Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
Albert Murray, Alabama-born, Harlem-based, essayist, novelist, and cultural critic, was, in the words of his friend and favorite subject, Duke Ellington, the unsquarest person I know.

Murray was a champion of the positive, resilient aspects of black culture, found in the down-home truths of the jazz and blues idioms he wrote about so incisively in his books. A lifelong opponent of the notion of inescapable black pathology, Murray viewed African American culture as a creative and ingeniously vibrant human response to a national legacy of racist suppression. He saw the broad expanse of American culture as a mixture of black and white traditions, a cultural composite, and his books featured iconoclastic ideas about the fallacy of race, the complexity of culture and the centrality of the arts and humanities.

Indeed Murrays intellectual legacywhat he called Cosmos Murray-- encompassed a broad constellation of literary and vernacular influences and included such writers and thinkers as Thomas Mann, Constance Rourke, and Ernest Hemingway, as well as his celebrated fellow Tuskegee Institute alumnus, Ralph Ellison. But when Murray died in 2013, at the age of 97, most of his books were out-of-print, or available only via print-on-demand editions. Now, marking the centennial year of his birth, The Library of America is publishing Albert Murray: Collected Essays and Memoirs, a collection of his nonfiction works, in October, with a second volume of his fiction to follow.

The first volume  a compendium of his essays, reviews, autobiographical writing, literary and musical criticism and some previously unpublished materials  includes three of his best known and critically-acclaimed works: The Omni-Americans (1970), which challenged the social science fiction of white supremacy and the fakelore of black pathology found in the infamous Moynihan report, and in the work of such black literary figures as James Baldwin and Richard Wright; South to a Very Old Place (1971), Murrays evocative, personal travelogue, a vivid account of his travels through the deep South; and Stomping the Blues (1976), a lushly illustrated treatise on the importance of blues and jazz in American culture, as reflected in the artistry of Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Count Basie. The second LOA volume, which will be published in February, 2018, contains Murrays quartet of picaresque novels featuring his alter-ego Scooter, in addition to his lone book of poetry, and a long and unpublished interview with Murray on the craft of writing fiction.

Both of LOAs collections have been overseen by the editorial team of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, author, historian and literary/cultural critic, and Paul Devlin, a professor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and editor of Murray Talks Music (2016), a collection of rare and unpublished writings on jazz and blues.

Publishers Weekly spoke to Gates and Devlin about Albert Murrays intellectual legacy.

Professor Gates, you met Albert Murray in the early seventies. Prof. Devlin, you met him in 2001. What does the publication of this volume do for those who have studied him for years, and for those who may be unfamiliar with his work?

Henry Louis Gates: I was a sophomore at Yale in 1970, and at the time, we were surrounded by black ideological bullies, whether it was a black ideological bully espousing the Black Panther program, or Amiri Barakas and Maulana Karengas Black Cultural Nationalism, as well as the Nation of Islam. And we had white groups like the SDS trying to tell us how to be black and how to be radical [laughs]. You had to run the gauntlet of ideologies just to get through the day.

So when I read The Omni-Americans, it was like a burden was lifted from my shoulders. I read it from cover to cover, and savored every word. To have an adult, strong black male, very secure in his blackness, say no, you dont have the right to tell me how to be black was so empowering and ennobling. Albert Murray stood for complexity. [Which meant:] Tell the truth about the black experience in its complexity. Since the day I read that [book] Ive been calling it the way that Ive seen it. Dont edit it. Dont shoehorn it. Dont try to make it conform to someones ideological program. Just tell it like it is, and let the chips fall where they may. Thats what Murray did. Thats what I do, and Pauls in the same camp.

Paul Devlin: We learned from a master! This is the definitive scholarly edition of Murrays nonfiction and thus it will be essential for longtime readers as well as for those readers discovering his work for the first time. Murray completists will appreciate seven previously uncollected pieces and one previously unpublished essay  on the relationship between black and Jewish communities  which happens to be among his very best essays. Scholars will find our bibliographical essay indispensable, while new readers, especially younger ones, will find valuable context in the extensive notes. For all readers, Murray offers precise diagnoses of some of the pressing social problems that are, unfortunately, still so relevant today. But his essays on art are just as incisive. And he perfected a personal style of irreverent, deadpan humor.

Murrays non-fiction appeared in print a decade after his close friend Ralph Ellison published his novel, Invisible Man in 1952, and his oeuvre overshadowed Murrays work. How do both of you address the long-held belief by some scholars that Murray was an echo of Ellison?

Devlin: They share some of the same concerns and in broad strokes their ideas about American culture and its African American influences look similar, but Murray is very much his own man. Ellisons essay collections are composed entirely of occasional pieces  as are some of Murrays  but there are no fully conceived nonfiction books in Ellisons oeuvre, like Murrays South to a Very Old Place, Stomping the Blues, and The Hero and the Blues. Murray covers plenty of terrain that Ellison did not. But to give Ellison credit where its due, he did help Murray get a writing assignment or two when Murray retired from the Air Force after two decades as a Major. Ellison was three years older and had been a professional writer that entire time.

Gates: Paul, just a footnote: The lines of influence went both ways. Murray influenced Ellison, if not more, than Ellison influenced Murray. Murray wrote more than Ellison. Ellison would call him and read passages of his second novel, and Al would critique them. And they shared letters [published as Trading Twelves]. They would have lunch all the time at the Century Club. They had a reciprocal relationship.

One of Murrays central themes expressed in all of his work was his unrelenting attack on the social sciences for not being scientific enough in their observations of black life.

Gates: One of Albert Murrays greatest contributions is his concept of the Social Science Fiction monster [laughs]: that you could reduce the literary complexities of the literary text to a sociological formula. That somehow, the Negro was a sociological problem. And everything the Negro did was reduced to sociology. Thats The Social Science Fiction Monster. And it robbed so many works of art, and so many creative artists in literature, music and the visual arts of their complexity. [Works of art] are buried in layers of ambivalence, ambiguity and complexity.

When I wrote The Signifying Monkey, I was looking for precedents in the black tradition, when artists and critics said you need to plow the grounds of the African-American [cultural] tradition. Ellison and Murray said this tradition is rich enough to be the basis of a whole new theoretical approach to art, and a discourse in the analysis of literature. They were fluent in the folk tradition, the vernacular tradition. [Murray and Ellison] talked about it all the time. Murrays word for it was idiom. People now take it for granted that you dont have to fly to Paris or Berlin in order to theorize about African-American literature.

Murray's pro-literary stance and ideals are perfectly in line with the kind of writers generally described as Men of Letters. Was Murray part of that tradition?

Gates: Murray was a profoundly learned man. John Holloway  my dissertation advisor at the University of Cambridge, and chair of the English department  wrote a book called The Victorian Sage (1953) about this sort of Man of Letters. These people were polymaths, polylinguistic, polyvocal, and you dont find them anymore. Al was the last of a breed.

Proof positive of Murrays polymath prowess will be on display in the second LOA volume, which includes a never-before-published, extensive interview with Murray, conducted in 1978 by Gates and Robert G. O Meally, who now teaches at Columbia University.

Gates: That interview, which miraculously turned up on Als 100th birthday, which would have been this year, was transcribed by Paul with lightning speed; it will also be published in the Paris Review this December. Its all about his approach to writing. Its really Al Murrays theory of the novel and its amazing.

Devlin: I second that! Its unique among his interviews for its focus on fiction  almost as if it were done for the Paris Review  but it was not. I think hed be thrilled with its publication, and also thrilled that his books will be in print in perpetuity in elegant editions from the Library of America.
Londoner Irena Brignull has a long track record as an in-demand screenwriter, including work on the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love, as a script executive at the BBC, and, most recently, penning the screenplay for the Netflix adaptation of The Little Prince. Writing a novel was on her wish list, but with screen projects lined up like planes waiting to land at Heathrow  and three kids  she had neither time nor mental space to commit to it.

Then her youngest son came down with an illness that required a long hospitalization, and Brignull put her career on pause while he recuperated. It was after that, when a friend invited us to join them on holiday and I was watching [her son] run and play outside, that I relaxed and felt a freedom to do something else, said Brignull.

The result is The Hawkweed Prophecy (Weinstein Books, Sept.), a novel about two teenagers  one a witch, one not  that blends fantasy and feminist thought. The idea of witches has always been interesting, she said, but when I started to write I found I was more interested in the notion of powerful women, women who wanted independence and were punished for it, than I was in the magic.

PWs review called the debut novel a fantasy with the air of a classic, and foreign rights sold briskly after Orchard in the U.K. bought the book at auction in January 2015, said Brignulls primary agent, Catherine Clarke of Felicity Bryan Literary. Clarke reports sales to date in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, and North America  where Brignull is represented by Catherine Drayton of Inkwell Management. Weinstein Books Amanda Murray acquired the book here, and former Little, Brown Books for Young Readers executive editorial director Cindy Eagan edited it.

There was a day when the phone kept ringing and the news was, Oh, I sold it to Germany, and then, It sold in France, and then, Holland, too,  Brignull said. All that when I still couldnt quite believe I had sold it at all.

The two girls at the heart of The Hawkweed Prophecy, Poppy and Ember, have both been victimized by a jealous witch worried that baby Poppy might be the witch prophesized to one day lead the coven; she concocts a spell to switch Poppy with a baby born to commoners. As a result, Poppy grows up not knowing her heritage but constantly, inadvertently, causing chaos as her powerful magic leaks out in destructive ways. When her father finally moves her far away from the schools from which shes been expelled, Poppy has a chance encounter with Ember, whose childhood among witches has been a disaster since she shows no predisposition for magic whatsoever. Both girls feel like outcasts without knowing why.

For the author, the transition from screenwriter to novelist was not without challenges. I would work really hard all day and have one page written, Brignull said. With a screenplay, so much of it is dialogue, and so much of the work is done in figuring out the structure. I had to get used to a much slower pace and I had to learn patience.

Though she didnt start out writing novels, Brignull has a degree from Oxford University in English literature and a lot of her work for the screen has had a decidedly literary bent. In addition to adapting Antoine Saint-Exuperys classic novel, The Little Prince, she also served as script editor on I Capture the Castle, the 2003 film adapted from Dodie Smiths novel, and wrote the screenplays for the adaptations of David Almonds Skellig (2009) and The Boxtrolls (2014), based on the novel Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow.

Though a pedigree like that ought to inspire confidence, she showed her first draft to her oldest daughter  then only 11  with trepidation. When I first started writing it, I thought it might be just for my kids, Brignull said. Her daughter set her straight. I knew to take her response with a pinch of a salt because shes my daughter, but she was an amazing pre-reader, and she was very encouraging that it ought to be a series.

And although Brignull says she suspects the novel sold quickly in the U.S. because she was already known to the Weinsteins, the producers of Shakespeare in Love, her agent, Clarke, thinks Brignulls storytelling speaks for itself. Our German co-agent, Sabine Pfannenstiel [doesnt] think Fischer [the books German publisher] was swayed by her screenwriting credentials. They simply fell really hard for the text and were quick to pre-empt.

Brignull has already written a sequel, The Hawkweed Legacy, which Weinstein will publish in fall 2017. All the attention that her debut novel received even tempted her 12-year-old son to read it. He was not willing initially but he did read it and he gave me the biggest compliment, Brignull recalled. He admitted that, by the end, he almost had a tear in his eye.

The Hawkweed Prophecy by Irena Brignull. Weinstein Books, $18 Sept. ISBN 978-1-60286-300-8
Kelly Kerney recently wrote a piece for Publishers Weekly titled The Impossible Task of Writing Historical Fiction. In it, Kerney proclaims her dislike for the term historical fiction and its rigid connotationone that conjures bad memories of boring tomes written by authors with penchants for superfluous descriptions and romanticized characters. Meanwhile, other genres, such as near-future, have evolved into clever evergreen categories. But historical fiction writers should not be dismayed. The genre isnt vanishingits changing.

Perhaps youve noticed the sudden proliferation of the neo- prefix. The term neo-historical fiction is a relatively new trend in literature. Neo-Tudor, neo-Victorian, neo-Georgian, neo-40sthe list goes on. Paradoxically, the neo-historical label claims a novel can be something both new and old. For the writers working in these subgenres, their understanding of the prefix neo- could instead imply something that is revived or modified. Their writing may represent a new attitude toward a particular historical subject, whether it be a character, a manner, or an event. These new categories give life to a seemingly diminished genre. People like new things, so why not brand the same old, same old into a refreshing package, one colored with relevancy?

Like Kearny, writers and publishers shy away from the traditional name. Its why Bernard Cornwells wildly successful Saxon Tales is marketed as a testosterone-infused action-adventurewhich, I have to admit, sounds a whole lot more exciting than a stuffy old standby. Does it sound better because people dont like reading historical fiction, or is it because its so hard to write? Anthony Doerrs All the Light We Cannot See won the Pulitzer Prize, but it took him 10 years to write it. Don Snyder, an author and mentor of mine, told me that attempting to write historical fiction is just about the toughest thing a young writer could do. I tried, and I agree.

When I interned for a local literary agency this past year, I noticed a dearth of historical fiction submissions. In an attempt to avoid the stigma, writers called it something else, evidence theyre catching up to market trends. On top of these concessions to rebranding, I noticed these writers had something in common: they still drew from the same historical tradition laid down by the father of historical fiction, Walter Scott.

Scotts Waverly pretty much established the historical fiction genre in the 19th century; he wasnt so much a historical novelist as he was a novelist with a theory of history.

And here is the point I want to make: historical fiction might be changing, lagging in popularity, or losing ground in the is it sexy? competition, but it isnt going away. It isnt going away because for as long as there are people on this Earth, there will be novelists with a theory of history. Like an albatross, the title may be claimed by fewer writers (including Kerney), and more publishers might shy away from the genre, but the novelists who hold to a theory of history will continue to write it.

I believe all of these neo- subgenres borrow from the fundamental formula laid down by Scott. Think about them. Do you notice similarities? You can call it whatever you want, but if your story deals with collective moments of revolutionsuch as wars or physical conflictsor if it shows characters caught between two conflicting factions or ideologies, youre writing in the vein of Scott. I would even argue that it doesnt matter if you set your book a thousand years ago or sometime in the future; a theory of history is still a theory of history.

But history isnt really about the past. Its about human nature. We use the genre as a lens to see ourselves in a different age. To write on the human condition is to write with a reliance on history. Elements such as political consciousness, large-scale conflicts, revolutions, opposing factions, questions about government, economy, society, culture: all of these contribute to that theory.

Kerney wrote that history is all around us, a continuum on which the past, present, and the future interact constantly. It is precisely this interactionthis conversation between past and present, and present and futurethat is driving this new trend in literature. Historical fiction is not vanishing at all, but changing for the better.

Justin ODonnell is a writer and marketer living with his wife in Brookfield, Conn.
Skyhorse Publishing has acquired bestselling author Terry Goodkinds forthcoming thriller NEST. Skyhorse will publish the novel November 15. According to the house's executives, Goodkind turned down larger advance offers from bigger publishers in order to release the novel with Skyhorse, which promised to get the book out before the holidays.

I couldnt be more thrilled to be with Skyhorse, Goodkind said in a statement. They are bold and innovative. I think they are the perfect publisher to bring NEST to the marketplace.

Skyhorse said NEST reinvents the paranormal thriller, and called it an explosive mix of action and suspense that takes readers on a dangerous journey replete with super-predators and gifted humans."

Mark Gompertz, Skyhorse group editorial director, said the company is committed to giving the book the kind of aggressive publishing schedule [it] deserves. NEST will be Skyhorses lead fall title; the publisher has announced a first printing of 200,000 copies.

Goodkind was represented by Russell Galen at the Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency. His books have sold over 26 million copies and been translated into more than 20 languages. Goodkinds primary American publisher, Tor, will release his next book, Death's Mistress, in January.
Swedish Debut Draws Bidders

Dont Ask for Mercy by Martin Osterdahl, a debut thriller drawing comparisons to the works of Tom Clancy and Jo Nesbo, is interesting publishers outside the author's native Sweden. The book was published by Swedish house Forum last month and is about the threat the country faces from Russia. So far, the Nordin Agency has sold the book to Ambo Anthos (the Netherlands), Blanvalet/Random House (Germany), Hayakawa (Japan), as well as to publishers in Denmark, Spain, Norway, and Finland. The novel follows a man who travels to Russia to find his girlfriend, who has gone missing in St. Petersburg.

French Novel Gaining Sales Abroad

Frances Bragelonne Books has been selling Chloe Duvals Le Temps Vole to several international publishers, including Kensington (USA), btb (Germany) and Proszynski (Poland). The womens fiction title follows a romance novelist who discovers a love letter that was never sent. Moved by the letter, which was written over 40 years ago, the novelist decides to try to locate the couple it depicts, in order to reunite them. The publisher currently has an offer on the book in from Italy.

Korean Thriller Makes the Rounds

Barbara J. Zitwer of the Barbara J. Zitwer Agency is handling rights for The Plotters by Un-su Kim, which was originally published by Korean house Munhakdongne Publishers. World English rights have sold to Text Publishers (Australia), for publication in Spring 2017, and French rights have sold to Philippe Picquier. The book is about mastermind "plotters" who develop assassination plots for the government.

Dutch Book Week Gift Sells Abroad

Brother by Esther Gerritsen has sold to Albin Michel in France. The title was the gift of this year's Dutch Book Week, a 10-day literary event in the Netherlands in which a well-known writer is asked to pen a book that is then given away in book shops (when customers spend EUR 12.50 or more on another Dutch book). The novella--it's 96 pages--is about the relationship between a brother and sister and how their lives change when he learns his leg might have to be amputated. Rights previously sold to Aufbau in Germany, at auction. 2 Seas Agency handles rights for the book on behalf of Dutch publisher De Geus.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.  Purdue Extension's Indiana Beginning Farmer program is offering military veterans, active duty members and their families an opportunity to learn about aquaponics on Oct. 15 during a daylong program.

Participants will meet for a morning workshop starting at 10 a.m. at the Millgrove United Methodist Church, 11151 Millgrove Road, in Quincy, Indiana, followed by a tour of the Ponderosa Aqua Farm, a veteran-owned family business.

An aquaponics system uses fish waste to provide nutrients for plants grown in water. Ponderosa Aqua Farm produces microgreens, other vegetables and fruits, and tilapia, a low-calorie, high-protein fish.

"We are so pleased to be able to offer the opportunity to our veterans to visit a veteran-owned and family-operated aquaponics farm. We will incorporate expert presentations on hydroponics and aquaculture into the workshop for those interested in starting their own food system," said Cindy Chastain, farmer veterans coordinator for the Indiana Beginning Farmer program and the National AgrAbility Project based at Purdue.

This is the fourth farmer veterans tour offered by the Indiana Beginning Farmer program.

"We have had tremendous response to the first three tours and we look forward to another instructive and productive program," Chastain said. "In addition to learning about aquaponics, participants will be able to network with other military veterans who are farming or thinking about starting a farm."

The program is free but registration is required and space is limited. Lunch and snacks will be provided.

To sign up, go to https://mdc.itap.purdue.edu/wk_rules.asp?itemID=22370. For more information, contact Chastain at chastai1@purdue.edu or Katherine Prasuhn at kslong@purdue.edu or call 765-496-2377.

Writer: Darrin Pack, 765-494-8415, dpack@purdue.edu

Sources: Cindy Chastain, 765-496-2377, chastai1@purdue.edu

Katherine Prasuhn, 765-496-2377, kslong@purdue.edu

Agricultural Communications: (765) 494-8415;

Darrin Pack, dpack@purdue.edu

Agriculture News Page
MOLINE -- Michael J. Mack Jr., is retiring as group president, John Deere Financial Services, Global Human Resources and Public Affairs.

His retirement was announced Monday as part of a Deere statement on changes to its senior management team. Marc A. Howze, 53, has been named senior vice president and chief administrative officer, and Cory J. Reed, 45, has been named president, John Deere Financial.

As a business leader, Mike Mack acted with conviction and commitment in a manner consistent with John Deeres core values, said Samuel R. Allen, chairman and chief executive officer. His insightful thinking, unpretentious manner and boundless level of energy have been an inspiration to all of us.

Mr. Mack, 59, is retiring after more than 30 years of service with Deere, including posts in information systems, finance, engineering, manufacturing, marketing and credit. He worked in four business divisions at Deere and was based in several U.S. cities, as well as in Europe.

After serving in leadership positions of increasing responsibility, Mr. Mack was named vice president and treasurer in 2004, senior vice president and chief financial officer in 2006 and president of Worldwide Construction & Forestry in 2009. He moved to his present position in 2014.

According to Deere, Mr. Macks leadership during the 2008 financial crisis allowed the company to maintain uninterrupted access to the credit markets. As president of Deere's Worldwide Construction & Forestry Division, he oversaw expansion of its product line, updating of the manufacturing capabilities and broadening of its global operations.

Mr. Mack earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in mechanical engineering from Iowa State University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Mr. Howze, currently vice president, Human Resources, will see his responsibilities expand to include human resources, labor relations, public affairs, communications, brand management and security. The position will focus on improved integration of important enterprise functions to drive employee engagement and effective execution of the John Deere strategy, according to a Deere news release.

Mr. Howze joined Deere in 2001 and served in a number of positions in its legal department, including associate general counsel and corporate secretary, before holding marketing and business development positions and serving as a factory manager. He holds undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Duke University.

Mr. Reed is currently senior vice president in the Worldwide Agriculture & Turf Division with responsibility for the Intelligent Solutions Group. According to the company's news release, Mr. Reed has been instrumental in developing and implementing Deeres precision agriculture strategy.

Since joining Deere in 1998, he has held a variety of marketing and sales positions, including marketing manager for large tractors, regional sales and marketing for John Deere International in Switzerland. He was senior vice president, Global Marketing Services, for the Worldwide Agriculture & Turf Division before assuming his current role.

Mr. Reed holds an undergraduate degree in finance from Miami (Ohio) University and a law

degree from The Ohio State University.
As the Illinois Supreme Court mulls whether to reconsider the Independent Map Amendment it had rejected, a federal case illustrates why it remains so essential.

And it serves as a reminder that House Speaker Michael Madigan is a powerful man because he is a smart one. Thanks to the way the Chicago Democrat and supporters have controlled Illinois maps, opponents rarely are willing to take on incumbent lawmakers. And when they do, they face a huge financial disadvantage thanks to Illinois weak campaign finance laws.

He has been abetted by grateful lawmakers and a helpful judiciary, for example, the disappointing ruling outlined in the editorial by the Belleville News-Democrat which follows. The decision shows why voter-approved redistricting reform remains our best chance to take back our government. And why we cannot surrender the fight.

Mike Madigan speaks louder

than you: thats the law

Belleville News Democrat

You are not unique enough. A Chicago federal judge said so on Wednesday.

You deserve a lesser voice than Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan and all of his special committees. That makes sense, because Madigan has so little opportunity to make his views known compared to you, right?

U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman ruled in Chicago that Illinois 2009 campaign finance law properly limits how much an individual or political action committee can donate to a candidate for state office while allowing political parties and party leaders to make unlimited contributions through their committees. He reasoned that the unique role they play in the political system warranted those special powers.

So your role is not unique. Less political voice for you.

The law was being challenged by the Liberty Justice Center, an offshoot of the Illinois Policy Institute, based on the state campaign laws curbs to your First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. State Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, is a plaintiff in the challenge because he said it is unfair that leadership can dump unlimited dollars on some candidates while he is limited because he doesnt get leadership money.

Illinois political leaders should not be allowed to use campaign finance rules to tilt the political playing field in their favor and protect themselves from competition, said Jacob Huebert, senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center.

They are appealing Feinermans decision. Maybe you will become more unique.
Kids from less affluent homes, even when they have health insurance, are not as likely as others to get vision screenings that can identify conditions like lazy eye before the damage becomes irreversible, a new study found.

Researchers at the University of Michigan examined commercial health insurance claims data between 2001 and 2014 for nearly 900,000 children from birth to age 14. They tracked how often kids at different family income levels visited ophthalmologists and optometrists and the diagnosis rates for strabismus (cross-eyed or wall-eyed) and amblyopia (lazy eye).

The two conditions are relatively common, serious eye diseases in children. Because the eyes are seeing different things, the brain suppresses the vision in one eye. If not corrected by age 10, either condition can result in permanent vision loss. Treatment generally involves glasses, surgery, eye drops or patches, or some combination.

Children in families with the lowest net worth of less than $25,000 a year had 16 percent fewer eye care visits than those in the middle-income category of $150,000 to $250,000, the study found. Meanwhile, kids from families with the highest net worth of $500,000 or more had 19 percent more visits to eye care professionals than those in the middle-income group.

Lower income kids were also less likely to be diagnosed with strabismus or amblyopia than children from higher income families. By age 10, an estimated 3.6 percent of children in the lowest income category were diagnosed with strabismus, and 2 percent were diagnosed with amblyopia, the study found. For kids in the highest income bracket, the estimated diagnoses were 5.9 percent for strabismus and 3.1 percent for amblyopia.

We think that affluence is driving the eye care visit and the visit is driving the diagnosis of eye disease, said Dr. Joshua D. Stein, the studys lead author and an associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of Michigans medical school.

The researchers estimate that the lack of eye-care visits by lower income children resulted in 12,800 missed cases of strabismus and 5,400 missed cases of amblyopia.

Many children receive vision screening in schools, which wouldnt appear in the claims data that were analyzed. Children who fail a school vision screening, however, should be referred to an optometrist or ophthalmologist for further testing, and that visit would show up in the claims data.

Less affluent parents may have more difficulty taking time off from work or face transportation challenges getting a child to an eye care provider, said Stein, and there may be fewer eye care providers available in less affluent areas.

Under the health law, services recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of medical experts, are covered by insurance without requiring most people to pay anything out of pocket. The task force recommends that children between the ages of 3 and 5 receive at least one vision screening to check for amblyopia. That recommendation is being updated.
We are always working toward health or illness.

With these simple words  and a suggestion of working toward health  Maggie Murray immediately had my attention.

Murray is a retired nurse who now owns Subtle Energy Thai Yoga Bodywork in Bettendorf. She had practiced in the traditional medical field for more than 30 years, and has a lot of positive things to say about working toward health in a holistic way.

Thai bodywork is wonderful for gaining or maintaining flexibility, relieving tension, releasing lactic acid and opening the energy meridians, she says.

Its not a massage as we know it in the West," she says. During sessions, clients remain clothed. There are no oils or kneading of the skin, Murray says.

Instead, there is a lot of deep breathing and interacting with the poses as the body is moved.

I decided to check out a session with Murray myself to see what it was all about. After some paperwork and a discussion of concerns and ailments, Murray had me lay on a mat on the floor in a darkened room. She uses a heated Biomat to raise body temperature, increase muscle relaxation and aid in relieving things like muscle and joint pain.

Murray then moved my body into a variety of positions that felt similar to yoga poses, but more relaxing because I wasnt actually doing any of the work. She also applied compression, stopping and releasing blood flow. During the course of 90 minutes, my body was manipulated in a variety of ways, none of which were painful, while I was encouraged to breathe deeply.

I left feeling very relaxed and loose, very much like I had received a deep tissue massage, only more energized. With traditional massage, I tend to feel drowsy and ready to nap afterward. Instead, I felt the same kind of energy I have after leaving a particularly good yoga class.

Kelly Harris, co-owner of Tapas Yoga Shala in Rock Island, offers Thai bodywork at her studio, and says yoga and bodywork are closely related.

Both include stretching as a method of bringing fresh blood and new awareness to the body. Through conscious and precise stretching, we can change the way muscle fibers and muscle groups communicate with the brain. This, in turn, helps the body replenish itself and counter the effects of day-to-day life, Harris says.

She says Thai bodywork has roots in East Asia. Like many other ancient arts, it has a deep and difficult-to-pinpoint beginning in East Asia. Thai massage has been a part of family history for many hundreds of years, and is now practiced and taught all over the world. Like other bodywork practices, theres a broad range of styles and techniques that now fall under this name, Harris says.

Daina Lewis, owner of Shine Yoga and Bodyworks, Moline, also practices Thai bodywork. She says she fell in love with it after attending a workshop at a yoga festival a decade ago, and began her training shortly after.

Lewis emphasizes that Thai bodywork is a practice that shouldnt be looked at as a treat, but as a necessary part of whole-body well being. She also points out that anyone can reap its benefits, from children to athletes to seniors.

Lewis practices not only on her clients, but on her children and her mother. She said her mother, who suffers from fibromyalgia, finds that the compression therapy used in Thai bodywork doesnt hurt the way the intense pressure of traditional massage can.

And athletes can use this as a way to maintain their body by getting into the connective tissues and around the joints. It helps with range of movement, Lewis says.

She adds that her teacher, Chuck Duff, refers to Thai bodywork as lazy mans yoga.

You get into yoga-like positions, but you get to relax the whole time, Lewis says, adding that you benefit more if you let your body become loose and let the practitioner do the work.

Thai bodywork is offered in a number of locations throughout the Quad-Cities and Radish region. Murray, Harris and Lewis agree that the regularity with which to receive Thai bodywork depends on the clients needs and budget, but that most clients come any where from once per week to once per month.
An Oct. 24 trial date still is scheduled for William H. Johnston, 69, of Cambridge, charged July 14 with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of his wife Cheryl.

Defense attorney Bruce Carmen, at a status hearing on Monday, expressed doubts about the timetable but agreed to another Sept. 30 pre-trial hearing to keep the case on track for an Oct. 24 jury trial.

He said he still is waiting for autopsy results and lab reports pertinent to the defense. I can see the way things are going; we're not going to be able to hold ourselves to (the October trial date),Mr. Carmen told Judge William McNeal.

Judge McNeal said the state has listed 45 witnesses so far.

Mr. Johnston remained in custody as of Monday on $1.5 million bond which the judge reduced from $2 million last month.
LE CLAIRE -- Two motorcyclists were killed late Sunday in a fiery collision with a Ford Explorer.

Police were notified around 10:22 p.m. Sunday of an accident with a burning vehicle in the 3100 block of South Cody Road/U.S. 67 in LeClaire, according to a news release from the Scott County Sheriff's Office.

The ensuing investigation found that an eastbound red Ford Explorer driven by Darryl Wilson, 52, of Silvis, crossed into the westbound lane and collided with two motorcycles traveling in a line.

The first motorcycle lodged in the front of the Explorer and both caught fire, the release states. The second motorcycle struck a third which was behind the first two.

The riders of the first two motorcycles died instantly, the release stated. The third rider was treated and released on scene. None of the riders were wearing helmets at the time of the collision, the release stated.

Killed were William Bruce Griffith, 57, of Davenport, and Ronald Gene Fox, 59, of Blue Grass, Iowa.

Mr. Wilson was taken to a hospital with injuries not believed to be life threatening.

The LeClaire police and fire departments, Medic Ambulance and MedForce all contributed to the response to the collision.
Samuel L. Johnson, 50, of St. Louis was charged with first-degree murder Friday, according to the indictment, The Belleville News Democrat reported. Johnson is accused in the March 2, 2005, killings of 79-year-old Doris Fischer, her sister 82-year-old Dorothy Bone and their hairdresser, 62-year-old Michael Cooney at Cooney's home salon in Belleville. The women were getting their hair done at the time of the stabbings. Cooney's next customer found the victims and called police.

The Belleville Police Department reinitiated an investigation into the killings in 2014. St. Clair County State's Attorney Brendan Kelly said his office presented the grand jury with new evidence collected during that investigation.

Johnson was arrested six days after the killings but was only charged with an attempted burglary of Cooney's home in December 2003, the News Democrat reported. Prosecutors said there wasn't enough evidence to charge Johnson with murder.

Johnson is serving a seven-year term in the Missouri Department of Corrections for gun, drug, stolen property and other charges. He is eligible for release Oct. 30, when he can be extradited to Illinois. His bail on the Illinois murder charges is $3 million.

Another suspect, Darrell Lane, was charged with murder for the killings in 2006. Prosecutors linked Lane to a bloody fingerprint found in a vehicle taken from Cooney. Jurors, however, acquitted Lane in 2010.

Johnson did not have an attorney listed in court records who could comment for him.
Entries are now being accepted for the 2017 Miss Blackhawk Valley scholarship pageant.

The pageant will take place Saturday, Nov. 5, at Rockridge High School, Taylor Ridge. The winner of the pageant will compete for the title of Miss Illinois in June 2017.

This local preliminary to the Miss America pageant is open to young women ages 17 to 24 who live, attend school or work in Rock Island, Henry or Mercer counties in Illinois. Miss Blackhawk Valley is the oldest continuous pageant in the Miss Illinois system, providing scholarship opportunities for 67 years. Each participant will receive a cash scholarship.

Miss Blackhawk Valleys Outstanding Teen scholarship pageant, which also will be held Nov. 5, is open to teens ages 13 to 17. Seventeen-year-olds who enter must still be juniors in high school. The winner of the Miss Blackhawk Valleys Outstanding Teen title will go on to compete in the Miss Illinois Outstanding Teen competition, and the winner of that contest will compete in a national competition, Miss Americas Outstanding Teen, in Orlando, Fla., in August 2017.

Miss Blackhawk Valley 2016, Jaryn Franklin, was named Miss Illinois in June and competed at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City on Sunday, Sept. 11. Halie Parkinson was named Miss Blackhawk Valley's Outstanding Teen 2016 and will make appearances until Nov. 5.

Orientation and first rehearsal for Miss Blackhawk Valley and Miss Blackhawk Valleys Outstanding Teen will begin at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016, at the First Baptist Church, 2901 29th St., Moline. The orientation will provide information about the requirements for competition, and is open to anyone interested in competing, along with a family member. It will be followed by the first rehearsal.

For more information about the competition or to get an entry form, contact Nancy Lee at 309-762-0884 or BlackhawkValley@mchsi.com. Visit the Miss Blackhawk Valley website at MissBHV.com or find the group on Facebook at Miss Blackhawk Valley Scholarship Program.
Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs encourages Illinois residents to attend an I-Cash event from 11 to noon Wednesday at the Moline Activity Center, 620 18th St.

According to its website, the Illinois State Treasurer's Unclaimed Property Division connects people with their unclaimed property through the I-Cash program. One in four residents who search for property end up finding something, with the average payout around $2,900.

Unclaimed property consists of accounts and other financial instruments, usually intangible, being held at corporations, financial institutions, financial intermediaries, courts and life insurance companies, that have gone dormant for a specified period of time based on property type.

The event will help people understand what procedures need to be done in order to prevent accounts from becoming unclaimed or abandoned. Keeping accounts active and making sure people make a deposit or withdrawal, update their contact information or contact their financial institution at least every three years is some of the advice expected to be given.

People can search their names on the online I-Cash database, which is updated several times a year. By law, the Treasurer's Office must publish the names of new owners twice a year in local newspapers. People can receive a letter and a claim form directly from the Treasurer informing them on having unclaimed property.
This story was edited Sept. 13, 2016, to clarify that an additional proceeding is needed before Clean Line could exercise eminent domain. Ed.

Rock Island Clean Line will appeal the Third District Appellate Courts ruling overturning an Illinois Commerce Commissions granting of a certificate of public convenience and necessity.

The certificate would allow RICL to pursue a 500-mile high-voltage transmission line from Iowa to Illinois including through northern Rock Island, Whiteside and Henry counties.

The certificate is a precursor to exercising eminent domain, but RICL would also have to go through a separate proceeding with the ICC for the authority to use eminent domain in acquiring property.

Spokeswoman Allison Copple said RICL is appealing to the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn the appellate court decision and appeals are due on Wednesday.

Rock Island Clean Line issued a statement Monday saying they will work alongside the Illinois Commerce Commission, consumer groups, labor unions and others to appeal the Third District Appellate Court ruling.

The decision, if it were to stand, would create barriers to competition that would lead to higher electricity prices in Illinois, read the statement. The Illinois Commerce Commission in 2014 unanimously determined that the Rock Island Clean Line satisfied Illinois public use standard by promoting competition in the states electricity market, bringing clean energy to Illinois consumers, and lowering electricity prices. It is important that the Third District Appellate Court decision is overturned so that the Rock Island Clean Line and future infrastructure projects are able to move forward and provide long-term benefits to the state.

Rock Island Clean Line is a subsidiary of Clean Line Energy Partners, owned in part by Grid America Holdings, which is in turn owned by National Grid USA. According to the appellate ruling, Rock Island Clean Line project is projected to cost $1.8 billion to construct, operate and maintain and as of the end of 2013, shareholders had committed $95 million in equity.
ROCK ISLAND -- The fallout from Rock Island's failed Wal-Mart deal last week brought only one person to speak publicly about the situation during Monday's city council meeting.

Rock Island resident Larry Hunter asked Mayor Dennis Pauley and city manager Thomas Thomas to step down from their positions. Mr. Hunter also criticized city attorney Dave Morrison for the failed deal in which the city spent $15 million since 2012 to bring the retail giant to the 11th Street site known as Watch Tower Plaza.

"How did you manage to screw up so bad?" Mr. Hunter asked of the mayor. "I feel you should be impeached. I feel Mr. Thomas should be canned. Mr. Morrison  the city should look for a new attorney."

Mr. Hunter was the only person of the seven audience members who requested to speak publicly, to talk specifically about the Wal-Mart deal.

He said the city is like a runaway train without brakes. When asked by Mr. Hunter what they had done for the city, Mr. Morrison replied, "Well, I did defend a couple of lawsuits filed by a relative of yours. I successfully got them dismissed. ..."

Mr. Hunter's son, Casey Hunter, is serving 21 years in prison for being a felon possessing a gun. Casey Hunter was arrested in 2010 after shooting over his shoulder at Rock Island police during a foot pursuit. He was hit by return fire from a Rock Island Police officer who hit Mr. Hunter in the buttocks and foot.

The officer was unharmed and cleared of any wrongdoing.

Larry Hunter reacted after Mr. Morrison brought up his son's case.

"Since you're bringing my son up, there's nothing straight about you," he said. "I think you should make up the $15 million of taxpayer money you threw under the bridge."

Mr. Hunter then went into alleged police harassment of citizens on the west end of town and other allegations before sitting down.

After Mr. Hunter spoke, some members of the audience applauded.

After the meeting, Mayor Pauley said he wasn't surprised that there were few comments regarding the Wal-Mart deal.

"I think we've had a lot of questions out there in the media, and we've answered about everything that you could possible answer," the mayor said. "We're moving on. We have a retail consultant out there working on it. We're trying to recruit an appropriate business for that location.

"We're just going to move forward."
After entering the plea, Jermaine Wright, 43, was immediately sentenced to time served.

"After 24 years incarcerated, I would just like to go home," Wright told Superior Court Judge Eric Davis before being sentenced to the maximum 20 years.

Wright was expected to be released from custody later Monday and return to his mother's home and a barbecue celebration.

Wright's plea comes six weeks after Delaware's Supreme Court declared the state's death penalty law unconstitutional, although his plea was not directly related to the ruling. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in December on whether the ruling can be applied retroactively to the 13 men currently on death row.

Wright was sentenced to death in 1992 for the killing of Phillip Seifert, 66, a clerk at a liquor store and bar outside Wilmington. His plea brings an end to a decades-long legal saga that centered on a confession he gave to police following a nearly 13-hour interrogation that took place while he was under the influence of heroin. Defense attorneys also had argued that someone else may have killed Seifert.

Seifert's son, Royce Seifert, however, angrily denounced the justice system as "broken." In a statement to the court, he said that Wright's confession to police included details that only the killer would have known.

"It has taken 9,374 days to get to this point," Seifert said, adding that his family had persevered over the years in the hope of seeing justice done.

"The final determination will have a hollow sound, for the murderer will go free and be returned to the streets of Wilmington," he said. "Jermaine is not a hero or a celebrity. He is a confessed murderer." Addressing Wright, Seifert added, "You will never be free from the truth of what you did."

Before his conviction was thrown out, Wright had spent more time on death row than any other Delaware inmate currently facing execution.

Superior Court Judge John Parkins Jr. overturned Wright's conviction and death sentence in 2012, saying Wright was not properly advised of his rights during the police interrogation. He also concluded that his trial attorneys were never given potentially exculpatory information suggesting that Seifert may have been killed by two men who tried to rob another liquor store in the vicinity a short time earlier.

In 2013, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed Parkins' ruling, saying his review of Wright's confession, the linchpin of the prosecution's case, was procedurally barred. The court also rejected Parkins' determination that there was an "actual innocence" exception allowing him to reconsider the issue. A majority of justices also said Wright was not prejudiced by the withholding of evidence about the earlier robbery attempt because it would not have bolstered his alibi defense.

Following yet another appeal, however, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously last year that Wright was entitled to a new trial because prosecutors repeatedly withheld potentially exculpatory evidence.

Parkins, whom Royce Seifert described Monday as "a liberal judge with his own agenda," then ruled that Wright's confession could not be used at his retrial. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling earlier this year and ordered that the case be assigned to a different judge. Wright was taken back into custody after prosecutors refiled charges against him.

"Criminal cases do not get better with age," prosecutor Steve Wood said Monday when asked about the plea bargain, adding that memories change and that some of the physical evidence in the case has gone missing. He declined to provide details.

"Given the state of the evidence and the passage of time, today's resolution was appropriate," Wood said.
FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP)  The mosque that Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen attended was heavily damaged in an arson fire that Muslim leaders said was the latest incident in an escalating campaign of harassment and violence against the house of worship and its members.

Given the timing  Sunday's 15th anniversary of 9/11 and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha  investigators believe the blaze that broke out shortly before midnight Sunday at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce may have been a hate crime, St. Lucie County sheriff's spokesman Maj. David Thompson said.

No one was injured. The fire burned a 10-by-10-foot (3-by-3-meter) hole in the roof at the back of the mosque's main building and blackened its eaves with soot.

A surveillance video from the mosque showed a man on a motorcycle approaching the building with a bottle of liquid and some papers, then leaving when there was a flash and shaking his hand as though he may have burned it, Thompson said.

The arsonist "is terrorizing our community because we don't know where he is at and we don't know what he is capable of doing," said Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, a Florida spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Mateen was killed by police after opening fire at the Pulse nightclub June 12 in a rampage that left 49 victims dead and 53 wounded. He professed allegiance to the Islamic State group. His father is among roughly 100 people who attend the mosque.

Ruiz said the mosque and its worshippers have been harassed since the massacre.

"First there were threating voicemails," he said. "Then drivers would splash water on the parishioners leaving on Fridays, and then a member got beat up in the parking lot when he came to the mosque for early morning prayers, and now the mosque has been set on fire."

The mosque has received more threats since the nightclub shooting than it did in its previous 20 years of existence, assistant imam Hamaad Rahman said.

"For this to happen to us on the morning of our biggest celebration of the year has made everyone saddened and scared, but our community is bigger than a building. We are stronger than that," he said. "I feel we will be able to pull together from this, and as time goes by we will be able to rebuild."

The FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives joined the investigation into the fire. Sheriff's officials released the video and asked for the public's help in identifying the arsonist.

Ariana Borras stopped by the mosque with her 2-year-old son to pay respects Monday morning. Borras said she is Hispanic and not a Muslim but is sometimes asked if she is Muslim because of the color of her skin.

The fire "makes me scared for my son. It makes me scared for my skin color," she said. "There have been a lot of racial issues going on and there's so much hate in the world right now."

Michael Parsons, 22, was standing outside his parents' home, directly across the street from the mosque. He said that since the Orlando shooting, "a lot of people have been driving by hollering and yelling expletives at the church or mosque or whatever they call it."

Parsons, a gutter installer with "trust no one" tattooed on his chest, said his mother's cancer doctor attends the mosque.

"America was founded so people can believe what they want to believe and do what they want to do," he said. "These guys flying the American flag on their trucks don't really know what the freedom is they're fighting for."

On July 2, a man was beaten outside the mosque. CAIR said the victim was a Muslim and the attacker hurled slurs. A suspect was arrested. CAIR said that earlier that day, a man in a truck stopped outside the mosque and said, "You Muslims need to get back to your country."

On Monday morning, a pickup truck with a "Don't Tread on Me" bumper sticker rolled past the mosque. The driver revved his engine and raised his index finger in the air as if making the gesture for No. 1.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  A second attempt at jury selection in the trial of a metro Atlanta man charged with killing his toddler son began Monday, at a new courthouse 275 miles (440 kilometers) from the suburban parking lot where the child died in the back seat of a hot SUV.

Despite the long-distance relocation of the trial, most potential jurors questioned by the judge said they not only had heard about the case against Justin Ross Harris, but had also formed opinions about his guilt or innocence.

Harris, 35, is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. Nearly three weeks of efforts to find an impartial jury in Cobb County fell apart in May, with the judge agreeing to move the case because of pretrial publicity.

Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark reconvened the trial Monday in coastal Glynn County, where about 250 people were summoned to jury duty. Two weeks have been set aside to pick a jury.

The judge began questioning the first group of 36 potential jurors Monday afternoon. Of those, 27 said they had previously seen news stories or other information about Harris' case. And 19 panelists, just over half, said they had expressed or formed an opinion about Harris' guilt or innocence.

However, when asked by the judge to stand if they were biased against Harris or did not feel "perfectly impartial" between prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case, all of the 36 possible jurors remained seated.

Meanwhile, 34 potential jurors asked the judge to be excused from the case  for reasons ranging from painful health problems to vacation plans falling in the middle of the case.

Clark did not immediately announce rulings on most of those requests. Those who were dismissed included a man complaining of excruciating back pain, a funeral home owner who said he had a sudden influx of business and a former police officer who works security at the federal courthouse.

Those who will remain in the pool for possible inclusion on the final jury include a father-to-be who said he expects his child to be born this week, a man whose daughter is getting married this weekend in Virginia, and a doctor who works in the emergency room of a rural hospital that typically has just one physician working every 12-hour shift.

The judge granted each of those possible jurors time to attend to affairs away from the courthouse. But they were all ordered to return before a final jury gets seated.

Harris, who moved to Georgia in 2012 from Alabama, is charged with murder. Prosecutors say he intentionally left his son to die at a time when Harris was unhappy in his marriage and looking for relationships with other women. Defense attorneys say the death was a tragic accident.
"I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal," she said of the pneumonia diagnosis she received Friday. She told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" that despite doctor's orders to rest for five days, she thought she could "just keep going forward and power through it and that didn't work out so well."

Clinton abruptly left the ceremony and appeared to stumble while she was waiting for her motorcade. Asked whether she fainted, Clinton replied: "No, I didn't. I felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute. But I got in, once I could sit down, once I could cool off, once I got some water, I immediately started feeling better."

Later Tuesday, Clinton told supporters via text message and Facebook, "I'm feeling fine and getting better," adding, "Like anyone who's ever been home sick from work, I'm just anxious to get back out there."

Clinton's evening interview, in which she promised to release more information at some point, came as her campaign scrambled to head off lasting damage from a difficult weekend. Aides are promising to release more of her medical records following her bout of pneumonia and conceding they were too slow in providing information about her condition.

An outbreak of respiratory illness swept through Hillary Clinton's campaign in the weeks before she was diagnosed with pneumonia, campaign aides said Monday.

The Democratic presidential candidate abruptly left Sunday's event after feeling "overheated." A video later posted on Twitter showed her staggering and eventually slumping forward before being held up by three people as she was helped into a van.

On Sunday, her campaign answered questions about Clinton's health and whereabouts with two short statements, both issued hours after she left the memorial in lower Manhattan. More than 20 hours later, her campaign gave a fuller accounting of the episode, which sparked a wave of bipartisan concern about her health and questions about her political transparency.

Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, said in an interview Monday with PBS' Charlie Rose that Hillary Clinton was "doing fine" after a good night's sleep. He added that if there are more health problems that caused her apparent weakness, "then it's a mystery to me and all of her doctors."

He said that "on more than one occasion" over the years "the same sort of thing's happened to her when she got severely dehydrated."

Clinton said in the live telephone interview with CNN that she started to feel hot at the event, which took place on a muggy day in New York. There was little shade where Clinton was standing alongside other dignitaries.

As family members of 9/11 victims read the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks, she decided to leave and get a drink of water. She was wearing a wool suit and had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, a fact her campaign had not made public.

In fact, campaign aides said Monday, a number of staff members at her campaign headquarters had been ill in recent weeks, including campaign manager Robby Mook.

At the apartment, she played with her grandchildren, even chasing them around the room, Fallon said. Clinton exited the building on her own, wearing sunglasses and carrying a handbag.

She waved to reporters and said: "I'm feeling great. It's a beautiful day in New York." She was then driven to her home in suburban Chappaqua, New York.

The public was left in the dark about Clinton's whereabouts for about 90 minutes, sparking widespread speculation about her condition. That was a mistake, Fallon said.

"It's just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you're a busy, active person, you keep moving forward," Clinton said on CNN.

Clinton's doctor, Lisa R. Barback, later came to her home and conducted an examination. In a statement released by the campaign eight hours after the incident, Bardack said the 68-year-old Clinton "became overheated and dehydrated" at the 9/11 ceremony. By the end of the day, she was "rehydrated and recovering nicely," the doctor said.

Campaign aides said it was Clinton's decision to attend weekend fundraisers and the Sunday ceremony, despite Friday's diagnosis. Late Sunday evening, she canceled a California campaign swing scheduled for early this week. Her husband will headline some of her events, an aide announced late Monday.
But even as Trump defended his backers, one lashed out at protesters in the hall by appearing to punch and slap them. Trump talked through the scuffle.

"While my opponent calls you deplorable and irredeemable," he said in Asheville, North Carolina, "I call you hard-working American patriots who love their country and want a better future for all our people."

But his rally was interrupted several times by demonstrators and, at one moment, brief violence. As several protesters were being escorted out by security, a man in the crowd grabbed a male protester around the neck and then punched him. He then slapped at a woman being led out. The Trump supporter was not ejected by security.

The celebrity businessman talked through the scuffle but cracked after the disturbance, "Is there any place more fun than a Trump rally?"

No stranger to making his own sweeping negative characterizations of large groups of people, Trump nonetheless deployed Clinton's remark as the foundation for a new campaign theme. The message: Clinton is divisive, while Trump is the only candidate representing "all Americans."

"You cannot run for president if you have such contempt in your heart for the American voter," Trump said. "You can't lead this nation if you have such a low opinion of its citizens."

In a speech earlier Monday to the National Guard Association conference in Baltimore, Trump said Clinton's comments were aimed at those in uniform, whether in the military or in law enforcement.

"These were the people Hillary Clinton so viciously demonized," said Trump, who demanded that Clinton issue a full apology. "She divides people into baskets as though they were objects not human beings."

Clinton has said she regrets using the term, "half," to describe the proportion of Trump supporters she considers "deplorables." But she didn't back down from describing his campaign as largely built on prejudice and paranoia.

The comments, though, combined with Clinton's health scare Sunday at the 9/11 memorial  she was captured on video struggling to step into a waiting van and her doctor later announced that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia  could reshape the race, in which Clinton holds slim leads in several battleground states. Trump, who has long questioned Clinton's fitness for the presidency, was notably restrained on the health matter, saying he hopes Clinton feels better soon.

A new ad, set to air in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, is squarely aimed at the voters the Trump campaign says Clinton is vilifying.

"You know what's deplorable? Hillary Clinton viciously demonizing hard working people like you," concludes the ad.

Clinton, who has said she is the candidate to unify a divided country, made the "deplorables" comment at a fundraiser Friday night in New York. She has made similar comments recently, including on an Israeli television station.

"To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic  you name it," she said, before stressing that other Trump supporters are frustrated and need sympathy.

Trump and his aides have predicted that Clinton's statement would be more damaging than the gaffe to which it has been frequently compared, when Mitt Romney four years ago suggested that "47 percent" of voters wouldn't back him because they were dependent on government.

But Trump has also attacked Americans who don't intend to vote for him.

When he trailed Dr. Ben Carson in the polls last December in Iowa, he mocked his opponent's claim that he had tried to stab a family member only to fail after the blade hit a belt buckle.

"How stupid are the people of Iowa?" he asked. "How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?"
Residents and observers reported quiet in most of the country hours after the truce came into effect, though activists said airstrikes took place on contested areas around the northern city of Aleppo.

But the most powerful rebel groups have shown deep misgivings over the cease-fire deal, which was crafted without their input last weekend in Geneva between the top U.S. and Russian diplomats. Hours after it came into force, a coalition of rebel factions put out a statement that stopped short of committing to the cease-fire, a reflection of their distrust of the government.

The first week of the truce will be crucial. During that time, all fighting between the military of President Bashar Assad and rebels is to stop. But, Assad's forces can continue air strikes against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked insurgents from the group once known as the Nusra Front.

However, the al-Qaida linked insurgents are closely allied to many rebel factions and are a powerful force in the defense of Aleppo in particular. That raises the danger that continued airstrikes will draw rebels into retaliation, eventually leading to the cease-fire's collapse, much as previous attempts earlier this year fell apart.

Compounding the situation, a group of 21 rebel factions issued a statement Friday in which they warned against targeting al-Qaida-linked militants. The statement was non-committal about whether the groups would abide by the cease-fire.

After a week, however, the conflict would potentially enter a dramatically different stage. A new U.S.-Russia coalition will step in to target former Nusra Front militants, and Assad's forces will no longer be permitted to. That will effectively remove Assad's pretext for war on opposition areas, which he calls a war on terror. Government forces will be allowed to fight defensively and to target the Islamic State group, only.

The deal's architects hope that would pave the way for an extended period of restraint that can serve as the foundation for peace talks between the war's many sides.

As the cease-fire came into effect, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that rebel factions must distance themselves from the al-Qaida-linked militants, whose group recently changed its name from Nusra to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, or Levant Conquest Front.

He also said the Syrian government must allow deliveries of humanitarian aid into besieged areas, including the rebel-held districts of Aleppo.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said peace talks between opposition groups and the government could resume as early as next month.

Multiple rounds earlier this year in Geneva failed to make progress. Ultimately, talks have run into the question that neither side is willing to budge on  the fate of Assad and his government. As a result, the war has continued the grinding violence that has so far killed more than 250,000 people and driven some 11 million people, half of Syria's population, from their homes since 2011.

That same roadblock makes prospects for a peace dim even if the cease-fire does hold, said Syria analyst Aron Lund.

Opposition groups have demanded Assad's departure as a condition to lasting peace, which has so far been a non-starter for government negotiations.

"It's an existential question for the regime as it currently stands. It's about the regime or not," said Lund.

In a letter to rebels disseminated last weekend, U.S. Special Envoy for Syria Michael Ratney promised them that, "our priority remains calming the situation to allow the launch of a credible political operation that leads to a true political transition that Syrians want most determinedly, a new Syria without Bashar Assad." A copy of the letter was given to The Associated Press by an opposition official.

Earlier Monday, a main opposition group linked to several small, moderate rebel factions said they will deal "positively" with the truce brokered by the U.S. and Russia. The Syrian National Coalition said that any effort that aims to end the suffering of the people "is a step in the right direction and we will deal with it positively."

Still, other rebel factions showed deep uncertainty. Some have complained that the cease-fire deal does not mention Assad's future and keeps in place the government siege of rebel-held parts of Aleppo.

"There is no balance in the agreement," said Col. Ahmad Hamada, an army defector who is now with the rebel group known as the Northern Division.

When the cease-fire went into effect at 7 p.m. (1600 GMT), the Syrian army issued a statement saying it would abide by a cease-fire until Sunday at midnight, while maintaining its right to defend itself against any violations.

Hours before the cease-fire went into effect, Assad vowed that his government would take back land from "terrorists" and rebuild the country. Assad spoke during a rare public appearance that included attending prayers for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, where rebels surrendered last month after a four-year siege.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Right, which has a network of activists around Syria to monitor the conflict, said "calm is prevailing on most of Syria's territories."

Still, residents in Aleppo reported some airstrikes and shelling, including a barrel bomb attack by government helicopters. It was not immediately known if the targets where Fatah al-Sham or other factions.

One of the more immediate goals of the U.S.-Russian agreement is to allow the U.N. to establish aid corridors into Aleppo, the contested northern Syrian city. Over 2,000 people have been killed in fighting over the past 40 days in the city, including 700 civilians and 160 children, according to a Syrian human rights group.
The president of the United States lands with all the majesty of Air Force One, waiting to exit the front door and stride down the rolling staircase to the red-carpeted tarmac. Except that there is no rolling staircase. He is forced to exit -- as one China expert put it rather undiplomatically -- through "the ass" of the plane.

This happened a week ago Saturday at Hangzhou airport. Yes, in China. If the Chinese didn't invent diplomatic protocol, they surely are its most venerable and experienced practitioners. They've been at it for 4,000 years. They are the masters of every tributary gesture, every nuance of hierarchical ritual. In a land so exquisitely sensitive to protocol, rolling staircases don't just disappear at arrival ceremonies. Indeed, not one of the other G-20 world leaders was left stranded on his plane upon arrival.

Did President Xi Jinping directly order airport personnel and diplomatic functionaries to deny Barack Obama a proper welcome? Who knows? But the message, whether intentional or not, wasn't very subtle. The authorities expressed no regret, no remorse and certainly no apology. On the contrary, they scolded the press for even reporting the snub.

No surprise. China's ostentatious rudeness was perfectly reflective of the world's general disdain for President Obama. His high-minded lectures about global norms and demands that others live up to their "international obligations" are no longer amusing. They're irritating.

Foreign leaders have reciprocated by taking this administration down a notch knowing they pay no price. In May 2013, Vladimir Putin reportedly kept the U.S. secretary of state cooling his heels for three hours outside his office before deigning to receive him. Even as Obama was hailing the nuclear deal with Iran as a great breakthrough, the ayatollah vowed "no change" in his policy, which remained diametrically opposed to "U.S. arrogant system." The mullahs followed by openly conducting illegal ballistic missile tests -- calculating, correctly, that Obama would do nothing. And when Iran took prisoner 10 American sailors in the Persian Gulf, made them kneel and broadcast the video, what was the U.S. response? Upon their release, John Kerry publicly thanked Iran for its good conduct.

Why should Xi treat Obama with any greater deference? Beijing illegally expands into the South China Sea, meeting only the most perfunctory pushback from the U.S. Obama told CNN that he warned Xi to desist or "there will be consequences." Is there a threat less credible?

Putin annexes Crimea and Obama crows about the isolation he has imposed on Russia. Look around. Moscow has become Grand Central Station for Middle East leaders seeking outside help in their various conflicts. As for Ukraine, both the French president and the German chancellor have hastened to Moscow to plead with Putin to make peace. Some isolation.

Iran regularly harasses our vessels in the Persian Gulf. Russian fighters buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea. And just Wednesday, a Russian fighter flew within 10 feet of an American military jet. The price they paid? Being admonished that such provocations are unsafe and unprofessional. An OSHA citation is more ominous.

Add to that American acquiescence not just to ransoming hostages held by Iran, but to delivering the loot by unmarked plane filled with stacks of cold (untraceable) cash, like a desert drug deal. Why the stealth? Obviously to conceal the manner of the transaction from Congress and the American public. Some humiliations are so grotesque that even the Obama team can't miss it.

Now the latest. At the G-20, Obama said he spoke to Putin about cyberwarfare, amid revelations that Russian hackers have been interfering in our political campaigns. We are more technologically advanced, both offensively and defensively, in this arena than any of our adversaries, said Obama, but we really don't want another Cold War-style arms race.

Instead, we must all adhere to norms of international behavior.

It makes you want to weep. This KGB thug adhering to norms? He invades Ukraine, annexes Crimea, bombs hospitals in Aleppo -- and we expect him to observe cyber-code etiquette? Rather than exploit our technological lead -- with countermeasures and deterrent threats -- to ensure our own cyber safety?

We're back to 1929 when Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down a U.S. code-breaking operation after it gave him decoded Japanese telegrams. He famously explained that "gentlemen do not read each other's mail."

Well, comrade, Putin is no gentleman. And he's reading our mail.
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...
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!
pills

Opioid painkillers are killing people. Lots of people.

Not only do they slow down breathing, they also act on the same brain systems as heroin. As such, prescription painkillers carry serious risks, from overdose to, in rarer cases, addiction.

So far, our pharmaceutical solutions have been focused on designing painkillers that are called "abuse deterrents." Their allegedly adult-proof packaging is supposed to make them hard to get high on, but there's little evidence to suggest that these drugs alone will be enough to end the opioid crisis.

Instead, the solution may lie in a slightly more complex task: Creating drugs that can't possibly get you high in the first place.

A handful of companies is working on formulations of drugs that are designed to relieve pain while simultaneously preventing the warm, snug, all-enveloping high that can be achieved when the pills we have now are taken in high enough doses. Several have already made it past some of the more preliminary hurdles of drug testing; others are still being studied in mice.

The drug that enters the brain too slowly to get you high

In San Francisco, California, researchers employed by a company called Nektar Therapeutics are working to build a drug designed to enter the brain too slowly to cause a high.

"Its a medicine that Im very passionate about," Dr. Stephen K. Doberstein, the company's senior vice president and cheif scientific officer, told Business Insider during a recent phone call. "We have a chance to really positively impact medicine here."

The problem, as Doberstein sees it, is simple: "There's almost no new development of new opioid molecules. Everyone just wants to figure out how to lock it up in a pill better," he said.

Indeed since 2010, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved a handful of "abuse deterrent" drug formulations; 30 more are currently in development. In a March address to a panel of advisers, FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Califf focused on these drugs as one of the biggest solutions to curbing the overdose epidemic.

Story continues

" ... The promise that we are on a path toward products that are effective in preventing abuse both by patients and non-patients is real. And the agency intends to fully support efforts to advance this technology," said Califf.

robert califf

Several people at the address

warned that these pills might not be enough for several reasons, the Associated Press reported. First, overstating the benefits of abuse-resistant drugs could encourage doctors to continue overprescribing them. Second, we still don't know that the new pills will actually reduce overdoses or deaths. Most of them, the AP pointed out, can still be abused simply when swallowed.

"I am not convinced that we can engineer our way out of this epidemic, and I would caution against over-relying on abuse deterrent formulations to do so," Dr. Caleb Alexander, an associate professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins and the founding co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness, told AP.

This is where Nektar's drug, so far called only NKTR-181, comes in.

"We have a chance here to actually separate analgesia [pain-relief] from euphoria [the drugs' characteristic 'high']. We should do that," said Doberstein.

Tests of NKTR-181 in recreational drug users have so far yielded promising results.

"We gave the drug to a set of patients and we asked them, 'How high do you feel right now? Would you pay money to have this experience again?' And what we found was that in most doses, the 181 was essentially indistinguishable to a placebo. They werent feeling anything with respect to getting high," said Doberstein.

"That was really a remarkable finding," said Doberstein. "I dont think weve seen anything like that in the literature for these types of drugs before."

In tests of the same group of people designed to determine if the drug was working for temporary pain relief against a placebo or sugar pill, the drug performed well. Now, the company needs to show that the drug can work for chronic, severe pain. The company began Phase III tests of NKTR-181 in people with chronic low back pain in February of last year. Those results are expected this coming spring.

A drug that won't trigger a dopamine surge

A brand new company called Epiodyne started by a research team at the University of San Francisco's School of Pharmacy is designing a drug that wouldn't trigger a surge in dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain that is involved in emotions like desire and pleasure.

Across the US but primarily in Eastern states hit the hardest in recent months by the the opioid epidemic, many people are becoming addicted to painkillers because of the complex set of effects they can have on the brain in people who are predisposed to addiction. The results are often tragic.

"What were seeing here in New Hampshire is people get hooked on opioids and then they switch to heroin because its easier to get," Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) said on a call with reporters in June. "We're losing more than a person a day due to overdose deaths," she added.

drug overdose opioid epidemic

The way opioids work to relieve pain is often described by experts as a double-edged sword. While they can reduce the burning sensation of an aching back or a stinging wound, they also act in the brain in ways that can affect complex emotions like desire and pleasure.

The reason we feel good when we eat a good meal or have sex, for example, can be chalked up to a series of naturally produced keys ("ligands") and keyholes ("receptors") that fit together to switch on our brain's natural reward system. Opioids mimic the natural keys in our brain. When they click in, we can feel an overwhelming sense of euphoria. More importantly, though, when prescription painkillers act on our brain's pleasure and reward centers, they can work to reinforce behavior, which in some people can trigger a repeated desire to use.

Epiodyne thinks it may have a drug candidate as powerful as morphine that could help avoid this problem. But it's still too early to say if the drug, known only as PZM21, might help people  so far it's only been tested in mice.

"What we know is that mice don't seem to like it, meaning they don't go back for more if given the choice. That gives us hope that it might not be addictive," Dr. Brian Shoichet, the chief scientist behind the drug who also runs the Shoichet Lab at the University of California San Francisco, told Business Insider.

He and his team have a steep hill to climb. Drugs like these tend to followed a pretty dismal pattern of development: They make it to animal testing, but never get past that stage to be tried in humans. At best, the odds seem to be 1 in 10, Pinar Karaca-Mandic, a health policy researcher at the University of Minnesota, recently told Reuters.

Still, one of the characteristics of PZM21 that could put it a step ahead of NKTR-181  if its promising results are borne out in extended trials  is that it is fundamentally different from traditional opioids in two major ways: First, it doesn't appear to slow breathing like traditional opioids; and second, it only affects a type of pain called affective pain, which refers to chronic pain that's typically felt consistently, like the ache of a sore back. Conversely, it appears to have no impact on something called reflex pain, the type of pain that is recognized immediately, like the painful heat of your hand on a hot stove.

This could be a big benefit that the drug would have against other traditional painkillers, since it ideally wouldn't block people's ability to respond to a sudden shock of pain in their environment. "You dont want someone doped up on pain relief medication and not being able to feel a hot stove," Shoichet pointed out.

Taken together, all of these observed effects suggest that PZM21 is fundamentally different from traditional opioids. And that's a big deal.

"That's completely unprecedented. That says this molecule is working in ways that no other molecule has," said Shoichet.





More From Business Insider


CRRC was awarded a Lira 192m ($US 64.6m) contract in February 2015 to supply the fleet of five-car trains, which are being assembled at the companys plant in Tangshan, China. Deliveries are due to be completed by the end of next year.

The 85km/h trains are 2.7m wide and each set accommodates up to 1286 passengers.
The trains will consist of two three-car sets coupled together, each comprising a driving trailer and two motorised cars. The trains will be powered by asynchronous traction motors which are expected to reduce energy consumption by 30% compared with existing trains.

The ventilation system will be designed to ensure an even distribution of air inside the trains. Anti-vandal and anti-abrasion materials will be used on seats and wall panels. The trains will have electronic destination indicators at each end.

The drivers cab will be air-conditioned, have vibration-absorbing seats and colour touch-screen controls.

Delivery of the first 15 trains will start in 2017, followed by the remaining 12 trains in 2018. OEVRZ is already supplying trains under two previous contracts for St Petersburg Metro and will complete the delivery of 66 trains this month. Delivery of the second contract for 20 eight-car trains is due to be completed in 2020.
Kyra Senese has joined the staff of Railway Track & Structures as Assistant Editor, reporting to RT&S Editor and Railway Age Engineering Editor Mischa Wanek-Libman.

Senese graduated from Columbia College Chicago in May 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism with a magazine writing and editing concentration. Prior to joining RT&S, she completed a research internship with Advertising Age. Her journalism career began as copy editor/copy chief at the student newspaper, The Columbia Chronicle, where she worked her way up, eventually being named as the papers editor-in-chief during her senior year. She oversaw a staff of 40 and expanded the number of special issues the paper produced.

Senese also serves as a mentor with the Columbia Links journalism program, which is a skills-building and leadership development program for youth and teachers in Chicago Public Schools.
Ineco consortium to supervise Mexico City metro extension Written by David Briginshaw , Consulting Editor, International Railway Journal









A consortium of Ineco, Spain, its Mexican subsidiary Inecomex, Spains infrastructure manager Adif, and Cal y Mayor y Asociados, Mexico, have been awarded a contract to supervise the construction of an extension to Line 12 of the Mexico City metro.

The 2.5-mile extension will run from Mixcoac to Obervatorio, where it will connect with Line 1 and the 35.75-mile Mexico City-Toluca interurban passenger line, which is due to open in 2017. The extension will have two intermediate stations at Valentin Campa and Alvaro Obregon.

The initial 15.2-mile section of Line 12, which opened in October 2012, has 20 stations and runs from Mixcoac to Tlahuac. Line 12 is the second metro line in Mexico City to have conventional steel wheel/steel rail technology rather than rubber tires (like the Paris and Montreal metros).
While the gendered impact of political conflict on women and children has been well-documented in conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, and Palestine, much less is known about the effect the Syrian civil war is having on women and children displaced by the conflict. More than 13 million Syrians ( PDF ) in Syria and surrounding countries have been displaced by the conflict since March 2011, creating what some have called the worst refugee crisis in a generation. More than 1 million displaced Syrians have sought refuge in Lebanon, accounting for almost a quarter of the neighboring nation's population of about 4.8 million. Syrians in Lebanon have become the largest refugee population in the world.

In Lebanon, more than half of registered Syrian refugees are younger than 18, and 75 percent are women and children. The absence of adult males in households has increased the vulnerability of women and children, who are at heightened risk for sexual and gender-based violence ( PDF ) as well as child labor, and other illicit activities.

Research has shown that women living in conflict areas or humanitarian settings are predisposed to poor reproductive health outcomes. A 2014 study that assessed the reproductive and general health of Syrian women in Lebanon found 30 percent of female respondents reported experiencing some form of violencebut of that group, 65 percent did not seek medical care. The plight of women and girls in Lebanon also may worsen due to their loss of legal protection, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report.

New legislation by the Lebanese government has suspended registration of new Syrian refugees. This has made unregistered Syrian women and children vulnerable to labor and sexual exploitation because they cannot go to Lebanese authorities to seek protection. Moreover, the United Nations is concerned about the number of Syrian children facing statelessnessreports suggest that the births of as many as 50,000 Syrian children remain unregistered in Lebanon.

ABADD-Resource Center for Gender Equalitya non-governmental, civil society organization that works to achieve gender equality in the Middle East and North African regionhas been at the forefront in responding to the needs of Syrian communities in Lebanon affected by gender-based violence. In collaboration with the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit humanitarian group, ABADD conducted a rapid assessment of the risks and violence faced by Syrian refugee women and girls in Lebanon. The group's findings underscored the dangers that the women and girls identified as most imminent, including rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and early child marriage.

Child marriage is common in Syria, according to a separate rapid needs assessment conducted by the United Nation's refugee agency (UNHCR). But it increased sharply among Syrian refugees younger than 18 and living in Lebanon. Why? Those interviewed by UNHCR researchers said the key, contributing factors included the insecure environment, lack of work, and inability of the heads of households to provide for their families. Some families also use early marriage as a way to keep daughters safe from sexual violence and out of poverty.

Syrian refugees, especially women, have insufficient information on registration, access to aid, and other sexual and gender-based violence prevention-related services.

Ghida Anani, founder and director of ABAAD, emphasized that access to adequate information, knowledge and quality services is paramount for Syrian women refugees in Lebanon. But most refugeesespecially those living outside campsare unaware or unable to access protection services. That means their safety and security is undermined, and they are more vulnerable to exploitation. Syrian refugees, especially women, have insufficient information on registration, access to aid and other sexual and gender-based violence prevention-related services, Anani said. Combined with challenges related to mobility and legal status in country, and changes in gender roles, displaced women and girls are becoming more vulnerable and at high risk of being affected by gender-based violence, she said.

In response to these challenges, ABAAD teamed with the Danish Refugee Council, UNHCR, the Christian charity Caritas Austria, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and UNICEF to establish transitional safe houses in three Lebanese regions, including Beqaa in eastern Lebanon, and North and Mount Lebanon. Anani said these havens seek to provide shelter and security for Syrian women and their children at high risk or those affected by gender-based violence. With the help of professionals who provide psychosocial care and legal counseling, women can receive support tailored to their needs. Resources are available that can help them try to re-establish a life free from violence.

As the influx of refugees continues, aid organizationsincluding ABAADare likely to be stretched thin and unable to meet the significant needs of those they seek to serve. The problems will likely worsen as public and private services struggle to meet increased demand for employment, education, and healthcare, including sexual and reproductive health services for women and girls.

Two researchers who have worked with NGOs in Syria that focus on sexual and reproductive health rights argued for an overarching solution in a recent commentary in the journal Reproductive Health Matters. Improving the health and well-being of Syrian women refugees and their host communities in Lebanon requires not piecemeal remedies, they wrote, but systematic change that targets the total social environment. Interventions for this population will succeed only if they are focused not just on individuals but also on broader economic, institutional, and policy constraints that hinder women from accessing and receiving the type of care they need, they said.

Mahlet Woldetsadik is an assistant policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a Ph.D. candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. This blog post was written for the Pardee Initiative for Global Human Progress.

Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
In 2014, legal sale of recreational marijuana began in Colorado and Washington state. Oregon and Alaska are creating similar regulatory regimes. In November at least five more states will vote on legalizing pot. This group includes a potential game changer: California, America's biggest state by population and GDP.

But those debating legalization should know that the decision isn't binary. That's according to Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. His research has explored the many middle-ground options between prohibition and the for-profit commercial model implemented in Colorado and Washington.

To shed light on marijuana legalization and other drug policy issues, Kilmer hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit yesterday. Here's an edited selection.

What's the most important thing for policymakers and voters to consider before legalizing marijuana?

That no one knows how it will play out, especially from a public health perspective.

This is where risk preference comes into play. I understand why those who are risk-averse worry about creating a commercial industry that will eventually fight regulation and taxation.

Fortunately for them, there are many middle-ground options. Most debates in the United States focus on the false dichotomy of prohibition versus a for-profit approach that regulates marijuana like alcohol. Elsewhere, there is much more interest in discussing middle-ground options.

Once a majority of states legalize marijuana, do you think the rest will, too? Will federal legalization follow? And once marijuana is fully legal, will people turn their attention to legalizing harder drugs?

Serious state-level debates about legalizing some other substances could happen before federal legalization of marijuana.

Also, this isn't the same as legalization, but I expect that you'll hear a lot more about safe-injection facilities and heroin maintenance over the next few years.

What has been the most surprising thing you've found in your work with cannabis?

Lately, I've been fascinated by research about cannabis and opioids. I'm thrilled that more and more researchers are looking into this relationship.

No one knows how marijuana will play out, especially from a public health perspective.

Many studies of cannabis use examine daily/near daily (DND) use and not the amount used. How do DND parameters differ between those who use one gram per week compared with one gram per day? Most pot users want to have healthy practices. When will we see daily guidelines like those for alcohol?

First, for those who don't know, daily/near daily (DND) users are usually defined as those who have consumed marijuana on 21 or more days in the past month.

Second, this is an important question. We desperately need better information about how much people consume, instead of just how many days they consume.

When we estimated the size of the marijuana market in Washington state, we fielded a web survey with pictures of unrolled joints and uncrushed buds next to prompts, such as a ruler, credit card, and coin. But I'm not sure if that's the best approach for obtaining quantity information. I look forward to seeing more research in this area.

There's been a lot of pushback on marijuana legalization due to the inevitable increase in traffic deaths. As a policy researcher, how do you recommend states look at, measure, and deal with the fallout from such serious consequences when the benefits to the economy are obvious?

These discussions can be frustrating. Most people in these debates know that testing positive for THC (or its metabolites) is not the same thing as being impaired. That's an important distinction.

Why? The number of drivers in fatal crashes in Colorado and Washington who test positive for THC has increased since legalization. But that doesn't mean that legalization leads to a net increase in traffic crashes or fatalities.

We must look beyond simple trend analyses. That means using control groups and accounting for other factors that influence crashes. The best dependent variable for policy evaluations is total crashes or fatalities, not just those that involve a particular substance. It's possible that legal pot could influence crashes that involve other substances, like alcohol.

How did you get into researching drug policy?

I did policy debate in high school. In my senior year, we argued that more money should be allocated to substance use treatment. Since I had already done a ton of research on the topic, many of my undergraduate papers focused on drug policy.

After writing a few op-eds, I thought it would be interesting to intern at a place that did research on drug policy. It's a long story, but I ended up at RAND 19 years ago and never really left, except to go to grad schooland even then, I kept working with my RAND colleagues.

Drug policy is so interesting. It also intersects with most of the social issues I care about.

Look out for more AMAs with RAND experts in the future.

 Pete Wilmoth

This Q&A was also published in Newsweek on September 18, 2016.
Head of Russian government airline put under house arrest

MOSCOW, September 13 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko)  The Basmanny District Court of Moscow has put head of the Special flight detachment Rossiya Yaroslav Odintsev, charged with abuse of office, under house arrest until November 6, RAPSI learned from the courts press-service on Tuesday.

Earlier various media reported that other officials related to the Special flight detachment, Igor Kovalenko and Dmitriy Pozdnyakov have been detained as part of a criminal case over fraud during purchase of air conditioners for airplanes. One of the top managers of Pribor-servis company has also been detained. All of the detainees are charged with fraud.

Special flight detachment Rossiya is responsible for air transportation of the Russian President and serves as the official airline for delegations of Russian Government.
Russian Supreme Court registers Transaeros appeal against collection of $82 mln

MOSCOW, September 13 (RAPSI)  The Russian Supreme Court had registered a Transaero appeal seeking to review lower courts rulings ordering the air carrier to pay 5.3 billion rubles ($82 million) to another Russian airline Aeroflot, RAPSI learned from court records on Tuesday.

Last December, the Moscow Commercial Court ruled to award Aeroflot the full amount of its 5 billion rubles ($7.7 million) claim against Transaero over a debt incurred under the loan agreement of September 4, 2015. Appeals courts upheld the ruling.

Some other Aeroflot suits against Transaero are reviewed by courts. Thus in January, the Moscow Commercial Court ruled in favor of Aeroflot in a lawsuit against Transaero, ordering the defendant to pay about 2.85 billion rubles ($35.6 mln) it owes to the competitor.

Besides, on September 22 the court is to rule on Aeroflot claim demanding 429 million rubles (about $6.6 million) and on October 12 it will examine a 2.1 billion ($32 million) claim.

Transaero found itself unable to pay its debts estimated at 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.

Last 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.




At this years Insurtech Connect conference, Insider Engage spoke to Pranav Pasricha, Swiss Re's global head property and casualty solutions, Reinsurance, to discuss why the protection gap is the biggest challenge the reinsurance industry faces today and how Swiss Re is using technology to support clients to respond to new and emerging threats.
The Shiites' increasing effort to undermine Wahhabism's influence in managing Islamic affairs is now expanding to other Islamic denominations, including sects within Sunnism. This is especially true given the fact that hatred of Wahhabism is not confined to Shiites, but also includes Sufis, most of whom are Sunni. Wahhabis and their political advocates in Saudi Arabia often express equal hatred for Sufism and Shiism.
Two weeks ago, Moldova marked the 25th anniversary of the Republics independence from the Soviet Union. But what was meant to be a day of pride, celebration, and solidarity turned into anger, protest, and tear gas-ridden clashes with police.

There is no doubt that the right future path for Moldova is European integration. The poorest country in Europe desperately needs the support of a free market and the safeguards and regulations that come with it. But that is not where the country is headed. Less than two months away lies a historical occasion for Moldova -- the first direct presidential elections since 1996 -- and the country finds itself at a crossroads.

Shaken and rattled by systemic corruption and events that led to the disappearance of $1 billion from the Moldovan Central Banks reserves, the people have simply lost faith in the pro-EU government that currently governs and are increasingly leaning toward pro-Russian political parties. This is what those responsible for the heist wanted all along.

The missing funds were funnelled out of the central reserves in under three years through three of the most prominent Moldovan banks and laundered through a web of offshore entities so intricate that two years later, not a single cent has been recovered. This, shockingly, is not even the worst part of the scandal. The most frightening fact is that the whole thing was organized, coordinated, and perpetrated from the inside. As the former deputy head of the Prevention and Combating of Money Laundering Service within Moldovas National Anti-Corruption Center, I saw the moving parts come to light and tried to do something  until I was pushed out.

What do you do when an already vulnerable and disadvantaged country is drained economically from the inside out, and the ones who are supposed to help are the very ones responsible?

With nowhere else to turn, people today are taking to the streets, protesting both the government and the individual primarily responsible for the theft -- business tycoon Vladimir Plahotniuc. Plahotniuc is Moldovas top oligarch and the countrys richest man. He has managed to buy influence throughout the countrys political, court, police, and media systems. Thus does he maintain his innocence and his freedom, buying off or threatening anyone who tries to prove otherwise. He is active at the very core of the system, putting even the heads of the National Anti-Corruption Center into his pocket.

To most Western countries, the entire situation sounds like something out of a movie. But it is in fact the reality for 3.5 million people, myself included.

Many Westerners might wonder indeed why they should care.

The problem goes far beyond Moldovas borders. While two people have been jailed for their role in the theft, a scheme of such proportions required many more to succeed. If the main benefactor and his accomplices are not held accountable, not only will the funds never be recovered; a similar scheme could be replicated in any number of vulnerable countries, particularly those in which corruption is similarly ingrained within the ranks of the political system.

Whats more, Moldova and its people are not the only ones paying the price. The reserves came from the International Monetary Fund, meaning it was also money from European and American taxpayers. Countless citizens are paying for what has happened.

The upcoming presidential elections are indeed historic. They present a chance to truly reform the system -- so that the IMF can guarantee the safety of its funds, and so that the Moldovan people can thrive economically -- so that they can trust the government and those in charge of their well being.

And, finally, so that the Moldovan people can finally take to the streets and truly celebrate their independence.
,



We're sorry, this article is not currently available
During his first two years in power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was busy spreading the message that India was open for business. Now that his efforts seem to be paying off, his attention has switched to the country's two oldest rivals: China and Pakistan.

"Courting investors is increasingly taking a back seat to Modi's effort to balance China and isolate Pakistan, playing to his nationalist base," Eurasia analysts wrote in a note on Saturday.

Since assuming office in May 2014, the former Gujarat chief minister has embarked on an international charm offensive to court foreign investors by detailing his plans to eliminate red tape and make the world's second-most populous nation realize its economic potential.

While Modi's job is far from over, his reform drive has succeeded in improving sentiment. India attracted the most greenfield foreign direct investment in the world last year, according to intelligence firm Eurasia, while April-June gross domestic product expanded 7. 1 percent the fastest pace of growth among major economies.

These indicators give Modi space to focus on other parts of governance, Eurasia suggested.

Modi's decision to skip both the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting in New York and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Venezuela later this month [making him the first Indian leader to miss a NAM summit] are proof of his new foreign policy priorities, Eurasia continued.

"Modi's absence in New York signals that he feels less need to personally meet with the business community, a regular focus of past UNGA trips. Similarly, giving NAM a pass demonstrates both that India now enjoys closer than ever ties with the U.S. and regional powers."

Recent months have seen 65-year old Modi increasingly lash out against Beijing and Islamabad, marking a new chapter in India's strategy towards the two countries.

When Modi came to power, he attempted to regenerate momentum in both bilateral relationships but "Modi's bet on a positive transformation of ties inevitably run into the structural problems that beset India's engagement with both the countries," Carnegie India director C. Raja Mohan said in note last month. "These problems come together in Kashmir and Balochistan."

Story continues

India and Pakistan have long fought over the disputed territory of Kashmir and recent developments are further fanning tensions. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $46 billion highway that would run from Kashgar in China to Gwadar in Pakistan, intends to cut across parts of Kashmir as well as Gilgit-Baltistan, another area claimed by both Islamabad and New Delhi.

CPEC also connects with the sea in Balochistan, Mohan pointed out. "The prospect of a Chinese military base in Balochistan links India's problems with Beijing in the Himalayas with the challenge of PLA's [China's People's Liberation Army] rising maritime profile in the Indian Ocean. Throw in a fresh bout of turmoil in Srinagar into the mix, you have the explosive cocktail that is blowing up the traditional frameworks of India's engagement with Pakistan and China."

Previously, Delhi signaled that it could live with CPEC but that's no longer the case. In August, Swaraj discussed the matter with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and at last week's G-20 summit, Modi warned Chinese President Xi Jinping that both countries had to be sensitive to each other's strategic interests.

"In the past, Indian leaders were unwilling to express differences with China in public and hesitant to question in private those policies of Beijing that hurt Delhi. Modi, however, is not willing to pretend all is well with Beijing," Mohan explained.

In Pakistan's case, Modi is also upping the ante.



During his Independence Day speech on August 15, Modi referenced human rights violations in Balochistan, one of Pakistan's four provinces and home to Gwadar. A few days earlier, Modi said at a parliament meeting that Islamabad must answer for its atrocities against Balochistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The death toll in Kashmir has been mounting ever since the July 8 killing of 22-year old Burhan Wani, a separatist leader who was popular among Kashmiris seeking secession from India, while Balochistan has witnessed a sharp rise in sectarian attacks.

"Modi's reference to disputed territories in his speech alerts the region, especially China, to revisions in India's Pakistan policy. Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Modi has thrown down the gauntlet on China's infrastructure plans for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Gilgit, areas of dispute," said Harsh V Pant, professor at King's College London, in an August 25 note on Yale Global Online, a publication of Yale University.

Modi's comments reveal his hardened stance on resuming dialogue with Pakistan, Pant continued. "The Modi government is no longer holding back and wants to expose Pakistan's own internal vulnerabilities to the world in an attempt to change the strategic calculus of its neighbor."

Taking a tough line against Islamabad will also boost Modi's position as a strong leader as his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party faces 15 state elections over the next two years and as continued bloodshed weighs on the coalition government in Kashmir, Eurasia pointed out.



Indian policy strategists have long cautioned against the idea of changing terms of engagement with China and Pakistan. But as Mohan observed, Modi's administration seems to view the matter as especially pressing. "Some in Delhi insist these two fronts are no longer separate and that India has no option but to come to terms with their fusionmost notably in Kashmir and Balochistan."

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.







More From CNBC


By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 09/12/2016



ADVERTISEMENT

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

Former The Willis Family star Toby Willis, 46, has been arrested and charged with one count of allegedly raping a child.Toby -- father of 12 children, eight girls and four boys, ages 5 to 24 -- was taken into custody Friday for an alleged sexual encounter with an underage female approximately 12 years ago, Us Weekly reported Toby was arrested in Greenville, KY. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation claims he had traveled to Kentucky in attempt to escape police.Agents from the TBI reportedly began investigating the 46-year-old reality star on August 29.Toby is currently being held at the Muhlenberg County Jail without bond on a fugitive from justice warrant, according to Us, and he will later be extradited to the Cheatham County Jail without bond.Toby, his wife Brenda and their 12 kids found fame as a country-music band when they competed on Season 9 of America's Got Talent in 2014. The band reached the quarterfinals.The family then scored their own TLC reality show, which followed their musical journey and personal lives. The Willis Family aired for two seasons from May 2015 to April of this year."TLC did not renew The Willis Family, and new episodes have not aired since April 2016," the network said in a statement to the magazine. "We are shocked to hear this news."According to a source, the Willis family was told in May the show was being canceled because it failed to deliver great ratings."The network does extensive background checks, but found no issues with Toby," the Us source added.
First-time voters should be experiencing the excitement that comes with backing a candidate who shares the values and ideals they have for our country. Instead, when asked who they will vote for many students sigh, unprepared to argue which candidate they dislike less.
Just because everyone is aware of it doesnt mean everyone talks about it. One sorority member at the University of Georgia believes its time to speak out against the hazing and prejudices in Greek life, and shes not surprised to be the only one willing to talk about it.
Whitney Howard has been denied bond. The 31-year-old was arrested Monday and charged with homicide by vehicle and driving under the influence after her Jeep crossed the center line on Athena Drive and struck three bikers.
FILE - In this June 26, 2016, file photo, Gabrielle Union, from left, Nate Parker and Aja Naomi King present the award for Dr. Bobby Jones best gospel/inspirational award at the BET Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. In an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times published on Sept 2, 2016, Union writes that she can't take lightly rape allegations made against Parker lightly. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP, File)

SHARE

By LINDSEY BAHR, AP Film Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP)  As a rape survivor, victim's advocate and an actress in "The Birth of a Nation," Gabrielle Union has found herself in an impossible position. Union recently, along with the much of the world, learned that her film's director, writer, producer and star, Nate Parker, was accused and acquitted of rape 17 years ago.

She collected her thoughts in a nuanced opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times Friday, writing that while she cannot take the allegations lightly, the film also addresses and raises important questions about this very matter.

It's also the latest high-profile complication for a film that just a month ago was presumed to be one of the year's most vital  a powerful awards contender and a possible antidote for the #OscarsSoWhite Hollywood diversity crisis.

Yet the film, which fetched a record acquisition price at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is now in the shadow of persistent controversy just weeks away from its Oct. 7 release.

In the film, about Nat Turner's 1831 slave rebellion, Union's character is raped, though it's not depicted on screen. It's why the actress took the part, she writes. She wanted to give voice to women of history, especially black women, who have for so long been silenced on the matter.

"I knew I could walk out of our movie and speak to the audience about what it feels like to be a survivor," Union wrote.

Union, who was raped at gunpoint in the backroom of a Payless shoe store 24 years ago, says she's been "in a state of stomach-churning confusion" since learning of Parker's 1999 rape case.

The rape allegation came while Parker was a student and wrestler at Penn State University. Parker was acquitted, though his college roommate Jean Celestin (who co-wrote "The Birth of a Nation) was initially found guilty of sexual assault. That conviction was later overturned when the accuser declined to testify for a trial.

The case garnered a lot of attention at Penn State. Parker and Celestin allegedly harassed the accuser on campus. The incident spawned a civil lawsuit by the woman against the college, with a settlement of $17,500.

The recently renewed focus on the case also brought to light the fact the accuser committed suicide in 2012, which Parker, now married with five daughters, learned about from media reports. He wrote on his Facebook page that he was "filled with profound sorrow" and regretted that he didn't "show enough empathy." Parker also recently spoke to Ebony magazine about how he's taking steps to grow and educate himself.

It remains unclear how all this might affect the release of the film, its public perception or even its awards chances. Distributor Fox Searchlight is proceeding with the October release and will still take the film, and Parker, to the Toronto International Film Festival this month. But things look very different from just a month ago when Parker was happily accepting a Sundance Vanguard Award and taking meetings in the White House.

Union's op-ed "is certainly bad news for Searchlight, in that it keeps the focus firmly on this issue going into Toronto," said David Poland, the editor in chief of MovieCityNews.com and a longtime industry observer. "I can't say that the film won't do business. It might. But half of what it might have. And its awards prospects are on their death bed."

Yet Poland says one positive is that Union hasn't quit on the film or its promotion. "That's an implicit endorsement of Nate and the film, though with clear reservations," he said. "That the rest of the cast will stick with the film at TIFF is also critical for Searchlight, which is holding on by its fingertips on this."

Union, for her part, says that she has read the 700 pages of court transcript from the case and doesn't know for sure what happened that night.

Instead of speculating on guilt or innocence, Union is using the platform to advocate for education and conversation on the topic of rape, consent and aggression, something she is also trying to do at home with her young son.

"I believe that the film is an opportunity to inform and educate so that these situations cease to occur," Union wrote. "Sexual violence happens more often than anyone can imagine. And if the stories around this film do not prove and emphasize this, then I don't know what does. It is my hope that we can use this as an opportunity to look within."

Representatives for Fox Searchlight and Parker did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In this photo taken Wednesday Aug. 24, 2016 visitors look at works of art by Henri Matisse in Johannesburg. For the first time, Africa is hosting an exhibit devoted to Henri Matisse. The show in Johannesburg features more than 80 works, including a painting that points to how the continent inspired Matisse and his contemporary, Pablo Picasso. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

SHARE

By ANDREW MELDRUM, Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG (AP)  The South African schoolgirl leaned close to the Matisse painting.

"I like the blue and yellow of the dress the woman is wearing. And then there is the bright red background," she said. "And the drawing of her face is simple but strong."

For the first time, Africa is hosting an exhibit devoted to Henri Matisse. The show in Johannesburg features more than 80 works, including a painting that points to how the continent inspired Matisse and his contemporary, Pablo Picasso.

The exhibit of bold line drawings and vibrantly colored stencils also includes one of Matisse's first drawings as a student and one of his final paintings, the portrait described by the student, completed shortly before his death in 1954.

"He collected many African art objects, particularly masks and figurines from Central and West Africa," said Federico Freschi, dean of art at the University of Johannesburg and co-curator of the show that runs through Sept. 17, "Henri Matisse: Rhythm and Meaning."

"Matisse also collected a number of African textiles. He had a particular interest in textiles. So he collected many Kuba cloths, for example, and also various North African fabrics, particularly the sort of cotton applique work that is well-known in Africa. And those things find their way into his work in various ways," Freschi said.

Because this is the first Matisse exhibit in Africa, the show is broad in scope to allow space for learning and engagement, Freschi said. Most of the works were loaned by the Matisse Museum in Le Cateau-Cambresis , the town where the artists grew up. Others came from the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the Matisse Museum in Nice , the Matisse family and private collections.

One painting features a small African sculpture, a carved wooden figurine that Matisse bought at a curio shop in Paris in 1906. He brought the sculpture to a lunch at Gertrude Stein's and showed it to Picasso, who was fascinated by it, Stein later recounted. Picasso soon collected African sculptures and masks, and many critics say his interest in African art led to his development of Cubism.

Young artists at the Johannesburg exhibit gathered excitedly around the plates from Matisse's famed Jazz series.

"I like many of his paintings ... they are so perfect," said Shaunti Hlongwane, 15, who came with other students from his art class at New Model School. "The colors, I love all of the colors that he used, so he gave me many ideas when I want to paint."

Students are meant to interact with Matisse's works, said Sibusiso Ngwenya, art facilitator at New Model School. "We want to encourage the students to think about what they feel in response to the art and then in response to create their own artworks and their own performances."

Ngwenya said he was especially pleased to expose his students to Matisse. "His use of color, the line work. The students look at it and they see simplicity and purity and it inspires them. They think, 'This is something I can do!'"

___

Online:

http://www.sponsorships.standardbank.com/groupsponsorship/Arts-&-culture/Standard-Bank-Gallery-/Current-exhibitions/Henri-Matisse:-Rhythm-and-Meaning

http://www.musee-matisse-nice.org/

http://museematisse.lenord.fr/en/Home/tabid/640/Default.aspx
SHARE

By The Associated Press

NAPA, Calif. (AP)  Margrit Biever Mondavi, the widow of California wine pioneer Robert G. Mondavi who served as the company's cultural affairs director for decades, has died. She was 91.

Mondavi died Friday afternoon of cancer at her Napa home, said Keith Roberts, her son-in-law.

"She was the great lady of Napa Valley and the wine world in general. She was a gift to all of us," Roberts said. "She and her husband invented the modern wine business in California, and the United States."

The Swiss-born Mondavi joined Robert Mondavi Winery in 1967, a year after it was founded. She married Robert G. Mondavi in 1980. It was the second marriage for both. He died in 2008.

The Mondavis were among pioneering Napa Valley producers who helped turn the agricultural area northeast of San Francisco into a world-renowned wine growing region.

Mondavi, an accomplished painter, was the winery's vice president of cultural affairs and had a dream of combining wine with fine art, music and food, according to a statement from the winery.

"She created a showplace for painters, sculptors, photographers, jazz and classical musicians and the great chefs and winemakers of the world," the statement said.

Mondavi founded the winery's Summer Music Festival in 1969 as a benefit for the local symphony. Over the years, it has drawn performers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte and Tony Bennett. A winter classical music series was created later to benefit local music organizations.

Mondavi also introduced cooking classes that evolved into a "Great Chefs" series at the winery.

She and her husband also endowed arts centers and schools and a local opera house.

"Like painting and music, wine and food speak to the heart," she said, according to the winery statement. "By honoring the world of the senses, of memory and emotions, the rites of the table express our humanity."
Greg Barnette/Record Searchlight

Kevin Estabrook, electric operations manager for Shasta Lake, talks with Steve Morgan and his wife, Pam, Monday in Shasta Lake. The Morgans lost their home during the Lake Fire on Saturday.





SHARE Greg Barnette/Record Searchlight Crews work Monday to restore power poles along Hill Boulevard in Shasta Lake after a fire burned 80 acres and destroyed three homes.

By Nathan Solis of the Redding Record Searchlight

One of the three homes destroyed over the weekend when a wildfire ripped through Shasta Lake belonged to a city councilwoman and her husband, who's running for county supervisor.

Steve and Pam Morgan sifted through the charred remains of their home on Monday. Pam Morgan recalled a baby blanket draped over her couch, one she crocheted for her great-grandchild. Steve pointed to a slab of concrete on Monday and said, "Let's talk on my porch."

The slab, chimney and a few other shapes are what remain of their home.

The couple lost their home of 12 years in one afternoon while they were out of town. They received a call from a friend who was reluctant to say how extensive the damage was, but they knew a fire damaged their home.

Steve Morgan is apologetic because he will not be able to return phone calls for his campaign for the District 4 Shasta County Supervisor's race.

"I'm telling people don't call the house phone, because no one is home."

Most of his campaign brochures and signs were destroyed in the fire.

About 80 acres burned after a brush fire started Saturday, prompting evacuations for residents near Lake Boulevard and Hill Drive.

The Shasta County Sheriff's Office arrested Joshua Daniel Devaney, 28, of Oak Run on suspicion of drunken driving and a crash that started the fire.

Deputies who arrived at the crash immediately saw a fire spreading through a wooded area on the east edge of Lake Boulevard. What deputies didn't know at the time was that a passer-by had pulled Devaney to safety from the wrecked vehicle and Devaney had run away.

After Devaney abandoned the vehicle, he was picked up by somebody in a white Ford Mustang, deputies said.

Shortly after that, Devaney returned and went up to a deputy who was in the middle of telling people to evacuate their homes. Devaney told the deputy he was the driver of the wrecked vehicle that started the blaze.

The deputy said he smelled a strong odor of alcohol on the man's breath and noticed other symptoms of alcohol intoxication. Devaney admitted to drinking alcohol before the wreck.

The Morgans said their insurance company will pursue any legal action. They estimate their total loss is approximately $350,000-$450,000.

On Monday, Pam Morgan pointed to her sandals. "These are my only shoes. This is the first time we've been back here. We don't know what we'll be able to salvage. I have a pair of earrings that I wore when we left from my sister who passed away. My dad passed in December, so I'll try to find something of his."

She said she will make another blanket for her great-grandchild.

The couple are staying in a hotel in Redding and working with their insurance company to figure out the extent of their losses.

On Monday a city of Shasta Lake utility truck trimmed trees on Lake Boulevard. Blackened trees and charred earth told of the fire's path that led to the Morgan's home. The couple asked for help moving a safe from the rubble because looters were spotted going through their property overnight.

"When you lose everything you try to take it the best way you can. But to have people decide that they can steal your stuff  I mean it's a sick world. Just don't let me catch them," said Pam.

Steve said he will continue his campaign. Friends have donated clothes and other essentials to the couple. But he says the campaign will go on.

"The new house will not have the same flavor of the old house. It has too many family memories. But I'm not going to let this fire put me down in my campaign. This is no more than a little bump in the road. God put it there for a reason."
Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight

Fire crews leave an area near Hog Lake northeast of Red Bluff Tuesday afternoon after battling a 290-acre grass fire.

SHARE

Firefighters had a 360-acre grass fire fully contained about three hours after it started Tuesday off Highway 36 near Hog Lake, northeast of Red Bluff.

The fire started when a bird flew into a power line around 11:10 a.m., said Kevin Colburn of the Tehama-Glenn Unit of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
SHARE

By Nathan Solis of the Redding Record Searchlight

Speed limits and building repairs will greet the Shasta County board of supervisors at their regular meeting on Tuesday.

Public Works Department proposes updating the speed limit on nine county roads, including Balls Ferry Road, Gas Point Road, Old Oregon Trail and Knighton Road.

Drivers on Balls Ferry Road traveling north between Deschutes Road to the city of Anderson will be able to speed up, if approved by the board.

Meanwhile, the department also plans to repair a couple of aging buildings. The Public Defender's Building on Yuba Street has a leaky roof. Total cost of that repair is $172,915 and that includes replacing old air conditioners on the roof.

Second, the old county hospital on Breslauer Way is now home to county mental health services and it's in need of repairs. That project is estimated to cost $1.3 million.

Also, supervisors are expected to approve the appointments for 14 special districts. The appointments include the Burney Water District, Fall River Valley Community Services District and several other seats. A few will not be filled, because no one filed to take the seats. The terms for those positions range from two to four years.

Supervisors will consider a mental health telecare contract. The $500,000 contract will allow the county to treat mentally ill patients by letting them participate in televised psychiatric sessions with physicians around the state.

The contract would carry two automatic one-year renewals and the first leg of the contract would extend to June 2017.
Ellie Beasley, 6, a Daisy Girl Scout from Redding, places flags at the Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo on Friday. About 50 youths from the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts placed flags at the cemetery in preparation for Memorial Day ceremonies. Stephen Jorgensen, assistant deputy secretary for the veterans memorial and cemetery, said there are about 1,700 grave sites at the Igo cemetery. "This is a wonderful opportunity to teach the Scouts what Memorial Day is all about," Jorgensen said.

SHARE About 50 youths from the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts placed flags at the Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo on Friday. About 50 Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts placed flags at the Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo on Friday for Memorial Day celebrations. Cooper Overton, 9, of Redding places a flag on a veteran's grave at the Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo on Friday. Cooper is a Boy Scout from Pack 44, Den 8.

Memorial Day observances

Monday

10 a.m.: Lawncrest Memorial Park, 1522 E. Cypress Ave., in Redding. Featured speakers are Redding Mayor Dick Dickerson and retired Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Rob Burroughs of the Northern California Veterans Museum and Heritage Center. Highlights include patriotic music, wreath-laying.

10 a.m.: Pine Grove Cemetery, 44631 Highway 299, McArthur. Features guest speakers.

11 a.m.: Anderson Cemetery, 2500 Cemetery Lane, Anderson. Featured speaker is retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Carl Bott, of Redding. Highlights include wreath-laying, patriotic music, honor salute, memorial board display, flag-raising.

11 a.m.: Fall River Mills Cemetery, 43331 Highway 299, Fall River Mills. Features guest speakers.

Noon: Redding Cemetery, 1201 Continental St., Redding. Mayor Dick Dickerson and retired Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Rob Burroughs of the Northern California Veterans Museum and Heritage Center are featured speakers. Highlights include patriotic music, wreath-laying.

Noon: Burney Cemetery, 37383 Mountain View Road, Burney. Features guest speakers and 400 wooden crosses made by Eagle Scout candidate Colton Ferguson for his Eagle Scout project.

5:55 p.m.: Northern California Veterans Cemetery, 11800 Gas Point Road, Igo. Highlights include Civil War re-enactors, the reading of the Gettysburg Address, plaque unveiling, Civil War-era displays in the chapel, wreath-laying, placement of 1,300 carnations on grave sites. A bus will transport people to the cemetery ceremony on a donation basis. The bus is wheelchair-capable. The bus, which will also return passengers, will leave at 4:30 p.m. from the Northern California Veterans Museum and Heritage Center on Meadow View Drive south of the Redding Municipal Airport. It leaves at 5 p.m. from the Monarch Learning Center north of the intersection of Branstetter Lane and Cedars Road. It also is scheduled to depart at 5:30 p.m. near the CVS Pharmacy on Buenaventura Boulevard and Placer Street.

Wednesday

11 a.m.: Veterans Memorial Grove, Redding Civic Auditorium grounds. Highlights include speeches, patriotic music, wreath-laying.

4 p.m.: Veterans Memorial at Anderson River Park, dedication of bench honoring Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad R. Regelin, 24, of Anderson, who was killed Jan. 2 in southern Afghanistan.
Kendra Angel-Adkinson, Assistant Vector Ecologist with the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District looks for ticks Wednesday in the undeveloped area of Anderson River Park.

SHARE

By Damon Arthur of the Redding Record Searchlight

Black-legged ticks are already notorious bad guys known for spreading Lyme disease. Now the nasty little creatures are making people sick by spreading a new and little-known bacteria similar to the germ that causes Lyme disease.

There have been no reports of north state residents being sickened by the tick's bite, even though the Borrelia miyamotoi bacteria has been found in ticks living in Shasta County.

Stephen Morgan, a member of the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District board of trustees, said he was so alarmed by an article he read about the new tick germ that he brought it to the attention of the district's staff.

Morgan said he showed the article, written by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, to district officials because he thought more people should know about the bacteria.

"That was my thing, to bring it to the attention of other people," Morgan said. "When I read it, it kind of scared the heck out of me."

The bacteria have been found in ticks in 19 of California's counties, including Shasta, Siskiyou and Trinity counties, according to the state Department of Public Health. Symptoms of the disease are similar to Lyme disease, which is caused by a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi, according to the state.

The new bacteria, which has not been named, can cause fatigue, headache and a fever that is higher than found in Lyme disease. It is also a relapsing disease, in which symptoms go away, but reappear weeks or months later.

It could be that the disease hasn't been found in Shasta County, or anywhere else in California, because no one has been looking for the bacteria in sick people, district Vector Ecologist John Albright told the trustees during a board meeting Tuesday.

"It's one of those things, if you're not looking for it, you're not going to find it," he said.

In California, the bacteria is carried by the western black-legged tick. The district conducts weekly surveys for the ticks from November to March, when they are most active.

To find the ticks, teams drag a cloth attached to a stick through tall weeds hoping a tick will latch on.

On Wednesday, it took only about a minute for a tick to grab onto cloths used by district employees Geoff Taylor, a vector control technician, and Kendra Angel-Adkinson, assistant vector ecologist.

The ticks are sent to a lab and tested for pathogens, Albright said. Currently, though, the district does not have ticks tested for the new bacteria. But Albright said the district may screen for the bacteria in the future when the test is more accessible.

Testing for the new bacteria is currently only available in research laboratories, according to the state.

It was the state Public Health Department that first detected the bacteria in ticks in Shasta County, during a statewide testing program it conducted from 2000 to 2011.

During that time, the state tested 28,735 ticks in both the adult and nymph stages. Of those, 54 had the new bacteria and 97 had the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, according to public health.

Bacteria were found in another 174 adult and nymph ticks, but state officials did not know whether they had the Lyme disease bacteria or the new strain.

The germ was first reported in Japan in 1995. There have been 46 cases in Russia and 18 cases in the eastern U.S.

An 80-year-old woman from New Jersey with a compromised immune developed signs of dementia and may also have suffered swelling of the brain and the lining of the brain after being infected with the disease, the NIH article said.

The symptoms of the disease can be treated with penicillin, doxycycline and amoxicillin, the report says. One researcher noted in the article that the disease is likely to become more common, with up to 5,000 cases a year being reported, compared with up to 30,000 cases a year of Lyme disease.

Other than avoiding being bitten by a tick, Albright said there is little people can do to prevent catching the disease.

He recommended people watch for ticks on their clothing or pets after being outdoors. People should also use insect repellent with DEET to ward off ticks, he said.
SHARE

Two weeks before the 1944 election, an already ailing President Franklin D. Roosevelt rode 50 miles in an open car through New York City in a driving rain, hoping to convince voters that he was healthy enough for a fourth term. He succeeded in winning re-election, only to die five months later.

Compare that to midsummer 1988, when, with polls showing Democrat Michael Dukakis leading the presidential race, President Ronald Reagan alluded to rumors that the Massachusetts governor had been treated for depression, declaring, "I'm not going to pick on an invalid." Though Dukakis was healthy, his poll numbers began to decline, and he ultimately lost to Vice President George Bush.

The latter incident shows the potentially damaging political impact of even unfounded rumors about candidates' health in a modern presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton's stumble and near collapse Sunday from pneumonia came after rivals had sought to make political mischief by raising the question of her health with unproven innuendo. In that climate, what appears to be confirming evidence in the form of an oft-repeated video of the event and her campaign's failure to disclose for two days that she had pneumonia could have a serious effect on this closely contested race.

History contains a warning for her.

In 1996, Republican nominee Bob Dole fell off a campaign platform in Chico. Though he soon started joking about it, the incident symbolized the fact that, at 73, he would have been the oldest person elected president.

In fall 1979, amid sagging approval ratings, President Jimmy Carter collapsed in a 10-kilometer road race near the Camp David retreat while trying to keep up with more seasoned runners. It became a symbol for his declining political standing.

And as President George H.W. Bush faced a Republican primary challenge from conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan in 1992, he collapsed and threw up at a state dinner in Japan. It came nine months after an earlier collapse while jogging because of what was diagnosed as a thyroid problem, raising questions about the 67-year-old president's health.

Dole, Carter and Bush all lost. If Clinton subsequently loses, future presidential campaign historians may cite this weekend as a precursor of her political demise.

History also shows ways to respond. In 1984, his age (73) became an issue for President Ronald Reagan's re-election after he gave a meandering closing debate statement. But he escaped political damage with a strong showing in the second debate and a typical Reagan quip that he wouldn't exploit rival Walter Mondale's "youth and inexperience."

But Reagan had more credibility than Clinton. Still, unless she shows more physical problems than have been indicated so far, Clinton may ultimately suffer more from her unfortunate weekend condemnation of half of Trump's supporters as "deplorables."

Besides, it's hard to say what voters weighing two unpopular nominees will decide when they measure her weekend missteps against Trump's lack of presidential temperament.

Email Carl P. Leubsdorf at carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com.
'Business Dems' create new California political realities

Fran Pavley, who is about to be termed out of her seat in the state Senate, was worried before the June primary election. Would her trusted longtime aide, Henry Stern, be aced out of the November runoff election to succeed her by a more business-oriented Democrat?

The answer turned out to be no, but it was no sure thing, as Stern managed only a 7 percent margin over Janice Kamenir-Reznik, attorney and longtime activist, president of the California Women's Law Center and cofounder of anti-genocide organization Jewish World Watch.

This was a classic fight between Democrats whose priorities are only slightly different. Stern has a strong environmentalist record. Kamenir-Reznik was perceived as more business-friendly. So a large share of the $900,000 in primary election spending  mostly money from businesses  in the San Fernando Valley-based 27th state Senate district went to Kamenir-Reznik, while Stern got some support from labor unions.

Pavley, who wrote landmark state environmental laws like the 2006 limits on greenhouse gases and carried legislation making the reopening of the leaky Southern California Gas Co. Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field more difficult, could breathe easier.

Stern did not lead the field in the primary, but he was the leading Democrat and is favored to best Republican Steve Fazio in the fall.

This race played out differently from others in the new political reality that's emerged here since the 2010 adoption of the Top Two primary election system. The new system, which sees a one-party U.S. Senate race and more than two-dozen one-party legislative and congressional match-ups this fall, has spawned a de facto third significant political party, loosely called the "business Democrats."

This grouping, often elected over opposition from labor-backed fellow Democrats, represents fulfillment of the stated purpose of Proposition 14, which created Top Two. Its generally moderate members usually vote with Democrats on social issues like abortion and gun control, but are far less environmentally oriented than the party mainstream. The Republican minority in Democrat-dominated districts often helps elect them.

They are the big reason business-funded political action committees will spend well over $20 million this year on California legislative and congressional races, even though the 17 state propositions on the November ballot are diverting some business-donated PAC money. Education interests also are splitting money between candidates who favor charter schools (generally business Democrats) and those loyal to teachers' unions.

A typical race of this type comes in San Bernardino County, where moderate, business-oriented Democrats have never been rare. That's where incumbent Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, backed by realtors and oil companies, benefitted from more than $600,000 in business PAC money during the primary.

Those interests won't have to spent as much this fall because Brown's more environmentally-oriented opponent is Eloise Reyes, who finished 9 percent behind Brown in the primary. Reyes doesn't figure to pick up many of the 21 percent of voters who went for the sole Republican running in the primary.

But business PACs might have to spend heavily in the 3rd Senate district, where longtime incumbent Lois Wolk of Davis is termed out. This race also features two Democrats, the business-oriented Bill Dodd, now an assemblyman, facing Mariko Yamada, a former assembly member. Dodd got more than three times as much financial support in the primary as all other candidates combined, but is still not assured of election unless he gets substantial support from the district's minority Republicans.

EdVoice, a so-called "reform" group advocating more rigorous school evaluations, scored a major primary victory in the nearby 4th Assembly District, covering parts of Napa, Yolo and Sonoma counties, when Winters Mayor Cecilia Aguiar-Curry drew 28 percent of the vote, thus eliminating Wolk's son Dan, who scored 25 percent. Republican Charlie Schaupp stunned Democrats in the district by taking 29 percent in the primary, but is viewed as a sure November loser in this heavily Democratic district.

The bottom line is that there are fewer sure-thing races for Congress and the Legislature in the offing this fall than before Top Two began, and that the minority party in districts heavily dominated by either Democrats or Republicans will decide some close races.

Smaller parties don't like this because they have no runoff election slots, but they can fix that if they draw more votes down the line and, perhaps, raise more money to help them draw those votes.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.
West Loop, we found your new favorite burger and undeniably cool bar feels.



Review: The Loyalist

177 N. Ada St. 773-913-3774

Rating: !! (Out of four) Give it some time

>>Read more about our ratings

Advertisement

Cult films, cheap (or expensive) whiskey and punk rock can sustain a person for a very long time. For many years, Delilah's, the legendary Lincoln Park dive bar that built its reputation on purveying that exact combination, was a clubhouse of mine. But as you know, dear reader, I spend more time in restaurants than punk bars these days. But wouldn't it be wickedly delightful if I could find a restaurant with quality food and the dark, divey comforts of Delilah's? I thought I'd found just the thing at The Loyalist, one of two new restaurants from culinary power couple John Shields and Karen Urie Shields (Charlie Trotter's, Alinea). And if I needed a sign, the restaurant's website said in its very best nod to Nirvana, "Come as you are." So I did.

The dark basement lair and Nothing Noble

Advertisement

Just like at Delilah's, there are cult films on offer at The Loyalist, and the night I walked in, the TV over the bar was showing the movie "Heathers." There is also whiskey. A cocktail dubbed Nothing Noble ($12) contradicts its name with bourbon, demerara sugar, Amargo-Vallet Angostura bitters (a woodsy spicy mix) and lemon verbena. A sip of the brew, which tasted like drinking very expensive leather in the middle of a citrus grove, made me feel like a king.

Nothing Noble cocktail at The Loyalist (Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)

If you've ever scraped your leg on duct-taped booths or feared the bathrooms at Delilah's, you'll appreciate The Loyalist's comfy, unblemished black banquettes and bathrooms lined with gleaming tile.

"I've always loved the idea of a Chicago bar," John Shields said. "We wanted to do a nice version of that, where maybe you drop in and the Cubs are playing on the TV, but you can also get a great bite to eat."

Still, like Delilah's, The Loyalist's dining room is as dark as a Frank Miller-era Batman comic book. Even though the sun was out when I dined, the subterranean lair was filled with flickering candles and shadows.

Tick tock, my seat is wrong

Speaking of The Loyalist's booths, you can reserve one with three or more people at a $20-a-head deposit (which is applied to your bill) via Tock, the ticketing system developed by The Alinea Group's Nick Kokonas and former Google and Apple guy Brian Fitzpatrick. If you're like me and regard communal tables as you would a close encounter with a Zika virus-riddled mosquito (hey, I'm shy), you'll want to do this because all of The Loyalist's non-booth seating is shared.

Booth seating at The Loyalist (Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)

Though we booked a booth in advance, we were seated at a communal table after checking in, and I sheepishly had to ask if we'd screwed up the reservation. To her credit, the hostess apologized profusely and quickly moved us to one of the coveted booths.

Downstairs vibe, upstairs eats

Advertisement

While dining in a dark basement feels a little Harry Potter-locked-under-the-stairs-like, the food is pretty and intricateas you might expect from Charlie Trotter's vet John Shields and chef de cuisine Mark Bolton, who spent time at Tru and Boka. I don't know what the stuff at high-end prix-fixe sister restaurant Smyth is like, but the plates here are beautifully composed.

Many of the ingredients served at The Loyalist come from top local farms including a place dubbed "The Farm" in Bourbonnais run by Rebecca and Alan Papineau. "We have zero Sysco trucks pulling up out back," John Shields told me.

Summer melon at The Loyalist (Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)

Though it's no longer on the menu, my favorite dish was half-moon slices of ripe Nichols Farm honeydew and cantaloupe dipped in crunchy cashew dust, dabbed with fish sauce and finished with shiso and kaffir lime powder. Salty, sweet and funky, the contrast of soft and crunchy textures had juice dribbling down my chin. Despite the cheffiness going on here, the dish rang up at a very reasonable $7.

One dish that's not reasonably priced is an $8 biscuit. Sure, it's served with spicy West Loop Salumi 'nduja-infused butter and housemade ramp honey, but it's a single biscuit. It's also riding the edge of dryness despite those lovely condiments and doesn't stack up to the less expensive turbinado-spiked biscuit I had at Giant a few weeks back. At the very least, when we told the server that our table of three was sharing everything, he could have warned us that the biscuit was a single serving.

Acid vacation

Tangy housemade kraut tossed with crispy roast potatoes and a runny egg dripping in buttermilk mayonnaise ($13) made me feel better, the way fancy drunk eats do. Still, the dish was a little heavy and the kraut and buttermilk a tad tame.

Advertisement

Another dish that could have used a spritz of lemon or a touch of acidity was a bowl of grilled squid ($13) tossed with sungold tomatoes and Fresno chili. I enjoyed the smokiness of the squid and the sweetness of the tomatoes but wanted more pop overall. And while the circular slices of calamari were thin and delicate, the tentacles were thick, chewy and a little too big. If they'd been halved or quartered, they would have worked better texturally.

Oh my, chicken thigh

I found redemption in the crackling, crusted, juicy-to-the-core chicken thighs ($23) nestled in a moat of creamy grits wafting a heavenly corn perfume. A tiny mound of pickled tripe offered just the right zippy balance to the dish.

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

Being a bar of sorts, The Loyalist should have a good burger. John Shields and Bolton deliver just that with a $16 option dripping with mayo, American cheese and thinly shaved curlicues of grilled onion. A healthy dose of pickled onion and cucumber brightened things up, while a downy sesame-studded bun toasted in beef fat sopped up all the drippings.

Every day is like (lemongrass) sundae

A good burger demands a solid hot fudge sundae, but Shields decided instead to go fancy with lemon verbena- and lemongrass-infused ice cream drizzled with salted licorice syrup and pickled blueberries served on a bed of sunflower butter cookie crumble ($10). The pickled blueberry and lemon notes didn't bog me down in a sugar coma but refreshed like tart frozen yogurt.

Advertisement

There's also pavlova ($10), toasted meringue served with blackberry sorbet that's studded with dried sweet corn nuggets. I liked the ripeness of the sorbet and the treasure hunt-like nature of discovering hunks of crispy corn, but the chewy pavlova texture was tiring after a while.

Bottom line: The Loyalist is a chill dark bar-staurant that offers a glimpse of the high-quality experience happening upstairs at sister spot Smyth. The seasonal Thai-flavored melon was extraordinary, and Au Cheval devotees might just find a new favorite at The Loyalist. But some of the dishes still need revisions with a dash of acid or honing of textures to make this place truly top-notch.

Michael Nagrant is a RedEye contributor.

Reporters visit restaurants unannounced, and meals are paid for by RedEye.
Looks at 100 km ride on single charge, ideal for big cities

Right from his days in college, dreamt of building the worlds fastest electric motorcycle. Armed with a rudimentary knowledge of electric motors, circuits and batteries from tinkering with remote control cars as a child, he set out to achieve this dream.

Today, Shelke has his eyes set on a different prize - building an electric motorcycle that Indians would love to own. His dreams to build the fastest, most powerful electric bikes arent completely dead, but sensibilities about what someone would be willing to pay have set in.

We wanted to build the worlds fastest electric motorcycle, but the budget for that was out of our reach. So we ended up building Indias fastest electric motorcycle, the T1X, which was a college project and built from the ground up, says Shelke.

That rudimentary T1X, equipped with a single motor and lithium ion batteries had a top speed of a little over 150km/hr and a range of 90 km. Eager to test it, the team entered themselves into the TTXGP, an electric class competition at the Isle Of Mann, a tiny speck of land in the Irish sea between England and Ireland, thats a mecca for motorcycle racing. Despite having the slowest bike on the track, the T1X propelled its rider to a podium finish.

Fast forward a few years and Shelke now runs Tork Motorcycles, Indias first electric motorcycle startup that is backed by and Ankit Bhati, the founders of ride hailing giant Ola. Hes now busy putting the finishing touches on his sixth generation electric motorcycle, the T6X, which will be the first production motorcycle to roll out.

He plans to sell 10,000 bikes in the first year and scaling up to 50,000 a year over the next few years.

It had to be a motorcycle for us. There were obvious reasons for that such as the cost and the range achievable, but theres also a lot of emotion attached to a motorcycle. So last August we started building a team and decided to build bikes as a company, rather than a bunch of enthusiasts building something, adds Shelke.

The T6X was designed from the ground up, but since the team had the experience of building the previous five prototypes they had a lot of their work cut out. Most of the major work done on the T6X was that of refinement and incremental improvements to the drivetrain that Tork had been building for the past couple of years.

Being a fairly hands on and compulsive boss, Shelke still has inputs into every last detail of the motorcycles that Tork builds. He has also assembled a team of like minded designers, engineers and even the operations professionals that have passion for motorcycles. Everything we build, we ride. If we arent happy ourselves, how can we expect others to like our bikes, says Shikle.

While Tork isnt revealing an exact timeline for the commercial launch of the T6X, the motorcycles is currently in the stage of being homologated by the Indian authorities for use on roads. With backing from founders, the company says it has enough money to complete the development of its first bike and enter production. The demand for the T6X will then give Shelke direction on how much money the company would require to take things forward.

"When we started out in 2009, people used to compare what we were building to a Splendor (a utilitarian motorcycle from Hero MotoCorp), but today theres a whole range of bikes in the sub-Rs 200,000 market. We have worked very hard to create a completely new category. Theres no point going up against someone like KTM, because someone who wants a Duke will buy that, Shelke says.

Tork is going after a tech savvy buyer whos looking at a motorcycle as a daily commuter but does not want a run of the mill motorcycle. Tork claims that the performance of the motorcycle will match if not better what its petrol powered counterparts in the same price range offer. However, there is also a compromise.

In order to allow the T6X to achieve its 100 km range, its top speed had to be limited to 85 km/hr. The company says while its fairly easy to increase the speed of the bike, doing so would offset its range capabilities, in turn forcing Tork to increase the size of the battery pack, making the bike much more expensive.

Despite this, Tork is confident it will find buyers in Tier 1 cities of India where the average traffic speed barely enters into the two digit market - the average speed of vehicles in Bengaluru is 9km/hr and drops down to as much as 4 km/hr on certain occasions. The company says its confident it will deliver a thrilling ride to its customers.

Charge infrastructure

The electric drivetrain often hogs the limelight when it comes to discussing the future of mobility, but an increasingly important aspect that often gets left out is that of the charging infrastructure. Today, the Automotive Research Association of India is working on building a standard plug for electric vehicles in India, apart from standardising a lot of the specifications of charge infrastructure too.

Shelke says that players in India will have to replicate the charging infrastructure model Tesla has created in the US, but it cant be completely copied. Given the obvious dearth of resources, Indian electric vehicle firms will have to come up with better, more cost competitive models for charging. While it is undoubtedly a hard task, he says Tork is working on something that could work, without divulging too many details.

Were going to monitor the charging stations too. If nobody is using it in one place, why should we let it be there, we could move it. The other side to charging infrastructure is how you can guide users to efficiently use the motorcycle, so route planning and other such things will be important. Just installing as many charging stations as possible isnt the answer, Shelke says.

Image used for representation purpose only
He wants his companies to have speed and agility to adapt to turbulent times

With overseas business making up 70 per cent of Tata group's revenue, chairman Cyrus Mistry remains optimistic about acquisitions -- both within and outside India -- as also growth through the organic route.

He wants his companies to have speed and agility to adapt to "turbulent times".

Each of the group companies is charting its own strategy and growth story, with a focus on sustainable and profitable growth, Mistry asserted.

"We continue to remain open to growth opportunities in India and overseas, through the organic route and acquisitions," he said.

The group invested Rs 415,000 crore ($79 billion) in capex over the last decade. Of this, Rs 170,000 crore ($28 billion) was invested in the last three years alone.

In an interview to the in-house magazine, Mistry, who took over the reins in late 2012 from the legendary Ratan Tata, also spoke about coming to grips with responsibility of chairmanship, multiple challenges facing Tata companies, essentials of technology, innovation and customer centricity, and continuing Tatas' commitment to societal causes.

"We recognise that growth has to be a function of the operating cash flows we generate. At the group level, over the last three years, our operating cash flows have grown by over 30 per cent CAGR. But this, as we know, is not the appropriate way to use such data - our individual companies need to earn the right to grow," Mistry said.

"At the group level, we are focused on helping our companies earn this right by building strong operational cash flows and looking at their capital structures."

But he struck a note of caution: Capex should not be looked in isolation from investment in talent, brands and technology. He feels these will be the true differentiators in future.

"We are building the Tata group of the next 150 years," he said.

Tata group's international revenues are close to 70 per cent of its composite turnover. Also, a majority of the group's capital expenditure in the last three years have been in foreign geographies.

With the opening up of two new markets of Iran and Myanmar, several Tata firms are "gaining traction there".

"It was clear to me relatively early that one needed to confront the challenging situations facing some of our businesses, and ultimately, this would entail hard decisions on pruning the portfolio," Mistry said.

"But I have learned through experience that if you want to do the right thing by all your stakeholders, there are no shortcuts."

Referring to "external influencers and so-called experts calling for churning portfolio", he talked about criticality of the group developing its own prognosis based on knowledge and context, keeping all stakeholders in mind.

He was clear that "we should not be afraid of taking tough decisions for the right reasons, with compassion."

For Mistry, active transformation rather than revolution remains the guiding policy.

"My approach is to ensure we have a deeper understanding of the structural drivers for every stressed business and our presence in that context. We would then evaluate leadership, strategy and operations of each business before we take any decision to exit," he said.

On Tata Steel, Mistry said it is low on cost curve, produces differentiated products, is a strong brand and has helped them survive in a period when most steel producers globally are under water. He pointed to main factors underpinning sustainability in each company as different.

He took the line that opportunities have to be looked at with a global landscape in mind for most industries.

"However, one also has to consider business environment, and India is particularly well placed, when compared with several other markets, in terms of growth prospects in multiple sectors," he said.

Appreciating his predecessor Ratan Tata's leadership, the Tata group chairman said his vision to take the entity global in the early 2000s has given it a very strong platform.

"I think the onus is now on us to build on that, and to make sure we not only have a global footprint, but we create global mindsets," he said.

The strategy at the group level, Mistry said, is to get closer to consumers to anticipate their needs.

Mistry also put a premium on enlisting customer loyalty and building strong brands that help companies weather many storms and often allow passing on of some of the volatility to the market.

"In keeping with the Tata ethos, we are fully committed to maintaining the highest standards of ethics and governance in the conduct of business by our enterprises," the group chief said.

This includes emphasis at the group level on certain standards and longer-term aspirations, providing sufficient autonomy to group companies and boards to independently focus on creating value for all stakeholders and parenting styles that meet needs of individual companies at their individual stage of growth and maturity.

Mistry felt that significant changes in the external world, including regulatory changes, have "provided us the opportunity to reflect on our policies and practices in corporate governance".

Photograph: Reuters
Nescafe is leading the companys efforts to widen the public lens on its portfolio of brands

The recently released short film by Nestle on YouTube is clearly aimed at the heartstrings. A radio jockey tries his best to get call-ins, but he is disheartened. Stuck with the graveyard shift at 5.30 am when the radio is a sleeping app on most phones, he struggles to find an audience.

But a sip of the brew and he is struck by an idea: He asks people to phone in, assuring callers that their secrets are safe from prying ears since nobody tunes in at that hour. His message hits home and the radio station finds itself flooded with calls despite the hour.

The third part of Nestles ongoing campaign for its instant coffee brand Nescafe is a hit, getting 4.6 million views on YouTube within two weeks of its launch. But, the ad is more than an emotional reach-out.

For the Swiss food and beverages multinational, it is part of a planned effort to swing the torch on all non-Maggi brands in its portfolio. Nescafe leads the pack in this game with dairy, chocolates and confectionary close behind.

Digital push

The campaign also marks the digital maturing of a company that once relied primarily on television commercials to spread the word. It is now going digital first on many campaigns and is not looking at the medium as an ad hoc accompaniment to traditional forms of communication.

Pitching online Campaigns typically break on Youtube, with a staggered rollout on TV Nescafe is seen as a younger brand than Maggi and its campaigns are thus designed for a digital audience The latest short film, third in the series, has managed 4.6 million views on Youtube within two weeks of its launch, more than any of the previous campaigns in such a short period of time The latest ad has been created in conjunction with radio station RedFM, this is the first time the company has allowed another brand on to its platform

In the case of the ongoing Nescafe campaign, the RJ film was first launched on the Internet, extended only recently to TV (September 6). There is an attempt to maintain narrative continuity too - the new commercial was released with the hashtag #StayStarted, indicating a progression from #ItAllStarts that accompanied the previous two ads.

Nestle also has a tie-up going with a radio station RedFM for this commercial, with the stations popular RJ Rishi Rawat, featuring as the protagonist in the ad. This incidentally is the first time that two companies have come together for a commercial, sector experts say.

The RJ ads popularity can be gauged from this: In one year, an earlier commercial in the series titled Cartoonist has had 6.9 million views so far, while the Stammering Stand-up Comedian ad garnered 5.5 million views in two years. Crossing 4.5 million views in two weeks, say market experts, is even more significant in this context.

Nestle has not stopped there. A radio show called Nescafe Mornings between 5.30 and 7 am plays every day on RedFM. The digital push is not without reason. Nescafe has been positioned as a younger brand in comparison to Maggi, which is targeted at families.

It also highlights the importance Nestle is giving its non-noodles portfolio. Prepared dishes and cooking aids, which includes Maggi noodles, contributes around 20 per cent to Nestles topline, post the ban.

It was 31 per cent prior to the ban. But growth-wise Nestles sales figures continue to be skewed in Maggis favour. Out of Nestles overall domestic volume growth of 7.3 per cent for the first half of 2016, contribution of categories excluding noodles was 0.5 per cent only. Value growth of the non-noodles portfolio was also low, declining 0.7 per cent for the period under review.

Suresh Narayanan, chairman and managing director, Nestle India, is determined to change that as he indicated in a recent analyst meet. We have made significant progress in the coffee portfolio. There has been a relaunch of Nescafe Sunrise with an even better and superior blend. Ready-to-drink (RTD) under Nescafe is another area, he said.

Taking on the competition

Nestles focus beyond Maggi is in part due to heightened competition in foods. Cigarettes-to-hotels major ITC recently announced its entry into gourmet coffee with a brand called Sunbean. While the segment is different from instant coffee, a mass-market category, analysts say ITC could well get into the latter at the opportune time.

Since food and FMCG are areas identified by ITC as future growth drivers, they will study all segments closely, Abneesh Roy, senior vice-president, institutional equities (research), Edelweiss, says. The Rs 1,300-1,500-crore (Rs 13-15 billion) instant cofffee market in India has been largely divided between two players - Bru from Hindustan Unilever and Nescafe.

Tata Global Beverages became the third player last year to step into the ring with Grand. So, Nescafe, which fights closely with Bru and is the leader with a 50.4 per cent market share in Jan-June 2016 - will have to keep its eye firmly on the business to ensure it does not slip up at all, experts say.

Narayanan in the recent analyst meet reiterated just that, saying that the company was working on aggressive projects. And he does not have just coffee on his mind. In recent weeks, Nestle has launched a slew of products across categories.

At the analaysts meet, Narayanan said that one of the goals the company had set for itself was to seek secular growth across the portfolio. For the winning edge, any organisation has to be fast, focused and flexible. We are working on it, looking at the reality of where we are and what we can offer, he said.

Photographs: Victor Fraile/reuters and Konstantin Chernichkin/Reuters
The move by the government to make local language support a must in mobile phones is aimed at making users communicate in local languages and access government services

As the government pushes to provide governance through mobile phones, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has mandated smartphone manufacturers to ensure all devices support Hindi and at least one local language.



Already, there have been two rounds of discussions on the matter between the ministry and handset makers. One more round of discussion is planned soon as the manufacturers have raised some concerns.



We have already started talking to the phone companies. We had two rounds of discussions now and they have asked for a little bit of time. What we are saying is, there should be at least three languages but we are still firming up because they pointed out some difficulties and issues and we are looking at that, said Electronics and IT secretary Aruna Sundararajan.



The central and state governments have stepped up measures to provide governance to citizen services through mobile phones. But, the single biggest challenge has been vernacular language support - critical to reach services to people in smaller towns and rural areas.



Mobile governance without India language content wont happen, said Sundararajan. According to her, e-governance initiatives will reach people only if they are in local languages.



Earlier this year, a top Department of Telecom official had said the government was working on regulations to make it mandatory for mobile phones to support Hindi and at least one regional language.



The regulations were scheduled to come in four or five months, but got delayed as handset manufacturers raised some difficulties over the matter. The move by the government to make local language support a must in mobile phones is aimed at making users communicate in local languages and access government services such has e-payment through mobile phones.

Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
Good days never come. The slogan of achhe din is a bone stuck in the throat for the National Democratic Alliance government, Gadkari said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's famous slogan of 'acche din' had originally been coined by his predecessor Manmohan Singh but has now become the "millstone" around the National Democratic Alliance government's neck, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Tuesday.

"Acche din maanne se hota hai (Good days depends on one's belief). It was at an Non-resident Indians meet in Delhi that Manmohan Singh had said that 'Acche din ayenge' (good days will come).

"When asked when 'acche din' will come, Singh had replied, 'in the future'. Modiji said the same thing somewhere and it has now become the millstone around our neck," Gadkari said at an event.

Modi had extensively used the 'acche din' slogan during the last Lok Sabha elections.

"Achhe din kabhi nahi aate. Achhe din ke naare gale mein fasi haddi hain (Good days never come. The slogan of Achhe din is a bone stuck in the throat for the National Democratic Alliance government," Gadkari said.

Responding to a query by former MP Vijay Darda, the minister quipped, "We just used the words Achhe Din and it should not be taken in the literal sense. It should be interpreted as progress is being made."

Gadkari said, "If a person has a bicycle, he would want a motorcycle, once the motorcycle is bought, the next target would be a car. Therefore, no one ever feels that good days have arrived."

Photograph: Ajay Verma/Reuters
Dispute resolution provisions in the production sharing contract remained unimplemented, while the regulator faltered, points out Jyoti Mukul.

While the Ajith Prakash Shah Committee report on migration of natural gas from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)s block in the Krishna-Godavari basin to the adjacent field owned by Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) helped in resolving the dispute partially, it also flagged the lack of regulatory mechanism in the high-stake upstream sector.

The Shah panel points to three articles in the production sharing contract (PSC) signed by RIL and its partners with the government. These deal with situations where a reservoir extends outside the designated area for an operator.

What festered the dispute It took 3 years to acknowledge the dispute RIL and ONGC did not pursue joint development in overlapping fields DGH, the sector regulator, said dispute resolution was outside its domain

These provisions lay buried in PSC, not only because the two firms lacked consensus on whether the natural gas was migrating, but also because the regulatory oversight mechanism, in the form of management committee established by the contract, overlooked the dispute.

Experts have been pointing out global instances where companies do joint development of overlapping fields. This helps in optimisation of development and production cost and allows for unitisation where volume produced from the overlapping area is divided among the operators. Such a joint development was possible under 5 elaborate provisions of Article 12 that deals with unit development.

Since RIL did not pursue such a step, and it had not been given the migrated gas as a gift or largesse, its actions had no lawful justification and amounted to unjust enrichment, the report said.

The panel found the only remedy available to RIL was to approach the government for joint development. The report says, Articles 10.15 and 11.2 of the PSC functioned as a prohibition on the unilateral production of migrated gas.

Article 10.15 of the PSC says if the development area under the field development plan (FDP) extends beyond the designated area or is outside the contract area, the management committee can ask the government to enlarge the development area. There is, however, a caveat that the extended area is not awarded to any other company.

Similarly, Article 11.2 on petroleum mining leasing for offshore areas allows the government to decide on including an overlapping reservoir in the development plan of an operator, RIL in the case of KG block.

But, since the overlapping area was already leased out to ONGC, the government could not have allowed it.

There is also no other extra-contractual right granted to the contractor that enables it to produce gas, regardless of its source. In fact, a contractor is limited by the gas that is available in its clearly defined and demarcated contract area, says the Shah panel report.

Clearly, the provisions in PSC were never used. The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), a wing of the ministry of petroleum and natural gas, not only failed to implement the contract but also did not play the role of a regulator. It is argued that DGH has not been empowered as a regulator and it merely identifies blocks and conducts bidding, and hence dispute resolution was not its domain.

The dispute

RIL made discoveries in the KG-DWN-98/3 block in 2002. An Initial Development Plan was approved in November 2004 and an addendum to the plan in December 2006. RIL drilled four development wells between December 2006 and November 2007 in the block and started production on April 1, 2009.

ONGC has two leases adjoining the RIL area. In July 2013, ONGC wrote to DGH stating that there was evidence of lateral continuity of gas pools of the ONGC blocks with that of RIL. Consequently, ONGC sought data on RILs block.

RIL and ONGC held a series of discussions and it was agreed that an independent consultant would be appointed jointly to carry out a study. But before a consultant was identified, ONGC filed a writ petition in the Delhi high court on May 15, 2014, against the Government of India, DGH and RIL.

The filing brought a sense of urgency since if ONGC had not gone to the court, the fact that migration was happening would not have been publicly acknowledged.

It still took two months for the two companies to appoint an independent consultant, DeGolyer & MacNaughton (D&M) in July 2015 to study the issue of continuity of reservoir and migration of gas.

The Delhi high court in September 2015 directed the government to take action on the D&M Report. The report established continuity between the gas pools and the migration of gas from the ONGC blocks to the RIL block.

The government chose not to decide on the report itself though the PSC gave it the right to do so. Instead, it constituted a single-member committee under Shah to make recommendations based on the D&M Report. By Shahs own admission, the panel had inherent technical limitations in giving a figure to the final value of the migrated gas produced by RIL.

While the D&M report has to form the basis for the migration of gas up till 2015, subsequent migration of gas post-2015 has to be inquired into by the Government of India, says the report.

RIL first decided not to take part in the proceedings of Shah Panel, but later agreed. It, however, questioned the ministrys statutory powers to set up the committee. RIL said the governments actions were restricted to what was permitted under the PNG Rules and the PSCs of RIL and ONGC.

It argued the appointment of the panel violated the doctrine of separation of powers under Article 50 of the Constitution, as it should have been left to a court of competent jurisdiction.

The road ahead

While RIL is likely to seek arbitration or go to court if the government decides to impose a penalty on it, ONGC is irked at the committees recommendation that the company does not have claim over this penalty since natural resources belong to the government.

The dispute not just took three years to be acknowledged, it came up in the most promising sedimentary basin of the country, reflecting a regulatory failure and an inability of Indian companies to opt for coordination rather than confrontation.

Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters
IMAGE: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watches a long-range rocket launch in February. Photograph: Kyodo/Reuters

While trying to persuade North Korea to give up its provocative actions, engaging China is the first hurdle that world leaders will have to deal with, says Rajaram Panda.

North Korea is in the news again, as always for the wrong reasons.

On September 5, when world leaders gathered in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou for the G-20 summit, North Korea launched three missiles into the Sea of Japan in another cry seeking world attention.

What message did Pyongyang really send to the world with its missile launch?

The three missiles launched from near Hwangju in the south-western province of North Hwanghae reportedly flew about 1,000 km and fell in Japan's exclusive economic zone in the Sea of Japan.

According to the South Korean military and Japanese defence ministry, the missiles fell into waters 200 to 250 km west of Okushiri Island in Hokkaido.

The missiles believed to be the mid-range Rodong with a range of 1,300 km were chosen for launch because North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un probably wanted to impress the world with its missile attack capability that it has achieved.

Kim 'expressed great satisfaction' over the launch and called on his country to bolster its nuclear forces.

From past experience one can notice that North Korea launches missile and rocket tests when international attention is focussed on northeast Asia.

This time too, it chose the time when world leaders had gathered for the G-20 summit of advanced and emerging economies.

IMAGE: Missiles at a military parade in Pyongyang, October 2015. Photograph: James Pearson/Reuters

The launches came four days before the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government, and days after the US and South Korea ended annual military drills, which North Korea regularly describes as a dress rehearsal for invasion.

North Korea's choice of timing to conduct this provocative missile launch does not surprise analysts. Leaders who gathered in Hangzhou took serious note of this North Korean act getting President Barack Obama to huddle with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye to discuss the issue.

When South Korea and the US agreed in August to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence missile system in South Korea, both China and Russia criticised this move.

China's displeasure stemmed from the fact that the THAAD missile defence system brings China within its range, perceived to be threat to its security.

Pyongyang's latest provocations did not deter President Xi to sit down with President Park, the North's chief enemy, to discuss ways to deal with Pyongyang's latest act.

What worries leaders is that Pyongyang's missile launch demonstrates that North Korea has made steady progress in developing its missile systems that target its neighbours, Japan and South Korea, as well as the continental US including the US military based in Japan and South Korea.

The September 5 missile launches follows North Korea's launch of submarine-based ballistic missiles on August 24. Here too, the timing was significant when it coincided with the meeting of foreign ministers of Japan, China and South Korea in Tokyo to discuss regional issues, including North Korea's nuclear sabre-rattling.

The submarine-based ballistic missiles could potentially put more of South Korea and Japan within North Korea's missile range and are harder than land-based missiles to detect before launch.

Pyongyang claimed both launches as a success, which is why both Japan and South Korea expressed concern.

North Korea is barred from such actions under United Nations sanctions. As world powers seek ways to cope with new threats like Islamic State and deal with such emerging challenges to international security, North Korea continues to make steady technological advancement, further adding to tensions.

Successive US Presidents have been unable to create a better situation in North Korea, leaving future Presidents to grapple with the crisis becoming graver by the years. Whosoever succeeds Obama has the onerous task of finding new ways to deal with the North Korean issue of developing destabilising weapons systems rather than mere expression of concerns and further sanctions.

Mere talks of redoubling efforts to keep North Korea under check are not enough as such responses have yielded no positive outcome so far.

IMAGE: North Korean soldiers at a parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers Party of Korea in Pyongyang. Photograph: James Pearson/Reuters

Both the Japan and South Korean militaries believe the missiles launched on September 5 were probably mid-range Rodong missiles, which flew about 600 miles west before crashing into the Sea of Japan within Japan's Air Defence Identification Zone.

As per international practice, Pyongyang needs to give advance notice before such launches, but it launches missiles 'without giving any prior navigational warning.'

While condemning Pyongyang's actions, Japan's Defence Minister Tomomi Inada observed that North Korea's missile technology has substantially improved, presenting a grave national security threat to Japan.

This is because past weaponry tests which were claimed as success by Pyongyang were actually failures as missiles were detected as exploding in mid-air or wobbled and crashed well short of presumed targets.

Japan's Coast Guard issued a warning for navigation in waters near Japan, and sent patrol ships and aircraft to search for missile debris.

Instructions were issued to relevant government agencies to gather and analyse information so that appropriate steps could be taken to ensure the safety of aircraft and ships.

Prime Minister Abe ordered from Hangzhou stepped-up security and intelligence-gathering measures related to the missiles. Tokyo sees the North Korean action and its ability to strike the Japanese archipelago as a grave threat to national security.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida lodged a protest with North Korea through diplomatic channels in Beijing and termed it 'an extremely dangerous act.' Japan, Kishida said, would work closely with the US and South Korea in seeking an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. A special task force was created in Abe's office to gather intelligence.

South Korean President Park remarked that North Korean threats were real with Pyongyang steadily improving its weaponry system. She cited the growing threats as justification for deployment of the missile-defence system.

Regional security analysts doubt if North Korea has yet developed a functioning long-range missile capable of reaching the continental US, though they admit that North Korea has been making steady advances in its missile system that can reach US forces stationed in the region as was demonstrated by North Korea's successful mid-range ballistic missile test in June.

North Korea has shown little respect for international warnings and punishments. It has not cared for the UN Security Council's imposition of tough punitive measures imposed in March after its fourth nuclear test in January and missile launches the following month.

On the other hand, Pyongyang is engaged in further missile tests and making advances in its weapon systems. Another worry for the international community is Pyongyang's confirmation in August of resumption of plutonium production at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, which it had agreed in 2007 to suspend activity.

One thing seems clear: North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons. It is the only deterrence that would secure its survival. North Korea realises its vulnerability if it gives up its nuclear option.

Pyongyang's actions seem to be a cry for the international community to accept it as a Nuclear Weapons State and as Tetsuo Kotani observes, 'go into arms control talks with the US in exchange for a peace treaty.'

It is also possible that the latest missile launches were a means to insult the G-20 gathering. It could also be seen as a response to the decision by the US and South Korea to deploy THAAD to counter missile and nuclear threats from North Korea.

No single reason can be attributed to Pyongyang's action and combination of several considerations could be behind the way North Korea behaves.

IMAGE: Kim Jong-un with Liu Yunshan, a member of China's Politburo Standing Committee, the Chinese Communist Party's highest decision-making body, at the military parade in October 2015. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters

Since China itself worries that the THAAD system's radar will track its military capabilities and disapproves of its deployment, Beijing could be secretly sympathising with Pyongyang's belligerent response.

'Mishandling the issue is not conducive to strategic stability in the region and could intensify disputes,' President Xi remarked. This could be open to interpretation as to where China's stance actually lies.

While North Korea's missile launches could persuade Xi to soften his stance on THAAD, President Park would argue more vigorously justifying the decision to deploy THAAD because of Pyongyang's missile launch.

When other leaders sought action against North Korea, China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called for calm. 'At the moment,' she said, 'the situation on the (Korean) peninsula is quite complex and sensitive' and that 'all relevant parties can avoid taking actions that may escalate tensions, and can make joint efforts to maintain peace and stability on the peninsula.'

Beijing views the THAAD deployment as a larger conspiracy by the US to shift the regional power balance in favour of its allies in Asia. Having a US-made, US-run missile system in its backyard increases China's discomfort, which is why it views the THAAD system as 'killing a chicken with an axe.' So, things are complicated.

At Japan's request, Obama, Abe and Park met to decide the next steps to deal with North Korea, whose acts are in breach of past Security Council resolutions banning the use of ballistic missile technology.

If a new statement rebuking North Korea for its action has to be issued, all 15 members of the Security Council ought to be unanimous in their views.

Like China played spoilsport in blocking India's entry to the Nuclear Suppliers Group recently, here too China is unlikely to support any statement condemning North Korea for its actions.

As long as deep divisions remain in the Security Council with China, North Korea will enjoy a free hand.

While trying to persuade North Korea to give up its provocative actions, engaging China to bring it on the same platform is the first hurdle that world leaders would have to deal with.

Consensus building is of prime importance to deal with the North Korean issue.

Dr Rajaram Panda is Indian Council for Cultural Relations India Chair Visiting Professor at Reitaku University, Japan.
A day after being rocked by large-scale violence, the city appeared to limp back to normal on Tuesday with sporadic protests, even as the Karnataka government decided to comply with the Supreme Courts modified order to release 12,000 cusecs of water Tamil Nadu till September 20.

IMAGE: Charred remains of the vehicles in Bengaluru on Tuesday, a day after they were torched by pro-Kannada activists during their violent protests over Cauvery water row. Photograph: PTI

As the Cauvery unrest kept the countrys IT capital on the boil, the government warned of dealing with an iron hand any violence after an emergency cabinet meeting which took stock of the situation and decided to comply with the apex court order passed on Monday.

A 30-year-old man died on Tuesday of multiple injuries he suffered while escaping police lathicharge when he jumped in panic from a three-storey building on Monday, police said, with the toll in the unrest over Cauvery row rising to two.

One person had died in police firing on Monday.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the victim did not die due to police action, but due to the injuries he had suffered.

IMAGE: Police raises his baton at a man who defied a curfew in Bengaluru, following violent protests in Karnataka over the Cauvery river. Photograph: Abhishek N Chinnappa/Reuters

Facing more pressure after the apex courts modified order, Siddaramaiah held an emergency cabinet meeting which decided that though it was most difficult to follow, the direction could not be disobeyed or rejected as it would be against the Constitution.

This order is the most difficult to follow. But when we are functioning within the framework of the Constitution, though it is a difficult order, as a constitutionally formed government it is difficult to violate or reject the Supreme Court order. It will be a violation of the Constitution, he said.

Siddaramaiah said the cabinet, after weighing the pros and cons constitutionally, legally and politically and keeping in mind the main Special Leave Petition challenging the Cauvery tribunals final award coming up on October 18, decided to obey the court order.

He said the first order passed on September 5 itself was difficult and Mondays was most difficult to follow.

But we have accepted the federal set up and that the legislature, executive and judiciary should function in a way complementary to one another, he said.

IMAGE: Members of the security forces make their way past burning lorries in Bengaluru, which were set on fire by protesters. Photograph: Abhishek N Chinnappa/Reuters

In its September 5 order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighbouring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September 9.

The chief minister said he would meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention and requesting him to call a meeting of chief ministers of both states to resolve the issue.

An immediate appointment had been sought and probably we will get it tomorrow.

In Bengaluru, under prohibitory orders till Wednesday and where 16 localities remained under curfew, there were palpable signs of normalcy returning, as city police assisted by central forces kept a close vigil.

IMAGE: Curfew remains imposed in Bengaluru and schools and colleges remain shut on Tuesday. Photograph: Abhishek N Chinnappa/Reuters

A bus that was half burnt on Monday was torched once again on Tuesday near New Timber layout and another vehicle was also set on fire near Tigalarapalya here. Both had Tamil Nadu registration number plates.

Police lobbed tear gas at Hegganahalli and Pattegarapalaya as protesters tried to burn tyres on the streets, defying curfew.

Police are also conducting combing operations in several sensitive areas and dispersing crowds that are gathering.

Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara said the police commissioner would decide on continuing or lifting of curfew depending on the situation.

Sporadic protests have been reported in various parts of the state like Mandya, Chitradurga, Ramanagara and Mysuru.

IMAGE: Police personnel disperse pro-Kannada activists during their violent protest over Cauvery water row, in Bengaluru. Photograph: PTI

In Chitradurga, a lorry with Tamil Nadu registration number was burnt, while in Ramanagara protesters held demonstrations in front of a farmhouse reportedly belonging to a daughter of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.

Shooting of a Tamil film was stopped by protesters at Jaganmohan palace in Mysuru, police said.

In a video message to the people, Siddaramaiah warned of stringent action against any act of vandalism or disturbance to peace.

Stating that some organisations and political forces were behind Mondays violence, Parameshwara said more than 300 people have been arrested so far and more arrests would follow.

It is the governments responsibility to protect public and their property and we will do our work without any hesitation, he added.

Asked whether the government had failed in assessing the situation and in maintaining law and order, he said, We did our best and we showed some sort of tolerance, but that has been misused.

Pointing out that the violence was an instantaneous reaction to the developments in Tamil Nadu, Parameshwara said, We have controlled it as far as possible, or else there were chances of it going out of control and more loss of lives.

He said that other than a couple of stray incidents, the situation is peaceful.

WATCH: Security tightened in Karnataka

Parameshwara said the government has decided to give Rs 10 lakh compensation each to families of the two persons killed.

Sidddaramaiah held consultations with senior Congress leaders from the state on the prevailing situation.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Congress Leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge sought the prime ministers intervention.

He said the prime minister has to convene a meeting of chief ministers of riparian states for an out-of-court settlement of the issue.

I request the prime minister at this critical juncture as it involves inter-state water dispute. His role is important for peaceful settlement of the dispute, he said.

The bustling IT city was bereft of its monstrous traffic with very few vehicles moving on city roads. Schools, colleges and government offices also remained shut due to Bakr Eid on Tuesday.

Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation operated buses in select areas in the city, where cab aggregators and autorickshaws also plied, though in lesser numbers.

Officials said transport services to Tamil Nadu remain suspended. Metro Rail services have been temporarily stopped.

He said that other than a couple of stray incidents, the situation is peaceful.

Meanwhile, domestic airlines including national carrier Air India on Tuesday announced waiving off flight cancellation/ rescheduling changes for some of their flights for a specified period.

Air India said it would not charge any fee for cancellation of a ticket or rescheduling of its flights to and from Bengaluru and Hubli upto September 16.

"On account of disturbance, Air India waives applicable penalties of re-issuance, date change, no-show, cancellation & refund charges for travel from/to BLR & HBX for both dom & intl flts,on all tkts issued on/before Sept 13th '16 for trvl on Sept 13th '16," Air India tweeted.

Private carriers Jet Airways and Vistara also said they have decided to waive off date and flight change fee due to the situation in the Karnatka capital.

"Due to the present situation in BLR (Bangalore), we are waving off date and flight change fee to & from BLR for travel on 13th & 14th Sep," Vistara said in a tweet.

Due to the current situation in Bengaluru, we will waive off penalties for date change & flight change on confirmed tickets to and from Bengaluru for September 12 and 13, Jet Airways announced.
When you Google places to eat in Kolkata one name surely pops up in all the searches.

Mocambo.

The iconic 60 year restaurant, off Park Street, is known by one and all for its food and ambience.

However, the eatery has left a bad taste in the mouth of Dilashi Hemnani, who was on a work trip to Kolkata, after the restaurant discriminated against her driver, solely on the way he was dressed.

In a Facebook post that has since gone viral, collecting over 60,000 comments, she describes the incident and says, How shallow and inhuman have we become.

According to her, Friday was her last day in Kolkata and as a token of thanks to her driver Manish bhaiya she decided to go to the iconic eatery  Mocambo.

At first, when she approached the staff, she was asked to wait for 15 minutes. A little later, she was told that it would take at least 45 minutes to clear the table.

Hemnani and Manish kept waiting, only to be told much later that they will not be given a table.

As they kept waiting, they realised that other people were being given tables.

When asked why, first there were excuses and then the shockers, she wrote.

Madam, he is not properly dressed, a Mocambo staff allegedly told Hemnani. Some argument over dress codes later, another allegedly said, He is drunk. She said, Racist.

The arguments yielded no fruit; the staff told her that there was no dress code, but they dont allow roadside people to enter the restaurant.

Hemnani at the end of the post wrote, To Mocambo staff and restaurant at Park Street Kolkata, which doesnt consider humans as humans and differentiates, discriminates and stratifies them into classes just because he doesnt fit into your description of a perfect customer, Im sorry you dont deserve a fine human like Manish bhaiya sitting and eating in your racist restaurant.

Photograph: Rajarshi Mukherjee/Zomato.com
Mentally-challenged children find themselves ignored by India's education system.

Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar reports on one such case from the nation's capital.

Nine-year-old Shubham, a Class 4 student at the Delhi municipality-run Katwaria Sarai primary school, suffers from 50 per cent mental retardation.

Shubham's brother Satyam, 16, is afflicted with 75 per cent amentia (mental disability) and was forced to drop out of Class 6 three years ago.

Both brothers had to leave the Government Boys Senior Secondary School after facing difficulties in keeping up with their studies.

Their mother Mamta Nandan approached the education department where she was promised many times that special educators would be appointed, but for nought. She also wrote to the prime minister and the Delhi chief minister. There was no response from either of their offices.

She finally approached social activist and Supreme Court lawyer Ashok Agarwal who has been fighting several cases to get these children admitted in schools who had earlier refused to admit them.

"Getting them admitted to schools has not helped a bit," Agarwal told Rediff.com "These institutions allow them inside where they sit the entire school day and go back home in the evening. There is no attempt to educate or enlighten them on any subject which inevitably leads these students to drop out, hence serving the school's purpose."

Of special schools for the mentally-challenged, Agarwal said, "It is totally illegal to run separate schools for them. They (mentally-challenged children) have to be with normal children. Putting them in a different school just makes them realise that they are not normal and will never mingle with children their own age, further adding to their isolation from society."

Agarwal has petitioned the Delhi high court to order schools to appoint special educators on behalf of Mamta and Shyam Nandan. There was a court order in 2009 to appoint special educators in all government-run schools, he added, but the order has yet to be implemented.

The case will come up for hearing next week.

The children's parents are vegetable vendors and could not afford the special school in Delhi's Vasant Kunj area.

"In our country mentally-challenged children are totally ignored by the education system," Agarwal told Rediff.com

"There are teachers who are specially trained to look after and teach them, but nobody employs them. Even rich parents do not send such children to school. They accept that their child is 'stunted' and nothing can be done about it. They employ servants to look after them and there the matter ends. They do not try to teach the child to look after himself at any stage."

"Physically-challenged children are badly treated by our education system which provides them no special facility," he added, "and mentally-challenged children are even worse off since the education system does not even acknowledge their presence."

"My elder son went to school till Class 6 and then dropped out as he did not learn anything," Mamta Nandan, the mother of the boys, said. "My younger son has attended LKG, HKG and five years of schooling. Every year they send him to the next class but don't teach him anything. These two boys don't even know to write their own names."

"One of the other parents approached the lawyer and told him about my children. He said he will approach the court and get the school to appoint special teachers. If and when that happens I will send my kids to school," Nandan added. "My elder son has been sitting idle at home for three years. He is 15 years old now."

Kindly note: Image published only for representational purposes.
A recap of events that occurred in India in the past 24 hours.

Police personnel detain pro-Kannada activists during their violent protest over Cauvery water row, in Bengaluru. Photographs: PTI Photo

A security person takes position near the building where terrorists were hiding during the 2nd day of encounter at Allah Pir area in Poonch. Photograph: PTI

Tamil Nadu bound buses engulfed in flames after they were torched by pro-Kannada activists during a protest over Cauvery water row, in Bengaluru on Monday. Photograph: PTI

A wall collapsed during the renovation work in Bhendi Bazaar in Mumbai. Photograph: PTI

Army officers paying tribute to army jawan Shahaji Gopala Gorde who died in Kashmir while discharging his duty, during hi cremation in Chandvad taluka of Nashik district. Photograph: PTI

People looking at a 47 ft-long Blue Whale stranded at the beach near Jaitapur. Photograph: PTI
The Congress leadership should have immediately called on the Karnataka chief minister to implement the Supreme Court order and crack down on the violence, says R Rajagopalan.

The Supreme Courts order to the Karnataka government to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu has legal and constitutional obligations on

the Congress government headed by Siddaramaiah.

Till yesterday the issue remained legal but it turned political when the Karnataka government made it an all-party issue by convening a meeting of all political leaders to discuss the Supreme Court order.

The Cauvery water dispute is a perennial political, legal, emotional and sensitive issue. Whichever government is in Karnataka, be it of the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party or the Janata Dal-Secular, the dispute can not be solved because of the political leaders inability to arrive at a settlement.



It is the same on the Tamil Nadu side as well. If Jayalalitha is in power, Karunanidhi would whip up emotions by raising the issue of standing crops which need water, or vice versa. Interestingly, there is a

specific period when the standing crops need water, which is in the middle of September; however, the issue hots up from

July onwards.



The blame for the latest round of violence rests squarely on the non-implementation of the Supreme Court order by Karnataka. And the responsibility for letting the issue degenerate into violence should rest entirely on the Siddaramaiah government. Like former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao who kept mum when Babri Majid was being demolished in 1992, Siddharamiah too slept through the outbreak of violence and remained a mute spectator.

The Congress party, especially its central leadership, should take a fair share of the responsibility for the state governments inaction. Why did vice president Rahul Gandhi, ever ready to fly out to violence-affected spots, not visit Bengaluru to see first-hand how hooliganism was unleashed on innocent Tamils living in and around of Bengaluru city?

But the Congress government seems to have adopted a stoic silence.

In 1986, the Tamil Nadu government had appealed to the central government to constitute a tribunal for solving the issue under the Inter-State Water Disputes Act, 1956. However, the tribunal was set up only after the Supreme Court took cognisance of the issue and ordered the Central government to do so in 1990.



The Cauvery Waters Tribunal was thus constituted on June, 2, 1990.

After 16 years of holding hearings and passing an interim order, the tribunal announced its final order in 2007 allocating 419 tmc ft water to Tamil Nadu and 270 tmc ft to Karnataka. Kerala was given 30 tmc ft

and Puducherry got 7 tmc ft. The tribunal had come to the conclusion that the total availability of water in the Cauvery basin stood at 740 tmc ft. However, both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka filed a review petition

before the tribunal.



In 2012, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as chairman of the Cauvery River Authority, directed the Karnataka government to release 9,000 cusecs of water daily. When it failed to do so, the Supreme Court slammed the state government which offered an unconditional apology and started the release of water, leading to widespread violent protests.



For the past fortnight, when the Cauvery dispute was hotting up, regional media in both states and TV news channels went live with their coverage of violence, buses being burnt, etc.



Like how his predecessor P Chidambaram imposed a ban on live coverage of violence during the Telangana agitation, it would have helped had Home Minister Rajnath Singh done the same. That may have helped contain the situation.

The Congress leadership should ponder over the partys poor image in Tamil Nadu -- primarily due to the heavy-handed violence perpetuated by fringe groups and Siddaramaiahs silence over the anti-Tamil violence in his state. Such miscalculation by the leadership, especially on the part of Rahul Gandhi, will cost the Congress organisation very dear in Tamil Nadu.

Politically, the worst affected in the Bengaluru violence is the image of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi as decisive leaders and the All India Congress Committee organisation. The Cauvery dispute could have been solved if only the AICC had called on Siddaramaiah not only to release the water as per the courts dictates but also to contain the violence.

Image: A vehicle from Tamil Nadu is torched by pro-Kannada activists during a protest over the Cauvery water row in Bengaluru. Photograph: PTI Photo.
A 36-year-old Muslim woman, who was wearing a traditional Islamic attire, was attacked in New York and her clothing was set on fire in a troubling incident that occurred just a day before the United States marked 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The woman, who has not been identified, was walking on the citys Fifth avenue, which houses top luxury brands, Saturday night when an unidentified person set her blouse on fire using a lighter.

The New York chapter of the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the attack, which is the latest in a series of attacks on Muslims in the state and nationwide in recent days and months.

CAIR-NY also urged New Yorks mayor to add resources for the investigation of hate crimes.

The victim felt heat on her arm, realising her blouse had been set on fire.

She saw (the suspect) pull a lighter away and walk away, a source said in the New York Daily News.

The victim put out the flames on the sleeve of her blouse and was not hurt in the attack. The suspect, who reportedly did not say anything during the attack, remains at large.

The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is trying to determine a motive for the attack.

We are clearly seeing a spike in attacks on individual Muslims and Islamic institutions in New York and around the country, which should be of concern to all Americans, said CAIR-NY Executive Director Afaf Nasher. It is time for the mayor and the NYPD to put forward the necessary resources to investigate and prevent these attacks on the Muslim community.

Last week, CAIRs New York chapter had welcomed a hate crime charge for an attack on two Muslim women pushing babies in strollers during which the alleged attacker punched and kicked the victims and tried to pull off their hijabs.

Earlier this month, 60-year-old Nazma Khanam, a native of Bangladesh, was stabbed to death near her house in Queens.

Khanam was also wearing Islamic attire at the time of the stabbing.

CAIR said it has noted a spike in anti-Muslim discrimination and hate crimes in recent months, which the civil rights groups attributes at least in part to Islamophobic rhetoric used by various public figures.

Image used for representational purposes. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Prohibition is resulting in Bihar's prisons getting overcrowded, reports Satyavrat Mishra.

Prohibition in Bihar has brought happiness to families but has also created a thriving space for illegal liquor trade and drugs.

Munni Devi is a happy woman today. For the last three months, her husband Inder Kumar has been giving her more attention and her sons have been spending time with the family.

"It wasn't like this. My husband used to hit the bottle as soon as night fell," she recalls. "Soon, my sons also picked up the nasty habit. It was a very hard time."

Inder Kumar hasn't had a drink in three months now. He takes better care of his fields and spends his evenings chatting with friends.

"Last week, he gave me money to buy this," smiles Munni Devi, awkwardly showing off her new green glass bangles.

Her youngest son, too, bought her a saree. "It must have cost him more than Rs 500. I will wear it only on special occasions," she beams with pride.

Munni Devi, who belongs to the extremely backward community, lives in Rajauli village in Bihar's Vaishali district. She is among the thousands of women whose life has turned around since prohibition was imposed in the state five months ago.

"All the women in our village support prohibition. Liquor destroys homes," she says. The initial few months, when the men did not get their daily dose of alcohol, were difficult, "but it was nothing compared to the hell we used to live in. The men would start drinking soon after sundown and then beat their wives."

Roshni Devi, a Mahadalit from the nearby Saidpur village, shares Munni Devi's enthusiasm, but cautions, "The police should be more vigilant and not let illicit liquor trade thrive. Some people are making money by selling liquor to those desperate for it."

In Bihar, prohibition has brought peace to many households. But it has also given rise to fresh problems. "Procuring country-made liquor might be tough now, but not whisky or rum," says Ashok Rai, a resident of Bidupur in Vaishali district.

The liquor is even home delivered, reveals the young man, "as long as you have a recommendation from an existing customer."

A bottle of alcohol, which would earlier cost Rs 400 to Rs 500, now sells at Rs 1,500 and can even go up to Rs 2,000, he says. The men say the police are aware of this business but don't act because "big names are involved."

Another fallout of the liquor ban has been that some have switched from alcohol to ganja (hashish). "In my husband's village, the sale of ganja, charas, bhang and other such intoxicants has skyrocketed," says a resident of Saidpur village.

Others like Ashok Rai's grand-uncle Ram Sunder Rai say that by imposing prohibition, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is only correcting a past mistake of his.

"It was he who had got so many liquor shops opened in the first place," says the octogenarian. "He should have taken this step earlier, but it is better late than never."

The last five months have seen a dip in the crime rate. Additional Director General of Police (Headquarters) Sunil Kumar says murder cases have witnessed a 31.7 per cent fall during April to July 2016 as compared to the same period last year.

"There has been a sharp fall in other crimes too -- 20 per cent in rape, 27 per cent in road robbery, 73 per cent in dacoity, 18.4 per cent in rioting and 61 per cent in kidnapping for ransom," he says.

Road accident-related deaths are also down by a little over 26 per cent.

If there is good news, there are also some worrying developments too.

State government officials say prohibition is prompting hardcore criminals to turn their attention to the illegal liquor business.

A few days ago, officials of the excise department seized more than 3,000 cartons of liquor worth Rs 80 lakh (rs 8 million) from a truck.

"We have credible information that hardcore criminals are turning to the liquor trade in the state," says Bihar Excise Commissioner Aditya Kumar Das. "It gets them big money with little risk."

Moreover, Bihar's prohibition law, although described as draconian by many, has failed to act as a deterrent to many, as almost 50 per cent of the violators booked under various sections of the law have been granted bail.

Between April and August, of the 13,805 people arrested, 5,990 were given bail.

"Most of them were booked for storing liquor, a crime not punishable under the previous law," says Das. "But that will now change. The governor has approved the new excise Bill, which is very stringent."

Prohibition is also creating some problems that the state government did not foresee -- the prisons are getting overcrowded.

"We have a capacity of 37,000 and almost 29,000 criminals are already lodged in our jails," says a senior official of the jail department. "At this rate, we will need to build more prisons."

The sale of narcotics has also soared.

On September 7, the directorate of revenue intelligence seized the fourth-largest consignment of ganja, worth Rs 50 lakh (Rs 5 million), from Muzaffarpur.

"Three other such seizures have been made from the district in the last couple of months," says an official of the Narcotics Control Bureau. "According to our sources, Bihar, which was earlier a transit state, is fast turning into a user state."

The excise department also finds itself facing trouble.

On August 30, its officials raided the house of one Inderjit Sen in Nalanda district and seized several bottles of Indian-made foreign liquor. Sen is the block president of the ruling Janata Dal-United.

Following a joint inquiry by the district magistrate and the Nalanda superintendent of police, Sen was declared innocent.

Instead, the district excise sub-inspector was charged with conspiring with a local leader from the Bharatiya Janata Party to falsely implicate Sen.

The action against one of their officers has left others in the excise department wary. Some of them have asked for protection from the state government.

Clearly, Bihar's liquor-related problems are far from over.

IMAGE: Liquor stores mushroomed across Bihar before the alcohol ban was imposed. Photograph: Reuters
Russia: "Extremism" religious freedom survey, September 2016

Publisher Forum 18 Author Victoria Arnold Publication Date 13 September 2016 Cite as Forum 18, Russia: "Extremism" religious freedom survey, September 2016, 13 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d7efb14.html [accessed 30 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 Extremism Law and associated Criminal and Administrative Code articles (with ever-harsher punishments) are regularly used to arrest, imprison or fine individuals for exercising freedom of religion or belief, punish communities for meeting and ban publications on religion which do not contain calls to violence.
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.
Libya: UN envoy calls for immediate cessation of hostilities in Oil Crescent area

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 12 September 2016 Related Document(s) Security Council resolution 2259 (2015) [on the situation in Libya] Cite as UN News Service, Libya: UN envoy calls for immediate cessation of hostilities in Oil Crescent area, 12 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d8022140c.html [accessed 30 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.

12 September 2016 - Expressing grave concerns over recent fighting in Libya's Oil Crescent area, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for the country and the head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) Martin Kobler called on military forces that moved into the area to immediately stop fighting and refrain from any further military escalation.

I urge all parties to avoid any damage to the oil facilities. Natural resources belong to all Libyans and preserving oil infrastructure is in the national interest, said Mr. Kobler in a news release issued by the Mission.

Attacks on the oil terminals further threaten the stability and lead to a greater division of the country. They further restrict the oil exports and add to people's suffering, he added.

He further called for respecting the UN Security Council Resolution 2259 that recognises the Government of National Accord consisting of the Presidency Council and the cabinet as the sole executive authority in the country.

The resolution also contains a clear prohibition on illicit oil exports, noted the news release.

The release also mentioned that Mr. Kobler joined the Presidency Council's calls for a comprehensive national consensus and expressed his support for consultations that would lead to the formation of a new Government of National Accord.
Fiji: Release five men detained for discussing constitution

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 10 September 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Fiji: Release five men detained for discussing constitution, 10 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d803214.html [accessed 30 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.

"Fiji must immediately and unconditionally release the five men detained today for holding a meeting to discuss Fiji's Constitution on Constitution Day. This is a brazen crackdown on people for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression," said Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty International's Director for South East Asia and the Pacific.

"The men appear to have been detained under Fiji's repressive Public Order Amendment Decree which restricts the ability to hold 'public' meetings. There is no evidence to suggest that the event posed any threat to national security. Fijians should be free to openly discuss their supreme law and even criticize without fear of reprisals."

Background

Five men have been detained by the police on Saturday 10 Septmeber 2016 after holding a discussion about the 2013 Constitution on Fiji's inaugural Constitution Day, a public holiday, on 6 September 2016.

The detained men are:

Attar Singh, a prominent trade unionist; Sitiveni Rabuka, leader of SODELPA political party; Biman Prasad, leader of the NFP political party; Tupeni Baba, member of SODELPA and Jone Dakuvula from civil society organisation Dialogue Fiji.

The office of the NFP political party has been raided by police, with documents and computers confiscated.

Police claim the panel discussion was held without a permit. The Public Order Amendment Decree requires that permits be obtained for 'public discussions'. The law does not apply to private meetings.

This comes after a Fiji Sugar Industry meeting was cancelled on Tuesday for not having a permit.

Amnesty International has previously criticised the 2013 Constitution for failing falling short on human rights protection and for its wide reaching immunities, which cover any government act between 2006 and 2014.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Thailand: No New Military Trials of Civilians

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 13 September 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Thailand: No New Military Trials of Civilians, 13 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d803c44.html [accessed 30 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 Thai junta's decision not to bring new military trials of civilians is a limited step that appears intended to deflect international criticism of Thailand at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said today. The action by the ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) is undercut by ongoing military trials of civilians and the military's retention of expansive police powers.

The 33rd session of the UN Human Rights Council begins in Geneva on September 13, 2016.

"No one should be fooled by the Thai junta's sleight of hand just before the Human Rights Council begins meeting in Geneva," said Brad Adams, Asia director. "The decision will spare many Thai civilians the injustice of a military trial, but repressive military rule is still a reality in Thailand."

On September 12, Prime Minister Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha revoked three NCPO orders that empowered military courts to try civilians for national security offenses, including sedition and lese majeste (insulting the monarchy). However, the action is not retroactive and does not affect the more than 1,000 cases already brought against civilians in military courts. The military also retains authority to arrest, detain, and interrogate civilians without safeguards against abuse or accountability for human rights violations.

Fundamental rights and freedoms that have been repressed since the May 2014 coup remain curtailed. Expression of dissenting opinions against the junta, peaceful opposition to military rule, criticism of the monarchy, and public assembly of more than five people are still criminal offenses. Since May 2014, at least 1,811 civilians have been brought before military courts across Thailand.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly stated that Thailand, as a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), is obligated to take measures to ensure and uphold basic fair trial rights. Governments are prohibited from using military courts to try civilians when civilian courts can still function. During the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Thailand in May 2016, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as many foreign governments and human rights groups, expressed concern that the rules governing Thailand's military courts violate the basic fair trial rights protected under the ICCPR. In particular, many parties urged the Thai government to move all civilian cases out of military courts, drop cases that deal with restrictions of fundamental rights, and end the military's unaccountable power to arrest, detain, and interrogate civilians.

"General Prayut should demonstrate that he is sincere about ending military trials of civilians by dropping all pending cases or transferring them to civilian courts," Adams said. "This would be a long overdue and meaningful step toward ending repression, respecting basic rights, and returning the country to democratic civilian rule."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Syria deal needs to work for aid agencies on the ground

Publisher IRIN Author Annie Slemrod Publication Date 12 September 2016 Cite as IRIN, Syria deal needs to work for aid agencies on the ground, 12 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d804a04.html [accessed 30 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.

With aid a key component of the cessation of hostilities scheduled to begin Monday at sundown in Syria, humanitarians say they'll need more than just words if they are to bring help to Syrians in need.

In announcing the US-Russia brokered deal on 9 September, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the latest ceasefire includes "unimpeded and sustained humanitarian access to all of the besieged and hard-to-reach areas, including Aleppo".

But as the details were still being hammered out hours before the fighting was set to stop (and bombs continued to fall), the International Committee of the Red Cross told IRIN by email that "fundamentally, action must follow on from these decisions and pledges so that humanitarian agencies can safely access communities and assess and respond to their needs, in an independent and impartial manner".

The group's spokeswoman said the ICRC welcomed "any step that can bring about a reduction in the violence on the ground  if it can give civilians some desperately needed respite, and allow for greater humanitarian access to different areas heavily affected by the fighting".

The International Rescue Committee, a major aid organisation headed by former British foreign secretary David Miliband, echoed this sentiment.

While it welcomed the news, the group said in a Saturday statement: "It will be deeds, not words, that will determine if the ceasefire is a turning point in the war."

Speaking to the BBC on Monday morning, Miliband said he had assurances about humanitarian access "from the highest level" at the UN, the US, and Russia, but that progress on the ground would be "dependent on the follow-through by different sides to the conflict".

"If there are enough short-term interests that join the Americans and the Russians, then those of us on the humanitarian side have got a chance to try and make a difference," he added.

These assurances have been tricky to negotiate in the past  convoys cannot move without promises of safe access and airdrops are impossible without clear airspace.

A spokeswoman for the World Food Programme told IRIN by email that the agency's trucks need time to move into a location, offload deliveries, and depart safely.

"This is a time-consuming and complex process," she continued, emphasising the particular complexity of the delivery process. "When a convoy is sent to a besieged area, it requires a minimum of six hours and can take up to 37 hours to receive security clearances to be able to advance through checkpoints. Three hours is often the amount of time we wait at a checkpoint. A 48-hour pause in hostilities is the minimum that WFP and other agencies need to be able to reach some of these areas and deliver to those affected by this crisis. "

The UN now estimates there are more than 590,000 Syrians living under siege (other groups put the number closer to one million), and while aid has occasionally been allowed into these areas there has been no deal on sustained access.

Rebel groups have reportedly said they will allow aid into Aleppo, but are also insisting it is given to all Syria's other besieged areas.

Aleppo will be a key test of the deal's strength. The city has not officially been declared besieged by the UN but supplies are said to be running low in the rebel-held east. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country has more than 30 aid trucks ready to deliver humanitarian supplies into the city, under UN supervision.

WFP said trucks for an interagency convoy are being loaded in Turkey right now.

"We stand ready to assist the hundreds of thousands of residents inside eastern Aleppo who are suffering from the escalating violence and dwindling food and medical supplies. WFP's trucks are part of an inter-agency cross-border convoy, which will set out from the Turkish border and make its way to eastern Aleppo via [the] Castello Road," WFP said.

The convoys to Aleppo would include 40 trucks of food, the agency added.

Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the UN's aid coordination body, OCHA, told IRIN by email Tuesday the UN was standing by to provide humanitarian assistance.

"All parties to the conflict and member states with influence over them must now ensure that the cessation of hostilities is respected to enable unimpeded, unconditional and sustained access without delay," he said.

In addition to the planned food deliveries to east Aleppo, Laerke added that the next convoys would be prioritised according to a plan already laid out for September, with aid going to the "four towns" of Fua, Kefraya, Zabadani, and Madaya, as well as Moadamiyet al-Sham.*

The ceasefire will not apply to the so-called Islamic State or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the Nusra Front's name since it formally split from al-Qaeda in July.

This may be a major sticking point in the ceasefire as rebel groups worry that Nusra's exclusion will be used as an excuse to bomb other rebel groups, including those in and around Aleppo and Idlib.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has signed up to the deal, but his latest words suggest his longer-term war goals are unbending. On Monday state media reported him as saying: "the Syrian state is determined to recover every area [of Syria] from the terrorists".

*(This story was updated to add OCHA comment)
Time to get tough on human trafficking and sex slavery

Publisher IRIN Author Philippa Garson Publication Date 12 September 2016 Cite as IRIN, Time to get tough on human trafficking and sex slavery, 12 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d8051c4.html [accessed 30 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 Amira's husband was killed in the Syrian war, she found herself adrift in Lebanon. Barred from working and with two young children to feed, she resorted to marrying off her nine-year-old daughter and putting her 12-year-old son to work.

Amira is not a real person but her story is increasingly commonplace. No one knows how many of the 60 million forcibly displaced people around the world have fallen victim to trafficking, slavery, and forced labour, but their number appears to be on the increase. As many as 7,000 women and girls have been taken as sexual slaves by Boko Haram; in Libya, armed groups regularly exploit migrants and refugees for forced labour or hold them for ransom; and in Iraq, more than 5,000 Yazidis have been enslaved by so-called Islamic State.

Recent research on Syrian refugees in Lebanon by the Freedom Fund, an anti-trafficking and slavery NGO, found that forced and child labour, child marriage, sexual exploitation, and survival sex were becoming more widespread  in a country hosting more than one million refugees. "The economic desperation, combined with lack of legal protections and other factors, makes these individuals more susceptible to various forms of trafficking," said Kate Kennedy of the Freedom Fund.

Most agree that humanitarian interventions to detect  let alone stop  trafficking of refugees are woefully lacking, as are efforts to find and punish the perpetrators. But momentum to address the problem is gathering pace at the UN, prompted in part by the realisation that not only are these crimes on the rise, but they are taking on darker and more brazen forms.

Perfect storm

Armed groups like IS and Boko Haram openly advocate for the enslavement of women and children, both as a means of generating revenue and punishing particular populations. At the same time, protracted conflicts in Syria and elsewhere have swollen the numbers of desperate people searching for a way to survive their displacement, creating a perfect storm for these crimes to escalate.

The United Nations University has just released a report, "Fighting Human Trafficking in Conflict", that documents the connections between conflict and trafficking that takes place within conflict zones and within displaced populations that have fled such areas.

According to the report: "Refugees fleeing conflict are often subjected to trafficking-related exploitation, including child labour, forced prostitution, forced and early marriage and forced begging."

UNU's James Cockayne, lead author of the report, stated that there is disturbing evidence that human trafficking in conflict is a growing problem and that armed groups like IS and Boko Haram are "encouraging  and organising  slavery on a scale not seen since World War II."

Cockayne said these non-state armed groups were "openly reviving slavery and organising slave markets, using more sophisticated and institutionalised techniques, including social media platforms to both groom victims and to auction them off".

A human face

Thanks to the brave stance of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman whose family was murdered and who was then gang-raped by ISIS soldiers and sold as a sex slave, the frightening resurgence of sexual slavery as a weapon of war now has a human face.

Murad has become a spokeswoman for the Yazidi women still being held in sexual slavery by IS. Her harrowing testimony at last year's first ever debate on human trafficking at the UN Security Council reduced council members to tears. This Friday she will be appointed a goodwill ambassador to advocate for trafficking survivors, especially refugees, women and girls.

Targets in three of the Sustainable Development Goals  5, 8 and 16  relate to stopping human trafficking and give the UN further impetus to tackle the problem. Agencies focused on the issue include the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the International Labor Organization and the International Organization for Migration.

Meanwhile, the UNU report, which offers 10 ideas for the Security Council to tackle human trafficking in conflict, will feed into another report that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is due to release on the topic in a couple of months, to be debated by the Security Council in December.

What can be done?

But there are no easy solutions to a complex problem in which organised crime, terrorism, and legitimate-seeming business practices are intertwined, and the victims usually hidden.

While there are many anti-trafficking laws and tools in place, applying them is hard. Laws that bar money laundering and terrorism financing can't prevent money moving through informal routes that bypass the formal banking system, such as the "hawala" system popular in the Middle East. Neither can they stop the kind of trade taking place in IS-held territories whereby kidnap victims are reportedly sold to fighters for a mere few dollars, or bartered for guns or cigarettes.

The UNU report suggests a multi-pronged approach that includes targeting the financial flows where possible, using social media to spread awareness, harnessing existing sanctions regimes, developing better tools to monitor and report on the problem, and bringing trafficking and slavery cases before international war tribunals.

The Security Council is also urged to help states take action against perpetrators. But in the conflict countries where trafficking is rife, the rule of law is weak and armed groups act with impunity. States are also reluctant to give up their sovereignty on the matter.

But cracking down on perpetrators is unlikely to be effective unless alternative livelihoods are found for the growing number of displaced people. A study on the impact of the Syrian war on trafficking by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development found that much of the exploitation taking place involves "family members, acquaintances and neighbours" rather than transnational organised crime groups. "Families and communities displaced by the war are often left with no viable alternatives for survival other than situations that can be characterised as exploitation," reads the study. Interventions such as lifting restrictions on work for asylum seekers and refugees, cash transfer programmes, and better access to school for refugee children may have more impact on reducing trafficking and exploitation than going after perpetrators.

Spreading the word

Meanwhile, humanitarians are searching for ways they can alleviate the problem. Kennedy told IRIN that ways have to be found to "systematically document slavery and human trafficking of refugees" and for anti-trafficking efforts to be incorporated into strategies to address refugee and displacement crises.

At a workshop that formed the basis of the UNU report, many participants argued that because human trafficking is not specifically tackled in the UN's cluster approach to humanitarian coordination, it gets little attention in UN field approaches.

One suggestion is to run information campaigns at places where people-at-risk gather, such as border crossings, refugee processing centres, food distribution centres, and on social media. In co-operation with each other and the UN, countries could start sending investigative units to high-risk areas.

Part of the problem is that agencies are often ill-equipped to deal with human trafficking that occurs in the midst of a conflict or crisis. According to the authors of a 2015 article published by the Overseas Development Institute's Humanitarian Practice Network: "Humanitarian actors often lack tailored, specific and systematic anti-trafficking tools or knowledge. Human trafficking risks are often not fully understood or recognised by first responders at the onset of crises."

The authors suggest that "dedicated experts" be deployed with other first responders and that mobile anti-trafficking teams made up of government and civil society groups could be used.

The Migrants in Countries in Crisis Initiative also urges humanitarian workers to increase their capacity to identify and help trafficking victims. All too often humanitarian workers see trafficking as the domain of development actors. What's clear is that it has become an urgent humanitarian priority.
Iran: Zaghari-Ratcliffe sentenced to 5 years imprisonment on secret charges

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 12 September 2016 Cite as Article 19, Iran: Zaghari-Ratcliffe sentenced to 5 years imprisonment on secret charges, 12 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d805d34.html [accessed 30 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 is extremely concerned by the five year sentence handed down to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, for secret charges, as well as her continued detention. We call for her immediate release and a full release of the charges against her.

On 6 September, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years imprisonment by Judge Salavati of the Iranian Revolutionary Court. She is expected to serve her sentence in Evin prison. The sentence follows her court case in the Revolutionary Court from 14 August 2016.

There have been numerous abnormalities during the trial, including that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has continually been refused access to her lawyer, has reportedly signed confession under duress. The actual charges for which she is sentenced have not been revealed to Zaghari-Ratcliffes family in Iran or in the UK.

We urge that Iran upholds its international human rights obligations, including the right to a fair trial: Zaghari-Ratcliffe must be released immediately, and the right to a fair trial must be upheld, stated ARTICLE 19s Executive Director, Thomas Hughes.

On 3 April, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Imam Khomeini Airport when returning to the UK from holiday in Iran, visiting her family. Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked as a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, which delivers charitable projects around the world, but does not work in Iran.

The accusations made against her have been linked to her work at Thomson Reuters Foundation, claiming that she is an agent for Thomson Reuters Foundation  whose charitable work is allegedly a cover for intelligence work used for spying and intelligence operations for Western governments and part of an infiltration project. These are all allegations strongly denied by Zaghari-Ratcliffes family and lawyer, as well as the Thomson Reuters Foundation, who released this statement on 9 September.

Zaghari-Ratcliffeis currently being kept in Evin Prison in the high security wing under the control of the Revolutionary Guard. Evin Prisons conditions are notorious for their severity.

On 9 September, Zaghari-Ratcliffewas allowed to call her husband, partly because of Eid Al-Adha in Iran, but also to clarify that she had been sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. When asked what her charges were, she asked the guard next to her by the phone, who clarified that they were national security charges.

Her continued detention, lack of due process throughout her detention and the allegations made against her highlight the threat faced by those working in the NGO sectors and dual citizens linked to media agencies who travel to Iran. A sentence with secret charges still seems crazy. Literally it is a punishment without a crime. commented Zaghari-Ratcliffes husband, Richard Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Zaghari-Ratcliffes family have requested Zaghari-Ratcliffes lawyer to appeal the decision. No date for the appeal has yet been set.

Amid increasing and improving diplomatic relations between Iran and the UK, ARTICLE 19 urges the UK, and the international community more widely, to increase pressure on Iran to fulfil its human rights obligations and release Zaghari-Ratcliffe and the remaining journalists, artists, and human rights defenders who have been detained for their peaceful activities.

ARTICLE 19 will be raising the case with the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on 13 September 2016 at UN HRC33.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Turkey: Prominent intellectuals Ahmet and Mehmet Altan imprisoned

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 12 September 2016 Cite as Article 19, Turkey: Prominent intellectuals Ahmet and Mehmet Altan imprisoned, 12 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d806404.html [accessed 30 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.

Prominent novelist Ahmet Altan, and his brother, Mehmet Altan, a writer and distinguished professor of economics, were arrested on the morning of 10 September. ARTICLE 19 calls for their immediate release.

According to their lawyer, the prosecutor has accused the brothers of putting out subliminal messages supporting the coup during a television interview in which they criticised President Erdogan. The television programme was aired on 14 July, the day before the failed coup took place. Formal charges are yet to be issued and since their detention, they have not had access to their lawyer.

"The accusations against Ahmet and Mehmet Altan are both absurd and groundless," said Katie Morris, Head of Europe and Central Asia Programme at ARTICLE 19. "We call upon the Turkish authorities to immediately release the brothers and to cease the persecution of writers, journalists and intellectuals in Turkey," she added.

After the coup attempt Turkey issued state of emergency decree laws, under which individuals can be detained without charge for up to 30 days, and are only able to see their lawyer after 5 days.

"We are concerned that the government is abusing the state of emergency to silence all critical voices within the country. While the Turkish authorities must bring those responsible for the failed coup to account, the investigation must not be used as a pre-text to stifle freedom of expression," said Morris.

Ahmet Altan is also currently on trial in a separate case related to his previous work as an editor of the daily newspaper, Taraf. ARTICLE 19 attended the first hearing of that trial and called for the charges to be dropped.

ARTICLE 19 calls upon Turkey to immediately and unconditionally release Ahmet and Mehmet Altan, and all writers and journalists detained without evidence.

We the undersigned call upon democrats throughout the world as well as those who care about the future of Turkey and the region in which it exerts a leading role, to protest the vendetta, which the government is waging against its brightest thinkers and writers who may not share their point of view.

The background to this letter is the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, which mercifully failed and was quickly subdued. Had the Turkish people themselves not resisted this assault on their institutions, the result would have been years of misery.

In the aftermath of that coup, it is understandable that the government would have imposed a temporary state of emergency. However, the failed coup should not be a pretext for a McCarthy style witch hunt nor should that state of emergency be conducted with scant regard for basic rights, rules of evidence or even common sense.

We as writers, academics and defenders of freedom of expression are particularly disturbed to see colleagues we know and respect to being imprisoned under emergency regulations. Journalists like Sahin Alpay, Nazl Ilcak or the novelist Asl Erdogan have been outspoken defenders of democracy and opponents of militarism or tyranny of any sort.

We are particularly disturbed to see the prominent novelist Ahmet Altan, and his brother, Mehmet Altan, a writer and distinguished professor of economics, being detained in a dawn raid on September 10, 2016. The pair stands accused of somehow giving subliminal messages to rally coup supporters on a television panel show broadcast July 14th, the night before the coup-attempt.

Ahmet Altan is one of Turkey's most important writers whose novels appear in translation and sell in the millions. He was also editor in chief for five years of the liberal daily newspaper Taraf. The paper championed the public's right to know. He has been prosecuted many times over his career -in the 1990s for trying to get a Turkish readership to empathize with the country's Kurds or more recently for trying to force an apology from the prime minister for the 2011 Roboski massacre in which 34 villagers were bombed. He appeared in court as recently as September 2, charged with handling state secrets based on an indictment that was in large part copy pasted from two entirely different cases.

Mehmet Altan is a professor at Istanbul University, a columnist whose numerous books campaigned to rebuild Turkey's identity not on race or religion but respect for human rights. Like his brother and others now in jail his crime is not for supporting a coup but for the effectiveness of his criticism of the current government whose initial progress in broadening democracy is now jammed in reverse gear.

We therefore call upon the Turkish government to cease its persecution of prominent writers and to speed the release of Ahmet and Mehmet Altan as well as so many of their colleagues wrongly accused.

172 SIGNATORIES

Dogan Akhanli, Writer, PEN Germany.

Monica Ali, Writer.

Gillian Anderson, Film, television, theatre actress.

Ingeborg Arlt, Writer, PEN Germany.

Michael Augustin, Poet, translator, Germany.

Thomas Bachmann, Author.

Cigdem Balm, Senior lecturer, Indiana University.

Etienne Balibar, Philosopher ; Professor Emeritus, University of Paris-Ouest ; Anniversary Chair in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London.

Julian Barnes, Writer.

Robert Barnett, Senior Research Fellow and Director, Modern Tibetan Studies, Columbia University.

Jurgen Baurmann, Professor Emeritus, University of Wuppertal, Germany.

Sara Bershtel, Publisher, Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt.

Clifford Bob, Raymond J. Kelley Endowed Chair in International Relations, Duquesne University.

Mirko Bonne, Writer.

Vera Botterbusch, Filmmaker, photographer, writer.

Patrick Boucheron, Professor, History, College de France.

Olivier Bouquet, Professor, History, University of Paris VII.

Lisette Buchholz, Publisher, persona verlag.

Simon Callow, Actor, musician, writer and theatre director.

Nick Cave, Musician, author, screenwriter.

Baltasar Cevc, Lawyer, Erlangen, Germany.

Roger Chartier, Professor, History, College de France.

Noam Chomsky, Linguist ; Institute Professor of Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Claus Clausen, Publisher, Tiderne Skifter, Denmark.

Jonathan Coe, Novelist.

Costas Douzinas, Professor of Law, University of London.

Horst Eckert, Writer.

Jean Louis Fabiani, Professor, Humanities, EHESS.

Sascha Feuchert, Vice-President and Writers-in-Prison-Commissioner of PEN Germany ; Professor of Literature, University of Giessen.

Stephen Frears, Film director.

Uwe Friesel, Writer and translator ; Member of International PEN / First President of the German Union VS.

Neil Gaiman, Writer.

Rebeca Garcia Nieto, Writer, Spain.

Mario Giordano, Writer.

Maurice Godelier, Professor of Anthropology, EHESS, Paris.

Jordan Goodman, Honorary Research Fellow in the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at College, London

London.

Roland Greene, Mark Pigott KBE Professor in the School of Humanties and Sciences, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Stanford University.

Ulla Hahn, Writer.

Matt Haig, Novelist and journalist.

Anton Harber, Caxton Professor of Journalism at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and chair of the Freedom of Expression Institute

David Hare, Playwright.

Josef Haslinger, President, PEN-Centers, Germany.

Wolfgang Hermann, Author, Austria.

Uwe-Karsten Heye, Writer.

Kathy High, Interdisciplinary artist, curator, scholar.

James Hollings, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Massey University Wellington, New Zealand.

Nick Hornby, Writer.

Gabriela Jaskulla, Writer and journalist.

Joachim Kalka, Writer and translator.

Tanja Kinkel, Writer.

Hubert Klopfer, Publisher and member of PEN Germany.

Barbara Krohn, Writer.

Hari Kunzru, Novelist and journalist.

Hanif Kureishi, Writer.

Olivia Laing, Writer and critic.

Jean-Manuel Larralde, Professor of Public Law, University of Caen, Normandy.

Camille Laurens, Writer.

Marie Lecomte-Tilouine, Director of research at CNRS, France.

Jo Lendle, Publisher, Carl Hanser Verlage.

Antoine Lilti, Professor, History, EHESS.

Gert Loschutz, Writer.

Gila Lustiger, Writer, Germany / France.

Lindsay Mackie, Board member of English PEN and chair of its Readers and Writers Programme.

Anthony Marx, President and CEO of The New York Public Library ; former president of Amherst College.

Frederique Longuet Marx, Maitre de conferences en sociologie a l'Universite de Caen.

Ian McEwan, Novelist and screenwriter.

Maureen N. McLane, Professor of English, Director of Honors, New York University.

Maria Meinel, Translator.

Luiza Franco Moreira, Poet ; Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literaure at Binghampton University.

Madhusree Mukerjee, Writer.

Herta Muller, Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Sten Nadolny, Novelist.

Ralf Nestmeyer, Author, historian.

Mary Ann Newman, Translator.

Steve Newman, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of English, Temple University.

Thandie Newton, Actress.

Dr. Wulf Noll, Writer.

Olivier Nora, Publisher, Editions Grasset.

Andrew O'Hagan, Novelist.

Hans-Christian Oeser, Literary Translator, Member of PEN.

Michael Ondaatje, Novelist and poet.

Erol Onderoglu, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Turkey.

Christian Parenti, Author, investigative journalist.

Philip N. Pettit, Historian, Philosopher, Princeton University; Australian National University.

DBC Pierre, Writer.

Angela Pimenta, Columnist and president of Projor (The Institute for Development of Journalism), Sao Paulo.

Philip Pullman, Writer.

Justin Quinn, Writer, translator ; Associate Professor, University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic.

Eduardo Rabasa, Writer.

Marie-Joelle Redor-Fichot, Professor of Public Law, University of Caen, Normandy.

Professor Michael Rothberg, 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies, UCLA.

Frederick J. Ruf, Professor, Department of Theology, Georgetown University.

Alan Rusbridger, Journalist, Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and the former editor-in-chief of The Guardian.

Salman Rushdie, Writer.

P. Sainath, Author, journalist.

Gisele Sapiro, Professor of Sociology at the EHESS and Research Director at the CNRS, Vice-President of the EHESS for International Relations.

Aram Saroyan, Poet and novelist.

Elif Shafak, Writer.

Jayeeta Sharma, Associate Professor of History, University of Toronto.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Writer.

Peter Sillem, Editorial Director, S. Fischer Verlag.

Shelly Silver, Associate Professor, Visual Arts Program, Columbia University.

Laura M. Slatkin, Professor, Classical Studies, New York University.

Ali Smith, Writer.

Klaus Stiller, Writer.

Lorin Stein, Editor of The Paris Review.

Ulrich Straeter, Writer and publisher.

Uwe Timm, Writer, Germany.

Johann P. Tammen, Poet and editor, Member of PEN.

Ilija Trojanow, Writer, translator, publisher.

Anja Utler, Writer, Germany.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University.

Irvine Welsh, Novelist and playwright.

Herbert Wiesner, Literary Critic, Member of German PEN Centre, Berlin.

Michel Wievorka, Sociologist ; President, Foundation of the House of Social Sciences, Paris.

Dr. Thomas Wohlfahr, Director of Literature Workshop, House for Poetry, Berlin.

Felicia Zeller, Writer.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
SANTA MONICA, CA--(Marketwired - September 12, 2016) - Conference organizers of the fifth-annual High Horsepower (HHP) Summit, North America's largest showcase of natural gas fueling and technology solutions for high horsepower applications, announced keynote speakers and released the full speaker lineup that will convene at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, October 11-13, 2016.

"Even with today's lower oil prices, high-fuel-use operations still have a significant opportunity to reduce their fuel costs and mitigate long-term price volatility. Experts throughout the world agree $30/barrel is simply not sustainable for the global oil market," noted Erik Neandross, CEO of Gladstein, Neandross & Associates, the clean transportation and energy consulting firm that produces the conference. "Beyond the economic benefits, clean-burning natural gas provides a cost-effective solution to meet increasingly stringent emissions regulations, not to mention an opportunity to simply be a more responsible and sustainable business operation."

The 2016 HHP Summit program is focused on educating HHP operators on the economic and environmental value proposition of natural gas and giving them the tools, resources and information needed to consider a transition of their own operations. Program highlights include:

Keynotes and Featured Speakers: The agenda sessions will allow attendees to gain insight from industry executives on opportunities for growth in today's natural gas market and how natural gas can provide high horsepower sectors a long-term competitive business advantage.

Featured industry speakers include:

Keynote : Andrew Evans, Chairman & CEO, AGL Resources (Pivotal LNG)

Keynote : Brian Cothran, President & CEO North America, GE Oil & Gas

Sam Thomas, Chairman of the Board & CEO, Chart Industries

Joel Feucht, General Manager of Gas & Medium Speed Engines, Caterpillar

John Grubic, Team Lead -- LNG Business Development Americas, Shell

Paul Cheliak, Director of Innovation and New Markets, Canadian Gas Association

Story continues

Real-World Natural Gas Case Studies: From new LNG production plants to multi-vessel deployment projects, executives from the marine, rail, mining, and utility sectors will provide insight on demonstration project plans and results; discuss the value of fuel price stability, predictability, and risk mitigation as oil prices creep back up; and the continued focus on environmental drivers -- regulatory and sustainability.

Featured speakers providing case studies, include:

Eric Evans, Vice President, Carnival Corporation

Matthew Jackson, Vice President of LNG Business Development, Crowley Maritime

Dan Britton, President, Fairbanks Natural Gas

Doug Stout, Vice President of Market Development & External Relations, FortisBC

Cameron Brown, Vice President of Engineering, Western Copper & Gold

Chad Verret, Executive Vice President of Alaska LNG Operations, Harvey Gulf

Shea DiMauro, Director of Operations Support, BNSF Railway

Peter Keller, Executive Vice President, TOTE

Stephen Nelson, Chief Operating Officer, Longview Power

Stephen Sheridan, Senior Manager, Pacific Gas & Electric Company

Expo Hall: The show floor will offer access to the industry's largest display of natural gas engines, equipment and technology. Attendees will get hands-on access to the latest technology and have the opportunity to talk to representatives about engine and equipment specifications before making an investment.

HHP Summit 2016 will host some of the top names across the high horsepower and natural gas industries. A complete list of this year's sponsors, exhibitors, and speakers is available at www.hhpsummit.com.

About the High Horsepower (HHP) Summit

HHP Summit is North America's largest and most comprehensive conference and expo focused on the environmental and economic benefits of natural gas for marine, mining, rail, drilling, pressure pumping, and remote power generation operations.

About Gladstein, Neandross & Associates (GNA)

GNA is the leading North American consulting firm specializing in market development for low-emission and alternative fuel vehicle technologies, infrastructure and fuels for both on and off-road applications. For more than 20 years, GNA has pioneered the nation's largest and most innovative alternative fuel vehicle projects, including the development of several successful clean fuel corridor projects. www.gladstein.org
Title Submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child on child recruitment and the reintegration of girls in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Publisher Child Soldiers International

Publication Date April 2016

Country Democratic Republic of the Congo

Cite as Child Soldiers International, Submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child on child recruitment and the reintegration of girls in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d811d04.html [accessed 30 October 2022]
Cases like Wells Fargo's creation of phony accounts for customers highlight the need for strong banking regulation, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Tuesday.

Speaking at the 2016 Delivering Alpha conference, Lew declined comment on specifics about the Wells Fargo case.

"This ought to be a moment where people stop and remember how dangerous the system is when you don't have the proper protections in place," Lew said. "This is a wake-up call and should remind all of us that culture and compensation make a difference. How you reward people, how you motivate people and what values you hold people to matters."

The conference is hosted by CNBC and Institutional Investor.

The Wells Fargo case came to light late last week when the bank agreed to pay a $185 million fine for what regulators called "widespread illegal" sales practices.

While the bank fired more than 5,000 employees, no one has been charged. The person overseeing the bank division in question is entitled to about $95 million in stocks and options accumulated over her career after she retires at the end of the year, according to a Wells Fargo proxy statement.

Lew said no one should be "too big to jail."

"The pattern of behavior that we've seen here is something that needs to stop," he said. "It is not acceptable to do things that are designed to increase either individual or firm bottom lines by deceiving customers or passing along charges that are either invisible or they don't know about."

In addition to declining comment about the specifics of the Wells Fargo case, he also passed on providing input for the current presidential race.

"I have not dissected any of the campaign proposals. I'm not doing politics in my current life," he said.

Correction: This story was revised to correct that the head of the community banking division will retire at the end of the year, according to Wells Fargo. It also was revised to provide a lower value of her stock and options, based on a Wells Fargo proxy statement.
Martinsville handles Bedford North Lawrence to reach sectional final

Martinsville defeated Bedford North Lawrence on the back of strong defensive play and a huge game from the Artesians' offense.
TUESDAY

West Texas Fair & Rodeo

The West Texas Fair & Rodeo will be open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. at the Taylor County Expo Center. Admission will be free until 1 p.m. The midway will open at 5 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults; $4 for students. All rides will be $2.

Business workshop

Texas Tech Small Business Development Center Abilene will conduct a Trademarks, Copyrights & Patents Workshop from 3-5 p.m. in the Texas Tech Training Center, 749 Gateway St., Suite 301. To make a reservation, call 325-670-0300. Free consultation, by appointment only, will be available from 2-3 p.m.

Building opening

A ribbon-cutting ceremony will begin at 4 p.m. at the new Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Public Health Building, 1650 Pine St. A reception and public tours will follow at 4:30 p.m.

Public meeting

TxDOT will conduct a public meeting regarding possible safety enhancements to the Interstate 20 corridor from 4-8 p.m. in the TSTC Seminar Room, 300 Homer K Drive in Sweetwater.

Job Corps meeting

Job Corps, a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor which provides assistance with training and employment, will conduct an informational meeting at 5 p.m. at the Mockingbird Branch of the Abilene Public Library, 1326 N. Mockingbird Lane.

Tree workshop

Certified arborist Bruce Kreitler will present a workshop on varieties of trees suited for area landscapes at 6:30 p.m. at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. Admission is free.

Square dance workshop

TYE  The Key City Squares will conduct a square dancing workshop at 6:30 p.m. at the Wagon Wheel.

Other ...

Mission on the Move Soup Kitchen, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Southwest Drive Community United Methodist Church, 3025 Southwest Dr.

Abilene Southwest Rotary Club, noon, Beehive Restaurant, 442 Cedar St.

High Noon Al-Anon, noon, Southern Hills Church of Christ, 3666 Buffalo Gap Road (south end; follow the yellow signs).

Blood drive, 1-6 p.m., Coleman County Electric Co-op.

Stroke/Aphasia Recovery Program support group, 1:30-2:30 p.m. West Texas Rehabilitation Center boardroom, 4601 Hartford St. 325-793-3535.

Dystonia Support Group, 5:15-6:15 p.m., Not Without Us, 3301 N. First St. Suite 117.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS), 5:30 p.m., Brook Hollow Christian Church, 2310 S. Willis St. 325-232-7444.

Legacies Al-Anon Family Group, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Open Door Building, 3157 Russell Ave. 325-280-7584.

Family (of Mental Health Consumers) Support Group, 6-7 p.m., Mental Health Association in Abilene, 333 Orange St. 325-673-2300.

MHAA Bipolar/Depression Peer Support Group, 6-8 p.m., Ministry of Counseling & Enrichment, 1502 N. First St. 325-673-2300.

Free certified nurturing parent class (pregnancy to toddler), 6-8 p.m., Mission Church, North Third and Mockingbird streets. 325-672-9398.

Methodist Children's Home Foster Parent Orientation, 6-8 p.m., 500 Chestnut, Suite 1621. 325-672-9398.

Abilene Star Chorus, 6:15 p.m., Wisteria Place Chapel, 3202 S. Willis St. 325-829-1470.

Abilene Chapter of American Association of Professional Coders, 6:30 p.m., in the board room next to the Tom Roberts Conference Center, second floor, Hendrick Medical Center, 1900 N. Pine St. Free AAPC CEU offered at every meeting. 325-435-9059.

Women of Combat Veterans Group, 6:30 p.m., Anson Housing Authority building.

Overeaters Anonymous, 6:30-7:30 p.m., Exodus Metropolitan Community Church, 1933 S. 27th St.

Al-Anon Parents Group, 7 p.m., Hillcrest Church of Christ, 650 E. Ambler Ave. Use Church Street entrance.

Al-Anon, 7 p.m., Doug Meinzer Activity Center, Knox City. 940-658-3926.

Abilene Society of Model Railroaders, 7-8:30 p.m., 2043 N. Second St.

Unity Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, 602 Meander St.

WEDNESDAY

West Texas Fair & Rodeo

The West Texas Fair & Rodeo will be open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. at the Taylor County Expo Center. Admission will be free until 1 p.m. The midway will open at 5 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults; $4 for students and free for seniors age 60 or older.

Food truck lunch

A food truck lunch fundraiser will be 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Taylor County Sheriff's Office, 450 Pecan St. Proceeds will go to the American Heart Association.

Art film

As part of the 'This Is Modern Art' series, a screening of 'Julian Schnable: Art in Progress' will be presented at noon at the Center for Contemporary Arts, 220 Cypress St.

Little League fundraiser

A fundraiser for Southern Little League is planend from 5-8 p.m. at DoubleDave's Pizzaworks, 4001 John Knox Drive. Participants must pick up a flyer when ordering or complete the flyer presented at www.facebook.com/abilenesouthern.

Square dance workshop

TYE  The Wagon Wheel Squares will conduct a square dancing workshop at 6:30 p.m. at the Wagon Wheel.

Other ...

Overeaters Anonymous, 8 a.m., Hinds Square Building, Room 112, 100 Chestnut St.

Blood drive, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Blue Cross Blue Shield, 4002 Loop 322.

Abilene Cactus Lions Club, 11:45 a.m., Cotton Patch Cafe, 3302 S. Clack St.

Abilene Wednesday Rotary Club, noon, Abilene Country Club, 4039 S. Treadaway. $12 for lunch. Jo Ann Wilson, 325-677-6815.

Kiwanis Club of Abilene, noon, Abilene Country Club, 4039 S. Treadaway Blvd.

Clearly Speaking Toastmaster Club, noon, Westgate Church of Christ, 402 S. Pioneer Drive. 325-795-5570.

Diabetes Support Group, 2-3 p.m., Stonewall County Library.

Free swim class for people with multiple sclerosis, 5:30 p.m., YMCA, 3250 State St.

Veterans Peer Support Group, 6 p.m., 765 Orange St. 325-670-4818.

Mid-week Al-Anon Family Group, 6-7 p.m., Open Door Building, 3157 Russell Ave. 325-698-4995.

Advanced Square Dancing, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Wagon Wheel.

Al-Anon, 7 p.m., First United Methodist Church, 1501 N. Broadway, Ballinger. 817-689-2810 or 325-977-1007.

DivorceCare support group, 7 p.m., Hillcrest Church of Christ, 650 E. Ambler Ave. 325-691-4200.

THURSDAY

West Texas Fair & Rodeo

The West Texas Fair & Rodeo will be open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. at the Taylor County Expo Center. Admission will be free until 1 p.m. The midway will open at 5 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults and $4 for students. Admission will be free in exchange for six empty Coca-Cola product cans.

Book reading

A reading of the children's book 'Little Beauty' by Anthony Browne will begin at 10 a.m. at The Grace Museum, 102 Cypress St. A limited number of copies of the book available for sale. To register, go to thegracemuseum.org.

Mac class

The MacUser Group will conduct a free Mac computer class at 1 p.m. at the Mockingbird Branch of the Abilene Public Library, 1326 N. Mockingbird Lane.

Air Force appreciation

A celebration of the Air Force birthday will be held from 5-8 p.m. at The Grace Museum, 102 Cypress St. Art activities, cake and punch will be available, and the museum will kick off its new podcast for deployed personnel. The event will be free for active and former military and their families.

College night

A college night will be open from 6-8 p.m. at The Grace Museum, 102 Cypress St. Live music, food trucks and drink demonstrations by Monk's Coffee House will be available. Admission is free for college students.

Square dance workshop

TYE  A-Team will conduct a square dancing workshop 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Wagon Wheel.

'Story @ The Center'

'Story @ The Center,' a monthly event featuring artists sharing personal stories, will be 7-9 p.m. at the Center for Contemporary Arts. The theme will be 'Processing.' Admission is free, but donations will be accepted.

Other ...

Blood drive, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., TxDOT, 4250 N. Clack St.

Chronic Pain and Depression Group, 11 a.m. to noon, Mental Health Association of Abilene, 333 Orange St., 325-673-2300.

Abilene Founder Lions Club, 11:30 a.m., Al's Mesquite Grill, 4801 Buffalo Gap Road.

Kiwanis Club of Greater Abilene, noon, Beehive Restaurant, 442 Cedar St. 325-695-0092.

Retired Military Wives Club social meeting, 1 p.m., Rose Park Senior Activity Center, 2625 South Seventh St. 325-675-6175.

Mental Illness Open Support Group, 1-2 p.m., Mental Health Association of Abilene, 333 Orange St. 325-673-2300.

Abilene 42 Club, 6 p.m., Rose Park Senior Center.

Teen Recovery Group, 6-7 p.m., Mission Abilene, 3001 N. Third St.

Free certified nurturing parent class (all ages), 6-8 p.m., Mission Church, North Third and Mockingbird streets. 325-672-9398.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly, 6:30 p.m. Brook Hollow Christian Church. Weigh-in begins at 5:30 p.m. 325-665-5052.

Free swim class for people with multiple sclerosis, 6:30 p.m., YMCA, 3250 State St.

Gambler's Anonymous, 6:30 p.m., Unity Spiritual Living Center, 2842 Barrow St. 325-338-2575.

Round Dancing, 7 p.m., Wagon Wheel. 325-829-1517.

South Pioneer Al-Anon Group, 8 p.m., 3157 Russell Ave.

Unity Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, 602 Meander St.

FRIDAY

West Texas Fair & Rodeo

The West Texas Fair & Rodeo will be open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. at the Taylor County Expo Center. Admission will be free until 1 p.m. The midway will open at 5 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults and $4 for students.

Chopper Madness

The Abilene Radio Control Society's annual Abilene Chopper Madness event will be open from 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. at Seabee Park on Farm Road 600. For information, go to abilenercsociety.com. Free admission.

The Peddler Show

The Peddler Show: Perfect Street of Shops will be open from noon to 7 p.m. at the Abilene Civic Center, 1100 N. Sixth St. Admission is $7 for adults and free for children 12 and younger.

Party on the Patio

Party on the Patio, featuring Original KISS Army, will be open from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Kent's Harley-Davidson, 3106 S. Clack St. Food vendors will be available.

Dance

OPLIN  A dance featuring Muddy Creek will be 7:30-10:30 p.m. at the Oplin Community Center. Admission is $5. Information: www.grandoleoplin.com.

Other ...

Blood drive, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Roscoe High School.

Blood drive, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Kwik Kar Lub, 4824 S. 14th St.

Abilene Chinese Corner, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Abilene Christian University library. lld09a@acu.edu.

Mid-City Al-Anon, 7 p.m., First Christian Church. 325-670-4304.
Was Deputy Ken Maltby the first lawman in Eastland County killed in the line of duty since a deputy was shot by the Santa Claus Bank Robber during an escape attempt from the Eastland jail?

A caller to the newspaper asked this question following the death of Deputy Maltby in a traffic accident south of Eastland on Wednesday.

A search of the Officer Down Memorial Page (odmp.org) doesn't list any Eastland law enforcement officer deaths between Maltby and Deputy Thomas Jones on Nov. 18, 1929.

Jones was killed by Marshall Ratliff, the Santa Claus Bank Robber, in an escape attempt from the Eastland County Jail.

Here's Ratliff's story from the beginning, condensed from the Handbook of Texas Online. For a more detailed account of the ill-fated Santa Claus Bank Robbery, read the book by the same name by A.C. Greene.

Ratliff, disguised as Santa Claus, and three other armed men held up the First National Bank of Cisco on the morning of Dec. 23, 1927. Things began to go wrong from the start when children began following Santa Claus and a woman left the bank screaming it was being robbed. Her screams alerted not only the police but gun-toting residents, hoping to cash in on a $5,000 reward offered by the Texas Bankers Association for bank robbers.

A gunbattle followed between the robbers, police and residents. Estimates were at least 200 bullet holes were found in the bank. Cisco Police Chief Bit Bedford and Deputy George Carmichael were both mortally wounded, and six townspeople were injured. Ratliff and robber Louis Davis also were wounded in the melee.

The robbers managed to escape with two girls as hostage. They didn't get far because they had neglected to fill up their gas tank and a tire had been shot out on their car.

They commandeered another car from a passer-by. They transferred their loot, hostages and the wounded Davis into the second car only to find out its 14-year-old driver had given up the car but kept the keys.

They then got back in the first car, but left behind Davis who was now unconscious. What's more, they forgot the money. They abandoned the car and two girls outside of town and fled on foot. Davis died that night in a Fort Worth hospital.

For three days they stole cars, took hostages, and were chased and shot at by lawmen. Eventually all three were captured.

Robert Hill was sentenced to 99 years for armed robbery. He escaped prison three times but was recaptured each time. He was paroled in the mid-1940s.

Henry Helms, who was identified as the person who killed the Cisco policemen, was electrocuted Sept. 6, 1929.

Marshall Ratliff was tried in Abilene and sentenced to death for his role in the policemen's slaying. However, a lunacy hearing was sought, and Ratliff was transferred from prison to the Eastland jail, where he convinced his jailers he was insane so that they fed him, bathed him and took him to the toilet. On Nov. 18, 1929, he attempted to escape, grabbing a gun and shooting Jones. Ratliff's escape attempt ultimately failed when he was subdued by Deputy Pack Kilbourn.

Ratliff was lynched the next day by an angry mob estimated at 1,000 people who overpowered Kilbourn. The mob's first attempt to hang Ratliff on a power pole failed when the knot came loose, but a second attempt was successful.

A grand jury was convened over the lynching, but no one was ever tried.
AUSTIN  In a somber ceremony in the Texas Capitol, 57 first responders who were killed or injured in the line of duty in recent years were honored as heroes by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Included among the posthumous honorees was William Karl Keesee, a Department of Public Safety trooper based in Brown County who died in a car wreck on duty in Mills County in October.

'They stand in front of us to protect us from all that threatens,' Abbott told the surviving public servants and the families and colleagues of all the recipients of the 2016 Star of Texas Awards on Monday. 'We must stand together to have their backs.'

The names of the honorees  first the 20 who were killed on duty  were called and a brief description of their careers and the reasons for their awards were read aloud.

The Star of Texas Awards were established by the Legislature in 2003. Nominations are accepted each year for actions going back to 2003.

Also among the honorees was Brian Jackson,an officer with the San Angelo Police Department. In 2008, he was stabbed in the forehead by an unruly guest at a San Angelo. Even though the blade was lodged about a third of the way into Jackson's skull, the officer  now with the U.S. Border Patrol  still managed to bring down his attacker, according to reports in the San Angelo Standard-Times.

Another honoree was Concho County Sheriff Richard Doane.

In May 2013, Doane was among authorities trying to end a rampage by a gunman who had already killed one when he was wounded by gunfire. When Abbott presented the Star of Texas Award, he told the sheriff whose county is just east of San Angelo, 'You're one tough man.'

'So are you,' the sheriff replied.

Twitter: @JohnnieMo
Working as a team, Abilene weathered challenges better than most cities

Texas fared well but Abilene actually worked toward its future rather than just trying to stay afloat
Andy Cleveland, with one word in mind, approached the microphone at Monday's Abilene Independent School District board meeting. Her goal was to talk about single-member districts.

Her word was representation.

Cleveland, a 55-year teaching veteran who spent 51 years with Abilene ISD before her retirement in May 2011, said she learned at a young age the power and responsibilities of those chosen to represent. She said she grew up in a small Oklahoma town that faced a tough decision of whether or not to get rid of its teacher-principal.

Her mother, she said, organized other parents in favor of keeping the teacher and together, they marched the streets to the homes of the school board members responsible for making the decision.

'We were polite and silent,' Cleveland said. 'My mother would plead our case. She would represent us. I can remember how, when we marched from home to home, how the home (the school board members) lived in were like mansions. The board (was comprised of) big, powerful men who controlled what happened in our town. They were polite and they listened, but they didn't hear.'

That teacher was not rehired, she said. It was a lesson she needed to learn.

Cleveland was just the latest member of the public to address the board with comment on the matter since the June 13 school board meeting. Many supporters feel single-member districts would help the board, which has no members of a minority race or ethnicity, become more diverse.

Despite the pressure from community members each month, the school board elected to take a delayed approach to focus on creating this year's budget. With that adopted at the end of August, some expressed interest Monday night in making diversity a key topic of focus.

Angie Wiley, who joined the school board in May after winning an election, was one of those members making a statement in favor of getting quickly to any changes that need to be made.

One way administration feels change can occur is by emulating a program one Dallas-Fort Worth area district has created to train and inspire future board members. In the interest of learning about the program, the district will send officials and board trustees to Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD next week to get a peak behind the curtain, Superintendent David Young said.

'We are, in fact, going to be making a visit to the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district in the near future, where they have an aspiring board member academy that we're interested in replicating in Abilene ISD,' Young said. 'We see this as one potential way to increase diversity of our board and get people interested in serving our school district from all over our community and from different groups in our community.'

In other news, the board approved an administrative request to apply for 13 class-size waivers from the Texas Education Agency for the 2016-17 school year. Joe Alcorta, executive director of human resources, said the district must maintain a 22:1 ratio between students and teachers in grades K-4.

These 13 classrooms, he said, are all 23:1 and spread throughout a number of elementary schools.

Twitter: @TimothyChippARN
'Hey, more than 500 people have been murdered in Chicago this year,' says one of my conservative friends. 'I can't wait to see what you write about that.'

Why? You didn't listen to me the last time. Are you really listening or just waiting for your own turn to complain?

'Jeez, why are you so touchy?'

I'm just tired of hearing your usual one-note analysis and solution: Black people are having too many babies out of wedlock. Hey, do you ever ask what happened to the jobs that used to enable workers to support a family? Do you ever notice how the poverty, crime, opiate addiction and out-of-wedlock birthrates are growing among poor whites, too? When are you people going to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps?

'Hey, you don't think fathers are important?'

Of course, we're important. But where are you going to find all the marriageable black men to fulfill your dream?

'Hey, OK, I'm listening. Tell me what you would do about the killers roaring out of control in Obama's adopted hometown.'

Hey, that's President Barack Obama, pal. Respect. Look, 500 murders and it's only September? There's a horrible thing. But it's not a first. Violent crime is like a Zika virus. You don't know when or where it's going to surge but you have to deal with it when it does.

We've been through this before. I was covering Chicago cops as a young reporter in 1974 when murders in Chicago peaked at 970  or about 29 per 100,000  after rising for more than 10 years. And I remember when murders peaked again in 1992, this time at 943 or 34 per 100,000.

You could almost hear the rejoicing in December 2004, when the Chicago Tribune headlined: 'City murder toll lowest in decades.' For the first time in almost four decades, there were fewer than 500 murders in Chicago. Break out the Champagne.

'So what's that got to do with this year?'

First, it tells you that we've dealt with crime waves before. One reason murders look so high is because violent crime overall, including murder, has dropped since the 1990s. Second, everybody talks about how Chicago homicides this year outnumber those in New York and Los Angeles combined. But a number of smaller cities like Milwaukee and Houston have had big increases this year, too. So far, it's not a national trend, but it's not a uniquely Chicago problem either. There is no single, one-stop, one-size-fits-all diagnosis or prescription.

'Yeah, but you're not talking about Black Lives Matter and kids with cellphone cameras waging war on the police. The cops are afraid to get out of their patrol cars for fear of winding up on YouTube.'

Frankly, some of them should fear winding up on YouTube, considering what we've seen on YouTube already.

But I notice you're not talking about how New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio pulled back on the city's aggressive stop-and-frisk profiling policy on the streets last year. Conservatives howled, but so far homicides have continued to decline.

'So you want to coddle the criminals and wage war on police?'

No, quite the opposite. I want to see more cops on the street, working in cooperation with local residents and community leaders. Community policing works, if you do it right.

Unfortunately, Chicago police are undermanned and pulling lots of overtime. The city and state are deep in debt, and, as much as Mayor Rahm Emanuel talks about hiring more cops, nobody knows where he's going to get the money except from taxpayers who are feeling pretty tapped out already.

Ah, so, once again Democrats are screwing up our cities.

I know you'd like to make this a partisan issue, but it's not that simple, either.

'Hey, Donald Trump recently said Chicago police could solve the city's crime problem 'in a week.' '

Oh, yeah? How? Is he going to give gangbangers scholarships to Trump University?

'No,' he says the police only have to be 'very much tougher' than they are now.

Oh, gimme a break. This is a guy who claims he knows 'more about ISIS than the generals.' Now he thinks he knows more than Chicago's police?

'He says one of Chicago's 'very top police' told him and Trump says he believed the guy '100 percent.' '

Right. That would make Trump as gullible as he hopes the voters will be in November.

Email Clarence Page, a member of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, at cpage@tribune.com.
Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson embarrassed himself Thursday when he was asked about the epicenter of Syria's civil war and responded, 'What is Aleppo?' The moment, on an MSNBC morning program, deserves to become iconic because it encapsulates why Johnson is not fit to be president.

His disregard for U.S. foreign policy and strategic interests is so profound that he did not recognize a reference to Syria's largest city, which, for several years, has been the site of intense fighting, massive war crimes and an ongoing humanitarian crisis that has, with its tidal wave of refugees, rocked prime U.S. allies in Europe.

But let's be fair to Johnson: In the context of the 2016 presidential campaign, he's far from winning the cluelessness contest. Following his gaffe, the former New Mexico governor offered a relatively cogent summary of U.S. support for various Syrian factions. Later, he apologized, saying that he thought 'Aleppo' was an acronym. 'I feel horrible,' he said to Bloomberg Politics. 'I have to get smarter, and that's just part of the process.'

It's refreshing, at least, to hear a national candidate acknowledge error and vow to do better. Contrast that with Donald Trump, who in a televised national security forum Wednesday offered a staggering array of ignorant and mendacious assertions  and acknowledged no regrets about any of them. In addition to repeating his false claims to having opposed the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya, Trump defended a tweet saying that military sexual assault was the result of men and women serving together, and he suggested the solution was to 'set up a court system within the military' because 'right now, the court system practically doesn't exist.' Does he really mean to replace the U.S. military justice system?

At least that would be easier than Trump's plan to 'take the oil' of Iraq: 'Just we would leave a certain group behind, and you would take various sections where they have the oil.' The jaw-dropping imbecility of this idea surely would make even Johnson wince.

Most troubling of all was Trump's renewed endorsement for Vladimir Putin, despite the mounting evidence that the Russian government is attempting to directly interfere in the U.S. election campaign. Confronted with a litany of Putin's offenses, including the military actions in Ukraine and Syria and the computer hack of the Democratic National Committee, Trump responded, 'Do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?' - as if there were equivalent U.S. actions.

'He is really very much of a leader,' Trump said of a man who has overseen the murder of his domestic political opponents and critical journalists, the rigging of elections, a global campaign of disinformation and a foreign policy whose first aim is to increase Russian influence at U.S. expense.

Johnson may not know what Aleppo is. But in the contest between the United States and an autocratic and increasingly belligerent Russia, Trump appears not to be sure which side he is on.

The Washington Post
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

This just in...
Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong on Tuesday fired tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets in a massive dawn raid cracking down on weeks of protests in the rebel village of Wukan.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 riot police stormed Wukan, which is administered by nearby Lufeng city, detaining more than 20 people, local residents told RFA.

But villagers, who have been protesting the loss of their farmland and the detention of their leader Lin Zuluan for more than 80 consecutive days, fought back with bricks as riot police beat them up indiscriminately, eyewitnesses told RFA.

"We were woken up very early this morning by a phone call saying that there were a lot of police outside," a resident who declined to be named told RFA. "We looked out of the window, and there really were a lot of police."

"We are so fed up now, because the whole village is swarming with police, who have sealed off every intersection," he said.

"We feel very unsafe and worried about the villagers' safety," he said.

The Lufeng police department said in a post on its official microblog account that the operation was aimed at "dealing with illegal protests in Wukan carried out by a minority of people."

"[The operation] was supported and assisted by the vast majority of local people, and Wukan is currently going through the process of a return to business as usual," the post said.



Tear gas and rubber bullets

A second Wukan resident said 20 or 30 people had been detained in the raid.

"They started in the middle of the night, at around 3.00 a.m. ... and have now detained more than 20 people," the resident said.

"They fired tear gas and pepper spray," he said. "Some people were also hit by rubber bullets, which are incredibly painful, and a lot of people were injured and bleeding."

"There are now police at every intersection," the person said.

The second resident said the total number of people injured isn't yet known.

"We can't get a clear figure," he said, adding that online rumors claimed that some people had died.

"We didn't see that with our own eyes, though," he said.

A third resident confirmed the reports of shots and tear gas being fired.

"They fired tear gas and they fired shots into the air," the third resident said. "They are still beating up local people now, including women and the elderly, until they bleed, then they are detaining them."

"It looks like the scene of a massacre ... They are all armed police and riot squad, and they are everywhere," he said. "Wukan is full of police detaining people everywhere they go."

Bloody injuries

Photos shown to RFA of the raids showed a number of people bleeding from injuries, with more seriously injured people lying on the ground in pools of blood.

Bricks were also littered around on the streets, after local people flung them at police in self-defense, resulting in injuries on both sides, sources said.

An administrator who answered the phone at the Lufeng People's Hospital confirmed that injured people were being taken there from the clashes in Wukan, but said they were unaware of the scale of the casualties.

"I don't have the list of casualties, so I can't tell you exactly how many there are," the employee said. "But there were some armed police too."

"I just work in the office, so I don't know anything more than that, because I'm not a medical practitioner," the person said.

Exiled former Wukan resident and protest leader Zhuang Liehong, who fled to the United States in the wake of 2011 protests in the village, said the authorities seemed determined to wrest back control of the village after weeks of daily demonstrations.

He said his elderly father was among those detained.

"My father, Zhuang Songkun, who is nearly 70 years old, was among those detained; also Cai Jialin and an elderly woman, who [are both] about the same age as my father," Zhuang said.

The photo shows Lin Zuluan after he was elected a second time as leader of Wukan village in southern China's Guangdong province, March 31, 2014. AFP Court sentence

The raid comes after a court in Guangdong's Foshan city sentenced Lin Zuluan to more than three years' imprisonment on "bribery" charges.

Lin was denied permission to see lawyers hired by his family, while many believe that his televised "confession" to the charges was made under duress.

Zhuang said Lin's grandson had been forcibly relocated to Dongguan, not far from Foshan, shortly after his grandfather's detention.

"The government won't allow him to live in Wukan anymore," he said, adding: "I think this has a lot to do with the policies of Hu Chunhua," Zhuang said, in a reference to the ruling Chinese Communist Party secretary for Guangdong province.

Lin, former Wukan party secretary and former leader of the 2011 protests, was handed a 37-month jail term and a U.S. $60,000 fine by the Foshan Intermediate People's Court last week, after it found him guilty of taking bribes and of other charges.

Wukan residents, who were largely prevented from attending the trial by draconian security measures, rejected the sentence, staging further protests over charges they said were trumped up.

Grassroots election expert and former independent People's Congress deputy Yao Lifa told RFA that the Wukan protests are likely the longest-running public protests China has ever known.

"To my knowledge, this has never happened before, for such a long time, and on such a scale," Yao said.

But he said any progress towards genuine democracy in China would still require the full cooperation of the government.

"Changes in the law and reforms have to happen at source, to start with the whole system," Yao said. "They need to ensure fairness and openness and supervision in the running of elections, as well as genuine opposition and media coverage."

"Without that, we will continue to see conflicts of all kinds continue to arise across the country," he said.

Put this thing to bed

Canada-based rights activist Yeung Hung said the authorities are trying to put a swift end to the protests in just a couple of days.

"They want to put this thing to bed ... so the people who were detained today are likely to wind up with jail sentences, or at least with administrative sentences handed down by police," he said.

But he said Wukan residents might not take the latest government actions lying down.

"My fear is that if they government continues to escalate the situation, then the people of Wukan, who haven't yet backed off even half a pace, could get neighboring villages to help them," Yeung said.

"Then the authorities, faced with a situation beyond their control, could call in even more military force and suppress it with even greater force," he said.

Lin, 72, was made the new head of the village in 2012 as former protest leaders were elected to positions on the village committee following weeks of protests, and after a standoff at the barricades made world headlines after the death of a protester in police custody in 2011.

The provincial government, unusually, took the side of the villagers, overruling officials in Lufeng and firing former party secretary Xue Chang from his post on corruption charges.

The elections that followed were widely reported in China's tightly controlled media as a model of grassroots democracy.

But a committee charged with getting the villagers' farmland back made scant progress, and two of its members were themselves jailed on "bribery" charges last year, in a move their relatives said was a form of political retaliation.

Lin's detention in June came as villagers persuaded him to relaunch the land protest campaign.

Reported by Wong Siu-san and Wong Lok-to for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Yang Fan for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
UPDATED at 9:21 AM EST on 2016-09-14

U.S. President Barack Obama will discuss the further lifting of sanctions against Myanmar when the countrys de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi begins her first official visit to Washington on Tuesday as state counselor and foreign minister.

After meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday, Aung San Suu Kyi is flying to the U.S. to meet with top U.S. officials, including Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and U.S. legislators. She will also go to the United Nations in New York to address the General Assembly next week.

The U.S. maintains more than 100 individuals and organizations in Myanmar on a blacklist, many for their ties to the countrys still powerful military, or because they have been cited for their involvement in drug trafficking or money laundering.

The visit has prompted Shwe Mann, former speaker of Myanmars lower house of parliament, to call on Aung San Suu Kyi to urge the U.S. to drop the remaining sanctions.

We wish that [Aung San Suu Kyi] will bring the rewards of removal or lifting of international sanctions with her foreign trips to the U.K., U.S., and U.N., said Shwe Mann, a former top general during the previous military junta that ruled the country until 2011, on a social media post.

Aung San Suu Kyi had supported western sanctions against the country during her 15 years of house arrest as an opposition party leader when the country was under the rule of a military junta.

Shwe Mann quoted an old Burmese saying that the son comes back shouldering a gold pot, but in this case, he said, the Myanmar people would like to see Aung San Suu Kyi bring pots of diamonds and gold by urging western countries to lift sanctions on Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma.

He also noted that Myanmar has been kept under restrictive sanctions by the international community that have directly or indirectly impacted the general population.

The Obama administration will consult closely with Aung San Suu Kyis government to ensure that the sanctions are not preventing economic investment that would help the Myanmar people, the presidents deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said in a talk at a Washington think tank on Tuesday.

The view of the government matters a lot to us, Rhodes told the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Obama hosts Aung San Suu Kyi at the White House on Wednesday.

Burma Strategy Act

Amnesty International urged both the U.S. and the United Nations to remain firm with Myanmars nearly six-month-old civilian-led government as it consolidates reforms that unwind the practices of half a century of military rule.

We have seen encouraging changes as Myanmar eases out from under the shadow of military rule. But there is still a lot more to do to ensure a decisive break with the countrys ugly past of human rights violations, Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty Internationals director for South East Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced legislation on Tuesday to keep the Obama administration focused on human rights issues, national ethnic reconciliation, and constitutional reform in Myanmar, while determining whether to modify or lift the remaining sanctions.

The Burma Strategy Act of 2016 sets benchmarks and guidelines on sanctions relief by having the Secretary of State review and make recommendations about modifying or lifting sanctions based on challenges to democracy, good governance, ethnic reconciliation, legal reform, and the treatment of military-owned enterprises, according to a news release issued Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The legislation also authorizes bilateral economic assistance to support civil society organizations, provides humanitarian assistance, conducts limited military-to military engagement between the U.S. and Myanmar, creates a fund to provide incentives for private-sector investment in the country, and calls for a report on the gemstone sector to ensure good governance standards are put in place.

Murky jade industry

Some rights groups have expressed concern that it is still too early for the U.S. to drop the remaining sanctions, particularly those directed at the military or the resource extraction sector.

Global Witness, a London-based international NGO that exposes corruption and environmental abuse, warned the U.S. not to lift the sanctions, saying that its investigations into the countrys murky jade industry are of particular concern.

The industry, worth up to U.S. $31 billion in 2014, has been a target of U.S. sanctions and remains under the control of military elites, U.S.-sanctioned drug lords, and so-called crony companies, while local people see almost no benefit, the group said.

Jade was kept largely off-limits from the former governments reform efforts, and the industry now stands as one of the key obstacles to progress under the new civilian-led government, Global Witness said in a press release issued Tuesday.

The murkiness of the jade trade also poses risks to U.S. companies looking to engage in Myanmar, it said.

The group recommends that the sanctions be maintained until powerful elites no longer threaten Myanmars future.

FDI increases

American foreign investors have so far indicated their confidence in the continued democratic reforms that have occurred under the new Myanmar government, which came to power in April.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) rose to U.S. $900 million during the first five months under new administration and have created about 50,000 jobs in the last three months, Aung Naing Oo, general sectary of the Myanmar Investment Commission, told reporters on Tuesday in the administrative capital Naypyidaw.

Most of the investment has been directed to the manufacturing, telecommunications and real estate sectors, he said.

The U.S. eased some of its economic sanctions against Myanmar in May to promote the Southeast Asian nations economic growth and political reform under the new, reform-minded government.

Washington also removed seven state-owned enterprises and three state-owned banks from an official blacklist of companies prohibited from doing business with the U.S., and extended a measure to allow shipments to go through ports and airports in Myanmar, hoping to open up opportunities for trade and for more American companies to invest in the country.

Aung Naing Oo also said that the amount of incoming FDI during the first months of former President Thein Seins administration in early 2011 was not this high since he had not yet implemented various social and economic reforms.

The commission expects total FDI for this year to reach U.S. $6 billion, he said.

The U.S. temporarily lifted a ban on trade through Myanmars ports in December, a month after Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) party won general elections by a landslide.

The U.S. had previously dropped most trade restrictions against Myanmar after Thein Seins quasi-civilian government undertook political and economic reforms beginning in 2011, but an embargo remained on several business interests of the junta-era elite, including several key export and import sites.

Reported by Kyaw Min Htun and Win Ko Lwin for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Hundreds of Tibetan monks and laypeople coming from across northwestern Chinas Qinghai have gathered this week at a Buddhist monastery in the province for a traditional eight-day period of religious teachings and debates, according to a Tibetan source living in the region.



This years Jang Gunchoe, or Winter Teaching, is being held at Tsigorthang (in Chinese, Xinghai) countys Drakkar monastery, and began on Sept. 10, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



Hundreds of monks from four different schools of Tibetan Buddhism, and representing 48 different monasteries, are participating in the assembly, the source said, naming the Buddhist schools represented at Drakkar as Geluk, Nyingma, Kagyu, and Jonang.



Monks from Tibets Bon tradition are also taking part in the gathering, the 13th to be hosted by Drakkar, he said.



Most of the monks have come from Geluk monasteries, and they are busy now debating religious topics focused on logic and valid approaches to reasoning, he said.



Many senior religious teachers called Geshes are also attending the event and are instructing those present to devote their lives to meritorious work based on understanding the Buddhist teachings on karma, the source said.



They are also urging parents to take responsibility for teaching their children Tibets language and traditional culture, and to provide wisely for their childrens future, he said.



Public assemblies at monasteries in Tibetan regions of China have greatly increased in size in recent years, observers and participants say, as tens of thousands of Tibetans gather to assert their national and cultural identity in the face of Chinese domination.



Chinese security forces, fearful of sudden protests opposed to Beijings rule, frequently monitor and sometimes close down events involving large crowds, sources say.



Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.




Six years have now passed since the last talks on the status of Tibet were held between envoys of the Dalai Lama and Beijing, and the Dalai Lamas Middle Way proposal for greater autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule continues to be rejected by Chinese leaders. Here, in edited excerpts from Sept. 7 and Sept. 8 interviews with Dorjee Damdul and Palden Gyal of RFAs Tibetan Service, Tsering Topgyalan assistant professor of political science and international studies at the University of Birmingham in the U.K.explains what may be getting in the way of a solution.



Why has this conflict over Tibet been so intractable?



My take is that it has been difficult for the Chinese state and elites and for the Tibetan leadership, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to resolve this dispute partly because each side has different security concerns.



The Chinese statethe regime and the Communist Party at the top, along with local officials in the Tibetan regionshas different insecurities connected with the historical relations between China and Tibet, and with how Tibet came to be annexed by the Peoples Republic of China.



These are also connected to Chinas relations with other great powers like India and the U.S., and to Chinas relationship with some of its neighbors. Tibet figures in many of these relationships.



There is a tendency in the scholarship on the Sino-Tibetan conflict to see the Chinese side as driven by security concerns, and this seems reasonable and rational. But when the same scholars look at the Tibetan side, there is a tendency to see this as driven by emotion or ethno-nationalism.



But on the Tibetan side, there are security concerns as well.



For example, we can talk about ecological security. Many Tibetans are worried about the condition of their environment. Tibetans also have economic insecurities--concerns over what Chinese migration is doing to Tibetans prospects for jobs and livelihood.



But Tibetans are most concerned over the security of their identity. Basically, this is about the survival of the Tibetan nation.



Each side says or does certain things to increase its security, but what this ends up doing is raising the insecurity on the other side . . . China tries to undermine the Tibetan sense of identity, at the same time trying to make the Tibetans feel more Chinese and identify more with the Chinese nation.



So the two sides get caught up, and they both end up being more insecure rather than more secure, as was their original intention.




For the first time in 20 years, official election results in Belarus show that candidates who are not allies of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka have won seats in parliament -- two seats out of 110, to be exact.

But independent analysts and election observers warn the results don't mean that Belarus has suddenly cleaned up its notoriously corrupt electoral system or that the beleaguered opposition's fortunes have dramatically improved.

They say the tally for the September 11 parliamentary vote was as fraught with fraud as ever.

This time, critics allege, Lukashenka has allowed two candidates with opposition sympathies to be proclaimed winners because of pressure from the West.

"The appointment of two independent deputies signals Belarusian authorities are ready for some sort of transformation, but they want to control this transformation and limit it very strictly," Andrey Dynko, editor in chief of the independent Our Field newspaper and website, told RFE/RL. "Simultaneously, these appointments are also snubbing the nose of the West and those in the opposition who wanted to mastermind the creation of some moderate opposition."

Lukashenka, he argued, "wants to show that he wants to select who will be the moderate opposition in his country."

On September 12, international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) cited the weekend Belarus elections as "efficiently organized" but still beset by "systemic shortcomings." They criticized the country's "constitutional and legal framework" as insufficient to meet international standards, in addition to media bias and a lack of "fundamental freedoms."

None of the country's elections has been deemed democratic since referendums in the mid-1990s that ushered in a new constitution and consolidated Lukashenka's power, marginalizing the president's political opponents in the process.

'Concession' To Critics

The editor in chief of the Minsk-based analytical website Our Opinion, Valeriea Kosyugova, noted that Lukashenka has been under pressure to open up elections to the political opposition in order to improve diplomatic and economic ties with the European Union and the United States.

Kosyugova agreed that allowing a single opposition candidate and one independent candidate to win parliamentary seats was a concession to its international critics.

One of those candidates, Hanna Kanapatskaya from the opposition United Civil Party, was declared the winner in Minsk's 97th electoral district.

Her main rival was one of the best-known opposition candidates who did not opt to boycott the ballot: Tatsyana Karatkevich of the Tell The Truth movement, who had run against Lukashenka for president in October 2015.

An independent candidate from the town of Stouptsy, Alena Anisim, was also declared the winner in a race against the principal of a local, state-run elementary school.

Anisim is the deputy head of a nongovernmental group called the Belarusian Language Society, which promotes Belarusian culture and the use of the Belarusian language, which is frequently sidelined in favor of Russian.

'Appointed' To Parliament

Mikalay Statkevich, a prominent Belarusian opposition figure who was imprisoned for 5 1/2 years for organizing mass demonstrations after his unsuccessful 2010 presidential bid against Lukashenka, says both Kanapatskaya and Anisim were "appointed" to parliament by Lukashenka.

"Let's be honest," Statkevich told RFE/RL on September 12. "Lukashenka appointed these women because he thinks they are less dangerous" to his government and his political agenda than other opposition candidates.

Reporters at Dynko's Our Field documented evidence purportedly showing election officials altering the official turnout and early vote count in Kanapatskaya's race against Karatkevich.

Still, Dynko said, any favoritism shown by election officials for Kanapatskaya and Anisim would not be the fault of those candidates.

WATCH: Voting In Belarus 'Just A Wild Guess'

Despite the motive for any favoritism they may have been shown by election officials, Dynka said he sees the emergence of moderate opposition deputies in parliament as a positive development.

He said Kanapatskaya and Anisim are "real, opposition, and not some fake opposition as we've had in Belarus," in Russia, and in other former Soviet republics since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He told RFE/RL that their ability to voice the opinions and agenda of the political opposition could expose new ideas to new audiences in Belarus.

And while the pair is unlikely to change the political landscape by proposing political reforms that would be passed by other lawmakers, he said he expects Lukashenka's allies will join with them to consolidate a Belarusian national identity and to promote Belarusian national sovereignty.

OSCE election monitors in Minsk concluded that, just like previous elections in Belarus over the past 20 years, the September 11 ballot was "still marred by a significant number of procedural irregularities and a lack of transparency" linked to "early voting and counting and tabulation procedures."

It said that despite the declared victories of one independent and one opposition candidate, Belarus has "yet to take steps towards democratic elections."

'No Way Free And Fair'

Kent Harstedt, the vice president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the head of the OSCE's observer mission in Minsk, told RFE/RL on September 12 that Belarus's elections "were in no way free and fair" and that "there were so many violations that they did not meet international standards."

In fact, Belarus has not held a vote that was assessed by international monitors as free or democratic since the early 1990s.

Authorities there routinely punish dissent and tightly control media -- leading to Western sanctions against Minsk for human rights abuses and severed diplomatic ties.

But relations between Minsk and the West have improved since Lukashenka hosted international peace talks on Ukraine's conflict and announced the release of political prisoners in 2015.

In February, the European Union ended five years of sanctions against Belarus as part of a push to encourage democratic change through engagement rather than isolation.

Washington has also relaxed some of its restrictions as it tries to counter what it sees as a newly aggressive Russia.

Belarus has also implemented some economic reforms in a bid to get loans from international lenders -- including a $3 billion loan it is seeking from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The economic crisis in Russia linked to falling oil prices and sanctions over Moscow's role in Ukraine's conflict has also hurt Belarus.

With 40 percent of Belarusian exports going to Russia, the Belarusian economy shrank by 3.9 percent in 2015.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Belarusian Service


"A final report card on Dayton is not yet possible," Richard Holbrooke wrote in his book To End A War, published in 1998. He passed away before he could see the peace agreement of which he was so proud being misused to keep the ghosts of war alive in Bosnia.

The political system enshrined by Dayton encourages each group, Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats, to choose its representatives based on ethnicity, thus perpetuating wartime divisions. Moreover, nationalist party leaders exploit the fear of a new conflict to further cement their hold on power in both entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat federation. Politicians in Bosnia are not judged on the basis of their economic or social policies. Demonizing the other ethnic group(s) is the simplest and surest way of winning elections. Ethnic populism reigns unchallenged in Bosnia.

Yet Dayton's reification of ethnic division as the foundation of politics was not always put into practice. The president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, started his career as an enthusiastic supporter of the peace agreement and of a unified Bosnia. Holbrooke was full of praise for Dodik in his book:

"In all three ethnic groups, the men who started the war in 1991-92 were still in power as late as spring 1998. They have to disappear to make way for a new generation of leaders willing to reach out to one another as prime minister Dodik of Republika Srpska has begun to do. If more leaders like Dodik appeared, and survived, then the original Dayton design could work."

Holbrooke was right at the time -- during the war Dodik led a group of independent legislators in the parliament of what was then the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska. He was an opponent of Radovan Karadzic, the chief instigator of the conflict. During his visit to the United States in 2007, Madeline Albright described him as a "breath of fresh air." He was the EU's darling as well. The late British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, praised Dodik in front of the Republika Srpska's National Assembly. He said that Dodik's government had done more in its first two weeks to improve the lives of the people than its predecessor had done in two years.

How has Dodik the peacemaker become the biggest threat to peace in Bosnia?

The winds blowing from Sarajevo in the aftermath of the war were not always favorable to reconciliation. Many at the top, including Haris Silajdzic, a close associate of the late Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegovic, were calling for the abolition of Republika Srpska. Silajdzic referred to it as "the genocidal entity." Some of this was understandable resentment over the fact that Dayton had effectively legitimized the reality created on the ground by ethnic cleansing. Yet the frosty attitude did nothing to discourage Banja Luka from looking to Belgrade.

Closer relations between Serbia and Republika Srpska followed. In May 2008, Dodik and former Serbian President Boris Tadic opened a Republika Srpska Park in Belgrade. Dodik then used police reform to create a nationalist profile for himself. Belgrade Television became the major platform for his political speeches. He welcomed back former Republika Srpska President Biljana Plavsic after her release from prison, having served her sentence for war crimes, and even sent an official jet to pick her up.

A year ago he went to Srebrenica, seemingly to pay tribute to the victims of genocide. Yet the very next day he called it "a massacre," and promised to establish "an international commission" to find out "what really happened in Srebrenica." He thus sought to overwrite The Hague tribunal and EU declarations on the Srebrenica genocide.

In 2011, Dodik proposed a referendum on whether to reject Bosnia's state war crimes court and the special prosecutor's office established in 2005 by international decree. It was seen as a highly risky move, and after a series of failed diplomatic efforts to stop the referendum, Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign-policy chief at the time, rushed to see Dodik in Banja Luka and promised a reform of the Bosnian judiciary. Dodik already saw himself as the head of a mini-state, a feeling further encouraged when a high-ranking EU official went directly to his Banja Luka headquarters, bypassing the capital, Sarajevo -- although he ultimately relented on his proposed referendum. Yet the course was set. In his regular reports to the UN Security Council, Valentin Inzko, the high representative in Bosnia, frequently mentioned Dodik as the most persistent -- albeit not the only -- proponent of Bosnian state dissolution.

Although he did back down in 2011, after having his ego boosted by EU officials, Dodik was not done with referendums. A new one planned for September 25 has raised tensions in Bosnia to a fever pitch, and threatens to split the country. It is ostensibly a plebiscite on Republika Srpska's Statehood Day, but is seen by many as the thin edge of the wedge. It seeks to officially celebrate the birth not of post-Dayton Republika Srpska, but rather Karadzic's prewar creation that helped bring about the Bosnian conflict.

Dodik currently seems prepared to use all means that he considers legitimate to achieve Serbia's wartime goals. If Holbrooke were still around, he would probably ask for an urgent conference on Bosnia and a revision of Dayton. Even in 1998 he expressed some regrets. One of them was keeping the name Republika Srpska. "It was wrong to permit Karadzic to keep the name he had invented," he wrote in his book.

Commenting on Dodik's new referendum, former Croatian President Stipe Mesic called Dodik the new Slobodan Milosevic.

Mesic is right. Like Milosevic, Dodik is probably not as ideologically committed to Serbian nationalism as he is trying to appear. He may be more of an opportunist. When the international community was more closely involved in Bosnia -- in the years immediately after the war -- Dodik determined that it was profitable to support a unified state. As the world has gradually disengaged from Bosnia, nationalist rhetoric became key to political survival once again. This is partly the legacy of Dayton, the establishment of a country in which people exercise their rights, and their political will, as members of one of three ethnic groups, rather than as Bosnian citizens.

Bosnia deserves better than a flawed peace treaty as its constitution, and it deserves to move on. It is not possible without EU and U.S. assistance.
Bulat Barantayev is calling for the impeachment of Russian President Vladimir Putin and for all corrupt officials to be tried and imprisoned.

But that's not why he has no chance of winning a legislative mandate in Russia's September 28 Duma elections.

Barantayev, by his own admission, won't be representing Novosibirsk from the liberal Parnas coalition because he is one of the first openly gay men to run for the Duma in modern Russian history.

"For a long time now, I have used all opportunities to cultivate an audience for accepting LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] people," Barantayev told RFE/RL when asked why he was running in a race he is certain he can't win. "By my example, I show that gays in Russia can create their own successful businesses, can meet with people, can have children, and can even run for the State Duma."

Aleksei Korolyov is another openly gay man on the Parnas ticket in the southern city of Krasnodar. He is also realistic about his chances but confident his candidacy is a step forward for Russia.

"The LGBT community now is in a desperate situation," he told RFE/RL, "and we need allies. It is good that we have been able to form an alliance with Parnas. The LGBT community gets new resources to defend itself and the party should get some new voters.... I decided to run because the ruling party has adopted an extreme homophobic position. The authorities are facilitating a homophobic discourse in society that is inciting hate crimes."

Moved To Action

Both Barantayev and Korolyov were moved to public action by Russia's 2013 law banning the "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships" to minors.

"The mechanism that the authorities are using to foster homophobia in society is very primitive," Barantayev said. "The LGBT community has been branded as enemies in order to divert the public's attention from real economic and political problems."

Barantayev, 33, has been open about his sexuality since he was 25, and in 2011 he created the local nongovernmental GORD gay-advocacy organization.

In 2009, he was inspired when opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead in Moscow in 2015, made a quixotic run to become mayor of the city of Sochi. He joined Nemtsov's Solidarity movement, the first step on his road to the current campaign.

Korolyov, 29, has been a gay-rights activist in the southern city of Krasnodar since 2012.

"For four years, I have been working to establish relations between the LGBT community and various democratic organizations, including the Yabloko party," he said. "Before the passage of the 'gay propaganda' law, many democrats said the topic isn't important and society won't respond positively. Now everyone understands that the LGBT community needs support."

The liberal Yabloko party even included support for the rights of sexual minorities as a plank in its party platform. Parnas, however, did not.

"Unlike Yabloko, our party is struggling to survive. We can't afford to get into particulars," Barantayev said when asked why. "Even in this silence, the democratic values of Parnas include the defense of LGBT rights."

Playing The Long game

Barantayev said that he doesn't feel in danger running for parliament.

"I am risking less than other candidates from our party," he said. "The leader of the Novosibirsk branch of Parnas, Yegor Savin, is under tremendous pressure. His assistant was recently assaulted. People who are distributing his leaflets have been threatened over the phone. The building where his business is located was set on fire."

"I'm of no interest to local officials, the police, or the United Russia party," Barantayev added. "The authorities believe there is no chance I'll be elected in today's Russia. So they don't pay any attention to me."

This contrasts sharply with his past experience of merely being gay in Russia.

"I have been attacked," he said. "I was called and summoned to the mayor's office in response to my application to hold an LGBT event. But outside the building, I was jumped by thugs and beaten up. When I return home late, young men that I don't know call me by name and shout obscenities. Because of the attacks, I am a little afraid to be out in public sometimes. But I don't have a victim complex. They treat us the way we let them treat us."

Both men are playing the long game and are optimistic that time is on their side.

"Maybe I'll be elected to the eighth Duma [in 2021]," Korolyov said. "We can't hide and be afraid. The discriminatory law has activated the LGBT community and has spurred development. We recognize that if we don't do politics, politics will do us."

In Novosibirsk, Barantayev also sees progress.

"These days, the best journalists come to LGBT events and report about them properly and positively," he said. "In 2016, being a homophobe is the same as having 'I'm a provincial rube' tattooed on your forehead."

Asked about pro-Kremlin television personality Dmitry Kiselyov, who notoriously said the organs of gays should be burned rather than used for transplants, Barantayev said: "Kiselyov is the opinion leader of provincials. He does not determine what happens tomorrow."


KYIV -- Rights groups say the Russian-imposed authorities in Crimea are using threats and intimidation to get out the vote in parliamentary elections that Ukraine has denounced as illegitimate because they are being held on territory seized by Moscow.



Russia is holding nationwide elections for the State Duma, its lower parliament house, on September 18. It is the first Duma vote since Russia took control of Crimea in 2014 after sending in troops and staging a referendum that Kyiv and most of the world say was illegal.



Public sector workers have reported being threatened with dismissal or wage cuts if they do not vote, Olha Skrypnyk, head of the Crimean Human Rights Group, told the Crimean News Agency. She said that heads of municipal departments on the Black Sea peninsula have called meetings to deliver the ultimatums to their subordinates.



Nariman Dzhelalov, deputy chairman of the Mejlis, the self-governing body of the Crimean Tatar people -- which the Russian authorities have branded an extremist organization and banned -- said he has been told of workers at private firms being threatened with layoffs should they decide to skip the vote.

One apparent case of pressure was made public by a Duma candidate in Crimea. On September 3, Oleksandr Talipov shared a photograph of an order sent by authorities in the Crimean city of Feodosia to municipal offices that said that attendance at a September 8 rally in support of the ruling United Russia party was mandatory, and that those unable to attend must write an explanatory note to their superiors.

Within Russia, the use of pressure to get vulnerable groups such as state workers, soldiers, and students to vote -- in some cases specifically for United Russia -- has been widely documented in elections since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.

'Illegitimate' Elections



Many members of Crimea's Muslim Tatar minority boycotted the 2014 referendum that enabled Moscow to cast the annexation as the will of the people. Activists say Crimean Tatars and others who opposed the Russian takeover have faced reprisals including being jailed on trumped-up charges and also abduction, torture, and killing.



About 100,000 people have left the region for mainland Ukraine since the annexation, according to SOS Crimea, a Kyiv-based rights group.



Crimean Tatar leaders have called on all Crimeans to boycott the Russian elections, which they say are "illegitimate."



"Boycotting the September 18 elections is a peaceful, nonviolent form of resistance against the Russian invaders, available to and worthy of each honest person. Boycotting the September 18 elections is our support for political prisoners and their families," said Mejlis chairman Refat Chubarov, who has been barred from Crimea by Russian authorities. "No honest person should come to a polling station on September 18."



The elections have also ignited a war of words between Kyiv and Moscow, whose relations have been severely damaged by Russia's seizure of Crimea and its support for separatists in a conflict that has killed more than 9,500 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014. Kyiv and NATO say Russia has sent large numbers of troops and weapons into the region during the war.



Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the Foreign Ministry have urged the international community to condemn what they say will be an "illegitimate" vote, while the Kremlin said it does not care whether other countries recognize the polls or not.



"The Russian elections [in Crimea] will be null and void and illegal. They contravene international laws and the constitution of Ukraine," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maryana Betsa told RFE/RL. She said the ministry was working behind the scenes to get the international community to condemn the elections.

OSCE Observers

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it has observers within Russias internationally recognized borders to monitor the elections, but not in Crimea.



Asked whether the European Union would recognize the vote, foreign policy spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told reporters she could only repeat that the "EU has condemned and does not recognize the illegal annexation of Crimeaby the Russian Federation, and that we are unwavering in our support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine."



She said the EU would base its assessment of the elections on reports from the OSCE observers, some of whom are EU diplomats.



Betsa accused Russia of using the elections to "trick" the international community into legitimizing the annexation of Crimea.



"We do think [holding elections in Crimea] will put under question the legitimacy of the State Duma in general."



Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov brushed off Kyiv's criticism, saying that Russia does not care whether foreign governments recognize the elections because, in his words, "Crimea is a Russian territory now."



Russia also plans to open polling stations at its embassy in Kyiv and its consulates in Kharkiv and Lviv for Russians living in those places to vote. Around 150,000 Russian citizens were registered as living in Ukraine in 2014, according to official data, the Kyiv Post reported.



Kyiv said on September 10 that it would not allow those polling stations to open unless Russia canceled the elections in Crimea.



On Sept. 12, Peskov said that Moscow would not bend to that ultimatum "under any circumstances," and Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia's Central Electoral Commission, warned that Kyiv's move "could backfire on Ukraine in an unexpected way." She did not elaborate.



Betsa said that, in practice, it would be difficult to prevent voting at the Russian Embassy and consulates.



"There are not so many ways to influence this, legally speaking," Betsa said. "The territory of the embassy is part of the territory of that state."
The leaders of the separatists in Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have announced a unilateral cease-fire starting at midnight on September 14.

In a recorded statement aired on Russian television on September 13, the separatist leader in Donetsk, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, said the separatists are "fully committed to the Minsk peace agreements and see them as "the only solution."

Zakharchenko urged Kyiv to follow suit.

The separatist leader in the Luhansk region, Igor Plotnitskiy, made a similar announcement.

It is the first time that the Russia-backed separatists have come with the idea of a unilateral cease-fire.

But it was not immediately clear why the Russia-backed separatists made the announcement more than two weeks after the sides had already agreed to another temporary truce.

The announcement comes a few hours after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he expects the parliament to vote soon on constitutional amendments granting autonomy to eastern Ukraine.

Fighting between government and separatist forces has killed more than 9,500 people in Ukraines east since April 2014.

Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS
Belarusian lawmaker Hanna Kanapatskaya, among the first opposition parliamentarians to be elected in 20 years, says she might even take part in a presidential election in the future "if my parliamentary tenure works well."

Kanapatskaya, a member of the United Civil Party, and independent candidate Alena Anisim were the first opposition lawmakers since 1996 to win seats in Belaruss 151-seat parliament in elections on September 11.

Speaking to journalists in Minsk on September 13, Kanapatskaya said she will focus on ushering in electoral reforms, fighting a law targeting private entrepreneurship, and annulling a law on parasitism, a Soviet-era crime still in use that targets those working in underground private ventures but also political dissidents.

Kanapatskaya also said that Belarusians "want change" but added that the country was not ready for mass protests because they feared a repeat of the sort of violence that followed the Maidan protests in Ukraine in 2014.

Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine after popular protests toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Belarus has not held a vote that was assessed free or democratic since the early 1990s and authorities routinely punish dissent and keep a tight lid on the media in the post-Soviet country of around 10 million people.
The fire safety engineer of a Moscow printing house where 17 people were killed in a fire last month has turned himself in.

The Investigative Committee's Moscow Department said on September 13 that Anton Yatskov refused to accept the blame for the August 27 fire.

The printing house's director general Sergei Moskvin was arrested on September 6.

Both Moskvin and Yatskov were added to the federal wanted list in early September and charged with violations of fire-safety regulations.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russian authorities would conduct a thorough investigation and that all of those found to be responsible for the tragedy would be held accountable.

Three Russian citizens and 14 Kyrgyz migrant workers, all women and one of whom was pregnant, were killed in the blaze.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax


This photograph, of the Northern Lights sparkling above a village in Belarus, has no artistic merit whatsoever -- according, that is, to a recent court ruling in a copyright dispute between a well-known photographer and Belarus's state-run television network.

On March 17, 2015, Anton Motolko drove 60 kilometers north of his home in Minsk to photograph the Northern Lights, a rarity in Belarus. After a spectacular and successful night working, he published the images on his social media accounts and they quickly went viral.

The next evening, Belteleradiocompany, a state-run television network in Belarus, ran a feature on Motolko's work that compared the hues in his photos to the red and green Belarusian flag. The television channel did not pay or credit Motolko, and had not asked permission to use the pictures.

The unauthorized use of their work is something photographers have become accustomed to in Belarus, Motolko told RFE/RL. "They [the television network] do it all the time."

But this time the photographer saw his images used in a way he never intended. "They used these photos like a f****ing government propaganda symbol," he told RFE/RL by telephone.

The red and green flag is similar to one used by the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1950s, and is associated with the government of strongman President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who brought it back as an official state symbol in 1995.

It replaced the white-red-white flag -- used by the Belarusian Peoples Republic of 1918 and after Belarus gained independence in 1991 -- that is seen as a symbol of the opposition.

Motolko decided to sue. "I was asking for about 1,000 euros ($1,100)," he said. But as the case wore on, he decided to drop the amount in damages he sought to just one kopek -- less than a cent. "I wanted to be clear that this wasn't about the money, that I just wanted professional respect."

In Belarus, going up against state-run organizations is a difficult proposition, but in this case the country's copyright laws were clear. Motolko felt he was fighting on behalf of the many photographers, two of whom he knows personally, he says have had their images used without permission on state television.

Last week, Motolko learned that his effort had ended in failure.

Key to the television network's case was testimony from an expert who said that Motolko's photographs did not have "any signs of creative freshness, originality, uniqueness, or exceptionality."

The images were deemed to be a commonplace record of a "social event," and therefore copyright protection did not apply. The case cost Motolko around $300, $40 of which was to pay for the expert who declared his work so unoriginal it was unworthy of copyright protection.

There has been outrage, as well as humor, on Belarusian social media in response to the ruling. One beer company came out with an "Autumn Fire" brew, using one of Motolko's photographs on the logo.

Team Brewery thanked Motolko for the "beautiful background that did not feature any creativity, or copyright restrictions."

But this is not the end for Motolko, who is waiting to see if his appeal to the World Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of the United Nations, has been accepted. "This is just the beginning," he was quoted as saying last week by Delovaya Gazeta.

A representative for Belteleradiocompany agreed to respond to RFE/RL's questions by e-mail, but as of time of publication RFE/RL had received no response, and further calls went unanswered.


It speaks volumes about Vladimir Putin's Russia that you can now become a prisoner of conscience for misbehaving in church.

Yeah. That actually happened.

Amnesty International last week named Ruslan Sokolovsky, the Yekaterinburg-based atheist blogger who faces five years in prison for playing Pokemon Go in church, as a prisoner of conscience.

And it speaks volumes about Vladimir Putin's Russia that you can be prosecuted for merely questioning the existence of God on social media.

That happened a few months back in Stavropol when Viktor Krasnov was charged with insulting Orthodox Christian believers for writing "There is no God" on the social-networking site VKontakte.

He faces a year in prison.

So why is the Kremlin so afraid of atheists? Why is it so afraid of them playing Pokemon Go in church?

Russia, after all, isn't a theocracy. At least not quite. At least not formally. At least not yet.

But it is a state that cynically uses Orthodox Christianity as a surrogate ideology to prop up its authority.

It is a state where fealty to the Orthodox Church -- or at least publicly proclaiming one's fealty to the Orthodox Church -- has become a surrogate for patriotism.

And it is a state where publicly proclaiming to be an atheist, or publicly challenging the authority of the Orthodox Church, or pretty muich doing anything that is in any way seen as insulting to Orthodox believers, is akin to an act of treason.

So Russia isn't a theocracy. But it certainly is making large strides in that direction.

Keep telling me what you think in the comments section, on the Power Vertical's Twitter feed, and on our Facebook page.
ABU GHOSH, Israel -- Salim Jabber recently renovated his house, and he says he feels bad about hanging the portrait of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov in a corner of the living room: it isnt prominent enough.

"He's a magical guy," Jabber, who spent 25 years as mayor of Abu Ghosh before stepping down in 2013, says of Russian President Vladimir Putin's man in Chechnya. So during our interview, he moves a bookcase to the right to make the portrait more conspicuous.

It is a display of reverence that might seem more suited to life in Kadyrov's southern Russian republic of 1.4 million, where the 39-year-old former rebel has parlayed Kremlin largesse and frontier-style justice into unrivaled power. There, Kadyrov's critics run the risk of vilification in Russia's pro-government media, public shaming at the hands of Kadyrov himself, or politically charged thuggery and even disappearance.

But two years ago, Kadyrov arrived in this village in green hills on the outskirts of Jerusalem to dedicate a mosque that he helped bankroll as a high-profile gesture to a town with possible historical ties to the North Caucasus.

Russia watchers like Maxim Suchkov suggest the massive Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque, named for Ramzan's assassinated father, who ruled Chechnya before him, was an effort "to enshrine family glory." The mosque also allows Kadyrov to paint himself as a generous Muslim abroad, a break from the frequent criticism he faces for his suppression of domestic dissent.

In Abu Ghosh, best-known in Israel for its hummus restaurants and historical Christian churches, locals say the mosque has given them a deeper sense of identity as Muslims -- and possibly Chechens. Now they are cheering on Kadyrov as he faces an uncontested election in mid-September to stay on as head of the Chechen Republic, even as human rights activists blame him for a "vicious crackdown."

"He is a good man and he walks the straight path. He has done something good. May God help him," says housewife Dallal Abu Katish.

Restoring A Lost Connection

Jabber says he grew up hearing that the four extended families of the Abu Ghosh clan originated in Chechnya but that an avatar of those legends arrived when a Jewish Chechen emissary knocked on his office door six years ago and told him Kadyrov was searching for Chechen communities abroad. Would Abu Ghosh like to renew its ties?

"I said we would bless this connection," Jabber says.

Jabber says a number of Chechen dignitaries visited Abu Ghosh, and then he took his first of 12 visits to Chechnya. When the plane landed, he says, "I kissed the ground of my homeland." Looking around him, he was sure the people of Chechnya resembled his neighbors in Abu Ghosh. They spoke Chechen, but Jabber thought he could discern in their voices a similar lilt to the Arabic spoken in his village. Chechen media documented his travels, he says.

Palestinian historian Adel Manna says there may be truth behind Jabber's gut reaction. He says residents of Abu Ghosh are likely descendants of warriors from the Caucasus sent by the Ottoman Empire to guard the main road from Jerusalem to coastal Jaffa. One possible meaning of Abu Ghosh is "father of fighting," he says. The troops may have been from anywhere in Circassia, which spanned a strip across the Caucasus, or maybe they were from Chechnya in the east, he says. In Arabic, he adds, the words for Circassia and Chechnya are the same. Israeli geographer Yehuda Ziv says Abu Ghosh is a variation on Ingushetia, another Russian republic in the North Caucasus that abuts Chechnya.

Today Chechnya is a tiny, mostly Muslim republic still recovering from years of war. After the fall of the Soviet Union, rebel Akhmad Kadyrov fought against Russia for independence, then switched sides to Moscow. He died in a 2004 bombing claimed by Islamist radicals. Putin appointed his son, Ramzan, as his successor.

In political circles outside Russia, Kadyrov is known for his cheerleading for Putin, his administration's persecution of dissenters, and his extravagance -- gold-plated automatic pistols, a fleet of exotic cars, and a stable of racehorses -- much documented on his widely followed Instagram account.

Admirers say Kadyrov has kept the peace in a restive swath of Russia and allowed Chechnya to rebuild. Jabber keeps a souvenir from his visit to Grozny: a 3D laser-etched glass block showing the Chechen capital's modern skyline, erected during Ramzan Kadyrov's time. And Jabber sees in Chechnya's current politics an echo of Abu Ghosh's history. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Abu Ghosh sided with Jewish forces and was permitted to remain, while most other Arabs in the area fled or were expelled.

"[Akhmad Kadyrov] made a smart move," Jabber says. "If he had continued fighting, there would be no more Chechnya. And Abu Ghosh is the same thing: If we had stayed here and insisted on fighting the Jews, Abu Ghosh would not exist."

The appreciation for the Chechen leaders echoes around Abu Ghosh. Fadi Ibrahim printed photographs of Ramzan Kadyrov and his father and hung them in his sandwich shop.

He says he doubts reports of Kadyrov's abuses.

"Maybe the man himself is not like that," he says. "I personally appreciate this man. He did good for me."

Building A Megamosque

Jabber says Kadyrov asked him how he could help the village. At the time, the people of Abu Ghosh were framing a new mosque, funded by local donations, and they were running out of cash. Chechnya sent the money to finish building the four-story house of worship and repave the street outside, and named both for his late father.

On a recent Friday, the Akhmad Kadyrov mosque filled up for noon prayers. The sun streamed into the prayer hall via windows cut into an airy dome, and glinted off three crystal chandeliers. Men who could not fit inside the gleaming building knelt under the shaded arcade at its entrance or sweated out the services under the fierce August sun in the courtyard. The new shrine, with space for 3,000, replaces a tiny stone house of worship that had room for only 150 people, with the overflow praying on asphalt outside.

Dallal Abu Katish, the housewife, says the construction of the mosque was a community effort. She says she cooked eight massive trays of food for the visiting construction workers one evening.

"The mosque united our village," she says.

The striking new structure has left behind almost no paper trail. The AP news agency and others reported that Chechens gave $6 million to build the mosque. Jabber estimates the total was closer to $10 million, including money for heavy wooden doors and gilded marble furniture. Turkish and Chechen craftsmen were also flown to Abu Ghosh, but he cannot provide details on costs and says most payments were made in cash. The village mosque foundation Kadyrov's administration reportedly funded has filed no financial reports with the Israeli government since it was established in 2007, which a clerk at the Charities Registrar says is against the law.

Current Mayor Issa Jabber cannot provide a precise accounting of Kadyrov's contributions either. Jabber is listed as the creator of the village foundation, and Salim Jabber's name and phone number are listed among its founders, but he says a separate foundation funneled the money to the mosque.

"My goal was to get the mosque built," Salim Jabber says. "I am not involved in the financing."

Beyond slipshod accounting, Kadyrov's donation may have also included some arm twisting. Salim Jabber says Kadyrov's wife insisted on adding two minarets to the two that already capped the mosque, which is common in Chechnya and Turkey but flashy among Palestinians. To get his way, Kadyrov's representatives in Abu Ghosh directly funded builders, Jabber says. The mosque's contractor Ali Abu Katish, a distant relative of Dallal, says he appreciated the Chechens' momentum. He also hung photographs of both Ramzan and Akhmad Kadyrov in his living room.

"Here we get slowed down," Abu Katish says. "They [the Chechens] do things the way they're supposed to be done."

A Chechen Gift -- Or Russian Overture?

None of these details surprises Zvi Magen, Israel's former ambassador to Russia.

"Everything is as usual," Magen says. The mosque was a gift, he says, not from Kadyrov to Abu Ghosh but rather from Moscow to the Chechen leader.

Magen says the mosque reflects Russia's growing involvement in the Middle East. Russia is propping up the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including through a recent bombing campaign. Moscow has worked with Tehran on nuclear technology, security issues and trade, and more recently in Syria. And Putin has offered to host Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as early as this month. While Moscow has courted the Israeli government, Magen says Kadyrov could help cultivate ties with Israel's 20-percent Arab minority, which is mostly Muslim.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry had no comment on relations with Chechnya.

Expert Suchkov at the Moscow-based Russian International Affairs Council says Kadyrov promotes himself as a paragon of Sunni Islam at home. He built a $20-million mosque in Grozny, passed an edict requiring women to wear head coverings at universities and in government jobs, and issued an order in November requiring Chechen police to read 300,000 prayers to the Prophet Muhammad during the month.

Perhaps the Chechen leader is using gestures like the Abu Ghosh mosque to gain renown among Muslims worldwide, Suchkov muses.

Kadyrov's Legacy

For former Mayor Jabber, the relationship with Chechnya has given him a deeper sense of identity. Others are less romantic.

"Until they built the mosque I knew we were from the Caucasus," says village resident Tabet Abu Ghosh, 75. "The Chechens came and said, 'We're Chechen and we want to build you a mosque,' and we said, 'Fine.'"

Dallal Abu Katish says her husband, son, two daughters, and all her brothers and sisters have become regulars at the Kadyrov mosque since it opened. Her sister takes part in Koran study competitions, she says. Abu Katish vows to attend services on the Eid el-Adha holiday.

Jawdat Ibrahim, a distant relative of the sandwich shop owner Fadi Ibrahim, says he is not religious but has become a regular at the new mosque because his 12-year-old son goes to weekly prayers.

Ibrahim is perhaps uniquely qualified to appreciate unexpected windfalls like Abu Ghosh's Chechen funding: He won $22.7 million in the Illinois State Lottery in 1990. With his winnings, Ibrahim returned to Abu Ghosh, founded a university scholarship, and opened an expansive hummus restaurant.

Ibrahim says he also grew up hearing about his Chechen roots, although he concedes he has no evidence.

Still, he says, "When someone tells me, 'We love you,'... why do you have to ask too many questions?"


In an unprecedented trial in northwestern Kazakhstan that began on September 13, two brothers are suing local police for placing them on a list of suspected terrorists with the country on high alert.



Samat Kozhaniyazov, a 43-year-old plumber, found himself on a list of suspects in what authorities described as a series of deadly attacks carried out by Islamic militants in the city of Aqtobe on June 5.



Kozhaniyazov's younger brother, 41-year-old oil worker Sanat, was listed among suspected militants killed in a shootout with security forces during the same attacks.



They are demanding $30,000 compensation for "moral damages," in a country where the average monthly salary is around $400-$500.



Kazakh authorities say the attacks -- on two gun stores and a military unit in Aqtobe, the capital of a province of the same name -- were carried out by a group of some 25 militants.



Shortly after the incidents, regional police issued names and photos of several men who authorities said took part in the assaults, which killed five civilians and three security troops. The lists appeared on media outlets and social media.



The Kozhaniyazov brothers say they first found about the lists when they got phone calls from anxious relatives.



The brothers insist they have no connection to Islamic extremism.



"I dont even pray," Samat Kozhaniyazov told Kazakh media.



The siblings insist they never left their native village of Zhanabulak -- some 100 kilometers from Aqtobe -- on the night of the deadly events in the provincial capital.

'Bearded' Suspects



Residents and officials in Zhanabulak stand by the Kozhaniyazovs, saying the brothers had hosted a memorial service on June 5 for their father, who died a year ago.



The village leader, Samat Kozhaniyazov, told RFE/RLs Kazakh Service that he sent Samat Kozhaniyazov to the district police department on June 9 "in order to stop the spread of the false information" about the brothers.



Kazakh media reported that police officials have acknowledged the mistake and apologized to the Kozhaniyazovs.



The brothers, however, want more than just an apology.



The older brother says he has been suffering from stress-related health problems since finding his name among the "bearded" suspects:



"I only sleep three or four hours a night," he told Kazakh media. "Doctors prescribed me sedatives."



The brothers say they want their "clean reputation" restored.



Meanwhile, Kazakh authorities say they have concluded a probe into the Aqtobe attacks, which they link to the Islamic State (IS) extremist group.



Thirty people will stand trial in connection with the attacks, the National Security Committee announced on September 5.



Authorities say 18 of the gunmen were killed by security forces who confronted the group on June 5.

Written by Farangis Najibullah with reporting by RFE/RLs Kazakh Service and Kazakh media


Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has made a cabinet reshuffle after he replaced the prime minister last week.

The Kazakh presidential website said on September 13 that Defense Minister Imanghali Tasmaghambetov was appointed as deputy prime minister.

Deputy Defense Minister Saken Zhasuzaqov was promoted to the post of defense minister.

Justice Minister Berik Imashev was appointed the head of the Central Election Commission. Imashev was replaced by Marat Beketaev, the deputy chief of the presidents office.

Nazarbaev's daughter, Darigha Nazarbaeva, who was deputy prime minister in the previous cabinet, was appointed a member of the parliament's upper chamber, the Senate.

The majority of cabinet ministers have retained their posts.

On September 8, Nazarbaev appointed Prime Minister Karim Masimov to the post of the chairman of the Committee for National Security.

On September 9, the Kazakh president appointed Deputy Prime Minister Baqytzhan Saghyntaev as the new prime minister.
Lavon Volski is one of the most famous rock musicians in his country, but his fans dont hear his songs on the radio, nor can they see him live. Hes from Belarus, where his irreverent lyrics and non-conformist style are not allowed.

A keyboardist, guitarist, and vocalist, Volski founded the band Mroja in 1981, and in the glasnost climate of the late 1980s in the Soviet Union, they became incredibly popular. When President Alyaksandr Lukashenka came to power in Belarus in 1994, Volskis criticism grew more strident and he founded a band called N.R.M, which is an acronym in Belarusian for Independent Republic of Dreams. Volski describes the band as a state within a state for all those who dont want to conform to the rules of President Lukashenka, who is often referred to as Europes last dictator. Volski has been banned from performing in Belarus since 2001.

His music is fueled by the rebelliousness of the rock/punk sound, and his lyrics are sharp, honest, often political, and sung in Belarusian, an added irritant to the authorities, who favor Russian as the lingua franca, though both languages have official status. Volskis music was described by one critic as the anthem of those who dream of a democratic and free Belarus.

An N.R.M. song from 2003



In addition to his numerous musical and creative projects, he also writes and performs cabaret-style satirical songs for RFE/RLs Belarus Service. Several times a month the service publishes a new song on a topical issue in Belarusian society, each featuring two characters created by Volski--a bureaucrat who serves as a government mouthpiece, and an opposition activist who argues with him, but using the same tired cliches Volski says the Belarusian opposition has developed over the last two decades.

"This reflects the situation in our society, Volski said. It is divided into those who approve and those who condemn, us and them.

One recent song was about Yury Chyzh, a wealthy businessman who is believed to have ties to Lukashenka. Another dealt with a proposal to raise the retirement age in Belarus.

Inspiration is everywhere here. Ideas are literally lying under your feet. You just need to pick them up and frame them properly, Volski said. The situation in Belarus has gone too far from the civilized world, but it provides plenty of material for parody.

In April 2016 Volski was recognized with the Freemuse award for promoting freedom of expression through music, which is awarded annually by the Sweden based organization, whose aim is to advocate and defend freedom of expression for musicians globally.

Music combined with lyrics has a strong impact on a person, said Volski. One song makes you jump around carefree, while another makes you reflect on how we live. You may cry after the third song, and the fourth one will make you laugh. Therefore, music can do a lot, including the promotion of democratic values, if thats the musicians goal.

--Emily Thompson
Russian metals giant Norilsk Nickel has admitted that a spillage at one of its plants was responsible for a local river turning blood red.

Russian environmental regulators had ordered an investigation last week into why the Daldykan River near Norilsk in the Russian Arctic had been discolored.

Despite initially denying that it was responsible, Norilsk Nickel admitted on September 12 that heavy rains on September 5 had resulted in water flooding over a "filtration dam" at the plant and into the river.

"Despite the short-term discoloration of the water...this incident does not present a danger for people or fauna in the river," said a statement from Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest producer of nickel and other major industrial metals.

But activists said it was too early to evaluate the environmental impact of the spillage as the official investigation was still ongoing.

The Norilsk region is one of the most polluted regions in the world. The countrys state statistics service classified the region Russias most polluted in 2010.

Based on reporting by AFP and BBC
Pakistan and Russia will hold their first-ever joint military exercises later this year, signalling what may be an emerging realignment in South Asia amid cooling relations between Islamabad and Washington.

Senior Pakistani officials told The Express Tribune that around 200 military personnel from the two sides would take part in the war games.

Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakariya confirmed to RFE/RL that the drills are a part of a broader warming of ties with Russia.

"Both countries are coming closer in several areas," he said. "You see that Russia has got the North-South gas pipeline contract recently. It is worth $2 billion, and not a small contract. So all these things are signifying that relations between the two countries are rapidly [growing]."

The warming between Moscow and Islamabad is occurring at the same time U.S. ties with Pakistan's biggest rival, India, have been growing. The United States recently signed a major defense and economic agreement with India and in a visit to New Delhi last month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry used the occasion to point some sharp criticism at Pakistan.

"Many changes are coming in the region. New partnerships are emerging and Pakistan is very carefully monitoring this," Zakariya said. "For this reason, we recalibrate our foreign policy whenever changes come and those changes affect us."

The growing ties with Russia are an outgrowth of the changes in the region and Pakistan's desire to develop closer ties with its neighbors, he said.

Not only is Islamabad seeking greater defense and economic cooperation with Moscow, but "Russia is also attaching much importance to Pakistan," he said, as evidenced by Russia's sponsorship of Pakistan to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an Asian economic group.

At the same time, Zakariya denied that Islamabad's increased cooperation with Russia amounts to retaliation for the closer ties the United States is developing with India.

It's not a "zero-sum game," he said. "Pakistan-U.S. relations are broad based. These are very old ties. Besides, we have a very extensive defense relationship" and "much cooperation in counterterrorism" with the United States.

With reporting by Express-Tribune
A suicide bomber detonated his explosives outside a Shi'ite mosque in Pakistan, injuring four police officers, in the latest sectarian violence in the volatile country.

The attack took place on September 13 in Shikarpur in Sindh Province, where 60 were killed in a suicide attack on another Shi'ite mosque in 2015.

Police officer Bahardin Kerio said the attack happened during prayers for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

He said a second attacker, a would-be suicide bomber, was shot and wounded at the scene.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but similar attacks in the past have been claimed by extremist groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

The extremist Sunni group considers Shi'ites as heretics and has frequently targeted them in recent years.

Pakistan is a predominately Sunni Muslim country, with Shi'ites making up around 20 percent of the population.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
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."
The head of the Russian state air carrier serving President Vladimir Putin and other top-ranking officials have been placed under house arrest on charges of abuse of office.

A Moscow court said on September 13 that Yaroslav Odintsev, the director of the Special Flight Detachment Rossiya airline, has been put under house arrest for two months pending the official investigation.

The probe has focused on accusations of misspending funds earmarked for the purchase of air conditioning systems, according to Russian media reports.

Odintsev has denied the allegations.

It is the latest in a series of corruption investigations targeting top Russian officials.

On September 9, the acting head of an anticorruption agency at the Russian Interior Ministry, Dmitry Zakharchenko, was arrested for receiving bribes after police found banknotes worth more than $120 million in a raid on a Moscow flat.

Based on reporting by AP and Interfax


Ukraine says three government troops have been killed and 15 wounded in fighting with pro-Russia separatists in the country's east.

Military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said on September 13 that the deaths occurred in the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk in the previous 24 hours.

One serviceman remains unaccounted for, Motuzyanyk said.

Meanwhile, the separatists said violence in the Donetsk region resulted in the death of three of their fighters as well.

The violence comes despite the warring sides last month agreeing to a cease-fire that went into effect on September 1 to coincide with the new school year.

The foreign ministers of Germany and France are due to visit Kyiv on September 14 in a bid to revive the truce.

Fighting between government forces and separatists has killed more than 9,500 people in Ukraine's east since April 2014.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP


The world's main anti-doping regulator says one of its principal databases has been attacked by a Russian hacking group linked to other notorious computer hacks, including that of the U.S. Democratic Party.

The agency, known as WADA, said on September 13 that the database, which contains a confidential listing of medical submissions made by athletes around the world, had been accessed by a group known as Fancy Bear, and some of the information had already been posted to the Internet.

It said the information had been accessed via a computer account affiliated with the International Olympic Committee.

The cyberattacks were an attempt to undermine WADA and the global anti-doping system, Olivier Niggli, the agency's general director, said in a statement.

The attack targeted some female members of the U.S. team which competed at the Rio Olympics last month, including tennis players Venus and Serena Williams and teenage gymnast Simone Biles.

The hackers accessed records detailing Therapeutic Use Exemptions issued by sports federations and national anti-doping organizations that allow athletes to take certain substances due to athletes' verified medical needs.

Fancy Bears has pledged to release confidential records from other national Olympic teams.

Any possible participation of the Russian government or secret services in the hacking of the WADA data "is out of question," Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

The entire Russian Paralympic team and nearly 120 athletes from the countrys Olympic squad were barred from competing in Rio after an investigation found that Moscow ran a state-sponsored sports doping program.

It wasn't immediately clear where the confidential information was being published, though at least one Twitter account called FancyBears purported to be distributing the information.

The hacking group gained widespread notoriety earlier this year when cyber-researchers identified it and another group -- and they appeared to be linked to Russian intelligence services. They were also said to be behind the hack of the U.S. Democratic Party's computer systems. E-mails were later leaked that embarrassed top party leaders and cast a shadow over the Democratic convention.

WADA earlier this year released a damning report detailing a massive government-backed Russian effort to hide positive doping results from its athletes competing at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. The report led to scores of Russian athletes being barred from this year's Summer Olympics in Brazil.

With reporting by Interfax
Three school books that have been criticized as inappropriate should no longer be banned from use in Chesterfield County schools, the districts superintendent has concluded.

Superintendent James F. Lane followed the recommendation of a panel that had been tasked to review the content of the books and determine their appropriateness for inclusion in Chesterfield middle schools and in middle school media centers.

The disputed books are Tyrell by Coe Booth, the story of a teenager growing up homeless; Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers, a novel about a young drug dealer who vows to change his life; and Rainbow Rowells Eleanor & Park, a love story between two young misfits that is set in the 1980s.

The three books, all novels, had been temporarily pulled from a summer reading list after some parents complained that they were laden with sexually explicit language and violence.

Throughout the summer, the panel looked at the applicable policy and regulation, read the books, received external reviews of the books, heard ... the concerns expressed by parents (and) received information from school division instructional specialists and held a vigorous discussion about the books, Lane wrote in his recommendation.

Lane presented the final report to the School Board at a meeting Tuesday, but there was no discussion and neither Lane nor the board members commented on the issue.

In a written statement, schools spokesman Shawn Smith said school officials recognize that everyone may not agree with the committees decision, but will move forward with the recommendations.

We hope that the increased parent engagement in this topic will bring us each closer to our families and our students. We have revised our summer reading list and feel like we addressed the parent concerns related to the lists, Smith said. As it relates to the books in the libraries, we encourage parents to work directly with their school librarians to help choose the best books for their child.

Although the books remain on school library shelves, the school division in the future will not recommend individual books for reading, but will share lists of nationally recognized/award-winning books. Individual schools may continue to require summer reading assignments involving specific books but must have an alternative assignment available for students who express a concern.

The dispute had drawn the attention of a state senator and criticism from national free-speech advocacy groups after the district issued a revised reading list in June in response to about 20 parents expressing concern over the content and language in some of the books.

The parents and state Sen. Amanda F. Chase, R-Chesterfield, say some of the books removed from the nonmandatory list contain pornographic scenes and inappropriate language.

The parents and Chase, a graduate of Monacan High School who has three children enrolled in county schools, called for a review into how the district selects books for its summer reading list.

The review committee included three parents representing the Chesterfield County Council of PTAs, a middle school principal, two middle school teachers, a middle school librarian and a member of the school divisions curriculum and instruction team.

Chase suggested in an interview last month that the division could help parents by labeling, rating or otherwise demarcating books that may contain sensitive or controversial subject matter.

Were not looking to legislate banning books, Chase said in the interview, adding that the issue should ultimately be resolved on a local level by the School Board.

Chase could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Chases efforts were criticized by groups advocating free speech, charging that rating books is, in and of itself, censorship.

In a letter written in July on behalf of more than half a dozen organizations, the National Coalition Against Censorship quoted from a position statement from the National Council of Teachers of English stating that giving letter ratings or red-flagging is a blatant form of censorship that reduces complex literary works to a few isolated elements.

On Tuesday, coalition Executive Director Joan Bertin said in an email that she was pleased to see that Lane has accepted the recommendation of the review committee and will retain the books in the library.

This serves the interests of all members of the school community, because it allows different parents to make their own decisions about what books their child reads, Bertin said. We are also gratified that the district has reiterated its commitment to following established procedures governing book challenges in the future, which allows the district to ensure that decisions are based on valid educational grounds.

Additionally, Lane has tasked the school district with taking the following actions:

The Chief Academic Office is instructed to review the process used for choosing books that are available in the school library, to include reviewing how age appropriateness is determined.

The Chief Academic Office will continue to use its newly adopted method of sharing summer learning resources.

The school district will review book challenges only if the appropriate process for challenging a book is followed.

The review committee also recommended that the district develop a review of the process by which books are selected for inclusion in the media center at certain school levels to ensure appropriateness for grade level and to create consistency across the school division.
Backed by about two dozen supporters, the head of the Richmond Branch of the NAACP called on City Council members Monday to support a proposal for a slavery memorial park in Shockoe Bottom.

We are asking you to endorse this plan, said Lynette Thompson, addressing the council during the public comment period of their regular meeting.

We are making the same request of all the individuals campaigning this year for public office in Richmond. The future of Shockoe Bottom must be a central issue in this campaign season.

In early June, a team of designers from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst worked with Richmond residents to design a memorial in Shockoe Bottom that includes a grove of lighted towers, a public square and an interactive wall displaying the names of the enslaved who passed through.

A loose coalition of community groups voted to support the project, but it has yet to win significant support among elected officials. Mayor Dwight C. Jones administration has focused on a narrower, as-of-yet-undefined memorial focused on the Lumpkins slave jail archaeology site.

Thompson closed her comments by pledging you will be hearing from us again very soon.

In other business, the council approved two development projects: a full-service grocery store in Richmonds East End and a reuse project for historic apartments on Overbrook Road near Hardywood Park Craft Brewery.

The council approved a $500,000 grant for the grocery store, a Jims Local Market, along with a series of zoning changes and road closures.

The mixed-use development at the intersection of Nine Mile Road and North 25th Street includes retail space and 25 residential units.

While the grocery store won unanimous approval, the Overbrook Road project saw some dissension, with council members Parker C. Agelasto and Jonathan T. Baliles opposing.

Agelasto said he worried that the developers plan to convert the century-old tobacco warehouse amounted to forcing a square peg into a round hole and jeopardizes the future of the states historic tax credit program. Baliles did not say why he voted against the project.

The project drew scrutiny from state Department of Historic Resources officials, who called an earlier plan disturbing. That approach called for preservation of the windowless facade in order to qualify for the historic tax credits but then add windows five year later when the states compliance review period ends.

In response, the city agreed to remove the requirement to add windows later.
Erin Law, 18, of Henrico County was excited about her plans for this past Saturday to visit one of her best friends  Jordan Bowman, a freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University known by Law and others as kind, hilarious, genuine and nonjudgmental.

That get-together with Bowman never happened, because Bowman, 18, had fallen to her death from a window on the 13th floor of her Richmond apartment building at about 3 a.m. Saturday, in an incident that remains a mystery to many.

Friends remember the recent graduate of Henricos Mills Godwin High School as one of a kind.

She was just such a sweet and genuine girl, Law said.

She was very true to herself. She was a person who didnt care what other people thought. She didnt try to impress anyone. And she would help you feel a lot more comfortable with who you were and made you feel comfortable to be yourself, Law said.

Bowman enjoyed drawing and listening to music, and she was outgoing and not shy about voicing her opinions, Law said.

Allison Weber, vice president of marketing for Peak Campus, which operates the apartment building, said via email that Bowman was a resident of The Towers on Franklin in the 100 block of West Franklin Street. Weber would not say how many people were in Bowmans apartment when she fell to her death, citing the ongoing police investigation.

While few details have been made available about what might have led to Bowmans death, Richmond police have said they do not suspect foul play. Bowman was pronounced dead at the scene.

Law said Bowman was a happy person, who cared deeply about her friends and family.
Virginia Commonwealth University will host a mental health fair Friday to mark National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, the school announced Tuesday.

The fair will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the University Student Commons Plaza, 907 Floyd Ave.

The fair will feature an interactive graffiti board, a PostSecret-style postcard station and an exhibit of images showing how mental illness affects the brain, the university said.

Therapists from University Counseling Services and representatives from the schools Wellness Resource Center also will participate.

The purpose of the event is to promote suicide awareness and prevention, said Engin Ege, a University Counseling Services staff psychologist. We want to let students know that there are resources and VCU is here for them.

Students at the fair will be invited to write supportive messages to one another on the graffiti board, which will be displayed year-round outside the counseling center.

For VCU students, there may be a moment of turmoil as they adjust to being back on campus or coming to a new campus, Ege said. Many things come together that can add to students distress levels in September.

University Counseling Services provides psychotherapy and referrals to students struggling with mental health issues, she said.

If anyone is struggling with mental health concerns, feeling stressed or distressed, we meet with them and try to figure out the best solution moving forward, Ege said.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Police Department released photos Tuesday of a suspect sought in a sexual battery that occurred last weekend.

VCU police were notified of a sexual battery that took place about 11 a.m. Saturday at the University Student Commons at 907 Floyd Ave.

A woman reportedly held a door open for a man at an entrance near the Main Street side of the building. As she walked past, the man forcefully grabbed her buttocks, police said.

The suspect is described as a black male, approximately 30 years old, with a medium build. He is about 5 feet 7 inches tall and is bald or has very short hair and a goatee, according to police.

The man was last seen wearing a charcoal gray T-shirt, dark denim shorts and black Nike tennis shoes with red soles. He left the scene on a black and silver moped with a possible Virginia tag of 25755M.

VCU is asking for the publics help to identify the suspect. The released photos, which came from VCUs security camera system, are of a man matching the victims description.

Anyone with information can contact VCU police 24/7. For emergencies, call (804) 828-1234; for non-emergency tips, call (804) 828-1196.
A person was sent to the hospital Tuesday after an SUV smashed into a home in eastern Henrico County.

The silver SUV crashed into the garage of the home near the intersection of South Laburnum Avenue and East Caryhurst Road.

One person was taken to the hospital with injuries that aren't life-threatening, said Capt. Taylor Goodman of the Henrico Division of Fire.
A once-weekly, seasonal farmers market has plans to debut at Henrico Countys Westbury Pharmacy shopping center next week.

The outdoor farmers market will open Monday and will feature, among other items, local produce, homemade sausages, baked goods and merchandise from area artisans.

We thought it would be a nice thing for the area, said Joe Oley, who represented Westbury Pharmacy at Tuesday nights Henrico Board of Supervisors meeting, where a rezoning and provisional use permit for the market, a wholesale bakery and two food trucks was unanimously approved.

About 15 vendors are lined up for the farmers market, which Oley said grew out of a desire to build upon a small area within the pharmacy that sells local goods.

The zoning change and permit frees up 7,000 feet of space in the shopping centers parking lot northwest of the intersection of Three Chopt and Eastridge roads.

The farmers market, which will be open from 3 to 6 p.m. on Mondays between August and the end of December, will take up roughly four rows of parking spaces, said the countys planning director, Joseph Emerson.

In other business, the supervisors unanimously denied a permit for the Steelhouse Tavern to operate pool tables until 2 a.m. after the owner said he could not afford to comply with conditions set forth by the county.

The countys Planning Commission recommended that the supervisors approve the extended hours for the pool tables, provided that the restaurant on West Williamsburg Road in Sandston comply with more than a dozen conditions.

Owner Wayne Phaup said its not financially feasible for the business to comply with the countys terms, which included requiring a security officer inside and outside the tavern from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. three nights a week.

Restaurants with pool tables in the county must seek a provisional-use permit to remain open after 12 a.m. A permit is also required for more than two pool tables.

Phaup initially sought to operate four pool tables for extended hours, but the Planning Commission recommended a pared-down version of the request after fielding concerns about noise and police calls at an August meeting.

The panel also approved a rezoning request for a development with 115 town houses.

Developer Wilton Acquisition LLC will build on a largely vacant, 16.4-acre site at the northwest corner of the interchange of East Parham Road and Interstate 95, according to planning documents.
WASHINGTON

Just because Donald Trump isnt qualified to be president  and just because much of his agenda is hateful and undesirable  doesnt mean that everything he says is automatically wrong. Some of his ideas deserve consideration and enactment. One of these is building a wall across our southern border with Mexico.

It has been ridiculed by opponents as an unneeded monstrosity and a colossal waste of money. The theory of the wall is that it keeps out low-wage workers and, thereby, raises the wages of U.S. workers, including earlier Hispanic arrivals. They are most vulnerable to more Hispanic workers, because their skills generally overlap.

Just what a wall would cost is unknown. Guesses vary. Trump has said $8 billion. A detailed report by AllianceBernstein, a research firm, estimated between $15 billion and $25 billion. These sums seem (and are) large, but within a $4 trillion federal budget, theyre modest.

The crucial question is: If we had a wall, what would we get for it? The answer: A wall probably represents our best chance of reaching broad agreement on immigration policy, a subject that has frustrated Congress and the last two presidents.

Lets be clear on one issue: Trumps insistence that Mexico pay for the wall is an absurd idea. No self-respecting Mexican president would accept it. If one did, the wall would become a subject of endless bickering between the two countries as to who actually owned and controlled it. The fact that Trump made this so central to his proposal suggests that hes not serious. He is simply grandstanding.

Still, in the hands of someone serious, a wall could be a catalyst for a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration policy. Its hard to understand opposition (to a wall), as my colleague Charles Krauthammer recently noted. Its the most venerable and reliable way to keep people out. He argues correctly that the outlines of a deal have long been apparent. It would:

Change legal immigration criteria to favor employability (aka skills) over family connections  the emphasis would be on stimulating the nations economic growth.

Require most businesses to belong to E-Verify, the government system that allows employers to check on the immigrant status of potential workers.

Create a path to legality  and ultimately to citizenship  for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the country.

Embrace policies  including a wall  that would credibly and dramatically reduce illegal immigration.

Without a wall, its doubtful that Republicans will enter into meaningful negotiations on immigration policy  and without Republican participation, the stalemate will continue. In a recent Pew poll, 63 percent of Republicans supported a wall and only 34 percent opposed. The distrust is deep. Republicans think Democrats dont truly care about stopping illegal immigration; they mainly want amnesty for existing undocumented immigrants. In the same Pew poll, 84 percent of Democrats opposed a wall.

There are two standard objections to a wall  both true but politically irrelevant. The first is that it might have once been justified but isnt now, because the inflow of undocumented Mexican immigrants is slowing and maybe reversing. Mexicos birthrate  which affects its labor force  has declined, and its economy has improved. It can more easily absorb new workers. A 2015 Pew study found that the number of undocumented Mexicans in the United States had dropped by 140,000 between 2009 and 2014.

But this is a net figure: people entering minus people leaving. There are still hundreds of thousands of Latinos trying to cross the southern border illegally every year. A wall will make this harder and reinforce the natural trend. Some people wont try to enter; of those who do, fewer will make it. Tragedies  dying in the desert, being exploited by coyotes  will decline.

The second objection is that the southern border isnt the only way people become illegal immigrants. Many arrive legally and overstay their visas. Indeed, according to a study in the Journal on Migration and Human Security, these immigrants now outnumber those breaching the southern border. But if E-Verify were widely adopted, these immigrants would have a harder time getting work.

If we could buy an immigration bargain for $25 billion, or even a bit more, it would be a fabulous deal. Thats the opportunity facing the next president. But we wont make it any easier by stigmatizing the one change  a wall  that could be the foundation for compromise.
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.
BLACKSBURG  The future of food delivery arrived at Virginia Tech this week, as Google began its much-anticipated  and secretive  experiment to lower Chipotle burritos from drones to a select group of university students.

A drone was spotted buzzing overhead just before 1 p.m. Monday. It descended to about 10 feet, hovered over a grass patch and then lowered a large white package to the ground on a string. The drone then flew away, leaving the package and string on the ground.

A woman with a clipboard walked over somewhat unceremoniously, cut the string and carried the package back to a staging area where test subjects watched from behind a safety net.

The process was repeated about 10 times in a 30-minute span on Monday. Sometimes, multiple orders were brought in at the same time on two separate drones flying near each other.

The meals were only carried about a tenth of a mile, maintaining the line-of-sight flights that the Federal Aviation Administration prefers.

Google said last week that the drones would be flown autonomously, with pilots standing by just in case. Virginia Tech, which was selected as a designated drone test site by the FAA in 2013, provided safety oversight.

The experiments were conducted by the Project Wing team devoted to the companys drone ambitions. Project Wing is part of Alphabet, Googles parent company.

Project Wing spokeswoman Jacquelyn Miller said last week that the experiments would be closed to the public and media. But the flights were clearly visible from a nearby vantage point.

Miller declined to comment on the video Tuesday, saying the company plans to release more information as the experiment continues.

None of the drones spotted by The Roanoke Times were sporting Google logos, but they were the same model the company has used in previous promotional materials. Even the delivery boxes matched Project Wings previous models.

The Roanoke Times couldnt confirm the content of the packages being lowered to the ground, but there was a food truck parked nearby  like Miller said last week there would be.
I had been writing about my memories of the Roanoke Weiner Stand when I learned that longtime owner Gus Pappas had died Aug. 26. He had served the city and his customers well since he arrived in Roanoke from Greece in 1955 to work for his uncle, Harry Chacknes, at the restaurant.

As a young lad back in the 1930s, most every Saturday afternoon, my mother gave me a quarter plus two streetcar tokens to go downtown and return. I and other playmates left our homes on Belleville Road to catch the streetcar, which we took to Campbell Avenue and Jefferson Street and walked directly to the Rialto Theatre to see a picture show that featured one of our favorite cowboy heroes  Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson or Bob Steele.

When the show was over, we headed down Campbell Avenue past Nelson Hardware, Mick-or-Mack, a billiard parlor, a duckpin bowling alley and Bobs Shoe Store on our way to the Roanoke Weiner Stand. I ordered a hot dog and drink, which I recall being 10 to 15 cents. I thought then that this was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon, a routine that is forever etched in my memory.

In 1970, I was campaigning for Roanoke City Council. The Roanoke Weiner Stand is an ideal place for a candidate to meet a number of voters and most politicians. On one occasion, Mr. Chacknes was there, and my photographer took a picture of us in front of the Weiner Stand. Gus Pappas was visible at the grill behind the window of the restaurant. An enlargement of that very picture is prominently displayed in my family room. That same photograph now hangs on the wall of the Roanoke Weiner Stand.

Mr. Chacknes and Mr. Pappas will be fondly remembered by the thousands of customers they served at the Roanoke Weiner Stand. They have become legends in the community. In operation for 100 years, the Roanoke Weiner Stand holds the distinction of having served more customers than any restaurant in the citys history.

I hope the Roanoke Weiner Stand will be around for another 100 years.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe is waiting another month before getting his hopes up about state revenues.

Less than a month after outlining a two-year revenue shortfall approaching $1.5 billion, McAuliffe said Monday that revenues in August rose by 12 percent over those of August 2015, thanks in part to two extra payroll deposit days for income taxes.

"I am pleased that we have started the new year off on a positive note with two months of above-average collections," the governor said.

"However, we still have work to do to grow and diversify our economy to ensure that our revenue pictures continues to improve, regardless of external forces like [federal budget] sequestration."

A $279 million shortfall in revenues in the last fiscal year short-circuited plans in the new two-year state budget to provide raises for state employees, college faculty, teachers and state-supported local employees. The state faces a projected shortfall of $843 million in this fiscal year and $632.7 million in the next.

"The good news is it's not bad news," Del. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said of the August numbers.

The biggest concern for the governor and General Assembly budget leaders has been tepid growth in payroll withholding taxes, which account for almost two-thirds of state revenues.

Last month, however, withholding taxes rose 17.7 percent for the month compared with a year ago, helped by the two extra deposit days. For the first two months of the year, withholding taxes are ahead of last year's collections by 9.5 percent, compared with an annual forecast of 3 percent.

Sales tax collections, another big concern for budget leaders, rose 1.1 percent in August over the previous year. To date, sales taxes are up 2.7 percent, just ahead of the annual forecast of 2.6 percent.

Recordation taxes on deeds, wills and lawsuits rose almost 25 percent in August from a year earlier. They were up 12 percent for the first two months of the year, more than double the annual forecast of 5.5 percent.

But state officials say September is more significant than August because the first payments from individuals who don't withhold from payroll are due, along with payments by corporations and insurance companies.

"September collections will complete the first quarter of fiscal year 2017 and provide a clearer assessment of revenue growth," Secretary of Finance Richard "Ric" Brown told the governor.
A college degree is one of the most important investments an individual can make, according to a recent study by the White Houses Council of Economic Advisers.

The earnings gap between a college and a high school graduate continues to widen, with those earning bachelors degrees making nearly $1 million more in their lifetime compared with those with only a high school diploma, the report found.

While the overall return on a college education nears historic levels, the report suggests there are variations on that return, depending on the school and program a student selects. To find the college thats the best fit, prospective students and their families can turn to the 2017 U.S. News Best Colleges rankings, released today.

[Explore the 2017 Best Colleges rankings.]

The 2017 edition includes data on more than 1,800 colleges and universities, of which 1,374 are ranked. Under the rankings methodology, eligible schools are divided into different categories such as National Universities and Regional Colleges, and evaluated on up to 15 indicators of academic excellence, such as freshman retention, faculty resources and graduation rates  to name a few.

Among National Universities, which emphasize research and offer bachelors, masters and doctoral programs, Princeton University in New Jersey once again took No. 1, Massachusetts Harvard University remained in second place and the University of Chicago moved up one spot to tie with Yale University in Connecticut for third place.

Other changes in this years top 10 include Californias Stanford University and New Yorks Columbia University moving down one spot from a tie at fourth to a tie at No. 5. The University of Pennsylvania traveled up one notch to No. 8, while California Institute of Technology dropped two places to No. 12.

One of the largest leaps in the 2017 National Universities rankings came from Howard University in the District of Columbia, which climbed 11 spots from a tie at No. 135 to a tie at No. 124. Similarly, Kansas State University rose by 11 places, traveling from a tie at No. 146 to a tie at No. 135.

Story continues

[See photos of the top 20 National Universities.]

National Liberal Arts Colleges, which focus on undergraduate education and award at least half of their degrees in fields such as humanities or social sciences, didnt see any movement among the top two spots. Massachusetts Williams College took the No. 1 spot again, and Amherst College, also in Massachusetts, stayed at No. 2. Pennsylvanias Swarthmore College dropped one spot to a tie at No. 4 with Vermonts Middlebury College, while Massachusetts Wellesley College climbed up to No. 3.

The most dramatic jump in the National Liberal Arts Colleges rankings came from Californias Thomas Aquinas College, which rose 29 spots from a tie at No. 82 to a tie at No. 53.

Among Regional Universities, which offer a range of undergraduate disciplines and some masters but few doctoral programs, North Carolinas Elon University maintained its No. 1 spot in the South. Creighton University in Nebraska and Texas Trinity University kept their top positions in the Midwest and West, respectively. But in the North, Providence College in Rhode Island moved up one spot to nab first place.

New Yorks Cooper Union moved up one spot to take No. 1 in the North among Regional Colleges, which focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than half their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. Carroll College in Montana and High Point University in North Carolina held on to the No. 1 spot, respectively, in the West and the South.

Calvin College in Michigan, which changed from being categorized as a National Liberal Arts College to a Regional College this year, shared the No. 1 spot in the Midwest with Indianas Taylor University.

Some institutions such as Calvin College changed categories this year because the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education  the most widely accepted classification system in U.S. higher education that U.S. News uses in its rankings  updated its system.

As a result of the Carnegie updates, around 12 percent of ranked schools for the 2017 edition of Best Colleges have moved into different categories. Villanova University, for example, moved from its No. 1 position among Regional Universities in the North to sharing a four-way tie at No. 50 with Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park, Californias Pepperdine University and the University of Florida among National Universities.

Beyond the overall rankings, U.S. News has other lists and rankings to help students and their families compare colleges.

For high school students who arent at the top of their class, U.S. News has the A-plus Schools for B Students list. These schools perform well in the rankings and accept students who dont necessarily have straight As. Pepperdine is the top-ranked National University that appears on the A-plus list and Skidmore College in New York is again the highest-ranked A-plus School among National Liberal Arts Colleges.

There are other rankings such as the Best Value Schools for cost-conscious families, which evaluates colleges on more specific measures of quality and cost; these schools typically subsidize tuition and fees for eligible students based on financial need. Harvard ranked the highest among National Universities for offering the best bang for your buck, moving up a spot from last year.

[Discover more Best Value Schools.]

In addition to nearly 50 types of numerical rankings and lists, U.S. News also publishes a wealth of data on each schools online profile page, including information on application fees and deadlines, popular majors and financial aid  to name just a few areas. Colleges report most of this information directly to U.S. News via an extensive questionnaire.

Looking for full rankings information? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find all published data points, including student debt and employment statistics.

More From US News & World Report
The Dominion Diamond Corporation announced the appointment, effective as of September 10, 2016, of Mr. Matthew Quinlan as Chief Financial Officer.

Earlier the company 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 2016 JNA Awards is presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award to casting solutions specialist Shouzui Yasui, CEO of Tokyo-based Yasui & Co. Yasui, says a report in JNA.

Shouzui Yasui will be receiving the accolade at the JNA Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner scheduled for September 14 at the InterContinental Hong Kong during the September Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair.

Letitia Chow, founder of JNA, director of Business Development  Jewellery Group at UBM Asia, and chair of the JNA Awards Judging Panel, said, Mr. Shouzui Yasui well deserves the JNA Lifetime Achievement Award honour. There are two known blue boxes in the jewellery industry. One is represented by a high-end consumer brand that has come to symbolise gifts of special significance. The other represents a jewellery casting company that the trade associates with high-quality and cost-effective manufacturing solutions. The latter is Yasuis blue box. Wherever there is jewellery manufacturing in the world, one can find Yasuis Vacuum Wax Injector. His contribution is noticed and felt widely throughout the industry.

Shouzui Yasui said: For 44 years, I have dedicated my life to the development of casting solutions for the jewellery sector. I am thrilled and deeply thankful for this significant recognition. This accolade represents what decades of hard work and determination can accomplish. It is a great honour to be the recipient of JNAs Lifetime Achievement Award.



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor in Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough&Polished




voila ce qu 'ecrivais un membre de ce forum

https://www.routard.com/forum_message/2229667/partir_au_japon_avec_bct_touristik.htm#3718465

pour avoir teste tout recemment un voyage au japon sans TO ( du 05/08 au 21/08 ) je peux vous certifier que cest hyper simple et surtout on sen rend compte sur place.

Au depart jetais comme vous voulant par TO pour deux raisons principale :

1 -securite :je faisait ce voyage avec ma fille de neuf ans et je ne voulais prendre aucun risque du fait dune premiere fois au japon.

2- facilite : je pensais avoir a faire a des professionnels et je me referais donc a leur savoir faire, ce qui fut le cas sur leur professionnalisme

Seulement voila en cherchant un peu et grace a quelques forumeurs de ce site je me suis lancer dans un comparatif vis a vis dun TO en lorganisant moi meme et jai recherche divers blogs et site parlant de ce pays : bref je me suis renseigne

Le resultat fut sans appel : une reduction de cout de plus de 50 % sans perdre en rien de notre programme, de notre confort et de notre securite.

pourquoi ? En fait la reponse principale est que le japon est bien un des rares pays ou lon peux se permettre ce genre dexpedition.

De mon experience personnelle en 15 jours je nai subit pas la moindre agressions de quelque sortes que ce soit (verbale ou physique) Je nai meme pas entendu la moindre sirene de Police meme a Tokyo plus grande ville du monde !!!

Et surtout vous serez surpris du civisme des japonais : vous etes perdus a la poindre demande ils se decarcasseront pour solutionner votre probleme (du vecu) et meme simplement sans demander en voous voyant reflechir sur une carte (du vecu aussi).

Pour terminer ce que jai fait je le referais dans tres peu de pays au monde voire aucun, mais les deux sentiments qui peuvent resumer mon voyage et qui me resteront graves a jamais sont PAIX ET SECURITE et croyez moi cela fais du bien.

PS : pour info mon devis TO pour 1 adulte et 1 enfant pour 15 jours 6600 euros. Fait moi meme 3000 Euros (avec des experience humaine inoubliable pour moi-meme ainsi que pour ma fille car lenfant est roi la-bas)
China will release a raft of data on Tuesday, setting the pace for a busy day in Asia-Pacific economic activity. On tap are August figures for industrial production, retail sales and fixed asset investment.

Industrial production is expected to rise 6.2 percent on year after gaining 6.0 percent in July. Retail sales are expected to be steady at 10.2 percent, and FAI is expected to slow to 7.9 percent from 8.1 percent in the previous month.

Australia will see August results for the confidence and conditions indexes from NAB; in July, their scores were +4 and +8, respectively.

Hong Kong will provide Q2 data for industrial production and producer prices. In the previous three months, industrial production gained 2.8 percent on quarter and slipped 0.4 percent on year, while producer prices sank an annual 2.8 percent.

New Zealand will release August numbers for food prices; in July, prices were down 0.3 percent on month and 1.3 percent on year.

Japan will see Q3 results for the large manufacturing and all industry indexes from BSI; in Q2, their scores were -11.1 and -7.9, respectively.

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.
Farmer Bros. Co. (FARM) announced after the bell Monday that it has agreed to acquire China Mist Brands for $10.8 million. The stock is now down 1.46 on 4K shares.

Farmer Bros. dropped in early trade Monday, but rose back into positive territory around mid-afternoon. Shares finished up by 0.19 at $33.46. The stock has been gaining ground for over 2 weeks and set a new high for the year.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Rubicon Technology, Inc. (RBCN), a provider of sapphire substrates and products to the LED, optical and semiconductor industries, announced Tuesday its plans to cease all production activities and shut down its Penang, Malaysia facility. The decision was made in order for the company to focus on the optical and industrial sapphire market for the foreseeable future.

Production activities at the Penang facility are expected to cease by November 30, 2016, with the shutdown of the facility to be completed by the end of the year. The company noted that its Malaysia facility has been primarily engaged in producing polished and patterned substrates for the LED market.

According to the company, its high quality crystal, strong and developing U.S. customer base, and optical finishing capability are strong differentiators in the optical and industrial sapphire market. The company believes that there are emerging applications in that market which will drive revenue and margin growth in coming years.

Bill Weissman, the Company's CEO, said, "The sapphire industry continues to be very challenging with pricing for LED sapphire products continuing to decline throughout this year. G....While we made significant progress on that front, the continual decline of prices has made the prospects of becoming profitable in the LED substrate market unlikely for the foreseeable future. As a result, we have decided to focus on the optical and industrial sapphire market at this time."

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Hilton Food Group Plc (HFG.L) reported that its profit after taxation for the 28 weeks to 17 July 2016 was 13.4 million pounds, up 29.9% from last year's 10.3 million pounds, reflecting higher operating profit and the lower effective rate of taxation. Basic earnings per share in the first 28 weeks of 2016, at 16.9 pence, were 28.0% above last year's level.

Profit before income tax grew to 16.67 million pounds from 13.16 million pounds in the prior year.

Operating profit for the first 28 weeks of 2016 was 25.7% higher at 17.3 million pounds and 21.3% higher on a constant currency basis driven by organic European volume growth, the roll out of the new Melbourne facility, lower start-up costs and the successful start of Hilton's UK meat trading .

Hilton's underlying trading performance remained strong, despite competitive retail grocery and uncertain macroeconomic conditions. Volumes increased by 4.5%, reflecting the investment bedding-in phase with Tesco in the UK, encouraging growth in Irish business and further progress in Holland and Central Europe.

Turnover increased by 9.1% to 631.9 million pounds from 579.2 million pounds last year and by 5.3% on a constant currency basis.

The Directors will declare an interim dividend of 4.6 pence per share, amounting to 3.4 million pounds (compared with an interim dividend of 4.1 pence per share in 2015) to be paid on 2 December 2016, to shareholders on the register at close of business on 4 November 2016.

The Group expects results for the full year to be in line with the Board's expectations.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Brazil's retail sales decreased in July, erasing the gain registered in the previous month, preliminary data from the statistical office IBGE showed Tuesday.

Retail sales dropped 0.3 percent month-on-month following a similar size increase in June. The fall was in line with economists' expectations.

On a year-on-year basis, retail sales decreased 5.3 percent in July after a 4.8 percent slump in June. Economists had forecast a 5.1 percent decline.

The broad retail sales, which includes automobile trade and construction material, dropped 0.5 percent from June, when they fell 0.2 percent. Economists were looking for a 0.9 percent climb.

Compared to the same month last year, broad retail sales plunged 10.2 percent after an 8.1 percent drop in June. Economists had expected the pace of decline to remain steady.

On an accumulated basis for 12 months, retail sales dropped 6.8 percent, which was the biggest fall since the series began in 2001.

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.
A first-of-its-kind journey along India and Pakistan border

What binds the two most talked about nations - India and Pakistan together? What makes the
SNc Channels:



Search

About Salem-News.com



Sep-12-2016 20:30 TweetFollow @OregonNews Lebanon Fire Investigators Help Sheriff Apprehend Arsonist Detectives were able to identify a suspect from the surveillance camera images.

19-year old Kristian Ray Lee was arrested on Arson charges.

Photo: Linn County Sheriff's Office

(LEBANON, Ore.) - Linn County Sheriff's Office Detectives arrested 19-year old Kristian Ray Lee, of Lebanon, on Monday in connection with seven arson fires in the area of Rock Hill Drive near Central Avenue. The fires were set between the dates of July 30, 2016 and August 28, 2016 along an approximately quarter-mile stretch of Rock Hill Drive between Central Avenue and Ty Valley Road. The fires were all suspicious in nature as there was never a clearly identifiable cause, and members of the Lebanon Fire District Fire & Life Safety Division launched an official investigation after concurrent fires between August 12 and August 16, 2016. LFD placed surveillance cameras belonging to the Oregon Department of Forestry in the area, and on August 28, 2016 two new fires were reported on Rock Hill Drive within three minutes of each other. After extinguishing the fires, LFD investigators accessed the cameras and found images of a male on a bicycle who appeared to be setting the fires. At that point the incident became a criminal investigation and fire authorities contacted the Linn County Sheriff's Office to hand the investigation over to them. LCSO Detectives were able to identify a suspect from the images provided by LFD and on Monday September 12, 2016 an arrest was made. Lee admitted to starting five of the seven fires and has been charged with four counts of Arson I, Reckless Burning, and five counts of Criminal Mischief II. Lebanon Fire District Division Chief Jason Bolen praised the work of his staff and other agencies for the arrest. "This arrest is a direct result of the excellent investigation work of Lebanon Fire District fire investigators as well as the tremendous cooperation between the District, the Oregon Department of Forestry, and the Linn County Sheriff's Office. "Our members did an outstanding job of quickly getting cameras up and sifting through tens of thousands of photos to find images of the suspect. All of their hard work paid off thanks to the great police work of the Linn County Sheriff's Office detectives. "We want to thank the Oregon Department of Forestry and the Linn County Sheriff's Office for helping us get this arsonist off the streets," Chief Jason Bolen said. Source: Lebanon Fire District _________________________________________

Most Commented on





Articles for September 12, 2016 | Articles for September 13, 2016
Young roster has high hopes for future. Only four seniors suited up.
JERUSALEM (AP)  The Israeli government and Facebook agreed to work together to determine how to tackle incitement on the social media network, a senior Israeli Cabinet minister said Monday.

The announcement came after two government ministers met top Facebook officials to discuss the matter. The Facebook delegation is in Israel as the government pushes ahead with legislative steps meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says incites violence.

Israel has argued that a wave of violence with the Palestinians over the past year has been fueled by incitement, much of it spread on social media sites. It has repeatedly said that Facebook should do more to monitor and control the content, raising a host of legal and ethical issues over whether the company is responsible for material posted by its users.

Both Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, two key figures in Israel's battle against the alleged online provocations, participated in Monday's meeting.

Erdan's office said they agreed with Facebook representatives to create teams that would figure out how best to monitor and remove inflammatory content, but did not elaborate further.

Erdan and Shaked have proposed legislation that seeks to force social networks to remove content that Israel considers to be incitement. An opposition lawmaker has also proposed a bill seeking to force social networks to self-monitor or face a fine. It was not clear whether Monday's agreement would lead the lawmakers to shelve their bills.

In a statement, Facebook said "online extremism can only be tackled with a strong partnership between policymakers, civil society, academia and companies, and this is true in Israel and around the world."

The social media company also said its community standards "make it clear there is no place for terrorists or content that promotes terrorism on Facebook." It called the meeting "constructive," but offered no details about its conclusions.

Israeli security authorities currently monitor for incitement, and then complain to Facebook. The company determines whether the material in question violates its community standards, removing some items but allowing others to stay.

Shaked said Monday that over the past four months Israel submitted 158 requests to Facebook to remove inciting content and another 13 requests to YouTube. She said Facebook granted some 95 percent of the requests and YouTube granted 80 percent.

"We know that the amount of inciting online is even greater so we have to continue and increase our efforts, and we will," she said at a security conference. "An inciting page is a perpetual growth engine for terror if it is not removed."

The Palestinians dismiss the Israeli allegations that the violence is caused by incitement. They say it is the result of nearly 50 years of Israeli military occupation and a lack of hope for gaining independence.

Digital rights groups have charged that such legislation is unlikely to be enforceable and say the laws are used as a pressure tactic to prompt Facebook to monitor users' content. The groups warn of a slippery slope to censorship.
OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea (AP)  The United States on Tuesday sent two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by U.S. and South Korean jets, were seen by an Associated Press photographer as they flew over Osan Air Base, which is 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border with North Korea, the world's most heavily armed. The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, without landing in South Korea.

Such flyovers are common when always high animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war as there has never been a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" as a deterrent to North Korea. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.

North Korea is keenly aware of the U.S. presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the U.S. nuclear threat. It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as alleged proof of U.S. hostility that it claims as the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

Last week's nuclear test, the North's fifth, was its most powerful to date. Pyongyang's claim to have used "standardized" warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who has regularly visited the North's nuclear facilities, estimates the North may have enough nuclear fuel for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016 and the ability to add about seven new bombs a year.

"Left unchecked, Pyongyang will likely develop the capability to reach the continental United States with a nuclear tipped missile in a decade or so," Siegfried wrote on the North Korea-focused website 38 North. He said that more troubling was the recent test successes may give Pyongyang a false sense of confidence.

International diplomatic efforts to rid the North of its bombs have been stalled since the last round of meetings in late 2008. Since then, Pyongyang has ramped up both its ballistic missile and nuclear bomb development, despite an increasing raft of sanctions.

After the test, the North's nuclear weapons institute said it will take unspecified measures to further boost its nuclear capability, which analysts said hinted at a possible sixth nuclear test.

South Korea's Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said Monday that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device at any time at one of its tunnels at its main Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place.

Moon refused to say what specific evidence pointed to another possible nuclear test. But the South's Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified Seoul government sources, reported Monday that there were signs the North had finished test preparations at one tunnel that has never been used. Yonhap did not elaborate.

Seoul, Washington and their allies have vowed to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.

"The United States and (South Korea) are taking actions every day to strengthen our alliance and respond to North Korea's continued aggressive behavior," Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said in a statement.
Dear Vatapuia and Misiona,

Thank you very much for your nice article A country of special people. You have crafted a very good article from the short interview we had by the roadside. The photo is a really good shot too.

Our holiday in Samoa is now over and the experience is still growing on us. The times with the locals and other tourists around the beach fales has been very special. We stayed typically for two days at various costal places and visited both Upolu and Savaii.

There are so many things which worked just right whether it was the weather, the ferry, the food, the water, the accommodation, the buses.

In fact the bus trip with our bikes from Lalomanu to Apia at 6:30 in the morning will remain in my memory forever. The bus was so full with the music blaring away, everybody cheerful despite the crush, heading through the mountain pass, an experience not to be missed.

In fact the holiday was so special that we will be back and we will recommend Samoa as a holiday destination to our friends and relatives here in NZ.

While at the tourist office in Apia we asked for a contact to a local beekeeper  I am a beekeeper myself. They could not find a contact. Do you happen to have some contacts to a beekeeper in Upolu and Savaii? I usually offer my help organising gear and can also help with connections for the sale of honey overseas should that be of interest.

Best regards,

Ernest Kilian

Christchurch, New Zealand
Dear Editor,

Call this gentleman, Ulugia, what you might, disrespect his words or assign an agenda to him as youve suggested, however, it does not negate the fact, this gentleman has a Samoan Heart with a deeper love and understanding of who he is, A Samoan with an obligations of Stewardship to his Country, Samoa.

He is worried and concerned with the results of land alienation and relocation based on pipe dreams of a few and unreal hallucinations of pies in the sky, if I may.

From all indications, Ulugias Samoan Heart is something which has been lost with ...some Government folks and P.M. Tuilaepa, aided and supported by, I supposed, learned Samoan minds, such as yours Mr. Jeffery.

Minds aligned and marching forward with these dreams to the beat of foreign drums. These foreign sounds and slogans such as bigger is better, do not necessarily translate to better lives for the majority of our Samoan people.

These sounds are unwelcomed, they are alien to our experiences as Stewards of our Samoa; our people, our lands, our oceans, our language, our identity, and most importantly, our collective understanding of ALOFA as true blue Samoans. Some have forgotten these Samoan facts of life. Heres a reminder:

E le pepelo le Alofa, E le losilosivale le Alofa, e le matavalea le Alofa, e le faitogafiti le Alofa, E le fia fai mea le Alofa, E le mativa le Alofa, e le olegia le Alofa. Peitai, E amiotonu le Alofa, E faamaoni le alofa, and above all, e talitonu ma matau I le Atua le Alofa.

Asipau Tafua
They say water is life.

So what happens when there is no water?

Thats the predicament Isapela Talisua of Vailele-uta is struggling with. On top of the task of making ends meet, the water issue is something she can do without.

Her family has explored all possibilities for a better life.

Working the land hard and fishing in the ocean is provides only enough to get by every day but that is it. Aged 62, her family also shares a small patch of land with two other families where they try their best to help one another out.

Right now we only have one male working and he is a fisherman, Isapela explained to the Village Voice yesterday.

He is the only one working. We also have our small plantation here that provides a little bit of money for my family.

Isapela is not shy about what she needs.

Right now the only thing I need is some lumber to finish off my house, she said.

My family is also in need of a water tank because its hard for us living in-land when it comes to water. The river is far down the hill and thats why we need the water tank. My house also needs tin to extend it a bit more because my family has a lot of kids.

Earning a maximum of $100 a week is just not enough for the struggling mother.

Some days and weeks are different; we consider $100 a week as a lot, she said.

There are many things we need to use the money for so we stretch the $100 and whatever is left over, that goes to looking after the children.

Right now life is quite expensive. For the sake of my children, I really want to make a better home for them so they can live happily and also for the well being of my family.

The familys only source of water is a river located down a steep slope. Right now we get our water from a family further in land but if not then my children have to walk down the steep hill over there to fetch some water, Isapela said.

The river is very far down the hill.

Thats the only thing we need because the water we bring up here is used for cooking and bathing.

My family cant go down to shower or do our laundry because we must be mindful of the families down the river who also use it so we have to bring up the water to use. Thats our hardship.

Isapela works very hard but she needs assistance.

The way I see life is, if you do not look after your family properly then there will be no joy in the family, she said.

Thats why I really need help, to help look after my poor family.
It is no secret that Samoa is well known for its fashion and with the launch of the inaugural Samoa Fashion Week on Monday night, we can all look forward to great things.

With the potential to be a launch pad for future designers, the Fashion week promises a week of wonders, a week of designer exposure, a week of Samoan fashion.

The event was officially launched by the Masiofo, Her Highness Filifilia Tamasese during a charity event held at the Tanoa Tusitala swimming pool where guests marveled at the bold designs of all the talented designers.

I love fashion, its partly because I have a nephew in Australia whose name is on the brochure, Peter Tamasese. I like what he says and does about fashion, she said.

In fact, I used to sit and watch him either draw a dress design which were way too far out for me, or id watch him paint choosing different colours, different motifs, different materials; whether its mens wear or womens wear."

Fashion is about many things, its about art, its about values and its about vision. Its about what you see hear and smell; its about fauna and flora.

Its about the ordinary and the extraordinary. Its about the colours you see every day; the blues of the sky and the sea, the life of the stars and the brightness of the sun.
Leoo Dr. John Adams is a relieved man.

It follows a ruling by the District Court last week in his favour, dismissing an allegation of him making a false declaration in relation to his candidacy for the General Election in March.

The hearing of the allegation against Leoo was the last of five candidates who were unable to contest the General Election due to eligibility challenges by their opponents.

When Leoo put his name in to contest the seat, he was challenged by the Member of Parliament for the Aleipata Itupa-i-luga, Amituanai Fagaivalu Samu.

On 24 February 2016, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the eligibility challenge. The complainant argued that Leoo had not provided his monotaga as the law demanded.

Later, Leoo was accused of making a false declaration. The allegation was not proven and the charge has since been dismissed.And now that its all over, Leoo is both relieved and sad.

The decision of the court case just proved that I was right all along, he said.

I am glad that it is all over because it took up a lot of time. Ive got a busy clinic and every time we have a court case or hearing, I take a day off and for me; it wasnt an easy thing to do because I have a clinic to look after and most importantly I have a lot of patients coming in for help."

But now that its done, I am happy and relieved. At the same time, I am sad and disappointed that we just got the final decision now and its too late.

Leoo said he is not disappointed he wasnt unable to contest in the election.

Instead he is sad that the 1,800 people of their constituency who registered were not given the chance to vote.

Our constituency was not given the chance to vote in the general election, because there were only two candidates from our constituency, and that was me and Amituanai. So when I was disqualified the seat was automatically given to the other candidate."

So the people of the village and the constituency werent able to express their Constitutional rights to vote. Thats my biggest disappointment and also the biggest disappointment for the people of our constituency."

Thats why I was really disappointed because they were ready to cast their votes to whomever out of the two candidates should represent the constituency in Parliament, but then the court said otherwise."

But now that the court case if done, I am glad that we have set the record straight. I never made a false declaration; I am not capable of making a false declaration.

And the courts decision now proves that I was eligible to contest in the general election this year. But its already too late.

Moreover, he believes that in order for Samoa to move forward, the new amendment of the Constitution needs to be reviewed.

My opinion is that the government needs to revisit the amendment because it has not been prepared well. What about people who have rendered monotaga for 20 to 30 years on an on and off basis?

Leoo also believes the amendment limits and discourages election candidates. This is unfortunate with Leoo saying he believes the opportunity should be given to people to have a voice and represent their constituencies in Parliament.

If you look at it, five out of the five cases of all the candidates who have been disqualified were all successful. So thats says something about the current legislation.

Maybe they need to relook and revisit the current legislation."

Because at the end of the day, the biggest loser are the people of the constituency who are not given the opportunity to vote. Especially for those constituencies who had only two candidates. They automatically give the seat to one of the two candidates if the other one drops out or have been disqualified.

Nevertheless, he said he is not implying that the legislation is wrong.

I am not saying its wrong, I am just saying its unfair, he said.

In my opinion, this is something our government needs to have a look at moving forward. I think one of the things our government should do is to allow the village or the constituencies to make their decision on who they believe should represent them in parliament."

Take for instance what happened to Le Tagaloa Pita and his monotaga."

He was disqualified from running in the election because he didnt have a monotaga. But that is a practice according to the customs (agaifanua) of his village or constituency in Savaii. I think the legislation contradicts with some of the customs in our villages."

I strongly believe that the constituency should be given the opportunity to choose whether they want someone else to represent them in Parliament or not. This is done so that they should also be given the chance to vote."

For our constituency, 1,800 people registered in the electoral roll this year. And they didnt vote because there were only two candidates, me and Amituanai. So when I was disqualified, they didnt have to vote. The seat was automatically given to Fagaivalu.

And this is unfair for these people, because they were willing to vote. There should be a back-up plan if a case like this happens.

On the other hand, Leo'o is grateful that it is all over.

I am happy it was successful, he said.

Like I said before, I am not disappointed that I didnt run in the election. My main concern was that our constituency never voted.

Looking ahead, Leoo said he is not sure whether he will put up his hand up again for the next election.

Well see how it goesI might change my mind.

Serving was what motivated Leoo to contest the March General Election .

I am a servant, and serving people was the main reason why I wanted to run in the general election."

I have always been serving my people and the people of my constituency, and I thought that it was about time I take my service to the next level."

"Thats what motivated me to run in the first place."

I have been a doctor for 35-years now. I have been working in different places in Samoa."

"Its all about service. If God thinks that I can do a better service being a doctor, then so be it. I am just a servant.

Finally, he wants to thank all the people who have been supporting him throughout the case.

I want to thank the people of my constituency for all their support and patience during the court case. A lot of people showed their support and had given me their support."

I also want to thank my families and friends for believing in me and for helping me out all throughout the court case."

Lastly, I want to thank all the nuns and sisters and also the elders at the Mapuifagalele Home for the Elderly for they are my biggest supporters.
The Police are investigating the death of a 60-year-old father who was shot dead at Faleatiu at the end of last month.

Confirmed by Police Media Officer, Sua Muliaga Tiumalu, he told the Samoa Observer they are still searching for suspects.

All I can say at this stage is that there is an investigation, he said.

The investigation team has some leads and they are following it but the investigation is continuing and I cannot discuss the details.

The body of the elderly man was discovered by villagers about 300 meters from his home.

Sua said the Police have been told that the deceased man went to fetch coconuts that morning when the incident happened.

He said police found wounds on the back of his head and on his back when his body was taken to the hospital.

He confirmed that the injuries sustained by the deceased man are from a gun.

Sua said they are still waiting for a gun expert to examine the bullets found on the deceased to confirm the type of weapon used.
The hearing of charges against the suspended Director of the National Prosecution Office (N.P.O), Mauga Precious Chang, took an interesting twist yesterday.

Mauga is facing charges of negligent driving causing injury and dangerous driving.

When the matter was called before District Court Judge Vaepule Vaemoa Vaai, confusion arose as to which lawyer was the prosecutor.

Two senior lawyers were present.

One was Taulapapa Brenda Heather-Latu, who appeared on behalf of the N.P.O.

The other was New Zealand-based lawyer, Satiu Simativa Perese, who represented the Police.

Taulapapa told the Court she was acting on behalf of the N.P.O. based on Section 13 of the National Prosecution Office Act 2015. This provides for the power of the N.P.O Director to delegate any functions, duties and powers of the Office or the Director.

But Satiu disagreed saying the Director of the N.P.O cannot appoint her own prosecutor.

He said the matter would be tested in the Supreme Court next week.

Even Judge Vaepule was taken by surprise.

I did not anticipate whats now happening, said Judge Vaai.

He said there are two charges before him and he expected advice from the bar the charges are final and what the pleas are.

I do not see that this Court has to be necessarily involved in arguments as to which Act prevails over which Act, he said.

That should be dealt with in the Supreme Court but if counsel sees that these particular arguments should proceed in this Court, it wont happen this morning.

Satiu agreed with Judge Vaepule and admitted that it was unfair for them to bring the matter before the District Court in such a short notice. He added he is in Samoa based on instructions from the Office of the Attorney General as an independent prosecutor.

On the other hand, Taulapapa asked the Court for a weeklong adjournment to allow the Police to finalise the charges against Mauga.

Mauga is represented by former Attorney General, Aumua Ming Leung Wai. He filed an application before the Court for his client to be remanded at liberty.

Judge Vaepule granted the application.

He also adjourned the matter until 23 September 2016 for Police to finalise charges and to give time for the Supreme Court on Monday to rule on who would stand to prosecute.

Judge Vaepule added if at that stage the Supreme Court has still not ruled on who would prosecute; the District Court will make a decision based on common sense.

Outside Court, Taulapapa declined to comment.

But Satiu said his instructions came from Attorney General, Lemalu Herman Retzlaff.

The Attorney General instructed me as an independent counsel, he said. The Police cant prosecute themselves because they work with the person that they are prosecuting.

He said he is in Samoa as the prosecutor.

Thats why Im here. The argument this morning (yesterday) is who has the right to appear for the Police.
They say money cant buy happiness, but study after study has found some truth to the connection between income and happiness.

So when WalletHub set out to identify the happiest U.S. states, the financial data site examined 28 measures of both financial security and a pleasant state of being.

For example, those 28 metrics include:

Income-growth rate

Number of work hours

Physical health index (measures self-reported effects of disease on personal happiness)

Emotional health index (measures self-reported effects of emotional well-being on personal happiness)

Divorce rate (includes adult population that is separated from spouse)

Average leisure time per day

WalletHub then graded each state on a 100-point scale, with 100 reflecting maximum happiness.

Utah came out on top with an overall score of 71.02. Compare that with West Virginia, which ranked last with a score of 32.65.

The top 20 ranked states are:

Utah Minnesota North Dakota Hawaii Colorado Idaho Iowa Nebraska South Dakota California New Hampshire Washington Wyoming Vermont Wisconsin Massachusetts Connecticut District of Columbia Delaware New Jersey

Out of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., Utah has the:

Highest volunteerism rate (45.2 percent)

Lowest divorce rate (15.97 percent)

Lowest rate of heart attack diagnosis (2.7 percent)

Fewest work hours (36.8 hours per week)

If youre worried about having to move to Utah to find happiness, however, dont be.

Darrin McMahon, a history professor at Dartmouth College and author of the book Happiness: A History, tells WalletHub:

It is certainly true that there are happier (and less happy) places. You are better off in Belgium than Botswana for many reasons. But the bottom line is that external circumstances turn out not to have a big influence on personal happiness  probably only about 10%.

The big drivers are genes (50%) and intention actions  in other words, how you choose to deal with the hand life has dealt you. So if you were born and live in the land of milk and honey, great. But if you dont, dont worry. Being happy is still up to you.

Story continues

For more help with the connection between money and happiness, check out The 10 Commandments of Wealth and Happiness.

Watch the video of Where Are the 20 Happiest States in America? on MoneyTalksNews.com.

How would you score your state for happiness? Let us know below or on Facebook.

This article was originally published on MoneyTalksNews.com as 'Where Are the 20 Happiest States in America?'.

More from Money Talks News
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
2000 - 2022   24 .-   .       focus-news.net,                 () .                  24 .                 24      .       .       24 .
Aurora, CO -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/13/2016 -- Cyber-Trail, LLC is a unique multidisciplinary Digital Investigation firm based in Denver, Colorado. Its team of highly skilled professionals support law firms & corporations with digital forensic examinations of all types of storage media and communication devices. They specialize in computer forensic examinations of data stored on mobile phones, laptops, and the cloud as well as social media. They support over 15000 makes and models of smart phones & tablets. They document their findings and analysis within carefully crafted "forensic reports" in support of legal proceeding and pre-trial conferences. Cyber Trail follows forensic best practices to ensure compliance with Daubert standards for admissibility. They possess a experienced team of licensed and trained private investigators, attorneys and software engineers. Their forensic examiners are certified by the International Association of Computer Forensic Examiners which is one of the oldest and most prestigious computer forensic certifications in the industry. Cyber Trail provides an honest and cost effective service to their clients by assigning a personal project coordinator to each project. In this way all parties are well informed and update to date in regards to the progression of the investigation. The project coordinators are licensed Colorado attorneys and experienced computer examiners who are well versed in the admission of ESI.



When contacted, the CEO of the company said, "Our examiners are additionally certified in at least two vendor sponsored certifications such as those provided by Encase, Access Data and Cellebrite. Our examiners adhere to the International Society of Forensic Computer Examiner's code of conduct." He further added, "We provide forensic investigations of all types of cloud and social media sources including: Facebook, Twitter, Office 365 and more. In the future, digital investigations will depend on forensic access and analysis of these sources of data more than any other data source including computer hard drives and Smartphone internal memory chips."



About Cyber-Trail, LLC

Cyber-Trail, LLC specializes in cases involving Diversion of Marital Assets in Family Law Cases, Email authenticity, Fraud investigations, Demonstrating Evidence of Spoliation, Insider Theft, Social Media, and Defamation and Libel lawsuits. Their experts say they can go beyond the inherit limitations of the commercial digital forensic software tools by developing their own custom code such as Python Scripts.



Media Contact:

Contact Person: William Foster

Phone and Fax: 1-303-495-6449, Toll Free: 1-(888)-323-8648

Email: wfoster@cyber-trail.com

Website: http://cyber-trail.com/

Address: 2851 S Parker Rd Ste 1158, Aurora, Colorado 80014 United States
Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/13/2016 -- The healthcare sector across Europe is witnessing a dramatic shift and is inclined towards less invasive diagnostic procedures. Dermatology diagnostic equipment aids in both easy as well as painless diagnosis. Furthermore, these devices help in the detection of different skin diseases including Melanoma. Besides this, dermatoscope plays a vital role in better diagnosis, even beyond what a human eye can capture.



Geographic analysis indicates that the U.K. would account for a greater market share. In addition, rising numbers of skin disorders in Europe has contributed to the growth of this market. Moreover, growing awareness about the aesthetic procedures has kept the prospects of the market high. Additionally, rising standard of living coupled with increasing need for quality healthcare is expected to create greater opportunities.



Get Free Sample Report Of Europe Dermatology Diagnostic Devices Market @ http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/europe-dermatology-diagnostic-devices-market-opportunities-and-forecasts-71305#RequestSample



The European dermatology diagnostic devices market is segmented based on type and geography. The types assessed in the research report consist of imaging technique, dermatoscope and microscope. Countries such as U.K., Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and others would witness rapid growth.



The key market players active in the European dermatology diagnostic devices market are Welch Allyn, AMD Global Telemedicine Inc., Toshiba Medical Systems, Carl Zeiss Meditec, Siemens Healthcare, FEI Company, Heine Optotechnik, Fotofinder Systems GMBH, Philips Healthcare, Leica Microsystems, Bruker Corp., Michelson Diagnostics Ltd., MAVIG GmbH, Nikon Corporation, GE Healthcare, MELA Sciences, Inc., Solta Medical and Verisante Technology, Inc.



Do Inquiry To Buy Report Europe Dermatology Diagnostic Devices Market @ http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/europe-dermatology-diagnostic-devices-market-opportunities-and-forecasts-71305#InquiryForBuying
White Plains, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/13/2016 -- Hate crimes are described as prejudice-motivated crimes that are often violent. It can include bias against disability, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, and much more.



Within the US court system, a hate crime is committed if somebody performs a criminal act and chooses the victim because of a specific bias that they have. The federal hate crimes statute is focused on investigating and prosecuting hate crimes area they are disturbingly prevalent within the United States, and punishments can vary.



Valerie Jenness is the Professor of Criminology, Law & Society, and other topics at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). She specializes in finding links between deviance and social control as well as crime control and criminalization area for research has focused on hate crime, prison violence, and corrections regarding public policy.



She is currently exploring the various penalties that people could expect if they were convicted of a hate crime. Depending upon who is doing the prosecuting and what the investigation shows, punishment can be 10 years to life in prison, and some of the bias-motivated crimes are punished using the death penalty.



State law can vary as it pertains to hate crimes as well, creating a disparity between how the crimes and punishments are actually handled within the US court system.



The Matthew Shepard Act or Hate Crimes Act was passed in October 2009 in response to two brutal hate crimes. One involved the death of a student in Wyoming that was tortured by a gang because they believed he was gay. The other involved to white supremacists driving an African-American man behind the truck, leading to his decapitation. Federal authorities did not prosecute either of these crimes because of the 1969 federal hate crimes law that was currently in existence.



Now, with more hate crimes being committed across the United States every year, there is the need to focus on punishment and a firm stance within the US court system. According to the FBI, 47% of hate crimes were racially motivated.



"I'm extremely interested in the politics of crime control and criminalization, and look forward to working with students regarding this topic," comments Valerie Jenness.



She is a professor at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and various courses are taught by her every semester.



Contact:

Valerie Jenness

http://valeriejenness.com/
Vilnius, Lithuania -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/13/2016 -- Ablation does involve a very small amount of risk and is suggested for patients when medications or resetting heartbeat do not work.



Victoria M., a 28-year old patient from the United States, has been having irregular heartbeat for years when her doctor prescribed medications first time.



"I started taking prescribed medications and all possible side effects started to occur  I did not see any improvement in my condition, and the side effects have been negatively affecting most areas of my life dramatically. I wanted to stop taking the medications as soon as my doctor would allow  I was then presented an option of ablation, which according to my doctor, would be a good option for me."  says the patient.



Ablation procedure cost is more than a few thousand dollars in the U.S., which is a big amount for patients, especially those who do not have insurance coverage for such procedures.



Victoria M. has been patiently waiting for the ablation procedure  however, the doctors were not able to perform the ablation on the day scheduled due to the heart rhythms of the patient  the preparation was done, the patient was there, but the procedure could not be performed.



"I was then introduced to one of the leading heart surgeons in Vilnius, Lithuania  we discussed my case over the phone, and I have provided my medical records to the surgeon. Next day the surgeon has confirmed that they can perform the procedure. Two months later I had the ablation performed in the leading private general hospital in Vilnius  Kardiolita Hospital. We have prepared well, the doctors were extremely professional  and the cost of the procedure was more than twice lower even with all travel expenses added." - adds Victoria M.



"If the patient's heart rhythm does not allow to perform ablation on a scheduled day, we reschedule for another day  the visit is not lost and we only charge the patient when the procedure has been performed. Heart patients worldwide, if they research just a little online, they know Lithuanian heart surgeons and specialists are some of the best in the world"  says Andrius Jonutis, General Deputy Manager at Kardiolita Hospital  the leading private hospital in Vilnius, Lithuania.



For more information on cardiac surgery and procedures at Kardiolita Hospital, visit http://www.treatmentinlithuania.co.uk/cardiac-surgery-at-kardiolita.



About Kardiolita Hospital

Kardiolita Hospital is the leading private general hospital in Lithuania, accredited by the JCI and working by the highest industry standards. Established in 1998 Kardiolita Hospital provides full range of medical services  from comprehensive diagnostics to various surgical treatments within many medical areas. Kardiolita Hospital employs 200+ highly qualified Lithuanian doctors with extensive international experience and treatment performance of more than 45+ medical areas. The hospital has long-term experience in treating international patients.



Contact Information:

Contact person: Andrius Jonutis

Kardiolita Hospital

Phone: +44 (0) 203 290 0070

Laisves Av. 64a, Vilnius, Lithuania

http://TreatmentInLithuania.co.uk

http://www.kardiolita.lt
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/13/2016 -- The competitive rivalry in the Indonesia power generation market is moderate owing to the monopolistic structure of the market, reports Transparency Market Research in a study. The leader in the power generation market in Indonesia with an overall share of approximately 85% is the government-owned company chain, PT PLN. The rest 15% is owned by independent power producers (IPPs). As a result of this, the competition in the power generation market in Indonesia is controlled by the subsidy regime in the country.



Get free research PDF for more Professional and Technical insights : http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=4449



As the power generation business is highly capital intensive, market incumbents are anticipated to compete strongly and strategically sell their power to obtain a defensible return on investment (ROI). The three leading government PT companies, PT PLN Persero, PT Indonesia Power, and PT Pembangkitan Jawa Bali accounted for approximately 83.3% in 2013 of Indonesia's power generation capacity. The other government-owned PT power generation companies held 3% of the overall share in the Indonesia power generation market in terms of power generation capacity.



The Indonesia power generation market is expected to rise at a CAGR of 18.7% between 2014 and 2022. The power generation capacity (GW) of the Indonesia power generation market was 49.7 GW in 2015 and is estimated to touch a capacity of 90.1 GW by the end of 2022. Coal fired power generation technology led the Indonesia power generation market in terms of power generation capacity. It is projected to account for 58.3% of the overall share in the Indonesia power generation market. As a large number of coal reserves are present in Indonesia, the demand for coal fired power generation technology is comparatively high than any other form of power generation technology. Indonesia is one the prime coal producing countries in Asia Pacific along with China, India, and Australia. In 2013, Indonesia was ranked fourth globally in terms of production of coal with a production of 259.8 million tons.



Development in Mining and Quarrying Industry to Aid in Growth of Power Generation Sector



According to a TMR analyst, "Indonesia is one of the prime producers and exporters of coal in the world after China, the U.S., and Australia." It is also one of the leading exporters of several other types of minerals. At present, the country holds around 0.6% of the coal reserves present worldwide. To discover more coal reserves and enhance their power generation capacity, the Indonesian government is focusing on the development of the coal mining industry of the country. With consideration to the historical trend and government initiatives, production of coal has achieved an upper hand over its consumption in the country. However, due to the population explosion in the country and concerns with electrification, coal mining activities are expected to grow in the coming years resulting in a rise in power generation capacity of the country.



Power Generation Sector to Face Challenges due to Absence of Proper Infrastructure



Being a developing country, the current infrastructure facilities in Indonesia are at a nascent stage. Post the economic crisis in Indonesia, the government spent massive funds on currency devaluation and stabilizing the political situation in the country. As a result of cut back in infrastructure in Indonesia, the country has faced a massive negative plunge in power generation capacity. To tackle the poor infrastructure scenario of the country, the government is focusing towards on spending approximately 2% of the country's GDP towards infrastructural development. The development of the country's infrastructure is likely to attract more foreign investments and thus lead to a roll out in constructive policies. This is likely to favor the growth of the power generation market in Indonesia in the coming years.



Complete Report with TOC : http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/indonesia-power-generation-market.html



Conducive Government Policies to Provide Future Power Generation Enhancement Opportunities



To utilize the country's abundant natural resources, the government of Indonesia has introduced several new regulations that would help foster development in the renewable resource energy sector. The government further introduced feed in tariffs in order to encourage power generation through renewable resources. The laws passed by the government mandate the inclusion of 15% of renewable energy technologies in the overall power generation technology of the country. The growth in the renewable power energy sector is anticipated to provide profitable growth opportunities to the companies operating in the power generation market in Indonesia.



Key segments of the Indonesia Power Generation Market



Indonesia Power Generation Market: Technology Analysis



Coal-fired Power Generation

Natural Gas-fired Power Generation

Oil-fired Power Generation

Geothermal Power Generation

Hydro Power Generation

Combined Cycle Power Generation



About Transparency Market Research

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.



Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.
Playas del Coco, Costa Rica -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/13/2016 -- RealEstateinCostaRica.org is welcoming new listings from Costa Rican real agents selling various types of property: residential and commercial buildings, vacation rentals and land.



The Costa Rica Real Estate is a highly specialized agency selling houses, condos, town homes and other types of residential estates. Its listings also count highly coveted oceanfront properties and homes with an ocean view. In addition, the company meets the demands of land buyers and sellers, too. The land listings already on the website are also in the oceanfront category and allow the construction of buildings. Some of these are located within exclusive residential communities.



At Costa Rica Real Estate locals and foreigners alike can search for a suitable home or property based on criteria that is relevant to them. The properties are located in a total of 9 cities. Clients may search based on area or city, price range and type of property.



The website hosts a new category of great interest  that of vacation rentals, which is expected to grow further, as many have taken a vivid interest in holiday accommodation. Foreigners can look for temporary homes in listings which reveal all the details of interest. The staff guarantees to deliver the desired results in only a few days' time, regardless of the client's query.



Costa Rica Real Estate is specialized in the Pacific Coast area of Costa Rica but can extend its services to other regions as well. The real estate agency has extensive knowledge on every aspect of buying or selling properties, sharing it with all its clients. Its agents will assist anyone in searching for a new home or selling their property. Besides the real estate agents, clients can also register on the website to gain access to convenient features.



Costa Rica Real Estate also hosts a special section dedicated to essential Costa Rica facts and travel advice. The articles include tips on how to search for a place to buy or to rent, advice regarding vacation rentals and how to choose them, plus tips about daily life in Costa Rica.



About Costa Rica Real Estate

Costa Rica Real Estate is a property specialist focused on the Pacific coastline and located in Playa del Coco in Costa Rica. The website lists property for sale and for rent, as well as vacation rentals as temporary lodging.



Interested clients can find out more by visiting realestateincostarica.org or calling 224-420-2001



Contact:

John Mayer

Costa Rica Real Estate

nina@realestateincostarica.org

http://realestateincostarica.org/

Playas del Coco, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

847-579-9087
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/13/2016 -- 'The Cards and Payments Industry in Austria: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides detailed analysis of market trends in the Austrian cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including direct debits, check payments, payment cards, cash transactions and credit transfers during the review period (20112015).



The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry, and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, and transaction values and volumes during the review period and over the forecast period (20162020). It also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including the market shares of issuers and schemes.



The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers details of regulatory policy and recent changes in the regulatory structure.



To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @ http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=809280



Summary



'The Cards and Payments Industry in Austria: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into the Austrian cards and payments industry, including:



Current and forecast values for each market in the Austrian cards and payments industry, including debit card, credit and charge cards.



Detailed insights into payment instruments including direct debit, credit transfers, cash transactions, checks and payment cards. It also, includes an overview of the country's key alternative payment instruments.



E-commerce market analysis.



Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing the Austrian cards and payments industry.



Detailed analysis of strategies adopted by banks and other institutions to market debit, credit and charge cards.



Comprehensive analysis of consumer attitudes and buying preferences for cards.



The competitive landscape in the Austrian cards and payments industry.



Scope

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Austrian cards and payments industry.



It provides current values for the Austrian cards and payments industry for 2015, and forecast figures to 2020.



It details the different demographic, economic, infrastructural and business drivers affecting the Austrian cards and payments industry.



It outlines the current regulatory framework in the industry.



It details marketing strategies used by various banks and other institutions.



Make an Enquiry of this report @ http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=809280



Reasons To Buy

Make strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to the Austrian cards and payments industry and each market within it.



Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in the Austrian cards and payments industry.



Assess the competitive dynamics in the Austrian cards and payments industry.



Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in Austria.



Gain insights into key regulations governing the Austrian cards and payments industry.



Key Highlights

The uptake of alternative payments is gradually increasing in Austria, with the availability of various options. The latest is the launch of the SEQR mobile payment app in July 2016, which enables consumers to make online and retail purchases using quick response (QR) codes. In August 2015, PayPal expanded its One Touch instant checkout service to Austria, which can be activated from the PayPal website and can be used to skip the login process at eligible websites to accelerate the payment process. Other alternative payment solutions, such as Sofort, Klarna, Paysafecard and Skrill, are also available in Austria.



Contactless payments are gaining prominence in Austria, with all major banks in the country including Erste Bank, Bawag PSK and Volksbank offering cards with contactless functionality. The number of contactless cards grew threefold in the last two years, to reach 9 million in 2015. In addition, contactless mobile payments (m-payments) are becoming popular. In June 2016, Erste Bank launched a range of NFC payments in the country. Users can make contactless payments using enabled wristbands, stickers or mobile apps launched by the bank. In addition to in-store payments, the payment methods can also be used to withdraw cash at NFC-enabled ATMs.



The Austrian Supreme Court made one-off loan-processing fees lawful in June 2016, allowing banks to include processing fees, payments and commissions which must be paid by borrowers in addition to the principal loan amount. This fee depends on the total loan amount rather than the actual expenses incurred in processing a loan, which is sometimes inconvenient for consumers. Charging a one-off loan-processing fee is a common practice that has been applied by banks for decades in Austria, and the Supreme Courts ruling will further encourage banks to continue this exercise. This may lead consumers to look for other low-cost borrowing options such as credit cards.



About ResearchMoz

ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.



For More Information Kindly Contact:



ResearchMoz

Mr. Nachiket Ghumare,

Tel: 518-621-2074

USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948

Email: sales@researchmoz.us



Follow us on LinkedIn @ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG
A careful statistical examination of words from 6,000+ languages shows that humans tend to use the same sounds for common objects and ideas, no matter what language theyre speaking.

The new research, led by Prof. Morten Christiansen of Cornell University, demonstrates a robust statistical relationship between certain basic concepts  from body parts to familial relationships and aspects of the natural world  and the sounds humans around the world use to describe them.

These sound symbolic patterns show up again and again across the world, independent of the geographical dispersal of humans and independent of language lineage, Prof. Christiansen said.

There does seem to be something about the human condition that leads to these patterns. We dont know what it is, but we know its there.

Prof. Christiansen and his colleagues from Argentina, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland analyzed 40-100 basic vocabulary words in 62% of the worlds more than 6,000 current languages and 85 percent of its linguistic lineages.

The dataset used for this study is drawn from version 16 of the Automated Similarity Judgment Program database, they explained.

The data consist of 2840 lexical items from 6,452 word lists, with a subset of 328 word lists having up to 100 items. The word lists include both languages and dialects, spanning 62% of the worlds languages and about 85% of its lineages.

The words included pronouns, body parts and properties (small, full), verbs that describe motion and nouns that describe natural phenomena (star, fish).

The scientists found a considerable proportion of the 100 basic vocabulary words have a strong association with specific kinds of human speech sounds.

For instance, in most languages, the word for nose is likely to include the sounds neh or the oo sound, as in ooze.

The word for tongue is likely to have l or u.

Leaf is likely to include the sounds b, p or l.

Sand will probably use the sound s.

The words for red and round often appear with r, and small with i.

It doesnt mean all words have these sounds, but the relationship is much stronger than wed expect by chance. The associations were particularly strong for words that described body parts. We didnt quite expect that, Prof. Christiansen said.

The researchers also found certain words are likely to avoid certain sounds. This was especially true for pronouns.

For example, words for I are unlikely to include sounds involving u, p, b, t, s, r and l.

You is unlikely to include sounds involving u, o, p, t, d, q, s, r and l.

The teams findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, challenge one of the most basic concepts in linguistics: the century-old idea that the relationship between a sound of a word and its meaning is arbitrary.

The researchers dont know why humans tend to use the same sounds across languages to describe basic objects and ideas.

These concepts are important in all languages, and children are likely to learn these words early in life, Prof. Christiansen said.

Perhaps these signals help to nudge kids into acquiring language.

Likely it has something to do with the human mind or brain, our ways of interacting, or signals we use when we learn or process language. Thats a key question for future research.

_____

Damian E. Blasi et al. Soundmeaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages. PNAS, published online September 12, 2016; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1605782113
The World Conservation Congress, a high-level event summoning 8,000 of the worlds most prestigious environmental scientists, is taking place in Hawaii this month. The choice of location is a sensible one  islands are strongly affected by climate change and invasive species, their ecosystems are among the most fragile on the planet and islanders depend directly on nature for their livelihood.



Throughout the conference, the knowledge and experience of indigenous islanders was underlined as an important source of information to cope with climate change and degrading environments.



When we ask how to live within our means, indigenous people have the answer, Erik Solheim, the executive director of the UNs Environmental Programme, said during the events opening session.



But there is a darker undercurrent to the image of islands in perfect harmony with nature. The settlement of the Pacific, and even of Hawaii itself, is a story as much of destruction as it is of conservation.

As the conference goes into its final days, the warnings from Polynesian history are clear: ecological boundaries are crossed at humanitys peril. The Polynesians, in a sense, were lucky. When their ecosystems degraded, there were new shores to sail to for a better life. As the summit shows, thats no longer an option. Inga Vesper, SciDev.Net

The voyages of the early Polynesians are incredible human achievements  a credit to highly advanced marine and navigation technologies as well as intricate social relationships. They travelled thousands of miles in outrigger canoes across a vast ocean to discover unknown lands and trade with friends in known places.



But often, these voyages were forced by overpopulation and resource scarcity in the islanders homelands. Many islands in Southeast Asia lost all tree cover because of land degradation, while shortages of fresh water and overfishing led to conflict among ancient tribes. Human activity turned the Marchena and Easter islands in the Galapagos into barren wastelands. Trade introduced foreign species into previously pristine habitats.



Islanders are now stepping up to the task of protecting their ecosystems. Palaus effort to place 80 per cent of its marine territory under strict protection was lauded as a prime example of indigenous experience, passed down through stories and song, overcoming economic greed. The environment is our economy, Tommy Remengesau, the president of Palau, told the conference.

Others made clear that a combination of traditional knowledge and modern technology looks like the winning combination for conservation.

There is a lot of opportunity for indigenous people to use technology to preserve knowledge that they have, but also to contribute to planning tools that decide what happens to their environment, said MLis Flynn, who looks after indigenous partnerships for Australias Wet Tropics Management Authority.



As the conference goes into its final days, the warnings from Polynesian history are clear: ecological boundaries are crossed at humanitys peril. The Polynesians, in a sense, were lucky. When their ecosystems degraded, there were new shores to sail to for a better life. As the summit shows, thats no longer an option.
Tibets expanding glacial lakes threaten downstream communities in Nepal, reports Jane Qiu.

Geologists gathered in Beijing for the 33rd International Geographical Congress, held in August, reported that at least six of Tibets southern lakes could be classified as very critically dangerous since they could cause devastating glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).

There have been at least 30 GLOFs in Tibet in the recent past according to Pradeep Mool, a geologist and remote-sensing expert with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, Nepal.

In 1981, the rocky moraine ridge of Cirenma Co, a glacial lake 14 kilometres from the China-Nepal border, collapsed as a result of an ice avalanche, unleashing nearly 20 million cubic metres of water that picked up debris and blocked the Poiqu River  a transboundary river that originates in Tibet and flows through Nepal and India (known respectively as Bhote Koshi and Sun Koshi). It raised the water level by 30 metres over a 30 kilometre-stretch in Nepal.

In Tibet, the torrent destroyed a village and a highway bridge, though there was no fatality. In Nepal, however, the floods killed five people, damaged infrastructure, including 47 houses, one hydropower station and a key trade route between Nepal and Tibet, causing economic losses worth US$ 4 million.



Critically dangerous lakes

Now, 35 years on, Cirenma Co is full again, says Hu Jinming, a hydrologist at the Yunnan University in Kunming, China. And Cirenma Co is just one of several rapidly expanding glacial lakes in the Poiqu watershed, according to a study Hu presented at the Beijing conference.

By using satellite imagery, Hu, Mool and their colleagues found that 13, out of the 21 glacier lakes they studied, had increased by 24162 per cent between 1991 and 2012. This is consistent with the big picture of glacial-lake changes in the Himalayas, where most glaciers are retreating rapidly, says Wang Weicai, a glaciologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing.

In a separate study that analysed 119 glacier lakes in the Poiqu watershed, Wang and his colleagues found that their total area had expanded by 122 per cent between 1976 and 2010  pointing to a trend that began at least four decades ago.

In a rare joint China-Nepal expedition to the region, Hu, Mool and their colleagues surveyed 10 of the expanding lakes, gathering information such as dam composition and the degree of consolidation, whether they are drained from the surface or underneath, the distance between the mother glacier and the drainage point, and valley gradients that could help determine the likelihood of an outburst flood and the impacts.

Based on an area-volume relationship derived from previous studies of glacial lakes in the Himalayas, the researchers estimate that the volume of those 10 lakes  an important factor in risk assessment  averages 92 million cubic metres and can be as high as 430 million cubic metres.

The team, relying on Wangs study, concluded that six of them are very critically dangerous while two lakes, including Cirenma Co, are considered to be lakes in very high degree of danger.



Worrisome for Nepal

Both studies point to a really worrisome situation that has serious implications for downstream communities, says Jeffery Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who has been working in Nepal for over a decade but is not involved in the studies.

The Poiqu watershed is home to 17 Tibetan settlements of about 5,000 people, though most of them are not at risk in this sparsely populated part of Tibet. In Nepal, however, approximately 3,000 households with 16,000 people could be affected, says Mool. Risk assessment shows that a GLOF of the same scale of the 1981 incident would cause much greater economic losses, about US$ 153 million. This is mainly because there has been significant infrastructure development along the valley in the past decades, he says.

The lakes that are deemed highly dangerous need to be closely monitored, the researchers say. When necessary, there should be proactive attempts to lower the water levels, says Kargel, who is part of the scientific team that advises the mitigation work.

One such effort is being carried out at Imja Tsho, a glacial lake in Nepal 10 kilometres south of the Everest, where the goal is to lower the water level by three metres. This will at least reduce the magnitude of the disaster should one occur if not eliminating the risk altogether, says Kargel.

Meanwhile, there is urgent need to install effective early-warning systems in the upstream regions in Tibet, says Hu. Such systems consist of sensors that measure water levels and automatically send warning signals to a management centre when they rise above certain thresholds.

In the aftermath of the 1981 disaster, Nepal installed a series of such censors along the Bhote Koshi and Sun Koshi. But they do not provide enough lead time for downstream communities in Nepal to respond if a flood originates in Tibet, says Mool.

To be more effective, early-warning systems need to be located much closer to glacial lakes in Tibet, says Kargel. This requires a strong bilateral cooperation between China and Nepal and the sharing of water-level information. This is the only way to ensure that disasters such as the 1981 GLOF wont happen again, says Mool.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South Asia desk.
[HONOLULU] Scientific panels comprising conservation researchers and industry representatives can overcome mistrust between their sectors to help save endangered species, a conference has heard.

The creation of such panels in Niger and Russia has resulted in action to improve habitats by some oil giants operating in these countries, IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) representatives told an event at the World Conservation Summit. They explained that the science focus of such panels has defused potential conflict between the oil industry and activists, instead providing transparent and independent advice.

For example, the Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel, set up by the IUCN, has worked with local oil company Sakhalin Energy to reduce the impact of drilling at the eastern Russian coast on this critically endangered species. As a result of their work, the number of whales in the area increased from 115 in 2004 to 174 in 2015.

Cooperating with industry is crucial for the long-term protection of endangered species, says Steward Maginnis, the director for nature-based solutions at the IUCN. We found that we needed to take advice from as many parties as possible.

The panels advantage, according to its organisers, is that it includes sound scientific advice as well as voices from local communities. This mix results in high-quality and rounded input, which is easier for oil companies to act on, while potential conflict is diffused in the course of discussions, Maginnis says.

Cooperating with industry is crucial for the long-term protection of endangered species. We found that we needed to take advice from as many parties as possible. Steward Maginnis, IUCN

At the event, which took place on 3 September in Honolulu, industry representatives from oil giant Shell said a similar panel set up in the Niger Delta was already providing the company with advice on cleaning up the area. Deric Quaile, a manager of environmentally sensitive areas at Shell, says the practical advice received from the Niger panel means company management is able to make decisions that conserve the environment and also make business sense, while clashes with NGOs are kept to a minimum.

Initially, there was a lot of mistrust, Quaile told SciDev.Net. But as soon as you breach that mistrust you can make incredible progress.

However, Wendy Elliot, the deputy global wildlife leader at conservation charity WWF, says there are still reservations about working with the industry on the NGO side. She describes how many NGO and community representatives felt angry about involving the oil industry in the Niger Delta  which caused the environmental problems in the first place  in clean-up efforts.

But eventually, we saw that success requires every operator to come together, she says. There were times when we disagreed, but in the end the process worked. Our contributions improved the panel process.
A reshuffle of the science system in Cuba reduced the number of science, technology and innovation (STI) institutions funded by the state.

This reorganization, as Cuban authorities called it, aims for a more integral and economically sustainable management of STI, according to legislation that came into effect in August 2014.

Prior to the legislation, 97.5% of the 232 institutions operating at the time were financed by the state; today, 60% of the 200 that are left after the reorganisation have become enterprises or units, according to information published by local press.

The changes are not only quantitative. As a result of this legislation, science institutions are now classified as research centres, scientific-technological service centres or development and innovation units  and this has implications for the way each institution is managed.

Any impact from the results of scientific research requires time, typically years, to be reflected in improvements in the well-being of the population. This is the case even for the results of relatively small R&D projects. Emilio Garcia Capote, Science Academy of Cuba

For example, the 18 scientific-technological service centers should, according to the new law, self-finance their work by commercialising all their products or services.

The new scenario represents a challenge for the scientific community. Emilio Garcia Capote, member of the Science Academy of Cuba and an expert in S&T policy, believes that it is not possible to sustain, from the budget of the state, everything that until now was financed, except social, clinical and fundamental research activities, many of which are still to be defined.

The researchers of the institutions that will begin to self-finance will try to face the situation realistically, he said. It is new to most of them.

Several documents distributed by the Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (CITMA) between 1998 and 2015 showed weak R&D interaction between universities and enterprises. They also showed insufficient demand by the business sector for science, according to an article published in the magazine Congreso Universidad, edited by the Ministry of Higher Education in Cuba.

According to local press, Elba Rosa Perez, minister of CITMA, said that this change in legislation aims to direct the [countrys] scientific potential towards the real needs of the country.

The impact of the changes on society may not be immediate, Capote warns. Any impact from the results of scientific research requires time, typically years, to be reflected in improvements in the well-being of the population. This is the case even for the results of relatively small R&D projects.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Latin America and the Caribbean desk
Google has been in headlines for a number of reasons. Aside from the much anticipated Nexus 2016 smartphones- or Pixel and Pixel XL- rumors about Google's Nexus 7 2016 tablet release date, specs and price have been flooding the internet for quite some time now. New reports suggest the upcoming 7-inch tablet will get released sometime later this year.

According to ZDNet, popular leakster Evan Blass has posted a new tweet which claims that the upcoming Google Nexus 7 2016 tablet will feature 4 GB of RAM and will get a 2016 release date. As per the tweet, the next gen tablet will be manufactured by Huawei. This is not the first time that Google has partnered with Huawei. Last year, the Chinese tech giant created the critically acclaimed Google Nexus 6P Android smartphone.

Google's Huawei-built 7-inch tablet, with 4GB RAM, on track for release before the end of the year.  Evan Blass (@evleaks) September 5, 2016

Talking about specs and features of Google's alleged Nexus 7 2016 tablet, the upcoming device is rumored to come powered by NVIDIA's Tegra X1 processing chip and feature Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor, a 4GB RAM, a 128GB internal storage and 2TB worth of expandable storage option. The next gen tablet is expected to be among the first devices to come preloaded with the search giant's latest mobile OS, Android 7.0 Nougat, which will bring in impressive new features to the tablet.

There are reports which claim that the budget friendly Google Nexus 7 2016 tablet will come with a price tag of around $260. It is rumored that Google's upcoming Nexus tablet will give a tough competition to Samsung's recently released Galaxy Note 7 with its impressive specs and features. According to PC Tablet, the Google Nexus 7 2016 is expected to hit the stores by Thanksgiving i.e November 24. It remains to be seen whether Google will ditch the Nexus 2016 brand in favor of Pixel for its much rumored Nexus 7 2016 tablet.

Stay tuned to SWR for more updates on Google Nexus 7 2016 tablet release date, specs and pricing details
The question, "Are we alone in the universe?" has been one of the most complex thoughts that has baffled many of us. We have not found yet any conclusive evidence of outer space life. However, a NASA veteran believes there is life somewhere out there, and that it is "arrogant" to say we are alone in the void.

Dr. Leroy Chiao discussed his idea in Space.com, fueled by the recent discovery of an exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star from our solar system. The planet, named Proxima b, is believed to be orbiting in or near the Goldilocks zone, where right temperatures make it possible for a planet to support life.

"I believe that there is life all over our universe, since it would be the height of arrogance to think that we are alone," Chiao said, adding he had thought of the question as he flew many times in space. But, he explained the search won't be easy due to astronomic distance and technological limitations. However, he expressed confidence that in this century, at least, humanity would be more likely to find evidence of past, or even current microbial life on Mars.

The veteran also said that life on Earth would face demise, no matter what. "At some point, life on Earth will die out, either from natural causes, or from our own doing," the former astronaut said, comparing it to human life and natural progression. He also expressed that technology is "hastening our collective demise," instead of helping us survive.

Incidentally, Chiao has spent 229 days in space, conducted four missions and six spacewalks in his 15-year career for 1990 to 2005. He had also been one of the commanders on the International Space Station.

Other scientists have also expressed belief that alien life does exist. In 2014, astronomers from the Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute or SETI said in a US Congress hearing that alien life were "perhaps ubiquitous," and claimed that humanity would find it in the next 20 years.

Last year, NASA scientist William Borucki told the South China Morning Post that there has been no evidence of alien life found even though exoplanets have been found. "Our future is here on Earth," he said, urging people to do more to keep Earth's climate hospitable.
Scientists are currently attempting to further study the animal life history to trace the oldest forms of life in the kingdom Animalia. While there is no actual cast of a body to rely on, they have got fossils that are credible enough to show signs of animal life. The indications can be seen through scratches, footprints, burrows, or feeding marks. Through examination of animal fossils, experts found that there is a possibility for early animals to be microbial in origin.

According to Live Science, fossilized mats of stromatolites are the earliest evidence for existing life on Earth. Stromatolites are cyanobacteria that are around 3.7 billion years old. Their DNA produces proteins and is protected by their cell walls. Due to being biologically complex, these cyanobacteria made scientists think that life might have possibly begun earlier.

Additionally, Phys.org reported that scientists believe they found fossils made by animals over a billion years ago. This further raised the speculation that animals might have existed this early. This is amidst the fact that animal remains appear to have existed 600 million years ago based on fossil records. According to the records, the first animals lived during the Ediacaran period when soft-bodied animals were extant.

Supposed animal trace fossils from the Ediacaran Period were examined by oceanographer Giulio Mariotti. With the help of his colleagues, he conducted an experiment and tried to create trails of grooves and pits that were very similar to the trace fossils. They created waves in the water, so that microbial aggregates would move across the sand and at the bottom of a tank of water. As a result, the aggregates produced various trails that are dependent to the aggregate size and wave conditions.

While the findings show possibility that the animal fossils have a microbial origin, questions were also raised about the trace fossils' reliability. The trails produced were very much similar to those that are called the Ediacaran trace fossils; and for this, it can be said that there is likewise a possibility that some of the "trace" fossils were just caused by the aggregates' movements and are not actual fossils.

Meanwhile, studying the earliest life on Earth is important to know the types of life that other planets might have. As of writing, more evidences are needed to show that the findings indeed show signs of early animal life. NASA Astrobiology Program, through its Exobiology & Evolutionary Biology element, funded the study.

Stay tuned to SWR for more updates and latest news on animal life history.
The hundreds of exoplanets that astronomers have discovered in the past years are just little curvy dips on a graph. Astronomers who use the Kepler Telescope filter the planets out by examining the way the planets block out the stars' light as they move in their orbits. If astronomers could block out the stars, they would be able to see the planets directly. A new technique based on adaptive optics system in the storied Palomar Observatory has just been started. It's the first of its kind and is capable of spotting planets much farther from our solar system.

On August 24, astronomers found a new planet Proxima b orbiting the nearest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri. The European Space Agency (ESA) even shared the surface view of a sunset on the planet. The scientists don't actually know what any exoplanet looks like. "But to imagine how the planets might actually be is central to scientists' interest in them", according to Lisa Messeri, a space anthropologist. "People had a passionate feeling about Proxima b because its proximity to Earth makes it very real."

In her book Placing Outer Space , Messeri has mapped the mental shift among scientists at a mountain top observatory in Chile, at the Mars Desert Research Station, in an MIT exoplanet group and at a Silicon Valley NASA center. "One of the first things you notice when you're spending time with exo-planet astronomers is just how little data they actually have to model ," says Messeri.

Using just a few data points scientists can learn about a planet's radius, the duration of its revolution and its distance from its star. They could even infer details about its composition or its temperature. When a scientist discovers an Earth-mass planet, their imagination has familiar places to run with variations on the theme of "Earth".

A NASA scientist told Messeri about his colleague who theorized a new kind of world on the basis of a "volatile-rich planet," representing an Earth-mass Planet that is smothered in liquid. A competitor who had come up with the similar idea called them "ocean-planets" in his paper. However, people paid attention to the second person because they could picture an ocean. "You have to make an argument not just beacuase that this is a planet but also that this is a place worth studying," says Messeri.







The new adaptive optics system is called Project 1640. The system removes the starlight glare so the astronomers can actually see the exoplanets. This is very hard to do, states Charles Beichman, executive director of NASA Exoplanet Science Institute. "You can try and Imagine to find a firefly flying around a flood light farther than a thousand miles from us," he said in a statement.

The system has the ability to resolve objects about 10 million times fainter than the object at the center, usually a star. With that level of its sensitivity, astronomers should be able to see planets. Now, astronomers have taken on a three-year survey of hot young stars.
A new type of USB stick has been developed that allows the user to destroy whichever device it is plugged into, instantly eliminating the possibilities of extraction and leaks of information. The devices it can penetrate through range from PCs, televisions, laptops and most other electronic devices which have a USB hub.

Ideally made as a tool for hackers, the Hong Kong based company which developed this deadly USB has configured it such that takes in electrical charges from the USB power supply and then discharges the same in a matter of moments, according to a report made by ZDNet.

The concept of a killer USB had first arrived last year by a Russian researcher known as Dark Purple, to destroy sensitive components of a computer when the USB drive is plugged in. Now that the concept has now materialized, the device has been named USB Kill 2.0. If the USB is plugged into a computer which isn't authorized for use, it will instantly fry the system, according to The Hacker News.

The company that developed the USB stick maintains, however, that they planned on developing the device in order to let companies test their laptops and PCs against power surge attacks and "Juice Jacking" attacks.

The USB drive is highly effective with up to 95 percent of devices using a USB port. The manufacturer also claims that they had made such a device in order to provide some awareness of the dangers of power surges in devices and that tech companies should make consumer-level hardware more robust to prevent such attacks. According to the company, the Apple MacBook is the only device which isn't vulnerable to USB Kill 2.0

The USB stick also comes packaged with a Test Shield, designed to allow the testing of the USB on devices without actually destroying the host machine, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Stay tuned to SWR for more updates and latest news on USB Kill 2.0.
One of the biggest natural marvels in the world - the Great Barrier Reef, is on the verge of being extinct as the coral has been slowly vanishing since the past few decades. Due to the adverse effects of global warming and rising temperatures along the coastal line, coral bleaching has affected over 90 percent of the reef, in a report by Palm Beach Post.

The reef has since attracted even more tourists who have flocked to the spot to see it before it disappears. The tourism industry in Australia has seen an increase in traffic towards the popular sight-seeing spot. In 2015 alone, nearly 70 percent of the tourists who travelled to Australia went there with the intent of seeing the Great Barrier reef before it is gone.

This phenomenon of the sudden surge in tourist activities has been termed "last-chance tourism." A similar event has occurred in the past at other tourist destinations such as the Maldives and the Galapagos. Although it is good for the tourism industry, it also contributes to the ultimate demise of the natural phenomenon as more tourists also means more greenhouse gas emissions according to researchers.

Recovery of the reef has been growing steady as Australia has heavily invested in its rehabilitation, with a video indicating that from early September, a part of the reef has fully recovered from coral bleaching, as reported by WSB-TV.

More than four million people travel each year to the Great Barrier Reef. And some of the damage done to the reef has also been caused by tourist activities. However, cyclones and bleaching are the primary reason for the deterioration of the reef, according to Motherboard.

The coral death-toll within the Great Barrier Reef has been estimated at 35-percent along the northern and central sections of the reef. At this rate, researchers have estimated that it will take at least few hundred years for the Great Barrier Reef to regain its former glory.
DARLINGTON, S.C.  Investigators with the Darlington County Sheriffs Office have arrested a North Carolina man in connection with a sexual assault in Darlington involving a minor under the age of 16.

Michael Gregory Lallier, 63, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, was charged with criminal sexual conduct with a minor in the third degree.

On Aug. 5, the Darlington County Sheriffs Office was made award of a sexual assault, which occurred in the 1300 block of Harry Byrd Highway in Darlington.

The criminal investigation in ongoing. Anyone with information related to this case is asked to contact the Darlington County Sheriffs Office at 843-398-4501 or 843-398-4920.
WASHINGTON

Why does Donald Trump say such nice things about Vladimir Putin and Russia? What is Trump hiding in the tax returns he refuses to release? And are those two questions related?

Voters should demand answers. Until we get them, we can only speculate about Trump's weird admiration for a strongman who presides over a system of autocratic cronyism, flouts international law with his territorial ambitions, works against U.S. interests in hotspots around the globe and apparently might have even deployed computer hackers to meddle in our election.

There might be nothing nefarious here; perhaps Trump just admires Putin's swaggering style. But there are reasons to wonder whether Trump's warm-and-fuzzy feelings are prompted by financial motives.

"Reasons to wonder" normally do not qualify as legitimate fodder for journalism, but these are not normal circumstances. Trump has broken with four decades of precedent and adamantly refused to let voters see his tax returns. His excuse  that he is under audit  is bogus. Given his history as a swashbuckling wheeler-dealer, including four corporate bankruptcies, there are legitimate questions about his finances. Yet he stonewalls, knowing that speculation does not qualify as proof.

Here's what we know. In July, Trump said in a tweet that he has "ZERO investments in Russia." If this is true, the more relevant question might be the extent to which Russian oligarchs, by definition beholden to Putin, have investments in Trump and his empire.

In 2008, Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., said at a New York real estate conference that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets." Referring to the Trump Organization, where he works with his father, he added that "we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

That boast would make perfect sense. Following the bankruptcy of Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts in 2004  which involved three casinos in Atlantic City and one in Indiana, and allowed Trump to get out from under an estimated $1.8 billion in debt  banks became wary of lending to Trump, according to widespread reports.

A 2010 federal lawsuit alleged that much of the money that financed the Trump SoHo luxury hotel development in Manhattan, which broke ground in 2006, came from a shadowy Iceland-based corporate entity. The suit alleges that "the money behind" the firm was "mostly Russian," and that the Russians involved "were in favor with Putin."

Trump was not charged with any wrongdoing in the suit, but the suit does strongly suggest that if traditional lenders were reluctant to get involved with Trump, Russian money had no such compunctions.

Which raises an obvious question: To what extent are Trump and the Trump Organization dependent on Russian investment? We have no way of knowing. Examination of Trump's tax returns might provide the answer.

We do know that Trump considered Russian oligarchs prime customers for high-end properties. In 2008, he sold a Palm Beach mansion to billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million. Less than four years earlier, Trump had picked up the property at a bankruptcy auction for $41 million  meaning he made quite a tidy profit. Rybolovlev, who was then worth nearly $13 billion, is not believed to be as close to Putin as some of the other oligarchs, but neither is he in any sense an opponent of the regime.

Despite earlier claims to the contrary, Trump now says he has never actually met Putin. He tried his best to do so in 2013, when he took his Miss Universe pageant to Moscow, but Putin canceled a planned meeting and sent a lacquered box as a present instead, along with what was described as a warm note.

In his campaign, Trump has been consistent in calling for better relations with Russia. He has accepted Russia's annexation of Crimea as a fait accompli and suggested he might not come to the aid of the Baltic states if Russia invaded. Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort did extensive work on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the thuggish Putin-backed Ukrainian president who was ousted in 2014 and now lives in exile in Russia.

As a general rule, I don't believe in conspiracy theories, and I do believe in coincidences. But Trump's chest-thumping "America First" attitude toward the rest of the world seems to make an exception for Russia, and we need to know why.

Trump supporters will say I'm speculating without the relevant facts. I say provide them: Release the taxes, now.

Eugene Robinson's email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com
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.
Some eight months before its last, fateful flight over the Pacific, Amelia Earhart's aircraft appeared on theater screens chasing a panicked crowd all around an airport apron and then making a wild takeoff, new research into the world's most famous missing plane has revealed. Researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart on July 2, 1937, have discovered the twin-engined Lockheed Electra had a cameo role in the MGM romantic comedy "Love On The Run," starring Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. "With Hollywood stunt pilot Paul Mantz at the controls, the plane cavorted for the camera," Ric Gillespie executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. Photos: Amelia Earhart's Fate Reconstructed According to TIGHAR, the Electra was filmed within weeks of its delivery to Amelia on her 39th birthday on July 24, 1936. Whether she knew or approved of her new airplane's debut is not clear. After the crazy takeoff performed by Mantz, who was also Earhart's technical adviser, the newly-licensed airplane wasn't used again in the film. All of the later shots were done using a scale model. In the story, the plane ultimately crashed, though Clark Gable and Joan Crawford escaped without injury. "It is little wonder that this bizarre use of Earhart's aircraft was kept quiet," Gillespie said. Photos: Jars Hint at Amelia Earhart as Castaway He noted that scenes in the movie clearly show the registration number R1602 of Earhart's plane on the upper wing surface. The strange episode has been unknown to Earhart biographers and researchers until now. The fate of Earhart and resting place of the Electra remain unknown as well. In the attempt to finally solve the mystery, a new expedition will be launched in summer 2017, on the 80th anniversary of the disappearance of the legendary pilot. Amelia Earhart Plane Fragment Identified Gillespie told Discovery News that the comprehensive search will rely on two three-person manned submersibles operated by the University of Hawaiii's Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL). HURL's subs, Pisces IV and Pisces V, will inspect a one-mile-long section of the steep, underwater reef slope off the west end of Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, looking for fragments of Earhart's plane. "An abundance of archival, photographic and artifact evidence suggests that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan made a successful landing on the island's fringing reef," Gillespie said.

He explained that the couple appear to have sent radio distress calls for nearly a week before the aircraft was washed into the ocean by rising tides and surf. "Earhart and Noonan died as castaways on the waterless, uninhabited atoll. The aircraft lies somewhere below," he said. Called Niku IX, this will be TIGHAR's 12th expedition to Nikumaroro. Credible Amelia Earhart Signals Were Ignored Efforts to search the reef in 2010, 2012, and 2015 using Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) were frustrated by equipment malfunctions and limitations of the technology. A side-scan sonar survey in 2012 using the same Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) later used to search for the missing Maylasian Flight MH370 also proved unreliable and misleading. "Detailed re-analysis of the sonar data has shown that an anomaly in the imagery that seemed to resemble an aircraft is almost certainly a coral ridge," Gillespie said. This time the craggy underwater mountainside will be searched by direct human observation. "No more ROVs. We'll do it right or we won't do it," Gillespie said. Theory on Amelia Earhart's Emergency Camp Site Shifts Equipped with high-definition video, still cameras, mechanical arms, powerful lights and recovery baskets, each of the subs will carry a pilot and two observers. They will inspect the underwater area down to a depth of up to 6,500 feet. Gillespie estimates the search area will be covered in seven days of operation. Next year, if all goes as planned, submarines will be used in a comprehensive survey of all of the atolls and seamounts in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, the world's largest marine sanctuary. Amelia Earhart Letter Encourages Aspiring Aviator TIGHAR plans to charter the mother ship, the University of Hawaii oceanographic research vessel Ka'Imikai-O-Kanaloa (KOK), and the HURL subs during that time. "Staging out of Samoa, three days from Nikumaroro, rather than Oahu, nine days each way, would mean a tremendous saving in positioning costs," Gillespie said. In that scenario, Gillespie estimates the expedition will cost a little under $1 million.

This is a photo of Amelia's plane in the movie "Love on the Run." The registration number R1602 of Earhart's plane is visible on the upper wing surface.

July 13, 2012 -- As the search for Amelia Earhart's plane probes the waters off Nikumaroro, a tiny uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, a new paper has reconstructed what may have happened to the legendary aviator 75 years ago. Written by Thomas King, the senior archaeologist on Amelia Earhart search project, the paper summarizes 23 years of interdisciplinary research by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (or TIGHAR). It will be published by the academic journal Pacific Studies in October. "In the Earhart case, strong circumstantial evidence supports the hypothesis that the pilot and navigator Fred Noonan landed their Lockheed Electra 10E safely on Nikumaroro, made repeated efforts to radio for help, and eventually died as castaways," King told Discovery News. Discovery Channels Amelia Earhart Special Airs In August

The Facts Earhart sent her final radio transmission on July 2, 1937 during a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator. Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared in the final minutes of a flight from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island in the Pacific. At 07:42 local time, as she flew toward the target destination, Earhart called the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, stationed at Howland Island for support. "We must be on you, but cannot see you -- but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet," she said. Earhart's final inflight radio message went out an hour later, at 08:43. "We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait," she said. What happened after that last radio message has remained a mystery for 75 years. PHOTOS: Inside the Search for Amelia Earhart's Plane

The Hypothetical Reconstruction TIGHAR researchers believe that Earhart and Noonan reached the vicinity of Howland Island, but were unable to see it, perhaps due to difficult morning light conditions or because they were somewhat off-course to the south. Unable to communicate with the Itasca, and to see Howland Island, they flew southeast and in the late morning sighted Nikumaroro, at that time known as Gardner Island. According to the researchers' hypothetical reconstruction, the pair made an emergency landing on the island's northwest reef flat, north of the wreck of the British steamer SS Norwich City, which went aground on the island's reef in 1929.

Nikumaroro A desert atoll, less than five miles long and 1.5 miles wide, with a lagoon at its center, Nikumaroro is far from a dreamy island getaway. The island has no fresh water and has roasting temperatures often exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit -- even in the shade. The island is wooded in indigenous forest dominated by the Buka, a large tropical softwood tree, feral coconut and shrubs known as Scaevola frutescens. The island was uninhabited when Earhart disappeared in 1937, but was colonized in late 1938, with the colony lasting until 1963.

Distress Calls As soon as they landed, Earhart and Noonan are believed to have begun sending dozens of radio distress calls using the Electra's equipment. TIGHAR re-examined all the 120 known reports of radio signals suspected or alleged to have been sent from the Earhart aircraft after 12 noon on July 2, 1937 through July 18, 1937, when the official search ended. They concluded that 57 out of the 120 reported signals are credible. NEWS: Credible Amelia Earhart Signals Were Ignored

The Photograph After a few days, however, TIGHAR postulates that flood tides lifted the Electra and carried it over the reef edge, leaving behind the landing gear, which was inadvertently photographed by British Colonial Service officer Eric R. Bevington three months later in October 1937 The airplane either broke up in the surf on the reef edge, or was obscured by waves when the U.S.S. Colorado flyers flew over on July 9 during high tide. The Colorado flyers also did not see Earhart and Noonan. "TIGHAR's experience is that in the highly contrasting visual environment of the Nikumaroro shore it is very difficult to see people on the ground from the altitude flown by the Colorado planes," King said.

Fred Noonan's Fate Noonan may have not survived long. The content of some of the recovered radio messages suggests that he may have been injured in the landing.

Exploring the Island With the plane lost, TIGHAR believes that Earhart -- and Noonan, if still alive -- went to explore the island. They carried with them a few supplies, such as cosmetics for protection from the equatorial sun and Earhart's compact with its handy mirror. When he visited the island three months later, the British officer, Bevington, reported signs of someone's "overnight bivouac" near the lagoon on the southwestern side of the island. PHOTOS: Jars Hint at Amelia Earhart as Castaway

Map of the Island From the western reef slope, where she landed, Earhart is thought to have reached an area that TIGHAR calls the Seven Site, in the island's remote southeast end. There she may have survived for some days or weeks, but finally succumbed, probably to thirst.

Crabs Consumed Remains TIGHAR researchers believe that her body was largely consumed by the site's numerous hermit and coconut crabs, leaving only 13 bones, a few artifacts, and the remains of her cooking fires. NEWS: Amelia Earhart May Have Survived Months as Castaway

Skeletal Remains Indeed, a partial skeleton was found in 1940 at the Seven Site. The remains were recovered by British Colonial Service Officer Gerald Gallagher and described in a forensic report. According to that report, the bones probably belonged to an individual "more likely female than male," "more likely white than Polynesian or other Pacific Islander," and "most likely between 5 feet, 5 inches and 5 feet, 9 inches in height." Unfortunately the bones have been lost. A woman's shoe, an empty bottle and a sextant box whose serial numbers are consistent with a type known to have been carried by Noonan were also found near the bones.

Clam Shells Amelia may have survived on Nikumaroro for weeks and possibly months, according to Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR. Archaeological investigations at the Seven Site unearthed significant clues that suggest a castaway presence. "We found several small and large fires. The fire features contained bird, fish, and turtle bones. We also found two clusters of giant clam shells," King said. He added that many of the clams appeared to have been opened by someone who tried to pry them apart on the hinge side, others have been opened by smashing them with rocks. Whoever camped there was catching small reef and lagoon fish, cooking them on the coals, not consuming the heads, and disposing of their bones in the fires. "None of this behavior is consistent with fishing and fish preparation by indigenous Pacific islanders," said King.

Artifacts Apart from the fire features, the researchers also found a knife that was beaten apart to detach the blades, and several broken, partially-melted bottles in the remains of a cooking fire. They were probably used to boil or distill drinking water. "These objects tell a fascinating story of ingenuity, survival and, ultimately, tragedy," Gillespie said. NEWS: Earhart's Anti-Freckle Cream Jar Found
A massive iron meteorite has been pulled out of its Argentine grave, after hiding underground for 4,000 years.

Discovered on Sept. 10 by Astronomy Association Chaco meteorite hunters, the so-called Gancedo meteorite is not your average chunk of space rock, it rivals the second largest meteorite ever found. Weighing-in at around 34 tons (68,000 lb or 30,800 kilograms), Gancedo is only bested by the 37 ton El Chaco meteorite that was also found in the same Campo del Cielo ("Field of Heaven") meteorite fall.* Gancedo and El Chaco are the largest fragments found so far from that historic fall.

RELATED: Russian Meteor Strike Aftermath

Gancedo is so-named after the village it was discovered near and in appreciation of the villagers who aided in the meteorite's recovery.

Though these specimens are undoubtedly giants among space rocks, the largest meteorite ever discovered is the monstrous Hoba West meteorite in Namibia, which is estimated to weigh 60 tons.

Campo del Cielo occurred around 4,000 years ago, scattering a huge number of iron-rich meteorites over a large area. So far, 26 craters have been found and around 100 tons of meteorite samples recovered. The Campo del Cielo region is around 600 miles northwest of Buenos Aires.

RELATED: Meteor Over Western US Was Reentering Chinese Rocket

In a video released online, the effort to pull the meteorite from the ground was documented. According to news coverage, after the meteorite was discovered the research team were inundated with water, so the decision was made to use heavy-lifting equipment to recover the meteorite.

*There appears to be some ambiguity as to the estimated weight of the El Chaco meteorite, with the lowest estimate placing it at 32 tons and the highest estimate placing at 37 tons. If the former is closer to its actual weight, the Gancedo meteorite is the second largest meteorite ever found.

h/t CNET.com
Press Release

September 11, 2016 Zubiri joins millions of Muslim Filipinos in commemoration of Eidul Adha Sen. Juan Miguel F. Zubiri urged all Filipinos to commemorate Eidul Adha with millions of Muslim Filipinos. The EidulAdha, often called the greater holiday in Islam relative to EidilFitr, is a non-working regular holiday. Muslims observe this day as the "Festival of the Sacrifice" that commemorates the end of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca of our Muslim brothers and sisters. He said, "awareness and recognition of our diversity is the first step in eliminating prejudice and bigotry." Zubiri noted that "28.26% of the world's population, or about 2.08 billion, in the world as of 2014 observe the Eid al-Adha every year and our Muslim brethren play a very critical role in the political, social and economic scene, and in advancing the growth of our economy." In the Philippines, Muslim Filipinos constitute 5% of the 100 Million population. Zubiri stressed that the addition of Eidul Adha as a regular holiday is akin to the holidays like Christmas, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Black Saturday. Zubiri authored Senate Resolution No. 131 enjoining everyone to respect the observance of the Muslim holiday. "In Islam, this day also marks the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca, pilgrimage being one of the important pillars of their faith. The Muslim world also celebrate this day with prayers, and sharing of food, money and other basic needs for all the poor to highlight the pillar of charity which is very important in their faith." The Executive branch through the National Commission for Muslim Filipinos issued Proclamation No. 56 declaring today as the exact day of commemorating the tenth day of Zhul Hijja -- the twelfth month of the Islamic Calendar, as Eidul Adha. Zubiri authored Republic Act No. 9849 which declared Eidul Adha as a regular holiday for Muslim Filipinos. Eidul Adha is one of the 12 regular holidays and 3 special holidays observed nationwide. An estimate of an international Non-Government Organization place the number of Muslim Filipino followers at 10.3 million or 10% of the population. The Philippine Congress has approved laws for the Muslim Filipinos as follows: creation of the Mindanao Development Authority, creation of the National Council for Muslim Filipinos, declaring Eidil Fitr as a holiday, and most recently, the Halal Law.
Press Release

September 12, 2016 Statement of Sen. Leila M. de Lima on the pending execution

of Mary Jane Veloso I read the article from the online edition of Jakarta Post. President Widodo apparently said that our President has given the go ahead to proceed with the execution. This means he will no longer intercede, and that saving Veloso's life is no longer the policy of the President. There is still much confusion in this, as Secretary Yasay has said that as a result of the meeting of the two Presidents, the execution has been held off indefinitely. Malacanang should clarify what actually happened. The fate of Mary Jane and saving her life has been important to us in the Aquino Administration, especially the DOJ which provided the Indonesian govt the legal basis to hold the execution in abeyance using the mutual cooperation treaty between the Philippines and Indonesia on the prosecution of crimes. We provided Indonesia legal basis to hold off the execution by catching her recruiters and telling Indonesia we need her to prosecute them. Now it appears all our efforts have come to nothing, because the President is a firm believer in the death penalty and the punishment of those convicted of drug trafficking, and these personal beliefs are now our government's foreign policy insofar as the fate of Veloso is concerned. I am sad and heartbroken that the President will throw away all our efforts to save a life just like that, when it is still in his power to request for the holding off of the execution. But then again, magtataka pa ba tayo, e sa mismong bansa natin, araw-araw mahigit kwarenta katao na ang napapatay nang walang paglilitis. So ano pa nga ba ang kwenta talaga ng buhay ng isa pang Mary Jane Veloso. Mapa-judicial o extra-judicial execution, yan na ang polisiya ng gobyerno. Nakakalungkot. Nakakaiyak. Nakakahindik.
Press Release

September 13, 2016 GOV'T MUST FIND WAYS TO PROTECT PINOYS ABROAD WHILE WAGING ITS OWN WAR ON DRUGS--CHIZ The hands-off stance taken by President Rodrigo Duterte surrounding the case of Mary Jane Veloso is only natural and logical given the hardline policy of his administration against illegal drugs, Senator Chiz Escudero today said. In an interview with Senate reporters, Escudero said the President was put in a difficult situation to weigh in between appealing for clemency for Veloso, who is currently on Indonesia's death row for drug trafficking, during his meeting with Indonesian President Jokowi Widodo in Jakarta last week. "I totally disagree that Mary Jane should be put on death row. In fact, we should do everything we can to stop it, delay it. Remember the Flor Contemplacion case? We unrelentingly appealed for her case. But we are in a unique position now because the administration is batting for death penalty for drugs," the senator said. Although Escudero is against the reimposition of capital punishment in the country, the senator said the Chief Executive could have not done any better given his stand on illegal drugs. "Sana liwanagin nila, dahil ang tingin ko nalagay lamang sa alanganin si Pangulong Duterte na hilingin ang pag-pardon kay Mary Jane dahil siya mismo naniniwala sa pagbabalik ng parusang kamatayan dito sa ating bansa." "Yung sinasabi ni Presidente na 'implement your law, follow your own law' kay President Widodo, that's the very same thing na gusto niyang gawin dito. How can he ask other countries to do otherwise then?" Escudero pointed out. Escudero said the repercussions of Veloso's case on many other Filipinos convicted for drugs in different countries should be carefully studied in view of the new administration's thrust in combatting illegal drugs. In some cases, Filipinos are convicted abroad due to the absence or lack of legal representation or assistance from the government, he said. "There will be consequences and these have to be carefully studied. Maybe we need to revisit our foreign policies in the way that we can assist and extend more help to many Filipinos languishing in jails in different parts of the world. Whether rightfully or wrongly accused and convicted, we should exhaust all available remedies and steps. It is the government's duty to look after the welfare of its citizens," Escudero added.
Press Release

September 13, 2016 A humanitarian appeal: Huwag nating sukuan si Mary Jane Veloso

Statement of Senator Risa Hontiveros Will the Philippine government cease to pursue efforts to save the life of Mary Jane? An urgent clarification is in order, especially as President Joko Widodo is under the impression that President Duterte gave his approval for Mary Jane's execution. Hindi natin dapat sukuan si Mary Jane. Huwag nating isuko ang buhay ng ating kababayang biktima lamang ng illegal drug trafficking. The government must see that Mary Jane is a victim, not a perpetrator of drug smuggling. She went to Indonesia as a migrant worker, and just like many Filipinos, she hoped that working abroad will improve the life of her family here in the Philippines. Unfortunately, she was set up by an international drug syndicate to carry drugs into Indonesia. Promising them jobs abroad, many poor women are tricked into becoming drug mules. It has been said that women bear the brunt of all wars. The war on drugs is no exception. I urge the Duterte administration to defend Mary Jane's right to life. The government must continue to pursue all effective channels to make the reprieve granted by President Widodo to Mary Jane permanent. Let us remember that there are more women that could suffer the same fate. It is the government's duty to prevent this from becoming the "new normal." With all due respect to Indonesia's sovereignty, I join the appeal to save Mary Jane's life. Saving the life of Mary Jane is the right thing to do for both the Philippine and Indonesian governments. If we are to succeed in our campaign against illegal drug trafficking, law enforcement efforts must be complemented by a strong recognition of the vulnerabilities of poor women across the region and the urgent need to protect them.
Press Release

September 13, 2016 Legarda Files Anew Bill to Maximize Benefits of Malunggay Senator Loren Legarda has re-filed a proposed measure that will allow the government to maximize the uses and benefits of malunggay. Senate Bill No. 418, or the proposed Malunggay Develeopment Act, aims to spur the production, processing, marketing and distribution of malunggay in suitable areas around the country in order to acquire its benefits. "Malunggay is one of the most useful tropical trees. The relative ease with which it propagates through both sexual and asexual means and its low demand for soil nutrients and water after being planted makes its production and management easy," said Legarda. Malunggay's young leaves are edible and are commonly cooked and eaten like spinach or used to make soups and salads. They are an exceptionally good source of provitamin A, vitamins B, and C, iron, and the sulphur-containing amino acids methionine and cystine. The dry seeds can be ground to a powder and used for seasoning sauces, while the roots from young plants can be dried and ground for use as a hot seasoning base. "Because of the many uses of malunggay, the government should formulate a sustainable framework for development that will serve as guide to the formulation and implementation of plans, programs and projects for the production, marketing, processing and distribution of malunggay for food, medicinal, health and commercial needs. This is the goal of the proposed measure I filed," said Legarda. Under SBN 418, such framework for development will be formulated by the Department of Agriculture (DA), in consultation with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), farmer's groups, local government units, and the private sector. The DA, in coordination with DENR, and the municipal government concerned, will identify the broad areas suitable for the planting and propagation of malunggay. The bill also seeks to establish a Malunggay Development Fund to provide for the funding requirements for the production, marketing and processing of malunggay.
Press Release

September 13, 2016 MORATORIUM ON FARMLANDS CONVERSION PLUS 'SAGIP SAKA' WAY OUT OF POVERTY FOR FARMERS: PANGILINAN MANILA - President Duterte's moratorium on the conversion of agricultural lands and his condonation of debt penalties on farmers under the agrarian reform program, if coupled with an institutional program that increases farmers' income, would end poverty for Filipino farmers, Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan said Tuesday. "Ang utos ng Pangulo na itigil muna ang conversion ng mga lupang sakahan at ang utos niya na patawarin muna sa mga penalties sa utang ang mga magsasakang di nakabayad sa Land Bank ng kanilang amortization sa ilalim ng land reform program ay makakabuti sa ating mga magsasaka. Kapag sinabayan pa natin ng programang magpapataas ng kita nila, matutulungan nating tuluyang maihango sa kahirapan ang ating mga magsasaka (The President's order to suspend the conversion of farm lands and to condone the penalties on the arrears of farmer-beneficiaries who had fallen behind on their amortization payments to the state-run Land Bank of the Philippines for the land awarded to them under the agrarian reform program are good for our farmers. With a simultaneous implementation of a program that increases farmers' incomes, we will be able to help them out of poverty)," he said. On the recommendation of farmers' rights activist and Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano, President Duterte announced the two agriculture policy directives on Monday. Pangilinan, who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food, said his proposed Sagip Saka or Farmers and Fishers Entrepreneurship and Development Act, which is geared toward increasing the incomes of farmers and fisher folks, will help accomplish this. Sagip Saka requires national and local government agencies to help small farmers and fishers cluster themselves and sell directly to food distributors and consumers. Seeking to bypass middlemen and consolidators, the measure also requires government to directly buy food products from accredited agricultural cooperatives, and grants tax incentives to private entities and corporations that buy directly from farmers and fisher folks' enterprises. "Siguraduhin nating ang pagtaas ng kita ng mga magsasaka ang magiging batayan ng tagumpay ng mga programang sakahan. Pataasin lang natin ang kita ng 67 porsyento ng mga Pilipinong nakaasa sa pagsasaka at bubuti na ang purchasing power nila pati na ang ekonomiya sa kanayunan (Let us ensure that increasing the income of farmers would be the benchmark of agricultural programs. An increase in the income of the 67% relying on agriculture for sustenance would bolster the purchasing power of the marginalized sectors and will jump-start the rural economy)," the senator said. "Pag nangyari ito, di na luho ang pagkain, bababa ang kagutuman, tataas ang productivity, at mapapaaral at mapapagamot na rin ng ating mga magsasaka ang kanilang pamilya -- lahat ng yan makakatulong para tuluyan nang mawala ang kahirapan (Food items that seemed only a luxury before can now be afforded. Hunger will lessen, productivity will increase, and farmers will be able to provide basic non-food needs such as education and health care, all contributing to the collapse of the cycle of poverty)," he added. Pangilinan said farming in the Philippines is normally linked to low productivity and profitability partly because poor people have little access to productive assets and business opportunities. He said small farmers have few non-farm income-generating activities, and lack access to microfinance services and affordable credit. For the 17th Congress, Pangilinan filed pro-farmer and pro-fisher bills aiming to increase incomes in the agriculture sector. Aside from Sagip Saka, he also seeks the creation of a Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and is h earing the Coco Levy Trust Fund measures. His agriculture-centric legislative agenda, which also include the Crop Insurance Act, Imbak Tubig or the Water Impoundment Act, and the Food Bank Act, is intended to solve slow economic growth and underemployment in the rural areas.
Press Release

September 13, 2016 Senate moves to defer SK, bgy polls, to give time for reforms With 20 affirmative votes and two negative votes, senators today approved on third and final reading a bill that seeks to postpone the upcoming October 2016 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections to give way to necessary reforms that will improve the institutions' ability to serve its constituents. Senate Bill No. 1112, primarily sponsored and authored by Senate Committee on Local Government Chairman, Senator Juan Edgardo "Sonny"Angara, and coauthored by Senators Leila de Lima, Alan Peter Cayetano, Loren Legarda, Joel Villanueva, Cynthia Villar and Juan Miguel "Migz" Zubiri, was the first bill to be approved for the 17th Congress. Senate President Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III said the passage of the bill complemented similar moves in the House of Representatives where congressmen have approved their own version of the proposed measure. According to Angara, the measure aims to move the twin elections, originally set on October 31 this year, to the fourth Monday of October, or October 23, 2017. In the meantime, the terms of incumbent and SK officials will be extended "for a year unless they are removed or suspended from office." De Lima, who chairs the Senate electoral reforms committee, said this measure, once enacted into law, will give more time for local officials to implement their projects and programs in their respective localities. "Naniniwala po tayo, walang dapat kilingan ang mga barangay kundi ang mamamayan. Para higit na makapagsilbi sa Pilipino, ang barangay ay hindi dapat maging partisano at maging kasangkapan ng sistemang padrino," she said. Minority Leader Ralph Recto said he voted against the postponement of the SK and barangay polls because the reasons cited by other senators such as lack of funds would still exist by next year. In fact, he said, the government would be spending more than the current P7 billion needed to hold the SK and barangay polls this year. For her part, Senator Rissa Hontiveros said she was against the postponement of the SK poll because it would send "the wrong signal that the government is not sincere in including the youth in governing the country." Reforms, election fatigue "A foremost reason for pushing through with postponement is to allow more time for the full implementation of the SK Reform Act or Republic Act No. 10742, which was a product of the hard work of our colleagues, Senators Bam Aquino, JV Ejercito, and former Senator Bongbong Marcos," Angara explained. He said the government was not ready to implement many of the provisions and programs under the SK Reform Act, which was signed into law in January of this year "to improve the services of the SK and make it more meaningful." "For instance, RA 10742 calls for the creation of a training fund worth P50 million to be used for the mandatory training of SK officials. But these trainings cannot take place this year given the 2016 GAA does not provide any such training funds," he said. Angara also cited the presence of 'election fatigue,' among voters since only four months have passed since the national elections last May: "Consider how, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) only 3.095 million - or less than 50 percent - new voters were registered in time for the SK polls out of the target six million this year." "Postponement only gives the Comelec more time to assure higher voter turnout for these elections, and would-be voters the head space to fully consider who should lead their barangays," he said. Similarly, Villanueva said that a postponement would be particularly beneficial to senior high school and college students who were not able to register for the SK and barangay elections, since classes were already ongoing during the 15-day registration period last month. "In fact, the 15 day period can also be questioned because the Implementing Rules and Regulations SK Reform Law states that there should be a special registration and it should not be less than 1 month including Saturdays and Sundays," he added. No postponement of appointments, projects Pimentel earlier said that a key provision of the bill was that it would allow President Rodrigo Duterte to appoint "new government officials to man sensitive posts that would be temporarily shelved because of an election ban." "The President cannot appoint officials during the election period. Movement of personnel is also prohibited," the Senate Chief pointed out. No interruptions to drug war For his part, Cayetano said the bill would ensure that the ongoing fight against crime and illegal drugs would not be slowed down and affect the anti-illegal drug operations in barangays. Data from the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) show 98% drug affectation rate in the 1,611 barangays in Metro Manila alone. "To hold said elections now would complicate matters concerning the government's crackdown on illegal drugs, especially if barangay officials linked to the said illicit activities will claim political motivations/election-related reasons behind such accusations," Cayetano said. Similarly, Zubiri said allowing the elections to push through this October "will necessarily slow down the current administration's campaign against illegal drugs." "After the initial efforts of the President and national law enforcement agencies -- the Philippine National Police, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and National Bureau of Investigation -- on the war on drugs, this will have to be sustained down to the municipal and barangay levels," he stressed. Funds for youth-oriented projects To address concerns regarding the continuation of development projects for the youth nationwide, the bill includes a provision that demands that the Sangguniang Kabataan Fund will not be used "except for youth development and empowerment programs as provided under RA 10742," According to Senator Risa Hontiveros, who introduced the amendment, this will guarantee the "continued allocation and utilization for barangay youth related development activities," until the next elections of new SK officials. (Jardine Chua)
Mary Jane deserves clemency and our government's full support

in securing it - Recto

Mary Jane Veloso was not a drug lord. She was not even a user. On the contrary, she was used to smuggle drugs without her knowledge.

She was going to Indonesia to work as maid, not knowing that she was already a mule.

If she was a conscious, willing participant in transporting drugs, then any official reluctance in pursuing clemency for her can somewhat be explained, although this can never be justified.

But she was duped by con men, members of an international syndicate, some of whom have been arrested.

If she will be executed, then she will no longer be able to testify against them. The result is that she will be silenced forever while those who have deceived her would remain scot-free.

She is an irreplaceable witness in exposing the inner workings of a drug route. She dies and the truth will be buried with her.

It is for these reasons, to serve the ends of justice and on humanitarian grounds, that she deserves clemency and our President's and government's full and steadfast support in securing it.
FITCHBURG  In front of a small crowd gathered at the Fitchburg Fire Departments Central Station on North Street, firefighters and elected officials took part in a somber remembrance ceremony on Sunday morning, reflecting on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The ceremony is a tradition the Fire Department has adopted to remember when terrorists hijacked four commercial jetliners, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers, one into the Pentagon, and one into a field in Pennsylvania.

Weve done this every year for the last 15 years, Fire Chief Kevin Roy said. For us, its important to remember the 343 New York firefighters who gave their lives that day. They all knew what they were getting into that day; guys changed their shifts, guys who were leaving work jumped on trucks anyway and went and lost their lives that day.

We know what the risk is, but you never expect a tragedy like that. Well remember it always and well be out here every September 11.

The memorial consisted of a pair of prayers, ceremonial ringing of a bell, and lowering the American flag to half-staff. Several city councilors attended the event, with Mayor Stephen DiNatale and state Rep. Stephan Hay speaking briefly.

DiNatale was pleased with the number of children in attendance.

We want to make sure its in peoples minds, DiNatale said. It was nice to see young people here. It happened 15 years ago, and some of the kids here today are just 5 and 6 years old. Its important for them to understand what a tragedy it was, but more importantly, how we came together as a nation.

Fitchburg firefighters Kenneth Hollums and Anthony Liberatore were among those who saw the terrorist attack as a calling to defend the nation.

Its a pretty monumental day for me, being one of the major reasons I joined the military, said Liberatore, whose father, Richard, served for 40 years with the Fitchburg Fire Department. Our country was attacked and countless lives were changed by the actions of a few. I felt that as an American it was my call to duty to serve the country.

Both served in the Marine Corps before returning home to join the Fire Department.

We spent a lot of times overseas and saw some good friends get injured. We never forget why we went over in the first place, Hollums said. Its a good feeling to see people show up for this. After 15 years, a lot of people will kind of let it fade in their minds. I dont think it should.

Scouts pay tribute

In addition to the ceremony put on by the Fire Department, local Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts took time to recognize the significance of the day. Troop 41 took to Monument Park in Fitchburg to display the flag proudly with an honor guard.

We decided to have individual Scouts holding the flag, rotating in and out all morning, Troop 41 Scoutmaster Bill Hodges said. Its a pretty important day, but unfortunately history has a way of sort of whitewashing things. You lose the horror, so to speak.

And though hes too young to remember the attacks on the country, senior troop leader Devon Sauer was more than willing to accept the responsibility of being the first to display the flag on Sunday morning.

I think its really important that people look back at what happened on 9/11, said Sauer, 15. A lot of people died and its one of the most tragic things thats happened in the United States. Its important that we come out here and recognize what happened.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A federal appeals court questioned during a hearing Tuesday whether the city of Berkeley is unduly discouraging customers from buying cell phones by requiring retailers to warn them about the possible radiation effects of carrying switched-on phones close to their bodies.

Berkeleys ordinance, challenged by the cell phone industry, requires dealers to notify customers that the federal government sets radiation standards for the phones and that a user may be exposed to levels above those standards by carrying a cell phone in a pocket or tucked into a bra when the device is connected to a wireless network.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco allowed the law to take effect in January, saying the warning was based on research and guidelines by the Federal Communications Commission.

But at Tuesdays hearing, members of a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco asked the citys attorney whether Berkeley had gone beyond the FCCs findings and sent a message implying that cell phones are dangerous.

If we interpret this (ordinance) as warning that cell phones are unsafe, I dont see that you have defended it, Judge Michelle Friedland told Berkeleys lawyer, Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor.

Judge William Fletcher said that the FCC had included an enormous safety margin in its radiation guidelines but that Berkeley appeared to be requiring retailers to tell their customers that if they absorb radiation above the guideline levels, its unsafe.

Lessig replied that the federal agency had labeled its standards as safety measures and required cell phone manufacturers to include them in their manuals with each sale, the same message that Berkeley is conveying to consumers.

The FCC has never said that cell phones are safe in all uses, Lessig said. We should be allowed to rely on the FCCs judgment.

A lawyer for the industry group CTIA  The Wireless Association argued that the federal agency had indeed concluded that cell phones are safe in all current uses, no matter where theyre held.

Berkeleys message, which retailers are required to pass along, is an alarming point of view ... contrary to science, facts and the FCCs considered findings that cell phones sold in the United States are safe to use, attorney Theodore Olson told the court. He said the ordinance was a burden on speech.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Fletcher suggested that Olson was overstating the evidence. A federal report this year suggests (radio-frequency) radiation is of some concern, he said, and we know there may be cancer from some levels of radiation exposure.

But Olson said Berkeley was sending the same type of message that San Francisco tried to convey to cell phone customers in a now-withdrawn ordinance.

San Francisco would have required retailers to tell customers that cell phones could expose them to dangerous, possibly cancer-causing radiation.

The city dropped the ordinance in 2013 after the appeals court, in a suit by the same industry group, blocked its enforcement.

The court did not indicate when it would rule on the Berkeley ordinance.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Self-driving cars arent just going to destroy jobs. Theyre going to create some, too.

For tech-minded types who want to catch that wave nice and early, theres now a 36-week online program to gain a nanodegree  a kind of certification  as a self-driving car engineer.

Otto, the self-driving truck company recently acquired by Uber, has joined forces with distance-learning company Udacity and others to create the program, which promises to fast-track its graduates for jobs with its partners. Other companies involved are Mercedes-Benz, Nvidia and Didi Chuxing. In July, Uber sold its Chinese operations to rival Didi, Chinas leading ride-hailing company. As part of the deal, Didi invested $1 billion in Uber.

We will be the only company in the world with a self-driving car degree, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun said at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference Tuesday.

While in the long term, self-driving cars and trucks are expected to operate autonomously, for now, they require a human in the drivers seat both for regulatory reasons and to take over when the technology runs into trouble. That means a new category of jobs created by the transition to self-driving vehicles.

The curriculum goes far beyond what an Uber driver might need to know to navigate city streets. Topics covered will include deep learning, computer vision, sensor fusion, localization and controllers, Otto and Udacity said. The program will consist of three 12-week semesters, costing $800 each. At the programs end, students will collaborate on code that will be run on an autonomous vehicle owned by Udacity.

Thrun said he hopes that graduates of the course will ultimately design a crowdsourced self-driving car.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Applications are being accepted from through Sept. 27.

Nanodegrees, pioneered by Udacity, AT&T, Salesforce, Autodesk, Hack Reactor and other tech companies, are online certificates in basic programming that students can earn in six to 12 months for relatively low cost, qualifying them for entry-level jobs.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
Having gotten tangled up in a traffic jam of runners in that Sunday mornings Giant Race, I arrived at the San Francisco Fire Departments Sept. 11 Remembrance Ceremony about 10 minutes after it started. Uniformed firefighters, command staff and members of Fire Station 4 were reading the names of New York firefighters who died that day 15 years ago.

Trying to figure out how late I was, I paid attention to the order of those names ... and realized, in the middle of many Kevins, that they were alphabetized by first names rather than last. That seemed odd at first, but when Francee Covington, president of the Fire Commission, spoke, emphasizing the tragedies of their losses for their families and friends, it didnt seem odd at all. These were Roberts and Thomases ... and they wont be forgotten.

At the end of the ceremony, a remnant from the World Trade Center was unveiled. The program identified it as No. F-0005.019; the size of that number led me to expect a metal chunk in a Plexiglas box. I was wrong. It was a box-shaped exterior steel piece about 4 feet long.

Understanding that it was one among thousands, maybe millions, of such pieces brought home the magnitude of the Sept. 11 devastation.

The 80th birthday of Steve Reich: An American Maverick was marked with solemnity and celebration, said Michael Tilson Thomas, on Sunday night, Sept. 11, by the San Francisco Symphony, in a program that began  in a prelude to euphoria that was a gentle but firm percussion massage  with Six Marimbas, and went on to feature the Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird and the maestro sitting side by side with the composer to perform Clapping Music.

Marimba players Katrina Shore and Yi-Hsuan Lin, graduate students at the San Francisco Conservatory, were at a post-performance reception for Reich. Playing the music is mentally demanding, said Shore. Theres no downbeat, but you still have to lock in with each other. You can get messed up really easily. They didnt.

Thomas talked about Reichs role in defining avant-garde music in the second half of the 20th century, which suddenly became this music that gave us back the joy of tonality in an ecstatic way. Best of all, the tribute was in no way a summing up. This man writes great notes, wrote Thomas in the program, in the present tense.

He doesnt walk around showing his new gold medal to everyone, but Daniel Rodriguez, 71-year-old doorman at the Brocklebank on Nob Hill, is feeling pretty good about it. Rodriguez is a member of the Ancient Regime, a team of 70- to 74-year-olds who just won the Americas Masters Games basketball tournament in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Rodriguez started playing basketball as a kid in New York, before his family moved to California. At Garfield High School, he was named Los Angeles high school player of the year. He played in Europe for 18 years. At 6 feet 1 inch, Rodriguez says hes a petite kind of guy, always the littlest guy on the court. They used to call me the Road Runner. But now, its not beepbeep. Its like, beep ... beep.

The team that the Ancient Regime beat at the games was from Portland, and included Jim Barnett, TV analyst for the Warriors. Hes a very good player, said Rodriguez, generous in victory.

Im picturing Ruth Braunstein, who died last week, at a crowded Saturday afternoon opening in her SoMa gallery, an unexpectedly light and airy space on a dismal stretch of Clementina Street. Shes not a young woman anymore, but she is dressed with wit and color, and shes racing around the gallery showing off the works.

That gallery closed in 2011, but last January, an exhibition of works by artists Braunstein represented over the years was presented at Fouladi Projects as a tribute to her. By this time, well into her 90s, she was sitting rather than standing, looking quite amazed at the attention, but enjoying a shower of affection from her artists and her art lovers.

She had a distinctive throaty voice, and somehow, even when she was frail, a hearty manner. With some deaths, the phrase too soon has no expiration date.

Open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik

Public Eavesdropping

Im leaving tomorrow for Switzerland with my ex-husband, whos now gay. And a much better traveling companion.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Call it the fad that forgot to fade.

Bubble tea  tea shaken with milk, ice and sugar, often served with large tapioca pearls called boba  first emigrated from Taiwan to the Bay Area in the mid-1990s. At first, you could only find it at tiny shops such as Wonderful Foods in San Franciscos Sunset District, which remains one of the last pioneers standing.

Unless you're going to have some kind of mystical, ancient Chinese power from drinking it, [bubble tea] is not going to go anywhere, " Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999. How wrong he was.

Franchises like Lollicup and Quickly, a.k.a. the McDonalds of Taiwanese snack shops, roared into the market in the 2000s, and Quickly has grown to 69 Northern California locations. Still, the competition is swelling. According to Yelp, there are currently 75 additional bubble tea shops in San Francisco, the East Bay and the Peninsula; 14 of them have opened in the past four months alone.

Some, such as ShareTea and Gongcha, are Taiwanese chains following in the wake of Quickly. Others, like Boba Guys and Purple Kow, are homegrown microchains. Theyre the Burgermeister to Quicklys BK, upscaling bubble tea with premium teas, organic milk and house-made toppings.

High or low end, there are so many drinks, flavors and toppings on their menus that calculating the possible combinations would require a higher degree in mathematics. Intra-boba trends such as crema (a whipped cream topping that is sometimes flavored with cream cheese) and honey-lemon oolong drinks replicate with epidemic speed.

The unifying factor: soda-high levels of sweetness.

 Jonathan Kauffman, jkauffman@sfchronicle.com

Taxonomy

of toppings

1. Boba: These large tapioca pearls, the original bubble tea mix-in, are often soaked in a honey solution after being cooked

2. Egg pudding: a simple custard thickened with gelatin. Some stores make fruit or taro puddings as well.

3. Popping boba: Caviar-like spheres of fruity juices encased in soft gel, a newer arrival from Taiwan. Made with calcium lactate and sodium alginate, popping boba originated as reverse spherification, a culinary technique introduced in 2003 by Ferran and Albert Adria at El Bulli, their avant-garde Spanish resta urant.

4. Grass jelly: a slightly bitter, jiggly jelly made with Mesona chinensis

5.Aloe: cubes of aloe vera; basically the grass jelly of the yoga-mom set.

The gathering place

The moment school lets out every afternoon, Tpumps swarms with junior high and high school students  the 1950s soda fountain reincarnated.

That wasnt the original intention of owner Alex Su, who opened his first of four locations in 2011 intending to sell premium Taiwanese teas. The 40-person lines out the door only appeared when he added tapioca pearls and let customers choose up to three Torani flavored syrups. Now hes expanding to Southern California.

We basically brew the tea in the old-fashioned way and make sure we have the highest-quality tea, he insists.

Tpumps: 1916 Irving St., S.F. Also at 106 S. B St., San Mateo; 19959 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino; 1118 Burlingame Ave., Burlingame.

What theyre drinking

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

The new class

Is third-wave bubble tea here? Witness Plentea, which opened three months ago in San Franciscos Financial District. Owner Henry Tang, who used to manage Ajisen Ramen downtown, says what separates him from the mom-and-pop shops is quality.

I fly to Taiwan, talk to tea farmers and have fresh tea flown here, he says.

His staff turns out milk teas; lemon honey tea with aloe, tea or milk blended with fresh fruit; and green tea macha slush. Tangs own contributions to the genre: salted crema oolong (which costs about $2 more than typical boba) and branded glass bottles. The latter have sold so well hes rationing out 400 a day until replacements appear.

Plentea, 341 Kearny St., S.F. (415) 757-0223.

Its super-easy to open your own shop

Here are the minimum requirements for a bubble tea shop, according to the San Francisco Health Department:

A three-compartment sink, plus sinks for hand washing and janitorial work. Restrooms. A commercial stove and exhaust fan, if boiling tea in quantity. A commercial refrigerator for perishable foods.

Many online wholesalers sell starter kits containing teas, flavorings, toppings, glasses and straws for less than $700, and a plastic-glass sealing machine costs $1,400 to $1,700. A coat of pastel paint, a sign with a punny name, and youre in business.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Irving Street west of the busy 19th Avenue thoroughfare in San Francisco has been dense with produce markets, restaurants and snack shops for more than two decades. A fun, eclectic stop for shoppers and diners alike, its still ground zero for the fickle world of Asian snacking, with an ever-changing array of fresh-faced storefronts testing out the next big bite.

Tamara Palmer, food@sfchronicle.com

1. Heartland SF: A thoughtful and highly unusual collection of packaged and frozen organic foods from Taiwan to the Golden State are sold at this serene shop run by the Buddhist Heartland Society of Northern California. Stock up on healthy staples like flax seeds while experimenting with turmeric dumplings, miso cheese and Chinese pancakes with cedar shoots. 2245 Irving St., S.F.; (415) 753-3544.

2. S&B Supermarket: This newcomer offers a mighty array of condiments and frozen foods, including exotic ice cream flavors like ube keso (purple yam and cheese) from Manila. 2203 Irving St., S.F.; (415) 665-5598.

3. Aruba: Taiwanese street food and bento boxes are served out of this sliver of a space that seems to constantly turn over into a new concept. The focus here, unique to the neighborhood, is on broth-marinated combinations of items like pork intestine, chicken gizzard, enoki mushroom and five-spice tofu. 2146 Irving St., S.F.; (415) 988-5525.

4. Que Huong Vietnamese Deli: A longtime area staple for banh mi sandwiches, Que Huong moved into a larger space with room for an eat-in counter in 2013, which brought a broader menu of quick-serve meat and noodle dishes. Its also one of the areas only purveyors of fresh-pressed sugarcane juice. 2138 Irving St., S.F.; (415) 682-3828.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

5. Swich: Customizable ice cream sandwiches from mom and pop owners have been a cool replacement for a corporate frozen yogurt shop. House-baked square cookies in fun flavors like ginger and red velvet and toppings for the sides distinguish it from the pack. Swich recently ventured into hot pressed sandwiches in varieties like Seoul roast beef and herb-rubbed chicken. 2045 Irving St., S.F.; (415) 592-8091.

6. Tpumps: While Wonderful Foods down the street was the first to serve tapioca drinks (now more widely known as boba tea), the new neighborhood champion is Tpumps, as evidenced by the daily lines out the door. Its got honey-soaked boba and several format choices, including smoothies and slushies, but doesnt have Wonderfuls old-school Asian flavors like durian and taro. 1916 Irving St., S.F.; (415) 702-9244. http://tpumps.com
The Boba Guys arent the first to try to make tea the next big thing. But they may have a real shot at it. Through hip branding, quality ingredients, judicious real estate choices and Instagrammable off-the-menu drinks, the Boba Guys  Bin Chen, 33, and Andrew Chau, 34  have created a cult following for their bubble tea.

Now a gleaming flagship in Hayes Valley, complete with a tea bar, shows just how far they want their brand to go: nothing short of the kind of domination boasted by coffee brands like Philz, Peets and even Starbucks.

Boba Guys started in 2011 as a weekend pop-up for Chen and Chau, who at the time were both working at Timbuktu, the San Francisco messenger-bag company. Both have Taiwanese roots (Chen immigrated to the U.S. when he was 2; Chau has family there) and had spent their childhoods drinking boba tea, that blend of tea, milk, sugar and often tapioca balls that originated in Taichung in the mid-1980s.

You may drink boba tea all the time, or like many adults, you might have had it a few times in the late 1990s and found it too sweet for your liking. This is often caused by the syrups and powders that most bubble tea shops use in lieu of fresh ingredients. Chen and Chau saw a window of opportunity to bring the Bay Area fresh, local ethos to the beverage.

Boba is a drink weve always known and loved, but we had a lot of friends who had not tried it at all, or tried it and felt like it was super-sugary and never gave it a second thought, says Chen. This was a way to introduce our friends to it.

At their earliest pop-ups, held at Ken Ken Ramen in the Mission, the pair used premium teas and Straus organic milk, and sourced the best tapioca they could find. They quickly gained a following. More pop-ups in the Bay Area, Nashville and New York came next, followed by a 2013 storefront in the Mission, then stores in S.F.s Union Square and Manhattans Lower East Side.

All of their locations frequently have lines out the door. Many customers opt for the simplest order: the original milk tea, which features freshly made tapioca balls that have a bounce and springiness not often found in boba shops.

But just as many people are lined up for addictive specialty drinks like dirty horchata, which supplements the Mexican cinnamon and rice beverage with a float of Four Barrel espresso, or the strawberry matcha latte, a photogenic drink that layers a vivid strawberry slurry, milk and matcha green tea like core samples of the Earth.

The menu at any Boba Guys is long and customizable, and may be overwhelming to the uninitiated. As a base, do you choose the original milk tea, or Hong Kong-style tea with condensed milk, or Thai iced tea, or even a premium tea like lychee rose or muscat oolong? Do you go with cow milk, Califia almond milk or organic soy milk? Do you want 25 percent sweetness or 75 percent sweetness? And do you want to spike your drink with tapioca balls, egg pudding or freshly made almond or grass jellies?

Some of these decisions can be made at the tea bar at their new flagship store, at Octavia and Haight streets. The other shops are essentially storefronts, but the Hayes Valley location features a larger prep area, high ceilings and ample seating, including a patio. A spiral staircase leads to their office.

Here is enough room to sample your way through a tea flight to find your favorite style, or try experiments like taro smoothies, black sesame lattes and black tea on a nitrogen tap (similar to nitro coffee or stout beer; the nitrogens small bubbles give the drink a lovely creaminess).

The Hayes location is also serving snacks like Hong Kong toast and onigiri. The brioche-like toast, crisp on the outside and fluffy on the interior, is topped with either the traditional condensed milk buttercream or kaya, a coconut jam that the pair fell in love with in Singapore.

Their rice ball flavors change weekly; of the ones that I tried, the simple salmon-shoyu was the most successful, while the too-dry mapo tofu tasted mostly of numbing peppercorns. The onigiri also had the tendency to fall apart after a few bites, but overall, they were satisfying snacks.

Next for Boba Guys is more expansion  new stores in Potrero Hill and New Yorks Chinatown have been announced, and more are on the way. The pair also want to start making their own boba, potentially building a factory and supply chain to benefit other brands as well as themselves. They dream of getting a beer and wine license to start making the kinds of tea cocktails that they drink off the clock. Most importantly, they just want tea to be as popular as coffee.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

In the Western world, its kind of daunting for young people to get into tea, says Chen. When people think tea, they think its slow, but milk tea is the perfect vessel for go, go, go. We always want to push the boundaries.

Anna Roth is a freelance writer in San Francisco. Email: food@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annaroth

Boba Guys

What to order: Classic milk tea with tapioca balls ($4.25), dirty horchata ($4.75), strawberry matcha ($4.75), Hong Kong toast with kaya ($3.50).

Where: Boba Guys, 8 Octavia St., No. 308 (at Haight Street), San Francisco, (415) 967-2622. www.bobaguys.com

When: 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, until 10 p.m. Friday, noon-10 p.m. Saturday, noon-6 p.m. Sunday
Long before he was president, he was a huge draw in the city.

The Chronicles front page from Sept. 13, 1960, covers then-Vice President Richard Nixons campaign stop in San Francisco during his election contest with John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate.

Forty thousand people jammed into Union Square and adjacent streets last night to hear (Nixon) declare that the United States enjoys high prestige in the world despite what Democrats say, the story read. Thunderous applause echoed as Nixon emphasized that the nations military might will be kept strongest in the world whatever the cost or sacrifice if he is elected.

The photo on the front page shows Nixon riding a cable car. Combined with his much-ballyhooed BART ride 12 years later, the future president only needed to jump on a Muni bus and catch a ride on a Golden Gate Ferry to check off all the classic Bay Area transit options.

Nixons 1960 visit came during a break-neck election schedule, and it was taking its toll on the California native.

He had taken off from Baltimore in the fringe of a hurricane, Chronicle columnist Art Hoppe wrote in another front-page piece. He had flown to Indianapolis and Dallas with his injured leg resting on a special hassock. He had been pummeled and pounded and jerked this way and that by well-wishers in the East, the Midwest and the South for 17 hours.

At the foot of the steps another mob of greeters waited, Hoppe continued. Ahead lay a speech from the rostrum at the airport, the long drive to San Francisco, a hectic jaunt on a cable car and a crowd estimated at 40,000 in Union Square.

After all that, however, Nixon lit up. The reception seemed to buoy his spirits and ease his mind. His speech roused the tens of thousands in attendance, and hed keep up the pace in the next two months of campaigning.

See more front pages: Go to SFChronicle.com/covers to search a database of hundreds of Chronicle Covers articles that showcase the newspapers history.

More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.

Chronicle Covers highlights one classic Chronicle newspaper page from our archive for 366 days. Library director Bill Van Niekerken and producers Kimberly Chua, Michelle Devera and Jillian Sullivan contributed to the project. Tim O'Rourke is the executive producer of SFChronicle.com. Email: torourke@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TimothyORourke
Getty Images / /

A gun-wielding man shot by a Santa Clara County sheriffs deputy Monday at a home in Saratoga later died at a South Bay hospital, officials said Tuesday.

Deputies were first called to check on a man at a home on the 1200 block of Titus Avenue around 7:50 p.m., said Lt. James Jensen, a spokesman for the Santa Clara County Sheriffs Office.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Californias wildfire season is off to a ferocious start, fueled by overcrowded forests that are dry from drought and by more than 66 million drought-killed trees. Its important that California consider how we as a state can safely and efficiently deal with disposing the excess wood.

So far this year, California wildfires have burned more than 193,000 acres. We have more than 66 million trees killed from the drought and bark beetle, and experts expect to see more. Our forests are clearly in crisis, and to ensure public health and safety, forest owners are calling for immediate action.

Thats why the governor issued an emergency proclamation last year to help expedite the removal of drought-killed trees in high hazard zones.

Firefighters have been clearing excess fuel in an attempt to protect communities, utilities and roadways, but the severity of the problem is just too much. Instead, highway turnouts are being stacked with wood, and fallen trees are simply left on the forest floor because California lacks the infrastructure to process so much wood waste.

Leaving these trees in the forests can cause wildfires to burn hotter, longer and more unpredictably. While everyone seems to agree that removal is the answer, we need to help support the infrastructure to remove and process it.

Biomass power plants provide an opportunity.

Biomass takes woody byproducts, agricultural waste and urban demolition wood, and burns it in a high-pressure boiler to produce steam that spins a turbine and creates renewable energy. This process reduces pollution by up to 98 percent compared with open burning, and at the same time produces renewable energy to power California homes and businesses.

According to the Biomass Energy Alliance, the biomass power plants consume approximately 4 million bone-dry tons of the states wood waste and turn it into clean, renewable power every year, producing around 532 megawatts of electricity. Thats enough to power 600,000 homes.

The biomass power plant industry is a much-needed solution to the states emergency on dead trees.

Yet, at a time when we need it most, biomass power plants are closing down. Out of the remaining 22 biomass facilities in California, seven have expiring energy price contracts and are likely to close by fall.

They are shutting down because of antiquated contracts with utilities that do not cover their costs. Most were in long-term contracts that are expiring and not being renewed because of the cost to produce biomass energy. Unlike other renewables, biomass is not subsidized. While it certainly provides tremendous opportunity to solve our current situation, without leveling the playing field or providing certainty to the industry, the plants are closing  leaving our forests and communities at increased risk of fire and air pollution and wasting the opportunity to create clean, renewable power.

This faltering industry is in need of help to continue providing environmental and economic benefits to California.

Thankfully, the Legislature recognized the importance of biomass power plants and passed SB859, which would require the utilities to procure 125 megawatts of biomass power. It is awaiting the governors signature.

The bill calls for 80 percent of the plants feedstock to come from byproducts of sustainable forestry management.

This bill recognizes the emergency situation and serves as a step in the right direction. However, we will continue to advocate for the utilization of biomass power, especially in areas that were left out of the bill.

Biomass provides jobs in rural communities, provides renewable energy to help meet the states goal of 50 percent renewables by 2030, will help reduce the risk of wildfire, and will help create healthy more resilient forests. To not support an industry that provides so many solutions to California would be a waste.

David Bischel is president of the California Forestry Association. Paul Wenger is president of the California Farm Bureau Federation.
Bruce M. Alberts, a San Francisco scientist who once signed up too late for a high school biology class and flunked his first try at earning a doctorate in biochemistry, has won the Lasker Award, one of the worlds most prestigious prizes in medical science.

Alberts, 78, was cited Monday for his decades of commitment to improve American science education and his national leadership in science policy  as well as for his fundamental discoveries in DNA replication.

He has championed the notion that science and the institutions that support it provide a crucial foundation for any successful nation, arguing that evidence-based knowledge and value systems are vital for sound decisions. Through leadership, vision, and hard work, he has improved science education for students from K-12 to postdoctoral studies, the Lasker Foundation said in announcing the award for special achievement.

Alberts commitment to science education led him to found a project at UCSF in which medical students, researchers and faculty volunteered to work with San Francisco public school teachers to stimulate interest in science.

Now his Science & Health Education Partnership is a full department at UCSF and linked formally to the San Francisco Unified School District.

Alberts is now professor emeritus of biochemistry and biophysics at UCSF and travels frequently to Indonesia, where he has served as a special U.S. science envoy. In 2014, President Obama awarded him the National Medal of Science.

Much of his commitment to improving science education, Alberts said, came in the 1980s when his wife, Betty,was on the San Francisco PTA and their three children were in local public schools. Betty told me how little science they were getting and how starved even the best teachers were for equipment to show kids how to do science instead of just memorizing the words, he recalled.

So Alberts had an idea. Here we had all this research equipment stored up in our warehouse that the federal government had paid for but that scientists didnt need anymore because theyd finished their research, he said. We couldnt sell it without getting arrested, but maybe the government wouldnt mind if we transferred it to another government  to our school district. So we did it, and weve been doing it ever since.

The Lasker Awards honorarium is $250,000 and will be presented to Alberts on Sept. 23 in New York.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

David Perlman is the San Francisco Chronicles science editor. Email: dperlman@sfchronicle.com
BEIJING  The Chinese and Russian navies opened eight days of war games in the South China Sea on Monday, in a sign of growing cooperation between their armed forces against the backdrop of regional territorial disputes.

The Joint Sea-2016 maneuvers include ships, submarines, shipborne helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, along with marines and amphibious armored vehicles that will conduct live-firing exercises, according to a Defense Ministry statement.

Tasks will include defensive and rescue drills, antisubmarine exercises and the simulated seizure of an enemy island by marines from both sides.

The exercise is part of an annual program that aims to consolidate and advance the Sino-Russian comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, and deepen friendly and practical cooperation between the two militaries, Chinese navy spokesman Liang Yang was quoted as saying.

It will also improve coordination between the two navies on joint defense operations at sea, Liang said.

Chinas South Sea Fleet will make up the bulk of the forces, along with some elements from the North and East Sea fleets, Liang said.

The ministry didnt say exactly where the drills would be held in the South China Sea, the site of heated territorial disputes between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors. However, the official Xinhua News Agency said the Russian ships arrived early Monday in the Guangdong province port of Zhanjiang and the exercises would be held off the Guangdong coast, apparently in waters that are not in dispute.

Joint Chinese-Russian drills have become increasingly common in recent years  this weeks exercises are the fifth between the two navies since 2012  with the countries joined in their mutual suspicion of the U.S. and its allies.

Russia has been the only major country to speak out on Chinas behalf in its demand that the U.S. and other countries stay out of such arguments. That came as an arbitration panel in The Hague, Netherlands, issued a ruling invalidating Chinas claims to virtually the entire South China Sea, a result that Beijing angrily rejected as null and void.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Following the ruling, China vowed to continue developing man-made islands in the disputed Spratly island group and said it would conduct regular aerial patrols over the strategically vital sea through which passes an estimated $5 trillion in trade each year.

While China says the drills do not envision specific enemies or target any third parties, their location in the South China Sea has drawn criticism.

During a visit to China last month, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. Scott Swift, said there are other places those exercises could have been conducted. He described them as part of a series of actions that are not increasing the stability within the region.

Xinhua rejected such sentiments in a commentary Monday, saying those viewing the exercises as threatening were either ill-informed ... or misled by their prejudice about China and Russia.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A federal appeals court questioned during a hearing Tuesday whether the city of Berkeley is unduly discouraging customers from buying cell phones by requiring retailers to warn them about the possible radiation effects of carrying switched-on phones close to their bodies.

Berkeleys ordinance, challenged by the cell phone industry, requires dealers to notify customers that the federal government sets radiation standards for the phones and that a user may be exposed to levels above those standards by carrying a cell phone in a pocket or tucked into a bra when the device is connected to a wireless network.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco allowed the law to take effect in January, saying the warning was based on research and guidelines by the Federal Communications Commission.

But at Tuesdays hearing, members of a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco asked the citys attorney whether Berkeley had gone beyond the FCCs findings and sent a message implying that cell phones are dangerous.

If we interpret this (ordinance) as warning that cell phones are unsafe, I dont see that you have defended it, Judge Michelle Friedland told Berkeleys lawyer, Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor.

Judge William Fletcher said that the FCC had included an enormous safety margin in its radiation guidelines but that Berkeley appeared to be requiring retailers to tell their customers that if they absorb radiation above the guideline levels, its unsafe.

Lessig replied that the federal agency had labeled its standards as safety measures and required cell phone manufacturers to include them in their manuals with each sale, the same message that Berkeley is conveying to consumers.

The FCC has never said that cell phones are safe in all uses, Lessig said. We should be allowed to rely on the FCCs judgment.

A lawyer for the industry group CTIA  The Wireless Association argued that the federal agency had indeed concluded that cell phones are safe in all current uses, no matter where theyre held.

Berkeleys message, which retailers are required to pass along, is an alarming point of view ... contrary to science, facts and the FCCs considered findings that cell phones sold in the United States are safe to use, attorney Theodore Olson told the court. He said the ordinance was a burden on speech.

Fletcher suggested that Olson was overstating the evidence. A federal report this year suggests (radio-frequency) radiation is of some concern, he said, and we know there may be cancer from some levels of radiation exposure.

But Olson said Berkeley was sending the same type of message that San Francisco tried to convey to cell phone customers in a now-withdrawn ordinance.

San Francisco would have required retailers to tell customers that cell phones could expose them to dangerous, possibly cancer-causing radiation.

The city dropped the ordinance in 2013 after the appeals court, in a suit by the same industry group, blocked its enforcement.

The court did not indicate when it would rule on the Berkeley ordinance.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Proterra, a Burlingame startup that makes a fully electric city bus, has announced a product line that includes a high-end model capable of traveling roughly 350 miles per charge.

The Catalyst E2 series, unveiled Monday during the annual meeting of the American Public Transit Association, would give transit agencies a high-performance electric bus that can service long routes. The association expects the transit industry will need to buy 50,000 buses over the next six years.

Transportation  and the future of mobility  is a hot sector in the Bay Area, with fast-growing companies such as Tesla Motors and Uber Technologies getting enormous attention for their electric cars, ride sharing and forays into autonomous driving.

But public buses are a key part of the nations overtaxed transit infrastructure, particularly for passengers who cant afford to hail a car from their smartphone, much less buy an automobile. And as the nations coal-fired power plants close, transportation is likely to eclipse electricity production as the nations largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Thats already true in states such as California, where transportation accounts for 37 percent of the states emissions.

If you look at which sector is most vulnerable to electrification, a hot spot is transit buses, Ryan Popple, Proterras chief executive officer, said in an interview. Saving money on fuel means that transit agencies can provide more route service.

Proterras Burlingame team of engineers designs the battery system. The buses themselves are manufactured at a facility in South Carolina.

The companys first customer was Foothill Transit, which serves the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California and has committed to having a fully electric bus fleet by 2030. Since then, orders for buses have come in from larger agencies, including King County Metro in Seattle and Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

The most broken part of city infrastructure is how we move goods and people, Popple said.

Dana Hull is a Bloomberg writer. Email: dhull12@bloomberg.net
Google may have to pay publishers for their content. Facebook might, too. WhatsApp could have to follow tougher telecommunications standards. A new set of rules, expected to be unveiled by European Union officials on Wednesday, is likely to put new pressure on U.S. tech companies.

In a decade of sluggish growth, EU lawmakers assert that these proposed changes will bring together the regions national economies into what they are calling a single digital market.

The aim? To give the blocs roughly 500 million consumers unfettered access to services like movie streaming, online shopping and cloud computing, no matter where they live. At the same time, the proposals would force some of the worlds largest tech companies to comply with stringent competition, privacy and copyright rules.

For many executives from U.S. tech companies, such plans  which will still take years to come into effect and which will be subject to intense lobbying  feel like another round of protectionism. The plans to be announced by the Brussels-based European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, include:

 Potentially giving publishers the right to charge Google and other Internet companies, if they so choose, when they use online content from newspapers or magazines on news aggregation websites, like Google News.

 Placing greater scrutiny on Internet phone and messaging services like Facebooks WhatsApp, which may require them to comply with tougher telecommunications standards.

 Giving European consumers the right to watch and buy some premium and online streaming content from across the bloc, allowing people to buy services from the country that offers the lowest price.

 Providing financial incentives to telecom operators like Deutsche Telekom and Orange to invest in the regions mobile and broadband networks, potentially restricting competitors use of these networks.

Europes proposals, which could still be subject to last-minute changes before being published, were confirmed by six people with knowledge of the matter.

European policymakers say they are only following the regions stringent laws aimed at protecting peoples rights in an increasingly digital world. But the European Union has become a thorn in the side of many of the worlds largest companies.

Its a fact of life that most innovative companies come from the West Coast, said Andrej Savin, an Internet governance professor at the Copenhagen Business School. The proposals coming from Brussels definitely have the American companies in mind.
The Food and Drug Administration has a message for doctors: The money youre taking from pharmaceutical companies may be clouding your judgment.

Research sites where Pfizer Inc. had paid doctors at least $25,000 in speaking, consulting or other fees reported sunnier results for its smoking-cessation drug Chantix, the FDA disclosed. At those sites, doctors studying the drugs possible link to suicide risk and other behavior changes reported fewer side effects than at locations where colleagues accepted lower or no payments.

The FDAs findings  part of an agency review of Pfizers proposal to drop the most severe consumer warning on the drugs label  demonstrate the federal governments concern about the influence of consulting and speaking fees on medical decisions. The Affordable Care Act requires drugmakers to report such payments for posting to a public database. The law followed years of efforts by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to make drugmakers publicly disclose financial ties to doctors.

James Rusnak, chief development officer for Pfizers cardiovascular and metabolic unit, said the Chantix study was blinded, meaning that doctors who helped conduct it didnt know whether patients were getting a drug or a placebo. Any doctors who might have downplayed side effects would have done so across the board and thus wouldnt affect the final outcome, he said.

The idea of blinded study is to remove bias, Rusnak said. Even if you have payments and even if those payments bias the investigators in favor of your drug, the investigator has no idea which is your drug. They can only guess.

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, part of a coalition of consumer and other groups that petitioned to keep the warning on Chantix, said the FDA staff report shows that it doesnt trust the integrity of the data.

FDA clearly seems to be saying we cant trust the results of this study  the way it was coded, the way it was analyzed, and by the way theres conflicts of interest, Zuckerman said.

Outside experts are scheduled to meet Wednesday to advise the FDA about the necessity of the warning on Chantix. The pills black box label  the agencys strongest  currently cites risk of serious neuropsychiatric events such as suicidal thoughts or behavior. Chantix generated $671 million in sales last year, according to Pfizer.

In the FDA staff report, the agency offered an unusually pointed assessment of the payments and their relationship to doctors findings in the study. At two sites, the agency reported, doctors got as many as 60 separate honoraria for speaking engagements and consulting fees.

In sites where doctors received $25,000 or more from Pfizer, according to the FDA, only 1.8 percent of patients who had already been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder were reported to have side effects, such as anxiety, agitation, hostility or suicidal thoughts, during the study. At locations where physicians received less money or none at all, 6.4 percent of patients reported such problems.

Anna Edney is a Bloomberg writer. Email: aedney@bloomberg.net
If Dr. Larry Bedard has his way, Marin General Hospital would become the first acute-care medical center in California to allow patients to openly consume medical marijuana in the hospital.

Patients wouldnt be allowed to smoke it, since smoking is prohibited. But Bedard, a retired emergency physician at Marin General who now serves on the Marin Healthcare District board, says he knows of no other legally prescribed drug that cannot openly be used by patients in a hospital.

I know that it happens that its being used in the hospital, but its dont ask, dont tell, Bedard said. Its kind of wink-and-nod medicine.

The doctor is taking steps toward bringing it out into the open by introducing a resolution at Tuesdays board meeting for Marin Healthcare District, which governs Marin General. The resolution, if approved, would direct the hospitals administrative and medical staff to review and research the clinical and legal implications of using medical marijuana in the hospital and report back to the board.

Bedard initially planned to introduce a resolution to allow patient use in the hospital but stepped back from that last month after the Drug Enforcement Agency declined to remove marijuana from its list of dangerous drugs, keeping it in the same category as such drugs as heroin and LSD.

Gabriella Angotti-Jones/The Chronicle

A 2015 federal budget amendment protects patients, doctors and hospitals from prosecution if theyre complying with state cannabis laws. California legalized medical marijuana in 1996. But Bedard opted to slow down in light of the DEA decision and potential concerns by the hospitals administration over jeopardizing its federal Medicare and Medi-Cal contracts.

The real changes to the medical marijuana industry wont happen until Jan. 1, 2018, when the main provisions of the state Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, the package of laws that will regulate virtually every aspect of the cannabis industry, go into effect.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed the long-awaited legislation into law in October in anticipation of the potential legalization of recreational marijuana use. Proposition 64, which would allow adults over the age of 21 to legally use the drug for nonmedical purposes, is on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Bedard supports Prop. 64 and even helped write the rebuttal to the opposition to the measure. But he sees the recreational use and medical use of marijuana as two separate issues. He said he has written only one patient recommendation for medical marijuana but believes the plant has benefits for patients.

I think the fact that 80 percent (of people who have medical cannabis prescriptions) are using a medicinal reason to get the use of this as an intoxicant or social lubricant, that does a disservice to the 20 percent who have chronic pain, wasting syndrome, or other medical reasons, he said.

The California Hospital Association, which opposes Prop. 64, does not keep any information on whether hospitals allow the use of medical marijuana on their campuses, said Jan Emerson-Shea, spokeswoman for the trade group.

State law allows physicians to recommend rather than prescribe medical marijuana, a distinction that could pose legal problems, Emerson said. If a hospital is convicted of a federal drug crime, it can no longer receive payment for treating Medicare or Medi-Cal patients, she said. If a hospital pharmacy loses its DEA registration, the hospital must close  a hospital is not allowed to legally operate without a pharmacy.

The humor in a Marin County hospital becoming the first to allow on-campus marijuana use isnt lost on Bedard. I just can see it if we approve medicinal cannabis were going to be known as Marijuana General Hospital, he quipped. My favorite is Marin Ganja Hospital.

Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @vcolliver
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Self-driving cars arent just going to destroy jobs. Theyre going to create some, too.

For tech-minded types who want to catch that wave nice and early, theres now a 36-week online program to gain a nanodegree  a kind of certification  as a self-driving car engineer.

Otto, the self-driving truck company recently acquired by Uber, has joined forces with distance-learning company Udacity and others to create the program, which promises to fast-track its graduates for jobs with its partners. Other companies involved are Mercedes-Benz, Nvidia and Didi Chuxing. In July, Uber sold its Chinese operations to rival Didi, Chinas leading ride-hailing company. As part of the deal, Didi invested $1 billion in Uber.

We will be the only company in the world with a self-driving car degree, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun said at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference Tuesday.

While in the long term, self-driving cars and trucks are expected to operate autonomously, for now, they require a human in the drivers seat both for regulatory reasons and to take over when the technology runs into trouble. That means a new category of jobs created by the transition to self-driving vehicles.

The curriculum goes far beyond what an Uber driver might need to know to navigate city streets. Topics covered will include deep learning, computer vision, sensor fusion, localization and controllers, Otto and Udacity said. The program will consist of three 12-week semesters, costing $800 each. At the programs end, students will collaborate on code that will be run on an autonomous vehicle owned by Udacity.

Thrun said he hopes that graduates of the course will ultimately design a crowdsourced self-driving car.

Applications are being accepted from through Sept. 27.

Nanodegrees, pioneered by Udacity, AT&T, Salesforce, Autodesk, Hack Reactor and other tech companies, are online certificates in basic programming that students can earn in six to 12 months for relatively low cost, qualifying them for entry-level jobs.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
Two men were injured in a double-shooting Monday in El Sobrante, officials said.

Contra Costa County sheriffs deputies found the two men, ages 19 and 37, suffering from gunshot wounds shortly before 1 p.m. on the 600 block of El Centro Road near Lambert Road, about a block away from a cemetery, according to Jimmy Lee, a sheriffs spokesman.

One of the men was airlifted by helicopter  usually a sign of the severity of injuries  to the John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, while the other was transported by ambulance. The sheriffs office did not release their conditions.

A suspect found at a nearby residence was taken into custody and was being interviewed Monday evening, Lee said.

Anyone with information on the shootings was asked to call (925) 313-2600 or leave a tip at (866) 846-3592.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
CBS Films has announced that actor Jason Clarke, best known for his appearances on "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," will be joining Helen Mirren in the supernatural thriller "Winchester," a fictionalized tale about the origins of the storied Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California.

"Jason Clarke is an extremely talented actor and we look forward to seeing him face off against Dame Helen Mirren as well as any vengeful spirits that might be lurking about the WINCHESTER house," said the film's directors, brothers Michael and Peter Spierig.
Chanticleer

When an ensemble has a performance repertoire as broad as the one boasted by the fine mens chorus Chanticleer, the possibilities for thematic programming are practically endless. Pick a general topic, and you can assemble a cornucopia of music  ancient and modern, popular and classical  that shines a light on the subject.

The group opens its new season with a program dubbed My Secret Heart, which takes in an array of pieces about love and its mysteries. They range from a world premiere by the Finnish composer Jaakko Mantyjarvi to works by the Renaissance masters Tomas Luis de Victoria and Francisco Guerrero, with stops along the way for music by Mikhail Glinka, Augusta Read Thomas, Cole Porter and Noel Coward.
HOMER, Ohio  Nearly a century and a half before Hillary Clinton, a fiery activist from Ohio became the first woman nominated for U.S. president.

Victoria Woodhulls varied and colorful life makes her difficult to pigeonhole. The suffragist, medium, businesswoman, stockbroker and newspaper publisher was Mrs. Satan to some, a visionary champion of womens and childrens rights to others. She rode motorcycles, preached free love and followed the guidance of an ancient Greek orator she believed had presented himself to her as a spirit guide.

The Equal Rights Party nominated Woodhull to face incumbent Republican Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 and Democrat Horace Greeley, nearly 50 years before women had the right to vote. At 34, she was a few months shy of the required age, but most historians still view her nomination and run as the first.

Woodhull lost, of course, but by how much is unclear. The number of votes she received in losing to Grant was never officially recorded, and historians surmise many were discarded. Nonetheless, interest in Woodhulls life is on the rise with Clintons historic candidacy this year as the first female nominee of a major party.

Woodhull is being honored in and around her hometown in Homer, Ohio, with exhibits, lectures and prominent mention in the villages bicentennial parade this Saturday. A documentary, The Coming Woman, is in production. Visits are up at the only U.S. memorial to Woodhull: a clock tower in nearby Granville where her wooden likeness emerges hourly to organ music.

Whats kind of funny about Hillary Clintons campaign bringing everyone out is that this is a very contentious campaign, and it was the very same way in 1872, said Judith Dann, a professor of ancient history at Columbus State Community College who has made a project of Woodhulls life since moving to Homer around 2000.

Dann said a rivalry with Susan B. Anthony and others in the early suffragist movement may have led to Woodhulls exclusion from history books. Her radical beliefs on women and marriage also caused consternation.

Woodhulls party picked Frederick Douglass, the runaway slave turned abolitionist, as her running mate  though Douglass never acknowledged it.

Despite her campaign fading into history, Dann said, she had a lasting impact.

Victorias here, she said. She left her mark. We just dont know to look for it.
The pull of the moon on our oceans may be a key factor in triggering a major quake, according to new findings released in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo looked at records of tidal stress for the fifteen days leading up to quakes in Japan and California and found a tie between the stress of the tides and major ruptures.
Getty Images

VALLEJO (BCN) A woman riding a skateboard is in critical condition after suffering potentially life-threatening injuries in a collision with a vehicle in Vallejo this afternoon, according to police.

The victim, a 32-year-old resident of Vallejo, was struck around 3:23 p.m. on Sonoma Boulevard at the intersection of Georgia Street, police said.
To activate the text-to-speech service, please first agree to the privacy policy below.

Taipei, Sept. 13 (CNA) Foreign Minister David Lee () said Tuesday that he is optimistic about Taiwan's participation in this year's assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), despite the fact that Taiwan has so far not received an invitation to the meeting scheduled to kick off later this month.
RUTH FREMSON/NYT

Is a presidential candidate with Hillary Clintons health problems  pneumonia now, but also for some time deep vein thrombosis and a history of blood clots  healthy enough to be president? Most probably, yes, but her weekend health issues make you wonder if Clintonia is covering up bigger health problems than her team has revealed to date. After all, her campaign initially told the press Clinton left a 9/11 ceremony early because she felt overheated. Only after a video revealed Clintons legs buckling as Secret Service agents had to spirit her into a van, did Camp Clinton release a statement that revealed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia Friday.

You cant watch the video of the back of Clintons head as others tried to prop her up and not feel for the former secretary of state and first lady. Shes always been an all-out campaigner, and even the healthiest politicians get sick. But, as you think about the campaigns attempt to gloss over this incident, you start to wonder what her team is not telling you.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The odds are mounting once again that more destructive earthquakes will hit the bay region within the next 30 years.

Theres now a 72 percent probability  which means the odds are nearly 3 to 1  that one or more quakes with a magnitude of 6.7 or greater will strike along one of the regions faults in the San Andreas Fault system before 2043, the experts have calculated.

The last Big One was the Loma Prieta quake of Oct. 17, 1989. Its magnitude was 6.9, and it killed 63 people and caused $6 billion in widespread damage.

The Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities, a team of experts led by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, released its latest outlook for future earthquakes last week, based on new information from recent quakes, improved mapping and new methods for modeling earthquake behavior.

The report also considers 32 smaller faults, from the Wright Way and Collayami faults near Clear Lake to the Reliz and Monterey Bay-Tularcitos faults between Salinas and Monterey, said David Schwartz, a geophysicist at the survey in Menlo Park and longtime member of the working group. Information on those faults was also used in the new probability estimates, he said.

Only a year ago, the working group estimated that the probability of one or more large quakes striking on any of the Bay Area faults was 63 percent. The new probability calculations put it at 72 percent.

Quake probabilities have risen more sharply for Bay Area faults largely because scientists have developed a new understanding of the stresses building up on one seismic fault that can cause stress on other nearby faults, and that several faults may be capable of rupturing together in large earthquakes, Schwartz said.

The probability of a large quake hitting somewhere along the East Bays Calaveras Fault has risen from 7 percent to 26 percent because of those phenomena, while the probability of a large quake on the Hayward combined with the Rodgers Creek Fault is now estimated at 33 percent, compared with an estimate of 31 percent a year ago.

For the entire length of the San Andreas Fault within the Bay Area, the Working Group now estimates the probability of a 6.7-magnitude quake somewhere on that fault at 22 percent, compared with 21 percent three years ago.

The probability of a large quake on the Green Valley-Concord Fault has risen much higher: from 3 percent a year ago to 16 percent today, the Working Group estimated.

On Wednesday, a quake with a magnitude of 3.5 was reported on the Hayward Fault near Highway 13 in Oakland. The tremor, which the USGS said happened at 12:30 a.m., was widely felt around the area. It occurred at a depth of about 3 miles and appeared to cause no damage.

David Perlman is The San Francisco Chronicles science editor. Email: dperlman@sfchronicle.com
Getty Images/Getty Images/EyeEm

One of the reasons people love Bubble Wrap is the satisfying "POP" it makes when you squeeze a bubble. From a distance, one could almost mistake it for a pistol going off.

In fact, that's what a college student in suburban Philadelphia thought was happening when she heard a burst of popping sounds Monday.
JERUSALEM Former Israeli President Shimon Peres suffered a major stroke on Tuesday and experienced heavy bleeding in the brain, hospital officials said, as doctors raced to stabilize the 93-year-old Nobel laureate.

Dr. Itzik Kreiss, director of the Sheba Medical Center, told reporters outside the hospital near Tel Aviv that Peres experienced lots of bleeding as a result of the stroke. He said that he had undergone a battery of tests and that doctors planned another assessment.

Standing alongside Kreiss, Peres son Chemi said that the situation was not simple but that the family was trying to stay positive.

My father is very special. I am keeping optimistic. Hoping for the best. But these hours are not easy, he said.

Peres office issued a statement early Wednesday describing his condition as serious but stable. It said he remained hospitalized in the intensive care unit.

Earlier, Israeli media reported the bleeding had stopped. Dr. Shlomi Matezsky, one of the doctors treating Peres, told Channel 2 TV that Peres had regained consciousness and was on a respirator.

He is on a respirator and lightly sedated but is conducting actions, what is called in medical terms simple actions and is not currently unconscious, he said.

He said doctors were meeting to decide how to proceed. The way things seem now, we dont think surgery in the next few hours would benefit Mr. Peres condition, he said.

Peres is the elder statesman of Israeli politics and the last surviving link to the countrys founding fathers.

Over a seven-decade career, he held virtually every senior political office in Israel, including three terms as prime minister and stints as foreign and finance minister. He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in reaching an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians.
1 Yemen fighting: Saudi-led air strikes on a water well in northern Yemen have reportedly killed at least 30 people, a U.N. official said Monday, making it one of the deadliest attacks since peace talks collapsed a month ago. The U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, said the casualties in the village of Beit Saadan included first responders and children. The strikes took place Saturday. Yemens conflict pits the internationally recognized government, which is allied with a Saudi-led military coalition, against Shiite Houthi rebels and forces loyal to a former president.

2 Terror claims: A group of six gulf Arab countries expressed deep concern Monday over a bill passed by the U.S. Congress that would allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia over the attacks. The head of the Saudi-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council, Abdullatif al-Zayani, said the legislation runs against the principles of international law and sets a dangerous precedent for foreign relations. The White House has signaled President Obama will veto the proposed law over concerns that it could open the U.S. up to similar lawsuits from other countries. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on the planes that killed nearly 3,000 people were Saudi nationals.
MANILA  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Tuesday he wont allow government forces to conduct joint patrols of disputed waters near the South China Sea with foreign powers, apparently scrapping a deal his predecessor reached with the U.S. military this year.

Duterte also said he was considering acquiring defense equipment from Russia and China. The Philippines has traditionally leaned on the U.S., its longtime treaty ally, and other Western allies for its security needs.

The remarks were the latest from a Philippine president who has had an uneasy relationship with the U.S. but also has tried to mend relations with China strained over South China Sea disputes.

Duterte said he wanted only Philippine territorial waters, up to 12 nautical miles offshore, to be patrolled by Filipino forces, but not other offshore areas that are contested. He added he opposes Filipino forces accompanying foreign powers like the U.S. and China in joint patrols, which could entangle the Philippines in hostilities.

We do not go into a patrol or join any other army from now because I do not want trouble, Duterte said. I do not want to ride gung-ho style there with China or with America. I just want to patrol our territorial waters.

Like other security pronouncements, Duterte did not provide details, but his rejection of joint patrols apparently goes against such an arrangement announced in April by the U.S. and the Philippine defense chiefs.

On Monday, Duterte said he wanted U.S. military forces out of the southern Philippines and blamed America for inflaming local Muslim insurgencies, in his first public statement opposing the presence of American troops in a part of the country.

In an apparent attempt to prevent potential damage in relations, Philippine officials said Duterte wanted the Americans out of the south for fear of their safety.
SEOUL  President Park Geun-hye of South Korea warned on Monday that there would be more provocations from North Korea after the Norths fifth nuclear test last week, adding that they could raise the danger of war on the Korean Peninsula.

Park issued the warning when she met the leaders of opposition political parties to appeal for a united front against what she called the Norths maniacal obsession with building a nuclear arsenal.

Park has become increasingly critical of the North since the test on Friday, when she said that its leader, Kim Jong Un, was guilty of fanatical recklessness and that his mental condition should be considered out of control.

On Monday, she ruled out dialogue with the country, saying its nuclear program was not a bargaining chip but a present and urgent threat to her countrys security. She said such discussions would only buy the North more time to perfect its nuclear weapons. China and Russia and opposition parties in South Korea called for talks with North Korea, insisting that sanctions alone could not end its nuclear ambitions.

We are now facing a very serious security situation that is different from the past, Park told the opposition leaders, according to a statement released by her office. North Korea is claiming that it will carry out more provocations, and that could lead to danger of war on the Korean Peninsula or take various forms such as terrorist attacks and local provocations.

The nuclear test Friday was the most powerful by the North to date, and the government later claimed to have tested a standardized warhead to be fitted on its ballistic missiles. Although that claim cannot be independently verified, the latest test fueled regional fears over a growing nuclear threat. The United States and its allies are urging the U.N. Security Council to pass stronger sanctions against the North.

Earlier Monday, the South Korean Defense Ministry said the North had the ability to conduct another nuclear test anytime at its Punggye-ri test site, where all five underground nuclear tests have occurred. South Korean officials said the site still had a couple of spare tunnels where the North could detonate a nuclear device if it wanted.

The opposition leaders joined Park in condemning the North Korean nuclear test, but they accused her of using the North Korean threat to suppress dissent at home. They told Park that they opposed her decision to deploy a U.S.-backed missile defense system in the South by late next year.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

BEIRUT  A cease-fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia brought calm across much of Syria on Tuesday as residents of the northern city of Aleppo awaited an expected aid shipment.

Insurgent groups have expressed misgivings about the cease-fire, which would allow for strikes against a powerful al Qaeda-linked group that fights alongside the rebels. That group, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly known as the Al-Nusra Front), has condemned the truce, saying the deal is aimed at keeping President Bashar Assad in power.

The extremist group was in talks with other rebel factions for a possible merger, a move that could dash Washington and Moscows hopes of distancing it from the wider insurgency and sabotage the truce.

One of Syrias most powerful factions, Jabhat Fatah al-Shams battlefield alliance with other insurgent groups makes it difficult for the United States to target them without the danger of inflicting harm to other opposition groups.

The denunciation of the deal came as activists and state media said the truce, which took effect at sunset Monday, was holding despite some violations. The Syrian army said it would abide by the cease-fire until midnight Sunday, while maintaining its right to defend itself against any violations.

The Russian military said U.S.-backed rebels have repeatedly violated the cease-fire, with six people killed and 10 wounded in Aleppo since the truce began. It said two Syrian soldiers were killed and another wounded in a separate attack in Aleppo.

Syrian state media reported nearly two dozen violations by insurgents, mostly mortar attacks and sniper shots. It said insurgents attacked power lines in the southern Quneitra region, causing a province-wide blackout.

Turkeys state-run news agency said two Syrians wounded in an attack by government forces were rushed across the border into Turkey for treatment.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura hailed a significant drop in violence over the first 24 hours of the cease-fire, but said no U.N. aid trucks have yet moved across the Turkish border into Syria. He said U.N. officials are awaiting assurances that the drivers will be unhindered and untouched.

He said aid for rebel-held eastern Aleppo is a top priority, and that a key concern about the overall cease-fire is whether sporadic incidents snowball to threaten the deal.

Dozens of residents in the rebel-held part of Aleppo protested against the United Nations and demanded the lifting of the governments siege of the area, which is home to some 250,000 people.

Hunger is better than humiliation, read one banner carried by the protesters.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea  The United States on Tuesday sent two supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test, and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by U.S. and South Korean jets, flew over Osan Air Base, which is 75 miles from the border with North Korea, the worlds most heavily armed border. The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam without landing in South Korea.

Such flyovers are fairly common when animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war because there has never been a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella as a deterrent to North Korea. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.

The B-1B doesnt currently carry nuclear weapons under a disarmament treaty. U.S. Forces Korea wouldnt comment on the bombers capabilities, but South Korean military officials and analysts said that they could carry nuclear weapons if reconfigured.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists, wrote in a blog posted Tuesday that the last B-1B was stripped of all nuclear equipment in 2011 and he does not consider them nuclear capable in their current configuration.

North Korea is keenly aware of the U.S. presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the U.S. nuclear threat. It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as alleged proof of U.S. hostility that it says is the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

Last weeks nuclear test, the Norths fifth, was its most powerful to date. Pyongyangs claim to have used standardized warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who has regularly visited the Norths nuclear facilities, estimates that the North may have enough nuclear fuel for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016 and the ability to add about seven new bombs a year.

Seoul, Washington and their allies have vowed to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.
To activate the text-to-speech service, please first agree to the privacy policy below.

Taipei, Sept. 13 (CNA) Local airlines said Tuesday that some of their flights scheduled to depart from airports in southern Taiwan the next day have been disrupted due to the impact of approaching Typhoon Meranti, which is expected to sweep past southern Taiwan over the coming two days.
lone wolf said: Not really.... Have you seen the lengths to which some folk will go to decorate themselves? Click to expand...

He could wear a hat that covers his forehead, but we could start to wonder after he's been our neighbour for over a year and we'll have never, even on the hottest of days, seen him take his hat off.Also, will he wear a hat on his wedding day? What about when he meets his potential future parents in law? What about when his potential spouse wants to get to know him better?'No, sorry. The hat is a part of me and it ain't comin' off.'That'll get old real fast.
Facebook blasted for censoring iconic 'napalm girl' photoJan M. Olsen, THE ASSOCIATED PRESSFirst posted: Friday, September 09, 2016 02:25 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 09, 2016 06:00 PM EDTCOPENHAGEN  Facebook on Friday reversed its decision to remove postings of an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam, after a Norwegian revolt against the tech giant.Protests in Norway started last month after Facebook deleted the Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut from a Norwegian authors page, saying it violated its rules on nudity.The revolt escalated on Friday when Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg posted the image on her profile and Facebook deleted that too.Initially, it stood by the decision, saying it was difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others. But late Friday it said it would allow sharing of the photo.In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time, Facebook said in a statement. Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed.Politicians of all stripes, journalists and regular Norwegians had backed Solbergs decision to share the image.The prime minister told Norwegian broadcaster NRK she was pleased with Facebooks change of heart and that it shows social media users opinions matter.To speak up and say we want change, it matters and it works. And that makes me happy, she said.The image shows screaming children running from a burning Vietnamese village. The little girl in in the centre of the frame, Kim Phuc, is naked and crying as the napalm melts away layers of her skin.Today, pictures are such an important element in making an impression, that if you edit past events or people, you change history and you change reality, Solberg told the AP earlier Friday, adding it was the first time one of her Facebook posts was deleted.Solberg later reposted the image with a black box covering the girl from the thighs up. She also posted other iconic photos of historic events, such as the man standing in front of a tank in Beijings Tiananmen Square in 1989, with black boxes covering the protagonists.Like its Scandinavian neighbours, Norway takes pride in its freedom of speech. Its also a largely secular nation with relaxed attitudes about nudity.Several members of the Norwegian government followed Solbergs lead and posted the photo on their Facebook pages. One of them, Education Minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen, said it was an iconic photo, part of our history.Many of the posts were deleted but Isaksens was still up Friday afternoon. The photo was also left untouched on a number of Facebook accounts, including the APs.It would be physically impossible for the company to comb through the hundreds of millions of photos posted each day so it relies on user reports and algorithms to weed out pictures that go against its terms of service.Photos are often automatically removed if enough people report them. Facebook usually does not proactively remove photos, with some exceptions, such as child pornography.Because of this, what photos are and arent removed can sometimes be inconsistent, and sometimes leads to Facebook reinstating the photos after removing them.Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published the photo on its front page Friday and also wrote an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in which chief editor Espen Egil Hansen accused the social media giant of abusing its power.Hansen said he was upset, disappointed  well, in fact even afraid  of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society.The uproar also spread outside of Norway, with the head of Denmarks journalism union urging people to share Hansens open letter. Germanys Justice Minister Heiko Maas, who has previously clashed with Facebook over its failure to remove hate speech deemed illegal in Germany, also weighed in, saying illegal content should vanish from the Internet, not photos that move the whole world.Facebooks statement said it will adjust its review mechanisms to permit sharing of the image going forward.We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe, and we will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward, it said.Paul Colford, AP vice-president and director of media relations, said: The Associated Press is proud of Nick Uts photo and recognizes its historical impact. In addition, we reserve our rights to this powerful image.Before it was published 44 years ago, AP also had a discussion about the image because it violated the news agencys policy on full-frontal nudity.Hal Buell, then APs executive news photo editor in New York, said he received a message from Saigon photo editor Horst Faas saying a controversial picture was coming up.Maybe we discussed it on the desk for 10-15 minutes, said Buell, who is now retired. But there is nothing about this picture that is prurient. How can we not publish this picture? It captures the horrors of war. It captures the terrible situation of innocents caught in the cross-fire of the war.AP published the image and media worldwide used it, though some chose not to, Buell said.
Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading.

Obituaries Newsletter Sign up to get the most recent local obituaries delivered to your inbox. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy
A woman who pleaded guilty to dealing methamphetamine Monday morning in Dodge County District Court had her bond reduced by Judge Geoffrey Hall.

Alicia Marino, 38, pleaded guilty to being in felony possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, a Class II Felony. Under Nebraska state Law, Marino faces a maximum of 50 years in prison. The minimum sentence must simply be less than the maximum, Judge Hall said.

Marino was arrested Aug. 6 after a Dodge County Sheriffs Office deputy was traveling southbound on Highway 77 when he or she noticed a vehicle driving erratically. The vehicle, operated by the defendant, eventually pulled over, came to a halt and shut off its lights.

Contact was made with Marino and she told the deputy that her car overheated. A license check alerted law enforcement that Marino was operating the vehicle during a time of license suspension, and she was subsequently asked if there was anything in the vehicle that the deputy should know about.

Dodge County Attorney Oliver Glass said that the defendant admitted to having methamphetamine in the car and on her person. A search through her vehicle and purse led to the confiscation of 2.5 grams of methamphetamine, a black scale and 90 baggies  used for distribution purposes.

Since her arrest, Marino has been held at Saunders County Jail with bond set at $150,000 with a 10-percent option. During a bond hearing, Marinos defense attorney asked Hall to consider reducing her bond, highlighting that the only previous encounters Marino had with the law was when she was charged twice with having no proof of insurance.

Glass said that he too confirmed that Marino doesnt have a lengthy criminal past, so he didnt have a problem with bond reduction and left it in Halls hands.

Hall asked what Marino would do should she post bond, and she responded that she wanted to spend time with her children, who are 10 years old and 13 years old.

Hall had concern about how Marino would spend her time  it was a red flag when she told the court that she hasnt had a legitimate job in three years.

Ultimately, though, Hall reduced her bond to 50,000 with a 10-percent option.

After having the defendant sign a waiver of extradition, Hall ordered a pre-sentence investigation and scheduled sentencing for 9 a.m. Nov. 7.
A convicted car thief was sentenced to spend a substantial amount of time in the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York Monday morning in Dodge County District Court.

Stephanie Carlin, 25, of Fremont was sentenced by Judge Geoffrey Hall on two separate charges stemming from a car theft that happened in February.

After originally being handed several charges, through a plea agreement between the prosecution and defense, Carlin pleaded no contest in July and was found guilty of theft by receiving and willful reckless driving/flight to avoid arrest, a Class IV felony.

Carlin was sentenced to spend four years in prison and was given credit for serving 207 days in Saunders County Jail. Under the Good Time Law of Nebraska, Carlin could be eligible for release in two years.

Carlin was previously on probation in Dodge County Court for a similar incident, Dodge County Attorney Oliver Glass said.

In addition to the prison sentence, Carlins operators license was suspended for two years and she must complete nine months of post release supervision.

An arrest affidavit shows that Carlin stole a Pontiac Grand Prix from West Point and proceeded to drive it back to Fremont when she was intercepted by law enforcement. An officer attempted to pull Carlin over but she sped off and managed to elude the officer.

Soon after, Carlin was located at a Fremont convenience store and she fled on foot prior to officers arrival.

A subsequent investigation led to the discovery that Carlin originally stole a vehicle from Wisner and swapped it out for a new stolen vehicle  the Grand Prix  in West Point prior to making the trip back to Fremont.

Carlins defense attorney highlighted that Carlin understood she was going to prison  probation was off the table  but that she made significant progress during her time of incarceration. Much of the reason is attributed to her once again being on medication helping her mental state, something she wasnt taking when the theft happened.

She is in a much better position mentally than she was when she first entered jail, her attorney said. She knows that she isnt going to get probation, however, I believe shes made the most of her time while being incarcerated.

Judge Hall encouraged Carlin to make a real effort to change.

Youre only 25 years old, and you can turn your life around, Hall said. But its something you really have to want to do.
Cultivating cultural competence

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships-the ability of all people, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace. Franklin D. Roosevelt

The first step to cultivate human relationships starts in the home. Children tend to exhibit the behaviors and attitudes that they observe. If parents want children to value diversity, its imperative that parents model respect for all people. In addition, parents must make a conscious effort to provide their children with the skills and tools necessary to grow up to become culturally competent adults.

Research Tells Us

Parents are the primary influence on childrens attitudes toward other cultural groups.

Between ages 2 and 5, children become aware of gender, race, ethnicity, and disabilities. They are aware of both the positive and negative bias.

Biases based on gender, race, disability, or social class creates obstacles and a false sense of superiority for children.

Racism attacks the self-esteem of children of color.

Make Diversity Apart Of Your Daily Life

Create an environment that reflects diversity. Include toys, literature, artwork, etc. that represents all groups of people.

Interact with others that are different. Provide opportunities for your child at school, daycare, play-dates, or try attending cultural events together.

Talk about diversity. Listen to and answer your childs questions about what they are experiencing in the world. Talking about their experiences helps them learn from different perspectives.

As your child gets older teach him/her how to challenge stereotypes appropriately and what to do when witnessing a bias.

Most importantly, parents must model acceptance and open-mindedness about diversity.

Make certain that the school your child attends as well as community and religious organizations you belong to promote respect for diversity.

Family Activities

Research your own familys heritage. This will help build a sense of pride and understanding of your cultural heritage in your child.

Discuss issues you may hear. Children are going to hear things about diversity and other issues in the media or in the classroom. This brings up a great opportunity to talk to your child about how to respond in an appropriate manner.

Learn a second language. Children can start learning another language with simple words like numbers, colors, and naming objects around your home. Our blog post Culturally Responsive Teaching And Environments has great tips on how to introduce other languages in the classroom which can also be used in the home! (https://learningchildblog.com/)

Explore foods. The cuisine of other cultures introduces children to something different. Try preparing ethnic recipes together at home or dine at an ethnic restaurant.

Attend cultural events. Museums, concerts, plays, dances, and attending festivals or celebrations of other cultures are great ways to introduce children to diversity. If youre a bit apprehensive about attending a cultural celebration/festival for the first time, you might want invite a friend from that community to accompany you and your family to the event.

Source: The Learning Child Blog, UNL
LINCOLN (AP)  Conservative Republicans who want to unseat Nebraska lawmakers are finding a new ally in Gov. Pete Ricketts, who is actively working to elect like-minded senators who promise to stay true to their word.

In an Associated Press interview, Ricketts said hes endorsing legislative challengers who have pledged to govern as they campaigned and who reflect what he believes are their constituents wishes.

The Republican governor said he wants more conservative lawmakers who will deliver on promises to lower taxes and slow state spending growth. Critics say hes trying to impose his will on the Legislature, which handed him a series of high-profile defeats during his first year in office in 2015.

Some of the candidates backed by Ricketts are challenging incumbents who voted against the governor on major proposals to repeal the death penalty, raise the states gas tax and allow professional and drivers licenses for people brought as youths to the country illegally. Each of the bills passed when Republican and Democratic senators joined forces to override Ricketts veto.

Ricketts said many of the incumbents votes conflict with promises they made as candidates.

As a voter, if you disagree with me and youre up front about it, at least I know that when I vote for you, he said. I think whats frustrating for voters is when a candidate says, Im in favor of this issue, and then they reverse themselves. I want candidates to live up to their campaign promises.

Former Gov. Dave Heineman played a similar role in legislative contests, although prior governors traditionally steered clear. In 2012, he endorsed Republican Bill Kintner over incumbent state Sen. Paul Lambert, whom Heineman had appointed the previous year.

Lambert ran afoul of Heineman when he voted to override the governors veto of a bill that allowed cities to raise their sales tax by a half cent. Heineman said at the time that Lambert, who lost the election, promised during his vetting to oppose sales tax increases.

Ricketts said he may endorse in other legislative races, but declined to offer specifics. So far he has walked with candidates in parades, stood with them at town hall events, spoken at fundraisers and contributed to their campaigns.

Ricketts said he doesnt mind policy disagreements but wants candidates who are willing to take a collaborative approach. He pointed to his work this year with senior lawmakers from both parties to pass a property tax package, school funding reforms and a major roads-funding bill.

All of those things happened because the executive branch and the legislative branch worked together, he said.

Two Republican incumbents facing challengers, Sens. Les Seiler of Hastings and Jerry Johnson of Wahoo, said they were disappointed but not surprised the governor backed their opponents.

Seiler said Ricketts is trying to exert control over a Legislature that acted independently after weighing issues based on their merit. Although he initially supported the death penalty, Seiler said he voted to abolish the punishment after becoming convinced that keeping it was impractical and a waste of tax dollars.

Ricketts wants a bunch of Muppets who will dance to his tune while he pulls the strings, Seiler said.

Seiler also serves as chairman of a legislative oversight committee that is investigating the states corrections department, a part of Ricketts administration. Last week, Ricketts criticized the committee for grilling the departments director for half a day and not taking a more collaborative approach. Seiler said lawmakers have a duty to find out what resources the department needs.

Seilers challenger, retired farmer Steve Halloran, said he shares Ricketts beliefs on the death penalty, taxes and licenses for youths who entered the country illegally. Halloran said he believes Seilers votes run afoul of what most of his constituents want.

My word is my bond, Halloran said. If you cant keep your word, you dont have anything.

Johnson said he has worked with Ricketts on many issues related to agriculture but differed with him on the immigrant licensing bill, the gas tax increase and a right to farm measure opposed by the states leading farm and ranching groups.

His opponent, Brainard farmer Bruce Bostelman, has pitched himself as a consistent conservative who opposes tax increases and public benefits for people in the country illegally.

Johnson said his votes were based on what he considered his districts best interests.

The licensing bill and gas tax increase were supported by agricultural groups, and Johnson said many of his constituents agreed with his position after hearing his rationale. Johnson opted to repeal the death penalty during an early vote in the Legislature, but decided to support it during a later vote after Ricketts asked him for more time to resolve problems acquiring lethal injection drugs.

The votes Ive made represent the interests of my district and agriculture, and its very frustrating that I get this for doing what I think is the right thing, Johnson said. The people the governor endorsed  hes going to own them.

Ricketts endorsements could backfire if the incumbents win re-election, but the governor said hes happy to take the risk.

The candidates Ive backed are tremendous individuals, he said. I have no regrets, no matter how any of the races turn out.
BOSTON: Keeping to its commitment to transform the world of printing, HP Inc on Monday launched 16 new LaserJet and PageWide Platforms based on the powerful A3 multi-function printing (MFPs) technology.

Calling it a "real disruptive play", Enrique Lores, President, Imaging & Printing, HP Inc, said that HP can now deliver the industry's most advanced lineup of A3 MFP and A4 laser print solutions for the office.

"The complexity of traditional copiers makes repair and maintenance too inefficient for our partners and customers," added Lores at HP's Global Partner Conference (GPC) 2016 here.

"By leveraging our superior printing technology, we can change the status quo with next generation A3 multi-function printers that improve the overall customer and partner experience. This is what we mean by reinventing printing," Lores told the audience.

The 16 HP PageWide and LaserJet platforms bring innovation to the copier segment with world class print security across devices, documents and data.

The devices have advanced monitoring based on Cloud and big-data analytics to predict service and supply needs.

"The new HP A3 portfolio and channel programme will empower HP's partners in a region where we are aggressively pursuing growth through innovation and contractual services," noted Richard Bailey, President, Asia Pacific & Japan at HP Inc.

Earlier, the company announced a definitive agreement to acquire Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s printer business in a transaction valued at $1.05 billion, the largest print acquisition in HP's history.

Read Also:

HP Unveils Two New Desktop PC's In India

What is New in Apples Latest iPhone Offering?
GENEVA: India has draged the US to the WTO over America's domestic content requirements and subsidies provided by eight states in the renewable energy sector.



"India has requested consultations with the US under the dispute settlement system regarding alleged domestic content requirements and subsidies provided by eight US states in the renewable energy sector," the WTO said in a statement.



The eight states are - Washington, California, Montana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware and Minnesota.



When contacted, an Indian official said, "Yes we have sought consultations with the US on the matter."



India has stated that the measures are inconsistent with the global trade norms because they provide less favourable treatment to imported products than to like domestic products, and because the subsidies are contingent on the use of domestic over imported goods.



The request for consultations is the first step in a dispute at the WTO under its Dispute Settlement System.



Consultations give the parties an opportunity to discuss the matter and to find a satisfactory solution without proceeding further with litigation.



After 60 days, if consultations fail to resolve the dispute, the complainant may request adjudication by a panel.

Read Also:

India May Become Global Power In Smartphones

Vizag to Host BRICS Urbanisation Forum Meet
BEIJING : India is at an early stage of smartphone boom but the country is "highly likely" to become a "genuine global power in the smartphone world", a Chinese media report said today.



"Worth noting is how essentially different India is from other emerging markets," an article in the state-run Global Times said.



"Factoring in its strength in software, which, coupled with the country's continuing demographic dividend and the Indian government's strong push for developing the nation's manufacturing sector, the country, presently in the very early stage of a smartphone boom, is highly likely to transform into a genuine global power in the smartphone world," it said.



"All these seem to be laying the foundation for India's local brands to possibly become the next Apple, Samsung, or China's ZTE or Huawei, in years to come when eventually India joins the global smartphone supply chain and follows in the footsteps of the US and China to become a new trendsetter in the smartphone arena," said the article based on observations by Chinese smartphone companies executives.



"When that day comes, India's phone brands might even be among the bestsellers in China," it said.



India is one of the few spots still buzzing with high growth in the global smartphone landscape, and has thereby increasingly become a magnet for smartphone makers from its giant northeastern neighbour, China, where its market has now hit a plateau after years of explosive growth, it said.



"With a rising number of Chinese technology brands making inroads into the Indian market, competition in the South Asian marketplace for smartphones is certain to heat up. However, it will not be the case that Chinese tech firms come face to face with India's local phone manufacturers in a cruel price war," it said.



"It is by no means an easy job for Chinese firms to actually make a profit at this stage, although sales may be boosted by the introduction of a few phone models that are capable of hitting it big in the local market," it said.



It advised the Chinese tech brands to forge partnerships with not only Indian firms but also their countrymen to create a bigger pie, thus enabling them to be truly commercially viable.



It's likely that within two years, Chinese phone brands will be among the top three or four phone vendors in the market, with a question mark hanging over how many of the top ones will be Chinese brands, the paper said.



"It would be more reasonable to assume that Apple and Samsung will still be tough rivals for any Chinese brands aiming for the more premium segment of the Indian smartphone market, considering that other companies, particularly Apple have been placing high bets in the Indian market and many of the Indian elite who have studied or worked in the US tend to naturally appreciate the American lifestyle that Apple is seen to embody," it said.



"Also, there is a possibility that China's foray into the Indian market may help catapult India's local smartphone manufacturers to be among global top brands some day," it added.

Read Also:

India to Acquire Guardian Drones from U.S.

E-Waste Can Be Turned Into An Economic Opportunity
VISAKHAPATNAM: The city will host the third BRICS Urbanisation Forum meet from Wednesday with the district administration and police geared up for its smooth conduct.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naiduwill inaugurate the three-day meet where Union MinisterM Venkaiah Naidu and others are likely to be present.

Visakhapatnam Joint Commissioner of Police A S Khan said security has been beefed up for the meet which would be attended by around 70 delegates from Brazil, China, Russia and South Africa and over 230 from India.

Around 2,000 policemen drawn from various battalions, including the elite forces such as Octopus, Greyhounds and AP Special Police, have been deployed to ensure proper security for the event, Khan told reporters yesterday.

For personal security of the delegates, the City Security Wing has been strengthened by drawing personnel from the 13 districts in the state, police said.

The Navy, Coast Guard and Coastal Security Police (CSP) will augment the security arrangements and take care of any threats from the seaside.

Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) K Mahendra Patrudu said around 47 CCTVs, including five on the Beach Road, have been synchronised to the Central Command Control Centre and will be manned round-the-clock during the event by a special team.

The meet will be held at four venues on Beach Road but there will be no traffic restrictions, police said while advising the motorists to give way to VVIP vehicles.

Read Also:

India to Acquire Guardian Drones from U.S.

E-Waste Can Be Turned Into An Economic Opportunity
WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign has raised in August $90 million  of which the real estate tycoon himself contributed more than half, but still remains short of $140 million raised by hisDemocratic rival Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Trump contributed $60 million to his campaign in August, which then turned out to be his best fund-raising month with $90 million as the total amount raised.

However, it is still short of $140 million raised by his rival Hillary Clinton's campaign in the same month.

The fact was acknowledged by the Trump campaign in its latest fund raising statement.

"We have broad support from across America. Hillary Clinton and her super PACs have spent over $130 million on negative political ads, and yet we are virtually tied (or better) in the most recent national polls and leading in many of the important swing states," said Steven Mnuchin, Trump for President Finance chairman.

"Hillary Clinton spent August attending 70 fundraisers; Donald Trump spent August at 34 rallies and speeches," he said.

In a statement, the Trump Campaign said the $90 million haul came mostly from small donors and includes a significant contribution from the 70-year-old  bringing his overall contributions to the campaign to almost $60 million dollars.

"Once again his contributions for the month far surpassed what the FEC legally requires in reimbursements to his related entities such as rent and airfare," it said.

As a result, the campaign and both Joint Fundraising Committees finished the month with very strong cash positions on hand, totaling approximately $97 million.

This is a significant increase from the previous month, it said.

According to the Trump Campaign, in last three months, 2.1 million people from across the nation have donated.

"On August 31, the day Trump met with the President of Mexico and delivered his 10-point plan to reform immigration laws in this country, the campaign raised more than $5 million," it said.

Read Also:

Indian-American Children Recites Poem At White House

Hillary Clinton Raised Record $143 Million In August

Source: PTI
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Staten Islanders gathered at a Huguenot church Monday evening to support police officers and honor those who've lost their lives in service.

More than 50 people gathered at Our Lady Star of the Sea R.C. Church at 7:30 p.m. to show their support for the NYPD with a mass.

"It's nice to see the support from the community and have the church bring us all together," James Cambria, a retired NYPD Sergeant, said. "It's a very tough job, and we pray that God watches over those who watch over us."

Cambria's son, Stephen, is now a police officer in the Sixth Precinct.

"I feel supported," the younger Cambria said. "It's nice to know that the community has my back."

The mass was said by Bishop John O'Hara, who said his father was in law enforcement as an IRS agent in the 1950s.

"There is nothing more inspiring than the men and woman who wear the blue of the New York City Police Department," O'Hara said.

The church was filled with community members from across the borough who came to show their support for the men and women in blue.

In addition to showing support for those currently serving on the NYPD, two posters listed the names of Staten Islanders who had been lost in recent years.

Victoria Alicea, whose husband is on the force, came from New Dorp to show her support.

"I appreciate (the mass) because it supports my husband, who's out there risking his life," Alicea said. "The church is obviously a place where we can send our prayers to God, because he watches over those who protect us."

Many current police officers came to the event with their families, including Joseph Mirabello.

"It's a humbling experience," Mirabello said. "It's nice that the community and the Church would come together like this for us."

Mirabello attended the mass with his wife, father, and mother, Antoinette.

"This is a great bonding experience for the community," Antoinette Mirabello said. "Maybe if we all stuck together there would be less crime."

Several local politicians were also in attendance, including Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, City Councilman Joe Borelli, Assemblyman Ronald Castorina, and Borough President James Oddo.

"I'm always happy to publicly support the NYPD," Borelli said. "I think it's always important to come together and pray for those who protect us."

Oddo said it was important to remember the sacrifices that the men and women of the NYPD make every day.

"Being a police officer in New York City is a dangerous job in the best of times," Oddo said. "It's nearly impossible to do without the public's support, so I'm happy to be here."
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - To reduce mosquito activity and the risk of Zika and West Nile viruses, the New York City Health Department will spray pesticide from trucks in parts of Staten Island on Wednesday, September 14 between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning, weather permitting.

In case of bad weather, application will be delayed until Thursday, September 15 during the same hours.

Several Staten Island and Bronx neighborhoods are being treated with adulticide due to a significant presence of Aedes albopictus, or Asian tiger mosquitoes, in traps set by the Health Department.

No Zika virus has been found in any mosquito in New York City, according to the New York City Health Department. Although Aedes albopictus mosquitoes can carry Zika virus, they are not responsible for the current outbreak in Latin and Central America. Aedes aegypti, a cousin to Aedes albopictus which has never been found in New York City, is responsible for the current outbreak, the city Health Department stated.

As part of its three-year, $21 million plan to protect New Yorkers from Zika, the city Health Department will spray pesticide in areas where Aedes albopictus are found in significant numbers as a precaution.

The neighborhoods to be sprayed have also met sufficient criteria for truck spraying of adulticide - an increase in West Nile virus activity as well as high numbers of Culex mosquitoes that have been known to transmit West Nile virus in New York City since 1999, according to the Health Department. These mosquitoes are not known to transmit Zika virus.

Parts of Bulls Head, Castleton Corners, Graniteville, Mariners Harbor, Port Richmond, and Westerleigh will be sprayed. The sections within these communities to be treated are bordered by Forest Avenue to the north; Manor Road to the east; Staten Island Expressway to the south; and Dr. Martin Luther King Expressway to the west.

Also being sprayed are parts of Arden Heights, Charleston, Greenridge, Rossville, Sandy Ground, and Woodrow. The areas to be sprayed are bordered by Arthur Kill Road and Arthur Kill Bay to the north; Muldoon Avenue, Arthur Kill Road and Woodrow Road to the east; Woodrow Road to the south; and Bloomingdale Road, Arthur Kill Road and Chemical Lane to the West.

The Health Department stated that they will use very low concentrations of DUET and Anvil(r) 10+10 when spraying the areas within Staten Island and the Bronx. When properly used, these products pose no significant risks to human health. The Health Department recommends that people take the following precautions to minimize direct exposure:
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The "Outerbridge Cowboy" and his lawyer say Staten Island stole his property and that they will not stop until it's returned.

Tod L. "Doc" Mishler, 80, of Ulster Park, N.Y., had his two horses, Hope II and Charity, confiscated in June after he rode them across the Outerbridge Crossing.

His new lawyer, Richard A. Luthmann, said the criminal case against Mishler is "baseless" and that they plan to get it thrown out.

"He has a right to travel in America on the highways unmolested by governmental interference, a right that goes back to the Magna Carta," Luthmann said.

Luthmann has previously been in the news for requesting a trial by combat to resolve a 2015 lawsuit against him.

Mishler was charged with animal cruelty in July after a veterinarian examination by the ASPCA determined his horses were dehydrated, had not regularly been to see a veterinarian and had bleeding sores caused by the saddle, accusations he flatly rejects.

"If you don't take care of your horses, you're not going anywhere, so, number one, I take care of my horses" Mishler said. "These people, the animal rights people, did some very good things, but it's gone too far to the extreme where they want to humanize animals."

He refused a deal from District Attorney Michael E. McMahon's office that would have required him to give up his horses for two years and plead guilty to disorderly conduct.

His next date in Criminal Court is Oct. 19., and Luthmann believes the criminal case will be dismissed.

If not, he said he plans to put the district attorney's "values" on trial.

"Does the district attorney value his campaign promise to fund and justify his 'Poochie Unit,' more than he does to keep humans alive?" Luthmann asked.

"The fact of the matter is we have a kid dying every day of heroin, every five days on this island."

The "Poochie Unit" is a reference to the District Attorney's Animal Cruelty Prosecution Unit that was established in April.

McMahon's office declined to comment.

Mishler and his lawyer are also preparing a civil case that they hope will get him a step closer to getting his horses back.

Luthmann said he plans to get a temporary restraint that would prevent the horse from being moved or put up for adoption.

He added that he plans to get visitation for Mishler, who hasn't seen the horses since they were taken from him and did not know how they were being cared for.

"They refuse to let me see them, but I think they're probably in good hands," Mishler said.

They said one of the biggest problems in the case is a lack of understanding about the type of horse Mishler is riding across the country.

Mishler pointed out that most Staten Islanders are only familiar with thoroughbred horses, but that he employs "beasts of burden."

"These aren't show horses, these are go horses," Mishler said.

This is not the first run-in with the law for Mishler. He was arrested in 2011 in Madison, Wis., amid allegations his horses appeared dehydrated and underfed, according to a report by the Wisconsin State Journal.

Those charges were dropped and he was reunited with his horses, the publication reported.

There are also people who have come out against Mishler's cross-country trip on horseback.

A Facebook group called "Stop Doc Mishler" was created in June that says Mishler is neglecting his horses.

However, Mishler and his lawyer said his cross-country mission to draw attention to childhood hunger is more important than the horses. Mishler frequently references scripture, and believes that his work is a mission from God.

"Doc is trying to save the children every day," Luthmann said of his client. "He wants the children to grow up big and strong and not be killed by heroin."

Mishler said he has not even considered the possibility of not getting his horses back, but his lawyer has a plan if that happens.

"We're going to sue to the ends of the Earth," Luthmann said. "Doc Mishler is a man of faith, Staten Island is a community of faith, and the fact that this has happened to this man in this community is an outrage."
South Korea Koreas Tensions

U.S. B-1 bomber, center, flies over Osan Air Base with U.S. jets in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The United States has flown nuclear-capable supersonic bombers over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its fifth nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

(Lee Jin-man)

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea -- The United States on Tuesday sent two supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test, and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by U.S. and South Korean jets, were seen by an Associated Press photographer as they flew over Osan Air Base, which is 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border with North Korea, the world's most heavily armed. The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam without landing in South Korea.

Such flyovers are fairly common when animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war because there has never been a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" as a deterrent to North Korea. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.

The B-1B doesn't currently carry nuclear weapons under a disarmament treaty. U.S. Forces Korea wouldn't comment on the bombers' capabilities, but South Korean military officials and analysts said that they could carry nuclear weapons if reconfigured.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists, wrote in a blog posted Tuesday that the last B-1B was stripped of all nuclear equipment in 2011 and he does not consider them "nuclear capable" in their current configuration.

North Korea is keenly aware of the U.S. presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the U.S. nuclear threat. It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as alleged proof of U.S. hostility that it says is the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

Last week's nuclear test, the North's fifth, was its most powerful to date. Pyongyang's claim to have used "standardized" warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who has regularly visited the North's nuclear facilities, estimates that the North may have enough nuclear fuel for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016 and the ability to add about seven new bombs a year.

"Left unchecked, Pyongyang will likely develop the capability to reach the continental United States with a nuclear tipped missile in a decade or so," Siegfried wrote on the North Korea-focused website 38 North. He said that more troubling was the recent test successes may give Pyongyang a false sense of confidence.

Six-nation diplomatic talks aimed at ridding the North of its bombs have been stalled since the last round of meetings in late 2008. Since then, Pyongyang has ramped up both its ballistic missile and nuclear bomb development, despite an increasing raft of sanctions.

After last week's test, the North's nuclear weapons institute said it would take unspecified measures to further boost its nuclear capability, which analysts said hinted at a possible sixth nuclear test.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Monday that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device at any time at one of its tunnels at its main Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place. Ministry officials refused to say what specific evidence pointed to another possible nuclear test.

Seoul, Washington and their allies have vowed to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.

"The United States and (South Korea) are taking actions every day to strengthen our alliance and respond to North Korea's continued aggressive behavior," Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said in a statement.

Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean policy, met South Korean officials in Seoul on Tuesday and said that Washington is working closely with other nations to work out new, stronger sanctions on North Korea.

Also on Tuesday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye ordered her military to be ready to "finish off" North Korea if it fires a nuclear missile toward South Korea. Following the nuclear test last week, she said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's "mental state is spiraling out of control" and that his government shows "fanatic recklessness."
Castorina Materna composite.jpg

Only registered Republicans can vote in the South Shore Assembly race Tuesday between Assemblyman Ron Castorina Jr. and Janine Materna. (Advance composite photo)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Voters will go to the polls Tuesday throughout New York to cast ballots in primary elections -- here's what you need to know about the races on Staten Island.

New York has a closed primary system. Just like in the April 19 presidential primaries, only those registered as a voter in a specific party may vote in that party's primary elections.

On Staten Island, registered Republicans living in the South Shore's 62

If you're a registered Conservative, there is a primary election somewhere on the Island that you can vote in. In the 61

Registered Democrats have no primaries in which to vote.

If you're unsure whether you can vote, visit the New York City Board of Elections website and type in your address to the poll site locator. It will tell you both where to vote and whether there are any primary contests for your party.

Check back Tuesday night, as the SILive.com will provide live coverage of the Assembly race.
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
Sweden hosted the third Neptune Steps Swim Climb race, in Bergs Slussar, following in the footsteps of Maryhill Locks in Glasgow, Scotland. Athletes competed over a course combining 1000 yards of open water swimming broken up by a series of ropes and ladder climbs. Before dismissing these athletes, consider Swedish Olympic swimmer, Simon Sjodin, only managed to finish in the runner-up position.







An athlete completes one of the 11 climbs on course in the Swedish canal.
 Said there's a "significant reversal" of the Islamic State's strength in Iraq and Syria. "They do not have the same type of control of the territory that they did this time last year," he said. Brennan said the Islamic State is now a "failing organization" that has lost the momentum gained in exploiting lawless areas in Iraq and Syria. "Their narrative has been refuted. Their claims of great victory have been debunked. So that's why I think there are fewer and fewer people now there looking to ISIS as being an organization they want to belong to."
Fairfax Media's digital division, Allure Media, will launch the Australian version of DIY website Kin Community this week, potentially adding hundreds of millions of video views every month.

US-based Kin Community features how-to videos aimed at young women who need more decoration, food and lifestyle ideas. It already has 68 million Twitter followers, 56 million Instagram followers, and 14 million followers on Pinterest.

Sydney locals, Andy and Sonia have had over 23 million views on Kin Community.

The Australian launch is also an opportunity for local 'content creators' to audition, and it "will be aggressive in attracting [Australian] creators in the next few weeks", Kin Community chief executive Michael Wayne told BusinessDay.

"We believe that there is this universal 'maker movement' where people are crafting and they are really thoughtful about what they purchase in terms of look, and they are really comfortable with making things," Mr Wayne said.
The volume of office space pulled out of the market on the east coast increased a staggering 71 per cent in 2015 and is expected to double in 2016.

According to new research from Knight Frank, the total volume of space withdrawn from the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane markets will peak at 378,202 square metres this year.

The cycle is moving so fast in Sydney that an under supply in office space could result. Credit:Louise Kennerley

In Sydney, offices are being withdrawn for several reasons - brand new office projects, residential, and to accommodate the new underground Metro project; whereas in Melbourne and Brisbane, apartments, hotel and student accommodation dominate the new uses.

A further 708,677 square metres of space will be removed from the market in the years to 2019 with another 138,496 square metres potentially going the same way.
Motoring giant Holden has sold its massive Fishermans Bend car manufacturing plant to the Victorian government in a $130 million deal which will see it transformed into an innovation and employment hub.

GM Holden put the 37-hectare site in Port Melbourne on the market last year after it announced the end of its 80-year history of building Australian motor vehicles.

Details about the deal for the brownfield site in Salmon Street have been tightly controlled but BusinessDay has learnt a sale was concluded last week.

The purchase gives the Andrews government control over nearly half the remaining land in the Fishermans Bend industrial area that has not already been rezoned for residential use.
More neutral weather conditions after high level winter rainfall should help maintain record grain production levels, which may help offset low prices some crops, such as wheat, are fetching.

Weather conditions over the Indian Ocean have resulted in a wetter than normal winter, with the outlook for either a La Nina or El Nino weather pattern emerging over summer broadly in balance.

Wheat kernels soon to be harvested Credit:Bloomberg

Bumper wheat crops are forecast for Victoria and especially Western Australia, while other areas such as NSW may see a downgrade in quality in some areas due to crops waterlogged after receiving too much rainfall.

The latest report on the Australian crop from the Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences has forecast a record winter crop of 46.1 million tonnes thanks to significant increases in production expected in both Victoria and WA, driven by wheat, up 16 per cent to 28.1 million tonnes, barley rising 11 per cent to 9.5 million tonnes and canola,where output is seen surging 23 per cent to around 3.6 million tonnes.
At least in theory, it's just as possible that the 45-year-old single guy whose elderly mother has Alzheimer's could ask for several months off as it is that a 35-year-old woman who is pregnant could. That could help change the calculus managers do when thinking about whom to hire or advance, since older workers and men could also use the time.

And if more senior managers take advantage of the policy themselves, it could help them better understand the challenges their employees face when they step out of the workforce for a period of time.

"The thing I think is really different about Deloitte's [policy] is its inclusiveness," said Kenneth Matos, vice president of research for the workplace consultancy Life Meets Work.

The program works like this: Deloitte's US employees have access to 16 weeks of paid "family leave" a year, covering things like elder care responsibilities, caring for a spouse or family member who is ill, or, of course, the birth or adoption of a child. New mothers also can take six to eight weeks of paid short-term disability leave on top of the family leave benefit. Employees have access to the benefit each year - meaning they could be out for a child's birth one year and take a few weeks for an elderly parent's care the following year. And they can use the benefit as they need, working just three or four days a week for several months, taking the full 16 weeks at one time, or taking a few weeks at different points in the year.

A spokesman for Deloitte in Australia said the company currently offered employees 14 weeks of paid parental leave. It will review the US policy but has not yet made a decision about whether it will adopt it in Australia.
As a call to action, "Let's imitate Finland" is unlikely to stir many hearts. Yet, to many Australian educators it's a rallying cry.

To them, Finland is an educational nirvana with high-paid teachers delivering excellent outcomes despite short school hours, the aversion to homework, the absence of external assessments and no annoying school league tables.

If Australia only ditched NAPLAN (our external assessment program), erased the My School website (which contains information about school performance), shortened the school day and forgot about homework (and pay teachers more, of course), we could become an educational powerhouse  just like Finland.

Ironically, Finland owes its status as an educational model to its performance in standardised tests. Specifically, Finland scored highly on tests conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment, widely known as PISA.
Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm thinks we need a "circuit-breaker" from the marriage equality debate, and has the proposed bill to show for it. This "circuit-breaker" is not because he thinks that the debate is an expensive diversion from urgent issues like cuts to frontline services for LGBTI people, but because he wants to preserve the rights of bakers and florists to refuse service to same-sex couples.

I mean, it's not all bad: Leyonhjelm is happy for same-sex marriage to be made law, just as long as Bob the baker doesn't have to put two little plastic grooms on top of his signature chocolate torte. It appears the Liberal Democrats' quest for "greater freedom" now extends to protecting the "right" of people to be virulent homophobes. Won't somebody think of the pastry chefs?

Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm wants ot preserve the rights of bakers to not make cakes for gay weddings. Credit:Hagen Hopkins

In a statement explaining the bill, Leyonhjelm said: "It will be easier for conservative politicians to sell the legalisation of same-sex marriage to their constituents if they can explain that nobody will be forced to do anything." (Never mind those other constituents who will be forced to hear conservatives debate their worth in a publicly funded hate campaign, I guess.)

I'm sure I'm not the only person who assumed that free market capitalists would be all for the wedding industrial complex. The irony of the Lib Dems' determination, under the guise of "personal freedom", to prevent "cake makers" from charging willing brides or husbands-to-be the traditional matrimonial markup ("Pile 350 per cent on the sale price with code-word 'WEDDING' at checkout!") borders on self-parody.
With a plebiscite on steroids we can make pollies listen. Just as exciting, we can cut out of the loop all the middle-men apparatchik hanger-on news-cycle-cowboy in-it-for-the-power, out-of-touch, gimme-a-slice-of-that-taxpayer-funded-expenses-pie suck-ups in Canberra.

So why not just ask voters clearly and directly what they want?

Of course we'd need some ground rules to stop a rich, powerful or loud majority hijacking the plebiscite process at every turn. So we ban paid advertisements by either side on each question. We reject any taxpayer support for the "yes" and "no" campaigns. The law of the land remains so that vilification and bullying is stopped at the gate. National security and final budget decisions remain the preserve of the executive government. An independent commission like the Parliamentary Budget Office prepares a "for" case and an "against" case on each question along with estimates of the financial fallout. And we ensure the elected MPs are bound to follow the plebiscite results. It's a bit like the 205-year-old citizen-initiated referenda in California but with more safeguards.

Australia needs regular, binding plebiscites because our two-party system no longer delivers credible government. Politicians claim they have a mandate for some things yet ditch other elements of their platform when it suits them, not us.

The poor voter cannot be expected to disentangle the myriad issues in an election campaign either. We might support five policies of one side but oppose five others. I like Labor's policy to ban foreign donations, for instance, but hate its protection of crooked unions. I like the Liberals' focus on small business growth but would happily pay higher taxes to get better social services.

We are forced to take a gamble on one side or the other, when most of us are far more complex than that.

And if we choose a minor party or independent, we know they will have very little chance of transforming their agenda into legislation.
The Turnbull government's plans to hold a plebiscite on same-sex marriage have fallen into deeper disarray, with a Liberal senator revealing he will refuse to vote with his party on the issue.

West Australian senator Dean Smith, the Liberal Party's first openly gay federal politician, said the idea of a plebiscite was so "abhorrent" to him that he could not support it.

Senator Smith told Fairfax Media he would either cross the floor or abstain from any vote when the plebiscite-enabling legislation arrives in the Senate.

Cabinet's decision on Monday night to allocate $15 million in taxpayer funding for the yes and no cases had only added "insult to injury", he said.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will be forced to wait another three weeks to find out if Labor will reverse course and vote for a $170 million national plebiscite on gay marriage to be held on February 11, 2017.

But Bill Shorten's opposition is all but certain to join the Greens and members of the crossbench and block the national poll, leaving it dead in the water and the government's plans to legislate same-sex marriage laws in chaos.

It provided for a day of a drama and fiery debate in Question Time, after details of the plebiscite were leaked to Fairfax Media on Monday evening and throughout Tuesday. Mr Turnbull accused the Opposition Leader of "shabby politics", while Attorney-General George Brandis said Mr Shorten was "playing politics with the lives of gay Australians".

If the plebiscite is held, Australians will be asked: "Should the law be changed to allow same sex couples to marry?"
Three girls in eastern India are being treated in hospital after acid was thrown on them, said police on Monday, just days after a court handed down a landmark death sentence verdict to a man found guilty of murdering a nurse in an acid attack.

The teenage girls were attacked late on Sunday in West Bengal's Bankura district as they were returning home from tuition classes and were waiting near a bus stand.

Acid attack survivors protest against the lack of any safeguards and laws seeking their active rehabilitation in New Delhi, 2014. Credit:Hindustan Times

Deputy Commissioner of Police Satyabrata Bhoi said they were taken by three men in a car where they were attacked and acid thrown on them. The three men have been arrested, he said, adding that the victims were now recovering in hospital.

"A Bolero vehicle and three persons have been arrested -- a driver and two other persons -- and cases have been registered against them," Bhoi told Asian News International (ANI).
Obama's steps into the campaign spotlight underscore her transformation from a once-reluctant political spouse into a confident public figure, a role she says she has embraced more fully during President Barack Obama's second term.

At an event in northern Virginia on Friday, Obama will urge voters to register before the state's October 17 deadline, the first of what aides say will be a series of appearances in the coming weeks in support of Clinton.

But this week, Obama will wade into the campaign fray on behalf of Hillary Clinton, putting her broad popularity and reputation for authenticity to work for a candidate who has suffered from a lack of both.

Michelle Obama has bridled for years at the confines of life in the White House and has tried to steer clear of the partisan messiness that has consumed her husband and is fuelling this year's bare-knuckled presidential contest.

Michelle Obama's communications director, Caroline Adler Morales, said the first lady's focus would be on encouraging voters in swing states, particularly young people and African-Americans, to register and vote.

Her message, Morales said, will emphasise "the qualifications and demeanour a president needs, the values we hold dear as Americans and our shared hopes for the future."

Obama previewed her pitch in July during a prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention, in which she delivered a testimonial for Clinton as a leader who could be trusted to carry on Obama's legacy. It was also a quiet but sharp denunciation of Donald Trump, whom she did not name, in which she took aim at his campaign slogan and derided him as a cynic who viewed the world's challenges in terms of 140-character posts on Twitter.

Obama has never had much affection for the campaign trail, and has spoken openly about trying to persuade her husband not to run for president and her struggles adapting to the scrutiny and obligations of political life. She has strictly limited her appearances at political events during the president's time in office, agreeing to them only when she believes her presence could have a major impact on a race.

That, Clinton's advisers say, enhances the first lady's effectiveness as a voice for their candidate. She is widely known and liked by Americans - her approval rating was at 58 per cent in July, according to Gallup - but seen as removed from politics and partisanship.
The other day, outraged about the early release of Brock Turner, who sexually assaulted a woman, I posted on my Facebook page the general outlines of my own rape, which occurred when I was 19 years old and on my first solo trip abroad. And I wondered, in the post, how many of my friends also had been raped.

Several women posted their own stories in the comments; others contacted me privately. Some had been raped more than once, and a few stories were horrifyingly violent, even beyond the violence of the sexual act itself. Mine, thankfully, was not; my rapist used threats rather than actual blows. ("You're having evil thoughts," he said when I struggled, "and I kill evil things.") Just two women said they reported their rapes.

Is victim-blaming really behind the need to keep rape a secret? Credit:Stocksy

Friends who had been spared the experience expressed surprise and dismay over how common and close-to-home the crime was. And more than one person praised me for my "courage" in sharing my story.

I'm still puzzling over this.
A review of 1.6 million students has failed to find any advantages to single-sex education, says the former president of American Psychological Association Diane Halpern.

Professor Halpern, who has spent three decades researching the psychology of single-sex education, will present the keynote address at the Australian Psychological Society Congress in Melbourne on Wednesday.

The former psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College will draw on the work of her American Psychological Association colleague, Janet Hyde, who undertook a meta-analysis of 184 studies of more than 1.6 million students from K-12 schools between 1968 and 2013.

"Proponents of single-sex schools argue that separating boys and girls increases students' achievement and academic interest," Dr Hyde said in the 2014 study. "Our comprehensive analysis of the data shows that these advantages are trivial and, in many cases, non-existent."
Moving into the spotlight.

The referendum vote on whether to restore the death penalty in Nebraska no doubt commands the most attention in November, but the battles in Omaha for a presidential electoral vote and a contested House seat will share some of the spotlight.

Hillary Clinton is vigorously pursuing that 2nd District electoral vote just as President Obama did in 2008 when he won it with an all-out ground game.

Democratic Rep. Brad Ashford is seeking re-election after upsetting incumbent Republican Rep. Lee Terry in 2014, and his Republican opponent, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Bacon, has emerged as an engaging and formidable challenger.

Last week, the savvy national Cook Political Report changed its assessment of that House race in a district that includes heavily Republican precincts in Sarpy County from leans Democrat to toss-up.

Ashford and Bacon have agreed to three debates in October that could be critical, beginning on Oct. 11 with a debate co-sponsored by the Omaha World-Herald and KMTV, which will air at 6 p.m.

The two candidates will meet later that week at the Omaha Press Club.

And the following week theyll debate at the Omaha Community Playhouse.

Showtime!

Rare endorsement

Heres a rare endorsement that doesnt just adhere to partisan political lines.

Sen. Tommy Garrett of Bellevue, an independent-minded member of the Legislature who has acted and spoken boldly on a number of hot-button issues while adhering to basic conservative principles, was endorsed last week by the Libertarian Party of Nebraska.

Garrett is one of the more interesting members of the Legislature, a retired Air Force colonel with a ponytail whose military field was intelligence.

While in the military, he served overseas in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom and he now works as an intelligence consultant.

A pro-life senator and firm supporter of 2nd Amendment rights, he voted to repeal the death penalty in Nebraska and subsequently voted to override Gov. Pete Ricketts veto of that measure.

Last year, Garrett voted to sustain the governors veto of a gas tax hike while voting to override his veto of legislation that ended Nebraskas ban on issuing drivers licenses to the children of illegal immigrants who were brought to this country by their parents, but now have legal presence in the United States.

In 2016, Garrett voted to allow those so-called DACA youth to be eligible for professional and occupational licenses in Nebraska. And he voted to override a gubernatorial veto of that bill.

However, Garrett might best be portrayed by his passionate arguments on the legislative floor in support of his proposal to legalize the use of medical marijuana in Nebraska when its needed to help alleviate suffering.

His devotion to the families who suffer along with a suffering child has been stunning and memorable.

He is a friend to liberty, personal freedoms, fiscal responsibility and all Nebraskans, the Libertarian Party stated in its endorsement of his candidacy for re-election.

Although Nebraskas Legislature is non-partisan, it is composed largely of senators who are registered Republicans. Garrett is one of them.

Theres a single registered independent  Ernie Chambers  and one registered Libertarian, Laura Ebke, who switched her affiliation from Republican in June.

Garrett is opposed in the Sarpy County legislative district by Carol Blood, a member of the Bellevue City Council and a Democrat. Its a rematch from 2014, when Garrett won election to the seat after being appointed to fill a vacancy a year earlier.

The May primary election results in the 3rd District: Garrett, 2,554; Blood, 2,000.

Finishing up

Ben Sasse handed most of the credit to Deb Fischer after the Air Force announced that Offutt Air Force Base is one of five finalists for a new drone mission control unit: Senator Fischer has the respect and admiration of our entire community for her hard work for Offutt on the Armed Services Committee.

Jeff Fortenberry says the key to halting North Koreas nuclear arms race lies with Chinas willingness to meaningfully challenge such rogue behavior.

A new Hillary Clinton TV ad borrows previous comments by Sasse along with those made by several other high-profile Republicans who do not support Donald Trump and then makes the argument that Trump is unfit, dangerous, even for Republicans.
Former headmaster of Knox Grammar Ian Paterson deliberately covered up allegations about child sexual abuse because he placed the reputation of the school ahead of student welfare, a royal commission has found.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has delivered a scathing assessment of Dr Paterson in its report into how Knox Grammar and the Uniting Church handled multiple allegations about teachers over a 40-year period.

Dr Paterson "deliberately withheld information" from a police officer who was investigating sex abuse allegations at the school, the report found.

He also failed to notify parents of the boys who had made allegations and did not inform Knox Grammar's school council of sex abuse claims.
Public servants at Canberra's Shared Services Centre reacted with panic on Monday to news that much of their work is to be taken over by the Finance Department.

Hundreds of workers were left almost completely in the dark on their future after the co-ordinated release of the news by the bosses of the Education, Employment and Finance departments.

Finance Department secretary Jane Halton. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

But Renee Leon, Michele Bruniges and Jane Halton were unable to tell the shared services workers exactly what was going to happen to them.

Do you know more? Send your tips to ps@canberratimes.com.au.
A two-year-old girl has been found dead in a home in Miller in Sydney's south west, NSW Police has confirmed.

The body of the toddler was found shortly after midday on Tuesday after police received a call from a member of the public concerned about the child's welfare.

The spokeswoman said emergency services discovered the child's body.

It's understood the mother and the girl live alone in the house although the woman is in a relationship with a man.
A state government policy to protect Sydney's water supply is "not worth the paper it's written on", environment groups say, after a court upheld an approval granted to a controversial coal mine pumping wastewater into the city's water catchment.

Springvale coal mine, operated by Centennial Coal and located beneath the Newnes State Forest in the Blue Mountains, was granted a 13-year extension last year by the independent Planning Assessment Commission (PAC).

The mine discharges untreated wastewater into the upper Coxs River, which flows through the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and is the second-largest source of water for Sydney's main reservoir at Warragamba Dam.

Under laws introduced in 2009 and incorporated in a statewide planning policy in 2011, developments in the Sydney water catchment cannot be approved unless the consent authority is satisfied they have a "neutral or beneficial" effect on water quality.
A woman has been charged with murder after the body of a two-year-old girl was discovered inside a house in Sydney's south-west, police say.

The body of the toddler was found inside the bathroom of the weatherboard home on Merino Street in Miller just after midday on Tuesday, after a family friend became concerned after she had not seen the child or her mother for several days.

A girl, 2, was found dead in home in Miller. Credit:Nine News Sydney

The friend initially asked a neighbour for a ladder to scale a fence, before she was able to get into the house and discovered the child's body.

Detectives launched an investigation into the girl's death and, on Tuesday evening, went to a hospital in the Blue Mountains where they arrested a 36-year-old woman.
A woman is dead and her husband is fighting for life after a possible murder-suicide attempt in Sydney's south west.

A relative visited the home of the couple on Links Avenue at Milperra, near Liverpool, on Tuesday afternoon after the woman failed to turn up to a belated family celebration.

The relative had not been able to reach the woman all day and raised the alarm.

Police investigate death of woman  #Milperrahttps://t.co/TkRvEqpf0q

 NSW Police (@nswpolice) September 13, 2016
Part of a Brisbane school has been declared off-limits after asbestos was found for the second time.

Work was already due to begin to remove the dangerous substance over the coming school holidays before the second discovery was made on the Holland Park State School oval last week, following heavy rain.

Asbestos has been found again at Holland Park State School. (Stock photo) Credit:Rohan Thomson

Department of Education and Training assistant director-general infrastructure Kevin Mara said the work would include removing the asbestos, reinstating soil and fixing drainage.

He said the school had completed an incident report, closed-off the area and taken other precautionary measures.
The really awesome businesses at the moment are the ones that don't require huge capital investment and instead provide a market through software  think Uber for taxis, AirBnB for hotels.

It's this business model that is responsible for the so-called disruption we're seeing in many markets and I think there's an opportunity for many parts of the economy to be transformed in this way.

Sean Senvirtne, founder of mydeal.com.au: "This is not the time for exit because we don't know what this thing is yet, what we have."

One business based on a similar business model is MyDeal.com.au, an online marketplace with more than 25,000 products from 1000-plus online retailers, everything from children's drones to furniture. The site receives a million visitors a month and is on track to achieve $100 million in sales by the end of 2019 at its current growth rate.

Launched in 2012 by Sean Senvirtne from his Melbourne apartment, the business is a conduit between small businesses that want to sell online  but don't want to have to manage the infrastructure to do this  and the customers that want to buy from them.
"I looked at it, and my partner looked at it, and we held it up to the light and found it was actually paper," he said.

The counterfeit $50 note is thicker than an average bill. Credit:Graeme Powell, ABC

Customer John Fenton told the ABC he withdrew $1,300 in $50 notes in order to pay bills when he noticed the inconsistencies in the notes.

The note appears to be missing the Australian coat of arms typically to the left of the security window, and it is slightly darker than other $50 notes.

Mr Fenton told the ABC the note was noticeably counterfeit.

"It didn't have the $50 embroidery on the window and the stars weren't a match," he said.

"I'm a bit concerned that it has come out of their ATM as it's illegal to give fake notes to anyone."

Mandurah Police warned residents last month about counterfeit $100 notes circulating local businesses.
Beirut: A nationwide ceasefire in Syria brokered by the United States and Russia went into effect on Monday evening, the second attempt this year by Washington and Moscow to halt the five-year-old civil war.

The Syrian army announced the truce at 7pm (2am AEST), the moment it took effect, saying the seven-day "regime of calm" would be applied across Syria. It reserved the right to respond with all forms of firepower to any violation by "armed groups".

Rebel groups fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad issued a joint statement listing deep reservations with the agreement they described as unjust, echoing concerns outlined in a letter to the United States on Sunday. While the statement did not explicitly back the ceasefire, rebel sources said the groups were abiding by it.

Hours before the truce took effect, an emboldened Assad vowed to take back all of Syria. In a gesture loaded with symbolism, state television showed him praying at a mosque and visiting Daraya, a Damascus suburb long held by rebels but recaptured last month after fighters surrendered in the face of a crushing siege.
Balinese prosecutors have called for alleged Australian paedophile Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis, who is accused of sexually abusing 11 children, to serve 16 years behind bars.

Ellis, 69, who was arrested at his rented property in Tabanan, Bali in January, is accused of molesting young girls in Bali after showering them with gifts and bathing them.

Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis flanked by his lawyers Benny Hariyono (left) and Yanuar Nahak (right). Credit:Jewel Topsfield

Prosecutor A. A. Alit Suastika demanded the panel of judges in the Denpasar District Court find Ellis guilty of repeatedly sexually assaulting children and be sentenced to 16 years' jail.

In addition, prosecutors wanted a two billion rupiah fine (about $200,000) or an additional eight months in jail. He said the number of victims was high and Ellis had degraded Indonesian people and damaged the future of Indonesian children.
Jakarta: An investigation into the alleged sex abuse of children at a prestigious Jakarta international school warned some of the suspects claimed to have been tortured by police until they confessed.

A report by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), obtained by Fairfax Media, outlines claims by some of the suspects, who were cleaners at the school, that "they were forced to admit their action because they could not stand being tortured any longer".

Neil Bantleman and Ferdinant Tjiong leaving the police station to be transferred to prison. Credit:Michael Bachelard

"With regards to the allegations of torture, Komnas HAM needs to further investigate to uncover the truth," the report says. "We also urge that the legal process is not carried out in ways that violate the law and human rights."

Five Indonesian cleaners, Canadian teacher Neil Bantleman and Indonesian teaching assistant Ferdinant Tjiong have been jailed for up to eleven years for the alleged sexual abuse of three kindergarten children at the school in 2013 and 2014.
A Muslim woman wearing traditional garments had her clothes set on fire by a man with a lighter as she shopped on a crowded New York City street over the weekend, police said.

The 35-year-old tourist was dressed in a hijab and standing outside a Valentino store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday night when she felt heat on her left side, according to the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

The woman, who has not been identified, saw that her blouse was on fire and patted out the flames. When she looked up, she noticed a man standing with a lighter in his hand, police said.

The man disappeared down a side street, leaving the startled woman with a hole in her blouse the size of a coin and no injuries, NYPD spokesman Christopher Pisano told The Washington Post.
Speaking last week after his release from a forced stay in a Crimean psychiatric hospital, Ilmi Umerov didn't hold back.

"It was what you could call one big torture," the former deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatars' self-governing body told German media.

Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov was freed after an international campaign. Credit:AP

Having made public statements against Moscow's annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, the Russian authorities charged Umerov with "separatism" and forced him into a psychiatric hospital for a month of observation.

Stricken with Parkinson's, diabetes and heart problems, the 59-year-old Umerov found himself in a crumbling, crowded facility, forced to use a filthy public toilet that other patients had turned into a makeshift common room. Thanks to international pressure, Umerov was released after three weeks, with the psychiatrists agreeing he had no mental health issues to speak of.
Bangkok: Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has signalled he wants to move his country away from dependence on the United States, ordering all US special forces out of the southern Philippines.

The order came after Mr Duterte boasted about snubbing his US counterpart Barack Obama at a summit of world leaders in Laos last week, after earlier labelling him the "son of a whore".

The US has long been most important military ally of the Philippines, which Washington ruled from 1898 until 1946 apart from a period of Japanese occupation during World War II.

In January the Philippines Supreme Court upheld the validity of the defence cooperation pact that gives the US military the right to increase troops deployed to the Philippines for war games, as well as bringing equipment into military areas including Subic Bay, the former site of a US naval base.
Barack Obama says Vladimir Putin is Donald Trump's 'role model'

Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Were working to restore it. Please try again later.

Dismiss
PHILIPSBURG:--- Leader of the United St. Maarten (US) party MP Frans Richardson on Monday night urged Prime Minister of St. Maarten William Marlin to finally "put to bed and shut up" Minister of Finance Richard Gibson who, according to Richardson, is "becoming rude and bold in this country."

Richardson tore into Gibson during the USp's public meeting on Monday night, chastising him for not taking care of workers in his places of business for many years, but quick to talk down colleague MP's of the current coalition government. According to Richardson, Gibson recently degraded MP's Silvio Matser and Maurice Lake. "Without those two you could not be a Minister, but you are out here degrading them. Enough is enough with you," Richardson said.

He said Gibson and his habit of "talking down his nose" at people, acts as if he is "Mr. Fix It Alone", failing to remember that it took all 8 of the MP's supporting the current coalition to appoint him as Minister. "And it will take all of us (eg the people) to leave him on the outside.," Richardson said.

"So I am calling on the Prime Minister, it's time to shut him up. It's time to put him to bed, he's old. It's time for him to go home. It's a new dawn and it's time for new leadership," Richardson said.

The war of words between Gibson and the USp began when Gibson directly dismissed USp's plans to implement a new tax model for indirect taxation. Gibson said such a model would never come to pass under "my watch". That statement led to Richardson branding Gibson as out of touch with reality and in contradiction with a decision of the Council of Ministers to explore indirect taxation and an advice by the Social Economic Council to do the same.

Then on Monday when the national Alliance released its manifesto, that party, Gibson's party, also came out for indirect taxation leaving Gibson and his "watch" standing alone.

On the announced Chinese Hotel Development Project, announced by Gibson at a town hall meeting with no additional information, MP Silvio Matser in particular has stressed that the development should not take place until it is clear that local contractors and workers will be involved in the project. This is a sentiment shared by many in the USp, especially the need for due diligence before anything is finalized.

USP Press Release.
Evan McMullin says Trump's Business Depends on Russian Oligarchs

Evan McMullin believes that America should be much more worried about presidential candidate Donald Trump's close ties to Vladimir Putin.

The former CIA agent and former Republican is so concerned about Trump's ties to Putin that he entered the 2016 presidential election as an Independent candidate in July in an eleventh-hour bid to bring some attention to the issue.

In an interview this week with CNN, McMullin asserts that his friends in intelligence have told him that Trump's previous business activities in Russia could have implications that jeopardize his candidacy.

"Donald Trump is dependent on Russian investments from Russian oligarchs associated with Vladimir Putin for his real estate development projects."

The potential for exposure by Putin puts the strong-arm Russian president in a position to coerce Trump into appointing Russia-favoring advisors and, should he win, implementing Russia-favoring policies as president.

"Vladimir Putin is one of the primary sources of instability in this world, and the thought that we would have a Republican nominee so 'in bed' with Putin, I think is so discouraging and really a bad thing for our country," McMullin said.

Since the Commander-In-Chief forum, McMullin has been even more critical about the constant praise Trump offers Putin, pointing out how unfortunate it is that we, as a country, have to debate on whether or not it's a good thing that a major party candidate is so fond of Putin.

"He is opposed to democracy, opposed to freedom, and opposed to our interests," McMullin said of the Russian leader.

McMullin believes that some of the appointments Trump has made to his staff support his claims. Paul Manafort, who was once Trump's campaign manager, was forced to resign from his position after his ties with a former Pro-Russian president of Ukraine became public knowledge.

He says other key members of Trump's staff have financial ties to Russia, including retired General Michael Flynn, who is also employed as an analyst by RT America. RT is a Russian cable network owned by the Russian government.

Trump actually invited Flynn, an employee of a Russian government-owned business, to join him at his intelligence briefing last week.

"An American president should never have these kinds of warm views of a Russian authoritarian like Vladimir Putin," McMullin said.

Evan McMullin: former CIA agent, former Republican, and the fifth U.S. presidential candidate.

McMullin is not the only former intelligence officer to suggest that Trump is being used by Putin.

"In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation," wrote Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell in a New York Times op-ed on August 5.

"He [Trump] may well pose a threat to our national security."

CIA officers are not known for liberal leanings. When men like McMullin and Morell question the reliability and loyalty of a major presidential candidate, it might be time for America to listen.

Evan McMullin is now either on the ballot or approved as a write-in in 20 U.S. States.
Hyundai MOBIS Deploys Qumulo Data-Aware Scale-Out NAS to Manage the Future of Connected Car Development

SEATTLE, WA  (Marketwired)  09/13/16  , the leader in data-aware scale-out NAS, today announced that has chosen for its unparalleled performance, capacity, scalability and manageability.

Hyundai MOBIS is the worlds sixth largest supplier of automotive parts and components, with assisted and autonomous driving at the core of its R&D focus. Helping vehicles to see and react like a human requires analyzing hundreds of terabytes of real-world video data  and storing that massive quantity of video and keeping it indefinitely accessible is a challenge for the Hyundai MOBIS IT team.

We cant store large quantities of video in small pockets of fragmented storage, said John Beck, IT manager for Hyundai MOBIS. Yet, thats what we had with our existing NetApp scale-up storage system, and adding more capacity threatened to only make the situation worse.

Beck and his team began looking for a new storage solution, and recognized that scale-out storage was a better alternative for Hyundai MOBIS, delivering the single-volume architecture and linear scalability lacking in traditional scale-up solutions. Beck initially considered scale-out storage from EMC Isilon, but ultimately decided against it due to its high cost, lack of innovation and poor support.

Beck found another solution in Qumulo, which delivers flexible, fast and highly scalable storage as well as the real-time analytics necessary for visibility into Hyundai MOBIS data usage and storage performance at scale. Additionally, its flash-first hybrid architecture leverages affordable commodity hardware to keep costs for Hyundai MOBIS well below offerings from both Isilon and NetApp.

Becks team selected , deploying a six-node cluster capable of storing more than 600TB of data. According to Beck, even at that scale, the deployment was simple.

With Qumulo, I just connected some cables and I was done, said Beck. I deployed the NetApp storage barely six months earlier, and had a totally different experience. Qumulo is so easy to set up and maintain.

Hyundai MOBIS R&D team is currently storing over 120TB of research video on the Qumulo system, with more data being added all the time. The cluster can ingest that steady stream of machine data without constant management, freeing Becks team to concentrate on other things.

The Qumulo cluster is super simple for us to maintain, said Beck. In fact, other than occasional software updates, we really dont have to spend any time on it at all.

Additionally, the Qumulo Care support team proactively monitors the system and alerts Beck to any potential problems, and has even alerted Beck about possible drive issues before any failure could disrupt operations at Hyundai MOBIS.

The Qumulo support team is amazing in its ability to help us head off issues before they become problems, said Beck. Qumulos proactive monitoring is a pretty cool advantage and the best service experience Ive ever had  it seems like theyre actually watching out for us.

Beck has significant plans for expanding Hyundai MOBIS Qumulo deployment over time. He is extremely impressed with the Qumulo system, and finds that he no longer has to worry about his data.

Managing data with Qumulo is so simple its hard to describe the impact, concluded Beck. Its given us tremendous ROI in terms of time saved and problems eliminated, and having that reliable storage we can finally trust makes us eager to use it more broadly throughout the company.

To read the full Hyundai MOBIS case study, please visit:

chooses data-aware scale-out NAS to develop future of the connected car

Qumulo, headquartered in Seattle, pioneered data-aware scale-out NAS, enabling enterprises to manage and store enormous numbers of digital assets through real-time analytics built directly into the file system. Qumulo Core is a software-only solution designed to leverage the price/performance of commodity hardware coupled with the modern technologies of flash, virtualization and cloud. Qumulo was founded in 2012 by the inventors of scale-out NAS, and has attracted a team of storage innovators from Isilon, Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft. Qumulo has raised $100 million in three rounds of funding from leading investors. For more information, visit

Tanya Espe Carlsson

Kulesa Faul for Qumulo

707.529.6139
AssetWorks Implements an Integrated Workplace Management System (AiM) at the Times Higher Education University Rankings #1 University in the World, The California Institute of Technology

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS  (Marketwired)  09/13/16  At 5:00am on August 29th, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) went live with their implementation of AiM  an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) by AssetWorks.

To optimize the stewardship of their facilities  the team at Caltech selected AiM by AssetWorks as their facility management solution in 2015.

Faced with a facilities management system not configured to support their numerous processes, Caltech facilities employees were forced to use various workarounds to retrofit their system to meet their needs. The outdated system interface was difficult for many employees to navigate, and even with retrofitted systems, their system did not allow facility staff to pull facilites data.

The AssetWorks professional services team worked closely with numerous Caltech process teams to discover their desired outcomes and determine how to best configure AiM to perform those processes. AiM was configured with Caltechs desired performance metrics in mind.

Since implementation:

Steve Hanes, Vice President of Professional Services noted:  Some of Caltechs processes are very innovative. We are proud to support these processes by configuring AiM to perform them correctly.

Over the past year, the teams at AssetWorks and Caltech have worked to implement this robust asset management solution for the facilities at the school. AiM will touch several institutional departments at Caltech, helping over 350 maintenance and operations personnel deliver facilities services and maintenance to 70 main campus buildings comprising 4.2 million gross square feet, including 546,000 gross square feet of residential facilities.

Key members of the implementation include Caltechs Director Maintenance Management and Energy Services Matt Berbee and AssetWorks Senior Project Manager Gil Oswald, who worked tirelessly to get the implementation off the ground.

One of the largest and most successful implementations in the history of the company, this integration is met with much celebration by both the AssetWorks and Caltech teams.

AssetWorkss Vice President of Services, Steve Hanes said: This was a true team effort on our part. Every group within the company, and many members of our staff had a hand in this in one way or another.

We are immensely privileged to be entrusted to provide Caltech with a campus-wide IWMS solution, said Tony DeSilvester, Vice President and General Manager, AssetWorks. Caltech represents leadership worldwide in research and innovation. Were proud to help play a role in preserving Caltechs extensive investments in facilities for both current and future generations of students and researchers.

Founded in 1891, Caltech is a private research university in Pasadena, California, focused on science and engineering. The 125-acre campus is home to 300 tenured faculty, 977 undergraduates, and 1,200 graduate students. The achievements of Caltech faculty, students, and alumni have been recognized with national and international honors including Nobel prizes, National Medals of Science and Technology, and membership in the National Academies. The Institute is home to NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Caltech Seismological Laboratory and a network of astronomical observatories. Caltech was #1 in the UKs Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2013-2014.

AiM from AssetWorks helps organizations reduce costs by promoting better oversight and utilization of facilities and real estate; eliminates management redundancies and proactively manages the workplace; ensures regulatory and fiscal compliance by providing auditable data and complete transparency to enterprise assets; and helps organizations realize their sustainability and business continuity goals.

ABOUT ASSETWORKS:

AssetWorks delivers industry-leading business solutions that help asset- and infrastructure-intensive organizations control capital and operating expenditures, reduce operational complexity, and manage regulatory and policy-driven risk. Leveraging a comprehensive portfolio of software and consulting solutions, we help organizations work more efficiently by improving access to shared asset data, promoting greater transparency across the organization, improving service delivery, maximizing asset availability and uptime and reducing total cost of ownership. Using the latest SaaS and mobile computing technologies, our asset management solutions and domain expertise help organizations eliminate waste, redundancy, and inefficiency. For more information, visit: .

Contacts:

AssetWorks

Kevin Raasch

877-489-7745
By James Q. Lynch, The Gazette

CEDAR RAPIDS  Women who arent running for office this year ought to be thinking about getting on the ballot in 2018, according to Ruth Harkin, who cracked the glass ceiling for women in political office more than 40 years ago.

Its not too soon, the former business executive said Monday evening in Cedar Rapids at Winning Women, a fundraiser for Iowa female Democrats.

Too many women dont run for office because they think the timing isnt right for them, said Harkin, who broke new ground in 1972 when she became the first Iowa woman elected to the office of county attorney.

You never hear a guy say that. Certainly not my husband, said Harkin, whose husband, Tom, served in the U.S. Senate for 30 years before retiring in 2015. Thats the same year the senior vice president at United Technologies Corp. completed a 10-year stint on the Iowa Board of Regents. The right time is when there is an opportunity. Timing and luck can be almost everything in politics. You have to be ready.

Today, Harkin said, there are 21 female county attorneys in the state. There are 65 female legislative candidates running this year and, for the first time, two female candidates  Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senate challenger Patty Judge -- will appear at the top of the Iowa Democratic ticket.

I never thought I would see Democratic women all the way up and down the ticket, but thats the case in about five places in Iowa, Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire told the audience of about 90 people that included several female officeholders and candidates as well as a pair of former lieutenant governors  Jo Ann Zimmerman and Judge.

Women run to determine the future, our future, Harkin said. To have influence, to have power, to be in service in something we care about not only for ourselves, but our children and our grandchildren, to be a role model and to bring a new and valuable perspective.

We cant get these things done if we arent in the room, she said.

And when the opportunity presents itself, its important that women candidates have the support of other Democratic women. McGuire launched Winning Women last year in an effort to promote the contributions and achievements of Iowas female Democrats and inspire more women to run for public office.

When Democratic women elections, Iowa families win, McGuire said. Democratic women are proud to advocate for pro-family policies like equal pay for equal work, raising the minimum wage, paid family leave and education.

Too many women try to do it all on their own, but we are so much stronger together, Harkin said, borrowing a campaign slogan from Clinton, who she has been supporting since the former first lady ran for the U.S. Senate in New York in 2000. Thats especially true once we are in office.

Actress Dana Delaney, best known for her roles in China Beach and Desperate Housewives, praised the Iowa caucuses.

Im so impressed with your system, the whole fact that you, with your caucus in February set history. You set the tone for the rest of the country that Hillary Clinton is going to be our first female president.
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






























DES MOINES  A new Iowa-based poll on the states U.S. Senate race shows Republican incumbent Chuck Grassley with a bigger lead over Democratic challenger Patty Judge than most other recent polls have found.

In a poll published Monday by Simpson College and RABA Research, Grassley leads Judge by 13 percentage points. Fifty percent of likely Iowa voters said they plan to vote for Grassley and 37 percent said they plan to vote for Judge.

Most other polls on the race have showed Grassley leading Judge by roughly 7 to 10 percentage points. Real Clear Politics average of polls on Iowas U.S. Senate race shows Grassley with an average lead of 8.6 percentage points.

Kedron Bardwell, chairman of the Simpson College political science department, said that does not necessarily mean Grassley is expanding his advantage in the race.

I dont know that we can infer yet a widening of the lead, regardless of which poll youre looking at, Bardwell said. You want to look at where the averages are trending and wait and see for a couple more data points. 

For some people on the Republican side, its a small sigh of relief that she doesnt seem to be mounting the kind of challenge that would be realistically enough to knock him out.

Simpson/RABA polled 1,054 likely Iowa voters from Sept. 6-8. The polls margin of error is 3 percentage points.

Grassleys advantage in the poll is built in part on Judges inability to solidify support from within her own party. Ninety percent of Republican voters said they plan to vote for Grassley while 73 percent of Democratic voters said they plan to vote for Judge, 11 percent said they will vote for Grassley and 16 percent said they are not sure.

That gives Judge room to grow her support, Bardwell said.

If Patty Judge can consolidate her party support in the coming weeks, this race will tighten, Bardwell said in a news release accompanying the poll. But knocking off any long-time incumbent senator is a difficult task.

Grassley also holds a strong advantage of 16 percentage points among no-party voters, and he leads among both men, by 19 percentage points, and women, by 8 percentage points.

RABA Research is run by Brad Anderson, a Democrat who ran President Barack Obamas 2012 re-election campaign in Iowa and ran for Iowa secretary of state in 2012, and Tim Albrecht, who was Republican Gov. Terry Branstads communications director. The same Simpson/RABA poll also tested the presidential race in Iowa and showed Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton by 40 percent to 39 percent when third-party candidates Gary Johnson (10 percent) and Jill Stein (3 percent) were included.
Noie: Of course Notre Dame was going to go away from home and do this

Notre Dame has played its best football far from South Bend this season. The Irish did it again Saturday in Central New York.
MASON CITY  Testimony will begin Wednesday morning in a civil trial involving a Mason City nursing home accused of the wrongful death of a resident.

The children of Maria Savas OBrien of Mason City, who lived at Good Shepherd Health Center prior to moving to the Muse-Norris Hospice Inpatient Unit before her death in April 2015 at age 84, filed a negligence lawsuit against the facility in Cerro Gordo County District Court in February 2015.

They amended their lawsuit in August 2015 to include the wrongful death allegation.

Savas OBriens children  Stephanie Prohaski, Anthony Savas, Theodore Savas and Kris Christensen  claim Good Shepherd was negligent in caring for their mother and violated numerous regulations, laws, rights and industry standards.

They claim that as a result of Good Shepherds negligence their mother suffered unnecessarily from treatable health conditions and incurred pain, suffering and injuries eventually leading to her death.

Former Good Shepherd Chief Executive Officer Diane Horning, current CEO Mike Svejda, Ian Stockberger and three nurses identified as Jane Doe 1-3 originally were named as defendants, but Savas OBriens children later dismissed them from the suit.

OBriens children are seeking an unspecified amount in damages.

Jury selection was completed late Tuesday afternoon at the Cerro Gordo County Courthouse. The rest of the trial will take place in the courtroom at the Cerro Gordo County Law Enforcement Center.

Opening statements are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday, with testimony to follow.
MASON CITY  A shoeless Mason City man who allegedly ran from sheriffs deputies was found hiding in reeds on the edge of a small pond on Tuesday, officials say.

Mitch Buesing, 27, crawled out a basement window in a relatives house on Oak Run Drive when a Cerro Gordo County sheriffs deputy tried to serve an arrest warrant late Tuesday morning, said Cerro Gordo County Sheriff Kevin Pals.

Buesing, wanted for two probation violations, ran from the home wearing only black shorts.

An exterminator working at a nearby home told authorities he spotted the shirtless, shoeless man running away from the home, which is in the Mar Oak neighborhood just northeast of the Mason City limits, Pals said.

Deputies and Mason City police searched for Buesing, who was found hiding in shallow water on the edge of a small pond on the south side of the development, Pals said.

He was taken to the Cerro Gordo County Jail and booked for the probation violations and a misdemeanor count of interference with official acts.

This is the second time in less than two weeks Buesing has run from sheriffs deputies, Pals said.

On Sept. 3, Buesing allegedly ran out the back door of a home on Owl Avenue when the resident spotted him inside the residence.

Cerro Gordo County sheriffs deputies, Mason City police and a Worth County sheriffs deputy and police dog searched for Buesing, who was found and arrested on a charge of felony burglary.
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.
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
MASON CITY | A woman accused of stealing nearly $475,000 from a Mason City dental practice has pleaded guilty.

Pamela Harris, longtime office manager for Drs. Blake Barnes and Michael Louscher, pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court to one count of wire fraud.

Officials say Harris stole $474,915 from the practice from July 2005 to May, 2014 by using the dentists' rubber signature stamps without their permission.

Former Mason City dental office manager charged with fraud MASON CITY  A woman who used to work at a Mason City dental office is accused of stealing m

Prosecutors say Harris used checks forged with the stamps to transfer funds to her bank accounts, pay for personal expenses and to transfer money into other accounts.

She also was accused of using the practice's credit cards to pay for personal expenses.

A statement issued Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Cedar Rapids said Harris agreed to make full restitution to the victims.

She's free on bond until her sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled.

Harris faces up to 20 years imprisonment.

 Molly Montag
This still image from a state-run CCTV newscast shows the Long March 2F rocket carrying China's Tiangong-2 space lab rolling out to the launch pad for a mid-September 2016 launch from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

China's Tiangong-2 space laboratory module is seen during prelaunch preparations ahead of its September 2016 launch into orbit. Tiangong-2 is China's second space lab for astronauts. (Image credit: CCTV+ Still

China's next space laboratory  Tiangong-2  is being prepared for a mid-September launch from the country's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, according to state-run media reports.

The launch of the uncrewed space module is set to occur between Sept. 15 and Sept. 20, according to a CCTV report. Tiangong-2 and its Long March 2F rocket have already rolled out from an assembly building along a 1.5-kilometer-long seamless rail track, with the rocket being covered by the tower on the launch site. Video from the CCTV+ shows the rocket and Tiangong-2 on the launchpad.

As China's second orbiting space lab, Tiangong-2 is a part of the Project 921-2 space station program, with the goal of creating a third-generation space station.

In October, China will launch two still-unnamed astronauts on the Shenzhou-11 mission to link up with the Tiangong-2. The visiting crew would stay onboard the module for 30 days, marking China's longest human spaceflight to date.

Next year, Tiangong-2 is to be visited by China's first robotic refueling and cargo vessel, Tianzhou-1. That unpiloted cargo ship is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2018 atop a Long March 7 rocket that will lift off from China's new Wenchang Satellite Launch Center spaceport on Hainan Island.

All this action is prelude to China's progression to a larger, 60-ton modular space station for the 2020s.

The core module for the Chinese space station  Tianhe-1  is reportedly due for launch in 2018, hurled into orbit by China's heavy-lift Long March 5 booster. That rocket is set to make its maiden flight next month, departing from Wenchang.

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+. Originally published on Space.com.
NEW YORK  Is anyone else out there? Humans have asked this question ever since we could look up at the stars, but hundreds of thousands of years later, we still don't have a satisfactory answer. Logic would seem to dictate that there's other intelligent life out there, and yet it also suggests that if there is, it may have found us by now. While we may not have an answer for another few decades  if ever  we are slowly but surely getting closer.

The two panelists spent a lot of time discussing the potential of finding life on Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. Scientists have theorized that Europa has a liquid ocean buried beneath 30 miles of surface ice, and liquid water is potentially one of the most conducive environments for life to evolve, the panelists said. [13 Ways to Hunt for Intelligent Alien Life]

If we were to find life on Europa, Ferdowski and Werthimer explained, it would most likely be primitive. Humans may appear to be the dominant species on Earth, after all, but our overall biomass is pretty small when compared to wildly successful organisms such as bacteria, or even insects.

"Europa [may be] completely covered in water," Werthimer explained. "That's great for primitive life, but if you want technology, you've got to have some land surfaces as well." Organisms on Earth, he said, have evolved to fill even the most extreme niches, "but it won't necessarily evolve into something more complex than single-celled life  What are the pressures that make you want to go from 'I can feed' to standing and talking?"

In fact, the relative likelihood of finding primitive versus sapient life was one of the recurring themes of the talk. Werthimer believes that humanity may confirm the existence of primitive extraterrestrial life within the next 20 to 30 years, especially if scientists can get missions to Europa, but technological life is harder to pinpoint, as we don't know how often it occurs.

Another potentially limiting factor is that intelligent life does not necessarily equate to technological life. Ferdowski and Werthimer pointed out that intelligent life (with varying degrees of what scientists would call "intelligence") has evolved many times on Earth. Humans are the most obvious example, but dolphins, octopi and crows are all fairly clever creatures, to say nothing of the other great apes, which share a lineage with humans.

Even if there's another technological civilization somewhere nearby, scientists are not exactly sure how to contact them. Radio signals seem like a safe bet; indeed, nearby stars have already seen "The Simpsons" and "I Love Lucy" from Earth's TV broadcasts. On the other hand, while radio signals travel at the speed of light, that won't do much good for an exoplanet that could be tens of thousands of light-years away.

On the flip side, given how fast life can (theoretically) arise and evolve on a planet, other civilizations could be millions or even billions of years ahead of Earth. We would have no idea how to monitor their communications, and they might not even be interested in ours. [The Strangest Alien Planets (Gallery)]

Ferdowski and Werthimer contrasted the Drake Equation, which suggests that sapient life in the universe should be at least somewhat common, and the Fermi Paradox, which questions why alien life is not observable if the universe teems with it. One potential answer to the Fermi Paradox includes an alien version of the "Star Trek" Prime Directive, which prohibits interference with less advanced cultures. Another suggests that not all technological civilizations are necessarily driven by exploration, and may have directed their efforts inward to cultural matters instead.

Assuming that scientists can find life, however, there is (at least) one very important question to answer: Does it resemble humanity on a genetic level?

"Did it have a different biogenesis?" Ferdowski asked. "If it's exactly the same as us, that probably doesn't mean there were two independent origins of life." In other words, if scientists find alien life that follows the basic biological dogma, such as translating DNA to RNA to proteins, it's very likely that all life in the solar system originated from a common precursor.

This theory, known as panspermia, suggests that extraordinarily simple, hardy life (or proto-life) could travel between planets aboard asteroids or other interplanetary debris. While this is harder to do once you get outside of a given solar system, it's entirely possible that life on Earth and, say, Europa could have originated from the same predecessor, the researchers said.

While Ferdowski and Werthimer did not come to any hard conclusions as to whether or not humanity can expect to find life, they did say that the question has far-reaching consequences, regardless of the outcome.

"It's a profound question either way," Werthimer said. "If we find the universe is teeming with life, we can learn a lot. If we find out that we are alone, that somehow life is incredibly rare out of the trillion planets, that's very profound also.

"If we find out we're alone," he added, "that means we'd better take incredibly good care of the precious life here on Earth."

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Rod Pyle is a space historian who has worked with NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Johnson Space Center. He has written ten books on the history and technology of space exploration and science including "Mars: Making Contact" (Carlton Books), "Blueprint for a Battlestar" (Sterling Publishing) and "Amazing Stories of the Space Age" (Prometheus Books), all due in 2016. His newest book, "Space 2.0" will debut in 2017. Pyle contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Let's face it: Spaceflight is inherently risky, and getting off the ground is one of the most dangerous phases of any mission.

A rocket launch is, by definition, one long, controlled explosion, with the energetic results of that explosion streaming out of the bottom-mounted engines and propelling the vehicle into space. It's when that controlled explosion, or its fuel source, becomes uncontrolled that things get shaky.

On the morning of Sept. 1, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on a launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, two days before its scheduled launch date. (Actually, according to a tweet from SpaceX's CEO, Elon Musk, it was not an explosion but a "fast fire.") [The Rockets and Spaceships of SpaceX (Photos)]

When the explosion happened, controllers were in the process of fueling the upper stage prior to a "static fire" test, when the rocket vanished into a large fireball. This test is designed to fire the first-stage engines briefly with the rocket firmly bolted to the pad to make sure that they are in perfect condition for a launch. Instead, the rocket vanished into a smoky, total loss.

At first, this explosion may seem like a total blow for SpaceX and spaceflight in general. After all, SpaceX lost a $62 million rocket (at retail pricing), and its customer, Spacecom (not to be confused with Space.com), lost a $195 million satellite  both significant setbacks.

But the truth is that there's actually some good that comes of it. So when is a rocket explosion OK?

SpaceX has contingency plans for launch accidents and will find the problem and correct it for future launch attempts, as the company has done in the past. While such accidents are surely not the most efficient way to learn about potential design flaws in a rocket or procedural errors the launch process, they are generally instructive. The Falcon 9 will soon be lofting astronauts to the International Space Station, and anything that can be learned about how to make the rocket safer and more reliable are best learned now, before crewed missions launch. (Even if this had been a test for a crewed launch, the astronauts would not have been aboard the rocket at the time it exploded. Further, Musk said on Twitter that the Dragon capsule would have been safe had it been atop the rocket when it failed.)

Also, such accidents contribute to the overall safety database for the industry. Any such mishap has a source, and these sources are usually found by dedicated and clever engineers who simply cannot stand it when things go wrong, and who will doggedly pursue the answers to exhaustion. It is a problem to be solved, and solved it must be. Also, because the explosion occurred on the ground, there are pieces to look at, allowing for the time-honored engineer's tradition of sifting through bits of broken metal and other detritus to find the flaw in the process. Had the explosion  or fast fire  occurred in flight, it would have been more difficult to pick up the pieces.

Like several other spaceflight mishaps  including the Apollo 13 emergency, the loss of two space shuttles, various Soviet space accidents, and countless smaller spaceflight failures (that, fortunately, did not involve the loss of human life)  these accidents remind the general public that spaceflight is a dangerous business. This is not a mandate to return our ships to the harbor and anchor them for fear of sinking, but to always strive for the best and safest spaceflight systems possible, to test known and suspected problems as near to extinction as possible, and to admit that spaceflight will always be risky, expensive and time-consuming. That's just how it is, and how it will be for years to come.

According to a SpaceX spokesperson, the company has launched the Falcon 9 rocket a total of 29 times with two failures, which puts it squarely in the acceptable range for a new rocket  a 93 percent success rate in an industry that claims a 95 percent success rate. In the end, all customers will benefit from such competitive performance, despite infrequent setbacks such as the Sept. 1 hardware loss.

Here's to a safe and speedy path to flight recovery for SpaceX. The company has a lot of flying to do.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2016 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service.
Editors note: The Globe Gazette asked the eight candidates in the Sept. 20 Mason City Council special election why they decided to run for the open at-large seat. Today we feature the response of Jeff Christie.

Im running to have a chance to better Mason City. Im a man of few words.

I think the entire government needs a retooling from top to the bottom. My vision for the future is a better city to call home.

My promise to voters is to be transparent. I will keep the voters updated if they request and will hold listening posts to hear the voter.
It was nice to experience a Germany exhibiting as much solidarity as it did in the summer of 2015. But a chancellor must also consider the possible effects of selfies taken with refugees. She has to think about whether the federal police force and other agencies will be able to keep up when the chancellor suddenly changes course. Shrewd governance requires clarity about, and the effective communication of, goals, strategy and tactics.

No leader can cede control of essential state responsibilities in times of upheaval yet Merkel, in claiming that the borders could not be controlled, did exactly that. Today, the Chancellery has come to accept the following facts: For eight weeks, the state lost control and was powerless. That control was soon regained, but in the post-fact era, a nucleus is all that is needed. The attacks in Paris and Brussels, the sexual assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne, the attacks in Nice and Ansbach and the shooting spree in Munich: None of them had much to do with refugees, but they have prevented a return to calm and have kept alive the perception of loss of control that Merkel triggered in the summer of 2015. It has become simple to fan the flames of xenophobia.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

RIDGEFIELD  School of Rock is about music, specifically rock n roll, but its also about friendship, taking risks and confidence.

This is life-changing for some people. When you first meet them, they cant even look you in the eye. Suddenly they are playing in front of hundreds of people, franchise owner Mariola Camacho said. Many towns around here are very sports-oriented. Some kids need another outlet.

Camacho opened her second location, at 37 Danbury Road in Ridgefield, last month. She also owns the New Canaan location. The Ridgefield location will hold a grand opening from 2 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, with live music, free lessons and a ceremonial guitar smashing. School of Rock will also be visited Wednesday as part of the Ridgefield Chamber of Commerces Welcome Wednesday program.

School of Rock is a performance-based music school offering guitar, drum, keyboard, bass and vocal lessons. Students from the Ridgefield School of Rock will perform during the Sunday, Sept. 25, Concert Across America to End Gun Violence at Ridgefield High School.

Ridgefield was a natural step for a second location. Its close to New Canaan but did not overlap with the students who were taking lessons there, Camacho said. We play at Ridgefield Playhouse frequently so I know the town and know it values the arts.

A Bach to Rock music school location also recently opened in Ridgefield at 15 Danbury Road. While School of Rock focuses strictly on rock n roll, Bach to Rock teaches a wider variety of music and has a different set of program offerings.

Its a different approach, Camacho said. We each have a market.

School of Rock teaches musicians of all levels from age seven to adult. All participants are encouraged to perform live in front of audiences. Beginning musicians get easier rolls to play, such as rhythm guitar, for the performances, Camacho said.

The kids are so talented and motivated, Camacho said. They push each other to get better. Its good team-building. There are on-going life skills learned here, not just how to play an instrument.

Camacho knows firsthand the confidence School of Rock can instill in musicians of all ages. Her son has been involved with the New Canaan location since it opened and she took lessons and became a part of a mom band that stayed together for a few years and played at local bars.

She likes the performance-based nature of the School of Rock concept.

The students just love doing it, more so than taking regular lessons. They advance quicker and eventually we teach more music theory, Camacho said. You dont teach kids how to read when they dont know how to talk. Thats the way we do it here.

Camacho, who has an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, formerly worked at MasterCard and had her own consulting business. She jumped at the chance to take over the New Canaan School of Rock franchise. Now that she has two locations, a third is in the back of her mind.

The idea is to have three, but we dont have a location pinned down yet. I would like it to be in Connecticut, but now Im just thinking of Ridgefield and getting this going, she said. I just love what we do and have from day one.
If you were to spend time with a person (without looking at them), you could probably pinpoint the time they grew up after listening to them talk for a while, or in the case of Millennials, by what they are not saying/posting.

Our American English language, though laden with rules and clauses, is also a beautiful ever-changing hodge-podge of idioms, cliches and slang.
STAMFORD  The city will soon be crawling with tech geeks as the Stamford Innovation Center kicks off its first Technology Week.

The event begins Wednesday with a series of panels focusing on this years theme: Smart Cities.

We wanted this week to have a mission, and given the commuter population in the area, we thought of smart cities, said Hugh Seaton, event organizer and vice president of operations at the Stamford Innovation Center. How can we make commuting easier using data?

Tech Week, which runs from Wednesday to Sunday, includes two flagship events: the Northeast JavaScript Conference on Thursday and Friday and the Hackathon on Friday and Saturday. The weeks programming is designed to build a tech community in the Stamford area and foster local ta lent.

The Innovation Center has already held Hackathons twice a year for about four years. A Hackathon isnt quite what it sounds like, though.

Computer geeks are not hunched over keyboards looking for software vulnerabilities  rather, these events are designed to encourage engineers to use state-of-the-art technology and creative problem solving to complete certain tasks.

The Hackathon idea is really not new. Weve done that before, Seaton said. Its the addition of this JavaScript conference that fleshes out this week into a major event.

More Information Tech Week events Wednesday Smart Cities: Cybersecurity Panel, 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. Smart Cities: Location, Data & City Life, 9:45 to 11:30 a.m. Press Conference and Photo Opportunity, 11:30 a.m. to noon Connecticut Commission on Economic Competitiveness, 12:15 to 2 p.m. Thursday Northeast JavaScript Conference, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday Northeast JavaScript Conference, 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Xcite: Women in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Stamford Hackathon, 6:30 to 11 p.m. Saturday Stamford Hackathon, 8:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. MakeFest at the Ferguson Library, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday Stamford Hackathon, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. High school STEM teams Hackathon, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. See More Collapse

JavaScript

and Hackathon

The Innovation Centers JavaScript conference will be the first of its kind in Connecticut, Seaton said.

JavaScript is the common computer programming language, useful for creating interactive effects within web browsers. The Northeast JavaScript conference will include coding workshops and in-depth talks about frameworks, data handling, animations and other key topics.

We wanted to make Hackathon bigger, so we thought, why dont we do a JavaScript conference? No one has really done that here before, he said. The goal is to build the tech talent pool we have here in southwest Connecticut, whether that be local to Stamford or reaching out into New Haven.

The JavaScript conference has already garnered 80 registrations, and the event has a capacity of about 120 participants, Seaton said. The Innovation Center will continue to accept registration applications until the event begins on Thursday.

Participants in the Hackathon, which Seaton expects will include about 90 people, will focus on projects that improve a citys transportation system through smart city technology. They will have access to data from Uber, Pitney Bowes and Indeed as well as an interactive 3D map of Stamford for virtual reality testing.

All of them will be focused on making the commuting experience better, Seaton said. All of the information from our partners will be key. Like Indeed, for example, people might choose not to take a certain job because of the commute they would have to make.

The Hackathon begins at 6:30 p.m. Friday and continues until 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free on Friday to allow prospective participants to gauge the crowd and available technology before they register.

Involving the community

Seaton said the Innovation Center wants to involve the entire Stamford community in Tech Week, with an opening ceremony hosted by Mayor David Martin on Wednesday morning.

Stamfords technology community is stronger and more vibrant than is often realized, Martin said in a statement. With this series of events, comprised of professional, student and government technology participants, were proud to celebrate the strength of our tech talent and foster its future growth.

While most of the Innovation Centers Tech Week events will be held at its headquarters in the Old Town Hall on Atlantic Street, the schedule of events was strategically planned to overlap some of the other events happening around Stamford over the weekend.

On Saturday, a MakeFest at Ferguson Library will connect people of all ages with state-of-the-art technology like virtual reality and drones.

Saturday will be a really nice afternoon, because MakeFest is running in conjunction with the weekend arts and crafts festival downtown, Seaton said. That helps us start to move toward a wider STEAM scope  thats science, technology, engineering, arts and math.

Tech Week concludes with an event for the future of Stamfords technology talent pool: local high school students.

The event is open to students from all three public high schools and will be held at Stamford High from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

This unique event will give our students the opportunity to work together in teams and embark on a technology challenge that will not only tap their creativity and critical thinking skills, but also provide an opportunity for them to compete with others, said Michael Fernandes, the districts assistant superintendent of secondary schools.

Students will join teams in one of three challenge areas  gaming, website development or an advanced track combining different skills. The teams will be mentored by teachers and professionals, and they will have five hours to complete their projects.

When you look at the scope of the week  from the panels to the JavaScript conference to the professional and student Hackathons  what you end up with is really the whole tech talent funnel from beginning to end, Seaton said. I cant say we necessarily planned it that way from the start, but the interest we got from community groups really helped this thing to grow into something bigger.

For more information about Tech Week and to register for either the JavaScript conference or the Hackathon, visit stamfordtechweek.com/

nora.naughton@scni.com; twitter.com/noranaughton

Nelson Oliveira contributed to this report.
MASON CITY  Two virtual reality experiences can be viewed at the Iowa Independent Film Festival at Mason Citys Historic Park Inn Hotel this weekend.

Mason City native and festival founder Tanna Frederick will bring her VR narrative Defrost to the festival.

Viewers experience the film through the eyes of Joan Garrison, a woman who wakes up after being frozen for nearly 30 years. Joan reunites with her family who have all aged and changed while she stayed the same.

Wearing Samsung VR headsets, viewers can turn to look anywhere for a 360-degree view.

If the viewer looks down, theyll see legs and hands as if they are sitting in Joans wheelchair.

David Frederick, Tannas father and festival volunteer, previewed the experience with Defrost at the Historic Park Inn for a small group Thursday.

Its immersive, David said. You feel like youre there.

Mason City native's virtual reality film airs at Sundance PARK CITY, Utah  Mason City native Tanna Frederick lived a dream in January when she attend

David instructed those trying out the experience, encouraging them to look around and take in the whole experience.

You can see the director dressed in scrubs pushing you in the wheelchair behind you, he said.

Tanna Frederick produced the series and also played Beverly Perez, Joans daughter.

Writer and director of Defrost John Randal Kleiser, known for films such as Grease and Flight of the Navigator, will join Tanna Friday night in a discussion about the series.

Carl Weathers, Bruce Davison, Christopher Atkins, Ethan Rains and Clinton Valencia are also featured in the 12-episode series.

The second VR experience, about bullying, is directed by Garner native Ron Vignone. The film was created for the California education system.

In addition to VR, the festival will feature Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, both known for their roles in Catch-22. Their films will be shown throughout the festival, and the pair will host a discussion of their work.

A bio-documentary on Iowa native Jean Seberg, Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg will premiere at the festival as well.

Paul Micichs documentary, MacNider Art Museum: 50 Years Eye-to-Eye, will have its first festival showing.

The full schedule can be viewed at www.iowaindie.org.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

STAMFORD  A Bridgeport man accused of escaping a police chase earlier this year has been tracked down.

Travis Snow, 28, of Bridgeport, was arrested Monday after police said he was one of five people who fled a crash on Interstate 95 stemming from a chase with authorities.

Stamford and Stratford police, and U.S. Marshals arrested Martiquice Dukes, 26, two weeks ago in Stratford on numerous weapons and motor vehicle charges related to the seizure of a TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol from a crashed car on Interstate 95 last January. Capt. Richard Conklin said Dukes was the driver of the car that fled when officers in the Narcotics and Organized Crime squad spotted his rental with South Carolina plates at a known drug hangout on Richmond Hill Avenue on Jan. 30.

The NOC officers were alerted to a Chevrolet coming up from North Carolina that would be used to peddle firearms from southern states and sell narcotics.

When officers tried to pull over the vehicle, the driver struck one of the police cars while making a U-turn to try to escape, police said. Police said Dukes drove extremely fast, nearly striking other cars, just before police called off the chase for safety reasons, Conklin said.

The Chevy eventually crashed between exits 8 and 9 on I-95. Two men and one woman were arrested following the chase and police found the assault weapon, as well as three empty 36-round magazines for the TEC-9, and a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic with two 16-round magazines in the trunk, Conklin said. State law prohibits magazines larger than 10 rounds for public use. Police also found several bottles containing a brown or purple liquid mixture of Codeine and Promethazine that people drink to get high, Conklin said.

Snow, a felon, was charged with two counts of criminal possession of a pistol or revolver, two counts of possession of a weapon in a motor vehicle, use of a machine gun for an aggressive purpose, sale of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance and possession of a large capacity magazine.

He is being held in lieu of a $200,000 court appearance bond.

jnickerson@scni.com;
Marvin C. Olson

FOREST CITY  Marvin C. Olson, 91, of Forest City, died Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016, at the Good Samaritan Center in Forest City.

Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. Friday at the First Baptist Church in Forest City with Pastor Eric Weaver officiating.

Visitation will be held from 12:30 p.m. to service time at the church on Friday.

Burial will be held in the First Baptist Cemetery in Forest City with military honors performed by the Forest City American Legion.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be directed to the First Baptist Church, Hospice of North Iowa or the Good Samaritan Center in Forest City.

Arrangements are with Cataldo Schott Funeral Home in Forest City.
L egal & General chief executive Nigel Wilson delivered some timely advice to the Government last week when he said on Radio Fours Today programme that it should abandon all the big infrastructure projects beginning with the letter H.

Specifically, he had in mind the termination of the HS2 high-speed rail link to Birmingham, the Hinkley Point nuclear plant and the third runway at Heathrow.

Instead, he believes the country would get much better value spending its limited resources in areas such as social housing, renewables and more mundane but much-needed projects.

Wilsons comments carry a lot more weight than most because he practises what he preaches. In the few years since he took the helm, Legal & General has become easily the most ambitious of the insurance companies in seeking out the higher long-term returns to be got from infrastructure and similar illiquid investments.

So is he on to something? Is the Government poised to pull the plug on one, two or all three? And is it right to do so?

The Government may well pay close heed to what he says for reasons that may not be widely appreciated. The first is that Theresa Mays head of policy at No.10 is John Godfrey. Until July, when the Prime Minister came to power, he was head of policy at Legal & General  and very much at one with Wilson on infrastructure. Having spent the last 10 years with the insurer, he may not be widely known, but his early career was politically focused. This has given him a better knowledge than most about how the Government machine works and how to get things done.

A second factor  though it is slightly mischievous to point this out  is the influence of Mays chief of staff, Nick Timothy.

Clearly, he has the PMs ear, which is significant because there is a widespread  though obviously unsubstantiated  view that he harbours a deep loathing for George Osborne, and by extension for the things Osborne promoted when in Government.

Prominent among these, of course, were HS2, Hinkley and Heathrow expansion. So for that reason alone, you might expect a shadow to fall across them.

Alternatively, you may like to believe that ministers would never allow their own or their advisers personal likes and dislikes to influence the decisions they have to take for the good of the country. That is probably not the way to bet though, particularly when the PMs constituency of Maidenhead is just sneezing distance from Heathrow.

HS2 is probably the easiest to can. It is the wrong railway, taking the wrong route to the wrong place  and it seems now to have lost its chief executive, who has decamped to Rolls-Royce. If we need more rail capacity to Birmingham, it can be delivered at a fraction of the cost by upgrading the line out of Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill. This would be a conventional train service  but who needs to save a few minutes on a journey in the age of Wi-fi?

If, for prestige reasons, we need another high-speed train, then lets put it where it is needed and link Liverpool to Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle, with a southern spur through Sheffield and Nottingham to Birmingham.

Next, in terms of cost, comes Hinkley. Last week, a clutch of senior business figures  Sir Richard Lambert, Sir Simon Robertson, Lord (Chris) Patten and others  wrote to the Financial Times in support of the project.

They are all members of an EDF advisory board  the French firm being the potential builder of the plant  but what was interesting was that, given they hold this position, how feeble and unfocused their arguments were, and how little they addressed specific concerns about Hinkley.

The letters most telling point was that we urgently need more nuclear capacity, but it failed to recognise that there are other cheaper designs for proven reactors we could have as an alternative. They also failed to mention that the two reactors being built to the Hinkley design in Finland and France, are massively late, over budget and still not working.

Finally to Heathrow. Most would probably agree with Sir Howard Davies and the Airport Commission that Heathrow makes the most logical case for expansion. The business community by and large agrees, as manufacturers organisation the EEF made clear last week.

But then we confront three problems. The first is that it will take longer to build another runway at Heathrow. Completion is possible by 2025 for Gatwick, against the earliest of 2029 for Heathrow. The second issue is cost. At 7.8 billion, Gatwick would be well under half the estimated 17.7 billion of Heathrow, and financed entirely by the private sector.

There are worries, too, that the Heathrow figure may be understated. It should be doubled to around 36 billion, according to Transport for London, to take account of roadworks and other costs of access.

The third issue is practicality. There is no doubt the Heathrow expansion will be resisted to the bitter end by some very vociferous people. Even if the project has the best case, is it so much better that it is worth spending years in legal wrangling and planning to secure it? Would it not me more pragmatic and sensible to take the second-best option that is deliverable  Gatwick  and get on with it?

Part of the deal might even be to build a high-speed train link to cover the 35 miles between Gatwick and Heathrow. If you cut the journey time to about 20 minutes, which such a train could do, the two airports would in effect be one for making connections.

And if Heathrow still needs more capacity, let it buy Northolt  only eight miles away, or four minutes by fast train.
D onald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the candidates in the US presidential election, could both have a substantial effect on the global economy given their tough stances on free trade agreements, according to Jes Staley, chief executive of Barclays.

The American banker who became boss of Barclays last year did not name either Trump or Clinton but warned against moves to halt globalisation.

Some of the narrative of the election in the United States is very much around questioning the vision of globalisation and free trade as instruments of global policy, Staley said at a banking conference in New York.

You see the position of both candidates with respect to the free-trade agreements, and that could have a very significant and substantial impact long-term on the global economy.

Trump has attacked China regularly for what he describes as its unfair trading regime while Clinton has vowed to stand up to the Chinese and said she would not back the Trans-Pacific Partnership between the US and Asia.

Trump slams Hillary Clinton's 'deplorable' comment

As a geopolitical matter, at least in my lifetime, the developed world has seen free trade and globalisation and the integration of the global economy as a worthwhile endeavor to try to seek global peace and global cooperation, Staley said.

He added that Brexit was the first major move by a developed nation to pull back.

But he praised Bank of England Governor Mark Carney for his clear and quick response to the Brexit vote and said that he now expected a shallow, limited slowdown as result.

Hillary Clinton stumbles as she leaves 9-/11 event early feeling 'overheated'

Meanwhile Staleys predecessor but one Bob Diamond has suffered a setback in his ambitions to buy all or parts of Barclays African operations.

Private equity giant Carlyle is reported to have pulled out of a joint bid for the business with Diamonds Atlas Merchant Capital vehicle.
E sure, the insurer once known for Michael Winners Calm down dear adverts, is parting company with the comparison website Gocompare.

After three months deliberation esure has decided to give Gocompare to its own shareholders through a demerger which will see each of them receive shares in the comparison website on a one-for-one basis.

That will mean esure founder Sir Peter Wood remains the largest shareholder, with 31% stakes in each firm.

Esure chief executive Stuart Vann denied it had received any approaches to buy Gocompare, promoted by annoying Italian tenor Gio Compario, since it put it up for review in June.

He said: This will enable both businesses to grow strongly.

Esure will load Gocompare up with 75 million of debt and take 63 million out of it in dividends ahead of the split.

Analysts reckon Gocompare could be valued at upwards of 430 million.
T he former boss of collapsed retailer BHS, Darren Topp is on the cusp of bagging the top job at high-end fashion chain LK Bennett, the Evening Standard can exclusively reveal.

Retail analyst sources claimed he was in advanced discussions with the luxury brand- whose fans include the Duchess of Cambridge and actresses Anna Paquin and Reese Witherspoon. They added that his appointment as chief executive was expected to be announced imminently.

BHS entered administration in April with a 571 million pension deficit- just over a year after Sir Philip Green sold it for 1 to Retail Acquisitions led by serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell.

Topp- who could not be reached for comment- had tried to turnaround the retail stalwart before the new owners ran out of lifeline funds.

The collapse was subject to a high profile probe by MPs this summer which concluded that Green chose to rush a sale of the 163-shops chain to a buyer who was manifestly unsuitable.

Green has insisted he is working on a "daily basis" to resolve BHS's gaping pension deficit

In June, BHS colleagues rallied support around Topp and dubbed his leadership as inspirational.

At LK Bennett he will replace Robert Bensoussen who took over on an interim basis in 2014. He is expected to remain as a non-executive director.

Royal fans: The Duchess of Cambridge wearing LK Bennett shoes Reuters / Reuters

LK Bennett which has 63 shops in the UK including 26 in London, was founded by Linda Bennett as a shoe chain in 1990.

The firm recorded a 93.6 million turnover for the year to August 31 2015, helped by a 16.8% surge in UK sales.
T ory-backer Howard Shores broking firm Shore Capital has backed Brexit to open the door to a bonfire of red tape, helping the UK to compete with the rest of the world.

We hope that Brexit will provide an opportunity to remove some of the regulations that impede the UKs ability to compete with the rest of the world, he said.

The veteran City broker said his firm was flexible enough to take advantage of the opportunities that Brexit will create.

Half-year revenues for the six months ending June 30 rose by 7.8% but profits fell from 9.5 million to 2.4 million, mainly due to fewer one-offs.

Shore was a vocal backer of the Leave campaign in the run-up to the June 23 referendum on the UKs membership of the EU.

He welcomed the speed at which new Prime Minister and Cabinet [were] put in place to make Brexit worries short-lived.

The firms broking division saw sales rise 4.9% to 13.1 million. leading to a profit before tax of 3 million.

Its fund management arm also added more assets, up to 900 million from 800 million last year.

Revenues rose by 7.2% to 5.2 million.
M ore grammar schools in London could undermine and fatally damage the current success of secondary education in the city.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, a former London headteacher and now Chief Inspector of Schools in England, explains why [News, Sept 9]. Its not good enough to say that a few grammar schools will do no harm to other schools. They cream off the more able students, turning former comprehensives into secondary moderns, and will destroy the aspirations of the majority of children.

Grammar schools cannot be introduced without harming existing schools. People must stop pretending that they can and start promoting the interests of Londoners and their children instead of the whim of a Tory Prime Minister with no democratic mandate for the introduction of this policy.

James Whiting

The social mobility Theresa May claims to promote with her proposals for grammar schools is just another term for social engineering. Grammar schools are a way of maintaining the class system, with the rulers and managers at the top and the plebs at the bottom.

With private schools becoming less affordable its necessary to maintain a flow of new recruits for the top positions. By making the transition at 11 theres a better chance of indoctrinating the new intake into upper-class mores.

David Pearson

Sir Michael Wilshaw claims grammar schools will reverse the trend of improvement in education in London. Such improvement has arisen from grossly inflated funding for London schools compared to the rest of the country.

The national funding formula will remove the advantage London currently enjoys so Sir Michael and experts such as him need to find an alternative to maintain Londons outcomes.

If not grammar schools, what is his suggestion to mitigate mediocrity?

Ben Kelly

Perhaps its because I wasnt raised in the UK but I am very confused by the issue of grammar schools.

Children who find the normal school curriculum easy, whether it is due to natural abilities or the efforts of their families, need a challenge. But why not offer International Baccalaureate (IB) or American Advanced Placement (AP) within existing state schools? This is what they did for students in Canada when I was growing up and it was as much a challenge as any student could want.

Paul C

Little benefit from boundary changes

The Boundary Commissions constituency review, as revealed late last night, could see a reduction of 50 MPs.

But the reforms  which will mean London will have five fewer MPs  were based on an electoral register drawn up in December 2015, which is totally obsolete given the recent upsurge in voter registrations in the first half of 2016. A significant number of people registered to vote in the run-up to the EU referendum (430,000 people applied during the extension to register alone). Individual voter registration has also had an impact.

Even those of us who may not agree with the views of our local MPs recognise how much work they already have on their plate. Fewer MPs will make it harder for the public to get what they need from their elected officials.

Chris Key

Fox is not fit to be our Trade Secretary

As a private investor I am very close to a wide range of smaller public companies, which I invest in for the long term. The majority export and trade internationally and I know how hard their key executives work and how extensively they travel.

Liam Foxs comments about businessmen being lazy and fat are shallow, stupid and offensive. Number 10 tells us they are his private views.

If that is so, then he clearly is unfit to be an ambassador for British business and should not be allowed to remain in office.

Lord Lee of Trafford (Lib-Dem)

Absurd tactics of Black Lives Matter

I agree with Rashid Razaq [Comment, Sept 9] that Black Lives Matter has morphed into something so nebulous in the UK as to have become meaningless.

Claiming pollution from London City Airport is a race issue is self-evidently absurd. The white middle-classes in west London are affected by much greater pollution from Heathrow. Creating another reason why black people should view themselves as victims will not help their cause.

Stan Labovitch

Tube staff must not use phones on duty

As a Tube user for many years Ive noticed more and more staff browsing on their mobile phones and even on tablets while standing guard at the ticket gates. This behaviour is unprofessional and a security risk.

This morning, during the rush hour at Bank station, the ticket gate was left open and a staff member was sitting in a closed booth on their mobile phone. With such a key front-line job it is unacceptable to use mobile devices on duty.

Name withheld
A 25-year-old married man has been arrested along with his 44-year-old mother after the pair were accused of having sex.

Shaun Pfeiffer and Melissa Kitchens both face a felony charge of incest in North Carolina, US.

It is believed Mr Pfeiffer lives with both his wife and mother in the town of Weaverville.

The Buncombe County Sheriffs arrest warrant alleges that the pair had sex in August.

Mr Pfeiffer, who is self-employed, also reportedly faces charges of indecent liberties with a child, making threats and being intoxicated and disruptive.

He is believed to have a young son with his wife Shannon Roman, who he married in September 2013.

In one recent Facebook post written by Ms Kitchens on a photo of her son, she said: Cant get over how handsome you are and Im about to cry Love you so much.

Both are due to appear in court at the end of this month. According to Buncombe County Jail's website, Mr Pfeiffer is being held on $70,500 (53,000) bail and Ms Kitchens is being held on $30,000 (23,000).

Sentences for incest in North Carolina range from 10 to 41 months.
H undreds of artefacts including a Tudor bowling ball and horseshoes from Roman London will go on show in an exhibition of finds from the Crossrail project.

Work on 26 miles of tunnels, linking 40 stations from Reading in the west through to Shenfield in the east, has turned up more than 10,000 objects which were examined by on-site archaeologists.

The best are to go on show in February at the Museum of London Docklands. They include Stone Age flints found in North Woolwich, the bowling ball dug out in Stepney Green and medieval ice-skates made from bone found near Liverpool Street station.

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
Review at a glance









W ifredo Lam at Tate Modern is an exhibition of the marvellous where the marvels are mostly off the canvas. Championed by the great Parisian provocateur and inventor of Surrealism Andre Breton (who said, Beauty will be convulsive or it will not be at all!), Lams style, taken from Picasso without much alteration, too often lacks any good reason to look at it.

All sorts of meanings are referred to. The great subjects are voodoo rites from Haiti and dancing deities from the Santeria religion still practised by rural Cuban Africans in Lams day (he was born in Sagua La Grande in 1902).

He brought politics and history to Picassos well-known shapes: social and cultural revolution, resistance to oppression, revolt of the underdog. But this show, containing more than 200 works, remains strangely weak. Not a non-event, Lam is far too attractive a figure for that, but a middling one.

His life story is the marvellous thing. The events of it are intertwined with great currents of 20th-century history. He moved to Milan to study in 1923 and later signed up to the Spanish Civil War in 1936 against fascism. His contribution was to labour in a munitions factory until illness brought on by toxic substances forced him to quit. He was in Paris when the Second World War broke out. Picasso had befriended him and opened doors for him. He returned to Cuba via Martinique, where he lived in daily contact with the poet Aime Cesaire, who became a lifelong friend.

Deliberately unrealistic: Umbral (extract)

His typical paintings feature an imagery of altars, knives and disembodied breasts, and figures that float and dance in a Jungian miasmic dream space. Priests and cultists are deliberately unrealistic and fragmented. They seem part tree or vegetable, part animal and part weapon. Theyre also a bit silly like modern art descending into kitschy vulgarity: the sorceress transformed from a mood of tribal-totem to pneumatic Playboy bunny.

What does it mean when everything in a large exhibition is quite good but full of uninteresting so-so decisions? I found myself glazing over from one painting to another. I registered different approaches to scale and handling, shifts in arrangement and organisation from simple to busy, surfaces that are a little ruffled to ones that have more activity. Nothing lacked charm but everything seemed like a prelude to something better, without it ever arriving.

The show, conceived and organised by Tate Modern curator Matthew Gale (whose catalogue essay is richly informative), makes sense on paper. Lams personal appearance was fantastically striking. He was part Chinese, part Spanish-African. His godmother was a Santeria sorceress, the daughter of a slave. He lived in America and Switzerland and spent long periods in Haiti and Mexico. He supported the Cuban revolution and made propaganda for Castro, successfully encouraging world famous artists to do the same.

When young he was intended to study law but instead went to an art academy in Havana for five years. Then, after he moved to Madrid, he received further training from a little-known conservative painter (who interestingly enough also trained Salvador Dali). He went to classes in the morning but for the rest of each day absorbed exciting ideas from bohemian friends. Once back in back in Havana his style gelled against a background of poverty and corruption and he spent the next four decades, until his death in 1982, rehearsing it, offering various approaches to facture and colouring.

Founded on charm: The Sombre Malembo (extract)

I kept finding myself wondering why he could never make his mind up about spatial ideas, and why form was of such little interest to him other than as a sort of instant sign. A shadowed abstract shape complicates the background of the magnificently titled Belial, Emperor of the Flies (1948) making the picture more plausible as a visual proposal than it would have been without it. However, that should have the starting point for decisions about space becoming surprising rather than flabby, not the end of the story.

I found myself addressing painting after painting with exasperated questioning: what are you doing with that shape?

I found myself addressing painting after painting with exasperated questioning: what are you doing with that shape? Why shade it and elaborate it, when it doesnt have any spatial meaning and its not asserting anything? Whats it for in the painting? Why leave a painting so founded on mere charm?

Wealthy lenders to the exhibition from Latin America, as well as the rest of the world, wont want to hear this, but isnt there a problem the show encapsulates of officially sanctioned wooziness, the new rule of the aesthetically ordinary?

When youve got very well-known style ideas of 20th century art dealt with in ways that dont make any impact, what does it mean? Its a phenomenon in art generally at this moment. Wavering uncertainty  the tentative raised to a maximum power  is practically the main message of Tate Moderns policy now, both in the permanent collection and the paying exhibitions. The Lam show exemplifies the taste du jour for unchallenging, relativistic this-and-that-ness.

It isnt just an issue of multiculturalism and inclusiveness. Its not just the desire to send the message that historically marginalised social groups (black people; women) have gradually won the fight for a space in which to redo painting  thats a triumph I would never fail to applaud and nor would anyone, I expect. But as Tate Moderns new director, Frances Morris, makes clear in her introduction to the show, when she writes that Lams art is a Trojan horse in the cultural apparatus (meaning that hes subversive; he undermines authority), the previous assumption that the strength of an artist like Picasso cant be questioned is now distrusted.

Its not that he isnt strong but strength itself has become dubious, its associated with ideological mistakes. An assertive artistic statement is shunned in favour of artists using Picassos language feebly. Why is it that work we would previously overlook, on the grounds of it being weak, is now relentlessly foregrounded so were forced to believe in it? The reason is that we wanted the pendulum to swing in the other direction but it has become stuck there. In turning away from the dangers of elitism, the wrong kind of power that might accompany artistic impact, we find ourselves opened out far too much to an aesthetic of the underwhelming.

Wifredo Lam is at Tate Modern, SE1 (020 7887 8888, tate.org.uk) from September 14 until January 8

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
A host of top chefs and restaurateurs will create and serve special dishes inspired by Syrian cuisine in order to raise money for Unicef UK's Children of Syria Fund.

Jose Pizarro, Nuno Mendes, Barrafina, The Modern Pantry, The Salt Yard Group and Yotam Ottolenghi are among the chefs and restaurants taking part, joining an almighty line-up curated by trend-setting Instagrammer Clerkenwell Boy along with NEXTGen London and SUITCASE Magazine.

The restaurants will donate 2 from each special dish sold directly to the charity, which works within Syria as well as helping Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and across Europe.

The initiative will kick-off with a banquet on Monday 31 October and will then run throughout November, with the special dishes available at Brunswick House, Caravan, Chick n Sours, The Dairy and more.

Tickets for the exclusive banquet will be available following a donation to the cause, with a minimum amount of 150 per person recommended.

For this, diners will be treated to a multi-course meal cooked by Angela Hartnett, Fergus Henderson, Jose Pizarro, Nuno Mendes and Yotam Ottolenghi with his right-hand man Sami Tamimi.

Other events will include a Syrian-inspired breakfast created by Instagram star Symmetry Breakfast and The Good Egg, a kebab feast from Honest Burgers, a supperlcub with Syrian chefs at Jamie Olivers Fifteen, a Tel Aviv-inspired supperlcub at Salon in Brixton, and a host of demonstrations at Borough Market.

Syrian recipes from a host of big-name chefs and food writers will also be available online, and people are being encouraged to host their own #CookForSyria supperclubs at home.

Visit Eventbrite to get tickets for the banquet and visit cookforsyria.com for more details and to get involved.

Follow Ben Norum on Twitter @BenNorum

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
A crime thriller from an independent publisher with a full-time staff of two will take on the heavyweights of the literary world after it was shortlisted for this years Man Booker prize.

Graeme Macrae Burnets His Bloody Project, about a triple murder in 19th-century rural Scotland, is one of six books vying for the 50,000 award.

It is published by Contraband, an imprint of Scottish publishers Saraband. It was set up by Sara Hunt after she quit her publishing career in London, where she worked for big names including Penguin.

The shortlist also features Paul Beattys The Sellout, a satire on race relations in modern-day America, whose Bloomsbury-based publishers Oneworld won last year with Marlon James A Brief History Of Seven Killings.

The other books are Hot Milk by Deborah Levy, Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, All That Man Is by David Szalay and Madeleine Thiens Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Historian Amanda Foreman, who is chairing the panel, said the six titles had come through a level of scrutiny that few books can survive.

Books to read in 2016 1 /10 Books to read in 2016 Click through our gallery to discover the best beach reads for summer 2016... Shutterstock / wavebreakmedia The Girls by Emma Cline Clines debut novel first started to make noise in 2014 when the unknown 25-year-old sold her manuscript for a reported $2 million as part of a three-book deal. Now that the book is finally out, its fast becoming clear why it was so hotly anticipated. Beautifully written, this unflinching account of 14-year-old Evie Boyds enticement into a hippie cult is loosely inspired by the Manson murders of the late Sixties. But if youre looking for the next Helter Skelter, Cline has put the grisly details on ice, focusing instead on a coming-of-age story that will reacquaint you with your teenage self: angry, unheard and passionate. Fans of The Virgin Suicides and The Bell Jar will struggle to put this down. Youll Grow Out Of It by Jessi Klein Comedian Jessi Kleins hilariously candid autobiography offers a relentlessly funny collection of real-life stories and the lessons shes learned from them. These include her transformation from tomboy to tom man, attempting to find watchable porn and identifying the difference between being called maam and miss. If you liked Amy Poehler's Yes Please, this is a must-read. Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality by Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell Keep the spirit of this months Pride celebrations alive by reading this fascinating and moving story of the lovers, lawyers, judges and activists behind the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that led to one of the most important civil rights victories in history - the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Both inspiring and unforgettable, these accounts will stay with you long after youve finished reading. Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life by Kim Addonizio Kim Addonizio's wisecracking debut memoir is a hilariously salacious account that reflects on writing, drinking, dating and her wildest years as a young writer. She captures moments of inspiration at the writing desk and adventures on the road- from a champagne-fuelled sexcapade to sparsely attended readings at remote Midwestern colleges. Barkskins by Annie Proulx At over 700 pages, this book isnt for the faint-hearted, but youll breeze through it thanks to its brilliantly genius characters. Based on the taking down of the worlds forests, the book centres around the greedy and vengeful descendants of wood-cutters over 300 years who seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse. The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley Scooping the coveted Debut Novel of the Year accolade at this years Costa Book Awards, this Gothic work has earned praise from a host of literary critics and writers, including Stephen King who described it as an amazing piece of fiction". Set in 1976 it follows a familys annual stay in an old house in Lancashire, a place gripped by the mystery of the death of the local priest. The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock Set in Alabama in 1917, Pollocks novel follows dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett and his three young sons. Several hundred miles away in southern Ohio, a farmer Ellsworth Fiddler lives with his son, Eddie, and his wife, Eula. After Ellsworth is swindled out of his family's entire fortune, his life is turned upside down, throwing him onto a tumultuous trajectory that will directly lead him to cross paths with the Jewetts. Dark, violent and funny, this book will be like nothing else youve ever read.

The longlist of 13 included works by J M Coetzee and former judge A L Kennedy. Foreman said: In re-reading our incredibly diverse and challenging longlist, it was both agonising and exhilarating to be confronted by the sheer power of the writing. As a group we were excited by the willingness of so many authors to take risks with language and form. The final six reflect the centrality of the novel in modern culture, in its ability to champion the unconventional, to explore the unfamiliar, and to tackle difficult subjects.

The winner will be announced on October 25 at Guildhall. All shortlisted authors receive 2,500 and a bound edition of their book, with the winner picking up 50,000. Last year, Oneworld immediately ordered a paperback reprint of 80,000 copies to meet the demand generated by James win.
F rom coconut water to Starbucks drinks, we are having a love affair with coconuts. All Market Inc., which owns Vita Coco, estimates that the U.S. market alone is worth $1.2 billion (912 million), according to a Bloomberg report. But soon, there may not be enough coconuts in the Caribbean  our biggest source of the fruit  to quench our thirst.

The report names droughts, storms, and Lethal Yellowing disease as a few culprits of the shortage.

Its fair to say that at this pace, the Caribbean is running out of coconuts, Compton Paul, coordinator the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute's regional coconut program, told Bloomberg.

Vilma Da Silva, who has been exporting coconuts from Guyana, has seen this firsthand. We want to get into more international markets and export more but there arent enough farms to buy from, she said.

So, is there a solution, or are we doomed to live in a world without coconuts?

Fortunately, other places including India, Indonesia, and the Philippines are stepping up to meet the demand.

Melvin Bautista, owner of the coconut water brand Coco Express del Caribe, explained that local farms are failing because people are buying from exporters.

For those who can't survive without coconut water, the report ends with some very simple advice from Bautista: Start planting more coconuts.

 Pure #paradise, perfect as-is.  A photo posted by Vita Coco Coconut Water (@vitacoco) on Sep 1, 2016 at 10:39am PDT

Read more from Refinery29:

The Best Tasting Menus In London

10 Breakfast Routines From Successful Women

London's Most Family-Friendly Restaurants
W hen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe last saw her daughter, they drew a picture together. It was of their family of three: Nazanin, her husband Richard and two-year-old Gabriella. For the first time, the guards in Irans Evin prison let Gabriella take this picture away with her.

This was on Friday afternoon. Three days earlier, Irans Revolutionary Court jailed Nazanin  a British-Iranian charity worker who has lived in the UK since 2007  for five years. It followed her arrest in April by the Revolutionary Guard. Although she has been accused of plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic, the exact charges against her remain unknown. Nazanin had been in Tehran visiting her parents with Gabriella. When she went to check in at the airport, she was taken away for questioning. Both their passports were seized. Gabriella, who is a British citizen, is now living with her grandparents, unable to leave Iran.

Nazanin, 37, was allowed to ring Richard last Friday morning. It was the first time shes ever been angry in a call, he tells me. Angry about her ordeal but also angry at me. She called the charges ridiculous and said, Negotiations have been going on for four months. What are you doing? The rage gave Richard a scintilla of comfort: her spirit hadnt been completely crushed.

She was distraught about her sentence. Nazanin calculated thats she already spent more than a fifth of Gabriellas life apart from her, telling her husband: I cant bear to be here, separated from my baby, one day more. Its horrendous. Richard asked her what the charges were. After checking with a guard, Nazanin replied national security-related: Im not sure if she doesnt know, or if she isnt allowed to be more explicit.

Prison has taken a huge toll on Nazanin. Her hair is falling out, she has lost weight and is now struggling to walk. Richard believes the psychological trauma is even greater though, especially the effects of interrogation. Nazanin hasnt talked about being questioned as theres a guard listening to her conversations, but Richard has spoken to former detainees about their methods: They isolate you, blindfold you, put a bag over your head and make you face the wall. There are two or three interrogators and the most senior youll never see. Hell only ever be a voice. They question you relentlessly, and go through all your personal emails to build a case.

Visits from Gabriella and her parents have kept Nazanin sane, Richard adds. Sleep is Nazanins only other sanctuary: She says, I hate being woken up because when Im dreaming, Im with Gabriella and sometimes with you. When she wakes, she remembers where she is.

Nazanin is being held in the high-security Revolutionary Guards wing of Evin. She was in solitary confinement for 45 days but is now thought to be sharing a cell with another prisoner. When her parents and Gabriella visit, the guards put sacks over their heads so they dont know where shes detained.

Richard is softly-spoken and under-stated. How he has coped with the past five months? When Im campaigning, I forget about the human side. Its when I talk to her family that Im confronted by the full horror. But at least I can talk about it. Nazinin is desperate: theres nothing she can do. Shes tried good behaviour, tried confessing [to false charges] and shes still being held as a bargaining chip.

He misses his daughter desperately too; they can only communicate using Skype. Richard says Gabriella is always happier after visiting her mother: She was jumping off the sofa last time. On Sunday, still excited, she went to the birthday party of one of Nazanins sisters, and blew out the candles before anyone could put the cake down.

Gabriella now speaks Farsi and is forgetting her English. She has struggled with the upheaval. After her mothers arrest, Gabriella wouldnt sleep. When she did doze off, she would wake in the night screaming. She would only sleep with her grandmother next to her, and wouldnt eat if her grandmother was crying.

This all seems antipodal to the familys hitherto happy life in Hampstead. Richard is an accountant, Gabriella went to nursery in St Johns Wood, and Nazanin worked as a project co-ordinator for the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, running journalism training courses abroad. Speaking exclusively to the Standard, Nazanins boss  CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Monique Villa  says: She is a hard worker, a team player, very personable, and was about to be promoted to programme manager. She is a strong character, so I cannot imagine how she is coping.

Nazanin's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, delivers a letter of petition to 10 Downing Street with his mother, Barbara Ratcliffe / Getty Images

The idea that Nazanin is a revolutionary plotter strikes Villa as absurd: Nazanin isnt political at all... I am absolutely convinced of her innocence. When she wasnt working, her favourite pastime was choosing fabrics and making dresses for her and for Gabriella. The Thomson Reuters Foundation doesnt even operate in Iran.

Richard and the couples MP, Tulip Siddiq, both see Nazanin as a pawn in a political game. They suggest Nazanin is caught in a tussle between the Iranian government and the Islamic regime. The timing is notable. The day before Nazanin was sentenced, Britain appointed an ambassador to Iran for the first time in five years.

Its a clear political signal that they [the Revolutionary Guard] dont want closer relations with the UK, says Richard. Theres something remarkably provocative about holding a mother and baby. So this is a political charge and it will be solved politically if theres enough will from the UK.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Richard Ratcliffe on their wedding day in 2009 / Azadeh Fatehrad

A Foreign Office spokesman said: Were deeply concerned by reports that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been sentenced without confirmation of the charges against her. While we continue to press the Iranians ... for due process to be followed, we also stand ready to get her daughter safely back to the UK if requested.

Although Theresa May asked Irans President to resolve the case, Richard feels the Foreign Office needs to do more. The Government has expressed concerns but little else. We hear about relations [with Iran] improving but my wife is just being left there.

Siddiq, the Labour member for Hampstead and Kilburn, puts this more bluntly. Its a travesty of justice. Shes a woman who went on holiday. Whats Iran trying to tell us? That they have no interest in rebuilding the diplomatic ties we once had.

Last Thursday, Richard met Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood. Though Richard praises him  He was sincere, and said this is one of his priorities  he believes the focus from the Foreign Office generally is on fostering better business relations with Iran. But he points out that Nazanin shows that those most likely to create corporate links  dual nationals who speak Farsi  are not safe there: If theyre willing to do this to a mum and baby, imagine what will happen to a young man travelling to Iran for work.

Iran has a habit of detaining dual nationals. Fellow British-Iranian Kamal Foroughi, 77, has been held in Iran for five-and-a-half years and now risks going blind without a cataract operation. A Canadian-Iranian professor, Homa Hoodfar, was jailed in Iran in June and is now scarcely able to walk or talk.

Its not enough for Boris Johnson and Theresa May to say they are raising concerns, adds Siddiq. Its gone beyond that. I want Nazanins sentence quashed at the appeal. We dont want words  we want action. Johnson has said due process should be followed  but Iran hasnt followed due process so far. In Gabriellas case, were talking about a two-year-old, away from her mum and dad. If the Foreign Office cant protect people like her, what is the point in them? Siddiq will now be contacting the ambassador to say Nazanin needs consular access.

Richards next step is to appeal, another amorphous process: When they review it, and how, is unclear. There are three possibilities: either there is a judicial review, a re-trial, or the former may lead to the latter. Richard also mentions taking his wifes case to the International Court of Justice.

He has spoken to the media against the wishes of his Iranian in-laws. They think I dont understand whats happening. A large part of the trial  150 pages in the file against her  was the foreign media writing against her detainment. [Nazanins parents] think of protesting your innocence as proof of guilt. And when I speak out, it is her father who faces an intimidating conversation. But telling the truth  being transparent and honest  feels right to me.

Richard pauses. I am sure this is what Nazanin would want, he says. She has a strong sense of justice and whats happened to her is wrong. I will keep talking until they are both home.

To sign the petition for Nazanins release, go to change.org

Follow Rosamund Urwin on Twitter: @RosamundUrwin
A total of 21.5 million exchanged hands last week at Londons largest annual car auction.

This years sale was notable for its listings of low-mileage Porsches, many of which sold above their estimates, including a 1995 Porsche 911 GT2 that was purchased for 1,848,000.

But it was a rare 1960 Aston Martin DB4 that stole the show, selling for 2,408,000.

Tim Scott Fluid Images (c) 2016 courtesy RM Sotheby's

The Aston is one of only three DB4s fitted with rear seats, and one of only 45 that were made with right-hand drive. At the other end of the spectrum, Wednesday evening saw the sale of a 1973 Toyota FJ40 Land Cruiser for 20,160, a VW Beetle 15,680 and a 1969 Fiat 500 L for 5,040.

London always has something of a party atmosphere, Peter Haynes of RM Sothebys tells me, its always well-attended and people seem to enter the sale in a relaxed and good-humoured mood, which is important to the success.

1967 Iso Grifo GL Series

In amongst some of the worlds most sought-after and best-preserved cars was a barn-find 1967 Iso Grifo. Left in storage for over two decades and covered in rust, the unrestored Grifo stood out on the auction floor and attracted a throng of loving admirers.

It sold for 128,000, smashing its pre-auction estimate. Also listed was a far better looked-after four-horsepower Vallee Vis-a-Vis from 1897. Thought to be one of just two Vallees still in existence, this one sold for 85,120.

1897 Vallee Vis-a-Vis / RM Sotheby's

This was RM Sothebys tenth year at the Battersea Evolution, based near the Chelsea Bridge entrance of Battersea Park.

London has always been an eclectic sale, says Peter Haynes, with a broad range of classics from veteran London to Brighton machinery, through to pre-war cars and up to what we refer to as modern classics. Its a sale that is defined by that broad offer of cars, and it will always have cars that are relatively affordable alongside some of the rare and expensive machinery. Its also a really international sale, as it is a location is easily accessed from all over Europe.

Centre stage was given to a 1956 Austin Princess hearse, with coffin tracks removed and airline seats fitted in their place. Previously owned and regularly driven by John Lennon, the car featured in Lennon and Yoko Onos 1972 documentary Imagine.

John Lennon's 1956 Austin Princess / RM Sotheby's

Though it may appear to be an odd choice of limousine for such a successful musician, the Princesses were a favourite for the Beatles, who preferred the Austins large open doors to the smaller offerings from Roll-Royce and Bentley. These doors allowed the band to swiftly escape hordes of marauding fans on the way out of busy concert venues.

Lennons Princess was listed with an estimate of 185,000 - 260,000 but failed to sell at auction, meaning the car is still available for anyone who wants to own this unique piece of motoring and musical heritage.

Ferrari 250 GT Cabriolet / RM Sotheby's

Despite a number of cars not reaching their reserves, Peter Haynes is optimistic about the state of the classic car market Nobody close the market has ever really felt that it is in decline, but simply that it has evolved from the crazy value rises that we had seen for a few years. That huge appreciation in values that we saw in almost all areas of the market simply couldnt continue, but were seeing that there is still very strong demand for cars offered in good condition with good histories and where the asking price is fair. The London sale proved that, with 76 per cent of the cars selling and all for very strong money.

Follow Ashley on Twitter @Ashley_Coates
A n army sergeant has been charged with attempted murder after his wifes parachute failed to open in a 4,000ft jump.

Police said Emile Cilliers, 36, is accused of two counts of attempted murder and another of criminal damage reckless to the endangerment of life.

His wife Victoria Cilliers, 40, suffered multiple serious injuries after plummeting to the ground during a skydive at Netheravon Airfield on Salisbury Plain on April 5 last year.

At the time Wiltshire Police said her reserve also failed and deployed only partially. Mrs Cilliers was taken to Southampton Hospital and later discharged.

Cilliers is charged with attempting to murder his wife between March 28 and March 31 in Amesbury, Wiltshire, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

He has also been charged with a second count of attempting to murder Mrs Cilliers between April 3 and April 6 last year in Netheravon.

A third charge relates to an allegation that he damaged a domestic gas fitting belonging to Mrs Cilliers, between March 28 and March 31 last year in Amesbury, endangering the lives of his two children.

Ian Harris, from CPS Wessex, said: "The CPS has today authorised the police to charge Emile Cilliers with two charges of attempting to murder his wife, Victoria Cilliers, and with a further charge of criminal damage reckless to the endangerment of the lives of their two children."

Cilliers, of Amesbury, Wiltshire, has been released on bail and is due to appear at Salisbury Magistrates' Court on October 14.
A British paraglider is feared to have been robbed and murdered during an expedition in Mongolia hours after his friend was forced to abandon him due to an injury.

Experienced hiker and paragliding pilot Steve Nash, 53, was found dead after his companion was forced to retire from their mountain trip.

Mr Nash had been attempting to cross the Khangai mountain range in central Mongolia when it is thought he was robbed of his passport and wallet and left for dead.

Mr Nashs wife became concerned when his statellite tracking system she had been monitoring from their home in Cheshire stopped updating.

Feared murdered: Mr Nash was attempting to cross a mountain range in Mongolia / Steve Nash/Facebook

Mr Nash and his companion, Gareth Aston, 48, had arrived in Uliastai for their 217-mile expedition on August 23 but a week later Mr Aston was forced to retire because of a back injury.

The pairs Facebook page announced in August 31: "Steve is continuing with the attempt solo, he has taken some of Gareth's food, giving him an extra seven-day window.

Mr Nash is believed to have been found dead at 1pm on the day of the Facebook update with his passport and money missing.

Facebook post: The explorer is believed to have been found dead hours after this message was posted / Steve Nash Facebook

His family said in a statement: "Steve was on his second Spiralling the Steppes adventure to Mongolia, when his family were informed that he had died".

The chartered engineer had been paragliding for more than ten years and was described as one of our best by a spokesman for the Nova Paragliding Team he was a member of.

Till Gottbrath added: "Steve was not only a fantastic pilot and outstanding athlete, he was the role model of a British gentleman: polite, helpful, open-minded, positive."
A woman, in her 50s, has been rushed to hospital after being hit by a bus at an accident black-spot in south-east London.

Metropolitan Police were called to Lewisham High Street just after 4.30pm today after the pedestrian was knocked-down.

She was taken to a south London hospital in a stable condition.

Dramatic images showed police and ambulances at the scene, which was completely taped-off.

Model Lorna Roberts witnessed the aftermath of the smash and told the Standard she remembers three other accidents in recent years at the danger spot.

She said: It's happened about three times on that road it's a real danger spot.

A bus (previously) hit a man about 100 ft along road from where (the accident) happened today.

A Met Police spokesman said: A Met Police spokesman said they were called at just after 4.30pm today to reports of a crash between a bus and pedestrian on Lewisham High Street.

"One woman in her fifties was taken to hospital and is in a stable condition.

No arrests have been made.
A 61-year-old man was today arrested on suspicion of terror offences after a raid in Kensington.

Scotland Yard said the man was held after counter-terror officers stormed an address on Monday afternoon.

The man was detained on suspicion of possessing an article for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism.

He is being held in custody whilst the property is being searched. The offence for which he has been arrested is not thought to be Syria-related.

The latest arrest comes after detectives foiled a plot to launch an Islamic State attack in the UK last week.

The current terror threat level in Britain is considered severe, meaning that an attack is highly likely.

Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said recently that it is a matter of when, not if an IS outrage is carried out in Britain.

More armed officers have been deployed across London and the Met recently revealed details of the forces new specialist counter terror firearms officers who are trained to reach incidents and confront gunmen within minutes using high powered motorcycles.
T his is the shocking moment a man is slashed across the face by a thug with a hunting knife.

Dramatic CCTV footage captured the knifeman approaching the victim with the blade concealed behind his back.

He runs around the back of a car before slowing to a jog and licking his lips as he approaches the 21-year-old victim.

The attacker then appears to say something to the man before pulling out the weapon and slashing him across the face.

Attack: The man appears to swing at the victim with a blade / Met Police

Back-peddling from the scene he then points the knife at the victim, shouting at him as he flees. The group with him leave on bikes.

Police today released CCTV taken from a neighbouring property after the attack in Shadwell Drive, Northolt.

Detectives say the victim was slashed across the left side of his face, causing a deep gash.

He was taken to an east London hospital where he needed stitches for the knife wound.

His alleged attacker is described as a black man, wearing blue jeans, a blue jumper and black jacket.

Police are appealing for anyone who saw the attack, which happened on May 1 at 6.24pm, to come forward.

Anyone with information should call police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
A student who will return to her university degree after losing her legs and fingers to sepsis said today: I dont let it affect my outlook.

Syeda Mannan, 21, became one of the youngest adults in the UK to undergo a quadruple amputation to save her from blood poisoning.

The Queen Mary University of London student, who resumes her law and politics degree this month, said: My parents wanted me to take a year off. But I had my heart set on going back straight away.

Ms Mannan, of Crawley in West Sussex, sought medical help for a sore throat last October. She was given drugs for a fungal infection resulting from lupus, which is caused by problems in the immune system, but had a severe allergic reaction and went into septic shock, suffering multiple organ failure. Her legs were amputated above the knee in November and her fingers in March.

'Remarkable': student Syeda Mannan / David Tett

I was one of the sickest patients they have ever had, she said. Most other patients dont make it. It was like a domino effect  it all just went downhill as soon as I started deteriorating.

Ms Mannan was treated first at East Surrey hospital in Redhill before being transferred to St Thomas in Lambeth. She spent 10 months in care, including 13 weeks in rehabilitation, learning how to walk again.

About 50 staff at Guys and St Thomas NHS trust played a role in her treatment and recovery. Jodie Georgiou, clinical lead for the trusts amputee rehabilitation unit, said: She has been remarkable. Her mindset is so positive and so strong.

Being a quadrilateral amputee is very difficult. We dont see it very often in young patients unless they have had a form of sepsis. You see it with military casualties. We generally see a patient like Syeda maybe once a year, or maybe even rarer.

Ms Mannan said: None of us knew what sepsis was before it happened. A lot of the doctors thought it was meningitis. To this day they still dont know exactly where it came from, how it happened and how it escalated so quickly.

Today is World Sepsis Day, with doctors calling for greater awareness of a condition that is responsible for at least 44,000 deaths each year in the UK. It accounts for more than one in 10 deaths of children under four.

Ms Mannan has progressed from her stubbies to prosthetic legs, bringing her back to full height, and is now able to climb stairs and walk outside.

As soon as I came round and started to recover, I made the decision that I wanted to get back to university straight away, she said. This was when I was in intensive care.

Sometimes I do get sad and ask why this has happened to me. But I dont let it affect my outlook. Theres no use dwelling on the past. I want to focus on the future. I want to make a fresh start and be the best I can be."
A motorcyclist was travelling at more than twice the 30mph limit when he buried his superbike into the side of a black cab after braking so suddenly it flipped over, an inquest heard.

Marian Suruianu, 25, was thrown through the air when his white Suzuki crashed near Marble Arch shortly after reaching speeds of around 70mph, Westminster coroners court was told.

Paramedics tried to resuscitate him but he was pronounced dead at the scene half an hour after the accident.

The Romanian had moved to Britain three years earlier and was working as an Uber driver to send money home to his family after his father died.

He is believed to have been riding with a fellow biker at the time of the crash early on Sunday, March 20.

Crash victim: Marian Suruianu with sister Gabriela. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death

Cabbie James Swash was taking Philip Cunningham and his wife back to their hotel in Earls Court shortly after midnight when his taxi was hit as he made a right turn into Bayswater Road from Hyde Park Street. He told the inquest: I looked to the right to see the traffic, let some traffic go and continued to look until I could see it was safe. The next thing that happened, I heard the motorcycle go into the back of the cab.

Mr Swash said the motorbike was embedded in his vehicle.

CCTV recorded Mr Suruianus speed as between 52 and 60mph, but as he was believed to be braking for much of this time, his initial speed was probably higher. Detective Sergeant Chris Osbourne said: An average of 70mph would not have been far off it.

Mr Cunningham, 43, broke his leg and required surgery after a piece of shrapnel became lodged in his left leg.

He told the inquest: As we came out towards the middle of the road, I could see the lights of a bike way off in the distance. It initially caught my attention because I thought that it was going fast. He added that Mr Suruianu braked so heavily the bike was standing up on its front wheel. The bike had just gone up vertical and the back of the bike hit the taxi. He said: He was up in the air in a Superman pose As he came off, the bike carried on and buried itself into the side of the cab.

Coroner Dr William Dolman recorded a verdict of accidental death.

Mr Suruianus sister Sorina Suruianu attended the inquest with a friend, but left without commenting.
D edicated artist zones could be created in areas such as Hackney Wick and Peckham to offer protection against developers and soaring rents, under proposals being worked on by the deputy mayor for culture.

Justine Simons said stopping creative people being priced out of London was a priority for her. In her first interview since being appointed to the role by Sadiq Khan in July, she told the Standard: Infrastructure is a big challenge for this city.

"You grow as a capital city and that puts pressure on infrastructure that layers down into the arts world.

If you look at the average salary of an artist its about 10,000 a year. The average property price in London is about 600,000 a year. There is real pressure on affordability. Were predicting well lose 30 per cent of artist spaces in the next five years so that is a particular pressure area.

She said the ultimate solution was to ensure artists own their studios and she was looking at ways of helping individuals and organisations to purchase unused spaces in existing creative hubs such as in east and south-east London, and identify new ones. Her team are also looking at whether creative firms could benefit from cheaper business rates.

Ms Simons said: The property market moves so quickly that by the time people have put grants together and applied for sponsorship the property is off the market, so its the kind of intervention that is about accessing finance to allow creative people to put down roots and buy infrastructure and create ownership.

At the moment artists and creative people are like the advance party  they find the stranger, weird places that no one sees much value in, they bring them to life, the area becomes valuable and then they are priced out of the market.

What we want to create is an area where creative people can put down roots and that would be a creative enterprise zone. Thats working with local authorities, developers with the creative community and residents. Its putting a spotlight and a ring around an area.

Ms Simons has worked at City Hall for 14 years and is best known for masterminding public art for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square and the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. She founded the World Cities Cultural Forum, a network of 32 international cities, including New York and Paris, to share ideas and promote culture. Ms Simons said the organisation was collaborative rather than competitive, but she was keen to maintain Londons pre-eminence.

As deputy mayor for culture and creative industries, she has responsibility for film, music, video games, crafts and publishing. She said she will work with the new night czar to protect music venues, following the closure of the nightclub Fabric, in Farringdon, despite the intervention of City Hall.
L ondoners sweltered in temperatures hotter than Mexico today as soaring temperatures made rush hour buses and Tubes unbearable.

Commuters complained of the sweat and the smell as they were trapped in packed carriages with temperatures reaching up to 35C.

Today was the hottest day of the year so far  beating even Julys scorching heat and becoming the hottest September day in over a century.

The heatwave brought a high of 34.4C in Gravesend, Kent, making it the warmest September day since 1911.

Timelapse of London from the Shard on September's hottest day since 1911

Transport for London urged commuters to take care in the heat and carry bottles of water to stay cool.

Commuters reported being given free water and ice lollies by TfL staff across London stations.

But sweaty passengers on the Central Line  which saw temperatures grow by five degrees during evening rush hour to 35C  complained of the heat.

Britain bakes on hottest day of the year

Lyn Luong, a 20-year-old technology analyst from Bow, was sweating and said: I think the way I look now is I how I would describe the heat  unbearable.

Sweaty: Lyn Luong, 20, from Bow Church said the heat was "unbearable". / Lucy Young

I think some people try to avoid the Tube, but if you have to take it you cant really not, I have to work. Today has been particularly bad and on certain lines its worse than others.

Richa Dhingra, 33, from west London, said: Its so hot, theres just no ventilation.

"Ive been travelling on the London Central Line and I feel sick because its so hot, I cant sit down because its so hot.

Heat: Richa Dhingra, 33, at the beginning of rush hour when the temperatures were climbing. / Lucy Young

Its everything about it, the sweat and the smell.

Martin Hermann, 32, who works in finance and is visiting London from Germany, said: Its terrible, awful, really really bad.

I thought these trains would have air conditioning. Go on any train in Beijing and know its much, much better in terms of ventilation.

Emma Rostron, 26, was just visiting London for the day - but said she has been in worse temperatures.

"Theres just no air, no movement of air," she said.

Sweltering: Emma Rostron said "there's just no movement of air". / Lucy Young

My brother used to commute and I know he used to say hed get to work and say hed need a shower by the time he got there.

Other commuters took the heat in their stride.

Britton Lutz, 30, who lives in Notting Hill, said: Im from the middle of the US so this is not as awful as it could be.

Bright side: Britton Lutz, 30, said the heat was "not as awful as it could be". / Lucy Young

But everyone Ive talked to here certainly complains about it and has been very frustrated.

Elsewhere on the Tube, commuters took to social media to complain of the heat but also thanked TfL for handing out water.

June Gundlack said on Twitter: "The heat on the tubes and trains in London tonight isn't comfy. Thank you @TfL for free ice lolly at Liverpool Street."

London Heatwave September 2016 1 /13 London Heatwave September 2016 At midnight last night, the temperature was 19C Lucy Young A couple sits in the shade of a tree in Hyde Park Lucy Young Londoners take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather in Hyde Park Lucy Young Two sun-seekers relax on deckchairs in Hyde Park Lucy Young A jogger braves the heat for a workout in Hyde Park Lucy Young The hot weather brought a boost to London's pubs, bars and restaurants Lucy Young The hot spell is expected to last to the end of the week Lucy Young A Londoner basks in the sunshine on a deckchair in Hyde Park Alex Lentati An overheated swan is guided back to the Serpentine after getting lost in Knightsbridge Alex Lentati Samantha Batey enjoys the sunny weather inHyde Park today Alex Lentati

The high temperatures today meant Britain was as warm as Bangkok in Thailand, and hotter than Madrid and Los Angeles.

According to the forecast the hot weather looks set to continue throughout the week with tomorrow being close to 30C in parts.
P olice are routinely discriminating against black people in stop and search operations in London as part of a misguided performance culture, Scotland Yards new head of diversity has warned.

Victor Olisa said it was accepted practice to stop young black men to try and boost arrest rates for drugs such as cannabis  while officers turned a blind eye to white men who may be carrying cocaine.

The chief superintendent said the discrimination was unwitting and driven by performance rather than racism but had led to a negative stereotyping of black people.

Ch Supt Olisa, one of Scotland Yards most senior black officers, said police were more likely to stop a car with young black men on the chance of finding drugs than stop a car full of white men in suits, though they could also be in possession of cocaine.

"We dont want you to join to be a hero. Just be a good cop and enjoy the salary"

He said if drugs were found then the officer would repeat the same process to get results adding: You end up building a process and a stereotype. The cop on the ground is just doing it because of what he or she thinks is right, they are not doing it because they are racist.

But when you look at the accumulated data you see massive disproportionality. I think thats where we get lost.

He said officers should continue to carry out stop and search based on intelligence, saying: You need to be able to explain as an individual why you stopped Joe Bloggs.

Mr Olisa, 57, who was the first black person to join Surrey police in 1982, said police discrimination based on stereotypes was much stronger when he joined, but it still existed.

He said he had experienced racism in the police some in subtle guises and other more overt, such as being called the N word by people in the street.

Speaking to the Standard he said the current fairness at work and disciplinary records showed the system was skewed against ethnic minority staff, meaning if you are BME you are less likely to get through the process.

Last week a report found that officers and staff in the Met expected to be victimised and their careers to suffer if they complained about racism.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission launched the study after former firearms officer Carol Howard was awarded 37,000 after being hounded by her boss for being a black woman.

Mr Olisa said part of the answer was to treat people fairly and with respect and with better communication.

People are sometimes afraid of being labelled as racist. If we start thinking Oh my God I am talking to a black person I had better be careful what I say we get ourselves into a real mess. Managers become defensive, people feel excluded.

Lets look at the qualities, the experience that people bring and concentrate on those and treat people fairly then issues about race become secondary.

He also believes the Met has to convince ethnic minority communities that policing is a good job - but not ask them to be role models.

He said: We should say its a good job, but we dont want you to join to be a hero, to be a role model.

"All those things are a burden. If I was a young black man and wanted to be a police officer, I dont want to be a role model. Why do we do this, just be a good cop and enjoy the salary. Lets not burden people.

The former Haringey borough commander, who appeared in the BBC documentary series The Met, described the challenge of policing the borough in the aftermath of the 2011 riots.

It was hellishly difficult, he said.

He also revealed just how London came close to a second round of mass rioting following the inquest verdict into the shooting of Mark Duggan.

Duggan, a 29-year-old gangster, was shot dead by a police marksman in Tottenham in 2011 in an incident that sparked unrest across the UK.

Ch Supt Olisa said tensions were running incredibly high after an inquest jury returned a lawful killing verdict in January 2014 - when the family expected an unlawful killing ruling.

He said When the verdict came and it was lawful killing my initial thought was that there would be another riot because the family had no-where to go.

I thought there would be a riot because there was so much anger, not necessarily from the family, but from everyone else. The tension was incredible. 

The danger subsided because police had better relations with the community and some were prepared to stand up and say give the police a chance.

However, he backed the Met over the shooting saying the police operation was targeted towards removing a gun from the street.
A man and a woman have been fined 3,000 after smuggling endangered tortoises into the UK.

Police raided the pairs Shepherds Bush home after reports suggested they had been illegally importing kittens from Algeria  but instead found six spur-thighed tortoises.

The pair were found guilty of importing and offering the rare species of tortoises for sale.

Spur-thighed tortoises are native to parts of Africa, Europe and Asia and are a protected species.

Officers from the Met and the City of Londons animal health inspector seized the tortoises, which have now been rehomed.

Kamel Gadouchi, 44, and Frederique Aline Chasles, 39, both of Shackleton Court, appeared at Hammersmith Magistrates Court on May 23 facing charges about the illegal import, keeping and sale of the tortoises.

Gadouchi was fined 600 for importing the animals, 600 for offering them for sale, 375.22 court costs and 198 compensation to an animal centre. He was also charged a 60 victim surcharge.

Seized: Two people have been fined after the tortoises were found at their home. / Met Police

Chasles was fined 600 for offering them for sale, 375.72 court costs and 198 compensation to an animal centre and a 60 victim surcharge.

Investigating officer Detective Constable Sarah Bailey of the Met's Wildlife Crime Unit said: "The illegal trade in this species and the impact on their conservation status has resulted in tortoises as a group being identified as a priority for wildlife crime enforcement.

We will continue to work closely with our colleagues in HM Customs and Excise and Animal Health and Welfare agencies to robustly confront those trading in wildlife illegally and place them before the courts."


D avid Cameron announced he was leaving Parliament, two of his biggest rivals were launching their memoirs across the capital. Both Nick Clegg and Ed Balls were upstaged by the former Prime Minister one last time.

Clegg was at the National Liberal Club, supported by a tight circle of Lib-Dem friends including Tim Farron and David Laws. He was not impressed with Camerons timing. Damn him, he said. In a final act of Coalition one-upmanship... David Cameron chooses to spike the evening news, which of course would have been dwelling on this event in other circumstances, by announcing hes resigned from Parliament.

Clegg did say Cameron had helped shape his relationship with his editor. Anything you dont like in the book basically [my editor] suggested... and all the good bits are me, he said. Thats the position that I learnt from the Conservatives in coalition.

Meanwhile, Ed Balls was speaking to a Labour crowd including Tessa Jowell at Kings College London, where he is a visiting professor. The Londoner asked Balls if he would suggest Strictly Come Dancing as a next step for the former PM. I think David Cameron would have to think hard about whether he would really want to go through what I am going through, said Balls, aching from his dance training. But if he does, I would really recommend it.

What might Cameron learn from the cha-cha-cha, we wondered? Balls said he had learnt a lot. With Strictly youve got to have a go, do your best and try and improve, he said. And youve got to be able to laugh at yourself as well. Now Cameron can dance like no ones watching.

-----

All eyes on who will stand in the Witney constituency being vacated by David Cameron. Toby Young, who has liberated himself from the West London Free School Trust CEO post, is said to be interested. Also watch out for MEPs such as arch-Brexiteer Dan Hannan. One candidate who is definitely interested is Ukips Elizabeth Jones. I have said I will lead Ukip from the front, like my hero Queen Boadicea  I dont just talk the talk, I walk the walk. That ended well.

Brexit is still puzzling dictionary minds

Last week the Oxford English Dictionary told The Londoner that an entry for Brexit in their dictionary was imminent. We celebrated: perhaps lexicographers could help the politicians define our exit from the European Union.

But yesterday the OEDs quarterly online update was announced, with Brexit nowhere to be seen. Instead, new entries include moobs, YOLO, and Westminster bubble.

Nothings changed. We are still researching and preparing an update, probably for December, a press officer told us. The word has changed since the referendum so we have to research the different meanings in use. As long as its not pushed back past 2017.

Fortnums gets the X Factor

The Londoner has never seen so many rebellious souls crowding into Fortnum & Masons Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon. The Queens grocer is hosting an exhibition, Fortnums X Frank, from collector Frank Cohen, which will be on free display for the next month.

Guests included filmmaker Charlotte Colbert, painter Maggi Hambling, collector Lauren Prakke, and artist Annie Morris, but The Londoner was intrigued to see how the older crowd were feeling about their transition to respectability. From YBA to OAP, its the inevitable trajectory, lamented Jake Chapman, whose work Unholy McTrinity 3 is being exhibited in the Fortnum crypt. The last time I was at Fortnums I was chucking eggs at it on the anti-austerity march.

Cohen added: I want to do a pop-up like this every year. Its much easier than dealing with contemporary artists because most of mine are dead.

-----

Most celebrities shy away from sycophantic fans when they use public transport but not Poldark heartthrob Aidan Turner, who enjoys making adulatory scenes on the Bakerloo line even more awkward  If they recognise me on the Tube, I tend to wind people up a bit, he tells GQ magazine. A woman opened a page of a newspaper which showed his Poldark character with the face of Ed Miliband on it. I may have leaned over and said something to her. Tube riders beware!

Paws and look for Hislops missing cat

Have I got mews for you? Ian and Victoria Hislops cat Colin is missing. Novelist Victoria has appealed on Twitter. Colin is awol in SW3 but normally commutes between his bowl and sofa. House seems empty. Come back Colin. The furry tabby was a staunch advocate for Remain, and is pictured on Twitter with an IN referendum sticker.

One imagines him tirelessly canvassing around the streets of SW3 till his little paws were sore. Could it be that, in his disappointment at the Brexit result, hes hopped on a ferry to Calais?

Hes clearly moved to Paris, fellow novelist Rachel Johnson chipped in on Twitter.

Either that or hes having a quiet pint and conspiratorial chat down the Westminster Arms with Palmerston the Cat.

Emily gets the Gallic shrug

Emily Thornberrys failure to name the French Foreign Minister (its Jean-Marc Ayrault, obviously) has elicited little more than a Gallic shrug across the Channel.

Staff at the Quai dOrsay drew a blank with our inquiry whether Monsieur Ayrault, pictured, had ever heard of Thornberry. Cue Marc Roche, veteran London correspondent for French magazine Le Point, who offered his own analysis. He has never heard of her for two reasons: there are no links between Labour and the French Socialist party, and Mr Ayrault, who is a fluent German speaker, is only interested in cementing the links with Germany after le Brexit result.

So diplomatic crisis averted, then? He will not take offence and will just shrug the shoulders and say: Ah, ces Anglais.
S adiq Khan has vetoed plans to create a new private pension scheme at City Hall in a bid to avoid accusations that London politicians are lining their own pockets.

The Mayor believes it would be hard to justify spending up to 2.1 million of taxpayer cash over the next four years on a new scheme at a time of spending cuts and wage freezes, even though Assembly members want him to do so.

It comes after the last Government blocked local councillors, as well as mayors and AMs elected this year onwards, from accessing the Local Government Pension Scheme.

Ministers said that since councillors were part-time volunteers they should not be eligible, but gave full-time City Hall politicians the freedom to set up a new scheme if they wanted.

A City Hall source said the Mayor had real sympathy for the position that AMs, as well as himself, had been put in but felt it would be impossible to justify.

He added: There is a real risk that it would look like Assembly Members were lining their own pockets at taxpayers expense - and Sadiq is simply not willing to do that.
C annabis should be legalised for medical use, a major parliamentary inquiry has concluded.

A cross-party group of MPs and peers has called for the UK to end its "irrational" ban on the drug being used for pain relief, with claims it was "unacceptable" that people currently doing so face prosecution.

During the inquiry, the group took evidence from 623 patients, representatives of the medical professions and people with knowledge of how medical cannabis is regulated across the world.

The group also commissioned neurologist Professor Mike Barnes to review evidence from the around the world.

His report concludes there is good evidence that medical cannabis helps alleviate the symptoms of chronic pain, spasticity - often associated with multiple sclerosis, nausea or vomiting - and helps manage anxiety.

Prof Barnes said: "We analysed over 20,000 scientific and medical reports. The results are clear. Cannabis has a medical benefit for a wide range of conditions.

"I believe that with greater research, it has the potential to help with an even greater number of conditions.

"But this research is being stifled by the Government's current classification of cannabis as having no medical benefit."

A recent Populus survey for the End Our Pain campaign, which is fighting for a change in the law, found public support for reform.

Some 68 per cent supported allowing doctors to prescribe cannabis where they considered it would help their patients, with 11 per cent opposed.

The parliamentary group's chairman Baroness Meacher said: "The findings of our inquiry and review of evidence from across the world are clear. Cannabis works as a medicine for a number of medical conditions.

"The evidence has been strong enough to persuade a growing number of countries and US states to legalise access to medical cannabis.

"Against this background, the UK scheduling of cannabis as a substance that has no medical value is irrational."

Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, who also chairs the group, said: "Many hundreds of thousands of people in the UK are already taking cannabis for primarily medical reasons.

"It is totally unacceptable that they should face the added stress of having to break the law to access their medicine.

"This is a matter of compassion and human rights. The Government should have the political courage to view the issue of medical cannabis separately from any wider drugs reform and act urgently."

Additional reporting by the Press Association.
D avid Camerons staff were phoning the estate agents today to find a new office in central London for an ex-premier in search of a new role.

The former Tory leader plans to set up an independent new base outside the House of Commons to provide administrative support as he considers his next career moves.

Mr Cameron surprised Westminster by resigning with immediate effect as an MP last night, saying he decided over the summer that he could not remain as a backbencher without becoming a distraction for the Government and pointed out he holds his own views on certain issues.

His comments hinted at private disagreements with the policy changes being rushed out by successor Theresa May, such as the introduction of grammar schools. Mr Cameron has not so far been allocated a slot to appear at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. The question mark over whether he will be given a chance to speak to activists recalled the fate of Margaret Thatcher who was cheered for five minutes at John Majors first conference without being allowed to stand up and make a speech.

Mr Camerons office said his conference arrangements had not been discussed yet but it was normal for the party to make decisions on the conference agenda at a later stage.

Cameron explains why he's standing down as UK MP

He has been given two weeks to clear out of his current office at Westminster  a grand suite that was hastily made available in July at the expense of four Tory backbenchers who shared it and were ordered to move out to more humble rooms.

His spokesman this morning denied a claim circling on social media that Mrs Cameron and wife Samantha had been dining with Tony and Cherie Blair since he quit as Prime Minister, after Junes EU referendum defeat. They have not met the Blairs or dined with them, said the spokesman.

Mr Blair caused controversy by launching a political consultancy after quitting No 10, making tens of millions of pounds in fees from businesses and governments, including Middle East dictators he got to know as premier.

Mr Camerons departure comes after he quit as prime minister on July 13. He said at the time that he was very keen to continue as MP for Witney.

He said Mrs May had got off to a cracking start but added: Obviously Im going to have my own views about different issues.

As a former prime minister it is very difficult, I think, to sit as a backbencher and not be an enormous diversion and distraction from what the Government is doing, he said.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he wished Mr Cameron all the best for the future, adding he got on well with him on a human level.
A senior ally of Jeremy Corbyn today sparked fears of a bloody purge of moderate Labour MPs by saying boundary changes were a chance to pick people more in tune with activists.

The threat came as MPs across London woke to find their constituencies are to be radically changed and in some cases abolished  pitching them into a brutal round of musical chairs to avoid the sack.

Among the big names forced to go on the move was Mr Corbyn, whose Islington North seat vanishes from the map under the proposals from the independent Boundary Commission.

Overall, Londons tally of MPs is being cut from 73 to 68 under the plans, with MPs on both sides affected.

Fears that centrists will be elbowed were fuelled when Darren Williams, who sits on Labours ruling National Executive Committee, predicted an axe for those deemed to have shown disloyalty to the party leader.

An exclusive analysis of the changes by Professor Anthony Wells of YouGov suggests the changes would mean Labour winning 39 London seats, with the Conservatives winning 29, based on voting in recent local and national elections.

The sole Liberal Democrat MP in the capital, Tom Brake, would be in danger, with his Carshalton & Wallington constituency gaining areas where the Tories have done well.

Labour leader Mr Corbyn said he was very unhappy with the new map. On the threat to his own seat, revealed exclusively by Standard Online yesterday, he said: I look forward to representing some parts of Islington.

His words confirmed that he will grab a new constituency of Finsbury Park and Stoke Newington, which will contain half of his old seat.

But with neighbouring seats being crunched together, there was a question mark over neighbouring Meg Hillier, the Hackney South & Shoreditch MP, who was branded core group hostile in a leaked loyalty list drawn up in Mr Corbyns office.

Chuka Umunnas Streatham seat is being changed radically, but he has a strong claim to move into a safe seat of Streatham & Mitcham.

Cardiff councillor Mr Williams told BBC Radio 4: I think where MPs have consistently demonstrated a disloyalty to the party leader and to the views on which he was elected then I think members are within their rights to ask whether those MPs should continue to represent them.

A Labour MP stated: They could not be more explicit about wanting to use this whole mess to carry out de-selections.

Ringing the changes across capital

Jeremy Corbyn

The Labour leaders nucleus of political control is set to be disrupted when his Islington North seat is replaced by new constituency Islington. In an attempt to avoid a three-way scrap for the seat between him, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry and Diane Abbott, the shadow health secretary, the axe could fall on Meg Hillier, the MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch.

Stella Creasy

Labour MP faces a fight to retain her Walthamstow seat against John Cryer, chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Boris Johnson

With much of his seat falling into new Hillingdon and Uxbridge constituency, he should be sticking around.

Stephen Hammond

Wimbledon MP could lose to fellow Tory and Putney MP Justine Greening in fight for new seat.

Mike Gapes

Backbench Labour MP faces trouble when Ilford South, which he has represented since 1992, splits.
T he Prime Minister has been urged to swap her leopard skin shoes for comfortable footwear to support a campaign against women being forced to wear high heels.

The issue was debated at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) today in Brighton, with the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists warning about the dangers of wearing heels all day.

More than 150,000 people have signed a petition demanding a change in the law after a receptionist was sent home from her first day at accountancy firm PwC for refusing to wear two to four inch heels.

Penny Robinson of the GMB union took off her high heeled shoes to tell delegates that women were expected to wear "totally inappropriate " shoes to work.

She noted that Theresa May had attracted comments about her leopard skin shoes and suggested that the new Prime Minister could support the union campaign.

She said: "She could make a point of wearing pumps, flats or comfortable shoes for Cabinet meetings or when she meets EU leaders.

Katie Collins of the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists said 80 per cent of adults had a foot problem, often caused by work.

Some employers enforced a dress code which included shoes, she said, adding: "Wearing high heels has real long term health implications."

Nicola Thorp, who was employed as a temp by PwC's outsourced reception firm Portico, alleges she was laughed at when she complained that the demand was discriminatory as men were allowed to wear flat shoes.

She says she was sent home without pay after refusing to go out and buy a pair of heels.

PwC said the dress code was not its policy and that it is in discussion with the third party supplier of house/reception services.

A Portico spokeswoman said of Ms Thorp at the time: In line with industry standard practice, we have personal appearance guidelines across many of our corporate locations. These policies ensure staff are dressed consistently and include recommendations for appropriate style of footwear for the role.
N igel Farages successor as Ukip leader will be chosen from a B-list of virtually unknown politicians, according to a new poll.

At least eight out of 10 people have never heard of each of the six candidates who entered the leadership race, according to the survey by BMG Research.

They are Bill Etheridge MEP, Diane James MEP, Elizabeth Jones, Lisa Duffy, Phillip Broughton and Jonathan Arnott MEP, although he recently announced he was withdrawing from the race.

The least well-known contender was Ms Jones, Ukip Lambeths deputy chairwoman, with 92 per cent of adults interviewed saying they had not heard of her.

She was followed by Mr Etheridge, with 91 per cent saying they were unaware of him, then Huntingdonshire councillor Ms Duffy and former parliamentary candidate Mr Broughton, both on 89 per cent, and Mr Arnott on 86 per cent.

The most well-known was Ms James, who stood in the Eastleigh by-election  though 85 per cent said they had not heard of her. Even among Ukip voters, their recognition levels ranged from just 12 per cent to 30 per cent.

The findings, which come ahead of the leadership contest winner being announced on Friday at the partys annual rally in Bournemouth, cast doubt over Ukips future.

The polling suggests that the slate of six candidates vying for the top of the party are much more B-list than the party has been used to in recent years, especially when compared to political big-hitters such as Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell, said Michael Turner of BMG Research.

Labour MP Steve Pound added: As Ukip was a one-man band for so long, nobody remembers who is playing the drums in the background. They have got millions of votes but absolutely no leadership.

But Ukip head of communications Gawain Towler said: Of course, its going to be a hard act to follow but come the hour, come the man or woman. There is no reason to think that the party wont go from strength to strength.

Ukips immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe has a higher profile than the six but he crashed out of the leadership race in the summer after party chiefs ruled that he failed to get his nomination in on time.

The contest is being carried out by postal vote, with some 40,000 members eligible to take part.

BMG Research interviewed a representative sample of 1,668 UK adults online between August 11-15 2016. Data are weighted.
The time is here for our annual 2016 United Way Campaign and we are asking for your support to reach our goal of $1 million-plus.

As a board member, donor and longtime volunteer with the United Way of North Central Iowa, I have seen the impact that the funding from the United Way has on our communities in the areas of education, income stability and health. United Way reaches out to many by connecting the dots to ensure that donor dollars are providing the biggest impact to meet the needs of our communities.

Donating to the United Way of North Central Iowa is one way of investing in the community and helping in the areas of education, income stability and health.

Please learn more by contacting the United Way office (641-423-1774) or by visiting with representatives of your employer. Live United. Give United.

Gary Schmit, Mason City
S enior Conservatives in Zac Goldsmiths constituency are urging him not to stand down and trigger a by-election if the Government backs a third runway at Heathrow.

Officers of Richmond Park Conservative Association instead want him to consult local voters over whether they want him to carry on or quit as the MP for Richmond Park.

Mr Goldsmith carried out a similar plebiscite before deciding to stand for Mayor of London.

Association officers believe that the situation on airport expansion has changed since David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister given that he, not Theresa May, made the no ifs, no buts promise ahead of the 2010 General Election to oppose a bigger Heathrow.

Graeme Ferrero, deputy chairman (political) of Richmond Park Conservative Association, told The Standard: He feels the honourable thing is to stand down.

But we feel he should test that with his electorate rather than rush into it.

We would like Zac to consult his constituents before taking a decision over whether to stand down.

We are very keen for Zac to remain as our MP. The situation is different now that Cameron has gone.

The Government is set to make an announcement on airport expansion within weeks, with Heathrow widely expected to get backing for another runway.

Mr Goldsmith has said he will trigger a by-election if Heathrow gets the green light.

But he is not believed to have decided yet whether to stand as a Tory, an independent or quit Parliament.

Tory strategists are urging Mrs May not to field a Conservative candidate against Mr Goldsmith if he decided to seek re-election as an independent.
T he UKs richest one per cent own more than 20 times the wealth of the poorest fifth, an Oxfam report has revealed.

The charity claimed the UK is one of the most unequal countries in the developed world and that this contributed to the vote to leave the EU.

Its figures suggest the property, pensions and shares owned by around 634,000 of Britains richest are worth more than 20 times as much as the accumulated assets of the poorest 13 million.

The anti-poverty charity issued a plea to Theresa May to take action to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

An Oxfam spokesperson said: The UK is one of the most unequal developed countries in the world. Three decades of high-level inequality have had a profound impact, leading many people to believe that they have little stake in society and to feel locked out of politics and economic opportunity.

Whatever your views on Brexit, the referendum brought divisions within our country to a head, with many people expressing distrust and disconnection with political processes and voting for change in the hope that it would improve their economic position.

The report, which analysed data from investment bank Credit Suisse, found that the richest 10 per cent in the country own over half the total wealth, with the top one per cent owning almost a quarter.

The poorest 20 per cent of the population share 0.8 per cent of the countrys wealth between them.

Experts believe rises in property prices have boosted the wealth of the richest over the last 20 years, widening the inequality gap further.
A black man was shot dead by police officers in his backyard in Florida, his relatives have claimed.

Gregory Frazier, 55, was reportedly using a small pocket knife to eat chicken wings when he was confronted by two officers from the Broward County Sheriffs Office on Friday evening.

They had been called to the home, in Pampano Beach, by Fraziers sister who has witnessed an argument between Frazier and her daughter.

The altercation had ended by the time police arrived, according to the Broward Palm Beach New Times, yet the officers still ordered him to get on the ground after seeing his knife.

Witnesses claim that Frazier told them to leave me alone before they repeated the order and then opened fire.

His nephew Quartaze Woodard claims he was shot and handcuffed. But, after realising he was unresponsive, the officers unsuccessfully attempted to perform CPR.

"I never would have called the cops if I'd known this was going to happen," said his sister Deborah. "They just came in and started shooting right away."

A spokeswoman for the Broward sheriffs office said two unnamed deputies had been placed on administrative leave as an investigation is carried out.

She said: "When deputies arrived, someone in the house directed them to the backyard where they encountered the subject who produced a knife. Both deputies fired their weapons".

It is the latest in a long line of incidents involving alleged excessive police force against African Americans, which have sparked numerous across the U.S. protests under the Black Lives Matter banner.
A British woman in Islamic clothing was set on fire while shopping in a suspected hate crime in New York.

Dressed in a hijab  a traditional Muslim garment which covers the hair and shoulders  the Scottish woman was attacked by a man with a lighter as she shopped on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue on Saturday evening.

The victim, a dentist from Glasgow, reportedly felt heat on her left side before realising her blouse was on fire.

As she was frantically patting the flames she saw a man walking off with a lighter in his hands, according to the New York City Police Department.

The woman, who has not been identified, was left with a charred hole on her ruined blouse but no injuries.

Police are now investigating the incident, which came just two days before the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attack, as a hate crime.

NYPD spokesman Christopher Pisano told The Washington Post that the suspect disappeared down a side street.

Police have now released CCTV footage in a bid to locate the suspect.
A Norwegian hairdresser has been fined for discrimination after refusing to serve a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf.

Meretne Hodne was fined 10,000 krone (900) by Jaeren District Court and ordered to pay 5,000 krone (450) in court costs.

The 47-year-old told the court she saw the hijab as evil and a totalitarian symbol.

Her lawyer said she would appeal the verdict and take the case as far as the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.

The incident at her salon, in the small town of Byrne in south west Norway, occurred in October.

Malika Bayan, accompanied by a friend who was also wearing a hijab, was "shooed away" from the salon, the court heard.

In an interview with Norways Tv2 last week, Ms Hodne said: I fear the totalitarian symbol of the hijab which says that I should be killed, and for me it is quite unnatural to provide good service in my situation.

As most people know hijab clad woman do not get to show their hair to men. My salon is a man and womens hair salon.

It would have been deeply discriminatory if I had banished men from the lounge because of a woman who could not show her hair to them.

She added: Evil is Islams ideology, Mohammedanism and the hijab are symbols of this ideology, like the swastika is for Nazism.
T he announcement that the BBC had lost the Great British Bake Off bidding war to Channel 4 sparked concern with fans over potential changes to the baking contest.

It seems that the move could have major consequences for the shows successful recipe.

The Guardian are reporting that, with none of the judges or presenters being consulted in negotiations, the shows most valuable assets could be at risk.

The channel switch risks Bake Off losing its popular judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, as well as its co-hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, they reported.

Speaking on Top Gear earlier this year, Hollywood told Chris Evans: It's not up to us, it's up to the production company, but as far as Mary, Mel, Sue and myself are concerned we want to stay on the BBC.

On social media, presenter Sue Perkins retweeted a BBC statement which read: Working with Love Productions, we have grown and nurtured the programme over seven series and created the huge hit it is today.

Great British Bake Off 2016 - contestants in pictures 1 /17 Great British Bake Off 2016 - contestants in pictures Full tent The bakers taking part in the Great British Bake Off 2016 have been revealed BBC/Love Productions Rav Age: 28

From: Kent

Bio: After studying Criminology at university, Rav went on to support students at City University, London. Hes experimental with his baking and is inspired by vegan baking and eastern cuisine

Speciality: Flavour combinations BBC/Love Productions Andrew Age: 25

From: Derby

Bio: Northern Irish-born aerospace engineer Andrew was taught to bake by his mum and gran. Hes a straight-A student who went to Cambridge University

Speciality: Structurally ambitious bakes BBC/Love Productions Louise Age: 46

From: Cardiff

Bio: Hairdresser Louise progressed her skills by making cakes for charity sales at work. She adventurous in her designs and in her hobbies  having completed a trek around the Andes and various other mountains

Speciality: Elaborate cakes BBC/Love Productions Lee Age: 67

From: Bolton

Bio: Builder-turned-theologist-turned-Pastor Lee used baking as a way to fill his days in the Eighties when an injury stopped him from playing cricket.

Speciality: Traditional flavours, including cherry, hazelnut, vanilla and chocolate BBC/Love Productions Kate Age: 37

From: Norfolk

Bio: Qualified nurse Kate is a Brownie leader and uses seasonal fruits which she gathers with her kids in her baking

Speciality: Sugar craft BBC/Love Productions Val Age: 66

From: Yeovil

Bio: Semi-retired substitute teacher Val incorporates her baking into her teaching. She does aerobics in her kitchen  but she might not do so in the Bake Off tent

Speciality: Traditional classics BBC/Love Productions Benjamina Age: 23

From: South London

Bio: Teaching assistant Benjamina takes inspiration from the likes of Instagram and Pinterest for modern takes on classic bakes. She takes feedback from her family to improve her creations

Speciality: Fresh and modern versions of traditional cakes BBC/Love Productions Michael Age: 20

From: London

Bio: Currently studying Politics and Economics in Durham, Michael has Cypriot heritage grew up making Greek pastries with his nan

Speciality: Big grand cakes BBC/Love Productions Selasi Age: 30

From: London

Bio: Ghanaian-born Selasi works in finance, and his hobbies include motorbikes, basketball, and travelling. He recently ran a 10k, half marathon, and trekked through Malawi for charity

Speciality: Delicate cupcakes BBC/Love Productions Jane Age: 61

From: Beckenham

Bio: Garden designer Jane wakes up at 5am to bake her bread. Her grandfather owned a bakery, and she s passionate about the classics

Speciality: Classic cakes, biscuits and pastry BBC/Love Productions Tom Age: 26

From: London

Bio: Rochdale-born Tom works for the Royal Society of Arts and is creative with his flavours and ingredients. He lost 30 kilos, and has a have your cake and eat it mentality

Speciality: Surprising twists BBC/Love Productions Candice Age: 31

From: Bedfordshire

Bio: Secondary school PE teacher Candice was taught to bake by her nan, and loves everything vintage. She lives with her boyfriend Liam and pug Dennis

Speciality: Baking the classics like her nan BBC/Love Productions

We made a very strong offer to keep the show but we are a considerable distance apart on the money. The BBCs resources are not infinite.

GBBO is a quintessentially BBC programme. We hope Love Productions change their mind so that Bake Off can stay ad free on BBC One.

When asked about the shows channel change, Mary Berry told The Sun: I have no idea, anything that happens is nothing to do with my choice.

Are these the best Great British Bake Off innuendos ever?

There has currently been no confirmation over who whether the judges and presenters will remain, though Love Productions  the company behind the show  is said to be keen to keep the original quartet.

The current series, airing on Wednesday nights, will be the last series of Bake Off to air on BBC One, with the show now set to move to Channel 4 in 2017.

The first series of Bake Off on its new home will be a celebrity series.

The Evening Standard online has contacted Bake Off representatives for comment.
English Latvian

Riga, Latvia, 2016-09-09 15:20 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

During the shareholders meeting of the Issuer held on 04 February, 2015, the articles of association were amended by extending the composition of the Board to two members. In the same meeting, Gerald Allen Wirth was elected to the Board. Currently, members of the Issuers Board are David Allen De Rousse as Member of the Board and Gerald Allen Wirth as Chairman of the Board.

Mr. Wirths professional experience and qualifications for three years prior to his appointment to the Board of the Issuer:

Chairman of the Board Gerald Allen Wirth owns 50% of capital shares of the Issuer.

For the three years prior to his appointment to the Board Mr.Wirth actively managed the portfolio of subsidiaries owned by the Issuer. He led negotiations with all major tenants, including SIA RIMI LATVIA, L'Oreal Baltic SIA, SIA UNILEVER BALTIC LLC, Rodl & Partner Tax consulting SIA, SIA Visma Enterprise, SIA Olympic Casino Latvia, AS RAUTAKESKO, SIA TNS LATVIA, and with Mandatum Life Insurance Baltic SE Latvijas filiale.

Mr.Wirth led negotiations for refinance with the Issuers senior lender Swedbank AS.

Mr.Wirth has managed renovation and further development of the Issuers subsidiary properties to expand tenants' premises, for new tenants or for improved premises.

Mr.Wirth led negotiations that resulted in the successful disposal of the Issuers subsidiaries SIA APEX INVESTMENTS and SIA TUKUMA PROJEKTS, which included nine retail assets fully rented and anchored by SIA RIMI LATVIA and AS RAUTAKESKO.

Professional Associations / Accreditation during three years prior to the Board appointment:

Foreign Investors Council In Latvia (FICIL): Chairman of the Board.

Baltic Institute of Corporate Governance (BICG): Board Member. Instructor for Professional Board Member training.

Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). Certified member of RICS.


Tampa, Sept. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DAS Health, a leading provider of health IT and management solutions nationwide, has added Chronic Care Management (CCM) to their service offerings in partnership with Tampa-based LinkedMD. DAS Health will offer LinkedMDs comprehensive CCM program to their clients including physician practices, medical groups, hospitals and Accountable Care Organizations.



LinkedMD provides CCM tailored to those services encouraged by Medicare through CPT Code 99490. As a LinkedMD value added reseller, DAS Health will educate physicians and their practices on the benefits of chronic care management as well as implement LinkedMDs CCM program.

Our goal is to provide our physicians and their practices with a comprehensive suite of patient-centered solutions. The addition of LinkedMDs CCM services gives our physicians an expanded ability to truly deliver better patient care, said David Schlaifer, President and CEO of DAS Health. LinkedMDs service model and patient-centered approach complement our existing solutions and address a critical need for chronic care management.

The partnership between LinkedMD and DAS Health is a natural fit. DAS has an established customer base and excellent IT infrastructure, and LinkedMD has the clinical service they need, said Laura Heiderman, President of LinkedMD. More importantly, together, we have outstanding employees who will ensure continued accelerated growth for both companies.

The need for chronic care is evident: 2/3 of Medicare beneficiaries live with two or more chronic conditions, according to the Center for Disease Control. Through this partnership, DAS Health and LinkedMD hope to provide more physicians with access to a critical component of patients health and well-being.





About DAS Health

DAS Health has been a leading provider of Health IT and management solutions and a trusted consultant to physician groups, hospitals and healthcare systems across North America since 2003. Headquartered in Tampa, FL, DAS delivers superior health IT, medical billing and regulatory consulting for over 1,500 clinicians and 5,000 users servicing more than 7 million patients. DAS was recently recognized for the 5th year in a row as a top healthcare company on the Inc. 500|5000 list and is a Tampa Bay Business Journal Fast 50 fastest growing company for the last 7 years. Visit DAShealth.com to learn more.





About LinkedMD

Founded in Tampa, Florida in 2014, LinkedMD offers Chronic Care Management services in accordance with those set forth by Medicare through CPT Code 99490. LinkedMDs CCM program puts the processes in place to deliver significant returns, both in terms of improved care and increased revenue for a medical practices qualifying Medicare patients. Our services are available to individual medical practices, hospitals, and Accountable Care Organizations. To learn more, visit mylinkedmd.com.
DENVER, Sept. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Platte River Equity ("Platte River") is pleased to announce the addition of three investment professionals to its team. James J.B. Moore joins as a vice president, while Tarun Kanthety and Brian Hopkin join as new associates.



Mr. Moore received his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in May, prior to which he was an associate at private equity firm Aurora Capital Group and an investment banking analyst in the Global Industrials & Services group at Credit Suisse. In addition to his MBA, Mr. Moore also holds a B.B.A. in Finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Prior to joining Platte River, Mr. Kanthety was an analyst at Simmons & Company International, where he focused on M&A advisory work and capital market financings in the energy service and equipment sector. Mr. Kanthety attended The University of Texas at Austin, where he received a B.B.A. in Business Honors and Finance.

Mr. Hopkin was an analyst in the Industrials Group at Barclays Capital prior to joining Platte River. While at Barclays, Mr. Hopkin worked on M&A transactions and financings in the industrials, metals and transportation sectors. Mr. Hopkin holds a B.S. in Accounting from Brigham Young University.

About Platte River Equity

Based in Denver, Colorado, Platte River Equity is a private equity firm focused on equity investments from $20 million to $80 million in lower middle market operating companies with enterprise values generally between $40 million and $250 million. The firm invests in sectors where it has deep operating and investing experience, including aerospace and transportation; energy and industrial products and services; and chemicals, metals, minerals and agriculture. Platte River has raised funds with committed capital in excess of $700 million.
SAN DIEGO, Sept. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Shareholders Foundation, Inc. announces that a lawsuit was filed for certain investors in Pure Storage Inc (NYSE:PSTG) over alleged Securities Laws violations by Pure Storage Inc in connection to the companys October 7, 2015 initial public offering.

Investors who purchased shares of Pure Storage Inc (NYSE:PSTG) have certain options and should contact the Shareholders Foundation at mail@shareholdersfoundation.com or call +1(858) 779 - 1554.

The plaintiff alleges on behalf of the shareholders, who purchased Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) common shares pursuant or traceable to its initial public offering ("IPO") on October 7, 2015 that the defendants violated the Securities Act of 1933.

The plaintiff claims that the Registration Statement in connection with the October 7, 2015 IPO was allegedly negligently prepared and contained untrue statements of material facts or omitted other facts necessary to make the statements not misleading.

More specifically, the plaintiff alleges that Pure Storage Inc failed to disclose and misrepresented that at the time of the IPO its sales personnel had aggressively pulled sales forward into the quarters prior to the IPO, resulting in reduced sales in the quarters ending after its IPO, that at the time of the IPO general trends in the IT market, as well as Pure Storage's own historical sales trends, demonstrated that its first quarter 2017 sales growth for the quarter ending April 30, 2016, would be significantly lower than prior quarters, and that at the time of the IPO its concomitant increases in sales and marketing and general and administrative expenses were not one-time expenses attributable to increasing the size of its sales force and sales footprint, but would continue in perpetuity.

Shares of Pure Storage Inc (NYSE:PSTG) declined from as high as $20.60 per share on October 15, 2015 to as low as $9.62 per share on June 20, 2016.

Those who purchased Pure Storage Inc (NYSE:PSTG) shares have certain options and should contact the Shareholders Foundation, Inc. by e-mail at mail@shareholdersfoundation.com or call +1 (858) 779-1554.

The Shareholders Foundation, Inc. is a professional portfolio legal monitoring and a settlement claim filing service, which does research related to shareholder issues and informs investors of securities class actions, settlements, judgments, and other legal related news to the stock/financial market. The Shareholders Foundation, Inc. is not a law firm. The information is provided as a public service. It is not intended as legal advice and should not be relied upon.
Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading.

Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy
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
HOUSTON, Sept. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tokio Marine HCC today announced the hiring of Paul D. Silverman to lead the Companys Primary Casualty Division.



Mr. Silverman brings over 30 years of underwriting and leadership experience to Tokio Marine HCC. Most recently, he was employed by Lexington Insurance Company. Mr. Silverman holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Massachusetts. He reports to Christopher Day, President of Tokio Marine HCC - Casualty Group.

As a leader in specialty insurance, growing and maintaining a strong general casualty underwriting operation is very important to us. We are fortunate to have recruited a highly experienced and respected underwriting executive to manage the Primary Casualty business for Tokio Marine HCC, said Christopher J.B. Williams, Tokio Marine HCCs Chief Executive Officer.

With underwriting teams in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, Tokio Marine HCCs Primary Casualty Division focuses on construction, manufacturing and premises-based risks.

Tokio Marine HCC is the marketing name used to describe the affiliated companies under the common ownership of HCC Insurance Holdings, Inc., a Delaware-incorporated insurance holding company. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Tokio Marine HCC is a leading specialty insurance group with offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain and Ireland. Tokio Marine HCCs major domestic and international insurance companies have financial strength ratings of AA- (Very Strong) from Standard & Poors Financial Services LLC, A+ (Superior) from A.M. Best Company, Inc., and AA- (Very Strong) from Fitch Ratings. Tokio Marine HCC is a member of Tokio Marine Group. For more information about Tokio Marine HCC, please visit www.tokiomarinehcc.com.
A friend 15 years older than Hillary Clinton recently came down with a mild pneumonia that sounds just like hers. Five days later, he was on a ladder pruning trees. The doctor wanted more rest, but he's fine. And so will Clinton be.
Tuesday, 13 September 2016 23:29:11 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo

Peru s only iron ore producer Shougang Hierro Peru said this week its workers started a strike on Monday, which is expected to last for an indefinite amount of time.

Earlier in September, the companys affiliated union said the workers should go on strike as of September 12 if there was no agreement over the workers wages.

As previously anticipated by the union, the workers then initiated the strike, as there was no agreement between the two parties.

Employees reportedly want better wages and other labor benefits. Shougang said it couldnt estimate the impacts of the strike on its business, since it was expecting employees to go to work in the next few days.

Some 953 workers at Shougang are expected to join the strike.


Tuesday, 13 September 2016 10:43:37 (GMT+3) | Brescia

According to local sources, the Italian domestic merchant bar market is permeated with uncertainty. This situation is exacerbated by the calm and the stillness of prices in the local scrap market. Merchant bar demand is still weak as it was in the period before the summer holidays, while local producers don't have big order books. On the bright side, sources say that local traders do not have a lot of supplies and therefore they will not be able to continue destocking for a long time.

Currently in the Italian market the leading producer is offering merchant bars at 35-45/mt ($39-50/mt) ex-works, compared to 50/mt ($56/mt) recorded in the middle of July, while other producers are offering the same products at lower prices.

A similar situation is reported for the export market, where buyers are extremely cautious and prices stand at an average level of 35-45/mt ($39-50/mt) delivered to customer.

*In the Italian market, price extras can vary in the range of 410-610/mt ($459-683/mt) for domestic sales and in the range of 410-620/mt ($459694/mt) for foreign markets, depending on dimension and product.

1 =$1.12
Blog Archive Apr 2010 (22) May 2010 (25) Jun 2010 (8) Jul 2010 (12) Aug 2010 (18) Sep 2010 (19) Oct 2010 (29) Nov 2010 (30) Dec 2010 (18) Jan 2011 (13) Feb 2011 (21) Mar 2011 (23) Apr 2011 (19) May 2011 (31) Jun 2011 (36) Jul 2011 (46) Aug 2011 (26) Sep 2011 (12) Oct 2011 (15) Nov 2011 (17) Dec 2011 (7) Jan 2012 (18) Feb 2012 (4) Mar 2012 (12) Apr 2012 (18) May 2012 (10) Jun 2012 (21) Jul 2012 (8) Aug 2012 (15) Sep 2012 (7) Oct 2012 (17) Nov 2012 (20) Dec 2012 (10) Jan 2013 (58) Feb 2013 (59) Mar 2013 (60) Apr 2013 (98) May 2013 (134) Jun 2013 (204) Jul 2013 (293) Aug 2013 (351) Sep 2013 (363) Oct 2013 (347) Nov 2013 (374) Dec 2013 (440) Jan 2014 (544) Feb 2014 (475) Mar 2014 (525) Apr 2014 (527) May 2014 (470) Jun 2014 (408) Jul 2014 (472) Aug 2014 (522) Sep 2014 (441) Oct 2014 (471) Nov 2014 (496) Dec 2014 (535) Jan 2015 (535) Feb 2015 (520) Mar 2015 (579) Apr 2015 (657) May 2015 (679) Jun 2015 (673) Jul 2015 (728) Aug 2015 (803) Sep 2015 (923) Oct 2015 (921) Nov 2015 (801) Dec 2015 (791) Jan 2016 (782) Feb 2016 (835) Mar 2016 (929) Apr 2016 (864) May 2016 (946) Jun 2016 (1044) Jul 2016 (882) Aug 2016 (1035) Sep 2016 (966) Oct 2016 (918) Nov 2016 (854) Dec 2016 (885) Jan 2017 (879) Feb 2017 (777) Mar 2017 (896) Apr 2017 (872) May 2017 (850) Jun 2017 (851) Jul 2017 (971) Aug 2017 (1040) Sep 2017 (998) Oct 2017 (1144) Nov 2017 (1046) Dec 2017 (838) Jan 2018 (873) Feb 2018 (769) Mar 2018 (885) Apr 2018 (808) May 2018 (827) Jun 2018 (820) Jul 2018 (840) Aug 2018 (854) Sep 2018 (844) Oct 2018 (851) Nov 2018 (870) Dec 2018 (912) Jan 2019 (919) Feb 2019 (827) Mar 2019 (957) Apr 2019 (913) May 2019 (1007) Jun 2019 (934) Jul 2019 (949) Aug 2019 (936) Sep 2019 (910) Oct 2019 (920) Nov 2019 (874) Dec 2019 (908) Jan 2020 (941) Feb 2020 (848) Mar 2020 (898) Apr 2020 (848) May 2020 (822) Jun 2020 (787) Jul 2020 (819) Aug 2020 (858) Sep 2020 (841) Oct 2020 (873) Nov 2020 (811) Dec 2020 (780) Jan 2021 (765) Feb 2021 (716) Mar 2021 (819) Apr 2021 (805) May 2021 (815) Jun 2021 (824) Jul 2021 (830) Aug 2021 (832) Sep 2021 (791) Oct 2021 (754) Nov 2021 (683) Dec 2021 (693) Jan 2022 (694) Feb 2022 (654) Mar 2022 (740) Apr 2022 (745) May 2022 (748) Jun 2022 (701) Jul 2022 (704) Aug 2022 (702) Sep 2022 (699) Oct 2022 (692)
Hello all,I have done some research in the forum related to good b-schools for the energy sector however I have not found too much. I have been working in the US since 2013 for an Independent Power Producer (IPP) developing power projects in North America and Latin America, mostly Natural Gas. I cover an engineering role from early stage development to actual project execution through project finance.I'm originally from Europe and I would like to continue my professional career working for a company based in Europe. I understand the projects will be mostly in Latin America, Middle East and South East Asia (travel is not a problem). I will pursue roles in the business development and project origination areas in the Oil&Gas or/and Power sector, stepping out (a little bit) from the engineering department. Ultimately, I would like to start my own business, probably in consulting but who knows...An MBA is definitely the next step for me based on the job roles I'm looking for so I would like to get some thoughts of what schools fit the best with what I described above. I am considering LBS, INSEAD and IESE. Please don't tell me... you should apply for Booth or Harvard etcPersonal reasons are also taken into account in my decision of choosing Europe.Thank you very much for your help
At the Airbus Helicopters factory of Ghimbav on Tuesday, France's President Francois Hollande said the factory is a project of European dimensions able to consolidate Europe's defence industry.

"This is a project of European dimensions because it is also able to consolidate defence industry in Europe. This is what we want to do and what I want to recommend at the Bratislava summit in some days' time. We must cooperate (...) in order to be able to secure the conditions for Europe's defence policy," Hollande told a joint news conference with Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos.

Agerpres
We rely on your support to make local news available to all

Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today
DES PERES  At the public hearing Monday night for the revised plan for a Reliance Bank and drive-thru Starbucks at 11781 Manchester Road, naysayers were outnumbered by supporters.

The plan has drawn many opponents to past meetings and when it was rejected by the Board of Aldermen last year, Reliance sued.

The St. Louis County Circuit Court ordered the city to issue a conditional use permit for Starbucks. An appeal of that ruling was put on hold when city officials agreed to work with Reliance on a revised site plan, which was presented at the meeting Monday.

Reliance CEO Tom Brouster called the new plan a major concession and compromise to satisfy major issues raised.

The new plan included changes in the placement of the drive-thru window and the order box and added landscaping on the northern side of the property, said architect Chris Chiodini. In addition, the entry drive off Manchester Road will be widened and two-way access on Vinetta Drive provided.

Mayor Rick Lahr pointed out that Regions Bank next door has agreed to help allow access to Bopp Road.

Several residents on Vinetta Drive and Harwood Road spoke against the project. Of those who spoke in favor, some had business affiliations, including a bank shareholder and a representative of the leasing firm CBRE.

Two residents and attorneys  Ben Sansone and Mark Pedroli  have offered their services to the city to handle the appeal for free. The city has already spent more than $200,000 on the case.

But City Attorney Kevin OKeefe pointed out that the Circuit Court ruling on the case found that the noise and traffic that would be generated at the site was not sufficient enough to support a denial of the permit and that two-thirds of appeals are unsuccessful.

A final vote will be taken on the new development plan and the permits for Reliance and Starbucks at the board meeting Sept. 26.
Long Island University Brooklyns decision to lock out its 400 unionized professors ahead of the fall 2016 semester is impacting students beyond the scope of their lectures, seminars and lab sections. Teachers and graduate students in the Psychology department said Tuesday that the administration has failed to maintain the campus Psychological Services Center where, under normal circumstances, students drop in for counseling sessions to discuss loneliness, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

The professors who supervise the center, who are also licensed psychologists, are currently barred from campus. Second-year psychology PhD students are typically in charge of counseling, but can only run sessions with licensed oversight. According to center director Dr. Seymour Pardo, only the office secretary is currently reporting to work. He's urged her to refer students to a mental health counseling hotline and the Dean of Students.

Since the lockout commenced last week, "the administration has had no direct contact with me," Pardo said.

LIU's Psychological Services Center is unique among mental health centers at American universities, in that its services are primarily pro bonoprovided by professors and students rather than outside professionals. "It's a win-win," said Kevin Meehan, an associate psychology professor. "The university gets high-quality psych services at no cost, and our students get training."

Now, in addition to missing out on said training, some of the PhD students said their psychology classes aren't adequately staffed. "It's concerning because we're on a really tight cycle of externships for our licensing," said one of the students, who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution from the administration. "Every day that we're not in the clinic is costing us those hours, which is impacting our eligibility."

The students sent a letter [PDF] to the administration and board of trustees outlining their concerns on Monday, and have yet to get a response.

Meehan added that he believes psychological services are particularly important at a school like LIU Brooklyn, where many students come from low-income and minority backgrounds.

"The kinds of problems that students come in with really go beyond the average purview of a mental health counseling center," he said. "We absolutely get test anxiety and things like that, but so many of the students are very, very financially distressed. A lot of them are the first person in their family to go to college, and many of them are first generation immigrants. They don't come from families that are used to the academic world."

In Pardo's experience, September is a "crucial" time for the center. "We usually do a great deal of outreach, where psychologists come to classes and do a short presentation, especially for freshman," he said. Pardo added that he believes foot traffic at the center has been relatively light since classes started, in large part because his staff hasn't been able to publicize its services.

This school year has already been particularly confusing and stressful due to the lock-out, students say. Over Labor Day weekend, union faculty members were informed that they will not be welcome on campus until an agreement is reached on their five-year contract, which expired on August 31st. Interim teachers have been recruited from other schools. And while LIU described these professors as "adjuncts with advanced degrees," students said many classes have involved minimal learning. Some haven't been staffed at all.

"Myself and the rest of the people in charge of protesting and gathering students could definitely use somebody to talk to and get some of our anxiety released," said Caroline Woods, a speech pathology graduate student. "I'm sure it would be very valuable to a lot of people, especially freshmen, who are just starting. They are so confused, they have no idea what's going on."

Presented with these allegations, LIU spokeswoman Jennifer Solomon said only that "all University services remain available to students." She did not confirm, nor deny, the Psychology professors' claim that their counseling center is being staffed by one secretary.

"I tell Nakisha [Thomas, the Psychological Services Center secretary] to tell patients that they will be contacted the minute our service resumes," Pardo explained (Thomas could not immediately be reached for comment). As for returning students seeking to resume counseling sessions post-summer break, Pardo is allowing his counselors to respond to their inquiries with brief phone calls, explaining why services are disrupted.

"We're basically keeping our fingers crossed that someone doesn't call and say they are doing very badly," he said.

Additional reporting by Erica Siudzinski.
Dalton Prager is fighting to breathe so he can see his wife before she dies.

For the first three years of their marriage, Dalton and Katie Prager were like any young newlyweds. They traveled, bought a house and rescued two dogs.

Then the fatal disease that united and will ultimately separate them took over. The Pragers were both born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that first attacks the lungs and also affects the digestive system and multiple other organs. The median age of survival is about 40. But after receiving a lung transplant last year, Katie Prager, 26, never fully recovered.

She developed lymphoma, a blood cancer, and her kidneys have failed. She is on hospice care at home in Kentucky and is not expected to survive into the new year.

"Decisions have been made that aren't meant to be made by someone in their 20s with their whole life ahead of them," Katie wrote on a fundraising page for her end-of-life and funeral expenses. "There are too many things going on in my body to be able to fix everything ... I get to spend the rest of my time surrounded by people and things that make me happy."

At the top of Katie's wish list is a visit with her husband. But Dalton Prager, 25, also developed complications after his own lung transplant in 2014 and moved back to the St. Louis area near his parents for full-time care. He now has pneumonia and is in intensive care on a ventilator at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, awaiting approval for a medical evacuation to a hospital in Kentucky. When he is healthy enough to be released from that hospital, he can visit Katie at home.

"He has tried so many times and he has tried so hard. Unfortunately his body is not agreeing with what he wants to do," said Dalton's mother, Renee Prager. "The patients don't get a win on this one, it's just how long they can endure it."

The couple has not seen each other since their fifth anniversary in July, when they spent about 10 minutes together in Katie's hospital room.

"Our situation hasn't been ideal and it hasn't been the easiest but the one thing I want people to know is that we still have each other even if it is long-distance," she said. "Even if I don't get to see him again."

This weekend will check off some life goals for Katie. She plans to celebrate an early Christmas on Saturday with family and friends. On Sunday, her high school class will gather for a reunion. She still hopes to go swimming for the first time in years and take a ride-along in a police car, "to do some fun stuff before time runs out." But mostly she wants to see her husband again.

I just want to hug him and I just want to sit down and have a conversation with him, she said.

Katie learned about Dalton Prager through a mutual friend and sent him a message on Facebook when they were teenagers. She told him that she understood what he was going through. Their relationship grew from there, and they married in July 2011. For the first few years, they lived together and built a future.

Just because we have cystic fibrosis doesnt mean that were different, we still like to do stuff normal couples do, Katie said. Its just strange, we figured were married, wed be together every day. We were hoping things would get better and eventually wed be back together, but its not going to end up that way.

Daltons nurse at Barnes-Jewish told Katie that his blood pressure is stable, and they are running tests to make sure he can manage on the ventilator at a low setting required to make the flight. He could be cleared for transfer to the Kentucky hospital as soon as Tuesday. But because she is too sick to visit him in the hospital, he will need to be fully weaned from the ventilator before they can see each other.

Katie said she is not scared to die because of her faith in God. She knows that she will see Dalton again either way.
DUPO  Melody Day spent most of the past 26 years searching for clues to find her missing mother  and collecting records and online information that might someday help identify a body, if it came to that.

On Tuesday, she said she was disappointed to learn that the key to the mystery had been sitting unnoticed in a Missouri Highway Patrol file.

In 2010, Day had learned from a Facebook posting that the decomposing body of a woman who apparently was beaten to death, had been found Aug. 26, 1990, in a secluded area of Pike County, Mo. That was the same month her mother, Cynthia Day, 38, was last seen.

There were similarities. Both women had hysterectomies, for example, and similar jewelry, body size and hair color.

Melody Day believed it was her mother. But she and her sister, Kimberly Day, both of Dupo, were told by Pike County sheriffs officials there was no way to be sure.

DNA testing was available but not as common in 1990. And there was no tissue left to test, because the victims bones had been boiled to preserve them and accommodate an attempt at facial reconstruction.

The women feared they would never know for sure. But the Facebook friend with the original posting called the Missouri Highway Patrol on July 26, asking investigators to see if there was anything available to help. It turned out, there was.

Pike County Sheriff Stephen Korte said Tuesday that an overlooked single thumbprint was discovered in Highway Patrol files, unbeknownst to his investigators.

A match was confirmed with an Illinois misdemeanor arrest file, and the sisters were told Monday. They said it felt like a slap in the face.

We told them to look for fingerprints, said Melody Day, 44, in an interview at her home Tuesday. And all this time, this thumbprint has been sitting there.

The family had kept faith of finding Cynthia Day, or her remains. Melody Days daughter, Kimiel Day, named her 7-year-old daughter Kimia Faith Louise  Louise for Cynthia Days middle name and Faith for the hope they held.

For it to be solved simply by a fingerprint leaves you astounded, Kimiel Day said Tuesday. Its crazy.

Korte said problems with the case track back to failure of police in the now-defunct Metro East stockyard village of National City, at the edge of East St. Louis, to record a missing-person report.

He said that made her disappearance invisible to Pike County detectives as they tried to identify the body.

The sheriff said the identification of Days remains will help the investigation, and that police have a person of interest.

Since the Day sisters came to his department six years ago, Korte said, his officers have researched the latest forensic technology and talked with specialists. He said he is unsure why the fingerprint never made it to his agency from the Highway Patrol.

We assumed we had everything they had in our case file, Korte said. I spoke to the lead investigator we had on the case and he said he didnt know that a print even existed.

Melody Day said her Facebook friend had queried the patrol directly, knowing it keeps fingerprint records.

The sisters frustration has been featured in the past in the Post-Dispatch and on TVs Dateline and the Discovery Channel, as well as other media.

They believe their mothers bones are still in a forensic lab in Colorado. The family plans to have them cremated, and to divide the ashes among them.

Kimberly Day, 42, is struggling with the transition from having a missing mother to a murdered mother.

Its like Ive got to start life over, she said, tears welling in her eyes. You get used to people saying, Oh, shes just missing, and youre living off that hope. Now youre not living off that hope.

The sisters last saw their mother Aug. 10, 1990. Kimberly took her newborn son and Melody, then a recent high school graduate, to a motel in Fairmont City where Cynthia Day lived with a boyfriend. They said she spoke of leaving him.

When they returned several days later, their mother and the boyfriend were gone.

The boyfriend later told police he saw Cynthia Day get into a truck in National City. It was a known prostitution stroll. The daughters have heard that their mother may have been a prostitute and drug abuser.

Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call the Highway Patrols Division of Drug and Crime Control at 636-300-2800 or the sheriffs office at 573-342-3202.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Due an an editing error, an earlier version of this story misstated availability of DNA testing in 1990.
CHICAGO  A grand jury will consider if Chicago police lied in connection with the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a white officer.

Special prosecutor Patricia Brown Holmes said Monday that the grand jury is the fairest way to handle the case instead of making charging decisions on her own. She was appointed in July to investigate whether there was a possible Chicago police cover-up in the October 2014 shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Holmes is a former Cook County judge.
A former Gasconade County law enforcement officer hanged himself in a jail cell while facing state and federal charges involving a series of sexual assaults on women, a coroners report obtained Tuesday says.

Marty L. Rainey died March 25 in his cell in the Ste. Genevieve County jail. Jail staff discovered him the next morning.

Coroner Eric Baslers report says that a review of surveillance video shows that after Raineys food tray was picked up at 4:42 p.m., he got out of bed and disappeared from the cameras view. Four minutes later, his foot appears, accompanied by the sound of a noose tightening, the report says. Rainey constructed that noose out of a torn sheet, working a piece of the sheet behind a bolt on a hook in his cell to hang himself, the report says.

There is no other sign of activity until Raineys body was discovered the next morning, the report says, and no sign of a struggle.

Sheriffs officials did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday, and Raineys former lawyer, Christian Goeke, declined to comment. Officials previously acknowledged only that Rainey had died in custody.

Rainey was facing federal charges of enticement of a minor to engage in a commercial sex act, and four counts of deprivation of rights under color of law. He was charged in state court in January 2015 with two counts each of sexual assault and acceding to corruption by a public servant, as well as statutory rape and use of a child in a sexual performance.

Rainey was a Gasconade County sheriffs deputy and a police officer for Hermann and Rosebud at the time of the crimes, officials said.

Prosecutors accused Rainey of threatening or coercing six women into having sex with him, a friend, or both, sometimes while he was in uniform. One of the victims was younger than 17 at the time. Others claimed Rainey tried or succeeded in forcing them to strip so he could photograph their genitals.

Raineys friend, Jonathan E. Pohlmann, was sentenced July 22 to 10 years in prison on a federal charge of conspiracy to violate civil rights. He still faces state charges of statutory rape, sexual assault and use of a child in a sexual performance.
STAUNTON  Officials are looking for the driver of an SUV suspected of hitting a St. Louis bicyclist in a hit-and-run crash Sunday in Staunton.

The bicyclist was southbound on Illinois Route 4 shortly before 10 a.m. when he was struck by a car less than a mile north of the Staunton Country Club, according to the Macoupin County Sheriff's Office.

The bicyclist, a 55-year-old man from the St. Louis area, suffered head injuries but was conscious at the scene. He was transported to a nearby hospital and later airlifted to Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He told officials he didn't remember anything about the accident.

A witness told officials he saw a maroon Hyundai Santa Fe SUV with a damaged front passenger side travelling south on Route 4 around the time of the hit-and-run. The witness said the driver was a white man in his 40's wearing a blue tank top and a hat on backwards.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Macoupin County Sheriff's Office at 217-854-3135.
ST. LOUIS  The victims of a triple shooting early Saturday went to a St. Louis fire station for help after someone opened fire on their car.

In the end, one man was pronounced dead at the fire house, another man was pronounced dead at a hospital and a third was taken to a hospital for treatment for gunshot wounds. A woman in the car was not injured.

Police on Tuesday released the names of the two who died. They are: Lewis Grant, 42, of St. Louis; and Ronsonie Scott, 39, of Pine Lawn.

A 31-year-old man was treated at a hospital for wounds to his side and arm. He was stable but his condition was not available. The uninjured woman is 40 years old.

The four were riding in a car in the 2900 block of Natural Bridge Avenue, near Glasgow Avenue, when someone fired shots into their vehicle at about 3:30 a.m. Saturday, police said. They drove to a fire house at North Market Street and Rauschenbach Avenue for help.

Grant, of the 4800 block of Highland Avenue, was pronounced dead at the fire house. Scott, of the 4000 block of Cedarwood Avenue in Pine Lawn, died later at a hospital.

Police have no suspects.
COLUMBIA, Mo.  In an attempt to put the events of last fall to bed for good, leaders from the University of Missouri System and the Columbia campus broke a months-long silence Tuesday and addressed progress on diversity and inclusion issues.

Mizzou was rocked by a series of student-led protests last November that centered largely around matters of race. The campus unrest, among other things, led to the resignation of two top leaders, Mizzou Chancellor Bowen Loftin and UM System President Timothy M. Wolfe.

Dont think the interim leaders are sitting on their hands, though  that is what they touted at the media event Tuesday.

Stress of that kind with a different group of people can bring them even closer together and make them more tightly bound and more unified, interim Mizzou Chancellor Hank Foley said. I think thats what you see now with a new group of people. Its a new day.

Foley, along with interim president Mike Middleton, Board of Curators chairwoman Pam Henrickson and UM System chief diversity officer Kevin McDonald, who has a dual role at Mizzou, used the day to highlight new campus initiatives.

The group unveiled a lofty goal: to double the number of minority faculty members during the next four years  to 13.4 percent, up from the current 6.7 percent.

Among a list of demands from student protesters last fall was one that stated the university needed to strive for 10 percent by 2018. Leaders said they remain in contact with students who helped create the demands about goals they find feasible.

Mizzou already ranks in the middle of the pack among its peers in the Association of American Universities  an academic organization of which 34 public institutions are members  when it comes to minority faculty. This is an issue every institution, whether AAU or the Southeastern Conference, are concerned about, Foley said.

Mizzou pledged additional money to an incentive fund set to target hiring and retaining of faculty of color. In total, among a series of diversity-related announcements, the campus has devoted about $1.3 million to this cause.

But theres also a plan to groom future faculty, and its a plan that could boost MUs status among other AAU institutions.

The flagship campus is investing $1 million of its intellectual property revenue to recruit minority postdoctoral fellows with the goal of retaining them in the long term as tenure-track faculty.

The fact that the postdoctoral students are minorities isnt part of the AAU rankings, but it matters to all of us, Foley said.

Aside from new funding, leaders also announced a new student orientation program at Mizzou centered around diversity and inclusion.

The two-hour program brings to light how differences among student populations arise on campus.

A promotional video highlights one students commentary, saying the program shows that Mizzou is about exposure, not so-called safe spaces.

Metrics to base how successful the Columbia campus is doing is another effort in the works. McDonald said the ongoing diversity audit at the campus as well as an upcoming climate survey will help form those benchmarks.

McDonald said theres interest from Mizzou to explore partnerships with either of Missouris two historically black universities, Lincoln University and Harris-Stowe State University.

Youre only limited by your own creativity, McDonald told the Post-Dispatch. To the extent that theres a willingness from our (historically black colleges and universities), I know theres a willingness from Mizzou and the system and the other institutions that comprise it.

Henrickson briefly addressed the search effort for the new system president, saying shes impressed with the candidates with whom the curators and search committee have met.

The board gathered last week in St. Louis outside of the airport, likely conducting interviews, though everyone involved stayed mum about the purpose.

Foley also addressed the decline in enrollment this fall and the impact that has on Mizzous budget.

He said the campus was able to cover the gap from reserve funds and general budget cuts, including previously discussed layoffs.
The NYPD has released surveillance footage of a man they believe set a Muslim woman's blouse on fire with a lighter on Fifth Avenue last weekend. The woman was wearing a hijab, and the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible bias attack.

The 35-year-old victim, who the NY Post identified as one Nemariq Alhinai, was window-shopping outside of the Valentino boutique at 693 Fifth Avenue around 9:00 p.m. on Saturday when she was approached. An NYPD spokesman would not confirm the woman's name, but said that she is a tourist, visiting New York from Scotland.

According to the police report, Alhinai "felt something warm on her left arm." She looked down and realized that the left sleeve of her blouse was on fire. A man standing next to her allegedly had a lighter in his hand.

Alhinai didn't know the man, who apparently headed east on 54th Street without speaking to her. She managed to pat out the flames without injury. No arrests have been made as of Tuesday.

Last week, a Brooklyn woman was arrested after she allegedly attacked two Muslim women pushing their babies in strollers in Bath Beach. Prosecutors say she attempted to rip off their hijabs and told them, "Get the fuck out of America, bitches." "It is time for the mayor and the NYPD to put forward the necessary resources to investigate and prevent these attacks on the Muslim community," said CAIR-NY Executive Director Afaf Nasher in a statement. "I'm running out of things to say, really," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, on Monday. "Each [incident] is followed by another." He mentioned a mosque in Fort Pierce, Florida that Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen attended, which police believe was intentionally set on fire yesterday. And Sunday, the 15th anniversary of 9/11, someone threw a rock through a window at a mosque in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Anyone with information in regards to the above incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
ST. LOUIS  An appellate court has ruled that the do-over election on Friday between Penny Hubbard and Bruce Franks Jr. for 78th District state representative will go on.

There was substantial evidence to support the trial courts decision, it was not against the weight of the evidence, and the court did not erroneously declare or apply the law. The judgment is affirmed, Judge Roy L. Richter wrote on behalf of the Missouri Court of Appeals.

No matter what happens Friday, we already won, Franks said, adding that he had called attention to a broken system that has no choice but to fix itself now.

Jane Dueker, attorney for Hubbard, said Tuesday afternoon that no appeal would be made to the Missouri Supreme Court.

She is going to focus on getting her disenfranchised constituents to the polls and winning this election for a second time, Dueker said of Hubbard. Obviously, she is very disheartened by the decision. The only people with constitutional rights  the voters  lost today.

Circuit Judge Rex Burlison called Sept. 2 for a new election after a two-day trial centering on the absentee balloting process in the Aug. 2 Democratic primary between incumbent Hubbard and newcomer Franks. Specifically, the case focused on the 142 absentee votes made in person at the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners office.

As reported Aug. 28 in the Post-Dispatch, all absentee ballots must be placed into a sealed envelope under state law. However, those cast at the Election Board office were not.

These irregularities were more than petty procedural infirmities but abuses of the election law which cannot be ignored, Burlison said. The number of votes called into question exceed the margin of the apparent victor and is of sufficient magnitude to cast doubt on the validity of the initial election.

Burlisons made his decision two days after a Post-Dispatch investigation revealed multiple problems with absentee balloting.

Hubbard won the Aug. 2 primary by 90 votes. Franks received nearly 53 percent of the vote on Election Day, but Hubbard won 78.5 percent of the absentee ballots, giving her the victory.

Dueker argued both before Burlison and the appellate court that tossing the election violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In court Monday afternoon, Dueker said calling for a new election disenfranchised people for irregularities that have no bearing whatsoever on a single vote.

Absentee voters have been stripped of any rights to ensure their vote is counted, Dueker said Tuesday.

The appellate court, however, disagreed.

Ordering a special election to replace the results of the original, improperly conducted election does not prevent qualified voters from casting a vote, Richter wrote. Every qualified voter will still retain his or her right to vote in the special election.

Implementing procedures to safeguard against fraud helps ensure that qualified registers voters votes are not diluted by unlawful voter activity. These procedures, such as calling for a new election, effectively protect voters rights, not abridge them.

Dave Roland, attorney for Franks, said: This is one of the rare cases in which the party that lost the trial actually made their position worse by appealing. The Court of Appeals emphatically rejected every argument Hubbards attorney put forward and reaffirmed that, because the absentee ballot process is a special privilege that is also prone to abuse, it is critical that voters and election officials strictly adhere to the statutes governing the use of those ballots.
JEFFERSON CITY  A state appeals court has given the green light to put a question on the November ballot asking if Missouri voters want to bring back limits on campaign contributions.

In an opinion filed Tuesday, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District upheld a Cole County judges decision to allow the ballot question to move forward.

With the clock ticking down on the upcoming election, the ruling came quickly. On Monday, attorneys for both sides argued the case before the three-judge panel.

Attorney Chuck Hatfield, who represents individuals and groups opposed to the proposed referendum, has vowed to pursue the matter to the states Supreme Court, hoping to get the measure barred from the ballot.

Opponents say the campaign limits initiative financed by Clayton businessman Fred Sauer unfairly limits some classes of businesses and associations from giving money to campaigns.

In particular, Hatfield said some classifications of banks and member-owned organizations such as the Association of Missouri Electrical Cooperatives would be barred from contributing to their own political action committee.

Hatfield argued that is unconstitutional.

In response, the appeals court said the challenge is too early.

Plaintiffs' constitutional challenges can only be resolved in a properly filed post-election lawsuit should the proposed measure be adopted, Justice Cynthia Martin wrote in a 28-page decision.

Todd Jones, a spokesman for the Missouri Campaign Finance Reform Initiative, said the ruling as a win for groups seeking to change the state constitution.

"We're definitely very pleased with the decision. We think this is a resounding defeat to those who want to block anyone from putting an initiative together and keeping it on the ballot," said Jones.

The initiative will ask voters in November whether they want to limit contributions to individual candidates to $2,600 and limit contributions to a political party to $25,000.

The referendum attempts to ban the current practice of funneling money through different committees to hide the source of the contributions. It prohibits contributions by foreign interests and companies not legally authorized to conduct business in Missouri.

Sauer, a Republican, ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2012. This is his third attempt to put the referendum before voters. It comes in an election season in which mega donors like retired St. Louis financier Rex Sinquefield and Joplin building materials magnate David Humphreys donated millions of dollars to candidates.

The opinion was issued on the same day Missouri lawmakers were set to host or attend more than two dozen fundraisers on the eve of the Legislature's veto session.
Mayor Francis Slay is one of two dozen mayors participating in the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative this week, where office holders will meet to work out different partnerships among cities along the river.

The aim is to expand tourism, improve food production supply chains, develop strategies to mitigate the effects of natural disasters while also working to keep the river healthy.

The meeting is being held in Natchez, Miss. this year in honor of that city being the first municipality founded along the Mississippi River 300 years ago.

During the three-day meeting, Slay will preside over a panel discussion on expanding tourism, during which National Geographic is expected to announce a new initiative to promote exploration of different areas along the river.

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Transportation is scheduled to announce a container-on-barge freight transport project for the St. Louis Port District, near America's Central Port in Granite City, Ill.

Next year's meeting is scheduled to be held in St. Louis.
JEFFERSON CITY  Missouris budget chief cast serious doubt Tuesday whether any of the $115 million in state spending withheld by Gov. Jay Nixon in July will be released this fiscal year.

In comments to a House budget panel, budget director Dan Haug said hes optimistic about the current level of tax revenue flowing into state coffers, but he doesnt foresee a big enough increase over the course of the next 10 months to allow agencies to spend the money.

Wed have to have pretty significant growth to start releasing. I think we will be pretty conservative, Haug said.

His comments in the packed hearing room signaled that groups and agencies waiting on that cash may have to sit tight until the next governor crafts a budget for the fiscal year beginning next July.

Among them is the Missouri Public Defender System, which saw a $4.5 million budget increase whittled to $1 million by the governor, sparking a high-profile squabble between its director, Michael Barrett, and Nixon.

That fight continues to fester. In a separate hearing Tuesday, lawmakers heard from Barrett, who earlier attempted to draft a reluctant Nixon into serving as a public defender  a move that drew national attention.

To be candid, I should not have to lobby for these funds, Barrett said. The state has made it impossible for me to do my job.

Attorney Doug Copeland of Clayton, a former chairman of the public defender commission, said the system simply needs more money.

Weve got to be able to handle all of the cases. Thats what the constitution requires us to do, Copeland said.

All told, the governor cut or removed funding for 131 programs out of the states $27 billion spending blueprint, including a GOP-led effort to study the University of Missouris operations.

Haug also cautioned lawmakers that more money could be withheld if the House and Senate override a trio of tax breaks worth an estimated $60 million that Nixon vetoed. The Legislature returns to action Wednesday at noon to act on the governors vetoes.

The governor takes seriously his responsibility to balance the budget, Haug said.

Despite his caution, Haug said revenues appear to be coming in at a healthy pace after growing less than 1 percent during the fiscal year ending June 30.

As of Tuesday, revenue growth for the year was at 4.8 percent, buoyed largely by increases in income and sales taxes.

That gives me reason for optimism going forward, Haug said.
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down the online advertising site Backpages request for a stay in delivering documents to a Senate committee investigating possible online sex trafficking, including the trafficking of minors.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who along with Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, had in March pushed through a rare contempt of the Senate vote against Backpage, said that the denial means that the company now has no more legal options to avoid turning over subpoenaed documents.

Portman and McCaskill had requested documents about how the company screened its ads, and also requested a committee appearance from Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer. Both were denied by the company last year on 1st Amendment defense claims. Portman and McCaskill pushed the matter into federal court with a civil filing trying to force Backpage to comply, and a series of rulings culminated in Tuesdays action. The Senate passed its first contempt citation in almost 20 years to get the legal case going.

Backpage lawyer Liz McDougall said she had no immediate comment.
ST. LOUIS  Nearly two dozen St. Louis County restaurants are participating in a fundraising effort to assist Ballwin Police Officer Michael Flamion, who was shot during a traffic stop in July.

The group Dine out for Ballwin Police Officer Mike Flamion posted to its Facebook page four new dates for the fundraiser "Meals for Mike," including Monday. Other dates slated for the fundraiser are Oct. 10, Nov. 14 and Dec. 12.

Customers arrived in droves to support the officer and his family at a dining fundraiser in July. The Go Fund Me page set up for Flamion by a Ballwin native has accumulated more than $358,000 in the last two months.

The retail store Talbots in Chesterfield plans to host a benefit event for Flamion on Sept. 22, with 10 percent of sales going to the officer. A number of other businesses and non-profits have hosted fundraisers in his name since the shooting.
When the Missouri Legislature convenes its annual veto session Wednesday, the focus will rightly be on Senate Bill 656. Thats the gun bill that would, among other things, allow Missourians to carry weapons without a permit and shoot anyone, anywhere if they feel threatened.

But that was just one of 22 bills that Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed this summer; most, if not all, of them deserved that fate. Some, like SB 608, would impose unaffordable penalty fees on Missouri Medicaid recipients, punishing the poorest of the poor. Others are gifts to special interests, like SB 1025, which exempts exercise classes from sales taxes, and House Bill 1713, which could give polluters a built-in majority on the states Clean Water Commission.

Republicans enjoy veto-proof majorities in both houses. If legislative leaders hold their troops in line, the state will become a more dangerous place, as St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson warns on todays op-ed page. State revenue will be siphoned off to special interests with no promise of new jobs or economic activity.

We hope lawmakers will remember whom they work for. The veto session is a chance to put teeth into the state motto: The good of the people shall be the highest law.

Unfortunately, the motto of the annual veto sessions might as well be Wheres the party? At least 31 fundraising events were scheduled to coincide with the lawmakers brief return to Jefferson City, two months ahead of the November election.

Given the talk (if not the action) on ethics reform that dominated the legislative session this spring, this looks particularly bad. Even Illinois, with its sordid history of political corruption, prohibits legislators from raising money while theyre in session. Average voters dont attend these parties. Special interests and their lobbyists do, checkbooks in hand.

Here are some key bills that voters should watch carefully:

 SB 656, the aforementioned gun bill. Three Democrats joined Republicans in passing the bill this spring, but Nixon has been working hard to turn them around and peel off a few Republicans. I tell the lawmakers, talk to your sheriffs, Nixon told us Monday. Someone comes in to them whos a domestic violence victim, and they cant tell them they can stop someone from getting a concealed carry permit. Im trying to take politics out of this and bring some thought to it.

 HB 1631, enabling legislation that would create a voter ID bill if voters approve Amendment 6 on the November ballot. It addresses a form of voter fraud that doesnt exist at the cost of disenfranchising 250,000 Missourians.

A lot of ill-considered legislation was passed in the last week of the regular session. Lawmakers now have a second chance to get it right.

Editor's note: This editorial has been modified to correct inaccurate listings of two bills that had already been reconsidered before the veto session. References to those two bills, Senate Bill 586 and House Bill 1891, no longer appear in the updated version of this editorial.
Free-standing chain-link fencing can be put up in a very short amount of time at very little cost, and we all should commit to this solution until the killings in our schools stop.
Someone has finally found a solution to New York's affordable housing crisis: turn Red Hook and the Columbia Waterfront into a futuristic super-neighborhood with 45 million new square feet of real estate, a new subway line, greenways, a marina for fun waterfront activities, and more. This very realistic proposal from engineering and construction giant AECOM was unveiled on Tuesday at a symposium titled "What Do You Want Your City To Be? Reimagining Southwest Brooklyn" at the Rudin Center for Transportation at NYU. The proposed redevelopment of what would simply be called Southwest Brooklyn would cover 246 acres, an area eight times the size of the Hudson Yards project. That $20 billion project, which was touted as all private development, has of course already consumed hundreds of millions of dollars of city subsidies. Then there's the extension of the 7 train, which took 8 years and cost $2.5 billion.

The Southwest Brooklyn project would create a new arm of the IRT branching off the southern end of the 1 train. The line, which in name would resurrect the dead 9 train (may its memory be a blessing), would run under the harbor to Red Hook and connect with the F/G and R at 4th and 9th. The train would solve a problem that's bedeviled Red Hook since it was guillotined by the BQElousy transportation options and both physical and economic isolation from the rest of Brooklyn.

The new square footagethere are also less ambitious proposals for adding 25 and 35 million square feetwould come from high and mid-rise development on land that's currently empty or low density. The city and Port Authority own large swaths of land in the area, including the little-used 80-acre Red Hook Container Terminal, which the PA has considered shutting down, so in theory that could be a starting point for the project. Under the AECOM proposal, the new neighborhood would get 50,000 new units of housing, including 11,000 affordable units (there are currently 3,000 units), and 1.8 extra miles of public waterfront access. AECOM estimates that the project would create around 55,000 jobs.

There would be a pedestrian corridor called the Red Hook Rambla, which hopefully would not be overrun with pickpockets like the original Rambla in Barcelona. In the renderings, the Red Hook Rambla looks a bit like a pedestrian "street" in a fancy mall, just with row houses on either side. Still, the computer-generated kids frolicking about seem happy.

In recognition of the challenges posed to waterfront areas by climate change, the good people at AECOM offer a range of resiliency measures, including building up the coastline, constructing berms and flood barriers, and putting up a flood gate for the Gowanus Canal. But one still questions the wisdom of adding tens of millions of square feet and tens of thousands of housing units in a region of the city that suffered terrible flooding during Hurricane Sandy and has been designated a Zone 1 Hurricane Evacuation area, i.e. at highest risk of flooding during a storm.

Cash rules every redevelopment and urban infrastructure project around us but there's not a lot in the AECOM proposal about cost. The firm estimates that the 25-, 35- and 45-million square foot plans would generate enough revenue to cover "basic development costs." It notes, however, that the most ambitious version would cover only 45 percent of the $3.5 billion subway cost. Theoretically, that would leave a gap of $1.5 billion, but the $3.5 billion price tag seems like a ridiculous lowball, so who knows how large the gap would be.

It's unclear if anyone at the Port Authority or the de Blasio administration is seriously considering any of this, but AECOM is a major force in NYC development, and it's worth noting that AECOM's senior vice president, Chris Ward, was formerly a top executive at the Port Authority. "We have to recognize that growth is necessary to create a waterfront that people can use, affordable housing and a mass-transit connection to a neighborhood where one doesn't exist," Ward tells Crain's.

You can check out the whole plan here.


Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) has found itself the poster child for bad bank behavior after being fined $185 million for the widespread illegal practice of secretly opening more than 2 million unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts. In addition to firing 5,300 employees related to the scheme, today the company announced it will eliminate all product sales goals in retail banking, effective January 1, 2017.

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf said they are eliminating product sales goals "because we want to make certain our customers have full confidence that our retail bankers are always focused on the best interests of customers."

While the elimination of product sales goals may be good for PR, it could "materially change how the company's Retail Banking segment operates and the fee revenue it generates," Piper Jaffray analyst Kevin Baker said in a note to clients Tuesday.

Baker said while they do not expert a dramatic impact to fee revenue near-term, over a longer period of time, it is possible fee income from the retail banking segment could stagnate. The analyst notes that retail banking segment accounted for 57% of total revenue, 49% of fee revenue and 59% of pretax income during the 2015 fiscal year.

While Wells Fargo's stock is trading in-line with its historical multiple, the analyst said forecasts appear high. "... we believe street estimates are roughly 8% too high ($4.18 street vs. $3.83 PJC Est.) primarily due to elevated fee revenue and interest income growth," Baker said. The firm reiterated an Underweight rating and $45 price target on WFC.
Pandora (NYSE: P) announced the signing of direct licensing agreements for recorded music with Merlin Network, Sony Music and Universal Music Group, along with The Orchard and over 30 other independent labels and distributors.

These landmark agreements create a win-win partnership between Pandora and the music industry, opening up new revenue streams for artists and labels, while paving the way for Pandora to bring new products to market that enable enhanced subscription services, fuel new advertising opportunities and deliver unprecedented flexibility and ease of use to listeners. The agreements apply to Pandoras business in the United States.

This was a truly collaborative attempt to find a solution that would support artists while profitably growing our respective businesses, said Tim Westergren, founder and CEO of Pandora. And that is exactly what we achieved. Working together, we can reshape the digital music market and grow a great business that provides tremendous value to the music industry for decades to come.

The newly signed music companies join ASCAP, BMI and more than 2,700 publishers who also recently partnered with Pandora to license their full catalogs for use on the companys upcoming products, ensuring a steady new stream of income to recording artists and songwriters alike.

Today, more than 78 million users listen over 24 hours per month to Pandoras ad-supported and subscription offerings - more than twice the engagement of all other streaming services. With these agreements, Pandora will soon deliver the worlds most personal and complete music experience, while opening up the full power of the platform to connect artists with their fans at scale and leverage the promotional offerings of Pandoras Artist Marketing Platform (AMP).

Pandora executives will also host a conference call on this topic today at 5:15 AM (PT) / 8:15 AM (ET). A live audio webcast will be available at http://investor.pandora.com. A live domestic dial-in is available at (877) 355-0067 or (614) 999-7532 internationally. A domestic replay will be available at (855) 859-2056 or (404) 537-3406 internationally, using passcode 80347305, and available via webcast replay until September 27, 2016.

Charles Caldas, CEO of Merlin Network

We are very pleased to broaden our relationship with Pandora, and to see additional revenue opportunities being created for our members. Independent music has always been at the heart of Pandoras experience, and we are confident that Pandoras users will appreciate and enjoy the music from Merlins market-leading member labels and artists as a vital element of the newly enhanced experience.

Doug Morris, CEO of Sony Music

This partnership should be a very encouraging sign for the entire industry. Pandora is a company founded and run by a musician. We are naturally aligned and look forward to growing the music business together and collaborating to support our artists in the digital era.

Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group

We are pleased to work with Pandora to enable compelling new products and services for one of the largest music streaming audiences in the world. Working collaboratively, we have created a thoughtful partnership that enables innovation and has the potential to delight music fans and benefit the entire music ecosystem of recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers.
Police are searching for a man who molested a man on an A train last month while also allegedly telling him, "Give my regards to the NYPD, they know me well."

According to the NYPD, the incident occurred at 2:40 p.m. on Sunday, August 28th. The 36-year-old man, who was traveling with his family, was on an A train when he was "approached by a male who grabbed the victim's buttocks" as the train headed from 72nd Street to Columbus Circle.

The victim also said the groper told him, "Yeah you know you like that. You know what I meanyou have a nice soft ass. You know you like that."

The victim took a photograph of his assailant before he left the train.

Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577.

If you see or experience sexual misconduct in the subway (this includes seeing a masturbator, being groped, being grinded on, etc.), you can report it to the MTA and police on this website. There's also a place for you to upload photos and/or video. Don't let the perverts win.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A team of seven financial advisers that managed $2.2 billion at Morgan Stanley left the Wall Street brokerage to launch their own wealth management group, one of the largest number of people to break away from a big firm in recent months.

The Wichita, Kansas-based group, which was known as the Kirk Bahm Group at Morgan Stanley, decamped to open 6 Meridian on Friday. The move was led by Margaret Dechant, now 6 Meridian's chief executive officer. She is joined by her former Morgan colleagues Tom Kirk, Andrew Mies, Bryan Green, Steve Bahm, Pam Smith, Sarah Hampton and six support staff.

Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Christine Jockle confirmed the group left the firm but declined to comment further.

At Morgan, the seven-broker group was one of the firm's largest discretionary portfolio management teams. They handled investments for high net worth corporate executives and entrepreneurs, clients they will likely try to persuade to follow them to their new business.

The group went independent in part to create and launch their own investment vehicles, in addition to working with third-party investment managers, according to the firm's statement.

(Reporting By Elizabeth Dilts; Editing by Bernard Orr)
BASEL, Switzerland, Sept. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) announced today that Basilea Pharmaceutica International Ltd. (Basilea) has entered into a supply, distribution and license agreement with Grupo Biotoscana S.L., (GBT) for Basilea's antifungal CRESEMBA (isavuconazole) and antibiotic Zevtera (ceftobiprole) in 19 countries in Latin America including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia.

Under the terms of the agreement, GBT holds an exclusive license to commercialize isavuconazole and ceftobiprole in key Latin American countries. In total, Basilea will receive upfront payments of CHF 11 million for both drugs and will be eligible to receive payments upon achievement of regulatory and commercial milestones. GBT will be responsible for marketing authorization applications, market access, commercialization and distribution of isavuconazole and ceftobiprole in the countries covered by the agreement.

David Veitch, Basilea's Chief Commercial Officer, stated: "We are pleased to have signed a distribution agreement with GBT, a leading biopharmaceutical company in Latin America. Latin America is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. With its presence in more than 90% of the Latin America market, GBT has the capability to successfully commercialize isavuconazole and ceftobiprole in this important region."

About isavuconazole

Isavuconazole is an intravenous (i.v.) and oral azole antifungal and the active agent of the prodrug isavuconazonium sulfate. It is approved in the United States for patients 18 years of age and older in the treatment of invasive aspergillosis and invasive mucormycosis.1 In Europe, isavuconazole received marketing authorization for the treatment of adult patients with invasive aspergillosis and for the treatment of adult patients with mucormycosis for whom amphotericin B is inappropriate.2 Isavuconazole has orphan drug designation for the approved indications in Europe and the US. Basilea commercializes isavuconazole as CRESEMBA in Germany, Italy, the UK and Austria and is seeking national pricing and reimbursement in additional EU countries. In the US, the drug is commercialized by Basilea's license partner Astellas Pharma US. Outside the US and the EU, isavuconazole is currently not approved for commercial use.

About invasive aspergillosis and mucormycosis

Invasive aspergillosis and mucormycosis are life-threatening fungal infections that predominantly affect immunocompromised patients, such as patients with cancer. Invasive aspergillosis is known for high morbidity and mortality. Mucormycosis (also known as zygomycosis) is a rapidly progressing and life-threatening invasive fungal infection, known for high morbidity and mortality.

About ceftobiprole

Ceftobiprole is a broad-spectrum antibiotic from the cephalosporin class for i.v. administration with bactericidal activity against certain Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and susceptible Pseudomonas spp. Ceftobiprole is approved for sale in 13 European countries and several non-European countries for the treatment of adult patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP), excluding ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).3, 4 The drug is currently available in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Austria and Switzerland.

About hospital-acquired and community-acquired pneumonia

Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) is one of the most common hospital-acquired infections and has been shown to have among the highest mortality rates of all hospital-acquired infections.5 Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the most frequent causes of hospital-acquired pneumonia.6 Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common condition with up to 60% of the patients requiring hospital admission and intravenous antibiotics.7 Prompt empiric intervention with an appropriate broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment is considered a best medical practice. The increasing incidence of bacteria resistant to many established antibiotics is a major concern.

About Basilea

Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is a biopharmaceutical company developing products that address increasing resistance and non-response to current treatment options in the therapeutic areas of bacterial infections, fungal infections and cancer. The company uses the integrated research, development and commercial operations of its subsidiary Basilea Pharmaceutica International Ltd. to discover, develop and commercialize innovative pharmaceutical products to meet the medical needs of patients with serious and potentially life-threatening conditions. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Additional information can be found at Basilea's website www.basilea.com.

About Grupo Biotoscana

Grupo Biotoscana (GBT) is a biopharmaceutical group that operates in the fast growing Latin American region and focuses on rapidly growing market segments such as oncology, hematology, high-complexity genetic disorders, rare disease, infectious disease, HIV and other specialty treatments. GBT operates throughout Latin America under its companies Biotoscana, United Medical and LKM. GBT's strong portfolio combines world-class licenses and proprietary products with annual revenues of USD 250 million. GBT is controlled by the global private equity firm Advent International, with other significant shareholders including Essex Woodlands and a number of private investors. To find out more about Grupo Biotoscana, please go to www.grupobiotoscana.com.

Disclaimer

This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For further information, please contact:

Peer Nils Schroder, PhD Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations +41 61 606 1102 [email protected] [email protected]

This press release can be downloaded from www.basilea.com.

References

1 CRESEMBA US prescribing information [Accessed: September 12, 2016]

2 European Public Assessment Report (EPAR) CRESEMBA: http://www.ema.europa.eu [Accessed: September 12, 2016]

3 UK Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) Zevtera: http://www.mhra.gov.uk/ [Accessed: September 12, 2016]

4 European trade name Zevtera or Mabelio, depending on the country. The drug has received national licenses in 13 European countries for the treatment of adult patients with community- and hospital-acquired pneumonia (CAP, HAP), excluding ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP): Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom

5 C. Rotstein et al. Clinical practice guidelines for hospital-acquired pneumonia and ventilator-associated pneumonia in adults. Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases & Medical Microbiology 2008 (19), 19-53

6 R. N. Jones. Microbial etiologies of hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2010 (51), S81-S87

7 W. I. Sligl et al. Severe community-acquired pneumonia. Critical Care Clinics 2013 (29), 563-601

Press release (PDF) http://hugin.info/134390/R/2041661/761897.pdf

Source: Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- CHC Student Housing Corp. ("CHC" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: CHC) announces that its Board of Directors has adopted a deferred share unit plan (the "DSU Plan"). The purpose of the DSU Plan is to promote greater alignment of interests between the Company's shareholders and directors while reducing the cash expense of compensating its directors.

The DSU Plan provides that the Company's non-executive directors may receive, at the discretion of the Board of Directors, a portion of their compensation in deferred share units ("DSUs"), and may also elect to receive all or a portion of any of their cash compensation in DSUs. Under the DSU Plan, DSUs will be priced at the greater of the volume weighted average price of the common shares of the Company over the last five trading days preceding the grant, and the closing price of the common shares on the last trading day preceding the grant. DSUs will be settled by way of issuance of common shares when a director ceases to be a director of the Company. The DSU Plan is subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, as well as the approval of the Company's shareholders at its next shareholders' meeting.

In addition, on September 13, 2016, the Board of Directors also approved the grant of an aggregate of $304,000 in DSUs (the "Cash DSUs") to the directors of the Company in settlement of directors' fees accrued and unpaid during 2015 and the first two quarters of 2016, for a total of 63,070 DSUs. The Cash DSUs were priced at the volume weighted average price of the Company's common shares over the last five trading days preceding the September 13, 2016 grant date, being $4.82. The Cash DSUs are currently to be settled in cash when a director ceases to be a director of the Company. However, the Cash DSUs may be amended to be settled in common shares of the Company following the receipt of the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange and the Company's shareholders for the DSU Plan.

About CHC Student Housing Corp.

CHC Student Housing Corp. is Canada's only publicly traded company offering high-quality purpose-built multi-residential student housing properties strategically located on campus or in close proximity to universities and colleges providing students a safe and secure living environment, affordable prices and high-quality amenities. CHC is focused on acquiring, developing and managing student housing in primary and well understood secondary markets in Canada. For more information, visit CHC at www.chcstudenthousing.com.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts: CHC Student Housing Corp. Mark Hansen President and Chief Executive Officer (647) 288-9355 [email protected] www.chcstudenthousing.com

Source: CHC Student Housing Corp.
HONOLULU, HI -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Honolulu Cookie Company welcomes the Fall season with two new exclusive shortbread cookie flavors: Pumpkin and White Chocolate Pumpkin. For a limited time, fans can sample these seasonal pumpkin flavors featured in a new Fall Collection. The collection will arrive in Honolulu Cookie Company stores and online on Wednesday, September 14.

These pumpkin cookies have everything people love about the fall season, naturally blending in the comforting tastes and aromas of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. For another level of sweetness, the White Chocolate Pumpkin cookie is carefully hand-dipped in creamy white chocolate, creating the unforgettable sensation of eating pumpkin pie a-la-mode.

The Fall Pumpkin Box, featuring 6 cookies in the 2 new flavors has a warm autumn feel with its golden orange colors and resemblance to a miniature pumpkin. The Fall Window Box, with 12 cookies in 4 flavors is a seasonal spin on one of Honolulu Cookie Company's most popular items and offers up a perfect gift of rich flavors.

Instagram Campaign

Honolulu Cookie Company is celebrating their new pumpkin flavors with a special "#AlohaPumpkin" Instagram campaign. Beginning September 14 and continuing through October 31, customers who post a picture on Instagram with the hashtag "#AlohaPumpkin" and show it to a Honolulu Cookie Company employee at any retail location will receive two free pumpkin cookies.

To Contact Honolulu Cookie Company

Please visit www.honolulucookie.com or call toll free at (866) 333-5800. Also available is the full range of the company's products, available for shipping across the U.S. mainland as well as internationally. You can also find Honolulu Cookie Company on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/honolulucookie.

About Honolulu Cookie Company

Since 1998, Honolulu Cookie Company's premium shortbread cookies have been made using Hawaii's freshest and finest ingredients. Baked fresh daily in Honolulu, each cookie is handcrafted and individually wrapped to ensure freshness.

On Oahu, Honolulu Cookie Company has eight retail stores in Waikiki, including a new location at International Market Place, as well as one at Ward Warehouse, another in the Makai Market Food Court at Ala Moana Center, and one on-site at their bakery in Kalihi. On Maui, Honolulu Cookie Company has stores at Whalers Village and Front Street in Lahaina, and at The Shops at Wailea. Honolulu Cookie Company can also be found in Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian | The Palazzo in Las Vegas and coming soon to Micronesia Mall in Guam. In addition, Honolulu Cookie Company cookies are available at select retail partners: Neiman Marcus, Tommy Bahama, Bloomingdale's and DFS stores.

Visit honolulucookie.com/store-locations to find a retail store near you.

The following files are available for download:

Bryan CheplicThe Harris Agency, LLC [email protected]

Source: Honolulu Cookie Company
CITY OF INDUSTRY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Hot Topic, Inc. announced that a conference call to discuss the second quarter results for the period ended July 30, 2016 is scheduled for September 13, 2016 at 4:30PM (ET). Access information for this conference call will be published on the Secure Financial Information Exchange prior to the date of the conference call.

Hot Topic, Inc. is a mall- and web-based market-leading specialty retailer of music/pop culture-influenced and licensed apparel and accessories targeting 18- to 24-year-old men and women. Music and pop culture are the overriding inspirations at Hot Topic. The company launched a new retail concept, BoxLunch, during the third quarter of fiscal 2015. Revenues are generated primarily through retail stores in the United States of America, Puerto Rico and Canada, and online through our websites hottopic.com and boxlunch.com. As of July 30, 2016, the company operated 709 stores.

The aforementioned conference call may contain forward-looking statements, which may include statements relating to financial results, guidance, store and online operations (including closures, remodels and relocations), projections, financial performance including cost reductions and changes in business operations, and related matters. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, including risks and uncertainties associated with meeting expected financial results, fluctuations in sales and comparable sales results, music, license and fashion trends, competition from other retailers, uncertainties generally associated with specialty retailing, technology and other risks associated with Internet sales, the effect of negative conditions in the economic environment (including global capital and credit markets), the effect of severe weather or natural disasters, political and/or social changes or events that could negatively impact shopping patterns and/or mall traffic, relationships with mall developers and operators, relationships with our vendors, litigation proceedings and contingent liabilities, as well as other risks detailed in the Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended January 30, 2016. Historical results achieved are not necessarily indicative of the future prospects of the company, and actual results or circumstances could differ materially from any forward-looking statements made.

Current noteholders, prospective noteholders and securities analysts may request access to the Secure Financial Information Exchange at: http://www.hottopic.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-hottopic-Site/default/CustomerService-FinanceInfo.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006546/en/

Hot Topic, Inc.

George Wehlitz, CFO

626-839-4681 x2174

Source: Hot Topic, Inc.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C., will welcome its first visitor on September 24. In anticipation, the Museum will launch a one-day giving campaign on Tuesday, September 13. The NMAAHC Giving Day is a 24-hour online, social media-driven effort that will encourage donations from $10 to $25,000.

The Museum's mission is to use African American history and culture as a lens into what it means to be an American. It is the only national museum exclusively devoted to the documentation of African American life, history and culture. Giving Day provides a way to increase awareness about the newest Smithsonian institution, as well as raise critical funds for its ongoing programs and operations. "The National Day of Giving provides everyone an opportunity to stand with us and be a part of history," said Adrienne Brooks, Associate Director of Development, who headed up the national building fundraising effort.

Celebrities including Shonda Rhimes and Kerry Washington have signed on to be Giving Day Champions. Founding Donor Hyundai Motor America is the primary Giving Day sponsor. Hyundai will generously provide up to $500,000 for matching gifts made online.

"Hyundai is honored to support the National Museum of African American History and Culture as a Founding Donor," said Dave Zuchowski, President and CEO, Hyundai Motor America. "The Smithsonian Institution is a preeminent organization in the world, which promotes better understanding and education of history and culture. The NMAAHC, the newest Smithsonian Museum, chronicles African American history and contributions to society for millions of visitors to see. A core value at Hyundai is a commitment to diversity and inclusion. We celebrate the rich tapestry of diversity, which we believe makes our society better. The NMAAHC's mission and focus on African American history and culture will stand for many generations to come, to share the important American story that is profoundly shaped by the contributions of African Americans."

Hyundai and the National Museum of African American History and Culture welcomes your support on September 13, 2016. Sign up and spread the word about #GiveNMAAHC by visiting GIVENMAAHC.org so that your friends, family and co-workers can make history with the opening of the first National Museum of African American History.

About 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. All Hyundai vehicles sold in the U.S. are covered by the Hyundai Assurance program, which includes the 5-year/60,000-mile fully transferable new vehicle limited warranty, Hyundai's 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain limited warranty and five years of complimentary Roadside Assistance. Hyundai Blue Link Connected Care provides owners of Hyundai models equipped with the Blue Link telematics system with proactive safety and car care services complimentary for one year with enrollment. These services include Automatic Collision Notification, Enhanced Roadside Assistance, Vehicle Diagnostic Alert, Monthly Vehicle Health Report and In-Vehicle Service Scheduling.

About the Museum

The National Museum of African American History and Culture was established as the 19th Smithsonian museum by an Act of Congress through legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003. Groundbreaking occurred in 2012. President Barack Obama will participate in the museum's Sept. 24 dedication ceremony.

The nearly 400,000-square-foot museum will be the nation's largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history.

For more information about the museum and its opening celebrations, visit the museum's website.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131002/LA90771LOGO-b

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hyundai-supports-national-museum-of-african-american-history-as-a-founding-donor-300326589.html

SOURCE Hyundai Motor America
Seven local businesses will square off in competition to raise money for nonprofits of their choice

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Teams from seven Denver and Boulder-area businesses will meet Saturday, October 15, to raise money in support of local nonprofits. The first annual Colorado Startup Games will be held at the Glitter Dome in the River North Art District.

The field of competitors for Colorados inaugural Startup Games include: Blinker, Ibotta, Circle Graphics, ReadyTalk with The Dialog Lab, HomeAdvisor, Sphero and ReturnPath. The teams will compete for gold, silver and bronze medals  and prize money for charity  in a variety of games like Foosball, Beer Pong, Jenga, Trivia and more.

The sponsors helping make the Colorado Startup Games possible are Westword Magazine, Built In Colorado, Buffalo Trace, MillerCoors, Titos Handmade Vodka, Mile High Cornhole and The Dialog Lab.

The public is welcome to join the activities during the Startup Games. Spectators can root on their favorite startup and try their hand at the games in Spectator Alley. The suggested $10 donation gets you an entry with drink tickets and a t-shirt. More information and ticket reservations can be found on the Startup Games event page.

Competitors and other members of Denvers thriving business community dont have to wait until October for their chance to meet the Startup Games crew and help raise money for local charities. At the Denver Startup Week Job Fair in the Buell Theatre Lobby on Wednesday, September 14, the Startup Games will hold a cornhole contest with unlimited entries for all in attendance. Entries consist of a $5 donation to Patriot Boot Camp, and the player with the most points at the end of the day will win a remote-controlled BB-8 droid from Sphero.

With so many great Colorado businesses stepping up to make a positive impact in their community, the Colorado Startup Games is set to become a lasting tradition of fun and philanthropy," said Sara Reeves, executive director of the Startup Games. Were excited to start that tradition well before the Startup Games opening ceremony with our cornhole contest during this weeks Job Fair.

About the Startup Games:

The Startup Games, founded in Austin, Texas in 2012, unites high-growth startup companies (and startups-at-heart) in friendly competition to build great cultures that value giving back to their local communities. The one-day event consists of 10 games played in bracket-style, heat or free-for-all formats. A 501(c) organization, Startup Games continues to give back to charities in host cities through team entrance fees, tickets sold and sponsorships. For more information visit www.startupgames.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913006617/en/

The Dialog Lab for Startup Games

Matt Isaacs, 609-246-5850 [c]

[email protected]

Source: Startup Games
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's top court should set aside a judgment invalidating a farm trade accord between the EU and Morocco, an adviser to the court said on Tuesday, offering a potential resolution to a diplomatic clash between the two.

The General Court of the European Union, the EU's second-highest court, ruled in December that the trade deal was void after a suit filed by the Polisario Front, which wants independence for the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

The court held that the EU had failed to examine whether a deal would affect the exploitation of natural resources in the Moroccan-controlled territory. That ruling prompted Morocco to suspend contact with EU institutions for four weeks and the EU to lodge a legal appeal.

Advocate General Melchior Wathelet said on Tuesday that Western Sahara was not part of Morocco so neither the 2000 EU-Morocco Association Agreement nor the 2012 EU-Morocco Agreement on liberalization of trade in agricultural and fishery products applied to the territory.

If the trade agreements were declared valid by the European Court of Justice, the EU and Morocco should avoid a repeat of the diplomatic clash at the start of this year.

Opinions by the advocate general are not binding, but EU court judges follow them in the majority of cases.

The EU and Morocco have struck agreements allowing duty-free quotas for agricultural products such as tomatoes and granting access for European vessels to fish in Moroccan waters in return for financial assistance. The two sides also began negotiations in 2013 to form a deeper and broader free trade agreement.

Morocco has controlled most of Western Sahara since 1975 and claims sovereignty over the sparsely populated stretch of desert to its south, which has offshore fishing as well as phosphate and possibly oil reserves.

But its annexation of the region led to a rebellion by the Polisario Front backed by Morocco's neighbor Algeria. The Front and Morocco have been at loggerheads ever since.

(Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop, editing by Robin Emmott)
Portugal's Left Bloc leader Catarina Martins speaks to the media after a meeting with Portugal's president at Belem Palace in Lisbon, Portugal November 20, 2015. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante

By Andrei Khalip

LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal's budget negotiations between the minority Socialist government and its left-wing backers in parliament are heading towards a deal that would involve providing more income to pensioners, the leader of the Left Bloc said on Tuesday.

The government, which has promised the European Commission it would keep cutting the budget deficit even as it reverses many of the austerity measures of the previous administration, has to present a draft budget by mid-October.

Some analysts have expressed concern that after pressure from Brussels for more fiscal consolidation, the new budget would split Portugal's first-ever alliance of the centre-left Socialists with the hard left that began in November.

Political instability could also exacerbate investor worries about Portugal's faltering growth and its credit ratings.

But so far, all signs indicate a smooth budget process. Left Bloc's Catarina Martins has signaled no outright challenge to the course of budget consolidation if the government agrees to increase pensions, especially for low-income pensioners.

"We are getting towards a deal on important matters and that gives us some confidence about the possibility of a budget that would correspond to the agreement that we've had" on parliamentary support for the government, she said.

Martins spoke to reporters after meeting Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who also received the leaders of other parties with seats in parliament.

But Jeronimo de Sousa, the leader of the Communist party, whose support is also crucial to ensure the parliamentary majority, was more restrained, saying progress was "still clearly insufficient".

"We've shown we are here to cooperate. It is an ongoing process," de Sousa said, urging the government not to give in to "blackmail" from Brussels. "We will support what is positive for the people and we will oppose what works against the workers."

Left Bloc's Martins singled out pensions as the most acute issue because retirees have so far only lost income in recent years. She also wants to end a crisis-time income tax surcharge, which has already been scaled down in this year's budget.

"Considering the low pensions, the poverty among the elderly, the recovery of pensioners' incomes has to be a priority," she said, adding that although there were differences with the government on various matters, the parties were working to bridge them.

(Additional reporting By Sergio Goncalves, editing by Axel Bugge, Larry King)
By Marc Jones and Ragnhildur Sigurdardottir

LONDON/REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - A group of U.S. funds battling with Iceland after it froze $1.4 billion of the government's bonds they own are limbering up for a legal fight if Reykjavik continues to stonewall efforts at a deal.

While the players and amounts of money involved mean the situation is unlikely to develop into an years-long Argentina-style standoff, it is overshadowing Iceland's comeback from one of the world's most extreme banking crises.

A few weeks ago it took a big step in dismantling its 8-year old capital controls and the smooth progress so far has earned the country a double-notch credit rating upgrade and has been driving up its currency .

One headache, however, is that it remains deadlocked with funds Autonomy Capital, Eaton Vance, Loomis Sayles and Discovery Capital Management -- whose frozen bonds are worth roughly 10 percent of Iceland's annual economic output -- after they spurned what they saw as low-ball government offer to unlock them back in June.

Two of the funds, Autonomy and Eaton Vance, have filed a complaint to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in Brussels which is ongoing, saying that the quarantining of their bonds amounts to a discrimination against foreign investors. Autonomy has made a separate approach to a court in Iceland.

Iceland rejects the claims saying that some domestic investors are also affected and that the moves are necessary to allow a smooth lifting of capital controls, so barring any sudden change of tack the situation looks set to escalate.

"Offshore investors (the U.S funds) have made a concerted effort dating back to 2015 to provide multiple solutions (to the deadlock)," one of the funds' leading lawyers in EFTA case, Morrison & Foerster's Gary Lee told Reuters.

"The Icelandic government has refused to engage, and has instead chosen a discriminatory path that will in the short and long-term only harm the Icelandic economy and the Icelandic people."

An EFTA spokesperson said the funds' deadline to clarify the next stage of the complaint was Sept. 20 but a spokesman for Iceland's central bank played down the threat from any formal legal action that followed.

"The Icelandic authorities have made a careful analysis of the legal implications of the strategy for lifting capital controls and are confident that the strategy is fully consistent with both domestic law and Icelands international obligations," the central bank spokesman said.

The finance ministry added: "Particular attention has been given to ensuring that this bill of legislation does not conflict with the EEA (European economic area) Agreement."

PRE-ELECTION LIMBO

But the central bank is also keeping the hopes of some kind of deal just about alive. The head of central bank said when the lifting of capital controls was announced last month that the 'offshore Krona' issue could be revisited next year.

"The lifting of controls on these off-shore investments is a matter of sequencing," the spokesman added.

However, "As these (bonds) are fairly liquid assets and the total claims amount to roughly 10 percent of Icelands GDP it would be too risky to lift restrictions on the offshore investments at the same time as the focus turns... toward lifting controls on local households and corporates."

For now it leaves the funds in limbo. Not only is ending years of capital controls a delicate process, but Iceland is holding elections next month which is dominating the government's attention.

Boston-based Eaton Vance told Reuters that they remain open negotiations though attempts at contact continue to be rebuffed.

"We are very willing and ready to work toward a solution," the company said in a statement. But "we have made a number of different proposals and have received minimal feedback from the other side."

Autonomy declined to comment, Discovery Capital Management said its policy was not to discuss specific market positions while Loomis Sayles did not respond to requests for comment.

One of the world's top sovereign debt lawyers, Cleary Gottlieb's Lee Buchheit, who represented Iceland's government in cases over its failed banks but says he is not involved in the current squabble, is skeptical of the funds' legal chances.

"I don't want to predict the outcome but it is going to be a challenge I think for these people to mount an effective legal complaint before EFTA here," he said, adding that it would also be difficult to pursue the case in another country's courts.

"Anyone challenging what they have done is going to have to say that it was unnecessary or disproportionate."

"And if you have got the IMF saying: no, what they are doing is perfectly necessary and perfectly proportional to protect their balance of payments and exchange rate, it is going to be a tough argument to make."

(This version of the story clarifies statement in paragraph 18 is company statement)

(Additional reporting by Daniel Dickson and Violette Goarant in Stockholm; Editing by Toby Chopra)
By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Police in Nepal have charged an American man of luring boys from villages and taking them to the capital for sex, an official said on Monday, amid concerns that last year's devastating earthquakes have caused a spike in human trafficking.

The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) official said Kenneth Joseph Coombs, 48, was arrested on Friday at a hotel in Thamel, a popular tourist district in Kathmandu, where eight boys aged between 12 and 16 were with him.

Nawaraj Silwal, CBI Deputy Inspector General, said police rescued the children from a hotel in the center of the city after their parents reported them as missing.

"He (Coombs) has been charged with child sex abuse and a court has remanded him to police custody," Silwal told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "He would force (the children) to do everything a pedophile does."

A Nepali associate was also arrested and charged under similar crimes, said police, who seized a laptop, camera and mobile phone at the scene.

Child welfare officials they were not surprised by the arrests as there has been a surge in human trafficking cases following devastating earthquakes in April and May last year that killed almost 9,000 people in the Himalayan nation.

Silwal said Coombs and his Nepali associate had allegedly lured the children from impoverished villages around Kathmandu with the promise of good jobs, clothes and food, but instead they were enslaved, exploited and raped.

Lawyers representing the two men were not immediately available for comment. An official at the U.S. Embassy said the embassy could provide details due to issues related to privacy.

Coombs, described as an app developer from Illinois, was a frequent visitor to Nepal, said Silwal.

Last year's earthquakes left hundreds of thousands of families homeless and raised concerns among rights groups that trafficking rings would take advantage of the vulnerable.

Nepali officials say more than 40,000 children either lost their parents, were injured, or were placed in a precarious situation following the disaster.

"There were increased incidences of trafficking in children after the earthquake last year, but we do not know many cases of sexual abuse like this," said Tarak Dhital, head of the government's Central Child Welfare Board.

"Disasters like earthquakes make children vulnerable to such crimes. We have to be alert against this."

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma, Editing by Nita Bhalla and Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
Exhibit A





ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





1401 H St. NW

Washington, DC 20005





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND









ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group

1401 H St. NW

Washington, DC 20005





DECLARATIONS





NOTICE

This policy is issued by your risk retention group. Your risk retention group may not be subject to all of the insurance laws and regulations of your state. State insurance insolvency guaranty funds are not available for your risk retention group.

Item 1. Name of Insured (the "Insured") Bond Number:

Pear Tree Funds 87097116B





Principal Office: Mailing Address: c/o Willis of Maryland, Inc.

55 Old Bedford Road 225 Schilling Circle

Lincoln, MA 01773 Hunt Valley, MD 21031





Item 2. Bond Period: from 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 2016 , to 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 2017 , or

the earlier effective date of the termination of this Bond, standard time at the Principal Office as to each of said dates.

Item 3. Limit of Liability Subject to Sections 9, 10 and 12 hereof: LIMIT OF LIABILITY DEDUCTIBLE AMOUNT Insuring Agreement A- FIDELITY $1,900,000 $50,000 Insuring Agreement B- AUDIT EXPENSE $50,000 $5,000 Insuring Agreement C- ON PREMISES $1,900,000 $50,000 Insuring Agreement D- IN TRANSIT $1,900,000 $50,000 Insuring Agreement E- FORGERY OR ALTERATION $1,900,000 $50,000 Insuring Agreement F- SECURITIES $1,900,000 $50,000 Insuring Agreement G- COUNTERFEIT CURRENCY $1,900,000 $50,000 Insuring Agreement H- UNCOLLECTIBLE ITEMS OF DEPOSIT $25,000 $5,000 Insuring Agreement I- PHONE/ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS $1,900,000 $50,000 If "Not Covered" is inserted opposite any Insuring Agreement above, such Insuring Agreement and any reference thereto shall be deemed to be deleted from this Bond. OPTIONAL INSURING AGREEMENTS ADDED BY RIDER: Insuring Agreement J- COMPUTER SECURITY $1,900,000 $50,000





Item 4. Offices or Premises Covered--All the Insured's offices or other premises in existence at the time this Bond becomes effective are covered under this Bond, except the offices or other premises excluded by Rider. Offices or other premises acquired or established after the effective date of this Bond are covered subject to the terms of General Agreement A.





Item 5. The liability of ICI Mutual Insurance Company, a Risk Retention Group (the "Underwriter") is subject to the terms of the following Riders attached hereto:





Riders: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11





Bond (10/15) and of all Riders applicable to this Bond issued during the Bond Period.









By: ____ /S/ Joseph Costello __________ By: _____ /S/ Catherine Dalton _____________

Authorized Representative Authorized Representative

INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND

NOTICE

This policy is issued by your risk retention group. Your risk retention group may not be subject to all of the insurance laws and regulations of your state. State insurance insolvency guaranty funds are not available for your risk retention group.

ICI Mutual Insurance Company, a Risk Retention Group (the "Underwriter"), in consideration of an agreed premium, and in reliance upon the Application and all other information furnished to the Underwriter by the Insured, and subject to and in accordance with the Declarations, General Agreements, Provisions, Conditions and Limitations and other terms of this bond (including all riders hereto) ("Bond"), to the extent of the Limit of Liability and subject to the Deductible Amount, agrees to indemnify the Insured for the loss, as described in the Insuring Agreements, sustained by the Insured at any time but discovered during the Bond Period.

INSURING AGREEMENTS

A. FIDELITY

Loss caused by any Dishonest or Fraudulent Act or Theft committed by an Employee anywhere, alone or in collusion with other persons (whether or not Employees), during the time such Employee has the status of an Employee as defined herein, and even if such loss is not discovered until after he or she ceases to be an Employee, EXCLUDING loss covered under Insuring Agreement B.

B. AUDIT EXPENSE

Expense incurred by the Insured for that part of audits or examinations required by any governmental regulatory authority or Self Regulatory Organization to be conducted by such authority or Organization or by an independent accountant or other person, by reason of the discovery of loss sustained by the Insured and covered by this Bond.

C. ON PREMISES

Loss resulting from Property that is (1) located or reasonably believed by the Insured to be located within the Insured's offices or premises, and (2) the object of Theft, Dishonest or Fraudulent Act, or Mysterious Disappearance, EXCLUDING loss covered under Insuring Agreement A.

D. IN TRANSIT

Loss resulting from Property that is (1) in transit in the custody of any person authorized by an Insured to act as a messenger, except while in the mail or with a carrier for hire (other than a Security Company), and (2) the object of Theft, Dishonest or Fraudulent Act, or Mysterious Disappearance, EXCLUDING loss covered under Insuring Agreement A. Property is "in transit" beginning immediately upon receipt of such Property by the transporting person and ending immediately upon delivery at the specified destination.

E. FORGERY OR ALTERATION

Loss caused by the Forgery or Alteration of or on (1) any bills of exchange, checks, drafts, or other written orders or directions to pay certain sums in money, acceptances, certificates of deposit, due bills, money orders, or letters of credit; or (2) other written instructions, requests or applications to the Insured, authorizing or acknowledging the transfer, payment, redemption, delivery or receipt of Property, or giving notice of any bank account, which instructions or requests or applications purport to have been signed or endorsed by (a) any customer of the Insured, or (b) any shareholder of or subscriber to shares issued by any Investment Company, or (c) any financial or banking institution or stockbroker; or (3) withdrawal orders or receipts for the withdrawal of Property, or receipts or certificates of deposit for Property and bearing the name of the Insured as issuer or of another Investment Company for which the Insured acts as agent. This Insuring Agreement E does not cover loss caused by Forgery or Alteration of Securities or loss covered under Insuring Agreement A.

F. SECURITIES

Loss resulting from the Insured, in good faith, in the ordinary course of business, and in any capacity whatsoever, whether for its own account or for the account of others, having acquired, accepted or received, or sold or delivered, or given any value, extended any credit or assumed any liability on the faith of any Securities, where such loss results from the fact that such Securities (1) were Counterfeit, or (2) were lost or stolen, or (3) contain a Forgery or Alteration, and notwithstanding whether or not the act of the Insured causing such loss violated the constitution, by-laws, rules or regulations of any Self Regulatory Organization, whether or not the Insured was a member thereof, EXCLUDING loss covered under Insuring Agreement A.

G. COUNTERFEIT CURRENCY

Loss caused by the Insured in good faith having received or accepted (1) any money orders which prove to be Counterfeit or to contain an Alteration or (2) paper currencies or coin of the United States of America or Canada which prove to be Counterfeit. This Insuring Agreement G does not cover loss covered under Insuring Agreement A.

H. UNCOLLECTIBLE ITEMS OF DEPOSIT

Loss resulting from the payment of dividends, issuance of Fund shares or redemptions or exchanges permitted from an account with the Fund as a consequence of

(1) uncollectible Items of Deposit of a Fund's customer, shareholder or subscriber credited by the Insured or its agent to such person's Fund account, or

(2) any Item of Deposit processed through an automated clearing house which is reversed by a Fund's customer, shareholder or subscriber and is deemed uncollectible by the Insured;

PROVIDED, that (a) Items of Deposit shall not be deemed uncollectible until the Insured's collection procedures have failed, (b) exchanges of shares between Funds with exchange privileges shall be covered hereunder only if all such Funds are insured by the Underwriter for uncollectible Items of Deposit, and (c) the Insured Fund shall have implemented and maintained a policy to hold Items of Deposit for the minimum number of days stated in its Application (as amended from time to time) before paying any dividend or permitting any withdrawal with respect to such Items of Deposit (other than exchanges between Funds). Regardless of the number of transactions between Funds in an exchange program, the minimum number of days an Item of Deposit must be held shall begin from the date the Item of Deposit was first credited to any Insured Fund.

This Insuring Agreement H does not cover loss covered under Insuring Agreement A.

I. PHONE/ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS

Loss caused by a Phone/Electronic Transaction, where the request for such Phone/Electronic Transaction:

(1) is transmitted to the Insured or its agents by voice over the telephone or by Electronic Transmission; and

(2) is made by an individual purporting to be a Fund shareholder or subscriber or an authorized agent of a Fund shareholder or subscriber; and

(3) is unauthorized or fraudulent and is made with the manifest intent to deceive;

PROVIDED, that the entity receiving such request generally maintains and follows during the Bond Period all Phone/Electronic Transaction Security Procedures with respect to all Phone/Electronic Transactions; and

EXCLUDING loss resulting from:

(1) the failure to pay for shares attempted to be purchased; or

(2) any redemption of Investment Company shares which had been improperly credited to a shareholder's account where such shareholder (a) did not cause, directly or indirectly, such shares to be credited to such account, and (b) directly or indirectly received any proceeds or other benefit from such redemption; or

(3) any redemption of shares issued by an Investment Company where the proceeds of such redemption were requested to be paid or made payable to other than (a) the Shareholder of Record, or (b) any other person or bank account designated to receive redemption proceeds (i) in the initial account application, or (ii) in writing (not to include Electronic Transmission) accompanied by a signature guarantee; or

(4) any redemption of shares issued by an Investment Company where the proceeds of such redemption were requested to be sent to other than any address for such account which was designated (a) in the initial account application, or (b) in writing (not to include Electronic Transmission), where such writing is received at least one (1) day prior to such redemption request, or (c) by voice over the telephone or by Electronic Transmission at least fifteen (15) days prior to such redemption; or

(5) the intentional failure to adhere to one or more Phone/Electronic Transaction Security Procedures; or

(6) a Phone/Electronic Transaction request transmitted by electronic mail or transmitted by any method not subject to the Phone/Electronic Transaction Security Procedures; or

(7) the failure or circumvention of any physical or electronic protection device, including any firewall, that imposes restrictions on the flow of electronic traffic in or out of any Computer System.

This Insuring Agreement I does not cover loss covered under Insuring Agreement A, "Fidelity" or Insuring Agreement J, "Computer Security".

GENERAL AGREEMENTS

A. ADDITIONAL OFFICES OR EMPLOYEESCONSOLIDATION OR MERGER--NOTICE

1. Except as provided in paragraph 2 below, this Bond shall apply to any additional office(s) established by the Insured during the Bond Period and to all Employees during the Bond Period, without the need to give notice thereof or pay additional premiums to the Underwriter for the Bond Period.

2. If during the Bond Period an Insured Investment Company shall merge or consolidate with an institution in which such Insured is the surviving entity, or purchase substantially all the assets or capital stock of another institution, or acquire or create a separate investment portfolio, and shall within sixty (60) days notify the Underwriter thereof, then this Bond shall automatically apply to the Property and Employees resulting from such merger, consolidation, acquisition or creation from the date thereof; provided, that the Underwriter may make such coverage contingent upon the payment of an additional premium.

B. WARRANTY

No statement made by or on behalf of the Insured, whether contained in the Application or otherwise, shall be deemed to be an absolute warranty, but only a warranty that such statement is true to the best of the knowledge of the person responsible for such statement.

C. COURT COSTS AND ATTORNEYS' FEES

The Underwriter will indemnify the Insured against court costs and reasonable attorneys' fees incurred and paid by the Insured in defense of any legal proceeding brought against the Insured seeking recovery for any loss which, if established against the Insured, would constitute a loss covered under the terms of this Bond; provided, however, that with respect to Insuring Agreement A this indemnity shall apply only in the event that

1. an Employee admits to having committed or is adjudicated to have committed a Dishonest or Fraudulent Act or Theft which caused the loss; or

2. in the absence of such an admission or adjudication, an arbitrator or arbitrators acceptable to the Insured and the Underwriter concludes, after a review of an agreed statement of facts, that an Employee has committed a Dishonest or Fraudulent Act or Theft which caused the loss.

The Insured shall promptly give notice to the Underwriter of any such legal proceeding and upon request shall furnish the Underwriter with copies of all pleadings and other papers therein. At the Underwriter's election the Insured shall permit the Underwriter to conduct the defense of such legal proceeding in the Insured's name, through attorneys of the Underwriter's selection. In such event, the Insured shall give all reasonable information and assistance which the Underwriter shall deem necessary to the proper defense of such legal proceeding.

If the amount of the Insured's liability or alleged liability in any such legal proceeding is greater than the amount which the Insured would be entitled to recover under this Bond (other than pursuant to this General Agreement C), or if a Deductible Amount is applicable, or both, the indemnity liability of the Underwriter under this General Agreement C is limited to the proportion of court costs and attorneys' fees incurred and paid by the Insured or by the Underwriter that the amount which the Insured would be entitled to recover under this Bond (other than pursuant to this General Agreement C) bears to the sum of such amount plus the amount which the Insured is not entitled to recover. Such indemnity shall be in addition to the Limit of Liability for the applicable Insuring Agreement.

D. INTERPRETATION

This Bond shall be interpreted with due regard to the purpose of fidelity bonding under Rule 17g-1 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (i.e., to protect innocent third parties from harm) and to the structure of the investment management industry (in which a loss of Property resulting from a cause described in any Insuring Agreement ordinarily gives rise to a potential legal liability on the part of the Insured), such that the term "loss" as used herein shall include an Insured's legal liability for direct compensatory damages resulting directly from a misappropriation, or measurable diminution in value, of Property.

THIS BOND, INCLUDING THE FOREGOING INSURING AGREEMENTS

AND GENERAL AGREEMENTS, IS SUBJECT TO THE FOLLOWING

PROVISIONS, CONDITIONS AND LIMITATIONS:

SECTION 1. DEFINITIONS

The following terms used in this Bond shall have the meanings stated in this Section:

A. "Alteration" means the marking, changing or altering in a material way of the terms, meaning or legal effect of a document with the intent to deceive.

B. "Application" means the Insured's application (and any attachments and materials submitted in connection therewith) furnished to the Underwriter for this Bond.

C. "Computer System" means (1) computers with related peripheral components, including storage components, (2) systems and applications software, (3) terminal devices, (4) related communications networks or customer communication systems, and (5) related electronic funds transfer systems; by which data or monies are electronically collected, transmitted, processed, stored or retrieved.

D. "Counterfeit" means, with respect to any item, one which is false but is intended to deceive and to be taken for the original authentic item.

E. "Deductible Amount" means, with respect to any Insuring Agreement, the amount set forth under the heading "Deductible Amount" in Item 3 of the Declarations or in any Rider for such Insuring Agreement, applicable to each Single Loss covered by such Insuring Agreement.

F. "Depository" means any "securities depository" (other than any foreign securities depository) in which an Investment Company may deposit its Securities in accordance with Rule 17f-4 under the Investment Company Act of 1940.

G. "Dishonest or Fraudulent Act" means any dishonest or fraudulent act, including "larceny and embezzlement" as defined in Section 37 of the Investment Company Act of 1940, committed with the conscious manifest intent (1) to cause the Insured to sustain a loss and (2) to obtain financial benefit for the perpetrator or any other person (other than salaries, commissions, fees, bonuses, awards, profit sharing, pensions or other employee benefits). A Dishonest or Fraudulent Act does not mean or include a reckless act, a negligent act, or a grossly negligent act.

H. "Electronic Transmission" means any transmission effected by electronic means, including but not limited to a transmission effected by telephone tones, Telefacsimile, wireless device, or over the Internet.

I. "Employee" means:

(1) each officer, director, trustee, partner or employee of the Insured, and

(2) each officer, director, trustee, partner or employee of any predecessor of the Insured whose principal assets are acquired by the Insured by consolidation or merger with, or purchase of assets or capital stock of, such predecessor, and

(3) each attorney performing legal services for the Insured and each employee of such attorney or of the law firm of such attorney while performing services for the Insured, and

(4) each student who is an authorized intern of the Insured, while in any of the Insured's offices, and

(5) each officer, director, trustee, partner or employee of

(a) an investment adviser,

(b) an underwriter (distributor),

(c) a transfer agent or shareholder accounting recordkeeper, or

(d) an administrator authorized by written agreement to keep financial and/or other required records,

for an Investment Company named as an Insured, BUT ONLY while (i) such officer, partner or employee is performing acts coming within the scope of the usual duties of an officer or employee of an Insured, or (ii) such officer, director, trustee, partner or employee is acting as a member of any committee duly elected or appointed to examine or audit or have custody of or access to the Property of the Insured, or (iii) such director or trustee (or anyone acting in a similar capacity) is acting outside the scope of the usual duties of a director or trustee;PROVIDED, that the term "Employee" shall not include any officer, director, trustee, partner or employee of a transfer agent, shareholder accounting recordkeeper or administrator (x) which is not an "affiliated person" (as defined in Section 2(a) of the Investment Company Act of 1940) of an Investment Company named as Insured or of the adviser or underwriter of such Investment Company, or (y) which is a "Bank" (as defined in Section 2(a) of the Investment Company Act of 1940), and

(6) each individual assigned, by contract or by any agency furnishing temporary personnel, in either case on a contingent or part-time basis, to perform the usual duties of an employee in any office of the Insured, and

(7) each individual assigned to perform the usual duties of an employee or officer of any entity authorized by written agreement with the Insured to perform services as electronic data processor of checks or other accounting records of the Insured, but excluding a processor which acts as transfer agent or in any other agency capacity for the Insured in issuing checks, drafts or securities, unless included under subsection (5) hereof, and

(8) each officer, partner or employee of

(a) any Depository or Exchange,

(b) any nominee in whose name is registered any Security included in the systems for the central handling of securities established and maintained by any Depository, and

(c) any recognized service company which provides clerks or other personnel to any Depository or Exchange on a contract basis,

while such officer, partner or employee is performing services for any Depository in the operation of systems for the central handling of securities, and

(9) in the case of an Insured which is an "employee benefit plan" (as defined in Section 3 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 ("ERISA")) for officers, directors or employees of another Insured ("In-House Plan"), any "fiduciary" or other "plan official" (within the meaning of Section 412 of ERISA) of such In-House Plan, provided that such fiduciary or other plan official is a director, partner, officer, trustee or employee of an Insured (other than an In-House Plan).

Each employer of temporary personnel and each entity referred to in subsections (6) and (7) and their respective partners, officers and employees shall collectively be deemed to be one person for all the purposes of this Bond.

Brokers, agents, independent contractors, or representatives of the same general character shall not be considered Employees, except as provided in subsections (3), (6), and (7).

J. "Exchange" means any national securities exchange registered under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

K. "Forgery" means the physical signing on a document of the name of another person (whether real or fictitious) with the intent to deceive. A Forgery may be by means of mechanically reproduced facsimile signatures as well as handwritten signatures. Forgery does not include the signing of an individual's own name, regardless of such individual's authority, capacity or purpose.

L. "Items of Deposit" means one or more checks or drafts.

M. "Investment Company" or "Fund" means an investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940.

N. "Limit of Liability" means, with respect to any Insuring Agreement, the limit of liability of the Underwriter for any Single Loss covered by such Insuring Agreement as set forth under the heading "Limit of Liability" in Item 3 of the Declarations or in any Rider for such Insuring Agreement.

O. "Mysterious Disappearance" means any disappearance of Property which, after a reasonable investigation has been conducted, cannot be explained.

P. "Non-Fund" means any corporation, business trust, partnership, trust or other entity which is not an Investment Company.

Q. "Phone/Electronic Transaction Security Procedures" means security procedures for Phone/

Electronic Transactions as provided in writing to the Underwriter.

R. "Phone/Electronic Transaction" means any (1) redemption of shares issued by an Investment Company, (2) election concerning dividend options available to Fund shareholders, (3) exchange of shares in a registered account of one Fund into shares in an identically registered account of another Fund in the same complex pursuant to exchange privileges of the two Funds, or (4) purchase of shares issued by an Investment Company, which redemption, election, exchange or purchase is requested by voice over the telephone or through an Electronic Transmission.

S. "Property" means the following tangible items: money, postage and revenue stamps, precious metals, Securities, bills of exchange, acceptances, checks, drafts, or other written orders or directions to pay sums certain in money, certificates of deposit, due bills, money orders, letters of credit, financial futures contracts, conditional sales contracts, abstracts of title, insurance policies, deeds, mortgages, and assignments of any of the foregoing, and other valuable papers, including books of account and other records used by the Insured in the conduct of its business, and all other instruments similar to or in the nature of the foregoing (but excluding all data processing records), (1) in which the Insured has a legally cognizable interest, (2) in which the Insured acquired or should have acquired such an interest by reason of a predecessor's declared financial condition at the time of the Insured's consolidation or merger with, or purchase of the principal assets of, such predecessor or (3) which are held by the Insured for any purpose or in any capacity.

T. "Securities" means original negotiable or non-negotiable agreements or instruments which represent an equitable or legal interest, ownership or debt (including stock certificates, bonds, promissory notes, and assignments thereof), which are in the ordinary course of business and transferable by physical delivery with appropriate endorsement or assignment. "Securities" does not include bills of exchange, acceptances, certificates of deposit, checks, drafts, or other written orders or directions to pay sums certain in money, due bills, money orders, or letters of credit.

U. "Security Company" means an entity which provides or purports to provide the transport of Property by secure means, including, without limitation, by use of armored vehicles or guards.

V. "Self Regulatory Organization" means any association of investment advisers or securities dealers registered under the federal securities laws, or any Exchange.

W. "Shareholder of Record" means the record owner of shares issued by an Investment Company or, in the case of joint ownership of such shares, all record owners, as designated (1) in the initial account application, or (2) in writing accompanied by a signature guarantee, or (3) pursuant to procedures as set forth in the Application.

X. "Single Loss" means:

(1) all loss resulting from any one actual or attempted Theft committed by one person, or

(2) all loss caused by any one act (other than a Theft or a Dishonest or Fraudulent Act) committed by one person, or

(3) all loss caused by Dishonest or Fraudulent Acts committed by one person, or

(4) all expenses incurred with respect to any one audit or examination, or

(5) all loss caused by any one occurrence or event other than those specified in subsections (1) through (4) above.

All acts or omissions of one or more persons which directly or indirectly aid or, by failure to report or otherwise, permit the continuation of an act referred to in subsections (1) through (3) above of any other person shall be deemed to be the acts of such other person for purposes of this subsection.

All acts or occurrences or events which have as a common nexus any fact, circumstance, situation, transaction or series of facts, circumstances, situations, or transactions shall be deemed to be one act, one occurrence, or one event.

Y. "Telefacsimile" means a system of transmitting and reproducing fixed graphic material (as, for example, printing) by means of signals transmitted over telephone lines or over the Internet.

Z. "Theft" means robbery, burglary or hold-up, occurring with or without violence or the threat of violence.

SECTION 2. EXCLUSIONS

THIS BOND DOES NOT COVER:

A. Loss resulting from (1) riot or civil commotion outside the United States of America and Canada, or (2) war, revolution, insurrection, action by armed forces, or usurped power, wherever occurring; except if such loss occurs while the Property is in transit, is otherwise covered under Insuring Agreement D, and when such transit was initiated, the Insured or any person initiating such transit on the Insured's behalf had no knowledge of such riot, civil commotion, war, revolution, insurrection, action by armed forces, or usurped power.

B. Loss in time of peace or war resulting from nuclear fission or fusion or radioactivity, or biological or chemical agents or hazards, or fire, smoke, or explosion, or the effects of any of the foregoing.

C. Loss resulting from any Dishonest or Fraudulent Act committed by any person while acting in the capacity of a member of the Board of Directors or any equivalent body of the Insured or of any other entity.

D. Loss resulting from any nonpayment or other default of any loan or similar transaction made by the Insured or any of its partners, directors, officers or employees, whether or not authorized and whether procured in good faith or through a Dishonest or Fraudulent Act, unless such loss is otherwise covered under Insuring Agreement A, E or F.

E. Loss resulting from any violation by the Insured or by any Employee of any law, or any rule or regulation pursuant thereto or adopted by a Self Regulatory Organization, regulating the issuance, purchase or sale of securities, securities transactions upon security exchanges or over the counter markets, Investment Companies, or investment advisers, unless such loss, in the absence of such law, rule or regulation, would be covered under Insuring Agreement A, E or F.

F. Loss resulting from Property that is the object of Theft, Dishonest or Fraudulent Act, or Mysterious Disappearance while in the custody of any Security Company, unless such loss is covered under this Bond and is in excess of the amount recovered or received by the Insured under (1) the Insured's contract with such Security Company, and (2) insurance or indemnity of any kind carried by such Security Company for the benefit of, or otherwise available to, users of its service, in which case this Bond shall cover only such excess, subject to the applicable Limit of Liability and Deductible Amount.

G. Potential income, including but not limited to interest and dividends, not realized by the Insured because of a loss covered under this Bond, except when covered under Insuring Agreement H.

H. Loss in the form of (1) damages of any type for which the Insured is legally liable, except direct compensatory damages, or (2) taxes, fines, or penalties, including without limitation two-thirds of treble damage awards pursuant to judgments under any statute or regulation.

I. Loss resulting from the surrender of Property away from an office of the Insured as a result of a threat

(1) to do bodily harm to any person, except where the Property is in transit in the custody of any person acting as messenger as a result of a threat to do bodily harm to such person, if the Insured had no knowledge of such threat at the time such transit was initiated, or

(2) to do damage to the premises or Property of the Insured,

unless such loss is otherwise covered under Insuring Agreement A.

J. All costs, fees and other expenses incurred by the Insured in establishing the existence of or amount of loss covered under this Bond, except to the extent certain audit expenses are covered under Insuring Agreement B.

K. Loss resulting from payments made to or withdrawals from any account, involving funds erroneously credited to such account, unless such loss is otherwise covered under Insuring Agreement A.

L. Loss resulting from uncollectible Items of Deposit which are drawn upon a financial institution outside the United States of America, its territories and possessions, or Canada.

M. Loss resulting from the Dishonest or Fraudulent Acts, Theft, or other acts or omissions of an Employee primarily engaged in the sale of shares issued by an Investment Company to persons other than (1) a person registered as a broker under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 or (2) an "accredited investor" as defined in Rule 501(a) of Regulation D under the Securities Act of 1933, which is not an individual.

N. Loss resulting from the use of credit, debit, charge, access, convenience, identification, cash management or other cards, whether such cards were issued or purport to have been issued by the Insured or by anyone else, unless such loss is otherwise covered under Insuring Agreement A.

O. Loss resulting from any purchase, redemption or exchange of securities issued by an Investment Company or other Insured, or any other instruction, request, acknowledgement, notice or transaction involving securities issued by an Investment Company or other Insured or the dividends in respect thereof, when any of the foregoing is requested, authorized or directed or purported to be requested, authorized or directed by voice over the telephone or by Electronic Transmission, unless such loss is otherwise covered under Insuring Agreement A or Insuring Agreement I.

P. Loss resulting from any Dishonest or Fraudulent Act or Theft committed by an Employee as defined in Section 1.I(2), unless such loss (1) could not have been reasonably discovered by the due diligence of the Insured at or prior to the time of acquisition by the Insured of the assets acquired from a predecessor, and (2) arose out of a lawsuit or valid claim brought against the Insured by a person unaffiliated with the Insured or with any person affiliated with the Insured.

Q. Loss resulting from the unauthorized entry of data into, or the deletion or destruction of data in, or the change of data elements or programs within, any Computer System, unless such loss is otherwise covered under Insuring Agreement A.

SECTION 3. ASSIGNMENT OF RIGHTS

Upon payment to the Insured hereunder for any loss, the Underwriter shall be subrogated to the extent of such payment to all of the Insured's rights and claims in connection with such loss; provided, however, that the Underwriter shall not be subrogated to any such rights or claims one named Insured under this Bond may have against another named Insured under this Bond. At the request of the Underwriter, the Insured shall execute all assignments or other documents and take such action as the Underwriter may deem necessary or desirable to secure and perfect such rights and claims, including the execution of documents necessary to enable the Underwriter to bring suit in the name of the Insured.

Assignment of any rights or claims under this Bond shall not bind the Underwriter without the Underwriter's written consent.

SECTION 4. LOSS  NOTICE  PROOF  LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

This Bond is for the use and benefit only of the Insured and the Underwriter shall not be liable hereunder to anyone other than the Insured. As soon as practicable and not more than sixty (60) days after discovery, the Insured shall give the Underwriter written notice thereof and, as soon as practicable and within one year after such discovery, shall also furnish to the Underwriter affirmative proof of loss with full particulars. The Underwriter may extend the sixty day notice period or the one year proof of loss period if the Insured requests an extension and shows good cause therefor.

See also General Agreement C (Court Costs and Attorneys' Fees).

The Underwriter shall not be liable hereunder for loss of Securities unless each of the Securities is identified in such proof of loss by a certificate or bond number or by such identification means as the Underwriter may require. The Underwriter shall have a reasonable period after receipt of a proper affirmative proof of loss within which to investigate the claim, but where the Property is Securities and the loss is clear and undisputed, settlement shall be made within forty-eight (48) hours even if the loss involves Securities of which duplicates may be obtained.

The Insured shall not bring legal proceedings against the Underwriter to recover any loss hereunder prior to sixty (60) days after filing such proof of loss or subsequent to twenty-four (24) months after the discovery of such loss or, in the case of a legal proceeding to recover hereunder on account of any judgment against the Insured in or settlement of any suit mentioned in General Agreement C or to recover court costs or attorneys' fees paid in any such suit, twenty-four (24) months after the date of the final judgment in or settlement of such suit. If any limitation in this Bond is prohibited by any applicable law, such limitation shall be deemed to be amended to be equal to the minimum period of limitation permitted by such law.

Notice hereunder shall be given to Manager, Professional Liability Claims, ICI Mutual Insurance Company, 1401 H St. NW, Washington, DC 20005.

SECTION 5. DISCOVERY

For all purposes under this Bond, a loss is discovered, and discovery of a loss occurs, when the Insured

(1) becomes aware of facts, or

(2) receives notice of an actual or potential claim by a third party which alleges that the Insured is liable under circumstances,

which would cause a reasonable person to assume that loss covered by this Bond has been or is likely to be incurred even though the exact amount or details of loss may not be known.

SECTION 6. VALUATION OF PROPERTY

For the purpose of determining the amount of any loss hereunder, the value of any Property shall be the market value of such Property at the close of business on the first business day before the discovery of such loss; except that

(1) the value of any Property replaced by the Insured prior to the payment of a claim therefor shall be the actual market value of such Property at the time of replacement, but not in excess of the market value of such Property on the first business day before the discovery of the loss of such Property;

(2) the value of Securities which must be produced to exercise subscription, conversion, redemption or deposit privileges shall be the market value of such privileges immediately preceding the expiration thereof if the loss of such Securities is not discovered until after such expiration, but if there is no quoted or other ascertainable market price for such Property or privileges referred to in clauses (1) and (2), their value shall be fixed by agreement between the parties or by arbitration before an arbitrator or arbitrators acceptable to the parties; and

(3) the value of books of accounts or other records used by the Insured in the conduct of its business shall be limited to the actual cost of blank books, blank pages or other materials if the books or records are reproduced plus the cost of labor for the transcription or copying of data furnished by the Insured for reproduction.

SECTION 7. LOST SECURITIES

The maximum liability of the Underwriter hereunder for lost Securities shall be the payment for, or replacement of, such Securities having an aggregate value not to exceed the applicable Limit of Liability. If the Underwriter shall make payment to the Insured for any loss of S ecurities, the Insured shall assign to the Underwriter all of the Insured's right, title and interest in and to such Securities. In lieu of such payment, the Underwriter may, at its option, replace such lost Securities, and in such case the Insured shall cooperate to effect such replacement. To effect the replacement of lost Securities, the Underwriter may issue or arrange for the issuance of a lost instrument bond. If the value of such Securities does not exceed the applicable Deductible Amount (at the time of the discovery of the loss), the Insured will pay the usual premium charged for the lost instrument bond and will indemnify the issuer of such bond against all loss and expense that it may sustain because of the issuance of such bond.

If the value of such Securities exceeds the applicable Deductible Amount (at the time of discovery of the loss), the Insured will pay a proportion of the usual premium charged for the lost instrument bond, equal to the percentage that the applicable Deductible Amount bears to the value of such Securities upon discovery of the loss, and will indemnify the issuer of such bond against all loss and expense that is not recovered from the Underwriter under the terms and conditions of this Bond, subject to the applicable Limit of Liability.

SECTION 8. SALVAGE

If any recovery is made, whether by the Insured or the Underwriter, on account of any loss within the applicable Limit of Liability hereunder, the Underwriter shall be entitled to the full amount of such recovery to reimburse the Underwriter for all amounts paid hereunder with respect to such loss. If any recovery is made, whether by the Insured or the Underwriter, on account of any loss in excess of the applicable Limit of Liability hereunder plus the Deductible Amount applicable to such loss from any source other than suretyship, insurance, reinsurance, security or indemnity taken by or for the benefit of the Underwriter, the amount of such recovery, net of the actual costs and expenses of recovery, shall be applied to reimburse the Insured in full for the portion of such loss in excess of such Limit of Liability, and the remainder, if any, shall be paid first to reimburse the Underwriter for all amounts paid hereunder with respect to such loss and then to the Insured to the extent of the portion of such loss within the Deductible Amount. The Insured shall execute all documents which the Underwriter deems necessary or desirable to secure to the Underwriter the rights provided for herein.

SECTION 9. NON-REDUCTION AND NON-ACCUMULATION OF LIABILITY AND TOTAL LIABILITY

Prior to its termination, this Bond shall continue in force up to the Limit of Liability for each Insuring Agreement for each Single Loss, notwithstanding any previous loss (other than such Single Loss) for which the Underwriter may have paid or be liable to pay hereunder; PROVIDED, however, that regardless of the number of years this Bond shall continue in force and the number of premiums which shall be payable or paid, the liability of the Underwriter under this Bond with respect to any Single Loss shall be limited to the applicable Limit of Liability irrespective of the total amount of such Single Loss and shall not be cumulative in amounts from year to year or from period to period.

SECTION 10. MAXIMUM LIABILITY OF UNDERWRITER; OTHER BONDS OR POLICIES

The maximum liability of the Underwriter for any Single Loss covered by any Insuring Agreement under this Bond shall be the Limit of Liability applicable to such Insuring Agreement, subject to the applicable Deductible Amount and the other provisions of this Bond. Recovery for any Single Loss may not be made under more than one Insuring Agreement. If any Single Loss covered under this Bond is recoverable or recovered in whole or in part because of an unexpired discovery period under any other bonds or policies issued by the Underwriter to the Insured or to any predecessor in interest of the Insured, the maximum liability of the Underwriter shall be the greater of either (1) the applicable Limit of Liability under this Bond, or (2) the maximum liability of the Underwriter under such other bonds or policies.

SECTION 11. OTHER INSURANCE

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, if any loss covered by this Bond shall also be covered by other insurance or suretyship for the benefit of the Insured, the Underwriter shall be liable hereunder only for the portion of such loss in excess of the amount recoverable under such other insurance or suretyship, but not exceeding the applicable Limit of Liability of this Bond.

SECTION 12. DEDUCTIBLE AMOUNT

The Underwriter shall not be liable under any Insuring Agreement unless the amount of the loss covered thereunder, after deducting the net amount of all reimbursement and/or recovery received by the Insured with respect to such loss (other than from any other bond, suretyship or insurance policy or as an advance by the Underwriter hereunder) shall exceed the applicable Deductible Amount; in such case the Underwriter shall be liable only for such excess, subject to the applicable Limit of Liability and the other terms of this Bond.

No Deductible Amount shall apply to any loss covered under Insuring Agreement A sustained by any Investment Company named as an Insured.

SECTION 13. TERMINATION

The Underwriter may terminate this Bond as to any Insured or all Insureds only by written notice to such Insured or Insureds and, if this Bond is terminated as to any Investment Company, to each such Investment Company terminated thereby and to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, D.C., in all cases not less than sixty (60) days prior to the effective date of termination specified in such notice.

The Insured may terminate this Bond only by written notice to the Underwriter not less than sixty (60) days prior to the effective date of the termination specified in such notice. Notwithstanding the foregoing, when the Insured terminates this Bond as to any Investment Company, the effective date of termination shall be not less than sixty (60) days from the date the Underwriter provides written notice of the termination to each such Investment Company terminated thereby and to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, D.C.

This Bond will terminate as to any Insured that is a Non-Fund immediately and without notice upon (1) the takeover of such Insured's business by any State or Federal official or agency, or by any receiver or liquidator, or (2) the filing of a petition under any State or Federal statute relative to bankruptcy or reorganization of the Insured, or assignment for the benefit of creditors of the Insured.

Premiums are earned until the effective date of termination. The Underwriter shall refund the unearned premium computed at short rates in accordance with the Underwriter's standard short rate cancellation tables if this Bond is terminated by the Insured or pro rata if this Bond is terminated by the Underwriter.

Upon the detection by any Insured that an Employee has committed any Dishonest or Fraudulent Act(s) or Theft, the Insured shall immediately remove such Employee from a position that may enable such Employee to cause the Insured to suffer a loss by any subsequent Dishonest or Fraudulent Act(s) or Theft. The Insured, within two (2) business days of such detection, shall notify the Underwriter with full and complete particulars of the detected Dishonest or Fraudulent Act(s) or Theft.

For purposes of this section, detection occurs when any partner, officer, or supervisory employee of any Insured, who is not in collusion with such Employee, becomes aware that the Employee has committed any Dishonest or Fraudulent Act(s) or Theft.

This Bond shall terminate as to any Employee by written notice from the Underwriter to each Insured and, if such Employee is an Employee of an Insured Investment Company, to the Securities and Exchange Commission, in all cases not less than sixty (60) days prior to the effective date of termination specified in such notice.





SECTION 14. RIGHTS AFTER TERMINATION

At any time prior to the effective date of termination of this Bond as to any Insured, such Insured may, by written notice to the Underwriter, elect to purchase the right under this Bond to an additional period of twelve (12) months within which to discover loss sustained by such Insured prior to the effective date of such termination and shall pay an additional premium therefor as the Underwriter may require.

Such additional discovery period shall terminate immediately and without notice upon the takeover of such Insured's business by any State or Federal official or agency, or by any receiver or liquidator. Promptly after such termination the Underwriter shall refund to the Insured any unearned premium.

The right to purchase such additional discovery period may not be exercised by any State or Federal official or agency, or by any receiver or liquidator, acting or appointed to take over the Insured's business.

SECTION 15. CENTRAL HANDLING OF SECURITIES

The Underwriter shall not be liable for loss in connection with the central handling of securities within the systems established and maintained by any Depository ("Systems"), unless the amount of such loss exceeds the amount recoverable or recovered under any bond or policy or participants' fund insuring the Depository against such loss (the "Depository's Recovery"); in such case the Underwriter shall be liable hereunder only for the Insured's share of such excess loss, subject to the applicable Limit of Liability, the Deductible Amount and the other terms of this Bond.

For determining the Insured's share of such excess loss, (1) the Insured shall be deemed to have an interest in any certificate representing any security included within the Systems equivalent to the interest the Insured then has in all certificates representing the same security included within the Systems; (2) the Depository shall have reasonably and fairly apportioned the Depository's Recovery among all those having an interest as recorded by appropriate entries in the books and records of the Depository in Property involved in such loss, so that each such interest shall share in the Depository's Recovery in the ratio that the value of each such interest bears to the total value of all such interests; and (3) the Insured's share of such excess loss shall be the amount of the Insured's interest in such Property in excess of the amount(s) so apportioned to the Insured by the Depository.

This Bond does not afford coverage in favor of any Depository or Exchange or any nominee in whose name is registered any security included within the Systems.

SECTION 16. ADDITIONAL COMPANIES INCLUDED AS INSURED

If more than one entity is named as the Insured:

A. the total liability of the Underwriter hereunder for each Single Loss shall not exceed the Limit of Liability which would be applicable if there were only one named Insured, regardless of the number of Insured entities which sustain loss as a result of such Single Loss,

B. the Insured first named in Item 1 of the Declarations shall be deemed authorized to make, adjust, and settle, and receive and enforce payment of, all claims hereunder as the agent of each other Insured for such purposes and for the giving or receiving of any notice required or permitted to be given hereunder; provided, that the Underwriter shall promptly furnish each named Insured Investment Company with (1) a copy of this Bond and any amendments thereto, (2) a copy of each formal filing of a claim hereunder by any other Insured, and (3) notification of the terms of the settlement of each such claim prior to the execution of such settlement,

C. the Underwriter shall not be responsible or have any liability for the proper application by the Insured first named in Item 1 of the Declarations of any payment made hereunder to the first named Insured,

D. for the purposes of Sections 4 and 13, knowledge possessed or discovery made by any partner, officer or supervisory Employee of any Insured shall constitute knowledge or discovery by every named Insured,

E. if the first named Insured ceases for any reason to be covered under this Bond, then the Insured next named shall thereafter be considered as the first named Insured for the purposes of this Bond, and

F. each named Insured shall constitute "the Insured" for all purposes of this Bond.

SECTION 17. NOTICE AND CHANGE OF CONTROL

Within thirty (30) days after learning that there has been a change in control of an Insured by transfer of its outstanding voting securities the Insured shall give written notice to the Underwriter of:

A. the names of the transferors and transferees (or the names of the beneficial owners if the voting securities are registered in another name), and

B. the total number of voting securities owned by the transferors and the transferees (or the beneficial owners), both immediately before and after the transfer, and

C. the total number of outstanding voting securities.

As used in this Section, "control" means the power to exercise a controlling influence over the management or policies of the Insured.

SECTION 18. CHANGE OR MODIFICATION

This Bond may only be modified by written Rider forming a part hereof over the signature of the Underwriter's authorized representative. Any Rider which modifies the coverage provided by Insuring Agreement A, Fidelity, in a manner which adversely affects the rights of an Insured Investment Company shall not become effective until at least sixty (60) days after the Underwriter has given written notice thereof to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, D.C., and to each Insured Investment Company affected thereby.

SECTION 19. COMPLIANCE WITH APPLICABLE TRADE AND ECONOMIC SANCTIONS

This Bond shall not be deemed to provide any coverage, and the Underwriter shall not be required to pay any loss or provide any benefit hereunder, to the extent that the provision of such coverage, payment of such loss or provision of such benefit would cause the Underwriter to be in violation of any applicable trade or economic sanctions, laws or regulations, including, but not limited to, any sanctions, laws or regulations administered and enforced by the U.S. Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the Underwriter has caused this Bond to be executed on the Declarations Page.





ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 1









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration of the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that Item 1 of the Declarations, Name of Insured, shall include the following:





Pear Tree Advisors, Inc.

Pear Tree Funds, a series fund consisting of:

o Pear Tree Quality Fund

o Pear Tree PanAgora Emerging Markets Fund

o Pear Tree Polaris Foreign Value Fund

o Pear Tree Polaris Foreign Value Small Cap Fund

o Pear Tree PanAgora Risk Parity Emerging Markets Fund

o Pear Tree Polaris Small Cap Fund





RN1.0-00 (01/02)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of this Bond.









ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 2









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration of the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that this Bond (other than Insuring Agreements C and D) does not cover loss resulting from or in connection with any business, activities, or acts or omissions of (including services rendered by) any Insured which is not an Insured Fund ("Non-Fund") or any Employee of a Non-Fund, except loss, otherwise covered by the terms of this Bond, resulting from or in connection with (1) services rendered by a Non-Fund to an Insured Fund, or to shareholders of such Fund in connection with the issuance, transfer, or redemption of their Fund shares, or (2) in the case of a Non-Fund substantially all of whose business is rendering the services described in (1) above, the general business, activities or operations of such Non-Fund, excluding (a) the rendering of services (other than those described in (1) above) to any person, or (b) the sale of goods or property of any kind.





It is further understood and agreed that with respect to any Non-Fund, Insuring Agreements C and D only cover loss of Property which a Non-Fund uses or holds, or in which a Non-Fund has an interest, in each case wholly or partially in connection with the rendering of services by a Non-Fund to an Insured Fund, or to shareholders of such Fund in connection with the issuance, transfer, or redemption of their Fund shares.





RN3.0-01 (01/02)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of this Bond.









ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 3









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration of the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that notwithstanding Section 2.Q of this Bond, this Bond is amended by adding an additional Insuring Agreement J as follows:





J. COMPUTER SECURITY





Loss (including loss of Property) resulting directly from Computer Fraud; provided , that the Insured has adopted in writing and generally maintains and follows during the Bond Period all Computer Security Procedures. The isolated failure of the Insured to maintain and follow a particular Computer Security Procedure in a particular instance will not preclude coverage under this Insuring Agreement, subject to the specific exclusions herein and in the Bond.





1. Definitions . The following terms used in this Insuring Agreement shall have the following meanings:





a. "Authorized User" means any person or entity designated by the Insured (through contract, assignment of User Identification, or otherwise) as authorized to use a Covered Computer System, or any part thereof . An individual who invests in an Insured Fund shall not be considered to be an Authorized User solely by virtue of being an investor.





b. "Computer Fraud" means the unauthorized entry of data into, or the deletion or destruction of data in, or change of data elements or programs within, a Covered Computer System which:





(1) is committed by any Unauthorized Third Party anywhere, alone or in collusion with other Unauthorized Third Parties; and





(2) is committed with the conscious manifest intent (a) to cause the Insured to sustain a loss, and (b) to obtain financial benefit for the perpetrator or any other person; and





(3) causes (x) Property to be transferred, paid or delivered; or (y) an account of the Insured, or of its customer, to be added, deleted, debited or credited; or (z) an unauthorized or fictitious account to be debited or credited.

c. "Computer Security Procedures" means procedures for prevention of unauthorized computer access and use and administration of computer access and use as provided in writing to the Underwriter.





d. "Covered Computer System" means any Computer System as to which the Insured has possession, custody and control.





e. "Unauthorized Third Party" means any person or entity that, at the time of the Computer Fraud, is not an Authorized User.





f. "User Identification" means any unique user name ( i.e. , a series of characters) that is assigned to a person or entity by the Insured.





2. Exclusions . It is further understood and agreed that this Insuring Agreement J shall not cover:





a. Any loss covered under Insuring Agreement A, "Fidelity," of this Bond; and





b. Any loss resulting directly or indirectly from Theft or misappropriation of confidential or proprietary information, material or data (including but not limited to trade secrets, computer programs or customer information); and





c. Any loss resulting from the intentional failure to adhere to one or more Computer Security Procedures; and





d. Any loss resulting from a Computer Fraud committed by or in collusion with:





(1) any Authorized User (whether a natural person or an entity); or





(2) in the case of any Authorized User which is an entity, (a) any director, officer, partner, employee or agent of such Authorized User, or (b) any entity which controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with such Authorized User ("Related Entity"), or (c) any director, officer, partner, employee or agent of such Related Entity; or





(3) in the case of any Authorized User who is a natural person, (a) any entity for which such Authorized User is a director, officer, partner, employee or agent ("Employer Entity"), or (b) any director, officer, partner, employee or agent of such Employer Entity, or (c) any entity which controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with such Employer Entity ("Employer-Related Entity"), or (d) any director, officer, partner, employee or agent of such Employer-Related Entity;





and





e. Any loss resulting from physical damage to or destruction of any Covered Computer System, or any part thereof, or any data, data elements or media associated therewith; and





f. Any loss resulting from Computer Fraud committed by means of wireless access to any Covered Computer System, or any part thereof, or any data, data elements or media associated therewith; and





g. Any loss not directly and proximately caused by Computer Fraud (including, without limitation, disruption of business and extra expense); and





h. Payments made to any person(s) who has threatened to deny or has denied authorized access to a Covered Computer System or otherwise has threatened to disrupt the business of the Insured.





For purposes of this Insuring Agreement, "Single Loss," as defined in Section 1.X of this Bond, shall also include all loss caused by Computer Fraud(s) committed by one person, or in which one person is implicated, whether or not that person is specifically identified. A series of losses involving unidentified individuals, but arising from the same method of operation, may be deemed by the Underwriter to involve the same individual and in that event shall be treated as a Single Loss.





It is further understood and agreed that nothing in this Rider shall affect the exclusion set forth in Section 2.O of this Bond.





Coverage under this Insuring Agreement shall terminate upon termination of this Bond. Coverage under this Insuring Agreement may also be terminated without terminating this Bond as an entirety:





(a) by written notice from the Underwriter not less than sixty (60) days prior to the effective date of termination specified in such notice; or





(b) immediately by written notice from the Insured to the Underwriter.





RN19.0-04 (12/03)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of this Bond.









ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 4









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration of the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that the Deductible Amount for Insuring Agreement E, Forgery or Alteration, and Insuring Agreement F, Securities, shall not apply with respect to loss through Forgery of a signature on the following documents:





(1) letter requesting redemption of $50,000 or less payable by check to the shareholder of record and addressed to the address of record; or





(2) letter requesting redemption of $50,000 or less by wire transfer to the record shareholder's bank account of record; or





(3) written request to a trustee or custodian for a Designated Retirement Account ("DRA") which holds shares of an Insured Fund, where such request (a) purports to be from or at the instruction of the Owner of such DRA, and (b) directs such trustee or custodian to transfer $50,000 or less from such DRA to a trustee or custodian for another DRA established for the benefit of such Owner;





provided , that the Limit of Liability for a Single Loss as described above shall be $50,000 and that the Insured shall bear 20% of each such loss. This Rider shall not apply in the case of any such Single Loss which exceeds $50,000; in such case the Deductible Amounts and Limits of Liability set forth in Item 3 of the Declarations shall control.





For purposes of this Rider:





(A) "Designated Retirement Account" means any retirement plan or account described or qualified under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or a subaccount thereof.





(B) "Owner" means the individual for whose benefit the DRA, or a subaccount thereof, is established.





RN27.0-02 (10/08)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of this Bond.





ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 5









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration of the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that this Bond does not cover any loss resulting from or in connection with the acceptance of any Third Party Check, unless





(1) such Third Party Check is used to open or increase an account which is registered in the name of one or more of the payees on such Third Party Check, and





(2) reasonable efforts are made by the Insured, or by the entity receiving Third Party Checks on behalf of the Insured, to verify all endorsements on all Third Party Checks made payable in amounts greater than $100,000 (provided, however, that the isolated failure to make such efforts in a particular instance will not preclude coverage, subject to the exclusions herein and in the Bond),





and then only to the extent such loss is otherwise covered under this Bond.





For purposes of this Rider, "Third Party Check" means a check made payable to one or more parties and offered as payment to one or more other parties.





It is further understood and agreed that notwithstanding anything to the contrary above or elsewhere in the Bond, this Bond does not cover any loss resulting from or in connection with the acceptance of a Third Party Check where:





(1) any payee on such Third Party Check reasonably appears to be a corporation or other entity; or





(2) such Third Party Check is made payable in an amount greater than $100,000 and does not include the purported endorsements of all payees on such Third Party Check.





It is further understood and agreed that this Rider shall not apply with respect to any coverage that may be available under Insuring Agreement A, "Fidelity."





RN30.0-01 (01/02)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of this Bond.

ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 6









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration for the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that, with respect to Insuring Agreement I only, the Deductible Amount set forth in Item 3 of the Declarations ("Phone/Electronic Deductible") shall not apply with respect to a Single Loss, otherwise covered by Insuring Agreement I, caused by:





(1) a Phone/Electronic Redemption requested to be paid or made payable by check to the Shareholder of Record at the address of record; or





(2) a Phone/Electronic Redemption requested to be paid or made payable by wire transfer to the Shareholder of Record's bank account of record,





provided , that the Limit of Liability for a Single Loss as described in (1) or (2) above shall be the lesser of 80% of such loss or $40,000 and that the Insured shall bear the remainder of each such Loss. This Rider shall not apply if the application of the Phone/Electronic Deductible to the Single Loss would result in coverage of greater than $40,000 or more; in such case the Phone-initiated Deductible and Limit of Liability set forth in Item 3 of the Declarations shall control.





For purposes of this Rider, "Phone/Electronic Redemption" means any redemption of shares issued by an Investment Company, which redemption is requested (a) by voice over the telephone, or (b) by Telefacsimile.





RN39.0-02 (08/02)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of this Bond.

















ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 7









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration of the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Bond (including Insuring Agreement I), this Bond does not cover loss caused by a Phone/Electronic Transaction requested:





 by use of an automated telephone tone or voice response system; or

 by transmissions over the Internet (including any connected or associated intranet or extranet) or utilizing modem or similar connections; or





except insofar as such loss is covered under Insuring Agreement A "Fidelity" of this Bond.





RN48.0-03 (12/03)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of this Bond.









ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 8









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





Most property and casualty insurers, including ICI Mutual Insurance Company, a Risk Retention Group ("ICI Mutual"), are subject to the requirements of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, as amended (the "Act"). The Act establishes a federal insurance backstop under which ICI Mutual and these other insurers will be partially reimbursed for future "insured losses" resulting from certified "acts of terrorism." (Each of these bolded terms is defined by the Act.) The Act also places certain disclosure and other obligations on ICI Mutual and these other insurers.





Pursuant to the Act, any future losses to ICI Mutual caused by certified "acts of terrorism" will be partially reimbursed by the United States government under a formula established by the Act. Under this formula, the United States government will reimburse ICI Mutual for the Federal Share of Compensation of ICI Mutual's "insured losses" in excess of ICI Mutual's "insurer deductible" until total "insured losses" of all participating insurers in excess of a statutorily established aggregate deductible reach the Cap on Annual Liability. If total "insured losses" of all property and casualty insurers in excess of a statutorily established aggregate deductible reach the Cap on Annual Liability during any applicable period, the Act provides that the insurers will not be liable under their policies for their portions of such losses that exceed such amount. Amounts otherwise payable under this policy may be reduced as a result.





This policy has no express exclusion for "acts of terrorism." However, coverage under this policy remains subject to all applicable terms, conditions and limitations of the policy (including exclusions) that are permissible under the Act. The portion of the premium that is attributable to any coverage potentially available under the policy for "acts of terrorism" is one percent (1%).





As used herein, "Federal Share of Compensation" shall mean:





85% in calendar year 2015;

84% in calendar year 2016;

83% in calendar year 2017;

82% in calendar year 2018;

81% in calendar year 2019; and

80% in calendar year 2020.





As used herein, "Cap on Annual Liability" shall mean, with respect to total "insured losses" of all participating insurers:

RN53.1-00 (02/15)





$100 billion in calendar year 2015;

$120 billion in calendar year 2016;

$140 billion in calendar year 2017;

$160 billion in calendar year 2018;

$180 billion in calendar year 2019; and

$200 billion in calendar year 2020.

















ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 9









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration of the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that Section 5 of this Bond is amended to read as follows:





"For all purposes under this Bond, a loss is discovered, and discovery of a loss occurs, when the President, Chief Financial & Administrative Officer, Director of Compliance, Chief Compliance Officer or any member of the Legal Departments of Pear Tree Funds or Pear Tree Advisors, Inc.:





(1) becomes aware of facts, or

(2) receives notice of an actual or potential claim by a third party which alleges that the Insured is liable under circumstances,





which would cause a reasonable person to assume that loss covered by this Bond has been or is likely to be incurred even though the exact amount or details of loss may not be known."





RNM27.0-03-097 (08/04)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of this Bond.













ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 10









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration of the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that notwithstanding the limit of liability specified on the Declarations Page under Insuring Agreement A, if an increase in bonding limits under Insuring Agreement A is required pursuant to Rule 17g-1 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 ("Act") due to an increase in assets of the Insured Fund during the Bond Period, the minimum required increase in limits under Insuring Agreement A shall take place automatically without payment of additional premium for the remainder of the Bond Period, provided that the total limit of liability under Insuring Agreement A does not exceed $2,500,000. If the Act requires bonding limits under Insuring Agreement A in excess of $2,500,000 then the increase in limits shall not occur unless the Underwriter accepts the increase by a Rider to this Bond.





RNM8.0-00-097 (10/07)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of the Bond.













ICI MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

a Risk Retention Group





INVESTMENT COMPANY BLANKET BOND





RIDER NO. 11









INSURED BOND NUMBER





Pear Tree Funds 87097116B

EFFECTIVE DATE BOND PERIOD AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE





August 1, 2016 August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017 /S/ Joseph Costello





In consideration of the premium charged for this Bond, it is hereby understood and agreed that, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in General Agreement A of this Bond, Item 1 of the Declarations shall include any Newly Created Investment Company or portfolio provided that the Insured shall submit to the Underwriter within fifteen (15) days after the end of each calendar quarter, a list of all Newly Created Investment Companies or portfolios, the estimated annual assets of each Newly Created Investment Company or portfolio, and copies of any prospectuses and statements of additional information relating to such Newly Created Investment Companies or portfolios, unless said prospectuses and statements of additional information have been previously submitted. Following the end of a calendar quarter, any Newly Created Investment Company or portfolio created within the preceding calendar quarter will continue to be an Insured only if the Underwriter is notified as set forth in this paragraph, the information required herein is provided to the Underwriter, and the Underwriter acknowledges the addition of such Newly Created Investment Company or portfolio to the Bond by a Rider to this Bond.





For purposes of this Rider, "Newly Created Investment Company or portfolio" shall mean any Investment Company or portfolio for which registration with the SEC has been declared effective for a time period of less than one calendar quarter.





RN33.0-00 (10/08)

Except as above stated, nothing herein shall be held to alter, waive or extend any of the terms of this Bond.












At its world debut at the Cannes Yachting Festival 2016, 76 Bahamas, the new model built at the Ferretti Group's shipyard in La Spezia, won the World Yachts Trophies award for Best Exterior Design in the 50 to 80 foot range category.

The new convertible yacht has been created on the same hull platform of the 76 Perseo coupe, and is fitted with the renowned Convertible Top system, the exclusive Ferretti Group patent first featured on the 88 Florida.

Joining the two best sellers, launched in September last year and both winners of the World Yachts Trophies 2015, is now the 76 Bahamas, with a recognition that confirms the position achieved by Riva in recent years as a leader of innovation.

The 76 Bahamas - product of collaboration between Officina Italiana Design, the Ferretti Groups Product Strategy Committee and its Engineering Department - combines the two souls of the open and coupe versions into a single model, offering a yacht of irresistible beauty featuring cutting-edge technology solutions. A masterpiece of nautical design that has already conquered the public and commentators alike,

The World Yachts Trophies, organised by the French nautical magazine Yachts France, is the first contest in the new nautical year and the ideal occasion to celebrate all the new models and innovations exhibited by yacht builders on the French Riviera.

The awards ceremony was held on the Plage of the Intercontinental Carlton Hotel as part of the closing events of the Cannes Yachting Festival, and was followed by the new yachts parade in front of the famous Croisette, where Riva chose to show its second new model at the world premiere on the French Riviera: the speedboat Rivamare, already a cult object for brand enthusiasts worldwide.
HERKIMER, N.Y. -- A Utica man was arrested on stolen property charges yesterday, but not before jumping out of a moving, stolen car while fleeing authorities on Interstate 90, New York State Police say.

Joseph Garcia, 28, of Utica, was charged with third-degree criminal possession of stolen property, a felony, and several motor vehicle and traffic violations.

Police saw Garcia speeding on westbound I-90 at 9:15 a.m. yesterday morning in a 2014 Nissan Maxima, police said. Police said when they tried to stop him, Garcia exited the vehicle before it completely stopped and ran on foot.

The vehicle came to a stop on its own a short distance away off to the side of the road, police said. Police said the vehicle had been reported stolen from Arizona.

Police searched for Garcia, along with the State Police Aviation team and the K-9 unit, and found him on Sokol Road in Herkimer, police said.

Garcia was arraigned at the Town of German Flats Court and was remanded to the Herkimer County Jail in lieu of $5,000 bail or $10,000 bond.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A man shot Monday evening on Syracuse's South Side is expected to survive, police say.

The Syracuse Police Department responded to the 300 block of Craddock Street at 6:47 p.m. Monday after a shooting was reported, said Sgt. Richard Helterline. Police were searching the area when they learned a man injured in the shooting had been brought to Upstate University Hospital Community Campus.

The man, 22, was shot in his abdomen and arm, Helterline said. He is in stable condition and is expected to survive.

No suspect information is currently available, Helterline said.

Police asked anyone with information to call (315) 442-522 or submit anonymous tips through the SPD Tips app.
Update, 8:15 p.m.: Police have cleared the scene at 323 Richmond Ave. with Lopez still on the loose; SWAT teams had entered the house searching for Lopez, but he was not found at that address.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Syracuse police have shut down Richmond Avenue and surrounding streets as they search for a wanted man a day after he threatened a woman with a gun on the city's West Side, city police First Deputy Chief Joe Cecile said Monday evening.

Police are searching for 21-year-old Jason Lopez, of Syracuse, Cecile said. Police believe he is armed and inside a vacant home in the 300 block of Richmond Ave., he said.

Around 3 p.m. Monday, an officer spotted Lopez on Apple Street, Cecile said. Lopez ran, police said. Lopez was wanted on a warrant for menacing and criminal possession of a weapon from a domestic incident Sunday on Apple Street, Cecile said.

He is accused of threatening the woman with a handgun, police said.

"By the time we arrived, he had left," Cecile said of Sunday's domestic incident.

Police shut down several streets surrounding Richmond Avenue for more than four hours Monday.

SWAT team members, a K-9 and a helicopter have been seen combing North Geddes Street, Richmond Avenue and Apple Street. Police were surrounding the house where they believe Lopez is hiding, Cecile said.

At 7:25 p.m. Monday, armed SWAT members went inside the Richmond Avenue home they had been surrounding.

Check back for updates.
Alec Baldwin

FILE - In this April 10, 2014 file photo, Alec Baldwin arrives 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival's Opening Night Gala at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.

(Photo by Annie I. Bang /Invision/AP, File)

WOODSTOCK, N.Y. (AP) -- The Woodstock Film Festival has announced its lineup for next month.

The 17th annual film festival is being held Oct. 13-16 in the famous arts colony of Woodstock, with additional events in Rhinebeck, Rosendale, Saugerties, and Kingston.

The festival opens with the world premiere of "Blind," a romantic feature starring Alec Baldwin, who is scheduled to attend the screening. The movie also stars Demi Moore.

Festival organizers say they will screen films from around the globe, including works from China, Israel, South Africa and Tobago.
For All U of U Health Patients & Visitors
As if pulled by an unseen hand, one of the drawers in Nade Haines desk in the County Coroners Office slides open.

No, we dont have poltergeists, the coroners assistant says, laughing.

However, the true explanation of why she needs to tape the drawer shut is probably just as eerie as if the office was haunted by restless spirits.

You know this is the old B&B Market, Haines said. Our office is where the butcher shop used to be, so the floors are slanted (to allow proper drainage of fluids and debris associated with butchering animals).

A glance around Coroner Mickey Nelsons office doesnt do much to dispel any feelings of uneasiness one might have.

His book shelves are loaded with volumes featuring such titles as The Encyclopedia of Suicide, Forensic Science Handbook, and Color Atlas of the Autopsy.

A collection of skulls sits on a file cabinet in the corner of the room.

But the longer one sits and surveys the scene, the less macabre the surroundings become.

A race car clock on the wall roars every hour on the hour.

Photographs of Nelsons children decorate the walls, along with a number of framed pencil sketches of historic Helena buildings.

And the man seated across the desk  his characteristic toothpick gripped between his teeth  is easy to talk to, and his rationale for doing a job that few people could stomach, is anything but creepy.

Nelson points to a worn photograph of a Montana Highway patrolman hanging on his wall.

Hes why Im here today, he said, explaining that Officer Alfred Mues sparked his interest in law enforcement at an early age.

Nelson recalls pleading with the patrolman to allow him to ride along with him on his shift. He was 10 years old at the time, and Mues promised Nelson that he could ride shotgun when he turned 12.

I waited for my 12th birthday like other kids wait for Christmas, Nelson said. That was the only birthday present I wanted.

And he wasnt disappointed. Mues was true to his word. After that first ride, Nelson was hooked and continued to ride with Mues regularly throughout his teenage years.

He taught me a lot about the law, he said. But everything I know about life, I learned from him.

As an adult, Nelson worked a few different jobs, including selling cars, but maintained a devout interest in law and order.

Nelson says it was his commitment to what is right that prompted him to challenge the system he loves in the early 1970s.

I always believed the offices of sheriff and coroner shouldnt be joined, he said, explaining that he doesnt think its possible for one person to properly perform the duties associated with both of those offices.

Due to Nelsons efforts, the jobs were separated, and he was elected to the new office of coroner in November of 1974. He has held that job ever since.

Despite his years of service, Nelson thinks some people in government still resent his actions of three decades ago, and would be happy to see him fade quietly into the sunset. But he remains undaunted.

As long as my health holds out and the people indicate Im doing ok, Id like to continue to serve the people, he said.

For Nelson, serving the people is what being a coroner is all about.

Over the years, hes witnessed more human tragedy than any one person should.

From quiet deaths at home, to multiple car pileups, to vicious murders, Nelson has been among the first responders to arrive at such scenes.

He has dutifully collected severed limbs from traffic accident sites, overseen autopsies conducted by medical examiners at the State Crime Lab, and scoured the areas around plane crashes for incinerated human remains.

But, most important to Nelson are the visits and phone calls hes made to victims families. Often hes delivering heart-breaking news, but he tries to temper that by providing them comfort.

I believe in my heart that Im serving the Lord in a unique way, he said, explaining that he thinks everyone is put on Earth to do a certain job. Im here to help people dealing with the most difficult thing in life  death.

On that level, Nelson offers the bereaved whatever he can. Some families want answers. Others want to know what to do next.

Everyone responds to death differently, he said, adding that while peoples actions in those situations may appear irrational to a casual observer, they are really just part of the human coping mechanism.

Nelson recalls changing a lightbulb in the kitchen for one woman who just lost her husband. In another case, a bereaved woman refused to accompany him to the hospital to identify the body of a loved one until she finished her laundry, so he helped.

In Nelsons experience, suicides are the most difficult types of deaths for families to absorb.

I know what it does to the family, he said. No one wants to believe that someone they love would take their own life.

And while the media may take special interest in some deaths for various reasons, Nelson asserts that no one death is more important than another.

They all have the same, tragic response, he said. The mechanism of the case is no different.

Nelson said he takes careful stock in being professional and compassionate in every circumstance. He believes thats what makes him good at his job.

If this office were to catch on fire, the only thing Id want out of it is the thank you cards people have sent to me, he said.

If Nelson has a hard time erasing the horrible images he faces on a daily basis from his mind, he doesnt acknowledge it.

Just the same, its clear he must have a unique coping mechanism of his own.

Maybe its sports. Nelson is a fixture at local college and high school sporting events.

Maybe its cars. Nelson says he has a deep appreciation for anything with a motor in it.

Nelsons impeccable 1988 Ford Crown Victoria is as much a fixture in Helena as the coroner is.

Its got 267,000 miles on its original engine, Nelson said, adding that he purchased the car new for use in his duties as coroner and for everyday travel. He maintains the vehicle, and the county reimburses him for mileage.

But, given the way Nelson lights up when questioned about the pictures of his children on the wall of his office behind him, its likely that his family is what keeps him grounded.

His wife, Beverly, is his constant companion, and is regularly spotted around town in the passenger seat of Nelsons car.

In February, the couple will have been married for 35 years. Nelson said they renew their vows every five years as a reminder of their love and commitment to one another.

Shes pretty understanding, he said, adding that only two factors about his job get her riled. Beverly doesnt like it when people call her husband on the home phone for work purposes  shed rather have the messages come through his answering service. And she questions why he paid for the Crown Victoria out of his own pocket rather than the county purchasing a vehicle for him.

Nelsons daughter is currently serving in Iraq and his son works as an officer for the Montana Highway Patrol. He says both of them believe passionately in what they are doing.

Despite the obstacle of distance, the family is a close one, and Nelson said the root of some of that closeness comes back to his job, and the sorrow he sees every day.

We cherish the moment because the moment could change rather quickly, he said.
Final scores: Week 10's high school football games on the Treasure Coast

Football teams hit field Thursday and Friday for Week 10 with SSAC playoffs beginning and District 12-4S title game between Treasure Coast and Vero.
Thank you for reading!

Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.
If it aint broke, then dont fix it. Those are words to live by, and yet, Rep. Ryan Zinke seems hell-bent on trying to fix what aint broke.

Take the Land and Water Conservation Fund. There are many reasons why outdoor recreation is a $6 billion industry in Montana, but one of the most important reasons is fishing. Tourists come to Montana from all over the world to cast a fly in our blue ribbon trout steams, and they can do so with ease across the state because Montana has hundreds of fishing access sites, most of which have been created through the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

So, why in the world does Rep. Ryan Zinke want to reform this program, which happens to be working just fine without his help?

Only Zinke knows the answer to that question. Rep. Zinke purports to value Montanas public lands and wildlife, but his true colors come out when addressing this issue. While his position on LWCF becomes increasingly cloudy, Montanans actually have a clear choice to make in this election. Do we want someone who will defend our outdoor heritage every time and conserve our last best places, or do we want someone whose positions on public lands change with the wind?

What Montanans need in Congress is a true conservationist, not a reformer on a mission to fix what isnt broken.

Lou Bruno

East Glacier Park
GE has labeled its voice-control program Geneva, so Alexa voice commands must include that name for the service to know where it needs to relay the command. Heres a small sample of what you can accomplish using just your voice once youve enabled the feature:

A broad range of GE appliances now recognize voice commands, thanks to the manufacturers adoption of Amazons Alexa Skills development kit . If you own an Echo , Echo Tap , or Echo Dot, you can use your voice to control any Wi-Fi-connected GE or Monogram refrigerator, oven, range, dishwasher, washer, dryer, or water heater.

Alexa will either confirm your request, or retrieve and speak the information youve requested. There are limits as to what you can do, however, since some activities require constant supervision. For safety reasons, you cant ask Geneva to boil a pot of water on the range, for example, or to broil a steak in the oven. Geneva also wont relay notifications via Alexa. So if you want to know when the oven has finished pre-heating, youll need to rely on your smartphone. (Youll find a complete list of Geneva commands here.)

One of our goals with Alexa is to enable voice control on every device within the home, and this collaboration gets us one step closer to achieving that, Alexa director Charlie Kindel said.

GE plans to add more voice-control features down the road, and it also intends to incorporate Geneva into additional appliances that dont have it now, starting with its line of connected air conditioners.

Why this matters: Amazon is working hard to make Alexa as ubiquitous as possible; and as we said in our original review, we can see users installing an Echo in multiple rooms to take advantage of its connected-home features (this was long before Amazon announced the less-expensive Tap and Dot).

With Google getting ready to ship its Google Home device, and Apples move to beef up Siri in iOS 10 by adding third-party connectivity (and possibly an Echo-like speaker), Amazon will need to continue to strengthen its hold on this element of the smart-home market. It has a huge lead with Alexait already has the largest third-party ecosystem, with more than 2000 skillsbut thats not an insurmountable obstacle to competitors as strong as those two.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Monday disclosed details about the New Glenn rockets his Blue Origin aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company plans to build.

Blue Origins next step  meet New Glenn, he tweeted.

Bezos released illustrations of two models, the New Glenn 2 and the larger New Glenn 3. Theyre larger than all other rockets except the Saturn V, which NASA used for the Apollo program to send astronauts to the moon and other missions.

The New Glenn 2-stage would be Blue Origins foray into the satellite launch market, noted Jekan Thangavelautham, head of SpaceTREx (space and terrestrial robotic exploration) at Arizona State University. It will be able to put large satellites in [low Earth orbit] and smaller satellites  sub-50 to 100 kg  in higher orbits.

The 3-stage heavy lift rocket should be able to put large satellites in [geostationary orbit] or send them on interplanetary journeys, he told TechNewsWorld.

First, however, the 3-stage New Glenn needs to prove the upper stage hydrogen-oxygen cryo engine, he pointed out. That is not an easy accomplishment.

New Glenn Specs

Both the New Glenn 2-stage and New Glenn 3-stage are 23 feet in diameter. The 2-stage is designed to stand 270 feet tall while the 3-stage rocket will be 313 feet tall.

The booster and the second stage are identical in both, and the booster will be reusable.

The first stage will be powered by seven Blue Origin BE-4 engines delivering 3.85 million pounds of thrust. The BE-4 is a single-shaft staged combustion engine running on liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen.

The second stage will be powered by one vacuum-optimized BE-4 engine. The New Glenns third stage will be powered by a single vacuum-optimized BE-3 engine burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

The New Glenn 3-stage rocket will be able to fly beyond LEO.

Its expected to launch from Cape Canaverals LC-36 complex by the end of the decade.

Asteroid Mining Potential

The New Glenn 2 is roughly the size of the Saturn V, but its payload will be less since its using engines and fuel with a lower specific impulse, observed Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Its total thrust is about half of the Saturn Vs, so we can assume that it will be capable of lofting large payloads into Earth orbit, he told TechNewsWorld. It will probably be capable of lofting smaller payloads into interplanetary space.

Private enterprise increasingly is demonstrating an interest in interplanetary space, especially asteroid mining, Jude said. The New Glenn 2-stage would seem to be capable of addressing that market.

Further, several companies are looking to place larger structures into LEO, he pointed out, and this booster would be ideal for that mission.

The Commercial Space Race

Private companies participating in the space race, apart from Blue Origin, include Elon Musks SpaceX, Interorbital Systems, Deep Space Industries, and Planetary Resources. The last two plan to mine asteroids for minerals.

SpaceX, the leading competitor, has won a NASA contract to ferry supplies to the International Space Station, but it has been slowed down by recent accidents. An explosion earlier this month destroyed another Falcon 9 rocket, along with its Amos-6 commercial satellite payload, on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral, reportedly during a static-fire engine test. A Falcon 9 rocket earlier this year crashed into an ocean barge during landing.

Blue Origin with the New Glenns could go after the same market [as SpaceX] and the satellite launch market as well, SpaceTRExs Thangavelautham suggested. With the anticipated growth, there will be room for more players. The defense industry is another option.

Competition will do what government couldnt do: drive down the cost to launch payloads, Frosts Jude said.

Theres definitely a race to achieve space tourism, Thangavelautham remarked. However, the first to reach the market is not always the clear winner in the aerospace industry. Weve had lots of failures in the past.
Storage manufacturer Seagate is facing a class-action lawsuit brought against it by the company's own employees. It comes after a senior HR executive was tricked into handed over workers' personal information in a phishing scam.

Back in March, cybercriminals sent an email to Seagate HR that appeared to originate from company CEO Stephen Luczo. It requested copies of employees' 2015 W-2 tax forms and other personally identifiable information, which were duly handed over. The documents contained names, social security numbers, income figures and home addresses - a trove of valuable data for identity theft fraudsters.

Nearly 10,000 current and past employee details were sent to the scammers, along with those of any family members and beneficiaries named in the documents.

As noted by The Register, employees filed the lawsuit against Seagate in July, accusing the firm of malpractice and a lack of regard for employees through negligent data management. The suit claims the information was "almost immediately" used to file fraudulent tax forms and for other methods of ID theft.

"In order for the cyber criminals to have obtained employees' spouses' Social Security numbers, Seagate would have had to have disclosed more than just the Form W-2 data for employees," states the complaint.

"Seagate would have to have disclosed additional information, such as retirement fund or insurance beneficiary, that contained the personally identifiable information of third parties."

The lawsuit is requesting a trial by jury for damages and out-of-pocket expenses for employees and third-party victims. Seagate wants the complaint dismissed and has said it's up to the complainants to prove the company's negligence. But in an email to employees on March 4, the firm's CTO allegedly took responsibility for the leak, writing that it "was caused by human error and lack of vigilance, and could have been prevented."

Seagate claims that: "Plaintiffs seek to hold Seagate responsible for harm allegedly caused by third-party criminals. But Plaintiffs cannot state a claim based solely on the allegation that an unfortunate, unforeseen event occurred. They must actually allege facts that show they are entitled to relief from Seagate."
Samsung is working on a software update for stubborn Galaxy Note 7 owners that haven't yet turned in their potentially defective handsets. The update is scheduled to roll out to South Korean users beginning September 20.

The Associated Press, citing a front-page advertisement in South Korean newspaper Seoul Shinmun, reports that the update will prevent users from charging the phone's battery past the 60 percent mark which should hopefully keep them from overheating and exploding.

If nothing else, maybe the charging limitation will serve as a nagging reminder for owners to take action and begin the recall process. Seriously, it's not worth risking it folks.

The advertisement stated that the update is a measure to put consumer safety first, adding that they apologize for the inconvenience it may cause.

It's unclear whether or not Samsung will distribute the update outside of its home country although Yonhap News Agency claims the manufacturer is in talks with wireless providers regarding the update.

We first learned that Samsung was experiencing issues with its Galaxy Note 7 late last month when the company paused shipments to investigate a possible battery-related issue. On September 1, Samsung confirmed that there indeed was a battery cell problem and halted sales worldwide.

DJ Koh, president of Samsung's mobile communications business, said this past weekend that Note 7 owners should power down and exchange their devices as soon as possible. The executive added that they are expediting replacement devices so users can complete the exchange process as quickly and conveniently as possible.

For some, however, the recall didn't come soon enough.

As of September 1, Samsung said there had been 35 battery-related incidents - a number that has no doubt swelled since then. Specific incidents reported in the media include a Note 7 that exploded while charging in a hotel room causing nearly $1,400 worth of damage and another involving a six-year-old boy that suffered burns when the Note 7 he was watching a video on burst into flames.

A family in St. Petersburg, Florida, watched as their Jeep Grand Cherokee when up in flames on Labor Day. The culprit? A Galaxy Note 7 charging inside the vehicle.

The Federal Aviation Administration has also chimed in on the matter, strongly advising airline passengers not to turn on or charge Note 7 smartphones while onboard and not to stow them in any checked baggage. Note that this is simply a word of warning, not an outright ban (not yet, at least).

Specific information about the recall has been hard to come by. According to The Wall Street Journal, Samsung is recalling phones in different markets through different exchange programs rather than conducting a single, universal program.

Another piece of the puzzle is that Samsung may simply not have enough inventory of new phones with safe components to replace the millions of devices that have already shipped. Prolonging the process is in the best interest of nobody and couldn't come at a worse time as Apple, Samsung's largest rival, prepares to launch its next wave of iPhones in just a few days.
Southwest Airlines Co. negotiated for three years, but it finally stroke a tentative agreement with the Transport Workers Union (TWU) of America Local 556.

The union, which represents a hefty number of 14,500 flight attendants of the airline company, recently said that a final version of an agreement was drafted.

Two weeks prior, deals were struck with unions that represent the pilots and maintenance technician staff belonging to Southwest Airlines Co.

According to the internal code of TWU Local 556, all tentative agreements have to first pass a review of the executive board of the union. As the executive board has yet to take a stance on the agreement, its details were not publicly released.

After the board makes its comments on the agreement, the flight attendants must provide a ratification ballot. Only after that ratification vote is cast can the contract go into full effect, provided that a majority of members voted "yes."

Audrey Stone, the president and lead negotiator of TWU Local 556, commends the members of the union for being "the best flight attendants" in the air travel industry and points out that the quality of their services is outstanding.

"We deserve a contract that recognizes that dedication and professionalism," she notes.

It took even longer for pilots from Southwest to reach an agreement in principle. This August, after four years of intense negotiations, the union led a no-confidence vote against Gary Kelly, the helm of Southwest.

The reached agreement reads that pilots will be getting an instantaneous salary boost of 15 percent, with 3 percent per annum increases and a ratification bonus to boot.

Later this month, the Southwest Airlines Pilots' Association will review the new deal and take a vote on whether or not to ask a membership vote to ratify the agreement. According to the Wall Street Journal, the process could take until November.

When looking at the maintenance techs' agreement, it is still pending approval from the executive committee of its union, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. After the committee passes the agreement, technicians will cast a ratification vote for its final form. That deal also required more than three years of negotiations.

There might not be a coincidence that a slew of preliminary contracts have recently landed.

This August, Randy Babbitt, the senior vice president of labor relations at Southwest, announced his retirement from the company.

According to the leader of Southwest Airlines Pilots' Association, Capt. Jon Weaks, the unions hailed Babbitt's retirement as a big step forward toward driving the negotiations to an end.

In February 2016, another TWU local representing 12,000 Southwest ground workers signed a new five-year labor contract by only 75 votes.

The number of airline passengers has been increasing over the past years, putting extra pressure on pilots, flight attendants and grounded maintenance personnel.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Facebook Messenger in its current form is a huge success, as it sits with more than a billion users per month and more than 300 million using it for voice chat or video calls. This is a big deal for the company, and, given such massive success, how can Facebook further improve the service?

Facebook is constantly looking for ways to keep netizens on the platform. The company wants to create its own little internet within the wider internet, and one way to do that is to have users pay for items from within Facebook Messenger without having to go elsewhere.

David Marcus, Facebook's VP of messaging products, took the stage at TechCrunch: Disrupt in San Francisco on Monday, Sept. 12, to talk about the plans his company has in mind to improve its messenger service.

The idea is to allow developers to use tools to create bots that can accept payments directly from Facebook Messenger. The ability to make payments from within the messenger app should make purchasing goods more seamless for users, and minimize abrasion.

Credit and debit card information will be stored on Facebook or Facebook Messenger. Furthermore, the information can be used instantly via bots whenever needed. At the moment, the service is in beta and will be rolled out to 34,000 developers who have united around the platform.

At launch, there were 18,000 bots; now the system is home to more than 33,000 bots. However, despite the number of bots, companies and users on the platform, it won't be making much money for Facebook right away.

As to whether or not bots are stable enough for making monetary transactions, well, that's still left to be seen. In recent times, folks have come across many bugs on Facebook Messenger that have made the bots unusable at times.

Interestingly enough, Marcus knows of this problem and told TechCrunch that changes will be put into place to improve the experience of Facebook Messenger as regards the bots.

"The problem was it got really overhyped, very, very quickly," he said. "The basic capabilities we provided at the time weren't good enough to basically replace traditional app interfaces and experiences."

Developers were not given the right resources and enough time to make their bots shine, but Facebook has no plans to allow such mistakes to happen again.

For bots to work on Facebook Messenger as intended, it will all come down to developers. So far, most bots are used to deliver news, but that might not be enough to keep the platform afloat.

Photo: Sarah Marshall | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Google has been dabbling in VR for quite some time. The company's first VR product came in the form of Cardboard, a make-it-yourself VR device that is made from actual cardboard, and now iOS users will be able to get in on the action.

Google has brought its Cardboard Camera app to the Apple iOS platform, which should allow iPhone and iPad owners to take beautiful VR photos and share them with friends and family.

If Google has its way, we could see the rise of 3D 360-degree selfies, and it could ultimately become a problem for the likes of Snapchat.

This is a smart move by Google. Instead of requiring the use of expensive camera technology, the Cardboard Camera app simply taps into the camera of the iPhone and iPad to take convincing virtual reality photos.

We understand that taking a 3D 360-degree photo is very much similar to taking a panoramic image on the iPhone, with the main difference being that you'll have to spin all the way around.

After taking an image with the Cardboard Camera app, it can then be uploaded where it can be viewed by others. The uploaded images are stored on Google's servers and can be viewed via the Cardboard Camera app. Furthermore, a link can then be generated to share with friends and family on social media.

"From rock concerts to real estate to mountaintop vistas, more than 5 million moments have been captured with Cardboard Camera on Android," says Google. "Share your VR photos with the #CardboardCamera hashtag  we can't wait to see the world through your lens."

The app can also capture all those special moments by recording sound while taking an image. When it comes down to looking around on the image, the user is required to use their fingers or hook up the iPhone to Google Cardboard and do it from a more natural point of view.

Bear in mind that this is not true 3D, but it should be good enough for what it brings to the table. In fact, no one should expect it to deliver on true 3D in the first place.

With the Google Camera app, the company could be on to something here. We could see the rise of a new type of selfie, and it will be something Snapchat would have to jump on as quickly as possible to stay in the zone.

Virtual reality has to go mainstream somehow, and this could be the breaking point.

Google first released the Cardboard Camera app for Android.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Netflix doesn't like data caps since it makes its video on-demand service more difficult to stream. The company has been fighting against this for quite a number of years, but it now seems as if the time has come to take more drastic steps.

Earlier last week, Netflix contacted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to complain that it needs to state that data caps are not reasonable. By saying this, the FCC could ultimately force internet service providers (ISPs) to end the practice of capping data whenever the user goes over a certain amount.

The FCC has the power to decide if Americans are getting advanced telecommunication services in a reasonable manner. This rule falls under 706 of the Telecommunications Act, and the FCC was instructed by Congress to oversee the whole thing.

Originally, this is all about the FCC making sure Americans are getting internet and at a good enough speed. However, Netflix would like to have data caps fall under the same rule. If the company gets its way, then data caps in the United States could end up being a thing of the past, but that likely won't be the case.

The FCC can decide to end data caps, but it can also choose to force ISPs to life data caps to give consumers more room to take advantage of what broadband has to offer. A low data cap generally means, "What's the point of having a broadband connection anyway?"

"Data caps (especially low data caps) and usage-based pricing ('UBP') discourage a consumer's consumption of broadband, and may impede the ability of some households to watch Internet television in a manner and amount that they would like," Netflix wrote. "For this reason, the Commission should hold that data caps on fixed-line networks and low data caps on mobile networks may unreasonably limit Internet television viewing and are inconsistent with Section 706."

According to Netflix in a statement to Ars Technica, whenever the problems of network capping comes into play, Netflix may have to pay these same ISPs to have them give its service a pass. This is unacceptable to the company, and as such, it would prefer a meaningful change.

300 GB of data is what Americans need to watch internet TV and for other trivial tasks, according to Netflix. That's quite a lot, and we're not sure if ISPs are willing to allow their customers to blow through 300 GB of data each month.

We're not certain how this battle will end, but it will no doubt go on for quite some time until the FCC feels the need to address the situation head on.

Want something interesting to watch right now on Netflix? We recommend Stranger Things.

Photo: Michel Ngilen | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A former sales manager for LG Electronics in California has filed a lawsuit against his past employer and Samsung Electronics, over accusations that the two South Korean companies have a non-poaching agreement between them.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed last week in the U.S. District Court of San Francisco, the agreement involves the highest levels of the two companies.

The agreement between LG and Samsung not to recruit each other's employees in Silicon Valley has the effect of driving down employee wages and violates antitrust regulations, the lawsuit claims.

According to the plaintiff, identified as A. Frost, he learned of the non-poaching agreement between LG and Samsung back in 2013. That year, a recruiter contacted him through professional social network LinkedIn, as a position with Samsung is open for filling.

However, the recruiter got back to Frost on the same day.

"I made a mistake! I'm not supposed to poach LG for Samsung!!! Sorry! The two companies have an agreement that they won't steal each other's employees," the recruiter allegedly wrote to Frost.

It is "implausible" for such an arrangement between the U.S. divisions of the two companies to be reached without the knowledge and consent of their corporate parents in South Korea, the lawsuit notes, hence the claim that the top executives of LG and Samsung are involved in the non-poaching agreement.

The lawsuit is seeking class-action status in behalf of all the employees of LG and Samsung in California. No specific amount for damages has been stated in the filing.

Representatives for both companies have so far declined to issue a comment regarding the matter.

Joseph Saveri, the attorney representing Frost, said that such non-poaching agreements are anti-competitive, as employees should be fairly given the compensation that they deserve based on their talents and their worth to their company. With a non-poaching agreement, employees who are qualified to get a higher position and pay by moving into a company are prevented from doing so.

Saveri was also one of the attorneys who filed cases against Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe in a similar lawsuit that was settled early last year. The companies agreed to pay $415 million to former and current employees to settle the class-action lawsuit that accused them of being involved in an "overarching conspiracy" of blocking employee mobility and driving wages down.

Central to that case were emails sent between top-ranking executives of the companies, with one exchange involving late Apple founder Steve Jobs and then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Zika infection was once thought to be a relatively harmless infection. It is particularly feared for its effect on the unborn babies of pregnant women.

As more studies are being conducted on the effects of the mosquito-borne virus, researchers learn that adults can also experience unwanted health effects because of Zika infection such as Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), a sickness of the nervous system.

Now, Italian researchers report of another danger of Zika. In a letter published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the researchers reported that they have found evidence that Zika infection can affect the brains of adults and damage memory.

Emanuele Nicastri, from the National Institute for Infectious Diseases Lazzaro Spallanzani, and colleagues described the case of a 32-year-old nurse who was infected with Zika in the Dominican Republic.

More than a week after she returned from the Dominican Republic, the woman went to a clinic because of a set of symptoms that include rash, weakness and headache. She eventually had trouble walking and had to be hospitalized because of her neurological symptoms.

Tests eventually revealed that the woman had Zika. The virus was found in the woman's blood, saliva, urine and vagina, though she did not have sexual contact while in the Dominican Republic.

In an experiment published last month in Cell Stem Cell, researchers found that Zika virus can also affect adult brain cells in mice, which suggests that infection of the Zika virus is not as harmless for grown-ups as previously thought.

The nurse's case provided evidence that Zika virus can indeed affect the brains of human adults. The patient had early neurologic symptoms and suffered moderate memory impairment based on neuropsychological examinations, and these are consistent with symptoms of Zika virus-related encephalitis.

While the nurse made a full recovery after three weeks, the researchers said that her case highlights the need for doctors to be on the lookout for neurological symptoms in patients who are infected by the Zika virus.

"Our case highlights the potential for Zika virus neurotropism and the need for early identification of Zika virus-related neurologic symptoms. Moreover, the presence of Zika virus in the genital tract supports the recommendation of safe sex practice for women returning home from areas with ongoing Zika virus transmission," the researchers reported.

Although adults' brains are less vulnerable to damage compared with those of developing babies, brain damage may cause personality changes, epilepsy, depression and dementia.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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 the debate, two pollsters who conducted studies, agreed on Saturday that former president Lula defeated Bolsonaro. | Read More
BILLINGS -- A judge halted an effort to recall the Meagher County attorney after finding that the petition was insufficient.

County Attorney Kimberly Deschene challenged the recall petition in August and asked for a court hearing to debate its merits.

After hearing oral arguments, District Judge Blair Jones issued an order on Sept. 6 that bars White Sulphur Springs resident Katherine Walter from pursuing the recall petition.

"The Court has concluded that the revised petition at issue in the cause is not legally sufficient," Jones wrote in the order. "Therefore, Defendant Katherine Saeman Walter should be enjoined from proceeding on the revised petition."

The order is permanent, according to the document.

Walter first filed a recall petition in June, alleging general misconduct violations by Deschene. She rescinded that petition and filed a second one in August. Another judge ruled that the petition would be pending until a court hearing.

Walter's second recall petition contained narrowed allegations about the way Deschene handled an assault case in which her husband, Michael Walter, was the victim. The defendant, Joe Davis, was initially charged with felony assault but ultimately took a plea agreement for a misdemeanor.

At the petition court hearing before Jones, Walter's attorney, Alex Rate, went over the assault case. Katherine and Michael Walter claimed that Deschene failed to get enough medical information, which could have pointed to a felony conviction.

Deschene's attorney, Terry Schaplow, brought evidence that Deschene had been in communication throughout the case and that Michael Walter wrote in an email that he didn't have lasting injuries.

In a statement, Walter said that she is "evaluating (her) options, including a potential appeal to the Montana Supreme Court."

Jones noted in his order that state law provides narrow grounds for a successful recall petition, and that many of Walter's allegations were't specific enough.

Deschene said Monday that the recall effort was a "vendetta" for Walter's displeasure about the assault case.

"I'm grateful that the court saw through the recall petition for what it was," she said.

Walter did not immediately return a request for comment.

In addition to her duties as county attorney, Deschene owns Bar 47 in While Sulphur Springs and is a partner at a private law practice.
The Revenue Department of Thailand has proposed the Finance Ministry to keep the value-added tax (VAT) rate at 7 percent for another year until the end of September 2017.

Revenue Department chief Prasong Poonthaneat said Monday that the government, in the past year, has meted out various packages to help grassroots people who have been hard hit by drought while exports are contracting due to global economic slowdown.

Increasing VAT rate from 7 to 10 percent will add more burden on the consumers and increase the production costs of business operators, he noted.

Citing the slow economic recovery and impacts on business operators and the public if VAT is adjusted up.

Mr Prasong pointed out that increasing VAT rate by just one percent will raise VAT revenue to 100 billion baht from 7 billion baht annually.

As for the collection of revenue taxes for 2016 fiscal year, he predicted that the collection would fall short of the adjusted target of 1.75 trillion baht by 140 billion baht due to substantial drop, about 100 billion baht, in petroleum taxes because of low oil prices.

Source: VAT rate to be pegged at 7 percent for another year  Thai PBS English News
Dr. Marius Kruger, center, and members of the Kruger National Park, keep the head of a rhino up during a white rhino relocation capture, on Oct. 17, 2014. Photo: AFP

Poachers killed fewer rhinos in South Africa since the start of the year as the government stepped up efforts to protect the animals, spurring an increase in the number of elephants which are being illegally hunted.

Nationally, 702 rhino were poached in the country between January and July, down from 796 a year earlier, the Department of Environmental Affairs said on its website. In the Kruger National Park, 458 rhinos were killed between January and the end of August, down from 557 a year ago, it said.

There may be indications however that the success of anti-poaching efforts in the Kruger National Park has led to poaching syndicates shifting operations to other provinces, Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa said. We have also begun experiencing an increase in elephant poaching.

Since January, 36 elephants have been illegally killed in the Kruger National Park, Molewa said.

Rhino horn demand has climbed in Asian nations, including China and Vietnam, because of a belief that they can cure diseases such as cancer and even ease a hangover. The price of the horns is as much as $95,000 per kilogram in Asia, more valuable than gold.
The defendants stand the trial in Nghe An on September 12. Photo credit: Tuoi Tre

A court in central Vietnam on Monday sentenced two men to death and another to life in prison for smuggling more than 7kg of heroin into Vietnam from Laos in 2014.

Nguyen Quoc Khanh, 56, and Cu Minh Tuan, 31, got death sentence and Ha Ba Hua, 27, got life imprisonment after they were found guilty of illegal transport and trading of drug.

Nguyen Thi Luat, 21, got 20 years in prison for the same charges, the People's Court of Nghe An said after the 4-day trial, the media reported.

According to the indictment, Khanh paid Hua VND10 million (US$450) to accompany three Lao men, who remain at large, to Vietnam.

On August 17, 2014, Khanh and Luat met with the Lao men in Nghe An for the drug deal. The duo paid them a total of $47,000 for more than 7kg of heroin and nearly 300 grams of methamphetamine.

Khanh hired Tuan to transport the drug to Quang Ninh.

Tuan was arrested with the drug when he was attempt to leave Nghe An on a taxi.

According to the court, Hua is an unemployed pedagogy university graduate who had also involved in another major drug smuggling case in the central province.

The case was tried on March 25 when he and another defendant, Hoang Van Quang, 43, got death sentence for smuggling nearly 7kg of heroin from Laos to Vietnam.
A life boat, which has carried eight foreigners suspected of pirating an oil tank, arrives at Tho Chu Island on Friday morning. Photo provided by the police

Police and coastguards in the Vietnamese island of Tho Chu said they are interrogating eight foreigners suspected of hijacking the MT Orkim Harmony oil tanker last week.

A lifeboat carrying the suspects, whose nationalities have not been disclosed, arrived at the island at around 9 a.m. on Friday, authorities said.

The group of eight said that they were in distress.

Police say they are investigating into the case.

Earlier on Thursday night, authorities detected the missing 7,300 deadweight ton (DWT) oil tanker in Vietnamese waters, around 20 nautical miles from Tho Chu.

They asked an armed group of eight, who had allegedly hijacked and taken control of the Harmony since June 11, to surrender.

The group later used a lifeboat, fleeing from the tanker in the dark night.

Eight suspected pirates that hijacked MT Orkim Harmony tanker, who were said to be held in Tho Chu Island in Vietnam. Picture is taken from RMN chief Admiral Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Jaafars Twitter account. Photo: Bernama. The Orkim Harmony is operated by Malaysias Orkim Ship Management. On board is a crew of 22 consisting of 16 Malaysians, five Indonesians and one Myanmar national.

Twelve of the crew were injured, and one was shot, after being attacked by the group, who were armed with guns and knives.

Reuters quoted Malaysian state oil firm Petronas as saying that the Harmony was carrying 6,000 metric tons of products from its Malacca refinery to Kuantan for distribution.

It said all necessary measures are being taken to ensure undisrupted fuel supply to consumers in the East Coast region.

The Orkim Harmony was hijacked on June 11 about 30 nautical miles from the Johor port of Tanjung Sedili, carrying around 50,000 barrels of RON95 gasoline, in the second such incident in the same area this month.
The men were accused by Vietnamese oficials of hijacking the Malaysia MT Orkim Harmony oil tanker

A Vietnamese court on Monday agreed to hand over to Malaysia eight Indonesians who were arrested last year on suspicion of hijacking a Malaysian-flagged oil tanker, according to reports.

The men washed up on Vietnam's southwestern Tho Chu island on a lifeboat claiming to have encountered an accident at sea in June 2015.

They were taken into custody after officials discovered they were carrying large sums of cash, and were accused of hijacking the MT Orkim Harmony oil tanker.

The group spoke Indonesian, officials said, and both Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur requested to have the men extradited.

"The Hanoi people's court has ruled out a request by the Indonesian embassy to bring back the suspects to its country for a trial," state-run VNExpress news site said.

"The court accepted Malaysia's proposal to extradite the men to Malaysia" based on Vietnam's mutual legal support laws with Malaysia, the report added.

Court officials did not respond for a request to comment Monday, though the report said the suspects have 15 days to appeal the ruling.

A life boat, which has carried eight foreigners suspected of pirating an oil tank, arrives at Tho Chu Island in June 2015. Photo provided by the police.

MT Orkim Harmony was carrying around 6,000 tons of petrol worth an estimated $5.6 million when it was commandeered on June 11 last year en route from Malaysia's western coast to the port of Kuantan on the east coast.

The eight suspected pirates eluded search crews by escaping in a lifeboat under cover of darkness, Malaysian authorities said at that time.

The tanker's 22 crew members were mostly unscathed except for a slightly injured Indonesian sailor who was treated for a gunshot wound to the thigh.

The vessel was the latest ship targeted by increasingly bold pirates behind an upsurge of sea hijackings in Southeast Asia in recent years that have typically aimed at smaller tankers carrying valuable petrol, diesel or gas oil.
The front cover of Norway's largest newspaper by circulation, Aftenposten, is seen at a news stand in Oslo, Norway September 9, 2016.

Facebook Inc will learn from a mistake it made by deleting a historic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, the company's chief operating officer said.

The photograph was removed from several accounts on Friday, including that of Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, on the grounds it violated Facebook's restrictions on nudity. It was reinstated after Solberg accused Facebook of censorship and of editing history.

"These are difficult decisions and we don't always get it right," Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a letter to the prime minister, obtained by Reuters on Monday under Norway's freedom of information rules.

"Even with clear standards, screening millions of posts on a case-by-case basis every week is challenging," Sandberg wrote.

"Nonetheless, we intend to do better. We are committed to listening to our community and evolving. Thank you for helping us get this right," she wrote. She said the letter was a sign of "how seriously we take this matter and how we are handling it".

The 1972 photograph, by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Ut of the Associated Press, shows screaming children running from a napalm attack. A naked nine-year-old girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, is at its center.

Sandberg wrote that "sometimes ... the global and historical importance of a photo like 'Terror of War' outweighs the importance of keeping nudity off Facebook."

Facebook bars nudity with some exemptions, such as photographs of nudes in art. It is unclear exactly how disputes over its "Community Standards" reach top management.

Solberg posted the photograph on her Facebook page after the company had deleted it from the sites of Norwegian authors and the newspaper Aftenposten, which mounted a front-page campaign on Friday urging Facebook to permit publication.

Solberg welcomed Facebook's about-turn. "It shows that it helps to use your voice to say 'we want a change'. I'm very pleased with that," she told NRK public broadcasting on Friday.

Sandberg suggested that Solberg's staff could meet two Facebook officials visiting Norway on Friday. "I hope to see you soon - and am always available if you have further concerns," she wrote.

Norway is a big investor in Facebook. Its $891 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world's biggest, had a stake of 0.52 percent in Facebook, worth $1.54 billion at the start of 2016.
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.
Nick Tullier will go to a rehabilitation facility in Texas, the deputy's father told WBRZ on Monday.

Tullier will be transferred from Our Lady of the Lake to TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston when his condition allows, according to the news station.

Tullier's father, James, told WBRZ the family chose TIRR after discussing options with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden's doctors.

The Houston rehabilitation facility was picked due to its closeness to family in Baton Rouge and doctors associated with the nation's leaders, according to WBRZ.

+2 Obama introduces injured EBR deputy Nick Tullier's father to personal physician During his visit to Baton Rouge Tuesday, President Barack Obama met with the family of injur

The East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's deputy was critically wounded July 17, when a lone gunman from Missouri attacked law enforcement in Baton Rouge. Three officers were killed and two others were wounded. Tullier was shot in the head and stomach, and has remained in the hospital since the attack.

"Everyday, to us, has been a miracle," James Tullier said in an interview with WBRZ shortly after the shooting.

To read the full story click here.
A former high-ranking state trooper who was fired after an alcohol-related crash in Ascension Parish is suing to get his job back, claiming the Louisiana State Police Commission that upheld his termination was illegally appointed.

Damien L. Dyson Sr., 36, was a sergeant assigned to provide security for Gov. Bobby Jindal's family at the time of the October 2014 accident.

Dyson, in a lawsuit filed against the state late Monday in the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge, alleges the Jindal administration violated the state Constitution by disregarding the appointment process for the State Police Commission.

Six of the group's seven members are appointed by the governor. The other member is elected by the classified state police officers.

Dyson's suit contends the Jindal administration bypassed the constitutional requirement that six of the State Police Commission members be nominated by the presidents of private colleges around the state.

Those institutions include Tulane, Loyola, Dillard and Xavier universities in New Orleans, and Centenary College in Shreveport and Louisiana College in Pineville, the suit says.

"The public should bear in mind that this check on the governor's appointment powers  was included in the draft constitution by the delegates to the constitutional convention and later approved by a majority of Louisiana voters," Dyson's attorney, Cliff Ivey, said Tuesday.

"This is yet another unfortunate example of our rulers disregarding the very law they enforce upon the ruled," he added.

Dyson's suit asks that the State Police Commission's August 2015 upholding of his firing be declared null and void, and his employment with State Police be restored. Alternatively, he is seeking a new hearing before a commission that is "constitutionally comprised."

Maj. Doug Cain, a State Police spokesman, said Tuesday the department had not been served with a copy of the suit, but the Department of Public Safety's legal section will review it once received.

The State Police Commission did not reply to a request for comment.

Dyson was booked into the Ascension Parish Jail in October 2014 on counts of first-offense driving while intoxicated, hit-and-run, careless driving and possession of an alcoholic beverage in a vehicle.

State police sergeant booked on suspected DWI after I-10 crash A State Police sergeant assigned to provide security for Gov. Bobby Jindals family was arre

Ivey said Dyson successfully completed a pretrial diversion program through the Ascension Parish District Attorney's Office.

Dyson, who was in his personal vehicle, was accused of rear-ending a car on Interstate 10 west of La. 22 shortly before 2:15 a.m. and fleeing the accident. The collision sent the victim's car into the median, where it hit several trees before it flipped onto its roof. Dyson exited at La. 44 and pulled over onto the shoulder, where authorities found him, State Police said at the time.

Dyson's blood-alcohol content was 0.175 percent at the time of the crash. A blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent is considered presumptive evidence of drunken driving for those 21 and older.

Dyson was fired about two months after the Oct. 11, 2014, incident, Ivey said. The state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal later affirmed the commission's decision to uphold the termination.

Dyson's suit has been assigned to state District Judge Wilson Fields.
A judge said Monday he'll decide Oct. 14 whether a Baton Rouge man is mentally disabled and thus ineligible for execution if convicted of first-degree murder in the September 2010 shooting death of a 42-year-old single mother during a home invasion in Beauregard Town.

Aramis Jackson, 25, also is charged with attempted first-degree murder in the shooting and wounding of Alexandra Engler's then-9-year-old daughter. Ariana Engler survived the attack despite being shot multiple times.

East Baton Rouge Parish prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if Jackson is found guilty of capital murder. He does not have a trial date.

Two psychologists who examined Jackson have split on the issue of whether he is intellectually disabled. The U.S. Supreme Court has barred the execution of intellectually disabled inmates.

California psychologist Ricardo Weinstein, who was hired by Jackson's lawyers, testified in March he believes the accused killer is intellectually disabled based on his IQ scores and adaptive functioning. But New Orleans psychologist Gina Manguno-Mire, hired by the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's Office, testified at that same hearing that Jackson's IQ does not fall within the intellectual disability range. She also said he has been able to function in society.

After receiving written post-hearing memorandums Monday from prosecutor Darwin Miller and Baton Rouge Capital Conflict Office director David Price, who is Jackson's lead lawyer, state District Judge Tony Marabella said he will issue a ruling Oct. 14 on the intellectual disability issue.

Weinstein has noted in a report that Jackson attended school up to the seventh grade in Baton Rouge and received special-education services. Manguna-Mire has indicted in a report that Jackson was arrested for the first time at the age of 11, and had been arrested nine times by the time he was 17.

Witnesses identified Jackson as the man they saw in the area shortly after the shooting carrying a gun and a television believed stolen from the Engler home, police have said.

A prosecution-hired forensic consultant who specializes in footwear impressions testified at a 2013 hearing in the case that a bloody shoe print found in the kitchen of the Engler house was left by one of Jackson's shoes.

Print found at scene An attorney for the Baton Rouge man accused of fatally shooting a woman in her Beauregard To

District Attorney Hillar Moore III has said the shoe print matches shoes found in Jackson's possession, but Moore declined to say if Jackson was wearing the shoes when he was arrested.
The chief of staff for Gov. John Bel Edwards said Tuesday that a review of public school policies ordered by the governor should pose no problems for the state Department of Education.

"Who would take that as a threat?" asked Ben Nevers, who is also former chairman of the Senate Education Committee. "My goodness."

Nevers' comments referred to what some officials call a potential conflict between a months-long review being done by the department and an advisory council to study school policies named by Edwards.

Both stem from a new federal law called the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.

The state has to submit a plan next year on how to comply with the law, which could pave the way for major changes in school policies.

Louisiana kicks off review of public school policies LAFAYETTE -- The state should take a new look at its public school testing policies, the val

However, some members of Edwards' advisory council have said they favor a bigger overhaul than the one envisioned by the department, including a new formula for assigning letter grades for public schools and districts.

Nevers made his comments to the 65th annual meeting of the Louisiana Association of Principals.

About 150 principals attended the two-day gathering.

State Superintendent of Education John White, who differs with Edwards on key education issues, alluded to the varying views when he addressed the group three hours after Nevers.

"There are obviously differences about education in the state," White said.

However, he said all the dialogue is about what is best for children.

White also said that, while he does not agree with Edwards on everything, he praised the governor's stance on leaving curriculum and other issues up to local educators.

Nevers said the task force includes a wide range of education groups.

Over 200 groups offer input on public school changes The state has gotten input from more than 200 groups on how public school policies should be

"It would do the Department of Education well to pay attention to the process," he said. "I am certain they will."

The panel includes leaders of the Louisiana School Boards Association, Louisiana Association of Educators and Debra Schum, executive director of the principals' association.

Rival school review panel named by Gov. John Bel Edwards Gov. John Bel Edwards named nine members to a panel Wednesday to recommend changes in public

Schum is among those who favor a review of letter grade policies, and others on the council are frequent critics of White and the department.

"We will work with the Department of Education and superintendent White to mold a program that is best for the state," Nevers told the group.

Asked about Nevers' comments White said, "The litmus test for any idea put forth as part of the ESSA process should be is it good for students."

"If somebody has a research-based idea that is going to advance the opportunities of Louisiana's kids all of us are required to listen to it," he said.

White told the principals that initial, department-backed proposals for school changes will be unveiled in the next month, input sought and revisions made.

He said the plan should keep what is working in public schools, offer new ways to aid struggling students and find avenues for assisting teachers.

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is scheduled to endorse a plan in the spring.

Changes are set to take effect for the 2017-18 school year.
LSU tumbled backwards a few spots in the U.S. News and World Report's latest annual ranking of top schools in the country, which LSU President F. King Alexander said is a direct result of state funding cuts.

Meanwhile Tulane, a private school and the state's highest ranking university, ascended into the list's top 40 most prestigious schools.

LSU came in at No. 135 on the "2017 U.S. News Best Colleges" list released Tuesday  a drop of six spots from last year. The ranking is the same as its 2014 spot  the lowest it's landed on the list in a 10 year period. The highest LSU has achieved was in 2011 when it came in at No. 124.

"Well after nine years and 15 budget cuts, that's what happens to you," Alexander said. The state has slashed higher education funding at a faster rate than any other state in the country over the past nine years as it's grappled with repeated state budget shortfalls. Higher education institutions lost 55 percent of their state funds over that period.

About 30 percent of the criteria is tied to financial resources, like average spending on student instruction and research. Also weighed heavily are faculty salaries, student to faculty ratios, and proportion of full-time faculty compared to adjuncts, which are all hurt by loss of funding.

"You can't expect us to outpace universities that have not gone through what we've gone through," Alexander said.

The rankings are also based on retention, graduation rates and ACT scores, among other academic benchmarks where LSU has touted improvements.

LSU's 135 ranking is tied with Kansas State University, Mercer University in Georgia, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, the University of Arkansas and the University of Mississippi.

The top 20 schools on the list are all private schools. Princeton University came in first place, with Harvard in second.

Tulane, a private university, this year climbed to No. 39  its highest ranking in more than 16 years. Last year, it ranked No. 41 and the year before it was 54.

We are pleased by this national recognition and the spotlight it shines on the innovative and inspired teaching, learning and discovery happening at Tulane University, Tulane President Mike Fitts said.

Louisiana Tech also landed on the list at No. 202, out of a total 220 ranked positions.

The U.S. News and World Report has for years been considered the premier collegiate ranking in the country, but it's often criticized by schools for not considering a wider range of criteria.

Alexander notes that LSU gets no credit for having low tuition, compared to other state schools, and for its students carrying significantly lower debt after they graduate. He said about 39 percent of LSU grads have student debt, compared to a national average of about 75 percent.

"We're doing so much more with less, but that's not a category," Alexander said.
An oil facility stands past dead trees on Isle de Jean Charles. Global warming is rapidly turning America into a stormy and dangerous place, with rising seas and disasters upending lives from flood-stricken Florida to the wildfire-ravaged West, according to a new U.S. federal scientific report. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
GOP vice presidential candidate Mike Pence on Tuesday called David Duke that bad man, but the Mandeville Republican's campaign says the top of ticket needs the former Ku Klux Klan leader in Louisiana.

For all the world, I have no idea why this man keeps coming up. Donald Trump and I have denounced David Duke repeatedly, Pence said during a press conference on Capitol Hill with U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, in attendance.

We have said we do not want his support and we do not want the support of people who think like him, Pence said, but stopped short when asked of calling Duke deplorable for the second day in a row.

Within an hour of Pences comments, the Duke Senate campaign renewed its support of Trump's presidential candidacy.

In order for Trump to carry the state of Louisiana, he needs the Duke vote, said Michael Lawrence, Dukes campaign strategist. Dukes and Trumps fates remain linked together.

Duke, one of 24 candidates vying for the U.S. Senate on Nov. 8, came to the center of the presidential campaign again when during a Monday night interview with CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer, Pence refused to call Duke deplorable. That was the description Democratic presidential Hillary Clinton used last week in describing some of Trumps backers.

"There are some supporters of Donald Trump and Mike Pence who  David Duke, for example, some other white nationalists  who would fit into that category of deplorables. Right?" Blitzer said during the interview.

"Donald Trump has denounced David Duke repeatedly. We don't want his support and we don't want the support of people who think like him," Pence replied.

Later that evening, Duke praised Pence to BuzzFeed News, for not taking Blitzers bait. Duke pointed out that he had a perfect Republican voting record during his time as a state representative for Metairie from 1989 to 1992.

Its ridiculous that they attack me because of my involvement in that nonviolent Klan four decades ago, he said.

Duke led a faction that attempted to make the Ku Klux Klan look more businesslike. His group was not affiliated directly with the more violent groups, like the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan that was involved in church burnings and the murders of African Americans and civil rights activists.

Pence, at Tuesdays press conference, returned the focus to Clintons deplorable comments saying she wasnt talking about that bad man, she was talking about people all across this country who are coming out in record numbers to stand by Donald Trump and to stand with him in his vision to make America great again.

On his internet radio program in February, Duke said against Trump is really treason to your heritage  and I support voting for him as a strategic action.

Trump responded the next day, I didnt even know he endorsed me. David Duke endorsed me? Okay, all right, I disavow, OK?

Trump was asked repeatedly over the next couple weeks if the candidate included white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups in his disavowal. The issue came up again in July when Duke qualified to run in Louisiana saying he endorsed Trumps presidential bid. Trumps campaign released a statement rejecting Dukes endorsement.

Regardless of what the Trump campaign states officially, Lawrence said, Donald Trump did not disavow David Dukes support until he was pinned and pushed into a corner. I really do not believe it was a comment that Trump wanted to make. And frankly his statement was glib, at best, regarding the so-called disavowal.
In a boost for motorists, the state of Louisiana will add one new lane in each direction on heavily-traveled Interstate 10 between Highland Road in Baton Rouge and La. Hwy. 73 in suburban Ascension Parish, Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Tuesday.

"It is one of the most congested sections of interstate in Louisiana," Edwards told reporters.

The work on the roughly seven-mile stretch is scheduled to begin in about one year.

Shawn Wilson, secretary for the state Department of Transportation and Development, said it is too soon to tell how long the expansion will take, but the state's plan will save time and money.

The project will cost upwards of $60 million, Wilson said.

The upgrade comes at a time when the state has a $12.7 billion backlog of road and bridge projects, and a gubernatorial study aimed at coming up with solutions.

Previous work expanded I-10 by one lane each way from the I-10/12 split to Highland Road.

However, going from three lanes to two east of Highland triggers traffic slowdowns.

The project could also allow for interstate elevations along the stretch  a foot or so  to help avoid flooding problems like those that appeared in the area last month during historic weather troubles.

How La. flood might change plans for state's transportation overhaul A study touted as the forerunner to the most sweeping overhaul of Louisiana's roads and brid

The widening should also improve traffic in part because La. 73  the Prairieville/Geismar exit  is a key exit for eastbound Ascension Parish residents who make daily commutes into East Baton Rouge Parish.

In addition, the stretch targeted for improvements is part of the I-10 corridor that features freight haulers traveling between California and Florida.

After a summer marked by record flooding and other problems, politicians who turned out for the announcement were almost giddy over a big-impact road project.

State Reps. Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge; Patricia Smith, D-Baton Rouge; C. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge; Ted James, D-Baton Rouge; Johnny Berthelot, R-Gonzales; and others gathered around the governor while he spelled out the details.

Marcelle is running for mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish.

Officials said the work will be financed by re-routing federal funds earmarked for other projects, such as overlay and safety work.

Edwards emphasized that those projects will be delayed, not scrapped, and that directing dollars to the I-10 expansion will prevent them from being reallocated to other states.

Sen. Bodi White, R-Central, another candidate for mayor-president, attended the press conference and said he was assured the work will not affect the Pecue Lane/I-10 interchange project.

Wilson said widening I-10 from Highland to La. 73 overtook efforts to widen I-10 from the Mississippi River bridge to the I-10/12 split because the latter is not ready for work.

"It (Highland to La. 73) is one of the most congested areas ready to be built," he said.

The exact price tag on the work is unclear in part because the state plans to use an accelerated process called design/build.

That means the project will be handled by a joint team of highway designers and builders, rather than having those steps handled separately.

Doing so requires the approval of the House and Senate transportation committees, which appears assured.

Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, and House Transportation Committee Chairman Kenny Havard, R-St . Francisville, attended Tuesday's gathering, praised the project and vowed to meet quickly.

Cortez said the expansion schedule means taxpayers will be able to see concrete being turned within a year or so.

Edwards said design/build will shorten the work by three to four months.

Wilson said how long the expansion will take depends in part on days budgeted to finish the job by firms bidding on the work.

While modest compared to the state's overall needs, the plan represents the second notable road project in the Baton Rouge area since Edwards and Wilson took office in January.

A federal grant is, among other things, going to finance the relocation of the often-congested Washington Street exit near the Mississippi River bridge to one closer to downtown.
This years sprawling U.S. Senate field can be divided into distinct, if sometimes overlapping, subsets. There are the incumbent congressmen, the establishment Republicans, the conservative insurgents and a host of upstarts and wannabes  or in a few cases, has-beens  who hope to break through the clutter.

But so far, the most distinct contest within a contest is between the two Democrats who have managed to make a dent in the polls. Sure, Republicans are favored to hold outgoing U.S. Sen. David Vitters seat, given Louisianas overall party leanings. But in any given race, about 40 percent of voters, give or take, usually choose a Democrat.

If either Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell or lawyer Caroline Fayard were the sole well-known, well-funded Democrat, either would easily land in the runoff. The fact that they are competing for that same vote, in a 24-candidate race in which the difference between second and third or fourth may be minuscule, means that neither could. So its do or die time for both.

On paper, the two candidates represent different wings of the party. Campbell, of Bossier Parish, is an old-school Louisiana rural populist hoping to follow in the successful wake of Gov. John Bel Edwards, who has endorsed him. Fayard, a New Orleans lawyer with roots in Livingston Parish, is running more of a Mary Landrieu-type campaign, and has focused heavily on womens issues such as pay equity. Landrieu's brother, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, endorsed Fayard Monday.

The divide is represented in their staffs, with some operatives who helped Edwards get elected now on Campbells team and some of the former senators aides helping Fayard. And it shows up in at least one issue area: like Edwards, Campbell is backed by the state's major teacher union, while Fayard has the support of a prominent pro-charter school group for which Mary Landrieu is an advisory board member.

The two differ on the importance of experience, too. Fayard, 38, who has never held office, sees hope in the general anti-incumbent mood.

People are really looking for something different and fresh. They've had it the Bobby Jindal way. They've had it the Barack Obama way. They've just had it, she said recently. "I think there is a sentiment, sweeping the country, that feels that frankly both parties are broken. Its not Democrats are better than Republicans or Republicans are better than Democrats, it's just that parties have generally failed people on issues such as keeping young people from being crushed by student debt.

Campbell, 69, is no fresh face, having served in the Legislature and the Public Service Commission so long that hes already been inducted into the states political hall of fame.

Im the only Democrat with a record, he said. "Experience is good. It lets you help people without a big learning curve."

That record, he said, involves taking on more special interests than anyone in Louisiana, including big oil and gas, his focus when he ran for governor in 2007. This year hes talking about closing the revolving door that lets lawmakers quickly cash in as lobbyists once they leave Congress.

Both candidates point to the fact that they outperformed Democrats at the top of the ticket in previous races, when Fayard ran for lieutenant governor in 2010 and when Campbell got some 50,000 more votes than Landrieu in his northwest Louisiana PSC district in 2014.

But both know perfectly well where the bulk of Democratic votes are and are aiming their efforts there. Fayard has sought to position herself as the fiercest critic of former Klan leader David Duke, a Republican candidate in the large field. A PAC supporting Campbell has an ad out criticizing Fayards relatives, who have close ties to the Clinton family, for contributing to John McCain and Sarah Palin over Barack Obama in 2008 after his bruising primary against Hillary Clinton.

This year its Fayard whos embracing the national ticket, focusing on issues before Congress, vowing to put her connections to Clinton to work for Louisiana voters and even making the case that, come the December runoff, conservative voters might want to opt for Democrat if the Senate switches hands in November.

Do you want to be on the table or on the menu? she asked.

Campbell, meanwhile, recently declined to tell Advocate reporter Tyler Bridges which presidential candidate he backs.

This race is about Louisiana, he said. Talking about Hillary Clinton distracts people.

That doesnt mean hes running away from all national Democrats, though. If Fayard sees hope in the desire for fresh faces, Campbell can relate to another old populist hand who had a breakthrough year.

This is the year to let Foster be Foster, Campbell quoted his own pollster as saying during a recent interview. I've been doing what Bernie Sanders has been doing for years."
You have permission to edit this article.

Edit Close
Nestle has been forced to take down an image from its Kit Kat Facebook fan page, after it emerged that it was similar to an icon used to ward off paedophiles.

The picture of the nut brown-coloured bear was used briefly to promote Kit Kat Bars on the Facebook page of the Nestle-owned chocolate bar. The company said it had no idea that the image matched that of Pedobear - considered visual shorthand on the internet for sites posting material with inappropriate overtones towards minors.

The Kit Kat bear.

"Drum roll please ... Kit Kat is on Instagram," the company wrote above an Instagram photo of the brown bear at a drum set yesterday, with two Kit Kat chocolate bars in its paws in the place of drumsticks.

Nestle Australia & New Zealand confirmed that it had produced the image but denied any knowledge of the paedophile-linked Pedobear.
On the ABC program The Drum on Monday night (12/9) former Howard government minister Jackie Kelly asked the rhetorical question: "Why not have two men and a woman in a marriage, or two women and a man, or let's go for more and more". It is precisely this ignorant, offensive argument based on the underlying fear that an amoral uprising is about to be unleashed on the wider "normal" community that is now to be funded by taxpayers. Shame on you Malcolm Turnbull and your Coalition colleagues for allowing Australia to continue in this time warp. Australia is better than this. Doug Shaw, Sunbury Rights will not be trampled on It is not surprising that critics of same-sex marriage are such vociferous supporters of a plebiscite. It appears to be a last desperate throw of the dice thanks to a clever ploy concocted and still pushed by ex-PM Abbott. The reasons against a plebiscite appear convincing but let's assume one goes ahead. What would be the result? A "yes" vote would simply give an equal right to a minority and put an end to the matter. Meanwhile, a "no" vote would not just break the hearts of many but would likely unleash endless campaigns. The human spirit would not allow this issue to just go away. Rights will not be trampled on. Peter Jacovou, Balwyn North

THE FORUM A Waterloo moment The agile and innovative Team Turnbull is bogged down in the morass of the same-sex marriage plebiscite and going nowhere. Meanwhile the Light Cavalry (led by Abbott, Abetz, Andrews and Bernardi) is off and racing over the hills back to the 20th century at full tilt. Where will it all end? I suspect that a Waterloo moment is not far off. Andrew Blyth, Eaglemont PM, try this adverb

Why did Mr Turnbull bother to flick furiously through the dictionary to come up with the funky adverbs "agile", "innovative" and "nimble" to describe his impending prime ministership when "static" would have done? Els van den Berghe, Yarrawonga We have the evidence So, a Senate inquiry into reports of abuse, self-harm and neglect of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island has been announced, with a reporting deadline of March2017. This news is breathtaking. First, what is it about the numerous reports already delivered by respected agencies and individuals, together with The Guardian's release of 2000 files detailing assaults, neglect and self-harm, that this Parliament doesn't understand? Second, the assumption that we have all the time in the world to, yet again, investigate and report on these critical issues is at best wilfully ignorant and at worst utterly cynical. Third, it ignores the fact that Manus Island detention has been found unconstitutional according to PNG law. It assumes the centre will still be around over the next six months or that somehow the court finding can be managed.

We must act now to avoid a catastrophic breakdown of mental and physical health of detainees. The government must close down both detention centres and bring the refugees here. Jill Dixon, Northcote In our name On "our" behalf, "our" political representatives have spent billions to protect "our" borders; in doing so, they have destroyed thousands of others' lives. While there is no easy solution, it's salutary to see that tiny countries like Jordan have found a solution. It's called compassion: "our"solution is called cruelty. A celebrated writer has said: "The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonourably, foolishly, viciously." Where is our patriotism? True patriotism requires universal human sympathies. Janet Upcher, Battery Point, Tas

High price of hypocrisy No wonder the government does nothing about the true "illegal" immigrants  all those on tourist and student visas who never go home. If it costs more than $9.6billion to bar the gate to many times fewer legal asylum seekers, we simply can't afford to do anything about the true illegals. Can we? That's the price of hypocrisy I guess. Margaret Callinan, Balwyn Communities get active How comforting to see two examples of constructive community reactions to tackle the major parties' loss of moral compass (The Age, 12/9): bravo to LaTrobe University and its law students for helping asylum seekers complete the paperwork for their claims to be processed, and bravo to the community groups who have taken it upon themselves to generate clean, renewable energy and get around the stalling tactics of the coal barons and their political lackeys.

Remy Favre, Malvern East Don't get carried away There has been much eulogising about the 25 years of continuous economic growth Australia has experienced. However, we need to temper the back scratching. The speculative boom in mining and housing that we have experienced has benefited only a tiny percentage of the population; the increased levels of tax avoidance has led to massive, and worsening, income inequalities; the intense pressure on the public sector has led to a reduction of services; there's been a massive transfer of wealth to private-sector rent seekers; and the impoverishment of the bottom 20per cent of society has led to higher crime rates, lower health standards and self-medication. Economic growth is good until it eats up all sustainable resources, but ultimately is only beneficial if it is spread evenly and does not just trickle upwards. Greg Bailey, St Andrews Put privilege to good use

Derryn Hinch, now it's also time to use your parliamentary privilege to name all those tax cheats who have offshore accounts in tax havens, family trusts and so on to avoid paying their fair share of tax, leaving it up to ordinary PAYG wage earners. I am sure you are not one of them. Raelee Hunter, Keilor Downs Put MPs on contracts Maybe we should put senators on casual contracts so we don't have to pay them when there's nothing for them to do. Better still, put them on 457 visas so we can get rid of them more easily. Michael Carver, Kew

Time on their hands The second week of the 45th Parliament and the government has no legislation to hand to the Senate despite their members being 3years into their well-paid jobs. And they want people to work for the dole? John Higgins, Hawthorn Timely advice for Tony Former British PM David Cameron has announced he will resign from Parliament, saying, "In my view with modern politics ... it isn't really possible to be a proper backbench MP as a former prime minister. I think everything you do will become a big distraction and a big diversion from what the government needs to do for our country".

It is, of course, a near exact echo of the situation in Australia, but we can expect no such reflection from ex-prime minister Tony Abbott, who seems determined to maximise the distraction factor. His inability to accept the loss of the leadership and his graceless undermining of his successor are a constant diversion for the government. The disloyal kindergarten antics of his supporters and surrogates in the parliamentary party do him no credit, either. Time to follow the lead of your Tory friend, Mr Abbott. Ian McKendry, Kew East Poor global citizen Jennifer Gerrand (Letters, 12/9) deplores Mr Turnbull's hypocrisy, criticising North Korean nuclear tests while Australia refuses to support a nuclear weapons ban. But the reality is worse. Australia is actively undermining proposals by UN working groups in Geneva aiming for a breakthrough in negotiations on a treaty for just such a ban. Last weekend Barnaby Joyce justified policy decisions by describing the Australian people as a "higher power" that must be listened to. In 2014, a Nielsen poll found 84per cent of Australians support a ban on nuclear weapons. Malcolm and Barnaby  it's time to listen and act accordingly.

Margaret Beavis, Medical Association for Prevention of War, Australia Forward planning So Defence Force uniforms are to be made in China. Should we get our ammunition made there also? I have a $60,000 insurance claim pending because the made- in-China braided hose installed under the sink by a plumber failed. The insurance company said these hoses are failing everywhere. Plenty of products made in China seem faulty. Just imagine, China could dummy our ammo and walk in and take the country without any loss of life. Ray Frost, Jan Juc Count ourselves lucky

In light of the coverage of Melbourne's surge in gun crime, suggesting that "Melbourne has become a Gun City", I asked my American boyfriend, a Detroit native, what his thoughts were on the matter. He replied with a weblink to the local paper Detroit News  "32 shootings in Detroit this Labor Day Weekend". Puts things into perspective. Perhaps instead of fearmongering we should count ourselves lucky. Ellen Coyne, Princes Hill Salute performances The obsession for Paralympic medals by Australian officials and commentators detracts from the performances of the athletes. Their skill and sheer dedication in overcoming a disability to compete at Olympiclevel is itself a medal-winning performance. We should just rejoice with every athlete who competes and salute their performances. Brian Morley, Donvale

Easter blockbuster Geoff Perston (Letters, 13/9) suggests we should eliminate the Easter Monday holiday, as our "religion" of sport easily overrides any traditional theistic observances. Surely he realises that Easter Monday is one of the biggest days on our "new" religious calendar, with a big blockbuster always scheduled at our main cathedral (the MCG). Ray Pilbeam, Canterbury Hats off to care group Aubrey Perry calls on Australia to follow intergenerational linking of young children and nursing home residents to teach empathy (Comment, 13/9). Such programs already occur in Victoria and around Australia. The Eden Alternative, an international non-profit organisation, isone example of care provided that is based on such a positivephilosophy.

Megan Stoyles, Aireys Inlet AND ANOTHER THING... I'd trust a president Clinton on life support ahead of a lusty, red-blooded president Trump any day. Peter McCarthy, Mentone

The plebiscite The Australian Christian Lobby is indisputably Australian and definitely a lobby group. The Christian moniker is, however, debateable. Jane Edwards, Peterhead, SA We're effectively already funding the "No" campaign through the tax allowances for religious groups. Another loophole we urgently need to fix. John Everett, Eltham

I think we need a plebiscite to decide whether the taxpayer should fund the debate on same-sex marriage. Ray Dahlstrom, Inverloch Politics Some $9.6billion since 2013 to stop the boats. I think I have an idea for budget repair. Peter Ramadge, Newport

Malcolm, if it helps, you could remind your Abbott bench that Manus has cost the nation two new submarines or 50 joint strike fighters so far. Colin Mockett, Geelong Hopefully, Mr "no child should be in detention" Turnbull will find his missing heart at the refugee summit in New York. Susan Munday, Bentleigh East If a factory has no work, workers are stood down  presumably without pay. And in the Senate?

Dianne Lewis, Mt Martha Careful Bill, messing around with the House of Reps could come back and bite you on the bum. Jill Burn, Ivanhoe Dear Tony, do an Elvis and a David Cameron; please leave the building. Anne McKenzie, Preston
Eddie Blewett has two mums.

This is far from common in Tathra, the small seaside town in NSW where he lives with parents Claire and Neroli.

But the community had always been welcoming and Eddie, 13, never had major problems at school.

"Our family was a non-event," Claire Blewett says.
One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts has urged Australia to mimic Britain's Brexit and leave the "socialistic, monolithic" United Nations during his first speech to Parliament, in which he also compared himself to Socrates and said there was no link between carbon dioxide and climate change.

Praising Britain's recent decision to leave the European Union, which had the power to set laws and regulations affecting domestic laws in member countries, Senator Roberts called on Australians to launch an "Aus-exit" from institutions including the UN and International Monetary Fund.

"Australia's values and way of life are also at risk from insidious institutions such as the unelected swill that is the United Nations," he said.

"The EU is a template for total socialist domination of Europe through unelected bodies, such as the IMF, forcing their frightening agenda on the people. It is also the UN's template, and Australia must leave the UN."
This is where we will leave you today, as we head to the Senate to cover the upcoming maiden speeches.

But first - what have we learnt?

The SSM marriage plebiscite dominated the sitting day - 'citizen panels' will help decide how the money allocated for the yes and no campaigns will be spent, Liberal Senator Dean Smith will cross the floor when it hits the upper house and Tim Wilson apologised to the Prime Minister over a party room 'misunderstanding'.

And the government and opposition did come to an agreement over the Coalition's omnibus savings bill - which Labor managed to announce first.

That's it for me - Stephanie Peatling, Andrew Meares and Alex Ellinghausen will be back with you Wednesday morning. Have a lovely evening and thank you for reading.
Gun violence is gripping the city and as Victoria's justice system and politicians come under fire for failing to tackle the crime wave, cops on the frontline have become the targets of real bullets.



Read part three of The Ages investigation into how Melbourne became a gun city.

He was 22 years old the first time he got caught with a gun. Police chased him down on foot and recovered a stash of drugs and a revolver. He was charged and released on bail.

Five months later, he would be caught with more drugs and another gun - this time a .22 calibre semi-automatic pistol.

For these crimes, he got nine months jail and a community corrections order.

Angelos* next run in with the law - five months after his release from prison - would see the now 24-year-old allegedly point a fully-loaded 9mm semi-automatic handgun at a police officer. They came face-to-face during the burglary of a suspected marijuana grow house in the citys western suburbs.

Browning 9mm Hi-Power Pistol Used in an alleged burglary of a hydroponic marijuana "grow house" in 2016. The weapon, which was stolen two years earlier, was used to threaten a police officer before the suspect was arrested.

Angelo chose to drop his weapon, but the split-second confrontation could easily have resulted in another fatal shooting by an officer - or the death of the officer himself.

The gun had allegedly ended up in Angelos hands after being stolen from a home two years earlier.

Once again, he got bail. As did his two co-accused despite having a string of gun and violence convictions between them, including possession of a sawn-off shotgun, attempting to pervert the course of justice and serious drug trafficking offences.

Yet, within months, Angelos bail was revoked when he was arrested again for allegedly committing another crime.

Police Association secretary Ron Iddles. Photo: Simon Schluter

It makes no sense, says former homicide detective, now Police Association secretary Ron Iddles.

He says the Angelo case, serves as a glaring example and a cautionary tale of why the courts cant afford to get it wrong. How can someone with a long list of prior convictions for violence, drugs and firearms offences be granted bail after pulling a gun on an officer?

Decisions like this, he says, beggar belief.

Advertisement

Bad to the bone

One of Victorias most notorious prisoners, Christopher Dean Binse, is another repeat offender whose new-found freedom and easy access to firearms ended in a cop staring down the barrel of a gun.

Armed robber and East Keilor siege gunman Christopher Dean 'Badness' Binse.

A prolific armed robber, Binse had spent nearly all of his adult life in prison by the time he got out in September 2011. Yet the man known as Badness managed to stockpile more than seven guns - including a Thompson submachine gun, shotgun and .357 revolver - in the months after his release.

Binse then went on a wild crime spree. He robbed an armoured car, threatened a police officer with a pistol and then fired heavily on armed officers during a 44-hour siege at his Keilor East home.

Christopher Binse in police custody after his two-day siege in Keilor. Photo: Channel 7

The chilling truth is Angelo and Binse arent exceptions.

In the past year alone:

A police officer has been shot in the head with a shotgun blast after attempting to stop a vehicle suspected to have been involved in a series of shooting and firebombing attacks on the homes of the Williams crime family

A police van was shot as officers attempted to intercept a suspected stolen vehicle

Members of the Hells Angels bikie gang were believed to be behind bullets being fired into a police building in a suspected revenge attack

Its not that the courts dont have the powers to lock up gun criminals or refuse bail. Sentencing options, for one, have been strengthened in successive Liberal and Labor state government law-and-order crackdowns. County Court Judge Lance Pilgrim, in a sentencing last year, outlined the possible jail terms that could now be imposed.

I am now becoming an old ancient; when I first worked in the courts 54 years ago, 55 years ago ... the maximum for possession of a handgun, first offence, was 12 months. Now look what has happened. In that time it has gone, if I am remembering correctly, from 12 months to seven years. That is a 700 percent increase, Judge Pilgrim said.

Regardless, less than half of criminals are ultimately sent to prison after being found guilty of possessing an unregistered firearm, according to the Sentencing Advisory Council.

Meanwhile, the number of guns on the street swells. Firearms offences have doubled in the past five years. There is now a shooting once a week. It is only a matter of time before more innocent people get caught in the crossfire.

Last year alone, there were 755 incidents in which prohibited persons - those with serious criminal convictions - were caught with firearms. Its a five-fold increase since 2011, according to the Crime Statistics Agency.

Part of the problem is no one can really pin down where all the illegal guns are coming from.

A burnt out vehicle in North Coburg. The car was allegedly used in a police shooting in Moonee Ponds on July 7, 2015. Photo: Darrian Traynor



TOP

Money and guns

Authorities point to the grey market the term given to rifles and shotguns that were not handed back in the 1996 amnesty that followed the Port Arthur massacre and have circulated for the past two decades.

A new national gun amnesty, which many have advocated for, would lead to the voluntary surrender of illicit weapons. Gun control advocates say a new amnesty would particularly target those grey market firearms.

But that argument doesnt account for the many handguns that have been used in recent shootings. Handguns were not part of the original amnesty, and hence are not part of the grey market.

A truck unloads prohibited firearms at a scrap-metal yard in Sydney, 29 July, 1997 where they will be loaded into a shredder and destroyed.

Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission chief executive officer Chris Dawson admits the serious national problem of illegal guns circulating through the country is far from well-defined.

Guns, points out Assistant Commissioner (Crime) Stephen Fontana, are surprisingly easy to hide, and traffick.

You can pull them apart, you can bring it over with a whole lot of car parts and metal in there. That's the challenge.

For Fontana, the answer lies in improved intelligence to help follow the money trail.

This is what we're trying to do from a serious and organised crime perspective nationally...to get a much better picture of what's happening, and try and identify the syndicates involved in importing this weaponry and trafficking it.

Admittedly, this is easier said than done. Fontana says that while some people are making good money out of the illegal gun trade, importing and trafficking firearms is not where you find the really big bucks.

Its certainly a far more lucrative business to be in drug-related crime than firearms-related crime, he notes.

The laws that worked

New South Wales has shown that some state laws can be part of the solution. A raft of new laws allow police to slap orders on suspected criminals that ban them from being on a property with a firearm or accompanied by a person with a firearm.

The laws have been used more than 500 times since being introduced in 2013.

Detective Superintendent Peter McErlain, acting director of the organised crime directorate for NSW police, says the laws gave police "extraordinary powers" to be able to search a prohibited person without a warrant.

And it seems to be working.

"If you look across the board, gun crime in NSW is falling overall. Violent crime and gun crime is falling. You couldn't attribute that entirely to the legislation, but it certainly would contribute to it," Superintendent McErlain says.

Victorias time

Now, Victoria is following suit.

Last year, Victoria Police began a review of firearms laws in other jurisdictions, including NSW, to see if they should lobby the state government for similar measures.

Days after the review was announced, the federal government committed to a new national approach, which promised a coordinated amnesty within 12 months and better intelligence to find out where the guns are coming from.

Police Minister Lisa Neville. Photo: Eddie Jim

Victorian Police Minister Lisa Neville says the state government will act on the police review, clamping down on gun crime based on the NSW model. This means introducing new offences to deal with:

Drive by shootings

Producing guns with technologies such as 3D printers

Banned people possessing guns

Ms Neville said gun storage rules could also be tightened to insist on better security and reduce the number of guns kept at hobby farms or holiday houses.

Victims of Crime Commissioner Greg Davies welcomes any new police powers but said they would make little difference if repeat offenders continued to get bail and were free to walk the streets armed.

"It has become abundantly clear that Victorians will continue to become victims of violent crime if criminals are not given custodial sentences that take them out of circulation, protect the community and act as a real deterrent, he said.

If they can be rehabilitated, well and good, but we have to accept there are some people out there who are seriously bad and need to be dealt with."

Meanwhile, on Friday two masked gunmen shot a 23-year-old man in the leg during an early morning home invasion in Brunswick West. Two days later, a man was shot in the leg in Broadmeadows.

It was the 100th shooting since January last year.

* Not his real name.

Advertisement



TOP
Wallet, phone, high school diploma and a one-way ticket - just a few of the things refugees may grab as they cast one last look around their home before fleeing.

"What they took with them" is a new video featuring Oscar-winning actor and UN ambassador Cate Blanchett and a cast of celebrities urging governments to ensure schooling, health and shelter for refugees ahead of a major UN summit on the crisis.

Cate Blanchett in the UNHCR video. Credit:Facebook: UNHCR

Launched by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) on Monday, the film shows Hollywood actors - including Keira Knightley, Jesse Eisenberg and Chiwetel Ejiofor - performing a poem listing items refugees took with them as they fled into exile.

"I think it captures the sense of 'what would I take?', 'what would I do?'" Blanchett said to fellow Australian actor Chris Hemsworth in an interview live-streamed on Facebook.
The wave of gastroenteritis outbreaks that affected hundreds of thousands of Australians over winter were caused by not one, but three new highly contagious norovirus strains, Sydney researchers found.

A spike in serious gastroenteritis cases across NSW prompted a warning from health authorities in July. At its worst point, cases of gastro outstripped influenza during peak flu seasons, with more than 3300 people attending EDs from the start of June to July 20.

Similar outbreaks were reported in WA and the ACT.

NSW Health suspected a new strain of the virus was responsible for the outbreak, which would explain lower immunity levels among the community leading to higher susceptibility. The hardest hit were daycare centres, aged care homes and hospitals.
A study to understand why cane toads haven't spread further across the country has found the Queensland icons are not big fans of cold weather.

In fact, they are fairly picky when it comes to their habitat and are slow to adapt to any changes in climate, a team, including James Cook University professor Lin Schwarzkopf, has found.

Cane toads are slow to adapt to colder climates, a study has found.

Thousands of toads were collected from three major invasion fronts at New South Wales, Western Queensland and Western Australia and their DNA sequence tested to try and understand the big question of why all animals aren't everywhere, Professor Schwarzkopf said.

"We know that animals only have a certain distinctive range, that animals only occur in some places," she said.
Gold Coast parents who say they would have aborted their daughter if they knew she had a severe brain defect are suing the medical professionals who allegedly failed to identify the condition for $2.5 million in damages.

Regan Hooker and Wayne Ball's daughter Aria, who is now two, was diagnosed with Aicardi Syndrome during an MRI in June 2014.

The girl's parents argue the diagnoses should have been made at the 19-week ultrasound. Credit:Jessica Shapiro

The couple who are originally from New Zealand, claim sonographer Kim Andrews and specialist radiologist Greg Duncombe of Queensland Maternal Fetal Medicine in Southport should have detected and warned them about Aria's abnormality at the 19-week ultrasound in September 2013.

They also claim obstetrician Penelope Isherwood did not warn them of the condition and that none of the medical professionals involved suggested a repeat ultrasound at 22 weeks gestation or a foetal MRI at 26 weeks.
Queensland's government has introduced anti-bikie law reforms to parliament that will ban the wearing of gang colours in all public places.

The laws also include a new consorting offence similar to one in NSW and will allow police to confiscate furniture including stripper poles from restricted premises.

Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath says the refusal of Prince Frederik from a bar has not caused a diplomatic incident. Credit:Chris Hyde

However, the government will have to rely on the support of crossbenchers to pass the reforms, which seek to repeal the previous Liberal National Party government's contentious anti-gang laws.

In introducing the reforms on Tuesday, Attorney-General Yvettte D'Ath slammed the LNP's Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment (VLAD) Act.
No matter where you are in the small business landscape, it can be hard to keep your eye on the prize.

And while success looks different to everyone, we are all hungry for growth and keeping true to our values.

So how do you do that?

Luckily for you, some of Australia's top new generation entrepreneurs are about to reveal their No. 1 tip for success and how they have implemented it.
Not a fan of what you're seeing in your Instagram comments? The social network is about to give you the power to ignore what you don't want to see.

In a company blog post, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom announced that all Instagram users will have the option to create a list of keywords that can be used to filter out comments they don't want to see. So, for example, if someone is being abused on the site by people using a certain term, that person can add that term to their personal blacklist.

Instagram users will have the option to create a list of keywords that can be used to filter out comments they don't want to see. Credit:Getty Images

"This feature lets you list words you consider offensive or inappropriate," Systrom wrote. "Comments with these words will be hidden from your posts. You can choose your own list of words or use default words we've provided."

Instagram users, he said, can still also swipe to delete comments, report inappropriate comments and block accounts.
The federal government is poised to announce a national gun amnesty following an unprecedented wave of violent firearm-related crime in Melbourne.

State and federal ministers and attorneys-general requested an amnesty be considered by senior officials in the National Justice and Policing Senior Officials Group last year.

These officials gave a unanimous in-principle support for an amnesty last month.

State ministers must agree to proceed, however, support for an amnesty is strong and it is understood the timing will be settled before the end of the year.
A Victorian Protective Services Officer has been charged over historic sex offences with a child aged under 16.

The charges come after an investigation into allegations of "indecent acts" with a child, a statement from Victoria Police says.

A PSO has been charged with eight indecent acts and suspended without pay. Credit:Justin McManus

The incidents occurred about 10 years ago in country Victoria.

Police said the incidents all occurred before the man joined Victoria Police.
Victorian Minister for Health Jill Hennessy. Credit:Darrian Traynor In the strongest indication yet that Labor may introduce laws to allow euthanasia, Ms Hennessy did not rule out a scheme when pressed on Tuesday, saying the inquiry had widely canvassed community views and that of the medical and a legal professions. "I don't have a religious or ethical objection to euthanasia," Ms Hennessy said. "There are great opportunities for us to provide a better death for Victorians." She said the inquiry's recommendation around an assisted death scheme was something she had "a very open mind" towards, but the decision was ultimately for the whole government.

"I think the material canvassed in the inquiry is very good." Labor introduced new laws on Tuesday to parliament to make advanced care plans legally binding. The directives currently give patients the power to set certain terms and guidelines for their doctor at the end of life but are not enforceable. The new laws will make it clear for health professionals what a patient's preferences are, and for the first time in Victoria make breaching these preferences a matter of misconduct, with deregistration a possibility. The bill states that patients cannot reject palliative care because of clinical feedback that not all people understand what pain and death is actually like, Ms Hennessy said.

The law will apply, with rigorous checks and balances, to children as well. "We've put some carrots and sticks in the bill," she said. The conversation people have around their death needs to become more culturally acceptable, with Ms Hennessy calling on more Victorians to talk with their GPs about death. "We want to change the culture around people not having these conversations around a barbecue or a dinner party table. We want them to happen with their GPs and clinicians and to commit an advanced care plan to writing," Ms Hennessy said. There will also be safeguards around a person's level of mental capacity in making an advanced care directive, with power of attorney laws.

The minister said there was not enough policy focus on the end of life. "Our historic new laws will give Victorians the certainty they want and need when it comes to end-of-life care and wishes," Ms Hennessy said. "We're putting people's preferences and values first when it comes to medical treatment decision making." Dying with Dignity Victoria welcomed the fulfilment of Labor's election commitment. "This and changes to palliative care services to meet community expectations represent a significant step forward," said Lesley Vick, DWDV president.
A woman accused of murdering a neighbour amid a long-running dispute over car parking in their street has pleaded not guilty by way of mental impairment.

Police allege Eva Whitecross murdered Rachel Tyquin in their Sunbury street when she attacked her with a knife after they crossed paths about 5.55am on April 16, after both women had been out on separate walks.

Rachel Tyquin, 44, was found dead on a nature strip in Sunbury in April. Credit:Facebook

Ms Tyquin, 44, was found on the footpath several doors from her home about 7.15am. She had suffered 16 stab wounds to the chest and neck.

Ms Whitecross, 54, who lived over the road from Ms Tyquin, appeared via video link before Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday and entered a plea of not guilty. Defence counsel Paul Galbally told the court his client would contest the charge by way of mental impairment.
"Why isn't good news newsworthy? The news always seems to be really heavy ..."

Those were the words emailed to the WAToday office on Tuesday morning, along with a video of three-year-old Ava giving us a Jamie Oliver style cooking class on how to make "strangled eggs".

Ava's father, David Laurance, reached out to us to bring a smile to our readers, hoping to give us all a break from the world's heavy news.

Mr Laurance said he thought it was time Ava upgraded from her toy kitchen to the family kitchen, as the pilot "Cooking with Ava" launched on Sunday.
Osan, South Korea: Two US supersonic B-1 Lancer strategic bombers flew over South Korea on Tuesday morning in a show of force and solidarity with its ally amid heightened tension following North Korea's fifth nuclear test last week.

The two bombers conducted a low-altitude flight over Osan Air Base in South Korea, which is 77 km from the Demilitarised Zone border with the North and about 40 km from the South's capital Seoul.

The scheduled fly-over was delayed from Monday due to weather conditions in Guam, where the bombers are stationed.

The bombers, capable of carrying the largest payload of both guided and unguided weapons among US Air Force aircraft, were escorted by South Korean and US fighter jets as they conducted the low speed flight over Osan.
Brand New Peugeot 3008 DKR Ready For Dakar Challenge







LONDON - September 13, 2016: Coming off the back of a successful Dakar and Silk Way Rally campaign with the PEUGEOT 2008 DKR this year, Team Peugeot Total and Red Bull have revealed the new PEUGEOT 3008 DKR. This is the all-new successor to the famous machine with which Stephane Peterhansel claimed his resounding 12th victory on the Dakar back in January, and Cyril Despres clinched his first win on four wheels on the Silk Way Rally in July.

A technical challenge & designer dream

The all-new Dakar challenger is based on an entirely new model of Peugeot SUV, to be revealed at the Paris Motor Show next month, following eight months of intensive work in Velizy, France, since the Dakar finish ramp in Rosario. The new PEUGEOT 3008 SUV forms the inspiration for the latest evolution, following the company's return to Dakar after 25 years in 2015.

The new PEUGEOT 3008 DKR also remains loyal to Peugeot's two-wheel drive philosophy, with the first Dakar win for a two-wheel drive car in 15 years nine months ago proving that you don't necessarily need four wheel drive to conquer the toughest landcapes in the world.

"The new 3008 symbolises the next step," said team director Bruno Famin. "Our goal with this car was to take the weaker points of the existing car and make them stronger, while capitalizing on all the existing strengths to improve them still further. There are also some new regulations, which we obviously needed to comply with."

Sebastien Criquet is Peugeot's senior exterior designer, responsible for the aggressive lines of the both the new PEUGEOT 3008 DKR and the corresponding road car. The Dakar car's dimensions and features are governed by technical rules laid down by the sport's governing body, but its inspiration is still very clear through a number of unique design cues.

"Our new Dakar car is the most extreme expression of Peugeot's latest SUV," added Criquet. "It keeps the distinctive design language of the road car, but transports it into a rally context. And that's the dream job for any designer: when you create a car, you always have a competition version at the back of your mind."

The new PEUGEOT 3008 DKR improves on its illustrious predecessor in four main areas:

Reliability. While the previous car was durable enough to win the Dakar this year and claim nine stages (including seven one-twos), in any competition machine there is always room to improve on reliability. Peugeot Sport's engineers went through every aspect of the car in fine detail in order to refine the package still further, focussing both on mechanical strength and also complex electronic processes, such as engine management. The Dakar is the toughest race in the world, taking in 10,000 kilometres at high speeds and altitudes, which makes it the ultimate test of reliability for any machine.

Driveability. Huge steps were made forward in this area from the 2015 debut to 2016, but Peugeot Sport has now ensured that the car's 3.0-litre V6 twin-turbodiesel engine is even more driveable for next year's Dakar, delivering greater torque at lower revs. Adding to the challenge for the engineers is the fact that the latest Dakar regulations have imposed a smaller restrictor on the engine (38mm as opposed to 39mm last year) with a net loss of around 20 horsepower. However, this power is now accessible from further down the rev range, meaning that the car is easier to drive and potentially even faster.

Suspension. This is one of the key elements to success on the Dakar, as it governs just how quickly the car can cover the ever-changing untrammelled terrain that is the hallmark of the Dakar, ranging from salt flats, to WRC-style gravel roads, to sand dunes. The suspension was already one of the most impressive aspects of the PEUGEOT 2008 DKR for the drivers, but for the new 3008 DKR further work has been done on the geometry and dampers. The test program up to now, which has included the 15-day long Silk Way Rally - featuring quite similar terrain to the Dakar - was instrumental in furthering these important improvements.

Air conditioning. It's something we all take for granted on our road cars, but the air conditioning that was introduced on the PEUGEOT 2008 DKR in Asia this summer has been made even more effective for Peugeot Sport's latest creation. With crews spending up to 12 hours a day inside the cars, subject to cockpit temperatures in excess of 60 degrees centigrade, the effect of air conditioning on human performance cannot be underestimated. Even though the drivers are super-fit athletes, the improved air conditioning should help them to perform at a higher level and get more out of the car.

Team Peugeot Total, ready to tackle new challenges Peugeot Sport will be aiming now for the sixth Dakar win in its illustrious history, with last year's triumph - in which a Peugeot led every proper stage - coming on top of four wins on the Dakar in Africa between 1987 and 1990. The Peugeot crews have 18 Dakar wins between them and the latest in cutting-edge technology with the new PEUGEOT 3008 DKR but the task ahead is still far from easy with an all-new route this year through Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, as well as strong opposition.

Before the Dakar itself, Carlos Sainz will test the new PEUGEOT 3008 DKR in race mode against other Dakar competitors and Cyril Despres in the PEUGEOT 2008 DKR, during Morocco's Rally in October (from October 3rd to 7th).

The potent combination of Peugeot, Red Bull, Total, Sparco, BF Goodrich and the most successful Dakar driver line-up in the world: Stephane Peterhansel, Carlos Sainz, Sebastien Loeb and Cyril Despres, is well and truly back. Look out for the first videos of the new car in action, coming soon.
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
Monday 05 September, 2016 Reliable information reaching Biafra writers desk has it that the life of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indi...
LL Beachwear

Help fund TBW for as little as $3

Search This Blog

Blog Archive Blog Archive October (16) September (9) August (6) July (8) June (5) May (2) April (7) March (10) February (5) January (7) December (12) November (12) October (16) September (20) August (29) July (18) June (12) May (4) April (14) March (21) February (27) January (56) December (27) November (43) October (43) September (48) August (39) July (37) June (27) May (12) April (41) March (49) February (89) January (106) December (72) November (67) October (21) September (28) August (29) July (45) June (56) May (27) April (28) March (32) February (36) January (45) December (37) November (53) October (45) September (40) August (63) July (54) June (46) May (51) April (54) March (64) February (62) January (94) December (71) November (75) October (87) September (84) August (72) July (82) June (71) May (69) April (103) March (126) February (108) January (80) December (72) November (57) October (3) September (54) August (74) July (107) June (66)
Your Ultimate Investing Toolkit

Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools:

Portfolio Monitoring

Top Stock Lists

Premium Reports

Stock Screeners

Live News Feed

Premium Support

Free for your first month.
The Trump Organization opened its latest property in Washington, D.C., on Monday, four years after they first secured the rightsafter Donald Trump and his children all donated as much as they could to D.C.s mayor and representative in Congress, who were instrumental in the hotels development.

In February of 2012, the federal government announced that Donald Trumps organization had won a bid to turn the Old Post Office Pavilion, located on Pennsylvania Avenue just a few blocks from the White House, into a new luxury hotel, which had its soft opening this week. Ivanka Trump, the moguls daughter, was put in charge of the project.

The Trump Organization is committed to making this the finest luxury hotel in the world and we think the buildings location and historic nature will allow us to do that, the younger Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post just after the rights were announced.

Months later, money began to pour in from the Trump family to two politicians with prominent roles in the hotel development project: Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

While the Trumps are notorious for doling out heaps of money to politicians on both sides of the aisle, D.C. politicians hadnt been recipients in the past. And the timing of the contributions leads to an appearance issue, as one campaign finance lawyer described itone enhanced by recent revelations about the Trump Foundations attempts to curry favor with politicians.

Theres no evidence of anything illegal about it, Lawrence Noble of the Campaign Legal Center told The Daily Beast. But, he said, its not a good look.

The closer you are to doing something specifically for somebody, he explained, the more it raises ethical questions.

In June 2012, Ivanka Trump sent a payment of $2,500 to Nortons campaign committee, her first such contribution. The next two years, she sent the maximum $2,600.

Norton, according to a press release on her site, had been involved in a 15-year effort to get the General Services Administration, an independent agency meant to support the functioning of federal agencies, to redevelop the Old Post Office building. In 2008, Norton introduced a bill called the Old Post Office Development Act which would allow for a new occupant of the long-vacant building near the White House. Because of her bill, the GSA was able to begin the process of seeking out proposals for renovating the space in 2011. The final lease agreement between the GSA and the Trump Organization was reached in June of 2013.

Norton pressed for the deal to get done in time for the congressionally mandated layover period to elapse before the start of the August recess, a press release from her office read at the time. The Trump Organization, led by Donald Trump, is now moving its own schedule forward to open the hotel by late 2015 or early 2016. Norton has spoken with Ivanka Trump, who leads the project, several times and today also spoke with Donald Trump.

Less than three weeks later, Trump sent Norton $2,600 , according to filings from the Federal Election Commission.

A spokesman for Norton dismissed the donations as completely ordinary.

It is not unusual for businesses who build in the national capital region to contribute to Members of Congress, communications director Benjamin Fritsch said in an email to The Daily Beast. Congresswoman Norton was at the groundbreaking because of her role as the sponsor of the Old Post Office bill.

On Aug. 5, 2013, the Trump Organization officially signed the lease , agreeing to pay the federal government a base rent of $250,000 for the next 60 years for the property. Initially, they requested not to pay D.C. taxes for the building, a request that was denied by D.C. Council Finance and Revenue Chairman Jack Evans. At the time, Ivanka Trump said that construction would begin on the hotel the following year.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the renovated complex took place on July 23, 2014, and the whole Trump family attended. Alongside them was Norton and Muriel Bowser, who was in the throes of a mayoral election campaign. Just over two weeks later, on Aug. 6, Ivanka Trump gave Norton another $2,600.

We will produce one of the great hotels anywhere in the world in the most exciting locationbetween Congress and the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, Donald Trump said at the announcement. I promise you this will be a truly great, not only hotel, but economic development project.

When Bowser took the microphone, she expressed how happy she was that the project could bring revitalization to the downtown area.

I am certainly proud to represent over 600,000 people who want to have great economic development in every quadrant of our city, Bowser said. And today I am pleased to represent all of the members of the Council who are so proud of the resurgence, not only of downtown, but of every area of Washington.

Just a few months prior to this groundbreaking ceremony, right after Bowser won the Democratic primary, Ivanka Trump made another D.C. contribution: the maximum of $2,000 to Bowser, according to financial filings.

In October, just a month before her mayoral election, Eric Trumpanother major shareholder in the hotelmaxed out with another $2,000 to her election committee. And finally, once Bowser won her election in November 2014, Donald Trump himself gave $5,000 (the maximum allowed) to the new mayors D.C. Proud Inaugural Committee . Ivanka Trump later met with Bowser in 2015 for lunch.

Thats a total of $9,000, the maximum that could be legally contributed in a year, from the major players involved in the hotel to a mayor whod been very friendly to their next big business venture.

The mayors office has not responded to a list of questions from The Daily Beast.

Ashley Nash-Hahn, the press secretary for the GSA, characterized the process for determining a future occupant of the building as open, competitive, and transparent. It was among a number of interested offerors and [GSA] selected the one that provided the best value based on the public criteria. We also sent details of the agreement to Congress prior to final execution.

To add to the intrigue in the timing of the contributions, Bowsers opponent in the race, Councilmember and longshot David Catania, adamantly opposed the Trumps occupying the building all along.

In July 2014, he tweeted a picture of Bowser and the Trumps together at the groundbreaking saying Never been happier to NOT be there. #DCCanDoBetter #DCision14.

Now in the private sector, Catania told The Daily Beast that he didnt want to comment on the current mayor when asked whether he knew that the Trumps were giving money to Bowser.

He did not hold back on his criticism of Trump though.

Among other things, I found Mr. Trumps efforts to undermine the legitimacy of President Obamas presidency, by aiding and supporting the birther movement, to be disgraceful and dangerous, Catania said in an email.

A representative for Ivanka Trump declined to comment on her contributions to Bowser and Nortonthe only two local candidates in D.C. history to receive money from the Trumps.

Donald Trump has previously bragged about what his political contributions accomplish. When you give, he said in 2015, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.

He has also faced renewed scrutiny over an improper contribution the Trump Foundation gave to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013, at which time her office was considering an investigation into Trump University, for which Trump will be going to court later this year. In that instance too, both Ivanka and Donald Trump personally gave money to Bondis campaign.
Donald Trump touts his supposed business acumen and his (self-proclaimed) reputation as a great builder as two of his greatest presidential qualifications. But in the heart of northwest Washington, D.C.just a few blocks away from the White House he wishes to inhabit come Januaryit appears as though Trump has built himself one brand-new, luxuriously marbled flop.

On Monday afternoon, the real-estate mogul and Republican presidential nominees latest hotel finally enjoyed its soft opening (a quiet launch for invited guests that eschews all the pressures of an official grand opening) at the Old Post Office Pavilion.

The only celebrity spotted at the opening was, of all people, Oscar-nominated actor Randy Quaid (Independence Day, National Lampoons Vacation movies, Brokeback Mountain), who has gone off the deep end and alleged that a Hollywood assassination squad was after him and his wife.

Asked why he was in D.C., Quaid simply pointed to Trumps hotel and said for this, before jumping into a car and racing off.

The grand-opening ceremony for Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C., will reportedly take place next month, weeks before election night.

In 2011, the Trump Organization beat out the competition to secure a 60-year lease from the federal government to renovate the iconic Old Post Office building. Trump broke ground on the project before officially jumping into the 2016 presidential fray last year, and he has repeatedly vowed to make his newest hotel property one of the very best in the world. Earlier this year, he used his presidential campaign to help promote and brag about the new Trump hotel.

Between now and the planned October grand opening, Trumps D.C. venture has a way to go.

As press was ushered into the renovated buildingpassing the unironically titled PRESIDENTIAL BALLROOMthe smell of white paint was still thick, and contractors wearing hard hats were rushing about the lobby. The ground-level bar was mercifully open and serving Trump-brand sparkling wine, as the mounted TV screens played promos for Melissa Joan Harts Christian film Gods Not Dead 2.

Every item of decor, from the turquoise and faux-gold armchairs to the candy dishes made out of fake dimes and nickels, was handpicked by Ivanka Trump with the help of design firm HBA. The overall aesthetic is somewhere between real, inoffensive luxury and a Red Roof Inn patrons conception of what a stylish, upper-echelon hotel must be.

Just like every other Trump hotel, it is, in its own way, a perfect metaphor for the man himself.

For the entirety of this soft opening, journalists were permitted to explore only the lobby. Trump hotel staff enthusiastically greeted the small number of reporters and curious public to gush about the historic and iconic and beautiful structure.

As for its namesake? According to staff, he might as well be the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being theyve ever known in their lives.

Oh, a great guy, one front-desk staffer told The Daily Beast.

Ive met [the Trump family]you couldnt ask for better owners, one publicist claimed.

But the moment The Daily Beast asked about the Trump campaign or politics, the staff (clearly urged to keep their mouths shut about the GOP presidential hopefuls rhetoric and extreme policy prescriptions regarding Muslims, undocumented immigrants, war, and so forth) immediately demurred and directed the inquiries to media relations.

Patricia Tang, director of marketing for the Trump International Hotel, insisted that the campaign has not been bad for business and that all of the negative publicity is more than offset by the people who have already fallen in love with the newly opened Trump property.

As for the barely two dozen protesters outside, brandishing anti-Trump and anti-racist placards handed out by the controversial hard-left group ANSWER Coalition?

Everyone has a right to protestthis is Washington, D.C., Tang said with a smile.

The problem for Tang and the Trump family is that bad press has, for the past year, almost exclusively defined the media coverage of Trumps latest luxury hoteland there is real evidence that it is cutting into Trump Hotels bottom line.

Originally, Trump had assured future patrons that his D.C. hotel would include two world-class restaurants. The two celebrity chefs, Jose Andres and Geoffrey Zakarian, who had agreed to oversee the menus for their respective restaurants, pulled out of their deals shortly after Trump launched his White House run by loudly slamming Mexican immigrants as rapists. Trump, in a retaliatory strike, sued both celeb chefs. (Publicists for the chefs did not respond to The Daily Beasts requests for comment on Monday.)

Andres, for his part, devotes much space on his personal Twitter feed to tweeting and retweeting anti-Trump content.

The hotel opens now with only one two-floor restaurant located in the lobbyBLT Prime, a chain steakhouse.

The bad news for Trump Hotels doesnt stop there. Some industry estimates have reservations at Trump hotels down almost 60 percent since September of last yearand the word on the street is that Trumps legal tiff with the two celebrity chefs has tanked his family and brand name in the eyes of the restaurant community.

Hes clearly a racist and makes racist comments, and we have an industry that has always reached out to an immigrant population and built on the work of an immigrant population, Top Chefs Tom Colicchio, the owner of Craft who was reportedly approached by the Trump Organization after Andres and Zakarian bailed, told Mother Jones magazine. (Colicchio is also a friend of Andres.)

I think that the remarks [Trump] makes would make it very difficult for anyone to stand up in front of their staff and want to be part of what hes doing, he continued.

But if none of this bothers you, and youve found yourself in Washington, D.C., and need a place to crash, just make sure the Trump International Hotel is in your price range.

For weeknights this fall, the hotels least expensive rooms will run you a minimum of $735 per night. For comparison, other luxury hotels that will compete with Trump for business ring in at $400 a night at The Jefferson for October (around the time of the opening of the Trump hotel), and roughly $300 at The Willard. Both are boutique and historic hotels in the District.

The room rates at Trumps new establishment arent by simple design, but by necessity.

In a filing with the General Services Administration, lawyers for one of Trumps competitors argued that for Trumps hotel to stay afloat, it would have to charge some of the most exorbitant rates in the nations capital.

A properly conducted price reasonableness analysis would have resulted in the conclusion that the minimum base lease proposed by Trump would require Trump to obtain hotel room revenues which are simply not obtainable in this location based on the concepts for the redevelopment, the lawyers for the competing development team wrote.

Welcome to Trumps D.C. hotelperhaps a microcosm of the bigger, badder, and broke America that a President Trump could have in store.
Forty-five years ago today, on Sept. 13, 1971, nearly 1,300 men were waking up in the yard of the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York, eager to begin another long day of negotiations with state officials. After first failing to get help by writing to their state senators and pleading with the commissioner of corrections, these men had begun a protest against inhumane treatment four days earlier. On this rainy, damp morning, they were now hoping that they could finalize the list of improvements to the prison they had been negotiating, as well as secure a promise of no retaliation, so that they could bring their protest to a peaceful end.

Suddenly, however, the men looked up in horror to see a helicopter rising over the walls of the prison. Within minutes, it began blanketing the yard with a thick cloud of toxic tear gas. Then, as men began choking, gagging, and falling to the ground blinded by this noxious powder that now covered their skin and filled their lungs, a phalanx of nearly 600 heavily armed and gas-masked state police rushed into the prison and began shooting these men down. Then, over the next weeks and months, behind the closed doors of Attica, these men were brutally tortured.

Today, Sept. 13, 2016, hundreds of people who live behind bars are once again in jeopardy because, on this 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising of 1971, they too just launched a series of human-rights protests as well as work stoppages. Like those prisoners in upstate New York more than four decades ago, prisoners from Florida to Michigan have erupted because they too endure terrible overcrowding, insufficient food, too much time locked in solitary confinement, terrible medical care, and even bruises, broken bones, and, yes, death at the hands of abusive guards.

Their mistreatment is well documented. White guards in one Florida prison, for example, recently forced a black prisoner into a chair, and while choking, kicking and punching him, they screamed Lets beat this n- and teach him a lesson. What had he done? He had dropped a cookie on the floor. In another Florida correctional facility just a few years earlier, prisoner Darren Rainey died after officers punished him by forcing him to stand in a scalding 180-degree shower for two hours. In Michigans prisons, juveniles and women prisoners have been raped by correctional staff, suffered medical abuse and neglect, and have been forced to eat rotten and rat-ridden food.

And yet, just as it was overlooked in 1971, this inhumane treatment has been utterly ignored by prison authorities as well as by the politicians who have the power to do something to stop it. And so prisoners are once again protesting.

But because prisoners have exploded in frustration this weekfrom the 400 men at Floridas Holmes Correctional Institution that erupted on September 8 this week, to the 400 men who exploded at Michigans Kinross Correctional Facility, to the hundreds more who have called for strikes within prisons in Alabama, Texas, Virginia, and the Carolinasthey, like the prisoners at Attica 45 years ago, are likely now facing brutal retaliation for having dared to act up and to speak out.

It is past time for politicians to address the abominable conditions that exist in our nations thousands of prisons and jails. This country now has more than 7 million Americans under some form of correctional supervision, and nearly 2 million citizens locked up in these overcrowded, abusive, and inhumane facilities. These people may be serving a sentence, but they are still human beings, and they are crying out for help.

Back in 1971 when the prisoners at Attica protestedwhen they were begging for help from state officialsthey ended up being shot, tortured, and traumatized. And because the nation ignored the problem then, and indeed made it much, much worse, prisons are once again erupting. This time we cant respond with even more abuse. This time we must all listen, and act.

Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan who writes about prisons and prison policy. Her most recent book is Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy (Pantheon, 2016).
Getting Americans to care about human-rights atrocities half-a-world away is hard. Getting them fired up about confronting the corruption that fuels those slaughters is an order of magnitude harder. But thats what actor George Clooney and human-rights activist John Prendergast are aiming to do with their new project, The Sentry.

You cant shame war criminals, explains Clooney. But, he says, You can shame people in the international community: banks and bankers, lawyers. Theres a lot of people that you can shame who dont want to be associated with atrocities.

Thats where The Sentry comes in. Building off their partnership with the Satellite Sentinel, which deployed real-time satellite images to detect troop movements and stop slaughters before they occur, this new initiative aims at the roots of much of the current conflicts in South Sudannot ethnic rivalry but greed.

To get you up to speed, heres the current state of South Sudan as explained by Prendergast, founder of the Enough Project. The president kicked the vice president out of the country in mid-2013, principally because they wanted to make sure that their faction could have all of the opportunities for corruption. So once the vice president and his faction were kicked out of the government, it was only a matter of time before he had to fight his way back in, because its all or nothing. The war erupted, it was a fire that just raged across the landTheyll use attack helicopters. Theyll use rape as a tool of war. Theyll recruit child soldiers and go in and send them as cannon fodder into villages to kill people. The worst human-rights abuses being committed in the world. And this is what South Sudan has dealt with because of this fallout between these thieves over the last 2 years.

Its a particularly brutal kleptocracy, with the money going to fund lavish lifestyles as well as military hardware thats in turn used against the people of the country.

For Clooney, its a continuation of his commitment to leverage his celebrity to get people to care about something more than celebrity as he has kept faith with the people of South Sudan. Back in 2011, his relentless advocacy helped restore international attention to a long-promised referendum that ultimately resulted in a 98 percent vote for separation from the Islamist government of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan.

I traveled through Sudan with Clooney and Prendergast for a week surrounding the referendum for a Newsweek cover story. Even amid the celebrations, which were attended by then-Sen. John Kerry, Clooney was cautious about getting too close with the newly minted president, Salva Kiir, wondering if he might drift in the direction of a Robert Mugabe or Charles Taylor. He was also clear-eyed about Americas limited attention span, half-joking that it might take Real Housewives of Sudan to keep us focused on the fortunes of the newest nation on Earth. With The Sentry, hes certainly supplied some drama.

The initiative between Clooney and Prendergast comes paired with an investigative report about corruption in South Sudan with stories fit for a movie script. Theres the presidents 12-year-old son who controls 25 percent of an oil company; the shadowy Russian arms dealer who goes by the nebbish nom de guerre Mark Goldmann; the Chinese casino venture betting big on a country where more than 2 million people are displaced. A nephew of the vice president conducted an armed takeover of a security business when someone unwisely asked him to pay for shares in the company. There are generals buying lavish luxury retreats and multiple BMWs on $65,000 salaries and one high-living son in-law nicknamed Smart Boy for Life, who makes it rain on the international party circuit while his fellow citizens back home struggle and starve.

Along with those stories of excess and buffoonish corruption, the site offers a series of proposals to combat the kleptocracy using tools the U.S. government and businesses already have at their disposal.

Targeted sanctions that aim at specific individuals can be imposed by expanding existing executive orders to cover public corruption and misappropriation of funds. But so far broadly implemented sanctions with little comprehensive follow through have cut off law-abiding citizens from credit while doing little to deter bad actors, further destabilizing the young nation.

You gotta go in with a scalpel, Clooney explains, not a machete.

The report also recommends that a provision of the Patriot Act be used by the Treasury Department to counteract money laundering through comprehensive monitoring of the dirty money and scrutiny of real estate transactions by family members.

Theres some small irony in that Clooney was an uncompromising critic of the Patriot Act during the Bush administration. Anyone whos fond of democracy has to look at parts of the, the Patriot Act with a little trepidation, Clooney says. But there are elements of that that I think come in extraordinarily handy right now for this situation and I dont see anything wrong with being able to look into finances of people who are committing atrocities. And if it werent in the Patriot Act, it should be in some other Act.

With their agenda set out, Clooney & Co met with President Obama, National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Secretary of State John Kerry in the 24 hours after the initiative was unveiled on Monday at the National Press Club.

Were not the government. We cant issue subpoenas. We cant freeze assets, says Clooney. We can only prod the government to do that and as advocates thats exactly what our job is.

But government, he says, can only provide part of the solution. To follow the money also means dealing with the banksand helping them see they have what might be called an enlightened self-interest in helping police the problem.

Foreign companies have been making direct payments to South Sudanese generals and officials, enabling them to move the filthy lucre with ease between family members, properties, and accounts. Cracking down on the corporate enablers of kelptocracy is key.

Were showing you evidence that you are helping to launder this money which is being used to commit atrocities, says Clooney, imagining an interrogation of banksters. I know you dont want to be involved in that and, and we feel very confident that thats gonna be an effective tool.

Adds Prendergast: The banks can become our ally in this.

The ultimate goal is to help South Sudan develop the civic structures that can cultivate a civil society, but that requires a combination of time and the rule of law, rather than brute force. It will mean requiring a greater degree of transparency and accountability through foreign governments and corporations. But the alternative is another failed state, with ever more chaos, heartbreak, and bloodshed.

Its not just about following the money, says Clooney, explaining why Americans whose eyes too frequently glaze over when confronted with financial crimes should stay focused on the cost of corruption in South Sudan.

If this state were to fail in any way, shape or form, the influences that will come in have never been friendly to the United States and can always be dangerous. This is infinitely cheaper. Youre sitting at home in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Im from, and going Well why should I care? You should care because you dont want a failed state. In that vacuum bad things happen and those bad things can come to our shores.
Rebekah Mercer doesnt want to be in the news. But she wants to change it.

Shes one of the three daughters of Robert Mercer, a reclusive hedge fund billionaire who shells out millions to boost Republican candidates and causes. Like most mega-donors, the Mercers avoid media attention and seek to keep their influence quiet. Unlike most mega-donors, however, they dont just focus on aiding candidates they like or think tanks they appreciate. Over the last eight years, the Mercers have put a special premium on actually changing the media landscape, investing heavily in projects that try to shift how American news consumers understand American politics.

And, by the way, theyre all in for Donald Trump .

Rebekah Mercer oversees the bulk of the familys political giving, according to reports from Politico and The Hill , and shes listed as the Mercer Family Foundations director on its most recent publicly available tax forms , from 2014. Under her auspices, the foundation has grown more generous with each passing year.

In 2005, it shelled out a paltry $69,000 to charitable causes, including $5,000 to a charity that sends flowers to old folks homes. It also gave $60,000 to what it incorrectly called the Organ Institute of Science and Medicine. The address listed on the 990 matches that of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a group that publishes a book on nuclear war survival skills . In 2006 and 2007, the Mercers foundation cut checks for totals of $174,000 (including $50,000 to the Organ institute) and $292,000, respectively.

In 2008, though, things started changing. The foundation cut a single check that was bigger than the previous two years contributions combined: a cool million bucks to the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank known for its efforts to discredit mainstream science on climate change. It also made the first of many contributions to a group called the Media Research Center, which rips mainstream media outlets and reporters for perceived liberal bias. All told, it gave five times as much money in 2008 as it did in 2007. The next year, the familys foundation shelled out even more, including a contribution that was small but telling: $50,000 to the Council for National Policy, a nonprofit group comprised of the most influential social conservative leaders in the countryincluding, at least at one point , Donald Trumps current campaign bosses, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon. In every subsequent year, the foundation has given the group $50,000, except in 2014, when the sum dipped to $25,000. In 2014, all told, it gave out $18.3 million.

From 2008 to 2014, the foundation gave millions to groups looking to change American media. And from Hollywood to The New York Times best-seller list, their beneficiaries had outsize impact.

The Media Research Center has been the foundations biggest beneficiary over the years, according to the site Conservative Transparency. That site, run by the liberal opposition research group American Bridge, calculates that the Mercer Family Foundation has given the Media Research about $7.5 million in the past decade or so. The MRC, helmed by Brent Bozell, argues that mainstream media outlets are incorrigibly biased against conservative candidates and ideas.

Besides backing an advocacy site that tries to chastise mainstream reporters and outlets, the Mercers also help fund right-leaning reporters that investigate liberal figures.

For instance, one of the most influential projects they have backed is the Clinton Cash franchise.

On May 5, 2015, author Peter Schweizer published his opus on how Bill and Hillary Clinton made money in the private sector after his presidency. The book won adoring coverage from the Drudge Report, and Breitbart News (which well get to in a minute) plastered its site with ads for the tome. Reporters from The New York Times also covered its findings extensively and built upon them, drawing scrutiny from their public editor . The book played a key role in directing media attention to questionable dealings of the Clinton Foundation.

Before the book was even published, CNN called it the first major test of Hillary Clintons nascent presidential campaigns ability to fend off attacks from detractors. The books findings helped direct major scrutiny to the Clinton foundation. And more than a year after its publication, the criticism hasnt dissipated; in fact, The New York Times recently ran an editorial calling for Bill and Chelsea Clinton to cut their ties to the foundation if Hillary Clinton wins in November.

The Clinton Foundation would have drawn pointed scrutiny without Schweizers book. But its undebatable that his research played a substantial role in raising questions about the group. Schweizers home base is the Government Accountability Institute, which has helped promote his book.

The funding behind that group?

According to Bloomberg , Rebekah Mercer was not only one of its donors, but also sat on its board. Tax forms show her family foundation gave the group $1 million in 2013, and another $1 million in 2014. Bloomberg noted that Mercer was also a co-executive producer for a movie based on Schweizers book. His bookwhich made The New York Times best-seller listalso became a graphic novel, which drew it another round of rapturous coverage from Breitbart News.

Breitbart, by the way, also gets Mercer funding, according to a report from Politico , which the Mercers have not publicly countered.

And Bannon, now the Trump campaigns chief executive, is also closely connected to the Mercers. He formerly headed Breitbart News and is executive chairman and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute, according to its website . Hes also on the board of directors of a Manhattan group pushing for conservative policy changes called Reclaim New York. Rebekah Mercer is that groups chairman, director, and treasurer . Her sister Jennifer is its secretary. Small world.

Breitbart, without question, has been the most influential conservative news site in the 2016 election. It helped propel Donald Trump to a win in the Republican primaries, and its friendly coverage of the racist alt-right helped that movement grow, too. Alt-right leaders, by the way, were delighted when Bannon joined Trumps campaign.

Mercer money doesnt stop with Breitbart, though. The family foundation has also generously supported the Moving Picture Institute ($300,000 in 2014), and Rebekah Mercer is on its board .

That group seeks to help movies with conservative, libertarian, pro-school-choice, and anti-communist messages get widespread distribution. According to its site, it also looks to help conservative and libertarian filmmakers jump-start Hollywood careers. And it even has a program for standup comedians. Its produced a host of films pushing for school choice programs, according to its site , as well as a music video on monetary policy and a childrens movie about the Boston Tea Party starring animated cats and dogs.

Joe Biden is fond of saying, Show me your budget, and Ill tell you what you value.

The Mercer foundations spending makes their priorities clear: building a media empire.
Wild Turkey recently announced that it had hired a new creative director. Big news? Typically, no. But in this case, the companys newest employee is actor Matthew McConaughey.

In his new role, McConaughey will appear on camera (naturally) in advertising spots and short documentary-style films and will also write, direct, contribute music, advise on print photo shoots and participate in new product development. His first TV commercial of three will begin airing this month; he may even get his own special whiskey bottling. The project has been in the works for almost three years, with the Academy Awardwinning actor making a few clandestine trips to the Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, distillery. Ive always loved the art of the sell, he recently told The Daily Beast. I want to direct where the campaign goes and how were reintroducing this brand.

The announcement about the partnership attracted an expected amount of ridicule. (From Twitter: File this under LAME.) Stephen Colbert aired a spoof, in which he announced he would write, direct, key grip, [and] intern for a fictional 190-proof grain alcohol called Savage Cock.

But liquor brands bringing in celebrities to jump-start sales is a hallowed tradition, one that involves more symbiosis than parasitism. Brands are happy to hitch themselves to someone with star power, especially when targeting a new demographic. In turn, celebrities are happy to be hitched to a product that evokes good times. (Evidently the cash isnt bad either.)

Repeal had scarcely been enacted in the United States when actors started touting alcohol. Among them: a then-famous, now-little-remembered actor named James Barton. His star turn, in the hit 1934 Broadway play Tobacco Road, led Schenleyone of the top-selling liquor companies at the timeto recruit him to be the face of Cream of Kentucky Straight Bourbon. In Life magazine ads, Norman Rockwells portrait of a wry Barton glancing sideways offered this promise: As a great entertainer youll score a hit, if next time you entertain, you give your guests the double-rich Kentucky straight bourbon! The word entertainer appeared twice more in the ad, a not very subtle suggestion that if you wanted to be the life of the party, serve Cream of Kentucky.

The approach must have worked. In 1950, Schenley hired Herbert Marshalla British actor popular in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 40sto tout its smooth, sociable whiskey. (Its always an Enchanted Eveningwhen Herbert Marshall serves Schenley.)

Throughout the 1950s, celebrities were increasingly in demand to endorse every sort of productfrom box springs to mouthwashas the advertising center of gravity moved from magazines though radio and on to television. Liquor was no exception (although it eschewed TV ads until 1996).

In 1958, Basil Rathbone appeared in a print ad for Booths House of Lords Gin, dressed as Sherlock Holmes, holding an oversize magnifying glass with a towering Martini glass in the foreground. Basil Rathbone probes the Gentlemans Martini, says the header, then quotes the actor: It is elementary that crime does not pay. This is true whether the crime is murder, robbery, arson, blackmail or making an inferior Martini.

Traditional ads (cluttered, wordy, clumsy) faded as the 1960s ushered in the golden age of celebrity liquor endorsements. Advertising was now entering its Mad Men era, when the best and the brightest pioneered ways to make products (and the celebrities associated with them) stand out in print ads with copious white space and witty, lean copy.

Major liquor brands scrambled for stars. Smirnoff recruited well-established names like actor Groucho Marx, bandleader Benny Goodman and late-night television host Johnny Carson to hype its vodka in print ads. Carson, for instance, was pictured sitting in a chair covered with snow, a St. Bernard at his feet, a bottle of Smirnoff around its neck and a Fresca between its paws. (Smirnoff comes to the rescue of hum-drum summer drinking.)

Smirnoff also conscripted young actor/director Woody Allen to appeal to a more youthful clientele; one full page pictured him emerging from a conch shell on a beach amid an array of colorful vodka cocktails. The predictable tag line? Come out of your shell Try Smirnoff.

Other celebrity-linked brands included George Dickel, which used country musician and former felon Merle Haggard as its spokesman (Waters for teardrops. Dickels for drinkin) and Black Velvet, which relied on actor Telly Savalas (Feel the Velvet, baby.) and comedian George Burns to vouch for its Canadian whisky. (The Burns tagline: After you feel Velvet, you wont want to touch another Canadian.)

The most aggressive of brands when it came to celebrities was Jim Beam, which, throughout the 1960s, enlisted stars in a series of ads that often played off the theme of two one-of-a-kind originals.

The ad men who recruited Beam spokespeople were on their game and built a deep bench: Ella Fitzgerald, Elliot Gould, Betty Davis, Sean Connery. It is an impressive list of notables that embodied cool during an era when being uncool was an unforgivable sin.

The period of the celebrity endorser faded as the more cynical 1970s and 80s encroached. (Out with the square jaw, in with the sardonic looks.) By 2004, a disheveled Tracy Ullman was pitching Tanqueray Gin in a red bathrobe with a what are you looking at? face, a quintessential meta-anti-glamour. (It was a far cry from Zsa Zsa Gabor in diamonds saying, Dont darling me if its not Smirnoff.) The message? Tanqueray may be British, but its not for the stuffy.

In the past decade, celebrities have tended to show up next to a bottle of liquor when said bottle is his or her own brand. Think: George Clooney and Casamigos, Sean Combss partnership with Diageos Ciroc Vodka, Danny DeVito and his limoncello and Ron Jeremy and his Ron de Jeremy Rum (long, smooth finish). Todays celebrity takes ownership. A smile and a wink no longer do the trick.

Millennials can smell fake, McConaughey told The New York Times. Some manicured, bearded hipster soliciting them? No, thanks.

The McConaughey deal is an interesting hybridhe takes some outward ownership of the brand and its image (although whether that involves actual shares in Wild Turkeys parent company, Campari, is uncertain), but he is still essentially a gun for hire, a celebrity endorser more involved than in earlier times.

Will McConaughey reshape the future of liquor advertising or be remembered as the James Barton of the 2010s?

Dont touch that dial.
A Mexican billionaire tried to buy San Diego mayoral candidates as part of his surefire plan to turn the San Diego waterfront into Miami West. Jose Susumo Azano Matsura, his son, and another associate were found guilty by a jury last week after a six-week trial.

The criminal complaint tried to obscure the recipients of Azanos donations, but they were identified in court as Democratic former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, failed Republican mayoral candidate Bonnie Dumanis, and other candidates. Dumanis is now the San Diego County District Attorney.

Filner, one of the candidates helped by Azanos scheme, eventually won the race. But the Democrat had to resign shortly after multiple allegations of sexual harassment, including that he grabbed women at campaign events. He was eventually sentenced to 90 days of home confinement and three years of probation, according to CNN .

Indeed, officials said during the trial that it was their investigation of Filner that put them on to Azano in the first place.

Azano needed mayoral support for his plan to develop the San Diego waterfront, where he planned a $500 million development that was to include a luxury marina and a high-rise hotel.

It was an audacious plan, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Schopler told jurors. And it almost worked.

The Jalisco native made his money in security technology. He has a much higher profile in Mexico than the U.S., according to the California Patch, which reports his Security Tracking Devices SA de CV company was also embroiled in a fraud investigation in Mexico. He also has a long-standing feud with Sempra Energy.

Azano was helped in his San Diego venture by his own son, Edward Susumo Azano Hester, a luxury car dealer named Marc Chase and others, who recruited people to make donations to candidates on Azanos behalf and even did so in their own names. (Chase pleaded guilty to eight misdemeanor counts relating to the case in 2014.)

Once Azano decided to support a candidate, he and his co-conspirators designed secret, illicit methods of contributing to the candidates campaign, knowing that Azano could not finance the campaigns directly because of campaign contribution/donation limits and his status as a foreign national, the complaint said.

At one point, Azano and associate Ravneet Singh gave campaigns unreported in-kind contributions of services through Singhs campaign social media services company, Electionmail. It was really Azano who funded the services through a Mexico-based company.

Azanos exact net worth is hard to pin down, but the reported billionaire owns two houses in California and others around the country. His interest in San Diego politics began in 2011 when he began trying to buy their loyalty with large donations, the complaint said.

On Dec. 21, 2011, one of the straw donors recruited by Azanos son sent out a plea to his friends.

I need to get a $500 check from you to help Susu [the son] and His Father support the soon to be Mayor Bonnie Dumanis, he wrote. We will give you the cash right away so you wont lose any money but your support is appreciated and very much needed.

In February 2012, Azano set up a $75,000 in-kind donation for Dumanis, through Singhs company. An email between Electionmail, Singh, and Azano referred to it as the betty boo project. Azano also set up an independent expenditure committee to support her, funnelling $100,000 into it.

During the trial Dumanis, the failed mayoral candidate, testified that she didnt recall much about her interactions with Azano, despite his hefty contributions to her campaign. They were introduced by a retired San Diego police detective who pleaded guilty to his involvement in the Azano scheme in 2014.

Given the dynamics of the campaign... its kind of irregular that a campaign and a candidate would be unaware of such large donations being given to their campaign, Chris Crotty, a San Diego political consultant, told The Daily Beast. But thats what Bonnie testified to in the trial.

Dumanis lost the mayoral race. But Azano and his cohort were playing both sides, just in case. And his other bet won.

Another $120,000 of Azanos money went to Filner, through a separate independent expenditure committee that supported him. Azano gave Filner an additional $191,955 in in-kind contributions through Electionmail.

But these large sums are rare in San Diego politics, which still has a small-town feel.

San Diego political circles are small and small-dollar. And everyone who is not a small donor, everybody knows and everybody asks, Crotty said. So you have this new guy pop up on the scene... and that just doesnt happen.

Prosecutors brought in countless invoices, bank records, emails, and wire transfers to make the case.

The jurys verdict confirms that a foreign national must not attempt to influence a United States election, said Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Blair Perez.

Singh and Azanos son were also found guilty of some crimes relating to the scheme. Azano was convicted on 36 counts.

I am absolutely confident that we will win on appeal, his attorney, Michael Wynne, told reporters after the guilty verdict. But Wynne did not return a request for comment in time for publication.

The 51-year-old Azano will be sentenced on Dec. 12. His waterfront plans remain unfinished.
Mike Pence doesnt want David Dukes support, but under no circumstances will he call him deplorable.

Thats what Donald Trumps running mate told a roomful of reporters on Capitol Hill this morning. The Trump camp has faced a host of questions about their loyal backing from the racist alt-right ever since Hillary Clinton said half their supporters could go in a basket of deplorables. Clinton later walked back the remark, saying half was an overstatement. And the Trump campaign cut an ad saying her comment was contemptuous and made her unfit to be president.

Reporters have kept pressing Pence on whether hell use the word deplorable to describe any of his supporters. And so far, no dice. That includes David Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan now running a long-shot Senate campaign in Louisiana. On CNN on Monday, Pence disavowed Dukes support but refused to describe him using the d-word.

Today at the press conference, he again opted out of using that particular descriptor for Duke.

Im not in the name-calling business, the Indiana governor said.

He referred to Duke as a bad man, but added that he was not going to validate the language Hillary Clinton used to describe the American people.

In other words, Mike Pence will not use the word deplorable under any circumstances to describe anyone. Including David Duke.

That may please the former KKK leader. Duke told BuzzFeed on Monday that he appreciated Pences decision to reject this absolute controlled media. On Tuesday, Duke added it was a real positive thing for all of us that Pence didnt denounce him.

Still, Pence reiterated that he and Trump dont want the white supremacists, like those in the alt-right, to back them.

And he lavished praise on one of the alt-rights most loathed Republicans: Speaker Paul Ryan. Alt-right figures hate Ryan for supporting free-trade deals and more open immigration policies. And conservative figures like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham criticize him for the same reasons. Steve Bannon, Trumps new campaign chief executive, even essentially endorsed Ryans far-right primary challenger, Paul Nehlen.

Pencewho has praised free-trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Ingraham and Bannon loathesaid he feels differently. When a reporter asked him if Ryans willingness to criticize Trump hindered their efforts to court moderate Republicans, Pence was entirely positive about the Speaker.

My and Donald Trumps respect and appreciation of Speaker Paul Ryan is boundless, Pence said.

To review: David Duke is bad and Paul Ryan is good.
BALTIMORE  If Donald Trump expected to get a warm reception from a group of people he just dissed, he didnt get it.

Ive met more generals [here] than Ive ever met in my life. I like them and they like me, Trump told the crowd packed into the Baltimore Convention Center attending The National Guard Association of the United States annual conference.

It sure didnt feel that way.

The audience, made up primarily of officers in the U.S. National Guard, was lukewarm at best. His applause lines drew a tepid response. A noticeable number of people in the audience declined to clap at all, such as when he bragged about his poll numbers.

The lackluster response may be in part due to Trumps comments just last week, when he disparaged Americas generals, saying at a presidential forum that they have been reduced to rubble during President Obamas administration. It was not a point he repeated before a convention hall filled with American military officers.

But the speech certainly did not have the boisterous feeling of a Trump campaign rally, where the audience frequently interrupts with chants of Lock Her Up! or other insults toward Trumps opponent, Hillary Clinton. And his stilted comments, delivered from prepared remarks fed to him through his teleprompter, lacked the freewheeling atmospherics that Trump has made a hallmark of his events.

Still has to work on the teleprompter [delivery], said one attendee, who asked not to be identified due to his position, but was generally supportive of what Trump had to say. He could have spent more time on his policies rather than attacking Hillary.

Trump promised the moon if he were to become president, telling the audience that the National Guard will have the resources, the equipment and the support you need and deserve, and a direct line to the Oval Officeand I mean direct.

Trumps speech Monday comes as his campaign has become increasingly divisive within the U.S. military.

While there is no official polling of those those who serve, around the service it appears rank and file troops are more likely to support Trump while their commanders are backing Clinton.

Trumps suggestion last week at the Commander-in-Chiefs forum that he would purge the military of its generals if they disagreed with his foreign policy only widened that schism. Some in uniform argue that todays generals are among the nations most experienced as nearly all have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, the majority have sent troops on missions that led to casualties.

I just shake my head. I dont feel much like rubble, retired Gen. John Allen, a Hillary Clinton supporter, said Sunday on ABCs This Week. As I look around at my peers Theyre some of the finest leaders that America has ever put under stars, whether they are admirals or generals. They are spectacular leaders and they have not been reduced to rubble.

Standing in front of flags representing the countrys 50 states, Trump sandwiched scathing criticism of Hillary Clinton between praise for Americas military. The Republican nominee focused on Clintons comments from last week, when she said before a Democratic fundraiser that half of Trumps supporters were drawn from a basket of deplorables.

Clintons comments were most explicit attack on the American voter ever spoken by a major party nominee, Trump roared. She revealed herself to be a person who looks down at the proud citizens of our country as subjects of her rule. Her comments display arrogance and entitlement.

To be sure, there were some in the audience who were absolutely on the Trump Train.

Its disrespectful for any American, not just Trump supporters. When youre talking about any person she should be supporting every citizen of the United States, said Roy Pipkin, a retired National Guard colonel from South Carolina. When she said that I guess it was a shot at redneck Americans. I dont know what she meant by it, but having Southern roots [Clintons comments were] totally deplorable.

Trumps speech was not particularly self-conscious: Trump blasted Clinton for living a sequestered life between gates and walls and guards, an odd criticism for a man who has made a name for himself building skyscrapers with gaudy and extravagant decor and his name emblazoned in gold on the side. Not to mention his fascination with building his own private security army.

To the working class of America, Trump pledged: I will be your voicedespite having been the beneficiary of a large inheritance and his place in the billionaire class. And he called Clinton divisive, which didnt take into account his own unique divisivenessand the insults he has heaved at prisoners of war and a Gold Star family.

But the most least convincing part of the speech, coming before a military audience, is when he focused on national security. It sounded hollow: He said the United States needed a real plan for victory against ISISbut laid out no such plan; he said defense cuts needed to be reversed, but did not explain how he would counter expected Congressional resistance; he promised modern equipment for the National Guard, but couldnt say how it would be paid for.

It felt like empty rhetoricand he got an empty response in return.

Nancy Youssef contributed reporting for this article.
PHILADELPHIA  A forceful and somewhat frustrated President Obama characterized Donald Trump as a selfish, dictator-loving moron who is a threat to the very fabric of American democracy.

In his first solo campaign appearance for Hillary Clinton (and as he said, perhaps his last visit to Philadelphia as president), Obama emphasized that her victory would be a continuation of his successes.

You dont grade the presidency on a curve, Obama, with sleeves rolled up, said near the famous steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art where Rocky Balboa once ran. This is serious business.

Coming off the heels of a recent poll indicating a 58% approval ratingthe highest since six months into his presidency in 2008Obama riffed on the greatest hits of his administration, including a report today detailing a 5.2% rise in median income, and painted Clinton as a steady, thoughtful choice in an unsteady, insane year.

I am really into electing Hillary Clinton, he said, stating the somewhat obvious.

Serving as a surrogate for the campaign, during a week in which Clinton is bringing out the heavyweights of the Democratic Party while she recovers from pneumonia, Obama repeated a similar talking point that Clinton has crafted since the Democratic National Convention; Trump is not a typical Republican. So its OK, as a Republican, to support Clinton.

This is a dark, pessimistic vision, Obama said of the Trump campaign, one which he said has deviated substantially from the Party of Lincoln.

Expressing frustration both with media coverage of the election and the closeness of the race in the pollsa concern of some Democrats who have voiced consternation as to why the contest hasnt been put away yetObama took off the gloves and bare-knuckle punched Trump in a vicious onslaught.

Do you mind if I just vent for a second? Obama said to one of the loudest cheers of the afternoon. When we see folks talking about transparencyyou want to debate transparency? Youve got one candidate in this race who has released decades of her tax returns, the other candidate is the first in decades who refuses to release any at all.

Trump has been dogged by constant requests to release his taxes, something that some 62 percent of Americans want to see and a normal prerequisite for the office. And as his foundation comes under more scrutiny, with potential pay-to-play scandals involved, the pressure continues to mount.

This week, both campaigns have promised to release more medical records as a reaction to Clintons health episode on Sunday. But Trumps campaign manager Kellyanne Conway seemed to suggest this morning that they werent entirely necessary, saying that we all have a right to privacy. Meanwhile Trump himself is going to appear on Dr. Ozs show, during which the scam artist physician has already promised not to ask difficult questions.

Fully embracing the role as prizefighter for Clinton, Obama also ripped Trump for his foundations freewheeling use of charitable contributions.

One candidates family foundation has saved countless lives around the world, the other candidates foundation took money other people gave to his charity and then bought a six-foot-tall painting of himself, Obama said referencing an insane anecdote from a recent Washington Post story. He had the taste not to go for the 10-foot version, he quipped.

Clintons absence from the trail did not seem to bother some supporters gathered in the Eakins Oval on Tuesday, who characterized the presidential contest as a shared interest between Obama and his one-time rival.

We have to make sure that Trump does not get in and ruin this country, local designer Erica Sullivan said, sporting a festive hat with pictures of Clinton and Obama embracing. I think it sends a wonderful message to not just our country but to the entire worldthat at one point in time, [Clinton and Obama] were running against each otherand now hes embraced her in his arms and hes supporting her. It just makes your heart feel good.

And the importance of Pennsylvania, a state where Clinton has held a steady lead and a must-win for both candidates, was not lost on Obama. As staffers registered voters while they entered the park, the president reminded the crowd that voting registration ends on Oct. 11.

Democracy is not a spectator sport, Obama said in an effort to mobilize the same people that propelled him into office. Many of those young voters though arent as enthused with the option of Clinton as they were with Obama, a weakness which her campaign hopes to overcome with the deployment of him and others as surrogates.

So far, a simple contradiction with Trump hasnt proven to give Clinton, the second most unpopular presidential candidate in history, the boost she needs to definitively win this race. As Obama put it once again, while the crowd voiced dissent at the mere mention of Trumps name: Dont boo, vote.
In 2011, Seth Meyers gave the ultimate indictment of a Donald Trump presidential candidacy. Donald Trump said that he was running for president as a Republican, Meyers said, at the time hosting the White House Correspondents Dinner. Thats funny, because I thought he was running as a joke.

The burns kept comingDonald Trump owns the Miss USA pageant, which is great for Republicans because it will streamline their search for vice presidentand, five years later, havent stopped.

Then, Donald Trump was in the room, scowling as Meyers roasted the very idea of the reality TV personality being taken seriously as a politician. Now, hes the elephant in the room, as Meyers hosts his daily late-night talk show.

In more than two dozen segments, Meyers has taken Trump to task on everything from the Trump University lawsuits to his incredibly racist attacks on an Indiana-born Hispanic trial judge to, most recently, the disparity in media coverage between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

This election has an older sister/younger brother dynamic, Meyers said earlier this week. Basically, Trump is Ferris Bueller and youre his sister Jeannie. Trump can skip school, dance on a parade float, and claim to be the sausage king of Chicago, but you, Hillary? You should know better. You were Secretary of State while he was televising a Gary Busey job interview. The rules are different for you.

When The Daily Beast talked to Meyers a full year ago, we were marveling at the fact that Trump was being taken seriously, even wondering then if we would get exhausted of talking and joking about him. At the end of the day I think everybody only has to take seriously that Donald Trump is at the top of the polls without ever having to take Donald Trump seriously, Meyers said at the time.

A year later, Meyers is back on the phonethis time with his former Saturday Night Live co-stars Fred Armisen and Bill Haderto talk about the upcoming second season of Documentary Now!, the absurdist comic homage to classic documentaries that premieres this week. The trio co-created and write the show; Armisen and Hader star in it.

In the time since we last talked, not only has Trump won the Republican nomination for president, but Meyers has also become a vital and unflinching voice in taking the air out of his candidacyeviscerating Trump to the point that it was no longer a joke. Earlier this summer, for example, he delivered a near seven-minute diatribe against the candidate that was short on laughs but pulsing with invective immediacy.

Given this, we asked Meyers if he thought that actually having Trump on his show as a guest would result in a meaningful, perhaps even necessary conversation.

I would think it would make for good television, Meyers told The Daily Beast. I think I could promise that. But as far as a meaningful conversation I think both people have to want that to happen, and I can only speak for half of that.

Im hard pressed to think if Ive seen him have that, [where it] wasnt just sort of deflecting and re-routing the conversation, he added.

One year ago, we wondered if we would ever tire of talking about Trump, perhaps even predicting that his buzz would fizzle. How wrong we were.

Obviously what hes doing, hes showing a real political acumen that I completely underestimated, he said. Ive been wrong about him at every turn. Im not saying that what hes doing is wrong. Im just saying that it might not result in anything meaningful if he ever did this.

When asked if he would be game to have Trump on as a guestdespite appearing on Jimmy Fallons talk show twice, Trump has not appeared on Meyerss show, which pundits attribute to hurt feelings over that Correspondents Dinner speechMeyers said hed be game, joking, Well, yeah, but we dont have a lot of openings so he might have to be a second guest.

Its at this point that Meyerss Documentary Now! cohorts weigh in. Feel the Bern, right? jokes Fred Armisen. Freds eight months behind on politics, Meyers laughs. We have to break the news to Fred right now, Hader jokes, about Bernie Sanderss candidacy.

As the conversation ends, Armisen gets in one last request: Tell everyone to feel the Bern!

A longer conversation with Meyers, Hader, and Armisen about Documentary Now!a show you all should watchwill publish Wednesday on The Daily Beast.
Three years after she was sentenced to 35 years in prison, the most pressing question about Chelsea Manning is not whether shes a traitor or a hero. Its whether shes a human being.

Two months ago, the former WikiLeaks source tried to kill herself, later citing a lack of care for [her] gender dysphoria as the motivating factor. Five days ago, she announced the start of her hunger strike with a simple plea: I need help. I am not getting any.

Manning, who came out as transgender shortly after her 2013 sentencing, has been particularly vocal about the fact that the United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) is requiring her to adhere to male hairstyle standards. As part of her hunger strike, Manning says she will refuse to voluntarily cut or shorten [her] hair in any way, which would likely vex USDB officials.

In a court brief filed last November, the Department of Justice claimed that making an exception for Mannings hair would pose a significant security risk, and would undermine the USDBs important military mission.

But at the heart of the conversation around the length of Mannings hair is a sobering question: If the United States cant even treat transgender people humanely outside jail, what hope do transgender prisoners have?

According to ACLU staff attorney Chase Strangio, who represents Manning, transgender prisoners may be a bridge too far for a government that has supported trans rights in other arenas.

Although the federal government has argued outside of the prison context that transgender women are women and transgender men are men, when it comes to treatment in custody, our government seems to believe it is just to strip away ones core humanity as part of the punishment of incarceration, Strangio told The Daily Beast.

In response to inquiries about Mannings hair and her hunger strike, a U.S. Army spokesperson told The Daily Beast, The U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth monitors the health and welfare of individual inmates to ensure procedures are pursued to preserve life.

Like Manning, most transgender prisoners in the U.S. are held in facilities that correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth unless they have undergone sex reassignment surgery (SRS). Military officials did, however, grant Manning access to hormone therapy last February after an ACLU lawsuit. The following month, an Army appeals court ordered military officials to stop referring to Manning as male.

This puts Manning in the awkward position of having had her gender recognized in some official capacities, but not others.

According to the DOJs November 2015 court brief, Manning is permitted to receive psychotherapy for her gender dysphoria, speech therapy, hormone therapy, female undergarments, and subdued cosmetics. But somehow, allowing her to have hair longer than 2 inches would compromise prison-security and military values at the USDB, the DOJ claimed.

The DOJs brief attempted to justified this discrepancy by arguing that Manning is housed in a male facility for male military inmates and is therefore not similarly situated to female inmates who are housed in facilities for female military inmates.

But the logic that placed Manning in a male facility in the first place is the same logic that has been used to deny medical treatment to prisoners like her for decades.

As a Lambda Legal FAQ states, seven circuit courts have recognized gender dysphoria as a legitimate medical condition. Most major medical associationsincluding the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Associationagree. But despite recent court victories for transgender prisoners, U.S. prison officials still commonly block the access of incarcerated people to transition-related health care, as Lambda Legal notes.

To date, for instance, no transgender prisoner has ever been able to receive SRS while still in detention, even though medical associations have long recognized its potential necessity depending on the patient. (Michelle-Lael Norsworthy, the first trans prisoner set to receive SRS after a 2015 court ruling, was paroled before the procedure could take place.)

Surgical procedures aside, physicians who treat transgender people also recognize that hair can be of vital importance for their patientsas it is for many cisgender people.

Clinical psychologist and World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) board member Dr. Randi Ettner, who evaluated Manning, said in a court filing that she should be immediately permitted to outwardly express her female gender through grooming standards that permit her to grow her hair. And in a section on transgender children, the WPATH Standards of Care highlight the potential significance of having a hairstyle that reflects gender identity during transition.

That doesnt mean that every transgender woman needs long hair nor that every transgender man wants short hair. But as the ACLU noted in an October 2015 court complaint, Manning reportedly feels like a freak and a weirdonot because having short hair makes a person less of a womanbut because for her, it undermines specifically recommended treatment and sends the message to everyone that she is not a real woman.

Dr. Ettner has also stated that the refusal to permit [Manning] to consolidate her female gender through the outward expression of her femininity causes her to suffer extreme pain, depression, and anxiety, according to the ACLU.

The DOJ waved away these concerns in its November brief by observing that Dr. Ettners evaluation of Manning had taken place over fourteen months ago and by arguing that a vague allusion to a potential future risk of harm is insufficient to establish that Manning is currently suffering an objectively serious deprivation.

After Mannings suicide attempt, however, it may become more difficult to argue that the risk of harm is vague. In the wake of that attempt, Manning has not yet been permitted to grow out her hairhence the hunger strikebut she could face additional charges for trying to kill herself.

Rather than treat Chelsea, the government has continued to deny her the necessary care that their own doctors have recommended and then, when Chelsea made the decision to end her life, they punished her for that as well, Strangio told The Daily Beast.

For her part, Manning has tried to shift public focus away from her 2013 conviction for leaking government documents to the fact that she is, above all, a person.

The bottom line is that I am only human, Manning wrote in a Medium post published shortly after her suicide attempt. When I cut my finger turning the page of a book, I bleed like everybody else.

There is no doubt that Manning bleeds. But in the eyes of the law, it seems, the question of her humanity remains an open one.
Julia Roberts Says MLK Jr. Paid Hospital Bill For Her Birth

YES, YOU READ THAT RIGHT

The actress said her parents were friends with King and his wife, and the couple helped out when they couldn't afford the bill.
DECATUR -- In 1866, the man who brought Abraham Lincoln to Illinois and later helped label him the Railsplitter Candidate built a brick house in Hickory Point Township.

This was John Hanks, and the house he built still stands -- its at 3496 Betzer Ave. Other than peeling white paint, a different porch and a general state of disrepair, it doesnt look much different than when it was erected.

Hanks great-great-great-great-nephew Tom Hanks -- not the actor -- lives in Decatur and has been studying his familys history for 50 years. Tom considers that house a piece of history that needs preserving.

But thats where the story gets complicated. The owner of the house doesnt live in Decatur, and his family, Tom said, won't return his calls. And even if the owner did want to sell the property, finding the money to buy it wouldnt be easy. Nor would turning it into the historic site Tom wants to see it become.

Plus, time is running out.

I took some of the local historical people out there and they said, Oh Tom, that needs to be saved,  Tom said. They said its salvageable, but that it might not be for much longer.

John Hanks isnt a household name among nonhistorians, but he was first cousins with Lincolns mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln. He not only brought Lincoln to Decatur, but was also a major figure in Macon County history.

The house in question was built in 1866, but John Hanks history on the property dates back to 1829. Like Lincoln, Hanks came to Illinois from Indiana: He lived with the Lincolns awhile before moving west to Macon County in 1828. He originally settled near Harristown along the Sangamon River, and sent word to the Lincolns that there was rich farmland under the prairie and to pull up stakes and come to Illinois.

John, though, moved to Bull Point -- now called Hickory Point Township, about a half-mile east of Boiling Springs. He built a cabin there and began farming. When the Lincolns arrived in 1830, he helped them build a cabin, smokehouse and barn near Harristown where John had originally settled. John and Lincoln -- then 21 years old -- split the rails used to build the cabin, and later split more than 3,000 logs in the employ of Macon County Sheriff William Warnick, who lived near there.

That winter, known in Macon County as the winter of the deep snow, drove the Lincolns out of Macon County. Abrahams father Thomas took the family to the Charleston area, while Lincoln decided to strike out on his own and moved to New Salem.

Through the years, though, Lincoln and John remained close. When Lincoln later came through Macon County as a lawyer on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, he would stay with John and his family at Bull Point.

Johns friendship with Lincoln even persuaded John to switch his political affiliation. The Hanks family were southern Democrats, and even John -- the only Hanks with whom Lincoln got along -- had voted against Lincoln during his runs for office with the Illinois legislature.

But in 1860, at the State Republican Convention held in the Decatur Wigwam, John dramatically switched sides. Before the event, Richard Oglesby and John went to the location of the Lincolns old cabin on the Sangamon River and brought back two rails John claimed he and Lincoln had split. At the convention, Oglesby announced that an old-time Democrat of Macon County wanted to make a contribution to the Convention, then Hanks burst in with a sign tied between two rails that read, Abraham Lincoln, the Rail Splitter candidate for President in 1860. John attended Lincolns inauguration in Washington, and also his funeral in Springfield.

But Hanks significance isnt just tied to Lincoln. He helped build the first courthouse in Macon County in 1830, daubing and chinking it. Daubing is covering or coating with soft, adhesive matter, such as plaster or mud; chinking is filling in cracks.

Hanks built the bridge over Stevens Creek in Bull Point and served on the first and second juries in Decatur. He was also a ranger in Capt. Isaac Pughs company in the Black Hawk War, took part in the 1849 California Gold Rush, and, at age 58, was a wagoner in charge of Gen. Ulysses S. Grants baggage during the Civil War.

After the Gold Rush, John returned to Decatur with enough money to build on to his cabin, which he improved into a seven-room structure.

It was quite ostentatious for those days, Tom Hanks said.

But the cabin caught fire and burned in 1866. John replaced it with a brick house 20 yards east of the cabin site. John, then known to most in Macon County as Uncle Johnny, died in 1889 at 87 and was buried alongside his wife and other family members in Boiling Springs Cemetery. Their graves are still there, along with a Looking for Lincoln historical marker.

The house, though, was occupied by various people for more than 100 years. Tom Hanks said he found out about it after learning the Hanks family history and their relation to Lincoln from his great-aunt.

Tom said hes tried several times to contact the owner and his family, but has never heard back: They probably think Im a crackpot, he said. But he doesnt want to give up.

It needs saved, Tom said. It could be restored. Ive got all the time in the world and would love to take it on.

The problem is, even if the owner was willing to sell, Tom doesnt have the kind of money it would take on his own. In addition to buying the property, he would need to have it renovated extensively, including painting and removing the front and back porches, and building a porch to replicate the original.

Nathan Pierce, Macon County History Museum director, said there aren't a lot of options.

There is an organization in town, the HASC (Historical and Architectural Sites Commission), and they could help him apply for a state grant and make sure its restored properly, Pierce said. Otherwise, the states not going to put the money up. And even if there was a grant or a private donor, whos going to maintain it, or man the tours? Its a lot more complicated than people realize. Im not sure how realistic it is.

Pierce said the Macon County Conservation District could be an option: It restored and maintains the Gov. Richard Oglesby Mansion. But district Director Paul Marien cringed at the mention of taking on another historic site.

Its a huge undertaking; these places are money pits, Marien said. What kills us is the preservation. Its unbelievably expensive, and it involves a lot of time and effort. You have to meet the standards of public access, and that can really drive the cost up.

Marien said the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency in Springfield could be another option. However, Chris Wills, a spokeman for that agency, said there's not much his organization could do without the owner's permission.

"The owners of a home have control over its fate," Wills said. "There's nothing the state can do to block what they want to do with the property, and the state can't require them to take action."

Wills offered a resource in Illinois Landmarks, which has a website at landmarks.org and puts out a list called "Most Endangered Historic Places in Illinois."

Hanks said the lack of options are frustrating to him, but he's not ready to give up.

We have people around here with talent and money, Hanks said. We need to make this happen.
New packaging captures spirit of Wild Turkey

Wild Turkey is releasing striking new packaging for their bourbon and rye whiskies, better reflecting the core values of its historic brand. Each expression will feature a detailed new turkey illustration, a spirited bird that is authentic, proud and bold - characteristics that are at the heart of Wild Turkey.

Nick Williamson, Campari UK marketing director says: The bold and characterful liquid of Wild Turkey now has a fantastic new label to match. The new labels all featuring a proud and prominent turkey icon, will ensure the bottle stands out in much the same way the whiskey has for decades. There has been an explosion of interest in bourbon and rye whiskies amongst UK bartenders and consumers, and the new pack will help ensure Wild Turkey remains at the forefront of this in the coming years.

The change of packaging comes on the heels of recent positive attention for the Wild Turkey brand stemming from critical and commercial success of its super premium limited time offerings, including Masters Keep, and is the latest example of Campari UKs efforts to further popularise the iconic brand throughout the UK. To date, the company has invested more than $100 million to thoroughly modernise and expand the Wild Turkey distillery experience, including the construction of a new visitor center and packaging facility.

The new look for the entire range of bourbon and rye whiskeys also reflects Eddie Russells promotion to master distiller last year. The packaging now makes it clear to consumers that Wild Turkey Kentucky Straight Bourbon (formerly known as Wild Turkey 81) is Eddies creation, while his father and living legend Jimmy Russell is the creator of Wild Turkey 101. Eddies signature is front and center on Wild Turkey Kentucky Straight Bourbon, while Jimmys is prominently placed on Wild Turkey 101.

Eddie Russell says: We wanted the new packaging to capture the hard work, craftsmanship, and heart that goes into making Wild Turkey. My father and I have been making whisky the same way for over 60 years. From hand selecting the grain, to bottling the liquid, and everything in between, we make sure our product is made the right way  the traditional way  at every single stage. Were proud of our whisky, and were glad to have packaging that embodies that.

In addition to its range of bourbon products, packaging for Wild Turkeys rye expressions have also been updated. Wild Turkey, as a way of celebrating Americas first spirit, is one of the few distilleries that has always produced rye whiskeys, long before the rye boom the industry is experiencing today. The new look features rich green colours and a premium split label design - a nod to the superior quality and character of the whisky. In addition to its range of bourbon products, packaging for Wild Turkeys rye expressions have also been updated. Wild Turkey, as a way of celebrating Americas first spirit, is one of the few distilleries that has always produced rye whiskeys, long before the rye boom the industry is experiencing today. The new look features rich green colours and a premium split label design - a nod to the superior quality and character of the whisky. Although the labels for each expression differ, they do share some common aspects that create uniformity across the range:



Strip Stamp: comprised of deep, rich colours and accented with gold foiled writing, the strip stamps at the neck of the bottle now denote what type of whisky is inside each bottle, and most contain the phrase Crafted with Conviction.



Glass: below the strip stamp on every bottle, a circular Wild Turkey marking is embossed in the glass. Near the bottom of every bottle, also embossed in the glass, are the words Bold. Genuine. True.



Label: the most striking feature of the new packaging is the true-to-life illustration of the turkey found on every bottle in the range. Professional wildlife artist Julie Rhodes was commissioned to draw the icon. Working closely with the USs National Wild Turkey Federation, Julie took great care to make her work as realistic as possible, painstakingly finishing a small section at a time before moving on to the next. What resulted is an incredibly realistic depiction of a spirited bird (the original national symbol recommended by Benjamin Franklin) that is regal, bold and proud  a perfect icon for an exceptional bourbon.

13 September 2016 - Sam Coyne The Drinks Report, editorial assistant
DECATUR  Gov. Bruce Rauner told more than 200 police officers gathered in Decatur on Tuesday they were the best of the best and one of his goals in fixing the state's economy was to give law enforcement all the resources it needed.

Rauner was a keynote speaker during the 2016 Illinois Criminal Patrol Conference hosted at the Decatur Conference Center and Hotel by Decatur Police and the Macon County Sheriff's Office.

The event, attended by officers from all over the state and beyond, is a four-day workshop to improve police skills in handling everything from traffic stops to giving court testimony.

Rauner, dressed casually and wearing cowboy boots, praised the attendees for wanting to increase their professional abilities.

You guys are the best, you are our heroes, everyone one of you; you are here trying to improve your skills, share knowledge with each other and strive for excellence, God bless you," he said.

The governor said the officers did their jobs in amid dark days, citing everything from terrorism coming in from abroad to violent home-grown gangs. We live in extraordnarily dangerous times, more dangerous then maybe ever in our long history, I don't know.

He said law enforcement needed the resources to get the job done, and his goal was to repair the state's finances and grow its economy while cutting wasteful bureaucracy so those resources would be there.

Rauner said fixing finances in a state that hadn't had a balanced budget in 30 years would also mean there was more money for all top priorities, such as education funding, and that would make life easier for police, too.

I want more resources in our school system because we are not educating our young people effectively and too many of them are getting drawn into gangs, in part, because our education system is failing, he added.

The governor went further, citing a bad economy that doesn't generate enough good jobs as a destructive force that damages the social fabric by stressing citizens as it plunges them into poverty and despair. He called it a vicious cycle that hurt everyone and left law enforcement facing increased problems with less means to cope.

Rauner also praised the people of Illinois as the best and most hard-working in the nation, pledging to fix the economy and turn the state around.

I promise you we are going to get there, he said. I am one of the most persistent sons of a gun on the planet.
If voter turnout is really going to be used as the measure of civic health in Texas, legislators should make voting compulsory.

You know thats not going to happen  and thats okay because not voting is also a way of registering your opinion. Perhaps you dont care who wins, you dont put much importance on a particular election or a particular lineup of candidates makes you want to hold a pillow over your face and scream.

So dont vote if you dont want to. Its your franchise, to do with as you will.

Yours, that is, except when lawmakers impose regulations that make voting more difficult: restricting when people are allowed to register to exercise their right to vote, limiting early voting times and locations and which kinds of proof of identification the authorities will allow.

If lawmakers wanted everybody to vote, they would make it easier.

They would be working to find and remove impediments to voting, the same way successful businesses smooth the path between their customers and their products.

You still have to stand in line to see a bank teller once in a while, but its rare. Any grocery store thats on the ball will open more checkout lanes when traffic picks up. Cities that have their acts together sync up the traffic signals so you can hit green lights on the way out of town.

Not everyone is good at this. Long lines are regular features at ball games and concerts. Those lines are a specialty of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Companies introduce smartphones without headphone jacks and tinker with the recipe for the most successful soft drink in history.

At least the stadium vendors are trying to solve it. New Coke evaporated. Someone will design a jack for the jackless phone.

Texas voter turnout really does stink in comparison with some other states, and turnout in the United States is lower than in other countries.

Rated against its peers, the United States is in the bottom half for turnout. According to the Pew Research Center, we are 31st among the 35 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the 2012 presidential election, 53.6 percent of the countrys adults voted. Thats better than Switzerland (38.6 percent in 2015) and Latvia (51.7 percent in 2014), but not nearly as good as Mexico (64.6 percent in 2012) or Turkey (84.3 percent in 2015).

And in a nation that lags other nations, Texas lags other states, ranking 48th in turnout in 2012, according to the U.S. Elections Project, with turnout of 49.6 percent (not as high as Latvias!) of the adult population. Our own Texas secretary of states office offers up a better number and a worse one for that year: As a percent of registered voters in 2012, Texas turnout was 58.6 percent; as a percentage of the voting age population, it was 43.7 percent.

You might conclude that we harbor a lot of lazy voters. You might mind, or not, that unmotivated voters stayed at home. And you might think that the turnout would have been the same without voter photo ID laws. Or with same-day voter registration. Or if voter registration was automatically included on citizens driver licenses. Or if the political districts for members of Congress and the Texas Legislature were drawn to give voters more choices in general elections instead of to protect the incumbent parties from fickle Texans.

Thats what the courts are starting to say in response to a wave of lawsuits challenging voter ID and other laws  that some states are intentionally or unintentionally disenfranchising their own voters.

North Carolinas case got the most attention because it drew the sharpest rebuke from a federal appeals court. But the Texas law also ran into interference in federal court.

Perhaps lawmakers will take the hint and try to set up elections the way a business would set up a service, with the goal of making it as easy as possible to securely vote.

Itll never be perfect. ATMs get robbed once in a while, but the banks have managed their security problems without getting in the way of their customers. This is a frame-of-mind issue: Voting is designed around worries about what might go wrong. People who are eligible to vote are sometimes denied that right when the state tries to keep the smallest thing from going wrong. Voter ID is an example: State officials said identification voter fraud was rampant but couldnt substantiate the claim in court. Meanwhile, their opponents proved the remedy stranded 600,000 eligible Texas voters who didnt have any of the legislatures required forms of identification.

You might deride the couch potatoes who didnt vote, but you cant blame those 600,000. Maybe they would have voted and maybe they wouldnt have, but at least it would have been their own personal choice.

Heres a thought: Stop blaming the voters. Instead, blame the people who make it harder to vote.
Before their recent meeting -- and I suspect a few times after -- Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. He wasn't the first to do so, even in his own country. Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, has also compared Trump to Hitler. Cher has compared Trump to Hitler. Abraham Foxman, former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has compared Trump to Hitler (although in fairness, that's kind of his whole brand). Even Glenn Beck compared Trump to Hitler. We'll no doubt hear it again many times before this election is over, and, to be honest, it's a comparison that bothers me for two reasons.

I am a Jew -- a New York Writer Liberal Jew, the scariest Jew of all -- and from a very young age, I was taught about an unimaginable horror called the Holocaust and about an evil man named Adolf Hitler. The elderly man who sat beside me every Saturday morning in synagogue was a Holocaust survivor, as was his wife. And so the first reason the comparison of Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler bothers me is not because it belittles the deaths of millions of innocents, but because, frankly, it belittles Adolf Hitler.

Hitler believed Jews were the cause of every problem. He believed extermination was the solution. He believed that the "Spear of Destiny," the spear the Romans used to poke Jesus on the cross, would give him magical powers. He had an elaborately developed, hideous, deplorable theory of how things worked, and he believed in it deeply.

Trump doesn't.

Hitler was a psychopath. Trump is just a con man.

Hitler had some opinions, he had some plans. They were monstrous and evil, and reason enough for even an avowed atheist to consider the existence of Satan. But I don't recall Hitler flip-flopping. I don't see him saying one morning, "I'm going to invade Poland," and then "softening" his stance that afternoon after meeting with Sean Hannity. He didn't decide to kill the Jews, then change his mind when his new campaign manager arrived. "I said the kill the Jew -- singular, one Jew, not all the Jews. Just the bad ones." Hitler was a megalomaniacal psychopath who should burn in Hell for eternity. . . who actually believed in something.

There's a difference. Trump is a two-bit con man. He's playing the fools.

Whether he's jacking up room rates 400 percent when his campaign uses his hotels, or spending campaign money to buy his own books, or blowing racial dog whistles and then accusing his rival of being a bigot, or lying about crime rates to win African American votes, or just plain old running out on his bills -- it is all, top to bottom, one long con. A scheme. A grift. To make a buck, to get out of hock, to get some fame, to get his own TV network -- the ignominious ends always justify the ignoble means. Even his run for president is a con, a way to gain even more power than this millionaire's son was already born with. It certainly isn't to implement any deeply felt ideas. It can't be. He hasn't got any. It's all about the con.

And give the man credit, by the way -- he's good at it. He is, as he says, the best. The white nationalists are eating it up, and they are a tough, tough room. The guy is a fantastic con man.

But he's no Hitler. Not even close.

Am I praising Hitler? No. I'm saying that if you absolutely had to find just one thing to say about Hitler that was positive -- if you could somehow siphon out all the festering, maggot-infested sewage that filled his soul to reveal one razor-thin sliver to point to in his favor -- you could possibly say, well, at least he believed what he said.

Which you can't say about Donald Trump.

Is Trump a megalomaniacal demagogue? Yes. Is he a sociopath? Undoubtedly. Is he dangerous? Maybe.

Which bring me to the second reason the comparison of Trump to Hitler bothers me: This isn't the comparison that matters. It's the easy comparison, the one that leaves us -- We The People -- safe from criticism.

The comparison that matters is not, "Is Donald Trump like Hitler?" but, "Are we like Hitler's willing executioners?"

Will we look the other way, say we didn't know, stand silently by while millions of our neighbors are rounded up, while women who get abortions are "punished," while immigrants are given "ideology tests" and our leader heaps praise on oppressive tyrants?

Well? Will we?

Are we that terrified? Are we that hateful? Are we that frightened, that cowardly, that selfish, that helpless, that cold-hearted, that dumb, that easily manipulated, that easily provoked? Are we so bereft of answers, so pathetically hopeless, that all we can come up with is easy scapegoating and blind fealty to Our Great Leader? Are We The People really going to fall for the dumbest, oldest, easiest trick in the book?

Because if we are, then we won't need an Adolf Hitler to embrace that darkness. Even a two-bit con man like Donald Trump will be enough.
City staff always answers questions from the Bryan City Council

In her letter, TC Langford, chairman of the Brazos County Democratic Party, expressed concern about the Bryan City Council. She wrote: "For months, councilmen have asked questions about a proposed $400 million budget - questions that remain unanswered and ignored." Where did she get this information?

For months, the Council has been holding meetings with discussions addressing all aspects of our Fiscal Year 2017 budget. Now, please understand, Councilman Rafael Pena did not attend most of those meetings so he may have had questions but the other six council members were there and had ample opportunity to ask anything. Councilmember Pena, however, was present at our council meeting on Aug. 23 and voted to approve the 2017 budget on a 5 to 1 vote. If he had questions, they must have been answered to his satisfaction when he voted to approve the agenda item. Can Langford identify any specific question that was asked and not answered?

It is possible that questions were asked, answered, but still not understood by a councilmember. In almost 14 years of service on the council, I never have asked a question and had it either ignored or not answered. Also, any council member can go to the city manager at any time with questions. The city staff always has been willing at any time to answer every question I have asked. My experience is that I never have failed to get my questions answered.

Langford also asked, "Why would my mayor and my councilman walk out of a public meeting to avoid having a quorum vote?" Have you asked your mayor? She hasn't contacted me, her councilman, and asked me. I haven't heard from her. If she really wants an answer to that question, I would be glad to discuss it with her.

BEN HARDEMAN

Bryan City Council

Single Member District 5

The Fightin' Texas Aggie Band is in a class by itself, ranks No. 1

I am writing in response to the article regarding the ranking of the Aggie Band in the top 35 of great college marching bands. To be more specific, it is ranked number 12 of the 35.

Always skeptical of polls and who gathered the data and how it was processed, I have to guess that the pollsters didn't know where to place such a unique marching band as the Aggie Band. All the others in the poll, although I have not seen but a handful of them, share many things in common: They are dressed in colorful uniforms performing "shows," playing pop tunes, spelling out letters or figures on the field, and are accompanied by flag-waving girls and baton-twirling majorettes.

I concede that they are good shows, but nothing that can be compared to the close-ranked, absolute precision-marching military style band, executing the most intricate maneuvers. And the Aggie musicians play nothing but marches in their marching performances.

Another unique feature of the Aggie Band is that they are all members of the Corps of Cadets, meaning that they live together in dorms, eat together, wear those uniforms every day -- not just for performances, and practice an untold number of hours during the week. Aggie Band members, you are in a class by yourself and ranked number 1 in my book.

ELEANOR FORD

Bryan
SULLIVAN  Testimony on Monday described Michael Yost as a man so obsessed with his ex-girlfriend he was threatening to kill her the weekend before she died.

It also painted a graphic picture of the horrific scene discovered inside the Sullivan apartment of Sheri Randall, 43, whose body was found lying next to Yost on the bedroom floor on March 4, 2015.

Stabbed multiple times, both people were covered in blood.

Yost, 42, of Sullivan is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in a bench trial that began Monday in Moultrie County Circuit Court and is expected to last at least three more days.

States Attorney Jeremy Richey called two dozen witnesses to testify before Moultrie County Circuit Court Judge Dan L. Flannell, chief judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit.

Three of them said they heard Yost threaten to kill Randall while at local bars either late Feb. 27 or early Feb. 28, 2015.

After hearing Yost threaten Randall once, Jeff Lewis of Sullivan testified that he told him he couldnt say such things, only to hear the defendant repeat the threat two more times before Lewis and others got out the door.

Lewis testified that Yost sent his ex-girlfriend off with this: I will kill you, you f---ing bitch. He was not sure, however, at which bar this series of threats was made.

Stephanie Shaw, a co-worker and friend of Randalls, testified she also heard Yost say something along those lines at Nite Landing that night. I ought to kill you, bitch, she quoted him as saying.

John Myers of Sullivan testified that that Yost told him at The Landing the next time he saw Randall, he was going to kill her.

Several witnesses also testified about Yosts behavior at The Landing on March 3, when he mostly kept his distance and bought Randall drinks until he got into a ruckus with another customer and was ejected from the bar about 10:30 p.m.

Sheryl Cochran of Sullivan, a longtime friend of Randalls, offered even more damaging testimony about a telephone conversation during which Yost said Randall was the love of his life and that if he cannot have her, no one else can.

Tamara McRill of Lovington, Yosts former girlfriend, testified he told her on the phone that he fantasized about killing Randall and then himself.

Each woman said her phone call with Yost took place in January 2015.

Discovering that Yost was alive, a Sullivan Fire Protection District ambulance took him to HSHS St. Marys Hospital, where he was arrested by the Illinois State Police upon his release six days later.

Nicki Bassett, next-door neighbor and the friend who shared a laundry room with Randall in their apartment building, was the person who discovered a bloodied Randall and Yost in Randalls apartment shortly after 11 a.m. March 4, 2015.

Sullivan Police Chief John Love and officer Andrew Pistorius, along with Sullivan Fire Chief Mike Piper provided additional details about the scene Monday.

But it was during the prosecutors opening statement, when he said Randall had such a large laceration to her abdomen her intestines protruded through it, that Randalls 25-year-old daughter Alexia Standerfer left the courtroom in tears.

Sheri did not die quickly, Richey said. She died slowly from hemorrhaging and pain.

Randalls parents, Terry and Brenda Standerfer of Sullivan, and other friends and family were present in court, as were three representatives of Dove Inc.s, domestic violence program. They were Teri Ducy, director; Vivian Reed, legal advocate supervisor; and Mary Hughes, coordinator in Moultrie County.

Yost is represented by Moultrie County Public Defender Brad Rau. The trial resumes at 9 a.m. today.
"Sacred lands enable the next generations to connect, identify with and carry on our ancestral cultures, traditions, ceremonies and spirituality", say the custodians.

In turn, according to UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights Vicki Tauli Corpuz, recognising the rights of indigenous peoples and upholding the health of their cultures is key for ensuring better protection for nature worldwide.

"Conservation organisations ... often fail to take into account why the forests are still standing. Often it is the indigenous people who have lived there since time immemorial who protected and preserved these lands ... indigenous people and local communities are the best proven stewards of their traditional lands and resources, and respecting their rights is critical amid the climate crisis", says Corpuz.

Sacred sites under threat

The passage of Motion 26 into IUCN policy comes at a crucial moment. Around the planet sacred sites and other protected areas are under serious threat as demand for commodities such as timber, fossil fuels and palm oil rises.

Earlier this year, a WWF report revealed that over half of all natural World Heritage Sites (114 of 229), supposedly the most zealously protected areas in the world, are under threat from mining and other destructive industrial activities.

This pattern is replicated in the lands and sacred sites of indigenous peoples, which are increasingly seen as areas of untapped economic potential by mining, logging and dam building companies, amongst others.

At a session during the congress, Aura Tegria, a member of the U'wa Tribe from Colombia, described how threats to Mount Zizuma, a sacred site for the U'wa, are affecting her people.

"The presence of energy mining projects within U'wa territory accelerate climate change and violate our (the U'wa's) mandate to protect, take care of and safeguard our Mother Earth, carrying us toward a physical and cultural extermination", says Tegria.

Each of the other indigenous custodians present at the congress had a similar story to tell. In their statement they describe "industrial activities in all their manifestations - mining, oil and gas extraction, dams, logging, corporate agricultural expansion, industrial-scale wind and solar power, and other extractive practices" as responsible for "multi-generational psychological and emotional trauma for indigenous communities."

Recent research by environmental think tank, Global Witness, has revealed that indigenous communities also suffer disproportionate levels of physical violence. The group found that in 2015, of 185-recorded killings of environmental defenders, 40% of the victims were indigenous.

The custodian's statement proposes Motion 26 as a key policy to help stem and turn back this tide of violence. Linking "the universal value of World Heritage Sites, protected areas, sacred natural sites and conserved territories" and calling for all to be protected as No Go Areas, Motion 26 seeks to prevent the multiple forms of violence that affect indigenous peoples as they encounter extractive industries worldwide.

A 'new paradigm' finally emerging?

In 2003, at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Durban, the world's largest conservation organisations pledged to respect the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands as part of a 'new paradigm' for conservation.

The successful passage of Motion 26 and the creation of a new category of membership for indigenous peoples' organisations within IUCN, are strides in the rights direction, says Fiona Wilton of The Gaia Foundation, one of a group of civil society organisations pushing for Motion 26.

"Indigenous peoples have historically suffered great injustices at the hands of conservation groups, as well as the extractive industries. Motion 26 is a good indication that the world's biggest conservation players are waking up to the fact that recognising indigenous peoples rights, supporting their lived forms of conservation and helping them protect their lands from destructive industries through policies like Motion 26, is the best way to protect life on Earth."

Though Motion 26 is not legally binding on governments or businesses, supporters say that it can be an effective practical tool for indigenous and local community activists struggling to protect sacred natural sites.

"By adopting this measure the IUCN has blown wind into the sails of indigenous campaigns for territorial defense and offered civil society a tool to help strengthen national level protected area norms to include sacred natural sites", says Amazon Watch's Andrew Miller.

Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu of northern California and one of the custodians present in Hawai'i, is in agreement, but says there is still much to be done.

"The challenge now is to identify a mechanism that will successfully make these sacred places permanent No-Go Areas - where indigenous knowledge and rights are respected. We still need enforceable laws to save our sacred sites", says Sisk.

Hal Rhoades is Communications and Advocacy Officer at the Gaia Foundation. He also writes for indigenous news journal Intercontinental Cry.

Motion 26 was officially proposed by IUCN member organisations including The WILD Foundation (USA), Nature Tropicale (Benin), Asociacion para la Conservacion, Investigacion de la Biodiversidad y el Desarrollo Sostenible (Bolivia), Centre for Sustainable Development (Iran), The Christensen Fund (USA), Wilderness Foundation (South Africa) and Zoological Society of London (UK). The motion was supported by The Gaia Foundation, Sacred Land Film Project, ICCA-Consortium, Women's Earth and Climate Network, Borneo Project and Amazon Watch. The IUCN Council also supported the motion. Read the full text of Motion 26.

Read the full Statement of Indigenous Kahu`aina Guardians of Sacred Lands.
Making a return to our two favourite summer locations, Mount Maunganui and Nelson in early January 2023, we've got whiff of the first release lineup and me oh my, yes boy
A Boones Mill man has been charged with attempting to elude police after a chase that involved a Rocky Mount officer firing at the suspect, according to the Virginia State Police.

Gary Ray Turner, 37, is also charged with two misdemeanor counts of destruction of property, state police spokesman Corinne Geller said Monday. State police are investigating the shooting at the request of the Rocky Mount Police Department.

The charges follow an incident that happened Saturday night about 11:20 p.m. after an officer and a deputy attempted to stop a Ford pickup truck in the 900 block of Tanyard Road, Geller said. The pickup truck and its driver, Turner, matched the description of an alert that had just been broadcast over the radio to authorities. Turner was wanted on an outstanding warrant in Roanoke.

Turner refused to stop, Geller said, and attempted to flee the scene. With the officer's and deputy's vehicles blocking the truck's means of escape, Turner began ramming the pickup truck into the law enforcement vehicles, state police said.

"During the course of the pickup truck trying to escape and running into the law enforcement vehicles, the Rocky Mount police officer fired at the pickup," Geller said.

State police did not say how many shots the officer fired, nor where the bullets went.

The pickup truck managed to break free and flee, but the deputy and officer stopped the driver a short distance later, Geller said. There was a woman in the passenger seat of the passenger seat of the pickup, but she was not injured.

Turner was taken to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital for treatment of non-life threatening injuries, Geller said. She did not specify how Turner sustained his injuries.

No officers were injured during the encounter.

Turner was released from the hospital Monday and taken into custody by Roanoke police. He's being held at the Roanoke City Jail without bond.

According to online court records, Turner was indicted by a Roanoke grand jury in July on four counts of grand larceny. He did not show up to court on Sept. 1. A failure to appear for felony arrest warrant was issued that same day.
Dear Dr. Roach: I would like a clear reason why older women who are not infected with HPV are not offered the HPV vaccination. I am a 65-year-old woman who was married close to 40 years. My spouse died six years ago. He was my only partner my entire life, until his death. I verified through my OB/GYN that I was HPV-negative until recently. I am in a monogamous relationship with a gentleman I met two years ago. Before we began our relationship, he agreed to a full exam and was tested for AIDS, etc. All tests were negative. However, I am now positive for HPV and am not happy. Why was I not offered the vaccine? Should I get a hysterectomy, even though my doctor has performed a colposcopy, which shows no adverse tissue at this time?

-- D.F.

A: The most recent data on the HPV vaccine shows continued protection for women who were immunized at the recommended age (11-13) from the HPV infections that lead to cervical cancer. I strongly recommend this vaccine, which also may protect against other HPV-related cancers, for both males and females. It may be given up to age 26.

There is no data, as far as I can find, about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine for a 65-year-old woman. Most women in their 60s already have been exposed to the virus, which would make the vaccine much less effective, if at all. (That's why it's recommended to be given to boys and girls before the onset of sexual activity.) My guess is that for those few women who have not already been exposed to the virus, it is likely to be effective and unlikely to be harmful. However, the risk of developing cervical cancer is very small, and regular screening tests almost certainly are more cost-efficient in older women.

The vaccine is not indicated for women over 26 by the Food and Drug Administration, meaning it would be given "off-label" at the discretion of your physician. A woman in your situation certainly would have to pay for it out of pocket (about $600 in the United States).

As far as hysterectomy, that is not appropriate at this time. Most women get over the infection without treatment, and you should follow up as your doctor recommends.

Our booklet on vaginal infections covers HPV and its treatment. Readers can order a copy by writing: Dr. Roach, Book No. 1203, 628 Virginia Dr., Orlando, FL 32803. Enclose a check or money order (no cash) for $4.75 with the recipient's printed name and address. Please allow four weeks for delivery.
Spencer Petras had one of his best games at Iowa

Iowa Football
WASHINGTON -- The most revealing moment in the presidential candidates' first joint forum came when Donald Trump told the world how much he admires Vladimir Putin.

Never mind that the Russian strongman invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea. Never mind that he supports the butcher Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Never mind that so many of his political opponents end up murdered or imprisoned. Never mind that U.S. officials suspect his government of trying to disrupt our election with cyberattacks. In Trump's star-struck eyes, all of this makes him "a leader, far more than our president has been a leader."

Putin, you see, once paid Trump a compliment. "If he says great things about me," Trump told moderator Matt Lauer, "I'm going to say great things about him."

There you have it, folks, the distilled essence of Trump's disgraceful campaign. It's not about immigration or foreign policy or making America "great again," whatever that means. It's entirely about Trump and his raging egomania.

Trump is sincere when he expresses preening self-regard. All the rest is just verbiage tossed with a light vinaigrette.

The candidates appeared sequentially, not face to face, at the USS Intrepid museum in New York before an audience of military service members and veterans. The old aircraft carrier, commissioned during World War II and retired after Vietnam, was an apt setting for hearing the candidates' positions on foreign and defense policy. But only one of them had anything meaningful to say.

Hillary Clinton went first and was immediately hit with a barrage of questions about her emails. Some commentators said afterward that she sounded defensive, but that line of criticism is absurd. How is one supposed to sound when pressed to defend oneself? Have we finally reached the point when a woman is allowed to speak forcefully on her own behalf? Or do we still expect, at all times, a demure smile?

As would be anticipated from a former senator and secretary of state, Clinton displayed her knowledge and experience. The headline, I suppose, would be this pledge: "We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again. And we're not putting ground troops into Syria." Those who worry she might prove too hawkish as president may feel relieved.

But the evening was really about Trump, and the stakes are far too high for him to be graded on a curve. No, he did not rant and rave like a crazy man or threaten to nuke anybody. But neither did he give the slightest indication he knew anything about the issues he was supposed to be talking about. Read the transcript and try to find one sensible and substantive thing he had to say.

On top of insisting that Putin is a great guy, Trump denigrated the U.S. military's high command. "I think under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble," he said. "They have been reduced to a point where it's embarrassing for our country."

Lauer recalled that Trump has long claimed to have a secret plan for defeating the Islamic State, but now says he would ask "the generals" to submit a plan within 30 days for victory over the terrorist group. Reminded that he has boasted that he knows more about the Islamic State than our military leaders do, yet now says he wants them to come up with a plan, Trump replied: "Well, they'll probably be different generals, to be honest with you."

In other words, he promises a purge at the Pentagon. Maybe his friend Vladimir can give him pointers.

And there's more: Trump repeated his complaint that the United States should have "taken the oil" in Iraq, noting that "it used to be, to the victor belong the spoils."

Yes, that was true in the time of Genghis Khan. Today, under international law, plunder is a war crime -- and not the only one Trump wants our military to commit. He has said in the past that our forces also should practice torture "worse than waterboarding" against suspected terrorists. He would ask our service members to dishonor the uniform and all it represents.

Trump defended a 2013 tweet about the problem of sexual assault in the military in which he asked, "What did these geniuses expect when they put men and women together?" He said the solution was to "set up a court system within the military." Unbelievable.

Face the truth: Trump has to be the most dangerously ignorant major-party presidential candidate in history.
Unfortunately, most people have some sort of financial stress. But the types of money problems people face tend to vary from state to state.

GOBankingRates.com surveyed more than 7,000 people in all 50 states and Washingotn D.C. to find the top causes of financial woe.

Click through the slideshow to see the top causes of financial stress in each state, and visit GoBankingRates.com for the full report.

The site had participants pick from the following list: Paying off my debt; Not being able to retire; Not having enough money to fund an emergency; Wanting a nicer lifestyle; Paying for education; Lack of stable income; Paying my mortgage or rent.



An overwhelming majority of states picked "paying off my debt" as their top cause for concern. Connecticut seems to be more worried about unforeseen disasters; the state's top financial concern in "not having enough money to fund an emergency."

Related: The most expensive things to do in Connecticut

GOBankingRates.com speculates this could have something to do with the high cost of living in Connecticut. Though the state's median household income is above the national median, even rich people may be living paycheck to paycheck around here, the site says.

"Plus, the average credit card debt in Connecticut ($6,494) is among the highest in the nation, according to ValuePenguin. So, residents might have little left over to fund an emergency after covering daily costs and debt payments," GOBankingRates.com writes.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

NORWALK  The ball is in Firetree Ltd.s court regarding how to proceed with a controversial halfway house proposed for Quintard Avenue in South Norwalk, according to one city official.

Halfway houses operating under the Department of Correction are not allowed on Quintard Avenue or other areas of Norwalk zoned for C Residence uses.

If Firetree, a Williamsport, Pa.-based nonprofit, organization hopes to reopen the halfway house at 17 Quintard Ave., it might have to adhere to that provision and provide the city additional information about its proposed rehabilitation program, according to the Norwalk Planning and Zoning Department.

If Firetree wants to come in as a new operator, they come in and get a tenant permit that theyre the operator and they show us what they are, said Michael E. Wrinn, Norwalks acting director of planning and zoning. Theres a lot of uncertainty at this point with exactly what they are and its up to them to prove it.

Lacking such proof, Firetree will not receive a certificate of occupancy following renovations made to the house, which it had hoped to open this month.

Firetree did not immediately respond for comment Tuesday on how it plans to address the concerns of city officials and residents. In an email dated Sept. 2, the organization expressed optimism that the issues can be resolved.

Firetree Ltd. is working with the city of Norwalk to amicably settle the issues surrounding 17 Quintard Ave., wrote Amy Ertel, Firetree vice president and spokeswoman. We are optimistic that we will be reach a solution that is satisfactory for the parties involved.

In July, Firetree bought the property from Pivot Ministries, a Bridgeport-based nonprofit organization that provided drug- and alcohol-rehabilitation services at the address since 1976.

The new owner undertook renovations and informed Wrinns office, in writing on July 21, that it intended to provide rehabilitation, education and supervisory programs and services for up to 19 residents who are in the process of transitioning from an institutional setting back to their communities.

In opening this facility, it is Firetree Ltd.s hope to bring its mission to the residents of Norwalk in a continuation of the work Pivot House has long provided the community, wrote Firetree President William C. Brown.

Quintard Avenue residents mobilized against the plan after learning the facility would operate under the federal Bureau of Prisons. The residents held two rallies urging the city to reject the proposal. At the second rally, Mayor Harry W. Rilling told neighbors the plan did not comply with Norwalks zoning regulations.

Halfway houses are allowed by special permit in C Residence zones provided they have no more than 12 persons with no less than 250 square feet of living area per person. They are not permitted if they are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections.

Connecticut has a Department of Corrections, but the federal entity involved in the halfway house is the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

Norwalk Pavilion Residential Reentry Center, as Firetree has named the proposed facility, was to open Sept. 1 at 17 Quintard Ave. and provide, among other services, life skills classes, comprehensive medical screening, case management and chemical dependency education resources.

All eligible referrals would those 18 and older who have an association with the criminal justice system. Referrals into the program would be directed through Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to Firetrees website.

Residents opposed to the halfway house have formed a Quintard Avenue Neighborhood Association and thus far collected nearly 500 petition signatures opposing the plan put forward by Firetree.

Rick Reardon, a Quintard Avenue resident, said halfway houses have changed since Pivot Ministries opened its facility on Quintard Avenue several decades ago.

Were questioning whether or not they can use the terminology of 1975 for halfway houses now, Reardon said. A halfway house in 1975 was people coming in for detox but it had nothing to do with prisoners.
One of the reasons that the Presidential campaign is becoming so odd is that Hillary Clinton need not do anything but enjoy her lead, show up to cheering crowds in a handful of key states  and let Donald Trump do all the talking.

Trump has run the most self-destructive campaign I have seen  and I have been closely watching federal elections for more than 60 years. It seems as if every time Trump opens his mouth he puts points on the board for team Clinton.

Trump is a narcissistic sociopath, who relishes every moment in the spotlight no matter how foolish he looks.

Just within the past few weeks he:

Hired Steven Bannon as his new Campaign Manager (manager number three). Bannon is a former CEO of Breitbart, an extreme right wing blog. Bannon was arrested for assaulting his then-wife who, incidentally, says Bannon was so anti-Semitic he refused to let his children go to a private school because there were too many Jews in attendance.

Shifted so many times on immigration policy that this policy, the mainstay of his campaign and the issue that always received the most applause at his rallies, is now broken and confused but seemingly still wrapped in the Confederate flag. Even his bigoted core of support is worried.

Said, Sometimes in the heat of debate, in speaking on a multitude of issues, you dont choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that and believe it or not, I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. What exactly does he regret? Attacking a Gold Star family? Suggesting Ted Cruz father was part of the Jack Kennedy assassination team?

Shown his racism. A well-documented article on Trumps racist business practices explains how he refused to rent apartments to African Americans. And then there is the time when Trump looked around at his almost all white audience and said, Theres my African American.

Trumps campaign stands for insults, divisiveness and for making America hate again. And it stands for blaming others  in the latest Typical Trump fashion, he attempted to blame Hillary Clinton for the actions of Anthony Weiner.

Oh, and why wont Trump release his tax returns? Is it that:

A. Hes not as rich as he claims?

B. He pays no income tax or so little as to be embarrassing?

C. He contributes little or even nothing to charity?

With a candidate like Trump, all you have to do is let him continue to talk; let him spend time in states like New Hampshire and Wisconsin where he has no chance. All Hillary has to do is play it cool. Election Day will be here before you know it.

The only campaign I have witnessed that is even remotely comparable would be the McGovern campaign of 1972. Although George McGovern was coming from the left and Trump is coming from the right, their campaigns are very similar. McGovern had almost no field operation and was just too far to the left for any reasonable person to even consider voting for him. Trump, similarly, has virtually no field operation. Trump has made it impossible to vote for him.

One of the things that I learned from all of this is that there should be a new law to require Presidential candidates to disclose their taxes. If you are unwilling to do that, go ahead and maintain your privacy  but dont run for the highest office in the United States.

Atty. Edward Marcus is former chairman of the Democrat State Central Committee in Connecticut and a former state Senate majority leader.
SPRINGFIELD  Independent congressional candidate David Gill is asking a federal appeals court to reconsider its decision to temporarily halt a lower courts order that his name should appear on the Nov. 8 ballot.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order Friday blocking the earlier decision from U.S. District Judge Sue Myerscough until the appeal is settled. She ruled last month that the Illinois State Board of Elections should allow Gill to appear on the ballot, even though he didnt gather the required number of signatures on his nominating petitions. The Illinois attorney generals office, which is representing the elections board, appealed Myerscoughs decision.

After Gill, a Bloomington physician whos run for Congress four times as a Democrat, collected only 8,593 of the 10,754 valid signatures he needed to earn a ballot spot, he challenged the requirement in federal court. He argues that its unconstitutional because its out of line with the requirements for major party candidates. Gills would-be opponents in the 13th Congressional District race, U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, and Democratic challenger Mark Wicklund of Decatur, each had to collect fewer than 740 signatures.

While Myerscough didnt rule on the merits of Gills argument, she issued her Aug. 25 ruling because she said the candidate showed that he and his supporters would be irreparably harmed if he was left off the ballot. The elections board certified the ballot the next day with Gills name on it.

In its appeal, the attorney generals office argued that the signature requirement is valid because the state has an interest in preventing ballot overcrowding and potential voter confusion. Allowing judges to override signature requirements would create uncertainty over the whole process, the state argues.

The attorney generals office declined to comment on the appellate courts order.

Gills attorneys are asking the full 7th Circuit to vacate Fridays order and hear the case quickly because the temporary decision could effectively settle the matter before all the facts are heard. Local election authorities are required to have absentee ballots ready to be mailed to military and overseas voters by Sept. 23.

Gill said he was not surprised, by the appellate courts order.

I was very disappointed, particularly for the voters in the district, Gill said. I think that they deserve to have as many options as possible, and weve worked very hard to provide them with an option other than the two major party candidates."

Meanwhile, the elections board is scheduled to hold a hearing Monday on objections to Gills nominating petitions.

Some of the objections former Macon County Republican Party Chairman Jerry Stocks filed against Gills petitions were put on hold after it was determined that hed failed to collect enough signatures. After Myerscoughs ruling, however, the board decided to allow those matters to proceed.
Astros strike back to win Game 2 vs. Phillies, evening up World Series

The Houston Astros won Game 2 on Saturday night to send the World Series back to Philadelphia at 1-1.
SPRINGFIELD  Supporters of a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution that wouldve created an independent commission to redraw legislative districts once a decade are figuring out their path forward after the state Supreme Court dealt their plan a final, fatal blow.

In a 4-3 party-line decision Monday, the high court denied a request for rehearing from the group Independent Maps, definitively blocking a redistricting referendum from the Nov. 8 ballot. As they did late last month in ruling the proposed amendment unconstitutional, the four justices elected as Democrats joined together to deny the rehearing, while the three elected as Republicans dissented.

Illinois voters have been denied their right to vote on a constitutional amendment to remove politics from the way state legislative maps are drawn, Independent Maps Chairman Dennis FitzSimons said Tuesday. Four members of the states highest court have rejected an amendment that we firmly believe meets the state constitutional requirements for amendments that can be proposed by voters.

Meanwhile, Republicans, led by Gov. Bruce Rauner, are vowing to continue pressuring lawmakers to vote on a redistricting amendment when they return to the Capitol after the election for their fall veto session.

The Supreme Court ruled the Independent Maps proposal unconstitutional because the majority said it went beyond the scope allowed for a voter-driven initiative.

Proposed constitutional amendments placed on the ballot by petition are limited to making structural and procedural changes to the General Assembly, which currently controls redistricting. But the proposal at hand would have given the state auditor general a role in the process.

FitzSimons said the courts majority ignored debate transcripts from the convention that drafted the 1970 Illinois Constitution. His group argues that those records show the drafters believed redistricting was an appropriate subject for a petition-driven amendment.

The court also only ruled on one of seven arguments from opponents of the proposal, FitzSimons said, leaving those questions for another day. 

But that another day may never come, he said, noting that the court declined to offer guidance for future proposals.

The future of Independent Maps, which collected more than half a millions signatures in support of its plan, is uncertain.

Our coalition remains committed to reform and believes an independent redistricting commission would be one important step in changing state government and making the legislature more responsive to the voters of this state, FitzSimons said. Whether that is possible through a citizen-initiated amendment is now an open question to be discussed by supporters throughout the state.

The Peoples Map, a group of minority business leaders that challenged the proposed amendment, didnt respond to requests for comment. The group was represented in court by Michael Kasper, an election attorney with ties to the state Democratic Party and its chairman, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago.

Speaking after addressing a law enforcement conference in Decatur on Tuesday, Rauner said he was very disappointed at the court's decision.

Its a tragedy for the people of Illinois, he said. They are not going to be allowed to vote up or down on whether we can have nonpartisan districts so we can have competitive general elections and restore democracy.

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said Rauner and Republicans could concentrate their efforts on winning support in the Senate for the House redistricting proposal.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Muhammad Shodiq Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

ASEAN is a diverse and economically dynamic grouping of 10 Southeast Asian countries, collectively accounting for the worlds third largest consumer base and a 3.2 percent share of the worlds gross domestic product (GDP).

That proportion is set to rise in the coming years, as catch-up growth sees emerging ASEAN countries close the gap on the major European economies by 2030. Small and medium enterprise (SME) development in ASEAN is a key strategy, focusing on supporting SME access to finance, markets and global opportunities, human resources development, information and advisory services, technology and innovation.

The contribution of SMEs to economic growth, employment and development in the region plays an important part in achieving equitable economic development and regional economic integration.

Below is the comparison of the three ASEAN countries on economic strengths, the banking penetration of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and the opportunities and challenges faced by the MSMEs.

Indonesia is the largest economy in Southeast ASEAN with GDP nominal at US$888 billion and GDP per capita at $3,500.

Indonesias banking sector is characterized by a growing economy. About 76 percent of assets of the financial sector are in the banking sector.

It has low banking penetration with a loan to gross domestic product ratio of 26 percent with only 41 percent of Indonesians having their own bank accounts. About 32 percent of the population dont save.

The informal sector plays a significant role in serving Indonesians on the lending side where only 17 percent of Indonesians borrow from the banks, 43 percent borrow from the informal institutions and 40 percent of them dont borrow at all. MSMEs play a crucial role in Indonesias economy.

There are about 52 million in Indonesia and they represent 99.9 percent of all business units, employ 97.7 percent of total labor force and contribute 57.8 percent of GDP.

However, even though MSMEs are the backbone of Indonesias economy, they get only small portions of bank financing. Total loans to MSMEs are worth about $57 billion, just about 20 percent of total bank loans with a growth rate of about 15 percent per year.

Since the micro segment can employ a lot of people and produce cheap products, it is a main contributor to national GDP and is widespread around the country.

Several advantages to developing micro-segment enterprises are their strategic value in the economic growth of national schemes and widespread economic distribution.

Meanwhile, the economy of Malaysiaw, the 44th most populous country in the world with more than 30 million people, is the third largest in ASEAN behind Indonesia and Thailand with a nominal GDP of about $375.6 billion and GDP per capita at about $12,000.

Based on the Economic Census 2011, the total number of SMEs in Malaysia is 645,136. They employ about 65 percent of the total labor force with 3.67 million workers, make up 97.3 percent of all business units and contribute 35.9 percent of GDP.

SMEs can seek financing from various types of financial institutions, including banking institutions, development financial institutions (DFIs), leasing and factoring companies and venture capital companies that provide equity financing. In addition, SMEs can also make use of various specific-purpose special funds set up by the government to help SMEs.

The banking system loans to SMEs accounted for 42.6 percent of total business loans outstanding by the end of 2005. Most SMEs used their own internally generated funds and funds sourced from friends and family members to finance their operations. Only 16 percent of SME respondents indicated a reliance on financing from financial institutions.

Indeed, only 10 percent of micro enterprises indicated that they relied on financial institutions for financing. A lack of collateral was the main obstacle faced by SMEs when seeking financing from banking institutions.

This was followed by insufficient loan documentation and the lack of a financial track record, as well as business viability. Almost 10 percent of respondents indicated a long processing time was also a problem.

Singapore is a global commerce, finance and transport hub. The Singaporean economy is known as one of the freest, most innovative, most competitive, most dynamic and most business-friendly.

Singapores financial system remains sound, but industry must stand vigilant against rising risks. SMEs and firms with US dollar loans could be more vulnerable under stress scenarios.

Banks reported higher NPL ratios under stress scenarios for loans to SMEs compared to large corporations. As loans to large corporations form the bulk of banks corporate loan books, the higher stressed NPL ratios for SME loans would not severely impact banks overall asset quality.

However, SMEs access to funding could be affected should banks become more risk averse in their credit underwriting for SME loans.

We need to promote more financial inclusion to deliver financial products and services to a wider community that is under-served, including MSMEs.

According to the AEC Blue Print, there are four initiatives that can improve SME capacity to participate effectively and proactively in regional and global value chains.

First, enhance the financing ecosystem in the region to benefit MSMEs, including through cross-collaboration among various working groups in ASEAN.

Initiatives to be explored may include setting up credit bureaus to facilitate the MSMEs in establishing credit standing to improve access to financing, credit guarantee institutions to provide credit enhancement to MSMEs that do not have collateral and other appropriate facilities or mechanisms that will provide financial access for MSMEs.

Second, expand the scope of financial access and literacy, as well as intermediary and distribution facilities, such as digital payment services to promote cost-reducing technologies and the development of financial services for smaller firms and lower income groups.

Enhance discussion channels in ASEAN to develop best practices and exchange information as well as strengthen cooperation.

Third, intensify the implementation of financial education programs and consumer protection mechanisms to bolster financial management capacity and encourage use of financial services.

Fourth, promote the expansion of distribution channels that improve access to and reduce the cost of financial services, including mobile technology and microinsurance.

___________________________________

The author is the vice president of the Shariah & MSME Academy  CIMB Niaga Indonesia. The views

expressed are his own.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Associated Press) Helsinki  Tue, September 13, 2016

Facebook's chief operating officer has apologized to Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg for deleting a photograph from its pages and conceded that "we don't always get it right."

Sheryl Sandberg said in a letter to Solberg that she'd raised important issues about Facebook's decision to remove postings of an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam. On Friday, following protests in Norway the tech giant reversed its decision and allowed the photo "Terror of War" to be seen on its pages.

In a letter dated Oct. 10, Sandberg conceded that historical importance "sometimes ... outweighs the importance of keeping nudity off Facebook," after Solberg had reposted the 1972 image and other iconic photos with black boxes covering parts of the images.

(Read also: Facebook allows postings of 'napalm girl' photo after debate)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Youkyung Lee (Associated Press) Seoul  Tue, September 13, 2016

Samsung plans to issue a software update for its recalled Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that will prevent them from overheating by limiting battery recharges to under 60 percent.

The front page of the Seoul Shinmun, a South Korean daily newspaper, carries a Samsung advertisement announcing the software update plan for any users of the Note 7who may be disregarding its recall notice and continuing to use the smartphone.

"It is a measure to put consumer safety first but we apologize for causing inconvenience,"Samsung Electronics said. The update for South Korean users will start at 2 a.m. on Sept. 20, it said.

South Korean media earlier reported the software upgrade plan, citing Samsung. It was not clear when the update may roll out overseas. The Yonhap news agency reported that Samsung is in talks with mobile carriers to carry out the same update plan to keep battery power at 60 percent or below at all times.

Samsung plans to begin issuing new Note 7s with batteries it says will not be prone to overheating beginning on Sept. 19. It has recalled 2.5 million of the devices after dozens of cases of them exploding or catching fire. Samsung says the problem stems from a manufacturing glitch in the batteries.

The company has urged consumers to immediately turn off the phones and get them replaced with the new Note 7. But implementing such a large-scale recall is a challenge. Consumers have to visit Samsung service centers or retailers twice  once to get a replacement phone  not a Note 7  and have a safety check of their existing Galaxy Note 7, and a second time to get a new Note 7. South Koreans are traveling for one of their two biggest national holidays of the year starting Wednesday, which complicates the recall plan.

(Read also: Garuda Indonesia bans Samsung Galaxy Note7)

Samsung did not answer emails and calls seeking comment on Tuesday.

Analysts said the update appears to be a last-ditch effort to contain the crisis.

Samsung "has to contain the battery explosions but people are not returning the phone," said Peter Yu, an analyst at BNP Paribas. "It is taking a desperate measure."

Keeping the battery level low could reduce the risk of overheating, but would be equivalent to getting a downgrade of a top-of-the-line phone, said Kim Young Woo, an analyst at SK Securities. The Galaxy Note series is one of the most expensive handset lineup made by Samsung.

"It means that the phone has not been optimized before the release," Kim said.

Samsung is the world's largest smartphone maker, and analysts said the recall may leave a larger impact on its brand than earlier estimated. Aviation regulators and airlines have deemed the Note 7 a flight hazard and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering an official product recall.

Canada issued a recall notice on Monday.

The company did not say how many more faulty batteries in the Note 7 have been reported since Sept. 1, when 35 cases were confirmed. In announcing its recall, the Canadian government said one case was confirmed in Canada while Samsung received more than 70 reported cases in the United States alone.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Whether you're a Disney movie fan or not so much, you've probably listened to or even enjoyed at least one of these soundtracks from the company's many animated films.

Since we are here to inspire, check out our list of some of Disney's best soundtracks to sing along to.

Aladdin (1992)

Become a street rat like Aladdin and go on a magic carpet ride as you sing along to songs that make you want to run away from the guards with "One Jump Ahead", or even strut in a parade in "Prince Ali". Meet your best friend, who just happens to be a genie, and sing "Friend Like Me", which was performed by the late Robin Williams. Slow it down later in the evening as you sing the duet "A Whole New World" with your significant other half.

This album is reportedly one of the best-selling soundtrack albums for animated film, with more than 2.48 million copies sold in the US as of April 2014. It also resulted in noted Disney composer Alan Menken being nominated and winning several awards at the 1993 Academy Awards and the 36th Grammy Awards in 1994.

The Little Mermaid (1989)

Dive into the beautiful ocean of Atlantica, home to mermaids and aquatic creatures, and enjoy liberating freedom with "Under the Sea". It's a party in the water to swim around, but if you're yearning to walk on land in search for love like Ariel, join in by singing "Part of Your World". When youre feeling evil like Ursula, you might want to help those "Poor Unfortunate Souls". Feeling romantic instead? Get your friends to help you with a slow song called "Kiss the Girl'.

Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel, still sings the famous "Part of Your World" at Disney events. This soundtrack was also recognized by the Academy and Grammy awards in 1989.

(Read also: Underrated Disney animated movies you should watch)

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

If you dont feel like you belong and want to be adventurous, get out of your "Little Town (Belle)" like the girl who usually has her "nose stuck in a book", Belle. When youre feeling French and famished, sing along with a clock and candle stick to "Be Our Guest". If youre feeling sparks for a significant other, then maybe theres "Something There", then you can slow it down for a waltz with the titular song "Beauty and the Beast" in a candle-lit ballroom.

Alan Menken returned to compose the music for the soundtrack, with Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson having their own rendition of "Beauty and the Beast" as the soundtrack won three Grammy awards.

The Lion King (1994)

This fun and heartwarming movie is filled with adventure, sorrow and action that its songs complement the entire musical movie. Renowned Elton John features in a few songs of the soundtrack. It won Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards as well as Grammy Awards in 1994. It is also the best-selling soundtrack album to an animated film in the US with over 7 million copies sold.

Everybody knows the opening sequence of "Circle of Life" as its something you belt out as the sun rises while animals appear to be present for Simbas birth; its fun because people usually say gibberish when trying to sing the African verse. When youre feeling rebellious, sing "I Just Cant Wait to Be King", or when youre feeling evil, be like Scar and sing "Be Prepared", but when youre just chilling in a lush environment, there "aint no worries, for the rest of your days" as you sing "Hakuna Matata" with your best friends. Slow the pace when youre feeling in love with "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", especially Elton Johns version, which gives the song that extra special glow.

Frozen (2013)

Last, the more recent Disney musical movie with a winter feel is the 2013 animated film Frozen. Every child in the world knows the words to almost every song in this soundtrack as its filled with joy and fun in the snow. Even with a plot so dark, all the songs are very lively. The album has also been certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Ask your friends if they want to build a snowman, express every emotion from the different ages Anna was shown, and enjoy the karaoke of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Embody the Princess of Arendelle as she ventures out of her castle "For the First Time in Forever" and enjoy the summer; even Olaf would enjoy the heat as he sang a list of what he would do "In Summer". When youre feeling lovey dovey, sometimes "Love is An Open Door", but be careful if your significant other half turns out to be like Hans of the Southern Isles. Or maybe sometimes you want to just run away to the mountains and start singing "Let It Go" with Idina Menzel's or Demi Lovatos versions. (kha/kes)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, September 10 2016

Celebrity couple actor Glenn Alinskie and actress Chelsea Olivia welcomed their first baby, a girl, on Friday.

Glenn shared the news on his Instagram account @glennalinskie, posting some pictures taken inside the delivery room with the newborn baby being kissed by the happy parents.

Welcoming our first daughter, Natusha Olivia Alinskie. Born at 9 a.m. on the 9th day of the 9th month of 2016, he wrote on his account.

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  Sat, September 10 2016

The Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) has urged lawmakers to allow the institution, with the help of law enforcers, to freeze without delay suspicious funds or other assets of suspected terrorists and people who finance terrorism.

The proposed inclusion of articles in the draft revision of the 2003 terrorism bill would articulate a UN Security Council resolution relating to the prevention and suppression of the financing of terrorist acts, which is binding for all member states. The resolution requires countries to freeze the assets of anyone listed as a terrorist by the UN, immediately and without a court process, PPATK chairman Muhammad Yusuf said.

Our law upholds the principle of the presumption of innocence. Law enforcers cannot immediately freeze assets without a legal basis and therefore we are now facing difficulties in implementing the resolution. We want it to be included in the law to simplify and strengthen the mechanism, Yusuf told journalists.

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 Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Hundreds of Indonesian citizens arrested by Saudi Arabian authorities for allegedly misusing their visas to go on the haj have been repatriated, a Foreign Ministry official has said.

The ministrys director for the protection of Indonesian nationals abroad, Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, said 147 Indonesian citizens were found to have either overstayed or misused their visas to work in areas outside Mecca. They also used their visas to enter Mecca to go on the haj without proper permits.

They are blacklisted and banned from entering Saudi Arabia, either for the haj or visiting the country, for the next 10 years, Iqbal told journalists on Tuesday.

The unsuccessful haj pilgrims are part of 229 Indonesians arrested by Saudi Arabian authorities on Friday for attempting to go on the haj without proper permits. Caught at two illegal shelters, the Indonesian citizens were accused of paying a sum of money to a syndicate promising to arrange their pilgrimage.

Iqbal further said Indonesian and Saudi Arabian authorities were conducting a joint investigation into an alleged immigration violations committed by 82 other Indonesians.

The ministry official said they would soon be deported if they were proven guilty only of violating immigration procedures. If they were found to have committed additional crimes, they would face a legal process under Saudi Arabian laws. (ebf)
LINCOLN  The Logan County Board will consider changes to an existing conditional use permit for the proposed Sugar Creek One Wind Farm to be located between New Holland and Middletown.

Modifications have been made to the existing permit approved in June 2011, and the Logan County Zoning Board of Appeals approved the amendments last week. Those changes must now be approved by the county board at the Sept. 20 meeting.

In April, American Wind Energy Management Corp sold the project to Apex Clean Energy, a renewable energy developer based in Virginia; however, the permit is still active, said Kyle Barry, an attorney representing the company.

Amendments are needed due to the change in ownership, changes in the wind industry since approval and changes in the plan since fewer turbines will be constructed, he said.

The zoning board approved the new conditions, which included setbacks of 1,225 feet, which is nearly 20 percent more than what is required by current ordinances, said Apex Project Development Manager Stan Komperda,

Construction could start next spring on the $300 million project, which covers more than 16,000 acres and should be finished before the end of the year. The new plans call for 77 turbines to be installed, a decrease of 40 from the original plans. The planned turbines will be spaced one-quarter mile apart, stand 492 feet high and provide enough energy to power up to 80,000 homes. During construction, about 200 full-time jobs will be added. After construction, about 12 employees will be needed, Apex officials said.

Komperda said the company intends to be good neighbors and have been proactive in addressing questions, such as the impact on nearby real estate values.

Peter Poletti, a real estate appraising firm based in Collinsville testified before the zoning board that a 2013 study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researched 51,276 home sales near 67 wind farms in 27 counties across nine states. All of the homes were within 10 miles of wind facilities, and the research indicated that even homes within half a mile of a wind turbine are not affected by its presence.

I dont believe this farm is likely to affect property sales at all, he said.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) Denpasar, Bali  Tue, September 13, 2016

Prosecutors demanded on Tuesday that the Denpasar District Court sentence Australian national Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis, 70, to 16 years in prison for allegedly sexually abusing 11 Balinese children.

The defendants acts have harmed the dignity of Indonesian children. His acts have damaged the future of those children, prosecutor Anak Agung Alit Suastika told the court.

The prosecution team further said that Ellis crime had claimed a lot of victims, or 11 children, which was among the aggravating facts that could make his sentence heavier. As an elderly man, he should protect children, but instead he repeatedly committed crimes against them, Suastika said.

Given the facts, he said, the prosecution team demanded the court declare Ellis guilty of repeatedly sexually assaulting children.

We also demand the judges fine the defendant Rp 2 billion [US$151,670.40] or face an additional eight months in prison, said Suastika.

Ellis has been charged with violating articles 76 and 82 of Law No. 35/2014 on child protection and Article 65 of the Criminal Code.

Ellis lawyer, Yanuar Nahak, said the prosecutions demand was wrong because the maximum sentence stipulated in the articles was only 15 years.

Where did they [prosecutors] get an additional one year imprisonment in their sentence demand? As this is a mistake, the prosecutors demand should be declared null and void, he said.

The Bali Police arrested Ellis based on public reports in January. (ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Seven children were swept by a river current at the Pemali River in Brebes, Central Java, on Monday. Three were found dead on the riverbed, while another two died while undergoing treatment at the Brebes city hospital.

"Two of four salvaged survivors died during treatment at the city hospital," Semarang search and rescue team spokesman Maulana Affandi was quoted as saying by kompas.com on Tuesday.

Seven children from the Muslimat orphanage were reportedly swept away by a river current while washing sacrificial meat following Idul Adha celebrations.

The five fatalities were identified as Mustakim, 18, Andre Bimantoro, 14, Sandi Kasmana, 14, Moh Ubaidillah, 16 and Kamaludin, 13. (dmr)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Due to frequent protests, the Jakarta Police are now deploying more security personnel to accompany Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama any time he attends events outside City Hall.

However, the governor has stressed that the beefed-up security would not use additional funds from the Jakarta city budget.

I never spend any money from the city budget for security. I also dont know why the police need to deploy additional security for me. They dont want to take the risk, said Ahok as reported by city-owned news portal, beritajakarta.com at City hall on Tuesday.

Ahok said he was unaware of any serious threats toward him, but he added that the intelligence institution might know better. Every day I receive threats. But I remain relaxed, he added.

Adj. Sr. Corm. Ida Ketut GKR, the head of the Gambir Police precinct in Central Jakarta, also said that 153 police officers had been deployed to guard City Hall on Tuesday to anticipate a planned demonstration at the governors office.

Last week, the governor was escorted by a number of police personnel while attending events. Dozens of bomb squad personnel were also deployed to secure the governor when he officiated a market in Central Jakarta last week.

Dozens of police officers riding motorcycles were also deployed to escort the governor when he officiated the Kebon Bawang market in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, on Tuesday. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama and Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan will discuss the fate of the islet G reclamation project on Tuesday at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.

Luhut previously said there were no longer any problems holding back the resumption of construction of the islet, which was halted by Luhuts predecessor, Rizal Ramli, due to legal and environmental concerns.

Rizal made the decision after receiving the results of an evaluation carried out by a joint team consisting of personnel from the Jakarta administration, Environment and Forestry Ministry, Maritime Affairs and Fishery Ministry and the Office of Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister.

Luhut told me to come to the meeting. Previously, Rizal only told the media about the termination of the project. We have never received any official letter ordering us to stop the islet development, Ahok said at City Hall on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the National Association of University Student Executive Bodies (BEM-SI) held a demonstration at the Hotel Indonesian (HI) traffic circle on Jl. M.H. Thamrin in Central Jakarta to protest Luhuts plan to continue the reclamation. The protesters said the project would not have any significant positive impact for people living in the area.

In June, Rizal said gross violations had occurred in the development of islet G as it was being built above underwater electricity cables and in the path of shipping lanes. Furthermore, Islet G would damage the environment and disturb vital strategic projects and ship traffic, he claimed.

Rizal lost his position in the Cabinet during the latest reshuffle. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama has told National Mandate Party (PAN) patron Amien Rais not to use mosques to convey political messages to the public.

Ask Amien Rais. Has he read a call from the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) saying that preaching in mosques should not be used for political purposes? said Ahok in Jakarta on Tuesday.

Ahok made the statement in response to Amiens Idul Adhas sermon, in which he urged Jakartans not to vote for the governor who had evicted many of the citys poor. Amin delivered his Idul Adha sermon at a hospital mosque in North Jakarta.

Vote for the governor, who is honest and loves the poor people. Dont vote for a governor who regularly evicts [poor residents] and serves the interest of capitalists, said Amien, who acknowledged after the sermon that he was referring to Ahok.

Chairman of the MUI Maruf Amin previously called on preachers not to use mosques to convey political messages or attack certain political figures.

Ahok also criticized Amiens call for PAN to hold an extraordinary congress if the party supported Ahok, who has been endorsed by the Golkar Party, NasDem Party and Hanura Party for the 2017 gubernatorial election.

With only two seats in the Jakarta Legislative Council, PAN is the smallest party in the capital. It seems as if Amien is the owner of PAN, Ahok added. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

In the yard of Al-Muhajirin Mosque in Jatibening, Bekasi, West Java, people of many ages gathered and passed the time on Monday by watching goats and cattle being ritually killed by five slaughtermen.

The men were well equipped for the job in hand with knives and ropes. Bismillah [In the name of God], said one as he began the slitting of a goats throat.

Beginning at 10 a.m. and proceeding for five hours, 27 cattle and 23 goats donated by devotees to the mosque were ritually despatched as qurban, sacrificial animals whose meat is then distributed to the poor.

By the end of the work, carried out under the watchful gaze of passers-by dropping into the mosque, the men were drenched in the animals blood.

Most people might shrink from such a task, but it is routine work for the slaughtermen celebrating Idul Adha, the Islamic Day of Sacrifice.

Idul Adha is held annually to commemorate the Prophet Abrahams willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail as an act of submission to God.

After the slaughtering process, the qurban meat was parceled up in readiness to be distributed among the less well-off members of the community.

One of the slaughtermen, Endang Fitroh, 39, said he was well accustomed to the job as it was after all his daily employment.

I work at a slaughterhouse in East Jakarta. This [slaughtering] is a piece of cake for me, he chuckled as he refreshed himself with a glass of cold water.

Endang said that for qurban slaughtering he was paid by the mosque, but declined to elaborate on the specific amount. What is more important is that I also contribute to charity.

The importance of doing the job properly is one of the reasons why many mosques across Greater Jakarta hire professional slaughtermen to kill and butcher the animals. Islam lays down very specific rules for the slaughtering process, which must be complied with.

Jinul, a 42-year-old hired by At-Tin Mosque in East Jakarta to slaughter the qurban animals, said he had to learn all the rules of ritual slaughter so as to prevent him from making any mistake during the important slaughtering process.

First, I have to slit the animals throats. This is important so they do not feel excessive pain, he said, adding that after slitting the animals throat, it should be laid on the ground to allow all the blood to drain away before the butchering of the carcass begins according to Islamic teaching.

So it might look easy, but actually the process is complicated, he said.

Unlike Endang, Jinul said that he did not work in a slaughterhouse, nor did he do the work on a regular basis.

I am actually a laborer renovating this mosque, he went on, The mosque asked me to do this, maybe because I looked strong.

Meanwhile, President Joko Jokowi Widodo celebrated Idul Adha in Serang, Banten, and prayed at Ats-Tsaurah Grand Mosque.

Accompanied by the presidential chief of staff Teten Masduki, Banten Governor Rano Karno and Serang Mayor Tubagus Haerul Jaman, Jokowi handed over a bull to be sacrificed and distributed to the poor.

Jokowi donated a bull to each province through their respective local administrations.

The President had also donated a 1.5-ton bull to Southeast Asias largest mosque, Istiqlal, in Central

Jakarta. (adt)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13 2016

In the yard of Al-Muhajirin Mosque in Jatibening, Bekasi, West Java, people of many ages gathered and passed the time on Monday by watching goats and cattle being ritually killed by five slaughtermen.

The men were well equipped for the job in hand with knives and ropes. Bismillah [In the name of God], said one as he began the slitting of a goats throat.

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  Tue, September 13, 2016

Beef prices in Jakarta remain high at above Rp 110,000 (US$8.30) per kilogram, an official has said, undermining Idul Adha celebrations.

Agriculture Ministry spokesperson Agung Hendriadi said the high prices were in line with high demand during major religious celebrations. People tend to eat more beef on these days and the government imports meat to stabilize prices.

We import beef only for the Jakarta market, while other provinces such as Central and East Java can fulfill demand with local supply, Agung told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday in Jakarta.

However, he continued, meat prices in Aceh had escalated the most compared to other cities due to high demand during the meugang celebration, a local Acehnese tradition to welcome the Idul Fitri and Idul Adha festivities by cooking meat for the whole family and for the needy.

Meat prices hiked about 30 percent in Aceh. They must pay Rp 180,000 per kilogram of buffalo meat, while customers in Jakarta enjoy prices of around Rp 65,000, Agung said.

Other fluctuating staple foods in Jakarta include chili and rice. Food traders at the Kramat Jati market sold chili at Rp 27,000 per kilogram from Rp 25,000.

When Idul Adha comes, Muslims need chili to cook curry, rendang and dendeng balado, Agung said. (rez)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13 2016

Jakartas streets presented an unusual appearance on Monday afternoon as traffic on its major roads flowed smoothly and without the usual jams and snarl-ups.

This was largely thanks to the Idul Adha holiday, which enabled residents to enjoy a long weekend from Saturday to Monday.

Tens of thousands of Greater Jakarta residents took advantage of the public holiday to leave the city either to celebrate the Islamic Day of Sacrifice with family or to enjoy a brief vacation.

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  Tue, September 13 2016

Creative diplomacy from ASEAN member states is needed to end the prolonged South China Sea (SCS) dispute, as China is committed to rejecting a court ruling on the SCS case, a law expert said on Tuesday.

Julian Ku, a professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University in the US, said the diplomacy could take the form of coordination between ASEAN member states and China, without referring to the ruling, as China had clearly rejected the judgment by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

The creative diplomacy would be for the countries to cooperate without having to agree on what the award [or the ruling] is, so that means that they have to come up with ways to cooperate without admitting that the other side is wrong, Ku told The Jakarta Post.

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  Tue, September 13 2016

JAKARTA: Several major Indonesian airlines have officially announced a ban on the use of Samsung Galaxy Note7 on their flights due to safety warnings issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Thursday.

Garuda Indonesia warns all passengers not to activate the phone during flights, not even on airplane mode, or to charge the battery or store it in checked baggage, the companys corporate communications vice president Benny S. Butarbutar said in a press release on Sunday, following Samsungs withdrawal of its latest version of the Note series last week due to faulty batteries.

Citilink, the low-cost arm of Garuda Indonesia, has implemented the same policy.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13 2016

From manga-drawing to robot-making and Japanese language learning, there are many services that education franchisors offer customers in Indonesia.

And there is real demand for these services in a country with a vast and youthful population and an emerging middle class, making education-related franchise businesses ripe for growth in Southeast Asias largest economy, according to the Trade Ministry.

As of August, 11.1 percent of 54 local franchisors and 16.3 percent of 123 foreign franchisors were operating in the education sector, ministry data shows. While total franchisors registered under the ministry are only 177, the actual number of franchisors has reached 700, the 2013 World Franchise Council Meeting stated.

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) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

When a terrorist is convicted and serves his time or is killed in action, what happens to his wife and children?

This simple question represents one of the deradicalization challenges that the government is facing as it cannot turn a blind eye to the family members who might have been exposed to radical values.

Khairul Ghazali, a former terrorist who had been involved in the robbery of a Bank CIMB Niaga in Medan, North Sumatra, has set up a pesantren (Islamic boarding school) to gather the children of the militant group members and educate them.

His school, Darusy Syifa, has been recently appointed as a model for such schools that have become part of the deradicalization programs of the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT).

Khairul said he never imagined beforehand that the pesantren he named Darusy Syifa would attract the BNPT, especially because when establishing it he was just moved by his concern over the fate of the displaced children of former terrorists whose parents were imprisoned.

When the terrorists were arrested, their kids and wives were not heeded. This was what moved me to build the pesantren to educate terrorists children as the state tends to ignore their education, Khairul told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

He said the pesantren was an education facility specially designed to prevent radicalism from developing, while at the same time offering education to the children of terrorist inmates.

He said unless these children were well educated, it was feared they would follow in their parents steps and become terrorists.

Khairul said up to now, 20 children of former terrorists had studied at his pesantren, apart from 12 others who came from poor families.

The 20 were the children of terrorists involved in an attack on the Hamparan Perak police office in Deli Serdang, the Medan CIMB Bank robbery and training in a terrorist camp in Jantho Aceh.

He said some of the terrorists were still imprisoned. Some others had been released, including Jumirin alias Sobirin, who was now working as a fisherman in Tanjungbalai.

Khairul said he knows all of the parents of the terrorists children. He said not many were still active in radical activities.

I dont know where they are now because our communications have been cut off, he said, adding that most of those who were still active terrorists hailed from Medan and Aceh.

He said the Darusy Syifa pesantren was equivalent to a junior high school level. All students studying there were exempted from school fees. The pesantren paid for everything, including their food and accommodations, as well as for the honoraria of five teachers.

I pay it all; no outside aid has been coming, said Khairul, adding that the operational costs he had to pay were between Rp 10 million and Rp 12 million a month.

He said he used the money he earned from fish ponds and vegetable plantations he ran in the vicinity of the pesantren, as well as from the royalties of the books he wrote.

I spent Rp 150 million to build this pesantren, Khairul said.

The Darusy Syifa Islamic boarding school is located in the Sei Mencirim subdistrict, Deli Serdang, North Sumatra, on 30 hectares of land belonging to PT Perkebunan Nusantara II. It was officially opened by the North Sumatra governor on June 11.

AZA, 13, one of the students, said he was happy to study at the pesantren, although he had only been there for a month on the recommendation of her father Jumirin alias Sobirin, who has just been released from a prison on Nusakambangan Island, Cilacap, Central Java, in August.

My father took me to this pesantren, AZA said.

BNPT head Comr. Gen. Suhardi Alius said he hoped that the community would not ostracize the children of former terrorists, but instead embrace them and give them an understanding about the dangers of radicalism.

[The school] is a role model that we will copy in other places. There are some potential radical enclaves where it will be our priority to build the same pesantren, said Suhardi during the groundbreaking ceremony of the development of a mosque at Darusy Syifa.

Southeast Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Rudy Sufahriadi, who was also present at the groundbreaking ceremony, said that he planned to build the same kind of pesantren in Poso for his deradicalization program in the region.

This is a form of terrorist handling in the field of education, Rudy said.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Four Indonesian students have been arrested by authorities in Gujrat district, 175 kilometers from Islamabad, Pakistan. The report was received by the Indonesian Embassy in Islamabad on Tuesday.

According to the release from the embassy, the four students were apprehended because their visas had expired in December 2015. Pakistani authorities reportedly rounded them up along with 24 other foreign students affiliated with Jamaah Tabligh.

Faiez Maulana from the Indonesian Embassy in Islamabad was quoted as saying that the embassy had been in contact with Jamaah Tabligh headquarters in Raiwind to identify the Indonesian students.

"We are contacting all parties to get consular access for the students," Faiez was quoted as saying by tempo.co.(dmr)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

The Foreign Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that the arrest of four Indonesian students in Gujrat district, 175 kilometers from Islamabad, Pakistan, was solely due to the expiration of visa permits.

"It's only a matter of documentation. The ongoing investigation that weve conducted reveals that they only overstayed their visas," deputy Foreign Minister AM Fachir said.

The four students, who are among 24 foreign students affiliated with Jamaah Tabligh, were apprehended because their visas had expired in December 2015.

According to a press statement from the Indonesian Embassy in Islamabad on Tuesday, Faiez Maulana from the embassy was quoted by tempo.co as saying that the embassy had been in contact with Jamaah Tabligh headquarters in Raiwind to identify the Indonesian students.

"We are contacting all parties to get consular access for the students," Faiez said. (evi)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Prima Wirayani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

The government has accepted that its economic growth target for 2017 was over-optimistic.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told the House of Representatives Commission XI overseeing financial affairs last week that the economy would expand by 5.1 percent next year, lower than the 5.3 percent stated in the proposed 2017 state budget delivered by President Joko Jokowi Widodo last month.

Sri Mulyani, a former World Bank managing director, told lawmakers the government did not intend to repeat this years budgetary mistakes, which forced it to carry out two rounds of budget cuts amounting to nearly Rp 150 trillion (US$11.4 billion) in anticipation of a massive tax revenue shortfall of Rp 219 trillion.

I feel more comfortable with 5.1 percent growth next year, Sri Mulyani said. Even if there is a revision next year, we hope its an upward one.

It remains unclear how greatly the lower growth target next year will affect state revenues and, consequently spending, as the government is still dealing with this years quandary of overly ambitious tax targets and lower economic growth than expected.

The country had just begun to recover from a six-year low economic growth rate of 4.79 percent last year, with an earlier expectation of boosting growth to 5.3 percent in the 2016 state budget.

However, after two rounds of budget cuts, Sri Mulyani has settled for between 5 and 5.1 percent growth target for the year as a result of reduced government spending that could hinder its multiplier effect on the overall economy.

For next year, lawmakers forecasts of an even lower growth rate of 5.05 percent made it clear that they and the government will proceed with a gloomier outlook on the nations economy.

Sri Mulyani said trade would be the pull factor next year as sluggish global economic conditions would still linger on to result in weak worldwide demand, as reflected in the recent G20 meeting in Hangzhou, China.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has slashed its global economic growth forecast to 3.1 percent from 3.2 percent this year and to 3.2 percent from 3.3 percent next year.

-(Finance Ministry/-)

Indonesia should get used to seeing its growth relative to the global economic expansion, which currently faced abundant challenges, said Febrio Nathan Kacaribu, head of research for the macro-economy and trade of the University of Indonesias Institute for Economic and Social Research (LPEM-UI).

Growing by 5.1 percent next year is already good, relative to global growth, he said by phone on Monday.

Given the countrys large population of more than 240 million people, consumer spending would remain the engine of growth, Febrian added, apart from private investment, which could push growth higher.

The government expects that investment will expand by 6.1 percent annually next year, lower than its previous target of 6.4 percent as several business sectors, such as commodities, remain under pressure from the slowing global economy.

Meanwhile, domestic consumer spending growth, which makes up more than half of the GDP last year, is maintained at between 5 percent and 5.1 percent.

Deutsche Bank chief economist Taimur Baig called Indonesias large, relatively young, population the economys blessing in addition to its growing middle class and rich natural-resource base.

However, he went on, excessive optimism had held Indonesia back in recent years. This affliction manifested in yearning for 7 percent real GDP growth in 2019, expecting surging foreign direct investment despite nationalistic measures and feeling immune from global market volatility.

This led to the governments macroeconomic forecasts being repeatedly wrong, leading to questions about the coherence of the fiscal and monetary policy framework, he wrote in a research note.

The more prudent and conservative the state budget is, the better it is, said Bank Central Asia (BCA) economist David Sumual.

If the realization is better than our expectation that can be a bonus for us, he said by phone on Monday, adding that the draft state budget was closely related to market confidence and faith in the countrys economy.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

The government plans to transform Indonesias port system from a point-to-point, or direct-route, operation to a hub-and-spoke model, Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said.

Currently, goods are shipped directly from international ports to ports throughout the country. With the new concept, Budi explained, several Indonesian large ports would act as hubs, strategic centers of the networks, and the spokes would radiate out to connect remote points throughout the country.

"We know we have big ports, such as Tanjung Priok [Jakarta], Tanjung Perak [Surabaya], Belawan [Medan] and Makassar [South Sulawesi], but none of them serves as a hub. They mostly still depend on other international ports. With this role, we are going to conduct reforms based on this hub-and-spoke concept," Budi Karya said in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The new concept will strengthen Tanjung Prioks role as a domestic and international hub port. Therefore, imported goods from Europe and China will transit through Tanjung Priok.

However, he said the new system had to be coupled with service improvements. Dwell time, which begins from the time a ship berths at a port to the time its cargo is unloaded and leaves the port, or vice versa, is one of the parameters to be improved.

Currently, dwelling time in Tanjung Priok stands at between 3.2 and 3.7 days, and he aims to reduce the time to 2.5 days. "The image of a port is based on the dwell time," Budi added. (evi)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13 2016

A man attempted to use crowded conditions at Jakartas Istiqlal Mosque to steal from visitors during celebrations for Idul Adha on Monday.

The suspect, who has not yet been named, was nabbed when he tried to steal a cell phone from a visitor named Ardi at 6:45 a.m., the victim said as reported by kompas.com.

Ardi said he was at the mosque with a sibling when a man attempted to steal his cell phone from his shirt pocket. Ardi said his sibling noticed the man trying to grab the phone when he was removing his footwear at the mosques gate.

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 Muhammad Shodiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13 2016

ASEAN is a diverse and economically dynamic grouping of 10 Southeast Asian countries, collectively accounting for the worlds third largest consumer base and a 3.2 percent share of the worlds gross domestic product (GDP).

That proportion is set to rise in the coming years, as catch-up growth sees emerging ASEAN countries close the gap on the major European economies by 2030. Small and medium enterprise (SME) development in ASEAN is a key strategy, focusing on supporting SME access to finance, markets and global opportunities, human resources development, information and advisory services, technology and innovation.

The contribution of SMEs to economic growth, employment and development in the region plays an important part in achieving equitable economic development and regional economic integration.

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  Tue, September 13 2016

Patients have been left in the dark as the Jakarta Administration has closed the Menteng Mitra Afia Hospital on Jl. Kali Pasir in Cikini, Central Jakarta, for not complying with regulations and permits.

Dozens of patients still came to the hospital on Friday as they were unaware that the hospitals permit had already been suspended.

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 Sebastian Partogi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13 2016

Majestic: Anak Krakatau, literally Child of Krakatoa the volcano that erupted in a gigantic explosion in 1883. Anak Krakatau, which rises out from the sea in the former caldera of Krakatoa, lies in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra.

Amid a lack of local young scientists, a documentary has been made to encourage youngsters to unravel the scientific mystery of volcanic island Krakatoa.

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  Tue, September 13, 2016

Indonesia is hosting the fourth Asian SME (small medium enterprise) Conference 2016, from Sept. 13 to 17 in Kota Kasablanka shopping mall in South Jakarta.

Cooperatives and SMEs Minister Anak Agung Gede Ngurah Puspayoga said the conference should facilitate SME players in strengthening their competence to face the global competition.

I hope SME players get optimally empowered, the minister said in a statement as quoted by tempo.co on Tuesday.

He said he expected Indonesian SMEs to thrive in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Good products, good services are not enough to survive the AEC, he said. Thus, the conference was expected to give SMEs solutions to thrive in the AEC.

The conference is targeting 700 participants from 15 countries.

Puspayoga said Asia had become the center of economic growth and the biggest market in the world. Asia is ready to compete with other continents, he said.

The event is presented by Asian Council for Small Business (ACSB) and endorsed by the ministry and the International Council for Small Business (ICSB). The event will have seminars with speakers from Malaysia, the US, Taiwan, among others and visits to cosmetics company Martha Tilaar Group and to Bandung in West Java.

Last years conference was held in Malaysia. (evi)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Indonesia has foiled three attempts to smuggle ammonium nitrate from April to August, totaling 166.47 tons with a value of US$25.97 billion. Ammonium nitrate is a chemical compound that can be used as an explosive by fishermen to catch fish or terrorists to rig a bomb.

"We have intercepted vessels from Malaysia off Sumatran waters, with the most recently caught vessel carrying 50 tons [of ammonium nitrate]," National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian told reporters in a press conference in North Jakarta on Tuesday.

He said that the police had uncovered networks behind the smuggling of the substance, which allegedly is being distributed to the eastern parts of Indonesia, including to Central Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, Flores, Sumbawa and Papua.

"We've been following up [the intercepted shipments] with investigation and have arrested some distributors in Central Sulawesi and Tanjung Pinang. We will further develop [the investigation] in South Sulawesi, Flores and Papua," he said. (dmr)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Indonesia plans to start implementing coordinated patrols with the Philippines and Malaysia this year as part of efforts to step up maritime defense in regional waters amid the risks of piracy and hostage-taking.

The Indonesian Navy is currently drafting the routes for the joint patrols, which would stretch to the piracy-prone waters of the Sulu Sea, to realize the trilateral maritime agreement signed by the three countries in August. Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu said on Tuesday.

"I believe we can start the coordinated patrols this year. I will meet the Malaysian defense minister in the near future [to further discuss the plan]," Ryamizard told journalists.

Aside from drafting the coordinated patrols routes, the Navy is also mulling the safest routes for commercial ships to use in the area, especially those traveling back and forth among the three countries. Safe routes are important in order to prevent any hijacking and hostage-taking taking place again in the future, he added.

The trilateral maritime agreement, signed by the Indonesian, Philippine and Malaysian defense ministers during a ministerial meeting in Bali, is aimed at strengthening regional cooperation to overcome security challenges in the countries maritime border areas, which have been beset by threats in recent months. At least nine Indonesians are still being held captive by Philippine militants from the Abu Sayyaf group who have demanded ransoms in exchange for the hostages. (rin)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Kupang  Tue, September 13 2016

The bodies of three migrant workers from East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) who died in Malaysia were returned to Indonesia on Saturday. They were identified as Sepriana Toto and Lody Banamtuan, of Kupang regency and Siprianus Tukan of Nagekeo regency.

Based on medical reports, the three migrant workers died of natural causes. Their bodies have been sent to their respective hometowns, Kupang Indonesian Migrant Workers Protection and Recruitment Agency (BP3TKI) head Tato Tirang told journalists on Monday.

The bodies of Sepriana and Siprianus were repatriated on Saturday afternoon on a Garuda Indonesia flight and Lodys body was returned on Saturday evening on a Lion Air flight. Their bodies were picked up by their relatives and brought to their home villages.

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) Batam  Tue, September 13 2016

The Batam, Rempang and Galang (Barelang) City Police named a suspected pimp on Saturday in a male prostitution ring involving immigrants who are currently being held in Batam. The police also arrested a woman who allegedly used the services of a teenage boy.

Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa expressed her support for the police investigation into the ring, which reportedly involved underage prostitutes. The suspected pimp has been identified as Bonny Sario and the alleged customer, who reportedly paid for the services of a 15-year-old Pakistani youth, has been identified only by the initial S.

Barelang City Police Crime and Investigation unit chief Comr. Ardian Memo told The Jakarta Post that police found evidence of BS involvement in the prostitution ring.S promised to pay Rp 20 million [US$1,520]], but did not pay the sum at once to BS, said Ardian.

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 Ganug Nugroho Adi (The Jakarta Post) Surakarta  Tue, September 13 2016

Local traditions still play a large part in the life of Javanese Muslims. Indeed, Javanese Muslims have their own way of celebrating the Islamic Day of Sacrifice (Idul Adha).

Aside from slaughtering cattle for qurban (sacrificed animals according to Islamic teachings), the Surakarta Palace, or Keraton, holds the jamasan (purification) ritual of the Nyai Setomi cannons at the Sewayana building in Sitinggil Lor.

The ritual is carried out ahead of the Grand Gerebeg tradition, or Islamic Day of Sacrifice.

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  Tue, September 13, 2016

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo is scheduled to inaugurate the New Priok Container Terminal 1 (NPCT1) in Priok, North Jakarta, on Tuesday morning. The terminal has undergone a trial operation since May.

The new terminal, occupying 32 hectares, can accommodate 1.5 million twenty feet equivalent units (TEUs) of cargo per year. With the developed length of the pier reaching 450 meters from the targeted 850 m by the end of this year, and 14 m deep of its mean low water springs to be gradually dredged up to 20 meters deep, the new terminal is estimated to serve cargo vessels with a capacity between 13,000 and 15,000 TEUs, weighing more than 150,000 deadweight tonnage (DWT).

Executives from partners of state seaport operator PT Pelindo II, including Mitsui & Co, Ltd., Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, and PSA International Pte Ltd are scheduled to attend the inauguration.

NPCT1 will be operated by lPC Group's PT New Priok Container Terminal One.

The terminal is the first of its planned three cargo terminals and two goods terminals under the New Priok project encompassing 411 hectares. (dmr)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Consumers can expect to enjoy simpler, faster and cheaper electronic transactions in the future as a new payment deal promises to build a more efficient system in the country.

University graduate Geraldi Dwitya Pradipta, 23, previously had only one electronic money card. However, he claimed that the card use had been so beneficial that he purchased two more for his family.

I always use e-money cards for transactions at toll gates because they are very useful. I can use them at both automatic gates and manual gates, Geraldi said recently.

For Petrus Sian Edvansa, also 23, an e-money card provides him with additional convenience when paying parking fees at shopping centers or simply on the street.

Geraldi and Petrus, and other users like them, expect any breakthrough in the countrys payment systems to make their daily lives even more comfortable and their financial transactions easier.

State-run lenders under the Association of State-Owned Banks (Himbara) claim they can meet this demand.

The banks  comprising Bank Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) and Bank Tabungan Negara (BTN)  signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) last week with state-owned telecommunications firm Telkom on the establishment of the countrys first domestic payment principal company.

The future company, whose formation has been approved by Bank Indonesia (BI), will facilitate electronic transaction switching between state-owned banks that currently dominate more than 50 percent of nationwide banking transactions, making transactions among them faster.

According to Himbaras calculations, a state-owned switching company will lead to savings in ATM investment and maintenance of Rp 6.8 trillion (US$510 million) per year.

With lower costs, banks can reduce transaction fees charged to consumers and slash their overall expenses. Himbara claims that eventually, they can also reduce lending in the future.

Gatot Trihargo, State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) Ministrys deputy for financial services, said the state banks would not see a significant decline in their fee-based incomes after they cut related fees, but could generate higher revenues instead as transaction volume is predicted to rise.

Himbara is currently finalizing an ongoing integration of its 10,000 ATMs and 60,000 electronic data capture (EDC) machines under one single ATM brand called ATM Himbara Link, which offers lower fees for interbank transfers and cash withdrawals. The process is expected to be complete by year-end.

The integration will use Link, which is an existing switching system owned by Sigma Cipta Caraka, a second-tier subsidiary of Telkom.

In parallel with the process, Telkom will provide temporary equity participation for the new switching company until the SOE Ministry realizes its plan to establish a financial holding company that will manage the four state banks. By then, the holding company  to be represented by state investment company Danareksa  will take over Telkoms stake.

The process to establish a company needs roughly two-and-a-half months. At the same time, we will calculate the total investment needed until the company is taken over by the future holding, said Telkom president director Alex J. Sinaga.

In the long run, the new company will have its system interconnected with other switching firms, regional development lenders (BPD) and private-sector banks. (mos)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung, West Java  Tue, September 13, 2016

Housewives living near the Cisaranten Kidul Community Health Center (Puskesmas) in Bandung, West Java, have proven that helping a fellow human being can be done in a simple way.

They are striving to fight malnutrition among children under 5 years old in their neighborhood with the establishment of the Cooking Center Omaba, an ojek (motorcycle taxi) community for baby food delivery services.

Supported by knowledge from lecturers at the Bandung Polytechnic for Health Sciences School of Nutrition, these housewives have developed 10 recipes for healthy meals they deliver to houses with malnourished under-5 children.

We not only deliver the foods but we also sometimes feed those babies. We continue to monitor their condition for nine months, said Omaba member Marliyani, 51, in a recent interview in Bandung.

The initiative began after several cases of malnourished under-5 children emerged. Puskesmas Cisaranten Kulon head Soni Sondari said there were 23 malnourished children in Gedebage district, Bandung, in 2012, several of whom lived near his working area.

Initially, the malnourished under-5 children were provided with baby formula. However, it was later discovered that the families receiving the assistance had instead sold the formula, reasoning that they could use the money to buy food for entire family.

On account of the incidents, we decided that it would be better for us to provide healthy meals for the babies. We then gathered and developed recipes for the malnourished babies, said Cisaranten Kidul health committee head Vita Fhinera Wijaya.

To run the program, the Omaba community has received funds from the Bandung Health Agency and state-owned oil and gas company Pertaminas corporate social responsibility program.

The assistance from the Bandung administration is enough only for three months. Pertamina provides funds for the following three months and a motorcycle we use to distribute the meals, said Vita. Every day, two Omaba members deliver healthy meals for the malnourished children.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla has lauded the initiatives of the Omaba community. At the end of May, Bandung Deputy Mayor Oded M.Dahnial represented the community when it was named among the 35 Top National Public Service Innovations for 2016 in the regency and municipality category. (ebf)
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Sunny, along with a few afternoon clouds. High 79F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds from time to time. Low 53F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura, Papua  Tue, September 13, 2016

Papua Police have sent two special teams to hunt for the killer of a contract teacher in Mulia, Puncak Jaya, on Monday, saying that the perpetrator was savage.

These teams would help the police and the Indonesian Military deployed in Puncak Jaya to hunt down the shooter, Papua Police chief Insp. Gen. Paulus Waterpauw said Tuesday. The perpetrators act is savage and inhumane, shooting a teacher who every day teaches children there to become educated, he said.

Ezra Patatang, 27, was a contract teacher who had been teaching Catholic class for state elementary school SDN Dondon Baga, Mulia, Puncak Jaya, and moonlighted as an ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver. He was shot by an unidentified man in Karubate village in Mulia district on Monday at 6:30 p.m.

That afternoon he was on his way from Kota Baru to his house in Kota Lama. He took a passenger to Kota Lama. Not long after that, he was found dead with a gunshot wound, Markus Tandiyu, the head of Torajan community in Puncak Jaya said. Torajans hail from South Sulawesi.

Ezra lived with his sister, Resty Patatang, who is also a teacher.

From a preliminary investigation, the police found that Ezra was shot from a short distance with the bullet entering his right temple and exiting through the back of his head. When we found him, he was about 10 meters away from his motorcycle. It looks like there was a struggle before he was shot, Waterpauw said.

Ezras body was sent to Makassar in South Sulawesi to be laid to rest in Masamba, Luwuk regency in South Sulawesi. (evi)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Jakarta Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) stressed on Tuesday that his party would nominate someone from its own ranks to compete in the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election.

The process has been completed. We have observed the political dynamics. We are sure that the PDI-P will nominate an internal candidate, said Djarot at City Hall on Tuesday as reported by tribunnews.com.

He said the PDI-P would welcome other political parties to join with them in a coalition, despite the fact that the PDI-P has 28 seats on the City Council, which means it can nominate a candidate without forming a coalition.

The PDI-P has not yet announced its candidate for the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election, although it has hinted at supporting incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama.

Djarot added that his party wanted members of the coalition to establish a long term relationship, and not to split soon after the election.

We dont want to repeat our experiences in other regions. During the regional elections, we had close cooperation, but some months or a year afterwards, we started to quarrel and split. This should not happen with the coalition for the Jakarta gubernatorial election, he added.

Separately, PDI-P secretary general Hasto Kristiyanto said the partys decision on the gubernatorial candidate had been made by party chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri. He declined, however, to reveal the name of the candidate. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ina Parlina and Margareth S. Aritonang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

The fate of Philippine death row drug convict Mary Jane Veloso hung in the balance as Indonesia and the Philippines gave conflicting statements regarding her possible execution.

Although the first visit of the gaffe-prone Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to Indonesia last week proceeded smoothly, the bilateral ties between the two nations have been put to the test following a remark by President Joko Jokowi Widodo saying that his counterpart had given the go-ahead for Velosos execution, a statement that was not only met by rebuttal from Manila, but also sparked criticism at home.

(Read also: Duterte has given the green light for Mary Jane's execution: Jokowi)

Veloso was spared execution in April last year after a woman came forward in her home country to admit that she had duped Veloso into smuggling drugs to Indonesia.

The Philippine authorities have since asked for her to testify as a witness in the ongoing trial of her alleged trafficker. Veloso was excluded from the list of convicts in a further round of executions in July.

Jokowi was quoted by Antara in Serang, Banten, on Monday as saying: President Duterte, at that time [during the bilateral meeting], said [Indonesia could] press ahead if [she is] indeed to be executed. Jokowi further said that Attorney General M. Prasetyo would follow up with the legal process to execute Veloso.

Jokowi has been widely criticized, at home and abroad, for launching a tough campaign of executing death row drug convicts. But Duterte has sparked an even greater international uproar for his much tougher stance on drug abusers and dealers.

Under his watch, extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers and abusers have taken place on a wide scale. Various media outlets have reported that more than 2,000 suspected drug abusers and dealers have been killed since Duterte launched a war on drugs after he was sworn into office on June 30.

Manila was quick to deny Jokowis claim. Philippine Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay Jr. said Duterte did not give the go-ahead for Velosos execution, but simply told the Indonesian President that he respects their judicial process and will accept whatever the final decision they arrive at regarding her case. Velosos execution, Yasay added, had been indefinitely postponed.

(Read also: PH denies Duterte gave go-ahead for Veloso execution)

Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said Duterte only told Jokowi to follow your own laws and that I will not interfere, as reported by a number of media outlets in the Philippines.

Before Mondays controversy, which became a trending topic on social media both in Indonesia and the Philippines, Duterte was tight-lipped regarding Velosos fate, raising questions as to whether he would press ahead with his plan to plead with Jokowi for mercy for Veloso. Before making his trips to Jakarta and the ASEAN summit in Laos, Duterte had said he would respect Jokowis decision and Indonesias judicial system if his counterpart rejected his pleading.

Upon returning to the Philippines over the weekend, Duterte told local media that he could not divulge the details of his talks with Jokowi before speaking to the Veloso family.

Earlier, he told reporters in Jakarta immediately after the meeting with Jokowi that details from his conversation with the Indonesian President were not for public consumption.

Anis Hidayah from the NGO Migrant Care called on both Jokowi and Duterte to show compassion toward migrant workers in both countries, warning that they were prone to becoming victims of drug

cartels.

Mary Jane is only one of many cases of female migrant workers facing the death penalty for crimes they did not commit, she said. There is also Merry Utami, Anis said, referring to an Indonesian woman who was spared execution last month.

Jokowi would also face difficulties in seeking to protect the lives of Indonesian migrant workers overseas if he ignored the rights of Veloso, warned Anis.

_________________________________________

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.

For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) Denpasar, Bali  Tue, September 13, 2016

Child protection activist Siti Sapura has said Australian national Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis, 70, deserves to get a tough sentence if he sexually abused 11 Balinese children as charged.

She made the statement to respond the prosecution's demand for a 16-year imprisonment for Ellis during the latters trial at the Denpasar District Court on Tuesday.

Its too light for what he has [allegedly] done to our children. He should get a heavier sentence," Siti said.

The Bali Police arrested Ellis in January this year based on information provided by the child protection organization, the Lentera Anak Bali Foundation.

To follow up on the information, the Bali Police's Women and Children Protection (PPA) Unit, the Denpasar administration's Integrated Service Center for the Empowerment of Women and Children (P2TP2) and the Lentera Anak Bali Foundation, one of two child protection groups, including Bali-Terre des Hommes Netherlands, concerned with the crime, conducted a joint investigation starting in December last year, which ended with Ellis arrest in January.

It was suspected Ellis had sexually abused many children in 2014 and 2015. He reportedly attracted his victims with various gifts.

During Tuesdays hearing, the prosecution team also demanded the courts judicial panel order Ellis to pay a fine of Rp 2 billion (US$151,670), or face an additional eight months in prison.

The defendants [alleged] acts have degraded the dignity of Indonesian children. His [alleged] acts have damaged the future of those children, prosecutor Anak Agung Alit Suastika told the court. (ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

After years of deadlock in prosecuting cases involving corporations, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) now has the confidence to start charging companies for graft after the Supreme Court issued a regulation shielding the antigraft body from any potential legal backlash.

A draft of the regulation has been prepared by both the KPK and the Supreme Court and it is expected that the highest court will sign off on it by the end of September in order for it to come into force by early October.

The KPK has often confronted a dilemma because Law No.20/2001 on Corruption already gives it this authority but the Criminal Code (KUHP) only recognizes people as proper subjects of criminal prosecution, not companies.

Thus, the Supreme Court regulation patches up this legal discrepancy between the law and the KUHP and it will protect the KPK from any lawsuits that question its decision to go after corporations.

The draft regulation covers procedures that the KPK and other law enforcement institutions can take in investigations and in naming suspects and bringing companies to court on corruption charges.

An official from a company will stand trial to represent the company and the sentence will come in the form of fines, not prison sentences, because the subject of the legal process is not a person.

KPK commissioner La Ode Muhammad Syarief said the regulation would also guide judges across the country in how they handle cases related to corruption committed by corporations, adding that it would also guide the KPK in how it seized assets belonging to corporations after a conviction had been attained.

In addition to fines, officials who commit corruption in service of their companies can also receive prison sentences.

[With the regulation] judges will have a shared understanding on how to consider cases [on corporate corruption], Syarief said.

The KPK has so far only prosecuted company officials who commit corruption with state officials for the benefit of their respective companies. The KPK has not yet charged corporations with corruption.

Around 90 percent of cases at the KPK involve companies. Charging companies and seizing their assets, according to the KPK, will produce a deterrent effect in the future.

A number of companies have been at the center of KPK investigations, but the KPK, prior to the existence of the regulation, has been reluctant to charge them. Some of these companies include the nations third-largest lender, Bank Central Asia (BCA), giant developers PT Sentul City, Agung Sedayu Group and Agung Podomoro Land, and the Lippo Group, a powerful business conglomerate operating in the country.

Supreme Court justice and spokesman Suhadi confirmed the establishment of the regulation and both parties, the antigraft body and the Supreme Court, expect that the regulation will be implemented by early October after the Supreme Court signs off on it in late September.

The regulation can also be used in money laundering cases involving corporations, Suhadi said, adding that both officials and companies could be punished at the same time under the regulation.

Suhadi said under the regulation, the KPK could charge a company with corruption after finding strong evidence that the money used to bribe state officials in order to receive a preferred policy came from the company.

A company can also be charged if it is found that money from corruption offences was funneled to the company and even if the money has already been transformed into assets owned by the company. As for its officials, they can receive prison sentences and the company itself can receive fines as punishment, Suhadi said.

Former Democratic Party treasurer Muhammad Nazaruddin, convicted of graft and money laundering, used around 30 companies to channel state projects worth trillions of rupiah every year between 2005 and 2011 for private gain and to those around him.

Meanwhile, graft and money laundering suspect Tubagus Chaeri Wardana allegedly used around 300 companies to siphon off money from state projects from the office of his sister, former Banten governor Ratu Atut Chosiyah, for years. Ratu has also been convicted for graft.

None of the companies used by Nazaruddin and Tubagus were prosecuted in the courts.

Furthermore, BCA also received benefits when former Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) chairman Hadi Poernomo, in his capacity as former director general for taxation between 2002 and 2004, unilaterally approved BCAs request for income-tax leniency, a decision the KPK said had triggered around Rp 2 trillion in losses.

However, a controversial pretrial ruling lifted Hadis suspect status in May 2015, forcing the KPK to stop an investigation into the BCA case.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Two residents of North Grogol in South Jakarta died Monday evening after allegedly consuming bootleg liquor made up of alcohol and energy drink.

NH, 23, and EW, 21, died on their way to the hospital on Monday evening, Criminal Investigation Unit chief of South Jakarta Police Adj. Sr. Comr. Eko Hadi Santoso said on Tuesday.

The incident took place after EW allegedly asked NH to drink alcohol that night. He then went outside to buy alcohol before they gathered at a rented house in North Grogol.

"EW bought two 50 milliliter bottles of alcohol at a drug store. Then, he mixed the alcohol with the energy drink," Eko said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

Not long after drinking the concoction, the victims felt their abdomens burning and they also suffered from suffocation and had foam in their mouths.

The House of Representatives had plans to endorse the controversial alcohol prohibition bill this year that might totally ban production, distribution and consumption of alcohol. The public and businesspeople had expressed concerns that the bill, if passed, would raise the sales and consumption of unsafe bootleg alcohol and illegal liquor. (rin)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

Hundreds of University of Indonesia (UI) students on Tuesday staged a protest in front of the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister to protest the governments plan to continue the reclamation of islet G in Jakarta Bay as stated by Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan last Friday.

On Tuesday, Luhut planned to meet with Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama to officially announce the decision to resume the reclamation project. The project was halted by Luhuts predecessor, Rizal Ramli, in June.

"We, the students of UI, reject the reclamation project, said Arya Ardiansyah, the chairman of UIs student executive body.

The Jakarta State Administrative Court decided to revoke the islet G reclamation permit on May 31, Arya said, adding that if the government decides to continue with the project, it might constitute an unlawful act.

"We question Luhut's authority to resume the reclamation project, especially after the court ordered a moratorium on Islet G," he said.

Arya added that the project had negatively affected the income and welfare of the fishermen who live near the coast. "We want Luhut to meet with students and fishermen so he can listen to our concerns. Even if we have to go to the President, we will come to him to state our concerns," Arya said. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, September 13, 2016

The Indonesian government has said that it would not carry out the execution of Filipina death-row inmate Mary Jane Veloso until a court case in the Philippines, in which she is implicated as a victim of human trafficking, had been ruled on.

"We are waiting for the ongoing court process in the Philippines to be finished. There is a trial of a trafficking case involving her [as a victim]," Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly told reporters on Tuesday.

The government would respect the request from the Philippine court for Veloso to testify as a witness in the ongoing trial of her alleged trafficker, Yasonna said. However, since Veloso was forbidden from traveling to the Philippines due to her current status as a convicted drug smuggler, the government would only allow her make a written testimony, he added.

The Philippine court made the request under the ASEAN mutual legal assistance treaty, signed by Southeast Asian countries to fight transnational crimes in the region. The treaty obliges Indonesia to provide Veloso as a witness in the human trafficking court case.

Veloso was spared from execution in April last year after Maria Kristina Sergio, Veloso's alleged trafficker, came forward in her home country to admit that she had duped Veloso into smuggling drugs into Indonesia. Veloso was also excluded from the third round of executions in July. (dan)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Associated Press) Washington  Tue, September 13, 2016

The luxury hotel that Donald Trump built in an iconic downtown Washington building has opened its doors to customers able to pay $900 a night or more for a room.

The Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C., opened without fanfare Monday afternoon. Grand-opening ceremonies are being planned for October. Trump tweeted a photo of himself with the hotel staff but did not make a public appearance.

Rooms at the hotel are starting at $895 a night.

(Read also: Naked Donald Trump could be yours! Statue up for auction)

The Trump Organization won a 60-year lease from the federal government to transform the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue into a hotel.

Monday's opening attracted some protesters who disagree with Trump's politics. Two well-known chefs backed out of plans to build restaurants at the hotel because of Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants.
A trip to New York inspired the new Genos Italian-style sandwich shop at the corner of Hennepin and 4th St. SE in Minneapolis. Opening in a former Subway, the limited-seating restaurant features a fast-casual Italian menu in a diner ...
1.

Colson Whiteheads novel John Henry Days opens with differing versions of the same story, told by witnesses and observers, all recounting John Henrys famous battle with the steam-powered hammer. No story is the same. For men wagering on whether John Henry would defeat the machine, Whitehead writes, [e]ach wager was a glimpse into the man who made it; just the same, each story  the details remembered or who won the contest, for example  is a glimpse into the storyteller. The power of the folk hero, it becomes quickly evident, lies not in what actually happened; John Henry Days is not after the real story, but what it means that America keeps telling the story of the black steel-driving man.

With his new novel, Whitehead has picked another well-known story often retold: the secret transportation network of slaves before the Civil War. Frederick Douglass (who famously escaped via a literal railroad) and Harriet Jacobs both wrote popular accounts of their slavery. Slave escapes play a large part in the plot of Uncle Toms Cabin, published in 1852, about the same time The Underground Railroad is set. Numerous accounts of slaves and escapes were later collected and preserved by the Works Progress Administration.

Whitehead has said that he relied upon many of these narratives, particularly the Works Progress Administration accounts, in writing The Underground Railroad, and many actual advertisements for catching runaway slaves preface the books chapters. But for this story  probably Whiteheads finest  history is a stepping-stone.

2.

The Underground Railroads prologue summarizes the life of Ajarry. Kidnapped from her home, she is transported across the Atlantic. Standing naked on a platform, her breasts are pinched by an agent, who acquires her for $226.00. Shes eventually sold and re-sold, from southern plantation to plantation, bondage to bondage, price rising with each transaction, appraised and re-appraised, each day waking upon the pan of a new scale. She births five children, one of whom, Mabel, survives into adulthood, and has a child of her own, Cora. Ajarry dies in bondage, [a]s if it could have been anywhere else.

The bulk of the novel then follows Cora, Ajarrys granddaughter, a slave by birth on the Randall Plantation in Georgia, owned by the (respectively) cruel and distracted Randall Brothers. Mabel escaped the plantation when Cora was 10 or 11, only leaving her daughter a three-yard plot of okra and yams. As a result, Cora grows up bitter at having been left behind. But she also emerges as clever and conscientious, someone who cursed herself for her smallmindedness.

From her early days she suffers greatly, including as a victim of gang rape by her fellow slaves. When she is approached by Caesar, another slave on the plantation, to escape, she is at first reluctant (channeling her grandmother), eventually willing (channeling her mother). During their escape, they spar with and kill a white boy who tries to return them to the plantation, and are relentlessly tracked by Ridgeway, a slavecatcher who had never been able to successfully apprehend Mabel. They flee through South Carolina and beyond. Either outcome seems possible: that Cora will die a slave in the ruthless mechanism of the world, like Ajarry, or experience the eddy of liberation, like her mother.

3.

By now, if you have read anything about this novel  perhaps that it was on President Obamas Summer Reading List, or that it has been blessed by Oprah Winfrey, or that it has become a #1 New York Times Bestseller  you know its central conceit. For Coras escape, the Underground Railroad is an actual underground network of trains, schedules, handcars with pumps, and tunnels that gradually lead north. Some of the stations are elaborate constructions, with comfortable waiting areas and refreshments, and some are rundown holes with boxcars. The tunnels and conductors are under a repeat threat of discovery. For something fantastic (imagine the engineering feat), not a bit of it is lacking in verisimilitude; it possesses its own history and myth, spliced with just the right amount of mystery.

Whiteheads brilliance is on constant display here. After five previous novels, each very different, this is the only thing we can count on. Its hard to imagine a new novel farther from Whiteheads last, the zombie thriller Zone One. The Underground Railroad shares some features with his debut work, The Intuitionist, and his second novel, John Henry Days; both novels confront issues of race and American history through less-than-straightforward methods  a Whitehead signature.

The Underground Railroad is a more frank confrontation, albeit with a dose of magical realism. As he did in John Henry Days, Whitehead has taken something emblematic of a period in American history and pulled a nifty trick: he has made it simultaneously real and ahistorical. In The Intuitionist, Whitehead freely played with elevators, which obtained the weight of metaphor but not the heft of a symbol. Every American schoolchild learns about the Underground Railroad. As Kathryn Schultz recently wrote, the story of the Underground Railroad that Americans know was not quite wrong, but simplified; not quite a myth, but mythologized. It assuages the national guilt; it reminds us of the noble struggle for freedom, and not the astounding moral failing that kept such an institution legal for more than a century. (In Edward P. Joness The Known World, slavery is often simply, and appropriately, talked of as the law.)

When, here, Whitehead revisits the greatest crime in American history, he thus also revisits its greatest attempt at commutation, the mythologized Underground Railroad, and all the compromises that made it necessary. As one character says, slavery produced scars [that] will never fade. America [i]s a delusion, too, the grandest one of all, built on murder, theft and cruelty  best personified by a slave boy on the Randall Plantation, who has been taught to memorize the Declaration of Independence but has no grasp of its meaning.

Toward the end of The Underground Railroad, Cora receives some advice. As she rides the railroad, she is instructed thusly: Look outside as you speed through, and youll find the true face of America. Of course, there is nothing to see from an underground track  only the dim of the subterranean world. Whiteheads book asks: How can a country ever put such a period behind it? Putting the famous Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill wont change the fact that American money was used to purchase people. This isnt Mississippi in the fifties, J., one character in John Henry Days tells the protagonist. Its always Mississippi in the fifties, J. answers.

4.

Besides the underground locomotives, Whitehead has sprinkled other touches of magical realism, or anachronisms, throughout this book, including ghosts, a skyscraper in 1850s South Carolina, and the Museum of Natural Wonders, which, among its exhibits, re-creates anodyne living dioramas of the human trafficking trade. For a time, Cora, believing she has found her freedom in South Carolina, works in the museum, participating in the slave ship display. She quickly finds out that, even in her freedom, [t]ruth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you werent looking, alluring and ever out of reach. These purposefully absurd sections are perhaps the closest thing to Whiteheads older work, and his jocular tone; the rest of The Underground Railroad, rather, is sober and measured. [I]t is a serious subject that didnt seem to warrant my usual satire and joking, Whitehead told Vulture.

The ironies are cruel ones, taken from life: the doctors who sterilize black people in South Carolina, where Cora first emerges after her travel on the railroad, and justify the procedure to black women as a chance for you to take control over your own destiny. In a one-off chapter, a grave robber reflects on stealing black bodies for the medical schools, observing, based on the obviously identical anatomy between whites and blacks: In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white mans equal.

The plotting is deft and sure-handed. But the story slows for poignant moments, like Coras frisson when she finally puts on a soft cotton dress in South Carolina. There, she guiltily enjoys one of the keys product that drove the entire system of bondage.

The inventiveness that characterizes elements of his plot extends to his voice in this novel. In interviews he has said it emerged complete from just writing the first section on Ajarry, and the resulting omniscient narrators words prove lapidary, perhaps including some of the best writing Whitehead has done. The prose, in short, is spectacular. Few books have demanded so much tabbing, so many bookmarks, and so many marginal notes  so often do crystalline turns of phrase and aphorisms materialize. Take this: Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close, but from outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Or this: In liberty or bondage, the African could not be separated from the American.

5.

The Underground Railroad is ultimately a story about a motherless girl searching for some kind of protection and love, but often finding only exploitation. It is ruthless in its depiction of the antebellum world, but threads of hope also emerge from the bravery of many characters, and from the feat of the railroad itself: The up-top world must be so ordinary compared to the miracle beneath, the book goes.

As for Cora, as for America, the scars of slavery wont fade:

Once Mabel ran, Cora thought of her as little as possible[S]he realized she banished her mother not from sadness, but rage. She hated her. Having tasted freedoms bounty, it was incomprehensible to Cora that Mabel had abandoned her to that hell.

Even if she finds her way out of hell, its clear that freedom doesnt mean heaven. The Declaration [of Independence] is like a map, one character tells Cora. You trust that its right, but you only know by going out and testing it yourself.
    

Tom Hanks latest nice-guy endeavour falls flat in Tom Tykwers A Hologram for the King.

Aiming for a lot and achieving little, the culture clash of America and Saudi Arabia  whilst interesting at first  doesnt feel like anything new. Visually stimulating but with little to back this up, it feels fair to say that whilst there are a few redeeming moments to pull the film together; the final product still feels intensely average. Aiming for a lot and achieving little, the culture clash of America and Saudi Arabia  whilst interesting at first  doesnt feel like anything new. Visually stimulating but with little to back this up, it feels fair to say that whilst there are a few redeeming moments to pull the film together; the final product still feels intensely average.

Following all-American Alan (Tom Hanks) as he embarks on a trip to Saudi Arabia, the premise of the film revolves around him attempting to sell his companys holographic technology to the king  as the title suggests. Along the way he meets a host of charismatic characters and discovers not only the county, but himself (original)  throwing a rose-tinted lens over the whole experience. At home, he has a nasty divorce and a daughter relying on his tuition contributions; in Saudi, he has adventure and happiness. The exotic pulls of quirky friendship, romance and the refreshing taste of change win out every time. That, and contraband alcohol.

The whole thing just feels a little cliched. The storylines flick and change so frequently that its hard to pin the film down as something specific, and dont go into enough detail or development to create something new. A sad sign is that by the end of the hour and a half run time, it felt like much longer had passed. Too many sequences were lost to obscurity, and too many times was the absent king absent. The same scenario every day feels a little tedious after a while, and whilst the point may be that the king isnt there and this city isnt built and the wifi is rubbish  it becomes a little too elongated with every rehashed action and every repeated conversation.

With regards to the actors; Tom Hanks is great as he is playing literal Tom Hanks, Yousef the novelty taxi driver (Alexander Black) injects some vibrancy, and Sarita Choudhury makes for a sentimental love interest. But throwing a bunch of good ingredients together doesnt guarantee a good cake. Hologram seems to not know what to do with all the gifts handed to it  Hanks in particular being a saving grace.

Alexander Berners fantastic eye for editing also suffers at the hands of Tykwers inability to focus: the choppy illusions and technology-to-reality warping are expertly executed, but erratically deployed throughout. It felt more like a fall back to keep the audience awake and engaged rather than advancing the film conceptually, as it definitely could have. I mean, at the end of the day, I just really wanted more things to explode into pink smoke.

Overall, it has to be said that the mid-life crisis of Tom Hanks everyman has been done before, and it will be done again. Yes, we love him  but putting him in another country and running the same narrative around him over and over can only go so far. There are some golden moments, there are some touching moments, and there are some hilarious moments; but they need to be supported by more than what can only be deemed as filler.

A Hologram for the King was released on digital platforms on 12th September and will be available on Blu-ray and DVD from 19th September, 2016 courtesy of Icon Film Distribution.




"The HoseMaster is the funniest satirist writing about wine in the world today."



--Karen MacNeil













--Terry Theise









HoseMaster

HoseMaster

HoseMaster



--Robert Parker





"...With sometimes crude analogies and occasional droppings of f-bombs, Washam cleverly uses satire to expose the underbelly of the wine business. It's often hilarious stuff as long as you're not the one being lampooned.



Washam takes no prisoners in skewering all that is silly, stupid, frustrating and pretentious about wine, and his favorite targets are other bloggers and writers. No one is immune."



-- Linda Murphy in "Vineyard and Winery Management"









-- JancisRobinson.com





"

Hosemaster of Wine

First: Im not sure if there is anyone better at cutting through the confidence trick that is often intrinsic to the business of wine.

Second: in a world where offending people appears to border on the illegal, the Hosemaster piles in. No one is safe."

--Joss Fowler "Vinolent.com"







"As serious as the world of wine is, it does allow time for humor. Each Monday and Thursday, Ron Washam customarily posts a commentary on his needling wine blog HoseMaster of Wine . Washam, a former sommelier and comedy writer  he might say they are closely related  is the most opinionated, humorous and ribald observer in the wine world. His body of work is irreverent and remorseless. Its almost always satire and parody, though he occasionally drifts into straight commentary, sometimes even with tasting notes. This past year, one of his posts was named the best of the year in the Wine Blog Awards. His success has spawned several imitations, which in their awkwardness show just how difficult satire is."



--Mike Dunne, Sacramento Bee





Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/21/6089630/dunne-on-wine-wine-blogs-and-bloggers.html#storylink=cpy





"Please let this guy write the scripts for Saturday Night Live which has gotten so lame...his newest "wisdom" is worth an Emmy....I wonder if he is the genius behind all those Hitler/Parker,etc. clips? No one else is remotely as funny or as talented.And the wine world sure needs someone to poke fun at all the nonsense and phoney/baloney unsufferable crap out there."



--Robert Parker





"

Washam uses his own blog, HoseMaster of Wine , to skewer the industry in general and wine blogs in particular. If your mouse scoots to your browser's close box while reading a wine blog, Washam may be the blogger for you."



-- San Francisco Chronicle



"Ron Washam, former sommelier, is easily the most bitingly funny blogger/wine writer that we have ever come across. He is an equal opportunity crusader who pillories big wineries and amateur bloggers alike, as well as everything and everyone in between...One needs a sense of humor and a tolerance for earthiness to enjoy reading The Hosemaster . We must have both because this guy deserves a wider audience, in our humble opinion."





--Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine

--Steve Heimoff





"This site should carry a warning label. It's sort of a Dave Barry/George Carlin approach to wine. The Hosemaster (real name Ron Washam) skewers fellow bloggers and industry savants with glee, while offering hilarious wine guides such as his Honest Guide to Grapes...

--Paul Gregutt, Seattle Times

"Washam is a skilled wine judge (I have judged with him) who is willing to judge wine double blind, in public . To my knowledge, Parker does not do this and never has. So Ron's credentials are in place, and so is his sense of the absurd."

--Dan Berger, VintageExperiences





"...I consider Ron a

talented writer and Ive long been an admirer of his scathing wit..."

--1WineDude

"And if any free sites think they can conquer the world, theres always the Hosemaster

to take em down a notch."

--Tyler Colman "Dr. Vino"

--Jo Diaz "Juicy Tales by Jo Diaz"





"I must say you are an idiot. I've never liked you. I have no idea why people find you funny."

--Reign of Terroir

--Will Lyons (WSJ) on Twitter







--Levi Dalton on Twitter

very
A recent coughing fit, a fainting episode and an eventual diagnosis for pneumonia have all added to uncertainty concerning the former Secretary of States future as the Democratic Party candidate for president. But what would happen if Hillary Clinton actually left the race?

What do the experts say?

Associate professor in US politics at Warwick University Dr Trevor McCrisken says the field would be open after what he believes would be the unlikely event of Clinton withdrawing from the race.

He told the Press Association: It would really come down to the party. There is certainly no time to have another primary season.

BBC political presenter Andrew Neil tweeted: If Mrs Clinton forced to drop out of presidential race, her replacement is entirely matter for the 445 strong Democratic National Committee.

The DNC rules give no guidance as to who would have preference if Mrs Clinton drops out. Sanders, Biden, Kaine would all be in running.  Andrew Neil (@afneil) September 12, 2016







The DNC rules give no guidance as to who would have preference if Mrs Clinton drops out. Sanders, Biden, Kaine would all be in the running.

Does Clinton have an automatic successor?

There is no automatic successor to replace Hillary Clinton as Democratic Party presidential nominee if ill health forces her out of the race for the White House.

Experts believe the partys governing body, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), would move quickly to choose its new standard bearer in the November election should Clinton decide to quit.

Who could replace her, should she quit?

Mark J. Terrill/AP/Press Association Images

Despite left-wing candidate Bernie Sanders running Clinton hard in the primary selection elections, he would have no automatic right to replace her at the top of the party ticket.

Vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine would remain in his position if another person were chosen to succeed her.

Others in the running for the top spot if Clinton pulls out would include outgoing US vice president Joe Biden who considered challenging the former secretary of state for the Democratic Party crown in the primaries.

Does this give Trump an upper hand?

Evan Vucci/AP/Press Association Images

McCrisken said the pneumonia incident is likely to put more pressure on Republican Party challenger Donald Trump to release more information about the state of his own health.

The pneumonia diagnosis could be spun to suit both sides of the campaign  by Trump to say that Clinton is weak, and by Clinton to show that shes resilient by continuing to campaign despite illness.

However, appearing ill can affect popularity. At the first ever TV debate between Nixon and Kennedy in the US, Nixon had the flu and looked bad. Those listening on the radio said Nixon fared better; the TV audiences preferred Kennedy.

What do the bookies say?

Julio Cortez/AP/Press Association Images

Clintons health scare has seen the odds on Mr Trump becoming the next US president tighten.

Betway now put a Trump victory at 11/8, while odds on Mrs Clinton securing the White House have lengthened from 2/5 to 8/15.

Betways Alan Alger said: Hillarys illness couldnt come at a worse time as the race had narrowed significantly in the past fortnight, with Trump gaining three or four points in the polls.

Now presented with a 48-hour window without his rival on the campaign trail, Trump could make further inroads as we approach the all-important debates.

However, Hillary is still our odds-on favourite to be the next President and Trump will need an impressive, composed performance during the debates to convince undecided voters in key swing states to give him their vote.
It was the wall of photos which hit me. Hard.

Staring back at me were rows upon rows of photographed faces, all dressed in striped shirts and shaved heads. Sadness and fear in their eyes. Men, women and children all forced to have their photo taken for identification purposes, which was then the least of their worries.

This was definitely not my usual choice of tourist spot - but an essential one to visit.

I was in Auschwitz 1 concentration camp, the first main camp built by the Nazis. The tour guide explained how each person pictured was lucky to live two-three weeks, the terrible conditions and fierce punishments they faced... but it was hard to take your glare from the photographs. It was the eyes of the people which screamed despair, close to giving up hope.

Name upon name was listed, as were their previous occupations and then the date their train pulled up in Auschwitz 1 followed by the date they sadly met their fate.

Months before The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas lit up my TV screen and I sat with my family discussing the living hell of human suffering from Nazi Germany. It was then we decided to visit Southern Poland, to learn about the horror of World War 2. Although a devastating experience, its one which I will never forget.

Nothing can really prepare you for coming face to face with that haunting place.

With a heavy heart we walked through the gate, the same gate millions walked through, never to return.

The gate read ARBEIT MACHT FREI translating to English as Work sets you free, an ironically cruel slogan used by the Nazis to enforce their power. No birds flew over the camp, even they could sense the eerie past the grounds held.

It was 29 degrees on the day, our guide told us of the awful weather Poland faced from 1940-1945, telling us how thick, heavy snow lined the floor and the bitter cold only added to the prisoners torture.

She explained that as a punishment many victims were forced to stand shoeless in the snow for 24-hours straight. Basking in the sunshine, wearing sandals, comprehending this was difficult and it was hard not to feel a sense of guilt.

Each post-camp relic which once homed prisoners has been turned into museum exhibitions although several had been kept in their original condition.

Room 5 of block 4 was hard-hitting; a glass wall display held human hair off the heads of those killed in the gas chambers. When I once read there was hair in the museum display, I really was not expecting the hair of 140,000 victims.

From Auschwitz 1 we headed to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the twentieth century hell for over a million innocent victims.

Brutal human imprisonment, slavery and murder took place here making the site the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is 3km away from Auschwitz 1, no one spoke on the mini-bus, overwhelmed and astonished by what wed learned and saw  somewhat nervous for what to expect next.

Arriving, it was the size which struck me the most.

The ground held watch towers, a train track which bought the victims to their death, gas chambers, a crematoria and the stables which incarcerated the innocence.

The memorial at the end of the train track was a place for reflection. Where flowers where lay and the plaque which read forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe.

Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz-Birkenau are camps to remember and places to prevent history repeating itself.

Even with little prior knowledge, all should show an interest in holocaust education to keep the memory alive, commemorate the victims and to never forget the horror which only happened 75 years ago.
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.
Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
11AAA semis will be awesome and more from HS football quarterfinals

high-school-sports
Muslims in Madison gathered at the west side Marriott on Monday to observe Eid al-Adha, or the "Feast of sacrifice," the most important Islamic holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide. The festival commemorates the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son as an act of submission to God's command and is celebrated each year following Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Many people get together with friends and family to socialize and share a meal of traditional cuisine on the holiday, similar to how Thanksgiving is celebrated in the United States.

Close
Congressman Keith Ellison, who will be the keynote speaker at Saturday's Fighting Bob Fest, was initially sworn in using a Quran that was once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Ellison represents a Minnesota district and was the first Muslim member of Congress.
Israeli soldiers of the Golani brigade take position during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, on the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. That report comes as opposition and monitoring groups say the U.S.-Russia-brokered cease fire appears to be holding one day in. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
U.S. State Department's Special Representative for North Korea Policy Sung Kim, left, watches as his South Korean counterpart Kim Hong-kyun speaks during a joint press conference after their meeting to exchange views on North Korea's fifth nuclear test conducted on last Friday at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The United States on Tuesday sent two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
LODI  A Columbia County sheriffs deputy remained hospitalized Monday after his squad car crashed into a tree Friday night, while the deputy was responding to a call near Lodi.

The deputy, identified as Brad Graf, was transported from the scene by University of Wisconsin Med Flight with what were then characterized as potentially life-threatening injuries, according to a report from the Wisconsin State Patrol.

Columbia County Chief Deputy Darrel Kuhl told the County Boards Public Safety Committee on Monday that Graf is recovering from his injuries at UW Hospital in Madison.

Recon, the German shepherd K-9 officer with whom Graf works, escaped serious injury. According to Kuhl, the dog was riding in a kennel inside the squad vehicle.

According to a report from the Wisconsin State Patrol  the agency that is handling the crash investigation  the crash occurred at about 9 p.m. Friday on Highway 60 near McGowan Road at Smokey Hollow Road.

The report said the deputy was responding to a call for assistance at a domestic disturbance involving a juvenile and his parents.

The squad car was traveling on McGowan Road when it approached a T intersection with Smokey Hollow Road. The vehicle traveled through the intersection and into a private driveway, then hit a tree on the front passenger side.

The Wisconsin State Patrol report said it took an extensive effort to extricate the deputy from the vehicle.

Officials of the DeForest Post of the Wisconsin State Patrol are continuing their investigation.

Other agencies that assisted at the scene include the Lodi Police Department, Lodi Fire Department, the Arlington Fire Department and the Columbia County Sheriffs Office.
Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah on Tuesday took the controversy surrounding the Onam legend to a new level after he extended Vamanajayanti wishes on Facebook on the eve of the popular Malayali festival.

Shah's post came days after the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh published an article in its local mouthpiece saying that the Onam festival was an occasion to celebrate the birthday of Vamana, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu. The article had questioned the legend behind Onam and said the popular myth was an attempt to malign the characters of Hindu text.

Onam is widely known as the celebration of a welfare kingdom ruled by Mahabali, an Asura king, who was tricked and pushed to the netherworld of Pathala by Vamana. According to myths, Onam is the day when the king returns to his land to meet his subjects.

Earlier, Hindu Aikya Vedi state president Sasikala had termed Vamana a freedom fighter, who liberated Kerala from Mahabali.

Amit Shah's Facebook post has sparked off an outrage and drawn much criticism and troll on social media with a hashtag #PoMoneShaji (roughly translated as get lost you Shah ji) trending on both Twitter and Facebook. Po Mone Dinesha, a famous dialogue of the protagonist played by Mohanlal in one of his movies, has become a new idiom for Malayalis to jokingly express how silly the person who they are talking to is.

A similar hashtag #PoMoneModi trended on social media a few months back when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a statement comparing the state with Somalia.
A war of words has broken out in Delhi over the handling of the situation arising out of severe epidemic of mosquito-borne diseases dengue, chikungunya and malaria. On its part, the AAP government squared the blame on the Centre, Lt Governor Najeeb Jung and the BJP-ruled municipal corporations in the city for the menace.

Faced with mounting criticism over the absence of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Health Minister Satyender Jain in Delhi while the number of cases of the vector-borne diseases spiralled and deaths were reported, the AAP government on Tuesday questioned the absence of Lt Governor in town and claimed that Jung had also sanctioned the leave of the new health secretary whom he had appointed recently.

Political opponents had criticised Kejriwal for being in Punjab, and Jain for campaigning in Goa while Delhi was battling the diseases.

In response, Kejriwal tweeted, CM n min left wid no power now, even to buy a pen. LG n PM enjoy all powers wrt Del. LG abroad. Question them for Del.

Delhi minister Kapil Mishra said the Lt Governor first removed the health secretary despite repeated requests from Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and the health minister that he be allowed to stay. The Lt Governor then appointed a health secretary who was,on record, responsible for delay on the Chinese Manjha issue and was infamous for delaying decisions. He further claimed that the Lt Governor sanctioned 15 days leave for the new health secretary.

The Lt Governor himself is missing. Where is he? What is he doing? he asked.

Attacking the three BJP-run MCDs (Municipal Corporation of Delhi), Mishra said, One simple question: when all funds have been released to the MCDs in advance, why was no preventive action taken?

Party spokesman Ashutosh tweeted that though it is the responsibility of the MCD to prevent mosquito menace, Jains absence is being questioned.
Following the ongoing unrest in Bengaluru over the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu, central forces have been deployed to assist the city police to maintain law and order.

The central forces include Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and the Railway Protection Force.

The Bengaluru Police said the situation in the city is is totally calm, adding strict action would be taken against vandals or miscreants.

The police said as many as 15,000 police men and officers have been deployed all over the city and around 270 Hoysala vehicles are deployed which act like police outposts.

The city police added that all necessary security arrangements have been made all over the city.

"In any emergencies kindly call 100 and report. KSRP and Quick Reaction Teams deployed all over the city to check violence. Be safe. Section 144 imposed," the Bengaluru Police said in its twitter handle.

Meanwhile, the pro-Kannada activists continued their protest in Mandya, Karnataka over the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday assured full assistance to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Governments to deal with the current state of violence that is prevailing in both the states over the Cauvery water issue.

Singh has assured assistance to both Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to tackle the present state of unrest.

In wake of the protests erupting over the Cauvery issue, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has written to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, requesting him to ensure safety and security of Tamilians residing in Karnataka.

With protests escalating in the wake of Cauvery water dispute that escalated between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the Bengaluru Police on Monday imposed Section 144 of the CRPC, meaning that no more than five people will be allowed to gather in public places in the city.

The protesters targeted vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu registration numbers and set them on fire. They also vandalised trucks near Hubli bypass in Karnataka.

Siddaramaiah has also appealed for peace and has written to his counterpart in Tamil Nadu, urging her to ensure the safety of Kannada speaking people living in the state. He also urged the Tamil Nadu authorities to take action against those indulging in violence.

Modifying its September 5 order, the apex court on Tuesday asked the Karnataka Government to release to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water every day to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

It had earlier directed the Karnataka Government to release of 15,000 cusecs of water for 10 days as immediate relief to farmers in Tamil Nadu.

The Hyderabad Police had earlier issued an advisory to all cable TV channels/cable TV network operators over protests in Bangaluru and said no program shall be transmitted in the cable service which is likely to incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order.
Politics in the coastal state of Goa is taking an interesting turn with each passing day. Shiv Sena, a long time ally of the BJP at the centre and in Maharashtra, has shown interest in tying up with sacked RSS chief Subhash Velingker's group for the upcoming state assembly elections.

Velingker had a two hour long meeting with senior Sena leader and party MP Sanjay Raut on Sunday evening. Within Shiv Sena's organisation structure, Raut is in charge of Goa state.

Shiv Sena is likely to contest 20 odd seats during the assembly elections due next year. It has always supported the cause of linguistic politics and 'sons of the soil'. Shiv Sena is all too happy that a powerful faction of Goa RSS took up the fight with ruling BJP on the issue of stopping government aid to English language schools in Goa. Velingker, who led this faction, was recently sacked as chief of Goa RSS. He is the convenor of Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch, an NGO which promotes Marathi-Konkani schools in Goa.

Raut is learnt to have told Sena leadership that party should form an alliance with the Velingker faction of RSS and BBSM.

On Monday, Velingker held a meeting of his supporters in Goa. It was decided at the meeting that BJP had failed to fulfil the promise it had given to voters on the issue of support to Marathi-Konkani schools. Shiv Sena is learnt to have conveyed to Velingker that it won't mind sharing seats with Velingker outfit, incase the latter were to directly take on BJP in an electoral contest.
The situation in Kashmir found a place in a session of the Human Rights Council that began in Geneva on Tuesday. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein, in his opening statement, noted that the commission had been receiving reports of Indian authorities using force "excessively" against civilians.

We had previously received reports, and still continue to do so, claiming the Indian authorities had used force excessively against the civilian population under its administration," said Hussein.

He made a public appeal to India and Pakistan for unconditional access to both sides of the Line of Control (LoC). The request had been made two months ago, he added. Pakistan government had sent an invite requesting the team for a visit on Friday, but India was yet to respond.

I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides," he said.

Hussein, however, acknowledged that he had received conflicting narratives about the cause of the situation.

Now it's time for India to put its diplomacy at the UN to the test.

India so far has politely, but firmly asserted that Kashmir is an internal affair. A strongly worded statement issued by the ministry of external affairs on Wednesday reiterated Indias position.

It would be recalled that the present situation arose from the death of a self-acknowledged commander of the terrorist organisation, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, who was wanted for several terrorist acts," said the ministry. It was further aggravated by sustained cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan. Terrorism is the grossest violation of human rights and should be so acknowledged by any impartial and objective observer. The high number of casualties sustained by Indian security forces is a reflection of the tremendous restraint they have displayed in difficult circumstances, it said.

Virtually denying access to the commission, India has said that the issue of an external mission was considered by the All-Party Conference that met on August 12 to discuss the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. It was unanimously felt that Indian democracy has all that is required to address legitimate grievances. Accordingly, an all-party delegation visited Srinagar. Despite cross-border terrorist infiltration that saw an encounter only yesterday, Government remains fully engaged in normalizing the situation as soon as possible," said the MEA.

Meanwhile, Pakistan welcomed the move. The question now is how India manages to win not only the statement war, but the battle of perception.
A judge Monday sentenced a Holmen man tied to a massive methamphetamine trafficking enterprise to five years in prison.

Timothy Loftus, 34, also will serve three years on extended supervision for his role in the drug distribution ring that operated between the Twin Cities and the La Crosse region for a decade before authorities interrupted it in October.

Authorities estimate those involved moved hundreds of pounds of meth manufactured by Mexican drug cartels throughout the area.

While his attorney argued that Loftus operated on the periphery, La Crosse County Circuit Judge Scott Horne called him a significant drug trafficker who minimized his involvement in the case.

You preyed on peoples addictions, Horne said.

While en route to search Loftus house Oct. 1 as part of the investigation, authorities stopped his vehicle in the town of Holland. Co-defendant Melissa Ozleplebici was in the passenger seat and Loftus young daughter was in the back.

Authorities found 25 grams of meth in the childs diaper bag, 90 grams of meth in a bag behind Loftus seat and two loaded guns in the car, according to the complaint. They also located an ounce of meth at his house.

Although Loftus pleaded guilty to conspiracy to delivering meth, he is unwilling to take responsibility for his conduct and tries to play the role of a victim, said assistant district attorney John Kellis, who argued for a prison sentence.

He claimed the drugs found in the car belonged to a co-defendant and the meth found at his house belonged to an ex-girlfriend  excuses that are difficult to accept, the judge said.

Loftus supporters described him as a hard worker and loving father who should be spared prison for an opportunity on community supervision. His attorney Shirlene Perrin argued for a period of probation that would allow him access to drug treatment.

This isnt who I am, Loftus told the judge. It was a mistake that I made.

Loftus, who took responsibility for being a burden on this community, said he wants to share his struggle with addiction to keep others off the same path.

My goal is to be that person who helps other people, he said.

Loftus receives credit for 283 days and is eligible for early release programs.
5:25AM EST: Thousands of people are currently attending the Levayos of the 7 Niftarim of one family who were tragically killed in yesterdays crash, when their minivan collided with a train in Kiryat Gat.

The Levaya has just left the Stolin Bais Medrash on Rechov Avi Noam Yellin in Yerushalayim, and is proceeding to har Menuchos for the Kevura.

Click HERE for photos taken by Reuven P.

The following was submitted by ZAKA to YWN:

ZAKA volunteers were among the first to arrive at the scene of the fatal train collision with a minibus at a railroad crossing north of Kiryat Gat on Thursday evening. As the full horror of the crash, in which seven members of one family were killed and 20 others injured, was revealed, it became apparent that they knew the victims: Aryeh Bernstein, the head of the family, who died along with his wife, his pregnant daughter and four other children, was himself a ZAKA volunteer from Beitar Illit. Bernsteins yellow ZAKA volunteer vest and hat was found among his belongings in the minibus.

Click HERE for phtos of ZAKA at the scene of the crash.

ZAKA Chairman Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who rushed to attend to the scene from his home in Jerusalem: The family is well-known. Aryeh was a very important veteran volunteer who attended my daughters wedding only last week. This incident, in which an entire family has been wiped out, is very hard, but the pain for us is doubled when we are talking about a respected member of the ZAKA family.

ZAKA volunteer Motti Bukchin: ZAKA volunteers are often called in to gruesome and horrifying scenes, and the public probably considered us as tried and tested and immune to the pain of seeing tragedy unfold. But we are not immune to pain, and on the scene I saw a couple of the volunteers standing to the side and shedding a tear for our friend Aryeh.

ZAKA volunteer Moshe Anki, who was one of the first to arrive at the scene, spoke about the chaos he found on arrival: The scenes were very difficult, among the dead were two young children. The first thing we did on arrival was to help MDA treat the survivors from the minibus.

The names of the fatalities were released on Friday morning: Aryeh Berstein, 43, his wife Rivka Bernstein, 41, and their children Mordechai, age 9, Chaya, 14 and Yochanan, 16, all from Beitar Illit. Their pregnant daughter Malki Gotstein, 21, was also killed, together with her one-and-a-half-year-old son, Mordechai. Malkis husband, Dudi, is the only family member to survive the crash and is in moderate condition in Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon. The driver of the minibus, a neighbor of the Bernstein family, survived the crash and is in moderate condition in Soroka Hospital.

(Yehuda Drudgestein  YWN)
Israeli legal watchdog Regavim has launched a boomerang campaign to rally support for its activities, after an American anti-Israel Lobby announced a pressure campaign to silence Regavim and have their charity status revoked in America. In a counter attack, Regavims lawyers have begun an investigation to ascertain who is truly behind J-Streets subversive anti-Israel position.

Last week, J Street which obsessively supported the Iran Deal, backed a UN Security Council Resolution against Israel and congratulated the UN Goldstone report which labeled IDF soldiers as war criminals decided to take aim against Regavim. Unable to beat Regavim in the court, they have decided to attack the organization in the court of public opinion, bypassing democracy, in an attempt to silence a law-abiding NGO.

Josh Hasten, international director of Regavim stated: After successfully pushing through a perilous Iran deal, which continues to endanger Israels very existence; J-Street is now targeting Regavim. We are proud that this repugnant anti-Israel group is coming after Regavim because it strengthens our image as a bastion of Zionist values. As a legal watchdog focused on land ownership issues, we work according to the letter of the law to ensure that Israeli national lands are not stolen or squandered. Apparently our recent string of successes in court have upset the anti-Israel lobby so much that they want to bypass democracy and silence us.

He continued: We call upon our supporters in Israel and around the world to show these anti-Israel bullies that Zionism is alive and well, by increasing their support for Regavim and ensuring that we continue to flourish

Regavim is a legal advocacy organization, dedicated to ensuring responsible, legal and accountable use of Israels national land. By investigating claims on the ground level, Regavim protects national land interests, presenting its findings in the form of white papers and legal action, in addition to briefing the press and diplomatic corps.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The accompanying video speaks for itself. We see a woman who crosses a street in an authorized crosswalk in Yaffo is struck by a vehicle, which throws her in the air. The hit-and-run occurred on Derech Shlomo Street in Yaffo. The video also shows the driver speeding off from the scene.

The woman, in her 30s, was transported to Wolfson Hospital in Holon where her condition is described as light. The driver was apprehended and taken for questioning.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Video: Media Resource Group)
After Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accused PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) of ethnic cleansing, the PA leader responds. Mr. Netanyahu earlier this week spoke of the PA plan of having a Judenrein Palestinian state, stating unequivocally that the PA is guilty of ethnic cleansing.

Abu Mazen used the occasion of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, stating in his public remarks that to date, Israel has refused to budge a step and despite his readiness to resume diplomatic talks, PM Netanyahu is unwilling. He added that Netanyahus actions have resulted in Israel becoming politically isolated. We dont just launch trial balloons pertaining to peace but we take steps to carry it out he stated.

He also accused Israel of damaging efforts towards peace by continuing settlements and damaging holy sites.

He added, Before the holy days approach, poisonous winds are coming from Israels direction

US State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said at a briefing in Washington that PM Netanyahus message was inappropriate and unhelpful.

She added, We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
RAYMOND  A man was arrested while allegedly attempting to push a friends car with his car from Racine to Milwaukee Friday.

Aaron D. Jones, 32, of the 6100 block of North 37th Street in Milwaukee, was first seen by a Racine County Sheriffs deputy after he noticed vehicles braking abruptly in all three lanes on northbound Interstate 94 near Highway G, according to the criminal complaint.

The deputy then noticed a red Oldsmobile in the left lane going about 25 mph under the speed limit while pushing a green Chrysler, the complaint said.

After a records check, the deputy learned that the Oldsmobile was suspended for emissions issues. Jones allegedly told the deputy at the time his name was Scotty T. Burks, according to the complaint.

Jones told the deputy the Oldsmobile belonged to someone else, but he knew the registration was suspended. Jones also said the vehicle had no insurance and that his cousin was driving the Chrysler, which had no power, the complaint said.

The deputy was unable to find a Scotty T. Burks in the system. Jones then said his name was Scotty Lamar Burks. While being questioned, Jones reportedly gave two different Social Security numbers and was ordered out of the vehicle, according to the complaint.

Jones then gave his real name and allegedly said he lied because he knew he was wanted in a warrant issued in Outagamie County, the complaint said.

Jones faces one misdemeanor charge for obstructing an officer. He is scheduled for a pre-trial conference at 3:15 p.m. Oct. 13 at the Racine County Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave.

He remained in custody as of Monday night at the Racine County Jail, online records showed.
The High Court of Justice on Sunday 8 Elul ruled the 2015 law that permits force-feeding hunger-striking security prisoners (terrorists) is permissible, explaining that once a prisoner has undertaken a hunger strike, the state is responsible for his well-being. The court ruled against the petition filed against the law by the Israel Medical Association (IMA) and a number of human rights organizations.

The court explains that when a prisoner undertakes a hunger strike, he is no longer like a regular person but a person who has willingly decided to put his health at risk as an act of protest.

The IMA feels doctors should not be compelled to force feed a prisoner and has expressed objections to the law passed in Knesset from its inception. However, the High Court has given its backing to the law despite the petition from organization along with human rights groups.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Former Prime Minister David Cameron, who has stayed out of the public eye since leaving Downing Street in July, has decided to step down from his position in Parliament and put an end to his political career.

Camerons surprise announcement Monday will trigger a by-election in the county of Witney in Oxfordshire, which has been a safe seat for his Conservative Party for several decades.

Cameron, 49, won a general election in 2015, but his political fortunes shifted overnight in June when British voters rejected his pleas and decided to leave the European Union.

He announced the next morning he would step down as prime minister but planned to stay on in Parliament. On Monday, he said he had concluded that it made more sense for him to leave public office altogether.

In my view, the circumstances of my resignation as prime minister and the realities of modern politics make it very difficult to continue on the backbenches without the risk of becoming a diversion to the important decisions that lie ahead for my successor in Downing Street and the Government, Cameron said.

The former prime minister said he fully supports successor Theresa May, now charged with carrying out the voters mandate to extricate Britain from the 28-nation EU bloc.

May said in a statement she had been proud to serve in Camerons government, where she held the important role of home secretary, and said the government had accomplished great things under his leadership.

Cameron did not announce his future plans. He became party leader in 2005 and prime minister in 2010, when he led a coalition government that included the Liberal Democrats.

His Conservatives won an outright majority in 2015, strengthening his hand considerably, but he was brought down by voters unhappiness with the EU, in part because of unchecked immigration from other EU countries into Britain.

The date for the by-election has not yet been set.

He promised to support the Conservative Party candidate chosen to replace him in the by-election that will be held in order to fill the Parliament vacancy.

(AP)
The No. 3 Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, disclosed Monday that he was diagnosed with pneumonia but that it has now cleared up.

Schumer was diagnosed several weeks ago. His disclosure Monday comes amid furor over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clintons own pneumonia diagnosis.

In response to questions from The Associated Press, Schumer spokesman Matt House said in a statement that Schumer was diagnosed with pneumonia and took antibiotics per doctors order, and also kept a lighter schedule. His doctor has pronounced him all cleared up and hes feeling much better, House said.

Schumer was present with Clinton at Sundays Sept. 11 memorial in New York. Clinton left the ceremony before it concluded, and could later be seen on video being helped into a car. Her staff subsequently disclosed that she had been diagnosed Friday with pneumonia.

The 65-year-old Schumer put out a statement on Sunday about chatting with Clinton at the event, but did not disclose his own condition at the time.

Schumer is in line to be the top Senate Democrat in January with the retirement of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

(AP)
For nearly 24 hours, Donald Trump was quiet.

As Hillary Clinton waded through the most perilous stretch of her campaign to date, the GOP presidential nominee held his tongue, allowing amateur footage of his foe stumbling after falling ill to play over and over on TV without his commentary.

The episode underscored a new political reality: After more than a year of off-the-cuff comments and chaotic cleanup, Trumps campaign seems to have found its footing.

Over the past four weeks, with a new leadership team in place, Trump has largely done away with his free-wheeling rallies, replacing them with teleprompter-guided speeches. While he is by no means a typical candidate  he derisively referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas and questioned the integrity of the FBI and Department of Justice during a morning show call-in on Monday  he has nonetheless refined many of his campaigns rougher edges. Hes trying to broaden his appeal and win over the moderate and independent voters hell need if he hopes to win.

Gone are the endless attacks on his former GOP rivals and his aversion to more intimate campaign events. He has even lifted his extraordinary ban on credentialing particular news outlets hes deemed unfair.

And on the worst weekend of Hillary Clintons year, Trump stayed largely silent and let her problems make the headlines.

Trumps team had already imposed a day of silence order for Sept. 11, asking supporters to refrain from news interviews and suspending outright campaigning as the nation marked the anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon.

But Team Trump even kept quiet Sunday as the news dripped out about Clinton  confusion about where shed gone after feeling overheated, video of her needing assistance and then stumbling while entering a van, her campaigns eventual revelation that shed been diagnosed with pneumonia. There were no gloating tweets, no told-you-sos from supporters whove been pushing conspiracy theories about her health.

When Trump re-emerged, in a pair of early-morning phone interviews with friendly TV stations, he was restrained and reserved, at least on the topic of Clintons health.

Somethings going on, he said on Fox and Friends, but I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail and well be seeing her at the debate.

Trumps tone surprised even long-time supporters like Barry Bennett, a former adviser to his campaign.

Thats the most remarkable thing Ive seen out of the Trump campaign so far, said Bennett, adding that, the old Donald Trump would have gone straight to Twitter.

Hes frankly a much better candidate, Bennett said, making the case that, if Trump can stay on message for the next seven weeks, he can win in November.

Jason Miller, Trumps senior communications adviser, credited the discipline to Trump himself, saying that, after months of campaigning, the political novice has seen what works.

What hes finding now are the best ways to articulate and implement his vision, Miller said, describing the strategy as letting Trump be Trump  but with discipline.

The new message control follows the campaigns latest leadership shake-up, including the promotion of Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager.

Under her guidance, Trump still veers off-script sometimes. But the candidate who once called for outlawing teleprompters for presidential candidates now rarely speaks without reading from one.

At a casual Roast and Ride event in Iowa last month that featured a long list of elected officials, Trumps staff awkwardly halted the flow of speakers so the devices could be assembled ahead of his remarks.

With the prepared speeches has come a more professional communications apparatus. Trumps team now often previews his speeches to reporters and sends out excerpts and transcripts to aid with stories.

Trumps schedule has evolved as well. Hes been holding more intimate events, including roundtables with small groups like miners and military spouses. Last week, he met with about a dozen students, teachers and parents at an Ohio charter school, where he sat at a child-size desk.

The smaller events mean Trump is spending less time in front of fiery rally crowds- crowds that chant Lock her up! at the mention of Clinton and wear shirts emblazoned with slogans like Trump that bitch!  prompting the asides that often get him in trouble.

Rep. Chris Collins, a longtime Trump supporter, said he believes the campaign team, under Conways guidance, now has Trump where he needs to be for the last eight weeks.

Even some of Trumps most vocal critics praised his response both over the weekend and over the last month or so.

Tim Miller, a Republican strategist who helped run an anti-Trump super PAC during the primaries, said that Trump had shown surprising restraint, to be honest in responding to Clintons health episode.

Nonetheless, Miller said he is doubtful about how long it will last and how much it will matter.

All Trump has done in the last month, he said, is turn what would have been a landslide into a more standard-fare loss.

(AP)
10:30AM IL: The SANA News Agency is reporting that an Israel Air Force fighter plane and drone attacking a Syrian army position in the Quneitra area were downed at about 1:00AM.

The Syrian report says both aircraft were shot down.

There is no official Israeli comment on the report.

10:39AM IL: The IDF spokesman unit reports two anti-aircraft missiles were fired following an IDF response to rocket fire leaking into northern Israel. Air force planes were far from the source of the [anti-aircraft] fire and they presented no threat to our forces.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Democratic voters in Brooklyn have primaries they can vote in today that in most cases will determine the eventual winner of the election. The most hotly contested race in the Jewish community is between Mordechai Avigdor, the former lawyer for Agudas Yisroel of America and Ruchie Frier the founder of Ezras Nashim  an all female ambulance service. They are vying to replace Noach Dear in the civil court for Boro Park and parts of Flatbush. Judge Dear was recently promoted to State Supreme Court  New Yorks main trial court.

Also today, is a county-wide race between Connie Melendez and Odessa Kennedy for Civil Court.

There is also contested race for New York State Assembly and Senate in Southern Brooklyn. Senator Roxanne Persaud is being challenged by Mercedes Narcisse. Senator Persaud has the support of most elected officials. However, Mercedes Narcisse has the backing of Charles & Inez Barron.

In the New York State Assembly, AssemblyMember Pam Harris is being challenged by Kate Cucco. AssemblyMember Harris has the support of Councilman David Greenfield.

Also in the New York State Assembly is an open seat to replace Assemblyman Jim Brennan. Attorney Robert Carrol is running as is Troy Odendhal, a radio producer, and Rob Curry-Smithson, a history teacher. Mr. Carrol used to work for Councilman Greenfield who is supporting his candidacy, as well.

Finally, there are four local uncontested races today that dont require any votes and because they have no completion these four are essentially guaranteed to be elected in November: Senator Simcha Felder is running unopposed on the Republican, Democratic and Conservative lines. Assemblyman Dov Hikind is running unopposed on the Democratic line. Hikind also resigned from his leadership post in the a Democratic Party and hand-selected his 22 year old aide to replace him as Democratic Male State Committeeman. Hikinds young aide, Duvid Schwartz, is running unopposed for the unpaid party position. He will join Sharon Fuchs who also works for Assemblyman Dov Hikind and is also running unopposed for Democratic Female State Committeewoman.

(Charles Gross  YWN)
Professor & Mrs. Simcha and Leah Goldin, parents of IDF Lt. Hadar Goldin HYD, arrive in the United States this week for meetings geared at gaining international support to assist them in obtaining the return of their sons body. Hadar was killed in Gaza fighting during Operation Protective Edge along with Sgt. Oren Shaul HYD and their bodies were snatched by Hamas.

The two were invited by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who will be traveling to the United Nations next week. The Goldins held a press conference on Tuesday 10 Elul prior to their departure, during which they thanked Mr. Netanyahu for his efforts to have the bodies returned. They thanked the Prime Minister for remaining in touch with them, adding there are others around the cabinet table who are less concerned with bringing the bodies back for kvura.

Professor Goldin feels Israel has many vantage points over Hamas and the release of prisoners is only one of them. There is a great deal the government can do to bring back Hadar and Oren he added. Some of the examples he cited includes Israel controls the water to Gaza as well as crossing points where building supplies enter Gaza. Goldin mentions the deluxe conditions given to imprisoned Hamas terrorists, insisting there is a great deal that can be done.

Mr. Goldin adds that Hadar was snatched during a ceasefire, questioning why the United Nations is not doing more. An international body that does not abide by its own agreements loses it moral right. Goldin feels that since the UN brokered the ceasefire, it is compelled to act to bring the bodies back.

Goldin concluded Despite it all, we never lost our love or patriotism for our nation for a moment. This is who we are and the values upon which Hadar was education and the values upon which we must bring Hadar home in courage and humility.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman spoke out against the hold the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the nations religious councils have on the lives of citizens. Lieberman also accuses religious councils of taking care of their own, providing jobs for their relatives.

Minister of Religious Services (Shas) David Azoulai responded to the harsh allegations. He told Kikar Shabbos News I suggest that Minister Lieberman, who is only in his post for a short time, learn the job for this is most important. He deals with matters of security and the more he learns the more he will succeed.

Regarding religious services, perhaps he says this due to a lack of knowledge. Therefore, I told him prior to criticizing as a result of not knowing, to take the time to learn close and up front regarding religious services in Israel. I would be pleased to escort him to any place he wishes towards letting him see how things operate up close and what is done in the Chief Rabbinate and religious councils as well as the rabbonim and mashgichim.

Azoulai added he does not know which rabbonim Lieberman is referring to, adding the rabbonim in the system work extremely hard and address many matters including shalom bayis and kiruv. I know many rabbis like this and he should meet them too adds Azoulai.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Indictments were handed down on Tuesday 10 Elul against three persons who were arrested when they entered the home of Rabbi Moshe Havlin without authorization, then causing a ruckus. The three were part of a group numbering 20-25, entering the home of the 68-year-old Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Gat to protest his role in reaching an agreement with the IDF by which Chabadnikim will serve in the IDF. They caused a ruckus and damaged items, leading to the rebitzen being hospitalized for observation following the trauma.

The three, Shlomo Zalman, Yehuda Leib and Menachem Mendel, members of the chareidi community, were apprehended at the scene that night while the others succeeded in fleeing. They were indicted in the Ashkelon Magistrate Court. It is pointed out that during their remand they were most uncooperative with authorities and they told the court during their arraignment that they do not recognize its authority over them.

The prosecution told the court the three got on a minibus and traveled from Beit Shemesh to Kiryat Gat to protest in the ravs home since they do not agree with the Chabad agreement by which bnei Torah will serve in the IDF. They entered the ravs home, created a ruckus, blew shofars, knocked things over, and threw flyers around the home. They shouted at the rav, who they accuse of selling Jewish neshomos, insisting he personally profits on each Chabadnik inducted into the IDF. They insist Rabbi Havlin earns NIS 600 per inductee, an allegation the rav dismissed as absurd.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
An Israeli Arab citizen, 25, a resident of Nazareth, has been taken into police custody on Tuesday 10 Elul after threatening to shoot Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

A threatening message was received in the Prime Ministers Office and in line with protocol police and other agencies were notified. The suspect was quickly located, arrested, and arraigned.

In the message the suspect stated I have a gun and an iron bullet, adding he was going to play Russian Roulette with PM Netanyahus head.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Bellini Italian Restaurant's last official day of business will be Nov. 12, its owners said.

"We figured that was the best move for us because we fulfilled all of our commitments and have the holidays to ourselves for the first time in almost 20 years," said Pete Gargano, who owns the restaurant with his two siblings.

Gargano doesn't have a buyer or renter yet for the building, but said there are a couple of interested parties.

It's not as if he works on holidays, but Gargano said he is looking forward to longer stretches of time with his family over Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.

"It just makes sense to us. It's something we haven't had for quite some time," said Gargano, who runs the business with his wife, Liz.

The building, a renovated church at 401 E. Washington Ave., is frequently booked for rehearsal dinners and wedding receptions and by mid-November it will be done with all of its planned events.

The closing of Bellini ends the Gargano family's run of Italian restaurants in Madison that stretches back to the 1960s.

In 1979, Sicilian-born Biagio Gargano, the father of Pete, Angelina, and Maria Gargano, bought and renovated the 1897 church, which was being used as an insurance office. He established the Monastery Restaurant, which he closed in 1994 to retire. Five years later, Biagio came out of retirement and opened a new restaurant, Bellini, with his children.

Bellini is the last Gargano restaurant in Madison. Biagio Gargano originally had the restaurant Gargano's on State Street in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His brothers, Peppino and Gino, also ran famous namesake restaurants in Madison.

Last year, Dane County was looking at the Bellini building for its homeless day resources center. An architect's report, however, found the site too small.
According to reports from Guatemalan news agencies, the building housing members of the Lev Tahor cult have been raided by the Public Ministry (MP) which investigates allegations of child abuse.

Authorities were reportedly notified of parents exposing their children to severe punishments that have resulted in injuries.

Personnel involved in the raid include the Attorney Generals Office.

Recently, a court in Guatemala indicted the ex-mayor of a small town for participating in the expulsion of a religious community.

In 2014, some 230 members of the Lev Tahor cult were forced out of the village following religiously tainted disputes with its Mayan residents, who are Roman Catholic. The local elders council voted against the group.

Antonio Adolfo Perez y Perez of San Juan La Laguna was charged with abuse of authority and discrimination and sentenced to house arrest, the local newspaper Prensa Libre reported. He had lost his political immunity on Jan. 14 after he was not re-elected.

Lev Tahor had maintained a small presence in San Juan La Laguna, a village about 90 miles west of Guatemala City, for about six years, but it expanded considerably after a contingent arrived complaining of persecution by Canadian authorities. Tensions appear to have flared after the newcomers sought to impose its practices on the indigenous people.

In 2014 YWN ran an article titled Cults and the War of the Jewish Magazines in response to Mishpacha and Ami magazines running articles on Lev Tahor. Mishpacha Magzaine had run a fifteen page expose on the group, essentially describing Lev Tahor as a cult that has some serious issues involving medicating children, and behaviors that resemble child abuse. Ami Magazing claimed the exact opposite  and ran the following sentence below their headline The unjust persecution of a group of pious Jews, and the unsettling silence of the Jewish community.

Originally a citizen of Israel, cult leader Shlomo Helbrans went to the United States where he was convicted for kidnapping in 1994 and served a two-year prison term before being deported to Israel in 2000. He then settled in Canada.

In 1994 he was convicted in Brooklyn for the 1992 kidnapping of 13-year-old Shai Fhima Reuven, a Bar Mitzvah boy he was tutoring, and served a two-year prison term in the U.S. He was originally sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, but in June 1996 an appeals court reduced the sentence to two to six years. Three days later, he was placed in the work release program for prisoners less than two years away from the possibility of parole, where inmates are freed from prison if they have a job. After protests, he was moved back to prison.

The high-profile case drew much attention in the U.S., and gained further attention when Helbrans successfully convinced New York prison authorities to waive their requirement that all prisoners be shaved for a photograph upon entering prison, and to accept a computer-generated image of what he would have looked like clean-shaven instead. After the State Parole Board decided in November 1996 to release Helbrans after two years in prison, the case rose to near scandal with suspicions that the Pataki administration was providing him special treatment.

After his release from prison, Helbrans ran a yeshiva in Monsey, N.Y., and was deported to Israel in 2000. He then settled in Canada, where in 2003 he was granted refugee status, claiming his life was being threatened in Israel.

(Chaim Shapiro  YWN)
Rockland Countys Orthodox Jewish communitys are heading to the polls today and there are two important races that people are following closely.

Democratic candidate Thomas Gulla is running against five-term incumbent Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee in the 97th Assembly District.

Many have accused Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee of stirring up anti-Jewish sentiment in the county, with unwarranted attacks against Yeshivas as well as questioning the validity of Orthodox Jewish Voters (See video in extended article)

In the past, Jaffee enjoyed the support of the Orthodox community, but this year the incumbent seems to have lost its support with every Kehilla backing her opponent.

One influential observer told YWN, at a certain point elected officials need to understand that their words and actions have electoral consequences. Jafffes agenda and rhetoric have unfortunately gone well past the line of fairness.

The district includes Orangetown, the Ramapo villages of Spring Valley, Suffern, Airmont, Chestnut Ridge, Hillburn, parts of Montebello, New Square, and areas in unincorporated Ramapo, including sections of Monsey.

Activists supporting Jaffee including the anti-orthodox citizens group Preserve Rockland/Ramapo as well as the NY State Teachers Union have launched an 11th hour effort to stave off a historic upset of their preferred candidate.

The other race being closely watched is for the 98th Assembly District.

Incumbent Karl Brabenec faces four primary challenges as he seeks his second term.

John Allegro, who has been active in the citizens group United Monroe, is Brabenecs foe in the GOP primary. Aron Wieder of Spring Valley is opposing Brabenec on the Independence Party line.

Wieder, a Rockland County legislator, also is opposing Krystal Serrano of Monroe for the Democratic and Womens Equality lines.

The 98th Assembly District includes parts of the villages of Spring Valley, Montebello, Wesley Hills, Monsey and Kaser, and all of the village of Sloatsburg. The Orange County towns of Monroe, Tuxedo, Warwick, Minisink, Greenville and Deerpark also are represented. Wieder lost two years ago by 68 votes.

With Rockland and Orange counties facing intense and unprecedented division over school funding and development/housing,experts say that the two races will be won or lost based on turnout.

(Chaim Shapiro  YWN)
Former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday suffered a stroke and was rushed to a hospital.

The 93-year-old politicians condition was reportedly critical and was on a respirator.

Peres, 93, has held virtually every senior political office in Israel over a seven-decade career, including three terms as prime minister as well as stints as foreign minister and finance minister.

He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in reaching an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians. As president, a largely ceremonial office, he cultivated an image as the countrys elder statesman and became a popular fixture at international conferences like the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Peres has remained active since completing his seven-year term as president in 2014, and is one of the countrys most popular public figures. He often hosts public events at his peace center, bringing together Arabs and Jews in efforts to promote peace and coexistence.

It is interesting to note that the Oslo Accords were officially signed at a public ceremony in Washington, D.C., on September 13, 1993. Peres suffered stroke on September 13, 2016. The Oslo Accords were signed in the presence of PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and U.S. President Bill Clinton. The documents themselves were signed by Mahmoud Abbas for the PLO, foreign Minister Shimon Peres for Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher for the United States and foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev for Russia.

he Accord provided for the creation of a Palestinian interim self-government, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The Palestinian Authority would have responsibility for the administration of the territory under its control. The Accords also called for the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

(Chaim Shapiro  YWN / AP)
Four people were arrested in Richland County for allegedly running a methamphetamine operation.

The arrests came after a search warrant executed at a house on Highway 60 in the town of Eagle on Saturday turned up evidence that "one pot" shake and bake meth labs were used in or around the house, the Richland County Sheriff's Office said.

Robert Schoener, 26, was tentatively charged with manufacturing and delivering methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine, maintaining a drug trafficking place, two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia and bail jumping.

Court records show his home address, 18677 Highway 60, as the same place where the search warrant was executed.

Stephen Szuflita, 40, was tentatively charged with maintaining a drug trafficking place, possession of drug paraphernalia, resisting/obstructing and multiple counts of felony bail jumping.

Court records show Szuflita also has the Highway 60 house as his home address.

Regina Heather, 42, of Richland Center, was tentatively charged with resisting/obstructing and felony bail jumping.

Bruce Travis, 43, of Orion, was tentatively charged with resisting/obstructing and a probation violation.

The Richland-Iowa-Grant Drug Task Force, the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation and the Richland County District Attorney's Office assisted the Sheriff's Office in the investigation, and the Muscoda Fire Department and EMS assisted at the scene.
Paying for gas at the pump might cost you more than just the listed price.

Card skimmers  surreptitious devices that steal bank card information with a swipe  are popping up all over Wisconsin, including in Madison. So state officials on Tuesday warned consumers to be watchful for any evidence of skimmers or unusual account activity.

Five skimmers have been discovered in gas pumps in Madison since early August, prompting the Madison Police Department to alert every gas station in the city to check their pumps.

The Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection said the five Madison stations were Whitney Way Mobil, 699 S. Whitney Way; Farzo LLC, 699 S. Gammon Road; MS Mobil, 3019 E. Washington Ave.; BP Amoco Food Shop, 318 S. Park St.; and Avenue Shell, 4821 E. Washington Ave.

State investigators found those five skimmers and another 10 across the state during inspections of pumps conducted over the past five weeks.

Other card skimmers were discovered at Newville Travel Plaza in Edgerton, J&R Express Mart in Janesville, Milton Travel Center in Milton, Tri-Par Qwik Stop in Random Lake, Camp Douglas BP in Camp Douglas, Dino Stop II in Lake Delton, 7 Eleven in Franklin, Open Pantry in Brookfield, BB Mobil Mart in Appleton and Jackson Street Mobil in Oshkosh.

Police spokesman Joel DeSpain said once skimmers are found, they are removed, and owners are encouraged to check their pumps daily. Police will also share photos of what skimmers look like to gas station owners. Officers will be going to each station to walk employees through what they should be looking for, DeSpain said.

DATCP spokesman Bill Cosh urged consumers to ask stations about steps theyre taking to secure their pumps. The skimmers, either internal or external, read information off cards without the consumer knowing, so accounts can be hacked.

The FBI and IRS have been conducting local skimming investigations at gas stations and ATMs but havent released information about arrests.

Police and IRS agents temporarily shut down several area gas stations several weeks ago, but DeSpain told the State Journal the skimmers found were not from one particular chain or owner.

The investigation by DATCP first found one card skimmer inside a gas pump, which prompted Madison police to encourage other operators to check their pumps, DeSpain said. Five skimmers were found in all, but we cant say there might not be others, DeSpain said.

DATCP said Tuesday that inspectors have recently become aware of skimmers in gas pumps throughout Wisconsin.

A consumer may likely have no indication that they used an altered dispenser until they find a discrepancy on their bank statements, said Frank Frassetto, division administrator of trade and consumer protection.

The best defense against card skimmer theft is a strong offense, so we strongly encourage shoppers to pay close attention to their monthly statements and to regularly check their credit reports, Frassetto said.

Gas pump skimmers are either external, with a false card reader fitting over the real card reader, or internal, with a communication cable containing a recording device put between the card reader and the main board.

DATCP said consumers can protect themselves from card skimming by wiggling the card reader on the pump  a skimmer might feel loose and fall off  or checking the pump to see if any security seals have been broken. If a seal is compromised, tell the station manager.

DeSpain said customers worried about having their personal information stolen can take steps to alleviate concerns.

Pre-pay for your gas inside the station or pay in cash, he said. And check your credit report for any unusual activity.

What happens when a card skimmer is found on a pump? DATCP said station management would be informed by the inspector, the pump would be taken out of service and law enforcement would be notified, because the presence of a skimmer makes the pump a crime scene.
Tamara Mellon is suing her former employer Jimmy Choo amid claims the company set out to sabotage her new venture.

The shoe designer, who was awarded an OBE for her services to fashion, co-founded the multi-million-pound luxury brand in the 1990s.

But after writing a reveal-all biography In My Shoes, in which she branded Jimmy Choos new private equity owners as vultures, she claims her ex-employer set out to punish her.

Court action: Shoe designer Tamara Mellon was awarded an OBE for her services to fashion

She told of how the company, which she left in 2011, had thrown a wrench in her plans by allegedly trying to boycott factories from producing creations by her brand Tamara Mellon.

The designer is now trying to claim millions in damages after her business declared bankruptcy. Mellon was left feeling spurned in 2011 when Swiss luxury goods group Labelux bought Jimmy Choo from private equity firm TowerBrook Capital for 500m, and she claims she was excluded from negotiations.

Jimmy Choo has said the case is without merit adding that the allegations will be vigorously contested.
More than 878m was wiped off Primark shares after it warned sales would fall for the first time in its history.

The High Street stores owner Associated British Foods finished the day down nearly 11 per cent or 341p at 2815p after a series of dire updates.

On top of a fall in trade, ABF also revealed how the pension scheme had a 200m black hole, when previously it had a surplus.

Blow: The discount retailer blamed the unseasonal weather on the weak sales

The discount retailer, which has transformed low-cost shopping with affordable, fashionable designs, blamed the unseasonal weather on the weak sales. In a pre-close trading update the firm said sales from stores that had been open for a year are expected to be 2 per cent lower for the year.

ABF finance director John Bason explained the figures were caused by warm weather in the pre-Christmas period and a very cold March and April.

Primark, along with rival chains had leftover stock that shoppers did not want and it was forced to slash prices in order to clear the shelves.

Bason said the clothing market had shrunk but Primark had increased its share. It has been a tough market but Primark has performed well, he said.

When you compare it with what happened to the market, we are happy with Primarks performance.

Big sellers during the year have been womens padded bomber jackets at 16, and cold shoulder ribbed tops at 6 where the shoulders are left exposed.

Men have been snapping up skinny jeans at 10 and printed shirts at 7.

ABF, which also has an ingredients business and makes tea brand Twinings, malt drink Ovaltine and crispbread Ryvita, said that if current sterling exchange rates continue it will have both positive and negative effects.

Elsewhere at the firm, it said sales and profit in its sugar business will be ahead of forecasts.

The company also announced it is selling its sugar cane business in China to local rival Nanning Sugar as the industry consolidates.
After a relatively quiet summer, the stock market continued on the downward trajectory it has been on since the City returned from its holiday.

Last week was the FTSE 100s worst week since April and yesterday it was in the red once more, finishing down 1.12 per cent, or 76.05 points, at 6700.90.

Associated British Foods was the surprise biggest faller. The Primark owner lost 10.8 per cent, or 341p, to 2815p in the day despite reporting a better-than-expected second half of the year.

At the top of the pile was private equity firm SVG Capital, which surged forward after a 1bn takeover offer by Boston-based private equity firm HarbourVest Partners. The bid was equivalent to a 14.7 per cent premium on Fridays share price close. Shares in SVG soared 14.7 per cent, or 83.5p, to 650p.

Life sciences firm Abcam surged after reporting that revenues had risen 19 per cent to 171.7m in the year to June 30. Thats despite the companys gross margin slipping 0.3 percentage points to 70.2 per cent.

Among the drivers of the strong results, Abcam said revenues of two of its antibodies rose around 30 per cent in the year and it has introduced its direct service in Singapore to provide technical support and customer services in the Asia Pacific region.

The business announced plans to increase its full-year dividend 8.5 per cent to 8.91p a share. Shares advanced 8.1 per cent, or 59.5p, to 791p.

Real Good Foods AGM statement had all the ingredients for a share price rally. Executive chairman Pieter Tott told shareholders orders had been strong.

The cake decorating part of the business also has a good number of orders going into the busy autumn and Christmas seasons.

Tott said the balance sheet was strong and the firm would be looking to invest in people, technology, marketing and its manufacturing facilities as well as growing through acquisitions. The business said it will also start to pursue a progressive dividend policy and will likely be announcing an interim payment in the new year. Shares sweetened 4.4 per cent, or 1.5p, to 35.5p.

Premium hostel owner Safestay is scoring with guest satisfaction but isnt quite making the grade with investors. Safestay said revenues had more than doubled to 3.29m in the first half of the year compared with the same period a year ago. Pre-tax earnings tripled from 260,000 to 780,000 in that time.

It said the newly introduced direct booking channel is performing ahead of expectations. But chairman Larry Lipman said there had been headwinds in the London market and full-year earnings are likely to be at the lower end of the forecast. Shares stumbled 5.8 per cent, or 3p, to 49p.

IPPlus leapt as it proposed the disposal of two parts of its business for a total of 6.7m. The firm, which is focused on telephony and secure payment solutions, wants to offload its Ansaback call centre and CallScripter businesses to Direct Response Contact Centre Group. IPPlus said it is proposing a special dividend of 1m to shareholders on completion of the deal. The company will also change its name to PCI-PAL. Shares rocketed 22.2 per cent, or 5p, to 27.5p.

Xcite Energy sent shares spiralling as it refuted market rumours concerning the restructuring of its bond debt.

The North Sea oil firm revealed in March it is in talks to restructure 101.5m of senior secured bonds. In June Xcite said it had negotiated a maturity extension until September 30. But it also warned the bondholders could take control of some of the firms equity, which would cut the value of shareholders stake.

Investors pushed shares up 20 per cent in a single day last week amid speculation an agreement may have been reached which would seen some return for shareholders.
To say shared appreciation mortgages are controversial is rather an understatement - they divide opinion, cause tears, arguments and anger.

People who didn't take them say those who did just have sour grapes now the time has come to pay.

Meanwhile many of those who did take them are trapped in homes they can't afford to leave and often can't afford to look after.

Some face the bank taking up to 75 per cent of the rise in value of their homes in addition to tens of thousands of pounds worth of interest over the years

Shared appreciation mortgages were offered by Barclays and Bank of Scotland in the 1990s

But there is a reason they are no longer sold.

Whichever camp you fall into, most agree they were a mistake and under existing rules, banks simply wouldn't offer them.

Shared appreciation mortgages were offered by Barclays and Bank of Scotland in the 1990s and offered borrowers a loan up to 25 per cent of their property's value interest free for life.

In return, when the property was sold, the bank would take up to 75 per cent of the uplift in value of the property as payment.

Both banks agreed that if the value of the property fell, they'd take their share of the loss.

There is no getting away from the fact that many of those who took SAMs thought they were getting a great deal, freeing up cash from their homes often without the need to pay a penny of interest until they sold up.

Many also admit that they took legal advice before putting pen to paper and drawing their money down from Barclays and Bank of Scotland.

Indeed, Barclays actually insisted that borrowers instruct an independent solicitor to explain the terms of the loan they were taking. All borrowers had to sign a form stating that they'd done this and understood what the implications of the mortgage were.

Nearly 20 years on and house prices have rocketed; what seemed like a good deal then, now looks atrociously expensive.

SHARED APPRECIATION The owner of a 200,000 house in 1998 would sign up to a SAM and be given 50,000 cash. If that house were sold in 2014 for 600,000, the owner would be required to hand over 350,000 to redeem the mortgage. Sale price: 600,000 House value when SAM taken out: 200,000 Increase in value: 400,000 75% of increase in value: 300,000 Original loan: 50,000 Total repayable: 350,000 (a return for the bank of 600%)

For many borrowers who signed up to the SAM on offer from Bank of Scotland, which charged an additional rate of interest at around 6 per cent, the outcome has been catastrophic.

Not only have these borrowers paid tens of thousands of pounds in interest for a loan that was often no more than 50,000 - they also face losing 75 per cent of the appreciation in value of their property.

They have paid over the odds for their mortgage over almost 20 years and by the time they have sold, they will have paid the bank more than the value of their home.

That these people signed the contract is indisputable. But that they did so in full knowledge of what they were signing and its implications is a much greyer area.

Many of these borrowers - particularly those who took their shared appreciation mortgage from Bank of Scotland - were offered no legal or financial advice. They simply filled in a form and posted it back to the bank.

They were also, more often than not, retired, vulnerable and elderly.

Those who took the deal from Barclays did take legal advice, but it seems that this wasn't what most people would understand legal advice to be today.

For some, anecdotally, the only question their solicitor asked them was: 'Have you read the brochure? Yes? Fine, sign there.' Hardly an explanation of what was a pretty complex contract.

Shared appreciation mortgages were sold with no financial advice from the bank

But these mortgages were sold in a different time - years before mortgage regulation was introduced - meaning the Financial Ombudsman Service has limited power to investigate complaints.

In some instances, I think the complaint should in fact be directed at the financial adviser or solicitor who advised the borrower to take the deal without explaining what it meant.

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





Unfortunately, more often than not these solicitors are no longer practising and if I had a pound for every time I was told that the financial adviser who recommended the deal was out of business, well, enough said.

There's another reason the deals are difficult to dispute; the way they were set up means they were often not subject to the same rules as most other mortgages.

The loans were rolled up into bundles and sold on to independent companies. This means that, in theory, any complaints about the loans are no longer the problem of the banks - they have passed on their responsibility to those companies.

These aren't governed by the banking code, which means the Ombudsman has little power to help borrowers who complain.

Ultimately, the point is not whether the banks told their (often financially naive) customers what they were up to. They did.

The point is whether these borrowers could reasonably have been expected to understand the nature of the contract they were entering in to.

The many people I have spoken to in the past weeks say they did not.

The banks have been here before: endowments, payment protection insurance and packaged bank accounts have all been mis-sold by banks

And there's another question - why were none of the borrowers I've spoken to offered an alternative loan on different terms?

I think it's time for the banks to compromise. In a world where bondholders are forced to take 'haircuts' on their returns because of the deteriorating state of the Greek economy, why shouldn't a bunch of bankers who invested in shared appreciation mortgages 20 years ago take a haircut on their already astronomical returns?

Nearly all of these borrowers are now elderly, vulnerable, physically and financially unable to look after homes that are unsuited to their needs and unable to move or pay for care.

For them, the difference of, say, 50,000 is life altering. For the banks and investors, which have already benefited handsomely, it's a trifle.

Nearly all of these borrowers are elderly, vulnerable, physically and financially unable to look after their homes

This is Money would like to see Barclays and Bank of Scotland offer shared appreciation mortgage borrowers a reasonable cap on the debt owed.

This should be open to negotiation and assessed on an individual basis, but could, for example, be equal to interest on the loan paid at an average market rate over the lifetime of the mortgage.

Sometimes institutions should do the right thing for their customers.
Marks & Spencer today confirmed that their high-flying executive Laura Wade-Gery will not return to work after having a baby at 50

High-flying M&S executive Laura Wade-Gery will not return to work after taking a year of maternity cover to have her first child at 50.

Ms Wade-Gery - who was once tipped to take the helm at M&S - will step down from the board immediately and leave her role as multi-channel executive director by the end of September.

She will get 540,000 of cash and benefits as she leaves the company, equivalent to eight months of salary, provided she does not get another job that pays more.

Ms Wade-Gery will also be entitled to rewards of up to 2million based on the performance of M&S shares, but after a poor year, it is expected to instead be in the tens of thousands.

The company share price today closed 5.5 per cent down after the shock announcement, which will surprise many who had tipped her to one day take the helm at the high street giant.

However, after taking maternity leave last summer and extending it to a year in December, she nor M&S have made any announcement about the baby such as a name or even if it is a boy or a girl.

A number of competitors for the top job left the company, including former clothing boss John Nixon, who abruptly quit. But then boss Marc Bolland left in January - just weeks after she announced she would extend her maternity leave - and Steve Rowe was announced as his successor.

She said today: 'I've been away from the business for a year now, and that time has seen some significant changes in both my personal life and in the business.

'I concluded that the time was right to move on from M&S. I wish Steve and all my colleagues and friends every success.'

Credited with taking the company into the digital age, Ms Wade-Gery was handed a 4million golden handshake from the high street giant when she joined from Tesco in 2011.

After four years, in which she relaunched the company's website, the former Cheltenham Lady's College girl and Oxford graduate was given control of the 800 stores.

Her departure comes as newly-appointed chief executive Steve Rowe (pictured) embarks on a major turnaround programme in a bid to shore up lacklustre sales at the company's beleaguered clothing division

Ms Wade-Gery, who earned 771,000 in her final full year of work with M&S, took a break last summer to have a child with her second husband, business consultant and farmer Simon Roberts, 67.

Neither the couple or M&S have revealed anything about the child, announcing only that she is enjoying time with her family. Nor was it revealed whether she became pregnant or used a surrogate. However, those who her saw her at the M&S AGM earlier this year reported no sign of a baby bump.

Ms Wade-Gery, who has not yet revealed if her child is a boy or a girl, will get a 380,000 pay-out from M&S over the next eight months

Her departure comes as newly-appointed chief executive Steve Rowe embarks on a major turnaround programme in a bid to shore up lacklustre sales at the company's beleaguered clothing division.

Less than two months into the role, Mr Rowe branded the performance of its clothing and home arm 'unacceptable' after like-for-like sales plummeted 8.9 per cent in the first quarter to July 2.

Last week he moved to cut costs, slashing 525 jobs from M&S head office.

The company said 400 permanent staff from its central London office will be relocated, with a number of IT and logistic roles moved to operations in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, and Middlesex.

The retailer said it plans to make the cuts through redundancies, reducing the number of contractors it works with, and 'natural attrition' - not filling vacancies.

Speaking about Ms Wade-Gery's exit from the business, Mr Rowe said: 'Laura has been a great colleague and has achieved much in her role heading our multi-channel business.
A state agency that oversees public employee union re-certification elections improperly withheld data about Madison School District employees that had or had not cast ballots during an election last year, a Dane County judge ruled Monday.

Dane County Circuit Judge Peter Anderson said that the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission should have provided Madison Teachers Inc. with data about who had or had not voted because those records are presumed to be open under state law and WERC provided insufficient justification for denying MTIs request for them during the 20-day voting period in November 2015.

I think everyones better off by having a plain, clear declaration by this court that on this record, the reasons given were plainly outweighed by the strong presumption in favor of disclosure, he said.

MTI sought the records under the state open records law so it could urge district employees who had not yet voted to do so. The union was overwhelmingly re-certified.

Johnny Koremenos, spokesman for the state Department of Justice, which represented WERC in the case, said DOJ had no comment on the ruling.

Under Act 10, which took effect in 2011, public employee unions must annually get the support of 51 percent of all eligible voters in their bargaining units in order to remain certified. Act 10 significantly reduced collective bargaining rights of most public workers in Wisconsin.

WERC denied MTIs records request because it feared coercion of voters by the union. It cited a report that coercion had happened in the Racine school district, but that report was never investigated.

WERC also cited voter privacy as a reason for not releasing the data. By state law, employees who dont vote are counted as no votes after the voting period has ended. By seeing who had not voted while the voting period was still under way, WERC argued, it was possible for MTI to assume that those who hadnt voted were votes against re-certification.

Anderson sounded skeptical about that justification during brief arguments before he made his ruling. He said a non-vote that became a no vote was even more apparent after the election because a person who had not yet voted during the election period could still vote either way.

Anderson also questioned the fairness of that aspect of the re-certification law, asking whether anyone would think it was fair, for example, if those who sat out the presidential election in November were counted as automatic votes for Hillary Clinton. He called it the state putting a finger on the scale.

State Assistant Attorney General Steven Kilpatrick argued that WERC properly balanced MTIs records request at the time that it was made.

It is true the chairman (James Scott) is supposed to do a balancing, Anderson said, but the balance is between a strong presumption of openness versus whatever policy he has on the other side.

Anderson said that short of voter coercion, there was nothing wrong with MTI wanting to use the information to get out the vote.
The following companies are subsidiares of Abbott Laboratories: 3A Nutrition (Vietnam) Company Limited, ABON Biopharm (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., AGA Medical Belgium, AGA Medical Corporation, AGA Medical Holdings Inc., ALR Holdings, AML Medical LLC, APK Advanced Medical Technologies LLC, ATS Bermuda Holdings Limited, ATS Laboratories Inc., Abbott, Abbott (Jiaxing) Nutrition Co. Ltd., Abbott (UK) Finance Limited, Abbott (UK) Holdings Limited, Abbott AG, Abbott Asia Holdings Limited, Abbott Asia Investments Limited, Abbott Australasia Holdings Limited, Abbott Australasia Pty Ltd, Abbott B.V., Abbott Bahamas Overseas Businesses Corporation, Abbott Belgian Investments, Abbott Bermuda Holding Ltd., Abbott Biologicals B.V., Abbott Biologicals LLC, Abbott Bulgaria Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Capital India Limited, Abbott Cardiovascular Inc., Abbott Cardiovascular Systems Inc., Abbott Delaware LLC, Abbott Diabetes Care Inc., Abbott Diabetes Care Limited, Abbott Diabetes Care Sales Corporation, Abbott Diagnostics GmbH, Abbott Diagnostics International Ltd., Abbott Diagnostics Technologies AS, Abbott Doral Investments S.L., Abbott Equity Holdings Unlimited, Abbott Equity Investments LLC, Abbott Established Products Holdings (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Finance Company SA, Abbott Financial Holdings SRL, Abbott France S.A.S., Abbott Fund Tanzania Limited, Abbott Gesellschaft m.b.H., Abbott GmbH & Co. KG, Abbott Health Products LLC, Abbott Healthcare (Puerto Rico) Ltd., Abbott Healthcare B.V., Abbott Healthcare Costa Rica S.A., Abbott Healthcare LLC, Abbott Healthcare Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Healthcare Private Limited, Abbott Healthcare Products B.V., Abbott Healthcare Products Ltd, Abbott Holding (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding GmbH, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited Luxembourg S.C.S., Abbott Holdings B.V., Abbott Holdings LLC, Abbott Holdings Limited, Abbott Holdings Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Hungary Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Iberian Investments (2) Limited, Abbott Iberian Investments Limited, Abbott India Limited, Abbott Informatics Asia Pacific Limited, Abbott Informatics Canada Inc, Abbott Informatics Corporation, Abbott Informatics Europe Limited, Abbott Informatics France, Abbott Informatics Germany GmbH, Abbott Informatics Netherlands B.V., Abbott Informatics Singapore Pte. Limited, Abbott Informatics Spain S.A., Abbott Informatics Technologies Ltd, Abbott International Corporation, Abbott International Enterprises Ltd., Abbott International Holdings Limited, Abbott International LLC, Abbott International Luxembourg S.ar.l., Abbott Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Ireland, Abbott Ireland Financing Designated Activity Company, Abbott Ireland Limited, Abbott Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Abbott Knoll Investments B.V., Abbott Korea Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Bangladesh) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco (Dos) SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Laboratories (Mozambique) Limitada, Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Philippines), Abbott Laboratories (Puerto Rico) Incorporated, Abbott Laboratories (Singapore) Private Limited, Abbott Laboratories A/S, Abbott Laboratories Argentina Sociedad Anonima, Abbott Laboratories B.V., Abbott Laboratories C.A., Abbott Laboratories Finance B.V., Abbott Laboratories GmbH, Abbott Laboratories Inc., Abbott Laboratories International LLC, Abbott Laboratories Ireland Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited - Laboratoires Abbott Limitee, Abbott Laboratories NZ Limited, Abbott Laboratories Pacific Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Laboratories Products B.V., Abbott Laboratories Residential Development Fund Inc., Abbott Laboratories S.A., Abbott Laboratories SA, Abbott Laboratories Services Corp., Abbott Laboratories Slovakia s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories South Africa (Pty) Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trustee Company Limited, Abbott Laboratories Uruguay S.A., Abbott Laboratories Vascular Enterprises, Abbott Laboratories d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories de Chile Limitada, Abbott Laboratories de Colombia S.A., Abbott Laboratories de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Abbott Laboratories druzba za farmacijo in diagnostiko d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories(Hellas) Societe Anonyme, Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios del Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Abbott Laboratuarlari Ithalat Ihracat ve Ticaret Ltd.Sti, Abbott Laboratorios Lda, Abbott Laboratorios do Brasil Ltda., Abbott Limited Egypt LLC, Abbott Logistics B.V., Abbott Management GmbH, Abbott Management LLC, Abbott Manufacturing Singapore Private Limited, Abbott Mature Products International Unlimited Company, Abbott Mature Products Management Limited, Abbott Medical (Hong Kong) Limited, Abbott Medical (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Medical (Portugal) Distribuicao de Produtos Medicos Lda, Abbott Medical (Schweiz) AG, Abbott Medical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Australia Pty. Ltd., Abbott Medical Austria Ges.m.b.H., Abbott Medical Balkan d.o.o. Beograd (Novi Beograd), Abbott Medical Belgium, Abbott Medical Canada Inc./ Medicale Abbott Canada Inc., Abbott Medical Danmark A/S, Abbott Medical Devices Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Espana S.A., Abbott Medical Estonia OU, Abbott Medical Finland Oy, Abbott Medical France SAS, Abbott Medical GmbH, Abbott Medical Hellas Limited Liability Trading Company, Abbott Medical Ireland Limited, Abbott Medical Italia S.p.A., Abbott Medical Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Korea Limited, Abbott Medical Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Medical Laboratories LTD, Abbott Medical Nederland B.V., Abbott Medical New Zealand Limited, Abbott Medical Norway AS, Abbott Medical Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Medical Sweden AB, Abbott Medical Taiwan Co., Abbott Medical U.K. Limited, Abbott Medical spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Middle East S.A.R.L., Abbott Molecular Inc., Abbott Morocco SARL, Abbott Nederland C.V., Abbott Nederland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Netherlands Investments B.V., Abbott Norge AS, Abbott Nutrition Limited, Abbott Nutrition Manufacturing Inc., Abbott Operations Singapore Pte. Ltd., Abbott Operations Uruguay S.R.L., Abbott Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Overseas Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Overseas S.A., Abbott Oy, Abbott Point of Care Canada Limited, Abbott Point of Care Inc., Abbott Poland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Procurement LLC, Abbott Products (Philippines) Inc., Abbott Products (Spain) S.L., Abbott Products Algerie EURL, Abbott Products B.V., Abbott Products Distribution SAS, Abbott Products Egypt LLC, Abbott Products Limited, Abbott Products Limited Liability Company, Abbott Products Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Products Operations AG, Abbott Products Operations LLC, Abbott Products Romania S.R.L., Abbott Products Tunisie S.A.R.L., Abbott Products Unlimited Company, Abbott Resources Inc., Abbott Resources International Inc., Abbott S.r.l., Abbott Saudi Arabia Trading Company, Abbott Scandinavia Aktiebolag, Abbott Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, Abbott South Africa Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Strategic Opportunities Limited, Abbott Trading Company Inc., Abbott Universal LLC, Abbott Vascular Devices (2) Limited, Abbott Vascular Devices Limited, Abbott Vascular Inc., Abbott Vascular Instruments Deutschland GmbH, Abbott Vascular International, Abbott Vascular Japan Co. Ltd, Abbott Vascular Limitada, Abbott Vascular Netherlands B.V., Abbott Vascular Solutions Inc., Abbott Ventures Inc., Abbott West Indies Limited, Abbott drustvo sa ogranicenom odgovornoscu za trgovinu i usluge, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc., Alere, Alere (Shanghai) Diagnostics Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Healthcare Management Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Medical Sales Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Technology Co. Ltd., Alere A/S, Alere AB, Alere AS, Alere AS Holdings Limited, Alere BBI Holdings Limited, Alere Bangladesh Limited, Alere China Co. Ltd., Alere Colombia S.A., Alere Connect LLC, Alere Connected Health Limited, Alere Connected Health Ltd., Alere Diagnostics GmbH, Alere DoA Holding GmbH, Alere GmbH, Alere GmbH (Austria), Alere GmbH (Germany), Alere HK Holdings Ltd., Alere Health B.V., Alere Health BVBA, Alere Health Corp., Alere Health Sdn Bhd, Alere Health Services B.V., Alere Healthcare (Pty) Limited, Alere Healthcare Connections Limited, Alere Healthcare Inc., Alere Healthcare Nigeria Limited, Alere Healthcare S.L., Alere Holdco Inc., Alere Holding GmbH, Alere Holdings Bermuda Limited, Alere Holdings Pty Limited, Alere Home Monitoring Inc., Alere Inc., Alere Informatics Inc., Alere International Holding Corp., Alere International Limited, Alere Lda, Alere Limited, Alere Limited (New Zealand), Alere Medical BVBA, Alere Medical Co. Ltd., Alere Medical Pakistan (Private) Limited, Alere Medical Private Limited, Alere North America LLC, Alere Oy Ab, Alere Philippines Inc., Alere Phoenix ACQ Inc., Alere Pte Ltd, Alere S.A., Alere S.r.l., Alere S/A, Alere SAS, Alere San Diego Inc., Alere Scarborough Inc., Alere Spain S.L., Alere Switzerland GmbH, Alere Technologies GmbH, Alere Technologies Holdings Limited, Alere Technologies Limited, Alere Toxicology AB, Alere Toxicology Inc., Alere Toxicology S.r.l., Alere Toxicology Services Inc., Alere Toxicology plc, Alere UK Holdings Limited, Alere UK Subco Limited, Alere ULC, Alere US Holdings LLC, Alere s.r.o., Alisoc Investment & Co, Amedica Biotech Inc., Ameditech Inc., American Generics S.A.S., American Medical Supplies Inc., American Pharmacist Inc., Antares S.A., Apica Cardiovascular Limited, Aquagestion Capacitacion S.A., Aquagestion S.A., Arriva Medical LLC, Arriva Medical Philippines Inc., Arvis Investments Limited, Atlas Farmaceutica S.A., Avee Laboratories Inc., Axis-Shield AD III AS, Axis-Shield AD IV AS, Axis-Shield AS, Axis-Shield Diagnostics Limited, Axis-Shield Ltd., BBI Animal Health Limited, BBI Diagnostics Group 2 Public Limited Company, Banco de Vida S.A., Bioabsorbable Vascular Solutions Inc., Bioalgae S.A., Biohealth LLC, Biosite Incorporated, Bosque Bonito S.A., Branan Medical Corporation, Brandex Europe C.V., British Colloids Limited, CFR Chile S.A., CFR Interamericas EL Salvador Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, CFR Interamericas Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, CFR Interamericas Panama S.A., CFR Pharmaceuticals, California Property Holdings III LLC, CardioMEMS LLC, Caripharm Inc., Cephea Valve Technologies, Cephea Valve Technologies Inc., Colibri Medical Aktiebolag, Comercializadora y Distribuidora CFR Interamericas Honduras S.A., Concateno South Limited, Concateno UK Limited, Consorcio Tecnologico en Biomedicina Clinico-Molecular S.A., Continuum Services LLC, Cozart Limited, Dextech S.A., Diagnostik Nord GmbH, Distribuciones Uquifa S.A.S., Domesco Medical Import-Export Joint-Stock Corporation, Duphar International Research B.V., Endocardial Solutions, Epocal (US) Inc, Esprit de Vie S.A., European Chemicals & Co, European Drug Testing Service EDTS AB, European Services S.A., Evalve Inc., Evalve International Inc., FARMINDUSTRIA S.A., Fada Pharma Paraguay Sociedad Anonima, Fadapharma del Ecuador S.A., Farmaceutica Mont Blanc S.L., Farmacologia Em Aquicultura Veterinaria Ltda., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV Ecuador S.A., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV S.A., Fernwood Investment S.A., First Check Diagnostics LLC, Focus Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Forensics Limited, Forestcreek Overseas S.A., Fournier Pharma Corp., Fournier Pharma GmbH, Fournier Pharmaceuticals Limited, Framed B.V., Gabmed GmbH, Garden Hills LLC, Global Analytical Development LLC, Globapharm & CO LP, Glomed Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Golnorth Investments S.A., Gynocare Limited, Gynopharm Sociedad Anonima, Gynopharm de Centroamerica S.A., Gynopharm de Venezuela C.A., Hi-Tronics Designs Inc., IDEV Technologies Inc., IG Innovations Limited, IMTC Finance B.V., IMTC Holdings B.V., IMTC Technologies Inc., Ibis Biosciences LLC, Igloo Zone Chile S.A., Igloo Zone S.L., Inmobiliaria Naknek S.A.C., Innovacon Inc., Instant Tech Subsidiary Acquisition Inc., Instant Technologies Inc., Instituto de Criopreservacion de Chile S.A., Integrated Vascular Systems Inc., Inverness Canadian Acquisition Corporation, Inverness Medical (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Australia Pty Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Hong Kong Limited, Inverness Medical Innovations SK LLC, Inverness Medical Investments LLC, Inverness Medical LLC, Inverness Medical Shimla Private Limited, Inversiones K2 SpA, Inversiones Komodo S.R.L., Ionian Technologies LLC, Irvine Biomedical Inc., Kalila Medical, Kangshenyunga S.A., Knoll UK Investments Unlimited, LLC VeroInPharm, Laboratoires Fournier S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano Lafrancol S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano del Ecuador S.A., Laboratorio Internacional Argentino S.A., Laboratorio Synthesis S.A.S., Laboratorios Lafi Limitada, Laboratorios Naturmedik S.A.S., Laboratorios Pauly Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Laboratorios Recalcine S.A., Laboratorios Transpharm S.A., Laboratory Specialists of America Inc., Lafrancol Dominicana S.A.S., Lafrancol Guatemala S.A. Sociedad Anonima, Lafrancol Internacional S.A.S, Lafrancol Peru S.R.L, Lake Forest Investments LLC, Lightlab Imaging Inc., Limited Liability Company Abbott Laboratories, Limited Liability Company Abbott Ukraine, Limited Liability Company VEROPHARM, Lung Fung Hong (China) Limited, Mansbridge Pharmaceuticals Limited, MediGuide LLC, MediGuide Ltd., Medscreen Holdings Limited, Metropolitana Farmaceutica S.A., Midwest Properties LLC, Murex Argentina S.A., Murex Biotech Limited, Murex Biotech South Africa, Murex Diagnostics Inc., Murex Diagnostics International Inc., Natural Supplement Association LLC, Negocios Denia Sociedad Anonima, Neosalud S.A.C., Nether Pharma N.P. C.V., NeuroTherm LLC, Normann Pharma-Handels GmbH, North Shore Properties Inc., Novamedi S.A., Novasalud.com S.A., Nutravida S.A., OJSC Voronezhkhimpharm, Omnilab Iberia Sociedad Limitada, OptiMedica, Orgenics France SAS, Orgenics International Holdings B.V., Orgenics Ltd., PBM-Selfcare LLC, PDD II LLC, PDD LLC, PT Alere Health, PT. Abbott Indonesia, PT. Abbott Products Indonesia, Pacesetter Inc., Pantech (RF) (PTY) LTD, Pembrooke Occupational Health Inc., Penagos S.A., Pharma International Sociedad Anonima, Pharmaceutical Technologies (Pharmatech) S.A., Pharmatech Boliviana S.A., Polygon Labs S.A., Quality Assured Services Inc., RF Medical Holdings LLC, RTL Holdings Inc., Ramses Business Corp., Recben Xenerics Farmaceutica Limitada, Redwood Toxicology Laboratory Inc., Rich Horizons International Limited, SC VEROPHARM, SJ Medical Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., SJM International Inc., SJM Thunder Holding Company, SPDH Inc., Saboya Enterprises Corporation, Salviac Limited, Scanax AS, Sealing Solutions Inc., Selfcare Technology Inc., Shandong Abbott Dairy Product Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Medical Devices Science and Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Shanghai Si Fa Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Sinensix & Co., Spinal Modulation LLC, St. Jude Medical, St. Jude Medical AB, St. Jude Medical ATG Inc., St. Jude Medical Argentina S.A., St. Jude Medical Asia Pacific Holdings GK, St. Jude Medical Atrial Fibrillation Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Brasil Ltda., St. Jude Medical Business Services Inc., St. Jude Medical Cardiology Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Colombia Ltda., St. Jude Medical Coordination Center, St. Jude Medical Costa Rica Limitada, St. Jude Medical Europe Inc., St. Jude Medical Export Ges.m.b.H., St. Jude Medical GVA Sarl, St. Jude Medical Holdings B.V., St. Jude Medical India Private Limited, St. Jude Medical International Holding, St. Jude Medical LLC, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings II, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings NT, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings SMI S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings TC S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Mexico Business Services S. de R.L. de C.V., St. Jude Medical Middle East DMCC, St. Jude Medical Operations (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., St. Jude Medical Puerto Rico LLC, St. Jude Medical S.C. Inc., St. Jude Medical Systems AB, St. Jude Medical Turkey Medikal Urunler Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Standard Diagnostics Inc., Standing Stone LLC, Swan-Myers Incorporated, TC1 LLC, Tendyne Holdings Inc., Tendyne Medical Inc., Thoratec Delaware LLC, Thoratec Europe Limited, Thoratec LLC, Thoratec Switzerland GmbH, Tobal Products Incorporated, Topera GmbH in Liquidation, Topera Inc., Tremora S.A., Tuenir S.A., TwistDx, UAB Abbott Laboratories, UAB Abbott Medical Lithuania, Union-Madison Realty Company Inc., Unipath Limited (dba Alere International/aka Cranfield), Unipath Management Limited, Unipath Pension Trustee Limited, Veropharm, Veropharm Limited Liability Partnership, Vida Cell Inversiones S.A., Vida Cell S.A., Vivalsol, W&R Pharma Handels GmbH, Western Pharmaceuticals S.A., X Technologies Inc., Yissum Holding Limited, ZonePerfect Nutrition Company, eScreen Canada ULC, eScreen Inc.,      ( ), and Abbott Laboratories Baltics.

Read More
Model N, Inc. provides cloud revenue management solutions for life sciences and high-tech companies. The company offers Global Pricing Management, which minimizes price erosion of products; Global Tender Management that enhances revenue by enabling segmentation and targeting, optimal bid pricing, and post-award tracking; Provider Management, which minimizes rebate overpayments; Payer Management that minimizes revenue leakage and noncompliance of complex contracts; Government Pricing, which optimizes revenue, and reduces the risk of fines and other penalties; and Medicaid that enhances compliance with regulatory requirements and payments of rebate claims timely, as well as at correct rates for government medicaid programs. It also provides Deal Management, which increases deal conversion and pricing consistency; Deal Intelligence that controls price concessions and determines ideal prices; Channel Management, which provides manufacturers a view of inventory, as well as evaluate price protection and stock rotation, and matching available inventory to quotes; Market Development Fund Management that allows companies to streamline their MDF process and reduce revenue leakage; Rebates Management, which centralizes control of rebate programs; and Channel Data Management that automates the process of collection, cleansing, validation, and standardization of channel partner data, such as POS, inventory, and claims. In addition, the company offers implementation, managed, strategic, and customer support services. It primarily serves large and mid-sized organizations worldwide through its direct sales force. The company was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California.
Gildan Activewear Inc. manufactures and sells various apparel products in the United States, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. It provides various activewear products, including T-shirts, fleece tops and bottoms, and sports shirts under the Gildan, Gildan Performance, Gildan Hammer, Comfort Colors, American Apparel, Alstyle, and GoldToe brands. The company also offers hosiery products comprising athletic; dress; and casual, liner, therapeutic, and workwear socks, as well as sheer pantyhose, tights, and leggings under the Gildan, Under Armour, GoldToe, PowerSox, Signature Gold by Goldtoe, Peds, MediPeds, Therapy Plus, All Pro, Secret, Silks, Secret Silky, and American Apparel brands. In addition, it provides men's and boys' underwear products, and ladies panties under the Gildan and Gildan Platinum brands; and ladies' shapewear, intimates, and accessories under the Secret and Secret Silky brands. The company sells its products to wholesale distributors, screen printers, and embellishers, as well as to retailers and lifestyle brand companies. The company was formerly known as Textiles Gildan Inc. and changed its name to Gildan Activewear Inc. in March 1995. Gildan Activewear Inc. was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.
Cenovus Energy Inc., together with its subsidiaries, develops, produces, and markets crude oil, natural gas liquids, and natural gas in Canada, the United States, and the Asia Pacific region. The company operates through Oil Sands, Conventional, Offshore, Canadian Manufacturing, U.S. Manufacturing, and Retail segments. The Oil Sands segment develops and produces bitumen and heavy oil in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. This segments Foster Creek, Christina Lake, Sunrise, and Tucker oil sands projects, as well as Lloydminster thermal and conventional heavy oil assets The Conventional segment holds assets primarily located in Elmworth-Wapiti, Kaybob-Edson, Clearwater, and Rainbow Lake operating in Alberta and British Columbia, as well as interests in various natural gas processing facilities. The offshore segment engages in the exploration and development activities. The Canadian Manufacturing segment includes the owned and operated Lloydminster upgrading and asphalt refining complex, which upgrades heavy oil and bitumen into synthetic crude oil, diesel fuel, asphalt, and other ancillary products, as well as owns and operates the Bruderheim crude-by-rail terminal and two ethanol plants. The U.S. Manufacturing segment comprises the refining of crude oil to produce diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, asphalt, and other products. The Retail segment consists of marketing of its own and third-party refined petroleum products through retail, commercial, and bulk petroleum outlets, as well as wholesale channels. Cenovus Energy Inc. was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.
Madison police are asking for witnesses to come forward who were at an outdoor party a week ago, where a man was shot in the mid-section and suffered life-threatening injuries.

The shooting of the 22-year-old man happened early in the morning on Sept. 4, behind a residence in the 600 block of Mendota Court.

The victim was shot once in the abdomen; he was taken to an area hospital with life-threatening injuries but is expected to survive.

"Detectives believe there are many witnesses who have yet to come forward in this case, including some who may be able to identify a suspect," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain.

One witness in particular, who gave information to police right after the shooting, is key.

"Detectives would like to have an additional conversation with this witness," DeSpain said.

Witnesses to the shooting are asked to contact Crime Stoppers, 266-6014.
The following companies are subsidiares of Bristol-Myers Squibb: 1096271 B.C. ULC, 345 Park LLC, A.G. Medical Services P.A., AHI Investment LLC, AbVitro LLC, Abraxis BioScience Australia Pty Ltd., Abraxis BioScience Inc., Abraxis BioScience International Holding Company Inc., Abraxis BioScience LLC, Abraxis BioScience Puerto Rico LLC, Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Adnexus, Adnexus a Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D Company, Allard Labs Acquisition G.P., Amira Pharmaceuticals, Amira Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Apothecon LLC, B-MS Generx Unlimited Company, BMS Benelux Holdings B.V., BMS Bermuda Nominees L.L.C., BMS Data Acquisition Company LLC, BMS Forex Company, BMS Holdings Sarl, BMS Holdings Spain S.L., BMS International Insurance Designated Activity Company, BMS Investco SAS, BMS Korea Holdings L.L.C., BMS Latin American Nominees L.L.C., BMS Luxembourg Partners L.L.C., BMS Omega Bermuda Holdings Finance Ltd., BMS Pharmaceutical Korea Limited, BMS Pharmaceuticals Germany Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals International Holdings Netherlands B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Korea Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Mexico Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Netherlands Holdings B.V., BMS Real Estate LLC, BMS Spain Investments LLC, BMS Strategic Portfolio Investments Holdings Inc., Blisa Acquisition G.P., Bristol (Iran) S.A., Bristol Iran Private Company Limited, Bristol Laboratories Inc., Bristol Laboratories International S.A., Bristol Laboratories Medical Information Systems Inc., Bristol-Myers (Andes) L.L.C., Bristol-Myers (Private) Limited, Bristol-Myers Middle East S.A.L., Bristol-Myers Overseas Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Israel) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (NZ) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (West Indies) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb A.E., Bristol-Myers Squibb Aktiebolag, Bristol-Myers Squibb Argentina S. R. L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia Pty. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Axia Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb B.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Belgium S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Business Services Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada International Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Delta Company Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Denmark Filial of Bristol-Myers Squibb AB, Bristol-Myers Squibb EMEA Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Egypt LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Ltda., Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Portuguesa S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb GesmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb GmbH & Co. KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holding Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings 2002 Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Pharma Ltd. Liability Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Ilaclari Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb India Pvt. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Company Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Investco L.L.C., Bristol-Myers Squibb K.K., Bristol-Myers Squibb Kft., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg International S.C.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb MEA GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Manufacturing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Marketing Services S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Middle East & Africa FZ-LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Norway Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Nutricionales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Peru S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (HK) Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Thailand) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Holding Company LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Ventures Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Polska Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Products SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico/Sanofi Pharmaceutical Partnership Puerto Rico, Bristol-Myers Squibb Romania S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.A.U., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Holding Partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Service Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Services Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Spol. s r.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Theta Finance Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Trustees Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Colombia S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Costa Rica Sociedad Anonima, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Guatemala S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb/Astrazeneca EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Bristol-Myers de Venezuela S.C.A., CHT I LLC, CHT II LLC, CHT III LLC, CHT IV LLC, CR Finance Company LLC, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., Celem LLC, Celem Ltd., Celgene, Celgene A.B., Celgene AS, Celgene Ab (Finland), Celgene Alpine Investment Co. II LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. III LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. LLC, Celgene ApS, Celgene B.V., Celgene BVBA, Celgene Brasil Produtos Farmaceuticos Ltda., Celgene CAR LLC, Celgene CAR Ltd., Celgene Chemicals Sarl, Celgene China Holdings LLC, Celgene Co., Celgene Corporation, Celgene Distribution B.V., Celgene EngMab GmbH, Celgene Europe B.V., Celgene Europe Limited, Celgene European Investment Company LLC, Celgene Financing Company LLC, Celgene Global Holdings Sarl, Celgene GmbH [Austria], Celgene GmbH [Germany], Celgene GmbH [Switzerland], Celgene Holdings East Corporation, Celgene Holdings II Sarl, Celgene Holdings III Sarl, Celgene Ilac Pazarlama ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Celgene Inc., Celgene International Holdings Corporation, Celgene International II Sarl, Celgene International III Sarl, Celgene International Inc., Celgene International Sarl, Celgene K.K., Celgene Kft., Celgene Limited [Hong Kong], Celgene Limited [Ireland], Celgene Limited [New Zealand], Celgene Limited [Taiwan], Celgene Limited [UK], Celgene Logistics Sarl, Celgene Ltd, Celgene Luxembourg Sarl, Celgene Management Sarl, Celgene NJ Investment Co, Celgene Netherlands B.V., Celgene Netherlands Investment B.V., Celgene Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Celgene Pte. Ltd., Celgene Pty Ltd, Celgene Puerto Rico Distribution LLC, Celgene Quanticel Research Inc, Celgene R&D Sarl, Celgene RIVOT LLC, Celgene RIVOT Ltd., Celgene RIVOT SRL, Celgene Receptos Limited, Celgene Receptos Sarl, Celgene Research Incubator At Summit West LLC, Celgene Research S.L.U., Celgene Research and Development Company LLC, Celgene Research and Development I ULC, Celgene Research and Development II LLC, Celgene Research and Investment Company II LLC, Celgene S. de R.L. de C.V., Celgene S.L.U., Celgene S.R.L., Celgene SAS, Celgene Sarl AU, Celgene Sdn Bhd, Celgene Services Sarl, Celgene Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Celgene Sp. Z.o.o., Celgene Sro [Czech Republic], Celgene Summit Investment Co, Celgene Switzerland Holding Sarl, Celgene Switzerland II LLC, Celgene Switzerland Investment Sarl, Celgene Switzerland LLC, Celgene Switzerland Sarl, Celgene Tri A Holdings Ltd., Celgene Tri Sarl, Celgene UK Distribution Limited, Celgene UK Holdings Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing II Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing III Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing Limited, Celgene d.o.o., Celgene sro [Slovakia], Celmed LLC, Celmed Ltd., ConvaTec Divestiture, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals AB, Crosp Ltd., Delinia Inc., Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, E. R. Squibb & Sons Inter-American Corporation, E. R. Squibb & Sons L.L.C., E. R. Squibb & Sons Limited, EWI Corporation, EngMab Sarl, F-star Alpha, FermaVir Pharmaceuticals L.L.C., FermaVir Research L.L.C., Flexus Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences Inc., Forbius, Galecto Biotech, GenPharm International L.L.C., Gloucester Pharmaceuticals LLC, Grove Insurance Company Ltd., Heyden Farmaceutica Portuguesa Limitada, IFM Therapeutics, Impact Biomedicines Inc., Inhibitex, Inhibitex L.L.C., Innate Tumor Immunity Inc., JuMP Holdings LLC, Juno Therapeutics GmbH, Juno Therapeutics Inc., Kosan Biosciences, Kosan Biosciences Incorporated, Linson Investments Limited, Mead Johnson (Manufacturing) Jamaica Limited, Mead Johnson Jamaica Ltd., Medarex, Morris Avenue Investment II LLC, Morris Avenue Investment LLC, MyoKardia, O.o.o. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oy Bristol-Myers Squibb (Finland) AB, Padlock Therapeutics, Padlock Therapeutics Inc., Pharmion LLC, Princeton Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Receptos LLC, Receptos Services LLC, RedoxTherapies Inc., Route 22 Real Estate Holding Corporation, SPV A Holdings ULC, Seamair Insurance DAC, Signal Pharmaceuticals LLC, Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Societe Francaise de Complements Alimentaires(S.O.F.C.A.), Squibb Middle East S.A., Summit West Celgene LLC, Swords Laboratories, VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Westwood-Intrafin SA, Westwood-Squibb Pharmaceuticals Inc., X-Body Inc., ZymoGenetics, ZymoGenetics Inc., ZymoGenetics LLC, ZymoGenetics Paymaster LLC, iPierian, and iPierian Inc..

Read More
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company provides solutions that allow customers to capture, analyze, and act upon data seamlessly in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and Japan. The company offers general purpose servers for multi-workload computing and workload-optimized servers; HPE ProLiant rack and tower servers; HPE BladeSystem and HPE Synergy; and solutions for secondary workloads and traditional tape, storage networking, and disk products, such as HPE Modular Storage Arrays and HPE XP. It also offers HPE Apollo and Cray products; and HPE Superdome Flex, HPE Nonstop, HPE Integrity, and HPE Edgeline products. In addition, the company provides HPE Aruba product portfolio that includes wired and wireless local area network hardware products, such as Wi-Fi access points, switches, routers, and sensors; HPE Aruba software and services comprising cloud-based management, network management, network access control, analytics and assurance, and location; and professional and support services, as well as as-a-service and consumption models for the intelligent edge portfolio of products. Further, it offers various leasing, financing, IT consumption, and utility programs and asset management services for customers to facilitate technology deployment models and the acquisition of complete IT solutions, including hardware, software, and services from Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others. Additionally, the company invests in communications and media solutions. It has a partnership with Striim, Inc. to offer high performance and mission-critical solutions with real-time analytics. It serves commercial and large enterprise groups, such as business and public sector enterprises; and through various partners comprising resellers, distribution partners, original equipment manufacturers, independent software vendors, systems integrators, and advisory firms. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company was founded in 1939 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
The following companies are subsidiares of Cummins: Anvl, Apollo FC Holdings Ltd., Atlantis Acquisitionco Canada Corporation, Atlantis Holdco UK Limited, Brammo, CIFC Worldwide Partner C.V., CMI Africa Holdings BV, CMI CGT Holdings LLC, CMI Canada Financing Ltd., CMI Canada LP, CMI Foreign Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings C.V., CMI Global Holdings B.V., CMI Global Partner 2 C.V., CMI Global Partners B.V., CMI Group Holdings B.V., CMI Group Holdings Cooperatief U.A., CMI International Finance Partner 1 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 2 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 3 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 4 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 5 LLC, CMI Mexico LLC, CMI Netherlands Holdings B.V., CMI PGI Holdings LLC, CMI PGI International Holdings LLC, CMI Turkish Holdings B.V., CMI UK Finance LP, CMI UK Financing LP, Cherry Island Renewable Energy LLC, Consolidated Diesel Company, Consolidated Diesel Inc., Consolidated Diesel of North Carolina Inc., Cummins (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Cummins (Xiangyang) Machining Co. Ltd., Cummins Africa Middle East (Pty) Ltd., Cummins Afrique de l'Ouest, Cummins Americas Inc., Cummins Angola Lda., Cummins Argentina-Servicios Mineros S.A., Cummins Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Cummins Aust Technologies Pty. Ltd., Cummins BLR LLC, Cummins Battery Systems North America LLC, Cummins Belgium N.V., Cummins Botswana (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins Brasil Ltda., Cummins Burkina Faso SARL, Cummins CDC Holding Inc., Cummins CV Member LLC, Cummins Canada ULC, Cummins Caribbean LLC, Cummins Center of Excellence Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Centroamerica Holding S.de R.L., Cummins Child Development Center Inc., Cummins Colombia S.A.S., Cummins Comercializadora S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Corporation, Cummins Cote d'Ivoire SARL, Cummins Czech Republic s.r.o., Cummins Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Diesel International Ltd., Cummins Distribution Holdco Inc., Cummins EMEA Holdings Limited, Cummins East Asia Research & Development Co. Ltd., Cummins Eastern Marine Inc., Cummins Electrified Power Europe Ltd., Cummins Electrified Power NA Inc., Cummins Emission Solutions (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Emission Solutions Inc., Cummins Empresas Filantropicas, Cummins Energetica Ltda., Cummins Engine (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Trading & Services Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine Holding Company Inc., Cummins Engine IP Inc., Cummins Engine Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Engine Venture Corporation, Cummins Enterprise LLC, Cummins Filtration (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtration GmbH, Cummins Filtration IP Inc., Cummins Filtration Inc., Cummins Filtration International Corp., Cummins Filtration Ltd., Cummins Filtration SARL, Cummins Filtration Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtros Ltda., Cummins Franchise Holdco LLC, Cummins Fuel Systems (Wuhan) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Americas Inc., Cummins Generator Technologies Germany GmbH, Cummins Generator Technologies India Private Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Italy SRL, Cummins Generator Technologies Limited, Cummins Generator Technologies Romania S.A., Cummins Generator Technologies Singapore Pte Ltd., Cummins Ghana Limited, Cummins Ghana Mining Limited, Cummins Global Financing LP, Cummins Global Technologies LLP, Cummins Grupo Comercial Y. de Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Grupo Industrial S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Holland B.V., Cummins Hong Kong Ltd., Cummins India Ltd., Cummins Intellectual Property Inc., Cummins International Finance LLC, Cummins International Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Cummins International Holdings LLC, Cummins Italia S.P.A., Cummins Japan Ltd., Cummins Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins LLC Member Inc., Cummins Ltd., Cummins Maroc SARL, Cummins Middle East FZE, Cummins Mining Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Mobility Services Inc., Cummins Mongolia Investment LLC, Cummins Mozambique Ltda., Cummins NV, Cummins Namibia Engine Sales and Service PTY LTD, Cummins Natural Gas Engines Inc., Cummins New Zealand Limited, Cummins Nigeria Ltd., Cummins Norte de Colombia S.A.S., Cummins North Africa Regional Office SARL, Cummins Norway AS, Cummins PGI Holdings Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (S) Pte. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (U.K.) Limited, Cummins Power Generation Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Power Generation Inc., Cummins Power Generation Limited, Cummins PowerGen IP Inc., Cummins Research and Technology India Private Ltd., Cummins Romania Srl, Cummins S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Sales and Service Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins Sales and Service Philippines Inc., Cummins Sales and Service Private Limited, Cummins Sales and Service Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Sales and Service Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Sinai ve Otomotiv Urunleri Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Cummins South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins South Pacific Pty. Limited, Cummins Southern Plains LLC, Cummins Spain S.L., Cummins Sweden AB, Cummins Technologies India, Cummins Trade Receivables LLC, Cummins Turbo Technologies Limited, Cummins Turkey Motor Guc Sistemleri Sats Servis Limited Sirketi, Cummins U.K. Holdings Ltd., Cummins U.K. Pension Plan Trustee Ltd., Cummins UK Global Holdings Ltd., Cummins UK Holdings LLC, Cummins Vendas e Servicos de Motores e Geradores Ltda., Cummins Venture Corporation, Cummins West Africa Limited, Cummins West Balkans d.o.o. Nova Pasova, Cummins XBorder Operations (Pty) Ltd, Cummins Zambia Ltd., Cummins Zimbabwe Pvt. Ltd., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Costa Rica S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica El Salvador S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Guatemala Ltda., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Honduras S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins S.A., Distribuidora Cummins Sucursal Paraguay SRL, Distribuidora Cummins de Panama S. de R.L., Dynamo Insurance Company Inc., Efficient Drivetrains, Efficient Drivetrains (Beijing) New Power Technology Co. Ltd., Efficient Drivetrains (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Hilite International, Hydrogenics, Hydrogenics Corporation, Hydrogenics Europe N.V., Hydrogenics GmbH, Hydrogenics Holding GmbH, Hydrogenics USA Inc., Markon Engineering Company Ltd., Nelson Burgess Ltd., Nelson Industries, Newage Engineers GmbH, Newage Ltd. (U.K.), Newage Machine Tools Ltd., OOO Cummins, Petbow Limited, Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) B.V., Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) Ltd., Power Group International Ltd., Quickstart Energy Projects SpA, Shanghai Cummins Trade Co. Ltd., TOO Cummins, Taiwan Cummins Sales & Services Co. Ltd., Worldwide Partner CV Member LLC, Wuxi Cummins Turbo Technologies Co. Ltd., Wuxi New Energy Automotive Technologies Co. Ltd., and ZED Connect Inc..

Read More
Less than a week into the new school year, UW-Madison officials are dealing with an incident of intolerance on campus after swastikas were found on three dorm room doors in Sellery Hall.

But UW-Madison spokeswoman Meredith McGlone said an investigation found the people responsible for drawing the swastikas on Saturday are not UW-Madison students.

Our information indicates they are students from another college who were visiting UW-Madison and selected the doors at random, McGlone said.

She said UW-Madison officials will contact officials at the students school about the incident.

UW-Madison takes campus climate seriously and when incidents like this occur, we work to support those affected and identify the people responsible, McGlone said.

This is the second incident this year of anti-Semitic vandalism in Sellery Hall. A student was disciplined for posting swastikas and photos of Hitler on the door of a Jewish students room in January. That vandalism was the first of several high-profile incidents at UW-Madison during the spring semester that stirred protests from students who demanded changes to improve the racial climate on campus.

Two other major incidents last spring also occurred at Sellery Hall. In March, a student pushed and spat on a group of black students during a dispute in the dorm, prompting minority students to share their negative experiences at UW-Madison using the Twitter hashtag #TheRealUW.

Later that month, another black student in Sellery reported finding a note slipped under her door that threatened her and used profanity and a racial slur.

Sellery Hall residents will be among those taking part this fall in a new cultural competency training program, Our Wisconsin, one of the initiatives campus officials launched after the complaints from students. The workshops start Tuesday and will run through November.
General Mills, Inc. manufactures and markets branded consumer foods worldwide. The company operates in five segments: North America Retail; Convenience Stores & Foodservice; Europe & Australia; Asia & Latin America; and Pet. It offers ready-to-eat cereals, refrigerated yogurt, soup, meal kits, refrigerated and frozen dough products, dessert and baking mixes, bakery flour, frozen pizza and pizza snacks, snack bars, fruit and salty snacks, ice cream, nutrition bars, wellness beverages, and savory and grain snacks, as well as various organic products, including frozen and shelf-stable vegetables. It also supplies branded and unbranded food products to the North American foodservice and commercial baking industries; and manufactures and markets pet food products, including dog and cat food. The company markets its products under the Annie's, Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Blue Buffalo, Blue Basics, Blue Freedom, Bugles, Cascadian Farm, Cheerios, Chex, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Cookie Crisp, EPIC, Fiber One, Food Should Taste Good, Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Gushers, Fruit Roll-Ups, Gardetto's, Go-Gurt, Gold Medal, Golden Grahams, Haagen-Dazs, Helpers, Jus-Rol, Kitano, Kix, Larabar, Latina, Liberte, Lucky Charms, Muir Glen, Nature Valley, Oatmeal Crisp, Old El Paso, Oui, Pillsbury, Progresso, Raisin Nut Bran, Total, Totino's, Trix, Wanchai Ferry, Wheaties, Wilderness, Yoki, and Yoplait trademarks. It sells its products directly, as well as through broker and distribution arrangements to grocery stores, mass merchandisers, membership stores, natural food chains, e-commerce retailers, commercial and noncommercial foodservice distributors and operators, restaurants, convenience stores, and pet specialty stores, as well as drug, dollar, and discount chains. The company operates 466 leased and 392 franchise ice cream parlors. General Mills, Inc. was founded in 1866 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
CRH plc, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes building materials. It operates in three segments: Americas Materials, Europe Materials, and Building Products. The company manufactures and supplies cement, lime, aggregates, precast, ready mixed concrete, and asphalt products; concrete masonry and hardscape products comprising pavers, blocks and kerbs, retaining walls, and related patio products; and glass and glazing products, including architectural glass, custom-engineered curtain and window walls, architectural windows, storefront systems, doors, skylights, and architectural hardware. It also offers precast concrete and polymer-based products, such as underground vaults, drainage pipes and structures, utility enclosures, and modular precast structures to the water, energy, communication, transportation, and building structures markets; and construction accessories, such as anchoring, fixing, and connection solutions, as well as lifting systems, formwork accessories, and other accessories used in construction applications. In addition, the company offers network access products, which include composite access chambers, covers, passive safety systems, retention sockets, sealants, and meter boxes; and paving and construction services. Further, it provides building and civil engineering contracting, contract surfacing, operates logistics and owned railway infrastructure; sells and distributes cement; and supplies access chambers and ducting products. It serves governments, contractors, homebuilders, homeowners, and sub-contractors. The company operates primarily in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the rest of Europe, the United States, and internationally. CRH plc was founded in 1936 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.
The following companies are subsidiares of PPG Industries: AIPCF V Texstars Blocker Inc., AkzoNobel, Alpha Coating Technologies LLC, Alpha Coatings Inc., Broad Range Development Limited, CG Holdings Manufacturing Co., Centro de Investigacion en Polimeros S.A. de C.V., Chemfil Canada Limited, Chorlton Trade Paints Limited, Comercial Mexicana de Pinturas S.A. de C.V., Comex, Comex Industrial Coatings S.A. de C.V., Consorcio Comex S.A. de C.V., Cristacol S.A., Cuming Microwave Corporation, Deutek SA, Dexmet Corporation, Dexmet Holding Corporation, Distribuidora Kroma S.A. de C.V., EPIC Insurance Co. Ltd., Eberle Design Inc., Empresa Aga S.A. de C.V., Ennis Canadian Holding Company, Ennis Paint Canada ULC, Ennis Paint Netherlands Holdings LLC, Ennis Paint U.K. Holding Company Limited, Ennis Traffic Safety Solutions Pty Ltd, Ennis-Flint, Ennis-Flint Inc., Foshan Bairun Chemicals Co. Ltd., Fpu Industrial S.A. de C.V., Grupo Comex S.A. de C.V., Hemmelrath Automotive Coatings (Jilin) Co. Ltd., Hemmelrath International Trade (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Hodij Coatings B.V., Homax Products, Industria Chimica Reggiana I.C.R. SPA, Johnstones Paints Limited, Kalon Investment Company Limited, Kalon South Africa Proprietary Limited, Karl Woerwag Lack-und Farbenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG, Masterwork Paint, MetoKote Corporation, MetoKote Mexico Holdings Inc., MetoKote UK Limited, MetoKote de Mexico S. de RL de CV, Milamar Coatings LLC, OOO Tikkurila, PPG A P Resinas S.A. de C.V., PPG AC - France SA, PPG ALESCO Automotive Finishes Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PPG Aerospace Materials (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Architectural Coatings (Puerto Rico) Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Canada Inc./PPG Revetements Architecturaux Canada Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Ireland Limited, PPG Architectural Coatings Italy S.r.l, PPG Architectural Coatings UK Limited, PPG Architectural Finishes Inc., PPG Asian Paints Private Ltd., PPG Business Services S.A. de C.V., PPG COATINGS SINGAPORE PTE. LTD., PPG Canada Inc., PPG Cetelon Lackfabrik GmbH, PPG Cieszyn S.A., PPG Coatings (Hong Kong) Co. Limited, PPG Coatings (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., PPG Coatings (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Thailand) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Wuhu) Company Ltd., PPG Coatings (Zhangjiagang) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings B.V., PPG Coatings Belgium BV, PPG Coatings Danmark A/S, PPG Coatings Deutschland GmbH, PPG Coatings Europe B.V., PPG Coatings Nederland BV, PPG Coatings S.A., PPG Coatings South Africa (Pty) Ltd., PPG DYRUP S.A., PPG Deco Czech a.s., PPG Deco Polska sp. z.o.o., PPG Deco Slovakia s.r.o., PPG Deutschland Business Support GmbH, PPG Deutschland Sales & Services GmbH, PPG Distribution S.A.S., PPG Europe B.V., PPG Finance B.V., PPG Finland Oy, PPG France Business Support S.A.S., PPG France Manufacturing S.A.S., PPG Guadeloupe SAS, PPG Hemmelrath Lackfabrik GmbH, PPG Holdco SAS, PPG Holdings (U.K.) Limited, PPG Holdings Argentina USA LLC, PPG Holdings Latin America USA LLC, PPG Iberica S.A., PPG Iberica Sales & Services S.L., PPG Industrial Coatings B.V., PPG Industrial do Brasil - Tintas E. Vernizes - Ltda., PPG Industries (Korea) Ltd., PPG Industries (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PPG Industries (UK) Ltd, PPG Industries Argentina S.R.L., PPG Industries Australia PTY Limited A.C.N. 055 500 939, PPG Industries Colombia Ltda., PPG Industries Delfzijl B.V., PPG Industries Europe Sarl, PPG Industries France S.A.S., PPG Industries International Inc., PPG Industries Italia S.r.l., PPG Industries Kimya a Sanayi VE Ticaret AS, PPG Industries LLC, PPG Industries Lackfabrik GmbH, PPG Industries Lipetsk LLC, PPG Industries Middle East FZE, PPG Industries Netherlands B.V., PPG Industries New Zealand Limited, PPG Industries Ohio Inc., PPG Industries Poland Sp. Z.o.o., PPG Industries Securities LLC, PPG Industries de Mexico S.A. de C.V., PPG Investment (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PPG Italia Business Support S.r.l., PPG Italia Sales & Services S.r.l., PPG Japan Ltd., PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes Canada LP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.K. LLP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.S. LLC, PPG Luxembourg Finance S.aR.L., PPG Luxembourg Holdings S.aR.L., PPG Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Packaging Coatings (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Paints Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Performance Coatings (Hong Kong) Limited, PPG Powder Coatings (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Refinish Distribution Limited, PPG Romania S.A., PPG Reunion SAS, PPG SSC Co. Ltd., PPG Switzerland GmbH, PPG Trilak Korlatolt FelelosseguTarasasag (PPG Trilak Kft.), PPG Vietnam Co. Ltd., PRC-DeSoto Australia Pty Ltd., PRC-DeSoto International Inc., PT. PPG Coatings Indonesia, Painter's Supply, Paintzen, Peintures de Paris SAS, Plasticos Envolventes S.A. de C.V., Polymeric Systems Inc., ProCoatings B.V., ProCoatings BV, Protec Pty Ltd, Reno A&E LLC, Revocoat France SAS, Revocoat Holding SAS, Revocoat Iberica SLU, Revocoat S.A.S, Road Infrastructure Investment Holdings Inc., SEM Products Inc., Sealants Europe SAS, Sierracin Corporation, Sierracin/Sylmar Corporation, Sigma Marine & Protective Coatings Holding B.V., SigmaKalon (BC) UK Limited, SigmaKalon Group, Sikar (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Spraylat International Ltd, Texstars LLC, The Crown Group Co., The Crown Group Inc, The Homax Group, Tikkurila Group, Tikkurila Oyj, Tikkurila Sverige AB, Traffic Safety Intermediate LLC, Traffic Safety Parent LLC, VF Specialty Products LLC, Vanex Inc., Vernisol S.p.A., VersaFlex Acquisition Corp., VersaFlex Inc., VersaFlex Intermediate Holdings LLC, Versaflex, Viasa S.A. de C.V., Whitford, Whitford B.V., Whitford Corporation, Whitford Jiangmen Ltd., Whitford Ltd. (HK), Whitford Ltd. (UK), Whitford Pte. Ltd., Whitford S.r.l., Whitford Worldwide Company LLC, and Worwag Coatings.

Read More
Companhia Brasileira de Distribuicao engages in the retail of food, clothing, home appliances, electronics, and other products through its chain of supermarkets, specialized stores, and department stores in Brazil. It operates in Brazilian Retail, Grupo Exito, and Other Businesses segments. The company sells non-perishables, beverages, fruits, vegetables, meat, breads, cold cuts, dairy products, cleaning products, disposable products, and personal care products; and home appliances and other non-food products, such as clothing and baby items, shoes and accessories, household articles, books, magazines, CDs and DVDs, stationery, toys, sports and camping gears, furniture, mobile phones, mattresses, pet products, and gardening equipment and tools, as well as electronic products, including personal computers, software, computer accessories, and sound and image systems. It also offers medications and cosmetics at its drugstores; and non-food products at gas stations, as well as rents commercial spaces and e-commerce sales. The company operates its supermarkets under the banners of Pao de Acucar, Extra Supermercado, Mercado Extra, and Compre Bem; hypermarkets under the banner of Extra Hiper; and proximity stores under the banners of Mini Extra, Minuto Pao de Acucar, Pao de Acucar Adega, and Aliados Minimercado; and gas stations and drugstores under the banners of Extra and Pao de Acucar, as well as sells its products through its Websites. As of December 31, 2021, it operated 667 stores, 74 gas stations, and 68 drugstores in 16 Brazilian states and the Federal District, as well as 15 distribution centers and warehouses across Brazil. The company was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Companhia Brasileira de Distribuicao operates as a subsidiary of Casino, Guichard-Perrachon S.A.
Allergan plc, a pharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, and commercializes branded pharmaceutical, device, biologic, surgical, and regenerative medicine products worldwide. The company operates in three segments: US Specialized Therapeutics, US General Medicine, and International. It offers a portfolio of products in various therapeutic areas, including medical aesthetics and dermatology, eye care, neuroscience, urology, gastrointestinal, women's health, and anti-infective therapeutic products. The company also offers breast implants and tissue expanders; and RM-131 (relamorelin), a peptide ghrelin agonist for the treatment of diabetic gastroparesis. In addition, it develops medical and cosmetic treatments; therapies for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and other liver diseases; inhibitor for the treatment of psoriasis and other autoimmune disorders; atopic dermatitis drug candidate; peri-ocular rings for extended drug delivery and reducing elevated intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients; and treatments for neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. Further, the company develops RST-001, a novel gene therapy for the treatment of retinitis pigmentosa; small molecule therapeutics for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases; topical medicines for fat reduction; and delivery system and botulinum toxin-based prescription products. It has collaboration, option, and license agreement with Lyndra, Inc.; and strategic alliance and option agreement with Editas Medicine, Inc. Allergan plc also has licensing agreements with Assembly Biosciences, Inc.; MedImmune; and Heptares Therapeutics, Ltd. The company was formerly known as Actavis plc and changed its name to Allergan plc in June 2015. Allergan plc was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.
For the first time, Madison residents will be able to vote early at locations other than the clerks office in the City-County Building.

The expansion to twelve new sites  including nine public libraries, UW-Madison, Edgewood College and the citys East Side Streets Division  is expected to ease long lines of early voters at the clerks office.

Some of the dozen new locations will also follow the lead of the clerks office by having weekend hours, including Sunday hours at three public libraries.

The Madison City Council approved the expanded absentee voting hours and locations a week ago.

This is the first time absentee ballots will be cast at sites other than Downtown, said City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl.

Witzel-Behl expects about 18,000 ballots to be cast in absentia for the November general elections.

Republican lawmakers had enacted limits on early and absentee voting in an effort to make such voting uniform throughout the state.

The limits blocked weekend voting and established certain hours and dates for in-person voting.

But a federal judge in July threw out many of those laws, saying they were unfair to minority and largely Democratic voters.

The ruling prompted clerks in some areas to reinstate weekend early voting and establish longer early voting windows than the GOP law allowed.

Madison has gone further by expanding early voting locations beyond the clerks office.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August unanimously declined to have a full panel of judges hear an appeal of the election-related laws. The U.S. Supreme Court would have to intervene for any changes to happen before the Nov. 8 election.

Voter identification is still necessary for the general election, including those casting ballots as absentees ahead of Election Day.

Locations and hours

Ballots will be accepted at these places and times:

City Clerks Office, 210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Room 103: 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, Sept. 26-Nov. 4; 9 a.m.-noon Saturdays, Oct. 1-22; 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays, Oct. 29 and Nov. 5; 1 p.m.-4 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 30 and Nov. 6.

Streets East, 4602 Sycamore Ave.: 7 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, Sept. 26-Nov. 4.

Central Library, 201 W. Mifflin St.: 9 a.m.-8:30 p.m., Mondays-Thursdays, Sept. 26-Nov. 3; 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Fridays, Sept. 30-Nov. 4; 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Saturdays, Oct. 1-29; 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 2-30.

Alicia Ashman Library, 733 N. High Point Road: 9 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, Sept. 26-Nov. 4; 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturdays, Oct. 1-29.

Goodman South Madison Library, 2222 S. Park St.; Hawthorne Library, 2707 E. Washington Ave.; Meadowridge Library, 5726 Raymond Road; and Lakeview Library, 2845 N. Sherman Ave.: 10 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, Sept. 26-Nov. 4; 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturdays, Oct. 1-29.

Monroe Street Library, 1705 Monroe St.: 1 p.m.-8:30 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Sept. 26-Nov. 4; 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Sept. 27-Nov. 1; noon-5:30 p.m. Thursdays, Sept. 29-Nov. 3; 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturdays, Oct. 1-29.

Pinney Library, 204 Cottage Grove Road; and Sequoya Library, 4340 Tokay Blvd.: 9 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, Sept. 26-Nov. 4; 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturdays, Oct. 1-29; 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 2-30.

Edgewood College, Wingra Commons, Predolin Hall, 1000 Edgewood College Drive: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, Oct. 31-Nov. 4.

UW-Madison, Union South, Marquee Lounge, 1308 W. Dayton St.: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, Oct. 31-Nov. 4.
Nearly 350 Madison-area households have signed up so far to find out more about the MadiSUN Solar Group Buy program, announced in June.

About 70 have had a free assessment of their property to see if it might qualify for the program and 12 households have signed contracts to have rooftop solar systems installed.

We are really pleased with the level of interest weve seen, said Katherine Klausing, of RENEW Wisconsin, the Madison nonprofit administering the MadiSUN program.

The goal for the city of Madison was to have 15 contracts for solar installations by Nov. 1.

In addition to a group purchase lowering the cost, federal and state programs offer additional incentives. Homeowners can get a federal tax credit for 30 percent of the cost of a solar system and the states Focus on Energy program offers rebates of up to $2,400.

Residents have until Monday to sign up for the program. More information is available at madisunsolar.com.
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.
Ted Buss/Times Record News Dr. Jed Grisel is the co-founder of Auditory Implant Initiative along with Andrew de Jong at Head & Neck Surgical Associates in Wichita Falls. Grisel and Dr. Terry Griffin, a professor at Midwestern State University, and students in the computer-science department developed software known as HERMES to help network a data system tracking device for cochlear implant patents in the U.S.

SHARE

By Ted Buss, Special to the Times Record News

Conclusive help for the deaf is clearly available if only those who can hear would listen and learn.

It is an occurrence familiar to the medical world. Technology has been perfected over the past 30 years to the point where deaf or near deaf children, adults and seniors can hear to perfection again. But familiar challenges stand in the way for those who live in silence.

The instrument that will transport the hard of hearing or deaf back into the world of sound is a cochlear implant. A voice of nationwide hope for this outpatient surgical process is Auditory Implant Initiative, a nonprofit in Wichita Falls. Dr. Jed Grisel, a doctor of otolaryngology at Head & Neck Surgical Associates partnered with Midwestern State's Terry Griffin, Ph.D. and students in the computer science department to develop the HERMES management platform.

HERMES is a tracking function used in other health communities to gather data used for analytics and research. At least 15 medical participants nationwide are now using the tracking system. The platform is vital in capturing unnamed patient data to further optimize overall patient care in the cochlear implant community.

"Despite its (cochlear implants) proven success only 70,000 to 80,000 implant surgeries have been performed in the U.S.," Grisel said. "This is only about 5 percent of those who are deaf or near deaf in the nation who could benefit from implants.

"Without assistance from Medicare or insurance companies, implants can cost up to $100,000. The FDA decides the criteria and sets the bar. Medicare has its criteria and its bar is set higher than the FDA. Medicare and insurance companies want a larger volume of data, so this is where we come in."

The Auditory Implant Initiative is threefold: To promote research, collaboration between medical centers and outreach to the general public on the cochlear process and its success rate.

"The software developed helps us do all these things," he said. "We did it because nobody else in the country was doing it, and it is proving to be a reliable way to track patients. It's frustrating to know how people who could benefit from implants struggle in life.

"Studies show deaf people have less educational opportunities and their socioeconomic lifestyle and compensation are lower than those with normal hearing. Deafness can cause depression and lead to dementia. And we haven't even mentioned not being able to hear a bird sing, a musical instrument or the voice of another person."

Since setting up practice here and starting work on the Auditory Implant Initiative five years ago, Grisel has performed 40 implant surgeries and enrolled 15 other communities, universities and physician offices in the HERMES management and solution system.

"Thanks to great input from MSU, we developed our system in two years," he said. "All things considered we are progressing well. The University of Southern California is in our system and Columbia is about to join. We have private practices in College Station and Austin and others virtually coast-to-coast."

Grisel is the only physician who does cochlear implant surgery between Wichita Falls and Oklahoma City, and between Dallas-Fort Worth and Lubbock. He completes the two-hour outpatient surgery at United Regional Health Care System.

"We are well behind the rest of the world in implant numbers," Grisel said. "Europe is at ... 25 to 30 percent. If we can get to (that) it will be a blessing for those who need this surgery."

Grisel explained that the difference between a cochlear implant and a hearing aid is that a hearing aid is basically an amplifier. Hearing aids are of no help to those who are deaf or seriously impaired.

"You have to have some hearing to benefit from hearing aids," he said. "A cochlear implant has an internal and external component. The internal component is surgically inserted under the skin behind the ear. The technology has greatly improved over the past 30 years."

The process includes microphones to pick up sounds and a speech processor to prioritize audible speech externally  splitting the sound into channels and sending the electrical sound signals through a thin cable to the transmitter. As of 2013 more than 350,000 people, mostly in Europe, have received cochlear implants.

In addition to data gathering, education about cochlear implants among those who have serious hearing disorders or live with someone who does is important. Despite its success and availability, it remains unknown to many.

Implants have revolutionized life for people who are deaf or hearing-impaired and cannot benefit from hearing aids. Studies show that elderly people achieve the same or nearly the same level of benefit in speech recognition as younger recipients, although the learning curve may be slower.

"We just have to continue doing what we are doing," Grisel said.

And this is the mission of the Auditory Implant Initiative: research, collaborate and outreach to those who need education in the implant process and success rate.

For more information, see the initiative website at aii-hermes.org.
SHARE Clement was given five years deferred adjudication.

By Times Record News

A woman charged in connection with an attempted highway robbery  literally a robbery on a highway  and a shooting entered a plea agreement Monday in 30th District Court.

Nicole Clement, 26, entered a plea of guilty on charges of aggravated robbery, assault, and endangering a child. She was sentenced to five years deferred adjudication with terms that include anger management and parenting classes.

The incident that led to her arrest happened Oct. 13, 2015. At the time, a police spokesperson said Clement and a man were driving along an access road of Central Freeway near North Sixth Street when they spotted a woman they knew walking along the access nearby. Police said the two got out of their vehicle and chased the woman across the busy freeway, attacking her with small stun flashlights.

A Texas Ranger passing by saw the incident and intervened. When Clement and her companion tried to leave in their vehicle, the Ranger held them at gunpoint until police arrived.

Clement was charged with child endangerment because allegedly she left her 1-year-old child in her vehicle as she pursued the woman.

Clement and her companion, Avery Wilkins, were charged in connection with an incident that occurred Sept. 27, 2015, in the 2200 block of Gilbert Avenue.

Police said that incident was a disagreement over a small amount of cash, and one man was forced into a vehicle at gunpoint, and a second was shot in the leg.

Once in jail after the incident on the highway, Clement told investigators that Wilkins had done the shooting and she had been the getaway driver. Wilkins was later sentenced to six years in prison.
Claire Kowalick/Times Record News Jeff Bradley, standing right, and Curt Parde, standing left, of HOK consulting group talk Monday afternoon to the Wichita County Commissioners about plans for a new justice center.

SHARE

By Claire Kowalick of the Times Record News

An agreement for a consulting contract with HOK and Harper Perkins Architects marks the beginning of an exciting time for Wichita County.

Commissioners unanimously voted Monday to approve the bid for architectural consulting services with HOK for the county's new jail facility. Harper Perkins has already been working with the county for about six years on several projects and they will continue to narrow the ideas for a new facility to house inmates.

A crucial decision will be whether to build a jail/justice center near the existing courthouse in downtown Wichita Falls or build at the Sprague Jail Annex on the south side of the city.

County Judge Woody Gossom has expressed a desire for years to have a justice center adjacent to the courthouse, complete with new a Sheriff's Office, larger book-in area, new courtrooms, and other amenities, along with an inmate-holding area. Other commissioners say it all depends on how large of a bond the public is willing to approve.

Commissioner Ray Gonzalez said a complete justice center downtown would be convenient, but would also be very expensive. In the original plan, he said the court was thinking a new jail might cost about $16 million. Due to land abatement, infrastructure maintenance and other issues, building downtown could cost more than double the price of construction elsewhere.

Commissioner Jeff Watts said if there is only enough money to build the jail and not the entire justice center, building at Sprague might be the more cost-effective option.

Commissioner Barry Mahler agreed that what they do will all depend on what kind of bond they are able to get through.

The court met with representatives from HOK in early August about possibilities in Wichita County.

HOK representatives Jeff Bradley and Curt Parde, based in Dallas, spoke about problems with the current jail situation and what HOK could offer.

During the next few months, HOK will look at jail population projections, current conditions, available properties in the county, roadways and infrastructure. The company will work hand-in-hand with Harper Perkins and present initial findings later this year.

The consultants said a detailed plan with defendable accounting will be crucial so the county can have a good chance of getting a bond that will pass.

During the August presentation, Bradley said keeping the public informed and involved all along in the process is an important part of the project.

HOK has worked with multiple counties throughout Texas and across the nation creating new jail facilities, courthouses, civil courts and justice centers.

The county leaders considered at least two other bids for the consulting project, but say HOK's offer stood out above the rest.

HOK's bid for the first four months of work, master plan and conceptual design was $49,500.

The team is set to begin work and expect to have a master plan and finalized concept as soon as mid-January.

When the consultants and county come up with a final project, the next step will be funding. The court is considering a bond or certificates of obligation in May or November 2017 to pay for the jail project.
SHARE

OK, so Gary Johnson probably isn't going to be the nation's 45th president. And it's doubtful Bill Weld will be replacing Vice President Biden. But the Libertarian candidates still deserve to stand on the debate stage and offer Americans their message of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. If the Commission on Presidential Debates evaluated candidate credentials and not poll standings, Johnson and Weld would have been the first to qualify. Neither the Republican nor Democratic ticket can match the executive governing experience of the Libertarian duo. In fact, we haven't had a third party ticket this qualified in modern history.

Johnson is a successful entrepreneur turned public servant. Sure, he's quirky. It's not everyday an Iron Man who wears Nikes with his suit and smokes pot seeks the nation's highest office. But consider that he was twice elected governor as a Republican in the very Democratic state of New Mexico. His record included the elimination the state deficit and creation of a surplus before leaving office, all while reducing the size of state government (a feat accomplished by vetoing 750 bills during his tenure, more than all other 49 governors combined). Plus, he governed without an ethical blemish, quite a credential when viewed against the competition.

Then there's Weld. Central casting could not have delivered anyone more suitable. Harvard undergraduate. Then Oxford. And Harvard Law. Weld was a U.S. attorney  recommended for that job by Rudy Giuliani  who went on to head the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Like Johnson, Weld was elected twice as a Republican governor in a Democratic state. In fact, when re-elected in Massachusetts in 1994, it was with the largest margin in state history.

There's something else notable: They are truly running as a team. Watch them interviewed together and you will see their ability to finish one another's sentences on matters of agreement, and willingness to amiably disagree. How refreshing.

Johnson and Weld, unlike the Green Party, will have their names on ballots in all 50 states. Their credentials make them worthy of standing on the presidential debate stage. But for that to happen, they need to quickly document the support at least 15 percent in an average of five national polls. So far, they have not met the threshold.

Still, there are signs of momentum, including the endorsement by a major daily newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch. That embrace was a bona fide vote of confidence in Johnson and Weld, not just a rejection of Clinton and Trump. The editorial called Johnson "a man of good integrity, apparently normal ego, and sound ideas," adding that "he is, in every respect, a legitimate and reasonable contender for the presidency."

Anecdotally it seems like the largest impediment to their further ascension is the belief that they can't win, and the idea that any vote for the ticket helps or hurts someone else. Weld rejected this argument in an interview when he secured the vice presidential nomination.

"I would never use the word 'spoiler'  I'm very comfortable with where we are," he told me. "We're going to speak truth to power and we are going to speak truths and we don't have to trim or modify our positions. And if we wind up nudging the Democrats toward the right on economic issues and nudging the Republicans to the left on social issues I think we will have done the country a really big favor."

Jesse Ventura, who in 1998 was elected governor of Minnesota under the banner of the Reform Party, bristles at the argument that a vote for Johnson-Weld is a waste.

"It's ridiculous," he told me. "When you vote, you're not there to pick winner, you're not there for a horse race. You're there to pick the person you want most to be president. And if that person finished hypothetically fifth, so what? You did your job as a citizen to vote for a candidate of your choice."

"When they come up with that nonsense about throwing your vote away, or electing someone else, that's their patented Democratic and Republican excuse for losing," Ventura added. "When they lose  they don't assume the responsibility themselves. They point a finger at the third-party guy and say, 'He's who did it.' How arrogant to think that everyone who votes for Gary would vote for one of them had Gary not been there."

For those willing to listen, Johnson and Weld have offered a nuanced vision of independence and thoughtfulness. They refuse to campaign dirty and are even willing to utter the dreaded c-word: compromise. Which is another reason why they would add value to the debates. Putting Johnson and Weld on the stage would force their opponents to defend their views against independent thinking.

The Times-Dispatch endorsement said:

"But our final decision to endorse the Johnson-Weld ticket, and to do so with great confidence and enthusiasm, came only after Johnson met with the editorial board last Monday morning. We found him to be knowledgeable but unscripted, reasonable and good-humored, self-assured but free from arrogance, willing and able to address every question, consistent in his beliefs without being dogmatic, even-tempered, curious  and in all respects optimistically, realistically presidential."

Admittedly, being "unscripted" has also hurt Johnson. Recently on MSNBC, he was flummoxed when asked his opinion on the Syrian refuge crisis in Aleppo. Whether that gaffe alone will prevent the Libertarians from reaching the debate threshold remains to be seen.

In the meantime, if a pollster calls your house, tell them you're for Johnson-Weld. You can always change your mind  after the debates.

Michael Smerconish writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and is host of "Smerconish" on CNN. Readers may contact him at www.smerconish.com
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Albany

SUNY Polytechnic Institute has gone from relative obscurity to No. 18 on the list of regional Northeast universities in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings this year.

SUNY Poly, formed in 2014 with the merger of the University at Albany's Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering with SUNY IT in Utica, jumped from No. 122 on the list of regional universities in the Northeast to No. 18 in the U.S. News & Report rankings, released Tuesday. The school has 2,792 students.

That means that in just one year, SUNY Poly's undergraduate program have gone from start-up status to joining the ranks of regional schools such as Ithaca College, Fairfield University, Marist College and SUNY Geneseo.

SEE THE U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT RANKINGS HERE

Three other Capital Region schools, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, Union College in Schenectady and Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, were ranked within the Top 40 of colleges and universities nationally.

Siena College in Loudonville was ranked 122 in the national liberal arts college rankings, while UAlbany earned a ranking of 146 in the national university list.

Although the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering is internationally known as one of the top semiconductor engineering research schools in the country, SUNY IT had been considered a commuter technical school without much of a reputation outside of the Mohawk Valley until the merger.

Alain Kaloyeros, president of SUNY Poly, said that combination of the two schools has created new value for the SUNY system. SAT scores have been on the rise, making the school more competitive. Research opportunities also have been growing at the Utica campus, which is the focus of the state's $1.5 billion Nano Utica initiative.

And the merger has created many more opportunities for students to earn scholarships. That includes one created by the widow of Wendell Williams, who mentored Kaloyeros at the University of Illinois and later was an adjunct professor at UAlbany before his death in 2010.

"We are competing now in the Northeast for a much wider group of students," Kaloyeros said in an interview on Tuesday. "The brand name is a major reason why."

SUNY Poly also is the least expensive among its competitors in the Northeast for New York residents. In-state tuition and room and board for undergrads runs about $21,000 a year. Sending the same student to Marist College in Poughkeepsie costs $50,000. LeMoyne College in Syracuse costs $45,000.

Some applicants to SUNY Poly's Albany campus have worried about the lack of a true campus setting after its break from UAlbany. Kaloyeros said students who apply to either campus can take online courses at the other, and the school is in talks to create a transportation service between the two campuses, which are about an hour and a half apart.

SUNY Poly is in the process of building student housing at its Albany campus and recently opened new student lounges that Kaloyeros said are the pride of the student body.

"Campus life is very important to them," Kaloyeros said.

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

Green Island

Union representatives at the Honeywell Aerospace factory in Green Island traveled to South Bend, Ind., Monday for a new round of contract talks with the company in hopes of trying to end a four-month lockout.

The trip will also include a health and safety inspection of Honeywell's South Bend factory by the United Auto Workers, which represents workers at that plant as well as the Green Island plant, which makes steel brake pads for airplanes and employs 42 union workers.

Both facilities are covered by a master labor contract, and Honeywell locked out workers at both sites in early May after they rejected the company's contract offer.

The South Bend facility, which is larger, makes carbon brake pads.

Honeywell has been using temporary workers at both plants since the lockout happened. While union members have questioned the quality of the work of the temporary workers, Honeywell has said that there have been no quality control issues.

The UAW requested a health and safety review, or inspection, of the South Bend plant back in July, telling the company in a letter that it had "uncovered a number of concerns" at the plant.

The issues range from the improper handling of hazardous chemicals such as dichromate to improper ventilation in the carbon machine shop and water dripping into electrical boxes.

Honeywell, which agreed to the health and safety review, told the union at the time that it was not aware of any of the issues cited by the union. It also offered to meet again with union officials to resume contract talks since they were going to be in South Bend.

It is unclear what could happen to contract talks if the UAW uncovers health or safety issues at the South Bend plant this week.

The last talks between the two sides were held June 8.

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

Voorheesville

Water from a kitchen faucet used to fill water jugs in the cafeteria and jugs for after-school programs at Voorheesville Elementary School was contaminated with high levels of lead, according to the school district.

The district issued a press release and posted the test results Monday after new water sample testing confirmed the lead contamination.

"Until we get this problem resolved, we are not going to be using any of those water outlets in the kitchen," said Brian Hunt, the school district's superintendent.

Testing done on Aug. 19 showed that a kitchen faucet at Voorheesville Elementary School had 1,800 parts per billion of lead. Any level of lead exposure is harmful to children, but 15 parts per billion is the federal "take action" level.

The faucet was shut off on the first day of school, Sept. 7, which was the day the district received the results from the August water samples.

The Albany County Health Department told the district to retest the faucet because the initial result was so high it might be an error. A new sample collected on Thursday showed 822 parts per billion.

In the wake of lead contamination in Flint, Mich., New York became the first state to require schools to test water for lead. A majority of homes tested in Flint last year had 27 parts per billion, though some had much higher levels from 400 to 13,000. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the new law on Sept. 6 and schools have tight deadlines to collect and test water samples from every faucet, water fountain and water outlet. Elementary schools must collect the samples by Sept. 30 and middle and high schools must collect samples by Oct. 31. The law also requires schools to notify parents and staff of test results within 10 days.

High levels of lead can cause physical, mental and learning impairments in people, but young children are especially vulnerable.

"The concentration of lead, total amount of lead consumed, and duration of lead exposure influence the severity of health effects," said Dr. Elizabeth Whalen, the Albany County health commissioner. "The ACDOH will send out a field team to learn more about how the testing was performed at Voorheesville, and gather information that could shed more light on potential risk to students."

The school district plans to offers free blood level lead screening for any student or staff member who wants it and is hosting a public meeting next week to discuss the test results with parents.

Initial testing at Voorheesville Elementary School targeted high-priority water outlets, including drinking fountains and kitchen sinks, but all 82 outlets will be tested by the deadline, Hunt said. All of the drinking fountains and bottle fill stations tested below the 15 parts per billion standard, but two other faucets  a sink in a classroom and a sink in the transportation office  showed lead levels of 15 and 18 parts per billion. Both have been shut off until the problem is fixed.

The retest of the kitchen faucet took two draws of water  the first collected water immediately after opening the valve and the second draw collected water after allowing water to flow for 30 seconds.

The lead level fell to 10 parts per billion in the second draw. Both the health department and testing company advised the district that this indicates the problem is likely the faucet itself, even though the faucet had been installed in May.

"We are going to do everything we can to remediate this situation as quickly as possible," Hunt said.

ccrowley@timesunion.com  518-454-5348  @townstu  http://facebook.com/cathleenFcrowley
ROME -- Capital Region residents might see military planes overhead from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The Eastern Air Defense Sector and the Continental U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command Region -1st Air Force (Air Forces Northern) will conduct an air defense exercise over portions of eastern New York, southern New Hampshire, southern Vermont and western Massachusetts.
GAWK Lands Record-Breaking Revenue Run for Third Quarter

By Steve Anderson - Contributing Writer

With GAWK Inc.'s third quarter now one for the history books, it turns out that August proved to also be one for the record books as the company's third quarter revenue turned out to be the best the company had ever seen. While it's still comparatively small against some firms' measures, GAWK's rapid gains suggest that the company is doing at least something right.

The company reported that August yielded over $600,000 in revenue for the company, beating out the previous record of $500,000 by a healthy margin. Leading the way was the company's hosted private branch exchange (PBX) exchange, a fully-encrypted system that allows all calls that flow through the network, whether as a target or as an origination point, receive the benefits of GAWK's powerhouse technology. With protection devoted to desk phones, desktop PCs, and soon, mobile devices, GAWK is ready to protect most any device that might send or receive a voice transmission.

Security is a major part of the competitive edge presented by GAWK; the company recently acquired a couple of firms geared toward augmenting that security in Xtelus and Connexum. With demands for cyber security overalland in voice service in particulargrowing, as noted by GAWK CEO Scott Kettle, GAWK's improvements in the field will generate a better level of security to meet the growing need.

Though security is front and center in GAWK's offerings, it's a competitive edge, not a primary focus. The company offers a complete slate of cloud-based connection options, offering not only hosted PBX but also Internet access from speeds ranging from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, which is a huge range and covers just about any need in the field. The company reaches 100 million people monthly, and covers not only 31 major cities, but also 21 separate countries.

That's a great range, and suggests that GAWK could be a major up-and-coming force in the field before too much longer has passed. The good news here is that it not only has a great product line in its hosted PBX, but it also has the infrastructure to back it up with the Internet access and a terrific competitive edge in its terrific encryption and security options. That combination together gives GAWK many of the necessary tools to be a success, but now, it's going to have to focus on its marketing in a big way. People need to know this option is out there, and if the company's counting its monthly revenue in the mid-six-figure range, it's still a comparatively small outfit.

GAWK has the tools to be big, but it's going to have to use these to really get ahead. With marketing now the big issue to getting ahead, it's a safe bet that GAWK will spread its word and make a hit with companies looking for a secure and feature-packed way to talk to others.

Please enable JavaScript to view the

Edited by Maurice Nagle
[September 13, 2016] Georgia Courts Broaden Use of Tyler Technologies' Odyssey eFileGA, Now Covering 43 Percent of State's Residents

Tyler Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: TYL) is experiencing strong growth in the use of its Odyssey eFileGA solution, with the Fulton County Magistrate Court becoming the third Fulton County court to go live with eFileGA. The county's superior and state courts implemented eFileGA over the past 18 months. With three Fulton County courts now electronically filing civil cases, counties covering 43 percent of Georgia's residents are in the process of implementing or are live with eFileGA. Courts in most of the Atlanta metro area are using eFileGA, including courts in Cherokee, Clayton, Coweta, DeKalb, Douglas, and Rockdale counties, with more coming, including Gwinett, Forsyth and Spalding counties. Courts using eFileGA are now contributing to the more than 125,000 documents and 75,000 cases that are filed daily with Tyler's e-filing solution nationwide. Using eFileGA helps courts streamline processes, reduce costs and save paper. Nationally, Tyler is seeing the number of electronically filed transactions steadily rise while processing times are getting faster, with many filings taking less than 60 seconds. By providing court participants with simplified and immediate access to court documents, Fulton County is using Odyssey eFileGA to increase efficiency more effectively using taxpayer dollars. This supports its strategic plan, which prescribes use of "equipment and technology in a way that enables high performance." Cathelene "Tina" Robinson, the Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Court of Fulton County, championed the e-filing project to provide court staff with better technology to automate court procedures and increase constituent access. "It is due to Clerk Robinson's vision and dedication that our courts have already seen tremendus value from Odyssey eFileGA, mainly through enabling constituents to directly upload necessary case documents, which has eliminated time-consuming processes for our staff," said Che Alexander, court services bureau chief. "By reducing the volume of paper used, we have automated several court areas, while increasing court staff communication and collaboration. We are pleased with e-filing's benefits so far and we are eager for the additional benefits ahead."



Fulton County Magistrate Court went live with eFileGA in April 2016, following six months of implementation within Fulton County's courts. Odyssey eFileGA is delivered as a Tyler-hosted solution and allows users to file documents with the courts 24 hours a day, every day of the week. In addition to leveraging eFileGA, the Fulton County Magistrate Court is using Tyler's Guide & File solution to improve access to justice for local residents who are self-represented litigants (SRLs). The Fulton Magistrate Court is using Guide & File to provide web-based interviews that simplify court filing for SRLs. This results in a reduction of erroneous filings as well as staff time answering questions from filers outside the legal profession.

"This project is a wonderful tool that anyone can use to more easily navigate the court system. It is such a simple idea, but a necessary one, allowing all equal access to our courts," said Chief Justice Hugh P. Thompson of the Georgia Supreme Court. "Tyler is proud to use its extensive public sector experience to help courts automate processes, offer constituents greater access to the court, and vastly reduce the amount of tedious and costly paper-driven work for court staff and their constituents alike," said Mitchell Spence, senior vice president of operations for Tyler's Courts & Justice Division. "Fulton County exemplifies how forward-thinking judicial agencies are applying Tyler solutions and our best practices to further enhance the breadth and quality of services that are easy to access and use." Overall, Odyssey serves more than 100 million residents, a third of the U.S. population, in more than 800 counties across 23 states. With more than 550 full-time employees dedicated to courts and justice solutions, Tyler has the capability to manage dozens of Odyssey client implementations concurrently. Fulton County is Georgia's most populous county with more than 1 million residents; it includes 90 percent of Atlanta, the state capital. About Tyler Technologies (News - Alert), Inc. Tyler Technologies (NYSE: TYL) is a leading provider of end-to-end information management solutions and services for local governments. Tyler partners with clients to empower the public sector - cities, counties, schools and other government entities - to become more efficient, more accessible and more responsive to the needs of their constituents. Tyler's client base includes more than 14,000 local government offices in all 50 states, Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and other international locations. In 2016, Forbes ranked Tyler on their "Most Innovative Growth Companies" list, and it has also named Tyler one of "America's Best Small Companies" eight times. The company has been included six times on the Barron's 400 Index, a measure of the most promising companies in America. More information about Tyler Technologies, headquartered in Plano, Texas, can be found at www.tylertech.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005045/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Insurance Law Podcast Discusses Handling of Third-Party Claims in Missouri

A.M. Best and Best's Recommended Insurance Attorneys and Adjusters has released the latest installment of the Insurance Law Podcast, a series that examines timely insurance issues from an attorney's point of view.

This episode features Aaron French and Phil Graham, attorneys, from the law firm of Sandberg Phoenix & von Gontard P.C. in St. Louis, MO. Mr. French is a shareholder at the firm and specializes in representing insurance carriers in coverage disputes and extra-contractual litigation. He serves as the business litigation group leader.

Mr. Graham is also a shareholder at the firm and works within the firm's business litigation and products liability practice groups. His practice includes enforcement and defense of contract rights and other contractual matters, business torts including fraud, negligent misrepresentation, tortious interferences with business relations trade secrets and other intellecual property. The podcast addresses the handling of third-party claims in Missouri.







Mr. French explains why Missouri is quickly becoming known as a risky state for insurers handling third-party claims. Mr. Graham details carriers' options in Missouri for the duty to defend when there is an actual or potential defense to coverage. Mr. French clarifies the available actions that carriers can take if an insured rejects a reservation of rights, or ROR, defense. Mr. Graham defines the types of third-party bad faith that are recognized in Missouri and the best ways to avoid these claims.

Sandberg Phoenix & von Gontard P.C. is a qualified member of Best's Recommended Insurance Attorneys and Adjusters, a claims industry resource that has featured legal counsel, independent insurance adjusting services and expert service providers since 1928.

Listen or subscribe to the Insurance Law Podcast.

A.M. Best is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright  2016 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913006232/en/
[September 13, 2016] LIK USA Announces the Ultimate Peter Lik Experience Promotion

LIK USA announces the launch of the Ultimate Peter Lik Experience, an opportunity for fans of the Master Photographer's fine art photography to win an impressive collection of high-end prizes. The lucky grand-prize winner and their guest will be flown first-class to Las Vegas for an exclusive once-in-a-lifetime, behind-the-scenes experience with Peter at LIK USA headquarters. The trip will include a three-night stay in a suite at Peter's favorite Las Vegas hotel, a Grand Canyon helicopter tour, a personally dedicated gift from the artist, and more! A variety of prizes will also be awarded to second- and third-prize winners, as well as to fans of Peter on Facebook (News - Alert), Twitter and Instagram. These include a signed copy of Peter's recently released epic book Equation of Time, which retails for $2,950 and serves as a tribute to his more than 30 years capturing the immense beauty and wonders of our natural world. People wishing to enter can accrue multiple entry opportunities by attending a series of special events at Peter Lik Galleries nationwide, purchasing work by the artist, referring new collectors, and being active on Peter's social media channels. Complete details on the prizes and entry requirements can be found online at the Peter Lik Experience (www.experience.lik.com).



The gallery events will be held on Saturday, September 24 and Saturday, October 22 at Peter Lik Galleries in Beverly Hills and La Jolla, California; Aspen, Colorado; Miami and Key West, Florida; The Forum Shops at Caesars, The Shoppes at Mandalay Place, and The Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian, Las Vegas, Nevada; Houston, Texas; Honolulu and Lahaina, Hawaii; and New York City. Event attendees will enjoy handcrafted cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and the chance to also win a copy of Equation of Time. Over the last few years, supporters of Peter have overwhelmed Peter with their show of love and appreciation through acquisitions, social media engagement and attendance at gallery events: "My love and appreciation for them are just as great," Lik states. "This promotion is unlike anything we have offered before. I really wanted to do something special for my dedicated collectors and fans by offering them something exclusive and unforgettable. I wish them all good luck and can't wait to meet the winner in Las Vegas!"

No purchase is required to enter the promotion, and entries can be accrued through Sunday, October 30. The winners will be selected at random and announced on Tuesday, November 15, 2016. About Peter Lik Peter Lik, whose work can be seen in 13 galleries across the United States bearing his name, began capturing the wonders of nature as a young boy in his native Australia and never stopped. In 1984, Lik migrated to the United States and discovered his passion for panoramic photography. One of his most notable projects, "Spirit of America," is a 50-state landscape exploration of perilous deserts, ethereal mountain peaks, lush fields, and glimmering cityscapes, and his love for America and its landscapes led him to become a naturalized citizen in 2013. In 2011, he jumped into mainstream culture by starring in the NBC-produced television series, "From the Edge with Peter Lik." Lik's masterworks "Ghost" and "Inner Peace" have been included in an exhibition of Nature's Best Photography at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., and he counts royalty, presidents and celebrities among his collectors. The numerous awards he has won throughout his career include The Lifetime Achievement Award from the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) as well as degrees as Master Photographer from both the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) and the PPA, and Fellowships from the British Institute of Professional Photographers (BIPP), The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and The American Society of Photographers (ASP). Learn more at http://www.lik.com/. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005535/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[September 13, 2016] NACD New England Chapter Appoints New President, Board Members

The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) New England Chapter announced today that Beth I.Z. Boland, Chair of the Securities Enforcement & Litigation Practice and Vice Chair of the Litigation Department at Foley & Lardner LLP, has been inducted as the organization's new president. Boland's appointment is accompanied by the addition of eight new directors to the organization's board. She succeeds R. Robert Popeo, who now serves as co-chair of the Chapter along with William Earon. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005269/en/ NACD New England Chapter President Beth I.Z. Boland (Photo: Business Wire). "I am honored to serve as president after Bob Popeo, who brought incredible energy and dynamism to the organization," said Boland. "The NACD New England Chapter has raised its profile and broadened its constituency of members, and will now focus on strategically partnering with other leading business organizations with an interest in corporate governance. I look forward to working with our esteemed board to guide our members in navigating the most important issues facing corporate directors today." "Beth's appointment, along with our outstanding slate of new directors, marks the beginning of an exciting new era in the NACD New England Chapter's history," said Earon, Founder and Managing Partner of Coastal Capital Advisors, LLC. "Amidst these changes, I'm delighted that Bob Popeo, one of the business community's most influential leaders on corporate governance, will remain in a key role in our organization. Bob has brought the NACD New England Chapter to a new level, strengthening its voice in the region and building valuable new relationships across industries-all in service of broadening awareness of the importance of corporate excellence and leadership in the boardroom." "The NACD New England Chapter is dedicated to one purpose: making sure corporate boards have the educational and leadership tools they need to make companies as strong as they can be," said Popeo, who serves as chairman of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo, P.C. "Beth is dedicated to that cause, and her vision, coupled with the combined wisdom of our board, will keep our organization at the forefront of education and training around corporate governance best practices." Boland's appointment to the NACD New England Chapter comes at a time of heightened awareness of the importance of high professional standards in corporate governance. Never before has it been so apparent that those who serve on boards of major corporations need not only fluency in their individual field of expertise, but also a firm understanding of the significant fiduciary and other responsibilities required of all corporate directors. An expert and frequently sought-after speaker on governance issues, Boland co-chaired the Boston Bar Association Task Force on Corporate Governance, and has served on numerous non-profit and quasi-governmental boards such as Commissioner of the Massachusetts Lottery Commission and the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, and the advisory boards for the New England Legal Foundation and the U. Mass-Boston Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy. In her law practice, Boland regularly represents corporate boards and institutional investors in connection with insider trading issues,accounting fraud, corporate control issues, and derivative actions. She was recently named one of the most "influential" attorneys in the Commonwealth by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.



The NACD New England Chapter's new board members hold senior leadership positions in sectors ranging from higher education to healthcare to financial services. The new board members are: Lisa Blais leads the Boston office of Egon Zehnder, where she advises CEOs and boards across sectors on CEO and board succession and on leadership development and recruitment throughout the C-suite. As part of her work with boards and C-suites, she also conducts management appraisals and team effectiveness reviews and advises on diversity and inclusion. Prior to joining Egon Zehnder, Lisa spent over twenty years with global industrial manufacturing companies, including roles in engineering, sales & marketing, and general management.

Andrew Dreyfus is president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, one of the largest independent, not-for-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in the country. Dreyfus's community-oriented health care expertise is reflected in his board service. Dreyfus is a director of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, the National Institute for Health Care Management, Jobs for Massachusetts, and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals. He sits on the advisory board of Ariadne Labs and is a founding member of the Massachusetts Coalition for Serious Illness Care and member of the Roundtable on Quality Care for People with Serious Illness. Allison Egbert, CPA is a partner in RSM's assurance practice, focusing on delivering service to public and private clients in a wide array of industries including manufacturing and distribution, alternative energy and clean tech, among others. Egbert leads the Boston SEC (News - Alert) practice. Her experience includes audits, reviews, mergers and acquisitions, consultations and analysis, due diligence services, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and assistance to companies with international operations. She also has experience in advising clients on transactions including public offerings, private placements, debt restructurings, and mergers and acquisitions. Egbert is a member of the not-for-profit board of directors of Dress for Success - Boston. Pamela F. Lenehan is a senior executive with broad strategic experience in corporate, investment banking, and public board environments. She holds leadership positions on the boards of American Superconductor, Civitas Solutions, and Monotype Imaging (News - Alert). She also devotes time to expanding opportunities for women as a member of the board of directors of the Center for Women & Enterprise and as a member of Brown University's Women's Leadership Council and the Steering Committee for 125 Years of Women at Brown. She is co-chair of the Boston chapter of Women Corporate Directors and sits on the advisory board of the American College of Corporate Directors. Cathy E. Minehan, a corporate and non-profit director, served as Dean of the School of Management at Simmons College from 2011 until June 2016. She previously served as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and as a member of the Federal Open Market Committee for a total of 39 years with the Federal Reserve System. Minehan is a director of VISA Inc, MassMutual Financial Group, and Bright Horizons Family Solutions. She is chair of the board of trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the board of the Partners Health Care System. She is also co-chair of the Boston Women's Workforce Council, a private-public partnership devoted to ending the gender wage gap in the greater Boston area. She and her husband Jerry Corrigan founded the Corrigan-Minehan Heart Center at the MGH and have been active with other health care and educational institutions. Pamela Reeve is the former CEO of Lightbridge (News - Alert), Inc., a company she headed from start up in 1989, took public in 1996, and ran for 15 years. As a board member, she has helped lead a number of organizations in the technology and healthcare spaces. She is the lead director of American Tower Corporation, chair of the board of Frontier Communications, and serves on the boards of Sonus Networks and DSM (News - Alert). She is a member of the board of trustees and the executive committee of the Mass Technology Leadership Council and board of directors of the Mass Tech Collaborative; vice chair of the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization Board of Trustees; chair of The Commonwealth Institute; and chair of Partners Community Physicians Organization. Jane Steinmetz serves as Ernst & Young LLP managing partner for the New England financial services practice. She is a tax partner by background and has consulted with a diverse array of taxpayers for over 20 years, and served as a tax consultant for various industry organizations. Steinmetz is a trustee and executive committee member of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and serves on the Boston Club Corporate Advisory Board. She is also a member of the Connecticut and Massachusetts bar associations. Ellen M. Zane serves as CEO emeritus and vice chair of the board of trustees at Tufts Medical Center & Floating Hospital for Children, and from 2004 to 2011, she served as its president and CEO. Her industry expertise is reflected in her board involvement with a number of public and private companies. She is currently a member of the board of directors at Boston Scientific, Brooks Automation (News - Alert), Parexel International Corporation, Press Ganey, Century Capital Management, LLC, Fiduciary Trust Company, and AgNovos Healthcare. In 2015, Zane launched an executive education program through the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health to address the needs of women executives interested in becoming corporate directors. NACD New England Chapter is the leading source in New England for corporate governance information, education, and training for directors and CEOs who are committed to raising boardroom standards. The chapter hosts panel discussions and other educational programming to foster connectivity between boards and promote corporate best practices. It includes a large number of regional directors and business leaders. NACD New England Chapter is part of the larger NACD network, the only not-for-profit membership organization founded by and for corporate directors. NACD has a national presence in Washington, D.C., with 22 active regional chapters, and more than 17,000 director and key executive members around the country. NACD's resources include an annual leadership conference, fellowships, downloadable publications, and in-boardroom education programs. NACD is also part of the Global Network of Director Institutes, a 100,000-member strong international collaboration of directors who share expertise from around the world. Learn more about NACD membership and general governance information online at www.NACDonline.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005269/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[September 13, 2016] NCR Expands New Global Headquarters Campus in Atlanta

NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), a global leader in omni-channel solutions, today announced plans to expand the new world headquarters campus under construction in Midtown Atlanta. The expansion will add a second tower to provide the space needed to prepare for future growth and create innovations that will help power the digitally-connected economy. NCR, the Georgia Department of Economic Development, and Invest Atlanta have agreed on additional incentives that will see NCR bring over 1,800 skilled professionals to Georgia over the next five years and invest $145 million in the second tower. NCR and Cousins Properties entered into a long-term, build-to-suit lease for the second tower, which will be owned and developed by Cousins, as is the first tower on the NCR campus. "What we are building is more than just a world headquarters campus - this is a commitment to the City of Atlanta, the State of Georgia, our employees, and customers that as the omni-channel leader we are focused on a bold, bright vision for the future," said NCR President, CEO and Chairman Bill Nuti. "We are building a work environment that mirrors the innovative, connected experiences we create for our customers every day. Our campus will provide a world-class work environment for all of our metro Atlanta employees and become a technology landmark in one of the city's fastest growing neighborhoods." "Georgia is a hotbed for leading technology companies such as NCR because of our extensive technology sector and pro-business climate," said Georgia Governor Nathan Deal. "NCR is already making a significant impact in the state's technology industry and the company will reap the benefits of having its headquarters in this thriving technology cluster. NCR's growth and expansion further proves that Georgia is on the minds of high-tech job creators." Phase I of the project, which features a 20-stoy tower, is under construction and is scheduled for completion in Q1 2018. Phase II, which is in the design phase, will feature a connected, 14-story office tower and is scheduled to be ready for occupancy in Q1 2019.



"I am pleased that NCR has chosen to further expand its global headquarters campus in the City of Atlanta through another capital investment in Midtown and by bringing over 1,800 skilled professionals to our city," said Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. "Atlanta continues to grow as a global technology center that offers companies access to top talent, renowned research institutions and advanced technology infrastructure. In our world-class business community, entrepreneurs and executives can find everything they need to build their dreams." NCR's new state-of-the-art global headquarters campus will be built to enable optimal collaboration and teamwork; feature the technology and tools to support the changing nature of how, when and where work is done; and excite and inspire employees and customers. The campus will feature such amenities as dining options and outdoor seating, coffee bar, gym, informal spaces that spark creativity and a large lecture space.

"We are excited to expand on our relationship with NCR by developing an additional tower for their new cutting-edge corporate headquarters in Midtown," said President and Chief Executive Officer of Cousins Properties, Larry Gellerstedt. "We are well underway with the first office tower, with delivery slated for early 2018, and we plan to begin construction on the second building by the end of the year." About NCR Corporation NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) is a leader in omni-channel solutions, turning everyday interactions with businesses into exceptional experiences. With its software, hardware, and portfolio of services, NCR enables more than 550 million transactions daily across retail, financial, travel, hospitality, telecom and technology, and small business. NCR solutions run the everyday transactions that make your life easier. NCR is headquartered in Duluth, Georgia with over 30,000 employees and does business in 180 countries. NCR is a trademark of NCR Corporation in the United States and other countries. Website: www.ncr.com Twitter (News - Alert): @NCRCorporation Facebook (News - Alert): www.facebook.com/ncrcorp LinkedIn (News - Alert): www.linkedin.com/company/ncr-corporation YouTube (News - Alert): www.youtube.com/user/ncrcorporation View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005930/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[September 12, 2016] Evolve IP Announces Plans for Significant Expansion of International Presence

WAYNE, Pa., Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Evolve IP, The Cloud Services Company, today announced plans to expand its international presence to target emerging enterprise market opportunities and support the growth of its customer base. These planned enhancements will include additional country coverage for its Unified Communications (UC) and Call Center solutions as well as the expansion to its data center facilities in 2017. The planned expansion includes the United Kingdom and Australia with additional locations in the EU and Asia-Pacific planned shortly thereafter. Evolve IP intends to significantly increase its local number coverage to nearly 60 countries early in 2017. Coupled with Evolve IP's unique hybrid gateway model, this expansion allows for nearly ubiquitous international coverage for its customers. "As our US-based mid-market and enterprise customers have grown, they've asked us to provide our award-winning services to their overseas locations," said Scott Kinka, Evolve IP's Chief Technology Officer and Founding Partner. "We've supported that growth through innovative product development and the next phase is our planned expansion into the geographies where our customers have led us. We're looking forward to providing additional coverage options and data centers both organically and through M&A activities." In addition to expanding its technical reach, Evolve IP has partnered with Intelisys Global to establish a sales presence in the UK. "Intelisys has recently expanded into the UK and has begun to bring on partners there. We're excited at the opportunity to grow with them overseas and we expect to add resources to support their growth and the opportunities of our other partners in that region," said Tim Allen, Chief Sales Officer and Founding Partner, Evolve IP. "We're excitd to see Evolve IP join us in our trek across the pond. We have seen a great amount of excitement with new partners in the UK and believe the market there is ripe for the unique mix of cloud services that a company like Evolve IP can provide," states Dana Topping, Founding partner of Intelisys Global.



One of the nation's fastest growing cloud companies, Evolve IP provides cloud services in virtually every industry including: healthcare, legal, insurance, banking, technology, travel, veterinary medicine, and retail and to some of the world's most recognizable brands. The company's Evolve IP OneCloudTM solution allows organizations to migrate multiple cloud computing and cloud communications services onto a single, unified platform including: virtual data centers / servers, disaster recovery, virtual desktops, IP phone systems / unified communications, contact centers, and more. ABOUT EVOLVE IP

Evolve IP is The Cloud Services Company. Designed from the beginning to provide organizations with a unified option for cloud services, Evolve IP enables decision-makers to migrate all or select IT technologies to its award-winning cloud platform. Evolve IP's combination of security, stability, scalability, and lower total cost of ownership is fundamentally superior to outdated legacy systems and other cloud offerings. Today the company's services, including virtual servers, virtual desktops, disaster recovery, IP phone systems / unified communications, contact centers and more, are deployed by more than 1,300 commercial business accounts with a combined 110,000+ users, licensed seats and managed end points. Visit www.EvolveIP.net for more information. PRLog ID: www.prlog.org/12586221 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/evolve-ip-announces-plans-for-significant-expansion-of-international-presence-300326418.html SOURCE Evolve IP

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[September 12, 2016] Hundsun: Hong Kong Brokerage Customers Have Completed Technical Preparations for Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect

HANGZHOU, China, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- After Shenzhen Stock Exchange recently released comments and a time schedule of the launch of Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect (thereafter Shenzhen-HK Stock Connect), the financial technology provider -- Hundsun Network -- said that up to now all HK Hundsun cooperated brokers have completed the technical development preparation. The system will go live after the docking test with Shenzhen-HK Stock Connect. Hundsun provides technical services for Hong Kong and mainland brokers The previous Shenzhen-HK Stock Connect rules clearly required that all brokers should complete the preparation of the technical development in late September and all preparations in early November. All HK Hundsun cooperated brokers, including GF Securities (Hong Kong), China Securities International. (CSCI), Orient Finance Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited, etc., have completed the preparation of technical development. Joson, the Network eader of HK Hundsun Network said: "Hundsun provides Shenzhen-HK Stock Connect System for brokers and has completed technology research and development work. This system is a part of the global financial platform of securities and futures transactions of Hundsun. This system has the advantages of flexible funding mode control, multi-currency exchange rate extension, 24/7 supporting extension, effective and efficient transaction process, timely and effective risk controls, etc. At the same time, Hundsun provides custody service in Hong Kong, including hardware integration scheme, more efficient to help new financial institutions to operate business at low cost in Hong Kong."



Shenzhen-HK Stock Connect is just a beginning Official data shows that currently the mainland enterprises occupied approximately 50% of 1,800 public companies in the Hong Kong financial market. From market value perspective, the mainland enterprises maintain approximately 60%, with about 30% being state-owned enterprises. The proportion of private enterprises is also increasing. Around 70% of average daily trading is related to mainland enterprises. The Hong Kong financial market has become the overseas IPO center for mainland enterprises.

In the future, Hong Kong could become the "center of three" -- offshore financial center for mainland investors, offshore RMB pricing center, as well as integrated risk management center for mainland investors. With the release of Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect, Hong Kong will have a more in-depth cooperation with mainland connectivity. Background: Hong Kong Hundsun Network Limited, is subsidiary of Hundsun INC Ltd in Hong Kong. It provides a full range of financial IT solutions for Hong Kong financial industry. It is one of the HKEx announced BBS qualifed providers. It is also the only one of the core financial products suppliers who could provide comprehensive solutions for sophisticated multi-system unified account management, multi-bank electronic bank securites transfer, global securities / futures transactions in real-time settlement system.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[September 13, 2016]

RedChip TV Interviews Michael Cothill, Executive Chairman of Hammer Fiber

POINT PLEASANT BEACH, N.J., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hammer Fiber Optic Holdings Corp (OTCQB: HMMR) today released a video interview of Executive Chairman Michael Cothill discussing Hammer Fiber's last mile wireless fiber technology, Hammer Wireless. The interview was conducted by Dave Gentry, President and CEO of RedChip and discusses Hammer Fiber's market position delivering high speed broadband over it's last mile wireless fiber network and how Hammer Fiber's value proposition, market position and competitive advantages position it to disrupt the internet service provider market. To view the video please visit. www.redchip.com/company/home/HMMR

About Hammer Fiber

Hammer Fiber Optic Investments Ltd. D/B/A Hammer Fiber (HMMR) is a registered Competitive Local Exchange Carrier in New Jersey that offers services throughout the New Jersey region, as well as Philadelphia and New York. Along with fiber transit solutions, VoIP platforms, Ethernet connectivity and managed services to businesses ranging from small to enterprise; Hammer Fiber also serves residential and small business markets with broadband, voice and video. For more information visit http://www.hammerfiber.com







Forward Looking Statement

This press release contains projections and other forward-looking statements regarding future events or our future financial performance. All statements other than present and historical facts and conditions contained in this release, including any statements regarding our future results of operations and financial positions, business strategy, plans and our objectives for future operations, are forward-looking statements (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended). These statements are only predictions and reflect our current beliefs and expectations with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and subject to risk and uncertainties and subject to change at any time. We operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Actual events or results may differ materially from those contained in the projections or forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160902/403932LOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/redchip-tv-interviews-michael-cothill-executive-chairman-of-hammer-fiber-300326608.html

SOURCE Hammer Fiber Optic Holdings Corp.
[September 13, 2016] CGI awarded contract to maintain, modernize financial management systems for State of Maine

$39 million contract extends CGI's enterprise resource planning (ERP) partnership with state through 2026 Stock Market Symbols

GIB (NYSE)

GIB.A (TSX)

www.cgi.com/newsroom FAIRFAX, VA, Sept. 13, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - CGI (NYSE: GIB) (TSX: GIB.A) today announced the award of a contract from the State of Maine that extends the company's scope of work for the Office of the State Controller through 2026 with US$39 million of added revenue. Through one of its many flexible delivery models for CGI Advantage ERP, Managed Advantage, CGI will provide managed services and solutions that strengthen cloud security, improve financial management and streamline case workflow for 139 state agencies. "The state will benefit from CGI's innovative private-cloud approach to reduce risk and deliver to our needs," said Maine's State Controller Doug Cotnoir. "The solution offered us the ability to leverage CGI's knowledge and experience without the need for us to provide our own infrastructure, security or technical expertise. This approach provides us the greatest level of efficiency and keeps our focus and attention on serving the needs of the state."

CGI has been a trusted IT partner to Maine since 1989, when the state implemented CGI Advantage Financial Management, a solution that modernized outdated systems plagued by redundant data entry points, slow processing times and a reliance on paper transactions. In 2005 the state once again chose CGI to upgrade its systems to the web-based solution featuring a centralized and integrated finance, budget and procurement environment. During this modernization, the state consolidated systems and streamlined processes, achieving greater efficiency and control through real-time budgeting information and the introduction of online forms, workflow processes and approvals. The new system was launched on-time and on-budget in 2007 and has since been serving 139 state agencies  and more than 100,000 vendors  including the departments of Education, Environmental Protection, Human Resources, Labor, Public Safety and Transportation, and the Treasurer. CGI's innovative and secure cloud-based RP model offers Maine a long-term solution that enables ongoing innovation and responsiveness to the state's current and future IT requirements. As part of a commitment to deliver innovation and predictable maintenance costs in the coming years, a local team of CGI professionals will continue to provide service based on in-depth knowledge of the state's systems.



"Maine is one of many states that have partnered with CGI for ERP modernization, reflecting our long-term investment in ERP technologies over the last four decades," said Daniel Keene, Senior Vice-President of CGI's Advantage program. "CGI's ERP solution is built-for-government, specifically to meet the processing, regulatory and funding requirements unique to the public sector." "We are thrilled to extend our partnership with the State of Maine and demonstrate the power of our cloud-based services," said Steve Starace, Senior Vice President of CGI's U.S. Northeast operations. "Having been honored as a "Best Fit Integrator" from the Center for Digital Government for our work in Maine in 2012, CGI will continue its strong commitment to the State through building on a legacy of IT innovation and outstanding service to the Office of the Controller."

About CGI

Founded in 1976, CGI Group Inc. is the fifth largest independent information technology and business process services firm in the world. Approximately 65,000 professionals serve thousands of global clients from offices and delivery centers across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific, leveraging a comprehensive portfolio of services including high-end business and IT consulting, systems integration, application development and maintenance, infrastructure management as well as 150 IP-based services and solutions. With annual revenue in excess of C$10 billion and an order backlog exceeding C$20 billion, CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Website: www.cgi.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

All statements in this press release that do not directly and exclusively relate to historical facts constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of that term in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and are "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. These statements and this information represent the intentions of CGI and Sears Canada, plans, expectations and beliefs, and are subject to important risks, uncertainties and other factors, of which many are beyond the control of the Company. These factors could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. These factors include but are not restricted to: the timing and size of new contracts; acquisitions and other corporate developments; the ability to attract and retain qualified members; market competition in the rapidly evolving IT industry; general economic and business conditions; foreign exchange and other risks identified in the press release, in CGI's and Sears Canada's annual and quarterly Management's Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") and in other public disclosure documents filed with the Canadian securities authorities (filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (filed on EDGAR at www.sec.gov), as well as assumptions regarding the foregoing. The words "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "anticipate", "foresee", "plan", and similar expressions and variations thereof, identify certain of such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, which speak only as of the date on which they are made. In particular, statements relating to future performance are forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. CGI and Sears Canada disclaim any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements or on this forward-looking information.

SOURCE CGI Group Inc.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[September 13, 2016] Mason-Based ConnXus Named Technology Sponsor for International Minority Supplier Development Conference

MASON, Ohio, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ConnXus, a six-year-old supplier diversity software company based in Mason, Ohio, today announced that they are the official technology sponsor for the 2016 global Minority Supplier Development Council United Kingdom (MSDUK) Conference being held September 20-22 in London, England. The conference is a three-day global supplier diversity and inclusive procurement event to be attended by over 600 delegates from Australia, Canada, China, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom. "Our involvement in the MSDUK conference is a growth driver for our business," remarked Rod Robinson, ConnXus founder and CEO. "Through the relationships and trust built there, we will expand our footprint in the global procurement market as we continue our plan to disrupt the $10 billion supply chain software market. More than money though, it is also giving us the opportunity to ensure our diversity practices are inclusive of a global workforce." Recently named Ohio's 2016 Early Stage Company of the Year, ConnXus contributes its rapid, impressive growth to its state-of-the-art, cloud-based technology featuring 1.7 million diverse suppliers and certifications, and the power of partnerships. "Without the establishment of key local, national, and global partnerships, we could not have seized the opportunity to sponsor the MSDUK conference and raise our recent $5 million Series 'A' funding round," noted Daryl Hammett, ConnXus Chief Operations Officer. We take great pride in moving beyond talent, capital, and customers to build lasting, meaningful relationships."



The president of The Social Entrepreneurs Fund and investor in ConnXus' Series "A" round, Liz Luckett, also finds value in the transparency that ConnXus brings to corporate supply chain diversity. She states, "ConnXus offers insight beyond diversity ownership to shed light on employment trends in small businesses by region and vertical industrya great value to large corporations seeking to leverage supply chain spend to demonstrate their role in job creation across diverse demographics." For Wendy Lea, CEO of Cincinnati-based Cintrifuse, ConnXus' ability to sponsor the MSDUK conference alongside other major organizations such as Procter & Gamble, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Metlife, Capital One, and the Coca-Cola Company comes as no surprise. "Scaling a startup takes hard work - and it's a road you can't go down all on your own. Rod and his team at ConnXus have built a formidable partnership strategy that lets them leverage outside resources so they can focus on what they do best. It's a strategy I wish more entrepreneurs would embrace," she said.

It is this level of sophistication and innovation that Mayank Shah, President of MSDUK, is looking forward to sharing with attendees at next week's conference. "We are excited to partner with companies like ConnXus, which are at the forefront of supplier diversity data and reporting management, in order to achieve our goals of sharing knowledge and developing connections." For more information about MSDUK, visit http://msdukconference.msduk.org.uk/ or follow #MSDUKConference. About ConnXus

ConnXus (www.connxus.com) is a supplier diversity software company headquartered in Mason, Ohio. The cloud-based platform helps small and diverse businesses, including woman- and minority-owned companies, grow by connecting them to Fortune 2,000 corporations. About Minority Supplier Development Council United Kingdom (MSDUK)

MSDUK (www.msduk.org.uk) is the UK's leading non-profit membership organization driving inclusive procurement. The organization promotes the ethos of diversity and inclusion in public and private sector supply chains by identifying and introducing innovative and entrepreneurial ethnic minority owned businesses (EMBs). Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406964 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406963LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mason-based-connxus-named-technology-sponsor-for-international-minority-supplier-development-conference-300327028.html SOURCE ConnXus

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[September 13, 2016] USALINKSYSTEM.COM Is Bringing Technology To The Community!

GLENDALE, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- USA Link System, Inc., and its sister company AskAnny.com, is bringing technology to the community. They are working closely with Glendale Economic Development Corporation. As one of Glendale's creative agencies, USA Link System is a proud platinum sponsor of Glendale Tech Week. As one of the fastest growing cities in Los Angeles, holding the Tech Week in Glendale is crucial and strategic for the city's progress. Glendale Tech Week aims to educate and inform the community about technology and business. Participate in lectures, conferences, and a job fair where aspiring applicants get to connect and interact with businesses. Esteemed guests and speakers include: developer Rick Caruso, CBRE's Lewis Horne, and Glendale's Mayo Paula Devine.



USA Link System invites the community to join them and participate at this year's Glendale Tech Week. Find their booth on September 14 from 9am-3pm and get to know their friendly staff! Ask them about their marketing strategies or their web and app development, and how they can help grow your business. Take advantage of their free digital presence evaluation and improvement report. Here is a partial schedule of Glendale Tech Week.

September 14

4pm-5pm: Workplace Strategy: A Changing Workplace, featuring CBRE's Lewis Horne and Developer Rick Caruso at CBRE.

5pm-7 pm: Kick-Off Reception at CBRE with opening remarks by Glendale Mayor Paula Devine.

7pm-9pm: Sunset Cocktails and Meet the Funders at Bourbon Steakhouse. September 15

12 pm to 1:30 pm: Lunch and Learn: Mobile First at Legal Zoom.

1:30 pm to 2:45 pm: Building Mobile Apps and Web Experiences at YP.

5:30 pm to 7:30 pm: Reception at Museum of Neon Art. Rum Bar and Cigar Rolling Lounge sponsored by Dominican Republic Consulate. September 16

3 pm to 4 pm: The Walt Disney Company: Current State of Technology in Disney and How it will Shape How They Tell Stories Going Forward.

6 pm to 8 pm: VIP Reception at the Skydeck Lounge at Eden Burger. Event is followed by a show by Robby Krieger and The Music Path at the Alex Theatre. Proceeds benefit the Music Path. (RSVP is Required to attend this event.) For a full list of events, visit GlendaleTechWeek.com. Website: askanny.com and usalinksystem.com Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AskAnny/ Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406747LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/usalinksystemcom-is-bringing-technology-to-the-community-300326889.html SOURCE USA Link System, Inc.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[September 13, 2016] WRMT First To Use Toshiba's ApP Lite For Blood Pressure And ECG As Part Of Its Next-Generation Smart Wearable Device -- 'Helo'

MIAMI, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- World Media & Technology Corp. ("Wor(l)d") (www.worldmediatech.com) (OTC Pink: WRMT), today announced that its smart wristband device uses ApP Lite (Application Processor Lite) from Toshiba Corporation's Storage & Electronic Devices Solutions Company ("Toshiba").

Toshiba developed ApP Lite for health monitoring systems. Wor(l)d has incorporated Toshiba's high-performance, low power consumption processor into its Health and Lifestyle Oracle, Helo. This is the first time Toshiba's ApP Lite has been used to measure blood pressure and ECG in a wearable device.

Helo, WRMT's smart wristband with connected app, provides real-time health monitoring and dis-ease prediction, directly from the wrist. Wor(l)d's unique algorithm analyses the data gathered by Helo, determines what it means and presents it in an easy to understand interface to inform the wearer's health and lifestyle choices. Helo features include measurement of Blood Pressure, ECG, Heart Rate, Respiration Rate, Heart Rate Variability (HRV) analysis for mood and energy levels along with measuring steps, distance and calorie burn. In addition, sleep quality is also analyzed, an SOS guardian can be notified in the event of an emergency and the 'WeCare' feature allows the wearer's vital signs to be monitored remotely.

Following a successful launch and initial shipments, Helo already has users in over 10 countries where Wor(l)d can check wearer vital signs and gather useful health and activity data over time.

Fabio Galdi, CEO, World Media & Technology Corp., said, "Engaging with Toshiba at such a deep technical level allows us to consolidate our wearable technology platform, fast-track our product development and maintain our innovative edge. We look forward to a long term relationship with Toshib." He continued, "Using ApP Lite allows us to release new and exciting, life changing products that bring the benefits of wearable technology to all our customers. It enables us to continue to deliver on our corporate promise  'Join Wor(l)d and change your life'. We look forward to having a more informed, healthier and fitter network of connected users."





ApP Lite is a trademark of Toshiba Corporation.

(http://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/product/assp/applite.html)



About Wor(l)d

World Media & Technology Corp. designs, manufactures and sells connected, next-generation, innovative wearable devices and mobile products. It has end-users in over 80 countries which it sup-ports through its exclusive distribution partnership with Wor(l)d Global Network (www.worldgn.com). For further information, see www.worldmediatech.com.

About Toshiba

Toshiba Corporation, a Fortune Global 500 company, channels world-class capabilities in advanced electronic and electrical product and systems into three focus business fields: Energy that sustains everyday life, that is cleaner and safer; Infrastructure that sustains quality of life; and Storage that sustains the advanced information society. Guided by the principles of The Basic Commitment of the Toshiba Group, "Committed to People, Committed to the Future", Toshiba promotes global operations and is contributing to the realization of a world where generations to come can live better lives.

Founded in Tokyo in 1875, today's Toshiba is at the heart of a global network of 550 consolidated companies employing 188,000 people worldwide, with annual sales surpassing 5.6 trillion yen

(US$50 billion). (As of March 31, 2016.)

To find out more about Toshiba, visit www.toshiba.co.jp/index.htm

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Words such as "expects," "intends," "believes," and similar expressions reflecting something other than historical fact are intended to identify forward-looking statements, but are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including the timely development and market acceptance of products and technologies, the ability to secure additional sources of finance, the ability to reduce operating ex-penses, and other factors described in the Company's filings with the OTC Markets Group and with the SEC. The actual results that the Company achieves may differ materially from any forward-looking statement due to such risks and uncertainties. The Company under-takes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wrmt-first-to-use-toshibas-app-lite-for-blood-pressure-and-ecg-as-part-of-its-next-generation-smart-wearable-device----helo-300327121.html SOURCE World Media & Technology Corp.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Google Pixel 7 features coming to Pixel 6  heres what to expect

Google has announced that the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are getting some of the Pixel 7s new features, and older Pixel phones are even getting a few updates. Here's what we know so far.
You know Anthony Fantano as the Internets Busiest Music Nerd thanks to his YouTube channel, The Needle Drop, on which he and his alter ego Cal Chuchesta video-review all of the latest notable releases in the world of music.

The acclaimed music critic is now set to return to Australian shores for a string of live presentations, which will feature discussion and multimedia as well as a special one-off appearance by Mr Chuchesta himself.

Fantano will be covering everything from the future of the music industry, the role of album reviews in the modern consumer market, how context impacts musical taste, the commodification of indie, and classic albums.

Tickets are limited and are expected to sell out so make sure you get yours fast. Fantano will be making an All Ages appearance in Brisbane, two appearances in Sydney, and is slated as one of the many draws of the upcoming Face The Music conference.

Anthony Fantano Australian Tour Dates

Friday, 11th November 2016

QUT Kelvin Grove Campus, Brisbane (All Ages)

Tickets: Eventbrite

Sunday, 13th November 2016

Newtown Social Club, Sydney (Under-18)

Tickets: Newtown Social Club

Sunday, 13th November 2016

Newtown Social Club, Sydney (18+)

Tickets: Newtown Social Club

Thursday, 17th November & Friday, 18th November 2016

Face The Music, Melbourne

Tickets: Face The Music
Dune Rats have been cooking up something for a while now. The Brisbane wild cards have been busy on social media sharing photos of themselves bunkered down in a Melbourne recording studio with good mate Zac Carper of FIDLAR.

Carper was behind the mixing board for the Dunies last single, the raucous Bulls**t, which dropped just ahead of the bands appearance on Violent Sohos immense WACO tour, during which Bulls**t was a staple of their set.

Carper, with whom the trio toured when they supported FIDLAR in the US, took the boys from recording sessions staged inside an RV en route to Joshua Tree, California to a Melbourne studio where the latest stash of new Dunies gear was cooked up.

Now Dunies have returned to Instagram to proclaim that their new record is finished and sick. According to triple js 2016 Aussie Release Schedule, a new EP is scheduled for release some time this year via Warner and the bands own Ratbag Records.

Clocking back in to the studio with Zac in Melbourne! Racking up some overtime for some high quality shit out soon, the band previously wrote on Instagram, not long after they revealed theyd shared writing sessions with touring buddies DZ Deathrays.
Loving live music isnt just about attending music festivals and seeing an international artists massive arena show.

Even the biggest of big-name headliners started in the trenches, on the sticky carpets and bandrooms of your local bars and pubs  which is exactly where you should be if you want to discover your new favourite band or venue.

Here are our picks for this weeks best local gigs from Aussie talent  from Perth to the East Coast  and all for the price of a good meal.

Rainbow Chan

Where: Newtown Social Club, Sydney NSW

When: 8pm  11:40pm, Friday Sep 16

Why: One of the foremost pop talents in Australia at the moment, Rainbow Chan heads to Sydney with her fantastic debut album Spacings, as well as excellent supports in Moon Holiday and Kimchi Princi. If you havent seen her yet  do.

Tickets & Info: $12 + bf, more info here.

Mall Grab

Where: Ferdydurke, Melbourne VIC

When: 8pm  1am, Sunday Sep 18

Why: Melbourne institution Ferdydurke will be celebrating its fourth birthday in style, bringing the big guns down from Sydney for a ripper of a free show. House maestro Mall grab will be joined by others like SHOUSE and S.Vibrato for a damn solid night of grooves. Free, get on it.

Tickets & Info: Free, more info here.

Holy Balm & More

Where: The Foundry, Brisbane QLD

When: 8pm, Thursday Sep 15

Why: Sydney party legends Holy Balm are launching their impressive new album Activity in Brisbane this Thursday, joined by Brissy faves S>c>r>a>p>s and 100%, who are finishing off a solid run of shows themselves.

Tickets & Info: $12+bf, The Foundry, Brisbane QLD8pm, Thursday Sep 15Sydney party legends Holy Balm are launching their impressive new album Activity in Brisbane this Thursday, joined by Brissy faves S>c>r>a>p>s and 100%, who are finishing off a solid run of shows themselves.: $12+bf, more info here

PLTS

Where: Elsewhere Bar, Surfers Paradise QLD

When: 8pm  12am, Friday Sep 13

Why: Fresh off a set at this years Splendour In The Grass, Byron indie rock outfit PLTS are hitting up Elsewhere to launch their new single Astoria with support from a talented roster of locals in Lotus Ship and Peach Fur. A very solid night of choons for the Surfers crowd this week.

Tickets & Info: $15, More info here.

The Shabbab w/ Nicholas Allbrook

Where: The John Curtin, Melbourne VIC

When: 8pm  12am, Friday Sep 16

Why: The Shabbab are a band of Melbourne roustabouts making what they call Middle Eastern garage, and they come highly recommended  not just by us, but also the one and only Nick Allbrook, wholl be supporting them alongside Shiny Coin as The Shabbab launch their new EP, Garlic.

Tickets & Info: $10, more more info here.

The Sugarcanes

Where: Cherry Bar, Melbourne VIC

When: 10pm, Thursday Sep 15

Why: Its soul time at Cherry this Thursday, as Melbourne rock n soul champs The Sugarcanes head to Cherry Bar for an exuberant evening. The only requirement, straight from the band themselves, is dance like you mean it.

Tickets & Info: more info here.

HABITS

Where: Yah Yahs, Melbourne VIC

When: 11:55 pm  3am, Friday August 26

Why: Electronic goth pop duo HABITS pretty much set the world on fire every time they take to the stage, and after a brilliant showing at BIGSOUND last week, we cant recommend them enough  especially at 2am in the morning on a Friday night.

Tickets & Info: more info here. Yah Yahs, Melbourne VIC11:55Electronic goth pop duo HABITS pretty much set the world on fire every time they take to the stage, and after a brilliant showing at BIGSOUND last week, we cant recommend them enough  especially at 2am in the morning on a Friday night.

BUOY

Where: Newtown Social Club, Sydney NSW

When: 7:30pm  10:40pm, Wednesday Sep 14

Why: One of the most impressive emerging talents doing the rounds right now, BUOY also impressed us at BIGSOUND, and shouldnt be missed as she brings her Break EP tour to Sydney this weekend. Support from producer and drummer Christopher Port is just the icing on the cake.

Tickets & Info: $10 + bf, One of the most impressive emerging talents doing the rounds right now, BUOY also impressed us at BIGSOUND, and shouldnt be missed as she brings her Break EP tour to Sydney this weekend. Support from producer and drummer Christopher Port is just the icing on the cake.$10 + bf, more info here

POWER

Where: The Tote, Melbourne VIC

When: 8pm Thursday Aug 25

Why: Melbourne cult rockers POWER are heading off to the US, but before then theyll be joined by a killer one-two punch of Miss Destiny and the long-awaited live return of Cuntz. Join them all for a night of new and old choons before they say hasta la vista, for just a tenner on the door.

Tickets & Info: $10, more info here.

High Violet, Billy Fox & More

Where: Oxford Art Factory, Sydney NSW

When: 8pm  3am, Saturday Aug 17

Why: Rare Finds are putting on one hell of a bargain party this weekend, with a fiver getting you in to see a great selection of acts including indie-pop group High Violet launching their new single, the aforementioned champs PLTS, and one of the brightest new live talents weve seen in Billy Fox. Kato and Dappled Cities DJs join the fray as well for a great night.

Tickets & Info: $5, more info here.
Australian music industry legend Michael Gudinski has hit out at ticket scalpers and the resale websites that are now facilitating their unscrupulous practices, which he says he hates.

We hate it  were against it. Some of the prices Ive seen are extreme, and it doesnt go to the artists or the promoters. Its a great frustration and I think the ACCC should look at it, he told the Herald Sun.

Gudinskis not the only one whos calling on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to review the ticket resale industry, which regularly offers tickets to sold-out shows at exorbitant prices.

As Tone Deaf previously reported, often scalpers put up posts on resale websites before tickets even go on sale, as was the case with The Cures Splendour In The Grass sideshows earlier this year.

Tickets on these sites often go for up to twice their original price or even more, leading many, including bands like Violent Soho and the promoters of Splendour to hit out at scalpers and the websites.

Cameron Hoy, managing director of Ticketek, told the Herald Sun that fans are being misled when they buy tickets on resale websites at inflated prices.

Often, tickets sold on resale platforms at inflated prices are, in fact, still readily available at the real face-value price from official agencies, he said.

Resale platforms have created an effective and anonymous channel to enable scalpers to gouge consumers on an industrial scale.
PUBLIC ART REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS (RFQ)



WORKERS MEMORIAL PROJECT



ESTIMATED PUBLIC ART PROJECT BUDGET RANGE: $150,000 - $250,000



DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTALS: October 28, 2016

As organized labor fades from the American political lexicon, here's the last artistic stand of this movement subsidized by Kansas City taxpayers.Our blog community asks . . .It's supposed to be place for union folks to gather, rather than empty union halls . . .Take a look at the pricey public art tribute and maybe send in a proposal to show Sally Field in her prime and poking through her t-shirt . . .The City of Kansas City, Missouri is seeking artists or artist collaborations to work collaboratively within the design process to develop innovative, original art that represents the union trades for the Workers Memorial project located at Water Works Park.The Workers Memorial will represent the working men and women who have lost their lives building Kansas City. The memorial should try to have a broad appeal representing a number of trades in the construction industry. Those trades include: Boilermakers, Carpenters, Bricklayers, Cement Masons, Elevator Constructors, Heat & Frost Insulators, Electricians, Ironworkers, Laborers, Operating Engineers, Painters, Pipefitters, Plasterers, Plumbers, Roofers, Sheet Metal Workers, Sprinkler Fitters, and Teamsters. The site should create a welcoming yet somber impression to visitors.Key elements should include providing a monumental feeling of awe, with the presence of history of Kansas City, that tells the story of workers building it . . .The primary objective for the memorial should include:To bring awareness of fallen workers to the community.To provide a site for families that have lost a loved one on a project to visit.To provide a space for Union members to gather. (The site will include lighting.)BUDGET/COMMISSIONArtwork for this project will be commissioned through the City of Kansas City, Missouri. Artists will coordinate work with city staff, Union representatives and the design team. The estimated budget for artwork and all related art project costs is in the range of $150,000 - $250,000. Possibility of in-kind work, materials and/or site preparation through the various trades.ELIGIBILITYThe opportunity to compete for this project is open to all professional artists residing in the United States. The City of Kansas City does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, age, national origin, sexual orientation, or disability. Qualifications by City employees or their relatives, and members of the Artist Selection Panel or Municipal Art Commission or their relatives will not be considered. Experience with public art projects, especially in relation to capital projects, is preferred. Applicants must be able to work effectively within the project timeline and collaborate with the design team and multiple government agencies.SELECTION PROCESSThe selection panel includes artists and arts professionals familiar with the field of public art, citizens, Union representatives, design professionals and City staff. The panel will select a small group of finalists wholl be asked to develop proposals. A stipend will be provided for the development of the proposals/finalist interviews.The criteria used by the panel will include the artists professional credentials as evidenced by the submitted materials.The City of Kansas City is not required to make selections from these submissions, if, in their opinion, qualifications are not appropriate.SUBMISSIONSInterested artist should submit the following, to be delivered to Elizabeth.Bowman@kcmo.org by 4:00PM Central Time, on October 28, 2016. Please put Workers Memorial in the subject line.Submission Materials:Professional resume highlighting relevant previous experience.Ten images of previous Public Art projects.Image list identifying title, date, location, materials, size, budget and commissioning entity.Letter of interest outlining qualifications, interest, and ability to complete the project on time and on budget.Names and contact information of three references.ANTICIPAED ART PROJECT SELECTION TIMELINEQualifications Due: October 28, 2016 by 4:00PM, Central TimePanel Review(s): Mid-NovemberRFP to selected artists: Late NovemberProposals Reviewed/Artist(s) Selected: Late January###########
KANSAS CITY MEDIA SKEPTICS STAND CORRECTED!!! THE JOCO DUDE'S MOM PROTESTING HIS INNOCENCE WAS CORRECT!!!

"The man's mother said police came to the family's apartment complex and arrested her son shortly after the shooting happened. She said her son was home at the time of the shooting and she knew he had nothing to do with it all along.





"They just came and told us they were releasing him and we already knew that because we've been telling them that since they picked him up," she told FOX 4 on Monday."

This is whyis Mother's Day . . .Take a look at the court of public opinion proven wrong again . . .Money line . . .Developing . . .
KANSAS CITY TALKER JOHNNY DARE RIPPED APART THIS LADY DRIVING THROUGH THE JOCO SHAWNEE WALMART SHOOTING AFTERMATH AND HER REAX THAT PURPORTEDLY STINK OF PRIVILEGE AND ENTITLEMENT!!!

"Now they are investigating the wounds, I guess. Apparently, one is still free, I guess. So, gross, gross. Don't come to Walmart."

This morning a Kansas City Internets celebrity confronts widespread local rebuke over her somewhat stereotypical reaction to a box store tragedy.To wit . . .The radio station called her out by name, and that's their prerogative . . . In the name of fair use and public discourse on news related items and shared social commentary . . .Take a look at what a great many Kansas City Internets denizens are talking about this morning . . .In fairness, everybody responds to tragedy differently but the reality here is that MSM it ripping this lady apart for her and the high (or low) point might be . . .Might not help that she sounds like she's chewing gum and constantly remarking about how much she hates visiting the box store.Still . . . The point here is that amid deadly gunfire, crime and gun rights debate . . . What has unified Kansas City media denizens is disdain for this broad and what people call a callous and uncaring shared social media description of the scene.You decide . . .
LIKE IT OR NOT, MAYOR SLY IS POLITICIZING THE TOPIC KANSAS CITY VIOLENCE AND LOOKING TO SCORE PARTISAN POINTS WHILE KANSAS CITY IS IN THE MIDST OF A HISTORIC HOMICIDE SURGE!!!

City Hall: Mayor James, Local Law Enforcement and Community Stakeholders Urge Missouri General Assembly to Protect Public Safety and Sustain Veto on Senate Bill 656





Over the weekend our blog community engaged in an important conversation about thisMayor Sly was the leader of this effort and right nowby locals who disagree with his rabid anti-gun stance and who also point out that he's helping to disarm women who might benefit from the passage of this Missouri gun rights bill.More over . . .This press conference demonstrates Mayor Sly more concerned with political debate where he is powerless and outgunned than the weekend of shooting on local streets and the steadily rising murder count.Here's the word according to Mayor Sly and the participants of this effort to thwart the 2nd Amendment . . .Mayor James brought together a wide range of stakeholders today to highlight the dangerous provisions included in Senate Bill 656, which Governor Nixon vetoed and the General Assembly is poised to override during tomorrows Veto Session. Stakeholders standing with the Mayor as he urged the General Assembly to sustain the veto included City Council members, Kansas City Deputy Police Chief Cheryl Rose, Jackson County Sheriff Mike Sharp, Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, Kyle Boyer, President of Alpha Protection, LLC, and representatives of the Citizens Task Force on Violence and Mothers in Charge.We have to take a long, hard look at what is happening in our own cities and cities across America, said Mayor Sly James. We cannot protect women and children from their abusers if we are making it easier for those abusers to carry a concealed weapon. We cannot continue to put the lives of our law enforcement partners in danger as they seek to serve and protect our community. And we absolutely cannot sit back and watch as lawmakers make it easier for criminals to commit slow motion mass murder in our neighborhoods and our schools. I urge legislators to use common sense on this issue and in doing so, help protect the lives of countless Missourians.Senate Bill 656 eliminates the need to secure a permit in order to carry a concealed firearm. As a result, Sheriffs across Missouri will no longer be able to deny permits that could stop potentially violent people from concealing a weapon. In a news article from MissouriNet, over 1,700 people were denied conceal and carry permits last year. The override of SB 656 will allow for these individuals to obtain a permit. Additionally, this bill eliminates local sheriffs ability to keep domestic violence offenders from legally carrying a concealed weapon.The full text of Senate Bill 656 can be found here: http://www.senate.mo.gov/ 16info/pdf-bill/tat/SB656.pdfPolice are very concerned that if this law goes into effect, it will make it easier for many more people to perpetrate gun violence, which is a considerable problem in Kansas City, said Deputy Chief Cheryl Rose, serving as Acting Chief on behalf of Chief Forte at todays press conference. It also could make it extremely difficult for law enforcement to get guns out of the hands of people who would use them to commit violent acts. We join law enforcement across Missouri in urging the Legislature to uphold the veto of Senate Bill 656.The public should understand that Jackson County has declined over 900 requests for a conceal and carry permit since the existing law has been in effect, said Jackson County Sheriff Mike Sharp. We need to continue to take guns out of the hands of people who are going to be harmful to our community. If overridden, SB 656 would give those rejected 900 people the ability to own a gun.SB 656 is a anti-safety bill. It will set Missourians up to fail, simply because they will not know the use of force laws, said Kyle Boyer, President of Alpha Protection, LLC. Concealed Carry classes allow instructors an opportunity to educate their students on being responsible and safe with their firearms."I support Governor Nixon's veto of SB 656. The safeguards that exist today in Missouri's concealed carry system are critical to keeping all of us safe," said Jackson County Executive Frank White.Today, Id ask every member of the Missouri legislator to walk in the shoes of a Kansas Citian impacted by violent crime, said Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters-Baker. Only then could they see the harm theyve created with this kind of legislation. SB 656 will bring more harm to this community. Voting to override is asking this community, already overburdened with gun violence, to shoulder even more. Thats too great a burden.###Links:You decide . . .
Thousands of students return to school in Greece on Monday, as the new school year officially begins today, with the Ministry of Education underlining that everything has been planned and arranged so that books and teachers are waiting students at schools.

As is customary, many of the countrys political leaders will visit schools. As such the President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos will visit a school in Nikea and Egaleo. The Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was planning to visit a school on Kefalonia, however the visit was cancelled so that he may visit the fire stricken island of Thasos.

The leader of the main opposition Kyriakos Mitsotakis has arranged to vsit a school in Perama, while the General Secretary of the Communist Party Dimitris Koutsoumpas will visit a school in Kerasiani. The Minister of Education Nikos Filis along with the Mayor of Athens Giorgos Kaminis will visit a school in Grava.

Finally, the Archbishop of Athens Ieronymos will attend the blessing ceremony at a religious school in Ilioupoli.

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
Six foreign investment funds have up until now submitted applications with the Bank of Greece (BoG) to receive licenses for managing non-performing bank loans

Six foreign investment funds have up until now submitted applications with the Bank of Greece (BoG) to receive licenses for managing non-performing bank loans (NPLs) in the country.

The information was announced on Tuesday by a top BoG official, who wished to remain unnamed.

NPLs in the country now exceed a whopping 110 billion euros, constituting one of the biggest problems facing the still "capital controlled" Greek banking system.

The same official also said necessary legislative changes are now imperative in the country in order to allow for the suspension of non-cooperative shareholders in companies facing bank-sponsored restructuring, as well as to provide legal protection for banking executives assigned roles in corporate restructuring. The latter reforms will ostensibly mirror legal provisions that exist in more advanced bankruptcy and banking codes in other European countries.

BoG Gov. Yannis Stournaras himself commented on the issues, during a meeting with creditors representatives at this office in the central bank's downtown Athens offices.

Representatives of Greeces institutional creditors, now known as the quartet, earlier met with Hellenic Financial Stability Fund chairman George Michelis.

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
Bulgaria has extended the deadline for bids in a tender to run and operate Sofia airport by a month to Nov. 18 due to increased interest in the process, Transport Minister Ivailo Moskovski said on Monday.



The government launched the tender to operate the Balkan country's main airport for 35 years in May, in a process it expects to bring some 1.2 billion levs ($689 million) into state coffers.



"The deadline has been extended by a month following a request by three companies that are interested in the deal," Moskovski told reporters. He did not elaborate.



The extension will also compensate for a temporary halt to the process following a complaint to the country's competition watchdog by a consortium that built a runway at one of the terminals. That complaint was overturned in late June.



In August, Turkish Limak Holding said it was planning to bid for the airport.



German airport operator Fraport, which has a 60 percent stake in a venture operating Bulgaria's two Black Sea airports, will look closer at the tender to see if it would be viable to expand in the country, its spokesman said on Monday.



Prior to launching the tender, Moskovski said operators of airports in Zurich, Lyon, Dublin and London Heathrow, as well as firms from Qatar and China, had expressed an interest.



The airport, which was used by more than 4 million passengers last year, is operated by the state. Moskovski said he expects a deal can be done by the end of the year.  Reuters
Israel said its aircraft attacked a Syrian army position on Tuesday after a stray mortar bomb struck the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, and it denied a Syrian statement that a warplane and drone were shot down.



The air strike was a now-routine Israeli response to the occasional spillover from fighting in a five-year-old civil war, and across Syria a ceasefire was holding at the start of its second day.



Syria's army command said in a statement that Israeli warplanes had attacked an army position at 1 a.m. on Tuesday (2200 GMT, Monday) in the countryside of Quneitra province.



The Israeli military said its aircraft attacked targets in Syria hours after the mortar bomb from fighting among factions in Syria struck the Golan Heights. Israel captured the plateau from Syria in a 1967 war.



The Syrian army said it had shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone after the Israeli attack.



Denying any of its aircraft had been lost, the Israeli military said in a statement: "Overnight two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission to target Syrian artillery positions. At no point was the safety of (Israeli) aircraft compromised."



The seven-day truce in Syria, brokered by Russia and the United States, is their second attempt this year by to halt the bloodshed.-Reuters
Saudi Telecommunication Company (STC) has signed a deal with Intelsat, a leading provider of video and broadband services, has extended its partnership with Intelsat for using its satellite solutions to support operations for the largest oil & gas producer in the kingdom.



Operator of the worlds first globalized network, Intelsat said it combines the worlds largest satellite backbone with terrestrial infrastructure, managed services and an open, interoperable architecture to enable customers to drive revenue and reach through a new generation of network services.



Under a multi-year agreement, STC, the largest telecom operator in Saudi Arabia, will use connectivity provided by Intelsat 10-02, located at 1 West, to provide satellite services to the oil & gas sector in the kingdom.



In 2016, STC and Intelsat continue to expand their relationship to support the growth of the VSAT sector in Saudi Arabia.



The telecom operator uses multiple satellites in Intelsats Globalized Network to provide high-quality broadband networking for corporate customers in the banking, government and oil & gas sectors operating throughout the Middle East and Asia.



The operations of oil & gas companies are important to Saudi Arabia and the global economy, and reliable broadband communications are a vital part of the sectors daily operations, remarked Walid Al Wabel, the general manager, Operations Management, STC.



Intelsat has been a valuable partner in our support of major oil & gas clients, delivering the satellite connectivity that ensures broadband services are always available. With Intelsats continued support, STC has the best available satellite infrastructure integrated into our network, allowing us to deliver the highest quality services to our enterprise customers regardless of location, he added.



Shahrokh Khanzadeh-Amiri, the director of sales at Intelsat for the Middle East and North Africa region, said: "Demand for VSAT connectivity in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East remains strong, demonstrating that satellite is the best option for delivering reliable communications services to large enterprises with hundreds of locations spread across vast and sometimes remote areas."



Intelsats continuous efforts to improve its technology make sure end-users can take advantage of "the latest VSAT applications available," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
The Bahrain Tourism and Exhibitions Authority (BTEA) kicked off a fun-filled Eid Surprise celebrations event to mark Eid Al Adha at the heart of Manama souq, which witnessed a large turnout of visitors.



Celebrations are scheduled to continue until the third day of Eid, September 14, with festivities starting from 6:00pm until 10:00pm.



The event included a variety of festive activities including musical performances that suit different musical palettes, alongside the traditional music that showcases the Kingdoms heritage. The activities also included magic shows, cultural shows and art-related activities such as graffiti and calligraphy. Visitors also had the opportunity to participate in the cultural competition Guess and Win that rewards participants prizes.



Shaikh Khaled bin Humood Al Khalifa, chief executive of the Bahrain Tourism and Exhibitions Authority said: The Eid Surprises in Bab Al Bahrain comprises of a variety of events and activities suitable for everyone. We seek to highlight the vast potential of Bab Al Bahrain and showcase its ability to embrace modern tourism activities whilst highlighting the Kingdom of Bahrains heritage for both residents and tourists.



The Bahrain Tourism and Exhibitions Authority will also host two of the most popular live television shows at City Centre Bahrain between September 8 and 14. Both events were held as a part of the Manama Gulf Capital of Tourism 2016 calendar of events that contributes towards the economic vision 2030.  TradeArabia News Service
Suspected Kurdish militants detonated a car bomb near local government offices in Turkey's southeastern city of Van on Monday, wounding scores of people, a day after two dozen mayors from Kurdish-run municipalities were stripped of office.



The blast hit some 200 meters from the Van provincial governor's office, security sources said, ripping through the city's central district and setting buildings and cars aflame. Officials said 48 people were wounded but no one died.



Iranian nationals may have been among the wounded, CNN Turk said. Van sits about 100 km east of the border with Iran.



Southeastern Turkey has suffered repeated bombings and other attacks since the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy in the region, abandoned a ceasefire in 2015.



Security sources said they suspected the PKK was behind the bombing in Van and that an operation had been launched to pursue the suspected militants. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.



The blast tore the front off a four-storey building. Footage from the Dogan news agency showed water cannon trying to douse flames on the street opposite. The district, normally busy, was more empty of traffic on Monday, the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.



Burhan Kayaturk, a local member of parliament from the AKP, said the blast had targeted the ruling AK Party's offices, but that they were well-secured and had not been badly damaged.



"ADMINISTRATIVE COUP"



Turkey appointed new administrators in 24 Kurdish-run municipalities mostly in the southeast on Sunday after removing their mayors over suspected PKK links, triggering protests. Four towns in Van province were affected by the removals.



President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Turkey had evidence that the mayors had sent support to Kurdish militants, and that they should have been stripped of their roles sooner.



"It is a step taken too late in my opinion," Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul after attending Eid prayers.



"They sent the support they received to the mountains, but this has all been discovered," Erdogan said, referring to Kurdish militant bases in the mountains of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. "Our government took this decision based on all of this evidence."



The municipalities were run by local associates of the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the third-largest party in parliament. The HDP decried what it said was an "administrative coup" and said the move was illegal.



Erdogan said last week that the campaign against the PKK - considered a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union - was now Turkey's largest ever and the removal of civil servants linked to them was a key part of the fight.



The US embassy said on Sunday that while it supported Turkey's right to combat terrorism, it hoped the appointment of government administrators would be temporary and that local citizens could soon choose new representatives. - Reuters
Evolving aviation security risks and integrated solutions will be discussed at the upcoming 25th Avsec (Aviation Security) World Conference, taking place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October.



Organised by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and Airports Council International (ACI) the summit will highlight key topics such as securing landside spaces at airports, information sharing among governments, managing the risks of home-grown terrorism and preventing cyber threats.



The event takes place from October 25 to 27.



Aviation security needs to evolve in step with changing threats, said Dr Fang Liu, secretary general, ICAO. The global policy and regulatory framework has to adapt effectively and in a timely fashion to address this increasingly dynamic risk. Having so many global aviation security experts and leading thinkers gathered together at Avsec World provides a valuable opportunity to identify common objectives and combine the industrys strengths and resources towards achieving better aviation security and facilitation.



Flying is secure. Keeping it that way is the responsibility of governments and a challenge for all parties involved in air transport, said Alexandre de Juniac, director general and CEO, IATA. Aviation is the business of freedom. But recent months have shown that it remains a target for terrorists. Avsec World strengthens the vital partnership between industry and government on security. And it is a catalyst that helps to turn our common interest into a shared agenda to stay a step ahead of those with an agenda of evil.



The recent tragic attacks on Brussels and Ataturk airports have brought aviation security sharply into focus in the worldwide media, said Angela Gittens, director general, ACI World. Ensuring the security of the travelling public is a top priority for ACI and its members, and a prerequisite for a sustainable aviation system. This is a goal that can only be accomplished through close collaboration among stakeholders. The landscape of aviation security is changing, and Avsec World 2016 will lay the groundwork for where were going and the best way to get there.



Liu, de Juniac and Gittens will all deliver remarks at Avsec World. Additionally, the conference will feature keynote addresses by Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger, Administrator, US Transportation Security and Henrik Hololei, director-general for Mobility and Transport, European Commission.



The event is expected to attract more than 500 delegates in security-related activities at airlines, airports, government agencies, defence and equipment and technology manufacturers.  TradeArabia News Service
Vacation Agent Magazine

A version of this article appears in print in the September 2016 issue of Vacation Agent Magazine. Subscribe
(TRAVPR.COM) CUBA, 13th September, 2016 - Welcome to the Destinationcuba.com, they are one of the leading online portals dedicated for Cuba vacations and Cuba travel packages. The Destinationcuba.com is offering some of the best travel packages for Cuba at the most economical and competitive price. Cuba remains the priority destination for the people who are planning to visit the Caribbean. Keeping the peoples interest in mind, the Cubadestiatyion.com provides the customized and tailor-made Cuba travel packages.

Over the years, Cuba has been recognized a good tourists destination, but instead it has never appear on the travelers list. Because of the political instability in the country from past several years, the Cuba Tourism industry has badly affected. The travel operators have no other option to shut down their business, because there is lack of tourist in the country. But, all those things of past and today the picture is different. Today, Cuba is among the most preferred destinations in the north Caribbean islands. These days, tourist from across the world visits Cuba and enjoys the beautiful and exotic places in the country. The Cuba vacations are always a great deal for the people who want to share some time with their families.

Private Home Stay & Transportation Services

DestinaCuba.com provides the private home stay and transport services across the Cuba. This ensures that you can travel anywhere in Cuba during your stay quite safely with dedicated transport services and also can stay in private home with full amenities and frills.

DestinationCuba.com packages include airport transfers, and your choice of 3/5/7 night stays. It also includes airport pick up and travel around Havana and the surrounding area in a privately owned 1950s America Classic car.

From the spokesperson

We at Destinationcuba.com are extremely delighted to announce our new travel packages for Cuba. We are serving in this region for many years and we know the taste of the customers. Therefore we provide the wide range of tailor-made travel packages for Cuba.

About DestinationCuba.com

Americans can now travel legally to Cuba in support of the Cuban people since you will be dealing directly with Cuban people by using private services offered by private citizens and not government owned hotels or transportation. In effect you are helping to build the nascent private business sector as permitted by the recent changes of the U.S Treasury license conditions.

Contact Details:

Hotel La Sirena Quepos , Avenida 1

Quepos, Costa Rica

60601

Phone:

From the U.S. or Canada

1 954-493-5144

Outside U.S.A. or Canada

011-954-493-5144

In Costa Rica

(506) 2777-0572

Email: info@destinationcuba.com

Web: http://destinationcuba.com/

###
Top Dog Travel Systems, a leading travel technology company and Travellanda, the fastest growing travel company have recently announced a strategic partnership to increase hotel distribution throughout the UK market.



(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED KINGDOM - September 13th, 2016 -

Integration between the two companies will provide travel agents, tour operators and OTAs within the United Kingdom with an additional choice of over 200,000 hotels worldwide. Following on from Travellandas latest distribution strategy, this partnership aims to provide consumers in the UK with great rates on more hotels in all key destinations around the world.

Denise Atkinson, Key Account Manager, Travellanda said: With our head office in London, the UK market has always been important to us. Whilst we focus on a global level in general, we are very excited to be working with Top Dog to further increase our footprint here in the UK and to allow more clients to start working with us via the API so we can all maximise business on a seamless basis.

Lindsay Gauton, Technical Director, Top Dog said: Our link up with Travellanda greatly extends the variety and uniqueness of stock available through our Infinity gateway product, now allowing all our clients access to 65 Accommodation suppliers, 100 Flight providers and many ancillary product suppliers such as Car Hire, Transfers, Parking, Attractions and Payment gateways.

---ends---

About Travellanda Ltd.:

As a leading B2B Accommodation Wholesaler, Travellanda is the travel industrys fastest growing company. Through cutting edge technology, it provides highly competitive wholesale rates on an inventory of over 200,000 hotels worldwide, plus extensive accommodation and services for groups visiting UK, Ireland, Turkey and Thailand. Using the Travellanda Online Reservation system, XML Connectivity or White label, travel agencies, tour operators, B2B online systems and OTAs have access to a wide range of hotels. Travellandas head office is in London and has local offices in Bangkok, Istanbul, plus representatives in over 10 countries

Contact:

marketing@travellanda.com

+44 (0) 203 384 5410

###
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.
Chennai, September 13

As PepsiCo reshapes its portfolio to focus on health and wellness category, its Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi visited a local restaurant here to stir up a conversation on how to make familiar food healthy.

Nooyi, on a two-day visit to India, visited a traditional south-Indian eatery here with PepsiCos nutrition ambassador Michelin star chef Vikas Khanna.

The two discussed plans and ideas for PepsiCo to make familiar traditional foods healthy as part of the companys aim to expand its offering to include whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

Speaking about her experience and nostalgia of eating at a local eatery, she said, As lifestyles continue to change, PepsiCo is on a mission to dial up the nutrition in our portfolio. pti
Manmeet Singh Gill

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, September 13

As many as 28 fresh dengue cases were confirmed by the Health Department here today while death of a patient has also been reported. With this, the count of patients who were tested positive for dengue this season has reached 180.

With each passing day the number of dengue patients is increasing. The department had confirmed 22 dengue positive yesterday. Meanwhile, the death of a government schoolteacher due to dengue has been reported from a private hospital.

However, Health Department officials said official confirmation regarding the case could be made only after the Death Review Committee of the department investigates the cause of death.

The officials said the record of the patient at the hospital would be scrutinised to assess the cause of death.

District Epidemiologist Madan Mohan said the anti-larva team of the department conducted fogging in Kot Khalsa, Rani Ka Bagh, Ranjit Pura, Khandwala, Sunder Nagar and Vikas Nagar. He said reports of over 30 suspected patients were awaited.

The first case of dengue in the district was reported in the last week of August. In the past three weeks, the number of positive cases reported daily had been increasing with each passing day.

The officials said in comparison with rural areas, the city was reporting more cases. While 82 of the total cases had reported from the walled city alone, the number of cases reported from rural areas was merely around 50.

They said government hospitals were providing platelet extraction facilities at subsidised rates as Civil Hospital and Government Medical College were equipped with apherisis machines.
As Venezuela gets ready to host the 17th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit, Augusto Montiel, Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, speaks about the relevance of NAM today in a changing world order. India will be represented at the Summit by Vice-President Hamid Ansari, who is scheduled to depart later this week for Venezuela.

Do you think NAM still holds relevance in the world today?

A: The fact is that organising the 17th Summit of NAM is the most important event to us in the light of the need for balance and peace, and the need to end this status of domination around the world. There are still countries that feel that colonialism exists. We could ask ourselves was 1947 really the end of colonialism in this area, in this region? Has colonialism ended in Africa? Its not just an academic question but people in their daily lives can also understand that colonialism exists. Just that now we call it neo-colonialism. But if civilisation is the art of living together, then all those who think that life needs to be treated fairly, and all states and nations need to be treated fairly and with respect, would understand that NAM is important.

Three weeks back, the foreign minister of Venezuela visited India and had discussions here. Can you share some details?

As you are aware, three weeks back our foreign and petroleum minister was here. An important component of the relationship between India and Venezuela is energy. One in every three drops of oil and gasoline in India comes from Venezuela. Indian state oil companies along with Venezuelan companies are producing oil in some of the largest oil reserves in the world, which is also the main reason for the US to target the Venezuelan government as a military objective.

Is oil the reason behind the animosity between the US and Venezuela?

That is the main reason for the fuss in the West as far as Venezuela is concerned. The control of this oil is the problem because we want the oil for solidarity, for development. There are countries in the world that want oil only for their own good and for controlling the world. That is not civilisation. That is madness, and criminal. Even the Prime Minister of India has called for a multi-polar world. The international institutions are not reflective of the existing world order today.

As many as 120 countries will be represented at the NAM Summit. What is the message that you want to send out to the world?

The more world leaders attend the NAM Summit, and give an orientation as to who wants a re-structuring of the United Nations system, the stronger will the message be. We want to convey this message to the countries that want to control the lives of other nations. Countries in Europe and the North American continent undoubtedly want to control international institutions like the UN. They want to control UNESCO, but dont pay the dues.

Do you blame the US for many of the problems of the developing world?

History has very clear pages as to who are responsible for the worlds affairs. Today, we see the control of the UN is over only a few countries. How can we then not say that they [the US] are responsible? You have people like former US president George Bush and former UK prime minister Tony Blair today saying that they are sorry; that they now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and that they are very sorry but they were misinformed. This is absurd. Their propaganda machinery, with its structure of domination, convinced the world that they needed to invade a country with a lot of oil, all in the name of democracy and freedom. It is all just a sweet story; now they are apologising to the families of 2 million human beings who were massacred, a culture that was killed.

Did Venezuela change the schedule of the Summit twice just to make it convenient for Prime Minister Modi to attend?

No, that is not true at all. A lot of countries requested that the Summit be held near the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, which is held in September, as it would be convenient for the leaders to first come to Venezuela and then move to New York. It has nothing to do with any specific leader. We did send an invitation addressed to the Prime Minister and also to the President of India.

Are you disappointed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to skip the Summit?

The world will thank the leaders who took chances and risks to produce a more balanced and multi-polar world. By not being present at the Summit, the message will not be heard directly. Many have asked us this question. It is for the Indian people to assess and reflect on this. Also, you should seek an answer to this from the Indian Prime Minister and the Government of India.
Vivek Katju

SUPREME leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei decided early this summer that Iranians would not go for the Haj this year; the annual pilgrimage, which is one of the five pillars of Islam, began on September 9 and will conclude on September 14. The decision was taken because Iran and Saudi Arabia could not reach an understanding on security and logistics issues relating to Iranian pilgrims, despite two rounds of talks between them. These discussions were necessitated because of the stampede in the city of Mina during last years Haj that resulted in over 2,000 deaths, including more than 400 Iranians. Iran accused Saudi Arabia of mismanaging the Haj and declared three days of national mourning.

Every financially and physically able Muslim is obliged to go on Haj at least once in his lifetime. Hence, Irans decision to prevent its nationals from going for the Haj is symptomatic of the dangerous and virtually complete meltdown in the Iran-Saudi ties, already deeply damaged by the Saudi decision to break diplomatic relations in January this year. The immediate provocation for that step was a mob attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran  a reaction to the execution of prominent Saudi Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

In this present climate of great tension in the Iran-Saudi relations, and conflict in West Asia and parts of North Africa in which both countries are also involved, Khameneis lashing out at the Saudi royal family has raised temperatures. Khamenei, only partly catering to a domestic constituency, said the Saudi rulers were disgraced and misguided, and called on the Islamic ummah to fundamentally reconsider the management of the two holy places and the Haj. As Saudi monarchs, since 1986, seek to claim prestige, if not leadership of the Islamic world by styling themselves the custodian of the two holy mosques, the demand that the ummah should establish new structures for the control of the two holiest Islamic places, the Al Masjid al Haram in Mecca and Al Masjid an Nabawi in Medina constitutes a direct and unacceptable challenge.

The Saudis responded swiftly and brutally. Sheikh Abdul Aziz, Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, and thus the countrys top cleric, said of the Iranians, We understand that they are not Muslims for they are the descendents of the Magus and their enmity towards Muslims, especially the Sunnis is very old. The Magus was a reference to Irans Zoroastrian roots, but the comment resonates as openly sectarian, questioning once again Shias Islamic credentials. The Iranian political leadership rallied behind Khamanei. Foreign minister Zarif tweeted, No resemblance of Islam of Iranians and most Muslims and bigoted extremism that Wahabi top cleric and Saudi terror masters preach. The Arab League ministers, clearly persuaded by the Saudis, condemned Khamanei for making bellicose and inciting statements.

The split in West Asia between Arabs and Iranians, as the Arab Leagues comment would indicate, is only one of the contradictions in the region. The sectarian split that has pitted Sunni Arab countries against Shia Arabs, with Iranian support in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, is a more fundamental consequence for the regions future. This is despite the fractures in the Sunni world with the rise of the IS and its barbaric practices. The countries, which quietly had supported the IS to apply a brake on Iranian ambition, find themselves contending with a group that is purely malignant, even to their own interests.

Many observers believe that the Sunni-Shia contradictions are over-emphasised and are only one of the factors influencing developments in the Muslim world. While this is true in many situations and periods, a survey of events since the Iranian revolution of 1979 reveals that the Shia-Sunni divide has been of basic importance in the unfolding of events in the region. The Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, had feared that Iran would claim not only the leadership of the worlds Shias, but also of the ummah. To prevent Iran from exporting the revolution and also prevent their own Shia populations from revolting, these countries, especially Saudi Arabia, supported Saddam Hussein when he launched the Iraq-Iran war in 1980. That war continued till 1988 and soaked Iranian energies.

At the same time, revolutionary Irans hostility to Shaitan-e-Buzurg  the US  and the capture of its embassy in Tehran and holding US diplomats hostage for over a year, led to the West responding with a total commitment to contain Iran through sanctions and alignment with the Sunni Arab states. Iran was hemmed in, but supported Shias, including in countries such as Pakistan. This led to years of bloody sectarian conflict in Pakistan that continues till today.

The end of the Iran-Iraq war witnessed an easing of relations between the Arabs and Iran. However, Irans pursuit of nuclear technology and missiles led to continuing suspicions among Sunni Arab countries. Hence, the US and UN sanctions, which contained Iran, became an essential part of these countries security calculus.

A significant feature during the 1990s related to Iranian-Saudi attempts at bridging the theological divide between the Shias and Sunnis. Religious scholars of both countries had numerous meetings, but it is clear now that Shia-Sunni differences, which go to the immediate aftermath of the death of Prophet Mohammad, are so rooted that the rift cannot be healed.

The US-Iran nuclear deal is removing the sanctions that had hobbled Iran. Iran has been swift to seek to spread its influence and the Sunni Arab states are alarmed. The Saudis have responded by gathering 34 Sunni Islamic countries in an alliance against terrorism. The exclusion of Iran and Shia-majority countries, including Iraq, is a clear indication of Saudi motivations. Thus there is every likelihood of the exacerbation of the current turmoil in the Islamic world, especially in Arab countries.

India has done well to steer clear of showing any partisanship in the Shia-Sunni contest. Over the past months, PM Modi has visited Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran to build bilateral ties. This is the basis on which India needs to move ahead. All these countries recognise Indias emergence and have responded well to Indias emphasis on bilateralism as the foundation of its West Asian policy.

 The writer is a former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs
Bijendra Ahlawat

Tribune News Service

Faridabad, September 13

As many as 95 confirmed cases of malaria, dengue and chikungunya have been reported in the district so far.

District Malaria Officer Dr Ram Bhagat said that a majority of the 8,000 blood samples collected by the department had been tested negative. Admitting a surge in cases of viral fever, he said only 15 patients had so far been found suffering from dengue. A total of 75 cases of malaria and 5 cases of chikungunya had been found positive at Civil Hospital here, he added.

Last year, the total number of dengue and malaria cases in the district was 200 and 134, respectively, he said. All cases of dengue were under treatment, he said, adding that private hospitals were bound to inform them about the positive dengue cases.

A separate ward had been set up for dengue patients, but there was no such ward for patients suffering from chikungunya, he said.

He said that fogging work was on in all vulnerable areas, especially where positive cases had been reported.

According to unofficial reports, hundreds of malaria and chikungunya cases have been reported in private hospitals and clinics in the past some days. All seven members of my family are down with fever having symptoms of chikungunya, said Mardan Khan (45) of nearby Badkhal village. Nearly 700 patients have been advised blood tests during the past one week at my clinic, said a private medical practitioner.
New York, September 13

Playing music during biopsy for breast cancer treatment may help reduce anxiety in patients, a new study has found.

Researchers from the University Hospitals Case Medical Centre in the US conducted a two-year study to learn the effect of live and recorded music on the anxiety of 207 women undergoing a biopsy for breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

They randomised patients into a control group (no music), a live music group, or a recorded music group.

Due to limited time before surgery, the researchers presented patients in the experimental groups with a live song performed by a music therapist at bedside or a recorded song played through earphones.

When self-rating their anxiety using a visual scale ranging from "not at all anxious" to "highly anxious," participants in both live and recorded-music groups experienced a significant reduction in pre-operative anxiety of 42.5 per cent and 41.2 per cent respectively, compared to the control group.

"During our two-year trial, we gained information on potential benefits, challenges and methods of facilitating a surgical music therapy programme," said Jaclyn Bradley Palmer, University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Centre in the US.

"In addition, we learned approaches to integrating the program with perioperative nursing staff members," Palmer said.

A music therapist may be highly beneficial in the surgical setting, and music therapy may be a means of enhancing the quality of patient care in collaboration with perioperative nurses, she said.

"As an interdisciplinary surgical staff member, the music therapist may help nurses achieve patient-related goals of anxiety reduction, pain management, effective education and satisfaction," said Palmer.

"By having professional music therapists facilitate surgical music therapy programmes, nursing workloads also may be reduced," she said.  PTI
Majid Jahangir/Ishfaq Tantry

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 13

Amid strict curfew across Kashmir on Eid, two youths were killed during protests and clashes that erupted across Kashmir which has left nearly 40 people injured.

The two killings took place in Bandipora and Shopian districts. Mustafa Mir, in his early 20s, was killed after he was hit by a tear-smoke shell during clashes in Bandipora town, while Shahid Ahmad was killed after being hit by a pellet in Bonabazar, Shopian.

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

The locals in Bandipora blamed police for firing at Mir from a close range. However, the police claimed that the youth was killed during intense clashes which broke out in the area when people defied curfew restrictions.

In Shopian, the killing took place when violent clashes broke out in Bonabazar when people tried to defy curfew restrictions. Doctors at Shopian said Shahid was brought dead with pellet injuries in the chest. Many protesters were injured in the clashes in Shopian.

With these two fresh casualties, the death toll in the current unrest has reached 81. More than 10,000 people have been injured in clashes in over the past two months.

Nearly 40 protesters were injured in clashes on Tuesday in Srinagar, Shopian, Bijbehara, Tral, Kulgam, Bandipora and Baramulla.

The J&K government on Tuesday imposed strict curfew across the Kashmir Valley and did not allow Eid congregational prayers in Eidgah and main mosques amid fears of largescale protests and violence.

Government has deployed thousands of forces across Kashmir and pressed into service unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, for aerial surveillance to ensure peace.

Kashmiri separatist leaders leading the present agitation have called for a march to United Nations Military Observers Group for India and Pakistan on Tuesday.

No major Eid gathering was allowed in any part of the valley. Eid prayers were not allowed at Hazratbl shrine, Eidgah grounds and Jamia Mosque in downtown Srinagar and at scores of other Eidgahs in major towns of Kashmir as the government put in place strict curfew with police and paramilitary personnel preventing people from venturing out.

In the morning, people in Srinagar saw heavy deployment of police and other paramilitary forces, with lanes and bylanes barricaded by concertina wires. Scores of residents, who turned up at these barricades, were either turned back or told by the police and paramilitary personnel to offer Eid prayers in the local mosques.

The authorities in Kashmir have also snapped broadband internet facility on fixed landlines and private postpaid and prepaid mobile services since Monday evening. It is for the second time during the ongoing unrest that broadband internet services were suspended. Earlier, the communication was suspended on August 13.
Majid Jahangir

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 13

As tension continued to escalate, the Army moved one additional brigade with three infantry battalions to south Kashmir, which is the epicentre of the present unrest, to bring back the situation under control, particularly in rural pockets.

This additional deployment of about 3,500 Army men at sensitive places in south Kashmir comes days after Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag reviewed security in the Valley. Gen Suhag had also visited Armys counter-insurgency headquarters at Awantipora in south Kashmir where he was briefed about the situation.

One additional brigadehas been moved to south Kashmir and more is coming, a defence official said. The situation in south Kashmir has to be taken seriously.

Though the additional Army would not be handling the protesters directly, sources said the personnel had been deployed in four districts of Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian for anti-militancy operations. They have also been tasked with area domination and round-the-clock patrolling.

Along with the Army men who are already deployed in these area, additional Army battalions will be engaged in counter-insurgency operations. These will help in bringing back overall situation to normalcy as protests in south Kashmir are militant-driven, sources said.

The police and other security agencies have been blaming militants for fanning the over two-month unrest following the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani.

The militants have taken maximum advantage of situation and they have been able to consolidate themselves as the entire counter-militancy operation have been put on a halt, said a cop involved in anti-militancy operations.
New Delhi, September 13

A policeman injured in a militant attack on security forces on Independence Day in Kashmir died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences here on Tuesday.

Constable Rous Ahmed had suffered injuries in the terror attack in Srinagars Nowhatta area. He succumbed to injuries at the hospital on Tuesday morning, a police official said.

A CRPF officer and two militants were killed while nine security personnel were injured when militants attacked security forces at Nowhatta in downtown Srinagar. PTI
Ishfaq Tantry

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 13

For the first time in the known history of Kashmir, Eid congregational prayers were today not allowed at the Srinagars grand mosque, Hazratbal Dargah, and other major Sufi shrines of the city as the government imposed a strict curfew to thwart the march to the United Nations mission office.

According to the Islamic injunctions, the Eid prayers are supposed to be offered in open designated spaces known as Eidgah and if the weather is bad, like in case of rain or snow, then in mosques.

Owing to the curfew, Eid prayers were also not allowed today at Jamia Masjid in the Nowhatta area of Srinagar, a historic place and witness to many ups and downs since it was first built by Sultan Sikandar Shah Shahmiri in 1394. The people associated with the grand mosque said in the past restrictions had been put on the Friday prayers at the mosque, but never were people disallowed from offering Eid prayers.

Today, a new dark chapter in the history of Kashmir has been created by the government after it disallowed Eid prayers inside the Jamia Masjid. During the Sikh rule and later during the reign of Dogra rulers, at least Kashmiri Muslims were allowed to offer Eid prayers at Jamia, said Syed Rehman Shams, the secretary of moderate separatist leader Mirwaiz Unar Farooq. Rehman is the member of the Auqaf Committee managing the affairs of the Jamia Mosque, Srinagar.

Prayers were also not allowed at the revered Sufi shrine of Syed Yaqoob Sahab in the posh Sonawar area, where the political elite of Kashmir would regularly pray on Eid, even in most difficult times. Likewise, people were not allowed to offer Eid congregational prayers at famous Hazratbal shrine, housing the relic of Prophet Mohammad, and the famous Sufi shrine of Dastageer Sahab in Khanyar besides the Khanq-e-Mualla mosque and shrine in downtown Srinagar. Just a few people offered prayers at Mukhdoom Sahab Sufi shrine atop Koh-i-Maran hillock in the city.

No prayers were allowed today at Yaqoob Sahab shrine and mosque as these were locked, said Rafi Ahmad Mir, secretary, J&K Muslim Wakf Board, which manages the shrine.

In the past, though the weekly Friday prayers have been disrupted many a times at the major mosques and shrines of the summer capital, it is for the first time in the modern time that the curfew had been imposed on Eid and prayers disallowed.

Locals said no major gathering was also allowed at Hazratbal. However, selected few people from the local Dobi Mohalla were later allowed to offer prayers at the shrine, an official said.

In the recent political history of Kashmir, I dont remember any government imposing curfew and disallowing Eid congregational prayers. Barring the periods of Dargah siege, it is unprecedented that there have been no Eid prayers at Harztbal shrine, political scientist Prof Noor Ahmad Baba told the Tribune.

Asked if the imposition of the curfew on Eid and lockdown of the major mosques and shrines was going to have any long-term effect on the local psyche, Baba said, By imposing the curfew the government wanted to prevent people from marching to the UN office. Though that has been stopped, it can further alienate the people. By this act, the government has stopped and punished even those people who wanted to celebrate the Eid, Baba said.
Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu/Poonch, September 13

The fierce gunbattle between security agencies and militants holed up in the Mini-Secretariat building in Poonch town ended on the third day on Tuesday with the killing of the last intruder.

A total of four militants were gunned down in the encounter that began on Sunday morning. The bodies of four militants who had split into two groups have been retrieved.

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

Two bodies were recovered from an old house of Haji Nazir Mir, a relative of deputy chairman of J&K Legislative Council Jehangir Mir.

The bodies of two other militants were retrieved from the Mini-Secretariat.

The Mini-Secretariat building is located at the rear side of the Superintendent of police (SP) office in the town.

Security personnel have recovered four AK rifles, four Under Barrel Grenade Launcher (UBGL) and four pistols from the spots.

According to the police, the slain militants were part of fidayeen squad (suicide attackers) and were trained in Pakistan. They had crossed the Line of Control (LoC) to either attack army installations or disturb peace on the occasion of Eid, the police added.

A policeman was killed, while seven others, including three police officials, a civilian and three soldiers, received bullet injuries during the encounter that had started around 7.10 am on Sunday.  (With inputs from DK Sudan in Poonch)
Gauri Chhabra

Whether we accept it or not, animation is here to stay - it will never get old and dated. It started from the good old whiteboard - fresh and inviting because we enjoyed watching something brought to fruition. From there, it changed myriad shapes and the white board became the digital canvas and entered the computer world moving from 2 dimensional to 3 dimensional. With the animation and digital arts industries ever-evolving, today, animation is a discipline in demand across a range of media channels, from apps to advertising, websites to music videos and beyond.

The trend that has been observed oflate is that there has been a lot of outsourcing of animation content to India due to the availability of low-cost, powerful computer animation platforms. What is more exciting is the fact that this industry would generate employment to thousands of prospective 2-D and 3-D animators every year.

Getting in

To carve out a career in animation one needs to get a graduate degree or a diploma. However, a graduate degree in animation is not very prevalent in India as yet and only a few institutes are offering this course at present. On the other hand, a host of institutes are offering diploma courses. You may require a bachelor's degree in fine arts, computer graphics, animation, or a related field to take the first steps in the field of animation.

Programmes in computer graphics often include courses in computer science, such as programming, and in graphics. Bachelor's degree programmes in art include courses in painting, drawing, and sculpture. A bachelor's degree in animation and the BFA are three-year courses whereas the diploma course in animation varies in the range of six-months to one- and-a-half-years.

Skillset

To get into this field, you need to have a creative mind, passion to do something different and sincerity towards work. Integrity towards fine arts, imagination and hands full of creative strokes are some of the key requirements for this career. Besides, an aptitude for sketching, drawing and deep interest in computers is always considered essential to gain entry into the animation industry.

Certificate and Diploma Courses

Many institutes have Plus II as the minimum qualification required, in order to pursue diploma courses. But some institutes do give admission after Class X.

Certificate courses:

Certificate in 2D

Animation

Certificate in 3D

Animation

Certificate in VFX

Certificate in CG Arts and Effects

The certificate courses mentioned above are beginner's courses. Such courses will help one to acquire key animation skills and knowledge. If you want to become a professional animator, you must consider going for advanced courses like Professional Diploma and Bachelor's Degree courses. Certificate courses last for a period of 3 to 6 months. Course duration may vary from one institute to another.

Diploma courses:

Diploma in VFX

Diploma in 2D Animation

Diploma in 3D Animation

Diploma in CG Arts

Diploma in animation

Diploma in Multimedia Animation Course

Advance Diploma in Game Art

Diploma in Fusion Animation

Bachelor's degree programmes:

BA in Animation &

Multimedia

B.Sc. in Animation & Multimedia

Bachelor of Visual Arts (Animation)

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Animation, Graphics and Web Design

BA in Animation and CG Arts

BA in Animation and Graphic Design

BA in Digital Filmmaking and Animation

BSc in Animation and VFX

BSc in Animation and Gaming

Advanced PG courses:

Advanced courses are available in the forms of MSc, Master of Animation, PG Diploma and PG Certificate courses. Some such well known courses are: MSc in Animation and Multimedia, MSc in Animation and Digital Filmmaking, MSc in Visual Effects, MA in Animation and Multimedia, MA in Digital Filmmaking and Animation, PG Diploma in Animation etc.

PG courses can be used to specialise in sub disciplines of this field. Some of the well-known areas of specialization include Visual Effects, Modelling, 3D Animation, Illustration, Texturing, Game Design (Computer and Mobile), Graphic Design, Specific Software.

Work profile

Animators create animation and visual effects for films, video games, television, mobile devices, and other forms of media using illustrations and software programmes. Animators also create graphics and develop storyboards, drawings and illustrations. They create, plan, and script animated narrative sequences, and assist with background design and production coordination.

You can further specialise in animated movies and video games, becoming deft at characterisation or in scenery and background design. Most of the time you would work in teams to develop a movie, a visual effect, or an electronic game. Each animator works on a portion of the project, and then the entire team puts the pieces together to create one cohesive animation.

Some multimedia artists and animators create their work primarily by using computer software or by writing their own computer code. Many animation companies have their own computer animation software that artists must learn to use. You may also prefer to work by drawing and painting by hand and then translating the resulting images into computer programmes. Some multimedia artists use storyboards or "animatics," which look like a comic strip, to help visualize the final product during the design process. With the internet becoming ubiquitous, you may put your creative work on the Internet. If the images become popular, you can gain more recognition, which can lead to future employment or freelancing.

A career in animation is all about passion and being always in motion. You have to constantly upgrade your skills for being updated with the latest trends in the industry and try to cross- integrate with other emerging fields. So, if you wish to ignite the world with your passion set the ball rolling now.

Institute scape

Desh Bhagat University, Mandi Gobindgarh, Punjab (offers BSc Animation)

Frame Box, New Delhi (offers BSc in Multimedia)

Academy of Animation and Gaming (AAG), New Delhi (offers BSc with specialisation in Animation, Multimedia and Gaming. It also provides 1-year full-time Diploma in Animation and 2 years Master's in Arts with specialisation in Multimedia)

Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Mumbai (offers four year, Bachelor of Design (B.Des) and a five year dual degree B.Des and M.Des)

National Institute of Design (NlD), Ahmedabad (offers 4-year B.Des in Animation Film Design and 2.5-year Master of Design)

Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC), New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai (offers 3-year degree in 3D Animation and Visual Effects)

Toonz-Webel Academy, Kolkata (offers courses in 2D and 3D animation, Graphic Multimedia and Visual Effects courses)

Whistling Woods International, Mumbai (offers 3-year degrees in Animation, Media & Entertainment, Communication and Fashion)

The Heart Animation Academy, Hyderabad (offers diploma in animation)

Zee Institute of Creative Arts (2ICA), Secunderabad (offers undergraduate as well as postgraduate diplomas)

Emerging fields

Forensic artists & animators

This is a cross integration of roles which is relatively new. Forensic artists work in a highly specialised role where they are responsible for recreating crime scenes or events. They work closely with witnesses, police officers and other forensic experts to produce visuals or animations to help illustrate how the event or crime played out in addition to sketches of potential suspects. Forensic artists and animators typically have a background in criminal justice as well as animation, as the work requires a strong grasp of the legal system as well as human form.

Motion graphic designer

Motion graphic designers create visual effects in video or other "moving" formats. These eye catching displays are used frequently in advertising as a way to stand out while still communicating a brand's message. Opportunities for motion graphic designers aren't just limited to those working in film and television. Businesses looking to create a visual splash have started increasing demand for these professionals as websites become more and more engaging.

Interaction designer

Interaction design is another specialised field whose growth is closely associated with the increase in digital applications and more sophisticated websites. The goal of an interaction designer is to create a user experience that is both intuitive and visually appealing - often some of the best work goes underappreciated because the experience is seamless.

Instructional designer

Instructional designers are responsible for determining the best way to present information to students or trainees. You need to have a background in education and utilise your knowledge of how people learn to create effective teaching materials or visual aids. You would require a breadth of knowledge and a skill for visual layouts and design is beneficial for presenting the most important information in an eye-catching way.
New Delhi, September 13

Chikungunya is taking its toll on people of Delhi, with at least five deaths due to the vector-borne disease reported in the last two days, including one today, even as the number of cases climbed to over 1,000 this season.

75-year-old Prakash Kalra of Mathura died of the disease this evening at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, where three other elderly men succumbed to it yesterday.

Doctors say that chikungunya is not a life-threatening disease in general, but in rare cases leads to complications that prove fatal, especially in children and old persons.

Chikungunya cases in the national capital have sharply risen to over 1,000 this season, marking a jump of nearly 90 per cent from its count last week.

The Delhi Government put the onus on Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and the Centre for the outbreak of dengue and chikungunya in the national capital even as Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues came in for criticism for remaining "absent" from the city.

Kejriwal, who returned from Punjab yesterday, said Jung and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be "questioned" over the issue as "all powers" rested with them.

"CM n min left wid no power now, even to buy a pen. LG n PM enjoy all powers wrt Del. LG abroad. Question them for Del, (sic)" he tweeted.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said in a tweet that officials of the Delhi Government were busy following the "LG's instructions" of going through the files of the past 18 months and sending these to him.

There are five ministers left in the Kejriwal cabinet after Sandeep Kumar's removal. They are Manish Sisodia, Gopal Rai, Satyendra Jain, Kapil Mishra, Imran Hussain.

As the city reels under a major health crisis, virtually the entire Delhi Cabinet is missing from action as Sisodia, Rai and Hussain are out of station. Only Mishra and Jain are in the city. Jain, who was on a two-day Goa visit, returned to Delhi this afternoon.

Kejriwal left for Bengaluru, where he is scheduled to undergo a throat surgery today. He will remain there for 10 days.

Sisodia is in Finland to study its education system for about two-three days. Labour Minister Gopal Rai is in Chhattisgarh, while Environment Minister Imran Hussain is on Haj pilgrimage.

Also, Lt Governor Najeeb Jung is in the United States for 10 days.

Former chief minister Sheila Dikshit hit out at Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues for "touring other states while Delhi is reeling under chikungunya".

"As far as I know, all the ministers are out of Delhi. It is the responsibility of the government...More than negligence, it is a matter of playing with the lives of people," Dikshit said.

Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken slammed Kejriwal and Jung for "passing the buck".

State BJP chief Satish Upadhyay also denounced Kejriwal and his ministers for "remaining absent" from the city even as he directed the party-ruled MCDs to make best efforts to halt the spread of chikungunya and dengue.  PTI
Our Correspondent

Jaipur, September 13

A Bangladeshi man was apprehended by BSF troops at the border at Champa Ka Jhopa, Khajuwala in Bikaner district during the wee hours of Monday.

The man was identified as Jannel, about 25-30 years old, hailing from Alantg of Jasso district, Banglaesh, an official PRO said on Tuesday.

Nothing suspicious was recovered from the individual, and interrogation was still under way to ascertain his motive of roaming in the area.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 13

India and China today took a positive step forward after months of acrimony when a Chinese delegation led by Director General Wang Qun of the Chinese foreign ministry met Amandeep Singh Gill, Joint Secretary (Disarmament & International Security) in the Ministry of External Affairs to discuss India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) among other issues.

This had been decided in principle when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had visited India a month ago. At his meeting with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Wang had said that China would send their top negotiator to New Delhi for a discussion on India's admission to the NSG.

India's entry into the elite club was opposed by Ireland, Turkey, Brazil, Austria and New Zealand, and later Switzerland on June 23 when the NSG held a plenary meeting in Seoul. India had, however, publicly blamed China for blocking India's entry and that had led to souring relations.

The MEA said in the talks held today the two sides focused "in particular on an issue of priority for India - membership of the NSG". The MEA added that the talks were "candid, pragmatic and substantive". It has also been decided that the two sides will meet for the next round on a mutually convenient date.
Chandigarh: A Jaguar fighter aircraft caught fire during takeoff roll at the Ambala Air Force Station late Tuesday evening. The pilot, a Squadron Leader, was able to exit the aircraft while it was still on the ground.

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

While the Air Force has ordered a court of inquiry to ascertain the cause of the incident, it is suspected that a technical snag may have led to the fire. It could be an electrical short-circuit or ingestion of a foreign body into the engine, an IAF officer said. Sources said the aircraft belonged to No.14 Squadron. TNS
Bengaluru/New Delhi, September 13

The Karnataka government on Tuesday decided to comply with the Supreme Court's modified order to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu till September 20 even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to people of the two states to "display sensitivity" and maintain calm.

As the Cauvery unrest kept the country's IT capital on the boil, the government warned of dealing with an "iron hand" any violence after an emergency cabinet meeting which took stock of the situation and decided to comply with the apex court order passed yesterday.

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

A 30-year-old man died today of multiple injuries he suffered while escaping police lathicharge when he jumped in panic from a three-storey building here yesterday, police said, with the toll in the unrest over Cauvery row rising to two.

One person had died in police firing yesterday.

Appealing for peace, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the Cauvery river water dispute can be solved within the legal ambit.

"I appeal to the people of the two states to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities," Modi wrote on Twitter.

He also expressed his unhappiness over the incidents of violence, and said: I am personally pained at the developments." Modi said the entire episode is "distressful".

Read

Modi hoped the people would keep "national interest and nation building" above all else, and that disputes like the present one could only be solved through talks.

"Violence cannot provide a solution to any problem. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint and mutual dialogue," he said.

'Difficult' order, but will follow: Karnataka CM

Facing more pressure after the apex court's modified order, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah held an emergency cabinet meeting which decided that though it was "most difficult" to follow, the direction could not be disobeyed or rejected as it would be against the Constitution.

"This order is the most difficult to follow. But when we are functioning within the framework of the Constitution, though it is a difficult order, as a constitutionally formed government it is difficult to violate or reject the Supreme Court order. It will be a violation of the Constitution," he told reporters here.

Siddaramaiah said the cabinet, after weighing the pros and cons "constitutionally, legally and politically" and keeping in mind the main Special Leave Petition challenging the Cauvery tribunal's final award coming up on October 18, decided to obey the court order.

He said the first order passed on September 5 itself was difficult and yesterday's was "most difficult" to follow.

"But we have accepted the federal set up and that the legislature, executive and judiciary should function in a way complementary to one another," he said

In its September 5 order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighbouring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September 9.

The chief minister said he would meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention and requesting him to call a meeting of Chief Ministers of both states to resolve the issue.

An immediate appointment had been sought and "probably we will get it tomorrow."

In Bengaluru, under prohibitory orders till tomorrow and where 16 localities remained under curfew, there were palpable signs of normalcy returning, as city police assisted by central forces kept a close vigil.

A bus that was half burnt yesterday was torched once again today near New Timber layout and another vehicle was also set on fire near Tigalarapalya here. Both had Tamil Nadu registration number plates.

Police lobbed tear gas at Hegganahalli and Pattegarapalaya as protesters tried to burn tyres on the streets, defying curfew.

Home Minister G Parameshwara said the Police Commissioner would decide on continuing or lifting of curfew depending on the situation.

In a video message to the people, Siddaramaiah warned of stringent action against any act of vandalism or disturbance to peace.

Stating that some organisations and political forces were behind yesterday's violence, Parameshwara said more than 300 people have been arrested so far and more arrests would follow.

Parameshwara said the government has decided to give Rs 10 lakh compensation each to families of the two persons killed.

Sidddaramaiah held consultations with senior Congress leaders from the state on the prevailing situation.

The bustling IT city was bereft of its monstrous traffic with very few vehicles moving on city roads. Schools, colleges and government offices also remained shut due to Bakrid today.

Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation operated buses in select areas in the city, where cab aggregators and autorickshaws also plied, though in lesser numbers.

Officials said transport services to Tamil Nadu remain suspended. Metro Rail services have been temporarily stopped.  PTI
Bengaluru, September 13

An uneasy calm prevailed in the city this morning after outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery river water with Tamil Nadu, as the Siddaramaiah government warned of "stringent" action against vandalism or attempts to disturb peace.

As the city police bolstered by central forces kept a tight vigil, particularly in areas inhabited by Tamils and other "sensitive" localities, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah made a fresh appeal for peace.

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

In a video message to the people of the state, Siddaramaiah warned of stringent action against any act of vandalism or disturbance to peace.

"There is pain among Kannadigas that Karnataka has been facing repeated injustice over Cauvery river water sharing issue. We are emotional on the issue of land, water and language, but we should not forget that humanity and human relationship within us is above all this," he said.

Holding that attack on Kannadigas and their properties in Tamil Nadu is "condemnable", he said, "At this time of difficulty we should not allow anger to take over. People of both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu should cooperate in maintaining law and order in both states. I would also warn strict action against any one indulging in any kind of vandalism or disturbing peace," he said.

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in the country's IT capital yesterday after sudden eruption of widespread violence, escalating tensions between the two states, now locked in a bitter tussle over release of Cauvery water.

As the orgy of violence targeting Tamil Nadu buses and lorries and other vehicles brought the city on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late last night and the entire city is under prohibitory orders till September 14.

Elaborate security arrangements are in place with 15,000 policemen being deployed, besides Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve Police, Rapid Action Force, Quick Reaction Teams, special forces, Central Industrial Security Force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force.

In view of the tense situation, the Centre has also rushed 10 companies (about 1,000 personnel) of the special anti-riot paramilitary force RAF to Karnataka after the chief minister spoke to Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The city that saw widespread violence, appeared to be limping back to normalcy, with no fresh incidents of violence being reported since last night.

Maintaining that the situation is peaceful, police said stringent action would be taken against miscreants or vandals.

The bustling IT city was bereft of its monstrous traffic.

There were very few vehicles moving on city roads, with schools and colleges also government offices remaining shut on account of Bakrid today.

State-run transport services remained skeletal with very few buses plying on roads in select areas.

Officials said transport services to Tamil Nadu remain suspended.

According to Metro Rail authorities, its services will remain temporarily suspended.

Prohibitory orders were relaxed in Idgah ground areas to facilitate Muslim community to offer Bakrid prayers.

Sporadic protests were reported in Mandya, the nucleus of the Cauvery agitation, where protesters burnt Tamil newspapers.

Meanwhile, Siddaramaiah held a meeting with senior Congress leaders from the state. The state cabinet is also holding an emergency cabinet meeting today.

Water Resource Minister M B Patil said the cabinet would discuss and "we will decide on what has to be done next."

The Supreme Court, modifying its September 5 order, had yesterday asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

In its September five order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighboring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September 9. PTI
New Delhi, September 13

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday appealed to people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to "display sensitivity" and maintain calm, and said the Cauvery river water dispute can be solved within the legal ambit.

"I appeal to the people of the two states to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities," Modi wrote on Twitter.

He also expressed his unhappiness over the incidents of violence, and said: "I am personally pained at the developments." Modi said the entire episode is "distressful".

Modi hoped the people would keep "national interest and nation building" above all else, and that disputes like the present one could only be solved through talks.

"Violence cannot provide a solution to any problem. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint and mutual dialogue," he said.

Modi urged people to give priority to restraint, harmony, and stay away from violence, destruction and arson.

"The violence and arson seen in the last two days is only causing loss to the poor, and to our nation's property," the Prime Minister said.

Modi's comments come as one person was killed in police firing on Monday night and curfew was in force in 16 sensitive localities in Bengaluru after protests turned violent in southern Karnataka over releasing Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu.

IANS
Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Meham, September 13

Khap representatives, speaking at the Shaheed Samman Samaroh here today, pledged to put up a concerted fight till the Jats were granted reservation in jobs. Family members of those killed during the February quota agitation were honoured at the event that saw a massive turnout.

The organiser, Meham Chaubisi Sarvkhap Panchayat head Tulsi Grewal, announced that a rally would be held at Ramlila Grounds in Delhi in December. Prior to that, rallies would be organised in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. A yatra would be undertaken to mobilise support for the rallies.

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

The speakers launched a scathing attack on the BJP government at the Centre and in the state for

"misleading" the Jats on the reservation issue.The community leaders, objecting to the anti-Jat tirade by the BJP's Kurukshetra MP, Raj Kumar Saini, alleged he had the Khattar government's tacit report.

They warned the BJP it would have to "suffer the consequences of not keeping its promises to the Jats" in the coming Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

Assuring help to those arrested in connection with the quota agitation, the Jat leaders claimed the community stood united in its "struggle" and a joint meeting of Jat outfits would be held in Delhi on September 28 to chalk out a plan to resume the stir.

The Sarvjatiya Sarvkhap Mahapanchayat head, Dr Santosh Dahiya, and Jat reservation leader Hawa Singh Sangwan were among those who addressed the gathering. Addressing a rally in Hisar's Mayyar village, the All-India Jat Aarakshan Sanghrash Samiti president, Yashpal Malik, said they would resume their agitation when the next session of Parliament commenced.

The Congress as well as the BJP have betrayed the Jats on their demand for reservation. The central and state governments are adopting a dual policy and wasting time by prolonging the issue in courts," he alleged.
Majid Jahangir and Ishfaq Tantary

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 13

Two youths were killed and more than 100 injured in clashes today as protesters defied curfew restrictions in almost all 10 districts in the Kashmir Valley to offer Eid prayers. There were reports of clashes at 50 places, including Srinagar, despite the deployment of thousands of troops and the use of drones for aerial surveillance.

The separatists' march to the UN office was foiled. Lanes and bylanes in Srinagar were barricaded by concertina razor wires and the residents told to offer prayers at local mosques. The internet facility in the Valley was suspended  for the second time during the ongoing unrest.

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

Mustafa Mir, 21, was killed in North Kashmirs Bandipora, 55 km from Srinagar, during clashes with security personnel. He was hit by a tear smoke shell. The locals blamed the police for the death. But a police officer claimed Mir had died of injuries during violent clashes in the area. Another youth, Shahid Ahmad of Uerpora Nagbal in Zainapora, in his twenties, was killed in clashes that erupted after the Eid prayers in Shopian district. He was hit by pellets in the chest and brought dead at the Primary Health Centre, Harmain, Chief Medical Officer Dr Abdul Rashid Najar said.

Special Director-General (Law and Order) Shesh Paul Vaid, claimed the forces had shown "maximum restraint" across the Valley, it being Eid. However, two unfortunate killings took place and it is not yet clear how these occurred, he said. Shahids body, that was found near Largam, was carried to the government hospital by locals who did not allow a post-mortem to be performed.They alleged he was injured during stone-pelting. The youth had been missing for two days.The police is investigating the matter," said an official spokesperson.

With two more killed on Eid, the death toll in Kashmir since July 8, has reached 81.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh/ Fatehgarh Sahib, September 13

Seven persons were killed and 53 others injured in a road accident involving two mini-trucks between Sahuwala and Panniwala Mota villages on NH-9 in Sirsa district late last night.

A truck carrying pilgrims from Fazilka in Punjab was returning from Guga Mari Dham, a temple near Bhadra in Rajasthan, while the other had pilgrims from Fatehgarh Sahib, who were going to the temple. The accident occurred around 11.30 pm. Six persons, including a woman, died on the spot.

The accident was so fierce that the engine of one of the canters fell at some distance. Passersby informed the police after which ambulances reached the site and began rescue work.

The injured were taken to a government hospital in Sirsa. Two seriously injured were referred to a private hospital, one of whom died during treatment.

The victims have been identified as Darbara Singh (45), Malkiat Singh (40), Mohinder Singh (65), Surmukh Singh Panch (20), Kulwinder Kaur, Ramesh Kumar and Sant Singh. Six of them belonged to Fatehgarh Sahib district in Punjab.

Kehar Singh, who was injured in the accident, told The Tribune that 54 devotees from Fatehgarh Sahib had gone to the shrine to pay obeisance.

MLA Nirmal Singh, GP Singh, Congress working committee member, and Kuldeep Singh Tehsildar, on behalf of the DC and SSP, attended the cremation of the deceased from Fatehgarh Sahib.
Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 13

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said here today that the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had played no role in the Speakers decision to hold a voice vote on the no-confidence motion yesterday.

Talking to The Tribune, he said Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal had always maintained neutrality.

However, the Opposition seemed to be in no mood to initiate a debate on the motion. Rather than accusing the Speaker or the Akali Dal for the debate not taking place, the Opposition must look within, he said.

Badal said he was upset at the House siege by the elected representatives (Congress MLAs) and the falling standards of the Assembly debate.

He claimed that the Opposition members used unparliamentary language in the House yesterday. Do they expect the treasury benches not to react when they use such words against individuals? During my long innings as a legislator, I have never heard such statements being made, he said.

Badal said he had welcomed the motion against his government and was prepared to listen to the Opposition MLAs. But they got into an unnecessary argument about an MLA wearing an Akali badge and questioned his neutrality. Had they wanted a debate, they should have raised issues concerning the people of Punjab. The Speaker had promised to give them time yesterday for these issues, the CM added.

Badal said he had taken the Speakers permission before going to the Assembly today to meet the Congress MLAs. With all humility, I told them that they were like my brothers/children. It does not look nice that they are protesting in the House, and I urged them to initiate a dialogue. But they did not relent and asked me what I had to offer. I had gone to request them, not to make any offers. That is the Speakers prerogative, he said.

The Speaker, who was off to Ludhiana for an endoscopy, was initially supposed to meet the legislators. But when he failed to reach here, Badal offered to step in. The CM was accompanied by his Special Principal Secretary, Gagandip Singh Brar, and national adviser Harcharan Bains.
Chandigarh, September 13

After AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwals visit to Italy, the SAD has also reached out to the Punjabi diaspora there. Manjinder Singh Sirsa, adviser to Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and general secretary of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee, is leading a delegation of the Akali Dal to reach out to the NRIs settled in Italy.

Sirsa hit out at AAP and Congress for launching a smearing tirade against Punjab and the SAD-led Punjab government. He said the government had taken crucial and critical steps to facilitate the NRIs during its nine-year rule.  TNS
Certain critics especially those belonging to the Civil Service, have sometimes an antipathy towards lawyers and think that lawyers should not be allowed to control the administration. A writer in the London Times who has contributed a number of articles on the elements of reconstruction after the war has concluded the series by a strong criticism of the lawyer mind. He thinks that the defects of social and public life are to some extent due to the medieval ogranisation and unsatisfactory general culture of the lawyers. He says that we cannot do without lawyers whom he expects to mould social thought and give shape to public opinion. The modern State needs politicians and lawyers who can take long views and who can think largely and constructively.
Neena Sharma

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, September 13

High value fruits and plant varieties cultivated under controlled conditions through tissue culture will soon reach fruit growers and farmers in the state who had to look towards neighbouring Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir for these highly coveted plant materials.

The Department of Biotechnology has started tissue culture of kiwi, orchid and brahmi at a small scale at its centre in Haldi. We have already planted around 300 plants of kiwi fruit in the Urgam valley and another batch of over 5,000 plants of kiwi, brahmi, lily and orchid will be planted in December. These should be ready by the winter for tests in the different fields at government orchards. It will take some time before they reach farmers, said Deepak Kumar, Secretary, Biotechnology.

Significantly, before recommending these plant varieties for commercial plantation to farmers, the techniques of propagation, irrigation, nutritional requirement etc have to be minutely observed so that when farmers take to the fields, their labour bears fruit.

The Department of Horticulture is optimistic about kiwi fruit cultivation due to the prevalence of diverse climatic belts in the state. We will go in for more varieties of kiwi in keeping with the prevailing climatic conditions in the state. We have hosts of options including introducing low-chilling varieties for lower altitudes, coloured for mid-altitude and sturdy varieties for places where the temperatures is quite low, said Dr BS Negi, Director, Horticulture.

In Himachal Pradesh, the fruit growers have been mostly growing Abbot and Allison varieties of kiwi.

The Department of Biotechnology is optimistic that the tissue culture of orchids that are usually brought from the North Eastern states and Brahmi herb, will boost the economic condition of the farmers.

While the Department of Biotechnology has been experimenting at its centre in Haldi, it is keen to take over the biotechnology laboratory set up at the GB Pant Nagar University in Patwadangar. This laboratory was set up in 2003 at the cost of Rs 10 crore. It will help us immensely if we are able to carry out our experiments in this laboratory, as the fields are also nearby and we can quickly start our plantation, added Deepak.
Washington, September 13

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said she is feeling much better and did not think the incident of her falling ill at a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was going to be that big.

"I just did not think it was going to be that big a deal. It is just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you are a busy, active person, you keep moving forward," Clinton, 68, told CNN in an interview last night.

This was her first interview, after she fell ill during a 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York.

"I think it is fair to say that people know more about me than almost anyone in public life. They have got 40 years of my tax returns, tens of thousands of e-mails, a detailed medical letter report, all kinds of personal details," she said.

Clinton said she is feeling so much better.

"I should have gotten some rest sooner. I probably would have been better off if I had just pulled down my schedule on Friday. But, like a lot of people, I just thought I could keep going forward and power through it. And, obviously, that did not work out so well," she said.

Despite her being diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, Clinton continued with her grilling schedule which finally resulted in her falling ill on Sunday.

The former secretary of state said it is something that has occurred a few times over the course of her life.

"I'm aware of it and usually can avoid it. What happened yesterday was that I just was incredibly committed to being at the memorial - as a senator on 9/11, this is incredibly personal to me. And I could, feel how hot and humid it was. I felt overheated. I decided that I did need to leave.

"As soon as I got into the air-conditioned van, I cooled off, I got some water and very quickly I felt better. So, I felt fine, but I am now taking my doctor's advice, which was given to me on Friday that I ignored, to just take some time to get over pneumonia completely," Clinton said.

Clinton said she felt dizzy and she did lose her balance for a minute.

"But once I got in, once I could sit down, once I could cool off, once I had some water, I immediately started feeling better. And my daughter lives nearby, so I went over to her apartment and, you know, spent time with her and my grandchildren which is the best medicine for anything in life," she said. Last week, Clinton said she had seasonal allergies.

"What happened this time, though, was it did not dissipate and that is why when I got off the road on Friday, I did go to see my doctor and that is when I was diagnosed with pneumonia.

"The funniest thing that happened to me on Sunday, was not a funny day, after all, but this was kind of humorous, is I got to the memorial, I saw my friend and former colleague, Chuck Schumer, and the first thing he says to me is I have had pneumonia and I have been resting for five days. And I looked at him, he said, you know, that is so funny, I have just been told I have pneumonia. So, apparently, there is something to this that is going around," Clinton said.

Clinton said she would get back on the campaign trail as soon as possible after taking some rest as advised by the doctors.

During the interview, Clinton lashed out at her Republican rival Donald Trump, 70, for not releasing his tax returns and not being transparent about him including his health.

"You compare everything you know about me with my opponent. I think it is time he met the same level of disclosure that I have for years. You have got a medical report on me that meets the same standard as Mitt Romney and (US President) Barack Obama.

"Donald Trump's doctor said he would be the healthiest president in history. That is just not even serious. And I have released nearly 40 years of tax returns. He has not released one," she alleged.

"This is a man with unknown numbers of partners and investors who says he is doing 120 foreign deals. The American people deserve to know what he is up to and what he is hiding.

So, if we were not fast enough I have talked to my staff, we, you know, take responsibility for that. But the information is out there. You cannot say the same thing about Donald Trump," Clinton added. PTI
New York, September 13

A 36-year-old Muslim woman, who was wearing a traditional Islamic attire, was attacked here and her clothing was set on fire in a troubling incident that occurred just a day before the US marked 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The woman, who has not been identified, was walking in the citys Fifth Avenue, which houses top luxury brands, on Saturday night when an unidentified person set her blouse on fire using a lighter.

The New York chapter of the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) condemned the attack, which is the latest in a series of attacks on Muslims in the state and nationwide in recent days and months.

CAIR-NY also urged New Yorks mayor to add resources for the investigation of hate crimes.

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

The victim felt heat on her arm, realising her blouse had been set on fire.

She saw (the suspect) pull a lighter away and walk away, a source said in the New York Daily News.

The victim put out the flames on the sleeve of her blouse and was not hurt in the attack. The suspect, who reportedly did not say anything during the attack, remains at large.

The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is trying to determine a motive for the attack.

We are clearly seeing a spike in attacks on individual Muslims and Islamic institutions in New York and around the country, which should be of concern to all Americans, said CAIR-NY Executive Director Afaf Nasher. It is time for the mayor and the NYPD to put forward the necessary resources to investigate and prevent these attacks on the Muslim community.

Last week, CAIRs New York chapter had welcomed a hate crime charge for an attack on two Muslim women pushing babies in strollers during which the alleged attacker punched and kicked the victims and tried to pull off their hijabs.

Earlier this month, 60-year-old Nazma Khanam, a native of Bangladesh, was stabbed to death near her house in Queens. Khanam was also wearing Islamic attire at the time of the stabbing.

CAIR said it had noted a spike in anti-Muslim discrimination and hate crimes in recent months, which the civil rights groups attributed at least in part to Islamophobic rhetoric used by various public figures. PTI
Moscow: After days of suspense, Russian authorities have finally got to know the reason behind a river in Siberia turning blood-red. Norilsk Nickel, the world's biggest nickel producer, has admitted a spillage at one of its plants, which had turned the river red. After denying blame for the contamination, Nickel said on Monday that a dike at its Nadezhda plant overflowed, colouring the Daldykan river, by the Arctic town of Norilsk, red, CNN reported on Tuesday. IANS

Tweet longer starting next week

New York: Micro-blogging website Twitter will stop counting media attachments, including images, GIFs, videos, polls, and usernames, against the 140-character limit starting September 19, allowing users to compose longer tweets, a media report said. The new change will not completely remove the 140-character limit. What it really changes is how Twitter counts the character limit. The extra room for text will give users more flexibility in composing their messages, the report added. IANS

FB loses bid to prevent suit over naked pic

London: Facebook has lost a legal bid to prevent a 14-year-old girl from suing it over her naked picture that was posted on a "shame page" on the platform as an act of revenge. A high court judge in Northern Ireland's capital Belfast on Monday rejected Facebook's attempt to have the claim by the girl struck out, The Guardian reported on Monday. The victim is also taking a legal action against the man who allegedly posted the picture. IANS

Over half of UK schoolgirls sexually harassed

London: More than half of girls in British schools and colleges have faced sexual harassment, according to a new report on Tuesday that called for sex education to be provided for all children in primary and secondary school. A parliamentary committee report said sexual bullying had become an expected part of girls' everyday lives. The report found evidence that almost a third of 16 to 18-year-olds had experienced unwanted sexual touching at school. reuters

Britain brings in polymer banknote

London: A new pound 5 polymer banknote went into circulation on Tuesday in Britain-one of the first European countries with such notes that can withstand being repeatedly folded into wallets or scrunched up inside pockets and can also survive a spin in the washing machine. The new note also has security features intended to make it harder to counterfeit. AFP
Belgrade, September 13

More than a year after she was sacked from Serbia's army for coming out as transgender, Helena Vukovic has finally received a passport, driving licence, health and ID cards confirming her identity as a woman  a small but important step forward for a deeply conservative country.

Vukovic became a cause celebrity last year when she came out as the Balkan country's first transgender army officer. In January 2015, the defence ministry forced the major out after two decades' service, saying her "psychiatric diagnosis" could harm the reputation of the military.

Vukovic, who is in her mid-40s and would not reveal her original male name, has since undergone a series of gender reassignment operations. She has become a vocal supporter of the rights of sexual minorities in Serbia, a predominantly Orthodox Christian country where many are still reluctant to come out.

She remembers the crowning moment when she received a new birth certificate after years of struggle.

"The postman brought an envelope and ... when I finally opened it I burst into tears of joy," she told Reuters between beers in her favourite downtown Belgrade microbrewery.

Serbia, which aspires to join the European Union, is under pressure to promote greater tolerance for minorities.

Vukovic said she would remain active in campaigning for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Serbia. Transgender people face particular difficulties, she said.

"They are facing a number of problems including legal matters such as securing new personal documents, employment and health protection," she said.  Reuters
Lahore, September 13

Needling India yet again, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday dedicated Eid-ul-Azha to the "supreme sacrifices" of Kashmiris and said Pakistan will continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is not resolved.

"We cannot ignore sacrifices of Kashmiris. They will succeed through their sacrifices. We dedicate this Eid to the supreme sacrifices of Kashmiri people and we will continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is not resolved according to their (Kashmiri people) wishes," the Prime Minister said in his message on the occasion of Eid-ul Azha.

Sharif offered Eid prayer along with other family members in the mosque at his Raiwind residence here.

He said, "Kashmiri people have sacrificed their third generation in their struggle to get freedom from India."

"They are struggling for their right to self- determination and facing Indian atrocities. Their voice cannot be suppressed through force," he said.

President Mamnoon Hussain, in his message on the occasion, said Pakistan must remember "our Kashmiri brothers and sisters affected by terrorism".

"During this hour of need we must support the Kashmiri people. They are facing the worst atrocities to get their right to self-determination. Time is not far away when the Kashmiri people will get dividend of their supreme struggle.

They will soon celebrate such festivals in free land," the President said.

Meanwhile, Jammat-ud-Dawah chief and Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed led Eid prayers at Gaddafi Stadium and prayed for the "success of Kashmiris fighting against Indian forces."

He urged the Nawaz government to take firm stance on Kashmir and "help them get freedom".

India and Pakistan are engaged in a fierce verbal battle over terrorism and the situation in Kashmir in the aftermath of the unrest in the Valley that broke out on July 8 after Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces.

While India has accused Pakistan of supporting cross border terrorism, Pakistan, on its part, has been trying to internationalise Kashmir, alleging New Delhi of human rights violations.

Sharif had earlier called for investigation into the "atrocities" committed by Indian forces, protection of Kashmiris' fundamental rights, a fair inquiry into the killing of Wani and implementation of UN resolutions. PTI
Beirut, September 13

A nationwide ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia was mostly holding across Syria on Tuesday and efforts to deliver badly needed aid to besieged areas including the northern city of Aleppo got cautiously underway.

Syrian state media said armed groups had violated the truce in a number of locations in Aleppo city and in the west Homs countryside on at least seven occasions on Tuesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said pro-government forces had shelled near two villages in the south Aleppo countryside and a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Damascus. But there were no reports of deaths or injuries.

Twenty trucks carrying aid crossed into northern Syria from the Turkish border town of Cilvegozu, a Reuters witness said, although with security a concern it was not clear how far into Syria they would go. A Turkish official said they were mostly carrying food and flour.

The Syrian government said it would reject any aid deliveries to Aleppo not coordinated through itself and the United Nations, particularly from Turkey, Syrian state media reported.

The UN said its trucks had not yet entered Syria and that it was still awaiting confirmation that the ceasefire was holding before sending in its own convoy.

We are waiting for this cessation of hostilities to actually deliver the assurances and the peace before trucks can start moving from Turkey. As I speak, that has not been the case, Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in Geneva.

We need to enter an environment where we are not in mortal danger as humanitarian organisations delivering aid, he said.

The ceasefire is the second attempt this year by the US and Russia to halt the Syrian war. Russia is a major backer of President Bashar al-Assad, while the US supports some of the rebel groups fighting to topple him.  Reuters
Washington, September 13

US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will propose allowing families to deduct the cost of childcare expenses from income taxes, his campaign said, a move aimed at bolstering his support among women voters.

Trump is to lay out the plan in a speech in the Philadelphia suburb of Aston, Pennsylvania, his latest attempt to construct a policy framework that he would use for governing if elected over Democrat Hillary Clinton on November 8.

Trump is to be introduced at the event by his daughter, Ivanka, who has championed the issue of childcare as an influential voice in his campaign. She told reporters on a conference call that she was involved in developing the plan. Im passionate about this, she said.

Trumps support among women voters has lagged. Overall, he has risen to a more competitive position against Clinton in national opinion polls and in battleground states where the election is likely to be decided.

Polls show the race tightening in the crucial state of Pennsylvania. A Quinnipiac University poll last week said Clinton led 48% to 43% for Trump there, a reduction from her 10-point lead a month ago.

Trumps plan would change the US tax code to let parents deduct from their income taxes childcare costs for up to four children and elderly dependents, his campaign said. It would be available for individuals earning less than $2,50,000 a year or under $5,00,000 for couples filing jointly.  Reuters
Washington, September 13

The US has said it is against independence for the Pakistani province of Balochistan where there have been allegations of human rights violations that were flagged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech.

The US government respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan, and we do not support independence for Balochistan, US State Department spokesperson John Kirby said in his daily press briefing on Monday.

He said this in response to a question on Modis remarks on August 15 about rights violations in Balochistan.

In a first for any Indian Prime Minister in an August 15 Independence Day speech, Modi referred to human rights violations in Balochistan and the part of Kashmir that Pakistan controls.

The world is watching. People of Balochistan, Gilgit, Baltistan and occupied Kashmir have thanked me a lot in the past few days. I am grateful to them, Modi said referring to his comments earlier in the month at an all-party meeting on reported excesses in Pakistans largest province and in the part of Kashmir it holds.

He said the way the people of these Pakistani regions wished me well, gives me great joy. In thanking an Indian Prime Minister, they have thanked the whole population of India, he said. I want to offer gratitude to these people.

The public reference to Balochistan by Modi was viewed as India hitting back at Pakistan for persistently raising the Kashmir issue and its attempts to internationalise it.  IANS
Phase 2 of the federal governments greenhouse gas and fuel economy regulations for medium- and heavy-duty trucks arrived last month.

Released jointly by The White House, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, they present the North American trucking industry with an environmental and technological to-do list that will keep OEMs, technology suppliers, and fleets busy for the next decade.

The GHG Phase 1 rules were finalized in 2007, hard on the heels of the implementation of EPA diesel exhaust emissions regulations that drastically reduced the amount of nitrous oxides (NOx) and particulate matter emitted by diesel engines. The threat of global climate change (see box on page 50) prompted a shift in focus at the federal level to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in trucks by improving fuel economy.

California, however, still wants to cut more NOx emissions from diesel exhaust, something truck and engine makers say will be difficult to do while improving fuel economy. The EPA announced it will work with the California Air Resources Board to evaluate future emissions standards with an eye toward further reducing NOx.

Building on Phase 1, EPA says the GHG Phase 2 final rules are designed to promote a new generation of cleaner, more fuel-efficient trucks by encouraging the wider application of currently available technologies and the development of new and advanced cost-effective technologies through model year 2027.

The final vehicle and engine performance standards were developed with input from the automotive and trucking industries, environmental groups, labor unions and other concerned parties. They will cover semi-trucks, large pickups and vans, and all types of buses and work trucks for model years 2021-2027.

According to government officials, the new standards will result in significant GHG emissions reductions and fuel efficiency improvements across all of these vehicle types. For example, when the standards are fully phased in, tractors in a tractor-trailer combination are expected to achieve up to 25% lower carbon dioxide emissions and fuel consumption than an equivalent tractor in 2018.

Overall, the agency says, GHG Phases 1 and 2 will lower CO2 emissions by approximately 1.1 billion metric tons, save vehicle owners fuel costs of about $170 billion, and reduce oil consumption by up to 2 billion barrels over the lifetime of the vehicles sold under the program. The agencies contend the program will provide $230 billion in net benefits to society, including benefits to our climate and the public health of Americans, and that these benefits outweigh costs by about an 8-to-1 ratio.

But the trucking industry must still deal with those costs, as well as ones the agencies might not have taken into account.

Phase 2 highlights

The CO2 and fuel consumption standards for Class 7 and 8 combination tractors and engines start in model year 2021, increase incrementally in model year 2024, and phase in completely by model year 2027. The standards differ by vehicle weight class, roof height, and cab type (sleeper or day). The fully phased-in standards will achieve up to 25% lower CO2 emissions and fuel consumption compared to the Phase 1 standards.

There are also separate engine standards. For diesel engines, new standards begin in model year 2021 and phase in to model year 2027, with interim standards in model year 2024. The final diesel engine standards will reduce CO2 emissions and fuel consumption by up to 5% for tractor engines and up to 4% for vocational engines compared to Phase 1.

The rule also requires a 16 to 19% efficiency improvement for vocational vehicles and 16% for heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans.

The final rule has more ambitious efficiency goals than the proposed rule unveiled last year, but a phased-in approach should help prevent sticker shock and forced adoption of not-quite-ready-for-prime-time technologies.

Key changes in Phase 2 GHG rules compared to the proposal include:

10% more GHG and fuel consumption reductions;

More robust compliance provisions, including improved test procedures, enhanced enforcement audits, and protection against defeat devices;

More stringent diesel engine standards;

An improved vocational vehicle program with a regulatory structure better tailored to match the right technology for the job;

Maintaining the structure and incremental phase-in of the proposed standards, allowing manufacturers to choose their own technology mix and giving them the lead time needed to ensure those technologies are reliable and durable.

Increased flexibility to minimize impacts on small businesses.

Reactions to the final rule vary. OEMs and technology suppliers are, predictably, generally upbeat and confident they can meet Phase 2 targets in the allotted timeframe, while fleet executives are wearily resigned to the whole business. And some in the industry believe there are better ways to go about reducing GHG emissions from trucks.

Phase 2 includes standards for trailers used with heavy-duty combination tractors. When fully phased in by 2027, trailer standards are expected to achieve up to 9% lower CO2 emissions and fuel consumption compared to an average model year 2017 trailer.

Proven and untested technologies

There are some 1,700 pages in the official government rules detailing GHG Phase 2. So, it will be some time before the trucking industry has a complete picture of everything they entail.

Glen Kedzie, American Trucking Associations vice president for energy and its environmental counsel, said the broad scope of GHG 2 was pretty much set in stone. Its the details buried in the ruling that will determine how difficult  and costly  these regulations will may ultimately prove to be.

The association is pleased that the rules stuck to the original, proposed extended compliance period, which will give all involved parties more time to meet the new standards. During the comment and public hearing period, some environmental interests pushed for a faster adoption timeline.

But Kedzie cautioned that when broken down, GHG 2 means four new target standards for trailers, three for engines, and three for vehicles. Thats a lot of new stuff, he said. And the bottom line is we can expect vehicle efficiency to go up. But so will associated costs for fleets.

One big change in Phase 2 is that it includes trailers. The trailer standards will have staggered effective dates, with EPA regulations taking effect in the 2018 model year and NHTSA standards in 2021. OEMs can get credits for early and voluntary participation. And since many trailer manufacturers are small businesses, the program includes provisions to make it easier for them to comply.

The overall trend for the past few years has been toward increased aerodynamic fairings on the sides, as well as boat tail type devices at the rear of trailers, Kedzie said. That trend will be accelerated, as will more aggressive development of the next generation of low-rolling resistance tires and their increased use on tractor-trailers.

Another positive, according to Mihai Dorobantu, director of technology planning and government affairs for the Eaton Vehicle Group, is that the new rules give OEMs and component/technology providers multiple pathways to compliance.

Nic Lutsey, program director with the International Council for Clean Transportation, noted that the regulations will drive fuel-saving technologies into the market that ICCT research has shown can increase typical highway fuel economy from 6 to 7 mpg today up to above 8 mpg and deliver payback periods within two years.

There are a lot of available and ready-to-be-deployed technologies, and this regulation ensures that the most cost-effective of those technologies see more widespread use, Lutsey said.

Dorobantu, for instance, cited advances in smart automated manual transmissions and integrated engine-transmission packages.

However, he said, pressure will be on OEMs to put together significant technology packages to comply with the standards while minimizing additional costs, weight and complexity. And while building on existing technology can help, there are new technologies that have to be implemented as well  with waste heat recovery systems and hybrid drivetrains standing out.

Looking at the numbers, Kedzie predicted that a new, GHG-compliant tractor in 2027 will cost $15,119 more than a truck does today (in 2013 dollars).

Fleets may want to mitigate that cost increase by going to OEMs and asking them to build a truck without waste heat recovery or hybrid drivetrains, he noted. And although the OEMs can technically do that under the regulations thanks to average emissions performance based on model year builds and banked credits for early compliance, its not really in their best interest to do so. Because for every inefficient truck they build and sell, the next one has to be super-efficient to maintain their mandated compliance averages.

Ken Calhoun, vice president of customer relations at Truck Centers of Arkansas and a member of ATAs Technology & Maintenance Councils board of directors, thinks the new standards will prove to be difficult to achieve and frets that costs will balloon for all aspects of fleet management. He said many of the technologies highlighted by GHG Phase 2 were pioneered on the recent joint government-industry SuperTruck project. But many of those systems, like waste heat recovery and hybrid drivetrains, were deemed far too expensive to put into production based on their nominal fuel economy returns.

Most of us in trucking have made a career out of adaptation to new technologies, he said. The good old days of who can build a better mousetrap to gain market share and succeed have long since been replaced by who can meet the standards and build in some degree of reliability. There have been some pretty disastrous experiments along the way.

Calhoun said that once again, fleets will be the ultimate adjudicator of the new technologies required by GHG regulations.

The testing will happen in real world application, and we will learn the hard way what works and what doesnt in the repair facilities rather than the labs, he said. Im just hoping that all of these projected cost savings arent immediately gobbled up in maintenance costs, lost utilization, and reduced resale value. At the end of the day, protecting our environment and reducing our dependence on foreign oil are good things, important things, but they will be, as they have been, very challenging for us all.

A different tree to climb?

Kevin Tomlinson, director of maintenance at Ohio-based South Shore Transportation and TMC immediate past chairman, thinks that ultimately, there are better, more common-sense ways to meet GHG emissions targets.

I think the levels outlined in Phase 2 are a little high, he said. Although Im assuming theyre do-able given that we received 10 years to give it a try. On the other hand, this industry has spent a lot of money over the past 10 years in terms of repair and downtime costs. And we have no idea that the next 10 years will bring. Its been challenging to say the least.

Tomlinson said he finds himself wondering if there isnt a better way. Smaller engines burn less fuel and emit fewer emissions, he noted. So why not concentrate on proven technologies like increased turbocharger efficiencies and build smaller, more powerful engines?

Its a sentiment ATAs Kedzie shares. Weve reached the point where EPA has gathered all low-hanging fruit off the tree, he said. And now were going up to get the higher-hanging fruit, which is much harder to get to. And I wonder if maybe wed be better off finding another tree with low-hanging fruit on it.

What Kedzie is talking about is upgrading the nations roadways and transportation network with dedicated freight corridors and truck-platooning lanes. Hes also referring to deploying modern vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication systems and even autonomous trucks that can curtail traffic congestion and boost freight efficiency.

If we get a GHG Phase 3 proposal, were really going to be pushing the envelope, he said. Were already in uncharted waters. And things are quickly getting so complex that only the largest fleets have the resources and staff to deal with all the changes. So Im afraid that these new rules will prove to be even more bad news for owner-operators and small fleets in this country.
WASHINGTON  This is the inversion election, a contest in which so many of our familiar mental categories have been turned upside down.

This year, it's the Republican presidential candidate who says the United States isn't great anymore and the Democrat who insists it is. The Republican says that the former KGB agent now presiding over Russia is a better leader than the president of the United States. The Democrat condemns him for it.

But last week reminded us that there is another role reversal in this election. There is one candidate who is authentically religious, who has thought seriously about what the Scriptures teach, and whose own view of the world was changed radically by her engagement with faith. Her name is Hillary Clinton.

Yes, I flinched when I typed that word "authentically." How can we know whose faith is authentic or truly understand someone else's relationship to God? It's hard enough for most of us to come to terms honestly with our own relationship to the Almighty.

Moreover, I acknowledge that I bring a series of predispositions to my case here, beginning with the most basic: my conviction that Clinton is fit to be president and Donald Trump is not. More importantly in this context, her journey in wrestling with the relationship between religious commitment and political action was remarkably similar to my own.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a key influence on both of us. She re-examined many of her assumptions when she heard him speak. I did the same after I chose a collection of his sermons, "Strength to Love," for a book report in a class at my Catholic high school. I grew up in a conservative family, as Clinton did, and King challenged me -- as he did her and millions of other Americans -- to embrace a Christian's obligation to struggle for social and racial justice.

So let me be more specific about my definition of authenticity. It focuses on passages from the letter of James that Clinton cited in her speech last Thursday to the predominantly African-American National Baptist Convention. James suggests that the best measure of authenticity is whether your faith affects how you think and what you do. Clinton's religious views, I'd argue, are organically connected to many of the choices she has made in her life.

"The Scripture tells us that faith without works is dead," she said. "The Epistle of James tells us we cannot just be hearers of the Word, we must be doers." Clinton explained that she embraced "an activist social justice faith, a roll-up-your-sleeves and get-your-hands-dirty faith."

This is not the only kind of Christianity, and it would be sinfully arrogant to doubt the authenticity of the beliefs of more conservative Christians whose deepest commitments lead them to conclusions quite different from Clinton's on issues such as gay marriage or abortion. In American history, Christians have argued passionately among themselves over what Scripture and tradition teach about a wide range of public questions, including slavery.

What I do doubt is the depth of the conviction of politicians whose religious commitments seem to have little connection to their lives. They paint themselves as religious by either pushing the social conservatives' hot buttons or, as Trump did Friday at the Values Voter Summit, appealing to their sense of victimhood. He spoke about religious liberty and criticized a media culture that "mocks and demeans people of faith."

Conservative religious people have every right to test liberal believers by their willingness to defend the role of faith in our public square. But liberal believers have a comparable right to test conservatives by whether what the Gospel teaches about love, justice and our obligation to the poor has any relationship to their public actions and the policies they promote.

Another test is humility, a hard virtue to come by in an election campaign. Thus did Clinton tell her Baptist audience that "we're not asked to love each other, not urged or requested. We are commanded to love. Indeed, Jesus made it his greatest commandment. When I used to teach the occasional Sunday school class, I often taught on that lesson. That's a hard commandment to obey. Some days it's really hard for me."

Clinton also spoke of "the awesome responsibilities of power and the frailties of human action." I do prefer politicians who follow Kierkegaard's lead in approaching the burdens of governing with a certain amount of "fear and trembling." I see at least some of that spirit in Clinton. I wish I could find it in Trump.

E.J. Dionne's email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.

(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group
TAFT  Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh said Tuesday he wants to make securing a 5 percent raise for all DOC staff a top priority during the next legislative session.

In the public safety arena, were at the bottom of the barrel in Oklahoma, Allbaugh said during a Board of Corrections meeting, referencing starting salaries for entry-level correctional officers. The biggest insult the agency has to endure is  anyone making less than $23,800 a year automatically qualifies for food stamps.

He said he will seek the raise for all employees across the board, calling it unacceptable that nearly 40 percent of DOC employees havent received a raise in 10 years. Starting wages for correctional officers are about $2,200 per month before taxes.

The comments during the boards monthly meeting came after Allbaugh noted the DOC recently received nearly $10.2 million back from the state, which had a more than $140 million surplus at the close of the last fiscal year due to an overestimate of budget cuts.

Allbaugh said he would work with the board to explore ways to allocate the money and present ideas during the October meeting. However, he maintained that he hopes the DOC can acknowledge in some fashion the sacrifices all our employees make every day.

Sean Wallace, Policy Director for Oklahomas Public Employees Association, told the Tulsa World following Allbaughs remarks that he is glad the director is making employee pay a central issue, although he thinks achieving the DOCs goal will be a challenge in the Legislature. He said correctional officers got a raise three years ago but that it still isnt enough to equal a truly livable wage.

Its just a waste of money to recruit and bring in all these cadets and watch 40 percent of them leave within six months, Wallace said. Youre going to save money by actually investing in your employees. Weve talked about a $15-an-hour minimum starting pay for correctional officers. (A) 5 percent (raise) isnt going to get them there. You have fast-food workers across the country arguing they deserve a $15-an-hour minimum. The state of Oklahoma should provide that to correctional officers who are at $12.77 an hour.

Tuesdays meeting, held this month at the minimum-security Jess Dunn Correctional Center, also focused on emergency repairs that are either pending or were recently completed at Jess Dunn, Eddie Warrior Correctional Center in Taft and Lawton Community Corrections Center.

Recent severe weather in Muskogee County damaged a roof at Jess Dunn and downed power lines at Eddie Warrior, Allbaugh said. At the Lawton facility, he said, the air conditioning units have been malfunctioning throughout the summer, especially on days when the temperature reached or surpassed 100 degrees.

All three expenses were less than $75,000 and therefore did not need board approval, Allbaugh said.

The board additionally approved an emergency declaration that allows Allbaugh to substitute emergency projects on the DOCs previously authorized fiscal year 2017 capital improvement plan list. The list will now include a request to replace a boiler system at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and a water treatment plant at Mack Alford Correctional Center in Stringtown.

That (boiler) unit (at OSP) has been dysfunctional, meaning not operational, for two years this October, Allbaugh said. Were putting pressure on the other boiler, which will fail if not remedied soon.

Board member Irma Newburn asked Allbaugh about recent issues with the water system at Dick Conner Correctional Center in Hominy, which required assistance from the Oklahoma National Guard. Allbaugh said the repairs to the water lines at the facility cost less than $60,000.

Finally, the board received an update on the progress of the transition of inmates to North Fork Correctional Center in Sayre, which began July 5. The 1,297 inmates currently at North Fork were previously at Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite, which has since received 718 inmates from the DOCs work centers across the state.

Division Manager of Field Services Laura Pitman said the addition of North Fork, which the DOC is leasing from Corrections Corp. of America, has resulted in the removal of temporary beds at Mack Alford, Dick Conner, James Crabtree Correctional Center in Helena, Joseph Harp Correctional Center in Lexington and Lexington Correctional Center.

North Fork can hold up to 1,510 people in the six units currently in use by the DOC.
WAGONER  Former Wagoner County Sheriff Bob Colberts jury trial on a multicounty grand jurys accusation to remove him from office likely wont take place until at least January, officials said Monday.

Meanwhile, a new defense motion alleges part of the accusation should be tossed because it is based on an undercover deputys misrepresentation to multiple state agencies of Colberts behavior while on duty.

Colbert was set to appear Monday before Pittsburg County District Judge James Bland to determine whether he would be ready for an October trial on the civil case accusation, which stemmed from a grand jury investigation that in March found, among other things, that Colbert willfully neglected to perform his official duties.

Colberts legal counsel previously told the court there was a possible scheduling conflict that could affect civil court trial proceedings, and one of his attorneys told the Tulsa World on Monday that shes optimistic that part of the accusation  and at least a portion of his associated criminal case  will be dismissed.

The grand jury investigation led to the Oklahoma Attorney Generals Office filing three felony charges against Colbert and former Sheriffs Capt. Jeff Gragg. One charge was dismissed during an August preliminary hearing. Both are accused of releasing two people who were under arrest in exchange for them turning over $10,000 that the sheriffs office seized during a December 2014 traffic stop.

Attorney Generals Office spokesman Lincoln Ferguson said Monday that Gragg will next appear in court Sept. 26. Gragg is expected to plead to an amended charge of willfully neglecting to perform his duty, which is a misdemeanor, and testify against Colbert if his case goes before a jury.

Attorney Michon Hastings Hughes, who represents Colbert, said there will be a Nov. 22 hearing before Okmulgee County District Judge Ken Adair regarding a motion to quash a previous judges Aug. 5 order that Colbert be bound over for trial in the criminal case. Minutes from Colberts Wednesday court appearance indicate the criminal case could be heard on the Okmulgee County jury trial sounding docket Feb. 22, with trial proceedings beginning March 20.

If the motion to quash is ruled in our favor, then the whole case goes away for the civil (action), too, Hughes said. If they dont establish probable cause in the criminal case, theyre not going to meet the burden of preponderance of evidence in the removal.  The facts as the states presented them dont present any crime at all.

Hughes said she hopes Bland at least grants a hearing on her clients motion for partial summary judgment on count three of the accusation for removal, which is based on how Colbert reportedly failed to properly handled money set aside for undercover operations. A new court date on the civil case has not yet been set, and Ferguson said the state has 15 days from Sept. 5  the date the motion was filed  to file a response to it.

The motion for partial summary judgment alleges the undercover deputy misrepresented the amount of expenditures from the undercover fund and claims all money from that fund was accounted for at the time of an audit conducted by the Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspectors Office.

The audit was released in August 2015 and said Colbert could not explain how his staff spent $440 from the undercover operations fund.

It also found that his office abused more than $7,000 in county funds by using them to purchase items considered to be self-promotion.

Authorities used the wrong account and the wrong records to compare to the expenditures, the motion states, adding that the fund was for expenses other than drug buys. The District 27 Drug Task Force provides funds to purchase drugs during undercover operations, according to the motion.

The undercover deputy reportedly told authorities Colbert fabricated receipts related to undercover fund expenses because he knew Colbert found them at his home, which did not match his recollection and summary of his own spending from the fund.

The motion says the deputys inaccurate accusations, combined with investigators failure to verify the claims, caused Colbert and his family irreparable harm and enormous monetary and emotional damage.

Nick Mahoney, a spokesman for the Wagoner County Sheriffs Office, said Monday that current Sheriff Chris Elliott has the utmost confidence in the undercover deputy and has no reason to doubt his abilities. He said the deputy turned over all his expenditure logs to authorities and that the sheriffs office strives for transparency.

Colbert, who was first elected in 2008, has been suspended with pay since March and did not run for re-election this year. Elliott, a former longtime Tulsa police officer, won a June 28 election to replace him and was sworn in the next week, succeeding interim Sheriff Dan David, who had been appointed by the Wagoner County Board of Commissioners.
Public costs tied to the Robert Bates scandal have nearly doubled  now totaling $334,160  with the announced settlement in a fired majors tort claim against Tulsa County.

Former Sheriff Stanley Glanz terminated Maj. Shannon Clark amid the Bates tumult in what Clark termed a biased sham investigation in search of a culprit who leaked a damning internal document to the media. The county reached a settlement with Clark and his legal team on a $150,000 payout, revealed in a resolution unanimously approved by commissioners on Aug. 29.

Prior to the settlement, the Tulsa World had calculated $184,160 in expenses incurred by the county specifically connected to former Reserve Deputy Bates fatally shooting Eric Harris 17 months ago.

The $334,160 total that now can be accounted for leaps to $376,160 when inserting an estimated cost burden from reserve deputies not working the 2015 Tulsa State Fair. That loss in volunteer manpower was about $42,000, an estimated figure derived from data in the Sheriffs Office 2014 annual report.

The special primary and general elections to plug the remainder of Glanzs vacated term didnt end up costing the county extra expenses. Patty Bryant, secretary of the Tulsa County Election Board, said the two chosen dates already had countywide votes  the presidential primary and the Vision 2025 package, respectively  allowing the sheriff races to be printed on those ballots.

Two pending civil rights lawsuits filed in January that allege Bates used excessive force might ring up substantial payouts.

The Sheriffs Office and five others  including Glanz and Bates  are named as defendants in a case filed on behalf of the estate of Harris.

Glanz, Bates and the Sheriffs Office are defendants in the other suit, which was filed on behalf of Terry Byrum.

Bates used a stun gun on Byrum on Feb. 12 while Byrum was handcuffed on the ground. The suit alleges Bates placed his foot on Byrums head and upper neck before using the Taser.

In dispute is whether Byrum continued to struggle or was compliant with a deputys commands before Bates deployed his Taser.

Attorney Dan Smolen filed the suits and is seeking in excess of $75,000 in actual and punitive damages for use of excessive force and supervisor or official capacity liability. Harris estate also seeks damages for deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.

Smolen told reporters after Bates second-degree manslaughter conviction on April 27 that jurors affirmed an element he will have to establish in the Harris civil suit in determining Bates was culpably negligent in the shooting.

Youve got a finding with Mr. Bates as far as his actions. And in a civil rights case, what were looking at is, were the actions of the officer unreasonable under the circumstances? Did he act in deliberate indifference to Harris constitutionally protected rights to be free from being shot in the middle of the street? Smolen said.

And clearly this jury says, Yes, his actions do. So thats part of an element that you have to prove in the civil case.

And the trial itself added extra expenses to the Sheriffs Office budget to pay overtime to some deputies on the day of the verdict. Spokeswoman Casey Roebuck said the amount of overtime wasnt much, and the exact figures werent available in time for publishing.

Previously reported public costs incurred so far include:

 $31,956.70 to the law firm of Wood Puhl & Wood to represent Bates during the criminal and administrative investigations of the Harris shooting in April 2015. General Counsel Meredith Baker said the Sheriffs Office stopped footing the bills once charges were filed against Bates.

 $33,969.93 to the law firm of McDonald McCann Metcalf & Carwile to contest the grand jury petition in June 2015 that sought to remove Glanz from office. Invoices werent submitted for any work in July 2015, which included an Oklahoma Supreme Court referee hearing, the two-day grand jury selection process and numerous pages of court documents filed.

 $13,233.37 was incurred by the Tulsa County District Court Clerks Office for the grand jury investigation of Glanz and his office, which took place on 20 days spread across two months in August and September 2015.

 $105,000 to contract with Texas-based Community Safety Institute to conduct a review of the Sheriffs Office in light of the Bates scandal, which was publicly released upon its completion in February after eight months. The figure initially was $75,000, but commissioners unanimously approved an additional $30,000 for auditors to address the grand jurys eight recommendations.
Dear Doctor K: Im convinced my husband is depressed, but he refuses to seek help. What can I say to convince him that he could benefit from therapy?

Dear Reader: Most men dont like to ask for help or to talk about their feelings. Thats not going to be easy for your husband. However, doing nothing could make it harder for him. If he is suffering from depression and doesnt get help, it could threaten everything important in his life, starting with family, friends and work.

Left unchecked, the symptoms of depression can make a person miserable. The sadness, lack of energy, loss of interest in sex, difficulty thinking and constant feeling of stress can cause serious problems at home and at work. They may even lead to destructive behavior like alcohol or drug dependence.

Your husband likely recognizes these negative feelings and changes. But he may not know the root cause, or if he does, what he can do about it. You need to gently help him recognize that he is unhappy and that it is causing tensions at home and at work (assuming thats true). And you need to assure him that help is available and what that involves.

You might explain to him that, generally speaking, a therapist will help establish treatment goals and then outline a strategy to meet them. This may include a combination of therapy during regular sessions and homework in between visits. After a series of initial treatment sessions, your husband might return periodically for booster visits to prevent a future relapse.

If youre able to convince your husband to try therapy, hell need to find a therapist. A primary care physician is a good place to start. Your husband can speak with his PCP about his situation, how he feels and his symptoms. The doctor can recommend therapists who can help.

If your husband would prefer not to go through his PCP, there are other resources. Many employee health care plans offer confidential help lines where you can ask questions and find therapists in your network. Another source is the National Alliance on Mental Illness Helpline (1-800-950-6264).

Finally, once you get him started, encourage your husband to stick with therapy, even if he does not feel a strong connection with the first therapist he tries. Advise him to try someone else and not get discouraged.

Write to Dr. Komaroff at AskDoctorK.com, or Ask Doctor K, 10 Shattuck St., Second Floor, Boston, MA 02115.
The CEO of Ramps Logistics says he is "really really disappointed" with the Guyana Revenue A
Ahead of next weeks Pride vs Prejudice highlights on ABC2, is the UK documentary Welcome to the Mosque.

For 8 months filmmaker Robb Leech (My Brother the Islamist, My Brother the Terrorist) films a Muslim community in East London.

With unprecedented access, this documentary gets inside one of Europes biggest Muslim communities, giving a unique insight into the people who make up its congregation.

East London Mosque is one of the largest in Europe  over a quarter of a million people walk through its doors during the month of Ramadan, and up to 7,000 fill its walls for Friday prayers. But for most people outside, its a place of mystery.

Having documented radical Islam in My Brother the Islamist and My Brother the Terrorist, filmmaker Robb Leech now asks what its like to be an ordinary Muslim living in the West. He follows the everyday lives of the people in the community, experiencing their faith at first hand.

Over eight months, Robb captures key moments in the life of the Mosque, from the rituals of washing before Friday prayers, to preparing Muslim couples for marriage at the centres very own match-making service. He also witnesses the effect of gender segregation on community members, and meets young Muslims at the Mosque School, where children learn the tenets of their faith alongside English, Maths and other core subjects from the national curriculum.

Welcome to the Mosque follows the families of the London schoolgirls who fled Britain to join Isis jihadists in Syria. Whether capturing an emotional encounter between the Mosques charismatic young Media and Communications Officer and a distraught sister of one of the girls, or travelling to Istanbul with the families of the missing girls to try and track them down, Robbs distinctive hand-held camera gives an intimate feel to dramatic events.

Wednesday 14 September 9.30pm on ABC2.
Defense Minister of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak has signed a document canceling 395 orders that prevent carrying out reforms and halt the process of adopting needed decisions, the ministrys press service reports.

We continue the work on bringing laws and regulations of the Defense Ministry of Ukraine to the standards of armies of the leading countries. With this regard, today Defense Minister, General of the Ukrainian Army Stepan Poltorak signed an order on recognizing as not valid 395 orders, which were approved in previous years and which hinder the process of adopting managerial decisions and prevent implementing reforms, reads a statement.

Moreover, this is the fifth order Defense Minister Poltorak signed to cancel previous decisions that prevented the ministry from carrying out reforms. At present over 1,600 orders have been abolished by relevant decisions.

iy
Finland has invested EUR 100 million in Ukraine's economy over the past twenty years, Finnish Foreign Trade and Development Minister Kai Mykkanen has stated at a briefing in Kherson Regional State Administration, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

It is worth noting that Finland invested EUR 100 million in Ukraine over the past twenty years, Mykkanen said, adding that many Finnish companies move their production facilities to Ukraine.

A reminder that the Finnish minister arrived in Kherson to attend the opening ceremony of the advanced eco-school built in the village of Antonivka by Finnish professionals and funded by the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (NEFCO).

mk
EU Ambassador to Ukraine Hugues Mingarelli asks the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to pass the bill on the National Commission for State Energy and Public Utilities Regulation of Ukraine next week.

This is said in the statement released by the EU Delegation to Ukraine.

"We are very disappointed that the law on the Energy Regulator was not adopted by the Verkhovna Rada in final reading," the statement reads.

It is noted that this bill is urgently needed to support further reform in the energy sector, notably gas and electricity.

"I very much hope that the bill will be passed as soon as the Rada reconvenes in plenary next week. The adoption of this law is also a condition for the release of the second tranche of EUR 600 million under the EU's Macro-financial assistance," Mingarelli said.

ol
Ukraine will file a lawsuit against the Russian Federation with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea regarding the violation of the relevant convention by Russia already this week.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said this on their air of ICTV Ukrainian TV channel on Monday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The first major lawsuit regarding UN Convention on the Law of the Sea will be filed this week. It is comprehensive as it includes such fundamental issues as the use of maritime space, violation of environmental safety, as well as objects of cultural heritage," the Minister said.

Klimkin noted that Ukraine would accuse Russia of violating key international conventions.

ol
Holding Russian parliamentary elections on the territory of temporarily occupied Crimea, despite their illegality, will not be a reason for severing diplomatic relations with the Kremlin.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said this on their air of ICTV Ukrainian TV channel on Monday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"I want to stress that this will not have any direct effect," the Minister said, when asked whether Russian elections in the occupied Crimea will actualize breaking off the diplomatic relations.

Klimkin noted that the diplomatic relations with Russia, which "actually exist in form, not in meaning", were needed to help Ukrainians residing in Russia.

ol
Consular establishments of Poland in Ukraine plan to issue over one million visas for Ukrainian citizens.

Foreign Minister of Poland Witold Waszczykowski stated this in an article Open doors for Ukraine, published in the Polish Rzeczpospolita before his visit to Ukraine.

This year we expect to exceed the threshold of one million issued visas [for Ukrainians], Waszczykowski wrote.

He also stressed that Warsaw supports the introduction of a visa-free regime for Ukraine as soon as possible.

We believe that Ukrainians deserve the adoption of such a historical decision, which will be another important step facilitating interpersonal contacts in Europe and promoting common values, the Polish foreign minister said.

iy
The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) has named Nigerian-American journalist Chika Oduah as the recipient of its inaugural Young Reporter for a Sustainable Future Award. The Award celebrates and encourages reporting from emerging journalists who demonstrate commitment to producing compelling stories that improve peoples daily lives and raise awareness of issues related to the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Award is part of ICFJs new partnership with the United Nations Foundation to help elevate and expand the conversation around a range of development issues. Last year, 193 Member States of the United Nations pledged to tackle poverty, health, climate change, inequality, and other global challenges as part of a comprehensive worldwide agenda known as the Sustainable Development Goals.

Oduah, who lives in Abuja, Nigeria, has reported for both Nigerian and international news outlets including CNN, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian, and Bella Naija. She stands out for her high-quality multimedia reporting on environmental abuses, poverty among disenfranchised ethnic groups, human trafficking, laws that victimize gays, and the high incidence of breast cancer in sub-Saharan Africa. Oduah accepted the award during a luncheon hosted by the UN Foundation in partnership with ICFJ.

Oduahs reporting stands out not only for her determination to expose humanitarian abuses, but also for her ability to use new technology for deeper, more meaningful coverage, said ICFJ President Joyce Barnathan. She sets a great example for other journalists eager to tackle the worlds most important social concerns.

The Awards luncheon featured an armchair conversation with Barnathan and UN Foundation President and CEO Kathy Calvin on the medias role in spotlighting global challenges and the Sustainable Development Goals. Cristina Gallach, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information at the United Nations, provided an opening address.

Action on the Sustainable Development Goals starts with engaged global citizens  and journalism plays a vital role in informing the public. This important partnership with the International Center for Journalists will help media professionals better inform communities in the United States and across the globe about the pressing issues of our time, Calvin said.

###

About the United Nations Foundation

The United Nations Foundation builds public-private partnerships to address the worlds most pressing problems, and broadens support for the United Nations through advocacy and public outreach. Through innovative campaigns and initiatives, the Foundation connects people, ideas, and resources to help the UN solve global problems. The Foundation was created in 1998 as a U.S. public charity by entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner and now is supported by philanthropic, corporate, government, and individual donors. Learn more at: www.unfoundation.org.

About the International Center for Journalists

The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) is at the forefront of the news revolution with programs that empower journalists and engage citizens with new technologies and best practices. ICFJs networks of reporters and media entrepreneurs are transforming the field. We believe that better journalism leads to better lives.
One year ago, the European Union (EU) and Member States agreed on a two-year plan to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers mainly from Greece and Italy to other European countries. Yet, the number of pledges continues to be woefully inadequate and implementation unnecessarily slow and challenging. So far, 4,776 asylum-seekers have been relocated from Greece and Italy, only 3% of the original target. UNHCR is calling on States to increase pledges, including for unaccompanied and separated children, speed up the registration and transfers of candidates, and for more nationalities fleeing war and persecution to have access to the scheme.

States have been slow in providing pledges despite agreeing to the plan. In some instances, while States have indicated the places made available, these same places have not been formally pledged to Greece and Italy. This is exacerbating the difficulties for asylum-seekers who can and should benefit from the scheme. Effective relocation is key to increasing solidarity and responsibility sharing in Europe, and ensuring the better management of movements, including helping to address irregular secondary movement and reliance on smuggler networks. This is particularly vital given the humanitarian situation in Greece, and the increasing number of people staying in Italy and applying for asylum.

From Greece, a total of 3,712 asylum-seekers have departed the country thus far and 7,970 people have been referred for relocation. So far, there are 8,676 pledges available for relocation from 21 EU Member States, as well as Switzerland and Liechtenstein, representing only 13% of the target of 66,400 places. The pre-registration exercise which took place in mainland Greece has helped to obtain further estimates of people who might be eligible for relocation. Based on nationalities of those pre-registered there are around 19,000 persons who could be eligible for relocation in mainland Greece. UNHCR encourages the Greek Asylum Service to further speed up the registration of candidates for relocation. UNHCR continues to support relocation candidates through the provision of accommodation. 12,290 relocation candidates and other asylum-seekers have been accommodated in small temporary apartments, hotels at special rates and host families so far, with the support of the European Commission. Many more men, women and children who are eligible for relocation still live in sites with poor conditions and security, which are inadequate for the coming winter. Speedier relocation would mitigate their fear and uncertainty about their future.

From Italy, 1,064 asylum-seekers have been relocated to 16 countries with 2,809 pledges made available to date. More people are staying in Italy than in previous years, including due to increased border controls in the northern areas. For example, the number of first time asylum applications in Italy has increased by 53% (72,470) this year compared to the same period in 2015 (47,428). This has impacted on the capacity of its reception and asylum systems, and requires a strong gesture of solidarity from other Member States.

Participating States also need to accelerate the processing and transfer of relocation candidates. States need to work in partnership with the Greek and Italian authorities and relevant agencies to increase the personnel and infrastructure made available, and to speed up the registration and processing of cases.

UNHCR also calls upon the EU and Member States to revisit the eligibility criteria by lowering the threshold for relocation candidates to include additional nationalities likely in need of protection. Currently, only asylum-seekers of nationalities with an average recognition rate of 75% or higher at the EU level are eligible for relocation. Based on the latest available EU data, this threshold excludes, for example, Iraqis, who previously met the threshold, as their average recognition rate has fallen to 73%.

The obstacles to implementing the relocation scheme now need to be overcome. In addition, parallel efforts must be undertaken in integrating those refugees not eligible for relocation. UNHCR continues to support participating States, the Commission and EU Agencies towards fully implementing the scheme. It is imperative that our collective efforts begin to deliver significantly on the commitments made one year ago for the benefit of people in need of international protection.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
Yessenia* rounded the corner one afternoon in March when she saw a group of four young men beating another. They saw her too. Its the teacher! she remembers one yelling before they scattered.

The boy they left behind was so badly beaten that at first Yessenia did not recognize him as one of her students at the grade school where she taught in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.

If I hadnt showed up they would have killed him, she says.

But any consolation from knowing she might have saved the boys life would be short lived. Two days later, she saw another group of young men she did not recognize near the school where she worked. Unable to avoid them on the street, she said, Good morning," and kept her eyes down.

Later that night she heard the suspected members of a street gang or mara - who commit crimes ranging from extortion to robbery and murder - had tried to kidnap a 21-year-old man before police arrived to rescue their would-be victim.

Everyone has a story about a family whose home has been burned down or a son recruited by the gangs.

The gangs frequently murder witnesses to their crimes. Yessenia had witnessed two crimes in as many days and knew she would be pegged as a police informer if charges were ever filed.

Racked with fear and anxiety, she stopped eating and sleeping and developed high blood pressure. She put in for a transfer and fled the school where she had taught for 12 years without telling anyone the real reason.

The 56-year-old is now one of tens of thousands of Hondurans who have become displaced within the borders of their Central American homeland by raging gang violence. A government report released last year estimated that 174,000 people were displaced internally in the decade to 2014. A growing number have also sought asylum abroad.

A resident walks in the El Bosque neighbourhood in central Tegucigalpa. The area is among many in the Honduran capital considered dangerous because of the presence of local gangs known as "maras."  UNHCR/Tito Herrera

Children play in a small community in the city of Tegucigalpa.  UNHCR/Tito Herrera

The front page of daily newspaper La Tribuna leads on the murder of a university student the previous day in Tegucigalpa.  UNHCR/Tito Herrera

Communities such as La Era in Tegucigalpa city are in constant danger of gang violence.  UNHCR/Tito Herrera

While she was still at the school Yessenia received frantic phone calls from parents of students desperate to get their children transferred to schools outside the crime-wracked neighbourhood. She says 60 students left the school between March and May, nearly half of those registered for classes. The school's director also fled.

Families in San Pedro Sula, the countrys second-largest city which in 2014 recorded the highest homicide rate in the world, live with the same fears. Residents of the citys crime-blighted Rivera Hernandez neighbourhood said many neighbours were abandoning their homes for the United States and Mexico.

Speaking with community members there, nearly everyone had a story about a family whose home had been burned down, a son who was recruited by the gangs, a relative who had been killed or fled.

San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second-largest city, recorded the highest homicide rate in the world in 2014.

They were leaving in droves, says Dolores,* the principal of a school there. These days, she says they lose about ten students a year who have to give up school because of threats or violence from the maras.

One of those students is Maria*. The 16-year-old loved going to school but says she had to give up her dream of studying finance when a local gangster wanted her as his girlfriend.

"I knew that if I went with him and things went bad, it would be very bad for me, she says. There are seven different gangs vying for control of Rivera Hernandez. In a place where gangs battle for territory block by block to extort businesses, association with a mara could be a death sentence if she walked down the wrong street.

Maria tried to rebuff the gang members advances, but he was persistent. He waited for her outside the school. He followed her. Afraid she might end up forced into a relationship with him or raped, Maria did the only thing she could to avoid him: she stopped going to school.

A UNHCR staff member greets a local resident at the Augusto Alvarado Castro community center in San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second-largest city.  UNHCR/Tito Herrera

The sign outside a gun repair shop in San Pedro Sula reads: "Don't let this happen to you, come visit us."  UNHCR/Tito Herrera

Students walk home from school in the community of 6 de Mayo in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Local schools have become a recruiting ground for street gangs.  UNHCR/Tito Herrera

A mural in San Pedro Sula shows flowers emerging from a gun barrel. In 2014, the gang-ravaged city had the highest murder rate in the world.  UNHCR/Tito Herrera

UNHCRs representative in Honduras, Andres Celis, says the kind of violence displacing, or otherwise disrupting, the lives of people like Yessenia and Maria is a challenge for the government to address. There are mechanisms for someone to seek protection from the state but each case is handled on an ad hoc basis.

For that reason, UN Special Rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons Chaloka Beyani recommended Honduras take steps to create a system that clearly outlines the governments response for someone fleeing violence, including a safe way to declare themselves displaced, and providing shelter and relocation.

But before such a system could be successful, the government must work to re-establish trust between the police and communities. The same fear that drives people from their homes keeps them from seeking help, believing that any visibility could threaten their life. This is especially true when the displaced see the police and other government authorities as complicit with the maras.

The same fear that drives people from their homes keeps them from seeking help.

So far, Honduras is the only country in Central America to give formal recognition of the forced displacement of its citizens by gang violence. It has pledged to draft legislation by the end of this year to formalize mechanisms to provide protection to those fleeing violence. In the meantime, however, the state faces gaps in its ability to provide basic protection and resources to those in need.

The UN Refugee Agency is responding with steps including the provision of technical assistance to Government and local authorities to develop and implement national legal frameworks and public policies for the protection of people displaced by violence. Other steps include monitoring high-risk areas of internal displacement, as well as working to improve reception conditions.

"We cant wait for the situation to continue intensifying, Celis says. The government of Honduras called UNHCR and acknowledged there is a problem with forced displacement here. When they call, we have to answer."



*Names have been changed for protection reasons.


The "Single payer and Multiple providers" is a health care policy where there the government pays for everything while the public has access to treatment given by any doctor or hospital in the country. This is the same principle that presidential hopeful Donald Trump wants to happen in the United States' education system. How will he do it and what improvements will it bring?

In his book, "The America We Deserve", Trump complained that the public school system has become a monopoly and competition has become a thing of the past. Because of this, he argued, public schools have become apathetic and stopped providing quality education. The only cure for this, he further reasoned, is to bring in competition by empowering parents to send their children to a school of their choice. By encouraging competition, parents and children have now access to "multiple providers" by using vouchers.

It works pretty simply: A student receives a voucher from the government containing the average cost for schooling. Any qualified school can take that voucher and take in as many students who want to enroll in that school.

This kind of system can be likened to how the Swedish education system works where a student receives public funding in any private school that offers primary and secondary education of their choice. This was what Bernie Sanders had proposed considering how he saw it worked in Sweden. The same system might be good for the US public school system as well.

Despite the promise it brings, there is still the persisting question whether the "single payer, multiple providers" principle bring the much-needed improvement into the system?

Basically, competition compels schools to innovate and experiment on what strategy works. These experimentations will allow them to discover the best way to teach students. These may also mean a lot of mistakes but that is how the road to progress looks like.

Moreover, a number of studies have been made regarding school choice and there is indeed a positive effect in public school performance. On the other hand, no empirical data shows that school choice has a negative effect on students in public schools. In fact, one of these studies showed that the greater the competition is, the bigger improvements the students have.

Another benefit this principle brings is a no-brainer because parents can choose the right school for their children's needs. Each child has their own unique personality, characteristic, preference, and need. If these needs and preferences are met, children will have more opportunities to grow because they have the freedom to find and grow in the right environment.

Compared to Clinton who has a clear-cut plan on her educational policy, Trump still has a lot to answer regarding the clarity of his stance including a sound plan how he would bring about those changes. However, his "single payer, multiple providers" principle holds a lot of promise. And whether he will win the elections or not, the public school system is in need of a radical fix in order to ensure that the "future" of the United States get the quality education they deserve.
If there were two schools that best describe the phrase "opposites attract," it would be Philadelphia University and Thomas Jefferson University. The former specializes in design while the latter has been considered one of the best in health sciences; thus, there aren't any factors that might guarantee a successful marriage. Yet they went with their original intent to merge and it finally happened. And with that came the question how it will benefit its students.

Looking at the surface, it is easy to surmise that the merger will make both campuses bigger in size. Philadelphia University sits on a sprawling 105-acre ground at the edge of the city while Jefferson is the 13-acre campus in the very heart of the city.

Stephen Klasko, CEO and President of Thomas Jefferson University and who will also become the president after the merger, said that the combined university will have two hubs, namely the East Falls and the Center City campuses. With two hubs, students have more choice where to go and they will not just have more but better facilities as well since Klasko already revealed that they are planning to improve the exercise and dining facilities.

Despite the infrastructure, the most important and obvious benefit for this merger is a bigger population. Once the merger gets approved by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the combined university will have around 7,500 enrollees and 78,000 alumni. That would make them the fifth-largest university in Philadelphia, a little behind St. Joseph University but ahead of Villanova and La Salle.

A large number of alumni base also spells more resources that would allow the school to hire the best faculty and create state-of-the-art facilities. Large enrollment also means an opportunity for more state funds which, in turn, can help lower tuition costs.

Klasko also added that he hoped the merger will revolutionize education "in how we provide greater value in more customized offerings, and in the recognition that design and healthcare are inextricably linked."

Philadelphia University President Stephen Spinelli, Jr can't agree more adding that by enhancing the value they give to their students, they can give more value back into the society.

"We're thinking doctors who are designers, nurses who are managers, designers who are physician assistants, occupational therapists who are industrial designers or who are given education around an interdisciplinary approach," he added.

To ensure a seamless and efficient transition, a market research study has been commissioned by the two universities to create a cohesive brand strategy and implementation plan while maintaining the value of each institution.
Wake Forest University will welcome the only child of former U.S president Bill Clinton and 2016 Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton today, September 13 in light of a leadership conference for women. Here, Clinton is set to share some advocacy and plans that her mother has for mothers, families and the economy of North Carolina. Her presence in the university is very timely since the election date is only 60 days away.

Clinton will not be the first to share her insights onstage of Wake Forest. The university founded in 1834 has housed several other speech events before during presidential campaigns. It has also been the venue of debates between notable people in the likes of Al Gore and George W. Bush last 2008. Going further back in time, the late George Bush and Michael Dukakis have exchanged their thoughts in the very same location. However, this would be the 36 year-old, Stanford University graduate's first time to visit for a general election trip. Winston-Salem Journal confirms that after the panel visit, she will be heading straight to Raleigh tomorrow. The trip's cause would be to share her and her mother's thoughts on innovation and technology. This is to be followed by a grand opening of the Durham campaign office. It will surely be a busy week for the former NBC special correspondent.

Chelsea Clinton has her name established in the world of non-governmental entities working for the Clinton Foundation since 2011. She has also worked for well-known bodies such as, but not limited to Avenue Capital Group, Common Sense Media and the New York University. She took her undergraduate degree at Stanford University and later gained her master's from Columbia University and Oxford.

It can be recalled that Clinton has also previously visited various campuses in the U.S towards her mother, Hillary Clinton's presidential nomination last 2007 and 2008.
Chinese hacker team, Pangu, does not release any new jailbreaking tool for iOS 9; this is probably because the team is currently working on the iOS 10 jailbreak.

Pangu is currently working on iOS 10 jailbreak?

Apple device users are waiting for iOS 10 roll out on September 13 but the jailbreaker fans highly expect the Chinese hacking team to also release the jailbreaking tool for the new OS. Pangu demonstrated security issue in iOS 10 beta a few months ago at MOSEC. This means that the team has already learned their way to jailbreak the operating system that has yet to be launched for public users.

@Ziph0n I hope Pangu already have a jailbreak and will release it with iOS 10  Matrucci (@matrucci) August 24, 2016



For the record, iOS 10 jailbreak beta 8 has been demonstrated by Italian hacker Luca Tudesco. However, the fans are disappointed since he does not plan to release the software for public download.

iOS 9.3.3 jailbreak Pangu

Apple previously released the latest patch, iOS 9.3.5, which makes Pangu's newest jailbreaking tool for iOS 9 useless. RedmondPie reported that users who 'care about jailbreak' should not update the iOS to iOS 9.3.5 if they do not want the device to get affected. However, if users are not planning to use the jailbreak solution, they are encouraged to update the OS to the latest version for more essential securities.

iOS 10 jailbreak Pangu release date

For those planning to break the Apple restriction in their iOS 10 device; they should wait for Pangu's jailbreaking tool. Looking at the previous release schedules, Pangu usually launches the tool a few weeks after a major iOS upgrade is rolled out by Apple.

Hence, the fans should anticipate the iOS 10 jailbreak tool in a matter of weeks after the OS is officially released for public. Hopefully, in the first week of October.

Meanwhile, check out a video of the unofficial jailbreaking tool for iOS 10 below!
Alabama State University is being sued by its Nigerian students for unnecessary charges when, in fact, the government has already paid for their education. The students also accused the school for treating them "like animals."

The Daily Beast reported that 41 Nigerian nationals, several of whom have since graduated from Alabama State University, have sued the college for overcharging them for books and meals. They also accused the school of enrolling them in classes that they never took, among others, because of the fact that they were black foreigners.

The Alabama State University is listed as one of the 100 Historic Black Colleges and Universities in America. The students received full scholarships for four years of education from the Nigerian government's fund.

"They called us cash cows," Jimmy Iwezu, an ASU alum, said. "I'm a black man and I'm proud to be black, but I felt discriminated against."

Apparently, the school intentionally mismanaged millions from the scholarship fund which was paid in advance. Iwezu added that Alabama State University had proclaimed autonomy over the seven-figure sum paid by the Nigerian government in 2013 for the 41 students.

Attorney Julian McPhillips is representing the Nigerian students. He brought the lawsuit to court for the second time. The first attempt in April was dismissed. According to Quartz, the first suit was dismissed without prejudice in July since it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction.

The students alleged that they were ripped off by ASU "because of their Nigerian national origin," as per the lawsuit. It was also noted that the students were hammered with exorbitant "billing" and that they weren't "being treated like other students" when the school increased the price of books, room and board.

"They tell me, 'You're a resident of the scholarship,'" Iwezu added. "So they think they can do whatever they want with the money [Nigeria] gives them... I'm not going to let them treat us like animals."
Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder Alexandria Williams is facing backlash for conflict-of-interest allegations after the York University student union donated thousands of dollars to the activist group. Williams is also the Equity vice president for the York Federation of Students (YFS).

The Toronto Sun reported that, during Alexandria Williams' tenure with the York Federation of Students, the student union made two donations to BLM. The donations totaled to $7,500. The first donation, which was $2,500, was approved back in August last year.

"As long as there is injustice happening in our society, the YFS will support and stand in solidarity with all oppressed groups," YFS president Chenthoori Malankov said. "The YFS is a democratic organization and our members have the right to put forth motions and it will be discussed."

The agenda from the meeting, held privately at the York University Student Center, revealed that the student politicians were considering a motion moved by Williams to write letters on behalf of the YFS to Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders, Toronto Mayor John Tory and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. The motion was to condemn the police practice of carding.

In a separate motion, moved by another YFS executive Huda Alsarraj, was resolved by donating $2,500 to Black Lives Matter. The second motion was approved at the YFS's annual general meeting on Nov. 30, 2015. The agenda for that meeting showed Williams suggesting that the student union donate another $1,000 to the cause. It was unclear who amended the motion since the donation was bumped up to $5,000.

"I do think that it is a conflict of interest," Rena Silver, a student who attended the AGM and president of the Israel-advocacy student group Hasbara at York, said. "I believe the Black Lives Matter movement is an important one. And it certainly was not out of the question to donate money to an organization like that, but as a measure of professionalism and objectivity, someone else should have been the champion of the motion."

This issue comes after BLM has received a total of more than $100 million from liberal foundations and individual contributions.
According to the Conservative former minister, David Willetts, schools should try and endeavor to improve their system. They should go beyond "not simply by selecting the kids who are going to do best."

Willetts explain that much of the social mobility improvement back in the 1950s and 1960s was "down to increasing numbers of white collar jobs" and not grammar schools. David Willets discusses that the entire education system needs an overhaul.

The education system when it comes to academic selection should be reshaped. If everyone wants a better social mobility result, then they should not, according to The Guardian, not focus on academic selection with a narrow perspective. The Conservative former minister signals the government's plans for new grammar schools.

The government, under Education Secretary Justine Greening's lead, is planning to release information regarding a new breed of grammar schools. Not only that, this initiative aims to include private school's attendance in the community as well.

But David Willetts shakes his head regarding this move. He was vocal in saying that the plan to remove a ban on new grammar schools in England does not solve social mobility. He says that there should be a proper and "coherent response" in the case of the education system.

He writes in the Guardian, stating that a social mobility strategy should include all stages of education. "It has to include competitive pressures on schools to improve their performance - and not simply by selecting the kids who are going to do best," says Lord Willetts.

He also points out school standards have widened and this is shocking when it comes to the basis of a good and steady employment for graduates. Now parents are thinking that it is important to send their kids to prestigious universities which should not be the case. There are other colleges and schools out there that can give them a future too.

Want to know more about David Willetts? The University of Leicester has conferred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws upon Rt Hon Lord David Willetts. Watch the video below:
United States Education Secretary John B. King Jr says that opportunity can never be rationed in the country. He adds that opportunity is not a perk which is being denied to other people.

"Opportunity must be available to all. Opportunity and education are not only the foundation of our democracy and the American way of life," says King.

Before King came aboard, President Barack Obama already has his heart set on improving the education system in order to provide better opportunities for Americans which would lead them to success. According to Education, Obama envisions to address the drop out crisis, increase graduation rates and improve student achievement. These and many more will mean that students would have the opportunity to prepare them for college and a great career while making sure education is affordable.

Before President Barack Obama steps down, he looks to finish his agenda on the education system. Which is why the Every Student Succeeds Act is being put in place. While many states have already created their own educational reform plans, John B. King continues to deliver Obama's legacy on education.

Ever since President Barack Obama took office, he has seen more students graduating in college compared to previous years. He has also seen older students and adults enrolling in college for the first time ever. At the same time, student debt is said to be minimized successfully as defaults, forbearances and delinquencies are trending down.

Obama's vision to build on the nation's education system for the future continues. As the Obama administration works with each state and community to create an environment that is essential for students and to provide world class education for every child and adult that needs it.

To continue his legacy, United States Secretary John B. King Jr is going on a five day bus trip in six states. From Washington, DC to New Orleans, he will work and talk with different people to create "Opportunity Across America."

Want to know more about this? Check out the video below:
"Grey's Anatomy's" own Sara Ramirez plays a doctor who saves lives. But she won't be for much longer.

The long time television show actress is not coming back for "Grey's Anatomy" season 13. It was a decision she decided to make that meant a lot to her. She did not get any backlashes from it. Her own colleagues supported her decision even though it meant her leaving the show.

You know her as Dr. Callie Torres. Parade quotes her in saying "It's the best choice I ever made." But before she left the show, she created her own series of TED talks titled "Education Revolution." The talk is filmed through a PBS special with fellow host Baratunde Thurston. The talk is part of the Spotlight Education week.

Ramirez explains that as an individual of mixed race (Mexican-Irish-American) and a female of color, she sees education as important especially knowing that 60% of Latin and African American kids drop out of high school. The "Grey's Anatomy" actress adds that she wants to be part of a revolution that focuses on how education is changing to adapt to the digital and tech world. "It felt very current," says Ramirez.

She uses her own personal background, family, education and experiences as her basis for this decision. She knows that education and learning is a priority. The actress herself experienced different types of discrimination and racism in school.

"I'm aware of how distractions can really prevent you from learning, from really investing in your education especially if you don't feel valued, if you don't feel seen, if you feel neglected on some level, whether it's teachers not following through, not really caring about their students as human beings but just as numbers, or if students are struggling with issues at home because one of their parents is incarcerated, or one of their parents is on drugs, or they're being raised by their grandparents and they're not getting the specific services they need or support they need, or they live in a neighborhood where at any moment there could be a drive by.

There are some very legitimate pressures for a lot of our youth, especially our youth of color, and so for those reasons too, I really was curious to see what these evenings were going to be about. So, all of those reasons made me really want to participate," says Sara Ramirez.

The cast and viewers of "Grey's Anatomy" will surely miss Dr. Callie in the hospital wards and TV screens.
Published: September 13, 2016

Sophomore Unplugs in Six-Week Poverty Immersion

Last semester, Carly Capra 19 spent every Friday posting to the social application Yik Yak, asking if anyone wanted to join her for pizza. Shed end up with eight to 15 students, and rain or shine, theyd take the pizza downtown and find homeless people with whom to share the meal.



Its not about the food  the food is an excuse to have a conversation, said Capra, who also joined two other church ministries on Thursdays and Saturdays serving meals as well. Feeding them is a temporary fix.



Capra, of Philadelphia, said she didnt think about homelessness until she came to college and met friends who were involved. Now she has a heart for the poor.



Everyone isnt on drugs. Not everyone is an alcoholic, said Capra, who intends to continue the Friday gatherings this semester. They are just struggling. More of them are sober and just struggling.



To truly immerse herself, Capra spent six weeks this summer living in communal housing, detached from all technology and learning about social justice.



The point is to humble yourself and be aware, Capra said. I pretty much dropped off the face of the planet for six weeks, even though I was here in Tampa.



Capra was one of four UT students (the other three were Elizabeth Virgl 16, Essence Hepburn 17 and Creed Smith 17) and six others in the Tampa Urban Project, a program of Intervarsity Fellowship and Tampa Underground. The group lived in a minimalistic house on $3 a day, pooling their money for groceries and emulating the communal living culture of the poor.



The poor are treated with such contempt that oftentimes they feel less than human. From the avoidance of eye contact, withholding of medical treatment by doctors and limited protection by authorities such as police officers, the poor can feel invisible, Capra said. But when you actually take the time to build a friendship with those who have less, you may be surprised with all the ways in which they actually have more. More character, more kindness and more love than you have ever seen in a person before.



During the day Capra interned at the Well, a nonprofit based in Ybor City that offers a place for people to rest, shower, fix their bicycles, eat, find other services and, most importantly, build relationships. At night, she was enrolled in an urban theology course that explored social injustice, racism and poverty in the United States and God's heart for the poor, she said. This course opened my eyes to the struggle of ethnic minorities in the states and the systems in place that are perpetuating poverty.



Capra, an international business/marketing major, has a career goal of establishing a nonprofit. She considered being a part of Tampa Underground as part of her training.



Ive never had to live simply, Capra said. I cant successfully run a nonprofit without fully understanding people in poverty.



Capra said shell continue to work on homelessness and poverty in Tampa Bay and spread the message to her friends and classmates in the variety of organizations she is a part of  as the Live Well UT student wellness coordinator, a Presidents Leadership Fellow and her involvement with the Leadership Exchange, among other things.



Building intentional relationships with those who are different from yourself is so crucial to addressing social injustice, she said. It is easy to remain in a bubble of people who look, sound and act like you do. But having diverse relationships teaches you the beauty in differences and ultimately the beauty in the world around you.





Have a story idea? Contact Jamie Pilarczyk, Web Writer

Sign up for UT Web Alerts


UTSA to host international conference on Latino aging in the Americas Sept. 14-16

The conference will focus on research, discussion regarding a growing elderly Latino population in U.S., Mexico (Pictured: UTSA Downtown Campus (Top) & International Conference on Aging in the Americas logo (Bottom))

(Sept. 13, 2016)  The UTSA College of Public Policy (COPP) will serve as host of the 2016 International Conference on Aging in the Americas (ICAA) on Sept. 14-16 at the Downtown Campus. The conference is free and open to the public.

The conference will bring top-tier researchers from around the world to UTSA to discuss current trends in Latino health and aging on both sides of the U.S. and Mexico border. The panels, community forums and discussions will examine research related to immigration, the Latino family and the socioeconomic factors that impact quality of life in Latino communities.

Latinos in the U.S. and throughout Latin American have always been relatively young, but demographic forces such as declining childbirth levels are fueling the aging of these populations. The aging of Latinos and Latin American peoples is set to occur pretty rapidly over the next several decades, said Rogelio Saenz, dean of the UTSA College of Public Policy and the Mark G. Yudof Endowed Professor. The conference is set up to help policymakers and health care practitioners understand and serve the needs of a growing elderly population in the U.S. and Latin America.

Saenz said older Latinos will soon make up a substantial share of the overall Latino population in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico. He believes the rapid aging of the demographic calls for researchers to develop innovative approaches and comparisons to inform future policy and health care.

Rene Zenteno, vice provost for international initiatives and senior international officer at UTSA, and Peter Ward, C.B. Smith Sr. Centennial #1 Chair in U.S.-Mexico Relations and professor of sociology and public affairs at UT Austin, will serve as the keynote speakers for the conference. Ward is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles on Mexicos social policy and housing policy in Latin America, Mexico and Texas. Zenteno is the former under secretary of population, migration and religious affairs at the Ministry of the Interior in Mexico, and was instrumental in the writing, negotiating and enacting of the 2011 Mexican Immigration Law.

We envision that this years conference will set the stage for vibrant interdisciplinary discussions about the intersection of Latino aging and health, said Jacqueline Angel, ICAAs principal investigator, professor public affairs and sociology and faculty affiliate in the Population Research Center and the Center for Health and Social Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. The partnership between UTSA, UT Austin and its partner institutions, will help spread new ideas and knowledge that should help provide a strong context for these topics as they relate to the border and beyond in both Latin America and the U.S.

The conference will close with Saenz hosting a panel discussion regarding Latino aging and health issues in San Antonio titled Latino Aging in the Homefront: Issues and Realities in San Antonio. Panelists will include Mercedes Bristol of the Grandparents Raising Grandparents Coalition, Adelita G. Cantu from the University of Texas Health Science Center of San Antonio School of Nursing and Juan H. Flores of La Fe Policy Research Center.

The annual Conference Series on Aging in the Americas is housed at the University of Texas at Austin. It uses research to augment knowledge about dimensions of healthy aging for people of Hispanic and Latin American descent. UTSA is hosting this years conference in partnership with UT Austin, the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and the University of Texas Medical Branch.

- Jesus Chavez

Public Affairs Specialist

--------------------------------------------

The 2016 International Conference on Aging in the Americas will be live streamed on NowCastSA.com.

To register, view a daily schedule or conference overview, visit the UTSA College of Public Policy or Conference Series on Aging in the Americas. For more information, contact rogelio.saenz@utsa.edu or michelle.skidmore@utsa.edu.

For more information about the UTSA College of Public Policy, visit copp.utsa.edu. Follow the college on social media on Facebook or Twitter.

Funding for this conference was made possible in part by a (R13) Scientific Meeting Grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). No. AG029767-01A2. The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Connect online with UTSA on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
UW Research Program Names 2016-17 Student Scholars

Jordan Brophy, a senior from Wray, Colo., conducts research in a UW chemistry laboratory as part of the Wyoming Research Scholars Program. (Rachael Coleman Photo)

Twenty-two new and returning University of Wyoming students have been named to the 2016-17 class of student researchers in the Wyoming Research Scholars Program (WRSP).

The WRSP, a UW Science Initiative-supported program, pairs undergraduate students with faculty mentors who can model the scholarship, teaching, service and outreach activities of a professional scientist. Research Scholars are selected based on research proposals, academic records and letters of recommendation.

The program provides hands-on, cutting-edge research opportunities that represent the pinnacle of active learning, which is the direction we aim to go at UW in terms of student learning and student success, says Jamie Crait, WRSP director.

Starting as early as their freshman year, science students can participate in significant research experiences.

Darbi Schlenker, a freshman from Meeteetse, is the first official new member of the 2016-17 class. Last March, the WRSP awarded the first WRSP Special Award at the Wyoming State Science Fair to Schlenker. As part of her award, she was accepted to the WRSP.

Schlenker, a chemistry major, says she chose to attend UW for many reasons, but her acceptance to the WRSP was a strong deciding factor.

This program offers me opportunities in the lab and in science that no other school could match, she says. I was accepted to Brown University, and turning down the Ivy League offer was tough but, ultimately, the research opportunities I received from UW were too beneficial for me to pass up. The chance to get in a lab and start doing research my freshman year is amazing, especially because I have a say in what type of research I will be doing.

Schlenker says she looks forward to discovering new ideas, working with professionals and exploring different facets of conducting research.

The WRSP funds students salaries for their work on research projects, covers the costs of some lab supplies and provides funding for students to present their work at professional conferences. Funding also is available for summer research.

Research Scholars must participate in a one-credit seminar class each year to learn about the scientific process, ethics, public speaking and writing. Additionally, students will gain experience in communicating science to public audiences through outreach activities such as discussing their research with K-12 students.

Crait says faculty and staff involved with the program want to create a sense of community where students from diverse science departments interact and share their research with each other throughout the year.

The program is an interdisciplinary one, so the students are able to benefit from learning from their peers in other science fields, which is exactly how they will eventually work with colleagues in their future professions, he says.

Students continue to be eligible for WRSP funding if they maintain a 3.3 GPA and make consistent progress as a full-time student toward a degree.

Jordan Brophy and Delta Burchi, two members of last years inaugural class of Research Scholars, will continue their research activities with another year of WRSP funding.

In my research, I work with Dr. John Hoberg and Dr. Bruce Parkinson to create new and novel materials via synthetic chemistry that are hopefully pertinent in next-generation electronics and energy research, among other exciting applications, Brophy says.

Kasey Trotter, a junior from Fort Collins, Colo., works in UW Assistant Professor Elliott Hulleys chemistry laboratory. Trotter is a second-year Wyoming Research Scholar. (Rachael Coleman Photo)

The senior, from Wray, Colo., says the WRSP has provided her with numerous opportunities, including networking with other students, attending a professional conference and speaking to the UW Board of Trustees and state officials about her experiences.

This program provides an avenue to help students become involved in their education on a deeper level, Brophy says. The insights I have received from the staff and faculty involved in WRSP on scientific communication, grad school, networking and other topics have been invaluable.

Burchi, a sophomore from Laramie, works in Department of Zoology and Physiology Professor Bill Flynns laboratory. She is researching the neurotransmitter/hormone vasopressin, which is essential for the regulation of the bodys retention of water.

Burchi says being in the program allows her to apply information and learn new skills.

My experience with the program has been nothing short of amazing, she says. Not only is it a great way to get early exposure to a lab setting, but it also has been a fantastic learning experience.

For more information about the WRSP, visit the website at www.uwyo.edu/wrsp.

New Research Scholars, listed by hometowns, years in school, majors, titles of projects and UW faculty mentors, are:

Buffalo -- Olivia Glassock, freshman, physiology, research project and mentor to be determined.

Cheyenne -- Logan Fairbourn, junior, microbiology, Bacterial cellulose: determining fiber properties and surmising application potentials as they relate to the textile industry, Jennifer Harmon, Rachel Watson and John Willford; and Samantha Haller, senior, physiology, Activation of CARD9: the role of adipocyte lipolysis, Guanglong He.

Dillon, Mont. -- Ashleigh Rhea, senior, wildlife and fisheries biology and management, Testing for correlations between immune function and carotenoid levels, Matthew Carling.

Douglas -- Heather Townsend, junior, biology, research project and mentor to be determined.

Fort Collins, Colo. -- Lukas Lindquist, junior, geology, Sagebrush, climate change and groundwater recharge in Wyoming, Kyle Palmquist.

Greybull -- Logan Jensen, junior, astronomy and astrophysics, Citizen CATE Experiment, mentor to be determined.

Laramie -- Ella DeWolf, sophomore, molecular biology, research project to be determined, Cynthia Weinig; and Kianna Olson, freshman, physics and astronomy, research project to be determined, Michael Brotherton.

Littleton, Colo. -- Ryan Parziale, sophomore, astronomy and astrophysics, Classifying star clusters in nearby galaxies, Daniel Dale.

Liverpool, N.Y. -- Logan Eicholzer, freshman, environmental systems science, and environment and natural resources, research project to be determined, Ramesh Sivanpillai.

Meeteetse -- Darbi Schlenker, freshman, chemistry, research project and mentor to be determined.

Westminster, Mass. -- Sarah Brannon, junior, wildlife and fisheries biology and management, The causes of variation in tropical bird parental care, Corey Tarwater.

Worland -- Narisse Trippel, freshman, mechanical engineering, research project and mentor to be determined.

Returning Research Scholars, listed by hometowns, years in school, majors, titles of projects and UW faculty mentors, are:

Buffalo -- Rex Yeigh, senior, physics and astronomy, Transit photometry of exoplanets using a robotized telescope, Hannah Jang-Condell.

Cheyenne -- Isabella Buongiorno, senior, agroecology, and environment and natural resources, The local food system map of Wyoming, Christine Porter; and Ken Madsen, senior, chemistry, Synthesis and properties of carbide buckypaper, Brian Leonard.

Cody -- Brittany Nordberg, senior, wildlife and fisheries biology and management, The evolutionary history of Lake Tanganyikas Nile perch species, Catherine Wagner.

Fort Collins, Colo. -- Kasey Trotter, junior, chemistry, Synthesis and characterization of Ruthenium (II) complexes for perchlorate remediation, Elliott Hulley.

Laramie -- Delta Burchi, sophomore, zoology and physiology, Effects of salt on the neurotransmitter vasopressin in rats, Bill Flynn.

Rock Springs -- Aaron Strom, senior, chemistry, Acetylene reactions in solid molecular hydrogen and helium recovery, David Anderson.

Wray, Colo. -- Jordan Brophy, senior, chemistry, Synthesis of nitrogen containing graphitic-like materials, John Hoberg.
Church News  October 20, 2022 LIGHT OF THE VALLEY LUTHERAN CHURCH Needing Answers We want God to be like FedEx and deliver overnight. Things dont happen that way, but in...

Church News  October 13, 2022 LIGHT OF THE VALLEY LUTHERAN CHURCH Natures Therapy The pine tree with its solemn dignity lifts its branches to the sky as if to give...
Four armed robbers, Monday afternoon, attacked the Jos home of Super Eagles star Ogenyi Onazi, carting away several valuable items including a white Toyota Highlander and an undisclosed amount of cash.

Thankfully, the damage they caused was limited to material things as they took no life although they physically assaulted the father of the Nigerian international.

Speaking from his base in Turkey, Onazi who is obviously shaken by the incident, disclosed that the bandits pretended to be courier men with a letter to be delivered to his father.

"Those robbers came, pretending they were there to deliver a letter to my dad at about 1.40pm on Monday (yesterday), as soon as he collected their fake letter and asked where it was coming from they swooped on him, tied his hands, beat him up, inflicting machete cuts on him in the process".

"They told him this is the first in a series of attacks that they will launch on our house and that I (Onazi) will be their target the next time".

"Those guys took their time to take some valuable materials including car and some cash but I am thankful to God they didn't do more than that," Onazi added.

Already, the brothers of the Super Eagles star and other family members have reported the incident to the police who have promised to bring the hoodlums to book and also help with the recovery of the stolen items.

Ogenyi Onazi's dad has also been discharged from hospital where he was treated for the injuries inflicted on him during the ordeal.
At the meeting with the Ministry of Transport (MoT) on September 5, a representative of ADP sought the MoTs opinion about ADPs proposals on determining the rights and role of ACV in managing the states asset, the franchise fees, as well as ADPs leeway to adjust airport service fees. In addition, ADP was concerned about the feasibility of ACVs joining in the expansion and upgrading of Tan Son Nhat International Airport as well as building Long Thanh International Airport.

If the Ministry gives a sufficient response, by the end of 2016 ADP will become ACVs official investor.

In the meantime, ACV has announced a loss of VND123.7 billion ($5.57 million) in the second quarter of this year, marking the first negative results since it came into operation, according to the companys financial report published on August 31.

According to its statistics, in the second quarter of 2016, the corporation reached VND3.263 trillion ($147.1 million) in net revenue. However, the cost of sales amounted to VND1.9 trillion ($85.7 million), making a decline in gross profit. Besides, financial expenditures went up to VND1.4 trillion ($63.1 million), VND1.38 trillion of which arose from exchange rate differences, accounting for 98 per cent of financial expenditures.

By late June 2016, ACV held JPY70.6 billion ($687.9 million) in loans, which was used to build terminal T2 at Noi Bai International Airport and the new international passenger terminal at Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

These are the main expenses responsible for ACVs first negative result.

ACV, the current operator of civil airports in the country, is one of the key enterprises of Vietnams aviation industry. Since it came into operation in early 2012, up to the first quarter of 2016, ACV had yet to report loss. The after-tax profits in the 2012-2015 period stood at an average of VND1.5-2.5 trillion ($67.6-112.7 million) per year.

In its initial public offering, ACV off-loaded 3.47 per cent of its stakes, altogether 77.8 million shares, at the average price of VND14,300 ($0.63) each, on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange on December 10, 2015.

The corporation targeted VND12 trillion ($541.08 million)) in revenue, with a pre-tax profit of VND2.056 trillion ($92.7 million) in 2016.

ACV is the only enterprise managing and running 22 international and domestic terminals in the country, with 65 per cent of its revenue coming from the sales of duty-free goods in airports.

It is also carrying out 19 investment projects, with the total capital of VND5.8 trillion ($261.5 million). Some of its large projects include the expansions of Tan Son Nhat International Airport with a total investment of VND1.06 trillion ($47.8 million), and Phu Quoc Airport, with VND696 billion ($31.4 million), and the construction of Cat Bi International Airports parking lot costing VND1.5 trillion ($67.6 million).
British Ambassador to France Julian King (R) has been called upon by EU commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to consider the role of security commissioner. (Photo: AFP/Thomas Samson)

Julian King, currently British ambassador to France, told a European Parliament hearing on his appointment as Security Commissioner, that he had been in Nice in July when more than 80 people were mowed down by a lorry in an attack claimed by Islamic State.

"I saw for myself the devastating aftermath of the attack ... which killed so many people, injured many more and traumatised Europe," King told MEPs.

"It brought home to me again the true human cost of terrorism," he told Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committee meeting in the French city of Strasbourg.

European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker last month named King to the new post of Security Commissioner tasked with fighting terrorism, and organised and cyber crime.

King is meant to lead implementation of what is known as the European Agenda on Security that the Commission, the European Union's executive arm, adopted in April last year.

Several MEPs questioned however how he could really carry out that mission when his country has voted to quit the 28-nation bloc but King said the two issues were completely separate.

"I am not here as a representative of the British government and if others want to ask about issues to do with Brexit and the British government's position, I'm afraid they will get the same reply."

King's predecessor Jonathan Hill, who held the key financial affairs portfolio, stepped down after the June Brexit vote left London and Brussels needing to find a replacement and a new role for Britain on the Commission.

MEMBER STATES MUST COOPERATE

King said he believed he could "make a real contribution in an area which is top of citizens' concerns" and promised that he would faithfully serve European citizens.

He recalled a series of terrorist atrocities over the 15 years since the 9/11 attacks on the United States which had exacted a deadly toll and required joint action to counter.

"In today's world, security of one member state is the security of all," he said in prepared remarks. "National security remains the sole responsibility of member states. But they cannot address alone threats which are transnational," he said.

Saying he would work closely with his peers on the Commission and in Parliament, King said all now needed "redouble our efforts to deliver the security that our citizens expect."

Brexit will deprive the EU of a major, nuclear-armed NATO military power with vast counter-terror experience at home and abroad but officials on both sides have stressed that cooperation in security will remain a key priority.

The European Commission led by Juncker comprises 28 portfolios - one for each member state - and crucially draws up the legislation to give effect to the political direction agreed by the European Council, which groups the member state governments.

The full European Parliament is expected to vote on King's appointment later this week. British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will not begin formal negotiations on leaving the EU until early next year, setting the clock ticking on a two-year deadline.
As a result of the passage of new legislation since 2009, it is now possible under a limited number of circumstances for foreigners to acquire a long-term tenancy in land for use such as for a factory, warehouse, retail, wholesale or office space.

One of the more common approaches is to use a parent-subsidiary business formation to hold the lease to the land.

Under this approach, a foreigner who holds an interest in a legally formed joint stock company (JSC) established pursuant to Vietnamese law and authorized to operate a business for one of the purposes previously described acquires a tenancy in land by first having the JSC establish a wholly owned subsidiary.

The land is then acquired by the wholly owned subsidiary from a private party in Vietnam and subsequently in a transfer leaseback transaction the property is transferred to the government and leased back by the subsidiary.

This latter lease back is necessary because in Vietnam only the Government has the right of land ownership and only it can grant the right to a foreigner to use the land, which is referred to legally as the Land Use Right (LUR).

Therefore, land itself in Vietnam cannot be bought. In practice, this means that the Government leases LURs to eligible individuals and organizations for a set period of time and purpose. These rights are evidenced by a LUR Certificate (LURC).

The registration for the LURC is compulsory for the land users. Thus a foreign investor who requires land for a factory, warehouse etc. must lease the LURs for the site to be used from the Government.

Foreigners who are not licensed to operate in Vietnam cannot obtain such a lease. When the lease expires, the right to use the land, and any infrastructure connected on the land, reverts to the Government with no compensation.

A foreign investor can only be leased land directly from the Government. A foreign investor cannot legally sub-lease land from a private individual, enterprise or other entity.

A similar result can be achieved using a joint venture form of organization.

The LURs detailed above are only valid for a restricted period of time, in general 50 years. In exceptional cases the Prime Minister can extend the duration to a maximum of 70 years.

Such an extension is usually granted (but not guaranteed) if upon expiry the investor wishes to continue to use the land and they have complied with the land regulations during the period and the land use was consistent with the approved land plan.

Most experts agree that Vietnams relaxing of land lease laws has been a very helpful move for the economy but believe much more should be done to overcome the hesitancy of foreigners as many parts of the law remain unclear.
The cars were assembled in Vietnam between July 1, 2015 and April 20, 2016. The error, according to GM, could cause the ball joint to crack during use leaving drivers unable to control the direction of the car.

The check and replacement of the ball joint will last 4.2 hours per car. GM Vietnam will bear all the associated costs. The recall is going to be carried out at all GM Vietnam official dealerships from August 15, 2016 till February 15, 2017.

In March, GM Vietnam recalled 565 Aveo Klasn1 FYU and AVEO Klas SN4/446 models produced between July 27 and December 4, 2015. According to GM, the error was also with the ball joint, but at the time the check and replacement took only two hours. The recall ended recently in September 2016.

GM Vietnam assembles vehicles at its Hanoi facility. Its vehicles are sold through 18 Chevrolet dealerships across the country. It also exports about 500 vehicles, making it the first automaker in Vietnam whose products are sold outside the country.
We will strive to assist Vietnam in speeding up its reform in the financial and banking systems, develop the stock market and issue bonds on international markets to raise funds for further development, said Savory during a four-day visit to Vietnam last week.Vietnam is in dire need of capital for further development. We know its plans to issue bonds abroad and were strongly supportive of the plan, he said.Savory also emphasised that the City of London was an ideal place for Vietnam to sell bonds and raise capital.He reiterated the citys support at a meeting with Dr Tran Dac Sinh, director of Ho Chi Minh City Securities Trading Centre.During the meeting, he said that Sinh and a delegation should visit the London Stock Exchange in order to learn more about it.Our Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and Standard Chartered Bank are willing to accompany you on a visit to our stock exchange, he said.The mayor was also optimistic about the future of Vietnams financial market, recommending changes and a direction in which the sector should follow.The capital markets in Vietnam have quite a long way to go. There need to be further legal changes, but you need the involvement of international investors in order to do that, he said.I think you need to encourage more European financial businesses to come and set up activities here. We already have leading banks like HSBC, but we need to encourage more investment banking activity, he said.The mayor praised the Vietnamese governments policies on opening up financial services, but warned them that a change in approach was necessary.Vietnam needs to allow international investors to have greater control of companies and banks, he said.There is currently a 30 per cent limit on foreign ownership here, if that could be raised to 100 per cent then Vietnam would encourage more inward investment, he said.One of the key elements in raising economic activities in Vietnam is to gain a stronger financial services sector, said the lord mayor.My message has been to allow more international organisations of the banks into Vietnam and to encourage more reform of public banking activities by becoming more efficient and by interchanging with international investors as well, he said.One problem associated with Vietnamese financial services is that all of its lending is short-term based.The lord mayor believes that by encouraging savings and the development of the bond market, Vietnamese industry will be provided with a long-term capital source.Savings in Vietnam are growing, but many Vietnamese choose to save by purchasing property, resulting in an escalating cost to the housing market that makes its difficult for low income earners to break into.Encouragement was also offered to municipal authorities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to raise capital via the issuing of municipal bonds.If I could take a message away with me from Vietnam back to London, it would be, Come to Vietnam, this is a good place to do business, he added.
inh La Thang, secretary of HCM Citys Party Committee, meets with South Korean business representatives at the South KoreaViet Nam Business Forum held last week in Seoul. Photo Hong Hiep

Speaking to representatives from 100 enterprises at the South KoreaViet Nam Business Forum, Thang said that South Korea was the citys fourth largest investor, but that huge potential between the two countries had yet to be fully realised.

Park Noh Wan, consul general of South Korea, told the business leaders that the country aimed to be the top foreign investor in HCM City.

During the forum, four Memoranda of Understanding were signed between HCM City and Korean enterprises in the fields of chemical industry, food processing, part supplying industry and infrastructure construction.

Thang said that Korean firms had shown a deep interest in Viet Nams investment climate and HCM City firms were determined to improve co-operation with South Korea.

HCM City is placing emphasis on continuing to be the countrys driving force and leading the southern regions development as well as the motivating force behind national strategic targets, Thang said.

Our ambition is to be a major hub for finance, commerce and science-technology in Southeast Asia, he added.

Kim In Shik, chairman of the Korea International Co-operation Agency, said the agency would enhance co-operation with Viet Nam, especially HCM City, and develop public private partnership (PPP) projects.

During the visit, Thang also met leaders of seven large South Korean groups, including CJ, Hyosung, GS, Lotte, Hanwha, E-mart and Samsung, who reported on their companies performance.

Investors from South Korea have topped the list of foreign investors in Viet Nam in the last two years.

The event was organised by the South Korean Consulate General, HCM Citys Department of Planning and Investment, Department of Foreign Affairs, HCM City Investment and Trade Promotion Centre, and the Korea Venture Business Association.

The forum was held under the framework of a week-long visit to South Korea by HCM Citys high-level delegation led by Thang from September 7-14.

South Korea was the largest foreign investor in Viet Nam in the first five months of the year, with a total of US$3.42 billion.
Customers make transactions at ABBank. Viet Nams central bank plans to restructure the credit institution system by encouraging M&A activities. - Photo giaoduc.net.vn

The solution is stated under the project of restructuring the credit institution system in the 2016-2020 period, urgently developed by the central bank.

According to the projects goals, by 2020, Viet Nams banking system must have at least 1-2 commercial banks with scale and capacity equivalent to large banks in the region to gradually meet the requirements of international economic integration.

Nguyen Van Hung, deputy chief inspector of the SBVs Inspection Agency, said M&A is a popular and effective solution to handle weak credit institutions and has many advantages compared with other measures.

In particular, with the support of the central bank, the process of M&A will not disrupt the operations of credit institutions, will continue to protect the rights and interests of shareholders and customers, and save costs, time and human resources.

In the 2011-2015 period, the number of banks decreased by 19 through the implementation of M&A, dissolution and by revoking licences. Of these, there were nine banks, two non-bank credit institutions and eight branches of foreign banks.

Currently, in the banking system, there are still 12 banks with charter capital of less than VN4 trillion (US$179.4 million). This source of capital is modest because in the context of fierce competition, banks need a strong financial capacity to boost lending activities and trade support as well as to invest in infrastructure such as information technology system and business-related services.

Therefore, in the near future, banks will have to continue restructuring so as to be able to develop sustainably. In case raising capital from existing shareholders is not feasible, banks will have to find potential M&A partners.

Nguyen Thuy Duong, deputy director of Ernst & Young Vietnams financial-banking services, told Tin Tuc (News) newspaper that with the increasing openness of the financial market, foreign financial institutions with abundant capital resources will seek to penetrate the market.

Meanwhile, the policy of the central bank is not to increase the number of banks. Therefore, it is quite possible that domestic small- and medium-sized banks will be acquired by foreign partners.

In addition, banks must divest capital in other banks to reduce the cross-ownership rate, Duong said.

At present, there are still a number of banks holding over 5 per cent of the shares of other banks or financial companies. For example, the Bank for Foreign Trade of Viet Nam currently holds 7 per cent stake of the Military Bank, 5.07 per cent stake of the Oriented Commercial Joint Stock Bank and 8 per cent of the Sai Gon Bank.

Viet Nam Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Industry and Trade holds 10.4 per cent stake of the Sai Gon-Cong Thuong Commercial Joint Stock Bank, while An Binh Bank owns 8.4 per cent stake in the EVN Financial Company.

However, according to SBVs Circular 36, commercial banks are only allowed to purchase and hold less than 5 per cent of voting shares of other banks.

Thus, banks which are holding more than 5 per cent will be required to divest to ensure compliance with the circulars regulation.

For this reason, it is expected that in the near future, the market will witness more cases of M&A among banks, Duong said.

Many banking insiders argued that to boost the practice of M&A, lifting the cap on foreign investors ownership is worth considering.

According to deputy chief inspector Hung, this issue needs a thorough study and an appropriate roadmap.

Hung said the limit of foreign investors ownership and shares owned by foreign strategic investors in Vietnamese credit institutions under the current regulations is suitable.

Specifically, a foreign strategic investor can own up to 20 per cent of the charter capital of a credit institution, while the total percentage of shares held by foreign investors is not allowed to exceed 30 per cent.

Hung added that the central bank was studying overall measures to report to the Prime Minister for consideration.

Economic expert Nguyen Tri Hieu said barriers to the restructuring of banks came from their internal resources. Strong banks are generally not interested in merging with smaller and less effective banks.

Even shareholders in these banks, especially strategic ones, are often opposed to the merger with ailing banks, unless theyre forced to do so.

Moreover, Viet Nam has yet to permit bank bankruptcy, thus it is difficult to reduce the number of banks.

Hieu said the number of banks is not a matter; the important thing is that banks must have good governance to be able to compete.
Vietnamese working in Taiwan protest against pollution in Vietnamese waters, caused by Formosa Plastics Corporation AFP/Sam Yeh

Public anger has mounted against foreign companies accused of polluting Vietnam since April when tonnes of dead fish washed up off the central coast in the country's worst ecological disaster in decades.

That incident was blamed on a Taiwanese steel firm called Formosa which was slapped with a $500 million fine for discharging toxic waste into the ocean.

In the latest case, authorities have accused Taiwan's Header Plan screw manufacturer of allowing contaminated water to run-off into the Moi canal in Dong Nai in southern Vietnam.

State media said residents have complained of increasing pollution in the canal since the plant opened in 2002.

The company has been ordered to clean up the waterway and fined more than $9,000, an official said Tuesday.

"The Header Plan Company must pay the fine according to an order from the Dong Nai People's Committee," said an official from the provincial environment department, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We investigated the company's violation based on local residents' claims."

The official did not say when the waste water was discharged.

In June, Taiwan's Formosa agreed to pay the heavy fine for discharging contaminated waste which crippled livelihoods in the central coastal area where fishing is the main source of income.

Demonstrators held rare protests in the authoritarian country after the fish began washing up along shores near a Formosa construction site.

Protesters blamed officials for dragging their feet on investigations into the scandal, and many of the rallies were violently broken up with scores jailed.
PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc (L) and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang shake hands at the Great Hall of the People on September 12, 2016. Photo: VGP

In a sincere and friendly atmosphere, the two PMs briefed each other about the recent situations in respective countries, discussing key issues of the bilateral ties, and reaching broad awareness of deepening the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries.

They agreed to work together to maintain and promote the Viet Nam-China friendship, consistently respect each other, enhance strategic exchanges and political trust, and further cooperation for mutual benefits.

The two leaders also agreed to control and settle the remaining differences and emerging issues satisfactorily, accelerate the healthy and stable development of the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership to bring practical fruits to both nations and to contribute actively to peace, stability and development in the region and the world.

Viet Nam will continue comprehensive and synchronous reforms, beefing up industrialization, modernization and international integration, realizing the set goals of macro-economic stabilization, economic growth, democracy, social progress and equality, and building up a peaceful and stable environment for national development, said PM Phuc.

Viet Nam is consistently pursuing the foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation, multi-lateralization and diversification of external relations, in which it gives priority to advancing relations with neighbors and pays special attention to relationship with all big countries and major partners.

The country will continue active international integration process and active participation in cooperative mechanisms in the region and the world, especially ASEAN and the United Nations.

PM Phuc affirmed maintaining the traditional friendship and developing the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with China stably, healthily, and sustainably for the sakes of the two nations, the region and the world remain the consistent policy, the strategic choice, and the top priority of Viet Nams foreign policy.

The two PMs hold talks at the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, China, September 12, 2016. Photo: VGP

On behalf of the Vietnamese high-ranking leaders, PM Phuc invited Chinese General Secretary and President Xi Jinping to pay an official visit to Viet Nam and attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Summit next year and Premier Li and other senior leaders to visit Viet Nam.

He also suggested China and Viet Nam work together in deploying practical measures to gradually achieve balanced trade ties by facilitating imports of Vietnamese key products, including rice.

In terms of investment, PM Phuc stressed that Viet Nam attaches importance to attracting high, effective and environmentally-friendly technologies while calling for more investment from China into such domains like high-tech agriculture, manufacturing, supporting industries, and renewable energies.

The Vietnamese Government chief also asked China to soon grant the additional loan of US$250 million for the Cat Linh-Ha Dong metro line in Ha Noi to ensure the quality and progress of the project.

Regarding the maritime issue, he asked the two countries to effectively control differences, maintain peace and stability at sea so as not to let the sea issues affect the healthy development of the relations between the two Parties and States.

He underlined Viet Nams consistent position of perseveringly settling disputes in the East Sea via peaceful measures in accordance with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, respecting diplomatic and legal processes.

PM Phuc urged the two sides to strictly comply with the agreements and the common perceptions reached by their senior leaders and the agreement on basic principles guiding the settlement of sea-related matters; respect each others legitimate interests in line with the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea; not to take actions that may further complicate the situation or expand disputes; accelerate substantial talks and satisfactorily settle fishing issues; collaborate with ASEAN countries to fully and effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and work towards early conclusion of a Code of Conduct in 2017 on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the signing of the DOC.

Welcoming PM Phuc to China, Premier Li highlighted the significance of PM Phuc's visit which would help boost the relations between the two Parties and nations in the future.

China attaches importance to advancing the relationship with Viet Nam, said Premier Li, adding that China stands ready to foster a balanced trade ties, handle the remaining issues, and encourage Chinese investors to expand investment and trade in Viet Nam.

He vowed to work with Viet Nam to control differences at sea, maintain the overall relationship between the two countries as well as peace and stability in the East Viet Nam Sea.

After the talks, the two PMs witnessed the signing of nine cooperation documents.
New voices and stories: Three black-themed comedies arrive with edgy but honest perspectives


remaining of

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.
The deputy leader of Cambodias main opposition party on Sunday accused the judiciary of being used as a political tool by the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party, led by Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Kem Sokha, the deputy leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, said after he was convicted on Friday to five months in prison for failing to appear in court for questioning, that the courts were being used to break up the CNRP.

They are breaking us up, destroying the Cambodian judiciary through the violation of human rights and the breaking up of the judiciary system, the use of courts as a political tool. This is a serious consequence that would seriously affect the democratic process in Cambodia, he said.

A spokesman for the CPP immediately dismissed the claim.

Sokha has spent nearly four months holed up in the party headquarters in Phnom Penh after the authorities attempted to arrest him in April.

He is being sought by the courts for questioning in a prostitution case which alleges he engaged in an affair.

If this court system still didnt provide justice to all of us, land right activists, human rights activists, environmental defenders, the opposition party, and the [opposition] leaders competing for change, we would consider using our rights to hold mass demonstrations nationwide and in Phnom Penh, he said.

Sokha was also fined about $200 by the court on Friday.

Ly Sophanna, spokesman for the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, could not be reached for comment.

But Sok Eysan, a CPP spokesman, said the court had acted properly.

As a perpetrator who does not acknowledge his guilt, he would say that, Eysan said.

Analysts said that calling mass demonstrations must be a last resort.

Ou Virak, founder of the Future Forum think tank, said that any such demonstration could lead to more violence and instability.

Another option is if [the CNRP] can convince [the CPP] to negotiate but now the ruling party continues to do wrong and people will protest to express their views.

Meas Ny, another analyst, said the CNRP may use a demonstration as a way of gaining a better negotiating position with the ruling party.

The CNRP should continue to be patient and reduce the risks that can occur from direct confrontation between the CNRP supporters and the armed forces, he said, adding that any violence at a mass demonstration would be seized upon by the ruling party as justification for further controls.

Eysan of the CPP said it would be impossible for a political settlement to interfere with the work of the courts, despite similar agreements in recent years leading to pardons of senior opposition figures, paving the way for a wider political settlement.

General Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said it was the right of all Cambodians to hold political protests, so long as they were not intended to topple the government.
For as long as one can imagine the meandering flow of the mighty Mekong River has passed through the nations of Southeast Asia, making its way south from Chinas Tibetan plateau until it spills out into the South China Sea.

But for the past few years fishing communities living along the riverbanks have complained that their fish stocks are drying up. The iconic waterway is going through some unprecedented changes.

Huge hydropower dams and irrigation systems to power modern farming in the Mekong region have changed how we interact with the river. Now, the Thai government has announced a sweeping new project that will funnel tens of thousands of cubic meters of water from the Mekong to plantations and industry in the countrys northeast.

It would be the biggest water diversion project on the Mekong and has prompted concern from environmentalists and experts.

Like many people in Thailands Chiang Khan region living long the Loei River, Wachira Nantaprom has been fishing since he was a teenager. He could also face resettlement under the scheme.

I am concerned that if this dam project gets constructed at this point of the Mekong River, there may be no longer a place to make a living because we always do fishing to make a living. The fish will be partly gone. We dont catch fish as much as in the past. This career may be gone from the Chiang Khan area, he said.

Moreover, the way of life will disappear. No one will continue this way of life in terms of the next generation. If there is a dam, we have to change careers. We will go to the city to be a day labor or do odd jobs. These are our concerns.

Chhanarong Wongla, a fishing industry representative in Loei, said a review of the project by the Royal Irrigation Department in July had prompted further concerns.

My concern is about the ecosystem, the varieties of fish and lives of people in the region. We are concerned that if there is construction here, there would be no flowing of water. It will stay still. People generally have different lifestyles based on the changes of the river. If the water is still, their lives will be entirely changed.

Thailand originally proposed the Khung Loei Chi-Mun project in the 1960s, but it never got off the ground until now.

According the the projects website, environmental and social impact studies were carried out in 2011. The construction would connect the Mekong to six smaller rivers including the Chi and Mun. It also says that the project would provide water to the entire northeast and irrigate 32 million hectares of farmland.

However, thousands would likely face resettlement.

Tanusilp Inda, a village chief in Ban Klang village, said the villagers were afraid of the consequences of such a large-scale project. They dont want it to be constructed, he said, adding that villagers would resist [the project] to their deaths.

Tek Vannara, executive director of the NGO Forum on Cambodia in Phnom Penh, said the diversion project would siphon water from other Mekong Basin countries who were also experiencing water shortages.

The reduction of water would impact biodiversity  [and] agricultural practices which depend on water from the Mekong. Climate in the region is also affected on the ground.

More than 60 million people rely on the fish and other produce derived from the river, he added.

The project would also affect the cultural practices on millions of people who live near the river, he said.

When the water level goes up or down, or when the ecosystem changes, their culture also changes. For instance, people in Steung Treng province and six other provinces around the Tonle Sap basin depend on fishing. However, when the water does not cover a wide area of the flooded forests, it affects the size of fish spawning area. Hence, the number of fish decreases.

In turn, this affects the socio-culture and the lifestyle of the fishermen, he said.

More than 30 other hydropower dams are planned for the Mekong, prompting alarm from experts.

Dr. John Ward, a specialist at the Mekong Region Futures Institute, said economic competition among Mekong Basin countries had led to environmental concerns taking a back seat.

Other countries have gone through this. They've gone from the river and unmodified system to the hardly developed one and there are lots of lessons to learn from that, he said.

So, it'd better to avoid the problems in the first place. And certainly like in the U.S., in Europe, in Asia, and Australia, there are lots of examples, of transboundary problems like the Mekong, and lots of lessons to be learned, how to avoid the future problems in the first place.

Ward added that multi-party talks should be held with a focus on environmental protection, before its too late.

Viroj Jiwaranga, the Loei provincial governor, acknowledged the impact the project would have on the regions biodiversity and cultures, but said the project would be good for the local economy and could go some way towards solving the water scarcity issue in Thailands northeast.

Fishermen like Wachira Nantaprom, however, are not convinced.
More than 40 years ago, Tun Sovan arrived in the US as a student.

When his own country, Cambodia, plunged into war and chaos, Tun Sovan found shelter in the US as a refugee and built a new life as an immigrant.

He went on to work for more than 35 years in federal and local government in the greater Washington DC area and has participated in a long list of civic groups promoting the Buddhist faith, religious dialogue and immigrant affairs.

He has met the Pope twice.

Tun Sovan describes his adopted home as a special country.

The United States is special, he told VOA Khmer in a recent interview, explaining how the US was built by immigrants on the principles of freedom, granting shelter and providing opportunity.

One should not forget that the United States has the principle, he said.

Now in his mid-70s, and an active community leader still, Tun Sovan believes the US continues to be a country of opportunity, and it must never lose its founding principle of being a shelter for those who, once like him, are unable to live in their own country.

Tun Sovans message resonates with many in the US where immigration has emerged as one of the defining issues of the 2016 presidential race, and as President Barack Obama prepares to host a global summit in New York on September 20 to address the world refugee crisis.

Obama wants global leaders attending the summit - being held on the margins of 71st UN General Assembly meeting - to increase funding for refugee humanitarian efforts, increase refugee resettlement, and provision of more opportunities for those seeking refuge.

The summit is by no means a panacea, Samantha Powers, US ambassador to the United Nations, and herself an immigrant, said in a speech in June.

Even if we hit every target, our response will still not match the scale of the crisis. But it would represent a step  an important step toward broadening the pool of countries that are part of the solution, she said.

The subject of refugees and immigrants has become a divisive subject in the US.

Republicans have criticized the Obama administrations plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees during the current fiscal year, saying it could put Americans at risk from terrorism.

As the beneficiary of a scholarship to study in the US in the early 1970s, then a refugee when Cambodias civil war plunged the country in to mass killing, and now a US citizen of 40 years, Tun Sovan understands the debate firsthand.

He agrees that the government must take action against terrorists, but those actions should not overshadow the countrys long history of helping refugees and welcoming immigrants, he said.

The US became a developed country because of immigrants, Tun Sovan told VOA Khmer.

Speaking to VOA Khmer at a Cambodian Buddhist temple in Maryland where he does volunteer work, Tun Sovan shared a story of similar antipathy toward Cambodian refugees decades ago in Virginia.

Efforts by the local Cambodian community to establish a Buddhist temple were being prevented by a local woman. The woman, Tun Sovan said, was blunt in her opposition to the temple, saying she didnt want immigrants in her area.

Tun Sovan said to the woman that, although she was not an immigrant now, she had forgotten that her parents were immigrants once too.

The value and contribution of immigrants to the US must not be forgotten or underestimated, he said.

After receiving a PhD in economics from the University of Tennessee 1979, Tun Sovan worked in local government and in the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency in charge of investigating discrimination in employment.

In his spare time, he devotes himself to helping his fellow Cambodians and other refugees to the US, and promotes understanding between faiths.

Among his many roles: He is president of the Cambodian Buddhist Society in Silver Spring, Maryland; vice president of the Washington DC Buddhist Network; founding member of the International Buddhist Association of America, and a member of the board of directors of the Interfaith Conference of metropolitan Washington.

Pope Francis invited Tun Sovan to participate in a Buddhist-Catholic dialogue in the Vatican in June 2015, and he met the Pope again during his visit to the US in September.

A commissioner for the Maryland governor's Commission of Asian and Pacific American Affairs since 1998, he is a founding member of the Immigrant Empowerment Council (IEC) of the Washington Metropolitan Area, and is on the Friends of Khmer Culture board of trustees.

Tung Yap, a resident in the Cambodian community in Virginia, said Tun Sovan is known for his work at the Buddhist temple and as a focal point of contact between the Cambodian community and the government.

I see that he went to meet with [the]state governor, senators, other congressmen, Tung Yap said.

Schanley Kuch, a Cambodian resident of Maryland, said Tun Sovan is well known for his service to the diaspora, particularly his efforts to unify the different Cambodian communities in the US.

He pays attention to the needs of the people and he serves the culture, Schanly Kuch said.

Tun Sovan has achieved much in his more than 40 years living and working in the US as a public servant and engaged citizen, yet there is one thing he hopes to achieve.

He would like to see a Buddhist ceremony held at the White House just as other religions have been honored.

Each year, Tun Sovan said, President Obama has sent a letter to Buddhist associations to mark international Visak Bochea day, which celebrates the birth, death and enlightenment of the Buddha.

But we dont want only that, we want to hold the ceremony in the White House, he said.

However, with just a few months left in President Obamas term in office, Tun Sovan believes his dream - as with so many things in the US - is possible, but it may have to wait.

Because he [President Obama] is going to leave, we will do our best with the next president.
When Myanmars Aung San Suu Kyi meets President Barack Obama at the White House this week, activists will be watching to see how the pro-democracy icon will address the plight of the country's ethnic Rohingya, whom human rights groups say are among the world's most persecuted minority groups.

Since ethnic and sectarian violence erupted in 2012, tens of thousands of Rohingya have been living in overcrowded camps in conditions that rights groups have condemned as deplorable. Mosques have been shuttered and marriages unrecognized by the government. The government restricts their movement, limiting the Rohingya's access to health care, education and job opportunities.

In fact, most Rohingya are not even considered citizens. The Myanmar government and many of its citizens see them as illegal immigrants, and even refuse to call them by their preferred name, "Rohingya."

Instead, Myanmar refers to them as "Bengalis," reflecting the view that they are from neighboring Bangladesh, even though many Rohingya have been living in Myanmar for generations. Aung San Suu Kyi herself has said that the Rohingya term is "divisive" and the government will refrain from using it.

Thousands of Rohingya have fled abroad, risking dangerous trips to Indonesia or Malaysia since 2012. But an estimated 140,000 remain displaced in internal camps. Some rights groups have argued the treatment amounts to ethnic cleansing, or even genocide.

The situation on the ground today is not good, said Wakar Uddin, a leading U.S.-based Rohingya advocate who met late last week with several U.S. administration officials to brief them  and sat down with VOA for an interview.

People are dying. We have dire issues that need to be addressed, Uddin said. One hundred forty thousand [people] in camps, lingering. They need to be returned.

Uddin is the founding chairman of the North America Rohingya Association and a professor of agricultural science at Pennsylvania State University.

Despite his deep concerns, he sees some hope with the creation of a commission headed by former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, which has the blessing of the Myanmars quasi-military government. The commission is charged with probing the Rohingya conflict and filing a report within a years time, a kind of road map toward a future solution.

This Kofi Annan commission is highly capable," Uddin said. They will be able to produce a balanced report: the truth. Whatever the truth is.

Trust is key, added Uddin. They will be and they should be talking to the victims, who have gone through this hardship.

That said, he is calling for immediate action now to alleviate the humanitarian suffering. Uddin told VOA that he specifically pressed U.S. officials this week to remind Aung San Suu Kyi to take steps now. Other experts agree.

The Annan commission has the ability to propose solutions that will assist the Rohingya and the Rakhine," said Ronan Lee, an Australian-based researcher. The commission will not make its report until the second half of 2017, meaning human rights for the Rohingya need to be progressed before this.

Lee also pointed out that Myanmars Buddhists also need immediate help.

It's important to remember, too, that while the Rohingya Muslims have and continue to suffer dreadfully, Rakhine state's majority ethnicity, the Rakhine Buddhists, are often also living in appalling poverty, he said.

Uddin believes that, after speaking with U.S. officials, some of these more urgent, immediate humanitarian steps will be taken ahead of the Annan commissions report.

One delicate political issue confronting Myanmars leadership, the Obama administration, and activists and Buddhists in Myanmar: Does the treatment of the Rohingya amount to genocide?

"You cannot paint with a broad brush. There are all kinds of voices in the community that use their own terminology, Uddin said. I really do not want to dwell on these terms. We want to make every effort to not anger the other side."

Labeling the treatment of Rohingya as genocide could compel the 147 countries that have signed the 1948 Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide treaty to intervene in the situation. That would mark an extreme step, but one that some activists say is necessary.

This is the case where we, as the predominantly Buddhist society, has been misled and brainwashed in the way the Nazis brainwashed and turned the German citizens against Jews, said Maung Zarni, a human rights campaigner and co-author of the book "A Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar."

Researcher Lee points to other researchers whom he said confirm Zarni's position.

A well-researched report from the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University of London was certain the Rohingya had been victims of state crimes and genocidal persecution," Lee said, while admitting his own research has not focused specifically on the question of genocide.

A separate legal study by researchers at Yale law school in 2015 that analyzed Rohingya testimonies, Myanmar government documents, and analyses by other aid groups argued that there is strong evidence of genocide. The group argued that while it was difficult to determine whether the treatment of Rohingya was intended to destroy them "in whole or in part," the available evidence strongly suggests that their treatment meets the legal definition of genocide.

As to whether or not Aung San Suu Kyi will act on the Rohingya issue, North America Rohingya Association's Uddin is hopeful.

"I believe Aung San Suu Kyi is a visionary," Uddin said. "She cares about our people. She recognizes that this Rohingya issue has risen to a global scale."

Ultimately, Uddin added, as one of the most revered and well-known political campaigners in the world, she recognizes that "she cannot ignore this."
American Muslims mark the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca with the four-day festival of Eid al-Adha, one of the most important events of the Islamic year.

At Masji al-Fatiha, a suburban mosque near Los Angeles, Muslim immigrants from many parts of the world and visitors from several other faiths came Monday for the celebration.

The mosque was founded by minority Muslims from Thailand, a largely Buddhist country, and the Thai immigrant imam, Rahmat Phyakul, points to the Thai lettering beneath the Arabic that proclaims this the first Thai mosque in America.

The theme of this holiday is sacrifice, explains mosque member Ahm Qutubuddin, one of many non-Thais in the mosque and an immigrant from Egypt. The festival recalls a story that is shared with variations by Muslims, Jews and Christians about the patriarch Ibrahim, or Abraham.

He was asked to sacrifice his son and he obeyed, and for that obedience, Allah  God  gave a goat in place of his son, so he was able to sacrifice that all Muslims all over the world commemorate, he explained.

The theme of sacrifice carries over to our everyday lives, said Yahia Abdul-Rahman, an Egyptian-born imam at this mosque. He said his message is that we need to work as hard as we can to establish justice and peace and fairness amongst all people, here in America and in the world.

The Thai consul general to Los Angeles was a guest at the celebration, his presence a statement of unity, said Rahman Phyakul, who notes that Thais have experienced tensions in their homeland as a result of an insurgency in the southern part of the country.

Even in Thailand, however, the tensions are exaggerated, says Consul General Tanee Sangrat, who says Muslims and Buddhists in Bangkok and elsewhere live and work together.

What you see in the press is sometimes misrepresented by the reality in Thailand, he said.

Mosque members say tensions are not an issue here. Thai American Lutheran pastor Pongtep Chutimapongrat says, We are [all] Thai people and friends.

In the story of Ibrahim, God provided the patriarch with a goat as a substitute for his son, and in some parts of the world, an animal is sacrificed and its meat shared with the poor.

Here, worshippers shared a community meal after the service that blended Middle Eastern food with dishes from Thailand, shared by the the multi-ethnic congregation and friends.
De facto Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi will visit Washington Wednesday to discuss whether changes to the U.S. sanctions against the country can help spur much-needed economic growth, a Myanmar official said.

It will be the first U.S. visit by the State Counselor and Foreign Minister since her National League for Democracy (NLD) government assumed office in late March. Myanmars democratic transition, after decades of military rule, is considered a major foreign policy success of President Barack Obamas outgoing administration, which is mulling how it can further support the process in the country also known as Burma.

State Counselor Office spokesperson Zaw Htay said Aung San Suu Kyi was seeking U.S. support for the countrys economy - which was wrecked by the former juntas mismanagement and international isolation - in order to meet the hopes of those who supported the NLDs landslide election victory last year.

Myanmars peoples expectations are very, very high right now - economic development can be a very strong signal to move forward in our democratization process, he told VOA.

Myanmar needs much technical support, especially in the financial and economic sector, Zaw Htay said, adding, sanctions will be one of the issues on the table, though he expected no quick changes to the web of restrictions affecting Myanmar.

During her meetings with President Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and leading members of Congress, including Republican Senator John McCain, Aung San Suu Kyi is also likely to address other challenges for her government.

In August, she led Myanmars most-inclusive peace conference yet, involving most ethnic armed groups, top army officers and political parties, though it was only a ceremonial opening for her governments efforts to end the decades-old civil wars.

Last month, the government also announced the creation of a commission lead by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to resolve Buddhist-Muslim communal conflict in Rakhine State. Some one million stateless Rohingya Muslims suffer persecution or discrimination in the state, with about 120,000 still displaced by violence.

A legacy of sanctions

The White House and Congress placed a growing number of sanctions on Myanmar during the past 20 years. Restrictions were set on jade and gemstones, and on businesses linked to the illegal drug and arms trades. Companies owned by more than 100 crony businessmen connected to the army were also placed on a U.S. Treasury blacklist.

Some sanctions were eased in 2013 and several major U.S. companies, such as Coca Cola and General Motors, entered the Myanmar market. But many U.S. companies and Western banks remain wary of dealing with local businesses. The European Union lifted all sanctions in 2013, except on arms trades.

The sanctions were seen as leverage to encourage further democratic reforms and Aung San Suu Kyi has not called for an end to sanctions since taking office. If we are going along the right path, all sanctions should be lifted in good time, she said during a visit by Secretary of State John Kerry in May, while also playing down the sanctions economic impact.

Erin Murphy, president of U.S.- based Inle Advisory Group, said the NLD government appears to lack a full understanding of the impact of sanctions, and the leverage they do and do not have, but could now be reconsidering its support for the measures.

If the NLD wants to spur foreign investment, the lifting of U.S. sanctions would certainly contribute to investor's reassessment of the market and also spur others to expand, said Murphy, whose firm advises investors in Myanmar.

She said, however, that the sanctions were among a number of factors that influence decisions on foreign investment, noting that Myanmar has many other challenges, such as capacity issues, poor infrastructure, lack of electricity, unclear government guidelines and rule of law.

Aung San Suu Kyi could also ask for other forms of U.S. support for Myanmars economic development, Murphy added, such as donor assistance and programming, and driving public-private partnerships and bringing key services, funding, and capacity building to Myanmar.

Garment export boost

Myint Soe, chairman of the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association (MGMA), said lifting sanctions would be good for the garment industry, a sector that has rapidly grown since Myanmars economy opened up, but that has had limited access to the U.S. market.

Nowadays, we can export to international markets, but the United States market is a little less than other countries, he said. Because of the U.S. sanctions, all the customers, these brands, they don't want to touch Made in Myanmar, and do business in Myanmar.

So after the lifting of all the sanctions, we can get more, bigger export to the United States, he told VOA.

Myint Soe said just under 10 percent of the $1.65 billion worth of garments is now exported to the U.S., a market share that was around 65 percent before sanctions hit the garment industry in 2001.
Two weeks after the removal of Dilma Rousseff as Brazil's president, the lower house of Congress on Monday expelled the lawmaker who engineered her impeachment for lying about secret bank accounts in Switzerland.

The once powerful former speaker Eduardo Cunha, who has been charged with corruption by the Supreme Court, was banned from politics for eight years and faces arrest now he has lost his congressional prerogatives.

The chamber voted overwhelmingly 450-10 to strip him of his seat.

"This shows that Brazil will no longer tolerate a politician who turned Congress into a business counter for bribes and favors," said lawmaker Rubens Bueno of the Popular Socialist Party. Bueno said Cunha took kickbacks from companies and instructed them to donate to the campaigns of his allies.

Cunha's downfall has many politicians worried because he has threatened to bring down others by revealing cases of corruption that could endanger members of the government of Brazil's new President Michel Temer and derail his fiscal reform agenda.

Cunha has warned he could tell all in a plea bargain that could compromise many in a discredited political establishment, where 50 politicians are already under investigation for taking kickbacks in the Petrobras scandal.

In all, about 60 percent of the 513 lawmakers in Brazil's lower house are under investigation for various allegations, according to watchdog group Transparency Brazil.

Cunha has been charged by the Supreme Court for allegedly taking a $5 million bribe on a drill ship contract for state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA and for having undeclared Swiss bank accounts.

"I did not lie. Where is the proof? Where are the account numbers?" Cunha asked his peers, appearing in the house to repeat his defense argument that his assets were held in trust funds over which he had no control.

An ethics committee report read out to the chamber said the existence of his accounts and assets abroad was fully proven.

Dozens of lawmakers who Cunha helped elect had sought to delay the committee hearings and managed to drag out the case for over 10 months. Shortly after hearings began in December, Cunha launched the impeachment process against Rousseff, who was removed from office by the Senate on August 31 for breaking budgetary rules and decreeing public spending without Congressional approval.

Rousseff argued that her impeachment was revenge by Cunha for her Workers Party's refusal to save him from the ethics probe that ultimately brought him down.

Cunha is the only sitting Brazilian lawmaker to face trial so far in a massive bribery investigation focused on Petrobras and other state-run enterprises where engineering companies siphoned off funds from overpriced contracts to pay bribes to executives and kickbacks to politicians in Rousseff's governing coalition.

The office of Brazil's top prosecutor, which earlier this year asked for Cunha's arrest for using his speakership to obstruct investigations, says Cunha faces nine other corruption accusations.

Bueno said the action against Cunha showed Congress was finally responding to the demands of Brazilians for cleaner politics.

Some analysts regarded the removal of a politician who was third in the line of succession for the presidency as step forward in Brazil's struggle to clean up widespread graft.

"It shows that even the most powerful man in Congress can be brought down by corruption and other missteps," said David Fleischer, politics professor emeritus at the University of Brasilia.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc officially started his high-profile visit with Chinese officials in Beijing Monday, amid simmering tension over the territorially-contested South China Sea issue.

The first official visit to China by a Vietnamese premier in six years, Phucs trip came at the invitation of Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang. Vietnamese and Chinese media are reporting that Phuc and Li jointly pledged to "manage maritime differences" and "maintain peace and stability" at a Monday news conference that followed wide-ranging talks at the Great Hall of the People.

Phuc's visit coincides with the launch of annual Sino-Russian naval drills, which, according to Chinese military officials, will include simulated "seizure and control" of contested islands and shoals. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said the training exercises aren't "against any third party.

State Department spokesman John Kirby addressed the Chinese-Russian wargames Monday, saying the U.S. doesn't perceive them as a threat.

"The only thing we are mindful of is that the exercise should be in accordance with international law, not raising tensions," he said.

Duong Danh Dy, a former senior Vietnamese diplomat who once worked as general consul in Guangzhou, says the invite extended to Phuc clearly shows that China wants to ease tensions.

Vietnams capacity is growing, so it cannot be ignored in the disputes over the South China Sea, he said, adding that Vietnam is not an important factor in Beijing-Moscow relations.

Trust-building

Some view Phuc's visit as part of Vietnam's trust-building efforts with its northern neighbor  the most populous country in the world  part of a comprehensive diplomatic campaign to gather support from the international community.

In a keynote speech during his visit to Singapore last month, Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang warned that any countries that engage in armed conflict over the resource rich waterway will be destined to lose more than they would gain from combat. He did not mention any country by name.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Xuan Cuong, head of the Institute of Chinese Studies, says the two nations are facing both opportunities and challenges.

The two sides still have differences over the South China Sea issue," he said. "The visit is a chance for them to find solutions and strengthen mutual trust.

But Dy, the former diplomat, says it may be a long time before the two nations find common ground amid conflicting claims of maritime sovereignty.

Building trust will never happen," he said. "They only make [an] effort to prevent wars from breaking out. Thats it.

The news portal of the Vietnamese government quoted Phuc as saying that he would engage with Chinese officials on exchanging measures to stabilize relations between the two countries.

During talks, both premiers witnessed the signing of agreements on trade, production capacity, infrastructure, education and tourism.

Phuc is on his first official visit to China since assuming office in April.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Vietnamese Service.
Armed with rubber bullets, shields and tear gas, Chinese riot police Tuesday clashed with local residents of a southern coastal village that was once seen as a symbol of grassroots democracy, but has become a flashpoint for protests against corruption.

Protesters in Wukan in Guangdong province are angry about last weeks sentencing of former village chief Lin Zulian, who had pressed for compensation for land seized by Communist Party officials. Demonstrators have pledged to keep on protesting until he is released from jail.

Authorities want the protests to stop and launched an overnight raid to snuff out any lingering unrest, arresting 13 villagers for allegedly inciting a mob and for using "intimidation and rumor mongering" to agitate participants of the villages rallies.



Raid on tape



Wukan's relatively small but defiant protests in recent years have drawn international attention, in part because of locals long-running opposition to land grabs by developers, and the government's willingness to allow them to elect a village chief in 2012. Now that the chief has been jailed on what supporters argue are trumped-up charges, and the locals have continued to protest, authorities are quickly removing discussion of the protests online. However, villagers Tuesday apparently managed to upload several video clips and circulate them online.

One clip showed a standoff in the middle of the day between riot police and residents, many of whom vented their anger by throwing stones at police as they fired tear gas and huddled behind shields.

Another video showed riot police storming into a villagers home before dawn and arresting an unknown suspect in his sleep.

The video clips cannot be independently verified, in part because of the authorities' crackdown which has made communications with protesters difficult.



The clash was reported to have led to injuries of tens of residents and the alleged death of an elderly woman, according to a Hong Kong-based online TV station. Pictures of some of those who were hurt were posted online.



Following the arrests, authorities in Lufeng City claimed that they detained 13 people including protest leaders Tsai Jialin, Chang Xiangkeng and Yang Jinjen on suspicion of illegal assembly and disrupting public order.



But analysts say the polices raid was neither appropriate nor lawful.

Rights lawyer Ge Yongxi argued that the arrest of any suspects on the charge of illegal assembly should have be made on site when they were allegedly refusing to stop protesting.



It is inappropriate to arrest those, who have dismissed [from their gathering] and returned home to sleep. The fact that they were able to safely return home means that their demonstrations have brought no immediate threat, Ge told VOA, adding that there is little reason to believe that the peaceful protests staged by Wukan villagers were illegal.



Ge was once hired by Lins family to represent him, but was dismissed by judicial officials.



Angered by Lins guilty verdict



Last Thursday, the court found the villages popular chief Lin guilty of taking bribes and granted him a combined jail term of three years and one month, in addition to a fine of nearly $30,000.



The 72-year-old chief, who has accepted the ruling and said he will not appeal, is seen as a hero by many of the villages 20,000 residents ever since he helped lead a rebellion in 2011 that led to the ousting of previous local officials for allegedly stealing land from residents and re-selling it to big developers. Weeks before his arrest, Lin had threatened to restart protests to press for compensation for villagers.



While some land disputes have been resolved since he took over as village chief, many are still contested.



And a day before the planned protest, Lin was detained in the middle of the night on suspicion of corruption.



Despite Lins guilty verdict, the villages residents continued to take to the streets to show their support for the chief and to fight for their own land rights.

Prior to Tuesdays arrest, the local government sent warnings to some protest organizers, many of whom apparently refused to abandon their demonstrations. That probably led to the polices unannounced raid.

Ge said he believes that the local polices move to silence protesters will eventually backfire.

In the short run, the arrest may work to suppress and maintain stability. But in the long run, it will do no good to ease the conflict, said Ge.



Richard Tsoi, vice chairman of Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, agreed.



In general, we see the residents in Wukan village are very strong in their determination to fight for their rights, and also, to protect their village leaders including Mr. Lin, he said.



So I would think, they will continue to fight, Tsoi added.



It is the level of determination, Tsoi said, that has probably intimidated local authorities, who waited for days before taking any heavy-handed action.



Others, however, speculated that the timing was tied to China's hosting of the two-day Group of 20 summit last week and Wukans proximity to Hong Kong, which is watching the protests closely. They say the broad attention the village has received has made local authorities think twice about quickly resorting to the use of force.
Three technology experts who helped manage the controversial private email accounts of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton asserted their constitutional rights against self-incrimination Tuesday and balked at answering questions from a congressional investigative panel.

In a politically charged hearing in the midst of the former secretary of state's campaign for the White House, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee attempted to undercut the conclusion reached by U.S. investigators that Clinton was "extremely careless" in her handling of classified national security information on her unsecured email server, but that no criminal charges were warranted.

Clinton's Republican challenger, real estate mogul Donald Trump, has often attacked Clinton's handling of the classified material and political surveys show many voters question her honesty in answering questions about the emails.

One of the witnesses called by the panel, Bryan Pagliano, a former State Department computer specialist, skipped the hearing even though he had been subpoenaed. He had previously spoken to the Federal Bureau of Investigation under a grant of immunity to talk about how Clinton used a private, unsecured email server based in her New York home while she was the country's top diplomat from 2009 to 2013 rather than a more secure government server.

Pagliano drew the ire of the committee chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz, who said Pagliano was "thumbing his nose at Congress" for not showing up and vowed there would be consequences for his absence. "We're not letting go of this," he said.



Abusing taxpayer dollars

Two other technology officials, Bill Thornton and Paul Combetta, of the Platte River Networks company that managed Clinton's email server after she left office, sat at a witness table but then refused to answer several Chaffetz questions, invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination. When Chaffetz realized he was not going to get any answers, he excused them from the hearing.

Chaffetz called Clinton's use of the private email server, her destruction of more than 30,000 emails she considered to be private and her handling of classified, national security material in the emails "an absolute mess...one of the biggest breaches of security in the history of the State Department."

But the top Democrat on the panel, Representative Elijah Cummings, attacked Republicans for even holding the hearing.

"I believe this committee is abusing taxpayer dollars and the authority of Congress in an astonishing onslaught of political attacks to damage secretary Clinton's campaign for president," Cummings said.

Cummings noted that FBI Director James Comey concluded that it was "not a cliffhanger" in deciding not to charge Clinton with a criminal offense.

One witness, Justin Cooper, a one-time technology aide to Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, answered the committee's questions.

Cooper said that as Hillary Clinton switched from one email device to another, all of the emails and information contained on her old computer were copied onto the new one, rejecting Republican claims that Clinton set out to hide material.

On two occasions, after information from old mobile devices was transferred, Cooper said he helped smash them with a hammer. He said he considered that to be a "good practice," even as some Republican lawmakers expressed their skepticism.
Hillary Clinton says she is "feeling fine and getting better," as she recovers from pneumonia at her home in Chappaqua, outside New York City.

"Like anyone who's ever been home sick from work, I'm anxious to get back out there. See you on the [campaign] trail soon," Clinton tweeted.

Clinton's doctor diagnosed her with pneumonia on Friday.

She told CNN Monday that she ignored her doctor's advice to take it easy because she said she was "incredibly committed" to being at a September 11 anniversary event in New York City Sunday.

Clinton said she thought she could "power through" the event, but got overheated and had to leave early.

Video showed her nearly collapsing while being helped into her car. Her knees appeared to buckle under her.

Aides drove her to her daughter Chelsea's New York apartment, where she emerged several hours later, looking bright and telling reporters she felt great.

Clinton officials canceled campaign appearances Monday and Tuesday in California. She is under a doctor's orders to modify her schedule and get some rest.

Clinton Monday thanked everyone who sent their best wishes, which included Republican rival Donald Trump.

"I hope she gets well and gets back on the trail and we'll be seeing her in the debate," Trump said Monday, looking forward to their first face-to-face meeting September 26.

Campaign officials first said Clinton was overheated and dehydrated before admitting she had pneumonia.

"I think in retrospect, we could have handled it better in terms of providing more information more quickly," Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC television Monday when asked why it took so long to disclose her illness.

Fallon said there are no other hidden conditions. "The pneumonia is the extent of it."

Trump Continues Attacks

Trump did not let up on Clinton during a campaign stop in Asheville, North Carolina Monday, despite her health scare.

He attacked what he called Clinton's "Wall Street" agenda, saying she has "hate in her heart" for middle class Americans and looks down on people.

Clinton is 68 and Trump is 70. They are two of the oldest candidates to try to win the White House.

Some political analysts say both should release more information about their medical history.

Trump said he plans to release the results of a physical exam he had during the past week, with "very, very specific numbers." He has accused Clinton of not having the energy and stamina it takes to be president.

Some Trump supporters have suggested that she is seriously ill from the effects of a concussion she suffered in a fall in 2012.

Doctors said at the time she had a blood clot on her brain and temporarily suffered from double vision, before declaring her fully recovered.

Last year, Trump released a letter from a physician claiming he would be "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

The doctor, however, has since acknowledged that he dashed off the note in five minutes while a Trump campaign limousine waited nearby.
A former Congolese rebel commander who started a hunger strike last week to protest the conditions of his detention at the International Criminal Court(ICC) told judges on Tuesday he is "ready to die".

Bosco Ntaganda faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed by his troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002-2003.

"I have no possibility to see my wife and children again under normal conditions. This is the reason I have lost all hope. This is why I am ready to die," Ntaganda said in a statement read out by his defense lawyer.

Ntaganda also instructed his lawyer to no longer represent him and cease all legal actions on his behalf. The three-judge panel of judges was considering the statement.

He stopped eating last week to protest restrictions on his phone calls and visitation rights which have been in place since 2014 due to concerns he was trying to interfere with witnesses.

The former Congolese rebel participated in hearings on Tuesday via a video-link from the ICC's detention unit after a medical report Tuesday morning concluded he was not well enough to be transported to the courtroom.

Ntaganda, whose trial began a year ago, started his military career in Rwanda when he joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front during the 1994 genocide. He later joined a branch of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), before surrendering in 2013.

He faces 13 counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity relating to two attacks against the non-Hema population in Congo's Ituri province. The charges include murder, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers.
Three Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 15 wounded in the past 24 hours in fighting with pro-Russian separatists, the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday

- the first major casualties since a cease-fire came into force on September 1.

Over the past two weeks monitors have reported a sharp decrease in hostilities along the eastern front line, fueling hopes for the 18-month-old 'Minsk' peace process designed to end a conflict that has killed over 9,500 people since April 2014.

However, Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said over the past day separatists had used heavy weapons for the first time this month and also directly attacked a Ukrainian position in Luhansk region.

"A sabotage-and-reconnaissance group crossed the river and attacked our servicemen. The fight lasted for 15 minutes," Motuzyanyk said in a daily televised briefing.

Two Ukrainian servicemen were killed in this encounter, while one was killed in shelling on the front line in Donetsk region, north-east of the Ukraine-controlled city of Mariupol.

Another serviceman is missing in action, he said. On Monday, separatist officials accused Ukraine of not honoring the truce, saying the Ukrainian military had fired heavy weapons at residential areas around the rebel-held Donetsk city, separatist news site DAN reported.

The so-called Minsk peace agreement, originally agreed between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France in September 2014, helped considerably reduce the fighting in east Ukraine's industrial Donbas region.

But violations have occurred regularly and implementing further points of the plan, including holding regional elections and returning control of Ukraine's border with Russia to Kyiv, has long stalled.
Reports of new incidents trickle in steadily through the French media. Ten radical Islamists are quietly removed from the massive Fleury-Merogis prison over fears of an uprising. In another prison, homemade weapons are discovered in the cell of at least one suspected radical.

Then there was the stabbing of two prison guards earlier this month - an incident that prosecutors are investigating for terrorist motives.

French prisons have long been criticized as overcrowded incubators of Islamist militants; but, as the leftist government tries to grapple with terrorism both at home and abroad, its proposals for fighting radicalization within its penitentiary system are being criticized on multiple fronts.

Following the stabbings, Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas announced a series of new security measures being released this week, particularly in new specialized prison de-radicalization units - an experiment being echoed elsewhere in Europe.

The units aim to disengage the prisoners from violence and break their sense of self-isolation, Urvoas told the Le Journal du Dimanche weekly. Its a moral duty, but also an imperative for national security.

Real powder kegs

Philippe Campagne, secretary general of SNP-FO, a national union representing prison guards, denounced the new security measures, along with the governments broader strategy of handling the radicalization.

The idea of deradicalization is good, but whats happening in French prisons is not that, Campagne said in an interview, calling for the complete isolation of radical inmates and describing the 188 French prisons housing them as real powder kegs.

Rights activists argue the opposite, saying efforts to isolate potential radicals may tip them to extremism.

For French authorities, the push to act is urgent after a spate of terror attacks and foiled attempts. Over the last week alone, authorities announced they had smashed an all-woman militant cell plotting two attacks, and arrested a teenage boy suspected of preparing imminent violent action.

"Today the threat is at a maximum, and we are a target," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Sunday, estimating about 15,000 people were being monitored for radicalism across France.



Concerns not new

Concerns about the spread of Islamist radicalism are not new in a penitentiary system where Muslims make up roughly 60 to 70 percent of the inmates.

Notable inmates include the January 2015 Paris attacks assailants Amedy Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi, who met during their incarceration at Fleury-Merogis, Europes largest prison located about 30 kilometers south of Paris. Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving suspect in last Novembers attack, is also holed up there in isolated confinement.

Today, the government estimates nearly 1,400 French prisoners are radicalized, including some 325 jailed on terrorist charges - figures some rights activists question.

This year, authorities opened special deradicalization units within five prisons, each equipped with sociologists, psychologists and other specialists to turn around extremists.



The deradicalization experiment suffered a setback this month, when participant Bilal Taghi attacked two guards, stabbing one in the back and the throat. According to the Liberation newspaper, the 24-year-old then drew a heart on a wall with the blood of his victim, before starting to pray.

The new measures introduced this week aim to step up prison security and further limit any communication between radicalized and other inmates.

Critics say the measures are insufficient. Former center-right president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is running again for the office, wants to create special courts and detention facilities for radicals, while dismissing any notion of a "Guantanamo a la Francaise."

Pros and cons of isolation

Prison employee unions are also pushing for dedicated facilities for extremists - a notion rejected by the leftist government.

We want a single national establishment created where radicalized prisoners are really isolated, where theyre not crossing other prisoners, says Campagne of the FO prison syndicate.

We see more and more people radicalizing in French prisons, he added, and if we dont take stock of this and put the necessary measures in place, those numbers will explode in future months.

But the International Observatory of Prisons, a Paris-based group campaigning for prisoners' rights, is against isolating suspected radicals, and questions the governments figures of radicalized inmates.

Theres such variety in the profiles ranging from a hardened Islamist to someone who merely consults jihadist websites, says Observatory member Camille Rosa, making a single treatment of them the bad response.

Rather than isolating prisoners, she says, the better strategy would be to mix those at risk of becoming radicalized with the larger population so they can see other backgrounds.

Its absolutely essential that the rights of prisoners are respected, she added, including those deemed terrorists or in danger of being radicalized.
More than 70 groups gathered in Hong Kong Sunday to protest threats and intimidation levied against a member of Hong Kongs Legislative Council.

Eddie Chu, who received the highest number of votes in the recent Legislative Council election, has moved out of his home. Chu says he and his family have received death threats.

Chu, one of Hong Kongs most famous conservationists, has been active in local land and heritage preservation movements. He also has been involved in a crusade against what he sees as unjust use of rural land, and has vowed to take on what he calls the collusion of government, business and mob interests.

Chu is not the first politician during Hong Kongs recent election to receive credible threats. Ken Chow, a candidate in the same constituency as Chu, suspended his campaign less than two weeks before the election. Chow later cited threats made to associates as reasons for his suspension.

When a legislator elected with 84,121 votes cant go home, and is threatened to be killed because of his views, I think the rule of law has been torn to shreds. All Hong Kong citizens would fear for their own safety, and electors would be furious, said Chu before reporting the threats to the Hong Kong Police on Thursday.

More than 70 organizations and political parties gathered on Sunday outside police headquarters to support him.

Among them are some of Chus fellow legislators-elect, including Nathan Law. Demonstrators shouted "No fear of the dark forces, Down with political violence," and other slogans.

Chu said that threats against him and his family challenged the bottom line of the Hong Kong people, and that he would persist no matter what.

"Who dares to not let us speak? If we do not speak, and then will there be freedom of speech in Hong Kong?" said Chu.

Environmental groups in Hong Kong also have launched an online campaign, Hong Kong people supporting Eddie Chu. So far, they have collected more than 8,000 signatures and have been joined by more than 70 groups.

In response to Sundays rally, Hong Kong officials have promised to take Chu's case seriously. They said the government has launched a full investigation, and that the Hong Kong Police have taken measures to protect Chu and his family.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Mandarin Service.
Syria and Israel issued conflicting claims Tuesday about the fate of Israeli military aircraft that conducted airstrikes on the Syrian side of the border in the Golan Heights area.

Both agreed that Israel attacked a Syrian military position around 1 a.m.

But Syria's state-run SANA news agency said its military responded by shooting down an Israeli warplane and a drone. The Israeli Defense Forces said Syria fired two missiles, but that its aircraft "were not harmed."

Syria also cast the Israeli airstrikes as coming in support of "armed terrorist groups." The government has often referred to opposition fighters as terrorists.

Israeli said it was responding to a projectile that was launched from the Syrian side and landed in Israel. That type of spillover has happened numerous times throughout the conflict in Syria since it began in March 2011, and Israel often reacted with airstrikes like those carried out Tuesday.
Recent controversy surrounding Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's health and her rival's release of his own medical information has raised questions about how much candidates must reveal about their medical history while running for office.

No U.S. law requires presidential candidates or presidents to release medical records or information about their health to the public. But 86 percent of voters say a candidate's health is important to their vote, according to a Rasmussen poll.

Most presidential candidates are middle-aged, but this issue affects somewhat younger candidates as well. John F. Kennedy, the youngest person to be elected U.S. president at 43, had Addison's disease and back pain that were treated regularly with drugs before he was elected. This information was not released to the public.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president with a clear disability: He was wheelchair-bound because of polio when he was first elected, and then was re-elected three times. Late in his presidency, FDR also suffered from undisclosed congestive heart failure.

The Constitution is clear that once a president has died, the vice president takes office. But questions have arisen throughout American history about what happens when a president is incapacitated, as in a coma or under anesthesia.

Following Kennedys death in 1963, Congress passed the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which said in part that when a president is incapacitated, the vice president and members of the presidents Cabinet can submit a formal declaration to the leaders of the Senate and House that the president is unable to discharge his duties. The vice president then immediately takes over.

But the amendment has never been invoked, even when former President Ronald Reagan was shot and underwent surgery in 1981.

President Barack Obama has released reports of his physical examinations periodically throughout his presidency and once during his campaign, though he was not legally required to do so. This move has become customary in the years since the passing of the 25th Amendment.

Obama's rival in 2008, Republican U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, released more than 1,000 pages of his medical records to the public when his age  72 at the time  was compared to Obama's 47.
Facebook has issued an apology for deleting an iconic photograph posted by Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

Sheryl Sandberg, the social media giants chief operating officer made the apology saying, We dont always get it right.

The 1972 photo taken by the Associated Press, shows a naked, screaming Vietnamese girl who was running away from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War.

The photo, commonly referred to as Terror of War, was deleted, ostensibly for violating Facebooks no nudity rules.

Sometimes, though, the global and historical importance of a photo like Terror of War outweighs the importance of keeping nudity off Facebook, she said in a letter to Solberg dated September 10. After hearing from you and other members of our community, we have decided to restore the photo.

The deletion of the photo set off a protest of sorts with several other members of Norways government posting the photos to their Facebook pages.

We dont always get it right. Even with clear standards, screening millions of posts on a case-by-case basis every week is challenging, Sandberg said.Nonetheless, we intend to do better ... Thank you for helping us get this right.

This was not the only headache Facebook has faced regarding nudity.

A judge in Belfast, Northern Ireland denied the companys request to stop legal action over the publication of a naked photograph of a 14-year-old Northern Ireland girl.

Attorneys for the girl say the photo, which was posted as some sort of revenge, was used to blackmail the girl. She is seeking damages for misuse of private information, negligence and breach of the Data Protection Act.

The photo appeared on Facebook numerous times between November of 2014 and January of 2016. Facebook said it removed the photo as soon as it was notified.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged for calm Tuesday in the southern city of Bangalore, where riots over a water dispute have plagued the Karnataka state capital for days.

"I appeal to the people of the two States, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities," he said in a series of tweets Tuesday.

Violence erupted when a court ruled that some water from the Cauvery river be diverted from Karnataka to neighboring Tamil Nadu. Disputes over the water have emerged periodically for years.

At least two people have been killed in clashes with the police since Monday, and over 300 have been arrested for arson and rioting. Buses and cars have been set ablaze throughout the city as stone-pelting residents continue to riot.

Businesses in India's tech capital have also lost money, having been forced to shut down for the beginning of this week. City police extended a curfew through Wednesday, and many witnesses reported businesses being shut down and the streets being deserted.

Colleges are expected to reopen Wednesday.

Bangalore is home to many major Indian IT companies as well as multinationals such as Amazon.com, Samsung electronics, and Oracle.
Hillary Clinton plans to return to the campaign trail Thursday after being sidelined for the last several days with pneumonia.

A spokesman for the Democratic presidential candidate said Tuesday that details of her schedule would be announced later.

While Clinton continued to recuperate, she got a rousing endorsement from the country's number one Democrat and her former boss, President Barack Obama.

"I am really into electing Hillary Clinton," Obama told cheering supporters at a sun-drenched rally in Philadelphia, a Democratic bastion where Clinton needs a robust voter turnout in the November 8 election against Republican Donald Trump.

"I have seen how smart and savvy and tough she is. I had a front-row seat for four years," Obama said of his onetime political foe who was the country's top diplomat from 2009 to 2013.

Obama mocked Trump, saying he "is not in any way, shape or form fit to represent this county abroad and be our commander in chief."

He belittled Trump's praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin as "a strong leader, because he invades smaller countries, jails his opponents, controls the press and drives his economy into a long recession."

The president added, "I have to do business with Putin. I have to do business with Russia. That's part of foreign policy, but I don't go around saying that's my role model."

Trump campaigned in the Midwestern state of Iowa, promising to bring back jobs from other countries, where American corporations moved them in search of cheaper labor and bigger profits.

"It's time to embrace a new and prosperous, and I do mean prosperous, America," Trump said.

He later appeared outside Philadelphia, where he unveiled details of his plans for making child care more affordable for American families and working mothers.

WATCH: Trump's running mate Mike Pence on 'deplorables'

He vowed to be "the president of everyone," continuing to attack Clinton for her remark last week that half of Trump's supporters were made up of a "basket of deplorables" because of what she said were their "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic" views.

A day later, Clinton said she regretted saying that half of his voters had such views, but otherwise stood by her remark.

The two candidates will square off in the first of three planned presidential debates on September 26, six weeks ahead of the election.

The latest U.S. political surveys showed Trump edging closer to Clinton, with RealClearPolitics' average of polls giving Clinton a 2.4 percentage-point advantage, down from about 8 points a month ago.

The weekly NBC News/Survey Monkey poll released Tuesday showed Clinton ahead 48 percent to 44 percent, with Trump 2 percentage points closer than a week ago.
U.S. President Barack Obama says his top priority working with Congress is to make sure members pass a spending bill by the end of this month to keep the federal government open.

The other thing he says he believes Congress will accomplish before leaving town soon for the November elections is to adequately fund efforts to deal with the widening outbreak of the Zika virus. Obama said Congress urgently needs to approve additional funds to develop diagnostic tools and vaccines that will solve the Zika problem for good.

The president met with the four top congressional leaders in the Oval Office at the White House Monday, telling reporters afterwards: Even though I know that were in the midst of a political season and everybody is thinking about elections, theres still business to be done, and I was encouraged by some of the constructive work thats being done right now.

Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi traveled to the White House to meet with the president, but avoided reporters after the meeting.

An aide to Republican Speaker Ryan put out this statement: The leaders discussed their desire to reach a speedy resolution on a short-term spending bill, including funding for the Zika virus. The speaker talked about his desire to get the appropriations process working, and told the leaders he objected to doing an omnibus spending bill later in the year. He also talked about the importance of taking care of our military through the appropriations process. In addition, the leaders discussed other remaining priorities including legislation on mental health, criminal justice reform and medical research.

Ahead of the meeting, McConnell said important progress has been made towards a short-term government funding bill and funding to fight Zika. McConnell indicated he would like to get those two bills done and to have the Senate adjourn so that senators up for re-election can got back to their home states and campaign.

Short-term Funding Bill

But House Republicans are indicating they will not support a short-term funding bill.

The White House has been asking Congress for additional funding to fight Zika since February.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that Republicans in Congress have used the crucial Zika funding bill for political purposes, by attaching provisions to the bill to stop admitting Syrian refugees or to stop funding Planned Parenthood, womens reproductive health clinics most Democrats support.

Democrats in the Senate have blocked a House passed bill with $1.1 billion to fight the Zika virus three times because they oppose a provision that would block funding for Planned Parenthood in Puerto Rico. The fight over attaching unrelated provisions, called riders, to the government funding bill and the Zika funding bill could set the stage for another high stakes showdown on Capitol Hill.
Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence sought Tuesday to deflect his refusal to label a white supremacist deplorable while attempting to project unity between the presidential ticket and Republican lawmakers in Washington.

Pence met with members of the House and Senate Republican caucuses, one day after a television interview in which the Indiana governor declined to say that former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was deplorable, saying he preferred not to call people names.

Duke has praised Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump while running for a Senate seat in Louisiana, prompting questions about white supremacists when Trump or Pence speak with reporters.

I have no idea in the world why this man [Duke] keeps coming up, Pence said at a news conference with House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. We live in a free country, and people of ill motives can associate themselves with politics.

As an example, Pence pointed to the public support for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by the father of Omar Mateen, the man responsible for a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

I would draw no more conclusions of that mans [Dukes] support [for Trump] than I would for the father of a terrorist who killed 49 Americans [who] was seen at a Hillary Clinton rally cheering her on, the governor said.

The word deplorables came to dominate presidential campaign coverage after Clinton described half of Trump's supporters as a basket of deplorables late last week.

The Trump campaign has pounced on those words, and Pence kept up the attack on Capitol Hill.

Ive never heard a major party candidate for president in the United States speak about the American people with such contempt, Pence said. For Hillary Clinton to express such disdain for millions of Americans I think is one more reason that disqualifies her to serve in the highest office in the land.

Clinton has said she regrets the remark, but stands by her observation the Trump campaign has drawn the support of white supremacists and that he has made derogatory comments about racial minorities, women and others.

Democratic lawmakers have come to Clintons defense, insisting nothing she said disqualifies her from office.

Shes explained that she is more concerned about the Trump-Pence ticket demeaning Muslims, demeaning Mexicans, demeaning so many people, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy told VOA. Thats what shes concerned about.

Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy said his constituents know which presidential candidate employs offensive rhetoric.

People in Connecticut arent going to vote for Donald Trump. They see him for the racist, misogynist, xenophobic candidate that he is, Murphy said.

WATCH: Mike Pence Accents Republican Unity

When not answering questions about Duke, Pence stressed unity of vision and purpose with Republican lawmakers.

The American people should be confident that 56 days from now we can elect a president and re-elect majorities in the House and Senate that will be ready on day one to restore American strength at home and abroad, the governor said.

House Republican leaders were quick to echo that message and heap praise on Pence, who served as a congressman before becoming governor.

Mike Pence is a friend. Mike Pence is a former colleague, Ryan said. Seven out of 10 Americans believe this country is headed in the wrong direction. He [Pence] is working with all of us to make sure that we put this country back on the right track.

Ryan did not mention Trump, a man he has criticized at various times and initially hesitated to endorse.

Democrats disputed the notion of a Republican-led Congress working hand in hand with a Trump administration.

We [Democrats] are in good shape to win back control of the Senate, said Murphy. I think Americans, frankly, are fed up with the Republican Congress doing nothing.
Political analysts and commentators in the Philippines say President Rodrigo Duterte is steering the countrys foreign policy towards a more nationalist narrative, marking a shift from recent Philippine leaders.

Further evidence of Duterte's approach came in an address to civil servants Monday as the president called for U.S. military advisers to be withdrawn from Southern Mindanao where Philippine troops have been battling Muslim insurgents. U.S. special forces have been in the region to help with countererrorism operations since 2002.

Duterte said as long as we stay with America, we will never have peace in [Mindanao]. We might as well give up.

He said he has long wanted to review foreign policy, but he could not because he did not want a rift with America. But they have to go, he said, warning if Americans are seen in the region they will be taken hostage or killed.

During the speech, Duterte held aloft photos and accounts of U.S. troops who in 1906 were accused of atrocities against Muslims during a rebellion against American rule.

At the summit of Asian leaders last week in Laos, Duterte also referred to the killings during the colonial period, veering off his prepared speech focused on the South China Sea. A scheduled meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Duerte at the ASEAN summit was canceled after Duterte referred to Obama as a "son of a bitch."

The Duterte administration has sought to ease tensions with China through talks over the conflicted South China Sea. Previous Philippine president Benigno Aquinos administration had taken the dispute to international arbitration at The Hague.

Military Agreement

The Philippines and the United States have been strengthening military ties in recent years as regional tensions grew over the South China Sea.

In 2014, the two countries signed a new 10-year military agreement. And in March, prior to Dutertes election, the United States and the Philippines signed a pact clearing the way for a new permanent U.S. military presence, including a base in Mindanao, the center of the long running Muslim insurgency.

The United States also joined other countries and the United Nations in criticizing Duterte's war on drugs policy that has left hundreds dead in extrajudicial killing.

Carl Thayer, a defense analyst with the University of New South Wales, says U.S. Special Forces in the southern Philippines have been providing intelligence and some tactical training to the Philippine military, but had been low key.

The U.S. might be concerned that terrorism could revive, but theres very little you could do, and when the president asks you to go, youve got to, because the U.S. has no other choice. It would threaten the whole position in the Philippines, Thayer said.

So far there are no signs that Duterte is interested in scuttling the broader U.S.-Philippines defense agreement. Philippine Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay and senior military leaders say Dutertes comments were not a sign that agreements between the United States and the Philippines would be abrogated.

On Monday, a U.S. State Department spokesman said he had seen news reports of Duterte's comments, but had received no official request to withdraw American forces from the counterterror operations.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials say Washington remains committed to its long standing alliance with the Philippines, including the fight against terrorist organizations.

But several Philippine-based commentators welcomed the shift away from dependence and subservience to America, according to The Manila Times.

If the Philippines is closely aligned with the United States, it risks being dragged into the intensifying big-power rivalry, with potentially grave dangers for national interests and the Filipino people, the Times commentary added.

New Direction

Political science professor at the Philippine's University, Dennis Quilala, says Duterte's stance marks a shift from past administrations.

"It's quite different from how the Philippines treated the United States before. What's clear now it that the United States is not the only option for the Philippines. Other interests are going to be considered," Quilala told VOA, without specifying.

Philippine presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella told local media Dutertes latest comments reflected the governments new direction towards a more independent foreign policy.

Mark Thompson, director of the Southeast Asia Research Center (SEARC) at City University of Hong Kong, says Duterte is pursuing a nationalist narrative not evident in recent Filipino administrations. Thompson says people have long been writing in the Manila papers pressing a nationalist narrative and opposition to the United States.

This nationalist narrative has always been there. There are a lot of intellectuals and activists in the Philippines that have long believed this and now they have a president finally saying it, Thompson said.

Also [Duterte] is not a classical leftist, hes not a communist, not even a classically social democrat really, but he uses this nationalist narrative, he said.
Top U.S. defense officials insist they are not turning a blind eye to fears that Russian hackers are trying to hijack upcoming U.S. presidential and local elections.

Still, the scope of the threat and just how the U.S. plans to respond remain unclear.

This continues to be an issue of great focus, said Adm. Michael Rogers, who serves as both National Security Agency Director and chief of the Defense Departments Cyber Command.

Im not going to characterize this activity, Rogers told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, but added I think there are scenarios where you could see capability applied.

The question was first raised by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, a long-time Republican senator from Arizona who is running for reelection.

Russia is using cyber to undermine American national interest, and now it appears our democracy could be the next target, McCain warned. If you attack that and succeed in destroying that, youve destroyed democracy.

U.S. defense, intelligence and law enforcement officials have long been worried about Moscows aggressive use of cyberspace for disruption and for intelligence gathering.

WATCH: Related video report by Steve Baragona

On 'high alert'

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are currently investigating allegations Russian-linked operatives hacked into the email system of the Democratic National Committee. And the FBI has also told election officials in Arizona and Illinois that each states voter registration database may have been infiltrated, possibly by Russian agents.

We are on all high alert, Louisianas Secretary of State Tom Schedler told members of the House of Representatives during a separate hearing Tuesday.

But Schedler cautioned there is only so much hackers working at the behest of Russia or anyone else can accomplish, especially since voting machines are not connected to the internet.

Voter fraud is much, much harder to accomplish than you may think, Schedler said. While it would certainly be disruptive to have registration systems hacked as we saw in Arizona and Illinois, voters could still vote, and election day would still occur.

Still, there are fears that manipulation of the voter registration rolls could cause problems.

They need not attack every county in every state, said Rice University Professor Dan Wallach. Its sufficient for them to go after battleground states where a small nudge can have a large impact.

The result of a hack like that, Wallach warned, could temporarily knock people off voter rolls or cause more simple problems such as long lines. Still, he said it could create enough obstacles to disenfranchise voters.

Is there a policy?

These are activities the government is taking quite seriously, Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Marcell Lettre told lawmakers.

Still, McCain and other lawmakers accuse the Obama administration of not doing enough.

Do we have a policy as to how to respond to this interference? McCain asked during a tense exchange with Lettre.

When Lettre began to refer to the ongoing investigations, McCain cut him off.

"I'm asking if we have a policy, and the answer is no," McCain said.

Despite the concerns, the NSAs Rogers said any actor trying to hack the U.S. election system would face significant challenges.

"One advantage I do see from a defensive standpoint is that the structure is so disparate with some elements being still manually focused," Rogers said. Because its not just one nationwide, single integrated structure, that tends to help us.

But is it a concern, McCain asked.

Oh, yes, sir, Rogers replied.
Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels apologized for the "great pain" they caused by kidnapping thousands of people to fund half a century of conflict as the insurgent group prepared to sign a peace accord with the government.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) said in a video recording late on Sunday that it had taken captives over the years but would not do so again.

The rebels and government are gearing up to sign the accord after reaching agreement on Aug. 24 to end a war that has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions. Some 7,000 FARC fighters will be incorporated into society and permitted to form a political party.

"We want to acknowledge, with the sentiment of humanity and reconciliation, that during the conflict the FARC also caused great pain with the retention of people for ransom," FARC's commander and lead negotiator, Ivan Marquez, said in the recording.

"That conduct, while always used to sustain the needs of the rebellion, resulted in harming entire families," he said from Havana, Cuba, where negotiations took place.

Some 27,000 people were kidnapped between 1970 and 2010, according to official figures. As many as 90 percent of those were seized by the FARC.

The rebel group amassed a fortune from kidnappings, extortion and the drug trade.

The two sides are scheduled to sign the peace agreement on Sept. 26. The deal will then be put to a vote in a plebiscite on Oct. 2, allowing Colombians to decide whether to accept the accord.
Saudi businesses catering to hajj visitor have taken a hit this year as far fewer pilgrims arrive and those who come have less cash to spend.

Saudi authorities say only about 1.86 million pilgrims, including around 1.3 million coming from outside the country, are attending this year's hajj, down from peak figures that approached 3 million a few years ago.

The number of visitors from abroad has fallen by around 20 percent and the number from within Saudi Arabia has fallen by half, said Marwan Abbas Shaaban, head of the kingdom's National Committee for Hajj and Umrah. Overall, hajj-related business was down by half, he said.

Every Muslim who is able and has the means is expected to travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia during the annual hajj month at least once in a lifetime. Muslims also visit the holy city at other times of the year for pilgrimages known as umrah.

Those who are still coming have less to spend, said Ali al-Hirabi, who hawks gleaming gold necklaces and rings from a shop in the holy city.

"They come, but their situation isn't like it was when there was peace in the world," he said. "It's the Arab countries that are the problem."

Saudi Arabia itself and many of its Arab neighbors are suffering from the fall in global oil prices that has cut state budgets, lowered wages and reduced lavish domestic spending. War across the Middle East has also hit the hajj.

Officials give a variety of reasons for the declining visitor numbers. One of the most obvious is a boycott by Iran, which barred its citizens from attending this year's hajj after diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia collapsed following the Saudi execution of a Shi'ite cleric.

Efforts to find a way for Iranians to come faltered over Tehran's accusations that Riyadh was to blame for poor safety at last year's hajj, when at least 2,070 people died in a crush.

Saudi Arabia says safety has improved over the years and accuses Iran of polticizing the rite with its criticism.

Shabaan said Iranians typically made up 7 percent of foreign hajj visitors, and their absence did not account for the bulk of the fall-off in numbers.

He said another factor was the construction under way in Mecca itself, which is designed to increase its capacity to accept hajj pilgrims in future, but means there is less room while the building is still under way.

"Over the last three years there has been a reduction in the number of pilgrims because of the expansion of the Two Holy Mosques and the massive infrastructure improvements," he said, also citing "political conditions in some countries and economic conditions."

Wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, which have brought down numbers in past years as well, have worsened this year.

Most Syrians and Yemenis now live in territory controlled by warring sides opposed by Saudi Arabia, making it difficult to get visas.

Renovations

Mecca's mayor Osama bin Fadl Al-Bar played down the lull.

"There is certainly an effect on economic sectors, but the private sector is always looking toward the light at the end of the tunnel and the investment opportunities that are present."

He said the renovations to expand Mecca's Grand Mosque and nearby hotels, which have turned the area into a tangle of cranes, would drive future business and let the city accommodate 3.7 million hajj pilgrims in 2020 and 6.7 million by 2042.

As part of a reform plan to wean Saudi Arabia off its dependency on oil, the government aims to encourage even more visits to Mecca outside of hajj season, raising annual pilgrim numbers to 30 million by 2030 from 8 million at present.

Some architectural and cultural critics have lamented the changes to Mecca's landscape from the development projects, which include high-rises and a 76-story clocktower.

Meanwhile, despite the smaller crowds, merchants in Mecca do not seem to be lowering their prices. The high cost of basic goods, especially near the Grand Mosque, is a perennial complaint for pilgrims.

Senior Saudi cleric Sheikh Abdullah Bin Sulaiman al-Manea told Okaz newspaper businesses should not gouge customers, and criticized the spread of billboards in the city: "The duty of hajj should not become a venue for trade, profit and gain."

Fatima al-Murabit, a Moroccan who together with her husband was visiting for the second year in a row, said prices had gone up since last year.

"Even dates are expensive, and bad manners are a general feature of traders and workers in the markets," she lamented.

"There is exploitation of the ignorant. I hope that gets changed in the future. People come for the Prophet's Mosque and the Kaaba, but there's some exploitation and a lack of oversight."
A spokesman for South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, has dismissed the findings of a report that accuses Kiir and former vice president Riek Machar of amassing huge wealth while millions of South Sudanese go without food.

Spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said Tuesday that the report, from a Washington-based advocacy group called The Sentry, is "rubbish" and "a lie." He said the report is meant to undermine Kiir and tarnish his image.

"The Sentry report is a political report because it contains a lot of nonsensical conclusions about the corruption in South Sudan, and it can only be used as a recipe for regime change for those who are running behind to change the regime," he told VOA in Juba.

The spokesman denied allegations in the report that Kiir and some of his generals, including army chief of staff Paul Malong, have used the nearly three-year-old conflict in South Sudan to make money.

Ateny also dismissed allegations that Kiir used state resources to provide a luxurious life for family members.

He says the president's legal advisers are examining the report.

"Most probably they will advise for legal challenge to the report," he said. "We will hire a legal firm in the United States of America to pursue this in the courts of law."

Years-long investigation

The report was based on a two-year investigation by a group founded by Hollywood star George Clooney and human rights activist John Prendergast. It says Kiir and Machar profited from contracts related to arms purchases, oil sales and shares of companies operating in South Sudan.

The report alleges that former vice president Machar  Kiir's rival in South Sudan's civil war  owns luxurious houses in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, and the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

James Gatdet, Machar's spokesman, says Machar neither owns a house in Nairobi nor Addis Ababa.

"He was accommodated by the authority of Ethiopia during the peace talks. So he did not own that house, Gatdet told VOA. For the report to come out and implicate him about that particular house in Addis is not true because it is not his property, he doesn't own it, and he has not bought it. He was simply accommodated."

Gatdet admits that the former vice president was renting a luxury house in Nairobi.

"The family should not be expected to rent a house in a slum area in Nairobi, he said. The family of a vice president should live in a  secure place."

Gatdet says Machar's family has moved out of the Nairobi house  whose picture appeared in the report  because Machar has no money to pay the rent.

The spokesman praised the release of the report, saying the findings can be used against individuals who have committed crimes against South Sudan.

"it is commendable because this can be used as future reference for cases like this once things have settled. And people who have committed such crimes  whether economic, war crimes  it can be thrown to justice," he said.
More than 40 years ago, Tun Sovan arrived in the United States as a student.

When his own country, Cambodia, plunged into war and chaos, Tun Sovan found shelter in the U.S. as a refugee and built a new life as an immigrant.

He went on to work for more than 35 years in federal and local government in the greater Washington D.C. area and participated in a long list of civic groups promoting the Buddhist faith, religious dialogue and immigrant affairs.

He has met the Pope twice.

The United States is special, Tun Sovan said, referring to how the U.S. was built by immigrants based upon the principles of freedom, granting shelter, and providing opportunity.

One should not forget that the United States has the principle, he said.

Now in his mid-70s, and an active community leader still, Tun Sovan believes the U.S. continues to be a country of opportunity, and that it must never lose its founding principle of being a shelter for those who, as he was, are unable to live in their own country.

Tun Sovans message resonates with many in America where immigration has emerged as one of the defining issues of the 2016 presidential race, and as President Barack Obama prepares to host a global summit in New York on September 20 to address the world refugee crisis.

Obama wants global leaders to increase funding for refugee humanitarian efforts, increase refugee resettlement, and provide more opportunities for those seeking refuge.

The summit is by no means a panacea, Samantha Powers, US ambassador to the United Nations, and herself an immigrant, said in a speech in June.

Even if we hit every target, our response will still not match the scale of the crisis. But it would represent a step  an important step toward broadening the pool of countries that are part of the solution, she said.



The subject of refugees and immigrants has become a divisive subject in the United States.

Republicans have criticized the Obama administrations plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees during the current fiscal year, saying it could put Americans at risk from terrorism.

As the beneficiary of a scholarship to study in the United States in the early 1970s, then as a refugee during Cambodias civil war, and now a U.S. citizen of 40 years, Tun Sovan understands the debate firsthand.

He agrees that the government must take action against terrorists, but those actions should not overshadow the countrys long history of helping refugees and welcoming immigrants, he said.

The US became a developed country because of immigrants, Tun Sovan said.

Speaking at a Cambodian Buddhist temple in Maryland where he does volunteer work, Tun Sovan shared a story of similar antipathy toward Cambodian refugees decades ago in Virginia.

Efforts by the local Cambodian community to establish a Buddhist temple were being prevented by a local woman. The woman, Tun Sovan said, was blunt in her opposition to the temple, saying she didnt want immigrants in her area.





Tun Sovan said to the woman that, although she was not an immigrant now, she had forgotten that her parents were immigrants once too.

The value and contribution of immigrants to the US must not be forgotten or underestimated, he said.

After receiving a PhD in economics from the University of Tennessee 1979, Tun Sovan worked in local government and in the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency in charge of investigating discrimination in employment.

In his spare time, he now devotes himself to helping his fellow Cambodians and other refugees to the US, and promoting understanding between faiths.

Among his many roles, he is president of the Cambodian Buddhist Society in Silver Spring, Maryland; vice president of the Washington DC Buddhist Network; founding member of the International Buddhist Association of America, and a member of the board of directors of the Interfaith Conference of metropolitan Washington.

Pope Francis invited Tun Sovan to participate in a Buddhist-Catholic dialogue in the Vatican in June 2015, and he met the Pope again during his visit to the United States in September.

A commissioner for the Maryland governor's Commission of Asian and Pacific American Affairs since 1998, he is a founding member of the Immigrant Empowerment Council (IEC) of the Washington Metropolitan Area, and is on the Friends of Khmer Culture board of trustees.

Tung Yap, a resident in the Cambodian community in Virginia, said Tun Sovan is known for his work at the Buddhist temple and as a focal point of contact between the Cambodian community and the government.

I see that he went to meet with [the]state governor, senators, other congressmen, Tung Yap said.

Schanley Kuch, a Cambodian resident of Maryland, said Tun Sovan is well known for his service to the diaspora, particularly his efforts to unify the different Cambodian communities in the US.

He pays attention to the needs of the people and he serves the culture, Schanly Kuch said.

There is still one more thing Tun Sovan hopes to achieve. He would like to see a Buddhist ceremony held at the White House just as other religions have been honored.

Each year, Tun Sovan said, President Obama has sent a letter to Buddhist associations to mark international Visak Bochea day, which celebrates the birth, death and enlightenment of the Buddha.

But we dont want only that, we want to hold the ceremony in the White House, he said.

However, with just a few months left in President Obamas term in office, Tun Sovan believes his dream  as with so many things in the US  is possible, but it may have to wait.

Because he [President Obama] is going to leave, we will do our best with the next president.

This story was reported by VOA's Khmer service.
German authorities have arrested three men suspected of membership in Islamic State, who allegedly were sent into the country by the terrorist group last year.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday in Berlin, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the three men, who arrived in Germany using the Balkan route, were arrested in the northern part of the country.

It appeared that they used the same smugglers and received phony Syrian passports made in the same workshop as some of those involved in the Paris attacks, de Maiziere said.

They allegedly arrived in Germany in mid-November and had been under observation, but there were no indications of concrete plans for attacks at this stage, he said, adding that they may have been a sleeper cell.

"Three people have been arrested," said de Maiziere. "They are being accused of being members of a terrorist organization. According to the current state of information, the investigations by the federal criminal police office [BKA] indicate connections to the perpetrators of the attacks in Paris in November 2015. All three came to Germany via the Balkan route. At this stage there are no indications of concrete plans for attacks, but there is the suspicion that the arrested [people] have been sent to Germany by the so-called Islamic State [group] in November 2015. They may have been advised to wait for instructions by the Islamic State [group] in Germany, and could therefore have been a sleeper cell."

More than 200 police commandos took part in the pre-dawn raids that led to the detentions.

A statement issued by federal prosecutors partially identified the suspects as Mahir al-H., 17, Ibrahim M., 18, and Mohamed A., 26.

Six locations in two German states were searched Tuesday, the statement said, and extensive material was seized as evidence.

About a million migrants arrived in Germany last year and their presence has become an issue of concern after a recent series of violent attacks, three of which were carried out by asylum seekers. Of those, two were claimed by Islamic State.
A nationwide cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia is mostly holding across Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

Some air attacks and shelling were reported in the first hours of the truce on Monday evening, in areas including the north Hama countryside, East Ghouta and north of Aleppo, the monitoring body said.

But that appeared to die down and the Observatory said it had not recorded a single civilian death from fighting in the fifteen hours since the cease-fire came into effect at 7 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Monday.

Syrian state media said armed groups had violated the truce in a number locations in Aleppo city on at least five occasions since the early hours of Tuesday. The latest reported violation was at 0945 which was a mortar fired in southwest Aleppo.

The Observatory said pro-government forces during Tuesday had shelled near two villages in the south Aleppo countryside and had also shelled the Jobar neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus. No injuries or deaths were reported.

The Observatory also said rebels had opened fire on the outskirts of a town in the west Hama countryside.

The cease-fire marks the second attempt this year to halt Syria's five-year-old civil war. Russia is a major backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States supports some of the rebel groups fighting to topple him.

The truce does not cover the jihadist groups Islamic State or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, a group formerly called the Nusra Front which was al-Qaida's Syria branch until it changed its name in July.

Fighting had raged on several key fronts before the cease-fire, including Aleppo and the southern province of Quneitra on Monday, the first day of the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday.

The Observatory said at least 31 were killed by airstrikes on rebel-held Idlib province and eastern Damascus, and by bombardment of villages in the northern Homs countryside and rocket attacks in the city of Aleppo on Monday, before the truce.
Taiwan has asked its diplomatic allies to send the United Nations secretary-general a letter requesting participation in three U.N. agencies, an unusually aggressive application that answers domestic pressure for more international achievements, but one that is sure to be rejected by China.

The foreign ministry said Tuesday the letter would ask that Taiwan participate in the World Health Organization, the air security-focused International Civil Aviation Organization and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Taiwan can contribute to all three for the overall good of the world, the ministry said in a statement. Taiwan also wants to join U.N. members in trying by 2030 to reach the bodys Sustainable Development Goals, which cover reductions in extreme poverty and greater climate change controls.

Rejection expected

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wens first U.N. application, the most aggressive in seven years, will inevitably be rejected because of opposition from China. Beijing officials see self-ruled Taiwan not as a country with rights to U.N. membership, rather part of their own territory. They insist China and Taiwan eventually unify despite opinion surveys that show most Taiwanese oppose it.

Taiwan, under the legal name Republic of China, withdrew from the United Nations in 1971 as the much larger China was gaining diplomatic clout. China now has more than 170 diplomatic allies compared to Taiwans 22, giving it wide-ranging influence in todays international body.

This effort isnt going to have any real result, Wu Chung-li, political science research fellow at Academia Sinica in Taipei, said of the U.N. bid. Its a symbolic issue.

Previous unsuccessful U.N. attempts

Former Taiwan presidents have also applied for readmission to the United Nations. Chen Shui-bian, who ruled from 2000 to 2008, had requested membership in the full organization. His successor, ex-president Ma Ying-jeou, set his sights on the aviation, climate change and health agencies. In 2009, as ties warmed with China, Taiwan was granted observer status in the WHOs annual World Health Assembly.

Tsai takes a more guarded view toward China than Ma, putting Taiwan-China relations on hold because of disputes over dialogue preconditions -- after eight years of brisk talks and the signing of 23 cross-strait deals.

Voters want more active foreign policy

But the U.N. bid this year answers a growing call from Taiwanese voters for foreign policy achievements under Tsai, who took office May 20. Her approval ratings fell 14 percentage points to 56 percent over the first two months due partly to frustration over lack of foreign policy moves, according to reports by local media that conducted the surveys.

Tsai is keen to oblige public demand so her approval ratings rise and she can leverage them to get more done, said Shane Lee, political scientist at Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan.

Generally people are very impatient now. Doing something like showing your attempt to get into international organizations or whatever would identify Taiwan as a sovereign state would be a plus for public opinion, he said. But its the objective conditions that are not there and particularly the Chinese attitude (in the United Nations) has not changed.

The government called on the U.N. itself to give its requests full consideration.

Our request is very clear and practical and the U.N. should think clearly about how Taiwan can get involved in the sustainable millennium goals and together, for the good of all people, strive to develop while sustaining our existence, the foreign ministry told VOA in a statement.
Lakota Sioux Indians and their supporters across the country are celebrating the U.S. federal governments decision to temporarily halt construction of a $3.8 billion oil pipeline that would cross treaty land seized from the Standing Rock Sioux Nation decades ago. But the issue is far from settled.

The plan was for the Dakota Access Pipeline to stretch from North Dakotas Bakken oil fields to Illinois, carrying about a half million barrels a day of Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners' (ETP) light, sweet crude. Originally, the pipeline was designed to cross the Missouri River near the state capital, Bismarck.

But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers worried that could threaten the citys water supply, so they changed the route to cross over lands seized decades ago from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe at Lake Oahe in North Dakota, about a half mile from the reservations border. Worse, say tribal leaders, they were never consulted about the change in plans.

In April, citizens of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and allied tribes set up the Sacred Stone Camp at the site of the proposed pipeline crossing. It has now grown to a sprawl of tents and campers inhabited by hundreds of people.

They say the pipeline would not only violate land that is sacred to the Lakota people, but pose a threat to the reservations own water resources.

Watch video report from VOA's Zlatica Hoke:

This is huge, said attorney and Native American activist Chase Iron Eyes, a Democrat who is currently running for North Dakotas only U.S. House seat. Its definitely the largest gathering of tribes in our history. In 1851, the United States sent word out inviting maybe about 20 tribes to the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty. But we counted 140 separate tribes at Sacred Stone yesterday.

In the Fort Laramie Treaty, the U.S. agreed on the Sioux tribes sovereign land in the Black Hills. The federal government promised to pay the tribes $50,000 dollars annually for 50 years if the tribes gave safe passage to settlers crossing that land. A year after signing, the U.S. changed the terms and began building forts in the area.

The protests earned international attention after private security firms hired by ETP used dogs and pepper spray against protestors, including women and children. Amy Goodman, a reporter with the watchdog group Democracy Now (above) caught the incident on video. The state of North Dakota has issued a warrant for her arrest on grounds of criminal trespassing.

The state also filed warrants against Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her vice-presidential running mate Ajamu Baraka for spray painting slogans on construction equipment.

Iron Eyes blamed local media for trying to portray the peaceful and unarmed protests as unruly, unlawful and unwarranted.

The pipeline company could have avoided all of this if they had just left the pipeline above Bismark, where it was set to go, said Iron Eyes. In fact, they could have avoided the Missouri River in its entirety and routed the pipeline completely on the east side of the Missouri River, avoiding all protests and all the hassles were now seeing.

The hacktivist group Anonymous has weighed in against the pipeline and the use of violence against peaceful protesters, posting a YouTube video threatening ETP co-founder and CEO Kelcy Warren, as well as North Dakotas National Guard, which has been authorized to take action against protesters.

In a joint statement Friday, the U.S. Departments of Justice, Army and Interior requested a halt to all pipeline construction for 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe and expressed support for the rights of Native and all Americans to assemble and protest. That said, they cautioned that any violence or destruction could be met by sanctions at the federal, tribal, state or local levels.

The halt is only temporary and only covers the part of the pipeline under construction on the 20 miles on either side of the river.

Construction everywhere else along the nearly 1,200-mile corridor is fair game right now, said Iron Eyes, who will join former Democratic presidential contender U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in front of the White House Tuesday and call on President Barack Obama to stop the Dakota Access pipeline completely.

Sanders has introduced the Water Resources Development Act of 2016 which, if enacted, would prevent the U.S. Army Corps from building the 40-mile stretch of the pipeline at Lake Oahe until the agency has completed an environmental impact statement, a much more arduous process, said Iron Eyes, than the environmental assessment the Corps is currently reviewing.

If, however, protesters cant stop the pipeline, construction will continue, said Iron Eyes.

And about 5,000 peaceful, civil disobedient U.S. citizens will put themselves in the way of the construction, he added.

But this isnt just a native dispute, he stressed.

Something big is happening in terms of the economic system, the economic reality that we are all born into which ultimately boils down to extractive economies and currency, he said, systems that assume that earths resources are limitless.
Turkish media said Tuesday the country's government made its first formal request for the United States to arrest a cleric blamed for leading a failed coup in July.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly accused Fethullah Gulen of being behind the coup attempt that left at least 270 people dead.

The Turkish reports said the written request to the U.S. alleges Gulen "gave orders and commanded" the operation. Turkish officials have been informally demanding Gulen's extradition for weeks.

The 75-year-old has been living in self-imposed exile in the U.S. since 1999 and denies any involvement in the coup attempt.

In addition to trying to get Gulen sent back to Turkey, Erdogan's government has carried out an extensive crackdown during the past two months that included ousting 80,000 civil servants, teachers, judges and others believed to by linked to Gulen or involved in the plot. Many of them were arrested.

U.S. President Barack Obama told Erdogan at a G-20 summit last week that his government is prepared to offer any support necessary to investigate the coup and bring those responsible to justice.

But U.S. officials have said that any extraditions would have to be approved in the U.S. court system.
Washington is accusing Beijing of unfairly tinkering with the prices of corn, wheat, and rice in ways that hurt U.S. exports and farmers.

President Barack Obama says Beijing's subsidies distort prices, lead to over-production by Chinese farmers, and "disadvantage" American farmers who export the same crops around the world.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Tuesday said China's use of "market price support" is $100 billion higher than commitments China made when it joined the WTO.

We will aggressively pursue this challenge on behalf of American farmers and hold the Chinese government accountable to the standards of fair global trade, Froman said.

Vilsack criticized China for failing to comply with its commitments to limit the use of subsidies on agricultural products.

This has resulted in significant losses to American producers," said Vilsack. "We see substantial opportunities to meet import demand for grains in China if China is willing to operate a WTO-consistent trade regime."

Higher Chinese production reduces the market in China for U.S.-grown products. China has grown to a $20 billion market for U.S. agricultural products, but U.S. officials say it could and should be much larger. America's rice, wheat, and corn industries support 200,000 U.S. jobs.

This is the 14th complaint brought by the U.S.T.R. against China since 2009. Washington says it has won all the disputes decided so far, and has filed more trade cases than any other WTO nation, with complaints also filed against India, Indonesia, Argentina, the Philippines, and the European Union regarding restrictions on raw material exports.

Obama said the U.S. is confident the case "should bring an end to China's illegal subsides, remove significant barriers on American exports and level the playing field for American farmers and their families who rely on the rice, wheat and corn industries and the hundreds of thousands of jobs they help support."
The Pentagon says it has confirmed a U.S. airstrike last month killed Islamic State's spokesman and chief strategist.

In a statement Monday, Defense Department spokesman Peter Cook said the deadly August 30 strike against Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani near Al Bab, Syria was one of several that have hurt the militant group's ability to operate.

The Pentagon had said shortly after the attack that the U.S.-led coalition conducting airstrikes against Islamic State had targeted Adnani, but that it was not able at that point to confirm he was dead.

The day after the airstrike, Russia said that its forces had carried out the strike, which a senior defense official told VOA was an "attempt at disinformation."

A U.S. defense official said Adnani was directly involved in recruiting foreign fighters and also directed Islamic State's major attacks outside of its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

"Significant operations carried out on his watch include the Paris attacks, the Brussels airport attack, the Istanbul airport attack, the downing of the Russian airliner in the Sinai, the suicide bombings during a rally in Ankara, and the attack on a cafe in Bangladesh," the official said. "In total, these attacks killed over 1,800 people and wounded nearly 4,000."

Adnani was reported to have been seriously injured eight months ago in Iraq, during fighting near the city of Haditha. He was born in Syria about 39 years ago and was a prominent member of the al-Qaida terror network before aligning himself with Islamic State, where he was considered second in rank to the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Adnani narrated an infamous statement from Islamic State nearly two years ago calling on Muslims living in the West to strike out wherever and however they could.

If you can kill a disbelieving American or European  especially the spiteful and filthy French  or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be, Adnani said in the recording.

The United Nations, which had Adnani on its list of suspected terrorists subject to financial sanctions, has described him as the leader of Islamic State in Syria and chief of its external operations.

The U.S. State Department had also offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Adnani's capture.
In South Korea Tuesday two American B-1 bombers flew in from Guam as a show of force, while on the ground U.S. and South Korean diplomats met to coordinate strategies to respond to North Korea's fifth nuclear test, conducted Friday.

The U.S. long-range bombers conducted a low-altitude flight over Osan Air Base in South Korea, which is 77 kilometers from the Demilitarized Zone border with the North.

The B-1 deployment was scheduled to arrive Monday but was delayed due to bad weather in Guam.

Sanctions

It appears that the long term reaction by the U.S. and its allies to North Korea's fifth nuclear test last Friday is going to be economic in nature.

At a press conference in Seoul U.S. Special Representative for North Korean policy, Sung Kim, and South Korea's Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, Kim Hong-kyun stressed their countries' joint commitment to impose even greater economic pain on the Kim Jong Un government.

South Korea and the U.S. decided to have strong sanctions and pressure measures at maximum level, and strengthen measures against North Korea including the U.N. Security Council measure, independent sanctions and pressure at global level, said the South Korean envoy Kim Hong-kyun.

North Korea reacted defiantly to the United Nations sanctions imposed in March for its fourth nuclear test. In the last six months Pyongyang has accelerated its weapons development efforts, conducted 20 missiles tests and last week detonated an unprecedented second nuclear test in one year.

Despite the sanctions failure in the short term to change Pyongyangs behavior, the U.S. envoy said they have been effective in curbing North Koreas access to foreign currency to support its weapons program.

I think its important to remember that pressure and sanctions need time. It requires sustained concerted effort, systematic effort to really have the kind of effect we desire, said Sung Kim.

China

On Monday the U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said coordinated economic sanctions had been shown to work but added China's participation was very important.

North Korea is economically dependent on China for trade and assistance.

Both China and Russia supported the U.N. sanctions imposed in March but both seem reluctant to back increased punitive measures this time.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Monday and afterwards urged all relevant parties to remain calm and exercise restraint.

There are also indications that both Beijing and Moscow may push for unconditional international talks to offer Pyongyang incentives to give up its nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and its allies have insisted that North Korea first take steps to halt its nuclear development activities before entering into new talks.

The U.S. envoy said Washington has repeatedly expressed a willingness and flexibility to engage in dialogue but Pyongyang is not interested.

If the North Koreans are ready talk to us sincerely about denuclearization I think we can work with that, said Kim Sung.

In 2005 during six party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, Pyongyang agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic aid, security guarantees and improved diplomatic ties.

But Pyongyang failed to live up to its commitment and conducted repeated nuclear tests in the years that followed. The U.N. has responded by imposing increasing rounds of sanctions on North Korea.

The envoys emphasized that China and Russia both have condemned North Koreas nuclear activities.

Sung Kim said China in particular understands the need for a new Security Council resolution in response to the latest nuclear test.

The American and South Korean envoys also said there is no need to either deploy U.S. tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula or for South Korea to develop its own nuclear program to deter the North Korean nuclear threat.

Our government will maintain and strengthen its strong deterrence capability against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats through the strong defense posture of ROK (Republic of Korea) and the U.S., and extended deterrence, said Kim Hong-kyun.

The U.S. is committed to defend its allies South Korea and Japan in East Asia against a nuclear attack by another country.
A widespread calm appeared to be holding Tuesday in Syria as a cease-fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia continued into its second day.

One thing we can say with confidence, a senior U.S. official said during a background briefing late Tuesday afternoon, is there has been a significant drop in the level of violence  not to zero, obviously, and we would like to see even a greater drop in the days to come.

The commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigian, told reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference Tuesday that the U.S. was now looking into the "possible establishment of a joint integration center with the Russians" to help with counter-Islamic State operations in Syria.

"The first step is the cessation of hostilities for seven days, Harrigian said. This is something the Russians and the [Syrian] regime must do, and they must do it properly."

Another senior U.S. official said the only legitimate targets for airstrikes are the Islamic State militant group and al-Nusra Front during this period.

After the seven continuous days of reduced violence, said this official, when we set up the Joint Implementation Center, and then begin the first strike through the Joint Implementation Center, at that time the Syria regime air force would no longer be able to fly in any areas of Syria where there is opposition or al-Nusra Front present.

Harrigan would not reveal details of where the potential center would be located, nor would he give specifics about what type of operational cooperation would occur, calling those details "premature."

He added that Russia's imprecise targeting methods and use of unguided, free-fall bombs were "clearly a concern of everybody involved," because the point of the cessation of violence and the potential coordination is to "protect civilians" in Syria.

The U.S. uses precision weapons, paired with surveillance, intelligence and intense training of its airmen, to strike IS targets. That way, Harrigian said, the U.S. can ensure it is putting "the right weapon on the right target at the right time" to avoid civilian casualties.

Syrias last chance

The halt in fighting went into effect after sundown Monday. Hours later, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared it "may be the last chance" to preserve the country fractured by five years of civil war.

The agreement was announced early Saturday in Geneva by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. It is supported by a number of other nations, including Iran, which is a backer of the Syrian government, and Turkey, which wants the removal of President Bashar al-Assad from power in Damascus.

The cease-fire does not apply to the terror groups Islamic State or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra until it broke from al-Qaida and changed its name.

While some key insurgent leaders have criticized the agreement and expressed skepticism that it can succeed, they appear to be accepting the cease-fire in hopes that it can lead to political talks to remove the defiant president.

Some rebel groups in Syria are concerned about the targeting of Nusra, which they see as an ally in defending insurgent-held districts from a protracted Syrian government offensive in eastern Aleppo.

"The armed opposition in Syria now faces what is perhaps its biggest and most momentous decision since they chose to take up arms against the Assad regime in 2011," said Charles Lister, an analyst at the Middle East Institute and author of the book The Syrian Jihad.

Lister added that mainstream opposition forces "are extensively marbled or coupled" with Nusra forces on some of the front lines, from Deraa in the south to Damascus and throughout the northwest of the country.

The years of conflict have left hundreds of thousands of people dead in Syria and created about 12 million refugees, one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
Turkey has formally requested that the U.S. government extradite Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen from the state of Pennsylvania where he has lived in self-imposed exile for 17 years. Ankara has accused Gulen and his followers  known as the Hizmet movement  of orchestrating a failed July 15 coup attempt that left more than 270 dead and thousands wounded. Gulen denies any role in the coup attempt.

Analysts say that if Turkey wants to prosecute Gulen, extradition is the only legal option. But the process involves far more than simply arresting an individual and loading him onto a plane. It could, in fact, take years.

Washington and Ankara cemented the Treaty on Extradition and Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters in 1980, agreeing to surrender to each other individuals who have committed crimes punishable by at least a year in prison. In straightforward language, it sets out a series of conditions under which extradition may be approved or denied, and lays out the terms of the legal process involved.

The extradition process is lengthy and complex, involving multiple federal and local legal authorities. In the first step, the State Department (DOS) reviews the extradition request to ensure that it complies with the treaty, and then refers the request to the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), which will determine whether Turkey has provided enough legal evidence to make a criminal case against Gulen.

In August, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had shipped seven dozen boxes of evidence demonstrating how Gulen and his followers have, over the past 20 years, worked to incriminate their political enemies and undermine the Turkish government.

Justice lawyers are now sorting through those files, a process that could take many months, to make sure the evidence meets requirements of both the treaty and U.S. law. If satisfied that the evidence meets both treaty and U.S. law, they will forward the matter to the office of the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, who would seek an arrest warrant through a U.S. judge in the same district.

If the judge agrees to issue a warrant, law enforcement officers would arrest Gulen and bring him before the judge. If the judge believes Turkey has presented its case, he would issue an extradition order for the Secretary of State to consider. While Gulen would not be able to appeal the decision, his lawyers would have a means to challenge it.

The State Department would have final say in the matter. Sticking points would include concerns, for example, over whether Turkey would treat Gulen humanely or give him a fair trial. The U.S. would examine Turkeys rights record on torture, for example, and has the right to set conditions for Gulens surrender.

If the secretary of state decides to extradite, the DOS would communicate with Ankara to determine the date, time and place for Gulen's handover.

Turkey is pushing for quick extradition, suggesting that U.S.-Turkish relations are at stake. But the burden of proof rests squarely on Ankara, and if it cannot sufficiently prove its accusations against Gulen, the extradition request will be refused.
A yellow fever outbreak in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been brought under control after a vaccination campaign of millions of people, according to the World Health Organization.

"The risk of a major outbreak is now over," Sylvie Briand, WHO pandemic and epidemics department director, said Tuesday in Geneva, adding that no new cases have emerged in Angola since June 23 and in DRC since July 12.

Briand cautioned that further outbreaks in 32 endemic countries in Africa could not be ruled out, including in the parts of Congo that had not been vaccinated recently.

The recent massive vaccination campaign aimed not only to stop the transmission of the virus, but also to preempt transmission during the upcoming rainy season, she said. A second phase of vaccination is to start soon.

The entire population of 7.7 million people in the Congolese capital Kinshasa was vaccinated in 10 days, as well as three million people in border areas in Angola and DRC to prevent the mosquito-borne disease from spreading.

Fifteen million people  or more than 65 percent of the country's population  were immunized across Angola, Briand says.

With 1,000 confirmed cases and up to 6,000 suspected cases of the disease recorded in August, the outbreak is considered the worst in decades among unprotected African populations and has killed more than 400 people.
Zimbabweans in and out of the diaspora have mixed views on why remittances sent to Zimbabwe from various nations, through formal channels like banks and international money transfers, have declined by more than $1 billion over the past year.

The significant drop by 15 percent from $2 billion to $1.2 billion was announced last week by Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, when he made the 2016 fiscal monetary policy review.

Economic commentator, Masimba Kuchera, says one of the reasons could be the global recession that has negatively affected most countries in the world, forcing some Zimbabweans living in some countries to lose their jobs.

There could be two factors, one being that there is a liquidity crunch in some of the countries where Zimbabweans are now based. Also the other reason could be that the central bank looks at formal modes of remittances yet theres a lot of money that gets into the country through other channels, he says.

Kucheras views are echoed by British-based political commentator, Nkululeko Sibanda of Huddersfield University, who adds that Zimbabweans living abroad have lost faith with their homelands potential for investment.

I think what is certain in Zimbabwe is that people living in the diaspora now think that investing in the country is not a good idea. The political situation, demos and so forth have not helped the situation at all, he says, adding that some of the money that used to be sent for investment, especially buying property like houses and development, could be part of the 15 percent that is no longer finding its way to Zimbabwe.

United States-based Den Moyo, who is the MDC-T's U.S provincial chairman, thinks that Chinamasa may be twisting figures to score political points.

Moyo says, It could be that the government is trying to create an impression that since its broke we in the diaspora have stopped sending remittances and is abandoning our families.

Dennis Juru, who is the leader of the International Crossborder Association and lives in South Africa, says the depreciating figures of diaspora remittances can be attributed to cash shortages in Zimbabwe that have forced Zimbabweans living outside the country to send less money to their folks.

People are not sure that if they send money the recipient will get the money ... They have now resorted to sending money home through other means like buses, cars and son on.

Zimbabwe has a vibrant skilled and non-skilled diaspora population living in many nations like South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and United States, who regularly send money back home to sustain their families that have lost jobs or simply cannot find any due to the current harsh economic situation in the country.
Supporters of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and his opponents are set to clash in New York this Saturday, while the 92-year-old Zimbabwean leader is attending the United Nations General Assembly.

Mr. Mugabes allies, the December 12 Movement International, says it will organize a counter protest to the one being proposed by Pastor Evan Mawarires #thisflag movement, #thisgown, the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Tajamuka Sesijikile Campaign, which want the government to address serious social, economic and political problems facing the southern African nation.

Zimbabweans have been of late protesting against what they call Mr. Mugabes iron-fist rule, which they blame for the current problems bedeviling the country.

Some of the groups want President Mugabe to step down saying he is to blame for the crisis in Zimbabwe.

Omowale Clay, spokesperson of December 12 Movement, blamed Zimbabwes deteriorating situation on people they believe are being sponsored by the West to destabilize the country.

We understand that Zimbabwe is a country that has come under the onslaught of western sanctions and efforts to distabilize Zimbabwe externally and create motions inside Zimbabwe to destabilize internally 

The organization added that they are ready for anti-Mugabe protesters. Our demonstration is not just continual effort for Zimbabwe but importantly it is to say to those forces organized and funded and preferred by United States, Britain and Western European countries to seek regime change in Zimbabwe they use Zimbabweans against themselves, against their own country.

At the same time, Tamburai Gwekwere, secretary of the MDCT-USA province, said they ready for the march.

"...It will be a good thing to have as many Zimbabweans as we can at that stage, he said, noting that they are not concerned about the December 12 Movement protest.

(December 12 Movement) They obviously have this ideology of this Mugabe, this old Mugabe, who did so much in the liberation war, so much as Africans and I believe they dont have the truth and understanding of Mugabe now, the Mugabe who is in charge of a country which is going down  I just hope it will shake in their minds, to question themselves, why do we have so many Zimbabwean here saying Mugabe must go 

Zimbabwean authorities have banned protests in the capital city, Harare, claiming that recent protests were violent and were plunging the country into a political crisis. A court declared the ban illegal saying it violated the constitution, which gives local people the right to protest peacefully.
Marion Louise Dahlke, 86, died on October 23rd at Grace Pointe Crossing in Cambridge, MN. Visitation will be held from 5:00 to 7:00 PM on Friday, October 28th at Anderson Funeral Home.
The B61-12, the new US nuclear bomb intended to replace the B-61s lined up in Italy and other countries, has been officially authorized by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Department of Energy Agency assigned to strengthen national security through the military application of nuclear science.

After four years of planning and tests, the NNSA has given the green light to the engineering phase that prepares for mass production. The B61-12s many components are designed and tested in the national laboratories of Los Alamos and Albuquerque (New Mexico), Livermore (California) and manufactured (using some parts of the B-61) in a group of plants in Missouri, Texas, South Carolina and Tennessee. The section of the tail for precision guidance, manufactured by Boeing, is added to this.

The B61-12, the cost of which is forecast at 8-12 billion dollars for 400-500 bombs, will start to be mass-produced in the tax year 2020 (starting 1 October 2019). From that point on, the B-61 will start to be replaced.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates that today the US has a total of 180 nuclear bombs in Europe: 70 B-61 nuclear bombs in Italy (50 at Aviano and 20 at Ghedi-Torre); 50 in Turkey; and 20 in each of Germany, Belgium and Holland. However no one knows precisely how many there actually are: at Aviano, there are 18 bunkers with the capacity to store another 70. Changes have already been made to both the Aviano and Ghedi bases, as the satellite photos published by the FAS show. Similar preparations are underway at the other bases in Europe and Turkey.

The NNSA officially confirms that the B61-12, defined as the lynchpin of the US nuclear triad (land, sea and air), will replace the existing B61-3, -4, -7 and -10. This therefore confirms what we have already reported. The B61-12 is not simply an updated version of the previous model but a weapon sui generis:

 a nuclear head where one of four power options can be selected, with an average power that equals four Hiroshima bombs;

 a guiding system that enables it to be launched at a distance from the target; and

 the capability to penetrate ground level to destroy command centre bunkers in a surprise nuclear attack.

The new bombs that the US is preparing to install in Italy and other European countries in the context of the escalation against Russia, are weapons that lower the nuclear threshold and by doing so, increase the probability of a nuclear attack being launched.

The 31st Fighter Wing, the squadron of the US F-16 fighter bombers deployed at Aviano, is ready for nuclear attack, 24/7. The FAS shows that Italian pilots have also been trained for a nuclear attack under US command with the Tornado fighter bombers at Ghedi. In anticipation, the F-35 fighters also arrive at the Italian Air Force, into which, the US Air Force announces, the B61-12 will be integrated.

The first F-35 squadron, stored at the Hill base in Utah, has been officially declared ready for combat. The US Air Force says that it cannot say when the F-35 squadron will be combat proven, but that an overseas line up is probable at the beginning of 2017.

Minister Pinotti hopes that it is stored in Italy, which the US has already chosen to install MUOS, something other nations would have wanted.

As Italy has the B61-12, the F-35 and the MUOS on its territory, it will also be selected by the country attacked as a priority target for a nuclear reprisal.
The Scottish actor Alan Cummings new book, You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams, showcases Cummings laissez-faire attitude toward nudity, with lots of artful photos of people baring all. Cummings interest in the body, though, is not limited to willing subjects. On last nights Late Show, he copped to Google-searching actors hes about to work with for the first time. Thats one way to build more intimate on-set relationships!
Photo: Jim Spellman/Getty Images

Astronaut Scott Kellys inspiring story of man withstanding a really long time away from family, friends, and gravity is set to become an inspiring motion picture about a man in space. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony bought the movie rights to Kellys upcoming memoir Endurance: My Year in Space a whole 14 months before the books November 2017 launch date. In the book, Kelly, who holds the American record for most time in space at 382 total days, covers his rise from being a C student to his training as a Navy test pilot to his special 340-day mission at the International Space Station. The movie and book will also heavily feature Scotts competitive relationship with his identical twin brother and fellow astronaut, Mark Kelly. Scott and Mark will co-executive-produce the film, while Marks wife, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, will be a consultant.
The 68th Emmy Awards air Sunday, September 18, and all this week, Vulture TV columnist Jen Chaney and New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz are breaking down the major categories. What will win? What actually should win? Thats what were here to determine.

Todays focus: Variety series.

Outstanding Variety Talk Series

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Crackle)

Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC)

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO)

Real Time With Bill Maher (HBO)

The Late Late Show With James Corden (CBS)

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon (NBC)

This is the second year that Outstanding Variety Series has been broken into two separate categories: talk and sketch (more on the latter momentarily). Last years Emmy in the talk category went to The Daily Show With Jon Stewart; this year, with the Jon Stewart in that title now replaced by Trevor Noah, The Daily Show is not nominated, the first time its been overlooked in variety talk  and before that, variety series  category in 15 years. That opens the door for the Emmy to go to another incisive show that tackles the important issues facing America. And I think we all know what that show is going to be  The Late Late Show With James Corden.

Kidding! Corden has his charms, but the interview part of his program is not its greatest asset. That goes double for The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. If this category were called Outstanding Variety Series in Which Celebrities Sing While Driving and/or Play Beer Pong on National Television, Corden and Fallon would obviously be the front-runners. But thats not what this is: Its talk, and in my view, thats not their strong suit.

Jimmy Kimmel is more adept at conducting interviews than his other traditional late-night counterparts in this category, and Real Time With Bill Maher is always an interesting show to watch in the lead-up to an election; it also deserves kudos for booking such diverse, often unexpected guests. But for me this comes down to two shows that are doing something really different with this format: Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is truly a talk show. Its the talking that really matters and propels the show forward. It also means that, depending on the guest and the direction the conversation takes, the episodes vary in terms of engagement. While the episode in which Seinfeld hangs out at the White House with President Obama is interesting, the ones that pair the host with comics who speak his same language are invariably more illuminating. Theres an easy, breezy simplicity to this show that makes it fun. But it also doesnt look like its that hard to pull off from episode to episode.

You know what does look hard to pull off, though? Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, which not only requires a host who radiates intelligence, can also tell a quality toilet joke with impeccable timing  Oliver does that and more  and also involves an enormous amount of research and planning. After leaving The Daily Show, Oliver went on to do what I think of as the Longreads version of that Comedy Central current-events riff. Oliver covers the people and issues that are making headlines  you know, like Donald Drumpf  but he and his staff also dig deeply into subjects that mainstream media isnt paying close attention to, like the lack of voting rights in Washington, D.C., or the unchecked financial corruption in certain churches and among televangelists. When presidential candidates are seriously talking about building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, we dont just want to hear John Oliver crack some jokes about that wall. We need him on that wall.

The Emmy should go to: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

The Emmy will go to: Last year, I think voters wanted to reward Stewart one last time. With that mission accomplished, I think theyll do the right thing and honor Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, especially in light of the fact that, during last weekends Creative Arts Emmy ceremonies, they already recognized the show for its writing.

Outstanding Variety Sketch Series

Documentary Now! (IFC)

Drunk History (Comedy Central)

Inside Amy Schumer (Comedy Central)

Key & Peele (Comedy Central)

Portlandia (IFC)

Saturday Night Live (NBC)

The victor in this category last year was Inside Amy Schumer, which was deservedly rewarded for an inspired season filled with sketches that tackled the unfair expectations society places on women, in ways that were honest, edgy, and still hilarious. This seasons Inside Amy Schumer was admittedly being held to a high standard because that third season was so strong, and it didnt match it. Even the sketches that went semi-viral  like Schumers Betsy Rossfocused version of Hamilton  felt forced in a way that almost nothing from the third season did.

Portlandia is still great  lets all give it up for the Mayors Kids!  and, like Portland itself, it continues to stay refreshingly weird. But it also doesnt stand out so much that Im inclined to say give it the Emmy this year. Documentary Now! is so audaciously niche that I am happily amazed its on television, while Drunk History somehow continues to be semi-educational through its alcohol-induced haze. Saturday Night Live had some strong moments last season  I will never, ever tire of watching Kate McKinnon in the alien-abduction sketch  but it wasnt consistent enough to deserve an Emmy.

Basically, this is all a long way of saying that, while all the nominees are terrific, oh my God, if Key & Peele doesnt win this, I will spit hot fire. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele were Obama-anger-translating magic for five seasons and they deserve a trophy for their Comedy Central swan song.

The Emmy should go to: Key & Peele.

The Emmy will go to: This parts a little tricky. Inside Amy Schumer won an Emmy already for its directing and Emmy voters have a tendency to click the same spot on their ballots as they did the year before. I can definitely imagine a scenario where Inside Amy Schumer wins again. But I believe common comedy sense and universal admiration for Key & Peele will prevail.

Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special

58th Grammy Awards (CBS), directed by Louis J. Horvitz

Adele Live in New York City (NBC), directed by Beth McCarthy-Miller

Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo (HBO), directed by Chris Rock

Grease: Live (Fox), directed by Thomas Kail; live television direction by Alex Rudzinski

Lemonade (HBO), directed by Kahlil Joseph and Beyonce Knowles

The Kennedy Center Honors (CBS), directed by Glenn Weiss

If you were paying attention to the Emmy winners announced over the weekend, then you know the Emmy for overall best variety special went to The Late Late Show Carpool Karaoke Prime Time Special. Not Adele Live in New York City, a special in which the star sings on the Radio Music City Hall stage as opposed to in a passenger seat, and, even more egregiously, not Lemonade.

In summary: the directing-of-a-variety-special category is the last opportunity Beyonce has this year to win an Emmy, which would put her halfway on track to EGOT status. The question is, do she and Kahlil Joseph deserve the Emmy in this category?

In my view, the most worthy competitors here are Lemonade and Grease: Live because both pushed the variety special outside of its traditional boundaries. The camera work required to pull off Grease: Live was extraordinary; the Born to Hand Jive sequence alone was a jaw-dropper that certainly deserves a trophy of some kind. Lemonade is the opposite of a special done on the fly: Its a meticulously conceived film that explores betrayal, grief, black womanhood, and social justice, an extended concept music video thats both mesmerizing and meaningful and, I would argue, the most significant work of its kind since Michael Jacksons Thriller or Black or White. Even if youre on the fence about Beyonce  which, as I understand it, is illegal in most of these United States  its hard to watch Lemonade and not be impressed and dazzled by it.

With that said, I believe:

The Emmy should go to: Lemonade

The Emmy will go to: Grease: Live
Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

About halfway through Colson Whiteheads The Underground Railroad, Cora, the teenage fugitive slave who has escaped a plantation in Georgia and traveled to North Carolina by an actual subterranean rail line, is being told by Martin Wells, a white man hiding her in a cramped secret nook above his attic, about the states new race laws, which amount to a genocidal policy of ethnic cleansing: In North Carolina the negro race did not exist except at the ends of ropes. We have already seen a road with black corpses hanging from trees as far as the eye can see, the so-called Freedom Trail. There is also an inquisition afoot against whites harboring blacks or possessing abolitionist literature, with neighbors informing on each other for voicing forbidden sympathies. Martin is telling Cora the story of a man in town who had been trying to rid himself of his wife for many years, to no avail. The details of her crime did not hold up under scrutiny, but she paid the ultimate price. The gentleman remarried three months later.

Is he happy? Cora asked. What? Cora waved her hand. The severity of Martins account had sent her down an avenue of odd humor.

This isnt a characteristic passage, and its hard not to sense that its really the author more than Cora whos gone down the avenue of odd humor. That it sounds anachronistic here is a sign from Whitehead of how much of a departure for him The Underground Railroad is and the lengths to which one of our most brilliant comic novelists had to go to restrain a portion of his gifts.

This hasnt been lost on critics, and Whitehead himself discussed the matter with my colleague Boris Kachka: You know, a sentence that comes easily to me is, The street was busier than a 7-Eleven parking lot on free meth day. I could make a weird modern joke, and thats a long sentence. But when you try to make a simile or a metaphor out of the nouns of 1850s, simplicity and clarity make more sense. In a satirical 2009 essay for the New York Times, What to Write Next, Whitehead poked fun at the genre of his new work: Southern Novel of Black Misery: Africans in America, cut your teeth on this literary staple. Slip on your sepia-tinted goggles and investigate the legacy of slavery that still reverberates to this day, the legacy of Reconstruction that still reverberates to this day, and crackers. The essay is largely self-satire, taking in styles Whitehead himself had worked in (Encyclopedic, Realism) and would later work in (Thriller). And the book Whitehead cut his teeth on in 1999 was anything but a literary staple but rather the extravagantly imagined and thoroughly idiosyncratic neo-noir novel The Intuitionist.

In his 2014 study Understanding Colson Whitehead, Derek C. Maus, an English professor at SUNY Potsdam, argues that Whiteheads previous novels can be understood as works of post-soul historiographic metafiction. As an academic formulation, this is sound, and Mauss book is an excellent and enlightening guide to Whiteheads work. Post-soul is a term coined by Nelson George in his 1992 book Buppies, B-Boys, Baps and Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture to refer to the cultural output of the generations of African-Americans who had come of age after the 1960s  an output characterized by a new diversity (George cites the abandonment of a Soul chart at Billboard, where he worked, in 1982). As for historiographic metafiction, Whiteheads books question received historical narratives and call attention to their own status as fictions. Until The Underground Railroad the narratives at the center of Whiteheads books were about black life in America after slavery, about what happened when some barriers to black advancement began to erode, and especially about race and meritocracy.

The Intuitionist is about the generation of African-Americans who were the first to really break through white-collar professional barriers en masse. Its set in an unnamed city that resembles a slightly fabulized New York, and its heroine, Lila Mae Watson, is the citys first colored (in the novels phrasing) woman to work as an elevator inspector. Her occupation, played for not too little deadpan humor, stands in for the professional middle class writ large, and the question that governs the novel is whether shes subject to a vast citywide conspiracy in being blamed for the crash of an elevator shed just inspected. Lila Maes mode of elevator inspection, intuitionism, which depends on a quasi-extrasensory detection of mechanical failures, is contrasted with the reigning style of empiricism, suggesting that discernible, measurable facts might be part of a covertly oppressive system. But the book is ultimately hopeful.

Whether that can be said about his next two novels is deliberately ambiguous. Like The Intuitionist, both John Henry Days and Apex Hides the Hurt are about protagonists whove joined the professional class and become disillusioned with their vocations. Whereas Lila Mae remains earnestly devoted to her trade, J. Sutter the freelance hack or junketeer in John Henry Days and the unnamed nomenclature consultant in Apex have come to see themselves as sellouts whove succumbed to the temptations afforded them by their elite educations. J. is on a quest to break a record among his cohort of journalists for the most consecutive days freeloading at PR events, and this is conveyed in mock-heroic tones as he attends a festival in West Virginia celebrating a new postage stamp featuring John Henry, the semi-mythic Reconstruction steelworker, born into slavery, who could lay railroad tracks faster than the newly invented steam drill, but according to legend dropped dead after beating the drill in a race. This was Whiteheads encyclopedic novel, and its formal debts to Don DeLillos Underworld were obvious and much pointed out. One of them was a resistance to narrative resolution, and so you cant be sure at the end of John Henry Days whether in Whiteheads retelling of the John Henry story the hero will die as he does in myth or whether J. Sutter will perish in a shooting that transpires at the end of the festival or remake himself as something other than a writer of puff.

Apex Hides the Hurt is a tighter, more brutally comic work, and, I think, Whiteheads most underrated. The unnamed nomenclature consultant has a knack for renaming brands, as he did when he dubbed a stunted adhesive bandage Apex after it was redesigned in an array of shades to appeal to a multiracial market by mimicking a spectrum of skin tones. He uses the bandages himself and they conceal the fact that his stubbed toe became infected when he stepped in pig shit. He neglects the injury, his toe is amputated, and he sinks into depression and stops working just after hes won an industry prize, at the Identity Awards. The main action of the novel concerns an assignment meant to spur his comeback: He travels to a small Western city, called Winthrop, to adjudicate over its potential renaming. The town was founded by settlers freed from slavery who then ceded its name to a rich white man who brought industry with him. Parsing the towns early history, the consultant sees that each of the names on offer sticking with Winthrop, reverting to the settlements original name, Freedom, or yielding to a tech entrepreneurs preference New Prospera  is its own sort of lie, and he decides to rename it Struggle. Whether the town will toss this name out after a year, as his contract says they can, is an open question, but hes made his perhaps futile stab at integrity in a sold-out world, and taken his first step out of depression. Capturing that state of depression is the novels greatest virtue.

These three novels form a thematic trilogy about African-American loners in a land of compromised opportunity. Maus groups another three of Whiteheads books as his New York Trilogy: The Colossus of New York, a sequence of 13 essays, published in 2003, and the novels Sag Harbor (2009) and Zone One (2011). Of course, New York is the model for the setting of The Intuitionist and the hometown and professional base of both J. Sutter and Apexs nomenclature consultant, but Whiteheads treatment of the city and its outskirts is more direct in the books Maus groups in this trilogy. Springing from an essay written in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Colossus is an idiosyncratically universalizing portrait of the city, told largely in an open-ended second-person voice and imperative mood. Its the sort of book many New York writers dream of attempting but few try because of the obvious risk of exposing your blinkers.

And Whiteheads own class status here is crucial: In the autobiographical Sag Harbor he writes about a group of teenagers on summer vacation in the Hamptons. According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses. A paradox to the outside, but it never occurred to us that there was anything strange about it. It was simply who we were. What kind of bourgie sell-out Negroes were we, with BMWs in the driveway (Black Mans Wagon, in case you didnt know) and private schools to teach us how to use a knife and fork, sort that from dat? What about keeping it real? Elsewhere the narrator states it another way: Lets just put it out there: I liked the Smiths. The characters parse their own ways of being hard or not and the differences between their own and their parents experience of being black. Whiteheads execution was direct and realistic; the book was accessible and a best seller.

So the obvious next move was to write a zombie-apocalypse extravaganza. Zone One is my favorite of Whiteheads books  a masterpiece of gory excess, stylistic virtuosity, and unflagging hilarity. The pyrotechnic abilities on display in The Intuitionist and John Henry Days here reached another level: a maturation of Whiteheads gifts inspired by indulgence of his adolescent love of horror flicks. In Zone One he takes his time addressing the question of race. The hero is named Mark Spitz, so-called because he hesitates at one point to swim, and his fellow zombie-resisters make a joke in line with the black-people-cant-swim thing. We only learn about his race less than 50 pages from the books end because in the scheme of the novel the surviving Americans struggle against the undead has instilled bonds of solidarity across race and class. There was a single Us now, reviling a single Them. Would the old bigotries be reborn as well, when they cleared out this Zone, and the next, and so on, and they were packed together again, tight and suffocating on top of each other?

The question of post-raciality post zombie plague is left unanswered because the novel ends with the undead unvanquished. His next book, The Noble Hustle, was an expansion of a magazine assignment of the sort that J. Sutter is at the end of John Henry Days aiming to leave behind, a trip to the World Series of Poker. But its notable that Whiteheads approach would have fit both J. Sutter and Apexs nomenclature consultant: I would represent my country, the Republic of Anhedonia. We have no borders, but the population teems. No one has deigned to write down our history, but we are an ancient land, founded during the original disappointments, when the first person met another person. I would do it for my countrymen, the shut-ins, the doom-struck, the morbid of temperament, for all those who walk through life with poker faces 24/7 because they never learned any other way. Depression: an affliction that knows no sociological bounds.

These books form the unlikely path to The Underground Railroad. It is a path that has taken him through history and alternate histories, into the minds of personas both prickly and inviting, into deep immersions in American race (as well as more universalizing narratives). Whitehead hasnt only put a check on his comic talent but also placed an almost impossible challenge to his ability to detect moral ambiguities: nothing ambiguous about the institution of slavery not quite two centuries since its abolition. Yet without resembling any of Whiteheads previous books as a whole, it partakes of aspects of them all.

The Underground Railroad opens in a real past America, a plantation in Georgia, where Cora is born, abandoned by her mother, and experiences daily assaults. Her escape from the plantation is also an escape from strict historical reality and into several possible Americas, some offering the illusion of a better America, but all in the end compressions of the national legacy of oppression. This is at once a subtler trick than the phantom Manhattan of The Intuitionist and one announced in spectacular deadpan with Coras arrival at the first of several actual subterranean rail stations: The stairs led onto a small platform. The black mouths of the gigantic tunnel opened at either end. It must have been twenty feet tall, walls lined with dark and light colored stones in an alternating pattern. Here history is punctured, opening new conceptual vistas.

The states through which Cora journeys are parallel Americas, each with their own horrors, some of them displaced from later eras of American history. In South Carolina the first thing she sees is a skyscraper, and the urban setting is at first more a more welcoming place  she begins learning to read. But shes soon put to work reenacting the work of a plantation slave, captivity on a slave ship, and a fantasy of Scenes from Darkest Africa in a museum behind a glass enclosure amid wax dummies of white people and subject to the dumb, open-jawed stares of the patrons  a metaphor for the fate of artists bound to rehearse historys humiliations. There are also mass sterilizations and human experiments with syphilis infection being conducted on blacks at the local hospital: a version of the Tuskegee trials of the 20th century. The creeping oppressions of urban life give way to outright acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing when Cora escapes to North Carolina, where she witnesses a Freedom Trail of black corpses hanging from trees. In North Carolina the negro race did not exist except at the end of ropes. This was a dream of some Southern whites during Reconstruction. After the white couple hiding Cora is betrayed by their servant, she is given over to the slave catcher Ridgeway  essentially a racist white cop, a figure familiar to this day.

Thats only some of the history Whitehead telescopes into The Underground Railroad with a brutal grace both refined and simplified in comparison to his earlier novels: For all its necessarily ghastly moments the narrative is as smooth as Sag Harbors and, as in Zone One, much of it is a suspenseful chase. Cora, too, is an evolved incarnation of a recognizable Whitehead character. Like Lila Mae, she undergoes an education, learning to read and then immersing herself in abolitionist literature and almanacs over months in her cramped attic nook. Like J. Sutter, Apexs nomenclature consultant, and Whitehead at the poker table, she is a person of morbid temperament. (How could she not be?) Like Mark Spitz, she undergoes a journey of constant physical torment. Whitehead has followed his masterpiece of excess with a masterpiece of restraint, and though the novel never sets foot in New York City, theres even a glimpse of his hometown: The Underground Railroad looks a lot like the subway.
Henry and Erivo in The Last Five Years. Photo: Jenny Anderson

A sensational concert performance of Jason Robert Browns The Last Five Years at Town Hall last night, starring Cynthia Erivo and Joshua Henry, started the New York fall theater season off with a bang. I use that phrase advisedly and sadly; the occasion was a benefit for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. (Erivo, Henry, Brown, and the five other musicians onstage all worked for free.) As if to emphasize the point, Brown began the evening not with the 2002 musical itself, but with a bitter new piece called A Song About a Gun, in which he snarled, from the piano, that he is too busy singing songs about my daughters / And the news I have to hide from them today to pen a paean to some gun lovers Remington. Strange and interior and dark, it was nevertheless an apt prologue to The Last Five Years, which premiered in New York in the shut-down winter after September 11, 2001. For those of us who saw it then, this new context felt too familiar.

For those who only know the show from its ecstatic original cast album, or from the lovely 2013 revival at Second Stage, or from the fine 2014 movie starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan, the evening had all the Broadway gloss you could want. The original stars, Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz  she having dashed from rehearsals for The Front Page, still partly in her old whore costume, and he wearing an anti-gun T-shirt  introduced the event, both nostalgically and tearfully. (Butzs sister Teresa was murdered in 2009.) They ushered on Dan Gross, president of the Brady Center, who after aptly noting that the audience of 1,500 had not paid up to $250 a ticket to see him, nevertheless roused the hall with the optimistic idea that our society had finally reached a turning point on this issue.

But the ability to recognize turning points as they happen is a key and equivocal theme of The Last Five Years, which covers the relationship between a successful young novelist, Jamie, and his less successful girlfriend-then-wife, Cathy, from two different perspectives. His version moves forward in time, from the exuberance of first attraction to the emptiness of dissolution, five years later. Meanwhile, hers moves backward, from bereft to buoyant. The two arcs are traced in alternating solo songs  14 in all  that meet only once, in the middle, when the pair gets engaged. Its a structural recipe for sadness at either end, or at best, mixed emotions throughout. Where exactly the balance shifts is, as in life, a mystery not even time can solve.

That  not to mention the relentlessly daredevil vocal writing  makes it a very difficult show to perform. Still, when well cast with superior singing actors, it is always almost unbearably moving. I wont attempt to measure Erivo and Henry against Scott and Butz, who were so at home in the roles it seemed as if the show had been written on their skin. But Erivo, on her day off from The Color Purple, and Henry, the night before leaving to play Burr in the Chicago production of Hamilton, were superb, too, in part because the roles clearly were not written on theirs. Color-blind casting is regularly framed as a problem, a knot of artistic intention and political correctness, but it is more often a wonderful opportunity to look differently at something familiar. And thanks to a forthright acceptance of this in Browns directorial approach to the evening, it took about 30 seconds to get used to a black Jamie (the character is notably Jewish) and a black Cathy. Henry used Jamies opener Shiksa Goddess to get the giggles out of the audience, and after that  even in the impossible Shmuel Song  the show was only about what these two specific actors brought to the story physically, vocally, and emotionally.

In Henrys case that was an explosive charisma; his was the biggest, sexiest Jamie Ive seen. Framing the character not as a nebbish but as an entitled prince made his success as a writer seem more inevitable and his personal failure more shocking. The astonishing energy of his opening songs was both endearing and overwhelming; the hollowness of his last ones the natural correlate. Meanwhile, Erivo, in a skin-tight animal-print dress, worked in the other direction, banking her fires through the first half but uncoiling spectacularly in the second  which, as always, proved the more painful trajectory. Her faintly shadowed optimism at the end, after we had already seen where it led, was devastating.

As was the evening overall. Though it raised $200,000 for the Brady Center, and though such events are meant to make do-gooding feel good, there was within the deafening ovation that greeted most numbers a sound that exceeded appreciation even for the work at hand. To me it sounded like rage: the frustration of people fed up with standing by. The theater  especially the musical theater, I would argue  can tap such feelings, but directing them is another matter. Part of the reason The Last Five Years feels so true and sad is that it shows us how easily we may become trapped in a structure too large to fathom, let alone reinvent.
The Waco Symphony Association will conduct auditions for dancers, ages 5 to 18, to perform with the Waco Symphony Orchestra in its presentation of The Nutcracker from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Joys School of Dance, 7560 Bosque Blvd.

For more information, call 754-0851.

Library story times

Waco-McLennan County Library will resume its weekly preschool story-time program, for ages 3 to 6, with a Lets Go to the Library theme this week.

10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the East Waco Library, 901 Elm Ave.

10:30 a.m. Wednesday at the West Waco Library, 5301 Bosque Blvd.

10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Central Library, 1717 Austin Ave.

10:30 a.m. Friday at the South Waco Library, 2737 S. 18th St.

The free program will include stories and crafts.

For more information, call 750-5942 or visit www.wacolibrary.org.

SCV meeting

The Sons of Confederate Veterans will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Poppa Rollos Pizza, 703 N. Valley Mills Drive.

Richard Montgomery will speak about Chaplains in the Southern Army.

Optional dining will begin at 6 p.m. Visitors are welcome.

For more information, visit www.scv-waco.org. or call 772-1676.

Watercolor Society

Central Texas Watercolor Society will meet from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, 1624 Wooded Acres Drive.

Local artist Tim Goss will present a program about drawing.

The program is free to first-time visitors. A light lunch will be provided.

For more information, call 772-1982.

BU ensembles concert

The Baylor University Symphonic Band and the Baylor Wind Ensemble will present a free concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Jones Concert Hall in Baylors Glennis McCrary Music Building.

For more information about the programs music, visit www.baylor.edu/music or call 710-3991.

Kiwanis Seniors

Waco Kiwanis Seniors will meet at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday at Golden Corral, 618 N. Valley Mills Drive.

Sandy Maselli and Christine Schroeder-Morren, with the Alzheimers Association, will be the guest speakers.

For more information, call Dick Rood at 399-0072.

Womens social club

Newcomers and Neighbors of Waco, a social club open to all women of Central Texas, will meet at 11 a.m. Sept. 21 at Ridgewood Country Club, 7301 Fish Pond Road.

Golden Keys Parsons, a local author, motivational speaker and director of a womens ministry outreach program in Waco, will be the speaker.

Cost is $20, which includes lunch. The reservation deadline is Thursday.

For more information, call Mickie Warnell at 741-1046, email mjw229@grandecom.net or visit www.newcomersandneighborsofwaco.com.

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.
The downtown Public Improvement District board voted Monday to triple down on landscape maintenance.

For a trial period of Oct. 15 to Jan. 15, the PID will pay Lawns Ltd. an extra $20,000 for services such as more frequent power washing and leaf blowing of sidewalks, as well as more regular emptying of trash cans.

In the next year, the board expects to rebid its maintenance contract and triple its annual maintenance budget to $126,000.

PID board chairman Steve Cates said the funding surge reflects a newfound popularity of downtown  and the PIDs newfound resources to spruce it up.

The PID funds downtown services through an extra 10 cents per $100 property surtax, and this years revaluation of downtown property values is expected to raise annual revenues from $320,000 to $450,000.

We now want to leverage those funds to enhance the viability of downtown even beyond what weve done, said Cates, CEO of Texas Life Insurance.

The PID also approved a 90-day contract extension with Centurion Security to provide an additional 40 hours a week of security services during the same period.

Currently, Lawns Ltd. gets $39,000 a year, which covers a general cleanup through the downtown district each month, with two cleanings in high-traffic areas, such as University Parks Drive; Fourth and Fifth streets; and Washington, Austin, Franklin and Mary avenues.

Under the enhanced contract, the high-traffic areas will get weekly service, and a full-time employee on a street-legal cart would work in the downtown area daily.

The worker will blow leaves on Austin Avenue at least weekly, with daily service during peak leaf-drop season.

The worker also will empty trash carts, pick up litter, clean alleys and water planters.

Because the new services represent a major contract change, the PID board will rebid the maintenance contract in early 2016, and Lawns Ltd. will be welcome to bid, officials said.

Jim Clifton, who heads the PID boards design and service delivery committee, said the enhanced maintenance should improve downtowns curb appeal, but further steps are needed.

He said downtowns alley trash bins are served by several different commercial haulers, and its difficult to establish responsibility for trash piled around the bins.

You get a lot of finger pointing, he said.

Clifton suggested choosing a single hauler for downtown trash, either by a city rule or incentives.

Cates said city code enforcement also could help reduce the nuisance caused by bird droppings downtown. He said the city needs an ordinance requiring the owners of vacant buildings to seal their upper-story windows to prevent birds from roosting inside.

The PID board approved sending a letter to City Manager Dale Fisseler asking the city to work with the board on the alley bin and bird roost issues.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials have launched an investigation into an incident at Baylor University earlier this month in which a construction worker fell four stories through a refuse chute and fractured his skull.

Jose Vicente Campuzano, a 23-year-old construction worker from Waco, remains hospitalized in serious condition after his fall Sept. 1 from the top of Martin Hall at Baylor left him with life-threatening injuries.

Campuzano, who works for Northstar Demolition and Remediation Co., underwent surgery and doctors inserted a steel plate in his skull, said Campuzanos attorney, Vuk Vujasinovic, of Houston.

Baylor spokeswoman Lori Fogleman said Baylor officials are aware of the incident. She deferred additional comment to officials at Whiting-Turner, the general contractor overseeing the renovation of the 62-year-old mens dormitory at 1101 S. Fifth St.

Oscar Vasquez, a supervisor at Whiting-Turner in San Antonio, declined comment Monday.

Gary Thibodeaux, safety director at Northstar, did not return phone messages left at his Beaumont office Monday.

Juan J. Rodriguez, an OSHA public affairs director in Dallas, would confirm only that OSHA officials are investigating the incident in which Campuzano was injured.

We cannot comment on anything further while the investigation is ongoing, but if violations of OSHA standards are found, OSHA can issue citations that could carry monetary penalties, Rodriguez said.

Vujasinovic said he sent letters Monday to officials at Baylor and the two construction companies informing them that he represents Campuzano and asking them to preserve evidence at the scene and to allow him to visit the site as soon as possible.

We are going to find out why Mr. Vicente fell four stories while working on the Martin Residential Hall refurbishment project, and hold accountable anyone who caused that to happen, Vujasinovic said.

Campuzano was assisting in the removal of asbestos from Martin Hall when he fell four stories through the refuse chute to the ground, Vujasinovic said.

At this time, we have no idea how or why this happened, he said.

The building opened in 1954 and is named for 1900 Baylor graduate D.K. Dock Martin, who was appointed chairman of the Texas Highway Commission in the 1920s by then-Texas Gov. Pat Neff. The dorm is closed this year during the renovation project.

Vujasinovic represented the family of Jose Dario Suarez, a 55-year-old construction worker from Manor who drowned in 2014 while working on the pedestrian bridge over the Brazos River that leads to Baylors McLane Stadium.

In April, a Harris County jury awarded Suarezs family $17.72 million, ruling that general contractor Austin Bridge and Road Co. was responsible for Suarezs death.

Baylor was named as a defendant in the original pleadings, but 151st State District Judge Mike Engelhart dismissed the school from the lawsuit last year.

Suarez drowned Jan. 28, 2014, after a hydraulic lift he and another worker, Terry Watson, were strapped to rolled from a modular barge into the Brazos River as the men worked on the bridge.

Watson was able to free himself and swim to the surface, where he was pulled from the cold river.
Sonia Harris, the 12-year-old girl struck by a van Sunday as she was trying to cross Hewitt Drive on her bicycle, remained in critical condition Tuesday morning, according to the Midway Middle School principal.

Doctors are closely monitoring swelling in her brain, and Harris is sedated at McLane Childrens Scott & White Hospital in Temple, Principal Herb Cox stated in an email to parents Tuesday.

The family has requested of me to let everyone know how much they have appreciated the incredible amount of comfort and support from friends and families in Midway ISD, Cox stated. They do not need any meals at this time, and they would prefer not to be contacted directly. They are not able to handle all of the individual inquiries about Sonia at this time, so please try to refrain from contacting them directly.

Harris and her sister were trying to cross the street on their bikes when a northbound van struck Harris on Hewitt Drive, just south of Sun Valley Boulevard, about 8 p.m., Midway ISD spokeswoman Traci Marlin said. Harris sister was uninjured.

Since then, the district has had additional counselors on campus to provide support and spent Monday reminding students about pedestrian safety procedures, Marlin said.

Hewitt Drive isnt a road that necessarily needs to be crossed, Marlin said Monday morning. When its dusk and visibility is low and youre not with a crossing guard, its not safe, and we have to re-teach that to students. Were definitely all very concerned about her condition.

The investigation into the incident is ongoing, and no charges have been filed, Hewitt Police Chief Jim Devlin said Monday.

The district will continue to send status updates to parents when they become available from the family, and further questions beyond that can be directed to Coxs office, Cox stated.

They do need your continued thoughts and prayers as we move through the next several days, Cox said. Thank you for your support of this family, and for your continued prayerful consideration on Sonias behalf.
Just because Donald Trump isnt qualified to be president  and just because much of his agenda is hateful and undesirable  doesnt mean that everything he says is automatically wrong. Some of his ideas deserve consideration and enactment. One of these is building a wall across our southern border with Mexico.

It has been ridiculed by opponents as an unneeded monstrosity and a colossal waste of money. The theory of the wall is that it keeps out low-wage workers and, thereby, raises the wages of U.S. workers, including earlier Hispanic arrivals. They are most vulnerable to more Hispanic workers, because their skills generally overlap.

Just what a wall would cost is unknown. Guesses vary. Trump has said $8 billion. A detailed report by AllianceBernstein, a research firm, estimated between $15 billion and $25 billion. These sums seem (and are) large, but within a $4 trillion federal budget, theyre modest.

The crucial question is: If we had a wall, what would we get for it? The answer: A wall probably represents our best chance of reaching broad agreement on immigration policy, a subject that has frustrated Congress and the last two presidents.

Lets be clear on one issue: Trumps insistence that Mexico pay for the wall is an absurd idea. No self-respecting Mexican president would accept it. If one did, the wall would become a subject of endless bickering between the two countries as to who actually owned and controlled it. The fact that Trump made this so central to his proposal suggests that hes not serious. He is simply grandstanding.

Still, in the hands of someone serious, a wall could be a catalyst for a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration policy. Its hard to understand opposition [to a wall], as my colleague Charles Krauthammer recently noted. Its the most venerable and reliable way to keep people out. He argues correctly that the outlines of a deal have long been apparent. It would:

Change legal immigration criteria to favor employability (aka skills) over family connections  the emphasis would be on stimulating the nations economic growth.

Require most businesses to belong to E-Verify, the government system that allows employers to check on the immigrant status of potential workers.

Create a path to legality  and ultimately to citizenship  for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the country.

Embrace policies  including a wall  that would credibly and dramatically reduce illegal immigration.

Without a wall, its doubtful that Republicans will enter into meaningful negotiations on immigration policy  and without Republican participation, the stalemate will continue. In a recent Pew poll, 63 percent of Republicans supported a wall and only 34 percent opposed. The distrust is deep. Republicans think Democrats dont truly care about stopping illegal immigration; they mainly want amnesty for existing undocumented immigrants. In the same Pew poll, 84 percent of Democrats opposed a wall.

There are two standard objections to a wall  both true but politically irrelevant. The first is that it might have once been justified but isnt now, because the inflow of undocumented Mexican immigrants is slowing and maybe reversing. Mexicos birthrate  which affects its labor force  has declined, and its economy has improved. It can more easily absorb new workers. A 2015 Pew study found that the number of undocumented Mexicans in the United States had dropped by 140,000 between 2009 and 2014.

But this is a net figure: people entering minus people leaving. There are still hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Latinos trying to cross the southern border illegally every year. A wall will make this harder and reinforce the natural trend. Some people wont try to enter; of those who do, fewer will make it. Tragedies  dying in the desert, being exploited by coyotes  will decline.

The second objection is that the southern border isnt the only way people become illegal immigrants. Many arrive legally and overstay their visas. Indeed, according to a study in the Journal on Migration and Human Security, these immigrants now outnumber those breaching the southern border. But if E-Verify were widely adopted, these immigrants would have a harder time getting work.

If we could buy an immigration bargain for $25 billion, or even a bit more, it would be a fabulous deal. Thats the opportunity facing the next president. But we wont make it any easier by stigmatizing the one change  a wall  that could be the foundation for compromise.

Robert J. Samuelson is also author of The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement, 1945-1995.
Many questions

A few questions regarding economist Ray Perrymans Sept. 8 column defending illegal immigration, given the needs of Texas industry:

If illegal aliens are so vital to our economy, why do we go to so much trouble to try to keep them out? How many illegal aliens do we need? And when we reach that number, will we close the border and allow no more to enter?

If foreign workers are so desperately needed, why dont we increase the number of immigrants who can come here legally? Who did all those jobs before millions of illegal aliens came here?

If illegal aliens are beneficial to our economy, was it detrimental to the economies of their home countries when they left? And if there were no jobs available in their home countries, how did it become our responsibility to find jobs for them?

If we import foreign workers, isnt that the same thing as exporting jobs? Its just out-sourcing in reverse. Either way, the result is the same  foreigners are doing those jobs.

With millions of people around the world trying to do it the right way and legally immigrate to the United States, how can we look them in the eye and explain why we allowed 11 million people to illegally jump ahead of them? Then, to rub salt in the wound, we may give line-jumpers legal status.

And if we give them legal status, wont that make them subject to minimum-wage laws? If so, can they still be considered cheap labor? What will stop their employers from replacing them with the next batch of illegal aliens who come across the border willing to work for less?

If we dont give them legal status, wont their low wages undercut the very concept of a minimum wage? Will legal status make them eligible for the government services Mr. Perryman claims they dont get now?

The Perryman Group has undoubtedly considered these things. It will be interesting to learn their conclusions.

David B. Anderson, Waco

The Deplorables!

Is Hillary Clintons campaign focus on bringing people together or further separating us? I just heard her suggest that a large percentage of Trump supporters are racists. If you favor her, are you ready to have your friends and family so branded if they voice support for Trump? If you dont support her, are you comfortable with the seed of doubt about you that she is trying to plant?

Juanita Case, Hewitt

As Teddy said

Teddy Roosevelt, speaking of immigrants, once said: (The immigrant) ...becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American but something else also isnt an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag...

I think he said it all regarding hyphenated Americans and maybe diversity also. Were all Americans and should act like it.

J.D. Copeland, Hewitt
YUTAN  Randall S. McDuffee of Yutan was arrested last Friday morning on a manslaughter charge connected to the death of his sister, Michelle Mary McDuffee.

The arrest comes almost three years after Yutan Fire and Rescue personnel was dispatched to 65-year-old Randall McDuffees rural Yutan acreage in December 2013.

According to court documents, emergency responders found Michelle McDuffee unresponsive and lying on the kitchen floor on the morning of Dec. 8, 2013.

She did not live with her brother, but was visiting from Colorado, said Saunders County Sheriff Kevin Stukenholtz.

Michelle McDuffee was transported by the Yutan squad to Lakeside Hospital in Omaha with severe brain injuries and then to University of Nebraska Medical Trauma Center for surgery.

She never regained consciousness and died almost three years later, on March 3, 2016.

Randall McDuffee reported to investigators in 2013 that he did not know how his sisters injuries occurred and that he had gone to bed at approximately 10 p.m. the night before.

Results of Michelle McDuffees autopsy listed the cause of death as medical complications of blunt force injury of the head.

At the time of the incident, Randall McDuffee was arrested and jailed, but the case was dismissed without prejudice by the county attorneys office, Stukenholtz said.

This allowed the county attorneys office to file charges at a later date  a felony manslaughter charge instead of an assault charge.

County Attorney Steven Twohig said he could not comment further, due to the ethical rules of prosecution and at the risk of tainting a jury.

McDuffee is currently in the Saunders County jail, Stukenholtz said on Sept. 12. His first appearance in County Court was scheduled for Wednesday at 9 a.m.
EAGLE  Some members of the villages workforce may soon add animal control to their resumes, after a recent decision made by Eagle Board of Trustees.

Board members approved at their last meeting the purchase of equipment and training that would allow village employees to effectively round up animals at large.

The decision came on the heels of the village noticing an increase in the amount of animal complaints making their way to the clerks desk, said Board Chair Travis Moore.

The last month or two theres been a lot more complaints around town of dogs running at large, Moore said.

Though most complaints are about dogs roaming unattended through the village, other complaints have come up, such as unlicensed animals wandering in from neighboring farms and stray cats.

Taking care of unattended animals is the villages responsibility, Moore said. In the past, the equipment and experience already held by employees was enough, but the increased complaints caused second thoughts.

Weve handled those situations as they pop up, Moore said. We thought it was necessary to get our guys properly trained.

Beginning in October, some of the villages maintenance employees will begin tagging along on rides with the City of Lincolns Animal Control Department, Moore said. Each employee will go on two or three ride-alongs, and more formal training is scheduled for later in October, though that still needs to be approved by the village board.

The main concern for village employees responding to animal-at-large complaints is keeping workers safe, Moore said. In such situations, its difficult to predict exactly what could go wrong.

You dont know if its been vaccinated, you dont know if it might be rabid, Moore said. We put our employees at risk by asking them to go out on these calls.

In addition to the ride-alongs in Lincoln, village workers will also meet with employees at Lincolns Capital Humane Society, Moore said. The village partners with that organization when handling lost animals.

Moore said an employee originally approached the village with an interest in receiving training in animal control, and so far employees have been receptive to the training plans.

He was very welcome to the idea, Moore said.

The village is attempting to crack down on problems with feral cats taking shelter in vacant homes, then reproducing quickly, Moore said. Along with training, the village may plan education efforts for residents. Pet owners are already receiving license notices and other mailings.

Maybe we need to try some public education efforts, Moore said.

The planned training will only allow employees to respond to domesticated animal calls. Wild animal complaints will need to be handled through other avenues.

That means animals like one of Eagles most recent visitors, a silver fox seen frequently in various parts of the village, will require more expert attention, Moore said.

Residents can contact the village with wildlife complaints, and the village will relay that information to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. From there, conservation officers will relocate wildlife.

The village board also approved a $500 investment in the Cass County, Nebraska Economic Development Council, which will allow village officials more avenues to network with nearby communities for economic growth, Moore said. Eagles proximity to Lincoln could allow potential for more growth than other villages in the county.

Trustees also discussed the possible creation of a Deputy Clerk position to help alleviate the burden of clerical duties that currently falls almost solely on Village Clerk Nick Nystrom. With the village currently working on updating the employee handbook and coming close to approving the next years budget, it seemed like an opportune time to give the idea some thought.

We felt this was a great time to put together a job description, Moore said.

No action was taken on that item.
The U.S. Navy Blue Angels will be returning to Houston for the 32nd Annual Commemorative Air Force (CAF) Wings Over Houston Airshow, which will be held Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 22-23, at Ellington Airport. Produced by the Commemorative Air Force, the non-profit airshow also will feature a special tribute to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which propelled the United States into World War II. Other highlights of the show include performances and displays of vintage warplanes, modern military aircraft, civilian aerobatic pilots and numerous exhibits and activities. The performance line-up will be finalized in the coming weeks.

The U.S. Navy Blue Angels, along with a great lineup of aerobatic pilots and flight demonstrations of modern and vintage aircraft are shaping up for another exciting show that draws fans from all over the United States and the world to Houston, said Airshow Director Bill Roach. Were putting together the final touches on a thrilling show lineup, but now is the time to purchase tickets, especially if you want to be in prime reserved seating.

Tickets can be purchased in advance by visiting www.wingsoverhouston.com or by calling 888-4-FLYSHOW. Tickets can be purchased at the gate on show days, but premium reserved seats sell out early. General admission tickets will also available at area Kroger stores by mid- to late-September.

About Commemorative Air Force (CAF) Wings Over Houston

The Commemorative Air Force (CAF) Wings Over Houston Airshow is a non-profit 501(c)(3) community event produced by a volunteer effort of the Gulf Coast Wing, Houston Wing, and Tora! Tora! Tora! of the Commemorative Air Force, with support from the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston, Texas Legends Flying Museum, Vietnam War Flight Museum, Lewis Air Legends and Collings Foundation West. The Airshow is dedicated to showcasing vintage World War II aircraft, along with the thrills of modern aviation. One of the top air shows in the United States in its category, the CAF Wings Over Houston Airshow attracts more than 90,000 festival goers throughout Houston as well as from around the globe. The 2016 Airshow benefits the CAF Wings Over Houston Airshow Scholarship Program, Aviation Career Education Academy, Exchange Club of Sugar Land, Westchase Rotary Club and the Commemorative Air Force aircraft restoration and flying historical programs, in addition to numerous other nonprofit participating organizations.

About the Commemorative Air Force

The Commemorative Air Force honors the men and women who built, maintained, and flew in these airplanes during World War II. The organization believes that is best accomplished by maintaining the airplanes in flying condition; taking the airplanes to the people allowing them to experience the sight and sound of the aircraft in flight.

Collecting, restoring and flying vintage historical aircraft for more than half a century, the Commemorative Air Force ranks as one of the largest private air forces in the world. The CAF is dedicated to Honoring American Military Aviation through flight, exhibition and remembrance. A non-profit educational association, the CAF has more than 13,000 members and a fleet of 165 airplanes distributed throughout the country to 76 CAF units for care and operation. For more information, visit www.commemorativeairforce.org.
Several World War II veterans will highlight activities at the third annual Atlanta Warbird Weekend at Dekalb-Peachtree Airport (KPDK) Sept.24-25, 2016. The event at the Chamblee, Ga., airport is a community effort led by the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) Dixie Wing, the Georgia Chapter of the worlds largest WWII flying collection. This years program will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the American Volunteer Group (AVG), nicknamed the Flying Tigers. AWW will host the largest gathering of P-40 Warhawks in 50 years, with at least 10 of the historic planes expected at the airport. The Curtiss P-40 was highly associated with the Flying Tigers and was the third- most- produced fighter plane of WWII. Very few are still flying and the AWW event will be a rare opportunity to see these aircraft together and hear from actual veterans who served with the Flying Tigers, as well as hear from other WWII veterans who will be present to discuss their experiences.

Frank Losonsky, Chairman of the AVG Flying Tigers Association, will be participating for the weekend. Frank was recruited into the AVG from his duties in the US Army Air Corps at Selfridge Field, Michigan. He was assigned as a Crew Chief in the Hells Angels 3rd squadron, where he generally was responsible for three to four aircraft at a time. In addition to these duties, he also carried out memorable tasks such as delivering bombs via truck from Kunming to Paoshan, and salvaging parts from ill-fated P-40s. On one occasion, Losonsky was part of a salvage crew sent to recover four wrecked Tomahawks. The flight of four planes, led by Gregory Pappy Boyington, had made forced landings near the Indochina border when they ran out of fuel. Honorably discharged from the AVG, Frank returned home, married, and then returned to the Far East as a mechanic with Chinese National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). Later, he returned stateside and assisted in building B-24 Liberators. Leaving the Air Corps, Losonsky took a civil service job at Clark Field in the Philippines. Following WWII Frank remained in the Far East and attained one of his earliest goals  to become a commercial pilot. He flew for TAA (TransAsiatic Airlines). In 1950 he left TAA and returned to the States. He joined GM and traveled the world for 30 years as a service rep for the GM Allison aircraft engine division. Franks finale was to serve as an Exec. Officer in his sons PART IV restaurant business in Columbus, Ga. In 1996 Frank was awarded a Bronze Star Medal by Chief of Staff USAF, Gen. Ronald Fogleman. The AVG Flying Tigers were granted veterans status in 1991 and awarded a Presidential Unit Citation in 1992.

Charles Chuck Baisden, vice president of the AVG Flying Tigers Association, also will be present for the special AVG weekend. He signed a one-year contract with Central Aircraft Mfg. Co., covert cover for the AVG, and worked as an armorer on 3rd Squadron P-40Bs and P-40Es. He was with the first forces to reach Burma, and first of the AVG to reach Toungoo in August 1941. Baisden was stationed at Mingaladon and Magwe, Burma; Loiwing, Mengshi, and Kunming, China, and did the Burma Road by truck. He once was sent to Maymyo, Burma, via Mandalay to pick up 55,000 rounds of aircraft ammunition. Baisden also served in WWII and Korea, for which he earned the following decorations: Distinguished Flying Cross; Bronze Star; Air Medal; four Presidential Unit Citations; Air Force Outstanding Unit Award; SAC Crew of the Month; Two Korean Unit Citations; China National Service Medal; Combat Ready. The Flying Tigers were recruited under secret presidential authority and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. The shark-mouth nose art of the Flying Tigers remains among the most recognizable images of any individual combat aircraft or combat unit of World War II. The AVG Flying Tigers Association will celebrate its reunion in conjunction with the AWW. Presentations at AWW, and leading up to the event, will be organized to educate and connect the public with the historical significance of the American Volunteer Group.

Also expected for AWW Lt Col Dick Cole, the last surviving member of the Doolittle Tokio Raiders. Dick Cole, who will turn 101 years old on September 7, 2016, was the co-pilot for Doolittle and led 16 B-25 bombers and 80 crew members on a mission to hit main lain Japan. The mission had no military strategic value, but changed the morale of Americans everywhere. On April 18, 1942, he was co-pilot of the first American airplane to attack the Japanese home islands since war had been declared. The Raid was just the beginning of a year overseas for Cole. After the Doolittle Raid, Cole remained in the China-Burma-India Theater (CBI) to Fly the Hump, one of the riskiest of all World War II aviation missions. In the spring of 1942, Japanese units overran Burma on Indias northern border, cutting off the last significant land routes that supplied the struggling armies of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in China. The United States and its Allies needed to keep China in the war. Since she had been attacked by the Japanese in 1937, her forces had preoccupied nearly 2 million Japanese troops. However, that strategy could only work if China and Allied troops could be supplied. So in April 1942, Cole, now assigned to the Air Transport Command, started flying the Hump in C-47s loaded to the gills with everything from gasoline to food to bandages  whatever was needed to keep China and her Allies in the fight.

Other veterans expected for AWW are WWII veteran pilots Bob Jones, who flew C-47 and the C-46 Commando over the Hump in the Himalayan Mountains; Paul Crawford , who Flew 29 missions in P-51s and flew P-40s for Chennault in the 14th Air Force; plus Albert McMahan, a B-17 ball and tail gunner who flew 25 missions in the dark early days of the 8th Air Force when there were no friendly escorts, and Henry Hughey, who flew as a ball turret gunner with the 487th Bomber Group (Gentlemen from Hell) later in the war and completed 32 missions.

Community support has been amazing and it is really bringing history alive in honor of our veterans, said Moreno Aguiari, AWW co-chairman. Aviation and veterans groups, museums, local municipalities and individuals are volunteering to help us share the story of World War II aviation history.

AWW will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day Sept. 24-25 at the Dekalb-Peachtree Airport. For a complete schedule of activities and CAF aircraft flight prices and reservations, visit www.atlantawarbirdweekend.com. The mission of the Texas-based CAF is to honor veterans and American military aviation through flight, education and remembrance.
What is the strongest force in the world? A poet may say "love", an economist will swear it is "self-interest", and a physicist will vote for "strong nuclear force". As a biologist, my answer is "evolution". This hidden force has a huge impact on our daily lives, especially as it applies to our interactions with micro-organisms, and specifically to the chemical warfare we are engaging in in a futile attempt to rid our lives of germs, and remake our kitchens and bathrooms into gleaming palaces of sterility.

The US Food and Drug Administration has banned the use of antibacterial compounds such as triclosan and triclocarban in household products such as liquid soaps. The overall finding of the FDA was that these types of chemicals did not meet the twin requirements of being efficient, and generally recognised as safe. To put this another way, the risks of using these chemicals outweigh the likely benefits. This is not a decision the FDA took lightly, as becomes evident if you wade through its 25-page ruling, and its 70 embedded scientific references.

For many years now, it has been clear from in vitro studies that when bacteria are exposed to broad-spectrum antibacterials such as triclosan, they rapidly evolve resistance. This is one of the purest examples of evolution in action: add a stress to an environment, and organisms are forced to adapt or die. Naturally occurring (but rare) mutants are selected from the initial population, and these proliferate at the expense of their less-robust brethren. Darwin would be pleased.

What is especially interesting (and terrifying) about such experiments is that when the surviving bacteria are tested for resistance to other antibacterial agents, they often have resistance to these too. In one experiment, an Acinetobacter strain adapted to triclosan was found to also gain resistance to piperacillin-tazobactam, doxycycline, moxifloxacin, ceftriaxone, cefepime, meropenem, doripenem, ertapenem, ciprofloxacin, aztreonam, tigecycline, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. All of these are clinically significant antibiotics  these are drugs that save lives. Should we be risking the usefulness of such agents in a quixotic quest to eradicate germs from our bathrooms and kitchens? The FDA did not think so.
Japanese activists hold the national flags on Uotsuri island, one of the islands of Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. Credit:KYODO NEWS It also happened to come just four weeks after China's other land grab suffered a major political setback. Key elements of China's claim to 90 per cent of the South China Sea were ruled to have "no legal basis" by an international tribunal at The Hague. Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin at demonstration over Diaoyu/ Senkaku island between China and Japan. Almost as soon as that finding was delivered against Beijing, "China started ratcheting up the pressure again" on the dispute with Japan, even before last week's big round of regional summits, including the G-20 summit hosted by China itself, Medcalfe points out.

Xi met Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the G-20 last week. China's leader told Abe that they needed to make progress through dialogue on their dispute because "no progress means regression". Medcalfe continues: "And now that the G-20 is over, one assumes the Chinese will continue to ratchet up." But why? Why take the risk? It's part of the project that Xi calls "the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation". Medcalfe, speaking from Tokyo where he has been discussing the dispute with Japanese experts, explains: "They want to be able to isolate Japan as a maritime power. Ultimately, China doesn't want US allies to be able to support each other in a crisis." And Xi knows that, when he enters any clash with Japan, he is on a popular cause. A new piece of research by the respected US polling firm Pew explains why. Its title tells the story: "Hostile Neighbours: China v Japan." And the subtitle: "View each other as arrogant, violent; disagree on WW2 legacy."

The poll finds that 86 per cent of Japanese have a negative view of China. And the feeling is mutual. Eighty one per cent of Chinese hold a negative view of Japan. There has been a marked souring of sentiment in the last decade, according to Pew's polls over those years. The two peoples see a looming confrontation. Six in ten Chinese are concerned that their territorial dispute will lead to "military conflict" with Japan, according to Pew. The Japanese are even more troubled by the prospect - eight in 10 are concerned. A war would be disastrous for all; but with such underlying animosity dating back centuries, it could well prove popular in both countries. ANU's Medcalfe sees it as very unlikely: "The risk of an incident is real but manageable, partly because Japan has been very professional and disciplined in its management of the dispute, and while the Chinese are very busy they are no longer doing the extremely risky manoeuvres they were doing in the past."

If the worst were to happen, how would Australia react? Canberra has no settled doctrine on this. A lot would depend on which country was seen to be to blame, on who was seen to have "started it". Medcalfe says: "If Japan doesn't start it, it's hard to see the US not getting involved." Indeed, Barack Obama has stated unequivocally that the US military alliance with Japan would apply to a clash between Japan and China. "And if the US is involved, it's hard to imagine we wouldn't get involved, even if it's only supporting US operations through the use of the joint facilities, that is, Pine Gap." But would the Australian navy be taking aim at Chinese vessels? "Japan doesn't need us, although it does need the US," says Medcalfe. "But they would need and expect our moral support and unless they did something gratuitous and provocative I think they would get our clear diplomatic support."

In an effort to help condition Australian thinking about any such decision, a Sydney researcher has published a new paper that recalibrates Australia's economic partners. A former director of the Australia-Japan Economic Institute, Manuel Panagiotopoulos, has created a new index that looks at the quality, not just quantity, of Australia's economic relationships. He takes not only import and exports and investment stocks into account, but also geopolitical alignments because, he says, in times of crisis geopolitics trumps trade. He applies a "risk discount" to allow for the "misalignment" of strategic interests and finds that, applying a 12 per cent risk discount to China reorders Australia's strongest economic partnerships  it puts the US first, Japan second and China third. It's another pointer to the increasingly tense and contested matrix of Asian ambitions.
One woman has died and several people are said to be unwell after what a family member said was an outbreak of gastroenteritis on a cruise ship off the coast of Queensland.

The P&O Pacific Jewel cruise ship left from Sydney on September 6 for a 10-night "Barrier Reef Discovery" cruise. P&O said there had not been a gastro outbreak on the ship.

Margaret Carlson boarded with her daughter and teenage grandson. It was the 79-year-old's seventh cruise in 10 years after her husband passed away, and she was looking forward to the journey after being upgraded to a luxury cabin.

She soon began showing signs of gastro and was told by medical staff that she had probably brought the bug onto the ship with her, her family says. Her daughter and grandson also fell ill after boarding the ship.
Pharmaceutical companies have spent millions of dollars wining and dining Australian nurses in recent years, as well as paying for them to attend overseas conferences, training courses and even coffee meetings.

Nurses were also involved in nearly 40 per cent of the 90,000 medical events sponsored by drug companies over the four years to September 2015, twice as many as those that doctors attended.

Drug companies have spent millions on events for nurses over the past four years, a study says. Credit:Gillianne Tedder

The cash splash was revealed after academic analysis of member data reported by industry group Medicines Australia and has raised concerns that it could influence decision-making.

It showed of $12.5 million spent on functions for nurses about $3 million was for "food and beverages". The remainder was spent on things such as conference sponsorship, flights and accommodation.
Thankfully most small business owners only have to deal with the Australian taxation system. When a business manufactures in or provides services from Australia that are used overseas, the business is only subject to the Australian taxation system. When the goods are manufactured or the service is provided in an overseas country, the taxation rules of that country must be complied with.

Q. I am operating a small business as a sole trader and have just moved to Canada where I will be based for two years. Will I still be considered an Australian resident for tax purposes? My business provides consultancy and other services in different locations overseas, with the consultants coming from different countries.

Small businesses based overseas may still have to pay tax in Australia. Credit:David McNew

I understand that since I'm a sole trader I can't pay myself a wage as an employee for tax purposes. If the consultants I employ are of other nationalities, for example Serbian, do they need to pay tax to the Australian government? Would they need to pay tax to their own government or the country where the services are provided?

A. Whether you will be classed as an Australian resident for income tax purposes is dependent on a number of tests. The first test relates to the number of days that a person is absent from Australia. Under this test, when someone is overseas for more than 183 days they may be classed as a non-resident for Australian income tax purposes.
Cancer conwoman Belle Gibson had "no reasonable basis" for believing she had terminal brain cancer, a court has heard.

Ms Gibson failed to appear before the Federal Court in Melbourne on Tuesday morning to answer questions about her global health scam and fundraising fraud.

Consumer Affairs Victoria alleges Ms Gibson falsely claimed that she had healed herself of terminal cancer and had run unlawful fundraising appeals to promote her top-rating app and cookbook, The Whole Pantry.

The action is in response to her claims of beating cancer by eschewing conventional medicine and of failing to hand over thousands of dollars raised in the name of charity in 2013 and 2014.
In the world of conspiracy theories, even a broken clock can sometimes be telling the right time. So it was that months of unhinged online speculation about Hillary Clinton's health finally intersected with reality on the campaign trail, as the Democratic candidate had a real health episode.

It is crucial to note that those doing the speculating did not employ forensic techniques or a laser focus. Rather, they deployed a trawler, which picked up all sorts of random information in the hope of creating a wall of anti-Clinton noise that no one could gainsay.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves as she walks from her daughter's apartment building on September 11, 2016, in New York, two hours after the incident. Credit:AP

However it is also true that Hillary Clinton has at times been her own worst enemy in abetting such speculation, the machine politician in love with information management. The question of her emails was from the beginning as much about her instinct to conceal as it was about the likely contents of the correspondence itself. And so it is that a man with no history in high office can cheerfully contradict himself and yet be contrasted with his opponent as a "straight talker".

Distinguishing between the truth and fables in a world obsessed with security has always been one of the foremost challenges of newsgathering. South Korea has responded to repeated weapons tests by North Korea by trying to win the war of information, and sometimes this has resulted in stories about the execution of leading Pyongyang figures that have seemed deliberately and exaggeratedly sensational. Is the revelation of planning to destroy Pyongyang in the event of a nuclear attack in this category? Could it be bluster that nevertheless makes the very renewal of conflict it is trying to prevent more certain? Or is it simply a bid for transparency - to show everyone what is at stake?
Washington: Former CIA Director James Woolsey, a vocal advocate of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq who promoted allegations that Saddam Hussein harboured illegal weapons, will serve as a senior national security adviser to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the campaign announced on Monday.

Woolsey's hiring contrasted with Trump's repeated assertions that he was a stalwart opponent of the invasion, although he initially supported it.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey testifies on Capitol Hill in 1996. Credit:AP/File

In the announcement, Woolsey said he supports Trump's plan to expand the US military, which calls for ending Pentagon budget caps and spending billions of dollars for additional troops, ships and aircraft.

"Mr Trump's commitment to reversing the harmful defence budget cuts signed into law by the current administration, while acknowledging the need for debt reduction, is an essential step toward reinstating the United States' primacy in the conventional and digital battle space," Woolsey said.
Canadian business players are looking to the emerging economies of Southeast Asia for lucrative long-term investment opportunitiesand Indonesia is leading the way.The Canada-ASEAN Business Council (CABC) recently concluded its 3Canada-ASEAN Business Forum. The event, which took place from September 7-8 in Jakartas Shangri-La Hotel, brought together over 250 business leaders and senior government officials from Canada and Southeast Asia.The forums objectives included raising the profile of Canada in ASEAN, educating Canadian businesses about the numerous benefits that would stem from greater ASEAN economic integration, and providing a platform for senior executives from Canada and ASEAN to discuss business opportunities in both nations.Indonesia is the anchor country of the relationship between Canada and ASEAN, CABC honorary chairman Jean Charest said during a press conference after the two-day forum.Charest pointed out many of the factors that singled out Indonesia as a great investment opportunity, including its large population, abundant natural resources, and economic dynamism.CABC president Wayne Farmer said that many Canadian businesses expressed strong interest in investing in Indonesia during the forum. Among the top industrial sectors deemed attractive to investors include infrastructure, environment management and services, and agriculture.Asked about the challenges being faced by Canadian businesses looking to invest in Indonesia, Farmer emphasized that more work was required to help Canadian businesses identify the most viable opportunities in the country.Canadian business players who conduct business in ASEAN often encounter significant challenges, such as the inconsistent enforcement of laws, difficulty in obtaining reliable and cost-efficient skilled labor, the preferential treatment of local companies, and widespread corruption.Indonesian Ambassador to Canada Teuku Faizasyah said that his government was committed to tackling these issues, especially those related to corruption. The establishment of the Corruption Eradication Commission, a government agency tasked with fighting corruption, made it clear that the Indonesian government was serious about fighting corruption, he said.
Fabrinet provides optical packaging and precision optical, electro-mechanical, and electronic manufacturing services in North America, the Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The company offers a range of advanced optical and electro-mechanical capabilities in the manufacturing process, including process design and engineering, supply chain management, manufacturing, printed circuit board assembly, advanced packaging, integration, final assembly, and testing. Its products include switching products, including reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers, optical amplifiers, modulators, and other optical components and modules that enable network managers to route voice, video, and data communications traffic through fiber optic cables at various wavelengths, speeds, and over various distances. The company's products also comprise tunable lasers, transceivers, and transponders; and active optical cables, which provide high-speed interconnect capabilities for data centers and computing clusters, as well as Infiniband, Ethernet, fiber channel, and optical backplane connectivity. In addition, it provides solid state, diode-pumped, gas, and fiber lasers used in semiconductor processing, biotechnology and medical device, metrology, and material processing industries; and differential pressure, micro-gyro, fuel, and other sensors used in automobiles, as well as non-contact temperature measurement sensors for the medical industry. Further, the company designs and fabricates application-specific crystals, lenses, prisms, mirrors, laser components, and substrates; and other custom and standard borosilicate, clear fused quartz, and synthetic fused silica glass products. It serves original equipment manufacturers of optical communication components, modules and sub-systems, industrial lasers, automotive components, medical devices, and sensors. The company was incorporated in 1999 and is based in George Town, the Cayman Islands.
Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets commercial aerostructures worldwide. It operates through three segments: Commercial, Defense & Space, and Aftermarket. The Commercial segment offers forward, mid, and rear fuselage sections and systems, struts/pylons, nacelles, and related engine structural components; and wings and wing components, including flight control surfaces, as well as other structural parts. This segment primarily serves the aircraft original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or engine OEMs of large commercial aircraft and/or business/regional jet programs. The Defense & Space segment provides fuselage, strut, nacelle, and wing aerostructures primarily for U.S. Government defense programs, including Boeing P-8, C40, and KC-46 Tanker. This segment also engages in the fabrication, bonding, assembly, testing, tooling, processing, engineering analysis, and training on fixed wing aircraft aerostructures, missiles, and hypersonics works, such as solid rocket motor throats, nozzles, re-entry vehicle thermal protections systems, forward cockpit and cabin, and fuselage work on rotorcraft aerostructures. The Aftermarket segment offers spare parts and MRO services, repairs for flight control surfaces and nacelles, radome repairs, rotable assets, engineering services, advanced composite repairs, and other repair and overhaul services. Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. has a strategic partnership with Sierra Space to enhance access to commercial space economy of the future. The company was formerly known as Mid-Western Aircraft Systems Holdings, Inc. Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1927 and is headquartered in Wichita, Kansas.
DERIDDER -- The Beauregard Parish Police Jury will meet Tuesday for the regular monthly meeting, at 6 p.m. Committee meetings are slated in the afternoon hours. Here are the agendas:

PUBLIC NOTICE

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Regular Monthly Police Jury Meeting will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at 201 W 2nd Street, DeRidder, in the Police Jury Meeting Room at 6 oclock p.m. to transact official business of the Police Jury in Regular Session according to the following agenda:

BEAUREGARD PARISH POLICE JURY

REGULAR SESSION

Sept. 13, 2016

6 p.m.

AGENDA:

Invocation

Pledge of Allegiance

Amendments to the Agenda

Approval of Minutes

July Regular Meeting Minutes

August Regular Meeting Minutes

Sept. 6 Special Meeting Minutes

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

A) Business of the Month for July  Junction Grocery *

ANNOUNCEMENTS

88th Annual Beauregard Parish Fair will be October 4th-8th, 2016. Wings & Wheels Fly-In/Drive-In, November 5, 2016 at the Beauregard Regional Airport

2017 Police Jury Association of Louisiana Annual Convention, February 14-17, 2017, at the Golden Nugget in Lake Charles, LA.

CHAIRMANS COMMITTEE REPORT (S)

A) FINANCE  S.E. Teddy Welch

1. Public HearingBeauregard Parish Police Jury, as the governing body, will sit as Board of Review to hear any and all protest on 2016 Ad Valorem Tax Levy

Aarons Inc.

Progressive Leasing, LLC.

Ampacet Corporation

SBA 2012 TC Assets LLC.

Approval of Final 2015 Budget

Approval of allowable contract rates for inmate OB-GYN cost with Womens Clinic of Southwest Louisiana, Inc.

Approval of Memorandum of Understanding

B) ROAD & BRIDGE  Gerald McLeod

Final approval of Speed limit decrease to 15 MPH of Longville Church Road

To discuss approval for Tommy Cryar  Request for Variance: Newts Corner Subdivision

Approval of Engineering plans for Phase Three of Bocage Subdivision

Approval of Public Notice - Request to reduce Speed Limit on Merchant Road, entire length to 25 miles per hour. Road District 3

Request for approval to abandon Billy White Road, Road District 5

Approval to replace motor in existing Herbicide Truck

Approval of low bids:

Dense Gray #67 Limestone (Washed)

Lightweight Aggregate (#3)

Approval of School Bus Turnarounds:

639 Dave Cole Road, Road District 6

908 Vaughn Road, Road District 7

Approval of three requests from the Town of Merryville:

Clean out drainage ditch along Frazar and Tyler Streets

Lay cold mix from Hwy 110 west on Neal Oilfield Road to the City Limit sign

Assistance in replacing culvert located on South Railroad in Merryville

Approval of Hardship Applications

C) LEGISLATIVE  Carlos Archield

D) PERSONNEL  Ronnie Libick

Appoint Kim Tugwell and James Eaves to War Memorial Civic Center Board

Approval to move Sheree Stracener from temporary to permanent full-time effective September 26, 2016.

Approval for Heather Phillips, Ruthy Reed, Kelly Bailey, and Misty Mosely to attend the GFOA Fall Conference, October 5-7, 2016 at the Baton Rouge Crowne Plaza.

Accept the resignation of Robert Hennigan as Treasurer and appoint Shantel Alleman as Treasurer to fill the unexpired term of Robert Hennigan.

E) ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT  John Stebbins

F) BUILDING & GROUNDS  Jerry Shirley

Approval of Purchase Agreement for Beauregard Parish Courthouse Clocks from Whites Clock and Carillon Service

Approval of Change Order for AOS in the amount of $8,785.00

Approval to amend LGAP Grants for Bundicks Lake Restroom Facilities to be used for playground equipment, picnic tables, fence and a dock.

G) INSURANCE  Ronnie Jackson

WAYS & MEANS  Mike Harper

LANDFILL SOLID WASTE  Elvin Holliday

SECRETARY/TREASURERS REPORT

ADMINISTRATORS REPORT

A. Approval of August 2016 Emergency Work Orders

SHANTEL ALLEMAN

SECRETARY

PERSONNEL COMMITTEE MEETING

PUBLIC NOTICE

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that there will be a Personnel Committee Meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at the Police Jury at 2:30 p.m. for the following purposes:

Approval of Parish Administrator Job Description

Discussion of accrual of sick/annual leave

Any Other Business

FINANCE COMMITTEE MEETING

PUBLIC NOTICE

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that there will be a Finance Committee Meeting, Tuesday Sept. 13, 2016 at the Police Jury at 3:00 p.m. for the following purposes:

2015 Audit  Aaron Cooper

2016 Budget Adjustments.

Approval of AP Register in the amount of $1, 912, 534.79 and the Payroll Register in the amount of $173,411.32 for August 2016.

Update on Business Health Partner  Jeanne Faciane and Glen Reichley

Any Other Business

BUILDINGS & GROUNDS COMMITTEE MEETING

PUBLIC NOTICE

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that there will be a Buildings & Grounds Committee Meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at the Police Jury at 4 p.m. for the following purpose:

Discussion of equipment purchase to control the air conditioning system at the jail  Jeanne Faciane and Brain Haller.

Discussion of LGAP 2017-2018 applications.

Tour Beauregard Parish Gothic Jail

Any Other Business.

ROAD & BRIDGE COMMITTEE MEETING

PUBLIC NOTICE

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that there will be a Road & Bridge Committee Meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at the Police Jury at 5 p.m. for the following purposes:

Approval of Low bids received:

Dense Gray #67 Limestone (Washed)

Lightweight Aggregate (#3)

Approval of Resolutions:

Annual Certification of Compliance with Off-System Bridge Replacement Program

Priority Replacement of the Off-System Bridge Program

Any Other Business
By Bill Hughes Sep. 12, 2016 | 07:48 PM | PADUCAH, KY

A couple of local groups are pressing for more fairness in the way hiring is done at Paducah Independent Schools.

Members of the Community Clergy Fellowship and the Paducah chapter of the NAACP raised the issue last week, saying qualified black applicants weren't even granted interviews for positions in the system - especially leadership positions.

In an interview Monday, Pastor Alfred Anderson said, "We have a system that is 60-65 percent African-American or minority (students), and none in the central office, none in the cabinet - not one."

Anderson cited statistics from a recent report by the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence also showing a gap in Kentucky's teacher to student percentages pertaining to race.

The report says, "In Kentucky classrooms, more than 95 percent of teachers are white, while only 79 percent of students are. That disproportion means many students never learn from a teacher of color. It also means that many school faculties have no members who can contribute personal experience of cultures other than the dominant white one." (Prichard Committee report, July 2016 - see link below).

Anderson said the city school system recently had a chance to help close that gap but didn't.

"I'm not really concerned about the state of Kentucky right now, I'm concerned with Paducah, where I reside, and the low number of minorities we have in the system, and how long and how much it would take us to catch up. And then we had an opportunity to do something about it and chose not to do anything," Anderson said.

He cited the experience of a food services employee who knew several years ago that long-time Director Penny Holt was retiring this fall, so she went back to school to get her degree and certifications for the job, but was never granted an interview for the position when she applied. A white woman from Hickman County was eventually hired for the job.

Anderson the applicant was never told why she wasn't interviewed. In fact, he said Superintendent Donald Shively told him at a School Board meeting last week that he was sorry the woman didn't get interviewed, but Shively said nothing to her when he had two opportunities the next day to talk to her in person.

"This lady will never be able to use the degree that she went to college and the certification that she went to get. She'll never be able to use it in this area," he said.

Another similar situation happened in the Head Start department, Anderson said.

"A position became available, had an African-American in the system with a Doctor's degree who works in the department, and one of the persons who do the hiring went to the county and got one of her friends to come in and be over the Head Start. It just continues over and over and over again," he said.

When asked to respond Monday, Shively issued a statement identical to one given to other members of the media last week, saying he reviewed the process for hiring a Food Service Director, and found that the hiring committee, "followed district policies and procedures and vetted each applicant." Shively said, "I am confident that the committee chose the best applicant. We are pleased that we have hired a food service director with more than five years of outstanding experience in a nearby public school district."

Shively's statement also said the system ranked first in the state in percentage of minority staff, including four minority principals and assistant principals, three of whom moved up from faculty positions.

Anderson said Shively's response leads him to infer that as long as hiring quotas are met, the school system can continue to treat some minority applicants unfairly.

He said the clergy group has gotten a copy of the system's hiring policy, and they have been in contact with the Kentucky Commissioner of Education.

In the meantime, Anderson says support from citizens and parents has been overwhelming. He said everyone should keep vigilant watch and raise their voices if applicants are not treated fairly.

Anderson said, "All we're asking for is fairness."

On the Net:
Advertisement

By Adam Morton

Sep. 12, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By Adam Morton Sep. 12, 2016 | 07:17 PM | PADUCAH, KY

At Monday's McCracken County Fiscal Court meeting, the Board of Commissioners adopted resolutions for property taxes for the 2016 year.



The first resolution passed levied a tax rate of 9.6 cents on each $100 value on all real estate within McCracken County, and 9.81 cents on each $100 of tangible personal property. The money will be used for the county government, general upkeep, and maintenance of roads. The resolution passed unanimously.



The board also approved a tax levy for the McCracken County Health Department in the amount of 2.4 cents per $100 of assessed property in McCracken County.



The third resolution adopted by commissioners approved a tax rate of 1.1 cents per $100 on all assessed property in the county. This money will be used for the mental health center.



The final resolution adopted a tax rate of 2.1 cents on each $100 of value on all real estate within the college support district, and a tax rate of 2.87 cents on each $100 of value of tangible personal property within the college support district.



Commissioner, Bill Bartleman said, "We've adopted what they call the compensating rate, which will bring the county the same amount of money this year as we got last year. It's not a tax increase. We've worked hard to hold expenses and keep things down so we didn't have to increase it."



Tax bills are expected to be sent out by the first of November.


By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 13, 2016 | 06:38 AM | MCCRACKEN COUNTY, KY

A traffic stop in McCracken County Monday night led to a short pursuit and multiple charges against a Paducah man.

According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Office, a deputy attempted to conduct a traffic stop on Estelle Street near Cairo Road. The driver, 31-year-old Christopher Battoe, had an outstanding arrest warrant out of McCracken County.

According to deputies, Battoe refused to stop his vehicle and fled for approximately one mile in the area of North 12th and North 13th streets. Battoe turned into the back yard of an abandoned home at 1234 North 12th Street, where he jumped from his moving vehicle and attempted to flee on foot.

Deputies were able to take Battoe into custody without further incident. He was booked into the McCracken County Regional Jail on the arrest warrant.

He's also charged with fleeing or evading, two counts of wanton endangerment, two counts of criminal mischief, possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, resisting arrest, operating on a suspended license, reckless driving and theft of a motor vehicle registration plate decal.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 13, 2016 | 04:19 AM | PADUCAH, KY

A Paducah man is in jail on multiple charges following a foot pursuit.According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Department, at around 3 pm Monday, deputies were dispatched to Walmart on Irvin Cobb Drive in Paducah for a shoplifter fleeing from security. The suspect, 38-year-old Jason Nikolov of Paducah, allegedly took approximately $78 worth of merchandise from Walmart and fled across the parking lot toward Lowes.

Deputies located Nikolov inside the Mobile Nation store. When Nikolov was approached, he reportedly pushed a deputy, knocking him to the floor.



Nikolov then ran out of the store and across the Lowes parking lot. Deputies were eventually able to take Nikolov into custody on charges of theft by unlawful taking under $500, assaulting a police officer, possession of methamphetamine, fleeing or evading, tampering with physical evidence, resisting arrest and possession of drug paraphernalia.



Nikolov was lodged in the McCracken County Regional Jail.
Advertisement

By Chris Skates

Sep. 12, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By Chris Skates Sep. 12, 2016 | 06:03 PM | PADUCAH, KY

Youve heard it before a million times but it bears repeating right about now. Upon signing the Declaration of Independence, Ben Franklin is reported to have said:



We must all hang together now, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately.



Franklins pun was well aimed. The founders were defying the wishes of the King of England, leader of the worlds military superpower at that time. Only by standing together as a unified group, (and only with some perfectly timed divine intervention) did the leaders of the colonial revolt stand a chance.



I attended Red State Gathering last week in Denver. I enjoyed spending some time with Erick Erickson and talking for a bit about things besides politics (but also about politics). I also met a lot of strong, dedicated conservatives. I made a special attempt to talk to as many of them as possible. I even talked to a few of the speakers after they came off stage. There were some areas that divided us to be sure, but there is one thing that unites us. We are scared.



Some may deny it, some may talk about optimism for the future and may even believe it to some extent, but we are scared about whats going to happen two months from now. By that I dont mean that folks think the world is going to end, I mean that after eight years of Obama, and under such poor leadership going forward, they think America will become some form of a European Socialist Democracy.



This columnist is done with the analysis. I am so sick of it I cant put it into words. Since the conventions we have all been trying to choose between a noose around the neck or a pistol shot to the temple with these two candidates. Set aside the enthusiastic supporters of each for a moment. That only leaves two types of voters, those who are #NeverTrump and those who are #NeverHillary. If, after Red State, I could boil all the areas of disagreement between those two factions into a couple of lines it would be these: One group thinks the floor is lower with Hillary as President, the other thinks the floor is lower with Trump. Neither side has embraced or promoted either candidate. So, why cant there be a mutual respect between the two going forward? Why cant we agree to disagree and be fully prepared to lock arms on November 9th, regardless of the outcome, and fight for conservatism together once again?



I ask because thats not whats happening now. I didnt see it so much at the gathering but with the exception of columns yesterday by Erick Erickson and Steve Deace and, thats not the tone that is being struck. Donald Trumps candidacy has done the one thing that I thought would have been impossible after eight years of Barak Obama, he has fractured the conservative movement into pieces. Some may think that a good thinga pruning as it were. But when I look at the demographics of this nation, I cant agree. We can barely win an election now 51% to 49%, we will never win again if we are split apart.



We need more calls for unity. If we cant unify behind Trump so be it. Then lets at least unify around one another, lacking that lets unify around conservatism or better yet, around our shared faith in a creator God.



The first step to us doing that is for both sides to admit something to ourselveswe dont know. Neither side can have any certitude about which candidate will be worse. This is an unprecedented election. Not only does the world seem to be in the midst of massive political and economic upheaval, the throwing off of the Judeo Christian ethic by the larger part of American society is going to have widespread repercussions. All this is happening in an age when information, photographs and even HD video, travel worldwide in seconds. A thousand things could happen to change the course of American democracy while one of these candidates is President and we have no idea how they will respond to those changes. So in light of this volatility can we allow one another some leewaysome grace?



One thing I am confident of, the vast majority of people voting in this election truly want to do whats best for their country. Those who disagree with my conclusions love their country too. That being said, we had darned well better rediscover our commonality. If we dont, in a few more years, Franklins quote wont just be a historical, metaphorical, reference.



Chris Skates is Supervisor of Lab Services at a Midwest utility; he has 27 years of experience in both fossil fueled and nuclear power generation. He is an Adjunct Scholar with The Cornwall Alliance for The Stewardship of Creation. Chris is also the author of dozens of nationally published articles in a diverse collection of publications including magazines like, Turkey Call, Electric Light and Power, American Coal, and Southern Writers. He has extensive public speaking experience on energy, political, and social issues, has presented multiple lectures around the country and has published three novels.
Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required.

Your Full Name: (optional)

Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required.
Even with 5-0 lead, Verlander can't get 1st World Series win
By Matt McClain, West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 13, 2016 | 01:18 PM | PADUCAH, KY

The only educational institution in Kentucky to get a visit from the Obama Administration during the annual U.S. Department of Education's "Back-To-School" bus tour around the nation was West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah.Kim Ford, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Management and Planning in the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education made the stop Tuesday, to talk with students and faculty about the positive aspects of the college, primarily its affordability.Ford spent time at the Allied Health Building's Multidisciplinary Simulation Lab, the Anderson Technology Building, as well as the Emerging Technology Center.During a round table discussion, Ford stated multiple times how impressed she was with WKCTC, and how many things the institution is doing right. She asked a lot of questions, including one about whether the faculty felt there were any stigmas attached to certain professions over others and whether it was impacting students. She then used the example of a master plumber, indicating that to reach that level in the plumbing profession takes many years, much like a surgeon, and most people will at one point need both in their lives. She then indicated that in some places across the nation, master plumbers can actually make or exceed that of a surgeon's income.Those in attendance indicated that, if anything, many of the barriers that maybe once existed in some professions are being erased. A faculty member in attendance then used the college's nursing program as an example, where nursing was once seen as a profession for women, but is now seen as a big profession for men as well, and that is evident on the current enrollment. Ford agreed, saying that on her tour she saw a good number of men and women inside the Allied Health building.Ford concluded with a press conference, where when asked about whether she was surprised about a community the size of Paducah having an Aspen recognized top 10 (top 3 for two of the judged years) community college, she replied, "Not at all." Saying that the community obviously supports WKCTC, and if there was one thing that she could duplicate across the nation from WKCTC, it would be the absolute passion that faculty and staff members pour into the students, some spending decades at the college.The Aspen Institute labeled WKCTC as a "Finalist-with-Distinction" for the 2015 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. Selected from 1,123 community colleges nationwide, last year was the second time WKCTC was awarded the top three honor, along with $100,000 in prize funds to support its programs. Within the past week, the institute once again labeled WKCTC as a top 10 finalist again this year, with the top three within the list expected to be announced at a later date.

On the Net:
By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 09, 2016 | 11:58 PM | PADUCAH, KY







Paducah's West Kentucky Community and Technical College has once again been named one of ten finalists for the 2017 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, the nation's preeminent recognition of high achievement and performance in America's community colleges.The $1 million prize fund will be awarded in March 2017 in Washington, D.C. to the winner and up to four finalists with distinction. (See complete list of finalists below.)WKCTC has earned a place on the ten finalists' list every year the Prize has been awarded (2011, 2013, and 2015) and was named a finalist with distinction in 2011 and 2015. The Prize, awarded every two years since 2011, recognizes outstanding institutions selected from an original pool of more than 1,000 public community colleges nationwide. With a singular focus on student success, the Prize assesses community colleges' achievements in four areas: student learning, certificate and degree completion, employment and earnings for graduates, and access and success for minority and low-income students."A Prize finalist every year since 2011, West Kentucky Community and Technical College continues to impress us with its deep commitment to the success of its students and to its community," said Joshua Wyner, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute's College Excellence Program in Washington, D.C. "From partnering with local organizations to reach out to minority students, to maintaining programs that allow students to earn college credit while completing high school, their ongoing dedication to improving lives beyond their own doors is remarkable."West Kentucky Community and Technical College stands out as one of the nation's top community colleges for many reasons, including:+ Successfully closing college-level course completion gaps between minority and non-minority students enrolled in accelerated developmental courses+ Work with the community to secure funding to build the Emerging Technology Center to bring together state-of-the-art facilities, customized training for business and industry, and college courses to meet the technology needs of the regional labor market+ A degree in Health Science Technology (HST) that allows students to earn a marketable credential in as little as one semesterCommunity colleges today enroll nearly half of all US undergraduates7 million studentsworking toward degrees and certificates. This includes rapidly growing numbers of low-income and minority students. While fewer than 40 percent of all community college students graduate, Aspen Prize finalist institutions demonstrate that every community college can help more students achieve success while in college and after they graduate.This fall, the Aspen Institute will conduct a rigorous review process that includes examination of extensive data on performance and improvements in learning, graduation, workforce, and equitable outcomes for all students as well as multi-day site visits to each of the ten finalist institutions. Then, a distinguished Prize Jury of higher education experts will select a grand prize winner and up to four finalists with distinction.The 2015 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence was awarded to Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. In 2013, Santa Barbara City College (California) and Walla Walla Community College (Washington) were co-winners. In 2011, Valencia College (Florida) was the inaugural Prize winner. According to the Prize rules, former winners were not eligible to reapply this cycle.Here are the 2017 Aspen Prize Finalists (listed in alphabetical order):Two colleges have been named finalists in four consecutive Prize cycles (indicated with *) and two others were finalists for a second time (indicated with #) Anoka-Ramsey Community College  Coon Rapids, MN Broward College  Fort Lauderdale, FL# Chaffey College  Rancho Cucamonga, CA Indian River State College  Fort Pierce, FL# Lake Area Technical Institute, Watertown, SD* Northeast Community College  Northeast, NE Odessa College  Odessa, TX Pasadena City College  Pasadena, CA San Jacinto College  Pasadena, TX West Kentucky Community and Technical College, Paducah, KY*
By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 12, 2016 | 06:28 PM | BOAZ, KY

Graves County authorities need the public's help finding a woman who faces animal cruelty charges.

Graves County Sheriff Dewayne Redmon said his office received a complaint over the weekend of possible animal cruelty. A deputy responded to a home on State Route 849 East in the Boaz community. Upon the deputys arrival, he reportedly found several dogs that were living in filth and in need of medical care.

The deputy attempted to make contact with the home owner but was unsuccessful. A search warrant was obtained and deputies made entrance into the home.

Deputies said the inside of the home was covered in feces, urine and trash. Four dogs were found inside and deputies said they were emaciated, malnourished, and at least one had mange.

The animals were seized and taken to the Graves County Animal Shelter and Mayfield Veterinary Clinic.

Deputies are requesting the publics assistance in locating the owner of the dogs, 51-year-old Tammy R. Littlepage, whose last known address is Boaz, KY.

Redmon said Littlepage has pending charges of animal cruelty.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 13, 2016 | 10:10 AM | MAYFIELD, KY

A Graves County woman wanted on animal cruelty charges is now behind bars.

According to the Graves County Sheriff's Office, 51-year-old Tammy Littlepage was arrested Tuesday morning after she reportedly called the sheriffs office to say she was at home. Littlepage was charged with four counts of 2nd degree animal cruelty and booked into the Graves County Jail.



The sheriff's office received a complaint over the weekend of possible animal cruelty. A deputy responded to Littlepage's home on State Route 849 East in the Boaz community and reportedly found several dogs that were living in filth and in need of medical care.

Deputies said the inside of the home was covered in feces, urine and trash. Four dogs were found inside and deputies said they were emaciated, malnourished, and at least one had mange.

The animals were seized and taken to the Graves County Animal Shelter and Mayfield Veterinary Clinic.
By PTI: Karachi, Sep 13 (PTI) At least two policemen were killed in a roadside blast in the troubled Balochistan province while 13 people were injured in two separate suicide bombings during Eid prayers today targeting minority Shias in Pakistans relatively peaceful southern Sindh province.

Two police officials were killed and 10 other injured in a blast near a police training centre on Quettas Sariab road when militants targeted a police patrol vehicle in the area, police said.

advertisement

Also, four suicide attackers infiltrated Shikarpur districts Khanpur tehsil, 470 kilometres north of Karachi, police said.

Two of the attackers targeted an Eid prayer ground where one assailant blew himself up, injuring 10 people, two of whom were policemen. The other attacker managed to flee, they said.

Two other suicide bombers targeted a Shia mosque but they were stopped at the entrance by policemen, which led to one of them blowing himself up while the other was arrested.

Three policemen were injured in the attack, one of whom was critical. Last year, at least 61 people were killed in a suicide attack on a mosque in the district.

"Alert" policemen at the venues prevented huge casualties, police officer Beherdin Kehrio told reporters.

"If the policemen had not prevented these suicide bombers from entering the prayer venues there would have been largescale casualties because of the large gathering because of Eid prayers," he said.

He said the attackers at the Shia mosque were stopped by policemen as they looked suspicious and when confronted one of them detonated himself.

"The other attacker was brought down and arrested," he added.

Those injured in the blast have been admitted to hospitals in Shikarpur for treatment.

No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan has been frequently hit by sectarian violence in recent years, most of them perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shia Muslims.

However, Sindh is considered a relatively peaceful of Pakistans four provinces and is highly influenced by Sufi doctrines and principles. PTI PMS/CORR ABH SUA AJR AKJ AJR

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From K J M Varma

Beijing, Sep 13 (PTI) In rare move, China today disqualified 45 national lawmakers elected from a province in the countrys northeast for their involvement in electoral fraud.

A report by the National Peoples Congress (NPC) credentials committee said, acts by the 45 deputies fromLiaoning provinceviolated the electoral law and thus their election should be nullified.

advertisement

An NPC Standing Committee session voted to unseat the 45 NPC deputies, elected from the Liaoning Provincial Peoples Congress, for vote buying and bribery during the election in 2013, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Such dismissals in Chinese national and provincial legislatures are considered rare.

China in the last three years is carrying on with a massive anti-corruption campaign in which thousands of officials were punished. PTI KJV AJR AKJ AJR

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/09/2016 (2239 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO  If the annual Manitoba Party at the Drake Hotel on Sunday had been all about the local films playing at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), it might have been a brief, low-key affair, since the only Manitoba film on the TIFF program was the bizarre, funny 10-minute short Imitations, from Winnipeg collective MarkusMilosIanFabian.

But it wasnt a quiet night out at all. In fact, the open-air party, sponsored by Manitoba Film and Music and On Screen Manitoba on the second-floor courtyard of the Queen Street venue quickly filled to capacity Sunday night with a whos who of Manitoba film.

The guests of honour  Milos Mitrovic, Ian Bawa, Fabian Velasco and Markus Henkel  of Imitations arrived directly at the party after putting in an appearance at the Midnight Madness party at The Citizen on King Street, in the company of one of the films stars Conor Sweeney, a veteran of the 2014 Midnight Madness film The Editorfrom another local film collective, Astron-6.

CARMIN DAVIDSON PHOTOGRAPHY Winnipeg filmmakers Shelagh Carter and Jennifer Dale.

Sweeney is hilarious as a Justin Bieber-like pop star named Austin Kelsey, riding the wave of popularity on the strength of an appalling pop song titled 21-Year-Old Baby. (I complained to Sweeney about the insidious earworm quality of the song, terrible as it is. Hey, I had to sing it for two straight days, Sweeney said.)

Bawa said the film was well-received at the TIFF Short Cuts screening on Friday, although he was unnerved it didnt elicit constant laughter, which might have been too much to ask. Its nevertheless a sharply satiric film about how celebrity worship can nullify the worshiper, as it does with Mitrovics character Arnold, who meets with disaster when he shows up to a karaoke night after enduring a surgical procedure to make him resemble his idol.

 In an interesting crossover strategy, another Astron-6 member, Matthew Kennedy, credited as Divorced Dad, plays the host of the karaoke event. Sweeney explains the character is featured in Divorced Dad, a six-episode web series Kennedy and Sweeney are shopping around.

Its a faux community access television show ostensibly about coping with divorce, except it tends to go off the rails in nightmarish ways, Sweeney explains.

 Jennifer Dale provided a bit of glamour to the party, showing up with Winnipeg filmmaker Shelagh Carter (Passionflower). The two are collaborating on a screenplay titled Into Invisible Light, inspired loosely by characters in Anton Chekhovs Uncle Vanya, Dale says. Carter has finished her drama Before Anything You Say, a tale of conflict between a married couple inspired by an episode of her own life.

 Producer Ian Dimerman of Inferno Pictures, executive producer of locally shot films including Goon, was in shmooze mode, saying Inferno is prepping a prestige Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie to shoot in Manitoba this fall, but he is not ready to name specific stars or a title.

 Producer Juliette Hagopian was at the party, as was Andrea del Campo, one of the stars of the Hagopian-produced dark comedy Stegman Is Dead. (I was here this weekend for a wedding, del Campo said.) Hagopian says Stegman will be finished by October, in time to pitch it to the Sundance Film Festival in January.

 Marvin Kaye, former executive producer of the TV series Less Than Kind, was spotted chatting with all-grown-upLTK ingenue Brooke Palsson, who now lives in Toronto and, between acting gigs, is working on a recording career under the name Nala. Kaye, meanwhile, has returned to acting and has a role in the Guillermo del Toros new film The Shape of Water.

CARMIN DAVIDSON PHOTOGRAPHY Conor Sweeney, Milos Mitrovic, Ian Bawa, Fabian Velasco and Markus Henkel

 Former political consultant and Corus Radio producer Dave Shorr worked the party, talking up a dream project, a TV series set in the world of radio titled FM Dial, a work he pitches as Mad Men meets WKRP in Ronald Reagans America.

The Toronto International Film Festival wraps on Sunday.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

If you value coverage of Manitobas arts scene, help us do more.

Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/09/2016 (2238 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

McDonalds Canada is embarking on another one-day blitz Wednesday, with the aim of hiring 250 new employees for its Manitoba operations.

The fast-food giant said Tuesday the Manitoba hires will be among a total of 1,700 new employees it hopes to find across Western Canada as part of its latest West Hiring Day initiative.

Job seekers can apply at participating McDonalds restaurants for crew, manager or guest-experience-leader positions. Some may even be interviewed on the spot by a member of the restaurants management team. Those who are unable to attend in person also have the option of applying online at McDonalds.ca/careers.

With hands-on experience and award-winning training, McDonalds is a great place to begin a first job, to refine skillsets or to build a career Shelly Hansen, western regional vice-president for McDonalds Canada

The 250 new hires will be in addition to about 287 workers the company hired in Manitoba in April as part of its National Hiring Day event, and the 400 employees it hopes to hire in the province as part of its recently launched Restaurant Experience of the Future and Create Your Taste programs.

The latter program features customer greeters, self-ordering kiosks where customers can choose from more than 30 toppings, and meals brought to customers tables on wooden trays.

The company noted while it hires people of all ages, almost 65 per cent of its nearly 90,000 Canadian workers are people between 15 and 24 years of age.

With hands-on experience and award-winning training, McDonalds is a great place to begin a first job, to refine skillsets or to build a career, said Shelly Hansen, western regional vice-president for McDonalds Canada.

 Murray McNeill
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/09/2016 (2238 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Considering all the bad news coming out of northern Manitoba for the past several weeks, the recent announcement Alamos Gold Inc. will proceed with a feasibility study on its two potential open pit gold mine sites in Lynn Lake is cause for a little excitement.

In the mining world, when a company says it is doing a feasibility study on a potential mine development, it means its serious about the project.

John McCluskey, CEO of Alamos, said he is dead serious.

Alamos has already spent close to $4 million this year in Lynn Lake in on-going exploratory drilling and it intends to keep drilling. A feasibility study  which Alamos is expecting will cost about $8 million to $10 million on its own  is generally considered bankable, which means its definitive enough to be able to go out and get financing on.

It is an exercise in risk reduction is really what it comes down to, McCluskey said.

But for northern Manitoba it is something else as well: a glimmer of hope.

Even if everything happens in the most expeditious way  with the feasibility study finished by the third quarter of 2017, two years worth of permitting and then another two years of construction  it would be close to five years before a mine is constructed.

If Alamos does proceed with the construction of a mine, it will invest more than $200 million with the intention of producing annual revenues of greater than $250 million.

It will also mean the renewal of a town that has gone from a population of 3,500 people a few decades ago when there was an operating mine, to less than 700. It means potential investment in the transportation infrastructure and a range of other things in the north that wouldnt have been possible without that industry.

It will also generate renewed interest in a geological zone that some say is worthy of greater attention than it has received in the past.

In the mining world, success breeds success, said Tim Friesen, the assistant deputy minister of Manitoba Mineral Resources.

Part of the really exciting thing for Manitoba is that as they continue to move forward (with the Lynn Lake project) they will start to attract momentum back to that belt.

And thats not just wishful thinking from a government official looking to see more activity in a sector that has been noticeably slumping.

There is very big exploration potential in that part of Manitoba, McCluskey said in a recent telephone interview. This is the very beginning. We anticipate there is much more (gold) to be found and it wont only be us looking. I think there will be others coming into the region and competing directly with us on the exploration side. It is inevitable that will happen.

Alamos has only been the owner of the Lynn Lake properties since the beginning of this year, when it acquired the remaining stake in the property after having merged with AuRico Gold Inc. in 2015. AuRico had a joint venture agreement with the former owners of the Lynn Lake properties and had committed to funding a feasibility study.

The merger with AuRico was mostly about an Ontario mine AuRico was developing.

McCluskey said, In a sense we lucked into Lynn Lake. It was not on our radar screen.

It goes to show mineral exploration projects look more or less attractive to one company over another for various reasons.

Even if it was just luck, its a good sign for mineral exploration in Manitoba.

Although exploration has increased a little over the last couple of years, in 2016 its still expected to be about half of what will be spent in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories and one-fifth of the spending in Saskatchewan.

And while spending has declined across the country, it slipped a little more than the national average in Manitoba and the provincial reputation as a mining friendly jurisdiction has taken a bit of a hit.

In addition to the momentum that may be picking up steam in the northwest part of the province, exploration work continues in the northeast corner at the second most promising development in the province, Monument Bay near Red Sucker Lake.

A year ago, Yamana Gold Inc. acquired Mega Precious Metals Inc. which had been drilling on that property for several years building up an excellent profile of gold and tungsten deposits.

It is at an earlier stage project than the Lynn Lake one and Yamana has other development projects that are of greater priority,

Still, Yamana recently said it intends to spend $6 million on exploration work on the property this year.

Increased activity on the mineral exploration front could translate into the possibility for increased economic activity across the board in the north.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
A brave nine-year-old battling cancer is living his dream to be a police officer. And the six surgeries he has had is not holding him back.

By India Today Web Desk:

One little boy in Ithaca, US, is bravely battling brain cancer since the age of two. Doctors say that all the tests show he shouldn't even be conscious but the brave little boy is rocking his new job as a police officer and he is living his dreams.

Colin Toland is battling a brain tumor and had a dream of becoming a police officer. So the people at Ithaca Police Department came together and soon Colin was sworn in as an honourable officer on Monday making his life long dream come true.

advertisement

He was sworn in as an honorary member of the Ithaca Police Department in front of his family, dozens of officers, and even his third grade class. "My favorite part about it is the badge," Colin said.



PROUD PARENTS

Colin's mother was excited to know that her son has become a police officer. It's just the latest accomplishment for Colin who has gone through six brain surgeries - three of those happened in the last 20 months.

"Colin doesn't look at obstacles the way I've seen most people. He sees everyday as an opportunity to have fun. When he's having a tough time he usually bounces back with a laugh or a joke", Colin's father, Hayward said, according to a CNY Central report.



PROUD POLICE AND MAYOR

Ithaca Police arranged for a custom made uniform with an IPD patch and badge. Chief John Barber of Ithaca Police Department says it's an honour to have Colin on the force.

"It's inspiring and he's touched the heart of every officer here," the Chief said.

"This is the best recruit we've sworn in to the Ithaca Police Department," Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick said.



RUNNING UP ON TIME

"I know he's the bravest kid I've ever met, and I know he'll take this job seriously. His time is limited. I just don't want him to be forgotten", Colin's father said.

Colin is very excited after becoming a police officer and without letting his cancer trouble him, he indeed is living his dreams.



--- ENDS ---
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/09/2016 (2239 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Good idea, bad execution. In politics, that is not a recipe for success.

As a case in point, consider the drama unfolding at city hall. Mayor Brian Bowman continues his quest to introduce growth fees on new development. It is a tool used widely in cities across Canada, and in fact in many neighbouring municipalities in Manitoba, to help pay for the collateral costs of sprawl.

Bowman has signalled for more than a year now that he wants growth fees levied in this city, more than enough time to consult and negotiate and mediate some sort of consensus on the issue. And yet, rather than agreement, Bowman finds himself surrounded by hostility.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The Waverley underpass project will ease traffic flow at Waverley near Taylor.

The development industry is up in arms and making all kinds of non-specific threats of retaliation. Councillors have concerns about political backlash. And the Progressive Conservative government is waiting in the long grass, possibly ready to squash Bowmans plan for being outside the authority of provincial legislation.

The developers and the mayors office have essentially been talking over each other for months now in an endless, but rather pointless, debate over growth fees that has done little to clarify this complex issue.

The developers have a pretty thin argument against growth fees. They moan and whine about how it will slow or stop new residential development in the suburbs without dealing with the principle issue: these fees are in use in many other jurisdictions.

Consider that Qualico, which has threatened to pull out of the Sage Creek development, continues to build homes in cities in other provinces where growth fees are the norm. Heck, Qualico also builds homes in capital region municipalities just outside Winnipeg city limits that charge growth fees that are very similar to what Bowman has proposed.

The biggest flaw in the developer case, however, is their refusal to acknowledge the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars the city spends to widen or extend roads and build grade separations needed to move a rapidly increasing suburban population back and forth from their swanky new suburban homes. Developers do pay for roads, sewers and water lines in the immediate vicinity of their developments, but not the infrastructure necessary to connect those developments to the rest of the city.

The Waverley West arterial roads project  which included an extension of Kenaston Boulevard and a new intersection and overpass at Waverley Street  cost nearly $70 million, none of which was covered by developers. The same goes for the $155-million, soon-to-be-constructed Waverley underpass at Taylor Avenue. Those two projects alone  which approach a quarter of a billion dollars in city expenditures  are costs directly connected to suburban sprawl but borne directly by property taxpayers from all areas of the city.

On the other side of the equation, Bowman has made a reasonably solid opening case for growth fees by pointing out how extensively they are used in other jurisdictions, and how badly Winnipeg needs the additional revenue. The cost of projects like the Waverley West arterial roads upgrades are proof enough that the city deserves more from developers.

However, Bowman has struggled with the execution of his plan.

Bowman did hire a consultant to provide some analysis of the need for, and impact of, growth fees. But the consultant did not widely consult with affected constituencies, including the business community and development industry. That omission gives Bowmans opponents a lot of traction to undermine the consultants final report.

As well, the mayor appears to have been lazy about cultivating support on council. Councillors have complained about a lack of information coming from Bowmans office, and a general failure to be more open and consultative with the development industry. Developers are important cogs in the municipal political machine, both as donors and opinion leaders and their displeasure will be felt by many councillors.

Which brings us to the real point of inflection in this debate. Although most of the attention is focused right now on the war of words between Bowman and developers, there is a bigger and more difficult battle looming on the floor of Winnipeg city council.

Ultimately, a majority of councillors will have to get behind Bowmans plan for it to become reality. And that is hardly a done deal.

There will be councillors, particularly those representing suburban neighbourhoods, who will be very nervous to sign on to Bowmans plan. Core-area councillors as well have bones to pick with the growth fee plan, particularly if the mayor attempts to apply it evenly throughout all areas of the city.

Bowman has not indicated clearly if he would consider exempting certain types of development, or certain areas of the city, from growth fees. However, applying growth fees to the downtown  where the city and province are spending millions of dollars to incent developers to build residential units  seems counterproductive to say the least. At worst, a blanket imposition of growth fees that would include downtown would kill any interest in continuing to build population density.

To get any policy through city council, even a worthy one such as this, the mayor must be vigilant about defusing opposition among developers and cultivating support on council. Following the summit meeting on Monday, Bowman has promised to meet and talk more with his detractors; he has not, however, said he will compromise with anyone to get a deal done on growth fees.

Growth fees are important to the future of the city and the mayor is correct in pursuing them as an additional source of revenue. However, even the best ideas can come undone with bad execution. The mayor needs to survey the current state of the debate, and fix his relationships with developers and councillors, or risk seeing a good idea never come to fruition.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/09/2016 (2239 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  More than a year after renewed negotiations began between Ottawa and Treaty 1 First Nations over the development of the Kapyong Barracks, the two sides have yet to reach a deal.

During a campaign stop in Winnipeg in September 2015, then-prime minister Stephen Harper announced the government would not seek another appeal of repeated Federal Court orders for Ottawa to properly consult First Nations before selling Crown land. The orders related to a 1997 agreement between Ottawa and the seven Treaty 1 First Nations that gave the bands the right of first refusal when surplus federal land became available.

In 2004, the Princess Patricias Canadian Light Infantry left Kapyong for CFB Shilo and the Winnipeg barracks were abandoned. In 2007, Ottawa declared the land surplus and attempted to sell it to Canada Lands Corp. for $8.6 million. (Canada Lands is a Crown corporation that develops surplus land.)

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The grass is mowed at the grounds of Kapyong Barracks Monday.

The Treaty 1 First Nations went to court to stop the sale, arguing they had not been consulted. The case took eight years and multiple appeals before the decision in August 2015. Five days later, Ottawa put a new offer on the table. In September 2015, hope was high a deal was close.

The negotiations were taken over by the Liberals after they took office in November.

Sources say talks have been ongoing. The discussions include issues such as designating the land an urban reserve, price, and control over development.

None of the parties approached Monday would discuss the negotiations.

Sources tell the Free Press the parties were close to an agreement until a leadership change at Peguis First Nation in spring 2015 put things on pause.

Peguis Chief Cindy Spence did not return calls Monday.

The Department of National Defence is handling the negotiations for Ottawa. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan is in Winnipeg this week, but his schedule does not include any work on the Kapyong file, his office said.

The negotiations are only for the barracks land: 160 acres at the intersection of Grant Avenue and Kenaston Boulevard.

There is also a larger parcel of land with base housing (including along Kenaston between Grant and the St. James Bridge) but it is going to be dealt with in a different parcel. Most of those homes are currently rented and the land has not been declared surplus.

The legal battle over Kapyong cost Ottawa more than $1 million in seven years. Ottawa has spent millions more on taxes and basic upkeep of the barracks during the last 12 years while they have been vacant.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/09/2016 (2239 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Finding a consensus on how to reform Canadas electoral system seems nearly impossible, judging from one town hall meeting in Winnipeg Monday afternoon.

Close to 150 people gathered at the Radisson Hotel downtown for the session moderated by Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef. They disagreed about which electoral system would be the best for Canada, whether or not there should be online voting and if voting should be mandatory.

The one thing most agreed on was the importance of being there and talking about electoral reform.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Maryam Monsef, minister of democratic institutions, speaks at the Radisson Hotel Monday.

I feel that our system is broken, said Jason Hildebrand, 41. He said he has lived in Germany, which has a proportional representation, unlike Canadas first-past-the-post system, in which the candidate in each riding with the most votes wins regardless of whether they get a majority of votes. A party can win with less than 40 per cent of the vote, said Hildebrand who lives in Winnipeg Centre and has no party affiliation. Both the current Liberal and previous Conservative majorities saw the government hold 54 per cent of the seats and all of the power with not quite 40 per cent of the vote.

The Liberals promised 2015 would be the last federal election held using the existing system. Monsef is travelling across Canada to get communities talking about how to improve the federal electoral system and how to get more voters engaged.

Those who attended the Monday afternoon session were mostly Caucasian, middle-aged and older, and many said they didnt trust online voting. Some said they mistrusted the technology: With a paper ballot theres a record, one senior said. Others feared online voting would make it too easy for the uninformed to cast a ballot.

One young voter at the meeting didnt buy that argument against online voting.

Well always get uninformed voters, University of Manitoba student Mathew Scammell, 22, said in an interview. Online voting would likely get more young people engaged in elections, he said. Scammell said if more young voters had attended the town hall meeting Monday, there would have likely been a consensus for online voting.

Being there was important to him, though, to get information and to show young voters are engaged.

It was worthwhile, said Scammell.

Jennifer Reese, 47, feels its her responsibility to take part in democracy, not just at election time.

I think its important to be part of this process, she said. I think theres a lot of apathy out there and its not just young people but people in my age group, said Reese.

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press Jason Hildebrand (left) listens at the Radisson Hotel where Maryam Monsef, minister of democratic institutions, held a federal electoral reform meeting Monday.

Not everyone at the meeting thought it was a worthwhile exercise. One senior woman scoffed at the process, saying the Liberals in 2004 looked at electoral reform and its report and recommendations have gathered dust.

But this is 2016, and times have changed and are changing, said Alberteen Spence. The Green party candidate who lost in the 2016 provincial election to incumbent NDP MLA Kevin Chief said after the town hall that Canadian values are changing because of things like climate change and people are determined to have their voices heard. As an aboriginal woman in the minority, she wanted speak up for electoral reform at the afternoon town hall hosted by Monsef and KMP Robert-Falcon Ouellette (Lib Winnipeg Centre). Winnipeg South MP Terry Duguid hosted a town hall with Monsef Monday night at Dakota Community Centre.

Reese said shes not sure what, if anything, will come from the community discussions on electoral reform.

Its a start, she said. Its better than doing nothing.

The Electoral Reform Committee of the House of Commons is holding hearings across Canada. It will be in Winnipeg and St. Pierre Jolys on Sept. 20. For more information go to Canada.ca/democracy

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/09/2016 (2239 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE PAS  The purchase of the Port of Churchill by a consortium of First Nations will happen, says Mathias Colomb First Nation Chief Arlen Dumas.

We are about making a sound business decision and we are doing our due diligence  I cant get into the specifics of it  but we are moving forward with the communities that we are partnering. This will happen, Dumas said.

We are in an arrangement and we are moving forward. We are still doing our due diligence, but it is going to happen. You just have to be patient.

Churchill Gateway Development Corp. Former Manitoba premier Greg Selinger and one of his top ministers deny any interference with Omnitrax Canada's negotiations to sell the Port of Churchill.

Omnitrax Canada began negotiating the deal to sell the Hudson Bay Railway and Port of Churchill to the consortium late last year. When the potential deal was announced in January both sides said they were confident the purchase of the port and railway would soon be complete.

However, no further announcement was made on the deal.

The future of the deal between Omnitrax Canada and the consortium of 10 northern Manitoba First Nations has been in flux since the Denver-based rail company announced in July it was shuttering the Port of Churchill and reducing freight service by half, to one train a week. The company has been silent on the future of the deal, however Dumas said he is absolutely continuing to talk with Omnitrax.

Dumas was in The Pas on Monday to meet with Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister Cliff Cullen, along with municipal government officials to discuss the pending closure of Tolko Industries in The Pas. Mathias Colomb First Nation is about 700 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg and about 200 kilometres north of The Pas.

Dumas could not give a timeline as to how long it would take for the purchase of the port and railway to take place, but said it will require assistance from the federal and provincial government.

We need to create a vehicle where our government partners realize that a proper investment will lead to real future growth and sustainability, Dumas said.

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/09/2016 (2238 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Chiefs from First Nations on the east side of Lake Winnipeg want to know if their all-weather road is still a go and whether their residents will be hired to help build that road.

Infrastructure Minister Blaine Pedersen handed out termination notices to all 80 employees of the East Side Road Authority Tuesday morning.

Berens River First Nation Chief Hartley Everett said that raises serious questions.

DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS files Aerial view of Berens River, which is one of the stops for the East Side Road on its way up the eastern side of Manitoba.

Tuesday was the first time hes heard from the Pallister government since it took office and announced in May it would dissolve the authority and roll it into the Infrastructure Department, Everett said.

Today was the first time Pedersens secretary contacted me to set up a meeting with the minister, with me and other chiefs on Sept. 22 at the legislature, Everett said.

Pedersens staff gave no hint what will happen, the chief said.

I guess time will tell, see if it will be better or worse, he said.

Everett said the chiefs want to hear that the all-weather road will continue to be built and residents will get jobs.

I feel confident they should. We have members here whove been trained. Thats one of the issues well throw on the table  I want to make sure our local people will be there to have work, Everett said.

The multimillion-dollar project linked Provincial Road 304 to the Bloodvein First Nation in 2014. Construction has continued 50 kilometres northward to Berens River, and is scheduled to reach the community in 2019-20. The 30-year project would eventually link 36,000 people, most of them First Nations residents, to the south.

In a news release, Pedersen said the authoritys entire staff would be let go Nov. 25. Some may be able to apply for other government jobs.

Former authority chief executive officer Ernie Gilroy charged Tuesday the termination of all 80 employees is bad news all around.

Its bad news for the all-weather road, for government workers and for indigenous people hoping for jobs on government construction projects, Gilroy said.

What I see here is the dismantling of the project, not (the authority), he said.

Premier Brian Pallister announced in May the Tories would dissolve the authority and consolidate all responsibility for building and maintaining roads on the east side of Lake Winnipeg with the Department of Infrastructure. The government let Gilroy go in early June, though he was still listed on the authoritys website Tuesday as its CEO.

Gilroy said workers expected they would be transferred into the Infrastructure Department. They are not unionized or members of the Manitoba Civil Service Commission, though they have government pensions, he said, and they are technically employees of a government agency rather than directly employed by the province.

Sources said some staff were seconded from other government departments and have the right to return, but most have only a possibility of being hired on short-term projects, if at all.

Pedersen accused the former NDP government of financing roads for political purposes, and said the Tories will be talking to Ottawa in the coming weeks about cost-sharing infrastructure projects on the east side of Lake Winnipeg.

Whereas the previous government made infrastructure decisions based on political motivation, we will select projects in line with Manitoba Infrastructures commitment to ensuring value for money and return on investment, he said in the news release.

In the coming weeks, our government will submit proposals to the federal government for cost-sharing of strategic infrastructure projects on the east side of Lake Winnipeg.

That especially alarmed Gilroy.

He questioned whether value for money means the province will no longer guarantee First Nations residents construction jobs.

Gilroy and other critics said it is highly unusual for a civil service news release to include a ministers partisan attack on its political foes.

Mr. Pallister ensured front-line workers they didnt have to worry about their jobs, Gilroy said.

Now were all looking to see what he means by that. What really matters is that the project continues  all of these people are needed.

Gilroy said some of the 80 worked only during winter, but many others were involved in inspections, designing and engineering projects.

Theres a whole team of environmental people.

There was a team that worked with indigenous residents, Gilroy said.

This is what Im really worried about  there were four people in aboriginal relations and economic development.

Said Pedersen in his news release: We are determined to minimize the impact of this transition on employees by ensuring maximum employment opportunities for those affected.

We will conduct both direct offer and competitive processes for (authority) staff to continue to have the opportunity to compete for open job opportunities.

Manitoba Government and General Employees Union president Michelle Gawronsky said the terminations are worrisome for her members.

What will happen to their workload? (MGEU members) are already doing a huge amount of work, and theyre stretched. This government ran on a platform to protect the public service, Gawronsky said.

As for the authority staff, Theres a hiring freeze on. How do these people support their families?

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/09/2016 (2238 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Red River Exhibition is set to embark on an ambitious $140-million development plan that calls for the construction of a small hotel, a massive expansion of its exhibition hall and doubling of the fairgrounds.

Garth Rogerson, CEO of Red River Exhibition Association, said it will likely take 30 years to completely build out the plans  but work will begin next spring.

Weve been working on this plan for about seven years, Rogerson said, adding the expansion will allow the Ex to host large-scale industrial and agricultural trade shows.

Winnipeg is the only major city in North America that doesnt have a facility like this so all that business is going to Saskatoon, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto, Rogerson said. Were really missing a big chunk of business. You cant put cows downtown, you cant put combines downtown, so all that kind of stuff is going elsewhere.

Our plan is to build a facility that can bring that economic benefit to Winnipeg.

RED RIVER EXHIBITION ASSOCIATION An aerial photo taken in June 2016 shows the new Festival Drive on the west side of the property.

Exhibition officials will present their plans at city hall Tuesday evening, which is the first step towards eventual council endorsement.

Rogerson said it appears to have support among most councillors and he hopes council will approve it before the end of the year.

Construction of a 100-room hotel  Rogerson said a major hotel operator has been lined up  and expansion of an existing office park is the first step next spring. As the development plans evolve, Rogerson said its possible a second hotel, designed for long stays, also might be constructed.

Rogerson said the first hotel would serve business interests in the immediate area, adding there is demand for hotel space now from clients using the nearby MTS Iceplex and users of the current agricultural hall.

The fairgrounds is currently 100 acres, but would double in size to 200 acres, Rogerson said.

Meanwhile, exhibition officials are still trying to determine how big to expand the exhibition hall. The current building is 40,000 square feet, Rogerson said, adding an expansion could vary from 60,000 square feet to 150,000 square feet.

Right now, the 10 days of Red River Ex delivers a $16-million economic benefit to the city and we think when were finished the development, it will deliver over $100 million a year.

Councillors on the Assiniboia community committee will consider the proposal Tuesday evening. Their recommendation will be forwarded to the property and development committee and ultimately council. The plan has been endorsed by the citys planning department.

Rogerson said it will not require any infrastructure upgrades from city hall. The association will be responsible for the provision of all services to the site.

Theres no cost to the city. Normal developments  the city would take ownership of the streets and be responsible for maintenance and snow clearing, and cutting the grass, Rogerson said. We do all that here. We own all the roads, all the parks. We do all the maintenance.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
The suspension of Bijaswan MLA came after Kejriwal returned to Delhi wrapping up his four-day visit to poll-bound Punjab.

By Press Trust of India: Cracking the whip on dissidents, AAP today suspended its MLA Devinder Sehrawat from the primary membership of the party after he accused party men in Punjab of "exploiting women" in return for tickets, the second legislator to face such an action in less than 10 days.

The action against Sehrawat came after he also made direct attacks on AAP's national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

advertisement

The suspension of Bijaswan MLA came after Kejriwal returned to Delhi wrapping up his four-day visit to poll-bound Punjab.

"Sehrawat has been suspended by the disciplinary committee till pending enquiry," AAP's Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey said.

Hitting back, Sehrawat dared the party leadership to expel him. "If you have the courage, severe the ties and expel. With 67 MLAs you could not perform, You dont have it in you- So Get out of the Way....(sic)," he tweeted.

KEJRIWAL ACCUSED OF SHIELDING HIS COTERIE

Earlier in the day, he accused Kejriwal of shielding his coterie. "Repeated reports of Molestation of women and sexual abuse,Ring Master Kejriwal obliging his lecherous cotrie & adding more such candidates (sic)," he said on Twitter.

Last week, Sehrawat had written to Kejriwal over alleged exploitation of women by a few party men in Punjab.

In the letter, Sherawat had also criticised party leader Ashutosh who had sought to defend Sandeep Kumar, sacked as a Delhi minister over an "objectionable" CD, and alleged that a "coterie" was damaging AAP.

Following his allegations, AAP leaders Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Pathak also filed a defamation case against Seharwat.

Earlier, AAP's women wing in Punjab had also filed a complaint with the State Women Commission against Sehrawat, alleging he was defaming the women in the state.

The Bijwasan MLA, who had questioned the way Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were sacked from the party, was known to have been unhappy with the organisation ever since.

AAP had last week suspended Sandeep Kumar from its primary membership over an alleged sex scandal.

The party has taken a conscious decision to suspend its lawmakers rather than expelling them as it would mean increasing the opposition seats at the cost of AAP.

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/09/2016 (2239 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Karyn Davis told the Free Press in 2009 her dream was to put the Dolly Parton Imagination Library into every First Nation in Manitoba.

Mission accomplished. Peguis and Nelson House First Nations signed up in July to become the programs 62nd and 63rd indigenous communities.

Now, Davis is setting her sights on Winnipegs inner-city children.

SUBMITTED PHOTO Hailee Desjarlais, with mom Erin, and a book from the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.

The Imagination Library delivers a book per month to pre-school age children. It isnt free, however. Communities need to raise $3.55 per child per month, and the Dollywood Foundation covers the rest of the costs, including shipping.

So Davis had to find sponsors.

Its a tough sell. Its not like First Nations are sitting there with huge surpluses of money, she said.

Peguis was one of the last because it has more than 600 pre-school kids. Thats a big bill. Major sponsors of the program in Manitoba have been Manitoba First Nation Education Resource Centre, Frontier School Division, Winnipeg Foundation, Manitoba Community Services, Aseneskak Casino, Healthy Child Manitoba and the RBC Foundation.

Erin Desjarlais, who is connected to Lake Manitoba First Nation through her husband, said the program has had an amazing effect on her daughter, Hailee. When my daughter receives a book in the mail, it makes her feel very special, Desjarlais said.

Its a very special bonding moment between me and my daughter when we read together, she said. Her daughter is hearing-impaired, so mom will read to her, while dad signs the text.

She loves books. She has her own bookshelf in her room and takes care of them.

SUBMITTED PHOTO Hailee Desjarlais, with mom Erin, and a book from the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.

Katherine McIvor of Ebb and Flow First Nation said her children, including son Kingston, would look at the pictures and make up their own stories. They always wanted a story read to them every night.

Were blazing a family literacy trail, Davis said.

Davis, who is Ojibwa from Ebb and Flow First Nation, met social service agencies at Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre Inc. on Monday for an information session. The goal is to reach 1,000 kids in 14 inner-city school catchment areas.

Public health nurses and representatives from schools, daycares and literacy organizations participated Monday.

We know the first five years of a childs life is when learning happens. Parents are their first teachers, and thats the message we need to send out, said Davis, who has worked in early-years education in Dauphin for much of her career. She is currently Dollywood Foundations Manitoba director, and is helping launch Early Years magazine aimed at indigenous parents.

In 2013, Davis was honoured for her work with a Diamond Jubilee Medal from the Governor General. She returned the medal to protest against the former Harper governments policies toward aboriginal people.

Parton started the charitable foundation in honour of her parents, who never learned to read or write.

SUPPLIED PHOTO Five-year-old Kingston McIvor of Ebb and Flow First Nation and his book from the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.

Parton, who performed in Winnipeg Monday night, was not available to talk to the Free Press. She was saving her voice for her performances on a grueling 67-city tour, and not doing any interviews, her handlers told Davis.

However, Parton sent her congratulations in a prepared statement. Im just delighted that the good people in Manitoba have launched the Imagination Library program in all First Nations in Manitoba, Parton said. Thanks to sponsors, champions and volunteers, close to 10,000 children will be able build their own libraries and immerse themselves in the magic of reading. Literacy opens so many doors throughout life, and Im incredibly proud that the Imagination Library program will be helping the on-reserve children to learn more and dream more.

Manitoba has 94 Imagination Libraries, and accounts for 40 per cent of Dollywood Foundation books shipped to Canada.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/09/2016 (2238 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the discovery of the wreckage of the two ships belonging to Sir John Franklin underscores anything, its the value of indigenous knowledge.

Over the weekend, the long-lost ship the HMS Terror was found at the bottom of an Arctic Ocean bay. Almost two years ago to the day, a search vessel discovered the location of Sir Franklins flagship, the HMS Erebus.

In both cases, the discoveries were aided by Inuit knowledge. The Guardian reported this weekends discovery was because of a tip from an Inuit crew member. Sammy Kogvik of Gjoa Haven said he and a friend had found a wooden object that looked like a mast sticking out of the ice on Terror Bay. He took a photo of it, but when his camera got lost, he took it as an omen of bad spirits. He pledged to keep the location a secret.

THE CANADIAN PRESS / HO / PARKS CANADA HMS Erebus is pictured on a sonar scan

But, heres the thing: when he told his story to one of his colleagues on board the expedition, it wasnt dismissed as Inuit oral history often is; instead, it was taken seriously, and the crew made the decision to search the area Mr. Kogvik described.

The ship itself is in pristine condition and its discovery challenges our history books on polar exploration.

In 2014, when HMS Erebus was found, Inuit oral history guided explorers to its location. The Inuit for years had suggested one of their hunters saw the ship in that part of the passage, abandoned. It ended up being exactly where they said it would be.

The two ships disappeared in 1845 as the Franklin expedition attempted to search for the Northwest Passage. All 129 men on board both ships died.

The decision to search for the Franklin ships was a pet project of former prime minister Stephen Harper that began in 2008. He deserves credit for pressing for the search for the two and for raising the profile of the Arctic region. As prime minister, he visited the North more times than any of his predecessors, seeing the area as an issue of Canadian sovereignty and identity. Millions of dollars were poured into the Franklin project, which many discounted as an effort by the Prime Ministers Office in militarization and branding.

But the discoveries are important for the future. For example, the fact that this area in the Arctic is now an integral part of Canadas history could threaten the ability for any company to open a drilling platform there. One of the private partners in the search for Erebus was Shell Canada, who suggested it was a natural fit for partnering on the project given its strong presence in the North. Ironically, the discoveries may limit the companys ability to extract oil.

Those decisions of course, remain up for debate. For now, Canada should be proud of the role it played in this important historical discovery, but more to the point, as author David Woodman points out in a CBC interview: It took 200 years for our technology to get good enough to tell us that Inuit were telling us the truth.
CONVICTED

 Jeremy R. Farnam, 38, of Independence, pleaded guilty to third-offense operating with blood-alcohol content above the legal limit and was sentenced to 125 days in jail and a year of probation. All but 14 days of his jail sentence will be stayed if he complies with probation.

 Jadari S. Dillard, 39, of La Crosse, pleaded guilty to second-offense possession of marijuana and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. As part of plea agreement, charges of possessing methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia were dismissed.

 Jessica M. Sobotta, 31, of Ettrick, pleaded guilty to drug possession of methamphetamine and was sentenced to three years of probation.

CHARGED

 Toby R. Hovland, 28, of Rushford, has a plea and sentencing hearing Oct. 13 on charges accusing him of possessing marijuana and second-offense operating with a restricted controlled substance. Hovland pleaded not guilty to charges in August.

 Becky L. Wood, 34, of Durand, had an arrest warrant issued Sept. 9 for failure to appear in court as scheduled on charges

accusing her of third-offense operating with restricted controlled substance and possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

 Eric J. Clark, 41, of Phoenix, Arizona, had a hearing adjourned to Nov. 9 on a felony charge accusing him of fifth-offense operating while intoxicated. Clark also was cited for allegedly driving without insurance.

 Shawn A. Fenske, 31, of Leroy, Minn., has a plea and sentencing hearing Sept. 21 on a felony charge alleging second-offense possession of marijuana and revocation of probation on a prior offense.

 Troy A. Willadsen, 21, of rural Cochrane, pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge accusing him of second-offense operating while intoxicated. A hearing was set for Oct. 5.

 Dustin C. Crandell, 31, of Winona, Minn., had a hearing adjourned to Sept. 21 on charges accusing him of second-offense possession of marijuana and possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.

 James W. White, 48, of Arcadia, had a hearing adjourned to Oct. 5 on a misdemeanor charge accusing him of third-offense operating while intoxicated and a citation for driving with a revoked license.

 Eric A. Liebl, 34, of Sparta, had a hearing adjourned to Oct. 5 on a felony charge accusing him of second-offense possession of marijuana.
Winona

Friday

9:50 p.m.  A 55-inch TV was reported missing from a residence on the 400 block of East Fourth Street.

9:56 p.m.  A 16-year-old Altura girl was cited for no proof of insurance, possession of a small amount of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia after a traffic stop near West Wabasha and Washington streets. Passengers in the vehicle were also cited. A 17-year-old Waukon, Iowa, boy was cited for possession of drug paraphernalia, and a 16-year-old Waukon, Iowa, boy was cited for possession of a small amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Saturday

2 p.m.  Charges of domestic assault (strangulation) were referred against Jeffrey John Rothering, 47, Winona after an incident at a residence on the 550 block of West Fourth Street.

Monday

12:09 p.m  The honor cash box and contents was taken from a table at Winona Wood Recyclers on Shives Road.

1:12 p.m.  A camper parked on the 100 block of Gould Street was entered and two fire extinguishers discharged inside. An XM radio, camera, and two small TVs were reported missing.

Winona County

Monday

11:45 p.m.  A 66-year-old Rollingstone man reported being swindled out of $2,700 in an online loan company scam.
Every day, millions of Americans get behind the wheel to head out on the highway, with their sights set on a specific destination. Some of them are off to the store, some to school and some to their office building. For Minnesotas professional truck drivers, their sights arent set on a certain end point, because they work on the highway.

Currently, there are 3.4 million professional truck drivers in America. These hard-working professionals deliver Americas goods like food, fuel, medicine and clothing. Every item in your home or office was delivered by a truck.

Sept. 11-17 is National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. It is a time for us to honor the professionalism and sacrifice of the men and women on whom we depend for so much.

These drivers delivered nearly 10 billion tons of freight last year, or about 70 percent of all the freight moved in the U.S. Sixty-eight percent of Minnesota communities receive all their goods via truck.

The trucking industry is the backbone of our economy and our professional drivers are our industrys heart. They are committed to safely delivering all the things that make our collective quality of life possible. Their commitment to safety is apparent in the consistent improvements in highway safety we have seen over the past decade.

This week, when you head to the store and see the variety of products that are available on the shelves, think about the professional drivers that got them there.

When youre in your home or office, look around and realize all those items were at some point in the back of truck before they got to you.

When youre out to dinner, think about the meal youre about to eat and how the ingredients were very recently delivered by truck.

During this National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, take a moment to be thankful for the efforts of Minnesotas truck drivers and recognize that without them, your table, your closet and the store would all be empty.

Our trucks and truck drivers truly do move America forward.
25 years ago this week (1991)

Two students at Baraboo Junior High were found Thursday in possession of explosives and were contacted and will be referred to proper authorities, according to the Baraboo police report. Assistant principal Michael Ecker reported the found property to Sauk County dispatch at 9:06 a.m. On arrival an officer found the complaint involved the possession by two juveniles of a dangerous weapon. According to Ecker, there was no explosion and the school was not evacuated.

An assault, which was reported Monday by a third party, was made on a 47-year-old woman on Tuesday, at 5:45 a.m.as she walked to her vehicle in the 300 block of Third Avenue. According to the report, a white male about 30 years old, approached the woman from behind, grabbing her by her blouse collar and striking her in the back. The woman fell to the ground, but quickly got back to her feet and verbally confronted the assailant, who fled along Third Avenue.

A new economic analysis by the state Department of Transportation concludes that a bridge across the Wisconsin River at Merrimac is more justifiable than continuing to operate the ferry which runs for eight months a year between Merrimac and Okee. The DOT will hold a public information meeting Oct. 1 to learn whether citizens prefer a bridge or continued operation of the ferry. The DOT now has evidence to support construction of a bridge, said Tom Carlsen, director of the DOTs south-central Wisconsin district. But were not about to dry dock the popular ferry without public support.

50 years ago this week (1966)

Fire discovered about 3:30 this morning totally destroyed the large warehouse on the former Island Woolen Mill property, now used by the Flambeau Plastics of Baraboo for storage. The plastics firm has leased the warehouse for the past seven years from Makler Bros. of Chicago, owners of the mill property, and it was used to house the finished product. Today only rubble remained of the huge building and its entire contents. Loss was estimated at over $100,000. A state fire marshal was in the city today to investigate the cause of the fire. So hot was the fire that trees all around the building were destroyed, among those damaged being the huge old pine which was for so many years the scene of an annual Christmas celebration when the mill ownership decorated it with hundreds of lights for enjoyment of the community. Apparently the fire had started in the western end of the building, farthest away from the other mill property, and across the street from it. The street side was covered with metal sheeting which kept the fire away from the mill, also, and the fact there was no wind probably helped to save the larger structure, sparks ascending straight up into the air. The city fire trucks had not yet returned to the fire station by 11 oclock this morning. This section of Second Avenue has been kept closed to traffic from the vicinity of the Second Avenue bridge, to Lyons bridge which leads to West Baraboo.

75 years ago this week (1941)

The Ernest Paddock family had an unexpected visitor at the back door of their home on Ninth Avenue last night about supper time  the Chamberlain insulation truck which Al. Burros drives slipping loose from its parking place in the driveway to the barn and rolling down the hill to crash into the lean-to portion on the back of the house. Two automobiles stood in its way, and both were struck and damaged, while the truck itself did not come out of the encounter so well, the back end which penetrated into the house for several feet being quite extensively damaged. Between the damage to the truck, the two automobiles, and the house, the bill for damages will be considerable, and it was not possible to move the truck today until insurance adjusters had visited the scene.

A Beloit man is at the St. Marys Ringling hospital with a fractured right ankle which he incurred during Saturday night, following an automobile accident which occurred on Highway 12 on Sauk hill. Mr. Cains 1938 Plymouth Tudor left the highway, taking out four guard posts and going over a 45-foot embankment to land at the foot of the gully without overturning. The man informed them he was not hurt in the accident but while travelling about the woods he accidentally fell into a pit, fracturing his ankle. Accordingly, he remained in these woods where he was found at daybreak by Officers D. B. Brandt and Special Officer Lester Ware. The injured man was removed to the hospital in a squad car.

100 years ago this week (1916)

The case of the State of Wisconsin vs. Benjamin W. Hackett was given to the jury about 6:10 p.m. on Friday evening after the case being before Judge ONeill for four days. There were two counts: 1. The defendant was charged with the burning of a dwelling in the night time, causing the death of a person, and 2. The burning of a dwelling in the night time with a person lawfully in it. The jury of twelve men returned the verdict of guilty on both counts. Judge ONeill gave Hackett a sentence of twenty years at Waupun, the 12th day of April each year to be spent in solitary confinement. This is thought to be the longest sentence ever given a criminal in Sauk county. On April 12, last, the home of Zell Pollock at North Freedom burned, and Mr. Pollocks wife, Mrs. Maggie Hackett Pollock, lost her life. She was a sister of the defendant. Sometime before the fire, the father of Mrs. Pollock and the defendant died and in his will he left practically all of his property valued at about $6,000, to Mrs. Pollock. Hackett was given one dollar. He quarreled with his sister concerning the division of property and remarked to Mrs. G. W. Hackett and others that he was so wrought up that he could not be good.

Tuesday afternoon while the D. W. Seeley threshing outfit was at work on the Egerer Brothers farm two miles west of North Freedom, the straw stack caught fire, blazing up like a torch and setting fire to the grain stacks and to the barn. As long as water was available a large number of men worked hard to save some of the buildings, particularly the house, which escaped with a good blistering of the end toward the barn. The barn, a large one with basement and silo, a wagon shed, storehouse, hen house and some other small buildings were burned. All their hay, 2,000 bushels of grain, wheat and oats, and two stacks of grain were also lost. It is thought the blaze started from a spark from the engine. Wood was being used as fuel, and this produced many sparks.
PETA officials are encouraging people to avoid circuses that feature performing animals after a USDA inspection at Circus World in July found that one of its elephants appeared to have trouble walking.

The 48-year-old Asian elephant, Bunny  who was subcontracted by Carson and Barnes to perform at Circus World for the summer  appeared to have a limited range of motion in her right front limb, according to the USDA inspection report released this month. It noted that she did not bend her right leg in a similar manner to her left, instead extending it in a peg-like fashion while walking.

The report said the actions were intermittent but could be suggestive of an underlying problem and recommended that Bunny be examined by a vet.

Debbie Metzler, a captive wildlife specialist for PETA, said circus workers failed to notice Bunnys stiff gait even after PETA filed a complaint with the USDA about the issue in April.

Carson and Barnes turns a blind eye to animal suffering, she said. Thats why PETA is asking everyone to stay away from Carson and Barnes and all circuses that exploit animals.

Following the USDA inspection, Kurt Sladky, a professor of Zoological Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, was brought in to examine Bunny, but he found little wrong with the elephant.

In a letter to Kay Backues, a vet who looks after Bunny in Oklahoma, Sladky noted that the elephant appeared bright, alert and responsive to our presence and movements. Sladky said he did not observe Bunny favoring one leg over the other but recommended that radiographs be taken of her right and left limbs for comparison. But this is not urgent and could be completed when she is back in Oklahoma, he concluded.

Circus World Executive Director Scott ODonnell said the allegations of animal mistreatment are part of a campaign that PETA launches each summer against Carson and Barnes and Circus World.

It happens every few months where a press release will come out with incendiary language, meant to inflame a conversation because it fits their point of view, ODonnell said. It borders on harassment of an institution.

While he finds the approach frustrating, ODonnell said he feels he understands the groups motives.

When they do stuff like this, and they get the press that they do, it helps their cause from a fundraising point of view, he said. They can go back to their donors and say, Hey we said this, and it was covered in this press, and were doing good things for animals.

ODonnell said Circus World and contractors who operate on the grounds provide proper veterinary care for the sites animals.

To say that we would not provide proper veterinary care is insulting, he said.
BJP chief Amit Shah seems to have ignored the fact that on Onam, Kerala celebrates the "return" of Asura King Mahabali and not the Vamana avatar of Vishnu.

By India Today Web Desk: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief Amit Shah is in the soup after he reportedly insulted the Malayalee community through his Onam greetings on social media.

Shah triggered a controversy after publishing a poster wishing Vaman Jayathi on his Facebook page. The poster carried an image of Vaman, the fifth avatar of Lord Vishnu, stepping on the head of King Mahabali, the famous mythological king popular in Malayali lore.

advertisement

ALSO READ: Malayali Muslim man celebrates Onam after a preacher calls the festival 'haram'





THE GOOF-UP

Shah seems to have ignored the fact that on Onam, Kerala celebrates the "return" of Asura King Mahabali and not the Vamana avatar of Vishnu.

The apparent goof-up comes after the RSS mouthpiece Kesari called for trouble through its article that claimed Onam to be originally Vaman Jayanthi, birthday of one of the incarnations of Lord Vishnu.

Amit Shah's Facebook post Amit Shah's Facebook post

Shah's post received numerous reactions, mostly critical of the BJP leader for distortion.

State BJP president Kummanem Rajashekeran, however, downplayed the issue, saying it was just a matter of discussion and nothing more should be attributed to it.



GREETINGS BACKFIRE

Reacting over the entire situation Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has hit out at Shah and demanded an apology for the insulting the religious sentiments of the Malayalee community.

"By eulogising Vamana and denigrating Mahabali in his Facebook post, BJP national president Amit Shah has humiliated Kerala and Malayali's national festival Onam. The belief behind Onam is of equality and egalitarianism and it is a festival celebrated by all cutting across caste, creed, religion and other barriers," Vijayan said in a statement.

Asserting that during Mahabalis's rule there was no evil, cheating and wrong doings and the people lived in harmony, the Chief Minister added that Malayalis see Mahabali as the symbol of equality and egalitarianism.

"By denigrating Mahabli and eulogising Vamana who had stomped Mahabali under the earth, the BJP president has buried the values of equality. The BJP president should immediately withdraw his statement and apologise to the people of Kerala," he said.

ALSO READ:

#NoTrainsBloreKerala: People take to social media for special train demand this Onam



--- ENDS ---
When government officials consider new regulations that would put a dent in a regions primary driver of economic activity, its likely being done by government nannies who think theyre doing it in the best interests of people.

Or, in this case, animals.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries is proposing a ban on humans coming within 50 yards of a Hawaiian spinner dolphin. This would effectively end a segment of Hawaiis popular tourist industry: tours that involve swimming with dolphins are prevalent in the island chain, and small business owners rely on these tours to survive.

The prohibition would apply to those swimming, snorkeling, or boating within two miles of the Hawaiian coast.

Tour guides and small business owners have come out strongly against the proposed rules, which they say will hurt their business.

Richard Holland, president of tour company Dolphins and You, told CNN, Our people stay in a neutral way. We dont chase them or hoard them or corral them in any way. We allow the dolphins to come to us.

It would be the end of legitimate dolphin swimming, Dolphin Discoveries owner Kevin Merrill told the New York Times.

The stated reason to prohibit people from coming within 50 yards of any spinner dolphin is not to disturb the animals. They become stressed, according to NOAA, by humans swimming near them.

When marine mammals respond to disturbance events, they incur a cost in the form of energy expended to respond as well as the lost opportunity to engage in fitness-enhancing behavior, the NOAA said in its proposed regulations. Basically, any human presence will introduce disturbance events to dolphin activities and must be avoided.

Dolphins already are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which prohibits people from harassing, feeding, hunting, or capturing any marine mammal. NOAA obviously believes this isnt enough, and humans cannot be allowed to swim near dolphins at all.

Dozens of small businesses would be impacted by these new rules  some of the businesses so large they take in millions of dollars per year for Hawaiis tourism industry, and there are more than 200 dolphin-related tourism businesses. Tourism is the largest sector of Hawaiis economy and has been for more than 50 years, driving more than 25 percent of Hawaiis economic activity.

NOAA fisheries rule is currently under proposal and, if adopted, would go into effect next year and put many of these tourism companies out of business.

If youre doing work that helps people  that enlightens them, inspires them, makes them feel good  thats a good thing. Theres no need to take that away, Holland said.
Wisconsin Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said fixing roads and finding ways to pay for the work will be among the top legislative priorities.

He spoke Tuesday morning during the Beaver Dam Chamber of Commerce September Breakfast Network at Beaver Dam Country Club.

The Republican Party of Dodge County served as the event host, and Dorothy Ebert said, I want to encourage all of you to vote in November.

Fitzgerald said transportation is an issue that is jumping out in the Wisconsin Senate. He said one area of contention is the view some have that the Department of Transportation is not as frugal as it should be.

Roads seem to be crumbling, Fitzgerald said.

He said with the drop in gas prices, discussions have included increasing the gas tax or vehicle registration fees.

Other issues Fitzgerald discussed included education, income tax and the budget. He said the governor wants to freeze tuition and spoke about the amount of money the state spends on education.

He said Wisconsin is in pretty good shape financially, with $280 million in the rainy day fund and a statutory balance of $65 million.

I feel really good with where we are with the budget, Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald said an important issue in Wisconsin is the lack of young people volunteering to serve on local fire departments. He said a legislative committee will study the issue in hopes of coming up with solutions.

He spoke about the problem of sexual predator placement, especially in rural areas. Dodge County has been at the center of the debate after several attempts to place two men locally met resistance.

Nobody wants a sexual predator in their neighborhood, Fitzgerald said.

He addressed the upcoming election and some of the key differences between the parties regarding jobs, the economy and education. Fitzgerald said the U.S. Senate race has been interesting to watch.

Phil Fritsche of the chamber spoke about plans for future chamber events. For more information about upcoming Breakfast Network events, visit www.beaverdamchamber.com/breakfastnetwork.
Beaver Dam Lake Improvement Association has drafted changes to some of the fishing regulations for Beaver Dam Lake.

The BDLIA Fish Program Committee is considering these changes based on the specific needs of the Beaver Dam Lake fishery and to invoke good fish management practices.

The changes they are recommending are in three areas:

Current regulations state three walleye over 18 inches. BDLIA recommends continuation of the three-fish limit. However, it recommends that at least two of the three walleyes be between 15 to 18 inches, and the third be either 15 to 18 inches or over 24 inches. This change will keep more of the large walleyes in the lake and will help improve the natural spawn. The BDLIA also recommends that trolling be prohibited.

Current regulations have a limit of 25 for panfish. BDLIA recommends that the limit remain 25, but not more than 15 of any one species. This change will help prevent over-fishing of one of the pan fish species.

Current regulations has a limit of 10 for catfish. BDLIA recommends that this be increased by 25 to help reduce overpopulation of catfish in the lake.

BDLIA is seeking input from the public on the changes it is considering before it forwards them to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Those who have comments on these may email them to info@bdlia.org or send them to BDLIA, P.O. Box 33, Beaver Dam, WI 53916.
Elroys most famous son returned on Saturday for a special celebration.

Tommy Thompson, who served as Wisconsins governor from 1987-2001, helped dedicate Elroys two new welcome signs on the north and south ends of the city. Saturdays event began with a luncheon at the Elroy Public Library provided by the towns womans club. The luncheon followed with A Walk Through Elroy, with speakers detailing the rich history of the Juneau County town.

Along with Thompson, speakers included sign committee member Shirley Preuss, Elroy Councilman Jim Garvin, Zach Bender from the Elroy Historical Society, retired librarian Mary Waarvik, new librarian Kari Preuss and Mayor Mark Stanek. State Representative Ed Brooks was also present for Saturdays dedication.

The new sign reads: Welcome to Elroy, Rails to Trails, and Thompson talked about the history of railroad transportation through the town. The main railroad track eventually developed into the Elroy-Sparta State Trail, which is used by walkers, joggers, and bicyclists.

While governor, Thompson also helped his hometown secure a $250,000 block grant to renovate the library.

During his presentation on Saturday, Thompson shared memories of his youth in Elroy and said hello to several familiar faces.

Thank you all for just being nice and living the dream and making Elroy the best it can be, Thompson said. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love this city, I love all of you and I love being involved in this city.

Thompsons wife Sue Ann was also at the dedication, along with his children and grandchildren. Thompson served as Health and Human Services Secretary under President George W. Bush from 2001-05. On Saturday, he told the story of Elroy becoming the center of the universe after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

After 9/11, I was in the center of the storm. I had to get 50 tons of medical supplies to New York by 5 p.m. that day. I was the only person, outside of the Air Force, that was able to get a plane in the air that day, Thompson said. After 9/11, we came into some other problems with anthrax and those sorts of things that I needed a better way to communicate with the world. We built a war room that was second to none.

Thompson said the war room featured maps and videos and every house could be spotted within the U.S. The state-of-the-art facility was a marvel to other Bush cabinet members, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Vice President Dick Cheney came over to see it. Right in the center of the whole world was the center of the universe and there was a big sign, emblazoned in stars and lights of a place called Elroy, Thompson said. So I had the ability to pick up any house in the U.S. and Elroy was at the center. I thought it was amazing. For awhile, Elroy was the center of the universe.

People would ask me, What is Elroy? and I would say, Elroy is a very special place.

Thompson said his great-grandfather came from Ireland to Elroy in 1860 and the area reminded him of his native land. His ancestors farmed in the Elroy-Kendall area. The development of the railroad led to a population boom in Elroy during the late 1800s.

We were one of the real growth cities in the state and people really looked to us as a leader, Thompson said.

Through the years, several famous politicians and dignitaries came through Elroy. Thompson said King Edward of England came through the town during his time as the Duke of Windsor. President Herbert Hoover campaigned in Elroy, along with Harry Truman. Vice President Richard Nixon, campaigning for President Dwight Eisenhower, also took the train through Elroy.

When the railroad boom dried up, Thompsons father helped turned the track into the Elroy-Sparta State Trail in the 1960s.

It went from rails to trails and it was the first of its kind in the country, Thompson said.

The former governor also praised the Royall School District for producing great leaders in many fields.

I thank all of you and wish you all the best and lets keep making Elroy the best little city that we can, Thompson said. May God love Elroy, God love Wisconsin and God love the United States of America.
Dianne M. Behm, 61, Janesville

Dianne M. Behm, 61, passed away peacefully Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016, in her home after a courageous six-year battle with breast cancer.

She was born in Cicero, Illinois, to Jerome and Rosemary Kizior. After graduating from Morton East High School in 1973, she attended Loyola University and earned a degree in Psychology in 1978.

She remained in Chicago where she met her future husband, Dr. James C. Behm, whom she married Nov. 12, 1982. They relocated to Janesville where they raised their two sons, Bryan and Kevin, and have remained ever since.

Dianne worked initially at Blain Supply and Data Dimensions before settling at Lab Safety Supply (Grainger) where she had recently celebrated 25 years of service. She was a very generous person and was a supporter of HealthNet and YWCA. In 2010 she and Jim created the Emily Kletzien Foundation after the tragic loss of a family friend. Each year they present a scholarship to a deserving Parker High School graduate to help them pursue further studies.

In 1995 after Jim bought some hunting land in Juneau County they began spending weekends and spare time in the Mauston/New Lisbon area where they made many new acquaintances and friends. It was not uncommon to see their boat, Doc and Dis, floating around Castle Rock Lake where they enjoyed its beautiful surroundings.

Highlights of Diannes life include watching her sons grow up and achieve professional degrees in their chosen careers.

She loved the numerous vacations with family and friends and enjoyed taking a ride on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz with Bryan after his deployment in the Navy.

Earlier this year she welcomed the arrival of her first grandchild, Rory Dianne.

Diannes spirit and determination after her diagnosis was an inspiration to all. When told she would no longer be able to bowl with her right arm she learned to bowl left-handed.

She continued to downhill ski, curl, bike ride, roller blade and boat. She was not going to let cancer change her life.

Dianne shared with loved ones how much she cherished her life saying; I love my life and the people in it. Its like one big ice cream cone filled with the most wonderful flavor you can imagine. I know it has to come to an end someday, but until then I am going to savor each lick (Dianne M. Behm 2016).

She is survived by her husband, James; sons, Bryan (Kendall) and Kevin; granddaughter, Rory Dianne; and brothers, David (Deborah) and Donn Kizior.

She was preceded in death by her father, Jerome Kizior; and mother, Rosemary (Pouzar) Kizior.

A funeral service will be held at noon, Saturday, Sept. 17, at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church with Reverend Daniel Decker officiating. A visitation will be held Friday, from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. at Schneider Funeral Home and Crematory and again Saturday, from 11 a.m. until noon at the Church.

In lieu of flowers memorials may be made to The Dianne Behm Memorial Fund in care of Johnson Bank, 1309 N Wright Rd, Janesville, WI 53546.

For online condolences and registry: www.schneiderfuneraldirectors.com.

Her family would like to thank the doctors and nurse staff of UW Hospital and clinics, Mercy Hospital, and Agrace Hospice for their care and support.

It is the familys deepest wish that a cure be found soon, one that leaves the body and spirit whole and unscarred from either the disease or the treatments.
LODI  A Columbia County sheriffs deputy remained hospitalized Monday after his squad car crashed into a tree Friday night, while the deputy was responding to a call near Lodi.

The deputy, identified as Brad Graf, was transported from the scene by University of Wisconsin Med Flight with what were then characterized as potentially life-threatening injuries, according to a report from the Wisconsin State Patrol.

Columbia County Chief Deputy Darrel Kuhl told the County Boards Public Safety Committee on Monday that Graf is recovering from his injuries at UW Hospital in Madison.

Recon, the German shepherd K-9 officer with whom Graf works, escaped serious injury. According to Kuhl, the dog was riding in a kennel inside the squad vehicle.

According to a report from the Wisconsin State Patrol  the agency that is handling the crash investigation  the crash occurred at about 9 p.m. Friday on Highway 60 near McGowan Road at Smokey Hollow Road.

The report said the deputy was responding to a call for assistance at a domestic disturbance involving a juvenile and his parents.

The squad car was traveling on McGowan Road when it approached a T intersection with Smokey Hollow Road. The vehicle traveled through the intersection and into a private driveway, then hit a tree on the front passenger side.

The Wisconsin State Patrol report said it took an extensive effort to extricate the deputy from the vehicle.

Med Flight took the injured deputy to UW Hospital.

Officials of the DeForest Post of the Wisconsin State Patrol are continuing their investigation.

Other agencies that assisted at the scene include the Lodi Police Department, Lodi Fire Department, the Arlington Fire Department and the Columbia County Sheriffs Office.
Even a small portion of a $1.2 million windfall could help Columbia County clear out flood-prone homes, and in the long run save money.

That was the case that Emergency Management Director Pat Beghin made Monday to the County Boards Public Safety Committee.

Columbia County will soon receive a one-time payment of $1.2 million from the American Transmission Company, as compensation for the environmental impact that a 180-mile, 345-kilovolt electrical transmission line, now under construction, is expected to have on the county.

State rules say that the money has to be used for environmental purposes.

Beghin said that describes his proposal: Using some of the ATC money as the local share for federal programs that help pay for the acquisition of flood-prone homes in areas where flooding occurs frequently.

But most of the federal buyout programs  such as one operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency  require the local governments to contribute a portion, usually between 12.5 percent and 25 percent, toward the cost of buying the property.

In the recent past, Beghin said, Columbia County officials have been chilly to the idea of using property tax revenues for the local share of buyout programs.

But if some of the ATC money were put into an account for the local share, then the county would be able to leverage federal money to acquire houses in flood-prone areas, then tear down the houses and leave the area as green space, Beghin said.

The buyouts are available only to homeowners who are willing to sell, Beghin said; no homeowner could be forced to accept a buyout.

And, he noted, the properties that the county has bought in the past (using programs that didnt require a local match) havent had particularly high price tags $40,000 and $28,000, for two different homes that the county acquired in the Blackhawk Park, area in the town of Caledonia.

Beghin acknowledged that not all people who own homes in the Blackhawk Park area want to sell and move out. But he said he knows of at least on property owner, who lives in a house on stilts, who is eager to be bought out.

He ties a canoe to the front of his house, in case he needs to get out, Beghin said.

Columbia County incurs special costs for providing public safety services, like fire protection and ambulances, to flood-prone areas. For example, if someone living in a flood-prone area has a medical emergency, responders would have to use special vehicles, such as hovercrafts, to bring people to a hospital when the roads are covered with water and impassable.

While a buyout program would never completely clear out areas subject to frequent flooding, Beghin said clearing as many people from those areas as possible will save money on emergency responses and road maintenance.

Supervisor Adam Field of Portage said he wasnt sure that this would be the best use of the ATC money.

He noted that a recent proposal from Highway Commissioner Chris Hardy, to use the money to improve roads and county park facilities, would benefit far more Columbia County residents than a flood buyout would.

Also, he said, the county has no real use for the property that it buys. Once the buyout is completed and the occupants have vacated the house, any buildings on the property are torn down and left as open space.

Supervisor Teresa Sumnicht of Columbus said using some of the ATC money for the local share of buyouts sounds like a good idea to her, in that it might lead to the restoration of wetlands.

The land will revert back to what it was, she said. The Earth knows what to do.

Supervisor Mark Sleger of the town of Lowville suggested that county officials think of Beghins proposal as a long-term plan, possibly requiring decades, to get houses out of areas like Blackhawk Park where flooding is frequent.

County Board Chairman Vern Gove of Portage noted that several departments will likely have proposals for the use of the $1.2 million from ATC, and any ideas would have to be discussed by the County Boards Executive and Finance committees.

Thats why the committee directed Beghin to take the next step  write out his proposal and submit it for Public Safety Committee approval, with the idea that the proposal be considered along with other suggestions from other county departments.
Wastewater treatment, a right-of-way, a proclamation and a development update were just a few of the topics before Reedsburg Common Council on Sept. 12.

During its regular meeting council unanimously approved two measures that could help save the City money on wastewater treatment improvements. Leaders approved a resolution that will allow the City to apply for a $1.6 million loan from the Clean Water Fund. They also agreed to a resolution appointing Public Works Director Steve Zibell as representative to file for the loan.

Zibell said the DNR requires the resolutions of Cities that wish to apply for money from the Clean Water Fund.

Right-of-way

Council also approved vacating a right-of-way on Modern Avenue.

The right-of-way ends at the west lot line of St. Peter Cemetery and will be divided between nearby properties.

Owners of all the properties have been notified and agreed to the proposal, said Brian Duvalle, the Citys building inspector, planner and zoning administrator.

Proclamation

Mayor David Estes read a proclamation recognizing Spanish teacher Sarah Breckley for winning the Wisconsin Teacher of the Year Award.

Breckley, an educator at Reedsburg Area High School, received the honor in a surprise ceremony on Sept. 9.

Vacant store

Duvalle updated council on upgrades that are underway at a former hardware store on Vine Street. The store, located across from the Reedsburg Police Department, is set to be used by Fermentation Fest this fall.

Electrical work is being wrapped up and the gas is on, Duvalle said. He added that the water wasnt drained properly last winter, which required repairs due to a broken pipe. The water heater is installed and wireless Internet is expected to be online in the near future.

The City has considered demolishing the property but, for now, it is set to stand for the next six months. After that time officials will need to ponder their options, he said.
Beaver Dam Operations Committee learned that work in the 151 Business Park is moving along smoothly and recommends replacing the city garage boiler.

Mike Laue from MSA Professional Services updated the committee on a number of ongoing projects in Beaver Dam that included 151 Business Park and the Third Street retention pond.

In the 151 Business Park, the framework for Vintage Parts continues and the foundation has been poured for Beaver Dam Cold Storage. Construction on WDS Construction corporate headquarters is also on its way.

The Third Street retention pondis now functioning. The contractor is currently waiting on lighting equipment to light the parking lot. Laue said it is expected to be lit by the end of September.

Ritchie Piltz, director of facilities and engineering said starting Saturday, Fourth Street and East Burnett Street paving will begin. He expects the East Burnett Street project to wrap up by the end of next week.

Waterworks Park will see storm sewers relayed and new curb, gutter and some sidewalk will go in next week.

The committee is recommending that the culvert replacement along Cooper Street near the Beaver Dam River go to Michels Corporation for a bid of more than $501,000.

Laue said due to the 2008 flooding the culvert was damaged. Because of this, the common council accepted a $425,000 Community Development Block Grant for disaster recovery, in March.

The Wisconsin Department of Administration Division of House awarded the grant to Beaver Dam for disaster relief and long-term recovery.

Piltz said this project came in over budget by $76,000. He told the committee that John Somers, city administrator, advised him that it is appropriate to use funds in the storm water utilities to cover this.

Laue said the new culverts will increase capacity and would be able to handle another 100-year flood.

The committee also is recommending Mechanical Technologies in Green Bay to replace the boiler in the Department of Public Works garage, 640 S. Center St., for a low bid of more than $42,000. According to the agreement, funds in the amount of $70,000 are available in the city Capital Improvements Program.

Alderperson Jon Abfall said that it is a good idea to replace the boiler, but it is only prolonging pressing issues in the garage.

This is just pushing the problem down the road, he said.

Pollution and the lack of room for the city employees are a concern to Abfall.

Chairperson Robert Ballweg said he agrees with Abfall, but replacing the boiler now is priority in keeping heating costs under control this winter.
On the first anniversary of an unsolved crime he called one of the most horrific attacks the city has ever seen by a stranger, Madison Police Chief Mike Koval on Monday appealed once again to the public for assistance in finding the man who brutally assaulted and left for dead a young woman just off a Near East Side bike path.

Koval said two detectives continue to work the case, along with their other cases. But as year two of the investigation begins, with a sketch of a person of interest available but still no identified suspect, police would welcome an encore of information from the public, Koval said, similar to the many tips that poured in right after the assault. We want a kick-start to the case, he said.

The victim, at the time a 33-year-old graduate student at UW-Madison who has since moved to another state, was grabbed from behind while walking on the Capital City Trail near the 300 block of South Livingston Street just after midnight on Sept. 12, 2015, police said.

Beaten, strangled and raped, she lost consciousness at least twice during the attack and suffered several fractures to her face, among other injuries, Koval said Monday.

She was left in the bushes alongside the trail and discovered more than an hour later by a passerby after she managed to crawl back to the path, police said.

This was an attempted homicide, Koval said Monday near the site of the attack.

The woman spent her initial days in the hospital under heavy sedation, unable to provide officers with many details. Information for the sketch came from another person who remembered seeing a man behaving suspiciously in the area around the time of the attack.

So far, detectives have investigated some 200 leads, Koval said, and taken DNA swabs from 60 individuals, while working with law enforcement throughout the Midwest on similar cases and with FBI profilers.

From evidence gathered at the crime scene and from the victim, police have at least a partial DNA profile of the possible attacker that has not yet matched any known offenders in criminal databases. A senior analyst at the state Crime Lab continues to work with detectives to analyze evidence and try to find matches, Koval said.

We are still hoping beyond hope that the forensic evidence will ultimately be helpful, he said.

People who recall hearing or seeing anything unusual in the area on the night of the crime, police said, or who have any other information about it, can leave anonymous tips by calling Madison Crime Stoppers at 608-266-6014.
"The youth identified as Murtaza, 25, died in the clashes. Security forces used smoke and pellets to disperse the mob," police said.

By Indo-Asian News Service: A protesting youth was killed and 10 others were injured in clashes between an unruly mob and security forces in Kashmir's Bandipora district on Tuesday.

The police said a mob gathered in the town after Eid prayers, and resorted to violence against the deployed forces.

Fresh clashes erupt in Kashmir's Pulwama district, 50 protesters, 12 policemen injured

advertisement

"The youth identified as Murtaza, 25, died in the clashes. Security forces used smoke and pellets to disperse the mob," police said.

The deaths in the Kahsmir in the summer of clashes between security forces and protesters has risen to 84.

Kashmir unrest: Centre wants to ramp up security to counter ISIS ideology

Authorities have imposed a curfew in all the 10 districts of the Kashmir Valley to prevent large-scale violence.

No major Eid congregation was allowed anywhere.

Separatists had asked the people to march to the Sonwar headquarters of the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) in Srinagar after the prayers.

--- ENDS ---
Wisconsins teacher shortage will improve when the state gets out of the classrooms, Rep. Dave Considine told Portage School Board members Monday.

Teachers testing every two or three months and reporting it on a state level  I dont think we need to be doing that, said Considine, D-Baraboo, who is seeking re-election to his 81st Assembly District seat that he has held since 2014.

The School Board extended invitations to local lawmakers to discuss education in the state budget and the November election. The boards next guest, George Ferriter, a Democrat running for the 42nd Assembly District, is scheduled to address the board in October.

The big issue, Considine said, is respect for education, and a total understanding of what education is.

One of my big concerns is we seem to have this philosophy that your job as a school board is to produce worker bees. I think thats a total lack of respect for education. Our job is not to produce worker bees. Its to produce good citizens, he said.

Earlier in the summer District Administrator Charles Poches shared with the board his view of teacher-candidate shortage in Wisconsin, citing a high number of open positions over a two-week period that was on par with what hed seen for an entire summer in past years. Portage began the summer with 32 teacher openings and filled them with relative ease, Poches said, but he and other leaders have expressed concerns for what the shortage might mean long-term.

Considine on Monday said that, as a former teacher, he understands how difficult it is to teach to a test instead of teaching the way they know how to teach. The states overbearing role in classrooms takes away from teachers ability to teach things that are exciting to kids, he added.

I think it also costs the state a bunch of money, and I dont think it gives us anything.

Considine promised the board hes working behind the scenes to secure more local control for schools. He is also fighting, he said, to roll back the expanded school voucher program to include only Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay and is pushing for appropriate mental health services in schools and improved broadband services for rural schools.

When board member Fred Reckling asked Considine how willing Republicans in the Assembly are to improving public education, Considine said if we get closer, theyll be more willing.

Right now theyre getting steamrolled by their own leadership, Considine said of Republicans, adding thats a problem that often occurs on both sides of the political spectrum.

But if we get closer, I know there are people who want to do better (for education).

Considine clarified he hopes to soon get at least 40 Assembly members (there are a total of 99) to support various education initiatives hes pushing for.

The discrepancy in funding between suburban schools and rural schools is massive  you know this as well as I do (and) its why teachers are moving so fast and not staying in the district and why retention is a problem, Considine said.

Its the gap that continues to grow, Poches replied. As we go along in these budget cycles it seems every two years it gets worse for the smaller, more poverty-based schools.

This funding formula, Poches said, continues to be manipulated in ways counter to what its structured for. And the majority of our kids in the state are educated in rural, small schools, where poverty tends to be higher.

We need to fight for equal education for all students in the state, Considine said. And thats not happening right now. Thats what our constitution says we have to do, so Im going to keep fighting for that.
By PTI: Mumbai, Sep 12 (PTI) After selling off its long products business, Tata Steel Europe is now planning to become a premium strip player and concentrate on improving its performance, a senior company official said today.

"Following the sale of long products business, Tata Steel Europe would focus on being a premium strip player and concentrate on improving its performance. The strategy for exploring further strategic consolidation in Europe is a step in that direction," Tata Steel Group Executive Director Koushik Chatterjee said here.

advertisement

Tata Steels Europe division was sold at a loss of Rs 3,296.48 crore to Greybull Capital LLP in the quarter ended June 30, 2016.

Chatterjee said the companys recent restructuring and cost-cutting initiatives in the UK, along with weaker sterling, had helped the business to report better performance in the quarter.

Meanwhile, Tata Steel Europe said it is in discussion with industry players to explore a strategic collaboration through a potential joint venture.

The company in March announced plans to sell all its UK operations after years of losses. Tata still owns the Port Talbot steel works in Wales, which employs more than 4,000 workers, and 2,000 workers at other plants in Hartlepool, Rotherham and Stocksbridge.

Tata earlier said it is in talks with companies, including Thyssenkrupp, for a joint venture.

"We are open to strategic conversation with partners. We continued to be in discussion with industry players to explore options for a strategic collaboration through a potential joint venture. Appropriate disclosure in this regard will be made in due course," Chatterjee said without giving any time-frame.

The companys UK business is currently progressing with divestment of the specialty steel business and the pipe mills in Hartlepool. The shortlisted bidders are being given access to due diligence and management meetings.

Tata Steel UK also continues to be engaged with several stakeholders, including trade unions, the trustee and the UK Government to find a structural solution to the pension exposure of the UK business, he added.

Hans Fischer, MD & CEO of Tata Steel in Europe, said: "We are making progress as a result of business improvement initiatives and the restructuring announced last year. We remain committed to investing in our customers through new product development and enhancing our manufacturing capability.

"In July, we started construction of a new slab caster in IJmuiden which will enable us to make more higher-strength steels, particularly for car manufacturers." (MORE) PTI AP RSY JM RDS

--- ENDS ---
22 missing persons comprising of 13 men, 6 women and 3 children had left their houses in Kasargod and Palakkad districts of Kerala between mid-May and first week of July.

By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: "We have been blessed with a baby girl on 6th September", read a message, received on Telegram, a mobile based application, by the sister of missing ISIS terror accused. She told NIA, the investigating agency probing the Kerela ISIS case that she got a good news from her brother Dr Ijas that his wife Refaela had been blessed with a baby girl in Afghanistan. This is a second child born to the group from Kerela. A baby was earlier born to another terror accused Ashfaq.

advertisement

Also read:

Kerala's Peace International School under scanner in Ashfaq missing case

Mumbai Police to visit Kerala to seek custody of Zakir Naik's aides Employee of Zakir Naik's IRF arrested for allegedly brainwashing youths to join ISIS



DETAILS OF THE CASE

22 missing persons comprising of 13 men, 6 women and 3 children had left their houses in Kasargod and Palakkad districts of Kerala between mid-May and first week of July. To avoid suspicion, all of them had exited India from different airports - Bangalore, Hyderabad or Mumbai airports for destinations in Kuwait, Dubai, Muscat and Abu Dhabi from where agencies learnt, that all of them reached Afghanistan via Iran. They have now become 24, with birth of two babies.

Yasmin Mohd Zahid, the only accused arrested in the case, was apprehended at IGI Airport in New Delhi while trying to flee India for Afghanistan. She was also accompanied by a son from her first marriage. Yasmin was teaching in International Peace School in Kasargode along where she met her to be husband Abdul Rashid Abdullah, the leader of the Kerala ISIS pack, who was reportedly working in office staff at the school. NIA is also investigating the link of Peace International School with Zakir Naik, the controversial televangelist. She was subsequently arrested and spilled beans on the design of the jihadi group.

Yasmin married Abdul Rashid in a nikah ceremony solemnized over phone on May 3 of this year. Abdul Rashid communicated to Yasmin that he and other missing persons from Kerala had reached the Caliphate in Afghanistan in first week of July and she should join him there. So he gave the ATM card of his first wife Ayesha to Yasmin and also transferred funds to the tune of Rs. 1.5 lakh into the account in mid-July. Yasmin used the money for her travel preparations to Afghanistan. She had purchased flight tickets, paid for the Afghanistan visa.

MESSAGES, VIDEOS SPREAD IN ISIS SUPPORT

Abdul Rashid sent her videos and messages in support of the Caliphate and Abubacker Al Baghdadi to her on Telegram. Yasmin also disclosed that Abdul Rashid and his first wife Ayesha were in touch with a UK couple who converted to Islam. The couple was spreading messages and videos in support of IS and the Caliphate over Telegram channel. Yasmin's phone, SD Card and SIM card has now been sent to FSL lab in Trivandrum.

NIA will eventually send Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) to Afghanistan to seek cooperation from authorities.

--- ENDS ---
EnerSys provides various stored energy solutions for industrial applications worldwide. It operates in three segments: Energy Systems, Motive Power, and Specialty. The company offers uninterruptible power systems applications for computer and computer-controlled systems, as well as telecommunications systems; switchgear and electrical control systems used in industrial facilities and electric utilities, large-scale energy storage, and energy pipelines; integrated power solutions and services to broadband, telecom, renewable, and industrial customers; and thermally managed cabinets and enclosures for electronic equipment and batteries. It also provides motive power products that are used to provide power for electric industrial forklifts used in manufacturing, warehousing, and other material handling applications. In addition, the company offers mining equipment, diesel locomotive starting, and other rail equipment. Further, it provides specialty batteries for starting, lighting, and ignition applications in transportation; and energy solutions for satellites, military aircraft, submarines, ships, and other tactical vehicles, as well as medical and security systems. Additionally, the company offers battery chargers, power equipment, battery accessories, and outdoor cabinet enclosures, as well as related after-market and customer-support services for industrial batteries. The company sells its products through a network of distributors, independent representatives, and internal sales forces. The company was formerly known as Yuasa, Inc. and changed its name to EnerSys in January 2001. EnerSys was incorporated in 2000 and is headquartered in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Travis Perkins plc distributes building materials to the building, construction, and home improvement markets in the United Kingdom. It operates through, Merchanting, and Toolstation segments. The Merchanting segment distributes interior building products, which include drywalls, ceilings, external envelopes, fire protection products, flooring and partitioning products, and tools and accessories to professionals within the construction industry; civil, drainage, and heavy building materials to specialist contractors and trade professionals; and pipeline and heating solutions. This segment also distributes building materials, plumbing and heating products, landscaping materials, timber and sheet materials, painting and decorating products, dry lining and insulation products, doors and joinery, and hand and power tools to trade professionals and self-builders. The Toolstation segment supplies products to the trade, home improvers, and self-builders industry through approximately 500 branches, as well as online, call centers, and a mobile website. It also offers kitchens and joinery products to specialist joiners, kitchen fitters, house builders, local authorities, and national house builders. The company was formerly known as Sandell Perkins Public Limited Company and changed its name to Travis Perkins plc in October 1988. Travis Perkins plc was founded in 1797 and is headquartered in Northampton, the United Kingdom.
National Bank Holdings Corporation operates as the bank holding company for NBH Bank that provides various banking products and financial services to commercial, business, and consumer clients in the United States. It offers deposit products, including checking, savings, money market, and other deposit accounts, including fixed-rate and fixed maturity time deposits. The company also provides commercial and industrial loans and leases, such as working capital loans, equipment loans, lender finance loans, food and agriculture loans, government and non-profit loans, owner occupied commercial real estate loans, and other commercial loans and leases; non-owner occupied commercial real estate loans consisting of loans on commercial properties, such as office buildings, warehouse/distribution buildings, multi-family, hospitality, and retail buildings; small business administration loans to support manufacturers, distributors, and service providers; term loans, line of credits, and real estate secured loans; residential real estate loans; and consumer loans. In addition, it offers treasury management solutions comprising online and mobile banking, commercial credit card, wire transfer, automated clearing house, electronic bill payment, lock box, remote deposit capture, merchant processing, cash vault, controlled disbursements, and fraud prevention services, as well as other auxiliary services, including account reconciliation, collections, repurchase accounts, zero balance accounts, and sweep accounts. As of January 20, 2022, the company operated through a network of 81 banking centers located in Colorado, the greater Kansas City region, New Mexico, Utah, and Texas. It also operates 121 ATMs. The company was formerly known as NBH Holdings Corp. and changed its name to National Bank Holdings Corporation in March 2012. National Bank Holdings Corporation was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado.
The House of Representatives passed the bill by voice vote, without objections, on Friday, after the Senate passed it unanimously in May, clearing the way for it to go to the White House for Obama to sign into law or veto.

By Reuters: President Barack Obama would veto a bill passed by both houses of Congress that would allow survivors and families of victims of the September 11 attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for damages, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday.

"It's not hard to imagine other countries using this law as an excuse to haul US diplomats or US service members or even US companies into courts all around the world," Earnest told reporters in a daily briefing.

advertisement

"I do anticipate the president would veto this legislation when it is presented to him," he said.

The House of Representatives passed the bill by voice vote, without objections, on Friday, after the Senate passed it unanimously in May, clearing the way for it to go to the White House for Obama to sign into law or veto.

Congressional aides said the measure appeared to have enough support, two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and House, for lawmakers to override an Obama veto for the first time since he took office in January 2009.

However, it was not clear when the vote would take place. The Senate sent the bill to Obama on Monday night, giving him a 10-day window to veto the measure that would end on September 23. The Senate has been aiming to leave Washington as soon as this week, before that deadline, and the House next week, and lawmakers would not be in Washington again until after the November 8 elections.

Under the Constitution, Obama has 10 days to veto the bill before it automatically becomes law. The Constitution also allows a "pocket veto", in which the president can defeat a bill just by holding onto it until Congress is out of session.

Also Read:

Gulf states condemn law allowing 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia



--- ENDS ---
The following companies are subsidiares of Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen France SAS, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Suzhou Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel Ireland Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Brooks Instrument Shanghai Co. Ltd, Buell Industries Inc., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS Australia Pty Limited, CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures Australasia S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Coeur Shanghai Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Denison Mayes Group Limited, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. Ltd., Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., E2M Production B.V.., E2M Technologies B.V.., E2M Technologies Inc.., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO Holding AG, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, Exhibit 21, FEG Investments L.L.C., Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Filtertek SAS, GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech Taicang Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Belgium B.V., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart International Singapore Pte. Ltd., Hobart Japan K.K., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components Chongqing Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components Langfang Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium B.V., ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS UK Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW China Investment Company Limited, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Construction Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Services Manila Inc., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Contamination Control Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Deutschland GmbH, ITW Diagraph GmbH, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW EU Holdings Ltd., ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.L., ITW European Finance Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Thailand Ltd., ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France Luxembourg S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW Materials Technology Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Ningbo Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology China Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Real Estate Germany GmbH, ITW Residuals III L.L.C., ITW Residuals IV L.L.C., ITW Rivex, ITW SMPI, ITW SPG Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Simco-Ion Shenzhen Co. Ltd., ITW Slovakia s.r.o., ITW Spain Holdings S.L., ITW Specialty Film LLC, ITW Specialty Films France, ITW Specialty Materials Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Sverige AB, ITW Sweden Holding AB, ITW Test & Measurement Equipment Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Test & Measurement GmbH, ITW Test and Measurement Italia Srl, ITW Test and Measurement Services Industry and Trade Ltd., ITW Texwipe Philippines Inc., ITW Thermal Films Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW UK, ITW UK Finance Beta Limited, ITW UK Finance Delta Limited, ITW UK Finance Gamma Limited, ITW UK Finance Limited, ITW UK Finance Zeta Ltd., ITW UK II Limited, ITW Universal II LLC, ITW Welding, ITW Welding AB, ITW Welding GmbH, ITW Welding Products B.V., ITW Welding Products Group FZE, ITW Welding Products Group S. DE R.L. De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Illinois Tool Works Chile Limitada, Illinois Tool Works ITW Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Inc., Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, Instron Shanghai Ltd., Instron Thailand Limited, International Leasing Company LLC, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., Itw Spraytec, KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems Canada Inc., Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MTS 2 LLC., MTS 3 LLC., MTS China Holdings LLC, MTS Europe Holdings LLC, MTS Holdings France S.a.r.l., MTS Japan Ltd.., MTS Korea Inc.., MTS Systems China Co. Ltd., MTS Systems Corporation, MTS Systems Danmark ApS., MTS Systems Europe B.V., MTS Systems Finance C.V.., MTS Systems Germany GmbH, MTS Systems Holding B.V.., MTS Systems Hong Kong Incorporated, MTS Systems Limited, MTS Systems Norden Aktiebolag, MTS Systems S.r.l, MTS Systems., MTS Systems.., MTS Sytems Do Brazil, MTS Testing Solutions India Private Limited., MTS Testing Systems Canada Ltd., Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology Suzhou Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited Enping, Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners Shanghai Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., R&D Engineering A/S., R&D Prague s.r.o., R&D Steel ApS., R&D Test Systems A/S., R&D Tools and Structures A/S., RDGDK Engineering Private Limited, Ramset Fasteners Hong Kong Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. Ltd, Simco Japan Inc., Simco Nederland B.V., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques  SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes B.V., Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Hong Kong Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Shanghai Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stokvis Tapes Taiwan Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Tianjin Co. Ltd., Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Subsidiaries, Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek China Limited, Teknek Japan Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Kunshan Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta Global Limited, Vesta Guangzhou Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil South Africa Pty Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, and Zip-Pak International B.V..

Read More
Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the electric utility, banking, and renewable/sustainable infrastructure investment businesses in the state of Hawaii. It operates in three segments: Electric Utility, Bank, and Other. The Electric Utility segment engages in the production, purchase, transmission, distribution, and sale of electricity in the islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, Lanai, and Molokai. Its renewable energy sources and potential sources include wind, solar, photovoltaic, geothermal, wave, hydroelectric, municipal waste, and other biofuels. This segment serves suburban communities, resorts, the United States armed forces installations, and agricultural operations. The Bank segment operates a community bank that offers banking and other financial services to consumers and businesses, including savings and checking accounts; and loans comprising residential and commercial real estate, residential mortgage, construction and development, multifamily residential and commercial real estate, consumer, and commercial loans. This segment operates 42 branches, including 29 branches in Oahu, 6 branches in Maui, 4 branches in Hawaii, 2 branches in Kauai, and 1 branch in Molokai. The Other segment invests in non-regulated renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure in the State of Hawaii. Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. was incorporated in 1891 and is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii.
By PTI: Los Angeles, Sep 13 (PTI) Oscar-winning actor Benicio Del Toro is in talks to join the alien action movie series reboot, "The Predator".

The films plot details are yet to be known but the new movie is said to be an ensemble piece anchored by the character which will be played by 49-year-old Del Toro, if the deal is made, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

advertisement

"Iron Man 3" helmer Shane Black is directing the project while John Davis, Joel Silver and Lawrence Gordon are producing. PTI SSN PSH

--- ENDS ---
Palo Alto Networks, Inc. provides cybersecurity solutions worldwide. The company offers firewall appliances and software; Panorama, a security management solution for the control of firewall appliances and software deployed on a customer's network, as well as their instances in public or private cloud environments, as a virtual or a physical appliance; and virtual system upgrades, which are available as extensions to the virtual system capacity that ships with physical appliances. It also provides subscription services covering the areas of threat prevention, malware and persistent threat, URL filtering, laptop and mobile device protection, and firewall; and DNS security, Internet of Things security, SaaS security API, and SaaS security inline, as well as threat intelligence, and data loss prevention. In addition, the company offers cloud security, secure access, security operations, and threat intelligence and cyber security consulting; professional services, including architecture design and planning, implementation, configuration, and firewall migration; education services, such as certifications, as well as online and in-classroom training; and support services. Palo Alto Networks, Inc. sells its products and services through its channel partners, as well as directly to medium to large enterprises, service providers, and government entities operating in various industries, including education, energy, financial services, government entities, healthcare, Internet and media, manufacturing, public sector, and telecommunications. The company was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
ALLETE, Inc. operates as an energy company. The company operates through Regulated Operations, ALLETE Clean Energy, and Corporate and Other segments. It generates electricity from coal-fired, biomass co-fired / natural gas, hydroelectric, wind, and solar. The company provides regulated utility electric services in northwestern Wisconsin to approximately 15,000 electric customers, 13,000 natural gas customers, and 10,000 water customers, as well as regulated utility electric services in northeastern Minnesota to approximately 145,000 retail customers and 15 non-affiliated municipal customers. It also owns and maintains electric transmission assets in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois. In addition, the company focuses on developing, acquiring, and operating clean and renewable energy projects; and owns and operates approximately 1,000 megawatts of wind energy generation facility. Further, it is involved in the coal mining operations in North Dakota; and real estate investment activities in Florida. The company owns and operates 158 substations with a total capacity of 10,066 megavolt amperes. It serves taconite mining, paper, pulp and secondary wood products, pipeline, and other industries. The company was formerly known as Minnesota Power, Inc. and changed its name to ALLETE, Inc. in May 2001. ALLETE, Inc. was incorporated in 1906 and is headquartered in Duluth, Minnesota.
Scientists are working on a project that will enable them to take a picture of a black hole's event horizon for the first time ever by 2017.

By India Today Web Desk: Do you believe in the theory of time-travel through a black hole, or that one can slip into a different universe by going through it? We might not be any closer to finding out what lies beyond a black hole, but we might just get to see a real picture of its event horizon.

Scientists are working on a project called Event Horizon Telescope which will be able to take a picture of a black hole's event horizon for the first time ever by next year.

advertisement

The picture, which is expected to look like a large crescent, will be taken with the help of a computer algorithm and various other equipment.

"We're almost there," one of the scientists, Feral Ozel, told BBC News earlier this year. "The phasing in of the instruments has been done, the receivers are in place and the theoretical work has been done."

"There are quite a few challenges that need to be overcome to take a picture of a black hole - it's something that's extremely small in the sky. But what we're hoping for is a full array observation in early 2017."

Source: NASA



What is an event horizon?

Event horizon, in general relativity, is a boundary around a black hole, beyond which no light or other radiation can escape.



How will the picture be taken?

Event Horizon Telescope is network of nine radio telescopes which are placed across the world. Scientists will be using the computer algorithm to link all of the nine virtual telescopes to take the epic picture.

If all goes well -- like getting a clear view through its swirling dust cloud and capturing the hot gas spinning around the event horizon -- we might get to see a first-ever picture of a black hole by next year.

The complex computer algorithm that will be used for this project is to be shown off at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference later this month.

--- ENDS ---
AstraZeneca PLC, a biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the discovery, development, manufacturing, and commercialization of prescription medicines. Its marketed products include Calquence, Enhertu, Faslodex, Imfinzi, Iressa, Koselugo, Lumoxiti, Lynparza, Orpathys, Tagrisso, and Zoladex for oncology; Brilinta/Brilique, Bydureon/Byetta, BCise, Byetta, Crestor, Evrenzo, Farxiga/Forxiga, Komboglyze/Kombiglyze XR, Lokelma, Onglyza, Qtern, and Xigduo/Xigduo XR for cardiovascular, renal, and metabolism diseases; Bevespi Aerosphere, Breztri Aerosphere, Daliresp/Daxas, Duaklir Genuair, Fasenra, Pulmicort, Saphnelo, Symbicort, and Tudorza/Eklira/Bretaris for respiratory and immunology; and Andexxa/Ondexxya, Kanuma, Soliris, Strensiq, and Ultomiris for rare diseases. The company's marketed products also comprise Synagis for respiratory syncytial virus; Fluenz Tetra/FluMist Quadrivalent for Influenza; Seroquel IR/Seroquel XR for schizophrenia bipolar disease; Nexium, and Losec/Prilosec for gastroenterology; and Vaxzevria and Evusheld for covid-19. The company serves primary care and specialty care physicians through distributors and local representative offices in the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. It has a collaboration agreement with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to research, develop, and commercialize small molecule medicines for obesity; Neurimmune AG to develop and commercialize NI006; Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to develop eplontersen, a liver-targeted antisense therapy in Phase III development for the treatment of transthyretin amyloidosis; Proteros Biostructures GmbH to jointly discover novel small molecules for the treatment of hematological cancers; Sierra Oncology, Inc. to develop and commercialize AZD5153. The company was formerly known as Zeneca Group PLC and changed its name to AstraZeneca PLC in April 1999. AstraZeneca PLC was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Cambridge, the United Kingdom.
The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: 2nd Road, ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Limited, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Limited, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AFD.TECH, AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, AIG Shared Services Business Processing Inc, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co. Ltd., Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. Ltd., Accenture (South Africa) Pty Ltd, Accenture (UK) Limited, Accenture 2 Business Process Services S.A., Accenture 2 LLC, Accenture A/S, Accenture AB, Accenture AG, Accenture AS, Accenture Africa Pty Ltd, Accenture Agencia Interativa Ltda, Accenture Australia Holding B.V., Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture B.V., Accenture BPM Operations Support Services S.A., Accenture BPM S.C.R.L., Accenture BPS Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Branch Holdings B.V., Accenture Bulgaria EOOD, Accenture Business Services for Utilities Inc, Accenture Business Services of British Columbia Limited Partnership, Accenture Business and Technology Services LLC, Accenture C.A., Accenture Canada Holdings Inc, Accenture Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Capital Inc, Accenture Central Europe B.V., Accenture Chile Asesorias y Servicios Ltda, Accenture Cloud Services GmbH, Accenture Cloud Software Solutions Limited, Accenture Cloud Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions LLC, Accenture Cloud Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd, Accenture Co. Ltd, Accenture Communications Infrastructure Solutions Ltd, Accenture Company Ltd, Accenture Consulting Pty Ltd, Accenture Consulting Services Ltd Tanzania, Accenture Consultores de Gestao S.A., Accenture Consultoria de Industria e Consumo Ltda, Accenture Consultoria de Recursos Naturais Ltda, Accenture Credit Services LLC, Accenture Customer Services Distribution SASU, Accenture Customer Services Ltd, Accenture Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, Accenture Defined Benefit Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Delivery Poland S.p. z o.o., Accenture Dienstleistungen GmbH, Accenture Digital Holdings GmbH, Accenture East Africa Limited, Accenture Ecuador S.A., Accenture Egypt LLC, Accenture Enterprise Development (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Accenture Federal Services LLC, Accenture Finance II Limited, Accenture Finance Limited, Accenture Finance and Accounting BPO Services S.p.A., Accenture Finance and Accounting Services S.r.l., Accenture Financial Advanced Solution & Technology S.r.l., Accenture Flex LLC, Accenture GP LLC, Accenture Global Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Global Engagements Limited, Accenture Global Holdings Limited, Accenture Global Services Limited, Accenture Global Solutions Limited, Accenture GmbH, Accenture HR Services S.p.A., Accenture Healthcare Processing Inc, Accenture Holding Brasil Ltda, Accenture Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Accenture Holdings (Iberia) S.L., Accenture Holdings B.V., Accenture Holdings France SASU, Accenture Hungary Holdings Kft, Accenture Inc, Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions Kft, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions SA, Accenture Insurance Services B.V., Accenture Insurance Services LLC, Accenture International B.V., Accenture International LLC, Accenture International Limited, Accenture Japan Ltd, Accenture Korea B.V., Accenture LLC, Accenture LLP, Accenture Lanka (Private) Ltd, Accenture Limited, Accenture Lithuania UAB, Accenture Ltd, Accenture Ltda, Accenture Maghreb S.a.r.l., Accenture Managed Services SRL, Accenture Management GmbH, Accenture Marketing Services LLC, Accenture Marketing Services Limited, Accenture Middle East B.V., Accenture Minority I B.V., Accenture Mozambique Limitada, Accenture Mzansi Pty Ltd, Accenture NV/SA, Accenture NZ Limited, Accenture Nova Scotia Unlimited Liability Co., Accenture OOO, Accenture Operations GmbH, Accenture Operations S.p. z o.o., Accenture Operations Services Private Limited, Accenture Operations Services Sdn Bhd, Accenture Outsourcing S.r.l., Accenture Outsourcing Services S.A., Accenture Oy, Accenture Panama Inc, Accenture Participations B.V., Accenture Participations II Limited, Accenture Peru SRL, Accenture Post Trade Processing SASU, Accenture Post-Trade Processing Limited, Accenture Process (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Pte Ltd, Accenture Puerto Rico LLC, Accenture Qiyun Technology (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture S.p. z o.o., Accenture S.p.A., Accenture SASU, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sdn Bhd, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services and Technology S.r.l., Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Single Member S.A. Organization Information Technology & Business Development, Accenture Solutions Co. Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions S.p. z o.o, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc, Accenture Sub III Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions S.r.l., Accenture Technology Solutions SASU, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures B.V., Accenture Technology Ventures SPRL, Accenture Tecnologia Consultoria y Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co. Limited, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Ltda, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Advoco, Agilex Technologies Inc., Alfa Consulting, Allen International, AlphaBeta Advisors, Altevie Technologies S.r.l., Altima, Altima (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Altima Asia Ltd, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Altius Consulting Limited, Altius Data Solutions Private Limited, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Apis Group Pty Ltd, Appaloosa Technology SASU, AppsPro, AppsPro, Arca, Arca Ingenieros y Consultoria S.L., Arca Telecom S.L., Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Artio People (Payroll) Pty Ltd, Artio People Pty Ltd, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Automation Partners Pty Ltd, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc, Avanade Consulting Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Limited, Avanade Europe Services Limited, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SASU, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade Inc, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy S.r.l., Avanade Japan KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Middle East Limited, Avanade Netherlands B.V., Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain S.L., Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Limited, Avanade do Brasil Ltda , Avanade Osterreich GmbH, Avenai, Avieco, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCS Consulting, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BENEXT, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, BRIDGEi2i, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Zhidao Future Consulting Co. Ltd, Benext, Berico Technologies LLC, Bionic, Bionic Solution LLC, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Bow & Arrow, Bow & Arrow Limited, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, Byte Prophecy Private Limited, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CS Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd, CS Technology (UK) Limited, CS Technology Group LLC, CS Technology LLC, CadenceQuest Inc., Callisto Integration Europe B.V., Callisto Integration Europe Limited, Callisto Integration LLC, Callisto Integration Ltd, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc, Certus Solutions Consulting Services Limited, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cirrus Connect Australia Pty Ltd, Cirrus Connect Limited, Cirruseo, Clarity Insights, ClearEdge Partners, Clearhead, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas Japan G.K., Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Limited, Cloudeasier SAS, Cloudpoint Limited, Cloudsherpas Inc, Cloudworks, Cloudworks Consulting Services Inc, Cloudworks Technology LLC, Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda, Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda, Context Information Security, Context Information Security LLC, Context Information Security Limited, CoreCompete LLC, CoreCompete Limited, CoreCompete Private Limited, Corliant Inc., Creative Drive LLC, Creative Drive US LLC, CreativeDrive, CreativeDrive Digital Content Services (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., CreativeDrive EMEA Limited, CreativeDrive Singapore Pte Ltd, CreativeDrive UK Group Limited, Cutting Edge Solutions Limited, Cygni AB, Cygni Norrsken AB, Cygni Stockholm AB, Cygni Syd AB, Cygni Vast AB, Cygni Ost AB, Cygni Ostersund AB, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Limited, DI Futures Corporation, Data Essential SARL, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings LLC, Decora Marketplace LLC, Decorado Marketplace Ltda-EPP, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digital Results Group LLC, Double Digit Limitada, Double Digit Pty SA, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Limited, Duck Creek Technologies, ESR Labs, ESR Labs AG, EdenOne Solutions Limited, Edenhouse ERP Holdings Limited, Edenhouse Solutions Limited, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting LP, End to End Analytics LLC, End-to-End Analytics, Endorphin Medici (M) Sdn Bhd, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Limited, EnergyQuote JHA, Enimbos, Enimbos Global Services S.L., Enkitec, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V., Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enthusian Pty Ltd, Entropia, Entropia (M) Sdn Bhd, Entropia Holdings Pte Ltd, Entropia Intercraft Sdn Bhd, Epylon, Ergo, Espedia S.r.l., Ethica Consulting Group, Ethica Consulting S.p.A., Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Experity, Exton Consulting, Exton Consulting Spain Strategy&Management S.L., Exton Germany GmbH, Exton International SAS, Exton Italia S.r.l., Exton SAS, FGM LLC, Fairway Technologies Inc, Farah BidCo Limited, Farah MidCo Limited, Farah Topco Limited, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Formicary, Founders Intelligence, Fruendo S.r.l., FusionX, Future State Consulting LLC, FutureMove (Beijing) Automotive Technology Co. Ltd., FutureMove Automotive, FutureMove Automotive Co. Ltd., GRA Supply Chain Pty Ltd, Gagel Group S de R.L. de C.V., Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gevity, Gren utvikling AS, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hahntel Ltda, Halo Partners LLC, Hamilton Holding Company S.A, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Happen GP Limited, Happen Limited, Headspring, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl A/S, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn Bhd, IBB Consulting, ICM.S S.r.l., IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INSITUM, IQSP Consulting LLC, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Icon Integration (NZ) Limited, Icon Integration Pty Ltd, Imagine Broadband (USA) Limited, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Imaginea Technologies LLC, Industrie IT (Hong Kong) Ltd, Industrie IT (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Industrie IT Group Pty Ltd, Industrie IT Pty Ltd, Industrie&Co, Infinity Works Consulting Limited, Infinity Works Holdings Limited, Infinity Works Management Limited, Infinity Works Midco Limited, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Innotec International EAD, Innotec International S.p. z.o.o., Innotec Marketing GmbH, Innotec Marketing International Ireland Limited, Innotec- Marketing Spain S.L, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., International Biometric Group LLC, International Biometric Group UK Limited, Intrepid, Intrepid Futureworks Sdn Bhd, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Technology Ltd, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, ItSafer Continuity Services S.L., JKD Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, K Comms Group Limited, KSC Studio LLC, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, King James Group, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Limited, Kogentix Singapore Pte Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LINKBYNET Indian Ocean (L.I.O) Ltd, LabAnswer, Lexta GmbH, Lexta UK Limited, Lien par le reseau Inc, Lien par le reseau infrastructures Inc, Lin Bo (Shanghai) Network Technology Co. Ltd., Link By Net SAS, Link By Net SRL, Link By Net Vietnam Company Limited, Linkbynet East Asia Ltd, Linkbynet Singapore Pte Ltd., Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, Lumenup S.A., MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision LLC, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte Ltd, Mackevision UK Limited, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd, Maihiro, Matter, Maud Corp Pty Ltd, Maxamine International, Measuretek LLC, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing LLC, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mistral Wind Operations  Servicos Empresariais Unipessoal Lda., MobGen, Mortgage Cadence LLC, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, Mudano Limited, Myrtle Consulting Group LLC, N3, N3 (Dalian) Business Consulting Co. Ltd., N3 Brazil Consultoria em Marketing Ltda, N3 Germany GmbH, N3 LLC, N3 North America LLC, N3 Results Australia Pty Ltd, N3 Results Ireland Limited, N3 Results Japan G.K., N3 Results Limited, N3 Results Malaysia Sdn Bhd, N3 Results Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., N3 Results S.A.S., N3 Results Singapore Pte Ltd, N3 Results Unipessoal Lda, NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., Nell'Armonia Israel Ltd, Nell'Armonia SAS, Nell'Participation SAS, NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda, New Energy Group, News Imaging LLC, NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage Pte Ltd, Northstream, Novetta Holdings LLC, Novetta LLC, Novetta Solutions LLC, Novetta Topco LLC, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Olikka Pty Ltd, Olympus Systems Corporation, Openmind, Openmind S.r..l., Openminded, Openminded SAS, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium AG, Orbium Consulting Limited, Orbium Inc., Orbium Ltd, Orbium Pte Ltd, Orbium Pty Ltd, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PLM Systems S.r.l, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, PacificLink Group, Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production A/S, Pegasus Production K/S, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pollux Automation Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pollux Canada Inc, Pollux S.A.S., Pollux USA LLC, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Limited, Pramati Technologies Europe Limited, Pramati Technologies Private Limited, Presence of IT Workforce Management North America LLC, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Limited, Procurian Inc., Prof. Homburg GmbH, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co. Ltd., RBCP Fund 1-A Vapor Blocker LLC, RBCP Platform Vapor Blocker I LLC, REPL Consulting LLC, REPL Consulting Limited, REPL Digital Limited, REPL Group K.K., REPL Group Pty Ltd, REPL Group Worldwide Limited, REPL Pte Ltd, REPL Software Limited, REPL Technology Limited, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Root LLC, Rothco, Rothco Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SALT Solutions GmbH, SEC Servizi, SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Salt Solutions, Sandbox Studio LLC, Sapling Bidco Limited, Sapling Midco Limited, Sapling Topco Limited, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Search Technologies BPO Inc, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Securiview SAS, Sentelis, Sentor Managed Secuirty Services AB, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Seven Seas Business Ventures LLC, Shackleton, Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton S.L.U., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., SigInt Technologies LLC, Silveo, Silveo Consulting India Private Limited, Simian Pty Ltd, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., Sirvart S.A., Sistemes Consulting S.L., Skylink SAS, Soltians Limited, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Somers Ventures Ireland Limited, Somers Ventures LLC, Spacelink SAS, Storm Digital, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Synership LLC, Systor AG, T.A. Cook, TXF LLC, Tambourine, TargetST8, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Ltd, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Tquila, Trivadis, Trivadis AG, Trivadis Austria GmbH, Trivadis Denmark AS, Trivadis Germany GmbH, Trivadis Holding AG, Trivadis Partner AG, Trivadis Services AG, Trivadis Services SRL, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Vector Acquisition Company LLC, Vector Topco LLC, Verax Solutions, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd, Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, WaveStrike LLC, White Cliffs Consulting LLC, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wise Partners SAS, Wolox, Wolox Colombia S.A.S, Wolox LLC, Wolox Mexico S.R.L de C.V., Wolox S.A., Wolox SpA, Workforce Insight, Workforce Insight LLC, Yesler, Yesler LLC, Yesler Limited, Yesler Singapore Pte Ltd, Zag, Zag Australia Pty Ltd, Zag Limited, Zag USA LLC, Zebra Worldwide Australia Pty Ltd, Zebra Worldwide Group Limited, Zebra Worldwide Media Pty Ltd, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines Inc, Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc, Zestgroup, Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, solid-serVision.com GmbH, and umlaut.

Read More
The following companies are subsidiares of Novo Nordisk A/S: Aldaph SpA, Beijing Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals Science & Technology Co. Ltd., CS Solar Fund XIV LLC, Calibrium, Corvidia, Corvidia Therapeutics Inc., Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc., Emisphere Technologies, Emisphere Technologies Inc., MB2 LLC, NNE A/S, Neotope Neuroscience Limited, Novo Nordisk, Novo Nordisk (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Novo Nordisk (Pty) Limited, Novo Nordisk (Shanghai) Pharma Trading Co. Ltd., Novo Nordisk B.V., Novo Nordisk Canada Inc., Novo Nordisk Colombia SAS, Novo Nordisk Comercio Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Novo Nordisk Denmark A/S, Novo Nordisk Egypt LLC, Novo Nordisk Farma OY, Novo Nordisk Farma S.R.L., Novo Nordisk Farma dooel, Novo Nordisk Farmaceutica Limitada, Novo Nordisk Farmaceutica do Brasil Ltda., Novo Nordisk Finance (Netherlands) B.V., Novo Nordisk Health Care AG, Novo Nordisk Hellas Epe., Novo Nordisk Holding Limited, Novo Nordisk Hong Kong Limited, Novo Nordisk Hrvatska d.o.o., Novo Nordisk Hungaria Kft., Novo Nordisk Inc., Novo Nordisk India Holding Pte Ltd., Novo Nordisk India Private Limited, Novo Nordisk Kazakhstan LLP, Novo Nordisk Kenya Ltd., Novo Nordisk Lanka (PVT) Ltd, Novo Nordisk Limited, Novo Nordisk Limited Liability Company, Novo Nordisk Ltd, Novo Nordisk Mexico S.A. de C.V., Novo Nordisk North America Operations A/S, Novo Nordisk Norway AS, Novo Nordisk Panama S.A., Novo Nordisk Pars, Novo Nordisk Peru S.A.C., Novo Nordisk Pharma (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Novo Nordisk Pharma (Private) Limited, Novo Nordisk Pharma (Singapore) Pte Ltd., Novo Nordisk Pharma (Taiwan) Ltd., Novo Nordisk Pharma (Thailand) Ltd., Novo Nordisk Pharma AG, Novo Nordisk Pharma Argentina S.A., Novo Nordisk Pharma EAD, Novo Nordisk Pharma GmbH, Novo Nordisk Pharma Gulf FZE, Novo Nordisk Pharma Inc., Novo Nordisk Pharma Korea Ltd., Novo Nordisk Pharma Limited, Novo Nordisk Pharma Ltd., Novo Nordisk Pharma Operations (Business Area) Sdn Bhd, Novo Nordisk Pharma Operations A/S, Novo Nordisk Pharma S.A., Novo Nordisk Pharma SARL, Novo Nordisk Pharma SAS, Novo Nordisk Pharma Sp.z.o.o., Novo Nordisk Pharma d.o.o., Novo Nordisk Pharma d.o.o. Belgrade (Serbia), Novo Nordisk Pharmaceutical Industries LP, Novo Nordisk Pharmaceutical Services Sp. z o.o., Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals (Philippines) Inc., Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals A/S, Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals Pty. Ltd., Novo Nordisk Pharmatech A/S, Novo Nordisk Pharmatech US Inc., Novo Nordisk Production SAS, Novo Nordisk Production Support LLC, Novo Nordisk Producao Farmaceutica do Brasil Ltda., Novo Nordisk Region AAMEO and LATAM A/S, Novo Nordisk Region China A/S, Novo Nordisk Region Europe A/S, Novo Nordisk Region Japan & Korea A/S, Novo Nordisk Research Center Indianapolis Inc., Novo Nordisk Research Center Seattle Inc., Novo Nordisk S.P.A., Novo Nordisk Saglik Urunleri Tic. Ltd. Sti., Novo Nordisk Saudi for Trading, Novo Nordisk Scandinavia AB, Novo Nordisk Service Centre (India) Pvt. Ltd., Novo Nordisk Slovakia s.r.o., Novo Nordisk Tunisie SARL, Novo Nordisk US Bio Production Inc., Novo Nordisk US Commercial Holdings Inc., Novo Nordisk US Holdings Inc., Novo Nordisk Ukraine LLC, Novo Nordisk Venezuela Casa de Representacion C.A., Novo Nordisk d.o.o., Novo Nordisk s.r.o., PT. Novo Nordisk Indonesia, S.A. Novo Nordisk Pharma N.V., UAB Novo Nordisk Pharma, Xellia Pharmaceuticals, Ziylo, and Ziylo Limited.

Read More
By PTI: Colombo, Sep 13 (PTI) A 48-year-old Bolivian woman, a member of an international drug ring, has been arrested here for smuggling drugs worth 40 million Lankan rupees after arriving on a flight from India.

The Customs spokesman Dharmasena Kahandawa said the woman was arrested yesterday when she landed at the Colombo International Airport from India. She is a member of an international drug ring.

advertisement

She had flown from Brazil to Ethiopia and then to India carrying close to 3 kilos of cocaine valued at 40 million Sri Lanka rupees, the officials said.

The arrest came as the President Maithripala Sirisena announced last week that security forces are to be placed on high alert to prevent the smuggling in of heroin to the country.

In July, the Sri Lanka Customs seized 80 kilos of cocaine inside a sugar container which was imported from Brazil. PTI CORR AMS AKJ AMS KK

--- ENDS ---
A woman in Philadelphia, US, faced the unfortunate incident of being smacked in the face by a dead catfish, which, she says, fell out of the sky.

By India Today Web Desk: Manna may have rained from the skies to feed the hungry Israelites following Moses, but when a dead catfish dropped out of nowhere and hit Philadelphia's Lisa Lobree on the head, it wasn't a pleasant experience.

Lisa was she was walking to her CoreFitness class near Philadelphia Art Museum, when she heard a "rustling" in the trees, reports Philadelphia Inquirer.

advertisement

The next thing she knew, a smelly, 5-pound catfish had fallen out of nowhere and smacked her in the face.

"Suddenly I was slammed by something," Lisa told the paper. "I was like, 'What?!' I was freaking out."

Lisa, who suffered a cut near her eye from the freak accident, believes a bird must've accidentally dropped the fish while flying away.

Lisa's husband took to Facebook to share the story last week. Commenting on it, Lisa said, "This is me after falling to the ground screaming and showering for 30 minutes to get the smell off. Only a small cut and swollen face. A memory to last forever though."

--- ENDS ---




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
He said that he 'Did not expect the TV media' to carry such controversial content which had made its way to social media.

When asked about the duration of the curfew, the Karnataka state police chief said he can't say how much longer the curfew will stay in place. Photo: ANI

By Jugal R Purohit: On a day when Bengaluru recovered from the shock of Monday when more than 50 vehicles were torched by protesters, the state police chief said he did not anticipate the impact of controversial clips which went viral depicting violence in Tamil Nadu.

He added that he 'Did not expect the TV media' to carry such controversial content which had made its way to social media.

advertisement

CURFEW TO CONTINUE

Speaking to India Today, the 1981 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer said, "I would say we failed to anticipate the two incidents in Tamil Nadu which went viral on social media and TV media carried it. It was not expected. Emotional reaction came suddenly".

When asked about the duration of curfew and the imposition of section 144 in the city, he said, "Additional forces are helping us. We have got seven companies of RAF airlifted to Bengaluru however, we can't say how much longer the curfew will remain in place. We will keep reviewing but can't give a time".

--- ENDS ---
A day after witnessing widespread violence, Bengaluru appeared to limp back to normalcy today. Sporadic protests were also reported from Chennai. Two persons were reported killed in the violence in Benguluru in the last 24 hours.

Men ride a motorcycle past a lorry in Bengaluru, which was set on fire by protesters after Supreme Court ordered Karnataka state to release 12,000 cubic feet of water per second every day from the Cauvery river to neighbouring Tamil Nadu. Reuters

By India Today Web Desk: A day after widespread clashes, Bengaluru today seemed crawling back to normalcy. Shops were opened, and traffic resumed after day of the violent clashes.Two persons were killed after angry protests turned violent in southern Karnataka over releasing more Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu. ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW | IN PICTURES

advertisement

Karnataka police today arrested 350 persons who were involved in setting buildings and public property on fire. State Home Minister G Parameshwara said that the persons were arrested on the basis of video evidence.



HERE ARE THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

Vistara, Jet Airways, Air India waive flight cancellations or change fees for travel to and from Bengaluru. In their respective accounts on micro-blogging website Twitter, domestic airlines announced that the step was taken due to the law and order problem that has emerged in Bengaluru.

STATE SUFFERS MAJOR LOSS

According to industry chamber Assocham, the widespread damage due to the violent protests over the Cauvery dispute has caused Karnataka to suffer a loss of Rs 22,000-25,000 crore.

TWO KILLED IN CLASHES



While a man died in police firing on Monday night, in another incident a man fell to his death while escaping lathicharge. Kumar, 30, died after he fell from a building wall.

SIDDARAMAIAH TO MEET MODI



Meanwhile, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has sought an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi for tomorrow. The CM expects to meet Modi on Wednesday to discuss the Cauvery issue.

It started with Karnataka's refusal to release this year's share of Cauvery's waters to Tamil Nadu as per the agreement. The matter landed on the table of the Supreme Court which in turn ordered Karnataka to release the water. Cauvery dispute: How is Section 144 CrPC different from a curfew?

The row over distribution of Cauvery river waters is not new and dates as far back as the 19th century as it was governed by an agreement between Madras Presidency and the State of Mysore that was signed in 1924. However, the agreement lapsed in 1974 and since then all attempts so far made by the Centre to settle this long pending inter-state water dispute through negotiations have totally failed. ALSO READ: 1996 | From the magazine: Cauvery consensus

PM MODI'S APPEAL



Dear brothers and sisters,? The situation that has emerged in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of the issue of distribution of the waters of the Cauvery River, is distressful. I am personally pained at the developments. Violence cannot provide a solution to any problem. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint and mutual dialogue. This dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit.



advertisement

Breaking the law is not a viable alternative. The violence and arson seen in the last two days is only causing loss to the poor, and to our nation's property. Whenever the country has faced adverse circumstances, the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, just like people across the country, have always handled the situation with sensitivity. I appeal to the people of the two States, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities. I trust you will keep national interest and nation building above all else, and give priority to restraint, harmony, and finding a solution, eschewing violence, destruction and arson.



Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah addressed the media today and said, "Hope all is well. We are trying to co-ordinate with everyone in Tamil Nadu. The situation is brought under control. Many assaults took place."

Siddaramaiah said, "There was no drinking water in Karnataka it was given to farmers in Tamil Nadu. Supreme Court's decision isn't final, we have filed a petition."

Bengaluru situation is totally calm. Strict action will be taken against vandals, said Bangalore Police. Police said, "All necessary security arrangements made all over the city. In any emergencies kindly call 100 and report." Mandya (Karnataka): #CauveryProtests in many parts of Karnataka, security forces on high alert. pic.twitter.com/D84mK7XWrF ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Bangalore Police has tweeted emergency WhatsApp number 9480801000, and has asked public to connect with them.

Karnataka Home Minister said, "I request people of Karnataka to please maintain peace in the state, dont take law in your hands. Some people indulged in violence using names of some organisations. We will find who they are, arrest them & take action. It is our responsibility to ensure safety of every citizen and we will do exactly that. It must be appreciated that we brought the city to order in time otherwise there would have been more loss of life."



Highlighting such incidents might incite further violence; hope media would play a constructive role in ensuring peace and normalcy. Had already urged the media to exercise restraint in reporting on the incidents happening in both the states: Venkaiah Naidu.

Dont blame people of Karnataka, we are ones who dont have water. People of TN are provoking Kannadigas: Sadananda Gowda



Though schools, colleges, government and private offices and banks have holiday for Eid fest, several IT firms and back offices, which are working, advised their employees to work from homes in view of the simmering tension across the city. Shops, markets, malls, hotels, eateries and commercial establishments are observing an undeclared shutdown across the city due to fear of being attacked by protesters. Cauvery violence: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah to inspect riot-hit areas of Bengaluru



Buses, taxis and three-wheeler auto-rickshaws are also off the roads, while metro rail service has been suspended till late evening. Hundreds of passengers alighting at railway stations in the city and at the airport on the outskirts had a tough time in reaching homes or workplaces in the absence of taxis, autos and buses.

A Rapid Action Force platoon staged a flag-march in the city's north-west suburb to instil confidence in the people that the situation is under control.

ADVISORY FOR CABLE TV OPERATORS: Hyderabad Police issues advisory to all cable TV channels/cable TV network operators over protests in Bangalore; says no program shall be transmitted in the cable service which is likely to incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law & order. Managements of all TV Channels are requested/advised to adhere to program code in interest of maintenance of public order/peace in Hyderabad. More: Clashes in Bengaluru, hotel attacked in Chennai

Hyderabad Police issues advisory to all cable TV channels/cable TV network operators over protests in Bangalore; says no program shall be transmitted in the cable service which is likely to incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law & order. Managements of all TV Channels are requested/advised to adhere to program code in interest of maintenance of public order/peace in Hyderabad. SIDDARAMAIAH TWITTER POST: Siddaramaiah has posted a video on his Twitter timeline. He speaks in Kannada, "Every kannadiga is wounded by the injustice meted out wrt to the Cauvery issue. Please bring humanity to the forefront. Let's not harbour the attitude of taking revenge. Let's all work towards peace and harmony across both the states. If miscreants indulge in disrupting peace, government will take action." Bangalore Police tweets emergency WhatsApp number 9480801000, asks public to connect with them. Click here to Enlarge

Siddaramaiah has posted a video on his Twitter timeline. He speaks in Kannada, "Every kannadiga is wounded by the injustice meted out wrt to the Cauvery issue. Please bring humanity to the forefront. Let's not harbour the attitude of taking revenge. Let's all work towards peace and harmony across both the states. If miscreants indulge in disrupting peace, government will take action." Bangalore Police tweets emergency WhatsApp number 9480801000, asks public to connect with them. Home Ministry decides to intervene in Cauvery dispute. Emergency Cabinet meeting to be held today.

Umesh, 25, died when police fired to disperse a mob attempting to torch a patrolling vehicle after ransacking a provision shop in the city's northern suburb," said the police official. More: Karnataka comes to a standstill, 53 Tamil channels blocked

Areas to be avoided are KPN bus depot, ORR Service Road, Chamaraj Pet 5th Main, Gopalan Mall, Kamas, Bellanduru Ecospace, Sunkadakatte Junction, Nayandanahalli Junction, BHEL 2nd gate, Pandavapura and RR Nagar.

advertisement

ALSO READ

advertisement

Cauvery dispute: Centre monitors situation, deploys 10 companies of Rapid Action Force

SC orders Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs water to Tamil Nadu Cauvery water dispute: Timeline of Karnataka bandh

Cauvery verdict: Thousands of farmers lay siege to KRS reservoir

Cauvery row: Failed in anticipating impact of controversial, viral content, says Karnataka top cop

--- ENDS ---
Lovers (illustration)

By: Chan Yuan

A woman in South Africa, killed her husband after he wanted to know too much about her love life with her boyfriend.

The 45-year-old manas sister said that her brother stayed with his wife despite knowing that she was cheating on him.

The couple raised their children together in Johannesburg, and the woman would often leave her husband to care for the kids while she went to her loveras home.

aThey would fight in front of the children. We were tired of telling her to stop cheating on him,a the heartbroken sister said.

According to police, the woman turned herself in to police and told them that she beat her husband to death abecause he kept following her whenever she wanted to go to another man.a

Police went to the home, where they found the body. Orange Farm police spokesman Captain Johannes Motsiri confirmed that a woman was arrested on a charge of murder.
Beth Walker in blue shirt

By: Tanya Malhotra

A police officer of the United Kingdom, was found guilty of punching a woman who married the man whom her mother loved.

A court heard that there had been an ongoing feud with the officeras family and the 50-year-old victim who married the former partner of the officeras mother, following an acrimonious split.

The officer was also fired from her job after being found guilty of assaulting the woman in the meat aisle at an Asda supermarket.

Police Constable Beth Walker of Birmingham, defended herself by saying that she was approaching the victim to greet her and she accidentally pushed her.

Witnesses and surveillance video confirmed the victims account that the 40-year-old woman who worked as a police officer for the past 13 years, punched the victim in the chest and said: athat was a long time coming, itas not over yet.a

During an investigation, the officer told a panel that she put her hand out for a afriendlya greeting and perhaps it was ill-timed and somewhat clumsy due to the confined space.

However, the punch was strong and the woman fell. Her shoe and the meat she was holding fell in another direction.

A three-person misconduct panel found Walker guilty of gross misconduct after a two-day hearing. Chair of the Panel, Harry Ireland, said that the assault had been a agratuitous violent act,a and she was fired from the police force.
A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took
Anna Zayachivska with Gianluca Cervara

By: Chan Yuan

A billionaire of Italy, filed a lawsuit against his model wife after she disappeared and was later seen with another man.

Gianluca Cervara filed a police report when his wife disappeared after saying that she was going out for a walk, but she was nowhere to be found.

The couple, who lived in Milan, got married in December, and they seemed to be happy. However, she vanished seven just month later.

24-year-old Anna Zayachivska, who was the winner of Miss Ukraine beauty contest in 2013, wrote loving messages to her husband on social media sites in the weeks before her disappearance.

She allegedly took A5,000 ($6,596) from her husbands safe before she disappeared.

The concerned husband was shocked when he saw Instagram photos, showing his wife with another man in New York City.

She also had many photos of her, on which she appeared to working as a model in New York.

Cervara is suing his wife for non-compliance of their marriage contract, as she violated their prenup agreement.

Zayachivska said that she ran away from home because her husband was physically abusive towards her.

She claims that he spit in her face during an argument and that he was not compassionate when she was feeling ill.

aI had headaches for a week, but Gianluca did not care about them. Finally, I decided that I needed to make changes as I was fed up of living in a golden cage, and I ran away,a she said.

Cervara denied the allegations of abuse and he said: aall I can say is that she is not the person she is pretending to be.a
Union minister from Karnataka Sadanand Gowda said, "Don't blame people of Karnataka, we are ones who dont have water."

By Vidya : Even as Tamil Nadu did not report any incident of violence apart from one small protest by a group in Chintadripet area and another protest later in the afternoon, it was the war of words between two states that continued to gather headlines.

Union minister from Karnataka Sadanand Gowda said, "Don't blame people of Karnataka, we are ones who dont have water. People of Tamil Nadu are assaulting Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu, even after Kannadigas being so magnanimous. But everyone must calm down".



advertisement

TAMIL NADU HITS BACK AT KARNATAKA

These words immediately met with angry backlash from Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithas supporter Advocate C Rajashekaran who said that Gowda was saying this only to gain some "cheap brownie points" for the upcoming elections in that state.

He added that Gowda should first look at his own state which is in an unrest where there is complete intelligence failure. It was not the time to talk about such issues.

WAR OF WORDS

He demanded that Gowda should immediately take back his words and that his party should throw him out. He added, "Karnataka bank branches are closed in Karnataka itself but not in Tamil Nadu."

Advocate C Rajashekaran claimed that there were only two stray incidents in the state and culprits in both cases were booked.

He claimed that the chief minister has strictly asked the police to protect the establishments across state belonging to people originating from Karnataka.

He added,"We are getting water from Pakistan peacefully but Karnataka is our neighbouring state and they should understand the river belongs to the whole country. We are sending them electricity from neyveli and kudankulam. We are not saying we will stop it."

--- ENDS ---
"We have taken steps to ensure that there is no disruption in supply of drinking water to Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mandya and surrounding regions till June 2017," said Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

By Mail Today Bureau: Urging people to maintain peace and harmony in the wake of the Karnataka government's decision to release Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today assured the people of Bengaluru, Mysuru and Mandya that supply of drinking water would not be affected.

STATEMENT

"We have taken steps to ensure that there is no disruption in supply of drinking water to Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mandya and surrounding regions till June 2017," he told the media after the Cabinet meeting without revealing how the government will meet with the demand for drinking water.

advertisement

All the three cities rely heavily on Cauvery River to meet the drinking water requirements. The Supreme Court's directive to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu from Cauvery River led to arson and violence in Bengaluru, Mandya and Mysuru on Monday.



ALSO READ:

Cauvery crisis: Bengaluru on the boil, Siddaramaiah to hold cabinet meet today

Cauvery dispute: India Today journalist rushed to hospital after goons attack her in Bengaluru





--- ENDS ---
The film, a remake of the hit Kannada movie Shivalinga, was being shot at a hotel in Mysuru when Kannada Rakshana Vedike (KRV) activists barged in and disrupted the shooting.

By Mail Today Bureau: Activists of the Kannada Rakshana Vedike (KRV) today barged into a star hotel in Mysuru and disrupted the shooting of a Tamil movie leading to tense moments.

A Tamil film unit was shooting for a movie, which is a remake of the hit Kannada movie, Shivalinga, at the Lalith Mahal Palace hotel in Mysuru. On Monday, the film unit did not shoot for the movie. However, on Tuesday, the unit resumed shooting and activists of the KRV barged into the sets.

advertisement

The film unit was caught unaware but the police present on the spot managed to control the activists. The police had to lathi-charge the protesters and disperse them. Well-known actors Bhanupriya and Tamil film-maker Raghava Lawrence are part of the Tamil movie, but it is not known whether they were present at the shooting location when the protesters barged into the hotel.

The police have now beefed up security in and around the hotel. The film unit has decided to suspend shooting in Mysuru till normalcy was restored.

Also read: Cauvery dispute: Kannada film stars to participate in Karnataka bundh on September 9



--- ENDS ---
Canadas spy agencies and military should be upgraded to better carry out offensive cyber warfare attacks against foreign adversaries, a strategy paper published in July by a Canadian military think tank argued.

Titled Canada and Cyber Warfare, and written by retired Major General John Adams for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI), the paper urges that Canada improve its capability to infiltrate, disrupt and destroy the computer networks of its foreign rivals.

Adams is the former head of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the countrys signals intelligence service. He has been a leading spokesman for the drive to expand the domestic and foreign powers of both CSE and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canadas domestic spy agency. Adams has previously boasted of CSEs deep integration in the US National Security Agencys illegal spy operations, with the aim of mastering the internet.

The basic arguments Adams puts forward in his paper have been used time and again to push for greater powers for the spy agencies and sweeping attacks on democratic rights. Vague and unsubstantiated claims are made about cyberattacks on sensitive computer infrastructure by foreign governments or terrorist groupsattacks which are supposedly difficult for Canada to fend off due to outdated equipment or legal barriers.

Other high-ranking former members of Canadas national security apparatus have also weighed in. Ray Boisvert, a former Assistant Director of CSIS, has complained that Canadas cyber warfare capabilities remain rudimentary at best and woefully underfunded.

The mounting demands for Canada to develop offensive cyber warfare capabilities are rooted in the growing tensions between the major powers internationally and the realization within Canadas ruling elite that to assert its imperialist interests it must prepare for war.

In recent years, the United States has frequently resorted to claims of cyberattacks from hostile countries to stoke tensions with its geopolitical rivals, above all Russia and China. President Obama unveiled a vast array of new cyber policing powers last year to tackle alleged threats, while earlier this year Germany established a new department in its Defence Ministry and created a new branch of its military to wage cyberwar, including offensive operations. (See: German army prepares for cyberwar)

Adams paper defines cyberspace as a domain comprised of the internet and other network infrastructure used by governments, militaries, corporations, and other organizations to maintain the ever-expanding scope of modern civilization. It notes that cyberspace has become the centre of gravity for the globalized world ... including military operations.

It goes on to state that cyberspace has become an emerging theatre of operations, with successful attacks capable of crippling the ability of states to function. Adams presents cyber warfare as inherently cheaper, cleaner and less risky for an attacker and so capable of crippling target infrastructure that it may soon supersede physical warfare.

Cyber warfare is typically defined as falling into one of three categories:

Computer network attacks: designed to disrupt, deny, degrade or destroy computer networks or the computers themselves

Computer network exploitation: seizing intelligence-grade data

Computer network defence: measures taken to protect ones networks from cyberattacks

Adams, Boisvert and others are emphasizing the need to provide the spy agencies and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) with the resources and the mandate to direct offensive action, in the form of cyber attacks, something Adams laments they have lacked up to now. Failure to do so, warns Adams, would be neglectful beyond belief.

Adams CGAI paper is directed at influencing the governments Defence Policy Review, which in its public consultation paper itself raises the issue of how Canada should respond to the growing importance of cyber warfare.

Launched at the beginning of April, the review is the first in more than two decades. It is being used by the Trudeau Liberal government, the military-security establishment, and the corporate and financial elite to push for major hikes in military spending, the procurement of a vast array of new warplanes, battleships, submarines, and high tech weapons, and more aggressive use of the military to secure Canadian imperialisms predatory interests.

In their ten months in office, the Liberals have dramatically expanded Canadas participation in all three of Washingtons major geostrategic offensivesin the Middle East, where the US is seeking to overthrow Syrias government as part of its drive to secure unchallenged domination of the worlds most important oil producing region; against Russia; and against China.

In July, Trudeau announced that Canada would take the leadership and provide the bulk of the troops for one of four new NATO battalions being deployed on Russias borders in Eastern Europe. Under Trudeaus government, Canada has also repeatedly voiced its support for the US provocative stance on the South China Sea dispute and expanded military-security ties with Washingtons closest ally in the Asia-Pacific, Japan

By posing the question of the type and size of investments required for cyber warfare systems, and the need to maintain interoperability with key allies, the Defence Policy Review consultation paper makes clear that the Liberals are also dead set on rapidly arming the spy agencies and military for offensive cyber warfare operations.

An example of the type of cyber warfare operations being considered is provided by the example of the 2010 Stuxnet virus, which was developed and deployed by a joint US-Israeli espionage team to target the computer-controlled gas centrifuges at Irans Natanz uranium enrichment plant. The virus reportedly caused hundreds of the centrifuges to self-destruct.

As one of the closest military allies of the US, Canadian cyber warfare units would undeniably be on the front lines in a war between Washington and its current main rivals, Russia and China.

While levelling accusations of cyber espionage against its rivals, the Pentagon established its own Cyber Command in 2010 for the express purpose of carrying out cyberwar against them.

As for the claims that Canadas cyberwar capabilities are defence-oriented and inadequate, nothing could be further from the truth.

CSE has been integrated with the NSA for decades, playing a critical role in eavesdropping on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. During the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, CSE boasted of its role in providing crucial military intelligence to the CAF.

More recently, CSE was exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a main auxiliary of the NSA in spying on foreign governments. Through the agencys LANDMARK software, CSE can hack thousands of foreign computers in a matter of hours and remain essentially untraceable.

In 2013, it was revealed that CSE established covert off-shore sites at the request of the NSA to conduct surveillance on at least 20 high-priority countries. Among the foreign governments surveilled were Brazil, over its disputes with Canadian corporations, and Kenya, in which a cellphone network was infiltrated at the request of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spy agency.

Former NSA executive Thomas Drake summed up one of the reasons CSE is a valued NSA partner: Think of certain foreign agreements or relationships that Canada actually enjoys that the United States doesnt, and under the cover of those relationships, guess what you can conduct?

Also being planned is deeper integration of CSE, CSIS, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the CAF. Under a five-year plan initiated in 2013, these four entities are to be brought under the umbrella of the Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC), the CAFs central command and control hub. CJOC directs both domestic and foreign missions, and is involved in cyber support for all three branches of the military.
Evicted presents shocking but true accounts of the struggles waged by eight low-income families living in Milwaukee during 2008 and 2009 to keep a roof over their heads. For these low-income families, the specter of eviction is shown to be an ever-present reality.

The author, Harvard professor Matthew Desmond, also uses the book to examine broad national trends in the privately-owned housing sector. The impact of profiteering in the private sector on low-income families is demonstrated by the fact that evictions are now common in large- and medium-sized cities across the US.

Desmonds original research from surveys and court statistics in Milwaukee is an important contribution to the understanding of the depths of social inequality in the US.

The book also provides some context to explain the historical trends and socioeconomic factors responsible for the plight of the real-life subjects. Much of the statistical material is up-to-date and contemporaneous with the books publication last fall. This is important because inequality has deepened considerably since he did his interviews with renters between 2008 and 2009.

The stories of these eight Milwaukee families, black, white and inter-racial, who face the specter of eviction and homelessness lurking around the corner every month, make up a substantial part of the book.

Early on in his work, Desmond defines the scope of the crisis by observing that during the Great Depression of the 1930s evictions in major American cities like Milwaukee were a fraction of what they are today.

The trials of one single mother, Arleen, and her family are recounted along with those of the other families over several chapters. The first hand accounts are interspersed with results of Desmonds academic research.

Arleen and her two boys, ages 13 and five, face constant domestic tension and disruption trying to make rent. They go from house to house, sometimes experiencing eviction because of the lack of a few hundred dollars, begging one landlord to stay at least through Christmas or living in a homeless shelter.

The evictions are almost inevitable. At one place big enough for the family the rent was $550 a month, utilities excluded, which would take 88 percent of Arleens $628-a-month welfare check. He writes of her thoughts: Maybe she could make it work. Maybe they could at least stay at least through winter, until crocuses and tulips stabbed through the thawed ground of spring, Arleens favorite season.

Eviction affects the old and the young, the sick and the able-bodied. But for poor women of color and their children, it has become ordinary, Desmond relates. Among Milwaukee renters, one in five black women report having been evicted in their adult life compared to one in 12 Hispanic women and one in 15 white women.

The description of what one father does to try to save his apartment for his boys, spending a week cleaning a filthy basement while moving around on the stubs of his amputated legs, is truly harrowing. In the end, the disabled mans landlord only credits him $50 toward his rent for the work, and serves him an eviction notice anyway.

During Desmonds time in a trailer park on the south side of Milwaukee he met up with Pam and Ned, a white working class couple being evicted due to a job loss. They find quickly that it is not the bi-racial make up of Pams children that is the biggest deterrent to finding a place to live after evictionit is that they are children.

He explains from his original research: The presence of children in the household almost triples a tenants odds of receiving eviction judgment. The effect of living with children on receiving an eviction judgment was equivalent to falling four months behind in rent.

The book documents the basis of the social tensions in Milwaukee manifested in the explosive popular reaction to the recent police shooting of a young black worker. Thousands of children each year have their first close-up encounter with the police when a dedicated eviction unit based in the sheriffs office comes to throw their toys and the rest of the contents of their family home to the curb. The property of the landlord is sacrosanct and defended with guns and badges.

In fact, the tensions are worse now than they were when Desmond did his case studies. New laws in Wisconsin, the state where Milwaukee is located, eliminate the tenants option to have their possessions go to storage after an eviction and direct the sheriff to put all household goods out on the street, just like during the Great Depression.

Evicted, because of its in-depth ethnographic studies and its original research on little-studied aspects of poverty in America is similar to the type of reporting on the ravages of inequality contained in Kathryn Edins and H. Luke Shaefers 2015 book called $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.

$2.00 a Day and Evicted are works on contemporary American poverty that break ground in their respective areas. Edin set out to study the effects of deep poverty, families living on a fraction of the already derisory and grossly inadequate official poverty. Desmond set out to write the details of eviction in the private housing rental market.

Desmond says he was surprised to find that the problem, so common and so deadly to families, was little studied. He draws from the Milwaukee Area Renters Study, or MARS, conducted from 2009 to 2011, and his other work producing the Milwaukee Eviction Court Study.

When I ran the numbers, I was shocked to discover that one in eight Milwaukee renters experienced at least one forced moveformal or informal eviction, landlord foreclosure, or building condemnationin the two years prior to being surveyed, he writes.

He points out that what separates those who have so little from major life disruption is often a relatively small amount. The median monthly household income of tenants in eviction court was $935, and the median amount of back rent owed was about that much. Yet this sum is out of the reach of low-wage workers who dont even get paid enough to survive paycheck to paycheck.

One of the most promising narratives remains undeveloped. The author addresses the complex problem of growing poverty with a short historical overview: Between 1979 and 1983, Milwaukees manufacturing sector lost more jobs than during the Great Depressionabout 56,000 of them. He quotes University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers in a 1988 report describing the impact even then on wages: Machinists in the old Allis-Chalmers plant earned at least $11.60 an hour; clerks in the shopping center that replaced much of the plant in 1987 earned $5.23.

These economic transformationswhich were happening in cities across America devastated Milwaukees black workers, half of whom held manufacturing jobs. When plants closed, they tended to close in the inner city, where black Milwaukeeans lived. The black poverty rate rose to 28 percent in 1980. By 1990, it climbed to 42 percent. There used to be an American Motors plant on Richards and Capitol, on the citys predominantly black North Side. It has been replaced by Walmart  the Schlitz and Pabst breweries have been shuttered and one in two working age African-American men doesnt have a job.

He follows his brief history of Milwaukee with another observation that bears further examination. He says: In the 1980s, Milwaukee was the epicenter of deindustrialization. In the 1990s, it would become the epicenter of the anti-welfare crusade.

His latter reference to welfare reform led to his book being featured this past August in The New York Times as part of an article titled  The Millions of Americans Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Barely Mention: The Poor.

The article grossly understated the impact on the working class of then-President Bill Clintons reactionary welfare reform. The Clintons role in ending welfare as we know it opened the floodgates for austerity in America. It was the first wholesale destruction of an entitlement program in the US.

Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton famously spearheaded the effort to round up the votes in Congress to get the legislation passed. The current Democratic Party presidential candidate was thus crucial in implementing a reactionary policy change that resulted in two decades of nightmarish deprivation among families, both working and unable to find work, at the bottom of the countrys income scale.

Desmonds effective showcase of the plight of the poor is laudable. However, the book suffers from a lack of perspective in many of the most tantalizing areas the author touches on.

For example, at one point he explains: I wanted to try to write a book about poverty that didnt focus exclusively on poor people or poor places. Poverty was a relationship, I thought, involving poor and rich people alike. To understand poverty, I needed to understand that relationship. This sent me searching for a process that bound poor and rich people together in mutual dependence and struggle. Eviction was such a process.

He lays most of the blame for the plight of the poor on Milwaukee landlords. Profiteering from want leads to inner-city landlords charging high rents based on scarcity. He also explains how holders of federally-funded vouchers are forced to pay more rent than the general market rate because landlords calculate they will reach deeper into their pockets for additional rent money.

He never addresses the multi-million-dollar profits of the big real estate, banking, hedge fund and Real Estate Investment Trusts. While the book was written before the presidential campaign of the billionaire real estate swindler Trump got underway, surely something has to be said about the insatiable appetite of the exploiters-in-chief.

In the chapter Nobody Wants the North Side we get an analysis very different from those that say Milwaukee is racially divided because whites are racist. But he does not directly take on race and identity politics as it is used by supporters of the Democratic Party to obscure issues of class.

He writes: Most Milwaukeeans believed their city was racially segregated because people preferred it that way. But the ghetto had always been more a product of social design than desire. His ensuing explanation of how Milwaukee became so segregated begins with the housing shifts beginning with towns in 16th century Europe, then on to America with a thumbnail sketch of housing patterns developed from Colonial times to the present.

The solutions Desmond presents are all thoroughly reformist. The working class is not presented as an actor, but merely a victim of exploitation. Nevertheless, he has chronicled much that is timely and important to developing an understanding of the components of the deepening housing crisis in the US.
Conservative Education Secretary Justine Greening yesterday announced the governments plans to reintroduce grammar schools in England.

This followed a speech Friday by Prime Minister Theresa May, her first focussing on domestic policy. This outlined plans to allow all schools in England, including existing state comprehensives and academies, the right to apply to select pupils by ability. Alongside this, the remaining grammar schools will be allowed to expand.

Mays policy overturns that of her predecessor, David Cameron, and that of the 1997-2010 Labour government, which imposed a statutory ban on the expansion of grammar schools in 1998.

Some 50 million is to be allocated to fund expansion. Within days of Mays speech, five councils have already drawn up plans to open new grammar schools.

Grammar schools were first introduced following the 1944 Education Act. At that time children sat exams at 11 years of age (the 11 plus) that creamed off the top achievers for grammar schools while the majority of pupils attended secondary moderns. At their height in 1964, 1,300 grammar schools educated a quarter of all pupils.

During the 1960s and 70s, with the advent of the comprehensive state school system, the majority of grammar schools closed. By 1988, no grammars were left in Wales and by 2014, just 163 remained in England (mainly in counties without major urban locations).

The attack on comprehensive education has been proceeding apace, so that the majority of secondary schools are now academies and free schools (state-funded but privately run). But the latest announcement is a decisive shift to selection.

Mays grammar school policy is a direct pitch to a section of the middle classdressed up with claims of a commitment to a meritocratic society. She stated that present education policy does not benefit those who cant afford to move house or pay for a private education, with government, saying to parents who want a selective education for their child that we wont let them have it.

The wealthiest social layers in Britain send their children to fee-paying public schools (private schools, also known as independent schools). However, these 242 schools, which charge fees at an average 23,000 per annum, educate only seven percent of the total number of schoolchildren in England. These schools are well out of the financial reach for large sections of the middle class. May noted in her speech, Between 2010 and 2015 their fees rose four times faster than average earnings growth, while the percentage of their pupils who come from overseas has gone up by 33 percent since 2008.

I want to relax the restrictions that stop selective schools from expanding, that deny parents the right to have a new selective school opened where they want one, and that stop existing non-selective schools to become selective in the right circumstances and where there is demand, she said.

After the vote to leave the European Union in Junes referendum, Everything we do will be driven, not by the interests of the privileged few, she claimed. Not by those with the loudest voices, the special interests, the greatest wealth or the access to influence.

Her speech referenced eight times the struggles and hardship facing the working class, who made real sacrifices after the financial crash in 2008, though they were in no way responsible I want Britain to be the worlds great meritocracy  a country where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will allow.

Mays cynicism is boundless. A right-wing Thatcherite, she portrays the expansion of selective schools as a means to enhance social mobilityable to take a proportion of pupils from lower income households, so that selective education is not reserved for those with the means to move into a catchment area or pay for tuition to pass the test.

In reality this ideologically driven offensive will only reinforce class divisions and social inequality. The claim that grammar schools enable social mobility is a myth. Thanks to their greater opportunitiesa more stable home environment, access to the arts, a culture of academic attainment, ability to pay tuitionselection overwhelmingly benefits students from better off families.

It is for this reason that streaming by attainment in the state sector has been the policy of successive governments over the past two decades. By 2011, research published by the Institute of Education has revealed that one in six children is allocated a stream by the age of seven.

There is overwhelming evidence proving that grammar schools from their inception have primarily benefited the more socially privileged layers. Researchers from the University of Bristol, the University of Bath and the Institute of Education, University of London, found that those who failed to pass the 11-plus to enter grammar schools were left at an immediate disadvantage in terms of future earnings. Grammars lead to a widening of the income gap between rich and poor.

The survey, based on the average pay of the top and bottom 10 percent of the workforce born between 1961 and 1983, found that in areas with a grammar school system, top earners are likely to earn 16.41 an hour more than those on the lowest incomes (around 30,000 a year based on a 35-hour week). In areas where the education system was fully comprehensive, the salary gap was 12.33a quarter less.

In a report issued Monday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies noted, Children from deprived backgrounds are much less likely to attend existing grammar schools than are better off children. Only about three percent of pupils at existing grammar schools are eligible for free school meals (a widely used indicator of poverty in schools), which compares with about 17 percent of pupils in grammar school areas as a whole.

May announced a series of other reactionary proposals designed to eliminate comprehensive educationincluding private schools supporting/sponsoring state schools in return for maintaining their charitable status. Universities will be obliged to sponsor a state school or set up a new Free School. In exchange, they will be encouraged to charge higher tuition fees.

These policies are being introduced under condition in which the vast majority of graduates leave university burdened with tens of thousands of pounds of debt due to sky-high tuition fees.

It is not primarily lack of educational attainment that is having the greatest adverse impact on the young, but a deepening economic crisis. A recent study found that having a degree today in Britain is ever less likely to secure a decent, well-paid job. The Intergenerational Foundation revealed that Britons between ages 15 and 35 are at risk of being the first modern generation to earn less than their predecessors over the course of their working lives. The burden of student debt repayment will wipe out any graduate premium for most professions, typically costing in total 282,420 over 30 years.

There are divisions in ruling circles as to the efficacy of expanding the grammar system. One senior minister told the Sunday Telegraph: With such a small majority [of 12 MPs in parliament], now is not the time to be picking a fight like this.

The Financial Times editorialised that grammars were the wrong solution, warning, it is worrying that Mrs May has chosen to begin by reviving such a divisive, totemic policy.

To avert this danger, the nominally liberal Guardian stepped forward to issue words of praise for the government. Englands school system is at last working pretty well, it asserted. May was helping social mobility, but should not therefore return to a policy that was abandoned 50 years ago because it had failed.
A report by the Care Quality Commission (CCQ) on the state of one of the leading hospital Trusts in the north-west of England reveals the impact of years of cuts to the National Health Service (NHS).

The Pennine Acute NHS Trust runs one of the largest acute trusts in the UK, covering a population of some 820,000 people. It operates from four main sites including North Manchester General Hospital (NMGH), the Royal Oldham, Fairfield General and Rochdale Infirmary.

The CQC inspection took place between February and March, with concerns raised as to understaffing in a number of departments that broke national guidelines and a lack of staff training. It concluded that the Trust was inadequate.

Concerns were raised as to the length of time patients had to wait in all three emergency departments. CQC inspectors found that levels of understaffing were appalling, putting patients safety at high risk.

Serious deficiencies were found in maternity care, with some staff accepting low levels of care as the norm. These problems were mirrored in two separate reports that flagged failures in clinical leadership.

At the time the inspection took place, there were 170 serious maternity and gynecology incidents that had yet to be dealt with. Thirteen of these involved critical injury or death.

Staff shortages on maternity wards were highlighted, including 20 midwife vacancies. The numbers of staff did not meet national benchmark standards due to the reduction of the number of midwives. This resulted in hospitals not always being able to provide one-to-one care for women in labour as is standard practice in midwifery.

Staff shortages led to high levels of stress, and sickness rates, increasing dependence on bank and locum staff.

There were issues raised about the lack of adequate staffing, covering a number of different departments. At North Manchester General Hospital there was only one consultant on staff in the emergency department at the time of the inspection. The department is supposed to have nine consultants. There were only half the staff doctors that were needed and five of the 13 junior doctors required. This led to the accident and emergency (A&E) departments becoming overly dependent on locum staff. Figures from the Trust show the staffing problems in the A&E department at NMGH, with nearly a third of medical staff positions being vacant.

In all three A&E departments there were concerns raised as to the length of time patients were having to wait. Patients are supposed to be seen within four hours and hospitals can be fined 120 for breaching this time limit. Half the serious incidents in the trust between April and October146involved waits of 12 hours or more by patients.

Up to six months prior to March 2015, 70 percent of the shifts had been filled by temporary locums. The CQC raised questions as to the lack of performance monitoring of locum staff and their inductions.

An induction process was in place for locum staff. However, at the time of the visit, one of the doctors had not gone through this process. Instead the doctor had to rely on nursing staff to be able to locate key items and equipment.

The scale of the staffing crisis is so great that NMGHs A&E department has considered diverting ambulances elsewhere at night. The report showed a catalogue of problems, with understaffing high on the list.

The lack of staffing in specific departments makes it impossible for staff to reliably deliver safe and effective services. While pointing to the impact of the staffing shortage, the CQC report recognises that in many areas of care across the trust staff were doing their best under these circumstances and were competent and compassionate.

At NMGH, the CQC found that annual staff appraisals were not being carried out. Appraisals are an intrinsic part of staff development and a method of being able to improve standards in clinical care. As low as 23 percent of staff received annual appraisals, effectively denying most staff the opportunity to meet with line managers to discuss issues such as performance.

Induction procedures were in place that would include the opportunity to develop skills and competencies, yet it was clear that due to manning pressures these plans were not always adhered to so that staff often were forced to take on roles sooner than anticipated.

Numerous incidents reported throughout the Trust, as a result of issues highlighted in the report, have led to compromising patient safety and care. This has been costly to the Trust. In 2014-2015, the Trust had the second highest level of clinical negligence claims cases against it nationally.

As in all trusts there will be cases of medical negligence. This can only be compounded by the conditions under which many employees in the NHS are forced to work on a day to day basis.

As the CQC report notes, such conditions are becoming intolerable. It cited one experienced worker in the womens and childrens services, that includes maternity and pediatrics, who said the numbers of registered nurses on shift in her department had continually dropped over the last few yearsmeaning staff do not have time to do their jobs properly. Those that remain are terrified of missing the key details they are trained to look out for, but they are under so much pressure they cant even stop for a glass of water.

The overall situation with NHS staffing is likely to get a lot worse. In the last fiscal year, Trusts ran up a collective deficit of 2.4 billionwith the Conservative governments aim to make further significant cuts to budgets.

A report published by the Kings Fund think tank warned that in attempting to balance the books, staffing levels will have to be reduced and waiting time targets relaxedcompromising patient care.

At the same time, there has been a massive growth in the private sector within the NHS due to competitive tendering and outsourcing. This has led to a bonanza for private companies winning lucrative contracts to deliver services. Companies such as Virgin Care and Care UK won contracts in 2014/15 worth more than 3.5 billion, five times greater than the previous year.

By last summer it was reported that three in four NHS hospitals were rated as inadequate. By July this year, a total of 26 Trusts under NHS England had been rated as inadequate by CCGs.

The slashing of the NHSs budget by 15 billion in the last parliament and a projected 22 billion in this one is the central cause of Trusts being rated as failures. This situation is being utilised in order to justify further health care cuts and closures of hospitals.

To facilitate closures and cuts NHS England has divided England into 44 areas, each of which has to submit cost cutting Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs). In July, every hospital trust was sent a letter by Bob Alexander, director of resources at NHS Improvement, the health services financial monitoring department. The letter instructed trusts to identify departments, with a deadline of July 31, which could be re-provided by other institutions. The submitted plans must include a list of services that are not clinically and financially sustainable. A department being re-provided is a euphemism for its privatisation.
Systematic efforts by the Labor government in the Australian state of Queensland to cover up abuses of boys in both juvenile and adult prisons have been laid bare by recent media reports. The assaults, imposition of solitary confinement and use of hooded restraints (spit hoods) have the same sickening character as the brutal practices uncovered in the Northern Territory in July.

The Queensland revelations point to the reality that the abuse of children as young as 10, mostly indigenous, in the Northern Territory (NT) is part of a wider pattern of violence directed against working class youth across the country, at the behest of Labor and Liberal-National governments alike.

Last month, after weeks of denials by the Queensland government, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) programs Lateline and 7:30 documented the mistreatment inside the Cleveland youth detention centre located at Townsville in northern Queensland.

A 17-year-old boy, Russell Johnston, came forward with details of how he was regularly assaulted by guards in the facility. Several staff members, former and current, corroborated Johnstons claims.

CCTV images showed Johnston being held down by five guards. He was then handcuffed, ankle-cuffed, stripped naked and left in isolation for over an hour. This treatment was inflicted supposedly because he refused to have a shower. The isolation cells are small, concrete rooms with no furniture, water, air-conditioning or even a fan.

Johnston described how the staff would use verbal abuse and name calling, often of a racist nature, to provoke him, providing an excuse for a code yellow, which is called to subdue an allegedly unruly prisoner.

One former worker, Shayleen Solomon, said such abuse was a common occurrence. In the detention centre the things that you seeand its not only the physical abusethe way that these big brutes of men will boast about how many young people theyve smashed, she said.

Youth Affairs Network of Queensland director Siyavash Doostkhah said what was reported by the ABC was the tip of the iceberg and any attempt to limit investigations to what was aired is nothing less than an attempt to cover up much larger problems that have permeated all aspects of the youth justice system in Queensland for a long time.

The material exposed the initial claims made by Queensland Attorney-General Yvette DAth, following the NT revelations that no such practices occurred in the state. She had told the media: In Queensland all the allegations that have been put to the department over a number of years have been thoroughly investigated and referred to police or other investigative bodies where appropriate. Incidents have been detailed in reports, and recommendations have been made for reform and been put into action.

In an attempt to cover its tracks, the state Labor government promised to convene an independent inquiry into the Cleveland centre. This inquiry, the personnel and details of which are yet to be announced, will attempt to whitewash the abuses and the political responsibility for them, just like the royal commission announced by the federal Liberal-National government into the NT juvenile detention system.

Soon after DAth announced the inquiry, evidence emerged of the vicious treatment of teenagers in the states adult prisons. Footage was obtained by the media showing a 17-year-old boy being placed by prison officers in what appeared to be a spit hood, similar to that used against the boys in the Northern Territory. This again exposed DAths claim to be appalled by the NT images and her assertion that spit hoods  are not used in Queensland.

Queensland is the only jurisdiction in Australia that treats 17-year-olds as adult prisoners, a measure that was introduced by the Labor government of Premier Wayne Goss in 1992. DAth promised that the government would end the practice, but claimed this could not happen until the government considered the safety of younger juvenile detainees if the 50 teenagers in adult prisons were transferred to the same facilities.

Successive state governments have ignored recommendations by the 1999 Forde inquiry into institutional abuse of children to end juvenile detention in adult prisons, as well as stop the prevalence of children being held in detention while waiting for their cases to be heard.

The Forde inquiry found that almost half of the children in detention were awaiting trial and recommended that alternative measures be explored to lower this number. However, the proportion has actually increased since then to an average of 80 percent. Moreover, after their cases are heard, only 15 percent of the children are handed sentences that result in detention.

Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander youth make up 64 percent of Queenslands juvenile detainees, despite accounting for just 8 percent of youth aged 10-17 in the state. This shameful situation reflects the fact that indigenous people represent one of the most vulnerable and impoverished layers of the working class.

High rates of youth unemployment in working class and rural areas across Queensland give some idea of the social devastation and loss of future prospects that confront young people, indigenous and non-indigenous alike. Since 2012, the closures of mines and mine-related industries, like Townsvilles nickel smelter, have added to the jobs crisis.

Youth unemployment in Queensland officially stands at 13.2 percent, and is much higher in some northern and remote areas. In the northern tourist city of Cairns, youth unemployment is 22.1 percent. In the rural outback, the figure is 28.4 percent.

The resulting social distress can lead to broken families, substance abuse and petty crime. It also leads to increasingly vindictive and repressive responses by governments and their police apparatuses to crack down on any expressions of discontent. What has been revealed in Queensland, as in the Northern Territory, is just a glimpse of the wider brutality that working class youth face at the hands of the police and prison authorities.

The author also recommends:

Systemic abuses in Australias juvenile prisons: The class issues

[4 August 2016]
The strike by nearly 5,000 nurses at Allina Health hospitals in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota has entered its second week.

The struggle has reached a critical juncture. Nurses have demonstrated their determination to beat back Allinas attack on their healthcare benefits and dangerously increase their workloads. In the face of the company strikebreaking operation and slanders by the corporate-controlled media, the vast majority of nurses remain militant and defiant.

The Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) and the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations, however, have left the embattled nurses to fight alone. The MNA has ordered some 7,000 members at seven area hospitals to remain on the job even though their employers will quickly follow suit if Allina defeats the strike.

Meanwhile, the MNA has repeatedly capitulated to the companys major demands. On September 3, two days before the strike, the MNA agreed to abandon four union healthcare plans and transition nurses to three company medical schemes, which would erode coverage and impose higher out-of-pocket costs on nurses.

According to Mondays Minneapolis Star Tribune, after agreeing to managements key demand, MNA negotiators requested that a hand-picked actuary be able to review the Allina plans each year to make sure their benefit values dont decline by 5 percent or more without the unions consent.

While the MNA has cynically claimed its surrender was a brilliant tactical maneuveraimed at exposing how unreasonable corporate management isthe reality is that the MNA has already sanctioned the destruction of nurses health benefits. The MNA executives only want a seat at table so it can grant its consent to cuts of 5 percent or more.

Nurses are determined to defend health benefits. A nurse at United Hospital told the World Socialist Web Site, Penny Wheeler says her first concern is patients. Thats completely false. If it was, she would settle with us. Instead, Allina is going to spend $40 million, $60 million or $80 million on replacement nurses depending on how long this strike lasts.

Allina says they will save $10 million if we give up our healthcare, and that they will put that into patient care. I dont believe that. Weve heard Wheeler makes $900,000 a year, and she reportedly got a $1.6 million bonus last year. Allina paid out $43 million overall to the top executives at Allina.

Wheeler lives in a $2 million house down in Eagan. I live in a three-bedroom rambler with a mortgage. My husband is retired with a heart condition. All these pills and tests cost money. I need my MNA healthcare plan.

Well aware of the resistance they would confront from rank-and-file nurses if they brought back a rotten deal, the MNA called the strike. While management has demonstrated a ruthless determination to achieve its cost-cutting aims, however, the MNA is organizing pathetic appeals to the conscience of the multi-millionaire executives on Allinas board of directors, while parading various false friends, including Democratic Party politicians like Congressman Keith Ellison, before the nurses.

Aiding the MNA executives is the pseudo-left group, Socialist Alternative, whose members hold influential positions inside the union. The SA has helped the MNA and its parent union, National Nurses United, perpetuate the fraud that the Democratic Party can be pressured into defending the working class. They joined the MNA in promoting Bernie Sanders, who is now campaigning for the warmonger and Wall Street shill Hillary Clinton.

In Minneapolis, the SA is currently campaigning for the City Council to adopt a $15 minimum wage provision. Such a raise would leave thousands of workers in poverty. Moreover, such provisions passed in Seattle and elsewhere are aimed at reviving the credibility of the Democrats and the unions, and more often than not include a loophole that allows employers to escape paying the minimum wage if they agree to a union contract.

The nurses struggle raises important political questions before the whole working class. Allina nurses are fighting not just one particularly ruthless boss. Standing behind CEO Penny Wheeler are giant corporate and financial interests, including General Mills and US Bank, as well as the Obama administration and the entire political establishment. All of these forces want to shift the cost of healthcare from the employers and the government to the backs of working people, while funneling even more money into the for-profit healthcare business.

Over the last two days, nurses have warmly greeted Socialist Equality Party (SEP) presidential candidate Jerry White on their picket lines. Nurses are looking for a way to fight, and like tens of millions of other workers and young people, they are asking about socialism.

On the eve of his public meeting at the University of Minnesota, the SEP candidate issued the following statement expressing his solidarity with the striking nurses and calling for the full mobilization of the working class behind their struggle.

The Allina nurses are standing up for all workers. Their enemies may be powerful but their potential allies are far more powerful. Millions of workers across the countryin the public and private sectorare facing an assault on healthcare benefits, along with their wages and pensions.

While Obamacare was sold to the public as a progressive reform, it was drafted by the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital monopolies to boost their profits and squeeze even more work out of already over-burdened healthcare workers. Regardless who wins the electionsClinton or Trumpthe attack on the social right to medical care will be accelerated.

To rally the maximum support for their struggle, rank-and-file nurses must take the initiative in their own hands. Like the socialists who led the great Minneapolis General Strike in 1934, they must turn out to the broadest sections of workersfirst of all at area hospitals to expand the strike and transform it into a counter-offensive of the entire working class to break the economic and political stranglehold of the financial aristocracy and their servants in both big business parties.

As a socialist, I call for the ill-gotten gains of the corporate and financial elites to be seized and for a radical redistribution of wealth. Profit must be taken out of medicine by nationalizing the giant insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital companies under the democratic control and collective ownership of the working class in order to guarantee universal healthcare to all as part of a socialist, planned economy.

All of the struggles of the working classagainst attacks on wages and benefits, and against war, police killings and other forms of state repressionmust be united in one common struggle, through the building of a mass political movement of the working class whose aim is to replace the bankrupt capitalist system with socialism.
Protests were held in New Zealand on Saturday against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the US-led trade agreement covering 12 Pacific Rim countries signed in Auckland last February. The day of action, organised by the Its Our Future coalition under the slogan Rally for Democracy, was held in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and seven regional centres.

While tens of thousands rallied in February, these protests struggled to draw more than about 200 to each venue. The organisers said the TPP is now facing opposition from both main candidates in the US presidential election, but maintained that the TPP and other trade deals remain a threat to New Zealands sovereignty.

According to Its Our Future spokespersons, Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey and newly-appointed Greens MP Barry Coates, the purpose of the rallies was to link the TPP to climate action, Maori issues, social justice and workers rights. A raft of environmentalist and animal rights groups and trade union bureaucrats participated.

In line with sections of the ruling class, the rallies opposed the TPP from the standpoint of protectionism and economic nationalism. They also denounced the rival Chinese-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the Trade in Services Agreement negotiations, and a proposed NZ-European Union Free Trade Agreement.

The TPP previously attracted opposition from working people because of provisions handing more power to big business. The agreement will strengthen multinational corporations throughout the Asia-Pacific region, facilitating the outsourcing of jobs and attacks on workers conditions. Companies will be able to sue governments in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals if legislation cuts into their profits.

The main thrust of the TPP, however, is as the economic spearhead of a US offensive that aims at the total subordination of China to its economic and strategic interests. It goes hand-in-hand with the US military build-up throughout the Asia-Pacific, the strengthening of alliances and accelerating preparations for war against China.

This central aspect has been covered up by the anti-TPP campaign organisers. As in previous rallies, speakers from the Labour Party, the Greens, Mana, New Zealand First, the Maori Party and the trade unions, were silent about the agreements role in Washingtons war preparations.

This is no oversight. The entire political establishment supports New Zealands alliance with US imperialism and its integration in the Obama administrations anti-China pivot to Asia, which has been carried out largely behind the backs of the population. The Labour Party and the Greens have led attacks on Chinese investment and foreign workers, and welcomed the forthcoming visit by a US warship, which will break NZs long-standing anti-nuclear stance.

The TPP is opposed on the grounds that it is not in the interests of New Zealand. On this basis, all the opposition parties have coalesced with the anti-immigrant NZ First Party and the Maori Party, which is part of the National-led coalition government, to decry foreign corporations. Their aim is to defend the less competitive sections of New Zealand capital, including Maori tribal-based and green businesses, which fear competition from increased foreign investment.

In an attempt to appeal to workers, the reactionary nationalist essence of the anti-TPP program is hidden behind populist rhetoric. Addressing the Wellington rally, Sam Huggard of the Council of Trade Unions said: The TPP isnt about trade  its about a transfer of power largely to corporations who can benefit from having free access in a global market to make as much wealth as they want to off the backs of workers and communities. Noting that workers had lost $NZ19 billion through their falling share of national income since the 1980s, Huggard called for sharing a little bit of power with the workers of this country.

In fact, the unions have collaborated with New Zealand corporations and governments in implementing savage job cuts and attacks on conditions for three decades. Local businesses are no less exploitative than their overseas counterparts. As the social crisis and inequality deepens, the unions are seeking to channel growing anger among workers in a nationalist direction, agitating for trade barriers and cuts to immigration.

NZ Nurses Organisation president Grant Brookes, a member of the pseudo-left Fightback group, spoke at the Wellington rally. He praised Bernie Sanders campaign in the US for building the groundswell of opposition in the Democratic Party, which had forced US politicians to go cold on the deal.

Likewise, Kelsey told the Auckland rally: People are saying no and shifting the ground of what was mainstream politics in the US, including the Democratic Party  the politicians there have had to start taking notice of the people. Neither speaker mentioned Sanders craven endorsement of Hillary Clinton or the Democrats threats of war against Russia and China.

As the WSWS has pointed out, capitalist trade deals can be opposed from the lefton the basis of genuine socialism and the struggle to unite the working class across all national bordersor from the right, on the basis of nationalism, militarism and xenophobia. Like Sanders, the anti-TPP lobby in New Zealand opposes the deal from the right.

Ariana Paretutanganui, speaking for the Maori nationalist Mana Party, gave a particularly xenophobic speech to the Wellington rally. She told NZ First Mana is not your enemy and appealed for collaboration between the two parties. She declared: It is insane that theyre allowing foreign speculators to buy up land  We have actually been taken over by foreign investors and speculators and by corporate interests. The pseudo-left groups Fightback and Socialist Aotearoa are both affiliated with Mana and support its nationalist politics.

NZ First spokesperson Amanda Vickers postured as an opponent of neo-liberal free market, unbridled capitalism and unprecedented inequality. She called for capitalism with a human face, saying we put New Zealanders first, not corporates first. NZ First, founded in the 1990s with a vicious campaign against Asian immigration, has been part of coalition governments led by both Labour and the National Party. It has helped impose cuts to public spending and lower taxes for the rich, along with more funding for the military and police.

Labour Party finance spokesman Grant Robertson covered up his partys record, declaring that the opposition parties had to reject the neo-liberal model, reject the trickle-down economics that have failed, and come together to build a new society, built on valuing people before money. In reality, Labour governments privatised publicly-owned companies, slashed taxes for the rich and oversaw the sacking of tens of thousands of workers and the destruction of whole industries.

The growing agitation for protectionist trade policies serves the most reactionary ends. It is a turn to the economic nationalism that erupted in the 1930s, cloaked in either fascistic or progressive garb, which pitted countries against each other and paved the way for World War II.

The author also recommends:

Anti-TPP protests promote Maori nationalism

[10 March 2016]

Oppose the TPP and the drive to war against China!

[13 November 2015]
Video caught on cell phone was released last week shows several Murrieta police officers severely beating an unarmed man outside of a CVS pharmacy.

The incident allegedly began when a police officer was flagged down by a pedestrian who noticed the victim, 22-year-old Alejandro Rojo, acting strangely outside the drug store last Tuesday.

According to police, Rojo was tearing open medical supplies in the store and began ingesting them. His family has said he gone to the store to buy medicine for an earache. Police say Rojo became unresponsive and started to fight with the officer, at one point allegedly trying to grab his weapon.

The Murrieta Police Department (MPD) released security footage from the store but only after the video of Rojos beating outside the CVS was made public. The security footage shows Rojo struggling with the police officer but it does not show Rojo trying to grab his gun.

What is unambiguous is what happened to Rojo after he got free from the officer and ran out of the store. Thanks to a bystander recording on their cellphone, which can be seen here, Rojos sadistic treatment at the hands of the MPD is now available for everyone to see.

In the video, three officers pin Rojo to the ground, yell stop resisting and proceed to punch and kick him repeatedly. One officer can be seen using a taser on Rojo as the other two beat him with batons. The allegation that Rojo, even if he was intoxicated, could not be restrained by three heavily armed men simply does not hold water.

When another police cruiser rolls up on the scene, rather than restrain the officers giving the beating, at least three more officers join in on the melee and deliver more blows to Rojo, who can be heard screaming in pain before going totally limp.

Rojo had to be transported to the hospital after posting $20,000 bail. His mother, Minu Rojo, told ABC7 news, All his body, all his muscles, are all mashed up really bad, really bad. His face, his back, his elbows, his arms, everything is mashed up.

While Rojos family says he is expected to recover physically from his wounds, he faces serious charges, including attempting to disarm a police officer, resisting an officer causing injury, trespassing and battery on emergency personnel.

The family attorney, Brett Parkinson, also told ABC7, Are we looking at a lawsuit? Absolutely, adding, Were concerned by what is seen in the videos and were doing everything we can to make sure Alexs rights are protected.

After meeting with local representatives of the NAACP, Murrieta Police Chief Sean Hadden promised a thorough investigation and said the officers actions will be judged in a fair manner. After the police conduct an internal investigation (i.e., coverup) they will submit the case to the District Attorneys office, which will decide what if any charges are filed against the police.

All officers in the video remain on full duty, except the initial officer on the video, who will return to duty as soon as his broken hand heals.

Rojos father, Arturo Rojo, told KTLA news, I want people to know hes a good kid... They can say whatever they want but I know my kid.

Washington State Attorney General will not file charges in 2015 police killing of immigrant worker

The Attorney General of Washington state announced last Thursday that no charges will be brought against the three Pasco police officers who shot and killed Antonio Zambrano-Montes on February 10, 2015.

Zambrano-Montes was a 35-year-old Mexican immigrant with a history of mental health issues, living in Pasco, who was shot 17 times while he was unarmed and running away from the police. The video footage of the shooting showed three officers cornering and shooting Zambrano-Montes execution-style outside a grocery store.

The shooting caused mass protests in the city of 60,000 people, whose population is composed mostly of Latino and immigrant farm laborers. There have been at least four fatal police shootings in Pasco since 2014.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced that his investigators found the shooting to be justifiable, saying in a press release that the Pasco officers actions on February 10, 2015, did not exceed the legal standards for the justifiable use of deadly force.

Fergusons review was the third and final say by a prosecuting attorneys office on whether or not to press charges. Both the Franklin County Prosecuting Attorneys Office and the US Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Washington earlier declined to press charges after concluding their investigations.

Police officers Adrian Alaniz and Adam Wright, two of Zambrano-Montes killers, have since returned to work, while Officer Ryan Flanagan has left the department.

The surviving family of Zambrano-Montes has filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the officers of using excessive force. The case is scheduled for trial in May.

Grand jury to decide if cover-up took place in fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police Department

A special prosecutor, Patricia Brown Holmes, appointed to investigate the October 2014 police shooting of Laquan McDonald, announced this week that a special grand jury will be impaneled to determine whether the Chicago Police Department engaged in a cover-up.

Judge LeRoy Martin Jr., presiding judge of Cook County who appointed Holmes as special prosecutor, told news media that a grand jury would convene in two weeks to hear evidence. Holmes said the decision to use a grand jury is fair and its impartial and it lends credibility to the process. In reality, secretive grand juries are the preferred method by the authorities to sweep corruption and murder under the rug.

McDonald was an unarmed 17-year-old minor who was executed by Officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. The police dashboard camera video was only released a year later when an independent journalist threatened to sue the city for obstructing access to public records.

Prior to the release of the video the city attempted to buy the McDonald familys silence with $5 million, in a desperate effort in damage control.

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama, and other leading Democrats engaged in a deliberate cover-up of the murder and tried to appease widespread anger and mass protests with promises to make the CPD more transparent and accountable.

In a move to soften public mistrust, police Superintended Eddie Johnson sought to fire four police officers and a sergeant that he accused of lying about McDonalds shooting last month.

The grand jury will be made up of 16 individuals who will meet at least once a month and have its deliberations kept secret. The state prosecutor will play a lead role in deciding whether criminal charges are filed or not. The process could last weeks to months, allowing the state maximum time and opportunity to defend its police officers.
The August 31 ouster of Workers Party president Dilma Rousseff, following her conviction by Brazils Senate on trumped-up impeachment charges of fiscal misconduct, has had wide repercussion across the political spectrum in Latin America and internationally.

The almost 10 months of the impeachment process saw international interventions such as a letter of condemnation by Labour and Scottish National Party MPs published in the Guardian on May 26, a letter by 40 Democratic US congressmen casting doubt on the process in late July, a condemnatory statement by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in early August and, finally, the recalling of the Venezuelan, Bolivian and Ecuadorian ambassadors following Rousseffs sentencing on August 31.

Faced with Brazils deepest economic crisis in a century, set into motion by the end of the commodities boom, national and international finance capital have moved to impose the countrys most right-wing government since the return of civilian rule in 1985.

The reactions of Sanders, the Labour MPs, et al. is not in opposition to this declaration of class war. Rather, their criticisms of the impeachment were offered as a form of friendly counsel to the Brazilian bourgeoisie, a reminder of the PTs long record of service to world capitalism.

These bourgeois forces saw in the PTs ouster, after 13 years of rule, the debacle of one of their main inspirations worldwide. For almost four decades the party had worked to hold in check the actions of Brazils large and concentrated working class, offering one of the worlds most successful models for suppressing the class struggle.

In the context of the deepening international capitalist crisis, the cry of foul play by Sanders and co. is above all an attempt to salvage the PTs legacy and exempt the party from any responsibility for its own ouster and for the unprecedented attacks that are now being prepared against the living standards of the Brazilian masses.

Historically, the partys emergence was hailed by the Brazilian and international bourgeoisie as an early welcome turn in post-Soviet politics. In contemporary terms, it served as a prototype of the parties of the 99% promoted by todays pseudo leftsthat is, parties like Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spainwhich attempt to corral the working class behind the interests of the top 10 percent of society, a social layer which internationally includes the union bureaucracy and other privileged layers of the upper middle class.

From its inception in the late 1970s, the PT project was meant to isolate the working class from Marxism and any trace of revolutionary consciousness, substituting for it nationalism and even the liberation theology of sections of the Catholic Church. Insofar as it spoke about the working class, it was from the standpoint of the lowest level trade unionism, for which the pragmatic union boss Lula was chosen as public face and spokesman.

The PT allowed Brazils ex-Trotskyists and Stalinists to join together, avoiding any reference to the Soviet Union or any of the great political problems confronting the working class in the course of the 20th century. Part of a worldwide turn to the right by such forces, this effort anticipated the later liquidation of the Communist Parties in Europe and of the Soviet Union itself.

For the exiled or underground leadership of Brazils left movements, the PTs ascension provided a means of avoiding any serious discussion of the tragedy of the Latin American petty-bourgeois nationalist and guerrilla movements they had promoted in the 1960s and 1970s, and the subsequent loss of a whole generation of activists to state terror across the continent.

The PT was then the banner of the unity of the left around a pact of silence over the great political problems faced by the working class, an agreement to refer any question to the instinctive, popular wit of Lula and his clique, whose chief political characteristic was to make a mockery of every question of theory and history. As for what the PT stood for, it was supposedly a new peaceful road to socialism, uniquely Brazilian and independent from past and international experience.

Over the course of the almost four decades that followed, many tendencies, the predecessors of the current Brazilian pseudo left, were expelled from or left the PT to operate essentially as external advisers, supporting the party at decisive moments and never questioning the class forces which dominated it from the start. At most they offered mild criticism of the party going too far by accepting millionaires into its ranks, and later, billionaires into its cabinets.

The virtual consensus of all pseudo-left groups around the Fora Temer (out with Michel Temer, Rousseffs former vice president who has now replaced her as result of the impeachment) demonstrations shows that they are fully engaged in burying any attempt at a balance sheet of the PTs trajectory.

The new Morenoite party, MAIS, summed up this attitude in a September 1 article by Henrique Canary, called Second chance, in which he welcomes the return of the unions to street demonstrations after Rousseffs fall. In reality, while limited numbers of union officials have joined the protests, the CUT, Brazils main PT-affiliated union federation, has failed to mobilize any significant section of the working class.

Canary, moreover, raises no questions as to the political motivations of the union bureaucracy, much less challenges its domination over the working class. Nor does he ask why the union bureaucracy supported a bourgeois government hailed by the worlds bankers for 13 years.

What is involved in this failure to seriously examine the experience with the PT lies an even further shift to the right by these forces, mirroring the recent moves of Sanders in supporting the most unpopular candidate in the history of US elections, Hillary Clinton, or the continued support by the left section of Labour for a party which harbors the war criminal Tony Blair. This shift to the right is rooted in the long-running increased financialization in world economy, which has raised the income of sections of the petty-bourgeoisie and the union bureaucracy, providing a new social constituency for the policies of war and social reaction.

This shift to the right is expressed in an open attack on the working class by the Pabloite Insurgencia, Brazilian section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, which functions within the PSOL (Party of Socialism and Freedom, which was formed by federal legislators who were expelled from the PT). In line with the reactionary ideology of PT-linked intellectuals, leading Insurgencia member Jose Correia Leite wrote recently that consumerism, fostered by an increase in wages under PT rule, rendered the working class indifferent to politics.

In parallel with this attempt to blame the working class for the fate of the PT has come an evermore unanimous adoption of the interpretation of Temers government as a matter of race. It is increasingly condemned as a big house, or plantation administration, by a social layer that has long been insensitive to the needs of Brazils workers of every race.

The depth of Brazils crisis and the sharp dangers confronting the working class were very consciously and ominously spelled out by one of the countrys leading papers, Folha de Sao Paulo, two days after Rousseffs ouster. Referring to scattered protests around the country against the new government, an editorial titled Fascists on the Run, referring to anarchist elements in the demonstrations, declared:

Democracies incapable of repressing the fanatics of violence are candidates for repeating the [experience of] Germanys Weimar Republic of the 1930s, engulfed by street violence until giving way to the worst dictatorship there ever was.

Significantly, Diana Assuncao, leading candidate of the MRT (Revolutionary Workers Movement, the Brazilian Morenoite faction aligned with the Argentine PTS, Socialist Workers Party) in the next Sao Paulo elections, ignored the open threat of fascism and dictatorship expressed by Folha de S. Paulo, treating it again as a mainly racial issue. Answering the editorial on the MRTs website Esquerda Diario on September 2, Assuncao wrote: the fascists are the police who kill blacks in the countrys shanty towns, the authoritarians are those who kidnap, steal millions of votes to install their representative, of the Big House.

The adoption of this analysis is a damning exposure of these political layers, who have no interest in and are incapable of warning the working class as to the dangers that it faces. Instead, they seek to conceal these dangers through the promotion of reactionary identity-based policies that have in recent years justified imperialist interventions in the name of racial minorities and womens rights, and have been turned into a primary instrument for diverting class tensions and justifying law-and-order campaigns.

The pseudo-left blindness to the depth of the crisis and threat of dictatorship, combined with a dismissal of class analysis, finds its most finished form in the Morenoite PSTUs light minded dismissal of the concerns of wide layers of Brazilians with Rousseffs ouster. Most recently, in a September 7 editorial, the party declared that the impeachment did not signify a defeat of the working class, much less a coup. On the contrary, it produced an even more fragile government and opened the way to the widening of the struggles of the working class.

This pretense of optimism, which could be summed up in the slogan first Temer, then us, is belied by the fate of the party itself, which lost half its members to a split that was carried out on the sole publicly declared basis of the PSTUs tactical response to the impeachment, which was essentially an adaptation to the campaign of the political right against Rousseff under the slogan fora todos, or throw them all out.

Those who left and formed the MAIS have voiced no disagreement with the PSTUs Morenoite revisionist foundations or its pro-imperialist policies in supporting CIA regime-change operations from Syria to Ukraine.

Instead, their sole concern was to disassociate themselves with the PSTUs line on impeachment and thereby eliminate an impediment to their pursuit of unity of the left with all manner of Stalinists, Maoists and members of the bourgeois PSOL.

All of these tendencies are moving, in tandem with the Brazilian bourgeoisie, sharply to the right, as the profound crisis of Brazilian and world capitalism is preparing a turn to the left by the Brazilian working class and an explosion in the class struggle.
Siddaramaiah held consultation meetings with senior Congress leaders, including former CMs and union ministers, on resolving the crisis.

By Mail Today: Karnataka has decided to abide by the Supreme Court's latest directive to release 12,000 cusecs of water from Cauvery river to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

Also read:

Cauvery row: Violence claims another life, 335 arrested in Bengaluru

Cauvery crisis: War of words continues between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu



SIDDARAMAIAH HOLDS MEETINGS

A decision to this effect was taken by the government following an emergency Cabinet meeting convened by Siddaramaiah today in Bengaluru. Prior to that, Siddaramaiah held consultation meetings with senior Congress leaders, including former CMs and union ministers, on resolving the crisis.

advertisement

"We have decided to abide by Supreme Court's order. We have been releasing water to Tamil Nadu since the last six days," he told the media after the Cabinet meeting.

"COMMITTED TO PROTECT TAMILIANS"

Siddaramaiah warned people against taking law into their hands. "We have also decided to take strict action against people, who incite violence or cause disturbances. Such elements will be dealt with an iron hand. We are committed to protect Tamilians and their business interests in Karnataka," he added.

--- ENDS ---
As is well known, truth is the first casualty of war. This applies in particular to the Syrian war. The reports of German television and newspapers are generally nothing but propaganda.

Germanys leading media present the picture of an uneven struggle between a bloodthirsty dictator, who is supported by similarly brutal foreign powers (Iran, Russia), and so-called rebels, who defend the people against the attacks of the Assad regime and the terrorism of the Islamic State. The rebels, according to this official presentation, are (inadequately) supportedor even sabotagedby the NATO powers.

The historical and political background to the conflict is suppressed, as are the political and economic interests pursued by the US, Germany and other NATO powers in the Middle East. Above all, the real role and aims of the so-called rebels, who are supported and armed by the USA and its allies, are carefully concealed.

Two years ago, the German media deliberately obscured the fascistic nature of the armed militias behind the coup in Ukraine. Now they systematically conceal the fact that the Syrian rebels mainly consist of Islamist jihadis. The Western powers work with the same forces in Syria that they utilize as a pretext for building a police state at home and mounting military interventions abroad under the pretext of the war against terror.

There are, however, moments in which the mask falls off and more is said than intended. Such is the case with the article Assad needs war by Andrea Bohm, which appeared on Die Zeit online on September 11.

The Beirut-based Middle East correspondent of the liberal weekly is obviously outraged by the agreement on Syria that the US and Russia announced Saturday. This is not an agreement on a ceasefire, she writes, but rather an agreement on who is allowed to be bombed after Monday.

The suggestion that a deal signed by Washington, which has conducted war in the region for 25 years and largely destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, could bring peace to the ravaged country is of course absurd. Washington has acquiesced to the agreement in order to give some respite to its proxy forces around Aleppo. In addition, it is exploiting the dreadful conditions faced by the Syrian people to prepare for an even greater military intervention under the pretext of defending human rights.

But this is not what Die Zeit is attacking. Rather, Bohm is appalled that the Russian-American agreement calls upon the moderate rebels to distance themselves not only militarily but also physically from the old Nusra Front in the next days.

The non-jihadist armed groups, including the Free Syrian Army, believe they have been betrayed and sold out to Assad and Putin by the US and its Western allies, complains Bohm. And this for understandable reasons. The group is the strongest military faction in the ranks of the anti-Assad forces. ... The enhanced former Nusra Front has become the life insurance for many moderate rebel groups. To reject it would be considered by most of them as political and military suicide.

Bohm leaves no doubt as to the character of the Nusra Front. It is, as she writes, the offshoot of Al Qaeda in Syria, which recently seceded on tactical grounds from the terrorist network and renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham [Front for the Conquest of Syria/the Levant].

This means that the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and which has served as a pretext for the war on terror ever since, is the life insurance of Washingtons and Berlins Syrian allies and the the strongest military faction in the ranks of the anti-Assad forces, which they support. That Bohms article appeared on the 15th anniversary of 9/11 underscores the cynicism of Die Zeit .

One can easily imagine what will happen to Syria should these forces prevail. One need only look to Libya, where numerous warlords and Islamist groups are terrorizing the country since the US and its allies brought about the fall of the Gaddafi regime. The numerous ethnic and religious minorities living in Syria for centuries would face ethnic cleansing and expulsion.

It was certainly not Bohms intention, but her article convincingly refutes the allegation that the military interventions by the Western powers in Syria serves humanistic goals. Both the US and Germany are pursuing imperialist interests therecontrol of the worlds most important oil and gas reserves and of a region of enormous geo-strategic importance. In doing so, they consciously accept the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and the displacement of millions.

It is significant that this article appeared in Die Zeit, whose readership comes mainly from the liberal, pro-SPD, educated upper-middle class. With the intensification of social and international tensions, these layers of the well-off petty bourgeoisie are increasingly moving to the right and enthusiastically supporting German militarism.

Thus Die Zeit editor Jochen Bittner is among the pioneers of an aggressive military German foreign policy. He co-authored the paper New PowerNew Responsibility that prepared the return of German militarism.

Also the Greens, who rest on the same social milieu, favour a military intervention in Syria by Germany. Their defence spokesman Omid Nouripour, speaking on the German national public radio network Deutschlandfunk, also criticised the demand that the Free Syrian Army, the so-called moderate opposition, that all forces fighting against Assad must now disentangle themselves from the so-called Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the former Nusra Front.

I dont know how that should happen, he said. Meanwhile, in the north of the country the former Nusra Front is the strongest force against Assad, and if one breaks away from it, one must give up a lot of territory throughout the country. I do not think many groups are willing to do that.

The Left Party is vigorously involved in the Syrian war as well. They have supported the destabilisation of the Assad regime, and the building up of the pro-imperialist Syrian opposition, with whose help Washington, and also Berlin, have driven the country into civil war. Their most important ally is the Syrian oppositionist Michel Kilo, who is one of the advocates of Western military intervention.
After curfew was imposed in Bengaluru and a protester died in police firing on Monday, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah will travel to the riot-hit areas of the city today to reassure citizens that the law and order situation is under control.

By Mail Today Bureau: Karnataka's Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Home Minister G Parameshwara are set to undertake a trip of riot-hit areas of Bengaluru today to reassure citizens that the law and order situation is under control.

The police have imposed curfew in 16 police station limits of western and southern parts of Bengaluru, which witnessed arson and rioting of unprecedented scale on Monday after the Supreme Court directed Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu.

advertisement

Despite the ban orders, a few miscreants gathered in Hegganahalli and raised slogans against Tamil Nadu and burnt effigies of political leaders. The police caned the mob to bring the situation under control.

Meanwhile, the government announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to Umesh, who was killed in police firing in the city yesterday.

Also read: Cauvery crisis: Bengaluru on the boil, Siddaramaiah to hold cabinet meet today





--- ENDS ---
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Florida Supreme Court Justice James Perry is stepping down from his post because he has reached the mandatory retirement age.

Perry sent a letter to Gov. Rick Scott on Friday telling him that he would leave the court on Dec. 30. Perry was appointed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist to the state Supreme Court in 2009. He was the fourth black justice appointed to the court.

Florida law requires that justices retire once they turn 70, although they can serve out their term if their birthday falls in the last three years of their six-year term. Perry is 72.

Perry's departure gives Scott a chance to alter the makeup of the Supreme Court, which has angered Republican legislators with some of its decisions. Scott will appoint a successor from a list given to him by a nominating commission.

(Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Police say a 23-year-old Florida man who was shot by his cousin wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest, but instead had donned a "fragmentation protective vest," also known as a flak jacket.

Tampa police said in a news release that Joaquin Mendez put on the vest late Saturday and "wondered aloud whether it still worked." Police say his 24-year-old cousin Alexandro Garibaldi pulled out a gun and responded, "Let's see."

Officers found Mendez outside the house with a gunshot wound to the chest. He later died at a hospital.

It's unclear how old the vest is or where it came from.

Garibaldi has been charged with manslaughter with a weapon and felon in possession of a firearm. He's being held at an area jail.

It's unclear whether he's retained an attorney.

(Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) - Tens of thousands of children are reported missing in Florida every year. Today memorials were held in the capitol city for missing children's day.

Florida's 18th annual Missing Children's Day was held at the state capitol Monday, to remember the kids who were kidnapped and killed, as well as others who have not yet been found.

Families of missing children each put a yellow rose next to a photo of their loved one, during a somber ceremony in the capitol courtyard.

Among the families and political officials that attended, was Billie-Jo Jimenez, whose nephew Zack Berhardt went missing sixteen years ago. He went missing from his Clearwater home on September 11th, 2000 and his disappearance has remained a mystery.

Jimenez said not knowing what happened to her nephew never gets easier.

Jimenez said, "Living for 16 years not knowing is probably the worst nightmare anybody could ever even imagine in their life. It's just horrifying. You need to know something about what's going on."

Governor Rick Scott and his wife Ann also took part in the event. Scott said the stories he hears are awful.

"We have gotten to know some of these families, and they are wonderful people. They, to this day, miss their loved ones and none of us can imagine what they have gone through," said Governor Scott.

Awards were presented to students for essays and drawings about "stranger danger" during the ceremony. Several law enforcement officers and police dogs were also honored for stopping potential kidnappings across the state.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) - Florida State University has recently moved up to be ranked No. 38 out of all the public national universities according to the U.S. News and World Report.

Of the top 50 public universities, Florida State has had the greatest gain. The previous year, FSU ranked No.43. The university has jumped an impressive 5 spots from last year's Best Colleges guidebook.

"We are extremely pleased that U.S. News & World Report has recognized the significant gains FSU has made in its pursuit of higher levels of academic excellence," said President John Thrasher. "This upward movement is a testament to the hard work of our exceptional faculty, staff and students who continue to make FSU one of the best universities in the nation."

Florida State University's graduation and student retention rates are some of the most important aspects in regards to the university's newly claimed rank. Originally, predicted with a 70 percent graduation rate, Florida State exceeded expectations with a 79 percentile.

"Our faculty are to be commended for providing our students with an excellent education and helping them graduate with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in 21st century careers.," Thrasher said.

Improvements among reputation ratings have improved as well with university peers and high school guidance counselors, and even faculty resources. In regards to Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Sally McRorie these where some key factors that contributed to FSU's climb.

"This year's ranking reflects the academic rigor and culture of student success that has long distinguished Florida State University as one of the best research institutions in the country," McRorie said.

In the university's continuing efforts to make long term investments, they have founded relationships with new faculty hired, made market equity improvements and improved retention.

When compared to all national universities, even private institutions, FSU now ranks 92nd compared to last years 96th rank.
MADISON COUNTY, FL (WTXL) - Madison County Sheriff's Office said they arrested a man in the middle of an attempted burglary.

Deputies said they were called to a residence on Coleman Street for an attempted robbery on Saturday. When they arrived, they found out that the male suspect, who they later identified as Vincent Sanders, had kicked in the home's front door and was still inside.

Deputies said they could hear yelling as they approached the door. When they entered, they found Sanders holding a female by her neck and arm in the hallway.

They said they told him to let go but once he did, police said Sanders began aggressively approaching them. Deputies tased Sanders twice before they were able to handcuff him and take him into custody.

Deputies said it's unclear why Sanders broke in, but he was transported to the Madison County Jail and charged with burglary, battery, and other charges related to the incident.
The 802 km-long (498 mi) Kaveri river has 44,000 km sq. basin area in Tamil Nadu and 32,000 km sq. basin area in Karnataka.

By India Today Web Desk: Two people have died in the Cauvery water crisis so far between yesterday and today.

The 802 km-long (498 mi) Kaveri river has 44,000 km sq. basin area in Tamil Nadu and 32,000 km sq. basin area in Karnataka.



CAUVERY WATER ROW: HOW IT BEGAN



Cauvery river water row dates back to the 20th century as it was governed by an agreement between Madras Presidency and the State of Mysore that was signed in 1924.

advertisement

Pact lapsed in 1974, all attempts to since then to resolve this issue by Centre have failed.



A three-member Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal was constituted in 1990 to look into the matter which delivered its verdict in 2007.



Also read: Cauvery protest: Bengaluru crawls back to normalcy after shops open, traffic restored



The term of the tribunal was initially set to expire in August 2005. The extension was granted and the tribunal's term was extended for another year until September 2006.



While Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were the major parties involved in the dispute, Kerala and Puducherry were also involved in the case.

The tribunal allocated 419 billion cubic feet of water annually to Tamil Nadu and 270 billion cubic feet to Karnataka; 30 billion cubic feet of Kaveri river water to Kerala and 7 billion cubic feet to Puducherry. But all parties involved filed for review of the judgement as none of them were satisfied.



Also read: Cauvery water dispute: PM Narendra Modi appeals for restraint



350 ARRESTED FOR VANDALISM



Karnataka police has arrested as many as 350 people for vandalism.

People arrested on the basis of video evidence, says Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara. Situation is being brought under control, 200 people have been detained.

Curfew has been imposed in 16 sensitive localities in Bengaluru. The Karnataka govt has posted around 15,000 policemen across the city.



WHATSAPP NUMBER FOR BENGALURU



Bangalore Police tweets emergency WhatsApp number 9480801000, asks public to connect with them.

SC asks Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu till Sept 20.

Earlier, in its September 5 order, the apex court had directed Karnataka govt to release of 15,000 cusecs to Tamil Nadu for 10 days.

Also read: Cauvery row: Karnataka to abide by Supreme Court directive



--- ENDS ---
Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa wrote a letter to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah where she noted that adequate safety and security to Kannada speaking people would be given in Tamil Nadu and expected him to take measures to provide the same for Tamil speaking people in Karnataka.

By Pramod Madhav: A day after a hotel was attacked in Chennai as a retaliation to a Tamil boy in Karnataka and a major riot broke out in the state, Tamil activists belonging to various parties are protesting in parts of Chennai to show their agony towards Tamil people being attacked and their properties being damaged.

JAYA WRITES TO SIDDARAMAIAH

Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa wrote a letter to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah where she noted that adequate safety and security to Kannada speaking people would be given in Tamil Nadu and expected him to take measures to provide the same for Tamil speaking people in Karnataka.

advertisement

Also read:

Cauvery row: Failed in anticipating impact of controversial, viral content, says Karnataka top cop

Cauvery protests: Siddaramaiah assures people that drinking water supply won't be affected



Meanwhile, certain Tamil nationalist groups unhappy with Tamil people being attacked in Karnataka entered into protests. Activists of 'Naam Tamilar' party, a pro-Tamil group decided to protest in front of a Karnataka based businessman's hotel in Chinthathiripet, Chennai.

Murugesan, a pro-Tamil activist said, "vehicles owned by Tamil people were damaged there but we didn't touch any Karnataka vehicles here. We are only protesting in a democratic manner."

The videos of riots and Tamil people's properties being damaged has caused panic in Tamil Nadu who fear for the lives of their relatives in Karnataka. "If we wanted to attack people from Karnataka, we would have done it long back. We just want to show our anguish over Tamil people being attacked in Karnataka", agitated Murugesan claimed.

SECURITY TIGHTENED

After New Woodlands Hotel was attacked by Tamil activists, Jayalalithaa met with Tamil Nadu DGP and Chennai Commissioner and discussed about the law and order situation in the state and asked them to provide adequate security to Kannada business establishments. Following which, extra police protection has been given to hotels and other organisations.



--- ENDS ---
You are the owner of this article.
Its no secret that too many humans in Yakima County are remiss in oversight of their canine companions, with outcomes that range from disrupt
YAKIMA, Wash.  Police have issued a Silver Alert for a 70-year-old man with dementia who drove off from a senior living center Sunday.

Lorren McKenzie, who is described as white, 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighing 210 pounds with gray hair and blue eyes, was driving a maroon Honda Accord with Washington license DV05679, police spokesman Mike Bastinelli said.

McKenzie was living at Brookdale Senior Living Solutions, 4100 Englewood Ave., and reportedly said he was going to look up an old girlfriend in Oregon.

Missing senior located YAKIMA, Wash. - Yakima police officers have located a missing person they characterized as a

He reportedly left without his diabetes medication, Bastinelli said.

Anyone with information on McKenzies whereabouts should call 911, Bastinelli said.

McKenzie was the subject of a previous Silver Alert on Sept. 5 and was found shortly thereafter.
NACHES, Wash. -- The Rock Creek Fire burning in national forest land northwest of Naches is now 90% contained, and officials have canceled the
Kumar, who was caught among the protesters, was trying to escape the police by climbing to the third floor of a building, but lost his balance and fell.

Police personnel disperse pro-Kannada activists during their violent protest over Cauvery water row, in Bengaluru on Monday. Photo: PTI

By Mail Today: The Cauvery River dispute claimed its second victim when Kumar (30), who fell from a building during police lathi-charge in Bengaluru, breathed his last today in a private hospital.

Kumar was caught among the protesters, who clashed with the police in Sunkadakatte in the city, on Monday evening. As the police launched a lathi-charge, Kumar escaped to safety and reached the third floor of a building in Sunkadakatte. However, he lost his balance from the third floor and fell to the ground.

advertisement

The local residents took him to a private hospital where he failed to respond to treatment. Kumar had suffered severe injuries to the head and chest.

Meanwhile, Karnataka's Director General of Police Om Prakash said that the police had rounded up 335 goons, who were responsible for Monday's disturbances and arson in the city.

"We are identifying the accused one by one on the basis of visual footage (TV channels) and apprehending them. The situation is by and large peaceful in the city," he told the media.

According to him, 21 trucks, 44 buses, 7 police vehicles and several private cars were burnt by protesters on Monday in the city.

Also Read:

Cauvery water dispute: PM Narendra Modi appeals for restraint

Cauvery dispute: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah writes to Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa seeking cooperation

Cauvery dispute: Little movement on streets after one man dies in police firing in Bengaluru



--- ENDS ---
If you are sending a Letter To the Editor, please be sure to follow these rules:

Letters have a firm 200-word limit and will be edited for grammar, clarity and accuracy.

The person who signs the letter must be the author. Anonymous letters will not be considered. Letters must address the editor, not a third party.

We will not print form letters, libelous letters, business promotions or personal disputes, poetry, open letters, letters espousing religious views without reference to a current issue, or letters considered in poor taste.

Letters reflect the opinion of the writer. The Yakima Herald-Republic cannot verify the accuracy of all statements made in letters.

Writers are limited to one published letter per calendar month.
While Arvind Keriwal-led Delhi government said lack of preventive measures by the cooperation is the reason behind spike in cases, the MCD accused CM of providing no assistance in tackling the issue.

By Ilma Hasan: The tussle between the Aam Admi Party and the BJP-dominated Municipal Corporation of Delhi stiffened today after the death toll from the mosquito-borne disease reached to five in the national capital.

While Arvind Keriwal-led Delhi government said lack of preventive measures by the cooperation is the reason behind spike in cases of chikungunya , the MCD accused CM of providing no assistance in tackling the issue.

advertisement



ALSO READ: Delhi's municipality blames residents for inadequate support to control dengue, chikungunya





BLAME GAME OVER DENGUE-CHIKUNGUNYA OUTBREAK

"The MCD is responsible for fogging to keep mosquitoes away and the mayor has disappeared," said AAP minister Kapil Mishra.

On the other hand North MCD Standing Committee Chairman, Parvesh Rana claimed that the Delhi government has not been co-operating to deal with the dengue-chikungunya outbreak in the national capital.

"There has been absolutely no help by the CM. We even tried sitting down with the Health Minister and fixing the problem but they haven't given a response,"said Rana.

Meanwhile, Delhi Health Minister Satyender Jain has dismissed the reports of vector-borne disease outbreak.

"There is no outbreak, it has been created by the media. Medically Chikungunya can never cause death," Jain said.

So far the national capital has recorded at least 1057 cases of Chikungunya, twice the number reported last year, and as many as five have succumbed to death.

ALSO READ:

Ministers nowhere to be found as Delhi left reeling with Chikungunya and Dengue



--- ENDS ---
A little over a week after the passing of Herzl Shaul , at the end of the Shiva (a traditional Jewish mourning period, lasting seven days), the Shaul family has published his final letter to his son Oron , who was killed in battle during Operation Protective Edge and whose remains are still held by Gaza-based terror organization Hamas . In the letter, Mr. Shaul expressed his desire to see Oron return home.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



When Herzl's condition deteriorated, the family said, he began writing what was on his mind, describing his thoughts since hearing that his son was in the hands of Hamas. He and a relative attempted to record Mr. Shaul reading the letter out loud, but their two attempts were not successful. A few hours later, Herzl Shaul lost consciousness. His last request was to be given the letter to his son so he could sign it himself.

Herzl and Oron Shaul. (Photo: Courtesy of the Shaul family)

The letter opens with Mr. Shaul's description of his condition. "My Oron, my hero son, ever since you left my body has started betraying me," it says, "My physical condition is deteriorating every day - a little more, and a little further."

The letter continues, "I cannot give up, because I want to reach the moment I've been imagining since the day you were kidnapped. That moment where the prime minister and IDF chief of staff call me and tell me, 'Herzl, Sergeant Oron Shaul, a fighter in the Golani Brigade's 13 Battalion's support company, is coming home from the war tonight.'"

"I imagine how I tell Mom, Aviram, and Ofek that you are coming back to us in a few hours, injured and exhausted, a captive with a long recovery ahead of him, but home!"

Herzl Shaul's final letter to his fallen son.

Later on, Mr. Shaul asks his son not to remain angry with government leaders for not bringing him home fast enough. "If you see this recording when you come back, they'll surely tell you about the hardship we went through before you came back from captivity. The lies and manipulations from all those people we appreciated and admired in the past. But my request to you is that you not have any grudge or anger. Do you know why? Because there's no people on earth like the people of Israel. Ever since your kidnapping, hundreds of thousands of people have reached their hands out to help."

At the end of the letter, Herzl shares a memory of his son's day of enlistment. "Do you remember when you announced that you were enlisting in Golani, your mother begged you to change your mind, since it's dangerous? Well, just so you know, despite me not telling you this, in my heart I was full of pride and joy. I want to apologize to you, my beloved son, for not listening to Mom."
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot can keep telling the world that they have an excellent relationship, that they have a high regard for each other and that the work relations between them are just fine, but as time goes by in the test of reality, and when looking at the decisions and statements of the two most senior figures in the defense establishment, things seem different.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



One does not need sources in the office of the IDF chief  who is currently overseeing a major military exercise  to understand what he went through on Monday evening when he heard the defense minister's speech at the Ariel College about Sgt. Elor Azaria , who is on trial for manslaughter after being filmed shooting an already-neutralized Palestinian terrorist to death in Hebron.

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot (L) and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Photo: Ariel Hermoni, Defense Ministry)

The first part of Lieberman's comments is understandable and correct  there is no room for convicting anyone in advance of the verdict, and the judicial-military system must deliver its ruling without any opinion in the background. There is no dispute over the fact that the court must reach its decision pertinently and without any pressure.

There is a problem, however, with the second part of the comments: Lieberman declared that the defense establishment would stand by the soldier even if he was at fault, and said that "even when a soldier makes a mistake, we must give him all the help he needs."

While Azaria hasn't been convicted, he has been charged with a very serious offense of manslaughter. If his version that he shot the neutralized terrorist because he sensed danger is not accepted by the court  the IDF should not support him, just like the IDF does not support other convicted felons, even slightly bolder fighters than him.

Lieberman complained about the background noises surrounding the trial  and rightfully so  but in the meantime he seems to be serving as a sort of megaphone. The new defense minister's statements  which contradict the ones made by his predecessor in the Defense Ministry, Moshe Ya'alon, who condemned Azaria's actions and defined him as a "a soldier who transgressed"  may influence the judges and the military echelon to the same extent.

And Eisenkot? He has already seen his decision about military dormitories being canceled, and how as soon as he landed in Israel following a successful visit in Washington  a statement was issued on behalf of the defense establishment against the Americans, and he is watching the minister in charge of him become oppositional to the military legal system.

Eisenkot won't rebel, and he won't leak or brief against the minister, and he will continue to act in a businesslike, professional manner. But don't let his shy smile fool you  he is quite unhappy.
Three Qatari members of a Gulf Arab military coalition have been killed during operations in Yemen, according to state media, their country's highest single death toll in the 18-month conflict.

The soldiers died on Monday, state news agency QNA said, without giving any information on how or where they lost their lives.

Western-allied Qatar has sent around 1,000 ground troops to Yemen, Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported in September, the country's first reported involvement in the Saudi-backed offensive. The Arab coalition is fighting to try to restore Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power after Iran-allied Houthi forces advanced on his temporary headquarters in the southern port city of Aden in March last year.
Likud MKs Yehuda Glick, Yoav Kish, Oren Hazan and Amir Ohana, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotolevy and Judea and Samaria Council Head Avi Roeh hosted on an emergency meeting with residents of Amona and Ofra on Monday to protest the scheduled demolition of their homes.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Amona, an outpost located on a hill overlooking Ofra, is located in the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council and is home to about 40 families. In December, 2014 the High Court of Justice ruled that the community was built on private Palestinian land and ordered residents evacuated by the end of 2016.

Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman addressed the matter on Monday evening whilst addressing the students of Ariel University in the West Bank. He said, "There's no chance to leaving Amona where it is built today because of the High Court of Justice's ruling, because most of the houses are built on private Palestinian landsThe law enforced in Amona will apply to everyonealso on Palestinian squatters in Susya. We will respect the court's decision as a country of law."

Amona, Ofra residents meet with Likud MKs to protest the planned demolition of their homes (Photo: TPS/Hillel Maeir)

In his speech, Lieberman also called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adopt the principle of land exchanges in any future agreement with the Palestinians. "Why do I need to subsidize Raed Salah and pay a salary to Hanin Zoabi ? I don't see a reason why the prime minister shouldn't adopt the principle."

Those at the emergency meeting disapproved of Lieberman's pronouncements. "Defense Minister Lieberman has raised the white flag of surrender to extreme left organizations and the Palestinian Authority, both of whom abuse the Israeli legal system to bring about the destruction of settlements in Judea and Samaria," said one participant at the emergency meeting. "We call on Lieberman, the prime minister and the other coalition parties to prevent the eviction."

Avigdor Lieberman at Ariel University (Photo: Asaf Magal)

The Likud Party has been in turmoil since Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in recent months that they intend to obey the Courts ruling.

"The time has come for the prime minister to understand that people who choose to live in Judea and Samaria do so out of a sincere belief that it is our right The story of Amona is not only about Amona, but about the whole of Israeli history," MK Oren Hazan told TPS.

TPS

contributed to this report.
Upon first listening to Eva Umlauf's story, it's hard to believe it. Only a writer with a totally wild imagination could have produced such a story. Well, it did happen. Umlauf is the youngest survivor of the Auschwitz death camp . She was only two years old when the Soviet Army arrived at the camp on January 27, 1945, yet she emerged alive.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



I heard her story a long time ago, but I only recently got to meet her for the first time and discover that this woman, flesh and blood, who is still young and works as a pediatrician in Munich, is the infant from that amazing story I first heard years ago.

Eva Umlauf. Today, she looks back at her life with satisfaction (Photo: Dana Bloch)

It turns out that there was complete chaos and disorder in the SS prior to the war's end, with one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing. On the first days of November 1945, after the Germans, who were preparing to withdraw from Upper Silesia, had already destroyed the gas chambers and the crematoria, a transport of young people suddenly arrived in Auschwitz, most of them from Slovakia.

Who had decided on this odd move, why and for what purpose? After all, the Auschwitz camps were in fact no longer operational, and if the Germans wanted to kill these Jews too, why send them to Auschwitz instead of murdering them in Slovakia?

In any event, that shipment arrived and the Germans did not touch it. They put the young people in barracks where they stayed until the survivors left the camp on the night between January 17 and 18. There were no longer gas chambers, but the young Eva, who arrived there with her mother, received the Auschwitz "trademark" anyway: The number tattooed on her left armA-26959.

I had heard about this story but never met her. Until recently, when I gave a lecture at a seminar in Dachau, the first concentration camp the Germans built near Munich in 1933 in order to keep the "regime's enemies"  communists and socialists  there. Only later were Jews brought there as well.

I was introduced to Eva by Mossad veteran Abba Naor, who 15 years ago initiated an international annual ceremony about the Holocaust at the "guesthouse" near the Dachau camp, the seminar at which I lectured. For the past 12 years, thanks to Naor, there has been a regular presence of a delegation of more than 10 high school students from Kibbutz Givat Brenner at the seminar.

Naor, a survivor of the camps, who often lectures about the subject mainly across Bavaria, spends several months a year in the area and returns to his home in Rehovot, Israel, for a month. When he introduced me to Eva, at first I refused to believe it, and only after asking a few questions I realized that she was the actual child from the story I had heard about so much.

Eva, who is 73 today, is a good-looking, meticulously dressed woman. In our emotionally moving meeting, she told me that she had tried for years to obtain details about how her life was saved as an infant, but failed to even find a clue. Because of her special resume, she told me, she decided at a young age that she would do anything to live a meaningful life and contribute to society as much as she could.

Today, she looks back at her life with satisfaction. She has been considered for years one of the most successful and highly regarded pediatricians in Munich. Her devoted treatment of thousands of small children feels like closure to her  the girl who survived the Auschwitz horror at such a young age.

Dachau's 29-year-old mayor, Florian Hartmann, by the way, asked me to return to Dachau  which has some 40,000 residents today  as soon as possible "in order to allow thousands of them to hear the truth about Auschwitz and about the rest of the extermination camps."

Some 40,000 prisoners  mostly Jews  were murdered in Dachau alone, while more than 11,000 were murdered in the sub-camps, a "good camp" as we defined it at the time. As Dachau is located only 15 kilometers from Munich, it attracts many tourists, with nearly one million people visiting the camp and the museum every year.

The seminar ended with an evening of singing and dancing, with a Bavarian folklore quartet presenting the ancient Schuhplattler dance, after asking the participants to purchase the traditional uniform which include, of course, short leather pants. Even with the uniform, the guys from Givat Brenner did not look Bavarian at all.
The United States and Israel have reached a final agreement on a military aid package to Israel of at least $38 billion. The agreement, which is slated to be signed within the next few days, stipulates that Israel will receive the military aid package over a period of ten years.

According to both Israeli and US officials, the deal will represent the biggest pledge of US military assistance ever made to any country, but it also includes major concessions granted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Nearly 2,000 years after the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the archaeologist Dr. Oren Gutfeld of Hebrew University of Jerusalem has found a scale weight from that period that apparently belonged to the family of the high priestand which has his name carved on it.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The weight was found as part of the excavation carried out at the Tiferet Israel Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the capital's Old City. The Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out the dig together with Hebrew University, and it is being funded by the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, Ltd.

The scale (Photo: Oren Gutfeld and Asaf Peretz, IAA)

Gutfeld explained that he himself unearthed the weight, which has two lines of Aramaic text and a lyre between them. This was initially obscured by a burnt layer, which is presumably from the burning of Jerusalem. While the first line of text has not been fully deciphered, the family name of the high priest was discernible.

Scene of the dig (Photo: Oren Gutfeld and Asaf Peretz, IAA)

"It doesn't happen very much that I get emotional when I find artifacts. But here, I went pale and even felt a small tremble to see the name of the high priest."

Oren Gutfeld (Photo: Eli Mandelbaum)

The Tiferet Israel Synagogue was built in the 19th century, but when the Jordanians seized the area, it was destroyed. In 2014, a cornerstone was laid for its rebuilding, but an excavation of the site has since expanded. Artifacts have been uncovered from the Ottoman, the Mamluk, the Byzantine, the Second Temple and the First Temple periods.

Gutfeld expanded, "New mikvehs (ritual baths) that we didn't know about and their heating system have been uncovered.

The findings from the Second Temple period were about a meter beneath the building's floor. They also include stone and glass tools, rings, pottery and candles that were put there for storage.
No need to be lonely: Ricky Martin is here in Israel

Before his Israeli premiere performance on Wednesday night, Ricky Martin has arrived with his two sons at Ben Gurion Airport.
Syrian media has been extensively covering the reportedly false claim made by the Syrian Army that Syrian ground-to-air missiles have managed to strike down an IDF drone and fighter jet.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



A row of Syrian experts and analysts have been called upon for television and radio interviews, one of whom opened his remarks by saying, Congratulations to the Syrian Army for on their reported accomplishment. The Israeli Army, on the other hand, has consistently been denying that the strike ever happened, with IDF Spokesperson issuing a statement saying, The air force planes were far from the source of the (missile) shooting, which did not threaten our forces.

A Syrian news anchor covering the story

Expressing enthusiasm that the Syrian Army managed to hit their targets, the Syrian public broadcasting network ran videos that displayed missiles of different kinds. For their part, official Syrian media outlets have also been covering the way the Israeli media has been denying what they report is a successful Syrian hit.

Syrian media reporting on the Syrian Army's claim of downing Israeli planes

The Syrian Arab News Agencys website published the Syrian Armys statementin Arabic, English and in Hebrewon the perhaps completely bogus story of the hit IDF planes. The General Command of the Army and the Armed Forces announced on Tuesday that the Israeli enemys air force attacked a Syrian military position in the countryside of the southern Quneitra province  The General Command said in a statement the Syrian air defense forces responded to the attack and shot down an Israeli warplane to the southwest of Quneitra and an Israeli drone to the west of Sasa town in the southwestern countryside of Damascus. It noted that the Israeli attack came in support of the armed terrorist groups and in a desperate attempt to raise the deteriorating morale of their members due to the heavy losses they have suffered in Quneitra. Similar reports have surfaced on Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese media network Al Mayadeen.

Other news sources, however, reacted with incredulity to the Syrian Armys claims of intercepting IDF planes. Syrian-British journalist Faisal al-Qasim, for instance, responded by gleefully tweeting that while many Syrians are currently happy about the downed Israeli planes, in reality Bashar al-Assad would be too cowardly to open fire on an Israeli cat.
The separatist leader in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday announced a unilateral cease-fire starting at midnight Wednesday, which could be a major step in solving the conflict that has been raging for more than two years.

The conflict between Russian-backed separatist rebels and Ukrainian government troops has killed more than 9,500 people since it began in April 2014. Ukraine and the separatists signed peace accords in Minsk, Belarus, last year but they were never fulfilled. What's more, the initial cease-fire has collapsed, turning an all-out war into a simmering conflict that, however, still claims lives.

It is the first time that that the separatists, who are widely believed to be controlled by Moscow, have come with an idea of a unilateral cease-fire.
Chikungunya claimed lives of four persons on Tuesday, while five people reportedly died of dengue in the national capital.

By India Today Web Desk: Death count in chikungunya cases rose to five on Tuesday, while reportedly five persons succumbed to dengue in Delhi. Chikungunya that is considered a non-life threatening disease claimed its first victim on Monday.

Not only four people died due to chikungunya, the total number of cases has shot up by 250 per cent in the last one week. While there were about 560 cases of till the last week, the number has of cases soared to 1,724 this week. Number of dengue cases have rose to 1,158 with five deaths. 60 people have died across the country due to dengue.

advertisement

"There is a need to give symptomatic treatment...We are ready to offer all help to state governments. This is not an issue for the Centre and states to indulge in blame game. We should work together," said Union Health Minister J P Nadda.

As per the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), around 27,879 cases of dengue have been reported across the country and 60 people have succumbed to the disease till August 31.

5,000 cases each have been reported from West Bengal, Odisha and Kerala. While West Bengal has reported 5,129 dengue cases and 22 deaths, the disease has affected 5,183 people and claimed nine lives in Odisha.

Also read: Chikungunya claims 3 lives in Delhi, most AAP ministers away from capital



SORRY STATE OF HOSPITALS



India Today conducted a ground report on government hospitals treating chikungunya and dengue patients. Much to the shock the hospitals were not only ill-equipped with the necessary amenities, some of the hospitals reeked and offered an unhygienic environment for the patients.

Meanwhile, hospitals across the national capital are brimming with patients. There is lack of space in most of the hospitals. Interestingly, even Delhi ministers are missing from the spot.

NO SIGN OFMINISTERS

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who is suffering from cough will be in Bengaluru for about 10 days for a throat surgery. Health Minister Satyender Jain, who should be be fast-tracking medical aid to those affected and seeing to it that there are adequate doctors and facilities in hospitals, has been in Goa for the past four days campaigning for assembly elections next year.

Infographics: Arindam Mukherjee

Kapil Mishra, the only AAP minister in Delhi currently, has been trying to avoid media queries regarding the sorry state of hospitals in the city. He has sought to shift the blame to the civic body officials, saying the MCD is not carrying out fogging regularly and garbage is not being lifted on time. Even Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia is not in the city too, having left for Finland on Monday night on an official tour.

Watch the video here

--- ENDS ---
After months of uncertainty, discussions, disagreements and strenuous diplomatic efforts, a massive US military aid package to Israel is set to be signed in Washington on Wednesday at a ceremony which will take place at 2pm ET.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



In keeping with US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiros promises earlier this week , the deal is slated to be the largest ever delivered by the US to any country ever.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama (Photo: AFP)

National Security Council Acting Chairman Yaakov Nagal, arrived Tuesday morning to Washington to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which will complete the military aid package from the US to Israel that will be valid until 2029.

According to the prospective agreement, which will go into effect upon the expiration of the current package in 2018, the US will provide Israel with a financial package which will amount to $38 billion over the course of the next decade along with missile defense systems. Under the terms of the agreement, Israel will also be prohibited from making additional budgetary requests from Congress.

The current military aid package, which will expire in 2018, provided Israel with an annual sum of $3.1 billion. Prime Minister Netanyahu requested a significant increase of $4.5 billion per year on account of his unsuccessful bid to stymie the US-Iran nuclear agreement. However, the two sides eventually reached a middle ground, resulting in an annual financial sum of $3.8 billion.

The new package will include provisions, for the first time, for missile defense projects which, hitherto, have been drawn from funds directly from Congress. Indeed, over the last few years, American legislators transferred up to $600 million for missile defense purposes.
The IDF conducted airstrikes aimed at artillery cannons of the Assad regime in the Syrian part of the Golan Heights Tuesday night. The strikes were a response to 'spillover' rocket fire from Syria into the Israeli Golan which occurred earlier that day.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



After a rocket fell on Israeli territory less than 24 hours ago, three more shells from Syria were located in the Golan Heights on Tuesday afternoon. The IDF believes that the mortar fire was likely the result of fighting taking place in the war-torn country. The 'fallout' further intensifies tensions on Israel's northern border after Syria attempted to shoot down an Israeli fighter jet on Monday night.

The rocket fell on open territory close to civilian areas near Kibbutz Ein Zivan located near Route 98, which was temporarily closed by security forces. No injuries were reported as a result of the fire, according to the IDF. The first 'spillover' shell, which was spotted at around 1pm by the IDF, occurred just half a day after IDF planes struck at Syrian artillery cannons, responding to another apparent 'spillover' mortar shell that landed in the Israeli Golan on Monday night.

Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot observes evacuation drill (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

In an unusual step, Syrian forces launched two surface-to-air missiles at the Israeli planes but the fighter jets returned to Israel unscathed. "The Air Force planes were far from the source of the fire, which did not constitute a threat to our forces," the IDF Spokesperson's Unit stated. Journalists identified as having ties to the Syrian administration made claims on social media saying that the missiles were of the S-200 model.

Launching these anti-aircraft missiles is considered highly unusual, as the Syrian military has refrained from such moves during previous Israeli strikes in the Syrian Golan Heights.

Israeli fighter jets are sent to the Syrian Golan several times a month in order where they conduct reconnaissance flights for suspicious elements. In the vast majority of cases however, they return without needing to strike or intercept any targets.

The Syrian military had previously advertised a false claim of downing the IAF jets. "The Syrian military's aerial defense means have intercepted the planes and downed a fighter jet in southwestern Quneitra, and a drone west of the town of Sa'sa, the statement said. The Syrian military further claimed that, "At 1am, aircraft of the Israeli Air Force attacked one of the military outposts in the outskirts of Quneitra."

Evacuation drill in the western Galilee (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

With tensions mounting on the northern border and Israel weary of a potential escalation with its northern neighbors, the IDF conducted a civilian evacuation drill in the western Galilee region. The 91st Division, in conjunction with local municipal authorities and national emergency authorities simulated an evacuation of residents from the border-adjacent town of Ya'ara, which is home to a population of several hundred.

The evacuation was intended to prepare the residents for such potential scenarios during times of time of war, and a rehearsal which stems from lessons learned by the IDF  specifically, the Home Front Command  after the Second Lebanon War and Operation Protective Edge. It included coordinating between the residents an authorities of the evacuated towns and the authorities in the towns to which they are being evacuated.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Syrian Foreign Ministry wrote to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the president of the UN Security Council. The news Israeli aggression is an attempt to heighten the lowered morale of terror organizations, the statement read.

Syria demands that the UN Security Council takes appropriate steps in order to punish aggressive Israel, and to force it to stop its aggression without delay and to stop supporting and protecting terrorists," it continued.
The Israel Police has arrested a Palestinian man caught with an M-16 assault rifle, as well as ammunition and accessories for it (including a special grip and scope).

The suspect, a resident of Jericho in the West Bank, was arrested after Israeli authorities received intelligence regarding him.
Lior Lotan , the prime minister's envoy on hostages and missing persons, said on Tuesday that Hamas has rejected several offers to swap all of its men capturedboth dead and aliveduring Operation Protective Edge in exchange for the remains of Israeli soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The two soldiers were killed during the 2014 campaign in the Gaza Strip and their bodies were captured by Hamas.

"At the end of Protective Edge, Israel had 19 bodies of fallen Hamas fighters and 18 prisoners, captives who later were sentenced to prison termsthe longest of them being 16 and a half years," Lotan said, speaking at the World Summit of the International Institute For Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at the Interdiciplinary Center in Herzliya (IDC).

"Hamas, on the other hand," he continued, "has two bodies of fallen IDF soldiers who were killed in Saja'iyya and Rafah."

"Since end of the war, Israel has been operating through many channels to bring our boys home," he added.

Hadar Goldin, Oron Shaul and Abera Mengistu

"Since that time, other Israeli citizens have crossed to Gaza," he said in reference to Abera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. "These are sick people, suffering from mental exhaustion, who crossed over into Gaza and are being held by Hamas to this day. Hamas officials are aware of the distress that these civilians are in. This is not a security matter. Israel has found ways to send Hamas proof that this is a humanitarian, personal, humane matternot a security matter."

Lotan went on to detail another offer made to Hamas "to return to Gaza all of the civilians who are in Israelpeople who crossed into Israel of their own accord. And of course, we expect to get our civilians who crossed over to Gaza in return."

Lior Lotan.

Lotan explained that these offers are not unusual. "These things are accepted norms in the world. At the end of every conflict, the sides exchange captives and missing personsthat's the norm. It was also done in our region, between Israel and Hezbollahboth before and after the Second Lebanon War. In unprecedented fashion, Hamas has refused this offer, and even put forth a precondition for the continuation of the discussions: resolving a case of prisoners who were not from the Gaza Strip at all and have no connection with the Protective Edge war at all. Of course, we cannot abide a precondition. It's not right practically speaking, and it's not right professionally speaking."

Israel is not officially negotiating with Hamas for the return of the remains of soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, and the return of civilians Abera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. However, it is conducting unofficial talks with the organization through back-door channels and intermediaries, trying to at least reach some understanding that might allow for the beginning of official talks.
Saudi Arabia has welcomed the US and Russian-brokered truce in Syria and urged

the Syrian government and its allies to abide by it.

In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry says it is following the cease-fire with interest and hopes it will help alleviate suffering among the "brotherly Syrian people."

The ministry says it also hopes for the resumption of talks aimed at ensuring a peaceful political transition in accordance with U.N resolutions.

Saudi Arabia, which backs the opposition, says no political transition is possible unless Syrian President Bashar Assad steps down.

The cease-fire has largely held since it went into effect at sunset on Monday, with only sporadic violations reported.
One year after Alexander Levlovitch was murdered in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv , his children held a small ceremony Tuesday at a memorial at the spot where he was killed, taking the time to reflect on their thoughts.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Levlovich, 64, was fatally wounded on the eve of last Rosh Hashanathe Jewish new year when he lost control of his car after it was pelted with stones by Palestinians. He was returning home after a festive meal.

He was the first person to be killed in the wave of terror which claimed the lives of 40 Israelis and injured hundreds between 2015-2016.

Memorial for Alexander Levlovich (Photo: Amit Shabi)

We hoped that dad would be the last victim, said his son Nir. Not one of us ever imagined that this was just the beginning.

With Rosh Hashana now approaching, Levlovichs children find it difficult to believe that almost a year has past since their father was snatched from them.

It has been a hard year for the children and for us, said his daughter Sophie. People say Happy New Year and I feelHow can I be happy? On that evening my father was killed. Every time I hear about this attack it takes me back to the moment when we were told that our dad is dead.

Photo: Amit Shabi

Nir added, It is a feeling of needless death. He didnt die from a serious disease, but because of a violent situation which maybe we could have prevented.

Levlovichs 41-year-old daughter works in the Finance Ministry in the department of Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. Two years ago I was debating whether to take the job and my dad asked me why. I answered saying rocks are thrown on the way, I travel in an unarmored vehicle and that there is a good chance that something will happen to me. Dad said to me stop with your nonsense. Close the windows and in the worst case scenario a stone will hit and you will continue your journey. Today we understand that stones can kill. In the end, my dad was killed by a stone that was thrown in Jerusalem.

Her sister Mia, 39, has been a police officer for a number of years and works as an officer responsible for the integration of Muslims in the police. Despite the tragedy which befell her and her family, she said, My father took care of everyone in a disabled home with dedication from any population. I believe that the murderers are in the minority and do not represent the community.

The siblings explained that due to the fact that they are all above the age of 30, they are not entitled to any kind of support as children of victims of terror, nor to compensation for work time lost because of the murder such as mourning of other outgoings stemming directly from the tragedy.

However, next week they will realize their fathers dream of opening a new department in a disabled home in Gilo where he worked which will be named after him.
A 65-year-old man succumbed to chikungunya on Monday at Sir Ganga Ram hospital, the first reported casualty of the disease.

Hospitals in the city are flooded with patients, with many being forced to share beds.

By Sneha Agrawal, Astha Saxena: With 1,057 cases of chikungunya reported over the last week and the first fatality on Monday, the dengue-chikungunya outbreak has reached an alarming scale in Delhi and NCR, affecting attendance in city schools and offices.

This was reflected in the challans issued on Monday by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi to buildings feared as breeding grounds for the vector-borne diseases. Schools and hospitals topped the challan list.

advertisement

This season is particularly bad. In the last few weeks, we have seen a steady dip in our class attendance as every week a few students report sick due to virus-related illness,?? Usha Ram, associate director, DPS World Schools, told Mail Today.

FEVER GOES VIRAL

This is also a period when most schools in the city are gearing up for internal examinations. Several school authorities that Mail Today contacted said they were taking strict precautions to deal with the outbreak. Regular advisory is being issued to the parents to follow required measures,?? said

Ashok Pandey, principal, Ahlcon International School in east Delhi. This is the peak season and we are taking all possible steps to keep our students safe.?? Pandey said on an average, one or two children were reporting sick every week. Those who are diagnosed with high fever are advised to stay at home so that no more children in the school are infected with the virus.??

Ameeta Wattal, principal, Springdales school at Pusa road said all the students who have fallen sick will be given a chance to re-appear for the examinations.

The school is taking all precautions to keep the surrounding clean. The fumigation is happening every afternoon and students have been advised to wear full-sleeve shirts and pants so that their body parts are not exposed to the mosquitoes,?? Wattal said.

Meanwhile, 24 educational institutions were served notices by south and north MCD on Monday for not following required safety measure on their premises. These included two departments of Indian Institute of technology (IIT), Zakir Hussain College, nursing college, Central schools, municipal schools, Cambridge Public School (Lajpat Nagar) and Notre Dame School.

The caretaker of these properties will have to appear before the magistrate and they can be penalised up to Rs 5,000 and weekly inspections are followed up to ensure that they are maintaining cleanliness and thus preventing the scope for the mosquitoes to breed,?? said an MCD official.

In all, the MCD listed 86 new sites for being mosquito-breeding spots. The maximum cases have been cited in South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC). Around eight hospitals and health centres were served challans, including MCD-run Hindu Rao Hospital, Jamia Unani Hospital and CRPF Hospital.



CHIKUNGUNYA CASES ON THE RISE

advertisement

A 65-year-old man succumbed to chikungunya on Monday at Sir Ganga Ram hospital in west Delhi, the first reported casualty of the viral disease. R Pandey, a resident of Ghaziabad was admitted to the hospital on Saturday in a critical state and was admitted to ICU ward.

Pandey who died early on Monday was infected with chikungunya with sepsis. The viral counts of the patient were high. He was shifted from Yashoda hospital in Ghaziabad to our hospital in an extremely critical state,?? said a spokesperson of Sir Ganga Ram hospital.

Delhi government officials said they had prepared a list of sensitive areas in Delhi where high level of breeding was found last year. The list included many government hospitals like Babu Jagjivan Ram hospital, AIIMS, Safdarjung hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC), Ram Manohar Lohia hospital and National Chest Institute.

All these areas have been identified under the sites which need special care. We are conducting regular awareness programmes and insisting on continuous fumigation in these areas. We are focusing more on preventive measures this year,?? said Dr SM Raheja, additional director general of health services (ADGHS), Delhi government. This year, Delhi and NCR is witnessing more cases of chikungunya as compared to the previous year.

advertisement

While 1,158 cases of dengue have been reported so far this year, the national capital has reported 1,057 cases of chikungunya in 2016. Last year, Delhi reported 64 cases of chikungunya. Cases of dengue have also increased sharply, with 387 cases reported this month, a rise of over 50 per cent, according to a municipal report released on Monday.

Also read: First chikungunya death recorded in Delhi: 65-year-old dies at Ganga Ram Hospital



--- ENDS ---
By Brijesh Pandey: While Delhi and NCR grapple with viral outbreak of dengue and chikungunya, the AAP and the BJP are indulging in politics.

4 deaths were reported on Tuesday at Gangaram hospital due to chikungunya. Instead of addressing this grave health scare, Delhi government is missing in action. This has led to a massive war of words between BJP and AAP.

advertisement

Also read:

Delhi in ICU: 4 die of chikungunya, no sign of AAP ministers

South Delhi hit hardest by dengue-chikungunya outbreak



WHERE THE MINISTERS ARE

The cases from vector borne disease have seen a jump of 90 per cent more than the last year and as the news of 4 deaths came in, the situation has become all the more scary. Delhi Health Minister Satender Jain is in Goa, campaigning for the party, as Deputy CM Manish Sisodia is in Finland. Imran Hussain is in Saudi Arabia for Haj. Gopal Rai is in Chhattisgarh, while Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal is in Bengaluru for a treatment. Absence of ministers has come under sharp criticism not only from the BJP but also on Twitter.

Rattled by the rising criticism, Arvind Kejriwal hit back via Twitter. He tweeted that "CM and minsiters left with no power now, even to buy a pen. L-G and PM enjoy all power wrt to Delhi. Quesiton them for Delhi".

Graphic by Arindam Mukherjee

BJP HITS BACK AT AAP

The BJP hit back immediately by asking Kejriwal to step down if he can't handle the situation. "You can't buy Rs. 10 pen but can spend 1 crore on samosa. If you ask him question, then you are a dalal. Is this the language of a Chief Minister," said BJP spokesperson, Sambit Patra.

Patra went on to ask if such is the restriction on the Delhi government, then on whose money, Manish Shisodia went to Finland.

Just when the BJP press conference was about to end, a letter surfaced on how the L-G sanctioned a 12-day earned leave to Health Secretary Chandraker Bharti. As soon as this letter became public, AAP lost no time in attacking L-G again. Kapil Mishra tweeted, "L-G has himself gone to America after sending the Health Secretary on a holiday. Nobody in Health Ministry is responding". He went on to say how the L-G first removed the Health Secretary appointed by the AAP and then replaced with his own man.

Meanwhile, Health Minster, JP Nadda hit out at the AAP blaming them for not even having an ad hoc arrangement in place. Nadda said, "No politics should be done on dengue, chikungunia. Since January, we have issued several advisories to state governments. Bed strength should be increased. It is the responsibility of Delhi government to handle the situation."

advertisement

MEET HELD TO ASSESS SITUATION

A meeting of senior officials was held today in Delhi to asses the situation and another meeting is taking place on Wednesday with concerned officials and MoS will attend the meet.

Once again things have gone out of hand for the average Delhiite. The question is whether somebody will stand-up and take action or will the situation be allowed to go from bad to worse.

--- ENDS ---
In what is clearly the height of callousness, all AAP ministers, except Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra, are away from the national capital at a time when the death toll due to Chikungunya in Delhi has risen to three.

By Pankaj Jain: In what can only be termed the height of callousness, all Aam Aadmi Party ministers, except Tourism and Culture Minister Kapil Mishra, are away from the national capital at a time when the death toll due to Chikungunya in Delhi has risen to three.

The national capital has been grappling with spurt in cases of dengue and chikungunya, and arrangements in city hospitals to deal with these ailments leave a lot to be desired.

advertisement

Delhi Health Minister Satyender Jain, who should be fast-tracking medical aid to those affected and seeing to it that there are adequate doctors and facilities in hospitals, has been in Goa for the past four days campaigning for assembly elections next year.

Kapil Mishra, the only AAP minister in Delhi currently, has been trying to avoid media queries regarding the sorry state of hospitals in the city. He has sought to shift the blame to the civic body officials, saying the MCD is not carrying out fogging regularly and garbage is not being lifted on time.



LAME DEFENCE

Mustering up a weak defence for the inability to save lives, Satyender Jain told ANI that the patients come for treatment at the last stage. "The person who died yesterday due to Chikungunya was from UP", he added.



Also read: South Delhi hit hardest by dengue-chikungunya outbreak



Chief Minister Kejriwal is himself battling cough and will be in Bengaluru for 10 days for a throat surgery. He returned only yesterday after having campaigned for four days in Punjab.



MINISTERS NOT IN TOWN



Even Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia is not in the city too, having left for Finland on Monday night on an official tour. Officials of the education department have accompanied him on this trip. Sisodia is expected to return to Delhi by Sunday.

Rural Development Minister Gopal Rai is campaigning for the Aam Aadmi Party in Chhattisgarh. He is expected to return to Delhi only after the 20th of September.

Relatively less active in govt matters, Food and Environment Minister Imran Hussain has gone on a Haj pilgrimage.

The department of Sandeep Kumar, former AAP minister who is now in jail in the sex CD scam, is lying vacant. The party is yet to appoint someone to head the Women and Child Development and Social Welfare portfolios.

With most hospitals and clinics reeling under shortage of doctors and other medical equipment, one can only hope the situation is brought under control.

advertisement

Also read: Dengue and chikungunya cases on rise in Delhi, 100 AIIMS doctors and kin fall ill

--- ENDS ---
As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
The five Indians from Kolkata were detained by security at Kunming international airport on September 7, and accused of carrying 18 kilograms of cannabis in their bags.

By Ananth Krishnan: China has granted Indian officials consular access for the five Indian nationals detained in south-western China, accused of bringing in at least 18 kilograms of cannabis into the country.

The five Indians from Kolkata were detained by security at Kunming international airport on September 7, and accused of carrying 18 kilograms of cannabis in their bags.

WHY INDIAN'S WERE DETAINED



advertisement

Security officials reportedly found the drug hidden in food packets and laptop bags of the five, who had arrived on a China Eastern airlines flight from Kolkata.

Indian diplomatic officials were formally informed this week and have been granted consular access on September 21.

The case will be dealt with by the Indian Consulate in Guangzhou under whose jurisdiction Kunming, the provincial capital of south-western Yunnan province, falls.

If found guilty, the five are likely to be formally charged in China. Drug smuggling is a serious offence in the country and authorities have shown little leniency in the past, with legal experts often citing China's past history in dealing with opium smuggling as one reason for the harsh penalties.

According to publicly available regulations, 'possession' of between 2 and 10 kilograms of cannabis can bring up to 3 years in prison plus fines. Possession of more than 10 kilograms can bring between seven years in prison to life imprisonment. Smuggling, however, can bring even higher sentences.

PENALTIES UNDER CHINESE LAW



Heavier sentences have been awarded in the past for smuggling cocaine or heroin, drugs which call for harsher penalties under Chinese law.

In 2009, a British national Akmal Shaikh, a Pakistani-British businessman, was executed for allegedly bringing in 4 kilograms of heroin into Urumqi airport in Xinjiang.

Earlier this year, Juliana Lopez, a 23-year-old 'beauty queen' from Colombia, was sentenced to prison for 15 years having been caught with 610 grams of white powder that contained cocaine at Guangzhou airport.

--- ENDS ---
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.
Latest News

Washington, DC - Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel will travel to Moscow, Russia from September 13 -16. In Moscow, he will meet with U.S. Embassy staff, Russian government officials and Russian journalists.

The Under Secretary will engage with alumni of educational and cultural exchange programs and deliver remarks at an event at the American Center in Moscow. In addition, he will tour the Moscow bureau of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and have a conversation with RFE/RL journalists.
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - During the end of June 2016, Arizona Western College Institute of Welding Technology students attended the SkillsUSA national conference and competition in Louisville, KY and came back as winners.

AWC competed in a number of events against the top college students and teams from nearly every state in the United States and its territories. Students that attended this years program represented the top 2% of career technical education students, with the top three in each skill competition being recognized with a gold, silver or bronze medal. All of the AWC students that competed in this years events qualified to receive the national Skill Point award, which is a component of the SkillsUSA work force ready system. To receive this recognition the students must have completed a series of written test and oral presentations.

This event was the culmination of a year of hard work and preparation by AWC students and faculty working together in preparation for the competition. These students completed program courses of study while also competing at the regional, state and now the national level to demonstrate that they are ready to join the American skilled workforce.

AWC Student Results:

Customer Service 7th Place-Joanna Pratt

Prepared Speech Silver Medal-Braiden Campbell

Welding Individual Silver Medal- Isaiah Gaspar

Welding Fabrication Team Event 11th Place-Aaron Allen, Quinn Ferrall, Pedro Ordaz, and James Veldhuis

Welding Sculpture 5th Place-Yvonne Bir

The SkillsUSA Student Chapter Advisors are Professor Samuel Colton and Mr. Larry Lebsock. The AWC Welding program faculty are proud of their students who have represented the college community so well at nationals.
China said it would be 'a shameless move' if Japan 'uses weapons sales for ulterior motives'.

By Ananth Krishnan: China has slammed Japan as "shameless" for reportedly considering lowering the price on a major defence deal with India in exchange for support on the South China Sea.

In unusually strong language, the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said it would be "a shameless move" if Japan "uses weapons sales for ulterior motives".

"We hold no objection to state cooperation including defence cooperation as long as such cooperation is normal," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a regular briefing.

advertisement

"But it is reported that the Japanese government is to cut the price to sell weapons to India with an aim to pressurise China on the South China Sea issue and such attempt is targeted at China. If such a report is true then we don't think the purpose such cooperation is right."

JAPANESE OFFICIALS OPEN TO LOWERING PRICE



Hua was responding to a question from a Chinese journalist quoting a media report on long-running negotiations between India and Japan for the sale of US-2 amphibious aircraft. The report said Japanese officials were open to lowering the price considering overall ties with India, and pointed out that Tokyo had been keen for Delhi to take a stronger position on the South China Sea issue.

While Japan has called for a July arbitration tribunal ruling that favoured the Philippines in its dispute with China to be implemented, India has taken a more calibrated approach, merely calling for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, under which the tribunal was convened, to be respected.

CHINA UNHAPPY WITH JAPAN'S MOVES



China has been angered by Japan's moves to sell military equipment to the Philippines, as well as by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's stand on the South China Sea. While Japan is not a party to the South China Sea dispute, tensions with China over disputed East China Sea islands have strained relations.

Hua said that while China has "no objection to normal defence cooperation", it would be a "shameless move" if the weapons sales had "ulterior motives" to pressure China on the South China Sea.

ALSO READ | China says should maintain South China Sea peace with Vietnam



--- ENDS ---
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.
Look more to new markets in Southeast Asia rather than put in billions into unrest-hit Pakistan, Chinese media warns Beijing.

By Ananth Krishnan: Beijing has received a note of caution about pushing its USD46 billion economic corridor to Pakistan from an unlikely source.

An article published in a Communist Party-run newspaper on Tuesday suggested to the Chinese government that it would be "unwise to put all its eggs in one basket", and that it should look more to new

markets in Southeast Asia rather than put in billions into unrest-hit Pakistan.

advertisement

"It is unlikely that China will change its supportive attitude on the CPEC [China Pakistan Economic Corridor] in the short term, but the increasing cost of security is becoming a big problem in efficiently

pushing forward the projects," said the article published in the Global Times, a tabloid owned by the official People's Daily, authored by reporter Hu Weijia.



QUESTIONS RAISED ON CPEC VIABILITY

It isn't often the case that the Chinese media suggests to Beijing that it go slow when it comes to a country that is increasingly being seen in China as its only ally.

Many Chinese experts and companies are known to have privately raised doubts on the viability of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which connects the restive Xinjiang province, through

Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), to the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea in Balochistan.

Also read: Corridor of Uncertainty



The plan, which envisages widening the Karakoram Highway and possible rail links and gas pipelines, not only passes through some of the world's most difficult terrain but also through areas grappling with unrest, from PoK to Balochistan.

The Global Times warned, "The economic corridor.. passes through some turbulent regions, Kashmir included. It is unlikely to be plain sailing for China and Pakistan in their attempts to push forward the

CPEC due to challenges such as the complex regional environment, and people in the two countries should be prepared for potential setbacks".

On Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's assurances that the CPEC was a top priority for the government, the paper said, "However, given the difficulty of protecting the personnel that are working in Pakistan,

projects under the CPEC may need to be implemented and assessed step by step."

Also read: China in close talks with Nepal on Xi visit, keen to deepen ties



SHIFT FOCUS TO SOUTHEAST ASIA



"This does not mean that China should give up on the idea of the CPEC because of the present challenges," it added. "However, China may not want to put too much focus on the region. At the very least, it would

be unwise to put all its eggs in one basket."



advertisement

It proposed that Beijing should instead "consider giving more attention to its economic cooperation with Southeast Asian countries". The CPEC has long been seen as a flagship project in China's Belt and Road initiative, but the initiative's strategic focus may need to shift gradually toward Southeast Asia, where there is a wide infrastructure funding gap but a relatively stable regional environment that will enable China to efficiently push forward ventures under the Belt and Road initiative," it suggested, specifically mentioning Vietnam, whose prime minister is currently on a six-day visit to China.

Also read: Provoking India: In a first, China and Pakistan hold joint border patrols in PoK



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 13 (PTI) Ahead of Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahals visit to India, Nepal today made it clear that the issue of Constitution amendment was an internal matter even as it said that both countries need to "introspect" on past issues like the "blockade".

Visiting Nepalese Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat also assured full cooperation to India on security issues and said Nepal will not allow its soil to be used against India.

advertisement

He said all bilateral problems need to be conveyed only through diplomatic channels.

Mahat stressed that Nepal wants to see tangible results on ground and for this faster implementation of Indian projects was necessary besides complete market access.

"I think the coming visit of Nepalese Prime Minister will be very fruitful and we will start a new chapter of our relationship," Mahat said speaking to reporters here before leaving for Nepal.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, commonly known as Prachanda is coming here on a four-day visit this week, in his first overseas trip after taking over office last month.

Nepals ties with India had strained after a months-long border blockade last year by the ethnic minority protesters over the new Constitution, which they claim is discriminatory to their interest. The Oli government had accused India of imposing an "unofficial blockade" on the landlocked nation to support the Madhesi demand of more political representation.

"Our Constitution is basically very inclusive but of course there is scope for improvement as there is no Constitution in the world which is perfect," he said.

Admitting that there are "some grievances", he said the new government is working on it.

"We have had several round of discussions with various stakeholders. We are taking it very seriously but it is a subject which the Nepal parliament, Nepal government and Nepal people will decide. It is our internal process. Whatever is good for Nepalese, we will decide.

"Whatever change that needs to be amended is completely internal Nepali process and based on demand and aspiration of the people of Nepal, we will keep on improving our Constitution," he said.

Asked about the new governments expectation from India, the Foreign Minister said he would rather talk about building relationships based on trust, friendship and cooperation.

"That is what this visit is all about," he said noting that besides his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj, he met with Water Minister Uma Bharati, Power Minister Piyush Goyal. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, BJP leader Ram Madhav and Congress leader Janardan Dwivedi. More PTI SAP AAR DV AAR

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Washington: Hillary Clinton has said that she thought her falling ill at Ground Zero was not going to be "that big a deal" as she promised to resume campaigning this week amid calls for transparency into her health condition.

In her first interview since she wobbled, stumbled and nearly collapsed during the 15th anniversary of 9/11 attacks in New York on Sunday, the Democrat presidential candidate said she felt dizzy and lost her balance, but did not lose consciousness, and is now "feeling so much better."

"I just did not think it was going to be that big a deal. It is just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you are a busy, active person, you keep moving forward," she told CNN last night.

The health scare forced the 68-year-old former secretary of state to cancel campaign and fundraising trips to California and has fuelled concerns about her medical fitness less than two months to go for the November 8 election.

It also prompted Republican rival Donald Trump a new opening and seek her medical record, which has remained an area of intense speculation since this was not the first time she has had issues surrounding her health condition.

Previously Clinton was afflicted by an uncontrollable cough for several minutes which forced her to stop speaking during a rally in Cleveland. And in December 2013, she had to be rushed to New York's Presbyterian Hospital after a medical scare following a fainting spell and concussion.

Her campaign initially attributed Sunday's health scare to overheating and dehydration. But later said she was diagnosed with pneumonia - an inflammatory condition of the lung.

"What happened (on Sunday) was that I just was incredibly committed to being at the memorial - as a senator on 9/11, this is incredibly personal to me. And I could, feel how hot and humid it was. I felt overheated. I decided that I did need to leave," she said.

Clinton, however, tried to defend her past medical record but admitted that it was something that has occurred a few times over the course of her life.

"I think it is fair to say that people know more about me than almost anyone in public life. They have got 40 years of my tax returns, tens of thousands of e-mails, a detailed medical letter report, all kinds of personal details," she said.

"I should have gotten some rest sooner. I probably would have been better off if I had just pulled down my schedule on Friday. But, like a lot of people, I just thought I could keep going forward and power through it. And, obviously, that did not work out so well," she said.

"As soon as I got into the air-conditioned van, I cooled off, I got some water and very quickly I felt better."

The abruptly rapid turn of events has called into question why Clinton delayed by two days revealing the pneumonia diagnosis.

Both Clinton and Trump have said they intended to release more of their medical details in the coming days.
Karachi: At least 13 people, including five policemen, were today injured in two separate suicide bombings during Eid prayers targeting minority Shias in Pakistan's relatively peaceful southern Sindh province.

Four suicide attackers infiltrated Shikarpur district's Khanpur tehsil, 470 kilometres north of Karachi, police said.

Two of the attackers targeted an Eid prayer ground where one assailant blew himself up, injuring 10 people, two of whom were policemen. The other attacker fled, they said.

Two other suicide bombers targeted a Shia mosque but they were stopped at the entrance by policemen, which led to one of the attackers to blow himself up while the other was arrested.

Three policemen were injured in the attack, one of whom was critical. Last year, at least 61 people were killed in a suicide attack on a mosque in the district.

"Alert" policemen at the venues prevented huge casualties, police officer Beherdin Kehrio told reporters.

"If the policemen had not prevented these suicide bombers from entering the prayer venues there would have been large scale casualties because of the large gathering because of Eid prayers," he said.

He said the attackers at the Shia mosque were stopped by policemen as they looked suspicious and when confronted one of them detonated himself.

"The other attacker was brought down and arrested," he added.

Those injured in the blast have been admitted to hospitals in Shikarpur for treatment.

No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan has been frequently hit by sectarian violence in recent years, most of them perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shia Muslims.

However, Sindh is considered a relatively peaceful of Pakistan's four provinces and is highly influenced by Sufi doctrines and principles.
Beijing: China is concerned over increasing cost of security and potential setbacks in the development of the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an official daily here today said recognising the risks involved with the project due to a complex regional environment.

An article in the Global Times said the ambitious project - that passes through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir - is unlikely to have a plain sailing. It also referred to the reported deployment of 14,503 security guards by Pakistan to protect the 7,036 Chinese nationals working on the corridor.

"China may not want to put too much focus on the region. At the very least, it would be unwise to put all its eggs in one basket," it said highlighting China's disquiet over the project which has also cast a shadow over India-China ties.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised concerns over the project in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 meet in Hangzhou on September 4.

The article, however, made no?reference to India regarding the project, which connects China's Xinjiang province to Pakistan's southwestern Gwadar Port in Balochistan with a maze of rail, road and pipelines.

"The CPEC has long been seen as symbolic to Sino-Pakistan economic cooperation. It is unlikely that China will change its supportive attitude on the CPEC in the short term, but the increasing cost of security is becoming a big problem in efficiently pushing forward the projects," the article said.

The daily, which in the past has strongly supported the project, said in the article that it is "unlikely to be plain sailing for China and Pakistan in their attempts to push forward the CPEC due to challenges such as a complex regional environment, and people in the two countries should be prepared for potential setbacks".

The daily is part of the ruling Communist Party of China's official organ - the People's Daily publication group. It also raised questions over Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's comments last month that Pakistan attached priority to the project.

Referring to Sharif's comments, it said "given the difficulty of protecting the personnel that are working in Pakistan, projects under the CPEC may need to be implemented and assessed step-by-step".

"Beijing should consider giving more attention to its economic cooperation" with Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, whose Prime Minster is currently visiting China, to improve ties despite differences over the South China Sea.

China is reportedly concerned after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Vietnam's capital Hanoi this month.

"The CPEC has long been seen as a flagship project in China's Belt and Road initiative, but the initiative's strategic focus may need to shift gradually toward Southeast Asia, where there is a wide infrastructure funding gap but a relatively stable regional environment that will enable China to efficiently push forward ventures under the Belt and Road initiative," it said.

"Hopefully, the two countries (China and Vietnam) will be able to put aside disputes that have arose over the South China Sea and focus on promoting economic development," it said.
Kathmandu: A Nepal Airlines flight from New Delhi to Kathmandu, with 150 passengers on board, including Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat, suffered a tyre burst while landing at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) here on Tuesday.

All flights were delayed for an hour due to the incident from around 12.50 pm.

Foreign Minister Mahat was returning after a two-day official visit to New Delhi to set the stage for the visit of Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal `Prachanda` to New Delhi, beginning on Thursday, the Kathmandu Post reported.

The Nepal Airlines Corporation Airbus A320 plane got stranded on the runway following the tyre burst. The burst also caused some damage on the runway, the Post said.

The 158-seater plane named Lumbini was fully occupied.

All passengers onboard were safe and were shifted to the airport terminal.
Kathmandu: Ahead of his India visit, Nepal Prime Minister Prachanda on Tuesday said the main thrust of his trip would be to "clear all doubts" in bilateral ties and build an environment of confidence and trust.

Prachanda will travel to New Delhi on September 15 for a four-day goodwill visit, his first foreign visit after assuming power some six weeks ago.

"The main expectation of my visit is to improve and strengthen Nepal-India relations that have gone through some bitter experiences in the recent past," said 61-year-old Prachanda responding to a question during an interaction with a group foreign correspondents at his official residence in Baluwatar.

"I am also expecting that India would help us to get out of the current difficult situation that would help strengthen our ties," he said.

"What had happened last year (indicating to border blockade) was very much painful to the Nepalese people and it was also not a pleasant thing for India," said Prachanda adding, "we will move towards adding a new dimension in the bilateral relations by learning from the past."

"My visit will clear all doubts and an environment of confidence and trust will be built," he claimed.

Prachanda said the environment in Delhi is favourable for Nepal this time as he had sensed from Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat, who had just concluded his two-day visit to India.

"From the feedback I received from our Foreign Minister, it is certain that this time I would not have to bear much pressure during my visit to Delhi this time and I will be visiting there in a much relaxed manner," said the Prime Minister.

Prachanda said he would hold discussions tomorrow with the Madhesi parties and other ethnic groups, that had launched months long anti-Constitution agitation last year resulting in death of over 50 people, to resolve the crisis.

"I will hold talks with the agitating parties to address their key demands including re-demarcation of provincial boundary and citizenship issue, and I am hopeful of reaching an agreement t with them to amend the Constitution by accommodating their demands," Prachanda said.

He said that he would do everything to make the new Constitution acceptable to all the sections of Nepalese society including the Madhesis and ethnic minority groups and also expressed hope that "an environment would be created for India to welcome it."

He said his government is committed to develop a balanced, warm and cordial relations with the neighbouring countries and for the purpose he had recently sent his special envoys to India and China soon after assuming office.

Prachanda had sent Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara to China and Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bimalendra Nidhi to India as special envoys.
Dhaka: When citizens of Dhaka celebrated Eid al-Adha with gusto on a rainy Tuesday they had little idea what was in store for them  blood streams across streets in the city.

Intermittent rains since early in the morning had led to water logging in many areas given the pathetic state of drainage in the city and with people

Here are some pictures of the gory scene from a Dhaka in a celebratory mood.

Rain and animal sacrifices for Eid lead to an unsettling sight: Rivers of blood in Dhaka https://t.co/5HkpIulkwM via @DhakaTribune  Jareen Imam (@JareenAI) September 13, 2016

Dhaka is this the way u celebrate your festival #eid ?? I feel sick seeing this EidMubarak pic.twitter.com/xhcssUXdvi  MIDHUL (@iammidhul) September 13, 2016

Blood river: civic nightmare in Dhaka after rain water flows with Eid bloodhttps://t.co/9ug7My7eC5 pic.twitter.com/25vtnrapEd  NewsCrunch (@NewsCrunch1) September 13, 2016
Seoul: A South Korean appeals court today issued a 20-year jail sentence to a US citizen charged in his teens for murdering a Korean man nearly two decades ago.

The Seoul High Court upheld a lower court's decision in January that found Arthur Patterson, now 36, guilty of murdering Jo Jung-Pil, who was stabbed multiple times with a knife in a fast-food restaurant toilet.

"The defendant lived 19 years of life that the victim was deprived of but did not show any sign of sincere remorse seeking pardon from the victim and the bereaved family," South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted the court as saying.

Prosecutors argued that Patterson, who was 17 years old at the time of the crime, showed a "devil-like brutality" in stabbing Jo -- a stranger to him -- to death for no apparent reason.

Twenty years in jail is the maximum penalty in South Korea for an offender under the age of 18.

Patterson, the son of a US military contractor, had denied any involvement in the crime which took place in the nightlife district of Itaewon, close to the US military base in Seoul.

He was initially tried in 1997 as an accomplice, while Edward Lee, a Korean-American man who was at the scene, was charged with murder. Both accused the other of killing Jo.

Patterson served 18 months in prison for lesser charges including obstruction of justice, while Lee was sentenced to 20 years in jail for murder.

In 1998, Patterson was released as part of an amnesty programme, only to find himself a murder suspect again after Lee was acquitted on appeal for lack of evidence.

He fled to the United States a year later after investigators failed to renew his travel ban -- a mistake that sparked a storm of criticism.

The murder was made into a hit movie in 2009, reviving public anger over the crime and forcing South Korean prosecutors to reopen the case.

Patterson was formally charged in absentia with Jo's murder in 2011, and was extradited from the United States in September last year to face trial in Seoul.

His lawyer said he would file another appeal against the verdict.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will on Tuesday leave for Bengaluru, reeling under curfew, to undergo throat surgery for his persistent cough.

The Aam Aadmi Party leader will remain under observation for a few days after the surgery. He will stay there till doctors advise him, an official told news agency IANS.

He is likely to return on September 22.

The official, however, refused to divulge further details like the name of the hospital where Kejriwal will be treated.

Bengaluru is currently witnessing violent protests over the Cauvery water sharing row.

In Kejriwal's absence, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia will look after the chief ministerial works.

Earlier in 2015, Kejriwal had attended a 10-day naturopathy treatment for his cough problem at Jindal Naturecure Institute in Bengaluru.

Sources in the government said that after returning from Bengaluru, Kejriwal is expected to visit Goa from September 26 to 28.

In Goa, Kejriwal will meet the party workers and campaign for the assembly elections due next year.

AAP has decided to fight Assembly Elections in Goa.

(With IANS inputs)
Bengaluru: One person was killed in police firing on Monday night after angry protests turned violent in Bengaluru over releasing more Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu.

Bengaluru City Police and Bengaluru City Traffic Police officials are regularly posting updates on Twitter so as to keep the city residents posted about all the happenings in the city.

Bengaluru City Police and Bengaluru City Traffic Police officials have also requested that people should not to pay attention to rumours and follow updates only given by authentic sources like Bengaluru City Police and Bengaluru City Traffic Police Twitter handles.

Here are the Twitter handles you can follow to get the latest updates on the Bengaluru violence

Bengaluru City Traffic police

@blrcitytraffic

URL - https://twitter.com/blrcitytraffic

Bengaluru City Police

@BlrCityPolice

URL - https://twitter.com/BlrCityPolice
Bengaluru: Due to violent protests over Cauvery issue in Bengaluru city, a number of users are curious to know if Karnataka state government has declared holiday on Wednesday.

According to latest reports, there was no official word on the holiday but curfew is still in force in several areas to avoid any untoward incident.

According to Bengaluru City Police's Twitter account, "Section 144 CrPC Is Imposed In Bengaluru City From 12-09-2016 to 14-09-2016. Strict action shall be initiated against miscreants."

#CauveryIssue: #Section144 CrPC Is Imposed In Bengaluru City From 12-09-2016 to 14-09-2016.Strict action shall b initiated agnst miscreants  BengaluruCityPolice (@BlrCityPolice) September 12, 2016

Also, several users on internet are searching for if there is Karnataka bandh tomorrow.

There is no official word by government on Karnataka bandh tomorrow as well.

Bengaluru Police has requested that one should not instigated by rumours.
By India Today Web Desk: Kathy and Brandon Gunn have been married since September 1, 2007. And like all couples, they've had their fair share of quarrels and disagreements.

On their wedding day, nine years ago, Kathy's aunt Alison gave her a gift that said something unusual--something as simple as "Do not open until your first disagreement".

In May this year, Kathy and her husband finally decided to open the gift, after one of their big fights, and wrote about what transpired next on Facebook.

advertisement

"Now, there had obviously been plenty of disagreements, arguments and slammed doors throughout our 9 years," she wrote in the post, which was shared by the page Love What Matters recently. "There were even a couple of instances where we both considered giving up ? but we never opened the box."

Kathy admits that they'd avoided opening the box all these years because they thought it would symbolise failure. "To us, it would have meant that we didn't have what it takes to make our marriage work - and we're both to stubborn and determined for that," she wrote. "So it forced us to reassess situations. Was it really time to open the box? What if this isn't our worst fight? What if there's a worse one ahead of us and we don't have our box?!"

Inside the gift, they found two hand-written notes wrapped around some cash, as well as wine glasses and bath products. The note addressed to Kathy asked her to "buy pizza or something you both like" and prepare a bath. The note to Brandon said, "Go get flowers and a bottle of wine".

And Kathy's takeaway? "I realized that the tools for creating a strong, healthy marriage were never within that box - they were within us."



In an interview with People magazine, Kathy talked about how her story has inspired others. "My husband and I are in awe of how much attention this story has garnered," she says. "I had only intended to give credit to my great aunt and share how important the box was for my husband and I - and the lessons that it had inadvertently taught us. Now that our story has gotten so much attention and has inspired others, it seems to be the gift that keeps on giving!"

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi: In view of ongoing violent protests over sharing of Cauvery river water, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday made an appeal for maintaining calm while stressing on the need for finding a solution through mutual dialogue.

I appeal to people in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities, the Prime Minister said in his appeal.

Expressing his displeasure over violent nature of protests in the two states, PM Modi said, ''I am personally pained at the developments. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint & mutual dialogue.''

I trust you'll keep national interest, nation building above all else, give priority to harmony, finding a solution and eschewing violence, the PM added.

An uneasy calm prevailed in Bengaluru today, where one person was killed in police firing on Monday night and curfew is in force in 16 sensitive localities after angry protests turned violent in southern Karnataka over releasing more Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu.

"We have, however, relaxed curfew in many areas for Muslims to offer prayers on Eid at mosques and in open grounds," a police official said.

Though schools, colleges, government and private offices and banks have holiday for Eid fest, several IT firms and back offices, which are working, advised their employees to work from homes in view of the simmering tension across the city.

Shops, markets, malls, hotels, eateries and commercial establishments are observing an undeclared shutdown across the city due to fear of being attacked by protesters.

Buses, taxis and three-wheeler auto-rickshaws are also off the roads, while metro rail service has been suspended till late evening.

Hundreds of passengers alighting at railway stations in the city and at the airport on the outskirts had a tough time in reaching homes or workplaces in the absence of taxis, autos and buses.

A Rapid Action Force platoon staged a flag-march in the city's north-west suburb to instil confidence in the people that the situation is under control.

One person, Umesh, 25, died when police fired to disperse a mob attempting to torch a patrolling vehicle after ransacking a provision shop in the city's northern suburb," said the police official.

Though police initially resorted to caning and lobbing tear gas shells to prevent the enraged mob of about 50 people from turning violent, 12 rounds were fired by a platoon of the Karnataka State Reserved Police to disperse it from the troubled spot.

According to preliminary inquiry, the victim, working at a petrol retail outlet, was unfortunately present at the spot where the mob gathered.

Umesh hailed from Kunigal in Tumakuru district, about 70km from Bengaluru.

"We have imposed curfew for three days from early Tuesday in the city's north-west, south-west, north east and central areas to maintain peace and prevent untoward incidents during the festival week, Bangalore Police Commissioner NS Megharikh told the media here on late Monday.

Onam festival for Malayalis on Wednesday and immersion of idols of Hindu god Ganesha on the 10th day of the festival falls on Thursday.

"We have also issued a ban order under section 144 of the CrPC across the city to prevent assembling of more than five persons in public places and populated areas and maintain law and order," asserted Megharikh.
New Delhi: Coming down heavily on the ongoing rift between the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Janata Dal (United) over Mohammad Shahabuddin's comment on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday said the people of Bihar are suffering due to the jungle raj of the grand alliance.

"The issue between the JD (U) and the RJD and Nitish Kumar being upset, the jungle raj has definitely come in Bihar after the way Shahabuddin has been released. But at the same time, there is a mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) for the development and good governance of Bihar.

There is a jungle raj there itself because the RJD is accusing JD(U) and the JD(U) is accusing RJD. Both the partners are fighting as if it is a free for all in Bihar," BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh told ANI.

Singh said the people of Bihar are the sufferers because they are not getting good governance.After being released from jail, Shahabuddin had last week said that Nitish Kumar became the Bihar Chief Minister due to "circumstances".

However, Nitish responded saying that he had been chosen by the people of Bihar and he did not care about the comments made by anyone else.

Shahabuddin had been sent to jail in November 2005 in connection with the murder of Rajiv Ranjan, a prime witness in the murder of his two brothers Girish Raj and Satish Raj. The brothers had been murdered in Siwan in August 2004.
Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today refused to term the recent hooch tragedy in Gopalganj, in which 18 persons died, as "failure of prohibition", saying such incidents have happened in states where there was no ban on liquor.

"Some people started saying prohibition has failed in the wake of hooch tragedy in Gopalganj. But, there has been bigger hooch incidents in Uttar Pradesh and Odisha where there is no ban on alcohol," he said while addressing a workshop of doctors from rural areas on prohibition.

Listing the virtues of the decision to declare Bihar a complete dry state in April last, Kumar said, "Steps taken by the state government (on alcohol ban) cannot be retreated."

The Chief Minister said it was he who had ordered a probe on the basis of circumstantial evidence and media reports into the Gopalganj tragedy last month.

Asserting that the ban on alcohol has given him satisfaction which no other work has provided, Kumar stressed on public awareness alongside strict enforcement of the new liquor law for better results.

On the loss of about Rs 5,000 crore revenue due to the prohibition, he said, "Around Rs 10,000 crore of the people are saved due to the liquor ban, which will be spent on good things and in turn further enhance the state's GDP."

The JD(U) leader said prohibition has wider impact, particularly in rural areas, which could be gauged by visiting such area.

"There has been a marked change in the lives of poor. If you want to see the impact of prohibition, pay a visit to any village and talk to the people there," he said.

Noted eye surgeon Rajvarshan Azad, Sunil Kumar Singh and B P Singh were present at the workshop.

Kumar added that the liquor lobby was disturbed due to the prohibition in Bihar as they think successful implementation of alcohol ban will ruin their trade.
Siwan: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) strongman Mohammed Shahabuddin on Tuesday downplayed the NDAs demand slapping Crime Control Act against him and put the ball in Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumars court while asserting that if the process is initiated then it would be an administrative decision.

I will do what I have to do. I have always been the way I want. Whatever the government wants to docan dowhat can I comment on that? The grounds for initiating CCA will be prepared and then imposed. According to me, there should not be any grounds for anything but the decision will be taken on what the government says, Shahabuddin told ANI.

Its not about ego or pride. I dont have any regrets because I think a lot before speaking. I might seem to be angry when I speak. If I cant smile then how can I pretend? I have always spoken the truth, he added.

The NDA on Monday submitted a memorandum to Bihar Governor Ramnath Kovind demanding slapping the Crime Control Act against Shahabuddin.

The Patna High Court on September 7 granted bail to Shahabuddin in a case of murder of a witness in the killing of two brothers in Siwan by bathing them in acid.

Despite the bail, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushil Kumar Modi said the government should put Shahabuddin behind bars by invoking provisions of the CCA to restore the faith of the people in the government as had been done in the case of expelled Janata Dal (United) MLA Anant Singh.
Siwan: Shooter Mohammad Kaif, who is wanted in journalist Rajdeo Ranjan's murder case, was spotted with Mohammad Shahabuddin on September 10, the day the RJD strongman walked out of prison on bail after 11 years.

Kaif was said to be absconding by the police.

Shahabuddin's close associate Laddan Mian is in jail in connection with the scribe's murder and though the inquiry into it has so far not named the RJD strongman, he was shifted to Bhagalpur divisional jail from Siwan a little after the incident.

Nitish Kumar government had recommended CBI probe into the murder on demand of the journalist's family.

Reacting to the revelation, Siwan SP, Saurabh Shah said, "Police probe against the accused (Mohammad Kaif) in case (journalist Rajdev Ranjan murder case) is underway."

"Essential raids are being conducted. Have received new photos which are being analyzed, they'll be arrested soon," the police officer added.

Ranjan, 46, Siwan bureau chief with Hindi daily Hindustan, was shot dead in May this year. He had covered former MP Shahabuddin's crime and court reports.

Shahabuddin, is a member of RJD National Committee - the top decision-making body of the party and is said to be close to Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Various pending cases against him were reopened and he was sent to jail after Nitish Kumar had assumed power in Bihar in 2005.

Shahabuddin got reprieve on Wednesday when Patna High Court granted him bail in a case of murder of a witness in the 2004 killing of two brothers in Siwan.

He had got bail in nearly 12 other cases earlier.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: As blame game over an outbreak of chikungunya, dengue and other viral diseases in Delhi continues, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has sought to put the entire blame on the BJP-led central government for failure in containing the spread of vector-borne diseases.

Kejriwal has also defended the absence of Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain, who is in Goa these days to oversee the Aam Aadmi Party's preparations for next year's assembly elections.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is due to leave for throat surgery in Bengaluru, also sought to deflect criticism over Jain's absence by saying that Delhi's Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung is not in the capital either.

Interestingly, Jung is in the US.

Through a series of tweets, Kejriwal said, ''AAP has also blamed the BJP-dominated Municipal Corporation of Delhi or MCD, with Law minister Kapil Mishra asking where Delhi's "mayor has disappeared".

CM n min left wid no power now, even to buy a pen. LG n PM enjoy all powers wrt Del. LG abroad.Question them for Del https://t.co/t8ygcZmo1P  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) September 13, 2016

"The MCD is responsible for fogging to keep mosquitoes away," said Mishra.

Mishra further informed that Sayendra Jain will be back in the capital today and that he has been getting constant updates on the Delhi situation.

Kejriwal had faced criticism last week for choosing to skip a one-day session of the Delhi assembly that he had called to clear urgent business. He went to Punjab instead to supervise election work there.

While AAP's ministers defend each other and justify their absence from Delhi for election-related tours, the capital is in the grip of a health crisis, with hundreds of new cases of mosquito-borne diseases being reported every day.

Three people died of chikangunya yesterday, the first deaths from that disease in the capital. At least 10 people have died of dengue and malaria and hospitals overflowing with sick people.
Panaji: Aam Aadmi Party today announced the first list of four candidates for the Goa Assembly elections due in March 2017.

The names include AAP's state convener Walmiki Naik who will contest from the Panaji constituency, which was earlier held by Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar.

BJP legislator Siddharth Kuncolienkar currently represents Panaji constituency, a traditional bastion of the saffron party.

Besides, former Shiv Sena Goa chief Ajitsingh Rane, who had recently joined AAP, will be contesting from Mayem constituency in North Goa, which is currently represented by BJP legislator and Goa Assembly Speaker Anant Shet.

Rane is a labour union leader and has been at the forefront of various agitations in the state, the most recent one being a protest by drivers of trucks operating in iron ore mines who were demanding compensation for loss faced due the long ban on the industry in Goa.

Molu Velip, a former aide of BJP state minister Mahadev Naik, has been announced as AAP's candidate from Shiroda constituency in South Goa.

The party also announced candidature of Cruz Silva, a businessman, from Velim constituency, which is currently represented by Independent legislator Benjamin Silva.

AAP has already announced that it will contest all the 40 constituencies in the coastal state.

Top AAP leaders from Delhi including Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain have campaigned in the state for the polls.
This is for the first time in 26 years since the onset of militancy that no Eid congregations will be held at the Idgah and Hazratbal shrines here.

By PTI: In vice-like grip of unrest for over two months now, the Kashmir Valley will hardly see any festivities on the occasion of Eid today, with the state government deciding to impose "curfew-like" restrictions to prevent outbreak of violence.

The decision to impose restrictions on assembly of large number of people has been taken in view of the call by separatists for a march to the local offices of the United Nations, official sources said.

advertisement

They said security forces will be out on the streets in adequate strength following apprehension of violence by the separatist elements, who often use women and children as "shields" during protest rallies resulting in civilian casualties.



FIRST IN 26 YEARS



This is for the first time in 26 years since the onset of militancy that no Eid congregations will be held at the Idgah and Hazratbal shrines.

The government has already ordered shutdown of internet services of all telecom networks and also mobile telephony except that of the state-run BSNL for the next 72 hours because of the tense law and order situation in the state.



INTERNET SERVICES BLOCKED



The decision to completely ban internet services was taken after a review of the prevailing law and order situation in the state on the eve of Eid-ul-Zuha festival tomorrow, the sources said.

They said Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone and Reliance telecom have been ordered to shut down their services with immediate effect for 72 hours. The BSNL too has been asked to stop its broadband services for internet.

However, post-paid BSNL connections, which are mainly used by police, army and government officials, have been kept out of the purview of the ban, the sources said.

Mobile telephony was banned immediately after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8 which set off the current spiral of violence in the Valley. It was partially restored on July 27 followed by opening of only broadband Internet.

Hafiz Saeed releases new video before Eid, asks Kashmiris to back Hurriyat

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi: In what can be a sign of China relenting on India's bid for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a Chinese delegation visited New Delhi on Tuesday and discussed the issue with the Indian side.

"A Chinese delegation led by Director General Wang Qun of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs visited India on September 13 for talks with an Indian delegation led by Amandeep Singh Gill, Joint Secretary (Disarmament & International Security) in the Ministry of External Affairs," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

"The talks covered issues of mutual interest in the area of disarmament and non-proliferation," it stated.

At the NSG plenary in Seoul in June, Beijing blocked New Delhi's membership bid saying that for a country to be a member of the 48-nation bloc, it has to be a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

During Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to India last month, it was agreed that China's Director General for disarmament would hold talks with his Indian counterpart on the issue.

Wang Qun heads the Chinese side during NSG meetings.

"As agreed by the External Affairs Minister (Sushma Swaraj) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in their meeting on August 13, the two sides focused in particular on an issue of priority for India - membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group," Tuesday's External Affairs Ministry statement said.

"The discussions were candid, pragmatic and substantive. The two sides agreed to meet for the next round on a mutually convenient date," it added.
Washington: The US respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan and does not support independence for Balochistan, a state department official has said.

"The government policy is that we support the territorial integrity of Pakistan and we do not support independence for Balochistan," State Department Spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily news conference on Monday.

Kirby was responding to a question on growing criticism from both inside and outside Pakistan's Balochistan province on its independence and violation of human rights by the Pakistani security forces there.

"Where does the US stand on Balochistan? Because Indian Prime minister (Narendra Modi) has raised this subject," Kirby was asked.

"The US Government respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan and we do not support independence for Balochistan," he reiterated.

In his Independence Day address from the Red Fort, PM Modi had spoken about the situation in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Gilgit and Balochistan and said people from there have thanked him for raising their concerns.
Chandigarh: Haryana Police on Tuesday busted a flesh trade racket which was allegedly being run under the guise of a massage parlour in Gurgaon, and has nabbed seven persons, including three women.

Acting on a tip-off, Inspector Anil Kumar, Police Station, Sector 5, Gurgaon, sent Head Constable, Pawan Kumar, as a decoy customer to the massage parlour, a spokesman of the Police Department said here.

He said that during interrogation, the owner of the massage parlour who was arrested revealed that he was allegedly running a prostitution racket under the guise of a spa and used to charge Rs 1,000 or more per customer for this purpose.

The police team also arrested the main accused's three women employees, aged between 25 and 35 years, and three customers.

A case under various sections of Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act has been registered at Police Station, Sector 5, Gurgaon, the spokesman said.
Hisar: All India Jat Aarakshan Sanghrash Samiti today said they would resume their agitation on commencement of next Parliament session for their demand for reservation for the community in government services in the state as well the centre, AIJASS president Yashpal Malik said today.

Malik was addressing a rally in village Mayyar, near here.

The rally was organised to mark the death anniversary of Sunil Sheoran who died during the Jat agitation in 2012 in Mayyar village.

During the arson at the time of Jat agitation in February this year 30 people had died and properties worth crores was damaged at many places in Haryana.

Malik alleged that previous Congress government and the present BJP government were not working honestly for their demand.

"Congress as well BJP has betrayed Jats on their demand for reservation," he said.

"If the BJP government continued with its policies against reservation for Jats, they will cease to exist," he said.

"Central and state governments are adopting dual policies on reservation issue and wasting time by hanging the issue in the court," he said.

Inspite of assurance given by central government and BJP president Amit Shah, the matter of Jat reservation is still hanging and resentment is prevailing in the Jat community, he said.

He said the community is now planning an all-out battle for their reservation against the governments.

Speaking on the riots that occurred during last Jat agitation in the state, Malik alleged an MP (referring to Kurukshetra lawmaker Raj Kumar Saini) had hatched the whole plan in which several were killed.

Action should be taken against the responsible MP, he said without naming Saini.



Malik admitted that due to split in the Jat community, the agitation could not get success previously but this time it will be a big agitation.

The community has been a victim of politics, he said.

Jat leaders and a number of people of the community from Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan addressed the rally.
New Delhi: Twenty two Keralites, including six women and three children, who were reported missing in June this year, have reached the bastion of ISIS terror operations in Afghanistan, officials said.

These people, who went missing from Kasargod and Palakkad districts of the state, had left the country from Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai airports for Kuwait, Dubai, Muscat or Abudhabi from where it is understood that they travelled to Afghanistan through Iran, they said.

The revelations were made by one Yasmin Mohd Zahid (29) who was arrested by NIA sleuths from the Indira Gandhi International Airport on August 1 while she was also trying to escape to Afghanistan, sources claimed.

Yasmin told interrogators that she had got married to Abdul Rashid (30) in May in a nikah-ceremony solemnised over phone in which co-accused Shihas acted as the 'wali' (guardian) of the bride, while other co-accused Ashfak and Yahya acted as witnesses.

She said subsequently Rashid used to send videos and messages in support of the 'Caliphate' and Abubacker Al Baghdadi to her using messaging app 'Telegram', they said.

Yasmin disclosed that Rashid and his first wife Ayisha were in touch with a British couple, who were converts to Islam and were spreading messages in support of the ISIS over 'Telegram', to which she had also subscribed as advised by Rashid.

Rashid also told Yasmin that in first week of July, he and other missing persons from Kerala, had reached the 'Caliphate' in Afghanistan.

She told the sleuths that Rashid had given the ATM card of his first wife Ayisha to her and transferred funds to the tune of Rs 1.5 lakh into the account in mid-July, which Yasmin used for her travel preparations to Afghanistan.

"She had purchased flight tickets, paid for the Afghanistan visa and also purchased USD 620 using the money," the officials said.

NIA officials were also informed that the sister of another missing accused Dr Ijas recently got a message from him informing their family that he and his wife Refaela have been blessed with a baby girl on September 6.
Delhi: Reacting to comments by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, India said on Tuesday that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir had become a hub for the global export of terror.

Noting that the commissioner had received 'conflicting narratives on the cause for the confrontations', India pointed out - "It would be recalled that the present situation arose from the death of a self-acknowledged commander of the terrorist organization, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, who was wanted for several terrorist acts. It was further aggravated by sustained cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan. Terrorism is the grossest violation of human rights and should be so acknowledged by any impartial and objective observer. The high number of casualties sustained by Indian security forces is a reflection of the tremendous restraint they have displayed in difficult circumstances."

The statement by Ministry of External Affairs further stated, "As regards the suggestion for a visit of a mission to both sides of the Line of Control, we would underline that there is no comparison between the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The former has a democratically elected government, while the latter has seen a Pakistani diplomat arbitrarily appointed as its head. The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is part of a pluralistic and secular democracy, where freedoms are guaranteed by an independent judiciary, an active media and a vibrant civil society. In contrast, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is administered by a deep state and has become a hub for the global export of terror."

"The issue of an external mission was considered by the All-Party Conference on 12 August 2016 that met to discuss the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. It was unanimously felt that Indian democracy has all that is required to address legitimate grievances. Accordingly, an all-party delegation visited Srinagar. Despite cross-border terrorist infiltration that saw an encounter only yesterday, Government remains fully engaged in normalizing the situation as soon as possible," MEA added.

'Terrorism is the grossest violation of human rights.' Our response to comments by UN High Comm'r for Human Rights https://t.co/lhRO518Bam  Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) September 13, 2016

OHCHR had today asked India and Pakistan to grant it 'unconditional access' to both sides on the Line of Control to establish an 'objective assessment' of the situation in Kashmir.

In his opening statement at the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, "Two months ago, I requested the agreement of the Governments of India and Pakistan to invite teams from my Office to visit both sides of the Line of Control."

"We had previously received reports, and still continue to do so, claiming the Indian authorities had used force excessively against the civilian population under its administration. We furthermore received conflicting narratives from the two sides as to the cause for the confrontations and the reported large numbers of people killed and wounded. I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides."

He said Pakistan has already handed over a letter formally inviting an OHCHR team to the Pakistani side of the line of control, but in tandem with a mission to the Indian side.

"I have yet to receive a formal letter from the Government of India. I therefore request here and publicly, from the two Governments, access that is unconditional to both sides of the line of control," he said, as per PTI.

Meanwhile, in Islamabad Pakistan Foreign Office welcomed Zeid Ra'ad's statement and said, "The visit by the OHCHR team would help to end the culture of impunity which is prevailing for more than 68 years, in violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions."

Foreign Office said Pakistan will give access to any UN team to its controlled region.

"We note the High Commissioner's statement that he awaits a formal letter from India for access to Kashmir. We urge India to respond to this request," the Foreign Office said.

(With Agency inputs)
Islamabad: Dedicating this years Eid-ul-Azha to the ''endless sacrifices of Kashmiris'', Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has pledged to dedicate all coming Eids to the people of Kashmir till the resolution of dispute in accordance with their wishes.

On this day of Eid, we cannot forget the sacrifices of the people of Kashmir too. The people of Kashmir, facing the Indian atrocities, have sacrificed their third generation to achieve their right of self-determination,'' he said in his message.

We dedicate this Eid to the endless sacrifices of Kashmiri people and will continue to dedicate all coming Eids to the Kashmiris till the issue of Kashmir is resolved in accordance with their wishes, the Prime Minister added in his message on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha being observed in the country on Tuesday.

He said Eid-ul-Azha was a remembrance of the submission of Hazrat Ibrahim Allaih Salam and the obedience and acceptance of Hazrat Ismail Allaih Salam.

The family of Hazrat Ibrahim sacrificed every worldly relation for the pleasure of their Cherisher and preferred the will of Allah Almighty on every occasion, he said, adding its peak point was the sacrificial of son.

Allah Almighty accepted this act of father and son in a way that it was made part of Hajj rituals and the Muslim society was made obliged to keep this tradition alive, he added.

Pakistan, today, with the grace and blessings of Allah Almighty, has been put on the path of prosperity. We have to take it to its destination, he added.

He, however, said,Today, we have a question before us, as if we can sacrifice our ego and interests for the sake of Pakistan? On the occasion of this Eid, we have to give a message of unity to the whole nation. By keeping the tradition of Hazrat Ibrahim, we have to sacrifice for others.

The Prime Minister extended hearty felicitations to all the Muslims residing in Pakistan and in the whole world, particularly, the Kashmiri people and thanked Allah Almighty, Who once again blessed them with this felicitous occasion.

He prayed that the nation continued to embrace such happy occasions in their lives repeatedly.

I pray that Allah Almighty bless all of us with real pleasures of Eid-ul-Azha and enable us to understand and perform this great reverence of sacrifice in its true spirit. Ameen!, the Prime Minister added.
Lahore: Needling India yet again, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today dedicated Ei-dul Azha to the "supreme sacrifices" of Kashmiris and said their voices cannot be "suppressed through force".

"We cannot ignore sacrifices of Kashmiris. They will succeed through their sacrifices. We dedicate this Eid to the supreme sacrifices of Kashmiri people and we?will continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is not resolved according to their (Kashmiri people) wishes," the Prime Minister said in his message on the occasion of Eid-ul Azha.

Sharif offered Eid prayer along with other family members in the mosque at his Raiwind residence here.

He said, "Kashmiri people have sacrificed their third generation in their struggle to get freedom from India."

"They are struggling for their right to self- determination and facing Indian atrocities. Their voice cannot be suppressed through force," he said.

President Mamnoon Hussain, in his message on the occasion, said Pakistan must remember "our Kashmiri brothers and sisters affected by terrorism".

"During this hour of need we must support the Kashmiri people. They are facing the worst atrocities to get their right to self-determination. Time is not far away when the Kashmiri people will get dividend of their supreme?struggle. They will soon?celebrate such festivals in free land," the President said.

Meanwhile, Jammat-ud-Dawah chief and Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed led Eid prayers at Gaddafi Stadium and prayed for the "success of Kashmiris fighting against Indian forces."

He urged the Nawaz Sharif government to take firm stance on Kashmir and "help them get freedom".

Sharif had last month nominated 22 parliamentarians as special envoys to be dispatched to world capitals to highlight the Kashmir issue.

He had earlier asked the international community to investigate into the "atrocities" committed by Indian forces and a fair inquiry into the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani.

Sharif's remarks came against the backdrop of escalating war of words between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the continuing unrest in the Kashmir Valley that broke out on July 8 after Wani was killed by security forces.
Shimla: Tension prevailed at a mosque in Himachal Pradesh village on Tuesday when two groups of a community clashed during Eid festivities, the state police said.

The clash occurred at the mosque at Misarwala, located some 25 km from Nahan town in Sirmaur district, when one group objected to the Eid prayers being conducted by a particular priest, a police official told IANS.

The official said the other group was insisting that the priest shortlisted by it should conduct the prayers. This led to the clash among the two groups.

"Four people were injured and a few vehicles parked near the mosque were damaged by the protesters," he added.

At the time of incident, over 3,000 people had gathered in the mosque.

The security in the area has been heightened and no arrest has been made yet.
New Delhi: Everybody is blessed with a unique talent. A video has gone viral on social media showing a kid entertaining his fellow classmates in a hilarious way.

After watching this, the kid will surely become the cynosure of all eyes.

Watch the entertaining video here:
Dawood Ibrahim, who is being addressed by his syndicate members as 'Bade Hazrat' these days, is annoyed as one of his 'trusted' accomplices, identified only as Khalique, is suspected to have escaped with the money which was raised in the name of the underworld don.

By Atir Khan: Is Dawood losing grip on his crime syndicate? Apparently, one of his henchman has reportedly siphoned off at least Rs 45 crore, which was meant to be deposited in a Canadian bank. Latest intercepts by central intelligence agencies suggest that the entire D-Company is worried after the event and could possibly target the person responsible.

Dawood Ibrahim, who is being addressed by his syndicate members as 'Bade Hazrat' these days, is annoyed as one of his 'trusted' accomplices, identified only as Khalique, is suspected to have escaped with the money which was raised in the name of the underworld don.

advertisement

Intelligence sources say that this is one of the rarest events when somebody within the D-Company is suspected to have dared to have misappropriated money raised in Dawood's name.

Intercepts of conversation amongst members of the D-Company by central intelligence agencies suggest that the former had entrusted Khalique and Rais to deposit Rs 45 crore in Canada and Panama.

According to the intercepts, as per Khalique, the black money belonging to unknown white-collared people in Delhi, was deposited in a Canadian bank. However, his associate Rais made some blunder due to which the bank has refused to release it.

CONVERTING BLACK MONEY INTO WHITE

At times, banks do deposit money on the insistence of clients, but during the diligence exercise, they demand an explanation of the source of the money. Until they are convinced that the deposited money is not proceeds of crime, they do not release it.

Documents accessed by India Today Group show that D-Company members have been engaged in round-tripping (converting black money into white through tax havens) for some white-collared people in India. The intercepts of the telephonic conversation between DCompany's Pakistan operative Jabir Moti and Khalique while he was in Sharjah, show that a D-Company team had transferred the black money to Panama and Canada in 2012.

The operatives had discussed a figure of '45', out of which '20' belonged to a Bollywood superstar and '5' was to be given to D-Company as commission and the remaining was to be invested in Panama and Canada.

It is not clear whether they are talking about Rs 45 crore or Rs 45 thousand crore. The money was supposed to be brought back to India as white money. Some unidentified brokers had been activated by D-Company for this purpose.

Interestingly, during the conversation, Jabir informed Khalique that Rais, who had deposited the money in the banks, informed them that some money had been misappropriated by Khalique in the name of 'Bade Hazrat'.

To this, Khalique replied that he did not misappropriate any money, but it was Rais, who had deposited the money in Panama and Canada, who made some mistake due to which the money was blocked. And the blocked money could only be retrieved after he receives a debit/credit card statement from his banks.

advertisement

Khalique (who is of Indian-origin) had sent two of his associates to Canada on November 16, 2015, and they were supposed to reach a place where they would receive debit/credit card statements.

Sources said that Khalique and Rais are blaming each other for the goof-up, and Dawood is not happy with this bickering. He wants to know what went wrong due to which the money had been blocked. Sources said that it is suspected Khalique is hiding somewhere in northeast India, and the D-Company is eyeing him for an explanation. Meanwhile intelligence agencies are also trying to identify the people who had provided black money to the D-Company to convert them into white money.

ALSO READ:

Dawood Ibrahim's money was not swindled, Indian government had it seized





--- ENDS ---
Jammu: The three-day-long operation against militants in Poonch district of Jammu region ended on Tuesday evening, police said, although search operations are still continuing in the area.

The police said the operation against holed up militants in the under construction Mini Secretariat building in Poonch town ended without another body of a militant having been found inside.

Firing had started between the holed up militants and security forces in the area on Sunday.

Four militants and a policeman were killed in the gunfight while five others, including a Sub-Inspector of Police, a civilian and three army soldiers, were injured.

The Army had pressed its elite commandos into the operation to flush out the holed up militants.

While three militants were killed on Sunday, the body of the fourth militant was found by the search parties of the Army inside the 60-room building on Monday.
Jammu: The Jammu and Kashmir BJP on Tuesday passed a resolution for the "dignified return" of Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) to the Valley.

A resolution was passed by the party's state unit on the return of the members of the KP community to the Valley with a release stating that the BJP stood by its?commitment?of ensuring a dignified return of KPs.

On the 27th Martyrs Day of Tika Lal Taploo, former vice- president of BJP Kashmir, tributes were paid here to him as well as those civilians and security forces personnel who were killed by terrorists.

BJP state president?and MLA Sat Sharma applauded the work of Taploo and described him as "a symbol of nationalism and the voice of the Kashmiri people who never compromised on principles".

He said Taploo's death during the early days of militancy in Kashmir not only deprived the BJP but the entire nation and added that at this "crucial juncture", when Kashmir was on the boil, a leader like him was much needed.

He assured the displaced KP community that the saffron party was always with them and supported the resolution for their return to the Valley.

State Minister of PHE, Irrigation and Flood Sham Choudhary highlighted Taploo's contribution to the KP community and the BJP.

He also paid tribute to Premnath Bhat who was killed by terrorists in Anantnag and other martyrs.

MLC Surinder Ambardar paid tribute to Taploo, Bhat, the martyrs of Wandahana, Chattisinghpora Nadimarg and voiced support to the resolution on the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley.
Srinagar: Two people have died and several others were injured in clashes across Kashmir after morning prayers for Eid on Tuesday as authorities banned gatherings at historic mosques and clamped curfew in all 10 Valley districts for the first time in decades.

One death was reported during clashes with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Bandipora district.

The Army, which has been asked to be on standby, will step in if there is fresh outbreak of violence in the Valley, which has been witnessing widespread unrest for over two months leading to death of over 75 people so far, official sources said.

Army troops have already been stationed at vantage points in rural areas which have a history of violent protests, they said, adding curfew will be in force from midnight tonight.

The decision to impose restrictions on assembly of large number of people has been taken in view of the call by separatists for a march to the local offices of the United Nations tomorrow, official sources said.

This is probably for the first time that curfew will be in place on the day of Eid festival ever since militancy broke out in the state in 1990.

Helicopters and drones will keep a bird's eye vigil from the skies and give early warning to security forces in case of assembly of people in certain areas, the sources said.

They said security forces will be out on the streets in adequate strength following apprehension of violence by the separatist elements, who often use women and children as "shields" during protest rallies resulting in civilian casualties.

This is for the first time in 26 years since the onset of militancy that no Eid congregations will be held at the Idgah and Hazratbal shrines here.

The sources said that people will, however, be allowed to offer Eid prayers in local mosques.

The government has already ordered shutdown of Internet services of all telecom networks and also mobile telephony except that of the state-run BSNL for the next 72 hours because of the tense law and order situation in the state.

The decision to completely ban Internet services was taken after a review of the prevailing law and order situation in the state on the eve of Eid-ul-Zuha festival tomorrow, the sources said.

They said Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone and Reliance telecom have been ordered to shut down their services with immediate effect for 72 hours. The BSNL too has been asked to stop its broadband services for Internet.

However, post-paid BSNL connections, which are mainly used by police, army and government officials, have been kept out of the purview of the ban, the sources said.

Mobile telephony was banned immediately after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8 which set off the current spiral of violence in the Valley. It was partially restored on July 27 followed by opening of only broadband Internet.

Opposition National Conference slammed the government for its decision to impose curfew, saying it vindicated the party's claim that the Mehbooba Mufti government had no control over the situation.

"The PDP always loves to compare the situation with 2010 agitation but never ever has there been a curfew on auspicious occasion like Eid before," the National Conference spokesman said.

With PTI inputs
Srinagar: The security forces` operation to neutralize holed up militants in Jammu and Kashmir`s Poonch continued for third consecutive day today.

With the killing of one more terrorist yesterday, the number of militants killed during the ongoing encounter since Sunday morning has risen to four.

Two security forces personnel were also injured in the gun battle yesterday.The security forces have cordoned off the entire area.

Apprehending the presence of some more militants in under construction building of Mini secretariat, military operation was resumed yesterday morning.

Three militants were killed while a policeman had lost life in encounter on Sunday.Heavy intermittent exchanges of fire has been reported throughout the day yesterday and last night.
Srinagar: Authorities foiled a protest march called by separatists on Tuesday to the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) here by imposing a curfew.

The separatists had called for the march from all parts of Srinagar to the high-security Sonwar area where UNMOGIP is headquartered.

All roads leading to Sonwar were sealed off with heavy deployment of police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), blocking all vehicles and even pedestrians.

The Eid congregation near a shrine in Sonwar was also disallowed by the authorities fearing that the devotees might march to the nearby UN office.

All the separatist leaders have been placed under detention since the ongoing unrest that started a day after Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was killed on July 8.

The UNMOGIP has officers at Srinagar, Baramulla and Muzaffarabad and it is mandated to ensure that ceasefire violations don't occur between India and Pakistan on the Line of Control (LoC) between the two countries.

Despite its limited mandate, it has become customary for separatists to hand over memoranda to officials posted at UNMOGIP.


Bengaluru: The pro-Kannada activists on Tuesday continued their protest in Mandya, Karnataka over the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh yesterday assured full assistance to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Governments to deal with the current state of violence that is prevailing in both the states over the Cauvery water issue.

Singh has assured assistance to both Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to tackle the present state of unrest.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the protests erupting over the Cauvery issue, Jayalalithaa has written to Siddaramaiah, requesting him to ensure safety and security of Tamilians residing in Karnataka.

With protests escalating in the wake of Cauvery water dispute that escalated between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the Bengaluru Police yesterday imposed Section 144 of the CRPC, meaning that no more than five people will be allowed to gather in public places in the city.

A massive violence broke out yesterday in parts of the city as several trucks, school buses and bus stands were seen being set on fire by the pro-Kannada protestors in West Bengaluru.

The protesters targeted vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu registration numbers and set them on fire.

They also vandalised trucks near Hubli bypass in Karnataka.Meanwhile, saying "we will fight it legally", Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara has requested pro-Kannada activists and farmers associations to maintain peace.

He also informed that 10 companies of CRPF and the Rapid Action Force (RAF) have been sent.

Siddaramaiah has also appealed for peace and has written to his counterpart in Tamil Nadu, urging her to ensure the safety of Kannada speaking people living in the state.

He also urged the Tamil Nadu authorities to take action against those indulging in violence.

Modifying its September 5 order, the apex court yesterday asked the Karnataka Government to release to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water every day to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

It had earlier directed the Karnataka Government to release of 15,000 cusecs of water for 10 days as immediate relief to farmers in Tamil Nadu.
Bengaluru: A day after being rocked by large-scale violence over the Cauvery water, an uneasy calm enveloped Bengaluru on Tuesday, even as the Karnataka government decided to comply with the Supreme Court's modified order to release 12,000 cusecs of water Tamil Nadu till September 20.

However, the government warned of dealing with an "iron hand" any violence after an emergency Cabinet meeting which took stock of the situation and decided to comply with the Apex Court order passed yesterday.

In Bengaluru, under prohibitory orders till tomorrow and where 16 localities remained under curfew, there were palpable signs of normalcy returning, as city police assisted by central forces kept a close vigil.

A bus that was half burnt yesterday was torched once again today near New Timber layout and another vehicle was also set on fire near Tigalarapalya here. Both had Tamil Nadu registration number plates.

Police lobbed tear gas at Hegganahalli and Pattegarapalaya as protesters tried to burn tyres on the streets, defying curfew.

Sporadic protests have been reported in various parts of the state like Mandya, Chitradurga, Ramanagara and Mysuru.

A 30-year-old man died today of multiple injuries he suffered while escaping police lathicharge when he jumped in panic from a three-storey building here yesterday, police said, with the toll in the unrest over Cauvery row rising to two.

One person had died in police firing yesterday.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the victim did not die due to police action, but due to the injuries he had suffered.

Facing more pressure after the apex court's modified order, Siddaramaiah held an emergency cabinet meeting which decided that though it was "most difficult" to follow, the direction could not be disobeyed or rejected as it would be against the Constitution.

"This order is the most difficult to follow. But when we are functioning within the framework of the Constitution, though it is a difficult order, as a constitutionally formed government it is difficult to violate or reject the Supreme Court order. It will be a violation of the Constitution," he told reporters, as per PTI.

Siddaramaiah said the Cabinet, after weighing the pros and cons "constitutionally, legally and politically" and keeping in mind the main Special Leave Petition challenging the Cauvery tribunal's final award coming up on October 18, decided to obey the court order.

He said the first order passed on September 5 itself was difficult and yesterday's was "most difficult" to follow.

"But we have accepted the federal set up and that the legislature, executive and judiciary should function in a way complementary to one another," he said.

The CM said he would meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention and requesting him to call a meeting of Chief Ministers of both states to resolve the issue.

On the other hand, Tamil Nadu was peaceful, with security beefed up for businesses owned by Kannadigas and also for popular personalities of Karnataka origin.

Tamil Nadu was peaceful, with security beefed up for businesses owned by Kannadigas and also for popular personalities of Karnataka origin.

However, angry truck owners in Tamil Nadu told the media that they would hold a demonstration in Hosur town, condemning the burning of around 45 trucks by hooligans in Karnataka, as per IANS.

In its September 5 order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighbouring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September 9.

(With Agency inputs)
Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Police on Tuesday tightened the security of severals south superstars like Rajinikanth, Prabhu Deva and Ramesh Aravind, in the wake of escalating tension between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over Cauvery water issue.

"Extra security has been provided and personnel has been deployed at houses of actors from Karnataka in the state," Tamil Nadu DGP told media.

Rajinikanth, who enjoys a huge fan following in Karnataka, yesterday came under the radar of several activists of a pro-Kannada group, who tore the superstar's movie posters in Bengaluru.

During the release of Rajinikanth's recent release 'Kabali', his posters and hoarding were put up in many places in Bengaluru and Mysuru. Some of those posters were torn apart by the mob shouting anti-Tamil Nadu slogans.

Protesters also damaged Rajinikanth's hoardings in Mysuru's Siddharth Nagar and removed posters in Ramakrishna Nagar Circle, reports said.

Widespread violence had broken out in southern Karnataka on Monday over the apex court order to release Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu, with angry Kannadiga protesters torching over 200 buses of a Tamil-owned bus depot in Bengaluru.

Parts of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry too saw protests by fringe outfits, with some commercial and government establishments of Karnataka coming under attack, in an apparent retaliation of happenings in Karnataka.

In view of the deteriorating situation, the Centre rushed 10 companies (about 1,000 personnel) of the special anti-riot paramilitary force RAF to Karnataka.


Imphal: One armed cadre of the Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF) was killed during an hour long gun battle with the cadres of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) late on Monday in Tamenglong district of Manipur.

Police sources told IANS on Tuesday that a posse of police and Assam Rifles have reached Taodaijang village where the fierce gun battle took place.

Confirming the recovery of the bullet-ridden body of the militant, police said that he was identified by local residents as Paouwalung of Ajuram village in the same district.

NSCN(IM) and ZUF are enemies and draw guns on sight of each other. There had been some encounters between the two outfits recently.

Combing operations have also been started in the suspected areas to flush the militants out. The ceasefire between the Indian government and the NSCN(IM) does not extend to Manipur.

Tamenglong district of Manipur is adjacent to Nagaland and as such cadres of these two outfits sneak into it from time to time.

There had been chance encounters. Besides, temporary mobile camps were also attacked which killed and injured some cadres. Being a mountainous region there cannot be tooth combs to smoke out the armed militants.
According to MCD authorities, inadequate public support to mosquito fogging posed a big challenge to disease control and prevention.

Public cooperation is critical to fighting the viruses, said Bir Singh, a malaria inspector with the MCD. Photo: Reuters

By Priyanka Singh: Overstretched by the outbreak of dengue and chikungunya, Delhi's municipal authorities are blaming what they call inadequate cooperation from the residents to their disease-control measures.

TACKLING THE SITUATION

So far, around 1,724 people have been diagnosed with chikungunya and and 1,158 with dengue in the capital, official data shows.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has escalated field visits and house-to-house fumigation as city hospitals burst at the seams with patients suffering from mosquito-transmitted diseases.

advertisement

Residential inspections have increased three-fold, said Prithvi Singh, an entomologist at the MCD. Emergency staff, he said, were now visiting at least 150 houses a day in a single neighbourhood to check mosquito breeding.

They have been advised to carry out fumigation rigorously in high-risk zones, Singh added.

RESIDENTS DON'T COMPLY, THEY SAY

According to MCD authorities, inadequate public support to mosquito fogging posed a big challenge to disease control and prevention.

Many people, claimed Singh, would not allow fumigators into their home. Public cooperation is critical to fighting the viruses, said Bir Singh, a malaria inspector with the MCD.

"But we don't get it every time," he insisted.

Domestic fumigation requires homeowners to stay outdoor for at least 30 minutes after the mosquito fog, the officials explained. They are also required to cover their food. "Some people just don't want to take these basic precautions. They tell our staff to fumigate outside of their homes while our experience shows breeding occurs mostly inside," Prithvi Singh said.

ON THE OTHER HAND

On their part, residents say city health services have been as slow as every year in tackling the spread of dengue and chikungunya.

"They stepped up their programs just now. These diseases break out every year. They should have taken the measures long back," a resident complained.

REALITY CHECK

Last week, India Today conducted a realty-check of the systems in place to combat the debilitating disease.

In Delhi's Geeta Colony, two field workers were found to be on the fumigation job. Of the nine fogging machines, some were either dysfunctional or were just gathering dust. The situation was no different in Krishna Nagar's municipal office in East Delhi, with staff and equipment crunch impacting anti-mosquito drives.

India Today then conducted a reality check in South Delhi's Lajpat Nagar, where dengue's larvae were found in half of the houses.

Uncovered pots of water and filth exacerbated the problem. At West Delhi's Raghubir Nagar, shortage of manpower was found to be affecting fumigation operations.



--- ENDS ---
Agartala: The Speaker of Tripura Assembly Ramendra Chandra Debnath has rejected the demand of Trinamool Congress (TMC) to grant status of the Leader of Opposition to its MLA Diba Chandra Hrankhawl on the plea that the party has no numerical strength.

"The numerical strength of the Opposition must be equal to the quorum to get the status of the Leader of Opposition, which means the Opposition should be at least ten in number to represent the House.

"As the strength of the TMC MLAs is less than ten in number no LoP status will be given to the party," the Speaker told reporters here today.

The six TMC MLAs, who switched sides from Congress in June, were recognised as TMC MLAs by the Speaker on August 29 citing rules and a Supreme Court verdict, but refused the main Opposition party status in the Assembly.

Soon after the TMC MLAs were recognised by the Speaker, chairman of the Trinamool Congress state unit Ratan Chakraborty wrote fresh letters demanding Leader of Opposition status to their senior MLA Diba Chandra Hrankhawl, who was appointed as the chief of the TMC legislature party.

"I have further studied the issue and TMC cannot be given the status of main Opposition party and thus, cannot be given the status of the Leader of Opposition from their party. According to the verdict of apex court and rules and practices of Lok Sabha and Tripura Assembly, TMC cannot get the Opposition party status in the House," Debnath said.



Chakraborty, however, said TMC was eligible to get the LoP status according to the legislative Assembly Acts of 1972 and 2008.

"We are consulting legal experts on this and might challenge the Speaker's verdict," he said.
Vellore: AG Perarivalan, one of the seven convicts in former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case who has been behind bars since the day of his arrest on June 11, 1991, was attacked inside the Vellore Central prison on Tuesday.

According to news agency ANI, 44-year-old Perarivalan was attacked by fellow prisoner Rajesh.

Prison officials have declined to spell out details of the incident, including the reason for the attack, maintaining that an inquiry by prison authorities was on.

Perarivalan is being treated at the prison hospital, police said. Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber at nearby Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991 and seven persons - Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan, Nalini, Robert Payas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran, were convicted in the case.

Nalini's death sentence was commuted to life in 2000 following a cabinet recommendation and appeal by Rajiv's wife, Sonia Gandhi.

The Supreme Court had commuted the death sentence of Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan in February 2014 following delay in deciding on their mercy plea.

The Tamil Nadu government had in March this year decided to remit the sentences of all the seven convicts.

However, the matter soon went to the Supreme Court and is pending there, with the Central government questioning the State's powers to grant remission to them on specific grounds.

The seven convicts are V Sriharan alias Murugan, AG Perarivalan, T. Suthendraraja alias Santhan, Jayakumar, Robert Payas, Ravichandran and Nalini.
Muzaffarnagar: Nine Nepalese tourists were injured when a bus in which they were travelling was hit by another bus near Banat on Khatima-Panipat Highway in Shamli district, police said today.

The incident took place yesterday when the victims were returning to Nepal from Himachal Pradesh, they said.

The victims have been identified as Karan Bahadur, Manoj Gyan Bahadur, Kishordhan Bahadur, Rita, Harish and Jitender.

All the victims were shifted to a hospital, police said, adding, the bus driver fled the spot.

In a separate incident, a couple was crushed to death when the motorcycle in which they were travelling was hit by a bus on Jhinjhana road in Shamli district yesterday.

The incident occurred when they Ramesh (28) and his wife Mithilesh (26) were returning to Karnal, Nishank Sharma, Circle officer said.

The bodies have been sent for postmortem, the CO said, adding, the erring driver fled the spot.
Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday pitched for a debate on the observance of Bakr-Eid (the feast of sacrifice), being celebrated on Tuesday, in an "eco-friendly" way.

On the Bakr-Eid or Eid al-Adha, Muslims across the world sacrifice animals as part of their holy tradition.

Paying heed to the BJP's advice, the Awadh unit of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-backed organisation Muslim Rashtriya Manch has decided to not sacrifice a goat today.

It will instead celebrate the festival by cutting a cake baked in the shape of a goat, reported The Indian Express. The cake weighing 5 kgs will be cut at the Manchs Awadh prant office in Lucknow.

The volunteers associated with Manch will not be cooking biryani at their homes, but prepare sewaiyan and dahi vada.

Many activists have been campaigning against the slaughter of animals with a section of them arguing that not killing animals is good for the environment.
Lucknow: The RSS Muslim wing on Tuesday celebrated Eid by cutting cake with 'No Bakra Goat 2016' written in icing.

Check out the pictures below:

Eid-ul-Zuha or Bakrid is being celebrated across the country today.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today greeted the nation on the occasion of Eid, hoping the festival will usher in peace and togetherness.

"Id-ul-Zuha greetings. May this festival enhance the spirit of peace & togetherness in our society," he said in a tweet.
Singur: A festive mood prevails in Singur where West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will on Wednesday return 9,117 land records to farmers and compensate 800 peasants from whom land had been taken against their will for the Tata Motors' Nano project, redeeming a pledge she made years back.

Two weeks after the Supreme Court struck down the land acquisition made by the erstwhile Left Front government and ordered the land be returned to the cultivators, the state government will celebrate the "Singur festival" in the Hooghly district rural pocket, even as skeptics raise questions over the industrial prospects of the state after the recent turn of events.

The main function is being held at Sanapara - the same spot of the Durgapur Expressway where Banerjee had held a 16-day sit-in protest in 2008 demanding 400 acres out of the total 997.11 acres acquired for the project be returned to the "unwilling farmers". The intense and often violent peasant movement had resulted in Tata Motors abandoning the Singur project and later bringing out the small car Nano from Sanand in Gujarat.

Banerjee, who had staked a lot during the movement, and even undertaken a 26-day hunger strike, rode on the anti-land acquisition stir in Singur and Nandigram (in East Midnapore district) to end the 34-year LF rule and become the state's first woman chief minister.

Both during the agitation, and after coming to power in the state in May, 2011, Banerjee had promised to return the land to the farmers. In fact, the first decision of the Banerjee cabinet was to return 400 acres to the peasants.

As Banerjee returns for her tryst with Singur on a triumphant note, a huge 80 feet long and 60 feet wide stage has been erected on one side of the Durgapur Expressway.

Pulling out all stops to make the programme a success, the district administration has installed floodlights and CCTV cameras and deployed 5,000 civic volunteers and police personnel to ensure fool-proof security. Around a dozen giant screens have come up in Singur and adjacent areas so that people can watch the entire proceedings live.

On August 31, the Supreme Court had quashed the land acquisition for the small car factory and given 12 weeks time to return the land to farmers.

Banerjee on Monday said that out of 997.11 acres, the state would complete land survey and demarcation of plots for 620 acres by Tuesday.

Asked about the demolition of the factory shades and administrative offices of Tata Motors at the abandoned project site, Banerjee had said: "We are following the verdict of the Supreme Court. We expect they will shift their materials. We will request them. If they don't or request us to shift the materials, the state government will set aside the same."

The state government has deployed its state apparatus in a massive way to complete the land survey expeditiously. Drones and GPS satellite mapping had been used for the purpose.

The opposition Left Front and the Congress have derided the debt-stressed state government for "wasting" money on the celebrations, at a time when it had failed to rope in big investments that could have brought the much-needed jobs to the state.


Islamabad: The Committee on Human Rights in the Pakistan Senate has expressed serious concern over the recovery of 1,200 unclaimed bodies from Balochistan.

In a recent statement, the committee, which was chaired by Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Nasreen Jalil, said that this revelation was a stinging indictment of the state and showed that the people did not trust the state and its institutions.

Members of the committee called for a comprehensive briefing from the director-general of Pakistan Rangers on Balochistan and on the dumping of unclaimed bodies in its next meeting.

Police sources have reportedly told the committee that as many as 545 people had been killed in 2014-15 and 2015-16.

The committee sought a detailed year-wise report on such deaths in the province.

The police are under instructions from the Supreme Court to conduct DNA tests of the unclaimed bodies and to assist the missing persons` families for identification.

Police said that they did not conduct the tests because nobody has showed up to claim any of the dead bodies so far.

Over the past month and a half, prominent Baloch leaders have repeatedly expressed their concern and helplessness over what they describe as the atrocities of the Pakistan`s military in Balochistan, and maintained that the situation in the province is graver than usual.

Baloch Republican Party Founding Chief Brahmudagh Bugti has alleged that people are migrating from the province because of violence in the region, as atrocities have increased over time and said the situation has to be monitored more thoroughly to know the exact status of the people.

He said that people disappear and are killed on a daily basis and claimed that this has been a regular affair since 2010.

Bugti said that they were trying to garner help from everywhere, including human rights organizations and NGOs to make them aware of the situation in Balochistan.

Representative of Balochistan at UNHRC and EU Mehran Marri has also expressed similar sentiments, saying that recently the Chief of Army Staff, General Raheel Sharif, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and others had a meeting and that they had agreed on a National Action Plan, but now, it was clear that the meeting was held to strategise on ways to isolate Baloch activists and the population from the rest of Pakistan.
Seoul: China must help the international community close loopholes in sanctions on North Korea after an "unprecedented" series of provocations by Pyongyang this year, a top US envoy said on Tuesday.

With two nuclear tests and more than 20 missile launches so far in 2016, the North`s leader Kim Jong-Un has hit a new low, said Sung Kim, the US State Department`s special representative for North Korea policy.

"North Korea once again has demonstrated blatant and reckless disregard for its commitments and international obligations," Kim said during a two-day visit to Seoul.

"This is quite unprecedented, even by North Korea standards," he told journalists after meeting with his South Korean counterpart Kim Hong-Kyun.

Following Pyongyang`s fourth nuclear test in January, the UN Security Council adopted the toughest sanctions regime to date, targeting the North`s trade in minerals and tightening banking restrictions.

But since then, Pyongyang has carried out a series of rocket launches, and on Friday detonated its biggest ever nuclear bomb.

The UN Security council is scrambling to come up with new penalties, but five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006 have failed to deter the North.

The international community has also engaged in a flurry of diplomacy in an attempt to persuade China to use its leverage.

China -- Pyongyang`s sole ally and largest benefactor -- had a key role to play in showing North Korea the "serious consequences for its unlawful and dangerous actions," Kim said.

Beijing has said it opposes the testing, but analysts believe it pulls its punches because it is desperate to avoid anything that would imperil the status quo and alter the balance of power on the Korean peninsula in favour of the US.

"We look forward to working with Beijing, to... try to close any loopholes" in the latest sanctions, Kim said.

Sanctions will not produce "immediate, instant success," he said, adding it would "require sustained and concerted effort...to really have the kind of effect that we desire."
London: Whistleblower Edward Snowden believes that US President Barack Obama should pardon him before he leaves office in January, arguing that the disclosure by WikiLeaks of the scale of surveillance by the US and British intelligence agencies was not only morally right but had left citizens better off.

In an interview to The Guardian via video link from Moscow, where he is in exile, Snowden said any evaluation of the consequences of his leak of tens of thousands of National Security Agency and GCHQ documents in 2013 would show clearly that people had benefited.

"Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing but that is perhaps why the pardon power exists -- for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things, these were vital things," Snowden said.

"I think when people look at the calculations of benefit, it is clear that in the wake of 2013 the laws of our nation changed. The [US] Congress, the courts and the President all changed their policies as a result of these disclosures," he added.

"At the same time there has never been any public evidence that any individual came to harm as a result," he told The Guardian.

Snowden's came as supporters, including his US lawyer, stepped up a campaign for a presidential pardon. Snowden is wanted in the US, where he is accused of violating the Espionage Act and faces at least 30 years in jail.

Obama's former attorney-general Eric Holder, however, gave an unexpected boost to the campaign for Sonwden's pardon in May when he said Snowden had performed a public service.

The campaign could receive a further lift from Oliver Stone's film, Snowden, scheduled for release in the US on Friday.

Snowden was confident that he will end up back in the US.

"Once the officials, who felt like they had to protect the programs, their positions, their careers, have left government and we start looking at things from a more historical perspective, it will be pretty clear that this war on whistleblowers does not serve the interests of the US, rather it harms them."


More than 100 people, including resident doctors and their families living inside the campus, have fallen prey to chikungunya and dengue in the last few weeks.

By Mail Today Bureau: Mosquitoes have not even spared hospitals this time, with doctors at the premiere government hospital, AIIMS, falling ill en masse. In fact, the maxing number of dengue and chikungunya cases in New Delhi area has been reported from the AIIMS Campus.

According to sources, more than 100 people, including resident doctors and their families living inside the campus, have fallen prey to chikungunya and dengue in the last few weeks. Of these, the highest number of cases has been from I and G Blocks, and from D2 Flats of doctors' hostels.

advertisement

They said that the increasing footfall of patients in the emergency department of the hospital is to blame as most often, doctors catch the infection from them. Medical campuses of hospitals like Safdarjung and Lady Harding Medical College (LHMC) have also seemingly become big mosquito-breeding grounds leading to a rise in number of cases.

NUMBER OF VICTIMS SOAR

"Four-five doctors in our campus have been diagnosed with Chikungunya and many more are having Dengue symptoms. There is a lot of construction work going on at the hospital premises which has been left in middle," a senior doctor from LHMC told Mail Today.

Overall, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has reported a big rise in the number of mosquito-borne diseases in its area this season. It has already reported 18 cases of chikungunya, 29 cases of dengue and 56 of malaria so far. In all, 259 challans and 4535 notices have been issued till Monday.

Many cases have surfaced from Babar Road, Tilak Marg, Kali Bari Marg, Netaji Nagar, Sarojini Nagar and Moti Bagh. NDMC has also issued a challan to the INA Metro Station for several mosquito breeding sites in the vicinity. NBCC Corporation was also issued a challan for its East Kidwai Nagar building site. "We are trying our best to contain the malaise. We are conducting awareness sessions with embassies, resident commissioners of state houses and police stations.

We have asked the SHOs to empty their malkhanas where cars and other seized objects are kept and often collect water leading to mosquito breeding," an NDMC official said.

ALSO READ:

Ministers nowhere to be found as Delhi left reeling with Chikungunya and Dengue





--- ENDS ---
Berlin: German police on Tuesday arrested three men with forged Syrian passports accused of being Islamic State (IS) militants and labelled a possible "sleeper cell" with links to the Paris attackers.

More than 200 police commandos took part in the pre-dawn raids in northern Germany to detain the men, who were suspected of either plotting an attack or awaiting orders to commit one.

The men were identified only as Mahir al-H., 17, Ibrahim M., 18, and Mohamed A., 26, in a statement issued by federal prosecutors.

They left Syria last October and travelled via Turkey and Greece -- a route used by tens of thousands of refugees and migrants -- and arrived in Germany in mid-November.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the three apparently used the same migrant trafficking network as several of the IS gunmen who killed 130 people in Paris in November last year.

"According to what we know so far, the investigation of the (federal criminal office) BKA points to links to the attackers of Paris from November 2015," de Maiziere told a press conference.

"There is every reason to believe that the same trafficking group used by the Paris attackers also brought the three men who were arrested to Germany," he said, adding that their forged travel documents came from "the same workshop".

He said German police had surveilled the men for months and tapped their phones, meaning that at no stage was there a risk of an attack.

Prosecutors said in their statement that Mahir al-H. Had joined IS in its de facto capital of Raqa, Syria by September 2015 and received some weapons and explosives training.

The following month, all three men had pledged to travel to Europe in talks with an IS fighter who was "in charge of missions and attacks" outside of the Syria-Iraq region where the group has its self-proclaimed caliphate.

In Europe, "the three accused were meant to either execute a mission or await further instructions," the prosecution service said in the statement, adding that no evidence of "concrete orders or instructions" had been found.

The men had received mobile phones and four-figure cash sums in US dollars, as well as the fake passports, from IS, the statement said.
Washington: The international community including China is united against North Korea which has conducted its fifth nuclear test, the White House has said, asserting that US President Barack Obama takes the threat seriously and is committed to protect Americans.

"I know that there was a statement from the Security Council over the weekend that indicated that they were going to consider additional economic sanctions that could be imposed against North Korea for their continued and flagrant violations of a variety of Security Council resolutions," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.

Noting that for a statement like that to come forward, it has to have unanimous agreement of the Security Council, Earnest said that is an indication of how unified the international community is in prioritising the situation in North Korea, in being alarmed about the situation there and in considering additional steps to isolate it even further.

"So there is some important work to be done at the UN and the US will be supportive of that process," he said.

There is a THAAD battery that has been deployed to Guam. The US and South Korea recently agreed to deploy an additional THAAD battery in South Korea - all of which is oriented against the threat from North Korea, he said.

"It is an indication that President Obama takes the threat seriously and is committed to taking the prudent steps that are required to protect the American people and our allies," Earnest said.

Obama had said how the administration has been pleased with constructive contribution that the Chinese have made to applying pressure on the North Koreans, Earnest said.

"The President believes there is more that they could do. There have been a number of conversations, including between President Obama and President Xi (Jinping), about the need to continue to make dealing with this situation a priority," he said as he refrained from responding to questions on US sanctions against North Korea.

"I certainly would not rule out an announcement like that, but those kinds of sanctions are not the kind of sanctions that we talk about publicly because doing so would only tip our hand and allow those who were the target of the sanctions to make arrangements to try to avoid them before we were even able to implement them in the first place.

"If there are more sanctions like that that are put forward, then we'll certainly announce them publicly and explain to you the rationale for why they were imposed. But we will not do that until a final policy decision has been made about them," Earnest said in response to a question.

The US has steps at the direction of the Commander-in- Chief to enhance its anti-ballistic-missile capabilities in the Asia Pacific. The US has deployed additional naval assets in the Pacific, including Aegis systems that can be used to defend the US against ballistic missiles, he said.

There is technology that has been deployed to Japan to better track those missiles and enhance our ability to defend the US and our allies against them.
Manila: The Philippines assured the United States on Tuesday it will honour its obligations as a military ally following volleys of profane tirades by unpredictable President Rodrigo Duterte.

After calling US leader Barack Obama a "son of a whore" last week, Duterte said he was "not a fan" of Washington and yesterday called for the small number of US military advisers to leave the southern Philippines.

Today Duterte also said Filipino forces would not participate in future joint patrols with the US in the South China Sea, where Manila claims waters that China insists are part of its territory.

But top officials moved to stem the damage, saying that it was business as usual between the Philippines and its powerful ally, whose backing is essential as it jousts with China over the maritime dispute.

"There is no shift in so far as our policy is concerned with respect to our close friendship with the Americans," Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said today.

The president's spokesman also insisted that Duterte's comments were providing context to the conflict in the south, not a reversal of policy.

"These were not directives to leave, OK? But this was a context on why we have a conflict (in Mindanao). In other words, he's giving a broad historical, cultural landscape," Duterte's spokesman Ernesto Abella said.

Yasay, who was flying to Washington later in the day for talks, added the Duterte administration would honour existing defence agreements including a 2014 accord giving the US military access to at least five Philippine bases.

One of the bases is located in the southern region of Mindanao, where the government is battling Islamic militants who have offered allegiance to Islamic State gunmen in the Middle East.

The Pentagon in June also deployed warplanes and about 120 personnel in the northern Philippines for short-term training missions aimed at ensuring the allies' access to the South China Sea.

Duterte's predecessor Benigno Aquino had pursued closer military ties with the United States as part of plans to improve the deterrence capability of his militarily weak nation.

In April, the Philippine Navy began joint South China Sea naval patrols with the US as the Pentagon responded to muscular Chinese actions in the sea, including building artificial islands over disputed reefs.
Riyadh: Saudi King Salman said Tuesday the kingdom rejected any attempt to play politics with the hajj, the annual pilgrimage which has added to tensions between Riyadh and Tehran.

For the first time in nearly three decades, Iran`s 64,000 pilgrims are not attending the hajj in Saudi Arabia after the two regional rivals failed to agree on security and logistics.

Among its concerns, Riyadh said Tehran had demanded the right to organise demonstrations.

"The kingdom categorically rejects that the hajj serves any political purpose," Salman, 80, said in a brief address to international VIPs attending the pilgrimage.

Tehran had accused Riyadh of "blocking the path leading to Allah."

Among the contentious issues was security after last year`s hajj stampede which, according to foreign officials, killed roughly 2,300 people.

Iran reported the largest number of victims, at 464.

Just days before this year`s hajj, which began on Saturday, Iran`s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei questioned Saudi Arabia`s right to manage Islam`s holiest sites.

He called the Saudi ruling family "puny Satans" who had politicised the pilgrimage. Khamenei also said Saudi authorities "murdered" the stampede victims.

His claims led to mutual accusations throughout last week.

Saudi Arabia`s Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh retaliated by telling a newspaper that Iranians "are not Muslims".

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, of which Saudi Arabia is the most powerful member, accused Iran of "a desperate attempt to politicise" the hajj and said Khamenei`s remarks were offensive.

More than 1.8 million faithful from around the world have been attending the annual pilgrimage which officially ends on Thursday.

"Serving the guests of God is an honour for us," Salman told the VIP delegates.

Saudi Arabia had said Iranians were still welcome at the hajj if they came from another country. The hajj ministry`s spokesman said "a number" who held other passports were in attendance.

He was not more specific.

Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran have no diplomatic relations and are at odds over a number of regional issues including the wars in Syria and Yemen.
Damascus: Syria`s government on Tuesday warned that all aid going to the divided city of Aleppo, particularly assistance sent by Turkey, must be coordinated with Damascus and the United Nations.

"The Syrian Arab Republic announces its rejection of the entry of humanitarian aid to Aleppo, particularly from the Turkish regime, without coordination with the Syrian government and the United Nations," state television quoted the foreign ministry as saying.

The statement came after media reports that an aid convoy was heading from Turkey to Aleppo city on Tuesday, hours after a fragile truce brokered by Russia and the United States began.
Geneva: The UN`s Syria envoy on Tuesday applauded a fall in violence through the first 24 hours of a fragile ceasefire but said security concerns meant aid convoys had not yet deployed.

Staffan de Mistura told reporters that the powers which brokered the truce -- the United States and Russia -- would likely provide a full assessment of the pact in the coming days or hours.

But he said that information reaching his office indicated "a significant drop in violence."

He noted that isolated reports of conflict persisted, especially on Monday night.

Possible ceasefire violations included mortar shelling by some opposition groups along the Castello Road, the key supply route to the battleground city of Aleppo, de Mistura said.

But he added that by sunrise on Tuesday the broad picture was positive.

A key test of the ceasefire agreed last week is whether warring parties will allow desperately needed humanitarian supplies to reach Syria`s embattled civilians.

De Mistura dismissed reports by Turkish state media that UN trucks on Tuesday crossed the border towards rebel held eastern Aleppo, which has not received aid since regime troops seized the Castello road in early July.

The envoy said he had "no information about any UN trucks moving at this stage," demanding "assurances that the drivers and the convoy will be unhindered and untouched."

Spokesman for the UN`s humanitarian office (OCHA), Jens Laerke, separately confirmed that no UN convoys have deployed across a border or within Syria since the ceasefire call.

The UN has said it is ready to send major stocks of life-saving aid to Syria`s besieged and conflict-wracked areas.

Speaking earlier in Geneva, Laerke told reporters that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad`s government had granted permission for aid to reach more than one million civilians this month.

But various obstacles remain. Past convoys have been blocked by government or military officials objecting to the contents of the humanitarian cargo.

De Mistura also stressed that opposition leaders in rebel controlled areas needed to accept aid "with no conditions or preconditions" before material can be moved.

The Syrian truce marks the latest bid to end a conflict that has killed more than 300,000 people since March 2011.

De Mistura has voiced hope that a decline in violence and more relief to civilians could help pave the way for peace talks to resume.

He provided no specific timelines on restarting negotiations, but said the issue was likely to dominate when the UN General Assembly meets later this month.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Tuesday that de Mistura could invite government and opposition representatives to new peace talks "at the very beginning of October".
Washington: The United States and Israel have agreed on a record $38 billion package of U.S. military aid and will sign the new pact on Wednesday, enshrining defence funding for Washingtons closest Middle East ally for the next decade, officials said.

The deal will represent the biggest pledge of U.S. military assistance made to any country but also involves major concessions granted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to officials on both sides and U.S. congressional aides.

Those include Israels agreement not to seek additional funds from Congress beyond what will be guaranteed annually in the new package, and to phase out a special arrangement that has allowed Israel to spend part of its U.S. aid on its own defence industry instead of on American-made weapons, the officials said.

Israels chief negotiator, Jacob Nagel, acting head of Netanyahus national security council, arrived in Washington in preparation for the signing ceremony, and the White House also began briefing members of Congress on the deal.

Nearly 10 months of drawn-out aid negotiations have underscored continuing friction between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu over last year`s U.S.-led nuclear deal with Israel`s arch-foe Iran, an accord the Israeli leader opposed. The United States and Israel have also been at odds over the Palestinians.

But the right-wing Israeli premier decided it would be best to forge a new arrangement with Obama, who leaves office in January, rather than hoping for better terms from the next U.S. administration, according to officials on both sides.

A deal now allows him to avoid uncertainties surrounding the next president, whether Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump, and to give Israels defence establishment the ability to plan ahead.

Obama`s aides want a new deal before his presidency ends, seeing it as an important part of his legacy. Republican critics accuse him of not being attentive enough to Israel`s security, which the White House strongly denies, and of taking too hard of a line with the Israeli leader.

Israel has long been a major recipient of U.S. aid, mostly in the form of military assistance against a backdrop of an ebbing and flowing conflict with the Palestinians and Israel`s neighbours, as well as threats from Iran.

The 10-year aid packages underpin Washingtons congressionally mandated requirement to help maintain Israels qualitative military edge in the region.

MISSILE DEFENCE

The deal, known as a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, calls for $3.8 billion a year in aid, up from $3.1 billion annually under the current pact, which expires in 2018, officials say. Netanyahu had originally sought upwards of $4.5 billion a year.

The new package for the first time will incorporate money for Israeli missile defence  setting the amount at $500 million a year - which until now has been funded ad hoc by Congress. U.S. lawmakers have in recent years given Israel up to $600 million in annual discretionary funds for this purpose.

Officials say Israel has agreed not to lobby Congress for additional missile defence funds during the life of the new MOU, a pledge expected to be made in a side letter or annex to the agreement. But the wording is likely to be flexible enough to allow exceptions in case of a war or other major crisis.

The State Department and Netanyahus office coordinated the release of brief written statements declaring that the deal was complete and would be signed at a ceremony in Washington on Wednesday. Neither side offered details but the State Department said on Tuesday it constitutes the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in U.S. history.

The pact will not be signed by Obama and Netanyahu, who have had a fraught relationship, but by two of their senior aides, in keeping with the way the two governments have formally sealed previous deals of this type. Nagel and U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon will sign the document.

Netanyahu gave ground on several major points. He conceded to a U.S. demand for a gradual phasing-out, starting in 2020, of the 26.3 percent share of the aid money that Israel can spend on its own military industries rather than on American products. The provision originated in the 1980s to help Israel build up its defence industry, which is now a major global player.

Netanyahu also agreed to end Israels use of 13 percent of the U.S. money on military fuel purchases, officials said.

Obama and Netanyahu will both be in New York next week for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, and officials have not ruled out the possibility of a meeting on the sidelines.

Negotiators working behind closed doors had all but completed the new package several weeks ago. But an announcement was quietly put on hold as objections were raised by a key pro-Israel lawmaker, Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, who had called for a more generous and less restrictive aid package, sources familiar with the matter said.

It was unclear, however, whether the administrations differences with Graham had been resolved or it had decided to go ahead with the announcement anyway.

U.S. congressional approval is needed each year for disbursement of the aid to Israel as part of the annual budget process. But little opposition is expected in Congress, where support for Israels security is strong.
Washington: The US has said it is against independence for the Pakistani province of Balochistan where there have been allegations of human rights violations that were flagged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech.

"The government... US government respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan, and we do not support independence for Balochistan," US State Department spokesperson John Kirby said in his daily press briefing on Monday.

He said this in response to a question on Prime Minister Modi's remarks on August 15 about human rights violations in Balochistan.

In a first for any Indian Prime Minister in an August 15 Independence Day speech, Modi referred to human rights violations in Balochistan and the part of Kashmir that Pakistan controls.

"The world is watching. People of Balochistan, Gilgit, Baltistan and occupied Kashmir have thanked me a lot in the past few days. I am grateful to them," Modi said referring to his comments earlier in the month at an all-party meeting on reported excesses in Pakistan's largest province and in the part of Kashmir it holds.

He said the way the people of these Pakistani regions "wished me well, gives me great joy". In thanking an Indian Prime Minister, "they have thanked the whole population of India", he said. "I want to offer gratitude to these people."

The public reference to Balochistan by Modi was viewed as India hitting back at Pakistan for persistently raising the Kashmir issue and its attempts to internationalise it.
It was bound to be Deja Vu! Mr S(The Aspiring Singer) and Saurav back together for another trip. The last trip we had together was the "Triund" trip and it was bloody darn good one. The trip started on a bad note(as usual)as it took me 200 bucks to go from Kalkaji to Old Delhi Railway station. A railway station always brings the Metrosexual Indian to ground Zero...the crowd,the collective sweat,the cacophony all combine together to form that unique orchestra that Luciano Pavarotti would have been proud of. <br><br> On 25th Oct'08 morning we reached the Kotdwara Station. A small cute station, Kotdwara is also the tipping point for all things ahead that are called "Garhwali". We boarded a shared jeep to Landowne and after a journey that lasted one hour, we finally reached our destination -"Blue Pine Resort". <br><br> The Hotel deal that I got from an online company was a good one. Three Nights/Four Days package for two at 3800 INR...well,that's no bad,eh? The view from the Balcony was amazing! <br><br> The hotel room was also really cute with colourful drapes and a real cozy feel to it. Sitting idle has never been a habit of mine nor Mr S'. So we set off...to Lansdowne. Actually our hotel was located in Deriyakhal, which is about 5 Kms from Lansdowne Cantonment. The walk that one takes through the twisted roads has to be one of my favourites till now. <br><br> Lansdowne is all about the Garwal Rifles. Garhwal Rifles is a well known infantry rifle regiment of the Indian Army. During the World Wars and the wars fought after Independence, the regiment not only showed exemplary courage but also maintained its unique identity. Mainly made up of Garhwali soldiers, this regiment fought with great valour during the Kargil conflict. More than 25,000 soldiers of this regiment are at present engaged in the task of safeguarding the motherland. <br><br> The cleanliness that this cantonment town maintains is mind blowing. Not only is it clean, but the discipline is exemplary. About 4000 soldiers, at least 40,000 civilians...yet there was so much harmony between SILENCE and CHAOS! <br><br> Mr S, a born shopper, was thrilled to be in the Lansdowne market. Right from Diwali crackers to Himesh Reshamiya CDs to an imported DVD player, this market which is a km from the cantonment is chaotic, crowded and THRIVING! We decided to have our own fun anyway...After shaving ourselves clean,we even wanted to take a studio photo with me in a Toy Car and Mr S with a 70's Sunglass doing a John Travolta :-), but we never found an appropriate studio:-( <br><br> The road back to the hotel was as exhilarating as the ascent. The evenings were amazing. It was as if the sun came down the hill and took away our sweat...our tears...our worries...our paradoxical problems!
According to data released by the municipal corporation on Monday, of the 1,158 cases of dengue reported in the Capital so far, over 255 patients of the vector-borne diseases are from the South zone.

Residents say that SDMC did not do fogging on time allowing mosquitoes to breed

By Mail Today Bureau: Some of Delhi's poshest localities have been the worst affected by the dengue and chikungunya outbreak as the highest number of cases has been reported from the South zone.

According to data released by the municipal corporation on Monday, of the 1,158 cases of dengue reported in the Capital so far, over 255 patients of the vector-borne diseases are from the South zone. The north and east zone have reported 105 and 70 cases of dengue respectively.

advertisement

The number of patients of chikungunya is also high in these areas, officials said. Out of the 1,057 cases of chikungunya in the national capital so far, 202 have been reported from the south zone this year. The north and east zone have reported 148 and 57 cases respectively.



SOUTH ZONE HAD MOST CASES LAST YEAR AS WELL

Officials said that this is not the first time that South Delhi has been the worst affected. Even in 2015, the south zone had reported 776 cases of dengue, while north and east confirmed 499 and 152 cases of the mosquito-borne disease respectively.

"There are nearly 1,185 unauthorised colonies in south Delhi which are prone to mosquito breeding. The highest numbers of cases are reported from these areas. We are continuously doing fogging in these areas to ensure there is no mosquito breeding," said Mukesh Yadav, spokesperson for South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC).

"Also, due to excessive rainfall, water logging in some areas has become a major issue which we are trying to sort out," Yadav added. While dengue fever is mostly spread by the Aedes aegypti, chikungunya virus is often spread by the Aedes albopictus.

Doctors say treatment is symptomatic with no specific cure, so if patients use pain medicines indiscriminately there is a risk of them becoming resistant to them. Symptoms usually last for 2-7 days, after an incubation period of 4-10 days.

Residents blamed the authorities for not taking enough preventive measures and delaying fogging drives. "Enough fogging is not done in areas where mosquitoes breed. The authorities should rigorously perform fogging exercise. Many residents are diagnosed with chikungunya here," said Varun Malhotra, a resident of Lajpat Nagar.

ALSO READ:

Defective fogging machines add to woes amid rising chikungunya, dengue cases in Delhi





--- ENDS ---
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has opened the Trump International Hotel, which is just five blocks away from the White House.

By India Today Web Desk: In case you are planning to travel to Washington DC, here's something you must know.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has opened a brand new hotel just five blocks away from the White House. So, if you have ever wanted to get close enough to the White House, this is the closest you can actually stay. Well, only if you can afford to.

Entrance to the new Trump International Hotel. Photo: Reuters

advertisement

The Trump International Hotel is the result of a USD 200 million (Rs 1337 crore) renovation of the 1889 Old Post Office, which also happens to be the third tallest building in Washington. Built in the Romanesque Revival architectural style, the renovation of this building took two years to complete.

The Trump International Hotel in Washington DC. Photo: Reuters

With a prime location to boast, which is less than a kilometre away from the Pennsylvania Avenue, the hotel boasts of 263 rooms and a suite that costs USD 20,000 a night (around Rs 13.3 lakh).

The renovation work was carried out under the supervision of Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, who told Reuters, "We have really positioned this hotel to not only be the finest hotel in D.C. but in the country".

The atrium of the Trump International Hotel on its soft opening day. Photo: Reuters

Calling it a "soft opening" of the property, the hotel staff organised a little hoopla event on September 12. But about 40 protesters gathered outside the hotel to oppose its opening.

A bottle of Trump champagne in a guest room at the Trump International Hotel. Photo: Reuters A bottle of Trump champagne in a guest room at the Trump International Hotel. Photo: Reuters

The hotel's grand opening is slated to take place in the month of October. Donald Trump paid a visit to the property on Monday to show his appreciation to the staff.

Here's what he tweeted after:

Picture courtesy: Twitter/@realDonaldTrump

When we tried to visit the hotel's website, this is the page we got:

--- ENDS ---
The suicide blast took place in Shikarpur district's Khanpur tehsil, around 470 kilometres north of Karachi, police said, adding another attacker fled from the spot.

By Press Trust of India: At least 10 people, including two policemen, were injured today when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Shia mosque during Eid-ul Azha prayers in Pakistan's southern Sindh province.

The suicide blast took place in Shikarpur district's Khanpur tehsil, around 470 kilometres north of Karachi, police said, adding another attacker fled from the spot.

ATTEMPT FOILED

advertisement

Police also foiled a separate suicide blast at another Shia mosque in the Shikarpur district where last year at least 61 people were killed in a suicide attack on a mosque.

Police said four suicide attackers had infiltrated Khanpur during Eid prayers, the Dawn reported.

Two attackers had targeted a Shia mosque but were stopped by police at the entrance on account of appearing suspicious.

ATTACKER GUNNED DOWN

When the attackers attempted to flee, one was gunned down by a policeman and the other was arrested.

Pakistan has been hit by frequent sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shia Muslims.

--- ENDS ---
A painting of the first TGV is displayed on a wall near the French power and transport engineering company Alstom factory in Belfort, France

The French government said Monday it had intervened to save the Alstom factory that assembled the country's first high-speed TGV train.

Alstom said last week it planned to halt production at the locomotive factory in Belfort, eastern France, prompting a rapid response from the Socialist government.

Alstom said it wanted to centralise its train production at a site 200 kilometres (125 miles) further north in Alsace and promised to offer the 400 workers in Belfort other jobs.

But after a cabinet meeting on Monday, Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said production at the site would now continue "in the same proportions as the current level".

The French government has a 20-percent stake in Alstom.

Vidalies described the company's threat to close the factory as "incomprehensible" because there was a chance of landing new contracts in the near future.

President Francois Hollande said earlier that he had told his cabinet "to ensure that more orders are taken there".

Belfort is a symbol of French industrial prowess. Alstom's first steam train was produced at the site in 1880.

The prospect of job losses at the factory would have been of concern to the Socialist government, with presidential and legislative elections looming next year.

The French government has a track record of intervening when it deems French companies or jobs to be under threat, particularly from multinationals.

When US conglomerate GE announced a bid for Alstom's energy assets in 2014 the state got involved, getting German group Siemens to put up a rival bid before finally coming down on the side of GE.
Cuba's foreign ministry underscored that progress on rapprochement would require an end to the US sanctions that have been clamped on Havana for decades

US and Cuban officials held talks in Washington on bilateral economic issues Monday for the first time since the countries resumed normal diplomatic ties, diplomats said.

Just over a year since the Cold War foes put aside five decades of bad blood to seek normal relations, they focused ongoing discussions on thorny banking and trade issues.

Although the talks had a wide-ranging agenda, not much can be pushed forward substantively with a US economic embargo still in place.

Only the US Congress can lift the sanctions.

Still, the officials created working groups on different issues, including one on human rights in the Americas' only communist-run one-party state, the State Department said.

But Cuba's foreign ministry underscored that progress on rapprochement would require an end to the US sanctions that have been clamped on Havana for decades.

The two sides restored diplomatic relations in July 2015.

However, Washington still bans Americans from visiting Cuba as tourists, although travel is permitted for 12 other categories, including cultural and educational exchange.

Washington and Havana agreed in February to restore direct commercial flights -- one of several watershed changes initiated in December 2014, when US President Barack Obama and Cuba's Raul Castro announced a thaw after more than 50 years of hostility.

The first regular commercial flight between the two countries in more than 50 years flew just last week on a US carrier.

Regular air service between the neighbors was severed during the Cold War, and charter flights had been the only air links since.
Dairy producers in Australia, the European Union, Mexico, New Zealand and the United States are pushing for their respective governments to take Canada to task over a new deal between farmers and the dairy industry that they say violates their international trade obligations.

In a letter released publicly on Monday, the dairy associations said the new deal places Canada in contravention of its World Trade Organization (WTO) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) obligations and called for their respective governments to initiate a dispute settlement proceeding through the WTO.

The groups said the new deal -- which was agreed upon by the Dairy Farmers of Canada and the Dairy Processors Association of Canada in July -- favours Canadian dairy ingredients over imports and subsidizes the export of local products to unfairly compete with those abroad.

Canadas increasingly protectionist policies violate their international trade obligations, hold out the prospect of trade diversion with attendant global price-depressing impacts, and are in conflict with the principles of free markets and fair and transparent trade, said the letter.

Jaime Castaneva, senior vice-president for one of the signatory groups, the U.S Dairy Export Council, which represents about 100 co-operatives and manufacturers, told the Financial Post that Canada should cancel the agreement and prevent an extended and costly proceeding with the WTO.

Its the same old story with respect to Canada, Castaneva told the newspaper.

Twenty years ago the U.S. and New Zealand took Canada to the WTO. This new special class of milk has the same principles as the program 20 years ago  its all about preventing imports and dumping milk in international markets.

Canadas supply management, which was introduced in the early 1970s, controls levels of milk production by linking it to consumer demand and restricting imports, as well as competition, through steep tariffs.

Story continues

The system was designed to protect Canadian dairy producers and stabilize prices.

However, in recent years, cheese producers have found ways to circumvent these tariffs by importing ingredients called ultra-filtered milk, which are not found on Canadas tariff list.

But the new deal would see the creation of class six milk that farmers will sell to processors at reduced prices to offset these cheaper imports.

Canada is restricted in terms of selling milk abroad at prices cheaper than it is available for at home, but dairy farmers argue that class six would allow them to peddle their surplus milk at reduced prices around the world.

Isabelle Bouchard, a spokeswoman for the Dairy Farmers of Canada, told the Financial Post that she could not discuss the details of the new agreement until it has been signed by all parties involved, but was shocked by the reaction of foreign dairy producers.

Its a surprise that these groups are acting because the deal has not been ratified, she told the newspaper.

What they are talking about is just created in their own minds.

She added that dairy farmers have long complained about the import of ultra-filtered milk, and that Canadians want Canadian milk.
By Julien Pretot and Emmanuel Jarry

PARIS (Reuters) - Alstom <ALSO.PA> has begun crisis talks with the French government as President Francois Hollande tries to avert the engineering company's planned shutdown of manufacturing at its Belfort plant in eastern France.

The company, which makes France's high-speed TGV trains and is 20 percent controlled by the state, stirred up a political storm last week by announcing that it would stop making rolling stock at the site where its first steam locomotive was built in 1880.

The move comes seven months ahead of the presidential election, and under-pressure Hollande vowed that "everything will be done" to prevent the shutdown.

"Alstom confirms it is engaged in talks with the French government over the future of its Belfort site," a company statement said on Tuesday, adding that no decision will be taken before the talks are concluded.

The statement left the door open to negotiations after a note was emailed to staff at the weekend, in which Chief Executive Henri Poupart-Lafarge said that Alstom would go ahead with plans to end manufacturing at Belfort.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls had said that Alstom "should forget" any plan to close the site, with 400 jobs at stake.

With French unemployment sitting at about 10 percent and the presidential election looming in April, the deeply unpopular government could ill afford to ignore the move by a company viewed as a national industrial champion.

THIN ORDER BOOK

Alstom's Belfort announcement rekindles bad memories for Hollande of the Florange steel furnaces, which closed soon after he took office in 2012 and left many left-wing voters disillusioned by his leadership.

Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said on Tuesday that new orders would be made in the near future to ensure that the Belfort plant survives, putting pressure on state-owned railway company SNCF to secure a deal with Alstom over a train order for its Paris-Milan route.

Story continues

Alstom's weekend note had cited a lack of orders and a need to streamline production.

"For over a decade, Alstom has received no locomotive orders in France and production of TGV locomotives, which is no longer assured beyond 2018, is at the lowest rate in its history," CEO Poupart-Lafarge said in the memo.

Belfort mayor Damien Meslot said on Tuesday that Poupart-Lafarge had told a meeting at the economy ministry that there were "margins for maneuver" over Belfort.

The government took control of a 20 percent voting stake in Alstom after the group sold its energy division to U.S. group General Electric <GE.N>.

It has until October 2017 to exercise an option to buy the actual stake from construction group Bouygues <BOUY.PA> at a minimum 35 euros and secure its influence over the company.

But with the shares languishing around 24 euros it is more likely to wait until an eight-day window in October next year when it will be able to buy at market prices.

(Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, Jean-Baptiste Vey, Gilles Guillaume and Benjamin Mallet; Writing by Michel Rose and Ingrid Melander; Editing by Pravin Char and David Goodman)
By Nick Carey CHICAGO (Reuters) - Following the collapse of Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd <117930.KS>, container shipping rates from Asia to the United States spiked 50 percent as the carrier's customers scrambled for ships. Few shipping industry experts expect those price increases to fix what is wrong with the industry. Hanjin's collapse and the resulting chaos in the global shipping sector are symptoms of deeper ills caused by a capacity glut that will remain even after the resolution of Hanjin's crisis, industry officials and experts told Reuters. "All of Hanjin's ships aren't just going to sink overnight," said Clint Eisenhauer, vice president for external affairs at the South Carolina Port Authority. "We are going to see the same imbalance between supply and demand, and beyond a short-term spike the impact on rates shouldn't be dramatic." In recent years container ship companies have gone on a spending spree, ordering ever larger vessels based on the assumption of rising trade in consumer goods from China and Asia. Shipping industry data provider Alphaliner estimates fleet owners will increase container shipping capacity by 3.9 percent in 2016, even as estimates for global demand range from growth of just 1 percent to 3 percent. According to order book figures from British shipping services firm Clarkson, the global container ship fleet should grow by 16.9 percent between now and 2019. "These are significant investments that were based on what seemed reasonable forecasts at the time," said Dean Tracy, principal of consultancy Global Integrated Services and former import transportation director at Lowe's . However, exports of goods and services as a percentage of global gross domestic product have slipped in recent years to 29.3 percent in 2015 from 30.7 percent in 2012, according to data compiled by the World Bank. The mismatch between supply and demand has left 7.4 percent of container ships worldwide sitting idle as of this spring, according to Alphaliner. Consulting firm Drewry said in July it expects a record 150 container vessels would be scrapped this year, but that would "only make a dent" in the excess capacity built between 2010 and 2015. The capacity overhang has battered container shipping rates and shipping company profits. In mid-February 2015, it cost $2,265 to haul a container from Shanghai to the U.S. West Coast. By late August, the price for shipping a container across the Pacific had fallen by nearly half to $1,153. Rates rose to $1,746 in early September, according to the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index, but remain well short of the earlier peak. All the major companies have struggled amid a low rate environment. Maersk , the world's largest container ship company, has warned investors its 2016 profit will be significantly lower than last year, fired its chief executive and announced plans to restructure its business. Germany's Hapag-Lloyd also warned profits would fall this year. South Korea's Hyundai Merchant Marine Co Ltd <011200.KS>, the world's fourteenth largest carrier, avoided collapse earlier this year when it managed to cut a deal with creditors. "I think the container sector has more serious long term structural problems," said Ralph Leszczynski, head of research at shipbroker Banchero Costa in Singapore. "A POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT FOR THE INDUSTRY" The bankruptcy of Hanjin is the largest ever collapse of a container ship company. The world's seventh biggest carrier has a fleet of 88 ships or around 3 percent of global capacity. Hanjin only owns around 30 of those vessels and runs the rest on charters. Two questions now are how much of Hanjin's capacity will be scrapped, which could help firm up shipping rates, and how much will be replaced by rivals seeking to grab market share? Seaspan Corp Chief Executive Gerry Wang says he has already been approached by a number of other operators who want to lease three ships his company, the largest global lessor of container ships, had placed with Hanjin under long-term contracts. Wang said Hanjin's woes could boost container shipping rates as some of the carrier's older ships should be idled. "It has been a fiasco, but this could be a positive development for the industry," he said. "I think we are going to see a shift to stronger, more stable carriers," he added. "FLIGHT TO QUALITY" Rival shippers are moving to fill the breach created by Hanjin. Within days of Hanjin's bankruptcy filing, Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Company SA, the world's two largest carriers who have a vessel sharing agreement, announced they would both launch new trans-Pacific services on Sept. 15. Both companies committed six ships each to the new services. The moves are "symptomatic of the industry's oversupply problems," said Chaim Shacham, a consultant and former maritime shipping executive based in New Jersey. In an email, Soren Egholm, vice president of trade and marketing at Maersk Line North America, said that as a "financially strong company we are currently being approached by many customers on the Transpacific who ask if we can provide alternative transport solutions for their cargo." Lawrence Gross, a partner at FTR Transportation Intelligence, said that Hanjin's collapse could push producers and retailers to more closely scrutinize the shipping companies they choose. "Customers have treated container shipping as a pure commodity play, but now they realize not all carriers are built the same," Gross said. "I think we may see a bit of a flight to quality as customers seek more stable partners." (Additional reporting by Keith Wallis in Singapore. Editing by Joseph White and Bernard Orr)
Robots

Robots Give Chronically Ill Kids Valuable Social Ties with School

A University of California Irvine research project may be the first of its kind to attempt to measure the impact and feasibility of the use of robots to bring homebound students into the classroom when they can't be there physically. The use of "virtual inclusion" through telepresence has been used for nearly two decades. More recently, the idea is that chronically ill students use some kind of robotic device on campus that can be operated from home to allow him or her to participate in class, interact with fellow students and navigate through school.

Frequently, these devices are provided by wealthier parents or through community support, reported researchers Veronica Newhart, a Ph.D. student in UC Irvine's School of Education, and Mark Warschauer, a professor of education and informatics. But they wanted to find out what the impact could be on kids who received the robots no matter what their family's income level, background or social support.

Veronica Newhart, a Ph.D. student in UC Irvine's School of Education, and Mark Warschauer, a professor of education and informatics, wanted to find out what the impact could be on kids who received the robots no matter what their family's income level, background or social support. Photo credit: Steve Zylius/UC Irvine

The areas they explored included how the robot is used in classrooms by students, teachers and classmates; what the effects of robot use are; and whether the use of the robots is "financially and functionally feasible."

As explained in "Virtual Inclusion via Telepresence Robots in the Classroom: An Exploratory Case Study," the results were pulled from observation, focus groups and interviews among 61 participants -- five homebound children, five parents, 35 classmates, 10 teachers and six school administrators. The kids at the heart of the study had used or were already using a telepresence robot.

What they found was one "common thread": the students who use the robotic surrogates said they felt more "socially connected." "When asked what they liked most about using the robot, all of the homebound children interviewed responded with a variation of 'I get to see my friends,'" the report stated. "When asked what they liked least about using the robot, the responses varied greatly from 'nothing really' to connectivity issues, to wishing the robot had arms."

As for the adults, they tended to focus on the academic areas. For example, one mother was "initially concerned" that due to his medical condition, her son wouldn't be able to attend a full day of class. "His energy level and interest in school had dropped off dramatically and she believed he would be able to attend school for maybe thirty minutes to one hour a day," the authors wrote. Instead, what happened was that once the student received his robot, "his interest and energy increased and he attended a full day of school (six hours)." It was only then that his mother realized that his lack of interest in school activities might have been the result of depression.

This particular student expanded from four hours of instruction per week to six to seven hours per day, five days a week. In fact, he not only did well in his regular classes, but he auditioned for and was accepted into the school choir via the robot.

"Further research is required to determine the impact of robot utilization on students' health and well-being, as well as the most effective ways to implement this technology in various settings," said Newhart in a university article about the study. "Collaboration among education, technology and healthcare teams is key to the success of virtual inclusion in the classroom for improved learning, social and health outcomes for vulnerable children."

Newman presented the findings at the 23rd International Conference on Learning, held in July at the University of British Columbia. She plans to continue her research in additional school districts elsewhere in the country.

This fall, the university itself will become home for telepresence robots  a gift from the class of 2016. As Newhart explained, the robots will act as "a solution for any student who's prevented from completing a course or degree program because of a long-term injury or illness."
According to doctors it was the first time that two people from different religions have donated kidneys to each other.

By India Today Web Desk: Amid the Eid festivities and Muslims all across the world praying for peace and harmony, two men in Rajasthan went on to blur the religious divide.

A Hindu and a Muslim man donated their kidneys to each other's wives in Jaipur. The two kidney transplants took place in a private hospital where the doctors claim that this is the first time that people from different religions have donated kidneys to each other.

advertisement

Anita Mehra, with a B positive blood group, suffered from glomerular disease which lead to kidney failure while Tasleem Jahan's kidney failed because of excessive intake of pain killers. Jahan's blood group is A positive while her husband's blood group is B positive.

When the doctors realised that Anita's husband's blood group is A positive and that a kidney swap is possible, they approached the two families and tried convincing them.

Both the families agreed for the swap after a counselling session and the surgery took place on September 2, where Anita Mehra's husband donated his kidney to Tasleem and her husband donated his kidney to Anita.

According to the law, only close relatives can donate kidneys but kidney swaps can take place easily.

"I will celebrate this Eid-ul-Adha with more fervour this year, all thanks to Vinod. He has given his kidney to my wife," said Tasleem's husband Ahmed.

Vinod Mehra, Anita's husband, said it was no less than Diwali for him.

--- ENDS ---
STEM

Penn State Turns to 3D Printing, Online Learning to Teach Students About the Brain

A Pennsylvania State University research project is exploring the use of 3D printing and interactive technology to teach middle school students about the human brain.

Researchers in the Brain3M project, funded by the Penn State Social Science Research Institute, have come up with a tailored online learning platform that allows students to go through a series of virtual 3D structure models and descriptions of the brain along with photos and diagrams that illustrate the complex concepts concerning how the human brain works.

Students in the Brain3M program each receive their own 3D printed model of the human brain so they can closely examine it themselves.

Likewise, students in the program each receive their own 3D printed model of the human brain so they can closely examine it themselves.

"The students can click on any parts of the brain in any order they want, so we're really letting them make their own decisions about their learning," said Jennifer Legault, a graduate student at Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology. "The kids seemed to like that they could take control of their own learning experience and go at their own pace."

In order to test the effectiveness of the Brain 3M project (which stands for mobile devices, magnetic resonance imaging and 3D models), researchers took pilot programs to the Young Scholars of Central Pennsylvania Charter School and the Science-U summer camp that is held annually on the Penn State campus for middle school students.

Participants were taught two different lessons involving brain science, one with the interactive Brain3M website and the other with a PowerPoint presentation.

Although the sample sizes of the groups were too small to yet draw any substantial conclusions, researchers indicated that students were more excited and engaged by the Brain3M platform. All students received the 3D models of the brain on keychains as souvenirs.

"More than 80 percent of the participants said they would want to use this website again to learn about the brain," Legault said.
TUESDAY, Sept. 13, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Commercial airline pilots on insulin therapy who keep their diabetes under tight control can perform their job without safety concerns, a new British study concludes.

In the United States, however, pilots with insulin-dependent diabetes are prohibited from flying commercial aircraft, the researchers said. A concern is that long flights can interrupt eating and treatment routines, and could lead to low blood sugar levels.

Two countries, the United Kingdom and Canada, allow people with diabetes treated with insulin to fly commercial aircraft -- if they can show they understand their condition and have it under excellent control, according to the study authors.

These pilots are overseen by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Irish Aviation Authority.

"A growing number of insulin-treated pilots have successfully applied for commercial pilots' licenses in the United Kingdom, and most recently Ireland," said Dr. Julia Hine, of the Royal Surrey County Hospital in England.

"To date, the CAA protocol has shown to work well in the cockpit, with no reported safety concerns, and without deterioration of diabetes control," Hine said in a news release from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).

The United Kingdom now has the largest pool of insulin-dependent pilots, enabling them to find jobs as pilots and also fly for recreation, the researchers noted. Pilots have to monitor their blood sugar before and during flights.

"Regular blood glucose testing in the cockpit ensures that any variability in blood sugar is detected and can be corrected early," said Hine.

"If pilots are unable to test their blood sugar due to operational demands, the protocol dictates that they should consume 15 mg of carbohydrate as a precautionary measure [to prevent low blood sugar levels] and then test within 30 minutes," she said.

The team of British researchers reviewed the effectiveness of these requirements and the safety of the program that allows people on insulin to fly commercial planes.

The study included 26 male pilots on insulin therapy. The investigators checked the participants' age, type of diabetes, treatment regimen and other health issues. The researchers also compared the pilots' pre-flight and in-flight blood sugar levels.

The pilots were an average age of 41 years old. Most had type 1 diabetes. The average diabetes duration was eight years. These pilots had no significant change in their three-month average blood sugar levels (HbA1c) before and after they got their license.

After examining nearly 9,000 individual blood sugar checks recorded during 4,900 flight hours, the study found virtually all were at safe levels. None of the blood sugar levels would have impaired the pilots' ability to fly, the findings showed.

The study was scheduled for presentation Monday at the annual meeting of the EASD in Munich, Germany. Findings presented at meetings are generally viewed as preliminary until they've been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

"There are a number of European states that have expressed interest in the program. The American Diabetes Association's position is that individual assessment of people with diabetes is the appropriate approach to determining whether a person is qualified to perform certain activities," said Hine.

"The [EASD] is developing recommendations to share with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that would enable the FAA to identify pilots who are at no greater risk for incapacitation than any other pilot," she added.

More information

The American Diabetes Association has more about commercial pilot restrictions and diabetes.
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 13 (PTI) Eid-ul-Azha was celebrated with traditional gaiety and fervour across the country today as Muslims thronged mosques for prayers and exchanged greetings on the holy day.

Hordes of people visited mosques and idgahs in the national capital to offer prayers on Eid this morning kickstarting festivities on the auspicious occasion.

Large number of people attended special prayers at the historic Jama Masjid, Fatehpuri Masjid and other prominent mosques in all parts of the city.

advertisement

The sacrifice ritual was also performed by the devout at their homes on the occasion of the festival also known as Bakr-Id.

People, specially children, in their festive best visited friends, neighbours and relatives exchanging greetings and gifts, all over the city.

Elaborate security arrangements were in place by Delhi Police for prayers at mosques and old city areas where large number of people visited markets and enjoyed festivities.

Clerics and community leaders delivered sermons on the festive occasion which occurs the day after pilgrims performing Haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia by Muslims worldwide, descend from Mount Arafat.

The festival is celebrated approximately 70 days after the end of the month of Ramzan, which is observed as Eid-ul-Fitr.

Animal sacrifices are also performed as a ritual to commemorate Prophet Ibrahims willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted the nation on Eid, hoping the festival will usher in peace and togetherness.

"Id-ul-Zuha greetings. May this festival enhance the spirit of peace & togetherness in our society," he tweeted.

In trouble-torn Kashmir, curfew and widespread clashes that left two youths dead marred Eid festivities in the Valley which has been witnessing continued protests for last 65 days claiming lives of 78 people.

For the first time, no Eid prayers were offered at the historic Jamia Masjid in Srinagar in nearly two centuries. The last time the grand mosque was closed was in 1821.

Similarly, no Eid prayers were offered at Idgah though authorities allowed partial use of Hazratbal Shrine for prayers.

This is probably for the first time that curfew is in place on the day of Eid festival ever since militancy broke out in the state in 1990.

While curfew was in force in Kashmir valley, Jammu region celebrated Eid-ul-Azha with religious fervour as Muslims flocked to mosques to offer prayers.

Besides offering prayers, people in colourful attire exchanged Eid greetings and pleasantries in all the districts of Jammu province. Hindus and Sikhs also participated in the celebrations, extending greetings to their Muslim brethren on the auspicious occasion.

advertisement

"Eid is the day when we remember the God and seek his blessings. While we prayed for ourselves, we also prayed for peace in the country, especially the Kashmir valley," said Irfan Khan, a local shopkeeper. PTI TEAM KUN RG KUN

--- ENDS ---
HAMILTON, Bermuda, Sept. 12, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Elman Myers, a former US Air Force special agent who is now a managing director at Hiscox, will be the keynote speaker at this months 2016 ALARYS Congress conference (www.alarys.bm) in Bermuda.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/91e6f6a9-e9f6-4b6b-9d5f-f89f127b8720

Based in Miami as Managing Director at Hiscox Special Risks Agency (Americas), Inc, Myers will speak on Organised Crimea New Risk-Management Challenge in Latin America at the September 2527 event at Hamilton Princess & Beach Club.

It is an honour to come to Bermuda, one of the worlds great insurance centres, to share ideas on how businesses looking to capitalise on opportunities in Latin America can confront the security and risk-management challenges posed by organised crime, said Myers.

After 52 years of conflict, the Colombian government and Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) agreed to end hostilities just last month, Myers noted. But organised crimemultinational criminal enterprises that engage in narcotrafficking, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, illegal mining, and money launderingare emerging as the next major regional security challenge.

How will this new criminal reality affect businesses looking to take advantage of opportunities in Latin America? he asked. We will take an overview of the security threats in the regions, show how they affect business interests, and explore ways to effectively manage the risk.

Myers began his career as a special agent with the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations, where he served nine years in investigative and counterintelligence positions in the US, Panama, and Honduras. He left military service in 1997 and worked at CIGNA International Specialty Products and Services (later purchased by ACE), and Willis, where he managed the Miami office until joining Hiscox in 2014.

Today, Myers manages a business-development and client-service team for Hiscox that markets Special Risks (Kidnap & Ransom) insurance throughout Latin America.

This is a highly relevant and timely subject that will be of major interest to our delegates, said Jorge Luzzi, President of the Fundacion Latinoamericana de Administradores de Riesgos y Seguros ALARYS (FUNDALARYS), who also serves as Executive Vice President of the International Federation of Risk and Insurance Management Associations (IFRIMA). We are honoured to have Elman address this topic for our audience and we look forward to welcoming him and all our attendees to Bermuda in two weeks time.

The theme of the 2016 Congress is Emerging and Non-Traditional Risk, with key sessions highlighting insurance-linked securities and other alternative risk-transfer products, as well as strategies for mitigating cyber, political, terrorism, kidnap and catastrophe risk. Topics will be discussed at roundtable discussions and moderated panel sessions, and networking breaks are also part of the agenda. Outside of conference business, activities such as a sunset cruise and other leisure downtime will showcase Bermuda and entertain delegates.

Its the third time FUNDALARYS has chosen Bermuda as host country for the trilingual conference. The Latin American Congress on Risk Management and Insurance was held previously in 2004 and 2010 in Bermudathe only non-Latin venue in its 20-year history.

CONNECTING BUSINESS

The BDA encourages direct investment and helps companies start up, re-locate or expand their operations in our premier jurisdiction. An independent, public-private partnership, we connect you to industry professionals, regulatory officials, and key contacts in the Bermuda government to assist domicile decisions. Our goal? To make doing business here smooth and beneficial
NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS) is hosting the worlds top aesthetic and plastic surgeons for its biennial Congress next month in Kyoto, Japan. The goal of this gathering of global leaders is to provide ongoing education by some of its most highly respected members and instructors. With an emphasis on patient safety, guidelines for choosing a top surgeon and cutting-edge surgical and non-surgical techniques, ISAPS is furthering leadership in the field of plastic surgery. The mission of excellence is promoted by the members and leaders of the society while providing an open forum for exchange of knowledge worldwide during this biennial event.



Promising a superb scientific program and social events that truly represent Japanese hospitality, ISAPS President Susumu Takayanagi, MD is pleased to note that our Scientific Program Committee is developing a diverse educational program involving speakers, moderators, panelists and video presenters from around the world. We will be joined by our local hosts, the Japan Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Visit Japan and experience the beauty of our temples, scenery, culture and friendly people.



The ISAPS Congress runs from October 2327, 2016, at the Miyakomesse Conference Center, in beautiful Kyoto, Japan. Registration for the event is open to board certified (or the equivalent) plastic surgeons and can be found by visiting http://www.isapscongress.org/registration.html

About ISAPS:

The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery places patient safety as its highest priority, holding the highest standards for its members. Through rigorous membership screening, continuing education for members and partnerships with world industry leaders, ISAPS serves as the guardian of patient safety. ISAPS is the patients global resource for finding qualified and experienced aesthetic plastic surgeons.
DENVER, Sept. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Pulse Beverage Corporation (Pulse) (OTCQX:PLSB) makers of Natural Cabana Lemonades/Limeades and Coconut Waters, and PULSE Heart & Body Health functional beverages introduces its newest private label product, Citrus Tree, which is Natural Cabana Lemonade/Limeade formula in a 16.9oz glass bottle in four flavors: Natural, Strawberry, Tropical Mango and Cherry Limeade. This new product is a private label brand sold through Acme Markets, a division of Albertsons, a 176 store supermarket chain in New York and Philadelphia metro areas having a population of more than 40 million. Pulse shipped its first product to Acme in May and a reorder was shipped in July.



Additionally, Pulse has secured listings for its 20oz Natural Cabana Lemonade/Limeade in 64 PriceRite supermarkets found in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia.

Robert E. Yates, CEO of Pulse, said, We are in the midst of a major thrust in the American Northeast and are thrilled to bring on PriceRite and private label Citrus Tree to help broaden our reach into the American Northeast, a highly populated and influential region.

About The Pulse Beverage Corporation

Pulse Beverage Corporation is an emerging beverage company that offers beverage brands that are great tasting, good-for-you, refreshing, low-calorie natural drinks. Combining all-natural ingredients, essential vitamins and minerals, Pulses line of beverages provides consumers with high-quality, healthy alternatives at a reasonable price.

For more information, please visit: www.pulsebeverage.com or email info@pulsebeverage.com.

Follow Pulse Beverage on Twitter at https://twitter.com/drinkpulsebev.

Become a Pulse Beverage Facebook Fan at https://www.facebook.com/PulseBeverageCorporation.

Forward-Looking Statements http:/ir.pulsebeverage.com/forward-looking- statements
NASSAU, Bahamas, Sept. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With the International Women's Empowerment Summit (IWES) quickly approaching, men and women from as far as Ghana are hoping to secure a spot at this inaugural event in paradise.



Slated for October 19-21 at the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort, the schedule for the summit is overflowing with purposeful activities, in particular eight revolutionary panels. Some of the featured speakers on the panel are heavy hitters like Pastor of One Church in Los Angeles, Toure Jakes Roberts; Fashion and Swimwear Designer, Amber Atherton and Celebrity Makeup Artist, Gabby Bernstein.



In addition to the world-renowned speakers, the topics for the eight panels include:Business as Unusual Women, Doing Business with Confidence, Wealth Creation and Economic Empowerment, Startup Women, Presentation is Everything, The Value of Educating a Woman, UN Women HeForShe and The Balanced Woman.

Hosted by The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, in collaboration with Startup Woman and United Nations Women, the summit is designed for women professionals and entrepreneurs from around the world and The Bahamas, to meet, to learn from and to inspire each other.



Joy Jibrilu, Director General of The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism said interest from the public, especially internationally, has been remarkable. "We have had more interest from international audiences than we could have asked for. I'm talking about people who have been prepared to register and commit to coming to The Bahamas. Feedback has been phenomenal from as far away as Africa and both Ghana and Nigeria have expressed huge levels of interest."



Jibrilu said the Ministry of Tourism reached out to spectacular women to speak on the panel to ensure that the summit has not only merit but also value.



"We've reached out to phenomenal women both at home and globally. Women who have made an impact such as Mrs. Folorunsho Alakija, the richest black woman in the world who is coming in to speak on two panels. In addition you've got Sarah Roberts, TD Jakes' daughter, and her husband coming to speak," she said.



"We are so delighted that the United Nations Women has come on to become a partner with us in this initiative. In addition, Startup Women UK and the founder of Startup UK is also the founder of WIE enterprises and they're partnering with us. So just their reach alone has ensured that we have the highest caliber and quality of speakers coming."



Other speakers include:

Sarah Jakes Roberts  Pastor of One Church LA

Folorunso Alakija - Founder of Rose of Sharon and Vice Chairman of Famfa Oil

Pastor Funke Adejumo - President of Funke Felix Adejumo Foundation

Lauren Holowesko - Director of Island House

Nikki Ogunnaike - Senior Fashion Editor of Hearst Digital Media

Amy Van Atta Slater - Senior Vice President, Rovi Corporation

Hon. Allyson Maynard Gibson - Attorney General of The Bahamas

Lakshmi Puri - Assistant Secretary General for Intergovernmental Support and Strategic Partnerships at UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

Melissa Odabash - Founder of Flash Cash

Cheryl Tiegs - Fashion Model and Designer

Carole White - Founder of Premier Model Management

Lisa Goodchild - CEO of Digiwoo

Beverly Saunders - Vice President of Human Resources for Cable Bahamas

Traci Otey Blunt - Executive Vice President of The RLJ Companies

Sam Fine - Self Help Author and Motivational Speaker

Karen Cummings Palmer - Health, Beauty and Nutrition Consultant

Dr. Terri Kennedy - CEO of Power Living Enterprises Inc.

Jennifer Wilson - Manager at the Cove Atlantis

Liz Stern - Founder of Global Giving Advisors

Marion Bethel - Partner at Sears and Co/Writer and Documentarian

Ted Bunch - Co Founder of A Call to Men

Josh Levs - Co Founder of A Call to Men

Amir Dossal - Founder of the Global Partnerships Forum



The summit will also host the launch of the StartUp Woman initiative for The Bahamas, a new enterprise by the founders of WIE Network, which shines a spotlight on woman-owned SME's in the UK, the US and The Bahamas. With the support of Startup Woman Bahamas, six notable women will be invited to mentor six young aspiring Bahamian entrepreneurs.



For more information, and to register for IWES 2016, please visit http://bahamasiwesummit.com/



The Islands Of The Bahamas have a place in the sun for everyone from Nassau and Paradise Island to Grand Bahama to The Abaco Islands, The Exuma Islands, Harbour Island, Long Island and others. Each island has its own personality and attractions for a variety of vacation styles with some of the world's best scuba diving, fishing, sailing, boating, as well as, shopping and dining. The destination offers an easily accessible tropical getaway and provides convenience for travelers with preclearance through U.S. customs and immigration, and the Bahamian dollar is on par with the U.S. dollar. Do everything or do nothing, just remember It's Better in The Bahamas. For more information on travel packages, activities and accommodations, call 1-800-Bahamas or visit www.Bahamas.com. Look for The Bahamas on the web on Facebook Twitter and YouTube
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
By PTI: Pratapgarh (UP), Sep 13 (PTI) An FIR has been registered against an Apna Dal MLA and 150 party workers for blocking the Raebareli-Varanasi Highway to protest the alleged misbehavior of a local leader with Union Minister Anupriya Patel.

Local leader Vinod Dubey and over 157 others had on Sunday allegedly misbehaved with Patel and Apna Dal workers during their partys roadshow.

advertisement

Subsequently, the protesters led by party legislator R K Verma had blocked traffic on the highway for six hours to protest the incident. A case was yesterday registered against them at Raniganj police station, a senior police officer said.

Also, an FIR was on Sunday registered against Dubey and 158 people for "misbehaving" with the Union Minister. PTI CORR ABN GVS DV GVS

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Sep 13 (PTI) India along with 21 others have been designated as major illicit drug producing countries by US President Barack Obama.

Other countries are Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Myanmar, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.

advertisement

In a notification, Obama further designated Bolivia, Myanmar and Venezuela as countries that have failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to adhere to their obligations under international counter-narcotic agreements and take measures against them.

However, Obama determined to continue aid to Myanmar and Venezuela arguing that this is in the national interest of the US.

Obama said a countrys presence on the foregoing Major Drug Transit and Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries list is not a reflection of its governments counter-narcotic efforts or level of cooperation with the US.

There is a growing international consensus that counter- narcotics programs must be designed and implemented with the aim of improving the health and safety of individuals while preventing and reducing violence and other harmful consequences to communities, Obama said.

"In concert with international partners, the US is expanding its domestic and international funding for drug treatment and recovery support programs based on empirical scientific evidence that shows that substance use disorders are medical conditions and must be treated as such," he said.

To achieve greater balance, US drug policy also includes stepped-up promotion of effective alternative development programs for farmers and others who agree to stop illegal drug cultivation and associated activities, he said.

Obama said heroin in the US is being increasingly adulterated with low-cost synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl.

Research has shown that fentanyl and its analogues can be 25 to 50 times more potent than heroin, he added.

According to US law enforcement, most illicit fentanyl, precursors, and fentanyl analogues that have been identified in the US originate in China and enter the country via Mexico, Canada, or direct mail, Obama added. PTI LKJ CPS

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 13 (PTI) India and Mauritius today explored greater collaboration in the area of defence and security even as discussions on a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Partnership Agreement (CECPA) between the two countries restarted.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today met visiting Finance Minister of Mauritius Pravind Kumar Jugnauth.

She appreciated Jugnauth for giving priority to visiting India on his first tour abroad which was in keeping with the "very special blood relationship" between India and Mauritius, official sources said.

advertisement

She said India has always given full support to the development priorities of Mauritius.

We are finalising the MoU under which the Metro Express project and other projects announced by Jugnauth in his budget could begin to be implemented, sources said.

The long-standing request from Mauritius for restarting negotiations on CECPA and PTA (trade agreement) had also been met with discussions held yesterday in Port Louis, they added.

Swaraj thanked Jugnauth for the forward looking decision which had made the protocol on amendment of the Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC) possible.

This, she said, had added to Mauritius financial credentials.

Swaraj said long-standing partnership between India and Mauritius had played a critical role in ensuring peace and stability in the Indian Ocean region.

In this context, both leaders called for greater collaboration in the area of defence and security. India offered to provide assistance in terms of hydrographic surveys, sources said.

The two leaders also discussed their concerns on terrorism and agreed to increase the collaboration in this area.

Jugnauth reiterated Mauritius consistent support for Indias bid for permanent membership of a reformed and expanded United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

In terms of people-to-people contacts, the two leaders discussed the construction of the World Hindi Secretariat in Mauritius.

Swaraj invited significant participation from Mauritius in the forthcoming Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD), 2017.

She said India would be sending a delegation this month to examine whether it can use the Girmtiya records for giving Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards.

Girmitiya records relate to indentured labourers from India working in plantations in Mauritius. PTI PYK SAP AAR SK AAR

--- ENDS ---
The Ministry of External Affairs blames Pakistan for the current spate of violence in the Kashmir Valley.

By Smita Sharma: India on Tuesday rejected the appeal of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNHCHR) to send a delegation to gauge the situation in Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control.



In a strongly worded statement, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) claimed that UNHCHR commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein has received conflicting narratives on the cause for the confrontations.

advertisement

The Indian foreign ministry in its reply blamed Pakistan for the current spate of violence in the Kashmir Valley.

"It would be recalled that the present situation arose from the death of a self-acknowledged commander of the terrorist organisation, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, who was wanted for several terrorist acts. It was further aggravated by sustained cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan. Terrorism is the grossest violation of human rights and should be so acknowledged by any impartial and objective observer", the response said.

Earlier, in his opening remarks at the 33rd session of the UN Human Rights Council, Zeid Ra'ad had lamented that two months back he requested both India and Pakistan to allow teams to investigate allegations of human rights abuses on both sides of Kashmir and his office received 'conflicting narratives' from both sides. "I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides," Zeid said.

PAKISTAN RAKES UP KASHMIR ISSUE GLOBALLY



Pakistan which has been going all out to internationalise the Kashmir issue, recently upped the ante by appointing 22 special envoys of the Pakistan PM on Jammu and Kashmir to rake up the issue globally.



Islamabad sought a 'fair, transparent and independent inquiry' into what it called the 'martyrdom of Burhan Wani.'

The Human Rights High Commissioner informed the UNHRC that in a letter sent last Friday, the government of Pakistan has agreed to 'formally invite an OHCHR team to the Pakistani side of Line of Control, but in tandem with a mission to the Indian side.'

Dismissing off the proposal, the Indian side in its reply said, "The issue of an external mission was considered by the all-party conference on August 12, 2016 that met to discuss the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. It was unanimously felt that Indian democracy has all that is required to address legitimate grievances."

"We hope that the connection between terrorism and violation of human rights would be recognised and deliberated upon in Geneva," the MEA emphasised.

ALSO READ | 2 killed in fresh clashes in Kashmir, India says cannot compare J-K with PoK



--- ENDS ---

advertisement
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 12 (PTI) Indian exporters will get greater market access in textiles and pharma in countries such as China and Korea under the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement, with the Cabinet approving the exchange of duty concession pact for the region today.

"The Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) is an initiative under the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific for trade expansion through exchange of tariff concessions among developing country members of the Asia-Pacific region," Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters here.

advertisement

"Many of the sectors where we benefit are of critical value to us. Particularly, China and Korea have offered textiles, chemicals, pharma, heavy engineering machine tools, gems and jewelery, iron and steel, agri and marine products for us."

This decision will be ratified during the fourth session of the ministerial council of APTA, which is due in January 2017. After that, all the decisions will be formally implemented.

Sitharaman said this decision was agreed upon by the APTA members after several rounds of talks. The third round was held some time in 2001 and since then, this has been going on.

On its part, India will give market access to the other members in sectors like railway locomotives, rolling stock, nuclear plants, fissile material, aircraft and spacecraft. These are the items which are procured only by government agencies in India.

She made it clear that nothing will come into the country at zero duty as this is a preferential trade agreement. The duty will be around 7 per cent.

"After prolonged and protracted negotiations, we have reached this... it has now got to be agreed by other countries and ratified by them. Ministerial meeting is in January 2017, where this will go through," she added.

Asked about the impact of the proposed mega deal Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on this, she replied that RCEP is lot more ambitious.

Although Indian exporters will get access in Korean and Chinese markets at a concessional duty, these two already have overcapacity in iron and steel and chemicals.

Currently, APTA consists of six countries or participating states - Bangladesh, China, India, Lao PDR, Republic of Korea, and Sri Lanka.

The Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved the exchange of tariff concessions, on margin of a preference basis, under the fourth round of negotiations under APTA and related amendments.

Since this is a PTA, the basket of items as well as extent of tariff concessions are enlarged during the trade negotiating rounds launched from time to time. MORE PTI RR CS ARD

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Syria's army command said in a statement that Israeli warplanes had attacked an army position at 1 am on Tuesday in the countryside of Quneitra province.

By Reuters: Israel said its aircraft attacked a Syrian army position on Tuesday after a stray mortar bomb struck the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, and it denied a Syrian statement that a warplane and drone were shot down.

The air strike was a now-routine Israeli response to the occasional spillover from fighting in a five-year-old civil war, and across Syria a ceasefire was holding at the start of its second day.

advertisement

Syria's army command said in a statement that Israeli warplanes had attacked an army position at 1 am on Tuesday (2200 GMT, Monday) in the countryside of Quneitra province.

The Israeli military said its aircraft attacked targets in Syria hours after the mortar bomb from fighting among factions in Syria struck the Golan Heights. Israel captured the plateau from Syria in a 1967 war.

The Syrian army said it had shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone after the Israeli attack.

Denying any of its aircraft had been lost, the Israeli military said in a statement: "Overnight two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission to target Syrian artillery positions. At no point was the safety of (Israeli) aircraft compromised."

The seven-day truce in Syria, brokered by Russia and the United States, is their second attempt this year by to halt the bloodshed.

--- ENDS ---
A 21-year-old transgender was admitted in West Bengal's Kalyani University beyond their intake capacity on humanitarian grounds.

By India Today Web Desk: Despite Kalyani University's Department of Mathematics being at capacity, 21-year-old Sumana Pramanik was admitted for post-graduation degree. And that's a joyful news not just for her but for you too if you believe in equality.

Sumana, a young transgender who was raised in an orphanage, was admitted "under the supernumerary quota" on humanitarian grounds.

Speaking to The Times Of India, the university's secretary of faculty council, Dr Pinaki Chattopadhyay, said, "Keeping in my mind the Supreme Court verdict on transgenders, we decided to look at her case from a humanitarian angle. Our VC had given the approval to admit someone beyond our intake capacity."

advertisement

"She has been admitted under the supernumerary quota. We aren't aware if any other university in Bengal has done something like this for a transgender candidate," he said.

The 21-year-old completed her Bachelor's degree from Srikrishna College in Bagula, Nadia district. She even met up with the state education minister, Partha Chattopadhyay, who "was kind enough to help" her with the issue.

Congratulations, Sumana. We hope you do great things in life.

--- ENDS ---
First of all, don't worry about it now, unless you have energy to put in a call here and there to one of these friends. Not necessarily to do anything, but to check in because you feel like you've dropped off the face of the earth.

Second, don't see an unexpected, unfilled weekend as an accurate preview of what's to come. Few people when they have an unplanned-for break in a busy sequence are able to pull together a coherent social use of that time--not unless they're tight enough with the people next door to go out for an impromptu coffee/beer/dinner out. Generally that time gets burned on the couch by people thinking, cheez, I finally have a break and this is all I'm doing with it? because being highly invested and preoccupied by an emotionally consuming mission tends to steal resources from other aspects of your emotional life. I'm sure there are people who can toggle quickly from all-in caregiving to structured socializing, but I can't think of any offhand.

Plus, filled and fulfilling social schedules tend to be the product of continuity and steady maintenance. Some of your friends might be gone for good, but chances are some will return to you as you resume your part of that maintenance.

Third, when you do find yourself in the "after" phase, you can survey the landscape then. You can regroup on your own as you need to, start calling old friends as you want to, weigh their (non-)responses as they come in, and see what kind of effort you want and need to make from there. With the exception of the occasional call I suggested at the outset, there isn't much you can do now that will change the outcome drastically later. Focus on your parent now, and focus on later later.
NTSB Examining Uncontained Engine Failure on Southwest Plane

So far, NTSB's initial findings from the examination of the airplane and the engine and a metallurgical examination show that the the left engine inlet separated from the engine during the flight, and debris from the inlet damaged the airplane fuselage and wing, gashing a 5-inch by 16-inch hole in the left fuselage just above the left wing.

The National Transportation Safety Board provided an update Sept.12 on its investigation of an Aug. 27, 2016, uncontained engine failure on Southwest Airlines flight 3472 as the Boeing 737-700 was flying from New Orleans to Orlando. The aircraft was diverted to Pensacola International Airport and safely landed without further incident.

So far, NTSB's initial findings from the examination of the airplane and the engine and a metallurgical examination show that the the left engine inlet separated from the engine during the flight, and debris from the inlet damaged the airplane fuselage and wing, gashing a 5-inch by 16-inch hole in the left fuselage just above the left wing. But no fan blade or inlet material was found in the hole, and the passenger interior compartment was not penetrated.

The airplane did experience a cabin depressurization.

According to NSTB, the aircraft's maintenance records are being reviewed.

A fan blade separated from the fan disk during the flight, and the root of that blade remained in the fan hub. Analysis showed curving crack arrest lines consistent with fatigue crack growth, with a fatigue crack region measuring 1.14 inches long and 0.217 inch deep. "The center of the fatigue origin area was about 2.1 inches aft of the forward face of the blade root. No surface or material anomalies were noted during an examination of the fatigue crack origin using scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy," according to NTSB, which added that the blades are made of a titanium alloy and the root contact face is coated with a copper-nickel-indium alloy.

The aircraft's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were shipped to the NTSB Recorder Laboratory and the data from both have been downloaded. Parties to the investigation include FAA, Southwest Airlines, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, and CFM International.
Shri Maharashtra Panchayat, an organisation for Maharashtrians in Karachi, has been celebrating the Ganesh festival since the pre-Independence era

By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: The Hindu-Maharashtrian community of Karachi celebrated Ganesh Visarjan with much zest and zeal to bid adieu to Ganpati Bappa. The festival in celebrated with equal fanfare and fervour in the Pakistani Metro.

Shri Maharashtra Panchayat, an organisation for Maharashtrians in Karachi, has been celebrating the Ganesh festival since the pre-Independence era.

No skirts, half pants allowed in Mumbai's famous Ganpati mandal. But wait, you can borrow lungis and pyjamas!



advertisement

PLACES REJOICING IN GANPATI CELEBRATION



This year also Karachi saw cheerful celebrations of the Ganesh festival at the Ganesh Math Mandir in Doli Khata, Bori compound area, Swami Narayan Mandir and the famous Shiva Mandir at Clifton.

The celebrations at the Doli Khata and Shiva temple in Clifton are the biggest celebrations in Karachi. The celebrations at the Shiva temple in Clifton was started by the late Krishna Naik.

Speaking to India Today from Karachi, Vishal Rajput, member of the Maharashtrian Punchayat said "the number of public celebrations has gone up. Karachi had around 25 to 30 celebrations, including those by non-Maharashtrians and the numbers are increasing every year."

The Marathi community, which numbers just around 800 in Karachi, also prepared sweets like the traditional Modaks, karanji and ladoos at home.

The idols of Lord Ganesha are generally immersed at the Nety Jetty in Karachi. Like any other Indian City, revellers take out procession to bid farewell to lord Ganesha. The minority Hindu community also celebrates other Hindu festivals like Janmashtami, Diwali with equal fanfare.

--- ENDS ---
Buyers purchasing units in bigger projects can enjoy more facilities and amenities in the development while paying a lower maintenance fee due to a larger resident base.

Indonesians have already bought 30 properties in Singapore valued at $5 million or more this year, up from just eight for the whole of 2015, data shows.

The number of Indonesian nationals purchasing luxury homes in Singapore has nearly quadrupled from last years total, reported Bloomberg.

Data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) shows that Indonesians acquired 30 properties in Singapore valued at $5 million or more from January to 17 August, a significant increase from only eight for the whole of 2015.

In the first half of 2016, Indonesians purchased 189 properties of all values in Singapore, up by 23 percent over the same period last year, revealed Cushman & Wakefield.

The pent-up buying activity coincides with the passage of a law by Jakarta, aimed at getting Indonesians to repatriate or pay taxes of around US$300 billion, which was moved to Singapore during periods of unrest.

Under the said law, Indonesians will pay a tax rate of four percent on declared funds or property left overseas. The tax rate increases in stages to 10 percent just as the amnesty period comes to an end in March. Those who bring their money back to Indonesia and keep it there for at least three years pay two percent and are also offered various potential investments. Those who do not declare and are found out face paying 200 percent of the tax owed.

Were seeing a big increase in Indonesians buying the most expensive property, stated Ang Kok Leong, a senior property agent at SLP Realty, who cited Singapores upcoming move to share financial information with Indonesia as the biggest motivation of his Indonesian clients.

These people are generally in tune with this kind of situation back home, so if Im not about to let the Indonesians know what I have, I will buy in Singapore.

Singapore, Indonesia and other countries are adopting global tax reporting requirements to inform each other of nationals holding assets overseas. Indonesians moving money into property, however, are counting on information on assets held in banks, and not in real estate, as the only ones to be shared, said brokers and agents.

Story continues

Nonetheless, not all Indonesians buying real estate are avoiding taxes, with some seeing value in a market that bottomed out in prime areas at end-2015. Indonesians are attracted to property located in Singapores city centre, particularly the Orchard Road area where the luxury OUE Twin Peaks towers are situated. According to Cushman & Wakefield, apartment prices in the area rose by 0.6 percent since their low at end-2015.

The OUE Twin Peaks development, where prices went for as much as $4 million when it went on sale in July, saw Indonesians emerge as the top foreign buyers.

An agent at Propnex Realty, the company that handles sales for the project, said the robust demand from Indonesians came as a surprise. It is a significant change from the past sales of downtown luxury homes, like Marina One Residences last year, when buyers from Indonesia made up just three of around 200 units sold, revealed data from Cushman & Wakefield.

Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg
Libya's UN-backed unity government lost control on Monday of a third oil port seized by rival forces, raising fears of a major outbreak of fresh violence in the chaos-ridden country. The loss comes after fighters backing a rival administration in east Libya seized two other terminals from guards loyal to the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) on Sunday. All three Mediterranean ports are in Libya's "oil crescent", an area seen as a vital source of income for the GNA which has struggled to assert its authority across the country. "Our armed forces were able to take control of Zuwaytina port and secure it completely," a spokesman for the fighters who took the terminals said. The LANA news agency loyal to the eastern administration reported a military source as saying: "The armed forces are now concentrated at the port and have secured it after expelling outlaw militia from it." The forces are commanded by controversial General Khalifa Haftar, who has refused to back the GNA and supports the parallel authority based in eastern Libya near the border with Egypt. On Sunday, they took the Al-Sidra and Ras Lanuf ports before attacking Zuwaytina to the east. It is the first time that Haftar's forces and fighters loyal to the GNA have clashed directly since the unity government started working in the capital in March. The UN special representative to Libya, Martin Kobler, urged Haftar's forces "to immediately stop fighting and refrain from further military escalation". "I call for the respect of UN Security Council Resolution 2259 which recognises the Government of National Accord... as the sole executive authority in Libya," he said in a statement. Kobler said oil installations must remain under the authority of the presidential council and stressed that Resolution 2259 "contains a clear prohibition on illicit oil exports". Meanwhile the United States and its major European allies condemned the offensives. "The governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States condemn this weekend's attacks on Zuwaytina, Ras Lanuf, Es Sider and Brega oil terminals in Libya," they said, in a statement. - 'Critical juncture' - The unity government, for its part, called on all forces loyal to it to "protect and defend" the ports, while the head of the rival government in the eastern city of Bayda said it would work on reopening the ports as soon as possible. "We will work on the oil ports resuming work as soon as possible so as to guarantee all Libyans a decent life," Abdullah al-Thani said. Haftar's forces said they would hand over management of the ports to the National Oil Corporation (NOC) to resume oil exports. The NOC is split into two rival branches, however, one allied to the GNA and the other to the administration that Haftar supports. Oil is Libya's main natural resource with reserves estimated at 48 billion barrels, the largest in Africa. But since 2010 the country's production has plummeted. The seizure of the ports deals a heavy blow to the unity government, depriving it of a key source of income. In late July, the GNA agreed to resume oil exports out of Ras Lanuf and Al-Sidra -- which together have a capacity of 700,000 bpd -- after a months-long closure following jihadist attacks. They shut after attacks in January by the Islamic State (IS) group, which has gained a foothold in the country. - Rival authorities, militia - Libya has been in chaos since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with rival authorities and militia vying for control. The port of Brega -- between Ras Lanuf and Zuwaytina -- remains in the hands of the oil installation guards. Haftar's assault on the ports came as pro-GNA forces, including oil installation guards, have been battling for months to oust IS from the coastal city of Sirte. The US Africa Command, meanwhile, said American warplanes carried out four air strikes in Sirte on Sunday in support of GNA forces, targeting IS "fighting positions". The latest raids brought to 143 the total number of air strikes in support of the loyalist fighters since they began on August 1, said a statement issued Monday. Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Monday his country would establish a military field hospital in the Libyan city of Misrata, to where GNA casualties from Sirte are evacuated, and deploy troops to ensure security. Italy's La Repubblica newspaper said the operation would involve 100 medical staff and 200 paratroopers.
Thousands of passengers across Africa have been left stranded after Nigeria's largest airline said Tuesday it had suspended operations and might remain grounded for several days.

Arik Air attributed the "temporary disruption" to "pending approval of aircraft documentation related to insurance renewal... a challenge due to the long weekend holidays" for the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha.

Two other Nigerian carriers, Aero and First Nation, also suspended flights this month.

A dire shortage of dollars, linked to the drop in the price of oil, which accounts for 70 percent of Nigeria's economy, has drastically reduced banks' liquidity and left the country's airlines unable to pay their bills.

Sabotage by armed groups in the Delta region has also affected oil revenue.

Earlier this year Angola became Africa's largest oil producer, overtaking longtime leader Nigeria, which slipped into recession at the end of August.

"The airline business is very capital intensive. No airline operator can do this business without having to go borrowing," Allen Onyema, head of another airline, Air Peace, wrote in a newspaper column published Tuesday.

"We need to have banks on our side. But I must say that a lot of them are scared of lending money," he added.

International carriers have also been affected, with Emirates running a single daily flight to Dubai instead of the usual two, and Air France-KLM reducing passenger capacity by using smaller aircraft.

spb/afm/pdw
The United States warned of "disturbing trends" in Iran's behavior Tuesday after Tehran's military threatened to down two US Navy planes over the Strait of Hormuz.

Some in Washington had hoped Iran's regime would show a warmer face to the world after this year's nuclear deal, but a US official admitted this has not been the case.

Asked about Iran's military provocations, its ballistic missile tests and its detention of US citizens, State Department spokesman Mark Toner acknowledged concern.

"We have seen some disturbing, as you cited, trends," he said, adding of the threat to the planes, "we have seen a succession of these events over the past month or so."

The spokesman insisted that Iran would have been an even greater threat to its region and to the United States if it had not signed the deal to limit its nuclear ambitions.

But he admitted it was possible that Iran had stepped up its provocations in other domains after the controversial agreement won the Islamic republic sanctions relief.

"I can't rule that out," Toner said, when asked if the nuclear deal, rather than taming Iran, had emboldened it to adopt a more aggressive stance.

"Iran, like many countries, has an internal political process that is defined by a lot of different dynamics, so I can't give an assessment on that one way or another."

Earlier, the Pentagon had confirmed the latest in a series of dangerous military encounters between the US Navy and Iranian forces near key oil trade routes in the Gulf.

Two US maritime patrol aircraft were flying separate missions in international airspace on September 10 when Iranian air defense batteries challenged them by radio.

US Naval Forces Central Command spokesman Commander Bill Urban said the Iranians told the pilots they "were flying near Iranian airspace, and if they did not change course immediately that 'we will fire Iranian missile'."

"The US aircraft independently replied, 'This is a coalition aircraft conducting routine operations in international airspace,' and continued their respective missions," he added.

Story continues

The spokesman said the Iranian warning was "unprofessional" but the US Navy has not deemed the incident "unsafe" because the US planes were outside known Iranian anti-aircraft missile ranges.

- Series of blunders -

In recent weeks, the Pentagon has denounced a series of "unsafe and unprofessional" maritime encounters in the Gulf, including one that prompted an American ship to fire warning shots at an Iranian vessel that got too close.

Navy officials say ships from the US and Iranian navies interacted more than 300 times in 2015 and more than 250 times the first half of this year.

Ten percent of these encounters have been deemed unsafe and unprofessional.

In January, the Iranian navy briefly captured the crews of two US patrol boats that had, through a series of blunders, strayed into Iranian territorial waters.

The 10 American sailors were released within 24 hours.
DJ Angie Vu Ha

Sexy playboy playmate and DJ Angie Vu Ha will be returning to Singapore during the F1 weekend to take over the decks at FashionTV Club on 18 Sept.

The Vietnamese bombshell has previously spun at major nightclubs in Singapore such as Attica and Avalon, with her last F1 appearance in 2013 at Italian restaurant and lounge Zafferano at Collyer Quay.

Vu, who was recently released from a six-month prison sentence for parental kidnapping charges, is ready for her comeback set in Singapore to spin electronic dance tunes as part of the Johnnie Walker presents Pitstop Party event.



According to reports, the model and owner of a lingerie line had been about to board the plane to China with her 9-year-old daughter Isabella Vu Froger when she was stopped at Kennedy Airport last November



DJ Leng Yein

Another of Asias hottest DJs, Leng Yein, 30, will be spinning at the same event on 17 Sept. The Malaysian model and EDM DJ has graced the pages of several mens magazines, including Maxim and FHM.

FashionTV Clubs marketing manager, Iqki Izaak, said, These women bring together beauty and talent It is spectacular to have them both and their sets are absolute sensations.
Its the Halloween season once again, and when the leaves change and the weather gets chilly, you know its time to turn up the frightsin real life and in the digital space. As they say, everyone is entitled to one good scare around All Hallows Eve, especially after the data breaches and security fails that some of the worlds top companies have gone through in 2022.

This year, maybe more than ever, weve seen that hacking groups have no scruples and are willing to disrupt any organizationno matter if they are a nonprofit or provide life-saving healthcare services. Lets take a look at some of the scariest hacking groups that security teams need to know this year.

Read the Article

Related: Uptime at Any Cost: Why Cyberactors Increasingly Targeted Manufacturing in 2021

Recommended: Employees: The First Line of Defense Against Cyberattacks
CAIRO (Sputnik)  On October 21, the Russian A321 plane carrying 224 people, crashed in the Sinai Peninsula en route from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg. All people on board died in the biggest disaster in the history of Russian civil aviation. Shortly after the crash, Moscow and Cairo reached an understanding on the investigation, and an international probe was launched, headed by Russia and Egypt.

"The Commission of Inquiry continues to explore the wreckage of the plane in Cairo airport and to date, it has not received any results that would indicate the cause of the accident," the sources told the El Balad broadcaster.

According to the sources, the most likely reasons behind the crash was the destruction in the tail section.
Rather than preparing to wage needless warfare after September 11, the US government should have immediately focused on preventing any suspects from leaving the United States and conducting an extensive investigation into who plotted the attack, Macgregor maintained.

"The first action after 9/11 should have involved closing our borders and ports, grounding aircraft and finding out who was actually in the United States that could have conspired with the perpetrators," he stated.

US policymakers under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have never been held to answer for their failures, Macgregor insisted.

"Where there is no accountability there is no performance," he said. "The appointed and elected leaders who squandered blood and treasure on self-defeating military occupations and wrongheaded policies were never held accountable."

Macgregor has a doctoral degree in international relations from the University of Virginia. He commanded the Battle of 73 Easting, a decisive tank fight during the 1991 Gulf War.

Middle East analyst and historian Helena Cobban agreed that the policies the United States undertook following the 2001 attacks have proven to be a mistake, both in their conception and results.

"Bush should have followed the example set by Presidents [Franklin] Roosevelt and [Harry] Truman at the end of World War II," Cobban said. "They insisted on a focused legal process to target the leading wrongdoers who ordered the criminal policies that were carried out."
Soros, the journalist noted, has not been at all shy about attempting to undermine the democratic process in entire regions in Eastern Europe and in Russia's backyard, starting in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, first in the former Soviet Bloc, then in former Soviet republics, and finally in Russia itself.

But Soros' operations have been broader than that, Shatov added. "It's no secret," for example, "that his funds sponsor media acceptable to Washington around the world."

With the billionaire's NGOs and charities well-represented in the post-Soviet space, only Russia can live with the comfort of knowing that as of November 2015, Soros' foundations cannot work in the country, having been classified as 'undesirable organizations'.

In the meantime, the billionaire has turned his gaze to the American presidential election  to the long and drawn-out process of selecting and electing a commander-in-chief which stretches from a year to a year-and-a-half. Among the latest revelations regarding the influence of Soros' operations has been the WikiLeaks publication of the internal correspondence of his Open Society Foundations, which revealed an attempt to influence the presidential race with the help of Pope Francis.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  "According to OpenSecrets.org, the number one recipient of lobbying cash from Google in 2014  was the Podesta Group, of course founded by John Podesta, who is now chairman of the Clinton campaign," said Sam Husseini, founder of the Washington, DC-based advocacy group VotePact.

As Sputnik reported on Monday, research psychologist Robert Epstein of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology estimates in a new study that Clinton-friendly suggestions Google provides in response to users search queries could shift as many as 3 million votes in the November US presidential election.

Husseini said the US tech industrys growth has fueled in part by the expansion of the national security state in the 15 years since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
By India Today Web Desk: Kapoor and Sons was one of the most successful films of 2015, not just on the commercial front but also critically acclaimed. The film depicting the picture of a dysfuctional family based in the hill-station of Conoor. The reason why the film was lauded, was its bravery in having a homosexual protagonist and leaving out all the stereotypes associated with it in Bollywood.



ALSO READ: Karan Johar confirms SRK's cameo in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil

advertisement

So Fawad Khan wasn't seeing acting effeminate or wearing pink tops to convey his sexuality. He didn't need to do that, it was nobody's business. And in a startling revelation, Karan Johar told the world that it was actually Fawad Khan's wife who goaded him to take up the role of a homosexual, which he thought was the most fantastic part of the story.

In the insecure world of Bollywood, where wives are generally 'stupid' as said by Karan Johar himself, it was a refreshing change to see a spouse egging her husband to go out of his comfort-zone and experiment. Karan Johar, a big fan of Fawad Khan who stars in his upcoming Diwali release Ae Dil Hai Mushkil as well, said Fawad was not only a great actor but also a brave one.

Karan Johar spoke at length about his career how he has evolved with Hindi Cinema and how the landscape of Bollywood has changed over the past two decades. Johar will be seen presenting his next film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, which releases on October 27.



--- ENDS ---
In one test, Google required a user seeking information on Clintons health to type, "hillary clinton hea," and the search engines auto-complete function yielded four suggestions: "health care," "headquarters," "hearing" and "headquarters chicago." There was nothing related to the candidates health, which has become an issue in the presidential race.

In comparison, Yahoos search engine merely required the user to type "hill" to yield 10 suggestions, three of which referred to the Democratic candidates health. Bing produced eight suggestions by typing, "hillary clinton h," with two pertaining to Clintons health.

Google has claimed that its search engine is programmed to filter out negative results. But that didnt appear to be the case when Epstein performed a similar search for "Trump flip flops." That query merely required the user to type, "donald trump fl," to yield the sought-after topic.

Similar complaints have been made against Facebook, which has been accused of liberal bias in items it posts as "trending."

In her interview with Sputnik, Verheyden-Hilliard warned that its a mistake for anyone to assume giant internet companies are neutral, especially when it comes to politics.

"Right now they have massive control over information and they are unlimited and unbridled," she said. "There is nothing capping their behavior except public exposure of their behavior."

To protect democracy, Verheyden-Hilliard recommended that companies such as Facebook and Google be treated as public utilities instead of corporations motivated solely by profit.
Copenhagen City Hall seems to be ready to spend five million DKK (roughly $800,000) on a "faith-neutral" church, which would be open to believers and non-believers alike. According to Tommy Petersen of the Social Liberal Party, the idea has been on the table since 2009 and money has already been spent on a preliminary design, the Danish newspaper Politiken reported. The plan is to allow Copenhageners to book the ceremony room in advance, which they expect to be able to run without municipal subsidies.

"Copenhagen dwellers who are not a members of a religious community have become increasingly 'homeless' faith-wise, in the sense that they themselves have create a new framework for baptism, the transition from childhood to adolescence, marriages and funerals. We want to make room for diversity in Copenhagen," Tommy Petersen told Politiken.

The proposal, worked out by Svendborg Architects, suggests converting storage rooms for funeral urns at Bispebjerg Cemetery, which have fallen into disuse, into a "faith-neutral" shrine, which would be completely stripped of any religious symbolism and based on three main values  solemnity, dignity and neutrality.
Stone is known for being outspoken on the subject of about war, which has become the subject of many of his films, including such gems as war drama "Platoon" (1986). According to Oliver Stone, who has personal experience of fighting in Vietnam, war is the most dangerous and destructive force in the world. The entire history of mankind is about the reasons why people have to go to war, and Stone, who is known for giving his honest opinion about US politics, believes America plays a special part in the process.

"Violence is part of our culture. Not only through television and movies, but it permeates our society and our attitudes. It's part and parcel of growing up in America. We get the violence with mother's milk," Stone told Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.

According to Stone, who is known for always questioning the established truths, the solution involves a new balance of power.
"In other words, the North's capital city will be reduced to ashes and removed from the map," the source said.

The plan provides for the use of South Korean-made Hyunmoo ballistic missiles, which feature a range of up to 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), to mainly target the North Korean leadership in the event that the north attempts to launch either a nuclear or a conventional war, according to the source.

Commenting on the matter, Toloraya said that all this frightening rhetoric had only been created "for internal use".

"South Korea's statements aim to reassure public opinion by showing that Seoul has the means to defend itself on its own, regardless of the US nuclear umbrella," he pointed out.

Touching upon Pyongyang's promise in July to turn South Korea into "a sea of fire and a pile of ashes" in response to the deployment of a missile defense system near North Korean territory, Toloraya said that this saber-rattling should also be seen as nothing but bellicose rhetoric.

"The propaganda of the North Korean threat does not stand up to criticism. Building up nuclear potential remains their only guarantee that any use of force against them will not be undertaken," he said.

Toloraya also expressed doubt about the effectiveness of sanctions against North Korea, saying that "the past 25 years have shown that the sanctions absolutely do not work" and that a new strategy on North Korea is needed.

According to him, the only way to contain North Korea is to negotiate rather than fight.

"They deliberately up the ante in order to strengthen their position and reach a sort of consensus during the talks, especially with the Americans," Toloraya said.
ALMATY (Sputnik)  Tajik, Chinese and Russian traces are seen in the August 30 suicide attack on the Chinese embassy in the Kyrgyz capital, Russias Federal Security Service (FSB) First Deputy Director Sergei Smirnov said Tuesday.

"Work to identify the persons involved in the terrorist attack in Bishkek continues in coordination with the SCO intelligence. Tajik, Chinese and Russian links can be traced in this work," Smirnov said at the 29th regional anti-terrorist structure of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (RATS SCO) in southern Kazakhstan.

Four terrorists suspected of taking part in the attack on the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek and believed to be linked to Uighur separatists in Syria have been put on an international wanted list, the countrys state security body said earlier this month.
BEIJING (Sputnik)  After US bombers conducted flights over South Korea, China has called on all sides to abstain from inciting tensions in the region, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Tuesday.

"I think the position of China is very clear. Considering the circumstances, we hope that all parties will exercise restraint, stop provoking one another or escalate tensions in the region," she said at a briefing.

Two US B-1 Lancer bombers were seen over the Osan Air Base south of Seoul on Tuesday morning. Their appearance was intended to be a show of force and solidarity of the United States and South Korea.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) jihadist groups growing military capabilities threaten to pose a more formidable challenge next year if the banned extremist group is not contained, the Russian presidential envoy for Afghanistan and senior Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday.

"They continue to mobilize, recruit, to build up their military potential. If this is not put to an end and is not contained, next year we may face an even more formidable force in the face of the IS," Zamir Kabulov said at a press conference hosted by the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Thailand expressed deep concern about the recent nuclear test carried out by North Korea on September 9, Thai government press service announced on Tuesday.

"Thailand shares grave concern over the latest nuclear test carried out by the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the morning of 9th September 2016. Such a test constituted a clear provocative violation of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions," the official website of the Royal Thai Government said.

According to the statement, Thailand emphasized the necessity to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions and fully cooperate with International Atomic Energy Agency on the nuclear issues.
"Finally, the United States has spotted the Daesh in Afghanistan. If six months to a year ago they said that separate rogues do not make the weather there, they are now looking at it more seriously We would like to make this more serious approach transform into more serious military actions because the United States has a power component in Afghanistan to quell this danger," Kabulov said.

According to the official, Russian troops will not be involved in fighting terrorists in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is in a state of political and social turmoil, with government forces fighting the continuing Taliban insurgency, while other extremist groups, such as the Daesh group, outlawed in many countries including the United States and Russia, have also expanded their activities both in the country and in neighboring states. The instability has persisted in the country since the 2001 US-led invasion to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The US-led NATO combat force withdrew from Afghanistan in December 2014. However, more than 10,000 US military personnel remain in the country as part of the Resolute Support mission.
I appeal to the people of the two States, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities: PM @narendramodi  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

The Cauvery River has been a bone of contention between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for more than a century, and both the states had witnessed violence over who gets access to its water on many occasions in the past. Twenty-eight people were killed in 1991 when hundreds of families of Tamil origin were forced to flee Karnataka in fear after a tribunal asked Karnataka to release the Cauverys waters to Tamil Nadu.

With widespread damage to vital urban infrastructure, as well as interruptions in transport including roads, rail and air and the inability of the workforce to safely move to and from offices and factories, Karnataka, particularly Bengaluru city, is estimated to have suffered a loss of up to 3.7 billion USD due to Cauvery dispute related-violence. Violence in the state capital and other parts of Karnataka has severely dented the image of Bengaluru as the Silicon Valley of India, and home to almost all of the Fortune 500 companies, says ASSOCHAM, Indias leading industry body on Tuesday.

Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are two of India's top industrial states. Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore, is the capital of Karnataka and is a major business center for large Indian and Multinational companies such as Infosys, Wipro, Accenture, Dell, Amazon, Mphasis, Ola, and Flipkart.
Karan Johar is a self-made brand that has taken close to two decades to build. What makes him tick? He talks about it.

By Tatsam Mukherjee: Karan Johar recently spoke at the Toronto International Film Festival 2016, where he talked about his journey from a candy-floss director to being accused of endorsing infidelity to making a post-9/11 film and then learning to not indulge himself with a three and half hour movie.

He was his usual witty, here are 10 moments from the conversation when he proved for the umpteenth time that he was the wisest, most shrewed mind of Bollywood:



ALSO READ: Karan Johar confirms Shah Rukh Khan cameo in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil

advertisement

1. Why go to a therapist when you can go to Bollywood songs?

Karan Johar paid homage to Bollywood music from the 50s and the 60s in his short film of Bombay Talkies, and he brings it up again when he says Lag Jaa Gale by Lata Mangeshkar remain his all-time favourite song. He mentioned how Bollywood music shaped him, and which is why music is such an integral part of his style of filmmaking.

2. The KANK episode

Karan recounted an episode featuring his movie Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, which recently completed a decade. He said a couple watching the film next to him were aghast to see Shah Rukh Khan (the ideal boy of Hindi cinema) cheating on his wife, when they check into a hotel room to have sex. This disgusted them so much that they left the theatre right then. However, he maintained how KANK remains his favourite film inspite of the indulgences, and that audiences have matured to it over the years.

He described his rapport with Shah Rukh Khan saying that their friendship started on the most unconventional note, when he asked SRK to wear Levi's denims instead of Wranglers. The director recounted his comfort with the Badshah saying when he was directing him for a cameo in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, even though they were working after 7 years the comfort level was the same.

4. An Unsuitable Boy

He talked about his autobiography 'An Unsuitable Boy' inspired by Vikram Seth's famous novel, saying he had written his mistakes down, about his failures. And that it would interest only those who were interested in him as a person, director.

5. Audience matured more than many filmmakers

He said most of the filmmakers were caught in a time-warp including himself, and that audiences had matured much more than a majority of the Bollywood directors which was a shame. And that films like Kapoor and Sons, which had a homosexual protagonist were a testament of the changing times.

6. I'm the brand ambassador of unrequited love

He said his next film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil was about unrequited love, of which he could be the brand ambassador. He claims there have been many times when he's loved someone and he's not loved back. That one emotion forms the core of the thought behind his next film.

advertisement

7. Fawad Khan's wife motivated him to take the role in Kapoor & Sons

He had words of appreciation for both Fawad Khan (who stars in ADHM as was also the lead cast in Kapoor and Sons) and his wife, for taking up the role of a homosexual with such sensitivity and grace. He revealed that it was Fawad's wife who egged him on to take the role, and he was rather brave to take up the part which was rejected by 6 actors.

8. "Do you need help?"

On his process of writing, he said he rarely wrote. He preferred to walk in circles in his favourite cities London and New York, where he carried a dictaphone and he began talking to himself about potential ideas, scenes even dialogues. He brought up this habit where he would be talking to himself even while shopping and how attendants come up to ask him 'Do you need help?' which they mean both ways.

He cited the problem of nepotism in Bollywood, where star-kids got easy access to films and then there were outsiders like SRK and Amitabh Bachchan who still happen to be the biggest stars. KJo said the phenomenon of casting directors had really hit Bollywood and how talent was being scouted not just from sons, nephews but how people like Sushant Singh Rajput, Fawad Khan get found.

advertisement

10. Nawazuddin Siddiqui is like Raymond, everyone loves him

He even cracked his witty one-liner about Nawazuddin Siddiqui, how he was Raymond and everyone loved him as seen he led the cast of a film backed by Salman Khan. He said the conventionally good looking faces like Ranbir, Fawad, Sidharth will always be there but if he were making a film like The Lunchbox, he would cast a Nawaz ahead of a Ranbir.

You can watch the whole interaction here:





--- ENDS ---
"A considerable segment of the population in the Philippines does not want to see foreign troops, including US troops, in the Philippines," Chang said.

"At the same time, the new president apparently wants to establish his credentials as a nationalist president, and he would also like to reduce the Philippines dependence on the US in the security arena."

President Duterte is inclined to pivot towards Beijing, in search of development aid and a compromise on the South China Sea.

"The President would probably like to renew negotiations with Beijing regarding the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and with the launch of the negotiations, he may like to improve economic ties with Beijing, and probably try to attract foreign aid from Beijing to the Philippines," Chang said.

Since 2002 the US has sent more than 1,000 special forces to assist the Philippines military fighting Islamic insurgency in Mindanao, the southernmost major island of the Philippines.
New Delhi (Sputnik)  Despite its 69 years of independence, India's government and society are commemorating a battle which it fought in the year 1897 with Afghanistan, while the country was under British rule.

Earlier this week, Manohar Parrikar, Indias Defense Minister, along with two of his fellow senior cabinet colleagues, attended a function dedicated to the premiere of a Hindi short film: Battle of Saragarhi.

The little-known story of this battle has become talk of the twitterverse, and many are glorifying the 21 brave Sikh soldiers who defeated more than 10,000 tribes of Afghanistan while defending an army post which lies in modern-day Pakistan. The Sikh Soldiers were fighting for the British Raj, the UK's colonial government.
"I think both our leaders, and perhaps more importantly our military experts, have determined that there is no need to reintroduce nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula," he told reporters, following a meeting with South Korean counterpart Kim Hong-kyu, according to Korea Joongang Daily.

The diplomat nevertheless reiterated Washingtons commitment to Seoul, and its "unshakable commitment regarding extended deterrence."

During their meeting, the two diplomats discussed the US deployment of the controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense [THAAD} system, calling it "more than sufficient to deal with the threat posed by North Korea."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey and the Council of European Union have presented their arguments in the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg and are awaiting the verdict, a court source told RIA Novosti news agency on Tuesday.

"The hearings are over, the decision will be announced later. The whole process from filing a suit to the announcement of the decision usually takes about 20 months," the source said.

Almaz-Antey is the producer of the Buk missiles and Russia's biggest defense contractor. The company contests two separate decisions of the Council of Europe, one concerning individual sanctions against the company introduced on July 30, 2014, another related to the sectoral restrictions imposed in September 2014.
A recent expedition in Arctic waters launched by a mixed crew of Norwegian and foreign researchers confirmed previous research, conducted by, among others, the University of Bergen, that geological formations along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge may be very rich in copper, zinc, silver and gold.

"We have charted a lot of copper on the seabed between Jan Mayen and Svalbard. Perhaps in 20 years commercial mining may start in this area at a depth of 2,300-3,000 meters," Martin Ludvigsen, a professor at the Department of Marine Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and expedition leader told the Norwegian national broadcaster NRK. "We have also found lesser deposits of gold and silver, but it is copper that is most valuable," Ludvigsen said.

Prior to the expedition on board the research vessel Polar King, which relied on underwater robots and was lauded as a major success, Martin Ludvigsen wrote an article in Norwegian economic newspaper Dagens Nringsliv, together with his colleagues at NTNU, Kurt Aasly and Steinar Lve Ellefmo.
For instance, fir plantations risk yielding a more fragile forest, whereas spruce is likely to develop root decay, whereupon the smitten trees are likely to become more susceptible to storms. The storm-affected areas are in turn more vulnerable to the bark beetle, which may further increase damage to the forest environment. Therefore, the authorities hope that forest owners continue planting pines, despite the risk of the plantations becoming elk food.

According to forester Hasse Bengtsson, who works on the "More Pines" project, the choice is not solely between planting more pines or shooting more elk.

"You need to work with many different facets simultaneously to create balance," Hasse Bengtsson pointed out.

The elk is a herbivore and is capable of consuming many types of plant and fruit. A typical elk, weighing some 400 kilograms, may easily consume 32 kilograms of food per day. Remarkably, elk are commonly denoted as browsers ("concentrate selectors"). Like giraffes, elk carefully select foods with less fiber and more concentrations of nutrients.

Sweden, a sparsely-populated Nordic nation of almost 10 million, has an impressive population of around 300,000 elk, according to the Swedish Hunters Association. In summertime, the population increases to around 400,000, whereupon around 100,000 end up being shot by Sweden's 300,000 hunters. Due to the great differences, a distinction between summer and winter populations of the elk is made. Hunting accounts for 93 percent of elk deaths, whereas other causes of death among the elk include traffic accidents (both by car and train), predators and diseases.
According to the Macedonian Nova TV, the lawmakers approved the members of the interim Cabinet, in particular, appointing SDSM's Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski, and Labor Minister Frosina Remenski. The government will be headed by VMRO-DPMNE's Emil Dimitriev.

The broadcaster said that the election campaign was due to start on November 21, and is due to stop on December 10.
KIEV (Sputnik)  Russian lawmakers have been absent from the assembly, which brings together 324 members of parliaments of the Council's 47 member states, since Crimea left Ukraine for Russia in early 2014.

"If Russians have their rights restored, for instance in PACE, we will consider our options, including abstaining from PACEs work," Klimkin told ICTV channels Freedom of Speech show.

The minister stressed that the final say lay with the national parliaments delegates but in case of Russias comeback he would "recommend taking very radical steps."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the presidents website, Hollande will meet his Romanian counterpart Klaus Iohannis and Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos.

"Hollande has arrived in Bucharest for the first state visit in almost 20 years," the Elysee Palace said in a Twitter posting.

This visit is expected to reinforce the historical partnership between the two nations and pave the way for Friday's summit of heads of state or government from 27 remaining EU nations in Bratislava, Slovakia.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  He slammed Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban for giving the European Union a bad name by making it look like it is preaching values it is unable to enforce within the bloc. Asselborn said Orbans administration was not far from allowing to shoot refugees and was treating them worse than animals.

"We cannot accept that EUs basic values are being greatly undermined. Those who, like Hungary, build fences to deter war refugees or violate press freedom and judicial independence should be temporarily or, if need be, permanently excluded from the EU," Asselborn told German newspaper Die Welt.

Hungary will vote next month on whether refugees should be resettled to the country under the European Commissions quotas. The government has been fiercely opposed to the plan since its inception.
Two youths were killed on Tuesday while several others were injured as fresh clashes broke out between security forces and stone-pelting protesters in Kashmir where authorities have imposed curfew in all 10 districts.

By India Today Web Desk: Two youths were killed on Tuesday while several others were injured as fresh clashes broke out between security forces and stone-pelting protesters in Kashmir where authorities have imposed curfew in all 10 districts.

Soon after Eid prayers ended in Bandipora, a group of protesters started hurling stones at security forces, who retaliated by firing tear smoke shells and pellet guns, a police official said.

advertisement

He said 20-year-old Murtaza Ahmed was hit by a tear smoke shell resulting in his death. Several others were injured in the security forces' action in Bandipora town.



Also read: Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif dedicates Eid-ul-Azha to 'sacrifices of Kashmiris'



Clashes were also reported from South Kashmir after a youth, Shahid Ahmed, was killed during fresh protests at Bonpora in Shopian district, another police official said.



KASHMIR CLASHES: TOLL REACHES 78



With these deaths, the toll in the ongoing agitation in Kashmir has risen to 78.

India on Tuesday said that there can be no comparison between the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and that in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

New Delhi's comments came after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein reportedly said at the the start of the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council that a team from the Geneva-based Office of the High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) should visit Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of large-scale violence.

Also read: Kashmir unrest: 2 more protesters killed, 120 wounded in fresh clashes in Shopian and Anantnag





JAMMU AND KASHMIR A SECULAR DEMOCRACY: MEA



Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted, "J and K is part of a pluralistic and secular democracy, where freedoms are guaranteed by an independent judiciary, and a vibrant civil society. In contrast, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is administered by a 'deep state' and has become a hub for the global export of terror. We hope that the connection between terrorism and violation of human rights would be recognised and deliberated upon in Geneva."

(WITH INPUTS FROM PTI)



--- ENDS ---
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Athens has proposed to invest up to 800 million euros ($900 million) in Greece's coal industry to Russia's energy giant Gazprom that holds a 50-percent stake in Prometheus Gas , a Greek  Russian joint company, Russian media reported Tuesday.

Athens offered the Vevi coal mine in the country's Florina region for funding as well as the expansion of the 330-megawatt coal-fired Florina Power Station, the Kommersant newspaper reported, citing its sources.

According to the media outlet, the project proposed by the Greek side aims to settle the dispute arising out of the 1987 gas deal between Greece and the former Soviet Union.
On Sunday, French and German media reported that French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and his German counterpart Ursula von der Leyen had filed a proposal to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to set up the bloc's collective defense, including a new military HQ and swifter deployment of overseas missions.

The six-page Franco-German paper says that "in the context of a deteriorating security environment  it is high time to reinforce our solidarity and European defense capabilities in order to more effectively protect the citizens and borders of Europe," as cited by French daily Le Figaro.

According to the submitted manual, the UK had in the past opposed steps toward the creation of an EU army or duplication of NATO structures.
Notably, the Sunday attack became the 18th such incident since UK voters took part in the referendum and decided to back Britain's exit from the European Union.

"The attack flies in the face of London's allegations that Britons do not behave aggressively towards foreigners; and on the other hand, it reflects ever-increasing tensions in Europe," Orzechowski said.

In this vein, he added, one cannot be satisfied with a simple explanation of Britons allegedly being unhappy about Poles taking British jobs.

This is also the case with Poland, Orzechowski said quoting the newspaper Rzeczpospolita as saying that about 80 percent of Poles do not want to host foreigners any more.

"We are talking about Ukrainians arriving in Poland in huge numbers and taking Polish jobs. This is a common illustration of the situation in Europe, which should somehow be resolved. For example, this may lead to closing the borders," he said.

When asked to comment on current xenophobic anger in Poland, he said that "none of the civilized people, especially Christians, and Catholics, have a right to persecute other people just because they are of a different origin."

Media reports said last week that Polish President Andrzej Duda wrote to letters to the heads of the Church of England and the Catholic Church in Britain, asking them to help prevent attacks on Poles living in the UK and combat a climate of "aversion and animosity."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The statement of Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn that Hungary should be excluded from the European Union based on its stance on migrant crisis and human rights was not agreed upon within the European states, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Tuesday.

"You will find out that this was not a position that was agreed upon within the European states and this is why my first comment is that Europe is in a difficult phase that is posing many challenges which we have to live up to," Steinmeier said at a press briefing, broadcast live on the Latvian Foreign Ministry's website.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  EU President Donald Tusk talked about EU future reforms with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo during a Warsaw meeting, which took place a few days before an informal summit of EU government and EU countries' leaders in Bratislava, Polish government spokesman Rafal Bochenek said at a press conference on Tuesday.

"The EU has to change, we have to reform it, and the EU government should not block these changes. Apathy, lack of attention to the voices of the societies of some member countries led, among other things, to Brexit," Bochenek said during a press conference.
In machine-building, things are even worse. "The problem is that domestic machine-building enterprises cannot compete with producers in the developed European countries," the portal candidly admitted.

Ultimately, Apostrophe noted, "while the government is holding talks with European officials on easing quotas on a number of export products, the reduction in exports has led to a weakened balance of trade and balance of payments. This in turn weakens the national currency, and stimulates the growth of unemployment, resulting in reduced consumer activity and a lowered standard of living for Ukrainians."

Commenting on Ukrainian officials' admission in an analysis for PolitRussia, blogger and independent journalist Sviatoslav Knyazev emphasized that for a country like Ukraine, the figure of $15-16.5 billion in losses is nothing short of catastrophic. "This is roughly equal to the country's [entire] annual budget."

"Poroshenko managed to honestly admit that the deterioration of relations with Russia resulted in a sharp decrease in the standard of living and the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of jobs. At the same time, the leaderattempted to add at least a hint of optimism to his speech, saying that in 2016, exports from Ukraine to the EU have increased by 7%," Knyazev recalled.

But this, according to the journalist, is a deceptive figure. "First of all, we are talking about growth following a catastrophic decline. In 2015, exports from Ukraine to the EU fell by 30%Second, in annual terms this positive dynamic may disappear, [since] growth took place due to export quotas on agricultural products, which were exhausted as soon as January and February. Thirdly, the very structure of exports is characteristic for third world countries, and does not give Ukraine's producers serious value-added income."

Overall, the journalist lamented, "against the backdrop of the overall export statistics, talk of 'Eurogrowth' looks more like blatant mockery. In July 2016, the decline in exports accelerated to 10.1%; hardest hit, once again, was machine-building, which fell by 24.8%. Taking account of the fact that Ukraine's exports collapsed a record 29.3% in 2015, their further drop observed today amounts quite simply to a total catastrophe."
BERLIN (Sputnik)  Three Syrian refugees detained in Germany are part of the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) jihadist groups sleeper cell in the country, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Tuesday.

"They were at the disposal of the Islamic State in Germany. It is safe to say that we are talking about a sleeper cell," de Maiziere said.

He added that the seized identification papers indicated the detained refugees Syrain citizenship.
"There are new studies of imagery, hieroglyphs, underpainting, direct dating, pigment technology (some accumulating over the last few years) and upon review of prior criticisms, it all systematically disables claims that the Grolier is a forgery. The knowledge that would have been necessary in the mid to early 1960s, when the Grolier was found, was simply not available. There are fake codices from that period and before which exist, they always copy, very badly, the known Maya books. The Grolier has striking but consistent differences," he explained.

The Grolier Codex is said to be the surviving pages of a 20-page ancient book, made of stucco-coated bark paper. The pages are said to be painted with typical Mayan iconography gods, warriors, slaves and hieroglyphs, and include a calendar charting the movement of the planet Venus.

"Our conclusion is based on the fact that any forger involved in tampering or falsifying papers such as this would be expected to make at least one error, and so in this case it is not the accuracy of Grolier that convinces us, but the absence of iconographic mistakes. Standards of knowledge that have only been available in such detail over the last few years for us to be able to conclude in this way," Professor Houston told Sputnik.

The Discovery

The Grolier Codex is said to have been discovered by looters in an Indian Jones-esque manner in Mexico in the 1960s.

It is claimed that alongside the damaged 20-page papers, the criminals also found a turquoise mask, a sacrificial knife, and some blank pieces of fig-bark paper which have also been authenticated by experts as original Mayan artefacts. But the Codex was doubted for a number of reasons, including wear and tear damage of the papers.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The IMF will discuss the allocation of the next loan tranche to Ukraine on its executive board meeting on Wednesday despite Kiev's sovereign debt in arrears. On Monday, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that Russia would vote against the third IMF tranche for Ukraine

"As for the tranche, the situation here is obvious. Moscow has consistently opposed and will oppose any modification of the rules of disbursement of new tranches for specific situations, for up-to-the-minute political situation, what in fact we can see in the case of Ukraine," Peskov said speaking about the Kremlin's position in regard to the IMF tranche.

He added that the Kremlin's position in regard to Ukraine's debt had not changed and of its sovereign nature.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The ceremony was organized by the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday.

"On September 12, Ambassador of the Republic of South Ossetia to Russia Znaur Gassiev at the invitation of President of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry Evgeny Bazhanov took part in the Diplomatic Club. Within the framework of the meeting, Bazhanov presented the first certificates of membership of the club. Along with the ambassador of South Ossetia, the membership of the club was awarded to the UAE and South Korean ambassadors [to Russia]," the statement said.

Gassiev thanked Bazhanov for the great honor, noting that the work at the Diplomatic club would be extremely useful to reflect the foreign policy of the Republic of South Ossetia, relations with diplomatic missions of countries accredited in Russia, and also representatives of the authorities of the host country.
Army has been told to stay away from mob control operations as this may increase the number of fatalities of protesters as they do not have riot control gear, sources said.

By Manjeet Negi: After the recent visit of Chief of Army Staff, General Dalbir Singh, to review security situation in the Valley, Army has started redeployment of its troops to handle the situation in the trouble-hit state. The government has also told the Army to go to the border to prevent any further infiltration of militants from across the border.

AREAS OF CONCERN IDENTIFIED

advertisement

"There is deployment of extra troops at South Kashmir border area and hinterland to show presence. We have identified 10 major areas of concern, specifically in South Kashmir and Kupwara in North Kashmir along with Uri," Army sources told India Today.

Also read:

Kashmir unrest: Death toll rises to 80, 150 injured in fresh clashes

Kashmir unrest: Centre wants to ramp up security to counter ISIS ideology



ARMY ASKED TO STAY AWAY FROM MOB CONTROL OPERATIONS

However, the Army has been told to stay away from mob control operations as this may increase the number of fatalities of protesters as they do not have riot control gear, sources said.

The Army has also been asked to carry out 'area domination' operation in places they have been deployed.

ARMY PRESENCE INCREASED AT HINTERLANDS

The counter-insurgency grid has also been reorganised, the sources stated. "Deployment of Army has been done near reception area where the terrorists enter Indian territory and hinterlands like Tral, Kokernag, Gurez, Machil, Keran sector along with the border and connecting areas," sources stated.

Top government officials also said government is hoping that the apple and walnut season would compel the farmers and traders to force separatists to normalise the situation in the Valley. The apple season starts by mid-September when farmers start sending their fruits to outside markets while the walnut season starts by end of the month. Both fruits are credited for carrying Kashmir Valley's economy on their shoulders.

Sources are also working to make sure that the Army shows strength in the hinterlands to quell the protests.

--- ENDS ---
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius and Estonian Deputy Minister for EU Affairs Matti Maasikas met in Riga and discussed a number of cooperation issues, including security policy challenges in Europe and other regions.

"The Ministers voiced their commitment to deepening cooperation in the field of security and defense through continued implementation of the decisions taken at the recent NATO summit in Warsaw. The Ministers underlined the importance of the Allies' decision to establish an enhanced forward presence in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland," the statement published on Latvian Foreign Ministry's website said.
The UK has so far found homes for 1,000 Syrian refugees from camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey. The success of the resettlement program is due to the local authorities working well with central government to find homes and school places for families and children.

However, there are concerns that pledges made by many local authorities to house Syrian refugees might not transpire into concrete offers of support and the resettlement team needs to be housing more people every few months if they have any chance of meeting the 20,000 target.

Then there's the funding, or lack of it. According to NAO's report, no estimate of the total cost of the program to the UK has been calculated, with it falling to different government departments and local authorities. It's now expected that the program could amount to US$2.25 billion.
The need for an agreement to protect external EU borders eventually led to the EU-Turkey refugee deal. And while politicians have praised its success in stemming the number of refugees arriving from Turkey, critics have raised human rights concerns and questioned the longevity of such an agreement.

Anti-Austerity and the North-South Split

However immigration and refugee distribution are not the only issues creating internal EU divisions, with the bloc's budget restraints and fiscal measures eliciting widespread debate and disagreement.

While Germany and other northern European countries have backed the strict fiscal measures, a number of other nations, such as France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece have called for a relaxation of the rules in order to boost public spending in the hope of stimulating their economies.

EU revamp also needs new financing of #EUbudget. Current system not fit for today. My speech at #HLGOR conference https://t.co/D22RJnCDQi  EP President (@EP_President) September 7, 2016

The idea of a southern European anti-austerity alliance has raised concerns in Berlin that Germany could be pressured into loosening fiscal measures.

German MEP Markus Ferber warned:

"After Britain's departure, the 'Club Med' will have a blocking minority that can prevent all kinds of laws in Brussels that it does not like."

Meanwhile, Germany's EU Commissioner, Gunther Oettinger also called for unity on the issue of EU public spending.

"It would not be good if the divide deepened between EU member countries with big budget problems and those with minimal fiscal issues."

Anti-EU Sentiment

While many within the EU acknowledge that there can never be total harmony in a union of 28 nations, the growing divisions and disagreements between member states have also come at a time of radical political change within the bloc.

On the political right, the dissatisfaction with refugee quota proposals has led to a sharp rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric and calls for stricter border protection, while on the left, the EU's insistence on strict fiscal measures has assisted in the popularity of anti-austerity movements such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain.

"Loss of control is leading to a certain euroscepticism," says Steinmeier but "back to national governments is not the solution" #Riga3plus1  Mike Collier (@mikskoljers) September 13, 2016

These political uprisings have also coincided with a purported rise in euroskeptic sentiment in the EU, witnessed by the UK's decision to vote to leave the bloc and a subsequent fear of a domino effect.

As the EU faces some of its biggest crises in recent decades, member states appear to be increasingly split on many key issues, with many drawing their battle lines as the tension heats up.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  British anti-poverty charity, Oxfam, urged UK Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday to take measures to tackle the inequality gap.

Earlier in July, UK Prime Minister Theresa May mentioned the necessity to review the countrys economy in order for more people to improve their well-being and expressed criticism towards irresponsible business practice in her speech on the economic agenda, following the Brexit vote.

"Oxfam welcomes the fact the government is embracing this agenda and believes that efforts to address inequality, particularly by looking at the role of businesses, can help reunite the country and ensure we have an economy that works for everyone," the charity organization said in the media briefing paper.
The prejudices of the Facebook crew, which handles the website's blocking of posts, may also play a role:

"I think if there are 200 students sitting there and doing what they want, probably they would sooner leave the posts about the 'Green Party' than about someone of the conservative 'Alternative for Germany.' But both sides can publish whatever they want as long as it is within the law."

Removals and blocking are also happening as a sort of reassurance, when someone says something about the policies of Ms. Merkel. But in a democracy, hard, partly cynical, rude and subjective debates must be permitted, Steinhofel said.

The recently introduced concept of "hate speech" is counterproductive, the lawyer believes:

"In Germany, everything contrary to the law is forbidden: incitement of ethnic hatred, insulting or hurtful gossip. All the rest is permitted and consistent with freedom of expression at the constitutional level. Interference into this right with such amorphous categories as 'hatred,' which is not even a legal definition, will lead to popular uncertainty, and they will simply not know what they are allowed to say at all. In general, this will end up with obedience, with respect to politically convenient ideas, and with restrictions on free speech," the activist told Sputnik.

The work of Joachim Steinhofel, who intends to restore the neutrality of posts and comments, has attracted public interest:

"In the month our website has existed, we've received nearly 6,000 likes. Views of individual posts can be measured in the thousands. It shows that a lot of people are interested in our work. If all this goes on and people continue to be active, this will certainly put pressure on Facebook," the lawyer claimed.

He also tries to fight with the platform legally in order to change its practice:

"I have just started the process. Three journalists, whom I represent, have been called a "neo-conglomerate"  it is obviously a personal insult; they do not want to put up with it, first of all, because it's not true. I warned Facebook, and pointed out the given circumstances. The answer was no  the website decided to leave everything like it was. Now we are expecting Facebook to claim to have abstained from any action and to bear the costs. If this doesn't happen, we will bring them to court in Germany, and get a very interesting precedent," the lawyer concluded.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The government intends to equip a total of 8,200 new places nationwide in addition to existing 3,000 till the end of October and to distribute migrants from their provisional camps in Calais and Paris, the plan seen by Le Figaro that sets guidelines for French regional authorities indicated.

"A scheme to mobilize shelters across the country was adopted in a bid to accommodate migrants from Calais and Paris," the newspaper quoted the document, as saying.

The Calais refugee camp is currently home to thousands of migrants who are staying in northern France in the hope of crossing to the United Kingdom.
In order to try and entice those in London's financial center to pack up shop and move abroad, cities around Europe have been making their own unique pitches, emphasizing things such as digital connectivity, cultural prowess and even the ability to easily hire and fire workers.

Paris

Following the UK's EU referendum on June 23, the French capital, often known for its beautiful architecture and civic culture, didn't waste any time in trying and encourage London-based financial firms and banks to ditch Britain and move across the channel.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The debate in the European Parliament on the controversial laws passed by Polands ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party that have caused Brussels' concern over the rule of law in the country will only lead to drumming up more support for the ruling party among the Poles, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, a non-attached Polish member of the European Parliament, told Sputnik Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the European Parliament is debating amendments to the Polish Constitutional Tribunal law that raised the alarm within the Polish opposition and Brussels as it allegedly enabled the PiS party to influence the tribunal's decisions. On Wednesday, the Parliament is expected to pass a resolution that urges the European Commission to examine media, counterterrorism and civil service laws passed by the PiS-dominated Polish parliament.

"The people of Poland will just show more support to PiS as pressure from abroad always turns into more support toward the government. The European Commission is right with raising concerns about the rule of law in Poland, but, we, Poles, don't like to be told what to do in our country," Korwin-Mikke said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) has recently concluded its visit to Ukraine and, pending a comprehensive report, noted several positive steps forward in this area, the UN Office at Geneva (UNOG) announced Tuesday.

"The UN independent experts also noted that Ukraine has made progress in improving conditions of detention in the country, in particular through reducing overcrowding in pre-trial detention centres. The increasing use of non-custodial measures during the pre-trial stages of criminal proceedings is a positive step forward, noted the experts," the UN body said in a statement.

This is the experts' second visit to Ukraine. They could not produce a conclusive report after the first one in May due to the inaccessibility of certain places.
British intelligence  because of its long history of dealing with the IRA and other groups in Northern Ireland, plus its experience of the 7/7 London bombings in 2005  is deemed to be the best in the world and recent terror attacks on mainland Europe have exposed intelligence failures within the EU.

The joined-up communication and intel-sharing in the UK is in sharp contrast to the federalized and silo nature of many EU countries, which security experts say led to terrorists going untracked ahead of recent terrorist attacks in Europe.

"British intelligence networks  particularly the join-up between MI5 [domestic intelligence agency] and MI6 [foreign] in addition to the join-up between the various police agencies is a template admired by many across the world in terms of how they have set up their intelligence infrastructures. Are we the best in the world? Well, yes. Between us and the United States, we have the most admirable systems," Geddes told Sputnik.

Security Experience

King  who was most recently Britain's ambassador to France  has worked on European defense and NATO issues, spent time in Brussels, working on relations with Turkey, European defense and EU enlargement and was UK Permanent Representative to the EU Political and Security Committee in Brussels, covering Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Thank you. Looking forward to further discussions on this vitally important area. https://t.co/O75tZdFALy  Julian King (@JulianKingFCO) 2 August 2016

King's appointment has yet to be ratified, but he appeared before MEPs for a three-hour grilling, during which he said: "I have direct experience  not least from my time in the Political and Security Committee and on the ground in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and more recently in France. Two months ago, I was in Nice on the morning of 15 July and saw for myself the devastating aftermath of the attack the night before  which killed so many people, injured many more and traumatized Europe. It brought home to me again the true human cost of terrorism."

After appearing before MEPs, September 12, Timothy Kirkhope, group leader of the Conservatives and Reformists said:

"It's clear that being the UK Commissioner will not be a walk in the park, but Sir Julian was right to say that the UK has played, and will continue to play, a major role in European security and intelligence cooperation even after we leave the EU."
By PTI: Mangaluru, Sep 13 (PTI): Eminent Konkani writer Gratian Pius DSouza, popularly known as Herolpius, will be presented the 15th Konkani Kutam Award 2016, instituted by the Konkani Kutam in Bahrain. The award committee local convener Richard Moras told reporters here today that the award was in recognition of his contribution to the field of Konkani literature.

advertisement

He said the award consisted of a cash prize of Rs 50,000, citation and memento.

The award ceremony would be held on September 23 in Bahrain.

DSouza, who had served as an officer for Ministry of Home Affairs for 37 years, had written 197 short stories, 225 poems, 329 articles and five serial articles in Konkani.

Hehad written and directed a drama and five one act plays inKonkani and had acted the leading role in a play. Dhon Thembe Dukhan (Two drops of tears), one of his works, had won the Goa Konkani Bhasha Mandal award. PTI MVG RA APR APR

--- ENDS ---
The Kathimerini newspaper reported that the coast guard towed the wooden vessel and transferred the migrants to a safe place, providing no further details.

The total number of migrants and refugees currently in Greece is estimated at about 58,000.
In August, the European Commission decided that Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to US$14.6 billion to Apple. This is illegal under EU state aid rules, because it allowed Apple to pay substantially less tax than other businesses. It has ordered Ireland to recover the illegal aid. Both Apple and Ireland are appealing the ruling.

'Then I got the Paddies' political parties and broadcaster to tell them they should refuse 13bn!'#twip #AppleTaxpic.twitter.com/H2346vA2Bv  Fact Check (@IrelandUncut) 11 September 2016

The landmark ruling followed months of investigations into so-called "sweet heart deals" offered by countries such as Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg which offer benign tax regimes that allow companies  particularly multinationals such as Apple, Amazon, Starbucks and Fiat Finance and Trade  to enjoy special tax arrangements to reduce their tax obligations in other countries.

Appeal of European Commission #AppleTax ruling is contrary to the interests of citizens. pic.twitter.com/P21IbISWei  Gerry Adams (@GerryAdamsSF) 7 September 2016

Apple's Chief Executive Tim Cook denied there was a special deal between Apple and the Irish Government and said the deal was "maddening."

"This comes from a political place and has no basis in fact or law," Cook told Irish broadcaster RTE.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden in an interview published Tuesday compared UK Prime Minister Theresa May to Darth Vader over her surveillance bill, which in his words is a violation of human rights.

In February, then-UK Home Secretary May pushed forward a revised Investigatory Powers Bill to parliament that seeks to extend police powers to browse peoples web history and hack phones whenever they deem it necessary. She argued that the revised bill had stronger privacy protections and oversight arrangements, as well as a strict requirement that police obtain a senior judges permission before accessing communications data, for instance to identify a journalists source.

Snowden told The Guardian newspaper that Theresa May is a a sort of Darth Vader in the United Kingdom, whose surveillance bill is an egregious violation of human rights, that goes far further than any law proposed in the western world.
VIENNA (Sputnik)  The Austrian authorities have admitted almost three-quarters of its assigned quota of refugees under the limit set by the government since the beginning of 2016, Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said on Tuesday.

Austrian authorities have stated that this year they would accept 37 500 refugees, compared with 90,000 received in 2015.

"On August 31, 2016 we have 32,036 applications for asylum and 26,419 have been accepted and are being processed," Sobotka told reporters.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The British parliament has to ratify the decision to leave the European Union to allow for further Brexit legislation, UK secretary for exiting the European Union said Tuesday at a meeting of the Select Committee of the House of Commons.

While the British public has voted to leave the bloc, the majority of UK lawmakers have opposed Brexit and voted against the move.

"There has to be some [internal UK] legislation [to start the Brexit process], no doubt about that," David Davis said, adding that "there may well have to be at least parliamentary ratification under the relevant 2010 legislation  the so-called CRAG [the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010]  but that's the absolute minimum I can see."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Germany is investigating links between the perpetrators who attacked Paris in 2015 and three Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) suspects arrested earlier in the day, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, German police special forces arrested three Daesh suspects in northern Schleswig-Holstein federal state. According to the initial investigation, the suspects moved from Syria to Germany in November 2015 in order to carry out an attack or to await further instructions on behalf of the Daesh.

Fake Syrian passports of the suspects originated "from the same workshop in Syria" as Paris attackers, de Maiziere said at the press conference, as quoted by Spiegel magazine.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  An ambitious Paris-Berlin collective EU defense initiative that expects to include a common satellite surveillance system and EU joint military headquarters is controversial due to lack of transparency and common foreign policy among the member-states, a member of the French National Assembly's defense committee told Sputnik.

French media reported Sunday that French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and his German counterpart Ursula von der Leyen had filed a proposal to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to set up the bloc's collective defense through facilitation of EU collective defense operations, building a common satellite surveillance system and establishing EU joint military headquarters.

"The main problem with a satellite surveillance system is who will be gathering and storing information and where this data will go. I do not believe in an absolute principle of equality, I think that at one moment one side may take advantage," Nicolas Dhuicq said.
VILNIUS (Sputnik)  Servicemen of US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team will replace soldiers of US 2nd Cavalry Regiment based in Lithuania as part of troop rotation and carry out joint exercises with the country's forces until February, Lithuanian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

"Servicemen of US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team will replace their counterparts and will further implement NATO's obligations to strengthen protection of the eastern flank. US troops will train in Lithuania until February, 2017," the statement reads.

According to the Defense Ministry, the rotation will be carried out as part of international military exercises dubbed Saber Strike held by NATO countries in the Baltic region. The 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team is stationed in Vicenza, Italy.
KIEV (Sputnik)  Earlier on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia offered to develop parallel roadmaps on ensuring security in eastern Ukraine. He added, that the political settlement of the issue could keep pace with ensuring the full silence regime, the stance Kiev disagrees with.

"To date, we do not have a single agreed roadmap, which could set out fundamentally important things, such as the sequence of what should be done.We need a clear, explicit roadmap, and this roadmap will be developed on the basis of our joint position in Normandy four format," Klimkin said at a briefing following a meeting with Polish Foreign Minister in Kiev.

In February 2015, a peace agreement was signed between Ukraines conflicting sides in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, after talks of the Normandy Four countries, comprising Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Ukraine and Poland reached an agreement on collaboration of the two countries' historians on the investigation of "Volhynia Genocide" (Volyn Masscre), Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Tuesday after a meeting with Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski.

"We should not fear ourselves and our history, but we should treat it and the friendship between our countries with respect. That is why we agreed to help our historians' work together and find a factual proof of what really happened," Klimkin said.

The Volhynia massacre was part of an ethnic cleansing operation carried out in Nazi-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in 1943-1944. According to various estimates, up to 60,000 Polish citizens were killed in the conflict.
By PTI: Colombo, Sep 13 (PTI) Sri Lanka will not go ahead with the joint venture with Indias National Thermal Power corporation (NTPC) to build a coal power plant in eastern Trincomalee district, the Supreme court was told today, after strong objections from environmentalists and the public.

The decision of the Ministry of Power and Energy not to go ahead with the project in Trincomalee districts Sampur, was informed by the Attorney General.

advertisement

The Environmental Foundation Limited had filed the rights petition on May 31 objecting to the coal power plant over its environmental impact.

They had highlighted the long term environmental impact from the project and its resultant health effects.

Sri Lanka governments Central Environmental Authority, Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and the Ministry of Power and Energy were cited as respondents in the case.

There had been protests over the resettlement of people displaced by the war with the LTTE in Sampur. Since the war ended, Sampur had been declared a high security zone due to the proposal to build the coal power plant.

The Sampur Coal Power Plant was proposed as a joint venture between the CEB and National thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC) of India and a Memorandum of Agreement was signed between the government, CEB and NTPC in 2006. PTI CORR AJR AKJ AJR

--- ENDS ---
VIENNA (Sputnik)  In an interview with German daily Die Welt earlier on Tuesday, Luxembourg's foreign minister urged that Hungary should be suspended or expelled from the European Union, blaming Budapest for challenging EU fundamental values. According to Asselborn, Hungarian authorities has been violating the freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary, while sealing borders to counter migrant influx, which is against EU norms.

"This statement serves little purpose for me," Sebastian Kurz said, adding that there always should be some space for "heated argument" in the European Union.

As Hungarys neighbor and a fellow EU member, Austria requires respect and necessity not to threaten the "European peace project," Kurz said, commenting on Asselborn's statement.
MADRID (Sputnik)  Last Friday, a train going to Portugal veered off the tracks and derailed in Spain's Galicia province, killing four people and injuring around 50 others.

"We have all the relevant data," Carballeira was quoted as saying by the Galician newspaper Faro de Vigo.

The suspected cause was confirmed after black box recordings showed that the train was travelling at the speed of some 73 miles per hours on a track where the limit was roughly 19 miles per hour.
KIEV (Sputnik)  Speaking on the Levy Bereg show, Lutsenko said a criminal investigation was launched after the Prosecutor General's Office received a letter from the Anti-Corruption Action Center.

"I receive over a dozen letters from people, including [the Centers head Vitaliy] Shabunin, whose letter was the premise for an inquiry into  you wont believe it  Interior Minister Avakov, because everyone is equal," the chief prosecutor said, without disclosing the cause of the probe.

Avakov was reappointed to the job last April in a cabinet reshuffle that followed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuks resignation.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The vote was passed late Monday by 450 to 10 with nine abstentions, the Chamber said in a publication. Cuhna has been barred from being reelected until 2026.

The 57-year-old, who has been an ally of incumbent President Michel Temer, accused the parliament of attacking him for his role in the impeachment process of ex-President Dilma Rousseff.

"Does anyone have any doubt that if I hadnt acted there would have been no impeachment? I am paying the price for giving continuity to the process," he was quoted as saying.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier on Tuesday, Brazilian Foreign Minister Jose Serra expressed concern about the recent "escalation of arbitrary arrests" in Venezuela, highlighting the case of Venezuelan-Chilean reporter Braulio Jatar, who was detained in early September. The Brazilian side also said that the arrests were made illegally, and with open non-observance of liberties and fundamental human guarantees.

"The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela condemns the blatant and immoral statements by Minister of Foreign Relations @joseserra_," Rodriguez said on Twitter.

Rodriguez said that the Brazilian government is the product of a "coup" which in her opinion, "violated the democratic order" and the will of 54 million citizens who had elected former President Dilma Rousseff.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Israel has been laying the blame for every single instance of cross-border fire on the Syrian government, which has been trying to flush rebels out of the nearby hideouts.

"In response to the projectile that hit Israel yesterday evening, IAF targeted artillery positions of Syrian Regime in Syrian Golan Heights," the statement by the IDF spokesperson read.
The attack, which Syrias SANA news service attributed to the general command of the Syrian Armed Forces, took place at 1 a.m. local time (22:00 GMT).

The Israeli armed forces however denied reports of aircraft losses in Syria.
Israeli aviation did not incur losses during an overnight operation in Syria despite being attacked by surface-to-air missiles, an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) official said on Tuesday.

"Tonight two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after our aircraft attacked Syrian artillery positions. At none of the stages of the incident was the safety of the Israeli Air Forces aircraft threatened," Maj. Arye Shalicar told RIA Novosti.

The Syrian Armed Forces said in remarks published by state media that an Israeli warplane and an unmanned aerial vehicle were downed in the southwest Quneitra province in response to cross-border strikes. Israeli media reported that it was the fourth such strike in two weeks.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the Daily Sabah newspaper, conspiracy against the Turkish government is cited as the reason of the requested detention.

A coup attempt took place on July 15 in Turkey and was suppressed the following day. The Turkish authorities accuse Gulen of having orchestrated the coup. Gulen denies the accusations.

In August, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan voiced his disappointment over the fact that Gulen was not even detained in the United States after Ankara's request for his extradition.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Counterterrorism efforts in the Israeli-controlled Syrian Golan Heights should be conducted with adherence to UN Security Council resolutions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday.

"There are terrorists universally recognized as enemies of mankind in the Golan Heights. But, of course, dealing with them including through airstrikes should remain within the UN Security Council resolutions dedicated to the Golan Heights and with general restraint, avoiding any provocations," Lavrov said.

The Golan Heights, internationally recognized as Syrian territory, was seized by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. In 1981, the Israeli parliament voted to annex two-thirds of the region. The United Nations has repeatedly stated that Israels occupation of the Golan Heights is illegal, calling for it to be returned to Syria.
By PTI: Colombo, Sep 13 (PTI) Sri Lanka will not go ahead with the joint venture with Indias National Thermal Power corporation (NTPC) to build a coal power plant in eastern Trincomalee district, the Supreme court was told today, after strong objections from environmentalists and the public.

The decision of the Ministry of Power and Energy not to go ahead with the project in Trincomalee districts Sampur, was informed by the Attorney General.

advertisement

The Environmental Foundation Limited had filed the rights petition on May 31 objecting to the coal power plant over its environmental impact.

They had highlighted the long term environmental impact from the project and its resultant health effects.

Sri Lanka governments Central Environmental Authority, Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and the Ministry of Power and Energy were cited as respondents in the case.

There had been protests over the resettlement of people displaced by the war with the LTTE in Sampur. Since the war ended, Sampur had been declared a high security zone due to the proposal to build the coal power plant.

The Sampur Coal Power Plant was proposed as a joint venture between the CEB and National thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC) of India and a Memorandum of Agreement was signed between the government, CEB and NTPC in 2006. PTI CORR AJR AKJ AJR MVV

--- ENDS ---
Meanwhile Irina Zvyagelskaya, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences says the process of separation of the so-called "moderate opposition" from the terrorists will inevitable face a number of obstacles.

"The situation on the ground in Syria is very complicated," she told Russian online newspaper Gazeta.ru.

"There are examples when people who are not terrorists by conviction chose to join the terrorist groups. Those are the people who are seeking protection and it is easier to find it by joining large organizations," she explained.

However, the political analyst added, there is an understanding that those who accept the ceasefire will be excluded from the list of groups which are subjected to airstrikes.

Russia's Duma (lower chamber of the Russian parliament) Deputy Speaker Sergei Zheleznyak is convinced that "any agreements are better than absence of any agreements", adding that currently it is the Americans who are "holding the ball."

Nikolai Kozhanov, a nonresident scholar in the Foreign and Security Policy Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, says that the new agreement has more grounds to become a long-lasting ceasefire due to a number of important changes in the situation in Syria.

"First, Turkey has entered the war," he told Gazeta.ru.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russia is ready to host long postponed talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders as soon as Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas agree on their time and place, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday.

"Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi spoke in one of his speeches in favor of holding a direct meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas in Russia. We will be ready for this," Lavrov told reporters.

He maintained that the two leaders should determine the schedule and location of a possible meeting on their own.
Coalition's attacks hit the cave where the leaders were hiding on Sunday, Al Arabiya broadcaster reported. Coalition's command has not confirmed the information yet.

Yemen has been engulfed in a military conflict between the government headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Shia Houthi rebels, the countrys main opposition force. The Houthis are backed by army units loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Meanwhile Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army soldier and former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell noted some of the benefits Jerusalem gets from the ongoing war in Syria.

In his interview with Canada-based news website The Real News Network, the former politician recalled the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"I think what the Israeli leadership is thinking right now is that the longer this war goes on, the safer Israel is, because it can do as Netanyahu has said, for example, in regard to the Golan Heights: they're ours forever; we're never going to give them up," he said.

"And anything else we can grab away from Syria while this turmoil is going on is ours, too, to increase the distance an enemy would have to come to invade Israel."

"And at the same time, all these powers are occupied killing one another, as it were, and so they can't take on Israel. So this is a direct result of what's going on in Syria right now is this feeling of a better security posture for Israel," said the former US Army soldier.

"I think strategically this is dynamite for Israel, that we're looking at the potential for things to start falling apart for Israel quickly and dynamically and dramatically, and for the United States to have some really serious choices to make about this," he added.

"So that's another element we don't like to talk about much in the United States, but it is intrinsic to this situation, and certainly to an ultimate solution to it."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Syrian government will refuse any humanitarian assistance, especially from Turkey, if it is not coordinated with it and the United Nations, local media reported Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, media reported that a Turkish humanitarian convoy of 20 trucks crossed the Syrian border and was heading to Aleppo.

"Following announcements made by the Turkish regime on its willingness to send substances it describes as humanitarian aid to Aleppo, Syria announces its refusal to allow such substances to enter from any party, especially if it was from the Turkish regime without the coordination with the Syrian Government and the United Nations," an official Syrian Foreign Ministry source told the SANA news agency.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Airstrikes of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) on Monday destroyed the groups supply routes near its de facto capital of Raqqa, along with oil infrastructure targets, the US Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve said in a statement.

"Near Ar Raqqah [Raqqa], five strikes engaged two ISIL [Islamic State] weapons caches and destroyed 11 supply routes," the statement said on Tuesday.

Ten additional airstrikes in Syria destroyed multiple oil tanker trucks, tactical units, and a command and control node, the statement noted.
The new US-Russia plan on Syria includes five documents. The specifics have not been made public due to sensitive information that they contain.

"We support it, but there are many details in Kerry-Lavrov deal that we don't know, as we did not receive an official copy of it," he added.

Bashar also said the new US-Russia agreement "is a prelude to creating the conditions for the start of the Geneva negotiations."

The cessation of hostilities, that entered into force on Monday, will first be set for 48 hours, with a further 48-hour extension followed by permanent implementation, if no obstacles arise.

If the new ceasefire in Syria lasts for seven days, the United States and Russia will launch the joint implementation center on distinguishing between opposition forces and terrorist groups. When the distinction is made, Moscow and Washington will coordinate their airstrikes against terrorists in the specific areas that have been agreed on. The Syrian air force, meanwhile, will operate in other areas, beyond those allocated for the Russian-US cooperation.
According to Anton Mardasov, the head of the Department of Middle Eastern Conflicts of the Moscow-based Institute for Innovative Development, the most important thing for the success of the ceasefire agreement is that it should be supported by the Fatah Halab alliance, which unites more than 30 groups, including those under the command of the Free Syrian Army.

"In the north of Syria, these groups operate in coordination with Turkey. Already at the end of August they announced that they would agree to the ceasefire and humanitarian aid deliveries to Aleppo," he said.

"It now appears that Moscow, Damascus, Tehran, Ankara and Washington have agreed that there will be no strikes on the groups of this alliance," he added.

"The real problem now lies with Jaish al-Fatah, composed of Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham," the expert said, adding that these particular groups might try to derail the ceasefire from the off, like happened in Hama and south-western Aleppo.

"In this case we could witness targeted airstrikes and liquidations, which could be carried out by the US-led international coalition, as it has recently been done in Idlib, where several leaders of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham have been killed," he said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Turkey must abide to the democratic freedoms like the right to a fair trial in the wake of the military coup attempt , EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Tuesday.

"Turkey must recommit strongly to those principles and values that are at the core of that democracy that the Turkish people protected and defended on the night of 15th of July: the rule of law, freedoms, pluralism, including also the rights that are at the core of any democracy, including the guarantee that everybody has the right to a fair trial," Mogherini said at the European Parliament.

The July 15 coup was quickly suppressed by the government forces the following day. Over 240 people were killed and more than 2,000 were wounded during the operation.
"The thing is that the major military operations against Daesh are taking place around Aleppo, with the aerial support of the Russian airspace forces," he said.

"It is only logical to suppose that the high-ranking Daesh commander has been in that particular district then," he said.

Bagdasarov also noted that Al-Adnani, Syrian by origin, was not simply a high-ranking Daesh militant but was in command of the military operations on the Syrian territory.

"The Americans therefore claim that he was killed in another district, closer to the Turksih border, while there was absolutely no need for him to be there.Hence the geography and logic speak in favor of the Russian version," he explained.

Anton Mardasov however said that there are alternative points of view.

First, he said, Al-Adnani could have been killed by the Kurds, however it remains unclear what the Daesh strategist "might have lost" in the city which has been under active attack of the Kurdish forces.

"On the other hand, there were reports of high-ranking Daesh commanders having been killed at the front line," he said.

Secondly, the Islamists often stage their deaths to cover up their traces and this might have been the case with Al-Adnani.
By PTI: Mumbai, Sep 12 (PTI) Director Mira Nairs forthcoming drama "Queen of Katwe" will have her son, Zohran Mamdanis soundtrack.

The film, which is set to release in India on October 7, will feature a cutting-edge Afrobeat soundtrack curated by Miras son, who is also a Ugandan rapper.

Zohran took inspiration for its music from the Katwe streets to immerse the audience in the modern sound of Kampala, the capital city of Uganda.

advertisement

He is the music supervisor on "Queen of Katwe" along with Linda Cohen, who has previously worked in the Oscar-winning film "Argo", Daniel Day-Lewis-starrer "There Will Be Blood" and "The Master".

The film, which stars Oscar-winner Lupita Nyongo, David Oyelowo and newcomer Madina Nalwangas, is based on real-life events and chronicles the inspiring story of an underdog from the streets of rural Uganda.

"Queen of Katwe" also had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10. PTI SSN BK

--- ENDS ---
The agency sees sectarian and ethnic tensions as prevailing risk factors in Iraq even in the presence of military gains against the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh). The bulk of national oil industry facilities are located away from areas of insecurity but low commodity prices, forecast by Fitch at $42 per barrel in 2016, $45 in 2017 and $55 in 2018, will continue to deteriorate public finance.

"Commodity dependence is among the highest of all Fitch-rated sovereigns. Oil accounts for more than 50% of GDP and over 90% of fiscal and current external receipts," the press release read.
On September 9, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry announced a new peace plan to address the conflict in Syria that called for a ceasefire to come into force on Monday.

"By early morning every report we have been seeing indicates a significant drop in violence," de Mistura told journalists.
MOSCOW(Sputnik)  The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia welcomed the Syria ceasefire agreement, a Saudi Foreign Ministry statement said Tuesday as quoted by a state news agency.

"Saudi Arabia follows with interest the beginning of truce in Syria and welcomes the ceasefire agreement," Saudi Foreign Ministry's statement said.

The cessation of hostilities in Syria entered into force on Monday, as agreed by Russia and the United States. If the ceasefire holds for seven days, the United States and Russia will collaborate through a joint implementation center on distinguishing between terrorists and opposition forces.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed hope on Tuesday that the ceasefire in Syria would be permanent, saying that so far it is largely holding.

"I hope that the ceasefire will be permanent," Erdogan said, as quoted by the Hurriyet Daily newspaper.
The new arrangement allows Israel to spend the money on its own defense firms for the first six years.

Tensions have been high between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly over the Iran nuclear deal, fervently opposed by the Israeli PM.

Netanyahu was reportedly holding out for a larger sum as recently as last month. Citing threats from Syria and Turkey, the Israeli leader was pushing for $50 billion.

Far below Netanyahus desired sum, the $38 billion is still an unprecedented amount for the US-Israeli, or any other, relationship, especially considering that, as a recent lawsuit claims, the defense packages may be in violation of US law.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The US-led coalition against Daesh has destroyed chemical weapons plant in Iraq used by the terrorist group, US Air Force Central Command commander Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian said in a press briefing.

"A strike we just executed the other night on a Daesh headquarters also used as a weapons production facility," Harrigan stated on Tuesday. "Intelligence had indicated that Daesh converted a pharmaceutical plant complex into a chemical weapons productions capability."

The commander noted that the production of chemical weapons underscores Daesh's "blatant disregard for international law and norms."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A nationwide ceasefire, brokered by Moscow and Washington, came into force in Syria at sunset on Monday. If the truce holds for a week, Russian and US air forces will begin coordinated airstrikes at Daesh targets.

"A total of 21 strikes at the government's positions and civilians have been registered in Aleppo province, Damascus, Hama, Idlib and Darayya since the previous day," Russia's Defense Ministry said in a statement published on its website.

The Russian reconciliation center for Syria said militants had shelled the district where the Aleppo governor resides.
The transparency organizations founder Julian Assange and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden are among the most wanted individuals in the world for their respective roles in exposing the secrets of the US government.

After revealing the extent of Washingtons global and domestic spying apparatus, Snowden currently resides in Moscow, while Assange has been forced to remain in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition for leaking documents obtained by Army private Chelsea Manning.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that the US government appears to have financed the creation of a bizarre pair of posters.
According to the report, which was penned by 62-year-old ambassador Krister Bringeus, former Swedish head of delegation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Sweden may become the first country to be attacked by Russia in the event of a war in the Baltic Sea, however improbable this scenario may sound. Since Sweden is obviously unable to defend itself, the bottom line of the report is that it is preferable to join NATO than to stay outside the bloc.

"The most tangible effect of NATO membership would apparently be the elimination of the uncertainty that currently exists regarding how a possible Baltic crisis would ultimately turn out. At the same time, the West's overall conflict deterring capability is thus likely to increase," runs the key passage of the report, published by Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.

The report gave a bleak picture of Sweden's defense capabilities in a new era, marked by Russia's "increasing antagonism" against the West. According to the report, the confrontation line between Russia and the West has shifted from Central Europe to the Baltic Sea region, which leaves Sweden particularly vulnerable. Russia was also pointed out as "the only state in Sweden's immediate surroundings that might exert military aggression against neighbors," citing Moscow's presumed unpredictability, desire to undermine NATO and penchant for hybrid warfare.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United States has partially lifted sanctions against cooperation with Afghanistan on helicopter maintenance with Russias Rosoboronexport state defense exporter, the Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan said Tuesday.

"Nothing prevented them from lifting sanctions against Rosoboronexprt relating to the delivery and maintenance of our helicopters to Afghanistan. They painted themselves into a corner and had to lift parts of the sanctions," Zamir Kabulov said at a press conference organized by the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.

Kabulov, who directs the Russian Foreign Ministrys Second Asian Department, pointed out that Washingtons reversal relates to helicopter supply part deliveries.
By Indrajit Kundu: Kolkata's iconic eatery Mocambo has refuted allegations of 'racial discrimination' levelled against it by a customer last week. Located on Kolkata's Park Street, the famous restaurant came out to clarify its position after a Facebook post slamming the eatery went viral.

"There was no discrimination. We do have customers bringing their domestic help. Some bring their drivers as well. We allow all of them to come in. The only issue was that he (visitor's driver) was not clean and was not in proper clothes. His clothes were extremely dirty. So it was not appropriate for us to allow him to enter the restaurant. Thus we denied them a table," said Anurag Gupta, one of the attendants at Mocambo.

advertisement

THE CASE

Dilashi Hemnani, a young marketing professional who had visited the restaurant on Friday night had narrated her experience with the restaurant staff on Facebook which since then has gone viral.

According to Hemnani, her request for a table was turned down as she insisted to take her driver inside the hotel for dinner. Hemani says, the reason cited was that her driver was not 'properly dressed'. Terming it a 'racial discrimination', Hemnani had left the restaurant vowing not to visit the place ever again due to the "inhuman inconsiderate behaviour" of its staff.

"We did allow the lady to come into the restaurant to dine with us. We only told her that the driver was not clean enough," Gupta says, refuting allegation that the restaurant staff misbehaved with the visitor. Hemnani's Facebook outburst has lead to a barrage of reactions slamming the renowned eatery. With many saying that the least Mocambo could do was offer an unconditional apology.

However, on its part, the restaurant seems happy to stick to its position terming such criticism on social media as "fake posts". "People may be using social media but Mocambo is not on social media. They may be posting as Mocambo customers but these are all fake posts," Gupta said.

--- ENDS ---
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport will exhibit military equipment that will be of interest for African countries, at the Africa Aerospace and Defense (AAD 2016) arms expo due to be held on September 14-18 in Pretoria, the exporter said Tuesday.

The company will display almost the entire range of military equipment produced by Russia's 14 leading manufacturers, including Yak-130 combat trainer aircraft, Mi-28NE attack helicopter, IL-76MD-90A military transport aircraft and the Project 636 big diesel-electric submarine, which are expected to attract much interest, Rosoboronexport said in a statement.

"It will be the eighth time that we have brought Russian equipment there. We keep expanding cooperation with most of the countries no matter where on the continent, both in Northern Africa and with states to the south of the Sahara [Desert]. The backlog of Russian equipment for Africa is already worth more than $21 billion," Yury Demchenko, the chief adviser to Rosoboronexports director general, said, as quoted in the statement.
The BRICS Security Advisors will discuss the security issues which threaten the BRICS region. They will discuss terrorist threats, especially those emanating from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. India's government will express its view of Pakistan-based terror groups and their role in threatening peace and stability in Asia. The Security Advisors will also discuss the threat posed by Daesh and how to counter the menace of terrorism in the Middle East.

The National Security Advisors of India and Russia will also hold bilateral talks on the sidelines of the BRICS Security Advisors meeting. There will be a discussion regarding the strengthening of the cooperation between India and Russia in terms of the defense, civil nuclear energy and space sectors.
China wishes to see early commencement of an open and transparent inter-governmental process to undertake, in accordance with the mandate adopted by the NSG at its Seoul Plenary meeting, a comprehensive and through study on the issue of the non-NPT states participation in the NSG in various aspects, a statement from the Chinese Embassy said on Tuesday.

India and China also discussed issues related to cyber security and the work of the Conference on Disarmament.

The discussions were candid, pragmatic and substantive. The two sides expressed the wish to intensify their exchanges on the relevant issues. India and China also agreed to hold the next round of consultations in China in due course, to be decided through diplomatic channels.
And choosing between the forum's many offerings was no easy task, either, Pskezin explain, given the huge range of new and innovative products. "For example, Bauman Moscow State Technical University developed a simulated 125-mm tank shell with no analogue in the world. The shell allows the learning process of tank crews to be brought as close as possible to battle conditions. Made of plastic, the shell is atomized as it flies toward its target, and a sheaf of markers indicates where the tank is hit. With the help of such shells it's possible to arrange a kind of tank paintball."

And that's just one example among dozens of new systems and innovations displayed at the show.

In terms of the show's material payoff for its organizers, this came via the interest of foreign governments, "reflected through the signing of major contracts. Foreign buyers conducted over 50 meetings and negotiations with Russian Defense Ministry leaders and representatives from the country's defense industry. The result was 17 government contracts worth over 130 billion rubles [nearly $2 billion US]."

The defense order, Pskezin calculated, "includes the delivery of six Project 636 submarines, three Project 21631 small missile ships, as well as the supply and modernization of over 230 pieces of military hardware."

And Russian producers were not alone, either on the fields or in the display stands, with Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia, as well as Pakistan and Malaysia, featuring their own national exhibitions, and 58 other foreign companies (double last year's figure) coming to the show with their own offerings, with firms from Germany, China, India, Israel, France, Switzerland, Ireland, and Thailand in attendance.

No defense forum would be complete without the discussion of new ideas in military-technical thought, with Army-2016 organizing over 100 round tables, briefings and conferences in 24 thematic areas. "All-in-all, 12,000 experts from 18 countries took part in the open part of the scientific and business programs," Pskezin noted.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The US Department of Defense and intelligence community support the new peace agreement with Russia on Syria, including intelligence sharing, but approach the deal with caution, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre said in a speech on Tuesday.

"Distrust but verify: That can apply a little bit in this case," Lettre told an open meeting at the Atlantic Council. "The intelligence community and the Department of Defense are strongly on board with supporting the new agreement as the steps play out as we think they should."

Lettre described the process of cooperating with Russia on intelligence issues to implement the Syria agreement as dealing in a "very complex" information-sharing environment.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Leandra Bernstein  National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden should make his case for a presidential pardon from a US prison, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr told Sputnik on Tuesday.

"He probably should make the case from jail, and that is where he should be," Burr said on hearing reports that Snowden was urging President Barack Obama to grant him a pardon before leaving office.

In an interview with The Guardian newspaper released on Tuesday, Snowden argued that he should receive a pardon because his revelations of classified US intelligence programs were "vital" for the public understanding of their government.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  "Lockheed Martin invites members of the media attending the Africa Aerospace & Defence Expo [near Pretoria, South Africa] to a C-130J Super Hercules briefing on Thursday, September 15," the release stated.

Lockheed Martin added that it has already sold the C-130s to the governments of 19 African countries.

Over the past decade, the United States has expanded its military presence throughout Africa in an attempt to counter Chinese and other emerging nations influence, while consolidating control over critical strategic resources and trade routes.
ROME (Sputnik)  The United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union may give bloc's governments a chance to strengthen joint defense capabilities, Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Tuesday.

"We all understand the difficulties associated with Brexit, but at the same time, it shows interesting prospects. Brexit could provide the EU governments with an opportunity to make a joint step forward in the defense area," Gentiloni told journalists at the meeting in Rome dedicated to the Brexit consequences.

He added that he expected London to provide certainty on timing and order of the United Kingdom's departure from the bloc.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A meeting among the six foreign ministers responsible for hammering out the July 2015 landmark nuclear deal with Iran could meet on the sidelines of the upcoming UN General Assembly, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministrys Second Asian Department said Tuesday.

"Sergei Viktorovich [Lavrov] will likely cross paths with [Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad] Zarif. A meeting between the six foreign ministers is being worked out on the Iranian nuclear program," Zamir Kabulov, presidential envoy to Afghanistan, told RIA Novosti.

The 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly begins later Tuesday in New York.
With Iran yet to make clear its reaction to the Russian-US agreement, Tarasov emphasized that Turkey, on the other hand, is the one to watch, when it comes to the ceasefire deal; "Ankara becoming more and more involved in the conflict, even though it is now clear that Operation Euphrates Shield was in some sense agreed to by Moscow and Washington. The question is how long the Turks go along with the US and Russia."

Turkish authorities, the expert noted, "are already trying to play an independent game, carrying out separate negotiations with Washington about storming Raqqa, while clashing with the Syrian Kurds, who are supported by the Americans. Against this background we can see the activation of the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] factor. It's no accident that there are terror attacks occurring in Turkey almost every dayAll this only further works to tangle the knot of contradictions around Syria."

In any case, the Tarasov noted that another factor which complicates any predictions about how the situation will develop next is the US's November elections. "Barack Obama has very little time left before he leaves office. And no matter who enters the White House in November  Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump  the new administration will need time to develop a new Syria policy and to form a new state apparatus. As practice shows, this restructuring usually takes seven or eight months," i.e. into mid-2017.

"And this means that the agreement between Lavrov and Kerry can either be blocked by the new administration, or substantially transformed in several areas."
By Smita Sharma: After months of strained ties and an economic blockade at the borders, India and Nepal are attempting to normalise relations. The newly-elected Prime Minister Prachanda will be on a three-day visit to India from 15th September. Ahead of the visit, Nepalese Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat stressed that both sides need to introspect on their misunderstandings and resolve issues through diplomatic channels instead of indulging in public spats. He also dismissed speculations that Chinese President Xi Jinping had cancelled his Nepal tour as Prachanda heads to India. President Pranab Mukherjee will also head to Nepal in early November. The Minister spoke exclusively to India Today's Smita Sharma. Excerpts.

advertisement

NEED TO EXPEDITE PROJECTS

1. What are we expecting from PM Prachanda's visit to India? Any significant announcement?

A - It's not a question of expectation. We want to build our relationship based on trust, enduring cooperation and friendship so that we can have in-depth and strong relations in many fields. We have people-to-people contact, cultural relations, cooperation in areas of socio-economic development of Nepal, different projects at governmental and private sector levels and investors working in Nepal. We want to see these relations expand, projects to move and not to stay pending for a very long time. We want to see visible results of this bilateral cooperation so that people truly feel something is happening. We want to ensure that whatever be our areas of cooperation, we can see results of the same on the ground. We don't want to propose big things. We need to expedite projects and fast-track issues of cooperation. All important matters must be discussed at high-level meetings.



Also read: Swaraj meets Nepalese foreign minister ahead of Prachanda's visit

2. Trust issues remain crucial, ties between India and Nepal soured in the recent past as there were apprehensions of a growing proximity between Kathmandu and Beijing. Will trust issues be addressed in the visit?

A- Our approach is a little different from that of our former PM Khadga Prasad Oliji. We want to resolve whatever issues we have through diplomatic channels, and not debate or discuss the same in public. We can achieve a lot by engaging diplomatically.



ATMOSPHERE OF TRUST VISIBLE

3. India should also resolve things through diplomatic channels?

A- Both countries must. We need to introspect on what all went wrong or the misunderstandings that crept in between our relations. An atmosphere of trust and goodwill is already visible. Such an atmosphere will be a key going forward. We are all for pursuing the right kind of approach and processes so that the ultimate objective of nurturing national interests of Nepal is fulfilled.

WANT GOOD RELATIONS WITH CHINA

4. Reports suggest that Chinese President Xi Jinping cancelled his visit as PM Prachanda is heading to India and President Pranab Mukherjee heading to Nepal. How do you see this?

A- These reports are absolutely baseless. The date of Chinese President's visit to Nepal is not yet decided, so the question of cancellation of Prachanda's visit to India does not arise. We want to see a high-level visit to India. Indian President Pranab Mukherjee is visiting Nepal. We have a date. So we expect our northern neighbour China also to attend a high-level meeting, probably Chinese President Jinping. We want to have good relations with China as well. We have many more areas of cooperation between India and Nepal. Our engagement is decided by whatever areas of cooperation are there. So there is no need to speculate.

advertisement

Also read: Xi's visit to Nepal not cancelled, says China

5. Constitutional amendment remains a major contentious issue within Nepal. Do you still maintain the view that it is all-inclusive or is your government going to be more flexible?

A- No constitution in any part of the world is perfect. There is always a scope for improvement in the constitution of whichever country one talks about. We have two Constituent Assembly elections. We want to ensure that the democratic system in Nepal gets institutionalised. There is always room for improvement. There is always some dissatisfaction and some grievances. This Govt is very open-minded and we like to see that all sections of people living here -- the jantjatis, Dalits, madhesis -- are satisfied. We are holding discussions with different parties, including the Madhesi centric parties. Dialogue is moving in the right direction and we hope that soon we will be able to satisfy several stakeholders.

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik)  Following the meeting, Security Council members will meet for closed consultations to discuss Libya sanctions, United Nations Support Mission in Libya and other matters, the Security Council schedule revealed.

After the consultations, Special Representative and head of the UN Support Mission in Libya Martin Kobler will hold a press stake-out following his briefing to the Security Council.

Libya has been in a state of turmoil since 2011 when long-standing leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown by Western-supported Islamic extremists after several months of unrest.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States has concluded a record ten-year military aid deal with Israel, the US Department of State said in a statement on Tuesday.

"The United States has concluded a new ten-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Israel on security assistance for fiscal years 2019 through 2028," the statement said. "This MOU constitutes the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in US history."

Earlier on Tuesday, US media reported that the United States was on the verge of reaching the deal, under which it will provide Israel with $38 billion in aid, or $3.8 billion per year.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  During a campaign speech for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Obama blasted her Republican opponent Donald Trump for praising President Putin.

"When the interviewer asks him [Trump], Why do you support this guy [Putin]? He says, He is a strong guy. Look, hes got an 82 percent poll rating. Well, yes, Saddam Hussein had a 90 percent poll rating," Obama stated.

Trump has repeatedly said that he expects to maintain good relations with Russia and President Putin if elected to become the next US president. On September 7, the Republican nominee argued that Putin was a better leader than Obama.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States extends for one year a federal law that restricts trade with Cuba, US President Barack Obama announced in a memorandum on Tuesday.

"I hereby determine that the continuation for 1 year of the exercise of those authorities with respect to Cuba is in the national interest of the United States, Obama stated.

The restrictions, introduced under the Trading with the Enemy Act, will remain in effect until September 14, 2017, according to the memorandum.
In 2013, Snowden revealed classified documents to reporters exposing the mass surveillance practices of the US government at home and abroad. Showden faces US charges of espionage and theft of government property that could land him in prison for up to 30 years.

In an interview with The Guardian newspaper released on Tuesday, Snowden argued that he should receive a pardon because his revelations of classified US intelligence programs were "vital" for the public understanding of their government.

In 2014, Snowden received a three-year residence permit from the Russian government. His lawyer Anatoly Kucherena called on Obama on Tuesday to pardon the whitleblower and prove his Nobel Peace Prize Award.
Todays main stories: Amid ongoing political tensions, Indian Authorities in the Indian controlled region of Jammu and Kashmir have enforced strict curfews which could mark the first time in history that all major mosques and shrines in Kashmir are closed during Eid-Al-Adha. We speak to freelance journalist from Kashmir, Harris Zargar.



Prison strikes across the United States enter their fifth day, with incarcerated workers protesting against forced labour and slavery. Recent reports suggest that the strikes have now spread to up to twenty four states. We speak to Azzurra Crispino from the the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC).



You can find previous editions of World in Focus here.



Tune in to Radio Sputnik five days a week for Sputniks daily current affairs program, broadcasting live from Edinburgh Scotland, with Jack Foster and Carolyn Scott.
"The French have to desalinate their sea water (at an oyster farm) but the water in the Black Sea has a lower salt content, just 18 parts per million (ppm), which is the necessary amount of salt that the French get artificially," he explained.

Dionisiy said that the farm aims to sell its produce in France, Spain and other European countries, recalling a time when the region was a major exporter of seafood.

"As soon as the farm is built we aim to produce real Crimean oysters. According to historical data, Crimea delivered tens of million of oysters to France before the revolution  after construction, our French partners are going to help us to create that unmistakable, delicious quality which the French have reached through years of practice."

"Our suppliers and partners in this business look very favorably on Russia, they are not involved in political processes which are currently going on in Europe and Russia. First of all, every company considers its own business development, and love and interest towards that business."

Crimean Seafood has made agreements with three French companies. One will carry out project-management, another will deliver the farming equipment and the third will work on the installation and water-filtering to ensure the right water quality. The first specialists will travel from France to Crimea next month, Dionisiy said.
KALUGA (Sputnik)  Federal funding of geological exploration work in Russia will be cut by 5 percent next year, Russian Minister of Natural Resources Sergei Donskoi said Tuesday.

"We envision the reduction of expenses by 5 percent," Donskoi told reporters and added that funding for 2018-19 was not under discussion yet.

In June, the minister forecast 2016 exploration funding from the federal budget to climb by 10 percent to 35.7 billion rubles ($551.4 million at the current exchange rate) from 32.4 billion rubles last year.
The demand will grow further, the RUTI press secretary assured. However, the problem is that the travel infrastructure in Russia is underdeveloped: museums are working at full capacity, and there is not transport and hotel space. Both in St. Petersburg and in Moscow, the demand has exceeded the capacity of the infrastructure.

A large-scale reconstruction of the Moscow center has caused problems for tour operators who have had to reconsider numerous excursion programs.

No Need to Go Overseas

In addition, Russians have switched to vacations in their own country with domestic tourism becoming a trend in recent years. During the first half of the year the number of Russian tourists going abroad decreased by 28%. It was much affected by the closure of the most popular and affordable destinations for Russians: Turkey and Egypt.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that a wealth of information revealed by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden is more important than his actions.

"The most important is not the actions of Snowden, but rather a wealth of information he revealed. The main thing is to understand: earlier everybody was joking that "Big Brother" is watching us and suddenly found out that he is really watching. It is Snowden who gave us the understanding that we are all living in a 'fish tank.' It is much more important than the judgment of what he did," Peskov told reporters.

Peskov was speaking after watching a new Oliver Stone movie about the former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor.
The recent Mocambo fiasco has brought into focus how much we accept overrated restaurants, just for the sake of nostalgia.

Why do we accept average restaurants just for the sake of nostalgia? Picture courtesy: Instagram/arjunujra/batman_4i7

By Shreya Goswami: We all have such restaurants in our lives, especially because we've grown up hearing just how amazing they are. It doesn't matter if you were brought up in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai or Hyderabad. You heard about these places, ate there, and even recommended tourists and visitors to the city to go and splurge on a meal there.

advertisement

But the recent Mocambo issue has raised one underlining question that we really need to answer: Do we frequent these restaurants because they have amazing food and service? Or do we recommend these places simply for the sake of nostalgia?

Now we're not saying that nostalgia shouldn't be a consideration at all, or ever. But when all you are looking for is a great dining experience, you should be able to go to a place that offers good food, an enjoyable ambience, and decent service. It's this trio that makes for an experience you'd want to savour again, and again. After all, you are paying for it, so it might as well meet your expectations.

We picked up seven overrated restaurants, from Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, where you won't find the perfect combination of the trio mentioned above. So take off those tinted glasses of nostaligia, and take a real peek into these restaurants.

Moti Mahal, Delhi

Now we know Moti Mahal is apparently the place where the world famous delicacy, Butter Chicken, was accidentally discovered. People still flock to the restaurant in Daryaganj to get a plate of Butter Chicken.

Moti Mahal might have invented the Butter Chicken, but there are better places to get a taste of this dish now. Picture courtesy: Instagram/getmemorefood

The place even claims to be the most authentic representative of North Indian cuisine. But is it really worth it any more? No. There are better versions of Butter Chicken available in the city itself, not to mention the numerous restaurants and chefs who have revamped the dish in other cities.

Also read: This post about a Kolkata restaurant that refused to serve a customer and her driver, has elicited shock



United Coffee House, Delhi

From watery coffee to extremely large portions of gulab jamun (and most dishes for that matter), United Coffee House seems to have outlived its glorious days.

United Coffee House has lost its charm and flavour over the years. Picture courtesy: Instagram/killeraps70

A closer look at the place would easily convey the fact that it is meant for large groups of people, who are more interested in catching up with each others' lives rather than catching up over good food. As it happens with restaurants that have grown too old and survive solely on the nostaligia factor, UCH doesn't satisfy your palate or your demand for good, fast, and attentive service.

advertisement

Indian Coffee House, Kolkata

We think Kolkata citizens already know this--the lyrics from the old Manna Dey song are true! (The song basically relives the memories of a friend circle, who lament the fact that the days of the famous adda at Coffee House are long gone.) Coffee House just isn't the place it used to be, and yet large numbers of people flock to the old, shambling building every year. Why?

The Manna Dey song about Indian Coffee House, Kolkata is so true. Picture courtesy: Instagram/nishedh.kumar

Because the place once had the best of Bengal discussing the most intellectual issues of the age there, over a cup of coffee and chicken sandwiches. Even now, you'll find crowds of college students there. But the food has no flavour, and the service is so bad that you might want to weep with desperation.

Flury's, Kolkata

You might feel like going up in arms about this one, but think about it. Does Flury's really have the charm it did even 10 years back? The answer is a straight-forward no.

Where did Flury's lose its British colonial bakery-like allure and perfection? Picture courtesy: Instagram/sudeshnasingh08

advertisement

What with the expansion of the brand, it seems they lost out on their high standards of service as well as the flavours of old, British colonial baking. And that's a real shame, because Flury's is still one of the landmarks of Kolkata's culinary scene.

Trishna, Mumbai

Some places go out of sync because of their age, but for some, it's publicity that does the trick. When Trishna was a little place in Fort, Mumbai with some amazing seafood dishes on offer, it was the place to be at.

With many restaurants dedicated solely to seafood, is Trishna really still that good? Picture courtesy: Instagram/themumbaifoodlabel

Once it became well known that the restaurant is good, viola! The service turned average, and so did the food. But more and more online reviewers are now insisting that the food has gotten worse, and it's extremely overpriced. Surely a place you'd want to give a miss.

Leopold Cafe & Bar, Mumbai

We know this place is a landmark, and it came closer to the heart of the city after the terrorist attack in 2008. But keep that fact aside for a second, and think of Leopold as an F&B venture alone.

Leopold is a Mumbai landmark, but fails to impress as a restaurant. Picture courtesy: Instagram/jayantchugh

advertisement

You'll find that the food is average, and overpriced. The service standards have fallen as well. Surely there's a better place to go hang out with your friends, over a more pocket-friendly tiramisu or cake?



Also read: Mocambo terms social media outrage as 'fake posts', refutes discrimination charge



Paradise, Hyderabad

For most visitors to the city, Paradise is THE place to get a taste of Hyderabad's famous version of biryani. The original restaurant in Secunderabad now has branches all over the city.

With great biryani on offer all over the city, would you go to Paradise for anything but nostalgia? Picture courtesy: Instagram/kaushik3191

And as it happens with brands that expand too much too fast, Paradise's biryanis no longer pull the foodies' palate (especially after the first spoonful. What this place has lost, however, is just its flavour. The service is still good (even their home delivery system). But in a city teeming with biryani eateries that can give you a lip-smacking experience, would you still want to frequent Paradise for anything but nostalgia.

Of course, you would still want to visit all these restaurants across the country. We all have precious memories associated with one or all of these, and those should be relived.

But here's the thing--if a restaurant is just not meeting your expectations, try out some new ones. Given the rise of amazing new restaurants and the advent of modern Indian cuisine, there's no need to limit your appetite or experiences any more.

Experiment with your palate, and go on a new journey in search of that perfect biryani or lobster. Memories, especially memories associated with food, can, and should be made throughout your life.

--- ENDS ---
But no need to be alarmed because this is one of few border-free international collaborations of scientists and engineers that ensure the happenings of outer space are constantly monitored on behalf of us all. With observable tech being at its best, there are systems in place to do so and where any possibility of risk can be seen, an international action plan is executed in order to minimize the likelihood of a devastating hit that could result in human extinction.

Small asteroid 2016 RB1 flew safely past Earth today. Distance: 25,000 miles/40,000 km. Size approx 7-16 meters. pic.twitter.com/CgbYM49rav  Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) September 7, 2016

A United Nations style coalition of all countries that overlooks any existence of political differences and works for the good of science progression and safety of planet Earth is firmly in place. Coalition groups such as the Planetary Defense Coordination Office led by NASA and the International Astronomical Union of wider countries, whose sole mission is to prepare the world for a range of unlikely, but devastating possibilities that exist outside of our earthly realms.

Planetary Defense Coordination Office  how to redirect an asteroid to stop an impact with earth @NASASocial pic.twitter.com/cHklSFY83H  Tharin White (@TharinWhite) September 7, 2016

"International cooperation in the name of science is a common occurrence because science overlooks any boundaries imposed by our politicians and works in the interest of humanity as a whole," David Baker, editor-in-chief of Spaceflight magazine, who has over 30 years of experience in the aerospace industry, told Sputnik.
"But thats really a euphemism for the fact that these entities are collecting extraordinary amounts of data on each individual that uses their system."

This mass collection of data gives companies like Google enormous power to manipulate public opinion.

"So across the board, I think its time for people to realize, and for us to begin to take action over the fact that these massive entities, these massive corporations that are what influence us hour after hour, day after day, can impact the political outcomes in America and around the world."
"The Internet is defined by its inclusiveness and openness. Those critical characteristics are reflected in the work thatwent into the drafting of the transition."

Other signatories to the letter include Amazon, Yahoo, and Cloudflare.

The global community has long supported the transition, as well as current ICANN head Fadi Chehade.

"I feel the proposal will lead us to a global, independent, neutral, well-governed organization, he said last year. "Im never comfortable, but I am optimistic and I believe that all interests are now alignedEverybody sees that this makes sense."

Senator Cruz has argued against the plan to give away the Internet and create an environment so that "countries like Russia, China, and Iran could be able to censor speech on the Internet."
Just like the end of any other Monsoon season, the mosquito borne Dengue and Chikungunya fever have infested India's capital, Delhi. Both Chikungunya and dengue are viral diseases that are transmitted by the Aedes mosquitoes which if not detected in time can be fatal.

Delhi is witnessing a sharp rise in the Chikungunya cases, which have risen to over 1000  marking 90% increase over the last week. The sudden increase in Chikungunya victims has forced both the central and state government to spring into action.

Shocking:While Delhi reels under huge epidemic of Chickengunya,dengue, viral fevers,AK,Sisodia,Jain,Rai all missing! https://t.co/nE1of4RDV8  Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) September 13, 2016

While emphasizing the availability of facilities at Government Hospitals across Delhi, the Government appealed for calm and advised concerned citizens to contact the medical authorities at the slightest suspicion of symptoms of the virus.
FBI Director James Comey, Harris replied, made principal decisions of what to provide Congress. Harris also said some information was in the hands of other agencies, not just the FBI.

However, Chaffetz claimed that the 302s provided by the FBI have been heavily redacted.

[The FBI] hand-picked the 302s to give to us after your discussion with staff, Chaffetz added. You [the FBI] dont get to decide what I get to see.

In 2014, Clinton released over 55,000 emails to State Department investigators, stating that the documents contained only work-related information. Yet more than 33,000 emails have been destroyed which does not satisfy established US rules and regulations.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Clinton abruptly left Sundays 9/11 anniversary service and canceled her two-day trip to California due to poor health condition. Hours later, her personal physician announced she was diagnosed with pneumonia.

"So I just want to get this over and done with and get back on the trail as soon as possible," Clinton said in an interview on CNN on Monday night, adding that she was feeling much better.

The US presidential hopeful is due to compete with her Republican rival Donald Trump for the US presidency at the elections scheduled for November 8. The candidates were nominated in July during their parties' respective conventions.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Leandra Bernstein  Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence made a useful outreach effort with a visit to Capitol Hill on behalf of the Donald Trump-Pence campaign, US Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told Sputnik.

"I think every little bridge-building exercise like that is very helpful," Cornyn said on Tuesday, characterizing the meeting between Pence and Senate Republicans.

Cornyn signaled that many members of the caucus were supportive of Pence, who served six terms in Congress, and welcomed the opportunity to "reconnect with an old colleague."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  President Barack Obamas advisors would recommend he veto a congressional measure preventing him from transferring detainees from the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said in a statement on Tuesday.

"[T]his bill would seek to prohibit any and all transfers of detainees, even where such transfers are conducted securely and responsibly and to further substantial US national security interests," the statement said.

If presented with the bill, Obamas advisors would recommend he veto the measure, the OMB explained.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  President Barack Obama should call for a complete environmental and cultural impact study of the Dakota Access Pipeline before allowing the project to continue, US Senator Bernie Sanders said at a rally near the White House.

"I am calling on President Obama today to ensure that this pipeline gets a full environmental and cultural impact analysis," Sanders told several hundred protestors on Tuesday afternoon. "In my view, when that analysis takes place, this pipeline will not continue."

The Dakota Access Pipeline Project aims to transport domestically-produced light crude oil from North Dakota through the states of South Dakota and Iowa into Illinois.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The military, which seized power during the 2014 coup, announced martial law in Thailand and handed over the jurisdiction over cases involving lese majeste, security offenses, arms possession as well as violations of the junta's decrees to the military court.

"Calm and stability have returned to the country, a new constitution was adopted in the August 7 referendum. Therefore, the government has decided to review the order that extended military tribunals' jurisdiction," Sansern Kaewkamnerd told reporters in a televised address.

Controversially, demonstrations and protests without the junta's permit are classified as crimes against national security under the government's orders.
Sharif said that the people of Kashmir are facing Indian atrocities and are making sacrifices to achieve their right of self-determination. He added that all coming Eids will be dedicated to them until the unrest is resolved and the Kashmiris get what they want.

By Pranav Priyadarshi: Dedicating this years Eid-ul-Azha to the endless sacrifices of Kashmiris, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has pledged to dedicate all coming Eids to the people of Kashmir till the resolution of the dispute in accordance with their wishes.

On this day of Eid, we cannot forget the sacrifices of the people of Kashmir too. The people of Kashmir facing the Indian atrocities have sacrificed their third generation to achieve their right of self-determination.

advertisement

We dedicate this Eid to the endless sacrifices of Kashmiri people and will continue to dedicate all coming Eids to the Kashmiris till the issue of Kashmir is resolved in accordance with their wishes??, the Prime Minister said in his message on the occasion of Eidul Azha being observed in the country on Tuesday.

HAILS THE EID SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE



He said Eid-ul-Azha was a remembrance of the submission of Hazrat Ibrahim (Allaih Salam) and the obedience and acceptance of Hazrat Ismail Allaih Salam.

The family of Hazrat Ibrahim (AS) sacrificed every worldly relation for the pleasure of their Cherisher and preferred the will of Allah Almighty on every occasion,?? he said, adding its peak point was sacrifice of the son.

Allah Almighty accepted this act of father and son in a way that it was made part of Hajj rituals and the Muslim society was made obliged to keep this tradition alive??, he added.

The Prime Minister said Syedna Ibrahim (AS) through his conduct told the world that sacrifice was the name of dedicating ourselves for the supreme human objectives.

The sacrifice of individuals keeps the society and nation alive. This is the lesson which is given through sacrifice??, he remarked.

TALKS OF THE NEED FOR UNITY OF THE NATION



The Prime Minister said there was a need to recall that lesson of oneness and sacrifice which Hazrat Ibrahim (AS) gave to think over how to unite this nation and could sacrifice for the national objectives.

Pakistan today with the grace and blessings of Allah Almighty has been put on the path of prosperity. We have to take it to its destination??, he added.

He, however, said, Today we have a question before us as if we can sacrifice our ego and interests for the sake of Pakistan. On the occasion of this Eid, we have to give a message of unity to the whole nation. By keeping the tradition of Hazrat Ibrahim (AS) we have to sacrifice for others.??

The Prime Minister said sacrifice gives us this lesson that we on this cheerful occasion should not forget the underprivileged sections of the society.

advertisement

We have to get their participation in our pleasures. We have to get ourselves off from the extremist attitudes by keeping ourselves above the personal, sectoral and factional interests and divert our spirit of sacrifice towards the progress and solidarity of the country and nation and Islamic world. This is what the basis of Islamic teachings is,?? he added.

The Prime Minister said, In fact, if we dedicate our spirit of selflessness and sacrifice to the right objectives, then harmony, tolerance, love, patience and moderation will become part of our daily life matters in the dear country. And our society will turn into an Islamic society in true meanings.??

SPECIAL EID WISHES FOR KASHMIRIS



The Prime Minister extended hearty felicitations to all the Muslims residing in Pakistan and in the whole world particularly the Kashmiri people and thanked Allah Almighty.

He prayed that the nation continued to embrace such happy occasions in their lives repeatedly.

I pray that Allah Almighty bless all of us with real pleasures of Eid-ul-Azha and enable us to understand and perform this great reverence of sacrifice in its true spirit. Ameen??, the Prime Minister added.

Also read: Pathankot attack: Pakistani Senator accuses Sharif government of patronising terrorists



--- ENDS ---

advertisement
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The Fund said discussions of the Iraqi economic policies will continue during IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings, which will take place in Washington, DC, on October 7-9.

"The Iraqi authorities and IMF staff started discussions on the first review of the SBA," the IMF announced on Monday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Leandra Bernstein  The United States has repeatedly encouraged Turkey to respect democratic values and institutions in the aftermath of the coup.

"Obviously, [Erdogan] is moving in a very authoritarian way, and I guess the concern that we would have over time is its effect on Turkey being a democracy, which is sort of a threshold event for NATO itself," Corker said Monday after a closed briefing on US-Turkish relations.

The concern over Turkey's governance relative to NATO is not imminent, but "it is moving in a direction at present which is unhealthy," Corker added.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Bengaluru is a major technology hub and the capital of the Karnataka state, which has been locked in a long-standing dispute over the use of the Cauvery River with the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu.

"15,000 thousand police men and officers have been deployed all over the city," Bengaluru police office tweeted, saying the situation was "peaceful."

On Monday, the nations Supreme Court ordered Karnataka to release 12,000 cubic feet of water to Tamil Nadu until September 20, prompting violent protests in Bengaluru.
The General Assembly has six main committees: Disarmament and International Security Committee (First Committee), Economic and Financial Committee (Second Committee), Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (Third Committee), Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee), Administrative and Budgetary Committee (Fifth Committee), and Legal Committee (Sixth Committee).

A Credentials Committee is appointed at each session of the UNGA to examine the credentials of member state representatives and to report to the General Assembly.

The General Committee, which is composed of the president of the UNGA and 21 vice-presidents of the Assembly, as well as of the chairpersons of the six main committees, meets periodically throughout each session to review the progress of the General Assembly and its committees and to make recommendations for furthering such progress.

The Assembly has subsidiary bodies that are established for specific purposes. They are divided into categories: Boards, Commissions, Committees, Councils and Panels, and Working Groups and others, such as the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, the International Law Commission, the Disarmament Commission, and the Human Rights Council.

After discussing the items on the agenda and seeking where possible to harmonize the various approaches of states, the subsidiary organs present their recommendations, usually in the form of draft resolutions and decisions, to a plenary meeting of the Assembly for its consideration.
BEIJING (Sputnik)  Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Chinese Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun and Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's Politics and Law Commission Meng Jianzhu on Tuesday discussed a number of security and political issues, including the so-called color revolutions , the Russian Security Council said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, Patrushev, Guo and Meng participated in Russia-China consultations on justice, public safety and public order that took place in the Chinese capital of Beijing.

"[The sides] discussed the problems of 'color revolutions,' plans of counterterrorism cooperation, as well as the issues of international legal support and cooperation in the sphere of justice," the statement published after the consultations said.
Former Commander of Russia's Pacific Fleet Igor Khmelnov said that while the Philippines, which recently won its case against China regarding the South China Sea in The Hague tribunal, has been considered a staunch ally of Washington, recent announcements from Manila appear to reflect the changing balance of power in Asia.

"The Chinese sailors are very well-prepared. From the point of view of joint exercises and countering the potential enemy, these are serious exercises and a serious effort," Khmelnov said.

In July the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in favor of the Philippines in its territorial dispute with China over the South China Sea. Manila brought the case to the court in 2013, with backing from the US.

However, China has refused to recognize the court's jurisdiction over the dispute, and has instead called for bilateral negotiations among the parties to the dispute.

On Monday Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte demanded that US special forces leave the south of the country, where they have been fighting Islamic insurgents.

"The statement reflects [Mr Duterte's] new direction towards coursing an independent foreign policy," explained the President's spokesman Ernesto Abella.

As well as China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Brunei also make overlapping claims to the South China Sea, a highly contested region which includes the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands, and through which nearly $5 trillion in international trade passes annually.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The World Bank may be in violation of international law by knowingly providing agricultural loans to Uzbekistans government that are used to support forced labor in the state-run cotton industry, the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) said in a report issued on Tuesday.

"The report concludes that the World Bank has been aiding and abetting the Uzbek governments gross human-rights abuses, which violates international law on responsibility of international organizations for financial complicity in international crimes," according to the ILRF, a US-based advocacy group.

In 2013, Uzbek civil-rights organizations alerted the World Bank that its funds could be contributing to forced and child labor on cotton farms and requested that the Bank launch an investigation.
Last week a Japanese government commission published its report into the consequences of Brexit. The report raises the prospect that international firms currently based in the UK will have to leave, unless the UK negotiates a suitable deal with the EU over its exit from the bloc.

The Japanese task force, headed by Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Hagiuda, cites concerns that Japanese financial institutions may have to apply for corporate status in the EU, if they lose the right to automatically do business across the EU from their base in the UK.

The UK is currently a clearing center for the euro, and EU agencies such as European Medicines Agency are currently based in London, but would be forced to move after Brexit. This would pose a risk to the pharmaceutical industry and medical research in the UK, Japan says.
The United States expects Syrias opposition to stop commingling with the Nusra Front within coming days, according to Toner.

"In the coming days as we [the United States] communicate with the moderate opposition and they understand that its not in their interest to remain comingled with Nusra, we are going to see a separation," Toner told reporters.

Ensuring that the opposition separates from the Nusra Front, Toner added, is "absolutely critical" to the success of the ceasefire agreement in Syria reached by the United States and Russia last Friday.

On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Syrian opposition groups to separate from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly named the Nusra Front, and he reiterated calls for all parties to abide by the ceasefire.
If you have plans to post Durga Puja selfies on social media then there is a change of scene. Police is planning to ban selfies with deities and there's a fine if you break the rules.

By India Today Web Desk:

The Kolkata Police is considering to take legal actions against those who seek to take selfies with deity Durga during the festival of Durga Puja in Kolkata.

According to the police, selfie-enthusiasts have become a major menace as they not only obstruct free movement of people inside the marquee but also create a lot of ruckus, especially if a group gathers to take a photograph with the deity in the backdrop.

advertisement

The problem is so huge that this is the biggest concern for the police who is gearing up to manage the annual congregation of visitors to the city.



SELFIE MENACE

"They are a menace as they slow down the process of crowd movement, affecting the whole plan. We request organisers to create a special selfie zone and stop others from taking selfies from their point of choosing," a senior official of the police said.

"Selfie seekers became a major menace last time and police is right in asking them to stop taking selfies as it disrupts the movement of people within the puja complex," Atin Gupta, a puja organiser in North Kolkata said.



FINE AND DISAPPOINTMENT

Police has also decided to fine those who disobey the rules, according to a Gulf News report.



"We are considering all legal options and consulting our lawyers," the officer added.

On the other hand, visitors fail to digest the new update as they consider it a dictate against personal freedom.

"Police cannot set rules on things that people do without harming others. Durga Puja is the biggest festival of the state and we wait for it all through the year. Taking selfies cannot be termed as a crime," Sayantan Sen, a student said.



SOCIAL SCIENCE

Social scientists say people updating their social media space has seriously affected the behavioural pattern of the young where doing something is not enough unless it is shown off to friends and family through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other such portals.

"Smartphone is the new toy and people are likely to use it to maximum unless something new comes out or it becomes a passe. Until they do even deities will not be spared from this selfie-obsessed generation," Sengupta, a social scientist said.

--- ENDS ---
Learning Resources

Raspberry Pi Sells 10 Million Micrcomputers, Debuts Starter Kit

Source: Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has sold more than 10 million affordable microcomputers. To celebrate, the foundation is debuting a new starter kit.

Since its launch in 2012, the foundation has sold more than 10 million of its $35 single board microcomputers to help students access computing and digital making skills. The unashamedly premium Raspberry Pi Starter Kit costs roughly $130, according to CEO Eben Upton.

The kit will contain the following:

A Raspberry Pi 3 Model B;

An 8GB NOOBS SD card;

A case;

A 2.5A multi-region power supply;

A 1m HDMI cable;

An optical mouse and a keyboard with high-quality scissor-switch action; and

A copy of Adventures in Raspberry Pi Foundation Edition

While other retailers have sold Raspberry Pi product bundles in the past, this will be the first kit from the foundation. Upton explains in a blog post why the foundation held off on selling its own kit. Very early on, we decided that we would offer the bare-bones Raspberry Pi board without accessories: that way, cost-conscious consumers get the lowest possible price, he wrote.

The kit is available for purchase in the United Kingdom  through element14 and RS Components  and it will become available to the rest of the world in the coming weeks. Further information is available on the Raspberry Pi blog.
Robots

Research: Robots Give Chronically Ill Kids Valuable Social Ties with School

A University of California Irvine research project may be the first of its kind to measure the impact and feasibility of the use of robots to bring homebound students into the classroom when they can't be there physically. The use of "virtual inclusion" through telepresence has been used for nearly two decades. More recently, the idea is that chronically ill students use some kind of robotic device on campus that can be operated from home to allow him or her to participate in class, interact with fellow students and navigate through school.

Frequently, these devices are provided by wealthier parents or through community support, reported researchers Veronica Newhart, a Ph.D. student in UC Irvine's School of Education, and Mark Warschauer, a professor of education and informatics. But they wanted to find out what the impact could be on kids who received the robots no matter what their family's income level, background or social support.

Veronica Newhart, a Ph.D. student in UC Irvine's School of Education, and Mark Warschauer, a professor of education and informatics, wanted to find out what the impact could be on kids who received the robots no matter what their family's income level, background or social support. Photo credit: Steve Zylius/UC Irvine

The areas they explored included how the robot is used in classrooms by students, teachers and classmates; what the effects of robot use are; and whether the use of the robots is "financially and functionally feasible."

As explained in "Virtual Inclusion via Telepresence Robots in the Classroom: An Exploratory Case Study," the results were pulled from observation, focus groups and interviews among 61 participants -- five homebound children, five parents, 35 classmates, 10 teachers and six school administrators. The kids at the heart of the study had used or were already using a telepresence robot.

What they found was one "common thread": the students who use the robotic surrogates said they felt more "socially connected." "When asked what they liked most about using the robot, all of the homebound children interviewed responded with a variation of 'I get to see my friends,'" the report stated. "When asked what they liked least about using the robot, the responses varied greatly from 'nothing really' to connectivity issues, to wishing the robot had arms."

As for the adults, they tended to focus on the academic areas. For example, one mother was "initially concerned" that due to his medical condition, her son wouldn't be able to attend a full day of class. "His energy level and interest in school had dropped off dramatically and she believed he would be able to attend school for maybe thirty minutes to one hour a day," the authors wrote. Instead, what happened was that once the student received his robot, "his interest and energy increased and he attended a full day of school (six hours)." It was only then that his mother realized that his lack of interest in school activities might have been the result of depression.

This particular student expanded from four hours of instruction per week to six to seven hours per day, five days a week. In fact, he not only did well in his regular classes, but he auditioned for and was accepted into the school choir via the robot.

"Further research is required to determine the impact of robot utilization on students' health and well-being, as well as the most effective ways to implement this technology in various settings," said Newhart in a university article about the study. "Collaboration among education, technology and healthcare teams is key to the success of virtual inclusion in the classroom for improved learning, social and health outcomes for vulnerable children."

Newman presented the findings at the 23rd International Conference on Learning, held in July at the University of British Columbia. She plans to continue her research in additional school districts elsewhere in the country.

This fall, the university itself will become home for telepresence robots  a gift from the class of 2016. As Newhart explained, the robots will act as "a solution for any student who's prevented from completing a course or degree program because of a long-term injury or illness."
Industry News

Shutdown of ITT Tech Also Affects Charter Schools

The nationwide shutdown of ITT Technical Institute also caused the companys public charter schools to close, leaving students and parents unhappily scrambling to figure out what to do next.

ITT Tech operated two Early Career Academy charter schools in Tempe, AZ and Troy, MI. The Indiana-based for-profit company also operated a campus in Indianapolis for a year, but the school had its charter revoked by the Indiana State Charter Board in August. The school also lost its nonprofit status in November 2015. By August of this year, the school had shut down.

At all three Early Career Academies, juniors and seniors could earn a high school diploma tuition free and an ITT Tech associates degree in two years, although most colleges and universities didnt accept ITT credits for transfer. According to the academies' website, the two programs offered at the Tempe and Troy campuses were network systems administration and software development.

At the Early Career Academy in Troy, school administrators are working to place their 61 former students in other local schools, according to the website the74million.org and Timothy Wood, associate vice president for charter schools at Grand Valley State University, which authorized ITTs charter in Michigan.

At Early Career Academy in Tempe, the executive director and staff are working with Arizona education representatives to secure a school building with hopes of reopening, according to the74million.org.

Were at a complete loss. What is our kid supposed to do? said Chris Eppich, father of Trevor Eppich, a student at Early Career Academy in Tempe, in an interview with the74million.org.

Early Career Academy and ITT Tech representatives could not be reached for comment on this story.

On Sept. 6, ITT Tech closed its vocational schools on more than 130 campuses in 38 states, after the U.S. Education Department banned the company from enrolling students who were receiving federal financial aid. The shutdown affected about 35,000 students who were preparing to start classes, as well as 8,000 employees who lost their jobs.
Student Information System

Tennessee District Adopts Ed-Fi Student Data Tracking System

The largest public school district in Tennessee has selected a new student database for its more than 47,000 students. Shelby County Schools (SCS) will begin using Ed-Fi, a free national open-source system that pulls from state, district and other databases to supply information about any student.

Prior to the new system, SCS teachers would have to submit a request to their schools front office whenever they needed students' information. SCS leaders said Ed-Fi has the potential to save teachers hours of work every week.

With Ed-Fi, teachers can access the following data:

Attendance and disciplinary records;

State and local assessment data;

Grades, test scores and credits;

Special designations, such as language and special needs information; and

College and career readiness data.

Our teachers have never had access to this kind of data before (all in one place), Jessica Lotz, the districts director of research and performance management, told Chalkbeat. We have this firehose of data in the ed world, but this system makes it more useable and focused.

Training began the first week of Sept. and involved 159 teachers and administrators. These Ed-Fi experts will go on to host training sessions in each school before Sept. 30.

Further information about Ed-Fi is available on the SCS site.
"A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist.

Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin Supreme Court in its 1960 opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC and buttressing The Public Trust Doctrine, Article IX of the Wisconsin State Constitution.
- Different tribes in Kenya have varied ways in which they accord respect to their departed loved ones

- So important are these rituals that failing to perform them and appease the dead is known to result in serious repercussions

- Most burial cultures border on the absurd at least in the eyes of an outsider who may not comprehend a certain community's culture

Among many tribes in Kenya, death is treated as a rite of passage, that when one is dead, they are still considered to be around, at least in their spirits.

Among Kenyan tribes, death is treated as a rite of passage, that when one is dead, they are still considered to be around, at least in their spirits.

READ ALSO: Too broke? ODM asks Jubilee government for financial assistance

And so the dead must be appeased through some elaborate ceremonies or they will be angry and decide to haunt the family and community.

However, Kenyan communities have some of the weirdest rituals which they perform on the dead.

So weird are the acts that if you do not come from that community, you may be left traumatised for life.

Here's some of the rituals.

READ ALSO: After Ntimamas burial, this is what his SECRET son plans to do

1. Smearing the dead body with fat

Among the Maasai, fat from the bull smeared on the entire body of the deceased person before burial

READ ALSO: The WIERD ritual that Ntimamas body would have undergone

Now who even does this seriously? The Maasai have the guts!

When an old and respected person dies among the Maasai, a special bull without blemish is slaughtered in the honour of the departed.

Fat from the bull is then smeared on the entire body of the deceased person before burial. What's even worse, this is done by the first born son of the dead man!

2. Corpse staying for several days at the homestead before burial

Among the Luhya, a corpse will be removed from the mortuary one of two days ahead of the burial and it must spend time at home.

READ ALSO: Ex-ODM MPs house under 24-hour police surveillance after joining Jubilee Party

The Luhya community has some of the most elaborate rituals done to the dead lest the dead person's ghost haunt the family for life

A corpse will be removed from the mortuary one of two days ahead of the burial and it must spend time at home with the coffin left open for all and sundry to see the dead person and 'interact' with them. The body must also face a certain direction, be dresses in specific clothes of a certain colour among other things.

3. Too many photographs during burial

READ ALSO: African president likens himself to God after eating human testicles, brains

This is the Kikuyu community's best moment to honour and remember the dead. The community is obsessed with photographs during funerals and the session will take a sizeable amount of time with every relative and friends standing beside the coffin for the photo shoot.

If the Kikuyu happen to lose a body such that it cannot be traced, a banana plant is buried instead!

4. Crying loudly

There are even professional mourners who can be hired for this art!

READ ALSO: 5 things which happen to your body when you drink a mixture of warm water, lemon and honey EVERY morning

This goes to the Luo and Luhya communities! They will howl and shout at the top of their voices as they head towards the home of the deceased. Some will tear their hair and clothes just to be seen to be mourning the best.

There are even professional mourners who can be hired for this art!

Soon after, you will see the mourners laughing as they enjoy a hefty meal of ugali which is a must have.

They believe that if you do not mourn like that, you could be behind the death and the deceased person's ghost will haunt you.

5. Sleeping with the deceased

READ ALSO: Luhya MPs violently exchange blows at a Kitale hotel as Wetangula plays referee

Perhaps the weirdest of them all, sleeping with the dead person is a ritual among the Luo.

The deceased person's wife is supposed to sit next to the dead husband's body until it is buried. The women is supposed to cry and ask the body rhetoric questions like why did you die? how will I raise the children?, why have you ashamed me? etc.

Well , I will just let this article rest in peace here.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
- A Nairobi barber has found himself in big trouble after sexually assaulting a female police officer

- David Munene Kathurima rubbed his manhood on the female officer's behind against her will

- He was on Tuesday, September 13, charged at a Nairobi court for the offence

Nairobi, the city in the sun is full of weirdos roaming its streets looking for a chance to exhibit their fetishes.

At one time, you will see some men shoving their manhood to unsuspecting women while others will post jaw-dropping updates on Facebook of their sexual experiences with children!

Such is what Nairobians and Kenyans at large have to contend with every day and women seem to be on the receiving end.

And so today Tuesday, September 13, another queer fish has found himself in trouble for doing the unthinkable.

READ ALSO: Apologise to Uhuru and Kenyans, Raila told

While on his rounds within Nairobi, probably seeking for ways to fulfill his fetishes, David Munene Kathurima spotted a female police officer who was probably on her way to her daily hustle.Or maybe she was out on lunch because it wa about 1 pm.

Kathurima, a barber, opened up his zipper, walked surreptitiously behind the woman, removed his manhood and rubbed it against the woman's behind.

READ ALSO: After Ntimamas burial, this is what his SECRET son plans to do

The accused David Munene Kathurima before a magistrate in Milimani Court, Nirobi.

READ ALSO: Wetangula speaks after controversial photo of him waving to trees in Kakamega

The incident happened along Duruma Road on Saturday, September 10.

The victim, Police Constable Sheila Acheing Oloo was so incensed and felt violated just like any other woman would be.

She flexed her police muscles and arrested Kathurima.

Women seem to be on the receiving end of sexual abuses in Kenya.

READ ALSO: 5 things which happen to your body when you drink a mixture of warm water, lemon and honey EVERY morning

The barber was presented before a magistrate at Milimani Court for the sexual abuse offense on Tuesday, September 13.

Cases of men violating women have been on the rise in Kenya despite punitive penalties under the Sexual Offences Act.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
By PTI: Kathmandu, Sep 13 (PTI) President Pranab Mukherjee is expected to visit Nepal from November 3, a media report said today.

"Indian President Mukherjee is most likely to visit Nepal from November 3," Kathmandu Post quoted a source as saying.

During a meeting in New Delhi yesterday, Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat and his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj agreed to expedite preparations for Mukherjee?s visit to Nepal, the paper said.

advertisement

Earlier, both sides had agreed that the Indian president would visit Nepal from November 1, but they have now agreed to postpone the date by two days in view of Diwali.

The final decision regarding Mukherjees visit will be taken during Prime Minister Prachandas visit to India, which is starting from Thursday.

Nepal and India yesterday also held discussions about President Bidhya Devi Bhandari?s visit to India, which was earlier cancelled in May.

Nepal government has also requested Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Nepal.

Prime Minister Prachanda, who is arriving in New Delhi on a state visit, will extend an invitation to Modi to visit Janakpur, Lumbini and Muktinath, the report said. PTI NSA

--- ENDS ---
-President Uhuru Kenyatta has made his first visit to Somalia since taking up office. It is also the first time in 30 years a sitting Kenyan president is visiting the Somalia

-He has more to gain if he does one thing for the Kenyan soldiers fighting in Somalia

-Uhuru should emulate what President George W Bush did in November 2003 that shocked the world

President Uhuru Kenyatta arrived in Somalia on Thursday, September 13, for the 28th IGAD Extra-Ordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government.

President Uhuru Kenyatta at a past military function

READ ALSO: Uhuru goes to Somalia days after the country banned miraa from Kenya (photos)

Although becoming the first Kenyan President in 30 years to visit Somalia is sufficiently remarkable, Uhuru could do even more to his gallant troops deployed in the country to battle the al-Shabaab terror group.

What he should do was done by former US President George W Bush in Iraq a few months after the American soldiers were deployed to bring down Saddam Hussein's administration.

READ ALSO: Uhuru tells Obama when KDF will exit Somalia

Former US President George W Bush serves soldiers dinner in Baghdad

READ ALSO: One person dead after attack in Ras Kamboni near Kenya-Somalia border

Uhuru is generally regarded as the coolest president Kenya has ever had, going by the many stunts he has pulled that have changed the traditional presidency.

Even if he will not do this during his first visit to Somalia, Uhuru should prioritise meeting with our soldiers before they leave in 2018.

The visit would be a morale booster for the troops who will obviously be delighted to see their Commander in Chief showing solidarity with them.

READ ALSO: Sababu za wanajeshi kudanganya

Kenyan troops on Somalia mission

President Bush did not just address soldiers during the secret visit in Baghdad but served them dinner on the Thanks Giving Day.

With election's coming up, visiting the Kenya Defence Forces should be part of Uhuru's campaign strategy for his re-election.

Kenya is among other African countries with soldiers in Somalia serving under AMISOM with the aim of crushing the al-Shabaab militia group to stabilise the Horn of Africa nation.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 13, 2016) - Bioz, Inc., a company that launched from stealth in July with the introduction of the world's first search engine for life science experimentation, today announced the launch of the Bioz Ambassador Program to researchers. Ambassadors around the world are an integral part of the Bioz movement. By joining the Bioz program, Ambassadors will help further accelerate drug discovery and scientific research toward finding cures for diseases ranging from cancer to Zika, diabetes and more.

"In the spirit of advancing life science experimentation, we are thrilled to officially launch the Bioz Ambassador Program to researchers worldwide," said Daniel Levitt, co-founder and CEO of Bioz. "Because Bioz has so radically disrupted the previous methods and time spent finding and sharing experimentation information, we've amassed an incredible and dedicated community in a short period of time. Currently, users come from 89 percent of the world's countries. The Ambassador Program brings together our loyal and passionate users who work on every facet of life science research and see first-hand the value of Bioz. The enthusiasm and passion for sharing how Bioz is improving their research has been overwhelming."

Ambassadors believe that Bioz' application of advanced software technology to life science research is revolutionizing the experimentation process, and will lead to faster discovery of cures for diseases, with the potential to change the world. At its heart, the Bioz movement reflects the need for and the value of greater transparency and efficiency in life science research. Bioz strives to reach all of the world's life science researchers, to bring them tremendous value from structured scientific data, to help them to make well-informed decisions when conducting their experiments.

"As a graduate research assistant and lab manager, selecting the best reagents, consumables and lab equipment for my experiments is of utmost importance," said Damian Wang, who is completing his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine. "As an early member of the Bioz Ambassador Program, I have witnessed firsthand how being an integral part of Bioz's 'inner circle' has helped me to conduct better research. Now, as a senior member of the Bioz Ambassador Program, I am working with other Bioz Ambassadors and researchers to spread the word and increase awareness for Bioz so that researchers around the world can also benefit from using the Bioz platform to perform quicker, better and more cost-effective experiments."

Story continues

The Bioz software architecture taps the latest advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to mine and structure hundreds of millions of pages of complex and unstructured scientific papers -- a new research paper is published roughly every 10 seconds -- placing an unprecedented amount of summarized scientific experimentation knowledge at researchers' fingertips. The platform helps researchers quickly select products, plan experiments, write papers, apply for grants and collaborate, ultimately speeding up experimentation and drug discovery.

The scientific community also benefits from Bioz Stars, a recently launched unbiased rating system to help scientists quickly identify the right products to use in their experiments. It is estimated that researchers in academia and biopharma spend $80 billion annually to purchase millions of products for use in life science experiments. Some of these products have high failure rates and yet, prior to Bioz, there was no easy way for researchers to quickly find, compare and select the best products for their specific assays and experiments.

Bioz Stars provides unbiased and objective algorithmic ratings that are displayed for over 200 million life science products, tools, reagents, lab equipment, instruments, assays and kits. The technology is based on the analysis of millions of peer-reviewed papers using a groundbreaking algorithm with weighted quantitative and qualitative parameters.

The Bioz technology has been broadly welcomed in scientific communities around the world. Currently using Bioz are over 40,000 users from academic research labs and industry R&D labs, from more than 170 countries and over 4,000 universities and biopharma companies. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneur and CEO Daniel Levitt, and accomplished Stanford research scientist Karin Lachmi, Ph.D., who serves as Chief Scientific Officer.

The Bioz platform is available free to researchers. Visit www.bioz.com, and start using Bioz today to find the best products for your experiments.

For more information on the Bioz Ambassador Program and its current members, visit: https://www.bioz.com/ambassadors. New potential members can apply within their Bioz user profile or by emailing info@bioz.com.

Helpful Links

Suggested Tweet: @BiozPage launches Ambassador Program to spread the word & advance research in #lifescience http://bit.ly/2cGrVUG

About Bioz, Inc.

Bioz, Inc. is the world's first search engine for life science experimentation. The patent-pending software platform combines the work of scientists with advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to help life scientists in academia and biopharma make faster and smarter experimentation decisions, ultimately speeding up drug discovery and increasing the rate of success in finding cures for diseases. Founded in 2013 by Stanford research scientist, Karin Lachmi, Ph.D., and CEO Daniel Levitt, Bioz is a StartX accelerator company. Bioz is used by 40,000 researchers from over 4,000 universities and companies in 170 countries. Try Bioz at www.bioz.com.
CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwired - Sep 12, 2016) - GrowMax Resources Corp. (TSX VENTURE:GRO) subsidiary, GrowMax Agri Corp., (collectively, "GrowMax" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company has received the results of an independent Preliminary Economic Assessment (the "PEA") for its Bayovar 7 phosphate project on its property located in the Sechura Desert, Peru.

WorleyParsons compiled the PEA for the development of phosphate Mineral Resources on the Company's Bayovar 7 mineral concession in Peru. WorleyParsons was responsible for the processing and infrastructure of the project and supported GrowMax's economic analysis of the project which relied on data from GrowMax and other participants; Golder Associates prepared the mine plan and associated mineral resource statement (which incorporates the mineral resource statement from the Company's technical report dated June 27, 2016 titled "Updated NI 43-101 Mineral Resource Technical Report on the GrowMax Bayovar Phosphate Project, Piura Region, Peru" filed on SEDAR on August 11, 2016); Integer Research Ltd. prepared the marketing research and phosphate price forecast; and MWH Peru SA provided the environmental and social impact assessment. The PEA report will be filed on SEDAR within 45 days. An updated corporate presentation showing location maps and geological cross sections will be posted to the Company's website later today.

All dollar amounts are in nominal U.S. dollars, unless otherwise noted.

HIGHLIGHTS

Rock phosphate content: Bench scale testing demonstrated that Bayovar 7 can produce 28% P 2 O 5 phosphate rock utilizing scrubbing and de-sliming. This product was successfully upgraded with froth flotation to 30% P 2 O 5 and 80% P 2 O 5 recovery.

The PEA provides for a 1.0 million tonnes per annum ("Mtpa") mine and processing plant with an initial capital cost of $279 million before start-up.

Total mining royalty including lease retention, community payments, and profit sharing are estimated at $344 million or $18 per tonne of product.

Corporate tax payable (at an assumed rate of 26%) estimated to be $251 million.

Net present value after tax at a 10% nominal discount rate (NPV10) is estimated to be $71 million without debt financing, $93 million assuming 50% debt financing.

Internal rate of return (IRR) of 13.3% after tax and without debt financing. The IRR increases to 16.5% after tax at 50% debt financing.

Payback period of six years without debt financing.

Story continues

"We are excited to have made progress in our evaluation of our phosphate resources in the Bayovar 7 area," commented Executive Chairman, Abby Badwi. "The PEA has shown us that the development can be pursued by concentrating on the best rock, with the least overburden, and leveraging significant existing infrastructure in the area. Further, it has indicated that growing Peruvian and local fertilizer demand, as well as Bayovar phosphate rock's relatively unique reactive nature and suitability as direct application phosphate rock (DAPR), could potentially provide a material enhancement of realized prices and returns on investment, relative to export sales."

The PEA is preliminary in nature and includes indicated and measured mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the PEA will be realized.

KEY PEA ASSUMPTIONS

Production target rate: 1.0 Mtpa of beneficiated phosphate rock over a 20-year mine life.

Project capital cost: $279 million before start-up.

In addition, $278 million of sustaining capital is projected over 20 years.

Sales Price: 30% P 2 O 5 phosphate export price projection in real terms for years 2020 to 2039 averages $137 per tonne. 70% of sales are assumed to be exported and 30% is assumed to be sold in domestic and regional markets. A $30 per tonne premium is assumed for the domestic and regional markets.

Life of Mine unit operating cost of $71.50 per tonne in real terms, totalling $1.8 billion in nominal terms.

2% annual inflation of prices and costs.

BAYOVAR 7 MINERAL RESOURCES

Summary of Mineral Resources, Bayovar 7, All Beds Area Vertical

Thickness (m) Dry Tonnes

(MT)** Wet Tonnes

(MT)** P 2 O 5

(wt%) SiO 2

(wt%) Dry Density

(g/cm3) Wet Density

(g/cm3) Measured 0.61 29.7 38.9 12 30.9 1.21 1.58 Indicated 0.6 137.4 181 12.33 31.38 1.2 1.58 Inferred 0.58 63.7 83.8 11.94 31.34 1.21 1.58 * Mineral Resources, no minimum thickness applied. ** MT: million tonnes

The phosphate Mineral Resources assessed in the PEA are distributed among 16 individual soft, free-digging, horizontal phosphate beds hosted predominantly within the Diana Formation, a sequence of bedded diatomite, sandstone and phosphorite beds.

The phosphorite beds within the Diana Formation are currently being mined by the Vale-Mitsui-Mosaic consortium at the Bayovar mine 25 kilometres southwest of Bayovar 7.

In the Bayovar 7 Concession area, the phosphorite beds PH00 through PH15 were intercepted in 74 drill holes. The drilling was performed using a nominal drill spacing of between 400 metres ("m") to 1,600 m. All drill holes were drilled vertically to between 60 to 150 m depth targeting horizontal phosphate beds within the Diana Formation.

The target sequence of 16 phosphorite beds spanning a total mean thickness of 56 m (range of 33 m to 76 m) including interburden diatomite beds. The phosphate mineralization is relatively close to the surface in the Bayovar 7 Concession, with the depths from ground surface to the roof of the upper most phosphorite bed (PH01) ranging from 5 m beneath the Virrila Estuary erosional feature to 47 m below the surface on the Tablazo. The floor of the lower most phosphorite bed (PH15) ranged from 34 m beneath the Virrila Estuary erosional feature to 95 m below surface in the Tablazo area.

MINE DESIGN AND PLANT ASSUMPTIONS

Mine design only includes measured and indicated mineral resources.

Mining in Bayovar 7 will extract up to 13 of the phosphate beds based on economic factors. Over the 20 year mine life, 583 million tonnes of overburden and interburden will be removed and 67.9 million run-of-mine tonnes of mineralized material at an average grade of 11.7% P 2 O 5 will be recovered. The resulting strip ratio is 8.6:1. A ramp-up in Year 1 at 50% capacity will be followed by average annual run-of-mine production of 3.48 million tonnes.

Overburden and interburden removal will be carried out by conventional truck and excavator open pit mining. The mine plan assumes a dilution of 7.5 centimetres ("cm") on the roof and the floor of the phosphate beds with a minimum mining thickness of 30 cm and minimum run-of-mine grade of 9% P2O5. The mining of the beds will be performed by GPS-controlled surface miners. Adequate mining faces will be established to allow the blending of the various beds to meet plant feed requirements.

A single beneficiation plant will be constructed with a capacity of 1.0 Mtpa of phosphate rock concentrate production utilizing conventional beneficiation techniques of drum scrubbing, attrition scrubbing and de sliming to produce 28% P 2 O 5 concentrate. By utilizing froth flotation, the product grade can be increased to 30% P 2 O 5 . These are similar unit processing steps to those currently employed by Vale at their adjacent phosphate operation. Ramp-up will occur over one year.

Tailing storage facility costs are included in the mining costs.

INFRASTRUCTURE ASSUMPTIONS

Export Sales will be transported to port using heavy haul trucks on a new dedicated road which runs parallel to the existing Vale port road. Local sales will either be transported to the port in the same way, or else transported by highway trucks directly to distributors. Offsite trucking will be contractor operated.

Power supply will be from the national power grid.

Natural gas will be used for drying. This will be delivered by a contractor-supplied gas pipeline.

Seawater will be used for process water and provides the vast majority of the project's water requirement.

An on-lease freshwater bore will replace the need for a desalination plant. Softened bore water will be used to supply the concentrate filter wash water requirements.

To avoid a water discharge, all process water and wash water will be sent to a tailing storage facility for evaporation.

The PEA study assumes sufficient available capacity for exports from an existing port in the Bayovar area. This is based on preliminary discussions with the port owners. An allowance of $4.5 million has been included to upgrade the port warehouse, power supply and facilities.

Initial capital costs include all initial infrastructure requirements.

CAPITAL AND OPERATING COSTS TABLES

Life-of-mine operating costs were developed for mining, processing and G&A costs. Operating costs include power, water, reagents, consumables, sustaining capital, labour and logistics cost to the ship or truck.

The NPV calculation includes Years -2 through 20 and adds the pre-production capital in Years -2 and -1.

The initial capital cost, including owner's costs and a 12% contingency, is estimated at $264 million ( 40% accuracy) in real (2016) dollars or $279 million in nominal terms.

Detailed studies could potentially lower mining costs and the Company will attempt to negotiate reduced royalties.

Undiscounted, Nominal Discounted, 10% Item $millions $/t of

product $millions Revenue - local sales $1,316 $221.0 $387 Revenue - export sales $2,483 $182.4 $713 Total Revenue $3,800 $194.2 $1,100 Mining Operating Costs $1,150 $58.7 $354 Beneficiation Operating Costs $335 $17.1 $99 G&A Operating Costs $353 $18.0 $103 Total Operating Costs $1,838 $93.9 $556 Mining CAPEX $38 $1.9 $29 Beneficiation CAPEX $69 $3.5 $52 Infrastructure CAPEX $95 $4.9 $75 Other CAPEX $77 $4.0 $61 Total Project CAPEX $279 $14.2 $216 Sustaining CAPEX $278 $14.2 $103 Royalties and Workers' Profit Share $344 $17.6 $97 Pre-tax Cumulative Cash Flow $1,061 $54.2 $127 Corporate Tax $251 $12.8 $56 Post-tax Cumulative Cash Flow $810 $41.4 $71

Sensitivity Analysis

The graph below compares the IRR when the average sales price, initial capital and operating costs are varied. As with most mining projects, the IRR is most sensitive to product pricing assumptions.

To view the graph associated with this release, please view this link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/GrowMax_Graph_09-12.pdf

The table below shows the financial model results at different real (2016) Moroccan Benchmark phosphate rock prices adjusted for 30% P 2 O 5 and transportation, on an unlevered, after tax basis.

Average Price $120 $130 $140 $150 $160 NPV10 $(17,931,722) $32,184,223 $81,191,010 $128,961,448 $176,545,363 IRR 9.1% 11.6% 13.9% 16.0% 18.0% Payback (years) 8.3 7.5 6.4 5.2 5.7

FUTURE WORK

The Company is in the process of evaluating options to progress the Bayovar project, and is considering the following future work:

Additional exploration and infill drilling, and metallurgical testing to increase confidence levels and to increase the understanding of variability of the phosphate beds.

Investigating options to market phosphate rock and direct application phosphate rock in Peru and other countries in the region.

Evaluating options to optimize capital and operating costs.

Enhancing the Company's corporate social responsibility program and dialogue with communities and government authorities in order to maximize the value of the project to all stakeholders.

Initiating a pre-feasibility study.

Studying the potential to develop the Company's significant additional phosphate resources on its other blocks in the Bayovar area.

About GrowMax Resources Corp.

GrowMax Resources Corp. (formerly Americas Petrogas Inc.) is an international mining company with headquarters in Calgary, whose shares trade on the TSX-V under the symbol GRO. GrowMax Resources Corp. owns approximately 91.6% and Indian Farmers Fertiliser Co-operative Limited (IFFCO) and its affiliates own approximately 8.4% of GrowMax Agri Corp, a private company involved in the exploration for near-surface phosphates, potash brine and other minerals, and potential development of fertilizer projects in the Bayovar region of Peru.

Forward-Looking Statements

The statements in this press release contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws including, but not limited to: the results of the PEA, expectations regarding production and cost guidance, references to mineral resource estimates, mine life (including extensions of mine life), future growth, potential expansion, exploration activities, construction and operation of new facilities, developing deposits, future work related to the Company's potash project at Bayovar; the expansion of exploration and economic assessment activities of the Company's phosphate deposits. Forward-looking information is not based on historical facts but rather is based on expectations. The words "anticipate", "contemplating", "develop", "estimate", "expect", "exploration", "flexibility", "focus", "future", "model", "option", "pending", "plan", "potential" and "priorities", and statements that certain actions, events or results will affect, or will occur or result, and similar such expressions, identify forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company as of the date of such statements, are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies. Such forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and assumptions and is based on information currently available to GrowMax Resources' management.

Forward-looking information involves significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking information, including but not limited to, risks associated with the natural resources industry; the uncertainty of mineral resource estimates; the uncertainty of geological interpretations; the uncertainty of estimates and projections in relation to costs; the risk of commodity price and foreign exchange rate fluctuations and other risks identified our filings with the securities regulators in Canada, including but not limited to those cautionary statements made under the headings "Business Risk Factors" and "Forward Looking Information" in our management's discussion and analysis for the year ended December 31, 2015 and under the heading "Forward Looking Information" in our interim MD&A  quarterly highlights for the period ended June 30, 2016. These factors are not intended to represent a complete list of the factors that could affect the Company. All forward-looking information contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. This forward-looking information is made as of the date hereof and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise this information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by law. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions inherent in forward-looking information, prospective investors in the Company's securities should not place undue reliance on this forward-looking information.

NI 43-101 Qualified Persons

The information in this press release was based on information contained in the PEA which was prepared by or under the supervision of the following qualified persons ("QP"):

The Mineral Resource Estimation was prepared by Golder, under the supervision of Jerry DeWolfe, MSc. P.Geo, an independent Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101.

The Mine Plan and mining operation related costs were prepared by Golder, under the supervision of Denis Mayer, P.Eng, an independent Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101.

The beneficiation testwork, subsequent process plant design and operation related costs were peer reviewed by Michael Kelahan, an independent Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101.

The beneficiation testwork and subsequent process plant design and operation related costs were prepared under the supervision of Ewan Wingate, AusIMM (CP-Met), an independent Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101.

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.

A graph is available at the following address: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/GrowMax_Graph_09-12.pdf
By Ron Bousso and Tom Finn LONDON/DOHA (Reuters) - Qatar Petroleum is interested in the Mozambique gas business of Italian energy group Eni and could opt to join Exxon Mobil in buying a multibillion-dollar stake, sources familiar with the matter said. State-controlled Eni is looking to reduce a 50 percent stake in its giant Mozambique gas acreage as part of plans to sell 5 billion euros of assets over the next two years. Last month sources told Reuters Exxon had reached a deal that could give it an operating stake in the onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant, while leaving Eni in control of the Area 4 gas fields feeding it. Qatar Petroleum is in talks with Exxon and Eni on some kind of involvement in Mozambique which could involve a joint investment with the U.S. major, one senior QP source said, adding the deal was not a classic joint venture structure. A second Doha-based source, who declined to be named as not authorized to speak publicly, said Qatar Petroleum had been looking at Eni's Area 4 field as well as adjoining acreage of Anadarko Petroleum Corp but added the focus was on Eni. "The expectation is that Qatar Petroleum and Exxon will go in on this together," the source said, adding a Qatar Petroleum delegation planned to visit Mozambique before the year end. The sources cautioned no decision had as yet been taken by the Qatari company. Qatar Petroleum did not respond to requests for comment and Exxon and Eni declined to comment. Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar Petroleum CEO, recently confirmed the group was looking at assets in Africa. Located in Mozambique's Rovuma Basin, Eni's Area 4 is one of the biggest discoveries of recent times, holding about 85 trillion cubic feet of gas. Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi, who has spoken of selling a stake of up to 25 percent, said earlier this month a detailed agreement had been reached with a partner. In 2013 Eni sold 20 percent of Area 4 to China's CNPC for $4.2 billion but since then oil and gas prices have dropped by more than half. A banker with knowledge of the matter said a 25 percent stake in the field could be worth in the region of 2 billion euros. Exxon and QP are already close business partners in Qatar, where Exxon's technical know-how helped the tiny Gulf state to develop its gas resources and become the world's biggest as well as lowest-cost LNG producer. Since then, both companies have jointly moved to exploit international LNG growth opportunities, including plans to build the Golden Pass liquefaction plant in the United States and bidding for exploration acreage in Cyprus. A moratorium on new Qatari gas production since 2005 has hobbled domestic expansion opportunities at a time of intense competition for global LNG market share as new producers such as Australia challenge Qatar's dominance. "The (Mozambique) gas will go east and so having Qatar on board with all its experience makes a lot of sense," a banker with knowledge of the matter said. (Writing by Stephen Jewkes, additional reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic in Milan, editing by William Hardy)
By Serajul Quadir and Ruma Paul DHAKA (Reuters) - A police case has been filed against the owner of Tampaco Foils and seven other top managers of the food and cigarette packaging plant near Dhaka who have gone into hiding, as the death toll from a fire at the factory over the weekend rose to 33 late on Monday. The blaze erupted early on Saturday morning and became Bangladesh's worst industrial accident since the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in 2013 that killed 1,135 garment workers. It has raised renewed questions about industrial safety in the country, which is one of the world's top garment exporters. "A murder case has been filed against eight people including the owner of the factory. All of them have gone into hiding. We are doing our best to arrest them," said Aminul Islam, who is an inspector at the local police station. He said the case had been filed by the family of one of the victims. The deputy inspector general of factory inspection said that authorities also plan to file cases against the company and its owner for violating building and safety codes. The factory is owned by Syed Mokbul Hossain, a former member of parliament. Hossain told Reuters on Saturday that Tampaco was "fully compliant." But he could not be reached by telephone to answer further questions on Monday. Jahirul Islam, a director with the fire service department, said on Monday the Bangladeshi army had joined search efforts at the site of the fire. "We need to move a huge amount of debris otherwise searching is not possible," he said. Many fear the death toll could rise further as the search continues and a few people remain missing after the blaze caused a partial collapse of the factory building. The cause of the fire in the Tongi industrial zone about 20 km (12 miles) north of the capital, Dhaka, was not immediately known, but officials said a gas line leak and a boiler explosion probably triggered it. "It may take two months to remove the debris of the factory. The debris is more than that of Rana Plaza," said Brigadier General Mahmud Hasan, commander of the army unit working on the search effort. The fire is the latest in a series of industrial accidents in the South Asian country. It comes just weeks after over 100 people fell ill after inhaling gas that leaked from a fertilizer plant in Chittagong in southern Bangladesh. Tampaco Foils makes packaging for food and cigarettes for a number of local companies and global brands like British American Tobacco and Nestle. A spokeswoman for Nestle said the plant produced packaging for products like its Maggi Noodles in Bangladesh. She said the factory had passed a fire safety and prevention audit run by a third-party inspection firm in late 2012. Nestle had been in the process of organising a new audit of the company just before the accident occurred. "We are currently unaware of the precise cause of the fire, but have been informed that the Bangladesh government has set up a formal investigation. We will need to await the conclusion of this before we can comment any further on the details," said a spokesman for British American Tobacco, adding the focus was now on offering humanitarian support to Tampaco. (Additional reporting by Martinne Geller in London; Writing by Euan Rocha; Editing by Michael Perry and Hugh Lawson)
Hillary Clinton's personal physician says she is "fit to serve as President of the United States", but her 70-year-old rival Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned her health.

He has done so despite being under pressure himself to release detailed information about his own medical history.

:: Hillary Clinton Falls After Leaving 9/11 Memorial Unwell

A short letter from the Republican's doctor - which he later said he was "rushed" into writing - stated in December that Mr Trump's blood pressure and laboratory results "were astonishingly excellent" and that he would be "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency".

Here is a brief history of Mrs Clinton's health over recent years:

:: 1998

Mrs Clinton suffers from deep vein thrombosis.

:: 2009

Mrs Clinton again suffers from deep vein thrombosis. She also fractures an elbow after slipping and falling on her way to a meeting at the White House.

:: December 2012

Mrs Clinton suffers a stomach virus after travelling. She becomes dehydrated and faints, sustaining a concussion.

As a result she was unable to testify as scheduled before Congressional committees investigating the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

Further medical evaluations find that Mrs Clinton was suffering from a blood clot. She also experienced double vision following her concussion.

:: 2013

Follow-up medical checks reveal the effects of the concussion have been resolved . Mrs Clinton also tests negative for all blood clotting disorders.

:: 28 July 2015

Lisa Bardack, MD, the personal physician for Mrs Clinton since 2001, releases a healthcare statement which reveals her patient to be a "healthy 67-year-old female".

The statement adds: "She participates in a healthy lifestyle and has had a full medical evaluation, which reveals no evidence of additional medical issues or cardiovascular disease.

"Her cancer screening evaluations are all negative. She is in excellent physical condition and fit to serve as President of the United States."

Story continues

:: 5 September 2016

Mrs Clinton interrupts a campaign speech in Cleveland, Ohio, after suffering a coughing fit.

She laughed off the interruption with the quip: "I've been talking so much. Every time I think about Trump, I get allergic."

Mrs Clinton's campaign aides attributed the coughing fit to allergies.

:: 11 September 2016

Mrs Clinton leaves a memorial event in Manhattan for the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks early after feeling "overheated".

She recuperates briefly at her daughter Chelsea's apartment before emerging to tell a reporter she is "feeling great".
By PTI: Mumbai, Sep 13 (PTI) An outfit seeking statehood for Vidarbha region today criticised the BJP-led governments in Maharashtra and at the Centre for not showing "political will" to resolve the decades-long issue and gave them a deadline of January 1 to meet its demand.

Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti (VRAS) said the "backward region" in eastern Maharashtra can achieve all-around development only when it is granted statehood which will allow it to take decisions independently.

advertisement

Addressing a press conference here, Wamanrao Chatap, a member of the core committee of VRAS, said, "We strongly believe the overall development of Vidarbha is only possible when it is made a separate state."

"Unless elected leaders of Vidarbha get full authority to take decisions on utilising resources of the region and creating new opportunities, issues like farmers suicides cant be resolved.

"We are not against Maharashtra or its leadership but we want freedom of decision-making by focusing only on development of Vidarbha, which is experiencing neglect of more than half a century," said the former MLA.

He said the Samiti has organised a mock session of Vidarbha Assembly on October 3 and 4 at Vasantrao Deshpande Hall in Nagpur. "We will highlight the revenue model of a separate Vidarbha in the mock Assembly, where the Budget for Vidarbha State will be tabled and discussed."

History stands testimony to the fact that whenever a state has been formed, its growth in terms of GDP has been far better than the mother state, the VRAS leader maintained.

VRAS has demanded that issue of granting statehood to the region, comprising 11 districts, which is famous for growing oranges and cotton, be resolved by January 1, 2017.

The central and the state government lack "political will" to resolve the issue, the Samiti leader alleged.

"If the governments (at the Centre and in Maharashtra) do not pay serious attention to our demand before January 1, the people from all the walks of life in Vidarbha would come out on the streets and launch an agitation," he said.

Chatap claimed it was very unfortunate Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who belongs to Vidarbha, was "not interested" in giving statehood to the region.

"BJP fought the election on separate Vidarbha issue. It gave a Chief Minister who hails from Vidarbha, but neither BJP nor Fadnavis has shown any interest to resolve the issue. The party is running its government with the support of Shiv Sena, which is vehemently opposing statehood for Vidarbha," he alleged.

The press conference was allegedly briefly disrupted by members of Raj Thackeray-led MNS, which is vehemently opposed to any division of Maharashtra.

advertisement

Terming MNS protest as "undemocratic", Chatap said everyone has right to express his or her views." PTI APM RSY KIS

--- ENDS ---
The Albuquerque Museums 2016 artist-in-residence, Virgil Ortiz of Cochiti Pueblo, is a painter, photographer, ceramic sculptor and fashion designer who can burn the rubber off the tire and the bird off the wire.

His stunning, mostly black-and-white indoor and outdoor mural, ceramic sculpture and figurative installation revisits the 1680 Pueblo Revolt inside and outside the museum lobby through June 2017.

Ortiz greets visitors at the museum entrance with a gigantic portrait of Popay, the leader of the revolt that drove the Spanish out of New Mexico for 12 years.

In a fit of creative excellence 15 years ago, Ortiz began to re-envision the revolt organized by Popay, the leader of Ohkay Owingeh, which the Spanish called San Juan Pueblo. Ortiz reimagined the 1680 event to take place in 2180 peopled in spirit by many of the original Pueblo and Spanish participants.

H. G. Wells would be delighted with Ortizs time machine re-enactment of the struggles embodied in one of historys most high contrast cultural collisions and the only successful revolt by occupied Native people against their European oppressors in the Western Hemisphere.

Ortizs projection into the future includes beautifully executed wall and column murals, costumed mannequins called Aeronauts, Pilots of the Survivorship Armada and four porcelain plates representing Translator and figures from The Spirit World Army.

I have mixed feelings about the installation of the armored mannequin installation. The figures are placed high above viewers heads and poorly lit, at least in daylight hours. From a conceptual standpoint, their position in the sky is the right choice in their roles as pilots, but it really makes these beautifully complex designs difficult to view.

I realize that individual floor stands would also represent a compromise.

Ortiz is also exhibiting a hand-built ceramic mask depicting Rydr who wears goggles and a breathing apparatus. The sculpture and plates are executed in clay utilizing traditional Cochiti clay-working techniques that Ortiz learned as a child from his mother, noted potter Seferina Ortiz (1931-2007).

While one is viewing the entire collection of paintings and objects, it is difficult not to imagine how prodigious these images would be on a big-screen animation or less ambitiously as an elaborate stage play with some operatic set designs.

Ortiz was a participating artist in the 2015 exhibition Killer Heels with his mini-installation titled Aeronaut Pilot of Survivorship Armada, Decision, depicting a female pilot choosing between several of Ortiz radical high heel designs.

Though I had seen bits of Ortizs work around New Mexico for several years, last years museum show caught my attention.

In Ortizs gigantic indoor mural, he unveils 22nd century organic technology within his depiction of several flying fighter planes piloted by his Aeronauts who are carried by disembodied tree forms replete with running lights no doubt powered by firefly technology and spiritual righteousness through the nocturnal skies.

This entire series covering 500 years of real and imagined history is dedicated to educating the public about a historic event that is too often overlooked, and the series is brimming with skillful renderings, soul-searching questions about the use of military and economic power and the rights of people everywhere to not become consumed by global corporate cultural homogenization.

This installation is a wonder-filled magnum opus by a solo artist. It is well worth a visit, and you will be amazed at the rest of the museums exhibitions.

It brings to mind an old expression regarding opulence: Wretched excess is never enough!

WHAT: Pueblo Revolt 1680/2180 an installation by Virgil Ortiz

WHEN: Virgil Ortiz through June 2017. Hours are: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays

WHERE: Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, 2000 Mountain NE

HOW MUCH: Free with museum admission: $4 for adults, $3 for New Mexico residents with photo ID, $2 for seniors and $1 for children ages 4 to 12.
JUNGLES OF PUTUMAYO, Colombia  Traveling deep inside the jungle after a daylong boat journey, I arrived with trepidation and mistrust at the secret camp of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

A Colombian photojournalist, I was raised in a modest farming family to despise the rebels my relatives characterized as killers. But watching the guerrillas of the FARCs southern bloc go about their daily routine as they prepared for peace I began to see them as regular people like myself and I decided to photograph them both in their uniforms and then in their civilian attire to show their more human side.

Under an accord reached last month by the government and FARC leaders, a cease-fire has taken effect and a national referendum will be held Oct. 2 to give voters the chance to approve the deal for ending a half-century of political violence that has killed more than 220,000 people and driven more than 5 million from their homes.

During a visit to their secret camp, I photographed rebels of both genders from the FARCs 48th Front and several other rebel units. I asked each one their age, number of years in the FARC and aspirations for the future.

Setting aside heavy assault rifles and camouflaged uniforms to put on street clothes, the men looked virtually the same. But the women were transformed.

Many said they were 18 but some looked younger. Many also confided that they joined the FARC years before. That meant many were recruited as minors, a human rights violation that is sadly among many that the long conflict has produced.

If the conversations seemed scripted  the male commanders chose which women I could photograph  the pictures were anything but. The women laughed, smiled and grabbed nervously at the edges of unfamiliar street clothes. Many had never been photographed in any formal way and the experience recalled my own youth as a studio photographer in Bogota taking portraits for high school graduations and ID cards.

After spending their youth fighting a futile war, the rebels are now eager to make up for the lost time. One young woman hadnt even finished elementary school.

It was very different than the last time I entered a guerrilla camp more than a decade ago. The rebels then were guarded, more dogmatic.

Today, Colombians still say overwhelmingly in polls that they dislike the rebels. FARC members have responded by trying to project a softer image during their transition into a political movement.

On my recent visit, the guerrillas were focused on their future lives under the peace deal reached last month after four years of negotiations. One rebel was even learning how to play guitar with instruction from the internet.

When I left after a week, I told the rebels Id see them soon. It was a throwaway phrase, the sort of thing you say when youre at a loss for words.

The next time, one said, you may not recognize us because well be dressed just like you.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.  A gunbattle between two people was what led to the fatal shooting of one bystander and the wounding of five others following a peace rally at a public housing community, police said Monday.

A teenager and the driver of a red Ford Mustang began shooting at each other, and then the driver of the Mustang recklessly returned fire, hitting the bystanders at Gate City in Birmingham on Sunday night, said Birmingham police Lt. Sean Edwards.

Edwards identified the man killed as 20-year-old Bobby Clayton of Birmingham. He said several of the five survivors received what appeared to be non-life-threatening injuries to their arms and legs.

The teenager and driver, who were not identified, knew each other and had had previous disputes, Edwards said.

This calculated shooting was between individuals who had no regard for human life, and unfortunately their actions resulted in someone losing their life, he said.

No suspects are in custody, but there is a person of interest in the case, Edwards said.

Xavier Story, 23, who lives nearby, was just finishing his sons 1-year-old birthday party when the shots rang out right around the corner, Al.com reported.

I ran and tried to grab all the kids and get them inside, Story said. Im getting as low as I can and trying to get my family in the house.

After getting the partygoers to safety, Story went back outside, where one of the victims had collapsed. He told the man that help was on the way, he said.

He had a pulse and we were fanning him and telling him, Theyre coming, theyre coming.'

___

This story has been corrected to show that five people were injured in the shooting, not six.
The federal government announced Monday that it will work to increase the captive population of endangered red wolves. The move ends years of speculation that the government might abandon a 30-year effort to reintroduce the animals into the wild. The reintroduction project will be greatly restricted, however, and some wolves may be removed from the wild.

Cindy Dohner, southeast regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said doubling the number of captive wolves to 400 in zoos across the country is the only way to save red wolves. To do that, the service will attempt to increase the number of mating pairs from 29 to at least 52.

At the same time, the agency said it would remove isolated packs of wild red wolves from private lands in several North Carolina counties near where they were reintroduced and place them in a single county within the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Some of the wild wolves would likely be placed in zoos to shore up the mating pairs.

The proposed changes were announced following a two-year, two-step evaluation of the entire red wolf recovery program that concluded that the genetic purity of the captive animals would be lost within a decade without implementation of its recommendations, according to a statement by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Under the current management system, we would lose the captive population, Dohner said, because with fewer than 30 mating animals the population is unable to sustain itself.

But conservationist groups disagreed. Ron Sutherland of the Wildlands Network said Fish and Wildlife was in effect abandoning its plan to bring wild wolves back to their native habitat in the southeastern United States.

Sutherland said North Carolina bullied Fish and Wildlife into folding its effort into one county. Landowners opposed to red wolf introduction turned state officials against the effort, he said, and in turn, those officials, who were once federal partners, allowed hunters to kill red wolves with impunity.

Red wolves, a canid relative of western gray wolves, were in danger of going extinct before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service embarked on an experiment to revive them on federal land in the late 1980s. The population grew to about 150 animals before experiencing a rapid decline over the past decade from breeding mortality and car collisions, and accidents involving hunters who said they mistook the wolves for coyotes.

In the past five years, Fish and Wildlife officials frequently found dead red wolves, led to the carcasses by pinging tracking collars. The agency can account for fewer than 30 wild wolves with collars, and have estimated that there are about 15 more whose whereabouts they cant account for.

Landowners and farmers in North Carolina have complained that the wolves are a nuisance, but few have proven that animals have killed livestock. Red wolves, like their relatives, prefer deer, which farmers also consider a nuisance.

Sutherland said Fish and Wildlife declined to work with North Carolina officials to strengthen penalties for shooting wolves, failed to engage landowners for a workable solution and turn to conservation groups to raise money to buy land that could be transformed into sanctuaries for wolves.

Theyre shifting their entire emphasis from trying to create a self-sustaining population to growing the zoo population by up to 400 animals to prevent genetic erosion, Sutherland said. He equated the new proposal to one big holding pen for red wolves.

Fish and Wildlife said opinions like Sutherlands are countered by an exhaustive review and the science it produced. It began in 2014 with a peer-reviewed assessment by the Wildlife Management Institute. The assessment was expanded and a team reviewed the red wolf population, the historic range and how it could be sustained. Its work led to a report with options for the service to consider, Fish and Wildlife said on its Web site.

Red wolves are considered an endangered species, but recent genetic research suggests that they may not be sufficiently different from gray wolves to count as a separate species, and that red wolves have interbred heavily with coyotes.

Still, the agency isnt giving up on red wolves, said Jeff Fleming, a spokesman. I think the decision we announced today is proof to the contrary.

red-wolves
WASHINGTON  A federal judge said Monday he is unlikely to hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging a proof-of-citizenship requirement in a mail-in federal voter registration form used by Kansas, Alabama and Georgia until an appeals court panel that looked at the matter issues its written opinion.

The move by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington means it is unlikely that the requirement will be enforced for Novembers elections.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2 to 1 Friday to order the states to treat any voter applications filed since January as if they did not include the requirement to produce documents showing citizenship.

Civil rights groups that brought the lawsuit asked Leon in June to temporarily block enforcement of the requirement while the lawsuit moved forward. Advocates of the requirement argued the rules help ensure that only citizens cast ballots in federal races, while opponents said having to bring in documents to register would cost many eligible citizens their right to vote.

In its Friday decision, the appeals panel said it seemed likely the civil rights group would win the lawsuit and ordered the temporary halt on the proof-of-citizenship rule while sending the case back to Leon to decide.

I cant envision a scenario where this can all get done by November, Leon on Monday told lawyers for the federal government, states, and the civil rights group. Leon also said in court that it was in the interest of judicial efficiency for him to see the appellate courts reasoning before issuing his ruling. Im not in a hurry to waste my time.

Kansas was the only state enforcing a demand to show documentation such as a birth certificate, passport or naturalization papers instead of accepting a signed and sworn affirmation of citizenship on penalty of perjury to register to vote in federal races. Alabama and Georgia have indicated they plan to enforce the change after November.

voting
Every now and again, secular progressives rip off their mask and tell conservatives what they really think of them.

At an LGBT fundraiser last Friday in New York, Hillary Clinton one-upped President Obama, who said of conservatives during the 2008 presidential campaign: And its not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who arent like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. That came to be known as the bitter clingers speech.

Hillary Clinton said: You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. She then said that some of these people were irredeemable.

After strong pushback, presumably from some of the deplorables, Hillary Clinton partly walked back her remarks. She said she had been grossly generalistic, and thats never a good idea. I regret saying half  that was wrong.

How many, then? One-quarter? One-third? Ten percent? And how does she arrive at such a figure?

This is the contempt in which it seems the left holds traditional Americans. Anything they say no to is to be labeled racist, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic and nativist.

To the left, anyone who does not share modern ideas is to be condemned, even called un-American and deplorable.

Clintons remarks remind me of what Washington Post writer Michael Weisskopf wrote about evangelical Christians in the early 90s. Weisskopf said they were mostly poor, uneducated and easy to command.

That produced a torrent of critical letters and phone calls to the newspaper, prompting ombudsman Joanne Byrd to say the reasoning behind Weisskopfs statement was that most journalists dont know any of these people.

The two comments prompted scores of evangelicals to send their resumes to the newspaper, showing degrees, even doctorates, in various fields.

In a statement released by the Republican National Committee in response to Clintons remarks, Chairman Reince Priebus said, Insulting everyday Americans to a group of wealthy donors shows whose priorities Clinton really has in mind and exposes the hypocrisy of a candidate whose stated desire to unite the country is clearly all for show. Priebus went on to accuse Clinton of condescension and disrespect to her fellow citizens.

Some of them, anyway.

Name-calling on both sides prevents us from hearing what solutions to Americas manifold domestic and foreign challenges the candidates propose. Perhaps the coming debates will help focus their and our minds.

Bad language in politics is nothing new. The 1800 presidential race between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who are now held in high regard as statesmen, was the beginning of what we now call negative campaigning.

In addition to the often scurrilous things they said about each other, Adams and Jefferson had surrogates who attempted to outdo them.

As Rick Ungar wrote in 2012 for Forbes magazine, the president of Yale University, a John Adams supporter, suggested that if Thomas Jefferson were to become president, We would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.

A Connecticut newspaper, Ungar wrote, warned that the election of Jefferson would create a nation where murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced.

Not to be outdone, James Callender, an influential journalist of the time  wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a repulsive pedant and gross hypocrite who behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.'

Deplorable, but redeemed in the minds and hearts of their countrymen; Im doubtful the same will be said of the current presidential candidates 200 years from now.

Email: tmseditors@tribune.com; copyright, Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
SANTA FE  New Mexicos general election is less than two months away, and campaign cash is flowing freely.

With control of both chambers of the Legislature at stake in the Nov. 8 election, both Republican and Democratic-leaning political committees known as super PACs have amassed large war chests that theyre likely to put to use in the coming weeks.

One political committee named Advance New Mexico Now, run by Gov. Susana Martinezs political adviser, Jay McCleskey, reported Monday taking in more than $846,000 during a recent two-month period.

The groups donations included $150,000 from Paul Foster, an El Paso businessman who founded an oil refining company, and $100,000 from Anne Marion, a Texan who co-founded the Georgia OKeeffe Museum in Santa Fe.

In all, Advance New Mexico Now reported having $1.1 million cash on hand, and McCleskey told the Journal in a statement, We will aggressively counter what we anticipate will be an unprecedented avalanche of money from left-wing special interest groups.

On the Democratic side, a Super PAC called Patriot Majority New Mexico reported that it received $165,000 in the past two months in three hefty campaign contributions from the political arms of Washington D.C.-based teachers unions. A similar group called New Mexico Together reported raking in $145,000, also from teachers unions and their political committees.

New Mexico enacted campaign donation limits after the 2010 election cycle, but those caps dont apply to super PACs, also known as independent expenditure groups, which can accept contributions of any size but are barred from coordinating directly with candidates.

Theyve had several election cycles now to really hone their game, said Viki Harrison, executive director of Common Cause New Mexico, a group thats pushed for more stringent disclosure rules on campaign spending.

I think by the time we get through this election, its going to be by far the most expensive ever for the New Mexico Legislature, Harrison said.

Meanwhile, New Mexicos secretary of state race, the only statewide, non-judicial contest on this years ballot, is also drawing big bucks.

Democrat Maggie Toulouse Oliver, the Bernalillo County clerk, reported raising more than $128,000 during the two-month period, including a $5,400 contribution from a union-affiliated political committee and hundreds of smaller individual contributions.

She reported spending roughly $48,000, most of it for political consulting, and has about $173,000 in her campaign account.

Her opponent, Republican Nora Espinoza of Roswell, reported receiving roughly $80,000 in contributions, including a $5,4000 donation from Yates Petroleum Corp. and $1,000 from the Republican Party of New Mexico.

Espinoza, a state House member, spent slightly less than $19,000 during the reporting period and has more money on hand  nearly $240,000  than her Democratic opponent does for the election homestretch.

The spending reports that were due Monday reflected campaign spending and fundraising activity from July 3 through Sept. 5.
WASHINGTON  Hillary Clintons campaign is scrambling to head off lasting damage from her brutal weekend. Aides are promising to release more of her medical records after her bout with pneumonia and conceding they were too slow in providing information about her condition.

Democrats said Monday that Clintons health incident alone is unlikely to fundamentally alter the presidential race, but some also said it adds to a growing sense of uncertainty less than two months from Election Day. For many supporters, Clintons battle with Republican Donald Trump is worryingly close, raising concerns not only about holding the White House but also retaking control of the Senate.

Clinton abruptly left a 9/11 anniversary event Sunday in New York and was seen on video stumbling and being held up by aides. After roughly 90 minutes of silence from her campaign, aides said Clinton left because she was overheated. Several hours later, her doctor said she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.

In retrospect, we could have handled it better, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said Monday. He pledged to release additional medical information about Clinton in the next few days.

Clinton spent Monday at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., after canceling a fundraising trip to California. It was unclear when she planned to return to the campaign trail.

Trump, who is also promising to release new medical records this week, showed restraint regarding Clintons health. He wished her well and did not repeat questions he has previously raised about whether the former secretary of state has the strength and stamina to be president.

He did hammer Clinton for her assertion Friday night that half of his backers are in a basket of deplorables and are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. Clinton later said she regretted applying that description to half of Trumps backers, but stuck by her assertion that the GOP nominee has given a platform to hateful views and voices.

Speaking in Maryland on Monday, Trump said he was shocked to hear Clinton attack, slander, smear and demean these wonderful, amazing people who are supporting our campaign.

The Republican nominees newfound ability to stay on script has coincided with tightening in both national polls and surveys in some key swing states.

Democrats are also warily watching a Senate landscape that looked to be favorable for the party if Trump proved to be a drag on GOP candidates. But Republican Rob Portman in Ohio has distanced himself from Trump and appears headed for re-election, and Republicans are also feeling more confident in Florida since Marco Rubio reversed course and decided to run for re-election.

Meanwhile, some Democrats said it wasnt Clintons pneumonia diagnosis or even the jarring video of her stumbling into a van that leaves them nervous. It was her campaigns unwillingness to quickly level with the public about the situation.

Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia, David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote on Twitter. Whats the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?
Rear Adm. Phillip G. Sawyer, deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, kicked off Navy Week on Monday during a ceremony at the New Mexico Veterans Memorial. Navy Week is the maritime services outreach program designed to inform area residents about the Navy, its missions, its people and its importance to national security, Sawyer said.

Its important for us to go to places that the Navy is not well known, Sawyer said before the kickoff, which featured dozens of uniformed sailors, veterans and a color guard from the USS Constitution, the oldest active ship in the Navy.

A lot of people, particularly here in Albuquerque or Phoenix, where Im from, probably wonder why we need a Navy. They may not understand how important the Navy is and what it does for America  providing access, and protecting our goods and services overseas. When you have global interests like the United States does, you have to have a means to protect them, he said.

For the next week, Navy bands, divers, skydivers, medical ambassadors, sailors and officers will meet with civic leaders, students, veterans and residents to let them know what we do, why we do it and where we do it. Sawyer said.

Albuquerque is one of 15 cities nationwide to host Navy Weeks this year and the local visit was scheduled to coincide with the State Fair.

At Mondays kickoff, Sawyer thanked the city, veterans memorial staffers, United Veterans Council and those in attendance for hosting Navy Week. He also complimented the city on the veterans memorial facility, saying it was inspiring.

Mayor Richard Berry welcomed Sawyer and the sailors  including four from the citys namesake submarine, the USS Albuquerque  to the Duke City. Sailors from Boston; Washington, D.C.; Bangor, Wash.; San Diego; and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, were in attendance, as was the Navy Band Southwest, which played several patriotic pieces.

While many Navy Week activities will take place at the State Fair, Navy personnel will also visit local Boys and Girls clubs, the BioPark Zoo, the nuclear history museum, the VA hospital, UNM, schools and other venues. A highlight of the week will occur from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Saturday when the Navy skydiving team, the Leap Frogs, parachutes into the State Fair racetrack infield.

TODAY
SANTA FE  A Republican-backed mailer is using a progressive Democrats criticism of a new stream access law against a moderate Democratic senator who voted for it.

The mailer is from Advance New Mexico Now, an independent expenditure committee run by Jay McCleskey, Republican Gov. Susana Martinezs top political adviser.

It cites Democrat Pat Davis criticism of 2015 legislation that Democratic Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto of Albuquerque supported, saying, Democrat Pat Davis says Daniel Ivey-Soto helped wealthy land-owners profit from public lands.

In fact, Davis criticism of the legislation  in a televised ad and in news releases  focused on Gov. Martinez, who signed it into law, and on the contributions she and Republican political committees took from the rancher who was a major supporter of the bill.

Davis ad didnt mention by name any of the Democrats who voted for it.

Davis, an Albuquerque city councilor, is executive director of the ProgressNow New Mexico Education Fund.

Its unfortunate that Im getting caught in the crossfire, and that the Advance New Mexico political action committee is choosing to criticize me on this issue, instead of focusing on the real issues that matter, which is jobs, education and public safety, Ivey-Soto told the Journal .

Ivey-Soto, a first-term senator, is being challenged by Republican Eric Burton as he runs for re-election in Senate District 15.

Davis said he was disappointed that Democratic senators voted for the bill, but he favors Ivey-Sotos re-election. He said they have disagreed on some policy issues but have a good working relationship.

The focus of the ad, the second in a series targeting the governor, is on the influence of money in politics, Davis said.

McCleskey did not immediately respond to questions from the Journal about the mailer, including where it would be distributed.

The law that started out as Senate Bill 226 bars the public from wading or walking in streams that run through private property without written permission.

Sponsored by Democratic Sen. Richard Martinez of Espanola, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, it passed the Senate 32-7 and the House 32-31. Similar legislation in the House was sponsored by Rep. Paul Bandy, R-Aztec.

It was aimed at counteracting a nonbinding 2014 opinion by former Attorney General Gary King that said the water in New Mexicos streams belongs to the public, and anglers can wade and fish in it as long as they dont trespass on adjacent private land. Supporters of the opinions said the state Constitution and a decades-old state Supreme Court opinion established that right of access.

Ranchers, lodge owners and fishing guides said public access to streams on private land could harm habitat improvements and undercut the arrangements between landowners and fishing guides who take their clients onto the property.

And they said state Department of Game and Fish regulations already required getting owners permission to walk or wade on private property.

Davis ad cited the role of oil-and-gas lawyer Dan C. Perry, a Texan who relocated to Santa Fe and owns a ranch south of Chama that offers fly-fishing and hunting to paying customers. He gave Gov. Martinez $10,400 for her 2014 re-election, and he donated more than $48,000 to various Republican-affiliated political committees this year.
A senior member of the Queen's guard was caught sniffing a powder-like substance off a ceremonial sword in the Officers' Mess at St James's Palace.

By India Today Web Desk: A British tabloid released a video showing a senior members of the Queen's guard snorting a "powder-like substance" off a sword while on duty. The incident which took place in St James's Palace is home to the Princess Royal and Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice.

The 30 second mobile footage shows two officers from the Queen's guard, snorting powdery substance thought to be cocaine off a ceremonial sword. According to the Sun, the two guards have been identified as Major James Coleby, 41, and Captain Alex Ritchie, 27.

advertisement

At the time of the incident Major Coleby, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, was in charge of 15 men at St James's Palace and had a 13 hour duty afterwards.

In the video, just as Major Coleby bends over to snort the substance, a woman can be heard shouting: "No, don't do it, for the love of God!"



Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British Army officer, told the Sun, "This behaviour is both highly worrying and acutely embarrassing for the British Army. However, I'd be very surprised if this powder does turn out to be drugs."

The Ministry of Defence has launched an investigation into the incident. Reports state that while consuming alcohol is permissible to a certain extent, taking drugs is a criminal offence.

Watch the video below:



--- ENDS ---
SILVER CITY  The body found near Bear Mountain Road last week was identified as Robert Wright, according to New Mexico State Police.

The cause of death is still unknown, but he did have gunshot wound to the leg.

Wright was reported missing last week after he borrowed a friends truck and drove out to Bear Mountain Road to do some shooting. He failed to return and the Grant County Sheriffs Office was dispatched to the area. Deputies found the truck but couldnt find Wright. They then asked for help from the New Mexico State Police and the Search and Rescue. His body then was discovered.



2016 the Silver City Sun-News (Silver City, N.M.)

Visit the Silver City Sun-News (Silver City, N.M.) at www.scsun-news.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A former Roosevelt County inmate who suffered injuries during a jail escape has reached a settlement agreement in a lawsuit.

County officials and attorneys confirmed a settlement had been reached, but they declined to provide terms because the terms had not been finalized.

Ruben Lozano filed a lawsuit against the county in March after being released from the Roosevelt County Detention Center in September 2015 following more than two years of incarceration.

Lozano was one of two inmates who escaped from the jail in June 2013 and was apprehended a week later in Midland, Texas.

In the lawsuit, Lozano makes the following claims:

* Lozano accrued injuries in the form of fractures to his pelvis and hip during his escape in June 2013. He was not allowed to be treated for the injuries by RCDC staff for more than a month, despite recommendations from a hospital in Midland that he be seen by an orthopedist within one to two days for further evaluation and treatment.

* Lozano did not receive treatment until it was court ordered by District Judge Donna Mowrer in July 2013.

* Lozano spent more than a year in solitary confinement, in a small cell in which he had to sleep on the floor and was not given reasons as to why and was denied in his requests to be released.

The lawsuit also stated that a health care professional at the facility dealt with Lozanos complaints of increased mental health issues from the isolation by increasing his antidepressant medication three times.

Lozano was sentenced to five years probation after reaching a guilty plea agreement in September 2015 for the charges of escaping jail, according to court records.

The lawsuit names three individuals working at RCDC in 2013, including former Administrator David Casanova, as well as Correct Care Solutions, a company that provided health care to inmates at the facility.

Casanova could not be reached for comment.

Lozanos attorney, Adam Baker, and Roosevelt County Manager Amber

Hamilton both declined comment because they said paperwork had not been finalized.

Baker said the complaint against the health care company is still pending.

Correctional Healthcare declined to comment Monday.



2016 The Portales News-Tribune (Clovis, N.M.)

Visit The Portales News-Tribune (Clovis, N.M.) at www.pntonline.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

_____
The graphic video imagines the shooting death of a young woman during a home invasion.

That much is not in question.

What is in question: Whether the short film by a Second Amendment activist crosses a line by violently portraying the fictional death of a real-life student protester.

Since the four-minute video, Never Met Her, was posted to YouTube two weeks ago, it has drawn outrage  including from at least one gun-rights group  for its violence and unapologetic targeting of campus-carry opponents.

The short films creator, Brett Sanders, is a self-described Freedom Fighter who insists the video was a reasonable vehicle through which to present his pro-gun views.

But one student activist, 19-year-old Ana Lopez, says she has been particularly unnerved because the actress in the video bears a strong resemblance to her.

In the video, the actress enters an apartment, sets a large sex toy down on a table, settles on her couch and turns on the television.

On the fictional screen is actual Fox-affiliate news footage from an Aug. 24 rally at the University of Texas at Austin, where members of Students Against Campus Carry protested a new state law allowing guns on campus. Theyre seen holding sex toys, part of a campaign with a NSFW name.

The young womans phone rings, and the caller ID shows that its Rosie Zander.

Oh, my God, did you see us on TV today? the woman asks the caller. Were going to go viral. We might get to meet Shannon Watts!

Rosie Zander is the name of a UT student who has been a prominent activist against campus carry. Shannon Watts is the founder of the Moms Demand Action group.

The young woman hangs up after the fictional chat. Outside, a black man is shown approaching her apartment, walking past a Gun Free UT sign.

Hearing the commotion, the young woman darts back across her living room to grab the sex toy, then aims it at the intruder as he bursts through the front door.

As he advances, he notices she is armed with a sex toy. He removes a bandanna from across his mouth, calls her a [expletive] liberal!  and shoots her in the head.

Blood splatters against the wall, spraying a framed Moms Demand Action sign.

Lopez, a UT sophomore and co-founder of Students Against Campus Carry, said she was disgusted by the video.

We activists are used to hateful messages and statements meant to demean our cause, she told The Washington Post. However, this video is, so far, the worst threat Ive seen.

She and others have called the video a snuff film that crosses the line by explicitly threatening those who have spoken out against allowing guns on campus.

At first I thought that it was just a poorly made rebuttal to our protest, Lopez said. And then I skipped forward and I saw the subject shot in the head with the sex toy fall to the ground next to her. Of course I was disgusted.

She said it was her friends who pointed out that the actress looked a lot like her. Lopez noted that the young woman in the video had a similar hairdo and was wearing a T-shirt like the one Lopez had worn at the August protest.

After the video was released, Lopez discovered a Facebook post from one of Sanderss friends, pointing out Lopez as the doppelganger of the actress.

Lopez said she has since filed a report with UT campus police and notified the Austin and Frisco police departments.

She didnt only see the video as a personal attack, she said; it was an open call for violence against all anti-gun activists.

Everyone knows that this wasnt just a little jab, Lopez said. This was a huge invitation to attack us and anyone in opposition to campus carry

She added: The people who film and distribute these threatening messages toward young, female activists  theyre revealing that theyre not interested in our safety. They just want to keep us in our place, fearful . . . and theyre using guns and violence to do that.

The video was written and directed by Sanders, a 32-year-old Frisco, Texas, resident who gained some notoriety this year for paying a $212 traffic ticket with pennies.

Frisco is a suburb of Dallas, about 225 miles north of Austin. There, Sanders is an IT professional and maintains a website that highlights articles that are anti-government and anti-police. In his online bio, he describes himself as a notable first and second amendment advocate and a voluntaryist or Libertarian rather than an anarchist.

I think we should all be left alone, Sanders said. I really just stand against the initiation of force, the initiation of violence.

The video he made, however, was intended to be violent, he said.

Yes, it was violent, it was graphic, and I really hope that it took people by surprise, Sanders told The Post. This is a real, violent threat that were facing. They have no concept that they could, in fact, be a victim at any given time.

Sanders said he conceived the idea Aug. 28 as a rebuttal to the sex-toy protests. It was filmed the following Tuesday at a friends apartment in Plano, another suburb of Dallas, then quickly uploaded to YouTube.

Sanders then promoted the video on Twitter, tagging the Moms Demand Action group and posting a wry elegy over the death of the girl depicted in the film: A moment of silence for this young lady. She was way too young.

Sadly, he wrote in another tweet, @MomsDemand lost a good soldier tonight. RIP dildo girl.

The whole point of the video is to basically eviscerate gun-free zones and the dangers of gun-free zones, Sanders said. We basically played out their idea. Their idea is to disarm everybody, arm everybody with a sex toy and hope for the best.

Sanders called the idea that he intentionally cast someone who resembled Lopez absurd.

I didnt even know of Ana Lopez, never heard of Ana Lopez, didnt even know what she looked like, he said.

The actress, credited as Staci Wilson, is the daughter of a friend who agreed to be in the film, he said. Wilson could not be directly reached for comment, though Sanders forwarded a statement on her behalf.

My dad pitched the idea of the video to me and it sounded like an interesting way of countering the gun control protest so I agreed, the statement read. I was surprised to be accused of portraying Ana Lopez, but other than that the fuss was expected. I look forward to playing a role in the sequel.

Sanders was also criticized for having a black actor, Eric July, play the role of armed intruder.

Last week, Sanders told Texas Standard that he did not regret casting July and said that statistically, African Americans are more prone to create violent crimes. It does play into the stereotype, whether we like it or not.

As Texas Standard noted, FBI crime data actually showed that white people committed 59.4 percent of all violent crimes in 2014; black people committed 37.7 percent of all violent crimes.

Moms Demand Action denounced the video as the product of groups on the extreme fringe of this debate.

And for too long, these radical activist groups have been the loudest voices at the statehouse in Austin, pushing through a dangerous agenda of guns everywhere at any time with no questions asked, Emily Keown of Moms Demand Actions Texas chapter wrote in an op-ed for the Austin-American Statesman.

In a blistering statement, one gun-rights group, Students for Concealed Carry, also denounced the video  and in particular, the films choreographer, Murdoch Pizgatti, who previously helped organize a fake mass shooting on the UT-Austin campus.

Pizgatti is neither a policy wonk nor a serious political activist, Brian Bensimon, Texas state director for Students for Concealed Carry, said in the statement. To say that he is on the fringe of the gun rights movement would be to give him too much credit. He is a publicity hound who cares about nothing more than seeing his assumed name in print. All parties to the campus carry debate, regardless of position or affiliation, have a duty to stand up to such reprehensible behavior.

texas-gunvideo
Mike Pence on Tuesday compared a prominent white supremacists support for Donald Trump to the backing Hillary Clinton received earlier this year from the father of a terrorist who killed 49 Florida clubgoers in May.

Pence, the GOP vice presidential nominee and current Indiana governor, said he did not think David Dukes backing of Trump is significant any more than the father of a terrorist who killed 49 Americans was seen at a Hillary Clinton rally, cheering her on.

That is a reference to the appearance Seddique Mir Mateen, father of Orlando killer Omar Mateen, made at an Aug. 8 rally for Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. Mateen was not invited by the Clinton campaign, though he did occupy a prominent seat behind Clinton at the rally. The Clinton campaign later made clear it rejected Mateens support.

We live in a free country, and people of ill motives have associated themselves with politics, Pence said before reporters outside the Republican National Committee in Washington on Tuesday morning.

Seddique Mateen has denounced the violence perpetrated by his son, who was killed in the shootout at the Pulse nightclub, and said he would have notified authorities if he has known what his son was planning.

Pence made the comments after a closed-door gathering of Republican lawmakers in the first visit by a member of the GOP ticket to Capitol Hill since Trump himself came in early July. Republican leaders say the former House member and GOP House conference chair got a warm reception from his former colleagues. Later Tuesday, Pence is scheduled to attend a Senate Republican lunch meeting and a Washington fundraiser for the Trump campaign.

The former House member has been at center of the Trump campaigns efforts in recent days to capitalize on Clintons Friday remark dismissing half of the campaigns supporters as a basket of deplorables who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic  you name it.

Pence then stirred controversy of his own Monday in a CNN interview where he refused to call Duke, the white-supremacist Louisiana Senate candidate who is supporting Trump, by that term.

Im not in the name-calling business, Pence said under questioning by anchor Wolf Blitzer. The millions of people who support Donald Trump around this country are not a basket of anything. They are Americans. And they deserve the respect of the Democrat nominee for president of the United States.

Duke has enthusiastically endorsed the Trump campaign and tweeted Monday about Pences CNN remarks. Trump generated a major controversy in February when he avoided denouncing Duke; he later made clear he rejected Dukes support.

Pence on Tuesday continued his attacks on Clinton, saying the deplorables remark disqualifies her from the presidency: Anyone who has that low an opinion of the American people should not serve as president of the United States of America, he said.

Regarding Duke, Pence said: Donald Trump and I have renounced David Duke repeatedly. We have said we do not want his support, and we do not want the support of people who think like him.

Clinton, he added, was not talking about that bad man, she is talking about people all across this country.

Pence has a better relationship with lawmakers than the man he is running with, who many have denounced for various controversial remarks. Before his comments at the RNC, the Republican got a warm reception from GOP lawmakers in a private meeting on Capitol Hill.

There was an excitement in the air, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said after emerging from the gathering.

Pences main aim at the meeting was to try to humanize Trump, by sharing anecdotes about how the GOP nominee reached out to regular people and by speaking about how he got to know the celebrity businessman as a person.

Hes basically vouching for Donald Trump, because he knows that most of the people in the room dont know him also, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

The vice presidential nominee is seen as an old friend and a steady balance to Trumps high octane personality, as King put it. Several lawmakers said during the meeting they had told their constituents over the recess that Pence was the main reason they were supporting Trump, King said.

I started out not being a Donald Trump supporter, as most of you know, and yet when Mike Pence was appointed as his running mate there was nothing more compelling to me that told me Donald Trump would make a great president, said Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., adding that more than anything else, a president is to a large degree who he surrounds himself with.

When Donald came in in July, there was still a bit of skepticism, but I would say most of thats gone today, King said. To me it showed the Republican base is coming back.

There were some signs that, despite Pences best efforts, that Trump skepticism is lingering among Republicans.

He did a good job, but at the end of the day, Ive made my concerns clear, and well see how the next two months go, said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who has been a frequent Trump critic.

Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

pence-race
The University of New Mexico will freeze staff hiring in an attempt to address possible budget cuts from the state.

And President Bob Frank said Tuesday that the school may hire fewer faculty, which could affect the number of classes offered.

Frank presented that information and more during his administrative report to the Board of Regents on Tuesday morning.

Additionally, Frank said he has instructed officials with academic affairs, the administration and the Health Sciences Center to prepare for a 5 percent budget cut in anticipation of a potential state cut to the current budget.

Gov. Susana Martinez last month ordered state agencies to reduce their spending by at least 5 percent, but that directive did not apply to public schools and universities around the state.

But more spending cuts could be enacted after a special legislative session on the budget shortfall that Martinez is expected to call later this month.

Some lawmakers have said steep budget cuts for higher education have been discussed, possibly in excess of 5 percent.
BASTROP, Texas  Investigators say preliminary autopsy results indicate a Central Texas man fatally shot his wife and their 3-year-old son before taking his own life.

The Bastrop County Sheriffs Office on Tuesday said officials believe Leroy Roger Friedel Jr. and his wife, Jennifer, had a domestic disturbance outside their house near Bastrop.

Authorities say it appears Friedel shot his wife multiple times, then one of the bullets entered the home and struck their son, Leroy, in the head. A sheriffs office statement says Friedel then killed himself.

The bodies were discovered Saturday when officers responded to a possible disturbance call and checked on the welfare of the family. Officials didnt immediately say what prompted the disturbance.

Bastrop is 30 miles southeast of Austin.
ASHEVILLE, N.C.  As thousands of Donald Trumps supporters left his rally here this week, they were greeted by protesters who accused them of being, among other things, racist, hateful and uneducated.

Grow a brain, b-! one protester shouted at a Trump supporter. Another pointed at rally-goers and yelled: Racist a-! A third held a sign that read: Make racists afraid again.

Then they chanted in unison: Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate!

They have these vulgar signs, yet theyre screaming about love, said Lisa Jones, 51, a Trump supporter from Hendersonville, N.C. And were the ones that are intolerant? Were deplorable and intolerant? Well, we just found out that were deplorable. We thought that we were just intolerant.

Many rally-goers here in this mountain town Monday evening shrugged off Hillary Clintons controversial remarks that half of Trumps supporters belong in a basket of deplorables because they are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. While Clinton has expressed regret for using the word half, she has not abandoned the assertion that some of Trumps supporters are truly deplorable.

It made me feel real little, said John Warren, 72, of Asheville, who wore a camouflage Make America Great Again cap. That she was downplaying us. I mean, we are voters and, you know, we respect her. But not in the position she is running for.

Many Trump supporters say they have already been called much worse for their views on gay marriage, abortion, transgender rights, Syrian refugees, illegal immigration and race relations. Like Trump, they say they arent afraid to say politically incorrect things and no amount of name-calling from liberals is going to change that.

One mans steak is another mans baloney, said a 62-year-old salesman from Tennessee who said he was proud to have sold 14 Confederate flags outside the rally but did not want his name published. Just like a woman: I mean, I might say shes beautiful. The next guy might say shes ugly. You know what Im saying?

A 43-year-old construction project manager dressed up as a deplorable, putting a laundry basket over his head. Another man carried a sign reading: Deplorable lives matter. As two young men left the rally, one turned to the other and said: OK, Dan, lets go be deplorable.

During the event, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani joked that Clinton mentioned some phobics Ive never heard of, and that maybe the claustrophobics are for Trump. Trump pulled supporters on stage to share their thoughts, concluding: These are not deplorable people. That I can tell you.

The Trump campaign has focused heavily on the deplorables theme as a way to paint Clinton as elitist and out-of-touch, but it has also stumbled into its own problems with the issue.

Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., posted a picture labeled The Deplorables on Instagram over the weekend that placed Trump and several surrogates alongside conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and a cartoon character, Pepe the Frog, associated with the online white nationalist alt-right movement. Trumps running mate, Mike Pence, has also refused to use the word deplorable to label former Ku Klux Klan leader and Trump supporter David Duke, though he said Tuesday that he and Trump disavow Duke.

The Clinton campaign points to such incidents, as well as polling showing that many Trump supporters harbor prejudiced views of nonwhites, as evidence that many Trump backers are indeed deplorable.

At the Monday night rally, one protester held a sign that read: Deplorable Trump misleads good people.

Some Trump supporters here acknowledged that a small fraction of Trump backers could be viewed as having deplorable views, but added that every movement has a fringe group.

Some of them are, but I am a commonsense, logical person, said Joe Pruden, 26, a plumber from Asheville whose girlfriends weight was mocked by a protester, . . .Trump supporters, theyre on the defense, and Ive been talking to other conservatives and saying: Hey, we need to start standing up, man. We are done being bullied into a corner by these liberal, left-wing, progressive Nazi foot soldiers.

Kathy Campbell, 40, said Trump could avoid some of the criticism by more carefully choosing his words.

Trump has a way about him that comes off sounding mean and hateful, said Campbell, who lives in North Carolinas Rutherford County and originally supported Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. I dont care for his tone sometimes because I think you catch more flies with honey.

Campbell likes that Trump will crack down on illegal immigration and the public aid that undocumented workers receive. As a single mother, Campbell said her children were on Medicaid for a total of 20 years, and she needed the assistance of food stamps for five years, even though she was working full time.

The women who are sitting on their a- at home that can work, and they keep having baby after baby after baby just so they can keep getting more and more food stamps? Theyre abusing the system, Campbell said.

She added, Im a deplorable. Whatever. Im also called narrow-minded. You know what? There is so much talk about tolerance. Wheres the tolerance for me as a Christian? Wheres the tolerance for me as a Republican? Theres none.

This sentiment is common among conservatives here in North Carolina, where Republicans sparked a national backlash by enacting legislation that weakened anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians and which requires transgender people to use the public restroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate.

Shannon Niven, a 40-year-old nursing student and mother of two from Transylvania County, said that Trump supporters like her are educated and accepting  but tired of having the values of others forced upon their lives. She said the debate over the rights of transgendered individuals, who she believes have a mental illness, shows how much society has changed in the past decade or two.

Let a man come into the bathroom with my little girl and he may not make it out, she said. North Carolina  were conservative, were Christian, but were also a little crazy, and we will defend ourselves.

The supporters and protesters who showed up to the rally have mostly made up their minds about the election, but each tried to sway the other side anyway. Brenda Lilly, a Clinton supporter who teaches in Asheville, chatted with a young couple outside the rally and tried to warn them about Trump.

He is a racist. Hes a racist. What makes you think that hes not? Lilly said, giving a few examples including Trumps proposed ban on Muslims.

Its only temporary, the teenaged girl, who will not be old enough to vote in November, said as she held a Trump flag over her head.

Temporary! Thats what they said about Jews in Germany, Lilly responded. Please, read your history. I beg you.

Lilly also debated with Michelle Visconte, a 47-year-old housewife who says Trump was right to label illegal immigrants as rapists and criminals.

I dated Hispanic men all of my life, and now Im just like, Im done. Im done, Visconte said. Because you know what? Theyre here to bleed us and take advantage of whatever they can get.

No, theyre not, said Lilly, who lived in California for 27 years before recently returning to North Carolina. Were all of your boyfriends rapists and criminals?

Not every one. I had a couple good ones, Visconte said.

Were they all criminals? Lilly asked.

No, Visconte said. Wait, a minute, wait a minute: Yes, they were criminals if they came over to the United States illegally. Thats a criminal.

Conversations like this exasperated Lilly and confirmed what she had suspected.

Quite frankly, I think 50 percent could be a small percentage, Lilly said of the size of the basket of deplorables. These people are nuts. And I dont think they all are. I think there probably are some fine people.

After the rally, arguments between supporters and protesters continued. Two younger demonstrators got into a nasty yelling match with an older man wearing a profane pro-Trump T-shirt; they all took videos of each other saying or doing unkind things. Friends intervened and a police officer begged: Please, just be nice.

Later, as a young man wearing an Obama cant ban these guns tank top flexed his muscles for a photo, a young female protester threw a cup of water on him and ran away. As he pulled the wet shirt off, he yelled: That f b-!

As the two sides exchanged nasty words, an older activist took the lead in denouncing the Trump supporters, while a motherly woman leaving the rally urged the young men to go home before a fight broke out. She then turned to the gray-haired protester and asked why he was trying to incite a fight.

They need to be called out, he said. They need to be called out for their racism.

campaign-deplorables
WASHINGTON  Nearly a decade after the Supreme Court struck down the Districts long-standing ban on handguns, the city is again at the forefront of a legal battle over the Second Amendment.

Gun rights advocates have scored a series of victories in Washington, D.C., since the high courts landmark 2008 ruling, and are pressing this month to make it easier to carry firearms on the streets of the nations capital.

The pending cases have drawn the attention of gun rights groups and Republican attorneys general from more than a dozen states who are among those asking federal judges to find Washingtons restrictions on concealed-carry unconstitutional.

Local officials have been forced time and again to rewrite the Districts gun laws since the Supreme Court used a D.C. case to declare that individuals have the right to gun ownership unrelated to military service. The decision cleared the way for Washington residents to keep handguns in their homes and now drives the attempt to expand the number of people who can carry concealed weapons in public.

At issue for the D.C. Circuit is the citys system that requires residents to demonstrate a good reason to fear injury or show a proper reason, such as transporting valuables, in order to get a permit.

Two judges sitting in the same federal court for Washington have reached different conclusions about the key component of the citys gun control law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has consolidated those challenges that a three-judge panel will consider on Sept. 20.

The Districts law is among the strictest in the nation: Eighty-eight people have been approved for concealed-carry permits. According to the police department, 309 applicants were denied.

D.C. officials say the restrictions are reasonable and necessary in a city that struggles with gun violence and faces heightened security challenges because of a concentration of federal government buildings and diplomats.

The Districts concealed-carry rules are similar to those in Maryland, New Jersey, New York and some jurisdictions in California. Those systems have survived legal challenges in three other federal appeals courts.

Since the high courts ruling in the case known as District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court has turned down numerous opportunities to decide whether firearms regulations that cover carrying in public are constitutional.

That has left the issues for the lower courts to resolve.

The question of whether and to what extent the Second Amendment extends into a right to carry guns into public spaces is probably the most important constitutional question that could affect American gun policy since Heller, said Jonathan Lowy of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

In one of the D.C. decisions up for review, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly left enforcement of the citys law in place. She noted the Districts strong interest in promoting public safety and wrote that the potential risk to others from concealed firearms is far greater than the risk of possessing a handgun within the home.

Two months later, Judge Richard Leon, who sits on the same court, said in the second pending case that the citys law is probably unconstitutional. He called the Districts restrictions on public carry overzealous and said the rules violate the core right of self-defense.

The three judges who will hear the appeals this month were nominated to the federal bench by Republican presidents. Judge Thomas Griffith, a George W. Bush nominee, was in the majority in the courts 2007 opinion that overturned the Districts decades-old ban on handguns.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, nominated by George H. W. Bush, dissented in the 2007 ruling and sided last year with the city when it argued  unsuccessfully  to keep a one-gun-per-month limit on firearms registration.

The third judge, Stephen Williams, was nominated by Ronald Reagan.

In court filings leading to the Sept. 20 oral arguments, gun rights advocates say the Districts requirement that permit seekers show an extraordinary threat denies a constitutional right to most law-abiding citizens.

Opponents of the law note the ruling in Heller spells out that firearms can be banned from sensitive places such as schools and government buildings. But they say a citywide permitting system has the effect of extending that ban to many violent areas that do not have those buildings but where citizens may want to arm themselves.

Telling a citizen walking the streets of a dangerous neighborhood that she can obtain a permit for self-defense after she is suddenly attacked by a violent criminal is a bit like telling a passenger on a cruise ship that she is free to come back to the dock to pick up a life jacket if she falls overboard, according to the brief filed on behalf of the National Rifle Association by attorney Paul Clement, who was solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration.

Gun control advocates and city officials respond in court filings that more guns on the streets leads to more violence, and makes it more difficult and dangerous for law enforcement officials to do their jobs. The District saw a 54 percent increase in the number of murders from 2014 to 2015. In the current year, homicides have dropped more than 10 percent.

Limiting the number of concealed weapons on the streets of a densely populated, urban area advances public safety, they say.

The city is fighting to simply maintain one of the principal tools it has to combat gun violence, attorney Adam Levin wrote in a brief filed by the Brady Center in support of the Districts laws. Now is not the time to decrease gun regulation in the nations capital.



The Washington Posts Peter Hermann contributed to this report.

guns-district
Last year marked the greatest improvement in the typical American familys finances on record, according to a new annual report from the Census, especially for the working poor.

The median household income before taxes increased 5.2 percent, the report published Tuesday showed, the largest increase in nearly a half-century of data. Average incomes increased more rapidly for poorer families than rich ones.

In the last year, weve seen steady job growth, said Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. What were looking at is the recovery delivering, in a way that weve all kind of hoped it would.

The share of overall income enjoyed by the poorest one-fifth of households increased by 3 percent.

The change in the share of income claimed by more affluent groups of households was not statistically significant.

Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, also attributed the gains for poorer households to a rapid decline in unemployment, from 5.7 percent at the beginning of last year to 4.9 percent at the beginning of this year.

Their hourly wages also get a boost from having less competition among workers for jobs, Mishel said. We may finally start seeing employers having to compete for workers.

Those gains also appeared in the data for specific demographic groups that tend to be worse off.

Incomes for women living alone increased 8.7 percent last year, while the incomes of married couples increased 4.3 percent. The incomes of younger householders increased more than the incomes of older householders. For householders ages 25-34, the increase was 5.6 percent, while incomes for those ages 55-64 increased just 3.5 percent.

Hispanics and immigrants in particular benefited from last years economy. Average Hispanic incomes increased 6.1 percent. Immigrants incomes, excluding naturalized citizens skyrocketed 10.5 percent.

Those improvements contributed to an overall increase of 6.4 percent in the Western states, said Giovanni Peri, an economist who studies immigration at the University of California, Davis.

Peri attributed the increase in immigrants incomes to robust demand for labor in construction, manufacturing and services. Unemployment in the construction sector decreased from an average of 8.9 percent in 2014 to 7.3 percent last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In accommodation and food services, unemployment declined from 8.6 percent to 8 percent.

The connection between immigrants incomes and the labor market is an important sign of how much they are really contributing to the economy, Peri said. They are almost all working families, almost all working in jobs for which there is demand.

econ-poor
PHOENIX  A driver plowed into two police officers outside a Phoenix gas station on Tuesday and proceeded to scuffle with a third policeman who managed to get out of the way in what the police chief denounced as a violent, intentional act.

Police said Marc LaQuon Payne, 44, apparently drove his vehicle at the officers before hitting a patrol car and crashing into the front of the QuikTrip store around 2 a.m. Tuesday.

We are confident that this is an intentional act, Phoenix Police Chief Joseph Yahner said at an afternoon news conference. Our officers were targeted.

Payne was taken to a hospital in serious condition and is expected to be booked into jail after hes released, according to police who believe he was driving impaired.

They said Payne will likely face three counts of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault. It wasnt immediately clear if he has an attorney yet.

The attack came during an especially violent year for police officers nationwide, including separate deadly attacks in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Dallas over the summer.

Im outraged by this incident. This stuff needs to stop, Yahner said.

Phoenix police released a store surveillance video of the incident. It showed a vehicle backing out of a parking space, circling the parking lot and then accelerating toward the three police officers.

A 41-year-old police sergeant suffered a broken leg, a 36-year-old veteran officer had minor injuries and a 33-year-old officer on his first day of training suffered a head injury.

The video shows the rookie officer thrown several feet in the air and hitting the front windshield of the suspects vehicle, police said.

One officer managed to jump out of the way, but was injured during a struggle with Payne following the incident.

He runs over us, and he still fights with us, Yahner said of the suspect.

The gas station remained closed Tuesday afternoon and blocked off with police tape as workers swept up shattered glass and installed new brick where the car smashed through the building. The car was taken away by police.

The names of the three officers werent immediately released by police. All were taken to hospitals for treatment.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said he spoke with two of the officers involved in the incident and thanked them for their valor and wished them a speedy recovery.
Police sources said the Rajiv case convict received blows from the rod on his forehead, scalp and also his arms when he tried to fend off the attack.

Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber at Sriperumbudur near Chennai on May 21, 1991. Photo: PTI

By Press Trust of India: A G Peralivalan, one of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, was today assaulted with an iron rod inside the high security central prison here by another inmate.

ATTACK AND MOTIVE

Perarivalan, who has been lodged in the high security block, was attacked by another inmate Rajesh Khanna, a life convict in a murder case.

advertisement

"Perarivalan was attacked...with an iron rod and it was used by another convict who is also in the high security block, to assault the Rajiv case convict," a top jail official told PTI, adding he was now doing well.

Police sources said the Rajiv case convict received blows from the rod on his forehead, scalp and also his arms when he tried to fend off the attack. He was taken to hospital where his wounds were sutured, dressed and treated.

They said an inquiry was being held by senior prison officials.

On the reason for the attack, they indicated it was related to shifting Khanna to another block. They declined to go further into it, since an inquiry was being held.

PARTIES DEMANDS PROTECTION

Learning about the incident, Perarivalan's mother Arputhammal visited him.

Later speaking to reporters here, she wondered how her 'soft-spoken' son could have become the target of an attack.

Perarivalan, also known as 'Arivu' has been in prison for over 25 years after he was convicted in the case.

Political parties, including the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), have demanded that the culprits behind the incident be punished.

PMK Chief Ramadoss said those behind the attack should be punished. He urged the Tamil Nadu Government to free all seven convicts on remission and in case of the legal process delaying their release, the state should give them leave.

MDMK Chief Vaiko condemned the attack, saying the incident raised doubts if it was an attempt to murder Perarivalan. He demanded that the state provide him adequate security and find out the reason behind the attack. He also urged the government to release Perarivalan on parole.

RECAP

Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber at Sriperumbudur near Chennai on May 21, 1991. Seven persons - Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan, Nalini, Robert Payas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran, were convicted in the case.

Nalini's death sentence was commuted to life in 2000 following a cabinet recommendation and appeal by Rajiv's wife, Sonia Gandhi.

The Supreme Court had commuted the death sentence of Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan in February 2014 following delay in deciding on their mercy plea.

advertisement

The Tamil Nadu Government had in March this year decided to remit the sentences of all the seven convicts.

However, the matter soon went to the Apex Court and is pending there, with the Centre questioning the state's powers to grant remission to them on specific grounds.

--- ENDS ---
The investigation into the explosion of SpaceXs rocket has only just begun, and last week Elon Musk tweeted that it was the most difficult and complex failure the company has ever had. But SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Tuesday that the company would return to flight by November, in what analysts said would be an exceedingly fast time frame.

Were anticipating getting back to flight, being down for about three months  in November, the November time frame, she said at a conference in Paris.

The explosion occurred earlier this month as a Falcon 9 rocket was being fueled for an engine test fire. It damaged the launchpad that SpaceX uses at Floridas Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. But SpaceX leases another one nearby at NASAs Kennedy Space Center that it has been rehabbing. SpaceX also has a launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

SpaceX is leading the investigation into the cause of the blast with help from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Air Force and NASA.

The company lost another rocket last year, and it took the company six months to fly again. Typically, it takes six to nine months for companies to recover after a failure, depending on the particular circumstances, said Phil Smith, a senior space analyst at the Tauri Group, a consulting firm.

But returning to flight after just three months is surprising because thats actually very quick, Smith said. Last week, the company was asking the public to turn over video or audio of the explosion that might help investigators determine what went wrong, he said.

The short timeline would imply that they must know something about the nature of the incident, that maybe it isnt the vehicle  that it was a procedural problem, Smith said.

The explosion has also pushed back the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy, the more powerful rocket the company had planned to fly in November. That flight is now scheduled for early 2017, according to a person familiar with SpaceXs plans.

Meanwhile, United Launch Alliance, one of SpaceXs competitors, announced Tuesday a service that would allow customers an expedited schedule to get their payloads into orbit.

The priorities of all of our customers include ensuring their spacecraft launches on schedule, securing the soonest possible manifest date and completing the mission with 100 percent success, Tory Bruno, ULA chief executive and president, said in a statement. To address these priorities, we have been working on this offering for more than a year, which allows our customers to launch in as few as three months from placing their order.

spacex
A fraternity at the University of Richmond has been suspended after an email with what university officials termed grossly offensive language was sent to about 100 students on campus.

The Kappa Alpha chapter will be investigated by both the university and national fraternity officials. It is the latest fraternity to come under scrutiny at a time when universities across the country are working to improve campus safety, avoid offending students, and prevent sexual misconduct.

The University of Richmond in Virginia has been embroiled in debate about campus sexual assault after two women wrote public accounts this month of their frustrations with the way the administration handled their complaints.

The Collegian, a campus newspaper, printed a copy of an email sent shortly before 1 p.m. Friday about a party that night. Asked whether she could confirm it is an accurate copy of the email in question, university spokeswoman Cynthia Price responded that an investigation is pending.

The email reminds recipients of the theme for the night  ameriKA  suggests dressing in red, white and blue (or be naked for all I care. . . . This is gonna be one for the books, the Collegian quotes the email as saying.  . . . were looking forward to watching that lodge virginity be gobbled up for all yall. See you boys tonight.

If you havent started drinking already, catch up. Tonights the type of night that makes fathers afraid to send their daughters away to school. Lets get it.

The university issued a statement Monday:

  

We learned this morning of an email from two members of the Kappa Alpha National Fraternity that was sent to about 100 students on campus. The email contained grossly offensive language and suggestions of behavior inconsistent with our policies concerning Greek life and with the caring nature of our campus community. As a result, the university has suspended all chapter operations, activities and events pending a thorough investigation. We have also contacted the national Kappa Alpha headquarters, which promptly suspended the chapter while it conducts its own membership review and investigation.

University administration will be meeting with Greek leadership to discuss the suspension and to reiterate our expectations for Greek Life, which include standards of behavior, sustaining a respectful and safe campus climate, and the core values of service, leadership, scholarship and fellowship.

  

The president of the student government association did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Jesse Lyons, assistant executive director for advancement at the national headquarters of Kappa Alpha Order, responded to questions with a statement:

  

Gentlemanly conduct is at the core of Kappa Alpha Orders values. Due to actions contrary to those values and our Risk Management Policy, the chapter operations have been temporarily suspended at the University of Richmond pending the outcome of an in-depth, individual review and chapter investigation. The National Administrative Office is working in conjunction with the University of Richmond administration and chapter leadership.

virginia-fraternity
George Washington University officials learned in the fall of 2015 that there might be problems identifying cadavers that had been donated to the medical school to train future doctors.

But for months afterward, GWU continued to cremate unidentified bodies and give the ashes to loved ones who were unaware of the mix-up  and who, in some cases, got the wrong cremains, according to a class-action lawsuit initiated by three families Tuesday.

The lawsuit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, alleges that the continued cremation of cadavers after problems came to light was part of a plan to cover up the schools negligence and that it hampered genetic testing that might have helped identify the bodies.

There has been no intent on the part of the university to mislead affected families, GWU spokeswoman Candace Smith said.

The medical school announced in early February that it had lost track of the identities of as many as 50 bodies donated for training first-year medical students. It suspended the body donor program at the time. University officials said that the problems surfaced internally in November and that they believed the sloppy record-keeping may have gone back seven years, affecting an untold number of families.

In many cases, the donors or their families had requested that the cremated remains be given to loved ones.

The three plaintiffs, Eileen Kostaris, Alex Naar and Mary Louise Powell, allege that their relatives remains have been lost, possibly given to the wrong family or buried in a cemetery without authorization. They each seek $10 million from GWU.

University officials have said that identification tags attached to the toes of the cadavers were removed and not replaced when the bodies were moved between the university morgue and student labs. The person in charge of that process stopped working at the university when the problems became known in November, school officials said.

Naars mother, Ruth W. Kurle, died in October 2013, and her body was donated to the medical school.

A body that GWU initially said was Kurles was cremated on Jan. 21 this year. The university told Naar that it was sure the body was Kurles because the school found during a 2015 inventory that the cadaver did not have a larynx and Kurle had undergone a laryngectomy. But the schools records also indicated the body they believed was Kurles was donated in 2015, two years after Naars mothers body was donated.

The lawsuit alleges that Powell received the remains of the wrong person last December, citing conflicting information provided by the university about the timing of her mothers cremation. What became of the remains of Kostariss grandmother is unknown, the suit alleges, adding that a university official told her that the remains may have been buried or given to the wrong family.

After the problems were discovered but before it notified families, GWU began collecting genetic samples of bodies it sent for cremation. Families were not told of these samples, the lawsuit alleges, until the plaintiffs attorney, Cary Hansel, threatened a lawsuit. And GWU has ignored repeated requests to make the samples available to families for testing by hired experts, the suit alleges.

The cremations took place in Maryland. State regulations forbid the cremation of unidentified bodies, the lawsuit alleges.

gwuniversity-bodies
PORTLAND  More than seven months after the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge ended dramatically, opening statements began Tuesday in the trial of people charged with the occupation.

For 41 days in January and February, national attention focused on the siege at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a snowy, remote stretch of land in eastern Oregon otherwise notable for birdwatching. The takeover began Jan. 2 amid protests supporting two local ranchers, but it soon turned into something else, as the occupiers proclaimed themselves champions of American liberty, even while they were indicted by a federal grand jury for using force, threats and intimidation against government officials.

For much of January, people came and went from the refuge with seemingly little interference from law enforcement. But by late January, authorities arrested the groups leaders  including Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan  and fatally shot one of the most high-profile occupiers, LaVoy Finicum, who had acted as a spokesman for the group. Federal agents sealed off the refuge, and people fled the grounds until just four holdouts remained.

On Feb. 11, the occupation came to an end when the last four anti-government activists were taken into custody, peacefully surrendering following a surreal negotiation carried out online before a rapt audience.

This case has since shifted to a federal courtroom in Portland, where seven defendants face charges that included conspiring to impede U.S. officers as well as counts of firearms crimes. In recent months, 11 other defendants pleaded guilty and another saw the charges against him dropped.

Last week, a jury of eight women and four men from all corners of Oregon were chosen. But before the long-anticipated trial at the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse could begin, Judge Anna Brown announced that one of the jurors had been excused on hardship conditions. That juror was replaced by an older white man  making the 12-person jury now all white.

As the opening statements began Tuesday, Geoffrey Barrow, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, started by presenting a timeline of the occupation in four chapters: the build-up, the takeover, the arrests and the aftermath.

Barrow said that the takeover began with a peaceful protest in nearby Burns, Ore., over the arrests of two local ranchers. But Barrow said this was escalated by Ammon Bundy, leader of the occupying group. In video footage shown inside the courtroom, Bundy can be seen announcing to the crowd: Were gonna make a hard stand. Were going to insist the Constitution be protected in this county.

During his comments, Barrow said that Bundy and the others began plotting the occupation in November 2015 when they met with Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward over the situation involving the ranchers. Barrow said Bundy delivered an ultimatum to Ward and promised to return with thousands.

When he began to speak to jurors, Marcus Mumford, Ammon Bundys attorney, said that the case is not about federal employees being kept from doing their jobs. Instead, he argued, its about the federal government.

Mumford described Bundy as a man protesting an overreaching federal government.

The issues are serious, Mumford said. One man is dead. Ammon has been labeled a terrorist and imprisoned for seven months.

Mumford went on to say that Bundy was trying to organize people, saying that Bundy is being prosecuted under the administration of a former community organizer for organizing his community.

If the months leading up to the opening statements were any indication, the trial could be an unusual spectacle. Debates over potential jurors turned into arguments over the Second Amendment. At multiple points during the hearings, people charged in the standoff interrupted with outbursts; last month, Ryan Bundy, who is acting as his own lawyer, argued with the judge over his belief that the Constitution doesnt allow the federal government to own land. (The Oregonian reported this summer that Bundy had tied bedsheets together in an escape attempt, but he disputed that, saying he was just practicing braiding rope.)

Bundy and his brother, along with their father, rancher Cliven Bundy, also face charges in Nevada stemming from an armed standoff there with federal agents in 2014. This standoff, along with the Malheur takeover, helped spotlight both a growing anti-government movement in the country as well as long-standing anger over federal land-management policies in the American West.

After his arrest, Ammon Bundy had said that he planned to use the criminal discovery process to obtain information and government records. He had also resisted the description of his group as armed occupiers, saying that they were educating people and trying to help them reach freedom.

Even as the trial got underway, the effect of the takeover could be felt in other ways. The Malheur refuges headquarters remained closed, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, while other parts of the grounds reopened for visitors.

The FBI brought agents to Malheur specifically trained in crimes relating to art and cultural property, because the refuge is the Burns Paiute Tribes historical home and houses thousands of tribal artifacts. Authorities examining the refuge following the takeover ended said they found guns, explosives and feces on the grounds.

Meanwhile, officials were still looking into the fatal shooting of Finicum, the occupier killed by Oregon state troopers in January. While the Malheur County district attorney said the deadly shooting was justified because the troopers feared for their lives, the incident prompted other investigations because authorities say FBI agents who were there fired shots and never reported them.

The FBI agents were part of the bureaus elite Hostage Rescue Team. Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson said investigators believed HRT agents fired two shots, neither of which hit Finicum. Nelson said his office was investigating this aspect of the shooting, as was the Justice Departments inspector general.

oregon
Attorneys for Marine Maj. Mark Thompson on Tuesday questioned the authenticity of a recorded interview that the government intends to use against the former U.S. Naval Academy instructor at his court-martial early next year.

Thompson, 47, has long sought to prove that he was unfairly convicted of sexual misconduct at a 2013 court-martial. The military launched a new investigation into Thompson after The Washington Post uncovered evidence that he was dishonest when he testified under oath to a Marine administrative board.

Thompson now faces new charges of lying to the board, encouraging a friend to lie for him at his court-martial  and lying to a Post reporter about his accusers.

The 45-minute audio recording of The Posts interview with Thompson, which the newspaper published online in July, is part of the militarys case set to begin in January.

At a preliminary hearing at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday, Thompsons attorneys asked a military judge to order The Post to turn over the original recording and contemporaneous notes from the reporter.

Our contention is that there are portions of the interview missing, Thompsons attorney Kevin B. McDermott said in the courtroom in the basement of Lejeune Hall. If the government intends to use my clients statements against him, we believe we should have access to it.

We have every right to determine whether the recording is accurate.

Marine Corps prosecutor, Maj. Babu Kaza, said The Post had already provided a digital recording of the interview, in addition to a statement from Post counsel, under penalty of perjury, that the recording produced in response to a government subpoena was complete and unaltered.

The notes are irrelevant, Kaza said, because the government does not intend to call reporter John Woodrow Cox as a witness.

McDermott suggested that there was a sizable gap in the recording at a critical moment in the interview, and that prosecutors should not be allowed to play the recording at Thompsons court-martial unless Cox testifies to its authenticity.

During their interview, Cox showed Thompson copies of text messages he uncovered that suggested Thompson was involved in a sexual relationship with a female midshipman. For nearly two minutes, the Marine said nothing, Cox wrote in the story that prompted the new investigation. He described him reading and rereading the text messages as he formulated a response.

The reporter repeatedly asked Thompson in the January interview why he lied to authorities about the last time he saw the woman. Thompson described the immense pressure he faced after another midshipman accused him of raping her.

I simply had to, Thompson said in the interview. When they were coming after me for 41 years  the sentence he could have faced if he had been convicted of rape  I cant begin to say, you know, how terrifying that is.

Kaza, the prosecutor, said there is no evidence that the recording was altered. The long pause in the recording was intentional on Thompsons part, Kaza said, because he had just been confronted with absolute hard evidence of his own lies. It is Mark Thompson spinning his gears to come up with more lies.

Military Judge Christopher Greer said he would resolve the dispute over the recording in a later ruling. When Thompsons attorney said he would also seek access to recordings and notes from other interviews The Post conducted with other possible witnesses, the judge cautioned: The Washington Post is not on trial.

Thompson, who has spent nearly 20 years in the Marine Corps, including service in Afghanistan, faces charges of making a false official statement and of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Military prosecutors have said he should be locked up for nearly three years, fined $200,000 and kicked out of the service.

In addition to the recorded interview with The Post, the governments case is expected to rely on testimony from Thompsons friend, Maj. Michael Pretus, who was a key witness for Thompson after then-Midshipman Sarah Stadler accused Thompson of sexual misconduct and a female classmate claimed that he had raped her.

Pretus, a decorated Iraq combat veteran, has since agreed to cooperate with prosecutors as part of an immunity deal. He told investigators that he lied on Thompsons behalf and also admitted to having a sexual threesome with Thompson and one of his accusers during a visit to Annapolis in 2011, according to a recorded interview played during a military court proceeding in May.

At Tuesdays hearing, Thompsons attorneys raised questions about Pretuss credibility as a witness. McDermott requested any medical records that would show Pretus had received alcohol dependency treatment.

There is good-faith basis to believe there are significant alcohol issues in this witnesss past and apparently ongoing, McDermott said.

Pretus declined to comment Tuesday on McDermotts assertion. He was removed from his position as an instructor at the Naval Academy after being implicated in the sexual misconduct scandal.

At Thompsons court-martial in 2013, it was Pretus who provided key testimony that contradicted the accusers version of events. Thompson was acquitted of the rape but convicted of five other charges related to sexual misconduct.

Pretus told investigators he had not wanted to testify during Thompsons court-martial but did so out of loyalty to his friend.

naval-academy
SANTA FE  The historic building currently housing Santa Fe County offices will be restored as part of a $38 million county administrative office complex project that also includes construction of a new building on the site of the old county courthouse.

County commissioners voted 4-0, with commissioner Robert Anaya absent, to approve space allocation for county departments at the respective sites about two blocks apart from each other in downtown Santa Fe and to do it for about $6 million more than the baseline estimate.

It might cost more, but it will be well worth it, said Commission Chairman Miguel Chavez, who added that restoration of whats already being called the old administration building was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Restoration of the nearly 80-year-old building on Grant Street will involve taking out an addition constructed in the 1970s to re-establish a small plaza area, or placita, on the north side of the building facing Johnson Street.

Nancy Meem Wirth, daughter of the renowned architect John Gaw Meem who designed the building, said recreating the placita would bring the building back to close to its original look and would enhance the work environment by filling the space with light and air. She said the building would then have even more appeal as a tourist attraction and as an example of a New Deal-era building. The building is already listed on the State Register of Cultural Properties and the National Register of Historic Places.

County Manager Katherine Miller said the county could afford to pay a little extra for the construction, in part thanks to savings realized by paying off bonds early. She said most of the project will be paid for through $25 million in bonds approved by the commission in December and $7 million in capital outlay appropriation from three years ago. A loan to complete the project could be considered later, she said.

The price tag could be trimmed by $1.5 million if the county doesnt go through with construction of an underground parking area, which Miller said was the staffs recommendation. She said she has been in discussions with the city about leasing underground parking space for the countys fleet at the nearby convention center. During previous public hearings on the project, members of the First Presbyterian Church, a landmark church that has existed in the neighborhood for 150 years, expressed concerns about how the property will be used and parking availability.

According to Mark Hogan of the citys Public Works Department, the next step is schematic design. Construction at the former county courthouse is scheduled to begin in late 2017 and be completed in 2019. Restoration of the old administrative building will begin after that and isnt due to be completed until 2020.
Ares Management is reportedly seeking to raise more than $45bn for its latest batch of funds.
Senior minister of the JD(U) government in Bihar, Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh said that they tried their best but the law took its own course.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Bihar government has asserted that they tried their best to oppose bail to don-turned-politician Mohammad Shahabuddin in the Rajiv Roshan murder case.

On the charges that the state government deliberately adopted legal laxity to facilitate bail to Shahabuddin, state Water Resources minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh said the state government put its best lawyers to oppose bail to Shahabuddin but unfortunately the former RJD MP managed his release.

advertisement

"Bihar government tried its best to ensure bail was not granted to Shahabuddin in Patna High Court. We put the best lawyers," said Lalan Singh.

The state government is facing heat for not moving the Supreme Court immediately for Shahabuddin's bail cancellation.

Speaking to the press on Monday, senior JD(U) leader Bijendra Yadav defended the the government and said, "Law will be taking its own course in the Shahabuddin case."

LAW AND ORDER

On the question of why the Bihar government did not impose Crime Control Act on Shahabuddin to ensure that he does not come out of the jail, Lalan said that according to legal provisions, CCA could not be imposed on a person who has been in jail for last 11 years.

"According to latest judgment of the Patna High Court, CCA cannot be imposed on a person who has been serving jail sentence for last 11 years", said Lalan Singh, Minister in Bihar government.

Lalan further asserted that the rule of law was prevailing in the state and would continue in future too.

"Shahabuddin is not important for us. His identity is nothing for us. We do not comment on person who go to jail and come out", said Lalan.

Also read: Dreaded Bahubali from Bihar: All you need to know about Shahabuddin, the don who made Siwan tremble



--- ENDS ---
Ranveer Singh came to pick up his girlfriend Deepika Padukone as she returned from Los Angeles.

By India Today Web Desk: Deepika Padukone, who has wrapped up the shooting of her Hollywood debut xXx Return of Xander Cage and was in the US for the film's post production, is back in town. And the 30-year-old actor was in for a surprise when her boyfriend Ranveer Singh was at the airport to welcome her.

ALSO READ: When Deepika Padukone kissed boyfriend Ranveer Singh at Madaari screening

advertisement

ALSO READ: Deepika and Ranveer are tying the knot early next year?

Clad in a denims, a white t-shirt and an overcoat, Deepika looked chic as ever. And soon as she stepped out of the airport, Ranveer was waiting for her in the car.

As the shutterbugs went berserk clicking away, Deepika sat in the car and whisked away with the love of her life.

Ranveer and Deepika make a dream couple not only on 70mm, but in real life too. With each public appearance, they have set major relationship goals for their fans.

Ranveer's public display of affection can give any guy serious trouble. Women love him, and men want to be him. Unlike his contemporaries, who keep their private life under wraps, the 31-year-old actor has always remained vocal about his love for Deepika. In fact, this has rubbed off onto his ladylove too.

On the work front, the two will be soon seen in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's period drama Padmavati.

(Photos: Yogen Shah)



--- ENDS ---
The accused officer is posted as a Tehsildar in Amritsar and is allegedly close to the Revenue Minister Bikramjit Singh Majithia.

By Manjeet Sehgal: Congress MLA Rana Gurjit Singh on Monday raised the issue of the sexual harassment of a soldier's wife in the assembly.

The accused officer is posted as a Tehsildar in Amritsar and is allegedly close to the Revenue Minister Bikramjit Singh Majithia.

The Congress member claimed the accused official used a Dubai SIM card to call soldier's wife and sought sexual favours on the pretext of providing her the property documents.

advertisement

The officer made nearly 30 phone calls to the victim who later informed her husband and relatives. The family members decided to teach a lesson to the corrupt officer .The victim recorded the telephonic conversation and invited him to home. He was allegedly beaten up by victim's relatives.

The Congress member claimed that the Amritsar police rather helping the victim,registered a case against the victim and relatives. No action was taken against the tehsildar who is believed to be close to Bikramjit Singh Majithia.

Majithia however said the tehsildar has been booked and the ADGP (Crime) was investigating the matter.

--- ENDS ---
Its not only the first time that the Innova nameplate features this safety suite but will also make its debut on a Toyota car sold in India

R Rohit Oct 29, 2022
Ohio State uniforms vs. Oklahoma

Unlike the home version of the Buckeyes' playoff uniforms, which have black numbers on the shoulders, Ohio State's white uniforms will have scarlet numbers. There's a Block O on the chest between the Big Ten logo and the shiny new Nike swoosh.

(Ohio State Instagram)

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Big games are special occasions.

Ohio State likes to dress to impress.

According to the program's SnapChat account, the Buckeyes will wear the same throwback uniforms it wore against Alabama in the 2014 Sugar Bowl in its big-time road contest at Oklahoma this weekend.

Ohio State wore these uniforms twice in 2015: In its season-opening win at Virginia last and its 42-13 win at Michigan in the first edition of Urban Meyer vs. Jim Harbaugh.

So the Buckeyes are 3-0 in games they wore this uniform combination.

Unlike the home version of the Buckeyes' playoff uniforms, which have black numbers on the shoulders, Ohio State's white uniforms will have scarlet numbers. There's a Block O on the chest between the Big Ten logo and the shiny new Nike swoosh.

Want a closer look at the uniforms? Check out the gallery below from Ohio State's win at Michigan last year:
In case you extended your Labor Day holiday and took all of last week off, Wells Fargo was fined $185M for practices that led to the creation of over 2 million accounts that consumers may not have known about. You can catch up on the details of that news here.

There have been a number of great pieces talking about different aspects of this scandal and if youre interested, Id encourage you to read both this Bloomberg piece from Matt Levine as well as this Snarketing post by Ron Shevlin on the Financial Brand.

In a nutshell, Wells Fargo employees appear to have been creating fake accounts as a way to meet sales quotas. This has some pretty big implications on the idea of cross-selling, which is why Im weighing in. To be clear, Ive never worked for Wells Fargo Bank, so I dont have intimate knowledge of their cross-selling practices. I do however, know about cross-selling at Financial Institutions, though, because:

I work for a company that builds software to help credit unions automatically cross-sell relevant products to new and existing members. Ive personally spoken with hundreds of credit unions and community banks about the topic of cross-selling, specifically, over the past year and a half.

So in light of my credentials on the topic, here are three takeaways that Ive gathered from Wells Fargo, in case youre on the fence about developing a cross-selling capability.

Start with Leads

One of the reasons cited by the Los Angeles City Attorney last year for the systemic increase in fake accounts at Wells Fargo had to do with foot traffic.

The quotas imposed by Wells Fargo on its employees are often not attainable because there simply are not enough customers who enter a branch on a daily basis for employees to meet their quotas through traditional means.

Marketings function is to drive people into branches and onto the website. Whether youre into the idea of building a sales culture or not, if you want to grow then your marketing needs to be able generate interest.

Organizations we work with have the most success opening new accounts when marketing is using data to drive people into the branches with relevant and timely offers. Here are two examples:

New Members  Create an onboarding and cross-selling process throughout the first year of the relationship. This gives you the second chance opportunity to continue to cross-sell all of the accounts your credit union pushes during account opening. Its also a great way to stay in front of new members with offers that are relevant to them based on the account(s) they already have open.

Closed Accounts  Find people that used to have specific products with you, like CDs or Auto Loans, but no longer do and offer them that same product using rate promotions. Sending out teaser rates to people who have already done business with you is a great way to get eyeballs on your website and warm bodies in your branches.

Once marketing is sufficiently bringing in leads on a steady basis, then youll need a way to be able to measure sales success.

Sales Closing Ratio vs Quotas

In the Wells Fargo case, the Los Angeles City Attorney went into further detail about quotas imposed on employees:

Wells Fargo has strict quotas regulating the number of daily solutions that its bankers must reach; these solutions include the opening of all new banking and credit card accounts. Managers constantly hound, berate, demean and threaten employees to meet these unreachable quotas. Managers often tell employees to do whatever it takes to reach their quotas. Employees who do not reach their quotas are often required to work hours beyond their typical work schedule without being compensated for that extra work time, and/or are threatened with termination.

Whenever a new internal policy is created, especially one around quotas, youre always going to want to understand the behaviors it incents. One emerging idea in sales, is an understanding of the distinctly different roles needed throughout the sales process.

We touched on the connection between marketing and sales in the first takeaway. But there are different ways your credit union may be handling sales.

If your front line staff is supposed to be making outbound phone calls every day, then a quota on the calls they make may be appropriate. If your front line staff is completely dependent on foot traffic to hit a quota, then a quota on daily closed deals will likely incentivize the wrong behavior, as it appears to have done at Wells Fargo.

One sales metric that were using ourselves at Onovative is the Sales Closing Ratio. This metric takes into account the number of opportunities that an employee has and measures their close rate against those opportunities. What we like about this metric is that it understands there are going to be ebbs and flows in sales opportunities, and measures employees based on their actual performance.

Now, by no means is the Sales Closing Ratio the end all, be all metric. Employees can still game this metric by closing sales with people who arent a good fit for a given product. Thats where monitoring what happens after the sale comes into play.

What Happens After Account Opening Matters, A lot

It turns out that looking at account activity, post sale, is really important. Heres how the Los Angeles City Attorney described one of the practices of opening fake accounts:

In the practice known at Wells Fargo as pinning, a Wells Fargo banker obtains a debit card number, and personally sets the PIN, often to 0000, without customer authorization. Pinning permits a banker to enroll a customer in online banking, for which the banker would receive a solution (sales credit). To bypass computer prompts requiring customer contact information, bankers impersonate the customer online, and input false generic email addresses such as 1234@wellsfargo.com, noname@wellsfargo.com, or none@wellsfargo.com to ensure that the transaction is completed, and that the customer remains unaware of the unauthorized activity.

In general, having a process for identifying corrupt behavior, is a great way to stop it before it gets out of control. With Wells Fargo, it looks like it could have saved a lot of heartache.

Everybody understands that your financial institution has nothing to gain by opening credit or debit cards for people who dont use them, let alone creating fake credit and debit card accounts.

Thats why its crucial to take activity after the sale into account, always.

With credit and debit cards, in particular, its easy to measure actual sales success by looking at the ratio of people who have activated their cards within a certain period of time lets say 14 days. Then, set a threshold number of monthly transactions and identify the ratio of members meeting your activity threshold vs. the number of members who are not meeting it.

If, after looking at your data, you find that you have either a low activation or low usage rate, then its time to start digging into your data to find out why. One way to do this is to look for trends such as:

The branches with low card activation rates

The employees with low card activation rates

The members with low card activation rates

Are there any common denominators?

Not only will this type of analysis help you identify and avoid the next fake account creation scandal, it will also let you know if youre actually achieving the goals that youve set out to achieve. Remember, the goal isnt to open X new credit cards that nobody uses. The goal is to open X new credit cards that generate Y in monthly revenue.

There could be any number of reasons for cards not being activated or used. And if cards are not being activated or used, then you will need to take action.

In this case, taking action could be as simple as sending out reminder communications. Or it could mean altering internal processes and incentives, changing overall marketing messaging or working to refine your lead generation process, altogether.

The Bottom Line

In order to cross-sell effectively, you need leads and a way to measure sales success both at the point of sale and after the sale. In short, you need good practices in both of these areas:

Leads  How good are you at identifying and generating opportunities?

Measurement  How well are you selling to people who ultimately use your products?

If you think that software can help you accomplish this task, Id love to talk with you.
NAFCU reacted to the $185 million fine of Wells Fargo by California and federal regulators for the widespread illegal practice of secretly opening unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts.

NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger said, Wells Fargos illegal sales practices are an egregious violation of consumer trust. To open more than 1.5 million likely unauthorized consumer deposit accounts and more than 500,000 credit card accounts is despicable, and its flat-out fraud. Someone needs to go to prison, Berger said. To put an end to this type of behavior, there has to be personal accountability. Consumers deserve better; our country deserves better. Did the banks not learn anything from the financial crisis they caused?

Berger added, Credit unions  not-for-profit, member-owned financial institutions  have their members best interests at heart. By contrast, Big Banks and Wall Street banks are clearly driven by their shareholders interests at any cost. The flagrant disregard exhibited by Wells Fargo for their customers trust confirms that.
The Scottish Government is pushing ahead with its work to improve the transparency of land ownership.

Ministers are seeking views on proposals for a register of controlling interests in land owners and tenants.

The consultation takes forward work in the Land Reform Act 2016 to ensure that communities, tenants and land owners know and understand more about who controls land owners and tenants of land in Scotland  including those from outside the UK.

The announcement follows the launch of the 2016/2017 Programme for Government earlier this week.

'Greater transparency'

Cabinet Secretary for Land Reform Roseanna Cunningham said improving transparency of land ownership in Scotland "goes to the very heart" of progressing land reform in Scotland.

"Today, we start to consult on proposals for a public register of controlling interests in land that will, when implemented, help to ensure that all the people of Scotland can benefit from one of our most vital assets," Miss Cunningham said.

She said the consultation continues with work to implement the Land Reform Act and is the next step in taking forward regulations.

"It will help us deal with policy, practical and legal dimensions in this complex and technical area," Miss Cunningham said.

"We want the register to result in greater transparency in relation to the individuals who control landowners and tenants in Scotland, but we also want to ensure that the requirements that we develop are proportionate and not unduly onerous on those who transact with land in Scotland.

"We also want to ensure that our proposals can apply to parties from outside the United Kingdom in order to deliver the transparency about controlling interests in land owners and tenants that the Scottish Government, and indeed the whole of the Scottish Parliament, wants to see.

"I encourage all interested parties to get involved to ensure that one of Scotlands most important natural assets is sustainably owned, used and developed in the best possible way," Miss Cunningham concluded.
Karachi : A Hindu woman was abducted from her home, then forcefully converted and a Pakistani cop sold her for Rupees 50,000. Her father was running here and there to get any help from others, but that fetched only the reward of physical abuses towards the poor girl! This is the real face of Pakistan Women, children and for minorities there is no human rights! Islamic clerics do generally frame the quantum of torture on Hindu women and fixed rates for sell of Hindu girls and women and the cops extend the support for them!

In another case of human rights abuse of religious minority in Pakistan, a Hindu girl was allegedly sold for Rs 50,000 by a police official in Sindh province. Three days after being sold, the girl was forcibly converted to Islam and married to one, Zafar Masoori.

The victim identified as Anila Bagri had been abducted some time ago in her hometown, Mirpur Mathelo of Ghotki district. She was later rescued by police but her ordeal just began here. One of the police officials, Sajjad Qazi held her back and did not allow her to go home.

The kidnapping of Hindu girls and forced conversion are not new in the Sindh province. Pakistans Hindu Council says four Hindu girls every month are forced to convert to Islam. A TV news (Video) program publicized in NDTV confirmed the unbelievable state of Hindu girls and women inside Pakistan.

When Anilas family came to know about her rescue from the abductors, they approached Mirpur Mathelo police. But, Sajjad Qazi refused to let go the girl. He demanded Rs 50,000 from the parents of Anila. This led to a protest by the locals.

But, soon Qazi handed Anila to one of his friends, Masoori in return for money. Local media reported the matter and built up pressure on the administration forcing an inquiry. Ghotki SSP Masood Bangesh was tasked to conduct the probe. Pending investigation, SSP suspended the accused police official.

Some of the Rights activists told in a discussion that looting the Hindu shops and business and kidnapping and converting Hindu girls into Muslim faith have been running Pakistan as a very prosperous industries.

Meanwhile, amidst recent reports of atrocities on minorities in Sindh, Hindus of the area have staged protests at several places.

Its a matter of routine in Pakistan to abduct a Hindu girl, rape her or force her to convert for Niqah. This has been the norm in the country since 1947. They think that Hindus should be driven out of Pakistan to make it a total Islamic nation and Anila Bagri was nothing but a part of the plot, said Rajkumar, a local.

Mirpur Mathelo was in news a few years ago but for the same reason. A Hindu girl, Rinkal Kumari was allegedly forcefully converted and forced to marry a local guy. Even in recent months, the town was in news for targeted killing of a Hindu boy, Satish Kumar.

Activist Ravi Dawani of All Pakistan Hindu Panchayat said, Forced conversion of Hindu girls in Pakistan is not new. Such incidents are not about Rinkals, Anjalis, Shobhas or Anilas. Its not about names. The point is how to find a solution to this problem.

There seems to be a conspiracy behind it. They want to disturb the Hindu community so that they move out from here. But, we will stay here. We appeal to the government to protect our children and our family, Dawani said.

Responding to the angry protests over frequent abduction of Hindu girls in Sindh, ruling PML Nawaz MP, Dr Ramesh Vankwani said, Such forced conversion of girls is against humanity. This must stop.

I am tired of raising voice; nothing happens here. Everyone knows what happens in Mirpur Mathelo. Girls are forced to convert and sold for Rs 50,000 to Rs one lakh. Only today, I got a High Court order for the release of one such girl, Vankwani said.

MIA MITHU FACTOR

In almost all the cases of abduction and forceful conversion of Hindu girls in Sindh, former PPP MP Pir Abdul Haq, better known as Mia Mithu has been the prime suspect in public opinion.

Even in the case of Anila Bagri, locals point finger at Mia Mithu, who is facing 117 cases of abduction and forced conversion of Hindu girls. Many call this former Pakistan parliamentarian a symbol of terror.

MINORITY HINDU AS TARGET

If mullah had their say, they would force even animals to accept Islam. Their bigotry is giving a bad name for Pakistan in the world, noted Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi was quoted as saying.

Deputy editor of Awami Awaz, Asad Chandiyo said, Forced conversion of Hindu girls is very common in Sindh. Earlier, only people like Mia Mithu did such things, now even police are doing it. Chances of getting justice for such victims are very bleak.

Source : Hindu Existence
Counted among the greatest authors to have ever lived, today is the 100th birth anniversary of master storyteller, Roald Dahl.

The author of books like Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would have been 100 today. Picture courtesy: Amazon.com| Facebook/ Cronicas de la Guerra Fria

By Mini Dixit: Today, September 13, marks the 100th birth anniversary of celebrated British novelist, Roald Dahl.

With words that are eternal and stories that refuse to lose their charm, Dahl's storytelling prowess was second to none. The name behind popular pieces of children fiction like Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl also served in United Kingdom's Royal Air Force during World War II.

advertisement

A literary genius in the true sense of the word, Dahl's books were replete with unexpected, ingenious and dark elements that gave birth to memorable characters like Bruce Bogtrotter, Willy Wonka, Mr Fox and magical beasts like Oompa Loompas--whose mention can now also be found in the Oxford English dictionary.





Picture courtesy: Twitter/@QuentinBlakeHQ

Also Read: The name's Bond, Ruskin Bond: 5 life lessons you should learn from the prolific writer

From restoring our faith in magic to inducing dark humour in our lives, we have a lot to thank Roald Dahl for.

Here's a look at eight quotes by the author, a mere glance at which will make your day--or #RoaldDahlDay.

1. "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men."

--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

2. "Those who dont believe in magic will never find it."

--The Minpins

Also Read: JK Rowling is releasing 3 new Harry Potter short stories this September



3. "A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."

--The Twits

4. "So please, oh please, we beg, we pray

Go throw your TV set away

And in its place you can install

A lovely bookshelf on the wall.."

--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory





5. "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog."

--Matilda

6. "I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice."

--Fantastic Mr Fox

7. "'We must hurry!' said Mr. Wonka. 'We have so much time and so little to do! No! Wait! Strike that! Reverse it!'"

--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory



8. "And don't worry about the bits you can't understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music."

--Matilda



--- ENDS ---
To access the premium content on InsuranceERM, you must first sign in to your account

Not registered? Take a free no obligation one-month trial.
Mr. Zanna Mohammed Ibrahim is the commissioner of police in Delta State, he resumed office in Delta on June 13, 2016. In this interview with Legit.ngs Austin Oyibode in Asaba, he tells how the police are working round the clock to keep Delta safe and ward off criminals.

Excerpts:

What can you say about the security situation in the state?

Well, the security situation in the state is within tolerable limit, because we have made lots of inroads and breakthroughs since my coming into office. I can comfortably tell you that we have been able to sustain the tempo that was initiated by my predecessor. We might have even surpassed what we met on ground. So, I can comfortably beat my chest and tell you that we are on top of the situation.

Inspector General of Police, Idris Ibrahim

Besides militancy in the coastal communities, there seems to be some level of peace in the state. How was your command able to achieve that feat?

Yes, the crime in Delta State borders on the issues of kidnapping, cultism, pipe line vandalism and pockets of high way robberies. It also touches clashes between cattle herdsmen and farmers.

As for kidnapping, I think we have made a lot of breakthroughs by the use of informants and electronics devices; there is what we call soft target which we use as third party to get at the kidnappers.

On the issue of cultist, we have not only followed them to where they operate, we have also created what we call the state anti-cultism unit which was not in place before I came and if I am to give you the statistics, I think as at the last count we arrested about a hundred of cultists.

Their cases have been prosecuted and their case files have been forwarded to the Department of Public Prosecution for legal advice. The remaining few are still in detention pending when their cases will be treated appropriately. Thats with cultism.

Related to the issue of pipeline vandalism, we are liaising with other security agencies like the navy, the army and the marine police to checkmate the activities of these vandals because most of the activities are at the riverine areas. So I think we are making a head way as well.

READ ALSO: Why a state of emergency should be declared in Nigeria

On the issue of cattle herdsmen, we wouldnt want our situation to degenerate to states like Nassarawa, Plateau, Zamfara and so on. We are trying as much as possible to involve the host communities so that in as much as they accept these people to come and graze their animals, the herdsmen too should respect the sensibilities of these host communities.

If per chance or by mistake, your animals enter into somebodys farm, they should come to the table and agree whether to pay compensation or to be forgiven out rightly. There must be conditions. I am also of the view that herdsmen should approach traditional rulers when they enter a land so that they will be better acquainted with the dos and the donts of those areas.

This is aimed at reducing incidences of conflicts. Another important issue too is the problem of child cattle rearers; you know children dont have much discretion, they may not be able to distinguish between a farm land and pure grass land. We are trying to discourage them from rearing cattle.

Zanna Mohammed Ibrahim, CP Delta State

What is your view on the crisis of the Niger Delta Avengers?

I think its not for me to talk much on that. All I can say is to advise them to have a rethink in the sense that it borders on our national interest and pride. So by the time you destroy pipelines, you are destroying the mainstay of the country and everyone will be affected not to talk of the pollution of the environment.

We are talking about investment; there is no investor who will like to invest his money where there is no security. I think the implication is that they are driving away investors. They should put patriotism ahead of any interest. Nationalism should take overriding cause over their personal interest.

They should go into dialogue; I think the government is ready to do that with them. They should bare their grievances to government diplomatically and map out ways to resolve the issue.

Bail is said to be free, but are your officers not violating the provision of free bail?

Not to my knowledge. But I have been preaching that bail is free, and my telephone number is in public domain, if somebody insists you pay money before bail, call me. If you dont have confidence on the District Police Officer or Area Commander, call me.

Actually, corruption is a crime, but I wouldnt want to look at it from one side. Holistically, both the police man and the person who gave the money are guilty of the offence. I will advise members of the public to refuse to give that money, then you report. Even if you dont have a phone to call me, go to a business centre and call. We have a complaint response unit, we have the Public Complaint Bureau under the PPROs office and we have DPOs, Area Commanders who are reliable officers and my humble self. So if you cannot do it at the local level, call me.

I can tell you that its only in the police that we have this internal mechanism of checkmating our people. Look at all the organizations in the country, there is none that goes all out to check mate the excesses of their people. We have the X squad; we have the anti-vice, the provost and visiting round officers on daily basis that go round to check the activities and misdemeanors of our men. I believe, with the attitudinal change of our men, we are going to fare better.

READ ALSO: Behold the party that will take over presidency in 2019

And there are also civilians who hang around police stations to negotiate bails. In essence they are helping crime thrive. Some lawyers are even involve, they call them charge and bail. Henceforth anybody connected with case like this will be arrested. Excesses of our men are reducing drastically; it means the sensitization is working. We hope that we will reap in refinement sooner enough.

The past Inspector General of Police has banned roads in Nigeria but police are still seen mounting road blocks and collecting money on the highway, what is your view on that?

Road block is illegal. Anybody who does that is engaged in illegal activity. Anywhere you see road block, call my attention to it. It is an order from the Inspector General. But that is not to say that if there is information, for instance that from point A armed robbers are on their way to point B, in order to get hold of them the police can mount what they call temporary road block to enable them do a kind of stop and search and after achieving the purpose, they dismantle it. It is not just done like that, it has to be done with permission. We have to call the commissioner of police for approval. If not mounting of road block is illegal.

Paraded suspected criminals in Delta

How is the police command relating with the state government and other security agents to ensure there is no loophole in the state?

We are all working towards the same goal which is promoting security and peace in the state. I want to assure you that if there is any relationship between sister agencies that is cordial, I think that of Delta state is the most outstanding.

Apart from the forum of Security Council meeting where we sit and discuss even before the commencement of such meetings we raise issues of concern and deliberate before the main sitting. We have a common voice which we present to government. Am sure you must have heard about the standoff that took place in Escravos, where the communities were agitating for almost a week.

I was informed by the Director of State Security Services. She called me and told me that there is need for us to go there. We had to arrange with Escravos for helicopter and we went. And our visit went a long way in dousing the tension. We went to the community and came back with good results.

Presently, there is an exercise that is taking place in the riverine areas. The Navy, the Army, the Air force, Police and SSS; its called Operation Crocodile Smile. We are all engaged in that. So the synergy is very well knitted and I want to assure you that it is going to continue.

With government, I think the administration of Senator Ifeanyi Okowa has been a very listening one. Despite the dwindling resources of the state, the government has been assisting us a great deal when it comes to logistics support; fueling of patrol vehicles, hotel accommodations for our visitors whenever we have VIPs in town. Like now that we are engaged in a recruitment exercise, all the people who came from Abuja for that exercise are housed by the state government for the number of days they will be here. The governor is helping us, even in the spate of a dwindling economy.

He has made our job very easy. All we are striving for is to reciprocate the gesture of government because it will be stupid of us to fail after all he has done for us. If we fail it means we are ungrateful.

Similarly, traditional rulers have been very helpful when it comes to information gathering and sharing. Vigilante groups are also a source of our strength. Youths organizations, especially the anti-cult groups, are one of us when it comes to fighting crime.

Heads of tertiary institutions have also been giving us tangible information. Generally, we are happy with the response of the generality of citizens in this state. It goes to show that they are satisfied with the services we are rendering to them.

READ ALSO: Has peace finally returned to the Niger Delta?

All we are trying to do is to police Delta state with a human face. The era of impunity is over. The era when people are afraid to give information is also over. The era of a complainant automatically becoming a suspect is also not acceptable. We want to attract the people to us so that we will be able to checkmate crime. We want to stop crime before it happens; that is what we are doing.

How do you plan to sustain this success story?

Security is business of everybody. We should not rest and say that now that we have peace we are okay, no. We should continue with what we are doing to sustain the tempo.

Information is very important. Like I said earlier on, these criminals are known to us. They are our children, our relations, brothers, sister we know them. If you see someone missing from home for three to four days and the next time you see him is with a brand new vehicle, you should be able to ask him how he made the money. Let us know the source of the income of our youths.

Lets not hobnob with criminals; dont hail criminals, expose them. The governor has assented to two bills now, anti-kidnapping and anti-cultism laws which now make the punishments more stringent because both your properties will be confiscated and you will serve a life term imprisonment.

I think the government has done their bit, it lies now with the public to do their bit by providing information. It is always said if you see something say something. Information can only be of value if shared. If you are afraid of whom you are sharing it with, look for credible people. I believe that members of the public should do their own bit and should not be left for the police alone.

There has been clamour for state police, do you subscribe to establishment of state police?

I am a federal police officer and wouldnt want to relegate myself and become a local sheriff. You are a paramount ruler and you want to become a ward head? The country has the kind of police that it wants to have. If you want a vibrant and effective policing, you can have it. If you pump in resources you can have it.

Why am I saying this? Some of us have gone on foreign missions and came back with commendations, awards, souvenirs and encomiums and name it. So why do we succeed outside and come back to our country and fail? It is because of the lip service we are paying to security. I believe if you empower the Nigeria police force, you will have great change. I believe the issue of state police does not even arise; can the states afford it.

With due respect, some states do not even know how to pay salaries so how are such states going to fare. So when you empower people and you dont pay them, it will be a banana republic. The country is not yet ripe for a state police.

All that should be done is for the government to lay more emphasis on community policing which we are introducing in collaboration with communities so that together we can solve our security problems. I believe if we empower the local police force, there will be no need for the clamour for state police

Source: Legit.ng
By India Today Web Desk: Bahu Humari Rajni_Kant's lead actress Ridhima Pandit is reportedly in relationship with Hrithik's cousin and music composer Rajesh Roshan's son Eshaan Roshan.

The duo are said to be very close and despite hectic schedule take out time to meet often. According to a source, they respect each other's career choices.

Also read: Ridhima Pandit excited to turn vamp on TV

advertisement

While Ridhima is playing the lead role of Rajni in Bahu Humari..., Eshaan is working on Sanjay Gupta's Kaabil as an assistant director.



Just us ???????? A photo posted by Ridhima A.K.A Rajni (@ridhimapandit) on Aug 28, 2016 at 11:05pm PDT

Days like these ?? with my fav boy @eshaanroshan A photo posted by Ridhima A.K.A Rajni (@ridhimapandit) on Jun 30, 2016 at 7:08am PDT

On Eshaan's birthday recently, Ridhima posted this sweet message. "Words come to me quite easily, every year on this very day and that is because it is a very very special day for me.. Whichever part of the world I am, every 17th of May I will celebrate it with more excitement and much more enthusiasm cause your special day belongs to me as much as it does to you. Because You are my person. Not only in need but the one who keeps me grounded and at the same time makes me believe nothing is impossible. Thank you for being you. And thank you for helping me be a better version of me. Here's to many more Birthdays together? Happy Birthday Esh..(sic)."

--- ENDS ---
By Mustafa Shaikh: The Sahyadri Krida Mandal in Tilak Nagar is celebrating Ganesh festival this year with Kung Fu Panda as their theme. It has a list of celebrities who come promote their films and serials. There are politician from across parties who pay darshan at the Sahyadri mandal infamous for its association with arrested underworld don Chhota Rajan. According to organisers Congress leaders like Sanjay Nirupam and Charansingh Sapra visited the mandal on Monday. Among the celeb list was Sonu Sood.

advertisement

Sahyadri Mandal has been trying to shake off the tag that Rajan is associated with it. Organisers also say that Rajan or his family members are not associated with the mandal. "This year were are celebrating 40th year of our mandal. Each mandal has its own controversies what we try to achieve is appreciation of the worshippers. To attract the youngsters this year we have kept Panda as the theme," said Rahul Walanj, president of Sahyadri Krida Mandal.

If locals are to believed, Rajan's close family like his wife and sisters still visit the mandal for darshan. "The mandal is not associated with Rajan family. Just that he grew up in Tilak Nagar area. We have been celebrating the festival from 1976 and we spend around Rs25 lakh on it every year. More than 100 members of the mandal are involved in organising the festival and we prepare for it for over two months," added Walunj.

--- ENDS ---
- Following the fresh accusations against Patience Jonathan over $20m Nigerians commence arguing whether Buhari government should probe his predecessor and his wife

- While some of them believe that Buhari should probe everyone who is found to be corrupt, other say that its not a big deal, supposing that incumbent leader is spending more money

Dame Patience and Goodluck Jonathan

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) might be investigating the former First Lady Patience Jonathan over $20m the total amount so far traced to her in investigations into a money laundering case.

Ex-presidents wife admitted having the account after it was reportedly frozen by the anti-graft agency in July 2016 after a money laundering case against Waripamowei Dudafa, Jonathans aide.

The EFCC source recently disclosed that the former first lady wasn't the initial target of the probe but after her admittance to owning the accounts, she has got questions to answer.

READ ALSO: Patience Jonathan linked to $20m financial scandal

The Punch has asked some prominent Nigerians should FG probe ex-president Jonathan and his wife Patience over $20m.

Yusuf Ali (Senior Advocate of Nigeria) said: Of course, the government can probe anybody. For me, probing the former president, Goodluck Jonathan, and his wife, Patience, is not a big deal. If they are able to defend themselves, it is okay. Otherwise, the law should take its course. Anytime the government is suspicious of an individual, the person involved should be invited for questioning.

Osita Ogbu (Professor of Law/Director, Centre for Advancement of Democracy & Rule of Law): Besides the millions of dollar that have been traced to Patience Jonathan, the Federal Government has the power to investigate anybody. A mere suspicion is enough to probe Mrs. Jonathan just like any other person much less the fact that a huge amount of money has been traced to her.

The foreign account saga means that Jonathan and his wife should be probed. Mrs. Jonathan was promoted to the position of permanent secretary during the Jonathan administration. That was the highest office she held. How much did all her salaries amount to? Where could the money have come from? Was her wealth declared as of when her husband was elected as President?

Auwal Musa (Board Chairman, Amnesty International, Nigeria) shares his views: Anybody caught with suspicious money should be able to explain the source of the money. In this, it is coincidental that the money belongs to Mrs. Jonathan.

What is important now is to investigate the sources of the money. There is the need for a thorough investigation to know the sources of the money and when it was lodged in the accounts. If the wife of the former president is able to convince the law enforcement agencies that the money was genuinely earned, there is no issue about it.

READ ALSO: $15m: Patience Jonathans houseboy, driver arrested by EFCC

Nigerians through different social media also reacted to probable probe of former president and his wife:

Source: Legit.ng
- Arik Air shut down all the operations in Nigeria and West Africa

- The airline owes massive debts to all its suppliers of fuel

- Additionally, the insurers of the airline in Europe and elsewhere had withdrawn insurance cover from the airline making it to stop flight operations

Arik passengers are now stranded across Nigeria

Arik Air, West-Africas leading airline, has just confirmed that it is suspending flight operation due to its inability to immediately renew its aircraft insurance, Vanguard reports.

The airline in a statement by its spokesman, Adebanji Ola said: Arik Air, West and Central Africas largest airline has alerted all air travelers of a temporary disruption to its operations, pending approval of aircraft documentation related to insurance renewal. The airline said that it was working around the clock to resolve the necessary documentation, which has been a challenge due to the long weekend holidays due to Ed al Adha.

This situation is likely to continue for the next few days until such time that NAICOM (National Insurance Commission) approves a waiver on a priority basis for the new insurance company to renew the policy.

The Group CEO has apologised and appealed (on behalf of the airline) for the understanding of passengers while it works diligently to resume normal operations at the earliest.

According to Sahara Reporters, Arik Air, stopped its operations as its fuel suppliers and Insurers have withdrawn their services.

Hundreds of air passengers, who booked on Nigerian Arik airline, are now stranded across Nigeria due to the inability of the airline to fly them to their destinations.

READ ALSO: Recession: Disquiet in aviation sector as workers panic over imminent job loss

Massive debts of the airline to major oil marketers who regularly supply aviation fuel are partially responsible for the current situation of the airline.

The airline has massive debts to key oil traders who supply aviation fuel, that are partially responsible for current state of the affairs of the Arik.

A source close to the oil traders revealed that the airline now owes at least N3 billion to all its contractors, a situation, which has made them not to supply Jet A1 to the airline.

However, Legit.ng editors were able to book tickets from Abuja to Calabar.

Nigerians immediately reacted to the news:

Arik Air was West-Africas leading airline operating a domestic, regional and international flight network. It operates mainly from two hubs at Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos and Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. Arik Air's head office is the Arik Air Aviation Center on the grounds of Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Ikeja, Lagos state.

READ ALSO: Panic at Lagos airport as gunshot leaves senators orderly, woman injured

ArikAir is the third airline to shut down flight operations in Nigeria in the last three weeks. First Nation airways, then Aero Contractors, and then Arik Air suspended operations.

Source: Legit.ng
By PTI: Chandrapur (Maha), Sep 13 (PTI) Children from the districts various schools, including orphanages and physically challenged schools, would be taken on a free visit to the famous Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve here on September 17, to mark the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Maharashtra Minister for Finance, Planning and Forests Sudhir Munganitwar has initiated the drive for awareness about forests and wildlife among the school children in Chandrapur.

advertisement

Around 6,000 children of classes IV to X, from all zilla parishad schools, ashram schools and schools for physically disabled children and orphanages in rural and remote parts of the district, would be able to enjoy the free visit to the tiger reserve, a press release said.

The students would be picked up from their respective schools on the scheduled day and dropped back after their visit to the tiger reserve, it added.

Mungantiwar said there is a need to create awareness among children about the importance of forests, wildlife and its conservation to make the world a better place for future generations.

Chief Conservator of Forests and Field Director of Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve G P Garad said elaborate arrangements are being made to make the programme a success. PTI CORR GK AAR SNK

--- ENDS ---
Captain Amarinder said Parrikar had no right or authority to order the service chiefs to accept what is not acceptable to them.

By Manjeet Sehgal: Taking a strong exception to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar asking the service chiefs to implement the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations despite their genuine objections, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Captain Amarinder Singh, who is himself a former Army officer, asked him to stand by the Defence services and not the babus in the government, who not only know nothing about the Defence services, but also seem to be congenitally hostile towards the services.

advertisement

WHAT CAPTAIN AMARINDER SAID

Captain Amarinder said Parrikar had no right or authority to order the service chiefs to accept what is not acceptable to them. He said, he had once again shown his inability to understand the services. "You can order them in operational matters and they will do as ordered, but on what grounds can you order them to accept the 7th Pay Commission recommendations when these are prejudicially biased against them?" he asked, while adding, "is this Nazi Germany and are you Hitler to issue such a dictatorial order?"

Captain Amarinder Singh said, the three chiefs are reflecting the views of each and every soldier in uniform or out of it. "Instead of you standing by your Defence services, you are toeing the line set by your babus", he told the minister while asking, "do you realise the implications of your attitude?"

"You have a highly disciplined force, perhaps the only pillar in our democracy that works without ever commenting or objecting", he observed, while adding, "do you want a disgruntled service?" He said, "if the services are to lose their standing by placing them below the babus and the police, that is exactly what you will have, and then God help our country with a belligerent China and Pakistan around. Will you then lead your babus into the battle?"

"LOOK BEYOND BABUS, STAND BY THE FORCES"

He asked Parrikar to look beyond the babus and stand by the forces. "Demoralising them will affect the security of our nation", he warned, while asking him to either stand by the services or quit, as the PM can perhaps find another Defence Minister and a better one.

Captain Amarinder also sought Prime Minister's personal intervention and asked him to look beyond those who lack foresight. "This is a matter of national security. The three chiefs are absolutely correct in their stand. Their officers and men expect nothing less from them. They have complete admiration and total support of the nation", he asserted.

--- ENDS ---
The last Saturday in August, three days after the Colombian government and a rebel army signed a peace accord to end a 52-year war, a yellow taxi coasted through Cartagena on its way to the airport.

To the left of the taxi, the Caribbean glittered and sent up spray. To the right rose a spectacle: a dozen kites dancing magically in mid-air. The kite-flyers stood atop the old walls of a great fort that once defended Cartagena. They read the wind like mariners. Their kites painted the sky.

The irony in that peaceful moment struck me.

Colombia owns a bloody history. In the last five decades, hostilities in this countrys open wound of a civil war took 220,000 lives, left many times that number maimed and traumatized, and created 5 million refugees in a nation of 60 million.

The blood soaks even deeper into Colombian history. On the very walls where Colombian kids and kids-at-heart tugged the strings of little paper playthings in the sky, centuries of cannon blasts defended Cartagena from pirates and invading armies. Smoke, steel, and blood are the holy trinity of the city.

The Spanish settled Cartagena in 1533, just 41 years after Columbus accidentally discovered the Americas as he sought the spice-rich East Indies. (Cartagena to this day bears the official name Cartagena de Indias.) Original settlers came from Cartagena, Spain, itself named for Carthage, the city in northern Africa that Rome famously destroyed, salting the earth after burning it.

Cartagena guarded the northern tip of a vast new continent, overlooking sea routes between South America, Cuba, and Europe.

South American gold brought pirates and armies in waves. Early after its founding, Cartagena survived a visit from the French corsair Jean-Francois Roberval, who took away everything he could load on his ships. Cartagena then built walls and put cannon on top of them. Another French pirate, Martin Cote, pillaged the city anyway.

Then came the English. First, Sir John Hawkins attacked Cartagena in 1568. By now, however, the city had some experience at fighting back, and Hawkins sailed away without plunder. Sir Francis Drake did better. The Englishman took the city one morning in 1586. Wanting booty for Queen Elizabeths coffers, he began burning houses to extract ransom. He reached 200, then discovered a letter from Spanish officials in the city that referred to him as a pirate. Enraged, Drake burned much more, including the citys cathedral, then sailed away with jewels, gold, and the citys bells.

In the 1600s and 1700s the slave trade brought its stain. The Spanish Inquisition set up practice too, brutally mistreating those without utter subservience to the crown and the Catholic faith.

In 1669, Morgan the Pirate and a scurvy crew attacked the port, lustful for gold from the old Inca Empire in Peru that offloaded in Cartagena. Morgan didnt capture the city, but he added fresh pages to its bloody history.

In 1741, the British navy crossed the Atlantic with a vengeance. The War of Jenkins Ear offered England a trumped-up excuse to grab wealth and land from arch-rival Spain.

King George II dispatched to Cartagena the largest fleet in the history of European warfare (until D-Day in 1944), a flotilla dwarfing even the ill-fated Spanish Armada of 1585. The Kings 192 ships and 30,000 men attacked a city with about 3,000 defenders, these led by a one-armed, one-handed, one-eyed Spanish officer. Miraculously, Cartagena defeated the British, an event celebrated today as a national holiday in Colombia. (It was not lost on leaders in English colonies from Georgia to Massachusetts that the invincible British navy had been vanquished. Sparks of the American Revolution 35 years later began to burn at Cartagena.)

With Colombias independence in 1810, Cartagenas own bloody history settled a bit, but violence flared with a vengeance in other parts of the new nation. Colombias history of human horrors matches just about any in the New World. Internal squabbles, brief wars against neighboring nations, sociopolitical struggles (a period from 1948-1958 is simply called La Violencia), gang and paramilitary actions, then drug cartel fighting all left gruesome memories through the decades.

As a recent backdrop stood the five-decade war with FARC, the acronym for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The leftist guerilla army rose to arms in the poorer parts of Colombia in reaction to unequal divisions of wealth and property.

The war cost Colombia much more than nearly 100 human deaths every week for 52 years. It sent millions of refugees streaming from endangered homes and farms into the relative safety of cities, straining services and social systems. The war also fueled the growth of the cocaine trade, with the evils it inflicted on citizens in Colombia and other nations. And leaders had a hard time actually leading during decades of warfarehow effective can any kind of economic or social planning be when the government doesnt control certain parts of the country? How can you build a road from here to there, or a bridge, or send traffic down a river?

Atrocities perpetrated by guerillas, the government, and marauding paramilitary groups have given Colombia a sort of national PTSD. Many people live without much confidence in the nation, shaking their heads in despair over potential solutions. If you want to see what 50 years of war does to a culture, walk down a street in Bogota and simply say good morning, buenos dias. People stare in suspicion, or simply pass like zombies.

Now, after four long years of negotiations in Havana, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the head of FARC, Rodrigo Londono Echeverri, who goes by the nom de guerre Timochenko, have signed an agreement to end the Western Hemispheres last, and only, war.

Colombians will vote on the accord October 2 in a plebiscite. A Si for peace, a No to reject the accord. Peace has a chance, though powerful forces want a no vote. They feel too many rebels who committed crimes and atrocities will receive clemency, forgiveness instead of punishment. The long-sought peace is no sure thing.

Personally, from the windows of a taxi passing through Cartagena, a city with a history written in blood, its hard to see how peace cant be better for Colombia than the pains and terrors of the past half century.

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine  for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell, William Tecumseh Sherman once famously wrote. Alabama-born writer Walker Percy added that Peace is only better than war when its not hell too.

True enough, on both counts. War has been terrible, in Cartagena and Colombia. And peace in Colombia has really only been low-grade warfare for a long time. Still, those graceful kites dancing over the walls of an obsolete fort looked like flags of a new day, a new time for Colombia. Like my fellow Colombians, Im sending my own fragile prayers for peace up into the blue.

Photo: Jairo Paez, CC-BY

Charles McNair is Pastes Books Editor emeritus. He served the magazine as writer, critic and editor from 2005-2015.
Romes been around a while, and its got the ruins to prove it. The Italian metropolis is not merely one of the oldest cities on the European continent; it has served as the center of the Roman Empire, the core of the Papacy and the capital of Italy. The Eternal City boasts so many layers of history (ancient temples and catacombs), art (Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces) and culture (Spanish Steps and Catholic artifacts) that it could take an eternity to experience it all. Add chaotic traffic, heaps of pasta and lots of walking, and you might feel more overwhelmed than charmed by the Italys largest city. A good plan allows you to enjoy the best of Rome without feeling like youre about to be fed to the lions.

There are few more iconic structures in Western Civilization than Romes Colosseum, which dates from 72 AD. Sure, its a thrill to see the gargantuan arches up close, but a tour of the amphitheater also provides insight into Romes heyday. Consider springing for a guide, audio tour or book that will explain the significance of what youre seeing, whether its the underground tunnels that housed gladiators and animals or the tiered seating that enforced Romes class system.

For a double dose of Ancient Rome, combine the Colosseum with a walk around the Roman Forum. If you can ignore the selfie sticks and tour groups, you can almost imagine what it was like to be in downtown Rome 2,000 years ago. Stone paths wind around the ruins of government buildings, the home of the vestal virgins and the grave of Julius Caesar. You can also see some of Romes ancient basilicas, which were open courts that later became Catholic churches.

Speaking of basilicas, St. Peters (pictured at top) might be the grandest of them all. In terms of size and splendor, its a wow experience. Entrance to the main church is free and allows you to take in the delicate beauty of Michelangelos Pieta, stand on the spot where Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and pay your respects to former popes (including John Paul II). The vantage point from atop Michelangelos dome provides a killer view of Rome, especially when the afternoon sun sets the citys honey-colored buildings ablaze.

If you were only going to visit one museum in all of Europe, a great case could be made for this one, which displays centuries of artistic treasures collected and commissioned by the Catholic Church. The Vatican Museums have a little something for everyone, from Etruscan chariots to Egyptian mummies, from ancient sculpture to the Renaissance frescoes they helped inspire. And theres no better finale than Michelangelos passionate decoration of the Sistine Chapel.

On paper, the Borgheses system is severe: reservations requested, timed ticket entry and you only get two hours. In practice, however, the arrangement allows for a pleasant museum experience with a small group who are not merely on a scavenger hunt to collect masterpieces on their iPhones. The mansion is stunning, but the obvious highlight is its collection of Berninis dramatic statues. Stare and wonder how this baroque artist forged such delicate, lifelike movement out of blocks of hard marble.

Feeling weighed down by centuries of art and history? Take a walk through this posh neighborhood. This is where Romans come for their nightly passeggiata, or evening stroll. Amble down the Via del Corso, window shop and detour past the Spanish Steps or Trevi Fountain (dont forget your coins). When its time for dinner, savvy travelers know to find better foodand pricesoff the main drag. Try Roman specialties at Hostaria Romana, five minutes from Trevi.

The diametric opposite of the Tridente, Trastevere is working Rome. Located west of the Tiber River (and most headline attractions), the neighborhood carries armloads of ambiance. Its becoming a little touristy, but you can still get lost in the twisty back lanes, where clotheslines tangle and locals go about their daily routines. Great food abounds at local pizzerias and homey restaurants, such as Trattoria da Lucia.

The best-preserved building from Ancient Rome still has its dome, an architectural feat that mystified visitors for centuries, then inspired the masters of the Renaissance. This temple was originally dedicated to all of the Roman gods, but when the empire converted to Christianity, the Pantheon did too. Fans of art and architecture should wander to other nearby churches. You might find a feast of Caravaggios (San Luigi dei Francesi) or a minor Michelangelo (Santa Maria sopra Minerva).

All roads lead to Rome, and this was one of thema sturdy stone highway created in 312 B.C. to allow quicker passage for troops. A portion of this historic roadway closest to Rome was preserved, and you can walk and bike down the ancient road (though thats best on Sundays, when its closed to motor traffic). Along the way, stop and tour some of Romes famous catacombs. The skeletons have been removed, but chambers, frescoes and relics from the early days of Christianity remain.

This hardscrabble neighborhood is becoming a hipster haven, although locals are trying to prevent Testaccio from straying too far from its working-class roots. For ages, this gritty area was home to Romes butchers, a legacy that lives on in the Testaccio restaurants that focus on offal dishes. Sample oxtail or marrow at the family-run Flavio Al Velavevodetto, where dining rooms are set into layers of underground ruins. Afterward, work off the meal at the neighborhood haunts. Stroll over to indie music pub Conte Staccio (bands seven nights a week, no cover) or dance with locals and expats at Planet Roma (previously known as Alpheus).

Bryan Wawzenek lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he writes about travel and music.
One of Triple Js biggest priorities is  and has always been  making space for, pushing forward, and celebrating Australias incredible young Indigenous artists, particularly in the Hottest 100 countdown.

But this leads to a spanner in the works; many Indigenous people regard January 26th as Invasion Day. Its not a day of celebration, but a day of mourning, which brings us to the news that its looking very much like Triple J will move the date of the much-loved musical countdown due to increasing public sentiment that its disrespectful to First Nations people to celebrate during some of our countrys darkest hours.

Australia Day is held on 26th of January because its the date that the first colony was established after the First Fleet arrived. Most white Aussies view this date as the day the country we see before us now started. But for Indigenous Australians, its the day that the violent assault on its people and culture began.

The Invasion Day / Australia Day dichotomy still remains a hot topic of conversation. Invasion Day rallies draw thousands of people Australia-wide, who march to protests the fact that Aussies celebrate the success of the British colonists at the expense of the lives of the Aboriginal people.

Dont get us wrong  a day for national morale is essential and most countries have one, but to hold ours on a day of mourning for First Nation people is understandably insensitive. Especially so when Aboriginal people still arent recognised in the Constitution, let alone been offered a treaty of any kind by either major party of the Australian government.

So, now that its looking increasingly likely that Triple J will change of date for the Hottest 100, what could this actually achieve?

Firstly, it would be established as an important act of solidarity with not only the aforementioned Aboriginal musicians who the station regularly plays and praises the achievements of, but also all Indigenous Australians.

It would say We value your mourning over a music countdown that could realistically happen any other day. It would say, We are truly sorry, and we are making efforts to put ourselves second to show this.

Secondly, it would be a significant marker of a change in rhetoric for younger generations.

Lets be honest with each other here: whatever criticisms you may have, Triple J is a cornerstone of Aussie culture.

Apart from barbecuing meat, the Hottest 100 is possibly the most Strayan cultural phenomenon we have. Its supportive of local artists, its a celebration of everything we hold dear about Aussie music, and having the countdown playing in the background of Australia Day celebrations is a fundamental part of our national day for so many.

As time progresses, the more empathetic and open-minded the youth of the world become; the internet means we have a world of information at our fingertips, and we can read about others lived experiences that we wouldnt ever encounter in terms of bigotry; racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and much more.

But, while we are slowly but surely becoming more compassionate and understanding of minority issues and the major damage caused by colonisation, there are many who continue to deny Indigenous issues still exist.

Despite the current devastating rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody, or 14-year-old Aboriginal boy Elijah Doughty being killed in Kargoorlie earlier this month, many disregard these issues with one or more of the following statements: Its in the past. Aboriginal people need to get over it. *I* didnt do anything  why should I have to say sorry?

The denial of these issues often (not always, but often) does not come from a place of malice or hatred, but learned and unquestioned acceptance of ideas from past generations, and/or a lack of awareness. As Adelaide FC player Eddie Betts said after the racist incident towards him during a recent AFL game: This is all about education.

While it may seem trivial to some, Triple J changing the date of its widely-adored Hottest 100 segment would be a significant opportunity for increased education, empathy and solidarity, and could help many young Aussies realise this is a bloody big deal. It might help someone with instilled prejudice take the time to research and learn about the issues First Nations people experience. It has the ability to lessen institutionalised prejudice. It has the potential to change minds.

It wouldnt have to be cancelled or downplayed to achieve this, it simply has to be moved to another day  and, as we said, that now seems like its a very plausible prospect.

Wed still have everything we love about the Hottest 100  the music, the national morale, the community spirit, the bringing together of loved ones  just without contributing to a day of mourning.

Change has gotta start somewhere, and this could be a very real catalyst for not only major political movement on Indigenous issues, but also the everyday treatment of a community still plagued by colonist pressures 200 years on.

Photo: Matt & Alex / Triple J.
Renault India has launched extended warranty options on all their cars on sale in the country. Renaults Anytime Warranty Plan allows owners of Renault cars and SUVs to avail of an extended warranty by 1 year/20,000 kms, starting from the third year until the seventh year of ownership.

However, there is a cap of 1 lakh kms under this scheme. This extended 7 year warranty is on all models in the company lineup except for the Kwid which comes in with a 4 year/1 lakh km standard warranty.

Renaults Anytime Warranty Plan offers owners the chance to extend standard warranty to cover the vehicle for a period of 7 years or upto 1 lakh kms. This benefit is offered to customers if their current standard warranty pack has expired or if the car has not been serviced at the companys authorized service stations.

The warranty covers all major components which include the engine, gearbox, ECM and starter besides the alternator, differential, AC compressor and steering box. Roadside assistance is also a part of this warranty package. This extended warranty covers all Renault vehicles which include the Triber, Lodgy, Duster, Captur and also the Koleos, Fluence and Pulse.

For those cars serviced at the companys authorized service centers, prices of the Anytime Warranty Plans range from Rs.5,775 for the 3rd year for the Renault Kwid going up to Rs.21,550 for the 7th year for the Renault Lodgy. Detailed price list can be seen in the images in this post.

In the case of vehicles that have been serviced at third party garages, these prices range from Rs. 8,390. In the case of the Koleos, Fluence and Pulse which have been discontinued from the company lineup, the extended warranty pack (for existing owners) is priced from Rs. 7,820 to Rs. 94,810 and will be as per model, year of coverage and service history.

Along with the Anytime Warranty Plan, Renault India is also offering cash discounts on the Renault Duster, Kwid and Captur through the month of November 2019. Buyers of the Duster can avail benefits upto Rs.1.25 lakhs in addition to loyalty bonus of Rs.10,000 and Rs.20,000 as exchange.

The Kwid also comes in with loyalty benefits upto Rs.50,000 on select stocks along with a 4 year/1 lakh km warranty while the Renault Captur SUV gets the highest discount of Rs.3 lakhs along with a corporate discount of Rs.5,000.
Fire, arson, violence, public agitation and arrests followed in both states as the Supreme Court ordered for release of 12,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu.

This row over sharing of water has left one dead in police firing while curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits. Areas under curfew include Rajgopal Nagar, Kamakshipalya, Vijaynagar, Byatarayanpura Kengeri, Magadi Road, Rajajinagar, RR Nagara, KP Agrahara Chandra layout, Yeshwanathapura, Mahalakshmi layout, Peenya, RMC Yard, Nandini Layout and Jnanabharathi.

In spite of curfew, there were many incidents reported of violence. Hundreds of vehicles were set on fire. In one incident, a private bus service operators fleet of 30 buses were set ablaze, just because the buses carried a TN registration number plate. Many TN registered cars, trucks were also torched by angry mob.

On the other hand, road blocks between the states has disrupted supply chains. It is believed that each state (Tamil Nadu and Karnataka) is losing property worth INR 500 crore a day.

#CauveryViolence

India Today? reporter and cameraman roughed up by goons for filming protests in Karnataka #ITVideo pic.twitter.com/gNHtNWX50p  IndiaTodayFLASH (@IndiaTodayFLASH) September 13, 2016

Violence broke out as the decades old dispute continued between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the sharing of water from river Cauvery. This was further aggravated after the Supreme Court turned down Karnatakas plea to stop the release of water to Tamil Nadu. This resulted in riots which broke out unabated. 200 people have been arrested in Bengaluru while protesters in Tamil Nadu attached the Kannadiga people and businesses in retaliation.

Karnataka has sought reduction in quantum of water to be released and reduction in number of days from 10 days to 6 days as ordered by the court.
Toyota, the Japanese automaker, is poised to launch the Daihatsu brand in India. Owning a majority stake in the company, Toyota is aiming at the entry-level hatchback segment which is noted for its high demand in India.

Toyota has managed to see a huge success in the INR 15+ lakh segment with the new Innova Crysta MPV and the Camry hybrid, but the same is not true for their entry level cars  Etios and Etios Liva.

With Toyota now holding a controlling stake in Daihatsu, launching cars from Daihatsu in India will be easier than before (when Toyota was not holding a controlling stake).

Daihatsu currently sells 5 small cars which include Daihatsu Ayla, Daihatsu Bee, Daihatsu Copen, Daihatsu Cuore and Daihatsu Mira. Each of these are offered with engines rated from 550cc to 1.0 litre. It is yet to be ascertained which of these models will be launched in India, but all of them seem to be value for money propositions.

Initially, Toyota will sell them under the Toyota brand and not under Daihatsu, because it will take time to promote a new brand in the market. It will not only be easier to sell cars under Toyota nameplate, but it will also save Toyota huge amounts in investing for setup of dealerships and service centers for Daihatsu.

A formal announcement is expected to be made in January 2017, which is when Toyota will also reveal what are the cars which they plan to launch in the first phase. As per an insider, the company plans to launch cars under INR 10 lakh range.

One of the first cars to be launched will be the new generation Agya / Alya, which is due for launch in Indonesia in 2019. This car will arrive in India in 2020 with BSVI emission norms.

via Economic Times
Taking a Benelli TNT 899 out for a ride requires a leash in the mind, a muzzle at the throttle and a jungle made of divine tarmac. This aint no street fighter ready to pick on infuriated little Chihuahuas, this machine attacks the big league, those docile super bikes disciplined with electronics. Lets see what the Italians got packin.

Benelli Tornado Naked Tre 899 is a tool that brings out ones true inner self.

First up, on picking up the switchblade keys from the hook by the window, notice the 899s beefy stance in the crack of dawn, it looks like an inflaming Rottweiler sitting briskly ready to pound on whatever treads its way. It is the collective appeal given by insanely aggressive four-eyed headlamp unit, bold bald fore-skull in the absence of a bikini fairing; alien-head shaped, well, head unit; tacho dominated instrument panel, really thick handlebar, gecko-like grips, ergonomic switch gears, stylish wing mirrors that doesnt lack field of vision; oh the tank, the mighty chiselled reservoir that holds just 16 litres of gas probably because its filled with drool, and notice the projections? Who am I kidding, that Alienware CPU kind of extrusions housing a radiator each and of course cooling fans, apart from the main heat exchanger ahead of the engine; cannot miss anyones eyes.

Then the seats, with sophisticated, protuberant trims and exposed stitching, makes one wonder if the Italians go to design school somewhere out of the earth. Beneath that is the alloy tail piece, which is one clever sculpture that boasts a sense of virility while remaining minimal, and sweeping towards the rear to give rise to tail lamp.

[caption id="attachment_138373" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] License plate holder and rear blinkers hang from the throat.

Emerging from what should be the rear fairing on either side, the set of red lights that exhibit rage in an elegant manner. And to the final highlight on the upper body of Benelli TNT 899, the under-seat exhaust that curls its lips and sticks its hollow tongue out with a contemptuous grin, to those who are two wheels behind the Tornado Naked Tre.

Sophistication and engineering marvel needs no explanation.

Below the belt, the Treacherous Naughty Tool has a thick carbon fibre fender mounted on the pair of inverted Marzocchi tubes that hold Brembo callipers on either stem. Attractive set of petal discs grip the 120/70-ZR17 Michelin Pilot Power shoe to halt. Midship, there is the wriggly exhaust tube unearthing its way to the posterior of 899, almost encircling the 898cc in-line tee cylinder power house capable of thrusting 122 PS and 88 Nm via 6-speed rotation manipulator.

Three-cylinder enthu engine offers more and more as you rev.

Sandwiched between the crankcase and fusion of triple exhaust is the belly pan, made out of carbon fibre. Just above the engine, seemingly sprouting from the tank extensions, is the wild red chassis tubes taking abrupt end past the crankcase towards the rear. Complimenting those is the stocky steel tube trestle swing arm, also painted in same shade of red. The slanted fork holds 190/50-ZR17 that pretty much glides through all possible punishments Indian roads try on it. And the rear mono-shock with preload and rebound adjustment sheds the undulations well, before it reaches the racer.

Exhaust note is not as sporty as the equipment looks. Needs more wroom to justify the swish.

So, on establishing that Benelli TNT 899 is a machine that is left savage; it doesnt even have ABS; one can say that it will be best suited for riders who seek thrill in playing with power. It has a reputation of sprinting from 0-100 kmph in just 3.5 seconds, the time taken to lace ones shoe; and it manages top speed of whooping 240 kmph. Still, those who wish to foray into this segment with the TNT 899 can rest assured that it wont stumble or overwhelm without a warning if the master is not yet a master.

Pillion beware.

On handling front, the 202 kg (without fuel) Benelli TNT 899 easily dives into corners demanding no panicking effort to lay it down or erect it back, when the twists ahead are surprising. Even in city traffic, gear shifts are shrewd and the bike is nimble enough to negotiate auto rickshaws, busses and even pedestrians who are habituated to watch out only on the wrong side of one-way street.

Instrument cluster is too simple for the price point, yet its slick.

Whats a bit disappointing in Benelli TNT 899 is that brakes lack bite, sure one can handle more teeth even without ABS.

Clever use of carbon fibre caps draws eyes away from the clutter.

And exhaust note couldve been composed better; it would prick the buyers heart to rip off the factory muffler and attempt an aftermarket. Apart from these, build quality, overall fit and finish, and all those standard checks are no concern for the money it is going to demand (hopefully, on the pricing part), except for the switch gears which couldve been more sturdy and tactile.

Some Autobots were apparently inspired by the Benelli TNT 899.

In short, if youre rich and in a fight with your dad about keeping you in a shell away from the fickle society, January 2015 could be the right time to go marry the Italian supermodel, and show off the inner brute.
Climate change will alter our ecosystems. Using ecological models, researchers are attempting to predict what kind of changes we can expect to see. Up to now, however, these predictions have not been accurate enough. An international team including researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) examined how to improve the predictive capacity of the models. Their recommendations are summarised in the latest issue of the journal Science.

Climate change will inevitably have far-reaching consequences for the Earth's ecosystems. But how ecosystems will react and adapt remains unclear. "So far we haven't been able to sufficiently determine what species composition future ecosystems will have, and how their functions and services for mankind will change," said Dr. Karin Johst of the UFZ. "This is because current ecological models often do not include important biological processes and mechanisms: so far only 23 percent of the reviewed studies have taken into account biological mechanisms."

As part of the synthesis working group sRangeShifter at iDiv, an international team of scientists has identified six key biological mechanisms which need to be included in future "process-based" ecological models to improve their predictive capacity. "One key mechanism concerns species dispersal, that is, whether species can find their way to new and better habitats as environmental conditions change, and if so, how quickly they can do so," explains Dr. Guy Pe'er, another UFZ scientist involved in the study. "Yet the capacity to spread is not enough: consideration must be given also to a second key mechanism which is interaction with other species. For example, if a butterfly relies on a particular host plant to lay its eggs on, but that plant hasn't yet reached the new habitat, the butterfly would not survive there. Unless a third key mechanism, evolution, comes into play: in some rare cases, the butterfly might be able to adapt to a new host plant."

Climate change entails not only temperature rise but also other aspects such as fluctuations in rainfall and increased drought. These could affect the life-cycle of species, or number of offspring they manage to produce (key mechanism 4: demographics); or they could affect the energy budget, e.g. if more energy is needed to regulate body temperature or find increasingly scarce food sources (key mechanism 5: physiology). Finally, changes in the environmental conditions (key mechanism 6: "abiotic environment"), e.g. temperature, humidity and availability of nutrients, affect different species very differently. "We know that certain biological mechanisms play a disproportionate role in determining how species respond to climate change. Therefore if we want to predict future biodiversity changes then we need to build models that incorporate those parts of biology that matter the most," says Professor Mark C. Urban from the University of Connecticut, who led the study published now in the Science magazine. Ecosystems are very complex structures, whose functioning depends on the interplay of abiotic environmental conditions and biological processes and mechanisms. By including the key mechanisms, future models can lead to a breakthrough in understanding this interplay, and make more accurate predictions on how our ecosystems are affected by climate change and how this alters their functioning and services. This is a key step for mitigating harmful effects.

But there is still a long way to go, as input data are lacking to support such high-end process-based models. Data collection is currently limited to monitoring the ecological effects of climate change such as the extinction of native species or the invasion of exotic ones. But this kind of data does not cover the key mechanisms identified by the authors, and consequently cannot be used for making better predictions. Moreover, with more than 8.7 million species worldwide, gathering the necessary biological information is a daunting task. "Our biggest challenge is pinpointing which species to concentrate on and which regions we need to allocate resources to," says Urban. "We are at a triage stage at this point. We have limited resources and patients lined up at the door."

According to the authors, globally coordinated efforts to collect the necessary biological data and parallel development of such process-based models is urgently needed for closing key gaps in knowledge, significantly boosting the quality of ecological models, and markedly improving their predictive capacity.

"We could take some lessons from the development of climate models, which over the past few decades pushed forward climate research toward improved predictions by adopting more advanced tools and applying detailed information that is gathered, coordinated, and shared on a global scale," said Pe'er. With better knowledge of how species and ecosystems react to global changes, we can take more meaningful measures -- both ecologically and economically -- to protect and preserve them and their functions, which serves as the basis for our very existence.
The shooter named Mohammad Kaif alias Bunty is shown accompanying Shahabuddin in his journey from Bhagalpur to Siwan after his release from jail.

By India Today Web Desk: Right after mafia don and four-term former MP of Lalu Prasad's RJD Mohammed Shahabuddin was released on bail from Bhagalpur jail on September 10, he was spotted with a dreaded sharpshooter who is wanted for the murder of journalist Rajdev Ranjan.

In this photo, the shooter named Mohammad Kaif alias Bunty is shown accompanying Shahabuddin in his journey from Bhagalpur to Siwan after his release from jail.



advertisement





Bhagalpur (Bihar): Wanted Shooter Mohammad Kaif spotted with RJD leader Mohammad Shahabuddin (Sep 10) pic.twitter.com/AXspXvxln1 ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

"New photographs have been received and are being reviewed about their connections.. Police force has been increased for the purpose to contain the fear [after Shahabuddin's release]," said Siwan's Superintendent of Police Saurabh Kumar Shah.



Also read:

We tried our best to oppose bail to Shahabuddin, claims Bihar government

Nitish upset with Lalu's silence on Shahabuddin's attacks, may use Crime Control Act to jail don

NDA delegation meets Bihar Governor over Shahabuddin's release

Shahabuddin and Sushasan cannot go hand-in-hand: Sushil Modi to Nitish Kumar

Kaif has been on the run since the murder of Roshan, the bureau chief of Hindustan newspaper in Siwan, in 2014. Roshan was the main witness in August 2004 murder case of his two younger brothers. He was shot dead three days before he was to record his statement in the murder case of his brothers Girish Raj and Satish Raj.

"The pictures show that Shahabuddin is related to Kaif and some other criminals. He was released from jail on September 10 and today is September 13," said Asha, wife of Rajdev Ranjan.

"How is it that the police did not know where the culprits were? Strict action should be taken against them. Nitish Kumar did not take cognizance of the matter, that is why I had to go to Delhi. He should correct his mistake and he should make proceedings against these culprits. CBI should take up the murder probe, until then the truth will not come out," she said.

The Nitish Kumar-led government in Bihar had earlier asserted that they tried their best to oppose bail to don-turned-politician Mohammad Shahabuddin in the Rajdev Ranjan murder case.

On the charges that the state government deliberately adopted legal laxity to facilitate bail to Shahabuddin, state Water Resources minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh said the state government put its best lawyers to oppose bail to Shahabuddin but unfortunately the former RJD MP managed his release. "Bihar government tried its best to ensure bail was not granted to Shahabuddin in Patna High Court. We put the best lawyers," said Lalan Singh.

The state government is facing heat for not moving the Supreme Court immediately for Shahabuddin's bail cancellation.

advertisement

"Where has the development gone that Nitish used to talk about? Nitish is creating a new environment to escape all this... The wife of the journalist cried but nothing happened," said Union Minister Giriraj Singh on the photo of the shooter with Shahabuddin.

Shahabuddin has been in news for the grave crimes, including several murders and attempts to murder, he has committed. While his supporters are rejoicing over his release from jail after 11 years, several others are struck with terror.



--- ENDS ---
For the first time, abnormal brain development following a Zika infection during pregnancy has been documented experimentally in the offspring of a non-human primate.

The researchers' observations of how Zika virus arrested fetal brain formation in a pigtail macaque could provide a model for testing therapeutic interventions.

The findings are reported Sept. 12 in the advanced online publication of Nature Medicine.

"Our results remove any lingering doubt that the Zika virus is incredibly dangerous to the developing fetus and provides details as to how the brain injury develops," noted Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, the lead author of the study. She is a UW Medicine physician and researcher, and a University of Washington professor of obstetrics and gynecology who specializes in maternal and fetal infections.

"This study brings us closer to determining if a Zika vaccine or therapy will prevent fetal brain injury, but also be safe to take in pregnancy," she added.

"This is the only direct evidence that shows that the Zika virus can cross the placenta late in pregnancy and affect the fetal brain by shutting down certain aspects of brain development," said one of the study's senior authors, Dr. Michael Gale, Jr., UW professor of immunology. An expert on how the body responds to viruses, he directs the UW Medicine Center for Innate Immunity and Immune Disease.

advertisement

Gale explained that the study results met Koch's Postulate, which establishes the criteria for determining if a microorganism is a causative agent for a disease or disorder.

Adams Waldorf, Gale and Dr. Lakshmi Rajagopal, UW associate professor of pediatrics, led the project. Rajagopal studies pregnancy and newborn infectious diseases at Seattle Children's Research Institute and UW Medicine.

"We were shocked when we saw the first MRI [magnetic resonance image] of the fetal brain 10 days after viral inoculation. We had not predicted that such a large area of the fetal brain would be damaged so quickly," Rajagopal noted. "Our results suggest that a therapy to prevent fetal brain injury must either be a vaccine or a prophylactic medicine taken at the time of the mosquito bite to neutralize the virus."

She added, "By the time a pregnant woman develops symptoms, the fetal brain may already be affected and damaged."

"Our entire team is deeply committed to developing an animal model in which we can rapidly test a vaccine or therapy to determine if we can prevent fetal brain injury caused by the Zika virus," said Adams Waldorf.

advertisement

Primates, including people, are an order of mammals that share many features of brain development. Non-human and human primates' gestations also have key similarities. These include the structure of the placenta, the timing of nerve and brain development, and the resulting proportions of gray and white matter in the brain.

Previously, no experimental animal model closely emulated the effects of Zika virus infection during human pregnancy. While the virus can cause fetal demise in mice, mouse models have not enabled medical researchers to delve into the causal relationships between Zika virus infection and fetal brain injury.

The Zika virus is transmitted by certain types of mosquitoes, including the Aedes egypti mosquito.

It is a flavivirus, part of a group of insect-carried viruses that cause illness throughout the world. Other mosquito-borne flaviviruses are West Nile virus, Dengue virus, Yellow Fever virus, and the Japanese encephalitis virus. In some cases, those infections can become complicated by severe nervous system inflammation.

In contrast, the symptoms of a Zika virus infection are often milder. Some people have no symptoms and others develop fever, muscle aches, rash, and sore, swollen eyes. However, contracting the Zika virus during pregnancy is a serious concern, because the fetal brain may be destroyed or quit developing.

The Zika prenatal study took place during the equivalent of the third trimester of a human gestation. The amount of virus inoculated in this study approximated what a person might contract from the probing and biting of an infected, feeding mosquito. The pregnant animal did not show any significant symptoms of infection, such as fever or rash.

The white matter of the fetal brain, which is important for coordinating communication between different parts of the brain, stopped growing about three weeks after viral inoculation. If the study continued one additional month with the same trajectory of brain growth, microcephaly, a condition where the brain is abnormally small, would have occurred.

The study brought together scientists and physicians from the fields of obstetrics, virology, molecular microbiology, immunology, pediatrics, pathology, radiology, neurology, medicine, bioengineering bioinformatics, neurological surgery, primatology and other fields.

The researchers on the Nature Medicine study listed some brain development problems that could affect some infants whose mothers had a Zika virus infection during pregnancy.

These might include a loss of brain cells and brain cell connections, enlargement of the fluid-containing brain cavities, a smaller-than-normal hindbrain (a part of the brain that controls movement and other functions), and vision problems from disruptions in the optic nerve. In addition, they found that the Zika viral genome was also present in other fetal tissues including, eye, liver, and kidney.

This research revealed conclusively that the Zika virus had crossed from the mother through the placenta and into the fetal brain. In fact, Gale pointed out, the virus level in the fetus's brain was higher than that in the mother.

A big question, Gale said, was how long the virus stays in the system during pregnancy and fetal development. He explained that the presence of the Zika virus in some way perturbs the normal balance of brain development by pushing the brain to build up too much supportive structure and not enough nerve cell structure. This alters the brain shape, size and function. The Zika virus used in the study was a 2010 Cambodian strain that is nearly genetically identical to the strain now found in Brazil.

UW Medicine was ready and able to launch the study about six months ago because of the resources and expertise it had in place: a well-established team to study infections and fetal injury in pregnancy, the Center for Innate Immunity and Immune Diseases, the Washington National Primate Research Center, the Seattle Children's Research Institute Center for Integrative Brain Research and the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research, and other units.

Gale also credited the assistance of the Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Programs at Washington University in St. Louis.

The work was supported with funds from the UW Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Washington National Primate Research Center (P51OD010425), and National Institute of Health grants R01AI100989, AI104002, AI083019, AI104002, R01EB017133, R01NS055064, and R01NS061057.
New research has found that venom extracted from a species of marine cone snail could hold the key to developing 'ultra-fast-acting' insulins, leading to more efficient therapies for diabetes management.

Researchers from Australia and the US have successfully determined the three-dimensional structure of a cone snail venom insulin, revealing how these highly efficient natural proteins called Con-Ins G1 can operate faster than human insulin.

The teams also discovered that Con-Ins G1 was able bind to human insulin receptors, signifying the potential for its translation into a human therapeutic.

Associate Professor Mike Lawrence from Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research led a collaborative study between the University of Utah, the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, La Trobe University and Flinders University in Australia.

Associate Professor Lawrence, a specialist in the structure of insulins and their receptors, said the teams utilised the Australian Synchrotron to create and analyse the three-dimensional structure of this cone snail venom insulin protein with exciting results.

"We found that cone snail venom insulins work faster than human insulins by avoiding the structural changes that human insulins undergo in order to function -- they are essentially primed and ready to bind to their receptors, " Associate Professor Lawrence said.

advertisement

Associate Professor Lawrence said human insulins could be considered 'clunky' by comparison.

"The structure of human insulins contain an extra 'hinge' component that has to open before any 'molecular handshake' or connection between insulin and receptor can take place.

"By studying the three-dimensional structure of this snail venom insulin we've found how to dispense with this 'hinge' entirely, which may accelerate the cell signalling process and thus the speed with which the insulin takes effect." Associate Professor Lawrence said.

Published today in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, the team's findings build on earlier studies from 2015, when the University of Utah reported that the marine cone snail Conus geographus used an insulin-based venom to trap its prey. Unsuspecting fish prey would swim into the invisible trap and immediately become immobilised in a state of hyperglycaemic shock induced by the venom.

Dr Helena Safavi-Hemami from the University of Utah said it was fascinating to uncover how the cone snail insulin was able to have such a rapid effect on its prey and, furthermore, that the peptide had therapeutic potential in humans. "We were thrilled to find that the principles of cone snail venom insulins could be applied to a human setting," Dr Safavi-Hemami said.

"Our Flinders University colleagues have shown that the cone snail insulin can 'switch on' human insulin cell signalling pathways, meaning the cone snail insulin is able to successfully bind to human receptors," Dr Safavi-Hemami said.

"The next step in our research, which is already underway, is to apply these findings to the design of new and better treatments for diabetes, giving patients access to faster-acting insulins," she said.
It is the double helix, with its stable and flexible structure of genetic information, that made life on Earth possible in the first place. Now a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has discovered a double helix structure in an inorganic material. The material comprising tin, iodine and phosphorus is a semiconductor with extraordinary optical and electronic properties, as well as extreme mechanical flexibility.

Flexible yet robust -- this is one reason why nature codes genetic information in the form of a double helix. Scientists at TU Munich have now discovered an inorganic substance whose elements are arranged in the form of a double helix.

The substance called SnIP, comprising the elements tin (Sn), iodine (I) and phosphorus (P), is a semiconductor. However, unlike conventional inorganic semiconducting materials, it is highly flexible. The centimeter-long fibers can be arbitrarily bent without breaking.

"This property of SnIP is clearly attributable to the double helix," says Daniela Pfister, who discovered the material and works as a researcher in the work group of Tom Nilges, Professor for Synthesis and Characterization of Innovative Materials at TU Munich. "SnIP can be easily produced on a gram scale and is, unlike gallium arsenide, which has similar electronic characteristics, far less toxic."

Countless application possibilities

The semiconducting properties of SnIP promise a wide range of application opportunities, from energy conversion in solar cells and thermoelectric elements to photocatalysts, sensors and optoelectronic elements. By doping with other elements, the electronic characteristics of the new material can be adapted to a wide range of applications.

advertisement

Due to the arrangement of atoms in the form of a double helix, the fibers, which are up to a centimeter in length can be easily split into thinner strands. The thinnest fibers to date comprise only five double helix strands and are only a few nanometers thick. That opens the door also to nanoelectronic applications.

"Especially the combination of interesting semiconductor properties and mechanical flexibility gives us great optimism regarding possible applications," says Professor Nilges. "Compared to organic solar cells, we hope to achieve significantly higher stability from the inorganic materials. For example, SnIP remains stable up to around 500C (930 F)."

Just at the beginning

"Similar to carbon, where we have the three-dimensional (3D) diamond, the two dimensional graphene and the one dimensional nanotubes," explains Professor Nilges, "we here have, alongside the 3D semiconducting material silicon and the 2D material phosphorene, for the first time a one dimensional material -- with perspectives that are every bit as exciting as carbon nanotubes."

Just as with carbon nanotubes and polymer-based printing inks, SnIP double helices can be suspended in solvents like toluene. In this way, thin layers can be produced easily and cost-effectively. "But we are only at the very beginning of the materials development stage," says Daniela Pfister. "Every single process step still needs to be worked out."

Since the double helix strands of SnIP come in left and right-handed variants, materials that comprise only one of the two should display special optical characteristics. This makes them highly interesting for optoelectronics applications. But, so far there is no technology available for separating the two variants.

Theoretical calculations by the researchers have shown that a whole range of further elements should form these kinds of inorganic double helices. Extensive patent protection is pending. The researchers are now working intensively on finding suitable production processes for further materials.

Interdisciplinary cooperation

An extensive interdisciplinary alliance is working on the characterization of the new material: Photoluminescence and conductivity measurements have been carried out at the Walter Schottky Institute of the TU Munich. Theoretical chemists from the University of Augsburg collaborated on the theoretical calculations. Researchers from the University of Kiel and the Max Planck Institute of Solid State Research in Stuttgart performed transmission electron microscope investigations. Mossbauer spectra and magnetic properties were measured at the University of Augsburg, while researchers of TU Cottbus contributed thermodynamics measurements.
Physicists have for the first time succeeded in directly visualising on small scales how a material abruptly changes its state from conducting to insulating at low temperatures. Researchers Erik van Heumen of the University of Amsterdam and Alex McLeod from the University of California thereby provide evidence for a 60-year-old theory that explains this phenomenon and pave the way for more energy efficient technologies. The team's experiments are described in the latest edition of Nature Physics.

Materials that conduct electricity at high temperature but are insulating at lower temperatures have been known for decades. However, until recently it was not possible to directly measure how such phase transitions proceed on small length scales. Using a new technique, Van Heumen and McLeod are now able to visualise the changes taking place in the material during such a phase transition on the nanometer scale.

In their experiments, the team observed a so-called percolation transition taking place among the electrons in the material. Above a certain critical temperature, the electrons can move relatively easily through the material enabling the flow of electrical current. When the temperature drops below a threshold temperature, small imperfections in the material trigger a kind of traffic jam for the electrons. Starting from small nanometer length scales, this traffic jam slowly grows outwards across the entire material. The previously freely moving electrons come to an abrupt halt and the material loses its conducting properties.

The material in which the team investigated the metal-to-insulator transition is the metal-oxide called vanadium-sesquioxide, V2O3, which is a more exotic relative of better known metal-oxides such as magnetite or rust. Such metal-oxides are interesting because of their exotic electrical properties, which could find use in future electronics applications. `You could use these types of switchable materials alongside the current silicon technology used in cell phones or laptops', says Van Heumen. 'These materials are cheap, energy efficient and could contribute to improving sustainability.' Van Heumen is also enthusiastic about possible applications on the interface with quantum technology. `When used, silicon heats up and becomes disruptive to sensitive quantum technology. The abrupt metal-insulator transition that we investigated could also be forced to take place under influence of, for example, a light flash, which could find applications for better isolating the computational units of quantum computers.'

Nevertheless, more research on the phase transitions in oxides is needed before this becomes reality. Van Heumen: `The fundamental research we are currently doing to better understand the properties of these materials is similar in spirit to research on silicon forty years ago. Nowadays, silicon technology is integrated in all our electronics, so who knows what these materials will be used for twenty years from now.'

Using an ingenious method to increase the resolution of their microscope, Van Heumen and McLeod succeeded in testing a 60-year old theory that explains the switch from metal to insulator. Until recently, the wavelength of light -- with a scale of several micrometers in the case of infrared light -- limited the resolution of electrical conductivity measurements. The physicists used a small needle to probe the insulating or conducting nature of the material below it with a resolution of 25 nanometers. The needle itself acts as a little antenna that sends this information back to a detector. McLeod: `Our technique allows optical imaging at unprecedented spatial resolution. With this unique method, we could directly visualise for the first time how the transition spreads through the material.'

The experiment took place at 100 degrees  below freezing, not really ideal for real-world applications. However, Van Heumen believes that materials will soon be engineered to feature similar transitions at room temperature. `Making these materials is like Legos for experts. It is the focus of an intensive research effort that looks very promising.'
For the first time, scientists know what happens to a virus' shape when it invades a host cell, thanks to an experiment by researchers at Penn State College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Understanding how the virus shape specifically changes could lead to more effective anti-viral therapies.

The experiment was designed to investigate how a virus' protein shell -- a capsid -- changes as it prepares to inject its genetic material into a cell. These altered virus particles are known as A-particles, or virus entry intermediates.

In previous experiments, exposing a virus to extreme heat or proteins caused the shape of the entire capsid shell to change. These were the closest observable simulations to a virus invading a cell that had been devised at the time.

"Using these lab tricks, my lab and those of other researchers were able to create high-resolution structures of the altered virus particles, but all of these tricks were triggering the capsid from all directions," said Susan Hafenstein, assistant professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology, Penn State College of Medicine.

Hafenstein hypothesized that in a more realistic simulation, only the part of the virus that interacted with receptors on the cell would change shape.

In the new experiment, Hafenstein and her coinvestigators simulated the surface of a cell by using mock membranes called nanodiscs. They inserted human cell receptors -- protein molecules that let outside signals into the cell -- into the nanodiscs, the first time this has been done to capture a virus capsid. The results were reported in a recent edition of the journal Science Advances.

advertisement

"This particular receptor has a long tail that it buries into the cell membrane," Hafenstein explained. "In our experiment, it buried its tail into the nanodisc, giving us a mock membrane displaying the appropriate receptor to bind to the virus."

The researchers then added virus capsids to the receptor-membranes and observed the resulting changes to the capsid shell using an imaging technique called cryo-electron microscopy.

When the thousands of 2D images they took were reassembled into a 3D capsid -- much like a CAT scan -- they found that previously observed shape changes only happened on the focused site where the receptors bound to the virus.

"Our work shows that a pore only opens up at that one point of interaction with the host cell," Hafenstein said. "And that's what's going to set up the capsid to release the genetic material into the cell. We think we have captured the first physiologically accurate virus capsid prepared to enter the host. All the ones that we had studied previously showed changes taking place all over the capsid, but now we know the changes the virus has to make only happen in one spot, next to the host membrane."

A recent advance to cryo-electron microscopy -- direct electron detecting -- made the observation possible.

advertisement

"This way of taking images has allowed us to take really fast images that can then be corrected into perfect data," Hafenstein said. "Now we can get atomic resolution using cryoEM."

The researchers used a virus called coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) in their experiment. CVB3 is a type of picornavirus, a family of rapidly mutating small RNA viruses that causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to pancreatitis to polio.

RNA viruses -- a group that also includes HIV -- change every time they replicate. These highly-mutating viruses can escape antiviral medications.

The ultimate goal is to understand intricacies in the steps of the virus life cycle, such as how the virus enters the host cell, to direct antivirals to those specific steps, Hafenstein said. "Then, if the virus mutates away to escape the drug, it will also lose the ability to enter the cell."

Next, Hafenstein's group plans to use a larger nanodisc to capture the process of the virus interacting with the mock membrane.

"Because the nanodiscs in this set of experiments were so small, we're not getting the best picture of the interaction, and that's one place to improve," she said. This, she hopes, will reveal "the most important step -- figuring out what triggers the release of the RNA into the cell."
The story starts at least four billion years ago, when there was no living matter on the planet. Sometime around then, smaller chemical compounds formed into larger organised structures capable of self-reproduction. And so the early precursors of life were born. Exactly which molecules were involved, and what they were made of, is the biggest puzzle in evolutionary history.

However, ETH Professor Roland Riek and his senior scientist Jason Greenwald have a compelling idea: these primordial lifelike structures could well have been proteinaceous aggregates, or amyloids. The latest results of their laboratory research now lend weight to their hypothesis.

The scientists performed an experiment to demonstrate that it is remarkably easy for such amyloid structures to assemble spontaneously from building blocks that existed on the prebiotic Earth, and under reaction conditions that also seem plausible for the primeval era. The scientists used four simple amino acids as starting materials: glycine, alanine, aspartate and valine. In addition, they used carbonyl sulphide as a catalyst for the reaction. This volcanic gas is also likely to have existed in the atmosphere billions of years ago.

Long sheet structures

In the laboratory experiment, the amino acid molecules spontaneously assembled, with the help the carbonyl sulphide, into short chains (peptides) comprising between 5 and 14 building blocks. These chains in turn arranged themselves in parallel into amyloid structures known as beta sheets. In the experiment, these sheet structures took the form of fibres and typically comprised thousands of adjoining peptide chains which the scientists were able to identify using an electron microscope.

To make sure the amino acid molecules formed into sufficiently long peptide chains, the scientists had to use a clever trick. "Simply mixing amino acids with carbonyl sulphide in a test tube only produces very short peptide chains which do not assemble into a sheet structure," Greenwald explains. The scientists therefore slowly dripped amino acid molecules activated with carbonyl sulphide into a test tube in a procedure lasting several hours. "It is conceivable that an equally slow process -- possibly taking several years -- with a steady flow of new chemical compounds may well have taken place in the Earth's primeval history," says Greenwald.

Catalytic effect

Scientists have already proposed amyloids as candidates for the very first lifelike structures on Earth, as even simple amyloids are capable of performing certain chemical functions. Last year, for example, Professor Riek and his team discovered amyloid structures able to split esters.

The ETH scientists stress, however, that there is still an important piece of the puzzle missing from their argument in support of the "amyloid hypothesis": Are amyloids also capable of self-replication, just like RNA molecules? This is conceivable, claim Riek and Greenwald, but there is still no experimental evidence to support it. The professor and his team are working on it.

Amyloids more likely than exclusively RNA

Even so, the researchers already describe their hypothesis as being much more plausible than the decades-old scientific assumption that the precursors of life were made up solely of RNA molecules. The scientists' main contention: RNA molecules with a biological function are comparatively large and complex. "They are so big that it would have been difficult for them to form spontaneously. Even with far simpler structures, amyloids exhibit certain chemical functions," says Greenwald. On top of that, the building blocks of RNA are more complex than those of amyloids and proteins. Furthermore, the latter are more stable even under harsh environmental conditions. "All this makes it plausible that the first functional molecules were amyloids," concludes Professor Riek.
Laser technology has revealed a common trait of Alzheimer's disease -- a sticky situation that could lead to new targets for medicinal treatments.

Alzheimer's statistics are always staggering. The neurodegenerative disease affects an estimated 5 million Americans, one in three seniors dies with Alzheimer's or a form of dementia, it claims more lives than breast and prostate cancers combined, and its incidence is rising.

To help fight this deadly disease, Lisa Lapidus, Michigan State University professor of physics and astronomy, has found that peptides, or strings of amino acids, related to Alzheimer's wiggle at dangerous speeds prior to clumping or forming the plaques commonly associated with Alzheimer's.

"Strings of 40 amino acids are the ones most-commonly found in healthy individuals, but strings of 42 are much more likely to clump," said Lapidus, who published the results in the current issue of ChemPhysChem. "We found that the peptides' wiggle speeds, the step before aggregation, was five times slower for the longer strings, which leaves plenty of time to stick together rather than wiggle out of the way."

This so-called "wiggle" precedes clumping, or aggregating, which is the first step of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Lapidus pioneered the use of lasers to study the speed of protein reconfiguration before aggregation.

If reconfiguration is much faster or slower than the speed at which proteins bump into each other, aggregation is slow. If reconfiguration is the same speed, however, aggregation is fast. She calls the telltale wiggle that she discovered the "dangerous middle."

"The dangerous middle is the speed in which clumping happens fastest," Lapidus said. "But we were able to identify some ways that we can bump that speed into a safer zone."

Lapidus and her team of MSU scientists, including Srabasti Acharya, Kinshuk Srivastava and Sureshbabu Nagarajan, found that increasing pH levels kept the amino acids wiggling at fast, safe speeds. Also, a naturally occurring molecule, curcumin (from the spice turmeric), kept the peptide out of the dangerous middle.

While this is not a viable drug candidate because it does not easily cross the blood-brain barrier, the filter that controls what chemicals reach the brain, they do provide strong leads that could lead to medicinal breakthroughs.

Along with new drug targets, Lapidus' research provides a potential model of early detection. By the time patients show symptoms and go to a doctor, aggregation already has a stronghold in their brains. Policing amino acids for wiggling at dangerous speeds could tip off doctors long before the patient begins to suffer from the disease.
Public figures such as United States presidential candidates Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump may have to do a lot more than just say sorry to win back public trust after a misdeed, said a York University researcher whose study on trust was published today.

"Whether it's a boss, co-worker or the public, saying sorry is not always enough to win back broken trust, especially when gender stereotypes are also broken. Both have happened with Clinton and Trump in the last few months," said Shayna Frawley, PhD candidate in human resource management at York U who led the study with York U alumna Jennifer Harrison, now at NEOMA Business School in France.

Gender stereotypes continue to be an issue in the workplace and on the campaign trail. Women are still expected to be benevolent and concerned about others, while men are perceived to be confident, competitive and independent. When either gender goes against those preconceived notions and also lose the trust of their colleagues or bosses, they'll experience a double backlash.

"With the Hilary Clinton email scandal, her critics were claiming she put national security at risk for her own convenience, putting her own needs ahead of her responsibility as a public official. This is a clear example of breaking trust and gender expectations," said Frawley.

The research, "A social role perspective on trust repair," published today in the Journal of Management Development, looks at how gender expectations can affect trust and its reparation.

In the workplace, if a woman violates trust while putting her own interests ahead of others, for example by being dishonest or not helping a co-worker, she will find regaining that lost trust much more challenging because she went against gender stereotypes. "Had she not broken gender stereotypes and instead just broke the trust by underperforming, she would have fared better," said Harrison.

advertisement

A man who fails to put others ahead of himself, however, will only face consequences for a breach of trust. That's because men are not expected to help others. Lying or refusing to help a co-worker doesn't affect those expectations. A man will also face the same double backlash if he performs poorly though. In this case, he will have violated the trust placed in him, but also will have gone against gender expectations that men are good performers.

Trump faced this double backlash when his critics pointed to a string of failed business ventures and his inability to raise campaign funds. "What these claims are trying to get at is that despite Trump's reputation and his connections, he's not performing so well at things that men traditionally are viewed at being good at," said Frawley. "They were saying he can't be trusted to perform well and has in fact misrepresented himself which plays into gender stereotypes."

So how do people go about repairing trust?

The research seems to show that if a man is trying to repair trust he should do it in a way that is consistent with expectations of what men should be. "One way is to apologize and take personal responsibility for what happened and not blame it on external factors," said Harrison.

However, if a woman violates trust in a way that breaks gender stereotypes, she is better not to apologize, but deny responsibility or blame external factors.

Take Melania Trump's speech at the Republican Convention which plagiarized portions of a 2008 Michelle Obama speech. Trump claimed to have written it with "as little helps as possible," but then a speechwriter took responsibility for accidentally using portion of Obama's speech. "This is a clear case of Trump blaming external factors," said Frawley.

If trust is broken without the breach of gender expectations, both men and women will have an easier time of regaining that trust, said Harrison.

The researchers say gender is something organizations should pay more attention to in their diversity management and conflict training, especially how gender and trust interact because it's an unconscious process. In other words, a women's lack of helping others or a man's low performance shouldn't be treated any more severely than if a woman shows low ability or a man puts his needs ahead of others.
Drastic shifts in public opinion in the last decade have seen an uptick in gay and lesbian candidates running for -- and winning -- public office as never before.

But experts often advise even openly gay and lesbian candidates to downplay their sexual orientation or risk losing votes.

Now, a new study by David Niven, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, calls that advice into question.

The research, presented Friday at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Philadelphia, suggests that not only does a gay or lesbian candidate's sexual orientation no longer pose a political disadvantage, but that, in some cases, it may actually help them win office.

"Our results call into question the always and everywhere assumption that running as a gay or lesbian candidate is necessarily a hurdle that must be overcome," said Niven.

LGBT candidates are often advised to downplay their sexual orientation for good reason, says Niven. He points to an established body of research documenting how a candidate's sexual orientation can be an impediment to higher office.

advertisement

"All the research that we have says you have to overcome and to downplay it," he said.

That conclusion, based largely on surveys, offers subjective and interpretive data on how voters react to fictional or hypothetical candidates, but little in the way of how voters respond to actual candidates once they're in a private voting booth, Niven said.

So he decided to test the theory in a real race, with real voters casting ballots for real candidates. Enter the 2016 March primary race for county recorder in Ohio's Franklin County, which includes Columbus.

The Study

Two Democratic candidates vied for the position: Incumbent Terry Brown, an openly gay man seeking his second term in office, and challenger Danny O'Connor, who is straight.

advertisement

The match-up proved an ideal field study, said Niven. While Brown's website features a photograph of him and his husband, neither he, his opponent nor the "Democrats United" ticket both candidates ran with referenced Brown's sexual orientation or interests in advancing civil rights issues.

Moreover, the low-key race for county recorder drew only minimal media attention, none of which identified Brown as gay, said Niven.

Niven randomly chose 30 precincts for the study. Because most gay and lesbian candidates tend to compete in places where Democrats are likely to win, he said, only households with a registered Democrat in residence were included.

Fifteen of the precincts received one of three 4x6 glossy postcards featuring Brown, while the other half, serving as a control group, received no mailing.

The first mailer featured a photograph of Brown and listed his efforts to save taxpayer money, improve the efficiency of the recorder's office and commitment to stamping out real estate fraud.

A second mailer included the same campaign claims, but featured a photograph of the candidate and his husband.

A third mailing repeated the claims of the previous two and included the same photograph as in the second mailing, but added an additional claim of the candidate's commitment to marriage equality for gay people.

The Results

Brown ultimately lost the race to O'Connor, but not because of his sexual orientation or commitment to marriage equality, says Niven.

According to the study, Brown actually received slightly less votes from voters who received the first mailer (which included only a photo of him) than he did from those in the control group who didn't receive any mailers.

Swapping a mailer featuring a photograph of the candidate with one of Brown and his husband produced slightly more votes, comparable to those of the control group. That increase, while negligible, speaks volumes, said Niven.

"Study after study suggests there is some kind of penalty gay and lesbian candidates are subject to without exception. That decidedly did not happen here," he concluded.

The results of the third condition, in which voters received a mailer featuring a photograph of the candidate and his husband and listing his commitment to marriage equality, also defied conventional campaign wisdom, says Niven.

In that scenario, Brown received more than four percent more votes than he did in all of the other scenarios.

"A lot of races are won on four percent," said Niven. "This is a pretty startling jump in terms of getting people's attention in a race they wouldn't otherwise give two thoughts about."

Niven says the results strongly suggest that emphasizing Brown's commitment to the rights of gay and lesbian people gave him a political edge.

"He's not just filing deeds, he's on the front lines of the civil rights struggle," he explained. "This is what was compelling to people."

Building Political Power

Niven acknowledges the limitations of the study, which focused on how Democratic voters in a specific region responded in one race. He's planning a follow-up study of the wider electorate this fall.

Nonetheless, he says the data indicates that the nation might be closer to a state of post-gay politics than some realize.

"When candidates hide or downplay their sexual orientation, it sends a message that significant barriers remain for gay and lesbian candidates," Niven said. "This study shows they might be hiding from a reality that isn't as bad as they think."

That comes as welcome news to Aisha C. Moodie-Mills, president and CEO of the Victory Fund, a nonpartisan organization that supports openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender candidates running for public office.

She said the study indicates a growing appreciation amongst voters for LGBT candidates who are open about their lives and policy positions.

"LGBT elected officials make tremendous public servants because they are painfully aware of the impact policies have on people's lives, and therefore think critically about the issues confronting them," she said. "This research offers important insights into the advantages of being an openly LGBT candidate in certain political environments, and provides a fresh perspective on strategies for building long-term political power."
Researchers with the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences are closer to helping producers better meet global food demand, now that they've combined simulation and statistical methods to help them predict how temperature affects wheat crops worldwide.

A global team of scientists, led by those at UF/IFAS, used two different simulation methods and one statistical method to predict the impact of rising temperatures on global wheat production, and all came to similar estimates.

This finding, published in a study in the journal Nature Climate Change, is critical in predicting how much wheat and other crops we'll need to feed the world, said Senthold Asseng, a UF/IFAS professor of agricultural and biological engineering and leader of this study.

Predicting crop yields is important because rising temperatures tend to keep fruits, vegetables and other crops from growing as well as they should, Asseng said.

"This means we're closer to more precisely predicting crop yields and their response to climate change worldwide, but we have shown this only for wheat, so far," Asseng said. "It's the first time that a scientific study compared different methods of estimating temperature impacts on global crop production. Since the different methods point to very similar impacts, it improves our confidence in estimating temperature impact on global crop production."

Global food demand is expected to increase 60 percent - with 9 billion people by the middle of the 21st century, according to a 2012 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. One critical crop that helps feed the world is wheat. Globally, China produces the most wheat at about 265 million pounds per year, while the United States produces about 132 million pounds, according to the same UN organization.

Bing Liu, a student from Nanjing Agricultural University in China who's doing research in Asseng's lab, is the lead author for the study, which includes nearly 50 scientists worldwide. This study is a part of AgMIP -- the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project, which brings together agricultural scientists from around the world to research climate change impacts and adaptation options. Many of the same scientists who helped with this study have worked with Asseng on computer models to simulate crop growth and yield, particularly for wheat.

"Reliable estimates of climate change impacts on food security require an integrated use of climate, crop and economic models," Asseng said.
For decades, failures by the WHO to respond to global health crises have drawn criticism and calls for reform by policy experts, governments and independent financial donors from across the world that contribute three-quarters of its $4 billion annual budget.

Serious recent failures that have drawn fire include shortcomings in its response to the Ebola pandemic, health crises in Sri Lanka in 2009, Haiti in 2010, South Sudan in 2013 and its current response to drug-resistant Tuberculosis in Papua New Guinea.

"An outsourcing approach would allow WHO to maintain global leadership and oversight but would utilise external expertise more appropriately," say authors Associate Professor Joel Negin at the University of Sydney and Dr Ranu Dhillon from Harvard University.

"This would allow the WHO to be leaner and more focused, and would increase the contribution of other actors. We believe such reform is essential to the future of the WHO and of global health action."

Most current proposals to reform the WHO focus on ways it could be made more effective and attract more funding. But Negin and Dhillon say more financial muscle and incremental reforms will no longer meet the challenges of preventing, predicting and responding to today's globalising health crises.

"When the WHO was established, there were few global health actors," says Professor Negin, who heads the university's School of Public Health.

advertisement

"Its unique positon meant it could bring the world's best minds and skills to bear on global health issues. Today, global health issues occur in a complex, multi-actor arena where rival multilateral organisations have taken control over much of the global health action and agenda.

"Given the emergence of new global stakeholders and the realisation that the WHO is struggling to meet its mandate, we need solutions that focuses not only on what the WHO should do to strengthen itself but one that leverages the expertise that exists in the sector."

Negin's co-author, Ranu Dhillon says the WHO should "outsource a number of its functions to other global agencies that are already leading the way. This would allow it to focus on a small number of core activities where it has comparative advantage and to coordinate or orchestrate the broader array of global health actors to take on other activities."

Negin and Dhillon say current WHO-functions that should be outsourced include technical matters such as research and surveillance, and on-the-ground responses to health issues and crises.

"The WHO never was and never intended to be an implementer of global health activities," says Negin.

"In fact, its Constitution emphasises that its principal functions are co-ordination, collaboration with specialised agencies, providing assistance, and promoting co-operation -- all of which resonate with the idea of WHO providing leadership but outsourcing key activities.

"Re-positioning it as a regulator, orchestrator and clearing house of expertise would dovetail with its global reach and mandate but acknowledges its limitations."

Indeed, the WHO itself states on its website that subcontracting is a good model in complex environments: "In addition, as new independent or autonomous actors come on stage, it becomes less easy to rely on hierarchical authority. This compels health actors to reconsider their relations. It is increasingly common for such relations to be based on contractual arrangements, which formalize agreements between actors, who accept mutually-binding commitments."

Though evidence is limited, the authors say outsourcing has been shown to be a successful model in health systems that are in transition, especially in post-conflict or fragile states.
A study presented at this year's European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) meeting in Munich, Germany (12-16 September), shows that UK commercial airline pilots with insulin-treated diabetes can fly safely, with almost all of their blood sugar readings at safe levels. The study is by medical staff at Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, Surrey, UK and the UK Civil Aviation Authority, Gatwick Airport, UK.

In 2012, the UK became the second country worldwide, after Canada, to issue insulin-treated individuals with Class 1 Medical Certificates for Commercial Pilot Licences (CPLs). The UK now has the largest cohort of insulin-treated pilots, and is leading the way in Europe and beyond to create and maintain employment and leisure opportunities for people with insulin-treated diabetes.

A comprehensive protocol, developed by a panel of medical and aviation experts, governs the medical certification of insulin-treated pilots. Ireland joined the UK in April 2015 in applying an agreed Medical Assessment Protocol under the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) regulation. Certificated pilots are subject to strict requirements, directly overseen by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) medical departments, including pre- and in-flight blood glucose monitoring. This study aimed to evaluate the early experience and safety of the UK programme.

With the pilots' consent, the files for all insulin-treated, Class 1-certificated pilots were reviewed and data were collected. This included: age; date of issue of Class 1 Medical Certificate; diabetes type and duration; diabetes management regimen; comorbidities; diabetes complication monitoring; all available HbA1c values (a measure of blood sugar control) pre- and post-licence issue; and all flights undertaken with associated blood glucose monitoring values. Average pre- and post-licence HbA1c values were compared. Pre and in-flight blood glucose monitoring values were correlated against the CAA-specified "Green" (5-15mmol/l), "Amber" (4-5 and 15-20mmol/l), and "Red" (<4 or >20mmol/l) ranges.

The researchers found that at the analysis date, 26 insulin-treated pilots had been issued with Class 1 medical certificates. All were male, with an average age of 41 years. The majority (85%) had type 1 diabetes, with an average diabetes duration of 8 years. Average follow up duration post-licence issue was 19.5 months. The average pre-licence issue HbA1c was 53.1mmol/mol; the average of the most recent HbA1c was 54.8mmol/mol, thus showing no significant change.

A total of 8,897 blood glucose monitoring values had been recorded during 4,900 flight hours. For short and medium haul flights (under 6 hours), 96% of 7,829 blood glucose monitoring readings were within the 'green' range. For long haul flights (over 6 hours), 97% of 1,068 readings were within the 'green' range. A total of 19 (0.2%) readings across short and long haul flights combined were in the 'red' range and to date, no pilot medical incapacitation due to low or high blood sugar has been reported.

advertisement

Dr Hine says: "A growing number of insulin-treated pilots have successfully applied for Commercial Pilots' Licences in the UK and most recently Ireland. To date, the CAA protocol has shown to work well in the cockpit, with no reported safety concerns, and without deterioration of diabetes control."

The study will be repeated, with these pilots and additional insulin-treated pilots who have gained Class 1 Medical certificates since the data were collected remaining under close follow up. Further data collection and analysis will follow.

If commercial pilots are already licensed and develop diabetes after getting their licence, these pilots can apply for a Class 1 Medical certificate under the protocol described for insulin treated pilots. They must show that they have excellent control of their diabetes, with no significant complications and they must comply with the pre- and in- flight blood glucose monitoring protocol.

Dr Hine adds: "The are a number of European states that have expressed interest in the programme. The American Diabetes Association's position is that individual assessment of people with diabetes is the appropriate approach to determining whether a person is qualified to perform certain activities. The Association* is developing recommendations to share with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that would enable the FAA to identify pilots who are at no greater risk for incapacitation than any other pilot." (In the USA, diabetes diagnosis currently excludes pilots from flying commercial aircraft).

The need for this careful protocol and monitoring is necessary, say the authors, since commercial pilots can work long shifts, with multiple short haul flight sectors, or a single long haul sector. This has the potential to disrupt normal eating patterns, particularly when crossing time zones. Insulin-treated pilots, however, must demonstrate excellent control and understanding of their diabetes in order to gain a Class 1 Medical Certificate.

Dr Hine says: "Regular blood glucose testing in the cockpit ensures that any variability in blood sugar is detected and can be corrected early. If pilots are unable to test their blood sugar due to operational demands, the protocol dictates that they should consume 15mg of carbohydrate as a precautionary measure and then test within 30 minutes."

In a separate presentation, Dr Stuart Mitchell, Head Authority Medical Section at the CAA, will give details of the safety protocol for these pilots, explaining how it was constructed.
Vongy, named after Vongaory, which is the word for "beetle" in Malagasy Language, is the name of the character of a comic that will help telling students in Madagascar about the value of research to preserve the biodiversity and environment of the Great Red Island of the Indian Ocean.

The comic Vongy. An Adventure Among Scientists -- which has 3000 copies edited in Spanish, English, French and German -- is an initiative of the group made by Xavier Declos, Professor of Paleontology at the Faculty of Geology and member of the Biodiversity Research Institute of the University of Barcelona (IRBio); Monica M. Solorzano Kraemer, from the Senckenberg Research Institute of Frankfurt (Germany), and Enrique Penalver and Ana Rodrigo, from the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME), and it is illustrated by the graphic designer Imke Trostbach.

The world of paleontology research in pictures

"The idea of presenting our scientific work in a comic came out in Madagascar around trees that produce Hymenaea verrucosa resin, collected insects, spiders and resin. We thought it would be convenient to tell kids and adults in Madagascar the reasons why we had traveled to their country, the value in the science of resin and the fauna of insects and spiders, and the importance of preserving the biodiversity" the authors said. "Thus, through a discovery adventure, which includes a dangerous journey through the ocean, we want to show the processes of resin trapping and dispersion of species."

Amber and copal are fossil resin that can have trapped insects from millions of years ago and still be well preserved, which helps to make morphological comparisons with the current creatures. Since 2015, the team of experts has studied the Malagasy amber, copal deposits and trapped biota in the fossil resins in North Madagascar -- particularly in Montagne d'Ambre- with a project funded by the National Geographic Global Exploration Fund, with the support of the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments in Madagascar (MICET) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. These fossil resins -- an image of the natural ecosystems from thousands of years ago- are also indicators of the worrying process of biodiversity-loses in Madagascar due to human activity.

Trapped by tree resin thousands of years ago

According to Professor Xavier Delclos, "nowadays we have tenths of thousands of insects that were trapped in these traps -- separated and classified. The insects and spiders we find inside the resin are analyzed to compare the existing angles between the fauna surrounding the trees and the animals that get trapped inside the resin, so we can figure out the register we find inside the amber from million years ago. We also compare the trapped insects in old resins (copal) of the Hymenaea tree with the current fauna to analyze the loss of diversity in Madagascar."

When the worst threat is man himself

"The worst threat for Madagascar biodiversity is man himself" says Delclos. "Malagasians use wood as their main fuel at home, and that is why there are so many forests disappear. Lately, the State is controlling careless forest-burning to get coal without authorization, but this consumption is still deep-rooted, also because there is no chance of getting any other combustible at affordable prices for most of the people."

"Except for the East, which is dominated by a wide strip of tropical forest, almost all Madagascar is a vast dry area which has almost no vegetation. The government has to establish large areas of national parks to protect the forest they still have. Lots of flora and fauna in Madagascar are endemic and located especially in the tropical forest."

The new comic, which tells the adventures of Vongy and his friends in Madagascar and Central America, will be a teaching tool distributed in schools and centers to make people conscious about the dramatic effects of the clearest of forests in the fourth biggest island in the world. This project was funded by the National Geographic Global Exploration Fund Northern Europe, the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain) and the German Research Foundation (Germany).

The comic can be seen in this link: http://www.senckenberg.de/files/Vongy_Comic/vongy_en_web.pdf
Researchers at IRB Barcelona describe for the first time how to prepare a specific type of aggregate of the amyloid-beta protein with the ability to perforate the cell membrane.

What causes neuron death and the subsequent cognitive decline in Alzheimers disease is still unknown.

The brains of millions of people suffering from Alzheimers disease are slowly and inescapably being depleted of neurons. However, the cause of neuronal death is still unknown. Several studies propose that the interaction of the amyloid-beta protein with the neuronal membrane causes neurotoxicity.

Today, a study headed by associate researcher Natalia Carulla, in the Peptides and Proteins Laboratory at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), in collaboration with scientists at the University of Leuven (Belgium), the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), and the Technical-Scientific Services of the University of Barcelona, describes for the first time a strategy through which to obtain a membrane-associated amyloid-beta aggregate that adopts a specific barrel-like structure. This type of structure -- which is present in other proteins found in nature -- has the capacity to form pores in cell membranes. Interpreted in the context of Alzheimers disease, this discovery suggests that the aggregate can also perforate the membrane of neurons, alter the equilibrium of these cells, and trigger their death.

The description of the barrel-shaped aggregates in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is the first step to establish the involvement of this aggregate in Alzheimers disease. Confirming the involvement would validate it as a new therapeutic target for this condition. The scientists made this discovery in the lab by studying amyloid-beta protein in simple membrane model systems.

Attack to the amyloid-beta protein

Dr. Natalia Carulla develops methods to identify the nature and structure of the toxic amyloid-beta species. "Everyone talks about the relevance of oligomers (aggregates made of the same protein unit) of amyloid-beta and their contribution to Alzheimers disease, but if we don't know which structural features characterize them, we won't know what to look for, and therefore we won't be able to demonstrate or disprove anything," explains Carulla. "We don't know whether this species is neurotoxic, but now that we know that it adopts a specific barrel-like structure, we can study it in the context of the disease since we know what to look for," say Montserrat Serra-Batiste and Marti Ninot-Pedrosa from IRB Barcelona, first and second authors of the paper, respectively.

The next steps involve obtaining the 3D structure of the aggregate and obtaining specific antibodies that recognize it. Afterwards, the researchers will study the function of this aggregate in cultured neurons derived from patients with Alzheimers disease. These will be decisive experiments for the validation of this specific amyloid-beta aggregate as a therapeutic target.
When Hippocrates first described cancer around 400 B.C., he referred to the disease's telltale tumors as "karkinos" -- the Greek word for crab. The "Father of Western Medicine" likely noted that cancer's creeping projections mirrored certain crustaceans, and the tumors' characteristic hardness resembled a crab's armored shell.

Later, scientists added another attribute: Tumors are hypoxic. That is, they grow so large and dense that they exclude blood vessels, causing a lack of oxygen in their cores. But what role these characteristics play in the development of cancer has remained a mystery.

Moving one step closer to an answer, scientists from Princeton University and the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center have found that, in breast cancer, tumor hardness and hypoxia trigger a biological switch that causes certain cells to embark on a cancer-promoting program. Reported Aug. 8 in an article in the journal Cancer Research, this biological switch is critical to a tumors' ability to invade other tissue, a process called metastasis -- and could offer a promising treatment target.

"Our study suggests that to combat cancer, we should be developing treatments that target the stiff, hypoxic regions of tumors," said lead author Celeste Nelson, a professor of chemical and biological engineering. "We were surprised to see just how important these two properties in the tumor microenvironment -- stiffness and hypoxia -- were for regulating cancer stem cells."

The specific cells triggered by stiffness and hypoxia are called cancer stem cells. These cells represent only a small proportion of the total cells in a tumor, but researchers believe they play a key role in spreading the disease. As normal stem cells help form an embryo, or aid in repairing muscles, cancer stem cells specialize in generating new malignant cells. In addition to spreading cancer, just 10 to 100 leftover cancer stem cells are needed to regenerate a tumor after it has been removed.

Using cultures of human breast-cancer cells and mouse mammary-cancer cells, Nelson and colleagues from Princeton and the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, discovered an association between a protein called integrin-linked kinase and the creation of cancer stem cells. Normally, integrin-linked kinase assists cells with a variety of important cellular tasks. But in dense, oxygen-poor tumors, the protein's function goes awry.

advertisement

In the lab, the researchers created a range of human and mouse breast-cancer cultures reflecting different tissue conditions. They showed that stiff hypoxic cultures did indeed promote cancer stem cells. But when they eliminated the integrin-linked kinase from those samples, they found that the cancer stem cells stopped forming. Conversely, when they forced abnormal levels of integrin-linked kinase in samples containing softer or less hypoxic tissue, cancer stem cells formed. They also confirmed a significant association between tumor stiffness, integrin-linked kinase and cancer stem cell presence in samples from human breast-cancer patients.

"We could see tumor cells expressing cancer stem-cell markers and integrin-linked kinase located at regions with high collagen, which is used to estimate stiffness in a tumor," says Mei-Fong Pang, a postdoctoral fellow in Nelson's Tissue Morphodynamics Laboratory.

The findings suggest that stiffness and hypoxia cause integrin-linked kinase to behave abnormally, which in turn triggers cancer stem-cell formation.

There are likely other features in tumors that cause cancer stem cells to form, but the findings indicate that stiff, hypoxic conditions -- and their effects on integrin-linked kinase -- are two of the most prominent ones. This means the findings could be useful for better understanding some types of cancer and for developing treatments for those characterized by solid tumors -- including for more than just breast cancer.

"These findings may lead to the identification of a new therapeutic target to halt cancer progression and metastasis," said Ren Xu, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky's Markey Cancer Center who is familiar with the study but had no role in it.

"Given the crucial function of integrin-linked kinase in hypoxia and stiff-induced cancer progression, it is now critical to define the molecular mechanisms by which integrin-linked kinase expression is regulated under these conditions," Xu said.

Nelson and her colleagues plan to investigate the specific molecular pathways that promote the formation of cancer stem cells in the presence of rigidity, hypoxia and integrin-linked kinase. Building on that knowledge, treatments could eventually be created that specifically kill cancer stem cells. Finding a way to change conditions in the tumor itself could provide another solution.

"If we can make the tumor softer or reduce hypoxia," Nelson said, "we could potentially have a way to treat breast cancer and maybe other cancers as well."
You don't need a Ph.D. in rhetoric to know that messages from a weak source -- a P.T. Barnum-esque carnival barker, for example -- typically don't hold much water. But according to new research co-written by a University of Illinois expert in social psychology, even the most spurious of arguments can still reverberate in the public consciousness over time, provided they are delivered by a credible source.

When a weak argument is delivered, a source-based "sleeper effect" can arise -- that is, the influence of the message can increase over time as it permeates the public sphere. But the dormant effect occurs only if the credibility of its source remains strong, says Dolores Albarracin, a professor of psychology at Illinois.

"We started to look at the delayed impact of communications, and the sleeper effect is a classic topic for persuasion research," Albarracin said. "The sleeper effect shows that a strong message from a noncredible source has a delayed effect, so it's more persuasive after time has gone by. We researched this effect for a long time, and we came to the realization that it was happening when people focused on the message's arguments -- but the source was an afterthought. So we turned things around and asked, 'What if people focus on the credibility of the source?'"

If a message can be discounted for its association with a noncredible source, "we wanted to see if it could also be discounted for containing weak arguments, as well," Albarracin said.

To test their hypothesis, Albarracin and her co-authors -- G. Tarcan Kumkale of Kadir Has University and Patrick Poyner-Del Vento of Simon Fraser University -- asked participants to evaluate the campaign materials of a fictitious political party running for the student government on campus.

Each participant received two ads: One describing the arguments of the party with either strong or weak arguments; the other introducing the attributes of the candidates, who were portrayed as either credible or noncredible.

advertisement

"These two ads allowed us to generate two conditions -- one with strong arguments presented by a noncredible source and the other with weak arguments presented by a credible source," she said.

The researchers found that when a credible source presents weak arguments, a source-based sleeper effect can be observed because the influence of the credible source endures.

"It turns out that, over time, a credible, strong communicator presenting a weak message or making a weak claim about an issue is able to convince people, even though the issue or the argument is weak," Albarracin said. "What happens is that there's a transfer of the positive or negative attributes of the source to the recipient's attitude about the position and the message. The only caveat is that it doesn't happen immediately; it takes time. It also happens when recipients are centered on the communicator more than the issues."

By contrast, a message -- even a credible one -- produced by a weak communicator with little credibility has no effect early on. But later on, there's a zombie effect.

"What is surprising about the classic sleeper effect is that, later on, this really weak communicator ends up convincing you, without you realizing it to some extent, because by then you've forgotten the weakness of the communicator," Albarracin said. "Thus, the sleeper effect."

A noncredible source coupled with a strong argument has the sleeper effect of the more it gets out there, the more currency it gains and the more traction it gets in the public consciousness.

advertisement

"The public forgets about what seemed suspect about a communication," she said. "They forget that they heard it first from someone who should be discounted. So something that wasn't effective early on might have an effect down the line because people forget who initially said it."

The research is especially relevant for communication that's aimed at persuasion, said Albarracin, also a professor of business administration.

"Communications tend to be tested in a neutral, baseline situation without really taking into account the mindset of its recipients," she said. "In real life, people have to make decisions: 'Who do I vote for?' 'Which of these two competing products do I buy?' That mindset -- focusing attention on either the message or the speaker -- isn't usually a part of persuasion research."

For instance, if your company had a credible brand but a weak product, consumers might test the product but not be persuaded to buy. Later on, however, they might "forget details about the testing experience and actually look more positively toward that product," Albarracin said.

"When launching a campaign or a product, or building some sort of program, how do you measure initial versus downstream impact? Does it have a little bit of an initial impact that quickly fades away? It's much rarer to find impact later down the line, but we find that it does actually happen."
An anonymous little piglet who was found lying on the side of a Pennsylvania highway now has a name.

Charlotte jumped out of a transport truck and hit the pavement hard. Stunned, she lay there while the traffic whizzed by. Then one car stopped and a family, who had been on an errand to buy school supplies, rushed to her side.

Dodo Shows Wild Hearts Guy And Wild Shark Have Been Best Friends For Decades

The little piglet was unconscious but still breathing, as the family picked her up and hurried her to the Adams County SPCA. When she arrived, veterinarians took her temperature; it was a whopping 107 degrees.

For two weeks, Charlotte needed intensive care - she couldn't even eat or drink on her own - so the people at the SPCA helped her build her strength. Finally, the baby pig was strong enough to retire to her forever home, Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary in Poolesville, Maryland, where she arrived last week.

"She is just starting to run and play," Terry Cummings, director of Poplar Spring, told The Dodo. "Although her wounds are still healing, she should soon be completely healthy," the sanctuary wrote on Facebook. "We are so happy that this family turned around, and that the Adams County SPCA went above and beyond to do everything they could to save her life." Charlotte has recently become acquainted with another newly rescued pig: Oreo, or Reo for short. They seem to have hit it off splendidly.

This browser does not support the video tag. Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary

"Welcome, Charlotte," the sanctuary wrote, "you will have a wonderful life here!"
Nearly half of all companies listed on the TSX still have zero women on their board of directors  virtually unchanged from last year, according to a boardroom diversity study released Tuesday.

The parity gap persists despite securities rules enacted in 2014 that require companies to disclose the number of women on boards of directors and in the C-suite offices. They also require companies to comply or explain policies aimed at putting more women on boards or why they are not in place.

Women hold an average of one board seat per Canadian company, representing an average of 13 per cent of the board, said the 2016 Diversity Disclosure Practices report by law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

Women held about 12 per cent of all board seats of TSX-listed companies for the full 2015 calendar year.

I frankly expected to see more women in director positions, said Andrew MacDougall, who heads the firms corporate governance practice.

Osler found 34 per cent of companies have written diversity policies, a slight uptick from 30 per cent last year. Just 10 per cent had targets for the number of female representatives on boards, up 2 per cent from last year.

The number of women in board rooms was slightly better among Canadas 60 largest companies, where women held about 24 per cent of board seats. Only three of those industry leaders had no women on their boards.

I think the big companies take a hold of these governance issues and they do it earlier . . . partly because the spotlights on them and partly because they look ahead to these types of issues, MacDougall said.

With the smaller companies, I think its a matter of time, theyre not moving quite as fast as we would like in terms of changes.

By industry, the utilities, media and financial services sectors led the way with the highest number of women directors, while mining, energy and forestry had the fewest.

The business case for gender diversity on boards and executive suites has been well-established, said Serena Fong, vice-president of government affairs at advocacy group Catalyst.

Companies that increased the number of women in the executive suite saw a 15-per-cent increase in their financial performance, a recent study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found.

Still, the securities rules are relatively new, so companies should be given some time to make that progress, MacDougall added.

It really depends on the change in the board structure and in those seats that will really determine how fast change is made.

A Catalyst report in June provided recommendations for accelerating progress and called on companies to take intentional actions to increase diversity.

Some of those actions include: setting targets, concerted efforts to facilitate renewal on the board, recruitment policies requiring a diverse slate of candidates and ensuring that women represent 50 per cent of interviewees.

Investor appetite for more women on boards has been mixed. Proposals brought forth by shareholders at BCE Inc. and Restaurant Brands International for board diversity targets each received less than 20 per cent support. At the same time, the number of funds and indices focusing on companies led by women has grown.

The Ontario government in June announced it would aim to have women comprise 40 per cent of appointments to provincial boards and agencies within three years. It also called on businesses to set a target of 30-per-cent female representation on their boards by the end of 2017.

SHARE:
By Manogya Loiwal : Singur, a small block in Hoogly district of Bengal has made a place in the pages of history for being the epicentre of an anti land acquisition movement and decimating a three decade old Left Government in the state.

After almost ten years since the anti land acquisition movement began in summer of 2006 the land owners will now be getting there land and compensation back this September. But this is being calculated on the basis on the prices of the year of acquisition that is 2006.

advertisement

More than 800 cheques will be given out to land holders on September 14 in Singur by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who will be observing 'Singur Diwas' to acknowledge the legal victory in the battle against Left and the industrial giant Tata.

The cheques are being paid out after a Supreme Court verdict last month to give back the land to the land holders breaking the barrier of the willing and unwilling farmers over the years.

CALCULATION BASED ON RATES IN 2006

But the calculation has taken them back in the time machine. The valuation is Rs. 8.4 lakh per acre for seasonal crop land and Rs. 12 lakh per acre for perennially fertile land to all the land holders and land owners unlike the present rate of more than Rs 20 lakh per acre.

Interestingly there were six industries that had come up in the acquired land area. Besides the main manufacturing complex, a rubber goods factory, two petrol pumps, a hotel, a bottle factory, a ceramic factory and a cold storage.

Dr Udayan Das, a professional doctor had sold 13 acres of land for Rs 6.5 crore and brought five acres land for a similar price in the main ancillary area in 2006. He built a cold storage also which never became operational. Udayan is now urging the CM to consider the region for industry even if he gets the land back this month.

Also read: Mamata Banerjee on Singur verdict against Tatas: Can die in peace now



RAY OF HOPE



"We are getting the land back after Supreme Court's verdict. When the court took the land from us, we bought it to set up an industry. We bought the land to set up an agricultural industry which would preserve and process the shoots and vegetables. We acquired almost 13 acres of land. Within two years we were able to start coal storage there. But unfortunately we had to let go the land as a bigger industry was about to set there. The Government then told that if in future we try to set up an industry there, we would get infrastructural help," said Udayan.



"Though we bought some land now but the acres of land we left then, we are unable to recover that. Though we left 13 acres of land then but are unable to recover nothing more than 4. The verdict on land by Supreme Court is a ray of hope for us. Thus like all other farmers, we will also get the land back. We want to do some agricultural based industry. And if we get the storage structure back, then we will get the work started by this year," added Udayan.

advertisement

Also read: After Singur victory against TATA's, Mamata now woos German auto giant BMW





The government is preparing for distribution of thousands of cheques to be paid out of the treasury within October but there are not all who are on same page with him.

Tapan Mitra too had parted with his land expecting monetary gains and development. "We want to get the land back the way we handed the land. After that we will decide that whether to do agriculture on the land or to give the land for industry because once we gave the land for industry leaving agriculture. We will get the land back according to the verdict of Supreme Court and only then we will decide together that whether to keep the land for agriculture or to sell it for industry," said Mitra.

advertisement

However, the Mahadeb Das had refused to give his only 3.5 acres of land in the interior area. He now wants to go back to the land tilling once the Tata factory structure is dismantled.

FRESH BEGINNINGS



"Our demand to Supreme Court was that our land was forcefully taken from us and thus we want our land back. After 10 years of struggle, we got it back and we are very happy. After getting our land back, we will be doing agriculture and we will also get some amount of money," said Das.

The basic reason for the movement was less rate of compensation and no consultation before acquisition. The farmers have not touched the land for a decade and still doubt whether they will be able to do anything constructive once they get the documents of land. After all it is more of vindication than just victory.

Also read: Singur land case: Mamata appeals to Tatas to cooperate with SC verdict and shift factory location





advertisement

--- ENDS ---
A half-century after Sid Bernstein pitched the idea for the Beatles groundbreaking performance at Shea Stadium in 1965, the company bearing the famed music producers name needs some help getting the rights to the concert.

Sid Bernstein Presents LLC on Monday sued the entity that holds the rights to the performances master tape. That company, London-based Apple Corps Ltd., is owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennons widow Yoko Ono and the estate of George Harrison, none of whom are strangers to copyright battles.

At the heart of the complaint is the claim that Bernstein, best known as The Man Who Brought the Beatles to America, was the driving force behind every aspect of the stadium performance and was therefore the rightful owner of the rights to the master tape.

All use of that tape has violated Bernsteins rights, including a 1967 television movie  The Beatles at Shea Stadium  that aired nationwide, and a 1995 documentary series, The Beatles Anthology, according to the lawsuit.

The suit is entirely frivolous, Apple Corps New York lawyer Paul Licalsi said in an interview. Bernsteins agreement with the Beatles at the time explicitly barred him from any filming rights and a copy of the deal will prove it easily, he said.

Mr. Bernstein never made any claim for the film for nearly 50 years until he died, Licalsi said.

Bernstein died in 2013 at 95. He had reached out to the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, to pitch a U.S. tour, according to the complaint. Bernstein helped get the band booked for their historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan television show and then produced their concert at Carnegie Hall, all in 1964.

Sid had the idea of putting on a performance by the Beatles at Shea Stadium, according to the lawsuit. No rock group had ever performed in such a large venue.

The music producer promoted the first-of-its-kind event and arranged for the Beatles to land at the Queens stadium in a helicopter, the company claims. All 55,000 seats were sold as a direct result of his efforts, it says.

Sid told people that he was planning a performance by the Beatles at Shea Stadium and the word spread like wildfire, the company said. Thousands of envelopes containing money and requests for tickets were sent to Sids post office box in New York.

The Beatles performed 12 songs at the Aug. 15 concert, including Twist and Shout, A Hard Days Night and Help!

SHARE:
OTTAWAAnne McLellan, leader of the federal task force on how to legalize pot, says its critical that Canada go slow on reforming marijuana laws.

In an interview with the Star as the task force concluded public consultations and begins to winnow recommendations to government, McLellan said there are important lessons to be taken from places that have already loosened marijuana laws  chief among them to introduce change slowly.

One of the things we have learned, or we have heard . . . , from states like Washington and Colorado . . . is take your time because its much harder to pull something back than it is to perhaps be a little bit more restrictive out of the box and then, as you learn, you maybe loosen things up a bit, she said Monday.

The Canadian Medical Association has urged the task force to adopt a phased-in approach toward legalizing marijuana, including possibly starting with pilot projects in smaller regions. The group representing Canadas physicians also wants a strict minimum age of 21 for marijuana consumption with other controls on users under 25.

McLellan, who has served in previous Liberal governments as health, justice and public safety minister, said the task force is still working through what approach it will recommend.

She said the question of whether to have separate recreational and medical marijuana regimes is one of toughest issues. She said the task force will have a recommendation for the government but we havent come to ground on it yet.

McLellan said no matter how much planning all levels of government do, it is clear there will be surprises that will require government to adapt any regime. She said she was not speaking for the task force as a whole but said it has learned from approaches adopted by other jurisdictions, as well as from a series of domestic consultations.

Any system that lifts criminal sanctions on marijuana and legalizes sales must be a robust regulatory system accompanied by very robust and co-ordinated public education campaigns focused on public health messaging  for parents and schools about the impacts of marijuana use on children, she said.

And all levels of government must be closely work together  with some experts recommending a national co-ordinating agency that would act as an early warning system for developments that will require the system to change, she said.

There has to be a high degree of collaboration and co-ordination and I can tell you the task force will talk about that as a general principle.

In Colorado, lawmakers did not foresee the popularity and explosive growth of edible marijuana products  in chocolate, lollipops, candies or gummy bears. McLellan said the state didnt have rules around advertising, around whether producers could make THC-infused lollipops or jujubes that were particularly attractive to children. The state didnt require, for example, producers to score the chocolate bar and on the label, require people to see how much THC was in each one of those squares, she said.

They were surprised, they were caught off guard by how edibles as opposed to the smoked product, how quickly the edibles grew, McLellan said.

State legislators had to go back to private sector to say and say, You know what  were going to change the regime on you. So you can imagine that was not easy. So lesson learned, she said.

Thats part of a message the task force wants to share not only with the government of Canada, but with Canadians and other levels of government which is dont box yourself in, and create the impression what we put in place initially is the whole story because it wont be.

McLellan acknowledged the legalization agenda poses problems for countries and individuals beyond our border. Canadas signature is on three international law treaties that require criminalization of marijuana. And while four states  Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Colorado along with the District of Columbia have legalized access, U.S. federal law means admitted or convicted marijuana users are barred from entry.

Yet McLellan said the Canadian government has an important narrative articulated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and in the Liberal party platform  that theres going to be strict regulation. And that should be very reassuring to the international community.

McLellan never thought it was going to be simple.

Still, she said she has realized after several weeks of travelling to other jurisdictions, holding expert roundtables, and receiving some 30,000 submissions (about 500 from organizations) that it is a massively complicated project.

The word legalization is a big word, its an easy word to say, but when you start to deconstruct what that means for Canadian society as we from prohibition to legalization, the complexity of the issue I think is what has surprised me the most.

Asked whether it is realistic for the promise to be fulfilled on the governments timeline, McLellan said the deadline is what it is.

The government is working backwards from a self-imposed deadline to introduce legislation sometime in the 2017 spring session of parliament, which goes into June, and has given the task force until Nov. 30 to report.

The task force contracted Hill and Knowlton to assess the submissions received. The agency has analyzed 25 per cent of them, and gave an interim report in Ottawa Saturday. McLellan said a majority of the submissions is in favour of moving from a prohibitory model towards legalization with a distinct minority opposed to legalization.

SHARE:
OTTAWAA second member of the Canadian Forces in Halifax has been charged with sexual assault in as many days.

Master Seaman Daniel Cooper, who was posted to the Naval Fleet School (Atlantic) at Canadian Forces Base Halifax, faces one charge of sexual assault in connection with an alleged incident that occurred in November 2015.

Canadian Forces military spokesman Lt. (N) Blake Patterson said Cooper and the alleged victim, also a member of the Forces, were participating in a training exercise on board the navys last remaining destroyer, HMCS Athabaskan, at the time.

Cooper has also been charged with one count of abuse of a subordinate in relation to the alleged assault and faces court martial on the two charges.

On Monday, Sgt. Kevin MacIntyre, a military police officer who was also posted to CFB Halifax, was charged with one count of sexual assault in connection with an alleged incident in Glasgow, Scotland, last year.

MacIntyre and the alleged victim, also a member of the Forces, were participating in an international training exercise at the time.

The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, the military police unit responsible for investigating serious crimes, took over the case and laid the charges.

SHARE:
The Hells Angels have shut down their elite Nomads chapter outside Ottawa, just a month after hosting a national gathering of more than 500 outlaw bikers.

Neither the bikers nor the police are saying why there is no longer a Nomads chapter (also known as a charter) on Piperville Rd. off Hwy. 417, just a 15-minute drive from downtown Ottawa.

Its closed, Det.-Staff Sgt. Len Isnor, head of the provincial biker enforcement unit, said on Tuesday. There is no Nomads chapter.

The Nomads are considered an elite group of bikers who require little direction.

There were about a dozen of them in Ontario.

The Hells Angels have about 175 Ontario members and 450 members across Canada. About 60 of them are in custody or are restricted from associating with outlaw bikers because of bail or parole conditions.

Many of the charges against them relate to drug trafficking and violence.

The Nomads shutdown is an abrupt change of direction for the chapter, which first popped up in Ontario when the Hells Angels expanded into Ontario in 2000-2001.

They had the honour of hosting a national gathering, or Canada Run, July 21-24 to mark the clubs 15th anniversary in Ontario.

The Nomads charter was nixed on Aug. 28.

One biker source said the Canada Run was considered dull and a dud, but Isnor said that it could be considered successful, as it drew together more than 500 outlaw bikers.

Bikers were seen taking a giant cake into the compound and taking selfies on Parliament Hill.

The 0.92-acre, gated compound where the Nomads met remains the home base for four chapters of the Red Devils, considered a junior club affiliated to the Hells Angels.

More than 30 Red Devils still meet there, Isnor said.

The status of the former Ontario Nomads is unclear as none of them has appeared as members of existing charters of the Hells Angels, Isnor said.

They havent landed anywhere yet, Isnor said.

Right now, its a very confusing organization, Isnor said.

There has been plenty of turmoil at the Ottawa-area clubhouse recently.

Nomads vice-president Phil Boudreault survived a murder attempt in April after he was shot while riding his motorcycle near Lachute, Que., about 60 km northwest of Montreal.

At least one gunman opened fire from a vehicle that pulled alongside him. A source said Boudreault shielded his girlfriend, who was also on the motorcycle.

Boudreault, a former Olympic boxer, was one of the Ottawa Nomads who wore a distinctive bright red, bullet-proof Kevlar vest.

Former Ontario Nomads president Paul Porter has quit the club and moved home to Montreal.

He was paroled in 2014 after serving time for cocaine trafficking.

SHARE:
Montrealers will commemorate the 10th anniversary on Tuesday of the shooting at a downtown junior college when a man murdered a young woman and injured another 16 people before killing himself.

Eighteen-year-old Anastasia De Sousa was sitting in the Dawson College cafeteria with friends when Kimveer Gill, wearing a black trenchcoat, black leather boots and with his hair styled in a Mohawk, started shooting.

Gill had already shot six people standing outside the doors of the college when he entered the building, made his way to the cafeteria and took aim at De Sousa, hitting her and another three students.

The man with the gun turned and asked James Santos, a student he had taken hostage, if Anastasia was still alive.

Santos told him he didnt know and begged Gill to let her leave the school to be treated.

Gill then asked another male student if Anastasia was dead and was told he didnt know.

He then riddled her body with bullets.

Now shes dead, he said, according to a coroners report into the tragedy.

Anastasias mom, Louise Hevey De Sousa, said in an interview she was initially told her daughter was shot in the arm and was being treated in hospital.

De Sousa said she felt like a zombie during the hours she waited before hearing the news.

I had knots in my stomach, she told The Canadian Press. There was something wrong.

When De Sousa and her husband found out around 9 p.m. that night their daughter was dead. Our entire lives fell apart.

A statement posted on Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus website Tuesday pays tribute to those affected by the tragedy, saying Our thoughts are with the victims, their loved ones and all those whose lives were forever changed that day.

In the aftermath of these tragic events, a whole community was left grieving and in a state of shock . . . We condemn all forms of violence and consider all attacks designed to spread fear and kill innocent people to be unacceptable.

Anastasias murderer was not a student at Dawson, an anglophone institution sitting on 12 acres of green space in downtown Montreal. Gill had been out of a job for a year and was living in his familys home in Laval, just north of Montreal.

He was armed with several weapons, including a Beretta CX4 Storm, a semi-automatic he used to shoot 72 rounds in and around the college.

The gun was so big that witnesses said they thought he was an actor in a movie when they saw him walking with it outside the school.

Gill used another weapon, a Glock pistol, to shoot himself dead roughly 20 minutes after starting his rampage.

Meaghan Hennegan was one of the six students shot outside the front doors to the school, which were a few metres from the cafeteria where Gill fired most of his rounds.

Now 28, she recently completed a degree to become a pharmacy technician and found a job in her field. She had to undergo years of physiotherapy and says she still has pain in her arm.

She said the fact the Beretta that Gill used to shoot her is even more accessible in Canada than it was 10 years ago is insulting.

At the time of the Dawson College shooting, the semi-automatic was classified as restricted, forcing its owner to have a special permit for possessing the weapon and another for transporting it.

As was the case in 2006, the weapon can be used only at shooting ranges.

Now, a modified version of that gun is available and is classified as non-restricted, which requires only a regular permit to purchase.

That makes me so angry, Hennegan said. Its a slap in the face.

Trudeaus statement makes no mention of the Canadian Long Gun registry, the firearm regulation initiative of the Liberal government of Jean Chretien that was sparked, initially, by the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre, which was also in Montreal. The registry was repealed in 2012 by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

De Sousa said the family never stops thinking about Anastasia.

I often ask myself where she would be now, she said. Would she be married? Would I be a grandmother? Ill never know. Burying your daughter at 18, it doesnt make sense.

Another mother also had to bury a child after the events of Sept. 13, 2006.

Parvinder Sandhu, Gills mother, said she is still suffering from what her son did.

I wont say anything, she said in an interview. No, its too painful and Im still suffering. Life has changed forever and Im not able to say anything. Its extremely painful.

Sandhu said her son wasnt treated fairly.

He was such a nice person, very gentle, kind, everything you can think about, she said. But when all this happened, its like, Oh my God. Its hard to understand. Its not him. He was totally opposite.

The coroners report said that written among Gills notes were passages describing how he would have murdered his parents if they had tried to get in the way of his plans.

SHARE:
ST. JOHNS, N.L.A Newfoundland man who promised in a social media post to turn himself in on five arrest warrants has kept his word.

The story played out on social media Monday for all to read when Brandon Melbourne took exception to comments on the Royal Newfoundland Constabularys Facebook page likening him to a person wanted for an armed robbery at a St. Johns bank on Friday afternoon.

Earlier in the week, the constabulary had posted pictures of Melbourne, who was wanted on a number of warrants.

After a robbery at the Bank of Montreal, police posted pictures of the suspect in that case.

When some people posted comments that the bank suspect looked like Melbourne, he responded on the page saying it wasnt him and he would be turning himself in on the warrants later in the evening after he did a few things.

Staff Sgt. Tim Buckle of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary confirmed in an interview that Melbourne arrived at the Royal Newfoundland Constabularys station at 9:20 p.m. on Monday.

Read more about:

SHARE:
HALIFAXThe Conservative leadership race is starting to take form as potential candidates seek support at the summer caucus retreat, bringing some contenders that much closer to making their move.

I think this is really the last ingredient, Conservative MP Erin OToole said of the time he will spend speaking to his caucus colleagues as they gather in Halifax to plan for their return to Parliament Hill next week.

The news this week that former cabinet minister Peter MacKay has officially decided not to join the race has cleared the way for other hopefuls  and more precisely, their potential campaign teams and financial donors  to start making their own intentions known, even if most political observers did not consider his decision a surprise.

I would suspect that now, nobody is waiting for anybody else to enter, so you need to signal your intentions sooner, rather than later, said Conservative strategist Tim Powers.

One big move came from Conservative MP Andrew Scheer, who on Tuesday gave up his job as Opposition House leader.

My consultations about a possible run for the Conservative leadership have been very encouraging and I would like to continue to explore the feasibility of such an endeavour, the Saskatchewan MP said in an email statement.

The former Speaker of the House of Commons is expected to officially declare his candidacy in the coming weeks.

OToole, a bilingual MP from Ontario who is reconsidering his earlier decision to stay out of the race, said he wants to use his time in Halifax to make sure that the support he has received from his colleagues is widespread among the 97 MPs and 41 senators that make up the Conservative caucus.

I would be running as a unifier and I have to make sure that I have that support throughout the caucus, OToole said in an interview Monday.

Conservative MP Lisa Raitt has said she has made up her mind and she is expected to make an announcement some time this month.

Quebec MP Maxime Bernier announced the endorsement of four Conservatives from Atlantic Canada, including Nova Scotia Sen. Stephen Greene.

And Saskatchewan MP Brad Trost  who has not yet filed his paperwork  told reporters Tuesday he is resigning from his role as the Conservative critic for Canada-U.S. relations.

So far, MPs Bernier, Michael Chong, Tony Clement, Kellie Leitch and Deepak Obhrai have all officially entered the race to replace Stephen Harper, but nearly a dozen others have expressed at least some degree of interest.

Conservative strategist Rick Anderson said the fact that the field of potential contenders includes men and women, those with more experience and those from a newer generation, a broad range of views that one would expect from a coalition party and at least one candidate from Quebec suggests Harper left the party in better shape than his critics like to admit.

In her speech to open the caucus meeting Tuesday morning, interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose said it is critical that the party remain united even as candidates stake out their positions in the months leading up to the May 27 convention which will choose the new leader.

We know that drama drives ratings, that those outside our party will do everything they can to separate us into separate camps, Ambrose said. Weve been there before, a long, long time ago, and we have no intention of going back there.

One controversial debate that woke up an otherwise uneventful leadership race earlier this month began after Leitch proposed having the federal government screen potential immigrants and refugees for what her campaign referred to as anti-Canadian values.

Conservative strategist Jim Armour said Ambrose will need to make sure the caucus is united where it counts  in the Commons, while it is trying to hold the Liberal government to account.

Outside of that, there is going to be all sorts of disagreements and there probably has to be for it to be a real race, said Armour.

Read more about:

SHARE:
Doug Ford presents an interesting variation on the old folk tale: he is the wolf who cried wolf.

The former city councillor, former mayoral candidate, brother of late mayor Rob Ford, now-private citizen and public all-purpose political shouter is pretty much always howling. Sometimes when he has done so in the past, he has alerted his opponents to a genuine political threat he poses, in the form of his flair for media manipulation and the sway he holds over the still-considerable populist political movement his younger brother built up in Toronto. Other times, he just seems to want attention.

Either way, so far, he gets everyone running and worrying and talking, though like the boy in the story, he also may begin to test the patience and attention spans of the townspeople  or at least the members of the press he relies on to cry out to them.

Genuine threat: recall the September day in 2014 when he held a press conference at the Ford Family compound  his mothers backyard  in Etobicoke that turned the citys election on its head. That day, he announced his infamous brother Rob had been diagnosed with cancer, and that he, Doug, would be replacing him on the ballot as a candidate for mayor. He came within 6.5 per cent of winning the vote in that election.

Cry for attention: On Tuesday, two years and one day later, Ford summoned the media to the exact same spot for an unspecified very special announcement. His free-range political thundering and his well-known considerable estimation of himself is such that he is currently considered a credible candidate for mayor (and, more immediately, the vacant council seat in Scarborough recently occupied by new provincial MPP Raymond Cho), for provincial office, and for dark-horse candidate for leader of the federal Conservative party. The timing in the news cycle, and his own recent hints about a decision, is such that an announcement of a bid for any of those offices might seem natural.

And yet it was none of those things. Instead, he was hawking a book.

Ford Nation: Two Brothers, One Vision  The True Story of the Peoples Mayor by Rob and Doug Ford, Doug told the assembled press, would be released on Nov. 22. It was a book, he said, that had been in the works since before Rob died, one that would tell the story of the family, his brothers troubles, and  of course! their enemies, in the words of both political Ford brothers themselves.

Flanked by his mother, Diane, his nephew, Councillor Michael Ford, and Robs widow, Renata, he promised  using the famous Ford flair for hyperbole  that the book would rock worlds political and journalistic.

You see, hes aware hes a wolf, and he has to show his fangs: No ones going to be left untouched, he said. Look forward to seeing your names in one of these books, he told the reporters in attendance. He said he would name names to expose both the lying Toronto Star and the other media who did him wrong, and also the other politicians who struggle with addiction problems similar to Robs but who pointed fingers during the crack scandal.

The Fords cant be judgmental, he said, because they have suffered every issue you might catalogue in the list of human failings. But some of these people dont throw stones, they throw boulders in a glass house.

In addition to settling political scores, Ford said, this book would benefit charity: all proceeds would go to a variety of charities, including cancer charities. But of course, it will also be a platform on which Ford will continue to cry wolf as an all-purpose political threat. He would embark on a national publicity tour this fall, he said, after which he will declare his political intentions.

As sure as Im standing here, Ill be running, he said, refusing to narrow down the options. Mayor of Toronto? Growl: I dont know if its going to be holding the mayor accountable. Member of provincial parliament? Snarl: Or the premier who runs up over a $300-billion deficit. Prime minister? Howl: If youre putting me up against Justin Trudeau, a camp counsellor and part-time drama teacher, I think that answers everything.

Everything and nothing. Awoooooooo!

The announcement by the Ford political machine was to gain publicity for a vehicle to generate more publicity for the Ford political machine, to be channeled into a specific endeavor to be named later.

The deadline to enter the federal Conservative leadership race is not until February 2017. The deadlines to declare for provincial and municipal races are considerably later than that. Lots of howling still to come.

The question is, if the townspeople stop jumping and the sheep stop running every time he opens his mouth, will his fangs still be as sharp?

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire

Read more about:

SHARE:
Traffic came to a standstill in parts of downtown Toronto on Tuesday evening as about 150 people protested the Dakota Access pipeline being built in the United States.

The protest began at 3:30 p.m. at the stock exchange on King St. before weaving its way through downtown. Demonstrators made a brief stop beside a Toronto International Film Festival venue and continued peacefully to Yonge-Dundas Square.

Although the protest stopped near the TIFF area, Carrie Lester, a protester from Mohawk Six Nations Grand River, said that was not the purpose of the march. Shortly after the brief pause, the group began walking north towards Queen St., with some protesters pushing anti-pipeline signs against the window of a limo driving towards the film festival.

People waved signs, chanting Keep it in the soil, you can't drink oil as they marched in solidarity with the people of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which has been conducting a blockade of pipeline construction for weeks.

The group stopped at intervals, holding up traffic while joining hands to form a giant circle surrounding indigenous drummers and singers.

As she walked down Yonge St., Lester said it's crucial for people all over the world to speak up against oil pipelines that she said are destroying the environment.

It's up to me, it's up to all of us, to protect our land and water, Lester said. We can't let these extractive industries continue what they're doing. They've held a noose around our neck for far too long.

Lester said this was the third such demonstration in Toronto in recent weeks.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota is suing federal regulators for approving the oil pipeline, arguing it will harm water supplies and disturb sacred burial and cultural sites.

Dorian Douma, who learned about the march on Facebook, hopes the Toronto protest raises awareness about the battle Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is undertaking.

It's important to show our solidarity with them and it's important for Torontonians to learn about what is happening, he said.

Protests continued in North Dakota on Tuesday, with 22 people arrested for interfering with pipeline construction. A sheriffs office spokeswoman told the Associated Press that construction workers were swarmed by protesters and that two people had attached themselves to equipment.

Amy Goodman, an award-winning broadcast journalist for Democracy Now! spoke in Toronto on Saturday at a TIFF panel on the film All Governments Lie, two days after Morton County, N.D., issued an arrest warrant charging her with criminal trespass after she filmed the protest.

Somebody has to be doing this, said Allan Henderson, of Mitaanjigamiing First Nation, who led the singing throughout the march. We do it for our grandkids. We do it for our great-grandkids. There are women here who are pregnant, and they would love to see clean water for their kids.

With files from the Associated Press

SHARE:
At the corner of Morse St. and Queen St. E. in Leslieville, the signifiers of gentrification are on full display at Mercury Espresso Bar  a man with an artfully trimmed beard reads the paper while Kate Bush music plays cloyingly in the background, drowned out by the hiss and whistle of the espresso machine.

I am the eye of the storm, I am the gentrification, jokes barista Tyler Semrick-Palmateer as he makes a perfectly crafted Americano.

Semrick-Palmateer, the barista, is himself a bit of a hybrid gentrifier  he works in Leslieville and lives at Clinton and Harbord Sts., another bastion of Torontos affluent hipsterism. But the 30-something musician also grew up not far from the cafe, on Broadview Ave., and remembers the neighbourhoods less shiny past.

A block away from the cafe in Leslieville, Jims Restaurant, a classic family restaurant famous for its Western sandwiches, is boarded up to make room for a six-storey condominium.

Its a vastly different place, Semrick-Palmateer said. I dont know what it will be replaced with, probably not some old-school  diner. Probably some sort of specialty vapour shop.

In 2006, the average household income in South Riverdale/Leslieville was $70,093, placing it in the bottom 40 per cent of neighbourhoods in the city.

By 2015, that figure had leapt to $103,384  a 47 per cent increase that placed the neighbourhood in the top 35 per cent by income in the city. On some blocks, incomes rose as much as 76 per cent.

House prices skyrocketed there, too. Excluding condominiums, the average price of a home increased by a whopping 140 per cent  from $319,753 in 2005 to $764,124 in 2015, according to data provided by Realosophy.

(The neighbourhood was defined as the area within the Don Valley, Eastern Ave., Coxwell Ave. and Gerrard St. E.)

The corner of Jones Ave. and Queen St. in 1986 and today. (Top: Toronto Public Library; Bottom: Marcus Oleniuk/Toronto Star)

From the Junction to Trinity Bellwoods to South Riverdale, you might think you see the signs of gentrification on every corner of Toronto.

Home prices have skyrocketed across the city in the past decade, but very few neighbourhoodshaveactually met the technical definition of gentrified, a Star analysis has found.

While 22 per cent of the city showed some sign of gentrification, only 0.4 per cent actually made the transition from low- to high-income neighbourhood over the past 10 years.

Where it did happen, however, the change was astonishing.

Artisanal salami hanging in a storefront window. Baskets of tomatoes ripening in the sun at a farmers market. Parents and children enjoying dripping cones of gelato on their way to the park.

Gentrification is about more than just the clip-clop of designer heels on pavement  its a total economic and social transformation, says Alan Walks, a researcher at the University of Toronto who studies gentrification.

Data shows pockets of the city in South Riverdale/Leslieville, Trinity Bellwoods, the Junction, Dovercourt-Wallace Emerson, Little Portugal North, St. James Town, the Blake-Jones area of the Danforth, and the Annex made the leap.

Incomes in gentrified neighbourhoods climbed by an average of 53 per cent, from about $65,000 to $99,500, according to data provided by Environics. Across the city as a whole, income increased by only 18 per cent.

Walks says that gentrification isnt a synonym for a good real-estate investment as much as a symptom of the citys growing inequality. Coupled with a citywide housing bubble, gentrification drives housing prices up and pushes poor people out, far away from jobs and services.

There is a misconception that gentrification is a positive thing overall, that it has some net social benefit, Walks said.

What gentrification involves is the displacement of renters from the very neighbourhoods that are best for renters.

To identify neighbourhoods affected by gentrification, the Star adapted a basic method used by Walks and other researchers and looked for big changes in income at the neighbourhood level.

If the neighbourhoods average household income was in the bottom 40th percentile in 2006, our analysis considered it a candidate for gentrification. If income grew faster than the citywide average of 18 per cent, it was considered to be gentrifying.

If it jumped to the top 40th percentile in 2015, it was considered gentrified.

Terry Brackett remembers a time when Leslieville wasnt such a hot ticket. An east-end resident since she was a child, Brackett raised her children in Leslieville in the 1980s, at a time when most of her neighbours were moving to the suburbs in Scarborough.

One time, while attending a charity fundraiser in Rosedale, Brackett told a woman her address.

Good Lord, wheres that? the woman asked. Do you mean people still live there?

That really annoyed me, Brackett said.

Inspired to boost her neighbourhoods reputation, Brackett campaigned for the fading industrial area near her home on Leslie St. to be christened Leslieville, after the former township.

The Duke, at the corner of Leslie St. and Queen St. in 1986 and today. (Top: Toronto Public Library; Bottom: Marcus Oleniuk/Toronto Star)

But turning Leslieville from a working-class neighbourhood to what it is today took more than a new name; it took almost 30 years.

Walks, an expert on gentrification in Toronto and its effects on inequality, attributes the stalled gentrification in Leslieville to the citys desire to preserve local industry in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as a local termite infestation that lasted well into the 1990s.

Although media reports had warned for years that Leslieville was the next big thing, it wasnt until the turn of the millennium that the neighbourhood really took off.

I think when Starbucks came in, everybody said it was a sign, says Dan Michaluk, a Leslieville resident since 2003.

On Leslievilles stretch of Queen St. E., the incredible growth of wealth is as clear as the display window at the artisanal pet supply store. The Starbucks that opened at Logan Ave. and Queen St. E. in 2006 was just the tip of the iceberg. Between 2005 and 2015, cafes and quick-service restaurants on Queen St. E. between Don Valley and Leslie St. more than doubled, from 12 establishments to 27, according to data provided by Ryerson University.

Bars almost doubled, from seven watering holes in 2005 to 13 in 2015. Full-service restaurants grew by almost 52 per cent, from 29 in 2005 to 38 in 2015.

For Michaluk, this growth in retail is a good thing.

Complain about gentrification? he said, incredulously. I cant say theres many things Ive loved that have gone away. Im trying to think of the more gritty aspects of our neighbourhood that Ive appreciated, and I cant identify anything. Everything Ive liked seems to be here.

But not everybody can afford to keep up with the changes on Jones Ave.

There are places I cant afford to go; $12 a glass of wine isnt my cup of tea, said Brackett. I accept that. Theres people who have moved in here who can pay it.

SHARE:
Vietnam is in the midst of a quiet military buildup analysts say is designed as a deterrent, to secure its 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone as China grows more assertive in staking its claims in the South China Sea.

By Reuters: China and Vietnam should work together to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea and manage and control disputes, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea, where about $5 trillion worth of seaborne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims in the sea believed to have rich deposits of oil and gas.

advertisement

Vietnam is in the midst of a quiet military buildup analysts say is designed as a deterrent, to secure its 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone as China grows more assertive in staking its claims in the South China Sea.

CHINA'S CLAIM INVALID

A court of arbitration in The Hague in July said China's claims to the waterway were invalid, after a case was brought by the Philippines. Beijing has refused to recognise the ruling.

Vietnam welcomed the ruling, saying it strongly supports peaceful resolution of disputes, while reasserting its own sovereignty claims.

Meeting in Beijing on Monday, Li told Phuc that the South China Sea involved both issues of sovereignty and maritime rights as well as "national feelings", China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

"China and Vietnam should work hard together, scrupulously abide by their high level consensus, maintain maritime stability, manage and control disputes, promote maritime cooperation, continue to accumulate consensus, jointly maintain maritime and regional peace and stability and create conditions for the stable development of bilateral ties," Li said.

MARITIME ISSUES

The ministry cited Phuc as saying maritime issues should be appropriately handled in a peaceful way on the basis of equality and mutual respect and not allow maritime issues to affect the development of relations.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered Vietnam a credit line of half a billion dollars for defence cooperation, giving a lift to a country rapidly pursing a military deterrent as discord festers in the South China Sea.

The offer comes after a surge of almost 700 per cent in Vietnam's defence procurements as of 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think-tank, which tracks the arm trade over five-year periods.

--- ENDS ---
Theyve become the tech crowds version of raves. And increasingly, job fairs.

On most weekends in big cities with thriving startup scenes, hundreds of young programmers, many of them still in school, will turn up at hackathons  freewheeling competitions where amateur developers race to create applications with new software platforms, hardware or data sets provided by the sponsors. For 24 or even 48 hours, they network, brainstorm and grind out code, their efforts fuelled by energy drinks, protein bars and the promise of attractive prizes.

I think Ive been to a hundred hackathons in the last five years, says Helen Kontozopoulos, a lecturer at the University of Torontos faculty of computer science and co-founder of the Innovation Lab there. They are crucial to our students because they are places where they meet each other, socialize and learn new skills.

Crossroads

While hackathons have become a widely accepted way for companies and other organizations to crowdsource new apps or solve problems, they have evolved into essential networking venues where talent and potential employers can cross paths.

Its crazy hard to get good developers, says Kontozopoulos. If you know developers are at hackathons, you have to be there. You just go.

Some observers, in fact, say that hackathons have become the best way for employers either to find new recruits or brand themselves as places to find a software job. The hothouse environment will also reveal how young techies perform when faced with the pressure of an intense deadline and an open-ended problem.

The reason we invest in hackathons has little to do with idea generation, explains Rocky Jain, director of Manulifes RED Lab, the insurance giants incubator, based at Communitech in Waterloo, Ont. It has everything to do with finding and identifying the talented developers who have the ideas.

Manulife opened RED Lab two years ago specifically to get itself in front of Waterloos programming community, whose members may not have considered the company as a potential employer. Since then, RED Lab has backed two hackathons, and seen its resume intake grow fivefold. Which is precisely Jains goal: I want the goose, he says. Not just the eggs.

Radical roots

The earliest hackathons, which were loosely organized and somewhat anarchic affairs, sprang up at universities more than a decade ago. Recently, theyve become more mainstream, seeing uptake by Fortune 500 companies, big retailers and tech companies alike. MasterCard, AT&T, Unilever, PayPal and Microsoft have all held hackathons (both public and employee-only); Facebook recently held its 50th coding event, and more than 40 intercollegiate hackathons took place across the United States in 2014 alone.

An industry has grown up around these events, with non-profits like HackerNest organizing them and finding sponsors, some of which provide impressive prizes (Salesforce, the sales-software giant, once offered $1 million). In Toronto, there were more than 30 hackathons last year, many held at MaRS, including HTML 500  Canadas largest learn-to-code event, which was presented by Lighthouse Labs and had hundreds lining up on a cold Saturday morning to participate.

Now, non-profits, governments and charities, especially those with ambitious open-data programs, have joined the fray. The City of Toronto put on TrafficJam at Evergreen Brick Works last fall, asking participants to use transportation data to, as the name would suggest, sort out the citys congestion problems.

Feedback

But private enterprise remains the driving force. Karl Martin, co-founder of Nymi says the Toronto firm has participated in, or sponsored, numerous hackathons for multiple reasons, including talent-spotting. He says that since Nymi makes a hardware device  a biometric wristband with security applications  its important for code writers to actually see it, so they can truly understand it.

We want developers to be playing with our product and [give us] feed- back, he adds, although company officials are on hand to get a sense of their skills, as well as to see what participants come up with.

Its almost like a way to interview without the pressure of an interview.

Nymis human-resources managers dont formally track the developers theyve met at hackathons, but Martin says that applicants always include their experiences at such events.

Indeed, the courting process is somewhat more indirect, says Mike Jarrell, who is the partnerships director for Bitmaker, a Toronto tech skills accelerator. I havent formally been approached by hiring partners who said, This is how were hiring students, he says. Its often more implicit than explicit.

Martin and others point out that hackathon sponsors should probably take a soft-sell approach to recruiting, and instead send their brand evangelists to network with the participants.

Down side

Not everyone in the tech space is a fan of finding new talent this way, however. In my view, hackathons are not a good recruiting tool, says Farhan Thawar, a former vice-president of engineering at Toronto software development firm Pivotal Labs, and now chief information officer of a new startup venture (currently in stealth mode).

He says the concentrated hothouse environment of a hackathon bears little resemblance to the way companies, even innovative ones, function on a day-to-day basis. Hackathon participation, he says, is not typically a great predictor of success in a corporate setting.

The goal can be somewhat open-ended, Thawar adds, because the point of a hackathon is to have developers brainstorm in an unstructured way, so sponsors may not necessarily find the people theyre after.

He recalls a more specific event from his days at the University of Waterloo, when IBM ran a programming competition, and offered an internship as the prize. Guess what? They got the people they were looking for  people who want to work for IBM.

Up front

Firms that do see hackathons as potential recruiting platforms should be meticulous about preparing for them. HackerNest CEO Shaharris advises corporate sponsors to be focused and transparent about their objectives, and avoid the temptation to use, for example, a charity-oriented hackathon to mask a recruiting exercise. Developers dont like being lied to, he says. Id be really, really up front about your goals.

You have to be super clear, agrees Martin. It can blow up in your face.

He says companies should make sure theyre able to provide lots of on-site technical support. While Nymi does send HR managers, and Martin himself will drop by to see how the teams are doing, the most important company reps at hackathons are software engineers. Thats who the developers care about. Jain, for his part, notes that the technical mentors that Manulife sends to hackathons also serve as our talent scouts.

Whats next?

Kontozopoulos, meanwhile, points to the advent of new types of hackathons, which take place over longer periods and involve closer, more direct collaboration.

One example: HealthEDGE, a joint venture by partners that include Johnson & Johnson Innovations JLABS, Toronto teaching hospitals, Autodesk and IBM. Participating developers will spend several weeks tackling hospital-based challenges, such as patient and diagnostic processes.

As she puts it, Were trying to evolve the hackathon.

This article is part of a series on the Future of Work featured in MaRS, a publication that highlights the people and companies in MaRS Discovery Districts network, and the innovations that touch our lives. Learn more about the Future of Work.

SHARE:
The 2018 Ontario election is underway today, two years early.

The first campaign announcement: Hydro bills will be reduced 8 per cent by January as an HST rebate, just in time for a positive pre-election impression.

Its a sop to those who hate the HST. And a victory for opposition politicians who have long goaded the government to cut taxes.

Which is precisely what this latest (and recurring) giveaway is. A tax cut  not a hydro rebate.

Pocketbook politics is back. And everything old is new again, courtesy of Mondays speech from the throne laying out the governments new (old) agenda  more of a reprise than a reset.

The Liberals have been down this path in the past, just before hitting the campaign trail in 2011. With hydro bills rising inexorably, and the opposition clamouring for tax relief, the government dreamed up the 10-per-cent-off! Ontario Clean Energy Benefit in 2010.

Environmentalists and economist urged the Liberals to wean themselves from such shameless givebacks. And after profiting from two election victories, the Liberals let it lapse last year  mindful of their desperate fiscal straits.

Now, in desperate political straits, the Liberals have revived it.

Everyone knew it made for good politics but poor policy: Not only bad for cash flow, but bad for carbon flow because it reimbursed people for energy consumption, diminishing the disincentive of price signals.

Its a quick and dirty fix, not an enduring solution. If hydro costs are too high, try reducing subsidies for (renewable energy) producers upstream  not introducing subsidies for consumers downstream.

But everyone loves a tax cut. Even a pretend one.

Like Leons, the Liberals are touting a tax holiday anew. Their rebate corresponds to the 8-percentage-point provincial portion of the 13 per cent HST (the other 5 percentage points are Ottawas business), averaging $130 a year per household.

The Progressive Conservatives proffered an HST exemption in the 2011 election campaign, but had second thoughts about their gimmick and dropped it in the 2014 campaign. Now, PC leader Patrick Brown is all for it.

The New Democrats first dreamed up the so-called HST holiday in 2010, sounding like old-time Tory tax cutters. Even when the PCs abandoned it, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath re-offered her idea this summer, and now gets bragging rights for forcing the governments hand  if piling on debt merits credit.

As shell games go, its awfully hard to follow. A frequent criticism of the old 10 per cent Clean Energy Benefit was that it merely transferred the burden of electricity costs from hydro ratepayers to taxpayers at large (it was described as transitional relief for the heavy expense of ridding Ontario of coal-fired power).

Now its getting even sillier. The new measure is being sold as tax relief, but remember that the HST on hydro doesnt actually go into the coffers of local electricity companies, but is remitted to the provincial treasury. Conceptually, that means ratepayers arent really getting relief from their hydro bills, just the tax they pay on hydro.

In that sense, its a shell game within a shell game. The treasury is bankrolling this tax cut, so well ultimately be making it up through other income and other provincial taxes.

The Liberals giveth with one hand, and taketh with the other.

Thanks to a steady economic recovery  Ontarios growth exceeded that of the U.S. earlier this year, and our unemployment rate is at an eight-year low  tax revenues are surging rapidly enough to cover this new hydro subsidy while still balancing the budget. But its still a shell game, any way you subsidize it.

Far better for the government to address the realities of rising electricity rates, rather than proffering pretend tax breaks. The same can be said for the opposition, who focus mostly on HST cuts and stopping the privatization of Hydro One, neither of which are remotely related to the underlying costs of generating power (and the ultimate price set by our independent regulator).

Stripped of its lofty pretensions, the latest manoeuvre is about digging the Liberals out of a political hole  by digging a trench against opposition attacks and laying the groundwork for the campaign trail. All at our expense, any way you cut it.

MORE ON THESTAR.COM

Kathleen Wynne announces 8 per cent tax cut from hydro bills in throne speech

Five highlights from Kathleen Wynnes throne speech

Martin Regg Cohns political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

Read more about:

SHARE:
Almost two weeks after a drone strike targeted one of Daeshs top leaders, the Pentagon said Monday that the militant  Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani  was confirmed dead.

In a statement, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook offered no explanation to how the United States confirmed Adnanis death or why it took so long.

[The strike] is one in a series of successful strikes against Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) leaders, including those responsible for finances and military planning, that make it harder for the group to operate, Cook said.

On Aug. 30, the Pentagon said it had struck Adnani near the town of al-Bab, Syria, but  at the time  could not confirm if he was dead. That same day, Daesh, over its social media networks, said that Adnani had been killed in an airstrike while inspecting troops on the front line, though it did not specify exactly where he had died. On Aug. 31, Russia, citing intelligence channels, said it had also eliminated Adani during an airstrike on a group of Daesh fighters about 25 kilometres west of where the Pentagon said it had targeted him.

A Syrian national, Adnani was responsible for helping craft some of Daeshs most gruesome execution videos and calling for terrorist attacks outside of the groups self-proclaimed caliphate. He was also seen as a possible successor to the extremist groups leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The competing strike narratives between the United States and Russia set off a bout of verbal sparring as they simultaneously took credit for Adnanis death. Unnamed U.S. defence officials told reporters that Russias narrative was laughable and so the Russian Ministry of Defence took to social media to lambast the Pentagon. In a Facebook post, the Russian Ministry of Defence said that American officials calling Russias claims a joke was the sole thing they can say to justify their unawareness.

A senior defence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said that the Pentagon waited longer than usual to ensure  through intercepted communications  that Adnani had in fact been killed, because it had been burned in the past. Last year, Adnani was reportedly targeted in a U.S. strike but survived.

In March, the Pentagon also said it had killed Daeshs minister of war, Omar Shishani, when it, in fact, did not. Daesh announced Shishanis death in July after a U.S. airstrike targeted him  again  near the Iraqi city of Mosul.

The United States, after almost 15 years of near-constant conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, has nearly perfected the act of eliminating the senior leadership of terrorist organizations  widely known as whack-a-mole through drone strikes and special operations raids. It is unclear, however, how effective these strikes actually are as the deceased leaders are often soon replaced. Since the start of the air campaign over Syria and Iraq in 2014, the Pentagon has claimed to have killed over 45,000 Daesh fighters, leaving roughly 15,000 fighters on the battlefield. In May, Russian officials estimated that the small contingent of Russian aircraft based in Syria had killed 28,000 Daesh fighters. The groups strength in 2014 was estimated to between 20,000 and 30,000.

The Russian air campaign over Syria, which began in the fall of 2015 under the guise of fighting terrorism, has received criticism for instead propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and targeting civilian-populated areas with inhumane munitions including cluster and incendiary bombs. While Russia has supported Syrian ground troops and government-aligned militias, mainly around the embattled Syrian opposition stronghold of Aleppo, with airstrikes and artillery, Russian forces have sporadically struck Daesh targets with heavy bombers, ship- and submarine-launched cruise missiles and bombing runs.

Targeting a senior leader such as Adnani is a rare move for the Russian air campaign. Russian aircraft have only sometimes used some of the more advanced precision munitions that are a hallmark of the U.S. campaign over Syria and Iraq, and has instead mostly used unguided or dumb bombs. While Russia has been accused of killing civilians in its strikes, the United States and its international partners are estimated to have killed between 1,000 and 1,500 civilians, according to AirWars.org.

On Monday, a ceasefire recently brokered by the United States and Russia went into effect throughout the war-torn country but was almost immediately violated. With many loopholes, caveats and skepticism from those on the ground, it is unclear how long  if it all  the reprieve will last.

Read more about:

SHARE:
BERLINThree Syrian men believed to have been sent to Germany last year by Daesh as a possible sleeper cell were arrested in raids on Tuesday, part of efforts to root out extremists sent to Europe amid the migrant influx, authorities said.

The three are accused of coming to Germany in mid-November at the behest of Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, in order either to carry out an assignment they had already received or to keep themselves ready for further instructions, federal prosecutors said. The three are suspected of membership in a foreign terrorist organization.

Their arrests followed raids at refugee homes in Schleswig-Holstein, Germanys northernmost state. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the men had been under observation for months, and that there are no indications of concrete attack plans at present.

This may have been a sleeper cell, he told reporters.

De Maiziere said the suspects appear to have made it to Europe through the same channels as two men who blew themselves up outside Frances national stadium in November in the Paris attacks claimed by Daesh.

Everything points to the same smuggling organization as with the Paris attackers having brought these three who were arrested to Germany, he said. And everything points to the travel documents having come from the same workshop.

Prosecutors identified the suspects only as Mahir Al-H., 17, Mohamed A., 26, and Ibrahim M., 18, in keeping with German privacy rules.

The three traveled to Germany via Turkey and Greece, the route used by most migrants to Europe last year. Mahir Al-H. joined Daesh in Raqqa, Syria, earlier last year and received weapons and explosives training, prosecutors said, before he and the other two suspects in October told an Daesh official responsible for operations and attacks outside the IS (Daesh) area that they would travel to Europe.

The three were provided with passports by Daesh and were given a high four-figure sum of cash in U.S. dollars as well as cellphones with a pre-installed communication program, prosecutors said in a statement.

The Federal Criminal Police Office said that six locations in two German states were searched Tuesday. It said that, as well as the arrests, extensive material was seized as evidence.

The office noted that the attacks in Paris and Brussels over the past year showed that Daesh has used the migrant flow to send people to Europe. It said that it knows of more than 400 tips about people among the migrants who might have a terrorist background, but most turned out to be wrong. However, more than 60 investigations were opened.

In July, two attacks were carried out in Germany by asylum seekers who arrived over the past two years and claimed by Daesh. Five people were wounded in an ax rampage on a train near Wuerzburg and 15 in a bombing outside a bar in Ansbach. Both of the attackers were killed.

Those attacks and two others unrelated to Islamic extremism in the same weeklong period put the country on edge and stoked tensions over the arrival last year of hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Those tensions have helped the nationalist, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, which won over 20 percent of the vote in a state election in the northeastern region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Sept. 4.

Tuesdays arrests come days ahead of another state election in Berlin. De Maiziere said they show that security authorities are vigilant and are acting with determination.

Read more about:

SHARE:
The outlook for release of Montreal anthropologist Homa Hoodfar from Irans Evin prison darkened Tuesday with news that a hard-line judge has dismissed her lawyer and chosen another to represent her without her consent.

This seems to be standard procedure for this judge, who has been violating many laws, said Hoodfars niece, Amanda Ghahremani, speaking from Montreal. Hes denied access to her lawyers, her family, she is in solitary confinement and has not been moved to a general ward. Her health is our biggest concern.

The judge, Abolqasem Salvati, known for earlier draconian verdicts, has presided over high-profile cases of Iranian-born journalist Jason Rezaian, Canadian permanent resident Mostafa Azizi and Iranian-British charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was sentenced last week to five years in prison.

Hoodfar, said to be in fragile, declining health, was first arrested in March by the counter-espionage service of Irans Revolutionary Guard, which is in a power struggle with President Hassan Rouhani. She was released on bail after interrogation and arrested again in June.

The details of her case have been kept secret. The exact charges against the 65-year-old retired Concordia University professor are unknown, nor has a trial date been announced. She is believed to be accused of collaborating with a hostile government, propaganda against the state, and dabbling in feminism.  Hoodfars work has focused on dispelling stereotypes about Muslim women in Canada and in the West.

She was hospitalized last month and according to her family, could hardly walk or talk.

Hoodfar is now back in solitary confinement under grim conditions. She suffers from a serious neurological condition, but Ghahremani says the family in Iran has no way of knowing if she received the medicine they delivered for her.

A spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said in an email to the Star that the government is very concerned about this recent development and the continued detention of Dr. Hoodfar. We are actively engaged on this case and doing everything we can to support the family as they endure this terrible ordeal.

She added that in the absence of diplomatic ties, we are working with countries of influence and pursuing the best course of action to press the case and to secure her safe return to her family, friends and colleagues, and that this case is a priority for us.

Hoodfar is one of a number of dual nationals targeted by the Revolutionary Guard in past months. It arrested Canadian permanent resident Saeed Malekpour in 2008, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Ghahremani, who spoke with Hoodfar before she went to Iran in February, said that after the death of her husband she wanted to go back to visit Iran and to grieve there. She wanted an opportunity to reconnect with her roots. Iran was her beloved country. However, her Tehran residence was raided, and her personal computers, cellphone and passport seized to prevent her from returning to Canada.

There have been widespread protests against Hoodfars arrest, and this week 21 former UN special rapporteurs on human rights are calling for Iran to release her immediately. They are asking the UN General Assembly to take up her case.

Note - September 14, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version.



Read more about:

SHARE:
ASHEVILLE, N.C.As thousands of Donald Trumps supporters left his rally here this week, they were greeted by protesters who accused them of being, among other things, racist, hateful and uneducated.

Grow a brain, b----! one protester shouted at a Trump supporter. Another pointed at rally-goers and yelled: Racist a-------! A third held a sign that read: Make racists afraid again.

Then they chanted in unison: Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate!

They have these vulgar signs, yet theyre screaming about love, said Lisa Jones, 51, a Trump supporter from Hendersonville, N.C. And were the ones that are intolerant? Were deplorable and intolerant? Well, we just found out that were deplorable. We thought that we were just intolerant.

Many rally-goers here in this mountain town Monday evening shrugged off Hillary Clintons controversial remarks that half of Trumps supporters belong in a basket of deplorables because they are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. While Clinton has expressed regret for using the word half, she has not abandoned the assertion that some of Trumps supporters are truly deplorable.

It made me feel real little, said John Warren, 72, of Asheville, who wore a camouflage Make America Great Again cap. That she was downplaying us. I mean, we are voters and, you know, we respect her. But not in the position she is running for.

Many Trump supporters say they have already been called much worse for their views on gay marriage, abortion, transgender rights, Syrian refugees, illegal immigration and race relations. Like Trump, they say they arent afraid to say politically incorrect things and no amount of name-calling from liberals is going to change that.

One mans steak is another mans baloney, said a 62-year-old salesman from Tennessee who said he was proud to have sold 14 Confederate flags outside the rally but did not want his name published. Just like a woman: I mean, I might say shes beautiful. The next guy might say shes ugly. You know what Im saying?

A 43-year-old construction project manager dressed up as a deplorable, putting a laundry basket over his head. Another man carried a sign reading: Deplorable lives matter. As two young men left the rally, one turned to the other and said: OK, Dan, lets go be deplorable.

During the event, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani joked that Clinton mentioned some phobics Ive never heard of, and that maybe the claustrophobics are for Trump. Trump pulled supporters on stage to share their thoughts, concluding: These are not deplorable people. That I can tell you.

The Trump campaign has focused heavily on the deplorables theme as a way to paint Clinton as elitist and out-of-touch, but it has also stumbled into its own problems with the issue.

Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., posted a picture labelled The Deplorables on Instagram over the weekend that placed Trump and several surrogates alongside conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and a cartoon character, Pepe the Frog, associated with the online white nationalist alt-right movement. Trumps running mate, Mike Pence, to use the word deplorable to label former Ku Klux Klan leader and Trump supporter David Duke, though he said Tuesday that he and Trump disavow Duke.

The Clinton campaign points to such incidents, as well as polling showing that many Trump supporters harbour prejudiced views of non-whites, as evidence that many Trump backers are indeed deplorable.

At the Monday night rally, one protester held a sign that read: Deplorable Trump misleads good people.

Some Trump supporters here acknowledged that a small fraction of Trump backers could be viewed as having deplorable views, but added that every movement has a fringe group.

Some of them are, but I am a common sense, logical person, said Joe Pruden, 26, a plumber from Asheville whose girlfriends weight was mocked by a protester,  ... Trump supporters, theyre on the defence, and Ive been talking to other conservatives and saying: Hey, we need to start standing up, man. We are done being bullied into a corner by these liberal, left-wing, progressive Nazi foot soldiers.

Kathy Campbell, 40, said Trump could avoid some of the criticism by more carefully choosing his words.

Trump has a way about him that comes off sounding mean and hateful, said Campbell, who lives in North Carolinas Rutherford County and originally supported Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. I dont care for his tone sometimes because I think you catch more flies with honey.

Campbell likes that Trump will crack down on illegal immigration and the public aid that undocumented workers receive. As a single mother, Campbell said her children were on Medicaid for a total of 20 years, and she needed the assistance of food stamps for five years, even though she was working full time.

The women who are sitting on their a---- at home that can work, and they keep having baby after baby after baby just so they can keep getting more and more food stamps? Theyre abusing the system, Campbell said.

She added, Im a deplorable. Whatever. Im also called narrow-minded. You know what? There is so much talk about tolerance. Wheres the tolerance for me as a Christian? Wheres the tolerance for me as a Republican? Theres none.

This sentiment is common among conservatives here in North Carolina, where Republicans sparked a national backlash by enacting legislation that weakened anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians and which requires transgender people to use the public restroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate.

Shannon Niven, a 40-year-old nursing student and mother of two from Transylvania County, said that Trump supporters like her are educated and accepting  but tired of having the values of others forced upon their lives. She said the debate over the rights of transgender individuals, who she believes have a mental illness, shows how much society has changed in the past decade or two.

Let a man come into the bathroom with my little girl and he may not make it out, she said. North Carolina  were conservative, were Christian, but were also a little crazy, and we will defend ourselves.

The supporters and protesters who showed up to the rally have mostly made up their minds about the election, but each tried to sway the other side anyway. Brenda Lilly, a Clinton supporter who teaches in Asheville, chatted with a young couple outside the rally and tried to warn them about Trump.

He is a racist. Hes a racist. What makes you think that hes not? Lilly said, giving a few examples including Trumps proposed ban on Muslims.

Its only temporary, the teenage girl, who will not be old enough to vote in November, said as she held a Trump flag over her head.

Temporary! Thats what they said about Jews in Germany, Lilly responded. Please, read your history. I beg you.

Lilly also debated with Michelle Visconte, a 47-year-old housewife who says Trump was right to label illegal immigrants as rapists and criminals.

I dated Hispanic men all of my life, and now Im just like, Im done. Im done, Visconte said. Because you know what? Theyre here to bleed us and take advantage of whatever they can get.

No, theyre not, said Lilly, who lived in California for 27 years before recently returning to North Carolina. Were all of your boyfriends rapists and criminals?

Not every one. I had a couple good ones, Visconte said.

Were they all criminals? Lilly asked.

No, Visconte said. Wait, a minute, wait a minute: Yes, they were criminals if they came over to the United States illegally. Thats a criminal.

Conversations like this exasperated Lilly and confirmed what she had suspected.

Quite frankly, I think 50 per cent could be a small percentage, Lilly said of the size of the basket of deplorables. These people are nuts. And I dont think they all are. I think there probably are some fine people.

After the rally, arguments between supporters and protesters continued. Two younger demonstrators got into a nasty yelling match with an older man wearing a profane pro-Trump T-shirt; they all took videos of each other saying or doing unkind things. Friends intervened and a police officer begged: Please, just be nice.

Later, as a young man wearing an Obama cant ban these guns tank top flexed his muscles for a photo, a young female protester threw a cup of water on him and ran away. As he pulled the wet shirt off, he yelled: That f------ b----!

As the two sides exchanged nasty words, an older activist took the lead in denouncing the Trump supporters, while a motherly woman leaving the rally urged the young men to go home before a fight broke out. She then turned to the gray-haired protester and asked why he was trying to incite a fight.

They need to be called out, he said. They need to be called out for their racism.

Read more about:

SHARE:
A Muslim woman wearing traditional garments had her clothes set on fire by a man with a lighter as she shopped on a crowded New York City street over the weekend, police said Monday.

The 35-year-old was dressed in a hijab and standing outside a Valentino store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan Saturday night, when she felt heat on her left side, according to the New York City Police Department.

The woman, who has not been identified, saw that her blouse was on fire and patted out the flames. When she looked up, she noticed a man standing with a lighter in his hand, police said.

The man disappeared down a side street, leaving the startled woman with a quarter-sized hole in her blouse and no injuries, NYPD spokesman Christopher Pisano told The Washington Post.

The male doesnt say anything and walks away, Pisano said.

Police are investigating the alleged assault as a hate crime. No one has been arrested and no suspects have been identified. Pisano said the woman was visiting the city from another country; DNAinfo described the woman as a dentist from Glasgow, Scotland.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the incident fit an alarming pattern of attacks on Muslims and Islamic sites in recent months.

We are clearly seeing a spike in attacks on individual Muslims and Islamic institutions in New York and around the country, which should be of concern to all Americans, said Afaf Nasher, director of the groups New York chapter, in a statement posted on Facebook. It is time for the mayor and the NYPD to put forward the necessary resources to investigate and prevent these attacks on the Muslim community.

The incident comes just days after a Brooklyn woman allegedly beat two Muslim mothers as they pushed their toddlers in strollers down a busy sidewalk in the boroughs ethnically diverse Bath Beach neighbourhood.

The woman, Emirjeta Xhelili, punched one of the mothers in the face and tried to rip off her hijab while screaming obscenities at them, authorities told the New York Daily News. Xhelili then allegedly tried to grab the other mothers stroller, which was carrying her 15-month-old child, according to the Daily News. Xhelili, 32, was arrested and charged with hate-crime assault. Xhelili is being held on $50,000 bond or $25,000 cash bail, according to The Associated Press. Her lawyer told the Daily News she has no prior arrests.

In another attack that has stoked fear in the citys Muslim community, a Queens man in August allegedly shot and killed an imam and his assistant as they left afternoon prayers in the boroughs Ozone Park neighbourhood. Alauddin Akonjee and Thara Miah were walking together on a weekend afternoon when Oscar Morel came up behind them and shot them execution-style in their heads, authorities said. Morel, who is charged with murder, has denied killing the men.

SHARE:
JERUSALEMFormer Israeli President Shimon Peres suffered a major stroke on Tuesday and experienced heavy bleeding in the brain, hospital officials said, as doctors raced to stabilize the 93-year-old Nobel laureate.

Dr. Itzik Kreiss, director of the Sheba Medical Center, told reporters outside the hospital near Tel Aviv that Peres experienced lots of bleeding as a result of the stroke. He said he had undergone a battery of tests, and that doctors planned to hold another assessment in a few hours.

Standing alongside Kreiss, Peres son Chemi said the situation was not simple, but that the family was trying to stay positive.

My father is very special. I am keeping optimistic. Hoping for the best. But these hours are not easy, he said.

He thanked the Israeli public for offering its support and prayers.

Peres office issued a statement early Wednesday describing his condition as serious but stable. It said he remained hospitalized in the intensive care unit.

Earlier, Israeli media reported the bleeding had stopped. Dr. Shlomi Matezsky, one of the doctors treating Peres, told Channel 2 TV that Peres had regained consciousness and was on a respirator.

He is on a respirator and lightly sedated but is conducting actions, what is called in medical terms simple actions and is not currently unconscious, he said.

He said doctors were meeting to decide how to proceed. The way things seem now, we dont think surgery in the next few hours would benefit Mr. Peres condition, he said.

Peres is the elder statesman of Israeli politics and the last surviving link to the countrys founding fathers.

Over a seven-decade career, he held virtually every senior political office in Israel, including three terms as prime minister and stints as foreign and finance minister. He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in reaching an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians.

He had remained active since completing his seven-year term as president in 2014, and even uploaded a video to his Facebook account earlier in the day.

In the video, in which Peres encourages the public to buy locally made products, he appears weary but is otherwise alert and coherent. Channel 10 TV said Peres had also delivered an hour-long lecture earlier in the day.

Earlier this year, Peres was twice hospitalized for heart problems but quickly released. His office said Peres received a pacemaker last week.

As president, a largely ceremonial office, he cultivated an image as the countrys elder statesman and became one of its most popular public figures.

He also became a fixture at international conferences like the World Economic Forum in Davos. Earlier this month, he participated in the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.

Since leaving the presidency, Peres frequently hosted public events at his peace centre, bringing together Arabs and Jews in efforts to promote coexistence.

In a message posted on Facebook, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished Peres a speedy recovery. Shimon, we love you and the entire nation wishes you get well, he said.

Read more about:

SHARE:
HAGERSTOWN, MD.The uncle of a 9-year-old boy fatally beaten over a missing piece of birthday cake pleaded guilty to first-degree child abuse Tuesday, acknowledging he handcuffed the child to a chair and allowed the mothers controlling boyfriend to pummel him senseless.

When the beating became so brutal that Jacob Barajas couldnt bear to watch, he closed his eyes, Assistant States Attorney Sarah Mollett-Gaumer told the court. Barajas called 911 but the boys mother sent the ambulance away, delaying treatment for hours.

Barajas, 24, faces up to 15 years in prison. The maximum penalty is 25 years, but prosecutors agreed to a lesser sentence and dropped six other charges, including second-degree murder, in the plea deal.

Barajas may be called to testify against the boys mother, Oriana Garcia, 27, at her trial in February, Deputy States Attorney Joseph Michael said.

Garcias boyfriend, Robert Wilson, 31, is serving a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty in March to second-degree murder in the July 2015 death of Jack Garcia.

Prosecutors and defence attorney Stephen Sachs revealed new details Tuesday about the months of abuse Jack endured after his mother moved them and her brother from Goleta, Calif., to Hagerstown, about 113 kilometres west of Baltimore, to live with a man she had met online.

Garcia didnt enrol Jack in school in Maryland, partly because his legal custodian was Garcias mother, who lived in another state, Sachs said. He said Jacks father had never seen the boy.

Barajas, a 10th-grade dropout, had lived with his sister and nephew for years, caring for Jack while Garcia worked in retail. But when they moved in with Wilson, a restaurant cook with a history of violence, all three fell subject to his strict household rules.

Even at his sentencing, Wilson complained about people in the apartment not doing what they were supposed to.

Wilson enforced discipline by controlling food servings, Sachs said. Jack, described in an autopsy report as thin, began taking and hiding food, according to lawyers for both sides.

Stealing food brought physical punishment. Garcia told police she allowed her son to be handcuffed, sometimes for hours, and that Wilson had slapped the boy, hit him in the leg with a bamboo sword and sparred with him in the weeks before he died.

On the day Jack was fatally beaten, I think he was just hungry and Wilson went off his rocker on that, Sachs said.

The beating followed the disappearance of a piece of cake at a birthday party for Wilsons visiting 2-year-old daughter, according to police reports. Another child told investigators she heard Wilson yelling, Cough up the cake, as Jack cried, No! Stop!

Sachs said Barajas may have felt helpless to stop the beating.

I think they were scared to death of him, he said.

SHARE:
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREAThe United States and South Korea vowed on Tuesday to push for the strongest possible resolution at the UN Security Council, including new sanctions and the removal of existing loopholes, to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear test.

The top American and South Korean envoys on North Korea expressed their resolve during a news conference in Seoul, the Souths capital, on Tuesday, speaking shortly after two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers from the U.S. Air Force base in Guam streaked over the South in a show of force.

The flight by the B-1B bombers demonstrated the United States commitment to providing extended deterrence, including the threat of using nuclear weapons, to protect the South, said Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the top U.S. military commander in the country. It was also intended to help counter calls among nationalist politicians and scholars here who contend that the South must arm itself with nuclear weapons.

On Tuesday, Sung Kim, Washingtons top official dealing with North Korea, and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Hong-kyun, reiterated that the South did not need to build its own nuclear bombs or to reintroduce U.S. tactical atomic bombs that were withdrawn in the early 1990s.

Their intention was to secure the strongest possible resolution that includes new sanctions as quickly as possible, Sung Kim said, declining to elaborate on how China, the Norths main ally on the Security Council, would respond. The situation requires a swift and strong international response.

Kim Hong-kyun said such a resolution would seek to close the loopholes in the existing sanctions as well as to place pressure on North Korea from all directions so that it will no longer be able to operate normally in the international community.

Washington and Seoul insisted on sanctions as the only option until North Korea agreed to return to the negotiating table with a commitment to abandoning nuclear weapons. But the nuclear test on Friday, the most powerful by the North to date, and its recent flurry of missile tests showed that despite years of sanctions, the country was advancing toward its proclaimed goal of fitting its ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.

The Security Council in March adopted, with Chinese support, what Washington and Seoul said was the strongest and most effective sanctions resolution ever against North Korea, after its fourth nuclear test in January and its launch of a long-range rocket the next month. Like the previous resolutions, it sought to undermine the Norths ability to raise hard currency to finance its banned weapons activities.

The resolution called for inspecting all cargo going in and out of the country, banning all weapons trade and expanding the list of individuals facing sanctions.

But critics identified significant loopholes. North Korea was still able to buy oil and sell its coal and iron ore, as long as it was not used to finance the countrys nuclear weapons program  an activity that would be difficult to prove.

Coal and iron ore are North Koreas biggest exports to China, which remains the countrys last remaining major trade partner and whose vigorous enforcement is crucial to the success of any sanctions. But Beijing prefers keeping a nuclear-armed North Korea afloat as a buffer against the South and the United States, Seouls military ally, to risking the collapse of the Norths government with too severe enforcement of sanctions, analysts say.

The recent statistics on trade between China and North Korea, as well as news reports from their border, indicate that the Chinese still allow a booming network of trade and smuggling across their 1,400 kilometre frontier. North Korea is also accused of running fronts based in China or using Chinese middlemen to circumvent the sanctions.

The resolution in March also did not affect tens of thousands of North Koreans employed in factories, construction projects and logging camps in Africa, China, the Middle East and Russia. Such workers send home $260 million to $400 million a year, most of which, human rights groups contend, ends up in the coffers of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un.

The resolution also did not affect North Korean factories making clothes on contract for Chinese companies, an arrangement that has become a growing source of income for Kim Jong Uns government, especially after the South this year closed an industrial park it had run with the North.

Washington and Seoul said on Tuesday that they would also try to enforce new bilateral sanctions against North Korea. But both have so few trade and other transactions there that their actions would be largely symbolic, analysts said. President Park Geun-hye of South Korea and her diplomats have been visiting countries in Africa and elsewhere in recent months to persuade them to curtail trade ties with the North, offering weapons and trade deals as incentives.

Siegfried S. Hecker, a U.S. nuclear expert at Stanford University, said the latest nuclear test by the North must be viewed with great concern, given what he called its growing ability to secure nuclear bomb fuel.

North Koreas capacity to produce plutonium remains limited to 13 pounds, or approximately one bombs worth, a year, he wrote in a paper posted on the website 38 North, which focuses on the country. While the nations capacity to produce highly enriched uranium, an alternative bomb fuel, remained highly uncertain, he said the North could add 150 kilograms of it, about six bombs worth, a year to a current stockpile of perhaps 300 to 400 kilograms.

Read more about:

SHARE:
By Indrajit Kundu: In a major blow to the Trinamool Congress in Tripura, the party's demand for the status of principal opposition in the state assembly has been quashed by Speaker Ramendra Chandra Debnath. The Trinamool Congress's demand was turned down by the Speaker as the party did not have the requisite strength to stake claim as the main opposition party. "Since Trinamool Congress has only six members in the sixty member house and was unable to achieve quorum, their claim was not entertained as per law," Debnath announced on Monday.

advertisement

Elaborating on the issue, Debnath added that the two letters submitted by the Trinamool Tripura unit chairman Ratan Chakraborty referred to the salaries and allowances of Members of the Legislative Assembly (Tripura) Act of 1972 and 2008 for their claim for the Leader of Opposition (LoP) post. However, the act was limited to the purpose of determining salaries and allowances and not the LoP post, he said.

Stating that a quorum of atleast 10 MLAs was required for the position of LoP in the house, the Trinamool Congress was intimated of the decision on Monday. There are different rules for different Indian states and in Tripuras case, unless one-sixth of the house strength is present, a party cannot be offered the position of the LoP in the assembly,?? Debnath explained.

However, the Trinamool Congress has criticising the speakers decision. Party legislator Sudip Roy Barman said that it was a violation of the Act as the Trinamool had fulfilled the criteria by having the most number of members in the house among the opposition parties. The Trinammol Congress has six members in the Tripura assembly after six sitting Congress MLA's defected to the party in June this year. The Congress, which was the principal opposition till then now only has three MLA's.

--- ENDS ---
Canadas future lies in the innovation-powered knowledge economy. Indeed, the nations leaders are well aware of the need for new ideas and approaches to meet the nations looming innovation, productivity and prosperity challenges.

The Trudeau government has made a clear commitment to shifting Canada from its resource-dependent past to a more knowledge-driven future by setting an innovation agenda dedicated to increased infrastructure funding. Ontario has even created a blue-ribbon commission, headed by former TD Bank CEO Ed Clark, to spark the development of its knowledge economy. Across all levels of government, there is a virtually unprecedented degree of alignment at a crucial time for economic policy-making.

And yet any strategy must recognize there is no one-size-fits-all approach. In fact, the knowledge economy is not a single national economy, but rather a collection of local ones. The clusters of talent, companies, universities, and other knowledge-based institutions are increasingly local challenges. To be effective, federal and provincial policies must bolster, build from, and strengthen these concentrated local assets.

This is the main take-away from a detailed Martin Prosperity Institute analysis of the knowledge economy in Ontario. The study, which we undertook with our colleague Shade Shutters of Arizona State University, evaluates the performance of more than 300 industries and 500 occupations based on their ability to drive exports and generate higher incomes across Ontarios 15 largest urban regions. The study provides strong evidence that the future of Ontarios innovation economy is local and geographically specific, tied to clusters of talent and industries that are distinct to particular regions of the province.

Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo form the two edges of a powerful knowledge economy supercluster that extends to Guelph, Hamilton, and Oshawa. With more than 36 per cent of its workforce employed in knowledge, professional, and creative occupations, this supercluster is now the main driver of Ontarios knowledge economy. Not only is it home to a diverse range of high-value-added services, but it also boasts an impressive mix of advanced manufacturing, world-class universities, and knowledge institutions.

Behind Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Guelph take second, third, and fourth place in terms of their knowledge economy strengths and potential for future success. The key challenges for these places are as much social as they are economic: investing in transit and local infrastructure, providing affordable housing, and dealing with growing inequality. Ironically enough, each of these challenges stems from the clusters very success.

With 44 per cent of its workforce in knowledge, professional, and creative occupations, Ottawa is also ripe for the knowledge economy. But other parts of the province face deeper challenges. Southwestern Ontario suffers from an older industrial economy that is closely tied to the struggling Rustbelt economy in the United States. Just 28 per cent of Southwestern Ontarios workforce is employed in knowledge and creative occupations, while most of its economy depends on the unsteady automotive sector. In this sector, jobs are subject to both competition from lower-cost areas of the world and the threat of further automation, as well as the possibility of longer-run disruption from new technology, such as driverless cars and electric vehicles. If Southwestern Ontario seeks to lead technological change rather than fall victim to it, the region must invest in people, infrastructure, and its education system to upgrade and deepen its historic strengths.

In other parts of Ontario, cities such as Sudbury and Thunder Bay are built on natural resource industries, which are exposed to swings in global commodity prices. Buffering these cities from external forces depends on diversifying their economic base while drawing on their existing stock of knowledge. Ultimately, these and other resource-based communities must sell their knowledge of mining, forestry, and energy along with commodities themselves.

While many commentators and policy-makers favour a shift in Ontarios economy away from older industries toward newer, more knowledge-based ones, the more effective strategy is to deepen the innovation and knowledge component of all industries, from engineering and technology to agriculture, service, and manufacturing.

Ultimately, the assets that power the knowledge economy are geographically concentrated. Because of this, there is no one strategy for bolstering innovation and creating a sustainable knowledge economy. This carries even more weight for large jurisdictions like Ontario or Canada as a whole. Indeed, the key to our economys long-run prosperity lies in building on local industries, talent, and knowledge-based institutions, while strengthening and deepening the connections between them.

Richard Florida is university professor and director of cities at the Martin Prosperity Institute in the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management and Greg Spencer is a research associate.

SHARE:
The recent Trudeau yoga/t'ai chi dance in Shanghai, as usual, was great optics. But his real achievement was his decision  long and unjustifiably delayed by the Harper government  to join the China-sponsored Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Lets look at the context in which this decision was made.

China is now, in nominal terms, the worlds second largest economy, with a GDP two-thirds that of the U.S. Measured in terms of purchasing power parity, it is now the worlds largest. And its 1.4 billion people constitute 20 per cent of the global population.

Chinas Premier Xi Jinping assumed office in March 2013, succeeding the formidable Hu Jintao. None of his predecessors have presided over as active a program of global economic and trade initiatives as Xi during the last three years.

Collectively these programs, summarized below, represent an unprecedented global development thrust. Initially focused on Asia but now expanded to the Middle East, Africa and Europe, they are literally worldwide in scope.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says the program represents a fundamental change in global and economic power. Some commentators contend these initiatives have been prompted in part because existing institutions  the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the IMF  have lacked both sufficient development resources, have been too risk-averse and in general have taken an overly passive approach to development potential.

The key issue for the West, including Canada, is, or should be, how these enormous innovative and aggressive global economic measures are to be assessed in determining whether, how and to what extent they provide opportunities for our involvement.

Some have suggested that collaboration is essential. The Brookings Institute has indicated that otherwise, especially in the absence of U.S./China co-operation, there is a risk of establishing restrictive regional development blocs with a consequent disintegration of trade.

What are the major programs?

The AIIB, proposed by China opened this June. It is headquartered in Beijing and supported by 37 Asian and 20 Western countries, with a capital of $100 billion. The U.S. and Canada were the only G7 countries that failed to join at the outset.

The U.S.s purported objections have related to concerns about environmental, labour and human rights requirements for loan applicants. And will the Bank favour China over other members in funding developers on specific projects? With almost 60 countries now signed up as contributors, it would be difficult for China to use the Bank for political or economic ends.

Even larger is the One Belt, One Road Initiative (OBOR) proposed in 2013 by Premier Xi. This vast initiative involves economic coordination between China and the rest of Eurasia. Its objective is to promote massive trade along several enormous geographic routes: a land route starting in western China and splitting into several connected links  a southern maritime route through Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal and up to Italy; two land routes, one along the Silk Road through Central Asia to the Middle East and another through Russia and Central Europe, ending in Spain.

There are other initiatives, the impact of which is tough to measure. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Bank, proposed by India and activated in July, is headquartered in Shanghai.

A group of 14 Asian countries, led by China and joined by Australia and New Zealand, are about to conclude a new trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), covering three billion people, 45 per cent of the worlds population and 40 per cent of world trade.

Trudeaus achievement in maintaining our substantial canola exports to China should not be underestimated. But in the longer term, unless Western economies, including Canada, come to grips with steadily increasing Chinese-led expansionist global development activities of the sort described above, we are at serious risk of slipping into economic decline.

The prime ministers decision to join the AIIB was a commendable first step.

Tim Armstrong, a lawyer and former Ontario Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, was agent general for the Asia Pacific Region.

SHARE:
Students at a Bloor West high school want to see better measures to combat high temperatures and humidity in their classrooms.

Georgia Gallagher, principal at Ursula Franklin Academy, sent a letter to parents Monday explaining that the school was canceling gym classes because, like most Toronto District School Board schools, the 89-year-old building doesnt have air conditioning.

It was hotter than I expected, said 17-year-old Grade 12 student Daniel Pliszka. Theyre not making enough effort to cool it down.

Pliszka said hes grown used to stifling classrooms in June, when school is winding down, but the heat wave during some of his classes last week made it hard to concentrate.

My work, everyones work, suffers. Everyone tends to focus on how hot it is and not on the lesson thats being delivered, Pliszka said.

Gallagher said gym classes havent been cancelled outright. The letter was meant to indicate that the school takes the heat issue seriously, and to lay out options if it continues.

We wanted parents to know that were aware of it. We get it, Gallagher said.

She said one student was sent home Friday feeling unwell because of the heat.

While it can be a struggle to stay cool in an old building, Gallagher said theres nothing the school or board could do that isnt already being done.

We have cold drinks  either juice or water  and granola bars available all the time in case any students need them, Gallagher said.

Gallaghers letter said staff would focus on opening windows, using fans and moving where possible to cooler parts of the school.

But thats not enough as far as Pliszka is concerned.

He said its unfair staff in the administration offices get round-the-clock air conditioning when students dont. Hes taken to breezing through the office on his way to class just to cool down, he said.

There arent enough fans and the old building doesnt get enough air flow for windows to make much of a difference.

Hed like to see the school relax the official uniform policy on extremely hot days, to give students the flexibility to wear lighter shorts or skirts.

TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird acknowledged the problem of sweltering schools but said there isnt much recourse.

We do know that it gets hot, but it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to put air conditioning into all our schools, Bird said. The priority right now, he said, needs to be on dealing with the $3.4-billion backlog in maintenance and repairs that the TDSB is facing.

Of the boards 588 schools, only 119 have facility-wide air conditioning. Others may have air-conditioning units in communal spaces such as the office or library, Bird said.

The TDSB does not have a maximum heat cap or a protocol governing high temperatures, Bird said.

Decisions about how to mitigate the heat are left to individual school administrators, and the results arent tracked across the system, he said.

The Catholic school board does have a heat protocol. It sets out guidelines and requirements triggered by heat warnings or extended heat warnings issued by the city.

There have been two heat warnings and one extended heat warning so far for September.

Under the Catholic board protocol, during a declared heat alert schools must allow personal water bottles at students desks and keep as many lights turned off as possible. Outdoor activity should be limited and south-facing windows covered during the day.

If an extreme heat alert is declared, schools much cancel all outdoor physical activity. If the schools ventilation system goes down and windows cant be opened, the school will be closed, the protocol says.

Having so many days of high heat strung together is unusual, Bird said.

We know its uncomfortable in some of our schools. Our staff do all they can to keep students as comfortable as humanly possible.

SHARE:
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Anheuser Busch InBev (BUD) were increasing in late-morning trading on Monday as the Belgian brewing company could explore other deals following its approximately $104 billion takeover of rival brewer SABMiller (SBMRY), Reuters reports.

Beverage companies such as Castel Group, Coca-Cola's (KO) Coca-Cola Bottling Africa and Anadolu Efes (AEBMY) could all be possible takeover targets.

AB InBev plans to sell SABMiller's brands in Western Europe in addition to its joint venture stakes in the U.S. and China as a means of speeding up its acquisition of the company. It's also offloading SABMiller's assets in Eastern Europe, worth about $7.9 billion, to an undetermined buyer, Reuters added.

SABMiller may also have an agreement with Castel that gives it the first right to buy out the French company if it were to explore new ownership, sources said, according to Reuters.

That opportunity could transfer to AB InBev. Analysts estimate Castel may be worth more than $30 billion.

Additionally, SABMiller owns a 57% stake in Coca-Cola Bottling Africa, Reuters reports. Under the agreement, Coca-Cola has the right to repurchase the stake once SABMiller's takeover closes.

AB InBev-backer 3G Capital have a growing relationship with major Coca-Cola shareholder Warren Buffett, which analysts have speculated could foster a deal.

However, it's more likely that Coca-Cola would buy back the shares as a means of defending itself from a hostile takeover, Reuters noted.

AB InBev's deal with SABMiller is expected to close in October pending shareholder approval.

BUD

data by

YCharts
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Pfizer (PFE) were gaining in mid-morning trade on Monday despite an FDA report released this morning scrutinizing the company's study of the side effects of Chantix, its smoking cessation treatment.

On Wednesday, the FDA will meet to discuss whether Pfizer can eliminate the boxed warning on Chantix mentioning neuropsychiatric effects like mood swings and suicidal thoughts, Bloomberg reports.

The FDA requested the trial on Chantix's side effects in 2008 and it has now been completed.

However, the FDA said that Pfizer's "ascertainment of the primary neuropsychiatric adverse event outcomes" could have impacted the interpretation of the trial's results, according to the report.

Pfizer did not properly utilize interview techniques, and the trial had "substantial variability" in how the adverse events were recorded as well as inconsistency in the handling of cases, the FDA said.

The FDA noted that these mishandlings "served to lower the overall number of primary outcome events" and could have led to biased results.

(Pfizer is held in the Dividend Stock Advisor portfolio. See all of the holdings with a free trial.)

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 "buy" with a ratings score of B+.

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, expanding profit margins and increase in stock price during the past year. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: PFE
There's a battle being waged in the cloud. And while this may seem like the plot of a latter-day Anne Rice novel, pitting comely angels against even comelier demons in heaven, it's actually happening in board rooms and technology development hubs.

Most importantly, it means big business ... and big profits for investors.

Two of the main players in the battle for the cloud -- that is, the remote network of internet servers that store, manage and process data -- are Microsoft (MSFT) and Salesforce (CRM) . And one of the biggest applications for the cloud is for managing business/customer relationships. That's called "customer relationship management," or "CRM" for short.

Until recently, HP employed Salesforce to take care of all its CRM needs and was one of the cloud company's largest clients. The two businesses formed such a symbiotic relationship that HP used Salesforce software on HP computer hardware in Salesforce's own headquarters. They called this entanglement the "Superpod" and even made the configuration available for sale to other companies.

Then HP split, spinning off its corporate hardware and services businesses into a new entity, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, during the second half of last year.

That left HP free to hire whatever company it pleased to handle CRM. And it has now hired Microsoft.

Microsoft has been in fierce competition with Salesforce ever since the tech juggernaut failed to acquire the cloud company last year. This has led to all-out war, with Microsoft snatching up social media platform LinkedIn from under Salesforce's nose, and Salesforce purchasing Quip, a competitor to Microsoft's Office suite.

The Microsoft/HP deal strikes a major blow to Salesforce. And it helps propel Microsoft's own cloud business into... well... the clouds.

Microsoft recently overtook Salesforce as the leader in the overall software-as-a-service (SaaS) market, according to eWeek, which cited data from Synergy Research Group. That means big profits in an industry that grew at a year-over-year rate of 33% in the second quarter of the year. For the quarter, the worldwide SaaS market generated revenue of more than $11 billion, eWeek also reported.

And now Microsoft will be the leader in that revenue, beating out not only Salesforce but also Cisco, Adobe and Oracle.

Cisco is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. See how Cramer rates the stock here. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells CSCO? Learn more now.

In fact, it's Microsoft's forays into the cloud that will continue to generate its profit growth as things like traditional software and computer hardware sales fall by the wayside. The company has made big investments -- as much as $10 billion on a data center for the development of its Azure cloud system. And these investments are going to pay off as the cloud continues to redefine how the world does business and stores its data.

With the big coup of the new deal with HP, Microsoft should continue to expand and take over in this space. Look for dips in stock price to grab shares of and profit from this technology juggernaut.

---

85% Accurate Trader gives his Personal Guarantee: "Give Me 9 Minutes a Week and I Guarantee You $67,548 a Year." As you can see, Microsoft remains a great play for investors. But what if I told you I know a way you can see a $67,548 per year or more in profitable trades just by following this simple step-by-step process? The trader who is sharing this secret has been right more than 8 out of 10 times, turning $5,000 into more than $5 million for himself. Click here to see how easy it is to follow his lead and collect thousands of dollars in "Free Money" every month.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Could beleaguered jeweler Tiffany & Co. (TIF) be wedded to an activist investor real soon?

Shares of Tiffany rose as much as 1.5% in early trading on Tuesday on a report from DealBreaker that activist Bill Ackman could be poised to amass a stake in the company. Shares are now up a fraction at around $68.

The report follows Tiffany's Tuesday appointment of Canadian Pacific (CP) exec Mark Erceg as chief financial officer. Erceg had served as CFO of the railroad operator since May 2015. Last week, Canadian Pacific said Ackman resigned from its board, fueling speculation he would follow Erceg to Tiffany. He joined Canadian Pacific's board in 2012, leading an effort to install new board members and management. In an Aug. 5 filing, Pershing Square confirmed it excited its stake in Canadian Pacific.

A Pershing Square spokesman declined to comment on the rumors.

Should Ackman put money to work in Tiffany, it would closely resemble the thesis behind a recent stake Pershing took in burrito joint Chipotle (CMG) : a well-known consumer brand that has fallen on hard times and needs fresh ideas in light of a share price that has gone drastically lower.

Tiffany reported second-quarter earnings, adjusted for one-time items, declined 5% from the prior year to 86 cents a share. Despite persistent struggles in driving sales globally, Tiffany benefited from price increases taken earlier in the year, lower gold and silver prices from last year that are now flowing through its financials, and a good number of share repurchases.

Executives foresee full-year sales declining by a low-single-digit percentage from the prior year, and earnings dropping by a mid-single-digit percentage.

But Tiffany's challenges -- mostly structural in nature -- continue. It has difficulty growing sales in key global markets. That calls into question whether the company can achieve its reaffirmed outlook, and why Ackman should jump aboard and shake things up.

Net sales declined 6% year over year to $932 million, slightly missing analyst forecasts for $933.9 million. In the Americas division, same-store sales dropped 9%, excluding the impact of the strong U.S. dollar. Wall Street was looking for a 7.8% increase. As in prior quarters, the strong dollar continues to impact tourist spending in major U.S. markets for Tiffany such as New York City, where it has prominent stores on 5th Avenue and Wall Street.

Meanwhile, same-store sales in Tiffany's Asia Pacific region plunged 9% on a constant currency basis in large part to "significant" declines in Hong Kong. Both a strong Hong Kong dollar and the Chinese government anti-corruption crackdown on gift-giving for party officials continue to weigh on luxury goods players.

As a result of the sustained pressure on oil prices, same-store sales dropped 22% for Tiffany in the United Arab Emirates region, where it has five stores. "We are increasingly concerned that Tiffany is situated in the crosshairs of a more challenged consumer environment in the U.S. and abroad," analysts at Oppenheimer wrote recently.

Tiffany shares have nosedived about 31% over the past two years, badly lagging the S&P 500's 7.2% gain.

One thing that might further tempt Ackman to get involved on Tiffany -- other than being a change agent that helps improve quarterly results -- is to try and unlock value by pushing for a sale of one of retail's most iconic properties. Tiffany owns the building that houses its well-known flagship store at 727 5th Avenue.

According to Tiffany's annual report, approximately 45,500 square feet of the 124,000 square foot building are devoted to retail sales, with the balance devoted to administrative offices, certain product services, jewelry manufacturing and storage. The New York City flagship store is also the focal point for the company's marketing and public relations efforts, says Tiffany.

The sale-leaseback transaction, as it's commonly called, is something department store Macy's (M) is reportedly considering for its giant flagship store that it owns in Herald Square in New York City. The property could fetch billions of dollars, per some reports.

Tiffany's property is unlikely to be as lucrative as Macy's given its much smaller size (the Macy's store has about 1 million of selling space and is the largest department store in the U.S.), but it could fetch a hefty sum in the still hot New York City commercial property market. Tiffany could then ink a long-term lease for the store and use the proceeds for shareholder friendly actions such as share repurchases and a special dividend.

Bill, are you out there?
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Monsanto (MON) were sliding in mid-afternoon trading on Tuesday as German chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer (BAYRY) is again raising its bid for the St. Louis-based agricultural products supplier, an increase to $129 per share, Bloomberg reports.

As of last week, Bayer was offering $127.50 per share, or $65 billion, for the company.

Monsanto's board is likely to reach a decision on its proposed sale to Bayer by today.

Bayer's board is expected to review the deal on Wednesday.

A combination of the two companies would create the largest maker of seeds and pesticides in the world.

Bayer stock was declining in mid-afternoon trading on Tuesday.

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:

The team rates Monsanto as a Buy with a ratings score of B. This is driven by multiple strengths, which it believes should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks it covers. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its good cash flow from operations, expanding profit margins and solid stock price performance. The team feels its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had somewhat weak growth in earnings per share.

You can view the full analysis from the report here:

MON

MON data by YCharts
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- BP (BP) is looking to increase its investments in Argentina after seeing "tremendous change" in the country since President Mauricio Macri took office nine months ago, CEO Bob Dudley said on BloombergTV's "Bloomberg Markets" on Tuesday afternoon.

Argentina just "feels different," Dudley told BloombergTV's Erik Schatzker at the inaugural Argentina Business Investment Forum.

"I am really encouraged by what I hear and what I see, so I think there's a lot of future here," Dudley said, noting that BP has been in Argentina since the late 1950s.

The government has "done a lot of the right things" in the past nine months, and the government is "saying all of the right things" this week, he explained.

Argentina has great resources and the momentum is really just starting, Dudley said. "It reminds me of engines just starting up," he said.

"What's going to determine if BP increases its investment in Argentina?" Schatzker asked.

"If I had to say where I think this is going by the end of the year, I think we're going to be making further commitment to invest," Dudley responded.

"But you're not ready to make them yet?" Schatzker asked.

"I think we are. That's why we're here. We wanna see if what we've heard and what we hear is actually happening. And in just three days here, you can sense it. I've had meetings with government officials as you have. There's a great desire to make this happen," Dudley said.

In addition, global energy companies will most likely follow BP into Argentina, Dudley predicted.

The country does have an entrenched bureaucracy, powerful organized labor, and corruption, Schatzker pointed out.

"I think the corruption tape is being cut down... You can't do it overnight, but [there are] huge different messages in the last nine months," Dudley responded.

Shares of BP were lower in late-afternoon trading on Tuesday.

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 team rates BP as a Hold with a ratings score of C. The primary factors that have impacted the team's rating are mixed - some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: BP

BP

data by

YCharts
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) were retreating 6.25% to $35.58 in late-afternoon trading on Tuesday as its CEO Kelcy Warren said today the company is "committed to completing construction" and operating the North Dakota Access Pipeline despite continued criticism.

Dakota Access, a subsidiary of the Dallas-based natural gas company, is building the 1,100-mile pipeline, according to Reuters. The project costs about $3.7 billion and is so far about 60% completed.

The company has received extensive pushback from activists who say the pipeline could destroy the Native American lands it's being built upon.

Last week, President Obama ordered construction to be temporarily halted on portions that were federal land, Reuters reports. Lands that are deemed sacred by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe run about a half-mile south of the pipeline's route.

Energy Transfer Partners executives plan to meet with federal officials to discuss ongoing concerns.

People in more than 30 states are expected to gather today to protest against the pipeline. The protesters allege the pipeline could leak into the Missouri and Cannon Ball rivers, on which the tribes rely for water, Reuters added.

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:

TheStreet Ratings team rates Energy Transfer Partners as a Buy with a ratings score of B-. This is driven by a few notable strengths, which it believes should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks it covers. Among the primary strengths of the company is its respectable return on equity which it feels is likely to continue. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that it evaluated.

You can view the full analysis from the report here:

ETP

ETP data by YCharts
By PTI: Agartala, Sep 13 (PTI) The Speaker of Tripura Assembly Ramendra Chandra Debnath has rejected the demand of Trinamool Congress (TMC) to grant status of the Leader of Opposition to its MLA Diba Chandra Hrankhawl on the plea that the party has no numerical strength.

"The numerical strength of the Opposition must be equal to the quorum to get the status of the Leader of Opposition, which means the Opposition should be at least ten in number to represent the House.

advertisement

"As the strength of the TMC MLAs is less than ten in number no LoP status will be given to the party," the Speaker told reporters here today.

The six TMC MLAs, who switched sides from Congress in June, were recognised as TMC MLAs by the Speaker on August 29 citing rules and a Supreme Court verdict, but refused the main Opposition party status in the Assembly.

Soon after the TMC MLAs were recognised by the Speaker, chairman of the Trinamool Congress state unit Ratan Chakraborty wrote fresh letters demanding Leader of Opposition status to their senior MLA Diba Chandra Hrankhawl, who was appointed as the chief of the TMC legislature party.

"I have further studied the issue and TMC cannot be given the status of main Opposition party and thus, cannot be given the status of the Leader of Opposition from their party. According to the verdict of apex court and rules and practices of Lok Sabha and Tripura Assembly, TMC cannot get the Opposition party status in the House," Debnath said.

Chakraborty, however, said TMC was eligible to get the LoP status according to the legislative Assembly Acts of 1972 and 2008.

"We are consulting legal experts on this and might challenge the Speakers verdict," he said. PTI JOY DKB IKA LNS

--- ENDS ---
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Argentina is going through a transformation to encourage more companies to invest in it, President Mauricio Macri said on BloombergTV's "Bloomberg Markets" Tuesday afternoon.

"Why should companies invest in Argentina after so many years of the country being unfriendly to companies?" BloombergTV's Erik Schatzker asked Macri at the inaugural Argentina Business Investment Forum.

"We have started a new political stage. A new Argentina based not in the government. Based in the majority of the citizens of Argentina," Macri said in response.

This country-wide transformation has changed the business climate in Argentina as well, he said. "We have learned. We understand that in addition to our talents and our huge natural resources, we have to add constancy. We have to add rule of law [in order] to be predictable. We have to clean up our economy and have clearer rules," he said.

Despite the conflicts Argentina has both internally and externally, investors won't find another country like it, Macri claimed. The country is "a very important player" in traditional energy, non-traditional energy, renewables, agribusiness and mining, he said.

"I want to know what more you can do practically?" Schatzker asked.

Argentina is working to continue to reduce taxes and has launched "the most important infrastructure program in our history," Macri answered. That program will provide additional opportunities, as the country will need roads, trains, ports, pipelines, and energy, he noted.

In the next six months, Argentina plans to build more strategic alliances with countries around the world, Macri noted.
The roiling interior torment that is envy might not seem to lend itself to succinct dramatic expression. But director Jose Luis Arellano makes the emotion visible and audible at one point in his production of Jordi Casanovass play Cervantes: El Ultimo Quijote (Cervantes: The Last Quixote) for GALA Hispanic Theatre. Partway through this trenchantly staged world premiere, the title character, the great Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, finds himself in a Madrid tavern, watching an impromptu play reading. Tavern habitues who happen to be actors perform a comic scene by a successful younger writer, Lope de Vega. Suddenly the dialogue transforms into music  lustrous opera that seems to fill the brightly lit tavern with additional color and sparkle.

Next, the same interpreters have a go at a script by Cervantes. The light turns pallid. A distorted droning sound drowns out the dialogue. The implication is clear: De Vegas play is far the better piece, and the watching Cervantes knows it.

Not only does the metaphorical sequence wittily evoke a sensation many of us have experienced when contemplating achievements that outpace our own, but it also underscores the literary concerns that lie at the heart of Casanovass enjoyable potboiler. Commissioned by GALA and performed to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Cervantess death, Cervantes revels in sensational twists, at least a portion of which are based in the historical record.

Conspiracy. Adultery. Blackmail. Imprisonment and ransom. Defamatory sonnets. The looming specter of the Holy Inquisition. All these plot points feature in Cervantes, which, in this production, even includes a flagellation scene. (Produced with the Spanish theater company Accion Sur, Cervantes is performed in Spanish with English surtitles.)

Yet, despite such piquant storytelling elements, Catalan playwright Casanovas manages to keep the plays central conflict hooked to the protagonists writing life. Much of the narrative concerns events that follow the 1605 publication of the first part of Cervantess seminal novel Don Quixote. Years later, the willful but introspective Cervantes (Oscar de la Fuente) learns that, before he has finished work on Don Quixote, Part II, a counterfeit manuscript with that title has gone on the market.

Outraged, Cervantes goes off in search of the culprit behind the bogus book, bringing along with him, as helper, a young man named Martin (Samy Khalil). During the course of the quest, Cervantess memories play out as flashbacks. A key recollection is his meeting, in that Madrid tavern, with de Vega (Eugenio Villota), whose ability to turn out crowd-pleasers seems to call into question the nature of Cervantess gifts. The older writer believes his own plays are more substantive and truthful. His rival disagrees. Theater isnt about putting essays on stage, de Vega complains after watching an excerpt from a Cervantes tragedy.

There are certainly no staged essays here. Arellano endows this new production with brisk pacing, canny transitions, a stirring atmosphere and  particularly with the help of Christopher Annas-Lees dramatic lighting  striking visuals. (Silvia de Marta designed the stylized Spanish-landscape set and the streamlined period costumes; Mariano Vales composed the frequent underscoring.)

A deft, role-juggling cast helps give the tale tension, vividness and touches of humor. Among other turns, Khalil is an appealing Martin, and Luz Nicolas lends dignity and depth to Cervantess wife, Catalina.

De la Fuente excels at displaying Cervantess moments of self-doubt and his very healthy ego. At one point, Martin marvels that, while held in captivity in Algiers, the young Cervantes dared make three risky attempts to escape. Cervantes reacts with a flash of the confidence that surely helped make him a literary master. He slaps Martin on the head. It was four! he roars.

Cervantes: El Ultimo Quijote (Cervantes: The Last Quixote), by Jordi Casanovas. Directed by Jose Luis Arellano; sound design, April Kelli Sturdivant; video, Alvaro Luna; properties, Alicia Tessari. With Erick Sotomayor, Soraya Padrao, Jose Gonzalez and Eric Robledo. In Spanish with English subtitles. English translation, Heather McKay. About 2 hours. Tickets: $25-$45. Through Oct. 2 at GALA Theatre, 3333 14th St. NW, Washington. Call 202-234-7174 or visit galatheatre.org.
The transition from summer to fall is an ideal time to get your home organized. As you put away all of that summer gear and prepare for cooler weather, why not also commit to clearing out some of the things you no longer need or use? Here are five quick ways to clean out items right now and donate them to an organization that will actually use them.

Luggage

Each person in your family needs one or two suitcases. If you have more than that, its time to purge. People seem to accumulate a luggage collection that far exceeds their needs, mostly because they dont know what to do with the suitcases they no longer use and they feel uncomfortable throwing away something that is still useful.

However, theres no point in storing bulky suitcases that youre not using, especially when there are organizations that will gladly accept them for kids and families in need. There are organizations in each state that collect donated suitcases for foster children, who often dont have suitcases to pack their things in when they transition between homes. To find a place to donate luggage near you, visit donateluggage.com. The website makes it easy to locate an organization in your state. In the District, the website will direct you to the National Foster Care Coalition. Also in the District, the Child and Family Services Agency accepts donated suitcases through its Partners for Kids in Care program. Further information can be found at cfsa.dc.gov .

Toiletries from hotels

We all have a drawer or bin full of hotel shampoos, conditioners, soaps and lotions. We bring them home thinking well definitely use them in our guest room or on a future trip, but somehow never remember to do so. If youre not using them  and, lets face it, youre probably not going to  why not donate them to a local homeless or womens shelter? You can find a shelter in your area by visiting homelessshelterdirectory.org or womenshelters.org. New and unopened bottles can also be sent to troops stationed abroad through an organization called Operation: Care and Comfort.

Reusable bags

Reusable tote bags are such a good idea  until youve accumulated so many that you cant actually use, or store, them all. As it turns out, reusable bags arent as environmentally friendly as many of us think, particularly because we dont use them enough to make their production worth it. In fact, theyve become so popular and so mass-produced that a recent article in the Atlantic pointed out, Their abundance encourages consumers to see them as disposable, defeating their very purpose. But instead of throwing away those totes youre no longer using, donate them to local food pantries, farmers markets and homeless shelters, where they will be used and reused. Or, if youre donating clothes or toys to a local organization, put your items in reusable bags so that they can be repurposed. Bread for the City in the District lists reusable bags on its wish list of items for donation.

Empty picture frames

We all seem to be framing fewer pictures, and yet picture frames seem to magically multiply. Sometimes theyre given to us as gifts, and other times we buy them because we intend to use them but then somehow never get around to it. Instead of keeping a collection of empty frames in a box in the basement, donate them to an organization that will give them to people who will use and enjoy them. Organizations that help people transition into homes, in particular, make good recipients of picture frames that are in like-new condition. Habitat for Humanitys ReStores and Goodwill, which both have locations in the area, will accept donations of picture frames, as will A Wider Circle, whose headquarters is in Silver Spring.

Glassware

Ive noticed in my recent organizing jobs that many people own hundreds of glasses. Really. Tall water glasses, short water glasses, juice glasses, champagne flutes, red wine glasses, white wine glasses, bar glasses, martini glasses, margarita glasses. I could go on, but you get the idea. Most of us use the same six to eight glasses every day. Sure, you need to have enough for entertaining, but is it necessary to take up valuable kitchen cabinet storage with glassware you seldom use? Spend 30 minutes taking an honest accounting of all that glassware and see if you have at least a dozen items you could donate. I bet you do, and I bet you wont miss them when theyre gone. There are many organizations in our area that will take glassware, including Interfaith Works, the National Center for Children and Families and Neighbors Consejo.

Although its totally legitimate to try to expand the storage options in your home, sometimes a better option is to just reduce the amount of stuff you need to store. And repurposing items to help someone else makes it even more worthwhile. For a full list of where to donate almost anything in the Washington area, go to charitychoices.com.
Candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump appear at NBCs Commander in Chief Forum in New York, hosted by Matt Lauer on Sept. 7. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Whatever you may think of Donald Trumps politics, fitness for office and character, you have to admit hes a genius communicator, especially on television.

Thats why it comes as no surprise that he floated the idea Monday that the three scheduled presidential debates feature no interference in the form of a moderator who might inhibit his penchant for fact-challenged showmanship.

Heres how the Republican nominee put it in a CNBC interview: Let Hillary and I sit there and just debate, because I think the system is being rigged so its going to be a very unfair debate.

Trump said he fears that the widespread criticism of Matt Lauer, who moderated NBCs recent Commander in Chief Forum, means that debate moderators will come out loaded for bear. Lauer was thoroughly pummeled  especially for letting Trump go unchallenged when he said he opposed the war in Iraq from the start, which is false.

Well now the new persons going to try to be really hard on Trump just to show, you know, the establishment what he can do, Trump said. (Brian Stelter of CNN accurately called this out in his newsletter as working the refs preemptively.)

But in making this proposal, Trump inadvertently raises the issue of just how the moderators should approach these debates, which could be immensely important in the elections outcome. The moderators are NBC Newss Lester Holt on Sept. 26, ABCs Martha Raddatz and CNNs Anderson Cooper on Oct. 9 (that one is a town-hall-style debate), and Fox Newss Chris Wallace on Oct. 19. None of the four have moderated a general-election presidential debate before. They strike me as generally solid choices.

Heres some unsolicited advice for what they should do in these extraordinarily important debates:

1. Maintain control. Good luck with this, of course, but its of paramount importance. The moderators have to walk a careful line  they should not become the story, but somebody has to be in charge. If not the moderator, it will be the candidates, particularly Trump, who is so dominant in his demeanor.

2. Be well-prepared enough to assert the truth in real time. Wallace, wholl moderate the last debate  just two weeks before the election  has already said that he doesnt see his role as fact-checking, otherwise known as calling the candidates on their lies.

Im not there to truth-squad, he told his colleague Howard Kurtz. That was surprising because Wallace can be a very tough and effective interviewer; I hope hell change his mind about that. If journalists arent interested in being part of the truth squad, they should find another sport.

They can get some help with this, through some real-time fact-checking by the networks airing the debates. Weve seen some from cable networks during the campaign in those bottom-of-the-screen captions known as chyrons. (Hes not, said one of them when Trump insisted President Obama was the founder of ISIS.) More of this, please!

3. Be willing  and able  to stop the candidates in their tracks. Candidates always wander off the subject in an effort to stay on message, and the moderators need to lasso them right back to where they should be.

4. Set clear guidelines at the start and hold the candidates to them. Lauer tried this, to no avail, when he said he didnt want the candidates attacking each other. They both did. Lets try that kind of thing again, with more follow-through and a stiffer spine.

5. Be willing to pursue a logical line of questioning, with repeated follow-up questions. James Fallows of the Atlantic magazine, whose just-published cover story looks ahead to the debates and back to other notable presidential debate moments, says that this kind of persistence shouldnt be confused with tough-talk showboating.

Its so easy to think that sounding tough is the same as being clear, he told me. Its important not to mistake hostility of tone for relentlessness of logic.

He noted that Chris Matthews of MSNBC did this well when he interviewed Trump about his abortion beliefs a few months ago. It ended up making news because Matthews pressed Trump until he became more specific: He said women who seek abortions should be subject to some form of punishment if the procedure were to be banned.

Its not easy to do this job well, and it may never have been tougher than in this election cycle. But despite Trumps ardent wishes, its imperative that the moderators rise to the challenge.

For more by Margaret Sullivan, visit wapo.st/sullivan
An untitled acrylic on canvas by Gene Davis is inscribed to his assistant Frances Chapman, herself a noted artist: "To Fran my faithful collaborator, with Love, Gene Davis, Jan. 3, 1972." (Courtesy of Quinn's Auction Galleries /Courtesy of Quinn's Auction Galleries )

Although painter Frances Chapman was best known for her works of photorealism, she created abstract works early in her career. So its not surprising that the Arlington artist proudly displayed one of Gene Daviss famous striped paintings in her home.

The work was a gift from Davis, the prominent Washington painter and beloved Corcoran professor. It was one of two he inscribed to her during the years she worked as his assistant, according to her son, Parker Chapman. While the bold-colored painting hung on the wall forever and ever, the second, featuring stripes of pale hues, was hidden on the floor behind her office door and discovered by her son after her death in 2014 at the age of 83.

I think she didnt like it. It looks like Easter, surmised Parker Chapman. It wasnt representative of a typical Gene Davis.

Yet that one brought in the higher price when the paintings  as well as a few posters and others examples of Daviss signature stripes  were sold at Quinns Auction House in Virginia on Saturday. The paintings sold for $32,400 and $34,800, which was more than the pre-auction estimates.

The paintings shed light on the relationship between the two local artists. Davis, who died in 1985 at the age of 64, was the more famous, a leader of the loosely organized Washington Color School whose work has been collected worldwide. Chapman started painting still lifes, moved to abstract work and then gained some prominence for her photorealism.

But in the late 1960s and 70s, she worked as an assistant to Davis, helping to paint the rigid striped canvases that rocketed him to fame. The works auctioned as part of Chapmans estate offer a window into his creative process and the relationship between painter and assistant.

The Davis paintings owned by Chapman were inscribed to her by the famous artist. To Fran with love is scrawled on the back of one canvas; on the other (the one she stashed behind her office door), Davis wrote, To Fran my faithful collaborator, with Love, Gene Davis. On the front of one of the posters, the artist wrote To Fran, who paints half my paintings, Love Gene.

What she told me is he would mix the colors and put a dab below the stripe and my mom would do everything else, Parker Chapman said. She would lay the tape and paint the painting herself.

Davis and Washington painters Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Paul Reed were among the leaders of the Washington art scene. Davis was also a longtime and beloved professor at the Corcoran School of Art. He had a reputation for whimsy and improvisation, but he was best known for his stripes.

Gene had all these ladies that helped him paint his stripes, said Roy Slade, a friend and former director of the Corcoran.

Parker Chapman was a teenager when his mother worked for Davis. He recalls a flamboyant man with a shaved head who often wore a scarf. Davis and his wife, Flo, would bring their dog to the Chapmans Arlington home for barbecues, he said.

One time he rolled up in a 1965 cream-colored Jaguar with a red leather interior. I thought, Holy cow, this is the nicest car, he recalled. He told me a guy gave him the car just that morning for a painting. And he took me for a ride in it.

Parker Chapman has a photograph of his mother on a ladder working on one of Daviss large-scale works. She didnt mix the colors or decide what colors went where, he said.

Many artists at the time employed studio assistants to help them paint their canvases. Davis was no different, according to Jean Lawlor Cohen, the consulting curator for an upcoming exhibition on Davis at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and a longtime friend of the artist.

He always had assistants, and they were always women and usually attractive, she said.

Cohen said Davis was among many artists who allowed their assistants a lot of leeway in the studio. This was the time when Warhol wasnt touching much of anything, she said. I dont think [Davis] ever relinquished artistic choices. I think he got lonely and liked to have people around.

Cohen said Chapmans presence is found in Daviss conceptual work, a 1971 lithograph titled The Artists Fingerprints, Except for One, Which Belongs to Someone Else. Davis later identified Chapman as the someone else.

Her fingerprint represents the controlled access he allowed and also his intention to surprise, if not mystify a bit, Cohen said.

Parker Chapman has retained about 20 works by his mother, but he doesnt know where her best work is. Thats one of the sad things about the legacy of my mom. I dont know where a lot of her art is, he said. The more desirable things, thats the stuff that [sold.]

Gene Davis: Hot Beat, featuring more than a dozen of his works, opens Nov. 18 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
This movie recounts the story of the African American mathematician Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and her two colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), who helped NASA catch up in the space race of 1969. ( 20th Century Fox)

I t all started with a mysterious photograph.

In 2011, Mary Gainer worked as a historic preservationist for NASA, and she stumbled on a 1943 picture of a thousand people standing in a huge building. Gainer figured that the black men posing in the front were probably machinists, and the rest of the group was mostly white men in suits and ties.

But scattered here and there was something unexpected: Women, some white and some black, in conspicuous knee-length skirts and pompadour hairdos.

Gainer, who worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., tasked her new intern, Sarah McLennan, with getting to the bottom of it. There were too many to be the few secretaries employed then, so who were they, she wanted to know.

Unbeknown to Gainer, another person was on a similar hunt  only Margot Lee Shetterly was a step ahead. Shetterlys father was a scientist who worked at Langley, so growing up in the 1970s and 80s, she was aware of the history of black women at NASA.

There are these women and I knew them, and my dad worked with them and they went to our church and their kids were in my school, she said recently over the phone from her home in Charlottesville. It was my husband who was like, What is this story? How come Ive never heard about it? 

This was a special story, she suddenly realized: black women living in Jim Crow-era Virginia hired by NASA to do math and research that would launch men into space.

Shetterly started poking around and linked up with Gainer, whose intern was compiling oral histories from former employees and their families. Shetterlys book about those math whizzes, Hidden Figures, came out earlier this month. In January, a movie version will hit multiplexes with a cast that includes Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae.

And just like that, a piece of history that was nearly lost could become common knowledge.



This photo  unearthed by NASA historic preservationist Mary Gainer in 2011  was taken at the NACA Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now NASA Langley Research Center) on Nov. 4, 1943, during a visit by Frank Knox, secretary of the Navy. (NASA Langley Research Center)

Shetterly and her neighbors all knew the stories of these women. Growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine, Shetterly writes in her book.

But at the very place where these prodigies were employed, the history was fading.

Everyone knows what a computer looks like: the hard drive, the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse. But in the middle of the last century at Langley (which was until 1958 part of NASAs precursor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA), it looked different. Women who used pencils and paper to calculate data from wind tunnel tests, among other research, were called computers. The first of their kind were hired in 1935, and their ranks swelled during the labor shortage of World War II. In other fields, as men trickled back from overseas, women returned to more traditional roles at home, but not at Langley. The female computers became invaluable as the needs for aircraft advancements gave way to a different kind of battle: beating, Russia to the moon.

The women who had these jobs may not have felt remarkable. They were just happy to have work that paid better than the alternatives  teaching and nursing. The jobs were classified as subprofessional, even though they entailed specialized math skills.



Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) and NASA mission specialist Karl Zielinski (Olek Krupa) in Hidden Figures. (Hopper Stone/SMPSP/20th Century Fox)

One such woman was Katherine G. Johnson. At 98, she still lives in Hampton, and she has emerged as the most high-profile of the computers. In the past year, shes won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saw a building named after her and had a bench dedicated in her honor. On her birthday, in late August, #HappyBirthdayKatherineJohnson started trending on Twitter. In a few months, Henson, an Oscar nominee, will play her on-screen.

Like a lot of the other computers, Johnson studied math in college. She was also one of three graduate students to desegregate West Virginia University in 1940, but marriage and a family derailed her plans for an advanced degree.At NASA, she worked on the life-or-death task of determining launch timing. Her calculations helped propel Alan Shepard into space and guided him successfully back to Earth; they landed Neil Armstrong on the moon and brought him home.

She never talked about work much, her daughter Joylette Hylick said recently.

To come home and start talking about complex equations wouldnt go over with teenagers, Hylick explained. Plus, we had activities  church, sports, music lessons, the whole nine, so it was quite a full life. She was not a stay-at-home but she also was not a workaholic in the sense that everything revolved around that.

When asked about her accomplishments, Johnson, a prodigy who graduated high school at 14, tends to deflect in every interview. Shetterly says Johnson told her again and again, I was just doing my job. (Johnson was unavailable to comment for this story.)

It wasnt until well into adulthood that Hylick realized the importance of it.

After all, her mother was a trailblazer amid rampant discrimination. The earliest group of black women who worked at NACA were segregated from another computing pool of white women, and they had to use different bathrooms. At lunch in the cafeteria, they were relegated to a table with a white cardboard sign that read colored computers. One woman, Miriam Daniel Mann, snatched the sign off the table and hid it in her purse, depositing it at home. At first, replacements would materialize, but when Mann kept taking them, they eventually stopped appearing. It was the first of many victories.



Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae, left), Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) in Hidden Figures. (Hopper Stone/SMPSP/20th Century Fox)

Now seems like the right time for this history to reemerge. Theres been a movement in the last couple of decades to diversify the history of computing, said McLennan, the former intern, who is now a visiting assistant professor at Virginia State University. The earliest histories of that kind of thing were about innovators or big companies, but it didnt necessarily look at the social aspect.

The films producer, Donna Gigliotti, credits the current interest in encouraging women to pursue science and math for helping get the movie made so quickly. Its rare for a producer to option a book based on only a 55-page proposal, but thats what Gigliotti did.

Really, you can feel it in the zeitgeist, Gigliotti said, and the rapturous response to the trailer confirms that.

Whatever the reason, Shetterly is happy that people will know not just about the John Glenns of the world, she said, but the whole team that helped him get where he was going.

We want the big stories, of course, of the great men, but theres as much drama and interest and lessons to be learned in actions that people like us take on a daily basis, she said. History happens as soon as I pick up my coffee cup  it happened 30 seconds ago. Its history.
Francess Kargbo, a 17-year-old senior at Mount Vernon High, speaks during an August training session for her internship through Genesys Works, which places high school students in information technology jobs at corporations. (Donnie Biggs/Fairfax County Public Schools)

Francess Kargbo, a senior at Mount Vernon High School, said she was apprehensive about her internship with Genesys Works, which assigned her to the information technology department of international commercial law firm Kirkland & Ellis.

Her only previous work experience was at Taco Bell, and the 17-year-old from the Alexandria section of Fairfax County had no experience in IT. She said she worried she was not smart enough.

But after her first couple of days on the job last week, she said she felt like she had a place.

I fit in really comfortably, Kargbo said. They make me feel welcome. Theyre very kind, and theyre very supportive.

Her internship is through Genesys Works, an organization that trains underprivileged high school seniors  many of whom will be the first in their families to attend college  to work as IT interns. The program aims to give them a taste of the corporate world at a young age, paying them and offering mentorship to help them get to college.

The organization, founded in Houston in 2002 by corporate strategist Rafael Alvarez, hopes to expand to 15 more cities by 2022, an ambitious goal aided by a $2 million grant from AT&T. The contribution was announced Tuesday. The expansion could mean more internships in the D.C. area, where the organization set up shop this year in Fairfax County with 40 students.

[This internship gives at-risk teens a taste of the professional world]

The program bridges the gap between traditional schooling and the real world at a time when educators and policymakers are aiming to make high school education more relevant to the needs of the workforce. Virginia has begun to remake high school to allow students to earn credit for internships, jobs and apprenticeships.

[Va. governor moves to upend traditional high school]

Alvarez, who worked for Compaq Computer when he started Genesys Works, said he was inspired to create the program when he served on the board of a charter school in Houston. When he spoke to the schools graduates, he learned that many of them were entering the same low-wage fields as their parents.

He wondered: If I could give the students the opportunity to demonstrate that they could succeed in the corporate world, how would that change their senior year?

Alvarez said the new infusion of funding will mean that the program can be more quickly scaled to cities that want to try it, and the program will soon solicit requests for proposals to have Genesys Works chapters. Communities have to put up some of their own money, which can come from public or private sources.

Students accepted into the program are put through an intensive, eight-week training session during the summer before their senior year. There, they learn how to be IT specialists and about corporate etiquette, such as the importance of dressing well and making a good impression.

Once they begin their internship, they continue meeting with Genesys Works staff, who counsel them on applying to college and for scholarships. The mentorship continues informally into college.

Mohamed Wazeer Mohideen, a 17-year-old senior at Stonewall Jackson High School in Manassas, is interning at AT&T. He rises at 5:30 a.m., is at school by 7:30 a.m. and then shuttles to his internship at 1:30 p.m., working for about four hours.

Mohideen loves spreadsheets and Excel and is interested in IT because some of his parents friends work in the field. He said he was excited to apply his unusual passion for spreadsheets to an internship.

For me, its just like playing video games, he said.

Manuel Robles, 23, graduated from the Genesys Works program and is now an IT senior support analyst for a renewable energy company in Chicago. He said his internship, with Chicago Public Schools IT department, completely changed his outlook.

In my family, no one had ever attended college, Robles said. No one had ever had an office job. I didnt know it was even a possibility for me.

He had planned to go to trade school and become an electrician. But then he saw how much progress he had made learning the ropes of IT. So he changed his path: He decided that he wanted to someday be a chief information officer. He went to St. Xavier University to study computer science, landing a job right out of college.

Kargbo, who aspires to be a doctor, said Genesys Works has helped her with her college and scholarship applications. Her parents did not go to college, and she struggled to navigate the complex process. Kargbo said the program already has given her the same kind of boost Robles found.

I had a bad lack of confidence, Kargbo said. Now, she said, I can do anything I set my mind to.
The United States today sent two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea.

By AP: The United States today sent two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by US and South Korean jets, were seen by an Associated Press photographer as they flew over Osan Air Base, which is 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border with North Korea, the world's most heavily armed. The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, without landing in South Korea.

advertisement

Such flyovers are common when always high animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war as there has never been a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War.

NO NUCLEAR WEAPON WITH SOUTH KOREA

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the US "nuclear umbrella" as a deterrent to North Korea. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.

North Korea is keenly aware of the US presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the US nuclear threat. It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as alleged proof of US hostility that it claims as the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

Last week's nuclear test, the North's fifth, was its most powerful to date. Pyongyang's claim to have used "standardised" warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the US mainland.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who has regularly visited the North's nuclear facilities, estimates the North may have enough nuclear fuel for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016 and the ability to add about seven new bombs a year.

"Left unchecked, Pyongyang will likely develop the capability to reach the continental United States with a nuclear tipped missile in a decade or so," Siegfried wrote on the North Korea-focused website 38 North. He said that more troubling was the recent test successes may give Pyongyang a false sense of confidence.

International diplomatic efforts to rid the North of its bombs have been stalled since the last round of meetings in late 2008. Since then, Pyongyang has ramped up both its ballistic missile and nuclear bomb development, despite an increasing raft of sanctions.

After the test, the North's nuclear weapons institute said it will take unspecified measures to further boost its nuclear capability, which analysts said hinted at a possible sixth nuclear test.

advertisement

NORTH KOREA CAN DETONATE ANOTHER ATOMIC DEVICE

South Korea's Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said Monday that South Korean and US intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device at any time at one of its tunnels at its main Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place.

Moon refused to say what specific evidence pointed to another possible nuclear test. But the South's Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified Seoul government sources, reported Monday that there were signs the North had finished test preparations at one tunnel that has never been used. Yonhap did not elaborate.

Seoul, Washington and their allies have vowed to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.

"The United States and (South Korea) are taking actions every day to strengthen our alliance and respond to North Korea's continued aggressive behavior," Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of US Forces Korea, said in a statement.

North Korea prepares for next nuclear test as US weighs sanction: South Korea



--- ENDS ---
With a box that is said to contain the ashes of her mother, Mary Louise Powell is shown in her condo in Southwest Washington. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)

George Washington University officials learned in the fall of 2015 that there might be problems identifying cadavers that had been donated to the medical school to train future doctors.

But for months afterward, GWU continued to cremate unidentified bodies and give the ashes to loved ones who were unaware of the mix-up  and who in some cases got the wrong cremains, according to a class-action lawsuit initiated by three families Tuesday.

The lawsuit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, alleges that the continued cremation of cadavers after problems came to light was part of a plan to cover up the schools negligence and that it hampered genetic testing that might have helped identify the bodies.

There has been no intent on the part of the university to mislead affected families, GWU spokeswoman Candace Smith said.

The medical school announced in early February that it had lost track of the identities of as many as 50 bodies donated for training first-year medical students. It suspended the body donor program at the time. University officials said that the problems surfaced internally in November and that they believed the sloppy record-keeping may have gone back seven years, affecting an untold number of families.

A family photograph of Mary Louise Powells late mother, Fidelia Ridgeway, during her 80th birthday. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)

[Unidentified cadavers in GW program point to years of problems]

In many cases, the donors or their families had requested that the cremated remains be given to loved ones.

The three plaintiffs, Eileen Kostaris, Alex Naar and Mary Louise Powell, allege that their relatives remains have been lost, possibly given to the wrong family or buried in a cemetery without authorization. They each seek $10 million from GWU.

University officials have said that identification tags attached to the toes of the cadavers were removed and not replaced when the bodies were moved between the university morgue and student labs. The person in charge of that process stopped working at the university when the problems became known in November, school officials said.

Naars mother, Ruth W. Kurle, died in October 2013, and her body was donated to the medical school.

A body that GWU initially said was Kurles was cremated on Jan. 21 this year. The university told Naar that it was sure the body was Kurles because the school found during a 2015 inventory that the cadaver did not have a larynx and Kurle had undergone a laryngectomy. But the schools records also indicated the body they believed was Kurles was donated in 2015, two years after Naars mothers body was donated.

The lawsuit alleges that Powell received the remains of the wrong person last December, citing conflicting information provided by the university about the timing of her mothers cremation. What became of the remains of Kostariss grandmother is unknown, the suit alleges, adding that a university official told her that the remains may have been buried or given to the wrong family.

After the problems were discovered but before it notified families, GWU began collecting genetic samples of bodies it sent for cremation. Families were not told of these samples, the lawsuit alleges, until the plaintiffs attorney, Cary Hansel, threatened a lawsuit. And GWU has ignored repeated requests to make the samples available to families for testing by hired experts, the suit alleges.

The cremations took place in Maryland. State regulations forbid the cremation of unidentified bodies, the lawsuit alleges.
The Montgomery County Council on Tuesday abruptly postponed a proposal to hire outside lawyers to help execute an agreement with a private developer to build a life science town center in White Oak.

The item was pulled from the agenda after council member Marc Elrich (D-At-Large) objected to the selection of former Montgomery County Planning Board chairman Francoise Carrier as special counsel for dealings with Global Life Sci Development Corp., an affiliate of the developer Percontee. Carrier was chairman of the planning board in 2013, when it approved the White Oak land-use plan that included the life science town center concept.

[Moco, developer reach agreement on White Oak]

Carrier left the board in 2014 and now works as of counsel to the Bethesda firm Bregman, Berbert, Schwartz & Gilday. The council was supposed to vote on hiring Carrier and another attorney, Douglas Bregman, who is a partner at the firm, for a fee that was still being negotiated.

Their hiring was requested by County Attorney Marc Hansen. Elrich objected, citing revolving-door concerns. The issue instead will be discussed at next weeks county council session.

This is something she considered her signature project, and she should not be negotiating her signature project. I want somebody who is representing the county, Elrich said.

Carrier said Elrichs concerns were not justified. I was very much involved with the White Oak master plan, and that plan set the stage for the development agreement, she said. But I didnt have any role in the development agreement itself.

After more than a year of difficult negotiations, County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) reached an accord with Percontee in June to create a medical and science business hub on 300 acres of land near the Food and Drug Administration campus near Route 29 and New Hampshire Avenue.

Hansen and his attorneys had clashed with Jonathan Genn, Percontees executive vice president, on several issues  including the belated discovery of covenants on the companys portion of the site that could limit development and potentially leave the county open to lawsuits.

Genn and Leggett said that issue has been resolved.

[White Oak deal stirs hopes, doubts for eastern Montgomery]

Hansen said although it is true there was contention, that is not his reason for wanting to hire Carrier and Bregman. Because the development agreement is contingent on Percontee securing the planning boards approval of detailed site plans, Hansen said, he wanted someone who knows the ropes to monitor the countys interests.

We dont often practice in the area where were going to the planning board to ask for development approval, Hansen said.

He also cited other cases that have stretched resources in his office, including litigation over the construction of the Silver Spring Transit Center and a lawsuit challenging the countys decision to place limits on construction in the Ten-Mile Creek area near Clarksburg.

Hansen said Carriers involvement does not pose an ethical conflict because as planning board chairman she served at the pleasure of the council and was not a county employee.

Genn said he had no role in the selection of Carrier or Bregman but has the utmost respect for both of them.

The council must decide in coming weeks whether to approve $47 million in bond funding to finance road and intersection improvements around the site.
Obituaries of residents from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia.

Maurice Heartfield Jr., university official

Maurice Heartfield Jr., 88, a former vice president and assistant treasurer of George Washington University who from 1983 to 1992 was administrator of the business and financial office at the private St. Albans School in Washington, died July 30 at his home in Bethesda, Md. The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said a daughter, Sarah Meiring.

Mr. Heartfield was born in Baltimore and grew up in Washington. He retired from GWU in 1983 after 25 years with the university. He was a former president of the St. Albans Alumni Association, chairman of the St. Albans School governing board and chairman of the board of the National Cathedral School.

Elizabeth Levin, secretary

Elizabeth Levin, 82, a retired secretary who worked at the CIA, the Agriculture Department and the Government Printing Office before retiring in the mid-1990s, died Aug. 11 at a hospital in Washington. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said a daughter, Leila Snider.

Mrs. Levin, a resident of Lanham, Md., was born Betty Nelson in Upper Turkeyfoot Township, Pa. She joined the CIA in 1955 and three years later left to accompany her husband on his Foreign Service career in Asia. She resumed her federal career in 1972, at the USDA. She was a member of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Berwyn Heights, Md.

Thomas Marshall, realty development partner

Thomas Marshall, 60, a partner in Elm Street Development and builder of residential housing in Montgomery County, Md., died July 31 at his home in Gaithersburg, Md. The cause was a heart attack, said a sister, Monica Vaughn.

Mr. Marshall, a Houston native, settled in the Washington area in 1988 and joined Elm Street Development. For the past 15 years, he had been the overseer of all apartment development for the company and the development of the Clarksburg Village planned community.

Jeanne ODonnell, lawyer

Jeanne ODonnell, 94, a Washington lawyer who specialized in real estate law and legal matters affecting elderly people for about 25 years starting in 1980, died Aug. 22 at an assisted living center in San Francisco. The cause was complications from cardiovascular disease, said a son, James ODonnell Jr.

Mrs. ODonnell, a former District resident who moved to San Francisco in 2013, was born Jeanne Conners in Boston. Her twin, James R. Conners Jr., was killed in action as a Navy pilot in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines during World War II.

Early in her career, she had been a hearing examiner for the D.C. Rental Accommodations Office, a legal assistant in her husbands law practice, a research analyst with the Labor Department, and a post-World War II civilian researcher for the Army and the State Department in Japan and the Philippines.

Carol Sykora, ESL teacher

Carol Sykora, 86, who taught English as a second language at Einstein High School in Kensington, Md., from 1973 to 1981, died Aug. 22 at a hospital in Silver Spring, Md. The cause was a stroke, said a daughter, Cristina Affeldt.

Mrs. Sykora, a resident of Calverton, Md., was born Carol Steibling in Louisville, Ky. She settled in the Washington area in 1971.

Louis Marzetta, electronic engineer

Louis Marzetta, 96, an electronic engineer at what now is the National Institute of Standards and Technology from 1948 until he retired in 1977, died Aug. 11 at an assisted living center in Friendship Heights, Md. The cause was Alzheimers disease, said a daughter, Barbara Marzetta.

Mr. Marzetta, who lived in Chevy Chase, Md., was born in Hopedale, Mass. He came to the Washington area during World War II as a Navy petty officer assigned to Naval Research Laboratory as a radio engineer. He continued that employment as a civilian after the war until joining what then was the National Bureau of Standards.

Elvin Ned Sloan, lawyer, community activist

Elvin Ned Sloan, 80, a Washington lawyer and community activist who had served as chair of the D.C. Statehood Commission in the 1990s and as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in Ward 4, died Aug. 15 at a hospital in Rockville, Md. The cause was complications from prostate cancer, said a son, Douglas Sloan.

Mr. Sloan, a District resident, was born in Youngstown, Ohio. He moved to Washington in 1965 and later became executive director for programs for Pride Inc., the training and employment program for inner city youths headed by the citys future mayor, Marion Barry.

He also worked with the United Planning Organization, which helped coordinate and oversee anti-poverty programs, including education, employment and daycare services for young mothers. From 1994 until he retired in 2015 Mr. Sloan practiced law with the firm of Sloan & Associates, specializing in federal employment cases involving discrimination.

Thomas Lange, school employee, musician

Thomas Lange, 60, who retired in 2007 as a media services technician at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, Md., and had been a bass player in musical ensembles in the Washington area, died Aug. 8 at a nursing center in Silver Spring, Md. The cause was complications from multiple sclerosis, said a daughter, Trisha Lange.

Mr. Lange, a resident of Rockville, Md., was born in Washington. He spent nearly 30 years working for Montgomery County Public Schools, initially as a bus driver.

As a musician, he played in local groups such as Evergreen, Ingus and the Fabulettes, and he appeared on DC101s The Greaseman show.

Harry Posman, adviser on aging

Harry Posman, 95, who retired at 92 as senior adviser to deputy assistant secretary for the federal Administration on Aging, died Aug. 27 at an assisted-living center in Pittsboro, N.C., where he had lived since 2014. The cause was complications from Alzheimers disease, said a son, Dr. Clifford Posman.

Dr. Posman was born in The Hague and emigrated to the United States in 1939. He became a U.S. citizen during Army service in World War II. In 1977, he moved to Washington and began working at the Administration on Aging, part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Earlier, he was deputy commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Services, where his work included the design and implementation of the states medical assistance program.

 From staff reports
Stanley Sheinbaum, shown in 1992, said that helping to keep a liberal voice alive was the overarching goal of a lifetime of activism. The high-powered L.A. host and change agent died Sept. 12 at age 96. (Tony Barnard/Los Angeles Times)

For more than four decades, Stanley Sheinbaum regularly gathered presidents, moguls, celebrities and activists in his Los Angeles living room to sip wine and debate the issues of the day.

Bill and Hillary Clinton, King Hussein and Queen Noor of Jordan, TV producer Norman Lear and entertainers Barbra Streisand and Warren Beatty were among the many who participated in the vibrant salons Mr. Sheinbaum and his wife, Betty, held at their art-filled home on exclusive North Rockingham Avenue in the Brentwood neighborhood.

But more than a high-powered host, Mr. Sheinbaum often was a change agent, whose fingerprints can be found on a remarkable array of notable events.

In the 1970s he was the chief fundraiser for Daniel Ellsbergs defense in the Pentagon Papers trial. In the 1980s he led a delegation of American Jewish leaders who persuaded Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to renounce terrorism and accept Israel as a state.

And in the 1990s he headed the Los Angeles Police Commission after the beating of motorist Rodney King and helped drive controversial Police Chief Daryl Gates from office. He then became the overseer of the commissions efforts to hire Willie Williams as the departments first black police chief.

Mr. Sheinbaum, who said helping to keep a liberal voice alive was the overarching goal of a lifetime of activism, died Sept. 12 at his home of undisclosed causes, according to his assistant Marti Maniates. He was 96.

Mr. Sheinbaum often took stands that invited outrage. When he was photographed shaking hands with Arafat, fellow Jews called him a traitor and a dead pig was thrown on his driveway. When he criticized the Los Angeles Police Department, he rankled Gates, who called him a pain in the ass.

He had courage, said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif. ), who met the peripatetic advocate in the 1970s before she held political office. I dont know anyone who is basically a volunteer activist who played the role Stanley has.

His fortune gave him the freedom to agitate and aggravate. A child of the Depression who trained as an economist at Stanford University, he gained his wealth through marriage to Betty Warner, the daughter of movie mogul Harry Warner, and doubled it through shrewd investment.

He belonged to the Malibu Mafia, a small group of socially conscious Westside moguls, including Lear and Max Palevsky, who channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars into progressive causes and candidates. George McGovern, John Anderson, Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton were among the politicians who relied on Mr. Sheinbaums support.

Born in New York on June 12, 1920, Stanley Klimberg Sheinbaum was the son of a leather-goods manufacturer whose company collapsed during the Depression. He had little interest in school and the poor grades to prove it. At 20, he joined the Army and spent most of World War II making maps.

After his discharge in 1946, he applied to 33 colleges on the G.I. Bill but was rejected by all of them. He returned to high school at 25, doing well enough to gain admission to Oklahoma A&M. He later transferred to Stanford and in 1949 graduated summa cum laude in economics. He traveled to Paris on a Fulbright fellowship to study international monetary affairs.

In the late 1950s he was hired to teach economics at Michigan State University, which assigned him to a program providing technical assistance to South Vietnam. He became the coordinator in 1957, not knowing that the program was a front for the CIA. When he learned the truth, after 18 months in the job, it radicalized him.

I realized then the real threat was not in Vietnam but right here at home, he told the Los Angeles Times many years later.

Mr. Sheinbaum resigned as coordinator in 1959 and in 1960 joined the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, Calif., as a research economist. He remained quiet about the CIAs links to the Michigan State program until he was contacted by journalist Robert Scheer, who had discovered the connection. Mr. Sheinbaum wound up collaborating with Scheer on an article published in Ramparts magazine in 1966 that exposed the program.

The CIA launched an investigation of Ramparts and a campaign to discredit it, which quickly evolved into a broader program of domestic political espionage, according to journalist Angus Mackenzie in his 1998 book Secrets: The CIAs War at Home. Mackenzie wrote that Mr. Sheinbaum was the first person to go public with his experience of CIA activity in the United States  a story about the Agencys infiltration of a legitimate civilian institution.

Mr. Sheinbaum became an outspoken critic of U.S. policies in Vietnam, appeared at antiwar teach-ins around the country and twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress in the 1960s as a peace candidate.

He was tapped to organize support for Ellsberg, the Vietnam War critic arrested in 1971 for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, and his co-defendant Anthony Russo. Mr. Sheinbaum raised nearly $1 million.

Most of the funds came in small contributions from thousands of individual donors, but Mr. Sheinbaum organized one big-ticket event that featured Streisand and raised $50,000. Had Stanley not put on that event and raised $50,000 the trial would have ended and I believe Nixon would have stayed in office for the rest of his term, Ellsberg said in Citizen Stan, a 2004 documentary directed by Patty Sharaf. And the war would have continued.

The case ultimately was dismissed over revelations that a break-in at Ellsbergs psychiatrists office was committed by Nixon White House operatives who later would be tied to the Watergate affair.

The Ellsberg work plunged Mr. Sheinbaum into Los Angeles political life. As chairman of the fundraising arm of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California from 1972 to 1982, Mr. Sheinbaum led efforts that increased the organizations budget from $60,000 to more than $700,000, enabling it to pursue the long-running Los Angeles school desegregation case and fight the LAPD on policies such as the use of chokeholds and battering rams.

In 1988, he was asked by officials from the Swedish foreign ministry to organize a group of American Jewish leaders to meet with the PLO and persuade it to adopt positions that would satisfy U.S. requirements for opening peace talks.

That effort culminated in the breakthrough with Arafat in Stockholm on Dec. 6, 1988, and helped pave the way for a historic 1993 meeting at the White House between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Besides his wife of 53 years, survivors include three stepchildren; a brother; eight grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.

Im not better than anybody else, he once said, but I do have a commitment to a good society and time to work on that.

 Los Angeles Times
An aide in the Prince Georges County school system has been accused of molesting at least four students on a school bus.

A spokeswoman for county police said the incident allegedly occurred May 24. It was referred to Child Protective Services and then, on June 20, to police, said Cpl. Nicole Hubbard, the spokeswoman.

She said that the matter is under investigation and that she had no additional information.

It was not clear why the information did not become public sooner.

There was no indication that anyone had been charged in connection with the allegations.

A school system spokeswoman said a bus aide and a supervisor had been placed on administrative leave.

The spokeswoman said the alleged incident involved children from James Ryder Randall Elementary School.

Earlier this year, a school-system volunteer was indicted on 270 counts of child pornography involving at least 23 victims.

The county Board of Education has adopted new policies aimed at safeguarding children.
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi in Washington on Oct. 22, 2015. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Lawyers for a former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Clintons private email system have notified a House committee that their client will not testify Tuesday morning, saying that he previously invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination before another Republican-led panel of Congress.

Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clintons 2008 presidential campaign before setting up a server for Clinton in her New York home in 2009 during her tenure as secretary of state, last year invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions by a House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

On Monday, Paglianos attorneys sharply criticized a new subpoena issued Thursday evening by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, for Pagliano to appear on two business days notice with two information technology workers to answer questions about why a Clinton email archive was deleted, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.

Any effort to require Mr. Pagliano to publicly appear this week and again assert his Fifth Amendment rights before a committee of the same Congress, inquiring about the same matter as the Benghazi Committee, furthers no legislative purpose and is a transparent effort to publicly harass and humiliate our client for unvarnished political purposes, wrote Paglianos attorneys with Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld.

[Staffer who worked on Clintons private email server faces subpoena]

The unreasonableness of the time constraint in the subpoena underscores the purely political motivations of this Committee, said Paglianos five-member defense team, led by Mark J. MacDougall. Any legal effort by the committee to force Paglianos appearance knowing that he will provide no new information could violate a D.C. bar ethics ruling against subjecting witnesses to public ridicule, they added.

Besides Pagliano, the House committee issued subpoenas to Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton of Platte River Networks, an information technology firm contracted by Clinton to help manage her server, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The FBI said this month that a Platte River staffer deleted an archive of Hillary Clintons email after it had been requested by Congress.

[FBI releases Hillary Clinton email investigation documents]

The New York Times reported last week that the staffer was Combetta, and that he had been granted immunity by the Justice Department in its year-long investigation into the handling of classified information, which was closed without charges at the FBIs recommendation.

A Chaffetz committee aide said late Monday that Justin Cooper, a Bill Clinton aide who set up the original private server in 2009, has agreed to testify.

Asked if Combetta and Thornton would invoke their constitutional rights against self-incrimination, the committee aide said: You never can know for sure. Were hopeful they will testify, we just have to wait and see.

Cooper attorney Howard Shapiro did not immediately respond to a request for comment. MacDougall declined to comment.

In a letter to MacDougall released by the committee, Chaffetz wrote that subpoenas for Paglianos testimony and relevant documents remain in effect, citing among other reasons the possibility that Pagliano could agree to answer some or all questions, or the panel could agree to hear his testimony in a closed-door session  or grant him immunity.

[Clinton IT aide asserts Fifth Amendment in civil deposition]

Paglianos lawyers have said that he fully cooperated with the Justice Department investigation under a grant of limited immunity. Pagliano invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 125 times in a June 6 deposition before lawyers with the conservative group Judicial Watch in a civil public records lawsuit seeking Clintons emails.
Korryn Gaines recorded video of her standoff with Baltimore County police officers on Aug. 1 and posted it on social media. Police say Gaines, a 23-year-old black woman, pointed a gun at officers and threatened to kill them before they shot and killed her. Officers had arrived at her apartment to serve warrants. (Instagram @shesyourmajesty)

Korryn Gaines recorded video of her standoff with Baltimore County police officers on Aug. 1 and posted it on social media. Police say Gaines, a 23-year-old black woman, pointed a gun at officers and threatened to kill them before they shot and killed her. Officers had arrived at her apartment to serve warrants. (Instagram @shesyourmajesty)

A wrongful-death lawsuit filed Tuesday on behalf of the estate of a Baltimore County woman claims that Korryn Gaines was illegally shot and killed by police during an August standoff at her apartment that also injured her 5-year-old son.

The suit, filed in Baltimore County Circuit Court, contradicts police accounts of the events and claims that a neighbor heard the 23-year-old mother offer to put down a gun she had pointed at officers and surrender if police put their guns down first. Officers allegedly refused.

The suit also claims that officers grew frustrated with Gaines as the standoff reached roughly seven hours. Before officers fired first, according to the lawsuit, the neighbor said he heard a man say, Im sick of this s---.

The case gained national attention after Gaines began live-streaming the Aug. 1 standoff on social media. Her death angered activists who have been protesting police shootings of minorities across the country. Gaines was African American.

During the standoff, police commandeered the apartment of Gainess neighbor, Ramone Coleman, who could overhear the entire confrontation between police and Gaines, according to the lawsuit.

Baltimore County Police held a news conference on Aug. 1 about the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Korryn Gaines, a black woman killed by police in Randallstown. Officers were trying to serve warrants at the apartment when they said Gaines pointed a gun at them and threatened to kill them during an hours-long standoff. A 5-year-old boy was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound. (Baltimore County Police)

Police said Gaines was fatally shot and her son was injured by a gunshot fired by one of the officers.

A Baltimore County police spokesman declined to comment on the assertions in the lawsuit.

[Woman shot by police in standoff ]

The estate is seeking millions in damages and claims that Gainess rights under the Maryland Constitution were violated, that police acted negligently, that they suppressed her freedom of speech and that they did not have legal justification to enter her apartment. We cant wait for the police to explain their actions, said Jim Bell, the attorney for Gainess estate. Why didnt they have a crisis-intervention team there? It was like her life didnt matter.

Baltimore County police said they went to Gainess apartment in Randallstown, Md., at about 9:20 a.m. Aug. 1 to serve a warrant for a March traffic stop, which Gaines also broadcast over social media. The stop ended with her being charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Police also had a warrant for her boyfriend.

After Gaines refused to leave her apartment, officers got a key from management to open her door, police said. When they opened it, they said, they saw Gaines sitting on the floor and pointing a shotgun at them, according to accounts police gave in the wake of the shooting. Her son was nearby.

The officers quickly retreated and began an hours-long dialogue with Gaines. Amid the negotiations, police authorities successfully petitioned Facebook to disable the 23-year-olds accounts.

According to the lawsuit, Coleman said that between 10 and 10:30 a.m., he heard Gaines make an offer to police: If you put your guns down and back up from my apartment, I will come out. But police did not back away from the apartment, the lawsuit says.

Coleman said officers had drilled holes in the walls of his apartment earlier in the day to monitor Gaines, according to the lawsuit.

Around 3 p.m., police have said, Gaines raised her shotgun at officers and told them she would kill them if they didnt leave. Police have said an officer then opened fire with one shot and that Gaines responded with a volley of rounds. Officers returned fire.

Police said that Gaines was killed and her son was hit by a bullet or shrapnel, and that a tactical officer fired the shot that hit the child.

[Boy hit by officers bullet during standoff in Baltimore County, department says]

In a differing account of events contained in the suit, officers grew frustrated with Gaines because she would not submit to their authority and leave the apartment.

After the neighbor said he heard the expletive, the lawsuit claims, an officer who was farthest from Gaines opened fire. Gaines was struck multiple times, and her son was shot in the face and elbow, which required surgery. The boy survived.

The officer did not act reasonably in his decision to shoot and kill Korryn Gaines out of his own personal frustration rather than any true fear of a threat to him or others, according to the lawsuit.
Major. Mark Thompson faces new charges after The Washington Post uncovered evidence that Thompson was dishonest when he testified before an administrative board. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Attorneys for Marine Maj. Mark Thompson on Tuesday questioned the authenticity of a recorded interview that the government intends to use against the former U.S. Naval Academy instructor at his court-martial early next year.

Thompson, 47, has long sought to prove that he was unfairly convicted of sexual misconduct at a 2013 court-martial. The military launched a new investigation into Thompson after The Washington Post uncovered evidence that he was dishonest when he testified under oath to a Marine administrative board.

Thompson now faces new charges of lying to the board, encouraging a friend to lie for him at his court-martial  and lying to a Post reporter about his accusers.

[A Marine fights to prove hes innocent of sexual misconduct. Then a lost cellphone is found]

The 45-minute audio recording of The Posts interview with Thompson, which the newspaper published online in July, is part of the militarys case set to begin in January.

At a preliminary hearing at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday, Thompsons attorneys asked a military judge to order The Post to turn over the original recording and contemporaneous notes from the reporter.

Our contention is that there are portions of the interview missing, Thompson attorney Kevin B. McDermott said in the courtroom in the basement of Lejeune Hall. If the government intends to use my clients statements against him, we believe we should have access to it.

We have every right to determine whether the recording is accurate, he said.

Marine Corps prosecutor Maj. Babu Kaza said The Post had already provided a digital recording of the interview, in addition to a statement from Post counsel, under penalty of perjury, that the recording produced in response to a government subpoena was complete and unaltered.

The notes are irrelevant, Kaza said, because the government does not intend to call reporter John Woodrow Cox as a witness.

[Marine in sexual misconduct case faces unusual charge of lying to a reporter]

McDermott suggested that there was a sizable gap in the recording at a critical moment in the interview, and that prosecutors should not be allowed to play the recording at Thompsons court-martial unless Cox testifies to its authenticity.

During their interview, Cox showed Thompson copies of text messages he uncovered that suggested Thompson was involved in a sexual relationship with a female midshipman. For nearly two minutes, the Marine said nothing, Cox wrote in the story that prompted the new investigation. He described him reading and rereading the text messages as he formulated a response.

The reporter repeatedly asked Thompson in the January interview why he lied to authorities about the last time he saw the woman. Thompson described the immense pressure he faced after another midshipman accused him of raping her.

I simply had to, Thompson said in the interview. When they were coming after me for 41 years  the sentence he could have faced if he had been convicted of rape  I cant begin to say, you know, how terrifying that is.

Kaza, the prosecutor, said there is no evidence that the recording was altered. The long pause in the recording was intentional on Thompsons part, Kaza said, because he had just been confronted with absolute hard evidence of his own lies. It is Mark Thompson spinning his gears to come up with more lies.

Military Judge Christopher Greer said he would resolve the dispute over the recording in a later ruling. When Thompsons attorney said he would also seek access to recordings and notes from other interviews The Post conducted with other possible witnesses, the judge cautioned, The Washington Post is not on trial.

Thompson, who has spent nearly 20 years in the Marine Corps, including service in Afghanistan, faces charges of making a false official statement and of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Military prosecutors have said he should be locked up for nearly three years, fined $200,000 and kicked out of the service.

In addition to the recorded interview with The Post, the governments case is expected to rely on testimony from Thompsons friend, Maj. Michael Pretus, who was a key witness for Thompson after then-Midshipman Sarah Stadler accused Thompson of sexual misconduct and a female classmate claimed that he had raped her.

Pretus, a decorated Iraq combat veteran, has since agreed to cooperate with prosecutors as part of an immunity deal. He told investigators that he lied on Thompsons behalf and also admitted to having a sexual threesome with Thompson and one of his accusers during a visit to Annapolis in 2011, according to a recorded interview played during a military court proceeding in May.

[Naval Academy teacher is removed amid widening sexual misconduct scandal]

At Tuesdays hearing, Thompsons attorneys raised questions about Pretuss credibility as a witness. McDermott requested any medical records that would show Pretus had received alcohol dependency treatment.

There is good-faith basis to believe there are significant alcohol issues in this witnesss past and apparently ongoing, McDermott said.

Pretus declined to comment Tuesday on McDermotts assertion. He was removed from his position as an instructor at the Naval Academy after being implicated in the sexual misconduct scandal.

At Thompsons court-martial in 2013, it was Pretus who provided key testimony that contradicted the accusers version of events. Thompson was acquitted of the rape but convicted of five other charges related to sexual misconduct.

Pretus told investigators he had not wanted to testify during Thompsons court-martial but did so out of loyalty to his friend.
Jacob Andrew Barajas plead guilt in a case involving his 9-year-old nephew, who was handcuffed and fatally beaten over birthday cake. (Courtesy of Hagerstown Police)

The uncle of a 9-year-old Maryland boy who died after he was handcuffed and fatally beaten for eating birthday cake without permission pleaded guilty Tuesday to first-degree child abuse, according to prosecutors.

Jacob Barajas entered the plea and faces up to 15 years in prison, authorities said. He is expected to be sentenced next year.

The boys mother and her boyfriend were also accused in the 2015 death of Jack Kirby Garcia.

Jack died after he was handcuffed to a chair and beaten after he allegedly stole birthday cake meant for someone else. His death was ruled a homicide, officials said.

The boys mother, Oriana Iris Garcia, is charged with second-degree murder and faces trial in February. Her boyfriend, Robert L. Wilson, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a 30-year sentence, according to prosecutors.

Oriana Iris Garcia was charged with second-degree murder in the case of her 9-year-old son, Jack. She was not home at the time he was attacked. (Courtesy of Hagerstown Police)

[Mothers boyfriend charged with murder in beating of Hagerstown boy]

The three adults were all living in a Hagerstown apartment at the time. Oriana Garcia was not at home during the attack and had left her son in the care of the two men. She later told authorities that her boyfriend would hit Jack with a piece of hollow bamboo shaped like a sword to punish him for lying and would slap him in the face.

Handcuffs had been placed on the boy for a few hours at a time in the past to show him whats going to happen in jail, authorities have said. Garcia had said she was trying to teach her son not to steal. The boy, she told officials, would mostly get in trouble for stealing food.

[Mother, uncle charged in death of boy beaten for eating birthday cake, police say]

This is the second of three people accused in a heart-wrenching and tragic case, Joseph S. Michael, the deputy states attorney in Washington County, said Tuesday concerning Barajass plea.

Other charges, including second-degree murder, were dropped against Barajas.
"The government policy is that we support the territorial integrity of Pakistan and we do not support independence for Balochistan," State Department Spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday.

By PTI: The US respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan and does not support independence for Balochistan, a state department official has said.

"The government policy is that we support the territorial integrity of Pakistan and we do not support independence for Balochistan," State Department Spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday.

ALSO READ: Baloch Republican Party protest Pakistan atrocities in South Korea, hail Modi

advertisement

Kirby was responding to a question on growing clarion calls from both inside and outside Pakistan's south-western Balochistan province on its independence and violation of human rights by the Pakistani security forces there.

US AGAINST MODI'S SUPPORT FOR BALOCHISTAN



"Where does the US stand on Balochistan? Because Indian Prime minister (Narendra Modi) has raised this subject," Kirby was asked.

"The US Government respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan and we do not support independence for Balochistan," he reiterated.

ALSO READ:Pakistan military on rampage in Balochistan, women and children tortured

In his address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the occasion of 70th Independence Day, Modi talked about the situation in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Gilgit and Balochistan and said people from there have thanked him for raising their issues.











--- ENDS ---
A man who allegedly broke into a womans apartment in New Carrollton on Sunday and sexually assaulted her was arrested Tuesday, police said.

[Sexual assault reported in the New Carrollton area of Prince Georges]

About 7 a.m. Sunday, 23-year-old Darren Samuel Robinson of no fixed address reportedly broke into an apartment in the 5400 block of 85th Avenue, according to a statement from the Prince Georges County Police Department. Robinson sexually assaulted a woman and took several items from her home before fleeing, the statement said.

After receiving calls on Tuesday from two people who saw the suspect at the Huntington Metro Station, Metro Transit Police arrested Robinson in Fairfax County, according to the statement. He is awaiting extradition to Prince Georges County, police said.
In 2008, D.C.'s ban on handguns was struck down by the Supreme Court after more than 30 years. The city's gun control laws are under challenge again. This is a look back at D.C.'s tough history on gun ownership. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

In 2008, D.C.'s ban on handguns was struck down by the Supreme Court after more than 30 years. The city's gun control laws are under challenge again. This is a look back at D.C.'s tough history on gun ownership. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

Nearly a decade after the Supreme Court struck down the Districts long-standing ban on handguns, the city is again at the forefront of a legal battle over the Second Amendment.

Gun rights advocates have scored a series of victories in the District since the high courts landmark 2008 ruling and are pressing this month to make it easier to carry firearms on the streets of the nations capital.

The pending cases have drawn the attention of gun rights groups and Republican attorneys general from more than a dozen states who are among those asking federal judges to find Washingtons restrictions on concealed-carry unconstitutional.

Local officials have been forced time and again to rewrite the Districts gun laws since the Supreme Court used a D.C. case to declare that individuals have the right to gun ownership unrelated to military service. The decision cleared the way for D.C. residents to keep handguns in their homes and is driving the attempt to expand the number of people who can carry concealed weapons in public.

At issue for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is the citys system that requires residents to demonstrate a good reason to fear injury or show a proper reason, such as transporting valuables, to get a permit.

District of Columbia resident Dick Heller speaks to reporters outside the U.S. Supreme Court, on Nov. 20, 2007, during pivotal case over D.C. gun ban. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

Two judges sitting in the same federal court for the District have reached different conclusions about the key component of the citys gun-control law. The D.C. Circuit has consolidated those challenges that a three-judge panel will consider on Sept. 20.

[Judge strikes down D.C. concealed-carry law as probably unconstitutional]

The Districts law is among the strictest in the nation: Eighty-eight people have been approved for concealed-carry permits. According to the police department, 309 applicants were denied.

D.C. officials say the restrictions are reasonable and necessary in a city that struggles with gun violence and faces heightened security challenges because of a concentration of federal government buildings and diplomats.

The Districts concealed-carry rules are similar to those in Maryland, New Jersey, New York and some jurisdictions in California. Those systems have survived legal challenges in three other federal appeals courts.

[Appeals court: No Second Amendment right to carry concealed guns in public]

Since the high courts ruling in the case known as District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court has turned down numerous opportunities to decide whether regulations that cover carrying firearms in public are constitutional.

A 2016 handgun display. (Sergio Flores/Bloomberg)

That has left the issues for the lower courts to resolve.

The question of whether and to what extent the Second Amendment extends into a right to carry guns into public spaces is probably the most important constitutional question that could affect American gun policy since Heller, said Jonathan E. Lowy of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

In one of the D.C. decisions up for review, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly left enforcement of the citys law in place. She noted the Districts strong interest in promoting public safety and wrote that the potential risk to others from concealed firearms is far greater than the risk of possessing a handgun within the home.

Two months later, Judge Richard J. Leon, who sits on the same court, said in the second pending case that the citys law is probably unconstitutional. He called the Districts restrictions on public carry overzealous and said the rules violate the core right of self-defense.

The three judges who will hear the appeals this month were nominated to the federal bench by Republican presidents. Judge Thomas B. Griffith, a George W. Bush nominee, was in the majority in the courts 2007 opinion that overturned the Districts decades-old ban on handguns.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, nominated by George H.W. Bush, dissented in the 2007 ruling and sided last year with the city when it argued  unsuccessfully  to keep a one-gun-per-month limit on firearms registration.

The third judge, Stephen F. Williams, was nominated by Ronald Reagan.

In court filings leading to the Sept. 20 oral arguments, gun rights advocates say the Districts requirement that permit seekers show an extraordinary threat denies a constitutional right to most law-abiding citizens.

Opponents of the law note that the ruling in Heller specifies that firearms can be banned from sensitive places, such as schools and government buildings. But they say a citywide permitting system has the effect of extending that ban to many violence-prone areas that do not have those buildings but where citizens may want to arm themselves.

Telling a citizen walking the streets of a dangerous neighborhood that she can obtain a permit for self-defense after she is suddenly attacked by a violent criminal is a bit like telling a passenger on a cruise ship that she is free to come back to the dock to pick up a life jacket if she falls overboard, according to the brief filed on behalf of the National Rifle Association by attorney Paul D. Clement, who was solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration.

Gun-control advocates and city officials respond in court filings that more guns on the streets lead to more violence and make it more difficult and dangerous for law enforcement officials to do their jobs. The District saw a 54 percent increase in the number of murders from 2014 to 2015. In the current year, homicides have dropped more than 10 percent.

Limiting the number of concealed weapons on the streets of a densely populated, urban area advances public safety, they say.

The city is fighting to simply maintain one of the principal tools it has to combat gun violence, attorney Adam K. Levin wrote in a brief filed by the Brady Center in support of the Districts laws. Now is not the time to decrease gun regulation in the nations capital.

Peter Hermann contributed to this report.
THE DISTRICT

Two men wounded

on Capitol Hill

Two men were wounded in stabbings Tuesday on Capitol Hill, and a person was taken into custody after the midmorning attacks, police said.

Few details were available on the stabbings in the 300 block of Pennsylvania Avenue SE. Police did not release the name of the person in custody.

One of the men was stabbed in the stomach, and the other in the shoulder. They were treated at area hospitals.

 Dana Hedgpeth

MARYLAND

Uncle guilty of abuse

in beating of boy, 9

The uncle of a 9-year-old Hagerstown boy who died after he was handcuffed to a chair and fatally beaten for eating birthday cake without permission pleaded guilty Tuesday to first-degree child abuse, according to prosecutors.

Jacob Barajas faces up to 15 years in prison after the 2015 death of Jack Kirby Garcia, authorities said. He is expected to be sentenced next year. Other charges, including second-degree murder, were dropped against Barajas.

The boys mother, Oriana Iris Garcia, is charged with second-degree murder in the incident and faces trial in February. Her boyfriend, Robert L. Wilson, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a 30-year sentence, according to prosecutors. The three adults were living in a Hagerstown apartment at the time of the childs death.

 Dana Hedgpeth

Tribute for officer

killed by DUI driver

Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Tuesday dedicated a stretch of highway in Montgomery County to a Montgomery County police officer who was killed by a drunk driver while on DUI patrol.

The highway signs along Maryland Route 97 (Georgia Avenue) in Olney are printed with Officer Noah A. Leottas name and the message: Dont Drink And Drive.

We thank Noah for his service, we thank him for his sacrifice, Hogan said.

Leottas death spurred the state General Assembly this year to pass Noahs Law, a bill that expands the use of interlock ignitions for drunk drivers. The law, which takes effect Oct. 1, lowers the blood alcohol level at which ignition locks are required from 0.15 to 0.08. It also requires ignition locks for anyone who has failed a blood alcohol test, not just those who have been convicted of driving under the influence.

 Ovetta Wiggins

Suspect arrested in sexual assault

A man who allegedly broke into a womans apartment in New Carrollton on Sunday and sexually assaulted her was arrested Tuesday, police said.

At about 7 a.m. Sunday, 23-year-old Darren Samuel Robinson of no fixed address reportedly broke into an apartment in the 5400 block of 85th Avenue, according to a statement from the Prince Georges County Police Department. Robinson sexually assaulted a woman and took several items from her home before fleeing, the statement said.

After receiving calls on Tuesday from two people who saw Robinson at the Huntington Metro Station, Metro Transit Police arrested him in Fairfax County, according to the statement. Robinson, who has no fixed address, is awaiting extradition to Prince Georges County.

Bicyclist, 77, is struck

and killed by a car

A 77-year-old man riding a bicycle was struck and killed by a car on Monday in College Park, police said.

At about 7:30 a.m., officers were called to the 4600 block of Paint Branch Parkway after a report of a collision involving a car and a bicyclist, Prince Georges County Police said in a statement.

Robert Dickey of Southeast Washington was riding his bicycle in the crosswalk and trying to cross the street, the statement said. When the traffic light turned green, the car struck Dickey, who died several hours later at a hospital.

 Justin Wm. Moyer
By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) workers today disrupted a press meet organised by pro-Vidarbha state leaders. Led by former MLA and AAP leader Wamanrao Chatap the Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti leaders were addressing the media seeking statehood for Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.

Led by Corporator Sandeep Deshpande, around a dozen MNS workers rammed inside the Mumbai Press Club shouting pro Maharashtra slogans. Raj Thackeray's party strongly opposed to any division of Maharashtra. MNS workers asked the pro-Vidarbha leaders to stop the press conference and leave the venue.



advertisement

WILL NOT TOLERATE SEPARATE VIDARBHA



"We have got a unified Maharashtra after a lot of struggle. 106 martyrs laid their lives for the cause. We will not tolerate creation of a separate Vidarbha and would not allow such drama on the soil of Maharashtra," Deshpande said.

The press conference resumed after police intervened and asked MNS workers to left. Former MLA Wamanrao Chatap was unmoved even after the protests.

DEMOCRATIC RIGHT TO PROTEST

"It is their democratic right to protest. Similarly even we have our right to put forward our stand. We did not turn away and we are firm on our demand for a separate Vidarbha. The 106 martyrs they talk about did not lay their lives for Vidarbha, they did it for Bombay" said Chatap. The Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti (VRAS) will not be filing a complaint against today's disruption.

The VRAS will be organising a mock assembly in Nagpur on October 3 and 4 to highlight its demand for a separate state.

Also read:

Pro-Vidarbha outfit sets Jan 1 deadline for statehood demand



--- ENDS ---
BRITAIN

Cameron to step down, end his political career

Former prime minister David Cameron, who has stayed out of the public eye since leaving Downing Street in July, has decided to step down from his position in Parliament and end his political career.

Camerons surprise announcement Monday will trigger a special election in the county of Witney in Oxfordshire, which has been a safe seat for his Conservative Party for decades.

Cameron, 49, won a general election last year, but his political fortunes shifted overnight in June when British voters rejected his pleas and decided to leave the European Union.

He announced the next morning that he would step down as prime minister but planned to stay on in Parliament. On Monday, he said he had concluded that it made more sense for him to leave public office altogether.

He did not say what he plans to do instead. The date for the special election has not been set.

 Associated Press

YEMEN

U.N. says airstrikes reportedly killed 30

Saudi-led airstrikes on a water well in northern Yemen have reportedly killed 30 people and wounded 17, a U.N. official said Monday, making it one of the deadliest attacks since peace talks collapsed a month ago.

The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, said the casualties in the village of Beit Saadan included first responders and children. The strikes occurred Saturday, on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

McGoldrick urged rival parties in the conflict to resume a cease-fire declared by the United Nations in April.

Yemens official news agency, which is controlled by Houthi rebels, reported that 100 people were killed or wounded in the airstrikes.

The U.N. statement said it based its findings on its own sources and media reports. The Saudi-led coalition, which has been carrying out air raids against the Houthis and their allies since March 2015, did not comment on the strikes.

Yemens conflict pits the internationally recognized government, which is allied with the Saudi-led coalition, against the Shiite rebels and forces loyal to a former president.

 Associated Press

LIBYA

Generals forces seize 3rd oil terminal in east

Libyan forces loyal to a powerful general said they have seized a third oil terminal from a militia in the east, giving the divisive leader a bargaining chip in negotiations with rival U.N.-backed authorities in the capital, Tripoli.

Forces led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter said late Sunday that they had seized the Zuwaytinah terminal from a militia known as the Petroleum Facilities Guard, hours after capturing the nearby terminals of Ras Lanuf and Sidra.

Most of Libyas oil exports went through the three terminals before the militia seized them more than two years ago.

Libya drifted into chaos after the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moammar Gaddafi. Today, it is split between rival parliaments and governments in the east and west.

Hifter enjoys the support of the eastern parliament. It has rejected the formation of a U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, in the west, in part because of differences over his future role.

The capture of the oil terminals could strengthen Hifters hand, making it more difficult to ignore demands from him for more clout in a power-sharing government.

The United States and other Western nations view the U.N.-backed government as the best hope for unifying Libyans.

 Associated Press

2 opposition candidates make it to Belarusan parliament: Two opposition candidates have won seats in the Belarusan parliament for the first time in 20 years. The remaining seats in Sundays election went to allies of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand since 1994. He is seeking rapprochement with the West as Belaruss economy has staggered in recent years. Western observers cited limited progress by Belarus toward a more democratic election compared with previous efforts.

South African leader pays home-repair costs: South African President Jacob Zuma has paid the state more than $500,000 after being instructed to do so in a scandal over upgrades to his private home, his office said. South Africas ruling party last month suffered its worst election showing amid voter anger over corruption allegations against Zuma. A court ordered him to repay some of the costs for home improvements that were unrelated to security.

 From news services
President Obama should not veto the bill that would allow 9/11 victims families to sue Saudi Arabia [Politics & the Nation, Sept. 10]. In October 1992, just weeks before the presidential election, then-President George H.W. Bush vetoed the 1992 Cable Act. The bill passed the House and Senate by veto-proof margins, and, despite an intense lobbying campaign by the White House, Congress overrode the presidents veto. It was one of many political wounds Mr. Bush carried into the final weeks of the 1992 campaign.

Mr. Obama is not on the ballot this year. But a veto would cause a political headache for former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and, by extension, the presidents legacy.

Martin Machowsky, Falls Church
Speaking in Baltimore Sept. 12, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump slammed rival Hillary Clinton for comments she made about some of his supporters. (The Washington Post)

Speaking in Baltimore Sept. 12, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump slammed rival Hillary Clinton for comments she made about some of his supporters. (The Washington Post)

Hillary Clinton may have been unwise to say half of Donald Trumps supporters are racists and other deplorables. But she wasnt wrong.

If anything, when it comes to Trumps racist support, she might have low-balled the number.

Trump, speaking to the National Guard Association of the United States annual conference here Monday afternoon, proclaimed himself deeply shocked and alarmed about Clinton putting half of his supporters in the basket of deplorables as if anybody, especially Trump, could be shocked by anything this late in the campaign. How dare she, Trump said, attack, slander, smear, demean these wonderful, amazing people.

But this isnt a matter of gratuitous name-calling. This election has proved that there is much more racism in America than many believed. It came out of hiding in opposition to the first African American president, and it has been welcomed into the open by Trump.

The American National Election Studies, the long-running, extensive poll of American voters, asked voters in 2012 a basic test of prejudice: to rank black and white people on a scale from hardworking to lazy and from intelligent to unintelligent. The researchers found that 62 percent of white people gave black people a lower score in at least one of the attributes. This was a jump in prejudicial attitudes from 2008, when 45 percent of white people expressed negative stereotypes.

"To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables,'" Hillary Clinton said at a New York fundraiser on Sept. 9. "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up." (Video: The Washington Post / Photo: AP)

This question is a good indicator of how one votes: Republican Mitt Romney won 61 percent of those who expressed negative stereotypes. And, when the question was asked during the 2008 primaries, those with negative racial stereotypes consistently favored Republican candidates  any of them  over any Democratic candidate in hypothetical matchups.

There is plenty of overt white prejudice, observes Simon Jackman, who directed the ANES until earlier this year and now runs the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Whites who reported prejudicial beliefs about blacks skewed heavily Republican in 2008 and 2012  and they will in 2016.

Clintons infelicitous basket of deplorables phrase, with echoes of Victor Hugo and Indian castes, takes its place alongside Romneys binders full of women in the awkward pantheon and could only have been devised by a woman who previously gave the world ladders of opportunity. But for the large number of racists drawn to Trump, the shoe fits.

In June, the Pew Research Center found that 79 percent of Clinton voters believe the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities is an important issue, while only 42 percent of Trump supporters feel that way. As I wrote previously, earlier Pew research found that Trump supporters were significantly less likely than other Americans (and supporters of other Republican presidential candidates) to think that racial and ethnic diversity improves the United States.

Research by Washington Post pollsters and by University of California at Irvine political scientist Michael Tesler, among others, have found that Trump does best among Americans who express racial animus. Evidence indicates fear that white people are losing ground was the single greatest predictor of support for Trump  more, even, than economic anxiety.

Few people embrace the racist label, so lets help them. If you are very enthusiastic about a candidate who has based his campaign on scapegoating immigrants, Latinos and African Americans, talked of banning Muslims from the country, hesitated to disown the Ku Klux Klan and employed anti-Semitic imagery  well, you might be a racist. But if you are holding your nose and supporting Trump only because you think him better than Clinton, that doesnt put you in the basket.

The new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds the two groups roughly equal: Forty-six percent of Trump supporters say they are very enthusiastic about his candidacy. The rest were somewhat or not terribly enthusiastic.

1 of 60 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail View Photos The GOP presidential nominee is out on the trail ahead of the general election in November. Caption The GOP presidential nominee is pressing his case ahead of Election Day. Nov. 7, 2016 Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at SNHU Arena in Manchester, N.H. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

There were mostly the latter at the National Guard gathering in Baltimore. Donny Crandell, a pastor from Nevada who serves as a National Guard chaplain, figured the audience was 70-30 for Trump, but with few of the deplorables. Said Crandell: I dont think youll find a lot of military types who are core Trump fans. They just like him better than her. That includes Crandell, who backed Ted Cruz and would prefer Marco Rubio to Trump, whose meanness offends Crandell. But hes the choice we have, the chaplain told me.

Trump, on stage, rejected any notion of racism, saying people who want secure borders are not racists, people who warn of radical Islamic terrorism are not Islamophobes and people who support police are not prejudiced. But moments later, he repeated the campaign slogan he borrowed from an anti-Semitic organization that opposed involvement in World War II.

America First  remember that, he said. America First.

Thats deplorable.

Twitter: @Milbank

Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
IN AN open society, public opinion polling is essential to connect the rulers and the ruled. To borrow a cliche, polls speak truth to power. This is much harder to do in a closed society where people are afraid to speak their minds. In recent years, Russian President Vladimir Putin slowly eliminated free-thinking news media and extinguished civil society groups, but the Levada Center managed to survive as an independent polling organization. Its studies of Russian public opinion have been penetrating, and that explains why it is now faced with suffocation.

For more than a decade, the center founded by Yuri Levada has been known as a superior source of research on what Russians are thinking, untainted by Kremlin influence. The polls, never easy to carry out in a public unaccustomed to free speech, have charted the ups and downs of post-Soviet life, including the genuine high popularity of Mr. Putin in the years of high oil prices and relative stability.

But in recent times, the center has also documented the underside of Mr. Putins tenure. In an essay titled Putins Relapse Into Totalitarianism, the director, Lev Gudkov, wrote last year that 10 to 12 years of repressive, domineering rule has sterilized Russias public space, leaving people with nowhere to articulate their interests and work out their problems. Mr. Gudkov said Mr. Putin was taking Russia toward dictatorship, with dire consequences for the economy and the nations future.

At the same time, Mr. Gudkov showed that Russians are well aware of the Putin cabals self-aggrandizement. In a survey in January 2014, Russians were asked, What traits do you think are most characteristic of the majority of modern Russian politicians? Forty-four percent said unscrupulous lust for power, and 41 percent said greed, while 1 percent said their leaders had high morals. Mr. Gudkov concluded that Russians are convinced that the current rulers are mainly concerned with the preservation of their own power and personal enrichment rather than the prosperity of the country. Levada Center polls in advance of the parliamentary vote Sunday show public disenchantment with the ruling party, United Russia.

Not surprisingly, the regime struck back and recently labeled the Levada Center a foreign agent. The Levada Center is a nongovernmental organization that has often worked on surveys with overseas partners, such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The designation as foreign agent could be a death knell for the Levada Center. There are fears lingering since the Soviet times [that] foreign agent means a spy or a saboteur to most Russians, Mr. Gudkov told Bloomberg News. Will Russians share their honest feelings with a pollster carrying such a label? Not likely.

Like all tyrants, Mr. Putin basks in the conceit that he is a beloved leader and can do no wrong. Mr. Gudkovs polls have suggested all is not well in Putinland. The Levada Center helped Russians speak truth, and that is why the organization is now being told to shut up.
THE LATEST partial truce in Syria got off to a bad start Monday, with the regime of Bashar al-Assad reported to be bombing and shelling the very areas the deal is supposed to cover. Whether the truce will ever get off the ground will likely depend on whether Moscow can restrain its client dictator, who hours before the cease-fire began repeated his vow to recapture all of Syria by force. But Vladimir Putins regime at least has a motive to succeed: If it does, it will have realized Mr. Putins aspiration of imposing his will on the United States.

When Russia launched its direct military intervention in Syria a year ago, President Obama predicted its only result would be a quagmire. Instead, the agreement struck by Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Friday with his Russian counterpart offers Mr. Putin everything he sought. The Assad regime, which was tottering a year ago, will be entrenched and its opposition dealt a powerful blow. The United States will meanwhile grant Mr. Putins long-standing demand that it join with Russia in targeting groups deemed to be terrorists. If serious political negotiations on Syrias future ever take place  an unlikely prospect, at least in the Obama administrations remaining months  the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers will hold a commanding position.

In exchange for these sweeping concessions, which essentially abandon Mr. Obamas onetime goal of freeing Syria from Mr. Assad and make the United States a junior partner of Russia in the Middle Easts most important ongoing conflict, Mr. Kerry promises that humanitarian lifelines will be opened into the besieged city of Aleppo and other areas subjected to surrender-or-starve tactics. The Syrian air force will supposedly be banned from dropping barrel bombs, chlorine and other munitions on many areas where rebels are based  though there seem to be loopholes in the deal, and its text has not been made public.

If that really happens, and lives are saved, that will be a positive benefit. Perhaps its the only one available to a U.S. policy that swears off, as doomed to failure, the same limited military measures that Russia has employed with success. But Mr. Putin and Mr. Assad have agreed to multiple previous truces, in Syria and, in Mr. Putins case, Ukraine  and violated all of them. Their reward has been to gain territory and strengthen their strategic positions, while receiving from the United States not sanction but more concessions and proposals for new deals. If the regimes observe their promises in this case, it may be because the time to exploit this U.S. administration  which has retreated from its red lines, allowed Russia to restore itself as a Middle East power and betrayed those Syrians who hoped to rid themselves of a blood-drenched dictator  is finally running out.
VIRGINIA EDUCATION officials last week revealed that an Alexandria school tried to improve its ratings by using the states new law allowing parents to opt their children out of standardized tests. It wasnt the only troubling disclosure; the state reported that an increasing number of parents throughout the commonwealth are having their children skip the annual state tests. Both facts should give pause to lawmakers who this year put their imprimatur on the pernicious opt-out movement, as well as Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who signed it into law.

Tests provide objective information about how well students are doing and what help they need. Anything that discourages participation does a disservice to children. That was underscored by the events in the spring at the Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology. Teachers at the high-poverty school, according to a school district investigation released by state officials, targeted parents of low-performing students to get their kids to skip taking the state Standards of Learning exams. The principal who allegedly hatched the scheme  and unaccountably still has a job  apparently thought it an easier way of improving the schools overall performance than actually giving these students the help they needed.

As Education Trusts Kati Haycock told The Post, Kids who are not tested do not count. She said if schools can opt out their poor kids, their kids of color, their disproportionately low-achieving kids, they will never do the work to get those kids to achieve at high levels.

The opt-out movement hurts these at-risk children in another way, by sabotaging the collection of data that shows disparities in education. White suburban parents, the driving force of the opt-out movement, may think their children are achieving and dont need to be tested or are overtested, but having their children sit out tests denies school officials the information they need. Taking a yearly test is not a hardship and might even tell these parents something they need to know about their children.

The number of parents opting out in Virginia is still small, but there has been an increase since this years adoption of the law that allows students to skip testing without it affecting a schools overall rating. Figures from the state Education Department show there were parent refusals for 3,272 tests in 2015-2016, compared with 1,460 tests in 2014-2015. In 2013-2014, before opt-out came into effect, there were refusals for 681 tests. When the General Assembly returns next year, it needs to reexamine the wisdom of this law.
Last week we saw another installment of the media malpractice that has plagued the 2016 campaign. NBCs Matt Lauer was widely criticized for his performance moderating the networks Commander-in-Chief Forum, especially his failure to correct Donald Trumps repetition of the lie that he opposed the invasion of Iraq. But another mistake has been getting far less attention. The nationally televised event yielded little serious debate about the many great security challenges facing the United States today, including perhaps the single most urgent threat on the planet: nuclear weapons.

Though Hillary Clinton was asked about the Iran nuclear deal, there was no discussion of nonproliferation or the perils of nuclear weapons in general. For that, to be fair, Lauer is only partially to blame. The unfortunate reality is that, at a time when experts have warned that the danger of a nuclear disaster is on the rise, neither of the major-party nominees has said much about it.

The nuclear threat was briefly in the headlines this summer when MSNBCS Joe Scarborough rather melodramatically reported that Trump, in a private briefing, had repeatedly asked a national security expert why the United States could not use its nuclear weapons. The Trump campaign denied the report, but his comments on the record are similarly frightening. As Ploughshares Fund President Joe Cirincione has said of Trump, He talks about nuclear weapons very loosely, casually  as if theyre just another tool in the toolbox.

For instance, Trump has stated on multiple occasions that you want to be unpredictable with nuclear weapons. If the Islamic State strikes in the United States, he has suggested we should fight back with a nuke. He declined to rule out deploying nuclear weapons in Europe, saying, Europe is a big place. Im not going to take cards off the table. And he explicitly said he would not object to Japan acquiring a nuclear weapon because its not like, gee whiz, nobody has them.

Clinton has seized on Trumps reckless comments as evidence that he isnt fit to command our nuclear arsenal. A man you can bait with a tweet, she has taken to saying, is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.

For a candidate so fond of touting her plans, though, Clinton has offered very few details about how she would approach the nuclear threat if elected. As of late last month, the Issues section of Clintons website featured 65 briefs totaling 112,735 words. (Trumps, by contrast, tallied around 9,000 words.) But as Columbia University journalism and sociology professor Todd Gitlin recently documented, there were only three mentions of nuclear weapons among Clintons many position statements: two related to the Iran deal and one referencing the New START treaty negotiated with Russia during her tenure at the State Department.

Trumps nuclear rhetoric is clearly alarming, but so is the nuclear status quo. There are more than 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, with the United States and Russia keeping nearly 2,000 on hair-trigger alert. Though the treaty with Russia included significant weapons reductions, the Obama administration has also committed to modernizing our nuclear arsenal at a cost of $1 trillion over three decades. The National Nuclear Security Administration announced last month that it had completed development and testing of the United States first smart nuclear bomb, slated for full-scale production in 2020.

And despite rumors that President Obama would pursue major nuclear policy changes as part of his legacy over the final months of his term, he has reportedly decided against declaring no first use of nuclear weapons, long an unwritten rule, as official U.S. policy. Certifying that the United States will only use nuclear weapons as a last resort would be especially significant given the possibility that Trump could end up with unchecked power to launch a nuclear strike.

Now, eight years after Obama campaigned on his vision of a world without nuclear weapons, the nuclear threat is escalating. The danger of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger, warns William J. Perry, defense secretary under Bill Clinton. Likewise, Eric Schlosser  whose 2013 book, Command and Control, has been turned into an important new documentary  says that pure luck is the main reason there has not been a nuclear disaster already.

In an election dominated by spectacle and confrontation, many policy issues have fallen by the wayside. But as the nuclear peril intensifies, we desperately need to have a real debate about issues such as the first use of nuclear weapons, taking our nuclear arsenal off hair-trigger alert, and at last ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that President Clinton signed 20 years ago this month. Reports that North Korea conducted a nuclear test in recent days underscore the need for a new approach to this challenge.

And while there is no doubt that Trump is unfit, Clinton should put forward a serious nuclear weapons policy that doesnt fit in a tweet. To start, she can reaffirm her support for Obamas vision during her time as secretary of state, when she argued, We cant afford to continue relying on recycled Cold War thinking. Clinton should make it clear that nonproliferation and elimination of nuclear weapons are not a utopian dream, but a security imperative, and that she meant it when she said, We are sincere in our pursuit of a secure peaceful world without nuclear weapons.

Read more from Katrina vanden Heuvels archive or follow her on Twitter.
Elements of the American right are seized with a fashionable despair, employed as a get-out-the-vote operation. I think this will be the last election if I dont win, Donald Trump recently said. This is our last shot to save civilization, claims Gary Bauer. At stake are national health and even survival according to Publius Decius Mus in an essay titled The Flight 93 Election that is making the rounds among conservatives.

Seldom has a pseudonym been more needful to protect an authors reputation. The essay is a master class in overwriting. We are headed off a cliff and facing a tidal wave of dysfunction because of the tsunami of leftism. If cliches clinched arguments, Decius would be irrefutable.

The article, published in the Claremont Review of Books, is also a model of the anticipatory ad hominem. Conservatives who are even slightly less breathless are being paid off by the establishment  essentially bribed to hope. They have pecuniary reasons and are waiting to cash paychecks and ride the fundraising circuit. One gets the impression of an author recently denied a job at the American Enterprise Institute.

As a matter of substance, Decius claims that America now faces a binary choice between political reaction and national suicide. A partial list of reasons the republic is dying includes: illegitimacy, oppressive government, high taxes, crumbling infrastructure, declining morality, stifling political correctness, crumbling families and failed schools that turn out disruptive punks. Conservatives who call for civic renewal and incremental policy changes are blind to the gravity of the situation (and are probably lining their pockets anyway). The national challenge has become so urgent, the stakes have risen so high, the issues are so fundamental, so profound and definitional, that America must turn to . . . Donald Trump.

The argument is self-refuting. There is no question of ethics, political philosophy or theology to which Trump is the answer. It is simply childish to trust this contemptible parody of a father figure.

Speaking in Asheville, N.C., Sept. 12, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton talks about people like they are objects, not human beings, following her comments on Trumps supporters. (The Washington Post)

This outlook involves what National Affairs editor Yuval Levin calls a despairing contempt for our country. As a conservative, I am not one to deny the challenges of modern, liberal societies  the fragility of families, the brittleness of institutions, the economic struggles that result from globalization, the pulverization of community in some sad and dangerous places. But I am a traditionalist with a healthy respect for the achievements of modernity, because I can imagine myself in the position of a woman, a gay person or a minority 50 years ago. The lives of countless millions have been improved. For them, the nostalgia of conservative white men is not a rallying cry.

There is, as Adam Smith said, a great deal of ruin in a nation. But there is also a great deal to love in our own, if you choose to look for it. There is abuse, addiction, abandonment  and kindness, courtesy and compassion. There are lives taken by violence and apathy  and saved by unexpected grace. I fully expect the next generation to be a source of renewal, because I am confident that certain core ideals and institutions best fit human beings and allow them to flourish. I believe that our children and grandchildren will be brave, free and daring in pursuit of ageless ideals  and that teaching them to despair would be the true source of national ruin.

I wish the critique could end here. But when you shift through all the hyperbole and insults of The Flight 93 Election, you are left with a residue of prejudice. The author refers to tribal, sub-Third-World foes and the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty who are making America less traditionally American with every cycle. Immigrants are typically guilty of rape, shooting, bombing or machete attack. Their importation is the sign of a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, in contrast, would say, I want my people to live.

Just think on that. Who exactly is my people? How is the American volk defined? On second thought, lets not try.

For a certain kind of right-wing nationalist, it always comes down to this. Our people must be preserved from invasion, rape and machete attacks by other people whose arrival would cause a country, a people, a civilization to die. Trump has achieved one good thing in our politics. He has revealed motives that used to be hidden by political correctness. They were also hidden by human decency. In terms Decius would understand: This is playing with fire!

Read more from Michael Gersons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .
Why does Donald Trump say such nice things about Vladimir Putin and Russia? What is Trump hiding in the tax returns he refuses to release? And are those two questions related?

Voters should demand answers. Until we get them, we can only speculate about Trumps weird admiration for a strongman who presides over a system of autocratic cronyism, flouts international law with his territorial ambitions, works against U.S. interests in hot spots around the globe, and apparently might have even deployed computer hackers to meddle in our election.

There may be nothing nefarious here; perhaps Trump just admires Putins swaggering style. But there are reasons to wonder whether Trumps warm-and-fuzzy feelings are prompted by financial motives.

Reasons to wonder normally do not qualify as legitimate fodder for journalism, but these are not normal circumstances. Trump has broken with four decades of precedent and adamantly refused to let voters see his tax returns. His excuse  that he is under audit  is bogus. Given his history as a swashbuckling wheeler-dealer, including four corporate bankruptcies, there are legitimate questions about his finances. Yet he stonewalls, knowing that speculation does not qualify as proof.

Heres what we know. In July, Trump said in a tweet that he has ZERO investments in Russia. If this is true, the more relevant question may be the extent to which Russian oligarchs, by definition beholden to Putin, have investments in Trump and his empire.

On Sept. 7, during a town hall event hosted by MSNBC, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated he would have a good relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. It wasnt the first time he's been friendly towards him. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

In 2008, Trumps son Donald Trump Jr. said at a New York real estate conference that Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. Referring to the Trump Organization, where he works with his father, he added that we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.

That boast would make perfect sense. Following the bankruptcy of Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts in 2004  which involved three casinos in Atlantic City and one in Indiana, and allowed Trump to get out from under an estimated $1.8 billion in debt  banks became wary of lending to Trump, according to widespread reports.

A 2010 federal lawsuit alleged that much of the money that financed the Trump SoHo luxury hotel development in Manhattan, which broke ground in 2006, came from a shadowy Iceland-based corporate entity. The suit alleged that the money behind the firm was mostly Russian, and that the Russians involved were in favor with Putin.

Trump was not charged with any wrongdoing in the suit, but the suit does strongly suggest that if traditional lenders were reluctant to get involved with Trump, Russian money had no such compunctions.

Which raises an obvious question: To what extent are Trump and the Trump Organization dependent on Russian investment? We have no way of knowing. Examination of Trumps tax returns might provide the answer.

We do know that Trump considered Russian oligarchs prime customers for high-end properties. In 2008, he sold a Palm Beach mansion to billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million. Less than four years earlier, Trump had picked up the property at a bankruptcy auction for $41 million  meaning he made quite a tidy profit. Rybolovlev, who was then worth about $13 billion, is not believed to be as close to Putin as some of the other oligarchs, but neither is he in any sense an opponent of the regime.

Despite earlier claims to the contrary, Trump now says he has never actually met Putin. He tried his best to do so in 2013, when he took his Miss Universe pageant to Moscow, but Putin canceled a planned meeting and sent a lacquered box as a present instead, along with what was described as a warm note.

1 of 60 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail View Photos The GOP presidential nominee is out on the trail ahead of the general election in November. Caption The GOP presidential nominee is pressing his case ahead of Election Day. Nov. 7, 2016 Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at SNHU Arena in Manchester, N.H. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

In his campaign, Trump has been consistent in calling for better relations with Russia. He has accepted Russias annexation of Crimea as a fait accompli and suggested he might not come to the aid of the Baltic states if Russia invaded. Trumps former campaign chairman Paul Manafort did extensive work on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the thuggish Putin-backed Ukrainian president who was ousted in 2014 and now lives in exile in Russia.

As a general rule, I dont believe in conspiracy theories and I do believe in coincidences. But Trumps chest-thumping America First attitude toward the rest of the world seems to make an exception for Russia, and we need to know why.

Trump supporters will say Im speculating without the relevant facts. I say provide them: Release the taxes, now.

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
By PTI: Visakhapatnam, Sep 13 (PTI) The city will host the third BRICS Urbanisation Forum meet from tomorrow with the district administration and police geared up for its smooth conduct.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will inaugurate the three-day meet where Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and others are likely to be present.

Visakhapatnam Joint Commissioner of Police A S Khan said security has been beefed up for the meet which would be attended by around 70 delegates from Brazil, China, Russia and South Africa and over 230 from India.

advertisement

Around 2,000 policemen drawn from various battalions, including the elite forces such as Octopus, Greyhounds and AP Special Police, have been deployed to ensure proper security for the event, Khan told reporters yesterday.

For personal security of the delegates, the City Security Wing has been strengthened by drawing personnel from the 13 districts in the state, police said.

The Navy, Coast Guard and Coastal Security Police (CSP) will augment the security arrangements and take care of any threats from the seaside.

Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) K Mahendra Patrudu said around 47 CCTVs, including five on the Beach Road, have been synchronised to the Central Command Control Centre and will be manned round-the-clock during the event by a special team.

The meet will be held at four venues on Beach Road but there will be no traffic restrictions, police said while advising the motorists to give way to VVIP vehicles. PTI CORR GK DV SNK

--- ENDS ---
The denial was the third time in recent weeks that the Supreme Court declined to get involved in a lower courts ruling on a states election laws. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a plea from Ohio Democrats to stay a lower court decision and add more early voting days in the presidential battleground state.

Without noted dissent, the justices left intact a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit that said the state already provided more early voting than the majority of states. As a result, Ohio will not have a period in which residents may register and vote at the same time.

Ohios Republican legislature eliminated the period known as Golden Week. Democrats sued, saying that it was a voting procedure disproportionately used by minority voters.

The Supreme Courts short order gave no reason for denying the request.

The denial was the third time in recent weeks that the justices declined to get involved in a lower courts ruling on a states election laws. The justices split on North Carolinas strict voting law, meaning a lower court decision that found the law intentionally discriminatory stands and it cannot be used in November.

Last week, the court turned down a request from Michigan that it be allowed to ban straight-party balloting. Lower courts said the Republican-backed law banning straight-party voting could discriminate against minority voters, who disproportionately use the procedure.

Tuesdays denial was the first to work against Democrats. The two parties have been locked in lawmaking and litigation in Ohio ever since the 2004 presidential election, when long lines at the polls meant that some missed their chance to vote.

One answer to the problem was an extensive system of early voting.

Democrats said that in the 2012 presidential election, 14,000 people registered to vote during Golden Week, and 80,000 cast their votes on those days. After a trial, a federal district judge said Ohios decision to eliminate the option violated equal protection and the Voting Rights Act. While not terribly burdensome, the judge ruled, Ohio provided no good reasons for doing away with the week.

But the appeals court panel voted 2 to 1 to overturn that decision, saying Ohio was a national leader in offering early voting.

Even without Golden Week, Ohios registration and voting processes afford abundant opportunity for all Ohio voters, of whatever racial or ethnic background, to register and exercise their right to vote, wrote U.S. Circuit Judge David McKeague.

The panel noted that the current voting program resulted from a settlement of an earlier case between the state and the American Civil Liberties Union. Additionally, it said that not allowing Ohio to cut back on its generous early voting would mean there was a one way ratchet that would prevent any state from ever making cuts, even with a good reason.

It is not the end of litigation in the battleground state. Still to be resolved are purges of inactive voters and what to do about eligible voters who cast their ballots at the wrong precinct.
When Hillary Clintons campaign and its allies pulled down television ads in Colorado some weeks ago, it was described as a game-set-match moment in the presidential campaign, a seeming acknowledgment that the state had moved from purple to blue in near-record time.

Make no mistake. Donald Trump is a distinct underdog in Colorado. Hes hobbled by demographic realities here and by a record of statements that have alienated the very groups of voters who will be pivotal in November.

But Democrats here say its premature to declare that there has been a permanent shift in the politics of the state. They worry about a lack of enthusiasm for Clinton and warn against complacency born of overconfidence.

[Clinton and Trump lay groundwork for pitched battle over Colorado]

Based on late-summer polling, Colorado appeared to be firmly in Clintons column  paired with Virginia as one of two state whose politics were shifting rapidly because of demographic changes.

The reasons here seemed obvious. Colorado is rich in the very groups that so far have been most resistant to Trumps candidacy.

White, college-educated women are tilting decisively to Clinton this year, in contrast to past elections, and Colorado has among the highest percentage of college graduates of any state in the country. In addition, Hispanics make up more than 14 percent of eligible voters and Democrats see Trump with a huge deficit in that community.

Finally, the state has become one of the nations most attractive locations for young people, with Denver at or near the top of metropolitan areas favored by millennials  a key part of President Obamas winning coalition in 2008 and 2012. Clinton advisers say their research shows that Colorado has the most millennials of any of the battleground states.

I think the polls have narrowed, said Dick Wadhams, the former Republican Party chair, arguing that Clinton has flaws as a candidate. But its still very tough for Donald Trump to win because of college-educated voters and Hispanics who are reluctant to vote for him.

Two polls in mid-August showed Clinton leading by 10 and 14 points. Since then, the race has tightened. A Washington Post-SurveyMonkey poll taken throughout August showed the race at two points in head-to-head competition at the start of September and a dead heat when Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein were included.

Clintons most recent internal polls showed her with a lead of seven points, according to a Democrat briefed on the results. That was a decline of two points from the previous internal survey. A recent poll by the Republican firm Magellan Strategies showed the race at 5 points in a four-way match.

Trump has spent less time here than Clinton and her surrogates, and his investment in ads and infrastructure trails hers. The Clinton campaign has about two dozen offices around the state and paid staff in the neighborhood of 200 people. Trump now has 10 with two more coming and a paid staff of about 50 people.

Trump is counting heavily on organizational work by the Republican National Committee, but his state director, Patrick Davis, acknowledged that Democrats are well organized. The Democrats here are a well-oiled machine, he said. Ill give them that.

[As Trump lavishes Colorado with attention, he faces resistance in GOP enclave]

Still, Trumps team leaders speak bullishly about the GOP candidates potential to increase his support. She has peaked, said Robert Blaha, Trumps state chairman. He said the Republican nominee benefits from growing organic support, with the one big question of whether the campaign can turn voters out.

Even Trump allies, however, say he must prove his steadiness to win over more voters. Steve House, the current Republican chair, said Trump needs to calm down and offer reassurance broadly to voters in the state. Hes got to make it okay to vote for him, he said.

Davis said Trump must make a more positive appeal to Hispanic voters. The immigrants in Colorado who have been here for a long time are looking for some certainty and hope that eventually they will be able to become citizens, through some process, Davis said.

Trumps many comments on immigration policy have led to confusion as to his exact position about the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. Davis said that, at the least, Trump has started a conversation within the immigrant community. Democrats believe its too late.

Trump is also potentially hobbled by the absence of a competitive Senate race. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, who had a tough race six years ago, appears in a strong position. His opponent, Republican Darryl Glenn, won a crowded primary, but his hard-right conservatism and lack of resources have left his campaign sputtering.

Obama won Colorado by five points in 2012 and by nearly 10 points in 2008. Prior to that, Democrats had won just once in the previous seven elections. That was in 1992, when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush here with help from Ross Perot, who got 23 percent of the vote.

What could turn Colorado into a truly competitive state for Trump over the next eight weeks is the same danger that Clinton faces elsewhere  a lack of enthusiasm among the voters she most needs to win the election. The Democratic vote is consolidate [behind Clinton], said a party strategist. But enthusiasm is not like it was in 2012 and certainly not like 2008.

Start with Hispanics. A Clinton adviser compared Colorado with Nevada, where polls show a much tighter race so far. The Hispanic community there, the adviser said, has been easier to motivate in past elections than Latinos in Colorado. That means the Clinton team must expend more effort in Colorado to assure the sizeable turnout needed to keep her margin over Trump comfortable.

Young voters also pose a potential problem in Colorado, ironically because of a change in voting procedures that Democrats thought would play to their advantage. Colorado uses an all-mail ballot system designed to make it easier for people to vote.

But Democrats here say that could be a problem for young voters, especially those on college campuses, who communicate electronically rather than through traditional mail. As a potentially nervous Democrat put it, how many have stamps? The mail-in ballot is a curve ball for us, said Emmy Ruiz, Clintons state director.

[Clinton, Kaine launch battleground state tour, while Trump hits back with attacks]

Democrats also worry that Trump has the potential to expand his support, in part because his investment to date has been minimal. But that might be as much an effort to tamp down expectations as anything else.

The third-party candidates are a wild card in Colorado. In the Post-SurveyMonkey poll of the state, Johnson and Stein combined for slightly more than 20 percent of the vote. Clinton allies say the third-party candidates are likely to take more votes from Clinton than from Trump.

Priorities USA, the pro-Clinton super PAC, is expected to go back on the air with ads in a few weeks. Clinton advisers declined to forecast when or if they would start a new round of ads in the state. Trump started his ads recently.

State GOP chair House said hes still confident that Trump can make the state a battleground this fall. But he also offered words of caution about the stakes.

If Hillary wins this time, he said, then we have to start worrying about the trends.
A supporter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump screams as Trumps motorcade passes on the way to a campaign rally in Asheville, N.C., on Monday. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

 As thousands of Donald Trumps supporters left his rally here this week, they were greeted by protesters who accused them of being, among other things, racist, hateful and uneducated.

Grow a brain, b----! one protester shouted at a Trump backer. Another pointed at rallygoers and yelled: Racist a------s! A third held a sign that read: Make racists afraid again.

Then they chanted in unison: Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate!

They have these vulgar signs, yet theyre screaming about love, said Lisa Jones, 51, a Trump supporter from Hendersonville, N.C. And were the ones that are intolerant? Were deplorable and intolerant? Well, we just found out that were deplorable. We thought that we were just intolerant.

Many rallygoers here in this mountain town Monday evening shrugged off Hillary Clintons controversial remark that half of Trumps supporters belong in a basket of deplorables because they are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. While the Democratic candidate has expressed regret for using the word half, she has not abandoned her assertion that some of Trumps supporters are truly deplorable.

Journalist Richard Morgan traveled to Altoona, Pa. with the goal of getting a deeper sense of what drives a Trump supporter firsthand. This is who he met. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

It made me feel real little, said John Warren, 72, of Asheville, who wore a camouflage Make America Great Again cap. That she was downplaying us. I mean, we are voters and, you know, we respect her. But not in the position she is running for.

[The Take: Clintons deplorables remark sums up a deplorable election season]

Many Trump supporters say they have been called much worse for their views on same-sex marriage, abortion, transgender rights, Syrian refugees, illegal immigration and race relations. Like the Republican nominee, they say they arent afraid to say politically incorrect things and no amount of name-calling from liberals is going to change that.

One mans steak is another mans baloney, said a 62-year-old salesman from Tennessee who said he was proud to have sold 14 Confederate flags outside the rally but did not want his name published. Just like a woman: I mean, I might say shes beautiful. The next guy might say shes ugly. You know what Im saying?

A 43-year-old construction project manager dressed up as a deplorable, putting a laundry basket over his head. Another man carried a sign reading: Deplorable lives matter. As two young men left the rally, one turned to the other and said, Okay, Dan, lets go be deplorable.

During the event, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani joked that Clinton had mentioned some phobics Ive never heard of and that maybe the claustrophobics are for Trump. Trump pulled supporters on stage to share their thoughts, concluding: These are not deplorable people. That I can tell you.

The Trump campaign has focused heavily on the deplorables theme as a way to paint Clinton as elitist and out of touch, but it has also stumbled into its own problems with the issue.





Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., posted a picture labeled The Deplorables on Instagram over the weekend that placed his father and several Trump surrogates alongside conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and a cartoon character, Pepe the Frog, associated with the online white nationalist alt-right movement. Trumps running mate, Mike Pence has refused to use the word deplorable to describe former Ku Klux Klan leader and Trump supporter David Duke, though he said Tuesday that he and Donald Trump disavow Duke.

[Cheers, a punch, a slur: What its like in the crowd at a Donald Trump rally]

The Clinton campaign points to such incidents, as well as polls showing that many Trump supporters harbor prejudiced views of nonwhites, as evidence that many Trump backers are indeed deplorable.

At the Monday night rally, one protester held a sign that read Deplorable Trump misleads good people.

Some here acknowledged that a small fraction of Trump backers could be seen as having deplorable views, but they added that every movement has a fringe.

Some of them are, but I am a common-sense, logical person, said Joe Pruden, 26, a plumber from Asheville, whose girlfriends weight was mocked by a protester.

He continued: Trump supporters, theyre on the defense, and Ive been talking to other conservatives and saying, Hey, we need to start standing up, man. We are done being bullied into a corner by these liberal, left-wing, progressive Nazi foot soldiers.

Kathy Campbell, 40, said Trump could avoid some of the criticism by more carefully choosing his words.

Trump has a way about him that comes off sounding mean and hateful, said Campbell, who lives in North Carolinas Rutherford County and originally supported Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). I dont care for his tone sometimes because I think you catch more flies with honey.

Campbell likes that Trump would crack down on illegal immigration and the public aid undocumented workers receive. She said her children were on Medicaid for a total of 20 years and, as a single mother, she needed the assistance of food stamps for five years, even though she was working full time.

The women who are sitting on their asses at home that can work, and they keep having baby after baby after baby just so they can keep getting more and more food stamps? Theyre abusing the system, Campbell said.

[Inside Donald Trumps new strategy to counter the view that he is racist]

She added: Im a deplorable. Whatever. Im also called narrow-minded. You know what? There is so much talk about tolerance. Wheres the tolerance for me as a Christian? Wheres the tolerance for me as a Republican? Theres none.

This sentiment is common among conservatives here in North Carolina, where Republican lawmakers sparked a national backlash by enacting legislation that weakened anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians and that requires transgender people to use public restrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificates.

Shannon Niven, a 40-year-old nursing student and mother of two from Transylvania County, said Trump supporters like her are educated and accepting  but tired of having the values of others forced upon their lives. She said the debate over the rights of transgender people, who she believes have a mental illness, shows how much society has changed in the past decade or two.

Let a man come into the bathroom with my little girl, and he may not make it out, she said. North Carolina  were conservative, were Christian, but were also a little crazy, and we will defend ourselves.

The supporters and protesters who showed up to the rally had mostly made up their minds about the election, but each side tried to sway the other anyway. Brenda Lilly, a Clinton backer who teaches in Asheville, chatted with a young couple outside the event and tried to warn them about Trump.

He is a racist. Hes a racist. What makes you think that hes not? Lilly said, giving a few examples, including Trumps proposed ban on Muslims.

Its only temporary, the teenage girl, who will not be old enough to vote in November, said as she held a Trump flag over her head.

Temporary! Thats what they said about Jews in Germany, Lilly responded. Please, read your history. I beg you.

[Seven percent of Donald Trump supporters think hes a racist]

Lilly also debated with Michelle Visconte, 47, who says Trump was right to label illegal immigrants as rapists and criminals.

I dated Hispanic men all of my life, and now Im just like, Im done. Im done, Visconte said. Because you know what? Theyre here to bleed us and take advantage of whatever they can get.

No, theyre not, said Lilly, who lived in California for 27 years before recently returning to North Carolina. Were all of your boyfriends rapists and criminals?

Not every one. I had a couple good ones, Visconte said.

Were they all criminals? Lilly asked.

No, Visconte replied. Wait a minute, wait a minute: Yes, they were criminals if they came over to the United States illegally. Thats a criminal.

Conversations like this exasperated Lilly and confirmed what she had suspected.

Quite frankly, I think 50 percent could be a small percentage, she said of the size of the basket of deplorables. These people are nuts. And I dont think they all are. I think there probably are some fine people.

After the rally, arguments between supporters and protesters continued. Two younger demonstrators got into a nasty yelling match with an older man wearing a profane pro-Trump T-shirt; they all took videos of one another saying or doing unkind things. Friends intervened and a police officer begged, Please, just be nice.

Later, as a young man wearing an Obama cant ban these guns tank top flexed his muscles for a photo, a young female protester threw a cup of water on him and ran away. As he pulled the wet shirt off, he yelled, That f---ing b----!

As the two sides exchanged nasty words, an older activist took the lead in denouncing the Trump supporters, while a motherly woman leaving the rally urged the young men to go home before a fight broke out. She then turned to the gray-haired protester and asked why he was trying to incite a fight.

They need to be called out, he said. They need to be called out for their racism.

Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.
Hillary Clinton holds wide leads among Latino voters in four battleground states and enjoys an edge on questions of temperament and whos best equipped to solve the nations problems. But Donald Trump is not faring as poorly as some might think, amid doubts about Clintons trustworthiness.

Clinton is far ahead among Latino voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Nevada, with her biggest lead at 50 percentage points in Arizona and smallest in Florida, where shes ahead by 24 points, according to a new poll for Univision News by Bendixen & Amandi and the Tarrance Group.

Clintons advantages over Trump among Latino voters are similar to President Obamas advantage over Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 in Nevada, Florida and Arizona, while her 45-point lead in Colorado is smaller than Obamas 52-point edge there four years ago.

The results underscore how Latino voters are poised to fuel Clintons support in key battleground states where they make up a significant and growing share of the electorate. Turnout remains a critical question, and it is unclear whether this years election will energize Hispanic Americans to vote at higher rates than in previous years, when fewer than half cast ballots.

The poll also measured support for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Johnson earned support from 5 or 6 percent of voters in each state, while Stein didnt earn more than 3 percent.





Roughly three-quarters of respondents say theyre unlikely to change their minds before Election Day. Clinton is viewed as the most favorable among Latino voters in all four states, while even larger majorities there have negative views of Trump.

In recent weeks, Trump floated the idea of revamping his immigration strategy in a bid to revive his standing among Hispanics, who factor immigration policy into their support for a potential candidate but do not consider it their top issue of concern. Trump last month announced that he would give a major policy address and then delayed it several times before scheduling the speech on the same day as a trip to Mexico to meet with that countrys president, Enrique Pena Nieto. But when he returned to the United States, he doubled down on his long-held immigration views, prompting a handful of prominent Hispanic business and religious leaders to cut ties to his campaign.

[Trump woos women and minorities by pitting one group against another]

Trump is seen unfavorably by 81 percent of Hispanic voters in Colorado, 79 percent in Nevada, 78 percent in Arizona and 68 percent in Florida. At least 6 in 10 likely Hispanic voters in each state think Trump will continue making insensitive remarks despite his recently expressing regret for sometimes saying the wrong thing.

But only 40 percent or fewer of the respondents in each state believe that as president he would deport all undocumented immigrants in the United States. In all but Nevada, a larger share of Hispanic voters believe that he would allow at least some undocumented immigrants to stay in the country.

The poll results contradict Trumps recent claims that he enjoys broad support among minority voters. On Monday, he told the National Guard Association conference in Baltimore that he is doing amazingly well with African American and Hispanic workers. Just 5 percent of black voters support Trump, and 91 percent back Clinton, according to an average of August and September Post-ABC polling data.

Clinton, meanwhile, is widely favored in each state on the issue of who would do a better job improving the lives of Hispanics and is seen as being closer to most Hispanics opinions on major issues. She leads Trump on questions of who is best prepared to handle the economy, terrorism and immigration reform; of who has the better temperament to serve as president; and, by a slightly narrower margin, of who is more honest and trustworthy.





But many Hispanics distrust Clinton, with more than 4 in 10 voters in each state saying she is a liar  including 49 percent in Nevada.

Other national polls show that Clinton is viewed unfavorably by a majority of all American voters. Her campaign has acknowledged that she must do more to present a more positive message and explain what she would do as president.

The Democrat earned swift condemnation from Republicans over the weekend for suggesting that half of Trumps supporters fit into a basket of deplorables. Clinton later expressed regret for the remark, but she blasted Trump again for feuding with the family of a Muslim Army officer killed in Iraq, attacking the judgment of a Hispanic judge hearing two cases against him, and promoting the theory that Obama was not born in the United States.

The Univision poll finds a significant gender gap among Latino voters, with Clintons support at least 10 points higher among women than men in Nevada, Florida and Colorado. In Florida, Clinton also wins 24 percent of self-identified Republicans, while Trump garners 59 percent.

Among Hispanics in all four states, the top issue remains jobs and the economy. Immigration reform ranks second, with education, health care and terrorism generally ranking lower.

[Clinton isnt doing better than previous Democrats with Latinos  even against Trump]

With most of the focus squarely on Clinton and Trump, their running mates remain widely unrecognized by most Hispanics. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, and his Republican counterpart, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, were unknown by more than 50 percent of Hispanics in Arizona, Colorado and Nevada. In Florida, 59 percent of respondents didnt recognize Kaine; 60 percent didnt recognize Pence.

A separate set of surveys released last week found Clinton with an even larger advantage over Trump among Hispanic voters in key states. The surveys, conducted by immigration reform advocate Americas Voice and polling firm Latino Decisions, found Clinton leading by 56 percentage points in Nevada, 55 points in Colorado and 35 points in Florida, each wider than the new Univision poll. She held a 52-point edge in Arizona, similar in size to the Univision poll. Latino Decisions is also conducting polling of Hispanics for the Clinton campaign this year.

The Univision News surveys also examined the states competitive U.S. Senate races  a growing concern for Democrats who believe the party is failing to capitalize on Clintons commanding leads among Hispanics to the benefit of down-ballot candidates. In Colorado and Nevada, Democrats are hoping to hold on to their seats, while Republican incumbents are defending seats in Arizona and Florida against well-funded Democratic challengers.

In Florida, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has a seven-point edge among Latinos, 46 percent to 39 percent, against Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy. Thats a far better performance among Hispanics for the Cuban American senator than Trump, his onetime presidential rival, who trails 24 points behind Clinton. Rubio earns a 52 percent favorability rating, while 42 percent express an unfavorable view; Murphy earns a 29 percent favorable mark, while 13 percent express an unfavorable opinion. Nearly 6 in 10 Hispanic voters said they didnt know enough about him to register an opinion.

[McCain portrays immigration record differently in English and Spanish]

In Arizona, Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick leads incumbent Republican Sen. John McCain among Hispanics, 50 percent to 35 percent. Thats a much smaller edge than Clintons 50-point margin over Trump and Obamas 49-point win among Arizona Latinos in 2012, making Kirkpatricks challenge to McCain more difficult in a Republican-leaning state. When asked their overall opinion of the candidates, poll respondents gave McCain a 52 percent favorability rating and Kirkpatrick 36 percent. Four in 10 respondents did not recognize Kirkpatrick.

In Colorado, Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D) holds a comfortable lead over his GOP challenger, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Darryl Glenn, 65 percent to 19 percent, similar to Clintons margin over Trump in the state.

In Nevada, former Democratic attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto leads Rep. Joseph J. Heck (R) 58 percent to 24 percent, a 34-point edge that is smaller than Clintons 46-point lead in the state. But 38 percent of Hispanics dont know enough about Cortez Masto to register an opinion; 41 percent dont know enough about Heck.

Those results signal why outside liberal interest groups, including the Senate Majority PAC and Democracy for America, have begun airing several millions of dollars worth of advertising for Masto in Nevada and Deborah Ross, the Democratic Senate challenger in North Carolina, who is hoping to unseat Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). Similar campaigns are being prepared for other Democratic Senate candidates. In Florida, a group backed by the industrialist Koch brothers is airing Spanish-language advertising in support of Rubio.

The poll of 1,600 Hispanic registered voters  400 in each state  was conducted Aug. 24 to Sept. 3 by Bendixen & Amandi International and the Tarrance Group. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points in each state.
'I don't want a dog to come in between my love life.' For a dog lover these words are nothing short of blasphemy.

By India Today Web Desk: To a dog lover, there isn't much difference between a human family member and a furry one, and they expect the same from the person they're going to spend the rest of the life with. And it really isn't too big a demand.

When this Bangalore girl realized that her prospective life partner didn't seem to be much of a dog lover, she point-blank rejected the proposal.

advertisement

Also Read: Remembering Everything: Man sends tennis ball to strangers in memory of his beloved dog



According to a Buzzfeed report, Karishma Walia who works in Gurgaon, recently got a marriage proposal from a family in New Delhi.



The screenshot of the conversation between the two has gone viral on Twitter. In it the guy says, ' I don't want a dog to come in between my love life and not share the same bed, and my mom doesn't like dogs in general.'

This B'lore girl rejected a guy cuz he doesn't like dogs & wouldn't want one after marriage. U go girl! #TrueStory pic.twitter.com/N4NW6U8IiJ Not Monika (@blahfamous) September 13, 2016

But this is not all, after Karishma gracefully turned down the proposal, he goes on to do his bit of 'mansplaining' saying, 'It may be a temporary phase in life when you like dogs. We are talking about your life here.'

To this the she puts her foot down and says, 'having a dog is not a temporary phase. I can't abandon my dog for anyone.'

And as usual people on Twitter had a field day:



@blahfamous tell her she took best decision of her life... ??? ????? pic.twitter.com/QyeZ1Mtbcn Jash (@Jash_RL_16) September 13, 2016

In this entire episode, can we atleast ask what the dogs want! pic.twitter.com/iDRbQnnxO5 Amit (@Goddamittt) September 13, 2016

If one has to sacrifice what she/he loves in life for a relationship, the relationship is half dead already. Denial doesn't change things Priyanka Lahiri (@lahirip) September 13, 2016

@blahfamous same thing if someone says says about my Kitty I will wage a war too..???the guy has to adapt here.. The Last Leaf... (@Neo_classico) September 13, 2016

--- ENDS ---
Israel and the United States have reached an agreement that will provide Israel an unprecedented amount of military aid over a decade.

The State Department said the agreement, known as a memo of understanding, will be signed Wednesday afternoon. Jacob Nagel, Israels acting national security adviser, arrived in Washington on Tuesday morning to sign on behalf of his country.

[Israel and U.S. close to a deal on biggest military aid package ever]

The agreement is expected to give Israel as much as $3.8 billion a year over 10 years, more aid than the United States has ever provided to any country. That represents a significant increase over the $3.1 billion the United States gives annually now, a figure that increases to about $3.5 billion a year with aid supplements approved by Congress. That is also much lower than the $4 billion to $5 billion a year that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought.

Netanyahu appears to have agreed to some other major concessions. The newspaper Haaretz reported that he agreed to limit Israels ability to lobby Congress for more aid, unless it is at war. The Israeli leader also agreed that Israel will not ask Congress for more aid to develop missile defense systems.

In another concession that was controversial in Israels defense industry, Netanyahu agreed to phase out a special arrangement that for decades has allowed Israel to spend 26 percent of U.S. aid on defense research, development and procurement. No other country receiving U.S. funding is allowed to do so. But Israel was granted that exception in the 1980s so it could build up its nascent defense infrastructure. With Israels defense industry now thriving, the Obama administration wanted U.S. aid directed to American companies providing goods and services.

[Chart: The two countries that eat up the most U.S. military aid]

U.S. officials declined to comment on the specifics of the agreement.

Negotiations for the aid package have been underway since November to replace a memo of understanding that will end in 2018. The new agreement will run from 2019 through 2028.

Salai Meridor, who was Israels ambassador when the last agreement was signed, welcomed the deal, despite some reservations.

I dont measure this relationship by the dollar number and whatever the exact number is. It is a reflection of the great relationship between the state of Israel and America, he said.

But Meridor called it disappointing to have limitations on Israel requesting more aid from Congress in the future.

Many of the important initiatives that have cemented the relationship have been the result of Congresss initiative, he said. I think this is an element of the agreement we might all regret in the future.

The talks have been complicated by substantive, political and personal differences. Netanyahu and President Obama have had a famously contentious relationship that reached a boiling point in 2015 when the Israeli leader appeared before Congress to lobby against the Iran nuclear deal.

The Obama administration wanted the increased military aid package completed before the end of his term to demonstrate the United States commitment to Israeli security after the agreement with Iran.

Its a good deal for Israel and a good deal for the United States, said Ilan Goldenberg, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. It sends a signal to those in the region that the U.S.-Israel relationship is a bedrock in the Middle East. Whatever difficult relationship exists between the president and the prime minister, at a strategic level, the relationship is better than that. Even if Obama and Netanyahu dont like each other very much, Israel and the United States are willing to make a commitment to Israels security.

The agreement has political advantages for both leaders. Netanyahu has been criticized for his aggressive tactics on the Iran nuclear deal, with critics saying he has poisoned relations with Israels greatest ally. Obama has insisted that the United States remains Israels biggest protector, despite any personal and political differences with the prime minister.

In financial terms, Israel maybe could have gotten more in the summer of 2015 than the summer of 2016, said David Makovsky, a fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But its still an increase. What seems to have driven the idea of coming to closure on this now is that both sides would like to get this done before the election.

Israel remains concerned about the threat posed by Iran, particularly now that its isolation has been eroded with the Iran nuclear deal.

We do not want this to be interpreted as being compensated for a deal we did not consent to, said Eran Lerman, a former deputy national security adviser to the prime minister.

We know Israel was not alone in the region of feeling worried about the consequences, he added.

It remains to be seen whether the $3.8 billion a year represents a ceiling or a floor. The agreement appears to rein in Israels ability to ask for more money. But members of Congress, particularly those involved in appropriations, have expressed a reluctance to give up their ability to allocate money based on their sense of priorities.

Eglash reported from Jerusalem. William Booth in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Read more:

Will Obama roll the dice on the Middle East one more time?

Biden comes to Israel to talk military aid and patch things up

Obama and Netanyahu try to et past the ugliness of the Iran deal
Late last year, as Islamic State fighters battled to expand their stronghold on Libyas coast, militants came within 45 miles of the countrys sole remaining chemical-weapons site, unnerving Libyan and American officials who feared that potentially deadly chemicals could fall into extremist hands.

In May, when the fighters struck a mile from the lightly guarded desert facility, killing two security officers at a checkpoint, they decided it was time to act.

The Islamic States encroachment on an installation outside the remote oasis town of Waddan, where 500 metric tons of chemical-weapon precursor materials were stored, set off a hurried chain of events culminating in a disarmament operation involving the United States, European countries and the United Nations.

The international effort, which concluded last week when a Danish ship unloaded the materials at a German port for destruction, is one of the rare successes that Western nations can claim in Libya since dictator Moammar Gaddafis ouster in 2011 pitched the North African country into lawlessness and civil war.

[In Libya, the Islamic States black flag rises by the Mediterranean]

The mission was also a sign of the risks posed by vulnerable chemicals, even if they have not been weaponized, in former dictatorships and failed states throughout the Middle East.

We were worried about this very dangerous material, said Mohamed Taher Siyala, foreign minister of Libyas unity government. If the Islamic State were to capture the chemicals, he said, it would be dangerous not [just] for us but for the international community.

The rush by the United States and its European allies to help Libya remove chemicals stored at the Ruwagha site, which had

been Gaddafis chemical-weapons farm, was also an indication of the Obama administrations uneasiness about whether the shaky unity government would be able to secure materials that could be made into mustard gas.

We placed a high degree of interest in moving these chemicals out of the country, said a senior U.S. official, who like other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation. We had been focused on it since we learned it was there.

The removal comes as U.S. warplanes continue daily strikes on Libyas coastal city of Sirte, where a small group of Islamic State fighters has managed to hold off militia forces affiliated with the Western-backed government for months.

[Inside the brutal but bizarrely bureaucratic world of ISIS in Libya]

Recent progress to weaken the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has not ended the prolonged political crisis that has spawned competing governments in Libyas east and west and pushed the country to the brink of civil war. This week, a powerful eastern commander seized major oil ports, further inflaming tensions that have prevented the unity government  which the United States and its allies see as the sole path to stabilization  from consolidating its power.

According to a second U.S. official, links between the officials responsible for Ruwagha and the unity government were tenuous at best, adding to the sense of insecurity about the stockpile.

Not to suggest that there was friction . . . but they didnt have somebody that they would report to with clear distinction and chain of command, the official said.

The material at Ruwagha, which included phosphorus trichloride and 2-chloroethanol, was the final remnant of a once-formidable chemical-weapons program built up by Gaddafi.

When Libya joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2004, the Gaddafi government declared a host of material it held in its chemical arsenal, including a vast store of bulk sulfur mustard agent. After Gaddafis ouster, the new government came across additional chemical weapons, mostly artillery and bombs filled with mustard gas, which were then reported to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a global watchdog. By early 2014, all remaining weapons had been destroyed.

While some precursor materials were destroyed in 2015, nearly 500 tons of dual-use, toxic industrial chemicals remained at Ruwagha.

There was also an environmental hazard: The materials were stored in containers so corroded that chemicals were leaking into the soil.

Officials from the Libyan office responsible for chemical weapons had hoped to destroy the precursors domestically, using sophisticated plasma technology, but that proved impossible as a wave of kidnappings, insurgent attacks and militia clashes surged across the country.

Ali Gebril, who has been Libyas representative to the OPCW since 2010, said officials fears about the remaining material increased in December 2015 when Islamic State fighters attacked a checkpoint about 45 miles from Ruwagha.

While U.S. and Libyan officials believed the Islamic State did not know about the presence of the chemicals, they feared that the site, which had also been used to store conventional weapons, might be targeted anyway. Already, Islamic State fighters were suspected of employing chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria; this week, U.S. warplanes destroyed a chemical-weapons factory in northern Iraq.

Their concern grew sharply when a second checkpoint was attacked in May, just over a mile from the facility. We started really to think how to remove the chemicals from where they are, Gebril said, or at least to move them from that vulnerable location.

In mid-July, the unity government renewed an earlier request to the OPCW, made more urgently this time, for help in removing the material. But securing international support to transport the chemicals would not be simple.

Under international rules, moving chemical-weapons material across international boundaries would require authorization from the United Nations. But officials worried that involving the world body might draw unwanted attention to the existence of the chemicals, including from the Islamic State.

Libyan officials also had a template as they made their request  the international collaboration to remove Syrias chemicals weapons in 2014. We told them it was an investment in world peace and security, Gebril said. We got huge support.

Rebecca Hersman, a former Pentagon official overseeing chemical-weapons issues who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Libya operation, like the one in Syria, showed that such transport operations to remove chemicals could be cost-effective and safe, rather than importing people and capabilities into that dangerous environment to destroy them at the site.

In Washington, American officials received regular intelligence information and satellite imagery of the site. In mid-July, Libyan officials piled about 20 barrels  Canada had helped the government purchase new, safer containers  onto a small convoy of trucks and drove them across the desert to the coastal city of Misurata.

Many people believed we couldnt deliver and move the chemicals, Gebril said.

At the same time, U.S. and European officials were scrambling to coordinate a way to get the chemicals out of Libya. On July 22, the U.N. Security Council voted to adopt a British-drafted resolution authorizing member countries to transport the material from Libya.

The White House decided it would not call attention to the unanimous vote until the materials had safely left Libya. Everything we did we wanted to be just as low-profile as we possibly could, the second U.S. official said.

In late August, the materials were loaded at the port of Misurata onto a Danish ship, which was accompanied across the Mediterranean by Danish and British naval ships. They were bound for the German city of Munster, where the chemicals will be destroyed in a commercial facility over six to nine months.

Although Libya remains perilously unstable, U.S. officials hope the operation can strengthen the unity government at a time when its future remains in doubt.

The lesson learned is that the international community still really cares about making sure that we put threats like chemical weapons back in the box and we can come together in difficult circumstances to make that happen, the first U.S. official said.

Amid the ongoing conflict, Gebril said the removal of deadly materials was one of the few things that Libyas divided society could agree on. It was in the interest of all Libyans to get these chemicals out of Libya and destroy them as soon as possible, he said.

Read more:

Libyan force was a lesson in the limits of U.S. power

U.S. Special Operations troops aiding Libyan forces in battle against ISIS

Even with U.S. airstrikes, a struggle to oust ISIS from Libyan stronghold
Japanese lawmaker Antonio Inoki, right, shakes hands with North Korean official Ri Su Yongprior to their meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Saturday. (AP)

North Koreas nuclear program is directed at the United States, a close adviser to Kim Jong Un said after last weeks atomic test, according to a Japanese lawmaker who just returned from Pyongyang.

The warning came as two U.S. military B-1 bombers flew over the southern half of the peninsula in a show of force against North Korea, and top military brass and diplomats warned Pyongyang that the United States is prepared to take all steps to contain and punish the regime.

North Korea defied United Nations resolutions and international warnings by detonating its fifth and largest nuclear weapon Friday, declaring that it was a warhead that could be used to counter the American threat.

[Everything you need to know about the North Korean nuclear test]

Antonio Inoki, a former professional wrestler who now serves in Japans parliament, returned Tuesday from a five-day visit to Pyongyang saying that Japan need not worry about the Norths nuclear program.

North Korea has conducted its fifth nuclear test, on the day of an important holiday for the regime. The Washington Posts Anna Fifield explains what that means. (Anna Fifield/The Washington Post)

This is not directed at Japan. The nuclear development is toward the United States, Inoki quoted Ri Su Yong, an elder statesman of North Korean foreign affairs who is particularly close to Kim, as saying.

Ri was Pyongyangs ambassador to Switzerland when Kim, now the 32-year-old North Korean leader, attended school there. He served as foreign minister in Kims regime until May, when he was promoted further up the Workers Party ranks and became a full member of the Politburo and director of the partys international relations department.

Inoki, who has tried to be a bridge between Japan and North Korea, told Japanese reporters who were waiting for him at the Beijing airport that he spent 90 minutes with Ri on Saturday, the day after the nuclear test. But these were the only remarks he made as he arrived at the airport.

[North Korea conducts fifth nuclear test]

His trip coincided with the nuclear test and followed provocative missile launches, several of which ended with landings within Japans air defense identification zone, earning harsh condemnation from Japan.

Although the missiles North Korea has been testing put only South Korea and parts of Japan and China within reach, many analysts agree that this is part of a larger program aimed at developing an intercontinental ballistic missile able to reach the U.S. mainland. The bigger goal is to attach a nuclear warhead to that missile, they say.

Pyongyang put out another dismissive statement Tuesday about the reaction to its nuclear test. The U.S. and its followers are making much fuss, creating impression that a nuclear bomb was dropped in downtown Washington or Seoul, the Korean Central News Agency said.

Neither sanctions nor provocation nor pressure can ever bring down the position of the DPRK as a full-fledged nuclear weapons state, and highhanded political and military provocations of the enemies will only invite a merciless nuclear strike which will lead them to a final ruin, the agency said, using the official abbreviation for North Korea.

[With each missile test, N. Korea inches closer to being able to reach the U.S. ]

In Seoul, U.S. and South Korean officials stepped up their warnings.

North Koreas nuclear test is a dangerous escalation and poses an unacceptable threat, said Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, as two B-1B Lancers, which carry the largest payload of any U.S. bomber, flew over South Korea together with American F-16s and South Korean F-15Ks.

The bombers were moved to a U.S. air base in Guam in August as part of a buildup against North Korea, and they conducted a training exercise with Japanese fighter jets over the southern island of Kyushu while en route to the Korean Peninsula.

Todays demonstration provides just one example of the full range of military capabilities in the deep resources of this strong alliance to provide and strengthen extended deterrence, Brooks said.

Separately, Sung Kim, Washingtons point man on North Korea, said after meeting his South Korean counterpart that the latest nuclear test has bolstered international resolve to hold the North accountable.

We are, of course, working . . . to take additional significant steps, including new sanctions, to demonstrate to North Korea that there indeed are serious consequences for its unlawful and dangerous actions, he said.

The U.N. Security Council, which imposed tough new sanctions after a nuclear test in January, also has condemned the test and vowed to respond.

Read more:

Pro wrestlers make unlikely peace trip to North Korea

Japan calls for international help as North Korea stonewalls on abductions

Heading to Pyongyang, Japanese ex-wrestler hopes to win over North Korea

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Syrians evacuated from Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite villages under rebel siege, are welcomed by pro-government forces as they arrive in Jibrin, on the eastern outskirts of Aleppo.

Dec. 19, 2016 Syrians evacuated from Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite villages under rebel siege, are welcomed by pro-government forces as they arrive in Jibrin, on the eastern outskirts of Aleppo. George Ourfalian/AFP/Getty Images

The Syrian government has dropped two chlorine bombs in the past month on the besieged, rebel-held city.

The Syrian government has dropped two chlorine bombs in the past month on the besieged, rebel-held city.

A cease-fire in Syria brokered by the United States and Russia has brought a rare period of calm to hard-hit parts of the country, activists said Tuesday, sending normally terrified residents out to shop, play and visit loved ones.

The nationwide truce went into effect at sundown Monday and continued to hold despite reports of sporadic violations.

After some airstrikes and shelling in the early hours, by early morning every report we have been seeing indicates a significant, significant drop in violence, U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said Tuesday evening in Geneva.

It is the second major attempt by world powers to curb the fighting that has killed nearly half a million people and spawned a humanitarian crisis stretching from the Middle East to Europe. It also marks the first time in months that rebel forces and the Syrian government have halted their fire in all opposition areas, including government airstrikes, granting civilians a brief reprieve from the constant threat of bombing and shelling.

People are going about their business, and children are even playing in the street, Mohamed Omar, a civil defense volunteer in the rebel-held area of Aleppo, a city that has been devastated by the five-year conflict.

The United States and Russia announced a new multi-step plan to bring Syria closer to a negotiated peace deal. (Jason Aldag,Karen DeYoung/The Washington Post)

People feel a lot more safe today because there are no airstrikes, he said. Things seem calmer.

[Watch: How the cease-fire talks unfolded]

The cease-fire is part of a broader deal between Washington and Moscow to eventually launch joint strikes against Islamist militants in Syria and possibly pave the way for a negotiated end to the war. The United States has backed some Syrian rebel factions battling the government and is leading a coalition conducting strikes against the Islamic State in Syria. Russia has sent warplanes and troops to aid Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The two sides also have called for the unimpeded flow of aid into Syria. But that effort had yet to get off the ground as of late Tuesday.

A major road designated under the agreement as a neutral humanitarian corridor remained the scene of clashes. Syrian government forces are required by the deal to withdraw from Castello Road in Aleppo province, and rebels also should refrain from launching attacks.

However, in a Russian Defense Ministry broadcast aired on the state-funded RT network, two Russian military commanders are shown ducking for cover as their position comes under fire. De Mistura said that allegations of mortar attacks on the road, by the opposition, in this case, had been reported.

De Mistura said he expected aid convoys to begin moving very soon. The trucks destined for rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he said, will move once notification of their contents is formally provided to the Syrian government and opposition forces in the city formally agree to U.N. distribution terms.





Aid destined for other parts of the country, where more than a dozen besieged areas have been without food deliveries, in some cases for years, is still awaiting Syrian government authorization letters, de Mistura said.

He indicated that, under the terms of the U.S.-Russia agreement, the aid should begin to flow within the first 48 hours of the cease-fire.

The United Nations needs to make sure its staff and partners are not in mortal danger before starting aid convoys, said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. coordination agency in Geneva, the Associated Press reported.

But whether the deal can keep violence in check remains to be seen.

According to the timetable laid out by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the first seven days are crucial. Under the deal, Russia is responsible for keeping the Syrian air force out of the air, while the United States must stop attacks by rebel forces.

The first step is a cessation of hostilities for seven days. And this is something the Russians and the regime must do, and they must do it properly, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, head of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, told reporters in a video briefing.

If the cease-fire holds, the two sides will start working out plans to share intelligence and conduct coordinated airstrikes, first against a former al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, or Front for the Conquest of Syria, and eventually against the Islamic State.

But a number of rebel groups have been fighting side by side with Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, raising concerns among opposition members that other factions will be targeted as well. The administration has acknowledged the overlap between the groups and warned the rebels that they must separate themselves from the terrorists or risk falling under coordinated U.S. and Russian strikes against the militants once they begin.

Were not being unrealistic, said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide more details. Its not going to happen overnight. Its certainly not going to happen if Russia and Syria dont stop indiscriminate bombing. But at some point, the official said, it is going to be important for the opposition to distance themselves.

Rebel fighters also have criticized the agreement for not imposing direct penalties for violations, and they say it could give Assads military a chance to try to expand its grip.

Rebel neighborhoods in eastern Aleppo have been de facto under siege by Syrian and Russian airstrikes, with 275,000 residents almost entirely cut off from vital supplies such as food, water and electricity, the United Nations has said.

But on Tuesday, residents there and in nearby Idlib breathed a sigh of relief  even if just temporarily.

[Pentagon finally says it killed top Islamic State figure]

Mohib Abdelsalam, a 26-year-old emergency responder and member of the Aleppo Revolutionaries rebel group, said residents had hoped that aid would arrive Tuesday.

We are trying to remain hopeful, Abdelsalam said. We need petrol and food, fresh produce. We have been depending mostly on vegetables that we grow ourselves. We are currently just trying to survive the day.

In Kafranbel in Idlib province, also in the north, Abu Muhammad said residents are relieved that no airstrikes have occurred there.

We havent heard any planes in the sky, and we havent documented any [cease-fire] violations in our area, said Muhammad, an activist and lawyer.

But people are skeptical about whether it is going to work, he said.

Heba Habib in Berlin, Zakaria Zakaria in Istanbul and Missy Ryan in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Doubts greet Syria cease-fire deal

10 new wars that could be unleashed as a result of the battle against ISIS

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
A research has revealed why women prefer men with beards and stubbles.

No wonder women can't help but swoon over Fawad Afzal Khan and Virat Kohli. Picture courtesy:

By India Today Web Desk: Not that there was a need for a research to establish a link between beards and attractiveness but a study by University of Queensland and University of New South Wales in Australia has gone ahead and associated the two anyway.

We apologise for generalising, but the female brigade has swooned over the likes of Fawad Afzal Khan, Virat Kohli and David Beckham for quite some time now--but why?

Geared up for the opening match today! #ISLU #PSL #islamabadunited A photo posted by Fawad A Khan (@fawadkhan81) on Feb 3, 2016 at 10:31pm PST

advertisement

According to a study published in The Journal of Evolutionary Biology, women tend to be more inclined towards full-bearded men and perceive them as long-term partners.

Also Read: 91 per cent women think men look the sexiest in these clothes

This research also hints towards women linking beards with "formidability", "survival" and "fertility."

The tshirt says it all. ??? Thats all that matters, our state of mind makes us who we are and where we go. Bless all. A photo posted by Virat Kohli (@virat.kohli) on Sep 7, 2016 at 8:28am PDT

The results of the study were based on a set of computer graphic manipulations which involved male faces with different kinds and levels of facial hair--including clean-shave, light stubble, heavy stubble and full beards.

Also Read: Ranbir to Fawad, Ranveer to Hrithik, Bollywood hunks who rock the beard!

"When women viewed the images, masculinised and feminised faces were less attractive than un manipulated faces when all were clean-shaven," a quote in PTI reads.

Paris bound .... ! ! ! ?????????????????? #Befikre A photo posted by Ranveer Singh (@ranveersingh) on Feb 22, 2016 at 9:59pm PST

Where a full-beard raked in favourable responses in reference to long-term relationships, stubbles were a favourite among women in a short-term context.



According to PTI, "Extremely masculine and extremely feminine-looking males were least attractive, irrespective of relationship context."

( With inputs from PTI)

--- ENDS ---
In the run-up to Fridays European Union (EU) summit in Bratislava, Berlin and Paris are pushing to transform the EU into a military alliance capable of large-scale operations abroad or at home.

A six-page proposal, drafted by defense ministers Ursula von der Leyen of Germany and Jean-Yves Le Drian of France, was shown to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Le Figaro. Its aims are to use the exit from the EU of Britain, which, like the United States, has traditionally opposed European military alliances separate from the NATO alliance, to integrate remaining EU countries armed forces. The remaining EU countries kicked Britain out of the Bratislava meeting, which is therefore technically an informal EU summit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande launched talks on this proposal in early July, just after the Brexit vote . It is high time to reinforce our solidarity and European defense capabilities in order to more effectively protect our borders and EU citizens, the document declares, according to Le Figaro. Given that the United Kingdom has decided to leave the EU, we will now have to act with [the remaining] 27 member states.

For many years, [EU military] cooperation failed in the face of opposition from the USA, who feared it would compete with the NATO alliance, wrote Stefan Kornelius in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The Brexit has now changed this situation in one blow. There will be no more opposition from Britain, though it formally still belongs to the EU. Two states suddenly have seen their chance: Germany and France are letting their ambitions emerge and playing the role of the avant-garde.

The aims of Berlin and Paris are utterly reactionary. Staggered by Brexit and the deep unpopularity in the working class of the EUs social austerity agenda, the European ruling class is trying to hold the EU together by arming it to the teeth against enemies abroad and the working class at home.

The von der Leyen-Le Drian document assigns responsibility for planning EU military operations to the Eurocorps, a joint unit with German, Belgian, French, Italian, Luxembourg, and Polish troops, that is headquartered in Strasbourg. It also calls for joint EU military medical command, logistics facilities and officer training programs, and the creation of a unified EU military headquarters.

It proposes to unify EU defense industries around developing key technologies. The objective is to keep European partners from buying systems off the shelf, mainly from the United States, thus undermining the EUs strategic autonomy, Le Figaro writes. Efforts should focus on four key technologies: in-flight refueling, satellite communications, cyber-security, and drones.

This makes a mockery of von der Leyens and Le Drians claim that their proposal is about border defense. Such technologies grant military capabilitieslike strategic bombing, long-distance reconnaissance, cyber warfare, and drone murderthat are unnecessary for routine border security operations. They are critical, however, to waging aggressive wars of colonial conquest like the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, or wars with other major world powers.

Workers in Europe and beyond have nothing to gain from such policies, as two decades in which Washington and its allies expended trillions of dollars on neo-colonial wars from Afghanistan to Iraq and Africa, costing millions of lives, have shown. Spending trillions of euros to rival US imperialism militarily would ruin a continent devastated by nearly a decade of deep austerity. As tensions escalate between NATO and Russia in Syria, Ukraine, and across Eastern Europe, it would set the stage for a war threatening the very survival of humanity.

The danger of a new world war between nuclear powers is openly discussed in ruling circles. In April, Britains Telegraph carried an article titled Heres how World War III could start tomorrow.

As in the past, it is perfectly possible that a third world war could start with a small event, or even by accident, it wrote. Indeed, the skies over Syria are starting to get dangerously crowded, with Russian jets flying near US planes on bombing runs, and sparring with NATO air defenses in neighboring Turkey. Perhaps it could happen at sea, when a Japanese or American ship scrapes paint with its Chinese Navy counterpart amid the reefs in the Pacific that are being militarized as part of Asias current arms race.

The proposals of von der Leyen and Le Drian show the remaining EU states are also preparing for such a warand, as well, to violently suppress opposition in the working class at home.

European workers are key targets of the tiny cabals devising EU policy, which fear mass social anger. In its Perspectives for European Defense 2020, the EU Institute for Security Studies bluntly declared that a key task of EU military action was the protection of the rich of this world from the tensions and problems of the impoverished.

As the proportion of the world population that is impoverished and frustrated continues to increase, the tensions between this world and the world of the rich will increase, it declared, adding: Technology contracts the world into a small town that is on the verge of a revolution. While we have to deal with an increasingly integrated upper stratum, we are at the same time confronted with the growth of explosive tensions in the poorest lower stratum.

This has already found practical expression in France. Tens of thousands of troops and riot police are on the streets under the state of emergency declared after the 13 November 2015 terror attacks in Paris. The PS has used the state of emergency as a pretext to violently attack mass protests against its deeply unpopular labor law, which imposes draconian social cuts on workers.

As the major NATO powers seek to arm themselves to the teeth, they raise tensions among themselves to explosive heights. The last time that the EU pushed aggressively for an independent military capability from the United Statescalling in the 1990s and early 2000s for a multipolar world after the Stalinist dissolution of the USSRbitter conflicts erupted with Washington.

When French and German officials opposed the US invasion of Iraq, it plunged relations with Washington into a historic crisis. Then-US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice proposed to punish France, ignore Germany, forgive Russia.

Significantly, the current push for an independent EU military policy comes amid deep tensions between Washington and Europe. Two weeks ago, top officials in Germany and France called for an indefinite suspension of trade talks with the United States. Yesterday, French President Francois Hollande took the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks to deliver an unusual attack on US war policy.

On his Facebook page, he wrote: The response of the American administration to these attacks, planned from inside the country and methodically executed, far from eliminating the terror menace, spread it over a larger area, especially in Iraq. France legitimately refused to join the intervention, and even condemned it, Hollande continued, but it nonetheless suffered from the consequences of the chaos it produced.

While EU-US tensions are erupting, the proposed EU military alliance is itself shot through with explosive contradictions. Three times in the last 150 years, Germany and France have fought each other in major wars, and Berlins emergence as the taskmaster of Europe, leading the formulation of EU austerity policies across the continent, has raised tensions between the EU powers to unprecedented heights.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung ruled out the possibility that the EU could jointly decide on military action, writing: On military intervention, and on questions of life and death, national sovereignty is holy for all EU states, including for Germany and its parliament.

Retired Italian General Vincenzo Camporini told Defense News that he doubted France would fully submit its militaryand particularly its nuclear forces, the sole legally declared nuclear arsenal in the post-Brexit EUto EU approval. British opposition to an EU army allowed other European states to also drag their feet, he said, Now the excuse is no longer there; who is ready to go forward? I believe the Germans are willing, although I have doubts about France because of its nuclear deterrent. Will that be shared? It is a very delicate political issue.
Nurses and other healthcare workers at the University of Pittsburgh-Medical Center (UPMC) have expressed their solidarity with the strike by 4,800 nurses at Allina Health in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. The Allina nurses are in the second week of a fight against the attack on their health benefits and demands that they accept dangerously high numbers of patients.

While the nurses have remained determined in the face of strikebreaking and intimidation by the company, the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) and the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations have isolated the struggle. Allied with the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, the unions are doing everything to prevent a movement of the working class in defense of health benefits, which have been under unrelenting attack by the Obama administration.

When W orld Socialist W eb S ite reporters told UPMC healthcare workers about the Allina nurses strike, they expressed overwhelming support.

Donna, a retired nurse from UPMC, explained the conditions nurses face. I worked as a nurse for 40 years, and the way nurses are treated, its terrible. I dont think I could work in a hospital ever again. Most nurses now in the OR [operating room] have to work 12-hour shifts, and I hated it. Others have to be on call. They have families, and its just too hard.

Speaking of the rich healthcare profiteers, Donna added, Where are they getting the money? Theyre getting the money from the working class, and from the government, so in the long run, working people lose all the way around.

Donna expressed frustration with the wage tiers imposed on newer nurses designed to divide the workforce. What frustrated me more than anything is when they kicked out the older nurses, and more new nurses came in The administration didnt care, as long as the newer nurses were being paid cheaper wages, but a lot of mistakes were being made.

They gave me a buyout, which was nothing, like throwing pennies at me after being a nurse for 40 years. It was $15,000, and when they took out the taxes, it was $8,000. And they told me I couldnt work for UPMC anymore. If I had the possibility to work a couple days, I would have.

When a WSWS reporter explained the attacks on Allina nurses, Tiffany, a dental student in Pittsburgh, responded, I think thats pretty ridiculous that theyre trying to take away their healthcare. I think its not fair.

I applaud them, Michael, a nurse from Pittsburgh, said of the striking Allina nurses. Being a nurse, we often go without breaks. I know a lot of nurses dont use the restroom all shift, whether its an eight or 12-hour shift. Rarely do I get a lunch. Im never officially relieved. I have a couple chugs of milk and a few heaping spoons of peanut butter, and that gets me through the shift.

Speaking to Allina nurses demands for lower staffing ratios, Michael continued, I would say one of the biggest things in the nature of nursing is that you have human safety at play, which is what surrounds safe staffing ratios.

Upon hearing that the MNA had called out only 5,000 of 12,000 nurses in the area, Michael replied, The unions basically are bought out, and they basically do serve the owners and the ruling elite. They seek in every way to circumvent the interests of the workers.

On the form, Im a registered nurse, but were considered management. I manage some other nurses, and sometimes they manage me. Because of that, Im separated from the union. Its one of the mechanisms they use to keep us divided on the battlefield.

Michael made comments on the role of the unions, stating, Most of the things that they step in for arent wages and benefits. Its people being late for work. Its been pretty petty concerns, and not the big stuff, like where did our pensions go? I think thats all part of where the unions sold out. Why wouldnt they value these bigger things?

Speaking of the irrationality of for-profit healthcare, Michael noted, The prices never go down. Its a dictatorship of a marketplace, they basically hold peoples health and welfare hostage, and charge whatever they want to charge.

Acknowledging the media blackout of the strike, Michael said, In our free society, which we supposedly have, its not being covered anywhere except the World Socialist Web Site, and I thank you for that.

Speaking to Allina nurses, Michael continued, I greatly applaud the Minnesota nurses for having some backbone and leading the way. They have my admiration and the support of, Im sure, countless nurses nationwide. I wholeheartedly support their commitment and drive. Weve been conned. Theres enough to go around for everybody in this country.
By Tom Polansek CHICAGO (Reuters) - A U.S. congresswoman urged the Labor Department on Monday to investigate Chipotle Mexican Grill for possible wage theft, another potential hurdle for the burrito chain as it seeks to rebound from food-safety problems last year. U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, said the department should probe allegations from about 10,000 current and former Chipotle employees who have joined a federal lawsuit that alleges the company did not properly pay them for hours worked. Such actions, if true, would contradict federal law, DeLauro said in a letter to the department, "depriving workers of the wages and earnings to which they are legally entitled." Chipotle said her call for an investigation was "misdirected." "We have maintained from the outset that this case is without merit and will vigorously defend our employment practices," company spokesman Chris Arnold said. The Labor Department had no immediate comment. Chipotle has been working to revive sales growth after outbreaks of E. coli, norovirus and salmonella linked to its restaurants sickened more than 500 people last year and drove away customers. Last week, activist investor William Ackman disclosed that his hedge fund had purchased a 9.9 percent stake in the company, saying it was undervalued. The case over unpaid wages began two years ago when Leah Turner, who worked as a manager at a Chipotle restaurant in Colorado, alleged in a lawsuit that the company routinely required hourly paid employees to work "off the clock," according to court records. The company used timekeeping devices that automatically punched employees off the clock, even if they were still working, the lawsuit said. Since then, about 10,000 others from across the country have joined the lawsuit seeking to recover unpaid wages, said Andrew Quisenberry, an attorney representing the workers for law firm Bachus & Schanker. The large number of plaintiffs is "significant to us, showing that it's widespread across Chipotle," Quisenberry said. The case is Tuner et al vs Chipotle Mexican Grill, U.S. District Court, District of Colorado, No. 14-cv-02612. (Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Kelly Hammer Lankford's heart sank as soon as the caller said he was with the United States Embassy in Peru, where her parents were vacationing on an Amazon River cruise.



She knew that the news couldn't be good. But nothing prepared her to hear that her mom and dad, Larry and Christy Hammer of Gretna, Nebraska, had died in their beds on April 10 after a fire broke out in their cabin aboard the luxury La Estrella Amazonica on the first night of a 10-day, 600-mile dream cruise.



Even more shocking was what she and her sister, Jill Hammer Malott, learned after hiring an attorney and private investigators in Peru to look into their parents' deaths, when they felt that they hadn't received enough answers from Peruvian authorities and the cruise operators, International Expeditions, based in Helena, Alabama.



Kelly and Jill's investigators concluded that the fire was caused by a faulty electrical power strip in their parents' cabin and that fire and smoke alarms weren't working. And video footage showed that it took crew members 22 minutes to pull their father from the second-story cabin, and another six minutes to rescue their mother, after somebody noticed smoke coming from a light fixture.



"In between, they opened the door to my parents' room and slammed it shut several times instead of rushing inside to get them out," Jill tells PEOPLE. "Our mom still had a heartbeat and could have been saved if they hadn't waited. There was failure aboard the boat on multiple levels."



Four months after the tragedy, she and Kelly are still trying to get conclusive answers from the cruise company and Peruvian authorities about everything that went wrong aboard the boat that night. They had Nebraska's congressional delegation write a letter to the Peruvian ambassador to the U.S., Luis Miguel Castilla, imploring him to make sure the investigation was timely and thorough.





Story continues

Determined Nebraska Sisters Seek Answers in the Mysterious Deaths of Their Parents Aboard Luxury Amazon Cruise| Real People Stories



The sisters are speaking out, they tell PEOPLE, to warn others about cruise ship safety at a time when interest in ecotourism trips is at an all-time high.



"It's horrifying to me that they had this boat back on the water less than 48 hours after the fire that killed our parents," Jill, 46, of San Francisco, tells PEOPLE. "We don't have all of the answers and yet they continue to load every week and put unsuspecting Americans back on the boat. We'd like to see documents showing that the boat is safe. We don't want anybody else to go through what we've been through."



Van Perry, president of International Expeditions, insists that the La Estrella Amazonica is safe and says the boat now has enhanced fire-fighting equipment and that the crew has been provided with refresher fire training.





Determined Nebraska Sisters Seek Answers in the Mysterious Deaths of Their Parents Aboard Luxury Amazon Cruise| Real People Stories



"We'll continue to give this incident high priority," he tells PEOPLE in a statement. "We extend our sympathy to the family. We cannot attempt to understand the depth of their loss, but continue to provide our offers of support to them."



A 31-passenger boat, the La Estrella Amazonica was marketed to Americans as the largest, most modern vessel on the Amazon, says Kelly, which is one reason why her parents, who were avid world travelers, spent $10,000 to take the luxury cruise.





Determined Nebraska Sisters Seek Answers in the Mysterious Deaths of Their Parents Aboard Luxury Amazon Cruise| Real People Stories



Larry, 74, a retired University of Nebraska-Lincoln administrator, and Christy, 72, a former schoolteacher and analyst for Gallup, had visited every continent except Antarctica, which they hoped to cross off their bucket list after their cruise on the Amazon.



"They were adventurous and generous people who had figured out what they truly loved in life  family and travel," says Jill. "They were great role models to Kelly and I when we were growing up, and to their four grandkids. 'Be thankful for what you have and live for what you love.' That was their philosophy."





Determined Nebraska Sisters Seek Answers in the Mysterious Deaths of Their Parents Aboard Luxury Amazon Cruise| Real People Stories



The Hammers were initially scheduled to go on the maiden voyage of International Expeditions' "star of the Amazon" in 2013, but when the trip was delayed, they rebooked for this past spring, Kelly tells PEOPLE, departing on April 10 with 19 other passengers and 15 crew members.



Only eight hours into the cruise, at about 2:30 a.m., a fire broke out in their cabin, with no alarms sounding, while they slept. Larry was dead when he was removed from the cabin, while Christy died on the way to a hospital. Smoke inhalation killed them both, says Kelly, and her dad also suffered burns on his body since the surge protector that caught fire was located beneath his bed.





Determined Nebraska Sisters Seek Answers in the Mysterious Deaths of Their Parents Aboard Luxury Amazon Cruise| Real People Stories



To make the sad outcome even worse, says Jill, her parents wedding rings have gone missing "and were likely stolen off their dead bodies," she tells PEOPLE.



Although Peruvian officials are still investigating, she and her sister say their attempts to talk to other passengers about the fire and any recollections of their parents' last moments at dinner that night have been rebuffed by the cruise company.



"The last time I talked to my parents was the day before they left when we called to say 'Bon voyage,' " Jill tells PEOPLE. "They were excited for the trip and promised my kids they'd take plenty of pictures of the animals they saw in the Amazon. Of course, they didn't get to take any pictures. We don't know about their last hours, but we're going to keep digging until we find some answers. No matter how small those moments may seem, they're huge to us."
Canada, get ready to meet Prince George and Princess Charlotte!



Prince William and Princess Kate are "looking forward to introducing their young family" to Canada when they embark on their eight-day tour on September 24, a spokesman said at a Buckingham Palace briefing Monday.



"This is a great opportunity for them to introduce their children to a major realm before things like school start to make these things difficult later on," the spokesman continued. "They really enjoyed taking Prince George to New Zealand and Australia and are delighted to have this opportunity to introduce them to Canada."



The royal family's visit will be largely based in Victoria, British Columbia, where they will stay at the Government House. They will also take in the wonders of the city of Vancouver, visit Bella Bella and the Great Bear Rainforest and remote Yukon as well during their stay.







It is the first time that 16-month-old Charlotte has been on an official tour with her parents. George accompanied his parents on a memorable tour to New Zealand and Australia in 2014.



The visit will likely be similar in structure to George's trip Down Under. It is "highly likely" the children will be seen when they arrive in Victoria on September 24, a royal source says, and again during departure. There's also the possibility of a couple kid-friendly events  similar to George's fun play date in New Zealand.



"The proviso is that they very small children, but the plan is for the family to get a chance to say 'hello,' " a place source adds.



 Want to keep up with the latest royals coverage? Click here to subscribe to the Royals Newsletter.



One possible occasion to see the royal kids in action will be at a children's party with military families on the grounds of Government House on September 29.



"A group of military families have been invited to share what should be a really lovely morning with plenty of surprises for the children," the couple's spokesman said Monday.



The sports-loving couple will have a few outdoor events as well, including fishing in Haida Gwaii. And while there will be formal occasions and meetings, Kate is expected to leave her tiaras at home.



"They are spending a considerable amount of time in one or two places rather than having to dart across the country, so they really hope to get a real sense of British Columbia in particular. It is a largely casual, highly outdoors tour," the spokesman said at the briefing. "There will be the usual government formal moments, but they'll getting out there and getting to meet Canadians face-to-face in all sorts of different settings."



In a statement the spokesman added, "The Duke and Duchess are delighted with the program. They cannot wait to get to Canada and start learning about new parts of the country that will play such an important part of their lives for many years to come."



The couple will take an entourage of 12 people. There are three private secretaries, four communications staff, a tour secretary, an operations manager and a personal assistant. Kate's hairdresser Amanda Tucker and nanny Maria Turrion Borrallo are also going and being paid for privately.



Their longtime foreign affairs adviser Sir David Manning will not be on the tour. The third private secretary is Laura Baker, William's assistant private secretary.



The royals are currently wrapping up summer at Queen Elizabeth's Balmoral estate before they pack up for their big family trip across the pond!




LONDON  Global Screen has picked up worldwide distribution rights to cross-cultural drama Zagros, the latest production from Belgiums A Private View (Vincent, Moscow, Belgium). Global Screen is selling the film at the Toronto Film Festival.

While Zagros, a young Kurd, is herding his sheep in the mountains, his pregnant wife Havin is accused of infidelity by her in-laws, according to a press statement. In a culture where that is as good as a death sentence, she flees to Belgium together with her 9-year-old daughter Rayhan. Convinced of her innocence and confident that they can build a new life together, Zagros smuggles himself to the West to join them. But when Zagros father arrives and moves in with them he successfully plants the poisonous seeds of doubt as to Havins fidelity in his sons mind.

International audiences and especially fans of high-quality, art-house drama will take to this tragically moving story of a husband and wife trapped in their cultural roots, Julia Weber, head of theatrical sales at Global Screen, said.

Global Screen previously partnered with A Private View on Moscow, Belgium, which won three awards in Critics Week at Cannes in 2008.

Producer Dries Phlypo said: I have seldom been so gripped by a script. The viewer is constantly next to Zagros as he is torn between his loyalty to his family and especially to his father, to whom he owes everything. We share his desperation and also his doubts as to his wifes fidelity: We want to know, as does he, has she betrayed him or not?

The film is the feature debut of director Sahim Omar Kalifa, and co-written by Kalifa and Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem. Cineart will handle the theatrical release in Benelux. It is a co-production with the Netherlands Viking Film and Belgiums Mans Films.

Related stories

Toronto: Momentum Takes U.S. Rights to Australian Box-Office Hit 'Oddball' (EXCLUSIVE)

Toronto Festival: France's MK2 Joins Forces With Jia Zhangke's Fabula

Oscar-Nominated Cartoon Saloon, Angelina Jolie Pitt Team With WestEnd on 'The Breadwinner' (EXCLUSIVE)
TORONTO (Reuters) - A teenage boy's struggle with his mother's terminal illness takes a surreal turn when he finds comfort in a giant talking tree monster, in the emotional fantasy drama "A Monster Calls." The film, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, follows the story of Connor, a quiet, artistic teenage boy who becomes a target for the school bully. As his mother, played by Felicity Jones, gets sicker from cancer, Conner goes to live with his cold, reserved grandmother, played by Sigourney Weaver. In the midst of his life crumbling around him, Connor is visited at night by a giant talking yew tree monster. The film is adapted from the children's book of the same name, and Bayona incorporated watercolor animations to illustrate the stories of good and evil that the tree monster, voiced by Liam Neeson, tells Connor. "I had never read anything quite like it," said Jones, who plays Connor's ailing mother. "The elements of fantasy, animation, and a giant, talking tree, and dealing with something that everyone goes through, dealing with loss, I thought was very special." Newcomer British actor Lewis MacDougall, who plays Connor, said the best part about working on the film was being among the all-star cast and shooting the film in Barcelona. The film will be rolling out across Europe in October and in limited U.S. theaters in December. Weaver said she was touched by the story and "delighted" to play an English woman. "I thought it was an amazing, ambitious story," she said. (Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Bernard Orr)
The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College, The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matter to you in your college or grad school search.

While most private colleges carry a higher sticker price than many public schools, that cost can vary.

On average, tuition and fees at private colleges cost $33,635 in the 2016-2017 school year -- more than a 3 percent increase compared with last year's average, according to data reported to U.S. News by 725 ranked private schools in an annual survey.

[Explore how private colleges are increasing tuition discounts.]

Students paying full price at New York's Columbia University pay the most of any private school, forking over $55,056 in tuition and fees for the 2016-2017 school year. Columbia wasn't included in the list of most expensive private schools last year because it didn't provide these cost figures to U.S. News.

The University of Chicago, the sixth most expensive private college, also wasn't among the 10 most expensive private colleges last year. The school raised its tuition by nearly 5 percent from $50,193 in 2015-2016 to $52,491 in 2016-2017.

The cost of attending one of the top 10 priciest private schools in 2016-2017, on average, amounts to $52,828 in tuition and fees for those who pay at the full rate.

On the other end of the spectrum, the 10 least expensive private colleges in 2016-2017 charge an average of $10,624 in tuition and fees.

[See which colleges offer the best value.]

Brigham Young University--Provo carries the lowest price tag among private colleges and universities that reported tuition and fees data to U.S. News. The Utah school, which is affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, charges Mormon undergraduates $5,300 in tuition and fees for 2016-2017. Non-Mormon students pay double that amount -- shelling out $10,500 for this academic year, which is still relatively inexpensive compared with the sticker prices at most private schools.

Story continues

But not all schools charge tuition. A small number of tuition-free schools, not included on this list, waive tuition.

Berea College in Kentucky, for example, offers all of its students a tuition scholarship; but these students are charged $570 in fees for the 2016-2017 school year.

[Learn more about tuition-free colleges.]

Alice Lloyd College, also in Kentucky, waives tuition for its students who are from a Central Appalachian state -- Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. But it is included in the list, as students outside the region pay $11,550 in tuition and fees for the 2016-2017 school year.

The tables below show the schools that charge the most and least tuition and fees in 2016-2017. Among the least expensive private colleges, the majority are in a southern state, such as Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana, and half are in the bottom one-fourth of their ranking category.

Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.

Most Expensive Schools

School name (state) 2016-2017 tuition and fees U.S. News rank and category Columbia University (NY) $55,056 5 (tie), National Universities Vassar College (NY) $53,090 12 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges Harvey Mudd College (CA) $52,916 21 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges Trinity College (CT) $52,760 38 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges Sarah Lawrence College (NY) $52,550 59, National Liberal Arts Colleges University of Chicago $52,491 3 (tie), National Universities Amherst College (MA) $52,476 2, National Liberal Arts Colleges Tufts University (MA) $52,430 27 (tie), National Universities Franklin and Marshall College (PA) $52,290 47 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges University of Southern California $52,217 23, National Universities

Least Expensive Schools

School name (state) 2016-2017 tuition and fees U.S. News rank and category Brigham Young University--Provo (UT) $5,300 68 (tie), National Universities Rust College (MS) $9,500 52 (tie), Regional Colleges (South) Tougaloo College (MS) $10,600 RNP*, National Liberal Arts Colleges LeMoyne-Owen College (TN) $10,900 RNP, Regional Colleges (South) Blue Mountain College (MS) $11,212 7, Regional Colleges (South) Alice Lloyd College (KY) $11,550 RNP, National Liberal Arts Colleges Our Lady of Holy Cross (LA) $11,632 56 (tie), Regional Colleges (South) William Carey University (MS) $11,700 41 (tie), Regional Universities (South) Jarvis Christian College (TX) $11,720 RNP, Regional Colleges (West) Park University (MO) $12,130 RNP, Regional Universities (Midwest)

*RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of its ranking category. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.

Don't see your school on the list? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find data on tuition and fees, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.

U.S. News surveyed more than 1,800 colleges and universities for our 2016 survey of undergraduate programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News' data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Colleges rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News' rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The tuition and fees data above are correct as of Sept. 13, 2016.





More From US News & World Report


A young New York girl found refuge from bullying in fashion and has dedicated her clothing line to serving people of all shapes and sizes.

Read: Meet The Court Therapy Dogs Easing The Anxieties of Child Victims as They Testify

Egypt Ufele, 11, of Queens, was subjected to torment by classmates when she was just 5 years old. She was stabbed with a pencil and even had her finger pulled out of its socket, her mom claims.

It was during those times that she would draw and sew outfits for her dolls as solace, in what would eventually transform into her clothing line  "ChubiiLine."

Egypts asthma had recently worsened when the bullying started and doctors had her on multiple medications  including steroids  causing her to gain weight. It was then that the insults about her weight started to pour in, with people constantly calling her chubby.

She was bullied for two years and she kept it from me, said Egypts mom, Reba Perry. She was fearful of being targeted.

Perry told the story of how one day Egypt said she couldnt go to school because they were going to kill her and Perry said thats when she knew there was a serious problem.

Being in the first and second grade, bullying was rough because they had threatened me and called me all types of names. And they were violent towards me so that was kind of scary, Egypt said.

The fifth-grader is now homeschooled, but shes turned her negative into a positive, she said.

ChubiiLine debuted at UBM (Unique Blend Models) Fashion Week in 2015 as part of New York Fashion Week. The brand was devised by Egypt and is aimed toward people of all shapes, sizes, and sexes.

I am trying to show people that no matter what size you are, you are perfect just the way you are, Egypt said. Its helped me get through because it boosted my confidence. People applaud me for my work so I feel like I did something good.

Story continues

Egypt and her mother also travel to schools around the city to speak out against bullying.

Read: Woman, 19, Busted After Illegally Cropping Dog's Ears, Stitching Wounds With Fishing Line: Animal Control

Many young children and adults have reached out to Egypt expressing their appreciation for what shes doing, but she said she never envisioned her clothing line would take off or that she would have such an impact.

"This experience was kind of surprising because I didnt think I was going to get this far. I thought it was just going to be a project," said Egypt. "I feel like Ive changed from the kid who was being bullied to helping others. I hope I can save all the lives that I can."

Watch: How Youngest Woman With Fully Grown Beard Helps Others Accept Themselves

Related Articles:
buffalo wild wings chicken

A month after an investor ripped apart Buffalo Wild Wings' business, the sport-bar offered up some solutions of its own to Morgan Stanley.

Buffalo Wild Wings is going back to the basics, with two short-term fixes to boost sales, according to a research note released by Morgan Stanley on Monday.

The first: half-priced wings on Tuesdays. The weekly discount launched nationally last week, and, according to Morgan Stanley, proved in tests to have a quick impact on sales.

The second solution is a weekday 15-minute lunch guarantee, which the chain introduced in early July. Executives said that the new guarantee is a way to draw customers who may not be Buffalo Wild Wings loyalists, but instead are seeking an inexpensive and convenient deal from any restaurant.

"The two combined are enough in the eyes of management to revitalize sales, getting them back to flat by the 4Q and presumably better thereafter," reads Morgan Stanley's note.

buffalo wild wings

In the future, Buffalo Wild Wings is planning on launching other, fairly standard programs to boost sales, including happy hour and late-night deals, as well as growing its to-go, digital, and (currently nonexistent) delivery business.

However, an activist investor has much bigger changes in mind.

In August, Mick McGuire, the founder and CEO of Marcato Capital Management who has been called a Bill Ackman "protege," released a letter to James Damian, the chairman of Buffalo Wild Wing's board of directors. The letter trashed management and called for the chain to adopt a 90% franchised model by 2020.

Buffalo Wild Wings told Morgan Stanley that refranchising so quickly would not be feasible, and could lead to problems for the chain.

"Refranchising, especially on a deadline, also brings with it operational and franchisee selection risks," writes Morgan Stanley. "A B-Dub is more complex than the typical [quick-service restaurant.]"

Ultimately, both Buffalo Wild Wings management and investors agree that a change is necessary, as sales have slipped in recent quarters. In July, the company reported in the second quarter, sales at company-owned stores open for at least one year fell 2.1% during the quarter, and fell 2.6% at franchised restaurants.

Story continues

NOW WATCH: We did a blind taste test of wings from Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's, and Buffalo Wild Wings  the winner was clear





More From Business Insider


When the rapper and actor Tupac Shakur died on Sept. 13, 1996, TIME called his murder a defining nightmare for a gangsta-rap world whose paranoid royalty seem increasingly compelled to live out the grotesque violence that fills its art.

In the 20 years since, however, his legacy has proved to be about much more than that gangsta-rap world, according to research by Jeremy Prestholdt, an associate professor in the Department of History at UC San Diego. His book, Icons of Dissent: The Global Resonance of Che, Marley, Tupac and Bin Laden, is due out next March. Prestholdt tells TIME that, while researching in East Africa in the years after Shakurs death, he realized that Shakur had a global resonance that was more complicated and more nuanced than what I was familiar with from an American perspective.

As Prestholdt described in a 2009 article for the Journal of African Cultural Studies, Shakur became a widely used symbol during the civil war in Sierra Leone, which began before his death and went on until 2002. He became a lodestar for multiple rebel factions, Prestholdt says, and the Revolutionary United Front used Tupac T-shirts as uniforms. The rapper was likewise a symbol in places including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast and Libya.

Prestholdt explains that there was a convergence of circumstances in the early 1990s that led to this situation. Hip-hop had become a globally popular art form, and he was recognizable all over the world. There was a post-Cold War sense of disillusionment, a loss of meaning, which Shakur was able to capture. His message about systemic oppression and poverty appealed to many, even those whose experiences were very different from his. And, of course, there was his headline-making sudden death at the height of his career.

Prestholdt posits that his death helped make him a symbol of possibility, of life cut short as well as righteous violence and courage, invincibility, resilience [and] a form of masculinity in many different places around the world where people faced violent trauma, from South Africa to the South Pacific.

Story continues

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

That symbolism has only increased in the past two decades.

Tupac has become more and more a mythlike figure since his death, Prestholdt says. Thats consistent across very different socioeconomic, very different national environments.

But that myth has also changed, as some of that post-Cold War alienation has faded.

One of Prestholdts arguments is that, in order for someone who has become a symbol to remain one, the symbolism has to evolve over time. In some ways, the violent end that helped establish Shakurs legacy has become less and less a part of his story, especially in the United States.

He was vilified during his life by lawmakers and others and then you fast forward to the recent past and you have his poetry being used in Powerade commercials, you have the Vatican in 2009 using his music on their MySpace page, Prestholdt says. The social relevance of his lyrics has taken on prominenceas, for example, in the musical Holler If Ya Hear Mewhile the parts of his life that were seen more critically at the time have tended to fall away from view.

He has become a voice for people who feel alienated, who feel marginalized by political or social systems, and I think the fact that he, in the minds of listeners or fans. really gave voice to their sense of alienation or their grievances, is what continues to make him such a powerful and resonant figure, Prestholdt says. People feel like hes speaking directly to them and hes narrating their experience.

Read TIMEs 1996 coverage of Tupac Shakurs death, here in the TIME Vault: What Goes Round
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand has recorded about 200 cases of Zika since January, the health ministry said on Tuesday, making it a country with one of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in the region. It was the first time Thailand's health ministry has confirmed the number of Zika cases this year. The announcement comes a day after health experts called on Thailand to be more transparent in reporting the Zika threat to the public after health officials played down risks from rising infections of the mosquito-borne virus. Health officials have expressed concern that disclosing information on Zika, which is linked to serious birth defects, would damage Thailand's lucrative tourism industry. "Since January, we have recorded about 200 cases and over the past three weeks, we have confirmed an average of 20 new cases per week," Ministry of Public Health spokesman Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai told Reuters. "The number of cases is stable," he said, without giving further details. Island city-state Singapore reported its first locally infected Zika patient on Aug. 27 and since then, the number of reported infections has soared to more than 300. Malaysia and the Philippines have also reported cases. The virus, which is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, has been circulating in Asia for years. The lineage of the virus circulating in Asia is different to the one in the Americas, researchers say. The level of population immunity to the lineage of Zika in Asia remains unknown, according to the World Health Organization. Suwannachai urged the public not to panic and reiterated a message aimed at reassuring tourists. "People shouldn't be scared to visit provinces affected by the Zika virus," Suwannachai said. Zika infections in pregnant women have been shown to cause microcephaly - a severe birth defect in which the head and brain are undersized - as well as other brain abnormalities. The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last year in Brazil, which has since confirmed more than 1,800 cases of microcephaly. Thailand has found no cases of microcephaly linked to Zika and it is monitoring about two dozen pregnant woman and about six who have given birth with no complications, the health ministry said. In adults, Zika infections have also been linked to a rare neurological syndrome known as Guillain-Barre, as well as other neurological disorders. The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947. (Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Highly anticipated is an overused term for new vehicles, but the descriptor certainly applies to General Motors new all-electric car, the Chevrolet Bolt EV. Except we havent really been waiting for it all that long. The anticipation has only lasted 20 months so far, measuring from when Chevrolet first showed a concept version of the car at the 2015 Detroit auto show. Since then, GM debuted the production Bolt EV at the beginning of 2016, divulged most of the cars technical details, and, last month, let us drive a prototype Bolt just outside the borders of the companys Michigan proving grounds. Now, a few months before the Bolt is scheduled to go on sale, weve had the chance to drive a Bolt EV in real-world conditions in California to test its driving range.

The anticipation surrounding the Bolt EV has a lot to do with two claims that GM made when it first showed the concept in January 2015: a starting price of around $30,000 and a driving range of 200-plus miles on a single charge. Confirming that first number will have to wait a bit longer, until Chevy finalizes the price, but its worth noting the caveat that the $30,000 estimate is the price after tax credits, including the federal $7500 incentive. But the secondand perhaps more importantnumber, the range, now has been officially certified by the EPA at 238 miles.

Oh, the Places Youll Go

Eager to prove that the Bolt really will go that far on a single charge, Chevrolet planned out a route from Monterey to Santa Barbara, California, that spanned approximately 240 miles on coastal highways. The route included elevation changes and higher cruising speeds, conditions that do not typically favor electric cars, which do best in stop-and-go situations that make the most of their regenerative-braking capability. (Chevrolet claims that about 40 miles of the EPA-rated range is attributable to regen adding energy back into the battery while the car is underway.)

During our day with the Bolt, we did not drive in an overly aggressive manner, nor did we hypermile. Most of the time, we stayed out of the standard Drive setting and kept the car in its Low mode, which increases the amount of regenerative slowdown you get when you lift off the go pedal. (More on that later.) Temperatures were in the 60s for the first half of our route, so we left the fan blowing without activating air conditioning; as we drove farther south, the temperature rose, and we set the automatic climate control to 72 degrees.

Story continues

The results speak for themselves: After driving 238 miles, we arrived at our destination with the range estimator displaying 34 miles remaining. No complicated math was required to see that the Bolt clearly can far outperform Chevys initial estimate. Other drivers on the same route achieved varying numbersone vehicle finished with a range indicator simply flashing Low rather than displaying a numberbut each of the four Bolts on our drive completed the tall task. Well go ahead and brag that we won, with our car showing the most remaining range at the end of the route, despite one wrong turn that added a couple of miles to our journey.

Screens Galore

Helping to keep track of available range is a useful gauge prominently displayed on the 8.0-inch digital instrument cluster screen. The number in the middle represents the cars best estimate for how much farther it can travel before running out of juice. This number is flanked by maximum- and minimum-range estimates. As you drive more efficiently, a green bar rises from the middle number to indicate that youre trending upward toward the maximum range. Use up more energy, and a yellow bar stretches down toward the minimum range number to indicate a downward trend. The spread between the maximum and minimum numbers narrows as you deplete the battery further. For example, our fully charged car displayed a main range estimate of 225 miles at the start, with a maximum of 265 and a minimum of 184 miles; when we finished the route, the main number read 34 miles, with a maximum of 40 and a minimum of 27.

Range anxiety in the Bolt happens on a different scale than in most other EVs. With less than one-fourth of battery capacity remaining, the range display can sometimes turn a somewhat alarming shade of orange, the sort of color that in another EV might prompt you to find a charging station posthaste. But in the Bolt, youre likely to have 30 or 40 miles of range remaining when this happens, giving you plenty of time to run a few errands before needing to find your next charge point. Speaking of which, GM does not quote total charging times, instead saying that a 240-volt charger will add 50 miles of range in less than two hours, and a 480-volt quick charger can add around 90 miles of range in 30 minutes. However, the Bolts 7.2-kW onboard charger (the Tesla Model S with the optional 20-kW capability can charge almost three times faster) means it will take roughly 8.5 hours to fully recharge its 60-kWh battery. A portable 120-volt charge cord is included, but that option wont replenish the battery pack with any urgency.

The central 10.2-inch infotainment screen offers additional metrics useful for EV driving and charging. One screen shows how much energy is being used by certain vehicle functions, including Driving and Accessories, Climate Settings, and Battery Conditioning (which only becomes an issue in extreme temperatures, when the car has to use energy to regulate the temperature of the battery pack). Another screen is a sort of driving scorecard that rates things like driving technique, climate-control usage, and terrain. All information on the two screens (both of which are engineered by South Korean electronics giant LG and designed by GM) is clearly and cleanly presented, and the responsive central touchscreen also includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto capabilities. Chevy promises more details are forthcoming about certain built-in navigation capabilities, connectivity features, and optional active-safety systems.

Making Sacrifices

While the Bolts technology palette is attractive, we were a bit disappointed with its interior quality, which is more befitting a $20,000 car than a $30,000 one. Chief engineer Josh Tavel admitted that priorities for the Bolt dictated more of a focus on innovative tech than it did on soft-touch dashboard materials and the like. That would be an understandable compromise, even with an abundance of hard plastic trim, some of which is poorly grained, but the interior is typically one of the least expensive component sets in a car, making this seem like a punt. Clear forward visibility, a spacious back seat with plenty of leg- and headroom for two adults, and a deep rear-cargo well help offset the interiors subjective shortcomings.

As we found during our initial prototype drive, the engineering team was not willing to compromise on the Bolt EVs dynamics. While developing the ride and handling of the Bolt, Tavelan avid SCCA racersays that he discouraged benchmarking other electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf and the BMW i3. Instead, he set loftier targets by seeking out great-handling cars for around $30,000 (which he doesnt name) regardless of propulsion system. The effort paid off: The Bolt isnt just good to drive for an electric car, its good to drive, period. Sure, its cornering limits are relatively low because of its low-rolling-resistance Michelin tires, but the ride is satisfyingly firm without being harsh, and body motions are well controlled. Steering is heavily weighted, but not overly so, and has good on-center feel.

We would tell you all about the action and feel of the Bolt EVs brake pedal, which uses regenerative braking for the first bit of its travel before activating the hydraulic brakes, but we hardly touched it during our drive. Several different configurations for the regenerative braking system enable single-pedal driving in nearly every scenario. The standard Drive setting enables the lowest amount of regen, while pulling the shifter back for Low ratchets up the amount of regenerative braking when you lift off the accelerator pedal, to the point where it can bring the car to a complete stop. In either Drive or Low, a helpful paddle behind the left steering-wheel spoke provides on-demand regenerative capability for when you want even more aggressive deceleration. Introduced on the current Chevy Volt, this paddle is a bit more useful in the Bolt EV because it is able to bring the car to a complete stop; the car also will hold itself at a stop if you slow to 0 mph in Low, while Drive mode allows low-speed creep similar to the familiar behavior of a car with a gasoline engine and a conventional automatic transmission.

The gradual and progressive feel of the right pedal (no gas pedal or throttle here) allows for precise adjustments that make it easy to get used to this single-pedal driving style. A Sport mode button on the dashboard increases pedal sensitivity for the perception of better responsiveness, but it actually doesnt provide any additional thrustwhich isnt exactly insane or ludicrous. Tavel said that the main reason the Sport mode is included on the Bolt EV was because of positive feedback received from Volt owners about a similar mode in their cars.

Quick, Not Fast

If the Bolt can indeed get from zero to 60 mph in about 6.5 seconds, as Tavel claims, it will match our best result for the BMW i3, the quickest entry among todays current crop of relatively accessible EVs, which excludes expensive machines like Teslas Model S and Model X. The Bolts torquey electric motor (200 horsepower, 266 lb-ft of torque) can easily chirp the tires from a stop and provides plenty of instantaneous power for slicing through city traffic or passing on the highway. Top speed is 90 mph, a relatively pointless measurement for most EV drivers. Even so, our inner hooligan wonders how far the Bolt could go while maintaining that velocity.

The waiting game for the Bolt EV will continue for a bit longer, as GM wont divulge an exact date when the car will reach dealerships. Although wed previously heard that deliveries would begin before the end of 2016, the company now says only that production will start by the end of this yearwe surmise that it now intends to start shipping cars to customers sometime in early 2017. The Bolt will be assembled at GMs Orion Township, Michigan, plant, with several partsincluding the electric motor and battery packmanufactured by LG in South Korea. The Bolt EV is said to be available in all 50 states, but not all of Chevrolets approximately 3300 dealerships nationwide will choose to apply for Chevys new electrification certification that will allow a given dealership to sell the Malibu hybrid, the Volt, and the Bolt. (Around 2200 dealerships are currently certified to sell the Volt.)

Chevrolet hasnt yet detailed any sort of pre-ordering process for the Bolt, but we wont be surprised if high initial demand creates a waiting list. The Bolt EV is worth the wait for a few extra months. Its a well-rounded, eminently usable, forward-thinking small hatchback thats satisfying to driveand perhaps the most compelling argument yet for the staying power of the mass-market electric car.

Specifications >

VEHICLE TYPE: front-motor, front-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door hatchback



ESTIMATED BASE PRICE: $37,500



MOTOR TYPE: permanent-magnet synchronous AC, 200 hp, 266 lb-ft; 60.0-kWh lithium-ion battery pack



TRANSMISSION: 1-speed direct drive



DIMENSIONS:

Wheelbase: 102.4 in

Length: 164.0 in

Width: 69.5 in Height: 62.8 in

Passenger volume: 94 cu ft

Cargo volume: 17 cu ft

Curb weight (C/D est): 3600 lb



PERFORMANCE (C/D EST):

Zero to 60 mph: 6.5 sec

Standing -mile: 17.0 sec

Top speed: 90 mph



FUEL ECONOMY:

EPA city/highway driving: 128/110 MPGe




Lord Stanley stopped by the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC? to light up the days of the kids and their parents on Tuesday. The National Aviary? brought along a REAL penguin... and another *real* penguin,? Brian Dumoulin was there to take pictures with the cup and the children. || See more 4 the 412 videos at Facebook.com/4the412
Enjoying a secure retirement means more than just hitting your investment goals. It also requires planning ahead for certain financial obstacles that could potentially make your later years a little less golden.

Having the right kinds of insurance can go a long way toward helping you combat potential blips on the radar. The difficult part is figuring out which type of coverage you need and how much is enough.

Understanding the problems each insurance policy is designed to protect against can help you decide where they fit in the financial picture. If you're not sure which kind of coverage is best, here are four policies you may want to consider.

Start with life insurance. Life insurance is designed to cover burial expenses and pay off any debts owed by your estate when you die. If you're married, however, it can serve a different purpose.

Rather than having to draw down savings you leave behind, your spouse can use the proceeds from a life insurance policy to cover basic expenses and maintain their standard of living. That would leave any retirement nest egg the two of you have saved intact until it's actually needed.

[See: 6 Reliable Dividend Stocks Paying Out for 100 Years or More.]

The challenge is deciding how much coverage you'll need. Eric Meermann, a certified financial planner with Palisades Hudson Financial Group's Scarsdale office, outlines two ways to approach it.

"The first option is the income replacement method," Meermann says.

In this scenario, you're creating a lump sum figure that represents how much you expect to earn over the rest of your life, assuming a normal life expectancy.

The second method focuses on what's needed to maintain a specific standard of living.

"Rather than looking to replace every dollar you would have earned, you look at the lifestyle you want to provide for your beneficiaries after you're gone," Meermann says.

The goal is to make sure your policy provides your spouse with enough money so that they can still enjoy a comfortable retirement even when they no longer have your income.

Story continues

Death isn't the only eventuality you need to plan for. While the possibility of dying before you've had a chance to build up a sizable retirement fund is less than encouraging, a disability has the potential to be just as devastating.

If you become temporarily or permanently disabled, your ability to work may be hindered.

That's what makes disability insurance so important, particularly for someone who's rearing a family, says Robert Chewning, head of wealth insurance services with Wells Fargo Private Bank.

"Your paycheck is what pays the mortgage, puts food on the table, contributes to a 401(k) and pays for a college education," Chewning says. "Disability insurance is meant to insure against a disability preventing you from working and earning a living."

If you're planning to get disability coverage, it isn't something you should put off until you're older, says Nahum Daniels, a certified financial planner and independent wealth advisor in Stamford, Connecticut.

"Disability insurance is something anyone under 65 years of age should strongly consider," Daniels says. "Having this coverage could mean the difference between financial survival and financial catastrophe."

Long-term care insurance can shield against high medical costs. Poor health can present a substantial threat to retirement savings if you require long-term care.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services puts the average cost of a nursing home stay in a semi-private room at $6,235 month. That's more than $72,000 per year that could siphoned away from your retirement accounts. Long-term care insurance is designed specifically to help you avoid having to spend a lifetime of savings on medical care.

Jimmy Lee, a certified fund specialist and CEO of Las Vegas-based Wealth Consulting Group, says that long-term care insurance is critical to maintaining your retirement lifestyle, especially for married couples.

"This insurance provides money to pay for home health, assisted living and nursing home care," Lee says. "I've seen people who care for their sick spouses lose years on their retirement trying to take care of their loved ones."

[See: 7 Pharma Stocks and the Prognosis for Profits.]

Daniels cautions people to remember that long-term care services aren't covered by Medicare or disability insurance. Because of that, he believes long-term care insurance is extremely important for most retirees.

"You need to ask yourself, 'If my spouse were to need care for 18 months, would there be any money left for me when I'm finished paying for that care?'" Daniels says.

Insuring yourself against personal liability is also important. It seems silly to think that a car accident could send your retirement skidding out of control but depending on where you live, it could be a reality.

In a handful of states, California most notably among them, individual retirement accounts aren't protected against creditor lawsuits to the same degree as a 401(k) would be. If you're sued following an accident, it's possible that some of your retirement savings could be attached to satisfy a judgment.

Purchasing an umbrella liability insurance policy can insulate you against big losses, says Timothy G. Wiedman, a now-retired associate professor of management and human resources at Doane University in Crete, Nebraska.

"Imagine being the only driver who receives a traffic ticket after an accident in which several people are injured," Wiedman says. In the worst-case scenario, he says, a million-dollar lawsuit could be a possibility.

According to Wiedman, the typical coverage in an automobile policy wouldn't provide nearly enough to cover the claim, which means your personal assets would be at risk to make up the difference.

An umbrella policy could be a lifesaver if the liability limits of your homeowners or automobile policy are exhausted after an accident.

Be clear about what you need and what you don't. Insurance can be an ace in the hole but it not's the right fit for every situation, says Lee.

"If someone has enough assets to replace lost income in a long-term disability or premature death situation, then they're self-insured," Lee says.

Chewning suggests asking yourself the right questions as a means of gauging what your insurance needs truly are.

[See: 7 Stocks to Buy for the Baby Boomer Retirement Wave.]

"Have you considered the financial impact if your parents don't have long-term care? How important is it to leave a legacy to your children and grandchildren?" Chewning says. "Have you created wealth that's exposed to estate taxes and transfer costs? Have you built a successful family business you hope will stay in the family? These are just some of the milestones in many people's lives where proper insurance planning may mitigate the financial impact of real-life events."

Rebecca Lake has been writing about investing, finance and small business for nearly a decade. Her work has been featured on The Huffington Post, Fox Business and Investopedia. Follow her on Twitter @seemomwrite.
Categories Health & Wellness

Everyone knows that exercise is good for you. But, it turns out that exercise isnt just good for you, its the best medicine. (Sorry, laughter.)

According to new research, even small amounts of movement have been proven to solve a bevy of medical issues, as well as prolong life and keep you looking younger longer, Time magazine reports. Sounds like Sister Madonna Buder is on to something.

There is no pill that comes close to what exercise can do, says Claude Bouchard, director of the human genomics laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana. And if there was one, it would be extremely expensive. (BRB, gonna go for a quick run.)

Most of you are probably already on top of your daily workout routines, but maybe this new research will change your mind next time that Gilmore Girls binge-a-thon is calling your name?

Photo: Kate Shill Gardner by Tim Gibson for Well+Good

1. It helps you age more slowly

Exercise has been shown to lengthen lifespan by as much as five years, Time reports, but it also slows down the actual aging of cells. How do researchers know that? By looking at telomeres, which are the protective caps on your DNA, and as Cameron Diaz explains in The Longevity Book, they shrink as you get older. But a recent study showed that exercise increases levels of a molecule that protects telomeres, which may keep your cells (and you) in a more youthful state.

Photo: Tamara Pridgett by Tim Gibson for Well+Good

2. It gives you gorgeous skin

Ever notice that perfect, no-blush glow you have right after your outdoor run? Thats not just in your headyour skin is proven to look better post-sweating. According to Anthony Hackney, an exercise physiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, aerobic exercise revs up blood flow to the skin, delivering oxygen and nutrients that can improve skin health and help wounds heal faster: Thats why when people have injuries, they should get moving as quickly as possible, Hackney says. Not only to make sure the muscle doesnt atrophy, but to make sure theres good blood flow to the skin.

To see all four ways exercise can improve your health check out the full article here.
At many colleges and universities, there are resources available through the school to help students cover the cost of pricey textbooks.

Milwaukee student Mitchell Arman, 21, a rising senior at Marquette University, says he cut his textbook costs in half by taking advantage of different services and resources available through his school.

"I wanted to figure out a way to spend less, so I reached out to some of the different services that Marquette had, and figured it out that way," says Arman, who found a scholarship just for books and supplies through his university. "My biggest piece of advice is to do a little exploring."

Arman says that through various cost-saving strategies, such as book rentals, scholarships and checking out e-books from the library, he was able to keep his annual textbook expenditure to around $400.

But most students spend much more each semester. A recent survey by the College Board found the average cost of textbooks and supplies at both private and public colleges exceeds more than a $1,000 a year.

Learn [how to save money when buying college textbooks.]

To curb expenses, here are a few college resources students can use to save money on textbooks.

1. Financial aid awards: Many schools include the cost of paying for books in their award package, says James Nondorf, dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of Chicago.

In a recent survey of more than 4,700 college students from 132 different schools, Student Public Research Interest Groups found that nearly 30 percent of students used financial aid to pay for their textbooks. That means nearly 5.2 million undergraduates spend more than $1.5 billion of financial aid money on books each semester, which translates to around more than $300 on average per student, according to the study.

But for some students, the amount received through the financial aid package isn't enough.

"It's not out of the question to have a $200 or $250 book," says Nat Smitobol, college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a New York City-based higher education consulting firm.

Story continues

If there's a shortfall in covering the cost to pay for books, college planners recommend students to appeal to their financial aid office.

"Keep receipts from your textbooks. If your total textbook costs exceed the financial aid office allowance, you can appeal to them to increase the cost of attendance to cover the difference," says Mark Kantrowitz, vice president of strategy for Cappex.com, a college and scholarship search website.

2. School emergency funds: "We have something called the student emergency aid for kids who have an unmet significant expense, whether it's for a suit for an interview, medical expenses or books that are beyond what we gave in the financial aid package," says Monica Inzer, dean of admission and financial aid at Hamilton College. "They can come to us, and we will give them grants."

Smitobol, the consultant, says colleges with larger endowments are more likely to include money for students for incidentals such as buying an expensive book or a winter coat.

Read [four ways to get free college textbooks.]

3. Online sources: College experts say one of the fastest-growing ways that students are saving on textbooks is borrowing e-books and using school libraries for finding online open sources. An open textbook, for example, is a book that's been funded, published and licensed to be used and distributed freely.

Some schools not only try to make more e-books available to students through their library systems, but also encourage faculty to use open sources in their curriculum.

"We have a racehorse librarian who works individually with faculty to try to talk to them about open source methodology," says Stephanie Dupaul, an enrollment manager at the University of Richmond. "So she consults individually with faculty members who want to look at reducing costs to their students."

4. Discounts through bookseller partnerships: Several universities are now teaming up with national booksellers to offer discounts and price reductions to students.

Purdue University--West Lafayette, for example, partnered with Amazon.com Inc. last year to give 30 percent discounts to its students on textbook rentals -- the partnership includes Amazon drop-off and pickup locations on campus for book orders. Other schools -- University of California--Davis, Texas Tech University and the University of Massachusetts--Amherst, to name a few -- have similar arrangements with the national bookseller.

Find out [10 things you can buy with student discounts.]

This type of university partnerships isn't only limited to Amazon. The University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee launched a pilot project last year with eCampus.com, giving its students up to 60 percent off on textbooks.

"We're noticing it more at the larger universities, but that's not to say that the smaller liberal arts colleges aren't also participating," says the IvyWise consultant.

5. Scholarships for books and supplies: Arman says he used Marquette Central, a website for student jobs and financial services, to find a $1,000 scholarship to cover the cost of books and supplies for his final year.

The communications major advises students to learn more about available resources on campus and says: "If you're serious about reducing costs, go to your campus's union and ask questions."

Trying to fund your education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for College center.





More From US News & World Report


High school guidance counselors are a unique and valuable resource -- in fact, their primary responsibility is to help students excel. If you are beginning your final year of high school, this is a great time to ask your counselor these five pointed questions.

1. What remaining graduation requirements do I need to meet this year? Even if you are a near-perfect student, graduation is not a guarantee until you complete all your requirements. And if you have requirements remaining, the beginning of your senior year is the correct time to determine this fact.

This is a worthwhile question to ask even if you believe you have finished all of your requirements. Especially at high schools with many electives or specialized classes, it can be challenging to puzzle out what counts toward graduation. Your counselor, however, is likely an expert in this area, and can give you peace of mind as you head into the home stretch.

2. What college-level skills should I work on this year? Counselors are dedicated to helping their students succeed in high school and beyond. Not only are they fantastic resources for admissions information, they also have insight into college-level success.

While there is some crossover between high school and college success, college is often much more rigorous, with a greater degree of self-direction -- and you pay for the experience. A great counselor can assist you in recognizing where you are already strong and where you can improve.

3. How can I begin transitioning from high school to college? Doing well in college is about more than just academic skill. For instance, if you are moving far from home, you will face the challenge of living on your own.

Your parents will not set your schedule or t ake you to club meetings or sporting events. You will need to do this while also exploring a new social circle and attending class. Even if you are matriculating into a school close to home, you will be much more independent than ever before.

Story continues

[Check out 10 ways to prepare for your freshman year of college.]

This can, frankly, be a shock to the system, but your counselor can help you find ways to ease your transition. What he or she suggests should be tailored to your needs and personality.

If you are normally shy, your counselor may ask you to reach out to future classmates via social media. If you love sports, he or she may encourage you to research intramural leagues at your future home.

4. What is one piece of general advice you would give to all graduating seniors? Even though each student is unique, there are certain similarities among high school experiences. Your high school counselor has worked with many students and likely has some perspective on post-high school life.

This is an open-ended question, so your counselor may have a scripted answer that he or she gives to all graduating seniors. Or your guidance counselor may tailor this piece of advice specifically to you.

"Remember that college ends" is one such piece of advice. While this is obvious, it is easy to forget to live purely for the moment.

[Read highlights of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings.]

5. What career advice can you share? College does end, and you will one day have to take that degree and parlay it into an employment opportunity. Senior year may be too early to plan your career, but it is not too early to begin thinking about it.

Simply earning a college degree will not guarantee you a place in the world, although it does help a great deal. Many of the steps toward a great job start while you are in college.

Internships, independent study and professional connections will all play major roles in your future career. Your high school counselor can assist you in creating a plan to maximize the value of your time in college.

There are numerous lessons you can learn from someone whose only job is to help you succeed. A guidance counselor may nudge you, but he or she will not grade you. Take advantage of this help, and position yourself to launch from your senior year of high school into college.

Brian Witte is a professional SAT tutor with Varsity Tutors. He earned his Bachelor of Science from the University of Washington and holds a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.
A dizzying array of new fusion-heavy sounds will be showcased at the sixth annual Bogota Music Market (BOmm), which kicks off Tuesday (Sept. 13) in Bogota, Colombia, and runs through the 16th. The annual marketplace/conference/music festival, put together by the city's Chamber of Commerce, has been growing steadily, with more than 1000 local acts registering to attend and vying for a coveted showcase spot. This year, 26 acts will perform live during the week. Here are five to watch. 1. Aerophon Crew: Frank Takuma and Jefrey "Ruzto" Martinez rap hard over piano riffs, trombones and sax. But what we like most is what they rap about: hope, dreams, ambition, tempered by love of family without gratuitous or corny messaging. Aerophon's reality (the name is a blend of aerosol - they sing to graffiti - and microphone) has struck a chord. Break-out hit "Mi familia" (My family) has over 2.7 million views on YouTube. 2. Systema Solar: These guys may be indie but they're no rookies and it shows. This decade-old troupe from Colombia's Atlantic coast is a kind of tropical/folk collective that mixes dance beats with traditional rhythms (think a less electronic Bomba Estereo). Check out their latest single, "Rumbera" (Party Girl), which celebrates the spirit fo women of all stripes and colors, to an irresistible beat. 3. Burning Caravan: This sextet's music is weird and funky, a mixture of art rock and Cuban trova (in the lyrics and vocals) and klezmer music with its use of clarinet and accordion. It's a mish-mash but you'll stop and listen. "Las historias de los hombres" attempts to bring all this together in a single track. Ambitious, but it works. 4. Los Rolling Ruanas: This quartet of guys from the surroundings of Bogota is both self-deprecatingly funny and engaging. Clad in their "ruanas" (think a Colombian poncho), they vacilate between folk and 50s rock with more than a touch of good humor. Geeky but endearing, these Rolling Ruanas will get you dancing. 5. Sango Groove: This brass and percussion group from Cali mixes funk, jazz and Pacific Coast rhythms in a complex, well-executed sophisticated mix that can be both danced and listened to.
IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Khang & Khang LLP (the "Firm") announces a class action lawsuit has been filed against K12, Inc. ("K12" or the "Company") (LRN). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between November 7, 2013 and October 27, 2015 (the "Class Period"), are encouraged to contact the Firm prior to the September 19, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline.

If you purchased shares of K12 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. Until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. You may choose to take no action and remain a passive class member.

The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, K12 issued false and misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: that K12 published misleading advertisements about students' academic progress, parent satisfaction, graduates' eligibility for admission into the University of California and California State University, class sizes, the individualized and flexible nature of K12's instruction, hidden costs, and the quality of the materials provided to students; that the Company submitted inflated student attendance numbers to the California Department of Education in order to receive additional funding; that K12 was open to potential civil and criminal liability due to these practices; that K12 would likely be forced to end these practices, which would have a negative impact on its operations and prospects; and as a result of the above, the Company's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When the true details emerged, shares of K12 fell in value, which caused investors harm.

If you wish to learn more about this lawsuit, or if you have 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 some jurisdictions.

Contacts

Joon M. Khang, Esq.

Telephone: 949-419-3834

Facsimile: 949-225-4474

joon@khanglaw.com

SOURCE: Khang & Khang LLP
A young boy stricken with cancer has achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a police officer, cleaning up the streets in upstate New York.

Read: Boy, 9, Battling Rare Kidney Cancer Becomes Honorary Member of Harvard Football Team

Colin Hayward Toland, 9, became Ithaca's newest honorary police officer last week, a major milestone for a brave boy who has had to deal with many setbacks in his short life.

Colin was celebrating his second birthday in 2009 when he collapsed. He underwent emergency surgery, where doctors found Ependymoma, a brain tumor that affects the brain and spinal cord.

"We thought he was only hanging on to life," said Ian Hayward, Colins father.

The toddler underwent treatments of high dose chemotherapy and radiation for about a year. In 2010, after his third brain surgery, Colin has miraculously recovered, finding the strength to eat and speak again.

"Its amazing that he graduated from kindergarten at the appropriate age" said Tamiko Toland, his mother.

Read: Woman Who Withheld Cancer Medication From Autistic Son, Killing Him, Wont Face Retrial

Despite the encouraging news, Colin's cancer returned in 2015. After six brain surgeries, Colins parents have been worried about his quality of life.

"Were just pursuing to make his life more satisfying. We dont think about it said Colin's parents.

And it came with great satisfaction that Colin met Ithaca police chief John Barber at a community event to talk about his dreams, and among them was becoming a police officer.

Barber felt inspired by the boy, and made arrangements for him to become an honorary officer in his department.

After everything, hes willing to help others and if that doesnt inspire you, I dont know what does, Barber said.

Colin is proudly answering phones at the department, and taking his duties very seriously.

Story continues

"I was really realy happy, even though I have a brain tumor," Colin proclaimed. "I'm very happy to be here."

WATCH:Town Celebrate Christmas Early For Boy Dying of Cancer

Related Articles:
We need this abandoned Mary Poppins Disneyland ride to become a reality right now

We need this abandoned Mary Poppins Disneyland ride to become a reality right now

If youre obsessed with all things Disney, its likely that youve already dreamed about what it would be like to work as part of the team of Disney Imagineers, also known as the dreamers, the doers, the masterminds of magic, the talented people behind everything that makes Disney so magical. Maybe youve dreamed about what it would be like to actually design a Disneyland ride.

If so, youre going to absolutely love this ride design created by a former Imagineer who oversaw the construction of some of the most popular Disney theme park attractions, including Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain and Indiana Jones Adventure, according to The Huffington Post.

Tony Baxter sat down with Kristin Rodack, the director of D23, the official Disney fan club, and told her that when he was a student in college, he designed a Disneyland attraction based on his favorite Disney movie, Mary Poppins.

I thought Mary Poppins was, like, the very best Disney live-action animation film Id ever seen, and I thought, its just a natural to do a ride at Disneyland. Maybe if I do a concept idea, I could get hired, he explained.

Baxter showed off his incredible vintage blueprint for the ride, which he called Mary Poppins Jolly Holiday, explaining that guests would ride horses on a carousel, before the horses jumped off into a show. He modeled it after Walt Disneys Carousel of Progress ride, which features a rotating theater, and his idea would take guests through Marys journey in the English countryside, meeting the penguins, and ending over the rooftops of London, before landing back on the carousel.

Baxters design caught the eye of Disney producer Bill Anderson, but Anderson encouraged Baxter, who hadnt yet enrolled in art school, to continue his training and offered him some valuable advice. Baxter got his degree three years later, and joined Disney shortly after graduating. He worked as an Imagineer for 47 years.

Story continues

His Mary Poppins-themed ride never came to fruition, but Baxter believes it could definitely still work. I think, you know, it would be still a great ride. I think everyone would still like this one, he says.

giphy (13)

Of course, with the forthcoming Mary Poppins sequel starring Emily Blunt, the timing is practically perfect in every way for Disney to actually create this ride!

Fans of the magical nanny can now meet her when in the parks, and also catch a glimpse of the iconic film in The Great Movie Ride at Disneys Hollywood Studios, but this ride would be the spoonful of sugar on top of the sweetest movie ever.

Disney, were begging you: Please make this happen.

The post We need this abandoned Mary Poppins Disneyland ride to become a reality right now appeared first on HelloGiggles.
By Maiya Keidan

LONDON (Reuters) - Hedge fund Crystal Amber Fund Ltd on Tuesday said Britain's vote to leave the European Union had created opportunities for its brand of activist investing, although it remained cautious on the market outlook.

Activist funds such as Crystal Amber search for companies they believe are undervalued, take a position in the stock and then agitate for change at board level to try and increase the value of the firm.

Faced with a challenging market and economic outlook after Britain's late-June referendum on European membership, Crystal Amber said, as it reported full-year results, that it believed company management may be more open to engaging as a result.

"We believe the fallout from Brexit has created a number of activist opportunities as companies are forced to adjust to inevitable changes," it said.

The activist manager, which has 151 million pounds in assets, said its top-10 positions include Britain's largest listed residential property owner Grainger and oil exploration company Hurricane Energy .

Its most profitable investment for the year was a 5.7 percent stake in James Bond filmmaker Pinewood Group, which earned Crystal Amber 6.1 million pounds after a takeover deal by Aermont Capital.

Some of Crystal Amber's investments, such as in STV Group and Northgate , lost money for the hedge fund over the year.

(Reporting by Maiya Keidan, editing by Louise Heavens)
Paris (AFP) - Imbolo Mbue's rise to the top of the literary tree is a true fairytale of New York.

The 33-year-old Cameroonian writer, who was born in a house without running water or electricity, became the talk of the town when she got a million-dollar advance for her first novel, "Behold the Dreamers", in 2014.

Two years later the book that Mbue wrote at the kitchen table of her tiny New York apartment -- often while breastfeeding her babies -- is getting the kind of reviews that authors dream of.

The New York Times called it a "dissection of the American dream that is savage and compassionate in all the right places".

The critical reception on the other side of the Atlantic -- where it was published simultaneously in French -- has been equally warm, with Le Monde hailing "the discovery of a formidable writer".

"I started the book when my first child was a baby," Mbue told AFP, "and I rewrote it while nursing my second.

"I perfected the art of holding them with one hand and writing with the other," she laughed.

"People afterwards said, 'How wonderful for you!' And I said, 'Oh, no it wasn't. Really, you don't understand!'"

Mbue's tale of a migrant from her oceanside hometown of Limbe who lands a job as a chauffeur for a Lehman Brothers executive -- just before the bank's collapse triggered a global financial crisis -- is a bittersweet tale of great expectations slowly shattered.

- Folly of the 1 percent -

Despite the latitude that the subject matter gave her to skewer the people who drove the world into recession, Mbue's immigrant heroes take a surprisingly tender view of the follies of the privileged one percent of US society they serve.

This gives the book what the Washington Post called "a kind of angelic annunciation of hope, which ultimately makes her story even more poignant".

Like her characters Junde Jonga and his wife Neni, Mbue arrived in America at 17 with little more than her wide-eyed innocence and doggedness to declare.

Story continues

Still Mbue had reason to feel embittered by the crash. The crisis cost her the good job in market research she landed after working herself through a master's degree selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.

With "so many Americans also out of work", she found it hard to get work and started writing.

"I wanted to be a college professor but my husband said only I could tell this story.

"It's funny because he didn't actually read the book until months after it was sold. Then he asked, 'What is it about?'"

Instead of sending her manuscript to any old agent, Mbue went straight to Susan Golomb, who represents Jonathan Franzen, one of America's most admired novelists.

- Age of Trump -

"I spent three years pursuing her," she recalled. "I stalked her basically. She finally read it and I rewrote it and then she rejected me again, before finally saying OK.

"I don't give up easily," she said.

Despite her success, Mbue is under no illusion about the American Dream in the age of Donald Trump.

"The odds are against you in America as an immigrant. I hope people realise this. Washing dishes or working in a cab, you get stuck and exhausted.

"You don't come to America to fail, but you have to have a lot of weapons to succeed.

"I've done some tough jobs," Mbue added, "but writing and raising children are the hardest things I've ever done."

"I am not the sort of person who would chose this path (as a writer). I have that immigrant mentality of wanting stability. I cannot just think of myself."

So despite her new-found fame, Mbue is not leaving her "very small" apartment. "I am superstitious. I had so many good things happen there I don't want to move. I am all cramped in there with screaming children, but I think if I move maybe my mojo will go away."
By Manolo Serapio Jr MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine miners facing more mine suspensions under an environmental review backed by President Rodrigo Duterte have stepped up their criticism of the process, questioning the inclusion of anti-mining activists in the review teams. The world's top nickel ore supplier has halted operations of 10 mines, eight of them nickel, for environmental infractions, and the government has said more suspensions will be announced this week. The crackdown is aimed at enforcing stricter environmental protection measures, with Duterte warning the nation could survive without a mining industry. But miners have labeled the review a "demolition campaign". The Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, which groups 21 of the country's 40 metallic miners, said it had "trouble appreciating" the inclusion in mine audit teams of groups such as Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM), which translates to Alliance To Stop Mining. "Why are they part of the audit team when they can hardly be expected to be impartial?" said Chamber spokesman Ronald Recidoro. "Our members are fairly confident that they have complied with the technical and legal requirements." ATM groups non-governmental organizations, church groups and academic institutions working to protect Filipino communities and natural resources threatened by large-scale mining operations, according to its website. The mining industry has powerful opponents in the Philippines, led by the influential Catholic Church, following past environment disasters and the displacement of local communities. 'UNACCEPTABLE' Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Regina Lopez, who has said open-pit mining is madness, said she had committed to involving civic groups in the audit teams along with government experts. "Miners need to upgrade their operations so that people don't suffer," Lopez told Reuters, adding that issues such as silt build-up on rivers, fishponds and rice fields around mining sites were "unacceptable." "The problem is that mining here has not followed rules." ATM's partners in local communities took part in the audit across the country, said Jonal Javier, advocacy officer for the organization. They told the audit team what to look into and submitted the public's complaints against mines, he said. The suspension of nickel mines in the Philippines and the risk of more closures lifted global nickel prices last month to a one-year high above $11,000 a tonne, although the metal has since eased to just above $10,000 a tonne. Nickel is used to make stainless steel. The Chamber's Recidoro said four of its members had been affected and the operations of all four remained suspended despite having addressed environmental violations. "How long is this suspension? Because an indefinite suspension is tantamount to a cancellation," he said. The Philippines' top gold mine, run by Australia's OceanaGold Corp's, expects a positive outcome from the audit, chief executive Mick Wilkes told Reuters in an email. (Reporting by Manolo Serapio Jr.; Editing by Richard Pullin)
Last year, the Hungarian government made clear its hesitance about accepting refugees when it ordered police to use tear gas and water cannons against families of asylum-seekers who tried to cross into Hungary from Serbia.

Now, ahead of a Friday meeting in Slovakia when European leaders will meet to determine how the European Union can best handle the refugee crisis moving forward, Luxembourg has a message for the conservative government in Budapest: Its time to leave the EU.

Hungary is not far away from issuing orders to open fire on refugees, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said in an interview published by German daily Die Welt on Tuesday.

According to Asselborn, Hungarys treatment of refugees amounts to a massive violation of EU values, and should result in Hungary either being suspended from or forced out of the government bloc.

Hungarians will vote in an Oct. 2 referendum to determine whether or not they want to accept future EU quotas to house refugees. Prime Minister Viktor Orban vehemently opposes the quotas, and is urging citizens to vote in favor of the October referendum.

On Tuesday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Asselborns comments reinforce his earlier reputation as an intellectual lightweight. He then went on to call his counterpart in Luxembourg sermonising, pompous, and frustrated, and a classic nihilist who is committed to destroying European culture.

Szijjarto added in the same statement released by his office that EU leaders who push others to share the burden of refugees really mean that Hungary should take on the burden created by the mistakes of others.

Hungary and Slovakia are already bringing the EU to court over a forced relocation plan that requires member states to accept certain numbers of refugees who are currently being held in holding centers where they are waiting to be processed and resettled. According to the Hungarian government, some 17,000 migrants and asylum-seekers have crossed illegally into Hungary this year, prompting Budapest to increase the number of security officials at the Serbian border from 6,000 to 10,000 each day.

Story continues

This summer, Hungary passed a law that allows them to return illegal migrants to the Serbian border if theyre caught within five miles of the border.

Although the Hungarian government has repeatedly defended its treatment of refugees and claims to have the right to decide who lives in Hungary, human rights groups have repeatedly accused the government of violating refugees rights to seek asylum. The October referendum vote will come shortly after a high-level summit at the United Nations intended to solve some of the problems surrounding refugee relocation. But human rights advocates, including Amnesty International, have little hope that meeting will provide any concrete results.

We already know the U.N. summit is doomed to abject failure, while the Obama summit looks unlikely to pick up the pieces, Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said in a statement on Tuesday, referencing a U.S. initiative to ask world leaders to commit to specific refugee resettlement numbers.

Photo credit: ARMEND NIMANI/AFP/Getty Images
Ahoy matey, this Pirates of the Caribbean actor is joining The Mindy Project!

Ahoy matey, this Pirates of the Caribbean actor is joining The Mindy Project!

Pirates of the Caribbean star Jack Davenport, who was most recently seen on NBCs Smash, will be guest starring on a Hulu original!

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jack has a role on The Mindy Projects upcoming season as a potential love interest for the comedys leading lady and namesake, Mindy Kaling (she is also creator and executive producer of the show).

Jack will play an English stage actor by the name of Leland Breakfast who arrives in New York City for his role in a one-man show, where Mindy catches his eye. And with a name like Leland Breakfast he already sounds like Mindys dream man.

As Mindy Project fans know, Mindys love life is complex enoughat the end of season four, she was torn between two potential significant others, one of whom she has serious history with. Itll be interesting to see how Leland fits into that situation  will Mindy even give Leland the time of day?

Fans are torn between Mindys two choices, but have no fear  executive producer Matt Warburton said earlier this summer that shell decide between them in Season 5.

I think people will be excited by how quickly we move things forward with the decision that she makes, Matt said. Were just going to see her really start to take that more seriously. Like, What is the rest of my life going to look like as a single mom with a kid? I dont have an infinite amount of time to figure this out.'

Other guest stars on The Mindy Projects fifth season will include Bryan Greenberg (How To Make It in America), Nasim Pedrad (Scream Queens), and Rebecca Rittenhouse (Blood & Oil).

The Mindy Project returns to Hulu on October 4, 2016. Watch the teaser for the new season below!

The post Ahoy matey, this Pirates of the Caribbean actor is joining The Mindy Project! appeared first on HelloGiggles.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The city council for rebel-held Aleppo on Tuesday rejected any Russian deployment along a road expected to be used to deliver humanitarian aid to the city, saying that it and not the Syrian government must be the party that oversees receipt of the aid. Aleppo, a city divided into separate zones controlled by the government and rebels, is expected to receive aid as part of a U.S.-Russian agreement that includes a ceasefire that took effect on Monday evening. Russia is a major backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has warplanes and troops in the country, while the United States supports some of the rebel groups fighting to topple him. Brita Hagi Hassan, president of the city council for opposition-held Aleppo, told Reuters he had received an aid delivery plan but that it did not contain details of how the operation would proceed. "The presence of the Russian side on the Castello Road is not acceptable due to its lack of neutrality," Hassan said, speaking from Syria via the internet. The Castello Road is the government-controlled road expected to be used for deliveries. He also said that the party supervising the road must not open the shipments, and that they should include fuel, medicines, and flour. Russia's Interfax news agency said on Tuesday a Russian mobile observation checkpoint had been deployed on the Castello road. In a videolink briefing from Aleppo on Monday, deputy head of the Russian reconciliation center in Syria Sergei Kapitsyn said the Castello Road is currently controlled by pro-government forces, but will become a demilitarized zone for the delivery of aid. Kapitsyn also said the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was building a checkpoint on the Castello Road to oversee the passage of aid to eastern and western parts of the city. "To create a demilitarized zone, pro-government troops are preparing to withdraw from the Castello road to the distance laid down in the Russian-American agreement, simultaneously with the moderate opposition," Kapitsyn said. Aid delivery throughout the five-year Syrian conflict has been fraught with difficulties as both sides accuse the other of obstructing deliveries to further their military and political goals. The U.N., which is legally obliged to coordinate with Damascus, has repeatedly criticized the Syrian government for restricting access, especially to besieged areas, and for removing vital items from convoys. The Syrian government said earlier on Tuesday it would reject any aid deliveries to Aleppo that are not coordinated through itself and the United Nations, particularly aid from Turkey. (Reporting by Tom Perry and Lisa Barrington in Beirut and Gleb Stolyarov and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow.)
Paris (AFP) - France's Socialist government clashed with trainmaker Alstom on Tuesday over the company's plans to close a historic plant, throwing into focus the state's policy of intervening to shore up a shrinking manufacturing base.

Alstom, which is 20-percent owned by the state, announced last week it would halt production at the factory in Belfort in eastern France by 2018.

The government swung into action, promising that the factory would be saved, only for Alstom to fire back Tuesday that it would be "impossible" to continue operations at the site.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the plan to close a plant where Alstom built its first steam train in 1880 was "out of the question".

Valls said the government was determined to keep the plant open and was working to generate new orders for a site where 400 people are employed.

Calling for patience, Valls said the government was soliciting public orders and that "a certain number of projects (are) advancing well", with some that may take "a few months before they are finalised".

President Francois Hollande added a pledge that the government would do "all it can to ensure that the Belfort site can keep going... for many years."

But that was not enough for Alstom CEO Henri Poupart-Lafarge, who insisted that the firm had "maintained production at Belfort as long as we could".

A lack of orders "now makes a long-term future for activities of the Belfort site impossible," Poupart-Lafarge said in a message to employees.

Management warned the government, which has a 20-percent stake in Alstom, "about this situation several months ago", he said.

- Painful memories -

With a presidential election looming next year, the tug-of-war over the Alstom factory will bring back painful memories for Hollande.

In his 2012 election campaign, Hollande promised he would keep open an ArcelorMittal steel plant in the eastern town of Florange.

Story continues

When it closed in 2013 despite his efforts, the sacked workers accused the government of betraying them.

The Belfort factory has a similar resonance for an entire region -- the town's slogan is: "Alstom is Belfort, Belfort is Alstom."

Not only was the company's first steam train built there, it also produced the first of the TGV high-speed trains in 1978, riding a wave of national pride at a project that was the envy of the rest of Europe.

To this day, every TGV locomotive is assembled at Belfort.

Cedric Perrin, who represents the town in the French Senate, the upper house of parliament, said the saga revealed France's lack of forward thinking.

"We need to have a real think about our long-term industrial strategy," he said. "When Alstom builds TGVs for the United States or India, it makes them in those countries. When (French train operator) SNCF buys trains, it orders them in Germany," he told AFP.

Indeed, SNCF recently chose German manufacturers Vossloh and Siemens or Canada's Bombardier over Alstom when it placed orders for trains.

A day of back-and-forth ended with Alstom saying it would not take a final decision until negotiations with the government were completed.

But how much room for manoeuvre does the state have in the Alstom case?

"With a 20-percent stake, you can't block a company's decision," said economist Marc Touati.

Although it has often done so in the past, the French state "cannot keep forcing companies to keep a production site open if it is no longer productive", he said.

If the government is to whip up orders for Alstom, it will most likely turn to SNCF, but many experts warn the operator is heavily in debt and facing intense competition.

"If the government goes to SNCF, it runs the risk of making the TGV crisis worse. SNCF's high-speed trains, locked in competition with low-cost airlines and car-share schemes are less and less profitable," economist Elie Cohen told Les Echos newspaper.
We will always want to copy these 19 movie characters short hairstyles

We will always want to copy these 19 movie characters short hairstyles

short hair

At one point or another, weve all looked in the mirror and have had the unquenchable desire to cut off several inches of hair. Such an inclination may come after a particularly bad breakup or when youve reached a point where you desperately need to change something about your life. And when such a time comes and you need a bit of hair inspiration before you urgently book an appointment with your stylist, weve rounded up several movie characters who have the short hair of our salon dreams.

1. Princess Ann in Roman Holiday

During this 1953 film, Audrey Hepburn got her hair cut and still looked like royalty.

2. Amanda Waller in Suicide Squad

Just this year, Viola Davis rocked a short hair look thats as fierce as can be.

3. Susanna in Girl, Interrupted

Though this movie was shot in 1999, Winona Ryders hairstyle is one wed rock in a heartbeat today.

4. Laney Boggs in Shes All That

maxresdefault

Although Rachael Leigh Cook looked AH-MAZING before her transformation for this 1999 film, we have to say: That short hairstyle is all that.

5. Amelie Poulain in Amelie

Audrey Tatou gives this 2001 style some French girl edge.

6. Black Widow in The Avengers

1431391394632

Scarlett Johnanssons 2012 haircut was made for someone superhuman.

7. Patience Phillips/Catwoman in Catwoman

Back in 2004, we had another reason to rock a super (pun intended) short hairstyle  courtesy of Halle Berry.

8. Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction

If anyone needs us, well just be traveling back to 1994 so we can see the introduction of Uma Thurmans iconic hair.

9. Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road

Charlize Theron completely owned her hair (or lack thereof) in 2015 and were not mad about it.

10. Maria in The Sound of Music

Is that the sound of music? Or the sound of someone whos just been inspired by Julie Andrews 1965 hair?

11. Samantha in Sixteen Candles

wgorbxondakwcciwjtep

Molly Ringwald in 1984 is #HairGoals.

Story continues

12. Mako Mori in Pacific Rim

PR06

Rinko Kikuchis edgy look is one weve wanted to copy since 2013.

13. Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs

Were not afraid to break the silence and shout that Jodie Foster knew a thing or two about hair in 1991.

14. Mathilda in Leon: The Professional

In 1994, Natalie Portman looked like a little professional with that hair.

15. Rosemary Woodhouse in Rosemarys Baby

Mia Farrow looked ready to fight a demon baby back in 1968  especially since her hair definitely wouldnt get in the way.

16. Allison Reynolds in The Breakfast Club

breakfast

Aly Sheedys locks in 1985? Wed be more than happy to join that club!

17. Deena Jones in Dreamgirls

An oldie, but a goodie! Were referring to Beyonce in this 2006 film, of course.

18. Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums

Back in 2001, Gwyneth Paltrows Tenenbaum hair was the TenenBOMB.

19. Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsy? Or, the greatest bob known to humankind? You decide while pondering what Carey Mulligan looked like in this 2013 production.

The post We will always want to copy these 19 movie characters short hairstyles appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Miami (AFP) - Alan Gross, the American contractor imprisoned for five years in Cuba before a thaw in relations between Havana and Washington, said in an interview with AFP that he would return to the island "in a heartbeat" despite his ordeal.

Gross, interviewed in Miami, said he still believes passionately in the mission that took him to Cuba -- spreading "connectivity" to the island famous for its lack of internet access.

But he said conditions are slowly improving from what they were even a few short years ago.

"What I was able to observe was that despite foreign citizens coming to Cuba using internet, if a Cubano would walk into a hotel and tried to use the internet they would either be thrown out or arrested," he said on the sidelines of a conference in Miami.

"By June of 2013 all of that changed, the laws changed in Cuba. Internet became legal for all Cubanos," Gross said.

The two-day Cuba Internet Freedom Conference wrapped up in Miami on Tuesday, with Gross one of its key participants. The gathering was sponsored by The Free Cuba Foundation, a US-based group working for democracy on the communist-ruled island.

Cuba freed Gross on humanitarian grounds in December 2014 at the request of the United States, five years after arresting him.

He was arrested for distributing communications equipment to members of the island's Jewish community while working as a contractor for the US Agency for International Development.

Gross denies that he was engaged in espionage, or in trying to spread a political message to Cubans.

"It's very consistent with the better part of my career in enabling people to have connectivity," he told AFP, adding that his work in Cuba involved bringing to the island "only with the technology, no content, no democracy, none of that stuff. Only the technology."

He added that he is heartened that the work he gave up five years of his life for -- the spread of internet access in Cuba and around the world -- seems to be taking hold.

"It's a message that says internet freedom is at the forefront of our thinking now, because so many aspects of our lives are associated with our ability to connect," Gross said.

"What I'm taking away from this is that many more people are now aware how important that vehicle is in order to live fulfilling lives."
Brazil has selected David Schurmanns three-part drama Little Secret to represent the country at the 89th Academy Awards, defying protests from a slew of filmmakers who withdrew their own films from contention after the appointment of film critic Marcus Petrucelli to Brazils foreign Oscar selection committee.

Petrucelli had made remarks on social media denouncing Aquarius filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho and his team for protesting against Brazils then interim government under Michel Temer while competing for the Palme dOr in Cannes.

Brazil has been going through a tumultuous time, as you know, Schurmann said in an interview with Variety. I absolutely loved Aquarius but there was pressure to compare the movie to what is happening in the country  Unfortunately, picking the Oscars in Brazil has fallen into a political trench, which may hurt films like ours, as people are being pushed to choose not the right film to go to the Oscars, but the one with a political angle and agenda.

He stressed that there were eight other members on the selection committee in addition to Petrucelli, presided by director Bruno Barreto, he said, who has been to the Oscars and knows what works best at the Academy Awards.

Inspired by the life of Schurmanns adopted sister, Little Secret, made for $3 million, boasts world-class talent including Central Station scribe Marcos Bernstein, who co-penned the film with Victor Atherino; Perus Inti Briones, a Variety Cinematographer to Watch; and German art director Brigitte Broch, a production designer on Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel and Moulin Rouge! (for which she won an Academy Award).

A record 17 Brazilian films were submitted for consideration this year.

Shame is the least I can say about the team and the cast of Aquarius, Petrucelli wrote on Facebook during the Cannes fest. He later posted: So it was like this: A movie made with public money goes to Cannes to represent Brazil and does not win any awards. Therefore, the lie about the alleged coup detat did not do anything but ridicule Brazil.

Story continues

Given the derogatory remarks Petrucelli made about Mendoncas politics, filmmakers like Anna Muylaert (Dont Call Me Son), Aly Muritiba (Para Minha Amada Morta) and Gabriel Mascaro (Neon Bull) viewed it as a conflict of interest and an attempt to keep Aquarius from repping the country on Hollywoods biggest night. To underscore support for Aquarius, they bowed out of the process. Actress Ingra Liberato and director Guilherme Fiuza Zenha, meanwhile, resigned from the selection committee.

Mendoncas drama, starring Sonia Braga as a widow who defies efforts by developers to force her out of her apartment building, has won several awards on the festival circuit, including a Grand Jury Prize at the Amsterdam Film Festival.

Even if its out of the foreign film race, Aquarius still has a few moves it could make in the Oscar season. The film is set for release Stateside in October, making it eligible in other categories. A robust campaign for Braga could draw on any goodwill left in the wake of this controversy.

Distributor Diamond Films plans a September bow for Little Secret in Brazil, followed by a wider release in November.

Oct. 3 is the deadline to submit foreign-language Oscar entries. The nominations will be announced Jan. 24 and the awards will be held Feb. 26 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Related stories

Oscars: Controversy Erupts Over Brazilian Film 'Aquarius'

Sharon Tate's Sister Calls for 'Aquarius' Boycott: 'It's Extremely Insensitive'

Film Review: 'Aquarius'
Montreal (AFP) - The second of two British exploration ships that vanished during a storied expedition to the Arctic in 1846 has been discovered, submerged but "perfectly preserved" in the Northwest Passage, Canadian scientists say.

The ill-fated HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which were under the command of Sir John Franklin, left the shores of Britain on May 19, 1845, on a mission to discover the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

While the Erebus was located in 2014, the whereabouts of the Terror were unknown until September 3 when it was discovered by scientists from the Arctic Research Foundation, which showed the sunken ship in a video that aired Monday on public broadcaster CBC.

"Resting proud in 24 meters of water, we found HMS Terror... It is perfectly preserved in the frigid waters of the Northwest Passage," foundation spokesman Adrian Schimnowski said in the video.

The three-mast ship, which was built 203 years ago, was found in the same region as the Erebus, the organization said.

"Huge piece of the Franklin Expedition puzzle possibly found at last. Amazing news," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted on Twitter.

The federal agency Parks Canada said in a statement it is "working with our partners to validate the details of the discovery."

The ship was discovered in a bay off King William Island, where an Inuit member of the Arctic Research Foundation spotted a mast piercing the water's surface several years ago.

The fate of the Franklin Expedition didn't become clear until 1859, when a vessel chartered by Franklin's widow Lady Jane came across a somber message on King William Island.

It turns out the sailors became trapped in ice for a year and half, and eventually ran out of supplies.

The message revealed that Franklin and 23 crew members died on June 11, 1847, in unspecified circumstances.

On April 22, 1848, 105 survivors left the ships in an attempt to reach solid ground on foot, but none survived.

In the 1980s, Canadian researchers said the remains of expedition members found on Beechey Island indicated they had died of cold, hunger and lead poisoning from canned food.
EXCLUSIVE: U.S. rights on the Nacho Vigalondo-directed Colossal with Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis starring have just been sold by CAA and Voltage to an unspecified Chinese-based media company. That China-based enterprise, which paid mid-seven figures for the film and is guaranteeing a significant 2017 theatrical release, will be revealed in the next few weeks when it announces its investment in a new U.S. studio.

Hathaway plays a woman who becomes convinced that the power of her mind is connected to the rampage of a giant lizard that has just started destroying Seoul, and that she alone can halt the destruction. Austin Stowell and Dan Stevens also star in the pic, which was written by Vigalondo.

Despite the unusual nature of this deal, it falls in line with what so far has been a most unusual 2016 Toronto Film Festival. This becomes the second high-seven- or near-eight-figure deal for a finished film (Fox Searchlight paid the latter for the Pablo Larrain-directed Jackie late last night), and while finished films are just beginning to find homes, the festival marketplace has seen massive pre-buys. That began with the Focus Features deal for Paul Thomas Andersons film with Daniel Day-Lewis and Lionsgates deal for the Jonathan & Josh Anderson-directed Kin, both deals for negative pickups with budget commitments and back-ends in excess of $30 million; and the $5 million plus $1.5 million in producing fees PalmStar Media paid for the Paulo Coelho novel The Alchemist.

It was clear coming in that the current distributor preference for pre-buys would overshadow finished film deals at the festival, but the latter should begin falling in place over the next few days. Most of the films have been seen, with a potential big one coming today: the George Nolfi-directed Birth Of The Dragon, an acquisitions title whose WW rights availability should be appealing given that the lack of stars is offset by the subject: Bruce Lees famous private brawl with Wong Jack Man, with Steve McQueen the narrator and bridge between the two brawling master martial artists.

Story continues

Related stories

Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver & J.A. Bayona Detail The Magic Of 'A Monster Calls' Moving Grief Parable - Toronto Studio

Morgan Spurlock's 'Rats' To Infest Landmark Theatres For Midnight Screenings

A Lesson In Old-School Attitude From Raoul Peck And 'I Am Not Your Negro' At Toronto's Doc Conference
About 100 anti-pipeline demonstrators picketed outside the world premiere of Deepwater Horizon at the Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday.

The demonstration is against the 1,170-mile Dakota Access pipeline near a Native American reservation in North Dakota. Many protesters chanted Standing Rock, the Sioux tribe thats opposing the construction of the pipeline due to its potential damage to water supplies and ancestral sites, according to CBC News in Toronto.

Protestors of controversial oil pipeline in N Dakota outside the world premiere of "Deepwater Horizon" #TIFF16 pic.twitter.com/4F9IDzYgq7  Stuart Oldham (@s_oldham) September 13, 2016

The protesters began their demonstration outside the Roy Thomson Hall, site of the screening, before moving on through the downtown core area and causing traffic disruptions.

PROTEST:

King St + Duncan St

-Protest has moved

-Now blocking Bay St + Queen St

-Consider alternates

^dh  Toronto Police OPS (@TPSOperations) September 13, 2016

On Sept. 9, the federal government temporarily blocked construction on part of the North Dakota pipeline, acknowledging that complaints from the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribal nations that their concerns had not been fully heard before regulators approved the project.

Deepwater Horizon centers on the massive 2010 explosion that killed 11 men working on the platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Mark Wahlberg plays an electrician on the oil rig. John Malkovich, Kurt Russell, Gina Rodriguez and Dylan OBrien also star.

Story continues

Lionsgate and Participant Media are teaming on the film, directed by Peter Berg from Matthew Michael Carnahans script. In 2011, the companies acquired feature rights to the New York Times article Deepwater Horizons Final Hour, written by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul.

Producers are Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson and David Womark.

Related stories

Toronto: French Sales Agents and Producers Expand Business Abroad

Spain's Carlos Saura on Recovering the Song and Dance of his Childhood

Toronto Film Review: 'Deepwater Horizon'
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The mission to merge Yahoo's assets with AOL and Verizon's will lead to "some job changes" according to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. Armstrong told the crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt 2016 in San Francisco that synergies within Yahoo and AOL's operations will inevitably lead to some job changes but stressed that the deal itself was "not about job cuts." Armstrong and Verizon executive vice president Marni Walden said the company is focused on a strategy that leverages advertisements across all platforms, utilizes partnerships with strongest competitors and strengthens media brands such as the Huffington Post and Yahoo news. "Google is search, Facebook is social, we're going to be brand," said Armstrong. (Reporting by Deborah M. Todd)
When President Obama gave his blessing to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reids decision to invoke the so-called nuclear option, he said the effort by Republicans to block his nominees was unprecedented.

"Today's pattern of obstruction, it just isn't normal," Obama said. "I support the step a majority of senators today took to change the way that Washington is doing business."

However, thats only partially true.

Looking at all of Obamas nominees across his administration, he has suffered unprecedented levels of obstruction, according to the Wall Street Journal. But when it comes to judicial nominees  the process that sparked Senate Democrats to approve the nuclear option on Thursday  hes really just suffering from a historically negative trend going back more than two decades.

According to congressional data, former President George W. Bush actually had a lower percentage of circuit court nominees approved during his time in office than Obama.

And when it comes to the amount of time it takes for circuit court nominees to get approved, Bush and Obama are actually in surprisingly close company, with Bush faring slightly worse. (See chart)

Obstruction of judicial nominees first became a regular practice during President Clintons time in office, and the amount of time it takes for a nominee to be approved skyrocketed during George W. Bushs presidency.

According to a May report from the Congressional Research Service, President Obama had 71.4% of his circuit court nominees approved during his first term, which is slightly better than George W. Bushs 67.3% level of success during his first term.

President Obama also didn't fare the worst when it comes to district court nominees. During his first term, 82.7% of Obamas district court nominees were approved, George H.W. Bush had 76.9% of his nominees approved.

Interestingly, H.W. Bush is the only president during this period who had fewer court vacancies at the end of his first term than he did at the beginning. However, Obama is the only president who suffered an increased vacancy during his first term without more court positions being created.

Story continues

But in recent years, its the amount of time it takes to get a nominee approved where the most radical change has taken place.

For example, during Reagans first term, it only took 45.5 days for one of his nominees to get approved. That number escalated only marginally over the next 20 years. But by the time George W. Bush was in office, the number skyrocketed to 277 days. Obama has fared slightly better than Bush, with his nominees taking 225.5 days to get approved. But historically speaking, its still a severe departure from most presidencies.

Obamas district court nominees have also suffered from extended confirmation delays. Again, Reagans nominees breezed through, with just a 28-day waiting period during his first term, compared with 215 days for Obama.

So, at the end of the day, Obamas experience may not be quite as unique as he wants the public to believe. But if the nuclear option does reverse the historical trend of obstruction, its a move that future presidents, both Republican and Democrat, will likely be thankful for.
Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentina's energy minister has sold off his shares in the Shell oil company after anti-corruption authorities warned of a potential conflict of interest, President Mauricio Macri said Tuesday.

Energy Minister Juan Jose Aranguren was the chief executive of Shell Argentina before joining the government, and the Argentine Anti-Corruption Office had urged him Monday to divest from Royal Dutch Shell.

They also called on him to recuse himself from any matters involving the Shell Group.

"I have a scoop for you: Aranguren sold the shares," Macri told an impromptu press conference on the sidelines of a major investment conference in Buenos Aires.

"It was his own decision, even though the shares he had did not constitute a relevant (market) position or move the value of shares worldwide," added the president, a center-right former businessman.

The minister had 16 million shares in Shell. They had been the target of lawsuits alleging a conflict of interest.

The government had already barred Aranguren from taking part in decisions directly involving Shell.

Aranguren also has been at the center of a political storm over hikes in gas and electric prices that ranged from 200 to 2,000 percent.

The rate hikes sparked street protests and litigation, confronting President Mauricio Macri with the biggest challenge since he took office in December 2015.

The Supreme Court ordered that the gas price hikes be suspended pending public hearings, which will start Friday. It left in place the higher electric power rates with the condition that they be sent back to a lower court for review.
By Venus Wu and James Pomfret HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in a village once dubbed a symbol of grassroots democracy, residents and Hong Kong media said, less than a week after the elected village chief was jailed for corruption. Pre-dawn police raids turned to violence after least 13 people were arrested in the fishing village of Wukan in the southern province of Guangdong, residents said. Human rights activists in Hong Kong, about a four-hour drive to the southwest, believe the crackdown could represent an unprecedented push to silence Wukan, whose villagers received international attention after an 2011 uprising led to authorities granting direct village-wide elections. While low-level democratic experiments have been tried in villages across China, Wukan's took place in the glare of both domestic and international publicity - and marked a rare moment when Communist Party officials backed down in the face of protest. Villagers, including old people, pelted police with bricks as they advanced with shields, batons and helmets, with clouds of tear gas wafting down the street, video footage seen by Reuters showed. The streets were strewn with bricks and used rubber bullet casements and tear gas canisters. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video. One Wukan resident reached by Reuters by mobile phone said riot police hit people with batons, setting off tear gas grenades and firing rubber bullets at villagers, including old people. He said police had entered the village in their "thousands". Others said between 300 and 400 police were involved in the operation, including house-to-house searches. "The riot police started attacking and shooting at us," he said. "They are still fighting now. We want them to leave." Calls for widespread democracy are anathema to party rulers, who have long feared such sentiment in Hong Kong leeching across the border into southern China. Weeks of "umbrella revolution" protests in the former British colony in late 2014 demanding fully free elections presented Beijing with one of its biggest political challenges in decades. Tuesday's crackdown also follows victories earlier this month by several pro-independence candidates in Hong Kong legislative elections - the first major polls since the 2014 protests. Amnesty International's Hong Kong-based China researcher, Patrick Poon, said this was the most serious crackdown Wukan had seen since 2011, when villagers ransacked the police station and government offices in protest against land grabs and corruption. "The government wants to use this crackdown to set an example and warn other neighboring villages not to stage protests," Poon said. "They are using so much force, it is quite possible the villagers may not be able to say anything for a while." The raids came days after a popular and democratically elected village chief, Lin Zuluan, one of the last of the 2011 protest leaders to remain in office, was jailed for three years on graft and other charges. The sentence outraged many villagers and one said at the time fresh unrest was likely. "POLICE LOCKDOWN" Thousands also took to the streets in June to protest the arrest of Lin, who later appeared on television in what villagers believed was a forced confession. Democratic hopes had all but evaporated ahead of Tuesday's violence, with protest leaders either in detention, in exile, facing arrest or quitting their posts. Another person whose relatives are in Wukan told Reuters the village was now in police lockdown and that internet connection had been severed. Photos on social media purporting to be from Wukan showed villagers with wounds that appeared to be from rubber bullets. One video obtained by the Hong Kong government-funded RTHK shows a loud bang and a flash going off near dozens of policemen huddled in formation behind shields. The official microblog of Lufeng county police, who oversee Wukan, stated in a post on Tuesday the 13 people arrested had been organizing illegal assemblies and used threats to force villagers to join since June 19, a day after Lin was detained. The police microblog said later its operation was supported by the public and order was being restored to Wukan. It also issued a stern warning to people using social media who they said were spreading false rumors on "the so-called Wukan issue", adding that cyber police were investigating. Many microblog posts sharing photos of the faceoff in Wukan have since been deleted. An official from the publicity department of the Shanwei City government, which oversees Wukan, said when asked about the violence: "I'm not very clear. Please ask another department." The crackdown has been extensively covered in Hong Kong media and some Hong Kong pro-democracy groups are planning protests outside Beijing's official Liaison Office in the city. (Additional reporting Hong Kong bureau and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Editing by Greg Torode and Nick Macfie)
Just in time for the Toronto Film Festival, the twin bankruptcy filings, on Aug. 17, of Dutch-Asian sales outfit Fortissimo Films and U.K. distributor Metrodome Group have cast a shadow over the indie film industry. Fortissimo, originally set up in 1991 by Helen Loveridge and the late Wouter Barendrecht, was an indie film pioneer, particularly in Asia, where it discovered such talents as Wong Kar Wai and Tsui Hark. Metrodome and Fortissimo were tireless supporters of the sort of cinema fare - low-budget, cutting-edge, often foreign-language - that Toronto celebrates. Indeed, two of Metrodome's recent acquisitions, Olivier Assayas' Personal Shopper, starring Kristen Stewart, and Francois Ozon's Frantz are screening in Toronto. They were set to roll out in the U.K. via Metrodome this year. Now their fate is unclear.

"It's sad, it's really, really sad, but it's not a shock," says British producer Stephen Woolley (Carol) of the Metrodome collapse, pointing to the shift in the indie industry that has increased competition for theatrical releases while shrinking revenue on the backend. "The DVD market hasn't quite disappeared, but it's definitely not what it was, and people are finding it very hard to monetize downloads [for indie films]."

The rise of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon decimated the DVD sales that were a backbone of Fortissimo's business. It maintains a huge library of art house titles, but the SVOD giants have chosen to cherry pick mostly new films, often signing deals directly with filmmakers and eliminating world sales middlemen like the Amsterdam/Hong Kong-based company.

Read more: Toronto Hot List: 16 Market Titles Generating Buzz

Rikke Ennis, CEO of Danish sales group TrustNordisk, compares losing Fortissimo "to losing an arm or a leg," given its standing in the art house sector as a champion of U.S. indie cinema in Europe and Asia.

Story continues

"It just shows what a challenge the film business is facing," adds Ennis. "We need a serious game-changer soon if we are not to see more cases like these. The worst part is that there is a market out there for art house films. However, they are just not available for the people who want to see them, and it is too expensive to launch in a traditional way."

Fortissimo was hit hard by a shift in the market for classic art house cinema, with fewer buyers and lower prices for all but the small handful of big indie brand names. "There are fewer than, say, 20 to 30 art house films that can be released globally [and make money]," says Chinese director Diao Yinan, whose crime drama Black Coal, Thin Ice won the Golden Bear at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival and was sold by Fortissimo worldwide.

Instead of trying to get bigger to compete with the likes of Focus Features or Lionsgate, Diao believes indies should instead "be small and smart. ... Art house films will always exist, but we have to adjust and adapt [our business models]."

Palme d'Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), whose early work was handled by Fortissimo, has a more philosophical take on its and Metrodome's collapse and the fallout for the industry. "It's very sad, but I guess in the business world sometimes bankruptcy allows a new beginning. I think the people of Fortissimo and Metrodome will persist."

Alex Ritman and Patrick Brzeski contributed to this report.

This story first appeared in the Sept. 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
From ELLE

Dear E. Jean: I want to get rid of my butt implants. I grew up in L.A., where a woman's worth comes from looking like a video girl, and then, after I got the implants because a guy left me for a girl whose body was more S-shaped than mine, I moved to San Francisco, where authenticity is prized. There I met a man who embodied everything I wanted, and wanted to be, and I started feeling like a fake-especially around my new, very anti-plastic surgery boyfriend. When I finally confessed to him that I had implants, he was shocked. He said he "needed time to process."

I didn't hear from him for days, and finally I called him and we got together. He seemed annoyed at just being there. So I said, "Are you going to tell me what you think about the implants?" He said, "You should have them removed." I said that I was considering it, but that every plastic surgeon I'd spoken with had said my ass would be pretty ugly afterward-like, "deflated."

This irritated him even more, and he was like, "So basically you're telling me you can either have a fake ass that might explode, or come out deformed?" He became so disgusted by the topic (saying I'd look "deformed" over and over again, with me apologizing over and over for not telling him sooner) that, long story short, he said his mom would never want him to be with a woman who was "plastic," and he dumped me. I was devastated.

And guess who the man is dating now? I ran into him at a club the other night, and he was with a girl who teaches yoga at a studio I go to. This girl has the biggest, most obvious breast implants-I mean, she went total XXL! What a hypocrite he is!

Okay, I guess I'm not asking you if I should have the implants removed. I'm taking time with my decision, and I'll be fine. I guess what I'm asking is, Why didn't I see this side of him earlier? -San Francisco Transplant

Story continues

SF, My Darling: Give me a sec. I raced through your letter, repeating under my breath, "the worthless, treacherous little swine!," and now I need a moment to sift all the ways you were wronged, Miss Transplant. I'm not just talking about the guy here. (I'll get to him in a moment.) I'm talking about those blasted buttock implants. (In fact, I wish I could address this letter to your derriere and reassure that poor body part that Auntie Eeee will stick by it through thick and thin.) Because, pardon me, I don't wish to give you added hurt, but it wasn't a "side" of Mr. Hypocrite you couldn't see earlier, Miss T-I suspect he was a shallow half-wit from the get-go-it was a side of yourself you couldn't see. The side that turned green when it saw "a girl whose body was more S-shaped."

Now, because the stupid things I've done in my life out of jealousy would make your assplasty look like butterfly-wing dust on a kumquat; because we're all run by subterranean, subconscious forces that foul us up; because women and men are not completely rational beings; and because you, Miss Transplant, are full of contradictions, whipsawed by celebrity booty, living in what Vice called the "era of the unrealistic ass," and unable to see your own motivations, here are:

Auntie Eeee's Nine Implant Rules:

1. Never get them after a breakup.

2. Never get them removed after a breakup.

3. Never get them to entice a man.

4. Never get them to flatten a rival.

5. Never get them to compete for attention.

6. Never get them to look like a woman on Instagram.

7. Never get (or remove) them unless you are 100 percent certain that it will make you look three times smarter.

8. Never volunteer to a chap that you have them. If he asks directly, fine.

9. Never criticize another woman's implants.

So to answer your question, Miss Transplant: You couldn't see the shallow side of Mr. Hypocrite, the "man who embodied everything I wanted, and wanted to be," because you were trying so hard to be like him, and you began disliking the things he disliked. As one of the things he disliked was your "fake ass that might explode," you ended up disliking it yourself. When you start disliking things about yourself, you become blind to beauty and excellence in everything and everyone around you. But I think you've figured that out. Now all you have to remember is that there are as many "fakes" in San Francisco as in any other city, and move on. Good luck! And let me know how you're doing.

Addenda to the Nine Rules: (a) They're not meant for valiant women contemplating reconstruction following mastectomies, accidents, etc., and (b) Auntie Eeee thinks breast and buttock implants are a hustle.

(Indeed, this column has insisted for 23 years that a clever woman who glories in herself and shows up in a pretty frock can be the most powerful creature in the room-and, ha!, sometimes doesn't even need the frock!)

You Might Also Like
Dennis Lockhart, President, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, takes part in a panel discussion in Beverly Hills, California May 1, 2012. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok

Atlanta Federal Reserve President Dennis Lockhart is stepping down.

According to a press release on Tuesday, Lockhart will leave the position on February 28, 2017 after nearly 10 years at the Atlanta Fed.

There's no immediate replacement, and Marie Gooding, the chief operating officer, will step in as interim president if no one is appointed by the time Lockhart leaves.

Lockhart is not a voting member of the Federal Open Markets Committee, and would only have received the rotating position in 2018.

On Monday, he said a "serious discussion" of whether to raise interest rates at the FOMC's policy meeting next week is warranted.

Here's the full press release from the Atlanta Fed:

Dennis Lockhart, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, today announced his intention to step down from his position effective February 28, 2017. After nearly 10 years of service at the Atlanta Fed, Lockhart plans to continue to pursue interests in public policy, civic work and private business.

"It has been an enormous privilege to serve as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta," Lockhart said. "The Atlanta Fed is an outstanding organization, and its employees are steadfastly dedicated to helping ensure the health and stability of our nation's economy and financial system. I am proud of the work we have accomplished together, and I believe the Bank is well positioned for the future."

Thomas Fanning, chairman, president and CEO of Southern Company and chair of the Atlanta Fed's board of directors, said, "Dennis has provided outstanding leadership to the Sixth Federal Reserve District and its communities as well as to the Federal Reserve System as a whole. Since becoming president in early 2007, Dennis has promoted better understanding of monetary policy's role in the economy through extensive interaction with business and community leaders, who in turn have provided him with valuable information on what is happening in the economy and the financial system."

Story continues

In line with the Federal Reserve Act and Board of Governors policy, Fanning will lead a search committee comprised of non-banking members of the Atlanta Fed's board of directors. This committee will conduct a nationwide search, seeking a diverse slate of candidates to replace Lockhart as president of the Atlanta Reserve Bank. The Bank has retained Spencer Stuart, an executive search firm, to assist in this important effort.

There is no set timetable for naming a new president. Should a successor not be appointed by February 28, 2017, the Bank's first vice president and chief operating officer, Marie Gooding, will assume the duties of president on an interim basis until a new president is appointed, in accordance with Section 4 of the Federal Reserve Act.

The Atlanta Fed will host a live webcast on October 6, 2016, at 2:00 p.m. ET to explain the search process and answer questions from the public. For additional information, visit frbatlanta.org/presidentialsearch.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta serves the Sixth Federal Reserve District, which encompasses Alabama, Florida and Georgia and portions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. As part of the nation's central banking system, the Atlanta Fed participates in setting national monetary policy, supervises numerous banking organizations, and provides a variety of payment services to financial institutions and the U.S. government.

NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like using the iPhone 7 underwater





More From Business Insider


The sounds of heels clicking on wood and hands clapping were, as foreseen, ubiquitous in Seville, Spain, during the past week, marking the start of the southern Spanish city's annual Flamenco Biennial. What was not so expected was the sight that met dozens of people, who, called by the sound of acoustic percussion and flamenco guitar, rushed to join a fast-forming crowd on the stone-paved plaza in city's historic center.

A wooden box, named Carmen, was marking the rhythms familiar from the sound made by flamenco dancer's feet and palms slapping together. The patented "Flamenco Machine," as charming as an old-fashioned automaton, or any handcrafted wonder found in an old-time cabinet of curiosities, was being played by its inventor, Ignacio Rodriguez Llinares.

The percussive mechanical box, which can reproduce seven different common flamenco rhythms, is the result of two years of development in Rodriguez's Seville workshop. The artisan, who turned his interest in tinkering with machines into a career after abandoning a long stint as a chef, was sitting in a cafe when he first sketched the idea on a napkin. At the time, he wanted to create a seductive souvenir that could be sold to the city's many tourists that would represent Seville's emblematic relationship with flamenco.

"I was working on my inventions and I needed something that would bring in some income," he explains. He first imagined, and then created and copyrighted, a whimsical wind-up toy that lets amateurs easily play a flamenco rhythm.

That then developed into "Melquiades" - a large crankable wooden box with two wooden shoes on top and wooden balls which pound out the beats. Rodriguez calls it "an automatic musical instrument for Flamenco percussion" that allows musicians to select the bulerias, alegrias, solea or other styles.

Carmen, which Rodriguez calls the "bulerias machine," is more complex, able to play the complete percussion for that fundamental flamenco style, including hand-clapping accompaniment, its upbeats and downbeats, and syncopation.

Rodriguez, who says he has no musical training, has been working with guitarist Jose Torres and other musicians as musical consultants. Rodriguez and Francisco del Campo Cortes -- who has taken on a project manager role -- have begun coordinating collaborations with artists, like the one that kicked off the Biennial, and others that will take place in theater lobbies and other locations until the festival ends on Oct. 2. Several of the machines have been sold at museums in the area.

The small boxes that Rodriguez first devised as souvenirs are also now back in production. The government of Andalusia ordered 10,000 of them to be used as promotional gifts. A limited edition of 1,000 of the "Zapatitos" ("Little Shoes") will also be on sale in Seville during the Biennial. Cortes assures that they wil also soon become available for ordering through the Flamenco Machine web site.
The back of Dakota Fannings dress is turning our eyes into happy hearts

The back of Dakota Fannings dress is turning our eyes into happy hearts

Another day, another perfect outfit from our girl Dakota Fanning.

In todays edition of What Did Dakota Wear Last Night, the actress was spotted out at a Toronto International Film Festival screening donning a black velvet frock with an elegant beaded detail at the waist and shoulders.

Ah, but what could possibly improve this gorgeous dress? A sensational brocade back and sparkling buttons, of course!

*Fans self*

Fanning wore the dress to the premiere of her latest film, Brimstone, a western thriller in which she plays Liz, a mute wife and mother who is being hunted  and courted for forced marriage  by an evil preacher who is also her father. (Are you disturbed yet?!)

The busy actress had another film screening at TIFF this week  American Pastoral, Ewan McGregors directorial debut. In that movie, Fanning plays the daughter of McGregor and Jennifer Connelly who shocks her family by joining the anti-Vietnam War movement.

After hours. A photo posted by Dakota Fanning (@dakotafanning) on Sep 13, 2016 at 8:50am PDT

She recently spoke to Metro News in Toronto about making the film festival rounds. I do enjoy it, she said. There is a fun energy of people getting to see your movie. Most of the time, for the first time. But she also said that the films screened at festivals can become overshadowed by Hollywood wheeling and dealing.

The film festival becomes about bidding wars and this and that, said Fanning. [But] I also try to think about the people who live in Toronto who get excited for the film festival and get to go see films  I try to remember that.

Were anxious to see if either of her films get picked up for wide distribution! (Especially if that means well see more of Dakota on the red carpet!)

The post The back of Dakota Fannings dress is turning our eyes into happy hearts appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Sean Hannity portrait illustration

It was Saturday night, and Sean Hannity found himself at a Rascal Flatts concert.

But the Fox News host did not appear to be paying too much attention to the performance taking place onstage. Instead, he found himself staring into the glow of his iPhone, furiously tweeting at Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review.

"NRO ESTABLISHMENT AND WORSE. WHO DID U WANT? Jeb?? NRO=HRC. Who will NRO endorse?OWN IT RICH! Lol," Hannity tweeted at 9:54 p.m. ET.

"NRO FOR HILLARY ONLINE!!" Hannity wrote in a follow-up tweet moments later.

It was the first time Hannity had sparred with his critics while enjoying such hits as "What Hurts the Most." But for months, the Fox News host has faced the brunt of criticism from conservatives upset about Donald Trump's ascension within the Republican Party.

As the host of one of the top radio shows in the country and with a prime-time television slot on Fox News, Hannity was easily the most visible member of the Trump-boosting media, making him a popular target.

Conservatives have publicly and privately trashed him for supporting the New York billionaire, something they have argued required him to betray the very principles he had for years vowed to protect. More and more, he has found himself on something of an island, punching back at critics who say he has made a colossal mistake.

And in recent weeks, the conservative talk-show host seemed to have had enough, not only moving to declare war on the Never Trump faction of the conservative news movement but also deciding to do so in a scorched-earth manner.

"Months before a single vote was cast, Sean threw his full support, on both his television and radio programs, behind the most liberal candidate in a field of 17 Republicans," John Ekdahl of the popular conservative Ace of Spades blog said Monday. "Ultimately, he realizes this was a gigantic mistake, and now he's attacking those who continue to point it out."

sean hannity

The radio host launched a war of words on several prominent conservative voices last month and, in an extended tirade, told his millions of listeners that he would hold those who refuse to back Trump responsible for Hillary Clinton's policies should she win in November.

Story continues

"You own Hillary Clinton," Hannity said. "National Review, you own it. Glenn Beck, you own it. Ted Cruz, you own it ... She wins, I'm blaming all of you. You own all of her policies."

That was only the beginning.

Though Hannity vowed to stop wasting his breath on the Never Trump movement, he has regularly returned to the topic, breathing fire on its members on a regular basis over the past several weeks.

"Hannity is absolutely out of control and fighting for his life as a person of standing," Erik Wemple, a media critic at The Washington Post, recently told Business Insider. "His embrace of Trump is devoid of principle and reason and integrity, and he has reached the desperate point of lashing out at everyone to boost his own reputation."

sean hannity

Hannity has characterized some of the most prominent names in the conservative media movement as "arrogant," "stubborn," and "stupid" people who are "purposefully distorting" and "creating doubt" about Trump's record.

During his Saturday-night Twitter tirade, the radio host accused Lowry of being a liar. He tossed acid on Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor, mocking the size of Kristol's following on Twitter in an effort to dismiss him as irrelevant. And he characterized National Review, perhaps the most respected conservative publication in the US, as "elitist BS."

"Hannity is picking fights publicly because that's what he thinks his audience wants," Stephen Miller, the publisher of the Wilderness blog and a former contributor to National Review, told Business Insider.

For the most part, Hannity's promise to hold Never Trump forces responsible for a Clinton White House has been dismissed as an empty threat.

National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg and Kristol have joked about it on Twitter:

The puppy dog part is that you think that is super scary. "Oh noes Hannity is holding me responsible!" https://t.co/cKXImN5Gel  Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) September 7, 2016

When did OWN IT! become a pseudo-tough-guy way to clinch an argument? (Asking for an elitist linguist friend curious about demotic speech.)  Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) September 11, 2016

And Pat Gray, the cohost of "The Glenn Beck Program," asked on Facebook, "Who does this guy think he is, Heinrich Himmler?" He was referring to the high-ranking official in Nazi Germany. (Full disclosure: I previously worked for TheBlaze, a property owned by Beck.)

"This is like the last section of 'Revenge of the Sith,' where Anakin's eyes start turning bright red," Gray wrote of Hannity's recent behavior, referring to the "Star Wars" film.

Gray added in another note: "What will being held 'accountable' by Sean Hannity entail, I wonder? No free tickets to ride on the 'Stop Hillary Express 2016?' Will he not call on us for questions when he's Trump's Press Secretary? I shudder to think."

But the attacks from Hannity have deepened an already-existing rift inside conservative media. Moreover, it has risked creating an irreparable divide  something Glenn Beck, one of the country's top conservative voices, has cautioned against.

"If Hillary Clinton wins, if we don't reunite with everyone and have all hands on deck, there's no chance of stopping Hillary Clinton. Zero," Beck said on his radio program. "So do not divide anymore. Please. Don't divide anymore."

Thus far, however, Hannity  who declined to comment for this story  has not heeded such advice. He appeared to mock Beck's call for unity on his radio program and has showed no signs of ceasing his war on the Never Trump movement.

It appears, at least for now, that Hannity seems to think he can punch his way out of his jam.





More From Business Insider


PARIS  Rod Henwood, the CEO of Banijay Groups U.K., Belgium and Netherlands offices, is stepping down from Banijay following the companys recent merger with Zodiak Media.

Henwood joined Zodiak Media in early 2014 and has served as CEO of the U.K., Belgium and Netherlands division, which comprises RDF, IWC, Touchpaper Television, Bwark, Comedy Unit, Zodiak Belgium and Zodiak Netherlands.

Announcing the departure, Marco Bassetti, Banijay Group CEO, said he enjoyed working with Rod since the merger and (has been) discussing collaboratively over the summer how best to organize (their) activities, given the Groups corporate location and Rods own aspirations.

Bassetti noted Henwoods exit was an amicable conclusion to part company.

Henwood concurred, Now that the merger has been concluded and bedded down, and that the business is trading well within a Group whose corporate centre is in Paris, it makes sense from all our perspectives to make a change.

Rod will continue in his current role until the end of November.

Earlier this year, Banijay Group and Zodiak Media merged their catalogs and production units to create one of the worlds biggest independent production and distribution companies with revenues of around $1 billion.

Related stories

Banijay Group Takes Minority Stake in New Italian Shingle Dry

Vivendi's Big Moves To Get Back In TV Game

Zodiak Rights Inks More Deals on Canal Plus' 'Versailles'
(Corrects to non-executive chairman in paragraph 3, adds dropped word he in same paragraph)

By Alastair Macdonald

STRASBOURG, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Former European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has accused his successor Jean-Claude Juncker of "discriminatory" behaviour for opening an ethics probe into his taking a job with U.S. bank Goldman Sachs.

In a letter to Juncker reported by the Financial Times on Tuesday, the former Portuguese prime minister who stepped down as the EU's chief executive two years ago, said the inquiry launched after a public outcry at his appointment was "inconsistent" with treatment of other former commissioners.

Goldman appointed Barroso as non-executive chairman of its international arm in London two weeks after Britons voted for Brexit in June and he said he would advise it on issues arising from the negotiations for Britain to leave the European Union.

Juncker initially made clear his disapproval but said the Commission had no power to intervene. But after the EU Ombudsman insisted last week that there should be an inquiry, Juncker asked the Commission's ethics panel to look into whether Barroso breached a requirement to act with integrity.

According to excerpts of the letter published by the paper, Barroso wrote: "It has been claimed that the mere fact of working with Goldman Sachs raises questions of integrity.

"Whilst I respect that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, the rules are clear and they must be respected. These claims are baseless and wholly unmerited. They are discriminatory against me and against Goldman Sachs.

He said he was concerned that the issue had been prejudged and added: "Not only are these actions discriminatory but they appear to be inconsistent with decisions taken in respect of other former members of the Commission."

Barroso could not immediately be reached for comment.

A Commission spokeswoman confirmed the letter was received by Juncker. He will use his annual State of the Union address to EU lawmakers in Strasbourg on Wednesday to urge voters to renew their trust in the Union following the British rejection of it.

Story continues

EU national leaders plan to deliver a similar message when they meet for a summit in Bratislava on Friday.

INTEGRITY AND PERCEPTION

EU officials have said that Barroso did not break a code of conduct requiring former commissioners to seek permission before taking jobs for up to 18 months after stepping down because Barroso's 10-year tenure as president ended 20 months earlier.

However, the European Ombudsman, citing public outcry that includes a petition started by EU staff, said that a broader requirement to act with integrity, enshrined in the EU treaties, had no time limit. Officials say each such case should be judged on merit and that public perceptions must be taken into account.

Many ex-commissioners have taken roles with private firms, but EU officials say the particular perception of Goldman Sachs in European public opinion has made the move by Barroso damaging just as Juncker is trying to revive trust in institutions.

The Brexit vote and a rise of anti-EU parties across the continent has been partly driven, EU leaders believe, by public perceptions that Brussels is undemocratic and run by elites in hock to global capital. Goldman is associated by many Europeans with the global financial crisis, which pitched euro zone states into severe debt problems and job-destroying austerity policies.

That such a high-profile figure as the former president of the Commission should not only work for Goldman but advise it on how to handle a British exit which has battered confidence in the Union has angered many senior officials in EU institutions.

Goldman Sachs says it respects all laws and the highest ethical standards. It said in July Barroso would help the firm advise clients on dealing with the ensuing "challenging and uncertain economic and market environment".

The Ombudsman has asked that three-person Ad Hoc Ethical Committee should take a view on Barroso's move within weeks. In principle, it can recommend to the Commission that it cut the pension and other rights of former commissioners.

(Editing by Alison Williams)
By Alastair Macdonald

STRASBOURG (Reuters) - Former European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has accused his successor Jean-Claude Juncker of "discriminatory" behavior for opening an ethics probe into his taking a job with U.S. bank Goldman Sachs.

In a letter to Juncker reported by the Financial Times on Tuesday, the former Portuguese prime minister who stepped down as the EU's chief executive two years ago, said the inquiry launched after a public outcry at his appointment was "inconsistent" with treatment of other former commissioners.

Goldman appointed Barroso as non-executive chairman of its international arm in London two weeks after Britons voted for Brexit in June and he said he would advise it on issues arising from the negotiations for Britain to leave the European Union.

Juncker initially made clear his disapproval but said the Commission had no power to intervene. But after the EU Ombudsman insisted last week that there should be an inquiry, Juncker asked the Commission's ethics panel to look into whether Barroso breached a requirement to act with integrity.

According to excerpts of the letter published by the paper, Barroso wrote: "It has been claimed that the mere fact of working with Goldman Sachs raises questions of integrity.

"Whilst I respect that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, the rules are clear and they must be respected. These claims are baseless and wholly unmerited. They are discriminatory against me and against Goldman Sachs.

He said he was concerned that the issue had been prejudged and added: "Not only are these actions discriminatory but they appear to be inconsistent with decisions taken in respect of other former members of the Commission."

Barroso could not immediately be reached for comment.

A Commission spokeswoman confirmed the letter was received by Juncker. He will use his annual State of the Union address to EU lawmakers in Strasbourg on Wednesday to urge voters to renew their trust in the Union following the British rejection of it.

Story continues

EU national leaders plan to deliver a similar message when they meet for a summit in Bratislava on Friday.

INTEGRITY AND PERCEPTION

EU officials have said that Barroso did not break a code of conduct requiring former commissioners to seek permission before taking jobs for up to 18 months after stepping down because Barroso's 10-year tenure as president ended 20 months earlier.

However, the European Ombudsman, citing public outcry that includes a petition started by EU staff, said that a broader requirement to act with integrity, enshrined in the EU treaties, had no time limit. Officials say each such case should be judged on merit and that public perceptions must be taken into account.

Many ex-commissioners have taken roles with private firms, but EU officials say the particular perception of Goldman Sachs in European public opinion has made the move by Barroso damaging just as Juncker is trying to revive trust in institutions.

The Brexit vote and a rise of anti-EU parties across the continent has been partly driven, EU leaders believe, by public perceptions that Brussels is undemocratic and run by elites in hock to global capital. Goldman is associated by many Europeans with the global financial crisis, which pitched euro zone states into severe debt problems and job-destroying austerity policies.

That such a high-profile figure as the former president of the Commission should not only work for Goldman but advise it on how to handle a British exit which has battered confidence in the Union has angered many senior officials in EU institutions.

Goldman Sachs says it respects all laws and the highest ethical standards. It said in July Barroso would help the firm advise clients on dealing with the ensuing "challenging and uncertain economic and market environment".

The Ombudsman has asked that three-person Ad Hoc Ethical Committee should take a view on Barroso's move within weeks. In principle, it can recommend to the Commission that it cut the pension and other rights of former commissioners.

(This version of the story corrects to non-executive chairman in paragraph three, adds dropped word he in same paragraph).

(Editing by Alison Williams)
(The following is FOX Business Charlie

Gasparinos originally published story, reported

ahead of the deal, now updated with latest details.)

German chemical giant Bayer has signed an agreement to acquire U.S. seed behemoth Monsanto (NYSE:MON) in an all cash deal worth $66 billion.

The deal comes after months of wrangling between the two companies. Bayer has agreed to pay $128 per share.

The deal terms includes a significant breakup fee of $2 billion that Bayer would pay to Monsanto if the transaction falls through due to U.S. and/or European anti-trust concerns that analysts say will be raised as regulators take a closer look at the combined companies.

The deal combines St. Louis-based Monsanto, known for its genetically modified crop seeds, and Bayer, the German manufacturer of a wide range of pesticides as well as aspirin. When putting the two together, it creates an agricultural giant with a specialty in seeds and pesticides and annual sales estimated at $67 billion.

The announced merger would be the biggest deal of 2016 and after Monsanto rejected two previous lower offers by Bayer. But even as Monsanto held out for a higher or other bid the reality of its business began to hit home; commodity prices have been hammered in recent years, thus taking a chunk out of Monsantos stock price that traded as high as $125 a share in February of last year. Today it is hovering around the $107 level.

The deal is also a gamble for Bayers chief executive Werner Baumann, who despite some resistance from investors continued to push for the Monsanto transaction. Baumann has made the case to investors and analysts that acquiring Monsanto is key to Bayers growth strategy, though many worried that the company would add too much debt if it paid close to $130 a share.

At a recent Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB) conference in Berlin Baumann said he was very comfortable with financing of the Monsanto acquisition as FOX Business reported.

Even with both parties agreeing on a final price, the deal would still run into regulatory scrutiny, analysts and investors predict. The share price of Monsanto remained stuck well below Bayers offer even as the German chemical giant upped its bid from its initial price of $122 per share in May, indicating that investors believed even a transaction approved by both companys boards would run into regulatory hurdles.

Story continues

The European Commission and U.S. Department of Justice have been keeping a close eye on the negotiations and now that theyve come to an agreement, the federal regulators will certainly take a close look at any possible anti-trust issues that might arise from combining two of the largest companies in this agriculture business.

Those same regulators are currently investigating other potential mergers. DuPont (NYSE:DD) and Dow Chemical (NYSE:DOW) agreed to a deal in December but the closing has been delayed until early 2017 after the European Commission opened an investigation. The same can be said for a possible merger of Syngenta (NYSE:SYT) and ChemChina which are also struggling with global regulators.

Related Articles
Japan can unite craftsmanship with technology

Redwood Comment

It is early on a Tuesday morning and I am once again at Heathrow. I am heading to Japan, where I will be spending some time with the tanners around the ancient leather centre of Himeji.

Japan is a rather forgotten country in the world of the leather making industry, except for its powerful automobile industry which consumes a lot of leather. Volumes of leather produced have been in steady decline, and what was once a top ten producer looked like slipping into oblivion. Imports of luxury items and leather footwear are both very big.

This is why I have not been to Japan for fifteen years despite having been a frequent visitor in the eighties and nineties. We well remember the days before China when the world feared the dominance of Japanese industry in one sector after another, and no one bought computers or electronic gadgets without first visiting Akihabara in Tokyo.

Now, as the economy in China is maturing, what is the future for a leather industry in Japan that in many ways is still deeply based in its very historic roots? Retail in Japan was always highly advanced, and is now getting more attention since the Chinese slowdown makes it likely that Japan will stay as #2 in the world after the U.S as a market for luxury goods. Chinese tourists now make up a big part of the store sales in Japan and we wait to see how the Japanese will accommodate their love of Internet shopping.

Luxury today is moving forward from its curious split into absolute and affordable luxury, and is much more about connoisseurship and personal fulfilment than it is about ostentation. Craftsmanship is back, along with authenticity both of which the Japanese know a lot about. More than most Asian countries, Japan steps away from the binary approach of the west and is often quoted as seeing popular taste and high culture, even rural and urban, as naturally overlapping. With experiences becoming more important, the separation between aesthetics and performance in leather has also become much less meaningful leaving the Japanese perfectly placed to marry their advanced technical skills with their profound capabilities in craftsmanship.

I can see a positive future in many sectors for Japanese leather, as supply lines change and a degree of reshoring takes hold.

Mike Redwood

13th September 2016

mike@internationalleathermaker.com



Follow Mike Redwood on twitter: @michaelredwood



Publication and Copyright of "Redwood Comment" remains with the publishers of International Leather Maker. The articles cannot be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the publisher.
Berlin (AFP) - German pharmaceutical and chemical group Bayer is preparing to increase its takeover offer for US seeds and pesticides giant Monsanto for a fourth time, a report said Tuesday.

Bayer will offer an increased $129 (115 euros) per share for Monsanto, compared with the $127.50 it proposed last week, the German regional newspaper Rheinische Post said in a report on its website.

On September 5, Monsanto confirmed it had received the $127.50 offer and was engaged in "constructive negotiations" with Bayer but was also considering proposals from other parties.

Bayer made a first all-cash offer in May of $122 per share, which Monsanto rejected as "incomplete and financially inadequate". The German company's second offer was $125 per share.

A merger of the two companies would create a new global leader in genetically modified (GM) seeds and pesticides.

As part of its latest proposal, Bayer will also offer to double, to $3 billion, the compensation it would have to pay to Monsanto if the deal is stopped by competition regulators, Rheinische Post said.

The proposed tie-up has rung alarms bells for some farmers who fear the power of the combined company in the market for seeds and pesticides, while opponents of GM food in Europe worry about Monsanto's influence on the continent.
Photo credit: Getty

From Town & Country

Boarding schools are more than just pretty campuses; they're some of the best places to go to school in the country. On a recently released list of the top private high schools in America, the top five were all schools that include a residential element (four also allow day students).

Niche, a company that specializes in data on educational institutions, just compiled its latest ranking of the best boarding schools nationwide. Using data sourced from the U.S. Department of Education, Niche users, and the schools directly, Niche considered categories including SAT/ACT scores, college data, student-teacher ratio, and more.

Here are the top 25 boarding schools on its list:

1. Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts

2. Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire (above)

3. St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire

4. The Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey

5. Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, Connecticut

6. Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts

7. Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts

8. Noble and Greenough School, Dedham, Massachusetts

9. Cranbrook Schools, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

10. The Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Connecticut

11. The Hockaday School, Dallas, Texas

12. Cate School, Carpinteria, California

13. Middlesex School, Concord, Massachusetts

14. The Thacher School, Ojai California

15. Milton Academy, Milton, Massachusetts

16. Lake Forest Academy, Lake Forest, Illinois



17. St. Albans School, Washington, D.C.

18. St. Stephen's Episcopal School, Austin, Texas

19. Hackley School, Tarrytown, New York

20. Peddie School, Hightstown, New Jersey

21. Kent School, Kent, Connecticut

22. Emma Willard School, Troy, New York

23. The Taft School, Watertown, Connecticut

24. Concord Academy, Concord, Massachusetts

25. The Madeira School, McLean, Virginia

To see the rest of the list, head over to niche.com.

You Might Also Like
new york brooklyn ladies

The US Census delivered a stunning report about household income trends on Tuesday.

Among other things, the report noted that median household incomes rose for the first time since 2007 (and saw the largest increase on record, no less), and the US saw the largest annual percentage point decrease in poverty since 1999.

But, notably, the report also included some data on two striking differences between households in metropolitan areas  big cities and their surrounding counties  and households outside of metropolitan areas in the last year.

The two big takeaways are:

1. Metro areas saw real median household incomes surge, while non-metro areas did not.

The US Census notes that households in metro areas saw a 6.0% increase for median incomes from 2014 to 2015 from $55,920 to $59,258, and those of households in "principal cities of metropolitan areas" surged by 7.3% in the same time frame. Also, regions in metro areas but outside the principal cities  mostly suburban households  had the highest median income of $64,144.

Meanwhile, households outside of metro areas  that is, in rural areas or small towns  did not see a statistically significant change in median income. Plus, households outside metro areas had the lowest median income of $44,657.

2. Metro areas saw poverty drop, while non-metro areas did not.

The US Census reported that the poverty rate in metropolitan statistical areas dropped to 13.0% in 2015, down from 14.5% in 2014; the number of metro area residents in poverty dropped to 35.7 million from 38.4 million. Taking a closer look, the poverty rate for those living in metro areas but not in the principal cities was 10.8%, a drop from 11.8% in the prior year, and the poverty rate of those living in principal cities was 16.8%, a drop from 18.9%.

Meanwhile, the poverty rate of those living outside of statistical areas was 16.7% in 2015  a rate that wasn't statistically different from 2014, although, the number of non-metro residents in poverty dropped to 7.4 million from 8.2 million.

Story continues

In short, the data suggest that households in metro areas saw incomes surge and a noticeable reduction in poverty last year, while those outside did not.

NOW WATCH: STIGLITZ: It makes me crazy that everyone gets this wrong about the economy





More From Business Insider


Billboard has announced plans to expand into China with the launch of new music channels that will include print, online, and mobile platforms.

China is the latest market for the music brand to launch in. Earlier this year, the company also announced plans to enter the market in the Philippines and Thailand.

Billboard has partnered with leading Chinese media company Vision Music Ltd. for the expansion.

The venture is in response to the country's rapidly growing music sector, says Billboard.

The latest expansion project is part of a bigger initiative to hold conferences and shows across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
From Esquire

The Birth of a Nation is one of the best films of the past several years. Under normal circumstances, the film would have made all the right moves in the run-up to an Oscar sweep. Splashy Sundance debut and high profile sale? Check. Buzzy new director offering a diverse perspective and promise of a long, prosperous career? Check. A second burst of momentum at TIFF? Check. But, as you likely know, the writer, director, and star of the film, Nate Parker, was charged with and acquitted of rape in 1999. Furthermore, one of the individuals he was charged with has a story credit on the film. One of the film's stars, Gabrielle Union, has openly addressed this issue in recent weeks, and Parker deflected questions about it in Toronto over the weekend. The fact is that all of the above has turned many against the film before almost anyone has seen it. Nonetheless, we are left with the movie. Everybody is flummoxed by what to do with it.

People will decide for themselves, but after seeing it for myself, I will say this: Watch it. The Birth of a Nation is a great and necessary film, essential to understanding both American history and our current moment.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related Story" customtitles="Nate Parker Dodges Questions on His Past" customimages="" content="article.48524"]

The Birth of a Nation is the first film, perhaps outside of Blaxploitation movies like Sweet SweetBack's Baadasssss Song and Foxy Brown, to dedicate itself to portraying black violence against white people as a political good. It is, in a sense, a companion piece to 12 Years a Slave. That movie was a description of straight victimhood: A man was kidnapped, sold into slavery, survived, and escaped. The moral dimension of his story was perfectly clear: His humanity was denied, he insisted upon it nonetheless, and he triumphed. He was good all the way through.

Story continues

'The Birth of a Nation' is the first film outside of Blaxploitation movies to dedicate itself to portraying black violence against white people as a political good.

The story of Nat Turner is vastly more complex and nuanced. Born a slave to a Southern family in 1800, Turner was taught how to read scripture as child before being used in the fields to pick cotton. His learning and his preaching ability proved to have value to his owners: He was rented out to other slave owners to preach the virtues of submission, mostly so that they could feed their slaves less while maintaining their docility. This experience gave Nat Turner a systematic view of the practice of slavery across the South. It also gave him access to the Christian justification of slavery as a "social construct"-he was involved in justifying it.

The nature of violence, particularly of the sexual violence in this film, is one of the sources of the controversy. The gang rape scene has been cut, although the cut-away only makes the audience momentarily hyper-conscious of the controversy. The loathing for black flesh emerges in other scenes of graphic torture. But the slave owners here bear no relationship to parodies, like, say, Calvin J. Candie in Django Unchained. There are sadistic monsters, to be sure, but there are also just white ladies who believe it's the natural order of things that black people do their laundry. The reasonable humanity of the white owners only renders the degradation of slavery more fraught and horrific. The sense of despair is more absolute. Nobody can even conceive of another way.

Photo credit: Todd Williamson/Getty

But the point of The Birth of a Nation is the violence committed by black people. That is the distinction between this film and literally every historical precedent. Nat Turner does not survive slavery-he resists it. Specifically, over a 48-hour period, he rampages across Virginia murdering white people in their beds. This violence is handled with extreme graphicness-pools of blood over white cotton linens, smashed brains over polished floors-and it ends in an orgiastic battle scene in which the slave rebellion is utterly crushed.

The reason that Nate Parker was about to become famous-and before his past alleged crimes became widely known, he was absolutely going to be one of the most important filmmakers of his generation-was that the timing of the The Birth of the Nation could not be better. It was supposedly the film of "the age of Black Lives Matter," which is why it sold for $17.5 million at Sundance. But when you actually see it, it is both more and less than a reflection of the current moment. Black Lives Matter belongs to the tradition of African-American peaceful protest. The Birth of a Nation belongs to a different tradition-the tradition of the embrace of violence. It is a film about the African-American experience as one of direct physical confrontation with the power of the American state. This is a small but vital part of the American story, which has not been told over the course of 200 years. And it is necessary that it be told.

This is a small but vital part of the American story, which has not been told over the course of 200 years. And it is necessary that it be told.

I cannot see how the controversy changes any of the above. Contemporary criticism has become obsessed with the idea that art must be virtuous and that artists, in turn, must be good people to make good art. This assumption has become ingrained even though it's more or less entirely novel. For most of history, it has been taken for granted that great artists were monsters. Vasari, the great sculptor of the Renaissance, was a serial killer who bragged about it. Nobody thought about tearing down his sculptures. Chinatown is a great movie; the man who made it, Roman Polanski, raped a 13-year-old girl. Netflix is not planning on removing Chinatown from its service for that reason.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related Story" customtitles="'The Birth of a Nation' Looks Haunting and Intense" customimages="" content="article.44005"]

It is also essential to remember that film is an evil medium in and of itself. The film that invented the feature as we know it was the 1915 picture The Birth of a Nation, which celebrated the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. One of the greatest female directors of all time, Leni Riefenstahl, who invented the documentary as we know it, made her films for Hitler. Films are not necessarily fascistic, but fascism is always filmic.

We live in 2016-a moment when actual real, true-life white supremacists might well serve in the next Republican government, the man who runs the Trump campaign was the former executive chairman of a media organization that frequently covers "black crime," and 20 percent of Trump supporters disapprove of Lincoln freeing the slaves. At a moment like ours, we cannot afford to turn aside from a film like The Birth of a Nation. The teller doesn't matter enough to reject it. The world needs to see it.

You Might Also Like
Los Angeles (AFP) - Shot on a shoestring with cheap video cameras and unknown actors, "The Blair Witch Project" established the "found-footage" sub-genre, redefining horror and breathing new life into indie filmmaking.

Since its inauspicious release on 27 screens in 1999, the pioneering film from Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick has been hailed as a modern horror classic, despite having no special effects, monsters or gore.

It made use of viral online marketing in a way no movie had attempted before and, despite its tiny $60,000 budget, managed to make $248 million worldwide.

"Book of Shadows," a glossy, special effects-laden sequel that dispensed with the found-footage formula, was rushed out a year later and universally derided, putting the franchise on ice for 16 years.

The original has spawned myriad imitations, with found-footage movies such as "Cloverfield," "Rec" and "Paranormal Activity" saturating the market over the following decade or so.

While each received glowing reviews, these and other franchises racked up numerous lower quality sequels and the sub-genre is now generally thought to be on its last legs.

Enter longtime collaborators Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, the respective director and screenwriter behind "Blair Witch," the latest installment in the franchise, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday.

"The most immediate feedback you can get from an audience is from doing a comedy or a horror film, and we've had a lot of experience with that," Wingard said ahead of the screening of "Blair Witch."

"And that's why with this film, we specifically made it with the mainstream reaction in (mind), where we really wanted to get lots of jump scares, lots of direct audience feedback."

- Darkness falls -

Developed, shot and marketed in secret as "The Woods," the film was preview screened at San Diego Comic-Con in July, with Wingard stunning fans at the last minute by announcing its real title.

Story continues

"Blair Witch" wipes out any lingering memory of "Book of Shadows," serving as a direct sequel to the original and hitting largely the same beats.

Film student James Donahue -- played by James Allen McCune, who was devoured by zombies in season two of AMC's "The Walking Dead" -- investigates the disappearance of his sister, beanie hat-wearing Heather.

Last seen screaming in a spooky cabin in the woods in the original film, Heather might still be alive, a mysterious YouTube video suggests.

James and love interest Lisa (Callie Hernandez), accompanied by school friend Peter (Brandon Scott) and his girlfriend Ashley (Corbin Reid), head into the woods in the Maryland wilderness.

They hook up with Lane (Wes Robinson) and Talia (Valorie Curry), the strange locals who posted the YouTube video, and the forest closes in as darkness falls and things begin going bump in the night.

The grainy found footage formula has been updated by advances in digital technology since the turn of the century, with the hand-held "shaky cam" usurped by GPS trackers, ear cams and even a drone.

- 'Loud death rattle' -

"It was a test of our physical and emotional state on a daily basis. It was amazing," McCune said of the shoot at Sunday's Toronto screening.

"It was probably the most authentic way of getting us into the position of what our characters would be going through. It was very real."

Curry recalled "screaming and jumping in my seat with my sweater over my face" when she first saw the finished product, remembering the terrifying experience of the film shoot in British Columbia, Canada.

"The natural environment was very scary, but Adam and Simon playing tricks on us to scare us out of our minds made it a lot worse, and it was very effective," she said.

Reviews from Toronto have generally been mixed, with some critics praising Wingard's direction, but others noting a more brash tone to the film, while lamenting its lack of subtlety and overuse of jump scares.

The Hollywood Reporter called it a "dull retread," while for Variety, it was "an effectively jumpy, artfully artless follow-up."
BMW Boasts New Better-Range eScooters

The new C evolution scooters from BMW will be unveiled at the Mondial de L'Automobile, in Paris next month.

The two models are the Long Range version and the European version, which meets the requirements for the A1 driving licence. Both feature new generation batteries, as used in the current BMW i3 electric car, significantly extending the range to 99 and 62 miles (160/100 kilometers) respectively.

A new charging cable with a smaller diameter is now included as standard. New optional accessories such as the smartphone cradle also mean there are now many more ways to customize the BMW C evolution.

BMW C Evolution

In the new C evolution Long Range the continuous output is 19 kW (26 hp), some 8 kW (11 hp) more than in the predecessor model. The top speed is 80 mph (129 km/h electronically limited). The new European C evolution has an output of 11 kW (15 hp), with a top speed of 75 mph (120 km/h).

Both versions of the new C evolution are available in the new paint finish Ionic Silver metallic / Electric Green, combined with the contrasting Blackstorm metallic. A new graphic has also been added to the center tunnel trim in the Long Range version. Already available in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, Ireland and China, the C evolution is now also due to be launched in the USA, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

BMW C Evolution

An overview of the highlights:

 Innovative electric drive via drivetrain swing arm with liquid-cooled emotor, tooth belt and planetary gear.

 Intelligent recuperation in coasting mode and when braking.

 Short charging times possible.

 Synergy effects with BMW automobiles and electrical safety according to car standards.

 Hybrid chassis with agile handling due to low center of gravity.

 Powerful braking system with ABS.

 Extensive range of standard features including multifunctional TFT instrument cluster, LED daytime running light, LED turn indicators, several riding modes, reverse assist and Torque Control Assist (TCA).
As a result, non-security interestse.g., economic protectionism and political controlare becoming increasingly intermingled with real security concerns, undermining the legitimacy of essential security oriented policies. Indeed, when governments commingle such interests, it makes it difficult to reject or refine any of their policies that are:

(i) justified on ostensible security concerns but actually based principally on industrial objectives, or

(ii) based on legitimate security interests but unnecessarily trade restrictive.

These trends raise serious economic risks to the global economy.

On IP, the Chamber recommends, "Security requirements should not require forced technology transfer or review of intellectual property (IP) such as source code. Such IP is business proprietary information that is essential to a company ability to innovate and remain economically competitive." As a principle, this seems prudent, however there are good reasons the EU Trade Secrets Directive includes caveats regarding free speech, whistle-blowers or mobility of employees





Essentially, the report argues for less regulation, including IP, in the ICT sector. Readers have been around long enough to know reports by interested parties generally report arguments which are in the interest of said parties. As is always my take on government industrial policy, there is a balance to be struck.





See below for a clip of Friedman discussing globalisation.

History tells us periods of globalisation do not come smoothly. According to economic commentator Thomas Friedman, our current era of globalisation is new, unique, terrifying and exciting. As exciting as it is, such change can be disquieting and the spoils of globalisation are not equally distributed. Against this new political and economic backdrop is a political reaction which, consciously or unconsciously, seeks to reverse this trend. This idea of a policy reaction is the subject of a recent US Chamber of Commerce report, " Preventing Deglobalization: An Economic and Security Argument for Free Trade and Investment in ICT ."Friedman divides globalisation into three phases. The first, starting with the 'discovery' of the Americas, runs from 1492 to 1800, which he argues is the globalisation of. The second phase is from 1800 to 2000, a time dominated by the Industrial Revolution, in whichbecome globalised. In our present era, from 2000, it is thewho joins globalisation. Not everyone wins, and periods of increased globalisation are often followed by periods of political turmoil. The ICT sector is a dominant sector driving change in our current wave of globalisation.The US Chamber of Commerce is concerned that, "some national governments, by intentionally or unintentionally defining security concerns in an overly broad manner, are applying intense pressure on the ICT sector to localize rather than globalize." Their report, written by economic, legal and policy consultants, argues regulations and laws are unduly, and ineffectively, burdening industry without achieving political goals, and with negative economic impact. On the intellectual property side, the report argues this trend includes, "requirements that products contain intellectual property [be] developed domestically, supposedly to make them more secure." These IP requirements, in conjunction with standards, subsidies, competition laws and other levers, lead the Chamber to conclude: The arguments in the report are generally sound, but caveats on the economic analysis are, as is often the case, relegated to the last chapter. It is difficult to unpack the claim that, "If China continues to pursue deglobalization in the ICT sector, economic modeling based on data from the Global Trade Analysis Project and defined shocks to the baseline of Chinese economic data suggests an annual reduction in Chinas GDP anywhere from 1.773.44%, or at least $200 billion based on 2015 GDP. By 2025, this would equate to a reduction in Chinas GDP ofat a minimumnearly $3 trillion annually." While it is likely that increased protectionism will not benefit the Chinese economy ( although Japanese import restrictions/protectionism may have benefited that economy ), the magnitude is debatable.I would have liked to see more consideration of other aspects of globalisation. The report notes, without irony, "Many a Chinese farmers child went from agriculture and garment stitching directly into high-tech assembly over the past decades, and that has pushed down electronics unit costs and generally lifted wages lately in other segments, hence costs of production." And economists wonder why we have such a dismal reputation.
Sofia (AFP) - Bulgaria on Tuesday said UNESCO chief Irina Bokova was still in the running for the UN's top job, dismissing rumours the government was switching its support to a different candidate.

Reports had said Bulgaria wanted to replace 64-year-old Bokova with European Commission Vice President Kristalina Georgieva as the country's candidate to replace Ban Ki-moon as UN secretary-general next year.

The rumours sparked a diplomatic row, with Germany accusing Russia on Monday of falsely claiming that Chancellor Angela Merkel was pressuring Bulgaria to select a different candidate.

But Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said Tuesday that Bokova enjoyed "the full support of the government" ahead of the next informal UN Security Council vote September 26 on the question of the top job.

"But if after the 26th she is not first or second, there will not be the means to pursue this and we will see together what to do," he said in front of reporters.

He denied reports of outside interference in Bulgaria's choice of candidate, saying his government "will not leave that to be influenced by third-party countries".

Bokova was considered an early front-runner in the race, with the UN under pressure to pick the first woman for the job and give preference to eastern Europe, the only region yet to be represented in the post.

But after four preliminary Security Council votes, former Portuguese premier Antonio Guterres -- who also served as UN refugee chief -- is leading, with Bokova in fifth position.

Her candidacy reportedly faces opposition from Security Council member Britain, and even the support from Bulgarian officials has been publicly unenthusiastic.

Conservative Borissov said frankly on Tuesday that if she had not been proposed as a candidate by the previous socialist government in 2014, he would have "already withdrawn her candidacy".

Ten candidates are running to succeed Ban, and the winner could be announced in October at the earliest.

In a vote on October 4, the five permanent, veto-wielding Security Council members -- the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China -- could potentially block any of the candidates, changing the dynamics of the race.
Shoes with cocaine in them

An "unusually heavy" pair of sneakers alerted border agents in El Paso, Texas, that a smuggling attempt may have been afoot.

Laura Valeria Ramirez of Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city just over the border from El Paso, was stopped on the evening of September 5, as she tried to pass through the Ysleta international pedestrian crossing inspection area.

During a secondary inspection, Customs and Border Protection agents noticed that the shoes she was wearing were heavy and that the inner soles were "thick and bulky," according to a CBP release.

After an X-ray revealed an anomaly in the soles, agents probed them, uncovering a white powder that tested positive for cocaine  1.32 pounds in total.

CBP officers will sometimes encounter people who try to smuggle drugs in their shoes, Severiano Solis, the acting CBP El Paso Port director, said in a release. Our attention to detail stopped this drug smuggler in her tracks.

Valeria Ramirez was turned over to special agents from Homeland Security Investigations, and she will face charges related to the attempted smuggling effort.

While her smuggling attempt failed, carrying cocaine in shoes is probably one of the safest ways a smuggler can carry illegal drugs on their person.

In the past, drug mules, as such smugglers are called, have attempted to ingest cocaine rolled up in condoms or balloons, often dozens at a time.

Carrying packets this way is no doubt uncomfortable, but should one of them burst, the mule can suffer an overdose and potentially die. A 24-year-old Brazilian man who ingested 80 packets holding nearly 2 pounds of cocaine died on a flight from Dublin to Lisbon after one of the packets burst in his stomach.

Drugs can also be surgically inserted. A Colombian woman who complained of severe pain was stopped in the Berlin airport earlier this year and found to be carrying 2.2 pounds of cocaine in her breasts.

Story continues

NOW WATCH: Why the price of cocaine in America has barely moved in decades





More From Business Insider


A photo of a 12-year-old boy standing defiant against thousands of anti-gay marchers in Mexico over the weekend has gone viral.

The protest was sparked after Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto proposed constitutional reform that favors same-sex marriage, which has been legalized in Mexico City and nine of the countrys 31 states.

Read: National Anthem Protests on 9/11 Anniversary Draw Ire From Celebrities: 'It's Not Their Moment'

The boy stood in front of a mass of more than 11,000 protesters with his hands outstretched during a demonstration Saturday by the National Front for the Family in the city of Celaya, according to the local newspaper Regeneracion.

The reporter who took the photo, Manuel Rodriguez, said that at first he thought the boy was just playing, but when he asked the boy why he was doing it, responded, I have an uncle [who's] gay and I dont like the hate.

Many have noted that the photo of the boy resembles the "tank man" image shot in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, Rodriguez said.

Many of the parades and rallies against gay marriage were organized by Roman Catholic Church Bishops across Mexico, according to reports.

Read: Vandals Destroy 9/11 Memorial on College Campus: 'If You Try to Destroy It, We Will Rebuild It'

Last week, Andres Cruz, the president of Comunidad Cultural de Tijuana LGBTI, a civil rights and support group that supports same-sex marriage, filed a complaint against Tijuanas Catholic archbishop, Francisco Moreno-Barron, who was said encouraged participation in many of the events.

The protesters "are creating hate, and this leads to physical aggression against people in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex communities," Cruz said in an interview with the LA Times. We have the right to defend our values, Moreno said in a recent homily, as he spoke of his intention to join the march in Tijuana.

Story continues

Watch: Arsonist Sets Fire to Pulse Nightclub Killer's Mosque: Cops

Related Articles:
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f207884%2ffrentefamilia

All across Mexico this weekend, thousands of people marched to protest same-sex marriage, as the country comes closer to passing marriage equality nationwide.

In Celaya, Guanajuato, however, one 12-year-old boy decided to take a stand ... literally, by standing in the middle of the street in hopes of stopping protesters. A powerful photo, captured by journalist Manuel Rodriguez, features the boy standing bravely before an estimated 11,000 protesters.

SEE ALSO: The Rio Olympics are the queerest yet, but coverage still has so far to go

Rodriguez told Regeneracion that he initially thought the boy was just playing, and that the story behind the image was far more innocuous.

But the boy later told the photographer that he was, in fact, trying to stop all "the hatred."

Wow! This photo! 12-Year-Old Mexican Boy Attempts to Block Thousands of Anti-Gay Protesters: https://t.co/qmHip9lA03 pic.twitter.com/uH93PYEONC  Zack Ford (@ZackFord) September 12, 2016

"I have an uncle who is gay and I hate the hatred," he told Regeneracion.

While activists in favor of same-sex marriage marched on Monday, protests against gay marriage, which included Tijuanas new Roman Catholic archbishop, drew huge crowds over the weekend.

President Enrique Pena is attempting to pass constitutional reform that would allow marriage equality legislation nationwide. Same-sex marriage is currently legal in nearly a third of Mexico's 31 states, and in the country's capital city.

Rodriguez's photo, which has since gone viral, has been compared to the iconic photo from the Tiananmen Square protests. In June of 1989, an unidentified man, believed to be part of a student movement, stood before powerful Chinese tanks and bravely attempted to block them.

While the student was unable to stop the tanks and the boy couldn't stop the protesters, photos of their resistance sent a powerful message worldwide.
Brazil has set Little Secret, a drama inspired by the true story of director David Schurmanns adopted sister, and its official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th annual Academy Awards. The countrys Ministry of Film made the announcement today.

Marcello Antony, Julia Lemmert, Mariana Goular, Maria Flor, Erroll Shand and Fionnula Flanagan star in the pic, which Schurmann co-wrote with Victor Atherino and Marcos Bernstein. It tells the story of Schurmann family who live traveling around the world aboard a sailboat and have their lives transformed when they receive the orphaned Kat. By adopting her, the new parents live with the delicate choice of whether to keep a secret that goes beyond adoption. It focuses on the power of love and the fate of two families.

Shot in Portuguese and English, its slated to open November 10 in Brazil with a Latin American rollout to follow. Watch the trailer above.

Little Secret was selected from among 16 national productions. The move was not without some controversy, however, as some filmmakers disqualified their own movies from contention. They were protesting local film critic Marcus Petrucelli being named to Brazils Oscar selection committee. He had railed on social media about Aquarius director Kleber Mendonca Filho and his crew for protesting against Brazils government at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

2016 Foreign Language Film Oscar Submissions

Afghanistan  Parting  Navid Mahmoudi

Algeria  The Well  Lotfi Bouchouchi

Armenia  Earthquake  Sarik Andreasyan

Australia  Tanna  Bentley Dean/Martin Butler

Austria  Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe  Maria Schrader

Belgium  The Ardennes  Robin Pront

Bosnia and Herzegovina  Death In Sarajevo  Danis Tanovic

Brazil  Little Secret  David Schurmann

Bulgaria  Losers  Ivaylo Hristov

Croatia  On The Other Side  Zrinko Ogresta

Cuba  The Companion  Pavel Giroud

Dominican Republic  Flor de Azucar (Sugar Flower)  Pavel Giroud

Egypt  Clash  Mohamed Diab

Finland  The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Maki  Juho Kuosmanen

Georgia  House Of Others  Rusudan Glurjidze

Germany  Toni Erdmann  Maren Ade

Hungary  Kills On Wheels  Atilla Till

Iraq  El Clasico  Halkawt Mustafa

Japan  Haha To Kuraseba  Yoji Yamada

Lebanon  Very Big Shot  Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya

Luxembourg  Voices From Chernobyl  Pol Cruchten

Morocco  A Mile in My Shows  Said Khallaf

Nepal  The Black Hen  Min Bahadur Bham

The Netherlands  Tonio  Paula van der Oest

Norway  The Kings Choice  Erik Poppe

Romania  Sieranevada  Cristi Puiu

Saudi Arabia  Barakah Meets Barakah  Mahmoud Sabbagh

Serbia  Train Drivers Diary  Milos Radovic

South Korea  The Age Of Shadows  Kim Jee-woon

Spain  Julieta  Pedro Almodovar

Sweden  A Man Called Ove  Hannes Holm

Switzerland  My Life As A Courgette  Claude Barras

Tunisia  The Flower Of Aleppo  Ridha Behi

Ukraine  Ukrainian Sheriff s  Roman Bondarchuk

Venezuela  From Afar  Lorenzo Vigas

Story continues

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_qAIqyZK8g&w=970&h=546]

Related stories

Oscars: Spain Selects Pedro Almodovar's 'Julieta' As Foreign Language Entry

In Oscar Seasons To Come, Foreign Voters Will Bring Their Tastes With Them

Oscars: Diverse Governors Awards Honorees Represent 2 Centuries-Plus In Movie Business - Analysis
Brasilia (AFP) - Brazil announced a series of auctions and tenders Tuesday aimed at privatizing infrastructure -- part of new President Michel Temer's plans to revive the moribund economy.

Under the new program, four airports will be put on the auction block this year, along with two port terminals. Tenders in the transport and mining sectors will also be up for grabs, for a total of 25 projects in all.

"This program is naturally aimed above all at the country's economic growth. But as a natural side-effect it will also create jobs," Temer said in a speech in Brasilia.

"The state cannot do it all."

The center-right president was sworn in on August 31 to serve out the rest of predecessor Dilma Rousseff's term, after she was removed from office on charges of illegally manipulating the government's accounts.

The impeachment drama ended 13 years of leftist rule in Brazil amid the worst recession in 80 years.

Temer, the former vice president, is promising to get things back on track for the Latin American giant with pension and labor reforms, lower budget deficits, and a smaller role for government in the economy.

The privatization plan is a key part of his push for a smaller state and should also bring in much-needed cash.

Four airports will be sold to private owners: in Porto Alegre, Florianopolis, Salvador and Fortaleza.

The fuel terminal at the Santarem port and wheat terminal in Rio de Janeiro will also go under the gavel.

Concessions for oil and gas fields whose profits are sagging will also be up for grabs.

The state is also looking to privatize six electricity suppliers.
(Adds details of transaction throughout)

SAO PAULO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Grupo Globo SA, Latin America's largest media conglomerate, agreed on Tuesday to buy out the stake that partner Grupo Folha had in Valor Economico newspaper for an undisclosed sum, as Brazil's worst recession in eight decades forces publishers to shed jobs and sell assets.

In a statement published on the website of newspaper O Globo, Rio de Janeiro-based Grupo Globo said the transaction requires approval from antitrust watchdog Cade. Both Grupo Globo and Grupo Folha had a 50 percent stake each in Valor Economico, which was founded in 2000 to focus on finance and economics news.

Grupo Folha, which is controlled by Brazil's Frias family and owns the country's largest paper in circulation, has cut coverage areas to reduce costs. Last week, employees at the flagship Folha de S. Paulo newspaper were told that several news departments would be folded into three different groups, according to sources briefed on the matter.

Folha's decision to drop Valor coincides with traditional media companies facing more competition from the Internet for news. Newspaper circulation in Brazil has declined every year since 2012, forcing publishers to adopt paywall systems and offering a limited number of stories for free.

At the start of the decade, Valor spent heavily to set up a financial information terminal to cater to bank and fund clients, many of which have had to shrink operations amid a four year downturn. According to a Valor article published in May 2015, Valor spent about 150 million reais ($46 million) to establish the so-called Valor-PRO and online platforms.

Thomson Reuters Corp, the parent company of Reuters News, competes with Valor in providing financial data and news to investors.

Brazil's media market is dominated by families, such as the Marinhos, who control Grupo Globo and command half of the printed editorial market in Brazil alongside the Civita family's Grupo Abril SA.

($1 = 3.2690 Brazilian reais) (Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal and Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Grant McCool)
Beirut (AFP) - With Syria's ceasefire appearing to hold on Tuesday, attention turned to another crucial point of the truce deal brokered by Moscow and Washington: the delivery of desperately-needed aid.

The US-Russian accord calls on all sides to ensure "unimpeded and sustained humanitarian access" to all besieged and hard-to-reach areas, particularly the second city of Aleppo.

Here is a breakdown of Syria's humanitarian crisis and the areas most in need of assistance.

- World's biggest crisis -

- Syria's five-year war has created what the International Committee of the Red Cross calls "the largest and most complex humanitarian crisis in the world".

The war has left more than 300,000 people dead, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

Over half of Syria's population has been displaced and nearly five million people have sought refuge in neighbouring countries. The UN says since 2011, Syrians' life expectancy has dropped by more than 20 years.

- According to the UN, Syria's economy has shrunk by 40 percent and over 13 million people inside the country, including six million children, need humanitarian aid.

Nearly 2.5 million Syrians lack reliable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food, while over 11 million require health care, it says.

- Besieged areas -

- Some 5.5 million people live in hard-to-reach areas where food and medical supplies are running desperately short.

- According to the UN, close to 600,000 people live in 18 areas that are under siege, mostly by government forces but also by rebels.

- Observers say the number could be twice as high if other areas -- like Aleppo's besieged eastern districts -- are included.

- An estimated 250,000 civilians are trapped under a devastating regime blockade in rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Rebels broke a siege of the area in August, but government forces reinstated it on September 8.

- UN figures predate last month's evacuation of thousands of people from the town of Daraya near Damascus after a four-year regime siege.

Story continues

- Syria's UN envoy Staffan de Mistura has warned that other besieged towns were likely to experience the same fate.

- Obstacles -

Delivering aid in Syria is a dangerous, often impossible task.

- The UN said Tuesday it had prepared help for civilians during Syria's ceasefire but aid convoys would not be delivered until security was assured.

"We need to enter into an environment where we are not in mortal danger," UN humanitarian office (OCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke said.

- OCHA says deliveries have been impeded by "conflict, shifting frontlines, administrative and bureaucratic hurdles, violence along access routes and general safety and security concerns".

It has accused the regime of systematically removing surgical equipment from convoys and breaking international law by preventing UN aid convoys from reaching six besieged areas.

- Last week, over 70 Syrian aid groups said they would suspend cooperation with the United Nations, accusing UN humanitarian agencies and their partners of being manipulated by the regime.

- Charity group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) accuses both regime and rebel groups of directly targeting medical facilities and workers for political purposes.

It says the Syrian government has denied repeated requests for access to besieged areas.




Ordinance 514 of 2008 prohibits the use of multiple presentations (i.e. variants) of any cigarette brand. Tobacco companies only have the discretion to pick which variant would remain on the market. For example, for the Marlboro family, Philip Morris chose Marlboro Red, whereas Marlboro Light, Blue, and Fresh Mint were taken off the market (Single Presentation Requirement  SPR; see the summary in para. 108 ff of the award).



Presidential Decree 287 of 2009 mandates an increase in the size of prescribed health warnings on the surface of the front and back of the cigarette packages from 50% to 80%, leaving only 20% of the cigarette pack for trademarks, logos and other information (in arbitral proceedings referred to as 80/80 Regulation; see the summary in para. 121 ff of the award).

SPR had substantially impacted the value of its Uruguayan operations; and



the 80/80 Regulation had wrongfully limited Philip Morris right to use its legally protected trademarks and had prevented their proper display.

In any case, the effects of the SPR were far from depriving Abal [Philip Morris Uruguayan entity] of the value of its business or even causing a substantial deprivation of the value, use or enjoyment of the Claimants investments, according to the standard that has been adopted for a measure to be considered expropriatory (para. 284 of the award).

But the fact remains that the incidence of smoking in Uruguay has declined, notably among young smokers, and that these were public health measures which were directed to this end and were capable of contributing to its achievement. In the Tribunals view, that is sufficient for the purposes of defeating a claim under Article 5(1) of the BIT (para. 306 of the award).

The Tribunal agrees with the Respondent that the margin of appreciation is not limited to the context of the ECHR but applies equally to claims arising under BITs, at least in contexts such as public health. The responsibility for public health measures rests with the government and investment tribunals should pay great deference to governmental judgments of national needs in matters such as the protection of public health (para. 399 of the award).

In particular, Ordinance 466 has the effect of prohibiting multiple presentations of a single trademark, but did nothing to address the misleading presentation of different trademarks, and specifically, did nothing to prohibit the use of so-called alibi brands that used slightly different combinations of colors and designs to accomplish precisely the same results that the single presentation requirement was supposedly intended to prevent (para. 168 of the dissenting opinion).

"The issue in dispute between the tobacco company Philip Morris and the country of Uruguay was the following anti-tobacco legislation, enacted byUruguay during the first term of President Tabare Vazquez (2005-2010), an oncologist by training, who is a fierce campaigner against smoking:Following unsuccessful attempts to challenge SPR and the 80/80 Regulation before state courts, at the beginning of 2010 Philip Morris filed a request for arbitration against Uruguay with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), claiming that:Such claimed deprivations of the IP rights of Philip Morris IP constituted, according to the tobacco company, breaches of Uruguays obligations under the Switzerland-Uruguay Bilateral Investment Treaty , in particular with regard to expropriation (Article 5) and fair and equitable treatment (Article 3(2)), entitling Philip Morris to compensation and damages. While an interim verdict of 2013 had affirmed the arbitral tribunals jurisdiction over the case, the majority of the arbitral tribunal held that the claims brought forward by Philip Morris were unfounded on the merits and therefore it dismissed the action.In respect of Philip Morris expropriation claims, the arbitral tribunal explained:In addition, the arbitral tribunal found with regard to Philip Morris expropriation claim as follows:Concerning Philip Morris allegation that it was denied fair and equitable treatment, the decision of the majority of the arbitral tribunal was significantly influenced by the following considerations:In a dissenting opinion, arbitrator Gary Born rejected the finding of the majority that SPR did not violate the fair and equitable treatment standard. Mr. Born regarded the challenged measure as arbitrary since there is no connection between SPR and its only articulated objective, protecting consumers against deceptive uses of trademarks. He especially focused on the under-inclusive character of SPR:Furthermore, Mr. Born held that the terms of the Switzerland-Uruguay Bilateral Investment Treaty cannot be understood to provide the host statewith a margin of appreciation  a concept developed in a different context, namely the European Convention on Human Rights. The case has been used by NGOs (see for instance the Global Justice Now website ) as an example of the allegedly deterrent effect of investment arbitration on states that intend to issue public health measures (so-called regulatory chill). The dismissal of Philip Morris claims shows that such fears are largely unfounded. On the other hand, even though the arbitral tribunals majority decision is well-reasoned, the question remains whether it is appropriate to bring about a result whereby a lawful business can be subjected to a such severe restriction in respect of core assets, such as its brands, without being paid any compensation (even in case of a public health measure). In this respect, the dissenting opinion of Mr. Born raises convincing arguments in favour of Philip Morris.With regard to the parallel investment arbitration initiated by Philip Morris against Australian plain packaging legislation, see the IPKat post of December 31, 2015 . For further reading on the protection of IP rights under international investment agreements have a look here here and here ."
Strasbourg (France) (AFP) - Britain should trigger its divorce from the EU as soon as possible and formally leave by 2019, the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said on Tuesday.

Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, also warned London that it could only keep access to the prized single market by accepting the free movement of all European Union citizens into Britain.

"The UK should trigger the Article 50 as soon as possible so that we can finalise these negotiations by 2019" ahead of the next EU parliamentary elections that year, Verhofstadt told a news conference at the parliament in Strasbourg, France.

"I cannot imagine that we start the next legislative cycle without agreement, and that we enter a new legislative cycle with no solution," he added.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will not trigger Article 50 -- the two-year divorce process leading to an exit from the EU -- until early 2017 at the earliest.

She has said London needs more time to finalise its demands, with the government split on how to curb immigration while keeping the benefits of the single market.

But Verhofstadt said there could be little negotiation on this, saying the two concepts were "inseparable".

"The position of the parliament is very clear. The position has always been that if the UK wants to remain part of the single market it will also have to accept the free movement of our citizens," he said.

Verhofstadt, the head of the European Parliament's Liberal group, was appointed last week to lead the legislature's negotiations on Brexit.

The parliament will have a final vote on Britain's deal to leave the EU.

His appointment caused shock in London as he is a diehard European and has been scathing in his criticism of Britain's shock June vote to quit the 28-nation bloc.
London (AFP) - A new polymer banknote featuring wartime leader Winston Churchill went into circulation on Tuesday in Britain -- one of the first European countries with notes that, literally, can be laundered.

The Bank of England will initially issue 440 million of the new A5 notes ($6.7, 5.9 euros) and the old note will cease to be legal tender in May next year.

"The use of polymer means it can better withstand being repeatedly folded into wallets or scrunched up inside pockets and can also survive a spin in the washing machine," bank governor Mark Carney said.

"We expect polymer notes to last at least two-and-a-half times longer than the current generation of fivers and therefore reduce future costs of production," Carney said.

He said it was estimated to last five years.

The new notes also has security features intended to make it harder to counterfeit. These include a see-through window featuring Queen Elizabeth II's portrait as well as a picture of Big Ben in gold foil.

The famous Houses of Parliament clock tower is showing the time as 3:00pm, the approximate time on May 13, 1940, that Churchill delivered a famous speech to parliament during World War II.

The new note carries a portrait of Churchill and a quote from that speech saying: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

Carney described Churchill as "one of the greatest statesmen of all time".

The new note is printed on a plastic film which is already used in Australia, Brazil and Canada.

In Europe, Romania also uses polymer banknotes.

Including Churchill on the banknote prompted criticism as his image replaced that of prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, leaving the queen as the only female figure on Bank of England notes.

A petition prompted the bank to unveil a new A10 note, which will come out next year, featuring novelist Jane Austen. A new A20 note will include the image of artist J.M.W. Turner and is due to be issued by 2020.
By Caroline Stauffer

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - The chief executive of the world's largest advertising company WPP (WPP.L) told Reuters that Argentina's new government has made "significant" reforms in a short period of time and his group would like to make more acquisitions and investments in the country.

High-profile British businessman Martin Sorrell also said in an interview on Tuesday the first signs of economic strain can be seen in post-Brexit Britain, even as the group's operations have looked to be recovering in recent weeks.

Sorrell, in Buenos Aires for a government investment forum, said Argentina under pro-market President Mauricio Macri would be "high on the list" of countries Britain should sign a bilateral trade deal with as the South American country strives to avoid isolation.

"The atmospheric changes that Macri has made as well as the physical changes dealing with the debt crisis and such have been very significant in a very short period of time," he said.

There are risks, Sorrell said, including Argentina's historically volatile politics.

"Lots of things can go wrong - there is volatility. Brazil is key," he said, referring to Argentina's main trading partner which like Argentina is now mired in recession.

Companies tend to agree with the policies Macri has implemented since taking office in December, and his government is trying to convince them the changes will stick at this week's Argentina Business & Investment Forum.

WPP, the owner of agencies Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam and JWT, acquired a 20 percent stake in Argentine technology company Globant (GLOB.N) in 2013 before it went public.

Asked if WPP was considering more acquisitions in Argentina, Sorrell said "We'd like to do more," emphasizing that WPP tends to make small and medium-sized purchases.

Argentina, Latin America's No. 3 economy, accounts for some $500 million of WPP's $20 billion of annual revenue, about the same amount as Brazil and less than Mexico.

Story continues

Asked if a "post-Brexit recovery" identified by WPP in July continued in August, Sorrell said "I expect it probably has," though he emphasized the longer term outlook was challenging.

Sorrell is a vocal critic of Britain's move to leave the European Union. He praised the Bank of England for helping avoid an economic slowdown but said the first signs of strain are visible due to the potential for a prolonged negotiation and lack of clarity for businesses.

"This is going to carry on probably until the end of 2019," said Sorrell, adding that he is doing more business in Germany post-Brexit.

(Reporting by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Andrew Hay)
London (AFP) - A British nurse who recovered after contracting Ebola in Sierra Leone in 2014 faced a disciplinary panel on Tuesday over accusations she misled doctors about her health when returning to Britain.

Pauline Cafferkey became infected with the deadly virus while working in Sierra Leone in December 2014. She was treated in the UK after returning home, and later required two further hospital stays after suffering from complications.

The 40-year-old nurse is now facing a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) disciplinary hearing accused of knowing her temperature was dangerously high when she received a screening check-up at London's Heathrow Airport on returning from west Africa -- but allowed a lower temperature to be recorded.

A doctor at Heathrow found Cafferkey's temperature to be 38.2 degrees, but told the hearing that a member of the group recording the values -- "Registrant A" -- suggested it be recorded as 37.2 degrees, thereby avoiding having to undergo further tests.

"Registrant A stated... that she would record the temperature as 37.2 degrees on Ms Cafferkey's screening form and then they would 'get out of here and sort it out'," NMC representative Anu Thompson told the hearing.

"Ms Cafferkey has stated she recalls the words 'let's get out of here' being used but now cannot remember who said it or who entered the temperature of 37.2 on her screening form," Thompson added.

Cafferkey travelled to her hometown of Glasgow the same day as she arrived back in Britain. It was the next day that she was diagnosed with Ebola after waking up and feeling "very unwell".

While explaining the dishonesty claim against the nurse, Thompson told the hearing that it should be withdrawn because Cafferkey's ability "to make decisions and reason properly were affected" by her condition. The panel must still decide whether to reject the claims.

Cafferkey was successfully treated within weeks of her diagnosis but suffered a relapse in October 2015, when she became critically ill with meningitis linked to Ebola.

She made a full recovery but was admitted for a third time in February to London's Royal Free Hospital, Britain's only isolation ward for Ebola, due to another relapse and again recovered.

More than 11,300 people died from the disease before the World Health Organization declared last month that the two-year Ebola outbreak in west Africa was over, although Sierra Leone has since recorded new cases.
LONDON (Reuters) - British police said on Tuesday they were hunting for 20 youths who seriously injured a Polish man in a suspected racially motivated attack, the latest in a number of hate crimes against eastern Europeans following the June vote to leave the EU. The 28-year-old Pole was kicked and punched by a group of teenagers in the northern English city of Leeds, police said in a statement. The attack, which occurred on Friday night, left the man needing hospital treatment for a head injury. Police said the incident was believed to be racially aggravated because of comments his attackers, a group of males aged 16 to 18, had made to the victim and his friend. "I want to reassure people, particularly the local Polish community, that we will not tolerate hate incidents of this nature and will do everything we can to ensure the people responsible are brought to justice," West Yorkshire police Chief Superintendent Paul Money said in the statement. Money said officers were treating the attack as "an isolated incident and not as an indicator of any ongoing hate issue in the area". There was a surge in hate crimes across Britain in the wake of June's referendum which saw Britons vote to exit the European Union with immigration one of the key issues. At its peak, there was a 58 percent increase hike and police recorded more than 14,000 such crimes in the period running from a week before the vote to mid-August. While offences decreased toward the end of August, the figures still showed a 14 percent rise compared to the same period last year. The rise lent support to anecdotal evidence of abuse toward Muslims and eastern Europeans following the referendum. In August, six teenagers were arrested on suspicion of killing a Polish man in a suspected hate crime. (Reporting by Tina Bellon; editing by Michael Holden)
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f20657%2funderwear_note

A small piece of fabric has made someone very, very upset.

Charlotte Wilkinson, who lives in Stokeinteignhead, UK, posted a photo to Facebook Sunday of an irate note her mother received from a neighbor.

Her crime? Hanging her underwear out to dry on a clothesline.

SEE ALSO: Woman posts confident nude photo in response to Playboy model's body shaming

Apparently, the neighbor took issue with the undergarment hanging across the street from the town's primary school  lest the youngsters learn that many women do, in fact, wear underwear.

"Didn't know there was a law against hanging your knickers on the line?" Wilkinson wrote in her post.

In better news, Facebook commenters appear to be firmly on Wilkinson's mother's side. "Someone clearly has way too much time on their hands..." one person wrote.

Image: facebook

Image: facebook

A few noble commenters even told her to fight back  with more underwear.

Image: facebook

Side note: it's much weirder to steal someone's underwear off the line than to hang it up to dry.
The Buffalo Police Department Homicide Squad is investigating the homicide of John Stein which occurred on December 13, 2013 in the vicinity of 37 Humphrey. The BPD knows that there are individuals who have knowledge about this case and on behalf of
SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria said on Tuesday it was sticking to its candidate for the top U.N. job, Irina Bokova, for now, after speculation that it was considering switching to backing EU commissioner Kristalina Georgieva. Prime minister Boiko Borisov said he would think what to do if Bokova did not come first or second in the next round of voting for U.N. Secretary General, due on Sept. 26. But he did not spell out whether that meant he would consider another candidate, and said he would not let other countries interfere in Bulgaria's decision. That appeared to be a rebuff to senior diplomats and officials who told journalists over the weekend that Bulgaria was considering Georgieva, a power figure responsible for sorting out the bloc's budget after Britain's vote to leave the EU. Speculation mounted after Russia's foreign ministry said German Chancellor Angel Merkel had been pushing for a different Bulgarian candidate in the race to lead the international body. Berlin later said it had not interfered in the process. "We have sought support ... and we will continue to do so until Sept. 26. Everyone should put utmost effort, me included, for Mrs Bokova to be among the first two candidates," Borisov told reporters. "But there is no way after 26 if she is not first or second, to continue with that topic and then we all we should decide how to proceed," Borisov said. South Korea's Ban Ki-moon will step down from the top U.N. job at the end of the year and former Portuguese prime minister Antonio Guterres, who also served as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has been the front runner so far. Bokova, who has served as Bulgarian ambassador in France and Monaco and was an acting foreign minister between Nov 1996-Feb 1997 in a Socialist government, polled equal third among 10 contenders in the last U.N. Security Council secret ballot. A senior Bulgarian government official called her performance so far "unconvincing". (Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova)
NBC Sports Philadelphia

The big hit eluded the Phillies in Game 2 of the World Series against Astros lefty Framber Valdez, who was filthy. Was he, perhaps, too filthy? Here's what the Phils had to say about Valdez' curious mannerisms on the mound. By Corey Seidman
By Sharon Bernstein SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday vetoed a bill to end state sales taxes on feminine hygiene products, angering women and advocates who call the taxes unjust. Brown, a Democrat, cited imperatives of fiscal restraint and viable revenue streams in blocking the bipartisan bill, which would have added tampons, sanitary napkins and other menstrual products to a list of necessities such as food and prescription medicines that are exempt from sales tax. Brown also vetoed several similar bills that would have ended certain state taxes for diapers and other items. He said those measures, together with repeal of the tax on feminine hygiene products, would collectively reduce state revenue by $300 million through the coming year. "Each of these bills creates a new tax break or expands an existing tax break," Brown said in a statement. "As I said last year, tax breaks are the same as new spending  they both cost the general fund money." State Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, chief sponsor of the tampon tax relief bill that passed both houses of the state legislature with unanimous support, railed against the veto in a posting on Facebook. "Jerry Brown please #mansplain why it's OK to balance the budget on women's backs?" she wrote, including a slang portmanteau of "man" and "explain" that is used to disparage men who talk to women in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing. Lawmakers in at least 15 states have introduced measures to abolish their sales taxes on menstrual products. New York repealed its tampon tax in June, joining Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Jersey. The movement appeals to Republicans because it would repeal a tax and is favored by Democrats, who say it eliminates an unfair burden on women, especially those living in poverty. Garcia, the California assemblywoman, said she would press on in seeking repeal, vowing to "keep pushing until we get it done." But it was not immediately clear whether a veto override bid was an option. Overriding a veto in California requires a two-thirds vote in both the state Senate and Assembly, and the legislative session ended Aug. 31. (Writing and additional reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Steve Gorman and Matthew Lewis)
London (AFP) - Former British prime minister David Cameron launched a bombing campaign in Libya based on "erroneous assumptions" and failed to adequately plan for the aftermath, according to a damning parliamentary report released on Wednesday.

The Foreign Affairs Committee analysed Britain's decision-making in the run up to its intervention alongside France in 2011, which the government said at the time was aimed at protecting civilians under fire from dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

"It (the government) could not verify the actual threat to civilians posed by the Gaddafi (Kadhafi) regime; it selectively took elements of Muammar Gaddafi's rhetoric at face value; and it failed to identify the militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion," lawmakers said in their report.

"UK strategy was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence," the report added.

Nearly five years after Kadhafi was ousted and killed, chaos continues to reign in Libya with two rival governments vying for power and fierce battles over the country's valuable oil assets.

Crispin Blunt, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said other options were available to Britain which could have led to a better outcome.

"Political engagement might have delivered civilian protection, regime change and reform at a lesser cost to the UK and Libya.

"The UK would have lost nothing by trying these instead of focusing exclusively on regime change by military means," he said in a statement.

The report also said the government should have been aware that militant extremist groups would attempt to benefit from the rebellion, adding there was no evidence a proper analysis of those behind the rebellion was carried out.

Cameron was described by the committee as "ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy".

The former prime minister declined to give evidence to the committee, citing "the pressures on his diary", according to the report.

Story continues

- Blair calls Kadhafi -

Key political players including former defence minister Liam Fox and former foreign minister William Hague gave evidence to the committee, as well as former prime minister Tony Blair.

Blair told the committee he spoke to Kadhafi by phone in February 2011 and tried to convince him to stand aside. "We saw no evidence that the then Prime Minister David Cameron attempted to exploit Mr Blair's contacts," the report said.

The fallout from the ousting of Kadhafi has also seen criticism of US government policy, with President Obama admitting in a candid interview with Atlantic magazine published in March that Libya was a "mess."

He said Cameron became "distracted" after the 2011 intervention and said he had placed too much faith in the Europeans, including then French president Nicolas Sarkozy, "being invested in the follow-up."

Intervention came after Kadhafi loyalists pounded the eastern city of Benghazi, raising fears of an imminent massacre in the rebel stronghold.

A UN Security Council resolution with Arab backing authorised the use of "all necessary means" to protect civilians and enforce a ceasefire and no-fly zone against Kadhafi's forces.
Underscoring its commitment to the international marketplace, Colombias Caracol TV continues to ramp up its English-language production with Expatriot, [sic] its third co-production with LA-based Mar Vista.

Expatriot is a thriller about a female CIA whistleblower agent who flees to Colombia. Shot 100% in the capital of Bogota, the TV movie was helmed by Conor Allyn and stars Charlie Weber (How to get Away with Murder), Valene Kane (The Fall) and David Valencia (The Boy).

We plan to give it a limited theatrical release; Mar Vista starts international sales during AFM, said Caracol Head of Co-productions Alejandro Toro. Caracol and Mar Vista previously co-produced kidnap thriller TV movie Abducted, also directed by Allyn, which aired on Lifetime in the US, and romcom Cup of Love, which has just started selling on the market since May.

Caracols Felipe Boshell and Mar Vistas Fernando Szew serve as executive producers while Toro and Kristopher McNeeley produced Expatriot.

Meanwhile, on the Spanish-language front, Caracol has produced up to eight low-budget films and is developing two more.

The network is in pre-production on Surviving Pablo Escobar, a Spanish-language series based on the autobiography of John Jairo Velasquez, alias Popeye, once the leader and commander of Escobars squadron of hitmen who gave himself up to prevent the murder of the woman he loved.

In June, Netflix snagged exclusive first window and SVOD rights to Surviving Pablo Escobar, drama La Nina and other properties to Latin America, the United States, Canada, Spain, Portugal and Andorra except Colombia where Caracol has its own top-rated digital multiplatform, Caracol Next.

Related stories

Colombia's Caracol TV Boards Ciro Guerra's 'Birds of a Passage'

Netflix Inks Exclusive Licensing Pact With Colombia's Caracol TV

Mip TV: Telemundo, Turner, Chilevision Buy Caracol TV's 'The White Slave' (EXCLUSIVE)
From co-hosting Opening Ceremony's political show to premiering her new film for Kenzo on Monday evening, Carrie Brownstein is having a shining moment at New York Fashion Week.

The Portlandia co-creator teamed up with creative directors Humberto Leon and Carol Lim on a short called The Realest Real, a satire that explores the intersections of social media and reality, and what happens when those lines blur.

Filmed at the Los Angeles Times building in downtown L.A., the movie sees social media-loving Abby (played by Spider-Man: Homecoming's Laura Harrier) brought to an institute where her digital fans become real-life followers (as in there's a line of people walking right behind her) and her celebrity crush (Natasha Lyonne, playing herself) becomes her "mom," which is a term of endearment on social media.

The film - written and directed by Brownstein - also stars Kim Gordon, Girl Meets World's Rowan Blanchard and House of Card's Mahershala Ali, all wearing Kenzo designs.

THE REALEST: Natasha Lyonne, left, Carrie Brownstein, Laura Harrier, Humberto Leon, Carol Lim and Mahershala Ali. (Photo: Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images)

The idea for the film was sparked after Brownstein went to Kenzo's men's Paris show and previewed the women's collection, according to Lim. "We talked about this idea of fandom and fans going to concerts and that ritual of getting ready, so she took that idea and came back with this treatment," Lim said during the film's premiere party Monday evening at The Metrograph in Chinatown, where attendees included the film's cast, as well as Fred Armisen, Chloe Sevigny and Karen Elson.

Brownstein, who made her directorial debut with the project, explained that the film is about exploring the notion of performance in everyday life.

"We're always on these tiny stages. Everything is sort of a version of pageantry. That's no longer relegated to these monolithic entities like movie screens and television," Brownstein told Pret-a-Reporter. "Each of us is always performing so it does become about these micro-expressions ... because we're always turning the lens toward ourselves. ... What used to be sort of unconscious has become very conscientious and a little bit forced."

Story continues

Read more: Opening Ceremony Gets Political With Star-Studded Show

What interests Brownstein most about social media is "how it conflates high and low," she said. "Everything we do is mediated through a handful of screens with our laptops or phones or iPads, so that fame is on the same platform as the news, and a text message from the people we love - it's that kind of flattening of experience."

This film isn't meant to be a cautionary tale, though, said Brownstein.

"I'm just very interested in where that's taking us and how that both insulates us in terms of putting us inside a condensed environment, but potentially is creating a sort of padding where we're losing sense of other things," she explained, adding, "It is interesting to me that the people who are ostensibly the most famous are opting out. The velvet rope is gone and we all got into the club. The new elite is to be invisible."

Check out The Realest Real below and enjoy.
* Czech central bank says will remove crown cap in H2 2017 * Six-month crown forwards imply 26.86 per euro from 26.85 * Warsaw stocks ease, but off two-month low By Sandor Peto BUDAPEST, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Expectations the Czech crown will surge in value, implied by forward contracts, eased somewhat on Tuesday after the Czech central bank said it would not remove its crown floor earlier than planned.

Governor Jiri Rusnok said the cap, which was adopted in 2013 and stops the crown appreciating to less than 27 per euro, could be removed sometime in the second half of 2017.

A recovery in Czech economic growth has kept the crown near that level for most of the past year and reserve figures published last week showed the central bank had stepped up interventions in the foreign currency market to defend the cap.

That led to speculation the bank might scrap the policy earlier than planned and that the crown could surge next year.

The crown exchange rates implied by six-month and one-year forwards eased slightly after the new Rusnok comments although they remained firmer than 27 per euro implied by the cap.

Bids for the six-month contract showed an implied level of 26.86 at 0854 GMT, up from Monday's close of 26.85 and Friday's low of 26.7835. The 12-month rate eased to 26.7 from 26.53 on Friday.

In the spot market, the crown traded flat at 27.022 against the euro at 0901 GMT. Other regional currencies were mixed, with the zloty firming and the forint easing by 0.2 percent against the euro.

Comments by Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn that Hungary should be excluded from the European Union because of its tough anti-migrant policies were largely ignored, one Budapest-based currency dealer said.

The forint has been stuck around the 310 level for some weeks, with Tuesday's slight weakening caused by some positioning in some crosses like the forint-zloty, dealers said.

Monday's dovish comments from Federal Reserve rate-setter Lael Brainard provided a positive global backdrop, but the impact on the region was muted as the odds for a Fed rate hike in September had been low anyway, traders said.

Story continues

Polish and Hungarian government bond yields dropped by a few basis points.

Regional stock markets were mixed.

Poland's blue-chip index was off Monday's two-month lows, but shed 0.6 percent compared to Monday's close.

The Polish central bank said the cost of returning money to clients overcharged by banks for Swiss francs they bought to service franc-denominated mortgages could be twice as high as initially estimated, Rzeczpospolita daily reported. It cited a figure of 3.6-4 billion zlotys ($929.49 million-$1.03 billion) as the initial figure.
(Reuters) - Chelsea long-serving captain John Terry has been ruled out for around 10 days with strained ligaments in his foot and will miss Friday's Premier League clash with Liverpool, the London club said on Tuesday. The 35-year-old, who has played all four of Chelsea's league games this season, left the Liberty Stadium on crutches in the closing minutes of Chelsea's 2-2 draw with Swansea City on Sunday. "John Terry's injury suffered in Sunday's game at Swansea is strained ligaments in his foot. He will be out for approximately 10 days," the club said in a statement on their website (www.chelseafc.com). (Reporting by Ian Rodricks in Bengaluru)
CHEP has Joined Forces with Element ID to Provide a New State of the Art Reusable Container Management and Tracking Solution for Manufacturers and Warehouses

BETHLEHEM, PA / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / CHEP, a Brambles Company, and Element ID have announced a partnership to offer a complete, best-in-class asset tracking system targeted at manufacturers and warehouses. The companies are offering a full-turnkey solution encompassing a customized solution design based on existing processes, hardware, software, and the support to assure stakeholder alignment. By combining Element ID's RFID data collection solution with CHEP's CHEP-TRAC software and drawing on business process knowledge and implementation expertise from both companies, manufacturers will have real-time visibility into asset location and event status as well as the ability for online ordering, access to shipping documents, and comprehensive reporting capabilities. The solution can be implemented throughout the supply chain to facilitate better planning, ordering, and efficiency.

Working together, CHEP and Element ID have greatly reduced the cost of data capture and management while improving data integrity. The customizable solution can automatically scan pallets and containers of raw materials as they leave the supplier's warehouse and then automatically scan them again upon arrival at the production facility. Element ID provides the integration, RFID design expertise, device level software, RFID hardware, and ongoing hardware support and maintenance for the solution. CHEP not only provides the cloud-based asset tracking software, but also draws on extensive expertise in supply chain management to help customers refine the process, develop key performance indicators (KPIs), and works with customers to assure the technology generates a positive return for stakeholders

CHEP's Director of IT, Keith Schall, excited about the partnership said, "Element ID brings a complete data collection package to the table, not just RFID hardware and software. They know how to design and implement solutions that work and provide real value to customers. It was their expertise and total solution philosophy that led us to choose them as our partner."

Story continues

When Element ID's CEO and Co-Founder Jack Romaine was asked about what this will do for global manufacturing, Romaine said, "Having the accurate data is crucial to making the right business decisions and now customers will be able to effectively manage their supply chain, gain total visibility over the process, and increase quality through the streamlined capabilities. The CHEP solution is ideal because they work closely with the customer to make sure there is a solid process foundation before even applying the technology. This creates significant value for customers."

About Element ID: Founded in 2006, Element ID is a specialty integrator focusing on RFID and data collection for manufacturers and warehouses worldwide. Element ID specializes in designing, installing, and supporting full turnkey solutions that use RFID, barcode, and sensor technology. Element ID develops systems that solve problems surrounding shipping, WIP tracking, inventory management, and traceability.

About CHEP: Founded in 1958, based in Orlando, FL CHEP is an international company serving fortune 50 companies dealing in pallet and container pooling services, in a range of industrial and retail supply chains. CHEP is owned by Brambles Limited.

For More Information:

Jeff Goldenberg

Element ID, Inc.

Jeff.goldenberg@element-id.com

610-419-8822

www.element-id.com

SOURCE: CHEP
Cheryl Burke says her "heart is aching" after protesters stormed the stage following her debut performance with dance partner Ryan Lochte at DWTS on Monday.

"I'm still trying to process everything that happened last night," the 32-year-old dancer wrote on Instagram. "My heart is aching for Ryan and his family. No one deserves that sort of behavior directed at them. We all need to love each other and not be bullies or cowards. Let's all just be positive for each other."

EXCLUSIVE: Ryan Lochte Reacts to 'DWTS' Protestors

A photo posted by Cheryl Burke (@cherylburke) on Sep 13, 2016 at 12:31pm PDT

The protesters were released from police custody at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, with a court date set for Oct. 4, according to documents from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The two, Barzeen Soroudi and Sam Sotoodeh, were held overnight following Monday's filming, when they rushed the stage wearing anti-Lochte shirts after the swimmer's foxtrot with Burke.

The duo were in the middle of receiving feedback from judge Carrie Ann Inaba when they were interrupted.

In her post, Burke shared her "heartfelt" thanks to the show's security team, who immediately tackled, handcuffed and escorted the protesters off the dance floor.

Show host Tom Bergeron echoed her sentiments on Twitter, praising the "fast-moving" guards.

WATCH: What Viewers Didn't See When Ryan Lochte Protestors Stormed 'DWTS'

See what Lochte told us following the DWTS drama in our exclusive interview below.

Story continues

Related Articles
Venezuelas president Nicolas Maduro paid a visit this month to Villa Rosa, a pro-government neighborhood on Margarita Island, expecting to be greeted with cheers. Instead, he was chased through the streets by protesters calling for his ouster, beating pots and pans and shouting, we are hungry!

A prominent opposition journalist, Braulio Jatar, caught the confrontation on his cellphone camera and quickly posted it online. International news outlets picked up the story and soon Venezuelans, suffering from extreme shortages of food, basic supplies and life-saving medicine, were reveling in the sight of their apparently humiliated president. Twitter users shared cartoonish memes of the president under the hashtag #VillaRosa.

Estos fueron los memes de los cacerolazos a Maduro en #VillaRosa https://t.co/wK3voJU1gL pic.twitter.com/pi619mqz8x  YOR (@y0r78) September 3, 2016

But the very next morning Jatar, who holds both Chilean and Venezuelan citizenship, was detained on his way to host a radio show. He was charged with money laundering and trying to fund a terror attack. Meanwhile, the government, trying to downplay the grainy video, said it was manipulated and released footage of their own showing Maduro cheered by supporters during his visit.

Now the Chilean government is demanding to know the reporters whereabouts and to allow visits from his family, his lawyers, and Chilean representatives. Initially Jatar was held in a detention center on Margarita Island, but he was recently moved to an unknown location and hasnt seen his lawyers for a week.

His family and advocates say the charges against him are false, simply a means to target a pesky journalist who embarrassed the president. In 2007, Jatar founded the investigative news website Reporte Confidential, which frequently denounces government corruption, and he has ties to former Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, a high-profile critic of Maduro who was arrested on conspiracy charges last year.

Story continues

If Venezuelan authorities have any credible evidence to support the trumped-up charges against Braulio Jatar Alonso, let them present it immediately or free the journalist without delay, Carlos Lauria, of the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement.

So far, Venezuela is refusing to budge, arguing that Chile should respect their legal process and accusing the country of unacceptable meddling, false assumptions and lack of diplomatic circumspection, according to a statement from Venezuelas foreign ministry. They also smeared Chile as caving to pressure from the most reactionary sectors of the Pinochet bourgeoisie and the international elite, allied to the coup-plotting Venezuelan right.

Brazils foreign minister Jose Serra also released a statement, expressing concern for Jatars detention and the rise in arbitrary arrests in Venezuela. This is a development that further complicates the dialogue between government and opposition, indispensable for overcoming the dramatic political, economic, social and humanitarian crisis affecting Venezuela, he said.

Just a day before the pots-and-pans protest in Villa Rosa, thousands of Venezuelans from all over the country flooded Caracas, Venezuelas capital, in one of the biggest anti-government protests this year, calling for a popular referendum. Polls show Maduro would probably lose such a referendumindeed, the outburst in Villa Rosa may be a telling sign. In the past, both Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, won the area easily.

Photo credit: RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images
Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC) launched an initial public offering in Hong Kong worth $8.1 billion on Tuesday, reports said, in what is expected to be the world's biggest flotation this year.

The Beijing-based lender is offering 12.1 billion shares at HK$4.68 to HK$5.18 each, according to Bloomberg, which said cornerstone investors would buy the majority of the stock.

The listing is expected be the biggest since that of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba in New York in 2014, which raised $25 billion.

PSBC is China's fifth-largest lender with 40,000 branches -- more than any other bank in the country -- and around 70 percent in rural areas.

Founded in 2007, it provides basic banking services to farmers and agricultural business owners, and it is the only financial institution present in some of the country's most remote regions.

According to the latest figures, PSBCs total assets reached 7.7 trillion yuan by March. Its net profit rose 11 percent year-on-year in the first quarter to 12.48 billion yuan.

"PSBC's earnings indicators such as profit and non-performing loan (NPL) ratios are better than other commercial banks in China," Dong Ximiao, senior economist and visiting fellow at Renmin University of China, told AFP.

But he added that the bank's low NPL ratios were due to it lending less, weakening its earnings capacity.

"The bank is trying to transform into a modern commercial bank using funds raised from the offering. But the task will be a challenging one," he said.

Previously completely state-owned, PSBC raised 45.1 billion yuan ($7 billion) by selling a 16.92 percent stake to 10 strategic investors in December, valuing the firm at $40.6 billion.

Among the buyers were e-commerce giant Alibaba's affiliate Ant Financial and Tencent, another internet behemoth.
Chinese authorities detained 13 residents of the rebel village of Wukan Tuesday, police said, after jailing its chief -- who was elected after leading protests against Communist officials -- on corruption charges.

Wukan, a 13,000-strong fishing village in the southern province of Guangdong, became a symbol of resistance against corruption after a mass uprising over allegedly illegal land grabs propelled it onto global front pages in 2011.

Lin Zulian, who played a key role in those protests, was detained in June, and police said that since then villagers had "continued to fabricate rumours and deploy measures such as threats, insults, force and bribes to instigate, plan and launch illegal mass gatherings".

Tuesday's detentions were for "disturbing the public order and public transport order", police said on verified social media account.

After the arrests, villagers clashed with police, with security forces using tear gas and rubber bullets, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

Villagers threw stones at police with riot shields, according to a video posted to the newspaper's website.

Photos published by the newspaper showed bloodied residents, and others wearing motorcycle helmets and holding bricks.

The road into Wukan from Lufeng, a nearby urban centre, was empty on Tuesday afternoon, with about a dozen police officers at a roadblock waving away approaching vehicles.

A Lufeng city official told AFP that the road was closed but would not comment on the situation inside Wukan, and police escorted AFP out of the area.

The 2011 protests in Wukan were initially seen as just another bout of social unrest in China, where tens of thousands of such incidents occur each year.

But when a protest leader died in police custody, residents took their demonstrations further, barricading roads leading into Wukan, and effectively expelling security forces for more than a week.

Communist Party authorities unexpectedly backed down and promised rare concessions, including pledges to investigate the land dispute and allow village polls to be held in an open manner -- a first in Wukan.

Lin, 70, was one of the successful contenders. He was convicted of corruption last week and sentenced to three years in prison after confessing to accepting bribes worth some $590,000 yuan ($90,000), the official Xinhua news agency reported.
China will become the world's first trillion-dollar aviation market as its expanding middle class takes to the skies in ever greater numbers, US manufacturer Boeing predicted Tuesday.

The world's most populous country is expected to add more than 6,800 new aircraft to its commercial fleet worth $1.03 trillion by 2035, Boeing said in its annual China Current Market Outlook.

Passenger traffic is estimated to increase 6.4 percent annually in China over the next 20 years as the country reforms its economy to rely more on consumption and the service industry to drive growth, said Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

"As China transitions to a more consumer-based economy, aviation will play a key role in its economic development," he said.

Chinese carriers have been expanding their fleets and adding new point-to-point services to cater to both leisure and business travel demand from an increasing number of affluent consumers in China and throughout Asia, Boeing said.

"The continuing expansion of China's middle class, coupled with new visa policies and a wide range of widebody airplanes with new technologies, capabilities and efficiencies, gives us every reason to expect a very bright future for China's long-haul market," said Tinseth.

Of the 6,810 new aircraft it will need during the 2016-2035 period, 75 percent will be single-aisle planes with 90-230 seats, Boeing said.

A total of 1,560 widebody aircraft are seen as needed, according to the company.

- Chinese rivals -

China's rapidly growing e-commerce business -- already the largest in the world -- also drives demand for cargo planes, with 180 new freighters and 410 converted freighters forecast to be added over the next two decades.

A quarter of Boeing's deliveries over the last three years were to Chinese airlines, it says.

Boeing, maker of the 737 MAX and 787 Dreamliner, competes with Europe's Airbus for global dominance in the aircraft market.

Story continues

The US firm says it made more than half of China's commercial jetliners currently in operation, while Airbus says it has an almost 50 percent share.

But both Boeing and Airbus are facing rising competition from Chinese rivals, who are supported by the government as Beijing sees the lucrative, technology-intensive industry as of strategic importance and a symbol of national pride.

In November last year, state-backed Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (COMAC) rolled out the C919, China's first domestically developed narrow-body passenger plane that would compete with Boeing's 737 and Airbus' A320.

Airbus in March started construction on a new facility to deliver wide-body planes in China while Boeing has reportedly submitted to the Chinese government plans for a factory in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

Tinseth said Boeing was "absolutely" vigilant about Chinese competitors.

"With such a large domestic base, there is an opportunity" for a Chinese airplane maker, he told reporters.

"There are areas with COMAC where we're partners, and there are areas where we compete. We will be strong partners and we will be strong competitors," he said.

Boeing said in July it expected a combined 39,600 jets worth $5.9 trillion will be needed globally over the next 20 years.
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f202634%2fc1e86d7c99474b3ab2ccf2b0da1f91dd

China's stronger environmental policies and weaker economic growth are driving a global decline in coal-fired power projects, a new report found.

Since the start of this year, the world has seen a 14 percent drop in the total amount of coal-fired power capacity in early planning stages, from 1,090 gigawatts globally to 932 gigawatts in July, according to CoalSwarm, a group of climate activists and data experts that tracks almost every coal power project worldwide.

China accounted for nearly three-fourths of the canceled capacity, scrapping 114 gigawatts in pre-construction projects over the seven-month period, CoalSwarm reported on Sept. 7.

SEE ALSO: Costa Rica hasn't burned any fossil fuels for electricity in two months

The trend, if continued long-term, would signal both important progress in the fight against climate change and a substantial obstacle to the fossil fuel industry.

A front-end loader drops coal near a coal mine at Datong, in China's northern Shanxi province, Nov. 20, 2015.

Image: GREG BAKER/AFP/Getty Images

China is the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide and the world's largest user and producer of coal. Any step the nation takes to reduce its fossil fuel consumption would translate into significant cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions.

On the flip side, any sustained increase in Chinese coal demand would offer a lifeline to the world's struggling coal sector.

Coal companies are banking on rising energy demand across Asia to offset the declining appetite for coal in the United States and Europe  both of which are retiring coal-fired power plants faster than they are building new ones, according to CoalSwarm data.

In the U.S., coal-fired electricity accounted for just a third of total power generation in 2015, down from around 50 percent in 2007, U.S. energy data show.

Yet the prospects that Asia might rescue the coal industry are growing increasingly dim, energy experts said.

China is gradually shifting away from heavy manufacturing to a consumer-driven economy, meaning it will eventually have fewer factories with enormous energy demands. Citizens are increasingly clamoring for cleaner air in smog-choked cities.

Story continues

And earlier this month, President Xi Jinping  along with U.S. President Barack Obama  formally joined the Paris climate change agreement, which aims to keep the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2100.

Coal companies were "all expecting this big Asia boom, but the Asia boom didn't happen," Ted Nace, director of CoalSwarm, told Mashable.

"That's just a fantasy now."

China's canceled coal plans

China's 114 gigawatts of canceled, early-stage coal projects amounts to about 40 percent of America's total coal generating capacity of 276 gigawatts.

"That's a lot, but it's not entirely surprising," said Colleen Regan, head of North American power and environmental markets for Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), who was not involved with the CoalSwarm research.

Chinese coal workers shovel black rocks in the snow, Jan. 22, 2016.

Image: barcroft media via getty images

China's red-hot economic growth has begun to cool in recent years thanks to a slowdown in manufacturing activities and housing and infrastructure development.

Slower growth, in turn, has depressed electricity demand growth and created a glut of power plants.

China's overall electricity demand grew just 0.5 percent from 2014 to 2015  its weakest annual demand growth since 1980, Regan said.

Last year, China's coal, gas and nuclear plants ran at just 49 percent of their full capacity on average, versus 61 percent in 2011, BNEF found. When a plant runs at just half the capacity, it's hard for plant operators to turn a profit.

On top of all of this, China is heavily investing in wind and solar power projects.

China invested more than $110 billion in clean energy last year, nearly twice as much as the United States, BNEF reported in January. In the first half of 2016 alone, China installed a hefty 22 gigawatts of solar power, according to China's National Energy Administration.

"They're adding more and more clean energy, at the same time that they already have a real slowdown in growth for power demand," Regan told Mashable.

In response to the power glut, the Chinese government in April halted plans for new coal-fired power plants in many parts of the country. Officials said construction of some approved plants would be postponed until at least 2018.

Regan said the chances that China might ramp up its coal investments when the economy picks up are slim, given the country's climate policies and renewable energy build-out.

"I don't foresee a scenario in which they [China] do a complete turnaround and start adding a lot more coal-fired power to their grid," she added.

Coal is still a climate threat

Despite the drop in China's coal plans, a substantial amount of coal-fired power capacity still remains in the pipeline.

Along with 932 gigawatts of pre-construction coal proposals  including announced, pre-permit and permitted projects  another 350 gigawatts are currently under construction, CoalSwarm found in its mid-2016 report.

A Chinese railway worker rides his motorcycle through coal piles.

Image: Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images

If all of those projects are built and operated, global carbon emissions would likely rise high enough to keep the world from meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

Roughly 80 percent of current coal reserves must remain unused from 2010 to 2050 to keep global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius throughout the 21st century, according to a 2015 paper published in the journal Nature.

Thirty percent of known oil reserves and 50 percent of gas reserves would also have to stay in the ground.

Many new coal projects are planned in developing countries, including Indonesia and India. Yet wealthier nations such as South Korea and Japan are also providing technology and financing to build those projects.

All of this threatens to undermine countries' commitments to curb emissions through the Paris climate agreement, Han Chen, an international climate advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, told Mashable.

"This is not on the right track for decreasing emissions, and that's a huge challenge," she added.
Screen Shot 2016 09 13 at 12.51.41 PM

On Monday, three Russian surface ships, two supply ships, two helicopters, 96 marines, and a handful of amphibious armored vehicles arrived at China's Zhanjiang port for a joint military exercise in the South China Sea, China's Ministry of Defense reports.

China says the drills will include the "highest ever level of standardization, combat and digitalization in recent China-Russia drills."

The Chinese and Russian ships will practice "joint air defense, anti-submarine operations, landing, island-seizing, search and rescue, and weapon use," according to the statement.

For their part, China states they will deploy a total of ten ships, including destroyers, frigates, landing ships, supply ships, submarines. In addition, 11 fixed-wing aircraft, eight helicopters, and 160 marines will participate.

Though the statement claims the drills do not intend to target any third party, the placement of the drills in the heavily disputed South China Sea raises eyebrows. This is particularly true as China has staged military drills explicitly training to take the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, territories that Japan and China have long argued over.

The announcement of the drills in July, after the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague ruled against China's nine-dash line claims in the region, could be seen as a response to the rising international pressures on China to comply with international law and the wishes of neighboring nations.

The South China Sea is the site of several overlapping territorial claims from China, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Brunei.

map south china sea

NOW WATCH: A couple got married dangling underneath a glass bridge above a 590-foot canyon





More From Business Insider


BEIJING (Reuters) - Common interests between China and Vietnam far outweigh differences, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Vietnam's prime minister on Tuesday, calling for their dispute in the South China Sea to be resolved through talks. China claims almost all of the South China Sea, where about $5 trillion worth of seaborne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims in the sea, believed to have rich deposits of oil and gas. Vietnam is in the midst of a quiet military buildup analysts say is designed as a deterrent, to secure its 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone, as China grows more assertive in staking its claims in the South China Sea. A court of arbitration in The Hague in July said China's claims to the waterway were invalid, after a case was brought by the Philippines. Beijing has refused to recognize the ruling. Vietnam welcomed the ruling, saying it strongly supports peaceful resolution of disputes, while reasserting its own sovereignty claims. Meeting in Beijing, Xi told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc that "China and Vietnam can manage their differences and promote maritime cooperation through friendly negotiations", the official Xinhua news agency said. "The common interests between the two countries far outweigh the differences," it paraphrased Xi as saying. The South China Sea issue should be resolved by bilateral consultations and maritime challenges transformed into opportunities for cooperation, Xi added. Phuc met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang a day earlier. Li told Phuc that the South China Sea involved both issues of sovereignty and maritime rights as well as "national feelings", China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. "China and Vietnam should work hard together, scrupulously abide by their high level consensus, maintain maritime stability, manage and control disputes, promote maritime cooperation, continue to accumulate consensus, jointly maintain maritime and regional peace and stability and create conditions for the stable development of bilateral ties," Li said. The ministry cited Phuc as saying maritime issues should be appropriately handled in a peaceful way on the basis of equality and mutual respect and not allow maritime issues to affect the development of relations. Earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered Vietnam a credit line of half a billion dollars for defense cooperation. The offer comes after a surge of almost 700 percent in Vietnam's defense procurements as of 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think tank, which tracks the arms trade over five-year periods. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry)
By Sijia Zhang

HONG KONG, Sept 13 (Reuters) - China's Amperex Technology Limited (ATL) will become the main supplier of batteries for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy Note 7 phones, a person with knowledge of the plans said on Tuesday.

Samsung's shares fell to their lowest level in nearly two months on Monday after it told customers to switch off and return their new Galaxy Note 7 smartphones due to fire-prone batteries.

Samsung's own SDI subsidiary had been the dominant battery supplier for the Note 7, supplying around 70 percent of the batteries globally, according to analyst estimates. ATL had supplied around a third, with a focus especially in China.

The source said that ATL had received additional orders for Note 7 batteries after the smartphone giant instigated the global recall.

The recall came just over two weeks after the company launched its latest premium phone, which features an extra-large screen and high-resolution camera. It followed reports of the 988,900 won ($885) phone igniting while charging.

The person added ATL was likely to take over battery supply for the model at least for the time being.

ATL's chief operating office Joe Kit Chu Lam told Reuters by phone he could not comment on a specific client due to business confidentiality agreements. He added, however, that the firm had received a "significant increase" in business this month.

"We expect the situation to last for the coming one to two quarters. This will not bring any capacity issue," he said. ATL is also a listed supplier for Samsung rival Apple, which unveiled its rival new iPhone 7 last week.

Samsung declined to comment. Japanese electronics firm TDK Corp, the owner of ATL, also declined to comment.

The official China Daily newspaper reported earlier on Tuesday that ATL would increase shipments of batteries to Samsung. South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Sunday Samsung would now only use batteries provided by ATL for the Galaxy Note 7.

Samsung first halted sales earlier this month of the Note 7 in 10 markets, including South Korea and the United States, but not in China where it said the model was equipped with batteries from a different supplier.

Story continues

Analysts said the supplier shift would likely mean ATL would be temporarily the sole supplier for the Note 7, though this was likely only to be a short-term solution.

"This could mean ATL would make all the batteries on Note 7s to be sold this year - which I expect to be 12 million maximum now," said SK Kim, a Seoul-based analyst with Daiwa Capital Markets.

"But I believe this is a temporary arrangement and will not affect SDI's position as the dominant battery supplier for Samsung." (Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
HONG KONG (Reuters) - State-owned Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC) [IPO-PSBC.HK] on Tuesday launched an initial public offering in Hong Kong worth up to $8.1 billion, with the vast majority of the deal covered by cornerstone investors.

The group of six cornerstone investors will buy as much as $5.86 billion worth of stock on offer, or about 72 percent of the IPO, underscoring tepid demand for Hong Kong offerings from retail investors and fund managers in the city.

That would put it near the record 77 percent cornerstone tranche for the $810 million listing of China Development Bank Financial Leasing Co Ltd in July.

Large investments by cornerstone investors hurt liquidity for IPOs once the shares start trading, as the stock is locked up for a minimum of six months. The cornerstone money can also pressure the stock as the expiration of the lock-up period nears.

PSBC, China's largest bank by number of branches, is offering 12.1 billion new shares in an indicative range of HK$4.68 to HK$5.18 each, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters.

The two largest cornerstone investors, CSIC Investment One Limited and Shanghai International Port Group, agreed to invest $2.2 billion and $2.1 billion respectively. Victory Global Group, a unit of aviation conglomerate HNA Group, will buy $1 billion of shares, while other cornerstone investors will buy smaller stakes.

PSBC did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the IPO terms.

The IPO is slated to be priced on Sept. 20, with its debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange set for Sept. 28.

(Reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR and Elzio Barreto; Editing by Stephen Coates and Edwina Gibbs)
Protesters in southern China are up in arms. They feel that Beijings promises that theyd be able to vote for their own local leaders have been honored in the breach. Theyre outraged at the show of force in the face of peaceful protest, and confronted with superior government might, they are using the power of numbers and the reach of social media to make their voices heard.

Readers would be forgiven for thinking the above to be a description of Hong Kong, where pro-democracy protests in October 2014 and a subsequent independence movement have captured global attention. But it also depicts Wukan, a small mainland Chinese village about a three and-a-half-hour drive east of the former British colony. In December 2011, it became a global symbol for a new style of Chinese governance when a citizen uprising against illegal land seizures and a brief exercise in self-rule during a police blockade elicited promises of village-level democratization from Beijing. Now citizen unrest is making headlines once again.

The latest round of unrest began after erstwhile protest leader Lin Zulian, who had governed as popularly elected village secretary since 2012, was detained on a June evening. Shortly before, Lin had pledged renewed demonstrations calling for restitution for improper land grabs. Western media described tensions growing thereafter; on June 18, public security in Lufeng, the municipality that contains Wukan, issued an official order calling on villagers not to let illegal elements imperil the villages hard-won stability. On Sept. 8, the verdict came down: Lin was sentenced to 37 months in prison and a fine of about $30,000 for bribery and kickbacks totaling about $88,000; he has pledged not to appeal. (Although Lin confessed to receiving kickbacks, many Wukan residents told NPR they thought it was staged.)

On Sept. 13, after what appear to have been days of street-level protests in Wukan, riot police descended on the village of about 13,000, arresting 13 on suspicions of disturbing public order, a charge commonly used against protesters in China. Photos circulated on social media also claim to show villagers injured by police; one widely-shared video depicts armored forces retreating under a hail of debris from angry citizens.

Wukans villagers may be heartened to know their concerns have become international news, but their likely aim is Chinas domestic audience, which is far better positioned to put lasting pressure on Beijing. Predictably, Chinas government has reacted with an information blockade. State media mentions of the septuagenarian Lin have been brief; stripped of context that might help viewers understood what he originally stood for, they sound like just another news item about a corrupt local cadre. Social media dispatches from the village have been censored for months. And police have threatened to investigate and punish internet users who spread false information about Wukan.

That means that most mainland Chinese have likely not heard much, or any, recent scuttlebutt about Wukan, leaving it to social media users to hunt for anything they can find. The watermelon seed-eating masses probably really dont know the full story, quipped one user on Weibo. Not many people understand whats really going on, wrote another, but everyone can feel what the authorities are doing in the pit of their stomachs.

Weibo commenters on Wukan have been largely unsparing toward their central government. Truly, the wisdom of the leaders isnt something the grassroots can understand. Its easier and more efficient to arrest the person who pointed out the problem than to solve the problem, wrote one. Another fumed that the biggest landlords are the Chinese Communist Party and corrupt businesspeople like Wang Jianlin, a billionaire developer who has been an outspoken advocate for Beijings policies.

Others took issue with the legal process itself. One Weibo user wrote, When I read those words, according to law, it makes me want to laugh. Another noted the absurdity of sending Lin to prison for 37 months for $88,000 in bribes and kickbacks when high officials have been caught with millions or even hundreds of millions in ill-gotten gains.

The volume of Wukan chatter on Chinese media is surely lower than what its residents might want. Yet they may currently rank among some of the most prominent activists in the country. Erstwhile opinion leaders on social media have gone silent; rights lawyers who blogged to raise awareness for their clients have been punished harshly. And while Hong Kongs youth-driven pro-democracy protests in late 2014 won widespread admiration in the west, mainland netizens have been far less sympathetic. Many mainlanders resent Hong Kong activists call for independence from the mainland, and think Hong Kongers, who live better than most mainlanders, to be spoiled. For their part, Hong Kongers decry both Beijings meddling and the large influx of mainland tourists. Some city residents have even taken to calling mainlanders locusts.

None of these long-simmering issues afflict the image of Wukan, a modest fishing village of about 20,000. Its citizen complaints are easier for mainland Chinese to understand. The core of Hong Kongers complaint is Beijings increasing meddling in an (admittedly imperfect) democratic process that Hong Kong already enjoyed; in Wukan, the bugbear is uncompensated land grabs by the local government, a widespread revenue-raising tactic that has become a neuralgic complaint among villagers across China. Unlike Hong Kong demonstrators, Wukan activists from the start stressed their loyalty to the Communist Party, insisting their protest was patriotic.

Those bullish on the prospects for Chinese democratic reform have long viewed its village-level experiments as a hopeful harbinger  in 1997, the non-profit Carter Center called them a serious and positive development in empowering Chinas 900 million villagers. (Many have since moved to cities.) Wukans own democratic experiment was initially hailed as an exciting new start by many Chinese observers. The 2012 vote proceeded smoothly (one happy participant is pictured above). But Wukan villagers never got back the land, or the cash equivalents, that theyd sought. More generally, because the ruling Communist party prescreens village candidates, their change-making potential is limited, and corrupt incumbents representing entrenched interests often stay in office, according to an Oct. 2015 article in Foreign Affairs.

Chinese authorities evident deployment of riot police looks both brutal and clumsy, especially when wielded against villagers who showed in 2011 that they know how to use social media to court national and international attention. But the messy and visible failure of Wukans truncated democratic experiment may be something Chinas leadership can countenance, squaring as it does with Beijings insistence that democracy foments chaos and disorder. This latest strike may also deter uprisings in villages elsewhere.

On June 20, the reliably nationalist Global Times ran an editorial in its digital and print editions opining that unfortunately, the Wukan question may ultimately require a solution in accordance with law. Netizens noted the curious phrasing; it sounded like a legal solution was being held out as threat. Now Wukans villagers are seeing what that means. Perhaps, some mused, the crackdown was inevitable. When [Wukans protests] happened a few years ago, wrote one Weiboer, we knew this day would come.

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian contributed research.

PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images
By Alexander Winning and Katya Golubkova

MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. bank Citi (C.N) is seeing business pick up in Russia as the country's economic crisis abates and is staying as engaged as it can given Western sanctions, its Russia head said.

Marc Luet, who is also Citi's head for Ukraine and Kazakhstan, said his bank has become busier with Russian mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and that there is growing interest in corporate debt issuance.

"We're seeing a pick-up in debt capital markets (DCM). Part of it is liability management, part of it is new issuance," Luet said in an interview at the Reuters Russia Investment Summit.

Russian debt issuance slowed to a trickle after the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 over the Ukraine conflict.

The sanctions limited access to international capital for large Russian banks and certain other businesses, scaring away investors and spooking compliance departments at top banks.

"I don't think we're going to quite return to the 2013 level, but we're going to see more issuance than this year. And this year was better than last year," Luet said, adding Citi had arranged Russian DCM deals worth more than $15 billion in 2013.

Better pricing conditions, an economic stabilisation and the maturity profile of outstanding debt are all encouraging greater issuance, Luet said.

A restraining factor is that many Russian companies have cut capital expenditure since the economy entered a deep slump when global oil prices tanked in 2014. A halting economic recovery this year has yet to spur any great increase in investment plans.

Luet said that investors had become accustomed to the sanctions and that banks had established which deals they could handle and which they should leave alone.

"We're going to stay as engaged as we can and take advantage of any opportunities that arise," he said.

Like many other global banks, Citi did not help the Russian state with this year's privatization program, including a stake sale in diamond miner Alrosa (ALRS.MM). Alrosa is not under Western sanctions but the deal was handled by a Russian investment bank.

Story continues

"We didn't stay away from the Russian government's privatization program per se," Luet said. "Every case is different, every transaction is different. It's not a blanket approach. We look at what's coming up."

Citi's Russian operation earned about 14.55 billion roubles ($225 million) in profit last year, roughly double what it made in 2014 and better than many domestic Russian banks.

Luet said that Citi had stuck to its tactic of serving multinationals and large Russian blue-chip companies as well as affluent retail clients.

"We haven't changed our strategy because of the crisis," he said.

Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_Summits

(Additional reporting by Kira Zavyalova, Christian Lowe and Dmitry Antonov; Editing by David Goodman)
By Alexander Winning and Katya Golubkova MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. bank Citi is seeing business pick up in Russia as the country's economic crisis abates and is staying as engaged as it can given Western sanctions, its Russia head said. Marc Luet, who is also Citi's head for Ukraine and Kazakhstan, said his bank has become busier with Russian mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and that there is growing interest in corporate debt issuance. "We're seeing a pick-up in debt capital markets (DCM). Part of it is liability management, part of it is new issuance," Luet said in an interview at the Reuters Russia Investment Summit. Russian debt issuance slowed to a trickle after the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 over the Ukraine conflict. The sanctions limited access to international capital for large Russian banks and certain other businesses, scaring away investors and spooking compliance departments at top banks. "I don't think we're going to quite return to the 2013 level, but we're going to see more issuance than this year. And this year was better than last year," Luet said, adding Citi had arranged Russian DCM deals worth more than $15 billion in 2013. Better pricing conditions, an economic stabilisation and the maturity profile of outstanding debt are all encouraging greater issuance, Luet said. A restraining factor is that many Russian companies have cut capital expenditure since the economy entered a deep slump when global oil prices tanked in 2014. A halting economic recovery this year has yet to spur any great increase in investment plans. Luet said that investors had become accustomed to the sanctions and that banks had established which deals they could handle and which they should leave alone. "We're going to stay as engaged as we can and take advantage of any opportunities that arise," he said. Like many other global banks, Citi did not help the Russian state with this year's privatization program, including a stake sale in diamond miner Alrosa . Alrosa is not under Western sanctions but the deal was handled by a Russian investment bank. "We didn't stay away from the Russian government's privatization program per se," Luet said. "Every case is different, every transaction is different. It's not a blanket approach. We look at what's coming up." Citi's Russian operation earned about 14.55 billion roubles ($225 million) in profit last year, roughly double what it made in 2014 and better than many domestic Russian banks. Luet said that Citi had stuck to its tactic of serving multinationals and large Russian blue-chip companies as well as affluent retail clients. "We haven't changed our strategy because of the crisis," he said. Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_Summits (Additional reporting by Kira Zavyalova, Christian Lowe and Dmitry Antonov; Editing by David Goodman)
Most goldfish live short, uneventful lives. But Conquer  the aquatic pet of 21-year-old Emma Marsh of Brisbane, Australia  is no ordinary goldfish.

The one-year-old little fish received a life-saving emergency veterinary surgery last week when Marsh noticed he was making excessive mouth movements, the Courier Mail reports.

It turned out that he had consumed a pebble that was about a fifth of his body length, making it impossible for him to chew, eat, or swallow. Marsh rushed him to the Brisbane Bird and Exotics Veterinary Service, where some nimble-fingered veterinarians anesthetized Conquer and extracted the pebble with forceps. The fish even got to stay at the hospital overnight; fancy! And he has since fully recovered and is in stable condition, according to Buzzfeed News.

For the service, however, Marsh dished out a full $500, according to the Mail, while Conquer had initially costed $12.

I treat fish like theyre any other pet, Marsh told the Mail. A spokesperson for the veterinary hospital noted that it was due to Marsh being so observant that Conquers issue was recognized at all.

Conquer isnt the first goldfish to receive special treatment in Australia recently, either; in 2014, ten-year-old (!) George underwent a rare surgery to remove a life-threatening tumor. That operation, however, only cost $200.
By Alana Wise and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton said on Monday she could resume presidential campaigning in a couple of days after a bout of pneumonia that she initially had not believed was "that big a deal." Clinton's health scare after she almost collapsed at an event on Sunday, causing her to cancel some campaign trips, revived concerns about a tendency toward secrecy that has dogged her campaign, and underscored perennial worries about the medical fitness of candidates for one of the world's most demanding jobs. "Well, it will be in the next couple of days. ... I just want to get this over and done with and get back on the trail as soon as possible," she said in an interview on CNN on Monday night, adding she had ignored doctor's orders to rest. "I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal." Her campaign acknowledged on Monday it may have been too slow disclosing her pneumonia diagnosis after she nearly fainted at a New York memorial ceremony for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. She was diagnosed with the lung infection on Friday. "I think that in retrospect, we could have handled it better in terms of providing more information more quickly," Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC earlier in the day. The health problem was the latest blow for the Democratic presidential nominee at a time when Republican rival Donald Trump has erased most of her lead in national opinion polls and is competitive again in many battleground states where the Nov. 8 election is likely to be decided. Clinton, 68, said she had dealt with similar episodes of dizziness before. You know, it is something that has occurred a few times over the course of my life. Im aware of it and usually can avoid it, she told CNN. Asked if she passed out during the incident on Sunday, she said: No, I didnt. I felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute. Once I got in. Once I could sit down. Once I could cool off. Once I had some water, I immediately started feeling better. Her campaign said her husband, former President Bill Clinton, would campaign on her behalf while she rests. Both Clinton and Trump, 70, said they intended to release more of their medical details in the coming days, as their campaigns gear up for the November election. 'DEEPLY SHOCKED' Questions about the incident reinforced the perception of Clinton as secretive, a view fueled by the controversy surrounding her use of a private email server while serving as President Barack Obama's secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. A federal investigation of that issue said she was "extremely careless" in her handling of classified emails, but did not recommend criminal charges. Trump said on Monday that health was a campaign issue but he did not attack Clinton over her physical condition. "I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail," he said in an interview with Fox News. He focused his criticism on comments by Clinton last week in which she dismissed half of his supporters as a "basket of deplorables" of racist, homophobic people. Clinton said she regretted the remark. Trump has compared the comment with a much-criticized remark by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney that 47 percent of the electorate was dependent on the government. I was deeply shocked and alarmed to hear my opponent attack, slander, smear, demean these wonderful, amazing people who are supporting our campaign by the millions, Trump told a conference of National Guard members in Baltimore. Trump has himself aroused controversy with comments in which he called some Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, questioned whether a U.S.-born judge could be fair because of his Mexican heritage and criticized the Muslim parents of an American soldier who died in combat in Iraq. 'SHORT-TERM TURBULENCE' Clinton's pneumonia disclosure was made public hours after her campaign said she had become "overheated" to explain why, her knees buckling and unsteady, she was rushed from the Sept. 11 ceremony. "The short-term turbulence will be more about the handling of this than the substance," David Axelrod, a former political adviser to Obama, told Reuters. "Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia," Axelrod tweeted later. "What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?" Trump had suggested for weeks that Clinton lacked the energy needed to be president. He has raised questions about her stamina, reprising a tactic from the Republican primary campaign when he derided rival Jeb Bush as a "low-energy" candidate. Democrats said her attendance at events despite her pneumonia diagnosis proved her toughness. Trump's campaign has issued a short letter from his doctor saying he was in excellent health with "extraordinary" strength and stamina. But the letter did not mention what medicine Trump might be taking or other details typically included in such disclosures. In July 2015, Clinton released a two-page letter outlining her medical condition that sought to reassure Americans about her health after she fell and suffered a concussion at home in 2012 near the end of her tenure as secretary of state. (Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Luciana Lopez, Jonathan Allen, Eric Beech and James Oliphant; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)
By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two computer technicians declined to answer questions from U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday about the unauthorized private email system that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton used during her tenure as U.S. secretary of state.

Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton repeatedly invoked their constitutional right not to incriminate themselves during about 10 minutes of questioning while under oath before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The investigation of Clintons email system has become a troublesome issue for her presidential campaign, with Republican rival Donald Trump saying a recent finding by federal investigators that she mishandled classified government secrets in her email should disqualify her from office.

Clinton, whose spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesdays hearing, has said she regrets using the system in her New York homes basement for work. Voters have said in surveys the decision contributes to a feeling she is untrustworthy.

Federal Bureau of Information director James Comey said in July there was evidence that Clinton and her staff may have broken the law with their extremely careless handling of classified government secrets, but concluded there were insufficient grounds to prosecute.

A third technician, Bryan Pagliano, did not appear at Tuesdays hearing despite a subpoena from the committee ordering his testimony. Lawmakers can jail people who defy congressional subpoenas.

Combetta and Thornton work for Platte River Networks, the Denver technology firm that managed Clintons email servers soon after she left the State Department in 2013. They repeatedly invoked their Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination to each question from lawmakers. Jason Chaffetz, the committees Republican chairman, eventually excused them out of what he called respect for their rights.

Elijah Cummings, the committees most senior Democratic member, expressed sympathy for the technicians, saying the Republicans were only trying to use them to embarrass Clinton.

Story continues

Chaffetz criticized Pagliano, who was paid by Clinton to manage her server while she was the nations top diplomat, for not complying with the subpoena and said the committee would decide after the hearing whether to punish him. Pagliano was given a form of immunity from prosecution in 2015 for cooperating with a federal investigation into the mishandling of classified information over the server.

A fourth witness, Justin Cooper, testified for more than two hours about his role setting up the email system in 2009 while he worked as an aide to the Clinton family.

Clinton used an AT&T email account while a senator and a presidential candidate in 2008. Cooper said she and her staff had a desire to change her email address because a number of people had received her email address over the course of those activities.

A summary report of the FBIs findings showed Combetta saying he used software called BleachBit to delete an archive of Clintons work emails around the same time as a conference call with Clintons lawyers, despite lawmakers seeking the records through a subpoena.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Bill Trott and Peter Cooney)
A day after Donald Trump passionately attacked Hillary Clintons assertion that half of his supporters fall into a basket of deplorables, the Democratic nominees campaign is hitting back with a new ad using his own comments about Americans to attack him.

The one-minute ad, published online late Monday, begins with a clip of Trump blasting Clinton at a rally in Baltimore earlier in the day.

You cant lead this nation if you have such a low opinion for its citizens, Trump said of Clintons comments, which she partially walked back over the weekend.

The ad quickly pivots to a compilation of Trump soundbites from the campaign trail, including his criticism of his GOP rivals supporters (How stupid are the people of this country?); his questioning of the fact that an American-born federal judge of Mexican descent was adjudicating a lawsuit against Trump University (Were building a wall  hes a Mexican); his attempt to reach out to African-American voters (Youre living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. What the hell do you have to lose?); and his comments about Rosie ODonnell (Shes a disgusting pig).

"You can't lead this nation if you have such a low opinion for its citizens." Donald Trump About that. pic.twitter.com/pij0atGrgK  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 12, 2016

The ad, which will run as part of the Clinton campaigns cable television spots this fall, was released hours after Trump declared that the former secretarys characterization of his supporters should disqualify her from seeking the presidency.

The disdain that Hillary Clinton expressed towards millions of decent Americans disqualifies her from public service, Trump said at the Baltimore rally. You cannot run for president if you have such contempt in your heart for the American voter. You cant lead this nation if you have such a low opinion of its citizens.

Story continues

Trump added: If Hillary Clinton will not retract her comments in full, then I dont see how she can credibly campaign.

Clinton sparked controversy Friday when she took aim at Trump supporters during a private New York fundraiser. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trumps supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? Clinton said at the event. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic. You name it.

She later clarified her remarks, saying in a statement issued Saturday that she regretted using the word half.

The Trump campaign pounced, pushing out an ad highlighting Clintons comments.

You know whats deplorable? a voiceover in Trumps ad asks. Hillary Clinton viciously demonizing hard-working people like you.

At a rally in Asheville, N.C., on Monday night, Trump continued his assault, accusing Clinton of running a hate-filled campaign.

My opponent slams you as deplorable and irredeemable, Trump said. I call you hard-working American patriots who love your country.

Anybody xenophobic? he asked. I dont think so.

WATCH: Man slaps several protesters as they are being escorted out of @realDonaldTrump rally in Asheville, NC. pic.twitter.com/KMKCDvIar4  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) September 12, 2016

But while Trump was praising his supporters, the Washington Post reported that the atmosphere inside the arena in Asheville grew tense as protesters repeatedly interrupted his speech.

At one point, a man took a fighting stance and then pushed and grabbed male protesters and swatted at a female protester, the newspaper reported. The protesters appeared to be in an antagonistic verbal exchange with the man.

ABC News captured video of the incident, which shows the protesters being removed by security from the event, while the man was allowed to stay.
By Lesley Wroughton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders on both sides of South Sudan's civil war and their families have profited off the conflict, amassing fortunes through links with bankers, arms dealers and oil companies, according to a report released on Monday by actors George Clooney and Don Cheadle. At a news conference to present the report, they called on the international community to cut off the leaders' financial flows through tougher sanctions. The report follows a two-year undercover investigation by The Sentry, a group co-founded by Clooney and fellow activist John Prendergast to look into the financing of African conflicts and comes at a time when the United Nations is threatening to impose an arms embargo against South Sudan's government. The group said a network of international facilitators stretched from arms dealers in Ukraine to construction companies in Turkey, mining firms in Kenya, and Chinese investors involved in joint ventures in gambling and private security sectors in South Sudan. According to the report, South Sudan's leader President Salva Kiir, his former deputy Riek Machar and military generals have pilfered state coffers, accumulated an array of luxury homes and cars, and enriched themselves and family members through stakes in oil and other business ventures. Spokesmen for Kiir and Machar both denied the leaders had properties in Kenya or other African countries, as the report alleged. The report also said South Sudanese army chief Paul Malong, who makes roughly $45,000 a year, has at least two luxurious villas in Uganda in addition to a $2 million mansion in a gated community in Nairobi. The report said family members of top government officials have stakes in commercial ventures in South Sudan. Local laws forbid constitutional office holders from engaging in business activities outside the government while in office, it said. The report said Kiir's family had been involved in a series of transitions involving government procurement deals and relationships with a foreign oil company. The group said it had obtained documents showing that Kiir's 12-year-old son held a 25 percent stake in a holding company formed in February 2016. "The past five years South Sudan's leaders have engaged in ... mass atrocities on its citizens, starvation and rape, all while plundering the state's resources and enriching themselves and their families," Clooney told the conference. "The simple fact is they are stealing the money to fund their militias who attack and kill one another. It involves arms dealers, international lawyers, international banks, international real estate," he added. Ateny Wek Ateny, a spokesman for Kiir, told Reuters by phone on Saturday before the release of the report, which was embargoed for release on Monday, that Kiir did not own properties in Nairobi. "The president doesn't have any property in Nairobi or anywhere," Ateny said. "If there is anyone who says that, he is only accusing the president for no reason. The president does not even have a bank account, so how do these people arrive at all these?" James Gatdet Dak, spokesman for Machar, also denied that Machar owned property in Nairobi or Addis Ababa. "It is a lie. Dr. Riek Machar's family does not own a house in Nairobi or in Addis Ababa as alleged," he said, "They are renting a house in Nairobi, while the one in Addis Ababa was a temporary guest house provided to him by the Ethiopian authorities during the peace negotiations." LOBBYING FOR ACTION Clooney said the group planned to lobby U.S. President Barack Obama and other senior administration officials to impose sanctions targeted at South Sudan's leaders and to freeze their assets abroad. The United States has poured $1.5 billion of aid into South Sudan despite widespread concerns over corruption. Prendergast, a former director of African affairs at the White House National Security Council, said the "fatal flaw" of the international community was it did not pay enough attention to the "core rot" at the foundation of the new government. South Sudan secured its independence in 2011 but by December 2013 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 fleeing to neighboring states. 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. The U.N. Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015, then in July blacklisted six generals, three from each side, by subjecting them to an asset freeze and travel ban. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Additional reporting by Denis Dumo in Juba and George Obulutsa in Nairobi; Editing by James Dalgleish)
CM Punks UFC career may have been a one-and-done deal. The former WWE superstar made his professional fighting debut on Saturday at UFC 203 in Cleveland, Ohio against Mickey Gall, and failed miserably.

He was signed by the fight promotion in December 2014 and spent nearly two years preparing for Saturday. Within seconds he found himself on his back. Seconds later he was mounted and eventually submitted via rear-naked choke. The fight lasted just over two minutes.

I became friends with him. Hes a nice guy. I like him. I have a lot of respect for him. He wanted to give it a shot. I gave him a shot, said UFC President Dana White about Punks UFC debut.

The 37-year-old professional wrestler turned mixed martial artists popularity and drawing power landed him in the top MMA promotion on the planet, but that wasnt his initial plan.

My initial venture into this was going to be at the lowest level. This opportunity just got presented to myself. I would have been a fool to say no. I dont know what happens from here on out, said Punk during the UFC 203 post-fight press conference.

Despite signing him with no MMA experience, White thinks it may be a good idea for Punk to take his next fight in a lower tier promotion.

He probably shouldnt have his next fight in the UFC, White told The Fight Network following Saturdays event. This is a tough place to learn.

Punk wants to continue his journey in MMA, but was uncertain about what the future holds.

Whos to say where I go from here, he asked. I definitely want to keep going. I just fell off a bike. Im not just going to shelve it and leave it in the middle of the street. Ive got to get back on and ride.

Follow MMAWeekly.com on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
SANAA/DUBAI (Reuters) - An Arab coalition bombed a Yemeni industrial site in the capital Sanaa on Tuesday, damaging what the Saudi-led alliance called a workshop making missile parts but which businessmen said were several plants making pipes and building materials. Among the buildings struck was a factory used by Yemen's Alsonidar Group to make and sell pumps under a long standing arrangement with Italian water specialist company Caprari, both companies said. That strike caused a fire that destroyed half the premises and resulted in several million dollars worth of damage, said Caprari managing director Alberto Caprari. There were no casualties in the attack on the Alsonidar site in al-Rawda district in northern Sanaa, which the Yemeni company said also destroyed a red brick factory and damaged another plant producing metal pipes. The Saudi-led coalition has been supporting an offensive by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government against Iran-allied Houthis who control most of northern Yemen, including the capital Sanaa. In Saudi Arabia, a coalition spokesman said warplanes hit the Alsonidar plant because it "is now becoming a military manufacturing unit specialized in producing pipes Houthis use to assemble local-made missiles." "This strike was necessary to protect Saudi border cities and eliminate the use of such missiles in Houthis attacks against the Yemeni national army and Yemeni citizens," it said. "The coalition takes its responsibilities under international humanitarian law seriously, and is committed to the protection of civilians in Yemen." Caprari said the site was purely civilian. "We are very angry. We have been operating in Yemen with our partner for more than 20 years, helping to produce pumps which are for civilian use," Caprari said by phone from the company headquarters in the northern Italian city of Modena. "This is a forgotten war. The Gulf nations are taking advantage of the situation and are ruining the industrial fabric of Yemen." The fighting in Yemen has intensified since U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Kuwait ended last month without an agreement. The coalition has been supporting an offensive by Hadi's supporters aimed at recapturing Sanaa from the Houthi group. The Houthis have in turn been firing rockets across the border into Saudi Arabia, killing and wounding a number of civilians, including several children. The Saudi-owned al-Arabiya satellite channel reported that several field commanders of the Houthi group were killed in an air strike on a cave near the border with Saudi Arabia. There was no immediate comment from the Houthi group on the report. (Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari, additional reporting by Crispian Balmer in Rome, writing by Sami Aboudi and William Maclean; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
Washington (AFP) - US-led coalition warplanes destroyed a factory in Iraq used by the Islamic State group to make chemical weapons, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The production center -- a converted pharmaceutical plant complex -- likely made chlorine or mustard gas, said Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigian, who heads US Air Forces Central Command.

"This represents just another example of Daesh's blatant disregard for international law and norms," he told Pentagon reporters in a video call, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

The strike occurred Monday near Mosul and was conducted by fighter jets, ground-attack aircraft and even a B-52 heavy bomber, the Pentagon said.

The Pentagon provided video of the strike, showing a series of large, flat-roofed buildings disintegrating under multiple explosions.

Observers have repeatedly alleged IS has used chemical weapons, and the Pentagon has confirmed the jihadists have deployed chlorine and sulfur mustard devices.

Iraqi security forces, backed by coalition air power, are in the final weeks of "shaping" operations ahead of an assault to recapture Mosul, which IS seized in 2014 and which remains the jihadists' last main stronghold in Iraq.
By Julia Symmes Cobb and Nelson Bocanegra YARI PLAINS, Colombia (Reuters) - Hundreds of FARC rebels are converging on a camp in southern Colombia to pour cement, shore up dirt roads and set up communications ahead of the group's congress this week, where delegates will ratify a peace deal to end 52 years of war. Representatives from each unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will debate and vote on the accord reached last month after years of talks with the government. As many as 1,000 delegates and media are expected at the 10th congress from Saturday, where rebels will discuss the five-point accord and their imminent entry into politics. Historically secretive, this congress is the first one open to civilians. The grassy plain, about five hours drive on mud roads from the nearest large town, is being prepped with toilets and large wooden structures for dining and other events at the week-long meeting. Visitors will sleep in tents and lean-tos. Fighters accustomed to bombing raids were laying bricks and lashing together bamboo stalks for roofing when Reuters visited the site before the official opening of the conference. "We're working 24 hours a day in three shifts so we can be ready, given the peace process accelerated and the date surprised us a bit," Carlos Antonio Lozada, a member of the FARC's seven-member ruling committee, told Reuters. With shirts wrapped around their heads, rebels mixed cement with sticks as two dozen reinforcements, carrying Kalashnikov rifles, arrived by truck. The congress will mark the group's final meeting as a guerrilla army and offer hints of its political future. A preliminary agenda seen by Reuters showed delegates would discuss rural reform and political prisoners. Previous congresses, to decide battle strategy, were sometimes held via internet due to military offensives that prevented leaders meeting. Under the peace accord, which will be decided nationally at an Oct. 2 plebiscite, ex-rebels will be able to run for office once they complete demobilization requirements. Marquees have been set up for the press, meals will be provided for $30 a day and an already struggling internet connection is tasked with providing Wi-Fi. The rural location means logistics will be tricky. Roads are thick with mud and heavy rains could make them impassible. Already, FARC fighters are busy laying wooden planks over the mud to fend off wash-outs and prevent trucks and buses getting bogged down. "We really need two lanes," joked Dairon, his nom de guerre, as he supervised the rudimentary roadworks. (Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb and Nelson Bocanegra; Editing by Helen Murphy and James Dalgleish)
By Devika Krishna Kumar

NEW YORK, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Colonial Pipeline Co's days-long shutdown of the main line that moves gasoline to the Atlantic Coast from the U.S. Gulf Coast has had the unintended effect of starting to alleviate the glut of domestic gasoline supply, traders said.

Colonial shut down Line 1 after a leak in Alabama on Friday, cutting off supplies and likely causing drawdowns in stockpiles. A full restart of Line 1 is expected to be completed by this weekend.

Gasoline futures, and cash prices, particularly in the New York Harbor, rallied.

The East Coast has been weighed down by bloated gasoline inventories, which are still 10 percent above the five-year average at about 64.9 million barrels, according to U.S. Energy Department data.

On Tuesday, a Colonial spokesman said that it had allocated space for gasoline on its distillates line until it could resume normal service on Line 1. That will affect the timing of distillate deliveries as well, Colonial said.

"The longer it's down, the more bullish it is for gasoline," said Andrew Echlin, oil products analyst at Energy Aspects in New York. "You add that to all the refinery shutdowns and the limited supply, and East coast refiners could see a bump in margins as well."

U.S. gasoline margins (1RBc1-CLc1) jumped to a near one-month high of $13.68 on Tuesday. U.S. gasoline futures also rose, gaining as much as 1.9 percent to a session high of $1.4128 per gallon.

Colonial's Line 1, with a capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day, runs to Greensboro, North Carolina, from Houston. Line 2 carries distillates primarily, while Lines 3 and 4 are multiproduct. Both Line 1 and 2 have crossover capability, though it is not a common occurrence, a Colonial spokesman told Reuters.

A source at a U.S. refiner said the supply disruption will cause a sizeable dent in the glut on the East Coast, but may not help clear the oversupply unless Colonial is down longer than a week.

U.S. gasoline calendar spreads also jumped on the Colonial news, strengthening the front of the curve. The spread between U.S. gasoline futures for delivery in November to December jumped to a record high on Tuesday, widening to as much as $0.0268.

The New York Harbor gasoline market tightened significantly on the Colonial news, traders said. If waterborne imports pick up over the next couple of weeks, however, that could keep a lid on New York Harbor premiums, they said.

(Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in New York; editing by Grant McCool)
13 Sep - Comedienne Joy Viado has recently passed away.



As reported on Coconuts Manila, Viado's son, Joseph Christopher, shared the news, saying that his mother had a heart attack on the night of 10 September.



"She was on her way from her friend's home, and when she arrived, she was already having a hard time breathing," said Joseph.



The comedienne was immediately rushed to the Quezon City General Hospital but was declared dead on arrival.



Her wake has been held at the Felicidad Chapel in Arlington Memorial Chapels, Quezon City since 11 September.



She was 57.



(Photo Source: facebook.com/jviado)
IMG_7158.JPG

A team of computer science professors at the University of Michigan are trying to change the way we manage money.

Clinc, a startup that was one of the companies to win "Best in Show" at Finovate on September 8, was born out of a research lab, by programmers taking an entirely different approach.

Clinc is a company we created with the mission of taking the best science and technology from academia, from our research lab, and creating real solutions for humans," said founder and CEO Jason Mars, who is a professor of computer science and engineering at the university.

Clinc can be described as a sort of Siri for your bank account, and the app features a financial genie aptly named, "Finie," which has a sophisticated understanding of natural language.

"You can talk to it like it's a person," said Mars. "It's different to other chat bots out on the market right now in that the user doesn't have to remember specific ways to ask questions or speak any key words."

They use a data driven, deep learning algorithm versus the usual rule based approach. "Weve never taught this thing a single rule," said Mars. "Weve trained it with experience and examples."

The programming professors built from scratch five distinct artificial intelligence engines using completely neural network technologies. A neural network is a system of hardware and/or software patterned after the operation of neurons in the human brain.

Clinc's mission is to give people the tools to understand their financial story in a really easy way. For example, you can ask Finie what your spending looks like this year so far, and she breaks it down complete with graphs and pie charts broken into categories. You can ask her to show a breakdown of your travel spending, and a few seconds later she'll come back with the numbers, broken up into hotels, taxi's, flights and the like.

Screen Shot 2016 09 12 at 11.23.21 AM

I was intrigued, so I went and tried it out at their booth after the demo. I asked it things like, "How much did I spend on sushi this year?"

Story continues

And then the dreaded question, "How much am I spending on Ubers?"

I wasn't sure I really wanted to know the answer to these questions, but I figured my bank account would thank me.

You can also take it one step further and ask it questions like, "Can I spend $300 on a nice dinner tonight?" Finie analyzes your historical restaurant spending and auto generates a budget based on your own history.

Or, if you want to remember the name of a great restaurant you went to on your trip to Italy last summer, she can show you all of the restaurant transactions from that trip, from one year ago.

She can also do various admin tasks like transfer money between accounts and send payments to friends.

The startup officially launched on Friday at the Finovate conference.

It's a B2B business model, and they are looking to sell to banks like Chase or Bank of America who want to deliver Finie to customers through their banking apps.

"Financial institutions can't do this on their own," said Mars. "They're not tech companies. But that's why we're here."

Clinc was a hit at Finovate Fall, which featured a who's who of the financial technology world. Over two days, 72 startups each got seven minutes to demo their ideas to banks, investors, and potential customers. Slides weren't allowed.

Instead, each startup had to show how to use their product in real-time, to an audience of over 1500. Pretty much every bank, consulting company and payments company was there, looking to scope out the competition and keep their fingers on the pulse of technology.

While there are a lot of other startups looking at integrating chatbots and artificial learning technology into banking apps, this university startup could be onto something new with this sort of natural language recognition.

"Academics come at it from a different angle," said Greg Palmer, VP of Finovate and the Master of Ceremony at Finovate Fall 2016 in New York. "In a data heavy industry, they can spot the holes that exist."

NOW WATCH: Kobe Bryant is starting a $100-million venture capital fund





More From Business Insider


By Andray Abrahamian What made North Korea decide to conduct its fifth nuclear test last Friday? No doubt because Pyongyang believed that China would allow Kim Jong Un to get away with it. Again. After Pyongyangs fourth nuclear test in January, the UN Security Council signed off on the UN's toughest sanctions against North Korea to date. Beijing, a permanent council member long frustrated by its neighbor, seemed to have signed off on a package of tough measures indeed. Those sanctions included bans on key North Korean exports, though with a vaguely worded exception for livelihood purposes. The measures specifically targeted extractives like coal and iron ore, which North Korea leans on heavily for revenues. They also greatly restricted options for international banking by North Korean institutions. However, Chinas fundamental position regarding the Korean peninsula remained the same: no war, no instability, no nukes. The sequence of that oft-repeated maxim is no accident. Those are the conditions Beijing seeks to avoid, in that order. Nuclear weapons are a distant third place in that range of apprehensions. Following the Koreas, of course, China would bear the brunt of war or instability on the peninsula, in the form of refugees and severe economic pain. As much as it frustrates Beijing, Chinese leaders continue to believe that nuclear North Korea is a problem that can and should be managed through diplomacy. Since its third nuclear test in 2013, China has been more comfortable with economic pressure as part of the policy mix regarding North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK), but it is still unwilling to push Pyongyang to the point of destabilization. As such, Beijingvirtually Pyongyang's only trading partnerhas implemented some of the measures specified, but seems to be frequently exercising that significant loophole regarding coal. Chinese imports of North Korean coal fell sharply in April and May after sanctions were announced, but rebounded strongly by June. In Pyongyang, policymakers will have been paying keen attention to Beijings public statements, information gleaned from backchannel communications with Chinese officials and facts on the ground for its businesspeople in China since March. They have sensed that they can cope with the new normal imposed on North Korea by the updated sanctions environment. They have judged that Chinas fundamental position has not changed, providing leeway to conduct another test. Indeed, Beijing immediately called for a return to talks in the wake of the nuclear test, but Washington and Pyongyang arent even close to finding a mutually acceptable starting position. The Obama administration has lowered the bar to its minimally acceptable height. Secretary of State John Kerry said it most simply last week in Geneva: All Kim Jong-un needs to do is say, Im prepared to talk about denuclearization. Expert opinion is somewhat divided as to whether or not the DPRK does someday want to discuss some sort of denuclearization in the near future. Its likely that someday it will, but for now sees the possession of a credible threat against the U.S. mainland as irreplaceably advantageous. From Kim Jong Uns perspective, why not bargain from a position of strength? Pyongyang chose to conduct the test on its national independence day, but that doesnt truly answer the question: Why now? Why, for example, didnt Pyongyang wait to conduct a test closer to the U.S. election? An information-saturated electorate will have largely forgotten this test by the time they head to the polls in November, but exploding a device in late October would have provided Donald Trump with fresh ammunition to attack the Obama/Hillary Clinton foreign policy strategy of strategic patience. Trump is Pyongyangs preferred candidate as he introduces a degree of unpredictability, given his disregard for diplomatic convention and apparent lack of knowledge about the Far East. Or why not let the sharp deterioration in China-South Korea relations play out a little longer? Seoul responded to North Koreas January nuclear test by allowing the United States to deploy its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea. THAAD essentially detects and shoots down ballistic missiles. It has been controversial in South Korea in large part because China has been so vociferously against it: Beijing views it as targeting the Peoples Liberation Army as part of a U.S. strategy to contain China. Due to THAAD, China-South Korea relations have gone from stellar to strained in a few short months. Last year, President Park Geun-hye was the only U.S. ally to attend Beijings celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. This year, South Koreans are concerned about some form of economic retaliation over THAAD by Beijing. Events between China and South Korea have been canceled, there are rumors of visa-issuance problems, and Beijing has already been looking to reduce the influence of South Korean pop culture. It may be that Pyongyang saw the acrimony between Seoul and Beijing and judged that these divisions would hamper cooperation against it if it conducted its fifth test now. But why not wait a little longer and see if Beijings rhetoric on THAAD turned to stronger reprisals? This could in turn provoke an anti-China backlash in South Korea and help create a powerful negative cycle between two famously nationalistic citizenries. By testing now, Pyongyang runs the risk of muting what could become serious discord between it two neighbours. That said, an editorial in the Chinese state-run Global Times on the day of the fifth test seemed very much to equate the sins of nuclear development and THAAD, putting them at the same level. If that really reflects the Chinese governments position, then perhaps Pyongyang has judged correctly and now is as good a time as any. The fact is, due to the DPRK's opacity, we struggle to know exactly why they conducted their 5th nuclear test at this moment. We do, however, have a clearer idea of their long-term strategy under Kim Jong Un: to have (or come close to) a miniaturized nuclear weapon and a missile that it can deliver to the U.S. mainland. (Andray Abrahamian is an Honorary Fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney and a contributor at 38north.org. @Draylien)
Yahoo Finance will have an exclusive livestream from the 2016 Concordia Summit in New York, NY. The special coverage will include live access to more than 20 panels over the two days. Highlights include Andy Serwer and Warren Buffett in a discussion of philanthropy, Andy Serwer and Boone Pickens discussing Americas energy future, a keynote address from George Soros and a wide range of topics from the presidential election to the refugee crisis and the sharing economy. Check out all the coverage live on Yahoo Finance September 19 and 20th.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A former Congolese rebel commander who started a hunger strike last week to protest the conditions of his detention at the International Criminal Court (ICC) told judges on Tuesday he is "ready to die". Bosco Ntaganda faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed by his troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002-2003. "I have no possibility to see my wife and children again under normal conditions. This is the reason I have lost all hope. This is why I am ready to die," Ntaganda said in a statement read out by his defense lawyer. Ntaganda also instructed his lawyer to no longer represent him and cease all legal actions on his behalf. The three-judge panel of judges was considering the statement. He stopped eating last week to protest restrictions on his phone calls and visitation rights which have been in place since 2014 due to concerns he was trying to interfere with witnesses. The former Congolese rebel participated in hearings on Tuesday via a video-link from the ICC's detention unit after a medical report Tuesday morning concluded he was not well enough to be transported to the courtroom. Ntaganda, whose trial began a year ago, started his military career in Rwanda when he joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front during the 1994 genocide. He later joined a branch of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), before surrendering in 2013. He faces 13 counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity relating to two attacks against the non-Hema population in Congo's Ituri province. The charges include murder, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers. (Reporting By Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Email privacy

Congress could fix this email privacy issue, but might not. \_()_/

The 114th Congress time is running out, but theres still time for it to fix an obsolete email privacy law that almost everybody agrees is broken. But even though the privacy-reform bill to fix those problems, H.R. 699, otherwise known as the Email Privacy Act, won unanimous passage in the House back in April, you cant rule out Congress failing to finish the job, because thats what tends to happen on Capitol Hill when tech policy comes up.

The 80s relic that is ECPA

The broken law in question is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, and its aged about as well as that years hairstyles. The worst of its provisions is one that allows law-enforcement investigators to demand email stored online for more than 180 days with only a subpoena  instead of having to get a judge to issue a warrant specifying the records to be produced.

Even in 1986, it shouldnt have been a foreign concept that people would keep mail on a remote computer instead of only on their own machines. There were such things as dial-up bulletin-board systems, which allowed users to store and download their messages on a central server, but not that too many people near Congress would have been using them.

But the thinking behind ECPA held that anything left to linger on a server for more than 180 days might as well be abandoned property, unworthy of the traditional protections accorded to messages saved on your own computer, or paper letters in your own home.

The only meaningful dent in that policy came in 2010, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that ECPAs 180-day rule was unconstitutional. Although that ruling was only binding in that circuits territory  Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee  major webmail providers began holding investigators to that standard nationwide, insisting on a warrant for stored email.

The crazy thing is, these companies (including Google and Yahoo Finances publisher Yahoo) didnt think to tell their users about this stronger defense of their privacy until January of 2013. That was several months after ECPA began showing up in news stories about the Gen. David Petraeus sex scandal.

Story continues

Its now been over three and a half years since the mass-market irrelevance of that part of ECPA has become common knowledge, and the law remains on the books unaltered.

Not for lack of trying

After several years of having attempts to fix ECPA in Congress run aground, were now closer than ever. The Email Privacy Act passed the House by a vote of 419 to zero in late April.

So Senate passage in the remaining weeks of this session should be a sure thing, right?

Advocates of ECPA reform are not overflowing with confidence.

Given the fact that the bill has passed out of the House overwhelmingly, and there is strong support in the Senate I think theres certainly a path for ECPA reform, said Michael Petricone, vice president of government affairs of the Consumer Technology Association.

Its certainly possible that the Houses strong support could mean it gets included in some year-end package, said Chris Calabrese, vice president of public policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology. Is that super likely? Probably not, but its also certainly a possibility.

The alternative is that the bill wont get out of the Judiciary Committee, where its been stuck since April as some lawmakers have sought to amend it to give the government more investigative powers  a common reflex after terrorist attacks.

For instance, after Junes mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, a measure that would have let the Federal Bureau of Investigation inspect a persons Internet use in detail without a court order barely failed to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to avoid a Senate filibuster.

Change is hard

If the Email Privacy Act gets dragged to the trash, it will at least have good company there.

Congress also looks increasingly likely to do nothing on patent reform, once again preserving the market patent trolls that make nothing and instead buy up patents so they can then shake down random companies with threats of lawsuits for allegedly infringing them.

A comprehensive patent-reform bill has once again stalled, and things dont look much better for a narrower measure that would require patent-infringement lawsuits to be contested where the involved companies actually do business. That would help keep trolls from filing suits in the notoriously plaintiff-friendly Eastern District of Texas.

The last best hope for tech-policy action may come in a bill that just cleared the House: The Consumer Review Fairness Act would strike down clauses in contracts between merchants and customers that allow businesses to punish consumers for saying mean things about them.

But meanwhile, an older bill that would extend nationwide consumer protections against lawsuits filed by companies and businesses to shut down public criticism looks to finish the year in a Congressional penalty box.

Change does take time. Congress did not vote to limit the National Security Agencys bulk surveillance of American citizens until two years after Edward Snowdens disclosures of such activity.

So tech-policy advocates promise that if they cant make things happen in 2016, theres always next year. As CDTs Calabrese said about ECPA reform: If it doesnt happen in this Congress, were also teed up for action in the next Congress. Or, presumably, the one after that.

Email Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com; follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro.

More from Rob:
Lyle Denniston, our Supreme Court correspondent, examines the controversy over an oil pipeline that will run across land considered sacred by Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, over the tribes objections.

Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline

THE STATEMENTS AT ISSUE:

The Army will not authorize constructing the Dakota Access pipeline on Corps of Engineers land bordering or under Lake Oahe until it can determine whether it will need to consider any of its previous decisions regarding the Lake Oahe site underfederal laws. Therefore, construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time. The Army will move expeditiously to make this determinationIn the interim, we request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe.

 Excerpt from a public statement on September 9 by the Justice Department, the Interior Department and the Department of the Army, announcing plans to interrupt construction of a small segment of a planned 1,172-mile-long pipeline to carry crude oil from North Dakota to join an existing pipeline in Illinois. The project has been challenged for years by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe because of its fears that construction will disturb sites sacred to Sioux religious tradition.

The risk that construction may damage or destroy cultural resources is now moot for the 48 percent of the pipeline that has already been completed. As the clearing and grading are the clearest and most obvious cause of the harm to cultural sites from pipeline construction, the damage has already occurred for the vast majority of the pipeline, with the notable exception of 10 percent of the route in North Dakota, including at Lake Oahe.

 Excerpt from a decision on September 9 by a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C., James E. Boasberg, denying a request by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe for an order to block further construction of the Dakota Access pipeline along its entire length. The judge found that the Corps of Engineers power over the project was so limited that any such order would have little effect, and that, in any event, the tribe had not proved that any federal laws have been violated by the Corps. The government agencies stepped to halt some of the construction soon after that decision was announced.

Story continues

WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTION, AND

Tribes of American Indians that gain official recognition from the federal government exist as nations in their own right, with broad powers of self-government. But Congress always has the last word over their fate, under the Constitutions Article I, giving the national legislature the authority to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes.

One of the most significant decisions the Supreme Court has ever made about Congresss authority to deal with the tribes was the 1980 decision in United States v. Sioux Nation. That ruling upheld a 1978 law giving the Sioux tribe a right to file new legal claims for compensation for the seizure of the lands of the Black Hills from them in violation of an 1868 treaty promising that the lands would remain theirs. As has so often happened with tribes throughout American history, that effort ran on for decades without a clear victory for the Sioux.

In 1966, Congress again demonstrated that it cared about tribal interests, this time focusing on the protection of property that had religious significance for tribes. It imposed on government agencies new duties to consult with the tribes as part of the National Historic Preservation Act. Other federal laws also now are available to the tribes as they seek to protect their heritage, including provisions that govern the regulation of the nations waterways and the environment in general.

Those are the laws that a part of the great Sioux Nation  the Standing Rock Tribe  has been trying for the past few years to use to protect sacred sites in the Midwest. The tribe, which has a reservation straddling the boundary between North and South Dakota, has been challenging plans for a new oil pipeline  called Dakota Access  that is to run on a path very close to reservation lands, and across (or under) rivers that have religious meaning for the Sioux.

Along with the legal challenge, the tribe, supported by other tribes and environmental advocacy groups, has been staging demonstrations along the pipeline path. The federal government has been urging that protests remain peaceful, but violence has sometimes broken out.

As matters have turned out, the legal part of the tribes challenge has just failed. A federal judge last Friday ruled that federal laws, as they apply to the construction of oil pipelines that snake across America, are very limited in their scope. While the tribe was demanding that the Army Corps of Engineers be ordered to use its powers to restrict construction along the entire path of the pipeline, from the Dakotas to Illinois, in order to protect sacred sites, the judge ruled that the Corps authority is confined to a very small geographic area, around Lake Oahe. (That is a 370,000-acre lake in the Dakotas, created when the federal government built a huge dam to regulate the waters of the Missouri River, covering up Sioux sacred sites that now lie beneath the lake waters.)

The federal judge noted that the greatest part of the pipelines path is on private lands, and that the government can do little to regulate what is done on those lands. And, even when the pipeline path would cross rivers or lakes that are subject to federal controls, the powers of the Corps of Engineers are narrow. Aside from having a duty to consult with tribes about sacred sites on Corps-regulated property, there is not much else the federal government can do, according to the judge. And he ruled that the Corps had done all that it could to try to talk with the Standing Rock Siouxs tribal leaders about the cultural sites.

But, within hours after that judge issued his ruling, three federal agencies stepped in, and ordered that no construction proceed any further around Lake Oahe until the Corps makes a new study of whether it should have put more restrictions on the pipeline. The agencies promised a clear and timely resolution.

Perhaps even more important, the agencies promised a round of formal consultation with Indian tribes in coming weeks on whether to give them even greater input into planning for infrastructure projects, and also to consider with them whether new federal laws should be enacted. Our message is heard, the leader of the Standing Rock Sioux told a rally in South Dakota.

Recent Stories on Constitution Daily

Does conviction of a serious crime always mean the loss of gun rights?

On This Day, the name United States of America becomes official

Constitution Check: Do online publishers have a right to gather news?
Officials in an Ohio town have been scratching their heads about the discovery of what is believed to be a human heart in a field.

Watch: MMA Fighter Donates 15-Month-Old Son's Organs After He Dies in DUI Hit and Run

Norwalk police Sgt. Jim Fulton told InsideEdition.com that the suspicious organ was discovered in a plastic bag late last month by a couple of EMS workers waiting in their ambulance for a call.

The perplexed EMS workers asked dispatch what to do about the "fresh" heart and were initially told just to toss it.

"They placed it in a Dumpster," Sgt. Fulton said. "Then they got a call back and were told to retrieve it."

Experts who examined the heart were all but certain it came from a human being, but it has been sent to the county coroner for testing to be sure.

Until then, Fulton and the town of Norwalk are left wondering how on Earth the heart ended up discarded in the field near a convenience store.

Watch: 6 People Are Forever Connected Through 3-Way Kidney Organ Transplant

One theory, Fulton said, is that it came from a funeral home. Another is that it could have once been a medical specimen that was tossed out for reasons unknown.

But with no one in Norwalk reporting a missing heart, authorities may not even have an answer when the results come back, likely within the next couple of weeks.

"It's a real strange situation," Fulton said.

Watch: Man Successfully Undergoes First Penis Transplant in America

Related Articles:
San Jose (AFP) - Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres said Monday she has withdrawn her candidacy for the top post at the United Nations, after failing to find sufficient support at the Security Council.

"All of the (straw) polls at the Security Council indicate that my candidacy does not have much future," Figueres said at a press conference alongside Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez.

Gonzalez added: "You have to read the signs."

Figueres expressed hope that the United Nations would choose a woman to replace Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has been in office since 2007 and whose second term ends December 31.

Gonzalez said that Costa Rica has pressed for a woman to lead the world body, even before tapping Figueres, and will continue to work toward that goal.

The world body has never had a female leader in its 70 years.

Figueres, who threw her hat in the ring in July, headed the negotiations that led to the historic 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
By Fayaz Bukhari SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - In Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's main city, calls to prayer ringing out from mosques went largely unanswered on Tuesday, as families in the Muslim-majority region heeded a curfew that made celebrating Eid nigh impossible. Adil Lateef was an exception. The 22-year-old was able to slip out of his home and pass along alleyways to reach his local mosque where a couple of hundred worshippers gathered. Usually hundreds of thousands of people would meet on outdoor prayer grounds to mark Eid al-Adha, one of the Muslim calendar's most important dates. "Normally, we would cook 10 lamb dishes at home on Eid, but today all we were able to get was cheese from the market," said Lateef, who works for a local company and lives with his parents. "The children used to go to the park to play and celebrate Eid with other local kids, but today they are all locked up at home." Kashmir, part of India's only Muslim-majority state, has witnessed deadly protests since the killing in a joint army and police operation of a well-known separatist militant on July 8. In the latest flare-up in violence, two men died in firing by security forces trying to quell stone-throwing protests that broke out in towns and villages across the mountainous region. The authorities are struggling to contain the worst unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir for six years, following the death of Burhan Wani, a field commander of Islamist separatist group Hizbul Mujahideen that is headquartered in Pakistan. Even though a decades-old dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir continues to rankle, the protests have been mainly driven by local anger at a heavy Indian security presence and the reluctance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to respond to calls by local leaders for greater autonomy. TWO MORE DEATHS In Srinagar on Tuesday, security forces in body armor and helmets with mesh visors kept vigil over deserted streets flanked by shops with their shutters drawn down. After prayers, a group of men spilled out of one mosque and chanted slogans in a spontaneous march that passed off peacefully, footage shot by Reuters Television showed. Security forces have deployed drones and helicopters to enforce the curfew, making it difficult for Kashmiris to return home from elsewhere in India to celebrate Eid with their families. Mobile telephone services remain partially blocked, while broadband internet was shut down for the second time during the latest wave of protests. One man was killed in stone-throwing protests in the Bandipora district of north Kashmir when he was struck in the head by a teargas shell. In Shopian, south Kashmir, another man was killed in firing by security forces, according to police and paramilitary officials who did not give further details. The incidents brought the civilian death toll to 78 in nearly 70 days of violence. More than 7,000 civilians have been injured, many by shotgun pellets used by Indian forces to clear protesting crowds. Two police officers have died and more than 5,000 security forces have also been injured. Locals said they were marking Eid, a feast in which many Kashmiris sacrifice goats or lambs, in a simple way. "We are mourning the killings," said Mansoor Ahmad, a Srinagar resident. Construction worker Nazir Ahmed, who normally earns 400 Indian rupees ($6) a day, told Reuters he has been out of a job since the protests broke out. He has had to rely on the charity of a neighborhood self-help group to feed his family of six. He, his wife, their children and his elderly mother were given half a chicken, some cheese, rice, cooking oil and vegetables to put food on the table for their Eid gathering. "We are locked inside our house, so we couldn't offer prayers," said Ahmed, 45. "I used to buy new clothes for my family for Eid, but this time we don't even have enough to eat." ($1 = 66.8720 Indian rupees) (Additional reporting by Reuters Television; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
SINCE THE RAPTURE OCCURS BEFORE THE FUTURE 7 YR TREATY IS SIGNED, I WONT BE AROUND TO HAVE THE ACTUAL TREATY SIGNING. BUT UNTIL THEN THIS SITE IS DEDICATED TO THE BEGININGS OF THE ISRAELI / ARAB PEACE PROCESS. AND AS CLOSE TO THE 7 YEAR SIGNING THAT WE GET BEFORE THE RAPTURE OF THE SAVED TO HEAVEN. UNTIL WE MEET JESUS IN THE CLOUDS BODILY, AND COME TO EARTH 7 YRS LATER.
D Interior Xpert Works with Commercial and Residential Clients on Offices, HDB or Condominiums

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / The founders of D Interior Xpert, an interior design and renovation firm in Singapore, are pleased to announce the launch of their new and user-friendly website.

To learn more about the renovation company in Singapore, including their HDB and condo interior design services, please visit http://www.dinteriorxpert.com/hdb-flat-bto.

As a spokesperson noted, the new website, www.dinteriorxpert.com, offers in-depth information about the company, as well as a portfolio of beautiful photos that illustrate some of their recent projects.

From business owners who are looking for experienced commercial interior design to residential HDB or condo owners who want to update the look of their home, D Interior Xpert is ready and willing to help. The friendly and experienced team works closely with every client to customize a package that will be fit both their budget and design needs.

"We value your time and finances so we work hard to ensure that projects are completed on budget and on time," noted the spokesperson, adding that the interior design services in Singapore from D Interior Xpert are completed by a top-notch team.

"From the designers to the contractors, we are confident that you will be working with among the most talented, skilled, and experienced hands and minds in Singapore."

No matter how large or small the project, D Interior Xpert strives to focus on three key elements: aesthetics, function and quality. As the top interior design company in Singapore, the team is committed to offering each and every client outstanding and expert service from the initial consultation to the day the project is completed.

For example, for people who would like to renovate their HDB home in Singapore, the team from D Interior Xpert works hard to redesign the space with form and function in mind. Living space is maximized as much as possible, and creativity is not limited to just the floor area.

Story continues

"Our wide range of design styles lend a dynamic and fresh perspective that is not just appealing to the eyes but is also a complete experience," noted the spokesperson.

About D Interior Xpert:

D Interior Xpert is an interior design and renovation company in Singapore. They have been in the business for over 5 years. They specialise in doing interior design for HDB and condos as well as commercial offices. For more information, please visit http://www.dinteriorxpert.com.

Contact:

Perry Castillo

admin@rocketfactor.com

(949) 555-2861

SOURCE: D Interior Xpert
The date of September 13, 1788, isnt celebrated as a major anniversary in American history, but it was a big day in the creation of our current form of constitutional government.

On that Saturday, the Congress of the Confederation set the dates for the election of a President and the transition to a Congress under the new Constitution  effectively agreeing to shut itself down as a legislative body in March 1789.

In its official Election Ordinance, the Confederation Congress acknowledged that all the requirements for the transition to a new form of government had been met: The Constitution had been written in Philadelphia in September 1787, later ratified by the required number of states in June 1788, and the ratification documents were authenticated and filed.

The ordinance spelled out that electors for the presidential election would be appointed on the first Wednesday of January 1789; the electors would assemble a month later to choose a President; and that the first Wednesday in March next be the time and the present seat of Congress the place for commencing proceedings under the said Constitution.

The ordinance also cleared the way for Senators and Representatives to be elected within states to serve in the new Congress. Three weeks later, Pennsylvania became the first state to name its two Senators: bitter rivals Robert Morris and William Maclay.

It also didnt specifically name New York City as the national capital, instead stating that the then-location of Congress (which happened to be New York) would be the starting place of the new government under the Constitution.

Article I, Section 8 of the new Constitution granted Congress powers to decide on the location of a federal district to serve as a capital. Such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, it read.

The Confederation Congress had been arguing for months about where to locate a temporary national capital. One faction favored New York, while another wanted Philadelphia, the site of the Constitutional Convention. Baltimore, Annapolis, and Lancaster were also proposed as sites.

Story continues

The ordinance was a short-term solution to the capital issue. Pennsylvanias delegates wrote to Thomas Mifflin, the state assembly speaker, about why they agreed to the compromise. The organization of the new government could no longer be suspended without risking consequences more disagreeable, they said, noting that Pennsylvania lacked enough votes to obtain the capital.

The Compromise of 1790 would settle the issue of the federal districts location, with an agreement reached among Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton to promote the capitals location in Maryland and Virginia, in exchange for the assumption of state debt by the new federal government.

The Residence Act of 1790 allowed President George Washington to pick the federal districts location, and in another compromise brokered by Hamilton, Philadelphia would serve as the temporary capital for 10 years, until the permanent federal district was ready.

History Stories on Constitution Daily

Forgotten facts about George Washingtons private life

10 facts about Presidents who were also Veterans

50 interesting facts about Abraham Lincolns life

10 little-known facts about President Theodore Roosevelt
Deadly violence flared across India-controlled Kashmir on Tuesday at the start of Eid, with at least two people shot dead by security forces and dozens more wounded, police and medics said.

Authorities imposed a curfew across large parts of the mainly Muslim state on the first day of the Islamic religious festival, barring prayers at the main mosque and prayer ground in the capital Srinagar.

Mobile networks and internet services were severed on the eve of the holiday in a bid to prevent a repeat of the protests that have erupted in the past two months.

In the northern town of Bandipora, an 18-year-old youth died after being hit in the head by a tear gas canister as he joined a protest in defiance of the curfew, a police officer who was not authorised to speak on record told AFP.

Another protester in his early 20s died on his way to hospital from shotgun pellet injuries sustained in the southern town of Shopian as demonstrators clashed with paramilitaries after the morning Eid prayers.

At least four others were wounded in the same clashes, a local police source said.

Around 50 people were also injured when police paramilitaries fired tear gas and pellet guns at protesters gathered on a road near Srinagar airport, according to another unnamed police official.

"There was a protest procession which was intercepted. People were shouting slogans and then there were intense clashes. About 50 people have been injured so far," the officer told AFP.

Many of the wounded were brought to the city's main hospital which had been largely emptied in anticipation of heavy casualties over Eid, an AFP reporter at the facility said.

More than 80 people have been killed since July 8 when a young militant leader was shot dead by Indian soldiers, making it one of the deadliest bouts of violence in decades.

Both India and neighbouring Pakistan lay claim to the whole of the Himalayan territory, which has been divided between the two since they separated seven decades ago.

The two countries, which are both now nuclear powers, have twice gone to war over the territory and accuse each other of stoking violence.




Getty Image

DeAngelo Williams seems like a good dude, but like many people, he gets set off by bad service in restaurants (well, that and participation ribbons, but thats another story). Williams went to a restaurant in Maryland recently, and according to an employee who decided to air his grievances on Twitter, he left less than a dollar tip on a $128 bill.

@DeAngeloRB thanks for the lousy tip. Servers and bartenders only make $4/hr and for someone who make mills can only leave $0.75  Johan Malcolm (@YoYo_Chelsea011) September 11, 2016

Getting mad online is never good, but sticking up for a co-worker who got the short end of the stick like this is a worthwhile cause. Unfortunately for Johan, Williams didnt leave a bad tip because hes a jerk. Instead, it seems like Williams got objectively terrible service.

https://twitter.com/DeAngeloRB/status/775169140000628736

She never asked for refills and took a dish back removed what was on it and left a shrimp tail in my salad https://t.co/rCqpGGdxmv  DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) September 12, 2016

Instead of asking for a manager I simply didn't leave a tip for the hardly working server that expected a tip https://t.co/rCqpGGdxmv  DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) September 12, 2016

Well your coworker set u up for failure did she also tell u she gave bad service and ask the other bar tender did I https://t.co/mOCdvIeaeQ  DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) September 12, 2016

These all are fair grievances. If only one of these things happened and Williams essentially stiffed his server on a tip, thats one thing. But for all of these things to happen in the same meal, a crappy tip seems somewhat justifiable. The restaurant worker tried to defend his co-worker by blaming the way that Williams ordered, but that got shot down pretty quickly, mostly because thats a weird accusation.

https://twitter.com/DeAngeloRB/status/775171443478843393

Story continues

I'm also trying to figure that out I don't think he was expecting me to reply https://t.co/Q8IDN3ITM7  DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) September 12, 2016

Williams also clarified that hes usually a pretty good tipper, but this was an exception because his service was so bad.

For terrible service?? Not me I tip to well for that https://t.co/EkSDRZT7KK  DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) September 12, 2016

According to TMZ, the dude who called Williams out on Twitter got fired and the restaurants owner offered to pay for the Steelers running backs next meal. While the server lost his job, we do have to give him props for sticking up for his co-worker. Plus he has a pretty good story to tell, which is always fun.

(Via Bleacher Report)
London (AFP) - Judges for top British literary award the Man Booker Prize spurned big-name novelists in favour of experimental new talent as they announced their shortlist in London Tuesday.

None of the six writers who made the cut for the coveted prize for fiction is well known outside literary circles.

Those who failed to make the shortlist included Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee, with "The Schooldays of Jesus".

The panel of judges told a press conference they wanted to reward creative pioneers.

"Being innovative, being bold, courageous, a willingness to take risks, being novel within the novel -- that's what really excited us because it shows that the art form isn't being nostalgic," said Amanda Foreman, chair of the judges.

Bookmakers Ladbrokes have made Graeme Macrae Burnet favourite to win with "His Bloody Project" at odds of 5/2.

The novel tells the story of a memoir written in prison in 1869 by a triple murderer. The manuscript is discovered by one of his descendants, who shares the author's name. He then edits and publishes the work himself.

Previous winners of the prize include Hilary Mantel for "Wolf Hall", Salman Rushdie for "Midnight's Children" and Michael Ondaatje for "The English Patient".

The winner will be announced in London on October 25.

- Gritty subjects -

Other shortlisted novels include US author Paul Beatty's "The Sellout", a satirical novel set in a fictional Los Angeles neighbourhood which explores racial equality and the civil rights movement.

One of the judges was actress Olivia Williams, who read many of the books between rehearsals and performances at London's National Theatre.

She described "The Sellout" as "shocking and unexpectedly funny" and compared it to the work 18th century satirist Jonathan Swift, author of "Gulliver's Travels."

Another was "All That Man Is" by Canadian-British author David Szalay, which judge Jon Day said was about "masculinity and the state of contemporary Europe -- a post-Brexit novel for our times".

Story continues

It traces nine moments in the lives of different men across the continent -- from a Prague suburb to a Belgian motorway -- to make wider points about masculine identity.

South African-born Briton Deborah Levy is the only author previously shortlisted for the prize to make this year's final six.

She made the cut for "Swimming Home" in 2012 but this year is included for "Hot Milk", described by its publishers as "a study in paralysis" set in a Spanish fishing village.

Foreman said it was about "the toxic waste produced by damaging parents and damaged children".

Completing the shortlist are "Eileen" by US author Ottessa Moshfegh and "Do Not Say We Have Nothing" by Canada's Madeleine Thein.

First-time author Moshfegh, 35, has written a portrait of a disturbed young woman trapped between caring for her alcoholic father in a squalid house and her job as a secretary at a boys' prison.

"Do Not Say We Have Nothing" is based around a world of classical music and silence in revolutionary China.

The judges dismissed suggestions that many of the books were gruelling and their characters unsympathetic.

"'Hot Milk' had me laughing out loud," said Williams, whose films include "Rushmore" and "The Sixth Sense".

"I was banned from reading 'The Sellout' in bed by my husband because I kept shaking the bed, I was laughing so much."

The Man Booker carries a cash prize of $52,500 ($69,000, 62,000 euros), but its higher reward lies in prestige which typically generates huge sales.
Defy Media, the studio whose brands include the popular Smosh comedy team, has closed a $70 million Series B round of funding led by institutional investor Wellington Management Co.

With the cash infusion, Defy plans to expand programming  in both volume and formats  for its portfolio spanning comedy, lifestyle and gaming. Its also looking to expand distribution on both traditional TV and emerging content platforms and hire staff to build out its nearly 400-employee ranks.

The new funding included participation from some (but not all) existing investors. Defy Media president Keith Richman declined to identify which backers were in the latest round; he also wouldnt say what Defy Medias valuation is with the new funding but said it was an up round (meaning the companys value increased).

Existing Defy investors include ABS Capital, Lionsgate, Viacom and Zelnick Media Capital. Defy Media was formed in 2013 by the merger of digital studios Alloy Digital and Break Media. At that time, the company raised $15 million in new funding.

Theres a lot of enthusiasm for our brands, and we have a secular wind behind us, Richman said, referring to the fact that digital-video viewing continues to climb.

Defy is increasingly looking at producing shows for TV networks, Richman said. The perception was, Oh, those guys produce digital, he said. But we want to make content for any device youre looking at.

Currently, Defy Media produces 72 original weekly series, representing more than 1,000 hours per month, across brands that include Smosh, Clevver, Screen Junkies, AWE me, Break and Made Man. All told, the companys programming generates over 800 million video views monthly, reaching 125 million viewers.

As an example of the type of programming Defy is considering expanding, Richman pointed to Smosh Live, an 83-minute sketch-comedy show featuring Smosh leads Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla that streamed live on YouTube on Aug. 26. The live broadcast had 57,665 peak concurrent viewers, and all told the show has generated more than 2.1 million live and on-demand views so far. It looked like television, Richman said. Smosh Live did so much better than we expected, especially in the opportunities it created for us.

Story continues

On the hiring front, Defy Media is looking to recruit across the board for open positions including a general manager of Clevver, content creators, and finance and sales personnel. It also plans to spend more money marketing its shows, channels and the company itself.

In addition to the weekly shows, Defy released Smosh: The Movie in the summer of 2015 (which hit No. 1 on iTunes movie comedy chart and was subsequently picked up by Netflix), produced Smosh comedy series Part Timers in collaboration with YouTube, and launched subscription VOD subscription service ScreenJunkies Plus. Defy distributes its content to more than 20 video platforms including YouTube, Comcast Watchable, Sky TV, Verizons Go90, Amazon Prime, Pluto TV and Spotify.

Guggenheim Partners served as exclusive financial adviser to Defy for the funding round, and Lowenstein Sandler acted as legal counsel.

Related stories

2016 Emmy Nominations: Maker Studios, Defy Pick Up First Nods But TV Nets Dominate New Short-Form Categories

Smosh to Launch Live Sketch-Comedy Show on YouTube (EXCLUSIVE)

Defy Media Unveils Series Slate at Newfront Presentation
[September 12, 2016] Chelsio Terminator 5 Unified Wire Adapters Achieve First-to-Market Delivery of Windows 10 Enterprise Client RDMA Support

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Chelsio Communications, Inc., a leading provider of high performance Ethernet adapters for storage networking, virtualized enterprise datacenters, cloud service installations, and cluster computing environments, today announced that its line of Terminator 5 (T5) 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) iWARP- (RDMA/TCP) enabled Unified Wire adapters have achieved "Certified for Windows 10 Enterprise" hardware certification for Windows 10 Enterprise Client RDMA feature enabling high-speed access to Windows Server using SMB Direct. Windows 10 Enterprise Anniversary Update (AU) includes an inbox driver for Chelsio iWARP enabled 10/40GbE Unified Wire adapters. The Windows 10 Enterprise Client RDMA feature provides I/O-intensive desktop applications, such as Video post-production, Oil/Gas and Computer-Aided Design applications, with high-speed access to Windows Server enabled by SMB Direct networking. Chelsio iWARP enabled Unified Wire adapters are first-to-market solution providing support for Client RDMA. As a result, customers using Windows 10 Enterprise for professional applications will see performance improvements while taking advantage of the ease of use and low cost of ownership of Chelsio iWARP. The iWARP (RDMA/TCP) standard permits building very efficient, high performance, Client RDMA-enabled Windows 10 Enterprise deployments very quickly. iWARP works with any Ethernet switch, thereby enabling incremental Windows 10 Enterprise RDMA installations without requiring a concurrent forklift upgrade of the Ethernet switch infrastructure. This ability to work with any switch, allows use of the most cost effective new or existing switch infrastructure with the least amount of support, while enabling an immediate plug-and-play deployment. The support of iWARP protocol for Windows Server 2012-R2 and Windows Server 2016 release allows for a very robust, tested, end-to-end RDMA networking deployment with iWARP. "Chelsio is pleased to be first-to-market with high-performance 10/40GbE iWARP Ethernet RDMA solutions for Windows 10 Entrprise," said Kianoosh Naghshineh, CEO, Chelsio Communications. "With Microsoft's concurrent certification of Chelsio's solution for Server 2016, Chelsio iWARP offerings can now enable the full benefits of RDMA networking to be delivered for large-scale, end-to-end Windows 10 workstation to Windows Server applications via using the same wire protocol on both ends of the wire."



"iWARP is the ideal high-performance RDMA over Ethernet solution for Microsoft Client environments, and allows the utilization of existing Ethernet infrastructure and reduces the complexities and costs commonly found in other RDMA protocols," said Philip Moss, CPO, Acuutech, a UK-based service provider and Microsoft Cloud OS networking partner providing cloud solutions. "Chelsio RDMA cards based on iWARP also integrate seamlessly with Storage Spaces Direct delivering very high performance storage to Windows 10 Enterprise; meeting the demands of the highest performance applications and complex datasets, with the simplicity of iWARP." "The new Client RDMA feature allows improved response times for the broad base of Windows 10 Enterprise professional applications requiring high-performance access to Windows Server storage," said Siddhartha Roy, Group PM Manager, Microsoft Corp. "We are pleased to see Chelsio support our mutual customers."

About Chelsio iWARP

Chelsio's Terminator 5 ASIC offers a high performance, robust third generation implementation of RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) over 40Gb Ethernet  iWARP. T5 delivers end-to-end RDMA latency that is comparable to InfiniBand, using standard Ethernet infrastructure. Chelsio's iWARP is in production today in GPU applications, in storage applications as a fabric for clustered storage, for Lustre and other storage applications, for HPC applications, and for remote replication and disaster recovery. It is a high performance, robust, reliable, and mature protocol that enables direct data placement, CPU savings, and RDMA functionality over TCP/IP and legacy Ethernet switches and internet with no performance penalties. About Chelsio Communications

Chelsio is a recognized leader in high performance (10Gb/25Gb/40Gb/50Gb/100Gb) Ethernet adapters for networking and storage within virtualized enterprise datacenters, public and private hyperscale clouds, and cluster computing environments. With a clear emphasis on performance and delivering the only robust offload solution, as opposed to simple speeds and feeds, Chelsio has set itself apart from the competition. The Chelsio Unified Wire fully offloads all protocol traffic, providing no-compromise performance with high packet processing capacity, sub-microsecond hardware latency and high bandwidth. Visit the company at www.chelsio.com, and follow the company on Twitter and Facebook. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130611/SF30203LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chelsio-terminator-5-unified-wire-adapters-achieve-first-to-market-delivery-of-windows-10-enterprise-client-rdma-support-300326321.html SOURCE Chelsio Communications, Inc.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate said on Tuesday they expected the chamber would vote to override President Barack Obamas promised veto of a bill allowing relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia.

It would be the first override of an Obama veto since he took office in January 2009.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, known as JASTA, would remove sovereign immunity, preventing lawsuits against governments, for countries found to be involved in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Fifteen of the Sept. 11 hijackers who crashed airliners in the 2001 attacks were Saudi nationals. The Saudi government, which strongly denies responsibility, has lobbied against the bill.

Harry Reid, the Senates Democratic leader, said he supported the measure. Theyre not one of my favorite countries, he said of the Saudis.

Richard Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said, Were all on the record supporting it, so at this point I think its a heavy lift for the president to have his veto sustained.

A White House spokesman said in a briefing on Tuesday it had received the bill, but did not offer updates about timing of a veto. The Constitution gives the president 10 days after receiving a bill to veto it before it automatically becomes law.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Related slideshows:



Slideshow: 9/11: Then and now - 15 years later >>>



Slideshow: Remembering 9/11 >>>



Slideshow: Tribute in Light >>>



Slideshow: World reactions to the 9/11 attacks  A look back >>>



Slideshow: How the 9/11 attacks were reported on front pages around the world >>>



Slideshow: 9/11 Memorial and Museum >>>
London (AFP) - Tottenham midfielder Eric Dier signed a new five-year contract with the Premier League club on Tuesday.

Dier has established himself as a key figure in Mauricio Pochettino's side since joining from Sporting Lisbon two years ago and also become a regular in the England team.

Following a season of playing in defence, Pochettino transformed Dier into a defensive midfielder and he has thrived in the role.

"We are delighted to announce that Eric Dier has signed a new contract with the club which will run until 2021," a statement on Tottenham's website announced.

The 22-year-old's contract extension comes shortly after Christian Eriksen committed his long-term future to Tottenham and reports suggest Harry Kane and Kyle Walker will follow in their footsteps by signing new deals soon.

On Wednesday, Tottenham host Monaco at Wembley Stadium in their first Champions League fixture for five years.

Dier, who has 11 England caps, has made 91 appearances for Tottenham and scored six goals.
The authenticity of the Grolier Codex has been disputed for the last four decades. A group of researchers who revisited the rare Maya text now argue that there's no way it could be a forgery.

If the 800-year-old Grolier Codex is indeed authentic, it would be the oldest known paper manuscript from the Americas, and one of just four Maya codices that are known today.

The fragmentary codex is made up of 10 painted pages full of Maya hieroglyphs, depictions of deities and a calendar that tracks the movement of the planet Venus, which was important for keeping religious rituals. [Photos: Maya Mural Depicts Royal Advisors]

The calendar spans 104 years, meaning the codex could have been used by at least three generations of calendar priests or "day-keepers," the authors of the new study wrote. For the Maya, Venus was an omen for unfortunate events, and the different cycles of the planet were linked to particular godsmost of whom are depicted in the Grolier Codex as dangerous, holding weapons like spears, darts and knives used for beheading.

Shady provenance

When it surfaced in the 1970s, the codex was eyed as a possible forgery. Those suspicions arose in part because of the manuscript's shady collecting history; it was not discovered by archaeologists, but looters, who sold it to a Mexican private collector JosueSaenz in the late 1960s.

Saenz presented what many scholars thought was an outlandish story about how he had acquired the manuscript. He said he was taken in a light plane to a remote airstrip in an undisclosed location in the Mexican state of Chiapas. There, the looters allegedly showed him the codex along with other Maya artifacts, including a wooden mask and a child's sandaland told him that the objects had been found in a cave.

According to the research consortium Trafficking Culture, Saenz allowed archaeologist Michael Coe to display the text at theGrolier Club in New York (hence the name of the codex) where it gained international attention. It then apparently sat for years in the basement of the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology.

Story continues

"It became a kind of dogma that this was a fake," study researcher Stephen Houston, an archaeologist at Brown University, said in a statement. "We decided to return and look at it very carefully, to check criticisms one at a time."

Evidence of authenticity

Coe, Houston and two other researchers have just published their 50-page reassessment of Grolier Codex in the journal Maya Archaeology.

Among the supporting evidence they present are radiocarbon dates that show the manuscript dates back to the 13th century. This would suggest the text was created toward the end of the early post-Classic period (A.D. 9001250), when both Chichen Itza in Yucatan and Tula in Central Mexico were falling into decline, and the authors say that the Grolier Codex contains imagery similar to what's been found at those two archaeological sites.

Skeptics had previously argued that a hoaxer could have created a forgery using genuinely ancient Maya paper. But the researchers also argue that the codex bears features that Mayanists in the 1960s didn't fully understand, and so a forger wouldn't have been able to create such features. The manuscript, for instance, contains images of deities that hadn't yet been discovered, the authors write, and some of the paintings are rendered in a pigment known as "Maya blue," which hadn't been accurately synthesized in a lab until the 1980s.

"A reasoned weighing of evidence leaves only one possible conclusion: four intact Maya codices survive from the pre-Columbian period, and one of them is the Grolier," the authors wrote.

The three other Maya codices which are much longer and in better condition than the Grolier Codex are the Dresden Codex, the Madrid Codex and the Paris Codex, each named after the city where the text is housed. It's not that the Maya didn't produce many written records. But many texts were written on organic material like strips of paper made from the inner bark of fig or mulberrytrees, and they likely disintegrated under the wet conditions of Central America. Still, others were deliberately destroyed by European Christians who saw the manuscripts as heretical works.

Some book burnings were even described in colonial accounts that would make any historian's heart sink. For example, one 16th-century Spanish Franciscan friar named Diego de Landa wrote about finding a large number of Maya books that contained "nothing in which there was not superstition and lies of the devil," so, he and his fellow missionaries burned them all, which the Maya, unsurprisingly, "regretted to an amazing degree."

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.
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f207610%2f87b5bdb50a2d40fc803f49a11ced10b7

Dolphins can carry on conversations in an advanced spoken language made up of pulses and whistles, a new study has found.

While marine biologists have long understood that dolphins communicate within their pods, the new research, which was conducted on two captive dolphins, is the first to link isolated signals to particular dolphins. The findings reveal that dolphins can string together "sentences" using a handful of "words."

"Essentially, this exchange of [pulses] resembles a conversation between two people," Vyacheslav Ryabov, the study's lead researcher, told Mashable.

SEE ALSO: Marine conservation efforts just took a major step forward

"The dolphins took turns in producing 'sentences' and did not interrupt each other, which gives reason to believe that each of the dolphins listened to the other's pulses before producing its own," he said in an email.

"Pulse, pulse-pulse, pulse pulse pulse."

Image: VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images

The study was published Aug. 21 in Physics and Mathematics, a journal of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University in Russia.

Ryabov is a senior researcher with the T. I. Vyazemsky Karadag Scientific Station  Nature Reserve, which is located in Feodosia  a port town in Crimea, the Ukrainian territory that Russia annexed in 2014.

For the study, Ryabov and his team recorded the acoustic signals of two quasi-stationary Black Sea bottlenose dolphins: Yasha, a male, and Yana, a female.

The duo has lived in the same concrete pool for about 20 years and have normal hearing.

Researchers used a two-channel system  with a frequency band of up to 220 kilohertz and a dynamic range of 81 decibels  to listen to "packs" of non-coherent pulses coming from each of the dolphins. Their audio recordings showed that the waveforms and spectra of each pulse changed from one pulse to another in every pack.

This suggests "that the set of spectral components in each pulse is a 'word' of the dolphin's spoken language, and a pack of [non-coherent pulses] is a 'sentence,'" Ryabov said.

Story continues

"Dolphins' acoustic signals ... apparently are the signals of a highly advanced spoken language," he added.

Example of the recordings displaying the sequence of the non-coherent pulse packs produced by Yana (down arrows) and Yasha (up arrows). The numbering of the packs corresponds to their sequence; I and II are the numbers of the recording channels.

Image: T. I. Vyazemsky Karadag Scientific StationNature Reserve

Michael Walsh, the clinical coordinator of the University of Florida's Aquatic Animal Health Program in Gainesville, said the dolphin study was an "important" development in the scientific quest to decode the acoustic signals of flippered mammals.

Walsh, who has studied dolphins for around 30 years and is a former head veterinarian at SeaWorld in Florida, was not involved in Ryabov's research.

Walsh said that, despite the excitement stirred up by the study, the finding that dolphins have conversations offers only a "small window" into understanding how dolphins actually relate to one another.

For both dolphins and humans, the vast majority of our communication is non-verbal (or non-acoustic), meaning we largely convey thoughts and feelings through eye contact, body language, gestures and other forms that don't involve words and pulses.

"There are many more aspects out there that are complementary [to language] and very important to how we understand animals in the wild," Walsh told Mashable.

Beyond communication, he noted that marine wildlife experts across the U.S. are conducting extensive research on deafness in dolphins. A 2010 study, for instance, found that around half of bottlenose dolphins that are stranded on the beach had significant hearing deficits.

"To me, that's ground-breaking," Walsh said of the research on dolphin deafness. "That results in them not being able to function anymore."
Donald Trump on Monday evening invited a handful of supporters onstage at a North Carolina rally to offer their thoughts on Hillary Clinton's "deplorable" comments from a fundraiser last week.

"These are not deplorable people, that I can tell you," Trump said as his supporters made their way to the stage.

The husband and wife who spoke first said they had been working in public education for their entire lives.

"My wife and I represent non-deplorable people," the husband joked.

.@realDonaldTrump supporters come on stage at Trump rally to respond to Clinton's "deplorables" comment: https://t.co/nLc7doOvbp  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) September 12, 2016

Others piled on.

"I am probably a lot of things," a woman said. "Deplorable is not one of them, I assure you."

"Do I look deplorable?" another woman added.

"No!" the crowd shouted back.

"I am a wife, a mother, and I work full time. Mrs. Clinton, you can go home!" the woman added.

Clinton said at a Friday gala in New York City that "half" of Trump's supporters are "deplorable" people. She later said she regretted placing "half" of his supporters in that category.

Speaking to the National Guard Association Conference in Baltimore earlier in the day, Trump slammed Clinton for the remarks, saying she "spoke with hatred and derision" about a large segment of the population.





More From Business Insider


How did we get here?

It is September 2016 and Donald Trump is one of two people who have a chance of being the next leader of the most powerful nation in the history of the world. Something in excess of four out of 10 Americans who are likely to vote support him and, according to a recent poll, his voters are more enthusiastic and engaged than those supporting his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

All this despite the fact that any objective analysis of the facts reveals the following: Trump has virtually no qualifications to be president, repeatedly failed as a businessman, has no history of public service, is the target of multiple investigations into possibly illegal activities, has regularly expressed racist and misogynist views throughout his career and during this campaign, and has deliberately and systematically reached out to groups that can only be described as deplorable  including white supremacists, anti-Semites, and other hate-mongers. Further, he has repeatedly expressed (including on Russian-state TV) his admiration for Vladimir Putin, a man who has systematically suppressed democracy in Russia, invaded his neighbors, scoffed at international law, and sought to undercut the interests of the United States. Worse, he has hired top aides who worked closely with the Moscow regime and sought to take advantage of a shockingly overt campaign by Russian intelligence to interfere in the U.S. election cycle.

Trump has repeatedly insulted and attacked the U.S. military and intelligence community, its leadership, and performance  while showing such utter contempt for the electorate that he has made no visible effort to come to understand Americas situation in the world or how foreign policy works. What is more, he has demonstrated his derision for the First Amendment to the Constitution and regularly sought to block, quash, and intimidate the press. If there were a more textbook example of the narcissistic, brutal personality type from which authoritarian thugs are made, it is hard to imagine. Trump is not just an American Berlusconi, he is our Putin- or Mugabe-in-waiting.

In an election year in which inequality and economic insecurity rank atop the list of voter concerns, Trump is a billionaire who has made his money by gaming the system and stiffing the little guy. He is odious and offensive; a poster child for everything wrong with the U.S. system. Indeed, the fact that he is not broke or in jail is powerful testimony to the special and unfair advantages the very rich have in America today. (See, for example, the evolving pay-to-play corruption scandal involving him and Floridas attorney general.)

In fact, by any rational calculus the only federal office for which Trump seems suited is one with bars on the windows. The notion that somehow he has become a champion for Joe Lunch Bucket is beyond ludicrous. It would be like Kanye West becoming spokesperson for the American Humility Society  except the stakes are incalculably higher.

Meanwhile, Trumps success is apparently due in part to widespread doubts about his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. These doubts have many roots, it seems. Some are tied to an email scandal that the FBI concluded was not worth pursuing and about which a Washington Post editorial made clear, as Gertrude Stein might have put it, there is no there there. This is exactly the same outcome that has resulted, and rightly so, from all the ridiculously expensive investigations into what happened in Benghazi  none has produced the slightest evidence that Clinton did anything other than her job as secretary of state. Some of these would-be smear jobs are linked to previous attempts to impugn the Clinton family; some go back decades, to when Clintons husband, the former president, used to walk the halls of the West Wing.

But beneath this veneer of sensationalism and unfounded accusations, there are of course facts, much as there are beneath the oily veneer of the Trump campaign.

In the case of Hillary Clinton, she is undoubtedly among the most qualified candidates to run for president in the modern era. Her record in office as a first lady, senator, and secretary of state was one of accomplishment and distinction by any metric (but to choose one, just look at her approval ratings while in those jobs.) Further, if you speak to anyone who even knows her somewhat or has seen her in action  and I have had the good fortune to have done both  they will tell you that not only is she extraordinarily smart, she is hardworking, warm, and funny. She comes to every meeting prepared. I have seen her sit in rooms with the worlds leading foreign-policy experts and with top economists: It was clear to all that she knew the material as well or better than anyone in the room. But what is more  she did something even rarer than knowing her brief inside out, she listened. It is no accident that she has an excellent team around her, one with the enduring loyalty that comes from having seen her in action.

Her election would be also a profoundly important historical moment, the first time a member of Americas majority population actually held the countrys highest office  an essential watershed for a representative democracy.

This is literally an election in which any fair evaluation of the facts should result in Trumps disqualification and Clintons election by acclamation. And yet, here we are, mired in a race that has the world scratching its head about whats going on in the United States and many Americans wondering what happened to send us all down the rabbit hole after Alice.

Theories about how we got here are plentiful. We could trace the rise of Trump back to Goldwater or Reagan and the rise of the modern right wing in America. We could trace it to Gingrich and the obstructionists who first shut down the government in the 1990s, proponents of a political scorched-earth policy that has only grown worse in the years since. (The Democrats, it must be said, are not without blame here. After all, it was a Democratic effort to shape the Supreme Court that gave us the verb to bork.) We could trace it to the concurrent emergence of the fringe right that stretches from Pat Buchanan to Pat Robertson, from Michele Bachmann to Rick Santorum, from Sarah Palin to the Tea Party. And certainly, elements of all of these movements led us here.

So, too, has the chorus of toxic commentators played a role in this  the Rush Limbaugh phenomenon and the Black Helicopter guys. They have embraced smear, conspiracy theories, inflammatory language, and gross incivility to drum up ratings and stir up emotions. They have a special role to play in moving the media world along the spectrum from light to heat. But cable news networks (Fox and MSNBC) and websites (Drudge, Breitbart, and the liberal equivalents) have all seen their success and aped it, valuing conflict over insight, cage-matches over thoughtful, unbiased analysis.

There is a special place in this demonology, by the way, for the right-wing newspaper commentators who developed a strategy and a series of code words that made them sound patriotic but in actuality were dog whistles for the haters. They spoke of family values  and slammed gays and broken inner-city families. They spoke of Christian values  against the express wishes of the Founding Fathers and in a way that excluded all the worlds other major religions and those who did not believe or doubted. They slavishly followed the playbook of the National Rifle Association  despite the fact that our national gun pathology has always posed a greater risk to the United States than any terrorist group. They spoke of liberty  but really meant freeing the rich from taxes while seeking for the state to play an ever more active role in womens reproductive systems or determining whether convicts should live or die.

They created the vocabulary that has been twisted into the mantras of todays haters and Trump lovers. And now, of course, most of them are running the other way, shocked and horrified at the monster they have made, ink-stained Dr. Frankensteins who lack the courage to admit their own responsibility in this gross national failure.

But somehow, when we trace each of these roots, they all take us back to periods in which the idea of a President Trump would be impossible  to Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike.

Something catalyzed all these forces and produced this inexplicable outcome. Determining it scientifically is impossible, of course. The rise of the echo-chamber-within-an-echo-chamber media phenomenon has helped isolate groups from one another and has deepened the us-versus-them mindset. The nonstop Twitter and social media conversation  wherein many of us get most of our news from friends, with whom we share values  is also to blame.

But something else has happened. The 15th anniversary of 9/11 underscores this for me. The entire country endured a psychic shock unlike any other in modern history as we collectively watched a human atrocity and national tragedy unfold. This made us feel more vulnerable and at risk than ever before. It created a level of fear that surpassed that all but the darkest days of the Cold War. This despite the fact that then, as now, we are probably safer than at any time since World War II. Were stronger. We face no real strategic threat (except those from within our own borders). And the enemies we face, while awful, are weak, small, disparate, and doomed to fail.

The lingering sense of vulnerability indicates the severity of the trauma. It also suggests that subsequent shocks  notably the global financial crisis  deepen the psychological damage. We, as a country, are still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. And Trump is a symptom of our distress.

He is not the answer. Restoring the country to psychic health is. That can only be achieved via the path that Barack Obama started us on and Hillary Clinton is promising to continue  systematic, material, economic, and social gains at home coupled with growing stature abroad (and here Clinton can help in ways that Obama could not).

In other words, the only constructive response to the Trump phenomenon is finding ways to help his supporters once again truly understand how great America still is  by delivering the benefits of that greatness to them as well as to all those who have been left behind as a consequence of the yet-to-be addressed inequities in our system.

Photo credit: JOE RAEDLE/Getty Images
From Cosmopolitan

Perhaps realizing that most women in America would sooner elect Homer Simpson over Donald Trump for president, the Trump campaign has launched a women-focused initiative called the Trump-Pence Women's Empowerment Tour.

Politico reports that Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law, kicked things off at an event in Ohio over the weekend. So far, the effort seems about as successful as Trump's African-American voter outreach, which has included him literally pointing to a black guy as "my African-American." Not even Politico could report on this initiative with a straight face:

"We are not politicians, we are civilians," Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump, told a mostly female crowd lunching on cold cuts and potato salad in a fluorescent-lit room. "We really don't have any idea what we're doing, except we said, 'We've got to go out and tell people what a great guy Donald Trump is."Great - and not a racist or misogynist.

Trump led the event with oft-memed Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson, former Apprentice star Omarosa Manigault, who now works for the campaign, Eric Trump Foundation VP Lynne Pattonthe, and YouTube stars Diamond and Silk. Notably, Trump was the only white woman in the group, a point which the women used to counteract the idea that their candidate  who has called Mexicans rapists and has proposed a ban on Muslims - is racist.

In a certain light, Donald Trump's sexism and racism really has been inspiring women. After all, his slurs inspired former Miss Universe Alicia Machado to apply for US citizenship so she can vote against him in November. His degrading attacks against women have inspired 30,000 other women to try to stop him from being elected. His comments about Hillary Clinton playing the "woman card" inspired the Clinton campaign to literally create a "woman card," which was a hit with her supporters. And he is certainly a continuous source of inspiration for pro-choice women who don't want to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

Story continues

It's unclear whether this initiative will bring more women into Trump's fold. But one thing is for sure  he could certainly use the help.

Election Day is Nov. 8. If you haven't registered to vote yet, you can do so here.

Follow Prachi on Twitter.

You Might Also Like
The seeds of American distrust over the new cease-fire in Syria  which began Monday after being brokered by U.S. and Russian diplomats  were planted as far back as last September. Thats when Moscow kicked off its air campaign in Syria by sending an official to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad with the message that Russian bombs would begin falling within the hour, blindsiding President Barack Obamas administration.

Since then, a pall of suspicion has settled in over the yearlong Russian air campaign, which has seen close calls and strikes on U.S.-backed rebels. Perhaps the most damning incident came on June 16, when Russian bombs nearly landed on American and British commandos in southern Syria in a raid that Russian planes repeated only 90 minutes later  despite urgent calls to Moscow to hold fire. Less than a month later, the Russians bombed a base 50 miles to the west used by rebel elements supported by the CIA.

Together, the strikes and mixed messages fueled suspicions at the Defense Department, CIA, and State Department that Russias actions betrayed its real agenda  to back the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the hilt while paying lip service to a worldwide goal of defeating the Islamic State.

An internal debate is now tearing through the Obama administration over how the United States should approach Russias aggressive moves in Syria.

Key officials at the White House and State Department want to negotiate with Moscow instead of risk an escalating proxy war with Russia or even direct military confrontation. Still, officials at the State Department and Pentagon remain deeply frustrated by what they see as Russias double-dealing, and the new plan to potentially forge deeper ties with Moscow comes as unwelcome news.

Under the terms of the agreement hammered out last week in Geneva, fighting between the Assad regime and opposition forces is supposed to stop in areas not controlled by the Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham  formerly the Nusra Front  allowing for the delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged areas and, in particular, the divided city of Aleppo. For the first week, the cease-fire will be renewed every 48 hours, after which the United States and Russia will start coordinating their targeting of the militant fighters.

Story continues

This plan has a chance to work, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday, noting the mounting death toll of Syrian civilians struck by Russian and Syrian warplanes. I would hope that everyone who has deplored these kinds of attacks  is going to support the effort to bring these assaults to an end.

Yet senior officials at the Pentagon and other top brass privately say the Russians and their allies in Damascus exploited the previous cease-fire in February to regroup and hammer opposition forces  particularly in Aleppo  the symbolic epicenter of the five-year civil war.

From the start of the Russian military intervention in Syria, Moscow said it wanted to work in cooperation with the United States to target Islamic State militants and other extremists. But, instead, Russian warplanes and troops on the ground mostly have struck opposition forces threatening the Assad regime, with bombing raids that rarely distinguished between civilian and military targets.

Theyve had about a year to demonstrate to us whether they were serious about that. And what theyve demonstrated is, no, theyre serious first and foremost about securing a future for Assad, Evelyn Farkas, a former senior Defense Department official who stepped down last year, told the BBC. The Russians have consistently lied to us.

Current senior military officers have an equally pessimistic view of Russias rhetoric on Syria as they have closely tracked Moscows aircraft and artillery backing up Assads forces over the past year.

The Russians need to put their money where their mouth is. Theyve been reluctant to do that so far, one senior military officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Monday.

But top commanders are ready to carry out the agreement despite the widespread skepticism, he added. Our job now is to say aye, aye sir and enact the policy, the officer said.

At the State Department, the deals provisions to allow for humanitarian access to besieged areas such as Aleppo are widely supported and viewed by many diplomats as a crucial reason for supporting the agreement. But officials deeply resent the impression that an unholy alliance is taking shape between the United States and Russia.

One major concern is that the United States now could be blamed just as harshly  by Sunni Muslims across the Mideast  as Russia currently is for supporting Assad.

This is about saving Syrian lives and getting back to transition talks, not placating Russia, a Western diplomat involved in Syria policy said.

U.S. officials have struggled to explain how they can both disdain Russias support for a regime that they believe has lost all legitimacy while agreeing to coordinate more closely with it.

This month, the U.S. special envoy for Syria, Michael Ratney, sent a letter to Syrian opposition groups outlining the planned cease-fire deal, saying it would rely on Russia to keep Assads warplanes from bombing mainstream opposition-held areas and bar pro-regime forces from a strategic supply route north of Aleppo. The letter emphasized that the deal with Russia was not based on trust  wording that angered Russian diplomats who felt they deserved better treatment by their American counterparts.

One Western diplomat said the Russian response was delusional.

If youre dealing with the Russians on this, you often need a long shower afterwards, the diplomat said.

In June, at least 50 U.S. diplomats voiced their revulsion to closer ties with Russia in a dissent memo calling for military strikes against the Assad regime. The letter acknowledged that the strikes would prompt a significant deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations but said the risk was worth taking.

The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable, the letter said.

The arrangements for how exactly U.S.-Russian military coordination would proceed in the ongoing cease-fire have yet to be hammered out. A senior defense official told Foreign Policy that the plan calls for American and Russian representatives to hold a series of face-to-face meetings to exchange targeting lists, haggle over which targets are legitimate, and negotiate where there might be objections.

Were going to have Russians and Americans sitting down in a room together with representatives from about 11 other nations to select mutually agreed targets, the official said. However, intelligence-gathering methods, sources, and why a particular target might be important will not be exchanged, the official stressed. Just the lists of targets.

Any possible cooperation with Russia, however limited, will risk exposing aspects of U.S. spycraft, said Christopher Harmer of the Institute for the Study of War.

Anytime the U.S. coordinates any military operations with another country, even our allies, we reveal some of our operational art, he said. As for Russia, it has never been known to share much of its intelligence with any country, dating back to World War II. In terms of sharing intelligence, Russia is a one-way street, Harmer said. They want information but wont share any.

In an awkward moment Monday, Kerry told reporters at the State Department that Washington and Moscow would have to give the go-ahead for any Syrian airstrikes, as long as theyre agreed upon with Russia and the United States.

Later in the day, however, State spokesman John Kirby issued a correction to Kerrys statement to clarify that the cease-fire makes no provision whatsoever for the U.S. and Russia to approve strikes by the Syrian regime, and this is not something we could ever envision doing. The confusion increased calls for the United States and Russia to make the details of the agreement public, a demand neither side has shown a willingness to accept.

Its unclear how the meetings will work, and officials declined to comment on where they might take place. Both the United States and Russia have operational centers in Baghdad from which they run their anti-Islamic State campaigns; Russian officials share their facility with Iranian intelligence and military officers. At the moment, U.S. officers at Central Commands combat air operations center in Qatar speak to Russian counterparts by phone to ensure U.S.-led coalition aircraft are not risking collisions with Russian warplanes over Syria.

The first hurdle the cease-fire will have to clear is the critical first 48 hours.

Were going to stop and assess after the first 48-hour period to see how many times the cessation of hostilities has not been adhered to, the defense official added. If the Americans are satisfied, he said, the cease-fire will continue for the rest of the week, after which the United States and Russia will begin sharing their targeting lists and signing off on strikes.

Photo credit: Zach Gibson/Getty Images
[September 12, 2016] International SOS and Everbridge to Highlight Strategic Partnership at ASIS 2016

International SOS and Everbridge today announced additional details of their strategic partnership, as well as combined participation at ASIS International 62nd Annual Seminar (ASIS 2016), one of the leading industry events for security professionals taking place September 12th - 15th in Orlando, Florida. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006367/en/ As previously announced, organizations will benefit from a powerful integration between International SOS' (News - Alert) TravelTracker and Everbridge's secure, reliable critical communications platform to communicate key messages to their people during international incidents and risks, such as terrorist attacks, virus outbreaks and other emergencies. As part of this integration, organizations that use International SOS' TravelTracker will have significantly enhanced multi-modal employee notification capabilities. Organizations will be able to deliver messages to domestic and international travelers as well as international assignees, across SMS, voice, email and other modalities. "The unpredictable nature of global events today makes safety a top priority for employees on-the-go. Everbridge's strategic partnership with International SOS enables users to better communicate with people based on where they actually are, or are expected to be, and not just based on where their official office location is," said Jaime Ellertson, CEO of Everbridge. "Employees are on the move more than ever and need location predictability capabilities; we're excited to continue to evolve this alliance with an inustry leader like International SOS to usher in the next generation of global critical communications and travel risk mitigation solutions."



"We are committed to equipping clients with the tools they need to deliver Duty of Care to their employees," said Arnaud Vaissie, Chairman and CEO of International SOS. "Integrating the Everbridge platform with TravelTracker provides organizations with a state-of-the-art platform to communicate with their people in times of crisis. Furthermore, the extension and connection built into the Everbridge platform expands our crisis communication capabilities to include both local and travelling employees, while leveraging critical information from TravelTracker. This functionality is absolutely key to the global organization." Joint Partnership Activity at ASIS 2016

Integration overviews will be available in the Everbridge booth at ASIS (#1773) and in the International SOS booth (#1767).

International SOS and Everbridge will be conducting a press conference to highlight the functionality of the integration. The session will be held on September 13th at 3 PM ET in the media room. Please contact [email protected] for additional media inquiries or briefing requests. Everbridge became the communication engine of TravelTracker in July. Users of Everbridge's Safety Connection solution will have access to visibility into employees' travel itineraries via TravelTracker. This connector between TravelTracker and Safety Connection provides a new data source for Everbridge users to send real-time, location-based notifications to employees based on their expected international travel locations and for TravelTracker customers to expand the breadth of communications available to local employees who may not be traveling. About International SOS

International SOS is the world's leading medical and travel security risk services company. We care for clients across the globe, from more than 1000 locations in 90 countries. Our expertise is unique: More than 11,000 employees are led by 1,400 doctors and 200 security specialists. Teams work night and day to protect our members. We pioneer a range of preventive programmes strengthened by our in-country expertise. We deliver unrivalled emergency assistance during critical illness, accident or civil unrest. We are passionate about helping clients put Duty of Care into practice. With us, multinational corporate clients, governments and NGOs can mitigate risks for their people working remotely or overseas. About Everbridge

Everbridge is a global software company that provides critical communications and enterprise safety applications that enable customers to automate and accelerate the process of keeping people safe and businesses running during critical events. During public safety threats such as active shooter situations, terrorist attacks or severe weather conditions, as well as critical business events such as IT outages or cyber incidents, over 3,000 global customers rely on our SaaS (News - Alert)-based platform to quickly and reliably construct and deliver contextual notifications to millions of people at one time. The company's platform sent over 1 billion messages in 2015, and offers the ability to reach more than 200 countries and territories with secure delivery to over 100 different communication devices. Our critical communications and enterprise safety applications include Mass Notification, Incident Management, IT Alerting, Safety Connection, Community Engagement, Secure Messaging and Internet of Things, and are easy-to-use and deploy, secure, highly scalable and reliable. Everbridge serves 8 of the 10 largest U.S. cities, 8 of the 10 largest U.S.-based investment banks, all 4 of the largest global accounting firms, 24 of the 25 busiest North American airports and 6 of the 10 largest global automakers. Everbridge is based in Boston and Los Angeles with additional offices in San Francisco, Beijing and London. For more information, visit www.everbridge.com, read the company blog, http://www.everbridge.com/blog, and follow on Twitter and Facebook. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006367/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Democratic Senate candidate Russ Feingold, left, and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. (Photos: Scott Bauer/AP)

Down Ticket is Yahoo News complete guide to the most fascinating House, Senate and governors races of 2016. Coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday until Nov. 8. What you need to know today.

_____

There is a distinct feeling of deja vu in Wisconsins Senate race.

Incumbent Republican Ron Johnson is trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat Russ Feingold in one of the most hotly contested races in the country. If that matchup sounds vaguely familiar, its because it is: Johnson shocked Feingold, a three-term incumbent, by defeating him in 2010.

Six years later, Feingold is out to accomplish something that hasnt happened in over 40 years: take back a Senate seat in the next election after losing it. He is running on a reputation as an iconoclast forged when Feingold was, in many respects, the one-man progressive wing of the Senate Democratic caucus.

The lone senator to vote against the Patriot Act in the wake of 9/11, he was one of the most vocal supporters of the Affordable Care Act, and he put his name on the landmark campaign finance reform act he co-authored with Sen. John McCain.

But McCain-Feingold, which was intended to reduce the influence of financial contributions in elections, has been watered down by high court rulings, and Feingold was dragged down by a conservative wave in 2010, opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and his own flat campaign.

Is there still a place for Feingold in a state that has only become more purple in the years since his defeat, with Republicans driving up key statewide victories in midterm election years to balance the states liberal leaning in presidential elections. The 63-year-old visited every county in the state and was heartened by what he found.

Democrat Russ Feingold, second from left, alongside state Rep. Chris Taylor in Madison, Wis., in June. (Photo: Scott Bauer/AP)

Sometimes, politicians get big egos, Feingold told Politico last year, shortly after he entered the race. My ego isnt so big that I think its about me. Its about whats been done to the people of this state for the past four years.

Story continues

This time around, Feingold has held a lead in virtually every major poll since his announcement. An August Marquette University Law School poll has Feingold leading by four points, down from double digits just a few months ago. A Quinnipiac poll released from the same time has Feingold leading by 11 points, however.

There is no doubt that Johnson has an uphill battle merely by virtue of running in an election year in a state that hasnt voted Republican in a presidential election since 1984. Republican senatorial candidates havent fared well in the Badger State in recent presidential election years. Former Gov. Tommy Thompson, perhaps the strongest possible candidate, faded down the stretch in 2012 and lost by four points as Rep. Tammy Baldwin rode Barack Obamas reelection coattails to victory.

And the jovial Thompson had near-universal name recognition in the state, which Johnson, despite being the incumbent, still lacks.

Weve seen very little movement in the favorability and the name recognition of both Johnson and Feingold, said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School poll.

The most recent version of Franklins poll showed roughly a third of those surveyed had no opinion of Johnson, a figure that has held steady for the duration of the campaign. Feingold is unknown to 26 percent of voters.

But Johnson has another, potentially more damaging problem in Donald Trump.

While some Republican Senate candidates have managed to run ahead of the controversial presidential nominee, most notably Rob Portman in Ohio and Joe Heck in Nevada, the political climate in Wisconsin makes Trump an especially tough sell.

The biggest problem is there are a number of Republicans that dont want to vote because they dont like Trump. If they dont vote, that hurts down-ballot Republicans such as Sen. Johnson, said U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, who represents one of the most conservative swaths of Wisconsin in suburban Milwaukee.

Despite the (not very enthusiastic) support of Johnson, Gov. Scott Walker and House Speaker Paul Ryan, many Wisconsin Republicans simply have not embraced Trump. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won a decisive victory in the states primary and, even after Cruzs exit from the race, many prominent conservatives have remained firmly in the Never Trump camp.

Ive cautioned my fellow conservatives, you embrace Donald Trump, you embrace it all. You embrace every slur, every insult, every outrage, every falsehood. Youre going to spend the next six months defending, rationalizing, evading all that, conservative talk show host and Never Trump standard-bearer Charlie Sykes told Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.

But most Wisconsin conservatives, including Sykes, are united behind Johnson.

Ive been asked  over and over and over again by the media, Is the party united here in Wisconsin? Well I want to tell you clearly, the Republicans in this hall and across this state are overwhelmingly united behind Ron Johnson to be our United States senator, Walker told the state Republican convention in May.

But the question is how many of the voters who propelled Johnson to victory in 2010 will turn out this election. Johnson has complicated things by hedging his support of Trump. Despite initially saying he would remain in Wisconsin and campaign during the Republican National Convention, Johnson was a last-minute addition to the speaking agenda. In his remarks he mentioned Trump a grand total of once in what was hardly a full-throated endorsement.

Instead, Johnson took the unusual step of calling out Feingold by name, saying his national security record is weak in an era when strong defense is needed to combat terrorism.

Sen. Ron Johnson waves to the delegates during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

In Wisconsin, Im running against Russ Feingold, who, even after 9/11, voted against giving law enforcement the tools they need to help stop international terror, Johnson said in his speech. During his 18-year senate career, he also voted against authorizing our military 11 separate times. And now hes asking Wisconsinites to give him a fourth term.

When Trump visited Green Bay at the height of the controversy over his attack on the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed in Afghanistan, Johnson declined to attend, citing scheduling conflicts. In recent weeks, he has tried to spin his campaign as a potential check on a Hillary Clinton presidency, seemingly distancing himself from Trump.

Wisconsin will need me to be a check and balance on her, Johnson told the Washington Post last week, adding that from my standpoint, youve got another six years of failure of liberal progressive Obama-Clinton-Feingold policies.

Johnsons side has tried to focus on his opponents record and allegations of campaign improprieties. Republicans have charged that Feingold began laying the groundwork for his run while still serving in the U.S. State Department, as special envoy to Africa. That would violate federal law.

Feingold has hit back, playing up Johnsons support of Trump and a series of curious missteps, including his suggestion to economize on education by showing students documentaries in place of instruction by live teachers.

If you want to teach the Civil War across the country, are you better off having, I dont know, tens of thousands of history teachers that kind of know the subject, Johnson said. Or would you be better off popping in 14 hours of Ken Burns Civil War tape and then have those teachers proctor based on that excellent video production already done?

The campaign, which has stretched for almost a year-and-a-half, has been a brutal fight, with TV ad after TV ad attacking the record of the opposition. Because of the pivotal nature of the race in the Democrats nationwide effort to take back the Senate, over $4 million has been pumped into the race from outside groups, including $2.2 million boosting Johnson from the Koch Brothers Freedom Partners Action Fund.

In more traditional fundraising, Feingold has a narrow edge over Johnson, with $7 million cash-in-hand, compared with Johnsons $5.7 million.

Most pundits have pegged a Feingold victory as likely, citing Trumps unpopularity and Wisconsins liberal tendency in a presidential election. But Johnson will be hoping enough voters turn out to split the ticket and propel him to a second upset victory and a welcome sense of deja vu for Wisconsin Republicans.

_____

State legislature races: Down Ticket digs deeper

In August, a motorcade carrying Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton heads toward the Capitol building in Iowa, a state where Democrats are feeling pressure to retain their foothold in the Senate, where they currently have a slim 26-23 advantage (with one independent) over Republicans. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)

By Chris Wilson

Our twice-weekly look at nonpresidential races, hasnt yet touched on more than 5,900 elections for offices that will directly affect most Americans: state legislature seats. At stake is not just influence over state lawmaking, but district maps that can decide who controls the U.S. House of Representatives.

Because many states turn the every-10-year process of redistricting over to legislators, control of that process allows the majority party to draw maps to their advantage  otherwise known as gerrymandering. Consider North Carolina, where Democratic candidates for the U.S. House won 80,000 more votes in total than their Republican opponents in 2012. The result? The GOP retained nine of the 13 seats thanks to the maps it drew after the Republican wave in 2010. At the national level, Democrats won 47 percent of major-party votes for the House of Representatives in 2014 but just 43 percent of House seats  partly because Democratic voters tend to be concentrated in a relatively few, generally urban, areas, and partly a result of how district lines were drawn by Republican legislatures.

Democrats know it will be impossible to take back a majority of state legislatures  Republicans hold 69 of the 99 chambers  but even a small blue wave could help flip a few of the closer contests or make progress toward achieving majorities in the future. According to reporting from The Hill:

Democrats have decent chances to win 11 Republican-held legislative chambers. Six of those chambers, state senates in Colorado, Nevada, New York, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia, would change hands if Democrats are able to win only a single seat.

There is also pressure on Democrats to hold on to embattled blue footholds in states that would otherwise be all red. Take Iowa: Republicans have the governors mansion, both Senate seats, three of the four U.S. Representatives and 57 of the 100 state House seats but find themselves at a slim 26-23 disadvantage (with one independent) in the Senate. The Democrats have an advantage in fundraising  theyve collectively raised $515,000 to the GOPs $147,000  but in many of the closest, most critical races the party affiliation of registered voters is extremely tight, usually within a few hundred.

These smaller races are particularly susceptible to the influence of outside money and super-PACs, which can flood a market at the fraction of the cost of affecting a bigger ticket race like one for the presidency or Senate. With most legislature seats not on the ballot in 2015, millions were dumped into mayoral races in Philadelphia and other cities, but its likely well see huge bumps in outside spending in 2016. In Connecticut, outside donations in 2012 reached around $750,000. In 2014? $7.5 million. And even less prominent races can attract large sums of money. Two years ago, a campaign to replace several members of a New Jersey school board spent $150,000 on the task, succeeding in ousting two incumbents.

While direct donations to state legislator campaigns are generally under tight limits(typically around $2,000), super-PACs can spend as much as they choose. So its easy to see how the smaller advertising budgets of the actual people in the race can be quickly swamped bylarge donations that could come from outside the state. Because while outside groups may not care much about, say, sales taxes in Virginia or road projects in Colorado  they care a lot about which party controls the House of Representatives.

_____

The best of the rest

Theres a lot of uncertainty surrounding this race, even more than there was when it was a Pence-Gregg rematch. https://t.co/TYvRbod6YJ  IndyStar (@indystar) September 9, 2016

NORTH CAROLINA

Governor:

McCrory  44%

Cooper (D) 51%

(Quinnipiac U., LV, 8/29  9/7)  PollingReport.com (@pollreport) September 9, 2016

The OH Senate race was supposed to be one of most competitive, but @senrobportman crushing @Ted_Strickland. Why?  https://t.co/lDyAA1b6Ak  Eliana Johnson (@elianayjohnson) September 13, 2016

Mike Bloombergs super PAC has now spent over $7 million on behalf of Pat Toomey in #PASen, with this new buy: https://t.co/wiv7iz4I2J  Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) September 9, 2016

Marco Rubio & Patrick Murphy agree to two debates  but sparks fly over whether theyll have more https://t.co/USaBnK9jNr  Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) September 12, 2016

GOP strongholds could have competitive House races for the first time in decades https://t.co/lG5u3CGhXU | Getty pic.twitter.com/Jeocs0wKdE  POLITICO (@politico) September 12, 2016

_____

Countdown

_____
The Hague (AFP) - Congolese former rebel Bosco Ntaganda has gone on hunger strike and is refusing to appear at his international war crimes trial in protest against his detention conditions, judges were told on Tuesday.

Ntaganda has also instructed his defence team to stop acting on his behalf at his trial which opened at the International Criminal Court in The Hague a year ago.

In a long, rambling, written statement seen by AFP, Ntaganda, who was absent from the courtroom, said "there is no possibility that I will see my wife and children again under normal conditions."

"That's why I am ready to die."

Last week, presiding judge Robert Fremr refused to lift visiting restrictions, citing concern he could be trying to interfere with witnesses or intimidate them.

But Fremr insisted "nothing in the restrictions prevents family visits from taking place."

Ntaganda has denied 18 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising out of savage ethnic attacks carried out in the Democratic Republic of Congo by his rebel Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC) in 2002-2003.

In his statement, read in court by his lawyer he said, "When I gave myself up three years ago, I thought I would be able to defend myself. But I know now that is not the case. I know there is no way out, and I no longer have any hope."

The judges rejected a defence request to adjourn the trial until Monday, and said the hearings would resume on Wednesday, ordering his defence team to appear in court to represent him.

The judges also ordered that a medical professional should assess Ntaganda's fitness and that a visit from his family should be arranged expeditiously.

Prosecution lawyer Nicole Samson argued that the "onset of depression seems to have been a fairly speedy one and appears in our submission ... to be a manipulative tactic aimed at halting proceedings and negotiating with the chamber."

Story continues

Ntaganda was handed over to the ICC after he turned himself into the US embassy in Kigali in 2013.

The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been mired for two decades in ethnically-charged wars, as rebels battle for control of its rich mineral resources.

Prosecutors say the man once dubbed "The Terminator" played a central role in the Ituri conflict which rights groups believe alone has left some 60,000 dead since 1999.
From Popular Mechanics

Dutch police are getting some help to take down rogue drones from the sky's most dangerous predator: eagles.

The Dutch police force began training eagles to bring down drones in 2015, and now they're finally ready. The eagles will be used to bring down drones in forbidden areas such as airports.

Back in 2015, the Dutch police began working with security company Guard From Above to develop methods for bringing down drones. The methods included using eagles as well as other tools such as nets. During the testing, it became apparent that eagles were the cheapest and most effective method.

"The eagles see the drones as prey and intercept them as they are flying," said police spokesman Dennis Janus to Agence France-Presse.

About 100 officers will be trained to work with the eagles, and this specialist "flying squad" will be getting their own eagles by next summer. In the meantime, Guard From Above will be providing the eagles.

And if you're worried about the risks the eagles face in the line of duty, Janus said that no eagles were harmed during the training. "None of the eagles were hurt, but as for the drones, none of them survived." Watch the skies from now on if you're flying drones in the Netherlands.

Source: Agence France-Presse

You Might Also Like
(Adds details, background)

AMSTERDAM, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Demand for gas from Groningen will "fall sharply from 2020" as production at the northern Dutch field is reduced, Economy Minister Henk Kamp said in a letter to parliament released on Tuesday.

The Netherlands has been forced to scale back production by roughly half at Groningen, which once met 10 percent of European Union gas requirements, to 24 billion cubic meters per year due to damage from earthquakes.

Citing a June study by Gasunie, Kamp said a 480 million euros gas conversion facility in Zuidbroek was no longer needed due to falling exports.

The Groningen gas field is operated by NAM, a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil Corp.

Dutch exports of gas have declined already and European countries, notably Germany, had said they would reduce Dutch imports further and seek other sources. The Netherlands had been studying the option of converting gas to meet export requirements.

"The market conversion abroad has started sooner than we anticipated," Kamp wrote. "Germany, France and Belgium will start the switch from low to high-caloric gas in 2020 instead of 2024.

That will lead to a reduction in demand for Groningen gas from 2020, he said.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch, editing by Louise Heavens and William Hardy)
Paris (AFP) - E-cigarettes may have helped some 18,000 smokers in England kick the tobacco habit last year, according to research released Wednesday.

The survey-based study was not a clinical trial, which means the link between the use of nicotine delivery devices and the number of people who quit smoking is not iron clad.

Indeed, other research has challenged the idea that e-cigarettes are an effective substitute for tobacco, with some studies even suggesting they are a "gateway" to adolescent addiction.

But a team of scientists led by Emma Beard of University College London, along with experts not involved in the study, said the new evidence that "vaping" can help smokers stop was compelling.

"Successful quit attempts increased over the period of time that electronic cigarettes became popular," commented Ann McNeill, an expert on tobacco addiction at King's College London who did not take part in the research.

"In my view, smokers struggling to stop should try all possible methods, including e-cigarettes."

The study pointed out that funding for other public programmes to help people curb or quit smoking had been cut back at the same time, increasing the likelihood that e-cigarettes played a positive role.

One in five adults in Britain smoke, and tobacco -- which kills 100,000 people there each year -- is the top preventable cause of cancer.

Worldwide, smoking claim around six million lives annually, mostly in low-income countries, according to the World Health Organization.

Britain's public health service offers tobacco users several pathways for quitting, including prescription medication and professional face-to-face counselling.

- No serious side effects -

As of today, e-cigarettes -- used by 2.8 million UK residents -- are not on the menu.

The study, however, suggests that perhaps they should be.

"Although these numbers are relatively small, they are clinically significant because of the huge health gains from stopping smoking," Beard and colleagues reported in The BMJ medical journal.

Story continues

A 40-year-old who quits tobacco can expect to live nine years longer than a life-long smoker, they pointed out.

John Britton, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, welcomed the new findings, even as he called for more research.

A one-percent, year-on-year drop in adult smokers in Britain indicates that something is driving trends in the right direction, he said in a commentary, also in The BMJ.

"Successful quitting through substitution with e-cigarettes is one likely major contributor," he wrote.

Another report on e-cigarettes in Britain, released at the same time, similarly concluded the devices may help smokers get the tobacco monkey off their backs.

The Cochrane Review -- updated from 2014 -- also found that there were no serious side effects associated with e-cigarette use.

The authors noted that no randomised controlled trials -- clinical experiments that allow scientists to rigorously compare impacts across different groups of people -- had been conducted in the last two years, but that several are in the pipeline.
The Project Will Help 200 Children Get Ready for the School Year and Start First Grade Ready to Learn

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Caras Alegres, an organization that works to improve the general welfare and position of women and children living in poverty and neglect, recently announced the launch of its latest project, Early Child Education for Change. The organization, which does its work in Las Rosas, Quezaltenango (Guatemala), created this project to prepare 200 children for the school year and help them get ready for a full school year.

To learn more about Early Child Education for Change, please visit goo.gl/0wK8Om.

According to a representative of Caras Alegres, many babies and young children in Las Rosas are left in an unsafe environment. In addition to being out of school, they have little food and water while their parents search for work opportunities. As a result, the children usually have cognitive abilities and vocabulary levels far below those of their peers from families who have higher incomes - and as adults, they earn lower wages, have higher chances of becoming delinquents, and often struggle to break the cycle of poverty.

Since its founding, Caras Alegres has supported quality early childhood education initiatives for the residents of Las Rosas. Early Child Education for Change helps babies, young children, and their families. At this time, Caras Alegres focuses on education, health, social investment, and community development, working tirelessly to ensure that children grow out of poverty.

At this time, Caras Alegres has taken the Early Child Education for Change to Generosity, where it seeks the necessary funds to help 200 children and their families get the support they need to go to school. The funds will help remodel the school and provide support for the children to spend an entire year in kindergarten and preschool. Additionally, the money will ensure that food, school materials, clothes and basic health services will be distributed to Early Child Education for Change's participants.

Story continues

Individuals interested in learning more about Alegres and Early Child Education for Change can visit the project's Generosity page for additional information.

About Early Child Education for Change:

Early Child Education for Change by Caras Alegres provides young children with support needed to prepare them for school and create a suitable learning environment. By encouraging education early on, children are given a greater chance to later on break through the poverty cycle and work towards giving their own children the same chances for success. The fund will be used to remodel the school and help get children food, school supplies, clothing, and other necessities to get children through their first year of school. For more information, please visit http://goo.gl/0wK8Om.

Contact:

Herbert Massey

admin@rocketfactor.com

(949) 555-2861

SOURCE: Early Child Education for Change
Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

Wells Fargo (WFC)  The bank will eliminate product sales goals for retail bankers and strengthen oversight, controls, and training. Wells Fargo will be the subject of a Senate Banking Committee hearing into its sales practices, after the bank settled a case with regulators by paying a $185 million penalty. The panel wants to question CEO John Stumpf about the practices that led to the case.

UnitedHealth Group (UNH)  The health insurer's Optum unit and Quest Diagnostics (DGX) formed a partnership aimed at reducing billing complexity, as well as providing more transparency into health care costs. Separately, UnitedHealth was rated as a "top pick" at Jefferies because of attractive valuation and a best-in-class management team.

Anthem (ANTM)  In that same report from Jefferies, Anthem was downgraded to "hold" from "buy." Jefferies cites concern over expenses and a lack of positive catalysts for the health insurer.

General Motors (GM)  The automaker's new Chevy Bolt will be able to travel 238 miles on a single charge, a longer range than the 210 for the Tesla (TSLA) Model S. The Bolt will go on sale later this year.

Tiffany (TIF)  The luxury goods retailer named Mark Erceg as its new chief financial officer. Erceg had been chief financial officer at Canadian Pacific Railway since May 2015.

Viacom (VIAB)  The stock was upgraded to "buy" from "hold" at Brean Capital, which said most negatives are already priced into the media company's shares, and that there are a number of potentially positive catalysts.

Netflix (NFLX)  Netflix was downgraded to "underperform" from "neutral" at Macquarie, which is optimistic long term but thinks Netflix may have some short-term difficulty on rising content costs and increasing streaming services competition.

Chevron (CVX)  The energy producer was rated "outperform" in new coverage at BMO, which said Chevron has reached an inflection point and is entering a new era of higher margin growth.

Story continues

Kate Spade (KATE)  The fashion accessories maker was upgraded to "outperform" from "market perform" at Wells Fargo, which thinks recent stock weakness has created an attractive entry point and that it sees a pickup in coming quarters.

Freeport-McMoran (FCX)  The mining and energy company struck a deal to sell Gulf of Mexico assets to Anadarko Petroleum (APC) for $2 billion. Freeport will use the proceeds to help pay down debt.

Weight Watchers (WTW)  Chief Executive Officer James Chambers is stepping down at the end of September, with a three-member "office of the CEO" replacing him until a permanent replacement is found. TV personality Oprah Winfrey, who owns 10 percent of the company, will help the weight loss company pick a new chief executive.

Boeing (BA)  Boeing increased its long-term sales outlook for the China market to $1.025 trillion over the next 20 years, with estimated aircraft purchases of 6,810. That's up 7.6 percent from Boeing's prior prediction for jet sales to China.

Nvidia (NVDA)  Nvidia unveiled its latest artificial intelligence computer that will be used to power Baidu (BIDU)'s self-driving car technology. The two companies had announced an autonomous vehicle partnership earlier this month.

Facebook (FB)  Facebook's Instagram unit launched a new keyword tool designed to monitor potentially offensive comments. Users can input words that they consider offensive and want hidden from posts.

NRG Energy (NRG)  NRG won a bankruptcy auction for SunEdison's wind and solar projects in Texas and other states. A court filing indicates that NRG won the auction with a bid of $144 million.

Intersil (ISIL)  Intersil agreed to be bought by Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics for about $3.2 billion. Published reports in Japan last month had indicated that Renesas was interested in the California based semiconductor maker.

Questions? Comments? Email us at marketinsider@cnbc.com







More From CNBC


Quito (AFP) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to answer questions from Swedish investigators probing rape allegations against him from October 17 in Ecuador's embassy in London, Ecuadoran justice officials said Tuesday.

The Australian has been holed up in the embassy since June 2012, when he took refuge there to escape extradition to Sweden to face a police investigation into the rape claims.

Ecuadoran prosecutor Wilson Toainga has been tasked with taking Assange's statement in response to questions submitted beforehand by Swedish officials, who will be present during the process.

"Toainga will take the statement based on a list of questions submitted by the Swedish justice ministry," the office said, adding that he also would be responsible for "the possible taking of samples of body fluids" from Assange.

Two Swedish officials -- prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and police officer Cecilia Redell -- have been authorized to be present during the proceedings which will start on October 17, it said.

The attorney general's office said the questions submitted by Sweden would not necessarily be put to him the same day.

Swedish prosecutors contacted by AFP on Tuesday did not comment on the announcement from Ecuador.

Assange, 45, who denies the rape accusation, fears the Swedes will turn him over to the United States to face charges for publishing a massive trove of US military and diplomatic documents.

He has previously welcomed the idea of Swedish prosecutors travelling to London to take his statement.

In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed an international arrest order against Assange, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention.

Britain also rejected the finding of the UN group, which is not binding.

A Swedish appeal court is due to rule on the arrest order on Friday.
The Dalai Lama on Tuesday urged Europe to emphasise education for the hundreds of thousands of refugees that have arrived mainly from the war-torn Middle East as a means of rebuilding their home countries.

"Provide them education, particularly for children," the Tibetan spiritual leader told AFP during a visit to France. "Then... eventually these refugees return (to) their own land and rebuild their own countries."

The 81-year-old Buddhist monk appealed to "the real spirit of the European Union", urging the bloc to "consider the importance of the common interest" in dealing with the refugee crisis.

More than one million refugees and migrants have entered Europe over the past year, largely fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate lamented the "terrible situations" they fled, saying: "Too much killing! And these innocent children (and) old people, I think, suffered a lot."

The Dalai Lama, who fled to India along with thousands of others after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, said: "We Tibetan refugees... we are all thinking (of a) return to our own country."

Many settled in and around the northern Indian town of Dharamsala where a Tibetan government-in-exile functions that is not recognised by any foreign state.

The Dalai Lama, who is making his first visit to France in five years, will travel to Strasbourg before he leaves on Sunday.

He will not meet with any French leaders during the trip that is focused on inter-faith dialogue, environmental issues and Tibetan culture.

Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of being a "wolf in monk's robes" seeking Tibetan independence through "spiritual terrorism".
[September 12, 2016] Wapack Labs Announces New Offering

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Wapack Labs, a cyber threat intelligence company, announced their new Cyberwatch  Application Program Interface (API) today at the Information Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) Congress in Orlando, FL. Companies will now be able to search Wapack Labs' cyber intelligence collections directly through this bold, new application. That means users can identify and address security threats fasterincluding before they're realized. Wapack Labs recovers information stolen by hackers from keylogger information, sinkholes, the dark web, malicious emails, and more. "With Cyberwatch  API, we're opening our collections to those not normally privy to high-end cyber threat intelligence," says Jeff Stutzman, CEO of Wapack Labs. Everything from usernames and passwords to financial transactions and credit card information can indicate previously unknown network breaches. Users can simply enter a company domain into Wapack Labs Cyberwatch  API (api.wapacklabs.com) and find out if it has been compromised. What makes Wapack Labs Cyberwatch  API of even greater value, however, is that it enables companies to be proactive. "Because of the sheer volume of our backend collectionswhich also includes data derived from malicious actors' activities, and not just te information they stealresults from your search can help you identify if you're being targeted," Stutzman explains. This is revolutionary for an industry where, today, offerings are almost always post-hoc; that is, they are built after a company has already been broken into. Antivirus, sharing intrusion prevention rules, and indicators of compromise all rely on expert analysis after someone has been hacked, and damage is already done. For another company to successfully capitalize on these types of security offerings, they must obtain and incorporate this information into their security tools before the threat evolves.



The Cyberwatch  API enables companies to connect their security tools directly to Wapack Labs' intelligence backend, giving them direct access to clean, parsed data without requiring additional analysis, thereby prioritizing work for CISOs and their cyber security operations center (SOC) teams. "These are not credential dumps or aggregated data," says Stutzman. "This is information stolen by nefarious actors or malware from roughly 15,000 companies and organizations all over the world. If a company or individual finds themselves in a query of our data, if they haven't been hacked yet, they may be soon, and can get a head-start on precautions."

About Wapack Labs

Wapack Labs, located in New Boston, NH is a Cyber Threat Analysis and Intelligence organization supporting the Red Sky Alliance, the FS-ISAC, and individual organizations by offering expert level targeted intelligence analysis answering some of the hardest questions in Cyber. Wapack Labs' engineers, researchers, and analysts design and deliver transformational cyber-security analysis tools that fuse open source and proprietary information, using deep analysis techniques and visualization. Information derived from these tools and techniques serve as the foundation of Wapack Labs' information reporting to the cyber-security teams of its customers and industry partners located around the world. For questions or comments regarding this report, please contact the lab directly by at 603-606-1246, or Chuck Nettleship at [email protected]. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wapack-labs-announces-new-offering-300326382.html SOURCE Wapack Labs

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Mexico City (AFP) - Egypt will build a memorial for Mexican tourists mistakenly killed in a military strike last year while a travel association will compensate their families and survivors, Mexico's government said Tuesday.

Eight tourists and four Egyptians were killed by security forces on September 13, 2015 when they came under fire during a lunch break in Egypt's vast Western Desert while on their way to the Bahariya oasis.

Survivors have told Mexican diplomats that they came under fire from a plane and helicopters.

Egypt said the tourists had entered a restricted area and were "mistakenly" killed as security forces chased jihadists.

Mexico's foreign ministry said in a statement that the Egyptian Travel Agents Association has agreed to provide an "economic compensation" to the survivors and families of the dead.

The ministry did not provide a monetary figure but the association said in May that it had paid $140,000 each to the families of three of the victims after they agreed not to press legal proceedings against Egypt.

Ahmed Ibrahim, treasurer of the Egyptian Travel Agents Association, told AFP at the time that the group agreed to compensate them after an investigation found that the travel agency looking after the tourists was responsible for their deaths.

In January, Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu said Egypt's tourism ministry "found that the administrative authorities and the travel agency should have had more clarity on the permit" to visit the desert.

The ministry did not indicate where the memorial for the Mexican and Egyptian victims would be built but it said that Egyptian authorities agreed to erect it "as one of the measures for reparations."
A suicide bomber injured four policemen, one critically, outside a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan as the country marked the beginning of the religious festival Eid al-Adha on Tuesday.

The attack took place in Shikarpur in Sindh province, around 470 kilometres (300 miles) north of Karachi and the same district where at least 61 were killed in a suicide attack on another Shiite mosque in 2015.

Officials said two suicide bombers tried to enter the Khanpur Imambargah but were intercepted by police.

"Four of our men are injured of whom one is critical," Umar Tufail, a senior local police officer told AFP.

Tufail added doctors were also trying to save the life of the other suspected bomber, who was injured when the first one blew himself up but failed to detonate himself.

"The attackers came as the worshippers were gathering to offer Eid prayers. Police were able to stop him at the gate outside the mosque," A.D. Khawaja, chief of police for Sindh province said.

Worshippers overpowered the second would-be suicide bomber as the police were reeling from their injuries, he added.

Pakistan has been hit by frequent sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shiite Muslims, who make up around one in five of the population.

The January 2015 attack on the Shiites in Shikarpur, blamed on the Sunni militant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group, led to a wave of nationwide protests.

In another incident Tuesday, a police van was hit by a roadside bomb in Quetta city in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.

"One policeman was killed and five others injured when their van was targeted," local police official Abdul Razaq told AFP.

He said two of the injured were in critical condition.

The incident was confirmed by local administration official Akbar Harifal.

Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has oil and gas resources but is afflicted by Islamist militancy, sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and a separatist insurgency.
NAIROBI, Kenya  She was the first woman in Africa elected to lead a government and the second to win a Nobel Peace Prize. But Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is most proud of the fact that next year shell be the only ex-president of Liberia enjoying a normal retirement. That hasnt happened to us in so many years, she told Foreign Policy in a recent interview in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

The record for retired Liberian leaders is grim. Charles Taylor is serving a 50-year sentence in Britain for atrocities committed in neighboring Sierra Leone, while Samuel Doe, Taylors predecessor, was tortured and decapitated on camera during Liberias bloody 1989-2003 civil war. Before that, President William R. Tolbert Jr. was disemboweled in his bed during the coup that brought Doe to power. (The most promising precedent is probably Moses Blah, who served as a placeholder president for just two months in 2003 and lived out his last days in Liberia before dying of natural causes in 2013.)

But the days of grisly palace intrigue are long past, according to Sirleaf. Despite a devastating Ebola outbreak in 2014 that claimed more than 4,000 Liberian lives, crippled the economy, and set the country back years in development terms, the president says the upcoming election will be the defining moment for Liberian democracy. This will be the first time in 30 years that a democratically elected president will turn over to a democratically elected president.

Its an achievement that is becoming increasingly rare in Africa, where leaders in Burundi, Rwanda, Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have all defied term limits or appear to be doing so. Freedom House, a think tank that tracks governance around the world, reports that the percentage of countries in sub-Saharan Africa it rated as free or partly free has slipped from 71 percent in 2008 to 61 percent this year. But Sirleaf says she doesnt think democracy is in recession in Africa.

Overwhelmingly there have been people who have stuck with the constitutional limits and have given up. Four of them are not following the rules  maybe more than four, I grant you. You will find one or two or three more, she said, cautioning that in places like Rwanda, this is the peoples choice.

Many would dispute that characterization of Rwanda, where the governments harsh suppression of dissent makes it difficult to know what the people would choose. Perhaps less controversial is Sirleafs view that democracy cannot easily be turned back anywhere in the world. Its too deeply entrenched in the society now. Its too deeply endorsed by the young population all over the world, she said.

That doesnt mean there wont be challenges as Liberians head to the polls next year. The U.N. peacekeeping mission is drawing down, leaving the countrys corrupt and abusive police force in charge of securing the election. Meanwhile, some of the ghosts of Liberias civil war have already re-appeared before the vote, which is scheduled for October 2017. Prince Johnson, who drained a Budweiser as he watched his men mutilate Doe in 1990, has declared his candidacy to succeed Sirleaf. So has Jewel Taylor, the former wife of Charles Taylor. (Both Johnson and Taylor serve in Liberias senate.)

Sirleaf, who says she doesnt plan to endorse any of the candidates vying to succeed her, demurred when asked if there is anyone who should be disqualified from running on account of their conduct during the war. Its too late for that, she said. Most of [them] have already been elected by their people. And at this stage, having been elected, they have been positive forces, despite their backgrounds.

The president herself raised $10,000 to support Charles Taylors insurgency in 1990, a deed for which Liberias Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended she be banned from politics. The ban was never enforced, and Sirleaf proved to be a steady hand at the wheel, winning accolades from human rights advocates and attracting investment from abroad. Before the Ebola epidemic, the economy was expanding at more than 5 percent per year, despite persistent corruption scandals and allegations that the poorest Liberians saw few if any of the benefits of this newfound prosperity.

But Ebola ended all talk of progress. The gains were erased in terms of growth and in terms of some of the services that we were providing, said Sirleaf, who was frank about her governments initial failures as it tried to contain the epidemic. We took a rather militant approach in the early days, she said of her decision to seal off entire slums as the country descended into panic. But we were wrong, clearly, because it led to the death of a young person who was shot dead by Liberian security forces as he tried to break a government-imposed quarantine.

The government shifted course after its initial blunders, lifting neighborhoodwide quarantines and accelerating efforts to educate communities about the disease. In the end, Liberia was able to contain the outbreak more quickly than Sierra Leone and Guinea, the two other countries hardest hit by Ebola. But the damage to Liberias economy was already done. Growth plummeted to 0.4 percent in 2014 as commerce ground to a halt and foreign investment dried up  costing the country an estimated $240 million in GDP losses through the end of 2015. The economy is growing again now, but the president estimates that it will be five more years before Liberia is back to where it was in 2013. So it was devastating; theres no question, she said of the Ebola epidemic. Its going to be a tough climb back.

It will be tougher still because donors have already begun to lose interest in Liberia now that the crisis is over. The country needs help rebuilding its shattered health sector, training new doctors and scientists, and building infrastructure to improve service delivery in rural areas. Sirleaf says that foreign aid hasnt been as effective or sustained as shed hoped. When a crisis is over, memories are short, whether youre dealing with Louisiana or whether youre dealing with Sierra Leone or Liberia, she said.

Despite waning international attention, Sirleaf says Liberia is better prepared to handle future outbreaks of Ebola. What we faced in 2014, we faced as something we didnt know. Wed never experienced that before. It was terrifying, she said. Now the country has a battle-tested response mechanism and health workers who are better trained and equipped. The government is also doing more research and working with international partners to develop vaccines. Were setting up a health institute  something like the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)  thats going to do its own research. I cant say to you that, yes, were 100 percent prepared. No, but were confident that were able to control the virus.

Sirleaf isnt sure exactly what shell do after her term ends next year, but she knows Ebola recovery will be part of it. I expect that I will be called on in the international community to share some of the experiences of leadership, the challenges, the progress, particularly the rebuilding of a country that had been so devastated, she said. But at the end of the day, I also tell people that Im preparing to go on the farm. And so Im building a farm, and I think I will take a lot of solace in that.

Does she think she has a shot at the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, the multimillion-dollar prize for ex-presidents created by the Sudanese telecom billionaire of the same name? Of course, we all think about it, she says of the award, which is supposed to go to former heads of state who demonstrated exceptional leadership and, perhaps most importantly, quit after their constitutionally mandated terms. Maybe I stand a chance of getting the Mo Ibrahim Prize, but its not that. I think the biggest prize that one gets, frankly, is just to be appreciated by ones people.

Photo credit: SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images
By Rich McKay ATLANTA (Reuters) - Holding signs and banners and chanting "Oil Kills," protesters in Atlanta and other U.S. cities on Tuesday shouted support for Native American activists trying to stop construction of a North Dakota pipeline they say will desecrate sacred land and pollute water. The protests against the Dakota Access pipeline have drawn international attention, sparking a renewal of Native American activism and prompting the U.S. government to block its construction on federal land, even as the company building the line expressed its commitment to the project on Tuesday. We were all moved by the spirit to be here, said Linda James Thomas, 59, who attended the Atlanta rally in support of the Georgia State Tribe of the Cherokee. When fully connected to existing lines, the 1,100-mile (1,770 km), $3.7 billion pipeline would be the first to carry crude oil from the Bakken shale directly to the U.S. Gulf. Protests were scheduled throughout the day in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and numerous other cities. Previous demonstrations have drawn celebrities including actresses Shailene Woodley and Susan Sarandon, and on Tuesday U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a former Democratic U.S. presidential candidate, spoke at a rally in the nation's capital. "We cannot allow our drinking water to be poisoned so that a handful of fossil fuel companies can make even more in profits," Sanders, flanked by activists in tribal dress and business suits, told the cheering crowd in Washington, D.C. In Ohio, about 100 people gathered at a Cleveland intersection, some clutching bunches of sage and beating drums. Tracey Hill, 46, a Cleveland resident who is one-eighth Cherokee, said she went last week to protest at the site of the pipeline project in North Dakota. People are sick of being run roughshod over by corporations, Hill said. Activists took to social media to dub Tuesday's rallies a national "Day of Action" against the pipeline. Many used the hashtag #NoDAPL to show their opposition. Outside the United States, activists said on social media they planned protests in countries including Britain, Spain, South Korea and New Zealand. Last week, the Obama administration, responding to the issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux, whose land runs about a half-mile south of the pipeline's route, said it would temporarily halt construction on federal land. Acting moments after a federal judge denied the tribe's request for a halt to construction, the administration asked the company building it to refrain from construction on private land as well. On Tuesday, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP , whose Dakota Access subsidiary is building the pipeline, said in a letter to employees it was committed to the project. The letter did not address the federal request for a temporary halt of construction. But company officials said they would meet with government administrators. "We are committed to completing construction and safely operating the Dakota Access Pipeline within the confines of the law," Kelcy Warren, Energy Transfer Partners' chairman and chief executive officer, said in the letter. He dismissed as "unfounded" worries that oil would contaminate water in the Missouri and Cannon Ball rivers, and said the pipeline would address safety concerns connected with vehicle transport of oil. "We have designed the state-of-the-art Dakota Access pipeline as a safer and more efficient method of transporting crude oil than the alternatives being used today, namely rail and truck," he said. In 2013, a runaway oil train in Canada crashed, killing 47 people, and in June 2016 a train carrying crude oil derailed and burst into flames in Oregon. In coming weeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will review its initial decision to permit the pipeline and decide whether it correctly followed federal environmental law in granting permits. Later this fall, the federal government will meet with Native American leaders to decide whether to reform its process for building infrastructure projects that will affect tribal lands. In North Dakota, protesters have vowed to remain until the project is halted. (Additional reporting by Kim Palmer in Cleveland, Catherine Ngai in New York, Valerie Volcovici and Ruthy Munoz in Washington, and Olga Grigoryants in Los Angeles; Writing by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by David Gregorio and Matthew Lewis)
Strasbourg (France) (AFP) - A group of EU lawmakers on Tuesday approved the man likely to be Britain's last European Commissioner after a hearing in which he pledged his loyalty to Europe.

Julian King was named in August as the candidate for new security commissioner after his predecessor Jonathan Hill stepped down in the wake of the Brexit vote.

King had on Monday told a European Parliament committee hearing that he would serve "the European general interest, and only the European general interest."

"We think he should be appointed as the next commissioner of the security union," said Claude Moraes, head of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committee.

Moraes said King "performed well and was going to be the guardian of the treaty and act on behalf of the EU and not of one particular country."

The full European Parliament must now formally vote on King's appointment on Thursday.

European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker named King to the new post of Security Commissioner tasked with fighting terrorism as well as organised and cyber crime.

On Monday, King rejected suggestions that Britain's impending departure from the EU meant he could not fully carry out his security job, or that his loyalty would lie with London.

"I will act in the general European interest and on behalf of all citizens of the EU including those in the UK as long as it is part of the EU," he told the committee.

"When it leaves, my job here will cease."
Strasbourg (France) (AFP) - Moves to let European Parliament head Martin Schulz extend his tenure are sparking fresh infighting in the crisis-hit EU, with his opponents warning it would be akin to a declaration of war.

The bearded 60-year-old German former bookshop owner has been in office for five years, more than anyone else since the parliament held its first international elections in 1979.

Schulz now looks set to seek another two and a half years at the helm of the EU's only elected body, a position whose profile he has raised with outspoken views on issues ranging from Brexit to Grexit.

But Schulz will be ignoring a deal between right and leftwing parties -- which he himself signed on behalf of the Socialist group -- stipulating the presidency should alternate between the political camps every 30 months.

Rightwing parties are demanding Schulz honour this commitment come January 2017.

"We have an agreement with the Socialists -- Martin Schulz signed it himself," said an MEP from the EPP group, which brings together the main conservative parties in Europe.

"If he puts himself forward again, he would be declaring war."

- 'We need stability' -

Schulz has already won the support of the leader of the Socialist group in the European Parliament, Gianni Pittella, who has spoken out in favour of a new mandate for Schulz, as has the German vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel.

More surprisingly, in July Schulz received the support of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker -- himself a leading member of the EPP and the man who beat Schulz to the Commission job

"I am in favour of the European institutions being led for the next two-and-a-half years as they have been thus far. We need stability," Juncker told German newspaper Der Spiegel when asked about the parliament presidency in a joint-interview with... Martin Schulz.

At the end of his first term Schulz was re-elected in July 2014 for another two-and-a-half year mandate with support from rightwing and centrist voters.

Story continues

The EPP however insists Schulz is far from indispensable -- while also criticising him for failing to publicly state that he wants to stay on in the job.

"For months, without ever saying anything himself, all sorts of people have been saying that he's just that good that we won't be able to survive without him," an influential EPP politician said mockingly.

- Run against Merkel? -

Potential successors floated by the conservatives include former French minister Alain Lamassoure, the former European commissioner Antonio Tajani, an Italian close to Silvio Berlusconi, and the Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness.

If he does decide to seek a new mandate, Schulz will be starting off on the wrong foot, seeing as he would have to convince a fair few MEPs outside of his own political circle.

Despite this, Schulz has been praised for bringing the role on to the world stage, although he has also ruffled a few feathers with his "autocratic style", says the German Green politician Reinhard Buetikofer.

"He's had his time. We won't support him," said the French ecologist MEP Michele Rivasi.

German media say Schulz is already considering a plan B: a political career in Berlin.

It has been suggested that he might take on Angela Merkel in next year's elections.

On this, Schulz has only said that Sigmar Gabriel is the "legitimate candidate" of the Social Democratic party -- pointedly failing to rule out a run himself.
Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) has not done enough to address the problems brought to light in its massive settlement over secret accounts, former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair told CNBC on Tuesday.

"If you're going to use clawbacks, this would be the situation," Bair said, referring to possibly recouping any compensation fired employees received as a result of creating fee-generating accounts for unsuspecting customers in order to reach sales and bonus targets.

Carrie Tolstedt, the Wells Fargo executive in charge of the unit where employees opened as many as 2 million unauthorized customer accounts, retires at the end of the year, according to a bank announcement in July.



Fortune had originally put a value on her accumulated stock and options over her career at $124.6 million. But according to a Wells Fargo proxy statement, the number is closer to $95 million, based on when the stock was trading around $49 per share last week.



Mary Eshet, spokeswoman for Wells Fargo, told CNBC that Tolstedt was not available for comment.



Last Thursday, Wells Fargo said it has agreed to pay $185 million in fines to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the city of Los Angeles, as well as $5 million to customers who were affected.



"Money drives behavior," Bair said. "Boards and senior management need to be aware of the compensation incentives they're putting in place and monitor those."





Wells Fargo on Tuesday said it would eliminate retail banking product sales goals, starting next year .



Hours later, the bank's CFO, John Shrewsberry, blamed underperforming employees struggling to meet goals for the lapses. Speaking at a banking conference in New York, he said 10 percent of the 5,300 employees fired were branch managers or more senior staffers.

"The perception is a lot of low-level people lost their jobs, without any accountability among supervisors and up the management scale," Bair said on "Squawk Box," ahead of Shrewsberry's speech.

Story continues

"That sends a very bad signal to employees about what kind of behavior is rewarded and what is penalized and who is held to account and who isn't," added Bair, now president of Washington College, a Maryland liberal arts school.

Bair was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006 to run the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., an independent agency created by Congress. The FDIC insures deposits and supervises banks as part of its mandate to maintain stability and public confidence in the nation's financial system.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Tuesday that cases like Wells Fargo are a "wake-up call for regulators." Speaking at the 2016 Delivering Alpha conference, presented by CNBC and Institutional Investor, Lew said no one should be "too big to jail."

Correction: This story was revised to correct that Carrie Tolstedt will retire at the end of the year, according to Wells Fargo. It also was revised to provide a lower value of her stock and options, based on a Wells Fargo proxy statement.







More From CNBC


Washington (AFP) - A former aide to Hillary Clinton who set up the controversial private email server she used while secretary of state ignored an order to testify on Tuesday before a congressional committee.

Bryan Pagliano's absence is likely to add fuel to a raging debate about Clinton's own transparency as she enters the final stretch of the US presidential elections.

Questions about the Democratic nominee's penchant for secrecy ignited again over the weekend after her sudden illness at a 9/11 ceremony Sunday and the belated disclosure that she was diagnosed on Friday with pneumonia.

Pagliano was subpoenaed by Congress to testify at a Republican-led House of Representatives committee hearing on the email controversy Tuesday, but failed to show up.

"When you are served a subpoena by the United States Congress, that is not optional," Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said.

"His attendance is required here," the Utah congressman added.

Chaffetz said the panel would consider other means to force the former senior State Department adviser to appear.

The Washington Post reported that Pagliano's lawyer sent Chaffetz a letter saying that his client would continue to assert his constitutional right not to answer questions.

Last year, Pagliano also refused to testify at a House hearing investigating the deadly 2012 attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The House Oversight panel said Tuesday's hearing was called to "examine the circumstances leading to the failure to preserve federal records during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state."

Pagliano was granted immunity in a separate FBI criminal probe into the security of Clinton's server and whether classified information was compromised.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced in July it would not recommend that Clinton be prosecuted but found her to be "extremely careless" in her handling of classified material.

Story continues

Republicans have made Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state a recurring issue in the White House race, with Republican candidate Donald Trump citing it repeatedly to raise doubts about her fitness to serve.

Critics say the use of a private server made official US correspondence vulnerable to hacking by foreign governments and terror operatives.

It first came to light in 2015 during Republican-led congressional investigations into her handling of the militant attack on the US mission in Benghazi.

The attack on September 11, 2012 resulted in the deaths of the US ambassador and three other Americans.

Republican lawmakers accuse the FBI of showing unacceptable lenience in their treatment of Clinton.
[September 12, 2016] PerfectlySoft Releases Perfect 2.0 Framework for Server-Side Development With Swift 3.0

PerfectlySoft Inc., the creator of Perfect, the world's first server-side Swift (News - Alert) development framework, announced today that it has released Perfect 2.0, the next iteration of the company's landmark programming platform. Perfect 2.0 takes the world-class Perfect framework to the next level by giving developers the tools they need to program server-side applications in Swift 3.0, the latest version of Apple's (News - Alert) groundbreaking programming language. Introduced in late 2015, Perfect is an open source server-side platform for full-stack mobile development that removes frontend and backend iOS development silos by allowing coders to write entire applications in Swift. Perfect was built from the DNA of the Lasso language, representing 20 years of knowledge and codebase. Easy to use and well documented, it provides developers with a high-performance framework and stable tools for server-side Swift development in iOS, OS X, and Linux environments. Perfect 2.0 includes many new features, such as support for additional datasources (Redis, FileMaker) and file formats (XML, Zip), as well as significant performance and scalability enhancements. "Perfect 2.0 has been designed in lock-step with Apple's consistent stream of updates, including the Swift Package Manager," said Sean Stephens, CEO at PerfectlySoft. "Based on feedback from the Swift community, we also added new features including increased modularity and interoperability, and these go into effect with Perfect 2.0 as we continue to innovate the platform for Swift's growing base of users." In August 2016, PerfectlySoft commissioned independent research to determine how server-side Swift stacked up to Node.js running on OS X El Capitan. The benchmark tests determined that not only did server-side Swift outperform Node.js on comparable workloads, but that the Perfect framework also beat out competing Swift development platforms in terms of speed and memory usage.1 Available today, Perfect 2.0enhances PerfectlySoft's industry-leading platform for the next generation of mobile development with Swift 3.0.



"Swift is evolving extremely rapidly," said James Governor, RedMonk analyst. "Perfect 2.0 responds by supporting Swift 3.0 and the Swift Package Manager to help developers keep up with changes to this fast moving target." Get started with Perfect 2.0 on Github, here.

Additional Resources: Read more about the PerfectlySoft on the Perfect website

Connect with PerfectlySoft on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook

Read about server-wide Swift's superior performance and scalability with Perfect compared to Node.js on Medium About PerfectlySoft Inc. PerfectlySoft Inc. is a startup dedicated to providing full-stack mobile developers with high-performance, stable tools and support to complete their server-side Swift projects for the iOS, OS X, and Linux environments. Headquartered in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, PerfectlySoft was founded in 2015. 1 Third-party programmer Ryan Collins was commissioned to conduct this research in August 2016 by PerfectlySoft to promote the power of Swift. The company exerted zero influence over the results of these benchmark tests. All of the code used in the study is publically available, and the company encourages other developers to perform these tests on their own. Collins, R. (2016 August 31) Benchmarks for the Top Server-Side Swift Frameworks vs. Node.js [Medium blog post]. Retrieved September 12, 2016. from https://medium.com/@rymcol/benchmarks-for-the-top-server-side-swift-frameworks-vs-node-js-24460cfe0beb#.69ffyktyw View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006481/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Brittany Stinson

Editor's note: A high school senior named Brittany Stinson earned the education world's attention in April 2016 with a unique college application essay set at Costco.

With early admission deadlines looming, Business Insider decided to republish what experts thought of her successful work below.

High-school senior Brittany Stinson recently shared with Business Insider a humorous admissions essay that got her into five Ivy League schools and Stanford.

That essay  which got her into the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Cornell and Stanford  went viral.

In the essay, Stinson reflected on her inquisitive personality, told against a backdrop of her childhood trips to Costco.

In light of how successful that essay was, we asked five former Ivy League admissions officers for their feedback on what Stinson got right.

Their expertise is as real as it gets, with collective experience working in admissions offices at Cornell University, Columbia Business School, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.

They also all have ties to the online platform Mentorverse, which connects students with mentors who can guide them through a successful college-application process.

They prefaced their remarks by clarifying that an admissions essay on its own cannot achieve an acceptance into an elite school, and that stellar academics and other extracurriculars must accompany an essay.

That said, the overwhelming feedback about Stinson's essay is that it truly stood out, in writing quality as well as intrigue. The experts said that they were drawn in by the impulse to keep reading and unlock the story Stinson was trying to tell.

Screen Shot 2016 04 12 at 3.06.06 PM

Nelson Urena is a cofounder of and mentor with Mentorverse who worked in the undergraduate-admissions office at Cornell. He begins by saying that he likes Stinson's choice of employing "in media res" to start her essay, meaning she starts in the middle of a scene.

Story continues

Nelson Urena

"This is a great way to hook the reader and force them to read more," Urena said. "As I read the next couple of sentences, her story slowly comes into focus as if the imaginary pupil in my mind's eye dilates to adjust for lighting. A picture begins to emerge."

That developing picture also drew in David Jiang, former assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth College.

"As an admissions officer reading hundreds of applications and essays in a short period of time, it takes something unique or memorable for an application to stand out at the end of the day," Jiang said.

"What makes this essay memorable is the way she frames her main idea," he continued. "As I read through the opening paragraph describing a 2-year-old flying through Costco looking for free samples, I am compelled to read further in order to figure out, 'Where is this essay going?'"

Urena also noted that he immediately connects with the story, as would any other reader who has ever been inside a Costco. The essay locks you into a shared experience.

"With no other information about Brittany, after reading this personal statement I want to learn more about this inquisitive, witty, astute, and eloquent young woman," Urena said.

Her essay contains a certain likability, Urena notes, a quality also admired by Dr. Aviva Hirschfeld Legatt, a mentor and an adviser of Mentorverse, and former senior associate director of admissions at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

"From the undergraduate committee perspective, students who stood out had only one thing in common: likability," Hirschfeld Legatt said.

"By the end of the committee discussion, admissions officers would be most excited to admit  and eventually meet  students whose essays could illuminate the unique identity of the person behind the application," she continued.

Screen Shot 2016 04 12 at 3.41.50 PM

Urena also liked Stinson's broad and evocative vocabulary.

"I also notice the strong verbs Brittany uses. If you go back and highlight all of the verbs in this essay, you will notice they are all well-chosen to express not only an action, but also an emotion: charged, rampaging, widened, sliced, sprinted, touch, taste, stick, explore, scour, whisked, scaled, survey, towered, navigate, and she used the correct 'lay,'" he said.

His one piece of constructive feedback would be not to overdo some of the verbose descriptors.

"Personally, I would advise Brittany to use less adjectives and adverbs for purposes of word economy and ease of reading, but it isn't a huge deal in this case," Urena noted.

Screen Shot 2016 04 12 at 3.47.06 PM

Hirschfeld Legatt also noted Stinson's ability to tell a compelling story.

"Brittanys strongest asset in her essay is her voice  she is clearly an insightful, creative, and funny young woman," Hirschfeld Legatt said.

"A particularly memorable line that I find to be both thought-provoking and funny: 'If there exists a thirty-three ounce jar of Nutella, do we really have free will?'" she continued.

Screen Shot 2016 04 12 at 4.22.50 PM

Marisa Zepeda, a mentor for Mentorverse who has served in the admissions offices of MIT and Yale, felt the crux of Stinson's storytelling come together in the fourth paragraph.

Marisa Zepeda

"While there is quite a bit of buildup in this essay, which Brittany is able to pull off because she is a good writer, things really come together for me in the fourth paragraph," Zepeda said.

"'I adopted my exploratory skills, fine tuned by Costco, towards my intellectual endeavors ...' In this paragraph, Brittany shares that she is someone who isn't afraid to try new things and has a genuine love of learning, which is exactly what all schools  not just the highly selective ones  are looking for in an applicant," Zepeda continued.

Of course, admissions essays are highly subjective, and one that stands out as stellar to one admissions officer may not seem as noteworthy to another.

Brittany Stinson

Lamin Kamara, who has worked in admissions offices at Columbia University's Business School, Hamilton College, and New York University, liked Stinson's essay, but thought that it had room for improvement.

"Though I don't think this is one of the best essays I've seen, I do like the link that Brittany tries to make between intellectual curiosity and her curiosity for shopping," Kamara said.

"I do think there was an opportunity missed here to tell us much more about herself," he continued. "I can only assume that the rest of her application is truly stellar, because based on this essay alone, I do not see anything that screams admit," he said.

Indeed, Stinson is expected to be the valedictorian of her Concord High School class in Delaware, and she has been first in her class every year in high school.

Like another female student who had Ivy League success this year, Stinson is also a girl who's immersed in science. This past summer, she participated in an MIT Science, Technology Engineering, and Math program, where she took courses in astrophysics and science writing.

NOW WATCH: A resume expert reveals what a perfect resume looks like





More From Business Insider


Ryan Lochte can count on his Dancing With the Stars family for support after two male protesters stormed the stage while he was on the dance floor.

Derek Hough, who helped throw out other protesters in the audience wearing anti-Lochte shirts, spoke to ET's Nischelle Turner following Monday's live show about the chaotic few minutes.

EXCLUSIVE: Ryan Lochte Reacts to 'DWTS' Protestors: 'It Felt Like Someone Took My Heart Out'

"I felt the energy in the room change," the 31-year-old DWTS vet told ET on Monday. "I'm really sensitive to that, honestly. I got really defensive, not just for Ryan, but for the ballroom, for the show."

Hough shared that he "said some words" to the protesters.

"I basically told them aggressively that they need to leave because you don't do that here," he said. "And I think that they looked like fools because [Ryan] just did a great dance and he's out there doing what he can do. We're all human beings,."

"You without sin cast the first stone," Hough continued. "I don't think these people are perfect. I don't think any of us are and I think that to bring that in here, that doesn't belong in here."

RELATED: Ryan Lochte Protestors Storm 'DWTS' Stage During Live Show

Hough, who opened the DWTS season 23 premiere with a performance with his partner, Marilu Henner, continued to defend his DWTS castmate, whom he admitted he didn't know "well."

"All I know is we've all done stuff. We've all made mistakes. We've all done things and unfortunately, his was out in the open," he said. "But you know what, let's all be there for each other, man. Let's have some passion and let's actually forgive. Let's move on. Let's look to the future and not the past."

"Love, guys, love! Spread some love, alright?"

RELATED: Ryan Lochte Hopes Competing on 'DWTS' Will Give Him a Second Chance With Fans

Following the live DWTS show, ET spoke to Lochte, who is serving a 10-month suspension from USA Swimming after his Rio scandal, where the 32-year-old Olympic swimmer was candid about his feelings on what had just transpired.

Story continues

"Honestly, it felt like someone just reached inside, took my heart out and tore it to shreds," Lochte said. "I was really hurt when I saw that and I was in shock. But I looked at Cheryl [Burke] and she just smiled and said, 'You just did what you said you can't do. You danced in front of millions.' And I was like, 'You're right.'"



A BBC Worldwide Productions spokesperson addressed the incident in a statement on Monday night, saying, "Two individuals stormed the dance floor tonight and were immediately subdued and escorted out of the building. The matter is now being handled by the authorities."

For more on Lochte's scary DWTS moment, watch the video below.

PICS: See All the Hot 'Dancing With the Stars' Season 23 Pairings

Related Articles
Sometimes, you've just gotta follow your heart.

Patrick Dempsey spoke to ET's Carly Steel at the Bridget Jones' Baby premiere in New York on Monday, where the 50-year-old actor opened up about fighting for love after he reconcilied with his wife of over 15 years, Jillian, after the two filed for divorce in January 2015.

WATCH: Patrick Dempsey Opens Up About Restoring Marriage: 'We Both Wanted to Fight For It'

"That's what my heart told me to do," Dempsey said.

The two have three children together, 14-year-old Tallula, and 9-year-old twins, Darby and Sullivan.

WATCH: Patrick Dempsey on Leaving 'Grey's Anatomy': 'I Stayed a Bit Longer than I Should Have'

Watch the video below for more on what caused Dempsey not to give up on his marriage.

Related Articles
ET was there as the stars of Sing dished on their animated characters at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Scarlett Johansson, Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Hudson lend their voices to the musical comedy, and despite the heat, they glammed it up on the red carpet.

RELATED: Scarlett Johansson Becomes the Highest Grossing Actress of All Time

"'Warm in Toronto,' that's the name of this segment," Johansson told ET.

In the movie, a koala (McConaughey) enlists the help of his friends to host a singing competition, hoping to drum up business for his theater.

Johansson plays a punk rock porcupine, whose voice is bigger than her stature.

"I don't really know what she sounds like," Johansson said. "She's sort of just like loud and proud."

Witherspoon plays a pig, who beautifully belts out Katy Perry's "Firework" in the movie, but the actress told us that her singing at home isn't always welcomed by her three children, 17-year-old Ava, 12-year-old Deacon and 3-year-old Tennessee.

PIC: Reese Witherspoon and Daughter Ava Look Identical in New Vacation Snap

"I think I embarrass them terribly when I try to sing Drake songs," Witherspoon admitted with a laugh. "I don't stop singing. I enjoy it."

On the other hand, McConaughey enjoyed a status boost in the eyes of his three children, Levi, 8, Vida, 6, and Livingston, 3.

"I was hot stuff in the house for about three solid weeks after they saw this," McConaughey said. "There's a selfish reason behind doing these things."

Sing hits theaters Dec. 21.

Related Articles
Ryan Lochte is still in shock over what just happened on the Dancing With the Stars live show.

During his live judges critique, protesters wearing anti-Lochte shirts crashed the DWTS stage while Carrie Ann Inaba was talking to him and his pro partner Cheryl Burke, causing security to intervene. Though viewers at home did not see ordeal, security could be seen running across the bottom of the screen.

RELATED: Ryan Lochte Protesters Storm DWTS Stage During Live Show

Moments after the live show ended, ETs Nischelle Turner spoke to the Olympic swimmer about what had just transpired and his emotions.

Slowly, slowly been able to breathe, Lochte told ET afterward.

The 32-year-old, who is currently serving a 10-month suspension from USA Swimming following his Rio scandal, was candid about his feelings in the moment and credited Burke for keeping his eye on the prize.

RELATED: Ryan Lochte Talks 'Heartbreaking Suspension, Reveals Phelps Advice

Honestly, it felt like someone just reached inside, took my heart out and tore it to shreds, Lochte said. I was really hurt when I saw that and I was in shock. But I looked at Cheryl and she just smiled and said, 'You just did what you said you cant do. You danced in front of millions. And I was like, 'Youre right.

The scary moment isnt going to deter Lochte from competing his heart out for the mirror ball trophy. In fact, it may have helped focus him even more.

So you know what? Im gonna keep moving forward and put this behind me and Im gonna better myself every day and just you know, came here what I came where to do and dance, he added. Im gonna dance.

RELATED: Ryan Lochte Hopes Competing on 'DWTS Will Give Him a Second Chance With Fans

ET also spoke to Burke, who said she was beyond proud of how Lochte handled the tense situation.

Its insane, the 32-year-old dance pro told ET. Weve worked so hard and I just want Ryan to have a positive experience. This is what this show is all about.

Story continues

Derek Hough, who helped throw out the anti-Lochte protesters, was unbelievably supportive of Lochte and his calm demeanor in the midst of those chaotic few minutes.

I felt the energy in the room change. Im really sensitive to that, honestly. I got really defensive, not just for Ryan but for the ballroom, for the show, he told ET.



RELATED: Ryan Lochte Talks 'Big Mistake in Rio: Everyones 'Blowing This Way Out of Proportion



A BBC Worldwide Productions spokesperson addressed the incident in a statement on Monday night, saying, Two individuals stormed the dance floor tonight and were immediately subdued and escorted out of the building. The matter is now being handled by the authorities.



For more on Lochtes DWTS journey, watch the video below.

Related Articles
U.S. super major ExxonMobil Corporation XOM and Oil Search Ltd. recently signed a deal with Gini Energy, a company controlled by Chinas Cnooc Ltd. CEO, to acquire majority interest in two deepwater exploration acreages in the Gulf of Papua.

Under the terms, Oil Search and ExxonMobil will purchase 40% stake each in two exploration licenses from Gini Energy. ExxonMobil will become operator of the licenses, while Gini Energy will retain 20% equity holding.

The two licenses, namely PPL 373 and PPL 375, are situated roughly 150 kilometers south of Port Moresby. They cover a combined 24,936 kilometers, with water depths ranging from 1000 meters to 2500 meters.

According to a comprehensive study of exploration opportunities conducted by Oil Search in 2015 and 2016, offshore Gulf of Papua has been identified as an area with significant gas potential. Hence, Oil Search and ExxonMobil partnered with Gini Energy to acquire stakes in the region and cash in on the opportunities.

EXXON MOBIL CRP Price

EXXON MOBIL CRP Price | EXXON MOBIL CRP Quote

Irving, TX-based ExxonMobil is the worlds largest publicly traded oil company, engaged in oil and natural gas exploration and production, petroleum products refining and marketing, chemicals manufacture, and other energy-related businesses.

With an AAA credit profile and stable cash position, ExxonMobils balance sheet is one of the strongest in the industry. However, the companys integrated functions make it susceptible to risk from any weakness in global economy.

As a result, ExxonMobil currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which implies that it will perform in line with the broader U.S. equity market over the next one to three months.

Some better-ranked players from the broader energy sector include NGL Energy Partners LP NGL and Matador Resources Company MTDR. Both these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Confidential from Zacks



Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



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



CNOOC LTD ADR (CEO): Free Stock Analysis Report



EXXON MOBIL CRP (XOM): Free Stock Analysis Report



NGL ENERGY PART (NGL): Free Stock Analysis Report



MATADOR RESOURC (MTDR): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Snowden lawyer Ben Wizner (L) and director Oliver Stone speak at the Brooklyn Public Library on September 11, 2016.

Is it a true story?

That was a question asked by Edward Snowdens U.S. lawyer, Ben Wizner, while discussing Oliver Stones new biopic, Snowden, at the Brooklyn Public Library on Sunday. Stone answered that his film was as close to reality as possible, and Wizner pointed to Snowdens own recent statement that the biopic is as close to real as you can get.

But as with many Stone movies that are based on real events, the director took multiple liberties with the known facts. Here are five significant inaccuracies in Snowden.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)

Edward Snowden, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, sits for a polygraph test in the film Snowden. Credit: Open Road Films

1) The 4-minute theft

The movie suggests one of the events that motivated Snowden to steal NSA surveillance documents and then leak them was Director of National Security James Clappers false testimony in which he said the NSA does not wittingly collect records in any way on American citizens. Indeed, Snowden himself has suggested this was one of his motivations. But Clappers testimony was in March 2013, and Snowden reportedly began stealing documents as early as April 2012.

Snowden began downloading documents related to the NSA collecting information from transoceanic fiber optic cables while working as a contractor for Dell in April of 2012, according to Reuters, which cited U.S. officials and other sources. In March 2013, Snowden got a job as a systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton to gain better access to documents. At some point, he built a custom Web crawler to systematically scrape specific information from NSA systems while he went about his work as a computer security expert.

(Photo: Open Road Films)

The document theft in Snowden happens quickly: Snowden inserts an SD card into a computer, pulls up a number of folders  such as Domestic surveillance, False statements and NSA mass surveillance projects  and copies them onto the device. The whole sequence takes less than five minutes.

Consequently, the films suggestion that Snowden decided to steal documents right before he fled Hawaii for Hong Kong is clearly inaccurate. By the time Clapper testified, Snowden had already been allegedly stealing documents for months and discussing his planned leak with journalist Laura Poitras for two months.

Story continues

Why this matters: Snowdens motivations are central to his historic theft and leak. The fact that he decided to steal documents as early as April 2012 subverts the depiction that Clappers testimony persuaded Snowden to act.

2) 3 weeks at the Mira Hotel

[UPDATE 3/21/17: The Mira Hotel has produced records of Snowdens stay during the May 21-June 10 time period, contradicting what hotel employees told the Wall Street Journal in June 2014.]

The film shows Snowden meeting with Poitras, as well as journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, in early June 2013. On June 4, the phone rings in Snowdens hotel room. Asked if he had received a call before, Snowden answers: Not once, not in three weeks.

The line is a minor one, but it belies what is known about Snowdens stay in Hong Kong. Specifically, Snowden reportedly checked into the hotel just days before that phone call.

Snowdens character reacts as the phone in his hotel room rings on June 4, 2013. (Credit: Open Road Films)

Edward Jay Epstein of the Wall Street Journal went to Hong Kong and found that Snowden didnt check into the Mira Hotel until June 1, despite having arrived in the Chinese special-administrative region on May 20.

Mr. Snowden would tell Mr. Greenwald on June 3 that he had been holed up in his room at the Mira Hotel from the time of his arrival in Hong Kong, Epstein reported. But according to inquiries by Wall Street Journal reporter Te-Ping Chen, Mr. Snowden arrived there on June 1. I confirmed that date with the hotels employees. A hotel security guard told me that Mr. Snowden was not in the Mira during that late-May period and, when he did stay there, he used his own passport and credit card.

Epstein also cited a source familiar with the Defense Intelligence Agency report on the Snowden affair in order to report that: U.S. investigative agencies have been unable to find any credit-card charges or hotel records indicating his whereabouts between May 20 and June 1.

Why it matters: If Snowden didnt check into the Mira until June 1, he initially visited someone else in Hong Kong. Albert Ho, one of Snowdens Hong Kong lawyers, referred to the unidentified person as Snowdens carer. This persons crucial role in Snowdens escape has never been explained.

I dont know where he was for these 11 days, Epstein said in an interview in August 2014. Its very important because if we knew where he was, then wed know who he went to see in Hong Kong.

3) I no longer have access to any of these files

The Guardian published the first Snowden story, revealing a top-secret program to collect records of phone calls made by Americans, on June 5, 2013. On June 9, as the leaks captivated the world, Snowden identified himself in a YouTube video. The next day, the film shows Snowden discussing the security of the stolen files with the journalists in his hotel room.

I no longer have access to any of these files myself, the Snowden character says after pressing a key on a laptop on June 10. You guys have them all.

This statement is clearly false, based on an interview Snowden gave to Lana Lam of the South China Morning Post on June 12. Snowden provided Lam with information that was withheld from the American journalists.

A copy of the South China Morning Post, carrying an interview with Edward Snowden, is displayed on a newspaper stand in Hong Kong on June 13, 2013. (Photo: Bobby Yip/Reuters)

I did not release them earlier because I dont want to simply dump huge amounts of documents without regard to their content, Snowden told Lam over encrypted chat. I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists.

Snowden added that he had much more information to release.

If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of U.S. network operations against their people should be published, Snowden told Lam.

U.S. officials feared that Snowden had taken as many as 1.7 million classified documents from NSA systems during his work as an NSA contractor for Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton. (Exactly how much he took remains unclear.) The U.S. estimated that he gave about 200,000 documents to the American journalists Poitras and Greenwald.

Why it matters: The stolen documents allegedly include 900,000 Defense Department documents and blueprints detailing how the NSA functions. And Snowden alternatively told NBC that he destroyed documents to make sure that for example the Russians cant break my fingers. Overall, questions remain about what happened to all of the stolen information.

Snowden and the journalists he met in Hong Kong, as portrayed in Snowden. (Credit: Open Road Films)

4) Hiding in Hong Kong and finding asylum

The movie shows Snowden spending all of his time in Hong Kong at the Mira Hotel and then, after his name becomes public on June 10, fleeing with his lawyer to the home of a poor family. He hides there until he boards a flight to Moscow with WikiLeaks adviser Sarah Harrison.

What does film leave out? The on-the-ground work by WikiLeaks to find Snowden asylum and at least three trips the American fugitive made to the building housing the Russian consulate in Hong Kong.

As Snowden found a safe house in Hong Kong, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sent his personal assistant and girlfriend, Sarah Harrison, to find Snowden asylum outside of China. Harrison, who was in Melbourne at the time, told Vogue that Assange called her on the morning of June 10 and dispatched her immediately and secretly to canvass foreign embassies to see which countries might be amenable to granting Snowden asylum.

On June 11, Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman announced that the country would consider an asylum application by Snowden. And Putin, after denying knowledge of Snowdens flight to Moscow, later admitted that Snowden first appeared in Hong Kong and met with our diplomatic representatives. A U.S. official told Epstein that CCTV cameras recorded Snowden entering the skyscraper housing the Russian consulate in Hong Kong three times in June.

Why it matters: The involvement of WikiLeaks and the Kremlin while Snowden hid in Hong Kong raises the prospect that Assange, who has amicable relations with Russia, linked Snowden with Russian officials while attempting to find him asylum.

You need to find a way to Russian officials. Its not so easy, Russian security expert Andrei Soldatov told me in January 2014. You cannot just knock on the door and say, I am an NSA whistleblower and I want contact with the Russians. So I think that some contacts were provided by Assange. I strongly suspect that there should be some connection.

The Hong Kong skyline in June 2013. (Photo: Bobby Yip/Reuters)

5) Ask the State Department

Stones film repeats the argument that the U.S. revoked Snowden passport on June 23, 2013, while he was on the flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, thereby stranding him in Russia as soon as he landed.

When people say Why are you in Russia? I say, Ask the State Department,' Snowdens character says, echoing what Snowden has said in real life.

However, according to the State Department, the U.S. government revoked Snowdens passport the day before he left Hong Kong. Consul General-Hong Kong confirmed Hong Kong authorities were notified that Mr. Snowdens passport was revoked June 22, the State Departments senior watch officer told officials.

Also on June 22, Assange obtained an unsigned special refugee travel document from the Ecuadorian lawyer in London that gave Snowden a semblance of travel papers while Beijing facilitated his exit. WikiLeaks later reiterated that Assange obtained the Ecuadorian document specifically so that Snowden could leave Hong Kong and travel to Ecuador via Russia. However, Ecuadors president subsequently said that the travel pass was completely invalid, adding that Snowden was under the care of the Russian authorities.

The unsigned Ecuadorian safe pass travel document that Assange obtained for Snowden.

Why it matters: The notion that the U.S. stranded Snowden in Russia is crucial to Snowden and his supporters arguing that he would otherwise have traveled to Latin America. The notion that Snowden is stuck in Russia largely because of Assange, who paid for Snowdens plane tickets, lodging and legal counsel in Hong Kong while advising him to seek asylum in Russia, subverts the Latin America argument.

So what?

These discrepancies wouldnt matter as much if Stone and Snowden said that the movie simplifies and fictionalizes certain events. But with the director and the primary subject swearing by the accuracy of the film, these editorial choices take on more meaning. After all, Snowden has been charged with theft of government property and two violations of the U.S. Espionage Act for disclosing classified communications.

The poster for Oliver Stones Snowden.

Snowdens supporters hope that the film will galvanize support for a presidential pardon. At the screening, Wizner announced that the ACLU and other organizations are launching a formal campaign this week  along with the website pardonSnowden.org  that will attempt to persuade President Obama to pardon Snowden before he leaves office. Stones film is being used as part of that campaign.

I think Oliver will do more for Snowden in two hours than his lawyers have been able to do in three years, Wizner told Vice reporter Jason Koebler at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Snowden is very much the story that Edward Snowden would like to be told. Snowden even makes a cameo at the end of the film, which serves as his seal of approval. But Stones biopic curbs some of the unflattering aspects of Snowdens heist and asylum, and viewers should keep the full context in mind.

Read also: In exile, Edward Snowden rakes in speaking fees while hoping for a pardon
[September 12, 2016] Rockwell Automation Acquires Automated Control Products to Deliver Simple and Secure Centralized Visualization and Mobility Solutions

Rockwell Automation (News - Alert) (NYSE: ROK) today acquired Automation Control Products (ACP), a leading provider in centralized thin client, remote desktop and server management software. ACP's two core products, ThinManager and Relevance, provide manufacturing and industrial leaders with visual display and software solutions to manage information and streamline workflows for a more connected manufacturing environment. This acquisition supports the Rockwell Automation growth strategy to help customers increase global competitiveness through The Connected Enterprise - a vision that connects information across the plant floor to the rest of the enterprise. It is accelerated by the Industrial Internet of Things and advances in technologies, such as data analytics, remote monitoring, and mobility. "Today's plant engineers turn to our technology innovation and domain expertise to help improve their manufacturing quality and reliability while increasing productivity," said Frank Kulaszewicz, senior vice president of Architecture and Software, Rockwell Automation. "With ACP's industry-leading proucts now in our portfolio, we can provide new capabilities for workers as the manufacturing environment becomes more digital and connected."



ThinManager centralizes the management and visualization of content to every facet of a modern manufacturing operation, from the control room to the end user. It streamlines workflows and allows users to reduce hardware operation and maintenance costs. Relevance extends the ThinManager functionality through proprietary location-based technology, enabling users' secure mobile access to content and applications from anywhere. "We are a perfect addition to Rockwell Automation's industrial automation offerings that aim to increase reliability, productivity and security as well as lower energy and maintenance costs while implementing sustainable technology for leading global manufacturers," said Matt Crandell, CEO of ACP. "We are confident that our customers will quickly see the value from our two organizations working to address their needs together."

About Rockwell Automation Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), the world's largest company dedicated to industrial automation and information, makes its customers more productive and the world more sustainable. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., Rockwell Automation employs approximately 22,000 people serving customers in more than 80 countries. About ACP Prior to the acquisition, ACP was a leader in the automation industry, providing full-featured industrial thin client management and location-based mobility software. ACP is a privately-held company located in Alpharetta, GA with less than 30 employees. Its solutions are installed in 3,000 locations globally with more than 1,000 customers in 30 countries, including nearly 30 of the top 100 global manufacturers. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006499/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Global health officials are racing to better understand the Zika virus behind a major outbreak that began in Brazil last year and has spread to almost 60 countries. The following are some questions and answers about the virus and current outbreak: How do people become infected? Zika is transmitted to people through the bite of infected female mosquitoes, primarily the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the same type that spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are found in all countries in the Americas except Canada and continental Chile, and the virus will likely reach all countries and territories of the region where Aedes mosquitoes are found. The virus can also be transmitted through sex, from either a male or female partner who has been infected, and a few cases of apparent infection via blood transfusion have been reported. How do you treat Zika? There is no treatment or vaccine for Zika infection. Companies and scientists are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine for Zika, but a preventative shot is not expected to be ready for widespread use for at least two or three years. How dangerous is it? The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that infection with the Zika virus in pregnant women is a cause of the birth defect microcephaly, a condition defined by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems, and other severe brain abnormalities in babies. The CDC said that since the causal relationship had been established, several important questions must still be answered with studies that could take years. The World Health Organization in an updated assessment said the "most likely explanation" is that Zika virus infection during pregnancy is a cause of congenital brain abnormalities including microcephaly. In addition, the agency said infection is a trigger of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), a rare neurological disorder that can result in paralysis. The update from the WHO came after considering months of research. Its previous statement, based on a rapid assessment of evidence, said there was strong scientific consensus that Zika virus caused GBS, microcephaly and other neurological disorders. Brazil recently reported 1,835 confirmed cases of microcephaly believed to be linked to Zika infections in pregnant women. It is investigating more than 3,200 suspected cases of microcephaly. Current research indicates the greatest microcephaly risk is associated with infection during the first trimester of pregnancy, but health officials have warned an impact could be seen in later weeks. Recent studies have shown evidence of Zika in amniotic fluid, placenta and fetal brain tissue. What are the symptoms of Zika infection? People infected with Zika may have a mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain and fatigue that can last for two to seven days. But as many as 80 percent of people infected never develop symptoms. How can Zika be contained? Efforts to control the spread of the virus focus on eliminating mosquito breeding sites and taking precautions against mosquito bites such as using insect repellent and mosquito nets. U.S. and international health officials have advised pregnant women to avoid travel to Latin American and Caribbean countries, sections of Miami, Florida in the United States and Singapore where they may be exposed to Zika. They are also advising that men and women who have traveled to Zika outbreak areas use condoms or abstain from sex for six months to prevent sexual transmission of the virus. How widespread is the outbreak? Active Zika outbreaks have been reported in at least 58 countries or territories, most of them in the Americas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Brazil has been the country most affected. (http://1.usa.gov/1ovAJyh) Africa (1): Cape Verde Americas (48): Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Aruba, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Bonaire, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saba, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthelmy, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Eustatius, St. Maarten, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, United States, U.S. Virgin Islands and Venezuela. Asia (1): Singapore Oceania/Pacific Islands (8): American Samoa, Fiji, Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga. What is the history of the Zika virus? The Zika virus is found in tropical locales with large mosquito populations. Outbreaks of Zika have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Southern Asia and the Western Pacific. The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in rhesus monkeys and was first identified in people in 1952 in Uganda and Tanzania, according to the WHO. What other complications are associated with Zika? Zika has also been associated with other neurological disorders, including serious brain and spinal cord infections. The long-term health consequences of Zika infection are unclear. Other uncertainties surround the incubation period of the virus and how Zika interacts with other viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes, such as dengue. (Compiled by the Americas Desk)
But it is still a possibility in the future.

As the threat of the fourth player looms over Singapore's telco trio, another bad news came for M1 Limited, as its supposed support from Axiata Group was belied by the latter's CEO.

In a report by Malaysia's Starbiz, Axiata CEO Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim confirmed that there have been no talks between the two to increase Axiata's 28.57% stake in the telco.

However, being one of the leading regional operators and a long-term investor in Asean and South Asia, we are always looking to consider any worthwhile opportunities in the region," Jamaludin was quoted saying.

This is subject to the right timing and pricing, among other important criteria and whether they meet our strategic merger and acquisition (M&A) objectives, he added.

Earlier reports stated that Anxiata was keen on increasing its stake in M1 as part of expansion plans in the region.







More From Singapore Business Review


MTV's Teen Mom OG star Farrah Abrahams latest controversy has to do with her daughter wearing makeup at only 7 years old.

The reality stars daughter got in trouble at school recently for wearing makeup, but Farrah fought the schools decision to reprimand her daughter and says she doesnt see any problem with a child her age wearing makeup.

Watch: Teen Moms Plastic Surgery Scare

I dont ever encourage my daughter to wear makeup. Thats just something she likes to do if she wants to wear makeup, its not a huge deal, she tells The Doctors. Theres no reason to take away from math, reading and science, to focus on someone experimenting with makeup.

Farrah says that her daughters heavy involvement in theater, performance, cheer and dance puts her in situations where makeup is worn and that its not something she is telling her to do. With the backlash and the concerns raised by the school dissuade Farrah from allowing her daughter to wear make-up?

If she would like to wear makeup, then she may, she tells the panel.

Watch: Teen Mom Talks Parenting

The Doctors polled our readers about this issue and a whopping 98 percent said they would not allow their 7-year-old to wear makeup to school.

In addition to defending her daughters makeup use, Farrah, meets with plastic surgeon Dr. Andrew Ordon to discuss the possibility of getting butt implants. Does Dr. Ordon think going under the knife is needed or should the reality star simply stick with her current workout routine for a firmer backside? Find out if Farrah will partake in yet another plastic surgery procedure in the video below.
Brussels (AFP) - EU President Donald Tusk on Tuesday warned leaders they cannot ignore the lessons of Brexit and must address concerns about migration when they meet in Bratislava this week.

Former Polish premier Tusk added that the bloc must be less "politically correct" and protect Europeans worried about terrorism, security and globalisation in the wake of Britain's vote to leave.

"It would be a fatal error to assume that the negative result in the UK referendum represents a specifically British issue," Tusk wrote in an invitation letter for Friday's summit of 27 leaders -- all except Britain.

In the letter seen by AFP, he said the EU had been too slow to deal with the migration crisis, adding: "We do not have too much time to spare. Bratislava will have to be a turning point in terms of protecting the Union's external borders."

The five-page invitation letter was sent to leaders on Tuesday, on the eve of the annual State of the Union address by European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Tusk said the EU leaders meeting in Bratislava, in a summit that is meant to draw up a roadmap for a future without Britain, had to act now to secure Europe's borders in the face of the migration crisis.

"All too often they (European citizens) heard politically correct statements that Europe cannot become a fortress, that it must remain open," the former Polish prime minister warned.

Tusk added that it was important for the rest of the EU to learn from Brexit, especially the British people's concerns over mass migration.

He said the Leave camp in Britain's June 23 referendum used "false arguments" but said it was "also true that the Brexit vote is a desperate attempt to answer the questions that millions of Europeans ask themselves daily".

"Questions about the guarantees of security of the citizens and their territory, questions about the protection of their interests, cultural heritage and way of life," he said.

Story continues

"These are questions we would have to face even if the UK had voted to remain."

Tusk, fresh from a tour of European capitals to canvass opinion, urged the EU to deliver on both security and prosperity but said that did not mean more powers for Brussels.

"My talks with you clearly show ... that is not the desired recipe," Tusk wrote

His last comments could be taken as a dig at Juncker, who has made much play of the fact that he leads a "political" Commission, rather than the bureaucratic apparatus it is by tradition, and as a result has been harshly criticised for not doing enough to prevent Brexit.
Udacity Sebastian Thrun

There's no way to get a degree in "self-driving car engineering"  at least from your typical university.

Today, engineers might come from the automative industry or they might be fresh out of MIT with a specialization in machine learning.

The lack of a formal education in the area is something Sebastian Thrun, the so-called "father of the self-driving car", knows from when he started on the project in the early days of Google's moonshot division. Even at Google, he had to poach from other departments and teach people on the job, he told Business Insider.

"From big companies like Mercedes to small companies, the biggest issue is the right talent," Thrun said. "There is a dearth of educated people."

That's why Thrun has created a nine-month "nanodegree" program in self-driving cars through his online education startup, Udacity.

As part of the program, Udacity has signed on hiring partners including Mercedes Benz, Didi Chuxing, Nvidia, and Otto, which was just acquired by Uber. All of the partners, with the exception of Didi, also helped design the curriculum so graduates will have learned the skills they hopefully need to succeed at those companies when they finish it.

A large part of what precipitated the talent drought is how fast the self-driving car revolution has come upon the industry. When Thrun started working on it decades ago, it was still considered a "moonshot." Now, companies from Apple to Uber to major automakers are working on some version of it and are in need of engineers.

Udacity Self Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree

Because of Udacity's global reach, Thrun is hoping to jump-start the next crop of self-driving car experts and not just rely on the limited trickle coming from programs like MIT and Stanford.

"Its even worse if you are passed university days," Thrun said about learning the skills for the fast-paced industry. "We reach people of all ages, of all geographies."

Story continues

In 2012, Thrun founded Udacity as what he describes as the "societal moonshot" of democratizing tech education.

Although Udacity initially offered a handful of online classes completely free of charge, the team pivoted a little over a year ago after seeing dismal course completion rates to a new "Nanodegree" program targeted at landing students jobs in areas like front-end web developer, Android developer, and data analyst.

The self-driving car program doesn't guarantee a job in the end, but its partners have promised to interview graduates coming out of it.

"Its really hard to find good people. Its just become exponentially in the last year," Thrun said, citing the competition specifically between Uber and Google. "Theres no doubt in my mind that its going to happen. ...The improvements are staggering, and its going to be a big industry."

NOW WATCH: 3 alternatives to networking that are less awkward and more effective





More From Business Insider


By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An office inside the Food and Drug Administration routinely shares details internally about criminal matters pending before grand juries, a step some lawyers say may run afoul of rules meant to safeguard investigations.

FDA agents send updates about anticipated grand jury testimony and indictments to more than two dozen people, many of whom have nothing to do with the case, emails from the agencys Office of Criminal Investigations, OCI, show.

The e-mails, known as "headquarters alerts," give FDA brass a heads up about expected actions inside or outside of court  such as arrests, the execution of search warrants, grand jury indictments or jury verdicts  so managers can prepare for possible press coverage.

Managers in the Rockville-based criminal investigations office require agents in the field to send these emails, internal communications and interviews show.

Yet section 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure imposes strict secrecy requirements on government employees, including prosecutors and agents investigating cases pending before grand juries.

This secrecy is designed to protect the integrity of the government's investigation and the rights of subjects facing possible indictment.

Under rule 6(e), the disclosure of a grand jury matter may only be made to government employees whose names are on a list on file in the court where the grand jury is impaneled. Only those deemed "necessary to assist" government lawyers can be designated, and each is to be advised to keep the matter confidential.

The FDA's "headquarters alerts" emails are typically sent to dozens of people inside the criminal office, according to copies seen by Reuters. Recipients include office managers, a training coordinator and a public affairs official.

Others receive them even if the case doesn't touch upon their subject expertise. Agents who specialize in food and tobacco receive information about drug cases, for instance.

Story continues

In an interview, OCI Director George Karavetsos said he does not believe the emails violate grand jury secrecy rules.

Discussing those things that are going to happen prospectively or have not yet happened, meaning that they may or may not happen, dont necessarily violate 6(e), he said. I have not seen anything that has violated 6(e).

A person who knowingly or willfully violates the rule can be held in contempt by a federal court.

The FDA Office of Criminal Investigation's handbook says only people whose names have been filed with the court are allowed to know about the jury's activities, such as whether the grand jury has issued a subpoena to someone.

Even the mere "fact" that a grand jury has been convened or issued subpoenas should be disclosed on a need-to-know basis through the proper channels, it says. "Neither FDA colleagues nor supervisors may be advised of the substance of grand jury activities unless they have been designated.

Adam Kurland, a former federal prosecutor who teaches criminal law at Howard University, said it is "mind-boggling that FDA bureaucrats who should know better are internally sharing details about who is testifying and what counts are being considered.

Unless every single person on the e-mail list is properly designated, he said, the FDA is likely in violation of the rules. "It sounds like the FDA PR machine has gotten ahead of itself," he said.

Solomon Wisenberg, a defense attorney at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, called the FDAs denial that it was breaking rules bulls--- and said he felt almost any federal judge would agree it is improper.

Some attorneys disagree, saying the FDAs actions, while questionable, may not necessarily violate rules. Court districts vary in how strictly they interpret grand jury secrecy rules.

The expectation that certain information is going to be presented to a grand jury is not necessarily 6(e), said James Felman, a defense attorney with Kynes, Markman & Felman.

Among the e-mails in question: One dated January 12, 2016 containing an attachment saying a special agent in Puerto Rico planned to present two indictments to a federal grand jury the next day against two men for their alleged role in a prescription drug diversion scheme and the sale of physician drug samples. The arrests of the two men, it says, were tentatively slated for January 14, the day after the indictment was expected to be returned.

Another email, sent January 20, 2016, discloses that a postal inspector was slated to testify five days later before a grand jury in support of an indictment against Averill Perkins for conspiring to distribute misbranded, foreign-sourced Tramadol.

An attachment with the e-mail goes into greater detail, naming an alleged co-conspirator expected to be indicted in the near future by a grand jury in a different district.

Perkins was not indicted until seven days later, court records show. There is no public record of any co-conspirator indictment.

Jake Watson, an attorney for Perkins, said he was "bothered" to learn the FDA had internally shared information before an indictment was filed.

Such concerns are not new.

In 2011, agents told the Health and Human Services Inspector General that the FDA did not have built-in restrictions in the offices online case management system to prohibit access to grand jury materials, and that managers in headquarters could access information without being designated, according to a May 2012 report by the inspector general.

The report also said the FDA's New York office did not follow policy by restricting access to grand jury information to the office's number one and two ranking officials. At the time, the FDAs response did not address the concerns.

Reuters examined the FDAs handling of grand jury information as part of a broader look at the OCI, a little-known unit where agents carry guns and investigate crimes. The office has spent thousands of hours investigating doctors who purchased imported misbranded drugs. Yet more than half of all OCI cases from 2008-2015 were closed without action, Reuters found.

Critics contend OCIs approach protects drug makers as much as consumers. The FDA said it follows leads from all sources to ensure dangerous drugs do not infiltrate the market.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)
J.A. Bayonas adaptation of Patrick Ness A Monster Calls must be one of the most well-received world premieres of this years Toronto Film Festival. The movie is a heartbreaking and truly moving grief parable for kids, about a young boy named Conor, whose mother is in the final weeks of an unsuccessful battle with cancer. As nightly visits by a giant monster fail to traumatize a boy already going through the worst of traumas, the monster tells Conor a series of stories that question the fairy tale understanding of heroes and villains, right and wrong.

Stopping by our Toronto studio with his cast and author-screenwriter Ness, J.A. Bayona told me his first read-through of the book was overwhelming. I was surprised by the number of ideas it had in common with my other films, he noted of the film that is nevertheless incredibly distinct in style and execution from The Impossible and The Orphanage. The movie gave me the chance to explore storytelling and try to shed some light on the ultimate meaning of what I do as a filmmaker.

Ness adapted his own book and refused to sell the rights until he met the right filmmaker. I could see all these things Bayona and the actors brought to it that I would never have thought of in a million years, he said.

Sigourney Weaver, who plays Conors strict but loving grandmother in A Monster Calls, praised the script read-through Bayona built into the schedule. Liam [Neeson] was there reading the monster, she noted. It was wonderful to hear it read out loud, and it gave you a lovely feeling of starting together. People dont do read-throughs very much anymore, and I think theyre awfully valuable for everybody.

Agreed Felicity Jones, who plays Conors dying mother: [Theyre] so important. It takes away some of the nerves as well when everyones in the room together. If you never have that moment, everyones working a little bit more disparate. Its great to come together and understand the tone of the film youre in.

Story continues

Bayona told me newcomer Lewis MacDougall, who appeared in Pan, was the obvious front-runner from the field of boys auditioned. The young actor said his audition culminated in a screen test in Barcelona. There were three or four other boys auditioning for Conor, MacDougall noted. That was the first time I really reached the emotions I would do later in the film.

The depth and sorrow of those emotions led to wails of tears from the audience at the Roy Thomson Hall earlier in the week, as the magical film unspooled. A Monster Calls gets a limited release in December ahead of a wide rollout in January. Check out more from the cast and crew in our exclusive video above.

Videos produced by Neil Hansen/Route Eleven, camera work by Meaghan Gable and Ida Jokinen. Special thanks to Image Skin Care Canada, Calii Love, Commune, Dan Gunam, and Silverline Studios.

Related stories

Anne Hathaway Sci-Fi Pic 'Colossal' Sells To Mystery Chinese Buyer - Toronto

Morgan Spurlock's 'Rats' To Infest Landmark Theatres For Midnight Screenings

A Lesson In Old-School Attitude From Raoul Peck And 'I Am Not Your Negro' At Toronto's Doc Conference
NEW YORK (Reuters) - To be clothed, or not to be clothed? That was a no-brainer for members of an all-female cast in Brooklyn who stripped down to celebrate their freedom of expression in a nude version of Shakespeare in the park. The Torn Out Theater company of New York teamed up with The Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society for the unique production of "The Tempest," which completed its second set of performances in Brooklyn's Prospect Park on Saturday, following a spring run. The idea behind the free show is to use storytelling and theater to get its message of body positivity heard. "It's an interesting thing to feel like I'm not only making a statement as an actor, getting to play an amazing part," said Gina Marie Russell, who played Prospero, the duke of Milan. "But I'm making a statement as a woman about female sexuality, female nudity and really trying to normalize that and make it non-sexual and non-threatening," she added. Director Pitr Strait said he was a little apprehensive about the play, but that everything went smoothly. "Even I was kind of nervous the first rehearsal and then within minutes I was like, this is normal - so normal that when we had an actor come on in clothes, she looked strange," Strait said. The production company had to obtain permits in order to perform fully nude. "It was sort of like you could feel like a new chapter turning," said actress Reanna Roane, who played Ariel. "The first time was a nice gentle easy process into performing nude. We had nude rehearsals, we had a lot of cast-building rehearsals to build camaraderie and things like that so that by the time the show actually came, I didn't really care about nude or what people would think," added Roane. "It felt really second nature." "Some people are a little weirded out, which is to be expected," added Strait. "We knew that the show was going to shake things up and make people question certain things." The reimagined play had no problem filling seats, with the audience including what Roane described "as a lot of curious people." "For the most part, the response has been really loving and really giving," she said. "What someone might think of someone being a creeper is really just someone going: 'Oh, I've never really seen that before.'" (Reporting by Alicia Powell in New York; Writing by Melissa Fares in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Starpharma: VivaGel Condom Receives Regulatory Approval in Canada

Starpharma Holdings Ltd (ASX: SPL) (OTCQX: SPHRY) today announced it had been granted a medical device license for the VivaGel condom by the Canadian regulatory authority, Health Canada.

Starpharma's marketing partner, Ansell (ASX: ANN), plans to launch the VivaGel condom in Canada as soon as possible under the LifeStyles Dual Protect brand.

The VivaGel condom is a world-first product based on innovative Australian technology. It is the only condom of its type, providing barrier protection and incorporating the proprietary compound, astodrimer sodium (SPL7013, VivaGel) in the condom lubricant.

Starpharma Chief Executive Officer, Dr Jackie Fairley, said, "The approval by Health Canada marks a further key commercial milestone for the VivaGel condom product, and is very significant as the first North American approval for the product."

Jeyan Heper, Ansell's President and General Manager, Sexual Wellness Global Business Unit said "Ansell's mission is to provide innovative solutions for safety, well-being and peace of mind. We pride ourselves on our innovative products and the LifeStyles Dual Protect condom is a great example of this, comining a high-quality condom with Starpharma's VivaGel, a patented anti-viral technology."







Regulatory reviews continue for the VivaGel condom in a number of other geographic regions with further approvals anticipated in the coming months.

In May 2016, Starpharma and Ansell announced that VivaGel condoms were provided to Australian athletes ahead of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The antiviral condoms are also available for Australian athletes at the Paralympics.

About VivaGel

VivaGel has been proven in laboratory studies to inactivate up to 99.9% of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), HSV (herpes simplex virus) and HPV (human papillomavirus), which are viruses that cause STIs. VivaGel was also recently shown in laboratory studies to have potent antiviral activity against the Zika virus at levels significantly below the concentration in the Dual Protect condom. It is now known that Zika virus can be sexually transmitted.

Customers in Canada can pre-order LifeStyles Dual Protect condoms at www.lifestyles.com/dual-protect, as of Wednesday 14 September 2016.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006570/en/
Female characters on broadcast TV grew more diverse last season but the employment of women in behind-the-scenes roles has stalled at about 26% of the TV production workforce. Those are among the key findings of the annual Boxed In study of women in television conducted by Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.

Laurens survey found that women accounted for 39% of all characters with speaking roles in the 2015-16 season across broadcast, cable and streaming platforms. Thats a decline from 40% in 2014-15 season. Broadcast TV had the highest percentage of femme characters at 41%, followed by streaming (38%) and cable (33%).

Broadcast TV has also led the charge in TV in presenting more diverse characters. Although the overwhelming majority of characters (71%) remain white, thats down 6 percentage points from last season. African-American women achieved a historical high at 17%, up 2% from last year. Latino women were up to 5%, up from 3% in the previous season, while Asian women also accounted for 5% of characters, up from 4%.

Meanwhile, women comprised 26% of directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and directors of photography of shows across broadcast, cable and streaming. Thats essentially unchanged over the past four seasons.

The Boxed In survey, now in its 19th year, is limited in its scope as the stats are drawn from an analysis of one randomly selected episode of every drama, comedy and reality series airing on ABC, CBS, CW, NBC, Fox, A&E, AMC, Discovery, Freeform, FX, HGTV, History, TBS, TNT, USA Network, HBO, Showtime, Amazon, Hulu and Netflix. But theres enough of a pattern to see that women still have a long way to go to achieve parity on either side of the camera.

Women continue to be dramatically under-employed in key behind-the-scenes positions that help shape what we see on screen. When women assume gatekeeping roles as creators or executive producers, we see more female characters overall, more females as major characters, and more women writers and directors, Lauzen said. Creators and executive producers act as our cultural architects. Constructing a more inclusive televisual world on screen begins with employing a more inclusive behind-the-scenes community.

Story continues

According to the report, 20% of all series creators in the 2015-16 season were female, down from 22% in 2014-15. The greatest percentage of women in behind-the-scenes roles held the title of producer (36%), followed by writer (27%), exec producer (25%), editor (22%), director (11%) and director of photography (3%). The study found that shows across the spectrum were more likely to have significant female characters if there were at least one women working in a prominent behind the scenes role.

Related stories

Movie Criticism Is an Overwhelmingly Male Dominated Field (Study)

Women Comprise 7% of Directors on Top 250 Films (Study)

Why Stuntwomen Face Unequal Pay for Equal Stunts (Guest Column)
Deal-making in Toronto may be moving slowly but that hasnt stopped New York-based speciality distributor Film Movement, which has picked up US and English-speaking Canadian rights to Bulgarian tragicomedy Glory.

The film, which is directed by The Lesson filmmakers Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, is described as a modern-day morality tale about a railway linesman who discovers a small fortune on the railroad tracks but doesnt feel he is adequately rewarded after he returns the money. Stefan Denolyubov and Margita Gosheva star in the title, which premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival last month.

Film Movement, which released the The Lesson last year, is planning an early 2017 theatrical release for Glory.

Michael E. Rosenberg, president of Film Movement, negotiated the deal in Toronto with Diane Ferrandez, head of international sales at Wide Management.

With Glory, we continue to watch the artistic talents of Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov evolve as they turn their keen sensibilities to yet another fascinating story of morals, said Rosenberg in a statement.

Related stories

Ewan McGregor & Cast On Bringing Philip Roth's Explosive 'American Pastoral' To The Big Screen - Toronto Studio

Rape, Terrorism, Controversy And Climate Change Dominate The Movies On The Toronto Film Festival's Second Day

'The Exception' Clip: TIFF Drama Looks At The Last Days Of History's Second Most Hated German Ruler
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f20545%2ff450e05999f44aba91ecf2c6fe7e9488

One firefighter found his own way to remember September 11.

To mark the 15-year anniversary of the attacks, firefighter Jason Harding wore his uniform to climb 110 sets of stairs on a StairMaster at a Planet Fitness in Tennessee. Each of the Twin Towers had 110 floors.

SEE ALSO: Walmart's September 11 display was a bad, bad idea

Lezlie Bauler, a front desk associate at the gym, shared the photo on Facebook.

"This man asked if it was okay for him to climb 110 sets, fully suited, of stairs in honor of his fallen brothers and sisters for 9-11," Bauler posted on Facebook, accompanying a photo of Harding on the exercise machine.

"Yes, sir, you can. I am not one to get emotional, but a few tears were shed. Thank you for your services," she wrote.
Mark Millar, the prolific comic author that regularly sets up Hollywood deals for his creations, is back with a new creator-owned title this fall called Reborn.

The comic, which is due in October from Image Comics, teams him with artist Greg Capullo, the penciller who worked with Scott Snyder on the acclaimed five-year run of DC's Batman. And as Millar describes it, after tackling super heroes, secret agents, crooks and aliens, it's his first real stab at fantasy.

"Fantasy is completely new to me and I only wanted to do it if I could find a good human angle on it," he tells Heat Vision. "That's what's generally turned me off fantasy growing up, the hooks rarely appealing. So I wanted to have a lead character we could relate to and plunge her into this place."

Millar is keeping mum on the details but he did offer this: "It's not Heaven or Hell or anything we've seen before. The idea simply is that when we're done here, we show up somewhere else and our main character, Bonnie Black, has a stroke in the opening pages and suddenly finds herself in this magical place that's a cross between Lord of the Rings and Mad Max. If you've lived a good life you appear in one territory, if you haven't, you appear on the other, and both sides are in conflict with one another. This is where all our dead friends and relatives are waiting for us and Bonnie is thrown right into the mix."

Millar has attracted the top artists of the last decade (his Hollywood track record is one factor working for him) and he is nabbing Capullo at a career high, having turned himself into an A-lister thanks to Batman.

"If you want to do story filled with monsters and darkness and impossibly cool visuals there's nobody better than Greg," Millar says. "I think it's safe to say he's the hottest artist in the industry at the moment, his Batman run with Scott Snyder just being universally beloved, so it's amazing to get him and I'm delighted he responded to the material so well."

Story continues

Speaking of art, Heat Vision has a glimpse of 12 gorgeous pages. Think of it as a teaser trailer where you get snippets of a story, without the lettering. Feel free to set your own music to it.
NASHVILLE, TN / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / On July 2nd 2016 in Marsing, Idaho Jack White and Third Man Records made vinyl history and played the first ever vinyl record in space, the team they partnered with to launch and recover their ICARUS spacecraft was a non-profit organization called Students And Teachers In Near Space (SATINS). "Working on this project was an honor and privilege, and we would like to thank Jack White, Kevin Carrico, and everyone at Third Man Records for giving SATINS the opportunity to be part of such an amazing and historical flight," said Founder and CEO of SATINS David Jankowski during the celebration of Third Man Records 7th year anniversary event at their Nashville HQ on July 30th 2016.

SATINS was founded in 2012 to provide opportunities for K-12 students to fly their science experiments in a near-space environment. There are unique opportunities with HAB (High Atmospheric Balloon) activities now that commercial Near Space Tourism is a reality that together will lead to a strengthening of America's role as the world engine of innovation in just over the next decade. Students and teachers will develop their very own near space programs and network with classrooms nationwide in a variety of ways; joint space missions, friendly competitions, local, state, and national science fairs, workshops, and more.

To achieve our mission SATINS has multiple programs which focus on an educational strategy designed to work with students throughout their entire k-12 years, and beyond; as each student progresses through elementary, junior high and high school so too does their level of participation. The highest level of achievement within SATINS, (as a graduating senior) is being selected for the Student Stratonaut Program wear in College students will begin to train for manned missions into near space in support of the global scientific community. We want to give students a taste of what's possible with a STEM education and career.

Near Space provides the perfect low-cost training environment to prepare future engineers, scientists, and Astronauts as the United States works towards the Human exploration of Mars and beyond. The programs offered through SATINS are unprecedented and perfectly suited to inspire students, teachers, parents and the next generation of explorers. Since the launch of ICARUS we have been receiving calls weekly from teachers, school administrators, the FAA, and people within the HAB community all expressing interest to partner with SATINS by providing support to their local and statewide schools.

To help achieve our mission we have developed the SATINS Special Projects division to support unique projects like ICARUS. Our goals with this division are to partner with businesses and corporations on special launch projects in exchange for donations and PR for SATINS. Whatever your special needs for your promotional event are i.g. Movie/TV - New Product - Social Gaming ect. By partnering with SATINS you will also be inspiring the next generation of thinkers, engineers, and explorers.

Show your support for SATINS TODAY and visit our Indiegogo campaign, to learn more about SATINS also visit our website at www.satinsprogram.com. For the first 2,000 people to follow, like, and share @satinsprogram on facebook and twitter by the end of September 2016 we will include your name on our next near space launch.

SOURCE: SATINS
By Matthew Stock London - About 90 percent of the world's goods are carried by sea, with more than 70 percent in shipping containers carrying everything from TVs to sportswear from Asia to the rest of the world. But the global imbalance in trade means most of these containers are empty on the return journey. Design student Philippe Hohlfeld, from London's Royal College of Art (RCA), has devised a way to stop this empty space going to waste. Grow Frame is a collapsible hydroponic farm that could grow vegetables inside the empty containers during the weeks-long sea voyage. "Grow Frame tackles the challenge that half of all containers going to China are empty. And that means, right now, 13 million containers annually are traveling around with just air. And when I heard about that I thought 'no, that's not a problem, that's an opportunity'," Hohlfeld told Reuters. "Every container is 12 square meters of land, and they're basically free. And free real estate in the world is really hard to come by, and especially in the countries where they end up in China and Japan and south-east Asia, that land would be really expensive and is at a premium." Each plant is grown in small individual plastic bags containing all the water and nutrients needed to feed the plant during the trip. The mini farms would cultivate vegetables using battery-powered LED lights that can be adjusted to provide precisely the right spectrum of light for optimal growth. Hohlfeld said the energy efficient lights and the battery would hold enough power for the duration of the voyage; for example, for the approximately three weeks it takes for the vessel to travel from the UK to China. To keep the climate inside each container as natural as possible, Hohlfeld said he's planning to grow mushrooms alongside leafy vegetables to help balance the mini ecosystem. "I'm growing cabbages, spinach, lettuces and bean sprouts. All these plants create oxygen, as we know, and it's really good in nature because it balances with animals. But in the container it could be a problem; so I'm introducing mushrooms which turn the oxygen back into CO2 because they respire the same way that we do. And that way the whole system keeps itself in check," he said. A key design consideration of Grow Frame was for it to collapse to a fraction of the size so as not to take up valuable space when the container was transporting goods. "I thought about an autonomous process that works in an enclosed environment over three weeks and that brings a real benefit to China and that can be as collapsible as possible; so it can be as small as possible," Holhfeld said, adding that he now hopes to turn his proof-of-concept design into a working prototype that could be tested on the open seas. Holhfeld is now looking for funding to help turn the concept into a reality. He estimates it would cost around 9,000 ($12,080 USD) to develop and manufacture the first frames, and a further 6,000 ($8,050 USD) to pay for a shipping trial. But the potential profitability of the reusable system would quickly recoup the initial costs, he said.
[September 13, 2016] HID Global Delivers New Solutions That Secure Internet of Things Applications for Smart Buildings

HID Global, a worldwide leader in secure identity solutions, today announced new solutions that secure Internet of Things (IoT) applications to improve the convenience and effectiveness of monitoring heating and cooling systems, along with a variety of manufacturing and safety equipment. The company's latest HID Trusted Tag Services solution for Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) joins HID Global's trusted identity solutions that solve key challenges faced by facility managers in an IoT and smart building ecosystem. The new solution provides secure "proof of presence" of maintenance and inspection teams to automate and drastically simplify service order management. The HID Trusted Tag Services solution seamlessly integrates with CMMS systems to link physical assets to cloud-based maintenance systems and IoT applications. This automates service calls, with a simple tap of a mobile device, to streamline monitoring and maintenance of fire safety, back-office systems and cafeteria equipment. The offering enables field service teams to easily acquire service history and repair manuals, as well as open service tickets and confirm service call times, duration and status. All service events can be monitored and tracked locally, regionally or globally using a mobile device. The solution can also be used to more effectively manage compliance and inspection workflows for regulated equipment. "HID Global is known for leveraging the power of mobile to protect people, assets and data, and we continue to drive innovation with new HID Trusted Tag Services use cases that meet the expanding requirements of today's facility manager," said Mark Robinton, Director of Business Development and Strategic Innovation with HID Global. "HID Trusted Tag Services is the missing link to take a CMMS to the next level for secure, intuitive and mobile management of high-value facilities equipment and assets across an organization. Optimizing facility operations is now an imperative, and HID Global is ahead of the demand curve with offerings that help make buildings smarter." "Our mission is to transform how facilities management professionals and commercial contractor partners collaborate on cloud-based service automation for fire safety and other equipment, without a swamp of paper, processes or protocols," said Steven Gottfried, Founder of ServiceChannel, an HID Global partner. "HID Global shares our vision and its HID Trusted Tag Services for CMMS will enable us to offer and deliver services that are seamless, easier to manage and empower a more responsive, productive mobile workforce." The HID Trusted Tag Services soution for CMMS extends HID Global's broad set of complementary solutions that secure IoT applications and facilitate smart building environments:



Automate maintenance and inspection processes: For facilities equipment, heating and cooling, sprinklers, fire extinguishers, data centers, IT equipment, video surveillance systems and other building systems with HID Trusted Tag Services for CMMS.

For facilities equipment, heating and cooling, sprinklers, fire extinguishers, data centers, IT equipment, video surveillance systems and other building systems with HID Trusted Tag Services for CMMS. Proving presence at security guard tours : HID Trusted Tag Services securely automates guard patrol rounds with a tap of their mobile phone to trusted tags placed at security checkpoints to log their tour. Key management, security patrol and contractor services can be managed via a single interface to deliver more accurate and actionable information in real time.

: HID Trusted Tag Services securely automates guard patrol rounds with a tap of their mobile phone to trusted tags placed at security checkpoints to log their tour. Key management, security patrol and contractor services can be managed via a single interface to deliver more accurate and actionable information in real time. Using smartphones to open doors, gates, and smart building services: HID Mobile Access is transforming the facility manager and tenant experience by enabling users to open doors with smartphones and activate HVAC, lighting and other building systems. Providing convenient and secure access to data, and cloud-based applications : Building occupants can use ActivID Tap Authentication for Microsoft (News - Alert) to authenticate to applications and services by simply tapping mobile devices with the same smart cards that are used to open doors.

: Building occupants can use ActivID Tap Authentication for Microsoft (News - Alert) to authenticate to applications and services by simply tapping mobile devices with the same smart cards that are used to open doors. Integrating seamlessly with other secure services in the smart building: HID Global's embedded solutions extend the use of trusted identities to automate and increase security for applications including time and attendance, secure print management, elevator access, cashless vending, and other common building occupant applications. HID Global's smart building offering is part of the company's mobility initiative spanning solutions, investments and strategic alliances aimed at creating a more convenient, trusted and secure experience in today's increasingly connected, mobile-first world. The solutions are powered by the company's Seos credential technology, which makes it possible to carry trusted IDs in mobile devices and empower users with new applications and capabilities. Stay Connected with HID Global

Visit our Media Center, read our Industry Blog, subscribe to our RSS Feed and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. About HID Global HID Global is the trusted source for innovative products, services, solutions, and know-how related to the creation, management, and use of secure identities for millions of end-users around the world. The company's served markets include physical and logical access control, including strong authentication and credential management; card printing and personalization; visitor management systems; highly secure government and citizen ID; and identification RFID technologies used in animal ID and industry and logistics applications. The company's primary brands include ActivID, EasyLobby, FARGO, IdenTrust, LaserCard, Lumidigm, Quantum (News - Alert) Secure, and HID. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, HID Global has over 2,700 employees worldwide and operates international offices that support more than 100 countries. HID Global is an ASSA ABLOY Group brand. For more information, visit http://www.hidglobal.com.  HID, the HID logo, HID Mobile Access, HID Trusted Tags, ActivID and Seos are trademarks or registered trademarks of HID Global in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks, service marks, and product or service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005672/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Opening arguments began on Tuesday in the trial of former American International Group Inc chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg over accounting fraud at the insurance giant some 16 years ago.

Greenberg, 91, is facing civil charges from the New York Attorney General's Office of orchestrating a $500 million transaction to inflate the insurer's reserves and a $200 million transaction to hide underwriting losses. Former AIG Chief Financial Officer Howard Smith is also named as a defendant.

The two men "designed, created, negotiated and implemented every major aspect" of the two fraudulent transactions in the case, Assistant Attorney General David Ellenhorn said in his opening statement.

Greenberg, who sat at the defense table in New York state court in Manhattan, is expected to testify during the trial.

David Boies, Greenberg's lawyer, said in his opening that the attorney general's office would not be able to prove any wrongdoing.

"This case is devoid of any admissible evidence that ties Mr. Greenberg to anything improper in either of these transactions," Boies said.

Vincent Sama, who represents Smith, will give his opening on Wednesday.

The case, filed by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2005 and continued by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, did not go to trial for more than a decade, due to legal wrangling that twice made its way to the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court.

Greenberg nearly settled the case in 2008 with a $100 million gift to charity, Boies told Reuters on Monday, but the market crashed that September along with the value of Greenberg's AIG stock holdings.

Damages were dropped from the case in 2013 after Greenberg and Smith entered into a $115 million settlement with AIG shareholders, but Schneiderman wants to claw back millions in bonuses, plus interest, paid to the defendants during the period the alleged fraud took place.

Ellenhorn said on Tuesday the state was seeking $46 million from Greenberg and $6 million from Smith, subtracting around $16 million the two paid in a 2009 settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the improper accounting.

Story continues

The attorney general also is seeking to bar the executives from serving as officers or directors of public companies.

Justice Charles Ramos of New York state court in Manhattan will decide the non-jury case, which may run into early next year with breaks between trial dates.

"My fear is at the end of this trial I will know more about reinsurance than I ever wanted," the judge quipped.

Leaving court on Tuesday, Greenberg told Reuters the case "never should have gotten to this point," but that it would be good "to set the facts out."

The defendant, who is still the head of C.V. Starr, a private insurance company, said he was about to fly to Argentina for a conference.

Greenberg led AIG for four decades before he was ousted in 2005. The following year, AIG paid $1.64 billion to settle federal and state probes into its business practices.

The case is People v Greenberg et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County No. 401720-2005.

(Reporting By Karen Freifeld; Editing by Anthony Lin)
(Adds details from court)

By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Opening arguments began on Tuesday in the trial of former American International Group Inc chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg over accounting fraud at the insurance giant some 16 years ago.

Greenberg, 91, is facing civil charges from the New York Attorney General's Office of orchestrating a $500 million transaction to inflate the insurer's reserves and a $200 million transaction to hide underwriting losses. Former AIG Chief Financial Officer Howard Smith is also named as a defendant.

The two men "designed, created, negotiated and implemented every major aspect" of the two fraudulent transactions in the case, Assistant Attorney General David Ellenhorn said in his opening statement.

Greenberg, who sat at the defense table in New York state court in Manhattan, is expected to testify during the trial.

David Boies, Greenberg's lawyer, said in his opening that the attorney general's office would not be able to prove any wrongdoing.

"This case is devoid of any admissible evidence that ties Mr. Greenberg to anything improper in either of these transactions," Boies said.

Vincent Sama, who represents Smith, will give his opening on Wednesday.

The case, filed by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2005 and continued by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, did not go to trial for more than a decade, due to legal wrangling that twice made its way to the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court.

Greenberg nearly settled the case in 2008 with a $100 million gift to charity, Boies told Reuters on Monday, but the market crashed that September along with the value of Greenberg's AIG stock holdings.

Damages were dropped from the case in 2013 after Greenberg and Smith entered into a $115 million settlement with AIG shareholders, but Schneiderman wants to claw back millions in bonuses, plus interest, paid to the defendants during the period the alleged fraud took place.

Story continues

Ellenhorn said on Tuesday the state was seeking $46 million from Greenberg and $6 million from Smith, subtracting around $16 million the two paid in a 2009 settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the improper accounting.

The attorney general also is seeking to bar the executives from serving as officers or directors of public companies.

Justice Charles Ramos of New York state court in Manhattan will decide the non-jury case, which may run into early next year with breaks between trial dates.

"My fear is at the end of this trial I will know more about reinsurance than I ever wanted," the judge quipped.

Leaving court on Tuesday, Greenberg told Reuters the case "never should have gotten to this point," but that it would be good "to set the facts out."

The defendant, who is still the head of C.V. Starr, a private insurance company, said he was about to fly to Argentina for a conference.

Greenberg led AIG for four decades before he was ousted in 2005. The following year, AIG paid $1.64 billion to settle federal and state probes into its business practices.

The case is People v Greenberg et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County No. 401720-2005.

(Reporting By Karen Freifeld; Editing by Anthony Lin)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - A former California lawmaker was sentenced to six months in prison and six months in home confinement Monday for laundering a bribe accepted by his brother, also a former legislator. Thomas Calderon, 62, pleaded guilty on June 6 to one count of money laundering in the case. He admitted to depositing $30,000 in an account held by his political consulting company, the Calderon Group, that had been offered as a bribe by an undercover agent to his brother in 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday. Tom Calderon was all too aware of the bribe payments to his brother and that his brother had agreed to a quid pro quo with the undercover agents, United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker said in a press release. Tom Calderon facilitated these bribe payments by helping to conceal his brothers corrupt activities from the public. Calderon's attorney, Shepard Kopp, said the longtime political hand from the blue collar Los Angeles suburb of Montebello was deeply remorseful for his actions. "If he had it to do all over again he would obviously make a different decision," Kopp said. "But it's important to view Tom and his life and public service as a whole rather than this one episode. He's been trying to better the lives of the people in his community on the east side of Los Angeles for more than 30 years." He was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder to a year and a day in custody - half of it in federal prison - and 100 hours of community service. Calderon, a Democrat, served in the state assembly from 1998 to 2002, representing Montebello and other suburbs northeast of Los Angeles. His brother, Ronald Calderon, 59, also of Montebello, was a Democratic state senator in 2013, when the FBI raided his office as part of the corruption case. The brothers were indicted in the case the following year. Ron Calderon, who took a leave of absence from the state Senate until his term ended in 2014, pleaded guilty to mail fraud in the case and is set to be sentenced next week. (Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Bernard Orr)
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - ABN Amro said on Tuesday that CEO Gerrit Zalm, the former Dutch finance minister who led the bank in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, will resign next year.

Zalm "has announced that he does not wish to complete his term of office," which was due to end in May 2018, the bank said in a statement, without giving details. The bank said it would release information on Zalm's exact departure date and the search for a replacement as it becomes available.

Zalm was the Netherlands' finance minister for much of the 1990s, and is considered one of the architects of the euro.

He took the top job at ABN Amro at a difficult moment. The bank, once a major international player, had been acquired in 2007 in an 71.9 billion euro (60.61 billion pounds) hostile takeover and was in the process being sliced up between Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and the now defunct Fortis of Belgium.

The Dutch state stepped in to nationalise the rump ABN and Fortis operations in the Netherlands as they hurtled towards an insolvency in October 2008 that would have crippled the country's banking system. Zalm, now 64, was asked to oversee the merger of the two operations.

In November the Dutch state sold a 30 percent stake as ABN Amro returned to the stock market, advertising itself as a stable, well-capitalised bank focused on the Netherlands, albeit with limited growth opportunities.

Many observers thought Zalm would step down shortly after the listing, but through the company's second quarter earnings this year he either deflected questions about his future or indicated he intended to serve out his term.

In July, daily newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad reported that Zalm intended to depart early and that board member Chris Vogelzang would likely be named later this year as his successor. The bank declined to comment.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Louise Heavens)
(Repeats to more subscribers)

AMSTERDAM, Sept 13 (Reuters) - ABN Amro said on Tuesday that CEO Gerrit Zalm, the former Dutch finance minister who led the bank in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, will resign next year.

Zalm "has announced that he does not wish to complete his term of office," which was due to end in May 2018, the bank said in a statement, without giving details. The bank said it would release information on Zalm's exact departure date and the search for a replacement as it becomes available.

Zalm was the Netherlands' finance minister for much of the 1990s, and is considered one of the architects of the euro.

He took the top job at ABN Amro at a difficult moment. The bank, once a major international player, had been acquired in 2007 in an 71.9 billion euro ($80.74 billion) hostile takeover and was in the process being sliced up between Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and the now defunct Fortis of Belgium.

The Dutch state stepped in to nationalise the rump ABN and Fortis operations in the Netherlands as they hurtled toward an insolvency in October 2008 that would have crippled the country's banking system. Zalm, now 64, was asked to oversee the merger of the two operations.

In November the Dutch state sold a 30 percent stake as ABN Amro returned to the stock market, advertising itself as a stable, well-capitalised bank focused on the Netherlands, albeit with limited growth opportunities.

Many observers thought Zalm would step down shortly after the listing, but through the company's second quarter earnings this year he either deflected questions about his future or indicated he intended to serve out his term.

In July, daily newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad reported that Zalm intended to depart early and that board member Chris Vogelzang would likely be named later this year as his successor . The bank declined to comment.

($1 = 0.8905 euros) (Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Louise Heavens)
By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - David Ganek, whose hedge fund shut after federal agents searched its offices five years ago, said on Tuesday that the U.S. government's raid "rerouted" the careers of six dozen people and that he is suing the government to fight for accountability.

"This case is sorely in need of disclosure of facts. How did this happen and why did this happen," Ganek said at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha conference on Tuesday.

Ganek was speaking publicly for the first time since filing a lawsuit that charges the U.S. government relied on materially false information to get the search warrant that led to a raid at hedge fund Level Global, which once managed $4 billion.

Level Global was founded by Ganek and Anthony Chiasson in 2003 and closed in 2011, just months after it and three other firms were searched by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as prosecutors investigated whether hedge fund managers were relying on illegally obtained insider information to make trades.

Both Ganek and Chiasson had once worked for Steven A. Cohen, whose firm SAC Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to insider trading in 2013.

Ganek was never charged with any wrongdoing. Chiasson was exonerated after initially being found guilty of insider trading. But for Ganek the anger runs deep, he said.

"The second the FBI came off the elevator it was an investigation, a trial, and a conviction all in one. 70 peoples' careers were rerouted," Ganek said, adding "It didn't need to be that way - so yes, there's a component that's personal."

When Ganek closed the firm, he said many of his former employees were tainted by having worked for him.

Ganek's legal team includes prominent litigator Barry Scheck, who has spent years working to exonerate wrongly convicted people. Scheck's Innocence Project is not known for working with hedge fund managers.

After being told by friends, investors and some lawyers, that it would be difficult and time consuming to sue Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, other federal prosecutors and some FBI agents, Ganek said he nonetheless decided to move ahead to shed light on what he charges was the government's false information.

"There is a deterrence here that can lead to a lot of good," he said.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Bernard Orr)
[September 13, 2016] Vinimaya Showcases Its New Real-Time eProcurement Suite Aquiire at the Procurement Leaders East Coast Forum

CINCINNATI, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Vinimaya, Inc., a leader in developing industry-leading B2B marketplace and supplier relationship management solutions, is showcasing its new, real-time procure-to-pay (P2P) software solution Aquiire at the Procurement Leaders East Coast Forum on September 13-14, 2016 at the State Room in Boston. A sponsor of the event, Vinimaya representatives will give global procurement leaders a first look at the real-time B2B e-commerce suite. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406667

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406669LOGO

"Aquiire's intelligent eProcurement platform features patented technologies that truly deliver on the promise of real-time universal shopping, supplier management, business intelligence and structured/unstructured data assimilation," said Mike Palackdharry, President and CEO. "Aquiire drives maximum user adoption, enabling compliance, purchasing control and unparalleled savings. The Aquiire brand and website www.Aquiire.com officially launched on September 6, 2016 as the only true real-time eProcurement suite in the industry. Palackdharry said that Aquiire's exclusive, patented methods provide the ability to extract, aggregate and search structured and unstructured data in real time. He said the full P2P solution features an industry-leading user interface (UI) that brings procurement to the use with an elegant and intuitive modern shopping experience.



Palackdharry said one of the key differentiators of the Aquiire solution is its ability to quickly perform a universal search across all supplier catalogslocal catalogs and real-time supplier web content from approved supplier websites. All of the structured and unstructured data is quickly aggregated into an organization's private marketplace for a true consumer-like shopping experience. He said that the solution immediately applies an organization's specific guided-buying rules as well as contract price/product compliance validation. "Real-time data is the only way to deliver true guided-buying functionality," said Palackdharry. "Real-time eliminates user punchouts and enables instant price and product comparisons across any e-commerce site in the world. It drives compliant shopping and saves time, money and mistakes. Real-time matters because the world changes in real time."

Two explainer videos are available on the www.Aquiire.com website that gives an overview of the Aquiire functionality and real-time capabilities. The videos can be accessed by clicking the links below: Aquiire P2P Solution Overview Video

Aquiire Real-Time Universal Shopping Explainer Video About Aquiire

Aquiire from Vinimaya is the only real-time P2P software solution in the industry. Aquiire's intelligent eProcurement platform features patented, real-time universal shopping, data aggregation, analytics and supplier management solutions that far surpass the traditional B2B e-commerce offerings in the industry today. About Vinimaya

Vinimaya is a MBE-certified technology company and a thought leader and innovator of real-time B2B eCommerce solutions for some of the largest organizations in the world. The company is dedicated to a solutions-focused, collaborative approach in working with their global customers. Since 2000, Vinimaya has been developing personalized, cloud-based technology solutions designed to solve their customers' unique business challenges. Vinimaya is one of several portfolio companies of Vora Ventures, which was named the 2015 Technology Company of the Year in Cincinnati. More information at www.Aquiire.com. Twitter: @Aquiire. Contact: Paulie Anthony, Director of Marketing

Email | 513/285.8385 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vinimaya-showcases-its-new-real-time-eprocurement-suite-aquiire-at-the-procurement-leaders-east-coast-forum-300326872.html SOURCE Vinimaya

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Bucharest (AFP) - French President Francois Hollande Tuesday threw his weight behind a Brussels probe into whether former European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso breached EU ethics guidelines by joining US bank Goldman Sachs.

"I fully support this initiative," said Hollande, a day after current Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker announced an investigation into his predecessor.

"When you know that Goldman Sachs was one of the reasons for the difficulties we encountered" during the financial crisis, "that justifies a procedure, the one that Juncker has just started," said Hollande on a trip to Bucharest.

Juncker said on Monday his team would send Barroso a letter asking him to "provide clarification on his new responsibilities and the terms of reference of his contract."

The Commission boss said he would also seek the advice of its non-binding Ethical Committee on the matter.

Hollande has previously attacked Barroso's appointment to a role as non-executive chairman and advisor at the US investment bank as "morally unacceptable".

Goldman Sachs was heavily involved in selling complex financial products, including subprime mortgages that contributed to the world financial crisis in 2008.

Barroso headed the Commission from 2004 to 2014, overseeing membership for several former communist states in Eastern Europe, the response to the global financial crash and the ensuing eurozone debt crisis.
By Anuradha Nagaraj BALANGIR, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - For three years, Srikrushna Rajhansiya worked 14-hour days making bricks. He hardly ate and barely slept. But no amount of labor was enough to earn his freedom. It all started with a loan. "We left our village because we were practically starving," he recalled, sitting outside his hut in Surgul village in India's eastern Odisha state. "We thought hard work would earn us enough to live with dignity." The reality was a form of slavery known as debt bondage, which campaigners say ensnares tens of thousands of laborers each year who are trafficked to brick kilns to feed India's booming construction industry. Disregard for labor laws, impunity for unscrupulous agents and brick kiln owners and few alternatives for workers from poor rural regions all made it difficult to break the cycle of exploitation, rights groups say. Rajhansiya's story is typical. He took a loan of 18,000 rupees ($270) from a local labor agent to arrange for his wife, son and daughter to accompany him to work at a brick kiln in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Their hopes of paying back the debt and earning money to take home soon evaporated. "The first thing they took from us was our phone," he said. "They also had security round the clock at the facility to make sure we didn't escape. We were accompanied even to the market. At night, all the boys were taken to the brick kiln owner's house, he added. "He would bring them back in the morning. How could anyone leave their child behind and escape?" Verbal abuse was constant. Any workers who complained or were too sick to work had chili powder rubbed in their eyes. Labourers had been promised 250 rupees ($4) for every 1,000 bricks they made - but they received just 100 rupees. "We still don't know how the accounts were kept," Rajhansiya said. "Every week we were paid a small amount for buying essentials and groceries. The rest we were promised at the end of our work. They said we would run away if all our wages were given on time." It was only when a new batch of workers from Odisha arrived that escape seemed possible. They had the number of a new hotline for migrant workers started by the labor department, and a contraband phone. Rescue was quick. Police raided the kiln, loaded workers onto a truck and drove them to safety. After receiving a release certificate, they were put on a train back home. But escape didn't come with freedom. "I'm still not free of the 18,000 rupees loan I took," Rajhansiya said. "My son is still working in a brick kiln and my wife may also have to go in a few months. We need to feed ourselves and there seems to be no other option." INHERITED DEBT No official figures exist on the number of people employed to cut, shape and bake clay-fired bricks, mostly by hand, in India's tens of thousands of brick kilns. According to a 2015 paper by the Centre for Science and Environment, at least 10 million people work in kilns, many located on the edge of towns and cities, making them easily accessible for urban builders. According to government data, 282,000 bonded laborers have been freed in 18 states across 172 districts since 1978. In Odisha's Balangir district alone, 2,488 workers have been rescued since 2011. A recent labor ministry statement said there was "no correct estimation of the extent of bondage" but local authorities say they get calls every week on a helpline. "A year or so back, we rescued 1,200 people being illegally taken to work near Khariar road (in Balangir)," Ashish Kumar Singh, a police officer, said. "We sent them back to their villages. Two days later, they were missing again. All of them had been taken by a different agent, through a different route." Many Indians are duped into offering themselves for work as security against a loan they have taken or a debt inherited from a relative. A survey of bonded laborers rescued from brick kilns, rice mills and agriculture in the southern state of Tamil Nadu found 61 percent of respondents had been enslaved for one to 10 years, and 21 percent for up to 20 years. The report by Chennai-based Loyola College and rights group International Justice Mission found that more than two-thirds of respondents had taken loans of at least 5,000 rupees ($75) for a family wedding, hospital expense or just to buy food. Many had inherited debts from parents and generational bondage was cited as the main reason for getting into the cycle of slavery. "By law, when a worker is rescued, all the debts should be written off," said Gladston Xavier, head of the Department of Social Work of Loyola College. "On the ground, both are failing those rescued, forcing many back to bondage." In the survey, 46 percent of rescued workers, most of them unskilled, still had debts and worked as day laborers. Trilochan Bagh is one example. He has vivid memories of the brick kiln he worked in. He remembers the night he carried his sick brother on his shoulder and walked out of the kiln looking for a hospital. "He was sick, had a fever and the owner was only interested in how many bricks we had made," Bagh said. "I had to do something." The 40-year-old and his wife recall every time abuse was hurled at them in the kiln. They remember the long hours they toiled before they were rescued in 2013. But Bagh is preparing to go back again. "This time only I will go, not my family," he said. "It's the second year of drought and I have a daughter to marry. There is no way out. Once you take a loan you cannot just walk away." ($ 1 = 66.64 rupees) (Reporting by Anuradha Nagaraj, Editing by Ros Russell and Timothy Large; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)
Paris (AFP) - Plans to create new migrant centres across France notably to house thousands moved from Calais' notorious Jungle camp were condemned by right-wing critics on Tuesday as "irresponsible" and at risk of sparking a "civil war"

The Socialist-led government believes some 12,000 places are needed by the end of the year, much more than previously thought, according to a leaked interior ministry document.

The figure includes providing long-term shelter to migrants from the Calais camp, which the government has vowed to dismantle, as well as another transit centre due to open in Paris in mid-October.

The document, revealed by Le Figaro newspaper and seen by AFP, involves plans for migrant centres across the country apart from Paris and the Mediterranean island of Corsica, where the foreign population is the highest.

The interior ministry has promised a "consultation" but the document triggered angry reactions including from the far-right National Front, which called it an "irresponsible distribution plan".

The right-wing Les Republicains of former president Nicolas Sarkozy -- hoping to return to the Elysee Palace in elections next year -- denounced it even more strongly, calling it a "state scandal".

Immigration and fears of terrorism are top public issues in France ahead of presidential elections in April and May next year, with the National Front and Sarkozy in particular seeking to present a hardline to voters.

Accusing the Socialist government of planning to create "hundreds of Calais (camps) distributed across the country," a Les Republicains spokesman called the plans a "migration diktat" which "does nothing other than create conditions for national disunity and therefore a civil war."

In a statement the party proposed setting up a reception centre in Britain to deal with migrants' applications, as well as "the restoration of controls on national borders" and "the ending of welfare benefits for foreigners who can't prove they have a job and a home in France".

Story continues

Immigration is a key issue in France as politicians gear up for primary elections on the left and right ahead of next year's presidential polls.

France did not follow EU partner Germany's opening of its borders to the massive influx of migrants into Europe last year but Calais has for several years attracted waves of migrants hoping to cross from the continent to Britain.

Two weeks ago French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve pledged to dismantle the Jungle camp -- which houses an estimated 7,000-9,000 migrants -- as rapidly as possible.
SUDBURY, ON / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Frontier Lithium (FL.V) (the "Company") announced today that it has awarded a Phase II Metallurgical Study on its PAK Lithium Project to XPS Consulting & Testwork Services ("XPS"), a company with laboratories headquartered in Falconbridge (Ontario) Canada. This study will take place over the next three to four months and will support the Company's commitment to advancing pre-feasibility plans in developing the PAK Lithium Project. It is expected that Pre-Feasibility will be completed by the end of March 2017.

The PAK Lithium Project in Northwestern Ontario hosts a lithium and rare-metal bearing deposit. "In March 2016, the results of the NI 43-101 Resource Estimate for the Pakeagama Lake pegmatite exceeded our expectations, confirming analogous geologic features to the high-grade, multi-element, and large tonnage Tanco deposit (see March 4, 2016 press release). We look forward to further analysis with metallurgical testing to increase our knowledge of the deposit and how to optimize future processing and development," commented Trevor R. Walker, President, Frontier Lithium Inc.

"The comprehensive testing planned by XPS will provide validation of the features and characteristics of the PAK lithium deposit and ultimately provide flowsheet development for defining the recovery of lithium and tantalum." XPS Consulting & Testwork Services is a metallurgical technology and testwork business based in Falconbridge (Ontario) Canada and at various operating sites around the world. The company provides quality technical expertise for orebody characterization, operational support, growth initiatives, and project development in the following commodity areas: Industrial Minerals, Nickel, Copper, Zinc, Gold, PGMs, and Rare Earth Elements.

Company Contact Information

Trevor R. Walker, President

2736 Belisle Drive

Val Caron, ON.

P3N 1B3 CANADA

T. +001 705.897.7622

F. +001 705.897.7618

Media Requests

Joseph Mansourian

Manager, Communications & Branding

2736 Belisle Drive

Val Caron, ON.

P3N 1B3 CANADA

T. +001 705.618.0070

F. +001 705.897.7618

About Frontier Lithium Inc.

Frontier's goal is to become a low-cost, fully integrated lithium and tantalum producer through development of the PAK lithium deposit in Ontario, Canada. Frontier maintains a tight share structure with management ownership exceeding 30% of the Company. CAD $4 million of exploration work has been conducted from2013 to 2016 on the deposit which boasts its lithium in a rare, high-purity, low-iron spodumene. The Company has adopted a staged growth approach to exploration and development in order to avoid unnecessary share dilution - a strategic imperative for the Company. The initial target market is the glass-ceramic industry which consumes roughly one-third of global lithium supply and is currently faced with monopolistic conditions, coupled with major lithium producers increasingly directing output toward supporting battery manufacture.

Ceramic/glass customers prefer to source technical-grade (low-iron) spodumene concentrate in excess of 7% lithium oxide (Li2O), if available, to avoid inferior lower grade petalite concentrates, or paying much higher prices for battery grade lithium compounds that require chemical plants costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

The PAK lithium deposit remains open in all directions and Company Management believes the resource can be developed into a world-class operation. Once production of lithium concentrates are established from Frontier, the possible second stage of investment and longer term prospect is to further process some of PAK's output to produce the higher purity lithium compounds required for lithium battery technologies used in the electrification of transportation and electric grid storage applications.

For additional information, please visit the company website at www.frontierlithium.com.

About the PAK Lithium Project

The PAK Lithium Project lies close to the boundary between two geological sub-provinces of the western Superior geologic province in northwestern Ontario and hosts a rare metals pegmatite deposit. The deposit is an LCT (lithium- cesium- tantalum) type pegmatite. These types of pegmatites have been the principal source of hard rock lithium, tantalum, rubidium and cesium ores mined in the world but there are comparatively few commercially-viable deposits.

Frontier is actively exploring its 100% owned project which contains the Pakeagama Lake pegmatite. The PAK deposit is one of the highest grade lithium mineral resources in North America which has a current Measured and Indicated Resource of 7.89 million tonnes of 1.73% Li2O equivalent (eq.) and Inferred Resource of 295,600 tonnes of 1.35% Li2O eq. which has a technical/ceramic grade spodumene with low inherent iron (below 0.1% Fe2O3). The deposit has adjacent zones that are enriched in tantalum and rubidium. Frontier is also evaluating the phased co-production of tantalum and mica-product concentrates once lithium mineral production has been commercialized.

The deposit now has a known 500m strike length with an estimated true width varying from 10m to 125m with a sub-vertical orientation. The resource remains open to depth and along strike to the northwest and southeast.

SOURCE: Frontier Lithium Inc.
London (AFP) - US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden called on President Barack Obama to pardon him, saying in comments published Tuesday it had been morally "necessary" to shine a light on mass surveillance.

The former intelligence contractor has spent three years in exile in Russia after initiating the largest data leaks in US history, fuelling a firestorm over the issue of mass surveillance.

"If not for these disclosures, if not for these revelations, we would be worse off," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper in a video-link interview from Moscow on Monday.

"Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing, but that is perhaps why the pardon power exists -- for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things," he said.

The 33-year-old insisted he had widespread support, saying the "public by and large cares more about these issues far more than I anticipated."

Snowden, whose residency permit in Russia runs out next year, explained he was prepared to spend time in jail in the US, adding he was "willing to make a lot of sacrifices for my country".

US anti-establishment director Oliver Stone called for Obama to pardon Snowden while unveiling his espionage thriller biopic about the whistleblower at the Toronto film festival earlier this month.

Last year, the White House rejected a petition signed by over 150,000 urging a pardon for Snowden, saying he should be "judged by a jury of his peers".
The Galaxy Note 7 has been nothing short of a nightmare for Samsung. Despite a series of initial positive reviews, it didnt take long before we saw an influx of reports regarding Note 7 devices either exploding or catching fire while charging. Now we seemingly cant go a day without hearing about a new crazy incident involving Samsungs phablet.

Over the past few weeks weve seen stories of Note 7 explosions destroying cars, charring homes, and damaging hotel rooms. Most recently, a 6-year old kid had a Galaxy Note 7 explode in his hands mid-use. The kid was rushed to the hospital but is reportedly doing fine now.

DON'T MISS: Apple gave an iPhone 7 Plus to an NFL photographer and the results are stunning

Without question, the Note 7 debacle and Samsungs subsequent recall has done a tremendous amount of damage to Samsungs brand and bottom line. Pictures like the one below, after all, can't be good for business.

galaxy-note-7-fire

While precise figures remain up in the air, some estimates peg the total cost of Samsungs recall in the $1 billion range. And thats to say nothing of the hit Samsung shares have experienced recently.

In light of Samsungs recall and the recent FAA directive imploring Note 7 owners not to turn on their device mid-flight or even tuck it away with their checked-in baggage, Samsung shares have been in something of a free-fall lately.

At the opening of trading today, Samsung shares were down nearly 6.9% from last Friday.

samsung-market-cap

All the more jarring is that Samsungs market cap has endured a whopping $26 billion hit since Samsung first announced its intention to initiate a worldwide recall of the device.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
Sept 13 (Reuters) - Representatives of Nagoya city and Aichi Prefecture have visited the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) office in Tokyo and informed the governing body they intend to resume talks regarding a joint bid to host the 2026 Asian Games. Nagoya's deputy mayor Teruo Shinkai told reporters on Monday that his city would restart "best efforts once again toward a joint bid", Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported. Discussions between officials from the prefecture and their counterparts from its capital Nagoya stalled last week as the prefecture had not yet come up with detailed estimates to help them identify how costs would be split. Aichi's prefectural government has since indicated to Nagoya that total costs are estimated to reach roughly 85 billion yen ($834 million). About 25 billion yen is expected to be covered by sponsorships and other revenue, with the prefecture paying two-thirds of the remainder and Nagoya the rest. The JOC is scheduled to take a decision on Japan's candidate site for the 2026 Asian Games later on Tuesday. The Olympic Council of Asia is expected to select the host location at a meeting scheduled for Sept. 25 in Danang, Vietnam. Japan last hosted the Asian Games in Hiroshima in 1994. The next Games will be held in Indonesia's Jakarta and Palembang from Aug. 18 to Sept. 2, 2018. ($1 = 101.9100 yen) (Reporting by Simon Jennings in Bengaluru; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)
Amber Heard's close friend, iO Tillet Wright, opened up to The Times of London's Sunday Times magazine about living with Heard and Johnny Depp for a year before they got married in 2015 and why the gay rights activist has severed ties with Depp.

Wright, 31, remains one of Heard's "best friends" after her split from Depp, but the same cannot be said for Depp. Wright feels the actor has been unapologetic about his behavior, leading Wright to drift away from him, although there is no ill will between the two.

WATCH: Amber Heard's Friend Who Called 911 Speaks Out on Alleged Abuse

In fact, Wright praised the couple for their generosity.

"They saved my life. One hundred percent," Wright said.

The Suspect host also revealed that Depp once offered financial assistance. Wright politely refused out of concern that it could sour their friendship.

BULLSHIT. I've had enough. I saw the bruises. Many times. And the fat lip. And the cut head.  https://t.co/yIXrvAYuLp  iO Tillett Wright (@iOlovesyou) June 6, 2016

How much evidence does a woman need to present?! She has photos, texts, witnesses, and filed a restraining order.  iO Tillett Wright (@iOlovesyou) June 6, 2016

This culture of victim blaming makes me sick. I'm a witness. I'm here. I'm standing up. I can't take any more of this witch hunt.  iO Tillett Wright (@iOlovesyou) June 6, 2016

Wright was vocal earlier this year about Heard's abuse allegations against Depp, tweeting, "I've had enough. I saw the bruises. Many times. And the fat lip. And the cut head. How much evidence does a woman need to present?! She has photos, texts, witnesses, and filed a restraining order. This culture of victim blaming makes me sick. I'm a witness. I'm here. I'm standing up. I can't take any more of this witch hunt."

Story continues

In speaking with The Times, Wright delivered a more sympathetic assessment.

WATCH: Amber Heard Alleges Johnny Depp Abused Her Throughout Relationship

"It's a tough thing," Wright said. "My attitude about that is the same as the attitude I have about my parents. People are very rarely bad people. People have things that happen to them and people have pain they are trying to get around ... Everyone is trying to dance with their pain and sometimes it's who do you stab in the process? It's what you do about having stabbed them that's the delineation between people you can have in your life and people you can't."

Related Articles
On Sep 13, Zacks Investment Research updated the research report on industrial goods manufacturer General Electric Company GE.



General Electric is actively engaged in massive restructuring initiatives to create a simpler and nimbler firm. From a classic conglomerate with diversified business interests in financial services, media, industrial and technology-based operations, the company is pruning its operating portfolio to focus on core manufacturing businesses with a digital edge.



Recent Divestitures



In end-June, General Electric inked agreements with three separate buyers to divest majority of GE Capitals restaurant franchise financing assets in the U.S. These included assets in the Southwest and Southeast that were sold to First Horizon National Corporation, a Tennessee-based bank with assets of approximately $27 billion. Assets in the Midwest and part of the West were sold to Wintrust Financial Corporation, an Illinois-based bank with approximately $23 billion in assets. GE Capital assets in the East were sold to Sterling National Bank, a $13-billion-asset holding bank headquartered in New York.



In the first week of July, General Electric completed the divesture of its Asset Management business to asset management firm State Street Corporation STT for approximately $485 million. General Electric intends to utilize the proceeds from the transaction for the GE Pension Trust, thereby increasing the trust assets used for paying GE pension plan benefits. (Read More: GE Closes Asset Management Business Sale with State Street).



Last month, General Electric and Hitachi, Ltd. HTHIY entered into a definitive agreement with BWXT Canada Ltd. to divest the GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada Inc. unit for an undisclosed amount. BWXT Canada is a subsidiary of BWX Technologies, Inc. BWXT, a power generation firm headquartered in Lynchburg, VA, which supplies precision manufactured components and services to the commercial nuclear power industry.



ShipXpress Acquisition



GE Transportation, an operating segment of General Electric, recently acquired ShipXpress, a premier provider of cloud-based software solutions, for an undisclosed amount. Founded in Apr 2000, ShipXpress provides cloud-based software solutions that allow transportation, industrial, and commodities businesses to work in harmony with their supply chain partners. ShipXpress provides its services to major North American railroads and Fortune 500 companies in the energy, agriculture, chemicals, and metal space.



The deal is likely to expand General Electrics Transportation portfolio and enrich its human capital as it will gain nearly 200 industry, technical, and software development experts who have been providing their services to ShipXpress. The amalgamation of ShipXpress innovative software products and General Electrics advanced sensing technology will further help enhance the Predix platform of the latter.



Moving Forward



Although General Electric is taking steps to limit its financial exposure by divesting GE Capital assets, it remains susceptible to various market risks. The companys objectives of simplification and productivity improvement pose operational execution risks as well. For a company as large as General Electric, the additional revenues needed for growth are quite large, posing a challenge in developing businesses on such a vast scale.



Nevertheless, we remain encouraged with the healthy growth potential of this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Story continues

Confidential from Zacks

Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



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



STATE ST CORP (STT): Free Stock Analysis Report



GENL ELECTRIC (GE): Free Stock Analysis Report



HITACHI (HTHIY): Free Stock Analysis Report



BWX TECHNOLGS (BWXT): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
[September 13, 2016] Glispa Acquires Avocarrot Programmatic Native Advertising Exchange

BERLIN, SAN FRANCISCO, BEIJING, SAO PAULO, TEL AVIV and SINGAPORE, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Glispa Global Group , the mobile ad tech pioneer, announces the acquisition of Avocarrot, to further bolster its native advertising monetization business for app developers. Based in San Francisco and Athens, Avocarrot is a high-growth native advertising Supply-Side Platform (SSP) leveraging programmatic advertising and Real-Time-Bidding (RTB) technologies to help automate the buying and selling of mobile advertising. For more information about Glispa Global Group, Avocarrot and the acquisition: www.glispa.com Complements Both Glispa's User Acquisition and Monetization Business

The acquisition benefits Glispa's advertisers (demand-partners), as it immediately offers an additional channel for a programmatic marketplace. The combination of assets strongly complements Glispa's native advertising monetization focus (for app developers). Avocarrot will integrate with Glispa's Ampiri Mediation platform to seamlessly monetize app inventory via both programmatic and non-programmatic allocation in a single platform. Avocarrot, combined with Glispa's Ampiri native advertising monetization platform, bring: A leading RTB exchange that allows media buyers, trading desks and Demand Side Partners (DSPs) to buy native ad inventory via programmatic direct, private marketplace and open auctions

More than 50 leading DSPs and leading ad networks together globally, with the widest possible reach to native programmatic demand

An ad server that app developers and publishers can use to launch direct advertising campaigns or cross promotions of their own products

Four Avocarrot technical founders, including Conno Christou , Georgios Makkoulis, Giorgs Eracleous , Panagiotis Papageorgiou as well as 14 additional engineers with a demonstrated expertise in programmatic native advertising in ad tech to join the Ampiri team of engineers and data scientists.



Avocarrot's programmatic exchange will soon integrate with Ampiri with a single user interface, a single SDK, and a combined integration of ad-networks and DSPs, all on the same platform. Integration with the Glispa Audience Platform will provide valuable user insights for profiling for increasing revenue.

"Together Glispa and Avocarrot have a distinct competitive advantage offering massive global scale for truly independent native advertising traffic," said Freddy Friedman, Chief Product Officer of Glispa Global Group. "Most mobile monetization companies focus either on programmatic advertising or on ad mediation and we've now strategically combined both in the most seamless way." "This is a key time in ad tech for a powerful player to cut through the noise in the app economy. Glispa's strong advertising footprint across 187 countries and our leading technology in programmatic native monetization provides tremendous value for our existing and future app partners. We couldn't be more excited to join forces with Glispa," said Avocarrot co-founder Conno Christou. About Avocarrot

Avocarrot is a programmatic SSP and Ad Exchange focused on in-app native advertising. The company is focused on building highly automated self-serve tools which have enabled thousands of publishers to monetize more effectively. Big apps like Reddit is Fun and ZapZap Messenger from big markets like US and Brazil, to smaller indie ones like PeruCholly in Peru use this technology in their core monetization strategy. About Glispa Global Group

Glispa Global Group is a mobile marketing ad tech company empowering clients to activate global audiences and move markets. Providing a full suite of technology-based services, Glispa partners with global advertisers, app developers and publishers, enabling them to reach their user acquisition and monetization goals. Our Glispa Performance Network helps advertisers drive mobile engagement to acquire high quality users, cost-effectively at scale. With our ad mediation platform, Ampiri, app developers gain full transparency and control over their entire mobile app inventory to maximize revenue potential, working with the largest global publishers and app developers. Our recently-launched social influencer network VOLTU connects advertisers with thousands of influencers worldwide in order to drive app installs, brand awareness and lifetime value. Headquartered in Berlin with offices in Beijing, Bangalore, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Singapore and Sao Paulo, Glispa employs a multinational team representing 45 nationalities speaking 32 languages. To get started with Glispa, connect with us: http://www.glispa.com. Press contacts: USA

Nicole DeMeo

[email protected]

+1 415 5332599 Germany

Melissa Bohlsen

[email protected]

+49.30.6098.48374 Southeast Asia

PRecious: Soraya Rosadha

[email protected]

+65-9272 3133 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406935 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/glispa-acquires-avocarrot-programmatic-native-advertising-exchange-300326938.html SOURCE Glispa Global Group

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
George Clooney is pulling back the curtain on the shadowy world of corruption and profiteering fueling Africa's deadliest conflicts.



Clooney, along with fellow actor and activist Don Cheadle, rolled out an investigative report on South Sudan war-crime networks at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Monday.



The report, titled "War Crimes Shouldn't Pay," details the rampant fleecing, exploitation and wholesale bloodbath that implicates South Sudan's president and former vice president, international banks, multinational oil and mineral companies and arms dealers in Africa.



The findings are a result of the investigative efforts of The Sentry. Cofounded by Clooney and Africa humanitarian John Prendergast last summer, The Sentry has tapped former financial forensic investigators to expose top officials in South Sudan connected to mass atrocities. Cheadle, meanwhile, is a founding board member of Not on Our Watch, a global human-rights group that collaborated with The Sentry on the report.



"We have the moral obligation and ability to act," Clooney told the room full of domestic and international journalists assembled for the press conference this morning. He and Cheadle outlined the highlights of the report, including evidence of complicity in looting and destruction of South Sudan on five different continents, and outlining measures that could be employed to end the corruption  all as a precursor to a White House meeting later in the afternoon with President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.





WATCH: George Clooney Gives 1.1 Million Dollar Award For Humanitarian Efforts



Generally solemn but occasionally chuckling at the absurdities of the crimes, Clooney reminded the audience, "You can't shame war criminals  we've learned that over the years. But you can shame banks and people. And we have the moral obligation and ability to act."



Together with several principals from The Sentry, Clooney and Cheadle described evidence of vast wrongdoing and outlined strategies to use their information to counter atrocities.



Cheadle told PEOPLE that his personal involvement with The Sentry "started in Darfur, in Sudan, with the genocide that was happening there. The evidence just led us to this. Hopefully we'll get back to Darfur. We're not finished. This is just the beginning."



When asked which countries are the heaviest supporters, Cheadle told PEOPLE, "It's the difference of who are the countries that are supporting on paper and who are the countries that are actually going to be substantively moving on this issue. We hope that as we speak to President Obama this afternoon, he will actually take an executive order and make this a priority before he's finished with his term and to see some movement here, because the people in South Sudan are suffering daily."



Clooney closed the conference with a call to action to the assembled journalists: "Investigate us. But don't take our word for it. Investigate it yourself. Look at the information with an open mind."
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A German court said on Tuesday it would not open proceedings against executives of German potash and salt miner K+S on charges of water pollution. Prosecutors had in March pressed charges against the chief executive, chairman and 12 other employees of K+S over suspected illegal waste water disposal. The state court in Meiningen said that the charges referred to actions so far in the past that the statute of limitations had passed. It also said it did not believe that sufficient evidence could be gathered to make a case against the defendants. The charges were directed at 14 employees of K+S, including the former and current chief executive, as well as further executive board members, a number of K+S staff, and also two employees and one former employee of the state of Thuringia mining authority, the prosecutors' office said. (Reporting by Maria Sheahan)
Berlin (AFP) - German police Tuesday arrested three men with forged Syrian passports accused of being Islamic State (IS) militants and labelled a possible "sleeper cell" with links to the Paris attackers.

More than 200 police commandos took part in the pre-dawn raids in northern Germany to detain the men, who were suspected of either plotting an attack or awaiting orders to commit one.

The men were identified only as Mahir al-H., 17, Ibrahim M., 18, and Mohamed A., 26, in a statement issued by federal prosecutors.

They left Syria last October and travelled via Turkey and Greece -- a route used by tens of thousands of refugees and migrants -- and arrived in Germany in mid-November.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the three apparently used the same migrant trafficking network as several of the IS gunmen who killed 130 people in Paris in November last year.

"According to what we know so far, the investigation of the (federal criminal office) BKA points to links to the attackers of Paris from November 2015," de Maiziere told a press conference.

"There is every reason to believe that the same trafficking group used by the Paris attackers also brought the three men who were arrested to Germany," he said, adding that their forged travel documents came from "the same workshop".

He said German police had monitored the men for months and tapped their phones, meaning that at no stage was there a risk of an attack.

- 'Awaiting instructions' -

Prosecutors said in their statement that Mahir al-H. had joined IS in its de facto capital of Raqa, Syria by September 2015 and received some weapons and explosives training.

The following month, all three men had pledged to travel to Europe in talks with an IS fighter who was "in charge of missions and attacks" outside of the Syria-Iraq region where the group has its self-proclaimed caliphate.

In Europe, "the three accused were meant to either execute a mission or await further instructions," the prosecution service said in the statement, adding that no evidence of "concrete orders or instructions" had been found.

Story continues

The men had received mobile phones and four-figure cash sums in US dollars, as well as the fake passports, from IS, the statement said.

They were detained at three refugee shelters in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein by more than 200 commandos of the federal police, BKA and police forces of several states.

Police also raided several other asylum seeker shelters, Die Welt daily said.

Warrants for their arrest had been issued by a federal judge on September 7, based in part on intelligence provided by Germany's domestic security agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

In July, Germany suffered two bloody attacks claimed by IS, which were carried out by migrants.

German authorities have urged the public not to confuse migrants and "terrorists," but have acknowledged that more jihadists may have entered the country among the around one million asylum seekers who arrived last year.

De Maiziere also said "it would be wrong to place refugees under general suspicion".

"Security forces have repeatedly received tip-offs of individual terrorists or sympathisers among the refugees ... but most of these have turned out not to be true."
BERLIN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - German police have arrested three Syrian nationals in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein suspected of being sent to Germany by the militant Islamic State group, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Prosecutors suspect the three men, aged between 17 and 26-years old, were dispatched to Germany in Nov. 2015 "either to carry out a mission that they had been informed about or to wait for further instructions". It was unclear where any attack would have taken place.

"Concrete missions or orders have not so far been found in the course of investigations carried out so far," said federal prosecutors in a statement.

Around a million migrants arrived in Germany last year and concerns about their presence here have increased after a recent series of violent attacks, three of which were carried out by asylum seekers. Of those, two were claimed by Islamic State.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Michelle Martin)
* Three held in big police operation in northern Germany

* Minister says same network smuggled militants into Paris

* Islamic State "targeting the entire West" (Updates with interior minister's comments)

By Erik Kirschbaum and Madeline Chambers

BERLIN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Three young Syrian men arrested in Germany on Tuesday were Islamic State members brought into the country by the same network that smuggled militants into France to carry out deadly attacks last November, the German government said.

Federal prosecutors said police special forces arrested the three in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on suspicion of being sent by Islamic State "either to carry out a mission that they had been informed about or to wait for further instructions" for an attack.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said they arrived in late 2015, probably with the help of the same network that funnelled IS militants into Paris to carry out shootings and bombings that killed 130 people on Nov. 13 last year.

"Everything points to the fact that the same smuggler organisation behind the Paris attacks also brought the three men to Germany who were arrested," de Maiziere told a news conference. "Indications are that their travel documents all came from the same workshop in that region."

European governments are on high security alert after a series of militant strikes in France, Belgium and Germany, where three attacks this summer were carried out by asylum-seekers and two were claimed by Islamic State.

Around a million migrants arrived in Germany last year, and concern about their presence has grown since the attacks, raising pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel to cap arrivals at 200,000 refugees per year, as her Bavarian allies are demanding. She refuses to set such a limit.

More than 200 police were involved in the operation to arrest the three men, aged 17 to 26. ARD television said they were held after raids at refugee housing in towns north of Hamburg. German authorities searched the flats of the three suspects but did not reveal what they might have found.

Story continues

BLENDING WITH REFUGEES

De Maiziere noted that two of the Paris attackers last year had registered as refugees. "That suggests that IS was determined to send these kinds of people to blend in with refugees in order to cause uncertainty in Europe and Germany."

He added: "The French connection ... is what makes this case so special. We have to find out if these are individual links or if there is a larger network. It shows IS is not only targeting France or Germany or Italy or Belgium or Britain - but the entire West."

Federal prosecutors said one suspect, Mahir Al-H., joined Islamic State in September 2015. He received weapons and explosives training in Raqqa, the militant group's de facto capital in Syria.

In October, he and the two other suspects, Mohamed A. and Ibrahim M., signed up with an Islamic State official responsible for operations and attacks outside Islamic State territory and travelled to Europe, the prosecutors said.

Islamic State allegedly provide them with passports, more than $1,000 in cash and cell phones with a special communications program. The suspects travelled through Turkey and Greece before arriving in Germany in mid-November 2015, at the height of the migrant crisis.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers and Erik Kirschbaum; Editing by Michelle Martin and Mark Trevelyan)
This girl documented her major hair appointment fail, and weve been there

This girl documented her major hair appointment fail, and weve been there

Every year it seems theres a new way to cut or color or style your hair so that you look #cool and like #youwokeuplikethis but also are definitely a fashion maven up on all the latest trends of what super-glamorous strangers on the internet are doing with their hair so they can look #cool and like #theywokeuplikethat to inspire you to emulate them in this endless circle of perfectly colored, cut, and styled hair. The beauty industry, folks. Its an insidious beast.

Galaxy Hair has been on the table for the past couple of years, going through various iterations but always looking like the sort of hair color that would make us feel like enigmatic fairy princesses who know a lot of the universes biggest secrets. Like, cmon.

#galaxyHair  Something different #color #thisgirl A photo posted by Julie-anne Gionet (@stonercakes420) on Sep 12, 2016 at 11:21am PDT

Joanna Huang, a 30-year-old woman living in Taiwan, looks like she was going for something between an ombre galaxy dye job and the smoky lilac trend. Unfortunately thats not nearly what she got.

According to Buzzfeed, Huang gave her hairdresser pictures of the woman below as a guide

But after a weirdly unnecessary perm, bleaching, and dye, Huang ended up with something veeeeery different.

Huang told Buzzfeed, I didnt think the perm was necessary, Huang said. But I didnt want to say anything because I thought it would turn out fine. Eeeeeeek.

   #   9.5 hr 5400..#### Posted by  on Saturday, September 10, 2016

Story continues

She got them to dye her hair black and make it look much better but GEEZ do we feel her pain. Theres NOTHING worse than going in expecting a magical hair makeover and coming out looking like somebody used your head like a paintbrush and forgot to clean it off. YIKES. The session, Buzzfeed reports, took NINE AND A HALF HOURS AND COST AROUND $170.

Huang, according to Buzzfeed, had no idea her hair saga would go viral, and apologized to her hairdresser for all the uh, negative attention they were getting

I told my hairdresser I complained about it and it got on the news. I apologized to him because I didnt want to hurt his feelings.

giphy

The post This girl documented her major hair appointment fail, and weve been there appeared first on HelloGiggles.
By Nita Bhalla NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Three girls in West Bengal are being treated in hospital after acid was thrown on them, said police on Monday, just days after a court handed down a landmark death sentence verdict to a man found guilty of murdering a nurse in an acid attack. The teenage girls were attacked late on Sunday in Bankura district as they were returning home from tuition classes and were waiting near a bus stand. Deputy Commissioner of Police Satyabrata Bhoi said they were taken by three men in a car where they were attacked and acid thrown on them. The three men have been arrested, he said, adding that the victims were now recovering in hospital. "A Bolero vehicle and three persons have been arrested -- a driver and two other persons -- and cases have been registered against them," Bhoi told Asian News International (ANI). Acid attacks  meant to maim, disfigure or blind  occur in many countries. They are most common in Cambodia, as well as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. Most victims are women, injured and disfigured by jilted partners or relatives. Previously classified under grievous harm, acid attacks became a specific offence in India in 2013 after public pressure forced the government to improve laws to protest women following the fatal gang-rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus in 2012. According to India's home ministry, there were 222 cases reported in 2015 compared to 309 the previous year. Activists say the number is under-reported as many do not report cases for fear the perpetrators will seek revenge. On Thursday, a man in Mumbai was sentenced to death for a fatal acid attack on a nurse at a busy railway station three years ago in what is seen as a legal landmark. Preeti Rathi, who was 23 when she was murdered, had just arrived from Delhi to join the Indian navy as a nurse. Her neighbour Ankur Panwar attacked her after she rejected a marriage proposal. It is the first such sentence for an acid attack in India. While certainty of justice and punishment is crucial, regulating the sale of acid is also essential, say campaigners. "It is shocking that despite the Supreme Court guidelines, acid is so easily available to people like those who did this to these girls," lawyer and women's rights activist Abha Singh told reporters. "The Supreme Court has given very clear guidelines that you cannot easily sell acid over the counter and is it the responsibility of local authorities to do surprise checks to see if acid is being sold illegally." India's top court in 2013 ordered the government to curb the sale of acid to control attacks on women. It made it mandatory for anyone wishing to buy the chemical, which is cheap and used as an everyday household cleaning product, to be over 18 years of age and have an identity card. (Reporting by Nita Bhalla, editing by Ros Russell)
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f20577%2fscreen_shot_2016-09-13_at_1.23.31_pm

You've likely seen plenty of videos showing off that wonderful Swiss creation, raclette, on the internet.

Basically, it's a delicious-looking melty heap of cheese that is poured straight off the wheel. It's usually left for small potatoes, charcuterie or pickles  but this New Zealand food truck called MELT is giving it a modern spin by putting raclette on fries and hot dogs.

Some people might say it's an affront to the traditional dish, but we say whatever! It looks amazing. Deadly, but amazing.

Nothing will stop badass mailman from delivering the mail

Man who fought racism with tea gets plenty of praise, pots of tea in return

Spice Girl Mel B joins James Corden for a gloriously awkward game of live Tinder

Kim Gordon just released her first solo single, and it's a monster
[September 13, 2016] Fitch Affirms Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. at 'A-/F2' on Software Spin-off; Outlook Stable

Fitch Ratings has affirmed the ratings for Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE), including the 'A-/F2' Long- and Short-Term Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) , on HPE's spin-merger of its software businesses (SW). Fitch's actions affect $20.5 billion of total debt, including the undrawn $4 billion revolving credit facility (RCF). The Rating Outlook is Stable. A full list of ratings follows at the end of this release. Fitch believes the SW spinoff further reduces scale and diversification, particularly within the context of HPE's pending spinoff of the Enterprise Services (ES) segment announced May 25, 2016 and HPE's focus on accelerating Technology Solutions (News - Alert) (TS) business amidst a lower growth hardware demand environment. Nonetheless, pro forma for both SW and ES transactions, HPE's scale will remain significant with approximately $28 billion of annual revenue, higher operating EBITDA margins and only modestly lower annual free cash flow (FCF). HPE's SW portfolio consists mainly of disparate on-premise offerings with secular new license growth headwinds but solid maintenance and support recurring revenue and cash flow. Nonetheless, Fitch believes filling product gaps, achieving scale and building a significant as-a-service (aaS) business would require significant investments and likely debt-financed acquisitions adversely impacting HPE's credit profile. HPE will spinoff the Applications Delivery Management, Big Data, Enterprise Security, Information Management & Governance and IT Operations Management businesses and retain assets related to the software-defined and cloud business, including OneView and Helion cloud platform. The spinoffs enable HPE to focus on its strategy of optimizing customers' hybrid cloud environments but Fitch believes the transactions reduce HPE's headroom for operational shortfalls. The company's strategy is underpinned by the TS business, which grew organically in the quarter ended July 31, 2016 for the first time since 2012. HPE is holding share in industry standard servers (ISS), although demand within non-hyperscale markets is muted. HPE's smaller but fast growing all-flash array and software-defined storage (SDS) are providing some offset to the continuation of secular decline for traditional storage solutions. The company's Aruba acquisition continues driving growth in networking, as HPE gains share in campus branch and emerging edge markets. Pro forma for the separations, Fitch expects profitability will remain consistent with growth in higher margin TS and restructuring initiatives offsetting competitive pricing in hardware markets, particularly servers. On Sep. 7, 2016, HPE announced it will spinoff the SW businesses (SpinCo) and subsequently merge SpinCo into U.K. software provider, Micro Focus. The total transaction value is approximately $8.8 billion. HPE shareholders will retain a 50.1% ownership in the new combined company, valued at approximately $6.3 billion, and SpinCo will make a $2.5 billion cash payment in the U.S. to HPE in connection with the spinoff. HPE will incur $700 million of separation costs related to the SW spinoff, the vast majority of which will be incurred in fiscal 2017. HPE expects to complete the transaction by the second half of fiscal 2017, pending customary regulatory approvals. HPE also recently closed the sale of Mphasis for approximately $825 million of pre-tax proceeds and will use the vast majority of proceeds for share repurchases. Fitch also expects HPE will use the majority of proceeds from the SW and Services spinoffs, $2.5 billion and more than $1 billion of cash and debt transfers, respectively, for share repurchases. Fitch expects debt levels will decrease by $1.9 billion in connection with the Services spinoff and core leverage (which excludes debt and profitability related to HP Financial Services) should remain roughly at 0.6x - 0.7x, versus 0.6x for the trailing-12-months (TTM) ended July 31, 2016. KEY RATING DRIVERS Intensified Hardware Exposure: Fitch believes HPE's transactions increase concentration to slower growing and, in certain cases, commoditizing hardware markets. Pro forma for the spinoffs, hardware sales will represent roughly two-thirds of total revenue but less than 25% of operating profit. Fitch expects ISS to remain a mixed demand market with meaningful pricing pressures. Fitch expects secular headwinds for legacy storage products will continue, constraining growth and profit margins. Networking remains a bright spot with secular campus branch and edge growth, although Fitch expects intensifying competition from a variety of players, including networking market leader, Cisco (News - Alert) Systems, Inc. Recurring revenue and FCF: Fitch expects significant recurring revenue and FCF, pro forma for the spinoffs. Maintenance and support sales represent approximately 30% of total revenue and 60% of operating profit, resulting in substantial recurring FCF. Execution on HPE's optimizin customers' hybrid cloud environments will drive a higher mix of TS sales and recurring revenue growth and cash flow.



Significant Shareholder Returns: Fitch expects shareholder returns will remain significant, particularly considering the vast majority of cash and majority of cash flow (a Fitch estimated two-thirds) is offshore and would give rise to tax liabilities upon repatriation. Fitch expects HPE will continue returning at least 100% of pre-dividend FCF to shareholders. The company will fund nearer-term shareholder returns with domestic cash flow, proceeds from spinoffs and other divestitures and some tax efficient repatriation. Over the longer-term, however, Fitch believes HPE will need to borrow to sustain similar shareholder return levels. Conservative Leverage: Fitch expects HPE's core leverage will remain conservative through the intermediate-term. Fitch expects core leverage below 1x through the nearer-term forecast period and that management will curtail shareholder returns to maintain core leverage below 1.5x through the intermediate-term.

Significant Installed Based: Fitch expects HPE's significant installed base will provide the aforementioned maintenance and support streams but also growth opportunities. TS's advisory and consulting practices should enable customers to migrate workloads across on-premise and cloud environments, both public and private, and attach additional HPE hardware and maintenance and support services. TS' revenue will represent roughly 25% of total revenue and was approximately $7.7 billion for fiscal 2015 with $2.5 billion of operating profit and meaningfully higher than corporate-wide 33% operating profit margins. Potential Debt-Financed Acquisitions: Fitch expects ongoing acquisitions to strengthen HPE's hybrid cloud environment strategy. Given Fitch's expectations for the continuation of shareholder returns equal to 100% of pre-dividend FCF and that a Fitch estimated two-thirds of pre-dividend FCF is offshore, Fitch believes acquisitions likely will be debt financed, potentially straining credit protection measures through the subsequent intermediate-term. KEY ASSUMPTIONS Fitch's key assumptions within the rating case for HPE include: --HPE completes the spinoffs of the Services and SW businesses in fiscal 2017; --Low-single digit organic constant currency revenue growth through the intermediate-term; --Operating EBITDA margin expands to the high teens from the spinoffs, restructuring and growth in higher margin TS; --HPE separates $1.9 billion of debt and $3.2 billion of operating leases and pension liabilities in connection with the Services spinoff; --HPE will use $4 billion cash dividends from the spinoffs ($1.5 billion from Services and $2.5 billion from SW) to support domestic liquidity, likely emphasizing share repurchases. RATING SENSITIVITIES The ratings could be downgraded if Fitch expects: --Negative constant currency organic revenue growth, likely from weaker than expected performance in TS or share losses or intensified pricing pressures in HPE's hardware businesses; --HPE will not sustain operating EBITDA margin in the high teens, pressuring FCF and core leverage; or --Shareholder returns intensify, requiring incremental debt to support domestic liquidity and resulting in core leverage above 1.5x. The ratings are unlikely to be upgraded in the absence of Fitch's expectations for: --Sustained positive low single digit or greater organic constant currency revenue growth, driven by clear technology leadership; --Annual FCF will more than double and become less transactional in nature, providing the company with greater visibility and enhanced financial flexibility to fund acquisitions and invest in next generation offerings and --Commitment to maintaining core leverage below 1x. LIQUIDITY Fitch believes HPE's liquidity is strong as of July 31, 2016 and supported by: --$10.1 billion of cash and investments, excluding cash related to HPFS. The vast majority of HPE's cash is located outside the U.S.; --An undrawn $4 billion RCF that fully backstops CP programs in the U.S. and Europe. More than $1.5 billion of annual FCF also supports liquidity. Total debt was $16.1 billion at July 31, 2016 but core debt, which excludes excluding debt associated with FS, was roughly $8 billion. Fitch affirms the following: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. --Long-Term IDR 'A-'; --Short-Term IDR 'F2'; --Commercial Paper (CP) Rating 'F2; --Senior unsecured RCF rating 'A-'; --Senior unsecured debt rating 'A-'. Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert) International Bank PLC --Short-Term IDR 'F2'; --CP at 'F2'. Electronic Data Systems LLC --Long-Term IDR 'A-'; --Senior unsecured debt 'A-'. Date of Relevant Rating Committee: Sept. 7, 2016 Summary of Financial Statement Adjustments - Fitch backs out profitability and debt, representing a 7:1 leverage ratio of finance assets, related to the HPFS to calculate core EBITDA and core debt, ultimately arriving at core leverage. This reflects Fitch's focus on HPE's true operating results that are comparable across its peer group. Additional information is available on www.fitchratings.com. Applicable Criteria Corporate Rating Methodology - Including Short-Term Ratings and Parent and Subsidiary Linkage (pub. 17 Aug 2015) https://www.fitchratings.com/site/re/869362 Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/content/ridf_frame.cfm?pr_id=1011575 Solicitation Status https://www.fitchratings.com/gws/en/disclosure/solicitation?pr_id=1011575 Endorsement Policy https://www.fitchratings.com/jsp/creditdesk/PolicyRegulation.faces?context=2&detail=31 ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON (News - Alert) THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913006219/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
BALTIMORE, MD / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Goldman Small Cap Research, a stock market research firm specializing in the small cap and microcap sectors, announced today that it has released a new research report on Iconic Minerals, Ltd. (OTC: BVTEF, TSX.V: ICM), an exciting and unique play on the fast-growing lithium market.

Iconic Minerals Ltd. is an exploration company focused on acquiring, exploring and developing projects of merit in North America. The Company's main focus is the discovery and development of lithium deposits located primarily in Nevada in areas of historically large discovery potential, which would allow for development and mine production at low cost rates.

Analyst Rob Goldman discusses the catalyst behind the issuance of the research report.

Goldman noted, "We believe that Iconic Minerals is well-positioned to take advantage of the huge demand for lithium, especially in the electric battery business for car manufacturers such as Tesla and others. Thus, industry estimates suggest that lithium production will jump from 202,000 in 2015 to 380,000 in 2020. Iconic owns 100% of a vast, non-depleted basin that is adjacent to a famed lithium producing site in Nevada that has been in production for 50 years. Characteristics are similar for both sites which bode extremely well for the Company's prospects and valuation, especially given a series of milestone events including a staggered drill program with early results slated for release in the near future."

"Interestingly, members of the technical team have had senior roles with major lithium producer Talison which sold for 800 Million to Tianqi. Plus, the recently acquisitive nature of industry leaders seeking to add supply could make Iconic a takeover target as it nears a full production launch. After all, the Iconic approach is low cost exploration and production, and a shorter road to production," remarked Goldman.

About Goldman Small Cap Research: Founded in 2009 by former Piper Jaffray analyst and mutual fund manager Rob Goldman, Goldman Small Cap Research produces sponsored and non-sponsored small cap and microcap stock research reports, articles, daily stock market blogs, and popular investment newsletters. Goldman Small Cap Research is not in any way affiliated with Goldman Sachs & Co.

Story continues

This press release contains excerpts of our most recently published sponsored company research report alert on Iconic Minerals Ltd. which carries a rating and a price target. The information used and statements of fact made have been obtained from sources considered reliable but we neither guarantee nor represent the completeness or accuracy. Goldman Small Cap Research relied solely upon information derived from Iconic Minerals Ltd. ("the Company") authorized press releases or legal disclosures made in its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission http://www.sec.gov.

Separate from the factual content of our report about the Company, we may from time to time include our own opinions about the Company, its business, markets and opportunities. Any opinions we may offer about the Company are solely our own, and are made in reliance upon our rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and are provided solely for the general opinionated discussion of our readers. Our opinions should not be considered to be complete, precise, accurate, or current investment advice. Statements herein may contain forward-looking statements and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties affecting results.

A Goldman Small Cap Research report, update, newsletter, article, trading alert, or press release is not intended as an offering, recommendation, or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell the securities mentioned or discussed is to be used for informational purposes only. Please read all associated full disclosures, disclaimers, and analyst background on our website before investing. Neither Goldman Small Cap Research nor its parent is a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer with FINRA or any other agency. To download this sponsored research report or any of our research, view our disclosures and disclaimers, or for more information, visit www.goldmanresearch.com. Goldman Small Cap Research has been compensated by the Company in the amount of $4000 for a research service and expects to be paid an additional $3000 for future research services.

About Iconic Minerals Ltd.: Iconic Minerals Ltd. (OTC:BVTEF, TSX.V: ICM) is an exploration company focused on acquiring, exploring and developing projects of merit in North America. The Company's main focus is to discover and develop lithium deposits through the exploration of high quality projects; located primarily in Nevada in areas of historically large discovery potential, which would allow for development and mine production at low cost rates. Learn more about BVTEF at www.IconicMineralsLtd.com.

Goldman Small Cap Research

Rob Goldman, Analyst

410-609-7100

rob@goldmanresearch.com

SOURCE: Goldman Small Cap Research
A version of this story on Genevieve Angelson first appeared in the print edition of TheWrap Magazines Fall TV Issue.

I feel like Ive spent my whole life researching this period, Genevieve Angelson said of her new show, Good Girls Revolt.

And what a period. Amazons new series is set during the feminist awakening of the late 1960s and early 70s, when a group of women writers and researchers at Newsweek, including the then-unknown Nora Ephron, filed suit against the publication for sex discrimination.

At the time, the movement was called womens liberation and feminists were sometimes derided as womens libbers.

Also Read: 'Good Girls Revolt' Star Talks Sexual Harassment Strides: 'Now There's a Language for It'

Angelson was born in 1987, long after the events depicted on Good Girls.

But the era of tie-dye and headbands comes naturally to her. I knew every Beatles lyric in fourth grade, she said. Ive seen every movie made in America between 1967 and 1980.

Not yet 30, Angelson has already built an enviable career on stage and screen. A graduate of Wesleyan University and NYU Tisch School of the Arts, she grabbed some early guest spots on The Good Wife and Army Wives.

Also Read: 'Better Things' Review: Pamela Adlon Delivers One of Fall's Best TV Shows

That quickly led to a recurring role on House of Lies and a leading role in Backstrom. On Broadway, she was in Christopher Durangs Tony-winning play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

Her new show is based on The Good Girls Revolt, the 2012 book by Lynn Povich that described how 46 women took on one of the most powerful magazines in America. Angelson plays Patti Robinson, a hippie whos coming to terms with the limits of her newfound freedom.

I never wear a bra, she said of her character. I smoke pot all the time. When the series opens, Patti finds herself indulging nearly every temptation a young woman of the era could find, but as time goes on she finds herself pulling back.

Story continues

Also Read: Nora Ephron's 'Lost in Austen' to Be Finished by 'Portlandia's' Carrie Brownstein

As for Angelson, working on the show has made the pull of nostalgia stronger than ever. I wish I were born in time to be in my 20s in the 70s, she said.

Good Girls Revolt begins streaming Oct. 28 on Amazon.

See more of TheWrap Magazines Fall TV Issue:

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save



Related stories from TheWrap:

Peak TV Debate: Is There Really Too Much TV and Is That a Bad Thing?

138 Fall TV Shows: Every New and Returning Series (Photos)
till faida adblock plus

Adblock Plus, the popular web browser extension that lets users block ads on web sites, made the surprising announcement on Tuesday that it's going to start selling ads itself, with the launch of an ad exchange it is calling the "Acceptable Ads Platform."

But there's already been a stumbling block: Adblock Plus' announcement implied Google and independent ad tech company AppNexus would supplying the ads within the platform, but neither company says they knew anything about it. AppNexus and Google have since gone on to suspend their relationships with the ad tech firm that made the partnership claim.

Why such a shock?

The platform, thanks to a partnership with an ad tech company called ComboTag, is meant to let publishers insert what Adblock Plus deems "acceptable ads," which its ad blocker won't block, via what is known in the ad tech community as an SSP (supply-side platform). Meanwhile, demand-side platforms (DSPs) can plug in to allow advertisers to purchase these whitelisted ads through an automated marketplace called an ad exchange.

The biggest surprise in the announcement was that the demand side of the Acceptable Ads Platform would be supplied by two online advertising powerhouses: Google and the independent ad tech firm AppNexus, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. Google and AppNexus would take a cut of the ads they helped sell via the platform, according to the report.

This would have been a big deal because Adblock Plus parent company Eyeo's business model is controversial, to say the least.

The company charges large entities  including Google  to get their ads whitelisted. That means that as long as their ads meet the Adblock Plus "acceptable ads" standards, their ads will still be served to Adblock Plus users (except those with the most stringent settings). Adblock Plus charges companies a fee of 30% of the additional revenue they earned by having those ads unblocked.

Story continues

People in the ad community have compared this model to everything from "blackmail" to "extortion" to being like a "Mafia-like advertising network."

But it turns out that Google and AppNexus never agreed to any sort of partnership with Adblock Plus.

Both AppNexus and Google's AdX were ComboTag's sole demand partners, but they're not participating in the new platform.

In fact, AppNexus served ComboTag and its associated ad network Shefa Media notice of termination on Tuesday, following the Acceptable Ads Platform announcement which implied its apparent involvement. AppNexus told Business Insider it would not have agreed to work with Adblock Plus because it views the Eyeo business model as extortion.

An AppNexus spokesperson sent Business Insider this statement:

"We informed ComboTag this afternoon that they had no authorization to announce such a partnership, and that we are definitively refusing to make Acceptable Ads Platform available on AppNexus.

"AppNexus does not work with companies like Eyeo; we regard their business practices as fundamentally harmful to the ecosystem. Essentially, Eyeo, via its Adblock product, erects toll booths on a public road and siphons off advertising dollars that should be going directly to publishers. We hold that practice in low regard.

"ComboTag issued today's announcement without our knowledge or authorization. The only AppNexus contact with whom they previewed details of the initiative was a junior support manager who is not authorized to sign off on it. When the story posted today, we promptly informed ComboTag that we would not allow Eyeo on our platform, even through the back door."

Google seems to have been equally surprised by the Acceptable Ads Platform announcement.

When contacted by Business Insider, Google said: "We review the validity and quality of inventory made available on our platform, but have no knowledge of, or involvement in, ComboTag or Eyeos publisher monetization arrangements."

On Wednesday, after this article was initially published, Google's senior VP of ads Sridhar Ramaswamy said the company is ending its business relationship with ComboTag, AdAge reported.

Where does this leave the Acceptable Ads Platform?

An Adblock Plus spokesman insisted on Tuesday evening: "The Acceptable Ads Platform will work with the demand infrastructures of Google AdX and AppNexus. We're looking forward to providing great service to publishers interested in reaching the ad-blocking web on its own terms."

ComboTag CEO Guy Tytunovich sent Business Insider this statement on Wednesday:

"The Acceptable Ads Platform simply works with the demand infrastructures of Google AdX and AppNexus. Nothing's changed here. ComboTag has been working with AppNexus and Google AdX for a long time and it's always been a fruitful relationship.

"We're looking forward to helping publishers monetize their inventories using our robust platform tools, while at the same time protecting ABP users from intrusive ads."

NOW WATCH: New guidelines have led to a big change for uniforms at the Rio Olympics





More From Business Insider


Self-driving cars have gained a lot of prominence in the last few years. It was in 2009 that Alphabets GOOGL Google revealed its autonomous car project. Since then both technology and automobile makers are striving to get a lead in the race for dominance in the self-driving car space.

In the past few years, Google has made decent progress in the space. The company has already completed over 1.8 million miles of autonomous driving testing on community roads. Being the first one to get a permit for on road testing and its various collaborations over the past few years have apparently made Googles technology relatively advanced by now.

But all said and done, it appears that Google is lagging in the market, which is now evolving at a rapid pace.

Whats Putting the Brakes on the Project?

A Bloomberg report yesterday stated that Google has lost its first-mover advantage to other companies pursuing more practical, less-ambitious self-driving car services.

It appears that the companys commitment to roll out the cars only after they are fully automated (that is completely driverless) is creating a lot of restlessness both within and outside Google.

After all, its the results that matter in the end. Other players, who entered the market after Google, have already started rolling out partially automated cars. Earlier this year, a startup initiated a autonomous taxi service in Singapore. Reports indicate that even bigger players like Uber Technologies are set to get autonomous vehicle technology on road very soon.

Google, on the other hand, is still in the heavy testing phase in order to tune its software to respond to all eventualities.

Therefore, despite the edge in terms of technology, Google doesnt have a clear commercialization plan in place, which is raising serious concerns. The company still has to form strategic collaborations or chalk a line of action regarding the mass manufacture of these vehicles. Though it has started a pilot carpooling service recently, its still far behind in collecting sufficient data to get its software right.

Story continues

For the driverless robot cars that Google is dreaming of, apart from perfecting the technology, it will have to overcome other challenges like getting regulatory approvals, which are not easy to come by given the obvious risks and security issues.

And most importantly, competition seems to be intensifying in the space with both tech players like Uber, Lyft, Didi Chuxing, Baidu, Intel, Apple AAPL and automakers like Ford, Tesla, Volkswagen, General Motors GM, Volvo, Fiat Chrysler FCAU going full throttle to get the biggest share of the pie as soon as possible. (Read: Who Will Win the Robot Car Showdown, Automakers or Techies?)

Loss of Veterans Making Things Difficult

As we said before, the slow pace of things at the Google car division is already causing some restlessness internally.

In the last few months, the project has lost a number of veterans and leaders. Last month, Chris Urmson stepped down from the role of chief technical officer. This came as a blow as media reports suggested that it was because of a tiff between Urmson and John Krafcik, who had taken the helm as the CEO of the project a few months ago.

Apart from Urmson, other notable departures were of Sebastian Thrun, Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson. Both Zhu and Ferguson are now working on their own artificial intelligence and robotics initiative per the Bloomberg report while Thrun is setting up his own startup in the education space. Some other ex-senior executives like Anthony Levandowski are even working on their own self-driving technology project named Otto.

These departures have made investors jittery as the car is still far from making it to the markets.

Wrapping Up

It appears that Google now has to form a concrete plan to stay in the race. Meanwhile, it faces stiff competition, uncertainty and regulatory hurdles that come in the way of its lofty ambitions.

Zacks Rank

Currently, Alphabet has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Interested in IPOs? Check out the special edition of Zacks Friday Finish Line below, where Editor Maddy Johnson and Content Writer Ryan McQueeney interview Kathleen Smith of Renaissance Capital about the IPO market in 2016 (see part two here).

Confidential from Zacks

Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



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



FIAT CHRYSLER (FCAU): Free Stock Analysis Report



APPLE INC (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report



GENERAL MOTORS (GM): Free Stock Analysis Report



ALPHABET INC-A (GOOGL): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Brian Elliott

Google wants to seriously step up its Amazon Prime competitor, Express.

The speedy online delivery service plans to spread its coverage from roughly 20 states and regions to the entire country by the end of the year, general manager Brian Elliott tells Business Insider.

To make that possible, the group made the "hard decision" to kill part of its grocery business and stop selling perishables, like fresh fruit and vegetables, a pilot it started this February in parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

"We've been testing a lot of different things, figuring what works, and how it works," Elliott says. "And now we're really, dramatically scaling the business."

Nation-wide coverage and new partnerships

Google launched its Shopping Express delivery service back in 2013, in part to avert Amazon's encroach on its product search territory. More and more, people were beginning their searches for water bottles, flat screen TVs, banana slicers, you name it, on Amazon instead of Google, which threatened the search engine's ads business. Express was a way for Google to reinstate itself as the go-to choice for product searches and to make it easier for people to actually buy the goods they found.

In the three years since, though, it's had some struggles, including having to make tweaks to its delivery model and some executive turnover. The division lost its founding boss, Tom Fallows, to Uber in late 2014 and had several temporary execs until Elliott took over almost exactly a year ago. Now, he says, Express has finally figured out its business strategy to the point where it's ready to start rapidly scaling up.

Google Express

Instead of a one-size-fits-all-regions delivery style, Express will offer a combination of same-day, overnight, and two-day delivery options. Users can either pay a $4.99 minimum delivery fee for each store order, or a yearly $95 membership fee that eliminates the per-store fee. Shoppers can also test the service through a $10-a-month plan.

Story continues

As of now, Express has signed on 50 total merchants, including Target, Walgreens, Petsmart, REI and, as of Tuesday, the home-goods shop Wayfair and 99 Ranch Market, an Asian grocery store.

It's also expanding nationwide service for two partners: Whole Foods and Costco.

People who don't have Costco memberships will be able to shop there, albeit at prices that are a bit higher than what members would get.

Expanding the delivery blanket of those two stores is instrumental to Express's focus on groceries, even though shoppers won't be able to order anything that needs temperature controls.

"We made the hard decision to focus on dry good groceries and having that be national," Elliott says. "For now, we're not gonna sweat the milk, and eggs, and ice cream side of it."

Express

That separates it from Amazon's grocery service, Prime Fresh, as well as other instant delivery startups like Instacart or Postmates, which can manage full, diverse orders.

Not delivering perishables makes delivery much easier, though. Google plans to partner with different third-party delivery services like OnTrac and Dynamex, so you'll be seeing fewer of its Google-branded delivery vans. Getting rid of its own fleet will help Google cut costs as it makes money by taking a small commission of total purchase prices.

"In a year from now, what we want is for this not only to be nationally present, but something that people see as a big part of their every day lives," Elliott says. "We want to go from 50 merchants to hundreds of merchants."

Not an "everything store"

Expresssss3

If you look at Google Express and Amazon's shopping service, Prime, head-to-head, the appeals of the "The Everything Store" are apparent. Even if Express does hit hundreds of stores, Amazon will still have far more products to choose from and an almost-identical yearly fee ($95 for Express vs $99 for Amazon) that will get shoppers a bunch of other perks, like free movies and music.

But Elliott advocates that people who like Google's service come looking for specific goods from specific stores. You don't want just any fleece jacket  you want that one from Target. He see Express as a way to buy from a bunch of retailers easily, in one place, not as a way to buy anything you want.

"We have this range of merchants that people really love, so they don't think about this as 'online shopping,'" Elliott says. "They just think of this as shopping. We want to bring a lot of the stores that people need to shop at on a regular basis into one easy-to-use service that makes it worthwhile."

Meanwhile, retailers hesitant to sell their good on Amazon see Google as more of an ally than a competitor since Express ensures them fast delivery while preserving much of their brand experience.

"You may live 300 or 400 miles from a Whole Foods  or even further if you live in a state where we don't have a store  and this is really an opportunity to bring the store to you," Jeff Jenkins, head of digital strategy at Whole Foods, says. "It really allows us to expand into places where we don't have brick-and-mortar stores."

A future focused on what Google's good at

Since the beginning, Express was meant to make Google's product search ads more useful. But, even three years later, the connection between search ads and Express isn't really there.

Google Express

Elliott, who worked on Google Shopping and its Buy Button before coming to Express, says that now that the infrastructure is in place, that's about to change.

"Because [Express] hasn't had a national presence, it's been hard to think about how to integrate this into other Google products and services," Elliott said. "But you can imagine that we'd want to do it so that when you searched for these products on Google, you'd actually find them in [Express]."

He also wants to find ways to help retailers give a heads up on their own websites that they offer their products through Express.

If Google rolls out a free way to feature Express merchants on product search pages, more retailers will likely want to be included. Though whether people will actually use Express as it spreads its availability through the US remains to be seen. Analysts estimate that Amazon has up to 69 million Prime subscribers. Elliott declined to comment on Express's revenue numbers, users, or its budget (the latter of which Recode reported as $500 million per year in 2014).

"Its a very small initiative and opportunity for Google relative to what they primarily do  selling advertising," says Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser. "I would argue that, in general, Google would benefit from prioritizing its focus on endeavors that directly relate to advertising or otherwise reinforce its position in the space. However, its also entirely unlikely that will happen."

Here's what Google's delivery list looks like now:

Google

NOW WATCH: This incredibly simple trick fixes your iPhone if it's acting slow  and it takes less than 30 seconds





More From Business Insider


By Piya Sinha-Roy TORONTO (Reuters) - While intense dramas and true life stories have dominated this year's Toronto International Film Festival, a vibrant love story inspired by the golden age of Hollywood musicals has found a warm welcome. "La La Land," a musical contemporary tale of star-crossed lovers chasing their dreams in Hollywood and starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, received a standing ovation at its premiere Tuesday night. "It's a great story and they're great engaging characters and the music kind of aids in that," Gosling, who plays a tortured jazz pianist, told Reuters on the red carpet. He added that he didn't think viewers had to like musicals to enjoy the film. Stone, who plays an aspiring actress, said "I learned to tap and ballroom dance and sing live on camera, which was pretty insane." "La La Land" is the second feature film from writer-director Damien Chazelle, 31. His first film "Whiplash," an intense study of a jazz drummer's quest to perfection, won three Oscars. "I love the old Hollywood musicals, as you can see, but I really have a fondness for the French answers to those musicals," Chazelle told the audience and a short question-and-answer session after the screening. "I wanted to do a musical, but really ground it in real life and invest it with stuff that felt messier and real," Chazelle said. "La La Land" has already been drumming up awards buzz. Critics have praised the performances and the intricate, colorful, love letter to a bygone era of movies. The film follows the two leads as their lives converge in poetic chaos while they try to make their respective dreams come true, even as they fall in love. "Every character has to negotiate the balance between dreams and reality," Chazelle said. "These two will always be the perfect lovers to me." (Editing by Alan Crosby)
By David Ljunggren and Nia Williams (Reuters) - Canada's Liberal government on Tuesday expressed confidence it could appoint new panel members to assess TransCanada Corp's Energy East pipeline, even though industry observers say it might be hard to find qualified candidates. A three-person National Energy Board panel charged with assessing the project in the largely French-speaking province of Quebec quit last Friday after it emerged two members had privately met a TransCanada consultant before the hearings formally started. That unexpected move means the federal government now has to appoint a new panel for the board - which serves as the country's energy regulator - before the Quebec hearings can resume. "We'll find them," Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr told reporters. "That's our responsibility, and we'll take it seriously and we'll do it as quickly as we can." One source familiar with the file said Ottawa could have problems, citing a severe shortage of fluent French-speakers who knew enough about energy to be able to deliver a comprehensive and well-informed assessment on the pipeline. Pressed about a lack of bilingual experts, Carr replied: "I'm not concerned about that." NAB spokeswoman Sarah Kiley said by law, panel members must be able to hear evidence in English and French without an interpreter and be free of an apprehension of bias. Kent Fellows, a research associate at the University of Alberta's School of Public Policy, said it could be difficult to identify candidates with necessary expertise who have not been recently employed by the oil industry. "It's a fine line to find people who are familiar with the relevant issues but have not touched anything specific to do with Energy East," he said. The Liberal government has already promised to reform the NEB, which some critics complain is too close to the energy industry. Before the panel resigned last week, the NEB had been due to produce a final report by March 16, 2018. Carr said the hearings schedule "could be changed modestly", depending on whether or not the NEB decided to restart the process. Hearings had already taken place in New Brunswick, but were disrupted in Quebec by protesters. The setback came after the United States blocked TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline last year. Energy East, designed to carry 1.1 million barrels per day from Alberta's oil sands to the Atlantic coast, does not cross international borders and was originally seen as a less contentious project, but has also run into fierce opposition from environmental groups. (Reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Nia Williams in London; Editing by Alan Crosby)
How have you been recently? I asked my paternal grandfather, Yao Guoxiang, during my summer vacation this year.

Very bad, he answered on the other end of the phone. Not a single doctor can cure my humpback and lower back pain. The chronic pain was not due to his 86-year-old joints. Rather, it was a lingering symptom of the beatings hed suffered during Chinas Cultural Revolution.

Fifty years ago, mass violence broke out across the country after Chinese leader Mao Zedong issued a call to arms to the nations youth to root out secret capitalists and class enemies. On August 18, 1966, Mao addressed a crowd of students at Beijings Tiananmen Square, encouraging the use of force against the alleged infiltrators. Revolutionary paranoia swept school campuses across China, and students grouped into militant cliques called the Red Guards. Schools and teachers were among the hardest hit in what later became known as Red August  after the Red Guards, red terror, and the color of blood.

Thus began what many of my generation, born in the 1990s, well after China had launched its meteoric ascent to prosperity and global power, view as the defining catastrophe of a lifetime. My grandparents, all four of them school officials in 1966, were immediately accused of taking the capitalist road, and endured persecution for the next decade. My grandfather Yao suffered the most. Yet he, as with many of his generation, seems strangely content with his lot, showing little bitterness towards his past. Grandpa Yao reads a lot of news online, and sees the internet as a potent tool to express his thoughts. It was only after I read his unpublished memoirs, compiled in a blog he set up himself, that I understood why he seems at peace with an era that left him with physical pain and emotional scars, and began to glimpse the gulf that separates my generation from his.

Grandpa Yao served as the principal of the No. 6 Middle School in Fushun, a coal mining boomtown in northeastern Chinas Liaoning Province. As soon as Red Augusts purges began, Red Guards stripped him of his title and took him into custody. Each day, he had to make three public confessions outside the school gate; he and his fellow prisoners would bend forward 90 degrees, confess, and ask for leniency. A wood board inscribed with his crimes hung around his neck by a razor-thin wire that cut into the back of his neck, leaving thin red scars. A slip of tongue during confessions would warrant a whipping from Red Guards.

Story continues

For Grandpa Yao, the physical abuse was harder to take than humiliation. After Red Guards beat him in a hotel room, he saw stars and barely remained conscious. Later, when he was exiled to the countryside for hard labor, beatings were routine. His body was frequently covered in red and green bruises. Once he was hit so hard with a spade that the handle broke. A Red Guard once even ordered the prisoners to beat each other up. As some prisoners started throwing fists at their former colleagues, my grandfather retorted angrily, Arent you already accusing me of a crime? Isnt beating people a crime added to a crime? The man suddenly found himself tongue tied, so he dropped the demand.

Hard labor was not just physically trying but outright dangerous. Grandpa Yao worked on roofs without any protection, barely escaped a tractor accident, and toiled in a petroleum factory in the dead of winter during the Chinese New Year holiday, a time for celebration and family reunion. If I succumbed, my grandfather concluded, it would have been no big deal, and maybe some would even have framed it as suicide.

Even as he recounts these horrors of the Cultural Revolution on his blog, my grandfather still plays red songs  Communist-era ditties praising Mao  on his computer every day, and writes other entries extolling the ruling Communist Party. At first, I couldnt understand this. Didnt Mao and the party subject him to beatings and humiliation during the Cultural Revolution? Didnt they steal years of his life away by forcing him into hard labor in the countryside? To understand Grandpa Yaos almost conciliatory attitude towards this dark history, I set out to learn more about his life.

What I learned was that the Cultural Revolution was only one in a long series of national tragedies that Grandpa Yao personally experienced. He was born in 1930. The next year, Manchuria fell to the Japanese. Chinas war against the Japanese invasion began in July 1937, two years before Hitler and Stalin divided up Poland. As Japanese forces swept into southern China Grandpa Yao was forced to flee his hometown of Hangzhou with his family, becoming war refugees. They faced hazards almost unheard of in China today. He lost his mother to typhus and younger sister to fatigue, and buried them in unmarked graves. Even my grandfather almost succumbed to exhaustion on multiple occasions. By the time fighting ended in 1945, 15 to 20 million of his countrymen had perished.

But the bloodshed wasnt over. The alliance between Chinese Communists and Nationalists soon fell apart, plunging the country once again into civil war, and Grandpa Yao took sides. His older brother, a prominent underground Communist, cultivated my grandfathers communist ideals. In July 1947, at the height of the conflict, my grandfather went up north to Nationalist-controlled Beijing, where he enrolled in college but was soon expelled for repeatedly publishing anti-Nationalist propaganda and starting his own library with collections of Communist pamphlets. Upheaval continued to occupy my grandfathers late teens until Mao and the Communist Party declared victory on October 1, 1949. It would have been impossible to imagine then that, less than 20 years later, my grandfather would be again made to suffer.

Chinese society today shows hardly any traces of the circumstances that shaped my grandfathers worldview. The China I know is fully transformed from the war, disease, and chaos that characterized Chinas path through Japanese invasion, civil war, and the Cultural Revolution. My parents are among Chinas growing middle class, living in spacious apartments, drinking Starbucks, and shopping online. Many in my generation receive such good education in China that we are able to study in world-class universities abroad. We lead lives my grandparents could scarcely have imagined. They feel not just fortunate to have survived; they are grateful for what China has become for their children and grandchildren.

Its gratitude that I sense in Grandpa Yao when he refuses to pity himself for the abuse he experienced during the Cultural Revolution. But its more than that too. For my grandfathers generation, communist ideals had offered a convincing alternative to the darkness and despair of their earlier lives. Those ideals inspired millions of Chinese like my grandparents to devote themselves to building a brighter future. Those loyal to the Communist Party were initially rewarded, before Maos political campaigns betrayed them. But Grandpa Yao, just like many other loyal party members who suffered under Mao, simply refuses to believe that the cause to which he committed so much turned out to be an illusion. He believes, instead, that individuals  but not Mao  subverted communist ideals for personal power and gain.

Though young Chinese still receive communist indoctrination in school, we have never shared in the miseries of our grandparents childhoods. We can no longer understand exactly why those ideals matter or how they are relevant to the materialistic society that China has become.

Sometimes, though, despite the distance in age and experience that separates us, I see in my grandfather echoes of the same questions about our shared history that trouble me. I still wonder, Grandpa Yao said of those who made his life miserable in the name of Maos revolution, why they picked up the same inhumane tactics as the Japanese and the Nationalists to torture us. I see it as cautionary tale  even ideas we believe in can betray us, if the power to wield them remains unchecked and unlimited. I hope that my generation, as we gradually rise in the ranks of our nations leadership, can remember the lessons of our grandparents.

China Photos/Getty Images
The wisdom of Channel 4s acquisition of the U.K.s most popular show, The Great British Bake Off, which it has poached from the BBC, was questioned Tuesday after it emerged that none of the shows on-screen talent had guaranteed they would stay beyond the present season.

After more than a year of negotiations, the BBC is reported to have offered 15 million ($19.8 million) a year for the show, but its creators, Love Productions, wanted 25 million ($32.9 million)  four times its existing deal. Channel 4 then stepped in with its successful bid, which is for a three-year contract.

On Tuesday, news emerged that the shows goofy but extremely popular hosts, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, will quit the show when it ends its run on the BBC this year. The two judges, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, whom Bake Off has turned into huge stars in Britain, have also not indicated whether they will stay on.

Asked by the Sun newspaper why the show was moving to Channel 4 after six years on the BBC, Berry said, I have no idea, before adding tartly: Anything that happens is nothing to do with my choice.

The chemistry among the hosts and judges of Bake Off has been a key factor in its success. When the show first launched its audiences were modest, around three million, but the latest season, the seventh, kicked off with an average 10.4 million viewers, a whopping 48% of the U.K. total. The shows ratings peaked at 11.2 million, which is more than the 11.1 million who tuned in for the most popular moment of the Rio Olympics.

The importance of a programs hosting team has been underscored this year by the struggles of the BBCs re-booted version of Top Gear, with Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc in the drivers seats. The pair replaced Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, who are fronting a new car show produced by Amazon, but the new Top Gear has seen a sharp decline in the ratings.

Piers Morgan, who co-hosts ITVs Good Morning Britain, tweeted: If C4 hasnt locked in Mary Berry to this #GBBO deal then they just bought a 25m lemon drizzle with no flour, lemon or sugar.

Story continues

Media journalist Steve Hewlett, who hosts the BBCs Media Show, wondered whether the reason ITV had been put off from trying to poach Bake Off from the BBC was because the talent was not attached.

Some industry leaders also attacked Channel 4s opportunistic raid, especially as both the BBC and Channel 4 are government-owned, and Channel 4s mandate is to offer an alternative approach to the other networks and be an innovator.

Michael Grade, a former chairman of both the BBC and ITV and a former chief executive at Channel 4, suggested that purloining Bake Off from the BBC might backfire on Channel 4. The deal might encourage the British government to revive its plan to sell off the network on the grounds that it was no longer fulfilling its obligation to offer distinctive programming.

I think Channel 4 have shot themselves in the footTheyve completely undermined their case against privatization, Grade said.

He added that Channel 4 had been arguing very strongly for the last year or so against privatization, putting up an argument that says its remit is to cater for tastes and interests not catered for on other channels and being different and innovating. But it has just splashed out on a show that really belongs to the BBC.

The Bake Off production companys decision to abandon the BBC comes on the heels of ITVs snatching away of singing competition show The Voice from the BBC. Some observers have asked whether it is right that, after the BBC helps build a show into a success, the shows producers ditch the BBC in favor of another broadcaster.

Lorraine Heggessey, the head of flagship channel BBC One between 2000 and 2005, said it used to be rare for a production company to desert a shows original broadcaster. In my day, there were often tough negotiations over program budgets, but in the end, there was an unwritten rule that you did not walk away and take your show somewhere else, she told the BBCs news show Newsnight.

It sounds like Love Productions were going to go [to a rival broadcaster] anyway. Thats what worries me because the BBC has invested a huge amount of license-fee payers money in growing this show, Heggessey said.

Giedroyc and Perkins echoed this sentiment in their statement Tuesday that they would be leaving Bake Off: The BBC nurtured the show from its infancy and helped give it its distinctive warmth and charm, growing it from an audience of 2 million to nearly 15 [million] at its peak. The co-hosts added: We made no secret of our desire for the show to remain where it wasWere not going with the dough.

Losing U.K. broadcast rights to Channel 4 is a blow for the BBC on top of its loss of The Voice and the troubles besetting Top Gear. But BBCs involvement with Bake Off is not completely over: The pubcasters international sales arm, BBC Worldwide, retains the international format and tape sales rights to the show, excluding North America, for the next 12 years. BBC Worldwide also retains the option to bid for the international distribution of future series of Bake Off.

Rights for the U.S. and Canada are held by Love Productions. CBS produced a U.S. version of the show called The American Baking Competition, which debuted in May 2013, airing in primetime on Wednesdays, with Jeff Foxworthy hosting and 5 million viewers watching. But by July, the show had collapsed like a bad souffle: ratings had failed to rise, the critics made a face, and CBS decided not to ask for a second helping.

A second attempt at making a U.S. version was made last year by ABC. The Great Holiday Baking Show premiered Nov. 30 at 10 p.m. EST, hosted by My Big Fat Greek Weddings Nia Vardalos and her husband, Cougar Town star Ian Gomez, with Berry on board as a judge. It ran for four weeks, averaging 5 million viewers, and returns for a second season in December.

Related stories

7 Things You Should Know About 'The Great British Bake Off'

'The Great British Bake Off': Hosts to Leave Show After Channel 4 Move

BBC Loses Rights to U.K.'s Most Popular Show 'The Great British Bake Off'
[September 13, 2016] Swift Playgrounds Now Available on the App Store

Swift Playgrounds, an innovative new iPad app from Apple (News - Alert) that makes learning to code easy and fun for everyone, is now available on the App Store. With Swift Playgrounds, real coding concepts are brought to life with an interactive interface that allows students and beginners to explore working with Swift (News - Alert), the easy-to-learn programming language from Apple used by professional developers to create world-class apps. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005701/en/ Swift Playgrounds, now available on the App Store, brings real coding concepts to life. (Photo: Business Wire) The Swift Playgrounds app is approachable enough for students with no previous programming experience to begin exploring key coding concepts, but also powerful enough for skilled programmers to experiment and express their creativity using Swift. "Everyone should have the opportunity to learn coding, and we are excited to bring Swift Playgrounds to the next generation of programmers looking for a fun and easy way to explore key coding concepts using real code," said Craig Federighi, Aple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. "More than 100 schools around the world have already committed to adding Swift Playgrounds to their fall curriculum, and we can't wait to see what students create with it."



Swift Playgrounds includes Apple-developed programming lessons that guide students through a series of challenges and puzzles to guide three on-screen characters through an immersive graphical world as they learn core coding concepts, like issuing commands, creating functions, performing loops and using conditional code and variables. Apple will also regularly release new standalone challenges so users can continue learning new skills. Swift Playgrounds also features built-in templates that users can modify and build on to create their own programs with graphics and touch interactions. They can then share their creations with friends using Mail or Messages or even by posting to the Web. And since Swift Playgrounds uses real Swift code, projects can be exported directly to Xcode and ultimately be turned into full-fledged iOS and Mac apps.

Availability Swift Playgrounds is available today on the App Store for free. Swift Playgrounds is compatible with all iPad Air and iPad Pro models and iPad mini 2 and later running iOS 10. For more information including videos, images and demos, visit: www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds. Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone (News - Alert), iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple's four software platforms - iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS - provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iCloud. Apple's 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it. NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit Apple's PR website (www.apple.com/pr), or call Apple's Media Helpline at (408) 974-2042.  2016 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Swift Playgrounds, iPad, App Store, Swift, Xcode, Mac, iPad Air, iPad Pro and iPad mini are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005701/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The hosts of Britains most-watched show, The Great British Bake Off, will leave the cooking competition series when it moves from the BBC to Channel 4 next year.

A joint statement from Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc said: We were very shocked and saddened to learn yesterday evening that Bake Off will be moving from its home.

We made no secret of our desire for the show to remain where it was.Were not going with the dough.

The statement continued: The BBC nurtured the show from its infancy and helped give it its distinctive warmth and charm, growing it from an audience of 2 million to nearly 15 million at its peak.

A spokesperson for the shows creators, Love Production, said: We would like to thank Mel and Sue for bringing their own unique humor to the [competition] tent over the past years and we respect their decision not to be part of the Bake Off team on Channel 4.

All eyes will now turn to the shows judges, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, to see if theyll stay or follow Giedroyc and Perkins out the door.

The 2012 winner of Bake Off, John Whaite, said the show would suffer without Giedroyc, Perkins, Berry and Hollywood on board. It wouldnt be the same  those four have made it the show it is If they jump ship Bake Off has had its day, he told Good Morning Britain.

After more than a year of negotiations, the BBC is reported to have offered 15 million ($19.8 million) a year for the show, but Love Productions wanted 25 million ($32.9 million)  four times its existing deal. Channel 4 then stepped in with a rival bid, which is for a three-year deal, comprising 40 hours of programming a year. Commercial network ITV and streaming platform Netflix are understood to have also submitted bids.

The struggles of BBCs re-booted version of Top Gear, with Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc as hosts replacing Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, has emphasized the importance of on-screen talent.

Related stories

Story continues

BBC Loses Rights to U.K.'s Most Popular Show 'The Great British Bake Off'

Joe Oppenheimer Becomes Acting Head at BBC Films

'Doctor Who': BBC Recreates Exterminated 1966 Daleks Storyline as Animated Episodes
Gwen Stefanis animated series Kuu Kuu Harajuku will premiere on Nickelodeon on Monday, Oct. 3 at 4 p.m., the network announced Tuesday. The 26-episode series, co-created and executive produced by Stefani, follows the kuu kuu adventures of the band HJ5  Love, Angel, Music, Baby and G  through their world of music, fashion and style. Kuu Kuu Harajuku will air at 4 p.m. through Friday, Oct. 7, before switching to its regular timeslot of Saturdays at 8:30 a.m.

Partnering with Nickelodeon on Kuu Kuu Harajuku is a dream come true! Stefani said in a statement. Its been incredible to see the Harajuku Girls and the world they live in come to life. The artwork is so beautiful and the whole series turned out better than I could have ever imagined. I love that this is an animated series for young girls that celebrates creativity, imagination and individuality. I cant wait for everyone to see it!

Kuu Kuu Harajuku follows Love, Angel, Music, Baby and their inspirational leader, G, as they form the super-talented band, HJ5. Thanks to their manager Rudie, angry aliens, NoFun politicians, hungry monster pets, and other obstacles, every gig is interrupted and the girls never get to complete a concert  but G and her friends never give up. The series is inspired by Stefanis fascination with the fashion-forward Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo, Japan, and centers around the Harajuku Girls characters the musician created while writing her first solo album.

The series is co-created and produced by Moody Street Kids (Australia), Vision Animation (Malaysia) and Stefani and commissioned by Network Ten with investment funding from Film Victoria (Australia) and MyCreative Ventures (Malaysia). DHX Media, the worlds leading independent, pure-play kids content company, handles international distribution for Kuu Kuu Harajuku, and licensed the series to Nickelodeon.

Related stories

Nickelodeon Brings Back 'Rocko's Modern Life' for TV Movie

Story continues

First Images of 'Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie' Unveiled

Nickelodeon's 'Loud House' to Feature Married Gay Couple
From Harper's BAZAAR

Photo credit: Courtesy Goop

Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop finally launched its first collection of apparel today. Produced in Italy and created by a team of designers which Paltrow oversees, Goop Label takes the form of capsules released each month which will be available to shop online as soon as they're revealed.

The first installment of the series, called the September Edition, is a four-piece capsule of wardrobe staples-a tweed tie-up jacket and matching culottes, a chambray button-down and a white tote. When all styled together, it's a chic back-to-work look, which isn't far off from Paltrow's vision.

"September, to me, connotes getting back to work, getting back to your life and buckling down," she said in a statement.

Photo credit: Courtesy Goop

The clothing launch comes two years after Goop first announced it would enter the apparel business back in 2014. It's the latest venture the lifestyle blog-turned-brand has branched into, after organic makeup, a pop-up shop and skincare line, among others.

In July, Paltrow caused a stir when she announced she wanted to separate from the brand because she felt she was slowing its growth. But she has since clarified her comment, saying that she simply "wanted to create product that is incredibly high quality and delivered at a great value" that could stand on its own-eventually, away from her name.

"I think there's a huge white space in the market for luxurious ready-to-wear at a direct-to-consumer price," Paltrow said. "It was very important to me to make the clothes in the same way that all of my favorite designer clothing is made, which is in Italy, with beautifully loomed fabrics, incredible tailoring, and incredible attention to detail, but to be able to deliver those pieces at a third of the price."

Below: Goop Label blazer, $695; culotte, $325; chambray, $195; and tote, $285, goop.com.

Photo credit: Courtesy Goop

You Might Also Like
Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Around 100 Haitian cholera victims protested Monday in front of the presidential palace demanding that the government obtain damages from the United Nations, whose peacekeepers are blamed for the epidemic.

"We are here so that (interim president) Jocelerme Privert finally takes the victims' side during the UN General Assembly next week," said Mario Joseph, a lawyer representing several people who contracted the disease.

In mid-August, nearly six years after the epidemic first spread in this impoverished island nation, the United Nations recognized that it had a "moral responsibility" toward the victims and promised material aid.

"The United Nations is finally recognizing it brought cholera here, so it's time for the Haitian authorities to say something," Joseph said.

"But since our country has experienced coups, the authorities say nothing because they want MINUSTAH (the UN mission) to always be there to protect them."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has recommended a six-month renewal of MINUSTAH, which was established in 2004.

Haitians fiercely opposed to the presence of the peacekeepers spoke of an international plot.

"Whenever the time comes to decide on whether to renew the mission, there is more insecurity in the city," said Martine Febert.

The UN peacekeepers "favor this insecurity in order to justify their presence and keep their jobs," said the 23-year-old.

Nearly 10,000 people have died from cholera in Haiti. With more than 500 cases of the disease each week, the country is facing the worst epidemic in the world in recent history.

Cholera, which is transmitted through contaminated drinking water and causes acute diarrhea, is a major challenge in a country with poor sanitary conditions.

Some 72 percent of Haitians have no toilets at home and 42 percent still lack access to drinking water, the UN says.
By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) - Three federal appeals court judges showed skepticism on Tuesday on how a 2014 New Hampshire law banning voters from taking selfies with their ballots on election day does not violate the U.S. right to free speech.

The judges repeatedly asked a New Hampshire official to explain how the law could prevent a replay of scandals that rocked many U.S. states in the late 19th century, when politicians paid for votes, in cash or alcohol.

"It's well known that in the late 1800s, buying votes was a huge problem," Stephen LaBonte, the state's associate attorney general, told a three-judge panel of the First Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston.

"What year is it now?" Judge Sandra Lynch shot back. "In the late 1800s there was a huge problem that obviously didn't involve ballot-selfies, which did not exist at the time."

LaBonte explained the state's position that the growing trend of voters taking pictures with their filled-in ballots and posting them on social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, could lead to voters being paid or coerced to change their votes.

"You have no evidence of that. None," Lynch said.

Opponents of the ban contend that it violates the free-speech protections of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. A New Hampshire voter sued in October 2014 after posting online a photo of his ballot, on which he filled in the name of his dog as a sign of displeasure over his choices in the 2014 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate.

The U.S District Court in New Hampshire agreed, pronouncing the law unconstitutional in August 2015. The state appealed the following month, setting the stage for Tuesday's arguments

Opponents of the measure contend ballot-box selfies are a form of political speech familiar to first-time voters, akin to the photos they post of themselves on vacation, at concerts or with friends.

Judge Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson noted that Rhode Island last month legalized the practice, reasoning that it helps to excite young voters.

Story continues

Attorney Gilles Bissonnette of the American Civil Liberties Union, who spoke on behalf of the plaintiffs, noted that the three plaintiffs who brought the initial lawsuit challenging the law had been investigated for politically motivated posts.

"The three plaintiffs in this case were carrying out a form of political expression," Bissonnette said. "None of them are charged with vote buying."

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Bill Rigby)
By Hyunjoo Jin and Cecile Lefort

SEOUL/SYDNEY (Reuters) - The chairman of Hanjin Group transferred 40 billion won ($36 million) to Hanjin Shipping on Tuesday to help unload cargo stranded on the troubled shipper's vessels, a spokesman said, but regulators warned securing further funds could take "considerable time."

The parent of Hanjin Shipping pledged last week to raise 100 billion won to help rescue cargo in the wake of the collapse of the world's seventh-biggest container shipper, including the 40 billion won from Chairman Cho Yang-ho.

About $9 million pledged by Choi Eun-young, a former chairwoman of Hanjin Shipping, has also come in, the shipper said.

Around $14 billion of cargo has been tied up globally as ports, tugboat operators and cargo handling firms worried about not being paid refused to work for Hanjin, which filed for receivership in a Seoul court early this month.

Goods started to move this week as workers in California unloaded a second Hanjin ship, the Hanjin Boston, at the Port of Los Angeles on Tuesday, industry officials said.

Hanjin Shipping submitted early last week to a South Korean court that it could take an estimated 173 billion won ($154.5 million) to unload all stranded cargo, a Seoul Central District Court judge told Reuters.

Korean Air , the top shareholder of Hanjin Shipping, on Saturday approved a plan to lend the shipper 60 billion won, conditional on Hanjin Shipping providing its stake in Los Angeles' Long Beach Terminal as collateral. That deal requires the approval of other shareholders and creditors of the terminal.

It may take "considerable time" for Korean Air to provide the loans for Hanjin Shipping, South Korea's top financial regulator said, according to a regulatory official. "It is being reviewed whether it is possible to secure the funding" from Korean Air, Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong said at a meeting with South Korea's ruling party.

South Korea has said no government or central bank money would be directly injected into the firms restructuring in the ailing shipping and shipbuilding industries, though it is helping small-to-medium sized businesses hit by the restructuring.

Story continues

RISKS IN AUSTRALIA

In Sydney, the Hanjin California, which docked on Sept. 3, remained held in port following a court order filed by Glencore Singapore Pte Ltd over unpaid fuel bills. Most of the containers on the 182-metre-long vessel have been offloaded, but some destined for other ports were still being held, port authorities said.

Six other Hanjin vessels were heading to Australia and risked being seized by creditors, two sources familiar with the situation said.

Unlike in the United States, Britain, Japan and provisionally Singapore, Hanjin has no protection in Australia against creditors for unpaid bills.

"It's likely someone will put a claim on the assets," said one of the sources, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

A spokesman for Glencore Singapore declined to comment on whether it had or planned to issue a warrant on more Hanjin vessels.

Some 93 vessels, or two-thirds of Hanjin Shipping's fleet, are not operating properly, including vessels seized, barred entry to ports or terminals, denied services or moving slowly, according to Hanjin Shipping data on Monday.

Truckers began moving freight from the Hanjin Greece out of the Long Beach port on Monday following a U.S. bankruptcy court's grant of protection. Both the Greece and the Boston were scheduled to move to docks in Oakland, California, in the coming days, industry officials said.

The Hanjin Gdynia also was headed toward the Port of Long Beach, a port spokesman said on Tuesday.

At China's southern Shenzhen Yantian Port, a customs official, who gave only her surname Li, confirmed local media reports that the Hanjin Rotterdam, carrying 9,300 containers, had been detained.

She told Reuters that the customs bureau would work through the upcoming Chinese holiday to process 3,000 of those containers so agencies can claim their goods.

The Shenzhen Yantian Port declined to comment.

Tina Liu, China country director at shipping consultancy Drewry, said there was a sense of panic among some shippers with cargo aboard Hanjin vessels and those planning to use the firm's ships in the next few months.

Chinese ports could face a logjam if they start to unload Hanjin ships, she said. "It's very likely to cause a constraint. If they're just holding the vessel in the anchorage it's less of a problem, (but) if you unload big containers your yard can face a bottleneck," she said.

Hanjin Shipping on Tuesday offered "a deep apology for causing damage to many interested parties" and said it set up an emergency management committee to deal with the cargo confusion.

($1 = 1,119.9900 won)

(Additional reporting by Cynthia Kim and Joyce Lee in Seoul, and Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Ian Geoghegan and Diane Craft)
One of the biggest public supporters of the Affordable Care Act has reportedly decided that some of his staff should be exempted from the new law.

CNN reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is the only top congressional leader to exempt some of his staff from having to buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

Thats right, even House Majority Leader John Boehner and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who have voted against the healthcare law dozens of times, have told their staff to sign up for insurance plans through the federal exchange.

The news will likely provide another talking point to critics of the healthcare law, commonly known as Obamacare. After all, members of Congress and their staff are not only required to buy insurance through the exchanges, they must buy plans in the gold tier, the second most-expensive option available.

Yahoo News has reached out to the offices of all 100 U.S. senators to see if any other members have exempted committee staff from the federal exchange. So far, the offices of 42 senators have responded to our inquiry, with 39 saying that the senator and their entire staff will switch over to the exchanges in January.

The offices of Ron Wyden, Tim Johnson and Barbara Boxer, all Democrats, said they were exempting some of their staff. Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, has not responded.

A spokesman for Louisiana Republican David Vitter told Yahoo News that the senator has introduced the "Show Your Exemption Act," which would require all members of Congress to publicly list which staff members have been exempted.

We've included a full list of senators who have responded at the bottom of this story.

Conservative pundits were quick to jump on the news Wednesday. Hot Air editor Ed Morrissey wrote, "If Obama cant even convince the man who shoved ObamaCare through the Senate by parliamentary chicanery, though, how can anyone else believe him?

When the Affordable Care Act passed, it included language that stipulated Congressional staff members must purchase healthcare plans from the federal exchange, which is designed specifically for, and limited to, federal government employees and their families. But the law didn't say that the government would continue to provide staffers a tax-free subsidy (of around 70 percent), meaning those employees, most of whom wouldn't qualify for the low-income subsidies, would have to pay for their plan without help from their "employer."

Story continues

However, this summer The Office of Personnel Management, the government's HR department, decided the government would provide staffers with a subsidy roughly equivalent to what they've been receiving. While it's technically true staffers have not been exempted from the law, as some Republicans claimed, staffers have been provided a privilege that is not written into the law.

So, how is Reid explaining why he's not requiring all of his staff to sign up for new plans?

Though the law requires members of Congress and their personal staff to sign up under the federal exchange, CNN reports that committee and leadership staff are not bound by the same requirements.

As Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson told CNN, "We are just following the law."

Still, the decision seems to contradict an earlier statement made by Reid in September, when rumors were circulating that Congress was attempting to exempt itself from Obamacare.

"Let's stop these really juvenile political games  the one dealing with healthcare for senators and House members and our staff, Reid said at the time. We are going to be part of exchanges, that's what the law says and we'll be part of that."



Which senators are exempting some of their staff from the Affordable Care Act, according to a poll conducted by Yahoo News?

Lamar Alexander (R-TN): No

Kelly Ayotte (R-NH): No

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI): No

John Barrasso (R-WY): No

Barbara Boxer (D-CA): Some

Sherrod Brown (D-OH): No

Richard Burr (R-NC): No

Ben Cardin (D-MD): No



Thomas Carper (D-DE): No

Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): No

Thad Cochran (R-MS): No

Susan Collins (R-ME): No

Christopher Coons (D-DE): No

Bob Corker (R-TN): No

John Cornyn (R-TX): No

Ted Cruz (R-TX): No

Richard Durbin (D-IL): No

Diane Feinstein (D-CA): No

Dean Heller (R-NV): No

Mazie Hirono (D-HI): No

John Hoeven (R-ND): No

Johnny Isakson (R-GA): No

Ron Johnson (R-WI): No

Tim Johnson (D-SD): Yes

Patrick Leahy (D-VT): No

Mike Lee (R-UT): No

Joe Manchin (D-WV): No

Robert Menendez (D-NJ): No

Barbara Mikulski (D-MD): No

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): No

Christopher Murphy (D-CT): No

Patty Murray (D-WA): No



Rob Portman (R-OH): No

Jack Reed (D-RI): No

James Risch (R-ID): No

Marco Rubio (R-FL): No

John Thune (R-SD): No

Pat Toomey (R-PA): No

Mark Udall (D-CO): No

David Vitter (R-LA): No

Roger Wicker (R-MS): No

Ron Wyden (D-OR): Some
[September 13, 2016] Thales Cloud Key Management honored at 2016 Golden Bridge Awards

PLANTATION, Fla., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Thales, leader in critical information systems, cyber security and data protection, is the Gold Winner of the Golden Bridge Award for Cloud Authentication Innovations for its bring your own key (BYOK) technology. The Golden Bridge Awards is an annual industry and peers recognition program honoring companies from all over the world that have achieved excellence. Winners were announced during an awards dinner and presentation on September 12, 2016 in San Francisco. Thales leads the industry where cloud security is concerned, providing key management capabilities for the leading cloud infrastructure offerings  AWS and Microsoft Azure  as well as the leading SaaS provider, Salesforce.com. Thales is clearly the company of choice to support our customers' cloud security needs. With Thales hardware security modules (HSMs) and key management on premises, organizations can take control of the lifecycle of the keys they use in the cloud, and revoke or retire those keys as necessary. This BYOK solution gives organizations flexibility in deploying applications in the cloud while retaining control of critical business operations in-house. Cindy Provin, chief strategy officer at Thales e-Security says: "As organizations focus on moving their more sensitive data and applications to the cloud, strong encryption key management is a critical consideration. The ability to manage cryptographic keys in-house and release them to cloud providers only on a 'need to use basis' is becoming an increasingly poerful tool and one that Thales has the proven experience and expertise to deliver. We are excited to have our market leading and innovative cloud security expertise recognized by the Golden Bridge Awards."



For industry insight and views on the latest key management trends check out our blog www.thales-esecurity.com/blogs Follow Thales e-Security on Twitter @Thalesesecurity, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube

About Thales e-Security Thales e-Security + Vormetric have combined to form the leading global data protection and digital trust management company. Together, we enable companies to compete confidently and quickly by securing data at-rest, in-motion, and in-use to effectively deliver secure and compliant solutions with the highest levels of management, speed and trust across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. By deploying our leading solutions and services, targeted attacks are thwarted and sensitive data risk exposure is reduced with the least business disruption and at the lowest life cycle cost. Thales e-Security and Vormetric are part of Thales Group. www.thales-esecurity.com About Thales Thales is a global technology leader for the Aerospace, Transport, Defence and Security markets. With 62,000 employees in 56 countries, Thales reported sales of 14 billion in 2015. With over 22,000 engineers and researchers, Thales has a unique capability to design and deploy equipment, systems and services to meet the most complex security requirements. Its exceptional international footprint allows it to work closely with its customers all over the world. Positioned as a value-added systems integrator, equipment supplier and service provider, Thales is one of Europe's leading players in the security market. Thales solutions secure the four key domains considered vital to modern societies: government, cities, critical infrastructure and cyberspace. Drawing on its strong cryptographic capabilities, Thales is one of the world leaders in cybersecurity products and solutions for critical state and military infrastructures, satellite networks and industrial and financial companies. With a presence throughout the entire security chain, Thales offers a comprehensive range of services and solutions ranging from data protection and trust management, security consulting, intrusion detection and architecture design to system certification, development and through-life management of products and services, and security supervision with Security Operation Centres in France, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150929/271846LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/thales-cloud-key-management-honored-at-2016-golden-bridge-awards-300327186.html SOURCE Thales

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Tangerine Dream, the German electronic group that inspired the music of Stranger Things, have shared their own version of two of the score's tracks, including the show's opening theme.





The members of Survive, the group who composed the music for the overnight cult classic Netflix sci-fi series, have cited Tangerine Dream as a key influence for their work on Stranger Things. With the two covers, Tangerine Dream pay homage to the homage, tinkering with the tracks to showcase their own hypnotic, synth-driven style.



Although Tangerine Dream's founder and longest serving member Edgar Froese died in January 2015, the group continues on a trio with keyboardists Thorsten Quaeschning and Ulrich Schnauss and violinist Hoshiko Yamane. In June, Tangerine Dream performed their first concert together since Froese's death.



In an interview with Rolling Stone, Survive's Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein talked about raiding their local Austin video store, I Luv Video, and stocking up on films featuring Tangerine Dream's scores.

"We get to see all that stuff, and then, like, Sorcerer. There's a Tangerine Dream score for Sorcerer that's great. I've rented that one a few times," Dixon said. "The Keep. I think you can only get The Keep on VHS. They have a huge horror section, so a lot of times I'll just get stuff if it's got a Goblin or a Tangerine Dream score and just see what it sounds like."

Tangerine Dream's "Exit," from the German synth legends' 1981 album of the same title, also featured in the sixth episode of Stranger Things.





Related Content:
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f20550%2fcfdb04beb18f4c2fbdd7ce256e278e70

A heartbreaking photo of an elderly man pushing a popsicle cart triggered a flurry of goodwill after the image was posted to Facebook.

While driving in the Little Village area of Chicago, Joel Cervantes Macias noticed a man struggling to push his cart full of paleta, a type of popsicle. After snapping a photo of the man, Macias says he bought 20 popsicles for $50. He later posted the photo to Facebook and received such a positive response, he knew he had to do something more.

SEE ALSO: Heartbreaking photo of a dazed young boy draws attention to Aleppo

Image: Joel Cervantes Macias/Facebook

"That one picture had so much to say, and people really responded to it," Macias said to DNA Info. "It communicated so many things  poverty, struggle, pride  it's like it spoke more words than any amount of writing could."

Macias explains that the man, 89-year-old Fedencio Sanchez, and his wife recently lost their only daughter. His wife was selling popsicles to help pay the bills, but she fell ill and was unable to work. So Macias and his friend Joe Loera started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to help cover the couple's expenses, but he was not prepared for the generousness of the internet.

In just two days, donations smashed the $3,000 goal, raising a total of $176,690 at the time of writing.

Image: GoFundMe

"The dude just looked like he was suffering," Macias told DNA Info. "I thought, 'This is a guy who aught to be enjoying retirement.'"

Some contributors expressed concern that the money wouldn't end up in Sanchez's hands, so Macias posted a few messages reassuring his followers that the man was in fact real and that the money would go to help his family. On Monday, Macias shared a Facebook Live, alongside numerous media outlets, showing Sanchez standing with his popsicles cart.

During the video, Gustavo Gutierrez, co-owner of Paletas Poncho, tells Macias that Sanchez has been selling their posicles for more than 20 years.

Story continues

"Every summer he always comes back," says Gutierrez. "And he's also really, really hardworking."

On Sunday, Macias wrote on the GoFundMe page that they will leave donations open for a few more days and will disperse the funds later in the week.

Bonus: 100 years of kitten beauty in 60 seconds
Taliya Thomas was 8 months old when her father died in the line of duty, but that hasn't stopped her from talking to him every day.

Taliya's third birthday was no different  and as part of that celebration, she had a photo session with Georgia-based photographer Mary Lee, who has been shooting Taliya for most of her life.

Read: Army Staff Sergeant Charged in Death Of Cop Who Was Killed On Her First Day on the Job

She is just the sweetest, cutest little girl. She just lights up a room, Lee told InsideEdition.com.

Her dad, Franklin County Deputy Sheriff Cruz Thomas was killed in May 2014 when his cruiser crashed in a high-speed chase with a suspect.

On Sunday, the 9/11 anniversary, Taliya donned her fathers uniform shirt and his hat for a photograph.

When her grandmother suggested a prayer for all those killed in the terror attacks, and for officers killed in the line of duty, Taliya fell to her knees and clasped her hands skyward.

And Lee, camera in hand, snapped an image that is both sweet and sorrowful.

Read: Police Officers Support Fallen Comrade's 10-Year-Old son as He Graduates Elementary School

We went to this big farm, Lee explained. There was this yellow butterfly that kept flying around her. She said, Thats my daddy. Hes sending me butterfly kisses from heaven.

Shes a very, very smart girl.

Taliyas paternal grandparents bring her in for photos. Her grandpa, Franklin County Sheriff Stevie Thomas, keeps the flame of his sons memory burning in his granddaughters soul.

She loves the memory of her dad, Lee said. She says, He watches over me every day.

Lee tries to come up with a different theme for each of Taliyas photo sessions. She said she doesnt know what the next one will be, but we will continue to do pictures in memory of her dad, Lee said.

Story continues

Watch: 9-Year-Old Battling Brain Cancer Gets Sworn In As Police Officer

Related Articles:
Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton's recent health episode stirred speculation on what would happen if she dropped out of the race before Election Day.

A former Democratic National Committee chairman told Politico on Monday that the party should start coming up with a contingency plan should Clinton need to exit the race.

"Now is the time for all good political leaders to come to the aid of their party," said Don Fowler, who led the committee from 1995 to 1997. "I think the plan should be developed by 6 oclock this afternoon."

Fowler said "you would be a fool not to prepare" a back-up plan.

So what would happen if Clinton dropped out? The rules on replacing candidates vary from party to party.

The Democratic Party's rules, which are similar to the Republican party's, state that the party chairperson would have to call a special meeting to fill any vacancy on the national ticket, according to AFP. The decision on who should fill the vacancy would be based on a majority vote from those who attend the meeting.

The Republican rules are similar, AFP noted.

If the rules for replacing presidential candidates seem vague, it's by design.

"It gives them the opportunity to make the best decision, rather than tie their hands with some kind of process that would give them a nominee they will not be comfortable with," Jeanne Zaino, a professor of political science at Iona College in New York, told AFP.

Clinton is taking a break from campaigning while she recovers from pneumonia. She was diagnosed with the illness on Friday, and her campaign announced it to the public on Sunday when she had to leave a 9/11 memorial event early because she was feeling "overheated."

Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said she expects to be back on the trail later this week, and Clinton herself tweeted Monday afternoon that she's "anxious to get back out there."

Story continues

But questions about her health have surfaced recently as she's been seen with a bad cough at speaking events.

Fallon, however, said "there is no other undisclosed condition" Clinton suffers from.

NOW WATCH: We spent an afternoon at the Trump Winery in Virginia and it wasn't what we expected at all





More From Business Insider


Throughout the country and in major cities around the world, people gathered Sunday to commemorate the lives of those who died 15 years agoduring the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

After terrorists hijacked four commercial planes and crashed them into the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon outside of Washington D.C., and a field in rural Pennsylvania, nearly 3,000 people perished in what became the worst terror attack on U.S. soil.

Families of the victims, as well as residents of the city, gathered at the 9/11 memorial in New York to pay their respects. On the site where the towers once stood, the names of the thousands of dead were read aloud as bagpipes played. Other memorial events, including church services at St. Patricks Cathedral, took place across the city.

"There is no New Yorker who somehow evaded the pain of that day. We all felt it. We all were affected. Everyone felt it. Everyone suffered, Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the services at St. Patricks Cathedral.

At a ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. President Barack Obama urged unity among U.S. residents and described the nations diversity as its greatest asset. As Americans, we do not give into fear, Obama said, the Washington Post reported. We will preserve our freedoms, a way of life that makes us a beacon to the world.

Story continues

The fourth plane that was hijacked by terrorists never made it to its intended destinationwhich was likely the White House or the Capitolafter passengers staged a rebellion. Instead the plane crashed into an empty field in rural Pennsylvania where all 40 passengers perished. Firefighters, emergency workers and families of the victims of Flight 93 marked the day with a ceremony at the recently created memorial on the site of the crash.

We have a strong bond with our @FDNY colleagues. Our thoughts are with all those affected by 9/11 #NeverForget911 pic.twitter.com/h7s0it43HB London Fire Brigade (@LondonFire) September 11, 2016

Commemorations were not limited to the U.S. alone. 9/11 was an event that reverberated throughout the world, and international cities have marked it accordingly. Ceremonies in Dublin, Glasgow, London and Rome, among others, marked the day while paying tribute to local firefighters and first responders.

Related Articles
they gender neutral

"Every student should do the best they can."

If you're a grammar purist, that sentence may have made you cringe.

Standard English dictates the word "they," a plural pronoun, should never be used to refer to a single person. Since "student" is a singular noun, you'd need a singular pronoun like "he" or "she" to match it.

A high-school English teacher, however, wrote a convincing argument about why he'll no longer mark that usage as incorrect in his students' essays. His decision could reflect a dramatic shift in the English language.

In a column for PBS NewsHour, 38-year teaching veteran Steve Gardiner of Billings, Montana, said that forbidding the singular "they" has outlived its usefulness.

"I have burned up hundreds of red pens, and hours of time, correcting this grammatical usage based on a traditional gender binary of he and she. It's time to move on," Gardiner wrote.

"They" has gained considerable traction recently as a singular pronoun. The Washington Post added "they" to its style guide last year to accommodate "people who identify as neither male nor female." And in January, the American Dialect Society declared "they" its Word of the Year in a vote among linguists, grammarians, and lexicographers.

"It does say something about the way people are exploring gender and sexual identity, and perhaps a greater openness to accepting new ways of expressing that identity through language," Ben Zimmer, chair of the American Dialect Society's new words committee, told Business Insider in January. "It feels like an opening up of the language, allowing for a greater possibility of what these pronouns can refer to."

By accepting the singular "they," Gardiner wrote, we can finally throw away the awkward constructions English speakers have invented to circumvent the issue.

Decades ago, masculine pronouns could be used to refer to someone of either sex, like in the sentence "The writer must address his readers' concerns." In the legendary writing guide "Elements of Style," EB White and William Strunk advised rewording that sentence to "As a writer, you must address your readers' concerns," according to the New Republic's John McWhorter. It's a compromise that sacrifices the conciseness of the original, though.

Story continues

As society became more inclusive, English saw the advent of more workarounds, including the clunky "he/she" and the unpronounceable "s/he." And dozens of gender-neutral pronouns have been proposed over the years  including "heesh," "thon," and "zie," although none of them came close to catching on.

Meanwhile, the history of the singular "they" goes back centuries, as McWhorter pointed out in another piece. Shakespeare used the possessive form in his "Comedy of Errors," first performed in 1594:

"There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend"

As singular "they" creeps into the lexicons of writers and media figures, it's only a matter of time before it becomes fully accepted. Ultimately, Gardiner acknowledges the fight against the singular "they" is futile:

"Having fought this battle with students for more than three decades, I am ready to admit defeat. Every student is going to write what they want. Every broadcaster is going to say what they want. There, I even wrote it myself, and most readers probably did not notice."

NOW WATCH: Here's footage of Brock Turner leaving jail after serving half of his 6-month sentence





More From Business Insider


Washington (AFP) - Hillary Clinton will return to the White House campaign trail Thursday after a few days recovering at home from pneumonia, her spokesman said.

"We will resume campaign travel on Thursday, more details to come," said the Democratic nominee's spokesman Nick Merrill in a statement late Tuesday.

Merrill said Clinton spent the day "catching up on reading briefings, making calls," and watching Barack Obama's rousing speech in Philadelphia, in which the president offered unstinting praise of his former secretary of state.
WASHINGTON  When Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia late last week, she informed a handful of her closest advisers, but pressed on with a busy campaign schedule and did not inform the public that she was sick. I just didnt think it was going to be that big a deal, she said.

Clintons first comments about her health condition came in a CNN interview late Monday, a day after a dizzy spell caught on video forced the Democratic nominee to disclose her illness and cancel a West Coast campaign trip.

The incident reinforced Clintons reputation as a public figure with a predisposition for privacy. While her top campaign aides conceded they were too slow in providing the public with information about Clintons condition, it was unclear how quickly they themselves had been informed by the candidate.

Less than two months from Election Day, Clintons handling of her health incident added to Democrats growing sense of uncertainty about the presidential race. While Democrats said the matter is unlikely to fundamentally alter the presidential race, Democrats worry the race with Trump is too close for comfort.

If you look at the way the last couple months have gone, it feels like the race should be further apart, said Greg Haas, an Ohio-based Democratic strategist and former county party chairman.

Aaron Regunberg, a Democratic state representative from Rhode Island, said he was surprised and concerned that the race is so tight.

I still think that we are likely to win, but I think anyone whos not concerned about a bigoted, KKK-endorsed sociopath being this close right now in the polls is not living in reality, Regunberg said of Trump.

Clinton abruptly left a 9/11 anniversary event Sunday in New York and was seen on video stumbling and being held up by aides. After roughly 90 minutes of silence from her campaign, aides said Clinton left because she was overheated. Several hours later, her doctor acknowledged she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.

Story continues

Clinton spent Monday at her home in Chappaqua, New York, after canceling a fundraising trip in California. It was unclear when she planned to return to the campaign trail.

In a text message to supporters Monday night, Clinton wrote: Like anyone whos ever been home sick from work, Im just anxious to get back out there.

Trump showed surprising restraint regarding Clintons health. He wished her well and did not repeat questions he has previously raised about whether the former secretary of state has the strength and stamina to be president.

He did hammer Clinton for her assertion Friday night that half of his supporters belong in a basket of deplorables and are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. Clinton later said she regretted applying that description to half of Trumps backers, but stuck by her assertion that the GOP nominee has given a platform to hateful views and voices.

Speaking in Maryland Monday, Trump said he was shocked to hear Clinton attack, slander, smear and demean these wonderful, amazing people who are supporting our campaign.

After a staff shake-up in August, Trump has largely abandoned the free-wheeling style of campaigning that energized his supporters but also led to an endless string of controversial comments about women, minorities and others. The Republican nominees newfound ability to stay on script has coincided with tightening in both national polls and surveys in some key swing states.

The last few days feed into a sense of uncertainty, said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist. He said Clintons rough weekend raises the stakes for the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, which will either finish Trump or, if he does well, it will create a race.

Privately, some Republicans say Trump would likely be losing more convincingly to another Democratic nominee. But Clintons unpopularity rivals that of her opponent, and shes been unable to do much to change the minds of Americans who believe she is dishonest and secretive.

To be sure, Clinton continues to have numerous advantages over Trump as the race presses into its final weeks.

Polls show Trump struggling mightily with big swaths of the electorate, including women, blacks, Hispanics and young people. His path to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win in November is also narrow  he likely needs to carry Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina  while Clinton has numerous routes. Clintons campaign is also running a sophisticated voter targeting and turnout operation, led by several people involved in President Barack Obamas winning campaigns, while Trump is banking on the Republican National Committee for his field operations.

Given those built-in advantages and Trumps weaknesses, some Democrats say their biggest fear is complacency  making the tightening of the race not such a bad development.

It really says to me and other supporters of Hillary that we have to be invested, and were going to have to get out and work, said Missouri state Rep. Margo McNeil of suburban St. Louis, who was a Clinton delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

AP writers Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, Lisa Lerer in White Plains, New York, and Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this reporttial
Este sitio utiliza cookies para mejorar la experiencia de usuario. Aceptar Ver mas
Hillary Clinton's doctor diagnosed the presidential candidate with pneumonia on Friday, according to The New York Times.

But while the illness may evoke images of cold weather, experts told Live Science that a late summer case of pneumonia is nothing surprising.

Pneumonia, which is characterized by inflammation in the lungs, can be caused by bacteria, a virus or a combination of both, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist and a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security. Adalja has not treated Clinton. [7 Absolutely Horrible Head Infections]

There is some seasonality to many infectious diseases, Adalja told Live Science. For example, certain viruses which can cause pneumonia are more common in summer than they are in winter, Adalja said. Pneumonia can be caused by a number of other things, including fungal infections, parasites or reactions to certain medications.

With any disease, seasonality represents only one common pattern of infection. That means it is possible for a person to get a certain illness outside of that season, he added.

Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who has not treated Clinton, agreed. Just like there are winter colds and summer colds, caused by different viruses, a person can get pneumonia in the summer or the winter.

Although The New York Times reported that Clinton is currently taking antibiotics for the pneumonia, Horovitz said that he suspected the candidate's pneumonia was caused by a virus, rather than bacteria. Antibiotics would not treat a viral infection, he said.

When people have bacterial pneumonia, they're a lot sicker than people with viral pneumonia, Horovitz told Live Science. Bacterial pneumonia often requires hospitalization and intravenous antibiotics, Horovitz said.

Still, it's not uncommon for a doctor to start a patient on oral antibiotics, especially when the patient has walking pneumonia, Horovitz said, referring to the type of pneumonia that involves not being stuck in bed. Doctors prescribe antibiotics in case a patient does turn out to have a bacterial infection. Although such infections can be confirmed by testing a person's sputum (a mixture of saliva and mucus) for bacteria that could cause pneumonia, it can take several days for the test results to come back, and by then, a person could be quite ill, he said.

Story continues

A chest cold gone a step further

Walking pneumonia is very common, Horovitz said. He noted that in his practice, he sees it all the time.

Because the illness is not serious, doctors don't need to report it to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Horovitz said. When the CDC talks about the nation's pneumonia cases and statistics, they're talking about the more serious cases that require a person to be hospitalized, he said.

"There's no obligation to report walking pneumonia [to the health department] any more than you'd have to report a common cold," Horovitz said. The condition is about as contagious as a cold, he added.

Walking pneumonia is like a "chest cold [that's] gone a step further," Horovitz said.

The treatment for a viral version of pneumonia includes staying hydrated, getting rid of mucus from the throat and lungs (by coughing it up, for example) and getting enough sleep, he said.

Originally published on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
From Cosmopolitan

Of all the emotions I've had watching Hillary Clinton's historic run for the White House - elation, pride, empowerment - the last thing I expected to feel was a deep, unshakable sadness. But as I obsessively followed the Democratic National Convention, the more and more noticeable it was. This feeling peaked in the middle of Hillary Clinton's moving speech, as I sat on the couch eating popcorn with my daughters as if we were watching a summer blockbuster in the theater. "Standing here as my mother's daughter, and my daughter's mother," she said, "I'm so happy this day has come. I'm happy for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between." I quietly started to cry, blowing my nose in my sweatshirt sleeve so as not to give myself away to my kids. As thrilled as I was to share this moment with them, I was also consumed with grief over the absence of my mom, who died in 2007 and was missing out on Hillary's historic run.

When Hillary was giving the commencement speech at Wellesley College in 1969, my mom was in college just 15 minutes away. She and my dad married and settled in Wellesley, and a few years later I was born at the hospital down the road. Though my dad's job eventually took us to San Francisco and New York, we finally landed back in Wellesley when I was 7, just a mile anda half away from Hillary's alma mater. Twenty years later, my mom would die in her bedroom of my childhood home, surrounded by my dad, brother, and me.

Growing up in the '80s I was aware of my mom's feminism long before I knew what the word really meant. The idea that women deserved equality lingered in our home, like the smell of potpourri. It was there in her copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves that sat in our living room shelves, and the way she listened in horror to the Anita Hill hearing on the giant boom box she kept in our kitchen, shaking her head in frustration and she bent over a cutting board, chopping vegetables for dinner.

Story continues

As an 8-year-old, I was obsessed with a bright pink neon hat with dark blue lettering that hung from a hook in our hall closet. She'd let me wear it around the house but hesitated when I asked to wear it to school. "When you're old enough to understand what it means," she said, her tone serious, "you can wear it." It took me a few years to get why a hat with the word "CHOICE" written across the front was such a big deal.

During my final year of elementary school, Barbara Bush came to town to deliver Wellesley College's commencement address (despite protests from students), with Raisa Gorbachev in tow. In her speech she dryly declared, "Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president's spouse. I wish him well!"

My mom was no Bush fan, but she loved that line. It was repeated over and over again on local news, and every time we heard it my mom let out a sassy, celebratory whoop. There was no question in her mind that one day she'd see a woman in the Oval Office, and she took every opportunity to remind my girlfriends and me that any one of us could do the job.

Her feminism also influenced her actions as a parent. She constantly stressed the importance of my own reproductive rights as a teenager, and she drove me to her OBGYN to get birth control when I declared it time. She was a proud liberal with a libertarian streak (she was born and raised in New Hampshire), a regular donor to Planned Parenthood, and a constant cheerleader of my own blossoming activism, whether it was writing a letter to my elementary school about a sexist teacher or interning at the State House during high school. But I was also aware of the challenges she weathered - her decision to be a stay-at-home mom despite loving her career in publishing, her quest to find new passions later in life, her never-ending investment in her kids' education and development, in school and at home.

Then, at 55, she was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, a tumor blocking her stomach and metastases on her liver. All it took was one Google search to understand the grimness of her diagnosis. The cancer zapped her energy and strength - but not her values. Despite being weak from chemo treatments and the general garbage-ness that is cancer, she was still determined to vote. So on a mild day in 2006, during the last November of her life, I drove her to our local middle school and helped her walk inside, just so she could cast her vote for the Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts.

When Hillary embraced Chelsea Clinton at the convention, all I could think of is how it might feel to hug my own my mom just one more time.

I often scroll through a rolodex of things in my brain that I can't believe she's missed out on since she died: President Obama, four Harry Potter movies, iPhones, the never-ending drama between Taylor Swift and Kanye West. But the one that stabs the sadness knife right in my gut is that she believed her whole life that one day a woman would be president, and now it's this close to happening and she's not here to see it. My sadness is greater than just knowing she'd be a Hillary supporter based on her left-leaning values. Hillary is a baby boomer, just like my mom, who found her voice just steps from where my mom lived out her adult life. I can only imagine that watching a woman from her own generation rise to the most powerful office would make her cheer like she did over Barbara Bush's speech, especially with her own daughter and granddaughters watching.

But my sadness goes beyond simply feeling sad that my mom is missing out on being #withher. When Hillary embraced Chelsea Clinton at the convention, all I could think of is how it might feel to hug my own my mom just one more time. Watching a 60-something woman move across America exhibiting empathy, compassion, and the occasional mom wisecrack makes me long desperately for my mom's presence, plain and simple. Were she alive I'd imagine she'd be the same way: a doting grandmother in low heels who, despite being caring and kind, wouldn't take crap from anyone.

After weeping my way through the DNC, I reached out to my secret Hillary Clinton Facebook group (we all have one) to see if other mother-less women were experiencing the same thing. Maybe, I worried, I was just projecting my grief onto Hillary because she, like my mom, was a pro-choice feminist who favored sensible bobs and chic pantsuits. But what I found were other motherless women also experiencing the same melancholy.

"What I find myself wishing is that we could go door to door in Florida, getting out the Latino vote," wrote Sabrina Weiss, a writer living in Brooklyn. "[My mom] was a hardcore '70s feminist who immigrated here when she was seven. She did a lot of getting out the vote work for Obama in Miami, and I wish I hadn't been too busy with work or other meaningless pursuits to fly down and join her for that, even for a day."

Bex Schwartz, who attended the DNC for work, told me, "I watched Hillary accept the nomination and I just started to cry because I wish my mom were here almost all of the time, but I ESPECIALLY wanted her to be there at that moment ... It was such a joyous moment that became such a heartbreaking moment, all at the same time."

And another woman, who described her relationship with her mom as "difficult," said, "I wish my mother were still alive because I think this would be one of the rare things we could not only agree on but celebrate together. What's more, I've come to realize HRC was a role model I very much needed growing up, and in many ways is the type of woman I really felt like would have been a great mother for a kid like me. I've found myself grieving my mother all over again during this election, and also grieving for a mother I will never have."

Knowing I was not alone in my Hillary-related grief comforted me, and I've tried to channel my sadness into action. I donate to her campaign, I phone bank for her on the weekends calling voters in Nevada and California, and I let my daughters stay up way past their bedtime anytime Hillary is speaking on TV.

Just the other day my 5-year-old shouted at me from her booster seat in our car, a pile of Pirate's Booty in her lap. "Mom," she asked, "Are you a feminist?"

"Yeah," I said, turning down the Beyonce blasting from the speakers. "I believe women and men are equal and should have equal rights, so that makes me a feminist.

"Me too." I watched her nod in my rearview mirror. "I'm a feminist."

These are the moments that let me know my mom's legacy is alive even though she is not. As for Hillary's legacy? I'm doing my damnedest to make sure this moment happens for her, for myself, my kids, our country, and most important, for my mom.

Election Day is Nov. 8. If you haven't registered to vote yet, you can do so here.

Follow Kate on Twitter.

You Might Also Like
By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was classic Hillary Clinton, ignoring medical advice and attending a ceremony on a sultry New York City day while battling pneumonia - a decision ex-aides and other associates speculated was rooted in her longstanding desire to prove that women can compete in the male-dominated world of politics. The move backfired on the famously stoic Democratic presidential candidate after she had to leave Sunday's September. 11 remembrance early and was caught on camera buckling from dehydration as she was helped into a van. Clinton, 68, has since acknowledged she went too far in trying to soldier on with a jam-packed schedule. Daniel Scherb, a South Bend, Indiana, cardiologist interviewed by Reuters, who was not privy to Clinton's medical records, said pneumonia can leave a patient "feeling blah for seven to 10 days" under the best of circumstances and, at worst, "people can die from it." Former subordinates who are fiercely loyal to Clinton said there are plenty of instances in which she drove herself remarkably hard as first lady from 1993-2001, as a U.S. senator from 2001-2009 and as U.S. secretary of state from 2009-2013. In her first year at the State Department in 2009, she traveled abroad extensively shortly after undergoing surgery for a broken arm. One retired ambassador said Clinton sees herself as part of a generation of women who had to work extra hard to overcome barriers to female advancement. The ambassador describes this as part of an ethos that you could never be weaker than a man. At the same time, the ambassador blamed Clinton's aides in part for allowing her to put herself into difficult situations. 'A DIFFERENT LENS' At an event in Congo after breaking her arm, Clinton snapped at someone who posed a question she disliked, the ambassador recalled. While the question may have been translated into English incorrectly, the ambassador said Clinton also was clearly exhausted. "It's not necessarily that she is running roughshod over the advice of her staff. Her staff doesn't seem to take very good care of her," the ambassador said. Working to defeat Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, 70, on the rough-and-tumble campaign trail, Clinton has said she is held to a different standard. "Women are seen through a different lens," Clinton told Humans of New York, a group organized around a project to photograph and catalog stories of New Yorkers. "I've learned that I cant be quite so passionate in my presentation," she said, adding, "I love to wave my arms, but apparently thats a little bit scary to people. And I cant yell too much. It comes across as too loud or too shrill or too this or too that," even though those attending her rallies "are loving it." In all her roles, including as President Bill Clinton's healthcare chief and a two-time presidential candidate, Clinton has been known as an almost unstoppable, detail-oriented policy wonk. "Her constant work, internal in meetings or external on Capitol Hill, was virtually incomprehensible," said David Dreyer, a White House deputy communications director during Bill Clinton's first term. Dreyer, who said he had a "front row seat" to the healthcare reform fight that Hillary Clinton spearheaded as first lady, said she is "wired" to always be fully prepared and compelled to public service. 'CAN'T-WIN SITUATION' Three other people, one close to Clinton when she was secretary of state and as a presidential candidate, said efforts to persuade her to temper her travel and appearance schedule can go nowhere because she insists it is expected of her. One, a prominent former official who has advised Clinton on foreign policy issues, said: She pushes herself so hard because shes convinced that only she can do what needs to be done, and thats compounded by a very small inner circle that in some cases doesnt like to contradict or confront her, and as a result just ends up encouraging this compulsion. Matt Bennett, who served as deputy assistant for intergovernmental affairs in Bill Clinton's second presidential term, said Hillary Clinton is "in a can't-win situation here." Noting competing, unsubstantiated attacks from Trump and his supporters about her health versus criticisms that she does not know how to pace herself, "Either she is frail or reckless with her health." Bennett added, "I don't view her as disregarding medical advice" over past blood clots, a fall that caused a concussion and other maladies. "But I do think she's super tough." Bennett, now a vice president at the Third Way think tank, said the increasingly frantic pace of campaigning for the White House has pressed candidates to the limit. As an aide to retired General Wesley Clark while he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, Bennett noted that Clark would constantly remark about the rigors of the campaign. "He was shot multiple times in Vietnam and went through (elite Army) Ranger training and he's saying this is really tough running for president." (Additional reporting by John Walcott and Amanda Becker; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Howard Goller)
It's the latest mystery surrounding Hillary Clintons shocking collapse: Who is the woman by the Democratic presidential candidates side?

Read: 6-Year-Old Photographed with Hillary Clinton as She Left Chelsea's Apartment Says It Was 'Exciting'

Conspiracy theories are running wild on social media, with many suggesting she's a personal nurse.

One person posted: Undercover nurse checking Hillarys pulse?!

#Hillary squeezing her nurse's fingers. Clearly, she's disoriented, wrote another.

There's also speculation the woman is Hillarys personal doctor, Dr. Lisa Bardack.

But the Clinton Campaign is shooting down the rumors, telling Inside Edition the woman is a campaign aide, but they would not identify her by name.

After she collapsed, Hillary asked to be taken to Chelseas apartment to rest, a move that has been seen by some news outlets as a breach of protocol when she was not taken straight to an emergency room.

Clinton's critics say the former first lady and secretary of state was worried that word of her illness would leak.

Read: Hillary Clinton Says She Feels Fine and Didn't Faint at 9/11 Memorial Service: 'I Did Lose My Balance'

The Secret Service denies it violated protocol.

Watch: Did Hillary Clinton Use a Body Double After Falling Ill at 9/11 Memorial Appearance?

Related Articles:
Despite his passing 20 years ago, Tupac Shakur remains at the forefront of hip-hop culture. Two decades after the prolific rapper was gunned down in a yet-to-be-solved murder, the West Coast rep remains a beloved influence among the music industry's biggest names from Justin Bieber to Kendrick Lamar. However, his impact as the revolutionary beyond rap goes even further.

On the 20th anniversary of the poet, actor and activist's untimely passing, Billboard spoke with Kevin Powell, the hip-hop historian, former reality star and author of the new autobiography, The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy's Journey into Manhood Kevin Powell, who has interviewed Tupac on several occasions. Powell waxes poetic about who the lyricist would be today, the legacy he left behind and why he continues to be a vital voice across the globe.

Tupac Shakur's Top 10 Billboard Hits

It's been 20 years since Tupac's passing. What's the most powerful memory that sticks out to you?

Well, I was there in Las Vegas [when he died]. I flew out there on behalf of Rolling Stone to document his being shot for the second time. A few of us actually thought that he was going to make it. In fact, I remember having a conversation with Kidada Jones, who was dating 'Pac at the time -- she's one of Quincy Jones' daughters -- and we had hope. I remember when he was shot the first time and miraculously survived so 'Pac had taken on this mythical feel about him. The feeling was that he was going to make it again. I was in my hotel room in Vegas, watching Denzel Washington playing Malcolm X in the Spike Lee movie and I got a call from my friend, [reporter] Allison Samuels. As Denzel Washington as Malcolm X was going into The Audubon Ballroom, she said, "Kev, we have to go to the hospital. Tupac just died." That blew my mind. It blew my mind to be at the hospital, seeing cars driving by, blasting Tupac's music. It was almost like a funeral going on with his music everywhere. I'd never experienced nothing like that. For the first time in my life, it really hit me, the way my mother felt when Marvin Gaye was killed, how people felt when John Lennon of The Beatles died, when Bob Marley died, when Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison died. For this figure, from your own generation, [to die], it was deep. I have not been to Las Vegas since that day. I have not been back. I wrote about him and interviewed him many times and I followed his life through the years. I was a journalist and wasn't trying to cross lines professionally but you develop a connection to someone when you spend that much time together and he trusted me with telling his story so it was traumatic.

Story continues

Six months later, Biggie's dead. There was a lot going on with the so-called East Coast/West Coast [beef]. It affected a lot of us and it still affects a lot of us. But it's almost like he didn't die because here we are, 20 years later, talking about him. He's bigger than ever. He's one of the most significant [artists], not just to American pop music or hip-hop stars, we're talking globally. I've been to Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia, to places I never could imagine and I'd be having conversations the last 20 years about Tupac Shakur.

Why do you think Tupac has global appeal?

'Pac was completely honest. He was imperfect and had a lot of contradictions like a lot of us, but he never tried to hide who he was. What you saw was what you got and that was refreshing. When he was grappling with something, he said, "I'm grappling with something." If he had an opinion, he spoke freely and honestly. You don't get a lot of people who talk like that. That attracted him to people. 'Pac was able to reach people who were intellectuals, who were scholars, artsy, Bohemian, but he also represented the hardcore heads from the community, the working class, the poor people -- the same poor African American, Latinos, and West Indians who created this culture so they related to him. But also, you see white and Asian sisters and brothers who connected with him because of that realness and vulnerability. That made him accessible to a lot of different types of people.

In your 1995 jailhouse interview with him, 'Pac said he would change the world in the next 23 years. How do you think he's done that?

I think there's a lot of ways. To me, there's no Kendrick Lamar. There's no J. Cole. There's no Lupe Fiasco. There's no Chance the Rapper [without Tupac]. There's a number of artists he's influenced through the years with the work he's left behind, what he's created. He's influenced and foreshadowed a lot of stuff that's happened since then, like the Black Lives Matter movement. Look at the music he was making from his first album to his last album. He was talking about racism, racial profiling, police brutality. He was talking about the suffering of poor people. In "Keep Ya Head Up," he was pro-choice. In one of my interviews, he talked about how he and Snoop [Dogg] were selling six million records. He said, "Imagine if rappers turned those consumers into activists." That's what the movement is now with all these young people who are millennials, born in the '90s as 'Pac was leaving this Earth. He's affected a lot of different types of people. It doesn't matter if you see him physically or not. He's here spiritually and his music is here forever.

What do you think his impact would look like today if he was still alive?

'Pac was a dynamic actor and he would have gone on to become an award-winning actor. 'Pac was a prolific writer. You would have seen someone who really flexed his muscles, not just as in film and on TV, but in theater, where he got his start at the Baltimore School of Performing Arts. Tupac would have been a director and producer. He would have continued to mentor a lot of young artists. He'd still be making music but I think his music would have gone in a range of different directions, particularly because he was so political, because of who his mother was, Afeni Shakur and his step-father Matulu Shakur, who's been in political prison for many years because of his activism.

I think 'Pac would have really evolved into the kind of leader that people thought he could've been had he not been shot down at 25. He would have still been very much involved in the community and doing work with the organization that he set up. 'Pac would have certainly influenced a whole range of different types of artists. When he died, when he was killed, it left a void. There were very few artists, as you know, who could speak to social issues, but also speak the poetry, the language of the people in urban America, in our inner cities, in our so-called ghettos, the way 'Pac could. He was a poet who had the ability to go back and forth the way Malcolm X was able to go back and forth from street corners to universities, the way Cesar Chavez could speak to farm workers in California, but he also could speak to a Bobby Kennedy or a dignitary. 'Pac was one of those types of people who could do that.

Tupac Shakur Pop-Up Restaurant Opening On 20th Anniversary of Rapper's Death

People often focus on the jailhouse interview but what's another unguarded moment that you shared with Tupac that remains important to you?

It was probably the first time we were traveling through Los Angeles together. By that point, I had been to L.A. a few times but I was with 'Pac and I was going to a school in the inner city of Los Angeles, what used to be called South Central. Black and Latino young people. 'Pac was as natural and in love with these children. I think that's something that some people knew, some people saw but he really had a deep love for the community and especially children. Think about his own life. His mom was pregnant with him in a jail cell because of her own activism with the Black Panther party. They moved around a lot in New York City, where he was born and raised. They moved to Baltimore and then Marin County up in Northern California so I think him visiting these communities gave him a sense of what I think he wished he might have had when he was a child, looking for some hope, looking for someone to see some potential in him. It was in those kinds of moments where you realized how genuine he was about people and not just about himself. I think 'Pac, in some ways, saw the fame, celebrity and even the money, as a way for him to do more for people.

What's the biggest misconception about Tupac?

People think that 'Pac was some sort of violent, maniac madman. No. Now, did 'Pac sometimes take on the persona of someone like that? Yeah. Was 'Pac angry like a lot of us were about our conditions in this country? Yeah. But when I hear people call themselves gangsters and thugs, that's what 'Pac called his movement -- thug life. But even that didn't fully reveal the complexities of it because "thug life" stood for, according to Tupac, "The Hate U Gave Little Infants, F Everybody." He even put it in context. You're not just born into it. As he says in one of his songs, "I was given this world. I didn't make it." He was a complex human being like the rest of us, but unfortunately, when you're a young person -- especially a young person of color, specifically a black or Latino person in this culture that we created called hip-hop -- people will instantly put all kinds of ridiculous stereotypes on you like you're some sort of monster or a menace to society and that's all you could possibly be. 'Pac was someone who loves Shakespeare and all kinds of literature. There's no way he could have renamed himself Makaveli at the end of his life if he hadn't actually read a book called The Prince by [Niccolo] Machiavelli, the Italian philosopher. Here's someone who read a tremendous amount of books. He was very much a thinker and often times, people don't credit 'Pac for being that type of person.

I've heard you say the [Notorious B.I.G.] and Tupac beef was overblown and that Biggie actually loved him through the beef. What experiences did you have with B.I.G. that helped shape that view?

Well, Biggie did love 'Pac. I knew Biggie as well as Tupac even though I interviewed Tupac more. I interviewed Biggie once and in one of our private moments, Biggie said to me, "I don't understand what's going on here." He said, "I don't have any problems with Tupac." Later on, when I did one of [VIBE magazine's] biggest cover stories on 'Pac and it was called "Live from Death Row" -- it was the cover where you see Suge Knight, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac like The Goodfellas poster from back in the day -- even 'Pac admitted somewhat that he was trying to sell some records and sensationalism sells records. But it took on a life of its own and people started taking sides. Then, of course, when the shots were fired -- first towards 'Pac and then towards Biggie -- we didn't know what was going on. It was a very terrifying time for a lot of people on the East Coast and the West Coast. Folks on the East Coast didn't want to go to the West Coast and it just didn't make any sense and to me. It was classic divide and conquer. It's tragic. We still don't know, really, what happened all these years later and that's the tragedy of it all. But Biggie was actually a really cool, nice dude. He was not a gangster. He just took on that persona because he was selling records. That's what was hot. They had dope beats and that's what it was. He wasn't trying to be all this other stuff that ended up taking his life.

Tupac's Estate After His Mother's Death: Wishes Will 'Be Honored,' Lawyer Says

I know you're working on a new book about Tupac's life. What are you exploring with this book that you haven't been able to touch on in the past?

It's going to take me a couple of years. I just published my own autobiography in the last few years called The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy's Journey into Manhood. There's actually a chapter in the book called "Vibe & Tupac Shakur" where I talk about my relationship with Tupac during those years. Now, I want to do 'Pac justice so even though he only lived 25 years, my plan is to really approach this like a real biographer. I've been reading the legendary biographers, people who have written about Abraham Lincoln or John Kennedy and folks like that, but I'm gonna put it in a hip-hop context. I've also been reading great music history books and music biographies about Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, and John Lennon. With 'Pac, I want to trace his life, follow his life and what I think is important. What I've learned in these years is that Tupac met a lot of people, man. I've been blessed as a speaker, writer and activist to travel all over and everywhere I go, someone has a Tupac story. They've handed me pictures they took with Tupac or letters 'Pac wrote from jail. It's mind-blowing. I'll meet folks who were engineers on this record or that record. What I want to do is bring all of this together and write what I plan on being, hopefully and humbly, a very definitive book about his life and impact while he was on this planet.

What should Tupac's legacy be?

Tupac was one of the most important voices in the history of hip-hop and pop music in American and world history. Period. I can say that from personally witnessing his impact while he was alive and I can say that even moreso now that he's gone because he's touched multiple generations of people. I think that he left behind a body of work that influenced so many people. You can't talk about Kendrick Lamar, probably the most important rapper in America today, without talking about Tupac Shakur. You can see the direct influence, obviously, on Kendrick and he pays homage to that when he samples Tupac's voice. I just think that his legacy is that he's here. The fact that we're still talking about Tupac 20 years later speaks to that. He's our Elvis, our Bob Marley, our Marvin Gaye. He's that significant a figure. He's on that level. That's why he's relevant and will continue to be relevant.
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Airbus opened a new plant to produce the H215 helicopter in Romania on Tuesday, a 50 million-euro ($56 million) investment which French President Francois Hollande said fits into efforts to promote European defense cooperation. Speaking at a ceremony with Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos in the factory in the town of Ghimbav, Hollande said: "We must cooperate this way to be able to give Europe the conditions to have its European defense policy." "Jobs that will be created here are not detrimental to French or German workers. New jobs here will lead to the creation of new jobs in France and Germany," Hollande said, speaking through a Romanian interpreter. Germany and France have outlined plans to deepen European military cooperation as Britain's exit from the European Union removes one of the biggest obstacles to stronger EU defense in tandem with NATO. Berlin and Paris are laying out ways for the bloc to rapidly deploy forces, with security cooperation emerging as a unifying force for Europe after Britain's vote to leave. The Ghimbav plant, 180 km (110 miles) north of Bucharest, will house H215 production from procurement to after-sales, including design office activities, and will provide jobs for more than 300 employees in the long term, the company said. A member of the Super Puma/Cougar family, the H215 is a twin-engined helicopter known for its versatility and competitive operating costs, it added. The factory will be capable of producing up to 15 aircraft per year when reaching full capacity in 2020. Its first Romanian-made H215 helicopter is expected to roll off the assembly line in 2017, Ciolos said. A partnership between local state-run helicopter maker IAR and Airbus dates back to 2002, when the Eurocopter Romania joint venture carrying out maintenance and repair works was set up. ($1 = 0.8898 euros) (Reporting by Radu Marinas; Editing by Keith Weir)
By Jeffrey Hodgson TORONTO (Reuters) - A new film that addresses the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War One is meant to spur discussion about a historical tragedy that still has the power to stir political tensions, its director says. "The Promise", the latest from director Terry George, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday evening. The historical drama stars Oscar Isaac as an Armenian medical student and Christian Bale as an American foreign correspondent who fall in love with the same woman. Their love triangle unfolds as the Ottoman Empire's entry into the war is followed by the killing of Christian Armenians. The nature and scale of those killings remains contentious. Earlier this year, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Germany in protest against a parliament resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians a genocide. Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments. "It's a subject that for 100 years ... has been suppressed, and I thought this was a wonderful opportunity to try and enlighten the world and at the same time tell an engrossing story," George said in a red carpet interview ahead of the premiere. George won the festival's People's Choice Award in 2004 with "Hotel Rwanda", a true story set during the country's 1994 genocide. George said the filmmakers opted to stay under the radar during production. But now that the movie completed, he said he is ready to address political reaction. "Let's get it out into the open. That's what this film is about. Let's not hide in the shadows or suppress the information or suppress the history of the event. Let's have a debate about it," he said. While there will be a focus on the film's politics, George noted that like directors David Lean and Warren Beatty, he set out to tell an "old fashion love story" set in a historic period. Canadian actress Charlotte Le Bon, who stars an the Armenian artist pursued by both Isaac and Bale, said the events of the film have contemporary relevance given so many people are still fleeing persecution. "This story happened a hundred years ago and it's still happening today," she said in an interview. (Reporting by Jeffrey Hodgson)
If there's a touchy subject in Turkish political discourse today - which is already rife with incrimination due to a failed coup attempt by the military in July - it's the Armenian Genocide in which nearly 2 million Armenians were systematically killed and forcibly relocated by Ottoman authorities beginning in 1915. The governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan still deny that such a thing ever happened, while the U.S. and Israel don't officially recognize it either, so as not to damage relations with Turkey, a crucial geopolitical ally for the West.

Writer and director Terry George, however, who rose to prominence making films like In the Name of the Father and The Boxer about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, has never been one to steer clear of difficult subject matter. Even genocide is a topic he's explored before: His 2004 film about the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, Hotel Rwanda, garnered an Oscar nom for best original screenplay.

George's new movie is The Promise starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, an epic romance set against the backdrop of the Armenian Genocide that bowed Sunday evening at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film has already been targeted by Internet trolls for its controversial subject matter. The YouTube trailer has more than three times as many dislikes as likes, an atypical distribution for the social media site that may suggest a concerted PR campaign against the film.

George talked to The Hollywood Reporter about how he got his political bearings for such a hot button project, about working in the vein of Warren Beatty's Reds and David Lean's Dr. Zhivago, and about how to take money from an advocacy organization without being forced to make "a piece of propaganda."

Congratulations on the premiere.

Thanks. I've debuted several movies here in Toronto. It's always good to do it here.

How did this project get going?

My agents came to me with this great script by Robin Swicord. They were fully financed and ready to go, and Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac were both very interested. We wanted to make something that was big and expansive, on the scale of Dr. Zhivago by David Lean or Reds by Warren Beatty. The story of the Armenian genocide has been suppressed by successive Turkish governments, and we were well aware of that, but we wanted to go after it anyway. At the beginning, we tried to fly under the radar as much as we could so that we didn't have to deal with outside pressure. So we shot in Spain and Portugal and Malta. We were crucially aware of what we were trying to do, so we said, let's get this thing made and put it out there, and then have the political debate and the conversation that we need to have. I talked to a couple of Turkish journalists about this, and some of them really liked the film, but not enough to go out there and put their name behind it.

Story continues

What obstacles did you encounter in making a film that deals with contentious subject matter like this?

Well, it's really a double edged sword because while this is a political film, it's primarily a love story. It's about a love triangle, or a love quadrangle, really. I wanted to make something that would appeal to audiences with no particular interest in the war or the conflict, that would stand on its own, because this is one of the most contentious subjects out there. Even now, they're locking up journalists who speak up on the matter. There was an article in the New York Times recently about how paranoid the government and the people are in Turkey now. They have the sense that they're being attacked by Western culture.

I assume you're referencing the recent failed coup attempt in Turkey. What wisdom have you gained from making explicitly political films in the past?

I've learned from films like In the Name of the Father and Hotel Rwanda that everything you put on screen has to be fastidiously researched. Even the fictional scenes that are woven throughout the real events and the real people you're portraying can't just be made up. They have to reflect something real that was going on at that time and place. The look, the feel, it all has to be real, and of course the actual names and dates do as well. It's important to be as accurate as you can, even with the fictional scenes embedded within your reality. So I would build up a dossier and work from that.

How did you actually go about figuring out what story to tell amid so many conflicting accounts?

Well, there's a library of revisionist and denialist material out there about the Armenian Genocide - you know, that it should be thought of not as a genocide but as a civil war. The other side is that this was designed, that it was planned. And as someone who studied these events, it's important to understand the political motivations of both sides so that we can have a discussion, but it's absolutely not a question of did it happen -- because it did -- but why did it happen. That's the question you need to get to.

What are you anticipating in terms of reactions to the film?

There's no doubt the Armenian community will embrace this film. And there's no doubt it questions the entire Turkish narrative. I'm sure it won't be shown in Turkey. At least, I'd be really surprised. But I developed a sort of mantra in the past about how to think about the reception of difficult stories like this one, which is, how will it play in Peoria, Illinois? If they don't get it in Peoria, then we've failed. So that became our attitude and catchword. I wanted to make a film that moves and enrages, that really evokes the spirit of rage, because that's what the events called for. Like David Lean's Zhivago. If we can do that, then we've succeeded.

How do you direct actors and individual performances when the scale or your story is so large?

When you're working with massive talents like Bale and Isaac, you really just step back and offer a few suggestions. We put a lot of research into costumes, mannerisms, accents, but that's all you can really do. Isaac is so facile with his voice. There was also an evolution in journalism at this time that Bale and I were intrigued by, from the straight reporting of more than a century ago to the more incendiary yellow journalism of the early 20th century. I wanted to embody those ideas. We also wanted a diverse cast, and we opened it up to actors from the Middle East. Unfortunately, we only had two Turkish actors, because many were afraid for their jobs and their careers and we understood that.

Where did the money for this film come from?

Well, we were fully backed by the Kerkorian Foundation. And we had an Armenian-American production company. So we obviously had their support throughout the process. But, you know, Queen Elizabeth funded Shakespeare, and no one calls Richard III a piece of propaganda. There's a difference between a perception of a story and the veracity of a story. We never wanted to dictate perception, just tell the truth. Of course, everything is subjective to one degree or another. If you've pointed a camera in one direction for 30 seconds and in another for 5 seconds, you've already made a judgment call.

Read more: 'The Promise': Film Review | TIFF 2016
TORONTO (Reuters) - HSBC's retail banking and wealth management head John Flint expects banks to partner more with financial technology (fintech) companies in the coming years to help meet changing demands from customers. Banks are increasingly teaming up with fintech companies, previously seen a threat, as they look to respond to a sharp increase in customers banking online and to take advantage of opportunities created by new technologies such as blockchain. "I think there's an awful lot of scope for collaboration," Flint said in an interview at the Toronto Global Forum on Monday. The HSBC executive said that, when visiting Davos for the World Economic Forum five years ago, he had been struck by how hostile and dismissive fintech entrepreneurs were toward established banks but noted that the dialogue had since changed. "There's mutual respect on both sides. If you look at smaller fintech firms, you can see that banks are partnering with them and that benefits both stakeholders' needs," he said. HSBC, itself, has set aside $200 million to invest in tech start-ups. Flint said Apple Pay was "both a threat and an opportunity". "We partner with Apple in every market that they want to be in. They've provided a technology platform and payment experience which our customers want. They extract a rent from us but we can do more business," he said. Flint said banks had fallen behind other industries in embracing new technology, with their attentions dominated by repairing balance sheets and meeting tougher regulatory requirements in the aftermath of the 2007-09 financial crisis. "I think we probably have but it's because we've been a bit distracted. The industry pretty much failed and then we've been in remediation mode and fix mode ever since," he said. "It feels like our industry has woken up to the possibilities of new technology really in the last three or four years," he added. "If there hadn't been a crisis, I'm sure we would all have started thinking about it a lot earlier." Flint said the full implications of Britain's vote to leave the European Union had yet to become clear. "I don't think any of us really know. Everything is uncertain," he said. However, he added that HSBC was sticking by the decision that it made in February to stay headquartered in the UK despite the outcome of the vote. (Reporting by Matt Scuffham; Editing by Bernard Orr)
By Madeline Chambers and Marton Dunai BERLIN/BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary should be excluded from the European Union for anti-migrant policies that undermine EU values, including erecting a razor-wire fence, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said, provoking a scornful riposte from Budapest. The unusually strong attack came three days before a crucial summit intended to project the bloc's unity after Britain's shock decision to leave. "We cannot accept that the basic values of the European Union are being so seriously breached," Asselborn told German daily Die Welt in comments published on Tuesday. "Anyone, like Hungary, who builds fences against war refugees or breaches press freedom and the independence of the justice system should be temporarily, or if needed forever, excluded from the EU." The direct call for the exclusion of a fellow EU member state was unprecedented, and underscored the extent of Europe's divisions over sharing responsibility for the more than 1 million migrants and refugees who reached its shores last year. Asked about the remarks by reporters in Moscow, Asselborn said he had wanted to stress that the EU had to protect its core values, and he was not picking on one country. "We can resolve the problem of Brexit but we can't resolve the problems of the survival of the EU if we lose the essence of the EU. So what I told the German newspaper is not directed against one nation, it's aimed at better understanding the essence and values of the EU," he said. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said his country had defended Europe throughout its history, and described his Luxembourg colleague as "condescending, uppity, and frustrated." Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has angered many of his EU partners with his tough rhetoric on migrants and by fortifying his borders to keep them out. He is urging the nation to vote in a referendum next month against future EU quotas stipulating how many refugees each country should take. INHUMAN TREATMENT The EU could not tolerate such behavior, and exclusion was "the only possibility to preserve the integrity and values of the European Union," Asselborn told Die Welt. Humans fleeing from war were being treated almost worse than wild animals, he added. "The fence that Hungary is building to keep out refugees is getting longer, higher and more dangerous. Hungary is not far from issuing an order to shoot refugees," he said. In response, Szijjarto told state news agency MTI only Hungarians could decide who they were willing to live with, a right that neither Brussels bureaucrats nor the Luxembourg foreign minister could take away. He said it was strange that Asselborn, who came from the land of "tax optimization", and another Luxembourger, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, were talking about shared burdens. "We understand what it means, though: Hungary has to pay the piper after other people make mistakes," he said. Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka sharply criticized Asselborn's comments, saying calls to exclude member states were "nonsense". German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he could understand impatience with Hungary. "However, it is not my personal approach to show a European member state the door." (Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels and Andreas Rinke and Gederts Gelzis in Riga and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Sept 13 (Reuters) - Activist investor Carl Icahn, the third-largest shareholder in Freeport McMoran Inc, said on Tuesday he endorsed the U.S. miner's efforts to reduce debt and explore strategic alternatives.

Icahn's comments come a day after Freeport said it would sell its deepwater Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas assets to Anadarko Petroleum Corp for $2 billion in a bid to reduce its debt.

The billionaire investor, who owns a 7.8 percent stake in Freeport and has two representatives on the board, said last year the company was undervalued and needed to address several corporate governance and capital issues.

"Yesterday's announcement demonstrates the Company is making good on its stated goal of deleveraging and is on track to cut its net debt by half, from year end 2015 through the end of next year, at current copper prices," Icahn said in a statement on Tuesday. (http://bit.ly/2cUlDOa)

Freeport, like other miners, has been hit hard in recent years by a downturn in prices for commodities, including copper, gold and oil, even as it racked up debt due to acquisitions.

The sale to Anadarko follows failed attempts by Freeport to sell all or part of its oil and gas business. In May, Freeport withdrew plans to launch an initial public offering for the business.

Chief Executive Richard Adkerson said in July that Freeport was still open to considering "all strategic moves" including selling assets or the entire company.

However, the company had then put its asset sales plan on the rear burner, and instead unveiled a $1.5 billion share issue to help cut debt.

Anderson also said he was confident the company could reduce its $18.8 billion of net debt to between $13.2 billion and $10.5 billion by the end of 2017.

The company's share price has more than doubled since it touched a 16-year low in January.

(Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / INTELLIGENT CONTENT ENTERPRISES INC. (ICEIF) ("ICE" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce the appointments of Mr. Ritwik Uban as President and member of the Board of Directors and Mr. Dikshant Batra as a member of the Board of Directors.

Mr. Uban is a recent MBA graduate from the prestigious Richard Ivey School of Business and received an Honors, Bachelors of Arts from the University of Toronto. As President of ICE, and its subsidiaries including Ice Studio Productions Inc., Mr. Uban will run the operational teams, develop market programs and expand the rapidly growing content and media areas of the business into high performance, revenue generating properties.

Mr. Uban was formerly a director of Uban Media and Construction of New Delhi, India ("Uban Media") where he managed the business operations of the Canadian investment interests of Uban Media and assessed and analyzed new media opportunities from North America to export to the emerging India market. Mr. Uban was also the former head of operations for an event management Company leading the client sourcing and procurement process and provided clients with a variety of services, including but not limited to, marketing, sales, venue sourcing, external vendor services and event sponsorships.

Mr. Batra is a serial entrepreneur, running two internationally successful companies in technology and supply chain management while completing his degree at the University of Toronto. Mr. Batra's company, Torinit Technologies, is a global technology and development outsourcing firm. Mr. Batra is the managing partner of Nova Sentio which builds market-centric teams to turnaround struggling value chains and companies into high performing, rapid growth enterprises. Mr. Batra is also the founder of Phoenix 1 a North American company that is re-inventing a key automotive after care area in developing countries and is the Co-Founder of the Canada Entrepreneur Organization.

"The appointments of Mr. Uban and Mr. Batra bring strong capabilities of content, technology and millennial entrepreneurship to ICE," said Mr. James Cassina, CEO of ICE. "We believe that Ritwik will lead the acceleration of our platform programs and revenue, and Dikshant will help guide the Company as we expand our vision and technologies and expand our sphere of influence in the global online media sector."

With the appointments of Mr. Uban and Mr. Batra, Mr. John Budden and Mr. Milton Klyman have resigned to allow for the appointments. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Budden and Mr. Klyman for their support and assistance.

The Company also announces that it has granted eight hundred thousand (800,000) common share purchase options exercisable at CDN $1.30 for a period of 5 years to directors and a consultant of the Company and seven hundred thousand (700,000) common share purchase options exercisable at CDN $1.50 for a period of 5 years to a director of the Company.

About Intelligent Content Enterprises Inc.

Intelligent Content Enterprises Inc., is an emerging media and Internet company that focuses on the experience of the user, creating brands, products and destinations globally, regionally and by language that are value driven providing an informative, entertaining and engaging look at content.

ICE's 4 pillar strategy drives revenue through technologies, platforms and services that deliver Content, Social and Digital Media, eCommerce and Advertising.

ICE's first acquisition, Digital Widget Factory, www.digiwidgy.com provides the baseline infrastructure and technology platform enabling content and media to be disseminated globally efficiently and effectively, creating economies of scale for distribution in over 50 languages, allowing users to create and participate in the content process and consumption.

Intelligent Content Enterprises is a publicly traded company on the OTCQB Markets under the symbol "ICEIF".

For further information, please contact:

Intelligent Content Enterprises Inc.

Investor Relations: investorrelations@intelligentcontententerprises.com

Certain information regarding the Company in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements or future oriented financial information under applicable securities laws. The forward-looking information includes, without limitation, successful completion of the proposed transaction, projections or estimates made by us and our management in connection with our business operations. Various assumptions were used in drawing the conclusions or making the forecasts and projections contained in the forward-looking information contained in this press release, which assumptions are based on management's analysis of historical trends, experience, current conditions and expected future developments pertaining to the Company and the industry in which it operates as well as certain assumptions as specifically outlined in the release above. Forward-looking information is based on current expectations, estimates and projections that involve a number of risks, which could cause actual results to vary and in some instances to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company and described in the forward-looking information contained in this press release. Undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking information, which is not a guarantee of performance and is subject to a number of risks or uncertainties. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of risk factors is not exhaustive. Forward-looking information is based on the estimates and opinions of the Company's management at the time the information is released and the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any such forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as expressly required by applicable securities law

Safe Harbor Statement



This press release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"), including all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of the company, its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) the company's financing plans; (ii) trends affecting the company's financial condition or results of operations; (iii) the company's growth strategy and operating strategy; and (iv) the declaration and payment of dividends. The words "may," "would," "will," "expect," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "intend" and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Also, forward-looking statements represent our management's beliefs and assumptions only as of the date hereof. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's ability to control, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors including the risk disclosed in the Company's Form 6-K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE: Intelligent Content Enterprises Inc.
Stockholm (AFP) - Swedish furniture giant Ikea posted a 7.1 percent jump in sales to 34.2 billion euros ($38.3 billion) in the past year thanks to strong sales of kitchens and dining rooms, it said Tuesday.

"Our focus on kitchens, kitchen equipment and dining rooms has proven very popular with customers and contributed to the strong result in the past year," IKEA Group chief executive Peter Agnefjall said in a statement.

Ikea's fiscal year runs from September to August. In the previous year, sales rose by 11.2 percent.

Ikea Group, which is not listed and which manages most of the company's stores, is expected to release its full earnings report before the end of the year.

The 340 Ikea stores, including the 12 which opened this year, registered more than 780 million visitors between September 2015 and August 2016.

Germany remains the group's biggest market, just ahead of the United States. China, Australia, Canada and Poland are its fastest growing markets, the group said.

Ikea Group plans to open its first stores in India and Serbia in the coming years, it said.
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Lundin Law PC (the "Firm") announces a class action lawsuit has been filed against Embraer S.A. ("Embraer" or the "Company") (ERJ) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws between April 16, 2012 and July 28, 2016 (the "Class Period"). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares during the Class Period should contact the Firm in advance of the October 7, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline.

To participate in this class action lawsuit, click here. You can also call Brian Lundin, Esquire, of Lundin Law PC, at 888-713-1033, or e-mail him at brian@lundinlawpc.com.

No class has been certified in the above action. Until a class is certified, you are not considered represented by an attorney. You may also choose to do nothing and be an absent class member.

The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, Embraer 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 was aware 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 stated 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 information was released to the public, shares of Embraer dropped in value, which caused investors harm.

Lundin Law PC was founded by Brian Lundin, a securities litigator based in Los Angeles dedicated to upholding shareholders' rights.

Story continues

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in certain jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

Contact:

Lundin Law PC

Brian Lundin, Esq.

Telephone: 888-713-1033

Facsimile: 888-713-1125

brian@lundinlawpc.com

http://lundinlawpc.com/

SOURCE: Lundin Law PC
By Tom Gardner LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Tens of thousands of people in conflict-ridden South Sudan are at risk of dying from starvation with many living in swamps and surviving on water lilies following renewed violence, a senior aid worker has warned. An estimated 4.8 million people from a population of about 11 million are going hungry with about 40,000 people at risk of dying, said Mercy Corps's South Sudan director Deepmala Mahla. The hunger crisis comes amid continuing instability and violence in the African country that attained independence from Sudan five years ago with renewed fighting hampering relief supplies. Here are some key facts and figures about the on-going conflict which is nearly three years long despite a formal peace accord last year, and has resulted in as many as 100,000 deaths and the displacement of 2.5 million people. South Sudan attained independence on July 9, 2011, after a referendum in which almost 99 percent of voters chose to become the newest country in the world. The new country was plagued with difficulties from the outset. South Sudan possesses enormous oil wealth but little else. Roughly half the population was dependent on food aid. Tensions with Sudan in the north stymied the country's progress. The Juba and Khartoum governments argued over border demarcation and oil, leading to a brief war in 2012. In December 2013 a full-blown civil war broke out as political in-fighting within the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) spilled onto the streets after President Salva Kiir sacked his deputy and long-time rival, Vice-President Riek Machar. The ensuing violence was fought broadly between South Sudan's biggest ethnic groups - the Dinka, led by Kiir, and the Nuer, under Machar. The conflict took on a regional dimension with Uganda intervening in 2014 on the side of the government in Juba, and Sudan supporting Machar's rebels in the east. The U.N. Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015 but has to date not imposed an arms embargo. A peace deal signed in August 2015 brought a formal end to the 20-month civil war but fighting in the southern region persisted with over 100,000 displaced. But the agreement did enable the return of Machar to Juba and the subsequent formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity in April 2016. However in July 2016 fighting flared up in Juba once again, with clashes between forces loyal to Kiir and Machar leaving some 270 dead. A ceasefire was announced four days later, but nearly 103,500 people have fled the capital to Uganda. The conflict continues to devastate South Sudanese lives. One in every 5 people in South Sudan have been forced to flee their homes since the conflict began. Nearly 1 in every 3 people were without adequate food in September 2015. Nearly 1 in every 3 schools in South Sudan has been destroyed, damaged, occupied or closed. A new report published on Sept. 12 revealed the scale of public corruption, including the private fortunes amassed by politicians in Juba, and suggested the struggle over control of the country's natural resources was a greater driver of conflict than ethnic rivalry. ((Sources: Reuters, United Nations, International Crisis Group)) (Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; 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)
CHICAGO (AP) -- Cleveland manager Terry Francona just wants Danny Salazar to get healthy. A return to the mound would be a bonus for the Indians.

Salazar had an MRI on Monday in Cleveland and will miss three to four weeks with a forearm injury, sidelining the right-hander for the rest of the regular season and casting doubt on his availability for the playoffs.

Salazar was examined by Dr. Mark Schickendantz, the Indians' head team physician. He was diagnosed with a mild strain to his flexor musculature.

''When it's all said and done, getting the news that we did is probably pretty damn good,'' Francona said. ''I mean it's musculature as opposed to something with a ligament.''

Cleveland lost 11-4 to the Chicago White Sox on Monday night, and its lead in the AL Central was trimmed to six games over second-place Detroit. If the Indians make it to the playoffs, a healthy Salazar likely would serve as their No. 3 starter behind Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco, but Francona said it was too early to speculate on what he might be able to do in the postseason.

''The one thing we want to do is get him healthy, make sure he knows he's healthy, because that's important,'' Francona said, ''and then if it fits somewhere, good. But the biggest thing is to get him healthy.''

Salazar will get a platelet-rich plasma injection on Tuesday and stop throwing for approximately 10 days. Salazar had Tommy John surgery in 2010 and missed a couple weeks in August with right elbow inflammation, but Monday's MRI showed his ulnar collateral ligament was intact.

The 26-year-old Salazar is 11-6 with a 3.87 ERA in 25 starts. He pitched four innings Friday at Minnesota before he was pulled because of forearm tightness.

''I think he felt this on one pitch,'' Francona said.

The injury ramps up the pressure on Trevor Bauer, Josh Tomlin and Mike Clevinger, three possibilities for the playoff rotation if Salazar is unable to go. Bauer goes for his third straight win Tuesday against the White Sox, and Tomlin and Clevinger start the final two games of the series.

Story continues

''I don't they need to try to do more than they can,'' Francona said. ''Every time they start it's a big night. Every time somebody does well it helps everybody, but it's always the case.''

---

Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenap
* Accenture, Wipro, Infosys shut Bengaluru offices

* Deadly riots over sharing of water between two states

* PM Modi calls for peaceful resolution of dispute

* Trade body estimates losses of up to $3.74 billion (Adds detail, link to video)

By Robin Paxton and Mamidipudi Soumithri

BENGALURU, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Indian and foreign technology companies including global outsourcing firm Accenture closed offices and told staff to stay home in the technology hub of Bengaluru on Tuesday after riots over the diversion of water from a river.

At least one person was killed in clashes between protesters and police that erupted after the Supreme Court ordered the southern state of Karnataka to divert some water from the Cauvery river to neighbouring Tamil Nadu state.

Businesses in Bengaluru, Karnataka's capital, have faced four days of disruption this month because of protests about the water dispute and an unrelated trade union-organised strike on Sept. 2.

This week's disturbances, in which dozens of vehicles were set on fire, have been the most serious in a city where gleaming new business parks are supposed to reflect the face of a modern, booming India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to resolve their differences peacefully.

"The violence and arson seen in the last two days is only causing loss to the poor, and to our nation's property," Modi said on Twitter.

The Cauvery river has been the source of tension between the two states for more than a century and violence over who gets access to water has flared before.

Karnataka's chief minister said that although the court ruling was difficult to abide by, his state would release water.

A Reuters witness said many shops were shuttered on Tuesday and fire trucks were stationed outside a major shopping mall, which was closed and had netting draped from its walls, apparently for protection.

Television footage showed largely deserted streets as riot police patrolled. Bengaluru airport said bus services to and from terminals were limited.

Story continues

A curfew would be extended until Wednesday, police said.

Senior police officer L. Chandrashekar told Reuters police had arrested 355 people. He said one person had been killed when police opened fire on Monday to stop protesters torching vehicles with Tamil Nadu licence plates.

Media reported a second person had died after falling while fleeing a police charge, but this could not be confirmed.

BUSINESS PARKS AND TRAFFIC JAMS

Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore, is home to major Indian IT companies such as Infosys, Wipro and Mphasis , as well as startups like Ola and Flipkart.

Multinationals like Samsung Electronics, Oracle and Amazon.com also have offices in the city's business parks that have sprung up over the past decade or so.

Thousands of English-speaking Indians work in the city's call centres and back offices.

To many, Bengaluru symbolises India's rising economic vigour but the city has also been a victim of poor planning and congestion that can produce traffic jams for hours.

Indian software giants Infosys Ltd and Wipro were among the big employers to stay shut on Tuesday.

Thomson Reuters , which has offices with more than 4,500 staff in the city, said it was monitoring the situation closely and had activated "business continuity plans".

"The safety of our staff is our number one priority. As a result we do have a significant number of staff currently working remotely, alongside a small core group working from our offices: together ensuring it is business as usual for our clients," said head of corporate affairs and chief company spokesman David Crundwell.

Accounting giant E&Y on Monday advised its workers to leave early and avoid travelling in vehicles with Tamil Nadu plates in Karnataka, and vice versa for those in Tamil Nadu.

It advised employees to work from home on Tuesday, as did Amazon and Samsung in notes to their Bengaluru-based staff.

Amazon said the violence had affected delivery of some of its products in the city.

A source familiar with the situation said outsourcing giants had closed on Tuesday because not all staff could work from home. A spokesman for Wipro said Saturday would be a working day to make up for the day off declared on Tuesday.

Trade organisation ASSOCHAM said it estimated the violence had cost Bengaluru and the wider region up to 250 billion rupees ($3.74 billion) in losses, but it did not give a breakdown of how it came up with that figure.

"The image that India built around Bengaluru as its 'Silicon Valley' is being sullied," its secretary general, D. S. Rawat, said in a statement. ($1 = 66.8 rupees)

(Additional reporting Euan Rocha and Sankalp Phartiyal; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Robert Birsel)
By Bernadette Christina Munthe

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia said on Tuesday it would issue permits to import 700,000 cattle for slaughter in 2017 as well as shipping in additional buffalo meat from India, as it looks to control climbing food prices.

Since coming to power in October 2014, President Joko Widodo has pursued food self-sufficiency to protect farmers, but the result has often been volatile prices and worried investors, eroding support for the government.

"This is being done to push down prices that are still high, and to prepare for demand during the Muslim fasting month in 2017," the country's economic ministry said in a statement.

The Southeast Asian nation ships in virtually all its cattle from Australia - a trade that was worth nearly $600 million in the last financial year.

Indonesia's government late last year estimated that the country would import around 700,000 head of cattle in 2016.

The country has been pushing cattle-buyers to start breeding their own livestock as part of efforts to reduce its dependence on imports.

Trade minister Enggartiasto Lukita said on Tuesday that for every five cattle imported, feedlots would need to have at least one animal for breeding purposes.

The government has also revised plans to import buffalo meat from India. It now expects to ship in 100,000 tonnes of the meat by June 2017, rather than aiming for 80,000 tonnes of such imports this year.

(Writing by Fergus Jensen; Editing by Richard Pullin and Joseph Radford)
Werkstattqualitat is a completely new and innovative rating tool, which directly records the real opinions of car service satisfied customers, then and there at local business owners

FRANKFURT, GERMANY / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / With Werkstattqualitat, Avendo Marketing GmbH located in Moers is presenting a completely new rating tool, which is now among one of the top 5 contestants for the Innovation Award of this year's Automechanika in Frankfurt. Werkstattqualitat - that is innovative design and absolute user friendly interface; it is an efficient and specific tool to gain new customers.

Presenting the real picture.

Customer ratings on the internet are becoming more important, especially when providing services.

Positive customer feedbacks enable future customers to purchase with confidence and thus avoiding expensive pitfalls.

Unfortunately not all online rating systems are trustworthy. In a massive pool of ratings there are many black sheep purposefully set up to distort ratings by spreading negative opinions, thus interfering with the real picture.

To combat this development and to make sure that the real picture is presented, Werkstattqualitat from Avendo Marketing GmbH located in Moers, was designed. Werkstattqualitat is a completely new and innovative rating tool, which directly records the real opinions of satisfied customers, then and there at local businesses. With a tablet and just a few clicks the positive feedback of local customers is instantly online and straight away available to be viewed by potential new customers.

In this way any image damaging manipulations tolocal business are ruled out. This is especially made possible, as each customer rating is connected to the customer's name and their customer number. So there is no room for the reputation of local business to be damaged though so called fake ratings.

Easy and user-friendly interface attracts new customers instantly.

All ratings with the new system Werkstattqualitat from Avendo Marketing are easily made directly on the spot. The process of rating is done in less than a minute, not wasting the precious time of your customers.

Story continues

Using a tablet, there is no registration or login needed at all, neither a special account nor an email address.

These advantages make the rating system Werkstattqualitat unbeatable, it's absolutely user friendly and thus promises huge acceptance.

And: If some customers are not entirely satisfied, you have the opportunity to make adjustments to the rating by creating a more positive experience for the customer then and there, thus influencing the rating for the better. It's in your hand to convince the customer early on of the performance of your business. As a result, a high number of positive ratings will generally lead to an increase in customers.

Experience Werkstattqualitat at the Automechanika live!

Local Business owner are welcome to personally experience the many advantages of Werkstattqualitat live, by the Avendo Marketing GmbH, just visit our exhibition booth E07 in Halle 9.1 at the Automechanika in Frankfurt. From the 13. till the 17. September 2016 we are presenting our product to all interested business clients. We will be focusing on the 5 attractive pillars of the concept:

1. Safety: All ratings are done by the customer directly on the spot, in your workshop.

2 Customer Magnet: More customers are generated through the positive, real customer ratings.

3. Online Marketing: More attention through the Google star-system. The number of website visitors and customer enquiries increases.

4. Customer Feedback: Easy to set up individual customer surveys. React to ratings is easy and fast.

5. Ratings Seal: With the new ratings seal the good reputation of your workshop is strengthened and expanded.

Through Werkstattqualitat, car-repair-shops that are looking for new customers receiving an excellent possibility to increase their income.

For more information, please visit http://www.werkstattqualitaet.de

Contact Info:

Name: Tobias Kolesnyk

Email: t.kolesnyk@werkstattqualitaet.de

Organization: Avendo Marketing GmbH

Address: Kamper Str. 54, 47445 Moers

Video URL: https://youtu.be/0dcLo_GGFbg

SOURCE: Werkstattqualitat
IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Khang & Khang LLP (the "Firm") announces a class action lawsuit has been filed against Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ("Tokai" or the "Company") (TKAI). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between June 24, 2015 and July 25, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"), are encouraged to contact the Firm prior to the September 30, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline.

If you purchased shares of Tokai 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.

The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, Tokai made false and misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: there were significant structural problems with the trial design for its Phase 3 galeterone study, ARMOR3-SV; that ARMOR3-SV was unlikely to succeed in meeting its primary endpoint; the commercialization of galeterone was less likely than investors were led to believe; and as a result of the above, Tokai's statements about its business, operations, and prospects were false and misleading at all relevant times.

If you want to learn more about this lawsuit, or if you have 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 via e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com.

This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions.

Contacts

Joon M. Khang, Esq.

Telephone: 949-419-3834

Facsimile: 949-225-4474

joon@khanglaw.com

SOURCE: Khang & Khang LLP
IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Khang & Khang LLP (the "Firm") announces a class action lawsuit has been filed against Corrections Corporation of America ("Corrections Corporation" or the "Company") (CXW). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between February 27, 2012 and August 17, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"), are encouraged to contact the Firm prior to the October 24, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline.

If you purchased shares of Corrections Corporation during the Class Period, please contact Joon M. Khang, Esquire, of Khang & Khang LLP, 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, during the Class Period, Corrections Corporation made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: that the Company's facilities lacked adequate safety and security standards and were less efficient at offering correctional services than the Federal Bureau of Prisons' ("BOP") facilities; that the Company's rehabilitative services for inmates were less effective than the BOP's services; that the U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") was unlikely to renew and/or extend its contracts with Corrections Corporation; and that as a result of the above, Corrections Corporation's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On August 18, 2016, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced that the DOJ decided to stop using private prisons, since they are less safe and less effective than federal government-run prisons. When this information was disclosed to the public, shares of Corrections Corporation fell in value, causing investors harm.

If you wish to learn more about this lawsuit, or if you have any questions regarding this notice or your rights, please contact Joon M. Khang, a prominent litigator for almost two decades, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or via e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com.

Story continues

This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in certain jurisdictions.

Contacts

Joon M. Khang, Esq.

Telephone: 949-419-3834

Facsimile: 949-225-4474

joon@khanglaw.com

SOURCE: Khang & Khang LLP
IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 12, 2016 / Khang & Khang LLP (the "Firm") announces 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 shares of Embraer 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 CEO Frederico Curado would resign. 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 the true details emerged, Embraer shares fell in value, which caused 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.

Contacts

Joon M. Khang, Esq.

Telephone: 949-419-3834

Facsimile: 949-225-4474

joon@khanglaw.com

SOURCE: Khang & Khang LLP
SOFIA (Reuters) - A six-year-old Iraqi boy and a young man have drowned and three children and a man are missing after a boat carrying 10 migrants sank in the Bulgarian waters of the Danube River, a police official said on Tuesday. The bodies of the boy and a 26-year-old man were recovered on Sunday, two days after the police found four migrants who survived from a sunken boat on an island in the northwestern Bulgarian stretch of the Danube river, which borders Romania. The migrants, who did not have any documents, told police they were a family of 10 people fleeing Iraq and that the metal boat which was carrying them to the Romanian coast on their journey to western Europe had capsized. "We have been searching the river after the migrants told us that six people that were in the same boat with them have fallen into the Danube waters," Dimitar Chorbadzhiev, director of the regional border police said. He said police officers are still searching for the three missing children, aged two, four and six as well as one man. Bulgaria has built a fence on its border with Turkey in an attempt to stem migrant inflows and has asked Brussels to help it with police, specialized vehicles and tracking equipment to better protect its borders. (Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova)
CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State supporters carried out an attack on Kenya's port city of Mombasa in which three robed women tricked their way into a police station, stabbed an officer and set fire to the building, the group's Amaq news agency said on Tuesday. Militant attacks, mostly claimed by al Shabaab militants from neighboring Somalia, have increased in recent years in Kenya, which has a large Muslim population concentrated mostly along its Indian Ocean coast. But police said in May they had arrested militants linked to Islamic State, a group which has seized areas of Iraq and Syria and inspired offshoot groups in the Middle East and Africa. "The perpetrators of the attack on the Kenyan police in the city of Mombasa were supporters of Islamic State. They executed the operation in response to calls to target crusader states," the agency affiliated to Islamic State reported. Sunday's attack in Mombasa appeared to be the first claimed by the group on Kenyan soil. In the Mombasa assault, the three women were shot dead. Police said they recovered an unexploded suicide vest from one of the attackers. When suspected Islamic State militants were detained in May, experts said Kenya's focus on dismantling al Shabaab cells may have allowed sympathizers of Islamic State to slip under the radar. But they said it was not clear whether such sympathizers had formal links to Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, or were simply offering allegiance. Al Shabaab has said it targets Kenya, a majority Christian nation, for sending its troops into Somalia as part of an African force to battle the Islamist insurgents. It often says it will continue attacks until the Kenyan "crusaders" leave. (Reporting by Ahmed Tolba; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli aircraft struck Syrian army positions early Tuesday after stray fire from its war-torn neighbour hit the Israeli-held zone of the Golan Heights the previous day, the military said.

The Israeli strike targeted "artillery positions of Syrian Regime in the central Syrian Golan Heights" in response to "a projectile" which on Monday had hit the northern Golan causing no injuries, an army statement said.

A military spokeswoman told AFP Monday's projectile was most likely not intentional, rather spillover from "internal fighting in Syria."

It was the fourth such incident in nine days, and came as a new Syrian ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States came into force on Monday.

The initial 48-hour truce does not apply to areas held by jihadists such as the Islamic State group.

The Israeli army holds the Syrian government accountable for any fire from its territory, regardless of its source.

There were similar events in July and previously.

Israel has sought to avoid being drawn into Syria's complex war which is now in its sixth year, but it has attacked Syrian military targets when fire from the conflict spills over.

Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.
Jerusalem (AFP) - A senior Israeli official said Tuesday that Hamas has rejected an offer to swap the bodies of two Israeli soldiers for those of 19 Palestinians and almost as many prisoners.

Lior Lotan, who is in charge of prisoners and missing persons, said the exchange was part of two offers turned down by Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip.

Lotan said Israel had been holding since the 2014 Gaza war 18 Palestinians from the enclave as well as the bodies of 19 others and "offered to swap them for the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers".

Hamas had rejected that offer and turned down a proposal to free Israeli civilians held in Gaza in return for the release of dozens of Gazans who Israel arrested for illegally entry from the strip, he said.

Two Israeli soldiers, Oron Shaul and Hadar Golding, are believed by the army to have been killed in Gaza during the 2014 war.

Hamas is thought to be holding their bodies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged this month to recover the body of Shaul.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars between 2008 and 2014.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade for around a decade and its border with Egypt also remains largely closed.

Israel bans its citizens from travelling to Gaza.
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said its aircraft attacked a Syrian army position on Tuesday after a stray mortar bomb struck the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, and it denied a Syrian statement that a warplane and drone were shot down. The air strike was a now-routine Israeli response to the occasional spillover from fighting in a five-year-old civil war, and across Syria a ceasefire was holding at the start of its second day. Syria's army command said in a statement that Israeli warplanes had attacked an army position at 1 a.m. on Tuesday (2200 GMT, Monday) in the countryside of Quneitra province. The Israeli military said its aircraft attacked targets in Syria hours after the mortar bomb from fighting among factions in Syria struck the Golan Heights. Israel captured the plateau from Syria in a 1967 war. The Syrian army said it had shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone after the Israeli attack. Denying any of its aircraft had been lost, the Israeli military said in a statement: "Overnight two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission to target Syrian artillery positions. At no point was the safety of (Israeli) aircraft compromised." The seven-day truce in Syria, brokered by Russia and the United States, is their second attempt this year by to halt the bloodshed. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry in Beirut and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Rome (AFP) - Italy is to build a 50-bed military field hospital to treat injured Libyan government forces in the conflict-wracked north of the country, ministers said Tuesday.

The hospital will be built at Misrata airport and will be protected by a unit of 100 troops.

"We are planning to deploy around 300 people, 65 doctors and nurses, 135 logistics staff and 100 for the protection of the hospital," Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti told a hearing of the parliamentary committee for defence and foreign affairs.

A C-27 transport plane is to be stationed at the airport in case of a need for emergency evacuations and an Italian warship will provide further security back-up from just off the Libyan coast, Pinotti said.

The minister said the Italian contingent would be operational immediately but gave no timetable for having the hospital up and running. Italy was acting on a request made by Libya's UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) on August 9, she added.

Italy, which has offered to lead a UN-backed peace force into its former colony when conditions on the ground allow, has recently evacuated and treated a number of GNA-loyal fighters who suffered serious injuries during an offensive against Islamic State jihadists in the city of Sirte.

As well as trying to eliminate the IS contingent in Sirte, the GNA is facing a new challenge to its authority from a rival administration based in the east of the country and backed by military strongman General Khalifa Haftar.

Forces operating under Haftar on Monday took control of a key Mediterranean oil port, after seizing two others at the weekend.

The move has raised fears Libya could be on the verge of a new cycle of conflict with analysts saying Haftar is taking advantage of the GNA forces being exhausted by their efforts against IS.

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Haftar's seizure of the oil ports was "negative because it damages the process of stabilising Libya."

He said Italy was working with the United States to promote dialogue on national reconciliation including Haftar.
When it comes to the tricky business of monitoring Oscar-season hype, the Venice Film Festival doesnt get talked about quite as its fall festival counterparts Telluride and Toronto, or even its European sister Cannes  largely because most of the journalists whose chief job it is to monitor Oscar season dont attend.

After all, its far away, it clashes with those aforementioned North American fests, and its program is heavy on the kind of hard-art world cinema that many Academy members will never hear of, let alone see. This years Golden Lion winner was The Woman Who Left, a four-hour, black-and-white drama of ethics and revenge from Filipino iconoclast Lav Diaz  a rewarding challenge, but not exactly the definition of an Oscar heavyweight. (Though some ironic tweets I posted immediately after the Venice awards ceremony were taken a little too literally by media outlets in the Philippines. Patawarin mo ako, ladies and gentlemen.)

Yet in its cool, unfazed Italian way, Venice has grown into an unveiling ground for future awards-season heavyweights. The last two Best Picture Oscar winners, Spotlight and Birdman, were both first seen on the Lido and immediately anointed as serious contenders; The Hurt Locker premiered there a few years before, though it went on to play a longer game. Gravity, Philomena, Black Swan, Atonement, Michael Clayton, The Queen, Golden Lion winner Brokeback Mountain  all were Best Picture nominees, all Venice coups. So even if Hollywood journos cant make the trip, they keenly await word from across the Atlantic.

This years Venice edition  a fine one, incidentally, marked by artistic successes from all across the commercial spectrum  looks to leave its watermark on the 2016 awards season through two films. The first was obvious: Damien Chazelles ravishing La La Land, already comprehensively discussed, kicked off the festival on a note of dizzy excitement, asserting itself as a likely Best Picture player within minutes of its premiere and maintaining Venices unusual track record for choosing opening films actually worth a damn. (Atonement, Black Swan, Gravity, Birdman, La La Land Cannes would kill for that strike rate.) And on Saturday, Emma Stone began her own trophy trail by winning best actress from Sam Mendes jury, beating out some stiff competition.

Story continues

Among that competition? Fellow American Natalie Portman, whose own path to the Oscar podium six years ago started with an electrifying Lido debut for Black Swan. (Unlike Stone, she wasnt honored by the Venice jury, losing out to Greek first-timer Ariane Labed  but thats all water under the Bridge of Sighs now.) The years since Darren Aronofskys art-genre hit havent been the richest of Portmans career as an actor, but Jackie, in which she startlingly plays former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, is about to change all that.

I reviewed Jackie, the first English-language effort by dynamite Chilean director Pablo Larrain, for Variety in Venice, so I wont go into an extended rehash of my thoughts here. In short, the film is astonishing: a hard, provocative, jaggedly structured rewiring of conventional prestige biopic tropes, examining its eponymous icon in the immediate aftermath of JFKs assassination, but not once succumbing to sentimental hand-wringing or hagiography. Those who thrilled to the formal invention and tough political inquiry of Post Mortem, The Club or the Oscar-nominated No will be relieved to hear its still every inch a Larrain film, albeit headlined by a star turn of such mannered, disciplined daring in Portman that she earns a claim on it, too. Biopics can often feel like a safe route to acclaim for actors, but this feels like the riskiest work of her career.

This is not a unique opinion, of course. Reviews out of Venice were rapturous across the board, and Noah Oppenheims rigorously intelligent screenplay was deservedly rewarded by Mendes jury. The heavily French-funded film entered Venice without a U.S. distributor, but as the lights went up on its first press screening on Wednesday last week  which met with robust applause and an unreported scattering of dimwit boos, as befits its unorthodox approach  domestic distribution was clearly a question of when rather than if.

The first name to surface in the discussions was Fox Searchlight, the most obvious candidate, since they had a hand in developing Jackie years ago, when Aronofsky was set to direct with then-wife Rachel Weisz in the lead. (Aronofsky has remained on board as a producer, now reunited with the actress he previously directed to Oscar glory. Its a funny old business.) While other eager bidders were in the running, including Amazon and Netflix, last night the news we were expecting finally dropped: With Jackie continuing to wow critics in Toronto, Searchlight made it official, and will release the film in the heart of awards season Dec. 9.

Thats good news for Jackie, of course, and good news for Searchlight, an outfit that probably needs another major title to work with this season, with their expensive Sundance investment The Birth of a Nation still an unstable property in light of director-star Nate Parkers troubling personal history.

But a word of caution before you go declaring Jackie any kind of locked-down frontrunner on the basis of reviews and campaign clout alone. This is not a burnished, surefire, Academy-tailored historical biopic in any sense, which is precisely why it is to be treasured. Larrain, Oppenheim and Portman are not here to preserve the Camelot mythos in amber but to challenge it, with moral and intellectual ambiguity, with spiritual questioning, with emotional and physical violence. Any nostalgic boomer voters who just want a Kennedy fix may be surprised by the films distance and cool temperature; those who booed at that first press screening clearly were.

With that caveat in place, however, its still hard to imagine Portman not leading the films awards campaign and securing a third Oscar nomination in the process. Once a prodigious child of the industry, shes now admired by peers and elders alike for her limelight-shunning diligence and seriousness of craft. Even viewers who are left cold by the film are likely to be impressed by the deep-dish work she does in it, from her attentive, near-transformative vocal work to her seamless transitions between visceral devastation and guarded hauteur. Its the kind of turn that could even net her a second statuette, though with a surfeit of formidable names in the mix, from Viola Davis to Annette Bening to Ruth Negga to Isabelle Huppert, the Emma vs. Natalie headlines currently coming out of Toronto feel hasty.

If Searchlights savvy and Portmans radiance can coax more cautious voters past the films thornier aspects, Jackie could well be an across-the-board player. Many in the Academys discerning directors branch could spring for Larrains refined, razor-edged work here; a nod for Oppenheims many-faceted original screenplay feels even likelier. (His previous writing credits are Allegiant and The Maze Runner. Talk about upping your game.) Portmans work is aided by a quality cadre of true supporting performances, with Peter Sarsgaards terse, touching and conflicted Bobby Kennedy perhaps the likeliest to register.

The films pristine craft work could well find recognition, too, from the textured, meticulously composed cinematography for Jacques Audiard regular Stephane Fontaine to Sebastian Sepulvedas editing, which artfully zigzags between time frames and psychological states. But the films true below-the-line star is 29-year-old British avant-garde composer Mica Levi, whose highly innovative and very prominent score supplements the films swinging moods with piercing strings, military-style percussion and delicate woodwind notes. Levi composed the most singularly mesmerizing film score of recent years for Jonathan Glazers Under the Skin, though needless to say, she wasnt on the radar of the Academys frequently conservative, cliquey music branch. Heres hoping some delayed recognition for her is but one happy outcome of Fox Searchlights wise purchase.

Related stories

Toronto: Eleanor Coppola Opens New Doors in Her Film Career

Toronto Film Review: 'Unless'

'La La Land' Set to Open Chicago Film Festival
NITRA, Slovakia (Reuters) - Luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) [TAMOJL.UL] has picked Japanese firm Takenaka and Czech company Vces, part of Bouygues group (BOUY.PA), as subcontractors for the Slovak factory it started building on Tuesday, the company said.

Out of the 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) to be invested, JLR will spend 800 million on construction of the factory that will employ 2,800 people, and 200 million to build a network of suppliers expected to create thousands more jobs.

The project is a boost to Slovakia, one of the poorest but fastest growing euro zone countries with a heavy focus on manufacturing.

The factory, expected to start operations in 2018, will use new conveyor belt technology to be supplied by German machinery and equipment maker Kuka (KU2G.DE), JLR said.

"We'll produce two different models in some variants," operating director Alexander Wortberg told journalists, without giving details.

The initial annual capacity of the plant will be 150,000 cars. A further investment would raise capacity to the maximum 300,000, but the decision has not been made yet, Wortberg said.

JLR said in June Britain's decision to leave the European Union would not affect the project, which is of the biggest ever foreign direct investments in the central European nation of about 5.5 million.

"UK may be planning to leave the EU. But be sure JLR is not leaving Europe," JLR CEO Ralf Speth said on Tuesday.

The car industry represents 43 percent of Slovakia's industrial output and a quarter of its exports, according to the Automotive Industry Association, which expects the country to make more than 1 million cars this year.

Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), Kia and Peugeot Citroen (PEUP.PA) already build hundreds of thousands of models in Slovakia, making it the world's biggest per-capita car producer.

Slovakia's finance ministry said last week the economy was likely to grow faster than the 3.2 percent expected this year, helped by construction of the JLR factory among other projects.

(Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova; Editing by Mark Potter)
(Reuters) - Representatives of Nagoya city and Aichi Prefecture have visited the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) office in Tokyo and informed the governing body they intend to resume talks regarding a joint bid to host the 2026 Asian Games. Nagoya's deputy mayor Teruo Shinkai told reporters on Monday that his city would restart "best efforts once again toward a joint bid", Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported. Discussions between officials from the prefecture and their counterparts from its capital Nagoya stalled last week as the prefecture had not yet come up with detailed estimates to help them identify how costs would be split. Aichi's prefectural government has since indicated to Nagoya that total costs are estimated to reach roughly 85 billion yen ($834 million). About 25 billion yen is expected to be covered by sponsorships and other revenue, with the prefecture paying two-thirds of the remainder and Nagoya the rest. The JOC is scheduled to take a decision on Japan's candidate site for the 2026 Asian Games later on Tuesday. The Olympic Council of Asia is expected to select the host location at a meeting scheduled for Sept. 25 in Danang, Vietnam. Japan last hosted the Asian Games in Hiroshima in 1994. The next Games will be held in Indonesia's Jakarta and Palembang from Aug. 18 to Sept. 2, 2018. ($1 = 101.9100 yen) (Reporting by Simon Jennings in Bengaluru; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)
By Makiko Yamazaki

TOKYO (Reuters) - Renesas Electronics Corp on Tuesday said it has agreed to buy U.S. chipmaker Intersil Corp (ISIL.O) for $3.2 billion, an all-cash deal that bolsters the Japanese group's efforts to refocus the company around automotive chips.

Slowing growth in computers and smartphones - the traditional mainstays of the chip industry - has fueled a wave of mergers globally as chipmakers turn to areas such as auto electronics for sales growth.

Renesas, created from the semiconductor units of several Japanese companies, has amassed a significant war chest since a state fund and key clients bailed it out after the Fukushima earthquake five years ago.

"It was a competitive bid and we settled at a price almost at the maximum limit," Renesas CEO Bunsei Kure told a briefing for reporters and analysts in Tokyo.

"We can combine our products and offer them in a package," he added, saying the chipmaker would "actively seek out other mergers" to further grow its business.

Kure's company paid $22.5 a share for Intersil, 14 percent above Monday's closing price.

"They might be over-paying just a little, but if Renesas doesn't buy Intersil they will struggle to supply customers in the U.S.," said a manager at an investment fund in Singapore that owns Renesas shares.

"If they want to be a top auto-industry component maker they have to do this," he added, asking not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

But Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner in Tokyo, said he doubted the benefits of the deal.

"It's not clear that Renesas will be able to sell Intersil's chips to its existing customers. Intersil produces for PCs and IT infrastructure while Renesas makes for automakers," Yamaji said.

Intersil, whose chips are used in industrial, mobile and infrastructure applications, would expand Renesas' portfolio in analog chips, which process signals such as sound, light and temperature before converting them into digital signals.

Story continues

It would also give it a presence in the $10 billion power management segment of the chip market.

By combining those products, Kure said he expected to bolster income by as much $170 million annually after four to five years.

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.

SECURITY CLEARANCE

The acquisition will need to win approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which scrutinizes deals for potential national security issues.

While Intersil has a growing aerospace business and produces chips with military applications, Japan has close military ties with the United States and Renesas Chief Financial Officer Hidetoshi Shibata said he expected regulators to sign off on the deal.

Renesas, which controls nearly 40 percent of the global market for microcontroller chips used in automobiles, will fully control Intersil after the buy-out. It aims to complete the deal by June 2017.

Renesas beat U.S. suitor Maxim Integrated Products Inc (MXIM.O), promising Intersil access to its network of automotive clients to boost the auto-related business, sources have told Reuters. A Maxim spokeswoman declined to comment.

San Jose, California-based Maxim has been on the hunt for a deal for some time, according to the sources. The company could therefore be at the center of further consolidation in the still-fragmented market for analog chips, they said.

Shares in Renesas were up 1.5 percent at 0500 GMT compared with a smaller 0.34 percent gain in the benchmark Nikkei 225 index.

(Additional reporting by Liana Baker in SAN FRANCISCO; Emi Emoto and Kentaro Hamada in TOKYO; Writing by Clara Ferreira-Marques; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Oslo (AFP) - Music streaming service Tidal, owned by rap star Jay-Z, posted heavy losses last year and has had trouble making payments on time, Norwegian business daily Dagens Naeringsliv reported on Tuesday.

Tidal's parent group Aspiro posted a loss of 239.5 million Swedish kronor (25.1 million euros, $28 million) last year, according to DN which examined the unlisted company's accounts.

Tidal is Aspiro's core holding.

Tidal has also received around a hundred payment default records since Jay-Z bought the company through his holding group Project Panther Bidco for $56 million in March 2015.

It has 3.6 million Norwegian kroner (390,000 euros, $438,000) in outstanding payments due, DN claimed.

Aspiro, a Norwegian company headquartered in the Swedish town of Malmo, was not immediately available for comment.

According to DN, Jay-Z's lawyers have accused Tidal's former owners, including Norwegian media group Schibsted, of overstating the number of paying customers and having embellished the accounts ahead of the sale, a charge they have denied.

At the end of June, the Wall Street Journal reported US group Apple was in talks with Tidal regarding a possible purchase, aimed at beefing up its own streaming service Apple Music.

Tidal soared in popularity early this year after Beyonce -- Jay-Z's wife -- released her latest album "Lemonade" exclusively on the service, although it was also broadcast in a film version on HBO and quickly made available on iTunes.

Tidal, which had a mixed reception after its relaunch last year, has also heavily promoted exclusives, such as albums by Rihanna and Kanye West.
jay z

Jay Z's music streaming service, Tidal, lost $28 million last year, according to a legal filing reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

That's twice as much as it lost in the year before Jay Z took control of Aspiro, Tidal's Swedish holding company.

In 2015, Aspiro lost 239 million Swedish kronor, while in 2014, it lost 88.9 million. Tidal has also reportedly failed to pay over 100 outstanding bills.

There is a slight silver lining, however. As Tidal's losses accelerated, so did revenue, which rose 30%.

The landscape

Tidal is far from the only music streaming service that isn't profitable. Market leader Spotify had an operating loss of 184.5 million euros in 2015, compared with 165.1 million in 2014, Reuters reports. Spotify's revenue rose 80% in 2015.

Tidal said that, as of June, it had 4.2 million paid subscribers. That is well behind Spotify's 39 million (August) and Apple Music's 17 million (September).

Tidal's strategy for getting new customers seems to rely heavily on high-profile exclusives from the likes of Kanye West, Rihanna, and Beyonce. But while those exclusives seem to have been effective in signing people up, they don't seem to have been as good at retaining them as loyal customers.

NOW WATCH: This incredible energy-generating tidal lagoon could provide power to thousands





More From Business Insider


Shabbat dinner may not be the first thing to spring to mind when Burning Man is mentioned, but it was one of the highlights during the father-son bonding time experienced by Jeffrey and David Katzenberg at this year's fest.

The two made the trek to Black Rock City, along with more than 70,000 other "Burners," as the annual counterculture festival celebrated a milestone 30th year from Aug. 28 to Sept. 5. It was the second year in a row that the Katzenbergs attended Burning Man together; David has been three times in total. Their Shabbat dinner took place Sept. 2, and David describes it as "massive."

"Anyone and everyone is welcome," he tells The Hollywood Reporter of the hospitality of their camp, known as Merkabah. "We hosted nearly 700 people this year. Everyone in our camp equally contributes their time, energy and resources to making the Shabbat dinner work."

David, 33, who tied the knot earlier this year with Stellina Bickers, shared a photo of his famous father, 65, on Instagram looking incognito in Burning Man-required attire of oversize goggles, a hat and a bandana tied around his face to cope with the ever-present dust storms in the Nevada desert.

Jeffrey - who bade goodbye to his staff on Aug. 22 when NBCUniversal's $3.8 billion deal to buy DWA closed and now serves as chairman of DreamWorks New Media and a consultant to NBCU parent company Comcast - isn't the first mogul to attend Burning Man. Other top execs who have traveled to the temporary metropolis filled with wild costumes, art installations and, yes, some drug use, include Elon Musk, Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and iHeartMedia chairman Bob Pittman. Meanwhile, it was directly back to work for David, who is producing the remake of Stephen King's It, now shooting.

#tbt It's about that time!

A photo posted by David Katzenberg (@davidkatzenberg) on Aug 25, 2016 at 2:41pm PDT

Story continues

Bye now! #burningman #merkabah

A photo posted by David Katzenberg (@davidkatzenberg) on Sep 3, 2016 at 7:29am PDT

My two dads reunited!

Read more: Burning Man Turns 30: The Joys, Pitfalls (and Drugs) of Hollywood's "Vacation for the Soul"
Sept 13 (Reuters) - JetBlue Airways Corp said on Tuesday that Chief Financial Officer Mark Powers would retire, effective Nov. 1.

Powers joined the budget airline in 2006 as treasurer and has been its CFO for the last five years.

He will be an adviser with the company for a year, JetBlue said in a statement.

Jim Leddy, senior vice president and treasurer, will be the CFO on an interim basis, subject to board approval at a meeting next week, the company said.

(Reporting by Rachit Vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)
From Cosmopolitan

Canadian judge Robin Camp is facing possible removal from the bench for the inexcusable comments he made to the complainant in a 2014 rape case.

On Monday, the Canadian Judicial Council, a federal body that reviews judges, is sitting before closing arguments of the hearing to decide Camp's fate. According to the notice of allegations on the Council's website, the remarks Camp made to the complainant - an anonymous woman who described how she was raped over a kitchen sink at a house party when she was 19 - are not only misguided but alarming: "Why didn't you just sink your bottom down into the basin so he couldn't penetrate you?" he asked her. "Why couldn't you just keep your knees together?... If she skews her pelvis slightly she can avoid him."

"[S]ex and pain sometimes go together," the judge added. "I don't believe there's any talk of an attack really... There is no real talk of real force." And the slut-shaming kicker: "Young wom[e]n want to have sex, particularly if they'redrunk," Camp stated. "She knew she was drunk Is not an onus on her tobe more careful?"

The Globe and News reports that during the hearing to investigate Camp, the woman, now 24 years old, testified about her re-traumatization at Camp's hands during the trial two years ago. Now, she worries that other rape survivors will read Camp's comments and stay silent about what happened to them. "He made me hate myself and he made me feel like I was some kind of slut," she said. "I felt ill and dizzy and I hoped I would faint just so he would stop. I was so confused during the trial." At the trial's conclusion, Camp decided that the version of events set forward by the accused rapist, Alexander Wagar, was more plausible than the woman's, and he acquitted him. The Alberta Court of Appeal overturned the ruling, however, and Wagar will be retried in November of this year.

Story continues

Camp may be an extreme example, but he's no anomaly in the justice system, which is under growing scrutiny for prioritizing sexual assaulters' POVs over sexual assault survivors' rights. In March, California judge Aaron Persky was excoriated for sentencing Brock Turner to just six months in jail for his three felony counts of sexual assault: Anything longer, Persky reasoned, "would have a severe impact" on the 23-year rapist. Last month, Colorado judge Patrick Butler sentenced 22-year-old Austin Wilkerson to two years of supervised probation after Butler admitted to raping an unconscious woman. A petition to remove Butler now has over 80,000 signatures.

According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, sexual assault is already underreported: Only 344 out of every 1,000 rapes are brought to the police, and just 13 of these lead to cases that are referred to prosecutors. Rulings like the ones Camp, Persky, and Butler delivered only discourage more survivors from coming forward.

Follow Hayley on Twitter.

You Might Also Like
Jurnee Smollett-Bell holding her baby bump on the red carpet. (Photo: Getty Images)

Jurnee Smollett-Bell is expecting her first child, and its a life event that is inspiring the devout activist to cling even tighter to her ideals of social equality. As an actress shes appeared in such hit shows as Friday Night Lights and WGN Americas Underground, but the 29-year-old also dedicates her time to charitable endeavors and championing feminism, making an effort to surround herself with like-minded individuals. During a recent talk with Yahoo Style, Smollett-Bell revealed that her husband, Josiah Bell, and brothers consider themselves advocates for womens rights. Its definitely helped me a lot being married to a feminist, she reveals. He roots for me. Hes my cheerleader.

The actress, whos a staunch advocate for Black Lives Matter and equal roles for females in Hollywood, has recently found a new area of social injustice to focus on: the treatment of working parents. Shes challenging the Screen Actors Guilds policies and even nudging the union to rethink its childcare and maternity leave options for working actors.

Here, Bell discusses her definition of a modern-day feminism, being in awe of her pregnant body, and why the world will be a much better place if the needs of females are taken more seriously.

Yahoo Style: You recently spoke on a BlogHer panel about being a NextGen feminist. What drives you to be so outspoken about feminism?

Jurnee Smollett-Bell: I feel like its ever evolving. The needs and desires of women are becoming more and more prevalent and as a society, we have to address it. I think the economy does better when women are doing better. When we service women and children, its just evident that we all benefit from it. And for me, I have my experience with the activism work I do but also as an actress, I cant put a price tag on my soul because of it. Its not always easy to navigate this industry, just in the very complex issues I deal with as a woman and as a feminist  everything from the fact that only 4 percent of the directors working in the industry are African American females. The fact that women account for little over 30 percent of all speaking roles in film is pretty pathetic. And oftentimes the roles are girlfriend roles and wife roles and you are there to just give a man your sympathy. And thats something Ive always fought against. Its very uninteresting to play those roles, to go to set and apply a bunch of makeup to just be pretty. Thats boring. I think its a complex issue. Its not just as simple as equal pay, which is important. Its also diving into really what our needs are and I think that were learning that our needs are very much complex but its not less important to address them and meet them.

Story continues

People hear the word feminist and a lot of connotations come up. What is your definition of a feminist?



The definition is ever-evolving. I think its just realizing that in order for us all to excel, we need to be passionate in making sure that the needs of women and girls are met  whether its education, opportunities, whether its equal pay, whether its making sure there is child care, whether it is rights and protecting our healthcare rights and rights to make decisions about our own bodies. You can be a male or female. My brothers, my husband are feminists and theyll say it all the time. Its just because they know the importance of meeting the needs of girls and women. Whether you are male or female, you benefit when women excel. Women hold up our society.

What are the benefits of being married to a male feminist?

Its pretty awesome! He grew up with three sisters, and his mom is his best. Hell be the first to correct his friends. Its so cool because I dont even have to do it. If his friend makes an inappropriate comment or calls a woman out or is just ignorant about a topic or something like that, you cant shut Josiah up. Hes super passionate about it. And it wasnt even something I had to educate him on. I give his mom a lot of credit for that because, I think, because theyve always been so close, he just personally feels invested. He personally feels the injustice when women feel the injustice. Its a personal assault to him. And so for me, its pretty awesome. I think when you navigate a household and when you are married and when you have two people who have strong opinions and strong careers and strong visions and strong dreams, its definitely helped me a lot being married to a feminist. He roots for me. Hes my cheerleader. So when Im on set working for 16 hours, hes not giving me an attitude for that. Hes like, Go baby. Go shine! It benefits me in big and small ways.

You guys are going to be the ultimate parents and will have very forward-thinking children.

Yeah! I feel blessed. I feel excited. I know we wont be perfect, but there is an amazing book that Alfre Woodard gave me called Whole Child/Whole Parent that Im reading. And one of the things it says in that is its not important to be a perfect parent, its important to be a searching parent. And I love that so much because Im such a perfectionist in my life and the pressure of being a parent is huge. But when you really take that off and you say, You know what? I want to make mistakes in front of my child. I want them to see me in all my imperfections and I want them to see me searching and growing and learning. Thats a whole other chapter Im entering, but Im excited about it.

Does getting ready to bring a child into the world make you cling a little tighter to some of these female equality issues that you are passionate about? Have you noticed yourself caring in a more intense way?

Well, yeah. Im just seeing how it affects me. I will soon be a working mom. I am about to start shooting Season 2 of Underground next week, so I see how it personally will affect me. Its funny, I was just talking with a friend of mine and we were like, I wonder if this industry is just more advanced in the nation in protecting working moms. I made an anonymous call to our guild to just be like, Hey, so what is the protection that you guys provide? Do you provide stipulations for working moms or is there a daycare on set? I just asked all these questions and got a very frank answer of No. Youre just like any other actor and you kind of have to negotiate it on your own. And I was like, Oh. I see. We havent thought about this. We havent actually thought that it was important to protect working moms. And there really is no template out there about it, which I think we have a lot to do. For instance, I have a friend who is an actress and she was very afraid to even bring her child on set or fly home and ask for the time that she was off for a week to fly home and see her child and things like this. And I was just blown away by this. I was like, Wait. Were in 2016? Hello, people. We shouldnt still be afraid of these things. We should be able to navigate being a whole woman and all that that means.

I know a lot of actresses bring their children on set but I didnt know it was just something that they kind of did around the system.

Yeah, which is something I kind of thought too. But Im new to this world. This is all new for me. I dont know what moms do. I am starting to talk to other moms who are in the profession to find out what they do. It is just interesting. There is not really a template set up. I think everyone just kind of negotiates their own situation. Look, Im not on my soapbox crying, because we get paid a lot of money to live out our dreams and do what we love. And then you have the mom who works at the grocery store, and she might not get the ability to negotiate with her boss. But it just definitely is indicative to me of how far we have to go as a nation.

Are you at all worried about going back to work on Underground and filming such an intense, dark role while pregnant?

Its a land of unknowns for me. Its a bunch of firsts, which keeps my life exciting. I have an amazingly supportive team and my husband. Underground is incredibly supportive and excited. I will have to let you know how it goes after we do this. But I love what I do. Im an artist, so I want my child now to experience the whole person of who I am. In that instance, Im excited about it.

Have you been having fun dressing your baby bump?

Its difficult! Its more difficult than I thought. Honestly, its fun but my bump has finally now popped. It definitely is fun to be like, Whats this? And then Im growing in strange areas. Its just amazing. Im just in awe of the womans body, what the female body is capable of. Ive gained a deeper appreciation during my pregnancy. I think the hardest thing will be wearing these long, hot dresses in Georgia for season two. That will be harder than anything else. But well see. We have an amazing costume designer, Karyn Wagner, so Im sure shell come up with something that is great for the character and great for me.

Do you know if youre having a boy or girl?

Not yet. Were not talking about it yet. Were just keeping it close. But were very excited!

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
Kanye West doesn't want anyone else on his stage!

The 39-year-old rapper, whose floating platform has been the signature set-piece of his Saint Pablo Tour, dealt with a fan somehow trying to raise himself onto the stage at the Atlanta, Georgia, show.

As seen in a Twitter video from the concert, West approaches the climber during the song, "Power," and shoo's him with a wave of his hand, before the eager fan falls back into the crowd below.

WATCH: Kanye West Kicks Off 'Saint Pablo' Tour on an Epic Platform Floating Above the Audience

A dude really tried climbing on stage with Kanye @TeamKanyeDaily pic.twitter.com/JepTYs3gPm  Chase Brown (@Chase_Brown713) September 13, 2016

Hopefully that guy is OK!

Meanwhile, West also seemingly addressed criticisms of his recent Yeezy Season 4 fashion show in NYC last week, which was plagued by heat and model shoe malfunctions.

WATCH: Kanye West Covers 'W Magazine' After Tweeting About 'Mission to Create the Most Transformative Experiences'

"I die on the internet every day for y'all," West said in an emotional speech between songs. "I look stupid so y'all don't have to be afraid. Don't be afraid to make mistakes."

(Some NSFW language in the videos below).

WATCH: Beyonce Has Flirty Moment With Jay Z at Kanye West's Concert -- See the Adorable Instagram!

Story continues

The sentimental speech comes after West directly addressed the fashion show criticism at his Washington D.C. show on Sept. 8.

"Today, I needed to hear these songs," West admitted to his fans. "I'm talking about the fashion show yesterday."

"I'm feeling like the Cavs right now," the rapper explained. "When you the LeBron, if you don't bring home that ring, it's your fault."

Kanye giving himself a pep talk about #YeezySeason4 in the middle of Power. Chin up, Ye. pic.twitter.com/ewynSIQsmK  Victor Nguyen-Long (@VNL) September 9, 2016

WATCH: Kim Kardashian, Scott Disick, and Kylie and Kendall Jenner Rock Out in the Crowd at Kanye West's NYC Show

Watch the video below for more on Yeezy Season 4.

Related Articles
UPDATE, 3:15 PM: Hit with a more than $12 million defamation lawsuit today, the director of the Katie Couric-fronted and -produced anti-firearms documentary Under The Gun responded this afternoon. And even though shes admitted in the past to selectively editing footage, Stephanie Soechtig is not backing down.

Its ironic that people who so passionately defend the Second Amendment want to trample the rights guaranteed to a filmmaker under the First, said Stefan Friedman, a spokesperson for Soechtig on Tuesday. Stephanie stands by Under The Gun, and will not stop her work on behalf of victims of gun violence.

Soechtig, Courtic and cabler Epix were all named as defendants in the jury-seeking complaint that calls out how members of Virginia Citizens Defense League were shown in the film being unable to offer an argument against background checks on gun purchases. An exchange with Couric that both the host and Soechtig have said didnt go down as shown on screen.

Contacted by Deadline, Epix responded earlier Tuesday, saying it had no role in its creation or production and should therefore not be a party to this lawsuit. So far, Couric has not made public remarks about the lawsuit filed in federal court in Virginia.

Citing the now-admitted editing techniques that misrepresented them, plaintiffs the VCDL, Patricia Webb and Daniel Hawes  who appeared in the docu which bowed at Sundance  want damages as well as an injunction essentially pulling the movie until the false depictions are fixed or removed.

PREVIOUS, 10:17 AM: First Katie Couric was called out for self-admitted editing in an exchange with members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League in the documentary Under The Gun. Now the ex-CBS anchor, the films director and cabler Epix are being sued for more than $12 million over the sleight of hand.

The Defendants manipulated the footage in service of an agenda: They wanted to establish that there is no basis for opposing universal background checks by fooling viewers into believing that even a panel of pro-Second Amendment advocates could not provide one, says the jury-trial-seeking defamation suit (read it here) filed Tuesday in Virginia federal court against Couric, director Stephanie Soechtig, Atlas Films and Epix as Studio 3 Partners LLC.

Story continues

Plaintiffs the VCDL, Patricia Webb and Daniel Hawes, who appear in the docu, want compensatory damages of $12 million and punitive damages of $350,000 for each individual plaintiff. They also want an injunction against further airing or viewing of Under the Gun until false depictions of them are removed.

Couric and Soechtig did not respond to request for comment from Deadline on the lawsuit. Of course, as the filing notes and a court will too, the host and director already have admitted that they tweaked the responses for dramatic effect. Epix, on the other hand, did have a clear response to the suit.

The claims against Epix in this lawsuit are completely without merit, said a spokesperson for the channel today. Under the Gun premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim. Epix saw the Sundance screening and acquired the documentary at that time. The network had no role in its creation or production and should therefore not be a party to this lawsuit.

epix logo

After the Sundance debut in January, the documentary fronted and produced by Couric aired on Epix on May 16. After the VCDL raised concerns about the way their members were shown in the film and their seemingly dumbfounded silence lasting several seconds over why background checks could be a bad idea, Soechtig and Couric both admitted editing choices had been made on the interviews.

My intention was to provide a pause for the viewer to have a moment to consider this important question before presenting the facts on Americans opinions on background checks, said the director on May 25 with support from Epix. I never intended to make anyone look bad, and I apologize if anyone felt that way.

Noting the film misrepresented the actual exchange, Couric on May 30 said she had pointed out the issue to Soechtig in the edit suite but accepted the directors choices. When VCDL members recently pointed out that they had in fact immediately answered this question, I went back and reviewed it and agree that those eight seconds do not accurately represent their response, she threw in there too.

The fictional exchange is defamatory because it holds the Plaintiffs up as objects of ridicule by falsely representing that, as experts in their respective pro-Second Amendment trades, they had no basis for their opposition to universal background checks, the heavily visual 52-page filing claims. The Defendants actions were malicious, willful, and wanton, and evidence a conscious disregard for the rights of the Plaintiffs, it adds.

The VCDL, Webb and Hawes are represented by Thomas Clare, Elizabeth Locke and Megan Meier of Alexandra, VAs Clare Locke LLP.

Related stories

'Get Shorty': Chris O'Dowd & Ray Romano Poised To Star In Epix Series

'Berlin Station' Creator On Being Compared To 'Homeland': Show Depicts "Normal People With An Abnormal Job"

Nick Nolte's 'Graves' POTUS Not Ronald Reagan Parody, Creator Insists To Dubious TV Critics - TCA
Katie Couric and a group of filmmakers were sued for defamation on Tuesday by a Virginia gun rights group that claims that their documentary Under the Gun was edited to make it look like they had no basis for their opposition to universal background checks.

The $12 million lawsuit, filed in federal court in Virginia, contends that the manipulated footage harmed the reputation of the Virginia Citizens Defense League and its members. Two of them, Daniel Hawes and Patricia Webb, were featured in the documentary and are plaintiffs in the case. Couric narrated the documentary and was credited as producer.

At issue is an exchange in the documentary in which Couric asks the members, If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?

The camera then shows the members silent and looking away.

After nearly nine seconds of silent footage  instead of the responses that the VCDL members had actually provided  the Defendants inserted footage of someone closing the cylinder of a fully-loaded revolver, driving home the point that the exchange was over, the lawsuit stated.

In reality, the lawsuit says that unedited footage shows that members immediately began explaining their position on background checks and to rebut the premise of Courics question. The suit says that the members spent six minutes responding to Courics question.

The organization notes in the lawsuit that Couric, after reviewing the footage before the documentarys release, confronted its director, Stephanie Soechtig, and an editor for Atlas Films because the footage was misleading and misrepresented her exchange with the VCDL members. In response, Soechtig and the editor admitted they had intentionally manipulated the footage. But, the lawsuit said, they refused to correct the footage. Soechtig and Atlas Films are also named as defendants in the case, along with Epix.

The lawsuit also cites Courics statement after a controversy erupted over the edited footage, which included a transcript of their responses. But the Citizens Defense League said in its lawsuit that even those responses were edited.

Story continues

Defendants deliberate and continued misrepresentations of Courics exchange with the VCDL shows that they did not really regret their actions or want to set the record straight, but that they were attempting to claim the moral high ground while doubling down on their misrepresentation of the VCDL, the lawsuit states.

Epic said that the claims against it are completely without merit. Under the Gun premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it received critical acclaim. Epic saw the Sundance screening and acquired the documentary at that time. The network had no role in its creation or production and should therefore not be a party to this lawsuit.

Couric and Soechtig didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.

Related stories

Hollywood's Biggest Stars Show Support at 'Stand Up to Cancer' Telecast

Nat Geo Acquires Climate Change Pic from Leonardo DiCaprio, Partners with Katie Couric on Gender Doc

Where Yahoo Stars Like Katie Couric Could Fit in Verizon's Content Universe
wells fargo window broken

Wells Fargo is facing a tidal wave of bad news.

The bank has a mounting series of problems stemming from the news that since 2011 employees had improperly opened accounts for customers.

In addition to a settlement on Thursday, Wells has been hit with backlash over other things such as executive compensation and questions about its debt.

The crux of it all

The catalyst for all the bad news is the opening of fraudulent accounts on behalf of customers.

Starting in 2011, Wells Fargo employees opened 2 million bank and credit card accounts in customers' names without their knowledge. The goal was to generate fees for the company and hit aggressive sales targets for employees.

After an investigation, the bank was accused of improperly opening accounts by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Los Angeles prosecutor. It settled on Thursday for $185 million.

In addition to the fine, 5,300 employees have been fired in connection with the improper openings  roughly 1% of Wells Fargo's workforce.

The fallout

Since the announcement of the settlement, Wells Fargo not only has had to deal with the financial fallout, but also with a public relations disaster.

On Monday, five US senators on the Senate banking committee wrote a letter to Richard Shelby, head of the committee, asking for an investigation and hearings to address the matter.

"The magnitude of this situation deserves a thorough and comprehensive review," the letter said. "As members of the Senate committee of jurisdiction, we should undertake prompt action to fully investigate the cause, scope, and impact of this event, as well as understand and consider implementing any lessons learned."

The hearing is set for September 20, and according to Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research at Compass Point, it will likely evoke memories of the 2013 London Whale hearing, where the bank's top brass were dragged up in front of lawmakers.

Story continues

Elizabeth Warren

"Our sense is that lawmaker questioning  particularly from Senators Brown (D-OH), Warren (D-MA), and Merkley (D-OR)  will focus on establishing a narrative that Wells Fargo is either 'too big to manage' or its management was willfully complicit in the fraud," Boltansky said.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who signed the letter to Shelby, told CNN that Wells had committed a "staggering fraud." Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton commented on the settlement by Wells, calling the account openings "outrageous behavior."

Moody's, a credit rating agency, issued a warning that the settlement may have a negative effect on Wells' debt because of image concerns and called the incident "highly disturbing."

"We do expect some immediate damage to Wells Fargo's reputation from this embarrassing episode," the Moody's report said.

On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told CNBC that from what he had seen, Wells Fargo had participated in "bad behavior," and that the accusations showed bank regulation should not be rolled back.

"What I can tell you is there's a lot of talk in Washington these days about rolling back Dodd-Frank, about rolling back the law, changing the law that created the agency that uncovered and took action against this," he said. "This ought to be a moment when people stop and remember how dangerous the system is when you don't have the proper protections in place."

Wells Fargo's response

In addition to the settlement, Wells announced that it was eliminating its sales goals for retail employees. The thinking is that targeted goals for opening accounts and generating fees led employees to cut corners and open accounts improperly.

"We are eliminating product sales goals because we want to make certain our customers have full confidence that our retail bankers are always focused on the best interests of customers," CEO John Stumpf said in a statement about the change.

John Stumpf

Despite the shift, Stumpf said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that there "was no incentive to do bad things" at Wells and laid the blame on the employees rather than the culture of the firm.

Speaking at Barclays' Global Financial Services Conference, Wells Fargo CFO John Shrewsberry said the fraudulent accounts were not opened in order to generate revenue for the bank. Instead, a few employees opened them to boost their performance.

"It was really more at the lower end of the performance scale, where people apparently were making bad choices to hang on to their job," Shrewsberry said.

$125 million

Also drawing the ire of lawmakers and pundits is the $125 million retirement payment going to Wells Fargo executive Carrie Tolstedt upon her retirement at the end of the year.

Wells Fargo

Tolstedt heads up the community banking division that in part oversees the retail banking and credit card operations part of the company and which was responsible for the improperly opened accounts.

Tolstedt is scheduled to step down at the end of the year and receive roughly $125 million in stock and other compensation from the bank.

The retirement is not a result of the findings, according to Wells Fargo; Tolstedt announced the move in July. Additionally, these compensation packages are usually set well in advance.

Still, in a time of public relations struggles, it's another headache for the bank.

Going forward

Wells Fargo's stock has taken a bit of a hit since the news, dropping by roughly $3 per share in the past week  just shy of 6%.

The Senate investigation still looms, and the public relations mess will nag the company, but outside of the settlement cost it is unclear what impact the past week will have on Wells Fargo.

So far it hasn't mattered too much  at least according to the company.

Shrewsberry said at the Barclays' conference that there has been little effect so far on customer behavior at Wells, but only time will tell if that remains the case.

NOW WATCH: KRUGMAN: Obamacare was done 'on the cheap' and now it is struggling





More From Business Insider


Keith Olbermann this morning announced hes got a new show. Its not on television. Hes hosting a biweekly series for GQ called The Closer with Keith Olbermann.

Were trying to be at the spearhead of whats obvious in television information programming: whether news or sports, its migrating to some form of online/download, just as broadcast was migrating to cable back when my tenure in the industry (two years) was twice as long as my new employer CNNs (one year), Olbermann told Deadline in an email exchange today.

The program will focus on the election cycle, but may go off the rails some days because, well, Keith Olbermann.

Itll basically recap and categorize the most extraordinary things of Trumps campaign so far, so that we can get a sense of the crazy forest rather than just the crazy trees, the former MSNBC and ESPN show host explained.

The goal will be two commentaries each week, he said, adding, We figure to produce more than that, plus periodic interviews, but exactly when and how often  thats to be determined.

Overall the commentaries will be very familiar to viewers of the old Special Comments  and just as unpredictable in length, he described.

Expect the project to lift off around 8 AM ET tomorrow, with the first commentary clocking in at about 17 minutes in length, accompanied by a text version with hyperlinks for your reference, further reading, etc.

In doing preliminary work on other scripts, I think we also have a seven-minute piece and a three-minute one in the pipeline. Its the internet, it doesnt have to be one size fits all, Olbermann said happily.

Olbermann called it extraordinary, and extraordinarily moving, that we are filming The Closer at GQ  which is in The World Trade Center. Thats the same site where I began my TV career for CNN 35 years ago last month.

Story continues

In case youre wondering what to expect, we asked Olbermann his thoughts on todays big election-cycle story, Hillary Clintons pneumonia. Its hilarious to see people on television explain how none of this wouldve been a problem had the diagnosis been announced Friday. Bullshit! The reaction wouldve been Oh! Suddenly she has pneumonia! Ill bet! Thats convenient. How dare she take time off? What, she only got it today?, Olbermann shot back.

We sometimes denigrate voters, but the easiest group to spin are todays TV folks. As in this case, theyre self-spinning.

Olbermanns take on Matt Lauers Commander-in-Chief Forum?

About Matt, well, I think were lucky he didnt follow up one of Trumps lies by saying, And the next thing thatll float right past me will be our old pal Snoopy, whos been a Thanksgiving Day staple since 1968!, he wrote back.

Between that and the Brokaw gaffe  [Brokaw cited, on air, a Republican who was inside, and he was raising questions as wellsaying he didnt know if this is true, but here are the incidents]  holy cow. I picked the right week to not be Andy Lack.

Heres Olbermanns tease posted this morning for The Closer:

In March, Olbermann called Trump just perhaps the most dangerous presidential candidate since the guy in the middle of the Civil War who wanted to give up in 1864. Back then, appearing on The View, Olbermann thought the GOP establishment would successfully bar Trump from getting the nomination at the party convention  because thats what they do.Theyre really good of preventing things from happening that should otherwise happen, he forecast, incorrectly.

Olbermann, who most recently left ESPN in July of 15, got maybe the best real estate ad ever, when The Washington Post ran his opinion piece, I Cant Stand to Live in a Trump Building Anymore announcing he was selling his home in a Trump tower. More recently, he authored a guide to surviving media coverage of Trump, for Politico.

Related stories

Seth Meyers Scolds Hillary Clinton For "Basket Of Deplorables" Line: "Rules Are Different For You"

Samantha Bee Torches Presidential Race Coverage In 'Full Frontal' Return

Jimmy Kimmel On Hillary's Health, Hosting The Emmys & Why Trump Is One Of The Best Guests Ever
Bevin speaks at a picnic on Aug. 6, in Fancy Farm, Ky. (Photo: Timothy D. Easley/AP)

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said conservatives may need to turn to physical violence in order to protect the United States against contemporary liberalism.

The Republican governor put forth the controversial suggestion after speaking of the degradation of society during an impassioned, 15-minute speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The provocative comments started to gain national attention at the start of this week.

America is worth fighting for ideologically. I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we dont have to do it physically. But that may, in fact, be the case, he told the crowd.

Bevin suggested that if Democrat Hillary Clinton were elected president, she would set the nation on a dangerous course that might require bloodshed to correct. He told the audience that the candle of liberty might go out on our watch.

To hammer home his point, he paraphrased a famous quote from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children, he said. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Dont let it happen.

Bevin encouraged young conservatives to speak up, be bold, sound the alarm and wake up others. He told the conference attendees to not keep what theyve learned from speakers and their books to themselves.

According to Bevin, too many people these days are following the example of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who infamously tried to appease Adolf Hitler and promised peace for our time, as opposed to his successor, Winston Churchill, who is widely celebrated for understanding and combating the threat of Nazism.

Story continues

He said liberals mock conservatives into silence by accusing them of being intolerant when they speak their minds. He lamented, for instance, that many conservatives have remained silent concerning the atrocity of abortion.

Its a slippery slope. First were killing children. Then its dont ask, dont tell. Now its this gender-bending kind of dont ask, dont be a bigot, dont be unreasonable, dont be unenlightened, heaven forbid, just keep your mouth shut.

On Friday, at a banquet in Washington, D.C., Bevin was awarded the Distinguished Christian Statesman Award from the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, a ministry of Evangelism Explosion International.

Bevins office has not responded to a request for comment from Yahoo News, but he did post a statement on Twitter encouraging people to listen to his comments in their entirety. He suggested that the mention of bloodshed in his remarks was a reference to military sacrifice and that any intelligent person will easily understand the message if they listen to the speech.

Related video:
SEOUL (Reuters) - It may take "considerable time" for Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd <117930.KS> to secure loans from major shareholder Korean Air Lines Co Ltd <003490.KS> to help unload cargo, Yonhap news agency reported citing South Korea's financial regulator.

Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong said in a meeting with the ruling party that it was uncertain whether Hanjin Shipping would be able to secure the funding from Korean Air at all.

Korean Air on Saturday approved a plan to provide a loan of 60 billion won ($54.16 million) but only after the shipper gave a stake in its Long Beach Terminal as collateral.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Cynthia Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Any possible participation of the Russian government or secret services in the hacking of the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) data "is out of question", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying on Tuesday by Russian news agencies. WADA said on Tuesday that confidential athlete data relating to the Rio Olympics had been hacked by a Russian cyber espionage group that had published some of it and was threatening to release more. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Alison Williams)
Kubo and Monkey (Charlize Theron) in Kubo and the Two Strings. (United International Pictures) Kubo and Monkey (Charlize Theron) in Kubo and the Two Strings. (United International Pictures)

Secret ending? No.



Running time: 102 minutes (~1.75 hours)

Kubo and the Two Strings is a 3D stop-motion animated fantasy action adventure film about a boy on a quest to gather the lost pieces of his fathers armour, in an attempt to prevent his demented grandfather from killing him.

It features the voice talents of Art Parkinson (Kubo), Charlize Theron (Monkey), Matthew McConaughey (Beetle), Ralph Fiennes (the Moon King), and Rooney Mara (the Sisters). It is rated PG.

Although exams are just around the corner, Kubo and the Two Strings is perfect for the whole family, with its touching themes and fluid animation. It might seem like an overdone premise (do we really need another Western adaptation of Eastern culture in animated form?) but its one thats executed well without fetishising the Japanese elements of the film. Its only after the film ends that you realise the significance of the title, and how it plays into the theme of family and memories.

Highlights

Fluid animation

Kubo and the Two String may be stop-motion animation, but the actions are so smooth and seamless that you can hardly believe that this was done with physical objects, especially since they have three distinctly different movement styles to work with (human, monkey, and giant insect).

The textures are similarly very well polished, with hardly any imperfections on the props or characters. The only deformities are intentional ones to show injuries and damage taken by the characters. Its one of the most impressive feats of stop-motion out there.

Coming-of-age themes

At heart, Kubo (Art Parkinson) is lost, lonely boy whos looking for his family to complete himself. His journey to make himself whole is one that everyone can identify with, especially since Kubo must learn to come to terms with his situation in order to grow as a person.

As a character, hes also easy to empathise with because he tries his best despite his circumstances. And when he finally matures (just in time to battle the final enemy), we feel that weve grown with him.

Story continues

Interesting fight scenes

The fights take place across spectacular locations and with interestingly weird enemies, and the fact that theyre all choreographed through stop-motion makes them it even more awe-inspiring.

Even though Kubo and his companions use magic, which is usually ill-defined and vague, you still instinctively understand their capabilities and limitations, meaning that the tension in the battles is real.

The twist in the tale

Kubo and the Two Strings has an unexpected twist thats also rather heartbreaking when it occurs.

But its this twist that fuels the emotional drive for the last Act, and gives Kubo a tangible reason to face his greatest challenge. Dont think too much about it though, or you might find some inconsistencies in the story.

Letdowns

A lacklustre ending

Although most of the fights in the film are exciting and innovative, the final battle lacks the same magic.

In terms of plot and emotion, its resolved satisfactorily. But the actual physical conflict leaves much to be desired, and the resolution to the battle is flat.



Still, Kubo and the Two Strings is one of the few times that the West has done Eastern culture some justice.

Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? Yes.

Should you watch this at weekend movie ticket prices? Yes, unless you dislike animation.

Score: 3.75/5

Kubo and the Two Strings opens in cinemas:

- 8 September, 2016 (Singapore)

- 25 August, 2016 (Malaysia)

- 12 October, 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.


KELOWNA, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Laguna Blends Inc. (CSE: LAG) (OTC: LAGBF) (Frankfurt: LB6A.F) (the "Company" or "Laguna"), a network marketing company, today announced the VIP launch of the CannaCeuticals "Canna" CBD Skin care products. Existing affiliates in the USA will be able to purchase the products to sell and consume.

Cannaceuticals fast tracks Laguna to become a major player within the skin care industry. Laguna will make the Cannaceutical skin care products available for sale on September 15th 2016.

Laguna will leverage its existing affiliate marketing network to sell Canna products in the USA and in the future pending regulatory approval, in Canada, Asia, Europe and Mexico. The global skin care industry is currently estimated at $121 billion US, while the skin care market in the USA alone is expected to reach $10.7 billion US by 2018.

Stuart Gray, CEO of Laguna Blends said, "Canna's skin care products are made with pure CBD extracts hailing from the crisp, clean air of Switzerland. CBD is recognized as a superior antioxidant and offers potential anti-inflammatory benefits. When combined with other essential ingredients, the CBD extracts at the center of Canna's skin care line offer a powerful punch of anti-aging properties and fast, visible results. What's paramount is in a recent clinical study evaluating the efficacy of Canna's CBD facial serum, test subjects using the product noted a 100% overall improvement to the appearance of skin in just two weeks."

Sherrie Berry, the formulator of Cannaceuticals by Laguna Blends explains in a 19-minute interview why the products work so well and why they're unique in the skin care industry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXlAzDAm6FM

What is Cannabidiol

Cannabidiol (CBD) is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid found in abundance in the hemp plant. Hemp genetics are naturally rich in cannabidiol as well as other non-psychoactive cannabinoids and phytochemicals. Cannabidiol, and all the other cannabinoids in the cannabis plant, were patented by the United States Government in 2003 as neuroprotectants and antioxidants.

Story continues

None of the statements contained in this news release are health claims and the FDA has not evaluated these claims. Laguna's products and proposed products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

About CannaCeuticals

Swiss heritage is at the core of Canna's revolutionary skincare products. It's pure, cosmeceutical-grade CBD extract hails from the crisp, clean air of Switzerland, but Canna's heritage goes much further than that. Swiss culture is known for its precision and perfectionism, and CannaCeuticals radiates that same standard in every formula it produces. Canna's team of formulators are made up of chemists and product developers that analyze every detail, sourcing ingredients from all ends of the earth to create the most balanced, highly efficacious, anti-aging CBD skincare products in the world.

CannaCeuticals CBD7 anti-aging skincare products incorporate cannabidiol (CBD), a superior antioxidant and a potential anti-inflammatory agent, both of which are significant in anti-aging. Canna's Swiss heritage influences a sense of unity in its products, and it combines CBD with other essential anti-aging ingredients to create formulas that pack a powerful punch.

About Laguna Blends Inc.

Laguna is a network marketing company that generates retail sales through independent affiliates. Affiliates utilize tools and technology that enable them to build an international business from their own home or anywhere else in the world. This technology replaces the need for expensive travel and hotel meetings.

The Company is currently focused on the nutritional health benefits derived from hemp. Laguna's first product category as an entry to market are functional beverage products that contain hemp and other efficacious ingredients. Laguna's initial products to market are the following:

" Caffe " is an instant, "just add water" hot coffee beverage that is infused with both whey and hemp protein. With 2 grams of protein in every serving, Laguna's proprietary product packs a powerful protein punch. Caffe, contains instant coffee, whey protein hydrolysate, hemp protein, natural flavors.

"Pro369" is a single serving, "on-the-go," plant based, instant, hemp protein that is served cold and comes in 4 delicious flavors. Pro369 is water soluble and can be directly mixed in water, added to milk, almond milk or coconut milk. Pro369 can also be blended in a shake or smoothie. Pro369 is also a source of Omegas, 3, 6 and 9 and contains ginseng.

Laguna Blends has been granted approval from Health Canada for four powdered Pro369 flavours: Chocolate Banana, Mixed Berry and Vanilla Caramel and Tropical Powder. Pro369 contains Hemp protein, natural flavors, stevia, and American ginseng.

The Minister of Health from Health Canada has granted Laguna a product license along with a Natural Product Number ("NPN") for all four of the Pro369 Flavours. They are all listed under the same NPN.

A source of protein that helps build and repair body tissues.

Source of amino acids involved in muscle protein synthesis.

Assists in the building of lean muscle.

An adaptogen to help maintain a healthy immune system.

Supportive therapy for the promotion of healthy glucose levels.

Hemp has long been recognized by the health and nutrition industry as a super food, cited in many publications as a balanced source of all ingredients required to achieve health and wellness.

HempOmega

HempOmega is an environmentally sustainable, vegetarian source of Omegas 3 and 6 that boasts a superior nutrient profile. A water soluble, homogenous, powdered ingredient, it can be easily integrated and/or manipulated, with no unpleasant taste or chemical contamination - opening up entirely new product formulation opportunities. Hemp Omega's greater ability to endure the digestive process delivers unmatched bioavailability, thereby maximizing its potential health benefits.

The Company sells its products through its independent affiliates in the USA and Canada.

HempOmega is a Trademark owned by Naturally Splendid Enterprises, Ltd. and is used under license by Laguna Blends Inc.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Stuart Gray"

Chief Executive Officer

CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS:

QualityStocks

Scottsdale, Arizona

www.QualityStocks.com

480.374.1336

COMPANY:

Laguna Blends

ir@lagunablends.com

www.lagunablends.com

www.lagunaworld.com



Join Us On Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/LagunaBlends/

Twitter: @LagunaBlends

Forward-Looking Information:

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to statements regarding the Company's business, products and future the Company's business, its product offerings and plans for sales and marketing. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Such forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance and developments to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risks that the Company's products and plan will vary from those stated in this news release and the Company may not be able to carry out its business plans as expected. Except as required by law, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation, and does not intend, to update any forward looking statements or forward-looking information in this news release. The statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release.

SOURCE: Laguna Blends Inc.
edward snowden

Just days before the release of the film "Snowden," ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and his supporters are pushing to secure a presidential pardon that could be the last opportunity he has to get back on US soil.

"This is about the best timing that you could get, with President Obama reaching the end of his presidency," Brad Moss, a national-security lawyer, told Business Insider. "And knowing that neither Trump or Clinton are going to be in any way amenable to the idea. You've got the movie coming out. This is his last chance."

The pardon campaign kicked off this week with a petition from the American Civil Liberties Union calling for clemency and the launch of a new website, PardonSnowden.org. The renewed public relations push follows a similar call of support from the editorial board of The New York Times in January 2014.

But Moss  and even one of the journalists who interviewed Snowden in Hong Kong  thinks a pardon coming from Obama is nothing more than a remote possibility.

"Aside from Obama having a last-minute 'I just feel so guilty' type of moment, I just can't see him doing it," Moss said. "I think the intelligence community would go ballistic."

'It's a massive uphill battle'

On Monday, Snowden spoke to The Guardian's Ewen MacAskill about why he should be granted a pardon.

"I think when people look at the calculations of benefit, it is clear that in the wake of 2013 the laws of our nation changed," Snowden said. "The [US] Congress, the courts and the president all changed their policies as a result of these disclosures. At the same time there has never been any public evidence that any individual came to harm as a result."

He added: "If not for these disclosures, if not for these revelations, we would be worse off."

In 2015, a US appeals court ruled that the NSA's bulk collection of telephone metadata was unlawful  a clear vindication of one program Snowden had exposed.

But far more was in the leaked documents that Snowden handed over to journalists in Hong Kong in June 2013, many of which had nothing to do with constitutional rights violations against Americans.

Story continues

NSA exit

"I think it's a massive uphill battle, because what he's done ... he and his team are very good at this," Moss said. "They selectively highlight a narrow set of issues that he exposed."

"Section 215 surveillance and the Section 702 surveillance programs, those were legitimate issues to raise concerns about. You could argue that was legitimate whistleblowing," Moss said, though he noted that Snowden didn't go through the formal process for whistleblowers.

However, Snowden's supporters have noted that, as a contractor, Snowden did not have the same protections as those inside the government.

"But the rest of what he exposed had nothing to do with any of that: exposing how we spy on the Chinese, exposing how we were gathering all the phone calls in Iraq and Afghanistan. That has nothing to do with whistleblowing," Moss said. "That's what [signals intelligence] and operations are all about  spying on foreign adversaries and gathering data."

Beyond this, there are also some big, unanswered questions in the Snowden saga, such as accounting for the number of documents he actually took, and how and why he ended up in Moscow, where he remains under asylum.

Retracing Snowden's steps

Edward Snowden hong kong

Snowden arrived in Hong Kong from Hawaii on May 20, 2013, but he didn't meet with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras until 11 days later.

What he was doing during this time is still a question, though Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Snowden was meeting with his country's diplomats. Snowden was also later spotted entering the "skyscraper that housed the Russian consulate on three occasions," though this happened in early June, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Snowden frequently says critics should "ask the State Department" if they want to know how he ended up "stranded" in Russia, since his passport was revoked after he left Hong Kong. He says that he was headed to Latin America with Moscow as a layover.

But this begs the question: Wouldn't a person who was "trained as a spy" know that the Kremlin would be very interested in keeping him around?

"Without a doubt, a person with inside knowledge like that, live and in the flesh, would be a very useful catch," Mikhail Lyubimov, a 20-year veteran of the KGB, told Time in 2013. "He is carrying information of great importance."

And despite Snowden's claim that his passport was revoked while he was in the air headed to Moscow, his passport was voided by the US one day before he left Hong Kong. Still, he contends that he had no issues using it to leave China.

Meanwhile, as Snowden was working on his Hong Kong escape, the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks was busy trying to help him  with founder Julian Assange advising against him going to Latin America since "he would be physically safest in Russia."

julian assange

The organization provided him an Ecuadorian travel document that would help get him out of Hong Kong, but since it was unsigned, it would never get him beyond Moscow. WikiLeaks has never explained this discrepancy, and no one is quite sure whether Snowden used his US passport or the bunk Ecuadorian travel document to escape.

Snowden may not have intended to get stuck in Moscow, but WikiLeaks certainly guided him that way.

That's especially troubling when that organization has close ties to Russia and has chosen not to publish documents that could potentially embarrass the Kremlin.

The NSA source also denied taking any documents with him after he left the journalists on June 10, but this claim falls apart when examining an interview he gave to The South China Morning Post two days later, which included a disclosure of internet addresses in China that the NSA was attempting to hack.

"I did not release them earlier because I don't want to simply dump huge amounts of documents without regard to their content," Snowden told The Post's Lana Lam over encrypted chat. "I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists."

He added that he would like to leak more documents later to "journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published."

edward snowden film

Will he get a pardon?

Regardless of the benefits that may have come from some of Snowden's disclosures, it's highly likely that Obama, who has been critical of Snowden, will weigh the questionable circumstances of his flight from the US in his decision-making process.

And he'll also weigh a petition with nearly 60,000 signatures and what will likely be increased public support for Snowden once the film comes out. But so far, Obama's views have not changed.

"I give it no more than a 10% chance" of a pardon actually happening, Moss said.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday reiterated Obama's stance that Snowden should return to the US and face the charges against him.

Obama "will have an insane revolt from the intelligence community," John Schindler, a former NSA analyst and frequent Snowden critic, told Business Insider. "This is political la-la land."

Snowden's US lawyer, the ACLU's Ben Wizner, did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Instead, he directed us to attend a press conference regarding the pardon campaign set for Wednesday in New York.

NOW WATCH: This is the scariest part about being a sniper





More From Business Insider


* PDVSA confirms 2017 bond swap offer

* Pemex returns with bond sale, liability management trade

* Brazil's Ouro Verde picks banks to market US dollar bond

By Mike Gambale

NEW YORK, Sept 13 (IFR) - Below is a recap of primary issuance activity in the LatAm market on Tuesday:

Number of deals priced: 1

Total issuance: US$4bn

PEMEX

Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), Baa3/BBB+/BBB+, announced a US$ benchmark 144A/RegS w/ reg rights 2-part senior unsecured notes that include a 7-year (2023) and 31-year (2047). Active bookrunners: Barclays / Citi (B&D) / HSBC / MUFG / Natixis. Guarantors: Pemex Exploracion y Produccion, Pemex Transformacion Industrial, Pemex Perforacion y Servicios, Pemex Logistica, Pemex Cogeneracion y Servicios. Use of Proceeds: Fund concurrent cash tender offer, transaction fees and expenses for concurrent cash tender offer and exchange offer, finance investment program.

IPTS: 7yr 4.75% area, 31yr 6.75% area

PRICE GUIDANCE: 7yr 4.75% (+/- 12.5bp), 31yr 6.75% (#)

LAUNCH: US$4bn 2-part. US$2bn 7yr at 4.625%, US$2bn 31yr at 6.75%

PRICED: US$4bn 2-part total.

- US$2bn 4.625% cpn 7yr (9/21/23). At 100, yld 4.625%.

- US$2bn 6.75% cpn 31yr (9/21/47). At 100, yld 6.75%.

PIPELINE:

Ouro Verde Locacao e Servicio will start roadshows this week to market a possible US dollar 144A/RegS bond.

The company will be in London on September 14-15, and Switzerland on September 16.

The following week it will head to Los Angeles on September 19, Boston on September 20 and New York on September 21. The Brazilian company, rated BB-/BB-, leases heavy equipment, machinery and fleets of light vehicles. Bradesco, Santander and Scotiabank are organizing roadshows.

Mexico's Banco Inbursa is marketing a new US dollar 10-year senior unsecured bond, according to market sources. The roadshow finished Monday in New York and Los Angeles. Expected ratings are BBB+/BBB+. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and Credit Suisse have been mandated as leads.

Argentina's YPF (B3/NR/B) has mandated Credit Suisse and UBS to arrange fixed-income meetings in Switzerland on September 12-13. A potential debut Swiss franc unsecured debt offering may follow.

Story continues

JSL, a logistics services provider operating in Brazil, is roadshowing a possible 144A/Reg S senior unsecured US dollar bond. The borrower wrapped up meetings in New York on Tuesday. BB Securities, Bradesco BBI, Morgan Stanley and Santander have been mandated on the deal. Ratings are BB/BB by S&P and Fitch.

Bankers has started marketing a Green bond to help fund the construction and operation of Mexico City's new international airport.

The bond, which is being issued through a special purpose trust, is expected to be the first of up to US$6bn of such trades, allowing the borrower to create an extensive curve over time. Bondholders will be paid through cash flows collected from passenger charges from the current airport and the new Mexico City International Airport (NAICM) that will start operations in 2020.

The issuer will be London on Wednesday, Boston on Thursday and Los Angeles on Friday. Roadshows will wrap up in New York on September 19 ahead of expected pricing. Citigroup, HSBC and JP Morgan are acting as global coordinators, while BBVA and Santander are coming in as joint bookrunners. Expected ratings are Baa1/BBB+/BBB+.

Brazil's BRF GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of BRF SA, (rated Ba1/BBB/BBB) has mandated BB Securities, Bradesco, Itau, JP Morgan and Santander to organize a series of fixed-income investor meetings. A US dollar-denominated 144A/Reg S senior unsecured bond issue with intermediate to long maturity is expected to follow, subject to market conditions. The meetings finished in New York, Chicago and Boston on Tuesday.

The Brazilian food company has launched a tender offer targeting about US$291m in outstanding 2020 and 2022 bonds. The borrower is offering a purchase price of 112.75 on the 7.25% 2020s and 110.50 on the 5.875% 2022s. BNP Paribas, BTG Pactual and HSBC are acting as dealer managers on that offer, which expires on September 14.

(Reporting by Mike Gambale; editing by Shankar Ramakrishnan)
CHARLESTON -- The Cumberland County 4 Kids Livestock Committee hosted the 2016 4-H Livestock and Small Animal Auction on Tuesday, July 19, at the Coles County Fairgrounds.

A total of 40 head of livestock-beef, swine, sheep, goats-were sold, and six small animal meat pens -- rabbits and poultry -- were sold. Proceeds were paid to the 4-H members by the many auction buyers who came from near and far to support local Cumberland County 4-H livestock and small animal exhibitors.

In addition to 4-H animals, eight jars of jelly were donated by Susie Cutright, honey donated by Steve Brandenburg, gift certificate to Bliss Salon & Spa donated by Kaylee Ferris, two pies donated by Joyce Hemmen, and peaches donated by Grissoms Lost Creek Orchard. Proceeds from the sales of these items go to the 4 Kids Auction Committee in support of 4-H and other local Extension programs.

A special thank you to the generous business owners and community groups who support the project work of the 4-H members year after year. Thank you to the Coles County Fair board for the use of the fairgrounds for the 4-H shows and auction. The Cumberland County 4 Kids Auction Committee and University of Illinois Extension staff appreciate the volunteer services from the auctioneers, clerks, 4-H superintendents, 4-H leaders, and Farm Credit Illinois during this annual event.

For more information about local University of Illinois Extension programming, please contact the Cumberland County Extension office at 217-849-3931.

Following is a list of the 4-H member, animal sold at auction, buyer, and price the animal brought.

Zoe Marti, Rabbit Meat Pen, purchased by Greenup First Neighbor Bank, $125.

Jame Ryder, Rabbit Meat Pen, purchased by Cumberland County Treasurer, $175.

Trent Koester, Poultry-Quail Meat Pen, purchased by Maxey Family  Ag Sales, $175.

William Romack, Poultry-Turkey Meat Pen, purchased by Cumberland County Longbeards National Wildlife Turkey Assoc., $150.

Jordynn Rowlee, Poultry-Chicken Meat Pen, purchased by First State Bank of Beecher City, $300

Rosten Ryder, Poultry-Chicken Meat Pen, purchased by Barkley Funeral Chapel, $175.

Josie Brown, Dairy Goat, purchased by Toledo Ag Supply, $375.

Taylor Huddlestun, Meat Goat, purchased by Wente Farms, $350.

Wyatt Huddlestun, Meat Goat, purchased by Maxey Family  Ag Sales, $375

Jerry Brockett, Market Lamb, purchased by Greenup First Neighbor Bank, $382.20

Josie Brockett, Market Lamb, purchased by Scotts Building Center, $327.60

Mason Brockett, Market Lamb, purchased by Nash Grain Farm, $290.40

Ryley Brown, Market Lamb, purchased by B&S Farms, $415.40

Elizabeth Titus, Market Lamb, purchased by First Mid-Illinois Bank & Trust, Neoga, $319.

Ellie Walk, Market Lamb, purchased by Cumberland County Farm Bureau, $345.

Emmalyn Walk, Market Lamb, purchased by Scotts Building Center, $300.

Gracie Dittamore, Beef Steer, purchased by Dilliers Hatchery Inc. and Grays Feed & Seed, $1,552.50

Brayden Dow, Beef Steer, purchased by Scotts Building Center, $1,863.

Jenna Flood, Beef Steer, purchased by Nash Ag Service, $1,890.

Cash Hurst, Beef Steer, purchased by James Hurst, $1,332.50.

Jarin Maxey, Dairy Steer, purchased by Scotts Building Center, $1,931.25

Macey Maxey, Beef Steer, purchased by South Central FS and Effingham Animal Health Center, $1,735.50.

Houston Napier, Beef Feeder Calf, purchased by Greenup First Neighbor Bank, $842.

Wyatt Napier, Dairy Feeder Calf, purchased by ONeill Livestock, $816.90.

Wylie Napier, Dairy Feeder Calf, purchased by ONeil Livestock, $809.60.

Wyatt Steffen, Beef Steer, purchased by B&H Services, $1,444.50.

Brody Titus, Beef Steer, purchased by Scotts Building Center, $1,230.

Jake Wente, Dairy Steer, purchased by South Central FS and Effingham Animal Health Center, $2,247.50.

Julie Wente, Dairy Steer, purchased by Scotts Building Center, $2,050.

Kyle Wente, Dairy Steer, purchased by Pinnacle Livestock Nutrition, $1,878.50.

Matthew Deters, Swine, purchased by EVAPCO, INC. Midwest Plant, $924.

Dalton E. Grissom, Swine, purchased by EVAPCO, INC. Midwest Plant, $610.20.

Megan Grissom, Swine, purchased by Maxey Family  Ag Sales, $638.60.

Ashley Heddins, Swine, purchased by KC Summers, $709.90.

Kaitlyn Hemmen, Swine, purchased by Hartrich Meats, Inc., $694.40.

Aedan McMechan, Swine, purchased by KC Summers, $694.40.

Lexi Will, Swine, purchased by Becks Hybrid, $688.

Sami Will, Swine, purchased by ONeill Livestock, $532.80.

AJ Baugher, Swine, purchased by Toledo First Neighbor Bank, $913.50.

Joleen Deters, Swine, purchased by Pinnacle Livestock Nutrition, $1,072.50.

Rachel Deters, Swine, purchased by Becks Hybrid, $868.

Sarah Deters, Swine, purchased by VFW-Cumberland County Post #4598, $952.

Paige Dittamore, Swine, purchased by Stone Seed, $968.40.

MaKenzie Flood, Swine, purchased by Stone Seed, $1,008.

Elise Hemmen, Swine, purchased by Taylor Law Offices, $995.30.

Ross Hemmen, Swine, purchased by Hemmen Dairy, $781.20.

Donated items and buyers included:

Steve Brandenburg, Honey, purchased by Cornwell Tools, $100.

Susie Cutright, Jam & Jelly, purchased by Cumberland County Circuit Clerk, $175.

Susie Cutright, Jam & Jelly, purchased by Cumberland County Pork Producers, $60.

Susie Cutright, Jam & Jelly, purchased by Maxey Family  Ag Sales, $155.

Susie Cutright, Jam & Jelly, purchased by Toledo First Neighbor Bank, $240.

Kaylee Ferris, Mani-Pedi Gift Certificate $48 value, purchased by B&H Sales, $100.

Mark and Joyce Hemmen, Family Pie, purchased by Park Law Office, $290.

Mark and Joyce Hemmen, Family Pie, purchased by Scotts Building Center, $175.

Grissoms Lost Creek, Orchard Peaches, purchased by Wente Farms, $250.
By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) - A lawsuit filed on behalf of seven Detroit students on Tuesday accuses state officials of allowing high rates of illiteracy at several poorly functioning schools in the city, arguing it is a violation of the children's constitutional rights.

The nonprofit group Public Counsel, which brought the proposed class action in U.S. District Court in Detroit, described it as the first federal case to argue that American children have a right to literacy under the U.S. Constitution.

If the case is successful, it could result in court-mandated changes at some Detroit schools and encourage similar lawsuits in other parts of the country, Public Counsel said.

Detroit ranked worse than 20 other major U.S. cities in reading proficiency for students in grades four and eight in a federal report released last year.

The lawsuit named Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder and other state officials as defendants. Schools in Detroit, which have suffered from a falling local tax base, have been under state control for most of the past 15 years.

Snyder and Brian Whiston, state superintendent of education, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

"We are concerned with the literacy levels of all children in Michigan," Whiston said in a statement.

Public Counsel's lawsuit said the seven children, whose surnames were not disclosed, had been forced to learn at "chaotic" campuses infested with cockroaches and mice and where textbooks were so scarce that teachers refrained from assigning homework.

"The books are broken, old, torn apart," Jamarria Hall, a 16-year-old senior but not one of the plaintiffs said in a telephone interview. "You come to school to learn and how can you learn if there's no books?

The five campuses cited in the lawsuit are among the worst-performing of the roughly 100 schools in the Detroit Public Schools system, which serves mostly African-Americans, the lawsuit said.

Story continues

"This is a case about ensuring that every student has equal opportunity to achieve literacy," Public Counsel attorney Kathryn Eidmann said.

The lawsuit, which seeks court approval to represent all students at the five schools in question, argued students had been denied their right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The plaintiffs' attorneys may have a difficult time convincing a judge of their novel argument the Constitution ensures a right to literacy, said University of Minnesota law professor Stephen Befort.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney)
From Cosmopolitan

Since the time she could write, Raina Telgemeier kept a journal in a comic-book format, illustrating her emotions with words and pictures. After graduating from art school, she went to work in publishing while creating her own comics and selling them for a dollar at comics conventions across the country. A chance meeting with an editor at Scholastic led to her first book deal to turn the beloved young adult series The Baby-Sitters Club into graphic novels. Her bestselling first original novel, Smile, was published in 2010 and became an international best seller. She has published three additional original novels; her fourth, Ghosts, was just released.

Telgemeier sources her own life experiences to tell stories her young readers can relate to. Her message to them: normal stories are important.

When I was 9, I discovered comics in the newspaper and I instantly connected with the combination of words and pictures. I started drawing my first comics in about fifth grade. They were really just knockoffs of my favorites, which were For Better or Worse and Calvin and Hobbes. I instantly related to For Better or Worse. The kids in the strip were about the same age as me, and every time they talked about their thoughts and fears, or their school days, I recognized myself. Calvin and Hobbes made me laugh, and the characters were really fun to look at.

I went to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. I decided to major in illustration as a way to work on my art and hopefully find a job after college. I took one cartooning class each semester as an elective and it was always the class I looked forward to the most.

I was one of two women in a cartooning class of 25. Most of the friends I made who were cartooning majors were dudes. And most of my favorite cartoonists were men. There wasn't really space yet for mainstream comics for women, and graphic novels weren't really a thing yet.

Most of my [male] peers were writing superhero comics or telling personal stories that closely resembled the story arcs in Wolverine. I had never gotten into super hero comics. I was making comics that were very personal and introspective. At around age 19 I started writing and drawing autobiographical comics. I wrote a short story about how I hated mosquitos, and another about driving around the mountains late at night by myself. They were very short and I tried to capture the time, place, and mood.

Story continues

Upon graduating in 2002, I started working in the [book] publishing industry. I worked in design departments, but never anything creative. I helped facilitate the art directors during the layout process. I loved the book community, but as soon as I finished work each day, I went home and made comics all night.

I heard about the MoCCA Arts Festival, which was a small-press comics convention in New York City. I made friends with a lot of other self-publishers [at the festival] and discovered a whole community. It was about 50 percent female and I felt so welcomed. It was like a homecoming. I started going to small-press comics conventions [similar to MoCCA] and also larger ones like San Diego Comic-Con to sell my work to people, and network with editors and publishers.

I was writing short stories about my life - what happened to me in college, the parties I went to, what I bought at the supermarket that day, and stories about my childhood. I would just sit down at my desk and think, what do I want to make today?

I started writing my first mini-comics series called Take-Out, which was a series of vignettes, mostly about my life in New York City, my friends, and our little adventures. I threw in short stories about my childhood, too, and by the sixth issue I was drawing exclusively upon my kid memories for material. I produced seven issues between 2002 and 2005. Each issue was 12 pages long and in black and white.

I was still working in publishing and spending all of my time off working on my comics. A friend of mine helped me build a website, and I started selling the comics by mail order. At the conventions I passed out a little form that said "Send $1 in the mail to my address and I will mail you a comic in return." Pretty quickly I amassed a small fan base. Every time I would go to an event, I had the same people coming back to my table and asking if I had anything new.

In 2004 I met one of the editors from Scholastic at an art gallery party in New York. This editor said Scholastic was thinking of starting up a new [comic book/graphic novel] imprint. A few months later I met her boss at San Diego Comic-Con. When I introduced myself, he said he had already heard about me, and invited me to the Scholastic offices for a meeting.

I went in with several pitches, my portfolio from art school, and examples of my self-published work. They asked me what books I had been a fan of as a kid. I said that I had always loved The Baby-Sitter's Club. They said, "That's Scholastic property. What if you try doing that as a graphic series?"

I went home and I drew up a treatment of the story, sketches of the characters, and thumbnails, which are blueprints of a page broken down into panels. I preserved some of the dialogue from the books, interpreted it, and added visuals. Seeing my name in print accompanied by the Scholastic logo and alongside the words Baby-Sitter's Club was surreal. I'd seen my mini comics in lots of comic book shops before, but seeing my work on the shelf at a bona fide bookstore was a special thrill, as I grew up visiting bookstores with my dad to buy all of my comic collections.

My advances for the books were less than I was making at my full-time job, but I figured it was time to take a pay cut to follow my dreams. I was living in a very cheap apartment in New York with two roommates. I was in a relationship and we pooled our resources to scrape by. I was already good at cooking myself ramen and rice and beans, and that just remained the case for several years.

I liked making my own schedule and focusing full-time on my art. I was able to negotiate for a higher advance on my second contract, and after I did the four Baby-Sitter's Club books, I hired an agent who could negotiate even higher advances for me in the future.

In 2004, while I was working on the Baby-Sitter's Club novels, I was invited to become part of a comics-based website called Girlamatic.com. The editors proposed I serialize a weekly comic. The ongoing deadline was a perfect excuse - and [offered] just enough structure - to finally tell a story I'd been kicking around in my mind for so long. In sixth grade I was running home with friends after a Girl Scouts meeting and I tripped, fell, and knocked out my two front permanent teeth. I spent four and a half years getting surgeries, braces, headgear, and false teeth all in order to have a normal smile again. Middle school is not an easy time for anybody, so throwing extreme dental trauma on top of that meant that I had a very difficult time during my tween years. I was incredibly self-conscious, and I looked weird. It made me an easy target [for bullying].

By the time I was done with the fourth Baby-Sitter's Club book in 2008, I had already written and drawn about 120 pages of the story that would become Smile. Scholastic had been keeping an eye on the comics I was publishing on the website and they liked it.

Smile came out in February 2010, and it was an instant hit. It was selling really well at Scholastic book fairs, where the company marketed all of its books, and then it started picking up at bookstores and online booksellers. When it was published I was out with my old college roommates and we all geeked out and took a lot of photos [with the books at a store] and put them up on Facebook.

There was no proven track record in publishing that said this would be marketable work. There weren't any other graphic novels about adolescent girls' experiences. In 2011 Smile became a New York Times bestseller. It was incredible. It would have been gratifying enough to be on that list for a week. Smile just hit 220 weeks [on the bestseller list].

My biggest supporters within the trade industry were on board early. But there was a bit of reluctance too. Some people within the industry didn't think graphic novels were valuable literature. I got some pushback from educators and parents who thought kids were just sitting down reading trash. They didn't consider a book with pictures in it to be challenging or academic. "Girls don't read comics" was something I heard over and over again.

That feeling of not fitting in and having something wrong with you was really universal.

It is an evolving attitude. The more graphic novels that get published, and the more readers that embrace them, the more the general population sees their value. I get dozens of letters a month from parents, teachers, librarians, saying, "There's this kid in my life, and she didn't read. Then she started reading graphic novels, and now she reads voraciously." That's powerful. Comics are powerful.

I started getting a lot of fan mail from kids who read the book. A lot of times they'd say, "Did this really happen to you? Is it real?" Or, "I don't usually like books, but I like your books." I got a lot of kids who immediately wanted to write stories about their own lives. I hear a lot of dental stories, and kids who had accidents or back braces. No matter what the actual specific incident was, that feeling of not fitting in and having something wrong with you was really universal.

It's very rewarding when your work touches someone because it's a very long and challenging process to make the book. When an idea is accepted by the publisher, I'll sign a contract and start drawing thumbnails. Then I'll write and sketch 250 pages and then work with my editor on the story. Once everyone is happy - after two to four revisions, which usually takes me about a year - I'll start final artwork. I use better paper and nicer pencils and ink, and I redraw everything. I pencil first and that takes about half a year. Then I'll ink the book, which is tracing over my pencil lines with permanent ink. That takes four to five months. Then everything gets scanned into a computer and I have a colorist who colors in my work. The text is dropped in by a computer. The whole process takes about two years.

After Smile, I wrote a book called Drama that came out in 2012. That book pulled a lot from my experiences in theater when I was in middle school and high school, but it was fictional. After Drama was published, my fans wrote to me asking to know more about my personal story. In 2014 I published Sisters, which was a follow-up to Smile. I don't call it a sequel, but rather a companion book. It's about my life with my sister and parents anchored by a cross-country road trip that causes plenty of fighting. The next book I'm going to work on is another memoir. It will be about a book that I read when I was 10 years old and how it impacted my life.

I'm always thinking about the kinds of stories I want to tell. I have notebooks and documents with sentences written down or sketches of characters. Sometimes those ideas gel into a story very quickly. Sometimes it can take five or 10 years. I had been thinking about the characters in my new book, Ghosts, since 2002. I started getting really interested in Day of the Dead and how that tradition helps people process death in a way that celebrates life and memories. [Then, in 2012], I had a young cousin who passed away from a brain tumor. She was 13. She was this joyous, beautiful girl who was the one convincing everyone else that it was going to be OK. In Ghosts, the little girl Maya has cystic fibrosis. Telling this story helped me process the grief. I thought if I could write about ways to cope with illness, there would be tons of kids and families who could relate.

Kids read my books and they feel like I'm their friend. I know they look to me as a role model, and that's intense. I wish I could have one-on-one interaction with every one of my fans. If I can reassure kids that their real lives and feelings are complicated and we share that in common, that's wonderful. You don't need to be extraordinary in order to be recognized for your feelings and feel loved.

Get That Life is a weekly series that reveals how successful, talented, creative women got to where they are now. Check back each Monday for the latest interview.

Follow Heather on Twitter.

You Might Also Like
(Adds quote, background on donation pledge)

By Deborah M. Todd

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman said on Tuesday that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump would have a "terrifying" effect on domestic and foreign policy if elected.

The comments came one day after Hoffman published an article on Medium.com pledging support to a CrowdPac crowdfunding campaign that promises to donate to veterans causes if Trump releases his tax returns.

Hoffman said in his article that he will match five times the crowdfunded amount to donate up to $5 million. The campaign has raised more than $90,000.

Hoffman told a crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt 2016 in San Francisco that he was "in denial" about the possibility of a Trump presidency but encouraged by efforts to hold the candidate accountable.

Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump is facing criticism for not releasing tax returns, a political practice that is not required by law but has been done by every White House nominee since 1973. His campaign last week released 10 years of returns for vice presidential nominee Mike Pence and repeated a pledge that Trump would release his own returns once the government completes an audit.

"When I saw the campaign  I said that's exactly the right way to make this message, a message in support of folks who have given great service to our country. If Donald Trump is as concerned with making America great as he says he is he should care about veterans," Hoffman said.

(Reporting by Deborah M. Todd; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
SPRINGFIELD -- Independent congressional candidate David Gill is asking a federal appeals court to reconsider its decision to temporarily halt a lower courts order that his name should appear on the Nov. 8 ballot in the 13th Congressional District.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order Friday blocking the earlier decision from U.S. District Judge Sue Myerscough until the appeal is settled. She ruled last month that the Illinois State Board of Elections should allow Gill to appear on the ballot even though he didnt gather the required number of signatures on his nominating petitions. The Illinois attorney generals office, which is representing the elections board, appealed Myerscoughs decision.

After Gill, a Bloomington physician whos previously run for Congress four times as a Democrat, collected only 8,593 of the 10,754 valid signatures he needed to earn a ballot spot, he challenged the requirement in federal court. He argues that its unconstitutional because its out of line with the requirements for major party candidates. Gills would-be opponents, U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, and Democratic challenger Mark Wicklund of Decatur, each had to collect fewer than 740 signatures.

While Myerscough didnt rule on the merits of Gills argument, she issued her Aug. 25 ruling because she said the candidate showed that he and his supporters would be irreparably harmed if he was left off the ballot. The elections board certified the ballot the next day with Gills name on it.

In its appeal, the attorney generals office argued that the signature requirement is valid because the state has an interest in preventing ballot overcrowding and potential voter confusion. Allowing judges to override signature requirements would sow uncertainty over the whole process, the state argues.

The attorney generals office declined to comment on the appellate courts order.

Gills attorneys are asking the full 7th Circuit to vacate Fridays order and hear the case quickly because the temporary decision could effectively settle the matter before all the facts are heard. Local election authorities are required to have absentee ballots ready to be mailed to military and overseas voters by Sept. 23.

Gill said he was disappointed, but not surprised, by the appellate courts order.

I was very disappointed, particularly for the voters in the district, Gill said. I think that they deserve to have as many options as possible, and weve worked very hard to provide them with an option other than the two major party candidates. I think that most voters have come to recognize that neither of the major parties is looking out for their benefit.

The appellate courts order is further evidence of how the system is rigged against independent candidates, he said.

Meanwhile, the elections board is scheduled to hold a hearing Monday on objections to Gills nominating petitions.

Some of the objections former Macon County Republican Party Chairman Jerry Stocks filed against Gills petitions were put on hold after it was determined that hed failed to collect enough signatures. After Myerscoughs ruling, however, the board decided to allow those matters to proceed.
Lionsgate on Tuesday became the first Hollywood Studio to partner with Vimeo on its global television store, launching next month as a new competitor to Netflix.

The exclusive licensing deal will make series like Orange Is the New Black, Mad Men and The Royals available to Vimeo subscribers in the U.S. and in 150 other countries.

"Their (Lionsgate's) television slate includes nearly 80 series on 40 different networks, and they are a great partner with whom to kick off a service that will bring premium scripted shows from the U.S. to our hundreds of millions of viewers around the world," Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive of Vimeo parent IAC, said Tuesday in a statement while unveiling the deal.

By investing in TV fare, Vimeo is looking to compete against Netflix as a streaming service. "They (Lionsgate) are the first of many top Hollywood studios we expect to attract in the months to come," Diller added.

Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said the Vimeo deal was part of an ongoing drive by the studio to get its TV content to online, next-generation customers everywhere.

"Not only are we proud to be in business with Barry Diller, but we are also pleased to continue teaming with nearly all the digital platforms, including recent licensing deals with YouTube Red, Verizon's go90, Steam, Starbreeze and Google's new Daydream virtual reality initiative," Feltheimer told investors in Toronto during his company's annual shareholders meeting.

Vimeo will officially launch its global television store Oct. 18 at MIPCOM in the south of France.

Read more: Lionsgate's Jon Feltheimer Touts Film and TV Slate to Investors
ELKO, NV / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Lithium Corporation (LTUM) "the Company" is pleased to announce that it has acquired via staking a block of claims on the Salt Wells lithium-in-brine prospect in Churchill County Nevada totaling approximately 3,440 acres. The property is 100% owned and controlled by the company with no underlying royalty.

The Company has previously conducted exploration on the property which culminated in a multiple phase - shallow direct push drilling program in 2011. Results from that program were enigmatic, and with the then proposed increase of Federal claim fees, it was decided to put the property in abeyance and concentrate elsewhere. Recent reinterpretation of the results from all previous fieldwork indicates that efforts should be refocused on a target area that was not tested during the earlier work. Field work on this playa outlined a broad geochemically anomalous area where results as high as 750 ppm lithium, and 3920 ppm boron in sediments have been seen. To date the most anomalous lithium-in-brine result from this area has been 36.5 mg/L. The company is currently reviewing all past data, and determining the best course of action for this property.

For further information with regard to Lithium Corporation, or our properties please contact Tom Lewis or Brian Goss at (775) 410-2206 or via email at info@lithiumcorporation.com.

About Lithium Corporation

Lithium Corporation is an exploration company based in Nevada devoted to the exploration for energy storage related resources throughout North America, looking to capitalize on opportunities within the ever expanding next generation battery markets. The Company maintains a strategic alliance with Altura Mining, an ASX listed natural resource development company that is currently developing its 100% owned world-class Pilgangoora lithium pegmatite property in Western Australia.

Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This current report contains "forward-looking statements," as that term is defined in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Statements in this press release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future.

Story continues

Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the inherent uncertainties associated with mineral exploration and difficulties associated with obtaining financing on acceptable terms. We are not in control of minerals prices and these could vary to make development uneconomic. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate. Investors should consult all of the information set forth herein and should also refer to the risk factors disclosure outlined in our most recent annual report for our last fiscal year, our quarterly reports, and other periodic reports filed from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE: Lithium Corporation
LONDON (Reuters) - A 19-year-old man from London has been charged under counter-terrorism law with preparing attacks, the British capital's Metropolitan Police force said on Tuesday. Haroon Ali-Syed, from Hounslow in the west of the British capital, was arrested last Thursday along with two other men, who have been released on police bail pending further investigation. The police said Ali-Syed's alleged offence of preparing to commit acts of terrorism took place between April and September this year. They gave no further details. He was due to appear at London's Westminster Magistrates' Court later on Tuesday. The official security threat level in Britain is currently set at its second-highest category of "severe", meaning that an attack by militants is considered highly likely. (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Michael Holden)
(DENHAM SPRINGS, La.)  Millions of people have seen and shared the video of a good Samaritan jumping off a boat to rescue Hailey Brouillette and her dog from a car sinking into south Louisiana floodwaters last month. Brouillette isnt one of them, but she finally got to meet the man who saved her life.

Although she heard David Phungs voice during the rescue, Brouillette never saw her rescuers face before their reunion Monday at a Denham Springs home where she is temporarily staying.

I know I dont know you, but I love you, Brouillette, 53, said as she hugged and thanked the man she called her angel and savior.

It was nothing, Phung, 27, replied before Brouillete introduced him to Sassy, the poodle mix he also saved.

A Red Cross volunteer who befriended Brouillette at a shelter arranged Mondays meeting. Brouillette lost her trailer home and all of her belongings in the flooding. Phung brought her a load of supplies, including dog food.

Its just who we are in Louisiana. We help people in times of need, he said. I was put in that place to help her out.

The Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillettes red convertible as David Phung and two of his relatives arrive in a boat and urge her to get out of the car.

Im trying! I cant! she replied. Oh my God! Im drowning!

Phung tried to smash a car window from the boat, then jumped into the water and used his hands to rip open a hole on the top of the car. Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. She remained submerged for several seconds before Phung finally pulled her out of the water.

Get my dog! she immediately shouted.

The poodle appeared to be underwater for at least 20 seconds before Phung took a deep breath, dipped below the surface and emerged with the dog cradled in his arms.

Story continues

I got your dog! he yelled. Swim to the boat.

Phung said he lost count of how many people that he helped save from the floodwaters, but none was more dramatic than Brouillettes.

I didnt actually see the tape until two days later because I was working from sun up late into the night, just helping people, he said. I was actually amazed at how calm and collected I was. I guess it was just the adrenaline took over.

Before getting caught in the floodwaters, Brouillette said she had been released from a hospital that morning after being treated for a kidney ailment. She was on her way to a pharmacy to get prescriptions filled when the car she borrowed from a friend was overcome by the water.

It still seems like a dream, she said.

She believes divine intervention also played a part in her survival.

He saved my life, she said. I dont even know if Im worth saving. I guess God said, Yeah.'

Carolyn Perry, a Red Cross volunteer, said she watched the rescue video several times from her home in Kern County, California, before she was deployed to Louisiana.

I was drawn to it, she said. I just had this strange feeling Im going to meet this woman.

Within three days of seeing the video, Perry recognized Brouillette at a Baton Rouge shelter that provided refuge to hundreds of flood victims. Perry said she hugged Brouillette and explained how the rescue had struck a chord with her.

She was very, very humble, and we just struck up a friendship, Perry said. For the next three days, we had a lot of heart-to-heart talks about life.

Before Perry returned home to California, Brouillette asked her new friend for help in connecting with the man who had saved her. Perry contacted an Associated Press reporter, who provided her with a telephone number for Phung. Perry called Phung and arranged for him to meet Brouilette and her dog.

At the end of their meeting, Brouillette gave Phung her phone number and embraced him one more time.

And if I can ever do anything for you, let me know, she said.
hillary clinton ad donald trump

Hillary Clinton's campaign is attempting to turn the tables on Donald Trump following his assertion that she has a "low opinion" of voters.

In a new ad titled "Low Opinion," released on Tuesday, Clinton's campaign spliced together a montage of Trump's criticisms of large blocs of voters, including women and military veterans.

The 60-second spot highlights Trump's generalizations about why black voters should support him, his mocking impression of a New York Times reporter critical of the real-estate magnate, and his comments calling various women "fat pigs" and "slobs."

"How stupid are the people of the country?" Trump asked in November, mocking former Republican presidential rival Ben Carson's story about a knife fight he participated in as a teenager. Clinton's ad highlights the line early on.

The ad comes several days after Clinton amended her characterization of half of Trump supporters as a "basket of deplorables," arguing that many were motivated to support the Republican presidential nominee because of their "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic" dispositions.

Watch the ad below:

NOW WATCH: We spent an afternoon at the Trump Winery in Virginia and it wasn't what we expected at all





More From Business Insider


Berlin (AFP) - Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said Tuesday Hungary should be suspended from the European Union for violating democratic core values and treating refugees like "animals".

"We cannot accept that the fundamental values of the European Union are being massively violated," Asselborn told Germany's Die Welt daily.

He issued his scathing comments about the government of populist right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban ahead of an EU summit in the Slovakian capital Bratislava, where leaders from Friday plan to map out the bloc's post-Brexit future.

Hungary "today would no longer stand a chance of becoming an EU member," said Asselborn, according to the report.

"Those who, like Hungary, erect fences against war refugees, violate the freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary should be excluded temporarily, or if necessary forever, from the EU," he said.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier however later dismissed the comments, saying: "This was not a position that was agreed upon by European states."

"I can understand that with regard to Hungary some in Europe are getting impatient when it comes to the ongoing debates between the European Commission and the Hungarian government," he told reporters in the Latvian capital Riga Tuesday after meeting with officials from the three Baltic states.

"But this is not my personal position to throw a European member state out of the door. No, we have to face up to the complicated debates that we have to hold," he added.

Asselborn was harshly critical of the razor wire-topped fence Hungary erected last year along its southern border to stop a mass influx of migrants travelling to northern Europe along the so-called Balkans route.

"People who are fleeing war are almost being treated worse than wild animals," the minister said, adding that "Hungary doesn't seem far from issuing an order to shoot refugees".

He added that leaders like Orban were damaging the EU's reputation by giving the impression that the bloc could no longer live by the values it propagates on the international stage.

Asselborn called for changes to EU treaties that would make it easier to suspend members, a move he said should no longer require a unanimous vote of all member states.
CHARLESTON -- Expected high interest in the November election is why Coles County Clerk Sue Rennels says she wants to close her office to non-voting services the day before.

At its meeting today, the Coles County Board is scheduled to vote to authorize Rennels to make the move, which she described as a "preventative measure."

She said she anticipates a large number of people coming to her office to register and vote on the day before the Nov. 8 election, adding to the demand of preparing for the actual Election Day.

"I don't think we're going to be able to accommodate people if we don't make this move," Rennels said.

She said a record turnout is possible because of high interest in a hotly contested presidential race.

Also, she noted, Illinois now allows registration and voting up to and including Election Day, if that takes place in the county clerk's office.

Election Day is an official court holiday in Illinois, so the courthouse and all its offices will be closed on Nov. 8, though the clerk's office will handle election duties that day.

With the county board's approval, other services the office provides such as marriage licenses, birth certificate copies and property sales recording wouldn't be available on Nov. 7.

Rennels said she doesn't know of a law or provision that specifically allows the limit on services, but she thinks the office needs it to be prepared.

State's Attorney Brian Bower said he thinks Rennels has a right to limit her office's services, just as the county board has the right to have the courthouse close on holidays.

He said the move is "a little unusual" but voting matters will likely be "where the focus of the office needs to be" on the day before the election.

The county board's Offices and Rules Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the board approve the limited services for the day before the election.

Rennels said the day before an election is when some of the office's staff is out preparing polling places, while those at the courthouse are providing election judges with supplies and fielding phone calls about voting matters.

Rennels also said voting during the March 15 primary made her think there will be a high demand for registration and voting on Election Day and the day before.

She said nearly 270 people registered and voted at her office on the day of the primary, and she estimated most were Eastern Illinois University students, though the university was on spring break at the time.

With EIU in session on Election Day, that could translate into a high demand for late registration and Election Day voting, Rennels said.

The county board's meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. today in the board's meeting room on the third floor of the courthouse in Charleston.

Other votes set for the meeting include adopting a policy that state law requires to ensure fraud protections are in place.

The policy that addresses auditing procedures and financial oversight is now required as a part of any grant application by any county office, according to Kelly Lockhart, executive director of the Coles County Regional Planning and Development Commission.

Lockhart said the county has many of the requirements already in place but the policy will conform to the required language and add provisions that are needed.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai on Tuesday urged world leaders gathered for the first-ever UN summit on refugees to not waste time with a "pageantry of sympathy" and act to guarantee schooling for refugee children.

The United Nations is hosting on September 19 the first summit on refugees and migrants, which will be followed the next day by a pledging conference for new offers of aid to refugees hosted by President Barack Obama.

Malala, who become the youngest-ever Nobel recipient for championing the rights of girls to education, urged leaders to reject short-term solutions to the refugee crisis now affecting 21.3 million people, including nearly four million children.

Every refugee child should have access to 12 years of schooling, she urged.

"Refugee girls are wondering how long they can stay out of school before theyre forced into early marriages or child labor. Theyre hoping for more than survival," Malala said in a statement.

"Why do world leaders waste our time with this pageant of sympathy while they are unwilling to do the one thing that will change the future for millions of children?" she asked.

A report by the Malala Fund and Cambridge University showed that nearly two-thirds of the 3.7 million refugee children and teenagers worldwide were out of school.

For every 10 refugee teenage boy in secondary school in 2015, there were the equivalent of just seven girls.

The report called on governments to provide $2.9 billion by September 2019 to a new fund to support education for out-of-school refugee children.
Kor Adana

USA Network's "Mr. Robot" is the first television show to really get hacking right with its realistic depictions of technical details and hacker culture, and one of the main reasons for that is just one man: Kor Adana, a former hacker himself who now serves as a staff writer and technical consultant on the show.

From what Ive seen in a lot of film and television, its the hacker [being depicted] in the dark basement with the glowing screen," said Adana, at a Monday night event on hackers in film and television hosted at Google's office in Venice, California.

That depiction is inaccurate to say the least. And it's one that Adana, a former network security analyst for Toyota, has worked diligently to correct over two seasons of "Mr. Robot." That work has paid off, since the critically-acclaimed show is beloved by real hackers, security professionals, and even non-techies for its drama and realism.

For those unfamiliar, here's the basic premise of the show: Elliott (played by Rami Malek) is a respectable employee of a cybersecurity firm by day, but by night, he's a hacker taking on the world around him with his technical skills, going after everyone from child porn peddlers to adulterers.

Real world testing

Eventually Elliot gets recruited into a hacker group, led by the pseudonymously-named "Mr. Robot," to infiltrate and take down a global conglomerate known as E Corp (which is referred throughout as Evil Corp). While Elliott also has a very bad drug addiction and makes an unreliable narrator, his hacks are legitimate  right down to the tools and code depicted onscreen.

"Everything in the show is feasible," Adana said.

At the Google event, Adana explained how the show maintains this accuracy, and it starts with an interesting choice for showrunner and creator Sam Esmail: Figuring out whether something is going to work before it's written into the script.

mr robot

In the writer's room, Esmail and others will usually go to Adana and explain what they want Elliott to do: Perhaps they want him to gain access to a bank or take over someone's smartphone, for example. Then it's up to Adana to figure out whether it can actually be done.

Story continues

"For us, if the hack isn't feasible in real life, it doesn't get in the script," he said. Once he learns what Esmail wants, he'll reach out to his team of consultants, which include other experts such as Marc Rogers, an information security manager with CloudFlare and head of security for the Def Con hacking conference; and Michael Bazzell, a former FBI cybercrime investigator who now teaches open source intelligence-gathering techniques.

After they figure it out  with Adana often performing the hack himself as a test  he'll bring it back and say yeah, it can be done. Interestingly, Adana has to clear many of his hacks with USA's legal department first, since they need to sign off on the depiction of certain tools, such as the Social Engineer Toolkit or ransomware code known as Cryptowall.

"We fudge the timing"

Once Adana gets the okay, the graphics team recreates the hack in Flash animation so the computer screens in front of the actors display what a hacker would really be doing. Unlike other shows which would use a blank screen and then insert computer code in post-production, "Mr. Robot" has the animation right there in front of the actor, and Adana shows them where to place their fingers and when to type.

Adana does have just one criticism of the show, which has been mentioned by some critics. If there is one criticism of our own work," Adana said. "It is that we fudge the timing.

The hacks are carried out very fast onscreen, but that is understandable when you have an hour-long show that needs to depict the cracking of a password that would take a normal hacker days, if not weeks, to get through. Adana also mentioned that he tries to keep a low online profile, and doesn't share nearly as much about himself as many people do on social media, for fear of it aiding those who might try and hack him.

And the realization among actors on the show that what they do on the show can be done in real life, along with Adana's own security-mindedness, certainly has made the crew wary.

There is a healthy level of paranoia there," he told Business Insider.

NOW WATCH: The worlds largest pyramid is not in Egypt





More From Business Insider


From Harper's BAZAAR

Warning: Light spoilers for Season 2 of Narcos below:

While Wagner Moura's Pablo Escobar is undoubtedly the star of Narcos, Netflix's masterful chronicle of the South American drug trade, Boyd Holbrook's DEA agent Steve Murphy is the lens through which viewers get to know the cocaine kingpin. Calling me from his home in upstate New York-"I've been building it for seven years"-the actor opens up about narrating the series as the man intent on finding Escobar, his character's darker turn for Season 2-which premiered September 2-and how he trained to become a DEA agent (it involved getting shot in the head).

HarpersBAZAAR.com: How familiar were you with Pablo Escobar's story before you started working on Narcos?

Boyd Holbrook: Not really. I knew he was involved with cocaine but it wasn't until I really started hanging out with Steve [Murphy, the inspiration for Holbrook's character] a lot. I got educated that way. It was crash course. You learn as quickly as possible.

HB: As narrator of the series, did you feel any pressure as the one actually telling Pablo Escobar's story? It's all witnessed through your eyes.

BH: I don't know if you've ever seen this film called Elite Squad, which, actually Wagner [Moura] is the one narrating that. Jose Padilha, one of creators of our show, that's where the style comes from. It has a heavy narrator. But I thought about it a lot. You [the viewers] have to work for the show, unless you're bilingual. It's a really aggressive type of filming, it's engaging, you've got to read. So I tried to do something that would not sedate but sort of put you underneath the current, and zone you out within the show.

HB: How challenging is it for you to both narrate the show and star in it?

BH: Well, the first year was pretty rough because between takes they would throw a microphone in my face and be like, "Okay, we need you to do this!" So we were actually just figuring out how to do it. I even did it for two or three months after we stopped filming. This time, I only had one episode left to [narrate] by the time we wrapped. We were much better.

Story continues

HB: Your character was a lot more jaded this season. Do you feel as though you transitioned to a darker place in Season 2?

BH: Oh yeah, that was the general idea for the creators of the show. You see Pablo rise up to this king status in an almost Shakespearean way and then the second season, it's sort of unraveling. Basically it flips the coin for Pedro [Pascal]'s character and my character, Javier and Steve Murphy. It's a very gray place.

Photo credit: Netflix

HB: Tell me about working with Pedro, who plays your partner on the show. What kind of relationship did you form?

BH: Before the first season, we really just did it in one night. We went out and got some drinks and got some good steak, and then about a week later I had this idea that we should do some sort of training. So we studied at Quantico for a week, with the actual cadets that go through a 19-week course doing raids and all this stuff; basically shooting each other with rubber bullets.

HB: What was that experience like?

BH: Fucking crazy as hell [laughs]. I mean in one scenario, I dropped my gun. You actually have a gun on you and they're blanks, but it makes the exact same sound, just as loud. I read this scenario wrong and this guy comes out like, "Who the fuck are you? Why are you in my house?" I was like, "Whoa, whoa, chill," and then another dude came out, pulled the gun off me and sat me down and shot me in the back of the head.

HB: Do you think it really helped you get in the frame of mind to play Steve?

BH: Absolutely. I didn't really need anything other than that [laughs]. You know in a second that you can lose your life, so that kinda brought it down to the ground floor for me and [I] let the script do the rest of the work.

I read the scenario wrong and this guy comes out like, "Who the fuck are you? Why are you in my house?" Then another dude came out, pulled the gun off me and shot me in the back of the head.

HB: You worked with the real-life Steve Murphy, who consulted on the show. How did you end up meeting him?

BH: I got his contact number-wasn't really shy about it-and I went down to his house to visit him, sat with him and talked with him extensively. I was trying to mimic his voice for a while, but there's a lot pressure to play a real-life person and at a certain point you just have to say, "Well, I'm always gonna be me."

HB: What was the craziest thing you learned from him?

BH: Gosh, I don't know. It was really not even him, it was just what Escobar was doing-the massive amounts of car bombs, just killing people left and right.The amount of people he killed was insane.

HB: What was it like shooting that final showdown, the last scene of Season 2?

BH: Oh man, it was the coolest. Me and Wagner had never worked together [until that point]. That was one of the last days of working so it was a nice payoff, in the end.

HB: Can you tell us anything about Season 3? Do you know if you're returning yet?

BH: Well the show has been picked up for two more seasons. It's called Narcos so it's about narcotics. It's really interesting; Pablo was taking [the drugs] to Miami and then when the Cali cartel took over they were like, "Screw this, just give it to Mexico and let them get it across the border." So you see the evolution of people like El Chapo, stuff like that. It should be a really exciting season.

HB: How has being on the show changed your career?

BH: Immensely. Netflix is in every country except China and North Korea. Enough people have seen the show. I mean, I'm in Patagonia and people recognize the show.

HB: Do you do the whole binge-watching thing yourself?

BH: Absolutely. I just crushed Stranger Things. It's got one of my favorite actors, David Harbour. And obviously Breaking Bad and stuff like that.

HB:Season 2 of Narcos was released on September 2, as was your latest movie Morgan, which is a sci-fi thriller. You also have The Free World, a romantic drama, coming later this month. What attracts you to such strikingly different roles?

BH: I wasn't raised up with any opportunities to get into this scene. It's taken me a long time to get work, so that's why I like to play really different characters that are really foreign to me. I want it to be something great and I want to have a great experience.

HB: You play the villain in the next Wolverine movie opposite Hugh Jackman. What can you tell us about that role?

BH: He's an innovative engineer and he's a big fan of Wolverine. He just wants to hang out with him [laughs]. There's a lot of surprising stuff in it.

HB: What else is coming up for you?

BH: Right now I have a company where I'm trying to get projects off the ground. Me and my partner Madeleine Sackler, we just shot our first feature in a maximum security prison where about 95% of the cast were incarcerated men. We're editing that and there's a doc going with it. Right now I'm kind of burned out from traveling and working so much, so I just want to stay and work in an office for a while.

You Might Also Like
Paris (AFP) - The European Space Agency will unveil on Wednesday a three-dimensional map of a billion stars in our galaxy that is 1,000 times more complete than anything existing today.

A space-based probe called Gaia, launched in December 2013, has been circling the Sun 1.5 million kilometres (nearly a million miles) beyond Earth's orbit and has been discreetly snapping pictures of the Milky Way.

The satellite's billion-pixel camera, the largest ever in space, is so powerful it would be able to gauge the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 1,000 kilometres, meaning nearby stars have been located with unprecedented accuracy.

Just over half-way through its five-year mission, Gaia's two telescopes have located a billion stars.

That's still only one percent of the Milky Way's estimated stellar population, scattered over an area 100,000 light years in diameter.

But it is enough to keep professional stargazers busy for years to come, said Francois Mignard, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research and a member of the Gaia Science Team.

"Over the centuries we have sought to catalogue the content of the skies," he told AFP.

"But never have we achieved anything so complete or precise -- it is a massive undertaking."

The first data dump "opens a new chapter in astronomy," he added, and is certain to generate hundreds of scientific studies.

Gaia maps the position of the Milky Way's stars in a couple of ways.

Not only does it pinpoint their location, the probe -- by scanning each star about 70 times -- can plot their movement as well.

This is what allows scientists to calculate the distance between Earth and each star, a crucial measure, explained Mignard.

- Thousands of new worlds -

Both types of data will be available Wednesday for more than two million stars.

"That's 20 times more than what we had before," Mignard said. "And all in one fell swoop!"

Story continues

By the end of 2017, Gaia will have done the same for a billion.

At the same time, it will collect vital data about each star's temperature, luminosity and chemical composition, vastly expanding current knowledge.

Tens of thousands of previously undetected objects will be discovered, including asteroids that may one day threaten Earth, planets circling nearby stars, and exploding supernovas.

"It seems like a good bet that the mission will reveal thousands of new worlds," Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at Yale University, told the science journal Nature.

By identifying stars from smaller galaxies long ago swallowed up by our own, Gaia will also help scientists better understand the Milky Way's origin and evolution.

Astrophysicists, meanwhile, hope to learn more about the distribution of dark matter, the invisible substance thought to hold the observable universe together.

They also plan to test Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity by watching how light is deflected by the Sun and its planets.

"Gaia is going to revolutionise what we know about stars and the Galaxy," David Hogg, an astronomer at New York University working on the project told Nature.

The spacecraft is controlled from the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, using ground stations in Cebreros, Spain and New Norcia in Australia.

More than 50 companies across Europe were involved in building Gaia and its instruments.

Mission scientists are scheduled to brief journalists on some of the initial findings Wednesday afternoon.
Marshawn Lynch joined Running Wild With Bear Grylls in Corsica, France, where the ex-NFL star was faced with challenges hed never experienced before. As he told Grylls early in their adventure, hed never been camping, hunting, or climbing  and he was about to get a quick lesson in the latter two.

Soon after Grylls told Lynch about how many wild hogs there are on the Mediterranean island, the two came across a big one. Grylls made a spear for Lynch out a knife and a stick before they attempted to sneak up on the hog. They gave chase after it got spooked but werent able to get close enough to snag it.

With Lynchs first attempt at hunting a failure, he soon learned how to climb when they spotted the hog on a ledge, dead, down the side of a mountain, leaving a trail of blood where it had fallen. Lynch originally refused to get it, saying he didnt even want Grylls to go. Even as Grylls was tying him to the rope, Lynch still refused. It took a lot of trying, but Grylls finally talked him into climbing down to get the pig. The next step was even more difficult because not only was Lynch heading up the mountain while Grylls helped with the rope, but he was also lugging up a large wild hog.

Once they had the hog back up the mountain and cut out a chunk of meat for later, Grylls got some blood on his finger and wanted to give Lynch some marks on his face with it in honor of the kill, something Lynch didnt like the sound of. But once again, Grylls pressed until finally Lynch agreed to let him do one cheek. Grylls eventually caught Lynch off-guard and got blood on both cheeks. Lynch, as he did many other times throughout the show, said Grylls was crazy.

Check out Michael Phelps winning a star-studded lip-sync battle:

Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Khail Anonymous, on Twitter.
OAKLAND (JG-TC) -- Area actors will share the story of the 1847 Matson Slave Trial and its ties to Abraham Lincoln during dinner theater performances on Sept. 23-24.

Advance tickets are on sale for "Lincolns Trial & Tribulations," which focuses on what is considered to be one of the top 10 trials in Lincolns legal career. History enthusiasts in Oakland joined together seven years ago to create an annual dinner theater production to help bring more attention to this local story.

The story is more than the dry history of the courtroom, said "Trial & Tribulations" coordinator Renee Henry in a press release. She said this history is also a story of love, humor, family, and morality.

The Matson case is the only trial in which Lincoln represented a slave owner. Historians have long pondered how Lincoln, who would become known as the "Great Emancipator," could have done that.

Events leading up to the trial began on Oakland area farmland owned by Robert Matson of Kentucky. Matson brought slaves to work on this farm and he threatened to send the children of one of these slaves, Jane Bryant, down south and separate the family.

Jane Bryant's brother Simeon Wilmot, who was living on this farm at the time, overheard the comment while living on the farm and warned his sister. Wilmot, Bryant and her freeman husband, Anthony, sought help from Oakland abolitionists and from the Coles County circuit court in Charleston.

The trial was a actually a habeas corpus hearing in front of two judges in October 1847. Lincoln represented Matson. The judges ruled that Bryant and her four children were free because the family had been residing in Illinois, a free state, for two years. After attaining their freedom, the Bryant family chose to emigrate to Liberia.

Veteran Lincoln interpreter Joe Woodard of Hazel Dell is part of a "Trial & Tribulations" cast that also includes Ed Adams of Charleston and Michelle Duchan of Indianapolis as Anthony and Jane Bryant. Duchan is a member of the Freetown Village troupe that focuses on African-American history.

Cast members also include Ben Williamson of Newman as Matson, Callie Baber of Paris as Mary Corbin Matson, Kim McGee of Newman as abolitionist Dr. Hiram Rutherford, and Matt Mattingly of Paris as abolitionist Gideon Ashmore.

"Trial & Tribulations" will be held at 6 p.m. Sept. 23-24 at Oakland Methodist Church. Each event will offer an 1847-style meal served family style, followed by the play. Tickets are limited to 75 per performance and can be purchased via www.matsontrial1847.org or 217-508-9113. Tickets should be reserved at least a week in advance.

In addition, the 1847 home of Dr. Hiram Rutherford and the Independence Pioneer Village in Oakland will be open for tours Sept. 23-24. The village hosts more than a dozen log structures from the 1800s.

These activities are part of a weekend Link on to Lincoln" celebration. Events highlighting local Lincoln and Civil War history will be held throughout Coles County. This celebration is a 2016 Signature Event for the National Abraham Lincoln Heritage Area and Looking for Lincoln. More information can be found at www.linkontolincoln.org.
A number of open house events are planned to help students affected by the nationwide shutdown of ITT Tech. The closing left more than 600 Maryland students confused, not sure where to turn. As promised, a number of colleges are pitching in to help out. Among them includes Anne Arundel Community College, which is offering information aimed at helping the ITT students making a transition.
Casino giant Las Vegas Sands launches Macau's latest resort Tuesday, outfitted with a half-size replica of the Eiffel Tower, as it bets its fortunes on mass market tourists flocking to the gambling enclave.

A corruption crackdown by Chinese president Xi Jinping and an economic slowdown since mid-2014 drove away many mainland high-rollers who had propped up the VIP sector in semi-autonomous Macau -- the only part of China where it is legal to gamble.

The former Portuguese colony has struggled to recover its footing ever since as it comes under pressure from Beijing to diversify away from gambling.

But August saw gaming revenues end a some two-year slump, with analysts putting the rally down to a new raft of mega resorts trying to entice mass market gamblers to compensate for the hole in the VIP sector.

Sands' $3-billion resort, The Parisian, opens its doors Tuesday evening, boasting 3,000 rooms, a water park and a 1,200-seat theatre -- the latest in a slew of pleasure palaces promising more than just gambling.

While the venue is expected to host more than 400 gaming tables, Sands is selling the venture as an "integrated resort" complete with street entertainers and Paris-inspired shops.

It is the second launch by Las Vegas stalwarts in a matter of weeks, after the $4 billion Wynn Palace -- home to a giant lake, musical fountains and cable cars, as well as gaming tables -- opened in August.

Recent launches by Galaxy and Studio City have also upped the non-casino element, including everything from river rapids to an elevated figure-of-eight ferris wheel.

The push to attract mass market visitors seems to have worked, according to analysts, with monthly gaming revenue for August rising 1.1 percent to 18.84 billion patacas ($2.36 billion), compared to the same month in 2015.

But accumulated revenue for the year until August fell 9.1 percent at 144.39 billion patacas, compared to the same period in 2015.

Analysts believe the market has now bottomed out and that Macau will reap the benefits of the resort openings in the second half of 2016.

Story continues

Macau overtook Las Vegas as the world's casino capital in terms of revenue after the sector was opened up to foreign competition in 2002.

It still leads its US counterpart despite the downturn.

lm/amu/ceb

WYNN RESORTS

LAS VEGAS SANDS CORP
Vegan quinoa umi kitchen

When you order takeout, you're usually paying for the convenience of enjoying a restaurant-cooked meal in the comfort of your own home.

But what if it's actually your mom's home-cooked meals that you crave?

That's what the founders of Umi Kitchen, a New York-based food delivery app, are banking on. Founded by CEO Khalil Tawil, former Tumblr VP Derek Gottfrid, and Hallie Meyer (daughter of Shake Shack founder and Union Square Hospitality Group CEO Danny Meyer), Umi Kitchen provides a platform for home chefs to cook meals for strangers through an iOS app.

The name "umi," which means "mother" in Arabic, plays into the theme. The name takes inspiration from Tawil's own mother, who immigrated from Lebanon to Missoula, Montana in 1976, and baked dozens of pounds of bread for the local farmer's market.

"My mother would cook dinner every single night, and our dinner table became the center of our social lives," Tawil said.

When Tawil went into the army, his mother would even send him vacuum-sealed meals. After several deployments, Tawil got an internship in finance and then went to Yale Law School, where he would later meet Meyer, who was a second-semester senior there.

umi kitchen

"In that first semester of law school, I was eating Chipotle and Shake Shack every day," Tawil said.

"I would walk past people's homes and just feel really frustrated that I didn't have access to a home-cooked meal."

He and Meyer decided to post a Craigslist ad looking for someone who might be interested in cooking them a meal. To their surprise, they got more than a dozen responses, and the idea for Umi Kitchen was born. They were later introduced by a friend to Gottfrid, who helped them get their tech infrastructure up and running.

"I had been doing a bunch of advising at other startups and was thinking of getting into something, but not really," Gottfrid said. "The part that really differentiates [Umi] is the passion that these people bring to their cooking. They're really sharing their souls with you."

Story continues

"Something that's made with so much love and care and excitement  that's actually in short supply."

Though it's launching as a competitor to delivery services like Seamless, UberEats, and Caviar, Umi Kitchen says that it considers the home-cooked quality to be more central to the concept than the convenience of delivery.

"I think the exciting part is the food, and the delivery is just the clarifier," Gottfrid said. "I don't think anyone is excited that something is delivered in New York  it's kind of expected at this point. In some ways, the delivery is the most unexciting part."

The founders evaluate each application and taste test a sample menu before allowing cooks to open their kitchens up to customers. Their only guidelines are that each chef should have a dish they consider their signature, and that the full meal should be enough to feed a hungry adult.

umi kitchen

They find that the chefs who sign up for Umi Kitchen do so for very different reasons.

"Some of them have gone to culinary school, but many of them have not. They're just wonderful cooks with signature dishes they're excited to share with people," Meyer said, adding that each cook who is accepted onto the platform must first pass food safety training  the same training required of restaurant workers.

Meyer herself is plenty familiar with the food world. Though her father is one of the most successful restaurateurs in the business today, she grew up cooking for her family and guests they had over to the house.

She started her first company  a catering company with the Yale Sustainable Farm  while still an undergrad, and won the school's version of Iron Chef twice.

"I grew up in a family where food was always about where it came from, and the story behind it. Cooking together was just what we did, it was all we talked about ... I feel totally lucky to have him as a friend and advisor on the sidelines through all this," she said. "Biggest piece of advice: have fun. And don't take yourself too seriously, especially in a business where the business is of making people happy."

umi kitchen cofounders

The service has been available in Brooklyn since April, but launches in Manhattan on September 13. Anyone between 116th Street and Houston, and to the east of 5th Avenue, can order through Umi Kitchen's app, which uses Postmates as a third-party delivery partner. Umi Kitchen is currently available only for dinner (and there's no menu for Fridays or Saturdays) but the founders haven't ruled out eventually offering more meals on the platform.

Umi Kitchen raised a $1.4 million seed round of funding led by Box Group's David Tisch and Adam Rothenberg. Additional investors include Danny Meyer, Version One Ventures, the Sweetgreen founders, Henrik Werdelin of Bark & Co., Hayley Barna of BirchBox, Yale University's Yale Innovation Fund, and Elizabeth Cutler of SoulCycle.

NOW WATCH: I tried sending something to an Amazon Locker and it was a terrible experience





More From Business Insider


WASHINGTON -- Time is running out for the New York Mets, who fell 10 games behind the first-place Washington Nationals in the National League East following an 8-1 loss Monday night.

"That was big for us to win that game," Washington manager Dusty Baker said.

New York (76-68) is very much in the NL wild-card hunt, and that is one reason manager Terry Collins didn't have much patience with starting pitcher Rafael Montero, who walked two with the bases loaded in the first inning and gave up six runs overall before he was lifted in the second.

"Tonight was certainly a downer," Collins said.

The Mets are still 16-6 in the past 22 games, and they maintain a half-game lead on the St. Louis Cardinals in the battle for the final NL playoff position.

"They are rising to the challenge, which is evident in how they have played lately," Baker said of the Mets.

Collins was asked about the team's recent surge and said it was a testament to the character of every player in the clubhouse.

And of course, good pitching helps as well.

"Our young (players) have stepped up, which is very big for us," Collins said Monday.

The teams will meet in the second game of the series Tuesday, when Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard (13-8, 2.48 ERA) faces Nationals right-hander A.J. Cole (1-2, 4.56 ERA).

It will be just the fifth start of the year for Cole and the sixth of his major league career. His only previous appearance against the Mets came on Sept. 2, when he earned the win with six innings of one-run ball at New York.

Cole is proving to be a much more mature pitcher than when he made his big league debut in April 2015 against the Braves in Atlanta.

In his four starts this year, he has pitched at least five innings each time, and he has not allowed more than four runs in an outing despite facing challenging road assignments such as in tiny Camden Yards against the Baltimore Orioles and Citi Field against the Mets earlier this month.

Story continues

Syndergaard is the same age as Cole, 24, but he is already an established major-leaguer in his second season.

He gave up four walks and six hits in five scoreless innings in his last start, a 6-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday. The hard-throwing right-hander has given up three runs in his past 27 innings.

Syndergaard is 2-3 with a 3.02 ERA in seven career starts against the Nationals with 47 strikeouts and 13 walks. He lost to Cole and the Nationals 4-1 on Sept. 2, when he gave up two runs in seven innings.

Several Washington hitters have fared well against Syndergaard.

Ben Revere is hitting .364 in 11 at-bats against him, Wilson Ramos is at .333 in 12 trips, and Anthony Rendon and Bryce Harper are both hitting .313 in 16 at-bats against the Tuesday starter.

A few Washington veterans have struggled against Syndergaard. Danny Espinosa is batting .167 in 12 at-bats, Jayson Werth is hitting .143 in 14 trips and Ryan Zimmerman is batting .125 in eight at-bats. Zimmerman has been in a slump for nearly a month, as was Ramos before he went 1-for-2 with two walks and two RBIs on Monday.

Following Syndergaard's start, Robert Gsellman will pitch the series finale Wednesday at Washington against Tanner Roark. New York will start Bartolo Colon and Seth Lugo in the first two games of a weekend series at Minnesota. Beyond that, Collins said Montero would not remain in the rotation after his Monday outing.

Who could take his place?

"Anybody," Collins said.
Mexico City (AFP) - Mexican police have arrested the wife of a jailed leader of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, authorities said Tuesday, making her the latest woman accused of a high-profile role in the country's underworld.

Clara Elena Laborin, 52, was detained on Monday in Hermosillo, northwestern Sonora state, along with another cartel operator, Alan Contreras, according to the federal police.

Nicknamed "La Senora" (The Mrs.), Laborin is the wife of Hector Beltran Leyva, who was captured in 2014.

Laborin is "identified as the head of operations of a criminal cell with a presence in Sonora state," Omar Garcia Harfuch, head of federal police investigations, told a news conference.

She and Contreras "are considered among the main generators of violence in Acapulco," where Laborin coordinated criminal groups, Garcia Harfuch said.

The Beltran Leyva drug cartel is entangled in a bloody turf war with the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, a conflict blamed for turning the once glamorous Pacific port city into Mexico's murder capital.

Acapulco's murder rate has soared to 111 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015, with state officials linking most of the killings to gang conflicts.

The Beltran Leyva family used to be among Mexico's most powerful criminal groups, but the brothers running the cartel have been killed or arrested.

Alfredo "El Mochomo" Beltran Leyva was captured by the army in 2008, his brother Arturo, or the "Chief of Chiefs," was killed in a shootout with troops a year later, and Hector was detained in the tourist city of San Miguel de Allende in 2014.

In 2009, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Laborin and 21 other individuals for their ties to the Beltran Leyva organization, freezing any assets they may have in the United States.

- 'Ruthless and highly intelligent' -

Laborin, who local media said is a former beauty queen in her home state, is not the first woman to be accused of having an important role in the macho world of drug cartels.

Story continues

Enedina Arellano Felix, an accountant, has appeared in US Treasury Department charts linking her to another notorious family, the Arellano Felix criminal organization.

Another woman, Sandra Avila Beltran, alias the "Queen of the Pacific," was extradited to the United States in 2012 where she was convicted of helping her former boyfriend, a go-between for Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel and Colombian traffickers, avoid arrest.

She was deported back to Mexico in August 2013 and was freed in February 2015.

More recently, the wife of the ex-mayor of Iguala, the city in Guerrero where 43 students vanished in 2014, was detained along with her husband.

After her arrest, prosecutors linked Maria de los Angeles Pineda to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, which is accused of killing the students after they were delivered to the gang by corrupt police officers.

"We're starting to see more and more women climbing through the ranks of many of these cartels," said Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

"There's one key factor that distinguishes them from other female traffickers: ...they're extraordinarily ruthless and highly intelligent," Vigil told AFP.

"They have to be extremely ruthless otherwise the men won't pay attention to them, and they have to be highly intelligence because they engage in the more sophisticated aspects that the cartel does such as money laundering and logistics, the corruption of public officials."
By Anahi Rama and Lizbeth Diaz MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has widened its investigation into the abduction and apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers in the southwestern city of Iguala in 2014 to examine the role of federal and state police, a federal prosecutor said. During the first year of the investigation, authorities focused on the municipal police in Iguala and the nearby town of Cocula, who federal prosecutors said were in cahoots with a drug gang suspected of killing the students. The disappearance of the 43, on Sept. 26, 2014, sparked international outcry, battering Mexico's reputation and plunging President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration into crisis. Alfredo Higuera, the special federal prosecutor assigned to the case, said in an interview that the probe had now gathered about 100 additional declarations in recent weeks from 19 federal police and 39 from the state of Guerrero. "Individuals from all forces have made declarations, obviously including people at the federal level," said Higuera, who took office a month after a group of international experts appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) cited deep flaws in the government's investigation. The government's account stated that the 43 were abducted by corrupt police and handed over to suspected members of local drug cartel Guerreros Unidos, who then killed them, incinerated the bodies and threw their ashes into a river. The government said it believed the gang had targeted the students in the belief they were linked to a rival outfit. The remains of only one of the missing youths have been definitively identified so far, and the CIDH report on the disappearances picked serious holes in the government findings. Higuera said important new information had been gleaned from the analysis of hundreds of calls made by police and officials on the night of the disappearances, as well as from suspects in custody and students who disappeared. "This is an investigation that goes beyond any situation, both because of the number of victims and the number of people who took part in it," Higuera said. The probe is now putting greater stress on determining whether students could have been brought to a variety of places after they were abducted, rather than a single location. (Writing by Natalie Schachar; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexicans who lost relatives or were wounded in an aerial bombing in Egypt last year have reached a compensation agreement with the Egyptian Travel Agents Association (ETAA), Mexico's government said on Tuesday. In September 2015, an Egyptian army aircraft fired on a group of visitors parked for a barbecue near a tourist site, thinking they were militants. Eight Mexican citizens and four Egyptians were killed. Six Mexicans were wounded. Mexico's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that after the intervention of both governments and their lawyers, an accord was reached with the ETAA to pay "financial compensation" to the victims once current religious festivals in Egypt are over. The federation is a union of local tourism chambers of commerce. It represents the tourism industry and is not officially part of the Egyptian government. Muslims this week celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday, one of the two most important festivals of the Islamic calendar. The ministry, which in May complained that it was not satisfied with Egypt's response to the attack, did not divulge details of the agreement. Under the accord, authorities in Egypt will also erect a memorial to the Mexican and Egyptian victims, the ministry said. (Reporting by Dave Graham, editing by G Crosse)
Michelle Obama wearing a Gucci dress on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. (Photo: Getty Images)

When Michelle Obama leaves the White House in February, its really the people shell miss the most. The girls have grown up in the White House. I mean, the staff thats there, we see them every day. These are people who have helped us raise our kids. Theyve loved us, theyve taken care of us, she said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Because of this, FLOTUS told the daytime talk show host that her daughters, Sasha and Malia, will probably have a tough time moving on. Im proud of them theyve really managed this so well, she said. I mean, I just love them to death and the big thing Ive always worried about was making sure that they got out of this whole. Im just proud that they are poised, smart, intelligent young women.

Michelle herself also handled the role of first lady well too, saying it was an honor to take on the job. I wasnt the political spouse. I was very hesitant about this, but its truly been an honor to serve, to travel this country, to meet so many great people, she said.

Meet my co-host for tomorrow. A photo posted by Ellen (@theellenshow) on Sep 12, 2016 at 7:29pm PDT

And shes done it all in style. From her white Jason Wu gown for the inauguration in 2008 to the orange Narciso Rodriguez sheath she wore at President Barack Obamas last State of the Union, shes spent eight years serving fashion hits. As for her latest appearance, Michelle looked amazing and fashion-forward in a Gucci dress from the Italian brands Spring/Summer 2016 collection. When the piece went down the runway in Milan last September, it featured a much lower neckline, which the first lady had altered.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
Microsoft Corporation MSFT is gradually gaining traction in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) space. The company recently announced that it has entered into a six-year agreement with HP Inc. HPQ for the deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online at its sales, marketing and service units.

Although Microsoft did not divulge the details of the agreement, we believe the HP-deal is a major win as it demonstrates the companys growing clout in the cloud CRM market.

Why This Move?

As per a report published by Fortune, HP has used CRM solutions provided by Oracle Corporation ORCL and salesforce.com, inc. (CRM) in the past.

However, Microsofts Dynamics CRM Online being a cloud-based solution is a more efficient and effective means of collaboration across various business units. HP plans to deploy the new cloud-based solution at 28,500 terminals, out of which nearly 20,000 will belong to the support department and the remaining to the sales department.

Mutually Beneficial Deal

Given the fact that Microsofts Dynamics CRM Online is tightly integrated with Microsofts cloud offering Azure as well as other analytics and productivity tools such as Power BI and Office 365, the switch by HP is expected to streamline the companys operations to a great extent.

On the other hand, the six-year HP contract will help Microsoft to strengthen its foothold in the CRM space that is dominated by the likes of Oracle, Salesforce and SAP.

Future Roadmap

In a bid to enhance the capabilities of its Dynamics CRM, Microsoft has made some smart acquisitions such as that of Adxstudio and FieldOne. Additionally, the companys recent acquisition of LinkedIn will also help Dynamics CRM users as they can have access to a large pool of business and customer data.

We note that during the last earnings call, Microsoft reported a 6% jump in its Dynamics revenues as paid seats for its Dynamics CRM Online solutions doubled on a year-over-year basis.

Story continues

With its mobile-first, cloud-first stance, Microsoft looks poised to strengthen its presence in the CRM space as well.

MICROSOFT CORP Price

MICROSOFT CORP Price | MICROSOFT CORP Quote

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

At present, Microsoft carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

A better-ranked stock in the broader technology space is Avid Technology, Inc. AVID, sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Interested in IPOs? Check out the special edition of Zacks Friday Finish Line below, where Editor Maddy Johnson and Content Writer Ryan McQueeney interview Kathleen Smith of Renaissance Capital about the IPO market in 2016 (see part two here).

Confidential from Zacks

Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



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



MICROSOFT CORP (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report



ORACLE CORP (ORCL): Free Stock Analysis Report



AVID TECH INC (AVID): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
LONDON (Reuters) - England midfielder Eric Dier has signed a new contract keeping him at Tottenham Hotspur until 2021, the Premier League club announced on Tuesday. The 22-year-old, who joined the North Londoners from Sporting Lisbon in 2014, previously had a contract to 2020. Dier has made 87 appearances for Spurs, scoring six goals, and made his full England debut last November. He now has 11 caps and has scored twice for England. Tottenham finished third in the Premier League last season and play AS Monaco in their opening Champions League Group E match at Wembley on Wednesday. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Amlan Chakraborty)
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is not happy at the thought that his onetime adversary, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, might soon be a key player in the nation's next White House administration, he told an audience at the Disrupt tech conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

"One of the things that's very important to us [at Salesforce] is LGBTQ equality," Benioff said. "You referenced Mike Pence in Indiana, who signed a law basically repressing the rights of the LGBTQ community in Indiana that we had to fight back. And we were able to do something very important: We turned back the law."

But he warned that the bigger battle over equality isn't over yet.

"It doesn't seem possible because here we are in San Francisco, the city of love. But it is. There's a lot of sh-- going on out there," he said. "You've got a set of people who have a lot of hate in their hearts."

"The people need to take a stand. If you don't take a stand, then I will tell you, there are a lot of people in this country, Mike Pence and others, who are going to do some very bad things to the people that we love," he said (emphasis added).

Benioff and Pence had a big showdown last year when Indiana passed a controversial law that some claimed would legalize discrimination against LGBT people in the state. Salesforce is the state's largest employer, and Benioff and other business leaders had warned Pence that they would reduce investment in the state if the law passed.

The fight escalated after the bill was signed, until Pence agreed to modify the bill with language that made it harder for the law to be used to justify discrimination.

Benioff said he's focused on making sure that equality happens at every level in his company, including paying women equal wages and ensuring representation among races.

Next month, at his company's annual tech conference in San Francisco, he will announce the appointment of a chief equality officer, who will report to him, he said. The goal with this new position is to make sure Benioff stays informed and involved in diversity, equal pay, and other company issues.

Story continues

NOW WATCH: Clinton's latest ad slams Pence for refusing to call former KKK leader David Duke 'deplorable'





More From Business Insider


Donald Trumps running mate, Mike Pence, again refused to repudiate former KKK leader David Duke and other white nationalists, telling CNN on Monday that he wasnt in the business of name calling.

Asked by Wolf Blitzer whether he thought Duke and his far-right cohort fell into what Hillary Clinton called basket of deplorables, Pence played Switzerland.

As I told you the last time I was on, Im not sure why the media keeps dropping David Dukes name, Pence said. Donald Trump has denounced David Duke repeatedly. We dont want his support, and we dont want the support of people who think that.

Also Read: Are Hitler-Trump Comparisons Fair? A Holocaust Survivor Tells His Son

Pressed on whether he would simply call Duke a deplorable person, Pence, again, played coy.

Im not in name-calling business, Wolf, he said. You know me better than that. What Hillary Clinton did Friday night was shocking. I mean the millions of people who support Donald Trump after not a basket of anything. They are Americans and they deserve the respect of the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. For her to rattle off a litany of pejoratives is just really shocking.

Pence did not, however, take issue with Trumps litany of pejoratives, like calling Mexicans rapists, proposing a ban on Muslims entering the country or calling his rival Crooked Hillary.

Also Read: David Duke, Roger Stone Turn Clinton's 'Deplorables' Comment Into 'Expendables' Memes (Photos)

Clinton has been under fire recently for saying that half of Trumps supporters fit into a basket of deplorables.

To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables, Clinton told a crowd doing a New York City fundraiser on Friday. Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.

Clinton has since walked back those comments, saying she regretted the half part.

Also Read: Ex-KKK Leader David Duke Runs for Senate, Loves Trump, Can't Spell 'United States'

Story continues

As for Pences shock at the medias instance of dropping David Dukes name all the time  here are a few reasons why that might be happening.

While its easy to blame the media, critics have argued that Trump has repeatedly been slow to distance himself from Duke. In February, Trump was asked by CNNs Jake Tapper whether he would disavow Duke and other white supremacist groups that are supporting his campaign. Just so you understand, I dont know anything about David Duke, OK? Trump said, adding, I dont know anything about what youre even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.

Trump later blamed a bad earpiece for not being able to hear the question. But critics were quick to point out that he seemed to hear just fine, considering he mentioned Duke and white supremacists in his answer.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Even Ex-KKK Leader David Duke Is More Popular With Black Voters Than Donald Trump

Donald Trump Is 'Rehabilitating' Hitler's Image, David Duke Says

David Duke Takes Credit for Donald Trump's Poll Surge (Video)
Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence refused to call former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke "deplorable" Monday, potentially undercutting his campaign's efforts to turn Democrat Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" gaffe against her.

In a CNN interview Monday, Pence said he and his running mate, Donald Trump, "don't want [Duke's] support and we don't want the support of people who think like him, but declined to characterize him as "deplorable."

"I'm not in the name-calling business, Wolf. You know me better than that," Pence told CNN host Wolf Blitzer.

[READ: Republican Officials Say No Support for David Duke]

Over the weekend, the Trump campaign pounced on comments Clinton made at the LGBT for Hillary Gala in New York City Friday night, in which she said "you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables' -- right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic -- you name it."

Clinton has said she regrets using the word "half," but her campaign has otherwise stuck with the assertion that Trump's campaign has allowed the mainstreaming of the so-called alt-right, including white nationalists and anti-Semitics who support his presidential bid.

Duke, who is running a long-shot campaign for the open Senate seat in Louisiana and a vocal Trump supporter, praised Pence after the interview Monday.

"It's good to see an individual like Pence and others start to reject this absolute controlled media," Duke told BuzzFeed. "The truth is the Republican Party is big tent. ... It's ridiculous that they attack me because of my involvement in that nonviolent Klan four decades ago."

Even as Trump has cut an ad featuring Clinton's remarks, slamming Clinton as insulting "hard-working Americans like you," the Clinton camp thinks they can flip the narrative.

Story continues

"If he'd like to argue against Hillary's claim that people who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic or Islamophobic are deplorable, we are happy to have that debate," said spokeswoman Christina Reynolds in a statement released before Pence's interview. "Trump has spent the entire campaign offering divisive views that have given rise to far too much hatred and bigotry -- Hillary Clinton and [vice presidential nominee] Tim Kaine will continue to call that out."

Pence's interview and Dukes's response gave the Clinton campaign the opening they were looking for.

"If you won't say the KKK is deplorable, you have no business running the country," her campaign account tweeted, sharing a link to video of Pence on CNN.

If you won't say the KKK is deplorable, you have no business running the country. https://t.co/mFut8Qrz9A

-- Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 12, 2016

Her campaign also countered Trump's ad with their own one-minute spot of their own Tuesday, accusing Trump of hypocrisy when he said Clinton's "deplorables" comment was disqualifying because "you can't lead this nation if you have such a low opinion of its citizens."

The ad then pulls together a supercut of Trump insulting Iowa voters, a Mexican-American federal judge, a disabled reporter, a Muslim Gold Star family, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and others.

[VIDEO]

Gabrielle Levy covers politics for U.S. News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter (@gabbilevy) or email her at GLevy@usnews.com.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Minaurum Gold Inc. (MGG.V) ("Minaurum") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an option agreement to earn a 100% interest in the La Quintera Silver Project ("Quintera") in the historic Alamos District in Sonora, Mexico from a private Mexican vendor. Quintera encompasses a number of wide, high-grade epithermal veins with significant historical production. The project has seen little modern exploration and has never been drilled.

Quintera covers 4,698 hectares and is located 8km west of Alamos, 45km northwest of Pan American's Alamo Dorado silver mine, and 15km south of Cobre Del Mayo's Piedras Verdes copper mine. Quintera hosts excellent infrastructure and is fully permitted from exploration through to production.

The Quintera Project, which includes the Promontorio, La Quintera, La Aduana, and Minas Nuevas mines, is estimated to have produced more than 120 Moz of silver from about 1680 to the early 1900s. Vein widths average 4m but locally range up to 20m. The primary target vein has a strike length of 3.5km and the entire vein system measures more than 7 km long. Historical records of selective mining indicate grades of over 2,000 g/t Ag were recovered using a cut-off grade of 1,000 g/t Ag.

Director of Minaurum, Dr. Peter Megaw, stated "The Quintera vein swarm produced the majority of the silver mined in the historic Alamos Silver Camp and has somehow eluded systematic exploration for over 100 years. We look forward to having the first crack at applying modern epithermal vein exploration concepts to this system."

The last known production in the district occurred between 1948-1957 in which an American Company processed historical dumps at a rate of 300tpd. In 2012, the Servicio Geologico Mexicano ("SGM") took a total of 105 samples over 3 waste piles and 4 tailings ponds at the La Quintera and the Promontorio mines. Based on the results, the SGM estimated that the Promontorio Waste Dump hosted 157,728 tonnes grading 169g/t Ag, 0.69g/t Au, 1.61% Pb, 0.77% Cu and 3.12% Zn. SGM also estimated that the Quintera dump hosted 66,712 tonnes grading 173g/t Ag, 0.57% Pb and 0.84% Zn. Neither of these estimates is NI43-101 compliant.

Story continues

At Quintera, low-sulphidation epithermal quartz veins are exposed in several surface cuts, pits, and underground workings. Veins occupy north-northeast-striking, steeply dipping, structurally controlled mineralized zones. Exploration work done since 2010 included the identification of 44 historic mine workings and the collection of 334 rock samples of which 97 assayed 100-1,380 g/t Ag and 106 returned values 30 - 100 g/t Ag. Thirteen samples assayed more than 1 g/t gold, the highest gold grade returned was 4.1 g/t Au.

Option Schedule to Earn a 100% interest in the Quintera District (all amounts in CDN$)





MILESTONE CASH SHARES WORK

EXPENDITURES NOTES Upon Signing

1,500,000



1st Anniversary $25,000 750,000 $500,000

2nd Anniversary $25,000 750,000 $500,000

3rd Anniversary $50,000 1,000,000 $500,000

4th Anniversary $50,000 1,000,000 $500,000

5th Anniversary $50,000 1,000,000 $500,000

6th Anniversary $400,000

$500,000 Cash Payment Payable in cash or shares at Discretion of MGG Total: $600,000 6,000,000 $3,000,000



In addition to the above schedule, there is a $2,000,000 payment due upon commercial production and the property vendor retains a 2% NSR (0.5% of which can be purchased for $1,000,000).

The acquisition of the Quintera Silver District adds another highly-prospective project to Minaurum's property portfolio. Over the last year, Minaurum has pursued the addition of high-quality projects that offer significant optionality in three key operating areas in Mexico. These regions include; the Guerrero Gold Belt, the Oaxaca-Chiapas Region and Southern Sonora State. Minaurum continues to pursue advanced stage assets in these regions while continuing exploration work in the Guerrero Gold Belt and drill permitting at Santa Marta.

Stephen R. Maynard, Vice President Exploration of Minaurum and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed the technical data in this release. However, the technical data has not been verified due to its historical nature.

Minaurum Gold is a regional explorer focusing on the exploration and development of high-grade gold and silver projects in Mexico. For more information, please visit our website at www.minaurum.com and our YouTube Minaurum Video Channel.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Darrell A. Rader"

Darrell A. Rader

President and CEO

For more information, please contact:

Sunny Pannu - Investor Relations Manager

(778) 330 0994 or via email at pannu@minaurum.com

The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

2300 - 1177 West Hastings Street

Vancouver, BC V6E 2K3

Telephone 778 330-0994

www.minaurum.com

info@minaurum.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements: Certain disclosure in this release constitute forward-looking information. In making the forward-looking statements in this release, Minaurum has applied certain factors and assumptions that are based on Minaurum' s current beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Minaurum. Although Minaurum considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect, and the forward-looking statements in this release are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Minaurum does not intend, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law

SOURCE: Minaurum Gold Inc.
By Yaniv Barzilai

Best Defense book reviewer

Baghdad. Fallujah. Kabul. Khost. Anbar. Sadr City. Helmand. Places that, for this generation, will live in infamy like Normandy, Iwo Jima, Inchon, and Khe Sanh. And Kael Weston was there, advancing U.S. interests as one of the State Departments only long-term warzone diplomats.

Westons memoir of his seven years back-to-back in warzones is a tragic tale of small victories, large losses, and the enduring challenges of counterinsurgency. Part Clausewitz, part Lawrence of Arabia, and part George Kennan, Weston was one of the few civilians practicing counterinsurgency before it was inscribed in new military manuals. Using his diplomatic savvy, Weston bolstered local allies in Iraq and Afghanistan and undercut Americas enemies in a way that sheer military force never could. Even as Anbar burned and Iraq descended into civil war, Kael al-Falluji (Kael the Fallujan, as he became affectionately known by some Iraqis) brought America closer to victory. Scholars and practitioners of counterinsurgency will study Westons experiences for years to come.

Weston shows that even in war, the pen is a mighty companion to the sword. If war is the continuation of policy by other means, as Clausewitz famously wrote, then diplomatic efforts to achieve political successes should  in theory  supersede merely tactical victories. However, Weston observed that special operations forces acting independently of the main political-military effort sometimes undermined painstaking counterinsurgency conducted by the State Department and the Marine Corps. Efforts to kill suspected low- and mid-level insurgents often took precedence over the more subtle points of counterinsurgency, even when the ramifications of military action far outweighed the rewards. He is yet another witness to the notion that, in wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, winning individual battles has little to do with winning wars.

Likewise, Westons memoir highlights the important and woefully underreported role that diplomats played in advancing U.S. counterinsurgency objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, while one of the key goals of diplomacy is to prevent wars, diplomacy does not end when war begins. A former Marine who knew Weston from his time in Fallujah commented: if only the United States could have replicated him a thousand times over, we may have had a different outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Story continues

The Mirror Test, however, is also a somber memorial to the human cost of war. Weston vividly captures the brutality and sacrifice of too many Americans, Afghans, and Iraqis. Reading the book is heartbreaking at times, and Weston refuses to let abstract numbers of losses numb the reader. In one chapter, he lists the 93 U.S. troops killed in action during his year in Fallujah, along with their hometowns and ages. After introducing many of these individuals in the narrative, the reader must then flip through a ten-page list of 20-year-olds who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their nation. He does the same for the 91 American troops lost during his year in Helmand. Weston also tells of paying blood money to an Afghan teenager who lost six family members (including his parents) in a U.S. night raid. Weston relives watching his Afghan bodyguards killed in an IED attack on his convoy. It is story after story of tragedy, miscalculation, error, or incompetence.

Not everyone will agree with how Weston portrays American foreign policy in the 21st century. From the start, he labels Afghanistan as the right war and Iraq the wrong war. He is deeply critical of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which he deems government-approved torture, as well as the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. But more than any pundit or politician, Weston deserves to make those judgments, as he is one of the few who has seen the cost of those policies firsthand. He has been to Abu Ghraib and Bagram. He spent time in military morgues at the height of the bloodletting in Fallujah. He met with former Guantanamo Bay detainees in Afghanistan. He dealt with the gut-wrenching aftermath when American troops killed civilians. He watched people blown up, shot, killed, and maimed as a result of choices in Washington, D.C. Who can better evaluate major foreign policy decisions than someone who spent seven years observing the impact of those policies on the ground?

The Mirror Test also confronts the home front and life after war. Upon returning to the United States, Weston departed on a journey to visit the graves of 31 Marines who died when their helicopter crashed in a sandstorm while traveling to secure a remote outpost for the 2005 Iraqi election. He blames himself for tragic loss because he overruled military officers who argued against such deployments. He carries this burden with him as he tries to reintegrate in a largely uninterested homeland, where the cost of the nations wars rest on the shoulders of the few.

As I begin my first tour in Afghanistan with the State Department, the death toll of Iraqis and Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. government stands out above all else. Weston joins Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Senators John McCain and Jeanne Shaheen, and others in highlighting the importance of the Special Immigrant Visa Program, a little-known initiative which allows U.S. embassies to grant immigrant visas to Afghan and Iraqi collaborators who face serious threats as a result of their service. My job over the next year in Kabul will be to support this effort, but unfortunately, some members of Congress seem determined to shutter the program. Westons account of the heroism of Afghan and Iraqi collaborators should be recorded in the Congressional docket so no member of Congress can claim ignorance while voting against the program.

The Mirror Test gets its name from the moment in the recovery process when a severely wounded or disfigured veteran sees his or herself in the mirror for the first time. The once-familiar face staring back is no more. As I read Kael Westons aptly-named book, I could not help but wonder if America, itself disfigured by two brutal and protracted conflicts in distant lands, will be able to recognize itself in the mirror at wars end.

Yaniv Barzilai is a State Department foreign service officer and the author of 102 Days of War  How Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda & the Taliban Survived 2001. He has worked on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Azerbaijan in the State Department and is currently assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. The views expressed in this article are his alone and do not necessarily represent those of the State Department or the U.S. Government.

Image credit: Amazon.com
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.
MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / ML Capital Group (MLCG), the parent company of PT Maui, announces the launch of an international, integrated publicity and marketing campaign for PT Maui less than one month after acquiring the luxury tour operator in Hawaii. PT Maui is a truly 5-star travel, tour and hospitality company licensed to offer transportation and tours on the island of Maui.

The campaign targets new customers within the medium- to high-net-worth travel sector and leverages PT Maui's expansive network of partners in the travel and tourism industry, including financial services and media. Over the coming months, PT Maui's brand will be featured and profiled in multiple high value locations, including magazines, television programs, travel publications and partnership marketing programs with leading global brands. At the same time, ML Group is refreshing PT Maui's brand and public profiles, with a focus on digital channels, all before Maui's peak tourism season.

"We're leveraging our connections with leading brand partners and media companies to take PT Maui directly to our target audience of affluent travelers," said ML Capital Group's CEO Kevin Bobryk. "Less than a month after finalizing the acquisition, and on the heels of filing the corresponding financial statements, we're already well on the way to elevating awareness and revenue for our flagship travel and tourism brand."

The first impact of this campaign will be felt almost immediately with travel partners featuring PT Maui in travel publications providing transportation to Maui, and followed by a major co-promotion with a well-known financial partner. It's estimated that the brand will be marketed, exclusively through partners, to over 2 million targeted consumers in the next month alone.

"We're strengthening the PT Maui brand, and we're putting it on display," said Bobryk. "The beauty of PT Maui is its reputation and commitment to excellence. Other brands want to promote it, as it elevates the perceived quality of their products and services. With ML Capital Group's support and network, we're taking that to a new, international level."

Story continues

Safe Harbor: This release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 27E of the Securities Act of 1934. Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Actual performance and results may differ materially from that projected or suggested herein due to certain risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, ability to obtain financing and regulatory and shareholder approval for anticipated actions.

ML Capital Group

Investor Relations

Email: info@mlcginc.com

Phone: (786) 313-3206

SOURCE: ML Capital Group Inc.
On Sep 13, 2016, we issued our updated research report on MoneyGram International Inc. MGI. The company is exploring opportunities to capitalize on growth and expansion both geographically and through its product offerings. Exciting new technologies are being implemented to the digital business to transform the company and differentiate its brand.



For instance, the company is focusing on an industry-leading kiosk technology. Its staging kiosks in particular are providing a better overall customer experience at the point-of-sale and due to lower operating costs and capital requirements. As a result, the company has decided to scale back its full-service kiosk to focus more on profitable growth and customer centric solutions that come from the staging platform.



The company has also strengthened its presence in high-growth potential markets of Latin America, Russia, the Asia Pacific, Africa, Western and Eastern Europe. It has also intensely penetrated several unexplored and underdeveloped global markets of the Middle East, South America, Vietnam and Myanmar.

MONEYGRAM INTL Price and Consensus

MONEYGRAM INTL Price and Consensus | MONEYGRAM INTL Quote

MoneyGram is aggressively making investments in ramping up its digital channel for money transfer, given the growing acceptance of the digital forms of remittance. Various components of its digital business MoneyGram.com, mobile account deposit and virtual agents are all showing solid growth.

The company boasts a wide agent network by virtue of its partnership with several post offices, numerous national banks and stores globally.



Moneygram has also undertaken cost saving initiatives which include closing facilities, headcount reduction, improving system processes, investing in automation and offshoring. These initiatives are expected to reduce cost and accrue to the bottom line in the coming years.



Nevertheless, increased commission, operating expenses, foreign exchange volatility as well as compliance spending also exert pressure on operating margins and cash flow at a time when operating revenues are already facing headwinds due to global instability.



MoneyGram continues to be troubled by economic and geopolitical issues impacting its performance in Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Angola, countries that have historically been strong send markets for MoneyGram.

Story continues

MoneyGram carries a Zacks Rank # 3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the same space are Euronet Worldwide, Inc. EEFT, ORIX Corporation IX and Daiwa Securities Group Inc. DSEEY. Each of these stocks carries a Zacks Rank # 2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Confidential from Zacks



Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



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



MONEYGRAM INTL (MGI): Free Stock Analysis Report



DAIWA SEC GP JP (DSEEY): Free Stock Analysis Report



ORIX CORP-ADR (IX): Free Stock Analysis Report



EURONET WORLDWD (EEFT): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
According to a report from Reuters, Monsantos MON board is meeting on Tuesday to a decide whether to accept a takeover offer from Bayer BAYRY. After months of negotiations, Monsanto is close to approving its sale for more than $65 billion.

Last week, Bayer disclosed a $127.50 per share cash offer for the Monsanto, the worlds largest producer of seeds. People familiar with the matter told Reuters that Monsantos board will accept the deal at a slightly higher valuation.

The ball will then move back to Bayers court; the German pharmaceuticals and chemicals giant will meet on Wednesday to consider Monsantos counter-offer. Reuters source said that the deal could still be stalled by either companys board.

Bayer is attempting to merge its crop chemicals business with Monsantos seeds business in an effort to create an agricultural superpower. Bayer is currently the worlds second-largest crop chemicals maker, behind only Syngenta SYT. Bayers offer of $127.50 per share last week was up from its original offer of $125 per share.

Shares of Monsanto slid about 1.5% in morning trading Tuesday, while shares of Bayer were down about 1%.

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



BAYER A G -ADR (BAYRY): Free Stock Analysis Report



SYNGENTA AG-ADR (SYT): Free Stock Analysis Report



MONSANTO CO-NEW (MON): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
(Updates with source on ECB procedure)

By Paola Arosio

MILAN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Marco Morelli, the frontrunner to take over the helm at troubled Italian lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, was in Frankfurt on Tuesday to meet regulators at the European Central Bank, a source familiar with the matter said.

Morelli travelled to Frankfurt with Monte dei Paschi Chairman Massimo Tononi and the head of the bank's nomination committee, Alessandro Falciai, the source added.

The appointment of Morelli, Monte dei Paschi's chief financial officer until 2010, has already received an informal nod from the ECB, a separate source said over the weekend.

But another source close to the matter said the selection must go to the ECB's supervisory board for a formal vote and the governing council must also sign off.

Morelli, currently head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Italy, has been widely tipped to become CEO since Fabrizio Viola agreed to step down last Thursday.

Viola has overseen two share sales since 2014, raising 8 billion euros ($9 billion) which Monte dei Paschi has burnt through. Bankers have said a new face was needed to win investors over to a third issue, and avert a banking crisis that would send shockwaves across Europe.

Morelli and Monte dei Paschi representatives were not immediately available to comment. The ECB declined to comment.

Tononi and Falciai will discuss the choice of the new CEO in a first meeting with the ECB on Tuesday, according to the first source.

Morelli himself will discuss the lender's rescue plan in a separate meeting later in the day, said the source, who added that it was an unusual move for the ECB to meet a CEO-in-waiting and this was probably tied to a desire to speed up the plan.

Monte dei Paschi, which emerged as Europe's weakest bank in stress tests in July, has pledged to launch a cash call of up to 5 billion euros before the end of the year and sell 9.2 billion euros of bad loans.

The bank needs to move quickly to implement the package and avert the risk of being wound down. But another source has previously said the share sale could be put back to next year because of political uncertainty ahead of a make-or-break constitutional referendum this autumn.

Story continues

On Monday Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said the board of Monte dei Paschi would meet on Wednesday to appoint a new CEO.

Italy's Treasury is the top shareholder in the Tuscan lender with a 4 percent stake following two state bailouts of the world's oldest bank during the financial crisis.

($1 = 0.8907 euros)

(Reporting by Paola Arosio; Writing by Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Pravin Char, Janet McBride)
Podgorica (Montenegro) (AFP) - Svetozar Marovic, a former head of state and close ally of Montenegro's strongman, has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for corruption, a court in Pogorica announced Tuesday.

Marovic, 61, who served as president of Serbia and Montenegro from 2003 to 2006 before the state split in two, was handed a 46-month term after he agreed to a deal with prosecutors.

He immediately stepped down from a powerful position in national politics.

Marovic was accused of involvement in suspicious land purchases and construction deals in the coastal resort of Budva, a top tourist spot, for a company belonging to his son.

"The accused has confessed to his crime," the court said in a statement.

Marovic must also pay a fine of 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) and donate 100,000 euros to charity, it added.

Marovic's son Milos. his brother Dragan and sister-in-law Mirjana have also been arrested in connection with the same affair.

His daughter Milena and four other members of his family are under investigation.

Following his sentencing, Marovic, long time considered the ruling party's main ideologue, resigned his position as director of the political council in Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists.

The party has ruled the Balkan country for more than 25 years.

Serbia and Montenegro were the last two republics to remain allied after the bloody break-up of communist Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

Marovic was the only president of their short-lived union until 2006, when Montenegro proclaimed independence
Hong Kong (AFP) - Hong Kong's credit rating could be at risk after the success of a new generation of young anti-China politicians in legislative elections this month, Moody's warned.

The first poll since mass "Umbrella Movement" protests against Beijing two years ago saw the election of five lawmakers backing independence or self-determination to the Legislative Council (LegCo).

But Moody's said the city's Aa1 rating, the agency's second highest, could be in trouble if the increased ranks of opposition politicians slow down policymaking.

"With these results, filibustering, which has become increasingly common in the past two years, is likely to continue, a credit-negative development that will result in slow and less effective policymaking," it said in a report published Monday.

It also said it expects the political divide to widen in the near future.

"In this environment, political friction is likely to continue and may intensify ahead of the chief executive election in March 2017," it said of the city's leadership election.

Financial secretary John Tsang said Tuesday the ratings agency should be "fair" to the city.

"If they know the situation better, then maybe they will know whether or not it will truly affect the overall economy or the workings of the government," Tsang said.

Moody's in March downgraded the city's outlook from "stable" to "negative", citing increasing political riskiness and closer economic ties with China, which is facing a growth slowdown.

The democratic camp including independence activists gained three seats in the 70-strong LegCo at the September 4 poll. That gives them the 30 members needed to veto key bills, which can only be passed with a two-thirds majority.

However, the overall make-up of the LegCo remains weighted towards Beijing under a system that makes it almost impossible for the democracy camp to take a majority.

Story continues

Young campaigners have been galvanised by a number of incidents that have pointed to increased Beijing interference.

The most high-profile was the disappearance of five city booksellers known for salacious titles about Beijing politicians. They resurfaced in detention on the mainland.

Hong Kong was handed over by Britain to China in 1997 under an agreement guaranteeing its freedoms for 50 years.
The best film at the Toronto International Film Festival this year is also the most delicate, such a calm yet precise piece of filmmaking that youre barely prepared for its shimmering, quietly sensational ending. Barry Jenkins Moonlightwhich Jenkins adapted from a story by playwright Tarell McCraneyis a coming-of-age movie, and a love story, that leaves you feeling both stripped bare and restored, slightly better prepared to step out and face the world of people around you, with all the confounding challenges they present. Theres not much more you can ask from a movie.

Three actors play the lead character during the course of Moonlight: A new, and marvelous, child actor named Alex R. Hibbert plays Little, an almost incongruously scrawny Miami kid whos picked on mercilessly by his classmates. With these mini thugs in pursuit, he dashes into a boarded-up house used as a drug hangout. A dealer named Juan (Mahershala Ali), the kind of guy who looks threatening to bad dudes but is radiantly kind to innocents like Little, plucks him out and brings him home for a good meal (Janelle Monae plays his smart-sassy girlfriend, Theresa). Juan returns Little to his mother, Paula (the always terrific Naomie Harris) the next morning.

Littles relationship with his mother is a troubled one, and adolescence doesnt improve it. As a teenager, Little becomes known by his real name, Chiron (now played by Ashton Sanders): Hes taller and, if possible, even thinner, as if he were stretching toward a manhood he isnt nearly ready for. And he still has very few friends, though there is one, Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), who shows him a kind of rough-and-tumble kindness that segues into something deeper and more meaningful, a romantic and sexual reverie that neither kid can quite deal with. This isnt the time or the place or the age for it: The young men around them are judged by how tough they are, and Chiron isnt tough at all. When he learns to be, your heart sinksbut its also clear theres no other way for him to survive.

Story continues

As an adult, Chiron, who now goes by the name Black (Trevante Rhodes), is barely recognizablehes beefed-up and closed off, the kind of guy who doesnt let anyone mess with him, or get to him. He now lives in Atlanta, and he and his mother are finally brokering some sort of peace. And one day Kevin (now played by Andre Holland, of The Knick) calls him out of the blue. What happens between the two men is so subtle and marvelous to watch that you feel drawn into an invisible but intense embrace. Any defenses you might be hanging ontoand who doesnt have them?seem to dissolve along with Blacks. The spell this movie casts is that strong.

This is Jenkins first feature since his 2008 debut Medicine for Melancholy (which also premiered at TIFF that year), a hypnotic, perceptive film about a young man and woman of color slipping into a tentative relationship in that historically pretty damn white city, San Francisco. Many who saw Medicine for Melancholy, including me, have been waiting for a follow-up. Moonlight exceeded my expectations, and I cant recall the last time I saw so many sterling performancessome by little-known or as yet unknown actorsin one picture. Their glow fulfills every promise of the movies name.

This is my last full day in Toronto, and as always, the pileup of movies I didnt get a chance to write about is overwhelming. A few off-the-cuff favorites: William Oldroyds chilly, elegant and grimly funny Lady Macbeth, in which a young woman forced into an arranged marriage calmly assumes control of everything and everyone around her; Onur Tukels weird, wild, invigorating satire, Catfight, in which Sandra Oh and Anne Heche beat the crap out of each other in a series of bone-cracking fight sequences that arent for the faint of heart; Adam Leons delightful New York-set romantic caper Tramps; and Kasper Collins superb documentary I Called Him Morgan, about the turbulent but profound relationship between great bop trumpeter Lee Morgan and his wife, Helen, who shot him dead in a New York City club in 1972, a crime of passion with heartbreaking consequencesbecause love, like the greatest of music, is often unpredictable.
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - More than half of girls in British schools and colleges have faced sexual harassment, according to a new report on Tuesday that called for sex education to be provided for all children in primary and secondary school. A parliamentary committee report said sexual bullying had become an expected part of girls' everyday lives. The report found evidence that almost a third of 16 to 18-year-olds had experienced unwanted sexual touching at school. "Surely no one who reads or hears these striking statistics today could now deny how serious ... this problem is," Katie Russell of Rape Crisis, a charity which works with survivors of sexual abuse, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Young people told the committee that complaints of sexual harassment would often be forgotten, with no action taken. Maria Miller, the lawmaker who chaired the committee, said the report found teachers often accepted sexual harassment as "just banter". Nearly three quarters of 16-18 year old students said they heard terms such as "slut" used towards girls on a regular basis. Miller, from the ruling Conservative party, criticized Britain's education department for having no "no coherent plan" to tackle the problem. Under the current UK curriculum, sexual health education is compulsory at secondary school but teaching pupils about relationships and sexual consent is not. A government spokesperson said the department would consider the report's recommendations. "Schools should be safe places and fortunately crime is rare, but no young person should suffer harassment or violence," the spokesperson said. (Reporting by Matthew Ponsford, editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, traficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Lawrence Delevingne

NEW YORK, Sept 13 (Reuters) - More financial executives are decamping to Florida for lower taxes, real estate investor Barry Sternlicht said on Tuesday, revealing that he is one of those who recently made the move.

"There's a massive exodus from Connecticut," Sternlicht said, naming himself and billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones as the most high-profile recent departees, at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha Conference on Tuesday. Sternlicht said, without naming anyone, many Wall Street workers were doing the same thing.

"As of July 1," Sternlicht said, "I've become a resident of Florida." Asked whether his departure was fueled by high taxes, he said "Yeah."

Sternlicht, who runs Starwood Capital Group, joins billionaire hedge fund managers David Tepper and Paul Tudor Jones in becoming residents of the so-called Sunshine State, which has no personal income or estate taxes. Tepper moved from New Jersey late last year, according to filings, and Jones moved from Connecticut, according to a filing. Tepper's Appaloosa Management is now also Florida based, but Tudor Investment Corp is still headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Previously Edward Lampert's ESL Investments moved from Connecticut to Florida, and Mark Spitznagel's Universa Investments moved its headquarters to Florida from California, also a high-tax state.

Business development groups in South Florida have aggressively courted Northeastern investors in recent years. Still, Florida is not close to rivaling New York and Connecticut, which have by far the most hedge fund managers and firms.

Sternlicht lived for years in Connecticut, a hub for hedge funds and home to wealthy Wall Street bankers and investors.

Now looking back at his former home state, Sternlicht said that it is being seriously hurt by high tax rates that are prompting many people to make a lifestyle decision and move.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Lawrence Delevingne; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
By Olivia Oran

Sept 12 (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley has hired two key executives from Bank of America Corp's Merrill Lynch unit as it builds out its digital offering within wealth management, the investment bank confirmed.

The hires come as Morgan Stanley is focusing on clients with bigger bank accounts and increasingly referring those with fewer assets to call centers and online investing platforms. It is also looking for new ways for technology-savvy clients to interact with their advisors, including mobile apps and texts.

Jaime Sobrepera started this week at the New York-based bank as the head of its call center for clients, called the client advisory center. Sobrepera had worked at Merrill Lynch for nearly 30 years where he held a variety of roles including running the advisor centers at Merrill Edge, the firm's online, call-center and branch-based brokerage platform.

Paul Vienick, who ran Merrilledge.com and its self-directed platform, will join Morgan Stanley in November. Vienick will help build out the bank's client portal Morgan Stanley Online and its mobile platform.

A Morgan Stanley spokesman confirmed the hires.

Morgan Stanley, unlike some of its Wall Street peers who have announced partnerships with algorithmic-based investment platforms known as "robo-advisors," has repeatedly said it believes the best way to use automated technology is alongside human advisors rather than as a standalone product.

"You said robo, we said digital - it's not the same," Morgan Stanley CFO Jonathan Pruzan said on Monday, responding to a question during an industry conference.

Morgan Stanley executives say their digital push is not to attract new mass affluent clients, as Merrill Edge has done. The bank is focused on doing more business with existing clients, particularly those with greater than $1 million in investable assets.

(Reporting by Olivia Oran in New York)
From Harper's BAZAAR

New York City may be currently in the midst of fashion week-a tradition that's been ongoing for over 70 years-but its assumed status as the "most fashionable city in America" might be losing its grip. According to a new study, that title now belongs to Los Angeles.

Photo credit: Getty

The research examined over 100 cities in the U.S. to find the country's most stylish one. First it counted the number of fashion-related businesses in each city via Yelp, and divided that total by the its number of occupied households, courtesy of Trulia. The latter also takes into account fashion-related real-estate listings, which were indicated by features like dressing rooms, for example.

The result showed Los Angeles on top, with New York as a close second and Anaheim in third place.

Photo credit: Getty

Designers are catching on to, if not leading, the fashion scene's move westward. Tom Ford and Jeremy Scott chose to host their fashion shows in L.A., but the trend isn't only among American designers. Stella McCartney and Saint Laurent also presented there this year. McCartney showed Pre-Fall 2016 at Amoeba Music in Los Angeles while Hedi Slimane used the Hollywood Palladium as his Fall 2016 venue.

Photo credit: Getty

You Might Also Like
Cindy Crawfords daughter ready to take modelling world by storm

The apple doesnt fall far from the tree! Kaia Gerber, the 15-year-old daughter of 90s supermodel Cindy Crawford, has won the Breakthrough Model of the Year at The Daily Front Row Fashion Media Awards in New York recently. She was presented the award by designer Marc Jacobs, whose label the teen will be endorsing.



Kaias mom Cindy too entered the modelling profession in her teens. She was only 17 when the prestigious Elite Model Management signed her after she won their annual contest. Despite having an impressive academic background, Cindy opted to pursue a career in modelling, and in no time, she made it to the top league, featuring among the original supermodels of the 90s.

Young Kaia is the spitting image of her mother, blessed with all the latters good features, including those long legs, beautiful eyebrows and well defined cheekbones.

Kaias older brother Presley Walker as well is into modelling.

During her acceptance speech, Kaia thanked her mom for teaching her to be kind and punctual, and raising her kids right as responsible individuals.

In a career spanning 3 decades, Cindy has achieved many honours, including being named the top-paid model of the world. The modelling industry, however, has undergone tremendous changes in the recent years; social media has become an integral part of a models career these days, contrary to the 20th century. Millennial models a.k.a Instagirls, Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid etc., have millions of followers on Instagram  a platform where they can sell their image, which in turn make them the most sought after faces for the big brands.

For Kaia, this is just the beginning.

Image credit: Getty, Instagram.
At Murree Brewery, home of Pakistan's national lager, vintage copper boilers belch odorous fumes as they churn out 10 million litres of beer each year.

Hundreds of tons of gin and whisky are stored in climate-conditioned cellars, shielded from the pummelling sun.

Whether it's beer produced by the crateful in Murree's venerable red brick brewery -- opposite the powerful army's headquarters in Rawalpindi -- or wine discreetly fermented in a bedroom, alcohol sales are booming in "teetotalitarian" Pakistan.

Strangers to the Islamic Republic may be surprised that the country industriously -- and at Murree openly -- produces such quantities of booze, despite it being forbidden to 97 percent of the population.

But although Pakistani Muslims are banned from drinking alcohol, topers take advantage of the fact that the country's minorities, mainly Hindus and Christians, face no such prohibition, and often snaffle up their quota.

And so although officially only three million adults can buy alcohol, the country's three breweries must work hard to please the nation's enthusiastic tipplers.

Murree produces two cask-aged whiskies and a gin dyed an electric blue -- not coincidentally exactly the shade of bottles containing its more internationally renowned counterpart, Bombay Sapphire.

Founded by the British in 1860 and now Parsee-owned, Murree brewery has been burnt down by Muslim protesters, temporarily shut down in an Islamist purge and and continues to survive prohibition, which was imposed in the 1970s.

Far from bowed, it flourishes as one of Pakistan's most successful companies, with an annual growth of between 15 to 20 percent, a rarity in a country regularly wracked by Islamist violence.

"There is no risk as such, because we are a very very legal entity -- one of the biggest taxpayers in this country," said Major Sabih-ur-Rehman, a brewery executive.

"It is in the interest of everybody that the Murree brewery as a legal business should flourish and continue."

Story continues

- An elite pursuit -

With cans priced at 300 rupees ($3) on the legal market in a country where the average salary is 13,000 ($130), the brewery caters mainly to a Muslim elite willing to break the rules.

Tahir Ahmed, a therapist specialising in addiction, who is worried about the rise in alcoholism, says that off licence stores "sell the booze to the people who can afford it, and only Muslims can".

"The middle class is steeped in Islamic morality, but the upper class are getting richer, and it is a new norm that if you invite someone for dinner you will be serving alcohol. It is socially expected."

Well stocked bars at birthday parties, dinners awash with Italian wines and discreet "car-bars" in the parking lots of wedding halls are supplied by a thriving blackmarket that also relies on vast foreign imports.

"The main source of smuggling is through Dubai on launches crossing the sea," a customs official who did not wish to be named told AFP.

Smugglers are able to bring in entire containers by paying off officials, while sometimes unscrupulous diplomats sell a part of their legal quota to bootleggers.

An Asian embassy in Islamabad once ran its own wine shop, according to former customers.

- Soaring spirits -

Buying on the blackmarket raises prices -- a bottle of Murree gin can cost $20 even (more than double its official cost), even when bootleggers dilute the spirit. An ordinary bottle of table wine starts at $40.

Cheap and dangerous moonshine is also available, often drunk with fatal consequences by the poor during festivals.

But wealthier amateurs, fed up with the variable quality of bootlegged alcohol, have taken to making their own wines at home.

With no grape harvest or cave, Hassan makes do with buying litres of grape juice, sugar and enzymes, which he mixes in huge glass cylinders.

For his white wine, he presses kilos of oranges and white grapes, which he brightens with raisins. All done discreetly in his guest bedroom.

"It is a fairly simple process, but you have to make sure everything is kept very clean, sanitise everything," explains the thirty-something connoisseur.

"It's a nice hobby, it's fun to make and drink what you made with friends", he adds.

Although a hobby that's punishable by 80 lashes, this viticulturist is undeterred. The penalty has never been applied.
London (AFP) - Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday met with British Prime Minister Theresa May during her first visit to London since becoming Myanmar's de facto leader, with the thorny issue of human rights on the agenda.

The two women discussed the challenges faced by Myanmar as it transitions from military rule to democracy during Suu Kyi's first visit outside of Asia since her party's election victory last year.

"They agreed that to create a society that truly works for all, it would be important to see Burma (Myanmar) make further progress in the creation of jobs, in improving access to quality healthcare, and on reforming the education system," said May's Downing Street office.

London stands "ready to provide further assistance as Burma continues to develop," including through A118 million (138 million euros, $156 million) in support this year, it added.

May also "raised concerns about human rights abuses in the Burmese military," with the nobel laureate, according to a Downing Street summary of the meeting.

Despite winning a landslide in last November's elections, which ended decades of brutal military rule, Suu Kyi is banned by a junta-era constitution from becoming president.

Instead she has taken the role of foreign minister and created a new position for herself as state counsellor. She has also appointed a longtime friend and ally, Htin Kyaw, to be a proxy president.

Suu Kyi met Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday, for talks including on Myanmar's Rakhine region, which is riven by ethnic divisions and is home to the stateless Muslim Rohingya.

Sectarian bloodshed in the western state in 2012 forced more than 100,000 Rohingya into displacement camps.

The Rohingya, a minority in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar, are denied citizenship and face severe restrictions on their movements and access to health care and other basic services.

Johnson welcomed the establishment of the Rakhine Commission to deal with the issue.

"We remain committed to supporting Burma's extraordinary reforms and we welcome a democratic, stable and prosperous Burma that can contribute to stability and security in southeast Asia and beyond," said Johnson.

"The courage and sacrifice of the Burmese people, not least of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself, has led to a major shift from military dictatorship to a more civilian, democratic and accountable government," he added.
Israel drove a hard bargain for months in negotiations with the United States over the terms of a new military aid deal, pushing for more funding and other concessions. But in the end, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed off.

The two governments announced Tuesday they had wrapped up a new memorandum of understanding that will deliver an unprecedented $38 billion worth of arms to Israel over the next decade in what the State Department called the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in U.S. history. The package does not detail what military hardware Israel will acquire or when, but amounts to a nearly $40 billion gift card at the Pentagons weapon bazaar.

But when President Barack Obama first put the groundbreaking offer on the table last year, Netanyahu refused to enter into negotiations on grounds that it would signal his support for the Iran nuclear agreement, which he bitterly opposes.

Even after talks eventually got underway on a new memorandum, Netanyahus government pushed for a larger figure than the one proposed by Washington, a position that sparked deep frustration in the White House. Israel also initially opposed provisions that would require them to refrain from lobbying Congress for more missile defense money beyond what is promised in the MOU. And it also argued against a U.S. proposal to phase out an arrangement that had set aside 26 percent of the earmarked funds for the Israeli defense industry.

But those objections gradually faded, and the massive military aid package was hammered out after 10-months of negotiations despite the very publicly strained relationship between Netanyahu and Obama.

Its not clear why Netanyahus stance changed over the past several months, as the Obama administration basically stayed pat, according to current and former U.S. officials. Israel apparently concluded that it would not be able to secure a better deal than the one on offer, and the Israeli military was anxious not to lose any more time re-negotiating the deal with a new U.S. administration after the presidential election in November.

Story continues

The MOU, which is due to be signed in a ceremony at the State Department on Wednesday, also could pave the way for a long-delayed sale of U.S. fighter jets to Qatar and Kuwait. The White House has been weighing those possible deals for more than two years amid concerns over Qatars links with Islamist militants as well as Israels relative military strength compared to its Arab neighbors.

Those potential deals, worth several billion dollars, would deliver up to 72 F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets to Qatar and 28 F/A-18 Hornets to Kuwait, both of which would be a boon to aerospace giant Boeing.

Photo credit: Olivier Douliery/Pool/Getty Images
(Adds detail, background and market context)

* Proceeds from new shares to raise DKK 5.5 bln

* Nets IPO is Europe's second biggest since Brexit vote

* Operates in increasingly competitive mobile payments sector

By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen

COPENHAGEN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Denmark-based card payment services company Nets set an indicative price range for its planned initial public offering (IPO) that values the business at up to $4.8 billion, nearly double the sum paid by two U.S. equity firms in 2014.

Scandinavia's largest payments processor said on Tuesday that it expects to price the offering at 130-160 Danish crowns per share when it lists on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange on Sept. 27, indicating a valuation of 26 billion to 32 billion Danish crowns ($3.92 billion to $4.83 billion).

Nets, issuer of the most used debit card in Denmark, Dankort, will offer between 40 percent and 60 percent of its total share capital. That includes up to 42.3 million new shares expected to raise proceeds of about 5.5 billion crowns.

The IPO, Europe's second biggest since Britain's June vote to leave the EU, comes only two years after its 17 billion crown acquisition by private equity firms Advent International and Bain Capital along with Danish pension fund ATP in March 2014.

"There is clearly a real appreciation of the transformation Nets has undergone in the past two years," Chief Executive Bo Nilsson said in a statement.

Since mid-2014 Nilsson has made seven acquisitions, sacked hundreds of staff and invested more than 800 million crowns on IT.

Advent and Bain were also behind British payments processor Worldpay Group's 4.8 billion pound ($6.34 billion). London listing last October.

The next challenge for Nets will to navigate an increasingly competitive online payments sector that includes card network rivals Visa and MasterCard as well as payment processing companies such as Worldpay and Wirecard and Danske Bank's Mobilepay service in the Nordics.

Story continues

As more consumers ditch cash, European online payments businesses such as iZettle and SumUp face tougher competition in their domestic markets from North American rivals such as San Francisco-based Square.

Existing Nets shareholders will sell between 37.7 million and 70.6 million of their shares while managers at the company have been granted an overallotment option of up to 15.75 million shares, Nets said.

The offer period starts Sept. 13 and ends Sept. 26, but it could be closed as early as Sept 22, the company added.

Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Nordea have been appointed as joint global co-ordinators and joint bookrunners.

Nets this month reported a 13 percent rise in first-half earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation before special items (EBITDA) to 1.2 billion Danish crowns for the first six months of 2016 corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 33.4 percent.

(Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia and Annabella Pultz Nielsen; Editing by Jason Neely and David Goodman)
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - To loud cheers from their family and friends, newlyweds Mohamed Noor and Huda Omar walk arm-in-arm through the place that will be their home - a camp for the internally displaced in Somalia's capital Mogadishu. Having met two years ago, the pair have just married at Rajo camp, where some 400 families live. Most, like Noor's parents, came here in the early 1990s to flee famine. They stayed on as years of conflict ravaged the Horn of Africa nation. As at any wedding, there is plenty of dancing and sweet treats for the young couple as they start married life in Noor's simple home, made of iron and plastic sheets. "We have loved each other for a very long time," the 20-year-old groom said. "I could not afford to build a house and marry her, so my mother helped with the little money she had." Noor was born in Rajo after his farmer parents lost their livestock to the famine and left their hometown Baidoa for Mogadishu. He has only ever lived in the camp, where a handful of latrines serve all residents. He works as a mason with his father. Others here are builders or sell sweets, nuts and stick toothbrushes to make money. Some beg around the seaside city, which like the rest of Somalia has been gripped by violence since the toppling of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. "Life is tough here. Sometimes there are explosions nearby and the roads are blocked so I can't get to work," he said. For a photo essay, click here: http://reut.rs/2cypxje Omar left her family hut in a farming area in Afgoye, some 30 km (20 miles) away, for Rajo. She will now live in a small shack, divided into a bedroom and eating area, part of her husband's family's larger makeshift house. For the wedding, the couple's bedroom has been decorated with colorful balloons and flowers. "Life is about who you marry, not the type of home you live in," she said. "I love him." The couple celebrate a week-long honeymoon at home. After seven days, Omar is joined by other women for more festivities, during which guests bring presents, utensils and cakes. The bride's mother and mother-in-law place a colorful scarf on her, in a symbolic gesture indicating she is married. The day after, life goes back to normal -- Omar undertakes home chores while Noor goes back to work. "I hope we will have children and I will be able to educate them," Noor said. "If I get a good job, I will save my money and open a shop for my wife so she can become a trader". (Reporting by Feisal Omar; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
By Rina Chandran MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When India's Tata Power engaged SPARC, a group focused on housing for the urban poor, to help relocate hundreds of families living under and around its distribution towers, it was the start of a long, complex process. Six years on, more than 200 of the 900 families living in makeshift homes by the towers are yet to be resettled elsewhere in Mumbai - highlighting the difficulty of resolving land disputes in the emerging economy. "Relocation and resettlement is never simple. It's tough and complicated because human beings are involved," said P. Murugan, a general manager at Tata Power. "There are so many factors to consider: homes, businesses, children's schools, and many different emotions and opinions," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Conflict over land rights in India has increased as one of the world's fastest growing economies expands, and land is sought for industrial use and development projects. India has introduced several land laws in the past decade to give the vulnerable more rights. A 2009 Mumbai court ruling made it mandatory for officials in India's financial hub to resettle displaced people. But the city, where almost 60 percent of the population lives in slums, has seen repeated clashes over land with residents forcefully evicted from homes that are then razed by bulldozers, and their belongings thrown on to the street. In a bid to avoid conflict, Tata Power approached SPARC, which has worked with city officials to resettle people affected by infrastructure projects, including the widening of roads and the construction of flyovers and railway tracks. "Our policy is to communicate and convince. Threats and ultimatums don't work," said M.G. Shekhar, secretary of the National Slum Dwellers' Federation, that is a part of SPARC. "It is important to involve the community so they feel a degree of control. It also ensures greater transparency and fairness for everyone," he said. SPARC typically organizes the community into groups to oversee various aspects of the relocation and resettlement, including an extensive survey of each household. Then there is a debate on the merits of the relocation. The risk from high-tension wires in this case offset some of the concerns about distance from train stations, and proximity to children's schools or their place of work, Shekhar said. There were also concerns about where the residents were to be located and the size of their new homes - apartments measuring 225 sq.ft. that Tata Power bought from the city for 300,000 rupees ($4,520) each. "No concern is too big or too small," Shekhar said. "A lot of it is just logistics - showing them the flats, helping with school admissions, jobs, alternate sites for businesses. But some of it is also about emotions," he said. Between 1950 and 2005, about 65 million people were displaced in India by dams, highways, mines and airports, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center. Less than a fifth have been resettled. More than 650 families affected by Tata Power's distribution towers have been relocated, while 16 families chose to stay. The remainder will be moved over the next year, Shekhar said. The families staying behind were given money to rent a home nearby for up to two years, he said. "It has taken six years, and we did not move everyone," Shekhar said. "But it can't be done any other way. We need to involve the community and arrive at solutions through discussion and agreement, not coercion," he said. ($1 = 66.36 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Rina Chandran @rinachandran, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)
Geneva (AFP) - The UN said Tuesday it had readied help for civilians in Syria's ceasefire but aid convoys would not roll until security was assured.

"We have been mobilising, stockpiling, readying ourselves for this great opportunity to deliver this very urgent aid but we need that peace to be reinstated," UN humanitarian office (OCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters.

A truce brokered by the United States and Russia last week appeared to be holding on its first full day Tuesday.

A key test of the deal will be whether warring parties allow relief to reach people in Syria's besieged areas.

Laerke said the UN was taking time to assess the truce's durability before it deployed aid to hotspots like east Aleppo.

Since the deal was reached on Friday, "there has been a lot of mobilisation, frantic activity to be able to rush in aid... as soon as it is safe to do so, however, up to this moment, no, the convoys have not been rolling," Laerke said.

"We need to enter into an environment where we are not in mortal danger."

The UN got the regime's approval on September 6 to deliver aid to nearly one million people this month, including to the rebel held eastern part of Aleppo, which has been encircled by government forces.

Syria's second city has been a key battleground for weeks.

East Aleppo would initially be supplied with food in trucks coming across the Turkish border if security is guaranteed, OCHA said.

East Aleppo's estimated 250,000 people have not received aid since early July, when regime forces cut off the last supply route.

The other towns covered in the September 6 agreement are Moadamiyat al-Sham Madaya, Zabadani, Foua and Kefraya.
By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Norway's prime minister said on Tuesday she wanted to work with Facebook to promote education in an apparent gesture of peace after a row with the company for deleting a Vietnam War photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack. Facebook re-instated the 1972 Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph on Friday after Solberg and others accused Facebook of censorship and of editing history by erasing the image from their accounts under its restrictions on nudity. Facebook backed down, ruling that the historical importance of the photo outweighed the company's nudity rules. And Solberg said she hoped for cooperation between the social media giant and her elected government. "We have been working with Facebook and other social media on education, especially in conflict areas," she told Reuters. "So there will be reasons for us to have contact with them on several issues." "That's my main reason for trying try to be in contact with them ... if you are really going to get education into conflict areas, social media is probably one of those platforms they can use," she said. Solberg, of Norway's Conservative Party, welcomed a personal letter from chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg thanking Solberg for her role and saying the company would learn from the dispute. "It was a humble letter," Solberg said. She and Sandberg met at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. At the time, Norway's NTB news agency said Solberg asked Facebook's help with ways to help train teachers and to ensure schooling in war zones or other areas in crisis. Still, Solberg also said Facebook should admit more clearly that it acts as an editor of the Internet. "They are editing and then they have to be honest on the editing," she said. "They have to make sure that they are not editing ... history or political activism through the way they are editing," she said. The 1972 photograph, dubbed "Napalm Girl", by Nick Ut of the Associated Press, shows screaming children running from a napalm attack. A naked nine-year-old girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, is at its center. Facebook bars nudity with some exemptions, such as photographs of nudes in art. It is unclear exactly how disputes over its "Community Standards" reach top management. (Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Boeing 737Max Norwegian

For several years, Norwegian Air has teased the flying public with promises of $69 tickets to cross the Atlantic.

Now it looks like the cheap tickets for which we have pined for so long may finally be within reach.

According to Norwegian Air chief commercial officer Thomas Ramdahl, his airline is awaiting the aircraft needed for the $69 flights.

That's because the first of the 100 Boeing 737 MAX 8 airliners Norwegian Air ordered to operate those flights won't be ready for delivery until 2017.

The Boeing 737 Max 8 is expected to enter service with launch partner Southwest Airlines during the third quarter of 2017. However, Boeing told Bloomberg's Julie Johnson and Mary Schlangenstein that the planes could be ready for delivery as early as March.

Ramdahl told Business Insider that his airline plans to make an announcement around November or December of this year with firm details of the $69 fares.

"I can promise you that you will see trans-Atlantic flights on the 737Max next year," Ramdahl told us in an interview last week. "And that's when you will see the $69 fares."

The 737 MAX 8 features new fuel-efficient CFM LEAP-1B engines, upgraded avionics, and aerodynamics. As as result, the new jet offers airlines the range and performance to operate trans-Atlantic service with the lower cost of a narrow-body jet.

norwegian air

Following the introduction of the 737 MAX 8, Norwegian will introduce the first of the 30 Airbus A321neo LR airliners it has on order in 2018. The A321neo LR will be larger than the MAX 8 and will also offer greater range than the Boeing.

Norwegian currently operates its trans-Atlantic flights using a fleet of new Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Even though the European low-cost carrier currently do offer bargain basement prices, the costs associated with operating the wide-body jets make the sub-$100 price point unfeasible.

This month, Norwegian announced that, starting next summer, it will commence flights between several major cities in the US and Barcelona, Spain for as low as $189 per ticket one way. These flights will be operated on the airline's current fleet of Boeing Dreamliners.

Story continues

In July, Norwegian took home the award for best long-haul low-cost airline in the world from the highly respected consumer aviation website Skytrax. In addition, Norwegian won best low-cost airline in Europe for the fourth year in a row.

NOW WATCH: What it's like to fly on Qatar Airways  the best airline in the world





More From Business Insider


From Esquire

So you probably already know Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday. You know that on Sunday, at the 9/11 memorial service in New York, she fell ill and was forced to leave. As she left, she was caught on video stumbling, almost falling, as she moved toward a black van. This information has been clogging the news cycle (on 9/11, no less) for more than 24 hours-push notifications (four from CNN alone, by my count), tweets, television, radio. You know all of this stuff.

Hillary Clinton 9/11 NYC pic.twitter.com/q9YnsjTxss - Zdenek Gazda (@zgazda66) September 11, 2016

The narrative is quick, easy, buttoned-up. Cause and effect. It takes the form of a tabloid story: shock, awe, scintillation. It's the latest Chris Brown melt-down-they called the SWAT team?-or another picture Justin Bieber's dick on the Internet-that big? It's easy to digest, and even easier to have an opinion on-she almost fainted? She actually fell? She can't be president! And now, the latest installment, which nicely ties sexist body shaming to outright lunacy: She used a body double to stage her healthy exit after she collapsed? (Thanks, Twitter.)

With Clinton, you will believe what your parents believe, or what your gender believes. You've already argued for-or against-her politics. You've already lauded-or disregarded-Clinton on the basis of gender. Your mind was made up on all things HRC long ago-you've weathered every other Clinton controversy, haven't you?

New statement from Hillary Clinton's doctor: Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia earlier this week pic.twitter.com/1thylamSKE - Monica Alba (@albamonica) September 11, 2016

Donald Trump said today he would release his medical reports. There's no reason not to. They could detail mass coronary hemorrhaging, and it wouldn't matter, because not a single person is conspiring to prove he has mass coronary hemorrhaging. No one investigates male candidates for their meat-and-potatoes-and-Big-Macs-and-KFC-fueled-health. No matter how much Trump runs his campaign like a gossip rag, he doesn't have the tabloid hook of an embattled female politician running for president amidst half-baked conspiracies. That shit is juicy.

Story continues

No matter how much Trump runs his campaign like a gossip rag, he doesn't have the tabloid hook of an embattled female politician running for president amidst half-baked conspiracies.

This morning, NBC News published a story called "Hillary Clinton's Health Scare: 9 Unanswered Questions." You know what we might benefit from knowing nine answers to? Trump's plan to defeat ISIS in 30 days, or Trump's intentions for U.S.-Russia relations. If Clinton's "health scare" can persuade you to vote differently in November, then you haven't been paying much attention at all.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related Story" customtitles="The Truth About This Alleged Basket of Deplorables" customimages="" content="article.48506"]

You Might Also Like
Washington (AFP) - The National Security Agency chief said Tuesday he was "perplexed" over Twitter's move to block US intelligence from accessing data which may help thwart violent attack plots.

NSA director Admiral Michael Rogers made the comments at a congressional hearing in response to Senator John McCain's criticism of Twitter for refusing access to a real-time analytics service called Dataminr.

McCain queried Rogers about a Wall Street Journal report in May that Twitter had blocked intelligence agencies from using Dataminr, which uses algorithms and location tools to reveal patterns among tweets.

The veteran senator said the report indicated that Dataminr had alerted its clients minutes before this year's Brussels attacks and at the time the November Paris attacks began to unfold.

"So we have a situation where we have the ability to detect terror attacks... Yet in order to for us to anticipate these attacks we have to have certain information, and Twitter is refusing to allow them to have certain information which literally could prevent attacks?" the senator who heads the Armed Services Committee asked.

Rogers replied: "Yes sir, and at the same time (Twitter is) still willing to provide that information to others for business, for sale, for revenue."

He added, "I'm perplexed by their approach in this particular incident.. Clearly, I wish I had a better understanding, and perhaps there are insights that I am not aware of."

McCain then said of Twitter: "So shame on them."

Twitter has said it allows both government and business to use the data, as long as it is not for "surveillance" purposes. Media reports have said that Twitter, which owns a stake in Dataminr, did not want to appear to be too close to US intelligence.

"Dataminr uses public tweets to sell breaking news alerts to media organizations and government agencies, for non-surveillance purposes," a Twitter spokesman said in a statement.

Story continues

"Due to privacy concerns, we have not authorized Dataminr or any third party to sell data to a government or intelligence agency for surveillance purposes. This is a longstanding Twitter policy, not a new development."

The dispute involving Twitter is the latest between US tech firms and the government over the degree of cooperation in fighting crime and other violence, in view of privacy concerns.

The statement added that Twitter "responds to valid legal process issued in compliance with applicable law, and our most recent transparency report shows over 5,000 US government information requests in 2015 alone."
By Suzanne Barlyn

(Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday issued long-anticipated proposed cyber security regulations for banks and insurers in the state, the first of their kind in the United States by any state or federal agency, the governor said in a statement.

Cuomo's planned regulations for institutions overseen by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) would require companies to set up cyber security programs and appoint a chief information officer, among other measures, according to the governor's office.

The planned regulations, in the works since 2014, follow a series of high-profile hackings of U.S. companies and three surveys by the regulator about cyber security programs at a total of nearly 200 companies under its watch. One NYDFS report last year revealed that a third of 40 banks in a 2014 survey did not require outside vendors to notify them of data breaches, which could compromise bank data.

The regulations aim to provide institutions with flexibility to adapt to technological innovations while reducing vulnerabilities, NYDFS Superintendent Maria Vullo said in a statement.

NYDFS regulates state-chartered and foreign banks licensed to operate in the state, including Goldman Sachs Group, Barclays and Deutsche Bank, and all insurance companies that do business in the state.

It previewed the plan in a November, 2015 letter to other state and federal regulators. That same day, U.S. prosecutors unveiled criminal charges accusing three men of helping run a sprawling series of hacking and fraud schemes, including a huge 2014 attack against JPMorgan Chase & Co , that generated hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profit.

Among the planned requirements: board chairmen would have to file annual certifications with NYDFS, stating, to the best of their knowledge, that their companies' cyber programs comply with the regulation.

Other measures would include appointing overseers for outside vendors and limiting access of customers' non-public information, such as social security numbers, to employees who need those details, according to the proposal. Systems would have to include multiple steps for verifying user identities.

Story continues

Institutions would also have to regularly test their cyber security systems. The chief information security officer would have to present twice-yearly reports about progress and vulnerabilities to the board of directors and make those findings available to NYDFS.

Before the plan becomes final, the public will have 45 days to submit comments, once the proposed regulations are published in the New York State Register.

(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, G Crosse and David Gregorio)
New York (AFP) - Police were on the hunt Tuesday for a man who set fire to a veiled British woman's clothing in Manhattan, as the American Muslim community faces growing Islamophobia.

The attack took place late Saturday in front of a luxury boutique on 5th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

The British woman, age 35, said she was walking when she suddenly felt her shirt sleeve on fire.

Police declined to provide further details on the attack, saying only that they were investigating a potential hate crime. On Monday, the police released images of the incident caught by surveillance cameras and asked the public to help find the suspect.

The New York branch of the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations, which is in touch with the victim and is providing legal help, said it could not confirm whether the suspect was motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment, though his victim was wearing a hijab at the time.

"It's another (piece of) evidence that Muslims are increasingly vulnerable in this hostile political climate," said Zainab Chaudry, a CAIR spokeswoman.

"Even in places like New York City, one of the most diverse in the US, we are seeing a spike in anti-Muslim bigotry."

In August, an imam and his assistant were shot to death on the street near their mosque in the borough of Queens. An investigation into that incident has not yet established that it was Islamophobic.

After that attack, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that additional police officers would be deployed to secure mosques and the Muslim community.

Authorities would not immediately confirm the identity of Saturday's victim. The New York Post said she was a dentist from Glasgow, Scotland.
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Monday urged U.S. insurers offering coverage next year under his national healthcare law to step up their efforts to enroll those who remain uninsured, especially younger and healthier Americans. Several big insurers, including UnitedHealth Group Inc, Aetna Inc and Humana Inc, have announced they will pull back from the Obamacare individual insurance market in 2017, citing financial losses due to the costs of covering members who are sicker than expected. Their planned exit has prompted new questions over whether Obamacare can survive over the long-term if insurers cannot create a viable business from the market. Insurance premiums for consumers have jumped each year since Obamacare plans took effect in 2014, and those price increases are expected to grow steeper as fewer insurers participate. Obama, in a letter to all insurers selling health plans next year on the exchanges, noted that the program has helped reduce the percentage of Americans without health insurance to a record low, and acknowledged that it could still be improved to benefit insurers and consumers. His administration will help find and enroll those who still lack coverage, with a particular focus on enrolling young adults. "Since the remaining uninsured are disproportionately younger and healthier, signing them up improves the risk pool and consequently the affordability of coverage for all enrollees," Obama said in the letter. Obama, Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell and other top health advisers on Monday met with executives from several leading insurance companies, including Cigna Corp Chief Executive David Cordani and Humana CEO Bruce Broussard, to discuss ways to strengthen the marketplace ahead of its fourth open enrollment period, which begins Nov. 1, according to a White House official. A spokeswoman for industry group Americas Health Insurance Plans said the meeting's focus included increasing enrollment. As health plans are preparing for open enrollment, todays meeting was focused on how to build on the continued progress in reducing the uninsured rate and moving forward with policy solutions that will support a stable, affordable market for 2017 and beyond, AHIP spokeswoman Clare Krusing said. (Reporting by Susan Kelly in Chicago)
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Monday urged U.S. insurers offering coverage next year under his national healthcare law to step up their efforts to enroll those who remain uninsured, especially younger and healthier Americans. Several big insurers, including UnitedHealth Group Inc, Aetna Inc and Humana Inc, have announced they will pull back from the Obamacare individual insurance market in 2017, citing financial losses due to the costs of covering members who are sicker than expected. Their planned exit has prompted new questions over whether Obamacare can survive over the long-term if insurers cannot create a viable business from the market. Insurance premiums for consumers have jumped each year since Obamacare plans took effect in 2014, and those price increases are expected to grow steeper as fewer insurers participate. Obama, in a letter to all insurers selling health plans next year on the exchanges, noted that the program has helped reduce the percentage of Americans without health insurance to a record low, and acknowledged that it could still be improved to benefit insurers and consumers. His administration will help find and enroll those who still lack coverage, with a particular focus on enrolling young adults. "Since the remaining uninsured are disproportionately younger and healthier, signing them up improves the risk pool and consequently the affordability of coverage for all enrollees," Obama said in the letter. A spokeswoman for industry group Americas Health Insurance Plans did not have an immediate comment on Obamas letter. Obama, Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell and other top health advisers on Monday met with executives from several leading insurance companies, including Cigna Corp Chief Executive David Cordani and Humana CEO Bruce Broussard, to discuss ways to strengthen the marketplace ahead of its fourth open enrollment period, which begins Nov 1, according to a White House official. "Most new enterprises have growing pains and opportunities for improvement. The marketplace, while strong, is no exception," Obama said in the letter. (Reporting by Susan Kelly in Chicago)
(Adds quotes from Obama, background)

WASHINGTON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said after meeting with the top four congressional leaders on Monday he was encouraged that lawmakers would be able to pass short term spending legislation to keep the government open during the 2017 fiscal year.

Democrat Obama said he was hopeful about reaching agreements with the Republican-majority Congress on funding to fight the Zika virus and for disaster relief after flooding in Louisiana.

The president met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan, both Republicans, and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on issues that have been a struggle as his second term winds down.

"My hope is that by the time Congress adjourns before the election that we will have an agreement in place to fund the government and that our Zika funding will be taken care of," Obama told reporters in the Oval Office. Obama will leave office on Jan. 20.

Obama said he hoped Congress can make "modest progress" before the Nov. 8 elections and he was "even more hopeful we can get some things done," after them.

Congress must pass a temporary spending bill by Sept. 30 or much of the federal government will shut down. Shortly before the meeting with Obama, McConnell said congressional leaders were making progress on legislation on temporary spending and Zika. McConnell said he expected to advance the legislation in the Senate this week.

Congressional leaders are considering attaching as much as $1.1 billion in Zika spending to the temporary spending bill. In February, Obama had asked Congress to approve $1.9 billion in emergency funds to fight Zika with diagnostic tools and vaccines, but disagreements over side issues related to abortion have led to divisions about full funding.

Ryan spoke at the meeting about his desire to come to a speedy resolution on short term spending legislation that includes funding for Zika, an aide to the speaker said. Ryan also made clear his objections to doing a massive spending bill later in the year, the aide said.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, Ayesha Rascoe and Richard Cowan; editing by Grant McCool)
President Barack Obama took some time out of a speech Tuesday to rake members of the media over the coals for coverage of Donald Trump.

Obama, speaking at a Philadelphia rally for Hillary Clinton, said he was "frustrated with how this campaign is covered."

"I'm just telling the truth. Guys in the back, I'm just telling you the truth about how I feel about this," the president said, speaking directly to the members of the media toward the back of the rally.

Obama then asked the crowd: "Do you mind if I just vent for a second?"

"You know, you don't grade the presidency on a curve," he said. "This is serious business."

Obama contended that Clinton and Trump were starkly different on a number of issues.

"You want to debate who is more fit to be our president?" he asked. "One candidate has traveled to more countries than any secretary of state ever has, has more qualifications than pretty much anyone who has ever run for this job, and the other, who isn't fit in any way, shape, or form to represent this country abroad and be commander-in-chief."

"And Donald Trump says stuff every day that used to be considered as disqualifying for being president," Obama continued. "And yet because he says it over and over and over again, the press just gives up, and they just say, 'Well, yeah. OK!'"

The president added: "They just  'I was opposed to the war in Iraq.' Well, actually he wasn't. But they just accept it!"

Obama was likely referencing a moment in which NBC News anchor Matt Lauer didn't press Trump on his false claim that he was against the Iraq war at the outset.

"The bottom line is that we cannot afford to suddenly treat this like a reality show," Obama said. "We can't afford to act as if there is some equivalence here. To be president, you have to do your homework, and you have to know what you're talking about."

NOW WATCH: OBAMA: The press doesn't challenge Trump's rhetoric enough





More From Business Insider


At best, President Obama's proposed health care fix offers political protection for vulnerable lawmakers. That's because beyond giving insurance companies permission to continue offering individual health care plans that don't comply with the Affordable Care Act, the president's fix doesn't compel anyone to do anything.

So why even propose such a fix, and especially a remedy that, according insurance experts, could lead to more expensive premiums for the people the fix is supposed to help?

As Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President Larry Levitt explained to Yahoo News, the best "fix" supporters of the Affordable Care Act could offer is to simply let the current process play out.

"From the perspective of keeping the market stable and premiums down, a quicker transition to new coverage is the best approach," Levitt said. "Any plan that allows individuals to keep their old policies will tend to raise costs and raise premiums.

In other words, according to Levitt and other experts, Obama's proposed fix offers little in the way of actual help to consumers or even insurance providers.

What it does do is provide Obama (and by extension the Democrats in Congress) a scapegoat and a much-needed short-term political gain.

"This doesn't change anything other than force insurers to be the political flack jackets for the administration," an insurance industry insider told Buzzfeed. "So now when we don't offer these policies the White House can say it's the insurers doing this and not being flexible."

The president's proposal creates a number of challenges. For example, insurers are not actually required to restore canceled plans. And if consumers keep their less expensive plans, it will almost certainly drive up costs for those who are buying plans from the health care exchanges.

"If due to these changes fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase in the marketplace and there will be fewer choices for consumers," Karen Ignagni, chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, a leading organization of insurance providers, said in a statement.

Story continues

Levitt adds that it will be "complex but not impossible" for insurers to reverse course on canceled plans. But while that course is theoretically possible, the insurers have little incentive to reverse course and "throw a wrench in the works in the bottom half of the 9th inning," as Levitt described it.

"It is unclear how, as a practical matter, the changes proposed today by the president can be put into effect," said Jim Donelon, president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and Louisiana Insurance commissioner. "In many states, cancellation notices have already gone out to policyholders, and rates and plans have already been approved for 2014. Changing the rules through administrative action at this late date creates uncertainty and may not address the underlying issues."

Regardless of whether the president's fix does anything to actually help consumers, you can almost certainly expect more political fixes to be offered before the January 2014 deadline for all Americans to be insured goes into effect.

Republicans in the House are gearing up to consider a bill by Fred Upton, R-Mich., that would allow insurers to continue to offer non-ACA compliant plans on a yearly basis, while a potential Democratic bill in the Senate would require insurers to continue these plans.

House Speaker John Boehner said he plans to go forward with a Friday vote on the Upton bill. When asked if Democrats in the House would propose their own legislative fix, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters, "We'll do what we have to do."

"My guess is that because the House and Senate proposals all go further in their own way, I would expect that they would stick around for awhile," Levitt said.
barack obama

President Barack Obama on Tuesday unleashed on Donald Trump's positive statements about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During a rally supporting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Obama called Putin "Donald Trump's role model," and slammed the Republican nominee for trying to "curry favor with Vladimir Putin."

"He loves this guy," Obama said of Trump's relationship with Putin.

The president expressed disbelief that the GOP standard-bearer had positive sentiments about the Russian president, a complete reversal from the party's longtime skepticism of the state's authoritarian regimes.

"Now their nominee is out there praising a guy, saying he's a strong leader, because he invades smaller countries, jails his opponents, controls the press, and drives his economy into a recession," Obama said.

During a recent town hall appearance, Trump defended his statements about the Russian president by touting Putin's high polling numbers among many Russians  a point that Obama latched onto at Tuesday's speech.

"Saddam Hussein had a 90% poll rating. If you control the media and you've taken away everybody's civil liberties, and you jail dissidents, that's what happens," Obama said.

Throughout the campaign, the real-estate magnate and his campaign haven't shied away from their closer relationship with Russia than many past Republican nominees.

Former campaign chair Paul Manafort was a longtime consultant for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally who sought asylum in Russia after civil unrest in his own country forced him to flee.

Last week, Trump lauded Putin's ability to exert "very strong control over his country," and both Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, declared that Putin was a "stronger leader" than Obama.

NOW WATCH: Why you won't find a garbage can near the 9/11 memorial





More From Business Insider


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama would veto a bill passed by both houses of Congress that would allow survivors and families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for damages, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday.

Its not hard to imagine other countries using this law as an excuse to haul U.S. diplomats or U.S. service members or even U.S. companies into courts all around the world, Earnest told reporters in a daily briefing.

I do anticipate the president would veto this legislation when it is presented to him, he said.

The House of Representatives passed the bill by voice vote, without objections, on Friday, after the Senate passed it unanimously in May, clearing the way for it to go to the White House for Obama to sign into law or veto.

Congressional aides said the measure appeared to have enough support, two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and House, for lawmakers to override an Obama veto for the first time since he took office in January 2009.

However, it was not clear when the vote would take place. The Senate sent the bill to Obama on Monday night, giving him a 10-day window to veto the measure that would end on Sept 23. The Senate has been aiming to leave Washington as soon as this week, before that deadline, and the House next week, and lawmakers would not be in Washington again until after the Nov. 8 elections.

Under the Constitution, Obama has 10 days to veto the bill before it automatically becomes law. The Constitution also allows a pocket veto, in which the president can defeat a bill just by holding onto it until Congress is out of session.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe and Timothy Gardner, additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Grant McCool and Andrew Hay)

Related slideshows:



Slideshow: 9/11: Then and now - 15 years later >>>



Slideshow: Remembering 9/11 >>>



Slideshow: Tribute in Light >>>



Slideshow: World reactions to the 9/11 attacks  A look back >>>



Slideshow: How the 9/11 attacks were reported on front pages around the world >>>



Slideshow: 9/11 Memorial and Museum >>>
Barack Obama

Two years ago, President Barack Obama was largely absent from the campaign trail. Prospective and incumbent senators and House members shied away. His approval rating languished near the lowest point of his presidency.

Two years later, the script has flipped. He is trying to help elect the second-least-popular nominee in modern presidential history, Hillary Clinton, to carry on his legacy in office. And he's perhaps her best surrogate.

"Obama is the single most effective surrogate she has, and I can't remember a time when an incumbent president this popular campaigned this hard for his party's nominee," said Jon Favreau, the former director of speechwriting for Obama.

Obama hits the trail again Tuesday, when he heads to Philadelphia to campaign for Clinton as she rests to recover from pneumonia and as her campaign looks to turn around a rough past week in her matchup with the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

In a Washington Post poll released over the weekend, the president's approval rating hit an astounding 58%. That is 15 points higher than it was in a Post poll from right before the 2014 midterm elections. And it's the highest level since he hit that point six months into his presidency.

"He is the most popular Democrat in the country, and as his term comes toward an end, the intensity of love for him only grows," said Steve Schale, a former Obama campaign state director. "'Elect Hillary to protect President Obama's legacy' is a very powerful message for Democrats."

The threshold might seem arbitrary. But historical precedent suggests it could bode well for Clinton, Obama's former secretary of state.

Early this year, Obama's approval rating hit 50% in the weekly average from Gallup's daily survey. As of Tuesday, it stands at 51%. For Obama, whose approval ratings have been stuck in the low to mid-40s for much of his second term, it was a notable bump.

"While it's hard to pinpoint precisely why Obama's approval rating has risen among Democrats recently, there are a number of plausible explanations," wrote Andrew Dugan, a Gallup analyst, and Frank Newport, the organization's editor-in-chief, in a post earlier this year.

Story continues

One of the explanations, the pair concurred, was that "the unusual status of the Republican primary race  exemplified in particular by frontrunner Donald Trump's campaign style and rhetoric  may serve to make Obama look statesmanlike in comparison."

"He reminds swing voters of the basic decency they miss in politics," Schale said. "I believe a lot of the increase in his popularity of late has to do with a visceral reaction to the abrasive vitriol of Trump. They see Obama as measured and thoughtful, dare I say with the right kind of temperament to hold the rudder of a nation through the troubled global waters. His style creates an inherent contrast with Trump, and it is a contrast that benefits Clinton."

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at the National Guard Association of the United States 138th General Conference and Exhibition in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., September 12, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Trump has come into Obama's crosshairs repeatedly as he has hit the trail for Clinton. And with good reason: More so than at any other presidential hand-off in recent history, so many elements of the current administration's legacy are at stake.

The Republican nominee has pledged to undo signature achievements on healthcare (the Affordable Care Act), the environment (historic new regulations aimed at curbing climate change), and foreign policy (the Iran nuclear deal).

Trump has sought to frame Obama's tenure as a disaster. But the president's spiking approval ratings and popularity suggest that argument might become more and more lost on swing-state voters.

"A lot of Republicans are misjudging the fact that despite most of the country thinking the nation is on the wrong track, swing voters have a more favorable than unfavorable view of Obama," said Tim Miller, a former spokesman for Jeb Bush's presidential campaign who has been critical of Trump.

"So Republicans in swing states are succeeding  Rob Portman, Joe Heck, Marco [Rubio]  when they highlight their independence and their desire to roll back government policies like Obamacare that are unpopular," he added. "But when Trump claims that Obama is an un-American disaster, that might play on talk radio, but it isn't how voters who will decide this election view the world."

Favreau said: "Trump has convinced himself that the Fox News view of Obama is the public's view, so I hope he keeps making the third-term argument."

Obama's approval ratings at this point are far better than those of George W. Bush, his predecessor, off whose unpopularity Obama thrived during his 2008 run. His level is most directly comparable to that of Ronald Reagan, who in March 1988 held a 51% approval rating, according to Gallup.

That same year, voters selected George H.W. Bush  Reagan's vice president  to succeed him.

"Yes," said Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary for George W. Bush, when asked earlier this year whether Obama's apparent rising popularity posed a problem for the Republican Party.

"Certainly, going into an election spring and summer, it's better to have an incumbent president increasingly popular rather than less popular if you're the incumbent party," he told Business Insider.

The numbers present a striking contrast to some data points associated with the current Republican presidential nominee.

Barack Obama Hillary Clinton

A Gallup survey earlier this year showed that 42% of voters viewed Trump in a "highly unfavorable" light, compared with 16% who saw him highly favorably. That's the highest negative percentage for any major presidential candidate since at least 1956, according to Gallup.

"I've been doing this [since] 1964, which is the Goldwater years," NBC/Wall Street Journal co-pollster Peter Hart told NBC earlier this year, discussing the relative unpopularity of many of the candidates at the time. "To me, this is the low point. I've seen the disgust and the polarization. Never, never seen anything like this. They're not going up  they're going down."

Closest to Trump? Clinton, whom 33% of the electorate views highly unfavorably.

It helps explain why Clinton is attaching herself to much of Obama's legacy. And Obama remains favorable to wide swaths of constituencies that Clinton needs to turn out to vote in November. The president holds high approval ratings among African-Americans (90%), Democrats (82%), Latinos (73%), and voters ages 18 to 34 (64%), according to Gallup.

"You can't recreate the Obama coalition  she has to build a Hillary coalition," Schale said. "But nonetheless, the president is a motivator, particularly for African-American voters."

NOW WATCH: TRUMP SPOKESWOMAN: Why the Republican Party has 'miserably failed'





More From Business Insider


It was a week where both oil and gas prices finished higher.

On the news front, pipeline giants Spectra Energy Corp. SE and Enbridge Inc. ENB agreed to merge in a stock-for-stock deal worth $28 billion, while energy explorer Apache Corp. APA announced a massive discovery in West Texas' Permian Basin.

Overall, it was a good week for the sector. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures added 3.2% to close at $45.88 per barrel, while natural gas prices edged up by a meagre 0.2% to $2.797 per million Btu (MMBtu). (See the last Oil & Gas Stock Roundup here: BP & CNPC Ink Shale Gas Deal, Diamond Offshore Loses Rig Contract Early.)

Oil prices moved north for the first time in 3 weeks after the U.S. Energy Department's weekly inventory release showed that crude stockpiles recorded a huge drop. As per the federal governments EIA report, oil inventories decreased by a massive 14.51 million barrels for the week ending Sep 2, 2016  largest in 17 years. The outsized drop resulted from a tumble in net imports as Tropical Storm Hermine moved into the Gulf of Mexico and prevented tankers from docking.

Oils-Energy Sector Price Index

Oils-Energy Sector Price Index

Natural gas also eked out a small gain following a lower-than-expected build and predictions of strong cooling demand with forecasts of warmer temperature over the next few days.

Recap of the Weeks Most Important Stories

1. Leading midstream energy companies Spectra Energy Corp. and Enbridge Inc. have decided to merge in a $28 billion transaction with an aim to create the largest energy infrastructure company in North America. The deal will likely be closed by the first quarter of 2017. Post-merger, Enbridge shareholders will have a 57% ownership in the combined entity and Spectra Energy will have the remaining 43% interest.

The amalgamation will form one of the largest global energy infrastructure firms with the merger of the two companies highly complementary platforms. With a diverse base of assets that comprises crude, liquids and natural gas pipelines along with terminal and midstream operations, the merged entity will be able to reach key supply basins and markets.

Story continues

The combined firm is also believed to have solid balance sheets and enough cash flow generating capacity to finance future growth projects. Moreover, the merger will combine two secured giant projects worth $20 billion and $37 billion that are under development. (Read more: Spectra Energy, Enbridge Enter into $28 Billion Merger Deal.)

2. U.S. energy explorer Apache Corp. reported that it has made a significant new discovery in the Alpine High, which is located in the southern portion of the Delaware Basin in western Texas. The find is expected to contain about three billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of rich gas.

The site - which cost Apache $1,300 per acre for 352,000 gross acres (307,000 contiguous net acres) is expected to generate anywhere from $8 billion to $80 billion in revenue for the company over the life of the wells.

To accelerate drilling in the discovery, Apache has raised its full-year 2016 capital budget by 11% to $2 billion. Per the company, the west Texas field has the potential to become one of the largest discoveries in a decade. (Read more: Apache Announces Discovery of New Oil Field in Texas.)

3. Oil and gas company EOG Resources Inc. EOG has agreed to acquire privately held Yates Petroleum Corp. in a $2.5 billion stock and cash deal. Over the years, Artesia, New Mexico-based Yates has gained a rich acreage position across the western U.S. - producing 29,600 barrels of oil equivalent per day (48% oil). EOG Resources currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

EOG Resources, on the other hand, is the largest oil producer in the Lower 48, with average net daily production of 551 thousand barrels of crude oil equivalent. The company is reputed for technological leadership in the development of unconventional resource plays.

The combination of EOG Resources strong technical competencies with the massive resource potential of the Yates acreage is expected to create significant value for shareholders of both companies. In particular, EOG Resources' inventory of premium drilling locations will grow by 40% as Yates immediately adds an estimated 1,740 net premium drilling locations in the Delaware Basin and Powder River Basin. (Read more: EOG Resources to Combine with Yates; Deal Valued at $2.5B.)

4. San Antonio, TX-based refiner Tesoro Corp. TSO announced that it has decided to purchase the Madison, WI-based renewable fuels and chemical company, Virent. The deal  whose terms were not disclosed  is intended to support the latter in bringing biofuels technology to commercial scale.

Per the agreement, Tesoro will provide resources and expertise to Virent in order to help the company scale up and commercialize its BioForming technology for the production of low carbon bio-based fuels and chemicals.

Moreover, Tesoro expects the addition of Virent will help it to lower costs in compliance with the federal renewable fuel standard and California`s low carbon fuel standard. (Read more: Tesoro Agrees to Acquire Renewable Fuels Company Virent.)

5. Brazil's troubled state-run energy giant Petrobras PBR reported that it has finally reached an accord to sell a 90% stake in its natural gas pipeline and storage unit, Nova Transportadora do Sudeste. This subsidiary of Petrobras is responsible for operating 2,700 kilometers of pipelines in the south of the country.

The stake is being sold to Canadian investment fund, Brookfield Asset Management Inc. for an undisclosed amount. However, sources with knowledge of the matter estimate the transaction value to be around $5.2 billion.

This deal, which is slated to close by the end of this month, is in line with the companys plan to divest assets worth $15.1 billion by 2016 to reduce its debt. Petrobras will have to undertake asset sales worth $6 billion to reach its goal after the sale of Nova Transportadora. (Read more: Petrobras to Sell Majority Stake in Pipeline Unit to Brookfield.)

Price Performance

The following table shows the price movement of the major oil and gas players over the past week and during the last 6 months.

Company Last Week Last 6 Months XOM -0.75% +5.92% CVX +0.08% +8.48% COP +2.20% +6.65% OXY -3.30% +9.85% SLB -1.48% +7.30% RIG -0.10% -12.88% VLO -0.24% -13.22% TSO +6.16% -5.98%

Over the course of last week, The Energy Select Sector SPDR was up 0.46% amid the largest crude supply decrease since 1999. Consequently, investors witnessed buying in most market heavyweights. The best performer was downstream operator Tesoro Corp. that added 6.16% to its stock price.

Longer-term, over the last 6 months, the sector tracker has jumped 13.62%. U.S. energy explorer Occidental Petroleum Corp. OXY was the main beneficiary during this period, experiencing a 9.85% price increase.

Whats Next in the Energy World?

As usual, market participants will be closely tracking the regular weekly releases i.e. the U.S. government data on oil and natural gas. Energy traders will also be focusing on the Baker Hughes data on rig count.

Zacks' Best Investment Ideas for Long-Term Profit

Today you can gain access to long-term trades with double and triple-digit profit potential rarely available to the public. Starting now, you can look inside our stocks under $10, home run and value stock portfolios, plus more. Want a peek at this private information? Click here >>



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



PETROBRAS-ADR C (PBR): Free Stock Analysis Report



SPECTRA ENERGY (SE): Free Stock Analysis Report



TESORO CORP (TSO): Free Stock Analysis Report



ENBRIDGE INC (ENB): Free Stock Analysis Report



APACHE CORP (APA): Free Stock Analysis Report



EOG RES INC (EOG): Free Stock Analysis Report



OCCIDENTAL PET (OXY): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
- Two men were arrested for trespassing Monday after rushing US swimmer Ryan Lochte on the set of the popular American television show "Dancing with the Stars." Police were called to CBS studios in Los Angeles after the men were tackled by security guards during the live broadcast of the show as they ran onto the dance floor where the 32-year-old Lochte had just finished his routine with partner Cheryl Burke. The men were wearing shirts bearing Lochte's name with a circle and a line through it. Several women protesters were also reportedly removed from the audience after they shouted at Lochte. Sam Sododeh, 48, and Barzeen Soroudi, 40, both of Los Angeles were arrested on "suspicion of trespassing" charges, according to Los Angeles police spokesman Mike Lopez.

AFP
OMG: Were pretty sure Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner just got matching BFF tattoos

OMG: Were pretty sure Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner just got matching BFF tattoos

Since weve all been following it closely, we know that Game of Thrones has finally starting filming for Season 7, and we are SO excited. The stars are back to their various filming locations, including a bunch of them hanging out once again in Belfast. A pair of our favorite besties, Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner were both hanging out in the city, and they dropped a little tease of their activities, and it is HUGE news!

Were pretty sure that Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner got matching tattoos.

A photo posted by Sophie Turner Greece (@sophieturnergr) on Sep 13, 2016 at 9:48am PDT

Yeah, you heard us right. According to Watchers on the Wall, the ladies were spotted going into a tattoo parlor. We dont know about you, but to us, that looks like the bandage from a new tattoo wrapped around Maisies left arm there.

Its MUCH harder to see, because Sophies right arm is behind Maisie, but just below the elbow, we think we can see the same bandage. Which means that these two just solidified themselves as best friends for life by getting matching tattoos.

This would not be the first tattoo for Sophie, who has already revealed the finger tattoo she has.

A photo posted by Sophie Turner (@sophiet) on Jul 24, 2016 at 4:11pm PDT

The five hash marks reportedly represent her 5 family members, as we wrote about here, so clearly, Sophie loves reminding herself about the people she is close to.

We would not be at ALL surprised that these ladies did something like that, because they definitely heart one another.

Hold tight my London Krewwwww A photo posted by Maisie Williams (@maisie_williams) on Jan 22, 2016 at 3:42pm PST

Sophie posted this ADORABLE picture of these two hanging out together a few months ago.

But the big question is, what might these two matching tattoos look like? Maisie gives us a clue via her Instagram.

07.08.09 A photo posted by Maisie Williams (@maisie_williams) on Sep 13, 2016 at 12:15pm PDT

See that caption? 07.08.09? That looks like a date, and, according to Watchers on the Wall, the casting of these two ladies was announced in August of 2009, so were betting this is the day they met.

Story continues

Tattoos are one of those things that have a way of really solidifying friendships.

step brothers

This news makes us so excited for them, we just have to dance!

The post OMG: Were pretty sure Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner just got matching BFF tattoos appeared first on HelloGiggles.
A Filipino crewman was killed Tuesday during a safety drill on the worlds biggest cruise liner, the Harmony of the Seas, while it was docked in Marseille, a city official said.

The 42-year-old and four other crew members were in a lifeboat that plunged 10 metres (35 feet) into the water during a safety drill in the southern French port.

Three other Filipinos and an Indian man were hurt in the incident, and two were fighting for their lives.

A fire service spokesman said: One person is dead and four are injured, including two whose lives are in danger.

Marseilles deputy mayor Julien Ruas told AFP the five were the only people in the lifeboat at the time when it became detached from its fastenings and fell 10 metres into the harbour.

The citys prosecutor Xavier Tarabeux said a similar drill is carried out every week on the ship.

It involves putting a lifeboat to sea, he said.

- Sudden drop -

An investigation has been opened to find out why the cable or the fastenings holding the lifeboat in place gave way, the prosecutor said.

The boat fell suddenly into the water, he added.

Royal Caribbean said in a statement: We are keeping our colleagues and their families in our thoughts and prayers.

The Harmony of the Seas sailed into Marseille early Tuesday from the Spanish Mediterranean island of Majorca.

The ship had been scheduled to set sail for Italy later on Tuesday but the investigation into the lifeboat incident is expected to delay its departure until Wednesday at the earliest, the prosecutor said.

The 120,000-tonne liner operated by Florida-based Royal Caribbean only entered service in May.

At 66 metres (217 feet), it is the widest cruise ship ever built, while its 362-metre length makes it 50 metres longer than the height of the Eiffel Tower.

On its maiden voyage, it sailed from Southampton on Englands south coast to Barcelona.

Built in the STX shipyard in the northwestern French port of Saint-Nazaire, the Oasis-class liner has 16 decks and can carry more than 6,000 passengers and 2,400 crew.

Story continues

Among the onboard attractions are The Ultimate Abyss, a 10-storey slide from the top deck to the main deck which Royal Caribbean bills as the worlds biggest ship-mounted waterslide.

A giant climbing wall, a rope slide, mini-golf, surf simulator, floating jacuzzis, casino and 1,400-seat theatre playing Broadway musicals are among the other attractions.

Royal Caribbean has ordered a sister ship of the Harmony to join its fleet in 2018.

For more news videos visit Yahoo View.
This is the *one thing* Michelle Obama will miss after her family leaves the White House

This is the *one thing* Michelle Obama will miss after her family leaves the White House

As the Obamas time in the White House comes to a close next January (*sniff!* say it aint so!) Michelle has been recently reflecting on her time as First Lady at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Recently, Michelle visited The Ellen DeGeneres Show and it wasnt just to dance.

Although we really, really enjoy her dancing, in general.

giphy (2)

The First Lady told Ellen what she will miss most about living at The White House.

The First Lady Ellen Tune in to @TheEllenShow today for some dance moves and surprise guests. A photo posted by First Lady Michelle Obama (@michelleobama) on Sep 13, 2016 at 12:13pm PDT

Hint: its not the tiny bowling alley in the basement. Although having a bowling alley to use whenever you want would be pretty sweet.

Michelle said that more than anything, she will be sad to leave the White House staff shes worked with for the last eight years:

Its really the people. The girls have grown up in the White House. The staff thats there, we see them every day. These are people who have helped us raise our kids. Theyve loved us, theyve taken care of us.

Meet my co-host for tomorrow. A photo posted by Ellen (@theellenshow) on Sep 12, 2016 at 7:29pm PDT

Such gratitude!

Michelle also noted that while her girls may not be totally ready to leave behind the Executive Mansion, she is proud of them.

Hermosa  A photo posted by First Lady Michelle Obama (@michelleobama) on Mar 24, 2016 at 6:23pm PDT

Theyve really managed this so well, and I just love them to death. Im just proud theyre poised, smart, intelligent young women. 

At that, the Ellen crowd gave uproarious applause, and we did, too!

The post This is the *one thing* Michelle Obama will miss after her family leaves the White House appeared first on HelloGiggles.
The Innovative Platform Allows Students to Put All of their Files in One Place, which Helps them Stay Organized and on Top of their Schoolwork

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Bas Dijkstra, a Dutch coder and entrepreneur, and graphic designer Dorelys Smits are pleased to announce the launch of the OnTrack - Automatic Student Sync Tool.

To watch a short video that explains how the innovative new platform works, please visit http://goo.gl/8vuLkq.

As a spokesperson for OnTrack noted, more educators than ever are turning to school websites to notify students of upcoming assignments and provide class materials.

Unfortunately, instead of doing their homework and learning the material, many students are spending a lot of time searching through folders to find those assignments, download them, and make sure they haven't missed anything. As many students know quite well, this process can get tedious and it is immensely frustrating to get it all done.

Inside the congress building of the PXL university in Belgium, Dijkstra was having the exact same problem.

After he started downloading all his files one by one through the platform the school provides and sorting all the files neatly inside folders, he received a new mail stating one of the files was updated.

At that very moment Dijkstra noticed that this way of keeping himself updated for school was way too time consuming. He contacted Smits to ask her to design a user-friendly software that would help solve this issue. With that, the OnTrack project was created.

"OnTrack is a new platform designed to put all of their files in one place, automatically downloading and syncing class materials provided by instructors," the spokesperson said.

Thanks to OnTrack, students don't need to worry about manually downloading and organizing each file. The time-saving tool automatically organizes and has files already available. The application will be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. OnTrack is currently optimized for use with popular school platform Blackboard.

Story continues

In order to help pay for the production costs that are associated with creating and marketing OnTrack, Dijkstra and Smits recently launched a fundraiser on Kickstarter. The pair hopes to raise $11,280 through crowdfunding to help as many students as possible get control of their files and course notifications.

About the On Track - Automatic Student Sync Tool:

The OnTrack - Automatic Student Sync Tool is a cross-platform desktop application that stops the robot-like job of keeping students updated and informed about their school. The new platform was created by Bas Dijkstra and Dorelys Smits. For more information, please visit http://goo.gl/8vuLkqU.

Contact:

Woodrow Hoffman

admin@rocketfactor.com

(949) 555-2861

SOURCE: OnTrack
Neruda, Pablo Larrain's biopic of Nobel-winning poet Pablo Neruda, will be Chile's submission to the foreign-language film category at the Oscars, the country's Culture and Arts Council president announced Tuesday.

The film premiered in May at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes and is scheduled for U.S. release by The Orchard on Dec. 16. The project features Luis Gnecco (Narcos) as the poet and communist senator.

The story focuses on the political persecution Neruda suffered after he was ousted from Chile's Congress in 1948 and the manhunt for his arrest led by police commissioner Oscar Peluchonneau, played by Gael Garcia Bernal (Mozart in the Jungle).

Chile's Oscar submission in 2015 also was a Larrain film: Berlinale winner The Club. The filmmaker, whose Natalie Portman-starrer Jackie is receiving Oscar buzz for its lead and was recently nabbed by Fox Searchlight, was actually the last Chilean director to grab a foreign-language film nomination in 2012 with No, which featured Garcia Bernal as the publicist who developed a campaign to defeat dictator Augusto Pinochet's attempt to remain in power through a plebiscite.
Lithuania has selected Kristijonas Vildzuinas' Seneca's Day as its submission in the best foreign-language film category at the Oscars.

In a co-production with Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia, Vildzuinas, who made his name as a rock star in Lithuania in the late 1990s before turning to film, goes back a quarter of a century to set up his story on mid-life disillusionment.

Set in Vilnius in 1989, the final year of Soviet rule, teenage friends resolve to "live each day as if it were your last" in a group they call Seneca's Fellowship, named after the famous Roman philosopher. Broken apart by a love triangle, the friends drift apart. A quarter of a century later, with disillusionment haunting his apparently successful life, one member of the group feels he has betrayed his youthful ideals and delves into a Pandora's box of memories.

Vildzuinas has three shorts and three features to his name -- including Back to Your Arms, which was Lithuania's foreign-language Oscar entry in 2011. Industry observers in Lithuania are pinning high hopes on Seneca's Day, which he also wrote.

Produced by Lithuania's Studio Uljana Kim, Estonia's Amrion and Latvia's Locomotive Productions, the film, which was supported by state film funds in each country as well as Eurimages, stars Dainius Gavenonis, Marijus Mazunas, Elzbieta Latenaite and Ina Marija Bartaite.

Lithuania has never won an Oscar or even been nominated in the foreign-language category, although last year's entry, lesbian teen coming-of-age story The Summer of Sangaile, won the best director award in Sundance's World Cinematic class for director Alante Kavaite.

Read more: Oscars: Lithuania Nominates 'The Summer of Sangaile' for Foreign Language Category
From Woman's Day

We all know that teachers can have a profound impact on the lives of their students, but this emotional experience shows how that relationship can go both ways.

Over 400 students, teachers, and school faculty members from the Christ Presbyterian Academy in Nashville, TN, gathered outside of teacher Ben Ellis' house to encourage and sing to him, The Tennessean reports.

The entire school wanted to show support for the teacher after principal Parker Altman shared the news that Ben had decided to stop his cancer treatments. The Latin and Bible studies instructor, who's been working at the academy since 2008, was diagnosed with cancer back in December. He has five children who attend the school.

Immediately after sharing the news, the principal announced that buses were in front of the school, ready to take all students to see the teacher. "It was really just a spur of the moment thing," the school's headmaster, Nate Morrow, said. "He's a dad here, a teacher here, and is one who is an absolutely brilliant educator of children."

After the students sang to Ben, a video capturing the visit was shared online. Since then, the footage has gone viral with over 20 million views and hundreds of thousands of likes and shares. Even Tim McGraw shared it on his Facebook page.

You can get see the touching moment in this video:

The outpouring of support for Ben after the video went viral was amazing, his friends and family wrote online. "Thank you all for the positive words of encouragement from all over the USA for my big brother, Ben," his sister, Cherlyn Ellis wrote in her comment on the video. "It means a lot to us to see how loved and thought of he is by so many."

Sadly, Ben lost his battle with cancer in the early morning hours of Friday, September 16, according to ABC. "Ben was a gift to us all in the most unassuming and life-giving way," headmaster Nate Morrow said in a statement.

Story continues

(h/t The Tennessean)

You Might Also Like
Iconic international nightclub brand Pacha is reportedly up for sale after 49 years of service.

According to a report by Spanish publication Cronica Global, Pacha founder Ricardo Urgell is fed up with the Mutates family's domination of Ibizan nightlife and can't see a way to reconcile his company's ideals with the VIP-centric atmosphere it champions.

Have Ibiza's Glory Days as a Dance Music Mecca Come to an End?

"It's simple: Ricardo Urgell - founder - cannot stomach the Matutes family," sources close to Pacha Group are quoted as saying. "Pacha does not believe in this new idea of a rich Ibiza as pushed forwards by Abel Matutes J. The founder cannot go on any more, and his children do not want to bear witness to the future. For this reason they are looking for an investor."

The Mutates, once called "the Kennedys of Ibiza," are the minds behind Ushuaia nightclub's more commercial approach and recently announced the takeover of fellow Ibizan nightclub Space when its lease is up at the end of the year. Legendary techno DJ Carl Cox has held down a residency at Space for 20 years, but will not continue to work with the new owners.

Where Is the Next Ibiza? 5 Contenders -- From Mykonos to Croatia

Urgell reportedly looks to sell Pacha, associated venues including Destino and Lio, as well as its international franchises for a price tag of &euro500 Million, or $562,050,000.

Representatives of the Pacha Group provided the following statement to Billboard Dance:

Regarding the latest news published about the potential investment in Pacha Group from a venture capital found, the company informs that:

 Pacha Group regularly receives many offers from potential investors and their team of professionals analyses and evaluates each closely.

 In the event of a financial operation with enough informative relevance, Pacha Group will notify promptly that information to the media according with their transparency principle and the good governance management which governs in this company.

Via: Resident Advisor
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's parliament may well have to ratify part of the legislation needed for the country to exit the European Union, Brexit Secretary David Davis told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday. "There has to be some legislation (to enact Brexit), no doubt about that," said Davis, whose formal title is Secretary of State for exiting the European Union. "There are various stages, firstly some legislation to deal with the European Communities Act 1972 ... There may well have to be at least parliamentary ratification under the relevant 2010 legislation, the so-called CRAG legislation, but that's the absolute minimum I can see," he said. He was referring to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. The issue of parliamentary ratification is sensitive because a majority of MPs voted for Britain to remain in the European Union. The United Kingdom as a whole voted to leave in a referendum on June 23, and Prime Minister Theresa May has said the will of the people must be respected. (Reporting by William James and Estelle Shirbon; editing by Michael Holden)
By Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan is expected to cruise to re-election in his Wisconsin congressional district on Nov. 8, the day before his real political problems are likely to start. That is when Ryan will know the shape of the new House of Representatives. If, as some analysts foresee, it becomes even more conservative than it is now, Ryan's difficulties in managing the lower chamber of Congress could worsen. For the highest-ranking elected U.S. Republican, that could spell trouble as the former vice presidential nominee looks ahead to a possible presidential run in 2020. Some staunch House conservatives, questioning Ryan's commitment to them and their agenda, are looking less kindly on the idea of re-electing him as speaker early next year. But his real test, assuming he retains the speaker's gavel, would be getting legislative results with a more conservative House. Compounding that could be the U.S. Senate switching to Democratic from Republican control and possibly a Democratic president, Hillary Clinton, if she beats Republican Donald Trump in the November election. "Next year, almost no matter what, is going to be a very tough one for Paul Ryan," said political scientist Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute think tank. The 2016 election results could cast a shadow over Ryan's presidential ambitions in 2020 and 2024, assuming he harbors them. "It may well be that he decides it's just not worth it, partly given what he sees within his own party," Ornstein said. Ryan's aides were reluctant on Monday to discuss the possible challenges of the next Congress. "The focus over the next 57 days is defending and strengthening our House majority. We are in a good position," said Ryan's political spokesman, Zack Roday. SMALLER, MORE CONSERVATIVE CAUCUS? Republicans hold 246 of the 435 House seats, their biggest majority in decades. But analysts expect the party will lose seats in November, especially if Trump hurts fellow Republicans. House members serve two-year terms and most are easily re-elected. The political prediction newsletter "Sabato's Crystal Ball" has tagged only 16 races as too close to call. Ten of those are currently held by moderates or pragmatists who have been fairly reliable supporters of legislation backed by Republican leaders including Ryan. Five of the 10 are retiring from the House. If Trump's performance damages candidates down the ticket, moderates may bear the brunt. The result could be a smaller House Republican majority more dominated by politically secure conservatives of the sort who have in recent years defied Ryan on some legislation. "A shrinking GOP conference is no doubt going to be more conservative in the new Congress, raising the challenge for Speaker Ryan to form majorities with a slimmer and more conservative rank and file," said Sarah Binder, professor of political science at George Washington University. If a number of moderates lose their seats, while most conservatives hold theirs, "then the House Freedom Caucus becomes more powerful," said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of "Sabato's Crystal Ball." The Freedom Caucus is the House's most conservative bloc, with about 40 members. It helped eject Ryan's predecessor, John Boehner, a year ago, leading to Ryan's election as speaker. The Freedom Caucus initially welcomed Ryan, a budget and fiscal policy specialist seen as more willing to listen to their agenda. But some Freedom Caucus members are unhappy with him since one of their members, Representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, lost a primary election last month. Ryan could have done more to help Huelskamp, some critics said. "There was huge disappointment in that," said Representative John Fleming, a Freedom Caucus member from Louisiana who is running for the U.S. Senate in November. The Huelskamp fallout has driven speculation that some conservatives who previously backed Ryan will oppose him when the House elects a new speaker in January, although none of them has said so publicly. "I don't think most members feel yet that Ryan is undeserving of more time (as speaker), but frustration with the leadership is certainly growing," said Dan Holler of Heritage Action, the political wing of the Heritage Foundation conservative think tank. (Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney)
By Paul Kilby

NEW YORK, Sept 13 (IFR) - Short-term bonds issued by Venezuela's PDVSA were trading up on Tuesday after the company's president confirmed that a swap of outstanding 2017s for new 2020s was in the works.

PDVSA's old and new 2017s were up a good 2.5-3 points on the day to trade respectively at 73-74 and 79.50-80.50, according to a buyside trader.

If successful the transaction would provide some breathing space to the state-owned company, which faces billions of dollars in bond maturities over the next year or so.

Reuters reported that the operation would include US$3bn of PDVSA bonds maturing in April 2017, and new PDVSA 2017s which have a US$2bn amortization in November and another US$2bn at the end of next year.

With no details released on the pricing of the swap, however, it remains unclear whether a sufficient number of foreign holders will freely participate in the transaction.

PDVSA is considering collateralizing the bond with shares from its US unit Citgo, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

But market participants questioned the effectiveness of the collateral as incentive given that equity pledges have been placed on a prior financing package from Citgo.

"One has to question the nature of the collateral and where it has been pledged," said the buyside trader. "With another US$7bn of debt (collateralized with equity) there would obviously be material dilution. At this point, it hard to quantify the extent of participation from external bondholders."

Ultimately, foreign participation is expected to come down to whether the transaction is net present value positive for investors.

"I don't think anyone cares about the Citgo shares," said one investor. "I would price this as a normal bond, looking at the exchange ratio and whether it is NPV positive."

In televised comments, PDVSA President Eulogio Del Pino said the new bond had received positive evaluations by three rating agencies, Reuters reported.

(Reporting By Paul Kilby, Davide Scigliuzzo; editing by Shankar Ramakrishnan)
By Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday will propose allowing families to deduct the cost of childcare expenses from income taxes, his campaign said, a move aimed at bolstering his support among women voters. Trump is to lay out the plan in an evening speech in the Philadelphia suburb of Aston, Pennsylvania, his latest attempt to construct a policy framework that he would use for governing if elected over Democrat Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8. Trump is to be introduced at the event by his daughter, Ivanka, who has championed the issue of childcare as an influential voice in his campaign. She told reporters on a conference call that she was involved in developing the plan. "I'm very passionate about this," she said. Trump's support among women voters has lagged. Overall, he has risen to a more competitive position against Clinton in national opinion polls and in battleground states where the election is likely to be decided. Polls show the race tightening in the crucial state of Pennsylvania. A Quinnipiac University poll last week said Clinton led 48 percent to 43 percent for Trump there, a reduction from her 10-point lead a month ago. Trump's plan would change the U.S. tax code to let parents deduct from their income taxes childcare expenses for up to four children and elderly dependents, his campaign said. It would be available for individuals earning less than $250,000 a year or under $500,000 for couples filing jointly. Trump campaign officials did not detail the overall cost of the program. A senior official said it would be part of Trump's plan to overhaul the tax code and would end up not adding to deficit spending in the U.S. budget. Trump would offer childcare spending rebates to lower-income taxpayers through the existing Earned Income Tax Credit. The campaign said this could mean tax rebates as high as $1,200 for eligible families each year. Trump also would create new Dependent Care Savings Accounts to allow families to set aside money "to foster their childrens development and offset elder care for their parents or adult dependents," the campaign said. Individuals could contribute up to $2,000 a year tax free. The New York businessman also is proposing guaranteed six weeks of paid maternity leave. He would accomplish this by amending the existing unemployment insurance that companies are required to carry. The benefit would apply only when employers do not offer paid maternity leave, and would be paid for by offsetting reductions in the federal unemployment insurance program so that taxes are not raised. (Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)
LIMA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Peru President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said a transcontinental railway proposed by China to slash the costs of shipping Brazilian goods to Asia could be too expensive and environmentally harmful to build.

Peru and China agreed to study the feasibility of a 5,300-kilometer (3,293-mile) railroad to link Brazil's Atlantic coast with a port on Peru's Pacific shores last year during the term of Kuczynski's predecessor, Ollanta Humala.

Environmentalists said the project, which would cross the Amazon and the Andes, could destroy rainforest and put indigenous tribes at risk.

Kuczynski, who took office in July, said in an interview with local broadcaster RPP from Beijing that he flagged his concerns about the potential project with China's main railway builder during an official visit to the Asian powerhouse.

"I told them, without getting confrontational, that this trans-Amazonic train has very high costs, it could have environmental impacts and we have to look at that carefully," Kuczynski said without elaborating.

Kuczynski said the Chinese railway company, which he did not name, was interested in building a commuter train on Peru's central coast that he has pitched as part of his bid to boost economic growth through infrastructure development.

Kuczynski, a 77-year-old former Wall Street banker, traveled to top trade partner China over the weekend for a five-day visit aimed at finding investments in refineries, ports and railways and broadening access to food markets.

Kuczynski told RPP that Aluminum Corp of China Limited was interested in building an alloy smelting plant in Peru and that representatives of China's iron and steel industry expressed interest in building a steel plates factory.

Kuczynski wants Peru, the world's third biggest copper producer and sixth largest gold producer, to squeeze more value out of its mineral exports by ramping up its refining and smelting capacity.

Kuczynski has previously said Peru could process copper concentrates with high levels of arsenic from Aluminum Corp's Toromocho mine. Chinese smelters are banned from taking concentrates with high levels of arsenic, a toxic chemical that can cause cancer.

(Reporting by Mitra Taj and Marco Aquino; Editing by Leslie Adler)
By Enrico Dela Cruz and Manuel Mogato MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines moved to shore up relations with the United States on Tuesday with guarantees that a treaty between them would be honored and security ties were "rock solid", despite President Rodrigo Duterte's railings against Washington. The firebrand leader launched more verbal salvos on Monday about what he called atrocities under American colonial rule, calling for the pullout of U.S. special forces stationed in the restive south that he said were complicating counter-insurgency operations. Duterte is hugely popular at home for his brash remarks and take-charge style, but his frequent tirades against Washington, including calling both President Barack Obama and his ambassador to Manila a "son of a bitch", have tested a relationship of strategic importance to both sides. Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay said Duterte's remarks, including that the southern Philippines "would never have peace" while allied with Washington, were not a signal that a pact between them would be abrogated. "The president has said ... that we will respect and continue to honor our treaty obligations and commitments," Yasay said in a radio interview. As his administration scurried to put out fires, Duterte followed up with a guarantee of his own, saying the Philippines would not "cut our umbilical cord" with allies, but would pursue its own path. "We are not, we could never be, just a small country and to be shouted at or lectured upon," he said in a speech at an air force event. It was the latest sign of the abrasive former lawyer hinting at taking decisive measures, then later ruling them out, adding to concerns in Washington about his volatility. Obama last week canceled a meeting with Duterte after his outburst, saying the mood was not conducive to productive talks. At an official ceremony on Monday, Duterte said U.S. special forces could become high-value targets for Abu Sayyaf rebels notorious for kidnapping and beheading foreigners. 'ROCK SOLID' But that, the military said in a statement, would entail the exit of a "token" number of Americans, and broader defense programs with the United States would remain intact. "Philippine-U.S. defense relations remain rock solid," armed forces spokesman Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla said. Duterte had on Monday shown pictures of what he said were victims of colonial-era atrocities against Muslims in Mindanao, repeating assertions that Americans were to blame for the instability that has dogged the region. Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella described Duterte's presentation as a "backgrounder" for Filipinos that explained his independent foreign policy. "These actions, these references that he's making, are intended to communicate to one and all that we need to be ready to chart our own course," Abella told reporters. White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday emphasized shared concerns and interests with the Philippines, then took a thinly veiled swipe at Duterte, who won a May election by a big margin, appearing to compare him outspoken Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. "Elections do say a lot about what kind of person is going to represent your country on the international stage..." he told reporters. The United States has only a few troops remaining in Mindanao after the conclusion last year of a program that once had 1,200 personnel providing technical and logistics support. Washington's security priority has since shifted toward the South China Sea, where the Philippines in among several countries at odds with China. Ranhilio Aquino, a Catholic priest and dean of the San Beda Graduate School of Law, said Duterte's complaints about Washington were not without cause, but he should think carefully about important alliances. "When you are being bullied, and you want international rule to prevail, you need help from your friends," he said. (Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Manolo Serapio Jr; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Monday that he wants U.S. special forces to leave his countrys Muslim insurgency-ridden South, taking his recent expressions of anti-Americanism another step further.

Addressing a swearing-in ceremony for new officials, Duterte said the Islamic militants deeming of Westerners as high-value targets made the region unsuitable for them to operate, Reuters reports.

Americans, [the militants] will really kill them, they will try to kidnap them to get a ransom, the 71-year-old President said. I do not want a rift with America. But they have to go.

U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby said the U.S. government had received no official demand from the Philippine government for the removal of its troops, which have been assisting the fight against the Islamic Stateaffiliated Abu Sayyaf group since 2002, but have recently dialed down their presence to a handful in liaison roles, an official told Reuters.

The Philippines is one of the key U.S. allies in Southeast Asia; an agreement signed under Dutertes predecessor President Benigno Aquino III last year expanded the defense cooperation between the two countries.

Duterte, however, has made his disdain for the U.S. clear on multiple occasions, mostly over its opposition to his brutal war on drugs. Earlier this year, he called the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines a son of a b-tch, an insult he appeared to also direct toward President Barack Obama ahead of the recent ASEAN Summit in Vientiane, Laos.

Duterte expressed regret for his strong comments that resulted in Obama canceling a planned meeting between the two leaders (although they did meet informally on the sidelines of the event) and later said the insult wasnt directed at his American counterpart. However, Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying on Monday that he was the one who skipped the meeting with Obama.

[Reuters]
MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines will continue to honor its treaty obligations with the United States, its foreign minister said on Tuesday, a day after President Rodrigo Duterte called for the withdrawal of U.S. special forces troops from southern Philippines. "The president has said, even as a priority statement in his inaugural address, that we will respect and continue to honor our treaty obligations and commitments particularly even with the U.S.," Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay told a radio interview on Tuesday. "His statements now are not intended and should not be taken as a signal that he will take back his previous statements insofar as respecting these agreements are concerned," said Yasay. On Monday, Duterte said U.S. military presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners. (Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Michael Perry)
From Popular Mechanics

NASA recently released some amazing images of cliff formations on Mars that were taken September 8 by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on the Curiosity rover. The photos of the Murray Buttes region near the bottom of Mount Sharp "arguably rival photos taken in U.S. National Parks," according to a NASA press release. We're inclined to agree.

"Curiosity's science team has been just thrilled to go on this road trip through a bit of the American desert Southwest on Mars," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The images show buttes and mesas of sandstone that have eroded into striking layered cliffs at the foot of the 18,000-foot-tall Mount Sharp. Just like sedimentary rock formations on the Earth, the layers of material can help planetary geologists read the history of that region of the planet, creating a detailed timeline of how the rock outcrops formed as sand dunes, were submerged underground, hardened, tilted, eroded, uplifted, and eroded some more.

"Studying these buttes up close has given us a better understanding of ancient sand dunes that formed and were buried, chemically changed by groundwater, exhumed and eroded to form the landscape that we see today," Vasavada said.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity has been in the Murray Buttes region for about a month, and the car-sized rover stopped to snap these photos on its way out of the area. Currently the rover is conducting its latest drilling operation near a butte on the perimeter of the region, after which it will continue south and up the slope of Mount Sharp.

NASA is planning another large panoramic image of Mars using the new photos of the spectacular formations in Murray Butte, which should be released in the coming weeks. Keep on keepin' on, Curiosity.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

You Might Also Like
From Cosmopolitan

Big Pitch Perfect wedding news! A cappella stars Anna Camp and Skylar Astin got married over the weekend after three years of dating, People reports. Their fellow Pitch Perfect stars Elizabeth Banks and Rebel Wilson attended the ceremony in Santa Ynez, California, and Brittany Snow served as a bridesmaid.

After the ceremony, Anna shared a photo of the flowers and said that her heart was "overflowing with love and beauty." "Thank you to everyone who made yesterday an exquisitely wonderful day for me and my new husband," she wrote. "I can't thank you enough."

As for the dress, People reports that it was Reem Acra; they also have an exclusive photo on their website. An Anna Camp fan account also has photos of the gown, which is just about as glamorous and princess-like as a wedding dress can be. But the real question remains: Did anyone sing a cappella at the reception?

Follow Eliza on Twitter.

You Might Also Like
Warsaw (AFP) - Poland on Tuesday urged an upcoming European Union summit to plot a path to post-Brexit "reform" but immediately met with a frosty response from EU chief Donald Tusk.

In a brief meeting with Tusk, a fellow Pole who is president of the European Council, Prime Minister c said Friday's summit in Bratislava should provide "the first impetus on the path to change."

"The EU has to change, we have to reform it," said Szydlo, whose remarks were conveyed to the press by her spokesman, Rafal Bochenek.

Poland's government, a fierce critic of EU federalism, has been trying to rally other eastern European countries behind an agenda in favour of national sovereignty.

The meeting lasted less than one hour, and the body language at their encounter seemed cool, according to an AFP journalist who attended the photocall.

Speaking to reporters, Tusk urged restraint and bluntly reminded Poland of the benefits it had gained from EU membership.

"We have to be careful with systematic revolutions in Europe. Europe as it is now has been very rewarding for Poland," Tusk said.

"Treaty changes in Europe will not necessarily benefit Poland. If I had to guess, I'd say every destabilising, revolutionary idea could instead hurt Poland."

He also stressed that Warsaw had not made clear what kind of reforms it is calling for.

In Bratislava, "it is crucial that Poland does not join those who today want to rock the European boat a little. We need a Europe that is stable, strong and as united as possible," Tusk added.

The Bratislava meeting is designed to sketch ideas for the EU after Britain's avowed exit from the bloc following its referendum on June 23.

Britain, for the first time in its 43-year membership of the EU, will not be taking part in a full summit.

Tusk is touring EU capitals to sound out opinions ahead of the meeting, which will have informal status and not make any decisions.

Story continues

So far, thinking has coalesced around whether centralised powers in the EU should be either strengthened or weakened as a result of Brexit.

Britain, along with Poland, has been leading the fight against centralised authority.

Populists in both countries, and elsewhere in eastern Europe, have attacked the EU's powerful executive Commission as a federalist assault on sovereignty.

In contrast, EU supporters say Europe's flaws have happened because stronger centralised institutions and democracy have been thwarted by national interests.

Bochenek said that in Warsaw's view, the Brexit vote reflected a sense of public alienation with Brussels.

"European civil servants absolutely must not block these reforms. Passiveness, the failure to listen closely to the voices of the people in member states, was a chief cause of Brexit," he said.
Authorities hope a new image and information may help generate leads in a Baltimore County cold case that has ties to Boston. The victim, labeled Jane Doe, was found on Sept. 12, 1976, in the 5600 block of Dogwood Road near the Lorraine Park Cemetery in Woodlawn. Investigators said she was tortured, drugged and gagged.
LONDON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Portugal's weak banking sector remains a source of risk to the government even after an agreement to recapitalise state-owned bank CGD last month, ratings agency Moody's said.

The European Commission and Portugal last month agreed in principle to the recapitalisation, on market terms, of Caixa Geral de Depositos, envisaging an injection of up to 2.7 billion euros ($3 billion) in state funds and nearly as much in debt and equity.

"The banking sector will pose a risk to the sovereign as long as it is weakly capitalised," Moody's said in a list of frequently asked questions which addressed whether the agreement on CGD had changed its view.

The ratings agency did not publish an update on Portugal at a review scheduled for September 2. It's review before that was in May.

Moody's, which rates the country Ba1 with a stable outlook, added that Portugal's weakening economy and increasing risks to the debt trajectory are exerting downward pressure on the country's sovereign creditworthiness.

(Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; Editing by John Geddie)
LISBON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Portugal's budget negotiations between the minority Socialist government and its left-wing backers in parliament are heading towards a deal that would involve providing more income to pensioners, the leader of the Left Bloc said on Tuesday.

The government, which has promised the European Commission it would keep cutting the budget deficit even as it reverses many of the austerity measures of the previous administration, has to present a draft budget by mid-October.

Some analysts have expressed concern that after pressure from Brussels for more fiscal consolidation, the new budget would split Portugal's first-ever alliance of the centre-left Socialists with the hard left that began in November.

Political instability could also exacerbate investor worries about Portugal's faltering growth and its credit ratings.

But so far, all signs indicate a smooth budget process. Left Bloc's Catarina Martins has signalled no outright challenge to the course of budget consolidation if the government agrees to increase pensions, especially for low-income pensioners.

"We are getting towards a deal on important matters and that gives us some confidence about the possibility of a budget that would correspond to the agreement that we've had" on parliamentary support for the government, she said.

Martins spoke to reporters after meeting Prime Minister Antonio Costa. The Communist party, whose support is also crucial to ensure the parliamentary majority, has yet to comment.

She singled out pensions as the most acute issue because retirees have so far only lost income in recent years. She also wants to end a crisis-time income tax surcharge, which has already been scaled down in this year's budget.

"Considering the low pensions, the poverty among the elderly, the recovery of pensioners' incomes has to be a priority," she said, adding that although there were differences with the government on various matters, the parties were working to bridge them.

(Reporting By Andrei Khalip and Sergio Goncalves, editing by Axel Bugge, Larry King)
(Adds Communist leader's comment)

By Andrei Khalip

LISBON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Portugal's budget negotiations between the minority Socialist government and its left-wing backers in parliament are heading towards a deal that would involve providing more income to pensioners, the leader of the Left Bloc said on Tuesday.

The government, which has promised the European Commission it would keep cutting the budget deficit even as it reverses many of the austerity measures of the previous administration, has to present a draft budget by mid-October.

Some analysts have expressed concern that after pressure from Brussels for more fiscal consolidation, the new budget would split Portugal's first-ever alliance of the centre-left Socialists with the hard left that began in November.

Political instability could also exacerbate investor worries about Portugal's faltering growth and its credit ratings.

But so far, all signs indicate a smooth budget process. Left Bloc's Catarina Martins has signalled no outright challenge to the course of budget consolidation if the government agrees to increase pensions, especially for low-income pensioners.

"We are getting towards a deal on important matters and that gives us some confidence about the possibility of a budget that would correspond to the agreement that we've had" on parliamentary support for the government, she said.

Martins spoke to reporters after meeting Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who also received the leaders of other parties with seats in parliament.

But Jeronimo de Sousa, the leader of the Communist party, whose support is also crucial to ensure the parliamentary majority, was more restrained, saying progress was "still clearly insufficient".

"We've shown we are here to cooperate. It is an ongoing process," de Sousa said, urging the government not to give in to "blackmail" from Brussels. "We will support what is positive for the people and we will oppose what works against the workers."

Story continues

Left Bloc's Martins singled out pensions as the most acute issue because retirees have so far only lost income in recent years. She also wants to end a crisis-time income tax surcharge, which has already been scaled down in this year's budget.

"Considering the low pensions, the poverty among the elderly, the recovery of pensioners' incomes has to be a priority," she said, adding that although there were differences with the government on various matters, the parties were working to bridge them.

(Additional reporting By Sergio Goncalves, editing by Axel Bugge, Larry King)
Canadian fertilizer makers Potash Corp. POT and Agrium AGU made it official yesterday that they have agreed to combine their businesses in a merger of equals to create a fertilizer powerhouse with a pro-forma enterprise value of $36 billion. The companies said in late August that they were in talks to merge.



The two leading fertilizer companies  both reeling under the effects of the depressed prices of crop nutrients  have agreed to merge in an all-stock deal that has been unanimously cleared by the boards of both companies. The companies said that a new parent company will be formed to own both companies.



The Deal



Under the deal terms, shareholders of Potash Corp.  the worlds largest fertilizer maker by capacity  will get 0.400 common shares of the integrated company for each share they own. Shareholders of Agrium, the biggest farm retailer in North America, will get 2.230 common shares of the combined entity for each Agrium common share they own. The all-stock nature of the deal allows all shareholders to participate in the benefits of the merger.



Following the closure of the transaction, shareholders of Potash Corp. will own roughly 52% of the combined company, with Agrium shareholders holding the balance on a fully diluted basis.



The transaction, which is subject to regulatory clearances, Canadian court approval, approval by the shareholders of both companies and other closing conditions, is expected to consummate during mid-2017. It will also be implemented by way of a plan of arrangement under the Canada Business Corporations Act. Both companies expect to retain their current dividend payments until the transaction closure.



BofA Merrill Lynch and RBC Capital Markets are serving as financial advisors to Potash Corp. while Barclays Capital Inc. and CIBC Capital Markets are Agriums financial advisors for the deal. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC is serving as joint financial advisor to both companies.



Following the deal closure, Potash Corp. CEO Jochen Tilk will serve as Executive Chairman of the new company while Agrium CEO Chuck Magro will serve as Chief Executive Officer. Both will report to the new board of directors. The combined companys board will also have equal representation. The new company will have its registered head office in Saskatoon with Canadian corporate offices in both Calgary and Saskatoon.



Industry Majors Unite in Tough Times



The deal came as a survival strategy as both Potash Corp. and Agrium are feeling the bite of low fertilizer prices, weak agricultural market conditions and depressed demand in certain key markets including Brazil. These headwinds have weighed heavily on their sales and profits so far this year. Global capacity expansion continues to exert pressure on fertilizer prices.



Potash Corp. saw its profits tumble roughly 71% in the second quarter of 2016 as lower prices hurt margins across its potash, nitrogen and phosphate businesses. The company reduced its earnings guidance for 2016 and announced a dividend cut. Moreover, weaker selling prices across all nutrients dragged down Agriums profits in the second quarter. The company cut its earnings guidance for 2016 factoring in sustained pricing pressure.



The broader fertilizer industry remains hamstrung by a slew of headwinds including low prices of nutrients and depressed farm income. The prevailing softness in agricultural commodity pricing remains a concern for fertilizer companies as it is hindering fertilizer use by farmers given the adverse effect of lower crop pricing on growers income.



Prices for potash (a major nutrient), which are down roughly 27% from a year ago, continue to be hurt by elevated supply. Potash prices came under pressure following the exit of the world's largest potash maker, Uralkali Group from one of the biggest potash cartels  the Belarus Potash Company (BPC)  in 2013. Depressed global energy prices and higher supply have also contributed to a softer nitrogen-pricing environment.



A Fertilizer Giant in the Making



The integrated company (to be named prior to the transaction closure) will be the largest crop nutrient company in the world and the third largest natural resource company in Canada. It will also be better placed to serve customers and growers with low-cost, high-value products and services and complementary assets.



The combined company will have the lowest-cost potash production assets and reserves in North America, a balanced portfolio of nutrients and a leading retail distribution platform. Moreover, recently completed investments in low-cost capacity are expected to improve operating costs and help the new company address increases in demand.



The combined entity would have nearly 20,000 employees, operations and investments across 18 countries. Moreover, it would have net revenues of around $20.6 billion and EBITDA of $4.7 billion for 2015 before synergies on a pro-forma basis.



The integrated company is also expected to generate as much as $500 million of annual operating synergies. Roughly $250 million of these synergies are expected to be achieved by the end of the first year following the completion of the transaction. The deal is anticipated to be accretive for both sets of shareholders with run-rate synergies.



The new company will also have a strong balance sheet with considerable cash flows, providing it ample flexibility to return excess capital to shareholders and invest in growth while retaining a strong investment grade credit rating profile. The integrated entity would have 2015 operating cash flow of more than $4 billion (inclusive of expected synergies) on a pro-forma basis.



The deal, however, is likely to face antitrust scrutiny due to competitive concerns given its size and scale.



Potash Corp.'s shares slipped around 1.2% to close at $16.76 yesterday while Agrium ended 2.7% lower at $92.64.

Story continues

POTASH SASK Price

POTASH SASK Price | POTASH SASK Quote

AGRIUM INC Price

AGRIUM INC Price | AGRIUM INC Quote

Potash Corp. currently carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) while Agrium is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock.



A couple of better-ranked companies in the basic materials space are Innospec Inc. IOSP and Innophos Holdings Inc IPHS, both sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Confidential from Zacks



Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



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



INNOPHOS HLDGS (IPHS): Free Stock Analysis Report



INNOSPEC INC (IOSP): Free Stock Analysis Report



POTASH SASK (POT): Free Stock Analysis Report



AGRIUM INC (AGU): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
(WASHINGTON)  President Barack Obama will hit the campaign trail Tuesday to rally support for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, a state that has served as a firewall for her party in the past six general elections but is now viewed as competitive.

Obama is scheduled to appear without the candidate herself. Clinton was scheduled to make a fundraising swing to California, but will take a couple of days off from the campaign trail after being diagnosed with pneumonia.

Obama will seek to generate momentum for Clinton in a race that has become uncomfortably close for many Democratic supporters. The latest poll by Quinnipiac University found her with a 5 percentage point edge over Republican Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Obama will speak at a plaza in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Hell also attend a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee in Philadelphia and then fly to New York City for a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser.

The candidate Obama hopes will succeed him left a 9/11 ceremony after about 90 minutes Sunday and struggled to stay on her feet while she was helped into a van. Her campaign said she had overheated, but later revealed that she had been diagnosed Friday with pneumonia. The episode played into Trumps efforts in recent weeks to raise doubts about Clintons stamina.

Clintons campaign was already on the defensive after she used the term basket of deplorables to describe half of Trumps supporters.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama doesnt feel like he needs to help Clinton with damage control.

I think the presidents belief that shed be an excellent president of the United States is something that youve heard him say many times. And I can tell you theres nothing that happened yesterday that has changed that assessment at all, Earnest said.

Earnest deflected several questions Monday about whether both candidates were being forthcoming enough in releasing details about their health. He said its ultimately the candidates themselves who have to make the decision about what kind of information they release and the level of detail. Still, he said that Obama remains confident Clinton has the strength to carry out the demands of the presidency.

When asked about Clintons use of the term basket of deplorables, Earnest made clear that its not the presidents phrase. But he also said there has been a disturbing tendency on the part of Republicans in Washington, D.C., to try to appeal to extremists for political support.
The time has come to end presidential term limits, because continuing the restrictions on how long one can serve in the country's highest office is bad for the United States, a university professor argued this week.



In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post, Jonathan Zimmerman, a history and education professor at New York University, says deciding whether a president deserves a third, fourth or more terms should be left to the American people, not the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which placed a two-term limit on the position. As background, here's an excerpt from the amendment, ratified in 1951:

"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."

The amendment came into being a few years after Franklin Roosevelt was elected to the fourth of his White House terms. Known to Americans as the president during the final years of the Great Depression and most of World War II, Roosevelt, a Democrat, died in office before completing his last term. After the war, Republicans made a successful bid to install a two-term maximum for future presidents. But, according to Zimmerman, they limited not only the president's time in office, but also "democracy itself."

With President Obama's job-approval numbers down sharply, Zimmerman indicates that the nation's chief executive is perhaps being hampered by the fact that he's in his final term, giving GOP opponents and even Democrats little incentive to support him on issues that might hurt their own re-election chances.

To illustrate his point, he uses two topics in the headlines: the implemention of the new health care law and the nuclear agreement with Iran.

He writes:

"Many of Obamas fellow Democrats have distanced themselves from the reform and from the president. Even former president Bill Clinton has said that Americans should be allowed to keep the health insurance they have. Or consider the reaction to the Iran nuclear deal. Regardless of his political approval ratings, Obama could expect Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.) to attack the agreement. But if Obama could run again, would he be facing such fervent objections from Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)? Probably not. Democratic lawmakers would worry about provoking the wrath of a president who could be reelected. Thanks to term limits, though, theyve got little to fear."

Zimmerman adds, "Nor does Obama have to fear the voters, which might be the scariest problem of all. If he chooses, he could simply ignore their will. And if the people wanted him to serve another term, why shouldnt they be allowed to award him one?"



On this last point, he invokes George Washington, the first president of the United States. Washington, he says, stepped down after his second term, but not because he was required by law to do so. Zimmerman says Washington didn't support enforced term limits, citing one of his letters. "I can see no propriety in precluding ourselves from the service of any man who, in some great emergency, shall be deemed universally most capable of serving the public," Washington wrote. By leaving office, however, he did establish a precedent that would be followed for more than a century.



In his "Presidential Term Limits in American History: Power, Principles, and Politics," Michael Korzi, a professor of political science at Towson University, cites the first president's remark, stating that Washington departed voluntarily after his second term "more for personal reasons than for reasons of philosophy."



Even so, the Founding Fathers had different opinions on whether to impose a mandate on term lengths, researchers indicate. (U.S. senators and representatives don't have term limits.) Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the U.S., felt a maximum had merit. In "Jefferson Himself: The Personal Narrative of a Many-Sided American," edited by Bernard Mayo, Jefferson referenced his dislike of the idea of an entrenched leader:



"That I should lay down my charge at a proper season is as much a duty as to have borne it faithfully ... . These changes are necessary, too, for the security of republican government. If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will in fact be for life; and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance."



As for the present, Zimmerman's idea isn't new, and in fact, rumor-researching website Snopes.com notes multiple proposals in recent years to repeal the 22nd Amendment. Republicans and Democrats alike have raised the issue, but none of the attempts have gotten too far. .



You tell us: Do you prefer to have presidential term limits? Or would you rather a president be able to run as many times as they want?
In October 1969, a young Georgia politician was leaving a fundraiser when he spotted a large object glowing in the sky.

Read: Roswell Teen Charged in Theft of Model UFO

Four years later, in September 1973, he formally filed a UFO sighting report with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).

That politician was Jimmy Carter, who went on to become the United States' 39th president.

A new episode of NASAs Unexplained Files, which airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. on the Science Channel, explores Carters UFO filing.

Author William J. Birnes said in the episode: "When he looks up in the sky and he sees an object, it is bigger than the moon. He says to himself, 'That is the darndest thing I ever saw.'"

There is no reasonable explanation for what Carter saw that October night, but it continued to occupy his mind.

During Carters 1976 presidential campaign, he brought up his UFO encounter. He promised that if he was elected, he would encourage the government to release every piece of information about UFOs to the public.

Read: A Real-Life Star Trek? Strange Video of UFO Has Internet Buzzing

While Carter did win the election, he later backed away from his promise, saying that the release of such documents would cause national security defense implications."

In a 2007 interview with CNN, Carter was asked about his UFO sighting, to which he replied: It was unidentified as far as we were concerned, but I think its impossible in my opinion  some people disagree  to have space people from other planets or other stars to come to us. I dont think thats possible.

Tune in to NASAs Unexplained Files Tuesday at 9 p.m. on the Science Channel.

Watch: SpaceX Makes History! Rocket Takes Off Then Lands in Upright Position

Related Articles:
Sept 13 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

** The Canada Revenue Agency has launched a review into the actions of B.C. real estate speculators in light of a Globe and Mail report that uncovered possible tax evasion and fraud. (http://bit.ly/2cSQY8e)

** Canada Post should consider resuming the phaseout of home delivery, but will still need a radical overhaul to stay financially viable, a federal task force report says. (http://bit.ly/2cSR7Zi)

** The Federal Court of Appeal has rejected a challenge by a Vancouver-area First Nation, which argued its rights were violated by the National Energy Board during the agency's review of Kinder Morgan Inc's TransMountain expansion project. (http://bit.ly/2cSRTFz)

NATIONAL POST

** The Trudeau government knows that it is going to spend political capital in the coming months - a euphemism that translates as decisions that will consign members of the governing caucus to defeat at the next election. (http://bit.ly/2cSQXkM)

** An Ontario judge has approved a plan to reduce the debt of Postmedia Network Canada Corp, less than a week after shareholders and debt holders voted overwhelmingly in favor of the deal. (http://bit.ly/2cSQT4d)

** Dairy producers in Australia, the European Union, Mexico, New Zealand and the United States have teamed up to threaten a trade war over a new deal between Canadian farmers and its dairy industry. (http://bit.ly/2cSRAdU) (Compiled by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru)
Princess incoming!

Prince William and Kate Middleton are preparing to bring Princess Charlotte to North America on her first royal tour next week.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will visit British Columbia and Yukon in Canada on a royal trek kicking off on Sept. 24th. Accompanied by 16-month-old Charlotte and her three-year-old brother, George, the family will touch down in Victoria for a busy week involving 30 official engagements.

WATCH: Kate Middleton and Prince William Speak About Fears as Parents

So what's on the agenda?

After unveiling a new plaque paying tribute to veterans of Canada's involvement in the Afghanistan conflict, the couple will greet locals, meet with Canadian leaders and travel to Vancouver by float plane.

Meetings with charities including Sheway, which benefits mothers battling addiction, the Kelty Mental Health Resource Centre and Cridge Centre for the Family are also on the cards.

NEWS: Kate Middleton and Prince William Meet a Baby Dinosaur

The royal couple will also mingle with "people of their generation" at an event celebrating young Canadian leaders, attend the Taste of British Columbia festival at Mission Hill Winery, go fishing at Hectate Strate, peruse MacBride Museum and paddle around in a canoe at Haida Heritage Center.

The little ones are also in for some fun as the family will visit the Great Bear Rainforest on BC's Central Coast and attend a children's party at Government House, where the kids are promised "plenty of surprises."

We can't wait to see pics of wee Charlotte and George taking on Canada!

See the Duke and Duchess talk about their worries as parents in the video below.

Related Articles
A college degree is one of the most important investments an individual can make, according to a recent study by the White House's Council of Economic Advisers.

The earnings gap between a college and a high school graduate continues to widen, with those earning bachelor's degrees making nearly $1 million more in their lifetime compared with those with only a high school diploma, the report found.

While the overall return on a college education nears historic levels, the report suggests there are variations on that return, depending on the school and program a student selects. To find the college that's the best fit, prospective students and their families can turn to the 2017 U.S. News Best Colleges rankings, released today.

[Explore the 2017 Best Colleges rankings.]

The 2017 edition includes data on more than 1,800 colleges and universities, of which 1,374 are ranked. Under the rankings methodology, eligible schools are divided into different categories such as National Universities and Regional Colleges, and evaluated on up to 15 indicators of academic excellence, such as freshman retention, faculty resources and graduation rates -- to name a few.

Among National Universities, which emphasize research and offer bachelor's, master's and doctoral programs, Princeton University in New Jersey once again took No. 1, Massachusetts' Harvard University remained in second place and the University of Chicago moved up one spot to tie with Yale University in Connecticut for third place.

Other changes in this year's top 10 include California's Stanford University and New York's Columbia University moving down one spot from a tie at fourth to a tie at No. 5. The University of Pennsylvania traveled up one notch to No. 8, while California Institute of Technology dropped two places to No. 12.

One of the largest leaps in the 2017 National Universities rankings came from Howard University in the District of Columbia, which climbed 11 spots from a tie at No. 135 to a tie at No. 124. Similarly, Kansas State University rose by 11 places, traveling from a tie at No. 146 to a tie at No. 135.

Story continues

[See photos of the top 20 National Universities.]

National Liberal Arts Colleges, which focus on undergraduate education and award at least half of their degrees in fields such as humanities or social sciences, didn't see any movement among the top two spots. Massachusetts' Williams College took the No. 1 spot again, and Amherst College, also in Massachusetts, stayed at No. 2. Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College dropped one spot to a tie at No. 4 with Vermont's Middlebury College, while Massachusetts' Wellesley College climbed up to No. 3.

The most dramatic jump in the National Liberal Arts Colleges rankings came from California's Thomas Aquinas College, which rose 29 spots from a tie at No. 82 to a tie at No. 53.

Among Regional Universities, which offer a range of undergraduate disciplines and some master's but few doctoral programs, North Carolina's Elon University maintained its No. 1 spot in the South. Creighton University in Nebraska and Texas' Trinity University kept their top positions in the Midwest and West, respectively. But in the North, Providence College in Rhode Island moved up one spot to nab first place.

New York's Cooper Union moved up one spot to take No. 1 in the North among Regional Colleges, which focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than half their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. Carroll College in Montana and High Point University in North Carolina held on to the No. 1 spot, respectively, in the West and the South.

Calvin College in Michigan, which changed from being categorized as a National Liberal Arts College to a Regional College this year, shared the No. 1 spot in the Midwest with Indiana's Taylor University.

Some institutions such as Calvin College changed categories this year because the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education -- the most widely accepted classification system in U.S. higher education that U.S. News uses in its rankings -- updated its system.

As a result of the Carnegie updates, around 12 percent of ranked schools for the 2017 edition of Best Colleges have moved into different categories. Villanova University, for example, moved from its No. 1 position among Regional Universities in the North to sharing a four-way tie at No. 50 with Pennsylvania State University--University Park, California's Pepperdine University and the University of Florida among National Universities.

Beyond the overall rankings, U.S. News has other lists and rankings to help students and their families compare colleges.

For high school students who aren't at the top of their class, U.S. News has the A-plus Schools for B Students list. These schools perform well in the rankings and accept students who don't necessarily have straight A's. Pepperdine is the top-ranked National University that appears on the A-plus list and Skidmore College in New York is again the highest-ranked A-plus School among National Liberal Arts Colleges.

There are other rankings such as the Best Value Schools for cost-conscious families, which evaluates colleges on more specific measures of quality and cost; these schools typically subsidize tuition and fees for eligible students based on financial need. Harvard ranked the highest among National Universities for offering the best bang for your buck, moving up a spot from last year.

[Discover more Best Value Schools.]

In addition to nearly 50 types of numerical rankings and lists, U.S. News also publishes a wealth of data on each school's online profile page, including information on application fees and deadlines, popular majors and financial aid -- to name just a few areas. Colleges report most of this information directly to U.S. News via an extensive questionnaire.

Looking for full rankings information? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find all published data points, including student debt and employment statistics.

Farran Powell is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering paying for college and graduate school. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at fpowell@usnews.com.
Yerevan (AFP) - Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian on Tuesday appointed a Kremlin-friendly technocrat as the ex-Soviet nation's new prime minister, after the last premier quit following anger over a hostage crisis.

"The President signed a decree on the appointment of Karen Karapetyan on Tuesday morning," Sarkisian's office said in a statement.

Former mayor of the capital city Yerevan, Karapetyan, 53, has previously held senior posts at Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom's subsidiary, Mezhregiongaz, and Moscow-based Gazprombank.

Karapetyan's predecessor, Hovik Abrahamian, resigned last week after a protracted hostage crisis highlighted popular discontent over official failings in the nation of 2.9 million.

A group of anti-government gunmen seized a police building in Yerevan for two weeks, killing two police and taking several high-ranking officers hostage. After clashes and lengthy negotiations they surrendered on July 31.

The crisis sparked anti-government protests that saw clashes with police and Sarkisian promised to reshuffle his cabinet in the aftermath.

Armenia -- the Kremlin's closest ally in the Caucasus region -- is a member of a Moscow-led economic union and hosts a Russian military base, and the new premier looks set to maintain those close links.

"Karapetyan is widely perceived in Armenia as Russia's protege," political analyst Stefan Safaryan told AFP. "He is a player on Russia's field."

Armenia has a military pact with Russia and relies on Moscow for its weapons supplies as it faces off against neighbouring Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region.

The festering feud over the territory -- seized by ethnic-Armenians from Azerbaijan in a brutal war in the early 1990s -- erupted into its worst violence in decades in early April.

A Russian-brokered ceasefire put an end to four days of heavy clashes -- which claimed at least 110 lives -- but tensions remain high as Moscow has mediated between the two sides.

Armenia's economy has been hit by the spillover from the economic crisis in Russia. Some 30 percent of the population lives below the official poverty line, according to the Asian Development Bank.
By Ayesha Rascoe and James Oliphant PHILADELPHIA/DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - With Hillary Clinton sidelined by pneumonia, President Barack Obama took up the Democrats' fight against Donald Trump on Tuesday, trying to quash the Republican presidential candidate's bid to appeal to working-class voters. Obama, whose 50 percent job approval rating could help improve the climate for the Democratic ticket in the Nov. 8 election, rallied party faithful against Trump, the 70-year-old New York real estate developer, at an outdoor event in Philadelphia. "This is a guy who spent 70 years on this earth showing no concern for working people. He spent most of his life trying to stay far away from working people. He wasn't going to let you on his golf course," Obama said. Obama's campaign appearance was his first as a solo act on behalf of Clinton as he tries to ensure Democrats retain control of the White House once his eight years are over in January. The president lauded new census numbers on income growth as proof that his administration's policies have helped improve the economy, an attempt to undermine Trump's argument that economic woes are deep. "By so many measures, America is stronger and more prosperous than when we started out on this journey together," Obama said. Clinton, who was Obama's secretary of state during his first term, rested at her home in the New York City suburb of Chappaqua, from pneumonia. She was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday but she kept it secret until she nearly collapsed in on Sunday at a ceremony in Manhattan marking the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. At a rally in Des Moines, Trump steered clear of mentioning her illness but stepped up efforts to wring maximum advantage from Clintons controversial comment that his supporters are deplorables." "While my opponent slanders you as deplorable and irredeemable, I call you hardworking American patriots who love your country and want a better future for all of our people," said Trump, who tried to portray the former first lady as out of touch with ordinary Americans. Clinton said in a speech last week that half of Trump's supporters belong "in a basket of deplorables" and accused them of being racist and homophobic. She later said she regretted the remark. Trump, who has often bragged about his wealth, has come under fire himself for rhetoric against minorities during his campaign, including describing Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, suggesting that a judge could not be fair because of his Mexican-American heritage, and proposing a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the United States. After struggling in opinion polls in August, Trump has erased most of Clinton's lead in national surveys and is competitive again in many battleground states where the White House race is likely to be decided. Trump's vice presidential running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, used Clinton's comment to try to build more unity among Republicans, appearing at a news conference with Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives and the top U.S. elected Republican. "I think millions of Americans were shocked and saddened to see Hillary Clinton refer to people across this country as a basket of deplorables in a prepared speech before wealthy donors in New York City on Friday night," Pence said. RALLY ARRESTS The "deplorables" comment featured at a Trump rally in Asheville, North Carolina, on Monday night that saw a resumption of some of the violence that disrupted his events earlier this year. "Never in history has a major party presidential candidate so viciously demonized the American voter," Trump told the crowd. Five people, including a minor, were arrested at the rally and charged with crimes including second degree trespassing and fighting in public, Asheville police said. A man grabbed an anti-Trump protester's neck and punched him during the rally, video from NBC and ABC showed. Police said they also obtained an arrest warrant for the suspect in that incident. Clinton is expected to return to the campaign trail later this week. Trump will propose in a speech on Tuesday night allowing families to deduct the cost of childcare expenses from income taxes, his campaign said, a move aimed at bolstering his support among women voters. It was formulated with the aid of Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, an influential voice in his campaign. (Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson, Eric Walsh and Jeff Mason in Washington and Laila Kearney in New York; Writing by Steve Holland and Susan Heavey; Editing by Alistair Bell and Leslie Adler)
A bull is released and runs through the streets of the Spanish town of Tordesillas to kick off the controversial annual bull-lancing festival. This year, however a court has ruled that the bull may not be killed publicly, endiing a tradition that began in 1534. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).
Los Angeles (AFP) - A group of armed protesters who occupied a remote wildlife refuge in Oregon earlier this year, drawing attention to a decades-old conflict over public land use in the United States, went on trial Tuesday.

The seven defendants, including brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, are charged with conspiring to impede federal employees at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge through intimidation or force. Five of the defendants are also charged with possession of a firearm and two with theft of government property.

The 41-day siege that began January 2 at the remote reserve put the spotlight on a long-running dispute over millions of acres of public land in the US West.

It was led by the Bundy brothers, whose father Cliven Bundy had been involved in a similar confrontation in 2014 with federal officials over cattle grazing on public land in Nevada.

The takeover in Oregon ended with the dramatic surrender of four holdouts, including one who threatened to commit suicide in a phone call with mediators that was streamed live.

The group's spokesman, LaVoy Finicum, had earlier been shot and killed by police during a traffic stop as he, the Bundys and several others were headed to a community meeting to plead their cause.

The issue of land rights for decades has been a thorny one in western US states where the federal government owns most of the land.

Many conservative politicians and ranchers like the Bundys argue that the land has been mismanaged and should be handed over to states or turned into private property.

The occupation of the refuge in Oregon stemmed from a dispute between local ranchers and federal authorities and escalated into a full-blown crisis that drew international attention.

In all, 26 people have been indicted in relation to the takeover and 11 have struck plea deals with prosecutors. Charges were dropped against one of the defendants earlier this month and the remaining seven are set to go on trial in February.

The trial that got underway on Tuesday in Portland is expected to last until November.

The defendants face up to six years in prison on the conspiracy charge, up to five years in prison on the firearms charges and up to 10 years in prison on the charge of theft of government property.
(Adds comments by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Cleveland protester, other background)

By Rich McKay

ATLANTA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Holding signs and banners and chanting "Oil Kills," protesters in Atlanta and other U.S. cities on Tuesday shouted support for Native American activists trying to stop construction of a North Dakota pipeline they say will desecrate sacred land and pollute water.

The protests against the Dakota Access pipeline have drawn international attention, sparking a renewal of Native American activism and prompting the U.S. government to block its construction on federal land, even as the company building the line expressed its commitment to the project on Tuesday.

"We were all moved by the spirit to be here," said Linda James Thomas, 59, who attended the Atlanta rally in support of the Georgia State Tribe of the Cherokee.

When fully connected to existing lines, the 1,100-mile (1,770 km), $3.7 billion pipeline would be the first to carry crude oil from the Bakken shale directly to the U.S. Gulf.

Protests were scheduled throughout the day in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and numerous other cities. Previous demonstrations have drawn celebrities including actresses Shailene Woodley and Susan Sarandon, and on Tuesday U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a former Democratic U.S. presidential candidate, spoke at a rally in the nation's capital.

"We cannot allow our drinking water to be poisoned so that a handful of fossil fuel companies can make even more in profits," Sanders, flanked by activists in tribal dress and business suits, told the cheering crowd in Washington, D.C.

In Ohio, about 100 people gathered at a Cleveland intersection, some clutching bunches of sage and beating drums.

Tracey Hill, 46, a Cleveland resident who is one-eighth Cherokee, said she went last week to protest at the site of the pipeline project in North Dakota. "People are sick of being run roughshod over by corporations," Hill said.

Activists took to social media to dub Tuesday's rallies a national "Day of Action" against the pipeline. Many used the hashtag #NoDAPL to show their opposition.

Story continues

Outside the United States, activists said on social media they planned protests in countries including Britain, Spain, South Korea and New Zealand.

Last week, the Obama administration, responding to the issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux, whose land runs about a half-mile south of the pipeline's route, said it would temporarily halt construction on federal land. Acting moments after a federal judge denied the tribe's request for a halt to construction, the administration asked the company building it to refrain from construction on private land as well.

On Tuesday, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP , whose Dakota Access subsidiary is building the pipeline, said in a letter to employees it was committed to the project.

The letter did not address the federal request for a temporary halt of construction. But company officials said they would meet with government administrators.

"We are committed to completing construction and safely operating the Dakota Access Pipeline within the confines of the law," Kelcy Warren, Energy Transfer Partners' chairman and chief executive officer, said in the letter.

He dismissed as "unfounded" worries that oil would contaminate water in the Missouri and Cannon Ball rivers, and said the pipeline would address safety concerns connected with vehicle transport of oil.

"We have designed the state-of-the-art Dakota Access pipeline as a safer and more efficient method of transporting crude oil than the alternatives being used today, namely rail and truck," he said.

In 2013, a runaway oil train in Canada crashed, killing 47 people, and in June 2016 a train carrying crude oil derailed and burst into flames in Oregon.

In coming weeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will review its initial decision to permit the pipeline and decide whether it correctly followed federal environmental law in granting permits.

Later this fall, the federal government will meet with Native American leaders to decide whether to reform its process for building infrastructure projects that will affect tribal lands.

In North Dakota, protesters have vowed to remain until the project is halted.

(Additional reporting by Kim Palmer in Cleveland, Catherine Ngai in New York, Valerie Volcovici and Ruthy Munoz in Washington, and Olga Grigoryants in Los Angeles; Writing by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by David Gregorio and Matthew Lewis)
The last time Russias sole aircraft carrier sailed into the Mediterranean Sea, five years ago, the U.S. Navys 6th Fleet kept a close eye on its progress. The concern among American officers wasnt the ships contingent of fighter planes; instead, it was the very real worry it would sink and necessitate a potentially risky rescue operation.

The 26-year-old Admiral Kuznetsov made it through that 2011 deployment without sinking and is now headed back to the eastern Mediterranean this fall as part of Russian President Vladimir Putins effort to use Syria as a showcase for his new model military. But the earlier worries were plenty valid: On a 2009 Mediterranean transit, one sailor died when the vessel caught fire, and the ship accidentally dumped tons of fuel into the sea in a refueling mishap. And those accidents arent outliers. The problems with the ship are so widespread, and so expected, that the flattop has to be shadowed by tugs to tow it to port when it predictably breaks down.

But now the Kuznetsov has a slate of different objectives in mind. The ship will begin launching airstrikes on behalf of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian ally. It will be the carriers first-ever combat deployment and the first combat test of its MiG-29K fighter jets. It will also offer the first and perhaps best chance to showcase the carrier-based fighters capabilities to potential clients such as India, which already operates a Russian-built carrier and which has purchased dozens of MiG-29s over the last decade.

The Kuznetovs deployment comes just as Russia has carved out an increasingly prominent role in the Syria crisis. Last week, a year after Moscow started military operations there, the United States and Russia reached a deal on a cease-fire that, if it holds, could ground the Syrian air force and bring humanitarian relief to besieged cities. Russias whole Syrian adventure is, in many ways, a bid to re-create lost Soviet influence in the eastern Mediterranean, which reached its high-water mark in the early 1970s, in no small part due to the Soviet navys strength in the region.

Deploying an operational aircraft carrier, no matter how star-crossed, makes Russia a member of an exclusive club: The only other countries with big-deck naval aviation capability today are the United States, France, and, to a limited extent, China. (Plenty of countries have smaller ships that can launch some aircraft, but those arent full-sized aircraft carriers.)

If youd asked anybody following the Russian military just before they deployed to Syria, they would have said, Russians cant do expeditionary warfare because they cant support it, said Dmitry Gorenburg, a senior research scientist at CNA. But theyve been very inventive. Were not going to be as quick to dismiss them after this.

The Kremlin, painfully aware of the carriers spotty history, seems to be playing things safe, with one military source telling TASS that the ship will stick close to Syrias coastline so that the deck aircraft have enough fuel to complete the military tasks and return back.

Theres a good reason for that: The Kuznetsov lacks the catapults found on American and French carriers that shoot jets off the short decks at high speed. Instead, the Russian ship  like Indias and Chinas first carriers  features a ski jump lift at the bow to help planes get airborne. That kind of deck means the planes, about 15 Su-33 and MiG-29s, have to fly light, with smaller loads of fuel and half-empty bomb racks. The 10 Nimitzclass carriers in the U.S. Navy, such as the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, currently in the Middle East launching strikes on the Islamic State, can carry at least 60 aircraft and launch them with full fuel and bomb loads.

The decision to dispatch a limping ship with a one-armed air wing shows that Moscow is just flexing muscles, one senior U.S. defense official told Foreign Policy. The Russians already have strike aircraft near Latakia, on the Syrian coast, from where they have been launching operations for the last year. Another dozen-odd planes launching unguided bombs on short flights from the deck of the Kuznetsov wont add much punch to their efforts.

The U.S. official compared the carriers deployment to Russias use of cruise missiles last fall when the country began its air war in Syria. Its for effect, for show, he said, mostly to prove that Russia is a global military power with the capacity to strike targets from offshore.

And with the 55,000-ton carrier scheduled to go into dry dock in early 2017 for a long-awaited two-year overhaul, this fall looks like Moscows one shot to demonstrate the operational capabilities of the carrier and its new strike fighter.

India, at least, will be paying attention. The Soviet-built Indian carrier INS Vikramaditya and the INS Vikrant (being built in an Indian shipyard) both use Russian MiG-29Ks, but the Indian government has a long list of complaints over the performance of the aircraft. New Delhi shelled out $2.2 billion for 45 fighters in 2004 and 2010, but the planes have suffered a litany of problems, from faulty engines to poor flight availability, and the government has pushed back hard against Moscow.

Part of the problem has been the manufacturing process. Ukraine has banned all defense-related exports to Russia, and American and European Union sanctions have also bitten into the Russian military manufacturing base, forcing India to buy some of the components itself and add them to the aircraft once they arrive at their base in Goa.

A successful combat deployment of the Russian MiG-29s might assuage some of Indias concerns, once it sees what the plane can do in action.

And there might be more Russia-India deals in the future. This year, the Krylov State Research Centre, a Russian shipbuilding institute, held talks with New Delhi about eventually buying a version of Moscows future nuclear-powered carrier, known as Project 23000E. The Russians are up against the French, who are also attempting to woo the Indians; French shipbuilders have recently landed huge contracts for new submarines with New Delhi and Canberra.

Russian visions of future sugar plum fairies will have to wait, though. Right now, the Kuznetsov sits champing at the bit in port at Murmansk, undergoing repairs and final preparations for deployment. Its air wing, meanwhile, sits on dry land in Crimea, practicing on a landing pad built to simulate the sloping deck of the ship theyll soon join.

Photo credit: TASS via Getty Images
Some airlines go above and beyond to make their passengers comfortable.

Australia's Qantas set a new bar over the weekend, going to serious lengths to deliver a new ice cream to an Australian living in New York City.

That Aussie, named Adam, asked Qantas on Twitter for Gaynettos, a dessert hybrid of Golden Gaytimes and Cornettos.

The Gaynetto generated serious excitement in Australiaexcitement that Adam clearly felt he was missing out on. Luckily, Qantas understood.

GAYNETTO UPDATE: The ice-cream queens at @Qantas are assessing the logistics of transporting one to me in NYC pic.twitter.com/ZdXA3KHP8c Adam (@adamjmoussa) September 8, 2016

Last week we received a post from Adam, an Aussie living in New York who wasnt happy he was missing out on the newly launched, Gaynettos, a Qantas spokesperson told Travel + Leisure. So we put the challenge to Streets via Facebook to help us take Gaynettos to Adam in New York.

An international operation ensued, all for the singular purpose of getting this man some ice cream.

We wanted to help bring him a piece of home while living abroad in NYC, the Qantas spokesperson said.

And so the Gaynettos were loaded on a flight on Saturday to New York City, accompanied by two crew members who were human Gaynetto couriers to ensure they arrived safe and sound, and most importantly, frozen.

Anyone who's been far from where they grew up can understand just how comforting a little piece of home can be.

I can't stop crying. We did it kids pic.twitter.com/PlO51YJ4Mo Adam (@adamjmoussa) September 10, 2016

This was surreal. Thank you @Qantas & Streets for flying me a little piece of home. You made this ex-pat very happy. pic.twitter.com/uTSaNnEKGo Adam (@adamjmoussa) September 10, 2016

A point about Qantas for international folks: it's more than just an airline to most Australians. It's a source of national pride. Adam (@adamjmoussa) September 10, 2016

Related Articles
Doha (AFP) - Qatar's emir has urged Arab countries of the Gulf and Iran to settle their disputes through "dialogue", in a telephone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, state media reported Tuesday.

Against the backdrop of tensions between Tehran and Riyadh, the official Qatar News Agency said Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani telephoned Rouhani on the occasion of the Eid al-Adha feast, which Muslims began celebrating on Monday.

"The emir stressed that Gulf-Iran relations should be based on good neighbourly relations and mutual respect," reported QNA.

"Any Gulf-Iran disputes should be settled through negotiations and dialogue," the emir was quoted as saying.

QNA did not say specifically when the call was made.

It comes at a time of increased tensions and a full-scale war of words between opposing regional powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia over the hajj pilgrimage.

Iranians were this year blocked from joining the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites in Saudi Arabia for the first time in almost 30 years.

In response, Tehran called on the Muslim world to "punish" the Saudi government for its handling of the pilgrimage following last year's stampede disaster during the hajj.

In addition, Saudi Arabia's most senior cleric, Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, called Iranians "not Muslims".

And Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blasted the "incompetence" of the Saudi royal family.

The trading of insults comes on top of deep and bitter political schisms which sees the two countries support different sides in the Yemeni and Syrian conflicts.
On Sep 12, we issued an updated research report on QUALCOMM Incorporated QCOM -- the market leader in mobile chipsets.

Qualcomm recently tied up with AT&T Inc. T to evaluate Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) or drones on commercial 4G LTE networks. Notably, there is a growing consensus that consumer drones will play a pivotal role for consumer businesses in future. Although majority of Qualcomms revenues come from mobile phones and tablets, the market is maturing, with companies making few innovations. The possibilities of stagnation in this segment have encouraged it to foray into the new space.

Qualcomm is expected to gain significant traction in China in the near term through the signing of new patent license agreements with Chinese smartphone makers. Also, Qualcomm has lined up its latest flagship smartphone System on Chip (SoC)  the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821  to power next-generation smartphones. The company hopes to deliver better performance with this chipset compared to its predecessor, Snapdragon 820.

Qualcomm is also widening its presence in adjacent spaces, including automotive, networking, mobile computing and IoT which bodes well for long-term growth. The company is working with Alphabet Inc. GOOG to develop and power Android Auto in-car solutions with its Snapdragon automotive processors. The partnership should help the company accelerate innovation in the auto space, creating next generation in-car experiences and establishing a new revenue stream.

However, the company has been facing challenges from low-cost chip manufacturers like MediaTek and Rockchip as well as handset manufacturers SoC (System on Chip) projects such as Exynos by Samsung. Handset makers like Sony Corporation SNE have also been increasingly adopting MediaTeks low-priced yet efficient chipsets.

QUALCOMM INC Price

QUALCOMM INC Price | QUALCOMM INC Quote

Qualcomm currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Story continues

Confidential from Zacks

Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>

Interested in IPOs? Check out the special edition of Zacks Friday Finish Line below, where Editor Maddy Johnson and Content Writer Ryan McQueeney interview Kathleen Smith of Renaissance Capital about the IPO market in 2016 (see part two here).



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



QUALCOMM INC (QCOM): Free Stock Analysis Report



AT&T INC (T): Free Stock Analysis Report



SONY CORP ADR (SNE): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
From Good Housekeeping

When you normally see photos of Queen Elizabeth II, she's usually waving to a crowd from some sort of balcony, or seated comfortably during a parade. But it turns out the British monarch loves nothing more than the open road.

Hello! magazine reports that Queen Elizabeth II played host to the Duchess of Cambridge, her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, and of course, Prince William, at her summer residence in Balmoral, Scotland. The Queen played chauffeur to Carole as they returned from a grouse shoot, and earlier in the day she was spotted taking Kate to a picnic with William, according to People.

Here's the Queen with Kate by her side.

Photo credit: Peter Jolly/REX/Shutterstock

Here's the Queen with Carole:

Photo credit: Peter Jolly/REX/Shutterstock

This is hardly the first time the Queen has been seen behind the wheel. Just two years ago, she was spotted driving the Range Rover to a horse show in Windsor:

Photo credit: Getty

Here's the royal driving her Jaguar after watching a polo match in 2010:

Photo credit: Getty

Would you mess with her behind the wheel of a four-wheel-drive Land Rover? Here she is looking intimidating in 1992:

Photo credit: Getty

In the 1970s, she was the picture of chic driving a Vauxhall Estate Car in Windsor Great Park:

Photo credit: Getty

And way back in 1957, she drove her kids, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, around at Windsor:

Photo credit: Getty

Fun fact: The Queen is the only person in the United Kingdom who can drive without a license. That's because all licenses are issued in the Queen's name, so she doesn't need to give one to herself; the same goes for registration plates on her cars and even passports.

But she knows her stuff, having driven a military truck during World War II. And she once took Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah on a drive in Balmoral, despite the fact that women aren't allowed to drive in his home country. Now that's behavior fit for a queen.

You Might Also Like
A Lincoln-based e-commerce company has opened a new distribution center in Indiana.

Spreetail, which operates its e-commerce website under the name VMInnovations, spent $4.75 million to lease, renovate and equip a 160,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Plainfield, a suburb of Indianapolis. The facility started filling orders in July.

It is the fourth distribution center for the rapidly growing company. The others are in Lincoln, Las Vegas and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Spreetail said it expects to employ 75 people at the Indiana center by 2021.

Last year, Spreetail, which sells a variety of products on its website, had revenue of $138 million, up from $23 million in 2010, and now has more than 160 employees nationwide. The company moved its corporate headquarters into new offices at Nebraska Innovation Campus earlier this year.
Londons Raindance Film Festival, which runs Sept. 21-Oct. 22, has unveiled its co-production and industry events, including a day devoted to building relationships with the Chinese film industry.

China Day will take place on Sept. 22 and will be attended by the Shanghai governor as well as delegates from the China Film Group Corporation and the Beijing Film Academy. The day will include panels on virtual reality and 3D films, and the rise of these platforms in the film industry, as well as the European premiere screening of Johnnie Tos Three, starring Louis Koo, Wallace Chung and Zhao Wei, about a thug who will do anything to escape police arrest, and the European premiere of Guang Zengs short film, Farewell, My Love, starring Dan Liu and Zheng Wang.

Five films have been selected to participate in the Co-Production Forum, which is a partnership between Raindance and the Guadalajara Film Festival (FICG), focusing on the relationship between the U.K. and Ibero-American film industries. The films are in development and filmmakers will have the opportunity to try and secure funding and U.K. co-productions for their projects. Films include Jesus Magana Vazquezs Human Resources; Eduardo Naranjos I Faust; Sonia Albert-Sobrino and Miriam Albert-Sobrinos Melita; Tiahoga Ruges The Bicycle; and Horacio Alcala and Aitor Echevarrias The Icarus.

Among other industry sessions are a panel on Brexit, which will look at what leaving the European Union means for the U.K. film industry; The Film in My Mind: Women Filmmakers will include a panel of female directors discussing the challenges and successes they faced while making their first features; The Market for LGBT Films will look at the growing presence of these films globally and how visibility can be maximized in the international film festival circuit; and a panel on Successful Crowdfunding will look at how web series can capitalize on this source of revenue.

Story continues

The festivals Live! Ammunition! event provides participants with the chance to pitch an idea for a film to a panel of top film executives. Participants drop a five pound note in a hat and have two minutes to convince the panel to read their script or develop their film.

Raindance founder Elliot Grove commented: We are always striving to showcase innovative and leading-edge work, but we also know how important it is to provide independent filmmakers with opportunities to get their projects made.

The festival announced last week that British filmmaker Ken Loach will receive the first Raindance Auteur Award, and will participate in an onstage discussion.

Related stories

Raindance Opens With 'Problemski Hotel,' Closes With 'Planet Mars' (EXCLUSIVE)

Film Review: 'Three'

Raindance: Stage 32's Richard Botto on Social Media, Education Site's Short Film Competition
Ralph Lauren has become the latest designer to get on board the see-now-buy-now trend, which allows consumers to purchase outfits hot off the runway instead of waiting six months for the clothes to hit store shelves.

On Wednesday night, the designer will be holding two separate runway shows at NYFW, featuring 45 new fall 2016 looks from their see-now-buy-now collection, reports WWD.

Invited guests include retailers, editors and top consumers. The shows, which will be attended by 200 guests each, will take place outdoors in front of the brand's flagship store on Madison Avenue which will be closed off to traffic.

On offer will be ready-to-wear accessories, handbags and footwear. The entire collection is manufactured in Italy.

Lauren joins Tom Ford, Tommy Hilfiger, Rebecca Minkoff and Alice + Olivia in showing a see-now-buy-now collection this season.

The company will also host an event for their top customers Thursday morning and livestream the show on Facebook.
From Cosmopolitan

Collette Moreno was on the way to her own bachelorette party, and she was choking. The truck in front of her and her best friend, Ashley Theobald, was spewing fumes that were aggravating Moreno's asthma, but Missouri Highway 5 had a double yellow line; they couldn't pass. Her friend tearing up, Theobald craned her head to the left. The coast looked clear. She tilted the wheel, guiding the Chevy Malibu across the lines, speeding up to make the pass quick. But as the Malibu sped forward, a Dodge Ram came cruising up a slight hill that neither of them had seen. Theobald swerved, but the Dodge swerved with them. The cars collided head-on.

On June 20, 2014, 26-year-old Collette Moreno died five weeks before her wedding, leaving her 5-year-old son motherless. But that, according to the internet, wasn't the worst thing that happened that day: eight minutes before the fumes and the double yellow lines, Moreno took a selfie - grinning from the passenger seat, with Theobald in the background driving in shiny heart-shaped sunglasses.

"Dying in a car crash...but first, LEMME TAKE A SELFIE!," an anonymous commenter wrote on a Daily Mail article about Moreno's death. "thats natural selection - idiots die," wrote another on a YouTube compilation video about selfie deaths featuring Collette, and, "With great selfies must also come great stupidity," commented a third.

"We were just beginning to learn about everything ourselves," Moreno's sister Samantha says over the phone. "It was just completely overwhelming and heartbreaking that people that didn't even know the situation were saying things."

Within a year of Moreno's death, the internet's selfie-death obsession peaked. While the Oxford English Dictionary and Twitter named 2013 and 2014 respectively as the "year of the selfie," the Guardian called 2015 the year of the "dangerous selfie." The world had started seeing selfies not as a novelty but rather caught squarely in the crosshairs of the cruel repercussions of a narcissistic culture. The names of people that accumulated on the Wikipedia page for "List of selfie-related injuries and deaths" became punching bags. To critics, the deaths validate what they want to believe about Millennials: that they are self-absorbed, and self-absorption is an odious quality with odious consequences. Never mind that hardly any of these peoples' deaths were confirmed to be caused by a selfie.

Story continues

Moreno's photo, for example, had absolutely nothing to do with her death. But that didn't matter to the internet.

Collette Moreno was born on June 9, 1988, in San Diego, California, the eldest sibling to sister Erica and half-sisters Samantha and Breeanna. Like most modern 26-year-olds, she was hooked on social media - her Twitter bio still reads, "I'm addicted to social networking. #whyy?" She lived in Missouri, but with a lot of her family in San Diego, she stayed in touch by sending them silly videos and photos online.

But Moreno had to grow up fast. "She met a boy in high school, it was her ninth grade," says Moreno's mother, Kelly Arie. "She graduated, and then the next thing I knew I was going to be a grandma." Moreno's son, Brayden, was born Sept. 27, 2008. Her love for him shows in her Facebook posts. In September 2009, Moreno lamented about how she wished she could make things better for Brayden, writing, "If i was in a dream world i wouldnt i wouldnt have to worry about how i am going to care take of my son and give him the best life possible." Another post reads, "I wish i didnt have to be at work today. I would love to lay around and cuddle brayden all day long!"

Moreno's relationship with Brayden's father fell apart, and while she was happy as a single mom, she hoped one day to fall in love again. A few years later, she met Jesse Arcobasso at a party, and they started dating. He was 25, she was 23, and the young couple was goofy and carefree. They dressed up as Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas one year for Halloween and sent each other Snapchats of the weirdest faces they could make. Arcobasso tweeted in 2012: "u kno u r in a committed relationship when u get a call from ur girl at 946pm asking u to buy her tampons.#neveragain @ColletteMarie88." (Arcobasso did not respond to requests for an interview.)

After three years together, Arcobasso and Moreno stopped by a mall caricature artist, who drew a cartoonish Arcobasso holding a diamond ring and asking, "Will you marry me?" They set the date - July 26, 2014 - and decided to marry in Jamaica. Over the course of the next year, Moreno's Facebook feed slowly filled up with engagement photos, silly and sweet, and shots of the family-to-be: Brayden jumps on the couple's backs in their living room. Arcobasso gives Brayden a boost to put the star on top of the Christmas tree. Moreno leaps into Arcobasso's arms in an open field.

Moreno never made it down the aisle.

After the crash, Theobald, a pretty brunette who looks like she could be Moreno's sister, told Fox News that Moreno didn't appear terribly injured. "I was talking to her. She couldn't talk back but she was nodding at me," Theobald says through tears in the news report. "I didn't know it was as bad as it was because she wasn't physically super beaten-up."

An ambulance took Moreno to the hospital, where she would die a few hours later from injuries sustained in the crash. According to Moreno's family, Theobald is no longer in touch with them, and she did not return interview requests for this article.

Moreno's family isn't sure how the selfie got out. It first appeared on the website of a local Kansas City news outlet, KCTV. DeAnn Smith, the writer of the first article to include the selfie, did not respond to a request to confirm how the selfie was obtained, and a representative for KCTV said, "That information is not available." But it became the photo every news site used to cover Moreno's death.

Most of the news coverage about Moreno stated at least in the body of the article that she had snapped the photo a full eight minutes before the crash, but many readers missed this from the headlines like, "Collette Moreno Killed En Route To Her Bachelorette Party Moments After Taking Selfie," and "Bride-to-be, 26, killed in head-on car crash as she and best friend drove to her bachelorette party moments after pair snapped this selfie." Unfortunately, 55 percent of readers spend fewer than 15 seconds actually reading an article, according to founding CEO of Chartbeat Tony Haile. "One thing many people seem to have forgotten as a simple rule is to not distract the driver while driving. Maybe had she not looked over for just a few moments to take that selfie, she could have seen the truck coming," one commenter wrote on a Huffington Post article about the subject. The author of the Huffington Post article said in an email that he didn't think his headline mentioning the selfie was misleading, adding, "I can say I would never want any victim to be criticized."

Moreno isn't the only one who has been wrongly lumped into the selfie-death craze. In September 2015, the family of Kristi Kafcaloudis, a student who fell to her death from a cliff in Norway, came forward to clear their daughter's name after a similar internet mob.

"It was an accident. She was nowhere near the end of the rock, and not taking a selfie," her mother Milli Kafcaloudis said in a statement received by ABC. Kristi had taken the selfie earlier on the hike, according to Milli, and later was trying to walk around other tourists to get a better view at a popular scenic hiking area when the rocks gave, causing her to lose her balance. But initial reports said that Kristi "lost her balance while taking a photo at the cliff's edge" and "was taking a so-called 'selfie' when she lost her balance and plunged to her death."

Data journalism site Priceonomics estimated in January that, of the 49 people who have reportedly died while taking a selfie since 2014, "not a single death was caused by the selfie itself."

The Guardianissued a correction about Kristi Kafcaloudis's cause of death a month after the article ran, and some other sites followed suit, but the damage was already done. "Sometime in the future I may reflect on it with a broader perspective," Milli Kafcaloudis says in an email, "but for the moment I am just dealing with day to day life and trying to find my own balance with family and friends."

Kelly Arie's partner Rosa says seeing Moreno on those "Viral Selfie Deaths" lists, like "Moments After Their Selfies Were Taken These People Were Dead," "Here Are 7 Selfies That Were Taken Moments Before Death," and "8 Selfies Taken Moments Before Death," was even worse than the inaccuracy - it trivialized Moreno's death into a viral joke. "Every media site that I would find would post those stupid ten-top-selfies-before-death [lists], I would email them to take it down. I kind of went on a rampage with all of those," Rosa says.

The comments on the lists were more vicious than on the news reports. "I tried to stay away from it," Samantha says. "'She's obsessed with herself,' or 'she's conceited.' 'She just likes to take pictures all of the time,' and it's not like that. Women take pictures of themselves for many different reasons."

The only way to know why people spam the comment sections of articles about selfie deaths is to ask the haters themselves. "Short answer, narcissistic idiots lacking in common sense causing themselves harm or removing themselves from the gene pool is natural selection in action," says Pete*, a Redditor who has criticized several selfie-related deaths on the site.

The death-by-selfie hysteria produces responses that are almost uniform to Pete's, with little regard for whether the selfie caused the death or not. A Polish couple reportedly plummets to their deaths while attempting to take a photo and a comment reads, "It was probably wrong of me to have laughed when I read this headline but I just couldn't help myself" (the headline was "Polish couple fall off cliff and die while taking selfies"); a young father accidentally shoots himself allegedly mid-photo and someone tweets, "Laugh or Cry? Either Way, a Candidate for a #DarwinAward"; a Japanese tourist falls off the Taj Mahal supposedly while snapping a photo of himself and a commenter writes, "Should call them self-obsessdies. With emphasis on the 'dies' bit at the end."

Because selfies are a relatively new trend, research on the topic is slim. In a study of 800 men, researchers in Ohio found a link between these types of photos and narcissism, even psychopathy. A Polish study of 748 adults and a second with 548 adults showed that in women, selfie-posting correlated with a desire for admiration, while in men, selfie-posting correlated with vanity, an inflated sense of leadership abilities, and a desire for admiration.

Albright College Associate Professor of Psychology Gwendolyn Seidman, PhD, warns that these findings should be taken with a big grain of salt. "Part of the issue with the research on selfies," Seidman says over the phone, "is that among certain social groups, posting selfies might just be so common that it doesn't really tell you anything about the person, because everybody does it. It's more likely that it's some cultural trend and not all young people are suddenly insane."

There isn't enough research to determine why alleged selfie deaths receive so much more online vitriol than other events, but Phil Reed, a psychology professor at Swansea University in the U.K., hypothesizes that the perceived narcissism in selfie culture might be triggering to none other than the self-absorbed themselves.

Reed says that a lot of trolling and cyber bullying comes from a combination of anonymity and what he calls "the dark triad of personality characteristics" - sadism, narcissism, and psychopathy - in the commenters. "The negative comments about selfie deaths come probably from narcissists," he says, "who see somebody else getting attention."

Arie refused to let the internet commenters who'd made her pain so much worse bully her into signing off. "I post pictures of my daughter every single day. That's my way of dealing with it," she tells me over the phone. She tries not to think about the selfie and the comments, and instead focuses on drowning them out with new content about her daughter. Every few days for two years, Arie has posted about mundane things like shoveling snow (reflecting on how much Moreno hated it) and singing Adele in the car with Moreno's niece and the feelings of dysphoria and despondency that come with losing a loved one on the "In Loving Memory of Collette Marie Moreno" Facebook page. In one post, Arie writes:

But it's hard work to control your - or your daughter's - narrative on the internet. Some online companies offer to help, for a high price. One company, Reputation.com, offers a service called ReputationDefender that buries your negative search results for a fees from $3,000 a year to over $25,000 a year, depending on the workload. Another, BrandYourself, offers a package that includes personal branding and suppressing negative search results for $599.99 per month.

Operating the tribute page is the family's way of reclaiming the daughter and sister they knew. In July, along with a photo of Moreno's sister Erica wearing a T-shirt with Moreno's smile beaming from the front, Erica writes:

Brayden, who turns 8 this month and is living with his father's sister, doesn't know the vitriol he might find if he were to Google his mother's name. His grandmother says she's wary about letting him online for this reason. But when he's old enough to use the internet alone, Moreno's family wants to make sure Brayden doesn't see the nasty comments and instead sees the good they saw in their daughter and sister: a well-loved, caring, complex, three-dimensional woman.

After a two-year-long battle of love versus hate, the "In Loving Memory of Collette Marie Moreno" Facebook page is finally inching its way up on the first page of Collette Moreno's Google results. Samantha hopes the symbolism isn't lost on people who post nasty comments online - eventually, positivity will win out. "Treat others how you want to be treated," she says. "That's how everybody should be treated, not just my sister in particular, but everybody."

*Name has been changed

Follow Brittany on Twitter.

You Might Also Like
From Cosmopolitan

TLC reality star Toby Willis was arrested and charged with one count of rape of a child Friday for allegedly raping an underage girl.

According to a statement from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), they first began looking into Willis, 46, "at the request of 23rd District Attorney General Ray Crouch" and eventually "developed information Willis had a sexual encounter approximately 12 years ago with an underage female." The investigation "remains active and ongoing."

The patriarch of The Willis Family allegedly fled from his home state of Tennessee to Kentucky in order to evade police, but was still found and arrested. He is currently being held at Muhlenberg County Jail without bond and will eventually be extradited to Cheathem County Jail, where he will also be held without bond.

"We are shocked to hear this news," TLC said in a statement to CNN. They also confirmed the show would not be renewed and has not aired since last April.

The Willis Family followed Willis, his wife, and their 12 children as they attempted to balance their children's country music careers with a normal life at home. "The Willis Clan" reached the quarter finals on season 9 of America's Got Talent but ultimately did not win.

At this time, it is unclear if Willis has retained an attorney or if he will seek a plea deal.

Follow Gina on Twitter.

You Might Also Like


Tunku Mona Riza and the awards won by "Redha" in Kazan, Russia.



13 Sep  "Redha" has etched yet another win in its list of achievements, or three wins to be exact, since that is the total of awards received by the local drama film at the XII Kazan International Muslim Film Festival.



"It is a great honour for a film like ours to be recognised by award winning juries. Alhamdulillah!," director Tunku Mona Riza posted on her Facebook account following the movie's triple win at the award ceremony held in Russia on 11 September.



The director shared that the first award given for the night was The Special Prize Nominated by The President of Tatarstan Republic For Humanism in Cinematography, which, of course, went to "Redha".



The second award received by the movie was Special Prize of The Russian Guild of Cinema Critics and the third award was Best Actor in the Full Length Feature Film for ensemble cast Harith Haziq, Izzy Zulkhazreef and Nam Ron.



"Redha" is not done receiving awards as next month the movie on autism will also be receiving the Merit Award at the Los Angeles Awareness Film Festival (LAAFF 2016).



(Photo source: Tunku Mona Riza's Twitter)
Berlin (AFP) - Germany's massive influx of refugees has driven a sharp wedge through the electorate, and nowhere is the divide greater than in Berlin ahead of regional elections.

Fears and scepticism about the ability of Europe's top economic power to integrate hundreds of thousands of newcomers have boosted the new anti-migrant party, the AfD -- including in the cosmopolitan capital of 3.5 million people.

Yet, at the same time, the outpouring of generosity seen one year ago when Germany opened its borders to people fleeing war and persecution, with cheering crowds meeting them at the country's railway stations, has also endured. It has even grown in many quarters of Berlin.

But AfD is hoping in Sunday's election to make Berlin the 10th of Germany's 16 states in which it holds seats in the state legislature.

At a recent rally in the well-heeled Zehlendorf district, AfD candidate Georg Pazderski railed against the sacrifices demanded of voters due to Chancellor Angela Merkel's welcoming policy.

"Do you know how much a refugee costs Germany each month?" he asked. "3,500 euros ($3,900)! We are all taxpayers here, it's our money."

Applause echoed through the quaint town hall while a young man with blond curly hair trying to challenge the AfD members struggled to be heard.

Many in the audience were disappointed voters from Merkel's own Christian Democrats (CDU) who have felt alienated by her stance on migration.

"Why should we accept refugees who are already safe in Greece, Italy and Turkey to come to Berlin and stay at our expense?" demanded Bastian Behrens, 42, a public relations executive.

"Those who come from war zones can obviously live here for a while, but now millions are arriving and many are economic migrants," said the CDU member who now plans to vote for the AfD on Sunday.

"To leave the borders open and let anyone in without knowing who they are -- that is a threat to our country," added a 54-year-old teacher, Maja Boenisch, who has also defected from the CDU.

Story continues

Both expressed strong doubts about the ability of most refugees to integrate. They pointed to the "parallel society" created by Germany's three-million-strong ethnic Turkish community, descended from "guest workers" who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s and never left.

- 'Welcoming culture' -

A recent poll by the independent opinion research institute Allensbach found that just 21 percent of respondents saw the chances of integrating refugees as "very good" or "good", while 50 percent saw them as "rather bad" or "very bad".

Yet despite the mounting pessimism, many Germans have taken Merkel's own "We can do it" mantra to heart, and backed it with their money and time.

Even a rash of sexual assaults in the western city of Cologne on New Year's Eve blamed mainly on Arab and North African men, as well as two bloody attacks in late July claimed by the Islamic State jihadists, have not dampened the willingness of German volunteers to help, a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation found last month.

"Around three to four million Germans are active in what's called 'Willkommenskultur' (welcoming culture) by making donations or offering practical help to refugees," said Wolfgang Kaschuba, director of Berlin's Institute for Integration and Migration Research.

Like 18-year-old Conrad Kuepper. For several months, he has distributed food to refugees lodged in a gymnasium in his neighbourhood.

They have recently been placed at another shelter but Kuepper and his mother are still helping out, mainly in assisting people to negotiate the complicated bureaucracy of seeking asylum.

- 'Saddened' by AfD's rise -

"I don't see how you can say we won't welcome refugees, or that we should only welcome those who are Christian," Kuepper said, referring to a call for preferential treatment for Christians by the CDU's Bavarian sister party.

"I am proud that Germany is the country that's helping."

But he added that he was "saddened" by the rise of the AfD.

"My Germany is the one you see in Berlin, where people are tolerant and work together."

Sophia Doering, a 32-year-old linguist who commits much of her free time to helping asylum seekers, said that encouraging contact with refugees was the only way to dismantle prejudice and build empathy.

"Most really want to learn German and many have already begun to do so on their own with books -- they want to work and live their lives," she said.

Kaschuba said the arrival of around one million migrants and refugees last year had laid bare a number of already festering tensions in German society.

"Not everyone wants to take the path of a diverse society -- mobile and multicultural," the researcher said.

"Among AfD voters, you are not only seeing a reaction against refugees but also against the part of society saying 'We can do it'."
Nebraska turns 150 years old on March 1. It was 1867, when President Andrew Johnson granted Nebraska statehood and admission into the Union.

The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, aka OLLI, will join other state groups in recognizing and celebrating Nebraskas sesquicentennial anniversary of statehood.

OLLI, however, is not waiting until March to begin celebrating. For the next year and a half, OLLI will offer courses, trips and events tied to Nebraskas history. OLLI courses and events will also continue to cover a wide variety of subjects. OLLIs theme for the fall of 2016 through 2017 is Out of Many, One Nebraska. This theme reflects Americas motto, E pluribus unum, or Out of many, one.

We have had many courses on aspects of Lincoln and many on history. This is an exciting time to have Nebraska and history come together on many topics such as music, literature, science and the production of food, said De Tonack, chair of this years Theme Committee. In addition, we have several special events and unique Nebraska travel opportunities, said Tonack, an educator since 1965 who continues to serve in an adjunct professors capacity at Nebraska Wesleyan University.

OLLIs second fall term begins Oct. 24. Here are some of the sesquicentennial-themed courses being offered:

* 150 Years of Taxation in Nebraska, will examine how Nebraskas constitution relates to our taxes and the changes made to tax laws over time.

* Medicine Woman: The Story of Susan La Flesche Picotte, an Omaha Indian widely acknowledged as the first Native physician.

* The Letters of Willa Cather, introduces students to Cathers work and her significance in American literacy.

* Celebrate Nebraskas Quilt Heritage, will present programs discussing elements of Nebraskas quilting history, including Nebraskas most famous quilters, Grace Snyder and Ernest Haight.

* War Comes to Nebraska, explores how World War II was a pivotal moment that changed wildlife, agriculture, politics and the landscape of our state.

Other subjects include: pioneer-era photographer Solomon Butcher, Nebraska authors, the contributions of immigrants to our state, Native culture, history of science in Nebraska, irrigation and farming and Nebraskas African-American settlers.

In-depth Nebraska tours will enhance the anniversary celebration. In 2017, Lee Rockwell of Valden Tours Inc., and OLLIs travel partner, will lead two tours, one to the Sandhills and another to Northeast Nebraska. Rockwell said plans for the Sandhills tour will include either a visit to see the cranes or a visit to observe the prairie chickens during mating season. The Northeast tour will include sites such as the John G. Neihardt State Historic Site and Ponca State Park.

In January 2017, OLLI will celebrate 25 years of SAGE and OLLI. In 1992, a program known as SAGE, Sharing Across Generations for Enrichment, established lifelong learning at UNL. In 2004, with a grant from the Bernard Osher Foundation, SAGE changed its name to OLLI and began an affiliation with UNLs College of Education and Human Sciences.

For more details, check out OLLIs website at http://olli.unl.edu.
The Iranian government threatened to shoot down U.S. spy planes over the weekend flying purposefully close to its borders but still in international airspace, officials confirmed to Fox News.

Fox cites three officials familiar with the incident who say a Navy P-8 Poseidon and an EP-3 Eries were flying a reconnaissance mission on Sept. 10 one mile outside of Iran's territorial waters, which according to international law extend 12 miles out to sea. During the flight, the Iranian military warned the planes it would shoot them down if they didn't change course. One of the officials told Fox News the U.S. was confident Iran did not have missile launchers in the area capable of downing the plane, according to the latest intelligence reports.

[READ: Iran Probes for U.S. Weaknesses in Gulf Encounters]

"We wanted to test the Iranian reaction," another official told Fox News.

"It's one thing to tell someone to get off your lawn, but we weren't on their lawn," the official said. "Anytime you threaten to shoot someone down, it's not considered professional."

The incident follows a series of increasingly tense interactions between the Iranian and U.S. militaries, perhaps most notably in January when Iran detained 10 U.S. Navy sailors after their small boats drifted into Iranian waters. Tehran continues to exploit that incident for propaganda purposes.

Alreza Tangsiri, a lieutenant commander in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy, warned the U.S. Navy in July that any other ship that approaches Iran's territorial waters would face similar treatment.

[MORE: Iran Intercepts U.S. Warship in Strait of Hormuz]

Leaders of the IRGC, which practices some level of autonomy independent of Tehran's chain of command, have publicly questioned whether the U.S. would confront Iran militarily.

Small IRGC boats have routinely harassed U.S. Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf, most recently earlier in September when an American coastal patrol ship was intercepted by seven Iranian vessels. U.S. Navy ships were forced to fire warning shots at IRGC boats in late August that maneuvered within a few hundred meters.

Paul D. Shinkman is a national security reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at pshinkman@usnews.com
Heading into the 2016 election, Republicans and Democrats are more different from each other in key demographic characteristics than any time in the past 25 years.

According to a new study by Pew Research, the nations two major political parties are diverging in key areas like race, age, religion and education. The Democratic Party is becoming more diverse, less religious, younger and better educated than the nation as a whole, while the Republican Party trends the opposite way: whiter, more religious, older and less educated than the country overall.

Heres a breakdown of some of the main trends.

Diversity

The United States has become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse since 1992, but the change has been much more pronounced among Democrats. In 1992, 76% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters were white, 17% were black and 6% were Hispanic. Now, only 57% are white, 21% are black, and the share of Hispanics has doubled to 12%.

The diversification among Republicans has been much slower. In 1992, 93% of Republicans were white, 3% were Hispanic and 2% were black. Now, the party is 86% white. The share of blacks is unchanged at 2%, and while the share of Hispanics has also doubled, they still make up just 6% of Republicans, half of what they constitute in the Democratic party.

Religion

Since 1996, there has been a large increase in the United States of voters who do not identify with a religious group, from 8% to 21%. The Democratic Party reflects that change (at even a slightly faster pace), now with 29% of Democrats or Democratic-leaners describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. 8% of Democrats are white evangelical Protestants.

Republicans, on the other hand, remain more religious than the country as a whole. Just 12% of Republicans are religiously unaffiliated, 9 percentage points less than the national average. And about one-third of Republicans are white evangelical protestants (35%), about four times more than their share of Democrats.

Story continues

Age

In 1992, the Republican Party had a younger average age than the Democratic Party. Now, as the country overall as aged, it is reversed: 41% of Republicans in 2016 are younger than age 50, compared to 51% of Democrats.

Education

The parties have also flipped trends in education. In 1992, Republicans were on average better educated than Democrats. Now, while registered voters overall have become more educated, the share of Republicans with a college degree has increased from 28% in 1992 to 31% in 2016. Not only do Democrats now have a higher share of voters with a college degree, but they experienced a much sharper increase: the share jumped from 21% in 1992 to 37% in 2016.

The new Pew results are based on 253 surveys and more than 340,000 interviews of registered voters conducted from January 1992 to August 2016.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has deepened his criticism of the United States, calling for the U.S. to withdraw its special forces from the country's south and faulting American intervention for flaming extremism in region.

"The special forces, they have to go," Duterte said. "They have to go in Mindanao, there are many whites there, they have to go... I do not want a rift with America, but they have to go."

But the country's foreign minister quickly sought to alleviate U.S. concerns Tuesday saying that U.S.-Philippines security deals remain intact.

[READ: Rodrigo Duterte Walks Back Comments About Obama]

"We will respect and continue to honor our treaty obligations and commitments," Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay said in a radio interview Tuesday.

Duterte explained he wanted the U.S. out of the southern Mindanao region, home to many of the country's Muslim minority, for an incident stemming back more than a 100 years. Duterte cited the killing of Muslims during a U.S. campaign in Mindanao in the early 20th century, and he called this the root of the long restiveness of the country's Muslim population.

"For as long as we stay with America, we will never have peace in that land," Duterte said.

Duterte then reportedly showed photos of alleged atrocities committed by U.S. forces against Muslim Filipinos. Some of the photos, Duterte said, show American soldiers around a mass grave.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Monday that the United States was "not aware of any official communication by the Philippine government to that that effect and to seek that result," but was aware of Duterte's comments.

"I'm not aware that there's been a tangible, practical effect on relations," Kirby said of recent developments. "We haven't been happy about everything we've heard," he added.

The odd dynamic -- fiery rhetoric from Duterte, followed by official apology and assurances later -- was crystallized Tuesday by comments from Yusay and others.

Story continues

"Philippine-U.S. defense relations remain rock solid," said armed forces spokesman Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla.

Duterte clarified Tuesday the he would not "cut our umbilical cord" with allies, but maintained he wanted the Philippines to chart an independent course.

Curt Mills is a news writer at U.S. News & World Report. Email him at cmills@usnews.com.
Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of Fox News and Fox Television Stations, answers questions during a panel discussion at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Pasadena, California July 24, 2006. REUTERS/Fred Prouser (UNITED STATES) - RTR1FSPI

Ohio University is removing Roger Ailes' name from its campus newsroom, the college's student paper, The Post, reported on Tuesday.

The move follows deliberation over what should become of the school's WOUB newsroom, which has been called the Roger E. Ailes Newsroom since 2007.

WOUB is a radio and TV outlet at the university's Scripps College of Communication and is affiliated with PBS and NPR.

Ailes has been engulfed in a sexual-harassment scandal since July, when former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit accusing Ailes of repeatedly sexually harassing her and enabling other male Fox News hosts to do the same.

The lawsuit ultimately led to Ailes' resignation from the network, which he had headed since its founding in 1996.

One of Ohio University's best-known alumni, Ailes donated $500,000 to the school in 2007 in exchange for naming a newsroom after him. Ohio University's president, Roderick McDavis, said the decision to remove Ailes' name "weighed heavily" on his mind.

"Given the allegations against Mr. Ailes, the circumstances surrounding his departure from Fox News, I've decided to return his gift and remove his name," McDavis said during a faculty senate meeting, according to The Post.

Many faculty members at the university have come out in support of the decision.

"I applaud President McDavis' decision," Robert Stewart, the director of the university's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, told The Post in an email. "The controversy has helped shine a spotlight on the ongoing problem of sexual harassment in the workplace, but it's a relief to have the name and plaque removed."

More than 20 women have come forward to accuse Ailes of sexual harassment while working at Fox, prompting an internal investigation at the network.

NOW WATCH: Here's footage of Brock Turner leaving jail after serving half of his 6-month sentence





More From Business Insider


By Luiza Ilie VIDRARU, Romania (Reuters) - With new technology and a crackdown on logging, Romania is racing to save some of Europe's last virgin forests, home to wolves and brown bears. To speed the process, the European Union state has invited environmental NGOs to join official administrators in mapping the threatened woodlands and adding them to a newly established national database to guarantee their protection by law. The database should go online within six months. Some beech forests are candidates for UNESCO's world heritage list, which could enhance Romania's appeal as a destination for wilderness hikers and wildlife enthusiasts. On a recent wet afternoon in the Fagaras mountains in central Romania, Greenpeace volunteers emerged from a deep forest. They shared snacks as they discussed a day spent charting trees in a virgin area of 140 hectares, some bearing scratch marks from large animals. "Virgin forests were preserved on valley bottoms, rocky areas, near alpine terrain," said Valentin Salageanu, Greenpeace forest campaign coordinator for Central and Eastern Europe. "They are forests that were hard to reach, maybe that is why they were saved." He estimated their area had halved in the decade since 2005, when a partial inventory indicated Romania could have 250,000 hectares of virgin forests left. "Many of them were destroyed in the last 10 years ... partially as a result of both illegal and poorly executed legal logging," Salageanu said. Corruption is also a factor. In response, the environment ministry has overhauled forest management, strengthened the role of guards and imposed steep fines for those who cut, ship or trade logs illegally. It has launched a mobile app called Forest Inspector, enabling citizens to track timber trucks. For the first time, it has allotted funds to help small private owners protect their forests, a legal requirement that many can't afford. Environment Minister Cristiana Pasca Palmer highlighted the role of an electronic tracking system that monitors logs at every stage, from sawing to factory gate. "This is super-important because I believe in the future it's only through this electronic monitoring that we can in fact reduce illegal logging," she said. (Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
(Reuters) - Rona Fairhead is to step down as chair of the BBC Trust and will not take part in the new appointment process for a new four year term as chair, according to a statement by Fairhead on BBC Trust's Twitter account on Tuesday. Fairhead, who was former boss of the Financial Times Group, was asked to reapply for the job by new Prime Minister Theresa May after she had previously been told by former Prime Minister David Cameron that she would stay in it. In May, the BBC faced a governance overhaul that included scrapping of the BBC Trust with a new board of up to 14 people and the appointment of communications watchdog Ofcom as the external regulator. Fairhead said the prime minister "strongly encouraged" her to take part in the new process, but she has decided not to re-enter it and that it would be better for the government to appoint someone new. The BBC Trust oversees the publicly funded British broadcaster. (Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; editing by Diane Craft)
Rossi's Misano Helmet Honors 'Blues Brothers'

Valentino Rossis sense of humor has always found various means of expression; the helmet has long been a favored canvas.

This year, the treatment for his home MotoGP round at the Misano World Circuit featured one of his favorite movies: The Blues Brothers. In collaboration with designer Aldo Drudi, the special AGV helmet displayed Rossi and longtime friend and assistant Alessio Uccio Salucci as Elwood and Joliet Jake Blues.

agv2

Their hats, shades and suits replicate the outfits worn by Dan Akroyd and John Belushi in the movie. Above them, the words Sweet Home Misano play on the title of the Robert Johnson blues standard Sweet Home Chicago,which is included in the movies soundtrack. (Rossi lives a few miles from the track.)

Vales fluo-yellow No. 46 is on the back, as are his dogs Cesare and Cecilia and his orange cat Rossano, all wearing the Blues Brothers costumes. The famous Bluesmobile police car is featured on the sides.

What kind of music do they play? Both kinds. Country and Western.
Police are looking for a man who calls himself Corrupt Dome on Facebook in the August burglary of Michael Tish Jewelers.

At 3:30 a.m. on Aug. 8, a man with tattoos on his arms threw a rock though a window at the business to get inside, then proceeded to break out several jewelry cases, taking 27 pieces of jewelry worth a total of $1,374.

Lincoln police released surveillance photos from the break-in and investigators received information that someone matching the description sold jewelry with his wife at an Omaha pawn shop the next day, documents say.

Police found the man -- later identified as Charles Dome -- on Facebook using the name Corrupt Dome. The warrant says Corrupt Dome listed his employment as Corrupt Tattoo, a tattoo shop in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Pictures of Dome's tattoos taken during an arrest in North Carolina were compared to the video surveillance taken at Michael Tish Jewelers and an arrest warrant charging him with burglary was issued. He is not yet in custody.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said on Tuesday it could impose a temporary ban on imports of "products of high phytosanitary risk" from Egypt. It did not disclose the list of the products which could be banned but said that its concern was caused by "systematic breach of international and phytosanitary requirements" by Cairo ahead of the start of massive citrus fruit supplies to Russia. (Reporting by Polina Devitt; editing by Maria Kiselyova)
By Polina Devitt and Eric Knecht MOSCOW/CAIRO (Reuters) - Russia threatened to ban Egyptian citrus imports on Tuesday, a move that could escalate a trade dispute over exports of Russian wheat to the world's largest importer of the grain. Moscow said this week it hopes to hold talks with Egypt, its top buyer, over Cairo's failure to approve Russian wheat shipments since tightening its regulations on ergot, a common grains fungus, in late August. [nL8N1BO14P] Several cargoes suspected of containing trace levels of the fungus have since been held at Russian ports, awaiting a decision from Cairo over whether to allow them to pass under the old rule, traders said. Zero tolerance on ergot could halt Russian wheat exports to Egypt at a time when the country has its largest wheat crop in post-Soviet history. Egypt's state grain buyer GASC purchased 540,000 tonnes of the grain from Russia since July before tightening its import restrictions on ergot, banning the fungus entirely and saying the new rule would apply retroactively, affecting hundreds of thousands of tonnes yet to be shipped. [nL8N1B907S] The sales were originally agreed to under a rule allowing 0.05 percent ergot, a common international standard. Russian wheat export prices fell last week, partly due to delayed supplies to Egypt, and are expected to remain under pressure until the situation is resolved, traders said. Egypt bought 6 million tonnes of Russian wheat in the 2015-16 marketing year, which ended on June 30, a quarter of Moscow's total wheat exports for the period. Russia's food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said on Tuesday it was concerned about the "systematic breach of international and phytosanitary requirements" in "massive supplies" of Egyptian citrus fruit set for export to Russia Russia has a history of using threats and limiting imports in trade disputes. [nL8N1B03AU] [nL8N13L1BJ]. It did not disclose the list of the products that could be banned and did not answer calls from Reuters. Russia bought around $150 million of Egyptian citrus products in 2015, about 13 percent of its total citrus imports from across the world. One Egyptian fruit trader told Reuters he had not heard of any Russian complaints about Egyptian citrus. "Of course there are huge worries for us because any comment or decision will directly affect the size of contracts," he said. The head of Egypt's agriculture quarantine said it had received no notification from Russia about the "systemic breaches" of its fruit. "The Egyptian agriculture quarantine will respond to this forcefully and based on scientific grounds," quarantine head Ibrahim Imbaby told Reuters. "gypt is the largest customer for Russia. Everything is quite gloomy with its absence on the market," Dmitry Rylko, the head of IKAR consultancy said. A source at Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiisk said he did not expect the delayed wheat shipments to see any progress until the end of Egypt's Eid al-Adha holiday later this week. (Reporting b Polina Devitt in Moscow and Eric Knecht in Cairo; Editing by Mark Potter)
Even before Russian bombers launched strikes into Syria from an Iranian air base last month, it was clear that one of President Barack Obamas more dubious foreign policy legacies would be the resurrection of Moscows great power status in the Middle East. Lacking a significant military footprint in the region since being unceremoniously expelled from Egypt in 1972, the Russians are back with a vengeance, potentially bigger than ever. Indeed, moving into the void created by Obamas years-long retreat from Pax Americana, Russian President Vladimir Putin now stands poised to make major geopolitical advances into areas that his predecessors  czars and communist party general secretaries alike  coveted for centuries, but never realized. Areas, it should be stressed, where blocking the expansion of Russian influence has been among Americas highest national security priorities for the entire post-World War II era, from the Truman Doctrine to the Carter Doctrine and beyond. Until the age of Obama, that is.

Across the eastern Mediterranean and Levant, through Turkey, Iran, and the broader Gulf region, the trend line is obvious to anyone with eyes to see it: Russias star is waxing while Americas wanes. In strategic theaters where successive generations of U.S. statesmen have consistently maintained that American military dominance is essential, a resurgent Russia increasingly poses challenges. Slowly but surely, Washingtons freedom of action is being constricted. And as sure as night follows day, Russias successful flexing of military power has led to the rapid expansion of its political clout as well. And not just among Americas adversaries. From Israel to Saudi Arabia, from Egypt to Turkey, traditional U.S. partners are also increasingly compelled to curry favor with Moscow.

Syria, of course, is the Obama administrations original sin in this regard: the hesitancy, the empty ultimatums, the erased red lines, the lack of anything approaching a serious strategy to contain that conflicts steady, predictable descent into hell. All that and more over the course of four and a half long years amounted to a flashing neon sign declaring the abdication of U.S. leadership, an open invitation for a decisive assertion of Russian might in September 2015.

Story continues

And decisive it was. Obama insisted that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad must go. Putin insisted that Asad stay. Needless to say, Asad is staying. In the face of Obamas endless tut-tutting about the disutility of military force to shape political outcomes in the Middle East, Putin deployed force and in a matter of months transformed Syrias political landscape.

As for the impact of Russias intervention on U.S. military calculations, the Obama administration has been pretty clear. It wanted no part of any action to weaken the Asad regime that might risk tangling with the Russians. Just days after Moscows bombing campaign began, a Washington Post headline blared, U.S. will not directly confront Russia in Syria, Obama says. Months later, in open testimony to Congress, a top U.S. general all but admitted that U.S. options to impose a no-fly zone inside Syria had been effectively nullified by the administrations fear of triggering a confrontation with Moscow.

While the United States once enjoyed near-total domination of the skies over Syria and the broader eastern Mediterranean, it was clearly now constrained heavily, forced to alter its operational patterns to deconflict with Russias growing presence. The bottom line: As a result of Putins intervention, the Asad regime  a regime, lets remember, that has split its time in the 21st century between running al Qaeda rat lines into Iraq to blow up American soldiers and perpetrating mass murder against its own people  appears now largely immune from U.S. military action that might compel a change Assads decision-making calculus toward the war, much less put his governments very survival at risk.

The changes wrought by Russias intervention are no passing phenomenon linked to the Syria crisis. They appear to represent a more permanent shift in the geostrategic realities of the eastern Mediterranean. Whether or not the immediate conflict gets settled, the new Russian airbase in Latakia, Syria, is almost certainly here to stay. Russian fighters will be flying regular patrols in the area to monitor (and harass) U.S. warships and planes. The S-400 surface-to-air missile system, among the most advanced in the world, will be capable of striking targets in a wide arc that takes in southern Turkey, Cyprus, most of Israel, and northern Jordan. U.S. and allied forces will be confronted with an area denial, anti-access challenge on NATOs southern flank that they havent faced for decades, if ever. On a daily basis, regional states will have to take account of the reality of Russian power projection on their immediate doorstep, with potentially far-reaching impact on their own decision-making and behavior  especially in a context of continued American retrenchment.

Recent Russian bombing raids from an air base in Iran raise the specter that Moscows growing military role, bad enough in the case of the eastern Mediterranean, could expand to the Gulf region as well, a theater of perhaps even greater strategic consequence for the United States. True, the immediate grounds for the use of the base were relatively narrow, restricted to the joint Russian-Iranian interest in bolstering the Asad regime. Also true, the sorties lasted just a few days, cut short abruptly after Russian crowing about the operations to the media triggered a public kerfuffle in sovereignty-obsessed Iran. The Iranian defense minister, Hossein Dehghan (a former commander of Irans Revolutionary Guard, mind you, not an institution otherwise renowned for its strict adherence to the rules of etiquette) even chastised his Russian counterparts for their ungentlemanly remarks.

But no one should take much solace from the temporary hiccup. Senior Iranian officials made clear that Russias use of the base had only ended for now. Even as he criticized Russia for prematurely advertising its operations, Defense Minister Dehghan emphasized that Iran will give the Russians permission to use Nojeh Air Base whenever necessary. He, along with other Iranian leaders, also pointed out that Russias use of the base had been approved by Irans highest decision-making body, the Supreme National Security Council, under the direct control of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Making the point even more explicit, members of Irans parliament underscored that the expansion of Russian-Iranian military cooperation had occurred with Khameneis approval and signature, and that it is impossible for such things to happen without the leaderships permission.

There may indeed be powerful constraints acting to limit military cooperation between Moscow and Tehran, including Iranian nationalism and centuries of Persian-Russian rivalry and suspicion. But it is also increasingly clear that there are powerful forces at work pushing the two countries in the direction of unprecedented cooperation. The war to save the Asad regime in Syria, where Russian planes have been providing air support to Iranian-led ground troops for almost a year, is the most immediate and striking example. But beyond Syria, a much broader strategic rationale for enhanced Russian-Iranian partnership is taking shape, one focused not just on thwarting U.S. interests in the Middle East, but on systematically dismantling the American-led security order that has underpinned regional stability since World War II.

Should it come to pass, the persistent presence in Iran of Russian aircraft, personnel, and potentially air defense systems would have profound implications for the United States and its allies. Most obviously, as in Syria, it would dramatically enhance Irans deterrence posture against American or Israeli military action. In defending the Iranian nuclear deal, Obama has argued that the risks are acceptable because his successors will have at their disposal exactly the same options that exist today to prevent any Iranian dash to the bomb, including the use of force. That will patently not be true if in a few years time the next president has to confront the possibility that any attack on Iran risks triggering a great power clash with Russia. The same logic would also apply outside the nuclear sphere to any possible punitive attack on Iranian territory, whether in response to Irans aggression against U.S. allies, threatening actions against American warships in the Gulf, or sponsorship of terrorism. In short, a de facto Russian deterrent umbrella would give Iranian leaders even greater latitude to undermine U.S. interests, secure in the belief that Washington would be especially reluctant to risk a direct clash with Russia.

More broadly, an expanded Russian military role in Iran would give Moscow the capability to project power in ways never before seen in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Indian Ocean  critical lines of communication where U.S. military dominance has gone largely unchallenged for decades. A world where long-range Russian bombers and aircraft are suddenly in position to disrupt or challenge guaranteed U.S. access in these theaters is a very different world, indeed  complicating American military planning, for sure, but also influencing the decision-making and policies of key regional actors.

Just put yourself in the shoes of a Saudi policymaker, for example. You see your traditional great power partner, the United States, pulling back from its Middle East commitments; making deals with your archenemy, Iran; and standing aside as its historical rival, Russia, embarks on a large-scale military intervention against U.S. interests in Syria, working hand in glove with a Shiite coalition commanded by the head of the Irans Qods Force, Qassem Soleimani. And if all that wasnt bad enough, theres now the possibility for a Russian military presence in Iran as well, with potentially profound implications for vital Saudi interests in the Gulf. Facing that kind of emerging strategic challenge in its immediate neighborhood, it would hardly be surprising if the Saudis eventually start looking for ways to be more accommodating to Putins interests  maybe by dropping their demand for Asads immediate departure from power, or deciding to invest several billion dollars in Putin-approved projects in Russia, or submitting to Putins request for a cap on Saudi oil production that helps drive up global prices and Moscows revenues.

Putin almost certainly has his sights set on exploiting other opportunities for projecting Russian power in the region as well. For example, in defending Russias use of the Iranian air base to conduct strikes in Syria, Ali Larijani, the powerful speaker of Irans parliament, noted cryptically, we are also pleased that Russia is paying more attention to the Yemen issue too. Within days, Yemens former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the main ally of Iranian-backed Houthi rebels that have been fighting Saudi-led forces for control of the country, announced in an interview that Yemen would gladly welcome a Russian military presence. In the fight against terrorism, Saleh told Russian television, we reach out and offer all facilities. Our airports, our ports. We are ready to provide this to the Russian Federation.

Iraq is almost certainly on Putins radar, too. Shortly after Russias intervention in Syria, Moscow said that it had entered a quadripartite intelligence-sharing agreement with Iran, Syria, and Iraq, for purposes of fighting the Islamic State. It includes a coordination center in Baghdad, staffed by officers from the four countries. Russia is also providing the Iraqis with increasing amounts of military equipment, including planes and helicopters. Iraq allows Russian military aircraft to overfly its territory for resupply missions in Syria, and on several occasions Russian combat operations have used Iraqi air space as well. Russian cruise missiles fired from the Caspian Sea in October 2015 crossed Iraqi territory on their way to Syrian targets (though allegedly without Iraqi permission). And last month, the Russian bombers that launched from Iran were given approval to fly in Iraqi air space to conduct their missions. Especially in light of Irans growing influence over the Iraqi government, its not much of a stretch to think that at some point the Russian military could be granted access to Iraqi bases. True, the U.S. might raise objections. But then again, if Washington has long been willing to abide Qassem Soleimanis high-profile activities in Iraq commanding Shiite militias, how hard would it really push to keep the Russians out?

Finally, even Turkey merits concern when it comes to Russias expanding ambitions. Heres the short version: U.S.-Turkish relations have been on a downward trajectory for years, but especially since the July 15th aborted coup against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He and other Turkish leaders have repeatedly suggested that the United States might somehow have been behind the coup, lambasting America it in particular for failing to extradite immediately a Pennsylvania-based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who they believe was the coups mastermind. The virulent campaign of anti-Americanism that Erdogan has engineered has sunk popular support for Turkeys alliance with the United States and NATO to new lows.

At the same time, Turkeys relations with Russia have been on an upswing since June, when Erdogan issued an apology for the 2015 Turkish shoot-down of a Russian jet over Syria. Putin was among the first world leaders to express unqualified support for Erdogan in the face of the coup, while Erdogan made a point of going to Russia to meet Putin in his first post-coup trip, resulting in the full normalization of bilateral economic ties. Perhaps most surprisingly, just days after Russias use of the Iranian air base, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim suggested that Turkey might also be open to letting Russia use the air base in Incirlik, Turkey, which of course has been the epicenter of U.S. combat operations against the Islamic State. If necessary, the Incirlik base can be used [by the Russians], Yildirim told reporters.

One other related development worth noting: As Turkey was pursuing reconciliation with Russia, Turkish ties to Iran also intensified, with the Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers exchanging visits in August, and plans for an Erdogan visit to Tehran allegedly in the works for later in 2016. Speculation arose quickly about the possible emergence of a new Russian-Iranian-Turkish axis.

Lets stipulate upfront that the odds of Turkey definitively switching sides from the United States to Russia are slim. After more than 60 years of NATO membership, Turkeys security dependence on the U.S.-led Western alliance is deep and would be extremely difficult to replace. Moreover, Turkeys long history with Russia is at least as troubled and suspicion-filled as Irans, including several lost wars.

Yet within limits, theres still certainly plenty of running room for Putin to make a lot of mischief for the United States in Turkey. As analysts have noted, there are rising voices in Ankara calling for the countrys withdrawal from NATO in favor of an alliance with Russia. While Erdogan is probably too practical a politician to run the risks of going down that route, hes definitely not above stoking the general sentiment as a means of mobilizing domestic support and building leverage over the United States. At a personal level, its frequently been noted that Erdogans natural impulses are far more Eurasianist than Western in orientation. Prior to the contretemps over the shoot-down of the Russian jet, Erdogan was known to have an extremely strong affinity for Putin and his style of authoritarian leadership and crony capitalism. That predisposition has no doubt been reinforced after the coup, as Erdogan contrasts Western complaints about his indiscriminate mass purge of at least 100,000 suspected Gulenists with Putins unqualified support. If Putin can exacerbate these already existing tensions, he will without question do so, using whatever means he has to fuel Erdogans continued drift away from NATO and the West.

Exactly how far Russias resurgence in the Middle East will ultimately go remains to be seen, as do the potential strategic ramifications for U.S. interests. But no one should be sanguine. The trend lines are all troubling. Thanks to the Obama administrations retreat from regional leadership, things that seemed unthinkable five years ago are now entirely possible  from a large and permanent Russian military presence in the eastern Mediterranean to a rapidly evolving Russian strategic relationship with Iran in the Gulf. Already, Russia is today unquestionably the dominant player in the Syrian crisis, the most significant international conflict of our time. Based on the frequency with which Middle Eastern leaders are trekking to Moscow rather than Washington for consultations, its an assessment that could increasingly apply beyond Syria to the broader region as well.

While the Obama administration may not understand Russias power play in the Middle East as a serious challenge to important American interests, Putin definitely does. The fact is that while Obama may believe the world has transcended the era of great power rivalry, Putin is convinced that the United States is Russias main strategic enemy, and that the two countries are effectively at war. He will seek every opportunity to undermine U.S. interests and weaken the U.S. global position, while enhancing Russias. As one Russian defense analyst explained after Russias use of the Iranian air base in August:

There could be more, and the possibility of spreading the Russian air campaign to Iraq. The thing is not about [the war in] Syria per se. Syria is important, but there is more: Russia wants to spread its influence over the entire region, have bases all over, push the Americans out and become the dominant power in the region.

As surely as Obama was unable to unilaterally end Americas wars in the Middle East, his effort to declare the regions Great Game for influence irrelevant has also failed. Simply withdrawing from the field does not trigger the emergence of some self-sustaining, organic equilibrium. Instead, It creates a vacuum that engenders conflict and chaos, while empowering dangerous enemies like Russia, Iran, and the Islamic State that are determined to fill the void and attack U.S. interests. Yes, for sure, American primacy in the Middle East has been a bitch. But its abandonment will be a nightmare. Obama never got that. Will his successor?

Photo credit: SASHA MORDOVETS/Getty Images
Moscow (AFP) - Russia on Tuesday said Syrian regime forces were fully respecting a ceasefire but that rebel fighters had violated it 23 times.

Moscow is one of the main backers of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and has been flying a bombing campaign in support of his forces for the past year.

"Syrian government troops have completely stopped firing, with the exception of areas where Islamic State and Jabhat Al-Nusra fighters are active," senior Russian military officer Viktor Poznikhir said in a televised briefing.

"Unfortunately the same cannot be said for armed units of the moderate opposition controlled by the US. After the start of the cessation of hostilities by this morning 23 instances of firing on residential areas and government positions were registered."

The ceasefire agreement for Syria, hammered out between Moscow and Washington, came into force Monday evening and if it holds, could lead to the two sides coordinating strikes against jihadist targets.

In televised briefings from various locations around war-torn Syria, Russian military observers said that rebel violations had taken place in the provinces around Aleppo, Latakia, Damascus, Hama, Idlib and Daraa.

A Russian military officer said that "new violations" had also occurred around the ravaged city of Aleppo during the day.

As the televised briefing cut to a military monitor by the key Castello Road into Aleppo -- a crucial supply route for humanitarian aid which has been under Syria regime control -- gunfire broke out and the Russian officer dived for cover.

There was no way of independently verifying where the firing was coming from.

The truce deal is meant to see both government forces and rebels pull back from the key route to allow aid to enter rebel-held areas of Aleppo.

The Russian military said that the Syrian army had informed them they would be ready to hand over control of a checkpoint on the road to the Syrian Red Crescent at 1900 local time (1600 GMT), with some 20 members of a pro-government militia "for security".
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday urged the U.S.-led coalition to continue viewing the Nusra Front, now renamed Jabhat Fatah al Sham, as a terrorist organization and to carry out strikes on its positions. "I have a very demanding task now - not to let this list (of terrorist organizations) be reduced," Lavrov told a news conference. "I have no reason not to trust (U.S. Secretary of State) John Kerry, but what we see on the ground (in Syria) is that the coalition is very reluctant to strike the positions of the Nusra Front." Lavrov also said he would demand that the Russia-U.S. agreement on cessation of hostilities in Syria, reached on Sept. 9, be published in full. (Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Maria Kiselyova)
(GENEVA)  Russian hackers have been blamed for breaking into a World Anti-Doping Agency database and posting confidential medical data of some American athletes online.

WADA said Tuesday the attack  which targeted Simone Biles and some female members of the United States Olympic team that competed in Rio de Janeiro was carried out by a Russian cyber espionage group called Fancy Bears.

The hackers revealed records of Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) which allow athletes to use substances that are banned unless there is a verified medical need.

WADA previously warned of cyberattacks after investigators it appointed published reports into Russian state-sponsored doping.

These criminal acts are greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia, World Anti-Doping Agency director general Olivier Niggli said in a statement.

WADA said it extended its investigation with the relevant law enforcement authorities.

Last month, hackers obtained a database password for Russian runner Yuliya Stepanova, a whistleblower and key witness for the WADA investigations. She and her husband, a former official with the Russian national anti-doping agency, are now living at an undisclosed location in north America.

A spokesman for Russian state President Vladimir Putin rejected WADAs statement blaming Russian hackers as unfounded.

There can be no talk about any official or government involvement, any involvement of Russian agencies in those actions. Its absolutely out of the question, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies. Such unfounded accusations dont befit any organization, if they arent backed by substance.

The International Olympic Committee said it strongly condemns such methods which clearly aim at tarnishing the reputation of clean athletes.

Story continues

The IOC can confirm however that the athletes mentioned did not violate any anti-doping rules during the Olympic Games Rio 2016, the Olympic body said.

The top American anti-doping official said it was unthinkable to try to smear athletes who followed the rules and did nothing wrong.

The cyber-bullying of innocent athletes being engaged in by these hackers is cowardly and despicable, said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

In a statement , USA Gymnastics said Biles was approved for an exemption and had not broken any rules.

The name Fancy Bears appears to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to a collection of hackers which many security researchers have long associated with Russia.

In a statement posted to its website early Tuesday, the group proclaimed its allegiance to Anonymous, the loose-knit movement of online mischief-makers, and said it hacked WADA to show the world how Olympic medals are won.

We will start with the U.S. team which has disgraced its name by tainted victories, the group said, adding that more revelations about other teams were forthcoming.

Internet records suggest Fancy Bears data dump has been in the works for at least two weeks; their website was registered on Sept. 1 and their Twitter account was created on Sept. 6.

Messages left with the group were not immediately returned. A French name and phone number associated with the site both appeared to be bogus. A mailing address listed by the hackers appeared to point to a florist east of Paris; messages left with the business were not immediately returned.
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f208494%2f6b39c14ef46b42c5928b0ed4c75bbe23

A Russian mining giant admitted that a spill at one of its plants turned a river blood red last week.

Norilsk Nickel, the world's biggest producer of nickel and palladium, initially denied that its nickel processing factory had leaked industrial waste into the Daldykan river near the Arctic Circle.

The mining company said that, after an investigation, it found "abnormal heavy rain" on Sept. 5 had caused a tailings dam  which holds mining residue and wastewater  to overflow into the river.

SEE ALSO: River turns red in Russia just like in your worst Biblical nightmare

Norilsk Nickel said the area saw roughly 50 percent of its monthly average precipitation in rainfall over the course of 24 hours.

      -    https://t.co/Ahptd06eEV pic.twitter.com/3TAWfWVOGY  . (@taygainfo) September 7, 2016

"The overflow of one of the dikes occurred, and water entered Daldykan river," Norilsk Nickel said in a Sept. 12 statement.

The company claimed the contamination was harmless and said it would work to avoid such incidents in the future.

"Short-term river color staining with iron salts presents no hazards for people and river fauna," according to the statement.

Story continues

Environmentalists and local indigenous residents reportedly disputed Norilsk Nickel's claim of no harm, no foul.

"You can't just say that it's no big deal. Right now there is a ministry of environment commission there," Alexei Kiselyov of Greenpeace Russia told AFP.

Kiselyov also told AFP that investigating pollution from Norilsk Nickel plants is complicated by the fact that the infrastructure sits in remote areas.

An ore mining and processing complex in Norilsk, Russia.

Image: Sovfoto/UIG via Getty Images

The mining giant also controls access to the entire Taymyr peninsula in the Russian Arctic.

The city of Norilsk, located in Russia's Krasnoyarsk Krai, is home to the world's largest heavy metals smelting complex and known to be one of the world's most polluted places.

More than 4 million tons of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic, selenium and zinc are released into Norilsk's air every year.




Cheryl Burke is stepping up in support of her Dancing With the Stars partner Ryan Lochte, after the Olympic swimmer was ambushed by protesters on Monday night.

In a statement posted to her Instagram account, Burke asserted, No one deserves that sort of behavior directed at them.

She added, My heart is aching for Ryan and his family.

Also Read: Watch 'DWTS' Security Tackle Ryan Lochte Protestor (Video)

As previously reported, Lochte was confronted by two protesters as he danced with Burke on Monday night. The protesters screamed liar at the swimmer, an apparent reference to Lochtes gas station incident in Rio de Janeiro during the Olympics.

Video footage aired by Good Morning America showed a security guard taking one of the protesters to the ground.

In her message, Burke went on to thank fans for their concern, writing, Im still trying to process everything that happened last night.

Also Read: Ryan Lochte Sparks 'Dancing With the Stars' Security 'Incident' as Audience Members Storm Stage

She also thanked the Dancing With the Stars security team.

We all need to love each other and not be bullies or cowards, Burke added. Lets all just be positive for each other.

The suspended Olympic swimmer made his debut on ABCs Dancing With the Stars Monday, but the show had to jump to an emergency commercial break when two audience members heckled Lochte and stormed the stage.

In a statement to TheWrap, BBC Worldwide Productions, which develops and produces the show, said, Two individuals stormed the dance floor tonight and were immediately subdued and escorted out of the building. The matter is now being handled by the authorities.

A photo posted by Cheryl Burke (@cherylburke) on Sep 13, 2016 at 12:31pm PDT

Read Burkes full statement above.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Watch 'DWTS' Security Tackle Ryan Lochte Protestor (Video)

Ryan Lochte Sparks 'Dancing With the Stars' Security 'Incident' as Audience Members Storm Stage

Ryan Lochte Suspended for 10 Months Over Rio Gas Station Incident
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Business Administration has landed in the Top 50 best undergraduate schools according to the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings.

CBA jumped 13 spots this year to No. 48 among an annual ranking of business programs published Tuesday, and No. 30 among business colleges at public institutions.

The college was ranked No. 72 in 2013.

"We are thrilled to be recognized among this elite set of business schools -- both private and public," Dean Donde Plowman said in a news release. "We have had a singular focus to raise the stature and visibility of our college."

The business college will move into an $84 million building next year to accommodate an enrollment that has grown by more than 19 percent over the past five years.

"This ranking, our growing enrollments, our new privately funded building and our exceptional faculty and staff are indicators that we are making great progress," Plowman added.

Overall, UNL was ranked No. 111 among universities in the country, and No. 51 among public universities.

UNL had checked in among the top 50 public universities for five straight years. The lowest of the other public universities in the Big Ten Conference came in at No. 36.

"The world of higher education is increasingly competitive and even as we have raised our game, so have others," Chancellor Ronnie Green said in a statement. "We're pursuing big goals at the university to build on our strong foundation and achievements and we are working to accelerate our progress and having even more impact in Nebraska and beyond."

In other rankings:

* Creighton University in Omaha was named the No. 1 institution in the Midwest region; Nebraska Wesleyan University tied for No. 15; Concordia University in Seward was No. 40.

* In the Midwest region colleges ranking, Hastings College was No. 16, Union College was No. 32, and Midland University in Fremont finished tied for No. 48.

* Doane University in Crete tied for No. 149 among national liberal arts colleges.

* The University of Nebraska at Kearney was ranked No. 12 in the top Midwest public regional universities, and No. 56 overall.
Ryan Lochte's debut on Dancing With the Stars was interrupted when two men rushed the stage during Monday night's premiere of the ABC reality competition series. The incident occurred off camera, though viewers could hear the chaos as it unfolded.

Several audience members, however, captured the incident on social media. According to the eyewitnesses, a row of men and women in the audience revealed anti-Lochte T-shirts, and two men then rushed the stage. Video from one Twitter user shows one of the protesters being tackled to the ground. Additional footage shows the audience clapping as the two men are escorted out, and then chanting "Get out" to the remaining women. After the show, ABC News' Jason Nathanson shared a photo of two men in handcuffs wearing anti-Lochte shirts.

"Two individuals stormed the dance floor tonight and were immediately subdued and escorted out of the building," a spokesperson from BBC Worldwide Productions, producer of DWTS, told The Hollywood Reporter. "The matter is now being handled by the authorities."

The Associated Press reported the two men, identified as Sam Sotoodeh, 59, and Barzeen Soroudi, 25, were arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing. They were subsequently booked and held on $1,000 bail each. Los Angeles police spokesman Mike Lopez said they were detained by security until police arrived to take them into custody. No one was injured or listed as a victim in the incident.

Lochte and dance partner Cheryl Burke were listening to Carrie Ann Inaba critique their performance of the foxtrot to "Call Me Irresponsible" when the judge's attention was diverted by the commotion. The cameras stayed on Inaba as sounds of "boos" could be heard, and she began to repeat, "Excuse me, excuse me."

Host Tom Bergeron was heard saying "easy" before the cameras panned back to him and a stunned Lochte and Burke.

Read more: Ryan Lochte Apologizes to Matt Lauer, Says, "I Let My Team Down"

Story continues

"Take a breath," Bergeron told the audience, before the show abruptly cut to commercial.

When the show returned from the break, Bergeron thanked the security team for their efforts, saying, "We had a little break because we had a little incident."

"So many feelings are going through my head right now," Lochte told Bergeron after the break. He then added that he was "a little hurt," saying, "I came out here and I wanted to do something I was completely uncomfortable with, and I did."

A shaken Burke said, "I'm shocked. I'm hurt for Ryan. He's an amazing guy."

They ultimately received a combined score of 24 out of 40.

Inaba took to her Instagram shortly after the incident to say: "We had a bit of a scary moment during tonight's live taping of @dancingabc, but thanks to our security team and incredible staff at #DWTS, no one got hurt. Only positive energy here tonight and always. Thank you. #dancingwiththestars #security #grateful #dwtspremiere #dwts23."

On Tuesday, Burke also spoke out about the incident on social media and said. "My heart is aching" for Lochte," she said in a lengthy tweet. "No one deserves this sort of behavior directed at them."

pic.twitter.com/emHGQh7qkk

- Cheryl Burke (@CherylBurke) September 13, 2016

Ahead of his casting on DWTS, the Olympic gold medalist was at the center of a firestorm after fabricating a robbery report while at the Rio Games. The scandal marred the U.S. Olympic team's performance in Rio de Janeiro, and the swimmer subsequently lost his endorsements and was suspended for 10 months. Lochte wouldn't be the first to attempt to rehabilitate his image on the dancing show, which has also featured TV personality Paula Deen.

Watch the moment below:

What Just Happened To Ryan Lochte On #DWTS? pic.twitter.com/YOXw8Xs9y5 https://t.co/qzywbM6ERO

- BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) September 13, 2016

Sept. 12, 9:45 p.m. PT: Updated with arrests of two men.

10:47 p.m.: Updated with statement from BBC Worldwide Productions.

Sept. 13, 7:45 a.m.: Updated with names of two men, revised charges and bail amounts.

Sept. 13, 12:40 p.m.: Updated with statement from Burke.
Samantha Bee returned from her hiatus with fighting words for Matt Lauer.

The Full Frontal host joined in on the criticism of Lauer's performance as moderator of last week's Commander-in-Chief forum.

Bee addressed Lauer's focus on Hillary Clinton's email scandal in his questions. "C'mon Matt," said Bee. "Do you really think there's an email-smoking gun that the Inspector General, a House committee, the FBI and 18 months of nonstop news coverage couldn't find that will be magically uncovered from a human Splenda whose journalistic triumph is having no idea where the f - he is?" added Bee, referring to Lauer's "Where in the World" segment.

"Swallow your irritation, girl," said Bee, addressing Clinton after Lauer told her to be quick with an answer about national security. "You'll be glad Matt Lauer is there if you slip and fall off of the Intrepid." Bee cut to coverage of Lauer dressed as a female Baywatch lifeguard for Halloween, a favorite of late-night comedians poking fun at his turn as moderator.

"Maybe this Halloween he can dress up as a journalist," she said.

Read more: Late Night Hosts Tackle Hillary Clinton's Pneumonia and "Basket of Deplorables" Comment

Bee moved on to making fun of Donald Trump. "I bet the veterans have some things they'd like to ask a draft-dodging, Gold Star family-insulting, war-crimes advocating, torture-phile whose worst Vietnam flashbacks involve scrambling for the last place out of gonorrhea," she said.

Coverage of a veteran asking Trump how he was going to "stop 20 veterans a day from killing themselves" rolled. Trump corrected the veteran saying, "Actually it's 22." The veteran gave a quiet head shake at his calculation.

"Shut up, that veteran was correct. And that tiny polite head shake she gave was more fact-checking than Matt Lauer did in the entire 30 minutes that Trump spent bullshitting, bluffing and gleefully babbling about classified security briefings," said Bee.
Samantha Bee is only just getting started.

Since its launch in February, Bees Full Frontal, the talk-and-satire series that is equal turns gut-splitting and outrageous, has already become an acclaimed part of TVs late-night landscape (even though the Time Warner-owned cable outlet airs it at 10:30 p.m. on Mondays). Bee has sparked attention for getting the usually genial TBS to embrace wicked amounts of profanity, and for railing against fraudulent rage prophets and the tasting menu of roid rage personified by the nations more conservative elements. In general, shes known for kicking down the door to Americas minds by delivering a heady mix of information in between all those belly laughs. Its that razor-sharp voice that earned her a nomination for outstanding writing for a variety series (the award went to HBOs Last Week Tonight With John Oliver at the Creative Arts Emmys on Sept. 11).

Guido Vitti for Variety for Variety

Bees commitment to the shows success has her working nonstop: Consider her recent election special, her development of a Sam Squad of on-air correspondents, and her teams increasing social-media efforts. They even sparked a bit of a controversy when the shows Twitter account took aim at TBS for posting a video comparing Hillary Clintons laugh to a hyenas. It was more like poking your brother in the back seat of the car than it was anything antagonistic, Bee says of that Delete Your Account tweet. These things take on a life all their own, but that video was terrible. Im absolutely not walking it back.

In Samantha Bees hypercompetitive business, its hard to let anything go. With an election looming, shell be under pressure to make hay from a political cycle that has captivated millions. But she also wants to expand her focus beyond the Trump/Clinton melodrama, exploring topics that may have gotten less attention because of our political obsession. The show has ambitious plans for more of its signature field pieces, in which Bee and her crew have gone wall-climbing with Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, or sought out a security expert running schoolchildren through drills to keep them from getting shot in class. The network is encouraging her to expand beyond politics into popular culture and other areas, says Brett Weitz, TBS executive vice president of programming. She has the bandwidth and a really great handle on where the show should be post-election, he says.

Story continues

I waitered for so long that I literally have PTSD from it, and now, when I feel people being unfair to one another, it takes me right back to that place. samantha bee

No wonder Bee is ready to let loose at a moments notice. Between reading the draft of a script at a recent rehearsal and heading into a rewrite meeting, she is asked to tape a few promos for one of the companys German cable outlets, TNT Comedy. Hallo, Deutschland, she chirps in a fake German accent. Heil TNT! The moment is shocking and brazen. The crowd in the room cracks up.

Her one-liner, of course, will never make it to TV. That, she confides later, was just for us.

Indeed, Bee and her team take a lot of pride in staying true to their own interests to find fresh, funny material. Its hard to imagine fun-loving Jimmy Fallon cursing on NBCs Tonight Show while informing his audience about the horrifying effects of a national backlog of rape-kit evidence, or roguish Jimmy Kimmel on ABC letting loose with a graphic showing an elephant being sexually penetrated by a cross. But Bee has done it all. In months to come, her voice  one of only two in the format that belongs to a woman (Chelsea Handler does a late-night type series for streaming-video titan Netflix), and the only one with a TV-MA rating (save John Oliver)  could rise further above the din, particularly if Clinton is elected.

We do a show to please ourselves, says Bee, 46, whose profile rose while working for more than a decade as a correspondent on Comedy Centrals The Daily Show. This gives us an opportunity to say the things we want in the exact way we want to say them. In the process, her viewers get a few laughs, but also can exorcise their frustrations with modern politics and culture. When Bee watches TV, she says, I like a firm hand to take me somewhere. I think thats what we do with the show  provide a firm hand. You might not like where it takes you, and thats OK, too. She hopes viewers walk away with comedy first, and then the catharsis after. 

To the new generation of wee-hours TV rivals, the answer is Yes. Jon Stewarts decision to leave The Daily Show last year has left many feeling a void: Who will pick apart the news of the day in a way that makes us both think and laugh? Many among TVs current cadre of hosts aspire to fill the job. Seth Meyers has found new footing on NBCs Late Night by banning Donald Trump from his show; CBS hopes part of Stephen Colberts renewed appeal on the Late Show will come through being timely and topical. But Bee  even though shes on only once a week, like HBOs Oliver  is credited with helping viewers explore everything from state elections to gun control  and making them smile as she does. Reactions range from Did she really just say that? to Yes  someone finally said that!

Guido Vitti for Variety for Variety

Bees pointed, outspoken approach might be off-putting to some, but many are embracing it. Her first show attracted 914,000 viewers overall, according to Nielsen. Her Aug. 1 broadcast won more than 1.3 million. Bees style is explicit, offering colorful insults and sexual metaphors, co-opting a form of rhetoric long reserved for dudes being dudes with other dudes, says Danna Young, an associate professor at the University of Delawares Center for Political Communication who has studied late-night shows for more than 15 years. Shes for real, and her viewers know it.

There was no better demonstration of Bees authenticity than when she offered viewers her thoughts on the June nightclub shooting in Orlando. Now, after a massacre, the standard operating procedure is that you stand on stage and deliver some well-meaning words about how we will get through this together, how love wins, how love conquers hate, and that is great, Bee said. That is beautiful. But you know what? Fuck it. I am too angry for that. In a monologue that lasted more than seven minutes, she examined why assault weapons are easily obtained by criminals, savaged the response of government officials to the tragedy, and prayed for the National Rifle Assn. to be hit with a plague of boils. During rehearsals, Bee became very emotional, says Weitz. What you saw was somebody reacting to a breakdown.

The segment was so raw that AT&T, a staunch Full Frontal sponsor, moved the commercial it normally ran in the shows first break to later in the half hour, to avoid being near the polarizing material. There are times when some of what she has to say will be more controversial, and other times its not. It is a balance, says Valerie Vargas, vice president of advertising for social and emerging media at AT&T Entertainment Group.

Over-the-Top Laughs Full Frontal has a strong army of fans, followers, and streamers. 72.3m YouTube clips video views 33% Non-live viewing (DVR, VOD, and TBS and cable-provider apps and websites) 418k Twitter followers 344k Facebook fans

But the staff wasnt concerned with how the audience  or advertisers  might react, says Bee, who recounted that her husband, Jason Jones, reminded her during a rewrite session of some of the things she had said to him upon first hearing about the incident. I spoke from my heart, and thats how it occurred on camera. We were so angry, she says. It was personal. I think it had to be.

Most late-night hosts avoid political hot buttons, but Bee is anything but traditional. Full Frontal has no band, no gimmicky introductions, no celebrity guests eager to spotlight clips from a new project. Instead, the show introduces viewers to people and places they might not otherwise see. For her first show, Bee traveled to Jordan to visit Syrian refugee camps to lend more dimension to Muslim immigrants who might come to America. The segments title: The People Were Incoherently Yelling About. She spent weeks trying to get her hands on a costume of Eddie the Eagle, the gun-safety mascot of the NRA, but found buying guns a much easier task. And she introduced viewers to Dan Flynn, a Republican legislator from Texas who co-wrote a bill that made it harder for women to get abortions. You dont seem to know anything specifically about abortion at all, she told him.

How does Bee get people to appear on the show? Im sure he didnt like it, because we just dont agree on that particular issue  I mean, at all  but I felt like he was represented very accurately, she says of Flynn. I think people really do want to be heard from more than they care that a joke might be made at their expense. As Flynn made his case during the segment, however, it was clear he had little hope of prevailing. Bee warned him his efforts could lead more women to seek abortions in back alleys, and he asked her where she got her information. Her answer: Reality.

Making a Beeline for Controversy: We just see the world through a different kind of filter, says Samantha Bee (right) with stage manager Laura Mack.

Bee says she comes by her opinions honestly. Her mother taught her early in life that some people arent treated fairly, and kept her daughter from eating grapes because she felt the workers who harvested them faced unfair conditions. Bee, who grew up in Canada, recalls as a child arguing with her grandmother over the appeal of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. She thought Ron and Nancy were just classy, Bee remembers. I didnt think his foreign policy was worth anything.

Working for years in Toronto-area seafood joints and pancake houses while she tried to decide what to do with her life gave her even more of a sense of fair play. I waitered for so long that I literally have PTSD from it, and now, when I feel people being unfair to one another  when I feel people negating other people  it takes me right back to that place of having people be so awful to me because I was serving them food, she says. When I see Donald Trump, I think of all the dinners I served at the lobster house.

Relief came in the form of working as part of a four-woman comedy group called the Atomic Fireballs. Bee and three cohorts would produce and book their own shows  not an easy or lucrative task, recalls Allana Harkin, a member of the group who now works as a producer on Full Frontal. The basis of many of the sketches would be everyday things that set the members off, like a bad massage or waiting on the phone for service. Being pissed off at things  you use that and translate it into comedy, Harkin says. Sam just continues to do that. She wakes up in the morning and will say, I cannot believe what I just read. Its just the most ridiculous thing ever. The work with the Atomic Fireballs led Bee to an audition that landed her on The Daily Show  much to her surprise.

Full Frontal is also something of a shock. Before Stewart announced he was leaving The Daily Show, Bee was already preparing her own departure from the program, but she never considered hosting a show of her own. Shes glad she was not asked to helm the Comedy Central program. This is my much vastly preferred method of doing a show, she says. Its hard to pick up somebody elses bags and go anywhere with them. She and Jones had long been developing concepts for TV series, and they seemed to have snagged interest from TBS in a comedy, The Detour. This would finally offer them a chance to do something of their own. When network executives suggested her own late-night gig, she says, it was a little bit mind-blowing.

Ive always been the underdog, the quiet one, the one who properly stands in line and waits their turn, even when some jerk butts in front. well, Im done with all that now. samantha bee

Not for TBS. Executives wanted a female presence on a network that these days is best known for Conan OBrien and reruns of The Big Bang Theory. A show led by a woman might help the network broaden its appeal, Weitz felt, particularly one with Bees point of view. It may be uncomfortable at times, and it may be unsettling, but its what you need, he says. Its not angry; its fed up.

In an era when fewer people are watching TV live, says Weitz, the network can use Full Frontal to flout convention. The idea of late night has become more about the design and content of a show, as opposed to the metric of 11 to midnight, or 11 to 1, he says. Besides, putting Bee on at 10:30 means she gets to lead in to all of the conversations, he says. She gets to have an authoritative voice before anyone else.

One of the people who is instrumental in preserving that voice is Jo Miller, a former Daily Show writer who studied medieval Jewish history at Yale University even as she founded an improvisational comedy troupe. Miller, a Full Frontal executive producer and showrunner, sets writers, fact checkers, and producers to find topics that interest them, and often finds germs of ideas in a never-ending burst of commentary the staff produces on Slack, the instant-messaging app. When Bee learned she was getting her own show, one of her first moves was to invite Miller along for the ride. Miller made the leap, she says, because she had mastered the art of writing for Jon Stewart but never had the chance to write something in a tone that was more her own.

This show is our coping mechanism, she says. Hopefully, its a coping mechanism for people who watch it.

Bee has plenty more to say  even if Donald Trump loses his bid for the nations highest office. If Hillary Clinton is elected, the tsunami of misogyny that will emerge will overtake all of us. You can see what happened when we had a black president, and you will see the same if she becomes the leader of this nation, says Bee. I feel there will be no shortage of things for us to talk about, including Clintons own foibles. Bee has been quick to defend Clinton from sexist double-standards in recent months but has also been happy to poke fun at the nominees performance at debates and the recent conventions  making the prospect of how Bee will handle a Clinton White House interesting, to say the least.

But what if Trump proves victorious?

Im not sure well have a world, so well see, says Bee.

Whether or not the Earth continues to spin, theres a good chance Samantha Bee will have some way to analyze it. Theres been no official announcement, but Bees team, under contract through this year, is already considering plans for 2017. This is not just a flash in the pan, says Weitz. This is something thats going to be around for a while.

Such talk ought to please Bee. After years as a supporting player, she is more than happy to finally take center stage. Ive always been the underdog, the quiet one, the one who does all the work for the group project, the one who properly stands in line and waits their turn like a good girl, even when some jerk butts in front. Well, Im done with all that now. It is my greatest pleasure to stand up for something, to be bold, to grab people by the collar and force them to listen to me, she says. But like, in a funny way.

Related stories

Inside the Office of 'Full Frontal' Boss Jo Miller

TBS Greenlights 'Drop the Mic' Series From James Corden and Ben Winston

Emmy Nominees: Broadcast Writers & Directors Strong in Late-Night
samantha bee on matt lauer full frontal TBS

TBS's "Full Frontal" returned from its five-week hiatus on Monday and host Samantha Bee readily launched into ripping Matt Lauer for his performance during last week's "Commander-in-Chief Forum" with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

She summed up Lauer's qualifications for the forum with: "Its moderator was a man whose crack journalism skills include getting up early and asking tough questions about recipes."

After mocking Lauer's performance for the better part of four minutes, Bee really settled on the core issue concerning journalists in this election.

"The truth is Matt Lauer did a fantastic job at the meaningless campaign coverage we've come to demand from our media," she said. "At some point, networks decided that they can ask questions and the answers would just be someone else's problem."

She pointed to the lack of fact-checking in covering the election. For example, Trump said that he would've seized oil during the Iraq War. A panel of reporters and pundits wondered aloud if that would've been a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. One then suggested that viewers look up the definition of war crimes themselves.

"You heard her, average Americans," Bee said. "In your plentiful spare time, when you're not working your two jobs or not watching your screaming kids, why not spend 20 or 30 hours studying the Geneva Conventions, so you know whether or not it's okay to steal another country's oil. That's so much easier than asking reporters and moderators to do their f---ing jobs."

Yet just as Bee decided that journalists aren't preparing themselves for the issues that have come up in this presidential election, she also identified why that may be.

"The problem is news organizations are simply not equipped to cover a candidate whose entire being is a lie," she proposed, referring to Trump. "Maintaining the image of fairness requires them to portray Hillary and Trump as equally flawed candidates, even though they know that's incorrect."

Story continues

Watch Bee tear apart Lauer, then explain how Trump's candidacy has handicapped journalists' ability to do their jobs below:

NOW WATCH: Donald Trump is under fire for his comments about the Iraq War





More From Business Insider


(Updates with comments from LG Electronics)

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics were accused of agreeing not to poach each other's U.S. employees, according to a U.S. civil lawsuit filed last week, in what has become a familiar allegation in Silicon Valley.

The proposed class action, filed in a Northern California federal court by a former LG sales manager, accuses Samsung and LG of antitrust violations and driving down employee wages. The case is similar to one against Apple Inc, Google and other tech companies which settled last year for $415 million.

An LG spokesman said "no such agreement has ever existed" and the accusation was without merit. Samsung declined to comment.

The plaintiff, A. Frost, says in the lawsuit that a recruiter contacted Frost via LinkedIn in 2013, seeking to fill a position with Samsung.

According to the lawsuit, the recruiter then informed Frost the same day: "I made a mistake! I'm not supposed to poach LG for Samsung!!! Sorry! The two companies have an agreement that they won't steal each other's employees."

It is "implausible" that such a deal in the United States could have been reached without the consent of each company's corporate parent in South Korea, says the lawsuit, which does not state a specific damages amount.

Joseph Saveri, an attorney for Frost who had also filed the previous cases against Apple and Google, said the no-poaching agreements are inherently anticompetitive.

"There is nothing more fundamental than the ability to get fairly paid for one's worth and talents," he said.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is A. Frost vs. LG Corporation, LG Electronics Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al., 16-5206.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Additional reporting by Se Young Lee; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Stephen Coates)
By Dan Levine SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd <005930.KS> and LG Electronics <066570.KS> were accused of agreeing not to poach each other's U.S. employees, according to a U.S. civil lawsuit filed last week, in what has become a familiar allegation in Silicon Valley. The proposed class action, filed in a Northern California federal court by a former LG sales manager, accuses Samsung and LG of antitrust violations and driving down employee wages. The case is similar to one against Apple Inc , Google and other tech companies which settled last year for $415 million. An LG spokesman said "no such agreement has ever existed" and the accusation was without merit. Samsung declined to comment. The plaintiff, A. Frost, says in the lawsuit that a recruiter contacted Frost via LinkedIn in 2013, seeking to fill a position with Samsung. According to the lawsuit, the recruiter then informed Frost the same day: "I made a mistake! I'm not supposed to poach LG for Samsung!!! Sorry! The two companies have an agreement that they won't steal each other's employees." It is "implausible" that such a deal in the United States could have been reached without the consent of each company's corporate parent in South Korea, says the lawsuit, which does not state a specific damages amount. Joseph Saveri, an attorney for Frost who had also filed the previous cases against Apple and Google, said the no-poaching agreements are inherently anticompetitive. "There is nothing more fundamental than the ability to get fairly paid for one's worth and talents," he said. The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is A. Frost vs. LG Corporation, LG Electronics Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al., 16-5206. (Reporting by Dan Levine; Additional reporting by Se Young Lee; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Stephen Coates)
MINA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's King Salman said on Tuesday the haj should not be used to achieve sectarian or political aims, remarks likely to be seen as aimed at rival Iran, which is involved in a public quarrel with Riyadh over the management of the pilgrimage. Speaking to dignitaries from Muslim countries at a reception at the royal court in Mina, outside the Muslim holy city of Mecca, the king added that Muslims should unite to fight what he called an epidemic of "extremism". The remarks, coinciding with the Muslim Eid al-Adha (feast of sacrifice) holiday, follow an escalating war of words between Shi'ite Muslim Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia since a crush at the annual haj pilgrimage a year ago in which hundreds of pilgrims, many of them Iranians, died. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message published last week, said Saudi authorities had "murdered" some of them, describing Saudi rulers as godless and irreligious. Responding to Khamenei, Saudi Arabia's top religious authority, the Grand Mufti, described Iran's leaders as not Muslims. The king said extremism damaged Islamic unity. "The kingdom utterly rejects that this great ritual turns to achieving political goals or sectarian disputes," he said. "Exaggeration (in religion) and extremism are abhorred... when it enters the body of the Muslim nation, it spoils its unity, future and image before the world. There is no salvation from this affliction except to uproot it without mercy, and with the unity of Muslims, to destroy this epidemic," he added. Traditional Wahhabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia is ultra-conservative, viewing Shi'ites as heretical, but the authorities welcome them to the haj and accepts Iranian visits to the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Saudi Arabia and Iran back opposing sides in Syria's civil war and a list of other conflicts across the Middle East, including Yemen. Tensions between the two countries have been rising since Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in January following the storming of its embassy in Tehran, itself a response to the Saudi execution of dissident Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. (Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, writing by Sami Aboudi, Editing by William Maclean and Raissa Kasolowsky)
WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump, who had five draft deferments, never had to fight in the jungles of Vietnam.

But he had a different sort of war record, as he told radio host Howard Stern years ago: He slept with many women without getting STDs. "It is my personal Vietnam," he said. "I feel like a great and very brave soldier." What's more, Trump added: "This is better than Vietnam. It's more fun."

Said Stern: "Every vagina is a land mine. Haven't we both said that in private?"

Trump concurred: "I think it is a potential land mine. There's some real danger there."

I recalled this Trump war story after his latest disparagement of the U.S. military Wednesday night. Asked to elaborate on his previous boast that "I know more about ISIS than the generals do," Trump said at NBC's Commander-in-Chief Forum that, under the Obama administration, "the generals have been reduced to rubble. They have been reduced to a point where it's embarrassing for our country."

Trump later implied that he would fire current generals -- who, in the American tradition, are avowedly nonpartisan -- and replace them with retired generals who have supported him politically. His advisers on defeating Islamic State will "probably be different generals" from the current ones. My former Washington Post colleague Tom Ricks, author of "The Generals" and four other books on the military, tells me this would be "banana Republicanism."

It's difficult to think of a major political figure who has belittled the U.S. military as Trump has. Sunday was the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which ushered in a "support our troops" spirit that has endured regardless of party or opinion of the wars that followed. But Trump goes beyond the standard criticism of the president and civilian leaders to condemn the military itself.

"Our military is a disaster," he has said.

And: "The military is in shambles."

Soon after launching his campaign, Trump said that John McCain, the prisoner-of-war-cum-senator, "is not a war hero" and that "I like people who weren't captured." He later backtracked but said he didn't regret the remarks because "my poll numbers went up."

He said that he "felt that I was in the military" because as a boy he went to a military-themed boarding school, where he got "more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military."

He recently accepted a wounded-in-action veteran's Purple Heart, saying: "I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier."

He said, before backtracking, that he would order the military to torture detainees and to target innocent family members of terrorists -- even though it's illegal: "If I say do it, they're going to do it."

He later engaged in a high-profile squabble with the Gold Star parents of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq because they criticized him at the Democratic convention.

Though Trump talks often about veterans, he didn't make good on a promised contribution to veterans' charities after a fundraiser earlier this year until the Post noted his failure to do so. (Years ago, he opposed veterans working as street vendors on New York's Fifth Avenue, calling it "deplorable" to have them on the "prestigious shopping street.")

Trump has called John Allen, the retired officer who led the fight against Islamic State and now backs Clinton, a "failed general." And, though Trump said at Wednesday's forum that the "body language" of the intelligence officials in his security briefings indicated they disagree with Obama administration policies, he previously said he didn't trust U.S. intelligence officials.

Polling shows Trump leads among veterans and active-duty military members, though by less than Republicans typically do. Perhaps members of the military will change their views if a President Trump does, as he suggested, replace current generals with some of the dozens of retired military officials who signed a letter endorsing his candidacy last week.

These include retired Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, now an official at the Family Research Council, who believes Satan is working through Islam and who says gay rights are an "evil" that must be opposed by "God's army." Also on Trump's list is retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a Fox News commentator who supported an Army officer who refused to deploy to Afghanistan, claiming President Barack Obama was foreign-born and therefore an illegitimate commander in chief.

The officer, Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, was sentenced to military prison in a court-martial. But if Trump wins, perhaps the political supporters he appoints to replace the nation's nonpartisan generals will reinstate and promote him.
By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - A yellow fever outbreak in Angola and Congo has been brought under control by a major vaccination campaign, the World Health Organization's director of infectious hazard management Sylvie Briand said on Tuesday. "One (piece of) good news is that this outbreak is under control now. We haven't had any new cases in Angola since June 23, and since July 12 in DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo)," Briand told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva. The entire Congolese capital of Kinshasa, 7.7 million people, had been vaccinated in less than 10 days, as well as 3 million in border areas to prevent transmission from Angola, and another 3 million on the Angolan side of the border, where a second phase of vaccinations would be carried out soon. "So far in Angola more than 15 million people (have been vaccinated), this represents 65 percent of the population. So we still have to protect certain districts and provinces but the risk of a major outbreak I think is now over," she said. But there were still 32 endemic countries in Africa, so further outbreaks could not be ruled out, including in the parts of Congo that had not been vaccinated recently, she said. At the end of August the WHO said the trend was "extremely positive" but it was too early to say the outbreak had been stopped completely, with 1,000 confirmed cases and up to 6,000 suspected cases of the mosquito-borne disease. The outbreak is the worst in decades among unprotected African populations and has killed more than 400 people. The vaccination campaigns have depleted the global stockpile of 6 million doses twice this year, forcing doctors to switch to administering one-fifth of the normal dose, a tactic that the WHO says gives at least temporary protection from the disease. On Monday experts from WHO and other health agencies met in Geneva to discuss a long-term strategy to prevent future large outbreaks of yellow fever. The risk of such outbreaks has risen due to urbanisation and increasing mobility of the population, and this year it was especially acute because of the El Nino weather phenomenon which multiplied mosquito numbers, she said. The recent mass vaccination campaign aimed not only to stop the transmission of the virus but also to preempt transmission during the rainy season, which is already starting in some areas, Briand said. (Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Ralph Boulton; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Paris (AFP) - We all grow up to accept certain unassailable facts: water is wet, the Earth is round, and to produce a baby you need an egg and sperm.

As it turns out, the last of these may turn out not to be true.

On Tuesday, scientists announced they had produced baby mice by fusing sperm and a type of cell that is not an egg.

The pups that survived this alchemy were healthy, with normal lifespans, and able to procreate the traditional way, researchers from Britain and Germany reported in the journal Nature Communications.

"It had been thought that only an egg cell was capable of reprogramming sperm to allow embryonic development to take place," said the report's senior author Tony Perry of the University of Bath.

"Our work challenges the dogma, held since early embryologists first observed mammalian eggs around 1827 and observed fertilisation 50 years later, that only an egg cell fertilised with a sperm cell can result in a live mammalian birth."

There are two types of cell: "meiotic" reproductive cells (eggs and sperm), and "mitotic" cells which include most of the tissues and organs in our bodies.

Mammal reproduction requires a sperm and egg to fuse, creating an embryo.

But instead of using a meiotic egg cell to produce their mouse pups, the researchers used a type of mitotic cell called a parthenogenote.

These are very early-stage, single-celled embryos that form without fertilisation -- in this case by chemically activating a mouse egg.

Just before the parthenogenotes divided into two cells, they were injected with sperm nuclei to fertilise them.

The resulting pups' survival rate was a quarter that of other mice.

- Reproduction revolution? -

Though these are early days, the feat suggested that other types of mitotic cell, such as skin cells, may one day be used to create offspring.

This could open up the possibility for gay men, older women or infertile couples to have children with both parents' DNA.

Story continues

"Imagine if any mitotic cell could reprogram a sperm in the same way. Then there would be no need for eggs," Perry told AFP.

"This could revolutionise reproduction."

For now, though, the team still need eggs to create their parthenogenotes.

Parthenogenesis is a technique employed by certain plants and animals -- some lizards, snakes and worms for example -- to fertilise eggs and create embryos without the need for sperm.

It does not happen naturally in mammals, and any parthenogenote created accidentally would not survive.

One day, said Perry, it might be possible to print parthenogenotes instead of having to tease them from egg cells, meaning "the egg feature of this would be history".

Outside experts not involved in the study welcomed the world-first achievement, but stressed a lot still has to happen before the method can be used in humans.

Robin Lovell-Badge of The Francis Crick Institute, a biomedical research unit in London, described the result as a "technical tour de force".

"I am sure it will tell us something important about reprogramming at these early steps of development that are relevant to both fertilisation and SCNT (cloning)," he said.

"It doesn't yet tell us how, but the paper gives a number of clear pointers."

Marie-Helene Verlhac, a scientist at France's CNRS research institute, underlined the finding that one does not need an egg to reprogram sperm to kickstart embryo formation.

"So we can imagine also using parthenogenotes" in human fertility treatment one day, she said -- reducing reliance on eggs which are notoriously difficult to harvest.
EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Scotland's government faces the prospect of having to make deeper spending cuts after Britain's vote to leave the EU, a think tank said on Tuesday, adding to the challenge of implementing its new tax and spending powers. The uncertainty caused by the Brexit vote and its impact on the economy mean Scotland's public finances will likely be harder to manage, the Fraser of Allander Institute said. The pro-independence Scottish government has promised more generous welfare spending such as a doubling of public pre-school childcare over the next five years as it seeks to counter budget cuts by Britain's national government and gets a greater say in Scottish spending. Scotland's public finances are partly funded by a block grant from London and partly by an increasing share of Scottish tax revenue. Whereas in the past tax bands and rates were set by the national government in London, this year the Scottish government has the power to set a portion of its own taxes. The Edinburgh government has indicated it will not present its draft budget for next year until British finance minister Phillip Hammond has delivered a budget statement on Nov. 23. "Overall, the Scottish government should prepare for possible further real-terms cuts of 6 percent - or up to 1.6 billion pounds  in its resource budget by 2020-21," the report from the Strathclyde University-based research outfit said. Before Brexit, a budget cut of around 3 percent over that period had been expected, it said. "The transfer of new fiscal powers means that the outlook for the Scottish budget is crucially dependent upon Scotland's relative economic performance," it added. Scotland's economy has underperformed the United Kingdom as a whole in recent years, mainly because of falling prices for oil. The Fraser of Allander Institute predicted Scottish economic growth of 0.9 percent in 2016 compared with 1.6 percent for the UK as a whole. "The UK government's austerity means we are already facing a 10 percent real terms cut to our budget over the 10 years to 2020 - now the chaos caused by Brexit threatens to make those cuts even harder," Scotland's Finance Secretary Derek Mackay said in a statement. The devolved government has pledged to honour Scotland's vote to stay in the EU, despite Britain's overall vote to leave in June. It has argued that Scotland should have a fresh option to split with the UK if the terms of "Brexit" do not suit. However, a Kantar TNS poll published on Tuesday showed support for independence only two percentage points higher than it was in 2014, when independence was outvoted 45 to 55 percent. (Reporting By Elisabeth O'Leary; editing by William Schomberg)
Tordesillas (Spain) (AFP) - Locals scuffled with animal rights activists Tuesday at a centuries-old Spanish festival held for the first time since the event was banned from spearing its half-tonne bull to death.

"Bastard politicians, respect traditions," read a giant placard set up at the entrance to the central town of Tordesillas about 200 kilometres (120 miles) northwest of Madrid.

Every September, men on horseback and on foot have chased a bull on a plain near the town and speared it to death in front of thousands of onlookers as part of the annual Toro de la Vega festival held for nearly seven centuries.

But in May the conservative regional government of Castile and Leon bowed to Spain's increasingly strong animal rights movement and banned the spearing to death of bulls.

This year a 670-kilo (1,500-pound) bull named Pelado -- "Bare" in Spanish -- was let loose in the plain and hundreds of people ran alongside it for about an hour, causing a huge cloud of dust to rise from the ground until a sudden downpour cleared the air.

But in keeping with the new rules the bull was not speared or killed at the end of the festival, renamed Toro de la Pena.

Just before the bull was released, some 200 animal rights activists from across Spain faced off against thousands of local residents.

A line of police on horseback separated the two camps, who shouted insults and chanted slogans at each other.

Ricardo Garcia, who was decked out in black, said he came from Madrid with a group of friends to "ensure the law is respected".

Locals in the town of around 9,000 people held a protest in defence of the traditional bull-spearing festival.

They chanted: "Tordesillas does not give up!" and "Animal defenders are terrorists!"

- 'Taken it really badly' -

Scuffles between animal rights activists and locals have been a regular occurence at the festival in recent years, contributing to the pressure to ban bull spearing.

Story continues

While the activists welcome the ban, they complain the bull still suffers stress as it is chased and it is destined to be killed in the slaughterhouse in the end.

But for many locals the bull-spearing festival was a source of intense pride.

Local resident Omar Lumar proudly displays the head of a bull named Vulcano, killed in the festival in 2003, on the wall of his home.

Residents accuse the activists of "distorting" the reality of the festival to portray them as "savages".

"We have taken it really badly. These laws are a question of power, not of justice," Gerardo Abril, president of the festival's organising board, told AFP.

"It is incredible that in villages we have our traditions, and they take them away from us in cities," he added in a reference to Valladolid, the capital of Castile and Leon which passed the ban.

Abril, a plumber who was gored seven times by a bull at the festival in 2011, said he has been vilified within the far-left United Left party to which he belongs because of his support for the festival.

A self-described feminist, he wore a red handkerchief with a small image of a bull and Marxist guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara around his neck.

Feelings over the ban have spilled over to the ballot box.

In June's general election, 13.2 percent of votes cast in Tordesillas were blank -- the highest level in the country, comparing to a national average of just 0.94 percent.

Animal rights party PACMA, which spearheaded efforts to ban the festival, won a record number of votes in the polls -- nearly 235,000, although this was not enough to enter parliament.

The bull-spearing festival was banned once before, between 1966 and 1969 during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.
Mina (Saudi Arabia) (AFP) - Under a bank of monitors broadcasting live footage from more than 5,000 cameras, Saudi officers have kept their eyes on every route and gathering spot at this year's hajj pilgrimage.

As custodians of the most sacred sites in Islam, the authorities have been at pains to assure the world that every possible measure has been taken to prevent a repeat of last year's disaster at the hajj that cost the lives of around 2,300 pilgrims in a stampede.

An "eye" which never closes forms the heart of the command and control centre located in Mina, near Mecca, said Colonel Saad al-Dosari, its planning chief.

Another officer, Captain Tareq al-Azam, told AFP that his dozens-strong team has been on duty around the clock monitoring this year's 1.8 million pilgrims who have converged on the desert kingdom from across the globe.

More than 5,000 cameras have been installed in the entire Mecca sector covering a radius of around 10 kilometres (six miles) around its Grand Mosque, the single holiest place in Islam.

From his vantage point, the captain can direct the cameras and is able to zoom in to investigate any suspicious-looking or potentially dangerous activity.

The job of the security team was "to survey the screens to detect any problem or any blockage" in the constant stream of pilgrims navigating the holy sites, explained Dosari.

If any anomaly is detected, "they inform the operations centre to prevent any problem before it can even happen".

Dozens of soldiers are posted at the centre, located a few metres (yards) away, with headphones on and microphones at the ready to pass on information to the tens of thousands of members of the security forces on the ground.

They also redirect any complaints from the pilgrims on a special number provided by Saudi authorities, who have said this year's hajj which started last Saturday and ends on Thursday has been free of any major incident.
Sempra Energys SRE unit, Sempra U.S. Gas & Power, closed the sale of EnergySouth, Inc., the parent company of Mobile Gas Service Corp. and Willmut Gas & Oil Company, to Spire Inc. SR.



Details of the Transaction



The divestment was announced by the company earlier this year. Its total consideration includes cash proceeds of $320 million and Spires assumption of EnergySouths existing debt of $67 million.



The transaction covers the sale of Mobile Gas and Willmut Gas only. Sempra U.S. Gas & Power will continue to possess Bay Gas Storage Co., Mississippi Hub, LLC, Liberty Gas Storage and Southern Gas Transmission, all of which were part of EnergySouth. Note that EnergySouth was acquired by Sempra U.S. Gas & Power in 2008.

SEMPRA ENERGY Price

SEMPRA ENERGY Price | SEMPRA ENERGY Quote

Rationale behind the Sale



According to Patti Wagner, president and CEO of Sempra U.S. Gas & Power, the company had come to decision to sell the two utilities after assessing its natural gas assets. The company believes that the proceeds from the sale could be deployed for long-term growth opportunities that are in sync with its business strategy.



About Mobile Gas & Willmut Gas



Mobile Gas serves nearly 85,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in Mobile and Baldwin Counties of southwest Alabama.



On the other hand, Willmut Gas, which was acquired by Sempra U.S. Gas & Power in 2012, serves approximately 19,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in greater Hattiesburg, MS (covering portions of Forrest and Lamar Counties); and portions of Covington, Jones, Simpson and Rankin Counties.



About Sempra U.S. Gas & Power



Sempra U.S. Gas & Power develops clean power solutions in markets across the U.S., with a focus on zero- and low-emission fuels. The company operates more than 1,500 megawatts (MW) of renewable and natural gas-fueled power plants, including the largest photovoltaic solar facility in the U.S.



Zacks Rank & Key Picks



Sempra Energy currently has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). A couple of better-ranked stocks in the same industry include Piedmont Natural Gas Co. Inc. PNY and ONE Gas, Inc. OGS, both carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Confidential from Zacks



Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



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



SEMPRA ENERGY (SRE): Free Stock Analysis Report



PIEDMONT NAT GA (PNY): Free Stock Analysis Report



SPIRE INC (SR): Free Stock Analysis Report



ONE GAS INC (OGS): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
David Sneddon is, according to a South Korean report, alive in North Korea, held captive by the authoritarian regime that abducted the Lincoln East High graduate in 2004 while he was on an extended hiking trip in China.

The Yahoo Japan report confirmed previous Japanese investigations and what Sneddons parents, who now live in Utah, have believed since he disappeared 12 years ago, It also should provide impetus for the passage of a congressional resolution aimed at bringing Sneddon home.

Introduced in February by the entire congressional delegations from Nebraska and Utah, the resolution requests that the U.S. intelligence community become involved in Sneddons case and investigate his whereabouts and captivity -- which Sneddons family believes would be key to bringing him home.

The need for U.S. intelligence investigation is critical because North Korea is the worlds most closed society. Few Western visitors are allowed into North Korea, and those who enter the country are closely monitored.

So determining anything factual about North Korea, from the state of its economy to its development and testing of nuclear weapons, is difficult at best and nearly impossible without the use of advanced surveillance tools available to the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. intelligence services.

What they are likely to find, according to the article, is that Sneddon is married, has two children and lives in Pyongyang, North Koreas capital and largest city, where he teaches English. One of his students is believed to be North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

Whether any of those details are true remains to be seen. But that is the kind of information that the American intelligence can ferret out. And, when it is verified beyond doubt that Sneddon is alive, then the North Koreans can be pressured through third-party countries, perhaps China, to release him.

That is why the resolution needs to be enacted as soon as possible, even during the upcoming lame duck session of Congress. It certainly shouldnt be controversial to use existing intelligence resources to start the process of bringing an abducted American back home.
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian and German police arrested 30 people in a suspected drug smuggling ring and seized narcotics worth around 20 million euros ($22 million) on Tuesday, Serbia's interior minister said. Police seized 303 kg (670 lb) of cocaine, 106 kg of hashish and 96 kg of marijuana as well as weapons and money, after investigations lasting 13 months. Suspects were arrested in Croatia, Germany and Serbia on Tuesday, with 21 others arrested in Spain, Belgium and Hungary between October 2015 and March 2016, Germany's federal police said in a statement. Three further suspects remain at large. German police said the drug smuggling ring was suspected of selling drugs across Europe from bases in Belgrade and Essen, Germany, and maintaining illegal "indoor plantations" of marijuana at numerous sites in both countries. Serbia, which lies on key drug-smuggling routes between Central Asia and the wealthy markets of Europe, has stepped up efforts to combat organised crime and corruption to fulfil conditions for joining the European Union. It was the first time the two countries had carried out a joint police investigation, German prosecutor Anette Milk said. The cooperation worked very well, she told Reuters. "Serbia will continue to cooperate with Germany in all cases related with organised crime and corruption," interior minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said. Since the ouster of former president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, cooperation between Serbian and foreign police has improved dramatically. In 2014, a group of Serbian cocaine traffickers were arrested in an operation involving the CIA. In separate raids last week, Serbian police arrested 68 people around the country on charges ranging from violent crime to drug trafficking. ($1 = 0.8910 euros) (Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Hugh Lawson)
It's the end of the road for FX comedy Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll.

Sources confirm to The Hollywood Reporter that the Denis Leary starrer will not return for a third season. FX declined to comment.

'Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll' Star Denis Leary Explains His 'Hamilton' Parody, Why Season 2 Is the Sweet Spot

Created by, starring and executive produced by the Rescue Me alum, the comedy ended its second season last week after averaging 680,000 total viewers with three days of DVR. Produced by FX Productions and Fox Television Studios, the show has seen its ratings go down considerably from its freshman run, when the comedy, co-starring John Corbett, ranked as the third-most-watched new primetime scripted comedy on basic cable among total viewers and adults under 50 (with seven days of DVR). Recently, among the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demo, SDRR drew only 305,000 total viewers with three days of DVR.

Speaking to reporters at TCA, FX president John Landgraf said he uses a formula when determining renewals and cancellations. "I and my team get one vote, you and the other experts get one vote, and the audience gets one vote. Two votes gets a show picked up, but we overrule a two-to-one vote against us for a time if we believe either the audience or the experts will come around based on the quality of the show," he said.

'Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll' Star Denis Leary Critiques Real-Life Musical Reunions -- From The Who to The Replacements

The decision to cancel SDRR comes days after FX opted not to continue with a third season of Howard Gordon's Middle East-set drama, Tyrant, though producer Fox 21 insists there's a future for the series and is shopping it to streaming outlets.

The demise of SDRR comes as scripted music series continue to struggle to find the right tone, though THR chief TV critic Tim Goodman called the FX rock 'n' roll comedy a "note-perfect look at music, aging and family." On its part, HBO opted to cancel 1970s drama Vinyl after pre-emptively renewing it for a second season, and ABC canceled country-music drama Nashville, though the latter was revived at little-watched Viacom cabler CMT. Meanwhile, the future of Showtime's Cameron Crowe music drama Roadies remains up in the air.

With the cancellation, FX's comedy roster now includes Baskets, Louie, Atlanta and Better Things, as well as FXX's You're the Worst, Man Seeking Woman, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Archer.

This story was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Levi & Korsinsky announces it has commenced an investigation of Iteris, Inc. (ITI) concerning possible breaches of fiduciary duty by the board of directors of the company. To obtain additional information, go to:

http://zlk.9nl.com/iteris-iti

or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at jlevi@zlk.com or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, California, Connecticut and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities and shareholder lawsuits. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

CONTACT:

Levi & Korsinsky, LLP

Eduard Korsinsky, Esq.

30 Broad Street - 24th Floor

New York, NY 10004

Tel: (212) 363-7500

Toll Free: (877) 363-5972

Fax: (212) 363-7171

www.zlk.com

SOURCE: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP:

To: All Persons or Entities who purchased American Farmland Company ("AFCO") (NYSE MKT: AFCO) stock prior to September 12, 2016 .

You are hereby notified that Levi & Korsinsky, LLP has commenced an investigation into the fairness of the sale of AFCO to Farmland Partners Inc. (FPI). Under the terms of the transaction, AFCO shareholders will receive 0.7417 shares of Farmland Partners for each share of AFCO stock they own; based on the closing price of Farmland Partners Inc. stock on the day prior to the merger announcement, this represents a value of $8.23 per share. To learn more about the action and your rights, go to:

http://zlk.9nl.com/american-farmland-afco

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
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 13, 2016 / Lundin Law PC (the "Firm") announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Goldcorp Inc. ("Goldcorp" or the "Company") (GG) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws between March 31, 2014 and August 24, 2016 (the "Class Period"). Investors, who purchased or otherwise acquired shares during the Class Period, should contact the Firm in advance of the October 24, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline.

To participate in this class action lawsuit, click here. You can also call Brian Lundin, Esquire, of Lundin Law PC, at 888-713-1033, or e-mail him at brian@lundinlawpc.com.

No class has been certified in the above action yet. Until a class is certified, you are not considered represented by an attorney. You may also choose to do nothing and be an absent class member.

The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, Goldcorp made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: that Goldcorp's mine in Penasquito was leaking selenium into the groundwater well near the mine as early as October 2013; that the Company informed the Mexican government about the rise of selenium levels in the groundwater in October 2014; that in August 2016 the Company informed the Mexican government of contaminated water found in other properties near the mine; and as a result of the above, Goldcorp's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When this news was disclosed to the public, shares of Goldcorp fell in value, which caused investors harm.

Lundin Law PC was founded by Brian Lundin, a securities litigator based in Los Angeles dedicated to upholding shareholders' rights.

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

Contact:

Lundin Law PC

Brian Lundin, Esq.

Telephone: 888-713-1033

Facsimile: 888-713-1125

brian@lundinlawpc.com

http://lundinlawpc.com/

SOURCE: Lundin Law PC
Jerusalem (AFP) - Shimon Peres, in critical condition Wednesday after suffering a stroke, is an Israeli elder statesman, Nobel laureate and two-time prime minister who spearheaded peace efforts with the Palestinians after breaking with his hawkish past.

The 93-year-old, who also served as president, was a towering figure in Israeli politics for decades and is the country's last surviving founding father.

Beyond his accomplishments in the public eye, he is also seen as a driving force in the development of Israel's undeclared nuclear programme.

He is particularly lauded abroad, and his lavish 80th birthday party was attended by ex-presidents Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev. Film director Woody Allen sent greetings "from a bad Jew to a very great Jew."

He once confided that the secret to his longevity was daily gymnastics, eating little and drinking one or two glasses of good wine.

The highlight of his career came in 1994, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Yitzhak Rabin and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo accords with the Palestinians.

The 1993 accords were hailed as historic, leading to the creation of the Palestinian Authority and parameters that were supposed to lead to peace in five years.

It was sealed with a symbolic handshake between Rabin and Arafat in Washington. Peres was foreign minister at the time and a driving force behind the agreements.

But more than two decades later, Israeli-Palestinian peace remains elusive and some are ready to bury the idea of a two-state solution.

Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to the Oslo accords in 1995, while the bloody second Palestinian intifada broke out five years later.

As a new round of talks which later collapsed began in 2013, Peres however expressed his optimism.

He said the negotiations had "a clear purpose" to have "a Jewish state by the name of Israel and an Arab state by the name of Palestine not fighting each other but living together in friendship and cooperation".

Story continues

"There is no alternative to peace. There is no sense to go to war," he said.

"Terror doesn't have a message. Terror cannot bake bread and cannot offer fresh air to breathe. It's costly, it's useless, it doesn't produce anything."

- Hitchhike meeting -

Peres has held nearly every major office in a career spanning five decades.

He was among those instrumental in establishing the state of Israel, alongside its first prime minister David Ben-Gurion and other iconic figures like Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan.

Born in Poland in 1923, Peres emigrated to what was then British mandatory Palestine when he was 11.

He joined the Zionist struggle in the 1940s and while hitchhiking met Ben-Gurion, who would become his mentor.

He was part of the Haganah, the predecessor to the Israeli military, and at only 29 became director general of the nascent defence ministry.

While in that position, he helped plan the 1956 Suez war, in which Israel was allied with France and Britain.

Peres once hawkishly rejected any compromise with hostile Arab states, but said he was converted after 1977, when Egyptian president Anwar Sadat made a historic visit to Jerusalem, leading to the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty.

"I didn't change, I think the situation has changed," Peres told Time magazine in an interview published in February.

"As long as there was a danger to the existence of Israel, I was what you would call a hawk ... The minute I felt the Arabs are open to negotiation, I said that's what we prefer too."

But his embrace of peace efforts extended only so far. He was prime minister in 1996 when more than 100 civilians were killed while sheltering at a UN peacekeepers' base in the Lebanese village of Qana fired upon by Israel.

- Political stumbles -

Despite Peres's reputation as a statesman, he never managed to outright win a national election. Many in Israel opposed to the Oslo accords also blamed him for what they saw as their failure.

A member of parliament since 1959, Peres headed the Labour party from 1977.

He was prime minister between 1984 and 1986, then again from 1995-1996 after Rabin's assassination.

He would also serve as foreign, defence and finance minister.

In 2005 he left Labour to join the new centrist Kadima headed by Ariel Sharon.

The alliance ensured Israel withdrew troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation, although hopes of subsequently reviving the peace process came to nothing.

In 2007, he was elected by parliament to the largely ceremonial post of Israeli president, a crowning triumph in a career whose fortunes appeared dead just two years before, when he lost the leadership of Labour and quit the party.

Before becoming president, he had dedicated much of his time to promoting peace between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab world through his Peres Center for Peace.

He left office as president in 2014, but maintained an active schedule even after suffering heart trouble in January 2016.

He has not lost faith in the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"I think it's the only thing which is possible in order to bring an end to terror, violence and hatred," he said in the Time interview.

Peres, who speaks English and French as well as Hebrew, was married to Sonya, who died in 2011. The couple had three children and numerous grandchildren.
(Adds quotes from Chanos)

By Jennifer Ablan and Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The prominent short-seller Jim Chanos, founder of Kynikos Associates, on Tuesday called the proposed merger of Tesla Motors Inc and SolarCity Corp "crazy," noting that the combined company would need constant access to capital markets.

Chanos said it would be the "height of folly" for Tesla shareholders to vote to bail out SolarCity, which he added has an "uneconomic" business model.

Chanos estimates the combined company could have a cash burn of roughly $1 billion per quarter.

"To burden your own balance sheet and cash flow statement to, in effect, bail out shareholders at SolarCity strikes us as just the height of folly," he said at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha Conference in New York.

Chanos had previously disclosed his bet against the shares of both companies in the spring.

SolarCity shares were down about 5.4 percent in late trading and shares in Tesla were down about 2 percent.

Chanos, who rose to fame in the hedge-fund world predicting the collapse of Enron Corp in 2001, was reminded by the panel moderator that Tesla never seems to have trouble raising equity or debt.

Chanos responded: "Until they do."

"A lot of people aren't paying attention to the actual financial statements" of the companies and the risks for Tesla, Chanos said.

Chanos said Tesla and SolarCity chief Elon Musk's heavy reliance on borrowing from the capital markets contrasts with the approach of Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos.

"This is the anti-Amazon," Chanos said. "What made Amazon great ... is that they didn't need capital." (Reporting by Jennifer Ablan and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Richard Chang and Dan Grebler)
Spain's leading pay TV platform Movistar+ and CBS Corp.'s CBS Studios International unit on Tuesday unveiled an exclusive licensing deal in Spain for the linear and SVOD rights to current and past hits, as well as all future Showtime-owned series.

The agreement - which covers the likes of Billions, Madame Secretary and the Odd Couple - makes Movistar+ the official home of Showtime programming in Spain, with exclusive use of the Showtime brand and trademark.

Financial terms weren't disclosed.

The Movistar+ deal builds on CBS's global expansion strategy for Showtime by distributing its programming portfolio and brand as a bundled offering to leading media companies around the world. It has struck similar exclusive deals over the past 18 months with Sky in Europe, Bell Media in Canada and Stan in Australia.

Read more: CBS, Showtime Ink Content Deal With Israel's Yes

"Showtime is quickly becoming one of the most prestigious content brands in the global marketplace," said Armando Nunez, president and CEO, CBS Studios International. "We're excited to further expand the reach of Showtime with another branded programming agreement of this scale and with a best-in-class partner such as Movistar+."

Billions will kick off the content deal in November, followed by the comedy drama series I'm Dying Up Here, executive produced by Jim Carrey. Movistar+ will also be home to Twin Peaks, a much-anticipated return, and the new limited drama series, Purity, starring Daniel Craig.

"For the last few years, Showtime series were part of our service, but that was only the beginning. Now, we are able to build on our existing Showtime programming with future Showtime-owned series," Pedro Garcia Guillen, CEO of Movistar+, said. "We are very proud to have closed such an important deal with a brand that has proven its ability to create shows of enormous value and appeal to our Movistar Series clients."

Story continues

Read more: Jamie Foxx's Showtime Comedy Adds 'CSI: Miami' and 'Pitch Perfect' Grads

Other Showtime programming available on Movistar+ will include current series The Affair, Ray Donovan, House of Lies and Penny Dreadful, along with select library series including Californication, Dexter and Nurse Jackie.
Something needs to be done to ease the overcrowding in our prisons. How's that? Well, the ACLU's Danielle Conrad has it right; Do it from the front end by not locking up so many non-violent offenders (" At 50, ACLU Nebraska eyes prison lawsuit ," Aug. 29).

So, what then? To my mind, there is only one thing that by itself would substantially lessen prison over-crowding and that is legalizing drugs. I know that's a big step for a legislative body that can't even approve medical marijuana but, once again, its probably the only thing that, by itself, can bring order to our prisons. Good luck with all the rest.
By Heather Somerville

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Silicon Valley is creating a crash course in self-driving car technology to address a shortage of engineers with help from a startup in a different field: online education.

Nearly every major tech company, car company and ride services company, it seems, is developing or partnering with developers of self-driving technology, from Google parent Alphabet Inc to Tesla Motors, General Motors Corp and Uber Technologies Inc, creating an insatiable demand for the people teaching the machines to think.

In about a year's time, a Lincoln sedan will be driving itself from Mountain View to San Francisco, using software developed by 250 or so students enrolled at education start-up Udacity, if all goes according to plan.

Udacity bought the Lincoln already equipped with the digital interface needed in autonomous vehicles; students will write the code.

Udacity's course, which costs $2,400 for three, 12-week terms, starts next month and was designed by company co-founder Sebastian Thrun, who launched Google's driverless car program.

Self-driving truck startup Otto, recently acquired by Uber Technologies Inc, automaker Mercedes-Benz and chip maker Nvidia Corp contributed to Udacity's curriculum.

"If you go through this curriculum you are on the bleeding edge of self-driving cars," said Thrun.

FAST-TRACK TO JOBS?

The aim of the program is a faster path to employment, Thrun said, in a career that has an average salary of $138,000. Mercedes-Benz, Chinese ride-service Didi Chuxing and others agreed to consider Udacity graduates for job openings.

The employer pool is growing quickly. Research firm and venture capital database CB Insights has identified 33 corporations working on autonomous cars, including auto makers GM and Volvo, internet giants Baidu and Google, and Silicon Valley companies tech firm Intel and startup ride-service Lyft.

GM for one is hiring dozens of engineers in the area, and Uber is looking to fill more than 50 positions in Pittsburgh, where the company is building a fleet of self-driving cars, according to jobs website Glassdoor.

Story continues

"I love people with MIT and Stanford degrees," Thrun said. But "there are a lot of people who can't make it to those institutions. There are entire generations of people who are equally smart and equally capable."

Yet the idea that a certificate from an online training program would secure a job in one of the most difficult emerging technologies strikes some recruiters as very unlikely.

A master's degree in computer science from a leading university such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Stanford University is the usual, and still preferred, course.

"You'd be hard-pressed to say the Udacity candidate is going to be more qualified because they have some specific knowledge about self-driving cars, versus someone who has a rock-hard degree in computer science or data science," said Dave Carvajal, chief executive of recruiting firm Dave Partners, which fills executive jobs at venture-backed tech companies.

HUNGRY FOR TALENT

With a scarcity of talent in the workforce, companies have been recruiting directly from universities with strong programs in data science, robotics and machine learning. Carnegie Mellon University suffered an exodus of staff last year after Uber hired away 40 faculty and researchers for its Advanced Technologies Center.

Startups, too, are sparring to build autonomous vehicle staff. Varden Labs, a company of fewer than 15 people working on self-driving car technology, is "hiring aggressively" although the field is "very competitive," said co-founder Alex Rodrigues.

Technology companies frequently bemoan their struggle to hire qualified engineers, but the challenge is more pronounced in autonomous vehicles, which combines complex technologies such as machine learning and computer vision, and applies them to cars. Startups in particular are struggling to hire against powerhouses such as Apple Inc and Google, say recruiters.

"The startups will have to get by with one, two, three or four people who can do it," said Dan Portillo, talent partner at venture firm Greylock Partners.

But a small team may be enough for startup success. GM in March purchased Cruise Automation, a three-year-old autonomous vehicle startup with about 40 employees, for about $1 billion. Uber last month agreed to buy Otto, which is less than a year old, in a deal valued at $680 million.

"Early hires are making unbelievable amounts of money in a few short years," Rodrigues said.

(Reporting by Heather Somerville. Editing by Peter Henderson, Bill Rigby and Andrew Hay)
By Heather Somerville

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Silicon Valley is creating a crash course in self-driving car technology to address a shortage of engineers with help from a startup in a different field: online education.

Nearly every major tech company, car company and ride services company, it seems, is developing or partnering with developers of self-driving technology, from Google parent Alphabet Inc to Tesla Motors, General Motors Corp and Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL], creating an insatiable demand for the people teaching the machines to think.

In about a year's time, a Lincoln sedan will be driving itself from Mountain View to San Francisco, using software developed by 250 or so students enrolled at education start-up Udacity, if all goes according to plan.

Udacity bought the Lincoln already equipped with the digital interface needed in autonomous vehicles; students will write the code.

Udacity's course, which costs $2,400 for three, 12-week terms, starts next month and was designed by company co-founder Sebastian Thrun, who launched Google's driverless car program.

Self-driving truck startup Otto, recently acquired by Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL], automaker Mercedes-Benz and chip maker Nvidia Corp contributed to Udacity's curriculum.

"If you go through this curriculum you are on the bleeding edge of self-driving cars," said Thrun.

FAST-TRACK TO JOBS?

The aim of the program is a faster path to employment, Thrun said, in a career that has an average salary of $138,000. Mercedes-Benz, Chinese ride-service Didi Chuxing and others agreed to consider Udacity graduates for job openings.

The employer pool is growing quickly. Research firm and venture capital database CB Insights has identified 33 corporations working on autonomous cars, including auto makers GM and Volvo [VOLVO.UL], internet giants Baidu and Google, and Silicon Valley companies tech firm Intel and startup ride-service Lyft.

GM for one is hiring dozens of engineers in the area, and Uber is looking to fill more than 50 positions in Pittsburgh, where the company is building a fleet of self-driving cars, according to jobs website Glassdoor.

Story continues

"I love people with MIT and Stanford degrees," Thrun said. But "there are a lot of people who can't make it to those institutions. There are entire generations of people who are equally smart and equally capable."

Yet the idea that a certificate from an online training program would secure a job in one of the most difficult emerging technologies strikes some recruiters as very unlikely.

A master's degree in computer science from a leading university such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Stanford University is the usual, and still preferred, course.

"You'd be hard-pressed to say the Udacity candidate is going to be more qualified because they have some specific knowledge about self-driving cars, versus someone who has a rock-hard degree in computer science or data science," said Dave Carvajal, chief executive of recruiting firm Dave Partners, which fills executive jobs at venture-backed tech companies.

HUNGRY FOR TALENT

With a scarcity of talent in the workforce, companies have been recruiting directly from universities with strong programs in data science, robotics and machine learning. Carnegie Mellon University suffered an exodus of staff last year after Uber hired away 40 faculty and researchers for its Advanced Technologies Center.

Startups, too, are sparring to build autonomous vehicle staff. Varden Labs, a company of fewer than 15 people working on self-driving car technology, is "hiring aggressively" although the field is "very competitive," said co-founder Alex Rodrigues.

Technology companies frequently bemoan their struggle to hire qualified engineers, but the challenge is more pronounced in autonomous vehicles, which combines complex technologies such as machine learning and computer vision, and applies them to cars. Startups in particular are struggling to hire against powerhouses such as Apple Inc and Google, say recruiters.

"The startups will have to get by with one, two, three or four people who can do it," said Dan Portillo, talent partner at venture firm Greylock Partners.

But a small team may be enough for startup success. GM in March purchased Cruise Automation, a three-year-old autonomous vehicle startup with about 40 employees, for about $1 billion. Uber last month agreed to buy Otto, which is less than a year old, in a deal valued at $680 million.

"Early hires are making unbelievable amounts of money in a few short years," Rodrigues said.

(Reporting by Heather Somerville. Editing by Peter Henderson, Bill Rigby and Andrew Hay)
Simon Property Group Inc. SPG, the Indianapolis, IN-based retail real estate investment trust (REIT) announced that two globally recognized restaurants, Nobu and Fig & Olive, will open shop at the premier shopping destination in The Galleria, Houston in 2017. Addition of Nobu  a globally recognized Japanese restaurant and Fig & Olive  a Mediterranean restaurant, is likely to meet the increased consumer demand for fine dining options at The Galleria.



Simon Property is engaged in acquiring, owning and leasing a diverse portfolio of shopping malls. The Galleria is the largest shopping center of Texas and spans over 2.4 million square feet. The center contains 400 fine stores and restaurants, two high-rise hotels, and three office towers. Opening of two exclusive restaurant brands at the center shows the commitment of Simon Property to offer shoppers a matchless shopping experience that includes fine retail stores and restaurants.



Nobu, respected for its Peruvian-Japanese fusion cuisine delicacy, will debut the first shop in Houston followed by a second in Texas, at The Galleria, in the fall of 2017. New York-based Fig & Olive will open the fashionable French Riviera fare at The Galleria in the fall of 2017.

SIMON PROPERTY Price



SIMON PROPERTY Price | SIMON PROPERTY Quote

Currently, Simon Property carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).



Investors interested in the retail REIT sector can consider some better-ranked stocks like American Assets Trust, Inc. AAT, EPR Properties EPR and Weingarten Realty Investors WRI. All these stocks hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Confidential from Zacks



Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



SIMON PROPERTY (SPG): Free Stock Analysis Report



AMER ASSETS TR (AAT): Free Stock Analysis Report



WEINGARTEN RLTY (WRI): Free Stock Analysis Report



EPR PROPERTIES (EPR): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Holding. The ceasefire in Syria appears to be holding, with no civilian deaths being recorded in its first 15 hours, a monitoring group reported Tuesday. A few air attacks were reported just after the agreement took hold at 7:00 p.m. local Syria time (12:00 p.m. EST), but most of the bloodied country, for the first time in a long time, made it through the night quietly.

The agreement hammered out between the United states and Russia last week to halt airstrikes against all groups  save ISIS and the Nusra Front  still has six days to go before American and Russian military planners begin sharing targeting lists to strike the jihadists, but distrust remains. The Russians still want to expand the list to include foes of the Assad regime, while the Americans, burned by the Russians and unconvinced of their willingness to hold to the deal, move forward warily.

FPs Dan De Luce, Paul McLeary and John Hudson took the pulse of various U.S. diplomats and military officials Monday, and found them distrustful, at best. A few choice cuts:

The Russians need to put their money where their mouth is. Theyve been reluctant to do that so far, said one senior military officer on Monday.

If youre dealing with the Russians on this, you often need a long shower afterwards, an anonymous diplomat said.

FP also reported some details of the U.S.-Russia agreement, including that when it comes time to pick targets, were going to have Russians and Americans sitting down in a room together with representatives from about 11 other nations to select mutually-agreed targets, on senior military official said. However, intelligence-gathering methods, sources, and why a particular target might be important will not be exchanged, the official stressed. Just the lists of targets.

Iran threatens U.S. spy planes. In another worrying incident in the Persian Gulf over the weekend, Iran threatened to shoot down two U.S. Navy Poseidon EP-3 surveillance planes flying over international waters if they didnt move further from the Iranian coast, U.S. defense officials tell FOX News. We wanted to test the Iranian reaction, one US official told Fox when asked why the U.S. jets were flying close to Iran. Its one thing to tell someone to get off your lawn, but we werent on their lawnanytime you threaten to shoot someone down, its not considered professional.

Story continues

Irans Revolutionary Guard also launched a new ship on Tuesday it claims is capable of carrying a helicopter and up to 100 men. This ship increases the deterrent power of Iran and will have an effect on the calculations of the enemy, particularly America, Revolutionary Guard navy boss Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said at the launch. The unveiling comes at a time of increased tension between the U.S. and Iran in the Gulf, with more than 30 incidents between U.S. and Iranian vessels in the waterway this year, doubling the number during the same time period last year.

Flyover. Theres testing and messaging happening all over the place these days. Heres the latest: American warplanes roared over South Korea on Tuesday, just days after the North conducted its fifth nuclear test. Two U.S. B-1 bombers flew with Japanese warplanes over international waters, and after the Japanese planes peeled off near the Korean coast, South Korean F-15 fighters U.S. F-16 fighters took their place to conduct a low-level pass near Osan, South Korea in order to demonstrate the solidarity between South Korea, the United States, and Japan to defend against North Koreas provocative and destabilizing actions, said Adm. Harry Harris, Commander, U.S. Pacific Command. American and South Korean officials also said Tuesday they would work to secure a new round of strong sanctions on the North for their continued nuclear and ballistic missile testing.

Splitting up the cyber/intel family. Leaders at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community are expected to recommend to President Obama that he split the leadership of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command in order to create two distinct offices for electronic espionage and cyberwar, the Washington Post reports. The proposed move is being pushed by Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who are pressing for the split, with Carter seeking to build Cyber Command into a full-fledged fighting force that has its own network accesses to conduct attacks. Clapper, officials said, supports the idea in part to reduce tension over which force gets to use the networks  the spooks or the warfighters.

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

Tag team

The navies of China and Russia are drilling together in the South China Sea for eight days of the Joint Sea 2016 exercise, USNI News reports. In addition to normal exercise mission fare such as search and rescue and anti-submarine warfare, Chinas Peoples Liberation Army Navy says the drills will also practice island seizing. Sounds..promising. The exercise will involve five ships from Russia and a larger mix of vessels from China.

North Korea

Buckle up, because North Koreas recent nuclear test might not be the end of Pyongyangs theatrical provocations, the New York Times reports. In a statement released to the press, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said that North Korea may engage in terrorist attacks and local provocations following last weeks nuclear test in a course of confrontation which may lead to war. South Koreas defense ministry also said that the North can now carry out another nuclear weapons test at any moment at the Punggye-ri test site.

Philippines

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says American special operations forces should leave the country and end their 14 year presence working with the countrys military against Islamist militants in the southern Philippines, FPs Benjamin Soloway reports. So far, the Pentagon says it hasnt received any formal notification from the Philippines of a request to remove the roughly 100 commandos advising local forces and its unclear whether the famously erratic Duterte was serious or speaking rhetorically. Nonetheless, the comments raise questions about the U.S.-Philippine military relationship at a time when the two countries had been moving closer together as a result of shared anxiety over Chinas territorial ambitions in the region.

Syria

This again. For the fourth time in over a week, a Syrian artillery round has landed in Israels Golan Heights, prompting an airstrike from Israeli forces. Reuters reports that Syrian forces fired a mortar round, and the Israeli Air Force followed up by striking Syrian forces in Quneitra. Syrias military also fired two surface to air missiles during the air assault, claiming to have downed an Israeli jet and drone. Israels military denied the claim, saying all its aircraft were safe and accounted for.

Yemen

The Saudi-led coalition trying to oust the Houthi movement from power in Yemen is stiffing government troops on their pay, which is leading an increasing number of them to walk off the job, according to the New York Times. The coalition promised to pay troops around $270 a month but has been slow to deliver on the paychecks. Government troops in areas run by the United Arab Emirates, however, reportedly fare better in receiving timely compensation. By contrast, Houthi leaders have been regularly paying their forces a similar amount without interruption.

The cost of war

The U.S. has spent somewhere around $5 trillion on its wars since 2001, a new academic study says. The tally includes not only Pentagon spending, but the State Department and Homeland Security outlays as well. Study author Neta Crawford of Brown Universitys Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, called the total so large as to be almost incomprehensible.

Photo Credit: U.S. Pacific Command
Memphis' deadliest house fire in decades left nine people dead early Monday, with one child in critical condition, authorities said.



Firefighters arrived at the single-story home around 1:20 a.m. and found heavy smoke inside, the Memphis Fire Services Director Gina Sweat said in a news conference Monday morning.



Three adults and four children were found dead in the home, two other children died after they were transported to a children's hospital, according to officials.



An electrical malfunction in an air conditioning unit's power cord in the living room caused the fire, according to The Associated Press. It was under control in about 20 minutes.







The house did not burn down, although the inside was charred. Sweat called it the deadliest fire since the 1920s.



Some of the victims had signs of smoke inhalation while others had burns.



"It's a very sad day," Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland told the AP. "We are all in mourning."



The family home had a brick exterior with bars on some of its windows and doors.



It wasn't immediately clear to authorities if the people inside had tried to escape through the windows, Sweat said.



"They could have been simply overcome by smoke and never had an opportunity to escape," she said.



The fire caused $8,000 in damage to the home and $15,000 to the contents inside the home.



The community in the south Memphis neighborhood where the home was located has come together to raise funds for the family.



A fund was created at Regions Bank under the name Toots Family Funds.



A family friend, Felecia Wallace, told the AP she'd known the family since she was in elementary school.



"This is a loving family," she said. "If you needed anything, you could come right here. If you were hungry, you could come right here. If you needed a place to sleep, you could come right here."
By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - Thousands of rooftop solar energy customers in Nevada are expected to be grandfathered into older, more favorable rates for 20 years under a settlement between Elon Musk's SolarCity Corp (SCTY.O) and the NV Energy unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N).

Both companies on Tuesday confirmed the settlement, which is scheduled for a vote on Friday by Nevada's Public Utilities Commission.

The accord would shield roughly 32,000 customers who installed or applied to install rooftop solar before this year from new charges and reduced subsidies that the PUC had approved last December.

"This agreement is a victory not only for 32,000 solar customers in Nevada, but also for all Americans who expect these investments to be protected," Jon Wellinghoff, SolarCity's chief policy officer, said in a statement.

NV Energy had supported the new rates, saying the old rates forced its customers to subsidize those who favored green power.

But it later asked regulators earlier this year to implement the grandfather clause.

In a statement on Tuesday, NV Energy said its proposal was intended to "offer a solution" for solar customers "in the most efficient and timely manner."

Governor Brian Sandoval also supported the accord, after asking the companies to come up with a solution.

"I am hopeful that the PUC will act quickly on this agreement," he said in a statement. "It is time to move on."

At Berkshire's annual meeting on April 30, Buffett expressed support for NV Energy's original position.

"I personally think that if society is the one that's benefiting from the reduction of greenhouse gasses, that society should pick up the tab," he said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Alan Crosby)
Mogadishu (AFP) - Somalia on Tuesday agreed to lift a week-old ban on imports of Kenyan khat after a storm of controversy from angry growers of the leafy narcotic in neighbouring Kenya.

The decision was made on the margins of a historic one-day summit in the Somali capital, which was hosting a top-level African gathering for the first time in more than four decades.

Speaking at the close of the summit of the eight-nation IGAD trade bloc, Kenya's foreign minister Amina Mohamed said "the leaders have discussed relations between the two countries and ... the Miraa ban will be lifted as of the 14th September."

Khat, which is also known as miraa, is a red-stemmed, green-leafed plant that has a mildly amphetamine-like effect when chewed, like having one too many espressos.

Among Somalis it has long had social, cultural and religious uses but it is also frequently abused.

Early last week, Somalia's government suddenly banned aircraft that were carrying khat from entering Somali airspace.

While it is enjoyed in Somalia, khat is grown in neighbouring Ethiopia and Kenya, both of which have large farming communities relying on its export for their livelihoods.

Contacted by AFP, Somalia's transport minister Ali Ahmed Jama Jangeli had refused to give any reason for the ban and no explanation had been offered by any other government officials.

"This is a big loss to us," Dave Muthuri, chairman of the Kenya Miraa Farmers and Traders Association said last week.

"Farmers are crying because of the loss they are incurring. It caught everyone off-guard," he added.

Khat is banned in the US, Canada and most of Europe -- all places with large diaspora Somali communities.

But no government or authority has ever succeeded in banning it in Somalia, not the military dictatorship, the warlords nor the Islamic extremists.

The one-day summit was the first held there of the IGAD trade bloc since its creation in 1986.

The IGAD meeting in the Somali capital, which has come under repeated attack by the Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-aligned militant group, brought together the presidents of Kenya, Somalia and Uganda and the Ethiopian prime minister. Eritrea has suspended its membership.
An organization representing songwriters filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Justice Department, alleging that a ruling last month promoted payout disparity by streaming services and digital radio. The New York Times reports that the suit also names Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Renata B. Hesse, a Justice Department partner who oversees antitrust cases, as defendants.

Last month, the Justice Department ruled that companies like Ascap and BMI  the two primary companies that collect money for songwriters and earn more than $2 billion a year  must own 100 percent of the rights to the songs in their catalogue; they would not be able to offer songs with multiple writers who have agreements with different companies to radio or digital services on a compulsory basis. Songwriters of North America (SONA), an L.A.-based organization with some 200 members, claim that this ruling is a violation of songwriters' Constitutional property rights, and BMI has said it would challenge the rule at a federal hearing.



The Justice Department has said that songs with writers aligned with different organizations should renegotiate their deals. But SONA says that the ruling violates the Fifth Amendment since they perceived it to strip them of property rights without due process. Forcing songs to be governed by only one clearinghouse ostensibly creates a monopoly and, subsequently, they want the ruling to be declared illegal.

"The 100 percent mandate is an illegitimate assertion of agency power in gross violation of plaintiffs' due process rights, copyright interests and freedom of contacts, and needs to be set aside," the lawsuit claims.

Songwriter Michelle Lewis, who has written hits for Cher and Katherine McPhee, among others, founded SONA a year ago to promote advocacy for songwriters. Her lawsuit also features two other notable plaintiffs: Tom Kelly, who helped write Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors," and Pam Sheyne, who co-wrote "Genie in a Bottle" for Christina Aguilera.

Story continues

Lewis told the Times that while songs she's written for TV, such as a song in Disney's Doc McStuffins, would proffer quarterly royalty checks in the thousands, she receives less than $100 for songs streamed on services like Pandora and Spotify. "The honest truth is that if it weren't for the TV stuff, I'd be working at Starbucks," she told the outlet. "There is no way I could afford to be a songwriter just on streaming and digital radio."

Gerald P. Fox, who won a copyright infringement suit against Michael Bolton on behalf of the Isley Brothers in the Nineties, is representing SONA pro bono. The organization was advised by Jacqueline C. Charlesworth, who previously served as general counsel for the U.S. Copyright Office, in preparation for the suit.

Related Content:
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - U.S. pastor Steven Anderson has been banned from visiting South Africa over his anti-gays views, which the country's home affairs minister on Tuesday equated with hate speech. Anderson, of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, notoriously welcomed the gunning down in June of 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida by saying "there's 50 less pedophiles in this world". South African gay and lesbian groups collected more than 60,000 signatures opposing his visit this weekend, when he was expected to preach and seek converts to his church. Citing anti-discrimination laws designed to "prevent and prohibit hate speech", Home Affairs minister Malusi Gigaba told a media briefing he was banning Anderson indefinitely. South Africa became the first country in Africa to legalize gay marriage in 2006, but homosexuality is still widely frowned upon and same-sex unions are often decried as "un-African". Gigaba said that in the last 12 months, some 450,000 South Africans had attacked women who dressed and acted like men in public, and 24,000 had beaten men for dressing like women. Anderson said he felt sorry for South Africans. "I have been banned from South Africa and the United Kingdom," Anderson wrote on his Facebook page. "I feel sorry for people who live in South Africa, but thank God we still have a wide open door in Botswana." It was not clear when he was due to visit Botswana. In South Africa, gangs of men, especially in poorer black townships, have raped lesbians in the belief it will "cure" their sexual orientation. Although the country has one of the world highest rates of rape, activists say very few cases end in conviction. Women's groups say police and the justice system have been slow to tackle the problem. (Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by James Macharia and John Stonestreet)
By Mfuneko Toyana and Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's current account deficit narrowed more than expected in the second quarter, data showed on Tuesday, supporting Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's view that Africa's most industrialised economy was not in "recession territory". South Africa has a better than 50 percent chance of avoiding a downgrade of its credit rating to "junk" status this year, Gordhan told business leaders in Johannesburg on Tuesday. He also pledged to stick to deficit targets set out in his budget in February, despite weak economic growth. He warned, however, that surprising economic growth of 3.3 percent in the second quarter could not be sustained and pledged continued fiscal prudence, a key recommendation by ratings agencies. "The next year or so is quite critical, not just for ratings but for ourselves as an economy and as a country as well," Gordhan told business leaders. South Africa's current account deficit narrowed to 3.1 percent of GDP in the second quarter, better than the 3.6 percent predicted by analysts and down from 5.3 percent in the first quarter. "The recent data has certainly reduced the chances of a downgrade. It's gone from more or less inevitable to being a possibility," said John Ashbourne, Africa analyst at Capital Economics. The rand pared losses after the data were released. It had dropped as much as 1 percent in early trade, following a warning by Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas that a police investigation into Gordhan was causing economic uncertainty. Gordhan declined last month to obey a police summons linked to the inquiry into whether he had used a tax service unit to spy on politicians, including President Jacob Zuma. Gordhan said he had done nothing wrong and his supporters have called the investigation a witch hunt. Divisions within the African National Congress have widened since the ruling party suffered its worst-ever local election results last month. Analysts say the rifts result from a power struggle between Zuma and Gordhan. Zuma is due to appear in parliament at 2 p.m. (1200 GMT), where he expected to be questioned about alleged rifts with Gordhan and his relationship with the Guptas, a wealthy family. "It does destabilise, not only Treasury, it creates uncertainties across the economy," Jonas told 702 Talk Radio. "We feel confident there is no basis for the allegation. We are not worried about that." Jonas also said he had met Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, an anti-corruption watchdog, as part of her inquiry into whether the Guptas have been influencing high-level political appointments. Jonas dropped a political bombshell earlier this year when he said the Gupta family offered to secure him his boss's job. Zuma has said that the Guptas are his friends but denies doing anything improper. The Guptas have also denied making job offers to anyone in government. (Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Larry King)
The Nebraska Chapter of the United Nations Association will meet Monday (Sept. 19) at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, 84th and South streets. A program at 12:10 p.m. will be preceded by an 11:30 a.m. lunch.

Continuing a study of the UN Sustainable Goals, Alice Dahle, president of the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Chapter and a member of the Steering Committee of UNA Women, will address "The UN and Women: Opportunities and Challenges."

She will list the UN accomplishments for the benefit of women: providing a forum for women to meet and discussing the issues that affect them; defining the universal womens rights, and passing resolutions to protect women in armed conflict. She will outline the goals now undertaken by the UN to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, and explain the necessity of getting member states to support the UN goals and of holding the UN accountable for meeting the goals.
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma complained on Tuesday about being abused by opposition parties whenever he addressed parliament and asked the House Speaker to take action to address the issue. "Each time when I come here, I am abused by members of your parliament, because instead of answering questions I sit here being called a criminal, a thief. I think this house must do something about it," he said in parliament. In a rebuke that hit Zuma financially and politically, the Constitutional Court ordered him in March to return some of the $16 million spent on enhancing his private residence, triggering claims by opposition parties that he should resign. Zuma denied he had acted dishonestly over the upgrade. (Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Writing by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia)
South Korea was clearing up on Tuesday after being struck by its most powerful earthquake since records began.

The 5.4 magnitude quake late Monday sent people scurrying from buildings, unused to the kind of seismic events that regularly shake neighbouring Japan.

Seismologists said the quake was a natural geological phenomenon, and unrelated to the "artificial earthquake" caused last week when North Korea carried out an underground nuclear test.

There were no reported deaths, but six people suffered minor injuries after being hit by falling objects, the Ministry of Public Safety and Security reported.

South Korea's lively social media was flooded with images of shattered storefront windows and people fleeing apartments in panic, some with children in their arms.

Some spent the night in shelters or in their cars.

Kakaotalk, the country's largest mobile app, which is used by 40 million people, partially went down, the company said, as users rushed to exchange messages in the aftermath of the quake.

Television footage showed bottles falling from shelves at a store, and long cracks that had developed in a basement parking lot.

Reactors at four nuclear power plants were shut down for safety inspections, and were expected to remain off line for several days, but there were no indications of any damage.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., which operates the country's 24 nuclear plants, it had halted operations at four sites "on the off-chance" they might have suffered damage.

"All our plants were designed to sustain quakes of up to 6.5 magnitude", a company spokesman told AFP.

The US Geological Survey said the country had been hit by two quakes, the first of which had a magnitude of 4.9. It was followed an hour later by the more powerful 5.4 magnitude shake.

Korean seismologists, who put the magnitude of the second quake at 5.8, said it was the most powerful to hit since records began in 1978.
Hyunmoo missile

After North Koreas latest successful nuclear test, the Hermit Kingdom isnt the only nation that's using colorful rhetoric to publicize its militaristic intentions.

In response to the higher level fifth nuclear test conducted by North Korea last week, Yonhap News Agency reports that South Koreas Defense Ministry made public its plans for an extensive bombing operation called Korea Massive Punishment & Retaliation (KPMR).

"Every Pyongyang district, particularly where the North Korean leadership is possibly hidden, will be completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosive shells as soon as the North shows any signs of using a nuclear weapon, a South Korean military source told Yonhap.

In other words, the North's capital city will be reduced to ashes ...

KPMR outlines a preemptive strike on high-profile North Korean leaders, including Kim Jong-Un, in the event of either a war or the use of nuclear weapons is determined to be an imminent threat.

"The defense ministry's  [KPMR] is aimed at wiping a certain section of Pyongyang completely off the map," the military source stated in Yonhap.

In order to achieve these goals, South Korea has plans to mobilize its own arsenal of ballistic weapons  the Hyunmoo missiles, or Guardian of the Northern Sky  that have a range of up to 600 miles.

The total number of Hyunmoo missiles South Korea has in its arsenal is unknown, after reports surfaced of its intention to bolster production of the home-grown missile last month.

South Korea special forces

Story continues

To supplement bombing runs and missile strikes, Yonhap also reported that a source indicated a special operations unit had been founded with the purpose of taking out North Korean military leaders.

"This military unit is dedicated to targeting the North Korean leadership and launching retaliatory attacks on them, he stated in Yonhap.

Since Seouls statement was released, two US B-1 bombers, accompanied by South Korean F-15K fighter jets, performed a low-altitude show-of-force over Osan Air Base, about 48 miles from the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

But just like the doubts that accompany North Koreas frequent threats, foreign policy experts share the same sentiment for South Koreas KPMR plan.

In a Japan Times interview, Georgetown University professor Victor Cha claimed that although the possibility of a plan to strike Kim Jong Un and other military leaders may exist, it would be more an expression of anger and frustration than a strategic attempt to deter the adversary.

Additionally, Peterson Institute for International Economics analyst Kent Boydston also hinted at the difficulty of South Koreas plans.

Certainly North Korea would take precautions against a decapitation strike and it is unlikely that South Korea and the US could know exactly where the top leadership is located in a crisis, Boydston stated in The Japan Times.

Given the nature of the rhetoric behind both Koreas' preemptive and subsequent retaliatory strikes, its hard to imagine a scenario where mutually assured destruction isnt a possibility.

It is also hard to imagine a decapitation strike not escalating to broader hostilities, said Boydston.

NOW WATCH: Heres how North Koreas weird internet works





More From Business Insider


By Christine Kim and Cynthia Kim

SEOUL, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The South Korean government, long a bastion of support for the country's big conglomerates, is sticking to its hard-line stance on Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd , whose collapse is roiling global supply chains.

Since the world's seventh-largest container carrier filed for court receivership in late August, the government has sought to limit the impact on the export-dependent economy and Hanjin customers but is otherwise leaving the company to fend for itself.

"It now is entirely up to the court," a government official closely linked to the matter told Reuters, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

South Korea has said no government or central bank money will be directly injected into firms undergoing restructuring in the ailing shipping and shipbuilding industries.

Instead, it has extended aid to small-to-medium sized businesses jolted by the restructuring process, dishing out cheap loans and providing funds to maintain shipbuilding jobs and retrain workers in hard-hit regions of the country.

The government has also taken measures such arranging for rival shipper Hyundai Merchant Marine and smaller carriers to deploy ships to routes that were served by Hanjin.

In recent months, Korea Development Bank discussed arranging a merger between Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM), itself under creditor-led debt restructuring. That effort ended when Hanjin sought court receivership after lead creditor Korea Development Bank halted support, Hanjin Shipping executive Kim Hyun-seok said last week.

KDB, which is also HMM's lead creditor, would be willing to back HMM's acquisition of Hanjin assets if it makes business sense and depending on the outcome of the receivership process, a KDB official told Reuters.

"Although we are considering ways to absorb Hanjin Shipping's market share, HMM is currently primarily focused on supporting cargo owners to minimize their difficulties," a spokeswoman for HMM said.

Story continues

POLITICALLY PALATABLE

The tougher government line with Hanjin marks a departure.

Last year, KDB and the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) pledged 4.2 trillion won ($3.8 billion) in loans and equity to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd, the world's largest shipbuilder.

That drew criticism after Daewoo Shipbuilding, which received a bailout some 15 years ago, shocked investors with a first-half operating loss of about 3 trillion won.

Kong Dong-rak, general manager at Korea Asset Investment Securities, said the government's decision was based on the cost of reviving Hanjin, given the high charter fees Hanjin is paying to shipowners and the industry's bleak near-term prospects.

Hanjin had debt of 6.1 trillion won at the end of June.

"The government decided it was time to cut them off because they knew they were sinking," Kong said.

Playing hardball with Hanjin, with just 1,428 employees in South Korea, is easier to do politically than with Daewoo Shipbuilding, which employs 38,000.

"Lazy thinking that the government will have no choice but to help shippers if they run into problems has ended up hurting trading companies," President Park Geun-hye said at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

"We will not sit silently by as corporate managements who do not aggressively try to recover their businesses and wait for the government to solve everything," she said.

A Hanjin Shipping spokeswoman declined comment.

Financial regulators blamed the carrier for a lack of information.

"We tried to set up countermeasures for logistics issues which will arise from Hanjin Shipping's court receivership, but we were unavoidably limited as Hanjin Shipping did not respond to any requests from creditors for information about cargo owners and sailing plans," FSC chairman Yim Jong-yong told a parliament hearing last week.

South Korea's trade ministry has been helping cargo owners and exporters, but not Hanjin itself, an official there said.

"All additional help that goes to Hanjin should be limited to supporting the offloading of cargoes. No more," said an official directly involved in discussions with creditors.

($1 = 1,115.3000 won)

(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee and Jane Chung; Editing by Tony Munroe and Lincoln Feast)
By Christine Kim and Cynthia Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - The South Korean government, long a bastion of support for the country's big conglomerates, is sticking to its hard-line stance on Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd, whose collapse is roiling global supply chains.

Since the world's seventh-largest container carrier filed for court receivership in late August, the government has sought to limit the impact on the export-dependent economy and Hanjin customers but is otherwise leaving the company to fend for itself.

"It now is entirely up to the court," a government official closely linked to the matter told Reuters, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

South Korea has said no government or central bank money will be directly injected into firms undergoing restructuring in the ailing shipping and shipbuilding industries.

Instead, it has extended aid to small-to-medium sized businesses jolted by the restructuring process, dishing out cheap loans and providing funds to maintain shipbuilding jobs and retrain workers in hard-hit regions of the country.

The government has also taken measures such arranging for rival shipper Hyundai Merchant Marine and smaller carriers to deploy ships to routes that were served by Hanjin.

In recent months, Korea Development Bank discussed arranging a merger between Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM), itself under creditor-led debt restructuring. That effort ended when Hanjin sought court receivership after lead creditor Korea Development Bank halted support, Hanjin Shipping executive Kim Hyun-seok said last week.

KDB, which is also HMM's lead creditor, would be willing to back HMM's acquisition of Hanjin assets if it makes business sense and depending on the outcome of the receivership process, a KDB official told Reuters.

"Although we are considering ways to absorb Hanjin Shipping's market share, HMM is currently primarily focussed on supporting cargo owners to minimize their difficulties," a spokeswoman for HMM said.

Story continues

POLITICALLY PALATABLE

The tougher government line with Hanjin marks a departure.

Last year, KDB and the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) pledged 4.2 trillion won (2.85 billion pounds) in loans and equity to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd, the world's largest shipbuilder.

That drew criticism after Daewoo Shipbuilding, which received a bailout some 15 years ago, shocked investors with a first-half operating loss of about 3 trillion won.

Kong Dong-rak, general manager at Korea Asset Investment Securities, said the government's decision was based on the cost of reviving Hanjin, given the high charter fees Hanjin is paying to shipowners and the industry's bleak near-term prospects.

Hanjin had debt of 6.1 trillion won at the end of June.

"The government decided it was time to cut them off because they knew they were sinking," Kong said.

Playing hardball with Hanjin, with just 1,428 employees in South Korea, is easier to do politically than with Daewoo Shipbuilding, which employs 38,000.

"Lazy thinking that the government will have no choice but to help shippers if they run into problems has ended up hurting trading companies," President Park Geun-hye said at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

"We will not sit silently by as corporate managements who do not aggressively try to recover their businesses and wait for the government to solve everything," she said.

A Hanjin Shipping spokeswoman declined comment.

Financial regulators blamed the carrier for a lack of information.

"We tried to set up countermeasures for logistics issues which will arise from Hanjin Shipping's court receivership, but we were unavoidably limited as Hanjin Shipping did not respond to any requests from creditors for information about cargo owners and sailing plans," FSC chairman Yim Jong-yong told a parliament hearing last week.

South Korea's trade ministry has been helping cargo owners and exporters, but not Hanjin itself, an official there said.

"All additional help that goes to Hanjin should be limited to supporting the offloading of cargoes. No more," said an official directly involved in discussions with creditors.

(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee and Jane Chung; Editing by Tony Munroe and Lincoln Feast)
A version of this interview first appeared in the print edition of TheWrap Magazines Fall TV Issue.

ABCs Speechless stars Minnie Driver and John Ross Bowie as a middle-class couple with three children, including a teenage boy with cerebral palsy, who move to an Orange County, California neighborhood they cant afford but want to live in because of its school district.

What makes the show special?

JOHN ROSS BOWIE: I think theres an inherent challenge in this material. Theres a way to do it where its very maudlin and overly sentimental, and theres a way to do it where its actually kinda tasteless. And I love how the show walks a line between those two things really well, and maybe dipped its toes in both. Thats what makes it work. There was an interesting tone about it that I had not seen before on TV. Theres a lot of interesting stuff about the lengths well go to as a people to make our kids happy and taken care of, and the ways we fall short sometimes.

MINNIE DRIVER: And I love that we have the absolute worst house in a really nice neighborhood.

BOWIE: We were talking about this earlier  we might have the worst house in the history of TV comedies. This is a fixer-upper that is probably not going to get fixed up any time soon, and that was really exciting to me.

Also Read: How 'Speechless' Creator Got to Tell His Deeply Personal Story After 20 Years

A lot of the time in these aspirational comedies, you see the sets and think, No ordinary persons gonna live in that kind of place.

DRIVER: Whatever the opposite of aspirational is, thats our show.

BOWIE: With all due respect to our executive producer, who wrote on Friends, Monicas what? Shes like a junior chef at a restaurant? With a house like that?

DRIVER: They inherited the apartment from her grandmother.

BOWIE: Oh thats right, they did! Im sorry, I apologize. Still, though, nice place. Has a terrace, in the West Village? Granted theres no fourth wall, but still.

Story continues

Also Read: 138 Fall TV Shows: Every New and Returning Series (Photos)

What can you tell us about the rest of the first season?

BOWIE: Were just trying to find our place in this rather tony part of Newport Beach, in our terrible little house.

DRIVER: Is that where we live?

BOWIE: Yes, Newport Beach. According to the script, anyway.

DRIVER: [Laughs] I only read my part, obviously. Newport, really? Orange County?

BOWIE: Its Orange County, yeah. We moved from Tustin.

DRIVER I cant believe we live in Orange County. That is actually really a reason to be angry for me. Thats great. Thats good fuel for [my character] Maya.

BOWIE: Its all part of the process. Im so sorry, pro-cess.

DRIVER: [to Bowie] Thats why they cut that line, isnt it?

BOWIE: I think so.

Also Read: Minnie Driver Responds to Neighbors' Paint-Bombing Accusation: 'I'm a Single Mom'

DRIVER: Oh, God. There was a really funny line where Im explaining

BOWIE: She explains how our son with cerebral palsy gives the middle finger

DRIVER: The line was, Hes all there upstairs. The rest of him could use a tuneup. Thats the finger. Its a work in progress. They cut its a work in progress and I didnt understand why. And he just said its because I say it funny. I dont say it funny! We invented English!

BOWIE: Its not pro-gress, its prah-gress.

DRIVER: Aaaah. Ask me to be English in a show, and then cut me when I talk. See how that goes. Crikey. I will be trouble before this is done.

Speechless premieres Sept. 21 on ABC.

See more of TheWrap Magazines Fall TV Issue:

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save



Related stories from TheWrap:

7 Fierce New Fall TV Match-Ups: 'Supergirl' vs. 'Big Bang,' 'Empire' vs. 'Frequency' (Photos)

Minnie Driver Responds to Neighbors' Paint-Bombing Accusation: 'I'm a Single Mom'
By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American intelligence agencies are concerned about reports that foreign governments may be attempting to undermine the Nov. 8 U.S. elections through cyber attacks, Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, said on Tuesday. "We continue to be actively concerned," Rogers told a Senate hearing, responding to a question from Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Marcel Lettre, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, testified that the government is taking any such activities "quite seriously" and said an "aggressive investigation" is under way. McCain noted that one of the two states in which media reports said there was evidence of attempted Russian hacking was his home state, Arizona. Some analysts have said Arizona, which recently has been reliably Republican in presidential elections, could be tilting more toward the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, this year. McCain, a Republican, himself is in a tougher than usual re-election fight. Rogers said he could not provide specifics about spy agencies' current assessment of the alleged hacking in a public setting. But he added, "I will say this, that it continues to be an issue of great focus ... for the foreign intelligence community, attempting to generate insights into what foreign nations are doing in this area." Under further questioning, Rogers declined to characterize the activity as by a foreign nation-state. Lettre said the government would adopt a policy for dealing with any such activity once it had the results of the investigation. "The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security has an aggressive investigation underway," Lettre said. U.S. security officials have said that, starting last year, hackers infiltrated computers of the Democratic National Committee, Clinton's presidential campaign and her party's congressional fundraising committee. U.S. officials said they have concluded that Russia or its proxies were responsible, leading to calls by some Democrats and cyber security officials for the Obama administration to blame Russia publicly. Kremlin officials have dismissed the allegations as absurd, but there is anxiety in Washington over the possibility that a foreign power might be using hacked information to meddle in the November elections. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
One late night/early morning this past summer, Marjorie Saiser and her husband, Don, sat outside looking at the stars, watching for meteors. In the distance, they heard the sound of street construction, the beep of heavy vehicles backing up.

It was an interesting moment, Saiser recalled, a twinkle in her eye. There might be a poem there  in the juxtaposition. Im not sure yet.

Saiser views the stars, the sky, the prairie surrounding her childhood home in Naper, her yard in south central Lincoln, and even interactions with her husband at a traffic light through the eyes of poet. The award-winning writer has been telling stories since she was old enough to talk and writing poetry for more than 20 years. For her, poetry is a way to form connections.

Her latest collection of poems, "I Have Nothing to Say About Fire," explores the connections between our awareness of violence and cruelty, even as we experience moments of happiness.

Im attracted to poetry because of the connections, Saiser said. Its really important to connect to the life around us  and to the reader or listener.

"I Have Nothing to Say About Fire" is Saisers eighth book. Six have been published by The Backwaters Press, and, as Saiser likes to say, theres a story there.

* * *

Saiser comes from a long line of storytellers.

My mother was a great storyteller, she said. I did write as a child. I wrote stories. Then you get a job and raise children. I wasnt sure I would ever go back to it, but I did write again.

In the 1990s, Saiser returned to school to work toward a masters degree in creative writing. Many of her professors challenged her and helped hone her work, but it was the late William Kloefkorn who particularly inspired her.

I learned so much from him, she said. He encouraged and influenced lots of writers.

While she was a student, a professor asked her to read one of her poems at an informal holiday gathering. After the reading, a man introduced himself and said, Someday Im going to have a press and I would like to publish your work. That was Greg Kosmicki, himself a poet and writer, who later founded The Backwaters Press. He contacted Saiser and published her first collection of poetry, "Bones of a Very Fine Hand," in 1999.

Along the way, her poems came to the attention of Garrison Keillor, who has read seven of her poems on his radio program, The Writers Almanac.

When one of my first books was out, he called Lee Booksellers to ask how to pronounce my name, Saiser said. They were quite surprised to answer the phone and hear Garrison Keillor on the other end.

Saiser has links to Keillors readings on her website, poetmarge.com.

Hearing your work in that voice is something, she said. I like his timing.

* * *

It takes lots of time to write a poem. Hours. Maybe days. Saiser said her writing process was influenced by Ted Kooser.

He writes a lot, she said. You have to put in your time.

Saiser writes twice each day. In the early morning, she usually writes from the sunroom of her home. Later in the day she will read and write some more, often in a coffee shop. MoJava and The Mill are two of her favorites.

Growing up, her family ran a cafe where she waited tables. That may be why I love coffee shops, she said. Lots of people around, a warm cup of coffee and something sweet to eat.

She is also part of several writing groups, where she gets valuable feedback from other writers. She also attends poetry readings, which she finds inspiring. And she reads, which is a big part of her creative process. She is currently reading works by Lenora Castillo and Michelle Lyles, two Nebraska poets whose work is new to her. She also enjoys reading poetry by Miles Waggener and her friend, Cat Dixon.

Saiser has earned several awards for her work, including the Little Blue Stem Award in Poetry, the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry and the Leo Love Award. She has been nominated for a Pushcart award and, in 2014, received the WILLA Literary Award for her book, "Losing the Ring in the River." The prize, named in honor of Willa Cather, recognizes outstanding literature featuring womens stories set west of the Mississippi.

In "Losing the Ring in the River," Saiser tells the saga of life and love on the Great Plains through three generations of prairie women. Local playwright Brigid Amos is working on a play based on the book.

Saisers work is filled with themes of family, work and nature  all things that reflect her life growing up near the Niobrara River and her life now in Lincoln. One of her most popular poems, "Pulling Up Beside My Husband at the Stoplight," describes an interaction with her husband as they drove through quiet Lincoln streets one Sunday morning.

She often hears people say they dont read poetry or dont understand poetry. Her response?

You just havent found your type of poetry yet," she said. "There are so many kinds of poetry. Its just like music, you find the kind you like.

Saiser encourages people to listen to poetry read aloud online or attend poetry readings. She has clips on YouTube of herself reading her poems. A listing of local poetry readings is available at poetrymenu.com.

Saiser continues to observe life around her and look for connections. Her next project will be about doors in the world.

I began to see openings, things that open, things that close, she said. A person can be a door.

In the meantime, something might catch her eye and become a poem in progress.

I love to be outdoors in just an ordinary neighborhood, she said. To observe the connections. To watch a family of racoons walk across the dewy lawn as the sun rises. To connect to whats around us in the neighborhood.

Saisers books are available at Indigo Bridge Books, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
A new study shows that men who work out on a whim may do so because theyre worried about their body fat and are likely to be motivated by shame and guilt. (Photo: Getty Images)

Women arent the only ones with body image issues.



A recent study published in the September issue of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that men who go through periods of working out on a whim may be doing so because of hidden fears about body fat.



Psychology investigators from the United Kingdom and Australia asked 100 men to complete two exams  with one being an automatic assessment designed to evaluate their nonconscious (implicit) motivations for heading to the gym. Each of the male volunteers had a slightly elevated BMI (body mass index) and reportedly exercised for roughly hourlong sessions two to three times a week.



As a result, the authors discovered that the guys who worried about their perceptions of body fat were more likely to become spontaneous gym rats. Plus, these unplanned, impulsive visits to a fitness center are more likely to be motivated by feelings of guilt, shame, or pressure, as opposed to a desire to build muscle and improve overall health.

Anyone can be affected by what they see online, the social cues images can give, and the popular conceptions of an ideal body image, says study co-author David Keatley from the U.K.s University of Lincoln, in a press release. With the recent growth of selfies and the return of musclebound Hollywood icons such as Vin Diesel and Hugh Jackman, theres a real risk that males may be more influenced to attend the gym more regularly and work out to a point where it becomes dangerous or detracts from their well-being.

This study doesnt surprise me at all, Robi Ludwig, a psychotherapist and author of Your Best Age Is Now, tells Yahoo Beauty. Men are also affected by the visual images they are exposed to and surrounded by.



Ludwig adds that its imperative to understand that men are also diagnosed with eating disorders and body dysmorphia (also known as body dysmorphic disorder).



Story continues

In fact, the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) states that 10 million men will suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some point in their lives, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, or OSFED (other specified feeding or eating disorder). NEDA also reports that men with eating disorders often suffer from co-morbid conditions, such as depression, excessive exercise, substance disorders, and anxiety.



And then theres muscle dysmorphia  which NEDA refers to as an emerging condition a disorder in which men obsess about what they perceive as inadequate muscle tone and feed this compulsion by spending many hours in the gym, squandering excessive amounts of money on supplements, or engaging in abnormal eating patterns.



We tend to not think about men as being affected by these types of issues, but they are, states Ludwig. And the numbers are increasing.



Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
The Supreme Court refused on Tuesday morning to reinstate even temporarily an extra five days of voting in Ohio this year  the so-called Golden Week that the state legislature eliminated three years ago. No dissents were noted in the brief and unexplained order.

In a separate case, the Court refused to block a Senate investigating subcommittees demand for records on how an online publisher of ads  including sexually explicit items  makes its editorial decisions. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., took no part, but there was no indication of any dissent.

The Courts action on early voting was a significant blow to the Democratic Party in the state, because the Golden Week opportunity  when it existed  had brought out tens of thousands of black and low-income voters who normally support Democratic candidates. In the 2004 election, some 60,000 voters took advantage of that option.

In this years presidential election, as in most such elections in modern times, Ohio appears likely to be a battleground state where both parties candidates will be competitive.

The state Democratic party and some of its county committees had asked the Court to delay a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, rejecting the challenge to the elimination of that period of voting. Ohioans will still have 30 days of early voting this year, before election day, but they have to be registered before doing so. Under the Golden Week option, for five days before the 30-day voting span opened, an Ohioan could register and vote on the same day.

Last May, a federal judge ruled that the legislatures elimination of Golden Week was unconstitutional and violated the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. That was the order the Sixth Circuit Court overturned, and Tuesdays action by the Supreme Court left the Circuit Court ruling undisturbed.

The Justices acted on the issue after Justice Elena Kagan had referred the Democrats request to her colleagues for action.

Story continues

The Courts separate order on Tuesday on a Senate investigation came in a case involving Backpage.com, an online publisher of classified ads on many subjects. The Senate panel is investigating claims that the adult section of Backpage has contributed to illegal activity in sex trafficking.

The online site and its chief executive officer have been fighting the Senate subcommittee for more than a year. On September 6, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., temporarily delayed any enforcement of the panels subpoena until after the lawyers for the subcommittee could respond.

The Chief Justice then referred the issue to the full Court, leading to Tuesdays order denying Backpage any further relief, and lifting the Chief Justices temporary order.

Backpage, represented in its request by prominent lawyers in the field of First Amendment law, had hoped that the case could lead the Court to reopen the question of whether the Amendment protects a right to gather information for publication.

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. This article first appeared on lyldenlawnews.com.

Recent Stories on Constitution Daily

Does conviction of a serious crime always mean the loss of gun rights?

On This Day, the name United States of America becomes official

Constitution Check: Do online publishers have a right to gather news?
An SUV crashed into a gas stations convenience store, destroying its entrance and hitting the clerk in Clinton, Connecticut, on September 1. Surveillance camera footage captured the moment from three different angles, inside and outside the store. The images were released by the Clinton Police Department, which is investigating the case.

The clerk, 33-year-old Nirav Patel, suffered minor injuries and is recovering, police said. The driver was identified as 64-year-old Christopher Caterino from Greenfield, New York. He was cited for reckless driving and was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the moment of the incident, according to the police. Credit: Clinton Police Department
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swiss power and automation group ABB should spin off and list its Power Grids unit, the head of activist fund Cevian, ABB's second largest shareholder, said on Tuesday.

Earlier this year, Germany's Manager Magazin reported that Cevian had hired consultants to study a potential break-up of the group.

ABB officials have said they oppose such a move.

"To spin off and list Power Grids is the only rational and logical business decision," Cevian founder and managing partner Christer Gardell told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

"Big companies that consist of separate operations like ABB are bureaucratic, slow and ineffective."

Gardell said he wanted shares in Power Grids to be divided up among current owners.

He said an improvement in Power Grids' results recently was not a reason to reject a spin-off.

"Furthermore, we don't see any vital synergies in the current structure which cannot be dealt with by a cooperation agreement between Power Grids and the other units," he said.

Cevian owns around 5.2 percent of ABB's share capital and voting rights. ABB's largest shareholder is Sweden's Investor with a roughly 10 percent stake.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson; editing by Jason Neely)
ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland's highest court has ruled a request from the Netherlands for information on Dutch account holders at Swiss banks is valid, overturning a lower court's decision to block the order.

Swiss banks have paid billions of dollars in fines in recent years as global prosecutors, led by the United States, chipped away at the secrecy rules that for decades enabled the world's wealthy to keep their cash in Switzerland, out of sight of the taxman.

Last year, the Netherlands said it had requested information on Dutch account holders at UBS (UBSG.S) and Credit Suisse (CSGN.S), making use of a new bilateral agreement to crack down on tax avoidance.

But in March, the Swiss Federal Administrative Court sided with a Dutch client of UBS fighting the order, ruling the request was not covered by the information-sharing agreement since it did not include names of individuals.

The tax agency appealed, and on Monday Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court ruled the Dutch request did not require the names of clients but just needed enough information to identify account holders.

The court said the purpose of the double taxation agreement is to ensure a broad information exchange between the Netherlands and Switzerland, without encouraging so-called "fishing expeditions".

The decision will be a printed as a guideline for future cases in this area.

The Swiss Federal Tax Administration said it was "happy" with the ruling. UBS declined to comment.

(Reporting by Joshua Franklin and Angelika Gruber; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Syrian cessation of hostilities that went into effect on Monday appears to be holding despite some reports of continued violence, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday. "We have seen ... some reports of sporadic violence but thus far the arrangement as a whole seems to be holding and the violence ... is lower in comparison to previous days and weeks," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a briefing. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by James Dalgleish)
RACINE  A Racine couple is facing 26 counts of mistreating animals after police on Friday reportedly found more than 20 dogs in their home in cramped, dirty conditions.

The charges were filed against Heather D. Jensen, 33, and Terry S. Bogard, 64, both of 1437 Harmony Drive, on Monday. Both were given $5,000 signature bonds and have been ordered not to have contact with each other or possess domestic animals.

According to the criminal complaints, Racine Police were called to the couples home at 2:40 p.m. Friday after City of Racine Health Department and Wisconsin Humane Society staff said they were going to remove about two dozen dogs from the home.

An officer who entered the home reportedly saw 12 small-dog cages containing large dogs.

Many of the cages appeared to be too small to allow the dogs to move freely within them, the complaint states. The cages were all stacked on top of each other, two cages high.

The officer saw large amounts of dog food on the floor near the cages and several bowls that were flipped over, according to the complaint. He also did not seeing any bowls containing water.

The floors were covered in a thick coat of dog fur, the complaint states, and the walls were streaked with what the officer believed was mud or feces.

(Due) to the strong urine smell inside of the residence, I estimate that I was able to stay inside of the home approximately 30 seconds, the officer reported.

Twenty-six dogs in total were removed from the home, with 24 dogs taken by WHS. Two of Jensens personal dogs were turned over to family members down the street, according to the complaint.

Jensen and Bogard reportedly were extremely cooperative on Friday, bringing out the dogs one at a time, and providing names of each of the animals to police.

Jensen was reportedly utilizing the home as a shelter of sorts, apparently as part of her organization Lucky Mutts Rescue, Inc.

On Monday, a city Health Department notice was posted on the home, stating This unit cannot be used for human habitation occupancy or use.

Items were scattered in the driveway, including a white surgical-type mask hanging from a railing, while several flies buzzed around.

In court Monday

At an initial appearance on Monday Bogards attorney, Sheila Smith, who also represented Jensen, argued the charges should be dismissed because the state had failed to meet its burden of proof.

There is nothing, based upon what I see here in the criminal complaint  that would indicate that the animals were being negligently treated or treated in a cruel manner, Smith stated. In addition, there is no information indicating that the animals were suffering from any health issues.

Assistant Racine County District Attorney Dirk C. Jensen disagreed with that characterization. So did Racine County Court Commissioner Alice Rudebusch, who ultimately found there was probable cause for the case to proceed.

Nothing says these dogs have to be in pain or severely injured. There just has to be a showing of neglect, Dirk C. Jensen said. And I think based on the environment and condition of the home it shows neglect of each of the 26 dogs.

About Lucky Mutts Rescue

Wisconsin Humane Society spokeswoman Angela Speed confirmed Monday that WHS staff were called to assist police with an animal seizure in Racine on Friday.

Speed said the animals were being well-cared for at the three WHS campuses, but could not provide any further details.

State records list Jensen as the registered agent of Lucy Mutts, which incorporated in April 2015 with an address at 1437 Harmony Drive.

The operations website, luckymuttsrescue.org, describes the outfit as a non-profit, no-kill, all volunteer dog rescue organization serving the Wisconsin and Illinois areas  (and) primarily focusing on dogs in high kill public shelters.

Calls made to the phone numbers listed on the website were not answered Monday.
By Lisa Barrington and Tom Miles BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - A new ceasefire in Syria brought a full day with no combat deaths in the war between President Bashar al-Assad and his opponents, a monitoring body said on Tuesday, as efforts to deliver aid to besieged areas got cautiously under way. Twenty-four hours after the truce took effect, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura declared the situation had improved dramatically, saying U.N. aid access should be possible soon including to eastern Aleppo, the rebel-held half of the city that is under blockade. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had not received a single report of combatants or civilians killed by fighting in any areas covered by the truce. The ceasefire, brokered by the United States and Russia, is supported by countries that back Assad and his opponents, and marks the second attempt this year to halt a war that has frustrated peace efforts since fighting began more than five years ago. The Observatory estimates the death toll since the start of the conflict at abound 430,000, in line with U.N. estimates. About 11 million people have been made homeless in the world's worst refugee crisis. The ceasefire marks the biggest bet yet by Washington that it can work with Moscow to end a war that President Vladimir Putin transformed a year ago when he sent warplanes to join the fight on Assad's side. Moscow and Washington have agreed to share targeting information for strikes against fighters from Islamic State and the former Syrian branch of al Qaeda, the first time the Cold War foes have fought together since World War Two. The Observatory said the most intense fighting since the ceasefire began took place on Tuesday night in the village of Maan in Hama province. Insurgents operating in the Hama area included jihadists and nationalist rebels fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner. It was not immediately clear if the rebels involved in the fighting were parties to the ceasefire. A Syrian military source said armed groups had broken the ceasefire at 6 p.m. (10.00 a.m. ET) in Maan, attacking army positions with machine guns. Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said the fighting could be a serious threat to the ceasefire if it did not stop. A senior State Department official clarified that all groups except Nusra Front, which has renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and Islamic State had to abide by the agreement. "Our current understanding is that the only groups that are eligible to be targeted during this period are ISIS and al-Nusra Front," the official told a conference call with reporters. Outside the scope of the truce, Turkey said on Tuesday that air strikes by a U.S.-led coalition had killed three fighters from Islamic State. The agreement has been accepted by Assad and, far more reluctantly, by most of the groups that oppose him. The international community's first goal is to deliver aid to civilians in Aleppo, Syria's biggest city before the war, which has been divided for years and where the opposition area is under siege. DRAMATIC IMPROVEMENT In Geneva, de Mistura said there had been allegations of sporadic and geographically isolated incidents. But he told reporters: "There is no doubt a significant drop in violence." While stressing that only 24 hours of relative calm had passed, he said: "Sources on the ground, which do matter, including inside Aleppo city, said the situation has dramatically improved with no air strikes." While U.N. convoys have yet to enter Syria, de Mistura said that if the truce sticks, "(aid) access should be taking place very, very soon", and that the people of Syria could look forward to "no bombs and more trucks". But he said the United Nations was still waiting for Damascus to issue letters authorizing the deliveries. "We are eagerly hoping and expecting the government to issue them very soon." Syrian state media said armed groups had violated the truce in a number of locations in Aleppo city and in the west Homs countryside on at least seven occasions on Tuesday. The Observatory said pro-government forces shelled near two villages in the south Aleppo countryside and a neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus. But the reports of violence were far less intense than normal. The Russian military, which sent reconnaissance equipment to detect and suppress attempts at violations, said the ceasefire had largely been observed in Aleppo. Two aid convoys, each of around 20 trucks, crossed into northern Syria from the Turkish border town of Cilvegozu, about 40 km (25 miles) west of Aleppo, a Reuters witness said, although with security a concern, it was not clear how far into Syria they would go. A Turkish official said they carried mostly food and flour. The Syrian government has said it would reject any aid deliveries to Aleppo not coordinated through itself and the United Nations, particularly from Turkey. 'TECHNICAL ISSUES' A second senior U.S. official said there were some "technical issues" to be resolved before the trucks could proceed. "The regime is still present on the road, and under our agreement at some point in coming days they should be pulling back," the official told reporters. "The U.N. wants to make sure their convoys can get through both unhindered in terms of the regime and unthreatened in terms of the opposition, and to get safely into eastern Aleppo." The head of the city council for opposition-held Aleppo expressed concern that planned deliveries would be conducted according to Russian wishes and not meet the needs of an estimated 300,000 people living there. Brita Hagi Hassan said the rebel-held part of the city was in dire need of fuel, flour, wheat, baby milk, and medicines. Israel said its aircraft attacked a Syrian army position after a stray mortar bomb struck the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, a now-routine Israeli response to the occasional spillover from the war. It denied a Syrian statement that a warplane and drone were shot down. (Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington, Tom Miles in Geneva, Yesim Dikmen in Istanbul, Tom Perry in Beirut, Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Maria Kiselyova and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow and Orhan Coskun in Ankara; Writing by Nick Tattersall and Peter Graff; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)
Beirut (AFP) - More than 300,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since March 2011, a monitor said in a new toll Tuesday, the first full day of an internationally-brokered truce.

More than 86,000 civilians were among the 301,781 people killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The civilian toll includes 15,099 children and 10,018 women, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

Rebel fighters made up 52,359 of those killed.

A total of 59,006 Syrian soldiers have been killed, in addition to 48,048 other pro-government fighters from countries including Iraq, Iran and Lebanon as well as Syria.

Jihadists of the Islamic State group and the onetime Al-Qaeda affiliate now renamed the Fateh al-Sham Front accounted for 52,031 of the dead.

The Observatory said another 3,645 victims could not be identified.

The figure is an increase of nearly 9,000 on the last death toll published by the Observatory in early August.

The United Nations and the major powers have made repeated efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria but all have so far failed.

A new ceasefire brokered by Moscow and Washington went into effect at sundown on Monday and AFP correspondents and residents reported that it appeared to be holding on its first full day Tuesday.
Damascus (AFP) - Syria's government on Tuesday warned that all aid going to the divided city of Aleppo, particularly assistance sent by Turkey, must be coordinated with Damascus and the United Nations.

"Commenting on the statement issued by the Turkish regime on its intention to send what it says is humanitarian aid into Aleppo, the Syrian Arab Republic announces its rejection of the entry of any humanitarian aid to Aleppo, particularly from the Turkish regime, without coordination with the Syrian government and the United Nations," the foreign ministry said.

The statement, carried by state media, came nearly a full day into a fragile truce brokered by Russia and the United States that calls for immediate and unhindered humanitarian access throughout Syria.

Over the weekend, Turkey said it was already making preparations to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo, where some 250,000 people in the rebel-held east are under government siege.

But a Syrian source close to the government said the US-Russian deal only allowed the United Nations to send aid into Aleppo.

The source said the sealed trucks would come from Turkey and would be opened inside Aleppo by the Syrian Red Crescent, which would distribute the aid.

Turkey is a key backer of Syria's opposition and has regularly called for President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

Damascus in turn accuses its northern neighbour of sponsoring "terrorism".
Damascus (AFP) - Syria's military said Tuesday it shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone in response to an attack on Syrian army positions -- a claim denied by Israel.

"Our air defences blocked the attack and shot down the military aircraft in (the southern province of) Quneitra and a drone" in the province of Damascus, said the Syrian army statement carried by state news agency SANA.

It accused Israeli forces of supporting "armed terrorist groups" in the country's south.

The Israeli army said none of its aircraft had been downed overnight on Monday, as claimed by Syria, and it carried out fresh strikes against Syrian artillery positions on Tuesday night.

Both raids were in response to what appeared to be stray fire from fighting in Syria landing on the Israeli-held zone of the Golan Heights.

"At no point was the safety of (Israeli) aircraft compromised. Nothing true about what they claim," military spokesman Arye Shalicar said Tuesday.

He said that two surface-to-air missiles had been launched at Israeli aircraft overnight Monday.

An Israeli military spokeswoman told AFP that Monday's projectile was most likely spillover from "internal fighting in Syria."

It was the fourth such incident in nine days, and came as a new Syrian ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States came into force on Monday.

The initial 48-hour truce does not apply to areas held by jihadists such as the Islamic State group.

Israel has sought to avoid being drawn into Syria's complex war which is now in its sixth year, but it has attacked Syrian military targets when fire from the conflict spills over.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian army said on Tuesday it had shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone in Syria after an Israeli attack on a Syrian army position in southern Syria, state media reported. SANA news agency said the warplane had attacked an army position at 1 a.m. on Tuesday in the southern Quneitra countryside. It and a drone were then shot down. The Israeli military was not immediately able to comment. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Hanoi (AFP) - A Taiwanese company has been fined $9,000 for dumping waste water in a Vietnamese canal, an official said Tuesday, just months after another firm from the island was blamed for mass fish deaths in the country.

Public anger has mounted against foreign companies accused of polluting Vietnam since April when tonnes of dead fish washed up off the central coast in the country's worst ecological disaster in decades.

That incident was blamed on a Taiwanese steel firm called Formosa which was slapped with a $500 million fine for discharging toxic waste into the ocean.

In the latest case, authorities have accused Taiwan's Header Plan screw manufacturer of allowing contaminated water to run-off into the Moi canal in Dong Nai in southern Vietnam.

State media said residents have complained of increasing pollution in the canal since the plant opened in 2002.

The company has been ordered to clean up the waterway and fined more than $9,000, an official said Tuesday.

"The Header Plan Company must pay the fine according to an order from the Dong Nai People's Committee," said an official from the provincial environment department, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We investigated the company's violation based on local residents' claims."

The official did not say when the waste water was discharged.

In June, Taiwan's Formosa agreed to pay the heavy fine for discharging contaminated waste which crippled livelihoods in the central coastal area where fishing is the main source of income.

Demonstrators held rare protests in the authoritarian country after the fish began washing up along shores near a Formosa construction site.

Protesters blamed officials for dragging their feet on investigations into the scandal, and many of the rallies were violently broken up with scores jailed.
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria  A little more than a year ago, Aboubacar Aboubacar was born under the thatched roof of his familys wood-and-straw hut in the village of Madriya in Nigerias northeastern Borno state. He knew very little in the beginning. His body seemed only to understand how to breathe and eat and issue a soft cry.

Except for his periodic pangs of hunger, the baby in his earliest days had little idea of violence. But in his short, hard life, Aboubacar would come to know it well.

While Aboubacars father, Aboubacar Yunnus, worked the fields, the infant stayed with his mother, Halima, and his older sister, Houwa, who was 13. He ate and slept as they cooked and cleaned. His 3-year-old brother, Yunnus, played and helped with chores.

At the end of every day, his father  a tall, rail-thin man who smiled when he was nervous  would come home, his clothes bearing flecks of earth and sweat. He would change into his clean jalabiya, the tails of the robe flapping as it let fresh air in. His calloused and sinewy hands often grasped a small, light blue Nokia phone, even though it held no SIM card and rarely held a charge.

Life had gotten harder in Madriya in recent years. As Boko Haram pursued its stated goal of establishing a caliphate in the Lake Chad region, it destroyed virtually everything in its path. Militants looted and burned villages, kidnapped children, and brutally murdered thousands of people. They mined fields and killed farmers as they tended their crops, strangling trade routes and hampering humanitarian access. Local markets dried up, and, like most of his neighbors, Aboubacar Yunnus was able to plant less and less each year. Food stocks dwindled, and neighbors increasingly talked about how people in nearby villages were dying of starvation.

Still, the family clung to a tenuous routine. Aboubacar ate and slept. Halima braided Houwas hair, the infant resting in his sisters lap. Aboubacar Yunnus worked the fields and checked his Nokia phone. For the first eight months of Aboubacars life, things continued like this, hunger and uncertainty forming the backdrop to daily life. Then came the violence of Boko Haram.

Story continues

Fathers with sick children talk to a staff member from the International Committee of the Red Cross in Muna camp, on the edge of Maiduguri, Nigeria. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Halima holds her 1-year-old son, Aboubacar, in the hut where they live in Muna. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Halima and her daughter, Houwa, who is 11 years old, hold Aboubacar as the family rides to the hospital in Maiduguri. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

It was nearly 1 p.m. one February day when the fighters arrived in pickup trucks and motorcycles, their AK-47 assault rifles and machetes held high. Aboubacar Yunnus was in his field, trying to salvage a spoiled harvest. Aboubacar was at home next to his mother as she ground the guinea corn the family grew. Even before she saw anything, Halima knew exactly what was happening. From outside the hut came the sound of gunshots and the screams of her neighbors, as the militants tore into the village.

Aboubacars father sprinted home from the fields to find the militants rounding villagers up, yelling and spitting with guns drawn.

Where are your guns? they demanded. Give us your guns!

The villagers insisted they didnt have any, apologizing each time they repeated it.

You are Fulani, and Fulani always have guns! the fighters yelled, referring to the main tribe of the village. Give them to us, or well slaughter you!

The back-and-forth continued as the villagers pleaded for their lives. The militants finally ordered everyone to lie down on the ground. Aboubacar, who had been in his sisters arms, was soon wedged among dozens of bodies in the dirt, perhaps sensing the fear and anger and violence rising around him.

The fighters singled out six young men  the strongest-looking among the villagers  and forced them to lie down in a row.

Well slit the throats of every man here if you dont give us your guns! the leader threatened as he waved a large blade at the row of bodies splayed out at his feet. But again the villagers insisted they could provide nothing. The six men on the ground pleaded. The villagers pleaded. Fear rippled from body to body.

The leader of the militants knelt down on the back of one of the young men, sliding the blade under his neck. Then he began to saw. After the young mans head was severed, four other militants raised their guns and fired into the line of men lying at their feet. The fighters proceeded to loot everything of value from Madriya. When they had finished, they mounted their vehicles and tore out of town. Aboubacars family and the rest of the villagers were left trembling, facedown in the dust.

Early the next morning, the whole village picked up and left. Aboubacar Yunnus gathered Houwa and Yunnus while Halima bundled Aboubacar onto her back. They began walking west, leaving behind everything and nothing. For three days, Aboubacar stayed swaddled and hitched against his mother as they walked. They had no food and barely any water. The heat was relentless.

On the third day, they arrived at the city of Maiduguri, where they were met by troops in the Nigerian military. More men with guns and stern faces lined the villagers up and, one by one, took the men aside to be interrogated. Those suspected of collaborating with Boko Haram were put in the back of a pickup truck and driven off for further questioning. Some were never heard from again, a number of villagers said.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari  a retired major general and former military ruler  was elected last year on a promise to end Boko Harams reign of terror in the countrys northeast. Since then, he has launched a new offensive against the group, retaking large tracts of land and killing scores of fighters. But suicide bombings, kidnappings, and attacks continue. Fear and insecurity still plague much of the region, and civilians continue to flee their ancestral villages.

Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, has absorbed nearly 1.7 million internally displaced people (IDPs) since the insurgency began. The government-run camps are overflowing, and aid agencies are at their limit. Increasingly, people are being forced to settle in informal camps on the citys outskirts, where access to basic services like potable water, sanitation, and even food is extremely limited.

Because the war against Boko Haram, like all wars, is waged through propaganda as well as military force, the poor conditions in these settlements arent just a tragedy for their residents  they are a major setback in the governments fight.

Displaced people wait for food to be distributed in Muna. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Displaced mothers hold their children as they wait for food to be distributed outside Maiduguri. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Displaced women wait beside stacks of food being distributed by the ICRC in Muna. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

A mother who recently fled her home in the countryside for the relative safety of Maiduguri feeds her child. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

ICRC staff members distribute food to newly arrived displaced people as a dust storm blows through the outskirts of Maiduguri. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

A young displaced woman walks through a dust storm in Maiduguri. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Displaced people wait for food to be distributed in Muna. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

The government wants them far away from where people look, a local health worker named Ibrahim, who asked that his last name be withheld, said of those fleeing insecurity in the countryside. They [the government] need to show they have control.

The daily arrival of hundreds of terrified civilians doesnt help that narrative. So the government has been pushing displaced people into ad hoc settlements farther and farther out of town, as far from sight as possible.

There has been a lot of long-term neglect and a refusal to act upon the plight of the IDPs, Grema Terab, the former head of Bornos State Emergency Management Agency, the organization in charge of the states humanitarian response, recently told the Guardian.

The result has been rising rates of disease and death  not in the impoverished rural hinterland, but in the states capital city. In July, the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres described the situation as a large-scale humanitarian disaster and warned that a famine could soon be declared.

The most heart-wrenching cases we are seeing involve young children hit by what I call the three Ms: malnutrition, measles, and malaria, said Helene-S. Plennevaux, the deputy head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Nigeria. The food shortage has reached a critical point, and as always the victims are the most vulnerable civilians  women and children especially.

Left: Aboubacar Yunnus comforts Houwa in the State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri. Right: Halima cradles young Aboubacar in the hospital. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Aboubacars family ended up in Muna, one of the sprawling informal camps that surround Maiduguri. Located on the farthest edges of town, Muna sits just barely inside the security berm that rings the city and a mile or two from a forest where Boko Haram moves freely. In May, when Foreign Policy visited the camp, more than 14,000 people were living there. Hundreds more were arriving each week, their makeshift wooden huts spreading out across the dusty plains.

Much like the village Aboubacars family had fled, life in their new home revolved around searching for food and gathering news of events outside  where Boko Haram had attacked recently, who was fleeing where, what conditions were like in one village or another. At night, the voices of neighbors carried easily through the tightly packed huts. Sleep was often fleeting as empty stomachs churned. With no source of income and only a tiny amount of savings that they had managed to bring with them, the family was forced to ration the oil and grain distributed by the ICRC, one of the only aid agencies working in Muna. It was enough to slow the creep of malnutrition but not to stop it entirely in the growing bodies of young children.

One month passed and then two. The children grew thinner, and finding supplementary sources of food became a daily endeavor.

With food sparse, hygiene minimal, and conditions cramped in Muna, many succumbed to disease. In May, the local government administration set up a tiny clinic in a thatched-roof hut in the camp. In its first week of operation, doctors treated a total of 151 children for severe acute malnutrition  characterized by an extremely low weight-to-height ratio, severe wasting, and, often, nutritional edema  and 48 people for measles. According to Mohamed Ibrahim, one of the two government clinicians working there, 14 children died from a variety of causes in the clinics first 10 days. With just the two clinicians and a small allotment of medicine provided each week by UNICEF, the clinic was unable to meet the demand for care, which quickly exceeded 300 patients per day.

By the end of the third month in Muna, Aboubacar had become sick with diarrhea and vomiting. Houwa and Yunnus soon fell ill as well. Having watched other children die in the camp, Halima rushed them to the clinic. They waited in line for a full day, only to meet an overwhelmed clinician who gave them paracetamol, an oral rehydration solution, and zinc. The causes of the diarrhea  bacteria from the unclean drinking water in the camp, most likely  remained untreated, however, and the illness persisted.

One-year-old Aboubacar is weighed at the State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri. He weighs 10.4 pounds  the average weight of a 1-month-old baby. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Aboubacar lies on the examination table at the State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Exhausted, Halima cradles Aboubacar in the hospital. Her son has been diagnosed with chronic diarrhea, severe malnutrition, bronchopneumonia, and malaria. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Hospital staff members tend to Houwa and her brother Yunnus in the State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

With each day that passed, Aboubacar became sicker and more fragile. The bones of his frail body began to show, and the contours of his frame became almost birdlike. Food passed through him without nourishing his body. After another handful of unsuccessful visits to the clinic, his mother and father were at a loss. Eventually, he stopped being able to move, his limbs straightening and his joints locking so that he was encased in a kind of frozen body.

Houwa and Yunnus were not faring much better. Houwas dehydration and malnutrition had become so bad that it made her cross-eyed, the muscles in one eye simply unable to re-center the iris. She was barely able to walk and no longer held Aboubacar, her arms too weak. Yunnus had stopped playing altogether.

With no money for medicine or transport, the family continued to deteriorate until June, when aid workers happened upon them by chance and intervened. In a last-ditch effort to save Aboubacar, who was in critical condition by then, the family was evacuated to the State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri. Aboubacar cried in pain as Halima carried him into the pediatric ward, his face revealing agony and confusion. In the hope of replenishing some of the vital liquids and salts the infant had lost, clinicians spent 15 minutes stabbing for one of the threadlike veins that wove up his thin arm.

But Aboubacars body had already begun to shut down. As malnutrition progresses, the body enters a state of catabolism, gradually devouring the muscles of the outer limbs and using them for energy. Eventually, the peripheral nervous system powers off, and the body can barely move. Organs fail, one by one, in order of least importance for survival: Kidney function slows, the liver degrades, bone marrow productivity declines, anemia emerges. The body attempts to preserve the brain at all costs.

Aboubacar was nearing the end of this deadly sequence: He was diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition; chronic diarrheal disease; severe dehydration; malaria; marasmus; bronchopneumonia; and severe electrolyte derangement, a mineral imbalance that impairs muscle function, among other things. He weighed 10.4 pounds  the average weight of a 1-month-old baby.

His siblings, Houwa and Yunnus, were in slightly better shape: They were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, chronic diarrheal disease, severe dehydration, malaria, and mild electrolyte derangement. Thirteen and 3 years old, respectively, they weighed 46 and 22 pounds.

Inside the stifling pediatric ward, fluids began to flow, and small amounts of donated medicine and food followed. The children slept. Exhausted, Aboubacar Yunnus and Halima sat in silence in the saunalike hospital room, their foreheads beaded with sweat.

Over the next few days, Yunnus and Houwa grew stronger, and emotion slowly returned to their eyes and faces. Houwa was able to stand on her own and then slowly walk.

Two young boys look on as their friend digs a grave in Muna on the edge of Maiduguri. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Men bury the body of a young boy named Abba, who died earlier that day in Muna. Just 1 year old when he died, Abba was sick with chicken pox and severe diarrhea. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Men lay Abbas body to rest in the informal gravesite outside Muna. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Displaced men pray at Abbas funeral outside Muna. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Bulami Kyari, a man who was displaced from his home in Mafa, a small town in Borno, stands next to the grave of his 3-year-old daughter, Fatima, whom he buried the day before. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

A young man looks behind as he and others walk back to Muna settlement after burying a three-year-old girl who had died earlier that day. (MACKENZIE KNOWLES-COURSIN | Foreign Policy)

Worried about money for food and medicine, Aboubacar Yunnus paced the room, his blue Nokia clutched tightly in one hand. The conditions in Muna hadnt improved, and the prospect of returning to the deprivation that nearly killed his entire family weighed heavily on his mind.

After four days, Houwa was released, returning to the camp with her father. Yunnus followed a few days later, but Aboubacar stayed behind with his mother  he hadnt improved. Halima cradled him constantly, sometimes rocking him back and forth in the hope of lulling his pain and fear, other times simply holding him quietly for hours, his small body drawn taught and locked.

On June 18, 16 days after he arrived at the hospital, Aboubacar Aboubacar died, his small body finally unable to sacrifice any more of itself. Like the thousands of other civilians who have died as a result of conflict, starvation, and disease in northern Nigeria, his death went unnoticed to those beyond his family.

Across the road bordering Muna sits a small but growing gravesite. On most evenings, a group of men approaches with at least one small body wrapped in white and then returns to the camp empty-handed, the gravesite at least one plot bigger. The funerals are short and efficient, but the weight on the men is visible as they return.

Aboubacar was buried here, at the farthest margins of Maiduguri, in a small hole dug at the unmarked gravesite. He was 1 year old.
DAR ES SALAAM (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The Tanzanian government and aid agencies have dispatched medical workers, food and shelter materials to the northwest region where an earthquake at the weekend killed 16. The quake, which struck the Kagera region on the shores of Lake Victoria on Saturday, measured 5.7 and injured more than 250 people, local authorities said. Salum Kijuu, Kagera Regional Commissioner said 840 homes had been destroyed and another 2,000 damaged, leaving thousands of families homeless. A smaller aftershock hit the region on Monday. "We are trying our very best to offer necessary humanitarian support to the victims such as medical care, food and temporary shelter," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. He said authorities were still assessing the scale of the destruction and could not yet determine how many people were in need of assistance. The government said on Tuesday it had dispatched 15 specialist doctors to the region. East African neighbor Kenya announced on Monday it would donate iron sheeting, blankets and mattresses. Renatus Mkaruka, a disaster management official with the Tanzanian Red Cross, said local volunteers and Red Cross staff had been deployed to provide medical assistance to the victims. "We are doing everything we can to help and support people hurt and traumatized," he said. (Reporting by Kizito Makoye, editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
(Adds details from interview with TD executive)

By John Tilak

TORONTO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Canadian lender Toronto-Dominion Bank's capital markets division said on Tuesday it plans to acquire Albert Fried & Co, a New York-based broker-dealer, to expand its presence in the U.S. prime brokerage sector.

TD Securities has been boosting its reach in the United States in recent years by adding people and increasing coverage of sectors.

The lender's U.S. capital markets strategy has been to focus on large multinational clients, as well as sectors such as technology, media, telecommunications, energy and utilities.

TD, which did not disclose financial terms of the deal, expects to target hedge funds with its new services.

"With the prime brokerage acquisition, we have the opportunity to expand and service institutional clients more appropriately," Glenn Gibson, the vice chair and U.S. head of TD Securities, said in an interview.

"There is this broad appeal for clients to diversify their broker relationships, specifically related to the prime brokerage business," he added.

A 97-year-old firm that was founded after World War I, Albert Fried offers services in prime brokerage, trading and commission management.

David Santina, managing director of equities at TD Securities U.S., will lead the U.S. prime brokerage unit.

"Developing an integrated prime brokerage business really fills a niche for us in our U.S. product set," Santina said.

Major Canadian banks have been beefing up their U.S. investment banking divisions at a time when global firms, especially European lenders, have been pulling back.

"As some of those global players pull back, there will be opportunities for us... to be able to step in and fill some of those gaps," Gibson said.

In June, Bank of Montreal said it would buy Minneapolis-based mergers and acquisitions advisory firm Greene Holcomb Fisher, to branch out in the U.S. Midwest.

Royal Bank of Canada has been expanding organically and has a strong U.S. investment banking business.

TD Bank was looking to double its U.S. capital markets business in three to four years, Gibson told Reuters last year.

(Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Will Dunham and Alan Crosby)
NASHVILLE (Reuters) - A Tennessee lawmaker was expelled from the state's House of Representatives on Tuesday following accusations of widespread sexual harassment, media reported.

Republican state Representative Jeremy Durham was ousted by a vote of 70-2, according to the Tennessean newspaper, which said this was the state's first legislative expulsion since 1980.

Durham did not immediately respond to request for comment. The Tennessean reported that Durham said no formal complaint had been filed against him and that he has not been charged with a crime.

"I'm very pleased that the House made the decision it did today. This was good for the taxpayers of the state. It was good for the victims of the state," the newspaper quoted House Speaker Beth Harwell as saying.

A spokeswoman for Harwell's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A report released by Tennessee's attorney general in July accused Durham of inappropriate sexual conduct with 22 women over a four-year period. The report said Durham repeatedly made unwelcome sexual advances toward female legislative staff, interns and lobbyists.

Durham declined to be interviewed by investigators, the report said. His lawyer, Bill Harbison, said at the time that the report was politically motivated and unfair.

Harbison could not be immediately reached for comment on Tuesday.

The chairman of Tennessee's Republican Party, Ryan Haynes, said on Tuesday: "I am saddened that all of my former colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, have been placed in this terrible position by the reprehensible misbehavior of one individual."

(Reporting by Tim Ghianni in Nashville and Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Writing by Timothy Mclaughlin; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas woman has sued the company that runs Church's Chicken and three others for $50 million, saying the kitchen floor of the restaurant where she worked collapsed, causing fried chicken grease to spill and burn her body as she was caught in the gap.

The lawsuit filed last week in Dallas County alleged that Erica Acevedo, who worked at a Church's Chicken in Livingston, Texas, suffered burns to about 65 percent of her body in the incident last month. The floor collapse caused chicken fryers to turn over and spill boiling grease, it said.

"The boiling grease literally cooked Ms. Acevedo as she lay there, trapped," the lawsuit said. "Had a customer not come to her rescue, Ms. Acevedo would not have survived."

Officials from defendants Cajun Global, which runs Church's Chicken, and the Houston-based franchise operator of the store in East Texas did not respond to requests for comment. Two property management companies also listed in the suit could not be reached for comment.

Acevedo, 26, was airlifted to a Houston hospital, where she is still being treated for her burns, the lawsuit said. It added that the store manager and franchisee knew about the weak floor but did nothing to repair it.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Thailand's military courts will still hear some 500 ongoing cases against civilians, a senior junta official said Tuesday, a day after the regime announced an end to the controversial practice.

A 2014 coup ushered in one of the most autocratic Thai governments in a generation with generals expanding the use of military courts to try more than one thousand civilians, especially those critical of their rule or the monarchy.

But in a surprise move ahead of a planned visit to the United Nations in New York next week, army chief turned Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-O-Cha said military courts would be phased out for civilians.

Rights groups cautiously welcomed the order, which does not cover ongoing cases and offences prior to the announcement.

"The cases that are still under the deliberation of a military court will go ahead because they have already entered court procedure," Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told reporters.

"There are 1,500 cases in the military courts, of which 1,000 cases have already finished and 500 cases remain," he added.

Thailand's military courts tend to have much higher conviction rates and are far harder to appeal.

Some have handed down record jail terms, including a 30-year sentence for a series of Facebook posts by a civilian that were deemed critical of the monarchy.

The new order reflects growing confidence among junta leaders that they have successfully curbed opposition.

"It was about the right time to relax as people are more happy and there is less of a resistance movement," Prayut told reporters on Tuesday, though he rejected any suggestion international pressure had instigated the change.

Watana Muangsook, a politician loyal to the ousted government who has been detained by the military several times for criticising their rule, said the order was little more than window dressing.

"If the NCPO is really sincere they should abolish all orders that violate human rights... such as the military's authorisation to arrest, search and detain people without warrants," he wrote on Facebook, using the official acronym for the junta.

Story continues

Than Rittiphan, from the student protest group New Democracy, which has nearly a dozen members facing upcoming military trials, told AFP: "We felt that they just do (this) to keep out international pressure. They have no intention in respect of human rights at all."

The International Commission of Jurists, which has monitored military court trials, said the move was a "welcome step" but called for all pending cases to be transferred to civilian courts.

The new policy will not affect Thailand's three southernmost provinces, which have been governed under emergency laws for the past decade as Thai troops struggle to quell a festering Muslim Malay insurgency.

Army officers also still have the power to arrest and temporarily detain civilians nationwide, while Prayut has maintained his right to unilaterally pass any law in the name of national security.
Sometimes it doesnt matter how good an actor is: if theyve been miscast, no amount of emoting, gurning and Oscar grandstanding can undo that bad decision. These are the 10 most miscast actors of all time

Sean Connery is Spanish!

Credit: Rex Features

The movie: Highlander (1986)

When Sean Connery shows an interest in your movie, all logic and reason go out the window: just shay yesh. Who cares if the role called for a Spanish actor? Who cares that the character is called Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez? Just ask Sean very politely if hed mind attempting an accen- whats that? Hes not going to do the accent? Oh well. Stuff it. Connerys mentor was still head and shoulders above the rest of the cast and even helped deflect attention away from the fact the casting agents hired French guy Christopher Lambert to play a Scot. Did they just spin the globe and stick their finger on it or something?

Denise Richards is a Scientist!

Credit: Getty Images

The movie: The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Denise Richards, by her own admission, is not the sharpest tool in the box. (She even starred in a movie opposite Pamela Anderson called Blonde & Blonder, which basically rehashed every dumb blonde joke youve ever heard). Therefore, it was a very big leap  like, Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger big  to believe Denise Richards was a nuclear physicist in 1999 Bond movie The World Is Not Enough. We had a hard enough time believing that she wouldnt pronounce it nucular. Could it be that Bond producers only hired her for her pouty good looks and her penchant for wearing short shorts? Scandal!

John Wayne is Genghis Khan!

Credit: Getty Images

The movie: The Conqueror (1956)

John Wayne is a cowboy. John Wayne is America. One thing John Wayne is not is Mongolian. By any stretch of the imagination. No one has ever asked John Wayne So where are you from? I mean, originally? Casting oater icon John Wayne as Mongol warlord Genghis Khan might have got bums in seats in 1956, but those bums were soon shaking with laughter at the sight of Wayne wearing a silly little pencil moustache and delivering lines like Dance for me, Tartar woman! in his iconic Iowan drawl. The Conqueror went on record as being the most mocked movie of all time; suitably chastised, Wayne went back to the well and played approximately five thousand more cowboys before his death in 1979.

Story continues

Mickey Rooney is Chinese!

breakfast-2

The movie: Breakfast At Tiffanys (1961)

One of cinemas sparkling diamonds will always be tarnished by a yellowface smear. Audrey Hepburn is radiant in Breakfast At Tiffanys, a classic of the swinging 60s, but its a film thats always put firmly in its place by Mickey Rooneys character, Mr Yunioshi. Rooney is very much how do we put this? not Asian. But put some fake teeth and a big pair of comedy glasses on him, and Yeah, still not Asian. Just hugely offensive. The Me so solly! school of stereotypes might have been borderline acceptable back in 1961, but its just plain embarrassing today, and it remains a stain on Rooneys career, not to mention that of Blake Edwards: its a comic character ever David Brent would refuse.

Anthony Hopkins is Black!

Credit: Rex Features

The movie: The Human Stain (2003)

Spoiler alert! The big twist in this adaptation of the Phillip Noth novel is that Anthony Hopkins character, Coleman Silk, is actually an African-American who has been masquerading as a Jewish white man his whole life. Hopkins  whose skin shade in the movie can be described kindly as two week suntan  isnt believable as a man of colour, nor is his glamorous co-star Nicole Kidman believable as, get this, a janitor. Put them together in an unconvincing romance and you have the perfect storm of miscast actors  if youre going to suspend your disbelief for this one youll need industrial strength suspenders.

Johnny Depp is A Native American!

Credit: Disney

The movie: The Lone Ranger (2013)

Memo to Hollywood: Johnny Depp wearing white makeup was funny once, maybe two times at best. Tim Burton made Depp paleface a thing, not only in Edward Scissorhands but again in Sweeney Todd and Alice In Wonderland and Dark Shadows. Gore Verbinski was of the belief that Johnny Depp + paleface makeup = box-office success, but he learned how flawed that formula was with The Lone Ranger, an epic flop which put a $200 million crater in Disneys earnings report. Playing Tonto like Jack Sparrow dipped in Tippex, Depp did a great disservice not just to the role but to the thousands of qualified Native American actors that could have played it.

Idris Elba is Nelson Mandela!

Credit: 20th Century Fox

The movie: Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom (2013)

Idris Elba is a very fine actor of no small repute. Idris Elba also just happens to be black. These two things alone should not have been enough to merit his casting as South African leader Nelson Mandela; a great man but not a man anyone ever suggested looked like an aged Stringer Bell. Elba gave it his all, but the role of Mandela is one that requires the gravitas that only old age can bring  even Morgan Freeman struggled to play Madiba in Invictus. Even in full flow, a little bit of Elbas East London accent was still detectable in amongst the South African vowel sounds.

Nicolas Cage is Ghost Rider!

Credit: Columbia Pictures

The movie: Ghost Rider (2007)

Cages credentials for playing Johnny Blaze in the Ghost Rider movie were better than most: a life-long fan of the comic-book, Cage even rocked a flaming skull tattoo to prove his dedication to the role. The only problem was, Nicolas Cage  even under the most punishing studio lights  was not a young man in 2007. In fact, he was 43  at least 20 years too old to play the motorcycle stunt rider. Still, you cant keep a good Cage down, so we were treated to the sight of Young Nic wearing a weird thatched wig and a scene where he flashes his (fake CG) abs in a mirror. Somehow, in a movie about the devils own bounty hunter taking the form of a flaming skeleton, Cages casting was the hardest part to swallow.

Gary Oldman is A dwarf!

Credit: Rex Features

The movie: Tiptoes (2003)

How does this movie exist? What unlikely series of events occurred in order to get this movie off the page and into reality? Ill write slowly so you can accept the full horror of the films plot: pregnant Kate Beckinsale learns that her partner Matthew McConaugheys family is prone to dwarfism, and his dwarf twin brother is played by Gary Oldman. Gary Oldman! Regular-sized Gary Oldman! How! Was this! Allowed! To happen! Not even early career, skeletons-in-the-closet Gary Oldman  2003 Gary Oldman! Post-Nil By Mouth Gary Oldman! A dwarf! Sorry, we need to sit down. A wag at Variety summed up the movie perfectly, saying it comes up short in many departments. Gary Oldman! Unbelievable.

Emma Stone is Asian!

Credit: Rex Features

The movie: Aloha (2013)

I mean, shes not Asian, obviously. That much is obvious. Emma Stone is quite clearly caucasian. Shes white as toothpaste. She could star in the movie White Chicks and no one would bat an eyelid. She white. Cameron Crowe, however, saw past Stones gleaming whiteness and cast her as Allison Ng, a character who is one quarter Hawaiian and one quarter Chinese (FYI: Stone is four quarters white and hails from Arizona). The casting quickly stoked a whitewashing controversy, and the actress admitted she wasnt right for the role in a statement: Ive learned on a macro level about the insane history of whitewashing in Hollywood and how prevalent the problem truly is.

Read more:

The Film Posters That Ruined The Movie

The Hit Movies That Actually LOST Money  And How They Did It

10 Famous Films That Arent As Original As You Think
(Image: Flicker / Michelangelo Carrieri)

Countless companies around the world have developed and perfected sophisticated and multifaceted algorithms which are the intellectual property (IP) lifeblood of their business. Imagination and innovation have enabled thousands of these companies to conquer the free market and be prosperous. In the US, however, that extremely valuable commodityintellectual propertycould be jeopardized if a government agency (ironically, the Commodity Futures Trading CommissionCFTC) succeeds in doing what they propose.

Just think about how our world has changed with technology making our lives more efficient and effective due to sophisticated technological IP used every single day. Things we take for granted like a simple Google search use these proprietary algorithmsthe underlying heart which is based upon something called source code. It is that source code (developed, many times, over years and costing millions of dollars) which makes things like weather forecasting and traffic predications possible. It makes on-line shopping more convenient and expedient, and it provides health and safety protection to our citizens. Going into the future, source code will be utilized in digital currencies and blockchain applications, drones, self-driving cars and many other facets of contemporary life.

Source code is also used in financial markets, which is where this little commodity agency that not many people know, comes into play. The CFTC has proposed that proprietary source code (even if protected by intellectual property and trade secret rights) be given to the government upon request as part of the regular books and records available for inspection. Source code is not only used by traders, banks and others to implement their many market methodologies, but by trading venues like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) which provide the intensely intricate and important backbone fundamentals of our modern financial system.

The major problemo with the government getting a hold of this highly-sensitive, proprietary source code IP is that it could be stolen or otherwise compromised in some fashion. Such a risky policy prescription could place at precarious peril the essence and basic existence of a company.

Why should companies trust government with such sensitive source code IP data? They should not. We have witnessed many cyber-attacks, hacks and the outright stealing of sensitive information from our government.

Even after repeated warnings of persistent system vulnerabilities and/or failings, last year the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was hacked and the criminals accessed 21.5 million records. I am, unfortunately, one of them. And, it wasnt just simple DOB and Social Security data that was accessed. Those in highly-sensitive and national security-related jobs (like the one I had) file a Standard Form (SF)-86. The hackers had access to the SF-86s which include deets about financial holdings, family members and friends. No matter, the government offered a free credit score checking service (how nice!).

The OPM hack wasnt the only security breach, of course. In fact, even the very Agencythe CFTCwhich seeks to have access to source code was hacked in 2012. I was lucky, yet again. As a CFTC Commissioner at the time, criminals had access to my personal and sensitive private deets. At the time, we believed the data breach was limited to the roughly 700 CFTC employees, but we all knew that it would not have been a far fetch for the hackers to gain data and details on traders or exchanges. That is exactly why the CFTCs current source code proposal is fundamentally fatally flawed.

Oh, and by the way, in recent months the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and even the Internal Revenue Service were all hacked. Can government keep data safe and secure? Sure. Not!

The adoption of the CFTC regulation would set a horrendous precedent for all company IP. After 30 years in government, one thing I know for sure is that if one department or agency institutes a policy (like having access to source code IP)watch the heck out! Another, and another and anotherwill soon follow.

If companies want to ensure their source code IP is protected, they may take notice of this seemingly small, innocuous proposal. If there is an opportunity (which there might be) they may seek to have their voices heard.

Ive been a supporter of thoughtful regulation, especially in the financial sector. However, this far-flung CFTC source code IP proposal would set a terrible and treacherous precedent. It is unreasonable, and if adopted would be risky for companies who rely upon the safety, security and privacy of their intellectual property. As an agency which was established 40 years ago to protect commodity markets, the CFTC should protect source code IPa tremendously valuable, yet vulnerable, commodity.

Bart Chilton

Bart Chilton is former CFTC Commissioner and is currently a Senior Policy Advisor at the global business law firm DLA Piper and the author of Ponzimonium: How Scam Artists Are Ripping Off America. He can be reached at bartchilton@bartchilton.com
DUBAI (Reuters) - Three Qatari members of a Gulf Arab military coalition have been killed during operations in Yemen, state media said, their country's highest single death toll in the 18-month conflict. The soldiers died on Monday, state news agency QNA said, without giving any information on how or where they lost their lives. Western-allied Qatar has sent around 1,000 ground troops to Yemen, Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported in September, the country's first reported involvement in the Saudi-backed offensive. The Arab coalition is fighting to try to restore Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power after Iran-allied Houthi forces advanced on his temporary headquarters in the southern port city of Aden in March last year. The fighting, which intensified after peace talks ended without a deal last month, has killed more than 10,000 people, according to the United Nations. (Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
Hillary Clintons near-collapse yesterday at an event commemorating those who died in the 9/11 attacks has now increased public scrutiny dramatically of the presidential nominees health.

Even before she faltered and had to be helped into an SUV to be driven to daughter Chelseas Manhattan apartment to recover, social media was rife with rumors about Hillarys health. Clinton fanned those Alt-Right flames by telling the FBI during her interview in July about her use of private email for public business that because of a concussion she suffered in 2012, she could not remember all the security briefings she had been given as Secretary of State.

Clintons now-viral malaise is said to be pneumonia, and why wouldnt she  and Republican rival Donald Trump  be run-down and susceptible to illness at this point? What is demanded of U.S. presidential aspirants is an inhuman grind for anyone, especially a 68-year-old woman (Clinton) and a 70-year-old man (Trump).

The toll campaigning takes, however, is a walk to the podium compared with actually being president. Just look at how George W. Bush or Barack Obama aged after two terms in the Oval Office. Being the chief executive of the most powerful nation on earth is a killer of a job that demands intense mental and physical stamina 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You dont get weekends off, and theres a crisis a minute.

The public may not have a right to know if you paid your taxes, but it certainly should be able to demand solid evidence that you are mentally and physically up to the intensity of the job. While Trump, who has questioned Clintons stamina, is holding tight to his tax returns, he said last week that he would release his full medical records.

For a few minutes in 1972, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri was Democratic nominee George McGoverns running mate. Had McGovern been elected instead of swamped by the landslide that made Richard Nixon president, Eagleton would have been the vice president and a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Story continues

Related: Clinton's prospects in betting markets tumble on health concerns

But after it was revealed that Eagleton had been treated for bouts of depression, and had received electroshock therapy, McGovern asked him to withdraw.

Painful as it was for Eagleton to have his mental history splashed across every paper in the country, voters had right to know about his condition because the possibility that a potential president might be impaired is a factor well worth weighing.

And Americans shouldnt have to wonder if they are getting the straight story about a nominees health from personal physicians.

The complete truth about John F. Kennedy's medical conditions and ailments never came out until quite recently, although during the fight for the Democratic nomination in 1960, aides to rival Lyndon Johnson (who would become his vice president) said Kennedy had Addison's disease, which the Kennedy camp denied. But JFK's ailments didn't stop there or with his chronically bad back. He also suffered from infections, ulcers and colitis.

A 2013 story in The Atlantic says that "during his presidencyand in particular during times of stress, such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco in April of 1961, and the Cuban missile crisis, in October of 1962Kennedy was taking an extraordinary variety of medications: steroids for his Addisons disease; painkillers for his back; anti-spasmodics for his colitis; antibiotics for urinary-tract infections; antihistamines for allergies; and, on at least one occasion, an anti-psychotic (though only for two days) for a severe mood change...." And, of course, while Franklin Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down from the time he was 39, the press never mentioned the extent of his infirmity.

Related: Why Donald Trump Is Making an Issue of His Astonishingly Excellent Health

The U.S. has had a volunteer army since 1973, but male citizens are still required to register with the Selective Service when they turn 18. If there is a crisis requiring a draft, the Selective Service website says, men called to serve would be examined for mental, physical, and moral fitness by the military before being deferred or exempted from military service or inducted into the Armed Forces.

The country today is facing crises galore, and why should the rules be different for those who would be commander-in-chief?



Moral fitness may be a tough test, especially in this election, but before being chosen to serve by voters, presidential nominees should be examined for mental and physical fitness by top Army doctors  not the sympathetic sawbones theyve been seeing for decades.

Who knows, Trump the draft evader could have a spur on his heel and get a deferment from the presidency. Or the docs at Walter Reed Medical Center might find that Clinton really does have a forked tongue.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
From Esquire

Today's episode of Actual Issues We Actually Should Be Discussing involves the latest studies of Arctic sea ice-namely, that the latest study indicates we're pretty close to not having any. The The Alaska Dispatch News thinks this is something that deserves a little attention.

Sea ice extent-the area of sea surface covered at least 15 percent by ice-has fallen below the minimum reached in 2011, which had been the third-lowest minimum recorded since satellite measurements began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. Extent is now tracking slightly below the 2007 level for this time of year but well above the record low in 2012. "We're neck and neck with 2007," said Mark Serreze, the center's director. "We're either going to be No. 2 or No. 3."A notable characteristic of this year's ice is its low concentration, even at very high latitudes. Even near the North Pole, ice is broken, with a lot of open water exposed, according to satellite readings. "You can take a boat up to 86 degrees north," Serreze said. "I don't know if we've ever seen that before, but it's certainly an eye-opener."

Way back during the Age of Discovery, European monarchs, especially in France and England, spent a lot of time and money looking for the Northwest Passage, the commercial trade route through North America to Asia. It actually did exist, at about 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The problem was nobody could get there. As for the Europeans, things did not go well. Sir Humphrey Gilbert drowned. Henry Hudson's crew mutinied and sent him adrift in the bay that now bears his name.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related Story" customtitles="Fox News Briefly Admits Climate Change Is Real" customimages="" content="article.48365"]

Story continues

But Europeans were nothing if not persevering in their dreams of wealth. In 1845, 128 British sailors on two ships simply vanished into the ice. Nobody actually made the passage by sea until 1905, when Roland Amundsen made it to Nome after a voyage that took three years, which was quite an accomplishment, but not exactly an enticing commercial proposition. And right now, at this moment, a 900-passenger luxury liner is en route from Seward, Alaska, to New York City, where it is scheduled to dock on Friday. It is traveling via a true Northwest Passage that has been created because the sea ice is disappearing at a record rate. Henry Hudson would be proud, but he probably died some time in 1611 and, therefore, doesn't have to breathe.

I don't think he's relevant to the discussion.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related Story" customtitles="When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job" customimages="" content="article.36228"]

Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page.

You Might Also Like
These toddlers, 3 and 4, never thought they would be reunited in this Texas airport, especially since the last time they saw each other was more than a year ago in a Chinese orphanage.

Read: Adoptive Mother Reunites Long-Lost Sisters After Discovering Girl Who Looked Like Her Daughter in Orphanage

In a short video of their very first meeting after more than a year apart, Hannah, 4, and Dawson, 3, can be seen hugging and kissing as they fall over in excitement.

"My heart just burst into joy," Hannah's mom, Sharon Sykes told InsideEdition.com. "It's a miracle. He's adopted by such a great family that lives so close to us, and Hannah gets to have him as a little friend. I'm overjoyed."

Sykes and her husband were in the process of adopting Hannah when they realized there was a little boy who was right next to her in every single picture.

"When we went to the actual orphanage to get her, she was hugging him and they were giving each other kisses," Sykes remembered. "That was her little friend, how could I leave him there?"

Even after Hannah joined her family of two biological sons, Sykes said she couldn't stop thinking about that little boy, and even began losing sleep over him.

So she reached out to people in her community, and hoped that through word of mouth, there might be someone out there considering an overseas adoption.

Amy Clary, however, wasn't even thinking about adopting.

Clary told InsideEdition.com that she already had three kids of her own, including a 3-month-old daughter.

But, when she overheard some friends were talking about the little boy's story, out of the blue, she told them, "okay, I think we will."

Clary joked as she admitted to InsideEdition.com that she never imagined herself having a big family but, said, "[having kids] is addictive."

Despite Dawson's hydrocephalus, a buildup of water in the brain that leads to headaches and an enlarged head, would add another complication to the decision, Clary said she felt compelled to go through with this adoption with the help and support of Sykes and her family.

Story continues

Just in time for Hannah's 4th birthday last weekend, she was reunited with Dawson, the boy she grew up with more than 7,000 miles away.

"I think they're going to get married," Clary laughed. "It's like they're a part of a love story, although it's not realistic for a 3-year-old."

Read: Sisters Surprise Each Other by Unexpectedly Announcing They're Pregnant... at the Same Time

Since Dawson's arrival in America last week, Clary said the two families have been visiting every day.

Just like old times, Dawson and Hannah call each other by their Chinese names, Dada and Shui Shui, and continue to have rambling conversations in Chinese, which neither Sykes nor Clary understand.

"One day, a white woman comes and snatches you away  it's kind of scary!" Clary joked. "To see a familiar face and be able to look at Hannah and be like, 'Oh, everything's okay.' I wanted him to feel really comfortable."

Watch: Church Couple Wants to Adopt Newborn Left in Manger at Altar Nativity Scene

Related Articles:
Top 5 Bike-uriosities  Week of 9/12

At Bike-urious, were spending all of our time finding the most interesting motorcycles that are currently for sale for you to drool over (and maybe empty your wallet for). So lets take a look at our five favorite offerings from this week!

1. Confused KLR  2005/2008 Kawasaki KLR650 Supermoto

Kawasaki-KLR650-Supermoto-Front-Right-1

There's a lot of custom KLRs out there - but typically when a KLR owner throws money at his or her bike, it's to make it more dirt-friendly. This seller has gone in a slightly different direction, as he's turned it into a fat-tired supermoto. To be frank, I'm not sure it makes sense... but it's unique enough to share.

Kawasaki-KLR650-Supermoto-Right-Side

This bike started as a 2006 model but it's been updated with 2008 bodywork, then given a graphics kit from an older KTM. The supermoto conversion includes KYB forks from a '05 Yamaha YZ450 MX bike, and the 17-inch wheels and brakes from a Honda CBR600. (Gotta love a Frankenbike! -Ed) Other features include a DanMoto slipon, Trailtech computer, Renthal bars, Acerbis guards with aluminum Barkbusters, Giant Loop tank bag, Emgo trunk, and more. The bike needs new tags and there's some popping on decel so you may want to play around with the jetting, but otherwise this bike is ready to go - assuming you know what you want to do with it.

Kawasaki-KLR650-Supermoto-Front-Wheel

Find this KLR for sale here on Craigslist for $2,500 in Portland, Oregon.

2. Vee Two Ducati Alchemy SV-1

Ducati-Alchemy-SV-1-Left-Side

Last week I featured one of the rare distinct models from Brook Henry's famed Australian Ducati tuning house, Vee Two. Here's the other one, a bevel head-based exotic called the Alchemy SV-1.

Ducati-Alchemy-SV-1-Right-Side

If this bike intrigues you at all, you owe it to yourself to check out this article from OddBike, written by the always-comprehensive Jason Cormier. Otherwise, the very brief summary is that the Alchemy was available either as a kit to build yourself, or a complete bike that you could ride away. It all started because Brook realized that his go-faster parts were overwhelming the OEM Ducati frames, so he decided to build a better frame in-house. Brook introduced the SV-1 to the world in kit form in 1991 for $3,500 AUD. 97 kits and 7 complete bikes were built.

Story continues

Ducati-Alchemy-SV-1-Cockpit

As these bikes were usually built as kits, there can be quite a bit of variation between specific examples. This bike started as a road racer and was eventually made street legal. I try not to be mean on this site, so I'll just say that the paint job is... informal. Find this Alchemy for sale here on Raider Moto, though it's unclear where exactly the bike is. This shop is based in Australia and that's usually where their offerings are located, though it's possibly in the United Kingdom. Either way, there'll probably be some shipping involved!

3. Deus Ex Build  BMW R100S Custom

Deus-BMW-R100S-Right-Side

If you're a fan of Deus Ex Machina's bikes, then you're a fan of Michael Woolaway (affectionately known as Woolie), their US Motorcycle Design Director. Woolie was in the news quite recently for his work with Orlando Bloom's new bike, a custom BMW S1000R. But a couple of years ago he turned his attention to an older BMW, creating the R100S custom you see in front of you - now it's up for sale.

Deus-BMW-R100S-Engine-1024x683

In Woolie's words, "The inspiration behind this bike was to build something that didnt look very much like a BMW. I tried to change the look of it and to style it around something that was a bit older than the bike was. Its got a big tank and youre all stretched out, so you really feel like youre tucked in behind it. Its a fun bike... its a bit faster than I actually expected. Its definitely a one-off. Theres only ever going to be one of these.

Deus-BMW-R100S-Tail

Obviously the modifications are extensive, but highlights include a hand built chromoly subframe, 1,200-degree heat shield, drum rear brake, Works Performance rear suspension, Ohlins forks that were shortened and re-valved by Lindemann Engineering, Rizoma bars/bar mounts/mirrors/turn signals, and more. In addition, the tank and seat cowl were custom built by Evan Wilcox, which required being on the waitlist for over a year.

Soon after this bike was built, it was featured at the 2013 One Moto Show. It's also been featured at the Ton Up exhibit at Sturgis, put together by Michael Lichter and Paul D'Orleans (and featured in their book Cafe Racers: Speed, Style, and Ton-Up Culture

) It's also been featured in the lobby exhibit of the Petersen Automotive Museum to promote their Cafe Racer exhibit, and it was in the Greasy Hands Preachers documentary. Phew, that's quite a list!

Find this custom R100S for sale in Los Angeles for $63,000 or best offer - and for those of you that are up on modern currencies, the seller will also accept bitcoin! Email me at abhi AT bike-urious.com if you'd like to be put in touch with the seller.

4. One Owner  1980 Ducati 900SS

Ducati-900SS-Right-Side-1

After the angular design of the 860GT, Ducati went back to the classic lines of the 750SS when they styled the 900 Super Sport. Despite fewer-than-expected sales when it was first released, the 900SS has been steadily gaining value in recent years - and this example stands out because it's being offered by the original owner!

Ducati-900SS-Left-Side-2

The black-and-gold paint scheme of this 900 SuperSport has become quite iconic for Ducati, and as greenframe bike prices have entered the stratosphere, many riders have been instead looking for excellent examples of the 900SS like this bike (VIN: 0891700). It has 12,276 miles and it was given 40mm Dell'Orto carbs and Conti exhaust to replace the stock 36mm and Silentiums. Other modifications include stainless steel brake lines, V-Two Gear Gzer, Dyna coils, WORKS suspension front and rear, and a longer clutch actuation arm.

The seller says the bike is mechanically excellent and that it got a new clutch and rings recently. He has nearly all of the maintenance records since new, and the bike was featured in a Motorcycle Classics article back in 2008. It's got some cosmetic wear but I'm a big fan. The seller only rides it once or twice a year so he's letting it go to a lucky new owner.

Ducati-900SS-Gauges-2

Find this 900SS for sale in Banner Elk, North Carolina, with bidding up to $22,690 and the reserve not yet met or a staggering BIN of $39,000 here on eBay.

5. Number 2 - 1984 Kawasaki Ninja 900 GPZ900R

Kawasaki Ninja 900 GPZ900R - Right Side

The GPZ900R was Kawasaki's first Ninja - the beginning of a long line of iconic motorcycles. If I remember correctly, serial number 1 is currently in Kawasaki's museum at their US headquarters in Foothill Ranch, California. According to this seller, serial number 2 is now up for sale.

Kawasaki Ninja 900 GPZ900R - Rear

Produced from 1984 to 1996, the Ninja was a revolutionary design when it came out. In fact, some would argue that it was the predecessor of what we consider today to be a modern sport bike. It was the first 16-valve liquid-cooled inline four, something the competition would take years to catch up on. The engine produced 115 horsepower, good for a top speed of 151 mph - it was the first production road bike to top 150. Nowadays these numbers might seem tame, but this bike was an instant legend when it was released. It didn't hurt that the bike also got a supporting role in Top Gun:

This example apparently has some race history (campaigned in Daytona in 1984) but it was "restored to new condition." Well, that's what the seller claims, but it is annoyingly missing the Kawasaki stickers on the tank (which seems like a pretty obvious oversight). Either way, all racing parts are in storage and will be included in the sale. It has a new tires, an extra swingarm, and... a new motor. Hopefully the original numbers matching the engine is included but that isn't mentioned by the seller.

Kawasaki Ninja 900 GPZ900R - Left Side on Trailer

Find this Ninja for sale here on Craigslist for $4,000 in Fort Collins, Colorado.

What would you put in your garage?
Net profit margin is the most important entry in an income statement, as it demonstrates the affluence of a company. It determines the efficiency of a company in deploying its resources, making it the best metric to measure a companys profitability.



Net Profit Margin = Net profit /Sales * 100.



In simple terms, net profit is the amount a company retains after deducting all costs, interest, depreciation, taxes and other expenses. In fact, net profit margin can turn out to be a potent point of reference to gauge the strength in a company operations and cost-control measures.



Higher net profit is indispensable for rewarding stakeholders. Also, strength in the metric not only attracts new investors but also draws well-skilled employees that eventually add to the value of the business.



Moreover, a higher net profit margin as compared to peers lends a competitive edge.



Pros and Cons



Net profit margin helps investors gain clarity on a companys business model in terms of pricing policy, cost structure and manufacturing efficiency. Hence, a strong net profit margin is preferred by all classes of investors.



However, net profit margin as an investment criterion has its own share of pitfalls. The metric varies widely from industry to industry. While net income is a key metric for investment measurement in traditional industries, it is not that important for technology companies.



Moreover, the difference in accounting treatment of various items  especially non-cash expenses like depreciation and stock-based compensation  makes comparison a complex task.



Further, for companies preferring to grow with debt, instead of equity funding, higher interest expenses usually weigh on the net profit. In such cases, the measure is rendered ineffective to analyze a companys performance.



The Winning Strategy



A healthy net profit margin and solid EPS growth are two most sought-after elements in a business model.



Apart from these, we have added a few other criteria to ensure maximum returns from this strategy.



Screening Parameters



Net Margin 12 months  Most Recent (%) greater than equal to 0: High net profit margin indicates solid profitability.



Percentage Change in EPS F(0)/(F-1) greater than equal to 0: It indicates earnings growth.



Average Broker Rating (1-5) equal to 1: A rating of #1 indicates brokers extreme bullishness on the prospects of the stock.



Zacks Rank equal to 1: Only Strong Buy stocks are allowed. In good markets or bad, stocks with a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy) continue to outperform. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



VGM Score of A or B: Our research shows that stocks with a VGM Score of 'A' or 'B' when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 or 2 (Buy) offer the best upside potential.



Here are five of the eight stocks that qualified the screen:



Rockville, MD-based Argan Inc. AGX provides inside premise wiring services to the federal government. The company also offers underground and aerial construction services and splicing to major telecommunications and utilities customers. The stock has a VGM score of A. Moreover, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2016 has increased by 25 cents (7.8%) at $3.45 over the last 30 days.



Denver, CO-based Hallador Energy Company HNRG is engaged in the production and sale of steam coal used for power generation. The company has a VGM Score of A. Its earnings estimate for the current year has remained steady at 59 cents over the last 30 days.



Irvine, CA-based Autobytel Inc ABTL provides automotive marketing services that connect automotive retail dealers, manufacturers and consumers. The stock has a VGM score of B. Moreover, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2016 has remained steady at $1.09 over the last 30 days.



El Segundo, CA-based Stamps.com Inc STMP provides Internet-based services for mailing or shipping letters, packages or parcels anywhere in the U.S. The stock has a VGM score of B. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2016 has remained steady at $5.45 per share over the last 30 days.



Gibraltar Industries Inc. ROCK manufactures and distributes products to the industrial and buildings market. The company has its headquarters at Buffalo, NY. The stock has a VGM score of B. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2016 has remained steady at $1.44 per share over the last 30 days.

Story continues

Get the rest of the stocks on the list and start putting this and other ideas to the test. It can all be done with the Research Wizard stock picking and back testing software.

The Research Wizard is a great place to begin. It's easy to use. Everything is in plain language. And it's very intuitive. Start your Research Wizard trial today. And the next time you read an economic report, open up the Research Wizard, plug your finds in, and see what gems come out.

Click here to sign up for a free trial to the Research Wizard today.

Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material.

Disclosure: Performance information for Zacks' portfolios and strategies are available at: https://www.zacks.com/performance.

Zacks Restaurant Recommendations: In addition to dining at these special places, you can feast on their stock shares. A Zacks Special Report spotlights 5 recent IPOs to watch plus 2 stocks that offer immediate promise in a booming sector. Download it free 



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



STAMPS.COM INC (STMP): Free Stock Analysis Report



AUTOBYTEL INC (ABTL): Free Stock Analysis Report



ARGAN INC (AGX): Free Stock Analysis Report



HALLADOR ENERGY (HNRG): Free Stock Analysis Report



GIBRALTAR INDUS (ROCK): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
I can't remember the last time I saw an audience as emotionally wrecked by a movie as the one that attended Monday night's North American premiere of Ken Loach's I, Daniel Blake, which won the Palme d'Or at May's Cannes Film Festival. At the end of the screening, not only were lots of people inside a packed Scotiabank theater crying, but many were so devastated that they did not move from their seats until they were told they needed to leave. This apparently is not an uncommon reaction to the latest film from the 80-year-old who for a half-century has reigned as the master of the "kitchen sink drama" - stories about the impact of social problems on regular people. And it raises the question: Can a small film this powerful, but also this upsetting, resonate with a group as large as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?

I, Daniel Blake, which Sundance Selects will release Dec. 23, tells the story of a proud 59-year-old widower (played by British comedian Dave Johns) from northeast England - where English accents are so thick they require subtitles - who, after 40 years of work as a carpenter, suffers a heart attack. On doctor's orders, he stays home from work for an extended period of time, assuming that the British benefits system which he has paid into for his entire life will kick into action for him. Instead, he runs up against a soul-sucking wall of red-tape and bureaucracy that frustrates, infuriates and depresses him, and soon jeopardizes his ability to survive. Even in the face of such adversity, he sees that others have it even worse, and shows particular kindness to a young single mother (Hayley Squires) and her two children (Briana Shann and Dylan McKiernan), who are barely scraping by, as they all begin to look out for one another.

It would be hard to argue to Oscar voters that many 2016 movies are more timely than this one, when, on both sides of the Atlantic, there is an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots, and large numbers of people who once considered themselves securely "middle-class" are now struggling to stay above water. (A good companion article to this film is Neal Gabler's May 2016 article in The Atlantic, "The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans.") Also, while the British healthcare and welfare system works differently than the American version (in England there actually are variations of the "death panels" that Sarah Palin ly claimed Obamacare would bring to America), that is not to say it works much better.

Story continues

The film lays out, without ever feeling preachy or didactic, how the healthcare-industrial complex works - its causes (globalization, etc.), short-term effects (people will do whatever they have to in order to survive, including various forms of hustling and crime) and long-term effects (people wind up robbed of their dignity, self-respect and faith in government). It doesn't suggest the matter is black-and-white - rather, it shows the kindness of some who are part of "the system" and the cruelty of others who are not. Most of all, it serves as a frightening reminder that most of us are only one unexpected illness or accident away from a similar crisis - one that could cost us our health, our job, our savings and our ability to maintain our way of life.

I, Daniel Blake reminds me a lot of what was perhaps the first big-screen kitchen sink drama, King Vidor's 1928 masterpiece The Crowd - and it's interesting to consider how the young Academy received that film. The Crowd was only greenlighted by MGM's Louis B. Mayer with great reluctance, after Vidor, who was coming off of the hit war movie The Big Parade, convinced Mayer's president of production Irving Thalberg that he could replicate that film's success with one set in peacetime dealing with the day-to-day problems of regular people. (Thalberg regarded it as an "experimental film.") In the end, critics raved about the film, but audiences shunned it. Come Oscar time, The Crowd was nominated for best picture and best director, but lost both prizes because, Vidor later learned and shared publicly, Mayer himself campaigned against it within the small "central board of judges" that determined winners in those days. Why? "The others wanted the picture to have an award, but Mayer wouldn't go for it. It was his own picture, but it was unglamorous, against the studio's image." Even The Crowd's own distributor preferred escapism to realism.

All of this makes me skeptical that, even in the age of the screener, very many Academy members will choose to watch a bleak drama without a star. Its best shot at recognition, it seems to me, is with the directors branch, which determines the nominees for best director. Though Loach never has been nominated before, it's worth considering that the directors branch today looks significantly different than it ever has before. That's because, back in June, the Academy invited nearly 100 directors - an unprecedented number that incidentally included Loach - to join the existing 394. Many of these new members - people like Ramin Bahrani, Cristian Mungiu, Dee Rees, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck - are from and/or operate outside of Hollywood, making the sorts of films that Loach helped to pioneer. I wouldn't put it past them to watch I, Daniel Blake and pay tribute to its maker.
Though his filmography often consists of long interviews with hideous men, documentarian Errol Morris is nearly unequaled in his ability to inject empathy, or at least basic humanity, into explorations of figures as difficult as Holocaust denier Fred A. Leuchter or war architects Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld. Yet its hard to remember the last time the filmmaker tackled a subject he obviously adores as much as the recently-retired photographer Elsa Dorfman. As its title suggests, The B-Side: Elsa Dorfmans Portrait Photography, is something of a minor work compared to the knottier, weightier material of Morris recent films. But discount it at your peril: This portrait of the artist as an old woman is a gentle-hearted gem, as profoundly subtle as it is subtly profound.

Even though the film spends most of its 76-minute running time in a cramped photo archive, following the septuagenarian Dorfman as she leafs through her filing cabinets and explains how various snapshots came to be, knowledge of photography  or even a particular interest in it  is hardly a prerequisite. After all, Dorfman herself was never a natural fit for austere institutes and art galleries. A self-described nice Jewish girl from Massachusetts, Dorfman was 28 before she ever picked up a camera, and she only began to creatively blossom when she left the art-damaged bustle of New York for a quieter life back home in Cambridge.

All the same, her post-collegiate spell in New York was eventful: As a secretary at Grove Press, she managed to meet a host of Beat generation literary characters, in particular Allen Ginsberg. The great poet became a lifelong friend and one of Dorfmans most frequent photo subjects, which in the 1960s and 70s grew to include such notables as Bob Dylan, Anais Nin, Jorge Luis Borges, and Joni Mitchell. As wonderful as those black-and-white shots are, it wasnt until the 1980s that she embraced her most famous piece of equipment: the giant, stationary Polaroid 2024 camera, on which she took thousands of oversized color portraits, shooting famous artists, herself, and ordinary families alike.

(Whenever she shot paying customers, she would take two portraits, allow her customers to pick their favorite, and keep the rejects for herself. These b-sides  each evocatively imperfect in its own way  make up a huge chunk of her archive.)

Morris camera follows Dorfman as she tinkers around her studio, cutting away to linger long on photos and contact sheets. The conversation is casual, and she makes for excellent company: a modest, good-humored, unpretentious craftswoman who nonetheless isnt afraid to praise her own work when she knows its worthy of it. Morris is obviously enraptured, staying silent for the first third of the film until suddenly blurting out, Oh Elsa! Ive never seen these! at the reveal of a new batch of photos.

Dorfman does seem slightly miffed that she was never the toast of the fine-art world, though she also seems to understand why she might not have fit in. As she explains, the primary theme of her work is happiness  she preferred not to shoot people when they were sad  and she scoffs at the idea that her photography ought to capture the soul of the sitter. In one endearing exchange, she tells Morris that a particular self-portrait is unusual because it is one of her only pictures to feature a red backdrop. Why the red? he asks. Because it was there, she shrugs.

Of course, it would be a mistake to take Dorfmans interest in surfaces for a lack of depth. We may never see into his soul, but after viewing several dozen photos Dorfman shot of her husband throughout the decades, he becomes a fully-rounded character in the film despite never speaking in it. Dorfmans thoughts on the decline and fall of Polaroid, and her worries about what will become of her archives now that shes no longer a working photographer, cant help but double as quietly moving meditations on mortality.

Late in the film, Dorfman uncovers two nearly life-sized portraits (one clothed, one nude) that she shot of Ginsberg shortly before his death. She pauses for a moment to take it in. Does seeing this bring Allen back? Morris starts to probe. Of course, she exclaims immediately, once again in full cheer.

Related stories

New York Film Festival Sets 2016 Documentary Programming

Berlin Film Review: 'National Bird'

Master Interviewer Errol Morris Proves a Slippery Subject at IDFA Q&A
A vanity project on at least two levels, Nick Cannons King of the Dancehall sees the actor and TV host serve as star, director, screenwriter, producer, and executive producer on his maiden voyage behind the camera  which is certainly one way to make sure the extensive footage hes shot of himself dancing shirtless in slow-motion, his image projected in triplicate across the screen, makes it past final cut. As an auteur, Cannon quickly ends up way over his head, unable to wrangle a film that careens off in a dozen directions at once. Yet the director makes two smart decisions that help turn what could have easily been an unwatchable mess into a hysterical, feverish, incredibly watchable one.

The first is his choice to shoot the film on location in Jamaica, deep in the countrys dancehall scene. Though the music itself is not entirely mainstream in the U.S., Stateside audiences will surely recognize some of the countless dancehall beats and dance moves that American pop stars have been ripping off for years. Yet no amount of VMA twerking can compare to the wild, hypersexualized abandon of the real deal, and Cannon captures some of its flavor here.

The second wise move is the decision to cast Jamaican first-time actress Kimberly Patterson, previously employed as a makeup artist on film shoots, as his romantic lead. Its not hard to guess what initially caught Cannons eye  the actress is traffic-haltingly beautiful  but luckily for us, she also turns out to be a natural, possessing a cool ease on camera and an immediate magnetism that will hopefully see her land future roles with dialogue thats actually worth speaking.

Clearly inspired by the way The Harder They Come used genre film conventions to introduce much of America to reggae, King of the Dancehall interweaves documentary-style footage of the islands native music scene with a quarter-baked crime plot, and Cannon plops himself right in the middle of both. Here he plays Tarzan, a Brooklyn drug dealer fresh out of prison, whose mother (Whoopi Goldberg) is ill and unable to pay her medical bills. Thinking of ways to raise cash, Tarzan decides to take his $5,000 nest egg and head to Kingston, where he hopes to strike up a new hustle exporting the islands finest weed back to the heart of Babylon.

Story continues

In Jamaica, he hooks up with his cousin, Allestar, aka All Star Toasta, aka Toasta (Busta Rhymes), an ebullient selector whose long-suffering wife just threw him out of the house. Toasta introduces Tarzan to the islands nightclub scene, its vast network of fearsome gangsters, and his wifes virginal sister Maya (Patterson), whose suspicious bishop father (Lou Gossett Jr.) keeps her under a watchful eye.

As a protagonist, Tarzans primary characteristics are incredible luck and unbelievable stupidity. Thanks to the first, he somehow piques the interest of Maya  who, despite all her virtuousness, is a dancehall queen of some renown. Due to the latter, he makes an immediate enemy of Donovan Dada Davidson (Collie Collie Buddz Harper), a vicious white-Jamaican gang boss. And yet Tarzan manages to become one of Jamaicas most successful drug traffickers within a few weeks; within a few months, thanks to Mayas intimate tutelage, he has also learned how to dance with the best of them.

Shot in actual Jamaican outdoor dancehall venues, the films nightlife scenes are clearly meant to be its highlights. The dance moves are appropriately outrageous, but its here that Cannons inexperience as a director proves most frustrating: Even though this is essentially a dance film, so many of the dance sequences are so darkly-lit and frantically edited that its difficult to get a good look at the action. Nonetheless, the energy is there, and it powers the films first half well enough.

The second half, however, sees the film go from enjoyably all-over-the-place to unintentionally hysterical. As Tarzan becomes the leader of Kingstons hottest dance crew  to reiterate, this is supposed to be just a few months after he first started dancing  he reawakens the ire of Dada, who steals his money and has him thrown in prison. Once out, hes seduced by Dadas sister (Kreesha Turner) in hilarious fashion, and resolves to go straight by winning the years biggest dance contest. Its here that the film loses its already loose grip on reality, veering off into a few scenes of deep, deep nonsense that simply must be seen to be believed.

As Tarzan, Cannon makes sure to paint as glamorous and shirtless a picture of himself as possible, and his constant voiceover narration produces several laugh-out-loud moments. (Over a montage of jiggling butts, he seriously intones, asses were everywhere.) But he does deserve credit for assembling a largely Jamaican cast  as well as splicing in interstitial interviews with Beenie Man, whose song gives the film its title  their dialogue presented with subtitles. Hilariously, its the Brooklyn-born Busta Rhymes whose patois requires the most explication. The son of Jamaican parents, Busta appears to be stifling a giggle for most of his scenes, clearly having the time of his life laying the accent on in double-thick coats, and trying to see how many bloodclots he can cram into a single sentence. Viewers would be advised to approach this film with the same sort of attitude.

Related stories

Film Review: 'Chi-Raq'

Geena Davis' Bentonville Film Festival Draws Robert De Niro, Rosie O'Donnell

Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon Divorce and Dump Bel Air Estate
As if this year's best actress Oscar race wasn't already impressive enough, along comes Natalie Portman's jaw-dropping portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy in Pablo Larrain's Jackie, which is as good as any female performance this year.

Chile-born Larrain's first film in English, and his first centering on a female protagonist, had its world premiere last week at Venice and then screened on Sunday night and Monday afternoon in Toronto, where it currently is a hotly contested market title. (Fox Searchlight has first and last right of refusal.) Only gross incompetence on the part of whichever operation buys the film, should they release it before the end of the year, could keep Portman from landing a third Oscar nomination. In fact, she's so good that she might well walk away with her second best actress win, following 2010's Black Swan.

Jackie jumps around in time, covering, in no particular order, its protagonist's first solo exposure to the public on the Feb. 14, 1962, TV special "A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy"; the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of her husband John F. Kennedy; the days of personal and national mourning thereafter; and a closed-door interview she granted a journalist (Billy Crudup, playing a guy based on The Making of a President author Theodore White) at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis a week after her husband's death, from which came the "Camelot" myth.

Most of the time, Portman is onscreen in grand rooms by herself, subliminally conveying the loneliness Jackie felt even before her husband's death, and felt more than ever in the days after it, when she had to comfort two young children, plan a proper funeral, vacate her home and figure out her own identity without him - all in the public eye. Portman shares her character's delicate, porcelain features, to be sure, but she had to work for - and nails - the regal poise, purring voice, proper accent, dazed look and frosty demeanor of the public Mrs. Kennedy.

The actress also creates a fascinating portrait of what the real woman might have been like when she was away from the cameras and at her most vulnerable, confiding in her trusted friend Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig), bickering with Bobby Kennedy (a miscast Peter Sarsgaard) and Jack Valenti (Max Casella), pondering life's meaning with a priest (John Hurt) and trying to shape her husband's legacy during her on-the-record/off-the-record exchanges with the journalist in Hyannis.

Many recent films and TV programs have dealt with the Kennedy assassination and/or its aftermath, from Peter Landesman's 2013 film Parkland to Bryan Cranston's 2014 Tony winner turned 2016 Emmy nominee All the Way to Amazon's 2016 limited series 11/22/63 to another film here at this year's TIFF, Rob Reiner's LBJ. Therefore, some of the scenes in Jackie may feel somewhat familiar. But never have they been done as well as they are in Jackie, which is distinguished beyond Portman's tour de force work by its cinematography, costumes, production design, score, makeup and hairstyling, which are all top-notch and also will enter Oscar contention when, not if, the film finds a distributor.

var el = document.getElementById('targetParams');if (el !== null && typeof(el) != 'undefined') {var srcParams = $('.advert iframe').attr('src');var addParams = srcParams.split(";");for (i=1;i<=addParams.length - 1;i++) {if (addParams[i] != '=null' && addParams[i] != 'dcopt=ist' && addParams[i] != '!c=iframe' && addParams[i] != 'pos=t' && addParams[i] != 'sz=728x90') {el.value += addParams[i]+";";}}}brightcove.createExperiences();>>>>>>>
Netflix is in final negotiations to acquire What Happened to Monday? a sci-fi thriller starring Noomi Rapace and Glenn Close, Variety has learned.

The deal will close in the mid-seven figure range for multiple territories, including the United States. The project sold out of the Toronto Film Festival. Although it wasnt an official selection, What Happened to Monday? was screened to buyers at several private screenings, where it received favorable responses.

CAA packaged and sold the movie.

Whatever Happened to Monday? is directed by Tommy Wirkola (Hansel & Gretal: Witch Hunters) and co-stars Willem Dafoe. Rapace takes on six different roles in a story set in a post-apocalyptic world where families are forced to only have one child.

Producers are Raffaella De Laurentiis, Philippe Rousselet and Fabrice Gianfermi. The film was written by Kerry Williamson (Alex Cross) and Max Botkin (Robosapien: Rebooted).

As Toronto reaches its halfway point, few deals have closed for finished projects. The most high-profile title to sell is Jackie, starring Natalie Portman, which went to Fox Searchlight. In an unorthodox sale, Colossal, a monster movie with Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudekis, sold to a mystery Chinese buyer. Many distributors are exercising caution, but a handful of other titles are expected to come together in the days to come.

Related stories

Toronto: Justin Timberlake Concert Film Bought by Netflix

Netflix Taps Fox 21 TV Studios' Tara Flynn as Drama Originals Development Exec

Unscripted TV Lawsuits Indicate Need for Change (Guest Column)
David Sacks

As CEO David Sacks continues to pull his troubled startup, Zenefits, out of its nose dive, the company is making progress putting its legal woes behind it. The company said on Tuesday that it reached settlement agreements with five states.

The insurance broker and HR software company did not reveal how much it paid out to each state to resolve potential fines and compliance issues relating to its past business practices, except to tell us "the penalties are fair and generally all in line with each," according to a spokesperson.

The five states that Zenefits settled with are Arizona, Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, South Carolina. Tennessee, which previously settled with Zenefits, was the first state to do so for $62,500.

The settlements relate to the company's admissions earlier this year that under its previous founder CEO, Parker Conrad, it may have been selling insurance without being properly licensed. Conrad abruptly left the company in February, and Sacks, an investor and its COO, took over as CEO.

Zenefits was previously known as one of the highest-flying, fastest growing startups in the Valley, having raised $580 million at a $4.5 billion valuation. With all that money, it began hiring like crazy and between that and its party culture, it spun out of control.

Still not California settlement

With his promotion to CEO, Sacks cleaned house among top leadership, implemented compliance controls software based on Salesforce, laid off some staff, banned alcohol at the office and settled with investors in an usual arrangement that gave some of them more equity while downgraded the valuation to $2 billion.

Zenefits' implosion has been likened to another once high-flying startup Theranos, but Sacks takes issue with this comparison pointing out that Zenefits 'fessed up to its problems, faced them, made changes and is now making amends.

These settlements are a step in the right direction, but the company has still not announced a settlement with California, the trickiest one. That's because Zenefits has accused Conrad of created a program that may have let employees skirt the law when studying for their licenses in that state.

Story continues

Meanwhile, Sacks has stayed visible, eager to talk about the turnaround. He's now making the rounds at the fall slate of tech conferences, including TechCrunch's Disrupt on Tuesday. He'll also be speaking at Salesforce's massive conference, Dreamforce.

NOW WATCH: We did a blind taste test of Bud, Coors, Miller, and Natty Light  here's the verdict





More From Business Insider


Donald Trump senior adviser A.J. Delgado. (Photo: Calen Cooper/Yahoo News)

A.J. Delgado, an attorney from Miami, joined Donald Trumps campaign as a senior adviser last week after the Labor Day holiday.

During the presidential campaign, Delgado, a Cuban-American, has emerged as a prominent Trump supporter, appearing on both English- and Spanish-language news broadcasts. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign told Yahoo News that Delgados role in the campaign will focus mainly on communications. She will spend several days a week at the Trump campaign headquarters in New York City.

I am so pleased to join the Trump-Pence campaign as a senior adviser. As a longtime supporter of his candidacy, it is a great honor to stand behind Mr. Trump, and I look forward to continuing to spread his positive message and advocate for his policies placing Americans first, Delgado said.

In a conversation with Yahoo News, the Trump campaigns senior communications adviser, Jason Miller, described Delgado as a triple threat because of her ability to connect with a wide variety of voters.

The thing that I love about A.J. is the range of audiences she can go and speak to. So, as we talk about conservative street cred, shes absolutely top of the charts, well known in the conservative movement, Miller explained. He added that Delgado could speak to Florida people, being that shes a Floridian  and then also, I think, being able to talk to Cuban-Americans and Hispanics across the country.

Miller said Delgado also stood out because she was one of Trumps grassroots supporters prior to joining the team. Delgado discussed her support for Trump at length in an interview with Yahoo News in March before the Manhattan developer had locked up the nomination.

According to Miller, Delgado will serve as a national surrogate, help with expanding our outreach with the Latino community nationally, and work on the campaigns communications in South Florida, a crucial swing state that contains many Cuban-American voters. Polls show Trump is far behind among Hispanic voters, and his campaign has lagged behind Democrat Hillary Clinton in its minority outreach efforts.

Story continues

Hosts on both the left-leaning MSNBC and conservative Fox News told Yahoo News that Delgado has emerged as one of Trumps top television surrogates.

I think A.J. has been, by far, the most cogent, formidable surrogate for Trump of anyone whos been doing TV appearances, MSNBCs Chris Hayes said.

She has incredible communication skills. She is not only a Harvard grad who is brilliant, but she has incredible insight and knowledge on every important issue of the day, Fox News Sean Hannity said, adding, On top of that, one of the nicest people on television and a huge asset to the Trump campaign and any show she is on. A.J. just crushed it on TV  a total natural talent.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks to supporters through a bullhorn during a campaign stop at the Canfield County Fair in Canfield, Ohio, U.S., September 5, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Jill Stein have all answered 20 questions from the website sciencedebate.org about science.

Particularly interesting are their answers to this question (emphasis mine):

The Earths climate is changing and political discussion has become divided over both the science and the best response. What are your views on climate change, and how would your administration act on those views?

Hillary Clinton replied that "the science is crystal clear" when it comes to climate change. She went on to explain her plan to reduce US emissions 80% by 2050. (I explore this plan, and its potential costs, in greater detail here.)

Jill Stein described climate change as "the greatest existential threat that humanity has ever faced," and calls for a "WWII-scale" effort to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030. (Some of the details of Stein's plan, like a call to support organic farming, don't seem to pertain directly to climate science.)

Gary Johnson has not yet submitted his responses.

And Donald Trump said this:

"There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of climate change. Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water. Perhaps we should focus on eliminating lingering diseases around the world like malaria. Perhaps we should focus on efforts to increase food production to keep pace with an ever-growing world population. Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels. We must decide on how best to proceed so that we can make lives better, safer and more prosperous.

I'm a science reporter, not a political reporter. So that's the perspective I bring to the table when I read this.

First, here's what's true, regardless of politicians' claims.

The scientific debate about climate change has ended, largely because it's been an obvious, observable reality for decades now. While in the past there were serious researchers who doubted human-caused climate change, they have, one by one, changed their minds given the overwhelming evidence of the last decade. We're living through the warmest year ever. If you're at least sixteen years old, you've lived through all 10 of the hottest years ever recorded. Think that's probably a result of natural trends? Allow Randall Munroe of XKCD to explain with a beautiful data visualization just how unlikely that is.

Story continues

Now, let's read Trump's statement with all that in mind.

An ungenerous reading would tell you that Trump has no idea what he's talking about, other than an eagerness to tell readers that he's not on board with all this scientific hoo-ha. He tucks the field of climate change between scare quotes, uses the word "perhaps" three times, treats addressing malaria and climate change as a binary choice, and doesn't offer a single clear policy proposal.

But let's give Trump's words the more generous reading a presidential candidate's statement deserves. We'll go through it point by point.

Trump: There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of 'climate change.'

Again, if Trump means that it remains to be seen if climate change is a legitimate field of science or that it's unclear that the world has grown dangerously warm, he's wrong.

You simply cannot understand global atmospheric and oceanic trends, like the unprecedented annual icemelt in Greenland or disappearing countries, without it  just as you can't do biology without evolution or diagnose a broken arm without knowing what bones are.

But in the hard math of climate change, the world has to weigh the economic benefit of 56,000 Greenlanders against the deaths of millions, if not billions, of people.

But if Trump means that it's necessary for climate scientists, like researchers in any field, to expand and refine their findings, he's absolutely right.

We don't know yet just how high temperatures will get given current trends, or precisely how high sea levels will rise in the next century.

We don't know if detailed proposals like Clinton's and Stein's are sufficient to prevent the worst possible devastation, or if more drastic measures are necessary.

If Trump in fact wanted to "investigate" answers to these questions as president, the best option would likely be to increase federal funding for climate research.

Trump: Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water.

Perhaps!

Trump is right that climate change poses a serious risk to global clean water access. A 2013 review of the available research published in the journal Science found that evaporating sources of freshwater in a warming world pose significant risks to the lives and well being of much of the world's population.

In the US, 30 million people rely on the Colorado River for drinking water. But an area stretching from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Denver (not to mention much of Western Mexico) risks losing its only reliable water source as it dries up. Right now, the river's delta has shrunk to just 5% of its original size as a result of warming weather, and does not contain enough water to meet the massive demand of the millions of people dependent on its flow.

Far be it from me to offer specific policy prescriptions, but it seems likely that direct action to prevent the world from getting too hot for water to keep its liquid form would prevent such problems from becoming even more endemic in the future.

Hopefully that's what Trump means!

Trump: Perhaps we should focus on eliminating lingering diseases around the world like malaria.

Female mosquito pupae

Perhaps!

It's a little unclear to me whether Trump is still answering a question about climate change here. But he's absolutely right that malaria, the deadliest disease in human history, presents a serious problem.

Trump might find this study, which investigates how climate change impacts the spread of malaria interesting. It turns out that warming temperatures change the shape and scope of breeding grounds for malarial mosquitoes, increasing the total population at risk. One way to prevent malaria from becoming an even deadlier disease would be to combat climate change  though there's no reason that such programs should be mutually exclusive with direct anti-malarial campaigns.

Trump: Perhaps we should focus on efforts to increase food production to keep pace with an ever-growing world population.

Perhaps!

Climate change is expected to have severe impacts on food security, particularly in parts of the world where people simply cannot afford to pay to ship in food from rich agricultural zones. In fact, long term food insecurity is on the long list of issues you simply cannot understand without understanding climate change.

There are projects underway working on tackling this issue, though I haven't seen any studies showing that one approach is conclusively effective. Trump might be interested to know however that a 2012 study in Science suggests that a shift toward sustainable agriculture might both work to mitigate climate change and global food insecurity.

Hopefully Trump looks forward to devoting more efforts and research towards this problem as president!

Trump: Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels.

Perhaps!

Trump: We must decide on how best to proceed so that we can make lives better, safer and more prosperous.

Looking forward to it. Hope this helps!

NOW WATCH: Devastating photos show lakes vanishing around the world





More From Business Insider


(Adds Trump comment)

LONDON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. economy could be $1 trillion smaller than otherwise expected in 2021 if Republican candidate Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November, economics research firm Oxford Economics said on Tuesday.

While the firm said Trump's policies - including more protectionist trade measures, tax cuts and mass deportation of illegal immigrants - may be watered down in negotiations with Congress, they could have "adverse" consequences.

"Should Mr. Trump prove more successful in achieving adoption of his policies, the consequences could be far-reaching - knocking 5 percent off the level of U.S. GDP relative to baseline and undermining the anticipated recovery in global growth," it said.

Oxford Economics describes itself as an independent global advisory firm. It is headquartered in Oxford, England, but has offices around the world, including in Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the research. At a campaign event in Clive, Iowa, on Tuesday, however, Trump reasserted that he would grow the U.S. economy.

He vowed to revive the country's manufacturing sector by preventing U.S. companies such as Apple Inc from making products overseas, renegotiating global trade accords and slashing federal taxes and regulations.

"We're going to provide opportunity, prosperity and security for all Americans," Trump said.

Under its baseline scenario, Oxford Economics expects U.S. gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the economy, to grow at a fairly constant rate of around 2 percent from 2017, reaching $18.5 trillion in 2021.

But if Trump is elected and succeeds in implementing his policies, it predicts growth would slow significantly, falling near zero in 2019, and reducing overall GDP to $17.5 trillion.

Oxford Economics said its baseline scenario assumes Trump's Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton triumphs in the Nov. 8 vote and a split Congress emerges - between a Republican U.S. House of Representatives and a Democratic U.S. Senate - which results largely in a continuation of current policies.

Story continues

Trump would face challenges winning the backing of Congress for all his policies, and some economists argue that looser tax policy could actually help boost economic growth.

The latest opinion polls show Clinton, the former secretary of state, ahead, but her lead has slipped in recent weeks.

(Reporting by John Geddie; Additional reporting by James Oliphant in Des Moines, Iowa; Editing by Howard Goller and Dan Grebler)
On Tuesday, September 13, Donald Trump once again tried to reach out to African-American voters by claiming that It can't get any worse. ... You cant walk down the street without getting shot. Trumps comments were made in front of a mostly white audience in Iowa.
Istanbul (AFP) - Turkey has asked Washington to arrest US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen for "ordering" the July 15 coup bid which was aimed at ousting the government, state media reported on Tuesday.

The justice ministry has demanded that US authorities arrest the preacher on charges of "ordering and commanding the attempted coup," the Anadolu news agency reported.

It was the first time Turkey had formally asked Washington to arrest Gulen, who currently lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, the agency said.

Ankara has on several occasions asked the US authorities to extradite Gulen, sending them documents which allegedly show evidence of his involvement in the putsch.

Early last month, an Istanbul court issued a formal arrest warrant for Gulen, who has denied any involvement in the botched coup.

When US Vice President Joe Biden visited Ankara several weeks later, he said he understood the "intense feeling" in Turkey over Gulen.

The US has "no, no, no, no interest whatsoever in protecting anyone who has done harm to an ally. None," he said.

"But we need to meet the legal standard requirement under our law," he added.
(WASHINGTON) The United States will provide Israels military with $38 billion during the next 10 years, officials said Tuesday, the largest batch of military assistance the U.S. has ever pledged to another country.

Following months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the State Department said the two countries had reached a 10-year agreement, with a signing ceremony planned for Wednesday. The U.S. and Israel havent disclosed the exact sum, but officials familiar with the deal said it totals $3.8 billion a year  up from the $3.1 billion the U.S. gave Israel annually under the previous 10-year deal.

Obamas national security adviser, Susan Rice, planned to attend the ceremony at the State Department, a senior Obama administration official said. Israels acting national security adviser, Jacob Nagel, arrived in Washington ahead of the announcement and was also expected to attend.

Israels government had no immediate comment on the deal.

Under the agreement, Israels ability to spend part of the funds on Israeli military products will be gradually phased out, eventually requiring all of the funds to be spend on American military industries. Israels preference for spending some of the funds internally had been a major sticking point in the deal.

The new agreement also eliminates Israels ability to spend a fraction of the funds on fuel for its military. In another apparent concession, Israel has agreed not to ask Congress to approve more funds than are included in the deal, said the officials, who werent authorized to discuss the details publicly ahead of a formal announcement and requested anonymity.

The agreement concludes many months of negotiations that involved a delicate calculation by Jerusalem about whether to strike a deal with the outgoing U.S. president. In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quietly floated the prospect of waiting for Obamas successor in hopes of securing a better deal.

Story continues

But the Obama administration has been eager to lock in the agreement before leaving office to help bolster Obamas legacy and undercut the criticism that his administration was insufficiently supportive of Israel.

Obamas relationship Netanyahu has been famously fraught for years, and ties between the countries worsened significantly when the U.S. and world powers struck a deal with a nuclear deal with Iran. Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat and disagreed sharply with Obamas contention that the deal actually made Israel safer by limiting Irans nuclear program.

Israeli officials have said predictability about U.S. aid is important to help its military plan ahead. Securing the deal ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November also ensures that Obamas successor wont have to delve into the issue during his or her first few months. Both Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton have vowed to protect Israels security if elected.

The new U.S.-Israel deal also includes, for the first time, funding for missile defense programs. Under the previous arrangement, Congress approved funds for missile defense separately and on an annual basis.

Congress must still formally approve the funding each year, but is expected to put up few roadblocks. Both parties in Congress have sought to outdo each in with displays of support for the Jewish state. The previous 10-year agreement is set to expire in 2018.

Netanyahu and Obama both plan to be in New York next week for U.N. General Assembly meetings, but officials have not announced any plans for formal meeting.
By Matt Spetalnick and Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Israel have agreed on a record $38 billion package of U.S. military aid and will sign the new pact on Wednesday, enshrining defense funding for Washingtons closest Middle East ally for the next decade, officials said. The deal will represent the biggest pledge of U.S. military assistance made to any country but also involves major concessions granted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to officials on both sides and U.S. congressional aides. Those include Israels agreement not to seek additional funds from Congress beyond what will be guaranteed annually in the new package, and to phase out a special arrangement that has allowed Israel to spend part of its U.S. aid on its own defense industry instead of on American-made weapons, the officials said. Israels chief negotiator, Jacob Nagel, acting head of Netanyahus national security council, arrived in Washington in preparation for the signing ceremony, and the White House also began briefing members of Congress on the deal. Nearly 10 months of drawn-out aid negotiations have underscored continuing friction between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu over last year's U.S.-led nuclear deal with Israel's arch-foe Iran, an accord the Israeli leader opposed. The United States and Israel have also been at odds over the Palestinians. But the right-wing Israeli premier decided it would be best to forge a new arrangement with Obama, who leaves office in January, rather than hoping for better terms from the next U.S. administration, according to officials on both sides. A deal now allows him to avoid uncertainties surrounding the next president, whether Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump, and to give Israels defense establishment the ability to plan ahead. Obama's aides want a new deal before his presidency ends, seeing it as an important part of his legacy. Republican critics accuse him of not being attentive enough to Israel's security, which the White House strongly denies, and of taking too hard of a line with the Israeli leader. Israel has long been a major recipient of U.S. aid, mostly in the form of military assistance against a backdrop of an ebbing and flowing conflict with the Palestinians and Israel's neighbors, as well as threats from Iran. The 10-year aid packages underpin Washingtons congressionally mandated requirement to help maintain Israels qualitative military edge in the region. Despite increased funding under the new package, Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a key pro-Israel lawmaker, said that while the agreement was "deserving of respect," it was too restrictive and not generous enough to meet Israel's needs. Efforts to finalize the deal had been held up over his objections, sources familiar with the matter said. MISSILE DEFENSE The deal, known as a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, calls for $3.8 billion a year in aid, up from $3.1 billion annually under the current pact, which expires in 2018, officials say. Netanyahu had originally sought upwards of $4.5 billion a year. The new package for the first time will incorporate money for Israeli missile defense  setting the amount at $500 million a year - which until now has been funded ad hoc by Congress. U.S. lawmakers have in recent years given Israel up to $600 million in annual discretionary funds for this purpose. Officials say Israel has agreed not to lobby Congress for additional missile defense funds during the life of the new MOU, a pledge expected to be made in a side letter or annex to the agreement. But the wording is likely to be flexible enough to allow exceptions in case of a war or other major crisis. The State Department and Netanyahus office coordinated the release of brief Statements declaring the deal was complete and would be signed at a ceremony in Washington on Wednesday. Neither side offered details. The pact will not be signed by Obama and Netanyahu, who have had a fraught relationship, but by two senior aides, in keeping with the way the two governments have formally sealed previous deals of this type. Nagel and U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon will sign the document. Netanyahu gave ground on several major points. He conceded to a U.S. demand for a gradual phasing-out, starting in 2020, of the 26.3 percent share of the aid money that Israel can spend on its own military industries rather than on American products. The provision originated in the 1980s to help Israel build up its defense industry, which is now a major global player. The issue was a major sticking point in negotiations. Netanyahu also agreed to end Israels use of 13 percent of the U.S. money on military fuel purchases, officials said. Obama and Netanyahu will both be in New York next week for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, and officials have not ruled out the possibility of a meeting on the sidelines. U.S. congressional approval is needed each year for disbursement of the aid to Israel as part of the annual budget process. While Graham insisted the MOU would not be "binding on future Congresses," reaction was mostly positive on Capitol Hill, where support for Israel's security is strong. (Additional reporting by Luke Baker in Jerusalem; Editing by Alison Williams and James Dalgleish)
By James Pearson and Ju-min Park SEOUL (Reuters) - Two U.S. B-1 bombers flew over South Korea on Tuesday in a show of force and solidarity with its ally after North Korea's nuclear test last week, while a U.S. envoy called for a swift and strong response to Pyongyang from the United Nations. Speaking in the South Korean capital on Tuesday, Sung Kim, the U.S. envoy on North Korea, added that the United States remained open to meaningful dialogue with Pyongyang on ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. "Our intention is to secure the strongest possible (U.N. Security Council) resolution that includes new sanctions as quickly as possible," Kim told a news briefing after meeting his South Korean counterpart. He said the United States would work with China, North Korea's major diplomatic ally, to close loopholes in existing resolutions, which were tightened with Beijing's backing in March. "China has been very clear that they understand the need for a new U.N. security council resolution in response to the latest North Korean nuclear test," Kim said. However, China and Russia, which strongly oppose a recent decision by the United States and South Korea to deploy an advanced anti-missile system in the South to counter the North's missile threat, have shown reluctance to back further sanctions. "Both sides think that North Korea's nuclear test is not beneficial to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula," China's official People's Daily newspaper said on Tuesday following a high-level China-Russia security meeting in Beijing. "At present, we must work hard to prevent the situation on the peninsula continuing to escalate, and put the issue of the nuclearization of the peninsula back on the track of dialogue and consultation," it said. FORCE AND SOLIDARITY The pair of U.S. supersonic B-1B Lancer strategic bombers took off from their base in Guam and flew with two Japan Air Self Defense Force aircraft before a "hand-off" to South Korean fighters, according to the U.S. military. The B-1Bs were then escorted by South Korean and U.S. fighter jets in a low-altitude flight over Osan Air Base, which is 77 km (48 miles) from the Demilitarised Zone border with the North and about 40 km (25 miles) from the South's capital Seoul. "These flights demonstrate the solidarity between South Korea, the United States, and Japan to defend against North Korea's provocative and destabilizing actions," said Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command. North Korea's official KCNA news agency said public anger was "exploding like a volcano" over Washington's dispatch of bombers to South Korea. "Any sanction, provocation and pressure cannot ruin our status as a nuclear state and evil political and military provocations will only result in a flood of reckless nuclear attacks that will bring a final destruction," KCNA said. China urged restraint among all parties. "If there is a vicious cycle of tensions continuing to rise and mutual provocations, this is not in anyone's interests," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily briefing. North Korea's weapons enhancements, including the testing of various types of missiles this year at an unprecedented rate, have alarmed neighbors South Korea and Japan. South Korean President Park Geun-hye maintained her tough stance against the North. The two Koreas remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. "I want our government and military to stay fully ready to retaliate, determined to end North Korea's regime once North Korea fires even one missile nuclear-armed missile toward our territory," Park told a cabinet meeting. A group of lawmakers in South Korea said on Monday the country should have a nuclear force of its own, either by acquiring weapons or asking the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons withdrawn under a 1991 pact for denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Kim, the U.S. envoy, said there was no need to reintroduce nuclear weapons in South Korea. North Korea has refused the U.S. demand that it accept denuclearization as a condition for holding dialogue. "It's a question of North Korean intentions and commitment. If North Korea is ready to talk to us sincerely, I think we can work with that within the six party process," Kim said. The six party talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear program involve the United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea, China, and North Korea but have been stalled since 2008. South Korea said on Monday the North is ready to conduct an additional nuclear test at any time after setting off its most powerful blast to date on Friday. (Additional reporting by Kim Do-gyun in Osan, Ben Blanchard in Beijing and Linda Sieg in Tokyo; Writing by Jack Kim and Tony Munroe; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
(New throughout, adds vote results)

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Tuesday approved a proposal to revamp the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, after a hearing where lawmakers verbally tussled over rules enacted in the aftermath of the 2007-09 financial crisis.

The Financial Services Committee voted to send the bill, introduced this summer by committee chairman, Republican Jeb Hensarling, to the full House to consider. No Democrat on the committee voted for the measure, which would allow banks to choose between complying with Dodd-Frank or meeting tougher capital requirements.

It would also reorganize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a watchdog created through Dodd-Frank that last week penalized Wells Fargo for creating millions of fake accounts under customers' names.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank law, passed in the wake of the financial crisis, has drawn the ire of most banks and Republicans in Congress. They have said Congress went too far in trying to clamp down on Wall Street and the law imposes burdensome requirements and gives regulators too much power.

The CPFB has been a particular target for Republicans, who do not like that it is governed by a single director and say it reaches beyond its authority in enforcement.

During the hearing, Democrats cited the Wells case, where the CFPB levied its largest-ever fine of $100 million, criticizing the panel's Republican majority.

Democrats said that without Dodd-Frank the U.S. government would have had no tools to fight the widespread fraud, which led to the firing of 5,300 Wells employees.

"I am particularly disturbed that this bill would take away the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's ability to penalize companies for practices that are abusive to consumers," said New York's Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat, echoing many in her party. "The chairman's bill, strips...from the CFPB its authority to punish abusive conduct, which means Wells Fargo would have gotten off even easier."

Story continues

Meanwhile, Randy Neugebauer, the Texas Republican who has advocated creating a five-member commission to govern the CFPB, said the bureau has not been politically neutral and is not transparent.

"I remain concerned that many bureau actions demonstrate regulatory paternalism that assumes the American consumer doesn't know how to make choices for themselves," he said at the hearing.

Corresponding legislation has not been introduced in the Senate, and Obama would be unlikely to sign the bill even both chambers of the Republican-led Congress passed it. Dodd-Frank is one of the Democratic president's signature pieces of legislation.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Peter Cooney and David Gregorio)
By Jessica DiNapoli

(Reuters) - A U.S. bankruptcy court judge on Tuesday denied Vivint Solar Inc's <VSLR.N> request to advance its lawsuit against bankrupt renewable energy developer SunEdison Inc <SUNEQ.PK> stemming from a failed merger.

Vivint filed a lawsuit earlier this year against SunEdison in Delaware Chancery Court after Vivint terminated its planned $2.2 billion merger with SunEdison. The lawsuit was automatically put on hold when SunEdison filed for bankruptcy protection in April.

Vivint asked Judge Stuart Bernstein to allow the lawsuit to move forward so it could secure a judgment against SunEdison. Vivint has said in court papers its claim against the bankrupt company is approximately $1 billion in damages.

It is the largest unsecured creditor in the case and can potentially influence how SunEdison's bankruptcy moves forward.

SunEdison declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Vivint did not immediately return a request for comment.

Bernstein rejected Vivint's request because it will take up too much of SunEdison's time.

"Prosecution of the ... litigation at this time will interfere substantially with the progress of the bankruptcy case and prejudice the interests of other creditors by diverting [SunEdison's] resources and personnel at a critical time in the case," Bernstein wrote.

SunEdison has been selling off assets piece by piece as it decides which path its reorganization will take.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - Syria has seen a significant drop in violence in the 24 hours since a cessation of hostilities came into effect, the U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Tuesday. Although there was some violence after sunset on Monday, by early morning the guns had fallen almost entirely silent, and U.N. aid trucks should be able to move very soon if the Syrian government issued authorization letters, he said. "Today calm appears to have prevailed across Hama, Latakia, Aleppo city and Rural Aleppo and Idlib, with only some allegations of sporadic and geographically isolated incidents," de Mistura told reporters in Geneva. "Sources on the ground, which do matter, including inside Aleppo city, said the situation has dramatically improved with no air strikes." Damascus and central Syria were also calm but there were some reports of clashes between government and opposition forces around Harasta and fighting in Quneitra between government forces and the Nusra Front, a group that is excluded from the ceasefire and which has renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. The most delicate parts of the agreement were to avoid the fighting snowballing and to disengage armed opposition groups that are observing the truce from those that are not, especially the powerful Jabhat Fateh al-Sham militant group. De Mistura said that needed to be done within a week, which would be "quite a challenge". If the truce sticks, U.N. aid should go in very, very soon, and the people of Syria can look forward to "no bombs and more trucks", de Mistura said. "But what is missing still is the famous authorization letters from the government," he said. "We have not yet received those authorization letters but we are eagerly hoping and expecting the government to issue them very soon." Details of the agreement struck by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after marathon talks on Friday have not been made public. De Mistura said the agreement did not contain anything about the release of detainees, which the opposition has said in the past is one of their key demands, with tens or even hundreds of thousands of people in jail. "I can tell you that there is no reference in this agreement on the detainees issue, which remains a very important issue, which I think needs to be addressed in a different context but needs to be addressed." (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
While paying for college is a top concern for many -- especially as tuition increases at most schools every year -- families can turn to U.S News for data on tuition and fees and financial aid.

In-state students attending a public school pay an average of 57 percent less in tuition and fees for the 2016-2017 school year compared with those attending out of state, according to data reported to U.S. News in an annual survey. Both in-state and out-state students experienced an increase in tuition and fees by an average of nearly 2 percent and almost 3 percent, respectively.

The bump in tuition and fees is even more pronounced for students attending a private school; the price increased by an average of more than 3 percent in 2016-2017 compared with the previous school year.

To pay for the growing cost of college, the majority of 2015 graduates took out loans, borrowing $29,411 on average. For most undergraduates who borrow federal student loans, the maximum amount for subsidized and unsubsidized loans for an undergraduate is set to $31,000 by the Department of Education.

But schools are also giving more in need-based scholarships and grants to students, allocating 3.5 percent more in award packages in 2015-2016 compared with the prior academic year. A handful of colleges -- 19 out of 1,082 schools -- also offer merit aid to at least 40 percent of students without financial need.

There are also other ways to determine college affordability. Since 1993, U.S. News has provided information on the Best Value Schools, which measures academic quality and price, factoring in the net cost of attendance for a student after receiving need-based financial aid, among other cost considerations.

One example is Harvard University, a top-ranked Best Value School, which provides need-based financial aid to 55 percent of full-time undergraduates. The Massachusetts school offered an average need-based award in scholarship and grant money amounting to $48,533 in 2015-2016 -- money that is free to the student, who doesn't have to pay it back or earn it through work.

The data above are correct as of Sept. 13, 2016. For complete cost data, full rankings and much more, access the U.S. News College Compass.

Farran Powell is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering paying for college and graduate school. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at fpowell@usnews.com.
(Adds Delta reaction, quote from NTSB chairman, details from report)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday faulted a Delta Air Lines pilot for a March 2015 incident in which a Boeing MD-88 veered off the runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport, resulting in minor injuries to 29 passengers.

The report said the pilot's use of excessive reverse thrust during landing led to a loss of directional control and the jet's departure from the snow-covered runway.

The report also said the flight and cabin crews did not conduct a timely or effective evacuation for a number of reasons, including the fact that damage to the aircraft resulted in the loss of the interphone and public address system, which delayed an announcement to evacuate the aircraft.

The evacuation of the plane with 127 passengers and crew took 17 minutes and did not start until six minutes after landing, the NTSB said.

The plane struck a chain-link fence before coming to rest on a snow-covered embankment just feet from Flushing Bay with its left wing tank leaking fuel.

"Make no mistake: This was a very close call," NTSB chairman Christopher Hart said on Tuesday.

LaGuardia, the smallest of the New York area's three major airports, was temporarily closed after the mishap.

The report said the captain faced situational stress at the time of landing, which prevented him from immediately recognizing the use of excessive reverse thrust.

Delta said in a statement it had cooperated in the probe and "we respect their findings, conclusions and recommendations. Delta leaders will use this NTSB guidance to further enhance the safety of our global operation."

The NTSB report also raised concerns about the initial uncertainty about the number of passengers aboard the plane, which didn't include two lap-held children. The report also faulted the Federal Aviation Administration's airport winter safety guidance as "not sufficiently clear about the timing and need for updated runway condition reports."

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by James Dalgleish)
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday faulted a Delta Air Lines pilot for a March 2015 incident in which a Boeing MD-88 veered off the runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport, resulting in minor injuries to 29 passengers.

The report said the pilot's use of excessive reverse thrust during landing led to a loss of directional control and the jets departure from the snow-covered runway.

The report also said the flight and cabin crews did not conduct a timely or effective evacuation for a number of reasons, including the fact that damage to the aircraft resulted in the loss of the interphone and public address system, which delayed an announcement to evacuate the aircraft.

The evacuation of the plane with 127 passengers and crew took 17 minutes and did not start until six minutes after landing, the NTSB said.

The plane struck a chain-link fence before coming to rest on a snow-covered embankment just feet from Flushing Bay with its left wing tank leaking fuel.

"Make no mistake: This was a very close call," NTSB chairman Christopher Hart said on Tuesday.

LaGuardia, the smallest of the New York area's three major airports, was temporarily closed after the mishap.

The report said the captain faced situational stress at the time of landing, which prevented him from immediately recognizing the use of excessive reverse thrust.

Delta said in a statement it had cooperated in the probe and "we respect their findings, conclusions and recommendations. Delta leaders will use this NTSB guidance to further enhance the safety of our global operation."

The NTSB report also raised concerns about the initial uncertainty about the number of passengers aboard the plane, which didn't include two lap-held children. The report also faulted the Federal Aviation Administration's airport winter safety guidance as "not sufficiently clear about the timing and need for updated runway condition reports."

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by James Dalgleish)
By Dan Freed

(Reuters) - There is probably no broader problem in the U.S. banking industry over abusive sales practices, despite the penalties imposed on Wells Fargo & Co's recently, the head of a federal consumer protection agency said on Monday.

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), said during an interview on CNBC that he does not see problems similar to those discovered at Wells Fargo occurring "on any kind of systematic basis at any other bank."

The CFPB and two other regulators fined Wells Fargo a total of $185 million last Thursday. The bank paid another $5 million to customers for creating more than two million fake accounts for products like credit and debit cards to meet aggressive sales targets.

The enforcement action caught the attention of U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who on Friday applauded Cordray's agency, censuring Wells Fargo for what she called "outrageous behavior."

On Monday, five lawmakers wrote a letter to U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby calling for an investigation. Credit rating agency, Moody's Investors Service also commented, saying the "embarrassing episode" would have a negative impact on Wells Fargo's outstanding debt.

Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees who were involved in sales practices described by the settlement.

(Reporting by Dan Freed; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lauren Tara LaCapra)
SEOUL (Reuters) - Two U.S. supersonic B-1 Lancer strategic bombers flew over South Korea on Tuesday morning in a show of force and solidarity with its ally amid heightened tension following North Korea's fifth nuclear test on Friday. The two bombers conducted a low-altitude flight over Osan Air Base in South Korea, which is 77 km (48 miles) from the Demilitarised Zone border with the North and about 40 km (miles) from the South's capital Seoul. The scheduled fly-over was delayed from Monday due to weather conditions in Guam, where the bombers are stationed. South Korea's Yonhap news agency said heavy crosswinds prevented the jets from take off. (Reporting by Do-gyun Kim, Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Michael Perry)
By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Major technology companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter are urging Congress to support a plan for the U.S. government to cede control of the internet's technical management to the global community, they said in a joint letter dated on Tuesday. The U.S. Commerce Department has primary oversight of the internet's management, largely because it was invented in the United States. Some Republican lawmakers are trying to block the handover to global stakeholders, which include businesses, tech experts and public interest advocates, saying it could stifle online freedom by giving voting rights to authoritarian governments. The years-long plan to transfer oversight of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is scheduled to occur on Oct. 1 unless Congress votes to block the handover. The California-based corporation operates the database for domain names such as .com and .net and their corresponding numeric addresses that allow computers to connect. [uL1N16I23J] In the Sept. 13 letter, a copy of which had been reviewed by Reuters before it was sent, the technology companies said it was "imperative" that Congress does not delay the transition. "A global, interoperable and stable Internet is essential for our economic and national security, and we remain committed to completing the nearly twenty year transition to the multi stakeholder model that will best serve U.S. interests," the letter said. Other signatories include Amazon, Cloudflare, Yahoo and several technology trade organizations. Former presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who leads the opposition against the handover, will hold a congressional hearing on Wednesday to review the transition, which he has criticized as a "giveaway of our internet freedom." Tech companies, technical experts and academics have said the transition is overdue and necessary to keep the Internet open and globally oriented, and that the proposal includes safeguards against any potential abuse by any one country. (This version of the story adds dropped word in fourth paragraph) (Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Richard Chang)
(Adds Chinese statement)

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. International Trade Commission handed another victory to American steelmakers on Monday, affirming most of the recent anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on hot-rolled flat steel imports from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea and Turkey.

The commission rejected anti-subsidy duties of about 6 percent against hot-rolled steel from Turkey, but affirmed anti-dumping duties of about 6 to 7 percent against Turkish-made hot-rolled steel.

The vote locks in import taxes on the affected products for five years. The duties are among a series of U.S. actions aimed at fighting a glut of steel imports as China's economy slows and demand remains weak elsewhere.

Earlier on Monday, the U.S. Commerce Department levied anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties of about 64 percent to nearly 77 percent on certain Chinese-made stainless steel sheet and strip products

China's Commerce Ministry said the move had been met with "strong dissatisfaction" by China's steel industry, and the government would take all necessary measures to protect the sector's rights. It did not elaborate on what that may entail.

The ITC vote affirmed final anti-subsidy duties of 3.9 to 11.3 percent against most steelmakers in Brazil and South Korea, but top Korean steelmaker POSCO and Daewoo International Corp face anti-subsidy duties of about 57 percent.

The highest anti-dumping taxes of 34.3 percent were imposed against Brazil's Usiminas, with all other Brazilian producers facing 33.1 percent margins and just over 11 percent anti-subsidy duties.

The Brazilian government has threatened to challenge U.S. duties before the World Trade Organization in a separate case involving cold-rolled steel imports.

Britain's Tata Steel UK will pay U.S. anti-dumping duties to of about 33 percent, while Tata Steel's Netherlands operations faces final dumping duties of 3.73 percent.

Used in automotive applications, construction, tubing and heavy machinery, hot-rolled steel imports from the seven countries more than doubled to nearly $2 billion last year, with the largest share, about $650 million, coming from South Korea.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Richard Chang and Peter Cooney)
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said on Tuesday federal regulators were correct to punish Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) for setting up sham accounts without customers' knowledge, but stopped short of calling for a clawback of pay from the head of the unit where the wrongdoing took place.

"It's bad behavior they were correct to take action against," Lew said at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha Conference in New York. "This is unacceptable behavior, and the kind of behavior we ought to catch and stop."

Last week, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and two other regulators fined Wells Fargo $185 million for creating more than two million fake accounts for products such as credit and debit cards, to help employees at the third-largest U.S. bank by assets to meet aggressive sales targets.

The civil enforcement action called into question Wells Fargo's oversight of "cross-selling," long a central part of its business model, in which employees encourage customers to buy products or to open accounts they might not otherwise consider.

Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, said it fired 5,300 workers as a result of the conduct. The bank on Tuesday said it would eliminate all product sales goals in retail banking beginning Jan. 1.

Lew used the Wells Fargo case to defend the enactment of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reforms, which led to the creation of the CFPB, saying: "This is something that our watchdogs found."

Some lawmakers have called for a criminal investigation, and some commentators have suggested that Wells Fargo should claw back some compensation from Carrie Tolstedt, the community banking executive who was in charge of the unit responsible for the wrongdoing.

On Monday, Fortune magazine said Tolstedt will receive a $124.6 million compensation package in connection with her recently announced retirement.

Lew did not discuss whether prosecutions were warranted, but said no executive was "too big to jail," and declined to discuss whether a clawback from Tolstedt was warranted.

Still, he said the Wells Fargo episode was a "wake-up call" for the banking industry to show that the "culture and compensation make a difference."

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)
(Adds comment from former Canadian union president, analyst, background)

By Bernie Woodall and Allison Lampert

DETROIT, Sept 12 (Reuters) - United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams said on Monday the U.S. union will support Canada's unionized auto workers during contract talks with General Motors Co but declined to say whether the UAW would refuse work at GM plants in the event of a Canadian strike.

Williams said in an interview he believes GM and Jerry Dias, president of the Canadian union Unifor, will "come to a conclusion that's best for all parties" and hopes they can reach a new four-year contract without a strike.

Dias and Unifor have threatened the strike of about 4,000 workers at GM plants in Ontario unless a new four-year contract is reached by Sept. 19.

"The UAW is going to support the Canadian auto workers," said Williams. Williams met with Dias on Sunday.

A strike would have ripple effects at U.S. plants, particularly if Unifor workers walk off their jobs at an engine and transmission plant in St Catharines.

Williams would not comment on whether the UAW would refuse extra work to make up for lost output if Unifor's GM workers strike at two Ontario plants.

"I don't want to comment on that because I don't know what it will bring us, but we'll do whatever we can to help (Unifor) in any way we can," Williams said.

If GM asks for extra work at the UAW's plants, "we'll have discussions with General Motors and tell them how dissatisfied we are."

Existing contracts expire Sept. 19 for Canadian GM, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ford Motor Co workers. Dias picked GM as its "strike target," meaning the union will try to get a deal with GM and use it as an outline for deals at the others.

Dias recently said he expected the UAW "would respect any action" Unifor takes and not replace production from GM's St Catharines factory.

If Unifor acts, "striking at St. Catharines would provide the most harm to GM," wrote Sam Fiorani, vice president global for AutoForecast Solutions in a recent article. "However, General Motors maintains other powertrain facilities outside of Canada which, with little investment, could absorb the St. Catharines volume."

Story continues

Buzz Hargrove, former president of Unifor's predecessor, the Canadian Auto Workers, says he remembers how employees at GM's Oshawa, Ontario plant refused to produce extra parts for the automaker during a 1998 UAW strike.

"Given that history, I think that they (the UAW) would be reciprocal," Hargrove said.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Detroit and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Additional reporting by Susan Taylor in Toronto; Editing by Chris Reese and Cynthia Osterman)
By Bernie Woodall and Allison Lampert DETROIT (Reuters) - United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams said on Monday the U.S. union will support Canada's unionized auto workers during contract talks with General Motors Co but declined to say whether the UAW would refuse work at GM plants in the event of a Canadian strike. Williams said in an interview he believes GM and Jerry Dias, president of the Canadian union Unifor, will come to a conclusion thats best for all parties and hopes they can reach a new four-year contract without a strike. Dias and Unifor have threatened the strike of about 4,000 workers at GM plants in Ontario unless a new four-year contract is reached by Sept. 19. The UAW is going to support the Canadian auto workers," said Williams. Williams met with Dias on Sunday. A strike would have ripple effects at U.S. plants, particularly if Unifor workers walk off their jobs at an engine and transmission plant in St Catharines. Williams would not comment on whether the UAW would refuse extra work to make up for lost output if Unifor's GM workers strike at two Ontario plants. I dont want to comment on that because I dont know what it will bring us, but well do whatever we can to help (Unifor) in any way we can," Williams said. If GM asks for extra work at the UAW's plants, "well have discussions with General Motors and tell them how dissatisfied we are." Existing contracts expire Sept. 19 for Canadian GM, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ford Motor Co workers. Dias picked GM as its "strike target," meaning the union will try to get a deal with GM and use it as an outline for deals at the others. Dias recently said he expected the UAW "would respect any action" Unifor takes and not replace production from GM's St Catharines factory. If Unifor acts, "striking at St. Catharines would provide the most harm to GM," wrote Sam Fiorani, vice president global for AutoForecast Solutions in a recent article. "However, General Motors maintains other powertrain facilities outside of Canada which, with little investment, could absorb the St. Catharines volume." Buzz Hargrove, former president of Unifor's predecessor, the Canadian Auto Workers, says he remembers how employees at GM's Oshawa, Ontario plant refused to produce extra parts for the automaker during a 1998 UAW strike. "Given that history, I think that they (the UAW) would be reciprocal," Hargrove said. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Detroit and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Additional reporting by Susan Taylor in Toronto; Editing by Chris Reese and Cynthia Osterman)
LONDON (Reuters) - A 66-year-old convicted fraudster, who twice failed to turn up to court in the United Kingdom to be sentenced and fled to the United States, has finally been jailed 22 years after the case was opened. Shariq Chughtai, who helped run three UK trading companies, pleaded guilty to a so-called long firm fraud in July 1998 and was sentenced in absentia to four years in jail in 1999, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said on Tuesday. Once he had been tracked down, the SFO started extradition proceedings with the United States in 2015 and he was returned to the United Kingdom last week to start his sentence, which was extended by three months for skipping bail. In long firm scams, fraudsters win the trust of wholesale suppliers with a series of small orders. The fraudsters then place large orders on credit, shield their whereabouts by having goods delivered to third-party addresses, and sell them on without ever paying the supplier. Four other defendants in the same scheme were sentenced to jail in 1999 and have long since been released from jail. SFO cases can be delayed for years when suspects abscond. One of the agency's most notable recent successes was the 2012 conviction of Turkish Cypriot mogul Asil Nadir for fraud 19 years after he fled the United Kingdom. Nadir was found guilty of stealing millions of pounds from Polly Peck International (PPI), a global trading conglomerate and stock market darling in the 1980s that he built and led. The firm collapsed in 1990. (Reporting by Kirstin Ridley; editing by David Clarke)
Um, this guy asked for his money back after buying a young woman a drink  and heres how she responded

Um, this guy asked for his money back after buying a young woman a drink  and heres how she responded

If youve ever had a guy (or girl) buy a drink at a bar, you might have wondered: What do I do if they ever ask for their money back? That would be totally weird, right? Such is the current plight of 18-year-old Abby Fenton, a college student living in the U.K. She went out to a bar and a guy, Liam, bought her a drink for about $7. They didnt interact again until he texted her out of the blue, asking for his money back. And yes, she has the screenshot (she tweeted this on September 8th) to prove it:

So this jus happened pic.twitter.com/rm4weoTXUQ  Abby (@abbyfent17) September 8, 2016

Thats right: It appears that the two have had no interactions, aside from asking for his money back. Fentons response seems pretty gracious and forgiving, but it makes us feel weird. While we dont know this persons intentions  and hey, lets be honest, we all know what its like to be hard up on money  we think it might be indicative of a larger cultural problem.

While we dont know whether or not Fenton returned his money, we do know she had an informal poll on her Twitter about what to do, and it appears the majority of people say no, she shouldnt return it.

Should I have paid back the 6.50  Abby (@abbyfent17) September 8, 2016

Too often in our society, people equate buying another person something  in this case, a drink  as people owing them something in return. Whether its a date, a phone number, sex, or something else, too often we read these social cues as a sign that something is being exchanged.

This makes us wonder: Would this guy feel entitled to having his money back if Fenton had gone out with him? We dont know about him personally, but we do feel that this shines light on a bigger issue in our society with how we view women and respect.

The post Um, this guy asked for his money back after buying a young woman a drink  and heres how she responded appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Istanbul (AFP) - Twenty aid trucks on Tuesday crossed the Turkish border and headed toward the divided Syrian city of Aleppo after a ceasefire went into effect, state media said, although the UN could not confirm the report.

The trucks carrying UN humanitarian supplies crossed into Aleppo province through the Cilvegozu border gate in the southern Turkish province of Hatay, Anadolu news agency said, citing security sources.

Aleppo city lies 60 kilometres (35 miles) from the frontier.

At least 40 trucks are expected to cross the border by the end of the day, Anadolu said.

No confirmation could be immediately obtained from United Nations officials in Turkey.

Turkey has said it was already making preparations to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo, where some 250,000 people in the rebel-held east are under government siege.

A spokesman for the Turkish Red Crescent told AFP the aid group would start sending trucks to Aleppo from Wednesday, in coordination with the UN.

Mustafa Ozbek from Turkey's Humanitarian Aid Foundation (IHH) said the charity had begun dispatching meat to several parts of Syria including the northern city of Idlib, to mark the Muslim feast of Eid Al-Adha.

"Some 400,000 Syrians will benefit from it," he told AFP.

He could not confirm if the aid also reached Aleppo province, a key flashpoint in the brutal war.

The Syrian regime on Tuesday warned that all aid going to Aleppo, particularly assistance sent by Turkey, must be coordinated with Damascus and the UN.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN Security Council on Tuesday gave the formal go-ahead for a new mission to help the historic peace deal reached between Colombia's government and FARC rebels take hold.

In a unanimous vote, the council adopted a resolution that approves the one-year political mission of 450 observers deployed in some 40 sites across the country.

Led by French national Jean Arnault, the observers will monitor the ceasefire, help disarm the rebels and verify compliance with the peace deal reached in June after four years of negotiations.

The agreement ending the half-century conflict will be formally signed in Cartagena on September 26 and submitted to a nationwide referendum on October 2.

A first group of observers, mostly from Latin America, has already arrived in Colombia to verify the disarmament and monitor the ceasefire.

Under the peace deal, the FARC will begin moving its estimated 7,000 fighters from their jungle and mountain hideouts into disarmament camps set up by the United Nations.

The FARC will then become a political party and its weapons will be melted down to build three peace monuments.

Special courts will be created to judge serious crimes committed during the conflict.

The British-drafted resolution provides for the cost of the new mission to be shared equally between the Colombian government and the United Nations and stresses the need to speed up the deployment of the observers.

"With this resolution, the UN can now complete operational planning for its monitoring and verification role, which will be critical to the agreement's implementation," said US Ambassador Samantha Power.

Colombian Ambassador Maria Emma Mejia told the council that the peace accord was already bearing fruit, with a first group of 13 minors leaving rebel camps and handed to the Red Cross this month to begin new lives.

"Colombians will have the opportunity to open the door to a better future, with a stable and lasting peace that we will have built with the support of the Security Council and the United Nations," she said.

More than 260,000 people died in the decades-old conflict that also drove 6.8 million people from their homes.
Geneva (AFP) - The United Nations did not deliver any aid to desperate Syrian civilians during the first full day of a fragile ceasefire because of security concerns, officials said Tuesday.

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva that he had "no information about any UN trucks moving at this stage," demanding "assurances that the drivers and the convoy will be untouched."

Spokesman for the UN's humanitarian office (OCHA), Jens Laerke, separately confirmed that no UN convoys have deployed across a border or within Syria since the ceasefire call more than 24 hours ago.
Geneva (AFP) - The UN's Syria envoy on Tuesday applauded a fall in violence through the first 24 hours of a fragile ceasefire but said security concerns meant aid convoys had not yet deployed.

Staffan de Mistura told reporters that the powers which brokered the truce -- the United States and Russia -- would likely provide a full assessment of the pact in the coming days or hours.

But he said that information reaching his office indicated "a significant drop in violence."

He noted that isolated reports of conflict persisted, especially on Monday night.

Possible ceasefire violations included mortar shelling by some opposition groups along the Castello Road, the key supply route to the battleground city of Aleppo, de Mistura said.

But he added that by sunrise on Tuesday the broad picture was positive.

A key test of the ceasefire agreed last week is whether warring parties will allow desperately needed humanitarian supplies to reach Syria's embattled civilians.

De Mistura dismissed reports by Turkish state media that UN trucks on Tuesday crossed the border towards rebel held eastern Aleppo, which has not received aid since regime troops seized the Castello road in early July.

The envoy said he had "no information about any UN trucks moving at this stage," demanding "assurances that the drivers and the convoy will be unhindered and untouched."

Spokesman for the UN's humanitarian office (OCHA), Jens Laerke, separately confirmed that no UN convoys have deployed across a border or within Syria since the ceasefire call.

The UN has said it is ready to send major stocks of life-saving aid to Syria's besieged and conflict-wracked areas.

Speaking earlier in Geneva, Laerke told reporters that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government had granted permission for aid to reach more than one million civilians this month.

But various obstacles remain. Past convoys have been blocked by government or military officials objecting to the contents of the humanitarian cargo.

Story continues

De Mistura also stressed that opposition leaders in rebel controlled areas needed to accept aid "with no conditions or preconditions" before material can be moved.

The Syrian truce marks the latest bid to end a conflict that has killed more than 300,000 people since March 2011.

De Mistura has voiced hope that a decline in violence and more relief to civilians could help pave the way for peace talks to resume.

He provided no specific timelines on restarting negotiations, but said the issue was likely to dominate when the UN General Assembly meets later this month.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Tuesday that de Mistura could invite government and opposition representatives to new peace talks "at the very beginning of October".
Fleury-la-Riviere (France) (AFP) - In caves deep underground in France's Champagne region lie thousands of shells that are 45 million years old, a site researchers describe as "rare and exceptional" -- and which may have influenced the flavour of the local bubbly.

"It's my paradise," says Patrice Legrand, a champagne producer and owner of the "Cave aux Coquillages" or Shell Cave, in the Montagne de Reims regional park in northeastern France.

Legrand, 55, who is also an amateur paleontologist, acquired the vineyard in the early 1990s and set about excavating the caves, which are now open to the public.

Trapped in a thick layer of limestone, in around 250 metres (820 feet) of underground galeries, are thousands of shells that have been untouched since their sudden disappearance for reasons that are still unknown.

Apart from cephalopods and tiny seashells, some of them microscopic, which Legrand has painstakingly cleaned and catalogued, the star of the visit is undoubtedly the Campaniles giganteum -- gastropods with spiral tube-shaped shells that are 40 to 60 centimeters (16 to 24 inches) long.

In the Lutetian age, or between 47.8 and 41.2 million years ago -- and some 40 million years before the emergence of Homo Sapiens -- "the Champagne region was covered by a warm sea and it enjoyed a tropical climate," Legrand said in the winding galeries which are up to 28 metres (60 feet) underground.

"These are not fossils as such, as in reality they are not fossilised. The homogeneity of the calcified rock and the impermeable clay layer led to this conservation," says Legrand, pointing to the shells, which are smooth inside and have a pearly sheen outside.

- 'Link to champagne' -

Legrand has catalogued some 300 species. And his work has attracted the attention of French and Belgian researchers.

"This site has given us a look at the past," says Didier Merle of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, who has visited the site several times.

Story continues

"It's exceptional because you can find a large quantity of Campaniles giganteum. We have thus been able to better understand the evolution of the shellfish, the environment and the biodiversity of the era."

He says there "are no longer many sites from this era due to urbanisation. This one is rare from the point of view of the geological heritage and we must preserve it."

The caves, where ancient shells have replaced champagne bottles, attracted about 7,000 visitors last year.

In some places, the shells are stuck together in a tangled lump.

"You need patience when you find shells: you take them out in a block, it's the best way not to damage them," says Legrand, who has been excavating tirelessly since 1997, with the help of some basic tools such as an electric jackhammer.

"The Digger" as his neighbours call him, spends his days in the cool subterranean galeries like "a real kid" dazzled by the profusion of shells.

The shells are "inexhaustible, even frightening. I will never have time to dig them all out, I will leave them for future generations."

Besides guided visits, tourists can receive tastings aimed at showing the link between the marine sediments, the vines and the champagnes of that particular part of the region, including the owner's own Legrand Latour brand.

"Shells hold the marine iodine and only release it when it dissolves," explains Legrand, who has developed a champagne with a low level of sugar that is specific to the region.

"And that goes very well with shellfish, like oysters," he adds with a smile.
Otis Elevator  a unit of United Technologies Corp. UTX, was recently awarded a contract to provide 169 elevators for Xiamen International Trade Groups (Xiamen ITG) high-end residential projects. The projects are under construction in Fujian province, in China. The financial aspects of the deal remain under wraps.

About Xiamen ITG

Founded in1980, Xiamen ITG has established itself among the top 100 real estate players in China. It is associated with high-end projects, which include the Xiamen ITG Top Mansion, Hefei ITG Top Mansion and Nanchang ITG Top Mansion.

The Deal

Per the deal, Otis will provide 163 Gen2 elevators, which are integrated with the advanced ReGen technology and will ensure energy savings of approximately 75%. It will also provide six Sky elevators which will reduce energy consumption and simplify maintenance, while ensuring ride quality. The elevators will be provided by Otis Elevators (China).

UTD TECHS CORP Price

UTD TECHS CORP Price | UTD TECHS CORP Quote

Moving Forward

As a worlds leading provider of safe and innovative elevator technology, Otis continues working on improving its elevator and escalator services due to which it keeps winning such contracts.

The company has provided its expertise in iconic high-rise buildings across the globe, some of which include the 828-meter Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the 599-meter Ping'An Financial Center in Shenzhen, the 555-meter Lotte World Tower in Seoul, 553-meter CN Tower in Toronto and one of the Seven Wonders of the World  the 324-meter high Eiffel Tower.

Since the beginning of the year, Otis has been winning major deals in China. This will enable the company to improve its regional top-line growth.

Otis is likely to procure more such prime contracts in the near future, given its focus on innovation and expansion. Since it is already one of the most trusted elevator and escalator companies in the world, its sustained R&D focus will augment top-line growth.

Story continues

The company offers its services to over 200 countries and territories. Alongside, it maintains more than 1.9 million elevators and escalators worldwide.

United Technologies, the parent company of Otis, currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the industry include CLARCOR Inc. CLC, Barloworld Ltd. BRRAY and Crane Co. CR. All three stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Confidential from Zacks

Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



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



UTD TECHS CORP (UTX): Free Stock Analysis Report



CLARCOR INC (CLC): Free Stock Analysis Report



CRANE CO (CR): Free Stock Analysis Report



BARLOW LTD-ADR (BRRAY): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Two huge US bombers flew over South Korea Tuesday in a show of force against the North as a top US envoy said China must help close loopholes in sanctions following Pyongyang's largest-ever nuclear test.

The supersonic B-1B Lancers reached airspace over the US Osan Air Base at Pyeongtaek, 64 kilometres (40 miles) south of Seoul, at around 10:00 am (0100 GMT).

Each aircraft, which had flown from the US Pacific Command's Andersen Airforce base at Guam, was escorted by US and South Korean fighter jets.

"Today's demonstration provides just one example of the full range of military capabilities in the deep resources of this strong alliance to provide and strengthen extended deterrence", said General Vincent Brooks, US-South Korea Combined Forces Command.

"North Korea's nuclear test is a dangerous escalation and poses an unacceptable threat," said the general, adding the US has an "unshakable commitment" to defend allies in the region.

The US "will take necessary steps to do so, including operations like this one today, and the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) battery to the Korean Peninsula," he said.

South Korea in July announced plans to deploy THAAD, a sophisticated US missile defence system, to counter growing nuclear and missile threats from the North.

But China, which believes the system's radar could also be used to track its own defences, objected strongly. The plan has also met resistance from residents of the southern county of Seongju, the planned site.

South Korean opposition parties oppose the THAAD deployment, insisting it could escalate a regional arms race and hurt ties with China.

They also say its usefulness against the North's military threats is doubtful.

- 'Clear warning' -

Tuesday's overflight was "aimed at sending a clear warning to North Korea about its nuclear test, and containing further provocations," South Korea's defence ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun told journalists.

Story continues

Washington took similar actions after previous atomic tests.

In January, the US flew a B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber over Osan Air Base after North Korea's fourth nuclear blast.

South Korea is home to around 28,500 US troops and numerous bases.

The flight came after the North on Friday carried out what it described as a "nuclear warhead test" and vowed to take further measures to increase its nuclear strike force "in quality and in quantity".

Washington's special representative for North Korea policy, Sung Kim, said in Seoul Tuesday that China must help the international community close loopholes in sanctions against Pyongyang.

The UN Security council is scrambling to come up with new penalties, but five sets of UN sanctions since North Korea first tested a nuclear device in 2006 have failed to deter it.

Beijing has said it opposes the testing, but analysts believe it pulls its punches because it is desperate to avoid anything that would imperil the status quo and alter the balance of power on the Korean peninsula in favour of the US.

China -- Pyongyang's sole ally and largest benefactor -- had a key role to play in showing North Korea the "serious consequences for its unlawful and dangerous actions," Kim said.

"We look forward to working with Beijing, to... try to close any loopholes" in the latest sanctions, Kim told journalists.
Washington (AFP) - US and Cuban officials held talks in Washington on bilateral economic issues Monday for the first time since the countries resumed normal diplomatic ties, diplomats said.

Just over a year since the Cold War foes put aside five decades of bad blood to seek normal relations, they focused ongoing discussions on thorny banking and trade issues.

Although the talks had a wide-ranging agenda, not much can be pushed forward substantively with a US economic embargo still in place.

Only the US Congress can lift the sanctions.

Still, the officials created working groups on different issues, including one on human rights in the Americas' only communist-run one-party state, the State Department said.

But Cuba's foreign ministry underscored that progress on rapprochement would require an end to the US sanctions that have been clamped on Havana for decades.

The two sides restored diplomatic relations in July 2015.

However, Washington still bans Americans from visiting Cuba as tourists, although travel is permitted for 12 other categories, including cultural and educational exchange.

Washington and Havana agreed in February to restore direct commercial flights -- one of several watershed changes initiated in December 2014, when US President Barack Obama and Cuba's Raul Castro announced a thaw after more than 50 years of hostility.

The first regular commercial flight between the two countries in more than 50 years flew just last week on a US carrier.

Regular air service between the neighbors was severed during the Cold War, and charter flights had been the only air links since.
bomber

WASHINGTON, DC  On Tuesday, the US dispatched two US Air Force B-1B Lancer strategic bombers from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, in response to North Korea's largest nuclear test.

The long-range supersonic strategic bombers were joined by Japanese F-2s for training to "enhance operational capabilities and the tactical skills of units."

The bombers were then joined by South Korean F-15s and US F-16s for a low-level flight in the vicinity of Osan, South Korea. Upon completion of the bilateral flight, the B-1Bs returned to Andersen Air Force Base.

bombers

"These flights demonstrate the solidarity between South Korea, the United States, and Japan to defend against North Korea's provocative and destabilizing actions," US Pacific Commander Adm. Harry Harris said in a statement.

"North Korea continues to blatantly violate its international obligations, threatening the region through an accelerating program of nuclear tests and unprecedented ballistic missile launches that no nation should tolerate. US joint military forces in the Indo-Asia-Pacific are always ready to defend the American homeland. We stand resolutely with South Korea and Japan to honor our unshakable alliance commitments and to safeguard security and stability."

bombers

On Monday, South Korea's Defense Ministry spokesman said the rogue regime is ready to conduct an additional nuclear test at any time.

"Assessment by South Korean and US intelligence is that the North is always ready for an additional nuclear test in the Punggye-ri area," spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said, according to Reuters.

NOW WATCH: Meet THAAD: Americas answer to North Korean threats





More From Business Insider


USS Eisenhower

The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carries out airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria from the Mediterranean, but in the early morning hours of September 11 a baby was delivered on board, the Navy Times reports.

Normally, a pregnant woman would not deploy in any branch of the military under any circumstances, but the third class petty officer said she was unaware that she was carrying a 7 pound baby girl.

Both the mother and the baby are healthy and are doing well, 5th Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Bill Urban told the Navy Times.

The moment the medical staff aboard the Eisenhower knew she was expecting, a helicopter flew out for diapers, formula, and other necessary baby supplies. For a moment, the attention of the Eisenhower turned from fighting ISIS to ushering in a new life.

As the baby was born to a US Navy sailor aboard a US aircraft carrier at sea, she's a US citizen through and through.

NOW WATCH: This incredible time-lapse shows what a day is like on an aircraft carrier





More From Business Insider


The United States said the Philippine government had not officially communicated President Rodrigo Duterte's demand to pull US military advisers out of the rebellion-torn southern Philippines.

Since 2002, up to 600 US advisers have been deployed in the Mindanao region to train troops battling Muslim extremists but their numbers have been scaled down in recent years.

A week after calling US President Barack Obama a "son of a whore", the incendiary leader said Monday US Special Forces in the region "have to go".

Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay however attempted to downplay Duterte's comments, saying Tuesday they were "in the context of wanting to save the lives of these Americans who might be exposing themselves to unnecessary risk" from militant attacks.

In Washington, the Pentagon and State Department said they had not been officially contacted by Manila about pulling out the remaining advisers.

Yasay, interviewed by Manila's ABS-CBN network, also confirmed the allies had not discussed Duterte's demand.

He said only around 100 US advisers were left in the south of the country.

The Pentagon in June also deployed warplanes and about 120 personnel in the northern Philippines for short-term training missions aimed at ensuring the allies' access to the disputed South China Sea.

- 'No shift' -

Duterte, 71, has said he is "not a fan" of the United States and on Monday explained his demand by showing pictures of US troops killing Muslims as America took control of its new colony in the early 1900s.

He has said the spat was triggered by State Department criticism of his controversial war on drug crime, which has left about 3,000 people dead since he began his six-year term on June 30.

Obama has said Duterte must conduct his crime war "the right way", protecting human rights.

Yasay stressed that Duterte's new comments did not signal a shift in policy, and that ties with the US remained strong.

Story continues

The president only wanted to protect Americans from kidnappings and terrorism as they had become "a very good target", Yasay said.

"There is no shift in so far as our policy is concerned with respect to our close friendship with the Americans."

Yasay, who was heading to Washington for talks, added the Duterte administration would honour existing defence agreements including a 2014 accord giving the US military access to at least five Philippine bases, one of them in Mindanao.

Duterte's spokesman Ernesto Abella also said Tuesday the president's pronouncements were not to be taken as policy.

"These were not directives to leave, OK? But this was a context on why we have a conflict (in Mindanao). In other words, he's giving a broad historical, cultural landscape."

However analysts said any drawdown would could come at a time of deteriorating security in Mindanao, with the presence of extremist and splinter rebel groups, some of which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asian security expert at the National War College in the United States, said Duterte's actions towards the US were worrying.

"National security professionals that I am in contact with are agog with the behaviour of a treaty ally," Abuza told AFP.

"It is going to take a lot of work to get this relationship back on track."
Washington (AFP) - The United States warned of "disturbing trends" in Iran's behavior Tuesday after Tehran's military threatened to down two US Navy planes over the Strait of Hormuz.

Some in Washington had hoped Iran's regime would show a warmer face to the world after this year's nuclear deal, but a US official admitted this has not been the case.

Asked about Iran's military provocations, its ballistic missile tests and its detention of US citizens, State Department spokesman Mark Toner acknowledged concern.

"We have seen some disturbing, as you cited, trends," he said, adding of the threat to the planes, "we have seen a succession of these events over the past month or so."

The spokesman insisted that Iran would have been an even greater threat to its region and to the United States if it had not signed the deal to limit its nuclear ambitions.

But he admitted it was possible that Iran had stepped up its provocations in other domains after the controversial agreement won the Islamic republic sanctions relief.

"I can't rule that out," Toner said, when asked if the nuclear deal, rather than taming Iran, had emboldened it to adopt a more aggressive stance.

"Iran, like many countries, has an internal political process that is defined by a lot of different dynamics, so I can't give an assessment on that one way or another."

Earlier, the Pentagon had confirmed the latest in a series of dangerous military encounters between the US Navy and Iranian forces near key oil trade routes in the Gulf.

Two US maritime patrol aircraft were flying separate missions in international airspace on September 10 when Iranian air defense batteries challenged them by radio.

US Naval Forces Central Command spokesman Commander Bill Urban said the Iranians told the pilots they "were flying near Iranian airspace, and if they did not change course immediately that 'we will fire Iranian missile'."

Story continues

"The US aircraft independently replied, 'This is a coalition aircraft conducting routine operations in international airspace,' and continued their respective missions," he added.

The spokesman said the Iranian warning was "unprofessional" but the US Navy has not deemed the incident "unsafe" because the US planes were outside known Iranian anti-aircraft missile ranges.

- Series of blunders -

In recent weeks, the Pentagon has denounced a series of "unsafe and unprofessional" maritime encounters in the Gulf, including one that prompted an American ship to fire warning shots at an Iranian vessel that got too close.

Navy officials say ships from the US and Iranian navies interacted more than 300 times in 2015 and more than 250 times the first half of this year.

Ten percent of these encounters have been deemed unsafe and unprofessional.

In January, the Iranian navy briefly captured the crews of two US patrol boats that had, through a series of blunders, strayed into Iranian territorial waters.

The 10 American sailors were released within 24 hours.
Winding through the arid green hills, the highway gives way to a rugged gravel road ending at a lonesome gate like so many in this land of ranches.

Inside lies an experiment in music, sculpture and how to present art in the 21st century.

Inaugurated this summer, the 4,700-hectare (11,500-acre) estate called Tippet Rise is the brainchild of a wealthy couple of free-spirits who are fulfilling a lifelong goal of creating their own classical music venue.

The Tippet Rise Art Center, hidden some 105 kilometers (65 miles) from Montana's largest city Billings, aims to marry art to the American West's overpowering natural openness, with musicians at times performing outdoors amid sculptures in view of the Beartooth Mountains.

But while the ambitions and setting are big, the founders, Peter and Cathy Halstead, have deliberately gone small in audience size. With Montana famous for fast-gathering storms, most concerts take place inside an acoustically state-of-the-art barn with just 150 seats.

The intimacy is integral to Tippet Rise, with the audience invited to join beforehand in a gourmet buffet dinner featuring local produce and to linger around afterwards to discuss the music with the artists over wine under a star-filled sky.

"Who wants to build Carnegie Hall? It's already there," asked Peter Halstead. He and Cathy, grandparents who have known each other since they were teenagers, speak exuberantly about the project and complete each other's sentences.

"Think of all these things that were built in the '40s and '50s to show that you had a proud civic organization that could afford to have a big audience," Peter said of the era of big classical venues.

"Suddenly we started noticing that nobody is in the big halls anymore. They're half empty," he said. "What we have is the same size as the Temple of Solomon."

For more recent models, the Halsteads looked to Snape Maltings, the rural English barley mill transformed into a concert hall by composer Benjamin Britten, and (Le) Poisson Rouge, the nightclub in New York's Greenwich Village that showcases experimental music with cozy informality.

Story continues

- Informality at the concert hall -

The Halsteads are more than just patrons of Tippet Rise, which is named after Cathy's mother. Inside the barn, the Halsteads take unreserved seats for each performance, the bearded Peter sporting sandals and a faded bucket hat.

For a performance of Messiaen's "Visions of the Omen," Peter interspersed the dark work by reciting his poems about the September 11 attacks and sat beside pianist Svetlana Smolina, turning her notes for her.

Peter, who has recorded as a pianist and published poetry, hails from an East Coast banking family. Cathy, whose passion is painting, took over the liquor company of her billionaire father Sidney Frank who promoted Grey Goose vodka and Jagermeister liqueur.

The couple has no expectation that Tippet Rise will ever make money. Tickets cost $10, far from enough to take care of the land's 3,000 sheep, 500 cattle and 5.5 kilometers (three and a half miles) of newly designed walking trails, as well as up to 40 employees in season.

"We have the wonderful luxury that we come from the world of being able to give," Cathy said.

Tippet Rise runs entirely on geothermal and solar energy, generating enough power to distribute to neighboring ranches, and has the capacity to collect 380,000 liters (100,000 gallons) of rain water, said Alban Bassuet, the French-born acoustician and designer who relocated to Montana to head construction.

"Arts centers are usually notorious for their energy consumption. It is very unusual to do this," he said.

- A hill for a sculpture -

Another concert in the barn celebrated Mark di Suvero, one of the leading contemporary sculptors, who sat in jeans in the audience.

Di Suvero is among the signature artists on display at Tippet Rise, where electric-run vans shuttle visitors to works across the estate. Di Suvero's "Beethoven's Quartet" imagines musical instruments in an abstract steel meld, with guests hitting it with mallets and hearing the sound reverberate through the hills.

"We said, what if a sculpture were not in a museum, where it tends to be confined by the walls, or even outside with a lot of sculptures?" Peter Halstead said.

"What if it had its own valley?" he said. "What if you could spend the entire day with that one sculpture?"

With Montana's harsh winters, the center -- best reached by four-wheel-drive vehicle -- does not anticipate concerts year-round.

When shows are off, the Halsteads envision Tippet Rise as a retreat, where musicians can stay with their families and practice on the center's dozen Steinway pianos.

The scope for audience growth is narrow, with Tippet Rise already obliged to turn away visitors who showed up without tickets.

Instead, Tippet Rise has built an in-barn studio with 3D immersive sound that is capable of livestreaming or broadcasting performances.

"There are never going to be more than 150 people in the audience, so you get to the point where the entire global footprint of the festival is going to be streaming -- video and audio -- of an extraordinarily high nature," said Tippet Rise's music director Christopher O'Riley, a pianist known as host of the "From the Top" program on National Public Radio as well as his Radiohead covers.

"And I think we're very happy with that. It becomes a bucket place to go, but it doesn't mean you can't experience it."
Who doesnt love a good movie exorcism? Demonic possession offers titillation with a whiff of the ridiculous, perfect for dramatic representation in horror films and novels. So when Federica Di Giacomo turns the cameras on exorcisms in Palermo, it feels pathetic in its tawdriness. Then you think about the deeply disturbed people whose psyches are being corrupted by sham-artists, and the pathos turns to anger. By the end of Libera Nos (Latin for deliver us), that anger turns to fury as Di Giacomo erases any misconception that the Vatican might censure these exorcising Sicilian priests once they get a load of the nonsense theyre peddling. Far from it: The Church is churning out exorcists as fast as they can. The documentarys chilling coda is what really gives Libera Nos its power, and Venices top prize in the Horizons section guarantees international festival audiences will get a glimpse at this outrageous embrace of ignorance.

This isnt a film with talking heads (nor spinning ones), though some of those involved do informally speak to the camera. Visually, the style is flexible, well-composed when possible but often most preoccupied with getting close enough to the action, and if that means bringing the camera down to the floor as a woman writhes about, so be it. There is a repetitiveness to certain scenes, and some audiences will likely find elements exploitative, though the real exploitation comes from the priests, with their mumbo-jumbo about possession when what their duped parishioners really need is therapy and meds.

Franciscan Father Cataldo Migliazzo is the chief culprit of the film, although Di Giacomo is careful not to vilify him directly. As one of Sicilys most famous exorcists, his ministrations are sought from all over by people claiming demons have taken up residence in their souls. Supplicants are all ages, and appear to be from the middle as well as lower classes. Father Cataldo and fellow exorcist Father Carmine splash them with holy water, cover their heads with priestly stoles, and lay hands on them in ceremonies that take more from Pentecostal denominations than the Roman Catholic Church. Sometimes though, when Father Cataldo cant actually get to his flock, hell perform a mini-exorcism via mobile phone, adding a, Happy Christmas, and best wishes to your husband, at the end that makes the ridiculousness of it all tip into outright absurdity.

The problem here is that the people calling on these priests arent Linda Blairs playing at being Regan; theyre individuals suffering from schizophrenia, depression, and a host of personality disorders, and theyre not going to get better by being told the reason theyre possessed is because their parents dont have strong enough faith. No one Di Giacomo films gets better, though some claim to temporarily be rid of demons after the priests ministrations. The whole concept feels so medieval that its possible to lull yourself into thinking these things only happen on the fringes of the Church, but no: a final scene at an exorcists conference in the Vatican itself shows that the practice is growing steadily under official sanction, and exorcisms are as available in Yonkers as they are in small Sicilian dioceses.

This is an uncomfortable film to watch, knowing that these troubled souls are being steered away from mental health professionals and into the hands of witch doctors who happen to be ordained priests. Di Giacomo largely sticks to a limited cast of characters, from a blonde woman who tries not to be out of her house for too long for fear her demon will make her do things in public, to a tatted and pierced drug addict desperately in need of psychiatric rehab. Surely a few are performing ever so slightly for the camera  claiming to be possessed is one thing, claiming to be possessed and agreeing to be filmed is another  yet the frequency with which the director returns to these individuals does make this alternate reality feel almost matter-of-fact. The documentary wisely avoids questioning beliefs, but it does force audiences to question how those responsible for shepherding the faithful use their influence, for good or bad. And while Di Giacomo maintains a veneer of neutrality, clearly Father Cataldo should be brought up on charges for endangering those seeking his assistance.

Related stories

Venice, Telluride and Toronto Set the Oscar Season's Table

Venice Film Review: 'Prank'

Venice Film Review: 'American Anarchist'
San Francisco (AFP) - Verizon is focusing on synergies, not job cuts, with its multi-billion-dollar buy of faded internet star Yahoo, executives said at a TechCrunch Disrupt conference here.

AOL chief Tim Armstrong on Monday said that while there were likely to be "job changes" at Yahoo if the $4.8 billion acquisition closes as expected early next year, the deal was about combining strengths in "a bold strategy for the future."

Armstrong did not lay out details, saying the strategy was still taking shape with input from Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer and her team.

While Verizon executive vice president and president of innovation and new business Marni Walden took part in the on-stage talk with Armstrong, regular Disrupt guest Mayer was noticeably absent.

Verizon bought AOL last year in a deal valued at $4.4 billion, and the Yahoo acquisition is another move in building an online media platform on top of the US telecommunication firm's network.

"We do not want to be a dumb pipe," Walden said, playing off a question by the moderator at TechCrunch, which is owned by AOL.

"We also want to be a platform and a services company; our lead in mobile lets us take advantage of that."

Verizon on Monday ramped up its internet-of-things platform with the acquisition of Silicon Valley-based Sensity Systems, which specializes in LED light systems that connect online.

Financial details were not disclosed.

Armstrong said the Yahoo acquisition is on track, with "enthusiasm on both sides internally."

- 51 possible bidders -

Yahoo went with Verizon after a process involving 51 possible bidders, according to a recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Verizon commands about 35 percent of the US wireless market, according to data at industry tracker Statistica.com.

Armstrong has steered AOL since 2009 -- first when it was part of the Time Warner conglomerate, then as an independent company, and since last year under Verizon.

Story continues

Both he and Yahoo chief Mayer were early employees at Google.

Armstrong's "Project Everest" strategy reorganized AOL and helped focus on digital media, investing in the Huffington Post and other news sites, while strengthening its ad-tech services.

Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post news site that has become a global phenomenon, announced last month that she was stepping down to launch a nonprofit group focused on health and wellness.

- Show business -

Greek-born Huffington launched her original American website in 2005 and sold it to internet giant AOL in 2011.

She said she would be stepping down as editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, which now operates in 10 languages and has a user base of over 200 million.

Armstrong, who heads the AOL unit that includes the Huffington Post and other news sites, called Arianna Huffington "a visionary who built the Huffington Post into a truly transformative news platform."

Armstrong on Monday sidestepped expanding on whether internal friction played a role in Huffington's departure, describing her as a "world class talent" and telling of a going away party held last week.

"People in the media love the drama," Armstrong said of her departure.

"It's not show friends, it's show business."

Armstrong said he believed combining Verizon's online media offerings will be a winning formular "if we have the high ground."

He also said he thinks of Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and other online titans as partners, not rivals.

"We are not planning on competing with Facebook and Google," Armstrong said of the media platform Verizon is building.
Viacom's five new board members will get a chance to get a better feel for and weigh in on the company's business momentum and strategy at a regularly scheduled board meeting that will take place in New York Wednesday and Thursday.

Observers said the board in its day-and-a-half-long strategy review could make calls on such topics as the company's dividend, which an increasing number of Wall Street observers has said should be cut, and weigh in on budgeting plans in various divisions.

Viacom, like other companies, doesn't disclose the agendas of board meetings. However, the meeting is understood to be a regularly scheduled work and budget meeting ahead of the Sept. 30 end of the company's fiscal year, and it is not expected to focus on significant strategic decisions or shifts, as some reports have suggested.

Viacom's stock on Friday dropped 6 percent amid a broader market selloff and Wall Street chatter that there wouldn't be any major strategic shifts announced after the board meeting. Year-to-date, the stock is down 7.5 percent.

Most attention is focused on the company's dividend policy, which the board could change this week, according to observers.

After the ouster of Philippe Dauman, whose official last day as non-executive chairman is this Tuesday, and the appointment of Tom Dooley as interim CEO, the company is focusing on key business issues. It recently hired Morgan Stanley and Lion Tree to help it with a review of its capital structure, according to a source. The focus seems to be on debt and cash flow trends and drawing up possible scenarios for reducing debt, which stood at $12.37 billion as of June 30, with $1.4 billion of that maturing over the next year.

Credit analysts at Moody's and S&P have said in recent months that they could downgrade their debt ratings on the company, which would increase Viacom's borrowing costs.

Wall Street has increasingly discussed a possible reduction in the company's quarterly dividend as many believe a sale of a minority stake in Paramount Pictures, which could bring in billions that could go toward debt reduction and spending on new content, seems unlikely. Such a sale would require unanimous board approval, and controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone and daughter Shari Redstone have been opposed to such a deal.

Story continues

Read more: What New Viacom CEO Tom Dooley Must Do

In May 2015, the company raised its dividend by 7 cents, or more than 20 percent, to 40 cents per share. Moody's Investors Service analyst Neil Begley said the annual dividend payments amount to approximately $636 million.

Viacom in recent years has declared a quarterly dividend by early or mid August, but it didn't do so last month or so far in September. Some observers haven taken that as a sign of possible change. The company hasn't commented on its dividend.

Street observers say a dividend cut may not be the most popular move with investors but could be implemented quickly, would preserve cash and could help the company avoid debt ratings downgrades, even though Begley said it needs to do more.

"Absent concurrent enhancement of audience ratings performance and advertising sales, a dividend reduction alone would not be sufficient to hold the current rating," he wrote in a recent report. "But it would certainly help preserve liquidity and reduce debt more rapidly as the company continues to align its operations to withstand risks from changes in the traditional media ecosystem." He added: "If Viacom cuts its dividends by 75 percent to roughly $160 million per year, it would have over $1 billion of cumulative excess cash through the end of fiscal [year] 2018."

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger in a recent report said a dividend cut would "demonstrate fiscal responsibility and give [Viacom] flexibility." He explained: "The market typically reads the signal like this: 'If management doesn't have confidence in their future cash flows, why should we?' But there comes a time when management bravado and an imprudent dividend policy [lose] their power as a positive signaling device and instead become a negative signal (that management is out of touch with reality)."

Viacom has already put on hold its stock buybacks, which help boost companies' earnings per share. Viacom spent nearly $10 billion on such buybacks between Oct. 2012 and March 2015 before stopping repurchases last year when it announced a reorganization and layoffs that provided annual savings of about $350 million.

Read more: Viacom's Management Shake-Up: What's Next?

This fiscal year, the company has bought back $100 million of its stock, but none since the first quarter. "We don't anticipate any share repurchases through year-end fiscal 2018," S&P Global Ratings analyst Naveen Sarma wrote in a recent report.

In addition to cutting its dividend, some Wall Street analysts have said Viacom could also reduce its cost structure longer-term by merging networks or closing down weaker-performing channels. And UBS analyst Doug Mitchelson sees room for more layoffs. "We believe Viacom's cost structure still has a lot of fat," he said in a recent report, without detailing where the savings could come from.

Others, meanwhile, continue to speak out in favor of Viacom and corporate sibling CBS Corp. re-combining.

Begley called that "the optimal solution" for Viacom. "They instantly get a competent new leader," he explained. The combination would also "provide cash flow and a stronger balance sheet to reduce leverage and stabilize the Viacom credit ratings" and "buy Viacom more time to fix its programming flaws by combining/leveraging CBS and Showtime in negotiations for Viacom networks" with pay TV distributors, he added.

"One of the quickest ways for Viacom to address its operational issues is to merge with CBS," echoed Drexel Hamilton analyst Tony Wible. "However, CBS does not seem interested in a merger, as it would dilute its focus on strong networks with pricing leverage." He added: "A combination may provide growth opportunities as CBS could renegotiate Viacom fees, restructure or sell some of Viacom's less attractive assets, and scale overhead. CBS would also benefit from owning a studio and from substantial deal accretion."

Others have called for a partial or outright sale of Paramount and a CBS deal.

"We believe that one of the major stumbling blocks for CBS in a merger would be taking on all of Paramount given both the deterioration of the franchise," Stifel, Nicolaus analyst Benjamin Mogil wrote in a recent report. "Counter-intuitively, we view a partial sale of Paramount as tipping the balance towards a merger, as such a deal would not only generate capital, which could fund a reboot of the studio, but the addition of a strategic partner would ease concerns about management being spread thin, and the valuation of the partial stake would likely result in management being given a long lead time to turn around Paramount."

Shari Redstone and Dooley are among the directors expected to attend the board meeting in person. The five new members, added in a settlement between Sumner Redstone's National Amusements and Viacom, are Kenneth Lerer, chairman of BuzzFeed; former Discovery Communications CEO Judith McHale; former Sony top executive Nicole Seligman; Eversource Energy chairman Thomas May; and Avis Budget Group boss Ronald Nelson.

Read more: Interim Viacom CEO Reassures Employees About Transition
Some people looking to launch a new evening newscast might look to the usual suspect, like CBS Evening News or CNN. Josh Tyrangiel says he looked more closely at Sesame Street and Saturday Night Live.

Both of those programs, he explained, are built of individual programming modules, each designed to serve the needs of the content it delivers to viewers. If Sesame Street wants to teach a lesson about the number two, he said, it might use an animated short, but to discuss a question of ethics or emotional development, it might tap the conversational back-and-forth of Bert and Ernie. Likewise, SNL is apt to use a live sketch to poke fun at a political candidate, but will serve up one of its taped digital shorts to entertain in a different manner.

Tyrangiel has reason to avoid the usual broadcast-news trappings that have been handed down from Walter Cronkite to Lester Holt. He is Vice Medias executive vice president of content and his charge is to launch a new five-nights-a-week newscast on HBO that will engages a generation of news aficionados who are accustomed to lapping up the latest headlines as soon as breaking news surfaces on Twitter, or diving deep into a Reddit exchange to pluck out some knowledge. The new program, Vice News Tonight, will in half-hour bursts serve up anything form the immersive field reports for which Vice has become so well known, along with video essays that use animation to make a point, or even interactive technology that will allow people watching the new program on smartphones, mobile tablets or touch-enabled desktops to stop the video and examine documents used in its reporting.

The assignment here is to make a modern, flexible news show, Tyrangiel said during a briefing at Vices headquarters in Brooklyn, NY, on Tuesday. The half-hour show is expected to air each weeknight on HBO at 7:30 p.m. eastern, and will be made available on the Time Warner cable services HBO Go and HBO Now streaming services.

Story continues

The program is the latest in a series of ambitious efforts from Vice, which has captured the fancy of the media industry  along with investments from Walt Disney, 21st Century Fox and Hearst  with newsy content that has proven appealing to millennial consumers. The company already produces hundreds of hours of video for its web site, the Viceland TV cable network it owns with A&E Networks and the weekly newsmagazine is already produces for HBO. Now it wants to revive a format that, while still popular, is viewed as a format for a generation accustomed to getting home from work in the early evening and not having news dispatches hiccup and burble at them all day long through a different kind of screen. And Vice wants to do this knowing full well it must serve up something fresh and engaging every night on HBO to a crowd that is likely to have digested the bulk of the cycles main news stories.

The show is going to evolve, a lot. We know that, said Tyrangiel. Vices audiences expectations of their media has been raised.

The report has so many different elements to it that Vice and HBO have agreed to postpone the start date of Vice News Tonight, the executive said, which had originally been scheduled for September 26  coincidentally, now the date of the first debate scheduled between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Now, Vice News is expected to launch October 10, said Tyrangiel. Executives were eager to make certain the new interactive technology worked seamlessly and that Vice could stack its various reports together properly for HBO. This is a massive undertaking. We want it to be seamless, he said.

A sample newscast screened Tuesday included a broad array of interesting stuff. In one story, a Vice correspondent hunkered down with soldiers in Iraq while bullets whizzed over him. Rounds are cracking overhead, the reporter wheezes between heavy breaths. Its going to be a bad scramble to get out. In another dispatch, Vice correspondent Joshusa Hersh visits with the mayor of Rutland, VT, who wants to open the town to Muslim refugees. In one shot, a town resident yells at the official from across the street and tells him the first rape to result from such a move is on you. Another segment featured an animated look at the history of the emoji. Tyrangiel also suggested Vice wanted to score big newsmaker interviews. We are not always going to be someones first choice, he acknowledged. We have to earn our stripes.

The Vice newscast avoids the formats typical trappings. There is no anchor, just an unseen narrator  one that could change, Tyrangiel said, depending on the mood or tone Vice seeks each day. The correspondents are not camera-ready. Many are dressed simply in T-shirts, jeans and glasses. If they are made up for camera, its not immediately obvious.

What was not presented was breaking news. Tyrangiel kept information about how Vice might cover the elections close to the vest, refusing to say whether or not Vice News had made outreach to Clinton or Trump for interviews. The executive said the company intended to work hard to get noticed for its reporting, potentially releasing a sneak peek at coming report each day online to generate anticipation, and even suggested Vice would consider breaking into HBOs regularly scheduled programming if it was sitting on hot news that could not wait for the evening.

But he also indicated Vice wants to keep away from a rote read-back of the days happenings. Vice correspondents, he said, werent going to do reports on the latest stock movement or stand outside 10 Downing Street and muse on what happened in British government earlier in the day. He doesnt want Vice to add to a great volume of noise surrounding the election cycle by enlisting additional proxies for Trump and Clinton as talking heads. Instead, Vice will focus on looking at how different countries are adopting to modernity; the worlds shifting climate; technology; and cultural phenomena around the world, among other topics.

Vice News Tonight wont be constrained by anchors or ad breaks, Tyrangiel said, and he hopes the subject mix, on-the-ground reporting and surprise scoops will be enough to get viewers to sample and even stay. We know weve got to fight in a crowded media landscape, he said, but I do think better stuff is finding its way to audiences sick of thinly reported dispatches and search-traffic clickbait. We are trying to build a long-term relationship with a different audience, he added, and tell them how the world works.

Related stories

TV Review: 'High Maintenance'

'The Night Of' Star Amara Karan on the 'Powerful' Finale, That Kiss, and Season 2

Vice Exec Admits 'Weak Spots' in Paying Freelancers in Response to Report
From Esquire

Jody Hill might not be as famous as his frequent collaborator Danny McBride, but with their HBO series Eastbound & Down and now Vice Principals, the writer/director has established a very particular brand of outsized, over-the-top outrageous comedy. The North Carolina native met McBride and partner David Gordon Green (George Washington, Pineapple Express) while at the North Carolina School of the Arts, and the trio's latest venture is a kindred beast to their prior Eastbound, focusing on two white southern high school vice principals-McBride's angry, quick-tempered Neal Gamby, and Walton Goggins' evil, dandyish Lee Russell-who form an unlikely alliance in order to sabotage their new African-American boss, Dr. Belinda Brown (Kimberley Hebert Gregory).

Given that scenario's racial dynamics, Vice Principals has come under fire in certain quarters for being insensitive. However, according to Hill, such criticisms invariably fail to take into account where the show-which will end after its two already-produced seasons are over-is ultimately headed. Speaking to Esquire, Hill discussed that controversy, as well as the benefits of TV versus film, and the reason he's so drawn to telling stories about the South.

Photo credit: HBO

With either Eastbound & Down or Vice Principals, has HBO ever told you that you've gone too far?

I would say 99.9% of the time, no. There were one or two times they said something early on with Eastbound. There was one episode in the first season that we'd written and we showed it to them, and it was basically Kenny running into these devil worshipers and they try to rape Clegg (played by Ben Best), and stuff like that. [Laughs]. It was basically Danny bringing the devil worshippers to church and killing one of them on the altar because he thought it was the right thing to do. I remember they read that the first season andthey didn't freak out, but they were just like, okay, this might not be all right. But after the first season, I'll be honest, there hasn't been a lot of stuff that's come up.

When it debuted, Vice Principals took some flak from critics for its premise about two white men trying to undermine an African-American female superior. When you were shooting, did you think it might inspire such a response? And how do you feel about it now?

Well, I don't know. I know how the show goes over all eighteen episodes. I'm not trying to say that there's some big plot point-I don't even really want to get into that. But these critics are going to see these characters differently. And it's fine if the jury is still out, or if you give impressions based off what you've seen. But some of it just seems like an extremely quick judgment. It's almost like they were waiting for something to happen, or some reason to say it.

It's kind of crazy, because as the show goes on-and I think you're starting to see that now-people don't see these guys as two-dimensional. Kimberly said it really well. She was like 'Why do you have a problem with this? You're the one who pointed it out."

But I have to say, we thought about it a little bit-people are going to think this is some dumb premise just to get you in. And that's the thing: It kind of is. That's kind of what we like about it. It looks like the old Hollywood thing, and then I just don't think anyone is going to feel the same after it's over. You may hate it still, but I don't think you'll feel like any of that shit they were talking.

Having the room to slowly develop characters over an extended period of time-is that one of the biggest benefits of long-form TV versus film?

Exactly. That is one of the great things about TV, and that's why we like it so much. There are a lot of longer movies from the '70s that we were a fan of growing up in film school-Danny, me and David [Gordon Green, one of the show's producers and frequent directors]. We wanted to make those types of movies, and we found that the best place to make those kinds of movies was in TV.

I like it when characters are dark and complicated. I just think it's a weird approach to talk about art as if the person always has to be a good person. If you don't like it, fine. But I just don't think it's fair to say that we have this responsibility to teach some lesson.

I like it when characters are dark and complicated. I just think it's a weird approach to talk about art as if the person always has to be a good person.

Vice Principals walks a fine line between realism and cartoonishness. Do you frequently discuss that balance?

Yeah, we do talk about that a lot. We structure everything, and think of these shows as dramas. What frustrates me a little bit sometimes is that there are a lot of stricter criteria to comedy. Meaning, there are more rules-people are expecting this, or there aren't enough jokes, or whatever. We always approach this just like a drama, and then we put jokes in; we just try to write things that are funny. So if it's a funny set-up, we'll try to write it seriously. We're constantly trying to be like, okay, how do we dial this back, or push it forward. And it is a fine line.

Photo credit: HBO

Vice Principals began as feature-film screenplay, and after Eastbound, you decided to return to it and turn it into a TV series. What was it about the project that suggested it'd be a better fit on the small screen?

Danny and I wrote the first draft right after Sundance back in 2006, and it was just because we wanted to work together again and do a follow-up to The Foot Fist Way. We liked it, it was fun, there was cool stuff in it, but it's kind of like what we were talking about earlier, with the longer formats. [On TV] you can do more stuff, you can follow different characters, and go down different tangents, and just learn about these people. For us, it just felt like, in 90 pages or whatever it, you didn't get as much of that stuff as you wanted to. The show has been cool, because we get to actually spend a lot of personal time with each character, and I think that's more in line with our sensibilities. Something just didn't feel right in the shorter format.

You shot all eighteen episodes at once in Charleston, South Carolina. Was taking on such an enormous endeavor daunting?

I directed eight of the nine episodes in the first season, and Danny directed one  he's made his directing debut this year [with Episode Three, "The Field Trip"]. And David directed eight of the nine on [the second season]. Luckily, we had a great crew around. Those guys are my friends since college. We work with a lot of our college buddies and old friends, so it wasn't so bad, because we have a really good crew around. But it's a big undertaking. Shooting for, gosh, almost a year down there. It was cool, it was pretty massive.

Like Eastbound, the show is set in the South, where you're from. What is it about the region that you find so appealing?

You kind of always feel like rednecks when you are in a big city and you come from the South. And really, Danny and me and David are the furthest things from rednecks [Laughs]. But I do think that, coming from a place that doesn't get represented in movies a lota lot of it is writing what you know, probably.

I don't feel like we consider ourselves voices of the South, or anything like that. I'm not trying to speak for anybody. But southern characters have never been taken seriously. They're always the bucktoothed guy. It's like the one group of people that's totally okay to hate on in this country [Laughs]. I think we at least wanted to show that area for how we saw it, and what was funny about what we saw. It seemed like it's something that wasn't being portrayed the correct way. It's not just people rolling around in the mud and working on farms and stuff like that. It's people taking karate in strip malls, and going to high school like everywhere else-they just have accents.

The South's not just people rolling around in the mud and working on farms and stuff like that. It's people taking karate in strip malls, and going to high school like everywhere else-they just have accents.

Especially given the two shows' similarities, did you feel any pressure to live up to Eastbound with Vice Principals?

There's always pressure. I don't know if we directly related it to Eastbound, in terms of feeling we had to make this good because of Eastbound. We did want to make sure it was different from Eastbound, and we wanted to make sure that [in contrast with] Kenny Powers, we wanted to give [Gamby] the school to care about, something bigger than himself. Also, with the addition of Walton Goggins, it's more of a two-hander.

Photo credit: HBO

Walton Goggins is such an equally formidable presence opposite Danny. How did you settle on him for the part?

He actually auditioned for us on the third season of Eastbound, for the Jason Sudeikis part. We were huge fans of Sudeikis, and we were thinking we were going to go with Sudeikis the whole time. But when we saw Walton, we were like, "Wow, who is this dude?" It was crazy, it was a different take than everybody else in there. So when we were doing this one, his name came up, and Danny spoke with him originally, and he was telling me about the voice that Walton just started doing on the phone, and he was really psyched. So the first time I met Walton, he slipped into that voice and it was immediately everything Danny had said it was. It was perfect. He just truly got that character.

You know, Walton is from the South, and I think he gets it, and has seen people like this before. He is just the best actor. He is one of these guys that just inhabits the role, but not in some fake actorly way -he can literally walk around and talk like this guy, and it's just amazing how he can do anything, and can react to anything, and never break character.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related Story" customtitles="Walton Goggins Opens His Brain to Esquire" customimages="" content="article.46993"]

HBO convinced you and Danny to return to Eastbound for a fourth season, after you'd said the show was over. Is that why you shot both seasons of Vice Principals at once-to avoid being convinced, later on, to continue it?

With Eastbound, we were going to do three seasons, but Katy Mixon [who played Danny McBride's wife April] wasn't able to join us for the third season-she joined us for two episodes, but we couldn't really do an arc with that. And then it turned out that HBO wanted us to come back, and we were like, we're not coming back. But then they said they'd get us Katy Mixon, and we thought, "Okay, that's a chance to end this show the way we wanted to. So let's do it." I'm glad we came back for that.

We are fans of the British Office and BBC shows, and we thought it would be cool to end the show with the story complete. I always hate it when you're watching a show and you're a fan of it, and inevitably, you sort of start to dislike it over time, because they're reaching and trying to keep going, and you can tell that they're just doing everything they can to have some filler to hit the 100 episodes. We didn't want to do that. I'd like to have that money, don't get me wrong [Laughs]. But I don't knowit just seems kind of lame.

Can you tell me anything else about where Vice Principals might be headed?

I think that everybody, when they first see this, probably thinks they know where it's going to go. But the whole thing, all eighteen episodes, goes to really crazy places  there's lots of heartfelt stuff, there's lots of dark stuff. But I don't think you're going to be able to predict where it's going to go. So I'll just say, if you like what you see, there's plenty more of that.

You Might Also Like
Tensions were running high on Dancing With the Stars on Monday night, after two men rushed the stage while Ryan Lochte and Cheryl Burke were getting evaluated by judge Carrie Ann Inaba about their first dance.

While the episode was live, there were some scary moments that viewers at home did not see. The two protesters that ran out onto the stage were wearing anti-Lochte T-shirts, but they were not alone. Olympic swimmer Ed Moses was in the audience and took video of the incident, which revealed that there were several women standing in the back of the ballroom, wearing identical T-shirts to the men that charged the stage. "Liar!" the group chanted. DWTS' security team, along with Derek Hough, escorted the hecklers out of the audience.

This crap is getting old! I love u @ryanlochte and respect you putting yourself out there, you are one of a kind!! ... #respect A video posted by Ed Moses (@eddiemoses) on Sep 12, 2016 at 7:14pm PDT

Footage from the night also shows that security quickly rushed the stage and took both protesters down. LAPD confirmed to ET that the men, ages 25 and 59, did not have valid tickets to the DWTS taping, and were booked for trespassing.

EXCLUSIVE: Derek Hough Addresses Ryan Lochte's DWTS Scare -- 'I Felt the Energy in the Room Change'

Once the men were apprehended, the crowd went wild for Lochte, giving him a standing ovation and changing "Ryan!"

And a standing ovation after w "Ryan" chants!!! A video posted by Ed Moses (@eddiemoses) on Sep 12, 2016 at 7:18pm PDT

On Tuesday's Good Morning America, DWTS host Tom Bergeron gave his recount of the frightening encounter, admitting that he didn't know what was going on until he saw Inaba's face. "It's not uncommon for a lot of noise, cheering and jeering when people don't like the judges' comments," he explained. "It wasn't until I saw Carrie Ann's expression change that I got the sense something more was going on."

Story continues

WATCH: Ryan Lochte Talks 'Heartbreaking' Suspension, Reveals Michael Phelps' Advice Post-Scandal

Bergeron said the audience was in shock. "My main concern was how Ryan and Cheryl were, and to try to get some control of the show," he said. "The mood in the room was definitely Ryan's corner after these guys were escorted out."

He added, "Times of crisis, if you will, certainly bring people together, and in this case that was certainly true."

EXCLUSIVE: Ryan Lochte Hopes Competing on Dancing With the Stars Will Give Him a Second Chance With Fans

As for speculation that the incident was staged, Burgeron responded, "There are always skeptics about everything."

Lochte, who is currently serving a 10-month suspension from USA Swimming following his Rio scandal, spoke to ET about the anti-Lochte protesters. "Honestly, it felt like someone just reached inside, took my heart out and tore it to shreds," the 32-year-old athlete confessed. "I was really hurt when I saw that and I was in shock. But I looked at Cheryl and she just smiled and said, 'You just did what you said you can't do. You danced in front of millions.' And I was like, 'You're right.'"

Related Articles
The village once hailed across China as a model for governance finds itself in yet more turmoil.

Police moved Tuesday to end protests in Wukan village, in Chinas southeastern Guangdong province, over the conviction and imprisonment of its elected village chief, reports the BBC.

According to the Associated Press, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to suppress the demonstrations, and arrested protest leaders. Unverified video posted on social media appeared to show protesters clashing in the street with police.

Authorities appear to have the village on lockdown. Riot police are stationed at the entrance to our village. No-one can go in or out, the BBC cited one woman surnamed Cai.

The latest protests erupted following the sentencing last Thursday of Lin Zuluan  who had been elected Wukans village chief in 2012  to three years in prison for corruption. Many villagers believe Lin is the victim of trumped-up charges.

In June, protests broke out in Wukan following Lins arrest and a subsequent televised confession, during which he admitted to allegedly receiving bribes. He had been campaigning against what he said were continuing attempts by developers to amass land in the village.

Local police in Lufeng, the city that controls Wukan, told the BBC that 13 villagers have been arrested for disturbing public order. It added that villagers were constantly spreading rumors, and that police action was taken to protect the interest of the public and return the village life to order.

Wukan rose to fame after Beijing allowed the villagers to elect their own village committee in 2012, in an attempt to resolve a months-long conflict between farmers and authorities over unchecked land seizures the year before. The so-called Wukan model was even once praised by state media.

[BBC]
Los Angeles (AFP) - The World Anti-Doping Agency on Tuesday slammed Russian hackers who breached its database and published confidential records of US Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams.

WADA said in a statement that the Russian cyber-espionage group Tsar Team (APT28), also known as Fancy Bears, had broken into its Anti-Doping Administration and Management System (ADAMS) database.

The hacking group released information gleaned from the files of Biles, the Williams sisters and US women's basketball player Elena Delle Donne.

In a posting on its website, Fancy Bears claimed US athletes at the Olympics had "played well but not fair."

However, none of the documents published by the group provided evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the athletes involved.

Instead, the disclosed files set out instances where the athletes had been granted exemptions to use various medications for legitimate reasons -- a common practice in the sports world.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) characterized the hack as a "cowardly and despicable" attempt to smear the four women.

"In each of the situations, the athlete has done everything right in adhering to the global rules for obtaining permission to use a needed medication," USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said.

"The cyber-bullying of innocent athletes being engaged by these hackers is cowardly and despicable," added Tygart, the anti-doping czar who famously helped expose US cyclist and dope cheat Lance Armstrong.

- 'I believe in clean sport' -

Biles said on Twitter she had taken medications for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) since childhood.

"Please know I believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport and is very important to me," said Biles, one of the stars of the Rio Olympics after winning four gold medals.

Story continues

Venus Williams meanwhile expressed "disappointment" at the breach, stating: "I am one of the strongest supporters of maintaining the highest level of integrity in competitive sport."

Delle Donne laughed off the revelations in a upbeat post on Twitter.

"I'd like to thank the hackers for making the world aware that I legally take a prescription for a condition that I've been diagnosed with, which WADA granted me an exemption for. Thanks guys!" the basketball player wrote.

An International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokeswoman said the leaked information was "clearly aimed at tarnishing the reputation of clean athletes" while reiterating that no anti-doping violation had occurred.

The data breach comes just weeks after hackers gained access to WADA's file on Russian doping whistleblower Yulia Stepanova.

Stepanova, who is living in hiding in the United States, later said she feared for her life following the hack.

"WADA deeply regrets this situation and is very conscious of the threat that it represents to athletes whose confidential information has been divulged through this criminal act," WADA director general Olivier Niggli said in a statement.

"WADA condemns these ongoing cyber-attacks that are being carried out in an attempt to undermine WADA and the global anti-doping system," Niggli added.

WADA said it believed the latest breach had occurred after "spear phishing" of email accounts and that it had been confined to ADAMS accounts of athletes competing in Rio.

Spear phishing is when an email user receives a message purportedly from someone they know, but it is actually from a hacker.

- 'Criminal acts' -

The hacking comes after a series of WADA investigations which have alleged a vast state-sponsored doping program in Russian sport dating back several years.

Russia's track and field athletes were banned from the Rio Olympics by the International Association of Athletics Federations, angering the Kremlin, which condemned the move as politically motivated.

But an independent report commissioned by WADA and published in July by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren concluded that Russia had run an elaborate scheme to evade drug-testers at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, corroborating claims by the former head of Russia's anti-doping laboratory.

WADA director Niggli said the hacking of the agency would hamper Russian efforts to reintegrate into the sports world.

"These criminal acts are greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia further to the outcomes of the Agency's independent McLaren Investigation Report," Niggli continued.

Fancy Bears however indicated it planned to release more information.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," the group said on its website.

"Wait for sensational proof of famous athletes taking doping substances any time soon."
The Olympics Cold War has a new chapter and its titled Fancy Bear.

The World Anti-Doping Authority says thats the name of a Russian cyber-espionage group that hacked into its records and released information on four top American athletes: Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Simone Biles and Elena Delle Donne.

Theres more smoke than fire here, as the athletes were revealed to have used drugs that they had medical permission for. But dont expect Fancy Bear and groups like it to retreat into hibernation. And dont expect the debate over drug use among all Olympians to vanish for another four years. It might just be heating up.

Fancy Bear presented its findings on Tuesday along with a cage-rattling statement: After detailed studying of the hacked WADA databases we figured out that dozens of American athletes had tested positive. The Rio Olympic medalists regularly used illicit strong drugs justified by certificates of approval for therapeutic use. In other words they just got their licenses for doping. This is other evidence that WADA and IOCs Medical and Scientific Department are corrupt and deceitful.

Authorities believe a Russian group is responsible for the WADA hack. (AP)

Tested positive is less scandalous than it sounds, as theres a deliberate process for allowing use of these strong drugs. The justification by certificates of approval  technically called Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUE) by the governing bodies  has a basis in the rules.

WADA explains TUEs this way: Athletes may have illnesses or conditions that require them to take particular medications. If the medication an athlete is required to take to treat an illness or condition happens to fall under the Prohibited List, a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) may give that athlete the authorization to take the needed medicine.

Its unthinkable that in the Olympic movement, hackers would illegally obtain confidential medical information in an attempt to smear athletes to make it look as if they have done something wrong, U.S. Anti-Doping Authority CEO Travis Tygart said in a statement. The athletes havent. In fact, in each of the situations, the athlete has done everything right in adhering to the global rules for obtaining permission to use a needed medication.

Story continues

Biles posted her own statement on Twitter, saying she was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, hence her need for medication. Please know, she wrote, I believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport and is very important to me.

So whats the big deal? Some hacktivists revealed information that isnt damning; so what?

The incident is disturbing for a few reasons:

First, it indicates theres at least one group thats capable of finding out medical information and leaking it. Thats a major privacy issue for doping authorities to urgently address, and it will give pause to any Olympian who is understandably fearful of personal medical information becoming public.

It also suggests more is coming. The McLaren Report, which found systemic and state-sponsored Russian doping leading up to the Rio Games, stirred a cauldron of anger in Moscow and elsewhere in Vladimir Putins nation, and that might have led to this attack.

Simone Biles says she has always followed the rules. (AP)

Russian runner Yuliya Stepanova, who blew the whistle on the doping program, was also the victim of an attempted hack recently. That prompted the following statement from former U.S. State Department terrorism expert Scott Stewart: The investigation that the runner [Stepanova] and her husband incited, and the mass suspension of Russian athletes from the Summer Olympics that it precipitated, was a black-eye for the Russian government. And Moscow does not take kindly to embarrassment.

Olivier Niggli, WADAs director general, said on Tuesday the hack is greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia further to the outcomes of the Agencys independent McLaren Investigation Report.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov strongly denied any involvement in the Fancy Bear hack.

Still, even if the leaks have nothing to do with Russia, the public relations boon to Putin is clear: its ammunition for the argument that the Olympic establishment is geared to help American athletes. While this news will be viewed by most Americans as nothing to see here, it could be viewed in Russian circles as, See, everyone uses something.

The Fancy Bear website proclaimed, We will start with the U.S. team which has disgraced its name by tainted victories. We will also disclose exclusive information about other national Olympic teams later.

That brings us to the other dicey subject, which is whether TUEs are always used properly.

Many athletes have preexisting conditions that must be treated. Biles, as mentioned, has been diagnosed with ADHD and thus received a TUE for methylphenidate, more commonly known as Ritalin.

But its easy to see how some athletes would have a motivation to use a drug that would otherwise be banned and employ it under the guise of a doctors exemption. Theres an argument to be made that banned substances should be banned for all athletes who are in or near competition dates. Once that standard is bended  even for the noblest of reasons  the slope can get slippery.

So although this particular story has no smoking gun, a rash of leaks and information about TUEs would bring a bigger (and perhaps needed) discussion about whether there should be stricter limits on what athletes use and when and why.

American swimmer Lilly Kings famous finger-wag at Russian counterpart Yulia Efimova drew a lot of favor in the U.S., but there are plenty of people outside American borders who are aching to wag a finger right back at the Americans.

More Olympics coverage from Yahoo Sports:


GENEVA (AP) -- Confidential medical data of gold medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles, seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams and other female U.S. Olympians was hacked from a World Anti-Doping Agency database and posted online Tuesday.

WADA said the hackers were a ''Russian cyber espionage group'' called Fancy Bears.

They revealed records of ''Therapeutic Use Exemptions'' (TUEs), which allow athletes to use otherwise-banned substances because of a verified medical need.

Williams, who won a silver medal in mixed doubles at the Rio Olympics last month, issued a statement via her agent in which she said she was granted TUEs ''when serious medical conditions have occurred,'' and those exemptions were ''reviewed by an anonymous, independent group of doctors, and approved for legitimate medical reasons.''

Williams revealed in 2011 she had been diagnosed with Sjogren's syndrome, an energy-sapping disease.

''I was disappointed to learn today that my private, medical data has been compromised by hackers and published without my permission,'' Williams said. ''I have followed the rules established under the Tennis Anti-Doping Program in applying for, and being granted, 'therapeutic use exemption.'''

Another athlete named was women's basketball gold medalist Elena Delle Donne, who had thumb surgery on Tuesday and posted a post-op pic on Twitter, along with a statement saying she takes prescribed medication approved by WADA.

In a statement, USA Gymnastics said Biles - who won five medals, four gold, in Rio last month - was approved for an exemption and had not broken any rules.

She wrote on Twitter that she's taken medication to treat ADHD since she was a child.

''Please know I believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport and is very important to me,'' Biles posted.

Story continues

WADA previously warned of cyberattacks after investigators it had appointed published reports into Russian state-sponsored doping.

''These criminal acts are greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia,'' World Anti-Doping Agency director general Olivier Niggli said in a statement.

WADA said it ''extended its investigation with the relevant law enforcement authorities.''

Last month, hackers obtained a database password for Russian runner Yuliya Stepanova, a whistleblower and key witness for the WADA investigations. She and her husband, a former official with the Russian national anti-doping agency, are now living at an undisclosed location in North America.

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected WADA's statement blaming Russian hackers as unfounded.

''There can be no talk about any official or government involvement, any involvement of Russian agencies in those actions. It's absolutely out of the question,'' spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies. ''Such unfounded accusations don't befit any organization, if they aren't backed by substance.''

The International Olympic Committee said it ''strongly condemns such methods which clearly aim at tarnishing the reputation of clean athletes.''

''The IOC can confirm however that the athletes mentioned did not violate any anti-doping rules during the Olympic Games Rio 2016,'' the Olympic body said.

The top American anti-doping official said it was ''unthinkable'' to try to smear athletes who followed the rules and did nothing wrong.

''The cyberbullying of innocent athletes being engaged in by these hackers is cowardly and despicable,'' said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

The name ''Fancy Bears'' appears to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to a collection of hackers that many security researchers have long associated with Russia.

In a statement posted to its website early Tuesday, the group proclaimed its allegiance to Anonymous, the loose-knit movement of online mischief-makers, and said it hacked WADA to show the world ''how Olympic medals are won.''

''We will start with the U.S. team which has disgraced its name by tainted victories,'' the group said, adding that more revelations about other teams were forthcoming.

Internet records suggest Fancy Bears' data dump has been in the works for at least two weeks; their website was registered on Sept. 1 and their Twitter account was created on Sept. 6.

Messages left with the group were not immediately returned. A French name and phone number associated with the site both appeared to be bogus. A mailing address listed by the hackers appeared to point to a florist east of Paris; messages left with the business were not immediately returned.

---

Associated Press writer Raphael Satter in London and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report
By Alan Baldwin and Jim Finkle (Reuters) - The World Anti-Doping Agency said on Tuesday that hackers stole confidential medical information about U.S. Olympic athletes and published it on the internet, blaming a Russian group for the attack. The U.S. government is investigating the case because there is evidence that the hackers are linked to the Russian government, though details are still sketchy, according to two sources familiar with the probe who were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter. Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying any possible Russian government or secret service participation in the hacking was out of the question. An FBI representative said she had no immediate comment on the release of the medical information, which prompted gymnast Simone Biles to disclose that she has an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. WADA issued a statement attributing the attack to Tsar Team, a hacking group widely known as APT28 and Fancy Bear by U.S. cyber-security researchers. Fancy Bear is one of two hacking groups accused in June of hacking the Democratic National Committee's computer network. CrowdStrike, a firm hired by the DNC to respond to those attacks, said in June that Fancy Bear was probably working on behalf of the Russian military. WADA said that law enforcement had told it the attacks originated in Russia. WADA spokeswoman Maggie Durand declined to elaborate or say how the operation had been uncovered. "WADA condemns these ongoing cyber-attacks that are being carried out in an attempt to undermine WADA and the global anti-doping system," said Director General Olivier Niggli in a statement. WADA said it believed the hackers gained access to its anti-doping administration and management system (ADAMS) via an IOC-created account for the Rio Games. The doping agency made the accusations as a website, www.fancybear.net, posted what appeared to be data about four U.S. athletes: Simone Biles, Elena Delle Donne, Serena Williams and Venus Williams. That site, which internet registration records said was created on September 1, said it planned disclosing information about athletes from other nations in the future. BILES RESPONDS On Tuesday it released documents known as Therapeutic Use Exemptions, or TUEs, which are issued by sports federations and national anti-doping organizations to allow athletes to take certain substances. The leak of a TUE with information about Biles prompted her to disclose on Twitter that she has ADHD. "I have ADHD and I have taken medicine for it since I was a kid," Biles said. "Please know, I believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport and is very important to me." The International Olympic Committee (IOC), U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), International Tennis Federation (ITF) and USA Gymnastics all issued statements saying that athletes whose data had been released had done nothing wrong. The IOC condemned the leak as an attempt to tarnish the reputation of clean athletes. "The IOC can confirm, however, that the athletes mentioned did not violate any anti-doping rules during the Olympic Games Rio 2016," the group said in a statement. "In each of the situations, the athlete has done everything right in adhering to the global rules for obtaining permission to use a needed medication," Travis Tygart, chief executive of USADA, said in a statement. "The cyber-bullying of innocent athletes being engaged by these hackers is cowardly and despicable." ITF president David Haggerty said all TUEs handed out to tennis players were done so in accordance with WADA rules. USA Gymnastics said that Biles was approved for a TUE exemption and had not broken any rules. WADA's chief, who apologized for the hack, said that it was "greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia", following release of the McLaren Investigation Report. The independent McLaren report charged that Russians had swapped positive doping samples for clean ones during the Sochi winter Games, with the support of the Russian secret service. WADA revealed last month that Russian whistleblower Yulia Stepanova's electronic account had been illegally accessed. Stepanova, who is in hiding in North America, helped reveal the biggest state-backed doping program in Russia and was forced to flee the country with her husband for fear of her life. (Additional reporting by Karolos Grohmann in Athens, Martyn Herman in London, Amy Tennery in New York, Mark Hosenball and John Walcott in Washington DC; editing by Ken Ferris)
At least one person was killed and several others injured when police fired on rioters in the southern Indian city of Bangalore Monday.

Violence erupted after Indias Supreme Court ordered the state of Karnataka to release water from the Cauvery river to the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu, Reuters reports. The river, which flows into Tamil Nadu from the south of Karnataka, has been a source of conflict between the two regions since the British colonial era.

Officers opened fire in order to quell rioters and later imposed an emergency law known as Section 144, prohibiting public gathering.

According to Reuters, protesters pelted police with stones and set fire to vehicles. L. Chandrashekar, a senior police officer, said that at least 15 officers were injured during the riots. More than 35 buses were set ablaze and local metro services were suspended. The Indian Express reports that more than 200 people have been arrested.

There were also reports that protesters pulled over trucks with Tamil Nadu license plates, beating at least one driver.

Karnataka state was ordered to release 12,000 cubic feet of water per second every day to Tamil Nadu until Sept. 20. The river is the main source of water for the states rice crops and disputes over water are common, especially when there are droughts or weak monsoons.

A Supreme Court ruling in 1991, ordering Karnataka to release water to Tamil Nadu, left more than 18 ethnic Tamils dead in a similar outburst of violence.

Bangalore police tweeted that 15,000 riot police and border security officers have been deployed in the city to restore peace.

[Reuters]
New York (AFP) - Wells Fargo pledged Tuesday to eliminate product sales goals in retail banking as it faced mounting criticism over its bogus accounts scandal, including from Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

Lew slammed Wells Fargo after it was fined $185 million and charged last week by a federal consumer watchdog with secretly opening accounts without customers' knowledge.

"It's unacceptable behavior and it's the kind of behavior that we need to be able to catch and stop," Lew said at an investor conference hosted by the CNBC network.

Lew's remarks came as Wells Fargo announced that employees would no longer have product sales goals starting January 1. Regulators with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wells Fargo employees engaged in the chicanery because their compensation was tied to opening up new accounts.

"Our objective has always been and continues to be to meet our customers' financial needs and drive customer satisfaction," said Wells Fargo chief executive John Stumpf.

"We are eliminating product sales goals because we want to make certain our customers have full confidence that our retail bankers are always focused on the best interests of customers."

On September 8, the CFPB denounced Wells Fargo for "widespread" illegal activity tied to its cross selling of credit and bank products to customers. By Wells Fargo's own figures, the bank opened roughly 1.5 million deposit accounts and 565,000 credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers, the CFPB said.

Wells Fargo has apologized and said it fired 5,300 employees tied to the illegal conduct.

The US Senate Banking Committee has scheduled a hearing on Well Fargo for next week at which Stumpf is expected to testify. The hearing is expected to focus at least in part on whether the bank should demand the return of bonuses from top executives.

Wells Fargo is the biggest private mortgage lender in the United States and has been the largest bank by market capitalization. However, shares have been hit by the scandal, leaving its market capitalization slightly below that of JPMorgan Chase Tuesday.

Story continues

At midday, shares of Wells Fargo were down 3.4 percent at $46.91.

Though the scandal does not involve huge amounts of money, it has tarnished the image of Wells Fargo after it emerged from the subprime housing bust comparatively unscathed. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is the biggest shareholder in the bank with more than nine percent.

Morningstar called the conduct "beyond the pale."

"Unfortunately, it's not surprising that numerous employees took advantage of an incentive system designed to spur cross-selling," Morningstar said. "The financial services sector has seen many similar instances of poorly designed bonus programs, including a wide variety of excesses leading to the subprime crisis."

Lew said the crackdown vindicated the creation of the CFPB under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which was enacted in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

"When I hear people say we want to roll back the statute that created the consumer protection bureau, this is another proof point it was the right thing to create," he said.
Sept 13 (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co, the largest U.S. bank by market capitalization, said on Tuesday it would eliminate all product sales goals in retail banking, starting next year.

The move comes days after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and two other regulators fined the bank $185 million over abusive sales practices.

The bank paid another $5 million to customers for creating more than two million fake accounts for products like credit and debit cards to meet aggressive sales targets.

Customers should know that Wells Fargo retail bankers are always focused on their best interests, Chief Executive John Stumpf said in a statement on Tuesday.

The enforcement action caught the attention of U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who on Friday applauded the CFPB, censuring Wells Fargo for what she called "outrageous behavior."

On Monday, five lawmakers wrote a letter to U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby calling for an investigation.

Credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service also commented, saying the "embarrassing episode" would have a negative impact on Wells Fargo's outstanding debt.

Wells Fargo said it had fired 5,300 employees involved in the sales practices described by the settlement.

(Reporting by Richa Naidu in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
The resolution of unauthorized account opening allegations, last week, did not end the matter for Wells Fargo & Company WFC. Though a $190 million fine by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will have no material impact on the companys financials, it has come under fire from several quarters.



Penalty Credit Negative: Moodys



This fine has led to a significant embarrassment for Wells Fargo, which, until now, had good consumer satisfaction scores. According to Moodys Investors Service  the rating unit of Moody's Corp. MCO  the companys reputation will see some damage.



The regulators findings are consequential for a bank such as Wells Fargo, which historically has had strong customer satisfaction scores and a reputation for sound risk management, Moodys analyst Allen Tischler wrote. We do expect some immediate damage to Wells Fargos reputation from this embarrassing episode.



Further, Moodys noted, [T]he regulators revelations are highly disturbing; they highlight that Wells Fargos vaunted cross-selling capabilities were inflated, its incentive structure had led to pervasive inappropriate practices, and its retail banking sales process lacked adequate and effective oversight. As such, the implications of this announcement are credit negative.



Additionally, the rating agency expects Wells Fargo to improve its risk management and sales oversight. Nonetheless, Moodys did not announce any ratings changes.



Currently, Moodys has an A2 rating on Wells Fargos long-term debt with a stable outlook. The rating is one notch higher than that of JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM and two notches above that of Bank of America Corp. BAC.



CEO to Testify In Front of Senate Panel



Following the announcement of penalty last week, Democratic senators  including Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown  wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, calling for an investigation of the matter and asking Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf to testify.



The Senate Banking Committee now plans to hold a hearing on Sep 20, 2016. The CEO, along with other top executives, has been asked to appear before it.



Suspension of Cross-Selling of Financial Products



Wells Fargo has temporarily suspended cross-selling of its financial products to customers by call center workers. This was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.



The company spokeswoman Mary Eshet said, We asked the team to pause on the sales part of our calls.



The halting of cross-sell of products is likely to be reviewed later this week, while performance and incentive adjustments will complete by the end of this month. Nonetheless, the suspension does not apply to employees in retail branches.



Also, as part of the settlement deal, Well Fargo had to terminate the services of around 5,300 employees. It anticipated that the penalty should lead to claw-back of compensation from Carrie Tolstedt, the executive who headed community banking, until the company announced her retirement in July.



What's Next for Wells Fargo?



At the time of settling the allegations, in a statement the bank said, Wells Fargo reached these agreements consistent with our commitment to customers and in the interest of putting this matter behind us. Wells Fargo is committed to putting our customers interests first 100 percent of the time, and we regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request.



We believe Wells Fargo will have to make significant changes in the ways it sells financial products to its customers. Also, the company is likely to change incentives offered to its employees.



Currently, Wells Fargo carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). In case you wish to find some better-ranked stocks from banking as well as other industries, you can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Confidential from Zacks



Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>



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



WELLS FARGO-NEW (WFC): Free Stock Analysis Report



BANK OF AMER CP (BAC): Free Stock Analysis Report



MOODYS CORP (MCO): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
By Dan Freed and Lisa Lambert NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co scrapped its product sales goals for retail bankers on Tuesday and may take further disciplinary action against its employees in the wake of a fake account scandal that has already led to $190 million in fines and the firing of 5,300 employees. Wells Fargo has been hit hard by allegations its staff opened more than 2 million bank accounts and credit cards for customers without their consent in a bid to meet internal sales goals. Politicians are calling for an investigation, and Wells Fargo and regulators are expected to testify in the Senate next week. One of the United States' largest and most respected financial institutions, Wells Fargo built itself into the most valuable U.S. bank after the financial crisis partly because it did not rely on risky trades or complex derivatives to turn a profit. But the company's shares have lost around 7 percent of their value since last week, when U.S. regulators unveiled the fines against the bank , and it has ceded its position as the largest U.S. bank by market capitalization to rival JPMorgan Chase & Co. Wells Fargo - which was long the envy of the banking industry for its ability to sell multiple products to the same customer - agreed to pay $185 million in fines and $5 million to customers last week after reaching a settlement with three regulators over the alleged sales abuses. The phantom accounts meant that some customers were charged for insufficient funds, according to the regulators. During a CNBC appearance on Tuesday evening, Chief Executive John Stumpf apologized and said management takes responsibility for the problems identified in the settlement. Although the bank has eliminated sales goals for retail staff, Stumpf said "cross-selling" products from various businesses to customers is still important to growing its business. "We still love-cross selling," he said, later adding, "Cross-sell is shorthand for deep, long-term relationships. We love that." Even after firing more than 2 percent of its staff for improper selling, Wells Fargo is still examining its practices, Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry said earlier in the day. The bank will "take a big wide fresh look at who knew what and when and what else might have been done," he said speaking at an industry conference. Shrewsberry said the review would impact people "at all levels of the organization." Carrie Tolstedt, the head of the bank's retail operations where the abuses are alleged to have occurred, stepped down in July. The controversy has led to calls for the bank to claw back bonuses paid to her. Tolstedt received a pay raise in March, after getting more than $9 million in cash and stock last year. She left with more than 2.5 million in Wells Fargo shares, currently worth around $120 million. A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said Tolstedt had "made a decision to retire at the end of this year." Tolstedt could not be reached for comment. Stumpf said clawback decisions are determined by the board of directors, and that product sales goals are not a component of compensation for any senior executives. POLITICAL HEAT The bank's practices have also drawn scrutiny from Washington, with staff members for the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the banking industry, set to meet with representatives of the bank. Stumpf, Cordray and Tom Curry, from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, will testify before the committee next week. Torrie Matous, spokeswoman for the committee's chairman, Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, said staff had "been arranging briefings and collecting information from both Wells Fargo and the regulators" to prepare for a Sept. 20 hearing. Five Democrats on the committee, including Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have pressed for an investigation. The top Democrat on the banking committee, Ohios Senator Sherrod Brown, wants the panel to probe deeper than a single hearing, "so we can get answers on how this massive fraud happened, whats being done to make customers whole, and how to put safeguards in place to protect against its recurrence." (Writing by Michael Erman; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Alan Crosby)
TUNIS (Reuters) - The United States and five European powers on Monday urged forces loyal to eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar to withdraw from several key oil ports seized from a rival force over the weekend. Fighters loyal to Haftar took control of the ports of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider, Zueitina and Brega, displacing a force allied to the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli. The seizure threatened to reignite conflict over Libya's oil resources and disrupt efforts by the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord to revive oil production and exports. "We call for all military forces that have moved into the oil crescent to withdraw immediately, without preconditions," the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain said in a joint statement. The western powers condemned the attacks on the ports and affirmed their intent to enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution designed to prevent what they called "illicit" oil exports. Eastern Libyan factions allied to Haftar had previously tried to export oil independently of the government and the National Oil Corporation in Tripoli. Libya's oil infrastructure, production and export must remain under the control of the corporation acting under the Government of National Accord, the western countries said in their statement. U.N. Libya envoy Martin Kobler, in a separate statement, expressed "grave concern" at fighting around the oil ports, and called on forces who seized the terminals to refrain from further military escalation. "Attacks on the oil terminals further threaten the stability and lead to a greater division of the country," Kobler said. "They further restrict the oil exports and add to people's suffering." (Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Chris Reese and Richard Chang)
TUNIS (Reuters) - The United States and five European powers called on Monday on forces loyal to eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar to withdraw from several key oil ports seized from a rival force over the weekend. "We call for all military forces that have moved into the oil crescent to withdraw immediately, without preconditions," said the statement from the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain. Forces loyal to Haftar took control of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider, Zueitina and Brega ports, displacing a force that is allied to the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli. (Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Chris Reese)
Heres what happened to the hot dude who played Riley in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Heres what happened to the hot dude who played Riley in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

The Twilight Saga brought us a lot of famous names weve come to know and love over the last 8 (!!!) years  Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed  we can go on forever, really! And while the main cast stayed the same throughout the five films, the villains are a whole other story.

Remember when The Twilight Saga: Eclipse came out and everyone was all like, Sweet Jesus, who the heck is THAT super hot guy trying to kill Bella?

Well, that guys name is Xavier Samuel and SPOILER ALERT: Hes still hot AF. And while his starring role in the third installment of the wildly popular film franchise skyrocketed him to early 2010s fame and earned him 5 award nominations, it seems like hes been lying pretty low the last few years, right?

Wrong! Hes actually been pretty busy filming A LOT of movies. After Twilight, the 32-year old Australian actor starred opposite of Naomi Watts in Adore, in which he plays an 18-year old who falls for his mothers best friend.

You can actually catch this one on Netflix, and we definitely just added it to our watch list!

Samuel also has two films, A Few Less Men and Spin Out, that are out this year and has started pre-production for Banjo & Matilda.

And while Xavier likes to lay low on social media (seriously, he doesnt have Twitter or Instagram so really, how else ARE we supposed to keep up with what hes up to?) we can tell you this, again:

Hes still insanely attractive.

Well be on the lookout for his upcoming films!

The post Heres what happened to the hot dude who played Riley in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Common in children, head lice are not thought to transmit any infectious diseases the way that body lice can. But infestations of the tiny, wingless parasites often cause dermatitis of the scalp, characterized by a red scaly rash and itching -- or just itching, says Dr. Markus Boos, a dermatologist at Seattle Children's Hospital and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Along with the annoyance, there's stigma attached to having lice. "There are definitely social ramifications," Boos says, noting kids may be teased or viewed as unclean. However, clinicians point out, head-to-head contact with a person who has lice is the main means of transmission, not personal or household cleanliness. "This is something that is just very contagious," says Dr. Katya Harfmann, a pediatric dermatologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital and an assistant professor of pediatric dermatology at Ohio State University--Columbus.

Though experts say it may still be worth trying over-the-counter treatments as a first line of defense, the growing prevalence of so-called super lice -- or lice that's resistant to OTC treatments -- has led clinicians to recommend parents also carefully consider other options, including prescription treatment, if a child's lice persists. Research has found that as lice resistance to frequently used OTC treatments has grown widespread in the U.S., after first beginning to emerge in the 1990s, the effectiveness of OTC treatments has declined steadily. A study published earlier this year in the Journal of Medical Entomology found almost all lice collected and tested from 138 sites in 48 states (no lice were analyzed in Alaska or West Virginia) had mutations responsible for resistance to active ingredients in widely used OTC treatments, including Rid and Nix. The pharmaceutical firm Sanofi, which owned Sklice (ivermectin) lotion, a newer generation prescription treatment for lice, provided funding for the research.

Story continues

[See: 13 Tips for Getting Kids Health-Ready for Back to School.]

In addition, a review of head lice treatments published online this month in the journal Pediatric Dermatology noted a marked decline in the effectiveness of widely used OTC treatments, which are more frequently applied than prescription treatments. Published data "support that the emergence of resistance has caused this decline," researchers wrote. The review also found home remedies, such as applying mayonnaise, petroleum jelly or olive oil in an attempt to smother lice, don't work. The therapies may temporarily suppress the bugs' metabolic activity, "giving the impression of death, only to have them awaken shortly thereafter -- the so-called 'resurrection effect,'" researchers wrote. Conversely, the review found treatment with several topical prescription products were safe and effective with just one application; those include using ivermectin, malathion and spinosad, while benzyl alcohol required two applications. These were among the same prescriptions Harfmann and Boos recommended to treat lice in children.

Harfmann notes ivermectin (Sklice) is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children 6 months old and up, spinosad (Natroba) is approved for kids 4 years and up and malothion is approved for children 6 and up. Boos adds that the prescription Ulesfia -- for which the active ingredient is benzyl alcohol -- is also a good option to effectively kill lice in young kids, since it's approved for children 6 months and older.

In the face of much hullabaloo over lice treatment resistance, Harfmann and Boos say it's still important to make sure parents follow the direction for any treatment used on children and take other steps to prevent reinfestation of lice. "We have to distinguish whether it's the treatment -- the actual medication that's not effective -- or whether it's everything that goes into treating lice that maybe wasn't done properly or completely," Harfmann says. She recommends the whole family get treated at the same time for lice to prevent the parasites from being passed back and forth. "We can only do so much to treat the child. But then if they get reinfested from somebody else, it's hard to get that child clear," she says.

[See: Is it Healthy to Sleep With Your Pets?]

For most, the main side effect from OTC and prescription topical treatments is skin irritation, Harfmann says. "None of these are soothing lotions to the skin -- they're all a little bit irritating. But for most of them, since they're being rinsed off so quickly -- within 10 minutes -- that's usually not that significant," she says. Most notably, Harfmann says, malathion is a flammable lotion. "So you wouldn't want to put it on and use a hairdryer or a curling iron or something that had heat near the hair," she says.

Apart from medication, Boos notes that the FDA-approved device AirAlle, formerly the LouseBuster, which blows hot air to destroy lice and their eggs, has also been shown to be safe and effective at treating lice -- and would be an option for a person who lives near a lice treatment center that provides that treatment. Salt Lake City-based Larada Sciences, which owns AirAlle, says on its website that no adverse events have been reported and no one has been hurt as a result of the treatment. However, since the device delivers heated air, the company notes there's a slight possibility of a scalp burn if it's not used incorrectly.

[See: 10 Concerns Parents Have About Their Kids' Health.]

In addition to treatment, additional steps can be taken to help with the removal of lice, including vacuuming carpet and furniture in kids' play areas, Harfmann says. Bedding, clothing and headgear like hats worn by kids with lice should be washed in hot water. "Lice cannot tolerate very high temperatures -- so washing those in hot water and drying on high heat is recommended at the same time you do the treatment," she says. But stopping the spread of lice -- super or not -- is a difficult chore, and there's no foolproof way to go about preventing exposures. Experts say that makes finding the right treatment to effectively kill lice all the more crucial to stay ahead of the bugs.

Michael Schroeder is a health editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at mschroeder@usnews.com.
After months of tests, Dutch police will become the world's first force to train and employ an army of eagles, using the centuries-old skill of falconry against the modern-day scourge of unauthorised drones.

In their first public demonstration of their unorthodox new weapon, Dutch police on Monday sent out two-year-old Hunter, a female American bald eagle and her trainer Ben.

And what better scenario to show off the bird's prowess then a mock-up of a state visit?

As the "visiting" head of state, played by a woman police officer, emerged from her car at a police academy in the southern Netherlands to shake hands, a drone suddenly appeared.

"Attack, attack," came the cry, while sirens began wailing.

Hunter flew into action, heading for the drone and gripping it in her powerful talons before landing safely again a few metres away, still clutching her mechanical prey.

"It's a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem," police spokesman Dennis Janus told AFP.

As in other countries, increasing numbers of drones are invading Dutch skies raising concerns in places like airports and restricted, sensitive areas.

Dutch police launched tests in early 2015 to see how the battle between eagles and drones would shape up, and are now confidently preparing to recruit the majestic birds into their ranks.

"We found out that it is probably one of the most effective counter-measures against hostile drones," police head of operations Michel Baeten told AFP.

Pieces of chicken or turkey attached to some of the test drones have been used to reward the birds for their "kill", attuning the birds to idea that the drones are in fact prey.

During the long tests, "none of the eagles were hurt, but as for the drones, none of them survived," said Janus with a smile, brushing aside concerns from animal rights groups.

The plan is now to launch the eagles whenever drones are believed to be posing a danger to the public, such as during sensitive state visits or if the remote-controlled tiny craft are flying too close to airports.

Story continues

- Eagles are 'not robots ' -

But the scheme is not infallible. During Monday's demo, Hunter missed the drone several times.

"It is a bird, it is a animal, it is not a robot. It is not a flawless solution," Baeten insisted.

"It's very hot today and I have been told that weather conditions can affect the bird." But he stressed that during training, the birds had brought down the drones 80 percent of the time.

Dutch police have purchased their own birds -- although they refused to say how many -- which are now reached five months old, and will be deployed as needed alongside more traditional four-footed recruits, dogs and horses.

About 100 police officers will be trained in working with the eagles, and the Dutch "flying squad" with its own birds of prey could go into action from next summer.

In the meantime, the police will be using birds supplied by a specialist company, Guard From Above.

And further developments will be needed. While Hunter and her feathered friends can bring down the most common drones, other larger machines could risk cutting the birds' feet.

So the Dutch police are working on developing a protective glove to cover the birds' talons.

They are also continuing to explore other methods to combat drones such as using nets carried by another drone, or deploying electronic counter-measures against the hostile craft.

Amid the publicity, police forces from other countries like Germany and France have also been in contact to find out more about the eagle force.

"A lot of law enforcement agencies are really interested in our programme. I think other countries will follow," said Baeten.
Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama rolls out the red carpet for Myanmar's elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday, a visit that will signal her transition from democratic idol to politician.

The 71-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate is barred by military constitution from heading Myanmar's government, but she will still get a leader's welcome in Washington.

On her first visit to the United States since being elected last year, Suu Kyi will meet over three days with assorted cabinet secretaries, followed by talks with Obama and a coveted Oval Office grip-and-grin photo shoot.

The White House is keen to reinforce Suu Kyi's primacy as the de facto head of the government of Myanmar, also known as Burma.

In public there will be lofty rhetoric about freedom, peace and transition. But private talks between Obama and Suu Kyi are likely to focus on the nuts and bolts of governing.

After spending much of the last few decades under arrest, since her election last November she has taken the role of foreign minister and created a new position for herself as state counsellor.

As the de facto leader, she now presides over a skeletal government, an economy hollowed out by decades of kleptocratic dictatorship and a country riven with ethnic and religious violence.

The veteran campaigner must tackle all those problems while keeping an eye on still-powerful generals, lest they have second thoughts about democratic reform.

Since her election, Suu Kyi has shocked some of her more ardent Western supporters by following the junta's lead, most notably by refusing to recognize the Rohingya -- a persecuted Muslim minority group in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country.

Tens of thousands of stateless Rohingya have spent the past four years trapped in bleak displacement camps with limited access to health care and other basic services.

Privately, US officials acknowledge Suu Kyi is working with some very tough political constraints and dare not push the military, or the public, too far or too fast.

Story continues

"She has to tackle problems one by one" said Ben Rhodes, a key Obama aide who has spearheaded the administration's Myanmar policy.

- US sanctions remain -

The biggest question for the Obama administration may be how far and how fast to lift remaining US sanctions.

In May, Washington lifted a host of financial and trade embargoes on state-owned banks and businesses.

But Obama has stopped short of rescinding an executive order that declares Myanmar a "national emergency" and underpins sanctions.

Scrapping that order would bring clarity to US firms thinking about doing business in Burma, helping the economy and with it Suu Kyi's government.

But it could also weaken US leverage and perhaps let the military off the hook.

Officers still control huge business conglomerates as well as crucial home, border and defense ministries.

They are also guaranteed a quarter of legislative seats, giving them a veto on the constitutional changes needed for deeper reforms -- including civilian control of the military.

"We'll want to hear from her directly about how she is viewing our sanctions regime," said Rhodes.

That may be tacit acknowledgement that the White House believes Suu Kyi -- like her father, a military officer who steered Burma toward independence from Britain -- can best navigate some perilous political shoals.

"It has been interesting to watch the transition that she has made from an icon to a politician, a democratically elected leader of a country," said Rhodes.
From Road & Track

In crash testing it's called time zero: the moment an accident begins. When we think about vehicle safety, we tend to think about what happens after time zero. Crumple zones engage. Seat belts cinch tight. Airbags erupt. And after the violence ends, ideally the passenger cell remains intact, the humans inside unharmed. Those fractions of a second at the onset of an impact are crucial. But so are the ones that come before it. And the quest for safer cars runs in two directions-not just surviving a crash but trying to stop the clock before it ever gets to time zero.

Last year 32,850 people in the U.S. died in motor-vehicle accidents, according to a preliminary estimate by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For all the gains made in safety-the toll has dropped significantly from the 43,510 fatalities recorded in 2005-getting into your car is still likely the most dangerous thing you'll do on any given day. But around the world car companies and governments are making advances in vehicle safety at an unprecedented pace.

In the past year I've visited the front lines of safety innovation, walking the floor of a crash-test facility in Ohio, talking to engineers across the globe, and trying out new electronic safety systems on the latest vehicles. From progress in active crash avoidance to huge improvements in materials, the achievements we've made in vehicle safety are staggering. We may never completely eliminate accidents or deaths, but we're getting closer.

IT STARTS WITH THE STEEL

Considering all of the rapid developments we've seen with electronic safety systems in recent years, it's perhaps counterintuitive that some of the biggest safety improvements in the past decade have come from good old-fashioned steel. "Over the past 10 to 15 years, steels have been getting stronger," says Chuck Thomas, chief engineer at Honda R&D Americas, in Raymond, Ohio. "We probably had 500 megapascals of tensile strength in the early 2000s. Now hot-pressed or hot-stamped steel is around 1,500 megapascals." At that strength you can hang 200,000 pounds on an inch-wide strip without tearing it in two. The high-strength steel is stamped hot and then quickly cooled, allowing for complex shapes and a wide variability in yield strength, which helps determine how a car deforms in an accident.

Story continues

David Leone, executive chief engineer for Cadillac, says that the use of high-strength steel isn't about turning passenger cars into invincible tanks but controlling crash energy and minimizing weight. "Heavy does not mean safe," Leone says. "Heavy means heavy. Go back to the '50s and '60s. The cars were heavy. They were stiff. But if you ran into the wall, you bounced off the wall and all the deceleration went through your body. Heavy and stiff is not where you want to be."

These advances in steel-along with strategic use of other materials such as aluminum, magnesium, and carbon fiber-allow engineers to design structures that can dissipate and redirect crash forces. For example, the new Cadillac CTS uses lightweight aluminum "crush cans" up front to soak up a lot of energy before an impact reaches the passengers. Even the CTS's seat-belt spools unwind slightly during a crash to help minimize forces on your body.

The effective mix of stronger materials and crush zones is evident in a slow-motion video of the 2014 Acura MDX undergoing an offset-frontal crash test. As the car slams into the barrier at 40 mph, the front end deforms alarmingly until the shock wave reaches the firewall, where it meets high-strength steel stamped at 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead of continuing its collapse, the car pivots away from the barrier, absorbing the remaining energy. From the front door forward, the car is annihilated. From the door back, it's completely intact.

BUILT TO CRASH

Carmakers use a variety of materials and steel strengths in a car's frame to redistribute crash forces and protect passengers. In this 2015 Volvo XC90 there are five different grades of steel and lightweight aluminum. By using softer metals on the exterior parts and gradually using stronger steel through the crush zone and as part of the passenger cell, the violent energy from the impact can be controlled, keeping the humans inside safe. The XC90's seven massive airbags will also help.

WE STILL NEED TO SMASH STUFF

"Don't blink or you'll miss it," says a white-coated engineer as he prepares to fire the crash sled at Honda R&D Americas. The sled is fitted with a mockup of an Odyssey minivan dashboard, which is propelled backward by a 45,000-hp hydraulic piston. The dummy at the wheel will take a trip from zero to 35 mph in 100 milliseconds-distance-wise, about 5 feet. The sled doesn't actually crash into anything. The brute acceleration creates punishing g-forces that replicate those that occur in a front-end collision.

At the appointed moment the sled leaps backward and airbags deploy with a bang. The dummy tattoos the bag with paint dabbed on its head, the resultant smear telling a story of how a human might've fared in this hypothetical accident. This is one way Honda continues to improve its seat belts, airbags, seats, dash materials-items that don't require the destruction of a whole car.

Of course, as with all other carmakers, Honda still runs full-scale tests in a cavernous clean room where actual cars are flung into various barriers under blinding lights, the impact recorded and dissected in super slo-mo. This is how carmakers test rollovers, side impacts, and small-overlap front-end collisions, which focus on the car's right- and left-front corners. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety began running small-overlap tests in 2012 in response to statistics that roughly one-quarter of front-end collisions involving serious or fatal injury fit this criteria-a car drifting into the oncoming lane catches the fender of an oncoming vehicle or goes off the road and clips a signpost.

These are particularly nasty impacts because they don't engage the full crash structure of the front end. Instead, they tear through the vulnerable corners, sometimes forcing the front-left wheel into the driver's footwell. When the IIHS began evaluating small-overlap performance, the Volkswagen CC became the first car ever to have its driver-side door sheared completely off during a test. "If you don't strike the columns on either side of the engine, that crash energy goes into the cabin," Honda's Thomas says. "We've done a lot of work to adapt to these kinds of crashes."

In yet another room at Honda's testing facility, mechanical arms launch plastic dummy heads into the interiors of two Acura RDXs. Every piece of the cabin is optimized to deform and cushion a blow, from the headliner to the plastic coat hangers above the windows. The R&D staff, who regularly witness the violence of car crashes, seem passively disdainful of people who don't wear seat belts, the simplest and most effective way to prevent serious injuries in an accident. On the three test noggins are the names given to each dummy: Larry, Moe, and Curly.

A full-size dummy named Polar II stands in for people during pedestrian-impact tests. He helped Honda develop a better design for its windshield wipers. "If you look at your wipers, there's probably a big bolt on the axis," Thomas says. "Well, it turns out that's a spot your head might hit and basically land on a big spike. The answer is a breakaway wiper system." Which Hondas now use, thanks to Polar.

Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty

VEHICLES ARE GETTING AMAZINGLY SMART

While crash performance is still critically important, much of today's safety research concerns the relatively new field of active accident avoidance. "We know that collisions will still occur, so you have to work with the protection of the occupants," Thomas Broberg, senior technical advisor for safety at the Volvo Cars Safety Centre, says. "That's an evolution. The revolution, which has already started, is with collision avoidance-auto braking, steering, and autonomous driving." Volvo was one of the first carmakers to market with autonomous emergency braking, which applies the brakes in certain situations if the driver does not. According to a study by the IIHS, Volvo XC60s equipped with the system were involved in 20 percent fewer collisions than comparable SUVs without auto braking.

Self-steering cars are the next frontier. The past two years saw the introduction of self-steering in the Lincoln MKZ, Infiniti Q50, and Mercedes-Benz S-Class, each of which can make steering corrections at highway speeds to help maintain the car's position in a lane. Currently these systems demand involvement from the driver; when the S-Class determines that the driver hasn't made a steering input in 16 seconds, the car shuts down its lane-keeping assistance. Lane keeping works to prevent inattentive drivers from drifting over the centerline or into the flank of an adjacent 18-wheeler, but that basic, limited functionality could soon be capable of taking over for long stretches of highway driving.

Vehicles that can brake on their own or steer themselves aren't equipped with any one magic technology. Even small degrees of autonomy rely on a network of multiple sensors that are already used for the various active safety systems in a car, such as blind-spot or forward-collision alerts. Because each of these electronic systems relies on different technologies with different strengths, tying them together is the key to making a car semiautonomous and, maybe even one day, fully autonomous or driverless. "Cameras can distinguish shapes but have difficulty judging distance and speed," says Thomas. "Radar is good for distance and speed but not shapes. By using both together we get an accurate picture of the obstacles and what they are."

when the car takes a share of stress away from the driver, safety moves to the foreground of your daily experience

Nissan claims it will offer an autonomous car by 2020. Audi's piloted driving system, which can handle highway driving, is on track for release in three to five years. And in 2017, 100 drivers in Gothenburg, Sweden, will begin conducting their daily commutes in autonomous Volvos, part of a real-world research project that furthers Volvo's stated goal of zero fatalities or major injuries in its cars by 2020. And, of course, Google continues to work on its driverless cars, which have covered so many miles without a major accident that states are scrambling to create laws to address this new category of vehicle.

While there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about how soon a production driverless car could hit public roads-legal and insurance issues being just two-automotive experts remain optimistic. "We're going to look back in 15 or 20 years and say, that's what used to be in cars? Remember when I had to steer on the freeways?" says John Capp, director of global vehicle safety for Cadillac. Capp led research and development on Cadillac's upcoming Super Cruise system. Super Cruise takes over steering and pedal operations in certain highway conditions by using lane-keeping assistance paired with active cruise control, which together help a car maintain a set distance behind another vehicle without the driver having to apply the gas or brakes. These advanced systems blur the line between safety and luxury-when the car takes a share of stress away from the driver, safety moves to the foreground of your daily experience. "It's not a lot of fun to try out your airbags, but using your active cruise control is," Capp says.

OUR CARS ARE LEARNING TO TALK

As automakers bring smarter cars to market, the government has been testing out technology that allows for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. Greg Winfree is the assistant secretary for research and innovative technology with the U.S. Department of Transportation, which announced plans in February to pursue getting the technology it's been testing into production cars. "We're working with car companies as we develop connected-vehicle technology," Winfree says. "They recognize the safety potential, and they are as enthusiastic about it as we are."

If cars can relay speed, braking, and position information to each other, then they'll be able to register potentially hazardous situations almost instantaneously, warning the driver visually, audibly, or with the rumble of the seat or steering wheel. And if cars are equipped to brake and steer on their own, predictive accident avoidance becomes possible: Your car could take action to avoid an unfolding situation that you can't yet see.

Eventually there is the potential for vehicles to talk to infrastructure such as stoplights

"Because this is a connected system, all the vehicles must speak the same language," Winfree says. This intercar chat will happen on the 5.9-GHz band of the radio spectrum, which the DOT and other international organizations have designated for transportation safety. This band allows communications between vehicles up to 10 times per second-a boon when cars on two-lane roads can approach each other at 55 mph.

Eventually there is the potential for vehicles to talk to infrastructure such as stoplights. This could help traffic flow by coordinating the lights according to the situation. As for the obvious privacy question, fears that the government or nefarious individuals could use your car's connectivity to track you, Winfree acknowledges that it's a legitimate concern: "We recognize that Americans value their privacy, and we have to get this right." To that end, these signals don't transmit personal information, and the point of the program isn't to collect data. Besides, if someone wanted to data-mine you, there'd be easier ways to do it than by hacking a stoplight.

PEOPLE ARE THE PROBLEM

As our cars take on more driving tasks, there are suddenly entirely new engineering and design challenges for carmakers. "What is important as we go down this road, from the safety perspective, is how the car should interact with the driver," Volvo's Broberg says. "How do you let the car take over? How does the car tell you that you need to take over? We need to understand driver behavior."

The biggest hurdle is preventing drivers from over-relying on systems that aren't intended to fully replace an alert human at the wheel. Subaru's EyeSight auto-braking system will shut itself down after three consecutive near collisions, requiring the driver to restart the car before it resumes functioning. Audi's piloted-driving hardware includes two cameras pointed back at drivers to determine if their eyes are closed for more than 10 seconds. Volvo is working on a similar concept that also scans the driver's face with infrared lights to ascertain head position, making sure the driver isn't nodding off.

Right now driver monitoring is used to determine the threshold of intervention for systems like lane keeping and auto braking. It is also used for basic yet helpful driver aids. In many Mercedes models a small indicator light in the shape of a coffee cup appears in the dash if the car determines the driver is getting tired. Eventually, with systems such as GM's Super Cruise, this technology could tell the vehicle when to hand control back to the driver-or if a drowsy driver should even be allowed to activate the system in the first place. "It's going to take awhile before you can climb into the back seat and let the car take you to work," Cadillac's Capp says. "But we don't have to wait for everything to be perfected before we take some steps in that direction."

Spotty seat-belt use, drinking and driving, texting-these are problems that the best engineers can't vanquish

GM's haptic seat, which vibrates to alert the driver of lane departure-and impending collisions-underscores the human-psychology role in safety. Studies revealed an unexpected benefit of the seat's silent alert: Drivers were more likely to use an electronic warning system if they could avoid the potential embarrassment of passengers knowing their mistakes. Sometimes pride goes before the fender bender.

As car technology continues to evolve, the only constant is the unpredictability of the people behind the wheel. Spotty seat-belt use, drinking and driving, texting-these are problems that the best engineers can't vanquish. The good news is that behavior and social mores can change just as fast as technology. Thirty years ago kids roamed free in the back of station wagons that lacked airbags, antilock brakes, or stability control. Now, not only are the cars themselves infinitely safer but an unbuckled child is an aberration rather than the norm. The world strives toward perfect machines and technologies that will minimize the dangers of a simple trip to work, school, or the grocery store, but the biggest variable in automotive safety is the same now as it was a hundred years ago. The final challenge, as always, is us.

You Might Also Like
This Immigrant Doctor Is Reimagining Health in the American City

When she was 23 years old, Jasmin Castillo took the night shift as a janitor at an office building in Los Angeles. She needed the job to support herself and her mother after they left their home in El Salvador for California three years earlier. But it became increasingly difficult to do her work because of unwelcome attention from one of her supervisors.

He would look at my body and ask me to sleep with him, Castillo told TakePart. He followed me throughout the office while I was vacuuming.

Without legal documents to be in the country, Castillo tried to keep her head down, but one day the supervisor groped her. She went to the buildings security office and filed a complaint.

They said theyd do an investigation, but nothing happened, said Castillo. They protected the supervisor. I didnt know what my rights were in this country.

Today, the 40-year-old works with the SEIU United Service Workers West, organizing union members to prevent rape or sexual harassment at the hands of a supervisor, a problem they suspect more women face than reports may indicate. On the lawn of the California State Capitol in Sacramento this week, Castillo is fasting with 17 other women who have survived rape or sexual assault while working as janitors to urge Gov. Jerry Brown to sign a bill that they say will protect them.

I want to send a message to Governor Brown that its time to stand up for all these women, said Castillo. We want with all our hearts for him to sign this bill.

If Brown signs A.B. 1978, the California Department of Industrial Relations will be required to implement sexual harassment prevention training for supervisors, as well as training for employees that informs them of their rights. The law will also create a registry system for janitorial contractors, increasing accountability in the industry. The registry would mimic systems that are in place for contractors in other industries, such as farm labor and garment manufacturing. The law will also support the expansion of an independent toll-free hotline for complaints.

Story continues

More than half of all janitorial employers are in the black marketthey function in an underground economy because anybody with a mop and a broom can become a janitorial contractor, said Alejandra Valles, secretary-treasurer of SEIU United Service Workers West. The goal is to regulate and change the culture of the entire industry, not just the union.

The bill was sponsored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat from San Diego, and passed both houses with bipartisan support earlier this year. Brown, who has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill, has not indicated whether he intends to sign.

The plight of janitorial workers in California, many of whom are immigrant women working alone at night, was brought to light last June by a PBS Frontline investigation called Rape on the Night Shift. It uncovered an issue that Valles says was the industrys dirty little secret. A lot of women just didnt talk about it, but everybody knew it was there.

Now that the secret is out, the women fasting on the front lawn of the Capitol believe A.B. 1978 is the next vital step toward justice for janitorial workers.

If [Brown] signs the bill, hell be sending these women who have spoken up a message that when they lift their voices, it matters, said Valles. It will be groundbreaking.

Take the Pledge: Its on Us to Stop Sexual Assault. Learn How and Take the Pledge

Original article from TakePart
Bill Ackman

In 2015, Mallory Downing was hustling for a hedge fund job.

Like many of her peers at Columbia Business School in New York, she sent out hundreds of resumes. She met with more than 100 people in interviews or informal coffee meetings. She was set on a career in investing and knew the hedge fund model was for her.

"Getting into this industry requires some serious conviction," she told Business Insider.

Not long after, a prominent hedge fund manager stood in front of a group of female investors and said he wasn't sure why he couldn't find any to hire.

That manager was Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, and he was speaking at a June event hosted by 100 Women in Hedge Funds, an industry group.

After his talk, things changed slightly. Pershing Square's senior counsel, Jenna Dabbs, joined Ackman's 10-person investment team.

Still, the lack of women on the team, at least until recently, is curious. Ackman has recruited men at young ages. One was made a partner by age 29.

This problem isn't unique to Ackman's firm. The senior team at another activist hedge fund, Starboard Value, is all male and all white.

Screen Shot 2016 08 22 at 5.45.56 PM

So is ValueAct Capital's, whose nine investment partners are also all white men.

Starboard Value didn't respond to requests for comment. ValueAct representatives, both women, pointed out that they both hold partner roles, though they are in legal and investor relations, not investing. As for Ackman's Pershing Square, women also work in units outside investing at his $12.5 billion hedge fund.

Screen Shot 2016 08 29 at 10.56.50 AM

That setup is common in hedge funds. Women are very much present in compliance, marketing, and operations roles, but largely absent from investing jobs, the crux of the industry.

Industrywide, only 3% of senior investment roles in hedge funds were held by women in 2012, according to a 2014 article in the trade publication CIO.

So why the disconnect?

Hedge funds aren't trying to find women

A hedge fund is a loose term used to describe a wide array of investment firms that deploy an even wider range of investing strategies.

Story continues

But one trait is common  almost none of them focus on hiring women, according to two recruiters.

"Most funds want to go out and hire the best talent," said Michael Goodman of recruiting firm Long Ridge Partners. "They don't care if it's a man or a woman. Typically, they're going to find the male universe is larger."

Goodman estimates that about one in five of the investment experts he could suggest to hedge funds is a woman. That count includes traders, analysts, and portfolio managers.

Another recruiter, David McCormack, CEO of DMC Partners, says he rarely gets requests by hedge funds to provide a diverse slate of candidates.

"Hedge funds just want the best performers in the industry," he said. "It isn't driven by diversity hiring."

Hedge funds, which are more often small investment firms than institutional behemoths, are culturally apart in this regard, he added. Banks and traditional asset managers are more likely to ask recruiters to include female candidates, McCormack said.

"I'm not saying hedge funds don't care," he added. "It's just their biggest priority is performance, not the makeup of them internally."

McCormack has also found a shortage of women to choose from. Women with the skill set for long-short equity  one of the most common hedge fund investment strategies  make up about 5% of candidates, he estimates.

It's about who you know

Investing is one of the last frontiers where women are this underrepresented. One of the few female executives in the industry thinks it may be getting worse.

Varde Partners' Marcia Page said that when she started her career at Cargill's trading arm in the 1980s, about a third of the traders around her were women. She can't think of an investing firm with that level of female representation now.

"Frankly, we have actually gone backwards," she said.

This isn't just a hedge fund problem  women across finance are underrepresented. The executive committees of the six biggest US banks are only 20% female, for instance, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

It might also just be harder for women to find investing jobs, particularly at hedge funds.

That's because candidates often have to know the right people to hear about a job. Positions are not usually publicly posted, so jobs are found through networking, which tends to be stronger among men, according to people working in the industry.

Leda Braga

Most hedge funds don't have transparent recruiting processes as banks do with programs on college campuses.

Hedge funds tend to recruit via word of mouth, including through external firms that help them run their businesses, said Elizabeth Havens, a recruiter at David Barrett Partners who specializes in placing women in investment roles at endowments, foundations and family offices.

"Unless you're explicitly asking [for diverse candidates], the numbers are on the men's side," she said.

Business Insider asked Ackman about his hiring process. He declined to comment for this article, but one of his spokespeople, John Pinette, said this is how it works: A recruiter and/or trusted contact within Ackman's network makes recommendations for an open role. Ackman tells recruiters he's eager to consider female candidates, but few show up in the stack of resumes he receives. That's partly because Ackman prefers to recruit from private equity, a field with few women.

Unconscious biases

Hedge funds may fall prey to unconscious biases, too.

"You tend to look for candidates that look like the people that have been successful in the role before," said Meredith Jones, author of "Women of the Street: Why Female Money Managers Generate Higher Returns (And How You Can Too)."

"So if you've always hired white men and they've been successful in those roles, then unconsciously  and I don't think it's on purpose  you are likely going to continue to look for those kinds of people," she said.

That's why if investment firms want a diverse staff, they have to to make an active effort to find minorities and women, Jones said.

These unconscious biases aren't restricted to hiring  or hedge funds, for that matter.

Aurelia Lamorre-Cargill, a longtime banker who headed Barclays' global FICC trading unit before recently starting hedge fund Argon Capital, said women face unconscious biases throughout their careers that may hold them back.

"There's a fine line between aggressiveness and assertiveness," she said. "What is perceived as assertiveness for men is perceived as aggressiveness for women."

Broken pipeline, aggressive culture?

The other side of this, of course, is the pipeline problem. Few women are opting for careers in investing, especially at hedge funds. Part of that might be tied to perception, according to Lamorre-Cargill.

Women "might have a view of hedge funds being a more aggressive culture," she said. That may not necessarily be true; Lamorre-Cargill says that her own fund is not. "Sometimes that's how the media also portrays them."

LES_3583

Women also lack examples of successful women in investing, particularly on college campuses, says Downing, the recent Columbia Business School student.

That makes it "harder for women to visualize how a career in investing could work for them, which I think leads women to opt out of the career path," she wrote in an email. "In reality, cultures vary wildly from fund to fund, and there are very successful and inspiring women in investing, so I think there are misconceptions holding some folks back."

Some women also don't mind being one of the few on a team. One female analyst, who works at a multibillion-dollar New York hedge fund, said that while the disparity is real  she is the only woman on the 15-person investment team  she doesn't mind it.

"I've never been intimidated by men," she told Business Insider. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to speak to media. "I've always had a lot of male friends, and some of my best friends are men. It suits my personality."

When she goes to her children's after-school events, she says she constantly checks her Bloomberg terminal on her phone.

And that need to keep up with the markets also means it's harder for women who want to take time off from work  potentially for kids  to get back into their careers.

"It's extremely difficult to come back because you've lost touch of the markets," she said. "If you're interviewing as a portfolio manager or analyst, they'll ask you, 'What are your investment ideas?'"

'Returns are returns'

One advantage for women in investing is that performance is a quantifiable measure. That means it's easy to see who is performing well.

Nancy Davis, founder of Quadratic Capital Management.

"Irrespective of one's gender, race, ethnicity, etc., returns are returns," Nancy Davis, who runs her own hedge fund, Quadratic Capital Management, wrote in an email. "As a result, I think that women who enter investment management can potentially succeed solely based on results, not by having to navigate a so-called boys' club."

Meanwhile, some groups are working to close the gap in the pipeline.

A nonprofit called Girls Who Invest mentors college-aged women in summer-long classes with perks like paid internships. Another group called "Rock the Street, Wall Street" focuses on training girls in high school.

And at 100 Women in Hedge Funds, women who are already working in the space share jobs and host events with some of the industry's most prominent players, like Bill Ackman.

These initiatives might help hedge funds in the long run as performance lags. Hedge funds are underperforming the S&P 500 for the eighth year running.

More gender diversity could help the industry exit its slump, Point72 Asset Management's Doug Haynes recently said. Funds are suffering from groupthink, and diversity in background would help them produce better investment ideas, he added.

For some, the tide appears to be changing.

"It's amazing the number of conversations that continue to come up about trying to get more women into our investment stream," said Kelly Rau, an audit partner at KPMG who researches the topic. "It's dramatically on the radar."

As for Downing, the business school student who dreamt of an investing career, hustling paid off. She joined a New York fund earlier this year as an investment analyst.





More From Business Insider


The worlds largest nickel manufacturer, Norilsk Nickel, said it was responsible for turning a river in the Siberian town of Norilsk into a lurid shade of red last week.

On Sept. 7, Russias environment ministry suggested a pipe leakage from a factory owned by Norilsk Nickel may have resulted in the discoloration of the Daldykan river in the Russian Arctic.

The company initially denied that the pollutants originated from one of its plants.

According to BBC, the company said that a filtration dam was compromised on Sept. 5 after heavy rains caused it to overflow into the river.

Although the company denies any danger to people or wildlife, Greenpeace Russia activist Alexei Kiselyov told Agence France-Presse that it was too early to assess the impact. You cant just say that its no big deal, he said.

Kiselyov accused Norilsk Nickel of hindering investigations by controlling access to the affected areas, making it difficult to inspect pollutants originating from their factories.

[BBC]
Worried about losing the House in the wake of Donald Trumps divisive presidential campaign, GOP donors are turning to House Speaker Paul Ryan and his Congressional super PAC.

Mike Shields, the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC associated with Ryan that focuses on the House, said Tuesday that his organization has now invested $20.7 million in 15 congressional races, and that more money was on the way.

The PACs 2016 general election spending is now nearly twice the $11.6 million it spent in 2014, reflecting a big surge in donations. The total includes $10.7 million spent this month on television and internet ads in roughly a dozen House races.

Related: Could a Trump Candidacy Flip the House to Democrats?

CLF is spending more than it ever has in a general election  and we plan to spend more, Shields said in a statement. This record level of spending reflects CLFs growing support to ensure that Speaker Ryan and House Republicans have the strongest governing majority possible next Congress.

It was once unthinkable that the Republicans 246-to-186 majority in the House might be in jeopardy, but many House Republican candidates have struggled since Trump claimed the GOP presidential nomination in July.

In an interview with CNN, Shields voiced concern that Trumps highly controversial positions on immigration, trade and other issues are hurting down-ballot GOP candidates and putting control of the House in play this November.

In the event that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton defeats Trump and the Democrats take back control of the Senate, a GOP controlled House would be the Republicans only check on Democratic policies, Shields suggested.

"There is uncertainty at the top of the ticket and we have a significant group of donors who want to make sure that the House is a firewall," he said.

Related: Angry Trump Populists Confront Paul Ryan at His Home

Despite Republican worries, most analysts agree that its unlikely that Democrats will win back control of the House, even with a strong showing by Clinton in the presidential contest. University of Virginia political scientist Larry J. Sabato currently forecasts that the Democrats could pick up 10 to 15 seats, but that is far short of the 30 net seats needed.

Story continues

Still, a loss of 10 to 15 seats would greatly weaken the Republicans hand in controlling legislation and spending measures coming out of the House.

Citing multiple GOP sources, CNN reported that the Congressional Leadership Fund was attracting more money this year because Republican donors are far more comfortable with the policy-oriented House speaker than the unpredictable billionaire businessman atop the ticket.

With Trump at the helm, the Republican Party has lagged behind the Democrats in overall campaign fundraising and media spending, from the Republican National Committee on down to the GOP congressional campaign committee and state parties. Overall, the Democrats have outraised the Republicans $556 million to $523 million, according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee outraised the National Republican Congressional Committee in July by nearly three to one, raking in $12 million to the NRCCs $4.6 million. However, the DCCCs lead throughout the entire election cycle is far less impressive, with Democrats reporting $133 million to $121 million for the Republicans. Moreover, the Republicans are reporting more cash on hand than the Democrats.

Related: How Many Red States Can Hillary Clinton Win?

Since it was created in 2011 by former House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, the Congressional Leadership Fund has trailed its Democratic counterpart, the House Majority PAC, in overall fundraising. Ryan has proved to be less effective than Boehner in raising money for the super PAC, although he appears to be picking up the pace as the race intensifies.

Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said Tuesday that the Congressional Leadership Fund offers Ryan the opportunity to raise money quickly for House GOP candidates thanks to the lack of restrictions on donors.

So if there is a sense of panic, if there is a sense of anxiety among GOP donors  this is a way for him to go back to donors who have already maxed out to the party or already maxed out to joint fundraising committees ... and dig deeper into their pockets to help shore up congressional campaigns, she said in an interview.

For GOP donors who didnt side with Trump, I think Paul Ryan offers a logical option alternative for their support, she said.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Geneva (AFP) - Yellow fever outbreaks in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo are "under control" after a massive vaccination campaign involving millions, the World Health Organisation said Tuesday.

Yellow fever has been raging in Angola since December, with the number of suspected cases surging above 4,000.

"The risk of a major outbreak is now over," the head of WHO's pandemic and epidemics department, Sylvie Briand, told reporters in Geneva.

The UN health agency had raised alarm over the prospect of a significant outbreak in several countries after the viral haemorrhagic disease began raging in Angola.

Yellow fever subsequently spread into DR Congo, which saw more than 2,600 suspected cases.

Isolated cases were reported in China among people who had travelled to southern Africa.

According to WHO statistics, as of September 9, there have been 121 laboratory confirmed yellow fever deaths in Angola and 16 in DR Congo during the current outbreak.

WHO had been particularly concerned because cases were heavily concentrated in major urban centres like Luanda and the Congolese capital Kinshasa.

In an accelerated campaign, 7.7 million people were vaccinated in Kinshasa in less than two weeks.

Separately, 15 million people were immunised across Angola, more than 65 percent of the country's population.

Angola has not recorded a new yellow fever case since June 23, while the last new case in DR Congo was registered on July 12, Briand said.

She warned that vaccination against yellow fever remains low across Africa and that there is still a risk of a large-scale outbreak in the future.

That risk has been compounded by increased urbanisation on the continent, since transmission rates are higher in more densely populated areas.
(Reuters) - New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said he has opened an investigation into the Donald J. Trump Foundation to make sure the Republican presidential candidate's charity is complying with laws governing charities in New York, Politico reported on Tuesday. "We have been looking into the Trump Foundation to make sure it's complying with the laws governing charities in New York," Politico quoted Schneiderman, a Democrat, as telling CNN. (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham in Washington; Editing by Eric Beech)
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f208066%2ftumblr_m6xkgvdsfw1rae5vno1_1280

Passionate lover, unparalleled auteur and director/star of the worst movie ever, Tommy Wiseau is reportedly threatening legal action against Australia's Sydney Underground Film Festival.

The icon has said he'll sue should it screen Room Full of Spoons, a documentary about Wiseau's infamously bad cult classic, 2003's The Room.

SEE ALSO: Stars of 'Thor' plug the 'world's best film festival' you've never heard of

The film's protagonist Johnny and Wiseau share an "everybody betray me" sentiment, it seems. Threatening to sue people is almost a constant for the film maker, as a quick Google search will reveal.

Festival director Stefan Popescu seems unfazed, telling the Sydney Morning Herald, "If we did pull the documentary, there would be a kind of irony to it as over the last 10 years we have taken pride in screening content that was seditious.

"Yet it will be the man with the reputation as the world's worst filmmaker that manages to censor our festival for the first time."

"I am not completely sure if Tommy Wiseau is bluffing or not," he continued. "So my strategy at this point is to engage his lawyer in writing me as many letters as possible, as I know each letter would cost him at least $500 a pop."

A daring strategy, Mr. Popescu. Time will tell if it's you or Wiseau who's "just a chicken."

The Sydney Underground Film Festival runs from Sept. 15 to 18 at the Factory Theatre in Marrickville, Sydney.
To fight mosquitoes that may be carrying the Zika virus, officials in Miami-Dade County are now using aerial spraying, and this is stirring local controversy about the safety of the chemicals that are used in those sprays.

The debate is over a pesticide called naled, which has been registered for use by the Environmental Protection Agency since 1959. The insecticide has been banned in Europe since 2012, however, which has made some locals nervous.

The European Union classifies naled as harmful to aquatic life, dangerous if swallowed and harmful if it comes in contact with the skin. However, the effects of any chemical greatly depend on the amount that is used, said Keith Solomon, a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph in Canada, who researches environmental toxicology. [5 Things to Know About the Zika Virus]

"Obviously, people have to [apply it] properly," to the environment, Solomon told Live Science. "But as long as you put it on properly, there's not going to be an excess risk to humans."

Naled is part of a family of pesticides called organophosphates. It works by inhibiting enzymes found in animals called cholinesterases, particularly one called acetylcholinesterase, which is crucial to the transmission of nerve signals. Mosquitoes absorb the toxin through their skin, Solomon said, and die rapidly of paralysis and respiratory failure.

In high enough concentrations, Naled can cause nausea, dizziness, confusion and even convulsions and death in humans. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, these effects require exposure to naled at far higher levels than licensed professionals dispense during spraying. Aerial spraying of naled is done in ultralow volumes  approximately an ounce, or two tablespoons, are sprayed per acre of land. The pesticide also breaks down quickly in the environment. A 1996 study in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association found that naled sprayed on filter paper and placed in sunlight outdoors had a half-life of just over an hour, meaning that half the substance degraded in that time period.

Story continues

In a 2008 study of naled spraying that was also published in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association, researchers asked 205 people to provide urine samples before and after an ultralow-volume naled spray in their area of Florida. The researchers found that the participants were actually less likely to have components of naled in their urine after the spray, suggesting two things: One, that aerial spraying of naled doesn't result in elevated levels of the chemical in the human body, and two, that some of the participants had probably been exposed to naled before the study started, perhaps from pest control chemicals used in their homes or workplaces.

Humans have a much lower ratio of body surface area to body volume than insects, and human skin is less prone to absorb naled than insects' outer coverings, Solomon said. In comparison, he said, "The risks of Zika, at least in pregnant women, are pretty serious."

The virus attacks the nervous system of a developing fetus and can cause severe birth defects, according to the CDC. The most visible is microcephaly, a condition in which the infant's brain and skull are abnormally small, leading to severe developmental disabilities.

Researchers recently reported in the journal Radiology that some babies born to Zika-infected mothers may also have less obvious brain defects, including enlargement of the fluid-filled ventricles in the brain and abnormalities in the corpus callosum, the nerve bundle that connects the two sides of the brain. [Top 5 Ways to Reduce Toxins in Homes]

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, naled is used regularly across about 16 million acres in the United States and has also been used in targeted anti-mosquito efforts after hurricanes in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Miami-Dade county is currently conducting aerial sprays in Miami Beach in the early-morning hours. Officials are also using trucks to spray a larvae-killing bacterium called BTI.

Europe's stricter regulatory climate shouldn't be taken as evidence that naled is unsafe, Solomon said. The European Union operates according to the precautionary principle, meaning that "where scientific data do not permit a complete evaluation of the risk, recourse to this principle may, for example, be used to stop distribution" of a product that is thought to be dangerous. In the United States, actual harm must be demonstrated to get a product off the market. Europe also bans aerial spraying altogether, Solomon said.

Original article on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean police plan to ban public demonstrations in the capital for a month, according to a public notice issued on Tuesday that opposition lawyers said marked a slide toward a police state. Political tension is rising in the southern African nation after protests in the last three months against the rule of 92-year-old President Robert Mugabe, who has held power since independence from Britain in 1980. Angered by a jobless rate above 80 percent and the worst fiscal crunch and cash shortages since the adoption of the U.S. dollar in 2009, many Zimbabweans have taken to social media to organize anti-government activities. In a notice published in the state-owned Herald newspaper, Harare police commander Newbert Saunyama announced "a proposed temporary prohibition order" for public demonstrations in central Harare from Sept. 16 to Oct. 15. A High Court judge last week ruled that a previous two-week police ban had not been issued correctly and violated the constitution. Tendai Biti, a former finance minister and prominent lawyer who challenged the initial ban, said the law the police were using was unconstitutional. Under security laws, police can ban demonstrations for up to a month if there is justification but can only do so after issuing a notice of their intention, to allow affected parties to make submissions. "It is quite clear that we are now moving into a police state and it means that lawyers like myself and others we will do everything to fight back," Biti said. Opposition parties said on Monday they would hold a weekend protest nationwide - with or without police clearance - to press the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to ensure free and fair elections in 2018. (Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Ed Cropley)
Today is a happy day for Apple fans, what with the company having just released its brand new iOS 10 software. Well, okay, so it's not a happy day for all Apple fans. If your iPhone or iPad is still working after being updated to iOS 10 though, definitely check out the nine paid iOS apps we've found for you today that are all on sale for free.

MUST READ: The 10 biggest changes coming to your iPhone today with iOS 10

These are paid iPhone and iPad apps that have been made available for free for a limited time by their developers. There is no way to tell how long they will be free. These sales could end an hour from now or a week from now  obviously, the only thing we can guarantee is that they were free at the time this post was written. If you click on a link and see a price listed next to an app instead of the word get, it is no longer free. The sale has ended. If you download the app, you will be charged.

Tumbook

tumbook

Normally $1.99.

Tumbook is the best way to browse Tumblr photos and videos on any iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad device! NOTE:This app requires an Tumblr account to use. Features include:

 Gorgeous, easy to use interface for browsing photos and videos

 Quick access to your dashboard, likes & following & blogs

 Tag searches to find what you're looking for

 View photosets & animated gifs

 Quickly like, reblog & share

 Follow & unfollow blogs

 Easily look up blogs by name

- Much much more! This application uses the Tumblr application programming interface but is not endorsed or certified by Tumblr, Inc. All of the Tumblr logos and trademarks displayed on this application are the property of Tumblr, Inc. Happy Tumbling :)

Download Tumbook

WordHue

wordhue

Normally $0.99.

A new word game experience! Inspired by classic word games, WordHue gives finding words a decidedly colorful twist. WordHue was written exclusively for iOS, contains Game Center support, and is universal for iOS and iPad. WordHue contains 2 different modes: Zen Mode, and Time Attack. For those looking for a more leisurely game, Zen Mode lets you find words at your own pace. For a more visceral experience, Time Attack mode will put your brain to the test. Each mode is available in Random mode, as well as a Daily, where everyone in the world is given the exact same puzzle. -Exclusively for iOS. Supports iOS 7.1 and up on iPhone 4s and up, and is universal for iPad

-Game Center Support

-Every time you use a letter, its value increases

-Match tiles to the color meter to advance levels and get more time/turns

-Create your own Double and Triple word score tiles by making longer words

-Zen Mode: plan out your moves for the maximum score

-Time Attack Mode: quickly create words to beat the timer

-Daily Puzzles: each day, everyone playing gets the same 2 daily puzzles, so you can compare your scores to friends

-Unlockable color schemes, with no In App Purchases

-Multiple difficulty levels, including a new kids difficulty

Story continues

Download WordHue

Markdown

markdown

Normally $2.99.

No style but have format. Create beautiful formatted text document with just plain text. That is Markdown. Markdown is a pure editor specifically for writers who use markdown language. It provide a handy support for write markdown. 1. simple editor your file and sync with Dropbox storage.

2. support an easy way to make markdown text file.

3. accessory keyboard to help you easily input markdown keywords.

4. you can easily send your markdown text by email.

5. It can also make your app as a blog editor.

Download Markdown

Snapster

snapster

Normally $2.99.

Snapster is a simple and fun way to transform your every day videos into masterpieces! In just a few seconds, you could be standing next to famous celebrities, re-enact well known movie scenes or be petting a dragon. The possibilities are endless! *************************

HOW DOES SNAPSTER WORK

************************* 1. Select a green screen filter

2. Record your scene(s)

3. Save it or share it with your friends!

Download Snapster

Super Phantom Cat

super-phantom-cat

Normally $1.99.

Featured in 166 countries on the App Store!

4.5/5 - "It is a pretty perfect hybrid of the new and old." - TouchArcade

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Super Phantom Cat is a new retro platformer! Try to find your way through different worlds by uncovering hidden paths  and collect data to unlock new characters.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"How to become a Super Phantom Cat?" Mr White pacing around his floor thinking " It must be so cool if I could become a Phantom cat, I could be a phantom supercat and save the world!"

White have these thoughts when he was still a little boy, after he've been saved by the Phantom cat.

One night, the Flash cat show up. This truly master told White that if he wanna become a Super Phantom Cat he need to collect enough data to be transformable.

"Step into the adventure to collect data, you will become the hero to save the world eventually!" He says.

However, along with the changing phantom world those creatures are undergoing inevitable changes as well.

"There are different creatures in different galaxy; No matter you are human being or vampire, you can transfer your species and races easily with the help of data! Today you are an adorable cat, other day you can be a Diva, or you can be a vampire! Nothing is impossible, as long as you got enough data!!!

Explore the whole galaxy and collect all the data there to answer the most complicated philosophy question: Who we are?

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

 Beautiful

Clean, colorful art and whimsical character design

 Retro Style

A modern twist on retro platformers with a quirky plot, hardcore platforming gameplay thats perfectly tuned for touchscreen

 Easy to play

Designed to be easy for everyone to pick up, enjoy and complete with fully customizable controls

 Only one IAP

Easy for everyone to unlock level, but the only in game product can help you unlock it as well

 Extra Bonus

Bonus levels for even more challenge and depth, endearing unlockable characters ranging from a cute chicken to a menacing vampire

 Sound

Awesome chip tune soundtrack

Download Super Phantom Cat

Kesselberg Legendary Racing

kesselberg-legendary-racing

Normally $0.99.

Beat the legendary Bavarian race track! Controls and the course of the road were made as realistic as possible for a pure racing experience. Finally not a casual, arcade-like racing game!

No Zombies, no stars, no careers, no bananas - Kesselberg. "Tired of Star Roads and Colorful Power-Ups? J.A.R.G. Will Have You Covered." IndieGameMag Features:

- Optimized 3D graphics for HD Retina displays

- Enhanced car dynamics for high speed driving, slow turns and drifts

- Sound simulation for engine, gear shifts, transmission, crashes and wind

- Two-finger controls allow braking and turning or a combination of both

- GameCenter leaderboard for best times

- GameCenter leaderboard for pros (best times without crashes)

- No ads

- No extra costs

- Pay once, play forever! Kesselberg - a former FIA hill climb racetrack and now public road, still very popular among car drivers and motorcyclists.

High-resolution digital elevation data from airborne laser scanning was used for the construction of the road. Controls:

- The car always accelerates

- Turn left: tap on the left side of the screen

- Turn right: tap on the right side of the screen

- Braking: tap on the lower part of the screen

- Turning and braking can be combined (for drifts)

(Please refer also to the last screenshot.) Tweet feedback, ideas or an "Halloechen!" to: @flauchersfinest No Zombies, no stars, no careers, no bananas - Just Another Racing Game

Download Kesselberg Legendary Racing

8bitWar: Origins

8bitwar-origins

Normally $1.99.

8bitWar puts your strategical and tactical thinking to the test!

Hire units and place them in strategic formations to counter the enemy army. A total of 60 levels.

Play against a friend on the same device or online!

Download 8bitWar: Origins

Pause Video

pause-video

Normally $1.99.

The easiest way to pause video while recording. Add gorgeous filters and effects to your video. Save video to library or share it via Facebook, G+, Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote, Tumblr, Flickr, VK or even SMS.

Simple and convenient. Looking forward to your reviews! Our users' feedback:

Bdkbdkanalsbs: "I love the app because my camera doesn't have a pause choice on it. The app works great and immediately saves the video to my video album and it really works great definitely worth the price"

Dis app tho!!!: "I love this app. I'm on vacation and it's perfect because I don't have a go pro or anything!!"

Trap.Queen.Ari: "I honestly love this app so much. It's super nice and easy to vlog! So thank you for the amazing app!"

Jaka227: "Simple. I like it"  Features

 Works on iPad/iPhone

 Supports Remote Shutters. Ex. AB Shutter 3

 Supports portrait and landscape shooting modes

 Pause/Resume function

 Better video quality

 Sharing on social networks (Facebook, G+, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, VK)

 Sharing on cloud services (Evernote, Dropbox)

 Sharing via e-mail, WhatsApp or SMS!

Download Pause Video

Offline wifimap

offline-wifimap

Normally $5.99.

Map Wifi is the most convenient service for searching for the opened WiFi access points. Stay connected even in the most remote cities in Europe, America, Asia, Middle East, Oceania, Australia, South America and Russia. Now you can find the closest free WiFi zone in any part of the world. Our app works offline for the travellers' convenience! USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil ... America, Europe, Asia, Russia and CIS, Middle East, Oceania  the WHOLE WORLD is in your pocket! FEATURES:

- Access WiFi hotspots even without a pre-loaded map or an Internet connection

- FREE unlimited OFFLINE maps

- WiFi spots from around the world

- WiFi hotspots with tips and PASSWORDS

- Smart cafe, hotel, city and country SEARCH

- MAP navigation and routing

- Get the nearest WiFi hotspot

- Define your CURRENT LOCATION offline

- Share WiFi hotspots with your Facebook

- Add WiFi spots and passwords

- Update old passwords Frequently visited cities (United States)

 Los Angeles: 2'800

 New York City: 2'600

 Orlando: 1'900

 San Francisco: 2'200

 Chicago: 1'900

 Houston: 2'700 

 Brazil, Sao Paulo: 50'400

 China, Shanghai: 3'800

 France, Paris: 2000

 Germany, Berlin: 2'400

 Italy, Rome: 2'200

 Mexico, Mexico City: 10'200

 Russia, Moscow: 24'800

 Spain, Barcelona: 1'900

 Thailand, Bangkok: 6'200

 Turkey, Istanbul: 7'600

 United Arab Emirates, Dubai: 3'300

 United Kingdom, London: 3'850

- AND 150,000 OTHER CITIES

Download Offline wifimap

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
Samsung announced a recall of 2.5 million units of the oversized Galaxy Note 7 smartphone in early September after several devices exploded or caught fire (AFP Photo/)

Samsung has told customers worldwide to stop using their Galaxy Note 7 smartphones after a spate of battery explosions threatens to derail the powerhouse global brand.

It is the latest in a string of lithium-ion battery fires on products ranging from laptops to hoverboards to planes -- and a reminder that pushing the technology envelope can sometimes be problematic.

Here are some things to know about Samsung's snowballing safety crisis, the handset recall and why batteries can be a fire hazard.

How do these batteries work and why do they catch fire?

A lithium-ion battery is a rechargeable battery which is prized for handheld electronics because it can pack a considerable amount of energy for its weight.

Like all batteries, it uses different materials, one holding positive ions -- the cathode -- and the other holding negative ions -- the anode.

These ions move one way when charging, and back again when discharging -- being used.

These two layers -- or conductors -- are never supposed to touch, so manufacturers insert separators to keep them apart.

Unfortunately, the chemical reaction that makes batteries work also creates heat. Added risks with lithium-ion batteries is that they contain a compound that is flammable and the battery cells are pressurised.

Manufacturing flaws affecting the separators are one potential source of fires. Another is damage to the battery.

In addition, overcharging the packs -- or charging them too fast -- can also lead to overheating and a short circuit that can cause a fire.

What is the issue with Samsung's batteries?

Samsung has said a "very rare manufacturing process error" affected the separators, leading to parts of the battery that should never touch coming into contact.

Manufacturers have been striving to extend the capacity of batteries to handle power-hungry devices.

"Smartphone makers are trying to squeeze these batteries into a small, thin package," said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute in Tokyo.

Story continues

"Since batteries generate energy through a chemical reaction, it's really hard to reduce the risk (of fire) to zero.

Gadget makers have weigh all sorts of factors like performance, cost and safety when rolling out their next-generation technology.

"Sometimes convenience comes with a price," said Yasuda.

Has this happened before?

Yes. Battery fires have been reported in products including Sony Vaio laptops, last-year's must-have toy the hoverboard, electric bikes and even Boeing's Dreamliner jet.

In Samsung's case, faulty batteries caused some handsets to burst into flames during charging.

Cases of exploding batteries continued to emerge following the recall announcement, with users claiming a burning device had damaged a hotel room in Australia or set a car on fire in the US.

How extensive is the problem?

Millions of lithium-ion batteries are produced annually with a tiny fraction of those catching fire or exploding.

At the start of September Samsung had received reports of about 35 incidents involving the phone's batteries, with the tech giant launching a recall of 2.5 million Notes 7s in 10 markets. The firm said it would exchange the devices but there have been troubling reports that the batteries in the new handsets have also been involved in fires.

"It's not easy to know if Samsung's problem is the same as others ... at this point," Yasuda said.

"If its battery suppliers sell these same ones to other producers, it could possibly affect them too."

What does this mean for Samsung and other gadget makers that use these batteries?

According to some analysts, the cost of the Samsung recall operation could be up to $2 billion.

Although the company issued a stronger-than-expected operating profit forecast for the third quarter earlier this month despite the Note 7 setback, it has been battered by slumps in share price over its exploding smartphone woes.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has also issued a guidance update, urging all passengers to power off, and not use, charge, or stow in checked baggage, all Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices -- originals or replacements.

The scandal will also put pressure on other gadget makers to figure out how to make battery packs safe for ever-smaller devices.

"We always want batteries to be safe but also to be more efficient," said Guy Marlair, a France-based safety expert.

"The more that we boost the battery's performance, the higher the energy density in a small space and the tougher it is to manage security."
Violent extremist and hate groups continue to get their materials posted onto social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, despite strong efforts to block it, a US Senate panel was told (AFP Photo/TOBIAS SCHWARZ) (AFP/File)

Washington (AFP) - Facebook, Twitter and news organizations including Agence France-Presse have joined a coalition of media and technology groups seeking to filter out online misinformation and improve news quality on social networks.

First Draft News, which is backed by Google, announced Tuesday that some 20 news organizations will be part of its partner network to share information on best practices for journalism in the online age.

Jenni Sargent, managing director of First Draft, said the partner network will help advance the organization's goal of improving news online and on social networks.

"Filtering out false information can be hard. Even if news organizations only share fact-checked and verified stories, everyone is a publisher and a potential source," she said in a blog post.

"We are not going to solve these problems overnight, but we're certainly not going to solve them as individual organizations."

Sargent said the coalition will develop training programs and "a collaborative verification platform," as well as a voluntary code of practice for online news.

"We live in a time when trust and truth are issues that all newsrooms, and increasingly the social platforms themselves, are facing," she said.

"Each partner is committed to sharing knowledge, developing policies and devising training in how journalists use the social web to find and report news."

The announcement comes amid concerns over the growing role of social networks, especially Facebook, in delivering and filtering news, and sometimes allowing hoaxes and misinformation to proliferate.

The partner network includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, The New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, CNN, ABC News of Australia, ProPublica, AFP, The Telegraph, France Info, Breaking News, Le Monde's Les Decodeurs, International Business Times UK, Eurovision News Exchange and Al Jazeera Media Network.

Other organizations in the network include Amnesty International, European Journalism Centre, American Press Institute, International Fact Checking Network and Duke Reporters' Lab."

First Draft was formed last year with support from Google News Lab and has worked with YouTube on verifying user-generated videos, among other projects.
French investigators are still dealing with the fallout from the communications of an IS member suspected of using Telegram to direct people to carry out attacks (AFP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure)

Paris (AFP) - Smartphone app Telegram, favoured by the Islamic State group thanks to the encrypted messaging it offers, is proving a headache for French anti-terror investigators.

The free-to-download instant messenger, which allows people to exchange messages, photos and videos in groups of up to 5,000 people, has attracted some 100 million users since its launch in 2013.

And there are a couple of features that make it particularly attractive to jihadists, who can not only rest assured that their private messages are out of the reach of intelligence officials, but can disperse propaganda on YouTube-like public channels.

After IS gunmen and suicide bombers massacred 130 people in Paris in November, Telegram blocked dozens of public channels that were being used to spread extremist messages.

But Russian Internet guru Pavel Durov, who founded Telegram with his brother Nikolai, insisted that not even he has the power to intercept users' private chats.

In France, which has suffered a string of further jihadist assaults since the Paris carnage, investigators are still dealing with the fallout from the communications of an IS member suspected of using Telegram to direct people to carry out attacks.

Rachid Kassim, a 29-year-old Frenchman who has regularly appeared in IS propaganda videos shot in Syria or Iraq, was able to urge some 300 contacts to commit attacks on home soil, notably publishing a list of targets and scenarios for how to carry them out.

Among his contacts were Larossi Abballa, who knifed to death a senior policeman and his partner in the Parisian suburbs in June, and two teenage jihadists who slit the throat of an elderly priest in a northern French church in July.

Kassim has been back in the news this week after it emerged that female jihadists suspected of plotting to blow up a car filled with gas canisters near Paris' Notre Dame cathedral were on his contact list.

Unable to get past Telegram's impenetrable encryption, the best intelligence officials can hope for is to sneak into extremist chatrooms by posing as jihadists -- but they're bound to attract suspicion unless they talk the talk convincingly.

Story continues

"Infiltrating is possible, but you have to be a good actor and have a lot of cultural and religious awareness to get away with it," one investigator said.

- $300,000 code-cracking challenge -

So confident is Telegram in its encryption, it has offered up to $300,000 to anyone who manages to crack its system.

Moreover, the app has a feature that allows users to set messages to auto-destruct, making it impossible to recover them later for use in investigations.

Even in the realm of public jihadist propaganda on Telegram, it is "practically impossible to track the millions of messages that are exchanged every hour", one investigator lamented.

French intelligence chief Patrick Calvar described the app in May as "the main network used by terrorists".

"We bump into encryption problems on a daily basis, as the means of communication multiply along with the amount of data that we have to gather," he said, adding that encryption is "a major question that only international conventions can decide on".

The use of such apps, which soared after Edward Snowden's revelations of mass US surveillance in 2013, has sparked debate over the balance between internet users' right to privacy and the need for security agencies to protect the public.

Last month the interior ministers of France and Germany urged the European Commission to regulate encrypted messaging apps.

Telegram's makers said after the Paris attacks that they were "disturbed" it was being used by jihadists, but they are staunchly pro-privacy and have blasted internet giants Facebook and Google for giving data to third parties.

French investigators say they do not even know who within the Berlin-based company they should legally petition for information that could help piecing together a case, such as confirmation that a suspect is the holder of a particular Telegram account.

"We do not know who in Telegram to send our requests to -- there is no judicial entity or legal department like there is at Apple or Microsoft," one investigator complained.
A wake-up call

Transforming a unitary state to a federal one will remain a distant dream unless political parties go for elections
MONACO (Reuters) - Google is looking to establish partnerships between insurance companies and some of its businesses including Nest, which makes smart thermostats and smoke detectors, the managing director of its French division said. But the U.S. firm was not focusing on entering the insurance market directly, Nick Leeder added. "With some of the things we have done around Nest, we have been working with insurers in France like AXA and Allianz to develop bundles of products which blend technology and hardware with insurance," Leeder said during a panel discussion at the reinsurance industry's annual meeting in Monte Carlo on Tuesday. "Were clearer about the role that we can play and what we can add, and we are looking for partners." More than 40 percent of insurers see Google as a potential rival and threat because of its strong brand and ability to manage customer data, a report from consultants Capgemini earlier this year found. But that was not where Google was directing its efforts. "We are not a company that uses the word never much, so it's difficult to rule things in or out. I think there are things that we are good at and things we are not good at," the Google France boss said. Areas Google had been focusing more on included health care, and it shut down its price comparison site for motor insurance, Google Compare, earlier this year. "We found it didnt work as well as wed like," Leeder said. (Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; editing by John Stonestreet)
Tidal, a music service that promises to make rap artists rich again, has not been doing so well. Despite scooping up big-name exclusives like Lemonade in the last year, the high-quality streaming service has been losing money hand over fist.

Tidal's Swedish parent company Aspiro posted a loss of about $28 million for the last year, according to a Norwegian newspaper that examined the company's accounts. Tidal is the company's core financial holding, so it's safe to say the streaming service is not in good health.

DON'T MISS: The 10 biggest changes coming to your iPhone today with iOS 10

Jay-Z bought the music streaming service for $56 million last year. Since then, Jay-Z's lawyers have reportedly accused the sellers of inflating Tidal's records and number of paying subscribers before the sale.

Even if Tidal is in dire financial straits, it might not be the end of the road for the company. Apple is reportedly interested in buying the service, mostly for its strong relationships with artists. Apple's own streaming service, Apple Music, has been doing decently well since launch, but bringing on board a good number of well-reputed artists (and the associated exclusives) would do wonders for the battle against Spotify.

Still, there's no news of a sale to Apple since a June report in the Wall Street Journal. The news from Aspiro also claims that the company has hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding payments, so it's unclear how long Tidal can last while losing money hand over fist.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
By Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Critics of a plan for the U.S. government to cede control of the Internet's technical management to other countries might succeed in delaying such a move in Congress, a senior lawmaker said on Tuesday. Senator John Thune, a senior Republican from South Dakota, told reporters lawmakers are "trying to work out ... what would be effective in terms of slowing this." The U.S. Commerce Department oversees the Internet's management largely because it was invented in the United States. Some Republican politicians, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, want to block the handover to global stakeholders, such as businesses, tech experts and public interest advocates. Opponents of the transition said it could stifle online freedom by giving voting rights to authoritarian governments. Tech companies, technical experts and academics have said the transition is overdue and necessary to keep the Internet open and globally oriented, and that the proposal includes safeguards against any potential abuse by any one country. The plan to transfer oversight of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is set to occur on Oct. 1, unless Congress votes to block the handover. The California-based corporation operates the database for domain names such as .com and .net and their corresponding numeric addresses that allow computers to connect. The Obama administration approved the transition plan in June. Thune said he would expect language delaying the change to be in a bill to fund the government starting Oct. 1. He expects congressional leaders to finish writing the bill next week. Both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress would then have to vote on the bill and President Barack Obama, a Democrat, would have to sign it for it to become law. A leading Senate Democrat, however, scoffed at the proposed Internet provision. "Can Ted Cruz and Republicans dream up any more obscure, irrelevant issues to stop the business of the American government?" asked Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. There are other outstanding government funding issues also being negotiated by lawmakers, including how much spending should be committed to fighting the Zika virus. (Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Grant McCool)
Computer hacking in film and TV has taken on many different forms over the years, from the more visual approach of Hackers to the narration-heavy Mr. Robot. A group of panelists gathered at Google in Venice, Calif. on Monday to discuss hacking and cyber securitys growing popularity in storylines.

If the hack is not feasible in real life it doesnt get into our script, Kor Adana, a writer and technical producer on Mr. Robot said. I spend my day breaking story in the writers room but I spend my night talking to my team of consultants and well come up with an approach thats feasible and works.

If a hack gets written in, Adana said that he and his team will actually perform the hack to get screenshots or video of what the screen would look like. They then create a Flash program that they end up shooting with stars Rami Malek or Christian Slater or Carly Chaikin.

Im there on set practicing it with them, making sure it looks accurate so they hit the alt-tab at the right spot or they hit enter at the right spot, Adana said.

When creating shows that deal with the complexities of coding, however, it becomes a juggling act to negotiate those complexities with a main stream audience.

There are characters on our show that are hackers by broad definition and we like to have them approach personal problems from that place, Christopher C. Rogers, one of the showrunners on AMCs Halt and Catch Fire, said. I think it really helps for Chris [Cantwell] and I to be people that dont really understand the deep tech because the process of having it explained to you by people intimately familiar with it gives you the metaphors and facilities to give it back to the general public.

Adana agreed, saying that if the characters werent interesting then it wouldnt matter if the tech was right.

Story comes first for us, Adana said. The viewer may not understand the nuts and bolts of the technology but if they understand the stakes of the scene or the characters motivation and what Elliot is going through, that is whats most important to us.

Story continues

The panel, moderated by Reagan Gomez, also included Sarah Ullman, the executive producer of Coin Heist, Parisa Tabriz, the self-proclaimed Security Princess and Google Chrome Engineering Director, and Mark Abene, an infosec expert and entrepreneur.

Related stories

'Mr. Robot' Recap: Getting Those 'Breaking Bad' Vibes

'Mr. Robot' Recap: Orange Is the New Elliot

'Mr. Robot' Recap: Tensions Rise in an Unusual Hour
For most of us, data caps are just annoying. But for Netflix, they pose an existential threat to its way of doing business. If people have to pay extra to watch internet TV, it gives Comcast and TWC the edge.

So it's not surprising that Netflix feels strongly about the emerging trend of data caps, but the company really pulled no punches in a letter to the FCC.

DON'T MISS: This might be the worst thing about the iPhone 7 Plus crazy new camera

"Data caps on fixed line networks do not appear to serve a legitimate purpose: they are an ineffective network management tool," notes the company. (ISPs) have stated that data caps on fixed line networks do not serve a traffic management function....the Commission should recognize that data caps and UBP on fixed line networks are an unnecessary constraint on advanced telecommunications capability," Netflix explained.

Although 1TB data caps, which are being introduced by the likes of Comcast and TWC, might be sufficient for now, they may well become woefully inadequate in the future. "A data cap or allotment of 300 GB of data per month or higher is required just to meet the Internet television needs of an average American," the letter states. "An above average television watcher, a multi-occupant household, or a consumer wishing to watch in 4K requires a much higher cap."

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
By Suzanne Barlyn (Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday issued long-anticipated proposed cyber security regulations for banks and insurers in the state, the first of their kind in the United States by any state or federal agency, the governor said in a statement. Cuomo's planned regulations for institutions overseen by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) would require companies to set up cyber security programs and appoint a chief information officer, among other measures, according to the governor's office. The planned regulations, in the works since 2014, follow a series of high-profile hackings of U.S. companies and three surveys by the regulator about cyber security programs at a total of nearly 200 companies under its watch. One NYDFS report last year revealed that a third of 40 banks in a 2014 survey did not require outside vendors to notify them of data breaches, which could compromise bank data. The regulations aim to provide institutions with flexibility to adapt to technological innovations while reducing vulnerabilities, NYDFS Superintendent Maria Vullo said in a statement. NYDFS regulates state-chartered and foreign banks licensed to operate in the state, including Goldman Sachs Group, Barclays and Deutsche Bank, and all insurance companies that do business in the state. It previewed the plan in a November, 2015 letter to other state and federal regulators. That same day, U.S. prosecutors unveiled criminal charges accusing three men of helping run a sprawling series of hacking and fraud schemes, including a huge 2014 attack against JPMorgan Chase & Co , that generated hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profit. Among the planned requirements: board chairmen would have to file annual certifications with NYDFS, stating, to the best of their knowledge, that their companies' cyber programs comply with the regulation. Other measures would include appointing overseers for outside vendors and limiting access of customers' non-public information, such as social security numbers, to employees who need those details, according to the proposal. Systems would have to include multiple steps for verifying user identities. Institutions would also have to regularly test their cyber security systems. The chief information security officer would have to present twice-yearly reports about progress and vulnerabilities to the board of directors and make those findings available to NYDFS. Before the plan becomes final, the public will have 45 days to submit comments, once the proposed regulations are published in the New York State Register. (Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, G Crosse and David Gregorio)
(Reuters) - Pandora Media Inc said on Tuesday it had signed direct licensing deals with a number of music labels, including heavyweights Sony Music and Universal Music Group, beefing up its music collection to compete with Spotify and Apple Music. Shares of the music streaming company fell 1.3 percent to close at $14.10. The deal with more than 30 independent labels and distributors grants Pandora rights to their U.S. catalog and allows it to offer a new version of its streaming service, the company said. Pandora, which already has license deals with ASCAP, BMI and more than 2,700 publishers, said the latest deals also give it new advertising opportunities. Unlike other streaming services that have negotiated deals to allow listeners to pick songs, Pandora has acted more like a radio station that plays songs matching a genre without allowing users to make selections. The company had 78.1 million active users as of June 30. SunTrust Robinson raised its rating on the stock to 'buy' from 'neutral' on Monday, calling the deals with music labels and new tiered products positives. (Reporting by Narottam Medhora in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)
Airlines jack up fares to cash in on festive rush

With the festival season fast approaching in Nepal, airlines from India and China have jacked up their inbound fares more than threefold to cash in on the annual festive rush when Nepalis return home by the hundreds of thousands for the celebrations.
The OnePlus 3 smartphone has taken the top spot in the famous AnTuTu performance benchmark with an average score of 140.288, as of August 2016. It comes ahead of five other Chinese handsets, most of which are only available in Asia.

Selling for just $399, the OnePlus 3 has nothing to envy of pricier, high-end handsets from Apple and Samsung -- the iPhone 6s and the Galaxy S7 edge -- when it comes to performance. With a design largely inspired by the iPhone 6s, this 5.5-inch cell phone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 16MP and 8MP Sony cameras and 6GB of RAM. It runs OxygenOS, a mobile operating system based on Android Marshmallow and developed by OnePlus.

The OnePlus 3 is followed in the current AnTuTu ranking by the Vivo Xplay5 Elite and the LeEco Max2, both of which sell in Asian markets. The Vivo Xplay5 Elite is the first Chinese smartphone to get a screen with curved edges. This 5.43-inch mobile sells for approximately $674. The LeEco Max2 is a 5.7-inch smartphone with features including a 21MP camera with optical image stabilization. In China, it sells for under $450. Note that both phones have 6GB of RAM.

The first handset made outside of China to appear in the ranking is the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, in seventh place, followed by Apple's iPhone 6s in eighth. It remains to be seen whether its successor, the freshly unveiled iPhone 7, will be able to match the performances of its Chinese competitors and their Apple-inspired creations.

The 10 highest scoring smartphones in the AnTuTu performance benchmark

1. OnePlus 3 (140.288)

2. Vivo Xplay 5 Elite (138.706)

3. LeECo Max 2 (138.026)

4. Nubia Z11 (137.685)

5. Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro (136.853)

6. Xiaomi 5 (136.773)

7. Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (134.599)

8. iPhone 6s (133.781)

9. 360 Q5 plus (133.394)

10. HTC 10 (133.217)

AnTuTu is a Chinese benchmarking tool that compiles a multitude of data to establish a performance index, assessing the individual performance of all smartphones on the market.
Bakar-Eid celebrated (In photos)

The Muslim community across the country are celebrating Bakar-Eid (Eid-al-Adha), one of the biggest Islamic festivals, with joy and gaiety.
China in touch with Nepal about Xis visit

Amid speculations over Chinese President Xi Jinpings visit to Nepal next month, Chinas Foreign Ministry has said that it is improper to have any conclusion [at this point of time] and that Beijing is in communication with the Kathmandu through diplomatic channel
Danuwars biography launched

Sunita Danuwars biography Anshu ko Shakti (Power of Tears), a tale of the long walk to empowerment of a teenage girl sold to a brothel in Mumbai, India, was launched on Monday.
Flood disrupts traffic on East-West Highway

Transportation has been disrupted along the Rautahat stretch of the East-West Highway on Monday as the road was waterlogged due to the flood caused by incessant rains in Chandrapur-7.
Focus India visit to boost economic relation: Economic experts

Economic experts have suggested the government to focus the imminent visit of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to India on issues that would help boost economic activities in the country.
Govt should give priority to constitution amendment: Chair Yadav

Chairman of the Federal Socialists Forum, Upendra Yadav, has said that the incumbent government should give top priority to Madhes issues.
Grand ceremony to mark first Constitution Day

The Legislature-Parliament Secretariat is hosting a reception on September 18, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the proclamation of the Constitution of Nepal.
MPs seek pay hike amid criticism over paying less attention to House

Parliamentarians may have been criticised for paying less attention to Parliament meetings, but they have duly paid full attention to issues related to their pay hike.
NAC Airbus tyre bursts during landing at TIA, all passengers safe

All flights in and out of Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) were halted for an hour after a tyre of Nepal Airlines Corporation Airbus A320 burst during landing at the airport in Kathmandu on Tuesday afternoon.
Neglected woodlands

Family forests have made a significant contribution to forest and nature conservation
Nepal govt Denounces DPRK nuke test

The Nepal government has deplored the nuclear test carried out by the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea on Friday, in defiance of the relevant resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the calls of the international community.
Nepathyas new single hits YouTube

Folk band Nepathya are currently gearing up for a three-city tour around the world.
New chapter will be added in Nepal-India relations: FM Mahat

Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat has said that a new chapter would be added in Nepal-India relations.
Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years.
Recipe for failure

The proposed local jurisdictions are too large and they have too many responsibilities
Reconstruction of Rani Pokhari set to resume

Rani Pokhari reconstruction, which was halted earlier, is set to resume this week following an agreement between the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) and the Department of Archaeology (DoA).
Save Rara campaign kicks off

The Rara Tourism Development Committee is orgainsing Rara Conservation Campaign from September 24 aimed at preserving natural resources of Rara Lake.
Sellers unveil offers to lure customers

Sellers of vehicles, electronic products and mobile phone sets have started launching discount offers and schemes to give a boost to sales during the upcoming festivals of Dashain and Tihar.
Shakya is the founder CEO of beed, an international management consulting and advisory firm. He is the author of Unleashing Nepal and Unleashing The Vajra.
Syria ceasefire: 'No civilian deaths on first day'

The cessation of hostilities in Syria that came into effect at sunset on Monday is holding well into its first day, reports suggest.
Rana is a Kathmandu-based tech writer who has been covering all things tech for the past decade.
Two dead in Indian-administered Kashmir clashes amid Eid curfew

Two protesters have been killed in clashes with security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir amid a rare Eid curfew in the disputed region.
Indra Jatra begins (Photo feature)

Two persons including a security personnel were injured when a wooden pole known as 'lingo' brought to Hanumandhoka to mark Indra Jatra festival fell over them on Tuesday morning in course of erecting it.
Two injured rhino calves rescued in CNP

The Chitwan National Park (CNP) has rescued two rhino calves that were found injured in the park forests. Conservationists suspect the rhino calves were injured due to attack from wild animals.
Worth of water

Recurrent outbreaks of cholera should alarm authorities and jolt them into action
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
Government requires 600bn shillings to compensate all war survivors in Uganda.

While appeering before parliaments foreign affairs committee, the state minister in charge of veterans Bright Rwamirama said that its incumbent upon parliament to appropriate these sums of money to them to clear this long overdue burden.

He explained that government is not only paying veterans of the 1986 war, but even those who fought in world war 11
A former Congolese rebel commander who is on trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague has said he is ready to die rather than endure the conditions he is being held in, the Reuters news agency reports.

Bosco Ntaganda who is accused of using child soldiers, keeping women as sex slaves, and murder in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 2002-2003 went on hunger strike last week, Reuters adds.

I have no possibility to see my wife and children again under normal conditions. This is the reason I have lost all hope. This is why I am ready to die, Ntaganda said in a statement read out by his defence lawyer.

Ntaganda pleaded not guilty to all 18 charges at the start of his trial last year.
A former president of the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights (AfCHPR) has allayed fears that Rwandas withdrawal of its declaration would have a significant impact on future ratifications.

On February 29th, Rwanda withdrew its declaration that allows citizens to take cases of human rights violation to the African Court, sending a wave of uncertainty among human rights activists in many African Union member states including Uganda.

Rwanda made the withdrawal communication on February 29, three years after it first deposited the declaration under Article 34(6) of the Protocol to the African Charter on Humna and Peoples Rights.

In its withdrawal communication the Rwandan government said it was preventing exploitation of the individual complaint procedure by criminals, particularly individuals who took part in the 1994 genocide and have subsequently fled the country.

However, speaking at an inter-regional dialogue organised by UNESCO and the African Court on Human and Peapoles Rights on 10 September in Arusha, Tanzania, Justice Gerald Niyungeko said the move would not have any legal impact on the pending cases. For now Rwandese can still file their cases. Ratification or withdrawal is the decision of an individual state, he added.

Justice Niyungeko added though, that politically, the decision sends a negative message for the states that are yet to ratify the protocol and those that have ratified but have not yet deposited their declarations like Uganda.

Rwandas withdrawal will come into effect one year after pulling out, Justice Niyungeko told fellow judges, senior journalists and lawyers drawn from across Africa.

Out of the 54 AU member states 30 have ratified the Protocol and only eight have submitted declarations allowing individual complaints to the Court, and Rwanda is the first State to withdraw, potentially reducing the number of AU countries where individuals and NGOs have direct access to the Court to seven.

The Arusha meeting also focused on strengthening strategies to increase the number of African countries ratifying the Protocol and depositing the Declaration that allows citizens to present their cases to the African Court.

The Seminar conducted between September 8th -10th was running under the theme; Strengthening Judicial Systems and African Courts to protect safety of journalists and end impunity.

Story By Catherine Ageno
No

Yes, a light case

Yes, two or more light cases

One serious case

Two or more serious bouts

Vote

View Results
BLUFFTON  Eastsides Marching Blazer Pride band finished sixth among Class D bands at the On the Banks of the Wabash contest at Bluffton High School Saturday.

Adams Central finished first among Class D bands, one-tenth of a point ahead of Whitko. Alexandria was third. Adams Central won the special award for visual effect. Whitko won for best music. Alexandria won for general effect.

Woodlan was fourth, Bremen was fifth and Eastside was sixth.

In Class C, Concordia was first and swept the special awards. Norwell was second, followed by Angola and Garrett.

In Class B, East Noble was first and won for general effect. DeKalb was second, grabbing awards for best music and visual effect. New Castle was third.

Homestead won Class A, followed by Carroll and Northrop.

In the Scholastic Small category, Manchester finished first, followed by New Haven and Heritage. Manchester won for best music. Heritage won the visual effect award. New Haven won the general effect award.

Eastside and Garrett will compete in the DeKalb Invitational at Waterloo Saturday.

Scholastic Small competition begins at 3:30 p.m., with Scholastic Large competition starting at 4:22 p.m.

Eastside opens Class D competition at 8 p.m. Garrett opens Class C competition at 8:52 p.m. DeKalb performs in exhibition at 9:44 p.m. Trine Universitys band performs in exhibition at 5:40 p.m. and again at 9:57 p.m.
ORLAND  Work is expected to begin this fall on the deconstruction of a dam at the Fawn River State Fish Hatchery.

Indiana Department of Natural Resources representatives attended Monday nights meeting of the Orland Town Council and laid out the scope of the project. The dam will be removed, leaving historic control structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A new stream channel will be dredged in the mill pond. About 5,000 cubic yards of sediment will be removed.

A temporary diversion channel will be created to dry out the area while the work is being done, said Jomary Baller, project coordinator. Habitat structures will be created in the stream to help direct the flow of the river in a natural way.

Were going to be planting natural grasses and sedges, said Baller. The result of the project will be a free flow of water that allows fish passage in the Fawn River, she said. The project was made possible in part by a fish passage grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

It will flow like it was supposed to, said Dale Gick, director of the DNRs engineering division.

There were some concerns about the water level, but that will not change, Gick said. The river is 2 to 4 feet deep throughout most of its northern Indiana stretch. The water has subsided somewhat, leaving sediment islands in places. Doug Nusbaum, Lake and River Enhancement program specialist, said the lowered level in the river reflects a lower flow from Lake Jimmerson, which like its sister Lake James, is down about a foot at this time of year.

Bids for the dam project have been taken and permits have been requested from the Army Corps of Engineers, Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

In other business, the town council held a hearing on its proposed 2017 budget. The budget is set at $257,603. The council held a first reading on the budget and no comments were received from the public.

Also, Town Marshal Brooke Norton has moved speed limit signs to try to curb a problem with speeding in the town, which is at the intersection of S.R. 120 and S.R. 327. The 30-mile-per-hour zone has been pushed north of the town park on S.R. 327 and the 30- and 40-mile-per-hour zones in eastern Orland have been moved further east on S.R. 120.
KENDALLVILLE  Flint & Walling Inc. is planning a family celebration, and everyone is invited.

Plant tours, a Tombstone Trail tour, live music from two bands, food vendors, special guests  including descendants of the business founders  and activities for children are scheduled.

Kendallvilles oldest manufacturer, once known for its iconic windmills and now recognized for its pumps and water systems, will begin celebrating its 150th anniversary with a ceremony at about 3:30 p.m. Friday to bury a time capsule near the plant entrance at 95 S. Oak St.

The street will be temporarily blocked off to traffic. The public is welcome to attend.

The celebration then ratchets up Saturday. From 9-10 a.m., guided tours of the plant will be offered. Then the party moves to the Mid-America Windmill Museum, 732 S. Allen Chapel Road.

Mayor Suzanne Handshoe will be joined by other city officials to give the opening remarks at about 11:50 a.m. Saturday. The Francis Vinyard Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2749 color guard will present the colors, and East Noble show choir members will sing the national anthem.

Activities will continue at the museum from noon to 6 p.m.

The Moon Cats band will play music on stage from noon to 3 p.m. During band breaks Flint & Walling President Scott Lechner will recognize special guests, including descendants of Simeon Flint, as well as longtime company employees, Flint & Walling customers and the longest-serving contractor/wholesaler.

Present and former employees, customers and suppliers from all over the United States are expected at the celebration. At 2 p.m. Simeon Flints great-great-granddaughter, Mary Gibson of Edinburg, Virginia, and great-great grandson, Edward Flint Foster of Pontotoc, Mississippi, will be introduced.

Simeon Flint along with D.C. Walling founded Flint & Walling in 1866. Descendants of D.C. Walling had to cancel their trip from Texas.

At about 3 p.m. Saturday, Kendallville Olympian and East Noble High School graduate Amy Yoder Begley is scheduled to speak, followed by live music by the band Scarlett from 3:30-6 p.m.

There will be a food court and refreshment stands, and an Indiana National Guard helicopter will be on static display.

Scheduled games and activities for children and adults starting at noon include face painting, balloon art, penny hunt, rolling pin toss, cornhole tournaments, watermelon eating contest and balloon toss. Prizes will be awarded.

Guided Tombstone Trail tours of Lake View Cemetery highlighting prominent Flint & Walling-related grave sites, including the Walling and Flint families; Richard Cole, owner and president, 1950-1965; and Arthur Franklin Mapes, Indianas poet laureate, are scheduled for 3 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. Transportation will be provided to and from Lake View Cemetery for the 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. tours.

The Mid-America Windmill Museum, which features restored, historic windmills such as Flint & Wallings Star Windmill, and its gift shop will be open during the celebration.
Having earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Viterbo College (University) in Latin with minors in English and history and a Master of Arts degree from Catholic University in English. Sister Rita ministered as an elementary teacher for six years and high school teacher for 15 years in schools in Iowa and Wisconsin, including 11 years at Aquinas High School in La Crosse. She was a teaching assistant at Notre Dame, during the 1976-1977 term. Sister Rita completed her teaching career with 27 years in the English department at Viterbo College (University), including eight years as chairperson of the department. In the middle of her tenure at Viterbo, she served as communications director for the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration for four years. After retiring as associate professor, Sister Rita continued ministering at Viterbo as a volunteer, especially in the learning center and library. She retired to St. Rose Convent in 2005. In 2015, Sister Rita moved to Villa St. Joseph.
WINONA, Minn.  Victor Vieth stepped away a couple years ago from his administrative duties at Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center, a place he founded, so he could spend more time developing ways to protect children.

He says the center, whose headquarters is at Winona State University, is doing exactly that. Its mission and work has been brought into stark relief this month in Minnesota, amid revelations and closure in the Jacob Wetterling case, and the ongoing work of the centers partner program in the Twin Cities, the Wetterling Resource Center.

In 2015, the center trained 28,000 child protection professionals across the country and reached 227,000 children through its programs. Now the center is joining with organizations across the country to push a national plan to end all violence  to children, adults and elders.

Winona State, the training center and Gundersen are now household names internationally in child protection, said Vieth, who founded the center in 2003 and has since watched its programs replicated in many states.

Were an engine of change, he said. We want to take things to a higher level.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the persistence of violence and other forms of abuse, Vieth said, is many professionals fail to recognize the warning signs.

Neglect might be easily noticed if a child is hungry, unkempt or poorly dressed  but other forms of abuse are not plain to see.

A child who has injuries to his or her backside might be a victim of physical abuse, as most naturally occurring injuries will be to the front of a child, Vieth said.

He added that a child who shows an understanding of sex that is beyond his or her expected development  a child who uses dolls during playtime to demonstrate sexual behavior  might be a victim of sexual abuse.

Another problem is the reluctance of victims, especially children, to report when they have been abused.

We need to push personal safety and encourage children to come forward, Vieth said. Offenders dont like to operate in places with that kind of programming.

The Winona center has become a national model for its facilities and for its understanding of how to recognize and prevent abuse.

The center has five mock courtrooms, four forensic interview training rooms and a mock house, where students in Winona States child protection courses can recreate events and determine whether abuse might have occurred.

The mock home is complete with artificial grass outside the front door, a kitchen with functioning appliances and a staircase that leads nowhere  but is useful in simulating trips or falls.

We can make it a meth lab or a pristine upper-middle-class home where abuse might be subtle, Vieth said. We can go in the bathroom and figure out how hot the water gets, how long a child needs to be in there to get burned.

The center has influenced universities and colleges across the country to build similar facilities, part of a shift in this field toward immersive learning.

It has launched several other child protection programs, including the Wetterling Center. And it has done consulting work on cases of national significance, including the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

In the coming months, Vieth said, the center plans to work with faith leaders to prevent abusers from using spirituality to manipulate children. These abusers often convince children the particular abuse is somehow accepted or even ordained by God, he said.

You can always count on us to be on the cutting edge, Vieth said. Weve been several years ahead of everyone else on some of these initiatives.

Weve changed the debate from whether we can end abuse, to how quickly we can end it.

Weve changed the debate from whether we can end abuse, to how quickly we can end it.  National Child Protection Training Center founder Victor Vieth
The city of La Crosse will approach La Crosse County to start negotiations to provide library services and the famous Castle on Cass will become a bed and breakfast after a pair of Monday decisions by the La Crosse Common Council.

The council also approved a $50,000 settlement agreement with former La Crosse police officer Anthony Clark in Clarks federal discrimination lawsuit against the city, and the elimination of the Public Works Director position.

La Crosse Mayor Tim Kabat was pleased to see his proposal to merge the La Crosse Public Library and La Crosse County Public Library services move forward after the 9-4 vote. Kabat believes the proposal will save the city money and eliminate duplication of services for more efficient regional government.

He expects to have representatives from both the city and county review the two systems together in negotiations, he said.

Obviously, they offer library services to five other communities in our county, and we look to see how that matches up with our level of service, then we start to identify those costs and the staffing that is needed and come together with hopefully a plan, Kabat said.

Kabat said he would then take that plan out to the community and request input.

People have to understand what kinds of changes there are, if there are changes, and what exactly that would mean for people throughout the county, Kabat said.

If an agreement is reached between the city and county, it will need to go before the Common Council for approval.

The decision came after just under an hour of discussion and 10 failed motions, the majority of which would have delayed a decision on whether or not to request an agreement with the county, in a lengthy debate council member James Cherf called ridiculous.

Cherf called on the council to delay a decision to give the city and county library boards a chance to discuss what a merger would look like, following a plan laid out in the city librarys strategic plan.

We can bring this back once the discussion has been had so we can have an informed decision, Cherf said.

However, several of his fellow council members argued that further study is not needed the negotiations would give the two library boards and the city and county a place to hold their discussions.

Theres no reason why the city and the county library systems cant talk. You can still have your meeting, council member Philip Ostrem said. I dont think it blocks anything. It gets more people involved if anything.

Council member Ryan Cornett added that the county boards decision last week to delay forming a proposed task force to study the systems shows that the county is waiting for the council to act.

Until we sit down with the county and have a formal discussion, were not going anywhere, Cornett said.

Council members Cherf, Andrea Richmond, Robert Seaquist and Francis Formanek voted against approaching the county. Council member Aubrey Kader abstained.

The La Crosse Common Council also approved permitting a bed and breakfast to open at 1419 Cass St. in an 11-3 split, allowing a pair of Texan businessmen the chance to transform the lower levels of the former home of lumber baron Nymphus B. Holway, providing a unique experience to La Crosse visitors with an eye for history.

The approval came after the approval of a one-year sunset clause, which will allow the city to revoke the permit next year if the business proves damaging to the neighborhood. Cherf, Ostrem and council member Martin Gaul voted against the permit.

The council unanimously approved a settlement with Clark, who will receive $50,000 in exchange for dismissing a federal lawsuit accusing his colleagues within the La Crosse Police Department subjected him to persistent racial harassment and that the agency retaliated against him for reporting the behavior.

Under the terms of the settlement, the city of La Crosse will purge all of Clarks disciplinary records, and Clark agrees to not appeal the denial of his application for duty disability benefits or reapply for employment with the city.
SPARTA  Zachary Davis sat calmly next to defense attorneys Chris Zachar and Kenneth Hamm as the prosecution described Davis as a desperate, homeless man who repaid the kind act of a stranger with murder.

Davis trial on charges of first-degree intentional homicide in the death of Derek Magnuson and armed robbery began Monday after jury selection resulted in a panel of eight women and six men.

Monroe County District Attorney Kevin Croninger referred to the victim as a man having a rough day who befriended Davis and his girlfriend, Sebastian Martinez, who identifies as Sabrina Martinez, and took pity on them. The pair left North Dakota after stealing a vehicle, pawning items for cash and stopping at a Cabelas store in Woodbury, Minn., where Mr. Davis looked at machetes and (other weapons) and told Martinez they should get a weapon so they could rob someone, the prosecutor said.

Magnuson invited Davis and Martinez to stay in his room at the Econo Lodge in Tomah on March 11, 2015, where he was staying after a fight with his fiance. There, Croninger said, Davis stabbed an unarmed Magnuson several times with the 14-inch machete he had bought at Cabelas 12 hours earlier, stole his wallet and debit cards, and left him lying there, flopping like a fish.

Croninger discounted the defenses argument of self-defense, citing Davis actions after the crime: wiping down light switches, discarding his bloody clothing and using (Magnusons) debit card nine times over the next 10 hours.

Hamm pointed blame in the direction of Magnuson, who he said had been drinking throughout the day and evening. His bodys blood-alcohol concentration measured 0.23 percent. Magnuson made two trips to an area liquor store and took Davis to a bar, continuing to drink with Davis and Martinez in the hotel room after checking them in as family members.

This is the story of two men who on March 11 were perhaps at the lowest point in their lives, Hamm said, depicting Davis as lonely and ostracized by his family after choosing to date Martinez, adding that Davis intended to pawn the items purchased at Cabelas and that it was Martinez who selected the hatchet.

According to Hamm:

Martinez told Davis that Magnuson made sexual advances, trying to kiss him and touching his breast and groin when the two were alone in the room. Davis suggested leaving, but the pair ultimately stayed and Davis left to shower. After he discovered Magnuson attempting to sexually assault Martinez, Davis intervened, at which point Magnuson straddled Davis on the floor and delivered punch after punch and claimed Im going to (expletive) kill you.

Mr. Davis sees the machete still in that bag, hes struggling to get out and starts reaching for the machete, Hamm said. Davis swung several times, puncturing one of Magnusons lungs.

The physical evidence will show Mr. Magnuson was the initial instigator in this incident, Hamm said.Mr. Magnuson was still on his feet after the injury and continued to fight.

Hamm contends that Davis was terrified after the altercation and decided to flee, knowing he was already in trouble for stealing a car and believing others in the building would hear the commotion.

Davis admits to stealing Magnusons wallet, but Hamm argues the robbery was not premeditated, as Davis had items from Cabelas to pawn and wasnt in desperate need of money. Hamm added that Martinez only changed his statement to depict armed robbery after being pressured by his family and the state.

This was not a homicide. This was not an armed robbery, Hamm said. This was justified, and you will return with the verdict of not guilty.

The trial is expected to take two weeks.
A new half-day program is aimed at helping entrepreneurs and start-up businesses in the region.

The La Crosse Small Business Academy provides entrepreneurs and start-up businesses an opportunity to connect with financial and technical resource providers, learn the tools needed to start and grow the businesses, and network with other business owners.

The program will run from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 6, at the La Crosse Area Chamber of Commerces Lyle & Norma Anderson Education Center, 601 N. Seventh St.

Admission is free registration is required by Oct. 3 at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/first-annual-la-crosse-small-business-academy-tickets-27258936212.

The program is a collaborative effort between the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. and the UW-L Wisconsin Small Business Development Center. The two hope to hold the event each year.

You dont have to own a small business to attend, says Anne Hlavacka, director of the center. If youre wondering whether small business is right for you or whether your business idea is a good one, this event is a great place to learn more and to meet others who are going through the same discovery process.

After the program introduction that covers key considerations and financial resources for business start-ups, participants will have the opportunity to explore small business management topics by choosing from various roundtables. Each will be led by an expert in a specific area of business, including start-up financing, how and when to hire help, marketing basics, and social media, among others.

In addition to presentations and roundtable sessions, a number of local resource and economic development organizations will be available to provide information about the small business support services they provide.
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse remains one of the best public universities in the region, according to U.S. News & World Reports rankings.

The campus ranks fourth among public schools in its category, and its the 16th year in a row that UW-L has been the top-ranked UW System school outside of Madison. UW-Madison was not included in the regional rankings because U.S. News & World Report considers it a national university, ranking it 10th public overall.

UW-L is also listed among the publications A-Plus Schools for B Students, which recognizes campuses that help middle-of-the-road students succeed.

More than 1,400 accredited, four-year schools are compared in the rankings, and the factors weighed include peer assessment, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving. Complete listings are available at www.usnews.com/colleges.

Were delighted to be the No. 1 comprehensive university in the UW System and among the top four regional universities in the country, UW-L Chancellor Joe Gow said. This is wonderful external recognition of the outstanding work being done each day by our faculty, staff and students. Were very proud of this respected reputation.

Truman State University in Missouri remained the top public university in the Midwest with the University of Northern Iowa at No. 2, followed by Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Among all private and public Midwest universities, UW-L was in a four-way tie for 31st.
VIROQUA  Working two jobs to pay for rent and food. Getting paid less than a guy to do the same job. Going without medicine or medical care because of the expense. Staying with a violent partner because he might hurt you or the kids if you try to leave.

These are some of the issues that will be discussed at a round-table event Monday, Sept. 19, at Vernon County Democratic headquarters.

Wisconsin Sen. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, will speak about women and family health issues and legislation to address them.

Couleecap executive director Grace Jones will talk about the jobs, salaries and housing of women in the Coulee Region.

Alicia Leinberger, candidate for the Wisconsin 96th Assembly District seat, will speak on why women and family issues are important to her and legislation she will support to address them if elected. We know that when women suffer, families suffer. The effect this has on home life for children is unacceptable and our representatives must fight for families first.

Other participants in the round-table include Lisa Hynek, domestic abuse program coordinator, Family and Childrens Center in Viroqua; Molly Hilligoss, La Crosse YWCA social justice and advocacy director; and Gary Thompson, farm/food coordinator, Community Hunger Solutions.

The events, free and open to the public, will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the headquarters in the former Hotel Fortney, 100 N. Main St., Viroqua.
The prediction was supposed to sound ominous. But to many listeners, it just sounded delicious.

My culture is a very dominant culture, and its imposing and its causing problems, warned Marco Gutierrez, founder of Latinos for Trump, in an MSNBC interview earlier this month. If you dont do something about it, youre going to have taco trucks on every corner.

In the days that followed, this culinary Cassandra was widely mocked, memed and hashtagged.

How silly and self-loathing must Gutierrez be, the Twitterverse asked, to fear-monger with flautas, to bogeyman with burritos, to alarm with empanadas? After all, any idiot knows that Americans across the political spectrum love Mexican (or at least Tex-Mex) food. Even Donald Trump has featured taco-based cuisine in his political propaganda.

Yet I understand why Gutierrez might have expected his warning of Mexican culture creep to seem scary.

In recent years, there has been a subtle shift, on both left and right, away from the idealization of the melting pot  the United States long tradition of mixing and matching from the many cultures and ethnicities that migrate to our shores. Instead, both liberals and conservatives have increasingly advocated a version of cultural autarky: You stick to the traditions of your ancestry, Ill stick to mine, and well all be better off.

Maybe some rare exceptions can be grandfathered in, among them tacos (and, presumably, bagels). But for the most part, the goal seems to be to maintain clear, pristine ethnic boundaries, for foods, languages, clothing and other traditions.

The motivations for this evolving preference differ depending on the political faction youre talking about, of course. Those on the far left increasingly avoid engagement with other cultures traditions because they worry about cultural appropriation, or exoticizing or exploiting another peoples heritage. For the far right, this avoidance is based on fear of an invasive foreign influence, one that might contaminate true American values.

The rationales may be different, but the trigger can be the same.

Take, for example, yoga.

On the left, there is a recurring debate about whether practicing yoga in the West is a crass and offensive commercialization of another cultures sacred tradition. Last year, a college famously canceled a yoga class for students with disabilities due to concerns that the practice was taken from a culture that experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy.

The story earned lots of public derision, especially on the right.

But several months later, a similar yoga controversy, this time stoked by conservatives, went viral. Parents of children at a Georgia public elementary school were upset that their kids were being taught yoga and other mindfulness practices, because they believed the lessons promoted a Far East mystical religion. The school apologized.

Recent years have produced similar brouhahas about whether serving sushi, or wearing kimonos, sombreros or hijabs, amounts to oppression, invasion or even just benign appreciation of other cultures traditions and innovations.

Many on the far left seem to prefer a vision of pluralism in which different cultures never borrow from one another, regardless of intentions. In this view, white people who wear braids, buy turquoise jewelry, don saris or sing along with rap lyrics are exhibiting both bad taste and bad faith.

Many on the far right likewise yearn for their own safe space for American values, or at least a specifically Christian-Anglophone version of those values. That means an insular country where everyone says Merry Christmas rather than the inclusive Happy Holidays; no automated phone system ever says para espanol, oprima dos; and non-Western clothing styles are not just discouraged but outlawed. In fact, in the wake of the recent French burkini debate, a YouGov survey found that 4 in 10 Republicans would support a U.S. law banning Muslim-style body-and-face veils.

For centuries, humankind considered the peaceful exchange of ideas, goods and customs a source of progress, a means of (quite literally) spicing up life. Many of the traditions that we today associate with specific ethnicities are themselves borrowed from elsewhere, thanks to centuries of trade. The potato, that staple of Irish cuisine, was originally brought to the Emerald Isle from South America, for example.

Which makes this recent creep of cultural isolationism both concerning and confusing. Perhaps that scare-mongering Trump surrogate could be forgiven for not realizing that, just as potatoes eventually became Irishized, many Americans already regard tacos as fully Americanized. Heres hoping that this bit of confusion and inadvertent comedy slows the impulse to separate the ingredients of the American melting pot into its many parts.
Wisconsin could be the first state in the country to supply a tablet or laptop computer to nearly all high school freshmen if a proposal by Assembly Republicans becomes law, education officials say.

But whether the election-year proposal has a chance of passage is unclear, with lawmakers and state education officials saying they have no idea how the plan would be funded, how the technology would be used, and whether research shows such purchases are effective.

Any kind of support for technology for districts is appreciated, said Jon Bales, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators and a former superintendent of the DeForest School District.

But about 42 percent of school districts in the state already have plans under way to provide students with laptops or tablets, according to a survey conducted by the state Department of Public Instruction. And its unclear how this proposal would affect their programs, Bales said.

DPI officials and Bales said Monday that school district officials are asking such questions as: Would the districts already spending money on computers for all students receive reimbursements? What if districts are asked to offer iPads but they already bought Google Chromebooks?

The gesture is well-meaning  its just not well thought-out yet, said Bales.

Kit Beyer, spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said the proposal is part of the Assembly Republicans overall commitment to fund K-12 education, which would be addressed in the budget.

The specifics of the proposal are still being researched and developed, said Beyer, who noted the agenda released last week is a broad outline of goals for the next session and beyond.

Michael Griffith, school finance strategist at the Education Commission of the States, said Wisconsin would likely be the first state to implement a plan to provide all high school freshmen with a device if the plan is successful. Maine education officials implemented a similar plan for middle school students, he said.

Griffith said other states have considered similar proposals but have usually stepped back because of the cost to implement such a plan and because of opposition to a one-size-fits-all approach to technology.

The proposal to give a device to each high school freshman at public, charter and voucher schools comes at a time when lawmakers and Gov. Scott Walker are faced with the possibility of needing to erase another deficit in the 2017-19 budget. A projection released last year by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau showed a $210 million deficit looming.

Google Chromebooks and Apple iPads are the most popular devices purchased by school districts. Chromebooks cost about $150, while iPads run about $450. But district or state contracts for a large number of devices can significantly lower prices.

Wisconsin has roughly 74,000 high school freshmen. If each student received a device that costs $200, the state would need to spend about $14.8 million under the current proposal.

But Joint Finance Committee co-chairman Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, told WISN-TV on Sunday that the proposed plan could cost about $4 million to $5 million. A spokeswoman from Nygrens office did not respond to a request sent Monday seeking clarification.

While the governor looks forward to seeing more details on the tablet proposal, he will be prioritizing K-12 education funding in the next budget, said Tom Evenson, Walkers spokesman.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said through a spokeswoman that he would like more time to familiarize himself with the Assemblys proposals before taking a position.

Jeff Pertl, senior policy adviser for DPI, said DPI officials have learned few details on the proposal. Pertl said lawmakers emphasized the proposal would not be a mandate, which could mean the funding would be provided as more of an incentive to provide devices to students.

He said the easiest way to fund the plan is through reimbursing school districts for their own purchases.

Pertl also said providing funding to some schools will be complicated because the state is not allowed to provide money directly to private schools, but rather through vouchers that students use to attend the private schools.

Issues related to keeping the devices from being stolen, blocking students from visiting inappropriate websites, protecting private student data, internet access at home and training for teachers all should be considered when implementing a plan, education officials said.

Such plans can create a whole new frontier of liability, said Pertl.

Assembly Republicans also said they would like to provide mobile hotspots for students without internet access at home, or provide wireless internet access on school buses.

The Madison School District in 2014 already committed millions to a five-year plan to provide a laptop or tablet computer to most of its students, including all of its high school students.

Rachel Strauch-Nelson, spokeswoman for the district, said officials there would love flexible state funding to support their plan.

Our technology plan is part of our strategic framework  aimed at raising achievement for all and narrowing gaps. Were making positive progress even in a difficult budget environment brought on by the state, she said. If legislators want to invest in technology, it should be flexible funding to support our thoughtful, long-term approach.

Chris Patritto, superintendent of the Hurley School District in northern Wisconsin, said school officials there have had a program to provide devices to all students for seven years.

He said the most difficult thing about introducing technology to schools is maintaining and upgrading the devices.

Technology is of utmost importance to our kids now, but it is an extremely expensive line item and most schools dont have much if any dollars in that line item, he said. The biggest need we have is a need for funding for the hardware itself and then maintenance. We have firewall contracts, wireless access, internet contracts, etc., all of which is a cost people cannot imagine.

Patritto said a technology upgrade the district plans to make next spring will likely cost the district of more than 600 students about $400,000 to $500,000.

That is a tough cost to prepare for when we are cutting budgets every year, he said. Hopefully, we can get through one more upgrade with the plan we have in place. The future upgrade is going to be extremely tough.
This weeks question was asked by a friend.

QUESTION: What is the worlds oldest shipwreck?

ANSWER: That would be the Bronze Age ship, Ulu Burun, accidently found by a Turkish sponge diver in 1982. The young sponge diver told his captain that he had seen strange metal biscuits with ears lying on the ocean floor. They were in the eastern Mediterranean Sea off the southern coast of Turkey near Kas, working at a depth of 150 feet.

The captain recognized this description as that of a Bronze Age copper ingot. Archaeologists explored the site for 10 years beginning in 1984. Divers made over 22,000 dives. Because of the extreme depth, dive time was limited to 20 minutes each and two dives per day.

The ship was dated to 1300 B.C., and items were found that were representative of the seven civilizations that flourished in the eastern Mediterranean at the time of the reign of Tutankhamun in Egypt and the fall of Troy. The timbers of the 50-foot vessel were fastened together with mortise-and-tenon joints pinned with hardwood pegs, just the way Homer described the construction of the ship of Odysseus. The ship had a single mast, a prow both forward and aft, and one large steering oar off to one side that served as the rudder.

The main cargo was 10 tons of copper ingots, along with tin ingots (which were used with copper to make bronze), a golden chalice and some of the earliest pieces of known glass. Ebony logs from Egypt matched the ebony found in the furniture in King Tuts tomb. Fishing gear, pottery, amber beads, resins, mollusk shells, hippopotamus teeth, tortoise shells, ostrich eggshells, weaponry, tools and jewelry were discovered.

Food stuffs include nuts, figs, olives, grapes, spices and grain. A small wooden book with ivory hinges, probably representing the worlds oldest book, was found. The wooden pages of the book had been spread with a wax, which would be inscribed with a pen or stylus.

A gold scarab (medallion) bearing the royal seal of Queen Nefertiti of Egypt was brought up. It is the only one known in existence. She was the wife of Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled for 17 years.

And those strange biscuits with ears? It refers to the oxhide-shaped ingot, which had four legs or handles for easy lifting and transportation on horseback. The resin was used in incense. The tortoise shells were used as sound boxes in musical instruments, such as the lute. Ostrich eggshells became containers. Hippopotamus teeth were used to create ivory inlays.

The contents of the Ula Burun suggested the cargo was meant for royalty. The sinking may have been a severe blow to important persons in the 14th century B.C. But it was a serendipitous discovery that provided an enormous amount of new information about that ancient era.

An article in National Geographic points out that sponge divers provide the best information about ancient shipwrecks. Far more valuable than the most sophisticated sonar or magnetometers, states shipwreck explorer George Bass.

In a typical summer, 25 boats are working off the coasts of Turkey and Greece looking for sponges. An old shipwreck is a lucky find.

Send questions and comments to: lscheckel@charter.net.

Larry Scheckel is a retired Tomah High School physics teacher.
NAVARRE, Fla./SPARTA  Randy Laguna J. Jerman, 51, of Navarre passed away Tuesday, May 24, 2016, in Federal Way, Wash.

He was born Dec. 24, 1964, in Sparta, to Robert and Pat (White) Jerman. He graduated from Sparta High School and faithfully served his country for 21 years in the U.S. Air Force. He enjoyed woodworking and loved spending time in the Philippines, where he was building schools for the children. His wonderful sense of humor will be greatly missed.

Randy is survived by his brothers. Roger, Peter and Jay Jerman; and his sisters, Judy Nicolet and Joyce Bell. He is further survived by numerous other relatives and friends.

He was preceded in death by his parents; one brother, Jeffery Jerman; an infant sister; and a niece, Letitia Bell.

There will be a Celebration of Life at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 25, at the Southwest Prairie Lutheran Church at rural Viroqua. Pastor Clyde Ewers will be officiating with burial in the church cemetery. Military honors will be provided by the U.S. Air Force Honors Team. We will be celebrating with a potluck dinner following the service. The Thorson Funeral Home of Viroqua, is serving the family locally. Online condolences may be left at www.thorsonfuneralhome.com.
For a second time this year, jurors get a chance to decide if a Colorado businessman helped turn an online fundraiser to build a wall along the U.S. southern border into a cash cow for its creators. Prosecutors say fraud was in the game plan from the start for Timothy Shea and three others, including ex-President Donald Trump's onetime adviser Steve Bannon. But a lawyer for Shea told jurors in closing arguments Thursday that his client did nothing wrong in the online appeal for money that caused thousands of donors to contribute $25 million. A prosecutor insisted that the organizers were thinking about how to line their pockets even before they began collecting money in 2019.
HERSHEY  Village Board Chairman Tom Wolfgang of Hershey is hopeful that a viaducts completion will have positive effects on the town.

Despite some concerns about how the viaduct will affect businesses, Wolfgang said he believes the community is supportive.

The most important aspect is the safety factor, Wolfgang said. Our volunteer fire department is split up on two side of the tracks; some volunteers live on the north side and some on the south side. If a call comes in and there is a train going through or stopped there, it is impossible for the firefighters to get to their equipment in a timely manner.

Wolfgang said no one has a crystal ball to know how the traffic flow will change, but he said he sees a unifying factor in a community that is already tight-knit.

The part that really excites me is not how much it will split the town, but how much it will actually connect the town, Wolfgang said.

But business owners Jared Hellmuth of Hershey Super Foods and Kip Jorgenson of Home Lumber and Supply have some concerns about the future of their businesses when the viaduct opens.

Its not a viaduct, its a bypass, Hellmuth said. Bypasses move traffic away. Maxwell has a bypass, Brady has a bypass. Your communities suffer. I hope Hershey doesnt go in that direction.

Hellmuth said he understands that the viaduct needed to be built and he supported the project. He just isnt sure that the future effects on businesses like his were fully explored in the process.

Home Lumber and Supply is on the north side of the current at-grade crossing. Instead of driving across the tracks to get to the business, Jorgenson said, customers will have to drive to the roundabout and viaduct that will open on the west side of town.

Ive been on this side of main street 45 years, and I think its probably going to have a negative effect on main street, Jorgenson said. I dont see how its not going to have a negative effect.

Wolfgang disagrees. He said he believes residents will support the local businesses.

If anything, it has the potential to increase the business, Wolfgang said. If you are a resident on the north side of the tracks, many times you might want to go to the grocery store or the bank, or take family to Butchs for dinner, even just going to the post office, and many times youd wait for two, three or even four trains to go by. What a great thing when the viaduct is complete and you can go straight over the crossing and come off the exit ramp and it will take you right into town.

With Hersheys set-up, Wolfgang said he believes it will enhance business, especially travelers coming off Interstate 80 looking for gas or food.

What a nice shopping district it will create, Wolfgang said. It will create a downtown mall atmosphere. Instead of having a major link and traffic issues waiting for trains, it will kind of create a shopping area.

Wolfgang and other residents have said they are frustrated with having to wait for trains.

If a train is stopped, the crossing can be closed for up to a half hour, Wolfgang said.

In Sutherland, former village board chairman Tory Copeland said he believes the viaduct has had mostly a negative effect on the businesses there.

From my observations, the traffic coming off Interstate 80 is stopped at the old crossing and turns back to the Interstate instead of going across the overpass, Copeland said. We lost one business, Kildare Lumber, and I was told closing the crossing didnt help to keep the business open.

However, Wolfgang said Hershey is set up differently from Sutherland in that most of the Hershey businesses are located on the south side of the tracks. He said that means traffic off the interstate will be funneled toward the downtown businesses and traffic flow will be better.

When I polled village residents back when I was running for office, the long lines and waiting for trains were the biggest issues facing Hershey residents, and they really wanted to get the viaduct built, Wolfgang said. Did we get everything we wanted? No. But in every situation, as far as the village is concerned, weve done well in negotiating with the Nebraska Department of Roads.

He said concessions were made by both the village and the Department of Roads.

Im really pleased with the construction, Wolfgang said. Im excited about it. Theyve been very professional, and what Ive seen so far I think its been very positive.

Wolfgang concedes there will be changes but encourages residents and business owners to embrace the change.

I would like everybody to go into this new era that we are about to enter with an open mind and some real vision for whats possible for the village of Hershey and look at it the way I do, Wolfgang said. I really think this is going to bring our town even closer together than it already is.
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".
Between the last week of school and Christmas craziness, the past two weeks have been a blur. But I have been working out and diligently ...
News Story not available

This story has been published on: 2022-10-30. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.

This story is no longer available on our site.
PHOENIX -- Leaving your cell phone in an apartment where you have been a guest doesn't give police the right to search it without a warrant, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday.

In a decision with major privacy implications, the justices also said the fact that someone who does not lock his or her cell phone with a code is not an invitation for anyone, including the police, to see what's in it.

"Personal belongings need not be locked for a legitimate expectation of privacy to exist,'' wrote Justice Ann Scott Timmer for the unanimous court. "Cell phones are intrinsically private, the failure to password protect access to them is not an invitation for others to snoop.''

She also rejected the contention by prosecutors that they should be able to use what they found on the phone because officers had a good-faith belief that it actually belonged to the owner of the apartment, who was dead.

Monday's ruling ends efforts by Pima County prosecutors to bring Robin Peoples to trial on charges of necrophilia and rape.

"There is insufficient evidence to prove the crime in court without being able to present the video and the defendant's statement,'' said Kellie Johnson, the chief criminal deputy county attorney.

Court records show Peoples lived next door to his girlfriend who is not named in court filings. They say he frequently spent time in her Tucson apartment.

About three months into the relationship he spent a night there and used his cell phone to film the couple having sex.

The woman's daughter, who lives in the same apartment complex, found her unresponsive in bed the next morning while Peoples was in the bathroom. She called 911 and Peoples ran from the apartment to direct the paramedics, leaving his cell phone behind.

She ultimately was pronounced dead, with a later autopsy report saying she died of health-related issues and the manner of death listed as natural causes. Peoples, meanwhile, went to a friend's apartment.

A Tucson police officer, looking for medical information on the woman, found a "smart'' cell phone in the bathroom. Assuming it belonged to the victim, he turned it on and opened it with a finger swipe to search her contracts.

What he found was a paused video of the woman on her back in bed, mostly naked. When he pressed "play'' he watched part of a video with Peoples having sex with a seemingly unresponsive woman.

When Peoples returned to get his cell phone he was arrested. He subsequently made statements that he had sex with the woman during the early morning hours, filmed it with his phone, and said she "probably'' was dead, though he "thought she was breathing.''

A trial judge refused to let police use either the video or any statements Peoples made to prosecute him on necrophilia and rape charges. The state Court of Appeals reversed, ruling that police did not need a warrant because Peoples did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the woman's apartment or for his cell phone.

Timmer said the appellate judges were wrong on both counts.

She said the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that cell phones occupy a special place in people's lives and deserve special protection -- even when someone has been arrested.

""They essentially serve as their owners' digital alter egos,'' Timmer wrote, calling them "minicomputers that contain a digital record of nearly every aspect of people's lives, from the mundane to the intimate.''

"The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought,'' she said, citing the U.S. Supreme Court.

Timmer also said the fact Peoples did not have his cell phone on him when it was found by police does not change anything. She said the fact remains it still contains "the privacies of life'' which are entitled to Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless searches.

"That privacy is no less worthy of protection when a cell phone is outside a person's immediate control,'' Timmer wrote.

She also specifically noted that while Peoples left his cell phone in the woman's apartment, he had left to direct paramedics. And Timmer pointed out that when he returned a short time later he specifically asked the officer at the door to retrieve the phone.

What all that means, the justice said, is Peoples did not abandon the phone.

Separately, Timmer said that anyone who is an overnight guest in someone's apartment has the same expectation of privacy -- and against warrantless searches -- as the person who lives there. And she specifically rejected arguments by prosecutors that his status as a guest ended when his girlfriend died.
Dozens of progressive activists marched on the Florida Capitol Monday to demand a higher minimum wage. Some Democratic organizers hope the movement will raise flagging enthusiasm among the party's base voters as the November election approaches.

March one of more than two dozen 'Moral Monday' events nationwide

Movement led by Rev. William Barber

Campaign politics appear to unpin event

The march was one of more than two dozen 'Moral Monday' events taking place in state capitals across the country this year. The movement is being spearheaded by Rev. William Barber, the North Carolina NAACP president who delivered a rousing address at the Democratic National Convention in July.



"There's 64 million people in America who make less than $15 an hour," said Clint Cuyler, an Orlando restaurant worker. "When we educate them, when we organize them, when we mobilize them, when we get them registered and we get them eager to vote, we have the power to choose any candidate in any office to do what we want or to represent us."



With polls indicating Hillary Clinton's relative unpopularity compared to President Obama's favorability ratings in 2008 and 2012, some Democratic strategists have suggested focusing less on the candidate at the top of the party's ticket. Instead, they advocate more of a focus on compelling issues - including health care and the minimum wage - as a way of galvanizing turnout in swing states, including Florida.



Indeed, campaign season politics appeared to underpin Monday's march. It was held outside a Capitol controlled by Republicans who have shown little appetite for raising the state's minimum wage or expanding Medicaid.



"I absolutely believe that, if we can allow the free market to work - it's got to be a fair market - but if we do that, costs come down, quality goes up, service goes up," Gov. Rick Scott has said of his governing philosophy.



Which is why, the Moral Monday activists declared, elections matter.



"We need help out here, and ain't nobody trying to help us," Cuyler complained.
Amid the violence in Karnataka over the Cauvery dispute, popular Tamil radio personality RJ Balaji took to social media to exhort people to remember that we are 'all human first'.

On Sunday, 11 September, RJ Balaji posted a message to his Facebook page which asked the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to "remain sensible and refrain from posting things that spread hatred and violence". He also cautioned that "the Kaveri (sic) issue has to be resolved at an administrative level and not by indulging in physical and verbal violence".

While the post went viral over Sunday and Monday, RJ Balaji posted a more extensive message on his timeline on Tuesday, 13 September. This time, she shared a video that he captioned: "More than being a Tamilzhan or Kannadiga, let's be human first!"

"Let's be sensible, sensitive Indians, human beings," Balaji said, reported The Times of India, asking his followers "not (to) lose our sensitivity, and react foolishly to the trouble that someone random person stirs up on the street".

Balaji also reminded his followers of how people from the state of Karnataka had stepped forward to help Tamilians during the Chennai floods.

The situation in Karnataka has been tense since the Supreme Court ordered the state to release 12,000 Cusecs of water from the River Cauvery to neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

RJ Balaji received CNN-News18's Indian of the Year award in 2015.
Ever since it was announced that Dilip Mehta would be making a documentary on the life of Sunny Leone, there's been a lot of curiosity on how the film, titled Mostly Sunny, would turn out.

Mostly Sunny, which features extensive interviews with the actress in which apparently nothing was "off the record", premiered at the ongoing Toronto International Festival. It's been met with somewhat mixed reviews  while most viewers have stated that Sunny's personality really shines through in the documentary and that it brings forward an interesting contrast  the way the actress is treated in her hometown in Canada versus the response to her here in India.

A lot of the news around the film's TIFF premiere has focused on the actress' absence from a lunch that was planned in her honour by the film's makers (she apparently had a family event to attend with husband Daniel Weber).

Coming back to the film, it charts the actress' metamorphosis from Karenjit Kaur Vohra of Sarnia, Ontario, into Sunny Leone, the most Googled porn-star-in-the-world-turned-bonafide-Bollywood-actress.

As The Hindustan Times reports, Mostly Sunny brings a few poignant facts about Leone's life to the fore: Such as being ostracised in her hometown, where no one from her community speaks to her as a result of her work in the adult film industry.

Erotica, she wrote: Sunny Leones latest role is that of a short-story writer

Apparently, even when Sunny revisited Sarnia with the documentary's crew, none of the inhabitants there spoke with her.

Coming back to how the film has been received, Toronto-based Victor Stiff writes, "Despite her off the charts affability, her (Sunny's) story is rarely compelling. The film does get interesting when Mehta takes his crew halfway around the world to India... (where) Leone is more beloved by strangers than her own family back in Sarnia."

His review adds: "Leone has a magnetic presence, the camera loves her. However, those traits dont necessarily equate to a profound documentary subject. Even with the films colourful subject matter, Mostly Sunny comes off as drab."

Another review by Steve Gravestock, commends the director for skilfully "laying out the contradictions and complications that Leone's career has revealed in both Indian and diasporic Indian societies". "The Sunny we see here is a common-sense small-town girl who is deeply devoted to both her family (perhaps the most touching moment in the film comes when she discusses her father) and her work. What emerges from Mostly Sunny is a portrait of a woman whose exposure on the job has not destroyed the loving wife and daughter at home: if she's Sunny to millions, to her family she's still Karen," the review states.

While the film's international release is being planned for later this year, Dilip Mehta has said that the team may try for an earlier screening in India.

Karenjit Kaur Vohra to a household name: Tracing the awesomeness of Sunny Leone
Roald Dahl's books have been adored by children and adults alike all over the world.

Whether you have only seen the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder playing the whimsical chocolatier, or have witnessed Matilda's teleportation powers on the silver screen, but haven't read the books, you can't not know Roald Dahl.

The prolific writer's books have been published in more than 50 languages, and like any classical author, his books are so timeless that they hold your attention as much as they did when they were first published more than half a century ago.

Here's our pick of Roald Dahl's best books for you, on the occasion of his 100th birth anniversary:

The Witches (1983)

An orphaned boy (who is never named) is sent to Norway to live with his grandmother, who warns him to be wary of witches, but when they travel to England together it just so happens that they stumble upon a witch convention there.

The Grand High Witch in England has a clever plan to rid the country of all its children: she will turn them into mice. When our brave protagonist overhears the plot, he knows he must do something to stop them.

This is one of Dahl's funnier and darker books, and Quentin Blake (who illustrated many of Dahl's books) adds punch to the story-line with his powerful illustrations.

Matilda (1988)

Matilda Wormwood is one of Dahl's most enduring heroines and had a profound impact on me (and I suspect several other children) growing up.

A five-year-old child prodigy who loves to read, Matilda has a horrible family and a headmistress who's worse. She soon discovers that she has the power of telekinesis, and is helped by her class teacher, Miss Honey, along the way.

Miss Trunchbull, the evil headmistress, remains an iconic villain for kids who cheered Matilda along when she tried to overthrow her tyrannical reign over the school.

James and the Giant Peach (1961)

A newly orphaned boy whose parents are killed by an escaped rhinoceros lives with Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. The aunts treat him so badly that he escapes to live in a giant peach, and befriends the magical bugs he comes across.

This is one of the most surreal of Roald Dahl's books, so let your imagination run wild with James and his friends Miss Spider, Centipede, Earthworm and Old-Green-Grasshopper.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

One of the oldest and most famous books is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The story follows the whimsical chocolatier Willy Wonka and the five children he invites to see his factory. Each of these children, one of them being the poverty-striken Charlie, represent a deadly sin: Augustus is gluttony; Veruca is greed, Violet pride and Mike sloth. Out of all the kids who go into the factory, only honest Charlie is rewarded because of his natural kindness.

Boy (1984)

Wondering how Roald Dahl cooks up his stories?

You should definitely read Boy. The autobiography tells us stories from his childhood to the time he left school in the 1930s. The tragic yet comedic events will tell you all you need to know about the childhood of one of the most prolific writers of our lifetime  although some experts on Dahl contend you need to take this account with a tiny pinch of salt.
Kolkata: Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt paid a courtesy visit to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the Nabanna state secretariat in neighbouring Howrah district on Monday.

Banerjee exchanged pleasantries and introduced the Munna Bhai MBBS star to her cabinet ministers.

The Trinamool Congress supremo had good relations with Sanjay's star father, the late Sunil Dutt, and had rallied behind Sanjay who was sentenced to five years in jail in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case.

"After what happened to me in the 1993 incident, Didi (elder sister - as Banerjee is affectionately called) was the only one who supported me. After that I always wanted to come to Kolkata and thank Didi. Because no one had supported me back then. Only Shatrughan Sinha and Didi were by my side," Sanjay told reporters here.

Sanjay was handed a five-year sentence by the Supreme Court for illegal weapons possession in a case linked to the 1993 serial blasts that killed 257 people in Mumbai.

"I came to thank her. I said thank you, took her blessings. I told whenever she needs me I will be around. She has invited me for the (Kolkata International) Film Festival on 11 November and I will definitely come," added the actor.

He also lauded the development initiatives taken by Banerjee in the state.

"I heard she is working on reformation of jails. This is good."

Sanjay lavished praised on the chief minister for what she has done to transform the city since his last visit.

"Last time I visited was during (the filming of) Parineeta. This time, while coming from the airport, I was pleasantly surprised by what Didi has done in such a little time."
New York - India's top women bankers, SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, ICICI head Chanda Kochhar and Axis Bank CEO Shikha Sharma, are among the 50 most powerful women based outside the US, according to a list by Fortune which is topped by Banco Santander's boss Ana Botn.

Bhattacharya, 60, is ranked second on the list, while Kochhar comes in on the fifth spot and Sharma on the 19th position in the Fortune's '50 Most Powerful Women International' list, which has ranked the women based outside the US.

Botn, Group Executive Chairman of Banco Santander, Eurozones largest bank by market value, repeats as No. 1, in a time of economic and political volatility for all. The 2016 list spans 19 countries.

"Bhattacharya's profile has risen during her three-year tenure atop India's largest bank," Fortune said. SBI Chairperson Bhattacharya, who was widely speculated to succeed Raghuram Rajan as Governor of the Reserve Bank of

India, has continued her "high-profile battle with the bank's bad loans, while courting overseas partners to invest in the stressed assets.

In May, she also orchestrated SBI's merger with six other groups, a plan that, once complete, will result in one of largest lenders in Asia.

"Though her term leading the bank is set to expire in October, most expect the government will extend her time so she can see the efforts through," Fortune said.

ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO Kochhar, 54, is regarded even by rival bankers as a "visionary", Fortune said.

"After seven years at the helm of India's largest private sector lender, with consolidated assets of $139 billion, she has overhauled the nations consumer retail business.

"Though bad loans took a toll on income growth this year, Kochhar has engaged turnaround experts to help ditch those distressed assets," Fortune said, highlighting her efforts to boost the bank's digital growth and enable female employees to work from home for a year.

Sharma, 57, has grown Axis from an underrepresented bank to the nation's fastest growing private sector lender, with revenue up 15 per cent to $7.9 billion in 2015 and nearly 3000 branches across 1,800 cities and towns, Fortune said.

"First quarter profit this year was hurt by a spike in bad loans, but Sharma deserves accolades for publicising a 'watch list' she created to monitor four per cent of the bank's potentially-troubled assets," it said.

Last week, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi was ranked second and was the only woman of Indian-origin in Fortune's list of the 50 most powerful women in the US, a compilation topped by General Motors CEO Mary Barra.

The international power list also includes Singapore Telecommunications Group CEO Chua Sock Koong on the 4th spot, Walgreens Boots Alliance Co-COO Ornella Barra (10), chairwoman and co-founder of Chinese real estate developer Longfor Wu Yajun (26), CEO and President, GE China, General Electric Rachel Duan (35), Huawei Technologies Chairman Sun Yafang (38), President, International Markets, MasterCard Ann Cairns (44) and Coca-Cola Amatil Group Managing Director Alison Watkins (47).
New Delhi: State-owned Coal India Tuesday reported 14.7 percent fall in consolidated net profit at Rs 3,065.28 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2016, due to decline in sales.

CIL had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 3,596.93 crore in the year-ago period. Consolidated profit includes profit of jointly controlled entities and associates.

Net sales of the company during the quarter declined by 6.1 percent to Rs 17,796.05 crore, the coal major said in a filing to BSE.

Total expenses of the PSU declined to Rs 14,834.20 crore in April-June this year, from Rs 15,320.81 crore in the corresponding quarter of previous fiscal.

Its production during the quarter increased by 3.56 percent to 125.67 million tonnes (MT) compared to 121.35 MT in the same quarter of previous fiscal.

On the standalone basis, the company's net profit for the period plunged to Rs 3.68 crore in April-June against Rs 487.10 crore in the year-ago period.

Its standalone net sales dropped to Rs 22.84 crore in April-June 2016 from Rs 37.22 crore in the corresponding quarter of previous fiscal.

There was no dividend income during the quarter under review as against that of Rs 442.80 crore in the quarter ended on June 2015, the filing said.

Coal India accounts for over 80 percent of domestic coal production. The government has set a production target of 598 million tonnes for CIL for the ongoing fiscal.

The company is looking to double its production to 1 billion tonnes by 2020.
New Delhi: Expecting revival of fortunes at its automotive arm Tata Motors, Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry today said "green shoots of a turnaround" are visible at the country's largest automaker.

While admitting that challenges continue to exist in both parts of the business, particularly in passenger cars, Mistry said in order to address all of the challenges the company has identified eight strategic imperatives.

"We identified eight strategic imperatives and set up over a hundred cross functional teams, comprising executives from various levels in the organisation, but especially designed to ensure we gave an opportunity to our young leaders to shine," Mistry said in an in-house interview on the company's website.

"The strategy has paid dividends. The energy demonstrated by the teams and the results of their efforts have been incredible. Our journey has just begun, but we can already see the green shoots of a turnaround," he added.

For the first quarter ended June 30, Tata Motors had reported 57 per cent decline in consolidated net profit at Rs 2,260.40 crore due to post-Brexit adverse foreign exchange impacting its British arm JLR.

On a standalone basis, the company had reported a net profit of Rs 25.75 crore for the first quarter, down 91.11 per cent from Rs 289.84 crore in the year-ago quarter.

Mistry said that while reviewing the passenger car product plan, it was evident that the company had challenges in aspirational design, platform strategy, and an over-reliance on diesel power trains.

"These contributed to challenges in brand perception and the health of our dealership network. Product and service quality were areas that needed strengthening," he added.

He said that besides these challenges "the strength of Tata Motors lay in its people".

"We worked on multiple fronts to strengthen internal capabilities, and some of this work is beginning to bear fruit," Mistry said.

He added that competitive landscape has changed significantly over the last five years in the automotive field.

"New original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have entered the market with contemporary products developed on lean platforms that are engineered for cost and weight. We have seen the launch of more than 50 new passenger cars," Mistry said.

Similarly, in commercial vehicles strong global competitors have made large investments at a time when the market itself is falling, he added.

"We have a rich pipeline of innovative products that I am confident will redefine Tata Motors in the future," Mistry said.
Hong Kong: India has not really been among the top investment destinations for Hong Kong based companies these last few years for various reasons. But now, when India's status as one of the best investment bets in Asia is indisputable thanks to its robust economic growth, a treacle of fresh investments from Hong Kong could begin flowing in. This means instead of looking increasingly to countries like Singapore, Indian businesses  especially startups and those needing large investments  could also tap Hong Kongs moneybags.

Nicholas Kwan, Director of Research at Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), says India is already the fourth largest trading partner for his country with $24 billion worth of bilateral trade last year, when his country's exports to India grew 8%. At a time when overall Hong Kong exports were down 3%, this kind of growth will force any country to look at the huge potential Indian economy and its steady growth offers.

But not just trade enhancement, Kwan says Hong Kong based investors are showing growing interest in two Asian economies - India and Vietnam. "Hong Kong has a lot of incubators, PEs and Angel Funds. It has the second largest asset management centre in Asia after Japan. Now I see that India and Vietnam are two economies where Hong Kong's investors have growing interest".

Kwan rattled off some recent examples of investments in India-related ventures by Hong Kong based investors:

1. Jaarvis Labs Ltd has launched an India-specific accelerator that invests up to $50,000 (Rs 3.05 million) in start-ups that offer products and services related to Internet of Things (IoT), online-to-offline e-commerce services, mobility and other emerging technology areas.

2. Lion Rock Capital, Hong Kong has invested in Bigbasket.com

3. Vectr Ventures has invested in India-based LafaLafa.

4. Steadview Capital has invested in Flipkart, Ola, Urban Ladder and Saavn.

5. Horizons Ventures, owned by Hong Kong based tycoon Li Ka-Shing, has bought a small stake in Ezetap (mobile payment systems).

That Hong Kong is looking anew at the growth potential of the expanding Indian economy now more carefully than ever is evident from some of this country's recent moves. In February this year, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, C Y Leung, had led a business delegation to India to discuss bilateral trade and iron out sticky issues. This was the first ever visit by the chief executive to India.

Now, Hong Kong based venture capitalists are also taking a close look at the potential of the Indian market. John Levack, Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, says the venture capitalists in Hong Kong will form an India committee this year to recognise growing interest in India among the members, compared to the past.

Levack says now could be a good time for money from Hong Kong to flow into India for several reasons. One, money has now begun to flow into Hong Kong from China and India is a logical place for investment. Two, Hong Kong based tycoons like Li Ka Shing are looking towards India, besides pension funds and asset allocators who are also looking at the Asian Tiger.

"Hong Kong has Canadian Pension Fund (CPP), which may also look to invest in India," Levack says. A careful look at PE and VC investment data shows that Hong Kong based firms with "preference" for India are 35 now against just 19 in 2013. Since there are 180 VC and P firms now, this means every fifth Hong Kong based VC and PE is interested in India against just over 15% such firms which were keen on investing in India in 2013. These 35 VC and PE firms have raised funds to the tune of $33 billion in the last decade.

But the road to heightened investment flows from Hong Kong is not a smooth path. There are many hurdles to this, including the past experience of investors when Hong Kong based funds burned their fingers by investing in Indian ventures, especially in the startup rush of 2007-08. Also, India's fear of anything Chinese - including investments from Hong Kong - makes it rather difficult for Hong Kong based companies to come into India. There are also some doubts about Indias economic growth statistics among VCs in Hong Kong, besides issues such as the pending Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) between the two countries.

Raj Sital, chairman of The Indian Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong, says there are multiple deterrents for Hong Kong companies to invest in India, thanks to India equating Hong Kong with investments coming in from China. But a positive development is that this country is planning to open an Economic & Trade Office in India next year, to enhance bilateral trade between the two countries.

All told, India needs to recognsie the investment potential Hong Kong based companies possess and ease its mind about indirect investments from mainland China flowing in via Hong Kong.

It is interesting to see that India is already competing with Hong Kong and Singapore for attracting foreign capital into Asia. This story shows how India is aspiring to compete with the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong for foreign entrepreneurs by offering residence in return for investment. Foreigners investing Rs 100 million ($1.5 million) over 18 months or Rs 250 million over three years would now be eligible to live in India for 10 years. This so-called permanent residency status could be extended by another decade providing certain conditions are met.

This is a thoughtful move by the NDA government to make investing in India more lucrative for foreigners. It would be even better if India helped investors from Hong Kong too, by getting rid of its China fears.

ends

(The author was in Hong Kong between September 7-10 at the invitation of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council HKTDC).
India has filed a new dispute against the US at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) challenging the domestic content requirements and subsidies allegedly provided by eight American states.

India initiated a case against the US on 9 September by submitting a request for consultation under WTO's dispute settlement system regarding alleged Domestic Content Requirements (DCR) and subsidies provided by eight US states of Washington, California, Montana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware and Minnesota in the renewable energy sector.

India has complained to the WTO that the measures taken by the American government around the DCR are inconsistent with the WTO's Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) agreement and the agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM agreement) because they discriminate against imported products as compared to domestic products, and because the subsidies are contingent on the use of domestic over imported goods.

The consultations give the party 60 days to resolve the dispute without proceeding to litigation, failing which the complainant may request a Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) panel to adjudicate in the matter.

The US had initiated a similar case against Indian localisation rules in February 2013  a case that India lost under a DSB ruling. The US and India had failed to resolve their differences with consultations after which the matter was referred to a DSB panel in April 2014. The WTO panel on 24 February this year ruled that the DCR for solar power developers selling electricity to the government to use India-manufactured cells and modules rather than imported solar technology under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (NSM) is inconsistent with the TRIMs agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Specific articles under these agreements require that a product, whether domestic or international, should not be discriminated against in terms of the rules that apply and its market access.

India had appealed against the decision in April this year and expects the Appellate Body's ruling in the coming days.

This is an important outcome, not just as it applied to this case, but for the message it sends to other countries considering discriminatory 'localisation policies', the US Trade Representative Michael Froman had announced soon after the DSB ruling against India.

India and the US have been clashing quite a bit at the WTO. A major dispute between the two countries concerning certain American agricultural products, including poultry, is ongoing where the US has claimed retaliation of $450 million annually from India for trade losses. The US has stated that it will update this figure annually. In a meeting held on 5 September, the countries disagreed on the procedures on how to resolve this dispute and whether India has complied with the panel ruling. India has lost this case both in the DSB ruling and in its appeal against the DSB findings. The case has turned messy and remains at a logjam.

This is the ninth dispute registered with the WTO this year.

Since the creation of international trade body in 1995, the US has initiated six dispute cases against India while India has initiated nine cases (excluding the present one) against the US. However, there are only two active US-initiated cases against India, including the DCR-solar panel case. Similarly, only two cases of India against the US is active under the dispute settlement system  one, over US non-immigrant temporary working visas and second, a dispute of US' imposition of countervailing duties on import of certain Indian hot-rolled steel flat products.
New Delhi: Aiming to curb tax evasion and avoidance, India has operationalised the Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) with Seychelles, one of the major sources of foreign investment into the country.

The agreement will enable the authorities of both nations to provide assistance through exchange of tax and banking information, which may be used to track fund flow originating from the Indian Ocean nation.

While the foreign direct investments from Seychelles have been small at just about $187.3 million (Rs 1,131 crore) over the last 16 years, the island nation has long been perceived as one of the preferred offshore havens for routing funds.

The TIEA, which was notified on 8 September, 2016, would allow authorities of both countries to seek information held by banks or financial institutions.

Also, information regarding the legal and beneficial ownership of companies and partnerships can be sought.

Information received under the agreement shall be treated as confidential and may be disclosed only to persons or authorities concerned after assessment, collection, enforcement, prosecution or determination of appeals in relation to taxes covered under the agreement.

The agreement also provides for a Mutual Agreement Procedure to resolve any procedural differences.

The Agreement between India and Seychelles for the Exchange of Information with respect to Taxes was signed at New Delhi on 26 August, 2015, between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the visiting Seychelles President James Alix Michel.

TIEA would help curb tax evasion and provides for mutual assistance between the authorities of the two countries on enforcement action against suspected tax evaders.

India has signed similar bilateral agreements for Exchange of Tax Information with Argentina, Bahamas, Bahrain, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Liberia, Macao, Monaco, Liechtenstein, and San Marino.
Raghuram Rajan, former Reserve Bank of India governor, had become the most celebrated central bank official in India and abroad in his three year tenure largely for undertaking bold reforms and also, for openly airing his views on the government's social schemes.

Unlike Rajan who decided to go back to academia in the US to pursue his research on Indian economy post his RBI days, his one-time teacher at IIT Delhi, Dr Alok Sagar, chose a different path altogether after quitting his academic career in 1982. He has since chosen to serve the poor and oppressed in the country. Sagar taught Rajan nearly four decades back in the 1980s.

According to the Financial Express report, Sagar, a resident of Delhi, completed his bachelor studies in electrical engineering from IIT Delhi and later completed his masters from the same elite institution.

After completing his PhD from the Houston University in Texas, United States, he took a teaching post at IIT Delhi. However, he resigned from his post two years later in 1982. Since then, for the past 32 years, Sagar has been working with the tribals in Betul and Hoshangabad districts of Madhya Pradesh.

Working to save the environment, Sagar has planted about 50,000 trees in Betul alone. He is also involved with tribal welfare through Shramik Adivasi Sangathan, the FE report said.

Sagar does not believe in boasting about his degrees and career. He, in fact, said that he doesnt need his degrees to serve people, but only his will power.

It would have been difficult to know of Sagar's credentials, but thanks to Ghodongari assembly elections the people of this country have come to know about this noble soul. When the Betul district administration ordered him to leave the place citing security reasons, Sagar decided to reveal his identity.
What started as a sporadic and an isolated incident, became a raging and a fiery protest by the end of Monday in Bengaluru. The IT-capital witnessed frenzied mobs vandalising public property and business establishment after the Supreme Court on Monday modified its earlier order of releasing 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water per day to Tamil Nadu.

In its latest directive, the apex court asked the Karnataka government to release 12,000 cusecs on a daily basis till 20 September, which technically means that Tamil Nadu will receive more water.

Govt imposes Section 144

There was confusion over the imposition of Section 144 in the state since Monday morning. While news channels quoted the state DCP as saying that the section has been imposed, the Bengaluru police kept reiterating that it has not been imposed on its twitter account while asking people to stop spreading rumours.

Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code is a law against joining unlawful assembly of people armed with deadly weapons.

However, around 5.30 pm on Monday, the Bengaluru Police said that Section 144 has been clamped in Bengaluru as a preventive measure. It will remain in force till 14 September.

As a preventive measure, Section 144CrPC is imposed in Bengaluru City from 1700 hours today. @BlrCityPolice @blrcitytraffic  Abhishek Goyal (@goyal_abhei) September 12, 2016

There is no Sec 144 imposed in #Bengaluru. No need to be panic ! any untoward incidents please report it to DIAL100 immediately ! @CPBlr  BengaluruCityPolice (@BlrCityPolice) September 12, 2016

Protests continue

Protests have been erupting in Karnataka ever since the Supreme Court gave its first directive. On Monday, the protests exacerbated and protesters set vehicles on fire and vandalised public property paralysing normal life in Bengaluru.

New Woodlands Hotel in Chennai, which is regarded as one of the iconic landmarks of the city, was attacked by protesters on Monday morning. The Supreme Court had not issued a directive till then.

On Monday, most schools in Bengaluru were shut earlier than usual. Parents were called and told to take their children home.

Metro services were shut down completely following the protest, Vasant Rao, BMRCL told mediapersons.



Karnataka bank branch in Chennais Anna Nagar was also attacked by protesters. Karnataka also temporarily suspended bus services to Tamil Nadu after pro-Kannada activists set a vehicle on fire in Bengaluru.

Stones were pelted at lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registration number near Hubli Bypass, Karnataka. More than 40 buses were set on fire at KPN bus depot in Bengaluru.

Mob ransacked and created havoc on Bengaluru-Mysuru highway and as many as 200 protesters, who were involved in such dastardly acts, were detained.

A fleet of over 30 buses belonging to a private operator was reportedly set on fire by a mob in a depot today in Bengaluru amid the Cauvery water sharing row.

However, the managing director of Salem headquartered KPN Tours and Travels Limited Rajesh Natarajan claimed that 40 of his buses were set on fire.

"Around 40 of our buses were set on fire," Natarajan told PTI. He said many of his buses were insured.

ANI also reported that one civilian died in firing by police in Bengaluru. Protesters also reportedly pelted stones at Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's residence.

1 civilian dead, 1 injured in firing by police near Hegganahalli area in #Bengaluru #CauveryProtests  ANI (@ANI_news) September 12, 2016

Farmers and pro-Kannada outfit activists have been protesting in various parts of Karnataka since 6 September against the SCs direction. The Cauvery protection committee even called for a bandh in Mandya.

A dawn-to-dusk Karnataka bandh was also called by pro-Kannada outfits. Some political parties also supported the day long shutdown.

The farmers' leader warned the government that it would face a strong agitation if water was released to Tamil Nadu. Unfortunately, the farmers warning materialised as Bengaluru burned over the release of water to Tamil Nadu on Monday.

Journalists attacked

Meanwhile, PTI reported that a woman television journalist and her cameraman were assaulted and punched when violence broke out in Bengaluru. "My colleague, Rohini Swamy, and myself - we both were roughed up and beaten by those protesting against Supreme Court direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu," India Today Cameraman Y Madhu told PTI here.

Rohini and Madhu, who were covering the violence, were attacked by protesters after they objected to the media coverage given to violence and protests staged by pro-Kannada outfits, Madhu said.

"I was punched and later, Rohini also was punched in her stomach, and it was painful - that prompted us to rush her to a nearby hospital," Madhu said.

"As we were shooting the violent incidents near Gopalan Mall at Nagarbhavi, some protesters came up to us and threatened us to stop shooting the violence, and join them in their protests if they were Kannadigas," Madhu said.

"As we shut our camera, a separate group of people came to us and started to rough us up and in the melee they snatched and smashed our camera and mike," Madhu said.

Areas to avoid

As violence raged in the IT Capital, Google put out this map called 'Bangalore Help' to assist commuters. The map clearly marks out areas in Bengaluru which should be avoided and which are high-risk.

Prohibitory orders have also been imposed in Tamil Nady till 14 september.

Paramilitary forces deployed

The Centre rushed ten companies comprising 1,000 personnel of the special anti-riot paramilitary force RAF to Karnataka to tackle the violent situation arising out of the raging Cauvery water sharing dispute.

Officials said the personnel have been sent to the violence-prone areas of Karnataka and if need arises, some of the contingents will also be deployed in Tamil Nadu.

These additional contingents will assist the state police even as three such RAF units and an all-women CRPF company have already been deployed in Karnataka in view of the violent protests.

They said 5-10 more companies of BSF and Indo-Tibetan Border Police are also on standby and can be sent in if the any of the two state governments require. One company comprises 100 personnel.

How did both the governments react

Siddaramaiah wrote a letter to his Tamil Nadu counterpart J Jayalalithaa, asking her to cooperate in maintaining peace and calm in both the states in the wake of the recent attacks on state vehicles and a hotel, which is run by a native of Karnataka, in Tamil Nadu.

Letter written to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu pic.twitter.com/GMSM0A437U  CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) September 12, 2016

He earlier also asked Jayalalithaa to provide protection to Kannadigas in her state. Jayalalithaa responded by requesting safety and security of Tamilians in Karnataka. expressing her concern, she said "hotels and properties belonging to Tamils in Karnataka are being attacked and damaged. She also wrote that despite very provocative incidents that are taking place in Karnataka, absolute restraint was observed in Tamil Nadu.

TN CM Jayalalithaa writes to K'taka CM Siddaramaiah,requesting to ensure safety&security of Tamilians residing in Karnataka #CauveryProtests  ANI (@ANI_news) September 12, 2016

Meanwhile, Times Now reported that Siddaramaiah has already spoken to Jayalalithaa. However, no details are available on that as of yet.

Siddaramaiah also appealed to the Centre and PM Modi to intervene. There were reports that Centre is likely to mediate between the states to help resolve the matter. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Siddaramaiah and was apprised of the situation. He has assured Centre's full assistance to both the states.

HM Rajnath Singh assured of full Centre's assistance to K'taka CM Siddaramaiah & TN CM Jayalalithaa to deal with situation #CauveryProtests  ANI (@ANI_news) September 12, 2016

While speaking to Times Now, Siddaramaiah said that he has also requested for additional forces.

CR Saraswathi of AIADMK, however, said that All Kannada people in Tamil Nadu are living safely and there's no issue at all.

All Kannada people in Tamil Nadu are living safely; there's no issue at all: CR Saraswathi, AIADMK #CauveryIssue pic.twitter.com/CejM3ltKIa  ANI (@ANI_news) September 12, 2016

Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara said police forces had been deployed in areas where Tamils live in large numbers in Bengaluru and elsewhere in Karnataka. "We have taken precautions." He appealed to people of both states not to resort to violence.

He also appealed to the protesters to protest peacefully. We know that injustice has been done to Karnataka, he said.

The Karnataka CM has also convened an emergency cabinet meet to discuss the Cauvery issue and the violent protests because of the same 11.30 am on Tuesday. Supervisory Committee, headed by Union Water Resources Secretary Shashi Shekhar decided that the Central Water Commission will draw up a new protocol of online collection of data. However, IANS reported that no agreement was reached between the two st

The meeting on Cauvery specifically has, however been postponed for 19 September.

Protests in Tamil Nadu

Protests by fringe Tamil outfits erupted in parts of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on Monday with some commercial and government establishments of Karnataka coming under attack.

Outfits such as Naam Tamizhar Katchi and Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi hit the streets protesting the ongoing agitations in Karnataka opposing release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, police said. A popular restaurant in Chennai and tourist vehicles bearing Karnataka registration in Rameswaram were vandalised while protesters created a ruckus at a Karnataka Bank branch in neighbouring Union Territory of Puducherry.

At Vellore in Tamil Nadu, students of Government Law College boycotted classes over the issue. For the eight consecutive day, buses to Mysuru, Chamrajnagar and other places in Karnataka from Erode, Tirupur and Coimbatore in western Tamil Nadu were not operated.

Reactions poured in

The violence in Bengaluru took everyone by shock. Managing director of Biocon and a resident of Bengaluru Kiran Mazumdar Shaw dubbed the violence as rabidly parochial.

Rather than sharing unverified facts or sensationalising the issue, people on social media offered support in helping out fellow residents.

Don't be Kannadiga Don't be Tamizhan Be an Indian and help others Spread Love#CauveryIssue  Bobgally (@Krishnan_Masi) September 12, 2016

The natural resources of the nation belong to every citizen irrespective of any boundary.Please maintain peace and respect law #CauveryIssue  Madhur Bhandarkar (@imbhandarkar) September 12, 2016

Many people even shared their personal accounts of cooperation among citizens amid the protests.

A Kannadian safely dropped a Tamilian(me) in his home at Bangalore during the tense situation. Hope this kind of #love spreads #CauveryIssue  Ramanathan (@smile_rams) September 12, 2016

With inputs from agencies.
After witnessing raging protests and large-scale damage to property on Monday, an uneasy calm prevailed on Tuesday in Bengaluru even as protests resumed at Mandya and Mysuru in southern Karnataka over releasing of more Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu. In the wake of massive loss of property in Bengaluru and increasingly deteriorating law and order situation, the Karnataka government, on Tuesday, demanded additional forces from the Centre to tackle the situation on the ground.

On Monday, one person was killed and another injured in police firing in Bengaluru after violence erupted there and other parts of Karnataka following Supreme Court's modified order on sharing Cauvery water by the two riparian states.

Meanwhile, tempers were running high in Tamil Nadu as well, as sporadic incidents of anti-Kannada protests were reported from Chennai, Coimbatore and other parts of the state.

The apex court, modifying its 5 September order, had asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu till 20 September.

Karnataka limps back to normalcy amid curfew, sporadic protests

In Bengaluru, under prohibitory orders till Wednesday and where 16 localities still remain under curfew, there were palpable signs of normalcy returning, as city police assisted by Central forces kept a close vigil. A bus that was half burnt yesterday was torched once again today near New Timber layout and another vehicle was also set on fire near Tigalarapalya here. Both had Tamil Nadu registration number plates.

Sporadic protests were reported from various parts of the state like Mandya, Chitradurga, Ramanagara and Mysuru. In Chitradurga, a lorry with Tamil Nadu registration number was burnt, while in Ramanagara protesters held demonstrations in front of a farmhouse reportedly belonging to a daughter of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. Shooting of a Tamil film was stopped by protesters at Jaganmohan palace in Mysuru, police said.

Curfew was relaxed since morning for Muslims to offer Eid prayers at mosques and Idgah maidan in 16 sensitive localities where it was imposed on Monday night. Though schools, colleges, government and private offices and banks remained closed for Eid, several IT firms and back offices, which were working, advised their techies to work from homes in view of the simmering tension across the city.

Shops, markets, malls, hotels, restaurants, cinema theatres and commercial establishments observed an undeclared shutdown across the city due to fear of being attacked by protesters and anti-social elements.

Offices of IT giants TCS, Infosys and Wipro as also e-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon remained closed in the city on Tuesday. Many employees were asked to work from home as the companies invoked business continuity plans to ensure there is no disruption to critical projects.

Buses, taxis and auto-rickshaws were off the roads, while metro rail service remained suspended till evening. Vehicular traffic on the 150 km-long Bengaluru-Mysuru highway was affected as hundreds of angry protesters, including farmers, traders and youths, staged demonstrations at Ramanagaram, Kengeri, Mandya and Srirangapatna against the Supreme Court's order to release more water to Tamil Nadu for farming when Karnataka has water only for drinking purpose in the region.

Additional forces deployed in Karnataka

An additional 700 riot control police personnel have been rushed to Karnataka to tackle the situation arising out of the protests over Cauvery river water sharing. The Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel have been sent to the violence-prone areas of Karnataka to assist the local administration to ensure peace, official sources said. With this, a total of 1,700 paramilitary personnel have been deployed in violence-hit areas of Karnataka for maintaining law and order.

Earlier in the day, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramiah said that in view of the three festivals being celebrated in the state, additional police forces have been deployed in the sensitive areas. He also said that the state government had sought additional 10 companies of RAF from the Central government.

In a video message through television channels, Siddaramaiah appealed to the people to remain calm as the state was facing hardship due to distress situation following deficit rains in the Cauvery basin this year. He also warned that miscreants will be dealt with strictly. "We have decided that we will impose law and order with an iron hand so that there is no harm to the citizenry or to property," he said in his televised message.

The Chief Minister reassured the citizens that the government is committed to ensure their safety and promised that peace will be restored at the earliest. Siddaramaiah singled out Tamil speakers in reassuring them that the government is fully committed to protect them. "There will be no loss of property and no harm will come to you," he said.

Meanwhile, over 350 people have been arrested so far in Bengaluru, based on video evidence provided by media and police. The Karnataka Home Minister said that any efforts to vandalise property or disrupt law and order situation will be severely dealt with. He also said that kin of Umesh, who died in police firing on Monday, will be granted a financial assistance of Rs 10 lakh from state coffers, while reiterating that the firing was unavoidable. The mob had reportedly, tried to set a police jeep on fire on Monday, after which police had opened fire and shelled tear gas shells to control the protests.

Tough decision but we will comply, says Karnataka CM

After an emergency cabinet meeting to decide how to implement the apex court direction and deal with the violence over release of water, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said, Monday's court order was the "most difficult" to follow, but it could not be disobeyed or rejected as it would be against the Constitution. He said the cabinet had a detailed discussion and after weighing the pros and cons "constitutionally, legally and politically" and keeping in mind the main Special Leave Petition challenging the Cauvery tribunal's final award coming up on 18 October, it was decided to obey the court's order. He said the first order passed on 5 September itself was difficult and yesterday's was "most difficult" to follow. "But we have accepted the federal set up and that the legislature, executive and judiciary should function in way complementary to one another," he said.

Siddaramaiah to meet Prime Minister on Wednesday

The Karnataka CM said, "I had written to the Prime Minister, seeking his intervention. Today (on Tuesday) our Chief Secretary contacted the Prime Minister's Office seeking his appointment immediately. Most probably, we will get it for tomorrow (Wednesday)."

"I will be meeting him seeking his intervention, because law and order in this will have a bearing not only on Karnataka, but also Tamil Nadu because of movement of people. I will request him to call Chief Ministers of both the states to decide on this issue," he said.

Outlining key problems, complicating the issue, Siddarmiah also said that in the absence of a national water policy, it has become increasingly difficult to solve such issues. "Im going to raise this with the PM," he told reporters.

Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister had expressed pain over the developments in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and appealed for peace while underlining that violence cannot provide solution to any problem. He asserted that the dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit and "breaking the law is not a viable alternative". On Monday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh called up chief ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and assured them all Central assistance in handling the law and order situation in the two states which have been hit by violence over Cauvery dispute.

Protests continue in Tamil Nadu as well

Fringe outfits like Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK) continued to hold agitations outside Kannada establishments and businesses in several parts of the state but no major account of violence or injury were reported.

In Chennai, unidentified men pelted stones at an ATM of Karnataka Bank, damaging the glass panes, police said. Activists of NMK held protests outside hotels owned by natives of Karnataka in different places in Chennai and around 12 people were arrested when they tried to enter the premises at Mylapore.

At Coimbatore, at least 30 NMK activists, led by its district secretary Wahab, raised slogans against Karnataka and went to Karnataka Association hall in Tatabad, police said. However, they were stopped near the Association building and arrested.

Similarly at Neyveli, police foiled protestors' bid to burn an effigy of Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramiah and detained activists of the Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi.

Trade bodies urge end to violence as business remains disrupted in Karnataka

A traders' body announced holding of a day-long bandh on 16 September against attacks on commercial establishments in Karnataka in the wake of the ongoing Cauvery crisis. AM Vikramaraja, president, Tamil Nadu Vanigar Sangankalin Peramaippu (Federation of Tamil Nadu Traders' Association) claimed that Tamil traders, lorry and bus operators had incurred Rs 2,000 crore loss in the protest by Kannada groups, targeting commercial establishments,besides torching vehicles.

Commercial establishments owing allegiance to the Federation would down shutters on Friday, he said while appealing for the support of other trade bodies also.

Moreover, Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Tamil Nadu urged Prime Minister Modi to intervene and hold talks with both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for an amicable settlement. "The violence including burning and damaging of more than 50 buses and many other vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu registration and also torching of properties belonging to Tamilians is deplorable," chamber president Vanitha Mohan said in a statement.

Cauvery dispute causes Rs 25,000 crore loss to Karnataka

Karnataka is estimated to have suffered a loss of around Rs 22,000-25,000 crore with the wide-spread agitation hitting transport services and businesses, according to Assocham. The industry body further said that violence in the state capital and other parts of Karnataka has "severely dented" the image of Bengaluru as the Silicon Valley of India, which is home to many of the Fortune 500 companies, making a fervent appeal for peace in both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

According to Assocham, widespread loss would accrue to IT and ITeS facilities due to poor attendance for the last few days and the inter-state tourism particularly involving pilgrims and domestic travellers has been affected. Cancellation of air tickets have also been reported to and from Bengaluru, it said.

Likewise, industrial production, movement of cargo and retail trade including malls, cinema halls and restaurants have been halted. "All these losses would run between Rs 22,000 crore and Rs 15,000 crore, besides of course immense damage to the goodwill of the state as an attractive investment destination," the chamber said.

With inputs from agencies
New Delhi: An additional 700 riot control police personnel have been rushed to Karnataka to tackle the

situation arising out of the protests over Cauvery river water sharing.

The Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel have been sent to the violence-prone areas of Karnataka to assist the local administration to ensure peace, official sources said.

With this, a total of 1,700 paramilitary personnel have been deployed in violence-hit areas of Karnataka for maintaining law and order.

An uneasy calm prevailed in Bengaluru on Tuesday after outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery river water with Tamil Nadu, as Karnataka's Siddaramaiah government warned of "stringent" action against vandalism or attempts to disturb peace.

On Monday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh called up chief ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and assured them all central assistance in handling the law and order situation in the two states which have been hit by violence over Cauvery dispute.
Bengaluru: An uneasy calm prevailed in the city on Tuesday morning after the outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery River water with Tamil Nadu, as the Siddaramaiah government warned to take "stringent" action against vandalism or attempts to disturb peace.

As the city police bolstered by central forces kept a tight vigil, particularly in areas inhabited by Tamils and other "sensitive" localities, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah made a fresh appeal for peace.

In a video message to the people of the state, Siddaramaiah warned to take stringent action against any act of vandalism or disturbance to peace.

"There is pain among Kannadigas that Karnataka has been facing repeated injustice over the Cauvery river water sharing issue. We are emotional on the issue of land, water and language, but we should not forget that humanity and human relationships are above all this," he said.

Holding that attack on Kannadigas and their properties in Tamil Nadu is "condemnable", he said, "At this time of difficulty we should not allow anger to take over."

"People of both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu should cooperate in maintaining law and order in both states. I would also take strict action against any one indulging in any kind of vandalism or disturbing peace," he said.

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in the country's IT capital on Monday after sudden eruption of widespread violence, escalating tensions between the two states, now locked in a bitter tussle over release of Cauvery water.

As the orgy of violence targeting Tamil Nadu buses and lorries and other vehicles brought the city on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late last night and the entire city is under prohibitory orders till 14 September.

Elaborate security arrangements are in place with 15,000 policemen being deployed, besides Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve Police, Rapid Action Force, Quick Reaction Teams, special forces, Central Industrial Security Force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force.

In view of the tense situation, the Centre has also rushed 10 companies (about 1,000 personnel) of the special anti-riot paramilitary force RAF to Karnataka after the Chief Minister spoke to Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The city that saw widespread violence, appeared to be limping back to normalcy, with no fresh incidents of violence being reported since last night.

Maintaining that the situation is peaceful, police said stringent action would be taken against miscreants or vandals.

The bustling IT city was bereft of its monstrous traffic. There were very few vehicles moving on city roads, with schools and colleges also government offices remaining shut on

account of Bakrid on Tuesday.

State-run transport services remained skeletal with very few buses plying on roads in select areas.

Officials said "transport services to Tamil Nadu remain suspended."

According to Metro Rail authorities, its services will remain temporarily suspended.

Prohibitory orders were relaxed in Idgah ground areas to facilitate Muslim community to offer Bakrid prayers.

Sporadic protests were reported in Mandya, the nucleus of the Cauvery agitation, where protesters burnt Tamil newspapers.

Meanwhile, Siddaramaiah held a meeting with senior Congress leaders from the state. The state cabinet is also holding an emergency cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Water Resource Minister M B Patil said "the cabinet will discuss this and decide on what has to be done next."

The Supreme Court, modifying its 5 September order, had asked Karnataka, on Monday, to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

In its 5 September order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighboring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on 9 September.
Bhubaneswar: As communal tension prevailed in three towns of Odisha during immersion processions of Lord Ganesha and another deity, the administration imposed section 144 of the CrPC in these areas.

Section 144 has been clamped in Rourkela in Sundargarh district, Soro in Balasore district and Patamundai in Kendrapada district following communal tension between two groups, police said on Tuesday.

Adequate security personnel have been deployed keeping in view the festival of Eid-al-Adha, said a senior police official.

Director General of Police (DGP) KB Singh said adequate force has been deployed to maintain communal harmony in these areas.

He said police will take tough action against the miscreants who indulged in hooliganism.

Section 144 was imposed in Rourkela late Monday night after some miscreants hurled bricks at an idol of Lord Ganesha when the immersion procession reached minority-dominated Nala Road.

Stones were pelted by the members of the two communities at each other and police had to resort to a mild lathi-charge to bring the situation under control.

Following the incident, a group torched a car and damaged two scooters.

Similarly, curfew has been imposed in Soro town of Balasore following incidents of communal violence since the last three days.

Balasore SP Niti Sekhar said even though prohibitory orders under section 144 were lifted for several hours in view of Eid, they would be in force till Wednesday morning.

Two communities indulged in brick-batting during the immersion procession of Lord Ganesh on 9 August.

In Pattamundai town of Kendrapara district, curfew has been clamped after members of the minority community opposed the use of loudspeakers and beating of drums in front of a mosque during an immersion procession of Ma Khudurukuni, a local deity.

"The situation is under control. We have deployed adequate security personnel to restore peace in the area," said Kendrapara SP Nitinjit Singh.
Three days before Eid-al-Adha, Parvaiz Ahmad Sofi, a professor and his wife, Salma, a medical doctor, would begin preparations for Eid well before a week. The couple would go on a shopping spree for the kids and home. Salma would also select new drapings and upholstery for the home, while Pervaiz would buy essentials and baked goods from the market nearby from the main town of Baramulla in north Kashmir.

But two unprecedented civilian killings and two-months of siege have killed all desires. This time, Parvaiz said, even the children are least excited about the festival. That is generally true of most Kashmir.

My seven-year-old girl peeps out of window, looks at the concertina wires spread across the road, which connects Kanli Bagh with main town Baramulla, and says please dont go outside the army will beat you baba, Sofi, a professor in Sher-E-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, tells Firstpost.

Every year we used to cook at least nine different type of meet and invite friend and family over the meal on the second day of Eid. Chocolate cakes, different types of bakery and Swinya is favorite with children. But not this Eid, Salma, Sofi's wife told Firstpost.

Sofis two children have spent the last two months inside the four walls of their house, and even their parents talking about Eid couldn't evoke the festive spirit in them. We wont buy toys on Eid, there is curfew outside, Reyan, Sofis elder son, says.

For the first time in 26 years of the conflict in the valley separatists have called for protests and a hartal during the three-day Eid festival that begins on Tuesday, with authorities mulling to impose section 144 amid fears of wide spread protests. This has further dampened the festive atmosphere across the valley.

In Sonwar locality of Srinagar, Qurat Hameed, a lecturer in a local college, sits with her three children inside a semi-dark room, as the soldiers outside guard the streets with bamboo sticks and automatic rifles slinging their shoulders.

Eid means happiness but where is that happiness now? Qurat asks, how can we celebrate Eid when eighty people have been killed, mothers are applying henna on the bare hands of their unmarred dead sons and women are being forced to become pallbearers, Qurat, a postgraduate in Economics from Delhi University, told Firstpost.

My children are used to new clothes, toys and pastries on this day but I had to tell them that on this Eid, we wont be having anything of that sort. It is strange, even they dont seem affected by not having these things, she adds.

Qurat says that it is suffocating to even think that you would celebrate the festival and there would be thousands of others who have not worked for two months and their children would have no new clothes to wear and nothing to eat.

Separatists have asked people to march to the United Nations Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan, on Tuesday few meters away from Qurats house. The state government is also likely to shut mobile phone services and switch off broadband Internet connections.

People in Kashmir valley, like other places, prefer to offer Eid prayers at Idgahs or big mosques where tens of thousands of people turn up. These huge gatherings could turn into mass protests, like the 2010 unrest when thousands of people marched towards Lal Chowk and set ablaze two government buildings.

At least people in other towns can come out of their houses but we wont be that lucky, Abdul Rashid Gilkar, a resident of KP Road in Anantnag, said.

Gilkar said that nothing mirrors the festive atmosphere which used to be prevalent days before Eid and with situation turning from bad to worse in south Kashmir, there is every possibility that people might not even be allowed to venture out of their houses on Eid.

Every year we would used to perform qurbani  sacrificing an animal, mostly sheep on this day. The thought came to mind many times but I decided against it. Even if we perform qurbani one has to distribute the meat among neighbours and relatives, who will do it during a curfew? Gilkar, asked.
Jammu: After three days, army and police on Tuesday declared that an encounter in Mini Secretariat in Poonch was over with the killing of four terrorists.

Personnel of army and police stormed the under-construction complex this evening and eliminated the last of the four terrorists, a police officer said.

"The encounter has ended, said Inspector General of Police (IGP) Jammu Zone Danish Rana.

The encounter began at around 7.30 AM on Sunday when the terrorists fired at a police party killing one cop. The

terrorists then took shelter in a house, where an elderly couple lived, and the under-construction Mini Secretariat.

Security forces had safely evacuated the couple.

One militant was killed on Sunday, two were killed on Monday and the remaining one was eliminated today, a police

officer said.

Earlier, the police had said that three terrorists had been killed on Sunday and one Monday.

DGP Rajendera Kumar had said, "There might be a group of four to six involved in this incident.. We have recovered bodies of two militants. Two more militants have been killed. We feel one or two militants are still alive."

Explaining the confusion, DIG Johny Williams said there was a perception that three militants had been killed on

Sunday. "But one militant had survived and was firing. He was gunned down today," he said.

Asked whether the slain militants were Pakistanis, SSP JS Johar said it was a matter of investigation.

He said four AK rifles and a large quantity of ammunition was recovered from them.

The terrorists had taken position inside the building which has two floors and several rooms and the terrorists were taking benefit of it by firing from different areas, an army officer said.

He said mortars had to be used to eliminate the holed up militants.

Two security personnel were injured Tuesday evening when they launched an assault on the building to eliminate the

holed up terrorists.

The DGP had said militants had come with full preparation to disturb peace in the border district as there is calm and communal harmony in the area.

"Militants infiltrating a day before Eid is clearly pointing towards the fact they had come here to disturb peace

on Eid," Kumar said.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday expressed pain over the developments in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the Cauvery water dispute and appealed for peace while underlining that violence cannot provide solution to any problem.

I am personally pained at the developments: PM @narendramodi  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

He asserted that the dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit and "breaking the law is not a viable alternative". "Situation that has emerged in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of issue of distribution of waters of Cauvery river, is distressful. I am personally pained at the developments," he said in a statement.

This dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit. Breaking the law is not a viable alternative: PM @narendramodi  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

Situation that has emerged in Karnataka & Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of issue of distribution of waters of Cauvery River, is distressful: PM  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

"Violence cannot provide a solution to any problem. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint and mutual dialogue," he said.

This dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit. Breaking the law is not a viable alternative: PM @narendramodi  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

The Prime Minister appealed to the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to display sensitivity. "I appeal to the people of the two states, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities," he said.

I appeal to the people of the two States, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities: PM @narendramodi  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

The Prime Minister reposed faith in the people that they will keep "national interest" and "nation building above all else and give priority to restraint, harmony, and finding a solution, eschewing violence, destruction and arson."

I trust you will keep national interest and nation building above all else (1/1)  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

and give priority to restraint, harmony, and finding a solution, eschewing violence, destruction and arson: PM @narendramodi (2/2)  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Karnataka on Monday as the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu turned violent, escalating tensions between the two states.

As Bengaluru witnessed widespread violence bringing it on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late last night Modi said the violence and arson seen in the last two days is "only causing loss to the poor, and to our nation's property.

"Whenever the country has faced adverse circumstances, the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, just like people across the country have always handled the situation with sensitivity," he noted.

The Supreme Court, modifying its 5 September order, had on Monday asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

The apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighbouring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on 9 September.
Surat: On Monday, three policemen were suspended for their alleged inaction in preventing the suspected hooch tragedy at Vareli village, where the toll rose to 16 with the death of one more person.

In a related development, the Gujarat government asked the ATS to find out the source of methanol, a highly toxic substance which is said to be responsible for the tragedy.

Surat Range IG N N Komar suspended Inspector Hasmukh Bharwad, Assistant Sub-Inspector Anil Tulsiram and Head Constable Jayatibhai Vazir, all attached to Kadodara police station, for dereliction of duty.

"I have suspended these policemen for not doing their duty properly. Since the last one week, our teams have conducted raids at more than 25 places in that area," he said.

The government has not officially termed the incident as a hooch tragedy and referred to it as "unnatural deaths".

In-charge District Collector K Rajesh said one more person from Vareli died at Surat Civil Hospital.

"We have learned that one more person of that village, who was admitted to the civil hospital four days back, died today. With this death, the toll has reached 16," Rajesh said.

According to Komar, the post-mortem reports of all deceased are "inconclusive", though they suggested presence of methyl alcohol in their bodies.

"Postmortem reports suggested presence of methyl alcohol in the bodies. Since it is not enough to establish cause of the death, we have sought viscera reports from the forensic science laboratory," the senior police officer said.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani held a video conference with senior police officials on the issue and announced to hand over the probe related to the use of methanol to Anti-Terrorism Squad, an official release said.

Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol, is used in making country-made liquor.

The Superintendent of Police of ATS has been asked to find out the source of methanol and people responsible for the illegal distribution of the chemical in and around Vareli, the release said.

`During the conference, Rupani instructed officials, right from Additional DGPs to District SPs, to strictly implement the prohibition law in Gujarat.

On Saturday, the government formed a three-member probe committee, headed by ADGP (Police Reforms) V M Pargi, and asked it to submit a report within three days.

Meanwhile, Opposition Congress stepped up attack on the BJP government over the issue and called for Vareli bandh today. Congress leader and ex-Union Minister Tushar Chaudhary staged a dharna in Vareli and demanded a free and fair probe.

"There is no meaning of setting up committees. Reports of many such committees have been put in cold storage in the past. We want decisive action," he said.

OBC leader Alpesh Thakor, spearheading a movement against illegal liquor trade in Gujarat since the last few months, visited the village and demanded a High Court-monitored inquiry.

"We don't have faith in this committee. We want an inquiry under the supervision of High Court. The government must curb this menace by bringing a strict law. If it fails to do so, thousands will gherao the state Assembly in Gandhinagar on 6 November," he said.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader Shankersinh Vaghela demanded harsh punishment for policemen found guilty of dereliction of duty in such cases.

"Though the administration knew everything about this liquor trade, no action was taken. Hooch is being sold at every corner of Gujarat and bootleggers are given protection. The government must book police officials, under whose jurisdiction such crime happens, on the charge of murder," demanded the Leader of Opposition in Assembly.
Patna: With fissures surfacing within the grand secular alliance following the sparring between RJD and JD(U), the third coalition partner Congress on Tuesday strongly stood behind Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and told RJD that if they are not comfortable in the coalition, they could walk out.

"If you feel you are not comfortable in the alliance, you are free to walk out," state Congress chief and Bihar minister Ashok Choudhary said while reacting sharply to the snide comments on Nitish some RJD leaders.

"You say there is rock solid unity in the coalition and yet your leaders pass snide comments on the mukhiya (chief) of the coalition government," he said.

The Congress' strong reaction came in the wake of the controversy triggered by RJD vice-president Raghubansh Prasad Singh's barb against Nitish Kumar while backing party leader Mohammad Shahabuddin's utterances on him that he was a "circumstantial CM."

Trashing the comments of RJD leaders, Choudhary also did not appreciate the press conference held by two senior JD(U) ministers on Monday to ring a warning bell for RJD.

"We also do not appreciate the press conference held by JD(U) (to denounce RJD leaders' remarks on the CM and ask Lalu Prasad to rein in errant leaders)... such things create confusion among grass root workers of the coalition," he said.

"The three parties made him (Nitish) chief minister and it does not look good that any of our leaders humiliate the CM," Choudhary said.

"The three secular parties JD(U), RJD and Congress had come together in Bihar as part of a strategy to keep the BJP out of power. If you think now that things are not going as per anyone's wish, anybody is free to leave the grouping," he said.

With RJD'S 80 MLAs, JD(U)'s 71 and Congress' 27 MLAs, the trio is in a coalition in Bihar. Congress has four ministers in the Nitish Kumar Cabinet.

Choudhary said he has apprised the party high command with the latest political situation in Bihar.

On Shahabuddin's comments after walking out of Bhagalpur jail that Lalu Prasad was his leader and not Nitish Kumar, Choudhary saw nothing wrong in it.

"Lalu Prasad is the leader of RJD, Nitish Kumar is of the JD(U) like Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi is for the Congress," he said.
Who rules National Capital Territory of Delhi any way? Who has the responsibility to keep the city clean and ensure that people don't die due to lack of basic hygiene? Even if one leaves aside the long held aspiration of developing Delhi into a world class city, people here have a reason to ask their rulers basic questions relating to their living conditions.

Delhi has a popularly elected government with Arvind Kejriwal as chief minister and six cabinet Ministers. Until few days ago it also had 21 MLAs acting as parliamentary secretaries to assist the ministers in their official work.

But as of today where Delhi is reeling under severe health crisis, only one minister, Kapil Mishra who heads tourism, art, culture, languages, Gurudrawa elections and water is present in Delhi. One minister Sandeep Kumar was recently sacked after a sex CD relating to him had surfaced. All other ministers are out of Delhi. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is in Bengaluru, Manish Sisodia is in Finland, Imran Hussain too is abroad for Haj, Satyendra Jain was in Goa (who just reached Delhi late afternoon), Gopal Rai is in Chhattisgarh. Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, whom the high court on a petition filed by the ruling AAP, clarified to be administrative head of the city state too is touring abroad, the USA.

The situation for ordinary citizens couldn't be more bizarre. More so, when the world know that during this period of year parts of Delhi get waterlogged followed by the attack of dreaded mosquito born diseases  dengue and chikungunya. Pathetic scenes of hundreds of dengue and chikungunya patients flooding Delhi hospitals and news of so many people dying is reported year after year.

But those who have been tasked by the people and taken oath under Constitution to assume office (elected as Chief Minister or nominated as L-G) to make it a better place to live and work aren't really bothered about it. Their heart doesn't seem to bleed on issues of popular concern. Instead, their heart gets pumped up with oxygen and fresh blood only to fight for power, to be called 'I am the boss, my word should be the law'.

Surely, when they all were planning the tour, they knew that at this point in time, Delhi would be headless, neither the king would be here nor the courtiers. But who cares, when they are busy playing a childhood game passing the buck. A relentless and endless blame game continues and one can pass the responsibility without blinking an eye through Twitter sitting anywhere in the country or outside of it, or even when one is supposed to be in a hospital.

When media reported about three chikungunya deaths with reports of Delhi Chief Minister and Health Minister away from the city, kejriwal used Twitter to make a most insensitive comment to pass the blame on L-G.

https://twitter.com/ArvindKejriwal/status/775497017837707264

Kejriwal had preferred to be on election campaign in Punjab to salvage his party's prospects there even when he had called a special one-day session of Delhi Assembly to discuss urgent pending business. The task to lead the treasury benches of ruling AAP was left to his Deputy Manish Sisodia. If that is the case then the question which naturally arises, does Delhi even need an elected Chief Minister?

According to a NDTV report, around 1,000 chikungunya cases, 1,100 dengue cases and 21 cases of malaria have been reported so far.

When dengue, chikungunya and malaria are keeping people in Delhi on their nerves, the Chief Minister was engaged in a bitter twitter war and name calling with two media editors  Shekhar Gupta and Rahul Kanwal. Responding to a tweet by Shekher Gupta "1st malaria deaths in 5 yrs, 1st Chikungunya death now. While Delhi govt safely out conquering Punjab, Goa & Gujarat", Kejriwal twitted "Rajniti Karni hai, khul kar samne aao. Pahle Congress ki dalali karte the, abb Modi ki? Aise logon ne patrakarita ko ganda kiya." In another tweet Kejriwal said "do shabd apne malik ke bare me bhi bol dijiyejo duniya conquer kane chale hain".

To a tweet by Rahul Kanwal "CM Kejriwal in Bengaluru. His deputy in Finland. Imran Hussain on Haj. LG too abroad. North MCD Mayor away. While Delhi is in ICU! Wah re" and another tweet "AAP seems to have decided that running Delhi is not their responsibility. Let LG run the capital. They will focus on winning other states", Kejriwal reacted by tweeting:

https://twitter.com/ArvindKejriwal/status/775607002756177920

Turn to the winter of 2013 and 2014-15, when Delhi Assembly elections were held twice within a space of 15 months. Kejriwal offered himself to be one stop solution to each and every problem that plagued Delhi. But as soon as he assumed power whether for a month-and-half in 2013-14 or since February 2015, he and his party spent too much of negative energy in tackling his in-house challengers, Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and Co. and then Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His idea was by challenging Modi and by calling him names, playing both hero and a victim at the same time he would emerge as the sole challenger to Modi and the BJP in 2019 parliamentary elections. To him L-G was a mere small pawn, whose constitutional position didn't need to be taken into account. Since he had 67 MLAs in the house of 70 and all voted by people in his name, his word should be taken as law. He conveniently forgot that government runs through well laid out norms and not by whims.

Didn't he blame Sheila Dikshit for all the ills in Delhi in the run up to the Delhi elections? The problem with Kejriwal is that he never got down from activist mode to a more serious governance mode. He didn't keep any portfolio with him and as the time passed and his political ambitions grew he became a virtual non-resident Chief Minister.

The Constitutional limitations of the Delhi Chief Minister has been too well known and it would be too foolish to consider that Kejriwal of all the people didn't know about it. But then since the time the first Delhi assembly was elected as per the provisions laid down in 69th Constitutional Amendments Act 1991 and Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act, in 1993 and Madan Lal Khurana assumed office, the system worked smoothly. The L-G had the same powers as he has today but there never was a public spat, least of all, a daily affair. When BJP leader Khurana became chief minister, a Congress government was at the Centre and when Sheila Dikshit took over and remained chief minister for 15 years, early parts of her rule had a BJP government at the Centre. But there was never a clash. In fact, the first Metro train in Delhi ran when Delhi had a Congress government and Centre had a BJP government.

Kejriwal surely had different ideas about himself. He thrives in confrontation at varied levels and wants that he and only he should be counted. That is proving to be disastrous for Delhi.

Who should people of Delhi blame for their current ills? After all, they had voted for BJP in all seven parliamentary seats to make Narendra Modi prime minister and to AAP in 67 out of 70 seats to make Kejriwal chief minister. They thought their vote would turn Delhi a cherished place to live in. Little did they know, they were calling for anarchy in Delhi.
The Union government began a public discussion on holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies on its MyGov web portal last Wednesday (7 September). President Pranab Mukherjee, during his lecture to school students on the Teachers Day (5 September) had endorsed the idea of holding simultaneous Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies elections. President Mukherjee had said that with some election or other throughout the year, normal activities of the government come to a standstill because of the model code of conduct. This is an idea the political leadership should think of. If political parties collectively think, we can change it, he had said.

It may be noted that that this idea entered the mainstream debate since Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a strong pitch for it during an all-party meeting in March this year. The prime minister had said that holding simultaneous elections to elected bodies at various levels would give political and social workers more time to take people-oriented programmes to the grassroots level.

It could be argued that the prime minister has mooted this idea because it would be advantageous to the BJP which has emerged as the biggest national party replacing the Congress. But despite this political angle, the idea merits attention. After all, LK Advani had mooted the same idea when the BJP had not become an all-India party. Even the Law Commission of India had seriously deliberated on it and had come up with specific recommendations way back in 1999.

Let us not forget that the first four elections in independent India  in 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967  were a joint affair; elections to central and state legislatures were held simultaneously. It was only in 1971 when Indira Gandhi dissolved Lok Sabha and advanced the Lok Sabha elections by a year that the synchronised elections fell apart. Then there were a spate of unstable governments at both the Centre and the states which caused early dissolution of the Lok Sabha or state assemblies.

The situation today is such that almost every year, some state elections are lined up; the redeeming feature is that some stability has come about to the life of the state assemblies, thanks to the Supreme Courts strong verdict against the arbitrary imposition of the Presidents Rule by the Centre in 1994 in the Bommai case, which was reiterated recently in the Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh case.

What should be our foremost concern is that elections cost a lot of taxpayers money. Just take a look at the statistics: in 1952, when the first national election for the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies were held, as per the Election Commissions own data, just about Rs 10 crore were spent. In the subsequent two elections  1957 and 1962  the expenditure came down to almost 6 crore and 7.5 crore respectively (can anyone now imagine the possibility of reduction of expenditure on any head after five or ten years?). In 1967, the election expenditure equaled that of 1952, and in 1971, there was only a marginal increase.

Since 1977, the expenditure is on an upward climb. It doubled to more than Rs 23 crore (compared to 11.5 crore in 1971). In 1980, it more than doubled  to Rs 54 crore. By 1989, it went up by three times to Rs 154 crore. Just two years later, the expenses shot up to Rs 359 crore. In 1996, it had reached Rs 600 crore mark. And three years later, in 1999, the Election Commission spent Rs 880 crore. By 2004, it had shot up to Rs 1300 crore. The provisional estimate tells us that the conduct of 2014 Lok Sabha elections entailed an expenditure of almost Rs 3500 crore.

The expenses on state assembly elections are also rising. The election to the Bihar assembly cost the state government Rs 300 crore; expenses incurred by the central government election commission is a separate story. Imagine the amount of taxpayers money being spent over and over again mindlessly. With some application of mind and some resolute will, this wasteful expenditure could be minimized.

We cannot afford to avoid elections; after But all, that is the mainstay of a democracy. But we could avoid duplication of elections by holding Lok Sabha and assembly elections together. The Election Commission has expressed its ability and willingness to conduct simultaneous elections. Nevertheless it may appear an insurmountable task, given the spread of elections across the years, as it stands today.

The matter was discussed by the Standing Committee of Parliament which deliberated on the feasibility of holding simultaneous elections to the House of people (Lok sabha) and State Legislative Assemblies and submitted a report on 17 December, 2015.

The summary of the Standing Committee Report, as compiled by the PRS Legislative Research, is the following: Need for holding simultaneous elections: The Committee noted that the holding of simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state assemblies would reduce (i) the massive expenditure that is currently incurred for the conduct of separate elections; (ii) the policy paralysis that results from the imposition of the Model Code of Conduct during election time; (iii) impact on delivery of essential services; (iv) burden on the crucial manpower that is deployed during election time.

The Committee made the following recommendations: Holding of Elections in Two Phases: The Committee recommended that elections could be held in two phases. It stated that elections to some Legislative Assemblies could be held during the mid-term of Lok Sabha. Elections to the remaining Legislative assemblies could be held with the end of Lok Sabhas term.

The Committee even suggested a time frame for holding the elections. Schedule of next cycle of elections: The Committee suggested that the proposed first phase of Assembly elections could be held in November, 2016. Elections to all state assemblies whose terms end within six months to one year before or after appointed election date can be clubbed together. Similarly, the second phase of elections can be held in 2019 with the General elections to Lok Sabha.

Well, November 2016 deadline is not feasible now. But if efforts are made in line with the recommendations right away, May 2019 deadline can be certainly met.

But, like GST, this matter also needs political consensus, as it would involve Constitutional Amendments to Articles 83, 85, 172 and 174 to put the legislation in process. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi succeeds in evolving the consensus to make simultaneous election to Lok Sabha and state assemblies a reality, he would end up making a significant contribution to reforming Indian democracy for the good.
Chandigarh: Protesting against the ruling SAD-BJP government in Punjab, opposition Congress legislators spent their night in the assembly in Chandigarh and will stay in it till Wednesday morning when the House assembles again.

"All the Congress legislators participated in the day-long protest over the Speaker's refusal to allow our members to speak on a no-confidence motion," Congress Legislative Party leader Charanjit Singh Channi told IANS on Tuesday.

He said the legislators spent their night inside the house to lodge their protest despite the electricity being disconnected.

"Our protest inside the assembly would continue till the house assembles on Wednesday," Channi added.

The Congress was demanding a debate on government's failure to protect the interest of the state on the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal and deteriorating law and order situation in the state.

The protesters included four women legislators.

"We have requested the assembly secretary to provide three or four women support staff to ensure our safety in the night but no one was there," legislator Karan Kaur Brar said.

She said they spent their night in the house without lights and air-conditioning.

Official sources said 27 legislators stayed throughout the night using hand fans.

Describing the first-of-its-kind incident in the state unfortunate, Congress leader and former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said the government did not want to discuss the issues related to the common man in the house.

This is the last session of the assembly before the state goes to the polls in early next year.

The trouble started when the no-confidence motion of the Congress was defeated even before the debate could take place by a voice vote on Monday and amidst pandemonium Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal adjourned the house till Wednesday.
It must rank among one of history's twisted plots that the most ambitious step ever taken by Nitish Kumar to become the Prime Minister of India may eventually end up nixing his prime ministerial ambitions. When Siwan don Mohammad Shahabuddin walked out of jail after 11 years and immediately threw the gauntlet at Nitish, the Bihar Chief Minister must have finally understood the full import of his mahagathbandhan of convenience with RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav.

This was the same don Nitish had managed to put behind the bars in 2005, signaling the political and figurative end of Bihar's 15-year nightmare under former CM Lalu. Determined to cleanse the ill-effects of Lalu raj, Nitish had tied up with the BJP and ushered in Bihar's own glasnost and perestroika. The reformist steps ensured restoration of law and order and the state was hurled back into the path of growth, earning Nitish the moniker of 'sushasan babu'.

But the ambition of Nitish Kumar, who saw in Narendra Modi a ghost of Banquo that could block his eventual ascension to the Delhi throne, led him to sever ties with the BJP. It was his most ambitious step.

The clock has turned a proverbial full circle.

Now as Shahabuddin, the mafia-don-turned RJD leader, celebrated release on bail in his signature style of wanton unruliness  his bike-riding goons running amok in Siwan and 100-strong cavalcade whistling past toll nakas  mentor Lalu rushed in to justify his protege. And all that 'sushasan babu' could manage was a miserable squeak. It is a testimony to how hard Nitish has fallen on the scale of morality and courage having bartered his writ and authority with Lalu in exchange for CM's berth and in order to keep the BJP at bay.

"Shahabuddin has said nothing wrong," quipped Lalu as reporters asked him about the Siwan MP's statement that Nitish Kumar is a chief minister of circumstances. According to ANI, the RJD chief even ventured to offer that "Nitish has no problems with his statement".

Shahabuddin ne koi aisi baat nahin ki hai,ye kaha ki Lalu ji neta hain.Takleef Nitish ji ko nhi hai is baat se: Lalu pic.twitter.com/qMkRRnFFwI  ANI (@ANI_news) September 12, 2016

Talking to CNN-News 18 shortly after his release on Saturday, Shahabuddin, whose bail application was upheld by the Patna High Court in the case related to the murder of Rajiv Roshan, said that "Nitishji became Bihar's CM only because of the political situation."

The lameness of Nitish Kumar's comeback revealed his deep discomfort at having to walk the political tightrope. He tried to dismiss Shahabuddin's jibe as "unimportant" and then went ahead and responded anyway, insisting that he has the people's mandate.

People know the mandate,doesn't matter what a person says-Bihar CM Nitish Kumar on Mohd Shahbuddin pic.twitter.com/JZbl1BtTgU  ANI (@ANI_news) September 11, 2016

Shahabuddin's retort? He pumped up the rhetoric and openly challenged the CM, even raising oblique questions about Nitish's character by comparing him to Madhu Koda, the disgraced ex-Jharkhand CM.

Talking to reporters from his residence on Sunday, the Siwan strongman, according to The Times of India, said: "Nitish has never been a mass leader; he cannot win even 20 seats on his own. My party is definitely a part of the government, but RJD boss Lalu Prasad was, is and will remain my leader. Madhu Koda (also) became the CM because of circumstances, and so is the case with Nitish."

This is truly a Rubicon-crossing moment for Nitish. If he cannot put pressure on Lalu to rein in Shahabuddin, it will send an unmistakable message that he has been held to ransom by a rogue ally. There have been allegations that the state government did not secure the best legal help to keep Shahabuddin in jail against whom there are at least 40 different criminal cases including murder and kidnapping.

According to an editorial in The Times of India, "What is disturbing is that the state machinerys reluctance to start the trial against Shahabuddin in the 2014 murder of Rajiv Roshan paved the way for his bail."

If that is indeed true, then Nitish has a lot to answer for. As India Today reports, the maelstrom of criticism following Shahabuddin's release and the state's perceived inaction led a minister in Nitish Cabinet, Rajiv Ranjan Singh, to insist that "Bihar government tried its best to ensure bail was not granted to Shahabuddin in Patna HC. We put the best lawyers." But it is a claim few are buying. It is being pointed out that the state government could have immediately knocked on the Supreme Court's door to cancel the controversial MP's bail. But it did not.

Additionally, as The Times of India indicated, the JD(U) remains tight-lipped on whether or not it will appeal against Shahabuddin's bail.

If Nitish had been able to make Shahabuddin face the full might of law in 2005, what is restricting him 11 years later that he is dithering from even filing an appeal against his bail? Has an alliance with Lalu sapped Nitish's moral courage?

If 'sushasan babu' is made to dance to Lalu's tunes  a possibility that was widely predicted when Nitish joined hands with his bete-noire to keep out the BJP  it may not only jeopardise his stint as Bihar CM but crucially, also show him up as a weak leader.

Questions will be raised that if a chief minister fails to manage allies in his own state and succumbs to the compulsions of coalition politics, how will he lead an infinitely more complex coalition government at the Centre should such a possibility arise?

And there should not be any doubt over the extent of Nitish Kumar's ambition. On 6 March, 2014, a few days before Narendra Modi assumed office at 7 Race Course Road, Nitish had openly declared that he will be "much better than the declared PM candidates" as he has experience of working both at the Centre and the state, according to a report in The Indian Express.

He didn't name either Rahul Gandhi or Modi, but went on to say: "While one does not have the experience of Parliament another has no experience of running a stateI have both experiences Am I less qualified than them?", according to the newspaper.

Nitish's liquor ban, one of the very few pan-Indian planks that allows a regional satrap to transcend the boundaries of state, is also tailored towards his ultimate ambition. There is nothing wrong in having an ambition and Nitish won't perhaps make a bad Prime Minister. But if he allows Lalu to ride roughshod over him, Nitish's dream of becoming the PM will remain just a that  a dream.
As chief minister Arvind Kejriwal campaigns in Punjab, seeking to expand his partys footprint beyond Delhi, people in his own state are locked in a losing battle with chikungunya and dengue, both of which have assumed epidemic proportions. Newspapers inform that so far 1,158 cases of dengue, with four deaths, have been reported by the civic bodies. There have been 1,057 reported cases of chikungunya with three deaths so far.

They also mention that theres massive under-reporting of cases. The actual number of affected people is much more since good number of patients dont visit government hospitals and take help of private practitioners close to their places of residence. But these are not the only diseases troubling the residents of Delhi. They are under threat from malaria and a few viral and bacterial diseases too. Hospitals overflowing with patients tell the true story: The outbreak has gone out of control.

While mosquitoes and other carriers of pathogens are having a field day in the capital-state, conspicuous is the absence of political leaders trying to take control of the situation. Dirt, filth and overflowing sewage, the breeding ground for diseases, continue to be a fact of life here even as those representing the people look the other way. Arvind Kejriwal, the supposed peoples chief minister, is thick in the electoral campaign in Punjab for some time now; Satyendra Jain, the Health minister, is reportedly in Goa doing groundwork for his partys launch in the state. If those present in Delhi are working hard, it does not quite show in the results.

Last year, Kejriwal had made surprise visits to several hospitals after dengue outbreak claimed the life of two boys and warned them not to turn away patients besides promising to increase the number of beds in hospitals. The enthusiasm to reach out is not visible this time. Ever since the Delhi High Court ruled that the Lieutenant Governor is the administrative head of the state, the lack of enthusiasm in the Assembly to run the city-state's affairs has become apparent.

Soon after the courts verdict came, the AAP had asked people to go the Lieutenant Governor with all their problems since he, by logical extension the central government, was the administrative head of the state. Now, the party put the blame squarely on the L-G and the Centre saying they should be held accountable for dengue, chikungunya deaths since the state government didnt have powers to even buy a pen. The BJP, which controls the civic bodies, has hit back alleging that AAP has no interest in running the state.

The AAP governments predicament is understandable. It neither controls the MCDs nor does it have an independent say in several critical areas of governance. The Delhi High Courts order has left it handicapped further. The question, however, is shouldnt crises like this be the perfect occasion for it to stand behind people? After all it claimed to be a party unlike others and the voice of the ordinary people left as hopeless bystanders in a democratic process that has turned perverse over the years. It has a moral responsibility for the masses who elected it with such thumping majority. It appears to be abandoning it.

Of course, no other political party comes out looking better in the Delhis messy politics, but AAP under Kejriwal carried the burden of many pleasant expectations. It does not have the power alright, but it still can be the peoples party, raising their concerns, playing the role of the opposition in a half-state where real power lies elsewhere.

Its inactivity in the times of chikungunya and dengue only reflects its growing distance from people.
New Delhi: Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani will arrive in New Delhi on Wednesday on a two-day visit to hold "close consultations" on key issues with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during which India is likely to accede to Kabul's demand for increased military assistance.

Announcing the visit, the External Affairs Ministry said the discussions between Ghani and Modi will cover a wide range of "matters of mutual interest".

"The upcoming visit will provide an opportunity to continue the close and frequent consultations between the two friendly neighbours, including at the highest level."

"Such interaction is the hallmark of their strategic partnership and has guided the strengthening of all-round cooperation between the two countries," the Ministry had said in a statement on Saturday.

Afghanistan has been demanding increased defence supplies, including lethal weapons from India, which for the first time gave four Mi-25 attack helicopters to the war-torn country last year.

According to sources, India may accede to the demand and announce such assistance.

Apart from holding discussions with Modi, who will also host a lunch in his honour, Ghani during his working visit will also interact with the business community and deliver an address at a prominent think tank in New Delhi.
Miami: The Florida mosque where Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen worshipped was targeted in an arson attack on Monday, authorities said.

Fire crews responded to a 911 call reporting that flames were coming out of the Fort Pierce Islamic Center, Major David Thompson of the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office said.

Security video showed an individual approaching the building from the east, he said.

"Immediately after the individual approached, a flash occurred and the individual fled the area," Thompson said.

"Evidence has revealed that this fire was set intentionally," he said. "The sheriff's office is currently investigating this as an arson."

No injuries were reported and the extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

Photographs posted on the sheriff department's Facebook page showed fire engines parked in front of the building, a former church, with the facade appearing undamaged.

Authorities were working on enhancing the security video to help identify the perpetrator.

Thompson declined to speculate on a motive, but noted that it came shortly after the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States.

"We all know the implications of the date... Is that related? I would not want to speculate but certainly that is in the back our minds," he told reporters.

The attack also came as Muslims worldwide prepared to celebrate Eid al-Adha, Islam's feast of sacrifice.

The Fort Pierce mosque's gathering on Monday was moved "to another area and they're going to allow us to conduct our investigation so we can hopefully determine who set it," Thompson said.

Forty-nine people were killed and another 53 injured on 12 June when Mateen, a 29-year-old US citizen of Afghan origin, opened fire on the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando. Mateen was killed by police.

The mass shooting was the deadliest in modern US history.
Beijing: China is concerned over "increasing cost of security" and "potential setbacks" in the development of the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an official daily said on Tuesday recognising the risks involved with the project due to a "complex regional environment". concerned

An article in the Global Times said the ambitious project  that passes through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir  is unlikely to have a "plain sailing". It also referred to the reported deployment of 14,503 security guards by Pakistan to protect the 7,036 Chinese nationals working on the corridor.

"China may not want to put too much focus on the region. At the very least, it would be unwise to put all its eggs in one basket," it said highlighting China's disquiet over the project which has also cast a shadow over India-China ties. Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised concerns over the project in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 meet in Hangzhou on 4 September.

The article, however, made no reference to India regarding the project, which connects China's Xinjiang province to Pakistan's southwestern Gwadar Port in Balochistan with a maze of rail, road and pipelines.

"The CPEC has long been seen as symbolic to Sino-Pakistan economic cooperation. It is unlikely that China will change its supportive attitude on the CPEC in the short term, but the increasing cost of security is becoming a big problem in efficiently pushing forward the projects," the article said. The daily, which in the past has strongly supported the project, said in the article that it is "unlikely to be plain sailing for China and Pakistan in their attempts to push forward the CPEC due to challenges such as a complex regional environment, and people in the two countries should be prepared for potential setbacks".

The daily is part of the ruling Communist Party of China's official organ the People's Daily publication group. It also raised questions over Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's comments last month that Pakistan attached priority to the project. Referring to Sharif's comments, it said "given the difficulty of protecting the personnel that are working in Pakistan, projects under the CPEC may need to be implemented and assessed step-by-step".

"Beijing should consider giving more attention to its economic cooperation" with Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, whose Prime Minster is currently visiting China, to improve ties despite differences over the South China Sea. China is reportedly concerned after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Vietnam's capital Hanoi this month.

"The CPEC has long been seen as a flagship project in China's Belt and Road initiative, but the initiative's strategic focus may need to shift gradually toward Southeast Asia, where there is awide infrastructure funding gap but a relatively stable regional environment that will enable China to efficiently push forward ventures under the Belt and Road initiative," it said.

"Hopefully, the two countries (China and Vietnam) will be able to put aside disputes that have arose over the South China Sea and focus on promoting economic development," it said.
Brasilia: The Brazilian government has ratified the Paris Agreement on climate change, which was adopted by 195 countries during a summit in the French capital last December.

"The commitment against climate change in Brazil is not by one administration but is a matter of state," Temer told the Cabinet ministers, lawmakers and environmentalists, who gathered at the Planalto presidential palace for the ceremony on Monday.

Temer said that "this is not about a matter of the willingness of one or another administration," referring to the political crisis that led to the ouster of former President Dilma Rousseff, whose administration brokered the commitments Brazil made at the COP21 climate conference in Paris, EFE news reported.

Brazil agreed at the climate summit in Paris to limit annual carbon dioxide emissions to 1.3 billion tonnes by 2025, requiring a reduction of 36.1 percent.

The South American country also agreed to cut annual emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas blamed for global warming, to 1.2 billion tonnes by 2030.

The Paris Agreement is the first-ever universal accord to combat global warming, a deal that commits nearly 200 developed and developing nations to jointly transition to a low-carbon economy.

The landmark agreement reached after nearly two weeks of negotiations in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget marked the beginning of the shift away from a development model based on fossil fuels and came after 21 years of climate summits and 12 months of intense diplomatic efforts.

The final text of the agreement set a goal of "holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change."

To achieve that objective, it secured commitments to battle climate change from each of the 196 parties to the agreement and requires those countries to show evidence of their compliance and make further moves to cutting their man-made greenhouse-gas emissions every five years.

The first review of national efforts to meet climate goals has been set for 2018 and the first revision of emission commitments is set for 2020.
If Syria collapses that could start a domino effect which would be devastating. Which is why this break in hostilities is literally the last chance saloon and if it falls apart there is nothing but wilderness and a cold wind after that.

Most of the world doesnt care very much and that is noticed by the lack of public interest and the inability to absorb any more data through synapses that have been overloaded.

Yet, the whole world will pay a price either or both the US and Russia walk away.

Which is why these seven days in September starting Monday are vital.

After five long years the option of peace is being exercised. It is easy to be cynical and pass judgement on the odd parameters of this truce but both media and governments have an overwhelming responsibility to ensure that they work towards strengthening the fragile fibres into a rope rather than snipping them prematurely.

In Damascus the sounds of silence are probably the loudest they have ever heard in years and there is wonderment whether it will last the first seven days because at that milestone there will be the major movement from Washington and Moscow to sit on the same side of the table and negotiate proper peace talks with nothing off the table including a farewell, so long, auf weidersehen, goodbye to the Assad regime.

To be renewed every 48 hours, the first two days are crucial for this ceasefire and though Russia has excluded terror camps and strongholds from the peace that is worrying in the sense that rebel groups could get trigger happy. By the same token the Syrian army, which has spiked its guns, has warned that this spiking is predicated to an absence of provocation from any entity or any violation of the regime of calm that has descended upon the country.

The media which controls nor just perceptions but also can manoeuvre news into channels of reality and cause chaos of its own has already begun to unravel the knit. Western media especially seems to have indicated the very poor chances of the seven day period being successfully completed. Now, while it might make good headlines the need to be dubious by habit must be curbed. Western channels are already deep into gloom and doom with Fox, ABC and Sky already predicting the guns to go off pretty much any moment now.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has got it right when he says that this could well be the last chance to smoke that pipe, failing which an open ended multi-sided battle could see Syria disintegrate and the civilian population face death in huge numbers.

And dont think anyone is out of the orbit of the fallout.

It is almost as if Kerry feels he is at the end of his tether where Syria is concerned and with the change of the guard in the White House the next President may not even care to get involved. Obama also wants a strong footnote to his legacy and time is running out. This initiative is, therefore, not just a lifeline for Syria but also creates a little more stability in the Middle East at a time when the region needs to heal.

The one major fear at this time is the collapse of the peace move through rumour or misunderstanding.

Russia must also exercise restraint while defending its troops against any terrorist aggression but keeping the greater good in mind not up the ante during these crucial seven days.

Time for all elements to think of the possibility of a durable peace in positive terms not as if it was doomed even before it had started its walk.

The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights should play referee and alert all these parties to any infringements and try and pre-empt anything that even remotely endangers these seven days in September.

Six days to go.
Britain's former prime minister David Cameron resigned his seat in the House of Commons on Monday, less than three months after losing an EU referendum in which he had campaigned to stay in the bloc.

Cameron stepped down as prime minister in June, hours after Britain's dramatic vote to leave the European Union (EU), handing power to his successor Theresa May in July.

"The circumstances of my resignation as prime minister and the realities of modern politics make it very difficult to continue (in parliament)... without the risk of becoming a diversion," Cameron said in a statement.

"I fully support Theresa May and have every confidence that Britain will thrive under her strong leadership," the 49-year-old added.

The former premier was pilloried after the shock referendum defeat.

Critics accused him of recklessness in holding the vote in the first place and mismanaging the Remain campaign in the face of anti-EU populism.

His decision to stage the referendum was seen in Westminster as a bid to placate eurosceptic opponents in the centre-right Conservative Party.

His resignation from parliament is unusually quick -- former prime ministers have typically retained their seats for a number of years after leaving office.

Cameron denied it was linked to May's decision last week to let state-funded schools reintroduce selection by academic ability, a controversial move he opposed during his six years in office.

"This decision has got nothing to do with any one individual issue and that way the timing I promise is coincidental," he told broadcaster ITV in an interview.

"Obviously I have my own views about certain issues. People know that. That's really the point. As a former PM it's very difficult to sit as a backbencher and not be an enormous diversion and distraction from what the government is doing," he said.

May wished Cameron well for the future in a brief statement on Facebook.

"I was proud to serve in David Cameron's government  and under his leadership we achieved great things," the former interior minister wrote.

'A life outside Westminster'

The suave Eton-educated Cameron has been MP for Witney in the rural county of Oxfordshire, northwest of London, since 2001.

At the time of his resignation as premier, he insisted he was "keen to continue" as a constituency MP and intended to seek re-election at the next general election, due in 2020.

He is not known to have taken on any other roles since stepping down. His media appearances since have been in pictures of him holidaying with his family.

"Obviously Im going to have to start to build a life outside Westminster," he told ITV.

"I'm only 49 and I hope I can still contribute in terms of public service and contribute to our country," he said.

Cameron's decision was welcomed by allies.

His former finance minister and right hand man George Osborne, who was excluded from the cabinet by May, called it a "sad day" on Twitter.

"I know how difficult this decision has been for him," Osborne said.

Former foreign secretary William Hague added it was the "right decision", writing: "Former Prime Ministers are either accused of doing too little or being a distraction."

I'm only 49 and I hope I can still contribute in terms of public service and contribute to our country

Boris Johnson  the current foreign secretary who played an instrumental role in the Leave campaign  praised Cameron on Twitter: "Sad to see @David_Cameron standing down:modernising Tory party - delivered sustained economic recovery - incredible record of public service."

Angela Eagle, a senior lawmaker in the main opposition Labour party, told the BBC that Cameron had "put his whole country at risk to settle a debate in his own party" through the EU referendum.

"He has now walked away leaving others to clear up the mess," she added.

The pro-Brexit Daily Mail newspaper reported the resignation as "The Crushing of David Cameron" on its front page, saying his legacy was in ruins.

Despite Cameron's denial he quit in response to May's school reform, The Times said the former prime minister wants the freedom to speak out on the matter.

The Daily Telegraph, popular among Conservative voters, said Cameron quit "to avoid split with May".

Cameron's decision to resign triggers an obscure parliamentary procedure, because lawmakers are technically not able to resign.

He was named as Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead and a by-election to pick his successor will be held.
Kathmandu: Ahead of his India visit, Nepal Prime Minister Prachanda said on Tuesday the main thrust of his trip would be to "clear all doubts" in bilateral ties and build an environment of confidence and trust.

Prachanda will travel to New Delhi on 15 September for a four-day goodwill visit, his first foreign visit after assuming power some six weeks ago. "The main expectation of my visit is to improve and strengthen Nepal-India relations that have gone through some bitter experiences in the recent past," said 61-year-old Prachanda responding to a question during an interaction with

a group foreign correspondents at his official residence in Baluwatar.

"I am also expecting that India would help us to get out of the current difficult situation that would help strengthen our ties," he said. "What had happened last year (indicating to border blockade) was very much painful to the Nepalese people and it was also not a pleasant thing for India," said Prachanda adding, "we will move towards adding a new dimension in the bilateral relations by learning from the past."

"My visit will clear all doubts and an environment of confidence and trust will be built," he claimed. Prachanda said the environment in Delhi is favourable for Nepal this time as he had sensed from Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat, who had just concluded his two-day visit to India.

"From the feedback I received from our Foreign Minister, it is certain that this time I would not have to bear much pressure during my visit to Delhi this time and I will be visiting there in a much relaxed manner," said the Prime Minister.

Prachanda said he would hold discussions on Wednesday with the Madhesi parties and other ethnic groups, that had launched months long anti-Constitution agitation last year resulting in death of over 50 people, to resolve the crisis.

"I will hold talks with the agitating parties to address their key demands including re-demarcation of provincial boundary and citizenship issue, and I am hopeful of reaching an agreement with them to amend the Constitution by accommodating their demands," Prachanda said.

He said that he would do everything to make the new Constitution acceptable to all the sections of Nepalese society including the Madhesis and ethnic minority groups and also expressed hope that "an environment would be created for India to welcome it." He said his government is committed to develop a balanced, warm and cordial relations with the neighbouring countries and for the purpose he had recently sent his special envoys to India and China soon after assuming office.

Prachanda had sent Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara to China and Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bimalendra Nidhi to India as special envoys.

Prachanda said that Nepal is expecting high-level important visits within this year from both the neighbouring countries. After Prachanda's visit to Delhi, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee and Chinese Prime Minister are expected to visit Nepal in November.

Prachanda said he was also expecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Nepal within a couple of months, adding "this time I will extend him invitation to visit Janakpur, Lumbini and Muktinath, important Hindu and Buddhist pilgrim sites of Nepal."

He said during his visit to India, he will emphasise on expediting and implementing already agreed projects between the two nations rather than signing new agreements. To a question whether Nepal is still committed to generating 10,000 MW of electricity within ten years, which he had promised during his first tenure, Prachanda said, "The scenario has changed and now we have to generate 20,000 MW of electricity in the next ten years."

He said discussions will be held to move forward Mahakali project, Pancheshwor project as well as development of rural roads and east-west railway line construction in the country with the Indian officials during the visit.

Prachanda said he would also ask India to provide a grant a 400 MW Lower Arun hydropower project.

In the past, India had assured to provide money to construct 250 MW Naumure hydropower, which could not be materialised due to unfavourable situation. Prachanda also promised to provide additional Rs 100,000 to each of the 5 lakh families affected by the last year's earthquakes.

The government has already promised to provide Rs 200,000 as financial assistance to rebuild their houses. During his visit to India, Prachanda said he would also seek additional grants meant for post-quake reconstruction works.

India last year promised to provide USD one billion financial assistance to Nepal for the reconstruction works after the devastating earthquakes.
The UN human rights chief slammed India and Pakistan at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) for denying his team access to visit both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) emphasising that it has now become crucial to establish an independent, impartial and international mission to the conflict-ridden region.

Two months ago, I requested the agreement of the governments of India and Pakistan to invite teams from my office to visit both sides of the line of control: in other words the India-Administered Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-Administered Kashmir, said the UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Raad Al-Hussein on Tuesday at the opening session of UNHRC.

We furthermore received conflicting narratives from the two sides as to the cause for the confrontations and the reported large numbers of people killed and wounded. I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides, he said.

The top UN official also said that they continue receiving reports of Indian forces using force excessively against civilian population under its administration.

The Valley has erupted into violence after a popular Hizbul Mujahideen leader Burhan Wani was killed by the security forces in July this year. The violence that has stretched to 66 days and counting is one of the bloodiest summers the region has witnessed in the last five years.

In spite of a lockdown, anti-India protesters have called for a march to the UN office in Srinagar. Tensions have been further heightened due to Eid-ul-Adha that has kept the Indian troops on the alert even though there is a continuing ban on public assembly this year.

Zeid stated that he received a letter from the government of Pakistan on 9 September formally inviting a team from his office to visit the Pakistan side of the line of control but only in tandem with a mission to the Indian side.

I have yet to receive a formal letter from the government of India. I therefore request here and publicly, from the two governments, access that is unconditional to both sides of the line of control, he said.

The opening statement of the UN high commissioner for human rights at the HRC focused on issues of access of the UN to troubled areas and the growing trend of an increasing number of countries to refuse to grant access to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and/or other human rights mechanisms to their countries or specific troubled regions.

What is this United Nations? Outdated, laughable nonsense  bureaucrats and gilded elites!, he said in a hard-hitting statement to the Council.

Governments accuse the OHCHR of interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states when violations of human rights are pointed out to them and his statements referring to these violations are termed "biased", "irresponsible", "misleading" or based on "false" premises, Zeid said.

Quoting the Vienna Declaration which states that "the promotion and protection of all human rights is a legitimate concern of the international community", he argued that human rights is not exclusively a national issue.

Apart from India and Pakistan, the high commissioner mentioned Syria, Venezuela, Turkey, Ethiopia, Gambia, Burundi, China, Nepal, the US (for refusing access to Guantanamo Bay), Israel, Iran, North Korea, among other countries for non-cooperation with UN human rights mechanisms.

Human rights violations will not disappear if a government blocks access to international observers and then invests in a public relations campaign to offset any unwanted publicity. On the contrary, efforts to duck or refuse legitimate scrutiny raise an obvious question: what, precisely, are you hiding from us?" he said.
Karachi: At least 10 people, including two policemen, were injured on Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Shia mosque during Eid-ul Azha prayers in Pakistan's southern Sindh province.

The suicide blast took place in Shikarpur district's Khanpur tehsil, around 470 kilometres north of Karachi, police said, adding another attacker fled from the spot.

Police also foiled a separate suicide blast at another Shia mosque in the Shikarpur district where last year at least 61 people were killed in a suicide attack on a mosque.

Police said four suicide attackers had infiltrated Khanpur during Eid prayers, the Dawn reported.

Two attackers had targeted a Shia mosque but were stopped by police at the entrance on account of appearing suspicious.

When the attackers attempted to flee, one was gunned down by a policeman and the other was arrested.

Pakistan has been hit by frequent sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shia Muslims.
New Delhi: Twenty-two Keralites accused of leaving India to join the Islamic State are learnt to have reached "the Caliphate" in Afghanistan in the first week of July, said investigators who grilled the arrested Islamic State sympathiser Yasmin Mohd Zahid.

The 29-year-old Yasmin was arrested at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport while trying to exit India for Afghanistan on 1 August.

She informed investigators that thirteen of the missing Keralites were men, six women and three children, and "they had left their houses in Kasaragod and Palakkad districts of Kerala between mid-May and the first week of July."

Citing Yasmin's statement, a National Investigation Agency (NIA) official, close to the investigation, told IANS that all of the missing Keralites had "exited India from Bengaluru, Hyderabad or Mumbai airports for Kuwait, Dubai, Muscat or Abu Dhabi from where they are learnt to have travelled to Afghanistan through Iran."

During custodial interrogation, Yasmin further said that she had got married to Abdul Rashid, 30, on 3 May this year in a nikah ceremony solemnised over the phone. Rashid is one of the accused who left India along with other Keralites.

Investigators said that two other co-accused Ashfak and Yahya acted as witnesses of the nikah ceremony while another co-accused Shihas acted as "wali" (guardian) of the bride.

Yasmin also informed investigators that her husband Rashid used to send videos and messages to her on Telegram  a messaging app  in support of "the caliphate and Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi".

She told NIA interrogators that Rashid and his first wife Ayesha were in touch with a UK couple who were converts to Islam and were spreading messages in support of Islamic State and the Caliphate over Telegram channel.

"Rashid had told Yasmin in the first week of July that he and other missing persons from Kerala had reached the Caliphate in Afghanistan," the NIA official said citing Yasmin's statement.

The officer said that Rashid had also given the ATM card of his first wife Ayesha to Yasmin and transferred Rs 1.5 lakh into the account in mid-July which Yasmin used for her travel preparations to Afghanistan.

"Yasmin had purchased flight tickets, paid for the Afghanistan visa and also purchased $620 using the money."

The NIA also said on Monday that the sister of another missing accused person Dr Ijas informed them that her brother and his wife Refaela were blessed with a baby girl on 6 September.

The NIA had registered a FIR in the case in the last week of August.

The FIR has listed 19 missing persons as the accused. As many as 14 persons from Kasaragod district and five from Palakkad are on the list. The agency is probing whether the missing persons are linked with Islamic State.

The children, who are believed to have gone missing with their parents, have been excluded from the list of the accused. Sources with the NIA said some unidentified persons are also accused in the case. The FIR was registered at the NIA court in Kochi.
Washington: The US has said it is against independence for the Pakistani province of Balochistan where there have been allegations of human rights violations that were flagged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech.

"The government... US government respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan, and we do not support independence for Balochistan," US State Department spokesperson John Kirby said in his daily press briefing on Monday.

He said this in response to a question on Prime Minister Modi's remarks on 15 August about human rights violations in Balochistan.

In a first for any Indian Prime Minister in an 15 August Independence Day speech, Modi referred to human rights violations in Balochistan and the part of Kashmir that Pakistan controls.

"The world is watching. People of Balochistan, Gilgit, Baltistan and occupied Kashmir have thanked me a lot in the past few days. I am grateful to them," Modi said referring to his comments earlier in the month at an all-party meeting on reported excesses in Pakistan's largest province and in the part of Kashmir it holds.

He said the way the people of these Pakistani regions "wished me well, gives me great joy." In thanking an Indian Prime Minister, "they have thanked the whole population of India", he said. "I want to offer gratitude to these people."

The public reference to Balochistan by Modi was viewed as India hitting back at Pakistan for persistently raising the Kashmir issue and its attempts to internationalise it.
On November 16-17, 2016, hospitality buyers and experts from around the Middle East will gather in Dubai for the Hotel Technology Summit.

At the summit, global solution providers will showcase their products to hoteliers from leading brands like Accor, Marriott, Starwood, Movenpick, Hyatt, Rotana, Al Hokair Group, Swiss-Belhotel and more  providing an ideal gateway into the lucrative Middle Eastern hospitality market, which will be worth over $40 billion by 2018.

The summit is the result of a partnership between Naseba, a business facilitator based in Dubai, and Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals (HFTP), the world's leading global hospitality association and organizers of HITEC. Naseba and HFTP have been in the hospitality industry for more than a decade, and the past three editions of the summit have been enhanced by their combined resources.

Its unique format includes one-to-one business meetings designed to facilitate deals, as well as interactive panel discussions, informative tech talks, live demonstrations and networking sessions. Day one will focus on technology and digital transformation, while day two will revolve around accounting and financial management in hospitality.

The 200 attendees of the Hotel Technology Summit will include Managing Directors, Vice Presidents, IT and Technology Heads, Directors of Procurement and Purchasing, Heads of Finance and other key decision makers from international and regional hospitality brands.

The summit's second day will be moderated by HFTP leaders: Frank Wolfe, CAE, HFTP Chief Executive Officer; Arlene Ramirez, CHAE, CHE, CHIA, MBA, HFTP Global President and a hospitality finance consultant and educator; and Lyle Worthington, CHTP, HFTP Global Vice-President and a hospitality technology consultant.

"Both HFTP and Naseba have wide-ranging resources for providing hospitality education to the industry on an international scale," said Wolfe. "The combination of expertise from the two organizations is set to provide a thought-provoking and valuable exchange of ideas amongst hoteliers in the Middle East."

The Hotel Technology Summit will also be the setting of the Middle East Smart Hotel Award Ceremony. The awards will recognize the most high-tech hotels in the region, across six categories: Best Booking Experience, Best Online Concierge, Best Mobile App, Best In-Room Automation System, Best Use of Cloud Service and Best Smart Hotel.

Ismail AlKamal, CEO of Nawatt, remarked "The Hotel Technology Summit is a vital venue for all industry leaders to get exposed to the latest technological trends in the Hospitality Sector. Naseba does a great job as always in organizing and bringing together hoteliers and suppliers."

"The 20th edition of the Hotel Technology Summit marks an important turning point for the hospitality industry  where hotels have accepted the realities of digital transformation and smart technology, and are now beginning to fully explore all the opportunities that they offer. It's an exciting time to be a hotelier and to be involved in the regional hotel industry, with heightened deal activity throughout the market," said Nicholas Watson, Managing Director at Naseba.

The summit is sponsored by Ateco, Nawatt, Xnprotel Systems, Idiso, Network International, Pagero, Infor and MCOM Media Communications.

To learn more, contact:

Ryan Cooper

Marketing Manager

[email protected]

Naseba Industry Meetings

About HFTP

Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) is a global nonprofit hospitality association, headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA, that uniquely understands the industry's problems. HFTP has about 5,200 members and several thousand stakeholders across the globe. HFTP assists its members in finding solutions to industry problems more efficiently than any organization via its expert networks, research, conferences such as HITEC and certification programs. HFTP also owns the world's only hospitality specific search engine, PineappleSearch.com. HFTP is recognized as the spokes group for the finance and technology segment of the hospitality industry. For more information about HFTP, e-mail [email protected].

About Naseba

Naseba offers business facilitation expertise in growth markets. We create deal flow, foster networking and enhance knowledge exchange. Naseba supports you with educating your workforce, entering new markets, raising capital, securing partners and closing sales. Our services include investor introductions, industry meetings, leadership forums, and professional trainings. Naseba partners with governments, key figures in media, industry and academia to add real value to our network worldwide. Since its inception in 2002, Naseba has connected over 80,000 executives globally through more than 700 proprietary business platforms. Naseba has offices in France, India, United Arab Emirates and the United States.

Jessica Blankenship

Public Relations Manager

HFTP
GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here.
The Chief Executive (CE), Chui Sai On co-presided, together with the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, a meeting of the Macau-Portugal Joint Committee, held yesterday in Lisbon at the Portuguese Foreign Affairs Ministry.

In the meeting two subject matters were highlighted: Education and Economy.

On the first, the Portuguese government reaffirmed the political support to the continuation of Portuguese language learning in the region, although no concrete measures were suggested.

On economic cooperation, a new cooperation in scientific investigation was discussed, with a signing of an agreement expected between the Portuguese Science Fund and Macaus Science Development Fund in the near future.

After the meeting, the CE headed to a meeting where he was received by the Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa at S. Bento Palace. He was expended to conclude his day with another meeting, this time with the Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who had initially invited the CE to visit Portugal. RM
China responded yesterday to calls that it needs to do more to rein in North Koreas nuclear program by saying that American officials were truly to blame for inciting conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

The detection Friday of North Koreas fifth nuclear test brought new pressure on China, Pyongyangs economic lifeline and the closest thing it has to a political ally. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said China had an important responsibility in North Korea.

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters yesterday that Carter was being too modest. She cited a Chinese saying  Whoever started the trouble should end it  in calling on the U.S. to take on its due responsibility.

I think the U.S. should go over the process of the development of the nuclear issue and earnestly work on a tangible and effective resolution, Hua said.

China has agreed to allow sanctions at the U.N. Security Council after previous tests by Pyongyang, and says it has restricted shipments of jet fuel and imports of certain minerals from North Korea, which otherwise remains in almost total isolation from the world. Critics, however, say China hasnt done enough to tighten economic pressure on North Korea as punishment for its nuclear tests, which the Chinese government has publicly opposed.

Since Friday, Chinese state media have repeatedly linked North Koreas latest nuclear test to the American deployment of a high-altitude missile defense system in South Korea, which China has long opposed.

Hua did not mention the missile defense system, known as THAAD, yesterday. But she said all sides needed to resolve their concerns in a balanced way.

Even if China wanted to rein in North Korea, analysts say its not clear that it could.

North Korea has repeatedly rejected Chinas entreaties not to test nuclear warheads, and Pyongyang officials appear to be exploiting tensions between China and South Korea over THAAD, said Tong Zhao, an associate at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center think tank.

Beijing apparently has very little real leverage, Zhao said in an email.

One possibility is that China could try to broker a deal to freeze North Koreas development of new missiles and warheads as part of the U.S. and South Korea suspending joint military exercises, Tong said.

But Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for American Progress, said China has more leverage, and more reason to act, than its officials sometimes make it seem publicly.

More and more, China treats North Korea as a threat to its national security and regional stability, Mount said. Encouraging this transition should be at the top of the next (American) presidents agenda with China. AP
Postal Savings Bank of China Co. is seeking as much as USD8.1 billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering, which could become the worlds biggest share sale this year.

The Beijing-based bank is offering 12.1 billion shares at HKD4.68 to HKD5.18 apiece, according to terms for the deal obtained by Bloomberg yesterday. Cornerstone investors, who commit to hold their shares for six months, agreed to buy about $5.9 billion of stock, accounting for 76 percent of the offering at the midpoint of the marketed range.

The price range values Postal Savings Bank at about 1 to 1.1 times its net assets at the end of March this year, a person with knowledge of the matter said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. Chinese lenders listed in Hong Kong trade at a median 0.88 times their latest book value, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Postal Savings Bank, ubiquitous in small-town China, joins Bank of Tianjin Co. and China Zheshang Bank Co. in selling shares in Hong Kong to fund expansion. The bank, which has more outlets than any other Chinese lender, boasts a non-performing loan ratio that was less than half the official industry figure at the end of March, and has the potential to use a strong deposit base to grow lending faster than its peers.

Even though there are some positives for Postal Savings Bank, the valuation is not attractive enough, Edmond Law, an analyst at UOB Kay Hian (Hong Kong) Ltd., said by phone yesterday. Investors may prefer the shares of other listed state-owned banks due to their more attractive price-to-book ratios, Law said.

A Hong Kong-based external spokesman for Postal Savings Bank declined to comment on the valuation.

Even at the bottom end of the price range, Postal Savings Banks first-time share sale would be the largest globally this year, surpassing the $3 billion offering from Danish utility Dong Energy A/S in June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The IPO is set to be the largest globally since e-commerce billionaire Jack Mas Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. priced its $25 billion New York share sale in September 2014, the data show. Bloomberg
A horse strapper at the Macau Jockey Club has been accused by the company for giving an undisclosed substance to one of the horses, with the purpose of influencing the result of a race, the Judiciary Police (PJ) informed in a press conference held yesterday.

According to the information provided by the PJ, the case goes back to April 22, when one of the strappers tried to control the outcome of a race by giving a performance enhancing substance to one of the horses. In reality, the strategy backfired and the horse eventually finished the race last.

Now, according to evidence presented to the company that manages the horse-racing event, the strapper is being accused of being the source of the incident. The employee refuses to accept the accusation, claiming that he is innocent and that he only provided the normal care to the horse.

According to the results of the investigation, the employee is being accused of administrating a substance capable of changing the animals mental and physical condition during the race, which can lead to a punishment of up to three years imprisonment.

In a separate case reported by the police, a man has been accused of an unusual usury crime. Contrary to what usually happens in these cases, the suspect allegedly lent money to another man in order to buy air tickets to get back to his home country.

The amount of money lent, HKD 3,000, was subjected to an interest of HKD 100 per day. The borrower failed to return the money in total but claims, as at September 9, he had already paid HKD 2,500.

After failing to contact the borrower, on September 11 the lender eventually found him in a casino in Cotai and requested him to pay the debt that he claimed not to possess.

The suspect then hit him with his elbow leading the man to call for help from casino security.

Questioned by the police force, the suspect confessed to have lent the HKD 3,000 and to have received a total of HKD 700 as interest. He has been accused of usury.

Tourist accused of insult and disobedience

A tourist from mainland China (42) was accused of aggravated insults and disobedience to authorities, the Public Security Police Force revealed.

The incident occurred on Sunday around 3.10 p.m. when a manager from a hotel phoned the police requesting assistance due to a conflict that was taking place in one of the guest rooms.

According to the hotel manager, it was clear that the man was in an altered state, creating a lot of noise and carrying an intense smell of alcohol.

Police officers sent to the location found the man and tried to calm him but as soon as he saw them he started to address to them using rude language and hurling insults.

The man did not heed the police request and was subsequently taken into custody.

His attitude at the police station did not improve, and the man refused to fill in any forms or provide fingerprints.

He was accused of aggravated insults and disobedience and presented to the Public Prosecutions Office yesterday. RM
Two days after the British Government ordered the expulsion of 25 alleged Soviet spies, the USSR has retaliated by throwing out 25 British nationals.

It follows the defection of Soviet double-agent and KGB chief Oleg Gordievsky to the West.

He gave British security services an unprecedented amount of information about Soviet agents operating in the UK. In fact he had recently been appointed head of the KGB in London in charge of the USSRs whole spy operation in Britain.

He is the highest-ranking KGB espionage source to be identified and his defection was described by Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe as a very substantial coup for our security forces.

The Foreign Office revealed that Mr Gordievsky had been a double agent since 1966. He was persuaded to work for the Danish intelligence service soon after the KGB posted him to Copenhagen posing as a press attache.

Three Soviet diplomats were expelled from Denmark in 1977 thanks to information he gave to the Danes.

In 1982 the KGB sent him to London as a counselor for the Soviet Embassy when he began working for MI5.

Mr Gordievskys revelations are a severe blow to the KGB, but MI5s greatest asset is also gone. It is believed he is behind the expulsion of several other Soviet diplomats in the last few years.

He is now in the hands of British security, along with his wife, after requesting asylum some weeks ago. Precise details of his defection remain unknown.

The British Government had expected some kind of retaliation but was surprised by such a tough response as this is the first time Moscow has sent out an equal number of foreigners in reprisal.

There was a flurry of activity in Whitehall when news broke of the Soviet tit-for-tat expulsions. Sir Geoffrey held meetings with Foreign Office and security service officials to discuss Britains next move and the impact on Anglo-Soviet relations.

President Mikhail Gorbachev and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher have developed a certain personal rapport that has boosted trade between the two countries.

But the current crisis could undermine Anglo-Soviet relations. In a statement Sir Geoffrey said: We utterly condemn this unjustified action directed against British businessmen and journalists, as well as embassy staff.

Although the embassy in Moscow has been hit hard  18 of their 43 diplomats have been told to pack their bags  only two of the 25 people expelled were businessmen. Analysts suggest this means President Gorbachev wants to maintain the trade links that bring in much-needed hard currency.

Courtesy BBC News

In context

Two days later the British government ordered the expulsion of a further six Soviet officials and lowered the ceiling on the number of officials allowed to work in the UK from 211 to 205.

On 18 September the USSR expelled six more Britons at which point UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced a halt to the tit-for-tat expulsions.

Some months later details of Mr Gordievskys dramatic defection emerged.

His KGB bosses in Moscow had suspected him of betraying his country in May 1985 and summoned him back to Russia for interrogation.

He then contacted his handlers who helped him get to the British Embassy. From there he escaped to Finland in the back of a van.

After the British secret service had interrogated him he was flown to the UK with his family. He has since written books detailing the operations of the KGB.
The school year at Haileybury Colleges campus outside Beijing began with three Peoples Liberation Army soldiers marching on a running track as the Chinese national anthem played over loudspeakers. Seven hundred students stood silently in single-file lines, their hands crossed, the international prep schools crest emblazoned on many of their coats and T-shirts.

Then they sang the school song in English before heading off to class in brick-facade buildings modeled on a British prep school.

For most Chinese students, attending a school like this remains unthinkable. But international schools from abroad are booming here thanks to growing demand from parents who are seeking different pathways for their children to attend college overseas, and who can increasingly afford more options. Top prep schools from around the world are opening campuses in the country, often charging higher fees than their flagships and catering to students who want to go to university in the West.

Attending Haileybury costs up to USD28,000 a year. But Haileybury, which opened the Chinese version of its century-old Australian prep school three years ago, nearly doubled its enrollment this year and is considering opening a second campus in China.

Getting into Chinas best public high schools can be monumentally difficult, but regardless of whether their child has the academic chops, many parents are opting to pay for what they see as a less stressful and more enriching experience at an international school.

What they really care about is the happiness of their children, said Wang Dan, an education professor at the University of Hong Kong. Their future return on the students education is one concern, but equally important is the concern for the learning process.

The International School Consultancy, which monitors school trends worldwide, says the demand among Chinese for English-language schools like Haileybury is insatiable. More than 150,000 Chinese students are currently enrolled in international schools, according to the consultancy, which says the number of Chinese who can afford to pay seemingly stratospheric fees for those schools  even if its just a small percentage of the countrys population  will continue to grow, absent a dramatic downturn in Chinas economy.

Chinas top public high schools are intensely competitive and often criticized as excessively test-driven. Before their teenage years, children study long hours for entrance exams, often with high-priced private tutors. And at the end of high school, students take the notoriously difficult Chinese college entrance exam, the Gaokao, where a bad score can relegate a good student to a lesser university.

A massive government-ordered expansion of higher education over the last decade has produced many marginal colleges whose degrees count for little. That makes an overseas education even more attractive.

Western prep schools in China advertise a smoother pathway to university overseas, with teaching that emphasizes critical thinking over memorization and classes based on the International Baccalaureate program or others recognized abroad.

Once limited mainly to foreign children, international schools have been allowed during the last two decades to open campuses for Chinese students jointly with local companies. And while the Chinese government has sought to tighten its ideological control over textbooks and limit perceived Western influences, the international schools offer a valuable infusion of new teaching methods and options for Chinas middle class.

That opening has brought in some of the worlds biggest brand names, joining long-established international schools in Beijing and Shanghai. Britains Dulwich College now runs schools for Chinese students in the eastern city of Suzhou and the southern city of Zhuhai; Britains Hurtwood House operates in association with a school in eastern Ningbo.

William Vanbergen, managing director of the Shanghai school consulting firm BE Education, predicts many more Western schools will enter China in the coming years. Some schools are already struggling to maintain their enrollment, but for most, China presents a fantastic opportunity to build a global profile, he said.

Chinese parents are very smart, Vanbergen said. They demand the very best, and its going to become quite clear which operations are good and which are not.

Haileybury established its first program in China in 2001. Nick Dwyer, the school CEO, said the schools executives had long been seeking a local company with which to partner on its own campus.

Its a tough ask for any student to go as a foreign student to another country, Dwyer said. Here, we are offering the Australian product tailored in such a way that the Chinese students are at the center of the project, not off to one side.

Eventually, the school reached a deal with a state-owned development company to build a tree-lined campus between Beijing and the port city of Tianjin, featuring a towering administration building with two turrets thats a replica of Londons Eton College prep school.

The campus anchors a development of high-rise residential towers and single-family homes. Haileybury leases the campus and charges higher tuition in China than in Australia.

Dwyer described the school as Australian in its traditions, presented in Chinese dress. Teachers give lessons in both English and Chinese, and events like its opening ceremony are adaptations of Australian assemblies. Hallways are marked as English-speaking zones. The school offers a modified version of the standard Chinese curriculum until high school levels, and then classes based on Australias Victoria Certificate of Education.

Haileyburys first class of about 25 students graduates this fall. Their success will be a huge test for the school, Dwyer said. For the school to be successful, he said, every graduate must be admitted into college or a prep school en route to college.

Most of them must get a pathway into university, and the rest of them must get a pathway that they will transition into university, Dwyer said.

But already, Haileybury is successfully recruiting new families and moving toward profitability. Dwyer said he expects to break even this year.

Cheng Rui, a marketing consultant in Beijing, was touring Haileybury last month with his 9-year-old son. Cheng had enrolled his son previously in a bilingual program sponsored by a top Chinese university. But he saw his son feeling constant pressure and not being able to communicate with foreigners on a family vacation to the United States and Canada, despite having taken English classes in school.

It will be more enriching and distinctive for him in terms of developing his interests, and he will be under less pressure than students at traditional Chinese schools, Cheng said.

I wish to see him develop at his own pace, he added.

While Chinas economic boom has allowed millions of families to afford options like Haileybury, international schools remain out of reach for the vast majority of Chinese.

Zeng Xiaodong, a professor at Beijing Normal University, said she understood that parents who could afford those schools were seeking a pathway for their children to understand the future and be a member of the international world. But those options remain closed to rural families and dont solve the inequity of the overall system, she said.

Wang, the University of Hong Kong professor, said Chinas overall system may eventually benefit from the introduction of new teaching methods by international schools. But for now, particularly in rural areas, poor and even many middle-class children dont have access to better teaching, while upper-middle-class children are increasingly learning in a separate system.

The inequality of China right now is really dividing the population, and each group is playing a different game, she said. Nomaan Merchant, Tianjin, AP
Relatives of some of the 239 passengers and crew on missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 called yesterday for more of its possible debris to be examined to define a new search area.

Malaysia, China and Australia agreed in July that the search in the southern Indian Ocean would be suspended after the current 120,000-square kilometer expanse has been thoroughly examined with deep sea sonar equipment in the absence of credible new evidence that identified the planes location.

Eight relatives of lost passengers who met with Australian officials coordinating the search on behalf of Malaysia expressed frustration that they were not given a definition of what constituted credible new evidence that would result in a continuation of the search.

American wreckage hunter Blaine Gibson attended the meeting at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau headquarters with the relatives from Malaysia, China, Australia and Indonesia and handed over to investigators five pieces of potential debris that he found on beaches in Madagascar. Two of the pieces were burnt, which could indicate a disastrous fire on board, he said.

Gibson previously found a panel from Flight 370 in Mozambique. Malaysia has yet to collect other potential debris that Blaine has found washed up on Madagascar since June and handed to authorities there.

I hope that the search will go on and in my amateur opinion this constitutes new, credible evidence that justifies continuing the search, Gibson told reporters of his unconfirmed debris find.

Some confirmed pieces of debris have washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean, and the families believe other items yet to be examined may be clues to the planes location.

Grace Nathan, a Malaysian whose mother was on the Boeing 777 that vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014, said governments should be coordinating a search for debris and using drift modeling to define a new area to search after the current search is to be completed in December.

We want to call on the three nations  Australia, China and Malaysia  to make a concerted effort to go out and look for this credible new information, Nathan said.

Its very impressive that one private individual citizen, Blaine Alan Gibson, has managed to find up to 15 pieces of aircraft debris and we hope that these three nations do more than just hope by fluke people find more debris, she added.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau confirmed in a statement that it had received debris from Gibson and was seeking advice from Malaysia on how Australia should proceed.

Jennifer Chong, a Melbourne-based Malaysian-Australian dual citizen whose husband was aboard Flight 370, wondered why Malaysia had not sent diplomats to the five-hour meeting with Australian search officials. China and Indonesia both sent diplomats to support their citizens.

Oceanographers are analyzing the first piece of wreckage found, a wing flap known as a flaperon that washed up on Reunion Island off the African coast in July last year  16 months after the plane went missing  in the hope of narrowing a possible next area adjoining the current search boundary through drift modeling.

A wing flap found on Tanzania is also being examined at Australian Transport Safety Bureau headquarters for clues. Search officials expect more Flight 370 wreckage to wash up in the months ahead.

Sheryl Keen, chairwoman of Air Crash Support Group, which is supporting the relatives during their week in Australia, called on Malaysia to collect the debris found by Gibson on Madagascar and to consider handing responsibility for the search to Australia. Rod McGuirk, Canberra, AP
In a city where Taoist and Buddhist rituals are part of the culture, we often see people carrying out Chinese religious rituals, whether or not they are religious. One such ritual is Jingxiang  (offering joss sticks). We see people Jingxiang on wedding days, at the opening ceremony of businesses, during Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, when moving into a new apartment, and especially at funerals, when each guest has to offer three joss sticks.

These rituals have become such an intricate part of our lives that we do not pay much attention to them until we are asked about the meaning of burning joss sticks. I was asked why some people offer super-sized joss sticks, and if ones prayers will be better heard or ones wishes granted faster with a bigger stick. It left me wondering about the obsession of burning joss sticks on different occasions, so I started researching the practice of Jingxiang.

As a kid, I had the understanding that joss sticks were food for the spirits, and were burnt to feed the gods and ancestors. Perhaps I got that idea from Hong Kong ghost movies, where we were shown ghosts inhaling smoke from joss sticks to curb their hunger. But after reading about rituals in Taoism and Buddhism, and their usage of joss sticks, it turns out that they are not food, but exactly what they look like  just incense, lit up for meditation and prayers.

In both Taoism and Buddhism, Jingxiang usually requires three joss sticks. In Taoism, the three sticks remind believers to meditate on the Dao (the way), the Jing (the script), and the Shi (ancestors of Taoism)  the three treasures of Taoism. The smoke rising from the burning incense represents prayers being brought into the sky, not unlike the incense used in Christianity and Judaism.

According to Buddhism, the three joss sticks represent precepts, concentration and wisdom, respectively. With the first joss stick, we are reminded of our bad habits, thoughts and practices that we need to quit. The second joss stick represents inner calmness and concentration that we can achieve by quitting bad habits. The third joss stick represents wisdom from heaven that we gain in life; only through calm, concentrated meditation can we achieve that.

Therefore, by lighting three joss sticks, we are not trying to feed the spirits.

The joss sticks are not always offerings to the gods for granting our wishes either, although that is the more common reason for people burning joss sticks everyday. They represent the cause and effect in achieving true wisdom, and serve as reminders of the path to wisdom, while the smell of the incense assists in meditation, like aromatherapy.

But why do participants have to offer three joss sticks at funerals? Apparently, they are also lit for meditations on behalf of the deceased, perhaps about life and death; followed by moments of silence, or prayers for the deceased.

So, back to the ultimate question. Does the size of the joss sticks matter? Well, if the lighting of the joss sticks is to be followed by silent meditation, one should say the smaller the joss stick, the better, right? Imagine how long one needs to sit for a meter-long joss stick to burn through. Although a large joss stick will definitely get attention  if not from heaven, at least from the people around.
The New Macau Association (ANM) is organizing an online petition to support Hong Kong in opposing political violence. Lawmaker Ng Kuok Cheong, together with social activists Scott Chiang, Sulu Sou and Kin Long Wong, are among the organizers.

The groups decision to take action was influenced by recent issues regarding Hong Kongs newly elected lawmaker Eddie Chu Hoi-dick. Earlier, Chu received 84,121 votes in Hong Kongs Legislative Council elections. Since his election, Chu claims that he and his family have been facing death threats due to his intention to fight the collusion between Hong Kongs rural strongmen and the government.

We feel angry from the death threats against Eddie Chu. This is not just an attack to Eddie Chu, but also an attack to democracy, to freedom and to the rule of law. It is the enemy of all people who embrace these values, the ANM petition reads.

Edward Leung Tin-Kei, Andy Chan Ho-tin, James Chan Kwok-keung, in addition to previous candidates for Hong Kong Legislative Council election, were banned from the recent election campaign. The camp of another candidate, Wong Yeung-tat, was also attacked during a campaign activity on the streets during the election.

The above mentioned incidents are considered by the petition organizers as covering tangibly physical violence, invisible spiritual violence, as well as institutional violence. The petition adds that same as many people in Hong Kong, we will not tolerate [this].

The petition also declares that any government has the responsibility to protect the basic rights and freedom of its residents. The organizers urge the government to ensure the residents safety and freedom regardless of its political stance.

Moreover, the organizers noted that Macau is facing a similar downward political situation, along with Hong Kong, under Chinas one country, two systems. Anyone who believes in democracy and freedom, besides fighting alone to the end, should help each other all along, the petition reads, adding that the organizers oppose and condemn any kind of political violence.

Regarding the petition, Jason Chao, vice president of ANM, told the Times that Hong Kong and Macau share the same faith.

Last week, Chao wrote a report calling friends from Hong Kong to not visit Macau, as several abnormal incidents have been happening to related groups, including a suspicious cyber-attack to his online news agency website, and he being stalked. JZ
North Korea is capable of detonating another nuclear device at its main atomic test site any time it chooses, Seoul officials said yesterday, as the United States reportedly planned to send two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers to the South in a show of force against Pyongyang.

The speculation came three days after the North conducted its fifth atomic bomb explosion. Fridays test was the Norths most powerful test to date, and its claim to have used standardized warheads has sparked worries it was making headway in its push to develop small and sophisticated warheads to be topped on missiles.

After the test, the Norths nuclear weapons institute said it will take unspecified measures to further boost its nuclear capability, which analysts said hinted at a possible sixth nuclear test.

South Koreas Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said yesterday that South Korea and U.S. intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device anytime at one of its tunnels at its main Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place.

Moon refused to say what specific evidence pointed to another possible nuclear test. But Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified Seoul government sources, reported Monday there were signs the North had finished test preparations at one tunnel that has never been used. Yonhap did not elaborate.

Seoul, Washington and their allies vowed to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.

Bad weather delayed for at least 24 hours a U.S. plan to send warplanes from Guam to South Korea, as it has done after past provocations by North Korea.

Yonhap said the U.S. military will try again today to fly two B-1 bombers, capable of carrying 24 atomic weapons, over its main air base near Seoul. The U.S. military said some aircraft will be deployed Tuesday but declined to disclose what type or how many planes.

South Koreas military on Friday revealed it has retaliation plans involving precision-strike missiles and special operations forces for direct attacks on the Norths leadership in the case of a North Korean nuclear attack.

Yonhap said Sunday that the plan would turn areas in Pyongyang, where the Norths war commanders were likely to hide, into ashes and eliminate those places from the map permanently. South Koreas Defense Ministry said it would not comment on the report.

South Korea has previously avoided harsh rhetoric against North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un but after Fridays nuclear test, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Kims mental state is spiraling out of control and that his government has fanatic recklessness.

North Koreas propaganda machine, for its part, has kept up its typical anti-Seoul threats and crude insults against Park, calling her hideous confrontation manic and the Korean nations biggest trouble-maker. It previously called Park a prostitute. Park said Monday the danger of war and a possibility of North Korean provocations could loom on the Korean Peninsula. Hyung-Jin Kim, Seoul, AP

North Koreas foreign minister departs for UN meeting

North Koreas Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho departed Pyongyang yeserday for a pair of international meetings, including the U.N. General Assembly in New York, just days after North Koreas latest nuclear test.

Ri plans to attend the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Venezuela and then go on to the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

It will be Ris first time to attend the General Assembly as foreign minister. He was named to the post at a major ruling party congress held in May.
The Chinese and Russian navies launched eight days of war games in the South China Sea yesterday, in a sign of growing cooperation between their armed forces against the backdrop of regional territorial disputes.

The Joint Sea-2016 maneuvers include ships, submarines, ship-borne helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, along with marines and amphibious armored vehicles who will conduct live-firing exercises, according to an earlier Defense Ministry statement.

Tasks will include defensive and rescue drills, anti-submarine exercises and the simulated seizure of an enemy island by marines from both sides.

The exercise is part of an annual program which aims to consolidate and advance the Sino-Russian comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, and deepen friendly and practical cooperation between the two militaries, Chinese navy spokesman Liang Yang was quoted as saying.

It will also improve coordination between the two navies on joint defense operations at sea, Liang said.

Chinas South Sea Fleet will make up the bulk of the forces, along with some elements from the North and East Sea fleets, Liang said.

The ministry didnt say exactly where the drills would be held in the South China Sea, the site of heated territorial disputes between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors. However, the official Xinhua News Agency said the Russian ships arrived early Monday in the Guangdong province port of Zhanjiang and the exercises would be held off the Guangdong coast, apparently in waters that are not in dispute.

Joint Chinese-Russian drills have become increasingly common in recent years  this weeks exercises are the fifth between the two navies since 2012  with the countries joined in their mutual suspicion of the U.S. and its allies. Christopher Bodeen, Beijing, AP
Hundreds of Taiwanese workers in tourism-related businesses rallied in the capital yesterday to draw attention to a sharp decline in Chinese visitors that is putting their industry under heavy strain.

Workers marched down a central street in Taipei before gathering outside the Presidential Office Building. They called for the preservation of jobs and assistance to the industry, including allowing the owners of tour buses to delay their loan payments.

We only want the right to work. If (Chinese tourists) do not come, we cannot work. This is just our need, said tour guide Debby Huang, 41.

Workers also urged the government to encourage domestic tourism and allow visa-free entry for travelers from the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations as an inducement to visit.

The number of Chinese visitors has fallen since Beijing began discouraging travel to the island following the May inauguration of independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen.

Tsai has refused to endorse Beijings concept that Taiwan is part of a single Chinese nation, and reducing tourism is seen as one of the easiest and least risky ways of pressuring her government.

Accidents and an unwelcoming attitude among some Taiwanese are also blamed for contributing to the decline in Chinese visitors.

Government figures say the number of visitors from China has fallen by 22 percent since Tsais election compared to the same period last year. Chinese made up about 40 percent of tourist arrivals last year.

The government has already offered almost USD960 million to bail out the industry. AP
For weeks, Hillary Clinton dismissed questions about her health as little more than a conspiracy theory, part of a wacky strategy cooked up by rival Donald Trump as he embraced an alternative reality.

Those concerns are now unavoidable, made real by Clintons abrupt departure from a 9/11 anniversary ceremony and a video showing the Democratic nominee staggering and eventually slumping forward before being held up by three people as she was helped into a van.

The damage was compounded by the nearly eight hours of silence from Clinton and her team about the health scare, as well as the Sunday evening disclosure she had been diagnosed on Friday with pneumonia.

Clintons doctor said the 68-year-old former secretary of state became overheated and dehydrated at the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan. Dr. Lisa R. Barback said Clinton was examined at her home in suburban New York and is now rehydrated and recovering nicely.

But less than two months from Election Day, it was a problematic visual for Clinton as she tries to project the vigor needed for one of the worlds most demanding jobs. Late Sunday, she canceled plans to travel to California for two days of fundraising, campaign events and an appearance on Ellen DeGeneres talk show.

No longer can Trumps questions about Clintons physical stamina be summarily dismissed. The episode was also sure to fuel a vocal group of online conspiracy theorists, deemed healthers by some Clinton supporters, who point to videos and photos of Clinton as evidence of her poor health.

In phone-in television interviews yesterday, Trump was uncharacteristically subdued about Clintons health issues. On CNBC, he said he takes no satisfaction from her problems. On Fox News, he said he hopes she gets well and gets back on the trail and well be seeing her at the debate. The first of three debates is scheduled for Sept. 26.

Trump also said he had a physical last week and will release detailed health information when he gets the results, which are expected in coming days. I think theyre going to be good. I feel great, he said on Fox and Friends.

Both candidates have so far released only limited health records.

The incident compounds a difficult time for Clinton as the race enters its final stretch. Despite Trumps numerous missteps, the race remains close and many Americans view Clinton as untrustworthy.

On Friday, Clinton told donors that half of Trumps supporters are in a basket of deplorables  a comment that drew sharp criticism from Republicans. Clinton later said she regretted applying that description to half of Trumps backers, but stuck by her assertion that the he has given a platform to hateful views and voices.

Trump called Clintons remarks the biggest mistake of the political season. On Fox, he said that being elected to the White House means: Youre the president of all the people.

On Sunday, Clinton left the 9/11 memorial an hour earlier than planned. She had spent about 90 minutes standing with other dignitaries in the sun on a warm and humid day.

Her departure was not witnessed by the reporters who travel with her campaign. Aides provided no information about why she left or her whereabouts for nearly two hours. Clintons spokesman Nick Merrill eventually said Clinton had gone to her daughters nearby apartment, but refused to say whether she had required medical attention.

Clinton exited the apartment on her own, wearing sunglasses and carrying a handbag. She waved to reporters and said, Im feeling great. Its a beautiful day in New York. She was then driven to her home in Chappaqua, New York.

Bardack said in the statement that Clinton has had an allergy-related cough, and that during an exam on Friday, was diagnosed with pneumonia, put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule.

Unlikely previous presidential candidates, both Clinton and Trump have opted not to travel with whats known as the protective pool  a small group of journalists that follow the candidate everywhere.

The goal is to keep the public informed about their condition, whereabouts and official interactions at all times. For a president, who always travels with a protective pool, an hours-long gap without knowledge of their whereabouts could spark unrest in the financial markets and international concern.

Trump and his supporters have hinted at Clintons potential health issues for months, questioning her energy when she takes routine days off the campaign trail and reviving questions about a concussion she sustained in 2012 after fainting. Her doctor attributed that episode to a stomach virus and dehydration.

Doctors said Sunday that pneumonia is commonly treated quickly and effectively with antibiotics. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, said that based on the available information, this should not in any way impede her function going forward. Lisa Lerer & Julie Pace,

White Plains, N.Y., AP
A poll that was released Monday showing Idaho's Republican incumbents in Congress well ahead in their re-election battles with the state Supreme Court race far too close to call, and a separate survey showed both the state's senators have higher favorable than unfavorable numbers, although the approval rating for both was less than 50 percent.

And U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, who is running for re-election against Democrat Jerry Sturgill, released his first campaign ad today, featuring a brief shot of the Perrine Bridge.

Idaho Politics Weekly announces the results of a new poll by the Salt Lake City firm Dan Jones and Associates pretty much every Monday, and this week's poll shows Crapo up 57-20-4 over Sturgill and Constitution Party candidate Ray Writz, and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, the Republican whose district includes the Magic Valley, up 65-23-12 over Democrat Jennifer Martinez and Constitution Party candidate Anthony Tomkins. U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador, whose represents the western part of the state, was up 51-33 over Democrat James Piotrowski. There were still a lot of undecideds in the Senate race and the race for Labrador's seat, but 0 percent of those polled said they were undecided on Simpson/Martinez/Tomkins.

The company polled 602 voters  335 in Labrador's First district, 280 in the Second  from Aug. 18 to 31. The margin of error is 4 percent for the statewide numbers, 5 percent in the First, 6 percent in the Second.

As for the Supreme Court race, the survey found 21 percent support for Curt McKenzie, 18 percent for Robyn Brody, and 61 percent undecided.

There are 55 days until Election Day, and we'll see how these numbers change as we get closer to the election and everyone's campaigns start to ramp up. Crapo released his first TV ad Tuesday, in which he talks about his support for balancing the federal budget and reducing the debt, an issue he has talked about a lot over the past couple of years  it's a big part of the presentations he gives at the town hall meetings he's been holding throughout the state. He looks to be driving over the Perrine Bridge in the ad, and around the 20-second mark, you can see a shot of the bridge from the Jerome side, with the shopping plaza that includes Sportsman's Warehouse, Best Buy and Old Navy on the Twin Falls side in the corner of the screen.

Also on Tuesday, Morning Consult released the results of a survey of almost 72,000 registered voters it has been working on since May, asking their opinions of their U.S. senators. Crapo was about in the middle of the pack, with 49 percent approval, 28 percent disapproval and 23 percent undecided, and U.S. Sen. Jim Risch was lower (17th from the bottom in approval numbers) with 43 percent approval, 30 percent disapproval, and 28 percent undecided.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the most popular senator in his home state with 87 percent approval, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is the most unpopular, with 51 percent of those surveyed in Kentucky disapproving of him.
TWIN FALLS  Donald Trumps hard-liner stance on immigration helped him cinch the GOP nomination, but its causing concern for farmers in southern Idaho who largely vote Republican but rely on immigrant labor to milk cows, plant crops and harvest food.

Trump pledged earlier in the campaign to round up and deport all of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States  a policy farmers say would be especially disastrous for the Magic Valley dairy industry, home to 73 percent of the states 562,000 milk cows.

By some estimates, the Magic Valley dairy industry could lose 2,000 workers in a Trump presidency.

He talks in a strong tone about border security, said Bob Naerebout, president of the Idaho Dairymens Association. Thats fine. Border security is a primary issue. But with border security must come a strong immigration program, and Trump hasnt addressed that issue.

Naerebout, who said he was speaking for himself and not necessarily all the members of his association, raised other questions about Trumps plan:

How would we replace the deported workers?

How do we legally bring in labor and what would be those numbers be?

Will there be a visa program for year-round ag?

What does the immigration program look like?

Many immigrants come to the U.S. on temporary visas  the H-2A visa in the case of seasonal farm workers. But there is no visa for year-round farm workers, such as full-time dairy workers, so many remain illegally to keep their jobs.

Recently, Trump has appeared to soften on immigration  in a major speech earlier this month, he did not commit to deporting every undocumented immigrant  yet he has continued to vow that immigrants living here illegally would have no path to legal status in his administration.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has proposed a path to citizenship for the undocumented workers already here.

The contrasting policies has Idahos agriculture industries closely following the presidential campaigns.

We need workers, John Thompson, an Idaho Farm Bureau Federation spokesman in Pocatello, said Monday. People dont go to dairies to find work. But Hispanics are willing to take those jobs. Our food supply system depends on those people.

How many is tough to say.

The dairy cattle and milk production industry employs a little more than 5,000 in the Magic Valley, according to the Idaho Department of Labor. But pinning down the exact number of undocumented workers is difficult. Employers are reluctant to talk, and most undocumented workers live in the shadows.

In 2012, the Pew Research Center estimated about 43 percent of Idahos farm workers are undocumented. The National Milk Producers Federation says more than half of the nations dairy workers are immigrants.

It commissioned a study in 2014 to gauge the consequences of losing immigrant labor. More than 7,000 dairies would close, milk would shoot to $6.40 a gallon, 2 million cows would be culled, and the effect on the U.S. economy could approach $32 billion, according to the report.

Agriculture would not be the only industry impacted by the loss of a significant chunk of the workforce.

At a time when unemployment is low  3.3 percent in the Twin Falls area  sending 11 million unauthorized workers out of the country would leave as many jobs unfilled. And regional employers are already nervous about a looming job shortage as the local economy continues to grow.

On Thursday, Ethan Mansfield, a regional labor economist for the Labor Department, told Magic Valley economic development leaders that projections show there may be 5,000 too few workers to fill the number of jobs expected to be created over the next decade.

Losing immigrant labor would have deep ripple effects beyond agriculture, said Naerebout, the dairy industry association president. Agriculture is just an entry point to working in the U.S. Once settled, many immigrants go on to do construction, landscaping, hospitality and medical-services jobs.

Some foreign-born workers stay in agriculture, but their kids go to college and go on to other occupations, he said. Its not a new trend  this is typical and ongoing.
TWIN FALLS  Precision Aviation Inc. would like to welcome Drew Bishop to its flight operations.

Bishop comes from a flying family in the Magic Valley and has been involved in aviation for many years. He is a graduate of Boise State University. He is a licensed commercial pilot in addition to being a flight instructor, instrument flight instructor and multi-engine flight instructor.
TWIN FALLS  J.V. (John) Evans, III, executive vice president and regional credit officer of D.L. Evans Bank in Boise, was recently elected as the 2016/17 chair of the board of directors for the Idaho Bankers Association. He succeeds Don Melendez, Idaho Regional President of Wells Fargo Bank (Boise).

Evans is a fifth-generation Idaho banker. He began his banking career with D.L. Evans Bank in 1992 as a part-time bookkeeper and teller. After receiving his Bachelor of Science in finance from the University of Idaho he returned to D.L. Evans Bank as a commercial/agricultural loan officer in Twin Falls. Evans is also a graduate of Pacific Coast Graduate School of Banking and the Western Bankers Association Commercial Lending School.

Evans is the former president and director of the Idaho Community Bankers Association, former director of the Independent Community Bankers of America, and former director and vice chairman of the Idaho Elks Rehabilitation Hospital.
ARCO  Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is encouraging all fourth-graders to visit the park for free this year as part of the Every Kid in a Park program. The program gives fourth-grade students, and those accompanying them, free access to more than 2,000 federally managed lands and waters.

Visit EveryKidinaPark.gov to download the pass.

Craters of the Moon is home to some of best preserved examples of basaltic volcanism in the world. The seven-mile park loop road provides visitors access to lava flows, volcanoes and lava tube caves.

Craters was selected to receive a 2016 field trip grant from the National Park Foundation to support the Every Kid in a Park program. The $9,000 grant, administered locally with the support of the Craters of the Moon Natural History Association, will provide transportation for fourth-graders from local schools to visit the park as part of the parks A Trip to the Moon program, which also includes a ranger visit to each fourth-grade class. Thanks to the grant, about 1,000 students from southern Idaho will be able to complement their classroom experience with an in-person park visit.

The Every Kid in a Park pass  which features a new design for this years students  is valid for a full calendar year starting Sept. 1. The pass grants free entry for fourth-graders and up to three accompanying adults (or an entire car for drive-in parks) to most federally managed lands and waters, including national parks, forests, wildlife refuges and marine sanctuaries.

The newly expanded Every Kid in a Park website has links to educational activities, trip planning, field trip options, the downloadable pass and more information in English and Spanish. After completing a fun educational activity, the child can download and print a pass. The paper pass can be traded for a more durable pass at federal sites nationwide.
A normal winter and a wet spring in many areas of Idaho provided a mixed bag of broods with some areas reporting large populations of birds compared with last year and others spotty or lower, but still similar to long-term averages.

Many of the reports are based on field observations from biologists and other Idaho Department of Fish and Game personnel, while others are based on established, long-term surveys that help determine population trends.

Like most hunting, location is critical for upland birds, and regardless of season forecasts, hunters should cover lots of ground and remember that if birds arent in your favorite hunting spot, that doesnt mean they dont exist. Hunters are encouraged to keep moving and trying new areas, and also pay attention to seasonal changes in habitat use. Birds can, and will, move based on weather conditions and seasons.

Upland game birds are a favorite of many experienced hunters, and also a great opportunity for novice hunters. The birds are found throughout the state, theres lots of land available to hunt, and in many cases, all you need is a hunting license and a shotgun to hunt them.

Fish and Game manages 32 wildlife management areas throughout the state, which can be good places to start before seeking other areas. The department also leases about 360,000 acres through its Access Yes! program that pays private landowners to allow public hunting on their lands.

Magic Valley

Heres the 2016 outlook for Fish and Games Magic Valley region: Warm and dry weather during spring and summer were generally favorable for upland bird nesting and brood rearing. Department personnel are reporting average numbers of broods for all upland game species. Generally, bird numbers are similar this year compared with the 2015 season and slightly higher than average.

Call the Magic Valley Regional Office at 208-324-4359 to learn more about upland game bird status and trends.

Pheasant: Stable from last year; 10-year trend is down.

Pheasant numbers have remained relatively low in the Magic Valley since the mid-1980s because of changes in farming practices and the resultant loss of habitat. Pheasant stocking will continue at Niagara Springs Wildlife Management Area. Hunters might also want to obtain a Wildlife Tracts map from the Magic Valley regional office that shows the locations of 284 tracts of public land with nearly 33,000 acres that provide upland bird hunting opportunity.

Columbian sharp-tailed grouse: Up from last year; 10-year trend is stable.

Spring lek surveys and anecdotal information suggest sharp-tailed grouse numbers may have experienced a small decrease during the past decade. However, populations remain strong and currently provide liberal hunting opportunities (Oct. 1-31; two-bird daily bag). The best hunting is typically in or near fields enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. Fields with a forb component (for example, alfalfa) are typically the best. If conditions are dry, hunters should expect early movement of grouse up into mountain shrub communities (serviceberry) and to areas where green forbs can still be found. Land enrolled in the Access Yes! program in Cassia, Power and Oneida counties provide ample access to hunting areas. You can get a guide to Access Yes! properties at Fish and Game offices and at many license vendors.

Chukar: Up from last year; 10-year trend is stable.

No chukar surveys are conducted in the Magic Valley region, but early reports from around the region suggest that hunters should find a similar number of birds compared with last year.

Gray partridge: Up from last year; 10-year-trend is stable.

The 2015 harvest was above average. Given better habitat conditions, hunters should expect to find a similar number of birds compared with last year. Reports from the field indicate a good number of broods.

California quail: Up from last year; 10-year trend is up.

During the past several years, quail hunting has been very good in the Magic Valley and it appears there is another above-average crop this year. Hunters should expect to find areas with abundant quail along the Snake River and its tributaries west of Twin Falls, although good quail numbers are also being observed as far north as Shoshone.

Forest grouse (dusky, ruffed, spruce): Up from last year; 10-year trend is stable.

No population surveys are conducted in the Magic Valley, but anecdotal reports from field personnel and early reports suggest a good hatch and higher fall populations of dusky grouse in the northern portions of the region.
TWIN FALLS  The Bureau of Land Management Twin Falls District Resource Advisory Council will meet 9 a.m. Wednesday at the BLM district office, 2878 Addison Ave. E. in Twin Falls. Public comment and questions will be taken from 9:15-9:45 a.m.

In the morning, there will be a travel management planning training, an overview of the 2016 fire season and a presentation highlighting the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Federal Land and Policy Management Act. The afternoon will include an update on the implementation guidance for Greater Sage-Grouse plans and Burley, Jarbidge and Shoshone Field Office reports.

The BLM Twin Falls District RAC is a 15-member advisory panel that provides advice and recommendations to the BLM on resource and land management issues for approximately 3.9 million acres of federal public lands within 10 counties in south-central Idaho. Meetings are open to the public, and attendees are welcome to address the council during the comment period.
BURLEY  A Burley woman is charged with aggravated battery with an enhancement penalty for using a deadly weapon after police say she conked a man on the back of the head with a vase after an argument.

Geniva M. Alvarez, 21, posted a $10,000 bond and was released from the Mini-Cassia Criminal Justice Center on Sept. 6.

Police say the man filed a complaint on Aug. 1 and said he was over at his baby mamas house when the two started arguing.

He told police Alvarez started yelling at him to get out.

According to court records, the man said he turned around to leave and Alvarez threw hot water on his back. The man said he took off his shirt and yelled at her, then opened the door to walk out.

When he turned his back on her, she struck him in the back of his head with a glass vase, he said.

He told police he was stunned for a moment and then realized he was looking down and could see shards of green and multi-colored glass all over the porch.

He said when he left, Alvarez was hitting herself and saying she was going to tell police he beat her up.

Cassia County Sheriff deputies said the man had a one-inch cut on the back of his head.

When a deputy arrived at Alvarezs home, he saw what appeared to be pieces of pottery on the porch.

Alvarez told police that she had several similar pieces of pottery around her yard that matched the type of pottery pieces on the porch.

Alvarez denied hitting the man and deputies failed to locate any blood in or on the mans vehicle.

She is set to be arraigned Sept. 19 in Cassia County Magistrate Court.
TWIN FALLS  College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center director Zeze Rwasama will be recognized by the JRM Foundation for Humanity as one of 10 recipients of the 2016 Idaho Hometown Heroes award.

A ceremony is slated for Saturday at Idaho State Universitys Stephens Performing Arts Center in Pocatello.

Originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwasama now lives in Twin Falls.

As CSI Refugee Center director, he works to educate, integrate and build bridges between refugees and their new communities, according to a statement from the foundation.

The free public celebration will include a special guest  2016 Olympic medalist and U.S. world champion fencer Miles Chamley-Watson, a JRM Foundation good faith ambassador.

Keynote speaker Peggy Elliott Goldwyn will give a presentation on Strengthening Community Ties.

Events begin at 3 p.m. with the Konners Car Show, which runs until 6 p.m. at the Performing Arts Center.

The center will also host the JRM Foundations Partner Expo from 4:30-6 p.m.

The Idahos Hometown Hero medal ceremony will take place that night, along with the keynote address.

Following the medal ceremony, the dinner and gala event celebration  a ticketed event  will take place at 8 p.m.

Each year, Idahoans submit nominations online for the Idahos Hometown Hero Medal.

Established in 2011, Idahos Hometown Hero Medal pays tribute to those who show unique characteristics, achievements and remarkable commitment to creating better, safer communities across Idaho.
TWIN FALLS  School trustees unanimously approved a $1.77 million emergency levy Monday night to handle an influx of students in Twin Falls schools.

Money will be used for more math books and supplies, and to hire eight paraeducators to help in elementary school classrooms with large numbers of students.

As Twin Falls population continues to grow and new businesses come in, the Twin Falls School District is feeling the impact.

Enrollment is up 270 students  about 3 percent  over last year, for a total of 9,271.

Trustee Bryan Matsuoka asked where new students are coming from.

At the elementary level, were just getting growth in the community, Superintendent Wiley Dobbs said.

School boards are allowed to pursue an emergency levy by the second week of September if average daily attendance rates are higher than the previous year. It doesnt have to be approved by voters.

The school districts budget advisory committee recommended a $1.77 million levy  the maximum possible amount.

Fiscal affairs director Bob Seaman said the levy rate will increase slightly for property owners.

Average daily attendance is used to calculate how much money the school district can seek for an emergency levy.

This school year, there are about 200 more elementary schoolers and 70 more middle and high school students. The school district also had 137 students who transferred into the district from surrounding communities.

As for class sizes, the school district is aiming for 21 students in kindergarten through third grades and 25 or 26 in fourth or fifth grades.

Sometimes our projections are spot on, and sometimes theyre a little off, Dobbs said.

There are optimal class sizes in nearly every area, he said. But he noted eight classrooms out of 175 are larger than optimal.

A couple of parents attended the meeting, concerned about class sizes. They stayed afterward to talk with school district employees.

Stacey Hallmark told school trustees that she and her family recently moved from New York to the Magic Valley.

She has two children in the Twin Falls School District. Her youngest is a kindergartner at Morningside Elementary School and there are 27 students in his class.

A class that large is difficult to handle, she said, and she supports hiring another teacher or paraprofessional for that grade level.

Its impossible to find a teacher at this time of year, Dobbs said, which is why the district is seeking to hire paraprofessionals.

Overall, each of the nine elementary schools are under capacity. Many have at least 100 fewer students than last year.

Thats because Rock Creek and Pillar Falls elementary schools opened in August, paid for by a nearly $74 million bond voters approved in 2014.

Over the last decade, enrollment across the school district has increased from 2 to 4 percent each year.

The school board has approved an emergency levy each fall in recent years.

Emergency levies are a topic of conversation across the Magic Valley this time of year.

Last week, Kimberlys school board approved a $79,008 emergency levy. On the third day of school, attendance was up more than 100 students compared with the same day last year.

During their meeting, trustees also:

Heard an update from the Twin Falls Education Association co-presidents Peggy Hoy and Mike Wilkinson.

Hoy thanked the school board for its support. I think weve made some progress in the last few years, she said about teacher contract negotiations, and she hopes that continues.

Recognized employees of the month from Morningside Elementary School: librarian Kay Rehn and second-grade teacher Aleathea Gingell.

Recognized school principals Nancy Murphy from Pillar Falls Elementary School and Shari Cowger from Rock Creek Elementary School, along with their teams, for their work in opening two new schools.

Dobbs presented plaques  clear plastic with the Times-News story about the grand opening ceremonies inside  to each of the principals.

Heard a facilities update report.

The school district came in more than $439,000 under budget for constructing Rock Creek Elementary School and the project finished three months ahead of schedule, director of operations Brady Dickinson said.

Money was used for a new gymnasium floor and bleachers at Twin Falls High School  a much-needed project the district wasnt previously able to fund, he said.

Construction of Pillar Falls Elementary also came in under budget.

A total of $1.3 million in safety upgrades are underway, including new high-definition security cameras. This school year, new cameras will be installed at one elementary school per month.

Priorities for the next year are the construction of South Hills Middle School, an expansion project at Magic Valley High School and a school district food service storage facility, Dickinson said.

Approved a memorandum of understanding with St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center for two part-time school nurses.

Approved a service agreement with A Caring Hand Home Health Care to provide personal care services to qualifying students.

Approved independent contractor agreements with Alliance Family Services Inc. and Positive Connections LLC to provide services to students with an individualized education program plan.

Approved service provider agreements with physical therapist Iris Hubsmith and occupational therapist Nikki Stevens.

Approved a client services agreement with Soliant Health.

Approved agreements with Oregon State University and Boise State University for student teaching placement.
KETCHUM  A new book set in the Stanley Basin is being released Thursday in Ketchum.

Hailey author Julie Weston is releasing her new mystery Basque Moon at 6 p.m. at The Community Library in Ketchum. This book is the second in a series called A Nellie Burns and Moonshine Mystery, which launched last year with Moonshadows.

The books follow Nellie Burns, a photographer, and her black Labrador dog, Moonshine, as they travel with sheep rancher Gwynn Campbell and his Basque sheepherder to the Stanley Basin of central Idaho. Burns plans to spend several weeks photographing scenes at a sheep camp, but when their group arrives they discover the current herder is dead.

Both books are set in central Idaho in the 1920s. Moonshadows took place in Ketchum, Hailey and Twin Falls.

In 2015, Moonshadows won the Idaho Author Awards for best cover. In January, True West Magazine named Moonshadows as Best of the Rest in the fiction and mystery categories.

For more information, go to julieweston.com.
Morocco is Russias second largest trading partner in Africa and the Arab world with an annual trade volume of 2.5 billion dollars.

Figures released by Moroccos exchange office show that trade between the two countries totaled 18 million dirhams in 2014, with the balance shifted in favor of Russia, which exported to Morocco 16.3 billion dirhams while importing 1.74 billion dirhams.

Agri-food products represent 97% of Moroccos exports to Russia, while 78% of imports from Russia are hydrocarbons.

Means to boost bilateral trade between Morocco and Russia will be on top of the agenda of an economic forum in Agadir on September 15 between businessmen from the two countries.

In this respect, about 40 Russian businessmen will be attending the event which aims at boosting Russian-Moroccan cooperation in fields pertaining to trade, industry, investments and tourism.

The forum will be chaired by the President of the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises (CGEM) Meriem Bensalah.

It comes as part of the follow-up of the visit paid by Moroccos King Mohammed VI to Moscow last March.

Morocco welcomed 50,000 Russian tourists in 2015 and aims at attracting 200,000 Russian visitors by 2018.
Russian authorities could impose a temporary ban on some Egyptian agricultural goods that fail to meet phytosanitary requirements, Russias food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor indicated on Tuesday.

The Russian institution pointed at Egyptian authorities failure to comply with international and phytosanitary requirements ahead of the exportation of citrus fruit to Russia, Reuters reports.

Rosselkhoznadzor however did not disclose the list of products that could face the ban.

In a different report, Russian officials on Monday noted that they did not receive notification by Egyptian authorities for shipping Russian wheat to Egypt.

Russia is Egypts largest wheat supplier. Egyptian authorities reportedly imposed tight requirement policy on the ergot fungus as of August.

There is no official rejection (from the Egyptian side),Rosselkhoznadzor spokesman Aleksey Alekseenko told Reuters.

I think this question can be decided during talks between the two countries. We are preparing the official request this week.
Researchers used a simulation to transfer patients from low-volume to high-volume transplant centers as a way to show that standardized care from the high-volume centers can save lives. Click for enlarged graphic. Credit: Credit: Johns Hopkins Medicine

Using the results from a computerized mathematical model, Johns Hopkins researchers investigated whether they could improve heart and lung transplantation procedures by transferring patients from low-volume to high-volume transplant centers.

Investigators have long observed a positive relationship between a high operative volume and improved patient outcomes across a variety of surgical procedures, meaning that the more times a medical center does a particular surgery, the better its patients do overall. The new study, published in the American Journal of Transplantation on September 12, was the first to investigate this trend for heart and lung transplant patients on a national level, the Johns Hopkins team says.

"The reason we did the simulation is because there is a lot of uncertainty in predicting post-transplantation outcomes," says Trent Magruder, M.D., a surgery resident and fellow in the Division of Cardiac Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "We hope our model will help illuminate areas for improvement and bring better and more predictable outcomes to doctors and patients."

Past research showed that centers performing less than 14 heart transplants or 20 lung transplants each year have been associated with increased patient mortality. The new simulation drew on information from 12,594 heart transplant patients from 135 medical centers and 12,300 lung transplant patients from 67 centers in the U.S. The researchers define low-volume centers as those performing less than an average of 5.9 heart transplants or 11.9 lung transplants per yearboth below the threshold for low-volume centers, as defined by past studies by other researchers.

The algorithm divided the continental United States into 11 regions, as defined by the United Network for Organ Sharing, which controls the allocation of donor organs, and began figuratively "closing" the center with the lowest number of transplants per year in each region. The algorithm essentially referred all patients from the "closed" low-volume center to the largest one in that region and assigned those patients the largest center's reported mortality rate. This process was repeated until either five centers had been closed or only one transplant center in a given region was left.

For heart transplant patients, the first, second, third, fourth and fifth closings were associated with saving 10.1, 37.5, 76.6, 120 and 240.3 lives, respectively, at one year post-transplant. Lung transplant patients saw similar benefits, with 29.2, 78.2, 124.6, 202.5 and 240 lives saved at one year post-transplant for each successive closing.

"The goal of this study is not to say we need to close small centers," says Christian Merlo, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins. "We used this algorithm as a tool to see if we can limit some of the heterogeneity between centers and find out if this improves outcomes for our patients. It is food for thought that we hope will spark conversation among our colleagues about the need for a set of best practices and ways to share that information across centers," he adds.

While other countries, like the U.K., have nationalized, single-payer health care, a similar system may not be practical in the U.S. because of its size. For example, patients' average travel distances for heart and lung transplantation exceed 300 miles in parts of the Pacific Northwest, and center closure would undoubtedly increase these distances. As such, regionalization could limit access to care to those who can't afford to travel, in addition to the cost of the procedure. The authors emphasize that their algorithm, for the time being, can't quantify the socioeconomic costs regionalization of care would create.

The researchers say that the next steps will include studying the best performing centers to see what they are doing differently from smaller centers to save more lives. Using this information, transplant physicians and surgeons can develop guidelines for best practices to share across the country. "The limitation of this study is that it is a black box," says Magruder. "I can tell you that this algorithm appears to save lives, but I can't tell you what the high-volume centers are doing, which makes more detailed research an important next step."

Explore further High-volume lung transplant centers have lower costs and readmissions
Credit: TheNorlo/Wikipedia

E-cigarettes may have helped about 18,000 people in England to give up smoking in 2015, according to new research published in the British Medical Journal today.

Researchers at the Health Behaviour Research Centre at UCL analysed data from the Smoking Toolkit study - which provides the latest information on smoking and smoking cessation in England - and data on the percentage of the smokers who set a quit date with Stop Smoking Services.

There was no evidence that e-cigarettes prompted more people to try and quit, but over this time period, as more people used e-cigarettes, more people successfully quit smoking.

It's estimated that 2.8 million people in the UK use e-cigarettes.* And they are the most popular smoking cessation aid in the UK.

But the most effective way to quit smoking remains through prescription medication and professional support from free local Stop Smoking Services.

Although fewer people (450,000 a year) take up these services than those who use e-cigarettes, a smoker using a Stop Smoking Service is around three times more likely to quit than going cold turkey on their own.

Tobacco kills more than 100,000 people a year in the UK and is still the number one preventable cause of cancer.

Professor Robert West, Health Behaviour Research Centre at UCL, said: "England is sometimes singled out as being too positive in its attitude to e-cigarettes. These data suggest that our relatively liberal regulation of e-cigarettes is probably justified."

Alison Cox, director of prevention at Cancer Research UK, said: "Giving up smoking can be really tough. It's important to remember that getting support from Stop Smoking Services is still the most effective way to quit.

"E-cigarettes can play a role in helping people quit and the evidence so far shows e-cigarettes are much safer than tobacco. This study shows the positive impact they've had on helping people give up the deadly addiction.

"We'll continue to fund research into e-cigarettes to build our understanding, and encourage people to combine the most popular method with the most effective - Stop Smoking Services. But this study reassures us of the promise these products have."

Explore further College educated more likely to use e-cigs to quit cigarette smoking

More information: Beard et al. Association between population changes in use of e-cigarettes and changes in quit attempts, the success of quit attempts, use of smoking cessation pharmacotherapy, and use of stop smoking services: a time series analysis. British Medical Journal Beard et al. Association between population changes in use of e-cigarettes and changes in quit attempts, the success of quit attempts, use of smoking cessation pharmacotherapy, and use of stop smoking services: a time series analysis. British Medical Journal DOI: 10.1136/bmj.i4645 * ASH (2016). Use of electronic cigarettes in Great Britain, www.ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_891.pdf Journal information: British Medical Journal (BMJ)
The demand for family caregivers for adults who are 65 or older is increasing significantly, and family caregivers need more recognition, information, and support to fulfill their responsibilities and maintain their own health, financial security, and well-being, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Although caregivers' individual circumstances vary, family caregiving can negatively affect caregivers' mental and physical health as well cause economic harm, including loss of income and career opportunities. The report calls for health care delivery system reform that elevates family-centered care alongside person-centered care to better account for the roles of family caregivers and support their involvement in the care delivery process.

The committee that carried out the study and wrote the report found that by 2030, 72.8 million U.S. residentsmore than 1 in 5will be 65 or older. According to the National Survey of Caregivers, in 2011, 17.7 million peopleor approximately 7.7 percent of the total U.S. population aged 20 and olderwere caregivers of an older adult because of health problems or functional impairments. This estimate does not include caregivers of nursing home residents. Furthermore, for most family caregivers, caregiving is not a short-term obligation. The median number of years of family care for older adults with high needs is five years. The proportion of older adults who are most likely to need intensive support from family caregiversthose in their 80s and beyondis projected to climb from 27 percent in 2012 to 37 percent in 2050. Little action has been taken to prepare the health care and social service systems for this demographic shift, the committee said.

While the need for caregiving is rapidly increasing, the number of the potential family caregivers is shrinking. Current trends in family patternsincluding lower fertility, higher rates of childlessness, and increases in divorced and never-married statuses - suggest a shrinking pool of potential caregivers in the near future. Unlike in the past, older adults will have fewer family members to rely on, more likely will be unmarried or divorced and living alone, and may be geographically more distant from their children

The committee found that family caregivers typically provide health and medical care at home, navigate complicated and fragmented health care and long-term services and support systems, and serve as surrogate decision makers. Although family caregivers play an integral role in the care of older adults with disabilities and complex health needs, they are often marginalized or ignored in the delivery of health care and long-term services and supports. They also may be excluded from treatment decisions and care planning, while providers assume their availability to perform the wide range of tasks prescribed by the older adult's care plan. For example, Medicare and other payers' financial incentives encourage shorter hospital stays with the implicit expectation that family members can support the older adult at home and manage the transition from hospital to home. In addition, providers expect family caregivers with little or no training to handle technical procedures and equipmentsuch as feeding and drainage tubes, catheters, and tracheostomiesand to manage and monitor an elder's condition. Family caregivers describe learning by trial and error and fearing that they will make a life-threatening mistake. Furthermore, family caregivers are typically provided little, if any, information and training to carry out the personal care and care coordination they are expected to deliver.

"Ignoring family caregivers leaves them unprepared for the tasks they are expected to perform, carrying significant economic and personal burdens," said Richard Schulz, committee chair and Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh. "Caregivers are potentially at increased risk for adverse effects in virtually every aspect of their livesfrom their health and quality of life to their relationships and economic security. If the needs of the caregivers are not addressed, we as a society are compromising the well-being of elders. Supporting family caregivers should be an integral part of the nation's collective responsibility for caring for its older adult population."

Family caregivers have higher rates of depressive symptoms, anxiety, stress, and emotional difficulties, the committee found. Evidence also suggests that caregivers experience lower physical well-being, elevated levels of stress hormones, higher rates of chronic disease, and impaired preventive health behaviors. Family caregivers of significantly impaired older adults are at the greatest risk of economic harm, in part because of the many hours of care and supervision devoted to these family members. Moreover, the longer family members are engaged in caregiving, the more likely they are to suffer negative consequencessuch as anxiety, depression, social isolation, and financial losses. However, the actual consequences for individual caregivers vary depending on a host of individual and contextual characteristics. Despite the array of negative consequences, caregivers also report positive outcomes. For some, caregiving instills confidence, provides lessons on dealing with difficult situations, brings them closer to the care recipient, and assures them that the care recipient is receiving good care.

In today's world, family caregivers should not be expected to provide an array of complex care and support on their own, the committee said, and the emphasis on person-centered care needs to evolve into a focus on both person- and family-centered care. The report recommends that the next presidential administration take immediate steps to address the health, economic, and social issues facing family caregivers of older Americans. The secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in collaboration with other federal agencies, and private-sector organizations should develop and execute a National Family Caregiver Strategy that recognizes the essential role of family caregivers to the well-being of older adults.

This national strategy should include measures to adapt the nation's systems for health care, workplaces, and long-term services and supports to engage family caregivers and support their health, values, and social and economic well-being, as well as address the needs of the increasingly culturally and ethnically diverse caregiver population. Specifically, the strategy should develop, test, and implement effective mechanisms within Medicare, Medicaid, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that family caregivers of older adults are routinely identified, assessed, and supported. It should also direct the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to develop, test, and implement provider payment reforms that motivate providers to engage family caregivers in delivery processes, across all modes of payment and models of care. In addition, the strategy should explore, evaluate, and adopt federal policies that provide economic support for working caregivers.

The committee also recognized that most state governments have yet to address the health, economic, and social challenges of caregiving for older adults, and it recommended that state governments should learn from the experience of states with caregiver supports and implement similar programs. The public's investment in family caregiving for older adults should be carefully considered, and public dollars should be shepherded responsibly, the committee noted. As federal and state agencies move to develop new programs and supports to address the needs of family caregivers, it will be important to prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable caregivers and tailor eligibility appropriately.

Explore further Family caregivers for patients with cancer experience high levels of anxiety, depression

Provided by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
An "automatic assumption" to link terrorist acts with mental illness unfairly stigmatises the millions of people with mental health problems and impedes prevention efforts, warn psychiatry experts in The BMJ today.

In an editorial and podcast, Professor Kamaldeep Bhui and colleagues argue that the government's counterterrorism strategy is "shrouded in secrecy" and call for careful media reporting of terrorist events, similar to the reporting of suicides, to reduce copycat episodes.

They explain that terrorist groups and networks seem to avoid recruiting people with mental health problems, "probably because they share some of the same stigmatised views as the rest of society and see people with mental health conditions as unreliable, difficult to train, and a security threat."

Recent attention has shifted to "lone actor" terrorism, in which mental illnesses are more common, they say. However, they point out that no single diagnosis is associated with "lone actor" terrorism - and that a psychiatric diagnosis where appropriate "does not explain motivation"

They report that many health practitioners are concerned about the government's counterterrorism strategy (Prevent), which outlines a public duty to assess, report, and prevent radicalisation if this may lead to extremist violence.

They point to a lack of transparency which means there is a "paucity of published evidence" for the effectiveness of the programme. This undermines trust and has alarmed many health practitioners, "who are concerned about acting as agents of the state."

Speaking in the podcast, Simon Wessely, Professor of Psychiatry at King's College London, says that we should follow the example of the Royal Colleges by drafting sensible and voluntary guidelines for media reporting of terrorist events, similar to those developed for the reporting of suicide.

These should include guidance on not glamorising events or the perpetrator, and not focusing on methods or details, to avoid copycat incidents.

He argues that the single best thing we can do to improve services, is make it easier for people to be referred, improve treatments that they get - that will improve mental health - and may also reduce risk to the public of these extremest acts.And he adds that psychiatrists are not in the role to deal with extremism, but are there to help those with mental health problems.

"An effective counterterrorism strategy, which is in all our interests, will be more successful if it engages fully with mental health professionals, public health agencies, and communities, making the research evidence and recommended actions as transparent as possible without undermining genuine security concerns," conclude the authors. "This will create more trust and support for Prevent from all quarters."

Explore further Study finds links between depression and risk of developing extremist ideas
New UBC research finds that many online resources for preventing Alzheimer's disease are problematic and could be steering people in the wrong direction.

In a survey of online articles about preventing Alzheimer's disease, UBC researchers found many websites offered poor advice and one in five promoted products for salea clear conflict of interest.

"The quality of online information about preventing Alzheimer's disease ranges," said Julie Robillard, assistant professor of neurology at UBC with the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health and the National Core for Neuroethics. "The few websites offering high-quality information can be hard to distinguish from the many low-quality websites offering information that can be potentially harmful."

Today, 564,000 Canadians are living with dementia but the number is expected to grow to nearly one million in the next 15 years as the population ages. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia but there is a lot of uncertainty about what causes the disease and how to protect yourself from it. Previous research has shown that about 80 per cent of people, and half of older adults, turn to the Internet for health information.

Robillard and undergraduate student Tanya Feng examined almost 300 online articles about preventing Alzheimer's disease. They found websites with high-quality information often provided high-level advice suggesting individuals consider lifestyle modifications like managing their diabetes and exercising regularly.

The researchers identified a few common red flags for low-quality information, such as websites recommending products for sale alongside the content. They found this type of conflict of interest in one in five websites. Other signs of low-quality information included websites with very specific recommendations and nutritional information.

"Many red flags were not specific to what they were saying, but rather how they were saying it," said Feng. "For example, using strong language like 'cure' or 'guarantee', promoting their own products, and relying on anecdotal evidence instead of empirical research is suggestive of poor-quality information in online dementia information."

The researchers say this type of information can also be costly with people sinking money into products with little or no scientific evidence to show that they are effective. More concerning, however, is that the advice can cause anxiety and may impact the physician-patient relationship. Patients may sometimes feel they cannot trust their physician if they disagree with the recommendations or patients may not inform their physicians that they have changed their daily habits.

The researchers are developing a tool called QUEST, a simple test of six questions that anyone can use to help people recognize high-quality information online.

The study was published today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Explore further Googling 'liposuction'? Study shows low quality of online information
Credit: Cambridge Consultants

Innovative technology from product design and development firm Cambridge Consultants could help combat glaucoma  a major global cause of blindness, second only to cataracts. It offers a low-cost, user-friendly way of diagnosing and monitoring the disease  so that early intervention and treatment can help slow its progress.

Glaucoma affects more than 60 million people worldwide. It leads to optic nerve damage as a result of abnormally high fluid pressure inside the eye. The most common form is open-angle glaucoma, which affects around 95% of patients. It causes a gradual loss of peripheral vision  but can be virtually unnoticeable to the patient until they have lost half of their visual field. The damage is irreversible so, without treatment, an individual can become totally blind.

Open-angle glaucoma is hereditary  a family history of the disease increases the risk of an individual developing glaucoma by a factor of between four and nine. So regular checks are crucial for those at risk  and frequent monitoring is needed if problems start to develop.

The new Viewi optical concept developed by Cambridge Consultants shows how it could be possible for patients to monitor any effect on their vision in the comfort of their own homes. At the moment, patients typically have an annual optometrist or hospital check-up using a visual field analyser. Flashing lights at varying points of the visual field test sensitivity  with the patient pressing a button each time they see a light. The novel Viewi technology performs the same test but at a fraction of the cost  around 20 rather than 20,000 for the clinical device.

At the heart of the Viewi concept is the extensive optical expertise of Cambridge Consultants, which has been combined with a smartphone app to reproduce the hospital-based 'static perimetry' test. The smartphone is slotted into the light and portable headset, and runs a fast, conventional suprathreshold test in less than five minutes per eye. The patient simply presses a button  connected to the headset wirelessly via Bluetooth Smart  each time they see one of the flashing dots.

Human factors considerations were a key element in the design of the Viewi system as it had to be user friendly for patients with sight problems, many of whom are also elderly. The results of the static perimetry test are displayed in a non-technical, intuitive format on the smartphone  tracking the progression of the disease  and can be shared instantly with the patient's optician.

"Loss of vision as a result of open-angle glaucoma cannot be recovered  but early diagnosis and treatment can slow the progression of the disease," said Simon Karger, head of surgical and interventional products at Cambridge Consultants. "But although the current clinical tests work exceptionally well, the system for glaucoma management is overloaded.

"We've used our optical expertise  coupled with our algorithm skills  to show how a simple, affordable, fast glaucoma screening test that patients can do at home is entirely feasible. The Viewi system doesn't aim to replace the current screening and management system  it's been designed to augment the clinical tests."

The innovative Viewi concept has been hailed as an important advance by optics expert Chris Dainty, a professor at University College London Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital.

"The Viewi technology could provide a valuable early warning system for people at risk of developing glaucoma, as well as patients who need to monitor the effects of the disease on their vision," he said. "It could also make the static perimetry test accessible to more patients in developing countries, where expensive clinical equipment and trained professionals are often in short supply."

Explore further New eye test could detect glaucoma years earlier

Provided by Cambridge Consultants
Medical student Vinny Polsinelli is spending a year conducting cardiovascular research as a Sarnoff fellow at Northwestern University in Chicago.

UB Student One of 11 Nationwide Selected as 2016-17 Sarnoff Fellow

story by dirk hoffman

Vinny Polsinelli  who first began conducting research in Haiti following his first year of medical school  was one of only 11 students nationwide selected for a 2016-17 fellowship from the Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation.

The Sarnoff program is a small, intimate community of top-notch people in the field, and the backbone of the program is a closely guided mentorship that extends well beyond your fellowship year.  Vinny Polsinelli 2016-17 Sarnoff fellow

Polsinelli, who recently completed his third year of medical school, was chosen for his intellectual and academic achievements, as well as his leadership abilities. As a Sarnoff fellow, he receives a $30,000 stipend for a one-year mentored research experience with preeminent cardiovascular scientists of his choosing.

Lifelong Mentorship Key Attribute of Fellowship

Polsinelli says the programs unique qualities and focus on cardiovascular research appealed to him. The Sarnoff program is a close, intimate community of world-class people in the field. Its cornerstone is closely guided mentoring that extends well beyond your fellowship year, he says. After completing their year of research, fellows have opportunities to remain involved in the Sarnoff community. They are encouraged to participate in annual scientific meetings and other Sarnoff-sponsored gatherings, where they can receive career development advice from Sarnoff alumni and reconnect with colleagues.

Awardees Encouraged to Visit Labs Before Choosing

Fellows are provided with an allowance for travel expenses related to finding a preceptor and laboratory. I had the freedom to explore any lab in the country to find the best fit and the strongest program to achieve my goals, Polsinelli says. After visiting labs at five universities  Harvard; Duke; University of California, San Francisco; Vanderbilt and Northwestern  he chose to work with Sanjiv J. Shah, MD, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Northwestern University. I chose Dr. Shah because I felt excited about the projects in his lab, was very impressed with him as a mentor and felt like he would take ownership of me while I was there and ensure I would be successful, Polsinelli says.

Studying Heart Failure Patients With Pulmonary Hypertension

He will study the hemodynamics and physiology of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (diastolic heart failure). More specifically, he will be studying a subset of these patients who suffer from pulmonary hypertension, an elevated blood pressure in the blood vessels of their lungs. These patients are usually extremely ill, very challenging to treat and face a very poor prognosis, Polsinelli says. Tools such as sophisticated catheters, echocardiography and 4D MRI will be used to better characterize the disease process in these individuals. Animal models may also be utilized to further understand the mechanisms of the disease.

Organized Medical Team Trips to Rural Haitian Village

Much of Polsinellis activities in medical school have been centered around his work in Haiti, a project he was involved in as an undergraduate at Siena College. Working with David M. Holmes, MD, clinical associate professor of family medicine and director of global health education, Polsinelli organized a team of medical students and faculty for a trip to a small rural village called Fontaine during spring break of his first year of medical school. The UB medical trainees return to Fontaine twice a year and have essentially become the primary care physicians for the residents of the poor, medically underserved village.

Research Published, Presented at Milan Conference

During the summer between his first and second year of medical school, Polsinelli spent two months conducting a cross-sectional survey investigating hypertension in rural Haiti. When he returned to Buffalo, he was put in touch with Joseph L. Izzo, MD, professor of medicine and chief of clinical pharmacology at UB, chief of medicine at Erie County Medical Center and an internationally known hypertension expert. Working with him inspired me to pursue research. He taught me how to ask questions, examine data and think critically as we relate the large epidemiological data to the underlying mechanisms and pathophysiology, Polsinelli says. Izzo has continued to mentor Polsinelli and helped him take his project for presentation at the European Society of Hypertension conference in Milan, Italy. Polsinelli was first author of the article Hypertension and Aging in Rural Haiti: Results From a Preliminary Survey, which was published in the Journal of Human Hypertension in July. Izzo was senior author.

Dean Encouraged Application, Aided in Process
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.
Market timing - key factor for Turkish Stream

While available financing would improve the prospects for the Turkish Stream pipeline project, it is also important to consider market timing, says Agnia Grigas, an energy and political risks expert and non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.With a current gas glut and low prices in the global gas markets, expensive gas infrastructure projects become less appealing, Grigas told Trend.She believes that while it would be in Russias interests to build Turkish Stream, with limited resources and considering current markets, Moscow would probably prioritize other gas infrastructure projects such as Nord Stream II pipeline to Germany, Power of Siberia pipeline to China, and boosting its LNG export infrastructure.The Turkish Stream project, which involves the construction of a gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey through the Black Sea, was frozen after the relations between Moscow and Ankara deteriorated in November 2015.During a meeting on Aug. 9, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to resume the implementation of the Turkish Stream project.Earlier Turkish media referring the countrys president Recep Tayyip Erdogan reported that Turkey is ready to equally split the financing of the Turkish Stream pipeline with Russia.Last week Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told journalists that Russia and Turkey could sign an intergovernmental agreement on the Turkish Stream gas project within one or two months.Regarding the recent proposal of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to connect the Turkish Stream pipeline to the Trans Anatolian pipeline (TANAP), Grigas believes that Brussels will be less enthusiastic about such a possibility.She noted that TANAP is part of the Southern Gas Corridor intended to bring Azerbaijani and potentially Central Asian gas to Europe to help it diversify away from Russian gas.Connecting TANAP to Turkish Stream would potentially defeat this purpose. Indeed, Russia has tried to hold on to the South Eastern European market and to outmaneuver previous plans to diversify this region such as the previously planned Nabuco pipeline project and Southern Gas Corridor with its own pipeline plans south as South Stream and now Turkish Stream, Grigas said.TANAP project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijans Shah Deniz field to the western borders of Turkey. The gas will be delivered to Turkey in 2018, and after completion of the Trans Adriatic Pipelines construction, the gas will be delivered to Europe in early 2020.Meanwhile, Russian energy ministry recently said that no discussions has been held yet on connection of the Turkish Stream to TANAP.Russias Energy Ministry has not received an official proposal on the possibility of connecting the Turkish Stream to the TANAP to supply Russian gas through Turkey to Europe, the Russian Energy Ministry told Trend earlier.
The News in Brief

GDDG, UNM Trade Accusations



The GDDG ruling party has accused the UNM opposition party of intentionally provoking confrontations at campaign events ahead of the October 8 parliamentary elections, an allegation dismissed by UNM as absurd. They claim the accusation was leveled by the ruling party in an attempt to distract public attention from actual problems faced by the country.



Speaking on behalf of her party, GDDGs MP candidate Tamar Chugoshvili said on September 5 without giving any specifics The United National Movement, which is definitely going to lose the upcoming elections and has no public support, sees its only chance is stirring some kind of turmoil.



As far as we know, they plan to provoke various types of confrontation during our [campaign] events, as well as to bring into the electoral campaign tensions and confrontation, she said.



It is very important for our country to hold elections in calm environment  not only the ruling party, but also other political forces are responsible for that we also call on our supporters not to apply such methods and not to provoke any confrontation. If a provocation is staged by others, we encourage our supporters not to yield to such provocations, Chugoshvili said, and also called on the election monitoring groups to keep a close eye on cases which may obstruct the holding of elections in a calm environment.



Responding to the allegation, UNM MP candidate Salome Samadashvili said It is very regrettable that the Georgian Dream party, which has nothing else to tell the Georgian people and whose defeat in the elections is actually guaranteed, has decided to carry out pre-election processes with such absurd allegations. This accusation shows only one thing  Georgian Dream wants to obstruct UNM with all possible means, since we are the only political force capable of bringing country out of the current crisis.



Instead of speaking about actual problems faced by the country, the authorities, which organized [violent incident in the village of] Kortskheli [in May, 2016], are now speaking about invented threats, another UNM MP candidate, Sergi Kapanadze, said.



Ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvili, who has launched a campaign for GDDG party through his TV appearances, told journalists from the Guria region in Ozurgeti on September 5 that ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is now governor of Odessa region, encourages his supporters in the UNM party to stir disorder during the pre-election period.



Saakashvili is inciting his supporters to mess the situation up there will be attempts to bring chaos, but they [UNM] have no resources to do it, Ivanishvili said.



Saakashvili responded through a post on his Facebook page: Ivanishvili and his puppets started shouting that we [UNM] are fermenting disorder. As a rule, he is blaming opponents for what he himself is planning. This photo shows well what kind of disorder we are preparing. Ivanishvili is losing these elections. The post is accompanied by a photo showing his wife, Sandra Roelofs, who is campaigning as another UNM MP candidate, taking pictures with a group of young people.



Later on Monday afternoon, when Roelofs was holding a campaign meeting with supporters in the village of Jikhashkari in the Zugdidi municipality of the Samegrelo region, a group of men approached the event reportedly shouting insults at Roelofs. The UNM accused local authorities of being behind their actions. (Civil.ge)







Tbilisi car repair shop killer caught in Zestaponi



On Monday, police arrested a 24-year-old suspected of murdering a mechanic a few hours earlier in Tbilisi.



The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) has stated that a man was arrested for premeditated murder and illegally purchasing, storing and carrying a weapon.



The suspect was arrested in Zestaponi, a town in western Georgia, a few hours after the murder took place in Tbilisis Vake district following a dispute.



Co-workers told Interpressnews that the murder suspect asked the victim for assistance, who told him to wait for his turn. Instead the customer went and got a gun and killed the repair shop employee, an electrician.



The victim was taken to hospital but his life could not be saved. (DF watch)







Allies have expectations for highest-standard elections  James Appathurai



Georgias international allies have expectations for the highest-standard elections, Special Representative of NATO Secretary General James Appathurai has said.



According to him, the visit of the NATO Secretary General demonstrates his personal support.



He has also responded to the ownership issue of the Rustavi 2 TV company, saying NATO is closely following media freedom via its Tbilisi Office.



Media freedom is important for all of Georgias allies, Appathurai declared. (IPN)




Coming soon

Red Cross blood drives  During National Preparedness Month in September, the American Red Cross encourages eligible donors to give blood to help ensure a readily available blood supply for emergencies. Donors of all blood types are needed. To make an appointment to give blood, download the Red Cross Blood Donor app, visit redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767. Donors are encouraged to make appointments and complete the RapidPass online health history questionnaire at redcrossblood.org/rapidpass to help reduce wait times. Upcoming blood drives:

Missoula: 10 a.m.-2:15 p.m. Wednesday, Missoula city offices, 435 Ryman St.; noon-4 p.m. Wednesday, Missoula Blood Donation Center, 2401 Reserve St., Suites 6 and 7; noon-4:15 p.m. Thursday, Republic Services of Montana, 1501 Rogers St.

10 a.m.-2:15 p.m. Wednesday, Missoula city offices, 435 Ryman St.; noon-4 p.m. Wednesday, Missoula Blood Donation Center, 2401 Reserve St., Suites 6 and 7; noon-4:15 p.m. Thursday, Republic Services of Montana, 1501 Rogers St. Whitefish: 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Park Side Credit Union, 1300 Baker Ave.; 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Thursday, The Wave, 1250 Baker Ave.

Plasma Basics workshops  Learn how to make plasma devices, disaster relief supplies, pain relief and healing aids at a workshop offered Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 1 to 7 p.m. at the Eagles Lodge, 2420 South Ave. W., in the conference room. Taught by Whitney Fisher, the program is free unless using workshop materials, and donations will be accepted. For those wishing to make a health pen, bring two sizes of bare copper wire and tools such as needle-nosed pliers and drill. Email manyhands4peace@gmail.com for details.

Red Willow Center  For more information on the following classes at the learning center, 825 W. Kent, call 721-0033 or visit redwillowlearning.org:

"Breath, Mindfulness and Movement" with Kathy McIntyre, 6-7:30 p.m. Monday, $40.

"Basics of Resilience" with Kathy Mangan, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, free.

"Building Personal Resilience with Self-Hypnosis" with Patrick Marsolek, 1-5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 1, $55.

"Story as Medicine" with Suzy Wiseheart, Oct. 3-Nov. 14, 6-7:30 p.m. Mondays, $145.

Tai Chi Chih with Lynne Roberts, Oct. 12-Nov. 9, noon-1 p.m. Wednesdays, $60.

"Resiliency for Caregivers" with Christine Lustik, Oct. 10-Nov. 28, 2-4 p.m. Mondays, $200.

"Basics of Resilience" with Glenn Tousignant, 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 18, free.

"Becoming Fully Alive with Chronic Illness" with Betsy Hart, Oct. 20-Nov. 17, noon-1 p.m. Thursdays, $100.

Ongoing classes include "Yoga for Wellness" at noon Mondays, $12 or $40 for four weeks; "Mindfulness Meditation" at 12:10 p.m. Tuesdays, $12 or $40 for four weeks; "Yoga Beyond Cancer" at 4 p.m. Tuesdays, $40 for four weeks; "Yoga for Chronic Pain" at 5 p.m. Wednesdays, $40 for four weeks plus $50 for prerequisite screening.

BodyTalk programs  For details and registration on the following classes taught by Kathy Mangan at the Red Willow Learning Center, call Tori at 880-8749 or register at bodytalksystem.com.

ACCESS class, Saturday, Oct. 8, $125, including manual.

Fundamentals, Oct. 21-23 and Oct. 29-30. Learn the BT system and skills to become a practitioner, $100 discount available to students who register and pay course deposit of $250 by Sept. 26. New student payment plans are also available.

Ongoing programs

AA and Al-Anon  For the latest Alcoholics Anonymous meetings list, visit aa-montana.org or call the Missoula hotline at 543-0011. For more information on Al-Anon and Alateen, which are 12-step recovery programs for relatives and friends whose lives have been affected by alcoholism, visit mt.al-anon.alateen.org.

Acupuncture for cancer caregivers  Missoula Community Acupuncture, located in the Radio Central Building, 127 E Main St., Suite 314, offers free acupuncture treatments for friends, family, nurses, doctors or anyone who takes care of cancer patients 5-7 p.m. Wednesdays. No appointment is necessary. For more information, call Michael Peluso at 406-926-1611.

Adult Asperger's support group  An open meeting for those with Asperger's as well as their family and friends is held every Thursday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the University Center, Room 215, on campus. Contact Monique Casbeer at 721-3947 or Cindy Bacon Janego at cjanego@communitymed.org for more information.

Alzheimers support  Meets the second Wednesday of each month at noon at the Summit Independent Living conference room, 700 S.W. Higgins Ave. Another group meets the fourth Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the Missoula Senior Center, 705 S. Higgins Ave. For more information, contact Jackie Johnson at 549-3433 or jackiej45@yahoo.com.

Alzheimers caregivers support group  Meets the fourth Monday at 6:30 p.m. of each month at the Missoula Senior Center, 705 S. Higgins Ave. For more information, call Jackie Johnson at 549-3433.

Arthritis programs  The Montana Arthritis Program offers physical activity and self-management education programs, such as the Arthritis Foundation Exercise Program, Walk with Ease and Stanfords Chronic Disease Self-Management Program. Classes are available in several communities including Florence, Hamilton, Kalispell, Libby, Missoula, Plains and Polson. To find a class or for more information, visit dphhs.mt.gov/publichealth/arthritis.

Bereavement support groups  Frontier Hospice offers open door meetings 6-7 p.m. Thursdays at the following locations: The Springs at Whitefish on the first Thursday; Rising Mountains Assisted Living Community in Bigfork on the third Thursday; and Frontier Hospice in Kalispell on the second and fourth Thursdays. Call 406-755-4923 for more information.

Breast cancer support group  Meets the first and third Wednesday of the month from 11 a.m. to noon at the Montana Cancer Center, St. Patrick Hospital Broadway Building, second floor. Call 329-5656.

Cancer Center support group  Meets noon-1:30 p.m. the second Thursday of each month at the Montana Cancer Center, 500 W. Broadway. For more information, call Bonnie at 240-0996.

Cancer Resource Guide  The online guide covers resources including support groups, treatment centers, camps and retreats, in Missoula, Mineral and Ravalli counties. It is available at CancerResourcesMT.org.

Cancer support group  A support group for anyone affected by cancer meets noon-1 p.m. on the second and fourth Mondays at the Polson United Methodist Church, 301 16th Ave. For more information, call Tammy at 406-883-7284 or 824-2868.

Celebrate Recovery  The Christian-based 12-step recovery program meets 6-9:30 p.m. every Friday at Christian Assembly Foursquare Church, 1001 Cleveland St. Dinner is available from 6 to 7 p.m. and child care is provided for ages birth to 11. For more information, call 721-6884 or email cafc@4bible.com.

Cheerful Heart  Lake County cancer patients in treatment can receive a massage and help with hair and skin problems, free of charge, from local therapists and cosmetologists. Other non-medical services include transportation to treatment and doctor appointments, running errands, yard work and meal preparation. Appointments may be scheduled by calling 406-883-3070.

Colorectal Cancer Support Group  Meets 1-2 p.m. the third Friday of every month through March 20, Community Cancer Care Conference Room, 2827 Fort Missoula Road.

"Coping, Education & Support for Women with All Cancer Types"  The support group for women in all stages of cancer treatment or survivorship will be held noon-1:30 p.m. the second Monday of every month through March 14, 2016, at the Community Cancer Care Conference Room, 2837 Fort Missoula Road. For more information, call Deb Rivey at 327-3912, Terri Paxinos at 327-3957 or Kimberly Hardwick at 327-3906.

Diabetes program  At 6:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of every month, there will be a short presentation on a topic related to the management of type 1 diabetes at the YMCA, 3000 S. Russell St. It will be followed by the option for socializing in the foyer or being active together at the Y. A fee of $5 per individual will be collected at the door for those choosing to use the facility. Designed for ages 14 and older, children are welcome but must be accompanied by a parent/caregiver.

Double Trouble in Recovery  The 12-step program for people with mental health and addiction issues meets 3-4 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Winds of Change Recovery Mall, 2685 Palmer St., No. C (second floor). Coffee is provided. For more information, call Veronica at 721-2038.

Epilepsy support group  Meets the first Monday of the month from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Summit Independent Living Center, 700 S.W. Higgins Ave., Suite 101. Patients, friends, family and caregivers welcome. Call Debbie at 721-0707 for more information.

Free health exams  Women ages 30 to 64 who meet necessary income guidelines and either have no health insurance or have insurance that will not pay for breast and cervical health exams can receive free exams through Partnership Health Centers Montana Cancer Screening Program. Call 258-4162 for more information.

Gentle yoga class  The Missoula Senior Citizen Center, 705 S. Higgins Ave., offers a class that focuses on balance training, back strength and core conditioning through gentle yoga matwork every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 9 a.m. Fee is $4 per class. All ages welcome. For more information, call 543-7154.

Health Insurance Assistance Service  Montana cancer patients can call the American Cancer Societys 24-hour toll-free number to be connected to a health insurance specialist to ask about coverage and insurance programs specific to the state. The number is 800-227-2345.

Mens cancer support group  Open to men in all phases of testing, treatment and followup, the group meets the fourth Tuesday of the month from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Montana Cancer Center, 500 W. Broadway. It is facilitated by Gary Weisbrich and Tom King. Call 329-5628 or email gary.weisbrich@providence.org for more information.

Narcotics Anonymous  Meets at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Alano Club, 8 Third Ave. W., Polson. Call 406-883-4135.

National Alliance on Mental Illness  NAMI Missoula meets every Thursday from 10 a.m. to noon in the lower level (behind the cafeteria) of the Providence Center. It is open to anyone affected by mental illness or interested in learning more about the group. The NAMI Connection group for adults living with mental illness meets 1:30-3 p.m. Thursdays at the NAMI offices, 202 Brooks St., Room 210. Call 880-1013 with questions.

NAMI Family Support Group  National Alliance on Mental Illness Missoula meets Wednesdays from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at St. Paul Lutheran Church, 202 Brooks St., in Room 210. The peer-led support for adult family members, caregivers and loved ones of individuals with mental illness is free. For more information, call 406-880-1013 or email namimissoula@gmail.com.

My No-Nonsense Nutrition Program  A seven-week webinar course to improve your nutrition and fitness. Faith based approach to better health. Free initial consult with Judy Gilman, registered nurse, diabetes and wellness educator. mynononsensenutrition.com or 546-7819.

Overeaters Anonymous  Local meetings include 7 p.m. Monday and 9 a.m. Saturday at St. Paul Lutheran Church, 202 Brooks St. A meeting for newcomers is at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday followed by a "Back to Basics" meeting at 7 p.m. at St. Paul's. Everyone who wants to stop eating compulsively is welcome. There are no dues, weigh-ins or lectures. For more meeting information, visit oa.org.

SAA  For the latest Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting list visit saa-recovery.org, call the Missoula hotline at 241-4005 or email MissoulaBetterway@yahoo.com. SAA is a 12-step fellowship of men and women who share experience, strength and hope for the purpose of finding freedom from addictive sexual behavior and helping others recover from sex addiction.

S-Anon  Local meetings are held weekly for this recovery program for people affected by another persons sexual behavior. Visit sanonmontana.org or call 406-544-1271 to learn more.

Stroke and Brain Injury Support Group  Meets the second Thursday of each month from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Providence Center, 902 N. Orange St., in the dining area on the fourth floor. For details, call 329-5784.

Tai Chi for Arthritis  Class offered 9:15 a.m. Mondays at the Missoula Senior Citizens Center, 705 S. Higgins Ave. $4 per class. All ages welcome.

Tai Chi Chih  Classes are offered at the following locations: Missoula Senior Citizens Center, 705 S. Higgins Ave., 9:15 a.m. Wednesdays, $4 per class; PEAK Health & Wellness Center, 5000 Blue Mountain Road, 11 a.m. Tuesdays, call 251-3344; and The Womens Club, 2105 Bow St., 9 a.m. Fridays, call 728-4410.

TOPS  Take Off Pounds Sensibly, an affordable, nonprofit, weight-loss support and wellness organization, meets at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the First Christian Church, 2701 S. Russell St. Another TOPS meeting is 6:30 p.m. Monday at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, 2512 Sunset Lane. For additional meetings, go to tops.org, click on "Find a Meeting" and enter your zip code or call 800-932-8677.

The Women's Club  For more information on the following classes at The Women's Club, 2105 Bow St., call 728-4410:

Foundation Training, 12:15-1 p.m. Monday and Thursday. Improve posture, strength and athletic ability.

Pickle ball open play, 1-4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Paddles provided. All levels welcome.

Kick and Core high-intensity cardio workout with focus on strengthening core.
Montanas prisons and jails are over capacity. What changes in statute and/or funding at the state level  if any - do you think are necessary? If no changes, why not?

With 2.2 million people behind bars, the United States locks up more people than any nation on the planet, placing nearly one out of every 100 American adults in jail or prison. Much like the work being done by Missoula County, the Montana State Legislature is undergoing bipartisan criminal justice reform through an interim committee effort focused on key aspects of sentencing reform and post-incarceration policy.

We focus on everything from changing the use of pretrial detention and reforming the bail system, to improving representation at trial and throughout the legal process, to making parole and probation focused on community reintegration.

Has the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission adequately guided the states hunting and fishing concerns, or does the Legislature need to give the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks more specific direction regarding topics such as land acquisition, wildlife management, predator control, and bison?

Montana established a Fish and Wildlife commission to ensure accountability to citizens when it comes to sustainable fish, wildlife, and state-owned park resources in Montana for the purpose of providing recreational activities. Wildlife is owned by no one and held in trust for current and future generations. Our founders knew that politics would be trouble for biology, so they established an independent body to ensure good stewardship.

The Legislature must be very careful in not pursuing political agendas with wildlife while empowering the agency to make the right calls whether it's wolves, bears, elk, or trout.

Many Montanans depend on the extraction of fossil fuels for jobs, yet there is a strong demand for clean and renewable energy in the region, especially since prices for the latter are falling. How do you propose to help workers in the coal, oil and natural gas industries find jobs in this new economic landscape?

The Montana Legislature can't solve the problem of shifting global markets or competition, but we can make sure that our workforce is well trained to meet the rapidly evolving energy market. Solar, wind and natural gas prices have plummeted. That combined with concern for climate change has caused an unprecedented shift in energy markets. Montana has transmission lines that move electricity to West Coast markets. Those markets are demanding cleaner energy. The Montana Legislature should do everything in its power to make sure that those states chose Montana's clean energy resources as a replacement.

According to Montana University System records, as recently as 1992, the stated funded 76 percent of the university system. Now, though, state support has fallen to 40 percent, which means tuition funds 60 percent of the system  putting higher education out of reach for some Montana families. Do you as a legislator have a responsibility to help and if so, how? If not, why not?

Our public colleges and universities are for all the people, not just those who can afford them as they are now.

Directly investing more state funding in the Montana University System is a huge legislative priority but the Legislature must also create a more robust scholarship program for all Montana high school graduates, not just those who major in specific job-related disciplines. In this regard dedicating all net revenue from the lottery to student scholarships would incentivize enrollments across the board. And the Legislature must provide greater student access to dual and concurrent enrollment regardless of public high school size.

What do you regard as the most urgent problem facing Montana, and how do you propose dealing with it?

The most urgent problem facing Montana and American politics is the role of money in elections and we will likely need to amend the U.S. Constitution to reform that.

However, during the next legislative session, Montanans must not shy away from the reality of a national gun violence epidemic.

Every day, gun violence kills 91 Americans. Support for the Second Amendment goes with keeping guns away from criminals and dangerous people. More Montanans, per capita, will commit suicide this year than anywhere in the country. We have to work together to pass common-sense laws and policies that save lives.
Montanas prisons and jails are over capacity. What changes in statute and/or funding at the state level  if any - do you think are necessary? If no changes, why not?

Montana needs to look at criminal justice reform, to include reconsideration of mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent offenses.

Has the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission adequately guided the states hunting and fishing concerns, or does the Legislature need to give the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks more specific direction regarding topics such as land acquisition, wildlife management, predator control, and bison?

The Legislature needs to give FWP more specific direction. Additionally, involvement by those Montana citizens most affected by these processes and decisions cannot be impeded or forgotten.

Many Montanans depend on the extraction of fossil fuels for jobs, yet there is a strong demand for clean and renewable energy in the region, especially since prices for the latter are falling. How do you propose to help workers in the coal, oil and natural gas industries find jobs in this new economic landscape?

The Montana Legislature cannot kick coal, oil, or natural gas to the curb. The fight against federal overreach and the EPA's Clean Power Plan is not settled. We should look at giving tax credits of different kinds to displaced workers while they are seeking new jobs, retraining, and/or participating in new educational opportunities.

According to Montana University System records, as recently as 1992, the stated funded 76 percent of the university system. Now, though, state support has fallen to 40 percent, which means tuition funds 60 percent of the system  putting higher education out of reach for some Montana families. Do you as a legislator have a responsibility to help and if so, how? If not, why not?

Funding for higher education should be based on essential needs versus altruistic, societal wants. Legislators and administrators must work together to revamp operational and funding policies and make some fundamental changes before any new money is spent. Not everyone desires to attend university, and that's okay. We should consider opening up educational opportunities in non-traditional forms. Competition for higher learning will benefit students, lower overall costs, and improve value based learning opportunities.

What do you regard as the most urgent problem facing Montana, and how do you propose dealing with it?

Montana relies on the federal government for over 45 percent of its budgetary needs. This is not sustainable. We should look at zero-based budgeting, removing burdensome regulations, and moderating taxes in order to foster a climate that encourages economic expansion across all business sectors. Innovation and entrepreneurialism, manufacturing, agriculture, services, all of these can grow and prosper when we limit government.
LOLO  Starting this week, Lolo School District has a full-time school nurse again.

School board trustees approved a $15,000 donation from an "anonymous foundation" at their Thursday night meeting  "a huge relief," said Superintendent Mike Magone.

The money will round out the nurse's salary, moving her from part-time to full-time. There is no federal or state funding for school nurses.

It's the same foundation that originally funded the full-time nurse position the past four years with a $120,000 grant. The hope was that after those four years, voters would continue to support the position in a mill levy request.

But the $110,000 mill levy request failed in May, with 57 percent voting against it. It would have increased annual taxes on a $200,000 assessed home by about $40.42. Funding would have supported the nurse position, as well as reading curriculum materials and a part-time art and music instructor.

"It was a struggle," Magone said of the first couple of weeks of school with a part-time nurse. "It was a lot of extra effort and impact on our school offices, scrambling to contact parents. It was one of those that we didn't have a choice ... but we tried to schedule DawnPat (Metzker) so we could meet the most critical needs with someone qualified to do that.

"It was catch as catch can."

As budgeting for this school year began, the district had two options: part-time nurse or no nurse. District officials said in reality there was only one option: keep Metzker as the part-time nurse.

"Times have really changed, even just over the past five to 10 years, in terms of critical medical needs, complicated medical needs," Magone said. "Medical needs are getting more severe, and there's more of them. Parents are facing it with their kids, and schools are facing it as well."

Many students with medical problems require ongoing monitoring or medication. And for the kids who get bumps or scrapes at school, or come down with the flu while there, having a nurse look after them until a parent can come to school is huge, Magone said.

"Otherwise we would've had non-qualified people trying to do that, and that's just not good for anybody," he said.

There are about 550 students in Lolo schools.

This grant is only for this school year. After this year, another mill levy request would be needed to continue the position as full-time. The school board hasn't yet made a decision whether to go to the voters.

"It's too early for us to know where we're going to be budget-wise next year," Magone said. "I know it's probably going to be tight, as tight or tighter than it is now. We won't know until probably late winter or early spring.

"We want to give a huge thank you to this foundation. They're really stepped up to the plate, and they already had been for the past four years. To help out again this one more year is really generous and thoughtful on their part."
Medical marijuana shouldn't be used for menstrual cramps  and one "hit" is comparable to drinking 10 beers, according to a speaker who presented Monday at City Club Missoula.

Some 64 percent of Montana voters said yes to medical marijuana in 2004, but the laws have taken a circuitous path since then. The most recent ballot initiative, I-182, was the topic of two lunch presentations, one in favor of the measure and one against it. Among other things, I-182 would allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for chronic pain or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Stephen Zabawa, director of SafeMontana, doesn't want to see I-182 pass. Zabawa said he supported the medical marijuana initiative in 2004, but "the green card system is corrupt."

He estimated 60 percent to 90 percent of marijuana sold out of shops is for recreational purposes, not medicinal use.

"That's not what we signed up for," Zabawa said. "How do we get the recreational piece out of it?"

He also wanted certain standards in place so only patients with legitimate medical problems had access to the medicine  and not someone saying, "I've got a menstrual cramp. I've got to use medical marijuana."

On the other hand, Kate Cholewa, governmental relations representative for the Montana Cannabis Industry Association, urged participants to support I-182 as a law that reflects the will of citizens in 2004  to allow patients with debilitating illnesses access to safe medical marijuana through licensed and inspected providers.

After voters approved the act in 2004, traveling clinics damaged the medical marijuana program in Montana and drove up patient numbers, she said. Some providers offered substandard care.

I-182 "addresses the concerns over the previous law," according to her presentation.

If the initiative fails, she said, the law on the books will be one "ginned up" at the last minute in 2011 by four legislators with the intent to kill the measure citizens had adopted.

"The goal was to get as close to repeal as possible," Cholewa said.

***

Some 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medical use and a handful of states also allow recreational pot, according to the presentation.

The event was hosted by City Club Missoula, which aims to "inform and inspire citizens" on vital issues. At the DoubleTree Hotel event, participants quizzed the speakers on the topic of medical marijuana after their presentations.

Marcia Williams told Zabawa she doesn't drink because her father, uncle and nephew died from alcoholism. She wondered if he would be willing to subject alcohol to the same restrictions he believes are appropriate for marijuana.

Zabawa said he hasn't had an alcoholic drink in 20 years, but he could only focus on one issue at once. Marijuana remains a Schedule One drug, defined by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as having "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse," such as heroin. He said alcohol is different.

"Quite frankly, you can have one beer, and you're OK," Zabawa said.

However, he equated one "hit" of marijuana to 10 beers and said the active ingredient will "knock your socks off." Zabawa's effort this year to place I-176 on the ballot failed; if successful, the initiative would have repealed any state laws allowing marijuana to be used for medicinal purposes.

Laura Brehm, a participant who was sitting at the same table as Williams, disputed the comparison Zabawa made. Brehm said she has a son-in-law in California who suffers from chronic pain, and he isn't "stoned" or "ripped out of his mind" when he uses medical marijuana.

"He works full time. He's a dad. He's a great husband and father," Brehm said.

Larry Plant wanted to know the reason people have to smoke marijuana instead of ingesting it other ways, and he posed the question for Cholewa.

"Why can't it be a pill or a liquid or a nasal spray?" Plant said.

In fact, medical marijuana is available in those forms, Cholewa said. It's offered in edibles, infusions, tinctures, and capsules, and it's also vaporized.

Smoking has a cultural stigma, she said, but smoking marijuana is different than smoking tobacco because of the contents. She said the Tashkin Study, the largest of its kind when it was done in 2006, showed smoking cannabis does not increase the risk of cancer the way cigarettes do.

Another participant wanted to know if Cholewa saw any negative effects from medical marijuana or "pot shops."

She said she believes it makes sense to keep marijuana away from youth and developing minds, and she said its use appears to temporarily affect short-term memory. On the other hand, she said marijuana isn't going to ruin someone's mind, and it clearly has medical value despite its "peculiar" status with the DEA.

"That's got to tell you there's something funny going on," Cholewa said.
Saying he doesnt appreciate being called a racist, bigot or xenophobe, City Council Ward 2 representative Harlan Wells cast the lone dissenting vote Monday night on the adoption of a resolution in support of becoming a welcoming community for refugees.

The other 10 members present voted in favor, while Wells fellow Ward 2 representative Jordan Hess was absent.

Im not against all immigration, Wells said, adding hed dated daughters of Chinese and Turkish immigrants before he married his wife. I do have concerns with the program since we dont know where every refugee is coming from.

The resolution, in support of Missoula becoming a welcoming city, is part of the Building Welcoming Communities Campaign launched a year ago by the White House Task Force on New Americans.

The resolution was sponsored by Ward 6 representative Marilyn Marler and Ward 3 representative Emily Bentley. According to the most recent available statistics, Missoula becomes the 52nd city or county to commit to encouraging immigrants and refugees to fully participate in civic life, empowering them to use their skills to grow small businesses and pursue professional opportunities, among other things.

Bentley said shes proud of the way Missoula has accepted refugees so far and of the strong turnout for events in the last year supporting refugees.

The council also approved the creation of a stormwater utility, to prevent pollution of Missoulas waterways.

The utility would increase property owner sewer bills by $9 per year and commercial bills $23 per year, Public Works Director John Wilson said. Those are interim rates, until a rate study is completed in order to more accurately portion out the fee increase.

Ive been in public utilities for 25 years now and I take it very seriously that people like you and me are paying those bills, he said. Theres some heartfelt feelings about raising rates.

A first-year implementation cost of $250,000 will come from the increases, which will be added to existing sewer bills, Wilson said. The total cost will go toward hiring and training staff to focus on the utilitys implementation, as well as training and travel, public outreach and supplies costs.

Several members of the public commented on the utility, but only two took issue with the fee increase. Six others either supported creating the utility or wanted certain language or methods in the ordinance tweaked.

A spate of concerns arose from members of the council, who had previously discussed the ordinance in the Public Works Committee.

Wells, who doesnt sit on that particular committee, had several questions on the utility and its legality, and was especially concerned with the inequitable interim rate structure.

Weve had this in committee for several weeks, Bentley said. I dont think its worth sending it back to committee, especially by someone who doesnt attend committee meetings.

Wells and Ward 6 representative Michelle Cares voted against the ordinance, in a 9-2 vote.

The council unanimously approved two items on the consent agenda that had faced some discussion during previous committee meetings.

Missoulas contract with the Missoula Economic Partnership was up for renewal after its first five-year deal was up in 2016.

The citys contract with the partnership paid $100,000 per year, but City Council members expressed some dissatisfaction at last week's Committee of the Whole meeting with how much the city was contributing, wondering if it couldnt be put to better use outside of the partnership.

James Grunke, president and CEO of the partnership, said in the committee meeting that although its grown about 40 investors - from 110 to 150 - since its inception in 2011, the partnership actually requested an increase from the city in the new contract.

We figure out, what are the goals were trying to accomplish and what will it cost to put it together, Grunke said. Economic development cannot be done without the private sector.

Wells said at the meeting he supported the public/private solution to economic growth, but wanted the partnership to keep the council updated on specifics of growth.

Ill be expecting tangible, verifiable results to be able to show to our constituents or I will personally be the one to spearhead defunding this thing next year, he said.

Funding requested by Construction Projects Assessment Program to hire Missoula-based Axiom IT Solutions to build custom software for its curb and sidewalk management program was approved Monday.

In an Aug. 24 committee meeting, Kevin Slovarp, city engineer, said only one member of their office knows how to work the current software, which doesnt serve their needs very well anyway.

The project would cost $145,000, from the citys equipment finance fund, paid back in one to two years by the city engineers office from improved efficiency alone, Slovarp said.

The council unanimously approved an assessment levy for Special Improvement District 549, to pay for the Hillview Way construction.

The construction, to be completed this fall, will be paid for by bonds issued over 20 years, to the total of $3 million. The first installment will appear on district homeowners November tax bill.

And, Mayor John Engen proclaimed the week of Sept. 11 Direct Support Professionals Week, in part to honor Linda McConnell of Opportunity Resources, who was named Montanas Direct Support Professional of the Year.

He also proclaimed Sept. 18 Big Read Missoula Day, to combat the continuing decline of literary reading in America.
Sweep the pine needles off the deck, move firewood out from under the porch and stockpile sandbags: its time for the Missoula County pre-disaster mitigation plan to be updated.

Every five years the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires counties to update their plans in order to receive aid after a natural disaster and apply for grants, county Office of Emergency Management Director Adriane Beck said.

Well look through what could impact Missoula County and western Montana, Beck said. Disasters dont stop at the county line.

The county takes a broad look at natural and a few man-made disasters that may affect the area, examining anything from wildland fires and volcanic eruptions to epidemics or terrorist attacks, and looking at how the county would prepare and respond to each scenario.

Some disasters  flood or fire  are more likely to occur, but have a smaller comparative impact. Others  the Yellowstone Caldera erupting, for example  could render any preparations moot.

This plan is a way of dissecting those disasters into manageable bites, Beck said.

Tetra Tech Inc. was contracted by the county to provide technical assistance, risk assessment and models of different scenarios, as well as the mitigation strategy.

Risk assessment uses Department of Revenue and FEMA disaster data intersected with county records of home locations to map a hazard area, identifying vulnerabilities and values of the structures, ranches or farms in the area, Daphne Digrindakis, senior project manager for Tetra Tech said.

Tetra Tech will be able to provide much better data than in the past, due to technical improvements, building on the outdated 2011 plan, she said.

Theres nothing that has an aerial background. Theres nothing that has topography on it, Digrindakis said of the current plan. The maps themselves didnt show the results of their risk assessments.

Were going to have probably three times as many maps.

The project will cost $50,000, with the county paying 25 percent toward that cost, offset by a state grant covering the rest.

The 2011 plan will be used as a foundational document, Beck said, with changes and revisions being added as necessary. The county would like to have a first draft ready for public comment in December.

Keeping up with the mitigation plan did give Missoula County two disaster mitigation grants in the last decade, Beck said. One enabled widening of a culvert in Grant Creek to decrease flooding and one ongoing grant pays to remove hazards around homes at risk for wildland fires.

The county and Tetra Tech will introduce the updating process and review the current plan Wednesday at 10 a.m. in Annex 151 of the Missoula County Courthouse.

The whole meeting really is designed as an open forum for discussion, Beck said. There may be risks that the public is more concerned about than others.
More is not always better, and thats why Montana has been selected as one of 14 states to give health care providers the option of pioneering a new initiative to provide incentives for quality patient outcomes rather than the total number of patient visits or work volume.

At a news conference Monday at St. Patrick Hospital, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock announced that Montana was chosen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to implement a healthcare reform project called the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus model.

CPC Plus is a way of changing how payments are made to physicians and health care systems, explained Dr. Jon Griffin, the medical director for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana. Currently, we are under a fee-for-service model. So that means that the more is done, the more is paid. Were now shifting to incentivize directly improved health care outcomes, so, preventing disease, management of chronic disease and the utilization of health care services.

"What were talking about is providing incentives to hospitals and providers to minimize the use of resources and to appropriately use resources. Its an evidence-based standard.

Instead of getting a fee for every knee surgery or hip surgery from insurance companies, the practices who chose to participate will get a lump sum of money in advance for any services delivered. They can use the money for innovative practices and to try to reduce the need for unnecessary treatment or emergency room visits. Then, if they meet all the quality standards, at the end of the year they get to keep the money. If they fail to meet standards as defined by the CMS, they have to pay the money back.

The new initiative was lauded by Providence Health and Services (the company that operates St. Pats) regional chief executive Jeff Fee and Western Montana Clinic CEO Dr. Pam Cutler. Both said that the new model gives health care providers and doctors a tremendous amount of flexibility and freedom to do the things that they, as providers, know is best.

It takes a team in order to change the way health care is delivered, Fee said. Ultimately, what CPC Plus represents is a very tangible and significant step towards changing the incentives for the front-line caregivers. Its changing the way our primary care physicians will be working with our community. And so when we found out we were one of the 14 states, we celebrated.

Dr. Mark Garnass, who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology at Western Montana Clinic, also expressed his strong support for the initiative.

"In the last three years our state has reduced the uninsured rate from 20 percent to 7 percent of Montanans, he said. Medicaid expansion was the right thing to do. We now see patients in our clinics every day who previously had no health care coverage.

"Yet the battle to improve health for Montanans in a sustainable fashion is not over. We are here today to talk about further efforts to get public and private payers to work collaboratively with health care providers to focus on care that is patient-centered.

For the first time, Medicare, Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield Montana and PacificSource will all be aligning the way they pay for health care.

Practices can use the funds to offer things like 24-hour care via telephone, or 24-hour online care, which reduces the workload on physicians for patients who require a lot of social interaction. Griffin said it's hoped that the program will prevent unnecessary health care needs from becoming complicated and more costly down the road by giving patients the right care at the right time and place.

This is good news for patients, its good news for families, and its good news for the Montana primary care providers who are taking the lead in moving away from a one-size-fits-all, fee for service healthcare system, he said.

The money should allow physicians to provide high-quality preventive care because they will get paid by quality outcomes rather than the volume of their work. The program also includes the option of quality bonus payments for practices that deliver more comprehensive services for patients with complex medical and behavioral health needs, including an assessment of their psycho-social needs, and an inventory or resources to support those needs.

Montana kids, families and communities always deserve the best health care available, Bullock said. Here in Montana we have brought Democrats and Republicans together to improve access to health care services all across the state, and this new health care imitative will further ensure that Montanans are getting the right care, in the right place, at the right time.

The CMS has set a target date for the first payments to go out in January. There is no quota or minimum level of practices needed to apply, but CMS is recommending that any practice with about 150 Medicare patients  half of whom are covered by the aforementioned payers  should think about applying.

CMS is offering a series of informational calls and webinars for physicians and medical practices. A calendar of events can be found at https://innovation.cms.gov/files/x/cpcplus-practiceeventscalendar.pdf.
Lets be clear about the access zealots Terry Anderson is talking about in his recent column, The insatiable thirst for access (Sept. 6).

Hes talking about the father taking his son fishing. Hes talking about a mother taking her children to her favorite swimming hole. Hes talking about the college student learning how to fly fish after a long day of class. A tourist who has traveled across the world to fly fish in Montana, and the guide who is making his living by showing that tourist the best fishing of their life. Grandparents and grandchildren. Cousins. Old friends. Basically, any person who enjoys recreating on Montanas rivers but cannot afford a million-dollar home on the river.

In Terry Andersons world, you should be able to own the river itself. But not in Montana.

We cherish our public access to the places that make our state so special. These places are open to everybody regardless of your origin or bank account. This spirit is at the heart of our stream access law. It is part of who we are as Montanans.

We are so fortunate to live in a state and a country that set aside vast tracts of wild places where every man, woman and child is welcome to explore, to escape, to camp, hunt, fish and hike in places that have not been overdeveloped or privatized. But there is a concerted effort to wrest these places from public hands, to privatize our rivers, our fishing and our wildlife.

In the big picture, Anderson is vilifying every one of the millions of Americans who cherish our public access to land and water to enjoy the activities that keep us grounded in an increasingly busy world. These are the last wild places in our country, places that are uniquely American, places that keep us human. Without access to these places, we will lose something that makes us both fundamentally human and American.

There is no real argument for infringing on our rights to access these places, so people like Anderson vilify and oversimplify in an effort to get their way. They use divisive, wildly vague and inaccurate terms like true sportsmen in a self-righteous attempt to sway opinion. They insult our intelligence and ethics by claiming the public ruin these places, that only wealthy people care for the land and water. The truth is, they loathe the very idea of public access, that the common man and woman can still have access to world-class recreation.

They are wrong, and they are the minority. But they are powerful, and we need to be vigilant in opposing their efforts. I encourage every Montanan who enjoys public access to our states amazing land and water to stand up against people like Anderson and any candidate for public office who does not support public access. And yes, someone who has filed suit to block public access in the past probably wont support public access in the future.

I will agree with Anderson on one point: many of us do have an insatiable thirst for access. We live to be outside, and no one is going to take away our access to public land and water.

We should all be public access zealots. The more we get outside and take advantage of these places, the more likely we will want to protect them for future generations. Keep getting outside. Keep exploring. Keep it public.
Several major issues clearly place the choice for governor of Montana at Greg Gianforte over Steve Bullock. While Bullock has logged more time in state politics, Gianforte offers superior insight and business savvy. I compare their positions:

Second Amendment rights: (rated by the NRA-PVF): Bullock is C: A candidate with mixed record or positions on gun related issues. Gianforte is AQ: A pro-gun candidate whose rating is based solely on the candidates responses to the NRA-PVF Candidate Questionnaire Note: Gianforte is an NRA life member, earning their endorsement.

Expand Obamacare: Bullock strongly favors expansion, stated in Ballotpoedia.com, The Encyclopedia of American Politics. He continues to support Obamacare, even in light of recent news that insurance giant Aetna is pulling out of that market. Gianforte states on gregformontana.com: Its time we find real solutions to lower healthcare costs and preserve access.

Governmental regulations: re: Attorney General Tim Foxs lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power regulations: Bullock didnt directly say whether he supports the lawsuit (KXLH, Oct. 23, 2015). His non-supportive stand came at our (Colstrip workers) dismay. Gianforte states on gregformontana.com: Eliminate excessive regulations that burden businesses.

Considering these stands, Greg Gianforte will obviously be a better governor than Steve Bullock.

Dan Negethon,

Colstrip
I am writing in support of Adam Hertz for House District 96. Hertz will provide a new face and new ideas at the Legislature. Hertz has a proven record of looking out for the taxpayers of the city of Missoula during his time serving on the Missoula City Council. He consistently voted against raising taxes. In many cases Hertz was the lone voice of opposition to many of the tax-and-spend policies of the Missoula City Council. Citizens of Missoula County will be shocked when they receive their new tax bills this fall.

Hertz will bring common sense and a willingness to listen to fellow legislators and constituents, debate the issues and vote in the best interest of the taxpayers of the state. He is an avid outdoorsman who wants to protect our access to public lands. Although not a veteran, he is concerned about the lack of proper care for the veterans who have earned their benefits and deserve to return to civilian life with the hope of good paying jobs and health care they deserve.

Hertz's opponent has voted against giving Montana taxpayers back some of the money they have paid over and over. Votes against House bills 166 and 201 demonstrate this unwillingness to provide that tax relief.

The challenges in this next legislative session will be dramatic with the continued loss of good-paying jobs in the wood products industry, the coal industry and our natural resource production industries. We cannot continue to be 49th in wages in this country. We need a new face at the Legislature with a proven track record of standing up for Montanans. Adam Hertz is that person. I urge you to vote for Adam Hertz for HD 96 on Nov. 8.

Larry Anderson,

Missoula
I ask other Montana voters to join me in supporting Judge Dirk Sandefur for the Montana Supreme Court.

Sandefur has been endorsed by people across the political spectrum. Supporters include Republicans, Democrats and every living retired Supreme Court justice: conservatives, liberals and those in between.

Sandefur has a deep knowledge of the court system from 25 years as a police officer, prosecutor, defense attorney and district court judge. Unlike his opponent, he comes without a partisan agenda. As a district court judge in Great Falls, he decided some of the most serious and complex cases that come before our courts.

A vote for Judge Dirk Sandefur is a vote for fairness, non-partisanship and experience.

Linda Gryczan,

Helena
HELENA - An East Helena police officer is on administrative leave after he was cited for punching a 70-year-old man following a car collision.

Robert John Gutowski, 27, was off-duty when he was involved in a four-vehicle crash on Montana Avenue on Wednesday afternoon. Helena police cited Gutowski the next day for misdemeanor assault for allegedly punching the 70-year-old East Helena man multiple times in the arm, causing minor injury.

Gutowksi appeared in Helena Municipal Court on Thursday and entered a plea of not guilty to the charge. His next court appearance is slated for Oct. 12.

As of Monday, Gutowski remained on administrative leave pending an investigation by the East Helena officials, said East Helena Police Chief Dale Aschim.

Aschim said Gutowski, a patrol officer, will stay on leave due to the citation until the query is completed.

"We're looking into it," he said. "We're trying to see what happened."

Aschim said this is the first time his department has been in a similar situation with Gutowski and in general. He declined to comment further on the scenario in light of the ongoing investigation.
WHITEFISH  Joyce Kilmer believed hed never see a poem as lovely as a tree, and there are people who believe the whitebark pine is  or should be  at the top of Kilmers list.

After all, how beautiful is it that the high-elevation whitebark pine relies on a specific species of bird to plant its seeds?

The Clarks nutcracker takes seeds from the whitebark pine cones, 50 to 150 at a time, stores them in a pouch under its tongue, and flies off to hide them in caches, often in the ground.

A single Clarks nutcracker can cache almost 100,000 seeds in a single season, far more than it will usually need to feed on later. The bird does so as something of an insurance policy, in case thieving squirrels or other animals steal too many, or other food sources are in short supply that year.

What doesnt get eaten, or stolen, often grows.

But whitebark pines face deadly threats on so many fronts that the species is, according to University of Colorado Denver researcher Diana Tomback, a candidate for the U.S. endangered species list. It's already on Canadas version.

And its declining fastest in the Crown of the Continent ecosystem, Tomback says.

Northwest Montana has lost 90 percent of its whitebark pines, which may be part of the reason scientists working to help the tree survive will gather in Whitefish Friday for the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundations annual science meeting. Friday night Tomback, director of the foundation since its inception in 2001, and Flathead National Forest reforestation specialist Karl Anderson will explain to the public why the whitebark pine is so important.

And why it is in grave danger.

***

Clarks nutcrackers arent the only wildlife that use whitebark pine as a food source  theyre just the species that happens to disperse the seeds while doing so.

More than 110 species of birds and animals, including grizzly bears, like to feed on the seeds, which foundation secretary Melissa Jenkins calls big, fatty, and real nutritious.

In addition to being an important food source, whitebark pines are important to watershed protection. Their presence allows other tree species to establish under the harsh conditions near the tree line, and helps retain snowpack and regulate runoff, according to Jenkins, who is also a silviculturist with the Flathead National Forest.

The interaction between Clarks nutcrackers and whitebark pine is nothing short of amazing, Jenkins feels. Four other similar species of trees found in Europe and Asia each have their own species of birds that to for them what the Clarks nutcracker does for the whitebark pine.

Just as amazing is the birds ability to remember all the places theyve cached the tens of thousands of seeds.

I cant remember what I had for lunch yesterday, Jenkins says, but they can remember all the places they put those seeds.

***

Sadly, Tomback says, the whitebark pines decline is occurring at a rapid pace. The implications are vast, and the epicenter is your neck of the woods in northwestern Montana.

Here in the Crown of the Continent, the climate is conducive to the spread of white pine blister rust, a fungal disease man introduced to North America that is devastating whitebark pines.

The tree is also threatened by mountain pine beetles, increased competition from shade-loving trees made possible by decades of wildfire suppression, and climate change.

Our nonprofit was begun to counteract the threats and raise awareness of the tree and its decline, Tomback says.

To that effort, seed orchards for the whitebark pine have been started on the Lolo, Lewis and Clark, and Gallatin national forests in Montana. And on Saturday, Whitefish Mountain Resort becomes the first Whitebark Pine Friendly Ski Area ever designated by the foundation after agreeing to criteria that will help protect and restore the species at the resort.
HELENA  A panel of lawmakers and lawyers forwarded the Montana Legislature a set of bills on Monday that would reorganize the Office of the State Public Defender by creating a cabinet-level director to oversee the agency.

The Task Force on State Public Defender Operations, created by the state Legislature to review the agency that represents poor criminal defendants, recommended removing agency oversight from the Public Defender Commission and giving it to the governor.

The change, if approved by the Montana Legislature when it meets in January, would amount to creating the 17th department of state government. The state constitution allows up to 20 departments.

District Judge James Haynes, the task force member who suggested the change, said a director would have the authority to take charge and train stronger trial and appellate attorneys. The governor would pick a director from three nominees chosen by the Public Defender Commission, which would become an advisory panel.

Currently, a chief public defender, an appellate defender and a conflict manager each runs a section of the agency and is answerable to the Public Defender Commission. Under the current system, many of the staff attorneys are not well trained and competent managers are lacking, Haynes said.

"I think there needs to be a whole shake-up," he said.

The Office of the State Public Defender was created a more than a decade ago. Its caseload is high, and the office has suffered from a high turnover rate as attorneys burn out. State lawmakers created the task force to examine how the agency operates and to recommend changes in the form of bills to be introduced in the upcoming legislative session.

In advancing the new director position, the task force rejected the public defenders' office's strategic plan to keep the Public Defender Commission in charge of the agency and create a chief administrator of the agency who is answerable to the commission.

That structure would ensure the independence of the agency and keep out the politics of a cabinet position, supporters of the plan said.

"There has been very little evidence presented that this is a management problem, fundamentally," task force member James Holden, a Great Falls defense attorney, said in a failed attempt to advance the legislation. "We have excessive caseloads."

The task force also recommended creating a "holistic defense pilot program" that would look at the underlying causes that bring people into criminal justice system, and seek to reduce recidivism. The program calls for a team to include a public defender, a social worker, an investigator and support staff to provide defendants with both legal and social support services.

In addition, the task force advanced a bill requiring the state Department of Revenue to collect costs imposed by courts for public defender services. It also recommended that the state Department of Public Health and Humans Services make the determination now made by the public defenders' office of whether a defendant is eligible to receive the agency's services.
HAMILTON  Trial for a Florence physician facing hundreds of charges for allegedly providing his patients with illegal prescriptions will be delayed a year, Ravalli County District Judge Jeffrey H. Langton ruled Tuesday.

Langton said a years continuance for Dr. Chris Christensen's trial is reasonable, considering the number of felony charges and the degree of preparation required for the defense.

It is highly unrealistic that a defense attorney could adequately prepare in six weeks for a month-long trial on 400 felony counts in a case that has been in the states pipeline for more than four years, without prejudice to the defendant, Langton said.

Christensen was arrested in August 2015 for allegedly providing hundreds of illegal prescriptions, including prescriptions of methadone allegedly resulting in two patient deaths. Christensen faces 400 felony charges and two counts of negligent homicide.

Last November, the state Public Defenders Office asked to be taken off the case when it was determined Christensen had too much money to qualify for state-funded counsel. In July, Langton denied Christensens request for a years delay, noting that he had not yet filed for bankruptcy and wasn't doing enough to find an attorney.

Earlier this month, Christensen appeared in court with Josh Van de Wetering as his attorney, paid by extended family. Van de Wetering made a new request for a delay, noting that the case includes close to 11,000 pages of discovery and 28 expert witnesses.

"This one is as big as they come," he said then.

The case involves issues new to Montana such as whether physicians can be criminally liable for the death of their patients, whether prescribing practices can open them to criminal charges and whether doctors can be charged with drug distribution for writing prescriptions, according to the defense.

The state had countered that 49 witnesses and 450 jurors had already been summoned for trial, and had asked for a delay of six months rather than a year.

Langtons opinion issued Tuesday said that when weighing speedy trial against due process, the right of defendants, who stand to lose liberty, and even life, upon conviction be protected in criminal proceedings. The interests of justice weigh in favor of Defendant.

Christensen's trial had been set for Oct. 20.

Christensen, 67, faces a prison sentence of up to 388 life terms, plus 135 years and a fine of up to $20 million if convicted on all charges.
Copyright  2022 HT Digital Streams Ltd All Right Reserved
Police reports

THEFT FROM VEHICLE

Items including a Ruger 44 Magnum revolver and a Ruger 22 Magnum rifle were taken from an unlocked white 2009 Chevy pickup truck parked in an alley on the 1000 block of Placer Street between Sunday and early Monday. Fishing waders, two fly rods and ammo also went missing. The value of the items was estimated at $1,320.

DRUG ARREST

Mike Poma, 58, was arrested Monday for criminal possession of marijuana after police assisted probation and parole at his home on the first block of Gladstone Terrace. The Butte man faces a probation violation.

URINATING MAN

Larry Berger, 61, of Butte allegedly urinated on the side of the Finlen Hotel in Uptown about 2 p.m. Friday. He was arrested for disorderly conduct.

ASSAULT CASES

Cody Dodd, 23, of Butte was arrested on misdemeanor counts of partner or family member assault and tempering with a communication device after a 19-year-old woman reported he struck her head and butt with his hand. She also alleges he took her cellphone and broke it.

Police believe the two were having a child custody dispute in their home on the 500 row Silver Bow Homes on Friday.

Randy Weist, 35, of Butte was arrested for misdemeanor partner or family member assault about shortly before 5 a.m. Monday on the 1900 block of Oregon Avenue. A woman, 41, claims he pushed her to the ground from behind. She suffered a cut lip and scratch to her forehead. The suspect denies the allegation.

UNRULY MAN

Jonah Hogan, 28, allegedly used profanity and caused a disturbance in the emergency room at St. James Healthcare about 5:30 p.m. Friday. The homeless man was arrested for disorderly conduct and a probation violation.

FAMILY WOES

John Suraco, 47, of Butte was wanted on a Butte city court warrant when police say he resisted arrest at his home Friday on the 900 block of south Colorado Street. Police say the initial response concerned his girlfriend, 40, and daughter, 21, who were allegedly arguing and creating a disturbance over a utility bill.

VANDALISM

A front window at Kmart, 3300 Harrison Ave., was reported broken by a BB shot between 10 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Saturday. Damage is estimated at $300. Police say there is no video surveillance.

STOLEN CAR

A purple or maroon 1997 Honda Accord (MT 1-12515A) was stolen between 10:30 p.m. Saturday and 5:15 p.m. Sunday from the area of Woolman and Montana streets. The victim believes the keys may have been left in the car.

IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A CAT

A woman on the 200 block of Homestake Road reported Sunday a cat may have been caught by a bird of prey and dropped onto her A-frame roof, and then the cat fled the scene.
Butte-Silver Bow County Attorney Eileen Joyce told jurors Monday a Texas man on trial killed a Whitehall man, injured two other men and abandoned them in the mountains southeast of Butte.

In her 10-minute opening statement in Butte district court, Joyce said Tony Dwade Sawyer, 48, made a conscious choice to shoot and kill 37-year-old Joe Powers in the back and wound Steve Drury and Hunter Smith, also of Whitehall, on Fish Creek Road on a snowy night in early November 2015.

Sawyer faces one count of deliberate homicide and two counts of attempted deliberate homicide in connection with the shooting spree.

Public Defender Ed Sheehy told the jury of six women and six men, who were selected from a pool of 85, that his client was in fear of his life and justified in his split-second choice to shoot the three men after they dug out Drurys Chevy Equinox from a snow-filled ditch.

Sheehy said Drury and Sawyer met in Texas in 2014 and had kept in touch. Sawyer accepted Drurys invitation to visit Montana, arriving Nov. 2. The public defender painted Drury as a gun-toting, somewhat unreliable man whose behavior unnerved Sawyer.

Sawyer was a little bit uncomfortable about all these guns  and drugs, Sheehy told jurors.

Both Joyce and Sheehy said the four men drove to the remote area with the intention of using glow sticks to light up skeets in the pitch dark. Drury brought a 9mm handgun, which police believe is the weapon.

The shootings occurred after the men shoveled out the Chevy, Joyce said, adding that the evidence  photographs, video, interviews and state crime lab analysis  would support Drury and Smiths testimony.

Joyce stood before jurors, saying the defendant made a conscious choice to shoot and kill Powers, and made choices that night that will forever impact the lives of Steve and Hunter.

Jefferson County Dispatcher Rebecca Warner, a witness for the state, testified that Smith made a 911 call from the alleged crime scene at 11:28 p.m. on Nov. 3. In the audio recording, Smith was breathing hard and his speech was garbled.

Toward the end of the call Warner asks Smith if he was shot in the face.

Yes, he whispers.

The trial before Judge Brad Newman resumes Tuesday with prosecutors hearing testimony from Jefferson and Butte-Silver Bow County law enforcement officers.
A driving-under-the-influence trial for ex-Navy SEAL Rob ONeill has been continued to October, according to Butte city court records.

Billings-based attorney Mark Parker said Butte-Silver Bow County prosecutors last week requested more time due to a deliberate homicide trial currently underway in Butte district court.

Prosecutors asked for more time, and we gave it to them, said Parker.

The six-person jury trial is slated for Oct. 5.

ONeill, 40, told Butte-Silver Bow police that he took a prescribed sleep aid before he was found asleep at the wheel of a Nissan Sentra at a Town Pump convenience store on April 8. Several customers told a clerk that a man was sleeping in the running vehicle.

A police report stated that ONeill was hazy about whether he had been drinking or taken Ambien, a prescription drug used to treat insomnia. The Butte native was also unclear about where he had traveled from to his hometown.

ONeill was arrested and later refused a Breathalyzer test. He pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor DUI, a first offense, the day of his arrest.

In a statement released by his public relations firm, ONeill said he took a prescribed sleep aid to help with long-standing insomnia.

ONeill received national attention several years ago when he said he killed al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden during a U.S.-led attack in Pakistan in 2011.


:    9         

         2013 .         9          .    .
As our community works to become more informed about childhood trauma and its impact on lifelong health, it is important for the community to recognize the vast challenges ahead as we work and collaborate to make Butte-Silver Bow more livable and healthier.

As I write this column, I am at work on a response to a state Request For Proposal that will continue Montanas home visiting programs that are focused on families with children ages 0 to 5. Butte-Silver Bow is home to three of these programs, the Nurse-Family Partnership, Parents as Teachers, and SafeCare. The Butte-Silver Bow Health Department contracts with the state to provide the Nurse-Family Partnership program, and is a subcontractor to AWARE/Early Head Start to provide the Parents as Teachers program. The Butte 4-Cs contracts to provide the SafeCare program.

My response to the states RFP asks to continue the Nurse-Family Partnership, an evidence-based program proven to intervene in poverty, with eventual impacts on workforce issues and crime. The program, which is free and voluntary to those who enroll, focuses on first-time, low-income mothers  enrollment must occur before the 29th week of pregnancy begins.

In preparing this response, I and my colleagues have had to garner data. I wanted to share some of what weve gathered:

In 2014, the Butte-Silver Bow Health Department collaborated with St. James Healthcare and Southwest Montana Community Health Center to produce a Community Health Needs Assessment (http://buttesilverbow.healthforecast.net/index.html)  another assessment will be conducted in 2017. In regard to the communitys overall health, 22.3 percent of adults participating in the assessment reported that they believe their overall health is fair or poor. That finding is less favorable than statewide findings (15.8 percent) and the national percentage (15.3 percent).

Key informants  such as physicians, healthcare providers, community leaders, and social services representatives  took part in an extensive online survey to provide qualitative input into the 2014 Community Health Needs Assessment. More than half of the key informants  54.5 percent  characterized Family Planning as a major or moderate problem in Butte-Silver Bow.

Teen pregnancy is a huge problem, said one physician. Another physician cited the following problem: Teenage pregnancy and families with limited resources having children they have difficulty caring for. Said another healthcare provider, Being a dental office that accepts Medicaid we see a lot of pregnant mothers that are very young and do not seem to have the support necessary for raising a child.

From a community leader: Butte has a higher percentage of teenage pregnancies than other counties in Montana. Access to alcohol, lack of access to birth control, lack of coherent information related to sexuality and denial on the part of parents all contribute to this problem.

From a social services representative: Youth are having children at a much younger age and because of it are not graduating high school.

From a physician: I see a number of unwanted babies born into terrible social situations.

More than half of the key informants in the assessment  54.3 percent  characterized Infant and Child Health as a major or moderate problem in the community. Said one social services representative: Parenting education is not covered by any insurance which limits availability to many populations. If the family is not involved with child protective services or drug court the education is not available. Funding sources are needed for parenting.

Added a physician: There are numerous first time young/adolescents in this community who have no parenting experiences/skills to rely on as parents. Their knowledge of infant/child nutrition is very poor. Another social services representative contributed: Many agencies offer bits and pieces of infant/child healthcare, but there (is) no comprehensive (one-stop-shop) to access infant/child health and mental health and parenting needs. Infant/early child care and parenting education need to be delivered community-wide.

Another physician said, The high rate of social ills leads to terrible outcomes for at-risk children. The first two years are so critical, yet unintended pregnancies born to mothers without supportive fathers with a lot of substance abuse issues leads to children who have a host of behavioral difficulties. At my practice there is a large minority of children who start life with these problems.

Said another social services representative:   I think there are probably parents that are more concerned with themselves than with their children. And from a non-physician healthcare provider: We have way too many children  in our community and they are not being taken care by their families like they should.

According to the 2013 Montana Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) 2013 County Profile, of 18 risk indicators, Butte-Silver Bows rates are higher than the states as a whole in 12 of the indicators. Those 12 indicators include:

Percentage of low birth weight births (Butte Silver Bow: 9.9; Montana: 7.3)

Percentage of those under age 18 in poverty (Butte-Silver Bow 22.7; Montana 20.9)

Crime rate (per 100,000 people) (Butte-Silver Bow 3,145; Montana 2,149)

High school dropout rate (Butte-Silver Bow 6.4; Montana 4.3)

Child abuse (substantiated) rate (Butte-Silver Bow 39; Montana 29)

Domestic violence rate (Butte-Silver Bow 366; Montana 239)

Percentage of teens who reported binge alcohol use in the last two weeks Butte-Silver Bow: 22.4; Montana 20.2.)

Percentage/maternal smoking during pregnancy (Butte-Silver Bow 21.2; Montana 16.6)

Teen birth rate per 1,000 females ages 15-19 (Butte-Silver Bow 42.7; Montana 35.5)

Percentage of deliveries paid for by Medicaid (Butte-Silver Bow 48.9; Montana 33.1)

Percentage of deliveries for which mother had WIC (Butte-Silver Bow 48.5; Montana 32.7)

A future column will relay information from a report estimating the Nurse-Family Partnerships impact in Montana, including positive impact on the problems cited here.
The chemical company Solvay should build a facility west of Butte to harvest phosphorus from waste left behind when the plant closed in 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency has decided.

EPA chose the $25 million, 10-year mud-still harvester option over two other proposals by Solvay to cap the waste on-site or take it off-site to be incinerated.

The mud-still is Solvays preferred option, according to a 2015 waste plan exploring options for cleaning up 500,000 gallons of flammable phosphorus sludge in the plants old clarifier tank. The sludge will ignite if it touches air.

To pay for the plant, Solvay has suggested it could use the plant for commercial purposes, importing waste to process after the cleanup is done. But that would require signficant permitting at both state and federal levels, after a cleanup expected to take a decade.

The 150-acre phosphorus plant is a half-mile south of Ramsay School, across Silver Bow Creek, and produced elemental phosphorus from phosphorus ore from 1952 to 1995 before shuttering. A raid by state and federal regulators in 2000 found the clarifier tank sludge and other hazardous waste improperly stored, and then-plant owner Rhodia Inc. was fined $16.2 million in federal court in 2004.

Solvay bought Rhodia in 2011, inheriting a requirement under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act  similar to Superfund  to clean up the site. Fencing off hazardous waste and cleaning up portions of the site happened early on, but the flammable clarifier tank sludge has sat for 20 years.

EPA has been deciding how to clean up the phosphorus sludge since 2002, when the agency denied Rhodia Inc.s recommendation to merely cap the waste on-site. The Montana Standard reported then that EPAs Montana office director John Wardell told plant manager Dan Bersanti in a letter that EPA will not agree to capping in place unless there are no other options.

An EPA order in 2003 sent Rhodia back to the drawing board. Twelve years later Solvay came back with the same options proposed, but this time recommended on-site treatment with a mud-still instead of just capping.

One reason Solvay personnel said in the waste plan that they prefer on-site remediation is that shipping the sludge off to be destroyed would be too expensive and take too long  $54 million over 20 plus years  because no incinerator has ever had to deal with so much at once.

The waste plan said Solvays mud-still could fill this market niche for large scale incineration if the EPA and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality allowed the company to import phosphorus-containing waste from other facilities for harvest.

Solvay expects to extract $2.5 million worth of commercial-grade elemental phosphorus from the clarifier tank alone. But that won't pay for the construction of the $25 million plant.

Kristie Ponozzo, DEQ public policy director, said Solvay wont be making money off shipped in waste any time soon. Ponozzo said the EPA decision does not greenlight Solvay to import waste, and that cleanup must be completed before the mud-still could be used for commercial purposes. Commercial activity would also require extensive environmental permitting, and be separate from clean-up activities, Ponozzo said.

But Solvay's first responsibility, and the sole subject of EPAs proposed corrective action decision and public comment period, is the cleanup of the clarifier sludge, said EPA spokesman Richard Mylott.

"If Solvay proposed to treat offsite waste following the completion of any remedy for the clarifier sludge, they would be required to apply for a RCRA permit from Montana DEQ," he said.

Solvay issued this statement in response to EPAs most recent decision:

"After considering environmental and technical aspects of several options, EPAs recommendation marks a milestone toward ensuring the safe disposal of the on-site phosphorus.

Further steps are required before EPAs recommendation can be implemented. Solvay has not received any regulatory approval for treating phosphorus from any other source," the statement read.

Solvay has successfully tested a prototype mud-still, but still needs to design, permit, build and test the full-size facility, which the company projects will take at least two years. The waste plan states the facility would operate for at least five years, with total time from start to finish approximately 10 years given its experimental nature. The plan would end with a cap built over the clarifier tank.

According to conceptual layouts, the mud-still requires a 4,300-square-foot facility be built between the clarifier tank and a blast mat where Silicon Valley-based Space Propulsion Group tests experimental rocket motors, one of which exploded in 2011. SPG did not respond to questions as to how the EPAs decision will affect rocket testing at the phosphorus plant.

When the plant was operational, clarifier sludge was incinerated in a roaster on-site for its remaining elemental phosphorus. Plant manager Bersanti said in a 2001 letter that the feed system from the tank to the roaster became unsafe to operate in May of 1997, and the remaining sludge was left to sit in the clarifier. The roaster was torn down along with most of the plant.

EPAs decision does not address the numerous other sources of waste at the Silver Bow phosphorus site, including 10 million tons of radioactive slag, and a dried tailings basin DEQ has warned in the past could ignite.

Tuesdays legal notice comes ahead of any formal press release by EPA, and is the agencys first announcement of the decision.

We werent notified, Butte-Silver Bow Chief Executive Matt Vincent said, but progress is good.
Butte school trustees closed a meeting to the public Monday afternoon to discuss what they said is unspecified litigation.

Besides trustees, Superintendent Judy Jonart and the district's lawyer Pat Fleming attended the meeting in the Administration Building, 11 N. Montana St.

Fleming, Jonart and Chairwoman Ann Boston would only say the meeting pertained to district litigation.

No trustees answered queries from The Montana Standard on Monday.

Montana law (2-3-203) states, in part, that a meeting may be closed to discuss a strategy to be followed with respect to litigation when an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the public agency.

Its unclear whether an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the district in this case.
At a time when many are cynical about public officials, I cant help but notice ONE office holder  PSC commissioner Roger Koopman  who consistently gets it right. I dont much care what party he runs under. All I know is that this guy clearly understands who hes working for: the people, not special interests. He keeps fighting like a bear cat to keep our energy bills down.

Recently, Roger once again took a strong stand in defense of rate-payers, when NorthWestern Energy tried for a second time to saddle us with an $8 million rate hike to pay for a company-caused outage at Colstrip. And for the second time, the Public Service Commission barely rejected this effort on a 3 to 2 vote. Koopman was particularly vocal on the matter, asking what part of the word NO doesnt NorthWestern understand?

I shudder to think of where wed be if Koopman wasnt on the job at the PSC. One vote made all the difference on this rate hike. How do you suppose the man who wants to replace him (Rep. Noonan) would have voted, given the fact that a close family member (Art Noonan) is a paid professional lobbyist for NorthWestern? No one knows for sure, but I definitely dont want to take the chance of having a huge rate increase pass the PSC, because we werent wise enough to keep Roger Koopman on the job.

When a person is doing an excellent job for all of us, he needs to be returned to office. From what Ive seen over his entire tenure, thats exactly the case with Roger Koopman. Rate-payers need to take note. Roger doesnt just talk about being a public servant, like most politicians do; he IS one. Were all better off for it.

 Cindy Sanderson, Butte
The undersigned urge that District Judge Dirk Sandefur be elected as a Justice to Montanas Supreme Court. He has the temperament and the broadest professional background of any candidate for the Supreme Court  including the skills that are indispensable for analyzing and deciding all civil and criminal cases:

Sitting as district court judge serving for 14 years in one of Montanas busiest and most populous districts. Elected and re-elected three times by the Citizens of Cascade County;

Serving as a designated Supreme Court Justice at the request of the Chief Justice;

Serving as a police officer for the City of Havre;

Practicing law as a private attorney;

Serving as a public defender of persons accused of crime;

Serving as a Deputy Cascade County Attorney prosecuting persons accused of crime;

Appearing before the Supreme Court representing litigants;

Dealing with every conceivable type of civil and criminal case that may come before the Montana Supreme Court;

Not beholden to any partisan or special interest;

No partisan or special interest agenda.

Judge Sandefur is a third-generation Montanan. He is married and has three children. He and his wife worked and put him through the University of Montana Law School  from which he graduated with high honors

As a Judge Dirk Sandefur has committed himself to fairness, impartiality, independence and a level playing field for all. He will continue to serve with that same commitment as a Justice on the Montana Supreme Court.
ORIGINAL NOTICE

THE FAMILY CREDIT UNION,

Plaintiff,

v.

THE SPOUSE OF LARRY TERRY, if any; JOHNNY PAUL TERRY, LARRY SHANE TERRY, and all other HEIRS, DEVISEES, LEGATEES OF LARRY P. TERRY; ALL CREDITORS OF LARRY P. TERRY, including THE STATE OF IOWA, and ALL KNOWN and UNKNOWN CLAIMANTS and ALL PERSONS KNOWN OR UNKNOWN CLAIMING ANY RIGHT, TITLE OR INTEREST AND ALL OF THEIR HEIRS, SPOUSES, ASSIGNS, GRANTEES, LEGATEES, DEVISEES AND ALL BENEFICIARIES OF EACH AND ALL OF THE ABOVE-NAMED DEFENDANTS; ALL PERSONS WITH AN INTEREST IN THE ESTATE OF LARRY P. TERRY, DECEASED; and any PARTIES IN POSSESSION,

Defendants.

TO THE ABOVE-NAMED

DEFENDANT(S):

You are notified that a petition has been filed in the office of the clerk of this court naming you as a defendant in this action, which petition prays for Judgment in rem against all Defendants and against the the real estate located at 2093 U.S. Highway 61, Muscatine, Iowa for the sum of $101,876.52, sale of the premises and Writ of Possession. The name and address of the attorney for the plaintiff is Jeffrey C. McDaniel, Brooks Law Firm, P.C., 3725 Blackhawk Road, Suite 200, Rock Island, IL 61201. The attorney's phone number is 309-786-4900; facsimile number: 309-786-4940.

You must serve a motion or answer on or before October 3, 2016, and within a reasonable time thereafter, file your motion or answer with the Clerk of Court for Muscatine County, at the courthouse in Muscatine, Iowa. If you do not, judgment by default may be rendered against you for the relief demanded in the petition.

You are further notified that the above case has been filed in a county that utilizes electronic filing. Please see Iowa Court Rules Chapter 16 for information on electronic filing and Iowa Court Rules Chapter 16, division VI regarding the protection of personal information in court filings.

If you require the assistance of auxiliary aids or services to participate in court because of a disability, immediately call your district ADA coordinator at (563) 328-4145. (If you are hearing impaired, call Relay Iowa TTY at 1-800-735-2942)

IMPORTANT: YOU ARE ADVISED TO SEEK LEGAL ADVICE AT ONCE TO PROTECT YOUR INTERESTS
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The Muscatine Center for Social Action (MCSA) is approaching its 25th Anniversary Celebration with a makeover of the family shelter, brightening the future as the organization celebrates its past.

Charla Schafer, the executive director of MCSA, said she hopes having the organization, which provides emergency and temporary shelter, basic health care, and other services chosen as one of 25 locations in the world for the Annie Sloan decorative Chalk Paint 25th anniversary project, will help those who have chosen the family shelter.

"Many times they have had significant obstacles in their lives and to be able to walk into a space that's been completely transformed and is extremely comfortable besides being safe, I think it increases their hope and encourages them to recognize that the community believes in and supports them," she said.

As part of the project, the shelter's family suites will be going through a transformation, from mostly white rooms to bright, multi-color spaces. Fresh Vintage, the closest store that sells Annie Sloan's furniture Chalk Paint, announced the call for nominations for the award, and has been organizing volunteers for the project.

Cindy Tubandt, of Fresh Vintage, and her daughters Jennifer Conard and Norrine Hiner were painting a room on Monday, hoping to have one of the suites finished before MCSA's 25th Anniversary open house.

They will be using five different color schemes, Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, stencils, paintings, and fabric dye for new bedding to bring more warmth and color to the Family Shelter.

"We wanted it to be a nice, joyful, welcoming place, and I think color makes people happy so we chose some happy colors," Tubandt said.

The space, Schafer said, has been well-used, and has been in need of a makeover.

"The space has been able to help us transform a lot of lives, and now we're able to give back and make that space more comforting for those in need," she said.

"I find this to be a very meaningful change for us."

Tubant said MCSA was one of the largest venues, and one of only three that were chosen to receive the award in the U.S.

The timing of the project, Schafer said, was especially exciting because it coincides with the 25th anniversaries of both Annie Sloan and her company and MCSA.

"It's so very cool that she selected us in our 25th anniversary year as well," she said.

Volunteers are needed to help paint the space, which will include the common area outside the suites, as well as the kitchen. The volunteer efforts to use the paint from Annie Sloan to transform the space, Tubandt said, was one of the goals of the project.

"She also wanted to bring communities together," she said.

Conard said that she had been surprised and honored that MCSA was chosen for the award, and said the community should work together to help it thrive.

It's an asset for Muscatine," she said.

Schafer said she hopes those who choose MCSA will feel more welcome with the added color and warmth.

"I'm extremely excited to see how it's going to look, it's going to make a difference," she said.

The project will also include collages of children's drawings, local artists' work, painting of the kitchen, and three sections of decoration in the community area.

A children's area will include carpet squares, which will be removable and washable, and stenciled painting on the floor.

Tom Hendricks donated chairs to MCSA, which will also be painted and placed in the rooms.

Work days will be held on Oct. 8-9, and 15-16 during the day, and Fresh Vintage will hold workshop days on Sept. 26, painting chairs at MCSA, and learning Shibor, a dyeing technique, on Sept. 29, in preparation for the work days.

Corporate teams who wish to volunteer a different work day may schedule a time to do so, and those who may only be able to put in short amounts of time on the work days, Schafer said, are invited to do so.

Volunteers are also asked to bring a roller handle and a brush, or any other painting supplies they may have available, such as drop cloths.

For more information, or to volunteer to help paint the space, contact Fresh Vintage at fresh.vintage.muscatine@gmail.com or MCSA at 563-264-3278.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The Muscatine High School Acapella Choir traveled to China over the summer and told the board about their exciting trip at Monday night's Muscatine Board of Education meeting.

Johnathan Ryan, the director of choral activities at MHS, said the trip cost around $600 per student, which allowed students to travel who may not have been able to for more cost.

This was truly the opportunity of a lifetime for many of these kids, Ryan said.

Camilla McNeely, Garrett Auberg, Zoie Stafford and Emily Fillmore, students who participated in the trip, discussed some of their favorite places, people and activities in China.

McNeely said the most memorable part of the trip for her was interacting with other choirs from across the world, and singing together during the International Choral Festival.

We became brothers and sisters through the music, she said.

All the students said the people they met were kind and generous hosts, and Ryan said the school board had reason to be proud of the MHS students.

What impressed us the most about this trip were the people that we met. Theyre real people with real personalities; real senses of humor, real people who wanted to share their lives with us, he said.

Superintendent Jerry Riibe provided a presentation on the Physical Plant and Equipment Levy (PPEL), on which a vote will be held on Sept. 13. The levy, he said, has been in Muscatine for around 30 years, and will expire in 2020.

Riibe explained that funds from the levy are legally only able to be used for debt, construction of new buildings, repair, remodeling, roads, technology, buses, and other such items, and cannot be used for salaries, classroom materials, travel, and other printing or media services.

Most recently, funds have been used for the building of Jefferson Elementary, and the purchase of Chromebooks for middle and high school students.

In the future, he said the funds will be used for a furniture replacement schedule, security upgrades, maintenance, repair, construction projects.

If we didnt have PPEL, we would have to use money from the general fund, Riibe said.

The voter PPEL rate will remain at $1.10 per thousand dollars of assessed valuation. A Board PPEL which does not have to be approved by the voters is at 33 cents per thousand dollars of assessed valuation.

Riibe said combined, the PPEL provides the school district around two million dollars.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at seven locations.

Additional information can be found at the MCSD web site: http://www.muscatine.k12.ia.us/news/physical-plant-equipment-levy-faqs-special-vote-9-13-16.

To find your polling location, contact the County Auditors Office at 563-263-5821.

And I would ask that you find time to get out and vote tomorrow, said Board of Education President Drawbaugh.

In other business:

Tammi Drawbaugh was unanimously approved as the president, and Mary Wildermuth as the vice president for the board.

Jill Bourquin, the HR Director with the school district, has been compiling exit interviews to examine the district's retention rate. The majority of employees who participated in the interview said they had left for retirement or relocation reasons.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The Muscatine High School Class of 1962 will meet for lunch at 11:30 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 21, at The Peking Restaurant. All classmates, spouses, and friends are welcome to attend.
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
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 []
Google is selective about the markets where it rolls out fibre infrastructure projects like Project Link, the country director for Google South Africa has said.

Luke McKend was responding to a question in a panel discussion at SATNAC 2016, hosted by Telkom.

He said they considered the broadband environment in places like Kampala, Uganda and Accra, Ghana before launching Project Link there.

In other areas, Google might not roll out fibre directly, but provide a way for operators and Internet service providers to share cable ducts and trenches.

This is similar to what a company like Dark Fibre Africa offers in South Africa.

McKend said that although it might be an unpopular opinion, South Africas environment is already quite competitive.

Jan Vermeulen was a guest of Telkom at SATNAC 2016.

More on Google

Google fibre comes to Africa

Google planning to replace fibre with 1Gbps wireless tech

Google offers 1Gbps fibre to businesses

Google Fiber now available in 7 US cities
WASHINGTON  A war of words over Donald Trump's "deplorables" is intensifying as Republicans and Democrats fight for political points over Hillary Clinton's claim that many of the New York billionaire's supporters are racist, sexist and homophobic.

Trump and his allies across the country insisted Tuesday that the Democratic presidential nominee's comments reflect an out-of-touch elitist who looks down on working-class voters, akin to 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney's assertion that 47 percent of Americans would never vote for him because they were dependent on the government. Democrats  and even some Republicans  however, warned that this debate could backfire on Trump, drawing new attention to white supremacists and hate groups attracted by his "America first" message.

Indeed, former KKK leader David Duke offered fresh praise for the way that Trump and running mate Mike Pence are handling the controversy. But not all Republicans were pleased.

"Let's remember that, weird as it may seem, a lot of voters are only just now tuning in, so they may not be aware of the fact that David Duke, various KKK organizations, the alt-right en masse, Vladimir Putin and other foreign authoritarian enemies of America  people who really are deplorable  are supporting Trump," said Liz Mair, a Washington-based Republican operative and a vocal Trump critic.

Speaking to donors in New York City on Friday, Clinton had said that half of Trump's supporters were in "a basket of deplorables," a crowd she described as racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. Clinton later said she regretted applying that description to "half" of Trump's backers, but stuck by her assertion that the GOP nominee has given a platform to "hateful views and voices."

Trump and his team seized on the comments as his supporters across the country embraced a new rallying cry.

"While my opponent slanders you as deplorable and irredeemable, I call you hardworking American patriots," Trump declared at a Clive, Iowa, rally.

In the crowd, one Trump supporter held a sign that read "I'm not 'deplorable.' I'm just a hard-working, tax-paying American and proud of it!" Another wore a homemade shirt that read "I'm with deplorable."

"It sums up what she thinks of American voters: that we're dumb and stupid and can't make decisions for ourselves," said Charles House, 78, of Ankeny, Iowa. "She looks down on us."

The night before at a rally in North Carolina, one Trump's supporter's violent outburst complicated his message.

As security escorted out several protesters, a man grabbed one protester around the neck, punched another in the face and slapped at another woman. The incident was captured by assembled television networks.

Back on the "deplorables' front, Indiana Gov. Pence, Trump's vice presidential running mate, refused anew on Tuesday to say whether white supremacist Duke was "deplorable." Pence has disavowed Duke, but said he was "not in the name-calling business."

Duke, a former KKK leader, was pleased with that. "The whole idea that they were trying to make Pence call me names, basically, and he didn't bite on that was a real positive thing for all of us," Duke said.

Democrats have welcomed a debate that shines new light on some of the elements cheering Trump's candidacy.

In November, Clinton will need a strong turnout among President Barack Obama's coalition of minorities, women and millennials. Her campaign argues that Trump will struggle to connect with such voters if he's viewed as fostering white supremacists, a group commonly referred to as the "alt-right."

"Bigotry is deplorable and I think she should stand by her guns," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a Clinton ally.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who chaired Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, said the Democratic nominee's comments pale in comparison to Trump's.

"His attacks on women and Muslims and immigrants, I mean literally you'd run out of ink writing them all," McAuliffe said.

A pro-Clinton group, Priorities USA, began airing a new ad this week highlighting some of Trump's more provocative comments, including his aggressive references to protesters, such as "I'd like to punch him in the face."

The GOP nominee and his campaign said that Clinton's comment plays into the idea that she is a sheltered elitist, who sees herself as better than regular people and above the law.

Rob Gleason, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party said it made sense for Trump's campaign to take advantage of the issue, quickly cutting an ad and using it as a rallying cry.

"When somebody gifts you an issue, then you go ahead and run with it," he said. Still, he questioned that it would have much impact. "I'm not so sure even if anyone understands that," he said.

Republican operative Ryan Williams, a former Romney aide, warned that the Trump approach carries risk.

"Trump would be wise to take advantage of it," Williams said of Clinton's comment, "but he cannot miss an opportunity to criticize people like David Duke who support his candidacy."

"They are deplorable," he added, "but the vast majority of Trump's supporters are not."
DETROIT  Identification cards issued by a growing number of U.S. cities to make it easier for immigrants living in the country illegally and poor people to open bank accounts and access social services are now being used as passes for anything from pharmacy discounts to free museum memberships.

And there's hope they can make immigrants feel more at home amid the unwelcoming rhetoric of this presidential campaign season.

Pushed by immigrant advocates and others, the ID cards were first introduced almost a decade ago in New Haven, Connecticut. San Francisco followed and expanded what the cards could do. New York City launched the country's most ambitious program last year.

Detroit will soon become the latest city with a municipal IDs program.

"I think for me it's important to emphasize it's not about immigration. It's about building inclusive democracies and removing barriers in our communities," said Detroit City Councilwoman Raquel Castaneda-Lopez, who helped lead the effort in her city.

Such programs accept many different types of documents, making it easier for immigrants, homeless people, ex-prisoners and others who might lack birth certificates or proof of residency to get IDs. Many are based on point systems allowing applicants to submit a combination of documents or cards. Those include U.S. or foreign passports, documents denoting service in the military, attendance at schools, and completion of a prison sentence or community service program.

Detroit's IDs program, set to launch this month, follow the U.S. Supreme Court's recent deadlock on a decision effectively blocking an Obama administration plan to shield millions of immigrants living in the country illegally from deportation.

It also comes amid rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail, where Republican nominee Donald Trump has proposed temporarily banning foreign Muslims from entering the country and vowed to build a wall along the Mexican border. Detroit and its suburbs are home to one of the biggest Arab-American communities in the U.S., and the city has a large and growing Hispanic population.

Nadia Tonova, director of the National Network of Arab American Communities, said using the program "sends a really strong statement" about welcoming "the most vulnerable" residents.

"I certainly think that those types of messages are needed this year more than ever," said Tonova, whose network has 25 member organizations in 12 states.

About 10 municipalities have ID programs and at least 12 more are seeking them, according to nonprofit advocacy groups.

Castaneda-Lopez, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and the first Latina elected to Detroit's city council, said the city's cards are not meant to replace state IDs or driver's licenses but can help prove residency to secure social services or apply for a job.

The council passed an ordinance this year to create the municipal IDs. Census data show Detroit's foreign-born population in 2014 was about 38,700, out of a total 680,000 residents. Of those, 13,600 were naturalized U.S. citizens and 25,000 were non-U.S. citizens.

In New Haven, officials began issuing the IDs in 2007 after immigrants who lacked government identification began to worry about their safety. Some had trouble opening bank accounts without an ID and became targets for robbers looking to steal cash.

Some critics have accused ID programs of being a way to obtain information about residents that could be used against them. New Haven officials stress the confidentiality of their records.

Backlash also has come from people and groups that don't think public money should be spent to help immigrants who are in the country illegally. But people involved in pushing municipal ID efforts argue that the broadening benefits add to the cards' value and attract more people to use them, even those with traditional forms of ID.

Graciela Flores, a mother of three children from Queens, New York, got her municipal ID last year. She said she has used her card to get into the Bronx Zoo for a discounted price and looks forward to its other perks.

"It's accepted wherever I go," she said through a translator, adding that "nobody asks me any questions."

New York City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, author and co-sponsor of that city's ID legislation, said the city has tied several benefits to the cards to make them more attractive, which has helped ensure their success. He said another plus is that New York City police accept them as valid forms of ID when making stops.
The number of visitors from China to California is growing and their taste for Napa wines is growing too. How best to reach and treat these consumers both here and their home was among the discussions at a recent CANVAS workshop.

China is already the No. 1 international spender in the United States, surpassing Canada this year, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, said Charlie Gu, director of China Luxury Advisors.

California is also a major beneficiary. California welcomed nearly 1 million Chinese visitors in 2014, a 21.6 percent increase over 2013, making China the largest source of overseas visitors for the state. Chinese visitors spent more than $2.5 billion in the state in 2014, Gu said.

Gu was one of four panelists who presented at the Serving the Chinese Visitor workshop hosted by CANVAS (Concierge Alliance of Napa Valley and Sonoma) held at Cameo Cinema on Aug. 30.

A change in the visa policy that took place in November 2014, creating a 10-year reciprocal business and tourist visa between the U.S. and China, is largely responsible for the visitor increase. The visa can be automatically renewed, which is a game changer, Gu said, and makes it easier for Chinese visitors to come to the U.S.

And 2016 is the year of U.S. China Travel and Tourism, with the two governments promoting travel between the two countries, he said.

Chinas wealth has soared over the past decades as well, panelists said.

The past 30 years their middle class went from 10 million middle class to 300 million middle class. Nobodys ever done that before. And theyre proud of that fact, and they should be proud of that, said John Stallcup of Stallcup and Associates.

Seventy-three percent of Chinese luxury shoppers are under 45, more than 50 percent under 35. The average age of a Chinese millionaire is 34, while in the U.S. it is 54, he said.

Stallcup and Gu agreed that through the visa program Chinese visitors are likely to be repeat visitors, and those repeat visitors tend to spend more. Their first trip to California is likely to come through the two gateway cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles, while over consecutive trips the Chinese visitor will expand and explore areas where they can spend more time, like Napa Valley, Gu said.

Travel is considered educational, Gu said, and repeat visitors tend to travel five to eight times a year. They also travel in smaller groups instead of the tour-guided busloads that used to come to the states.

About half of the Chinese outbound travelers are now millennials, he said, with about two-thirds of this group belonging to the high income bracket.

Chinese millennials prefer to be inspired rather than persuaded, and they highly value authenticity in content and are more likely to trust peer-generated content on social media than from traditional media channels. They consider lodging part of their leisure experience and are willing to pay for something unique, Gu said.

Their definition of luxury is shifting from conspicuous spending to experiential luxury and mainland Chinese consumers plan to up their spending on travel than on luxury goods this year, marking the second year this has been the case, he said.

They are sophisticated, want exclusivity in quality, craftsmanship and style, Stallcup said.

Repeat visitors are typically young, educated, fashionable and sophisticated, Stallcup said, and will spend 10 percent of their annual income on luxury commodities.

Fine wine is among the luxury goods Chinese visitors want to purchase, often as a gift for family or friends. Expensive red wines such as Chateau Petrus, Lafite, Opus, Cask 23, or other limited production wines are part of status gifting, and seldom consumed for pleasure, Stallcup said.

Wines that the Chinese actually drink are in the under-$10 category, fruit-forward reds with tea tannins, or sweet, he said. Their palettes are attuned to the mouthfeel of tea tannins, and as a population the Chinese have more supertasters than any other group. In a large group such as the 50 or so people in attendance at the workshop, there will be about 25 percent Anglo supertasters compared to about 65 to 70 percent for Chinese, Stallcup said.

They just have more taste buds than we do, he said.

Stallcup was the Asian Concierge at Stags Leap for four years and shared some tips on interacting with Chinese visitors in the tasting room.

Show respect for them at all times and address the eldest in the group first. The oldest person is always the boss, but not always male, he said. Be politically correct and dont bring up old stereotypes, and dont confuse a Chinese visitor with a Korean or Japanese or any other Asian. If you dont know where they are from, just dont say anything about it, he advised.

Dont assume that they dont understand you. If you say, Welcome to X winery, heres our tasting menu, the cost is $30 and its for these wines and then you later remind them it costs $30, you just insulted them, Stallcup said.

Theyre always on a schedule, so make it easier for them to keep to it, he said. And while they are at the winery make sure to have free, easy access to Wi-Fi  roaming charges from China are expensive, he said  and have props for selfies.

Stallcup also recommends having something to give them as a gift as a thank you.

Luxury goods are what they look for but if you pay retail for something you lose face. And its not about giving them 30 percent off, its about giving them something of value that they can show, he said.

He told a story about selling $20,000 worth of wine to a Chinese customer and gifting a bottle of sauvignon blanc and a bottle opener to the purchaser, and giving the members of his party a magnet. They were overjoyed, he said.

The Chinese marketplace is flooded with fake products, panelists said, so they appreciate authenticity. And California wine is often purchased at retail value here, but sold there for multiple times over what was paid originally.

They are an extremely skeptical consumer base. If every time you went to purchase something here at home and 40 percent of the time it was fake, youd be skeptical too, said Adam Ivor, a winemaker who co-founded Gliding Eagle, a company that ships directly to China.

As a winemaker it bothers him to think that he spent two and a half years making a $100 bottle of wine that a distributor only wants to pay him $50 for, and then it sits on a ship for 60 to 90 days traveling to China in conditions that he cant control and then gets re-sold for $300.

Gliding Eagle is his solution to that by specializing in logistics, authenticity and transparency.

I was not about to put it on a truck and have it go into a black hole. I dont know whos buying it, what theyre paying for it, how its stored, how its transported, are they telling my brands story, how frequently, if it gets told is it getting told properly, he said. I dont want a distributor telling someone how I made that bottle of wine. No one can tell the consumer how I made that bottle of wine better than I can.

The distributor method in China is fragmented and murky, he said, so Gliding Eagle is working to be the conduit between the Chinese consumer and the wine industry. Purchasing between the two economies can be tricky, he said, but both Ivor and Gu said WeChat is the place to do business and communicate with the Chinese.

WeChat is the Facebook of China, the Twitter of China, Ivor said. It is also a mobile payment system.

Gu said there are more than 700 million monthly active users on WeChat, and 55 percent of users open WeChat more than 10 times a day.

Through WeChat consumers can directly look up more information about your wine, and using 30-second or one-minute videos provide a platform for them to learn more.

QR codes are huge, he said. I can scan and learn about your wine in Chinese on my own.

Its all about reducing barriers to purchasing, Ivor added.

He also recommended keeping pricing simple and bundle the pricing. Dont, for example, list the price of the wine, plus the price of shipping, and then the taxes, and anything else that could be added. Instead list the case price in total so its easy to understand. Also, stick to just a few wines that are the most likely buys.

You dont want decision fatigue, he said.
Napa County Public Health will begin offering free seasonal flu vaccine shots to anyone over 3 years of age.

This year the flu mist (spray) is not available because it is not effective to stop the flu viruses expected to be circulating this season.

Clinics:

Napa, Sunday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Binational Health Fair, 3285 Claremont Way.

Yountville, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 3-6 p.m., Yountville Community Center, 6516 Washington St.

American Canyon, Monday, Sept. 26, 3-6 p.m., Multi-Use Center, 2185 Elliot Drive.

Napa, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Napa Senior Center, 1500 Jefferson St.

Lake Berryessa, Monday, Oct. 10, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Berryessa Senior Center, 4380 Spanish Flat Loop Road.

St. Helena, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 3-6 p.m., St. Helena Elementary School, 1325 Adams St.

Napa, Monday, Oct. 17, 3-6 p.m., Napa Elks Club, 2840 Soscol Ave.

Angwin, Wednesday, Oct. 26, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., Angwin Fire Department, 275 College Ave.

Napa, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 3 p.m.-6 p.m., McPherson Elementary, 2670 Yajome St.

Calistoga, Monday, Nov. 7, 36 p.m., Calistoga Fairgrounds, Butler Pavilion, 1435 N. Oak St.

Although the spray version of the vaccine is not available this year, the flu shot is still the safest and most effective way to avoid getting the flu, said Dr. Karen Relucio, Napa County Public Health officer. In addition to protecting yourself from getting sick, the vaccine can prevent you from spreading the flu to your loved ones and other people who are more likely to have severe illness.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend everyone over 6 months of age get a flu vaccine. Those at higher risk for complications of the flu, including seniors over 65 years, pregnant women, children under five years and people with certain chronic medical conditions, are especially encouraged to get vaccinated.

In addition to getting vaccinated, simple steps to help stop the spread of the flu:

1) Wash hands often with soap and warm water for at least 30 seconds.

2) Cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue or sleeve.

3) Stay home and contact health care providers when sick.

For additional information, including the full schedule of seasonal flu vaccine clinics, visit the Napa County Public Health flu vaccine clinic: http://www.countyofnapa.org/publichealth/fluclinics/ or call the flu line at 707-253-4540 for 24/7 recorded bilingual information.

Residents unable to attend the flu vaccine clinics or with children less than three years of age can call the Public Health Immunization Clinic at 707-253-4270 for a free appointment.
PARIS  With their beloved baguette already available 24 hours a day, it seems only logical that Parisians can now get the Bayonne ham and Bas
A mixed-use, four-story stone building featuring dark bronze metal accents and an eclectic, turn-of-the-century feel is planned for the currently empty corner of First and Main streets in downtown Napa.

Representatives from Napa business Bounty Hunter recently submitted major design review plans to the city for its new headquarters.

We want it to be the nicest building in downtown Napa, said business owner Mark Pope.

Pope, founder and chief executive of Bounty Hunter Rare Wine & Spirits, plans to move his Old West-themed restaurant and offices with more than 100 employees at 975 First St. into the new 26,930-square-foot building.

His intent is to create a building that is historically interesting, but respectful of Napa heritage and tradition.

The project will feature space for a restaurant, bar, kitchen, wine shop, offices, storage, classrooms and meeting space.

We are going to use very high-quality building materials, Pope said. The building should cost between $12 million and $15 million.

However, in April, the Planning Commission conducted a preliminary review of the architectural design focusing on such issues as building design, exterior materials, lighting and business signage, said Scott Klingbeil, a city planner.

After reviewing the architecture with the applicants design team the Commission was largely supportive of the proposed development, he noted.

Its quality with a capital Q, declared Commissioner Beth Painter at the time.

Its going to be an awesome addition to downtown Napa, said Commissioner Michael Murray. Its going to set up a visual corridor that will be world-renowned.

Pope and his business partners acquired several properties on the block in 2013 and 2015. In November, demolition of the existing buildings  including former homes of the Tuscany and Don Perico restaurants  cleared the site for the Bounty Hunter project.

The Don Perico restaurant was significantly impacted. The business had been closed due to earthquake damage. Then it had to move to ready the site for demolition. For a time, it was unclear where Don Perico might go. The restaurant moved into a space almost across the street in Dwight Murray Plaza.

Im really happy that things have worked out for the owners of the Mexican restaurant, said Pope. Its a win-win for the community and that makes me feel good.

The current home of the Bounty Hunter on First Street will be repurposed, said Pope.

We may put another concept there, he said, but declined to elaborate. Were looking at all options.

As for the new project, Im hoping the city appreciates what we are trying to do and they are thrilled with it.

With any luck, construction could start at the first half of 2017 and be finished in 24 months.

The project will next go before Planning Commission. A date has not been announced.
Fran Pavley, about to be termed out of her seat in the state Senate, was worried before the June primary election: Would her trusted longtime aide Henry Stern be aced out of the November runoff election to succeed her by a more business-oriented Democrat?

The answer turned out to be no, but it was no sure thing, as Stern managed only a 7 percent margin over Janice Kamenir-Reznik, attorney and longtime activist, president of the California Womens Law Center and co-founder of anti-genocide organization Jewish World Watch.

This was a classic fight between Democrats whose priorities are only slightly different. Stern has a strong environmentalist record. Kamenir-Reznik was perceived as more business-friendly. So a large share of the $900,000 in primary election spending  mostly money from businesses  in the San Fernando Valley-based 27th state Senate district went to Kamenir-Reznik, while Stern got some support from labor unions.

Pavley, who wrote landmark state environmental laws like the 2006 limits on greenhouse gases and carried legislation making the reopening of the leaky Southern California Gas Co. Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field more difficult, could breathe easier.

Stern did not lead the field in the primary, but he was the leading Democrat and is favored to best Republican Steve Fazio in the fall.

This race played out differently from others in the new political reality thats emerged here since the 2010 adoption of the Top Two primary election system. The new system, which sees a one-party U.S. Senate race and more than two-dozen one-party legislative and congressional matchups this fall, has spawned a de facto third significant political party, loosely called the business Democrats.

This grouping, often elected over opposition from labor-backed fellow Democrats, represents fulfillment of the stated purpose of Proposition 14, which created Top Two. Its generally moderate members usually vote with Democrats on social issues like abortion and gun control, but are far less environmentally oriented than the party mainstream. The Republican minority in Democrat-dominated districts often helps elect them.

They are the big reason business-funded political action committees will spend well over $20 million this year on California legislative and congressional races, even though the 17 state propositions on the November ballot are diverting some business-donated PAC money. Education interests also are splitting money between candidates who favor charter schools (generally business Democrats) and those loyal to teachers unions.

A typical race of this type comes in San Bernardino County, where moderate, business-oriented Democrats have never been rare. Thats where incumbent Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, backed by realtors and oil companies, benefited from more than $600,000 in business PAC money during the primary.

Those interests wont have to spent as much this fall because Browns more environmentally-oriented opponent is Eloise Reyes, who finished 9 percent behind Brown in the primary. Reyes doesnt figure to pick up many of the 21 percent of voters who went for the sole Republican running in the primary.

But business PACs might have to spend heavily in the 3rd Senate district, where longtime incumbent Lois Wolk of Davis is termed out. This race also features two Democrats, the business-oriented Bill Dodd, now an assemblyman, facing Mariko Yamada, a former assembly member. Dodd got more than three times as much financial support in the primary as all other candidates combined, but is still not assured of election unless he gets substantial support from the districts minority Republicans.

EdVoice, a so-called reform group advocating more rigorous school evaluations, scored a major primary victory in the nearby 4th Assembly District, covering parts of Napa, Yolo and Sonoma Counties, when Winters Mayor Cecilia Aguiar-Curry drew 28 percent of the vote, thus eliminating Wolks son Dan, who scored 25 percent. Republican Charlie Schaupp stunned Democrats in the district by taking 29 percent in the primary, but is viewed as a sure November loser in this heavily Democratic district.

The bottom line is that there are fewer sure-thing races for Congress and the Legislature in the offing this fall than before Top Two began, and that the minority party in districts heavily dominated by either Democrats or Republicans will decide some close races.

Smaller parties dont like this, because they have no runoff election slots, but they can fix that if they draw more votes down the line and, perhaps, raise more money to help them draw those votes.

Thomas D. Elias writes the syndicated California Focus column.
When a person commits suicide, we know their own suffering was immense and the impact to family, friends and the surrounding community is also immense and heartbreaking. As members of the Napa County Mental Health Board, we are deeply disturbed by suicides, especially with the knowledge that there are identifiable stresses in our community that should be addressed.

It is in our communitys interest to address these issues both due to the societal cost and the financial cost of psychiatric crisis and suicide (Suicide results in an estimated $51 Billion annually in combined medical and work loss costs.  CDC, 2015). Below are some of the stresses and areas our MHB has researched, or is in the process of researching.

First of all, we know housing stresses are correlated with increased suicides and psychiatric crisis. Details about housing needs for adults (including seniors) with mental illness are in our previous letter (Napa County has critical need of housing for those with mental illness, May 10). Although our reports have met with agreement, we have yet to see projects to address this, and look to Napa Countys political leadership to provide the leadership and collaboration required to provide much-needed facilities and supportive housing.

Unemployment is another area of great stress for individuals with mental illness in Napa County. Again, we must be intentional about providing employment resources/training that meets the needs of adults with mental illness. The California Department of Rehabilitation has specific programs for adults with mental illness  these should be made available here in Napa County. (The MHBs Napa Employment Services for Psychiatric Disabilities workgroup welcomes input from the community.)

For children, increasing access to mental health services in schools must be addressed. Napa Valley Unified School District staff recently reported to our board about the services available, and acknowledged more focus/resources in this area are needed. Training teachers, staff, parents and children about mental health, and reducing stigma associated with mental illness are all ways to help our children. (The MHB recently formed a work group: School Based Mental Health Services & Stigma Reduction Needs Assessment 2016, and welcomes input from the community.)

Finally, in reaction to the recent reports of suicide rates among veterans (Researchers found the risk of suicide for veterans is 21 percent higher when compared to civilian adults. July 7, 2016, Military Times: New VA study finds 20 veterans commit suicide each day). The MHB has scheduled Patrick Jolly, Napa Countys Veterans Service Officer to speak at our Oct. 12 meeting, 4-6 p.m. at the new Health & Human Services campus, 2751 Napa Valley Corporate Drive, Building A, Oak Room. We hope to learn more about providing necessary services to our veterans  members of the public are always welcome.

Although September is being called Suicide Prevention Month, join us in treating every month as suicide prevention month by working to reduce the stresses and factors that cause suicide.

The MHB reviews, evaluates and advises the Board of Supervisors and the Director of Mental Health regarding Napa Countys mental health offerings. Monthly MHB meetings are usually scheduled on the second Tuesday at 4 p.m. Members of the public are encouraged to attend. Meeting agendas, minutes and board member information are available at: countyofnapa.org.

The 2015-16 MHB Annual Report presentation to the Board of Supervisors is scheduled for Oct.18 at 11 a.m.

The board currently has one opening. People are encouraged to apply: countyofnapa.org/ceo/committeesandcommissions.

Theresa Comstock is chair of the Napa County Mental Health Board. Kristine Haataja is vice chair.
Last in a series

Angwin resident Elsa Cairo Carlos joined 1,200 other people in a special ceremony in Oakland in early August. She took an oath and became a United States citizen.

Joining Carlos was her husband, Jorge Vicente Carlos Poma, and Blanca Dixon, who is the Immigration Program coordinator for the UpValley Family Centers. Dixon and Carlos first met when Carlos went to the Centers St. Helena office on Spring Street to pay her PG&E bill. They got to talking and Dixon convinced Carlos to sign up for a citizenship class.

That process ended Aug. 3 with the naturalization ceremony, but it really began 16 years ago when Carlos first wanted to become a U.S. citizen. In 2000, she didnt finish the process, though, because during an oral interview the officer didnt treat me well, Carlos said. This time, though, it was different, in great part because of Dixons encouragement and friendship.

Carlos doesnt speak English, so for this interview, Dixon acted as the translator, going back and forth between Spanish and English.

Carlos said she was so happy to be a part of the ceremony in Oakland. Most of those becoming citizens were either from China or Mexico, she said, and she stood up with four other people when officials announced Carlos home country, Peru.

After the ceremony, Carlos, her husband and Dixon went out to lunch to celebrate. During the lunch, Dixon said the new U.S. citizen shared so many stories, including when she first came to the United States with her husband and oldest daughter, Joselin, who is now 24. They were escaping the terrorism that plagued Peru in the 1980s and were granted political asylum in the United States. Dixon, who also grew up in Peru, said she remembers the terrorism from those days. I was a child there, 6 or 8 years old, she said. I remember being in that situation. They were so lucky to escape from that. Then, Dixon asks, Why did we have to suffer so much?

As a Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR), Carlos could have traveled back to her homeland, but she didnt. Since she became a U.S. citizen, Carlos went to the Social Security office and changed her status, obtained a U.S. passport and registered to vote in the November election.

She and her husband will take their three children, Joselin, Dayana, 20, and Emanuel, 16, to Peru in December. Dayana and Emanuel were born in the United States and this will be their first trip to Peru, to see where their mother grew up. They also will visit the family Carlos left behind when she emigrated to the United States. She hasnt seen those family members for 22 years.

Carlos has another plan as a U.S. citizen. She wants to petition the U.S. government to obtain legal status for her brother, who has been in the United States for the past five years. Dixon said the process of getting that legal status can take many years.

Carlos is so thankful for Dixons help and she encourages anyone who wishes to become a U.S. citizen to go to the UpValley Family Centers to start the process. The UpValley Family Centers are one of four nonprofits that are part of the One Napa Valley initiative, which helps foreign-born Napa County residents become U.S. citizens. The initiative is possible because of a grant from the Napa Valley Community Foundation, and the nonprofits work with the International Institute of the Bay Area.

Dixon and Carlos have a lot in common. Both were born in Peru and came to the United States and both have families. Soon, they will have another thing in common: Dixon has passed all the tests and will soon become a U.S. citizen. She said she is proud to work for the UpValley Family Centers to help people become citizens.

Overall, I feel how important it is when you come to our center, we can start everything from zero, Dixon said. The only thing is you have to be an LPR. We have classes, we have tutoring program, we have workshops where you can get help in filling out the application, we have attorneys, we have IIBA reps, we have everything for you. It is just connecting the dots. We are here to help, to guide you to become a citizen.

Carlos wanted to add one more comment to the interview. She only had to pay $50 for the IIBA rep to fill out the form, she qualified for a fee waiver for the $680 requested by the Department of Homeland Security. Also, she said, I want to thank the IIBA for their help.

For more information on becoming a U.S. citizen, contact Blanca Dixon at bdixon@upvalleyfamilycenters.org.
Tuesday, Sept. 6

0218 -- Multiple trash cans were overturned on Oak Avenue.

0835 -- Report of a strong chemical smell on Adams Street.

1055 -- A mental health patient turned up missing during an outing to the library.

1253 -- An underage boy was seen smoking and stumbling on Adams Street. Police checked the area.

1621 -- Medical aid on Pine Street for a possible heart attack.

1728 -- A Georgia drivers license was found behind a downtown business.

1959 -- The fire department responded to a trash can fire on Main Street.

Wednesday, Sept. 7

0611 -- Report of a black kitten in a Hunt Avenue parking lot. The caller was worried it might get hit by a car.

0951 -- Report of a brown pick-up with a For Sale sign parked in front of a Dowdell Lane business for two weeks.

1345 -- Report of a possible drunk driver near Pope and Main streets.

2128 -- Report of three suspicious men sitting on the steps of a Pope Street business. They were gone when police arrived.

2258 -- Medical aid on Madrona Avenue.

Thursday, Sept. 8

0703 -- Medical aid on Olive Avenue for an elderly woman who fell and hit her head.

0734 -- Report of a dead deer or dog on northbound Silverado Trail near Pope Street. Police notified the CHP.

1108 -- Medical aid on Starr Avenue for an elderly woman feeling weak.

1253 -- Medical aid on Pope Street for an elderly person feeling ill.

1448 -- An officer tried to catch a couple of loose Chihuahuas near Pope Street and Paulson Court.

1720 -- A caller reported fraudulent charges on her Macys credit card.

2109 -- Report of an ongoing problem with people being loud in a back yard on Pratt Avenue.

2111 -- Report of a loose dog last seen near Pope and Main streets. It was a medium-sized, cream-colored dog with slightly curly fur.

Friday, Sept. 9

0830 -- Report of a dog barking for over an hour on Pope Street, causing other dogs to bark.

1030 -- Report of a possible homeless person sleeping on a bench at Meily Park several times within the last 10 days.

1043 -- The dog on Pope Street was still barking. Police called its owner on the phone.

1125 -- Non-injury accident at El Bonita Avenue and Main Street.

1331 -- Report of a reckless driver in a red pick-up swerving all over Main Street before turning onto Madrona Avenue.

1539 -- Report of an ongoing problem with a man panhandling on Main Street. Hed been asked to leave a business property three or four times in the last few days, and he was asked to leave again today.

1604 -- Police took a report on someone making threats.

1613 -- A citizen in the lobby reported receiving a fraudulent call from a man claiming to be with Social Security and telling her she needed to pay $300 in order to avoid being arrested. Police told her to disregard the calls, which resemble the common IRS scam, in which fraudulent callers claim to be from the IRS.

Saturday, Sept. 10

0114 -- Report of a suspicious van on Kennedy Court. Police checked the area and found it on La Quinta Way. Its occupants had returned from a movie and had been talking, but now they were going inside.

0253 -- Medical aid on Hunt Avenue for a woman feeling ill.

0855 -- Report of someone using a loud leaf blower well before 8 a.m. on Hillview Place.

0958 -- Medical aid on Dean York Lane.

1026 -- Security at a south St. Helena winery told police that several hundred protesters would be out in front of the winery today. Security had also notified the CHP.

1150 -- A key fob for a BMW was reported lost yesterday, possibly in St. Helena.

1250 -- A large friendly dog was found wandering in and out of traffic on Spring Street near North Crane Avenue.

1256 -- A black tuxedo cat with a white spot on its nose was reported missing since Tuesday. Police referred the caller to the St. Helena Police Officers Foundations Facebook page, where police had posted a photo of the cat found on Wednesday morning. The caller confirmed it was the same cat, and made arrangements to pick it up.

1750 -- Non-injury accident on Main Street.

1753 -- Report of dogs barking at multiple houses in the Chablis Circle/Pinot Way area. They appeared to have stopped for now, so police told the caller to call again if they start back up.

Sunday, Sept. 11

0737 -- Police found someone sleeping in a car on Railroad Avenue.

0809 -- Report of people sleeping at the skatepark.

1007 -- Report of a geyser-like water leak at a house on Spring Mountain Road. The caller said it had been going for about 24 hours, and nobody appeared to be home.

1107 -- Report of four men smoking pot in the skatepark.

1247 -- Multiple Ferraris were seen driving recklessly at speeds of 100 mph on southbound Silverado Trail near Pope Street.

1306 -- Report of a water leak on Quail Court.

1335 -- A pink and white bicycle was stolen from a Hunt Avenue apartment.

1502 -- A man and two women were seen yelling at one another near some vineyards on McCorkle Avenue. Police checked the area.

1513 -- Report of a car taking up two parking spaces on Crane Avenue. Police checked the area.

1533 -- An officer at Crane Park was flagged down by a man asking whether it was OK to fly a drone at the park. The officer said there was nothing in the Municipal Code to prohibit him from doing so, but advised the man to use caution with other people around.

1626 -- Report of a woman swearing at Lyman Park with kids nearby.

2158 -- Report of a man causing a verbal disturbance on Stockton Street.

Monday, Sept. 12

0708 -- A caller reported their car was blocked in by another car on McCorkle Avenue. The cars were in a private parking lot, so police told the caller to call a tow truck.

1041 -- Report of a man sleeping near the walking bridge at Meily Park. Police arrested the 32-year-old Napa man for two outstanding warrants.

1123 -- Non-injury collision at Mills Lane and Highway 29.

1200 -- A caller reported losing her keys on the trail behind the library.

1211 -- A caller reported seeing a reckless driver about an hour ago on Main Street.

1339 -- Police took a report on elder abuse.

1905 -- Report of screaming coming from a house on Stockton Street. All was quiet when police arrived.

2022 -- Report of an ongoing problem with a dog barking on Charter Oak Avenue.
Napa County Registrar of Voters John Tuteur released a statement Monday about a potentially confusing mailer received by 14,047 Napa County voters.

The voters received a voter registration solicitation from the Voter Participation Center (VPC), a nonprofit organization whose published mission is to register and mobilize the rising American electorate. Many of the solicitations were sent to voters who are already registered to vote at their current address.

I encourage efforts to increase voter registration among the 25 percent of eligible citizens who have not yet registered to vote, Tuteur said. However, VPC did not check its mailing list against current voter registration data, leading to a number of voters calling our Election Division believing they are not registered to vote.

The data sources VPC used for its solicitation included recently registered voters, alternative names of voters, deceased persons and ineligible persons.

Napa County voters can go to secure.countyofnapa.org/VoterInfo and enter their last name and birth date to see if they are currently registered. If a citizen checks the database and does not find their name shown as an eligible voter for the Nov. 8 presidential election, they can register online at registertovote.ca.gov. The federal form circulated by VPC does not include all options available to California voters such as requesting vote-by-mail status.

Contact Tuteur at john.tuteur@countyofnapa.org or 253-4459 with any questions or comments.
Last night on the twenty-third season premiere of ABCs Dancing With the Stars, things got rather heated. Sure, the Ryan Lochte bum rush of Anti-Lochte protesters is what is on everybodys lips this morning when it comes to the competition show, but country music fans are focused on another hot topic: Jana Kramers sensual Viennese Waltz.

A self-proclaimed non-dancer, Kramer turned heads and dropped jaws as she moved around the dance floor with partner Gleb Savchenko, steaming up the studio and television screens across America. While head judge Len Goodman appropriately pointed out that the choreography lacked the ode to Old Vienna as expected, the judging panel still got quite a bit from the dance in the form of a nationwide dance floorgasm.

Watch Jana Kramers sexy dancing debut here:
President discusses latest foreign political developments around Artsakh

Azerbaijan officials considering opening embassy in Israel

Armenia PM, EU Special Representative for South Caucasus discuss regional security and peace

Nikol Pashinyan, Garo Paylan exchange views on Armenia-Turkey normalization process

Quake hits Armenia-Turkey border zone

Armenia ruling party adopting new vision regarding Karabakh conflict settlement

Russia MOD: Ukraine carried out terrorist attack on Black Sea Fleet ships, civilian ships in Sevastopol

Premier: CSTO should plan force operation, restore Armenias territorial integrity

Armenia PM: All countries consider Karabakh to be part of Azerbaijan

Armenias Pashinyan: CSTO does not exist

Kremlin responds to question on extending mandate of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh

Armenia premier: We need to know, ultimately, what Russian peacekeepers are doing in Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenia PM: Im ready to sign document, accept that Russian peacekeepers term in Karabakh be extended 10-20 years

Armenias Pashinyan: We are ready to delegate border guard service operation to Russian border guards

Finland, Sweden promise to join NATO together

European Parliament calls on Armenia to consider diversifying its security partnerships

Visiting Armenia MPs brief Canada lawmaker on recent Azerbaijan military aggression

Armenia PM at ruling party congress: We declared repairing states foundation our primary task

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
An ignorant man can merely overpass this site without understanding what it is in reality. At first sight, it is simply a heap of stones. But for the explanations of a specialist it is hard to imagine that a millennial human history is directly under your foot (photos).

Karashamb is the name of the village, in the surroundings of which the expedition of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia is working for several years. The excavations started here back in the Soviet period. In 1980, late Vahan Hovhannisyan, more known to the current Armenian generation as a political figure, found a burial mound while working as an archaeologist here. A unique encrusted silver bowl dating from 22-21st centuries BC was found in the burial mound. Currently it is exhibited in the History Museum of Armenia. Other utensils, as well as bones of holy cows were also found here, all this proving that there was a developed kingdom here millennia ago.

Archeologist Varduhi Melikyan told Armenian News  NEWS.am that in the 1980s this territory was divided between several entities as allotments. During the initial construction work, archaeological artifacts were found and specialists were invited to the scene.

Later summer cottages were nonetheless constructed, but 3.5 meter ha was left between them, this land currently serving as a unique archaeological monument. During the archaeological work which has been resumed since 2009, the workers of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography found a big burial ground disposal here with 776 tombs.

The excavation revealed that people were buried here for over thousand years, from 20th to 7th century BC.

Our main goal is to explore the burial ritual, which has been subjected to the least changes for centuries. This covered period when there were no written sources. The burial ritual gives us quite a precise idea on the household of people, social construction of the ancient society, demography, as well as their religious perceptions, Melikyan says.

The tombs in Karashamb are very close to each other: each tomb is surrounded by stones, cromlechs, a flag stone being installed in the center. This can be best seen from footage captured by drone. According to the archaeologist, the big tombs - burial mounds were not covered by flag stones: they had a wooden covering.

Varduhi Melikyan shows us a recently excavated tomb of late Bronze Age. Two adults and a child are buried in it: this is most likely to be a family. In the burials of that period, the deceased were put on a right or left side, or on their face, with bent hands and legs  like in a mothers womb. Heads were also buried separately.

The archaeologist will spend several more days to carefully take out all the bones and utensils from this tomb. Thereafter, all this will be recorded and directed to the Institute for further examination.

Frankly speaking, the temptation to go down into the tomb and make a selfie with the millennial bones was quite big; only the fear to damage something stopped the members of our camera crew. However, as it turned out later, the expedition workers themselves have such photos on their Facebook pages.

The specialists hope that after the completion of the excavation this site will be turned into a small reserve with a museum, where the artifacts from tombs will be displayed. They also believe that Karashamb will be included in the tourist trail of Armenia.
YEREVAN.  No phase in the talks can come to an end without the will of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh).

Vahram Baghdasaryan, head of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia National Assembly (RPA NA) Faction, on Tuesday stated the aforesaid to reporters at the NA.

When noted by the Armenian News-NEWS.am reporter that, according to Ambassador James Warlick, US Co-Chair of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, the avenue for resolving the Karabakh conflict is the handing of some territories to Azerbaijan, in exchange for Karabakhs status and asked what the latter means, Baghdasaryan responded: Naturally, each OSCE Minsk Group country [i.e. Russia, US, and France] shall express its views.

We [i.e. Armenia] have clearly expressed our view and we will repeat again; the President also said about it: no negotiating phase can come to an end without the will of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. And there is no decision and no document, at this moment; they are just wishes and proposals.

There is no certainty, yet. They are views expressed by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs.
MOLLY RILEY/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Hollywood actor and global activist George Clooney unveiled findings Monday of a two-year undercover investigation that he said paints a disturbing picture of war profiteering carried out by South Sudan's top government leaders.



This morning were prepared to give evidence of massive criminal behavior by the president of South Sudan and by his opposition, the ousted vice president of South Sudan and their generals, Clooney told reporters in Washington, D.C., Monday morning. The simple fact is they are stealing the money to fund their militias to attack and kill one another.



The investigation was released by the Sentry, an organization co-founded by Clooney that seeks to disrupt and dismantle the networks of military officers, government officials, businessmen, arms dealers, bankers and other enablers who benefit financially and politically from Africas deadliest conflicts, according to its website. The Sentry is an initiative of the Enough Project and Not on Our Watch.



According to Clooney, South Sudanese officials have amassed wealth from arms deals, oil and gambling.



Fellow actor and human rights activist Don Cheadle, who co-founded Not on Our Watch with Clooney and other celebs, also discussed the report Monday, saying, These families of several top officials we examined live in million-dollar mansions outside of the country. They post videos partying in hotels, driving around in luxury cars while the rest of the people in their country suffer consequences of a brutal civil war and in many places experience near famine conditions.



The report obtained images of officials family members on vacation as well as documentation of their properties abroad. Investigators found that leaders in South Sudan were living lavish lifestyles outside the country, despite their modest salaries. According to the report, one top official, who makes roughly $45,000 per year through his government salary, has at least two luxurious villas in Uganda in addition to a $2 million mansion in a gated community in Nairobi [Kenya].



The newly independent country of South Sudan has been engulfed in conflict since 2013. The violence has left tens of thousands of people dead, and nearly half the countrys population requires food assistance.



Clooney said the U.S. can act now or spend the next decade cleaning up the problem, warning that we have seen the influences that can take hold in a failed state.



He and Cheadle are calling for targeted sanctions and more oversight of banks that are doing business with Sudanese officials.



Clooney and his co-founders at the Sentry are turning over their findings to U.S. officials and met with President Obama in hopes of spurring action.



We have the moral obligation and the ability to act, Clooney said. We cannot continue to look away. History is watching.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Landry Dongmo Tsague Photo by Antoine Tempe

Physician Landry Dongmo Tsague 07MPH was halfway around the world from his home in Cameroon, studying at the Rollins School of Public Health as a William H. Foege Fellow in Global Health, when a good friend proposed the improbable: that in their spare time, the two men should create an open source medical journal for African scientists. "At the time I was fine-tuning my skills in research, documentation, and scientific writing at Emory," remembers Tsague. "I paused and said, 'You're right. Let's do it.'"

That was 10 years ago. Now, the Pan-African Medical Journal (PAMJ) is an established, credible open-source online resource for scientists in and out of Africa. It has multiple offices; it has bilingual editors and article reviewers; it has an average of 15,000 unique visitors per month reading its more than 3,300 articles; and, most important to Tsague, it has an earned a reputation for publishing high-quality research by and for African scientists.

For Tsague, founding the Pan-African Medical Journal was an important milestone in a career that was already full of accomplishments. Before becoming a Foege Fellow at Emory, Tsague was directing efforts to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV for the Cameroonian Ministry of Public Health. That work had led to being honored with an International AIDS Society Young Investigator Award. In addition to his education as a medical doctor, Tsague had also completed additional training in clinical research in France and in applied health informatics and statistics in Benin.

Still, Tsague and other accomplished African colleagues struggled to get their work published by established medical journals. Tsague says many journals weren't interested in the work he and his colleagues were doing in Africa, despite its relevance to African scientists and doctors. Article submission fees to journals made publication beyond some African scientists' reach.

"Even as an African medical student, I could see the missed opportunities that our generation and the generation before us had faced to make our work known by the global health community and to make our work used for global health," says Tsague. "From the start, our mission was to foster, stimulate, and perpetuate a culture of information sharing and publishing amongst researchers and other health care actors in the African health scene."

So in between classes at Emory, Tsague and his friend Raoul Kamadjeu (then a fellow at the CDC) began brainstorming how their journal would be different. "We started open access because we wanted to solve a problem linked to the availability of published work by Africans to the African community of scientists," says Tsague. "We wanted to expand the options of African researchers by providing them with a journal of continental scope so they could become major contributors to indexed medical literature."

By existing entirely online, they hoped PAMJ would ensure that relevant research could be used immediately by scientists around the continent, without waiting for print publication and mailing.

Tsague found his position at Emoryspecifically as a Foege Fellowessential to the upstart journal. "We knew for the journal to fly, we needed globally accepted leaders in the field who could back us up," Tsague says. "The most significant impact of the Foege fellowship has been and continues to be the invaluable professional and personal connections with public health experts from government, private sector, and academia in the United States and around the world."

View the journal at panafrican-med-journal.com

After finishing his MPH at Rollins, Tsague went back to working in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in Africa even as PAMJ was first coming online. And as African scientists' internet searches began leading them to PAMJ, Tsague's personal connections led to a partnership with AFENET, the African Field Epidemiology Network. AFENET now provides office space, equipment, and funding for PAMJ editors in Uganda. In the past few years, PAMJ has also added one editorial office in Cameroon with six full-time editors to keep up with the growing number of articles submitted in the French language. Meanwhile, PAMJ's slim budget is based only on a submission fee of $180 for scientists submitting articles.

Tsague is now based in Dakar, Senegal, and rejoices in what his journal has accomplished. "Even in Eritrea, even in Sudan, even in Libya, people are accessing the journal and submitting articles for publishing," he says. According to Google Scholar, PAMJ is now the second most influential open access medical journal in Africa.

Still, Tsague's work is not done. "What is critical to insist on is the journal surviving its founding fathers," he says. After all, Tsague still has other professional ambitions, including finishing a PhD in public health and excelling at his day job as a senior HIV/AIDS specialist for UNICEF.

"Making a significant contribution toward ending the AIDS epidemic in Africa during my lifetime has remained my personal aspiration a commitment that was nurtured during my time at Rollins," he says. And if work published in PAMJ can help the AIDS epidemic end more quickly, then that will make all his hard work after hours worthwhile.
Speaking in Daura, Katsina State, shortly after attending Eid prayers to celebrate Eid-el-Kabir on Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari said he inherited no legacy from the previous 16 years Peoples Democratic Party administrations..

The President, who spoke against the backdrop of current economic recession facing the country, said the administrations left nothing to build on.

The President also talked about his War Against Corruption; saying that Nigerians had nothing to fear, as his Government would be fair to all.

However, he warned that whose who abused public trust would face justice, in addition to returning their stolen assets to the nation's coffers.

The President expressed gratitude to Nigerians for supporting Federal Government's policies, programmes and actions aimed at improving security, revamping the economy and combating corruption.

He said: "We should thank God, the reports I'm getting, which is very pleasing, is that we will have a bumper harvest this year. I want Nigerians to realise that what this government inherited after 16 years of PDP Government was no savings, no infrastructure, no power, no rail, no road and no security.

"Nigerians can see what we have done on Boko Haram and what we are doing to resolve the problem in the Niger Delta.

"Before the elections, we identified three major problems confronting our country.

"The first is security; we need to sufficiently secure our country to manage it well.

"The second is the economy, especially jobs for the youths and fighting corruption, which is continuous.

"For the youths, graduates and non-graduates who are interested in agriculture, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, in collaboration with the CBN, is doing something to provide employment for them."
20:52

Dissatisfied with proceedings of Delhi University's poll panel, the Congress student wing, National Students Union of India has decided to approach court over its complaints of rigging in the recently concluded student union polls.

The Delhi University Student Union polls were held on last Friday and the results declared on Saturday.

The NSUI has alleged that the election result was rigged. The outfit had also alleged that during voting in some colleges there was problem with the electronic voting machines.

After the outfit members went on hunger strike, the election commission's grievance committee had agreed to show recordings of the counting process with NSUI and also provide machine wise votes secured by each candidate.

"We were shown the video recording today but the camera was focused only on just 2 machines and didn't show all the 12 tables wherein 140 machines were being counted. We are dissatisfied with the video recording as no transparency could be established by looking at just 2 cameras," an NSUI statement said.





"There were also discrepancies found in the machine wise data provided to us as some papers showed the date of counting as September 9 instead of 10 which was the actual day of counting, the date was missing from some papers, and some papers were signed by just one official instead of the requisite number of two officials," it added.
The requested page is currently unavailable on this server.

Back to [RTHK News Homepage]
SIU to observe Hispanic/Latino Heritage Month

by Christi Mathis

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Hispanic/Latino Heritage Month at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is a time to celebrate a diverse group of peoples and their cultures and promote inclusiveness.

The theme of this years festival, which begins on Wednesday, Sept. 14, is Intersecciones  Building Bridges in the Face of Intolerance and it includes poetry, dancing, discussion panels, a potluck and much more over a four-week period. Some events are informative while others are more social in nature, but all are free and open to the public.

As the theme suggests, the emphasis this year is intersectionality. We want to talk about the ways in which our experiences and accomplishments can help us better understand the histories and difficulties of other groups, and vice-versa, Rene Francisco Poitevin, coordinator of the Hispanic/Latino Resource Center, said. We want to celebrate our heritage, in its many permutations, while also making connections with what we share in common with other groups, highlighting that each heritage is also part of the social fabric of this country.

The big kick-off for the month takes place on Thursday, Sept. 15, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Corker Lounge at the Student Center. This reception provides a chance for people to mingle and learn more about the month and planned activities.

David Romero and Matt Sedillo, both well-known spoken word artists, will be featured in the months keynote performance at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 21 in Grinnell Hall, Activity Room A. The poetry of Romero, a Mexican-American, has been published widely and he has appeared in media and on college campuses across the country. Sedillo, a Chicano and fellow slam poet, is also a published writer and has gained media attention and performed at festivals before thousands of people as well as at universities.

The Noche De Gala, a popular evening of salsa music and dancing, returns to the Student Center Ballrooms on Sept. 24. Sigma Lambda Beta Fraternity sponsors this festive semi-formal event.

Black, Latino and LGTBQ students will share about the importance of intergroup dialogue and community building during the Black, Brown and Queer Reflections presentation at 5 p.m. on Oct. 5 in Room 151 of Lawson Hall.

Other Hispanic/Latino Heritage Month highlights include Si Se Puede! First Generation Academics and Professionals Speak on Sept. 28 and On Mexicans and Muslims -- Identity and the Quest for Belonging on Oct. 6. The Sept. 28 event takes place at 5 p.m. in Grinnell Hall, Activity Room A, and will bring together first-generation academics and professionals to discuss their journeys through higher education.

The Oct. 6 event is a panel discussion at 7 p.m. in the Student Center Auditorium. SIU Latino and Arab students will share their experiences regarding the current wave of anti-Latino and anti-Muslim sentiment and how it feels to be perceived every day as the other.

Numerous other activities are planned from Sept. 14 to Oct. 13. The full schedule is available online at http://smrc.siu.edu/hrc/.

The Hispanic/Latino Resource Center, Black Resource Center, Colleges of Business and Liberal Arts, the Department of Music, the Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities, the Hispanic Student Council, Ladies United Creating Change, and faculty members Jose Najar, Pamela Smoot and Roberto Barrios are among the sponsors and facilitators of Hispanic/Latino Heritage Month.
Members of the National Assemblys Standing Committee on Planning and Development will visit Gwadar to physically inspect the progress in implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Besides reviewing the progress of work on various projects being executed under the CPEC as well as the Public Sector Development Programme, the committee members will receive a briefing from the federal and provincial authorities on the establishment of a university in Gwadar, Dawn online reported on Tuesday. The itinerary and agenda issued by the National Assembly Secretariat shows that the members plan to visit the port city of Balochistan on September 27. The members of the committee, headed by Abdul Majeed Khan of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, will also receive a presentation on the "role, function and funding of University of Turbat and establishment of its campus in Gwadar", according to the agenda. Gwadar is at the centre of the $46 billion CPEC project and more than $1 billion worth of projects are to be developed around its port by December 2017. Addressing the participants of the conference, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had announced that the corridor's western route would be constructed first for which funds would be released soon. The CPEC project will benefit all regions of Pakistan equally including Gilgit Baltistan and remote areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, according to officials. It aims to link Gwadar to China's Xinjiang region via a vast network of highways and railways, allowing China access to the Arabian Sea, and making Pakistan a regional manufacturing hub and an attractive market for foreign direct investment (FDI). --IANS ksk ( 276 Words) 2016-09-13-08:29:58 (IANS)
Amitabh Bachchan, who recently attended an event held to announce the Global Citizen India Festival, has expressed hope for a poverty-free India by 2030. The 73-year-old actor took to his Blog to share his thoughts on the same and wrote, "Global citizenry beckons .. the nature of the intent and its inception brings many of us on a common platform to work and hope to succeed in ridding poverty from India by 2030 .. that's another 15 years away .." Several other Bollywood celebs including Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Farhan Akhtar also attended the event that was hosted by Tisca Chopra. Sharing his thoughts, Farhan took to his Twitter handle to post, "Was an honour to be part of flagging off @GlblCtzn India. We can be the change. We can make the change. #ShuruaatHoonMain" Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and BJP MP Poonam Mahajan were also among those who attended the event yesterday. Extending his support to the initiative, Fadnavis said the power of a digital India is unmatched. "Global Citizen is an important initiative given its ability to engage citizens and engage them in crucial issues. The Global Education and Leadership Foundation's focus on ethical altruistic leadership is important work that involves investing in our demographic dividend. The synergy of these promises exciting outcomes," said Fadnavis. "Connected individuals can amplify their collective voice and express their views on critical issues that people across the country face," he added. The Chief Minister further said the commitments raised over the last five editions of the festival are remarkable, adding the work done to get citizens to take action is unique. "I believe this is an interesting night an innovative approach to achieve important goals. Maharashtra looks forward to lead this movement across India. We are proud to bring this initiative to the country and be the voice of India to the world," he said. The charity concert, which is overseen by the Global Poverty Project, will be held at the MMRDA Grounds in Mumbai on November 19 on the occasion of World Toilet Day with a focus on sanitation, clean water, education and gender equality. The inaugural Global Citizen Festival India will be headlined by International artists like Coldplay and Jay Z and a host of B-Town biggies like Aamir Khan, Ranveer Singh, Katrina Kaif, AR Rahman, Farhan Akhtar, Shraddha Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Arijit Singh, Dia Mirza, Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Monali Thakur. Shiv Khemka, the chairman of The Global Education and Leadership Foundation, believes that India and its 800 million young people must play a vital role in the mission to achieve the Global Goals. "Young people are starting to engage with the challenges facing our country and the planet and are becoming increasingly committed to taking action for social change. TGELF's mission is to nurture and support ethical, altruistic and decisive leadership amongst young people at schools and colleges. Each one of us is responsible for our actions and the power of each action taken collectively can help achieve the global goals," Khemka said. (ANI)
After delivering a critically acclaimed film "Airlift" earlier this year, Nimrat Kaur is yet to sign her next Bollywood project. The actress, who was busy shooting for "Wayward Pines" in Vancouver for most of the year, says she is back and "getting into the groove of things" here. The actress says she was caught up with her personal as well as professional life, but she is not complaining. "Well, I have been up to a lot in the last year, it is really been a whirlwind. January was when 'Airlift' released, and it was like one thing after the other and before you knew it, it was all over and then my sister was getting married so that was like a month of festivities and madness, and during my sister's wedding came up a job that required me to spend almost half a year in Vancouver," Nimrat told IANS in an email interview. Noticed for her work in Indian film "The Lunchbox", Nimrat landed a role as a Pakistani ISI agent in American show "Homeland", and then bagged a role in TV series "Wayward Pines". She was shooting for the Manoj Night Shyamalan's TV series -- aired in India on Star World Premiere HD. The actress, who became part of the launch of Audi A4 here along with former India skipper Ravi Shastri, and Joe King, Head, Audi India, on Friday night, also shared that the year was a bundle of "unpredictable surprises" for her. She said: "I was filming 'Wayward Pines' there for Fox Network. So, I have literally just come back and I am just about kind of getting into the groove of things here. So ya, it's really been... probably the most unpredictable, incredible year that I could have had so far." Talking about her association with Audi, Nimrat said: "I think Audi as a brand and as a company stands for all things progressive, incredibly sexy and very very edgy, and this is something which is pretty visible in the newly launched A4 too." --IANS sug/nv/vt ( 355 Words) 2016-09-13-12:05:59 (IANS)
The former model and award winning actress, who earlier claimed to have turned into a nun, recently took to Instagram to post a video of herself baring almost all and captioned it as, "NAMASTE. I AM GAIA SOFIA... you think you know who I am. Here is the truth...," reports Pinkvilla.com.

Earlier this year, Sophia reportedly hit the headlines when she posted a picture of herself wearing a white coif and a monk's orange khaki. With this, she proclaimed to have turned into a nun.

Sofia, who began her career in 2003 starring in "Absolute Power", is currently promoting 'Six X', a movie directed by Chandrakant Singh.

Six X will hit the cinemas on September 23. (ANI)
According to a recent research, French children born between 1914 and 1916, whose fathers were killed or severely injured during the first World War, lost approximately one year of adult life expectancy. The findings have furthered the understanding of the long-term effects of maternal psychological stress on children. Some hypotheses state that much of the susceptibility to diseases in adulthood may stem from very early life experiences. Of particular interest are negative early life experiences, usually called early life adversities (ELAs). These encompass both nutritional and psychological stresses; the effects of early life exposure to famine have been extensively studied through other natural experiments, such as the Dutch famine of 1944 or the Chinese famine of 1959. However, a lack of adequate historical data has so far made it difficult to assess the potential long-term consequences of psychological ELAs in natural experiments. To investigate ELAs further, a team of French researchers from Inserm used newly-accessible historical databases to identify over 4,000 children born between 1914 and 1916 whose fathers were either killed or severely injured during World War One (WW1). Both of these groups are considered to have suffered ELAs. Of those children identified who had lost their father, the team also determined whether the death occurred after their birth, or whilst they were in the womb. Each individual was matched with a "control" of the same sex, age of mother, and date and district of birth. The researchers found that all of those who experienced ELA suffered an increased mortality in adulthood, losing an average of one year of adult life expectancy compared to controls. The decrease in adult life expectancy was greater for those whose father had been killed whilst their mother was pregnant - a median of 2.2 years shorter than controls. "The next step in the study will be to determine the cause of death for those having suffered ELA. This will shed light on the mechanisms involved." said lead researcher Nicolas Todd. "We know that deregulation of the stress response is commonly found on animal models of ELAs, so it will be interesting to see if any evidence of this can be seen in the causes of death in the French cohort. It may give us further insight into the long-term effects of ELA," added Todd. As inducing early life adversity in humans presents obvious ethical barriers, natural experiments such as World War- I are crucial pieces of evidence. The study is the first of its kind, and serves to strengthen our insights into the effects maternal stress can have on unborn and newborn children. The research was presented today at the 55th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology. (ANI)
Police sources told IANS on Tuesday that a posse of police and Assam Rifles have reached Taodaijang village where the fierce gun battle took place.

Confirming the recovery of the bullet-ridden body of the militant, police said that he was identified by local residents as Paouwalung of Ajuram village in the same district.

NSCN(IM) and ZUF are enemies and draw guns on sight of each other. There had been some encounters between the two outfits recently.

Combing operations have also been started in the suspected areas to flush the militants out. The ceasefire between the Indian government and the NSCN(IM) does not extend to Manipur.

Tamenglong district of Manipur is adjacent to Nagaland and as such cadres of these two outfits sneak into it from time to time.

There had been chance encounters. Besides, temporary mobile camps were also attacked which killed and injured some cadres. Being a mountainous region there cannot be tooth combs to smoke out the armed militants.

--IANS sku/

( 209 Words)

2016-09-13-07:53:55 (IANS)
During his two day state visit, Mr Ghani has packed programme apart from having one-on-one talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi followed by delegation level talks and signing of agreements.

Both leaders will also address a joint media briefing after the talks.

The Afghan President would also be addressing at India's defence think tank Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) where he is scheduled to interact with military experts.

Afghanistan has a long list of wishes so far as military assistance is concerned. Kabul has been asking for logistics and strike capacity, training equipment, air and ground mobility assets, engineering infrastructure and light infantry weapons.UNI MK ADG 1138

-- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-931347.Xml
Bakrid or Eid-ul-Zuha, the festival of compassion and sacrifice, was celebrated in the country with traditional gaiety and religious fervour today. A large number of Muslims gathered at various mosques and Eidgahs in different parts of the country, including the national capital here , to perform special prayers (namaaz) and greet each other. Many Hindus and non Muslims also joined in their Muslim brethren in festivities of the day, extended greetings and shared feasts. President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and several other dignitaries have greeted the people on the occasion. In the national capital here, Muslims in large numbers congregated as special prayers were held at the historic Jama Masjid, Fatehpuri Masjid and Eidgah this morning. They prayed for peace and prosperity. Markets in Muslim dominated localities wore a festive look on the occasion. Elaborate traffic and security arrangements were put in place for the festival. Eid festivities are also reported from a number of places in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and other states The festival was celebrated in Jammu and Kashmir amid curfew in a number of localities in the valley. Due to curfew, Eid congregations could not be held in Eidgahs, open fields and other holy places in the the valley, a report from Srinagar said. However, thousands of sheeps and goats were sacrificed throughout the valley, even as there were comparatively less number of sacrificial animals available this time due to restrictions and strike. MORE UNI SM PS ADG SS -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-931275.Xml
After enthralling several generations of cinegoers over the last five decades, the cult classic 'Mughal-e-Azam' is now set to be presented as a Broadway-style musical play. To be helmed by acclaimed director Feroz Abbas Khan, known for his award-winning film 'Gandhi My Father' and successful plays like 'Tumhari Amrita', 'Salesman Ramlal' and 'Mahatma VS Gandhi', the Broadway-style musical play will be a tribute to the original film. Sources associated with Feroz Abbas's production house said the play is being prepared on a grand scale, to be performed at the National Centre For Performing Arts (NCPA). The play will be staged daily from October 21 till first week of November for a limited engagement of two weeks followed by the staging in end November and for another two weeks in December at Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi. The musical play will not only be made on a grand scale like the film, but will also feature eight songs from the film to be performed as part of the narrative. Officials at the production house claim that this project will be the grandest musical live theatrical production witnessed in India and is expected to set a new benchmark for Indian theatre. Speaking about his theatre production, Khan said, "Mughal-E-Azam is apt because even the film was inspired by a play, Anarkali, which K Asif saw and borrowed passages of dialogue from. It's a dramatic father-son story with the nation at stake. In its writing skills and mounting, it was close to perfection with great dialogues and emotional story-telling, complemented by eye-catching visuals and a terrific score." The upcoming musical has another connection with the original cult classic- the musical play will be co-produced by none other than Shapoorji Palanji, the 150-year old business conglomerate that had funded K. Asif's 'Mughal-E-Azam' with a budget of three million dollars in 1960, making it the most expensive film made at the time. Apart from Khan, other names attached to this ambitious project are costume designer Manish Malhotra, award-winning lighting designer David Lander, Emmy award nominee projection designer John Narun, production designer Neil Patel and choreographer Mayuri Upadhya. Starring Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Madhubala, 'Mughal-e-Azam', released in 1960, was the most expensive film made at that time and is still considered the greatest Indian motion picture ever.UNI AR SHS ADG 1132 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-931315.Xml
The accident took place around 2330 hrs.

While a canter, carrying pilgrims from Fazilka in Punjab, was returning after paying obeisance at Gugga Marhi, the other was on its way from Fatehgarh Sahib to a religious place near Bhadra in Rajasthan.

Six people, including a woman, died on the spot while another succumbed to his injuries during treatment.

The injured were taken to the government hospital in Sirsa and two seriously injured were referred to a private hospital. UNI DB CJ ADG 1120

-- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-931329.Xml
Umesh, a petrol pump employee was returning home when he was hit by a bullet of a Indo-Tibtan Border Police (ITBP )official who fired from his gun when mob surrounded a bus and set it on fire ablaze. He was rushed to Victoria Hospital where doctors declared him brought dead. Two others who sustained bullet injuries were undergoing treatment.

Umesh hailed from Singhanahalli in Huliyadurga taluk in Tumakuru district.

Meanwhile, Bengaluru Rural District Deputy Commissioner V Shankar has announced that the government will bear the expense of education of Umesh's children and also provide a government job to his wife.

Mr Parameshwar said in addition to the normal compensation of Rs.five lakh, an additional five lakh would be released to the victim's family.UNI MSP CNR PS ADG 1418

-- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-931567.Xml
The 8th BRICS Summit, to be held in Goa on October 15, 16, will see the participation of 11 heads of states and Governments, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who would be a part of various bi-lateral meetings during the two day event. Briefing media persons about the nitty-gritty of the event at a hotel in the city last night, Sanjay Verma, Chief Protocol Officer at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said, '' Around 700 to 800 delegates would be attending the event. After the BRICS engagement, leaders of BRICS will meet leaders of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). The BIMSTEC countries are --Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal. It would be a second part of the BRICS engagement.'' "The issues related to environment, trade, counter-terrorism, trade, investments etc would be deliberated in the summit," he said, adding the declaration after the summit would be called 'Goa Declaration'.UNI AKM NV SZ ADG NS1252 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-931406.Xml
Seven passengers were charred to death when a high tension wire fell on a UP state roadways bus in Malawan area on National Highway 91 in the district today. Six passengers also received critical burn injuries in the incident. Police sources here said that the incident occurred around 1140 hours when the high tension wire fell on the bus going to Delhi from Kanpur in which the bus turned into an fire ball. The fire brigade had a hard time to bring out the passengers inside the bus in which seven died while six were rushed to the hospital. The deceased were yet to be identified. However due to heavy rains in the area, the fire was controlled. Due to the incident, there was a heavy vehicular jam on NH-91.UNI XC-MB CJ ADG PM1402 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-931509.Xml
The Naga Mothers Association (NMA) has expressed concern at the latest "crisis within the Naga Hoho and the statements from certain Tribe Hohos on the Rongmei issue." According to a press statement issued by the NMA Adviser, Rosemary Dzuvichu, today appealed to the apex Tribe Hohos to remain united "at this crucial juncture in our history and lead the Nagas with the spirit of reconciliation and greater wisdom." "We believe there is a space for dialogue and more serious consultation on the ongoing issue," the NMA said, while urging tribe leaders and the Naga Hoho for "unity against divisive forces from within and without, and work together in peace and greater understanding for the future of the Nagas," Rosemary said. UNI AS KK SZ ADG PM1349 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-931494.Xml
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa today said the Tamil literary books under Pathinenkeezhkanakkuwill be translated in various languages like French, German, Hindi, Malayalam and Telugu. Pathinenkeezhkanakku was a collection of 18 poetic works created during the 'post Sangam period'. In a statement here, the Chief Minister said it was promised in the election manifesto of the AIADMK that ancient Tamil books would be translated in other languages. ''As part of fulfilling this promise, the Pathinenkeezhkanakkubooks will be translated through World Tamil Research Centre', she said. She said with these translations, people all over the world would get to understand the richness of Tamil, its language andculture. Ms Jayalalithaa recalled that the poems of revolutionary poetBharathiyar and Bharathidasan were earlier translated in Arabic and Chinese languages. She also listed out various steps taken by her government for Tamil development.UNI GV 1537 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-931743.Xml
Aahar Chennai, the premier event ofIndia Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) and Tamil Nadu Trade Promotion Organisation, would be held at the ChennaiTrade Centre here from September 15 to 17. A statement from ITPO here said, the three day B2B event focussing on food technology was being organised with the support of Union Ministry of Food Processing. More than 115 leading Indian companies would be taking part in the exhibition. Covering an area of 4400 sqm, the display profile of products would include, bakery and dairy products, organic and health products, frozen, canned and processed food, meat, poultry and sea food, syrups, juices and energy drinks and much more. Seminars would be held during the three day event. Entrepreneurs development and emerging technologies in bakery industry, purchase connect, technology upgradation and modernisation of food processing industries-challengesand opportunities, do's and don'ts for chefs, housekeepers connect were the topics to be discussed at the seminar. The Food and Hospitality Support Association of India (FHSAI), Indian Federation of Culinary Association (IFCA), Southern India Culinary Association (SICA) were among the organisations associated with the event, it said. Meanwhile, SICA will also be conducting its fourth edition of culinary competition during the event. SICA general secretary, Sheetaram Prasad said the mainobjective behind the event was to establish a platform where chefs and culinary professionals could showcase their talent. The events will be held in seven categories, viz., individual competition, practical cooking, apprentice, cocktail/mocktail, tablecover display, towel art and culinary team challenge (edible buffet).UNI GV 1542 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-931762.Xml
Naga Hoho (NH) has explained that its stand over the contentious issue of 33 per cent Women Reservation as well as the Nagaland Municipal Act, 2001 in Nagaland, was borne out of its sole objective of safeguarding Article 371(A) of the Indian Constitution. The Article provides constitutional guarantee against any Act of Parliament (except only if passed by the State Assembly) in respect of Naga Customary Laws and practices and ownership and transfer of all traditional lands and resources. In a statement, the Naga Hoho through its Communication Cell has reiterated its stand said the provisions reserved for Nagas under Article 371(A) were neither a sudden outburst of an individual nor an imposition of the will of others on the Nagas, but a spontaneous flow of collective thoughts and aspirations of Nagas as a whole. Further, NH maintained that the special provision under Article 371(A) cannot be interpreted like that of the rest of other provisions in the Indian Constitution. The NH stated that the Centre had known fully well that Nagas were distinct in all aspects and so inserted the provisions under Article 371(A) with a view of its historical and philosophical perspectives. Reaffirming that the Nagas in the state were the stakeholders in the provisions under Article 371 (A), Naga Hoho said any Government of the day should consult the public organizations or civil bodies while interpreting the provisions that safeguard the right of the people. UNI AS KK RSA PR1440 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-931545.Xml
The ongoing agitation on Cauvery watersharing issue in Karnataka had resulted in an estimated loss of Rs 22,000 to Rs 25,000 crore, according to Industry body ASSOCHAM. In a release here today it said violence and the weeklongagitation across Karnataka had led to damage vital urbaninfrastructure,vinterruption in the transport including, roads, railand air and inability of the workforce to safely move to and fromoffices and factories. ''Violence in the state capital and other parts of Karnataka hasseverely dented the image of Bengaluru as Silicon Valley of India,home to almost all the Fortune 500 companies,'' said ASSOCHAM whilemaking a fervent appeal for peace in both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. ''The way the violent incidents had spread is demoralising thebusiness and industrial community, particularly in the capital cityof Karnataka. The image that India built around Bengaluru as its'Silicon Valley' is being sullied,'' said ASSOCHAM SecretaryGeneral, D S Rawat. ''The authorities in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu should not allowunder any circumstances the law and order to be compromised. Whilethe water is a basic requirement and an emotional issue, thesituation is being exploited by miscreants, scaring away the peaceloving workforce which has settled in both Bengaluru and Chennaifrom all over the country and even abroad,'' he added. According to ASSOCHAM, widespread loss would accrue to IT andITES facilities due to poor attendance for the last several days.Besides, the inter-state tourism, articularly involving pilgrims,domestic travellers, has been affected. Cancellation of air ticketshave also been reported to and from Bengaluru. Likewise, industrial production, movement of cargo and retailtrade including malls, cinema halls, restaurants, have been halted.''All these losses would run between Rs 22,000 crore and Rs 25,000crore, besides of course immense damage to the goodwill of the stateas an attractive investment destination'' it said ASSOCHAM urged the Centre to effectively monitor the situationand ensure that peace is restored in the two states. ''A lot ofdamage has already been done to the trade and factory output withmovement of the vehicles hit by the agitation which is takingviolent shape. There is a huge stake for the country's showpieceinformation technology in both Bengaluru and Chennai.''UNI CNR MSP RSS1510 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0284-931665.Xml
As Delhi reels under chikungunya and dengue epidemic, the Congress today asked Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to resign from his post and stressed that it was ready to take charge of the national capital and deliver under the present setup. The grand old party launched a blistering attack on the Chief Minister after he decried helplessness over soaring cases of vector-borne diseases. When asked, on twitter, about 'mosquito menace' in Delhi, Mr Kejriwal said, ''CM n min left wid no power now, even to buy a pen. LG n PM enjoy all powers wrt Del. LG abroad. Question them for Del.'' In a blog, Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken said,''The response of the Delhi Government to the present crisis is also insensitive to say the least. Instead of looking for the solutions and the Delhi Government has again resorted to the blame-game at the cost of Delhi Citizens.'' Mr Maken, placing official figures of chikungunya and dengue epidemic at 1,057 and 1,158 respectively with 7 deaths, said the actual figure of the number deaths was much higher. "The Chief Minister has gone to Bengaluru for his avoidable operation leaving Delhi, the Dy CM is in Finland, other ministers are in Goa and Chhattisgarh. Leaving only one minister in Delhi who is on twitter instead of visiting Hospitals. ''Even the Lt Governor is abroad. Two of the three mayors in Delhi are also reportedly missing-perhaps out of the country,'' Mr Maken wrote. He further alleged both the Lt Governor and the Chief Minister are busy passing the buck on to each other indulging in the blame game at the cost of the common citizen. "Kejriwal should resign if he's unable to govern. We are ready to govern Delhi and deliver under this setup," Mr Maken added. The DPCC will commemorate on 16 September, Bhagoda Diwas and hold demonstration in all 70 Assembly Constituencies against the apathy of Delhi Government and the Municipal Corporations.UNI RG/AR AE SB 1628 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0092-931735.Xml
Expressing concern over the attackson Tamils in Karnataka and their properties over the Cauveryissue, senior DMK Leader and Party Treasurer M K Stalin today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene byconvening a meeting of Chief Ministers of both the statesto find a solution and ensure peace in both states. Talking to reporters at the Chennai airport, he said the Karnataka government should abide by the Supreme Courtorder. ''The safety of the people in both the States should be ensured'', he said. Seeking the intervention of Mr Modi, he said the PrimeMinister should invite both the Chief Ministers for talksand find a solution to ensure peace in Karnataka and TamilNadu. The Prime Minister should also ensure adequate protectionto safety of Tamils in Karnataka. Meanwhile, the Opposition DMK today announced that theDistrict Secretaries meeting of the party would be held on September 18 to discuss about the raging Cauvery issueand the ensuing local body elections. DMK General Secertary K Anbazhagan, in a statement here,said the meeting would be chaired by former Chief Ministerand DMK President M Karunanidhi at 1030 hrs at the PartyHeadquarters 'Anna Arivalayam'. He said all the district secretaries of the party were requested to attend the meeting without fail. UNI GV 1610 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-931824.Xml
While addressing media persons, Kumar said, "Just for the sake of a peg or a two, why are you spoiling everything? Please do not do this, drink juice. Switch off the light and drink juice, you will feel as if you are drinking alcohol," Kumar said.

"The happiness and satisfaction that I got from banning alcohol was something I never achieved before," he added.

He further said that drinking or not drinking alcohol is solely the decision of the individual.

Earlier during the year, Nitish Kumar's government enforced a total ban in the state from April 1.

The Bihar Excise (Amendment) Act that came into force on April 1, 2016, had restricted the manufacture, transport, sale and consumption of liquor in Bihar and with effective implementation, the state was declared dry on April 6.

Nitish Kumar's government enforced total prohibition in Bihar in April this year.

He even asked Prime Minister Modi to impose prohibition across India.

The penal provisions in the Act are stringent as there is a large fine as well as a large jail sentence for anyone caught violating the laws.

The establishment of check posts and barriers around the state has made it nearly impossible for those who wish to consume alcohol to source it. (ANI)
The India UK TECH Summit 2016, India's largest knowledge and technology conference and exhibition, will be held in New Delhi from 7-9 November 2016. The UK is this year's partner country for the event, supported by the Government of India and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which provides a platform for promoting technology-intensive trade and investments between the two countries. The TECH Summit will bring together leaders in government, industry and research from both countries to broker new partnerships. The registration link to secure a place at the summit is now open. Dr Alexander Evans, British Deputy High Commissioner to India said: "TECH Summit will show that when we work together, the UK and India are an "unbeatable combination" as Prime Minister Modi has stated. Britain is open for business, and we want to do even more business with India. The UK has been the top G20 investor in India, consistently, since the turn of the century, and India invests more in the UK than it does in all other European Union countries combined. Our trade relationship is booming, our researchers collaborate on all manner of issues, and our people visit each other's countries for study and tourism. "The TECH Summit will see British and Indian entrepreneurs, experts and leaders in various fields related to technology converge and drive our partnership further still." The summit will take place over three days, comprising of separate thematic summits on 'Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship' and 'British Expertise in Higher Education', 'Design and Intellectual Property'. It will demonstrate the depth of India-UK partnerships in business, innovation, research, education and entrepreneurship, with the biggest showcase of British expertise and commitment to strengthening relationships in every sphere. It will also host a major delegation from the UK, highlighting the UK's capabilities across important sectors like smart cities, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, agri-tech, education and skills. The summit will host a major exhibition of UK-India technological collaboration and, excitingly, a Hackathon organised by Barclays Rise, where young Indian students, entrepreneurs and tech-professionals will participate in a competition to find a solution to a specially-posed technical problem. More details later. Three other major annual events will take place that week, namely Prabodhan, the UK-India CEO Forum and Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO), providing an unprecedented platform for Indian and British leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs to take the bilateral partnership to the next level. Last month in New Delhi, British Secretary of State for International Trade, Dr Liam Fox met the President of Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Naushad Forbes. Dr Fox met senior CII members committed to come back for the TECH Summit to explore the potential to further improve UK-India business relationships. Speaking last month, Dr Fox said: "The UK-India partnership lies at the very heart of the strategic relationship between our two nations, a relationship that has never been more important than it is today. "The India-UK Tech Summit in November will be a further celebration of this partnership, where sector experts ranging from smart cities, healthcare, agri-tech and others will come together to boost trade, R&D as well as academic ties between the UK and India." CII President Mr Forbes said at the time: "Technical capability is the source of prosperity for business. The India-UK Tech Summit promises to be a platform which will unleash new possibilities and add new dimensions to our long relationship." The UK's involvement in TECH Summit was announced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his highly successful visit to the UK last year. Check in regularly on the website as star speakers from India and the UK will be announced nearer the time. India-UK TECH Summit is the flagship event in the 2016 India-UK Calendar. Spanning business, science, education, research and more it will feature an eye-catching and innovative expo that showcases the best, most cutting-edge UK technologies; world-leading thought-leadership sessions from UK and Indian panelists; and high-level trade missions from the UK in Healthcare, Life Sciences, Future Cities, Advanced Engineering & Manufacturing and Agri-tech. There will also be a focus on Indian investment and entrepreneurship in the UK, and the 10 winners of the TECH Rocketship Awards will be announced at the Summit. This is a GREAT for Collaboration initiative, announced during PM Modi's visit to the UK last November, celebrating the strength of India-UK partnerships and forging brand new collaborations. TECH Summit comprises 4 concurrent summits: Technology, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Higher Education, Design, Intellectual Property. UK - India Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) provides a forum to UK companies to enhance their links and develop new partnerships with India business and decision makers. It provides an environment for lively dialogue for all participants with sessions focusing on opportunities in India in a number of sectors where the two countries can enhance their partnership including education and skills, advanced engineering and smart cities (including technology and infrastructure). (ANI)
Attacking the Narendra Modi Government on its 'Jan Dhan Yojana' on financial inclusion, the Congress today charged the NDA with fudging numbers, manipulating data and institutions and creating a chimera of performance and ''development out of thin air''. Citing media reports and RTI investigations that have revealed how banks are depositing Re 1 in the bank accounts of most poor people to show a reduction in the number of zero-balance accounts, the Congress said the Modi government has forced banks to open crores of accounts under the 'Jan Dhan Yojana', which remain unutilised.In a statement, AICC media incharge Randeep Surjewala said,''Media investigation and RTI replies obtained from 18 public sector banks and their 16 regional rural subsidiaries established existence of 1.05 crore Jan Dhan accounts with deposits of Re 1. This was done to reduce the number of zero balance accounts in the Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJYD). ''Shockingly, no written order was passed by the banks to its officials to deposit Re.1 through their own pocket. In effect for all the unabashed tall claims made by the Modi Government, 1/3rd of the total Jan Dhan Accounts, in effect remain without any money in them. The Modi government has forced banks to open crores of accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana, which remain unutilised. All Mr Modi achieved in these two years is forcing crores of people to open bank accounts. But people are asking what will they do with bank accounts when they have nothing to keep in the bank.''Questioning the claims by PM Modi of hogging limelight by flaunting the Jan Dhan Yojana, Mr Surjewala said the PM Jan Dhan Yojana rested on the broad shoulders provided by the Congress led UPA. ''In 2005, the Congress Government directed the banks to open "no frills accounts". There were 43.9 crore bank accounts in the country when Congress-led UPA came to power in 2004. This figure rose to 77.32 crore when Congress demitted office in 2014,'' he said.Charging the NDA with 'fudging' GDP data and 'fraudulent' figures on consumers giving up their LPG subsidies, Mr Surjewala said, ''there is broad skepticism about the reality of GDP data according to the new method of GDP calculation. Even the Governor of the RBI and the Government's Chief Economic Advisor expressed discomfort with the official data. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth at constant prices jumped from 7.2 per cent in the December 2015 quarter to 7.9 per cent in the March 2016 quarter. Experts all across believe the actual growth rate is in the neighbourhood of 5 per cent. The Modi government has been carrying out a high decibel campaign 'GiveItUp', calling upon consumers to give up their LPG subsidies. Coupled with the direct bank transfers, the saving has been almost Rs. 22,000 crore, the government claims. However, the CAG report tabled in Parliament has seriously punctured the claim. The audit has found that the saving from people voluntarily giving up LPG subsidy and direct bank transfers adds up to less than Rs 2,000 crore. The remaining saving is due to the dramatic fall in the prices of LPG that India annually imports. Manipulating figures, fudging data and falsifying so called 'achievements' has become the functioning style of Modi Government. Lies, deceit and trickery are the distinctive features through which Modi Government operates.''Charging the Prime Minister with fooling the nation through prevarication, he said it was time for the PM and Modi Government to introspect.''Modi ji unfortunately presides over a Government with only 'Event Management Skills', but in the absence of all fundamental facts and delivery, such event management becomes farcical and hollow.''It is time for the Prime Minister and Modi Government to introspect,'' he said.UNI AR AE RP1854 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0092-932028.Xml
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Academy of US Inc, in collaboration with Georgia Southern University and Next Thought, Oklahoma organised a conference STEM, the Global Dream here today. STEM is a registered organisation, which is promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Math in the third world countries. The academy represented by three Directors -- Dr Paddy Sharma, Dr Saibaba Arcot and Dr Amitabh Sharma. Four Americans -- Prof Robert Mayes and D Lisa Stueve from Georgia Southern University, Kenneth Leo Parker from Next Thought Technologies, Oklahoma and Dr Craig Donell Lockhart from Newton County School system addressed the conference. Speaking on the occasion, Prof Robert Mayes said students study phenomena has to as a system and not in isolation. Students must think like a scientists, computer scientist and an engineer. Worker in STEM occupations earn 26 per cent higher wages than non-STEM workers. Employment of mathematicians is expected to grow by 22 per cent between 2008-2018, much faster than the average for all occupations, Dr Amitabh Sharma said. He said in the 21st century, scientific and technological innovations have become increasingly important as we face the benefits and challenges of both globalization and a knowledge-based economy. To succeed in this new information-based and highly technological society, students need to develop their capabilities in STEM to levels much beyond what was considered acceptable in the past, he said and added there is considerable effort across the globe in furthering the advantages of STEM but they lack consistent, structured and cohesive implementation. Dr Amitabh Sharma and Anuradha Nathan said this is US President Barack Obama's pet project. Most of the schools and colleges in the US run on this platform. All the four core areas are thoroughly integrated and taught in small modules to students connecting to the real world. STEM inter-discipline education eliminates the boring lecture methods and practices 'hands-on activities' along with project-based learning. STEM inculcates critical thinking and makes modern day innovators at a very young age. Our Prime Minster Narendra Modi is also going big time on it. We are meeting the Department of Science and Technology on September 16 to be part of the project, Dr Amitabh Sharma said. "We will do similar conferences in Chennai and Delhi. We have already done one in Mumbai," he informed. Madhu Yaski, former Member of Parliament from Nizamabad among others graced the occasion. Representatives, headmistresses, principles, directors of 20 schools have attened the conference. These schools include, Rockwell, HPS, Pinnacle High School, Shivashivani, Kangaroo Kids Little Flower.UNI VV SW 1930 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0101-932200.Xml
Taking a strong exception to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar asking the services chiefs to implement the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations despite their genuine objections, Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh today asked him to stand by the defence services and not the babus in the government. Capt Amarinder said Mr Parrikar had no right or authority to order the services chiefs to accept what was not acceptable to them. He said he had once again shown his inability to understand the services. "You can order them in operational matters and they will do as ordered, but on what grounds can you order them to accept the 7th Pay Commission recommendations when these are prejudicially biased against them?" he asked, while adding, "is this Nazi Germany and are you Hitler to issue such a dictatorial order?" The former Punjab Chief Minister said the three chiefs were reflecting the views of each and every soldier in uniform or out of it. "Instead of you standing by your defence services you are toeing the line set by your babus", he told the minister while asking, "do you realise the implications of your attitude?," he questioned. "You have a highly disciplined force, perhaps the only pillar in our democracy that works without ever commenting or objecting", he observed, while adding, "do you want a disgruntled service?" He said, "if the services are to lose their standing by placing them below the babus and the police, that is exactly what you will have, and then God help our country with a belligerent China and Pakistan around. Will you then lead your babus into the battle?" The PCC chief asked Parrikar to look beyond the babus and stand by the forces. "Demoralising them will affect the security of our nation", he warned, while asking him to either stand by the services or quit as the PM can perhaps find another defence minister and a better one. He also sought Prime Minister's personal intervention and asked him to look beyond those who lack foresight. "This is a matter of national security and beyond that of the comprehension of the babus. The three Chiefs are absolutely correct in their stand. Their officers and men expect nothing less from them. They have complete admiration and total support of the nation", he asserted.UNI DB PR SB BD1838 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-932022.Xml
Over 20,000 policemen including personnel from central paramilitary forces have been deployed as part of the massive security arrangements for Ganesh immersion in Hyderabad on September 15. Thousands of idols will be immersed in Hussain Sagar lake in the heart of the city and dozens of other lakes on the outskirts, marking culmination of 11-day festivities. In a release, Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahender Reddy said as many as 12,000 CCTV cameras in the city so far and in which 2000 cameras are using along the main procession route to keep a tight vigil on the proceedings and 44 cameras at around Hussain sagar lake. This year 100 per cent CCTV coverage as all the cameras are connected to the command and control centre, which will help us cover every inch of the procession. ''If any untoward incident is likely to happen we proactively identify it and take measures on ground so that the problem can be contained then and there," he said. The massive procession with huge idols began from Balapur on the city outskirts and pass through communally sensitive old city and the main thoroughfares to culminate at Hussain Sagar. Over 50,000 idols have been installed in the limits of Hyderabad and Cyberabad police commissionerate and in which half of them will be immersed in Hussain sagar, where 34 cranes have been installed. ''NDRF teams, boats and ace swimmers is also guarding at Sagar, for public protection and 100 SHE teams are present for women's protection during the procession,'' he added.UNI KNR PY PR 2052 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-932431.Xml
The Army today said it was already working on the issue of opening road to facilitate the residents of Garha, Subhana and Dhina villages. Lt Col Manish Mehta, PRO Defence in a statement issued said a proposal in this regard had already been forwarded to the Jalandhar deputy commissioner. He said keeping in view that Jalandhar Cantonment was surrounded by eight villages and a large number of colonies, including the above said villages and security situation, a major work for construction of a security wall was released for the Cantonment in the year 2013-14 by the Ministry of Defence. Referring to the construction of 3 km of partial walls in the periphery of Village Subhana, Mehta said no such wall was being constructed claiming that all the entry or exit points into the Cantonment, were open to the military were also open to the general public. The periphery road / track which was presently existing in some stretches around the periphery of the Cantonment was being utilised unhindered by all the nearby villages. This issue was also discussed in the Civil Military Liaison Conference held on March 28, 2013 which was followed up by a Joint Committee Meeting of Army authorities and DC Jalandhar on December 4,2013. It was decided that the Army authorities will be allowed to construct their security wall after providing a periphery road from Atwal Colony to Village Birring and Punjab Government would compensate the Army authorities by acquiring equal value land in lieu of this periphery road. A firm commitment on this proposal is, however still awaited from Punjab Government. A meeting was also held at Chandigarh between Senior Defence Officers and the Special Principal Secretary to the Honorable Chief Minister of Punjab on April 7, to discuss this important issue. However, the case could not proceed further till an 'In Principle Approval' for exchange of equal value land is given by the Punjab Government.UNI XC PR SB BD2012 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-932273.Xml
The Indian Army deserves all kudos-the way, they flushed out the holed up militants with planned strategy to end three-day long gun battle broke out on September 11 in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir. According to sources, Army's Engineers Regiment made five-feet wide hole around the wall of mini secretariat building on the ground, using Improvised Explosive Devices, which was used as an entry point into the building. ''The blast made with an IED having around 60 kg of explosive, shook official and residential buildings following which the locals climbed onto their rooftops to witness the final assault of the operation,'' an eye witness here told UNI. He said para commandos of Army, with the help of a ladder, entered the building through a window on the third floor and flushed out the militants. The building where the operation was conducted had 87 rooms, over 20 washrooms and eight underground septic and water tanks. ''As soon as the operation was called off, thousands of locals including the Muslims, barged into the under construction building thus forcing the troops to face hard time in dispersing the crowd, who was in upbeat mood with the elimination of anti-national elements,'' eye witness said. He said the locals also raised slogans in favour and support of Army and India but anti-Pakistan slogans. Four militants were killed while a cop attained martyrdom, seven people including two soldiers, two CRPF men and a civilian sustain injuries in the three-day long gun battle.UNI VBH PY PR 2212 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-932508.Xml
Ahead of President Vladimir Putin's visit to India next month, the two countries today took a thorough review of the state of bilateral relations at their 22nd Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC).''The two countries noted the need to further broaden their strategic cooperation with emphasis on key sectors such as nuclear energy, space, modernisation, high technology, disaster management and supercomputing,'' the Ministry of External Affairs said here.External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj led the Indian delegation, while Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, led the Russian delegation.The Intergovernmental Commission reviewed the preparations for the forthcoming India-Russia Annual Summit to be held in Goa on October 15.While expressing satisfaction at the progress made in regard to some projects, the Commission also directed concerned Ministries and Departments to focus on key sectors in the trade and investment spheres to finalise concrete outcomes by the forthcoming summit in October.On the investment front, the Commission noted that there has been substantial progress with expanding cooperation in oil & gas sphere. Indian and Russian oil and gas companies are working towards finalisation of investments in each other's countries.Both sides today launched an industry level Working Group- led by Gazprom, biggest Russian gas company, and a consortium of Indian oil and gas companies- for creating an 'energy bridge' between the two countries through possible gas pipelines for direct gas delivery from Russia to India.A new milestone was recently achieved in the India-Russia cooperation in nuclear energy with the dedication of Unit 1 of the Kudankulam nuclear power project by Prime Minister Modi and President Putin in August 2016.Both sides renewed their commitment to work together on remaining stages of Kudankulam 2,3,4,5 and 6; and other projects through localisation under the Make in India programme.Connectivity was a major theme of discussion during the meeting of the Commission. Implementation of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) project and the launch of the 'Green Corridor' project for customs facilitation are major steps towards better connectivity and trade facilitation.Cooperation between Indian and Russian railways in the field of dedicated freight corridor, modernisation of railway stations, and training of railway personnel emerged as a new area to broaden cooperation in transports & logistics.India-Russia cooperation in pharmaceutical sector is also expanding rapidly. Indian companies are closely engaged with Russian partners to develop cooperation under the Russian 'Pharma 2020 programme'.On the sidelines of the Commission's meeting, an Indian company Wockhardt and a Russian company PharmEco have signed an agreement for joint project for insulin production in Russia under the Pharma 2020 programme.The two countries will be celebrating the 70th Anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between India and the erstwhile USSR (now Russian Federation) in 2017.A series of activities are being planned to celebrate this important milestone. There will be a new emphasis on promoting cooperation among various states in India and federal regions in Russia, especially the Far East region of Russia- as attractive investment destinations.UNI NAZ PY PR 2224 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-932530.Xml
Scion of erstwhile Royal dynasty of Kullu and BJP member of Assembly Maheshwer Singh has slammed Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh for casting aspersions on his linage. Addressing media persons at Kullu today Mr Singh said "It is highly immoral and unfortunate that Chief Minister who belonged to the erstwhile royal tried to demeaned the Kullu dynasty accusing them for continue forcefully seizing the Raghunath shrine and riding on the shoulder of its subject during the religious rituals." When the matter of Raghunath is pending in front of Himachal Pradesh High court how could six-time chief ministers took dig on this precarious issues accusing the erstwhile lineage for continue seizing the royal shrine against the will of Kullu general public, former BJP Member of Lok Sabha pointed out in a press conference. Chief Minsiter while addressing public meeting of Congress party at Banjar, in the outskirts of Kullu town about 240 km from here stated that a public servant (here Deputy Commissioner Kullu) who could not abide by or implement the government order in time and take week to respond the party for takeover of shrine should not have right to be continue on the responsible public post. Chief minister also said in the public meeting that being a erstwhile scion of Rampur royal family he had surrendered the similar shrine to a trust long back however Kullu Royal family continue the possession of shrine despite state government order its take over to the trust for its security and better financial management. Mr Virbhadra Singh said Raghunath was public property as it revolved round the historic Kullu Daussehra festival should be hand over to the government trust. Mr Singh said he would not comment upon the Chief Ministers remarks on the issue as matter is already before the court to decided on the issue terming it unwarranted on part chief minister.UNI ML PR GC2235 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-932261.Xml
The Army representatives of India and Pakistan exchanged sweets at Poonch - Rawalakot Crossing Point and Tattapani - Mendhar Crossing Point in Krishna Ghati Sector of Jammu and Kashmir on the occasion of the holy festival of 'Id-ul-Zuha' today. ''The exchange of sweets is an appreciated gesture from both the countries and is a regular event on the occasions of Diwali and Eid,'' a Defence ministry release said here. The event is a testimony to goodwill and will certainly strengthen the efforts towards maintaining peace and tranquility along Line of Control. UNI JS PR 2319 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-932282.Xml
Haryana government has decided to set up e-Soochna Centres at all bus stands across the state on the pattern of one set up at bus stand in Kurukshetra to facilitate commuters. These high-tech centres would provide timetable of buses and information regarding bus routes, tourist destinations of the city concerned, Transport Minister Krishan Lal Panwar said while interacting with media persons after inaugurating e-Soochna centre and touch screen at Kurukshetra today. Keeping in view the upcoming international-level Gita Jayanti Samaroh to be organised at Kurukshetra, this e-Soochna Centre had first been inaugurated at Kurukshetra. He said like last year, special buses would be operated from Delhi and Chandigarh to Kurukshetra during the Gita Jayanti Samaroh this year as well. The department would also work to pass the proposals received by it on priority basis. Special package buses would be started for tourists, he added. Mr Panwar said the government would soon purchase 300 new buses, and would purchase an equal number of more buses within one month of their addition to the fleet. He said that the state government had started bus service according to all 95 requests received for exclusive bus service to ferry girl students to and from schools and colleges. Of these, 12 buses are being operated in Kurukshetra. The government has also issued orders to the Director General of Police for appointment of women guards in these buses, he added. He said a grand bus stand for Pipli would be established on Ladwa road, for which Rs two crore have already been issued.UNI DB PR VM2242 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-932366.Xml
Punjab BJP today termed the dharna of congress MLAs inside the Punjab Vidhan Sabha as a mockery to the democratic set up of the country. Senior BJP leader and Jalandhar MLA Manoranjan Kalia said today that it was a great folly of the congress MLAs that they instead of insisting the Vidhan Sabha speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal for taking up the issue of no-confidence-motion against the SAD-BJP government, its CLP leader Charanjit Singh Channi asked for starting question hour which diluted the significance of the no confidence motion which was allowed by the speaker on September 8 when the monsoon session of the assembly began. He said the speaker was right in rejecting the motion after the CLP pressed for question hour. He said the dharna by the congress MLAs inside the Vidhan Sabha mounted to breach in the security set up of the Vidhan Sabha and is equivalent to that AAP's MP Bhagwant Mann who video-graphed the Parliament proceedings. He said Congress had brought three motions against the SAD-BJP government till now in the Vidhan Sabha but all in vain as the party had never been serious in its actions following which the motions were failed. He claimed that congress had lacked confidence and is confused over its working what to do or not. Referring to the issue of former CPS and BJP MLA from Amritsar Doctor Navjot Kaur Siddhu, Kalia said that she is nice lady and loyal party worker who obeyed the instructions of the chief whip of the party to be present during discussion on the no confidence motion of the congress. When asked about the resignation of the former BJP MP Navjot Siddhu, Kalia said that this query should be put to the central leadership of the party.UNI XC PR VN2225 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-932397.Xml
The meteorite was found in the town of Gancedo, 1,085 km north of capital Buenos Aires, Mario Vesconi, president of the Astronomy Association of Chaco, said on Monday.

"While we hoped for weights above what had been registered, we did not expect it to exceed 30 tons," Vesconi said, adding that "the size and weight surprised us", Xinhua news agency reported.

"It was in Campo del Cielo, where a shower of metallic meteorites fell around 4,000 years ago," Vesconi added.

The meteorite will be weighed again to ensure an accurate measurement.

The largest meteorite ever found is called Hoba, weighing 66 tonnes in Namibia, Africa.

--IANS ksk

( 128 Words)

2016-09-13-08:47:56 (IANS)
A representative for the The Trump International Hotel said that most of the property's 263 rooms are expected to be finished at the end of October, with grand opening ceremonies being planned later that month, Fox News reported.

The opening comes just eight weeks ahead of the November 8 elections.

According to the Trump Hotels reservation website, rooms for the soft-opening weekend start around $750 per night and go over $4,800 a night for the premier Postmaster Suite.

After the soft-opening period, room will be available for $500 a night for a "deluxe room" to $9,000 for the one-bedroom presidential suite which feature 14 to 16 foot ceilings, "soaring windows, glittering crystal sconces" and six-foot tubs.

The bi-level Trump Townhouse, which boasts two bedrooms, an office, workout room and dining room that seats 24, is available for the week of the Presidential inauguration at a rate of $100,000 per night, with a five night minimum stay.

The regular rate for the two-bedroom ownhouse is $18,750.

--IANS sku/

( 203 Words)

2016-09-13-03:21:56 (IANS)
In a major setback for the social media giant Facebook, the company has lost a legal bid to prevent a 14-year-old girl from suing it over a her naked picture that was posted on a "shame page" on the platform as an act of revenge. A high court judge in Northern Ireland's capital Belfast on Monday rejected Facebook's attempt to have the claim by the girl struck out, The Guardian reported on Monday. The victim is also taking a legal action against the man who allegedly posted the picture on Facebook. A lawyer for the teenager even compared the publishing of the photo to a method of child abuse. The girl has sought damages for misuse of private information, negligence and breach of the Data Protection Act. Her photograph was said to have been posted on a so-called shame page on Facebook several times between November 2014 and January 2016. The girl's legal team argued that Facebook had the power to block any re-publication by using a tracking process to identify the image to which a lawyer for Facebook said the claim for damages should be dismissed as the company always took down the picture when it was notified. Facebook's lawyers relied on a European directive that they claimed provides protection from having to monitor a vast amount of online material for what is posted on one page. The case against Facebook and the man who it is claimed originally posted the picture will now move to full trial in Belfast at a later date. --IANS sku/ ( 270 Words) 2016-09-13-03:57:55 (IANS)
On the eve of EU meeting of European leaders scheduled for September 16, Hollande will receive Merkel for "preparatory consultations", Xinhua news agency reported.

According to a statement, the two leaders will hold a joint press meeting at 00:50 p.m. local time before sharing a working lunch.

--IANS sku/

( 87 Words)

2016-09-13-06:01:56 (IANS)
IS itself has already said al-Adnani, who also served as the terrorist group's main spokesman, died in the August 30 strike in al-Bab in Syria's devastated Aleppo province, NBC News reported.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said that "the US precision airstrike" specifically targeted al-Adnani and removed IS "chief propagandist, recruiter and architect of external terrorist operations".

Cook said that US "will continue to target IS leaders, relentlessly pursue its external plotters, and, working with partners on the ground".

"We will not rest in our efforts to destroy IS's parent tumor in Iraq and Syria, combat its metastases around the world and protect our homeland," he added.

The Russia Defense Ministry, however, has mentained that al-Adnani was among as many as 40 Syrian rebels who were killed by a Russian Su-34 bomber in Aleppo.

--IANS sku/

( 179 Words)

2016-09-13-07:59:56 (IANS)
The Committee on Human Rights in the Pakistan Senate has expressed serious concern over the recovery of 1200 unclaimed bodies from Balochistan. In a recent statement, the committee, which was chaired by Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Nasreen Jalil, said that this revelation was a stinging indictment of the state and showed that the people did not trust the state and its institutions. Members of the committee called for a comprehensive briefing from the director-general of Pakistan Rangers on Balochistan and on the dumping of unclaimed bodies in its next meeting. Police sources have reportedly told the committee that as many as 545 people had been killed in 2014-15 and 2015-16. The committee sought a detailed year-wise report on such deaths in the province. The police are under instructions from the Supreme Court to conduct DNA tests of the unclaimed bodies and to assist the missing persons' families for identification. Police said that they had not conducted the tests because nobody has showed up to claim any of the dead bodies so far. Over the past month and a half, prominent Baloch leaders have repeatedly expressed their concern and helplessness over what they describe as the atrocities of the Pakistan's military in Balochistan, and maintained that the situation in the province is graver than usual. Baloch Republican Party Founding Chief Brahmudagh Bugti has alleged that people are migrating from the province because of violence in the region, as atrocities have increased over time and said the situation has to be monitored more thoroughly to know the exact status of the people. He said that people disappear and are killed on a daily basis and claimed that this has been a regular affair since 2010. Bugti said that they were trying to garner help from everywhere, including human rights organizations and NGOs to make them aware of the situation in Balochistan. Representative of Balochistan at UNHRC and EU Mehran Marri has also expressed similar sentiments, saying that recently the Chief of Army Staff, General Raheel Sharif, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and others had a meeting and that they had agreed on a National Action Plan, but now, it was clear that the meeting was held to strategise on ways to isolate Baloch activists and the population from the rest of Pakistan. (ANI)
Nepal Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat held bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj about the agendas that Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal will be taking up during his visit to India starting Thursday. During the meeting, Mahat brought development projects such as Pancheshwor and Hulaki Road among others to Swaraj's attention and laid stress on their early completion, reports the Kathmandu Post. "Early completion of these pending projects would help create an environment of trust between the two countries," said Mahat adding that the new government's priority is enhancing bilateral relations on the basis of trust. Mahat also urged the Indian side that the joint detailed project report of the Pancheshwor Development Project should be finalised at the earliest. Both sides agreed to expedite talks at the bureaucratic level to finalise disputes related to cost among others. "The Indian side did not raise (Nepal's) political issue. The meeting focused on enhancing bilateral relations and development," he added. Mahat arrived in New Delhi on Sunday for a three-day visit to set the stage for Prime Minister Dahal's visit, which is taking place just over a month after he assumed office. "Both sides reiterated their commitment to further strengthen and deepen age-old, close and friendly ties in diverse sectors such as trade and mutual investments, defence and security, economic and development partnership, infrastructure development, energy and water resources, and forging connectivity to facilitate movement of goods and services, people and ideas," India's Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement issued after the meeting. (ANI)
China has urged the United States to take due responsibility for the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue and provide effective solutions after the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) set off its most powerful nuclear blast to date on September 9, saying it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile. "The essence of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is the conflict between the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and the United States," Xinhua quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying saying on Monday. Hua said that as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and a close neighbor of the DPRK, China has made unremitting efforts to maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and safeguard the international nuclear non-proliferation regime. The Chinese statement comes as DPRK's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that the U.S. compelled it to develop nuclear warheads and the nuclear threat Washington has constantly posed to the country for decades is the engine that has pushed it to this point. Blindly increasing the pressure and the resulting bounce-back will only make the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula "a firm knot," Hua said, calling for responsibility from all the relevant parties. She reiterated that China will remain committed to resolving issues concerning the Peninsula through dialogue to realize long-term peace and stability. "China strongly urges all parties to speak and act cautiously with the larger picture in mind, avoid provoking each other and make genuine efforts to achieve denuclearization, peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," she said, adding that simply putting sanctions on the DPRK cannot solve the issue. Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said on Saturday that there should be more "creative" ways of responding to Pyongyang's activities than simply sanctions, adding that ways could be found to resume the six-party talks while condemning the DPRK's nuclear test. The six-party talks, involving China, the DPRK, the United States, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Russia and Japan, were a multilateral mechanism aimed at solving the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue. The talks began in 2003 and stalled in December 2008. The DPRK quit the talks in April 2009. "Resuming the six-party talks is difficult, but we cannot give up easily," said Hua. (ANI)
The cabinet under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull approved the referendum on Tuesday, EFE news reported.

The proposal for the refrendum will be submitted to the ruling coalition MPs, but those who are in favour of the legalisation consider that financing the campaigns with public money will be counterproductive.

The referendum also depends on the approval of the necessary legislation by the Labour opposition in Parliament.

Labor opposition advocates that same-sex marriage should be directly legalised without a plebiscite as it could encourage homophobia.

"A 'no' campaign would be an emotional torment for gay teenagers and if one child commits suicide over the plebiscite, then that one is too many," Labor party opposition leader Bill Shorten said.

Australia, where several states allow civil union, was criticised by several organisations for being slow in legalisation of marriages between same sex couples.

In December 2013, Australia's High Court annulled a law allowing same sex marriages on the ground that it contravened the cuntry's marriage laws.

Similar legislative proposals have also failed in the states of Tasmania and in New South Wales.

--IANS ss/

( 222 Words)

2016-09-13-10:57:56 (IANS)
Former CIA Director James Woolsey, a vocal advocate of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq who promoted allegations that Saddam Hussein harbored illegal weapons, will serve as a senior national security adviser to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the campaign announced.Woolsey's hiring contrasted with Trump's repeated assertions that he was a stalwart opponent of the invasion, although he initially supported it.In the announcement, Woolsey said he supports Trump's plan to expand the US military, which calls for ending Pentagon budget caps and spending billions of dollars for additional troops, ships and aircraft."Mr. Trump's commitment to reversing the harmful defense budget cuts signed into law by the current administration, while acknowledging the need for debt reduction, is an essential step toward reinstating the United States' primacy in the conventional and digital battlespace," Woolsey said.Woolsey, who served for two years as CIA chief under then-President Bill Clinton, also criticized the presence of classified information in emails stored on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's private server.In an appearance on CNN, however, he called Trump's plan to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States "a bad decision." He also has warned about the threats posed by climate change, something Trump has called a hoax that benefits China.Woolsey was an outspoken proponent of the Iraq invasion, suggesting that Saddam was hiding nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs from UN inspectors. He also promoted the erroneous allegation that the Iraqi dictator backed al Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.Shortly after former President George W. Bush took office in 2001, Woolsey visited Britain on a Defense Department trip in a fruitless hunt for evidence that Saddam masterminded the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. He made a second visit to Britain for the same purpose shortly after Sept. 11, and again came up empty.At the time of his second trip, Woolsey was a member of the Defense Policy Board, a panel of outside advisers to the Defense Department that advocated Saddam's overthrow even in the absence of any evidence of his complicity in 9/11.The following year, he arranged for the Defense Intelligence Agency to debrief an Iraqi defector who claimed that Iraq had mobile biological-warfare laboratories disguised as yogurt and milk trucks. The man was later determined to be a fabricator.In 2000, Woolsey briefly served as a corporate officer of a foundation that managed U.S. funding for the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group that produced a series of defectors who peddled false information to bolster the allegations that Saddam was hiding illicit weapons programs. No such weapons or facilities have ever been found. REUTERS VS 0404 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-931228.Xml
The leaders on both sides of South Sudan's civil war and their families have profited off the conflict, amassing fortunes through links with bankers, arms dealers and oil companies, according to a report released by actors George Clooney and Don Cheadle.At a news conference yesterday to present the report, they called on the international community to cut off the leaders' financial flows through tougher sanctions.The report follows a two-year undercover investigation by The Sentry, a group co-founded by Clooney and fellow activist John Prendergast to look into the financing of African conflicts and comes at a time when the United Nations is threatening to impose an arms embargo against South Sudan's government.The group said a network of international facilitators stretched from arms dealers in Ukraine to construction companies in Turkey, mining firms in Kenya, and Chinese investors involved in joint ventures in gambling and private security sectors in South Sudan.According to the report, South Sudan's leader President Salva Kiir, his former deputy Riek Machar and military generals have pilfered state coffers, accumulated an array of luxury homes and cars, and enriched themselves and family members through stakes in oil and other business ventures.Spokesmen for Kiir and Machar both denied the leaders had properties in Kenya or other African countries, as the report alleged.The report also said South Sudanese army chief Paul Malong, who makes roughly 45,000 dollar a year, has at least two luxurious villas in Uganda in addition to a 2 million dollar mansion in a gated community in Nairobi.The report said family members of top government officials have stakes in commercial ventures in South Sudan. Local laws forbid constitutional office holders from engaging in business activities outside the government while in office, it said.The report said Kiir's family had been involved in a series of transitions involving government procurement deals and relationships with a foreign oil company. The group said it had obtained documents showing that Kiir's 12-year-old son held a 25 percent stake in a holding company formed in February 2016."The past five years South Sudan's leaders have engaged in ... mass atrocities on its citizens, starvation and rape, all while plundering the state's resources and enriching themselves and their families," Clooney told the conference."The simple fact is they are stealing the money to fund their militias who attack and kill one another. It involves arms dealers, international lawyers, international banks, international real estate," he added.Ateny Wek Ateny, a spokesman for Kiir, told Reuters by phone on Saturday before the release of the report, which was embargoed for release on Monday, that Kiir did not own properties in Nairobi."The president doesn't have any property in Nairobi or anywhere," Ateny said. "If there is anyone who says that, he is only accusing the president for no reason. The president does not even have a bank account, so how do these people arrive at all these?"James Gatdet Dak, spokesman for Machar, also denied that Machar owned property in Nairobi or Addis Ababa."It is a lie. Dr. Riek Machar's family does not own a house in Nairobi or in Addis Ababa as alleged," he said, "They are renting a house in Nairobi, while the one in Addis Ababa was a temporary guest house provided to him by the Ethiopian authorities during the peace negotiations."LOBBYING FOR ACTIONClooney said the group planned to lobby US President Barack Obama and other senior administration officials to impose sanctions targeted at South Sudan's leaders and to freeze their assets abroad.The United States has poured 1.5 billion dollar of aid into South Sudan despite widespread concerns over corruption.Prendergast, a former director of African affairs at the White House National Security Council, said the "fatal flaw" of the international community was it did not pay enough attention to the "core rot" at the foundation of the new government.South Sudan secured its independence in 2011 but by December 2013 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 fleeing to neighboring states.World powers and regional states have struggled to find leverage over South Sudan's warring factions despite US and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions.The UN Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015, then in July blacklisted six generals, three from each side, by subjecting them to an asset freeze and travel ban.REUTERS VS 0422 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-931233.Xml
He is a vivacious billionaire businessman who has emerged as his country's most popular politician, offering Czechs a break with old parties tainted by graft; but opponents who see in Andrej Babis a threat to democracy are pressing him to choose between his commercial empire and political power.Babis, product of the disillusionment with elites that has shaped politics from Rome and Madrid to London and Washington, is favourite to win an October 2017 election with his ANO movement. He is, he says, no politician - despite his five years in politics - but a businessman who gets things done.Not all in politics see the current Finance Minister in such a favourable light.The Czech parliament may vote as soon as tomorrow on "Lex Babis", an attempt to limit the accumulation of media, business and political power which, for some, Babis represents.The proposed amendments to the 'conflict of interest' law, backed by some government and some opposition factions, would ban any future member of cabinet from controlling companies or having stakes in the media. Firms where they own over 25 per cent would lose access to public contracts, non-automatic subsidies and investment aid.Some have compared Babis with former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who combined media and business with political power. In the United States, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has drawn on the same anger with the political elite, though Babis might eschew any such comparison.Babis is the biggest private employer in the central European country with over 30,000 workers in over 250 companies from chemical firms to newspapers and fertility clinics. His weighty business persona he leavens in running a Michelin star restaurant in France, sponsoring pop bands and sending wry tweets. But his rivals are not assuaged."The aim of the proposals is that one person cannot sign a decision in the name of the state at 8.10 and instruct a company he controls about which public tenders to take part in at 8.20," said Martin Plisek, deputy for the opposition TOP09 party who proposed some of the amendments."A LAW AGAINST ME"Babis sees the graft not on his doorstep. In this he finds popular resonance after a series of scandals involving public tenders and distribution of EU funds. A centre-right cabinet collapsed in 2013, although graft investigations have not led to any high profile convictions.Under the proposed law, Babis, if he were to join the next cabinet, or lead it as prime minister, would have to reduce his stake in his main holding firm Agrofert below 40 per cent or transfer it to a trust fund, and end his media engagement.Babis has admitted having conflicts of interest but said he never abused his position."It is a law against me," Babis said in an interview with the weekly Tyden released yesterday. "If it is approved, I will start dealing with it, and my lawyers will make a recommendation to me. I cannot rule out a constitutional suit."Babis had earlier warned the law could break up the ruling coalition ANO is part of, but has not repeated the threats in recent weeks.The former communist party member and foreign trade official has built up Agrofert since the mid-1990s through a series of acquisitions.Its Czech operations received 228.48 million dollars in Czech and EU subsidies between 2006 and 2014, according to the latest data Agrofert provided.Agrofert said these included farming subsidies, available to all farmers equally, and environmental investment aid approved by previous governments. The group also has multiple business engagements with the state, such as provision and storage of commodity reserves.One of the amendments, proposed by deputy Jan Chvojka from Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka's Social Democrats, would ban ownership of media by a member of cabinet.Babis bought two of the country's handful of daily newspapers and the most popular radio station in 2013, resulting in the departure of dozens of staff."The media should play a controlling role. Of course when a member of the government owns a significant media outlet, it does not fulfil this role," Chvojka told Reuters.Earlier this year, Babis faced accusations that he had bent rules in 2008 by temporarily transferring ownership of a conference centre project to his family members so it could qualify for an EU development subsidy only meant for small firms. He denied any wrongdoing in that case. REUTERS SZ PM1139 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0441-931366.Xml
China's Foreign Ministry said today that all sides should avoid taking steps that increase tension after two US B-1 bombers flew over South Korea in a show of solidarity in response to North Korea's nuclear test last week.Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the remarks at a regular press briefing. REUTERS SZ PM1327 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0441-931475.Xml
Qatar, a leading supporter of Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, welcomed a ceasefire in Syria, saying compliance would hasten a political solution and facilitate humanitarian help.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said today the truce, brokered by Russia and the United States and which began at sundown yesterday, was holding across Syria.QNA said Qatar's foreign ministry, in a statement yesterday evening, "expressed hope that the implementation of the agreement would contribute to reaching a comprehensive and permanent political settlement to end the Syrian crisis and lift the humanitarian suffering from the Syrian people ... ".Qatar also urged world powers to ensure Syrian government forces implement the agreement.Other Gulf Arab states, including regional power and main rebel supporter Saudi Arabia, have yet to comment on the ceasefire agreement.Russia and Iran are both providing crucial military support to Assad against rebels and jihadi fighters. Iran has sent what it said were military "advisers" to help Assad and allowed Russian fighter-bombers to use an Iranian base to launch operations in Syria in August.REUTERS SZ PM1327 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0441-931481.Xml
Thailand has recorded about 200 cases of Zika since January, the health ministry said today, making it a country with one of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in the region.It was the first time Thailand's health ministry has confirmed the number of Zika cases this year.The announcement comes a day after health experts called on Thailand to be more transparent in reporting the Zika threat to the public after health officials played down risks from rising infections of the mosquito-borne virus.Health officials have expressed concern that disclosing information on Zika, which is linked to serious birth defects, would damage Thailand's lucrative tourism industry."Since January, we have recorded about 200 cases and over the past three weeks, we have confirmed an average of 20 new cases per week," Ministry of Public Health spokesman Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai told Reuters."The number of cases is stable," he said, without giving further details.Island city-state Singapore reported its first locally infected Zika patient on August 27 and since then, the number of reported infections has soared to more than 300.Malaysia and the Philippines have also reported cases.The virus, which is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, has been circulating in Asia for years.The lineage of the virus circulating in Asia is different to the one in the Americas, researchers say. The level of population immunity to the lineage of Zika in Asia remains unknown, according to the World Health Organization.Suwannachai urged the public not to panic and reiterated a message aimed at reassuring tourists."People shouldn't be scared to visit provinces affected by the Zika virus," Suwannachai said.Zika infections in pregnant women have been shown to cause microcephaly - a severe birth defect in which the head and brain are undersized - as well as other brain abnormalities.The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last year in Brazil, which has since confirmed more than 1,800 cases of microcephaly.Thailand has found no cases of microcephaly linked to Zika and it is monitoring about two dozen pregnant woman and about six who have given birth with no complications, the health ministry said.In adults, Zika infections have also been linked to a rare neurological syndrome known as Guillain-Barre, as well as other neurological disorders.The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947.REUTERS AKC PR1635 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-931862.Xml
Despite New Delhi's objections, China is unlikely to give up on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), according to Global Times.The CPEC has become another source of friction in Sino-Indian ties, but China is unlikely to give up on the idea because of India's protest, the paper said.The economic corridor, linking Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to Gwadar Port in southwestern Pakistan, does not target any third party, including India, the paper said. Given that China has developed close economic ties with both India and Pakistan in recent years, Beijing is unlikely to be interested in taking a side between the two countries.Rather than prevent foreign investors from entering the region as a solution to concerns over CPEC, India should focus on its negotiations with Pakistan to settle the Kashmir problem, according to the website.UNI XC RSA RP1810 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0104-932074.Xml
"If the Indians want to sell them, there is a special procedure for that. I don't see any problems," Zamir Kabulov, Russian President's envoy for Afghanistan and Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's second Asia department said, Tass news agency reported.

Mr Kabulov added that India has a Russian authorization to re-export helicopters.UNI XC SW SB 1943

-- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0101-932326.Xml
Germany plans to send up to 650 troops to join a new NATO mission to counter human trafficking in the Mediterranean Sea and combat arms smuggling by the Islamic State militant group, news magazine Der Spiegel reported today.The ruling coalition aims to present a plan to parliament for approval shortly, the magazine said. It would call for the German involvement in NATO's Operation Sea Guardian to last until December 2017.The deployment is part of a broader shift by Germany to expand its military role in Europe and NATO. Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen has sought to rebuild the equipment and troop levels of the armed forces after years of declines.Der Spiegel said she and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told parliamentary leaders in a letter that "terrorist organisations can act unimpeded" because of the lack of government controls along the Mediterranean coast by countries such as Libya. This presented "significant threats to our security".The foreign and defence ministries had no immediate comment.NATO members agreed to launch the new maritime mission at a summit in Poland in July. German ships are also participating in a European Union military mission called Sophia to try to combat the smuggling of weapons and people off the Libyan coast.REUTERS PY BD2103 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-932459.Xml
ZHENGZHOU, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- It is eight o'clock on a clear morning in Shifosi, a small town in central China's Henan Province. Mutuwulla Mutallip, a 53-year-old Uygur from northwest China's Xinjiang, has just arrived to his stall at the local jade fair, which is already swarming with merchants and buyers.

"We are sorting them by purity," says Mutuwulla, who is packing up his jade necklaces and bracelets alongside his wife and elder son.

Han merchants, members of the largest Chinese ethnic group, work nearby. In the Henan town and throughout its markets, it is common to see Han Chinese intermingling with Uygurs, an ethnic group who live mainly in northwest China's Xinjiang.

Shifosi, traditionally known for its jade business, is gaining a new reputation in the region for these promising scenes of ethnic unity.

ANOTHER HOMETOWN

"I buy raw jade from our hometown in Hotan before my son and coworkers process it," says Mutuwulla. "Then we come and sell it."

"They have the best sales here," says Liu Xia, a close friend of Mutuwulla and fellow merchant.

"They're very hospitable. We visit them without invitation and have some traditional homemade Xinjiang rice at their homes," she adds.

Mutuwulla feels the same way. "We're lucky to have met such helpful Han friends," he says. "They took our jade to other cities to sell when we first arrived and couldn't communicate much."

Mutuwulla is one of the thousands of Uygur jade merchants in Shifosi. Most come from Hotan, Xinjiang, which has a long history in the jade business. Over the past decade, more and more Uygurs have discovered the perks of trading in the Henan town.

"Jade sells a lot better here," says Mutuwulla, who makes around 80,000 yuan (11,970 U.S. dollars) a year. "I love Xinjiang, but the people and money have been driving me here for five years."

For some younger Uygurs, friendship with local Han people has played an even bigger role in their decision to head east.

"I got here eight years ago when I was only 18," says Muhpul Hulam, another jade merchant in Shifosi. "But it wasn't that difficult. The people here are very kind and open to us."

Muhpul says Han Chinese would invite him to eat Muslim-style meals at their homes. "I've got to learn Mandarin at the table," he says, laughing.

"Now we often hang out after work and even go on trips during holidays," he adds. "The town is like another hometown to me."

LANGUAGE, LEARNING AND OPPORTUNITY

Policies by the local government over the years have played a key role in fostering an environment for Han and Uygurs to live and work side by side.

Language education has been one of the most important initiatives. For most Uygur merchants new to the town, language is the biggest barrier to overcome. The government sets up an office specifically to meet the needs of Uygurs, with five bilingual employees to help them. The office also offers Mandarin classes for those who need them.

"Things weren't easy at first," Mutuwulla says. "I was illiterate and didn't speak Mandarin, but 23 days of bilingual courses enabled me to speak basic Mandarin and write my name in Chinese."

"In 2015, we started offering the courses as an annual regular session," said Shi Mingzhong, an official for ethnic and religious affairs. "Uygurs' enthusiasm for learning Mandarin has grown quickly ever since."

At the jade fairs across the town, Uygur merchants can be seen talking at ease with Han buyers and merchants, whether for business or just to chat.

"We speak fluent Mandarin, and it will help us a lot anywhere in the country," says 26-year-old Muhpul.

Language education is also in place for the next generation of Uygurs in town. Since 2014, bilingual teachers at the local primary school have offered three language courses a week for Uygur children, in addition to regular classes.

"The change came as Uygur parents attached more importance to the education their kids receive," principal Shang Lei says. "They believe better education means everything."

"We also don't set a limit for Uygur students' enrollment deadline," he says. "Whenever they arrive with their parents, they can come and be educated along with Han students right away."

UNBREAKABLE BONDS

As for the future, the plans of local Uygurs vary, yet the bonds between Shifosi and the jade merchants have been unbreakable. Some return to Xinjiang thankful for what they have gained in Henan.

"My vision has been largely expanded, and I'm a mature man now," Muhpul says. "This is the kind of experience to treasure for life."

Muhpul hopes to open a cafe back in his hometown of Yili, Xinjiang by the time he reaches his thirties. "I'll play the traditional dutar there and share my stories from Shifosi with my fellow Uygurs," he says.

"That will be a good way for me to both make my home better and to encourage more Uygurs to make the most of such opportunities," he adds.

Some other Uygurs prefer to stay in Shifosi to earn more money and take advantage of the better educational opportunities for their children.

"We won't leave here until my grandchildren are admitted to university," says Mutuwulla, whose two grandsons are just two and four years old.

Mutuwulla and his family are quite content to stay where they are. The primary school and comprehensive classes are a big reason. During breaks, Han and Uygur students play together, their arms around one other's shoulders.

"The Han children here aren't aware of, and don't care about, the differences between ethnic groups," says Liang Yaxun, a bilingual teacher at the school. "Uygur students are always like sisters and brothers to them."

"I love this place and want to stay here for a long time," says 11-year-old Gulxanay in perfect Mandarin while taking a break from dancing with Han classmates.

"I want to join the navy when I graduate from college," she says with a smile. "Then I'll be able to serve our country."
LISBON, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Portuguese maritime police saved 54 refugees travelling in a boat in the Aegean sea on Saturday, the National Maritime Authority said in a statement on Monday.

"The team of maritime police went immediately to the boat and rescued all the people," the maritime police said, adding that there were four babies and children, 12 women and 38 men.

On arriving at the Skala Sikaminea port, they disembarked and were helped by Greek coast guards and personnel from EU agency Frontex and NGO.

One of the women was of Spanish nationality and pregnant, according to the statement. She had been living in Turkey for five years.

The maritime police has rescued around 3,618 refugees and migrants in total since October 2015, 881 of which were babies and 783 were women.

The maritime police is composed of a team of 13 and has been in the Aegean sea since October 1 last year, amid an operation named "Poseidon Sea 2015" carried out by EU border agency Frontex. The team is expected to be on the Greek border until September 30, 2016.

Over 850,000 people arrived by sea to Greece last year, according to the UN refugee agency, as conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq forced people to flee their homes.
LUSAKA, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Security has been tightened ahead of the inauguration of Zambia's President-elect Edgar Lungu, the police said on Monday.

Lungu, who was declared winner of last month's general elections, will be inaugurated on Tuesday after the country's Constitutional Court threw away a petition by the opposition that was challenging his re-election while another court threw away an application to halt his inauguration.

Kakoma Kanganja, the Inspector-General of the Zambia Police, said the police have tightened security measures for the ceremony to ensure that peace prevails, adding that any attempts to go against the measures would be sternly dealt with.

The police chief said no offensive stuff such as bottles or bags will be allowed in the National Heroes Stadium, the venue of the inauguration in Lusaka, the country's capital, while access to the venue will be on a first come, first served basis.

"In view of the high profile nature of this event those intending to attend are advised to be at the stadium early for security clearance and other formalities. At all times those in attendance are advised to remain calm as adequate security measures have been put in place," he said in a statement seen by Xinhua on Monday.

The country's road safety agency said in a separate statement that it has deployed adequate traffic officers across the country to ensure the safety of all road users on Tuesday.

The agency said officers will be on high alert to conduct traffic management and enforcement operations to ensure that the ceremony was free of any road accidents.

The government has since declared Tuesday a public holiday in order to allow people to follow the inauguration ceremony which will also be beamed live on big screens across provincial capitals in the country.

Four African leaders will attend the event, among them Ian Khama of Botswana, John Magufuli of Tanzania, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

The tightly-contested August 11 polls have been disputed by the country's leading opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema, who said he does not recognize Lungu's victory.

The opposition claimed last week that 300,000 votes were stolen from him.

Lungu has led Zambia since January 2015 when he won an election called following the death of former President Michael Sata in 2014.
LUSAKA, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- An opposition leader in Zambia on Monday pleaded not guilty to a charge of criminal trespass.

Nevers Mumba, who leads a faction of the opposition Movement for Multiparty Democracy, was arrested on Saturday afternoon for unlawfully entering the newsroom of the state broadcaster, the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation last Thursday and spent the weekend in police custody.

According to the police, the opposition leader, who was the country's vice-president in late President Levy Mwanawasa's government, is alleged to have stormed the public broadcaster's newsroom and threatened staff on Thursday evening over a story the broadcaster run.

Mumba pleaded not guilty to the charge when he appeared in a magistrate court in Lusaka, the country's capital on Monday.

The court has since granted him bail after state prosecutors objected to the application by lawyers that he should be granted bail, saying he was a threat to national security following his comments last week that the inauguration of President Edgar Lungu will not take place.
SKOPJE, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Macedonia has set the European Union (EU) membership as its strategic goal and will continue to work on reforms in order to achieve EU integration, said the press office of Macedonian Prime Minister Emil Dimitriev on Monday.

Dimitriev met with the newly appointed EU Ambassador to Macedonia Samuel Zbogar here on Monday.

The talks focused on the progress of reforms in Macedonia and the next steps to be taken by the country's government toward the strategic goal of Macedonia to be integrated into the EU.

The two sides affirmed their commitment to continuing mutual cooperation.
CAPE TOWN, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- South Africa saw a decline in rhino poaching between January and August this year, during which 702 rhinos were poached nationwide, compared with 796 in the same period last year, Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa said on Monday.

In the country's Kruger National Park (KNP) which is the hardest hit by rhino poaching, a total number of 458 poached rhino carcasses were found, compared to 557 in the same period last year, representing a 17.8 percent decline, the minister said in the latest update on progress in fight against rhino poaching.

There may be indications however that the success of anti-poaching efforts in the KNP has led to poaching syndicates shifting operations to other provinces, according to Molewa.

In the period under review, the number of rhinos poached has increased in a number of other provinces in comparison to the same period in 2015, such as KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and the Northern Cape, she said.

However, despite these increases there is still a downward trend in the number of rhinos poached, Molewa said.

The minister also announced a significant increase in the number of arrests of alleged poachers this year.

A total of 414 alleged poachers have been arrested in South Africa since the beginning of the year, of which 177 were in the KNP and 237 for the rest of the country.

A total of 94 firearms have been seized inside the KNP between January 1 and August 31 this year, she said.

South Africa, home to about more than 80 percent of the world's rhino population, bears the brunt of rhino poaching.

The country declared rhino poaching a national priority crime in 2014.
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- The South African government on Monday called on all stakeholders to work together to eradicate illegal mining in the country.

"One of our biggest tasks is to get to the syndicates behind these operations, as well as the markets they're supplying," Minister of Mineral Resources Zwane said.

This came amid reports that a number of illegal miners were trapped underground in an abandoned gold mine in Johannesburg.

A rescue team managed to save four miners on Sunday, but suspended the search later due to high levels of carbon dioxide underground.

Six miners reportedly remained trapped underground. It is still unclear when the miners got into the mine. The illegal miners are believed to come from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Zwane said rescue teams will later on Monday assess the levels of carbon dioxide underground, to determine whether rescue operations can resume.

Meanwhile, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday also called for the speedy rescue of trapped miners. However, it said the number of trapped could be more than 50. The DA's figures cannot be officially confirmed.

"We call on law enforcement to exact the full might of the law on these syndicates who lethally exploit desperate people looking to put food on the table," the DA said in a statement.

"The scale of the disaster at the Langlaagte gold mine is unknown. One report said 51 miners were down the abandoned mine. So far seven are believed dead with others trapped underground," said James Lorimer, DA Shadow Minister of Mineral Resources.

"These tragedies will continue until there is credible action by the state to stop illegal mining," said Lorimer.

He said unstopped illegal mining indicates state failure on multiple levels such as unpoliced borders which allow the easy ingress of illegal miners, lack of legislation making illegal mining itself a crime and little action to close down and arrest people working at gold washing tables scattered across the area.

Zwane, on the other hand, said the mineral resources ministry is working together with law enforcement agencies to ensure that perpetrators are brought to book, he said.

Thus far, over 800 arrests have been made and weekly disruptive operations are undertaken, according to the minister.

Over 200 holes have been closed by the department and mining companies, thus cutting off illegal access to disused mining operations, Zwane said.

According to the South African Chamber of Mines, over six billion rand (about 420 million US dollars) is lost through illegal mining annually.

About 70 percent of illegal miners are illegal immigrants, according to the chamber, adding about 14,000 people are involved in illegal mining in South Africa.
PRAGUE, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Forty Czech police officers left for Macedonia on Monday to replace their colleagues, who were sent there in early August to protect the country's border amid a migrant crisis.

The police make up the fifth contingent of its kind from the Czech Republic. They will stay in Macedonia until the end of October.

Macedonia highly regards the friendly assistance and support the Czech Republic extends to Macedonia at the time of a migrant crisis, said Macedonian ambassador to the Czech Republic Paskal Stojcheski.

Stojcheski said his country will fully support these officers in their work.

Czech police will work together with their Macedonian counterparts to guard its border. Most of them will be deployed at Gevgelija, a town near a temporary camp for refugees in Greece's Idomeni. In May, Greece vacated the camp because of its bad sanitary conditions.
ALEPPO, Syria, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- People in government-controlled areas in the northern city of Aleppo have different opinions about the ceasefire that went into force Monday evening, as those who have suffered by the rebels highly doubt the prospects of the truce, while the better-offs wish the truce could succeed.

Those living in areas that are frequently targeted by the rebels' mortar shelling and rocket fire say they don't trust the rebels, as previous attempts to establish a pacification in Aleppo have largely failed.

They say each time a truce is declared, the rebels take advantage of the situation to regroup and bring in more weapons.

On Monday, several mortars slammed into residential areas in government-controlled districts in western Aleppo, leaving at least two people killed and over 29 others wounded.

In the Jamilliyeh district, in a street called Azbakiyeh, several mortars landed on Monday, just hours ahead of the implementation of the U.S.-Russian backed truce.

Glass was scattered everywhere, with blood spots seen everywhere.

Cries of little children, and the frantic voices of their parents could be heard in the street, which became deserted of passersby following the mortar attacks, which also coincided with the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, or the Feast of Sacrifice.

Ibrahim Khalil went out trying to cross the street to his neighbors to check on them, just minutes after a mortar hit at 6:30 p.m., half an hour ahead of the ceasefire implementation.

Kahil, a 43-year-old father of two, told Xinhua he doesn't believe in the truce.

"A couple of hours ago, a mortar hit the building and half an hour later another mortar shell hit the same area, leaving injuries, and we are still hearing the mortars slamming nearby."

Regarding the truce, he said "so far there is no such a thing as a truce in Aleppo, because mortar shells are still falling. When they say truce, it means a relief for the people, but if the mortar shells continued to land here, I am against it. We need a curb to the bloodshed."

"We are against the truce, because whenever there is a truce, the rebels start recollecting themselves and amassing weapons and manpower again and they shell Aleppo again. Every time there is a truce, the people are the ones who pay the price," he said, trying to end the conversation as he was fearing another mortar would hit soon.

He said the view of blood has become normal in Aleppo, as "every family in Aleppo has an injured one or a martyr."

Another man, on a wheel chair, from Azbakiyeh told Xinhua the rebels have no mercy for the civilians they are shelling.

"The rebels don't have mercy on us, why should we be merciful with them? I was injured during the war in Aleppo. Today just an hour ahead of the ceasefire, a mortar shell landed on an area where children were playing," he said.

"We don't want a truce, the army has a big arsenal, they should eliminate them and rid us of those terrorists," he demanded.

His wife, a 31-year-old woman, who has six children, said her kids don't know the spirit of the holiday, which used to be full of joy and peace.

"We have been suffering so hard since yesterday. They kept shelling this area. I don't think they will abide by the truce. I think that the truce won't work because every time there is a truce, they (rebels) become more violent. I don't trust the rebels, and I won't let my children out even after the ceasefire," she told Xinhua.

"My children have been traumatized by the attacks. My children were deprived from the joy of Eid, this is not a life," she said.

Those were people who have suffered until half an hour ahead of the truce.

In the fortunate district of Furkan, where coffee shops are scattered everywhere, with young men and women strolling down the streets there, university students and some higher class people were feverishly hoping for a successful truce.

Muhammad Burri, a Syrian merchant, said he believes in the truce, and has a firm belief it will work.

"I say I hope the truce could be implemented and I believe it will be successful because the truce is the only way out of this violence. I believe the truce will hold and will curb the bloodletting," he told Xinhua.

For his part, Maher, a university student from Aleppo, also shared the same optimism, saying "we have hope that this truce will be successful, despite the fact that previous efforts to establish a ceasefire have failed. We really wish to see a halt of violence and battles to our countries."

Bashar, a 20-year-old Syrian student, hoped for a true truce, saying he has not enjoyed his youth as others in his age do in other countries.

"As a young man living in Syria, it's extremely hard for me to find a chance or opportunity to build a future amid this war. As a young man, I have been displaced from my home, I was parted from dear ones as a result of this war. I really wish this truce could work out well, so that people like me can think only of building a bright future in a healthy environment," he said.

Another student, Khalil, expressed both conflicting feelings, about his wish of a successful truce, and his firm belief that only the military solution would settle the situation in Syria.

"I really wish the truce would be successful, but in my opinion nothing will resolve this crisis but the military solution. Aleppo was known as being the mother of the world, we miss the old Aleppo. I really think that even though the truce is welcomed, but the military solution, in my opinion, is the ultimate solution," he added.

As the truce went into effect at 7:00 p.m., following a military statement stating the beginning of a seven-day regime of silence, the streets of Aleppo was quiet, in terms of the frequent sound of shelling from both parties.

This truce is not the first, as a previous one was also concluded last February, as a result of a joint U.S. and Russian support. That truce held well near Damascus, but was quick to fall apart in Aleppo.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city and once an economic hub, is so important due to its strategic location near Turkey, in addition of being an industrial city.

The city has become carved out between the rebels in the eastern parts and the government in the western ones.

Over the past few months, the rebels unleashed wide-scale offensives to strip the government of key areas in Aleppo and its countryside, managing to control a series of military bases in the southern countryside of Aleppo, and succeeding in breaking the government siege on rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo.

The government mounted a counter-offensive last month, succeeding recently to recapture all fallen military bases in southern Aleppo, in addition to re-placing the siege on rebel-held areas in the eastern part of that war-torn city.
Former President of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha addresses a plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia Sept. 12, 2016. The Chamber of Deputies would decide the political future of Eduardo Cunha Monday night, after he was accused of breaking parliamentary decorum. (Xinhua/Andre Dusek/AGENCIA ESTADO)

BRASILIA, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's Chamber of Deputies will decide the political future of its former president, Eduardo Cunha, on Monday night as he stands accused of breaking parliamentary decorum.

The session is due to start at 7:00 p.m. local time and could result in Cunha losing his mandate as deputy, after allegedly lying about not holding foreign bank accounts.

Cunha is an ally of President Michel Temer and a leading figure in the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB).

In October, Switzerland provided information to Brazilian authorities that several accounts were in Cunha's name, containing millions of U.S. dollars.

Cunha is also under investigation within the Petrobras corruption ring as witnesses have alleged he took 5 million U.S. dollars in bribes to facilitate contracts.

The Chamber's rapporteur in the case against Cunha, Marcos Rogerio, will speak for 25 minutes on Monday evening to present the arguments in favor of his removal from office.

Cunha's defense team will get the same time period to refute these arguments, while Cunha, who will attend the session, will also be invited to speak.

Deputies wishing to speak will be given five minutes each to do so before an electronic vote happens. A majority of 257 votes of the 513 members is needed for Cunha to be stripped of his seat.
Image provided by Brazil's Presidency shows Brazil's President Michel Temer signing during the ceremony of ratification of the Paris Agreement (2015) on climate change in Brasilia, Brazil, on Sept. 12, 2016. Brazil's President Michel Temer on Monday ratified the Paris Agreement on climate change, which commits Brazil to reducing its carbon emissions by 37 percent by 2025 from 2005 levels. (Xinhua/Beto Barata/Bazil's Presidency)

BRASILIA, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's President Michel Temer on Monday ratified the Paris Agreement on climate change, which commits Brazil to reducing its carbon emissions by 37 percent by 2025 from 2005 levels.

In a ceremony in Brasilia, Temer highlighted that Brazil has made a further commitment to reducing its emissions by 43 percent by 2030.

In his speech, Temer said that Brazil had played a major part in climate agreements, such as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 and the Rio +20 sustainable development conference in 2012.

"We are now on a path that started back then. The climate issue is a state issue. It is an obligation of all governments," he said.

The Minister of Environment, Jose Sarney Filho, said that the actions to which Brazil was committed would become central in economic and social policies.

"This is an opportunity to redirect the national development project if we act in a firm and ambitious manner," he said, adding that Brazil's climate change engagement went alongside its goals to grow the economy, fight poverty, create jobs and achieve "green" innovation and investment.

The Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 during the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its 180 signatories committed themselves to maintaining global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

In order to enter into force, the Paris Agreement needs to be ratified by at least 55 countries responsible for a cumulative 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Earlier in September, China and the United States formally ratified the treaty before the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China.
Contestant Cecilia Catacata performs during the Chinese singing contest in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Sept. 10, 2016. (Xinhua/Martin Zabala)

BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- The first ever Chinese singing talent competition held in Argentina had not one, but two winners over the weekend.

Winners Victoria Landeira and Cecilia Catacata beat out 12 other contestants for an opportunity to travel to China to learn more about its culture.

A total of 14 contestants competed on Saturday in the final round of the contest, organized by the Chinese embassy and language-teaching centers at the Esquina Carlos Gardel cultural center in the capital Buenos Aires.

"Several years ago I studied the language (Chinese) for two years," Landeira, 22, told Xinhua.

"Then I had to stop, because I had to dedicate myself to (university), but this year I am graduating," the native of Quilmes, a town in Greater Buenos Aires, added, suggesting she might pick up her Chinese studies where she left off.

China has long fascinated Landeira, who said that as part of her graphic design studies this year "had to work on (designing) some bills and I made some Chinese yuan."

The trip to China won't be Landeira's first.

"I was in China in 2011 -- I liked it a lot -- so I will be getting to know it better next year. I really like Chinese food," she said, smiling. "I'm really eager to go to China ... I'm very excited."

Catacata, who hails from Chacabuco, a city in Buenos Aires province, studied Chinese at the Confucius Institute in La Plata, the provincial capital.

"I have been studying for four years ... but I never imagined I could be a finalist (in the contest), I'm very surprised," said Catacata.

"I was not expecting this at all (but) my main objective, since I first began studying Chinese, has been to reach China," she said.

Catacata said she was looking forward to the trip, especially the chance to perfect her Chinese.

"I want to meet people, I want to bring friends with me, improve my language and make the most of this opportunity. I'm so happy," she said. "Studying Chinese is not easy, but being there for a good long while is going to help me better my pronunciation, vocabulary, everything."

Friends, family and other spectators filled the ground floor of the cultural center, while the upper floor hosted the judges and special guests, such as embassy personnel, representatives from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, which sponsored the prizes.

The singing semifinals took place in June at the Chinese embassy in Buenos Aires, with 33 contestants selected out of an initial 80 who took part in local talent shows held at Confucius Institutes and classrooms around the country.

The contests aim to promote an appreciation for Chinese culture and the arts, especially among young students, and are supported by China's Ministry of Education and its department for teaching Chinese as a foreign language.
SYDNEY, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Australian dollar edged higher Tuesday as the greenback lost some ground after a Federal Reserve official cast doubt on the chances of a U.S. rate rise in September.

At the Asian open, the local unit was trading at 75.66 U.S. cents, up from 75.26 U.S. cents on Monday.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia chief currency strategist Richard Grace said the Australian dollar lifted almost 1 percent from Monday's low to 75.67 U.S. cents as the greenback had softened, oil prices increased and as the Wall Street rallied at 1.4 percent.

"The Australian dollar out-performed on the major crosses, except against the New Zealand dollar, where it travelled sideways to 1.0209," Grace said in a research note.

He said the August NAB (National Bank of Australia) business survey set to be released on Tuesday will not influence the Australian dollar's movement at all.

At 0925 local time AEST, the Australian dollar was trading at 75.63 U.S cents.
MELBOURNE, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Small star-shaped molecules could hold the answer to killing "superbugs" which have built up a resistance to antibiotics, a major Australian study has found.

The University of Melbourne study, published on Tuesday in respected international journal Nature Microbiology, found that manufactured star-shaped polymers dubbed "peptide polymers" were extremely effective at killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Greg Qiao, the leader of the study, said the rising threat of superbugs, bacteria that have developed immunity to antibiotics, made the study of utmost importance.

"It is estimated that the rise of superbugs will cause up to 10 million deaths a year by 2050. In addition, there have only been one or two new antibiotics developed in the last 30 years," Qiao said in a media release on Tuesday.

Qiao said his team tested the peptide polymer, developed by the Melbourne School of Engineering, against Gram-negative bacteria, a class of bacteria highly prone to antibiotic resistance.

The bacteria showed no resistance against the peptide polymer, which was able to kill the bacteria in different ways compared to antibiotics which are only capable of killing bacteria one way.

The research team said they believe the multi-faceted attack of the star-shaped polymer was responsible for its superior performance over antibiotics.

Qiao said that the discovery that the polymer was non-toxic to the human body was particularly promising, especially since tests on red blood cells found that the polymer dosage rate would need to be increased by a factor greater than 100 to become toxic.

The research team believes that this discovery is the first step in developing a treatment for superbugs.
SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. military on Tuesday flew two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers over South Korea in a show of force following the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s recent nuclear test.

Two B-1B Lancers, which can carry nuclear weapons, flew over the Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, some 70 km south of capital Seoul, at about 10 a.m. local time (0100GMT), according to local media reports.

The one was flanked by four South Korean F-15K fighter jets, while the other was joined by four U.S. F-16 fighter planes before returning to the base. The high-speed bombers made a sortie from the U.S. air base in Guam.

The flights are a day later than scheduled. The United States reportedly planned to send the bombers to South Korea on Monday, but it was delayed due to unfavorable weather conditions.

The United States allegedly forward-deployed several B-1Bs to Andersen base in Guam in early August from Ellsworth air base in South Dakota to replace B-52 strategic bombers.

The flight of B-1Bs over South Korean territory near the inter-Korean border came just four days after the DPRK announced its successful explosion test of nuclear warhead that can be mounted on ballistic missiles.

South Korea's military estimated the fifth nuclear test was the most powerful as it produced an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, bigger than 6 kilotons generated in the previous test.

Following the Jan. 6 nuclear detonation, the fourth from the DPRK, the U.S. military staged an armed protest by flying a B-52 strategic bomber over the Osan Air Base.
A meteorite is to be uplifted in Chaco Province, north Argentina, on Sept. 11, 2016. Scientists have excavated the meteorite weighing over 30 tons in Chaco. (Xinhua/TELAM)

BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have excavated a meteorite weighing over 30 tons in northern Argentina, it was reported on Monday.

The meteorite was found on Sept. 10 in the town of Gancedo, 1,085 km north of Buenos Aires, Mario Vesconi, president of the Astronomy Association of Chaco, told the daily newspaper Clarin.

"While we hoped for weights above what had been registered, we did not expect it to exceed 30 tons," Vesconi noted, adding that "the size and weight surprised us."

"It was in Campo del Cielo, where a shower of metallic meteorites fell around 4,000 years ago," the team was quoted as saying.

The meteorite will be weighed again to ensure an accurate measurement.

The largest meteorite ever found is called Hoba, weighing 66 tons and lying in Namibia.
iStock/Thinkstock(OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea) -- Two U.S. Air Force B-1B strategic bombers flew over South Korea's Osan Air Base early Tuesday local time about 75 miles from the North Korean border.

The show of force by the bombers, escorted by U.S. and South Korean fighter jets, comes after North Korea's fifth and most powerful nuclear test to date last week.

"Todays demonstration provides just one example of the full range of military capabilities in the deep resources of this strong alliance to provide and strengthen extended deterrence," said Gen. Vincent Brooks, U.S. Forces Korea commander. "The Alliance military forces remain ready to meet mutual defense obligations against threats to the security of the Korean Peninsula and the region."

The low-level flyover "highlights the close cooperation between U.S. and ROK military forces that keeps them ready to respond at any time to threats to stability and security," U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement.

U.S. ambassador to South Korea and special envoy on North Korea's nuclear issue, Sung Kim, said in Seoul Tuesday the U.S. was having "productive discussions" with the South Koreans.

"North Korea, once again, has demonstrated blatant and reckless disregard for its commitments and international obligations," Kim said. "This is quite unprecedented, even by North Korea's standards."

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
MELBOURNE, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The venom of a carnivorous sea snail could hold the key for artificial, fast-acting insulin for diabetes patients, an Australian study has found.

Researchers from Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) discovered the unusual three-dimensional structure of the insulin, a hormone that turns glucose ingested into liver and skeletal muscle cells, within the cone snail's venom.

Mike Lawrence, leader of WEHI's participation in the research, said the discovery was a significant step and would enable scientists to engineer an artificial version of the fast-acting insulin.

Lawrence said the artificial insulin, used to maintain a healthy level of glucose in the blood of diabetes patients, would work instantaneously compared to the insulin currently used which requires 15 minutes to take effect.

"Our breakthrough has been to determine the structure of this venom insulin," Lawrence told Fairfax Media on Tuesday.

"The ah-ha moment' was realizing that it doesn't have the hinge mechanism that human insulin does and then working out how it gets by without it."

Lawrence said insulin developed from the snail venom could be administered to patients suffering from type one, type two and gestational diabetes.

The cone snail uses its venom on fish, a vertebrate species similar to humans, which made researchers believe that the venom's insulin would work on humans.

"Fish are closer to us than snails," Lawrence said. "The fish is fast-moving and the snail is not fast-moving. So a snail needs to have a venom that is fast acting."

Diabetes Australia said that 280 Australians develop diabetes every day.

The research is an ongoing international collaboration between scientists from America, Denmark and Australia.




Hainan Airlines A330 aircraft from Changsha lands at Sydney Airport in Sydney, Australia, Sept. 13, 2016. China's Hainan Airlines new service from Changsha, capital of central-south China's Hunan Province, touched down for the first time at Sydney Airport on Tuesday, marking a new route for the airport. (Xinhua/Zhu Hongye)

SYDNEY, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- A promotional partnership between China's Hainan Airlines and the New South Wales state government which kick started on Tuesday will see the airline flying in about 52,000 Chinese tourist annually from China's Changsha and Xi'an in a new twice-weekly flight service.

NSW minister for Trade, Tourism and Major Events Stuart Ayres said in a statement partnering with one of China's largest airlines was part of the state's continuing effort to entice more Chinese tourists which was up 21 percent in the first six months of the year.

"Tourists from China are voting with their feet, coming to NSW in ever larger numbers to experience the magic of regional food and wine, our magnificent beaches, major events and explore our Aboriginal heritage," Ayres said.

"Investing in new aviation services is proving to increase visitation from second and third tier cities and make travel from other major Chinese cities to Sydney and Regional NSW more accessible than ever."

"Changsha and Xi'an are hugely important growth markets for NSW and now more tourists will learn about the direct way to get to Sydney and enjoy this great state," he said.

A recent survey by the Commonwealth Securities (CommSec) also revealed that the number of Chinese tourist were now leading the way in terms of tourist arrivals into Australia with an annual growth rate of above 20 percent.

CommSec chief economics Craig James said in the past year a record number of 1.2 million tourists came to Australia from China, up 24.1 percent from the previous year.
SYDNEY, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- An Australian auction to sell off a massive iconic Coca-Cola signage in Sydney has come to an end with more than 100,000 Australian dollars (75,000 U.S. dollars) received from local and overseas bidders, local media reported on Tuesday.

The Coca-Cola signage which has been a part of the Kings Cross skyline for more than 40 years was auctioned letter by letter on eBay on Monday night with the proceeds expected to be given to the homeless in Sydney.

The two largest letters, the "Cs", were more than 5.4 meters tall, up to 6.6 meters wide, 29 cm deep and 65 kg in weight each while the smaller letters were around 2.8 meters tall, between 1.2 meters and 2.6 meters wide, 29 cm deep and between 25 kg and 40 kg in weight.

Organizers said that the most popular letter from the signage was the little 'C', which went for 18,700 Australian dollars (14,000 U.S. dollars).

The other two 'C' signs were tied for the title of the cheapest letter, selling for 10, 300 Australian dollars (7,700 U.S. dollars) each.

The letters were put up for sale at the end of August.
SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korean economy posted trade surplus for 55 straight months through August due to the first rebound in exports for 20 months, customs data showed on Tuesday.

Revised figure for trade surplus reached 5.1 billion U.S. dollars in August, staying in the black for the 55th consecutive month, according to the Korea Customs Service.

Exports, which account for about half of the export-driven economy, grew 2.6 percent from a year earlier to 40.1 billion dollars, ending the 19th consecutive month of reduction through July.

Imports edged up 0.7 percent over the year to 35 billion dollars last month.

By item, ship exports surged 93.8 percent on the back of high value-added vessel orders won by local companies.

Shipments of semiconductors, steel products and auto parts increased 2.4 percent, 6.2 percent and 3.1 percent each, but those for cars, oil products and display panels posted a double-digit decline.

Exports to Japan expanded 7.2 percent in August from a year ago, but those to China and the United States, South Korea's top two trading partners, slumped 5.3 percent and 4.7 percent respectively.

Raw material imports slipped 5.2 percent amid lower commodity prices, but those for consumer and capital goods increase 7.8 percent and 5.9 percent each.
by Xinhua writer Yuan Quan

BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- What would you do if your body stopped growing at age 8?

For Wu Xiuju, 26, the answer was simple: she was determined to change the way the world saw her.

Wu was eight when she was diagnosed with dwarfism in 1998. No matter how much she ate, she grew only slowly.

She studied hard in school and got good grades, but she felt a sense of discrimination growing even as her body stopped.

It was only when she met a group of autistic children that she realized her small stature could bring trust and respect.

"I was very surprised by these unusual children when I first met them. The reaction was quite similar to those who suddenly realize I am actually 26," says Wu.

In a country where opportunities for people with her condition are limited, Wu wants to prove that small people can make great contributions to the world.

CHILDHOOD DREAMS

Born in a small village in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, she was the youngest daughter of her family. Her four sisters are all taller than 160 cm.

Her parents spent years taking Wu from city to city to see doctors. They were told her growth hormone secretion was insufficient and she would eventually stop growing.

The family tried various remedies, including calcium tablets, herbal medicines and hormone injections for a decade. As an 18-year-old high school student, she remained 128 cm tall, the height of an 8-year-old.

Wu dreamed that someday she would suddenly grow: "I dreamed of having a climbing race with my father, trying on my mother's pretty dresses, and joining my sister's party, telling everyone that I had defeated the little monster and come back."

However, she seldom felt self-pity. Her childhood was full of love and care. In high school she sat at a specially shortened desk. She got a free tailored school uniform and she had many friends and praise from her teachers.

"At that time my world looked small, but very warm," Wu says.

CRUEL GIBES

In 2009, Wu enrolled at Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology, majoring in project accounting, which had few female students. Her teacher once recommended her for a paid internship. "I felt a sense of accomplishment. I thought I had a future," she recalls.

But she struggled to find employment after graduation.

"I was ashamed. People of my age were supporting their families, but I had to live on my parents and sisters. "

She left her hometown to deliver resumes to more than 50 companies in the cities of Harbin, Beijing and Tianjin, but all her interviews ended in less than 5 minutes.

One interviewer joked, "If I employed you, I would be criticized for hiring a child worker."

A few months later, she got an offer from a Tianjin engineering company. She spent days and nights remembering design drawings and her colleagues called her "a walking computer".

To accurately measure a construction site, she insisted on climbing more than 70 meters up loose scaffolding.

"I was trembling and scared to look down," she recalls. "I did it to show my boss that I could do things normal people could."

She was exhilarated when she received a difficult assignment and worked overtime for two months. But when it was almost finished, Wu was told it was no longer needed.

"I was totally numb," she remembers. She cried. "Why should I be treated all the time as a child?"

Wu quit and looked for a new job. Her sisters tried to persuade her to accept that discrimination exists, but she refused to accept it, saying, "I will change the way they see me."

A NEWFOUND ADVANTAGE

In January 2015, Wu was with friends when she was introduced to a group of autistic children. She discovered that her size - the weakness she would not accept - was an advantage. She played with them like a sister. The children were relaxed and treated her as a friend.

Wu tried to teach them to engage with ordinary children. Any little progress made her and their parents happy. More importantly, she won trust and respect that she had seldom experienced before.

Wu underwent professional training through a non-governmental organization in Shanghai, learning about autism and dealing with autistic people.

She spends whole days in class, reading, and playing. She dresses children, feeds them and wipes their noses in kindergarten.

Wu is also a champion of fairness and respect for autistic children on social media: "They are the world's kindest people; they cannot cheat, cannot deceive or attack others. Discrimination against them is a tumor in this society."

Every week, she spends at least three mornings or afternoons teaching autistic kids, earning more than 5,000 yuan a month - not much in Beijing, but double her previous wages.

"In the past, I was loath to say I was little," Wu said in a TV interview this month. "But now in my work, I turn my physical defect into a strength. I find my value through it."

China's State Council on August 17 released a plan for disability-related development from 2016 to 2020, describing disabled people as key "participants, constructors and beneficiaries" of a more all-round prosperous society.

The plan urges governments to step up legislation to protect them and supervise the employment, education, social benefits and other aspects of disabled people's lives.

Wu is planning to establish an autism studio, where people like her can become teachers.

"I believe I have special mission in the world," Wu says. "Let me accomplish it."
SYDNEY, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- An Australian couple whose daughter was born with severe brain abnormality has lodged a lawsuit against several medical practitioners for failing to detect and warn them of the baby's condition during pregnancy.

The Gold Coast couple who are originally from New Zealand had filed the papers at the Brisbane Supreme Court on Tuesday and are claiming 2.5 million Australian dollars (1.89 million U.S. dollars) in damages, local media reported.

The couple is suing their former sonographer, radiologist and obstetrician from the Queensland Maternal Fetal Medicine in Southport.

In the papers, the couple said all three medical professionals should have detected and warn them about their baby's brain defect during the 19-week ultrasound held on September 2013.

The couple went on to say that they would have terminated the pregnancy had they known about the brain abnormality earlier, rather than to suffer financially and emotionally by being the parents of a disabled child.
SINGAPORE, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Resale prices for Singapore's non-landed private homes dropped 0.8 percent in August compared with the previous month, according to estimates released by Singapore Real Estate Exchange (SRX Property) on Tuesday.

SRX Property said resale prices for private homes in city fringe and suburban area recorded a decrease of 1.5 percent and 0.7 percent month-on-month respectively. On the contrary, resale prices for private homes in downtown area edged up 0.1 percent compared with that in July.

On a year-on-year basis, resale prices in August decreased by 0.8 percent compared with that in August 2015. For individual sectors, resale prices for private homes in city fringe and suburban area recorded a decrease of 2.9 percent and 1.9 percent respectively. While resale prices for private homes in downtown area posted an increase of 4.6 percent year-on-year. When compared with the peak in January 2014, resale prices in August were down 7.8 percent.

As for resale volume, an estimated 817 non-landed private residential units were resold in August, a 5.3 percent increase compared with 776 units resold in July.

On a year-on-year basis, resale volume in August was 59.3 percent higher compared to 513 units resold in the same period last year, said SRX Property. Resale volume was down by 60.1 percent compared to its peak of 2,050 units resold in April 2010.

Overall median Transaction Over X-Value (TOX), which measures whether people are overpaying or underpaying the SRX Property X-Value estimated market value, decreased from -10,000 Singapore dollars (-7,458 U.S. dollars) in July to -11,000 Singapore dollars (-8,089.4 U.S. dollars) in August.

Private homes are those developed by private developers. About 80 percent of the resident households in Singapore live in public housing units built and sold by the government. Private homes are typically more expensive than public housing units.
ISLAMABAD, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- At least 11 people were injured when a suicide blast hit a prayer gathering in Pakistan's southern district of Shikarpur on Tuesday, police said.

According to police, the incident took place when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance gate of a mosque when police guards stopped him for body search in Khanpur area of Sikharpur district in Pakistan's southern province of Sindh.

Following the first blast, another suicide bomber also attempted to enter the mosque, but police guards shot at him and injured him, police said.

Police has arrested the second suicide bomber and shifted him to undisclosed location for treatment and interrogation.

Police and rescue teams rushed to the site and shifted the injured to the hospital.

At least three policemen are among the injured, while two of the injured are reportedly in critical condition at the hospital.

According to local media reports, hundreds of people were present in the mosque to offer the prayer of annual Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha, when the bombers attempted to enter.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks during a voter registration rally at the University of South Florida September 6, 2016 in Tampa, Florida. (Xinhua/ AFP PHOTO)

BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's health scare has triggered fresh speculation about her health and revived concerns about her physical fitness for running for the White House.

The former secretary of state on Sunday morning abruptly left a 9/11 memorial in New York and her campaign initially told reporters that Clinton had been "overheated."

Soon a video shot by a witness surfaced online, in which an apparently ailing Clinton struggled to steady herself and had to be helped by two secret service agents into her van. She was driven to her daughter's apartment in Manhattan.

About 90 minutes after the episode, Clinton emerged and waved to onlookers. As she came out of the apartment shortly before noon, Clinton said, "I'm feeling great. It's a beautiful day in New York." She was then driven to her home in suburban Chappaqua, New York.

Almost five hours after the release of the video, the Clinton campaign released a statement from Clinton's physician which read that Clinton had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday and left the memorial after becoming dehydrated and overheated.

The Democratic nominee said she did not disclose pneumonia diagnosis immediately because she did not "think it was going to be that big a deal."

"There's no other undisclosed condition. The pneumonia is the extent of it," Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC.

Her campaign acknowledged on Monday it mishandled public concerns about Clinton's medical condition and said additional medical details of Clinton's would soon be released.

In an unusually restrained manner, her rival, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, offered her his wishes for a rapid recovery in his first public comments since Clinton left Sunday's Ground Zero ceremony.

"Something is going on but I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail, and we'll be seeing her at the debate" in two weeks, the Republican told Fox News.

But he also said Clinton's health issues were of longer standing than admitted, and promised to release "very, very specific numbers" from a medical exam he took last week.

Trump and his supporters have questioned Clinton's health, saying Clinton is physically unfit for the White House and accusing her of being "exhausted" and sleeping too much.

However, Trump, who shared even less information about his own medical details than Clinton did, was also bogged down in controversy surrounding his brief medical report that stated that Trump would be the "healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

It was later disclosed that the doctor who wrote the only public documentation about Trump's health spent five minutes writing the report.

Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, said in an interview Tuesday with PBS that Hillary Clinton is "doing fine" after a good night's sleep. He added that if there are more health problems that caused her apparent weakness Monday, "then it's a mystery to me and all of her doctors."

He said that "on more than one occasion" over the years "the same sort of thing's happened to her when she got severely dehydrated."

According to an aide to the former president, Bill Clinton will fly to a campaign event Wednesday in Nevada on behalf of his wife, who was forced to cancel a series of campaign fundraisers in California scheduled on Monday and Tuesday.

Speculation about Clinton's health dates back to 2012, toward the end of her tenure as secretary of state.

A stomach virus and dehydration prompted her to faint, causing what her doctor said was a concussion. Doctors said they found a blood clot in the brain. Clinton later received the all-clear.

On Monday, Fallon insisted that "there was nothing here in terms of anything that was caused by what happened in 2012."

He also said Clinton's team would be releasing medical records "in the next few days" in order to "further put to rest any lingering concerns about what you saw yesterday."
Syrian men carrying babies make their way through the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported air strike on the rebel-held Salihin neighbourhood of the northern city of Aleppo, on September 11, 2016. (AFP/Xinhua)

DAMASCUS, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Syrian civilians trapped in the long-running civil war have had a respite from constant shelling and gunfire after a U.S.-Russia brokered truce went into effect late Monday, coinciding with the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival.

The Syrian military announced a seven-day nationwide ceasefire that started at 7:00 pm local time (1600 GMT) Monday and will last till Sept. 19, local media reported.

The week-long truce, brokered by the United States and Russia, demands all warring sides in Syria stop attacks and airstrikes, and allow access to besieged areas, including the northern city of Aleppo.

It also includes improving humanitarian aid access and a joint military operation against banned terrorist groups.

While announcing its decision to observe the nationwide ceasefire, the Syrian military said it reserves the right to respond to any breach by the rebels.

And in a show of confidence, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited Daraya, a recently recaptured town in the suburbs of Damascus, on Monday, hours before the truce took effect.

Assad joined local residents in making prayers for the Eid al-Adha holiday, or the Feast of Sacrifice, in Daraya, a rebel stronghold for nearly four years.

Last month, hundreds of rebel fighters left Daraya under a deal they concluded with the Syrian army.

Information from different sources monitoring the ceasefire confirmed that the truce largely held in the past several hours, but those living in Syria gave different answers when asked about the prospects of the ongoing truce.

In Aleppo, a city bitterly contested between the warring sides since 2012, people living in areas frequently targeted by the rebels say they don't trust the rebels, as previous attempts to establish peace had all failed.

They say each time a truce was declared, the rebels took advantage of the situation to regroup and bring in more weapons.

Ibrahim Khalil, a 43-year-old father of two, told Xinhua he doesn't believe in the truce.

"We are against the truce, because whenever there is a truce, the rebels start recollecting themselves and amassing weapons and manpower again and they shell Aleppo again. Every time there is a truce, the people are the ones who pay the price," he said, trying to end the conversation as he feared another mortar would hit soon.

Meanwhile, the better off in the city are hoping the truce can succeed.

Muhammad Burri, a Syrian merchant, said he believes in the truce and has a firm belief it will work.

"I say I hope the truce could be implemented and I believe it will be successful because the truce is the only way out of this violence. I believe the truce will hold and will curb the bloodshed," he told Xinhua.

The protracted civil war in Syria started in March 2011 and has killed over 250,000 and forced 4.8 million to leave the country, according to UN statistics.

Chaos of war and sectarian rift have led to a surge of terrorism in the country in the past few years, posing a grave challenge to regional security and the whole world.

The ongoing truce is also seen as part of the efforts by the United States and Russia, respectively supporting the rebels and the government, to jointly tackle growing terrorist forces in the war-torn country.

The Pentagon confirmed Monday a U.S. airstrike on Aug. 30 that targeted Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, the longtime Islamic State (IS) spokesman, was successful.

Calling Al-Adnani IS'chief propagandist, recruiter and architect of external operations, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement that the strike near Al Bab, Syria, was one of a series of strikes against IS leaders.

"As we continue to gather momentum in our counter-ISIL campaign, we will continue to target ISIL leaders, relentlessly pursue its external plotters," said Cook, using another acronym of the extremist group.

Born in the countryside of the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, al-Adnani was also among the first group of foreign fighters against U.S. invasion in Iraq in 2003.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a press conference on Monday that "there's some reduction in violence" in Syria after the truce.

"There will undoubtedly be reports of a violation here or there, I am confident, but that's the nature of the beginning of a ceasefire almost always," he added.

He also reiterated his call to all parties in Syria to observe the cessation of hostilities brokered by the United States and Russia.

"I urge all the parties to support it, because it may be the last chance that one has to save a united Syria," he said.
SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday ordered government officials to comprehensively review the country's earthquake response system after the biggest-ever tremor shook its southeastern region on Monday night.

Park chaired a cabinet meeting in the presidential office, instructing officials to thoroughly brace for possible quakes of higher seismic intensity than Monday's tremors by fully reviewing measures to protect major facilities, including nuclear power plants and radioactive waste disposal facilities, from violent quakes.

The president said the series of earthquakes became a wake-up call to the perception that South Korea is relatively a safe zone from earthquakes.

A 5.8-magnitude earthquake, the largest ever hitting the country, struck on the outskirts of Gyeongju city in North Gyeongsang province at about 8:32 p.m. local time (1132 GMT) on Monday.

The main shock occurred less than an hour after a quake with a magnitude of 5.1 rattled the nearby region.

The epicenters of the two quakes are located just 1.4 km away from each other southwest of Gyeongju, near which multiple nuclear power plants and a radioactive waste disposal facility are sited. The majority of the country's nuclear power stations are located along the east coast.

Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP), the country's nuclear power operator, said its atomic power plants suffered no damage, but it turned off four nuclear reactors at the Wolsong nuclear power plant at around midnight for a safety inspection.

In the adjacent coastal city of Ulsan, a thermal power plant halted operations following the series of quakes.
NEW DELHI, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- India and the United States will embark on a two-week joint military exercise in the hilly state of Uttarakhand Wednesday.

The 12th edition of joint military exercise "Yudh Abhyas" (war exercise), focusing on anti-insurgency and anti-terrorist operations, will be held in the hills of Uttarakhand from September 14 to 27, according to an official statement Tuesday.

"Yudh Abhyas" 2016 will simulate a scenario where both nations are working together in a counter insurgency and counter terrorism environment in mountainous terrain under a United Nations charter, the statement said.

Over 200 U.S. Army personnel and 200 Indian Army personnel will take part in the military exercise, the curriculum of which "is progressively planned where the participants are initially made to get familiar with each other's organisational structure, weapons, equipment and drills."

"Subsequently, the training advances to joint tactical exercises wherein the battle drills of both the armies are coherently unleashed," the statement added.
Israeli army soldiers gather at the site of an accidental grenade explosion near the village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupiedGolan Heights on July 17, 2016. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

JERUSALEM, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Israeli army said on Tuesday that its air force struck Syrian army posts in retaliation for a mortar shell that fell in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights Monday.

The overnight airstrike came after a Syrian mortar, apparently a spillover from the fighting in Syria, exploded in an open field in the Golan Heights.

"In response to the projectile which hit Israel on Monday evening, IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft targeted artillery positions of Syrian Regime in the central Golan Heights," a military spokesperson said in a statement.

Last week, Israel fired back at posts of the Syrian army three times.

Errant fire from the fighting in Syria has occasionally been spilling over to Israel, usually causing no casualties or damage.

Israel had occupied the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed the territory in 1981.

Israel had repeatedly declared it would not intervene in the internal fighting in Syria. It did provide medical treatment to hundreds of wounded Syrians who reached the border.

Israel had also been responsible for several airstrikes in Syria in the past several years, allegedly targeting convoys carrying weapons from Iran and Syria to the Lebanese Hezbollah militant organization, a staunch enemy of Israel.

The country had remained quiet on these attacks up until two months ago, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel carried out "dozens" of attacks across the border.
Families enjoy their outdoor gathering and admire the full moon near Beidaihe seaside during the Mid-Autumn Festival in north China's Hebei Province. (Xinhua)

The Mid-Autumn Festival started as a harvest festival held on the 15th day of the eighth month on the lunar calendar, a full moon night between late September and early October.

The festival is an important traditional holiday in China, perhaps just behind the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year. This year's Mid-Autumn Festival falls on September 15.

Nowadays, the festival is an outdoor occasion for family reunions to deliver good wishes for future and cherish such gathering and harmony.

Traditional celebrations include sharing mooncakes, admiring the full moon, and playing riddles, a highly engaged word game written on paper lanterns.

The perfectly round mooncakes resemble the full moon and are symbols of unity. They are normally sweet. The stuffing and making of such "Chinese pies" can vary greatly from east to west.

Colorful 3-D printed mooncakes are offered by mechanical engineering college students in Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations in East China's Jiangsu Province on September 12. (Xinhua)

Citizens in Macao take photos on the lantern show near Senado Square on September 10 before the forthcoming Mid-Autumn Festival. (Xinhua)

Listed as an intangible culture heritage by the Chinese government in 2006, the Mid-Autumn Festival is surrounded by both customs and myths. The most well-known myth is associated with Chang'e, known as the Chinese Moon Goddess, a symbol of Chinese people's moon worship.

A special edition of postal stamps for the 2016 Mid-Autumn Festival is named as Harmonious Full Moon Night. The upper part of the stamp displays the myth of Chang'e flying to the Moon while the bottom half depicts the occasion of moon worshiping. (Xinhua)

Meanwhile, Chinese people also celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in more interesting and modern manners. Let's find out some funny celebrations.

Boys sit in wine jars and gobble mooncakes to woo the "Goddess of the Moon" in Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations in China's Hangzhou. (Xinhua)

This super mooncake weighs 350 kg. Residents in China's Shandong are invited to taste it for free. (Xinhua)

Lantern riddles competition is held in an elementary school in China's Anhui Province to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. (Xinhua)
MANILA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said on Tuesday that the Philippines has no plans to scrap the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the United States.

He said the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte will continue to "respect all treaty agreements or arrangements with all nations."

In an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel, Yasay expressed the hope that the bilateral meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and President Rodrigo Duterte would still take place.

Yasay was reacting to a statement that Duterte made Monday that U.S. special forces should pull out of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, saying the present of U.S. soldiers there make the southern Philippines "more volatile."

Referring to President Duterte's remarks over the weekend that the Philippines wants to pursue an independent foreign policy, Yasay said "when we carry out our independent foreign policy it must not be subject to outside pressure."

The United States and the Philippines inked EDCA in 2014, which gives more access to the U.S. military to conduct joint military activities on Philippine waters and soil.

The 10-year, renewable arrangement also allows for the increased presence of U.S. military forces, ships, aircraft, and equipment in the Philippines on a nonpermanent basis.

Meanwhile, the Philippine military said Tuesday that the defense cooperation between the Philippines and the United States remains "solid."
Students take part in a ceremony celebrating the Chinese Spring Festival in Accra, Ghana, Feb. 5, 2016. The Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana, Legon, hosted a colorful ceremony at the campus to celebrate the Chinese Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Lin Xiaowei)

ACCRA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana plans to expand its presence on social media platforms to promote Chinese culture.

Josephine Dzahene-Quarshie, co-director of the institute, said they now saw social media as one of the biggest platforms to spread Chinese language and culture to interested Ghanaians.

She told Xinhua Thursday that there was widespread acceptance of Chinese culture in Ghana, with many Ghanaians enrolling to learn the language and cultural activities such as Tai Chi and Martial Arts.

Since the beginning of friendship between the two countries over 50 years ago, the Chinese language and culture have won popularity in Ghana.

According to Sun Baohong, the Chinese ambassador to Ghana, there are more Ghanaian students in China than from any other African country, an indication that Ghanaians are popular with the Chinese culture.

Charles Mawuenyega, a former student of the Central China Normal University, noted Ghanaians' growing interest in China, and called for efforts to further whip up interest in the learning of the Chinese language.
MOSCOW, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian oil pipeline company Transneft is planning to stop Russia's oil exports via foreign Baltic ports by 2018 and redirect the routes to Russian ports, the Russian presidential website reported Monday evening.

"Last year, around nine million tons (of oil) were shipped through the (foreign) Baltic ports, while this year the figure was five million tons. By 2018 we will reduce this flow to zero and will direct it to our ports instead, as we have surplus capacity," said Chairman and President of Transneft Nikolai Tokarev at the meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to Tokarev, the company will redirect oil freight flows from the Baltic ports of Ventspils and Riga in Latvia to Russia's own Baltic ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk, along with the construction of oil transport routes.

Transneft is a Russian state-owned transport monopoly and the largest oil pipeline company in the world. The company is operating over 70 thousand km of trunk pipelines, and transports about 90 percent of oil produced in Russia to various destinations.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Carmen Lucia Antunes Rocha, who took office as head of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court on Monday, vowed to reform the country's judicial system which she admitted is in a poor state.

"I do not know of any human being who does not aspire to justice. We must acknowledge that the citizen is unlikely to be happy with the Judiciary today," she said in her inauguration speech, adding that it is her responsibility to find solutions.

Rocha noted that the Brazilian courts must be more efficient in their services and the reforming measures in the court system must be implemented quickly.

The magistrate took office for a two-year term, replacing Ricardo Lewandowski, who presided over the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff two weeks ago. Rocha will also preside over the National Justice Council, an organ to patrol the Judiciary.

Rocha is the second woman to head Brazil's Supreme Court, after Ellen Gracie Northfleet (2006-2008). She has been a member of the Supreme Court since 2006.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's House of Representatives expelled its former head Eduardo Cunha late Monday for allegedly telling lies and taking bribes, but Cunha refuted that the move was nothing more than a political vendetta.

The decision was passed by 450 votes in favor and 10 against, with nine abstentions.

After the vote, Cunha said that "I made many mistakes, but they did not lead to my expulsion. I was victim of a political vendetta."

Last year, Swiss authorities uncovered a number of accounts in Cunha' s name and informed the Brazilian authorities. Months before, Cunha had said in a congressional inquiry that he did not have any money abroad.

Cunha is accused of taking millions of U.S. dollars in bribes to favor specific companies in public biddings of state-controlled oil giant Petrobras. He was mentioned in the testimonies of several accused in the Petrobras corruption scandal as one of the politicians who took the most bribes.

There are at least four Swiss accounts in Cunha's name. The massive bribes are reportedly the origin of the money he had stashed abroad.

Cunha was known for being one of the main articulators in former President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment process.
SINGAPORE, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's Health Minister Gan Kim Yong on Tuesday highlighted preparation, response and long-term management as the country's three-pronged strategy to tackle the spread of Zika virus.

The minister made the remarks during his ministerial statement at the Parliament.

Gan said Zika is a mosquito-borne disease, and most of the people who have been infected recovered and are no longer symptomatic. The government will not isolate or hospitalize Zika patients, he said.

The health minister said more than 500 samples a month were tested for Zika from January this year, and close to 4,000 samples were tested between February and August, before the first confirmed case was reported on Aug. 27.

Gan said the ministry has worked with National Environment Agency's Environmental Health Institute to put in place a surveillance program for Zika two years ago.

Gan said the sudden surge of Zika infected cases from Aug. 27 to Aug. 28 was due to the active back-tracing process. He said the ministry only confirmed the first locally transmitted Zika case on Aug. 27, and then released information the same evening.

To manage Zika in the long-term, Gan noted that efforts are now focusing on vector control. The ministry will monitor babies born to pregnant women with Zika over time.

The minister reiterated that subsidized Zika testing is extended to all Singaporeans beyond the affected clusters.

On a suggestion to set up a Zika national registry, Gan said the ministry will study it carefully.

Singapore has confirmed 333 cases of locally transmitted Zika virus infection, including eight pregnant women, as of Monday.

These infection involved seven clusters, with slightly more than 80 percent of the total cases from the main cluster in Aljunied, Sims Drive and Paya Lebar Way.
DAMASCUS/JERUSALEM, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army said Tuesday it shot down an Israeli warplane over the southern province of Qunaitera, but Israel denied, local media reported.

Israel's army said Tuesday that Syria launched missiles toward Israeli war jets but missed, denying Syrian claims on downing an Israeli military drone.

An Israeli military spokesperson said in a statement sent to Xinhua that the incident occurred overnight after Israeli jets struck artillery posts in Syria.

The strike came in retaliation for a Syrian mortar shell that exploded a few hours before in an open field in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

"Two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission overnight to target Syrian artillery positions," the spokesperson said.

The fire exchange was the fifth such incident occurred over the past two weeks, but it was the first time the Syrian army responded with missiles to the Israeli retaliation.

The General Command of the Syrian army said an Israeli warplane violated the Syrian airspace over Qunaitera after midnight, attacking one of the military positions there.

"Our defense system confronted the attack, shooting down the Israeli warplane and a drone," the army said.

It said the Israeli attack comes in the framework of the Israeli support to the terrorist groups in Qunaitera. It wasn't the only Israeli attack this month.

On Sept. 10, the Israeli warplanes backed a rebel attack Qunaitera, attacking one of the military positions in that area, Syria's national TV said.

The TV report said the Syrian forces and allied troops have thwarted a wide-scale offensive by the rebels against the towns of Hadar and Mashati-Hadar, as well as Tal Ahmar in Qunaitera countryside.

The Syrian government repeatedly accused Israel of backing the rebels in Qunaitera.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Yao Zhongmin, a former senior executive of China Development Bank (CDB), has been expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and removed from office for corruption.

The decision has been approved by the CPC Central Committee.

The CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) announced on Tuesday that Yao, former deputy Party chief and chairman of the board of supervisors at CDB, was found to have violated the Party political rules and code of conduct.

He obstructed the Party investigation and did not show repentance nor rectify his wrongdoing even after having been punished for violating the Party's thrift rules, the CCDI statement said.

Also, the investigation found that Yao had violated the CPC's clean governance rules by accepting gifts and money and engaged in power-for-sex and money-for-sex deals.

The CCDI said that Yao may have committed the crime of bribery by using his power to secure interests for others and receiving money and gifts in return.

His illegal gains will be confiscated and the case involving suspected crimes will be transferred to the judiciary, the statement said.
Syrian army soldiers are honoured during Saidnaya Festival, near Damascus, Syria September 7, 2016. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

DAMASCUS/JERUSALEM, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army said Tuesday it shot down an Israeli warplane over the southern province of Qunaitera, but Israel denied, local media reported.

Israel's army said Tuesday that Syria launched missiles toward Israeli war jets but missed, denying Syrian claims on downing an Israeli military drone.

An Israeli military spokesperson said in a statement sent to Xinhua that the incident occurred overnight after Israeli jets struck artillery posts in Syria.

The strike came in retaliation for a Syrian mortar shell that exploded a few hours before in an open field in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

"Two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission overnight to target Syrian artillery positions," the spokesperson said.

The fire exchange was the fifth such incident occurred over the past two weeks, but it was the first time the Syrian army responded with missiles to the Israeli retaliation.

The General Command of the Syrian army said an Israeli warplane violated the Syrian airspace over Qunaitera after midnight, attacking one of the military positions there.

"Our defense system confronted the attack, shooting down the Israeli warplane and a drone," the army said.

It said the Israeli attack comes in the framework of the Israeli support to the terrorist groups in Qunaitera. It wasn't the only Israeli attack this month.

On Sept. 10, the Israeli warplanes backed a rebel attack Qunaitera, attacking one of the military positions in that area, Syria's national TV said.

The TV report said the Syrian forces and allied troops have thwarted a wide-scale offensive by the rebels against the towns of Hadar and Mashati-Hadar, as well as Tal Ahmar in Qunaitera countryside.

The Syrian government repeatedly accused Israel of backing the rebels in Qunaitera.
SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Top nuclear envoys of South Korea and the United States agreed on Tuesday to seek the strongest possible sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) over its recent nuclear test.

Sung Kim, special representative for DPRK Policy of the U.S. Department of State, arrived in Seoul on Monday afternoon after holding talks with his Japanese counterpart in Tokyo.

The U.S. official met with his South Korean counterpart Kim Hong-kyun, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs at Seoul's foreign ministry, to discuss how to address the DPRK's fifth nuclear test that was conducted on Sept. 9.

Kim said at a joint press conference that the two allies agreed to pursue the strongest possible sanctions and pressure on the DPRK by pressuring Pyongyang in an omni-directional way through UN Security Council measures, unilateral sanctions and international pressure.

Meanwhile, the U.S. official said Washington will make best efforts to take strong actions as rapidly as possible through the United Nations, noting that the U.S., South Korea and Japan will consider additional measures toward the DPRK separately.

He said that if Pyongyang is really ready to talk about denuclearization, it can be discussed through six-party talks, but the U.S. diplomat noted that the DPRK showed no interest in dialogue as it conducted unprecedented provocations.

The six-way talks, which involve DPRK, South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, have been halted since late 2008.

The DPRK announced on Sept. 9 that it had successfully conducted an explosion test of nuclear warhead that can be mounted on ballistic missiles.

Seoul's military estimated the fifth test was the most powerful as it produced an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, stronger than 6 kilotons generated during the fourth nuclear detonation in January.

Related:

Backgrounder: DPRK's five nuclear tests

UN chief strongly condemns DPRK nuclear test

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned the latest nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) "in the strongest possible terms." Full story

DPRK announces success of nuclear warhead test

PYONGYANG, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Friday that it successfully conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test, according to state-run television.
BERLIN, Sept.13 (Xinhua) -- German police have arrested three terror suspects in refugee camps on Tuesday, according to local media Focus.

In raids carried out by the police from German Federal Criminal Police Office and federal counter-terrorism special unit GSG9, six refugee camps located in federal states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony have been searched.
SYDNEY, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Australian police investigating a number of alleged historical child sexual assault cases dating more than 50 years ago have found a breakthrough by catching the perpetrator responsible for the crimes.

New South Wales police in a statement on Tuesday said a former teacher in the state's south had been charged for the alleged crimes which were believed to have occurred from 1964 to 1992 at a high school in Junee, a small town in NSW.

"About 0830 local time (AEST) on Monday, officers attended a home in Junee and arrested an 81-year-old man, who was a teacher at the high school between 1964 and 1992," the police said.

"The man was taken to Junee Police Station where he was charged with three counts of buggery."

"These offences relate to the sexual assault of a 12-year-old male student over a five-year period," the statement said.

Police said the man was granted conditional bail and is set to appear at Wagga Wagga local court on October 19 to face the charges.
by Xinhua Writer Zhu Junqing

BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- As Beijing rolls out red carpet to welcome Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc for his first official visit to China since taking office earlier this year, a new era of stronger bilateral ties is well in sight.

Monday's talks between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his Vietnamese counterpart came on the heel of their encounter at the meetings of East Asian leaders in the Laotian capital of Vientiane last week. It is also their third meeting over the past three months.

He is also expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping today.

Such intensive high-level exchanges between the top leadership of both countries have proven that both Beijing and Hanoi share a strong political will to strengthen mutual trust.

The Vietnamese leader, who was re-elected in July, hopes to join Beijing in solving their maritime disputes, promoting bilateral ties and safeguarding stability and peace in the South China Sea.

At the just wrapped-up East Asian leaders' meetings in Laos, most regional countries agreed that direct talks among concerned parties are key to handling disputes that are related to sovereignty and territorial integrity.

But the agreement did not come easy, especially after the former Philippine government's illegal arbitration case regarding its maritime spat with China greatly heightened tensions in the region.

Still, there are countries, both within and outside the region, that want to muddy the waters for their own self-interests without consideration for regional tranquility.

Therefore, Vietnam should join China in preserving that hard-won consensus to avoid their differences over the South China Sea from taking their relationship hostage.

China has already promised that it will work diligently with its ASEAN partners on a code of conduct framework in the South China Sea by mid 2017. It is also hoped that the relevant countries in the region, including Vietnam, can walk hand-in-hand with China in resolving any outstanding disputes.

Of course, China's relations with its southern neighbor go well beyond their maritime divergence.

The two countries have in the past witnessed promising economic and trade ties. Last year, bilateral trade has hit a new high, making China Vietnam's biggest trading partner for 12 consecutive years.

According to the director of Bank of China's Ho Chi Minh City Branch, two-way trade will surpass 100 billion U.S. dollars this year, and Vietnam will overtake Malaysia to become China's biggest trading partner in Southeast Asia.

As Hanoi is determined to transform the country into a more industrialized economy, China can be of great source of assistance and investment along the path.

Moreover, China and Vietnam have great potential in pragmatic cooperation.

China's Belt and Road Initiative dovetails well with Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan. It is expected that once coordination begins, the two proposals will bring more real benefits to both nations and their peoples.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli on Tuesday called for a steady advance of the Belt and Road Initiative to ensure it benefits the people along the routes.

The Belt and Road Initiative should help policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration and mutual understanding among the people along the routes, Zhang said at a meeting.

Priority areas for the initiative include building a platform to advance cooperation as well as a "green, healthy, intelligent and peaceful Silk Road," Zhang said.

He said the progress and results of the Belt and Road Initiative have been greater than expected.

The initiative, proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road -- a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes.

China has signed memorandums of understanding (MOU) with more than 30 countries along the routes on Belt and Road projects. Zhang called for the sound implementation of the MOUs and the development of a mutually-beneficial cooperation model.

He underscored the role played by financial cooperation, the creation of a multi-layered financial platform, and the establishment of a long-term, stable, sustainable, risk-controllable financial security system that could serve the initiative.

Zhang said China will further standardize the investing behavior of Chinese companies, and formulate effective measures to ensure the implementation of key cooperation projects.
WELLINGTON, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government has extended a scholarship program aimed at deepening collaboration on food safety with China.

Food Safety Minister Jo Goodhew said Tuesday the program developed by New Zealand's Ministry for Primary Industries and the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) would be extended by two years.

It was the first initiative under the Food Safety Cooperation Agreement signed between New Zealand and China in November 2013, Goodhew said in a statement.

The scholarship covered practice regulation, risk management, food processing and design, and the development and implementation of food standards.

It had an academic component led by New Zealand's Massey University, which was supported by applied learning through study tours and internships.

"This scholarship not only increases the understanding of our respective food safety systems, it also helps to strengthen the relationships between the two countries and helps to align food safety practices," said Goodhew.

"The two year extension of this scholarship program will further enhance the close cooperation between our two countries, resulting in a stronger bilateral relationship in the areas of food safety and consumer confidence."
U.S. based cleric Fethullah Gulen at his home in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 29, 2016. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

ANKARA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Justice Ministry officially asked the U.S. to arrest cleric Fethullah Gulen for ordering coup attempt on July 15, Hurriyet News reported Tuesday.

Ankara accuses Gulen of giving the order for the failed coup attempt and commanding it, a charge he denies.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan told media that Turkey is disappointed that Gulen is still at large in the U.S., who should be detained according to extradition treaty.

"According to the 1981 extradition treaty with U.S., we expect Gulen to be detained, however he still roams freely," Erdogan said during a joint press conference with visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Aug. 24 in Ankara.

Turkey has repeatedly demanded Gulen's extradition following the attempted coup, with U.S. officials insisting that they can only extradite him if Turkey presents proof regarding his direct involvement in the coup

Early in September, a delegation from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) went to Washington to discuss the extradition.

Turkish Justice Ministry had already sent dossiers to the U.S. Justice Department which it said contained evidence of Gulen's involvement in the coup attempt.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Four executives of online video service Qvod were sentenced to up to three-and-a-half years on Tuesday for spreading pornography for profits, according to a Beijing court ruling.

Wang Xin, former CEO of Shenzhen-based Qvod Technology Co. Ltd., was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison and fined 1 million yuan (149,254 U.S. dollars), according to Haidian District People's Court.

The other three executives were handed prison terms of up to three-years-and-three-months and must pay fines of up to 500,000 yuan, according to the court.

The company was fined 10 million yuan.

Qvod was found to have hosted and streamed a large amount of pornography and pirated content and had generated a substantial income by charging users and advertisers.

According to Haidian District People's Procuratorate, 21,251 of 29,841 files that police obtained in 2013 from four servers used by Qvod were pornographic.

The court heard that Qvod had been punished twice for spreading pornography in the past.

After it was first punished by Internet security authorities, the company set up an information security group, which was tasked with monitoring content across the site, however, the court said the group was ineffective.

In August 2013, Qvod was punished by the broadcast and media authority in Nanshan district in Shenzhen, and Niu Wenju, one of the three executives, signed the resultant notice.

"Wang Xin was not only aware of the pornography, but took measures to prevent the files from being found," said the judge.

The court believed that despite being punished, Qvod continued to turn a blind eye to the graphic content, as it was generating such huge profits.

"Qvod is duty bound to ensure Internet security," said the judge. "It should have the ability to do so, and pay for necessary cost."

Wang Xin said, "Hopefully this case will serve as a lesson to those in the industry, and encourage them to improve internal processes."
THE HAGUE, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Dutch police will become the world's first force to train an army of eagles to resolve the problem of an increasing number of unauthorized drones in the skies.

Giving the first public demonstration, Dutch forces on Monday unveiled one of their feathered friends, two-year-old Hunter, a female American bald eagle.

"It's a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem," police spokesman Dennis Janus told reporters.

A series of training and tests have been conducted since early 2015, police said, adding that they have achieved "good results."

"We found out that it is probably one of the most effective counter-measures against hostile drones," police head of operations Michel Baeten said.

The eagles will be deployed whenever drones are believed to be posing a threat to the public, including flying around sensitive areas during state visits or being too close to airports.

Around 100 police officers will be trained to work with eagles, and the Dutch flying squad will go into action as of next summer.

Drones become popular across the globe because of the low-cost and easy operation. However, a series of drone-related incidents have triggered public concerns over the increasing misuse of the lightweight unmanned aircraft.

Authorities in many countries are exploring methods to combat illegal drones, such as shooting nets to drones, or jamming communication signals to force them to land.
Meng Jianzhu (R), head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, shakes hands with Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, at a meeting on law-enforcement and security cooperation in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 13, 2016. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)

BEIJING, Sep. 13 (Xinhua) -- China and Russia pledged to strengthen security cooperation as a meeting on law-enforcement and security cooperation was held Tuesday in Beijing.

The meeting, co-hosted by Meng Jianzhu, head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, was the third since the mechanism was established two years ago.

"Deepening law-enforcement and security cooperation is of great significance to China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination," Meng said.

Applauding the fruitful cooperation achievements in law-enforcement, anti-terrorism, and procuratorial as well as judicial work since the establishment of this mechanism, Meng expressed hope that the two sides would implement consensus reached by leaders of the two countries and further strengthen such cooperation.

Russia is ready to work closely with China and support each other, contributing to the two countries' security interests and regional stability, Patrushev said.

The first meeting of the security mechanism was held in 2014 in Beijing and the second one was held last year in the Russian city of Ulan-Ude.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The National People's Congress (NPC)Standing Committee chairpersons' meeting has scheduled the 23rd session of the 12th NPC Standing Committee for Tuesday to discuss the handling of election fraud in northeast Liaoning Province, according to a statement.

Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, presided over the meeting.

The purpose of Tuesday's session is to "implement decisions of the Communist Party of China Central Committee regarding election fraud in Liaoning, and fulfill duties of the NPC Standing Committee," according to the statement.

The NPC Standing Committee session usually convenes every two months, but also can be convened provisionally when there is a particular demand.
JAKARTA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Indonesian government has said it would respect the ongoing legal processes in the Philippines regarding the case of a Filipino woman jailed in Indonesia over drug charges.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday that he considers his Filipino counterpart Rodrigo Duterte has been firm on the eradication of drug abuse.

President Widodo said his government would respect the ongoing legal processes of a case involving Mary Jane Veloso, who is on death row in Indonesian jail for allegedly smuggling heroin into the country.

"We highly respect the legal processes in the Philippines. Now there is a process that is ongoing there," Widodo said at Tanjung Priok seaport.

Indonesia has delayed execution of Veloso since May following a request from the Philippines on the reason that Veloso has to undergo legal processes of a separate case in the Philippines.

Veloso was arrested at the main airport Adi Sutjipto in Yogyakarto province in April 2010 for bringing 2.6 kg heroin, and sentenced to death by the provincial court in October 2010.
BERLIN, Sept.13 (Xinhua) -- Three suspects from the Islamic State (IS) were arrested in raids by German police in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein on Tuesday.

The three Syrians aged between 17 and 26 are under suspicion of coming to Germany through Turkey and Greece last November with order from the IS, Public Prosecutor General announced.

They may have already executed one received order or are still ready to receive further instructions. The "specific order or instructions" have not been confirmed yet by the investigation, the announcement said.

The suspects are committed to a person who is in charge of operations and attacks outside the "IS-area". The IS has equipped them with passports, U.S. dollars and mobile phones with pre-installed communication programs, according to the announcement.

Over 200 police officers from German Federal Criminal Police Office, German Federal Police and local police took part in the raids on Tuesday morning.

The apartments of the three suspects have been searched. Six refugee camps were also searched at the same day, in which some mobile phones, data reservoirs and documents were confiscated. Enditem
HAVANA, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Cuba and the United States held on Monday in Washington their first meeting on long-term bilateral economic ties despite the U.S.-led financial and commercial embargo, said the island country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Both delegations discussed commerce and future investments as well as other issues on economic and financial cooperation," according to a statement published on the Ministry's official website.

A year after reestablishing diplomatic relations, both countries held talks on banking and trade issues within the limitations the embargo imposes on Havana.

The U.S. Department of State said the talks covered a wide range of topics, such as air and maritime transport, migration, claims, telecommunications, health and agriculture. Officials from both governments agreed to create working groups on bilateral interests.

The progress on rapprochement would require an end to the U.S. sanctions that have hit Cuba for over five decades, said the statement.

"Both countries also examined possible economic cooperation in a post-blockade scenario," it said.

The U.S.-led economic embargo has caused Cuba financial losses of over 4.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.

Instead of lifting the embargo, U.S. President Barack Obama has opted to relax a series of trade sanctions and travel restrictions, as the Republican-controlled Congress has blocked any removal of the embargo.

After declaring a detente last year Cuba and the United States took action to improve relations that were hampered for over 50 years.

Obama and the Cuban leader Raul Castro have met three times since their historical announcement to restore ties in December, 2014.
KATHMANDU, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- A tire of Airbus operated by Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) was damaged on Tuesday while it was leaving the runaway after landing at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu, Nepalese authorities said.

However, the passengers were safe despite the incident, they said.

The plane RA206 9N-AKX, which departed from New Delhi, India, was carrying 149 passengers including Nepali Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat and an infant.

The plane had landed at TIA around noon local time.

Prem Nath Thakur, spokesperson at TIA told Xinhua that a tire on the left side of the plane was damaged while it was leaving the runaway towards the taxi way at the only international airport of Nepal.

"As 25 percent of the only runway at the airport was covered by the plane, domestic and international flights were affected for more than an hour," said Thakur.

After the incident, the passengers were urgently taken to the terminal building.

According to TIA authority, a technical team of NAC checked the plane, changed its damaged tire and brought the plane to the hanger, paving the way for other flights to operate.

"Flight take-off and landing resumed from 1:48 p.m. (local time)," said Thakur.

It is the second time in two days that the NAC's plane suffered such incident.

Ram Hari Sharma, spokesperson of NAC, told Xinhua that another airbus of NAC also suffered puncture in its tire in New Delhi two days ago.

"We will conduct probe on the incident and take necessary steps to avoid such incidents in the future," said Sharma.
KIEV, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine stands ready to enter a dialogue with Russia over Kiev's 3-billion-U.S.-dollar debt, Ukrainian Finance Minister Alexander Danyluk said on Tuesday.

"In accordance with Ukraine's obligations under its current cooperation program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in particular regarding "good faith" negotiations with the Russian Federation on the claimed debt, Ukraine is ready to enter into further talks on the possible resolution of the dispute," Danyluk said in a press statement.

The negotiations between Kiev and Moscow may start as soon as early October in the framework of the IMF meetings, Danyluk added.

His comments came after Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Monday that Moscow is prepared to consider an out-of-court settlement of the debt dispute.

The Ukrainian government borrowed a two-year loan in the form of Eurobonds from Russia in December 2013 to shore up its economy.

Failing to meet its repayment obligations before the debt matured in December 2015, Ukraine has pushed Russia to join its debt-restructuring agreement with other international creditors. Moscow has refuted the proposal offering. In turn, Russia's own debt-relief plan was rejected by Kiev.

After bilateral negotiations failed to make a mutually acceptable deal, Moscow filed a lawsuit against Kiev at London's High Court of Justice. The hearings are slated for January 2017.
RIYADH, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Saudi-led coalition has killed a number of Houthis leaders and officers by targeting a gathering near the Saudi-Yemeni border, Al Arabiya local news reported on Tuesday.

According the report, the airstrike targeted a cave near the border on Sunday evening, killing two main Houthis leaders and six officers, including the one who was in charge of the missiles.

The Yemeni-Saudi border has been among unsafe zones since the beginning of the war of the coalition against Houthis in support of the elected Yemeni government in March 2015.

The war seems with no end in sight as the failure of political parties to reach consensus.
NANNING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- In the border city of Pingxiang, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, workers are busy digging a 627-meter mountain tunnel to neighboring Vietnam.

The tunnel is set to be part of a special 1.5-km passage for cross-border cargo freight, which is expected to alleviate traffic jams and cut stays at the port of entry from hours to just minutes.

In the border city of Dongxing, also in Guangxi, China and Vietnam are building a bridge over the Beilun River which serves as a boundary.

"The bridge will be open to traffic by the end of 2016. It will improve transport conditions, boost tourism and facilitate trade," said Liu Baoquan, a deputy manager of the project.

"The construction of cross-border expressways, railways, bridges and tunnels is on the fast track," said Peng Zhiwei, an official for project construction at the Dongxing-Moncay cooperation zone.

The China-Vietnam border will possibly develop into "a golden corridor" for capital flows, technology and industries, said Pan Jin'e, a Vietnam expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

At the ongoing 13th China-ASEAN Expo in Guangxi, Vietnamese Minister of Transport Truong Quang Nghia said inter-connectivity between the two countries will significantly improve in the remaining months of 2016 and particularly in 2017.

According to him, Vietnamese regions neighboring China are now soliciting investment in expressways and also expect Chinese loans.

Nghia made the remarks at a meeting on the sidelines of the expo, where Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc led a large ministerial delegation and attempted to persuade Chinese tycoons to invest in his country.

On his first visit to China since he took office in July, Phuc called more than 200 Chinese business people "comrades," saying that the Vietnamese government and the people were very glad to receive Chinese investment.

Phuc received not only warm applause but also deals worth a total of 3 billion U.S. dollars at the expo.

China is Vietnam's largest trading partner. In 2015, bilateral trade grew 14.6 percent to 95.8 billion U.S. dollars. This year, Vietnam overtook Malaysia to become China's largest trading partner within ASEAN.

Premier Li Keqiang met with Phuc in Beijing on Monday, saying the two countries needed to continue maritime, land and financial cooperation.

China and Vietnam should also work on bilateral and sub-regional development strategies and strengthen cooperation on infrastructure construction, production capacity, trade and investment, said Li.

Phuc said Vietnam is willing to enhance cooperation with China on political, economic and cultural matters and further coordination in international affairs.

After the talks, Li and Phuc witnessed the signing of documents on several areas, including the economy and trade, production capacity, infrastructure and education.

Cooperation will allow Vietnam to use China's funds, technology and experience to rapidly improve its transport facilities, said Huang Dongri, a researcher with the China Foundation for International Studies.

According to Pan, the incumbent Vietnamese government attaches greater significance to economic development and people's lives. Therefore, it needs pragmatic cooperation with China.

"China is seeking to expand cooperation with ASEAN, and Vietnam can be an important window," said Hou Yongzhi, an expert with the Development Research Center of the State Council.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the Chinese mainland rose 5.7 percent year on year in August, compared with a 1.6-percent drop in July, official data showed Tuesday.

FDI hit 57.3 billion yuan (8.8 billion U.S. dollars) last month, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC).

The rebound came as a slew of data released Tuesday showed China's economic activity was in better shape last month despite lingering downward pressure.

Fixed-asset investment, industrial output and retail sales all accelerated in August, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The MOC said FDI in the first eight months of 2016 increased 4.5 percent year on year to 85.9 billion U.S. dollars, up from 4.3 percent in the first seven months.

Services continued to attract more foreign investment from January to August.

FDI in the service sector, accounting for over 70 percent of the total investment, went up 10 percent year on year, quickening from a 7.7 percent growth for the January-July period.

Meanwhile, FDI in high-tech services nearly doubled from a year earlier to reach 67.1 billion yuan.

In the first eight months, FDI from the United States surged 79.7 percent, while that from Germany and the U.K. soared 79.2 percent and 96.6 percent, respectively.

Altogether 18,538 new foreign-funded enterprises were established in the country in the first eight months, up 10.2 percent on a year earlier, according to the MOC.
by Xinhua writer Li Laifang

NANNING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Keen to tap into Vietnam's tourism opportunities, Yunde Group, a leading transportation provider in China's southern autonomous region of Guangxi, will soon establish its second joint venture in the neighboring country.

Yunde Group signed a deal with Vietnam's Truong Loc Construction and Trading Co. on Monday at the ongoing 13th China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The two firms will establish a transportation firm in Quang Ninh province, home to the World Heritage site Ha Long Bay, a popular tourist destination in Vietnam.

"Our 'go-out' strategy centers around ASEAN," said Qi Jingsheng, president of Yunde Group. In 2004, the company set up its first joint venture in Vietnam and launched a regular bus from Nanning to Hanoi the following year.

Qi said the firm was also keeping its eyes open for opportunities in Cambodia and Laos.

Nguyen Van Truong, board chairman of the Vietnamese company, told Xinhua that his firm was looking forward to learning from its Chinese partner.

The expo attracted more than 2,500 companies this year from 29countries including China, ASEAN countries, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Kazakhstan.

The four-day fair promotes industrial cooperation and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which was designed to encourage mutually beneficial cooperation, features prominently.

Since China and ASEAN began their dialogue relationship 25 years ago, cooperation has gone from strength to strength.

Bilateral trade volume grew 58 times from 7.96 billion U.S.dollars in 1991 to 472 billion dollars last year. The accumulative two-way investment has exceeded 160 billion dollars. China is currently ASEAN's largest trading partner, while the regional bloc is China's third largest.

As a result of the rapid development over the past 25 years, China-ASEAN ties are entering a new era of higher level cooperation, boosted by free trade agreements, industrial cooperation, people-to-people exchanges, and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

Mohd Zukepli, director of Malaysia Investment Development Authority's Beijing office, said the 25th anniversary of the China-ASEAN dialogue relationship was a "historic opportunity" to enhance ties.

"China-ASEAN cooperation benefits people on both sides," Zukepli told Xinhua after a roundtable on investment cooperation during the expo. He appreciated China's initiatives and efforts to develop relations with ASEAN, and voiced hope that the private sector will be more engaged in bilateral cooperation.

At the meeting, investment officials from ASEAN said they hoped to attract more Chinese investment in the sectors of high-tech, finance and scientific research, in addition to infrastructure and manufacturing.

Senior leaders from ASEAN attending the expo also had high hopes for China-ASEAN ties.

The ASEAN Community, a market with more than 600 million people, has strong demand for power, information technology, agriculture and scientific research, said Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen at the opening ceremony of the expo on Sunday.

To realize sustainable and inclusive growth, ASEAN needs the participation of all dialogue partners, especially China, he said.

The ASEAN Community faces internal challenges, but China's economic growth has helped invigorate the ASEAN economy, said Thai Deputy Prime Minister Prajin Juntong.

Integration between the Belt and Road Initiative and ASEAN development will boost ties, according to him.

The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and a closer China-ASEAN community of common destiny will see China and ASEAN achieve common prosperity, said Lao Deputy Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone.

"ASEAN's development requires support from China. China also wants a prosperous and stable ASEAN," said Xu Ningning, executive president of China-ASEAN Business Council.
People look at animals killed at a house destroyed by a Saudi-led airstrike in Yemen's capital Sanaa September 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

RIYADH, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Saudi-led coalition has killed a number of Houthis leaders and officers by targeting a gathering near the Saudi-Yemeni border, Al Arabiya local news reported on Tuesday.

According the report, the airstrike targeted a cave near the border on Sunday evening, killing two main Houthis leaders and six officers, including the one who was in charge of the missiles.

The Yemeni-Saudi border has been among unsafe zones since the beginning of the war of the coalition against Houthis in support of the elected Yemeni government in March 2015.

The war seems with no end in sight as the failure of political parties to reach consensus.
MOGADISHU, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Security has been enhanced around Somali capital, Mogadishu on Tuesday as the Horn of Africa nation hosts a regional summit which is also expected to tackle crisis in South Sudan.

A statement from the Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said seven Heads of State and government from the seven-member bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority (IGAD) are expected to hold their summit in Mogadishu for the first time since the regional body was established in 1986.

He said the summit will discuss the crisis of South Sudan, the ongoing preparations of Somalia elections and other crucial businesses and cooperation among the member states.

"This is a great moment for Somalia. Hosting such a high profile summit is a clear indication of recognition from the region and the international community to the progress the country has been making towards building a new Somalia, after more than two decades of anarchy," said Mohamud.

"I thank the people of Somalia for their commitment to ensure our country regains its reputation in the international arena," he added.

Heavy security is underway across the Horn of Africa nation especially in Mogadishu to enhance the security, seal all loopholes and make sure the significant summit takes place successful.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- China has condemned Japan's weapon sales to India as a "shameless move."

According to media report, the Japanese Government is promoting the sale of weapons worth 1.6 billion U.S. dollars to India. Japan will lower the prices as much as possible in exchange for strengthened cooperation in defense and security and to encourage India to become more involved on the South China Sea issue.

Hua Chunying, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Tuesday that China has no objection to normal defense cooperation, but it would be a "shameless move" if somebody uses this for ulterior motives.
CHONGQING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- More than 1,000 vehicles have been imported using a rail service from Germany to southwest China's Chongqing Municipality this year, a local entry port said.

The imported vehicles were worth 283 million yuan (about 43 million U.S. dollars). A total of 1,500 vehicles will be imported on the rail system by the end of the year, according to the railway port.

China imports over 1 million vehicles every year, but most of them arrive via shipping routes at the coastal ports.

Chongqing won central government approval to import cars by rail last July.

The railway trip takes just 16 days from Duisburg in Germany to Chongqing, two-thirds faster than shipping them, reducing logistics costs.

Huang Xiang, general manager of Chongqing Rail Port Logistics, said the car imports have spurred new business in and around Chongqing, with BMW, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz and Audi all establishing operations at the railway port.

Besides Chongqing, other inland ports, including Chengdu, Sichuan Province; Zhengzhou, Henan Province; and Yueyang, Hunan Province, have also increased the import of vehicles through the rail service.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Boeing has forecast demand for 6,810 new aircraft in China in the next 20 years, estimating a total value of about one trillion U.S. dollars, according to a report released on Tuesday in Beijing.

According to Boeing's annual current market outlook, China is expected to become the world's first trillion-dollar aviation market within 20 years.

"As China's economic transition into a more consumer-based economy, the aviation industry will play a key role," said Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing with Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

China's continuous economic growth will bring vitality to the aviation market, Tinseth said. Besides, new airliners and a rising middle-class will drive market growth.

"As travel and transportation are key services, we expect to see passenger traffic grow 6.4 percent annually in China over the next 20 years," he said.

China has become Boeing's largest customer in the world. In the past three years, Boeing delivered to Chinese customers with 25 percent of its total aircraft production.

To meet demand from the surging middle class in China and throughout Asia, low-cost carriers and the traditional full-service airlines have been adding planes and expanding new point-to-point services to cater for both leisure and business travel.

Boeing estimated that China will need 5,110 new single-aisle airplanes through 2035. And China' s widebody fleet will triple in size, requiring 1,560 new airplanes.

According to Boeing statistics, China' s single-aisle fleet currently accounts for about 18 percent of global single-aisle aircraft. The widebody fleet only represents about 5 percent of the global widebody segment.

"The continuing expansion of China's middle class, new visa policies and a wide range of widebody airplanes give us reasons to expect a very bright future for China's long-haul market," said Tinseth.

Empowering by its growing e-commerce business, the air cargo is expected to become a key driver for the continuous growth of aviation in China.

Boeing forecast the country will also need about 180 new freighters and 410 converted freighters.
JINGHONG, Yunnan, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The first joint anti-terrorist exercise between Chinese and Laotian police was held in southwest China's Yunnan Province on Tuesday.

A total of 280 police officers from Yunnan's Xishuangbanna prefecture and Luang Namtha Province of Laos participated in the 90-minute drill, which started at 10 a.m. The officers were equipped with 18 vehicles.

Assisted by drones and other technology, they nabbed 11 "terrorists" and shot dead four others, seized eight guns, four knives and 196 bullets, according to the Chinese police.

After the exercise, the two sides signed a memorandum pledging to deepen police cooperation between the two countries to crack down on crimes on the China-Laos border.
GENEVA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Office for the UN Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Tuesday that convoys aiming to provide civilians in war-torn Syria life-saving assistance are waiting for it to be safe enough before carrying out relief operations in the country which has been at war since 2011.

"We remain prepared to deliver to besieged and hard-to-reach areas that includes east Aleppo where between 250,000 and 275,000 people have not been reached by the UN since early July," said OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke.

"The first planned deliveries would provide food assistance to east Aleppo delivered cross-border from Turkey," he added.

As well as Aleppo, the UN plans to reach other locations across the country as soon as access is possible, prioritizing areas including Kafraya, Foah, Madaya, Az-Zabadni and Madamiyet Elsham.

This follows the implementation of a nation-wide ceasefire on September 12 at sundown after a landmark agreement between the United States and Russia was brokered last week after lengthy negotiations.

The truce is hoped to facilitate the delivery of critical aid as well as rekindle efforts seeking to convene warring factions back to the negotiation table to find a political solution to the five-year conflict.

The ability of conducting humanitarian operations, however, will be determined by what happens on the ground in the hours and days to come, Laerke indicated.

All parties to the conflict and those "with influence over them must now ensure that the cessation of hostilities is respected to enable unimpeded, unconditional and sustained access without delay," he said

"Up until now, no convoys have proceeded in September, we hope that the reinstated cessation of hostilities will enable us to access these areas and to reach everybody in need," he concluded.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday morning initiated emergency response measures for the approaching Typhoon Meranti.

Local authorities in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian,Guangdong, Hainan as well as Shanghai will closely monitor the typhoon and release information as it comes in, according to a circular released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the National Commission for Disaster Reduction (NCDR).

The NCDR has asked authorities in areas in the typhoon's path to prepare aid and relief.

Typhoon Meranti will make landfall in south China's Guangdong or Fujian provinces during the day on Thursday, meteorological authorities forecast.

If it lands in eastern Guangdong, it will become the strongest typhoon to churn ashore there in 47 years, said Zhang Dong, a forecaster with the Guangdong provincial meteorologic station.

"It only took nine hours for Meranti to grow into a super typhoon from a typhoon," he said. "Packing winds between 202 to 220 kilometers per hour, it is interacting with another storm, Malakas, 1,000 kilometers away, and the route could be hard to predict."

China's State Oceanic Administration issued a wave warning on Tuesday afternoon, as the Bashi Strait and northeast part of the South China Sea can expect waves eight to 13 meters high.

Provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters in Guangdong asked fishing boats to return and take shelter, and management of tourist activities on beaches should be tightened to brace for the typhoon.
by Ronald Ssekandi

NAKASONGOLA, Uganda, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Obama is the name of a naughty white rhino. Like a teenager, Obama is discovering himself, throwing up tantrums. He has just broken a radio repeater and his care taker, Angie Genade, is angry at him. But like the love of a mother, Genade understands the stage Obama is going through.

"He is a very beautiful rhino, a very healthy big boy and has just started behaving like a big male rhino should be behaving. He has just found his own territory," Genade told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"He is just coming into his teens and becoming sexually mature and starting to look for rhinos to mate with, his behavior is perfect," she added.

Obama was the first white rhino born in Uganda in 2009 after close to 30 years of extinction in the east African country.

Obama takes his name from the American President Barrack Obama. The rhino, has an American mother and a Kenyan father, just like Obama, the president.

The rhino's father was brought in from Solio Ranch in Kenya in 2005, while its mother was donated by the Disney Animal Kingdom in the U.S.

Obama was the first rhino born at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary in the central Ugandan district of Nakasongola, over 170km north of the capital Kampala.

The Sanctuary was started by the Rhino Fund in a bid to restore rhinos in the east African country where they had become extinct because of decades of war. In 1978, the country had 200 rhinos but by 1982 poaching and insecurity cleared them all.

The conservation program started with six rhinos, three male and three females. Obama was the first to be born.

Since then the number has grown to over 15 rhinos and two births are due later this month and in January next year.

"What is interesting about these two, they are Ugandan rhinos. Our project has reached a second phase where our own rhinos that were born in Uganda are now actually producing," she said.

The sanctuary has become a popular tourist stop-over with the numbers of visitors growing to 13,000 annually from the 400 registered in 2007, according to Genade, who is the director of the sanctuary.

Genade argued that the conservation project has showed that the number of rhinos can be increased provided there is dedicated effort.

Over 80 rangers patrol the fence, guard the gates, and monitor the rhinos 24 hours a day. The sanctuary management also has a good relation with the neighboring communities which are allowed to graze on the ranch.

The rhino horns are also microchipped such that if a poacher is arrested with the horns, the origin of the horn can be traced back.

"It is really a method of monitoring where rhino horn is going and whose rhino horn has been confiscated from a poacher," said Genade.

Genade argued that although there is increased effort to conserve rhinos in Africa, the targeted market for rhino horns must be involved in the efforts.

She said Asia, which is the main market for illicit trade in rhino horns must be involved in changing cultural beliefs surrounding the horns.

Rhino horns are reputed to cure diseases and cast out evil spirits in children besides being regarded as a powerful aphrodisiac.

Genade said countries can introduce rhino conservation in their education system whereby children are taught why it is important to conserve the rhinos.

"If you target the right people now with the right information and try and break that cultural barrier," she said, noting that 20 years from now, there will be a big difference.

She said top government officials, corporate companies and celebrities, who people look up to, can also play a lead role in urging the population to avoid buying rhino horns.
DUBAI, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of State for Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that the UAE offers condolences to Qatar for its three soldiers killed in Yemen, Emirati state news agency WAM reported.

Anwar bin Mohammed Gargash said "We offer our condolences on the death of martyrs of Qatar who sacrificed their lives for the sake of their country and nation, while on duty as part of the Saudi-led Arab Coalition force Operation Restoring Hope in Yemen."

In a statement issued earlier Tuesday, the Qatari Armed Forces said that their three soldiers were killed in action (KIA) on Monday.

Qatar has around 1,000 troops on the ground in Yemen, according to Dubai daily Gulf news.

The Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen since March 2015, trying to restore the internationally recognized government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

International efforts and talks between the war parties have been so far fruitless.
Argentina's President, Mauricio Macri, announces the delivery to the Congress of a Public Information Access Bill, in the Pink House, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 7, 2016. (Xinhua/Martin Zabala)

BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Argentina will launch the Argentina Business and Investment Forum on Monday, with over 1,900 business people from home and abroad confirmed to attend.

The forum, which is set to last till Thursday, is part of the Argentinean government's effort to rebrand the country among the global investment community.

It will seek to bring about the strategy of President Mauricio Macri to "boost economic sectors, strengthen the public sector and stimulate long-term, public investment, for which foreign investment will be a crucial pillar," said the president of the Argentina Agency for International Investment and Trade, Juan Procaccini.

With an economy set to contract by 1.5 percent this year according to the IMF projection, Argentina has set out to capture investments, kick-start public works and modernize infrastructure.

The event will kick off Monday night at the Kirchner Cultural Center, the largest convention center in South America.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Procaccini, said that the forum needs to help Argentina get the investments it needs to be competitive in a range of sectors.

Since December when Macri became president, Argentina has received between 33-35 billion U.S. dollars in investment pledges, said the official.

"In one semester, we received more than in a number of past years combined. We have reintegrated into the world, starting by building trust and removing obstacles. Argentina is again on the international rader, giving importance to this forum," he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (3rd R) meets with his Argentine counterpart Mauricio Macri (3rd L) who came to Hangzhou to attend the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, capital city of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 3, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

In a column published in the daily Clarin on Sunday, Macri wrote that "from September 12 to 15, the eyes of the world will be on Argentineans, and all we are capable of doing and being."

"This is the first time that this country will hold an event with these characteristics...in which first-class investment opportunities for agriculture, biotechnology, renewable and traditional energies, tourism, services and various industrial sectors" will be presented, Macri added.

Those having confirmed their attendance at the four-day summit include Bob Dudley, CEO of BP; Joe Kaeser, CEO of Siemens; Muhtar Kent, CEO of Coca-Cola; Miguel Kozuszok, president of Unilever for Latin America, and Andrew Liveris, chairman and CEO for Dow Chemical.

China Eximbank, China Railway Construction Corporation and the China Development Bank will be among those companies in attendance.
TOKYO, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga on Tuesday slammed the central government for using Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) helicopters to haul heavy equipment to be used to build new facilities for the U.S. military in Japan's southernmost prefecture.

Onaga, a staunch opponent of the relocation of a controversial U.S. base within the tiny island and advocate for lessening the base-hosting burdens of the island's local people, said the move by the Defense Ministry was "intolerable."

Local media quoted Onaga as saying that the Defense Ministry's Okinawa bureau using GSDF CH-47 transportation helicopters to airlift trucks and other heavy construction equipment to be used for the construction of U.S. military facilities was one that would greatly harm relations between the local Okinawa and central government.

The prefectural government in Okinawa had strongly urged that GSDF helicopters not be used to transport the equipment when the local chapter of the Defense Ministry informed it of the likelihood just one day before.

Onaga said the central government failed to provide a full explanation ahead of time as to why it was employing the use of the GSDF helicopters for U.S. military-linked construction.

He was quoted by local media Tuesday as saying that he was "observing the current situation with resentment."

It is exceedingly rare for Self-Defense Forces' helicopters to be used for the construction of U.S. military facilities and bases in Japan and, as such, the move saw local residents up in arms and also swift to denounce the move.

Okinawa's Northern Training Area, where two helipads have been built, with further construction underway, was once again the site of vehement protests on Tuesday by locals who are concerned the expanding facility will bring with it further noise and pollution problems.

The protestors also believe that the accident-prone Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft that could possibly be using the helipads, could be another source of increased noise and danger in the area. The aircraft, that can take off and land like a helicopter yet fly like a regular plane, have a seriously checkered safety history.

The Defense Ministry said it had previously been using commercial helicopters to haul equipment because protestors had been blocking access roads, but decided to use GSDF helicopters Tuesday to haul heavier equipment.

Defense Minister Tomomi Inada told a press briefing on the matter that the use of GSDF helicopters in the area would be kept at a minimum,

The project is part of a 1996 pact between Tokyo and Washington to reduce the U.S. military's footprint on the sub-tropical island. Okinawa hosts the majority of the U.S. forces in Japan, yet accounts for a tiny fraction of Japan's land mass.

According to the deal, both the Japanese and the U.S. governments agreed that 4,000 hectares of the 7,800-hectare training area would be returned to Okinawa provided that six helipads are relocated to the remaining area.

The work began in 2007, but only two helipads have been completed so far.
MOMBASA, Kenya, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Three women were arraigned in Kenya's court on Tuesday facing charges of harboring three terror suspects in the coastal city of Mombasa.

The three Naima Mohammed, Saida Ali Haji and Shukuri Ali Haji were however not allowed to take plea since they had difficulties in communicating.

State Prosecutor Erick Masila said they will bring a Somali translator and sign language interpreter for the accused before they can be allowed to take plea. The three are Somali refugees.

Mombasa Resident magistrate Emmanuel Mutunga has ordered the three to be detained at port police station until Wednesday before they can stand trial.

Masila said the three were harboring persons concerned in commission of terrorism act.

The three were arrested immediately after Sunday's foiled attack at central police station where three female attackers were shot dead by police.

Mombasa County commander Peterson Maelo said preliminary reports indicate that the incident was terrorist attack but motives have not been established.

Police are also investigating the possibility that the three could have been motivated to carry out the attack to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in the United States.
LONDON, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- A committee of politicians from Britain's House of Lords said in a report Tuesday that parliament should be consulted before the measure paving the way for Brexit is triggered.

The upper chamber's Constitution Committee made the recommendation in a report about the invoking of Article 50, the legal measure that will start the irreversible process of Britain leaving the European Union.

The latest move came weeks after British Prime Minister Theresa May said that the triggering of the Article 50 did not need the approval of parliament.

In her first post-summer recess cabinet meeting earlier this month, May reiterated her insistence that "Brexit means Brexit," saying, "that means there's no second referendum; no attempts to sort of stay in the EU by the back door."

Advisors to May fear that involving parliament in the Brexit process risks delaying or even wrecking the Brexit process with many politicians in both houses opposed to Britain leaving the EU. Political commentators have already said the House of Lords' report will be viewed as a direct challenge to 10 Downing Street.

The committee says it would be "constitutionally inappropriate and would set a disturbing precedent" for the government to act on the EU referendum without explicit parliamentary approval.

A statement issued by the Houses of Parliament Tuesday stated: "The committee says that the referendum result was clear, and that parliament is responsible for ensuring the government implements that result and takes forward Brexit negotiations in a way that achieves the best possible outcome for Britain as a whole.

"Parliament and the government will need to work together with a mutual respect for each party's constitutional role -- and that starts with the parliamentary involvement and assent for the invoking of Article 50."

The report points out that although the EU referendum was, in legal terms, advisory, it was accompanied by a clear undertaking by the government, based on a manifesto commitment, to implement the decision reached in the referendum.

"In the UK's representative democracy, it should be parliament which takes the decision to act following the referendum," it added.

The committee wants the parliament to play a central role in the decision to trigger Article 50 and have a key role in scrutinizing both the Brexit negotiations and in approving the final deal between Britain and the EU.

It adds that it is unclear whether Article 50, once triggered, could be unilaterally reversed by Britain.

Parliament, it says, should act on the assumption that triggering Article 50 would be irreversible, and that Article 50 should be triggered "only when it is in the UK's best interests to begin the formal two-year negotiation process."

Lord Lang of Monkton, chairman of the committee, said Tuesday: "The referendum result was clear and it is right that the government is preparing to take Britain out of the EU.

"However, our constitution is built on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and the decision to act following the referendum should be taken by parliament.

"Parliament should be asked to approve the decision to trigger Article 50, a decision which will start the formal process of the UK leaving the EU and set a deadline for the UK's exit."

Lord Lang said parliament's assent could be sought by legislation or through resolutions in both the House of Commons where MPs sit and the House of Lords.

An Act of Parliament, he added, would give greater legal certainty and could be used to enshrine the "constitutional requirements" required by Article 50.

Lord Lang concluded: "Parliament and the government will need to work together to ensure that the UK achieves the best possible outcome when it withdraws from the EU. It is therefore important that parliament plays a key role in scrutinizing the Brexit negotiations once Article 50 is triggered. We all want the negotiations to produce a deal that works for both the UK and the EU."
TIKRIT, Iraq, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Bomb blast killed seven members of a Iraqi family who were fleeing a besieged town in Iraq's Salahudin province on Tuesday, a provincial security source told Xinhua.

The bomb, planted by the Islamic State (IS) militants, was detonated on a road taken by many civilians to flee the besieged town of Shirqat, some 280 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the source said on condition of anonymity.

The victims, a man, his sister, his wife and four sons, were killed early in the morning, when they fled their home in Shirqat to seek help from security forces, who have imposed siege on the town for several months, the source said.

According to latest report by Iraq's Ministry of Migration and the Displaced, more than 15,000 families fled Shirqat and nearby villages due to the power blackouts, acute food shortages, scarce drinking water and medicine.

The liberation of the town, which is the last one still under the IS control in Salahudin province, is part of a major offensive to liberate the IS stronghold in Mosul, the capital of Iraq's northern province of Nineveh.

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, has been under the IS control for more than two years, when the extremist group took control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions in June 2014.
Marines take part in a joint naval drill in Zhanjiang, south China's Guangdong Province, Sept. 13, 2016. China and Russia started "Joint Sea 2016" drill off Guangdong Province in the South China Sea on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Zha Chunming)

Click for more photos >>

ZHANJIANG, Guangdong, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- China and Russia started a joint naval drill off Guangdong Province in the South China Sea on Tuesday.

The "Joint Sea 2016" drill will run until Sept. 19, featuring navy surface ships, submarines, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, marines and amphibious armored equipment.

Wang Hai, Chinese chief director of the exercise and deputy commander of the Chinese Navy, said the joint drill is "a strategic measure" and a concrete action to promote the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership and will deepen exchanges and cooperation between the two militaries, especially the two navies.

The drill will highlight combat, digitization and standardization to promote naval cooperation.

Several procedures will be undertaken during the drill, including joint air defense, anti-submarine operations, landing, search and rescue, island-seizing and weapon use.

Tuesday's exercise featured a light weapons shooting competition, sea crossing, island landing, climbing and gliding.

The joint drill demonstrates the shared security concerns of both China and Russia, Chen Hu, a military expert, told Xinhua. The joint exercise helps improve the capability of the two navies to address maritime security threats, and safeguard regional security and stability.

"One of the joint exercise highlights is coordinated three-dimensional island seizing," Chen said.

Zhang Junshe, senior research fellow of the Military and Academic Institute of the Chinese Navy, said the navies would perform operations in a number of areas, including air defense, anti-submarine, anti-vessel, and landings.

The drills would give the two parties an opportunity to show each other their combat effectiveness, and the performance data of their military vessels, planes, radar and sonar.

"An exercise on such subjects can only be operated between navies with a high level of mutual trust," said Zhang.

"The joint China-Russia naval exercise is essentially defensive and totally different from the island landing and retaking drills that a few countries engage in year after year in the west pacific region, against an imaginary enemy," Zhang said.

The joint exercise will enhance practical combat capability and increase deterrence in front of countries that have plotted against China, said Zhang.
CAPE TOWN, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Controversial U.S. Pastor Steven Anderson, who has repeatedly called for gay people to be killed, has been rejected entry into South Africa, Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said on Tuesday.

"Mr Steven Anderson and members and/or associates of his church are prohibited from entering the Republic of South Africa. This prohibition will be implemented in terms of section 29(1)(d) of the Immigration Act," Gigaba said at a press briefing in Cape Town.

This section affords the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) the legal means to prohibit a foreigner who is "a member of or adherent to an association or organization advocating the practice of racial hatred or social violence."

Anderson planned to visit South Africa in September. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Transsexual and Intersexed (LGBTI) community has launched a campaign to stop Anderson's visit.

Gigaba identified Anderson and members and/or associates of his church as "undesirable persons."

Undesirable persons are barred from travelling to South Africa for periods determined by the DHA.

"Furthermore, I have withdrawn their visa exemption status, enjoyed by all Americans. This is on the basis that I am certain they promote hate speech as well as advocate social violence," Gigaba said.
LHASA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPD Bank) opened a branch in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region on Tuesday.

The bank also signed an agreement with the Tibetan regional government, the government of Lhasa city, and a local state-owned company to earmark 60 billion yuan (about 9.2 billion U.S. dollars) for local development, said Ji Xiaohui, president of SPD Bank.

It joins the booming financial sector in the region to support economic and social development in Tibet, he said.

The bank will meet the public need for financial services and offer financing and loans for infrastructure, engineering projects and other local industries.

Established in 1993, SPD Bank has over 1,700 branches and offices nationwide.

Financial services in Tibet have grown rapidly in recent years. By the end of 2015, Tibet had 14 financial institutions operating in the region.

The assets of all financial institutions in Tibet reached 405.6 billion yuan as of the end of last year, about 2.4 times the figure in 2010.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (C) raises his fist along with military officials during the 250th Presidential Airlift Wing (PAW) anniversary celebration at the Villamor Air Base in Pasay City, the Philippines, Sept. 13, 2016. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali)

MANILA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte admitted Monday night that he "purposely" skipped the meeting between the Southeast Asian leaders and United States President Barack Obama in Vientiane, Laos last week.

"The reason is not that I am anti-West. The reason is not (that) I do not like the Americans. It's simply a matter of principle,"Duterte said in a speech in presidential palace.

During the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit and Related Summits in Vientiane last week, Duterte's spokesmen said the President failed to attend the ASEAN-U.S. meeting because he was not feeling well due to migraine attack.

Duterte's first attendance to an international meeting since he assumed the presidency on June 30 was hounded by controversy.

His expletives against Obama prompted the latter to cancel their bilateral meeting at the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting.

In the same gathering during the East Asian Summit, Duterte veered away from the prepared speech and instead talked about the massacre perpetrated by the American forces against the Filipino Muslims in southern province of Sulu in 1906, which he described as human rights violation.

Duterte criticized U.S. for its supposed human rights violations after Washington raised concern on the reported extrajudicial killings of suspected drug personalities in the Philippines amid the government's war on illegal drugs.
A man takes part in a march against homophobia in Havana, capital of Cuba, on May 14, 2016. (Xinhua/Liu Bin)

CAPE TOWN, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Controversial U.S. Pastor Steven Anderson, who has repeatedly called for gay people to be killed, has been rejected entry into South Africa, Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said Tuesday.

"Mr Steven Anderson and members and/or associates of his church are prohibited from entering the Republic of South Africa. This prohibition will be implemented in terms of section 29(1)(d) of the Immigration Act," Gigaba said at a press briefing in Cape Town.

This section affords the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) the legal means to prohibit a foreigner who is "a member of or adherent to an association or organization advocating the practice of racial hatred or social violence."

Anderson planned to visit South Africa in September. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexed (LGBTI) community has launched a campaign to stop Anderson's visit.

Gigaba identified Anderson and members and/or associates of his church as "undesirable persons."

Undesirable persons are barred from travelling to South Africa for periods determined by the DHA.

"Furthermore, I have withdrawn their visa exemption status, enjoyed by all Americans. This is on the basis that I am certain they promote hate speech as well as advocate social violence," Gigaba said.
By Ndumiso Mlilo

JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- A heated debate is expected at the upcoming 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in Johannesburg as Africa is divided on whether to allow trade on elephant ivory, experts said on Tuesday.

This emerged from a press briefing presented in Johannesburg by three researchers from the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).

The three researchers argued that there is not enough incentive to conserve elephants.

The conference is scheduled for September 24 to October 5 this year. South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia have made a joint a proposal to have a ban on international trade on ivory to be lifted.

Ross Harvey, a senior researcher with SAIIA, said the three countries have slim chances of having their proposal approved by the CITES Standing Committee.

He said, "The chances of the three countries to have the ban lifted on international trade on ivory is next to nil."

The best possible result is that there will be an agreement to have the domestic market shut down, which might alienate these countries, according to Harvey.

Harvey said there is a possibility that some might opt to leave CITES, but this is unlikely since there are other benefits for other species other than ivory.

Zimbabwe and Namibia have also made a bid to have the elephants completely removed from the CITES protection altogether.

A majority of sixty-six percent is required to adopt a proposal.

On the other hand, 29 African countries have also made a coalition to seek to end the ivory trade altogether. The coalition is also calling for the closure of the domestic ivory markets.

The international ban on ivory trade was introduced in 1989. The African Elephant Coalition is calling for the destruction of existing ivory stockpile.

Harvey said, "Some are piling up stock waiting to hear what will CITES decide. The question is why should you keep stock piles of ivory?"

Another senior researcher from SAIIA, Yu-Shan Wu, said the commitment made by the U.S. and China in September 2015 will boost the fight against illegal trade in ivory.

Wu said it is necessary for the people to be educated why the ban is imposed.

She said, "Some countries in Southeast Asia worship elephants and they have a religious significance on them."

Wu, a South African of Chinese descent, said China has shown commitment to fighting illegal trade on ivory by discussing it with Africa last December during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Summit.

She said some conservation organizations have also been educating the Chinese people about the importance against illegal trade in ivory.

She said Chinese celebrities have also been involved in sending messages against illegal ivory trade.

She praised Botswana as a good example of using local communities to manage natural resources like elephants.

She said they use the natural resources for tourism and get the incentives from that.

Africa has lost over 27,000 elephants annually since 2012, according to the Elephant Census.

Elephants will be on the agenda on the CITES conference.

Many proposals will be considered to reach a consensus at the end.
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Nkandla matter should be put to rest as President Jacob Zuma has honored the ruling of the Constitutional Court by paying the non-security upgrades at his private home, the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) said on Tuesday.

"We hope as the ANCYL this will finally put the matter to rest," ANCYL national spokesperson Mlondi Mkhize said in a statement emailed to Xinhua.

"We say this because we know that the enemy of the ANC has been using this matter relentlessly to pit the President against the nation," he said.

The Presidency announced on Monday that Zuma had paid the State more than 7.8 million rand (about 550,000 U.S. dollars), as ordered by the Constitutional Court.

The president raised the amount through a home loan obtained from VBS Mutual Bank on its standard terms, one of the few financial institutions which offer home loans in respect of land owned by traditional authorities, presidential spokesperson Bongani Ngqulunga said.

Zuma was ordered by the Constitutional Court in March 2016 to pay for the non-security upgrades to be determined by the National Treasury.

Over 246 million rand (about 17 million dollars) was allegedly used for the upgrades at Zuma's private home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal Province.
Zhang Dejiang (C), chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC), presides over the 23rd session of the 12th NPC Standing Committee in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 13, 2016. (Xinhua/Gao Jie)

BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator said Tuesday that the Liaoning electoral fraud challenged the bottom line of the Chinese political system, and that a zero-tolerance approach would be taken toward any offences in elections.

Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), made the remarks at the closing ceremony of the 23rd meeting of the 12th NPC Standing Committee.

Zhang said the meeting provisionally convened according to relevant laws and had important content of great significance. At the meeting attendees approved a report nullifying the election of some national lawmakers by the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress.

Attendees decided that the election of 45 NPC deputies by the first session of the 12th Liaoning Provincial People's Congress was invalid.

The meeting also made a decision that a preparatory panel should be established for the 7th session of the 12th Liaoning Provincial People's Congress.

Zhang said the electoral bribery in Liaoning was the first of its kind to take place at provincial level since the People's Republic of China was founded, which seriously violated the Party's discipline, state laws and rules.

The case seriously violated organizational and electoral discipline and the electoral system of the people's congress system, Zhang added.

It challenged the people's congress system, the socialist democratic politics and the state laws and Party disciplines, said Zhang.

It also challenged the bottom line of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, and the bottom line of the Communist Party of China (CPC)'s ruling status, according to Zhang.

Thoroughly investigating and dealing with the Liaoning electoral bribery in accordance with the law, shows a clear attitude and firm determination to comprehensively implement the rule of law and strengthen Party discipline by the CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping as general secretary, Zhang said.

The move safeguarded the authority and dignity of the people's congress system and the socialist rule of law.

Zhang said the electoral fraud exposed weak law enforcement by the election-organizing institutions and responsible persons, as they turned a blind eye to foul play.

Some candidates used money to manipulate the election, engaging in blatant election fraud; some NPC deputies broke laws and received bribes from candidates as if that was an implicit rule, Zhang said.

He added that some NPC officials and staff, though legally aware, still acted as go-betweens for candidates to rig the election.

Zhang cautioned officials to stay vigilant and learn lessons from the case.

The NPC is the organ of state power, ensuring the Party's plans become wills of the state through legal procedures, candidates recommended by Party organizations become officials through legal procedures, and the Party exercise leadership through state organs, Zhang said.

He said NPC deputies should defend the rule of law and firmly oppose election rigging as well as other legal and disciplinary transgressions.

Democratically electing NPC deputies is the foundation of the country's NPC system, said Zhang.

From this year, the NPC at all levels will face a new round of elections, he said, demanding serious reflection on and lessons be drawn from the electoral fraud in Liaoning and an earlier one in Hengyang, Hunan province, Zhang said.

"The trading of power and money must be eliminated from electoral procedures, and socialist democracy under the rule of law must not be undermined in any form," the top legislator noted.

The Party's leadership over the NPC, especially the deputy election work, must be upheld and elections should be organized in accordance with the law, Zhang added.

Zhang also vowed that a "zero tolerance" approach would be implemented to crack down on the crimes of election rigging and malpractice.

"To ensure clean elections, we will show no mercy and will not forgive those who violate discipline and laws," Zhang said.
NEW DELHI, Sept. 13 (Xinhua)-- China and India held a fresh round of arms control consultation in New Delhi Tuesday.

The consultation was co-chaired by Wang Qun, Director-General of Arms Control Department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, and Amandeep Singh Gill, Joint Secretary for Disarmament and International Security of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.

The two sides exchanged views on issues of common concern in this field.

On the question of non-NPT states' participation in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), given that it is an issue of major concern to India, China, for its part, shared with India the recent developments as it sees within the Group in relation to the question.

China also shared with India its principled positions and views on the above question.

In the meantime, China listened to and had the inputs from India on this issue, and indicated that it will bring such views and inputs back to the Group for its consideration. China hopes the above inputs will help facilitate the relevant discussions within the Group.

The two sides realized that the question of the non-NPT states' participation is, in essence, a multilateral issue, and can only be subject to multilateral solution by the Group.

Bilateral exchanges should serve to facilitate the relevant discussions within the Group.

China pointed out that the issue of the non-NPT states' participation in the NSG raises new questions for the Group under the new circumstances, and the crux of the above question is how to address the gap between the existing policies and practices of the non-NPT states and the existing international non-proliferation rules and norms based on the NPT as the cornerstone.

China wishes to see early commencement of an open and transparent inter-governmental process to undertake, in accordance with the mandate adopted by the NSG at its Seoul Plenary meeting, a comprehensive and thorough study on the question of the non-NPT states' participation in the NSG in various aspects.

China has hitherto not yet taken a position on any country-specific membership in the category of the non-NPT states. And China supports the notion of two-step approach within the Group to address the above question, i.e., at the first stage, to explore and reach agreement on a non-discriminatory formula applicable to all the non-NPT states, and to proceed to take up country-specific membership issues at the second stage.

China, for its part, expressed its readiness to actively participate in the above process within the Group.

The two sides also had in-depth discussions on issues related to cyber security and the work of the Conference on Disarmament.

The two sides believed that the consultation is positive, candid, pragmatic and constructive.

The two sides expressed the wish to intensify their exchanges on the relevant issues. They also agreed to hold the next round of consultation in China in due course, to be decided through diplomatic channels.
LHASA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- A comprehensive collection of ancient books on traditional Tibetan medicine and astronomy was released on Tuesday in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

The collection includes photocopies of 130 volumes of ancient books, selected from more than 1,000 volumes collected over the past two years, said Yexe Yangzom, deputy director of the regional Tibetan hospital, which headed the compilation.

Since 2014, compilers have been sent across Tibet and Tibetan-inhabited areas in four other regions to solicit precious books and documents that are important to scholars, doctors and monks, Yexe Yangzom said.

They scanned the documents and checked their background information, including their origin, author and date of release. The regional government funded nearly 17 million yuan (around 2.5 million U.S. dollars) toward the publication.

"The photocopies ensure authenticity of the ancient books. Since many of the books were hand-written in ancient Tibetan words, it is very likely for mistakes to be made when typing them into a computer," said O'kying Dianzin, deputy head of the Tibetan hospital of Dege County, Sichuan Province.

An international forum on Tibetan medicine was held in Lhasa on Tuesday and attended by hundreds of scholars from China and abroad. The day marked the 100th birthday of Tibet's regional Tibetan hospital.

Tibetan medicine, known as "Sowa Rigpa" in Tibetan, has a history of over 3,800 years. It has absorbed the influences of traditional Chinese, Indian and Arab medicine and is mainly practised in Tibet and the Himalayan region.

It uses herbs, minerals and sometimes insects and animal parts. It was added to China's official list for national intangible cultural heritage in 2006.
Photo shows the harbor of Skala Sikamineas in Lesvos, Greece, March 19, 2016. (Xinhua/ Liu Yongqiu)

by Maria Spiliopoulou, Anthi Pazianou

ATHENS, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Greece needs further support from Europe to assist refugees stranded in the country, visiting European Commissioner for Justice Vera Jourova said Monday, as protests were reported in overcrowded hot spots in the Aegean Sea islands.

Following talks with Greek Justice Minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos, representatives of NGOs, and a visit to a refugee accommodation center in the Greek capital, the European official called for more immediate actions to be taken to aid, in particular, minors, Greek news agency AMNA reported.

"Greece should be supported in its efforts to create 1,500 positions for unaccompanied minor refugees and receive European assistance so they can live in safety," Jourova told media.

According to UNICEF there are about 28,000 minors trapped in Greece today, including about 2,500 unaccompanied children, of whom only one third are living in formal housing.

Due to shortage of suitable accommodation, several of these minors are held in protective custody at police stations, or closed detention centers.

In order to help them, Athens will receive funding, human resources and expertise, Jourova said, acknowledging that so far EU decisions on support to Greece to handle the refugee resettlement are not being implemented.

Greek officials have repeatedly complained that only some 3,000 refugees have reached other European countries so far under the EU relocation program launched last autumn, out of the 33,000 people that should be transferred across the EU by 2017.

Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos is taking the necessary steps to tackle the issue, which include the opening of infringement proceedings against member states and, as a last resort, going to the European Court of Justice, Jourova underlined.

Meanwhile, tension rises at refugee camps with almost 60,000 refugees and migrants trapped in Greece today after the closure of the Balkan route to central Europe last February, according to the latest data released by Greek authorities on Monday.

Early Monday, a group of underage refugees held at Pili reception center on Kos Island, set fire to beds and mattresses, protesting the living conditions and delays in processing their requests for asylum, AMNA reported. The incident ended with police intervention.

Similar unrest was reported at the Moria hotspot of Lesvos island where refugees have, of late, held demonstrations every other day, also in protest of living conditions and delays in the assessment of their asylum claims.

Unconfirmed rumors that eight refugees died while travelling by tanker two days ago have increased anxiety.

"My friends and I are stuck here on the island for six months," said 25-year-old Ali Gohman from Pakistan, told Xinhua.

"There is no food for a lot of people and not enough water at the camp. We cannot even take a shower," added Mombar Inno, a 31-year-old from Afghanistan.

After the implementation of the EU-Turkey deal struck in March to stem the mass influx of refugees to the Greek islands, more than 5,150 refugees and immigrants are trapped on Lesvos and have requested asylum, while the capacity of the accommodation centers reaches 3,500 people, according to data provided by the Greek Refugee Crisis Management Coordination Body.

About 13,000 refugees and migrants have been stranded on the Aegean Sea islands in recent months, with capacity in hot spots standing at 7,500, according to the official figures.

Dozens keep landing on Greek shores every day, dreaming of following in the footsteps of the more than one million people who have reached other European countries via Greece since early 2015 until the closure of borders and the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement.

Under the terms of the March deal, so far, only 502 immigrants and refugees whose asylum applications have been examined and rejected by the relevant authorities - or they decided to voluntarily return - have been sent back to Turkey from the Greek islands, according to Greek police.

At least 269 migrants and refugees arrived on the Aegean islands only on Sunday and Monday, according to the Coast Guard, with 84 on Lesvos, 103 on Chios and 82 on Samos.

In a letter to the Deputy Minister of Migration Yiannis Mouzalas last week, the Mayor of Lesvos, Spyros Galinos, asked for the transfer of a large number of refugees and immigrants from the island to the mainland, warning about a "particularly worrying and dangerous situation."

Volunteers from the NGO "Movement Coexistence and Communication at the Aegean Sea" also expressed their anxiety specifically about the 140 minors that are "locked up" at the Moria camp.
ZHENGZHOU, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Central China's Henan Province announced its first Zika case on Tuesday, with the patient described to be in stable condition, according to local health authorities.

It is the 23rd Zika case reported on the Chinese mainland, said an official with the Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau of Henan.

The patient, a 28-year-old man, arrived at the airport of Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, last Thursday morning. The infrared radiation thermometer at the airport detected his temperature to be 37.6 degrees Celsius.

The man told doctors that he had been suffering from a fever, headaches and a sore throat for four days, and he had a rash on his body.

Before returning to China, he had worked for two months in Guatemala. He went to the United States last Tuesday and flew back via Seoul.

The passenger denied being bitten by a mosquito over the past two weeks. He also ruled out the possibility of other transmission channels such as sex, blood transfusions or contact with Zika-infected people.

He was confirmed to have Zika after his urine and saliva tested positive on Monday.

He has been quarantined, and local authorities didn't find Zika symptoms in other passengers on the same flight.

Zika virus is acquired through bites from infected Aedes aegypti mosquitos. Common symptoms include fever, skin rash and joint pains. It can also cause microcephaly, brain malformations and other birth defects if a pregnant woman is infected.

According to the China Central Television, at least 30 Chinese nationals were confirmed to be infected with Zika in Singapore.
JERUSALEM, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Israel's defense ministry announced Tuesday that Israel successfully launched a military surveillance satellite.

The satellite Ofeq-11, lifted off in the afternoon from the Palmachim airbase south of Tel Aviv, was launched by the defense ministry and Military Industry, Israel's state-owned weapons company.

The satellite was expected to begin transferring information some two hours after the launch, the defense ministry said in a statement.

Ofeq-11 would patrol the skies above the Middle East to collect intelligence on countries such as Iran, reported the Hebrew Ynet news site.

Israel objects the newly signed nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers, said the website.

The launch came almost two weeks after Amos-6, Israel's largest ever communication satellite, exploded during launching at Cape Canaveral in Florida over technical failure.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature on Tuesday confirmed the disqualification of 45 deputies for their involvement in electoral fraud, a move showcasing the central leadership's resolve to root out corruption, strictly govern the Communist Party of China (CPC) and enhance the rule of law.

This development came as a fresh round of elections has started to reshuffle government leaders and legislators at local levels, sending a stern warning to anyone with the idea of winning through fraudulent means.

The 45 deputies to the National People's Congress, elected from the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress, committed vote buying and bribery during the election in 2013.

The electoral fraud, the first of its kind to have taken place at the provincial level since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, seriously violated the Party's discipline, state laws, as well as political discipline and rules.

It also severely breached organizational discipline and sabotaged the electoral systems of the Party and the people's congress system.

With the disqualification of the 45 deputies, the central leadership has demonstrated its zero tolerance toward vote buying and firm commitment to fighting corruption.

Any violation of Party discipline and state laws, no matter who is involved, or how many are involved, will be dealt with in a thorough manner, and the guilty will be given no leniency.

Maintaining a "high voltage" crackdown on electoral fraud will help safeguard the people's congress system, which is China's basic political system.

The people's congress system is a fundamental institutional arrangement that integrates the principles of upholding the Party's leadership, the people being masters of the country and implementing the rule of law.

The people's congress electoral system constitutes an important part of the country's socialist democracy and rule of law.

Whether the election is fair or not directly decides whether citizens' rights to elect and to be elected are respected, and whether lawmakers at various levels can truly represent the people's interests.

Vote buying, a blatant challenge to the people's congress system and socialist democracy, must be eradicated.

Starting this year, a new round of elections will reshuffle legislators and government leaders at the township and county levels, involving more than 900 million voters nationwide.

Holding clean and fair elections will be vital for upholding the political development path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, reinforcing the CPC's governing status and safeguarding the people's rights as masters of their country.
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi exchanged views Tuesday with his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung-se, on the situation of the Korean peninsula.

In a telephone conversation, Wang noted that China has clearly expressed its opposition to the recent nuclear test carried out by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

China endorsed the necessary response to the DPRK's nuclear test by the UN Security Council and called on all sides to remain calm, exercise restraint and refrain from further actions that would heighten tension, Wang said.

The settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula requires that all sides eventually come back to the negotiation table, he said.

Reiterating China's opposition against the U.S. deployment of the anti-missile system of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea, the Chinese foreign minister urged South Korea to respect China's concerns and act with discretion.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd R) and his wife Peng Liyuan (R) pose for a group photo with Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2nd L) and his wife in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 13, 2016. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- China will support Peru in hosting the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday.

Xi told visiting Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski that China is ready to work with the Latin American country to make greater contributions to the Asia-Pacific and global economic growth through the APEC meeting.

The 24th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting will be held in Peru's capital city Lima in November. Kuczynski said Peru is looking forward to hosting a successful meeting with China's support.

Peru warmly welcomes Xi to attend the meeting and make a state visit to the country, according to a joint statement issued following the talks between the two heads of state.

Kuczynski is paying his first foreign visit to China from Monday to Friday. The visit shows the Peruvian people's admiration toward China for its achievements in independent development, Kuczynski told Xi.

Kuczynski was sworn in on July 28 after winning Peru's presidential race in June.

Xi held a red carpet ceremony to welcome Kuczynski ahead of their formal talks.

During the talks, Xi called on both countries to continue high-level contact and expand exchanges between governments, political parties, legislatures and at local levels to consolidate the political foundation for their long-term friendship.

He urged the two sides to enhance pragmatic cooperation in trade, energy, mining, infrastructure and other fields, fully implement the bilateral free trade agreement, and push forward cooperation in industrial capacity, investment, agriculture, green industry and new energy.

Xi also stressed that the two countries should strengthen ties in culture, education, media and law enforcement.

As for global issues, the Chinese president hopes both sides will maintain coordination and collaboration in global economic governance, climate change, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in order to safeguard the common interests of developing countries.

Xi pledged that China is willing to deepen cooperation in all directions with Peru as well as other Latin American nations.

For his part, Kuczynski said Peru is ready to strengthen ties with China in various areas, including cooperation on local economic governance and public infrastructure construction. ' According to the joint statement issued following the talks, China and Peru will continue to conduct a feasibility study on a railway project to link the Pacific to the Atlantic.

As for the South China Sea issue, Peru hopes disputes will be solved peacefully through dialogue and negotiation between parties directly concerned, said the joint statement.
TEHRAN, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese ambassador to Iran, Pang Sen, highlighted here on Tuesday the growing ties between China and Iran and stressed the expansion of ties further.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference, Pang said that Iran and China's relations are presently in a progressive motion, particularly following the official visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in January this year to Iran.

Xi's visit was a "successful" one and both sides agreed to develop a comprehensive plan for promoting relations for the future, he said.

Since then, officials from the two countries are in constant contacts and delegations from Iran and China have visited the other country for further negotiations on mutual ties, Pang said.

Iran-China trade value stood at 33.85 billion U.S. dollars last year, and has reached 14.1 billion U.S. dollars in the first half year of 2016, he added.

Pang also said that the non-finance investment of Chinese investors in Iran reached 270 million U.S. dollars from January to June, with a 43.8 percent increase year on year.

Meanwhile, China imported 15 million tons of crude oil from Iran in the same time span, which represents a 2.5 percent increase year on year, he added.

He also stressed that the projects carried out by China in Iran, including Tehran-Isfahan railway project, have made considerable progress.

In the meantime, cultural ties between two countries have witnessed positive trend of progress over the past years, Pang said. "Culture, education, media and tourism have been among the top areas of cooperation between Iran and China."

Last month, Chinese cultural festival titled "2016 Experience China in Iran" featured northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region through a photo exhibition, music performance and other cultural activities at Tehran's Niavaran Cultural Center.

The exhibition, drawn from the collection of major cultural items, offered a selection of local garments and musical instruments with a range of styles and cultural uses.

Presently, China is pushing forward with the important strategy of the Belt and Road Initiative, which has been welcomed by Iran, the Chinese ambassador said, adding that Iran is China's partner in cooperation for this initiative.

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, refers to building a Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aiming at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes.
JERUSALEM, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) signed Tuesday a deal to resolve an outstanding debt in unpaid electric bills, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

The PNA accumulated a debt of about two billion shekels (about 530 million U.S. dollars) in unpaid electric bills.

Under the deal, the PNA will pay Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) 570 million shekels (about 151 million dollars) in 48 payments, a statement by Israel's Finance Ministry said. The rest of the debt will be erased.

Also, the management of the operational and commercial aspects of Palestinian electricity market, which has been under Israeli control, will be under the responsibility of the Palestinian National Authority.

Israel also promised to release 1.14 billion shekels (about 302 million dollars) of Palestinian taxes and costume which Israel withheld in the recent years.

The deal was signed by Israel's Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, Major General Yoav Mordechai, Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), and Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh.

It followed year-long negotiations between Kahlon and his office, COGAT officers, and Palestinian government officials.

According to Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was briefed on the agreement, but his diplomatic-security cabinet has not held any discussions on it or been briefed on it.

Kahlon hailed the new deal. "The agreement ensures regular supply of electricity and economic development for the (Palestinian) authority," he said in a statement released by his office.

"A stable Palestinian economy is an economical, political and security interest of Israel," he said.

The statement also quoted al-Sheikh as saying that "transferring responsibility to the Palestinians will allow complete control of the electricity consumption of Palestinian residents. This agreement will allow the IEC to manage its engagement with the Palestinians through one address."

The IEC had carried out power outages in the West Bank in April 2016 and January 2015 over the debt, facing criticism that the act is a form of "collective punishment" for the Palestinians, who depend on Israel for their supply of electricity.

Israel occupied the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip territories in the 1967 Mideast War.

The IEC provides most of the electricity to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a total of approximately 120 megawatts. Israel sells the electricity to the PNA, who sells it to Palestinian distribution companies that supply it to households.

The PNA, which governs the Palestinian territories in the West Bank in accordance with the 1993 Oslo Accords, is financially strapped and largely depends on foreign aid to support itself.
OTTAWA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Tuesday announced that he will attend the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York City from September 19 to 20.

In a press release, Trudeau said Canada is committed to making meaningful contributions to solving important global challenges, such as climate change, international peace and security, and refugees and migration.

At the UNGA, Trudeau will advocate for greater global leadership to address the refugee and migrant crisis, reiterate Canada's intention to once more play a major role in peacekeeping and conflict prevention efforts, and encourage countries to follow through on the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

He will also deliver a Keynote address to the 2016 United Nations Private Sector Forum, which will bring together governments, businesses, and civil society to focus on the role of business in advancing development and preventing global instability.

Trudeau will take part in the Refugee and Migration Summit, hosted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as co-host U.S. President Barack Obama's Leaders' Summit on Refugees.

Canadian officials who will accompany Trudeau to UN, include Minister of Foreign Affairs Stephane Dion, Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, and Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship John McCallum.
File photo shows former Israeli president Shimon Peres. Former Israeli president Shimon Peres had a stroke on Tuesday evening and was taken to a hospital, his office said in a statement. (Xinhua/JINI)

JERUSALEM, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Former Israeli president Shimon Peres had a stroke on Tuesday evening and was taken to a hospital, his office said in a statement.

The Israel's ninth president was hospitalized for treatment in the Tel Hashomer Hospital outside Tel Aviv, the statement said.

"His condition is stable, and he is fully conscious," the statement read. "He is receiving medical treatment in accordance with his condition," it added.

Peres, 93, was one of Israel's most popular presidents.

In January, he was rushed to a hospital twice after experiencing chest pains. He was later diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat.

The former president, who ended his tenure in 2014, remained active in the public sphere through his activities at the Peres Center for Peace, advocating for coexistence and peace between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. He is also active in promoting high-tech ingenuity worldwide.
This file photo taken on November 14, 2015 shows former Israeli President Shimon Peres delivering a speech in honor of the victims of the Paris attacks in Rabin Square in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv. (AFP photo)

JERUSALEM, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Former Israeli president Shimon Peres had a stroke on Tuesday evening and was taken to a hospital, his office said in a statement.

The Israel's ninth president was hospitalized for treatment in the Tel Hashomer Hospital outside Tel Aviv, the statement said.

"His condition is stable, and he is fully conscious," the statement read. "He is receiving medical treatment in accordance with his condition," it added.

Peres, 93, was one of Israel's most popular presidents.

In January, he was rushed to a hospital twice after experiencing chest pains. He was later diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat.

The former president, who ended his tenure in 2014, remained active in the public sphere through his activities at the Peres Center for Peace, advocating for coexistence and peace between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. He is also active in promoting high-tech ingenuity worldwide.
China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) Chief Executive Chui Sai On (L) meets with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa during his visit in Lisbon, Portugal, Sept. 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Zhang Liyun)

LISBON, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chief Executive of Macao Special Administrative Region Chui Sai On has said Macao is keen to strengthen cooperation on economy and language education with Portugal.

During his meeting with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Monday evening, Chui briefed the president on the fourth Macao-Portugal joint committee meeting, which was held earlier in the day.

Chui said Macao would actively promote adequate economic diversification and regional cooperation while further strengthening cooperation on economy and Portuguese language education with Portugal.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese president said both sides had been enjoying good cooperative relations in finance, economy, culture, and language and the Portuguese language was a key element for establishing good relationships.

He cited the forum for economic and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries as an example of the Portuguese language's function in promoting friendly relationships between the two sides.

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said when meeting with Chui that Macao, an important bridge for maintaining a good relationship between China and Portugal, was actively promoting adequate economic diversification, which opened the door for cooperation for Portugal, and also helped to promote cooperation and development in economy and innovation in science and technology.

Chui, who co-chaired the fourth Macao-Portugal joint committee meeting on Monday with Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva, told a press conference that through the efforts of both parties, Macao and Portugal had signed cooperation agreements on more than 120 projects, covering 33 fields.

He said he was satisfied with the fruitful results, and hoped to make further enhancements in bilateral cooperation.

For his part, Santos Silva said Macao was an important exchange platform for enterprises between China and Portugal and also a bridge for Portuguese language education and mutual exchange.

He said the Portuguese government was duty-bound to offer appropriate support for training for Portuguese-speaking professionals and hoped that both sides would further enhance the cooperation in the high-tech domain.
ADEN, Yemen, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Five operatives of the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch were killed when a U.S. drone strike targeted their vehicle in Yemen's central province of al-Bayda on Tuesday, a military official told Xinhua.

The military source confirmed that missiles fired from the unmanned U.S. aircraft destroyed a vehicle carrying al-Qaida operatives in the mountains of Radaa area in central al-Bayda province.

The military source said that "the slain al-Qaida men were apparently traveling from Marib province and heading to meet their comrades in the al-Bayda province."

Scores of the al-Qaida gunmen launched numerous armed attacks against positions of army troops loyal to the Shiite Houthi group in al-Bayda province in the past few days, according to the Yemeni source.

On Tuesday, the United States announced that its military killed 13 al-Qaida militants in three separate strikes in Yemen in recent weeks, but it did not specify how the strikes were conducted or reveal the identities of the militants targeted.

The U.S. drones have been active over skies of Yemeni cities since years ago, launching hundreds of air strikes that killed scores of al-Qaida leaders and many other extremists.

Yemen has recently seen a growing number of al-Qaida activities in eastern and southern provinces, due to the prolonged security vacuum resulting from the 19-month civil war between the exiled government and Houthi rebels who seized much of the country's north, including capital Sanaa since 2014.

The military conflict has left more than 6,400 dead, according to the UN, displaced thousands and left the country's civilians facing a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
GENEVA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The yellow fever outbreaks are under control in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) due to completion of massive vaccination campaigns in the two countries, an expert from the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday.

"Those outbreaks were under control now, and there had not been any new cases in Angola since June 23, and since July 12 in DRC," Sylvie Briand, director of WHO Infectious Hazard Management, told a press conference after WHO convened a meeting focused on yellow fever strategies for the future.

Recently there had been major mass vaccination campaigns to stop the transmission of the virus, but also pre-emptive efforts to make sure that the transmission would not start again with the beginning of the rainy season, which was imminent.

According to the expert, 7 million people had been vaccinated in DRC's capital city if Kinshasa in less than 10 days. Another 3 million people had been vaccinated in the area of the border with Angola, to prevent transmission from the provinces of Angola which had been affected.

On the other side of the border, in Angola, around 3 million people had already been vaccinated as part of a first mass vaccination campaign.

In total, more than 15 million people had been vaccinated so far in Angola, which represented 65 percent of the population.

"It was still necessary to better protect certain districts and provinces, but the risk of a major outbreak was now over," Briand said.

Briand said the risk of yellow fever had increased in the recent past since intense urbanization in Africa, increasing mobility of the populations within the countries affected as well as between those countries and the rest of the world, due to disasters, conflicts but also professional mobility.

Also, the El Nino phenomenon was responsible for heavy rains, spurring higher mosquito densities, especially in urban settings.

With 32 yellow fever endemic countries in Africa, Briand warned there were still areas at risk. In DRC, beyond the capital and the border provinces where vaccination campaigns had been led, the rest of the country was still at risk.
Photo taken on Jan. 17, 2016 shows the stone monument in front of the headquarters building of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in downtown Beijing, capital of China. The China-initiated multilateral bank started operational on Jan. 16. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

GRONINGEN, the Netherlands, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- After a swift start, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has solid governance, good policies and good cooperation among members to take the challenge of building up more projects, a Dutch policy advisor said on Tuesday.

The policy advisor at the Dutch Ministry of Finance made the remarks at a workshop at Groningen University in the north of the Netherlands.

"What remains now the main challenge is to build up more standalone projects and do it more in the private sector. Also is important the implementation of the policies in practice," Alex Niatsetski told dozens of researchers attending the workshop on the impact, opportunities and difficulties of the Belt and Road Initiative for the China-EU relations.

Niatsetski, who is also advisor to a Dutch alternate member of the board of directors at the AIIB, emphasized that the Beijing-based lender is not a Chinese bank but an international financial institution with its own governance to serve two basic goals -- to foster sustainable economic development in the region by amongst others investing in infrastructure and to promote regional cooperation.

"It has been a really swift process since the announcement of the initiative by Chinese President Xi Jinping in October 2013," he said.

"In March 2015 the Netherlands decided to join as prospective founding member. After intensive negotiations about the policies and strategies of the bank, the final agreement has been satisfactory for all the prospective founding members. The Netherlands ratified the treaty in December. Then in January, the official inauguration of the AIIB took place in Beijing and the bank officially became operational. And half a year after that inauguration, the first four projects have been approved by the board of directors in Beijing," he explained.

In his analysis, the Netherlands has clear arguments to be a member of the AIIB.

"We really recognize the great financial gap in infrastructure sectors in the region, and that by complementing to that gap, by offering capital through the bank, we would foster economic growth and by doing that as an open economy with a big export sector, we could benefit from it ourselves," he said.

"The second argument is the direct influence on policies. As a prospective founding member, you are sitting at the table and negotiating on policies, you can really have influence. The third argument is a geopolitical one: it is important to cooperate within the region, with China but also with other members," he added.

As to the management of the bank, the Dutch expert noted that the consensus rule works really well in practice.

"The board comes together four times a year, and decides on more operational questions like policies and projects, but in practice they decide by consensus. Our experience so far is that the president of the bank, who is Chinese, really manages these dynamics really well," said the Dutch policy advisor.

Niatsetski believed that the AIIB has solid environmental and social policies comparable to that of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, saying "We made analyses about the differences and those are really minor, so it is really solid."

"Also, the procurement policy which looks at how the contracts are awarded to companies who build the infrastructure is also along the international standards. Dutch companies can also apply for projects if they have the best price-quality deal," he added.

Niatsetski considered it important to underline that for the AIIB, there is no competition with other IFIs (international financial institutions).

"The first thing that the AIIB did was making co-financing agreements with other MDBs," said the policy advisor.

"That means that the AIIB in the starting phase can trust the knowledge and guideline and capacity of other Multilateral Development Banks, and they can build their own experience from that. I think that is a very good signal," he said.

In June, AIIB approved its first four loans totalling 509 million U.S. dollars to fund infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Indonesia. These projects span the energy, urban development and transport sectors.

The AIIB, which supports infrastructure development and regional connectivity in Asia, is targeting at lending of about 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2016.

The AIIB will begin reviewing membership applications in September as it calls on more countries and regions to join its infrastructure funding efforts. Canada has decided to apply for membership. If Canada joins the AIIB, it will be the first North American member of the multilateral bank.
RIYADH, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry demanded on Tuesday Bashar al-Assad's government to stick to the ceasefire for the best interests of Syrians, Saudi Press Agency reported.

An official source from the ministry stated that Saudi Arabia supports the implementation of the temporary ceasefire in Syria.

The source said the truce will contribute to relieving the humanitarian suffering of Syrian people.

Saudi Arabia also stressed the importance of abiding by this truce by Assad's government and his allies, adding that the truce would help restart the political process in Syria which would lead to peaceful transition of power.

The truce came into effect on Monday evening brokered by the United States and Russia.
WARSAW, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- European Council President Donald Tusk said here Tuesday European Union(EU) should be united and Poland should not join the group of countries who want to rock the European boat.

After a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, Tusk said "European Union is our common good and as such it deserves our attention and support. Here in Warsaw, I did my best to convince the Prime Minister that Polish government should refrain from undermining EU's position."

"We need a strong, stable and united Europe. It is crucial that we commit ourselves to building our common future", he said.

Tusk is currently visiting EU member states in an attempt to forge a common stance on a series of issues. He said the main purpose of his Warsaw visit was to strengthen Poland's position in the EU.

Experts said that current migrant crisis, economic downturn and British decision to leave the EU pose a serious threat to European solidarity.

After the meeting, Polish government spokesman Rafal Bochenek said Tusk and Szydlo also discussed the pending EU summit in Bratislava, Slovenia on Friday.

"We believe that changes in the European Union are certainly necessary and should be initiated with the forthcoming summit," said Bochenek.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Mogens Lykketoft, the president of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, announced that the 193-member body, in the shadow of a bribery scandal involving one of his predecessors, passed on Tuesday a Code of Ethics for the office and introduced an oath to be sworn by his successors.

Minutes before his last formal meeting with reporters as president of the General Assembly (PGA), the General Assembly passed the measure as part of a move to "revitalize" the UN body.

He was to be replaced later in the day by Ambassador Peter Thomson of Fiji as president of the 71st session of the General Assembly and the first to take the 100-word oath.

Lykketoft, a Danish politician who was not involved in the scandal, worked hard to ensure there will be no further abuses of the office.

Ambassador John Ashe of Antigua and Barbuda, 61, was found dead in June in his home in Dobbs Ferry in the U.S. state of New York, following an accident while lifting a barbell during an exercise session, U.S. authorities said.

Ashe, president of the 68th General Assembly session from September 2013 to September 2014, was accused by federal prosecutors of accepting more than 1 million U.S. dollars in bribes, turning his position into a "platform for profit." He pleaded innocent.

Instead of "giving an assessment of the year we have been through," Lykketoft said, "I wanted to inform you in particular ... we just adopted the revitalization resolution a few minutes ago and what we have now is quite new Code of Conduct and an oath for the next president and all the transparency we have worked for also on the issue of the President of the General Assembly."

Lykketoft also said he sent a letter to the president of the Security Council and to the incoming president, copied to all UN member states on transparency in selection of the next secretary-general.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon retires on Dec. 31 after serving two five-year terms. There have been complaints that the selection process is not transparent enough.

"I think that this new standard should be seen as a bar, not the ceiling, and should be maintained throughout the entirety of the selection of the appointment process," he said. "That's also the reason why I've repeatedly had some critical remarks on the presumed lack of transparency in what the Security Council does in its straw polls."

"It's not a big issue because you (members of the media) are so quickly able to get hold of the outcome of the straw polls so we all know about it," he said. "But, I think it would have been more in line with the transparency we have fought for in the General Assembly if also formally there had been a transparent process in the Security Council."

"When we go forward it may be worth considering how to establish such an exercise or exploring ways to insure the memberships' own assessments of candidates can be fed into the selection process in the council," Lykketoft said.

The UN Charter says only the 15-member Security Council should recommend a candidate for the General Assembly to appoint as secretary-general.

Lykketoft this year instituted a program of "debates" in the assembly where announced candidates put forward by their governments were interviewed by members of the assembly.

He also said Christiana Figures, a Costa Rican diplomat, has dropped out, leaving nine candidates in the race.

The nearly 450 word Code of Conduct says consulting with member states the president must not receive or accept instructions "from any individual or governmental or non-governmental organization or group whatsoever ... shall avoid any situation involving a conflict between his or her own personal or private interest."

It also wants the PGA to insure the "greatest possible transparency in the utilization of property, premises, services and resources made available for the discharge of the functions of the office and ensure that they are used only for the official business of the Presidency and not for other purposes."
RABAT, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Pan-African parliament is awaiting the return of Morocco to the African Union (AU), the parliament's spokesman Roger Nkodo Dang said here on Tuesday.

"We are waiting for Morocco back to complete the list. We think that this parliament will play a basic role in unifying the continent," Nkodo Dang told the press following a meeting with spokesman of the Moroccan house of representatives Rachid Talbi Alami.

Morocco left the AU, at that time called Organization of African Unity, in 1984.

In July, Morocco formally announced its wish to rejoin the AU, 32 years after leaving over a sovereignty dispute.

Roger Nkodo Dang hailed Morocco's decision to return to the AU.

He added that his visit to Morocco aims to inform the Moroccan side, within a parliamentary framework, of the terms of returning to the parliament, noting that his meeting with Talbi Alami discussed bilateral issues of shared interest.

The Moroccan official said the talks involved Morocco's role at the continental level mainly regarding the development of investments.

The Pan-African parliament is headquartered in South Africa and comprises 270 deputies, which was established as an organ of the AU in order to ensure the full participation of African peoples in the development of the continent.
CAPE TOWN, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan is implementing peace because "we have no other option than having peace", visiting First Vice-President Taban Deng said here on Tuesday.

More violence is not an in South Sudan or anywhere elsewhere in Africa, Deng said at a press briefing after talks with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa.

"We have to settle so that people develop, so that people can have health services, people have roads and people are food secure," Deng said.

He said his government is very serious in implementing peace and there is no going back to any crisis or war.

Deng arrived in Cape Town earlier on Tuesday for talks with Ramaphosa on the peace process in South Sudan.

Ramaphosa said he and Deng had held "really good discussions" and are "confident that peace will finally be entrenched in South Sudan and they will now be moving to the development plan."

"We can say now that the guns have gone silent and they are working together in cooperation with President Salva Kiir. The government has become stable, the parliament has opened and we were very pleased and heartened to hear all these developments," said Ramaphosa, who has been appointed by President Jacob Zuma as peace envoy to South Sudan.

Ramaphosa said they have decided to set up a task team to work on matters of mutual interest.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The UN General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday opened its 71st annual session here, with joint efforts to carry out the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as its top priority.

Ambassador Peter Thomson of Fiji succeeds Mogens Lykketoft, a veteran Danish politician, as the president of the UNGA at its 71st session.

The following are basic facts about the UNGA and its main functions:

The UNGA, established in 1945 under the UN Charter, is a chief deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations.

It meets in regular sessions which last from September to December each year, and thereafter as required, at UN headquarters in New York.

Its major powers are to approve the United Nations budget, receive and consider reports from other parts of the United Nations, appoint the non-permanent members to the Security Council and the secretary-general on the recommendation of the Security Council, and make recommendations in the form of General Assembly Resolutions.

All the 193 UN member states belong to the UNGA, and each state, large or small, has one vote and is allowed to send up to five representatives.

Votes on important issues, such as recommendations on peace and security and the election of Security Council members, require a two-thirds majority of member states, while other questions are decided by a simple majority.

The UNGA can make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN Charter or affecting the powers and functions of other UN organs, except issues under discussion of the Security Council.

These recommendations cover a wide range of areas, including cooperation for maintaining world peace and security, the development of international law, the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the international collaboration in the economic, social, humanitarian, cultural, educational and health fields.

Though these recommendations do not carry the legal weight as a Security Council resolution does, the General Assembly may also take action if the Security Council fails to act, owing to the negative vote of a permanent member, a veto, in a case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression.

It can consider the matter immediately with a view to making recommendations to member states for collective measures to maintain or restore international peace and security.

The UNGA has, so far, initiated extensive political, economic, and humanitarian actions affecting the lives of millions of people throughout the world.

Outstanding examples include the Millennium Declaration of 2000 and the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document which reflected a commitment to attaining peace, security and disarmament, poverty eradication, safeguarding human rights, promoting the rule of law, and protecting the environment, among others.

The SDGs, a set of 17 development targets approved by world leaders in September 2015, serves as the blueprint for the global development efforts for the years leading up to 2030.

If a member state does not pay its annual dues, it is not allowed to vote under the Charter. However, exceptions can be made if the member state can show that conditions beyond its control contribute to the inability to pay.

In October, the General Assembly is expected to appoint the next UN secretary-general upon the recommendation of the Security Council to succeed the current UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, who will end his term on Dec. 31.
KIGALI, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Rwandan businesses were Tuesday called on to attend the upcoming China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair) as it presents an opportunity for the Rwandan private sector to forge more partnerships with their Chinese counterparts.

Gerald Mukubu, chief advocacy officer at Rwanda's Private Sector Federation, said the fair slated for next month, could also offer learning opportunity for Rwandans in terms of organizing trade exhibitions.

Mukubu spoke at a meeting organized by the Economic and Commercial Counsellor's Office of the Chinese embassy in Kigali to brief the businessmen about the exhibition.

The Canton Fair runs from Oct. 15 to Nov. 4 in south Chinese city of Guangzhou, during which commodities ranging from electronics, machinery to textiles and heath care products will be exhibited.

Mukubu urged business operators to go to China to explore business opportunities.

"It might be expensive to travel there, but I know you will win," he said, pointing to several benefits in terms of networking, bench-marking and getting some partnerships.

Canton Fair is arguably the largest trade fair in China, with the largest assortment of products, attendance, and number of business deals.

This is the 120th edition of the exhibition.

At the Kigali meeting, Zhang Liyong, the economics and commercial counsellor at the Chinese embassy in Kigali, echoed similar sentiments, noting that the fair will present both Rwanda and China with many opportunities in form of market as well as the needed products.
BUCHAREST, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Airbus Helicopters on Tuesday opened a new factory in central Romania to manufacture the twin-engine H215 helicopter.

"The first H215 helicopter 100 percent made in Romania should be out the assembly line in 2018," announced Airbus Helicopters Industries CEO Serge Durand.

France's Airbus investment puts Romania on the world map of helicopter manufacturers, said Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos who presided over the opening ceremony together with visiting French President Francois Hollande.

According to Ciolos, the helicopters in Romania will be built from scratch, with some of the parts brought from France and some provided by Romania.

The Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Defence might purchase H215 helicopters to be manufactured in the country, he added.

"This is a French-Romanian project, a European project, and I want to congratulate our German colleagues as well who are sharing in our ambition here of providing helicopters for military and civilian purposes," said Hollande.

The Airbus Helicopters factory, with an investment worth 52 million euros (58.33 million U.S. dollars), is located at Ghimbav in central Romania. It covers an area of 10,000 square metres.
CAPE TOWN, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- South Africa is sending a good signal to investors and rating agencies to avoid a possible sovereign ratings downgrade, President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday.

South Africa is resolved to take all actions necessary to reinforce policy certainty and improve business confidence, Zuma said in oral replies to questions in the National Assembly.

It's widely expected that South Africa's sovereign ratings would be downgraded to junk status in the coming months.

In reply to a question about what plan of action the government has in place to avoid such a downgrade, Zuma said the government remains committed to the February 2016 fiscal targets, which are aimed at stabilizing debt and containing the rate of increase in debt service costs.

The government will also take steps necessary to change the composition of expenditure towards investment so that government can make a contribution towards growing the economy and creating more work opportunities, said Zuma.

"We therefore have every reason to believe that our collective actions as South African can deliver a better economic performance in the next few months and years," Zuma said.

Data last week showing that the South African economy grew at 3.3 percent quarter on quarter in the second quarter of 2016 is a good sign that the collective efforts are begin to yield fruit, said Zuma.

He said the government and the private sector have been working on various initiatives to support the economy.

This includes recommendations for sector interventions in tourism, agriculture, health, manufacturing, setting up of a small business fund and initiatives to support youth employment.

"We will do this while simultaneously communicating a clear message that growth-friendly fiscal consolidation will continue," the president said.
The President of the 70th session of the General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, briefs the media one last time before leaving office at the UN headquarters in New York, Sept. 13, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Mogens Lykketoft, the president of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, announced that the 193-member body, in the shadow of a bribery scandal involving one of his predecessors, passed on Tuesday a Code of Ethics for the office and introduced an oath to be sworn by his successors.

Minutes before his last formal meeting with reporters as president of the General Assembly (PGA), the General Assembly passed the measure as part of a move to "revitalize" the UN body.

He was to be replaced later in the day by Ambassador Peter Thomson of Fiji as president of the 71st session of the General Assembly and the first to take the 100-word oath.

Lykketoft, a Danish politician who was not involved in the scandal, worked hard to ensure there will be no further abuses of the office.

Ambassador John Ashe of Antigua and Barbuda, 61, was found dead in June in his home in Dobbs Ferry in the U.S. state of New York, following an accident while lifting a barbell during an exercise session, U.S. authorities said.

Ashe, president of the 68th General Assembly session from September 2013 to September 2014, was accused by federal prosecutors of accepting more than 1 million U.S. dollars in bribes, turning his position into a "platform for profit." He pleaded innocent.

Instead of "giving an assessment of the year we have been through," Lykketoft said, "I wanted to inform you in particular ... we just adopted the revitalization resolution a few minutes ago and what we have now is quite new Code of Conduct and an oath for the next president and all the transparency we have worked for also on the issue of the President of the General Assembly."

Lykketoft also said he sent a letter to the president of the Security Council and to the incoming president, copied to all UN member states on transparency in selection of the next secretary-general.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon retires on Dec. 31 after serving two five-year terms. There have been complaints that the selection process is not transparent enough.

"I think that this new standard should be seen as a bar, not the ceiling, and should be maintained throughout the entirety of the selection of the appointment process," he said. "That's also the reason why I've repeatedly had some critical remarks on the presumed lack of transparency in what the Security Council does in its straw polls."

"It's not a big issue because you (members of the media) are so quickly able to get hold of the outcome of the straw polls so we all know about it," he said. "But, I think it would have been more in line with the transparency we have fought for in the General Assembly if also formally there had been a transparent process in the Security Council."

"When we go forward it may be worth considering how to establish such an exercise or exploring ways to insure the memberships' own assessments of candidates can be fed into the selection process in the council," Lykketoft said.

The UN Charter says only the 15-member Security Council should recommend a candidate for the General Assembly to appoint as secretary-general.

Lykketoft this year instituted a program of "debates" in the assembly where announced candidates put forward by their governments were interviewed by members of the assembly.

He also said Christiana Figures, a Costa Rican diplomat, has dropped out, leaving nine candidates in the race.

The nearly 450 word Code of Conduct says consulting with member states the president must not receive or accept instructions "from any individual or governmental or non-governmental organization or group whatsoever ... shall avoid any situation involving a conflict between his or her own personal or private interest."

It also wants the PGA to insure the "greatest possible transparency in the utilization of property, premises, services and resources made available for the discharge of the functions of the office and ensure that they are used only for the official business of the Presidency and not for other purposes."
RABAT, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Morocco said on Tuesday that a bill adopted by the U.S. Congress that would allow 9/11 victims' families to sue the government of Saudi Arabia would "weaken international counter-terrorism efforts."

"The Kingdom of Morocco, which condemns terrorism under all its forms and regardless of its expressions, has always been committed to the international community's fight against this plague," said the Moroccan foreign ministry in a statement.

On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which would remove sovereign immunity for countries found to be involved in terrorist attacks on the U.S. soil.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, outside Washington and in Pennsylvania, were Saudi nationals.

After the 2001 terror attacks, the Arab states, mainly in the Gulf region, have shown a strong commitment in supporting morally, militarily and financially international efforts in the counter-terrorism fight, said the foreign ministry statement.

"The perpetrators of terrorist acts should be held responsible for their acts before justice. But in no case should isolated terrorist acts of some individuals be blamed on their countries of origin," the statement said.
Syrian pro-regime fighters walk in a bombed-out steet in Ramussa on September 9, 2016, after they took control of the strategically important district on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Aleppo a day earlier. (AFP/Xinhua)

ALEPPO, Syria, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Even though the emergency room in al-Razi hospital in the northern city of Aleppo wasn't completely empty after a ceasefire went into effect Monday evening, but the medical team there was somehow relaxed as the night was relatively quiet after the truce.

Al-Razi is the main hospital to receive those who are injured when a mortar shell would slam government-controlled areas in Aleppo.

As the U.S.-Russian brokered truce went into effect in Syria on Monday, the medical team there was for once relaxed, compared with previous nights that have been thick with pain and grief of the victims.

Muhammad, one of the paramedic, usually takes two night shifts during the week.

On the night of the truce, he said he was for once relaxed that not a lot of people were taken to the emergency room, even though a few number did.

"Before the truce, we used to have busy nights thick with pain of those wounded and the families of victims who had been killed by rebels shelling, but after the truce, the situation has largely declined," he told Xinhua.

Last Saturday, the U.S. and Russia announced they had agreed on achieving a ceasefire in Syria, as the first step toward the political solution.

The Syrian army announced on Monday that the regime of silence will be implemented in all Syrian areas for seven days.

Still, state news agency SANA said the rebels have actually violated the truce in several places, including Aleppo.

Xinhua reporters visiting Aleppo heard on Tuesday the thud of two mortar shells slamming near the Saadallah al-Jabiri square, one of the main squares in Aleppo, under the government control.

Muhammad said a few cases arrived at the hospital the night when the truce went into force.

"Even though the rebels fired some mortars after the truce, but it wasn't as hard as before and we received a few number of wounded people and two martyrs," he said.

His superior, Ali, told Xinhua that three people were killed and over 25 wounded as a result of the shelling after the truce, admitting that this number is small in comparison with what the emergency room had received in the pre-truce times.

"In previous night we would be always on alert, due to the large numbers of wounded people, not to mention those killed. I can say that the coming days will tell about the truce and how well it could hold, but I personally don't trust the rebels," he told Xinhua.

But personally, Ali didn't have much hope about the continuation of the truce, saying previous attempts had shown that the rebels would for sure break the truce.

"We are with the truce and ceasefire and we are also with bringing to a halt of the destruction of our country, but I believe that the rebels are not trustworthy and will not hold on to the ceasefire for a long time," he said.

Yaser, a physician in Razi Hospital, also shared his colleagues' opinion, saying that the night of the truce was calmer than other nights, but remained skeptical about its outlooks.

"We received a few number of wounded people, it was less than previous nights, but given the fact that there is a truce, we shouldn't be receiving wounded people from shelling of the rebels," he said.

Not only the hospital people were less occupied than before, but in the frontline al-Abbara neighborhood, which is adjacent to a rebel-held area called Bab al-Nasr, people said their night was calm and no mortar landed on them.

The rebels in Bab al-Nasr used to shell al-Abbara with many mortar shells and explosive-rigged gas cylinders on daily basis ahead of the truce.

Abu Muhammad, a man from al-Abbara neighborhood who has a 13-member family, said their lives in that neighborhood is a living nightmare.

"We used to have mortar shells striking us every day, but the sad part is that we have become used to this life," he told Xinhua at al-Abbara, where littered glass was seen on the ground from a mortar attack that happened on Monday morning ahead of the truce.

"Yesterday after the truce went into force, our neighborhood was clam, and we felt strange, as we have not slept as peaceful as last night for a very long time. After 7 pm, there was no mortar shells or improvised rockets slamming our area," he said.

Still, the 48-year-old man said he wasn't optimistic about a long-lasting truce.

"I am not optimistic about the continuation of the truce, because I don't trust the rebels as they have violated the previous truce. I would really love to see this truce holding and I am supporting it, but if the rebels are taking advantage to regroup and strengthen themselves, then I am against it," he said.

Another resident of al-Abbara, Saleh, a father of five who runs a supermarket, said "our life here is like a never-ending horror movie. Mortar shells, explosive-laced gas cylinders, slamming us everyday. We have become accustomed to this lifestyle."

But he said that after the truce went into force, nothing slammed or hit their neighborhood.

Al-Abbara, which is a mixture of residential and shopping stores area, was different on Tuesday morning, as tens of children were running and playing, enjoying the second day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, or the Feast of Sacrifice.

They kids ran without fear of a sniper that used to shoot at the passersby in the back alley of al-Abbara.

Known as the Sniper of Bab al-Nasr, a rebel sniper used to disturb people's daily lives when he fires at random targets on al-Abbara.

Even some school children there had dropped out of school for fear of being targeted.

Ahmad Hussain, 18, was one of those dropouts.

"I had dropped out of school, as the situation was so dangerous. One day I was leaving for school, when a sniper from the rebel side shot dead a man near me. I was traumatized," he told Xinhua.

But that unforgettable experience was not his last.

On Monday, the first day of the holiday that should be fun with celebration, Hussain lost one of his friends.

"I was out with friends to celebrate the Eid al-Adha feast, when a mortar shell slammed nearby, many of my friends were wounded, and one of them died," he recounted.

Having mixed feelings as almost all of the people in frontline areas, Hussain said he wants the military to sweep in rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo to rid the city of the insurgents.

"We don't want this truce, every time there is a truce, the rebels continue to fire their mortars. I believe that the military solution is the best to face those people. But if the truce was real and they respect it, then I would surely welcome it," he said.

Even though the truce was breached more than one time on Tuesday, but the intensity of the clashes have largely declined, and Aleppo was quiet in terms of the sound of mortars, but noisy and busy with young people celebrating the Eid feast in the Mokambo district, which is punctuated with high-end restaurants.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (C) arrives at a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of September 11 attacks at the National 9/11 Memorial, in New York, the United States, on Sept. 11, 2016. The United States on Sunday commemorated the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

By Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Questions have been raised over the health of U.S. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton after she suddenly fell ill on Sunday, which could become a stumbling block for the 68-year-old candidate in her presidential bid.

Clinton nearly collapsed Sunday due to alleged pneumonia after attending the Sept. 11 ceremony in New York. While her aides said she would be back on the campaign trail in a couple of days, the incident is the latest in a string of health concerns about Clinton.

Some analysts said perceptions of Clinton's poor health may be exploited by her Republican rival Donald Trump, 70.

"There certainly are going to be more questions about Clinton's health in light of the recent incident," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

Clinton will need to provide more information about her health and reassure voters that she is up to the job, including answering questions and releasing relevant medical records, West said.

She also can use this episode to demand more health information from Trump, who has not released his medical records either, he said.

Clinton is one of the oldest candidates to run for the White House since former President Ronald Reagan. But while Reagan's age was a factor, he used humor to deflect public concern and kept up a vigorous schedule to reassure voters.

Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua that Trump has been relatively tame in his response to Clinton's mishap on Sunday, and has largely let media coverage of the event speak for itself.

"He has carefully avoided what could be seen as gloating over Clinton's misfortune, yet allows the media narrative to vindicate some of the questions that he and his surrogates have raised about Clinton's health," Mahaffee said.

For Clinton, as the latest episode has raised concerns among the broader U.S. public about her health, it'll be important for her to recuperate rapidly and come out strongly in the upcoming presidential debates. The first debate is slated to be held on Sept. 26.

Given Trump's age, paucity of medical records, and what appears to be a predilection towards fast food, there are legitimate concerns from medical experts about both candidates' health, Mahaffee said.

As a candidate, Clinton needs to tackle this issue with full transparency and directly address the issue, Mahaffee said.

"The perception that something is being hidden is worse than acknowledging that Clinton has fallen ill due to the recent tempo of the campaign or other factors," he said, referring to Sunday's incident, when Clinton's team appeared to try to sugar coat the issue.

While the team initially said she was overheating, the temperature Sunday was mild. And there was a 90-minute period in which there was not a word from the team on Clinton's health.

"While there is no crime per se with Clinton's health, one can apply the political rule that the cover up is worse than the crime. It only empowers conspiracy theorists and feeds the narrative of the Clintons being overly secretive," Mahaffee said.

Some analysts said both candidates can take a lesson from the 1980 presidential election, when Reagan, 69, was the oldest person to ever seek the presidency.

Reagan approached the medical issue with complete transparency during his campaign, allowing his doctors to release a wide range of medical records.

Additionally, he used lots of imagery of him being outdoors and working on his ranch to portray an image of health and strength, Mahaffee noted.
BRASILIA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Michel Temer on Tuesday announced his new Investment Partnerships Program (PPI), which aims to revive the national infrastructure sector through a series of tenders and privatizations.

The first phase of PPI will cover 25 important projects, including concessions for major airports, highways, railways, electricity distribution companies, hydroelectric plants and oil and gas fields.

Concessions for the airports of four major cities, Porto Alegre, Salvador, Florianopolis and Fortaleza, will be chosen in the first half of 2017.

The second half of the year will see concessions handed out to top major highways, BR-364/365, linking Goias to Minas Gerais, and BR-101/115/290 in Rio Grande do Sul.

Six energy distribution companies, which are currently owned by state utility, Eletrobras, will receive private sector concessions, including Amazonas Energia, Boa Vista Energia, Eletroacre, Ceal, Cepisa and Ceron. These will take place in late 2017 and early 2018.

Three hydroelectric plants, Sao Simao, Miranda and Volta Grande, will all be tendered out in 2017.

This broad agenda marks the beginning of Temer to fulfill his privatization pledges since being confirmed as president after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff.

At a speech announcing the plan in Brasilia, Temer said that his government would provide judicial security and regulatory stability to the private sector "in order to create the proper environment for the realization of private investment."

"The government cannot do it all, but it must always act as an agent to facilitate growth and employment," he added.

In a document sent to Congress accompanying the plan, the Temer government harshly criticized "unsustainable" negotiations held with the private sector in the past.

"To face the most severe economic crisis in its history, Brazil sees itself needing to improve its infrastructure," read the document.
Journalists watch live broadcast at media center of the G20 summit in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 4, 2016. The 11th G20 summit opened here on Sunday. (Xinhua/Zhang Cheng)

By Gao Zhikai

BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- The just-closed G20 Hangzhou Summit was unprecedented and broke many records both in form and substance.

In form, China dazzled the G20 leaders and the world at large with a most impressive display of Chinese hospitalities and organizational excellence, by bringing out the best that Hangzhou City and China at large were able to offer for the G20 and the whole world.

The gala performanceat at the West Lake scenic zone in the evening of September 4, including the ballet dancers dancing to the tune of the Swan Lake, was a great artistic achievement in itself.

In substance, the G20 Hangzhou Summit broke the record in inviting many guest countries, especially developing countries, to the Hangzhou Summit, thus making it the most inclusive G20 Summit so far.

The wide range of agenda items and topics for the Hangzhou Summit, focusing on innovation, inclusive development, integrated development, infrastructure, sustainable development, green financing, etc. enabled the G20 leaders to look at these important topics in a more integrated and coordinated manner.

Furthermore, Chinas effort to promote the transformation of G20 from a reactionary framework to deal with crisis, to a new framework for more coordinated and integrated global economic development in the coming years and decades, at least showed the G20 and the world at large a new and alternative way to address global development issues.

It may not be surprising that history may record the G20 Hangzhou Summit as one of the, if not the most successive and impressive G20 Summits.

While we can leave it to historians to work on this, it is however significant to think about what to be done to make G20 better and more effective:

MOVING TO GUIDING GLOBAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The rise of G20 was mainly due to the need of greater international cooperation in dealing with the international financial crisis around 2008. In a sense, G20 was like a fire brigade with a mandate to put out a global fire.

While dealing with crisis will remain important for G20 for many years to come, the equally important, if not the more important task is to avoid and prevent crisis and to guide global economic, trade and financial development

This will require the G20 members to better coordinate their economic, trade and financial policies and actions and to promote global economic development in a more coordinated and concerted manner.

SETTING UP A MECHANISM TO SHARE THE G20 OUTCOMES

A framework should be set up to share the G20 outcomes with the rest of the world which are not involved in G20 directly.

G20 should not be G20 for the G20, G20 should be G20 for the G20 and the rest of the world. The reality is that the rest of the world care about G20 as much as G20 and its members.

This new mechanism will make G20 more inclusive and sustainable. This new mechanism will also make it easier to achieve more effective coordination of international economic development.

The author is the director of China National Association for International Studies and chairman of China Energy Security Institute
Children make moon cakes to greet the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival at No. 2 Kindergarten of the Qiaodong District of Xingtai, north China's Hebei Province, Sept. 13, 2016. Chinese have the tradition to eat moon cakes at the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on Sept. 15 this year. (Xinhua/Zhu Xudong)
The first China-ASEAN Meteorological Forum Photo by Wei Jian

By Xu Wenbin, Zhang Yong

On the occasion of the 13th China-ASEAN Expo and the China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit, the first session of China-ASEAN Meteorological Forum co-organized by China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and the Government of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was held in Nanning, on September 11. This forum aims to share experience and discuss issues on how to build joint system for regional meteorological disasters monitoring and reduction and address climate change.

Representatives from the Government of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, National Meteorological and Hydrological Services of China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and world organizations such as World Meteorological Organization (WMO), ESCAP, and Typhoon Committee attended this forum.Dr Zheng Guoguang, Administrator of CMA; Mr. Zhang Xiulong, Vice Governor of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region; Mr. Chu Pham Ngoc Hien, Vice Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam; Dr. Andi Eka Sakya Director General of Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG); and representatives from ASEAN countries and international organizations delivered speeches at the opening ceremony.

Dr Zheng Guoguang expresses that the Chinese government has launched the Belt and Road Initiative, characterized with the spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit. CMA hopes to use the principle of regional cooperation from the Belt and Road Initiative, to promote cooperation with relevant countries, which will support the development of meteorological services in meteorological disasters preparedness and reduction, and addressing climate change. He says that China and ASEAN countries are faced with similar meteorological disasters, such as typhoon, heavy rainfall, drought as well as the challenges of climate change. So far, China and ASEAN countries have conducted good cooperation in the fields of weather and climate monitoring, exchange of meteorological data and information, exchange of expert visits, as well as the cooperation in meteorological technologies and equipment. Dr Zheng hopes that meteorological departments of China and ASEAN countries can establish a mechanism of regional cooperation, improve regional observation, data sharing, enhance joint actions against disasters and risk management; improve forecasting capacity and research, promote cooperation in meteorological instrument calibration and standardization, enhance exchange and training of forecasters and technical staff.

Mr. Zhang Xiulong states that it is the common mission of China and AESAN countries to promote the integrated development of disaster reduction and prevention and maximize losses. This forum bears vital significance to mutual trust and win-win cooperation of China and AESAN countries in meteorology. He believes this forum will be a marvelous platform to deepen cooperation and exchanges and facilitate fruitful results. He suggests that China and ASEAN countries can reinforce joint monitoring of extreme and disastrous weather, interconnectedness in meteorological early warning information, exchanges of weather prediction technologies and personnel, and so on.

Mr. Chu Pham Ngoc Hien points out that frequent meteorological disaster posed huge challenges to sustainable socio-economic development and regional strengths should be pooled to better monitor and predict natural disasters. This forum provides a new channel for the exchanges among national meteorological and hydrological departments. He is convinced that this forum is favorable to enhance communication and cooperation.Jiao Meiyan, Deputy Administrator of CMA, gave a report titled enhancing regional cooperation to better serve regional development. This report introduced the development of meteorological cause and cooperation with ASEAN countries, and offered suggestions on future meteorological cooperation. She expressed that CMA would like to share experience, enhance operation and service capacity, and improve disaster prevention and mitigation.At the opening ceremony, representatives approved Nanning Initiative on China-ASEAN Cooperation in Meteorology. In the future, China and AESAN countries will reinforce cooperation in aspects of meteorological observation, disasters preparedness and reduction, climate service and agro-meteorological service, meteorological instrument calibration and standardization, regional meteorological training, and so on.

(Source: cma.gov.cn)
We just wanted her back

Yesterday, at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, Rehana Singh, a mother of three, told reporters that her 14-year-old daughter Shivani Persad, who left their Rio Claro home on Wednesday morning and never returned, may be in the company of a 25-year-old man with whom the the father used to work.

She told reporters that she believes the man may have something to do with the death of her husband and her daughters disappearance.

If she is out there and she can read this, the message I would send to her is that it is time for her to come home, said a sobbing Singh, while at the Forensics Sciences Centre in St James, awaiting an autopsy on her husband.

Her father is not there no more and I would like her to at least see him before he is buried. He is gone - is only my daughters I have to live for now. Singh said that she does not know if her missing daughter is aware that her father is dead.

Newsday was told that before Shivanis disappearance, the man approached her and her husband, and asked to pursue a relationship with the teenager. She said she and Singh refused to allow them to see each other.

On Wednesday last, Shivani, a form three student of the Rio Claro East Secondary School, left their home for school, but never returned.

The family made a report to the police, but suspected that the man may have had something to do with her disappearance.

They searched for the man in his home at Ecclesville, which is located a few miles east of Rio Claro, however neither he nor Shivani could have been found.

Along with assisting police in the search for her daughter, Singh and her husband continued looking on Saturday night, but their searches bore no results.

Singh and Persad returned home minutes before midnight.

A half hour later, a loud explosion was heard and Persad was found in a pool of blood in the doorway of their home. He died shortly after.

Officers of the Rio Claro Police Station were alerted and officers from the Eastern Division visited the scene.
Trini arrested for illegal entry to US

Reports out of the US said that Declan Adrian David was arrested on September 6 after he crossed the Rio Grande in the vicinity of Hidalgo, Texas.

Police records indicate that in the 2011, David was formally deported on June 23, 2001 from the US via Miami, Florida, after serving a ten-year sentence for intent to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance. According to police reports, David was charged with illegal re-entry to the US and remains in US custody.
Teens death remains a mystery

According to reports, the teenager was killed while she was studying at her Mandela Drive, Orange Field Road home at about 1.30 pm on Saturday.

But it is still uncertain where the bullet which killed her came from. Newsday was told that the teen was studying with a friend when a loud gunshot was heard.

When relatives investigated, they found Sumiyya in a pool of blood on her bed. She was rushed to the Chaguanas Health Facility, but she succumbed to her wounds.

Carol told Newsday yesterday that she was liming with friends when the incident occurred.

I was on a roulette table when I got the phone call, she said. As soon as I heard what happened I ran up the road, and I found out that they had already taken her to the hospital.

When I got there, I asked for my daughter, and they said that she was inside. Moments later she came out bawling, and saying that Sumiyya is dead.

All I know for sure is that she is dead, and that I have to be strong for my family. Carol said her granddaughter had a dream of opening an orphanage and becoming a doctor.

She described her granddaughter, a student of ASJA Girls College, as a bright and hard-working girl.

She kept telling me that she was not like the other girls who she knew, said Carol yesterday She promised that she would take care of me when I got older, but I guess that she would not be able to make good on that promise. Since she died, it is like I am in a daze. I try to keep strong for my family, but I keep asking for her as though she is still alive. Homicide detectives are working on the theory that the teen may have been shot by a gun belonging to a family member. On the day of the incident, detectives could have been seen searching the bed which she was sitting on, looking for bullet holes.
Gasparillo man to pay mother for breaking pots

Ardis Sookram was given one day to compensate his mother, Gail Deonarine, for the two broken pots which he broke at their Gasparillo home on September 10.

Magistrate Natalie Diop, sitting in the San Fernando Fourth Magistrates Court, was told that at around 9.30am, Deonarine was at home when she witnessed Sookram pick up the pots and smash them on the ground. He then picked up a glass cooking pot and also threw it on the floor.

Sookram was represented by attorney Annalee Girwar, who described the incident as an unfortunate circumstance as there was poor communication between the mother and her son. She said Sookram, a mechanic, has since sought to change his ways while an aunt who lives at Parforce Road, Gasparillo has offered Sookram to stay by her in order to maintain some distance between her client and his mother.

Diop said while the incident could be described as minor in terms of criminal offences, she could not simply reprimand and discharge Sookram and ordered him to also pay $500 or spend 30 days in jail. He was given two days in which to pay the fine.
Verdict tomorrow for Trinis in Venezuela

Newsday was told last evening that the judge hearing their case gave a summation yesterday afternoon and has indicated to the men to return to the court tomorrow for her decision.

The men are optimistic that since no evidence was found against them for suspected terrorist activities or espionage they will be released and repatriated to Trinidad and Tobago as soon as possible.

They had been advised to plead to the lesser charge of espionage, for which the sentence is three years, but they have refused. They have already spent two and a half years in detention.

The judge wrapped up the proceedings on August 18.

Last month one of the detainees had told Newsday that the police gave statements in which there was no evidence against them to be charged for terrorist activity in Venezuela, and there were no more witnesses coming forward to testify.

The detainees, Wade Charles, Dominic Petilal, Asim Luqman, Andre Battersby and Leslie Daisley, were held along with their wives and children who were subsequently released and returned to Trinidad.

They had gone to Venezuela to obtain visas to travel to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage to Mecca. Since their detention, their families have been pleading with the previous Peoples Partnership administration and the current Government to intervene and assist in having the men released.

Family members have reported time and time again that the men were frustrated and at their wits end, not only because of being wrongfully accused, but because they were in need of medical treatment and food. In addition, their families at home have been suffering emotionally.
GIVE US MORE TIME

This after the Government acquiesced to a request from the Opposition for a Parliament committee to study the Tax Information Exchange Agreements Bill 2016 but on the strict condition that the study should not be rushed.

The Opposition has told us they are supportive but they want a Joint Select Committee, so that we have decided to facilitate the Opposition with a proper Joint Select Committee, Imbert told reporters at the Parliaments offices at Tower D, International Waterfront Centre.

Not a rush job, not a piecemeal job. At about 1.30pm, Imbert met with Caroni Central MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie, Opposition Whip Ganga Singh and Naparima MP Rodney Charles. Also on the Government contingent were Acting Attorney General Stuart Young and Planning Minister Camille Robinson-Regis.

The meeting lasted about half an hour. Imbert said it would be impractical to rush a Joint Select Committee and instead the Government would ask for more time so as to hold a JSC and then pass the legislation after the Budget.

While there was an option to meet over the weekend, the Minister said the purpose of the Joint Select Committee exercise would be frustrated.

The purpose of a Joint Select Committee meeting... is to have a mature, careful examination of legislation, allow the opportunity for interested parties to make representations, and have a proper ventilation, Imbert said. We thought that it did not really make any sense (to rush) so that what we are going to do now is to speak to the US Department of the Treasury, see if we can get an extension of time to allow a proper Joint Select Committee to take place after the Budget. Imbert expressed confidence an extension would be granted by the US.

We have signed the agreement with the United States, we have initiated the Parliamentary process by laying the bill, we are meeting with the Opposition, Imbert said. I am reasonably confident that once we provide this information to the US authorities, that we should be able to get a small extension of time to allow the Joint Select Committee process to be completed properly. Imbert did not agree that under the provisions of the legislation the office of the Minister of Finance would have access to private and confidential banking information.

Coming out of the meeting, Tewarie said the Government had agreed to consider the Oppositions request for a JSC.

The Caroni Central MP said there were several concerns with the legislation, including questions over to whom its provisions would apply; whether there would be adequate Parliament oversight; whether the Board of Inland Revenue would be ready to enforce the measures; and the lack of regulations.

However, Imbert expressed confidence the BIR would be readied in time, saying the insertion of a proclamation clause would give the State flexibility. He said the State will know if its request for more time has been granted within a week. He said if no extension is granted by the US, the State would cross that bridge when it gets there.

These developments came as US Ambassador John L Estrada paid a courtesy call on Speaker of the House of Representatives Bridgid Annisette-George and Senate President Christine Kangaloo yesterday afternoon. In a series of candid remarks, Estrada complimented both presiding officers, noting they often have a tough job of reeling in both sides of the Parliament.

Ive told you many times before how much I admire seeing you in action as you keep the politicians on track, Estrada said. Since Ive been here Ive enjoyed watching how the Parliamentary system works. Our system in the United States is much different.
Prison heads call for more resources

For years we have placed emphasis on the police and the army being the persons who will curtail crime, Wilson said. Speaking to Newsday after the launch of the Prison Service Community Outreach Caravan at the San Fernando City Hall, Wilson referenced the Prime Ministers $120 million grant to the Police Service.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced in his address to the nation on Sunday, that about $120 million is to be spent on acquiring equipment that would improve the polices intelligence gathering ability.

Wilson, however, believes that the rehabilitation programmes are an important factor in the fight against crime, particularly with regard to reducing recidivism and reintegrating more wholesome people into society.

If we have tried one particular method for so many years, why not try something new? he asked. Starting on Friday at Harris Promenade, San Fernando, the Caravan would begin touring the country to showcase the artistic creations of several prison inmates who are products of the Prison Services rehabilitation and restoration programmes which, according to Wilson, would benefit from more attention.

Why not give the prison a little more resources to fight the crime? Wilson did not put a figure on the necessary resources, but he said particular attention must be given to drug rehabilitation programmes.

I have always had an issue with the recidivism rates. We cannot calculate recidivism correctly if we do not have treatment programmes and treatment means drug rehab programmes.
Kamla: Government is not working

I rolled up my sleeves on the first day and started the process of turning this country around, she said.

Persad-Bissessar said if the revised figures presented by Finance Minister Colm Imbert in the midyear review are correct, the Government collected more than $60 billion in revenue since it assumed office last September.

She questioned why the ruling Peoples National Movement (PNM) has not done more to turn around the economy, if there is US$5.3 billion in the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund and US$10 billion in foreign exchange reserves.

While she agreed with Rowley there is a natural gas shortage that is impacting the economy, Persad-Bissessar said the former Peoples Partnership (PP) government, took action to increase natural gas production by changing the related laws 14 times to provide incentives to companies to invest and drill. Saying the PP had a plan for governance during its tenure, Persad-Bissessar stated, We recognised that we faced challenges and we recognised that we had to be innovative in dealing with these challenges. She warned Rowley that, all the money in the world wont solve problems if you have no plan, initiative or imagination. Persad-Bissessar said while adjustments must be made in light of the countrys economic challenges, we must protect the working poor and provide opportunities to diversify and build our economy. She advised citizens, if the Government is not working for you, then they are working against you. Persad-Bissessar claimed the $20 billion debt facing State oil Petrotrin is the result of decisions made by former chairman Malcolm Jones and incumbent chairman Andrew Jupiter, when he was a board member under Jones.

She noted that Jupiter was awarded a Chaconia Medal Gold at this years National Awards Ceremony.

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal described Rowleys address as a weapon of mass distraction from urgent and critical national issues.
Creditors Bill in Senate today

Government and the Opposition met yesterday to discuss the Tax Bill and agreed on the formation of a Joint Select Committee of Parliament to deal with it. The House is scheduled to sit tomorrow in the last period for Prime Ministers Questions.
Paray: Pay rice farmers money owed

On Sunday, Paray met a group of farmers, some whom were said to be on the verge on tears, at Sackeer Trace, Navet, to hear their plight.

The farmers told Paray they sell their produce to NFM which would pay them by way of paddy receipts which are cashable in six weeks time, but that now farmers are looking at their calendars impatiently.

Paray related that the wait for payment has negatively impacted the farmers and their families and harms their capacity to pay for their machinery.

Rice crops are four months labour intensive and the lack of payments have resulted in farmers not being able to plant fresh crops after harvesting since they are awaiting payments, the statement said.

The farmers said rice farming is not very lucrative since there are no subsidies on most of the fertilisers relevant to this crop and there are additional costs associated with harvesting.

However, it is a crop they enjoy cultivating and is apt enough for their families subsistence.

Paray said that via a phone call on August 24, he was told by Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat that all payments will be made in two weeks time.

However ,at last Sundays meeting in Navet, farmers expressed to Paray a sense of hopelessness at having not received any solid confirmation on outstanding payments. Paray said the minister reportedly told the farmers he is looking into the matter.

The MP is demanding urgent action by the relevant authorities to bring immediate relief to the affected rice farmers since they are vital organs to the diversification of the economy and food security of TT, concluded the statement.
Moto G4 Play Gets Launched in India, Here's What You Need To Know!

New Delhi, Tue, 13 Sep 2016 NI Wire

Along with rolling out smartphones with enticing features and latest technology, smartphone makers across the globe have even excelled the marketing game. They are known to use unique marketing strategies to attract customers.

One such marketing stint that left us impressed was by Lenovo owned Motorola, who had released quite a few mystery pictures of their latest flagship, the Moto G4 Play. Far ahead of the launch, Motorola had started giving teaser hints about the phone, which boasts to have a mighty battery.

After luring users with the mystery teasers, Motorola finally launched the device and now it's officially available in India also. The Moto G4 Play was launched on September 6. You can buy the Moto G4 Play exclusively on Amazon India. It is to note that Moto G4 Play from Motorola was first hinted at during the launch of other premium devices of Motorola; namely, Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus. Earlier all three of them were restricted to the US market only, and there was no clue about their international release. But with Moto G4 Play being released in India, we can soon expect them all to land in the Indian smartphone market soon.

Now we know the exact features of Moto G4 Play, but before exploring the price, let us recall the features of G4 Play and refresh your memories.

G4 Play: Specs and Features

As per the latest reports surrounding the G4 Play, this Motorola budget device comes as the watered down variant of Motorola's primary model, the G4. For the uninitiated, Motorola G4 comes with 5.5-inch full HD (1920x1080p) display, which is clocked at Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 octa-core processor. It possesses a 13MP rear camera with 3000mAh battery.

G4 Play takes a lot from its counterpart and is slightly altered. As for the G4 Play, you will find a 5.0-inch screen with HD (1280x720p) resolution which happens to be clocked at Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core CPU. This device has a rear camera of 8MP with 2800mAh battery. It even comes with 10W rapid charger which is included in the packaging box. As per Motorola, this can provide 5 hours of battery life in just 15 minutes charging. This is the only thing which makes G4 Play different from that of G4.

Talking of the other features, G4 Play and Moto G4 come with similar 2GB RAM, and 16GB internal storage that can be expanded up to 128 GB. Both of them selfie camera of 5MP backed with f/2.2 aperture and display flash. The OS is also same, they run on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow; and in connectivity the two smartphones support 4G-LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, VoLTE, Bluetooth 4.1, A-GPS, and Micro-USB.

As one can see, with this new smartphones, Motorola now has 3 devices in its elite G series: the Moto G4 Play, Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus. All the three cater to different sections of audience and have desired set of buyers too.

As for the price of the Moto G4 Play, it's available at Rs. 8,999. You can buy it from Amazon in color choices of Black and White.

The Motorola devices have carved a niche in the market, thanks to their wonderful performance, sturdy built and appealing look. With Moto G4 Play also one has high expectation riding on, and we really hope that this device will also bring in fortune for Motorola like its previous other devices.

So, if you are impressed by the Moto G4 Play, it's time to make your booking on Amazon before the stock goes out.
Share



Even though service providers deploy the latest network technology, existing infrastructure such as 3G will still be functional and widely used in 2020, when 5G is slated to come online. For operators, it means using the infrastructure to maximize their ROI for as long as possible. Nokia is extending the capability of its AirScale radio to prolong the life of 3G networks, as well as ensuring the smooth transition to 5G.





The cloud-based Nokia (News - Alert) AirScale Radio Network Controller (RNC) will allow operators to accelerate the planning, design and rollout of cloud-based radio access networks. According to Nokia, this is the first true cloud-based 3G radio network controller, which will still be used by 40 percent of mobile network subscribers in 2020.

With billions of users relying on 3G, moving the controller to the cloud will allow operators to continue to scale in the way they are able to deliver new generation services. In addition to the scalability, 3G will be able to extend its life across technologies with greater automation and inherent flexibility. Nokia announced it has validated the viability of this technology with real-life successful tests with operators, and it will make it available commercially during the first quarter of 2017.

AirScale RNC overcomes the limitations of conventional hardware-based products by combining the functions of existing Nokia RNC solutions with cloud-based capabilities running RNC application software on top of the Nokia AirFrame Cloud Infrastructure for Real-time applications (NCIR).

For operators it means having the agility to shorten the time to market of new products and services. This will increase new revenue opportunities by continuously improving subscriber's quality of experience. This is made possible with the scalability the cloud provides by allowing radio control functions to be deployed in large centralized, as well as in smaller distributed, data centers. Networks will have higher resiliency because of the virtualization of RNC functions across multiple machines to deliver a wide range of solutions, including real-time services to their customers.

Another benefit of the Nokia AirScale RNC is the support of existing network interfaces while managing legacy radio networks and Cloud RAN to simplify integration with Nokia NetAct and Nokia CloudBand management tools.

Some of the other AirScale announcements include: Nokia AirScale RRH 4T4R B40 160W for 2300 MHz (Band 40); Nokia AirScale RRH 2T2R B28 120W for the Asia Pacific Telecommunity band (APT (News - Alert)) 700 MHz (Band 28); and Nokia AirScale RRH 2T2R B11 120W for 1500 MHz (Band 11) is available in the advanced market of Japan.

All of the improvements in Nokia's AirScale platform will move the 5G adoption rate forward as the infrastructure needs to support the new standard as it continues to improve.

As Frank Weyerich, head of Mobile Networks Products at Nokia said, The journey to 5G can be smoothed by choosing the right technology path. With 4.5G Pro and cloud-based radio access networks, operators can leverage scalability and flexibility as they start to provide 5G-like use cases on top of LTE (News - Alert), taking user experience to the next level. Also, with prime examples such as the launch of the first true cloud-based RNC and the expansion of our AirScale radios and services portfolio, we are showing that Nokia is leading in this space, enabling customers to evolve in the most cost-effective and timely way.

Edited by Alicia Young
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.
UN envoy for Libya Martin Kobler tweeted Sunday that greater divisions are looming over Libya as the Libyan army led by Khalifa Hafter, rival of the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli, took control of most oil terminals controlled by Petroleum Facilities Guard aligned with the unity government.

General Hafters forces Sunday announced they took over Sidra, Ras Lanuf, Brega and Zuwaytina oil ports from Petroleum Facilities Guard headed by Ibrahim Jadhran; an ally of the UN-sponsored Government of National Accord (GNA.)

Hafter and the Tobruk-based government have been opposed to the GNA which they deem as a west-imposed government on Libyans.

Ibrahim Jadhran in July cut a deal with GNA to hand over the terminals in order to allow Libya to relaunch its oil exportation.

In his tweet, UNSMIL Head Martin Kobler wrote that the attack of the oil terminals would cause greater divisions among Libyans and that the move puts the countrys stability on the line.

Natural resources belong to all Libyans he stressed. Preserving them is in the national interest.

Koblers reaction falls in line with a joint statement by France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States which also condemned Hafter forces takeover of the oil terminals.

The governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States condemn this weekends attacks on Zuwaytina, Ras Lanuf, Es Sider and Brega oil terminals in Libya, they said.

We call for all military forces that have moved into the oil crescent to withdraw immediately, without preconditions, they added.

In cutting the deal in July with Jadhran, the Faiez Serraj-led GNA, which is facing economic challenges, expected to take control of the oil exploitation and exportation in order to generate funds to tackle the financial crisis that has gripped the oil-rich North African country.

Seizure of the oil terminals by Hafter forces is a huge blow to Faiez Serraj and his Presidential Council.

Libya collapsed into political disarray following the death of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed revolution in 2011.
Gabonese authorities have refused to grant entry visa to French media deemed critical of Ali Bongos regime after French Socialist party and other political figures questioned his re-election in a contested presidential election, reports say.

Tension has risen between Libreville and Paris after the ruling socialist party in France openly called on Ali Bongo to admit defeat following last month presidential election at the time the opposition figure Jean Ping claimed himself winner of the election judged non-transparent by the European Union.

Olivier Piot from Le Monde Diplomatique was reportedly denied entry into the central African country on Saturday for not being in possession of a visa. According to Gabonese authorities, contacted by AFP, the French journalist had no clear justifications for his trip to Gabon.

Piot who was in a negotiation with the Gabonese ministry of communication told AFP that he was told he could obtain the visa at the Libreville international airport. But once there, he was denied entry into the country.

The reporter claimed that Gabonese authorities were against the French media for their support to Bongos challenger. Reporters without Borders criticized the ban which it qualified as maneuver by authorities to conceal information.

The NGO slammed all attacks and violent acts on media and journalists.

French media have also accused Gabonese authorities of banning some French media from covering the presidential elections, as they could not get their visas on time.
The Moroccan navy took part in the naval exercise, Sea Border 2016, in the Gulf of Taranto in Italy on September 5-9.

On this occasion, Morocco sent patrol vessel OPV-70 dubbed, Bir Anzarane, which made an outstanding performance during the joint naval exercise that brought together naval forces from the north and south of the Mediterranean, le360.ma said.

The joint naval drills, part of the 5+5 initiative, aims at boosting the exchange of expertise between the navies of western Mediterranean countries with a view to safeguarding maritime security against any potential threats and boosting interoperability.

Besides the Moroccan navy, the Italian, Portuguese, French, Maltese, Mauritanian and Tunisian navy took part in the exercise.

Moroccos naval vessel OPV-70 was named after the Bir Anzarane battle which marked a victory of the Royal Armed Forces over the Algerian-backed Polisario separatists in 1979.

The OPV-70 is an Offshore Patrol Vessel of the Royal Moroccan Navy, designed by Raidco Marine and built at STX France SA. Its main tasks include surveillance of Moroccan EEZ and control of fisheries in the Atlantic ocean, with secondary roles including detecting illegal immigration, smuggling and drug trafficking as well as supporting counter terrorism and search and rescue patrols along Moroccan coast.
Three years since the launch of Moroccos new migration policy in 2013, over 23,000 migrants received the legal residency status offering them access to the labor market and basic services, such as health and education.

Moroccos Migration Ministry said that 23,096 registration cards were delivered to migrants since the policy was launched by King Mohammed VI in September 2013.

The Ministry noted that 85.53% of the 27.649 legal migration applications were approved, benefiting mostly Syrians followed by nationals from Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Morocco, a major transit point for people searching for a better life in Europe, is the first country in Africa to develop a legal migration policy.

This groundbreaking regularization approach came in implementation of the measures set in a royal speech in September 2013. The King had then called the government to elaborate a new global policy in relation to migration-and asylum-related questions, implementing a humanitarian approach in conformity with Moroccos international commitments and respecting the rights of immigrants.

In the latest speech he delivered on August 20, 2016, King Mohammed VI highlighted the solidarity-based and humanitarian approach governing Moroccos migration policy, which has earned the Kingdom the honor of co-chairing, alongside Germany, the Global Forum on Migration and Development for 2017-2018.
French Environment Minister, Segolene Royal, chairwoman of the climate Summit COP21, said that Morocco and France are joining efforts to raise funds to help developing countries achieve the climate goals of the COP22.

France and Morocco are cooperating to integrate renewable energies in development policies, said Royal following a meeting held recently in Paris between French President Francois Hollande and Moroccos Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar, chairman of the COP22.

She added that France and Morocco are facilitating the dialogue with Europe, Africa and the Mediterranean with a view to adding momentum to efforts to address climate challenges.

President Hollande has confirmed his attendance of the COP22 in Marrakech on November 15, upon invitation from King Mohammed VI.

Scheduled in Marrakech on November 8-18, the COP22 will bring together states that will strive to reach agreements on reducing greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity, assess the evolution of their commitments and review the implementation of the Framework Convention and other legal instruments.

So far, 197 Parties have adhered to the Convention (196 States and the European Union) including Palestine who joined in March 2016.

China and the USA, which are responsible for almost 40 per cent of total carbon emissions worldwide, have formally ratified the Paris agreement to curb climate change, earlier this September.

The Paris Agreement, negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus in New York, on December 12, 2015, will enter into force after it is ratified by at least 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global emissions.

So far, only 26 have ratified the agreement, which is not enough for the treaty to enter into force.
Twenty-year Democratic House veteran Loretta Sanchez shaking some unusual hands these days. Photo: Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times

Democratic U.S. representative Loretta Sanchez is nobodys idea of a California lefty. She was a charter member of the centrist New Democrat Coalition in the House, and is also one of the 14 surviving members of the once-robust Blue Dogs. Her voting record is notably to the right of the one compiled by her sister and House colleague, Linda.

On the other hand, shes been a regular Democrat with conventional loyalties throughout her two decades in the House. She regularly receives 100 percent ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and has a lifetime 95 percent rating from the AFC-CIO. Shes always been considered part of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, and endorsed Hillary Clinton for president earlier this year. Veteran Democratic political consultant Bill Carrick is running her current campaign for the U.S. Senate.

So all that makes her current energetic efforts to get Republican support for said Senate bid a mite awkward. But she doesnt have much choice. Californias top-two primary system has matched her against a fellow Democrat, attorney general Kamala Harris, in the general election. Harris finished first in the primary with 40 percent of the vote, more than doubling Sanchezs totals, but Sanchez won a spot on the November ballot by easily beating three Republicans who divided the GOP vote. Harris was subsequently endorsed not only by the California Democratic Party, but by President Obama and Governor Jerry Brown. A recent USC/L.A. Times poll showed Sanchez trailing Harris 30 percent to 16 percent, with three-fourths of self-identified Republicans declaring themselves either undecided or unwilling to vote for either of the surviving Democrats. So Sanchez needs these votes and needs some help getting them.

Shes certainly accepting support from some odds quarters, reports the Los Angeles Times:

The Democratic congresswoman popped up on a conservative talk radio show in San Diego to tout her record against Islamic extremists. She ventured to Shasta Lake, Northern Californias Republican frontier populated by farmers and ranchers, and promised to listen to all sides to address the states water crisis. And on Thursday, Sanchez will chat with U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton, where she will be joined by Vista Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who once called President Obama one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times.

She was earlier endorsed two other prominent Republicans: former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and U.S. representative Buck McKeon. Perhaps the most surprising endorsement was from talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, who took time off from his crusade to talk conservatives into supporting Donald Trump to give a nod to his old friend Sanchez.

Without question, shes got her rap down for potential Republican supporters:

I think when people take a look at me on the issues, they will realize I have the courage to confront and speak out against the threat of Islamic extremists. I have a common-sense approach to gun control that respects the basic human right of self defense  Second Amendment rights. Im strong on veterans issues, Im strong on national defense, on counterterrorism, on homeland security.

Probably the biggest question is whether Republican-aligned business groups decide its worth the trouble to raise Sanchez some serious money to complete with the well-financed Harris. If they do and she keeps angling for Republican support, you can expect the race to get a lot more sharp-elbowed, with Democrats going after Sanchez as a turncoat. Its a natural byproduct of the top-two system, which awards cross-partisan appeals but also guarantees some bad intraparty tensions.
Duke considers not officially deplorable a compliment. Photo: Brian Vander Brug/LA Times via Getty Images

Last week, Mike Pence broke with his running mate Donald Trump by rejecting birtherism and promising to release his tax returns, and now Americas least helpful vice-presidential candidate is at it again. On Monday evening, the Indiana governor provided a distraction from the controversy over Hillary Clintons pneumonia when he refused to call David Duke, who is perhaps Americas most famous white supremacist, deplorable.



In a CNN interview, Wolf Blitzer raised the issue of Clinton declaring you could put half of Trumps supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. The Democratic presidential candidate has said she regrets saying that half of her opponents supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic  you name it, but Blitzer noted that description certainly fits a percentage of Trump backers. There are some supporters of Donald Trump and Mike Pence who, like David Duke for example and some other white nationalists, who would fit into that category of deplorables, Blitzer said.



Im not really sure why the media keeps dropping David Dukes name, Pence responded. Donald Trump has denounced David Duke repeatedly. We dont want his support, and we dont want the support of people who think like him. So Pence would characterize Duke as deplorable, or deserving censure or contempt, right? No, Im not in the name-calling business, Wolf, you know me better than that, Pence said.

He went on to make the awkward, almost politically correct argument that people should be deeply offended by Clinton using the same terms as the national media  and even some Republicans  to describe Trump supporters:



What Hillary Clinton did on Friday night was shocking. I mean, the millions of people who support Donald Trump around this country are not a basket of anything. They are Americans. And they deserve the respect of the Democrat nominee for president of the United States. For her to rattle off this litany of pejoratives was just really shocking, and anyone with that low of an opinion of the American people should never hold the highest office in this land.

Blitzer wondered if that means Pence thinks his running mate should apologize to the millions of Americans hes offended in the past year, including Mexican-Americans, Muslims, a Gold Star family, and war hero John McCain. Pence scoffed at this idea, saying that while Clinton supporters want to draw some moral equivalency to early parts in the debate, Trumps outrageous attacks are entirely different because they were spontaneous. Theres a big difference between things Trump said, repeatedly, in the heat of the moment, and a line Clinton used in a prepared speech in front of wealthy donors.

Plus, some of Trumps insults have passed the statute of limitations. When asked if Trump should apologize for birtherism, Pence said, Were just not talking about that issue. Its a four-year-old issue.



Mike Pence declines to call Donald Trump supporter David Duke "deplorable" https://t.co/D6fuQRolmg https://t.co/S1nfCf8Iyy  CNN (@CNN) September 12, 2016

Unfortunately for Pence, when some of the people supporting your campaign are objectively awful, youre damned if you do and damned if you dont. If hed used Clintons term to describe Duke, then hed be proving her original statement was correct. He chose the other option, so Clinton called him out for standing with bigots:



If you wont say the KKK is deplorable, you have no business running the country. https://t.co/mFut8Qrz9A  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 12, 2016

Pence then accused the media of taking his remarks out of context, and tweeted out a Fox News interview in which he made the exact same point: The Trump team has denounced Duke repeatedly, but Pence wont call him deplorable because Im not a name-caller, I dont play that game.



It is outrageous that some members of the media are taking quotes out of context! https://t.co/x379lHe86p  Mike Pence (@mike_pence) September 12, 2016

One person still missing the essential point that Pence thinks the former Klu Klux Klan leader is deplorable, but wont use that word: David Duke. He called Clinton a hypocrite for embracing late senator Robert Byrd, who was praised upon his death by the NAACP for his path from KKK member to an active supporter of civil-rights legislation.



Clinton attacks Pense for NOT calling me "Deplorable" Yet, #HypocriteHillary supported ex-kKK Robert Byrd for Senate Leader! "Deplorable?"  David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) September 13, 2016

Duke has left the KKK as well, but hes still a member of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, a white-supremacist group.



FIGHT for the Black & Mexican interests & you are NEVER DEPLORABLE, but DARE DEFEND THE HERITAGE OF wHITE PEOPLE- U R SO, SO, SO DEPLORABLE!  David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) September 13, 2016

Hes also a Holocaust denier and foe of the Jewish elite.



Wolf Blitzer demands that Pense call me "Deplorable" and he refuses.. Wolfie boy, still upset that I outed you on CNN as an AIPAC AGENT?  David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) September 13, 2016

Duke, whos running for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana, went on to praise Pense for fighting the medias attempt to label him deplorable in a statement to BuzzFeed.

Its good to see an individual like Pence and others start to reject this absolute controlled media  The truth is that the Republican Party in Louisiana  I received the vast majority of Republican votes for United States senator before and for governor before that in my state. The truth is the Republican Party is big tent. I served in the Republican caucus. I was in the Republican caucus in the legislature. I had a perfect Republican voting record. Its ridiculous that they attack me because of my involvement in that nonviolent Klan four decades ago.

So dont listen to the Louisiana GOP when they call Duke a convicted felon and a hate-filled fraud who does not embody the values of the Republican Party. As he explains, the Republican Party has plenty of room for anti-Semitic white nationalists like himself. Who knows, the party of Trump may even boast millions of these deplorables.


The golden age. Photo: Hudson/Getty Images

Surely were not alone in pining for the golden age of rail travel: the full menus, the luxurious sleepers, and most of all, the bar cars. While decent meals on the rails are probably gone for good, bar cars are set for something of a comeback  at least on some of the trains running between New York City and Connecticut.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Connecticut Department of Transportation has ordered 60 new train cars, including 10 that will be retrofitted to include a bar. The bar cars are intended for the New Haven line of the Metro-North railroad, a popular commuter line running between New York City, and New Haven, Connecticut.

Apparently, with no bar cars to congregate in, commuters on the New Haven line had taken to gathering in the areas by the train doors at the front of the cars. One regular claims that on Friday nights there could be as many as 20 drinkers jammed into the cramped space, which seems as unpleasant for the revelers as it does for the other less-booze-inclined passengers.

Commuters on the line actually havent had to face their families sober for all that long, as the last of the older-generation bar cars on the New Haven Line were discontinued in 2014. But the New York lines of the Metro-North havent boasted bar cars since the 1980s.

Thirsty commuters  at least the ones interviewed by the Journal  are thrilled by the announcement. One even made the somewhat dubious claim that its not about getting alcohol, but being able to be in a place with a bunch of people who like to be together and talk.

Connecticut officials are planning to make an announcement about the bar cars later this week.
Syrian children play on a street in a residential suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus on September 13, 2016. Photo: Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images

The United States and Russias second attempt at a cease-fire in Syria began Monday night at about 7 p.m. local time. No civilian casualties have been recorded in the first 15 hours after the truce took effect, but reports suggest that fighting hasnt totally stopped in the war-torn state.

That is a bit of a problem, as the agreement calls for a seven-day cessation of violence so humanitarian-aid organizations can deliver food and medical necessities unhindered. United Nations aid convoys are reportedly still on hold and had not yet reached civilians as of Tuesday over fears that even a temporary peace wont stick. Residents in the rebel-held portion of Aleppo said Syrian government forces, led by Russian-backed President Bashar al-Assad, had dropped barrel bombs on the area. The Syrian army accused a rebel faction of launching attacks in the south, reports the Washington Post. Reports of sporadic attacks trickled out from elsewhere in Syria, including Homs and near Damascus.

A Syrian boy carries a toy gun past a destroyed building in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli on September 13, 2016, as a truce brokered by Russia and the United States saw guns fall silent at sundown the previous night. Photo: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images

Secretary of State John Kerry, who brokered the deal in Geneva with his Russian counterpart, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, late Friday, said that its too early to write off the truce. There will undoubtedly be reports of violations here and there, Kerry said. Thats the nature of ceasefires. For all the doubts that exist, and there will be many challenges in the days to come, despite that, this plan has a chance to work.

Yet skepticism prevails over whether this cease-fire will last the week, and, even if it does, whether a sustainable political solution can be accomplished after. According to this agreement, the Syrian army, backed by Russia, must halt any attacks on moderate opposition groups supported by the U.S. and its allies. In turn, the United States needs to convince those groups to dissociate from the al-Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda offshoot. After that, the U.S. and Russia will work together to target the al-Nusra Front and the other group the two agree needs to be defeated: ISIS. How to solve the problem of Assad or if Russia and Assad will stop targeting moderate opposition forces are two big and unavoidable questions that cast doubt on the potential for a longer-term settlement.

A Syrian boy rides a horse as Syrian children play in the street in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo as they celebrate the Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) holiday on the first day of a fragile cease-fire. Photo: Thaer Mohammed/AFP/Getty Images

Still, intense fighting has at least taken a tentative pause. Aleppos residents testified to a rare quiet, and even children are playing outside again. Even so, at least one grim statistic emerged Tuesday: The watchdog group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 300,000 people have been killed since the start of Syrias five-year civil war. That figure includes roughly 86,000 civilians.
Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

The most important substantive problem facing political journalists of this era is asymmetrical polarization. Political journalism evolved during an era of loose parties, both of which hugged the center, and now faces an era in which one of those parties has veered sharply away from the center. Todays Republican Party now resides within its own empirical alternative universe, almost entirely sealed off from any source of data, expertise, or information that might throw its ideological prior values into question. Donald Trumps candidacy is the ne plus ultra of this trend, an outlier horrifying even to a great many conservatives who have been largely comfortable with their partys direction until now. How can the news media appropriately cover Trump and his clearly flawed opponent without creating an indecipherable din of equivalent-sounding criticism, where one candidates evasive use of a private email server looms larger than the others promise to commit war crimes?

Liz Spayd, the New York Times new public editor, dismisses the problem out of hand in a column that is a logical train wreck. Spayd specifically addresses a column by Paul Krugman that lambastes two news investigations into the Clinton Foundation, one of which appeared in the Times. Both reports dug deep and found nothing improper, but instead of either walking away from the dry holes or writing an exculpatory story, dressed them up with innuendo. These stories supply a prime example of the larger critique often grouped under the heading of false equivalence  journalists treating dissimilar situations as similar, in an attempt to balance out their conclusions. Spayd dismisses false equivalence as liberal whining, without in any way engaging with its analysis.

Spayd begins her argument with the Herman Cainesque tautology, The problem with false balance doctrine is that it masquerades as rational thinking. She continues:

What the critics really want is for journalists to apply their own moral and ideological judgments to the candidates. Take one example. Suppose journalists deem Clintons use of private email servers a minor offense compared with Trump inciting Russia to influence an American election by hacking into computers  remember that? Is the next step for a paternalistic media to barely cover Clintons email so that the public isnt confused about whats more important? Should her email saga be covered at all? Its a slippery slope.

Critics argue that the Clinton email scandal should be covered in proportion to the scale of the offense, so that a gigantic violation of political norms receives wider and more hyperbolic coverage than a smaller violation of political norms. Spayd replies that this would lead to a slippery slope in which the smaller scandal receives no coverage at all. She does not explain why covering scandals proportionally to their importance would lead inevitably to this result. She simply conjures the metaphorical slope, and leaves her readers with the assurance that it is impossible to move a step in one direction without continuing to the extreme.

Shortly after, she concedes the entire substantive thrust of Krugmans column:

On the other hand, some foundation stories revealed relatively little bad behavior, yet were written as if they did. Thats not good journalism.

Right. Exactly. This is Krugmans entire point. But then in the next sentence she collapses into incoherence:

But I suspect the explanation lies less with making matchy-matchy comparisons of the two candidates records than with journalists losing perspective on a line of reporting theyre heavily invested in.

What? The false-equivalence charge is not that reporters are explicitly making matchy-matchy comparisons of the two candidates records. Its that they are doing this implicitly through what Spayd concedes to be bad journalism. The Times is creating the impression of two candidates with proportionally sized flaws even though it is not setting out to do so. Spayd is presenting the accusation as if it were a defense.

She commits the exact same fallacy later on:

[T]hese are two presidential candidates with the lowest approval ratings in history. Neither is very trusted or liked. Which means if ever there was a time to shine light in all directions, this is it.

The critics are suggesting that the fact that Clinton and Trump are both trusted in roughly equal measure is a problem for which the news media bears at least some responsibility. Perhaps they are about equally distrusted because the liberal media has portrayed Clinton as a criminal? No, Spayd replies, the media is doing it right because people dislike Hillary Clinton almost as much as Trump.

Throughout the column, Spayd expresses repeated skepticism of the motives of critics who complain about false equivalency. It is certainly true that most false-equivalency criticism comes from critics harboring a partisan motive. It is also true that sometimes false equivalency can become a cudgel to beat back any scrutiny of Democrats at all. Sometimes people have motives to say things that happen to be correct. For Spayd, the motive question is the beginning and end of her inquiry:

I cant help wondering about the ideological motives of those crying false balance, given that they are using the argument mostly in support of liberal causes and candidates. CNNs Brian Stelter focused his show, Reliable Sources, on this subject last weekend. He asked a guest, Jacob Weisberg of Slate magazine, to frame the idea of false balance. Weisberg used an analogy, saying journalists are accustomed to covering candidates who may be apples and oranges, but at least are still both fruits. In Trump, he said, we have not fruit but rancid meat. That sounds like a partisans explanation passed off as a factual judgment.

Weisberg is partisan, ergo his concept that two candidates can be radically different is also partisan and therefore wrong. (Weisberg, a writer who has written critically about the Democrats innumerable times over his career, is an especially bad case for Spayd.) This exact form of reasoning is what caused so much of the news media to miss the asymmetric transformation of the Republican Party over the last quarter-century. To recognize this development is to record an analysis that sounds like a partisans explanation, and any partisan analysis by definition cannot be a factual judgment. No possible evidence of a difference between the parties can persuade her, because she automatically dismisses such evidence as partisan. Spayds column refuting the false-equivalency problem happens to be a perfect demonstration of it.
The photographer Slim Aarons once described his ideal subject as attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places. That meant socialites like C. Z. Guest and Babe Paley relaxing in Palm Beach or the Bahamas, wearing clothes that were understated and always their own. Recalling a picture called Poolside Gossip, taken in 1970 at the Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, its owner at the time, Nelda Linsk, said that Aarons told her to just pull something out of your closet.

Fashion designers and art directors have cribbed from Aaronss images for years, because they document a vanished world to which he had unfettered access. Perhaps his most iconic image is of Guest in a white playsuit holding the hand of her small son by the familys pool in Palm Beach, a set of columns in the background. On Monday, Thom Browne re-created that scene  or, rather, he created a blue-tiled rectangle on the floor of a basement in Chelsea, complete with columns. Finding a pool with the grandeur of Guests would have been impossible  but its not even the point. Forget the pool. Its the image that matters  where Aaronss pool scene looked three-dimensional, Brownes looked virtually flat, as if based on a digitalized version of the original photo.

Thats a nifty way to comment on how we view stuff today, and also on our ability to manipulate things digitally, like an image of a Vermeer that gets turned into a perky abstract pattern for a dumb blouse. But Browne took the idea a lot further: He rendered the clothes flat, too. He did this by a laborious process called intarsia, in which pieces of fabric are assembled much like a puzzle for a smooth, seamless effect. And he produced every garment as a trompe loeil version of a 60s-era ladies luncheon suit, in checks, or as a shift with a white collar or jaunty bow. There was even a dress in sheared fur with a trompe loeil sweater tied at the waist and Brownes label visible at the back, where the neck of the sweater turned down.

View Slideshow Photo: Imaxtree

Brownes clothes, however ingenious, have a tendency to look stiff and ultimately unattractive. But, in linens and cottons, these clothes looked easy and light. They were also just fun  steeped in those watery blues and pinks weve come to associate with the optimism of Aaronss world, and shown with Brownes offbeat accessories, including sunglasses and platform heels in the shape of whales and sunfish, and new gingham and print versions of his Hector dog bag. (The British milliner Stephen Jones also crafted, from tiny mirrors, a bowwow hat that sparkled like a disco ball on the models head. Could someone please wear that to next years Oscars?)

The shows of the past day or so marked a shift at NYFW  away from the porno-sportivo and dubiously political, and toward clothes that looked charming and friendly, guided by a flattering silhouette. That was the story at Proenza Schouler, where Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez pretty much stuck to the same line  a floaty, asymmetrically hemmed skirt and a slightly raised waist. Typically the skirts were pleated, Miyake-style, and done in a bold stripe (say, black and cobalt), while the top part might be a crisply tailored blazer in striped jacquard or just an off-the-shoulder shell. Color-blocked knits suggested Mondrian or, on second glance, a French couturiers take on Maasai decoration.

View Slideshow Photo: Imaxtree

Whatever the inspiration, the key fact of this show is that McCollough and Hernandez didnt go off in a new direction. Instead, they dug into some of the styles theyve explored over the past few years  the tribal fringe and knits, for example, from a year ago. The lack of an unmistakable brand identity has been their shortcoming, as the retail pros Ronald Frasch and Rose Marie Bravo have been telling them. So this collection represents the refinement of many of their ideas, often in lighter-weight materials, and thats real progress.

Joseph Altuzarra also had a terrific show, in part because it built so clearly on the past few seasons  the slim, sexy skirts, the French dose of Bardot-esque gingham (now in blazers or cropped pants with a red lace ruffle, and also in a filmy shirtdress), the lean silhouette. I might have served up less fruit  small cherries, lemons, pineapples as embroideries or prints on python  but I also appreciate that Altuzarra has built his reputation on unexpected decoration. Another thing to notice about this collection is the breezy (and fresh) mix of patterns, like gingham with a vivid French tulip print. Thats happening a lot this season, and Altuzarra does it with confidence.

View Slideshow Photo: Imaxtree

At Oscar de la Renta, the studio staff took a collective bow, while Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia, who replaced Peter Copping, sat in the front row next to Annette de la Renta, the designers widow. The workmanlike show of white cotton lace dresses, gold-hued paisley pieces, and modest evening looks basically returned the label to neutral so that Kim and Garcia can now take over and do their magic.

View Slideshow Photo: Imaxtree

The Monse designers, virtually unknown a year ago, are having a big effect on the industry: Witness the number of editors wearing shirts spilling off their shoulders or tied in funny ways, a style they favor. The couple also worked briefly for Carolina Herrera, who is celebrating her 35th year in fashion. She now has the capable hands of Raffaele Ilardo, her head of design, who worked with de la Renta and as the chief tailor at Dior. Thats a lot of talent to sprinkle on some spring clothes  and it showed. Herreras simple dresses and tops in cotton with hobo-sack ties at the shoulders were among the best things she has done in a while, as were the casual knits, and a trio of would-be bride dresses as the closer.
Photo: Mark Sagliocco/FilmMagic/Getty

Fashion Week can take you to unexpected places, which is how, last week, I found myself sitting around a table at Robertas Pizza with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, getting an in-depth lesson on the blight of plastic straws.

We consume 500 million straws each day. The equivalent of 127 school buses filled with straws. Its disgusting,  Adrian Grenier declares the minute I sit down, brandishing a plastic straw that the waiter had forgotten to remove. There should be children in those school buses, going to school, to learn, not straws, he adds, wryly.

Grenier orders me a mezcal soda, his drink of choice. No straw, no fruit, he tells the waiter. I dont have the chance to find out whats so harmful about lime wedges before he turns to look at me, fixing me with the same penetrating gaze that rendered so many beautiful women powerless over the course of Entourages eight seasons and a movie. He might forget, or the guy at the bar may forget, so you have barriers to success, he explains. But now weve planted a seed, and hes going to think about that.

If you havent been keeping up with Adrian Greniers social media or online presence over the past few years, you might be wondering at this point: Why Does Vincent Chase care so much about straws? Much like his friend Leonardo DiCaprio, Grenier has embraced the mantle of celebrity environmentalist in recent years. The bulk of his activism takes place through the Lonely Whale Foundation, which he co-founded in 2015 along with producing partner Lucy Sumner. Sumner is married to Stings son, Jake Sumner, who recently made a film about plastic pollution in the oceans, and both of them joined us at dinner along with a handful of Greniers friends and colleagues from the foundation. According to its website, Lonely Whale is dedicated to bringing people closer to the worlds oceans through education and awareness, inspiring empathy and action for ocean health and the wellbeing of marine wildlife, with a focus on getting millennials engaged in ocean conservation through social media and various digital and IRL experiences.

I ask Grenier how he defines himself nowadays. He says he doesnt like the word environmentalist, because it sounds too radical. Im a guy who cares about people, he says. Acting is my day job, but at night, I get to be a superhero. There are superheroes, people who fly or have all these extraterrestrial powers or supernatural abilities. Everybody can be a superhero every day by doing very simple things. Change the world.

Tonight, were here to talk about Lonely Whales exhibit at Refinery29s interactive 29 Rooms, taking place around the corner, as well as Lonely Whales current campaign to get individuals to cut down on plastic straws (a major source of ocean pollution), and their upcoming documentary 52: The Search for the Loneliest Whale, out of which the foundation was born. The film, which DiCaprio helped kick-start, follows a whale who calls out at a frequency no other whales can understand. Its fascinating to see this story because of our relationship to whales historically, and what they mean to us symbolically, Grenier explained. Whales are the keeper of wisdom.



Grenier is very passionate  about straws, pollution, whales, the ocean, conservation, his vinyl collection (he recently curated a record store for a new East Village bar)  and he talks with the unfiltered confidence of a man who is used to people listening to what he has to say. He is a fan of hugs, and back-touching, and scooping food onto your plate even if you indicate that youre full. Much like Vinnie Chase, Grenier rolls with an entourage  a crew of bubbly environmentalists who refer to themselves as a family and all work for the foundation in varying amorphous capacities  and who all seem to adore Grenier. Hes one of the best people I know, Lucy Sumner tells me.



Everyone is very nice and very enthusiastic, if a bit intense, whether were talking about the sea (we mostly talk about the sea), sustainable agriculture, podcasts, the upcoming election (I said I was Canadian and Grenier pledged to vote for Hillary on my behalf), or feminism. I would consider myself a feminist, says Grenier when I ask him. But women dont need my permission to take what is rightfully theirs after all these years, so I dont even need to declare my feminism as a righteous thing. I just am, because I recognize that its happening, its right. And Im just in awe of it and excited about the prospect. Maybe our saving grace is if we can balance the male energy, which tends to be short-term thinking, overly aggressive, often indelicate, with the feminine energy, which is more careful study and frankly more sophisticated, we might actually be able to build a world that would be in balance.

Grenier speaks like a guy who just got back from Burning Man for the first time, which it turns out he did, and he is eager to discuss his experience. Its a bunch of people who are open, available to connect, and artistic, and are all conspiring to make the most amazing piece of art, which is everybody collaborating, he says. Its fantastic.

I observe that one of the biggest problems with people I know who go to Burning Man is that they never stop talking about it.

Its like, could you imagine having discovered America? he says. Would you stop talking about that? Its like, I went to this new land. Theres nothing like it. And thats the thing. Its captivating, because its unlike anything Ive ever experienced. And Im worldly, Ive been around the world. And it happens to reflect the value system that I agree with.



The Lonely Whale Foundation seeks to launch a conversation about conservation that resonates with people emotionally, and Grenier sees a lot of parallels between his foundations goals and his time in Black Rock. The reason I responded so much to Burning Man is, that is my ethos, that is my people, that is the way Ive always lived and wanted to live, he explains. And there is a Zeitgeist of humans who think that way. If I didnt have an umbrella, for example, I would go from umbrella to umbrella with people and get where I needed to go, dry.

Sharing umbrellas is awesome, adds one of our dinner mates, a celebrity chef focusing on sustainable seafood.

The discussion turns to New York City, where Grenier grew up and still lives. I observe that the city has changed a lot. I pioneered Williamsburg, says Grenier. It got so gentrified that I had to come to Bushwick. I lived two blocks away, and then this place opened, and I couldnt afford to live in this neighborhood, he says, gesturing around Robertas, which opened in 2008. We used to have to walk three miles backward in the snow for a cup of coffee when we lived here. Now theres, like, baristas and cold brew.

Suddenly, a woman taps him on the shoulder. Im not sure if you remember me, but I just wanted to come over and say hi. Grenier leaps up. Oh my god! Of course I do! He wraps her in a big hug and they chat for a few minutes.

I used to fly on United like drinking water, cause they were an Entourage affiliate. She worked on the ground or whatever, Grenier explains to us after they finish talking. We like brod down  She used to take care of me.

I take this as my entry to ask him whether he still gets dates because of Entourage.



I cant speak to [prospective dategoers] wealth of knowledge or wisdom, but Entourage struck a chord. It was a cultural phenomenon, it defined an era, its undeniably an amazing show, so it would be naive to pretend that that wasnt a reality, says Grenier. Still, he says he would never date anyone who wasnt socially aware. Were in the information age. People know more about their world, about the corporations, about whats possible, about how we can connect with others who share their values and unite against common goals and causes, and those are the people Im bonding with. Not the ignorant people who only watch reality television.

Is he single?

You know, its funny, he says. I was listening to this Radiolab episode about K-Pop. In K-Pop, they completely manufacture their pop stars and they make the pop stars sign contracts where they vow not to date because theyre supposed to be the property of the people, theyre supposed to be perpetually single and attainable. So in honor of that episode and the Korean pop stars that I aspire to be, I am perpetually single for the sake of my fans, he grins. Does your audience listen to Radiolab? You should put a link to that. (Here you go.)

As the dinner ends, we head over to 29 Rooms to see Lonely Whales installation, a room filled with crepe paper in the shape of waves and blue lights that simulate the experience of being under the sea. Grenier is glad that the event is using paper straws (per his request), and very pleased with how the room looks. Its gorgeous. I like being in there, he declares. He holds court in the room for much of the evening, taking photos with the Winklevii twins and chatting with a string of attractive women.

Earlier, I ask Grenier if he gets annoyed when hes recognized by people or asked about the show that made him famous, but he shakes his head. The celebrity thing is what you make it, he says, flashing me that winning Vinnie Chase smile. Look, I have an opportunity to live like Burning Man all the time because I have the opportunity to meet people who can open up and be present with me, he says. And I can shame them for it and act holier than thou or have those authentic moments with people every day. Im lucky.
Photo: Google Earth

A woman who was wearing traditional Muslim garb had her shirt lit on fire by a passerby on Saturday, September 10, reports the New York Daily News. The 36-year-old Scottish tourist was window-shopping outside the Valentino store on Fifth Avenue near 55th Street at around 9 p.m. when she saw [the suspect] pull a lighter away and walk away. He doesnt say anything, said a police source.

The woman was able to put the flames out immediately, and though the suspect managed to get away, the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the crime.



This comes just days after a Brooklyn woman was arrested for attacking two Muslim women, trying to rip their veils off, and allegedly screaming Get the f*ck out of America, bitches, you dont belong here!
Simone Biles and Aly Raisman. Photo: Walter McBride/Getty Images

Since arriving back in the States after winning gold in Rio, Simone Biles and Aly Raisman have taken on the VMAs, Lip Sync Battle, and now Fashion Week. The Olympic gymnasts were the biggest stars sitting front-row tonight at Sherri Hills sequin-heavy runway show, which drew its usual eclectic mix of Housewives (Kim Zolciak-Biermann), celebrity offspring (Candace Cameron Bures daughter Natasha; Alec Baldwins daughter Ireland), and Disney teens (Amy  something? I dont even know). Before taking in the prom-worthy designs, Simone and Aly gamely chatted with all the red-carpet reporters hungry for a quote from a recognizable name. Though they seemed comfortable in the limelight, both admitted that all the post-Olympics attention  from boys, especially  is getting to be a little much.

Aly, who was wearing a spangly blue Sherri Hill cocktail dress, sighed when I asked her about the moment Oakland Raiders tight end Colton Underwood asked her out on a date on-camera. I like to keep my personal life to myself  just because the video went so viral, she said. You know, Im one of those people [who] just likes to keep everything private. So it was overwhelming? I asked. Yeah, yeah, she nodded.

Related Stories Unknown NFL Player Tries to Get Attention by Asking Aly Raisman Out in Video

Simone, meanwhile, called all the attention crazy. (When she met Zac Efron in Rio, Brazilian gymnast Arthur Mariano Instagrammed, Hey @zacefron I saw her first She is my girl.)

Everyone makes such a big deal about it, because were always in the gym, so every time we post a picture with a boy, they think its our boyfriend, Simone said, touching her beaded, white Sherri Hill cocktail dress. But were literally  all five of us on the team are single. We dont have boyfriends. Theyre crazy. I guess they love it, so its funny.

The gymnasts are more focused on meeting cool girls during their nationwide tour, which kicks off at the end of this week. We still wanna meet Zendaya and Demi Lovato! Simone exclaimed, before taking her front-row seat.
Photo: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

When I think back to sex-ed class, two things come to mind: my seventh-grade teacher stretching a condom over her entire forearm, and me giggling all the way through The Miracle of Life even though I promised myself that I wouldnt. I cant remember much else, which is likely for the best  a new study published in the journal BMJ Open indicates that students around the world consider their schools sex education and relationship education (SRE) to be negative and out of touch.

Researchers examined 55 existing studies from the U.K., Ireland, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Iran, Brazil, and Sweden that took place between the years 1990 and 2015; participants were under 25, though most were in the 12 to 18 age range. The study found that SRE from around the world was negative, gendered and heterosexist.

There was also a reluctance by the teachers  who themselves were said to appear embarrassed and awkward in the classroom  to address that their pupils were sexually active. The students, for their part, were reported to contribute to some of the difficulties: Young men were observed being disruptive in the classroom to mask their inexperience and verbally harassed young women for for participating. The curriculum itself often pointed to young men as sexually predatory and young women as passive.

One fundamental problem the study touched on was that the prevailing approach within schools appears to be to deny that there is anything exceptional about the topic and to attempt to teach SRE in the same way as other subjects. The authors conclude with a suggestion for sex-positive education and for schools to acknowledge sex is a special subject with unique challenges, as well as the fact and range of young peoples sexual activity.



In the meantime, if you have a 3-D printer, the French seem to have some good ideas.
what of straight-to-netflix looking mess..

Reply

Thread

Link

lmao

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Lmaoo MTE

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

pretty much

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I am actually clutching pearls rn

Reply

Thread

Link

get that ball action sis

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

;) as long as it's O'Brien's 

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Keaton deserves better than that thing and Kitsch.

Reply

Thread

Link

he's a cutie but not the guy i would imagine as the lead of a CIA action role. maybe in like 10 years.



YA adventure? yes. lovable indie comedy? yes. gun-carrying death machine? LOL

Reply

Thread

Link

Lol same

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Maybe he was trained as a kid and activated right out of college? lol I have no idea.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

He looks like a grease trap and some meth had a baby.

Reply

Thread

Link

Why does he look like Jared Padalecki in that still?

Reply

Thread

Link

right ?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Back in the day when he was attractive. I'm

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

That is some Sam Winchester Season Two realness in that pic.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

mte

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

mte 

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

well now mythagowoods is gonna get into teen wolf

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

omg i see it

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Maybe this is a sign that SPN is next. Teen Wolf should have ended a while ago.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

same. like pre-season 1.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

seriously, i was wondering if op got confused lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

DADDY

Reply

Thread

Link

Are him and Taylor playing brothers? Because he looks like him in those stills

Reply

Thread

Link

I'm watching for Sanaa Lathan.

Reply

Thread

Link

I'm...intrigued.



I can easily see him making a smooth transition from teen roles to serious adult roles, a la Gordon-Levitt and Ledger.

Reply

Thread

Link

ia

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I hope he's doing well/has recovered.

Reply

Thread

Link

i'm glad he's back working tbh



and tfg teen wolf's ending ugh.

Reply

Thread

Link

He looks too young to be playing an operative for the CIA lmao

Reply

Thread

Link

IA. I'm never gonna complain about men being too young for some roles, there are way too many middle aged men playing heroes already in Hollywood.

At least if he gets a love interest, she'll probably be in his age group.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i didn't even realize this until you said it and now i'm on board we need younger male action heroes. i'm seriously tired of Tom Cruise trying to make us all believe he can still pull off that Mission Impossible shit without breaking a damn hip.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

good points!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

MTE, i like that it's a young dude (biased bc of Dylan tho)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link
I wonder if it's gonna feel/look different from when it was on CBS? Pics look good though.

Reply

Thread

Link

The look probably wont be as bright since Vancouver is a lot rainier, they'll probably have to brighten the show up digitally.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

as long as it's not like the green filter (tm)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

AHHHHHHHHHHHH, MY BBS!!!!! <333333333333

Reply

Thread

Link

Daaaayyyummnnnnnnn at that awkward still of Clark bumping into his ex Jimmy who is also his cousin Kara's love interest who is also the ex of his current gf Lois' sister Lucy.



WHAT KIND OF WEB OF ROMANCE AND INTERSPECIES SEX.

Reply

Thread

Link

excuse???



do i need to be watching this show

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lol no.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

You SHOULD be sis!!



Like it's not strictly speaking canonical that Jimmy and Clark had a thing, but lbr, there's wayyyyy too much ~bromance~ and hearts in Jimmy's eyes the second Clark is ever mentioned/alluded to.



And he has his special little gadgets to connect with Clark, basically has the keys to Clark's crashed ship repository of knowledge craft.



Like at this point they should just admit they fucked and be done with it.



And now Jimmy/Kara is canon, after Jimmy and Lucy broke up because of his feelings for Kara, and now Clark is in town, and it's just AWKS but i'm getting my life from these stills.



JAMES OLSEN JUST HAS A THING FOR THE HOUSE OF EL OK.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Shit I need to finish season 1 before 2 starts



When does it start?

Reply

Thread

Link

October 10th

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Oh good plenty of time then :)



Thank you

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link









(i literally googled "gif computer lotion" to find this gif btw) (i literally googled "gif computer lotion" to find this gif btw)

Reply

Thread

Link

LMAAO your dedication is A+

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

LMAO

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

fozzie bear: uh oh! looks like kermit's wacka-wackin' off!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lmao dammit, i should have googled "gif kermit lotion"

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

lmao i was like nnnnggghnn with this post's pic. it looks like they about to make out/fuck

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lmao



but mte

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

He looks like budget superman who fills in for the real one at birthdays and bar mitzvah.

Reply

Thread

Link

I demand closeups to his ass every single episode he's in!

Reply

Thread

Link

i concur

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

They really need a new costume designer like BAD.



Edited at 2016-09-13 12:55 am (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

since when can't we post the stills themselves?



anyway i'm excited for all the shows to come back already. i hope this show doesn't change too much just because it's moved over the the cw.



also jeremy's been away for a while working on newsies in l.a.....

Reply

Thread

Link







I really think it depends on the mod accepting.



Edited at 2016-09-13 01:02 am (UTC) Idk, I was confused and annoyed when I got hit with the rejection "show me where you got permission from the copyright holder to post these photos"I really think it depends on the mod accepting.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

LOL i did too. i was like ....what? i post stills ALL THE TIME from the ksite dudes who host the websites for all the shows. never had an issue. in fact, i specifically wait for them to post them since most of the other sites who get them (like tvline) are banned here.



the wording as so official too i was like "....."

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

"show me where you got permission from the copyright holder to post these photos"



The fuck?! Like, if you sourced them, and it wasn't a banned source, what gives?

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

i need this adorable show back asap. AND SHOW ME MISS MARTIAN!!!!

Reply

Thread

Link

mte, idc about flop superman lol, give me miss martian!!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

LEAVE GREEN DAD ALONE, CLARK!!

Reply

Thread

Link

Where is my promo?



Of course the still in the tweet is Superman. I can't wait for these two eps to be over so Kara can get her own show back.

Reply

Thread

Link

It's ridic that they havent put out a promo yet. I still dont understand why they started production so far behind the other shows.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I probably don't want a promo anyway. It'd be 90% Superman.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

for real tho

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I only love one male character. ONE. And Supergirl cast this tiny, too young troll. I hope they can recast him at some future point.



Between this and the DCEU, my boy is just getting so fucked over.



Edited at 2016-09-13 01:11 am (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

I'm annoyed that we've heard/seen nonstop about Hoechlin and not much of anything about the other characters that were added. No one needs to see this much of that ugly ass suit.

Reply

Thread

Link
Anadarko will pay US$2 billion to acquire a number of assets of mining giant Freeport-McMoRan in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil company said yesterday. The deal, Anadarko added, will expand its daily production by 80,000 net barrels of oil equivalent, to a total of 155,000 boed, of which over 85 percent is oil.

The buy will also lead to incremental free cash flow gains of some US$3 billion over the next five years, based on current strip prices.

The acquisition will also substantially expand Anadarkos presence in the deepwater sector of the Gulf of Mexico and more precisely the Lucius development, where it will now hold 49 percent.

Commenting on the news, Anadarkos chief executive, president and chairman, Al Walker, said that the additional free cash flow will be used to fund the companys onshore projects in the Delaware and Denver-Julesburg basins. This will involve adding two drilling rigs in each of the basins by the end of this year, with plans to boost the combined output from the two plays to a minimum of 600,000 barrels of oil equivalent daily by 2021.

For Freeport, the sale would provide much needed cash in times of trouble, with commodity markets still in turmoil despite golds rally. Copper, in particular, has remained subdued price-wise so far this year due to a market imbalance similar to that in crude oil. Weak demand from China has been seen as the leading factor for low copper prices.

Earlier this year, Freeport put its 56 percent stake of its largest copper mine, Tenke Fungurume, on the chopping block, and struck a deal with China Molybdenum in May to sell it for US$2.65-billion, although the sale has yet to finalize, and is being called into question with a minority stakeholder objecting to the sale. The divestment attempt is a result of efforts to manage the substantial debt load of the miner, much of it accumulated from its entry into oil and gas in 2013, just a year before the oil price meltdown started.

As of the end of the first quarter of 2016, Freeport had a debt of US$20 billion but asset sales and rigorous cost-cutting measures have helped it cut this by US$700 million.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Russia will stop exporting its oil through foreign ports sitting on the Baltic Sea by 2018, according to a new report by Reuters.

Nikolai Tokarev, head of the Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft, told President Vladimir Putin about the plan during a meeting on Monday.

"Last year, around 9 million tonnes were shipped through the Baltic ports, while this year the figure was 5 million tonne, Tokarev told Putin, according to the meetings official transcript on the Kremlins website. "By 2018, we will reduce this flow to the Baltic ports to zero and will direct it to our ports instead, as we have surplus capacity.

Good, Putin replied.

Crude supplies currently shipped through the Latvian cities of Riga and Ventspils will be redirected to Russian ports on the Baltic Sea with excess capacity, the oil executive said.

The suspension of Russian imports to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania would hurt the former Soviet republics transit revenues. Vitol, the worlds largest oil trader, currently operates out of Ventspils.

The three European Union-member countries have been dependent on Russian oil since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

This summer, the European Commission announced a plan to develop the Baltic states Soviet-era energy infrastructure, which keeps them tied to Russia.

In July, the European Commission agreed to invest 263 million euros in trans-European energy infrastructure projects - the biggest share of which will be destined to the Baltic Sea region to help the expansion of the gas infrastructure.

Russia and the EU have been at odds with one in another in recent months regarding several geopolitical issues, especially the Syrian Civil War and the annexation of Crimea. Lately, the EUs member states have been in search of new oil and gas trading partners to reduce Russias political leverage.

By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain condemned on Tuesday this weekends attack on oil export terminals in eastern Libya by armed forces affiliated with a parliament based in the east, which fights with the UN-recognized Presidency Council and Government of National Accord (GNA) based in the west.

The parliament-affiliated Libyan National Army (LNA)led by General Khalifa Haftartook control of the terminals Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, and Zueitina in the so-called Oil Crescent over the weekend, wrestling them from the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), which is affiliated with the GNA. Es Sider and Ras Lanuf alone account for 700,000 bpd in export capacity, almost half of what Libya used to export before it plunged into a civil war after Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011.

According to OPEC figures from Monday, Libyas oil production in August of this year was 292,000 barrels of oil per day, down from 313,000 bpd in July, and the lowest output level so far this year. Before 2011, Libya had a peak of pumping 1.6 million bpd.

In Tuesdays joint statement, the six western nations called upon all parties to halt hostilities and avoid further actions that would additionally weaken or disrupt Libyas oil exports. The U.S. and the five influential European countries reiterated that the Presidency Council is the sole steward of these resources.

Libyas oil  including all infrastructure, production and export  must remain under the exclusive control of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) acting under the GNAs authority, the western nations say, demanding that all military forces in the so-called oil crescent withdraw unconditionally and immediately.

Reaffirming their total support for GNA as the sole authority in Libya, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States called for peaceful cooperation and urged immediate start of efforts to unify all armed forces into one.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Reprinted from Consortium News



U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry chats with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov outside a room in the Russian Foreign Ministry's Osobnyak Guesthouse in Moscow, Russia, on July 15, 2016.

(Image by [State Department Photo]) Details DMCA



The new ceasefire agreement between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which went into effect at noon Monday, has a new central compromise absent from the earlier ceasefire agreement that the same two men negotiated last February. But it isn't clear that it will produce markedly different results.

The new agreement incorporates a U.S.-Russian bargain: the Syrian air force is prohibited from operating except under very specific circumstances in return for U.S.-Russian military cooperation against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, ISIS or ISIL. That compromise could be a much stronger basis for an effective ceasefire, provided there is sufficient motivation to carry it out fully.

The question, however, is whether the Obama administration is willing to do what would certainly be necessary for the agreement to establish a longer-term ceasefire at the expense of Daesh and Al Qaeda.

In return for ending the Syrian air force's operations, generally regarded as indiscriminate, and lifting the siege on the rebel-controlled sectors of Aleppo, the United States is supposed to ensure the end of the close military collaboration between the armed groups it supports and Al Qaeda, and join with Russian forces in weakening Al Qaeda.

The new bargain is actually a variant of a provision in the Feb. 27 ceasefire agreement: in return for Russian and Syrian restraints on bombing operations, the United States would prevail on its clients to separate themselves from their erstwhile Al Qaeda allies.

But that never happened. Instead the U.S.-supported groups not only declared publicly that they would not honor a "partial ceasefire" that excluded areas controlled by Al Qaeda's affiliate, then known as Nusra Front, but joined with Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham, in a major open violation of the ceasefire by seizing strategic terrain south of Aleppo in early April.

As the Kerry-Lavrov negotiations on a ceasefire continued, Kerry's State Department hinted that the U.S. was linking its willingness to pressure its Syrian military clients to separate themselves from Al Qaeda's forces in the northwest to an unspecified Russian concession on the ceasefire that was still being negotiated.

It is now clear that what Kerry was pushing for was what the Obama administration characterized as the "grounding" of the Syrian air force in the current agreement.

Al Qaeda's Ties

Now that it has gotten that concession from the Russians, the crucial question is what the Obama administration intends to do about the ties between its own military clients and Al Qaeda in Aleppo and elsewhere in the northwest.



President Barack Obama delivers a statement on confronting the terrorist group ISIL in Syria, on the South Lawn of the White House prior to departure for New York, N.Y., Sept. 23, 2014.

(Image by (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)) Details DMCA



Thus far the primary evidence available for answering that question is two letters from U.S. envoy to the Syrian opposition Michael Ratney to opposition groups backed by the United States. The first letter, sent on Sept. 3, after most of the Kerry-Lavrov agreement had already been hammered out, appears to have been aimed primarily at reassuring those Syrian armed groups.

As translated by al-Monitor, it asserted, "Russia will prevent regime planes from flying, and this means there will not be bombing by the regime of areas controlled by the opposition, regardless of who is present in the area, including areas in which Jabhat Fateh al Sham [the new name adopted by Al Qaeda's Nusra Front] has a presence alongside other opposition factions."

Ratney confirmed that the U.S. would in return "offer Russia coordination from our side to weaken al Qaeda." But he also assured U.S. clients that their interests would be protected under the new agreement.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AFTER the 9/11 attack, while bodies were still buried in the rubble, George W. Bush demanded from Congress the legal authorization to use military force against those responsible for the attack, which everyone understood would start with an invasion of Afghanistan. The resulting resolution that was immediately cooked up was both vague and broad, providing that "the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons."

Click Here to Read Whole Article

Despite this broadness, or because of it, the House of Representatives on September 14 approved the resolution by a vote of 420-1. The Senate approved it the same day by a vote of 98-0. The lone dissenting vote was Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California, who -- three days after the 9/11 attack, in a climate of virtually full-scale homogeneity -- not only voted "no" but stood up on the House floor to deliver this eloquent, unflinching and, as it turns out, extremely prescient explanation for her opposition:

In an op-ed she published in the San Francisco Chronicle nine days later, she explained her vote by pointing out that the resolution "was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events -- anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation's long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit." She added: "A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed."
See original here

From September 12-14, the sailing vessels Amal-Hope and Zaytouna-Oliva will moor at Bosch i Alsina dock in the port of Barcelona where various events (concerts, talks, nonviolent workshops, a street parade and visits to the boats) will take place as farewell for the women leaving to break the blockade on Gaza.

According to Laura Arau, with Rumba a Gaza, Spain's WBG partner, the launch point from Barcelona has special meaning for the community there. "We have been a sister city with Gaza since 1998, yet we have been unable to visit with one another," she says. "We want our sisters in Gaza to know they are not forgotten and that with these boats and women, we are sending to them our message of hope, love and solidarity."

The boats will depart on September 14th to Ajaccio, France and then travel through another Western Mediterranean port before reaching the shores of Gaza in early October. For the Barcelona-Ajaccio leg, the passenger lists include Malin Bjork, a Member of European Parliament from Sweden; Zohar Chamberlain Regev, an Israeli who currently lives in Spain and Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army Colonel and former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

The women participants, who differ for each leg of the journey, represent over 15 countries across six continents. However, as Chamberlain Regev, who chairs WBG's steering committee, explains, "While we come from very different cultural and professional backgrounds, we all share a common bond. We find the blockade of Gaza and the occupation of Palestine absolutely unacceptable. And as long as governments continue to ignore this political-humanitarian crisis, we, as global citizens of goodwill, have no choice but to continue our efforts to break this inhumane blockade."

For a schedule of program activities Barcelona, see here.

Press Contact in Barcelona: Laura Arau, Spanish, Catalan (+34) 636 00 36 01 /prensa@rumboagaza.org





*The Women's Boat to Gaza is an initiative of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition composed of civil society organizations and campaigns from more than a dozen countries. For more information, visit their website.
Readers of this mega-tome definitely get their money's worth. It reveals all the things you've always wanted to know about China, while parting the curtain that hides America. For good measure it provides great insight into the mind of an expatriate at a time when that community is growing by leaps and bounds.



New Silk Road

(Image by Merics China Rising) Details DMCA



Jeff J. Brown began life as an Oklahoma born agricultural engineer, traveling across Muslim lands in the Middle East and Africa, before landing in 1990's China with his French wife, becoming first an entrepreneur then a teacher. Like many ex-pats, the Brown-Langlois family bounced back and forth between France, the US and China, its latest stay in the Middle Kingdom starting in 2009. Not too many expats have life experience in three distinct cultures and political systems, and Jeff shares with his readers comparisons across this broad spectrum.

The book's subtitle "Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations", together with a preface by Brazilian roaming reporter Pepe Escobar, only hint at the breadth of this book. It makes little sense to know everything about the workings of China's "Heavenly Mandate" if you lack the international context in which it operates, in which false flags are ubiquitous, and the most powerful weapon is finance.


United Indigenous Nations

(Image by Georgianne Nienaber) Details DMCA



Watch this video before you read what follows.

Hawaiian indigenous leader Pua Case and her Ohana travelled from the Big Island to support the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Pua Case is waging a similar battle to protect the sacred mountain Mauna Kea from a telescope array.

The proposed Canadian-funded project would install an 18-story telescope and the supporting structure would extend 20 feet underground. Mauna Kea and her summit would be further desecrated by a 21,000 square foot office building, a road and a parking lot.

A statement on the Idle No More Website, describes the historical and spiritual significance.

Mauna Kea is one of the most sacred places in the Pacific. Islanders use the mountain as a place of spiritual contemplation, healing and recreation. National Geographic recently named it as one of the Holiest places on Earth. For Native Hawaiians, Mauna Kea is a temple dedicated to Aloha and peace. It is where our supreme being gave birth to all living things. It was the meeting place of Papa (Earth Mother) and Wakea (Sky Father), the progenitors of the Hawaiian people, and is the burial ground of the most revered of Hawaiian ancestors.

This is exactly the same fight the Sioux Nation is peacefully and prayerfully waging against Energy Transfer Inc. and the Dakota Access Pipeline. Enbridge, a Canadian company, is a major partner in the DAPL.

How many telescopes are needed on Mauna Kea? There are already 13 telescopes and other facilities built and maintained by foreign countries and corporations.

How many more oil pipelines do we need in the Great Plains?

Like Mauna Kea, there is a lack of proper environmental and cultural impact studies on the DAPL route. The proposed pipeline would cross under a section of the Missouri River that serves as a source of water for the Standing Rock tribe. Once again, broken treaties, broken promises and generational trauma are threatening the spiritual, mental and physical well-being of a Sovereign Nation.

Energy Transfer Inc has already destroyed burial grounds and spiritual sites of historical importance to the Sioux Nation. How much more insult will we allow after the fait accompli?
Reprinted from The National

Is Israel on the verge of civil war, as a growing number of Israeli commentators suggest, with its Jewish population deeply riven over the future of the occupation?

On one side is a new peace movement, Decision at 50, stuffed with former political and security leaders. Ehud Barak, a previous prime minister who appears to be seeking a political comeback, may yet emerge as its figurehead.

The group has demanded the government hold a referendum next year -- the half-centenary of Israel's occupation, which began in 1967 -- on whether it is time to leave the territories. Its own polling shows a narrow majority ready to concede a Palestinian state.

On the other is Benjamin Netanyahu, in power for seven years with the most right-wing government in Israel's history. On Friday he posted a video on social media criticizing those who want to end the occupation.

Observing that a Palestinian state would require removing hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers currently living -- illegally -- on Palestinian land, Mr Netanyahu concluded: "There's a phrase for that. It's called ethnic cleansing."

Not only did the comparison upend international law, but Mr Netanyahu infuriated the Obama administration by implying that, in seeking to freeze settlement growth, the US had supported such ethnic cleansing. A spokeswoman called the comments "inappropriate and unhelpful" -- Washington-speak for deceitful and inflammatory.

But the Israeli prime minister is not the only one hoodwinking his audience.

Whatever its proponents imply, the Decision at 50 referendum is about neither peace nor the Palestinians' best interests. Its assumption is that yet again the Israeli public should determine unilaterally the Palestinians' fate.

Although the exact wording is yet to be decided, the referendum's backers appear concerned solely with the status of the West Bank.

An Israeli consensus believes Gaza has been free of occupation since the settlers were pulled out in 2005, despite the fact that Israel still surrounds most of the coastal strip with soldiers, patrols its air space with drones and denies access to the sea.

The same unyielding, deluded Israeli consensus has declared East Jerusalem, the expected capital of a Palestinian state, as instead part of Israel's "eternal capital."

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Five Part Series: 15th anniversary of 9/11, 2016





By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould

The forces vying to determine the direction of the American Empire in the 21st century began their struggle long before 9/11. It might be said that the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the signature event that made 9/11 inevitable. The Soviet reaction to infiltration and destabilization on their southern border ended de'tente and renewed the Cold War but also kicked off a U.S. backed Islamist expansion into Central Asia that has now spread like a plague into Europe and the Middle East and today threatens to ignite World War III. At the time the Soviet invasion was presented as an open act of aggression and declared by President Jimmy Carter to be the most serious threat to peace since World War II. It would establish a new narrative of uncompromising hostility toward the Soviet Union and erase decades of efforts by moderates inside both Soviet and American systems to end the Cold War. It would increase defense spending to World War II size levels thereby changing the United States from a creditor to a debtor nation and would also embed the so called New Right and their neoconservative allies with their aggressive, militarist agenda into the American political establishment.

The engine that drives today's ideological and economic warfare against Russia and the crisis the United States suffers from in both its domestic and foreign agendas, both politically and economically stems from an extended psychological warfare campaign cooked up against the Soviets during the Cold War but prolonged and intensified during their long war in Afghanistan.

Following the events of December 27, 1979 Americans responded dutifully to a prepared script as it poured from a hoard of foreign policy "experts" bemoaning America's military weakness while claiming Afghanistan was payback for Vietnam. Zbigniew Brzezinski himself claimed in his memoirs that the Soviet's move into Afghanistan was a vindication of his concern "that the Soviets would be emboldened by our lack of response over Ethiopia." The shaken president, Jimmy Carter announced a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the creation of a rapid deployment force to the Middle East and a new get tough posture toward the Soviet Union.

On January 2, 1980 the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour brought in former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Theodore Eliot and Harvard Professor Richard Pipes to speculate on the implications of the invasion. As an unabashed neoconservative ideologue, Pipes should have been considered a controversial choice sitting alongside the thoroughly mainstream Eastern establishment Eliot. But on this evening Pipes had been chosen to play the very special role of delegitimizing de'tente with the Soviet Union while moving the discussion permanently and irretrievably to the neoconservative right wing. Paired with Eliot, the dean of American diplomacy and soon to be Secretary General for the United States of the Bilderberg group, the message was made clear that the ideology of neoconservatism, globalism and the institutions of the American government were now one and the same.

It was a moment that would change the United States in ways that few Americans would immediately understand and many continue to find baffling. Years earlier, Pipes had been chosen to chair a biased, highly partisan study of the CIA known as the Team B experiment in competitive analysis.

The decade of the 1970s presented a series of strategic shocks to the United States. The Watergate scandal and the Arab oil embargo, campus protests, combined with the American military failure in Vietnam opened the door for de'tente with the Soviet Union. Vietnam removed the veil from America's Cold War defense-intellectual elite, revealing their complex mathematical formulas for war to be useless as a guide to action. But even before the end of that war in 1975, pressure had been building from an influential collection of neoconservative hawks assembled by Albert Wohlstetter to ignore the facts on the ground, blame de'tente for American weakness and wind back the clock to an openly militarized Cold War approach to the Soviet Union.

Backed by Gerald Ford's CIA director George H.W. Bush, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) vice chairman, Leo Cherne, and the father of Cold War thinking, Paul Nitze, Team B's goal was to turn the CIA's thinking about the Soviet Union on its head.

"The intensity and scope of the current Soviet military effort in peacetime is without parallel in twentieth century history," they claimed in their top secret 1976 report. The Soviets were preparing for a "third world war" and were comparable only to "Nazi remilitarization of the 1930s." Given military superiority and the will to use it, they reasoned, at some point in the near future the Soviets would make a strategic move that the United States would be militarily unable to stop.

But it was in their claim that the Soviets would first "intimidate smaller powers . . . adjacent to the USSR . . . where pro-Soviet forces have an opportunity to seize power but are unable to do so without military help," that the Team B assessment attained a level of prophecy.

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Dennis Richardson for Secretary of State

Oregonians share how the Secretary of State can create positive impacts for families

Central Point, OR  Candidate for Secretary of State Dennis Richardson yesterday launched his From the Heart television campaign featuring reform-minded Oregonians sharing with voters how the Secretary of State can positively impact the issues for which they advocate.

Since the beginning of this race, Ive been focused on how the office of Secretary of State can be used in a way to bring real reforms to the issues that are on the minds of Oregon families, stated Richardson, a former 12-year legislator and Ways and Means Co-Chair. When used as intended, the Secretary of State has the authority to audit failing programs like our foster care system, investigate why our public schools are low-performing, and follow-through on newly passed legislation.

Richardson noted his main opponent, Brad Avakian, has been publicly chastised by members of his own party for attempting to expand the office of Secretary of State outside the scope of its legal authority. While Mr. Avakian wants to focus on partisan social issues and auditing private businesses, I believe there is plenty of work to do within the scope of the office without trying to encroach on the duties of other statewide elected officials. We cannot ignore the systemic problems in Oregons schools or public agencies.

From the Heart features three Oregonians who are advocates for their respective issues.

Its clear Oregonians are ready for a Secretary of State who is focused on using the position as intended to get real results for all Oregonians, Richardson said. Theres simply no room for partisanship in the office of Secretary of State if were to achieve needed reforms in our state agencies.

From the Heart ads began airing statewide yesterday.

Meet the Oregonians who are ready for reforms

Danielle Tudor recently helped lift the statutes of limitations for the crime of rape, and secured funding to end the backlog of rape kit testing.

Watch Danielles Heart message.

Ben West is a nurse and a foster care parent. Like Richardson, he adopted a child from Oregons foster care system and wants to ensure that Oregons most vulnerable children are protected from abuse.

Watch Bens Heart message.

Kim Sordyl is an attorney and education advocate focused on lifting graduation rates and ensuring Oregon schools are safe for all students and teachers. As a lifelong Democrat, Sordyl isnt focused on partisan labels, rather, she supports leaders who focus on outcomes.

Watch Kims Heart message.
Colm for Congress

Colm Willis, candidate for Congress, urged Kurt Schrader to debate him in every county in Oregons 5th district. Schrader has agreed to appear jointly with Willis at only two events, ignoring the voters in Polk, Lincoln, Benton, and Tillamook Counties. Schrader has been invited to appear at an event in Polk County but has failed to accept.

I want each and every voter in congressional district 5 to be as informed as possible about the options available to them for their Representatives in Washington D.C. and I believe Kurt wants the same. Willis continued While I would like to do as many events as possible to reach the most voters possible, I am willing to compromise to accommodate Kurts busy schedule which Im sure is full of meetings with lobbyists and special interests in D.C.

A native Oregonian, Willis is the Republican candidate for Congress in Oregons 5th Congressional District. The general election will be held on November 8, 2016.
Sectarianism is a form of racism which should be condemned: Founder Harkatul Mujahideen

ISLAMABAD: Sectarianism is a serious threat to the very existence of Pakistan and to the Muslim world, said Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the leader of Ansarul Umma.



"It (sectarianism) is a form of racism which should be condemned by all Muslim and human-loving people," the founder of Harkatul Mujahideen said in a statement issued to the media.



He warned the Muslims that Sunni-Shia tussle was not in the interest of Islam and the Muslim world. The key enemy of the Muslims - United States - and its allies have constantly been hatching plots against the Muslims by instigating Sunnis and Shias against each other, he said. "It is part of my faith that Shia-Sunni clash is not at all in the interest of Pakistan and its people." Khalil - who is also a key leader of Difa-e-Haramain Sharifain (defence of the Two Holy Mosques) - highlighted numerous challenges being faced by the Muslim world due to their internal differences. "A lasting solution to all such challenges rests in the unity of Muslims at all levels," he said.



He said that all Muslims, irrespective of their sect, should ensure unity among their ranks to foil the conspiracies of their common enemies. About the agenda of Difa-e-Haramain Sharifain, he said it had nothing to do with sectarianism. "The organisation was formed with a sole purpose to unite all the Muslims against all those who want to divide them on sectarian grounds," he said.



"Being a worker of Difa-e-Haramain Sharifain, I request all the Muslims affiliated with different sects, including Deobandis, Barailvis, Shia and Ahle Hadees, to join our organisation to make Pakistan a strong fort of Islam," he said, adding that this would help reinforce the defence of the Holy Mosques - Makkah and Madina.



Referring to a recent statement of the Supreme Leader of Iran Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei on the Hajj arrangements, Khalil said that the Saudi rulers should not be criticised for a stampede at Haram Sharif last year.



The last week's statement by Khamenei came after the Iranian pilgrims missed the current Hajj season due to serious differences between Tehran and Riyadh over Hajj preparations.



The Saudi government wanted the Iranian government to ensure a peaceful role by its pilgrims during Hajj, which was not accepted by Iran.



Khalil said that the Saudi rulers should not be blamed for the absence of Iranians from Hajj, because being a host to about two million pilgrims it was their prime responsibility to ensure a peaceful atmosphere for all the participants.



"Demonstration and rallies at the holy places during Hajj is not acceptable to the Saudi government and also to the other participants," he explained.



It would be incorrect to say that the Saudi rulers had always remained unsuccessful in providing better facilities to the Hajj pilgrims, he firmly said, and added that the facilities being offered to Hajj pilgrims were always remarkable.



He set aside a notion that the Saudi rulers disallowed the Iranians due to some prejudice, and said that hundreds of Iranians from other countries had been welcomed for Hajj.



Referring to a demand by a few countries, including Iran, that Hajj arrangements should be made by a collective management of some Muslim countries, Khalil termed it unwise and impracticable. "Saudi rulers have vast experience in making all the required arrangements for a smooth Hajj. They are well trained in discharging their obligations to facilitate the Hajj participants, including men, women and the elderly, in performing their religious responsibilities."



Appreciating the measures adopted by the hosts for ensuring a peaceful and smooth Hajj every year, the Ansarul Umma leader said that the Saudi services reflected the commitment of the government leaders to facilitating millions of Hajj pilgrims.



There also existed a well-organised system in the Saudi Ministry of Hajj for further improving the facilities for the pilgrims, he said. "This ministry remains in function throughout the year not only to further develop its administrative structure but also to remove its previous year's shortcomings. It also maintains a regular contact with all Muslim countries to exchange their mutual experiences before and after Hajj."He said it was an undeniable fact that the Saudi rulers had been offering all possible comforts to their guests as part of their religious obligation, and it had nothing to do with politics.



He said that more than 800 flights carrying Hajj pilgrims from different countries landed at the King Abdulaziz International Airport everyday, and all the guests were treated well upon their arrival and departure.
The Campaign Coordinator of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kofi Adams, has entreated Ghanaians to opt for a safe pair of hands to govern the country by voting for John Dramani Mahama on December 7.



Mr Adams, who likened the country to a commercial vehicle, said Ghana was on a journey and a driver and his mate who have handled the vehicle so well is what is needed.



As such, the vehicle cannot be given to a driver who is always sleeping and a mate who lies, he stated.



Mr Adams made these comments on Sunday, September 11, as the party launched the first phase of its zonal campaign in the Greater Accra Region.



Even though Mr Adams did not make reference to any individual at the Ashaiman event, the NDCs bitterest rivals ahead of the polls is the New Patriotic Partys flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo and his running mate Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.



Mr Mahama had described the NPP flag bearer as a dictator and a dangerous political figure in the country on previous occasions. He also said the three-time flag bearer of the NPP was very divisive and also sleeps during his campaign tours, therefore, fails to see the development projects undertaken by the government.



Some pro-NDC critics have also labelled Dr Bawumia as a liar accusing him of manipulating statistics and data in favour of his party. He recently held a lecture during which he said that the country was better under ex-President Mills tenure than that it has been under President Mahama, even though both fell short of the level of achievements under ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor.



However, Mr Adams said Bawumias lecture was full of lies and the party would not get Vice President Kwesi Amissah Arthur to respond to the lies churned out at that programme.



The former aide to the Rawlingses stated that the upcoming elections was about experience and stressed: Nana Addo has not been able to manage the affairs of the NPP satisfactorily, hence should not be given a bigger responsibility, having failed at managing a smaller organisation.



He urged the electorate to vote massively for the NDCs presidential and parliamentary candidates.

Source: classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The 2016 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has described as unacceptable the high level of unemployment in the country.



Speaking at a forum in the capital-Accra, Nana Addo said the situation will worsen if pragmatic measures are not put in place to create jobs.



Youth unemployment represents a serious threat to the stability of the country with the jobless rate becoming a worrying trend as the economic growth or the real GDP growth fell behind the expansion of the labour force.



Successive governments failed to create jobs for new graduates entering the job market. Nonetheless there is an absence of a viable private sector in Ghana, to absorb the teeming unemployed youth in Ghana.



The onus of creating jobs fall squarely on the shoulders of the government, and needs to create an estimated 400,000 jobs annually if the unemployment rate is to be fully addressed.



However, the Flagbearer of the main opposition said an NPP government will ensure massive job creation in the country by expanding the productive base of the Ghanaian economy and enhancing enterprise growth.



Today the greatest challenge confronting our nation is the unprecedented high level of unemployment among the youth. According to the World Bank about 48% of Ghanaians between the ages of 15-24 yrs are unemployed whiles over 18% of those aged between 25-64 yrs are inactive or unemployed and actively looking for jobs.More than 150,000 students leave school at various levels of education every year for the job market in Ghana, he bemoaned.









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
NASA Astronaut Christina Koch takes a frozen selfie at the South Pole on the continent of Antarctica. Credit: Christina Koch

A trip to the Red Planet begins long in advance of liftoff. NASA's journey to Mars includes preparing astronauts to cope with several months of isolation, confinement, and in an extreme environment (identified with the acronym ICE). One of the best ways to study this on Earth is by observing others who also spend several months on actual ice in Antarctica.

NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, have a new collaborative agreement to study the effects of living in the polar environment.

In an initial research collaboration, a study developed and led by Dr. Candice Alfano, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Houston, will analyze people who work in Antarctica for long periods of time.

It's relatively simple to place subjects in isolation or confinement for the purpose of studying mood and behavior, but the extreme environment element is harder to find.

Sometimes called "White Mars," Antarctica is perfect because "you can't walk off the ice. That goes for whether you're having a health, behavioral health or a personal issue, you're not going anywhere," said Lisa Spence, project manager for NASA flight analogs in the Human Research Program. "That is very similar to spaceflight. It changes your mindset about how you are going to respond when you know you can't leave."

Just how extreme is the extreme environment of Antarctica at the South Pole? Not only is 98 percent of the continent covered in ice, but it also has extreme winds and an average temperature range of minus 49 to 26 degrees, making it the coldest place on Earth. At the South Pole, the sun disappears for months at a time. Known as "The Polar Night," the sun goes behind the horizon in late April and is not seen again until mid-September.

Once the sun is down, you could be stuck there. It is unsafe for airplanes or ships to travel to most parts of Antarctica during the winter because of the extremely cold temperatures and sea ice.

NASA astronaut Christina Hammock Koch has spent many seasons at various Antarctic and Arctic stations helping scientists conduct research remotely, including a year at the South Pole. "[This] means going months without seeing the sun, with the same crew, and without shipments of mail or fresh food," she said. "The isolation, absence of family and friends, and lack of new sensory inputs are all conditions that you must find a strategy to thrive within."

While certainly a difficult situation, Koch found ways to cope. She exercised, found hobbies, socialized with others in the station, and saved care packages to open at later times. She also said, "The most helpful strategy I developed was to avoid thinking about all the things I was missing out on and instead focused on the unique things in the moment that I would never get to experience again."

These factors combine to create an atmosphere suitable for the NASA, NSF and UH study. The study, scheduled to begin in February 2017, will include approximately 110 U.S. Antarctic program volunteers located at the McMurdo and South Pole stations.

Map showing the locations of McMurdo and South Pole Stations on the continent of Antarctica. Credit: NASA

"McMurdo is a coastal station with a population of around 250 people during the winter or the Northern Hemisphere's summer. Evacuation, though difficult, is possible. In contrast, the South Pole is far inland near the center of the continent and can have temperatures of -100F. Evacuation is simply not possible in winter," Dr. Alfano said.

By studying volunteers from both stations, researchers hope to more precisely understand the greatest sources of stress. Volunteers will complete periodic computer-based questionnaires, provide saliva samples, and wear a monitor that records sleep and wake cycles. Researchers will use these collective tools to look for signs of stress and changes in psychological health of the volunteers during their time in Antarctica.

The plan is to refine and finalize a checklist to be used to "provide an efficient means of monitoring signs and symptoms that a behavioral condition may be developing. Therefore, allowing early detection and early intervention," Lauren Leveton, Ph.D., of NASA's Behavioral Performance team said.

This checklist will be useful to NASA in relation to future space travel, but Alfano points out it will have other applications as well, such as among deployed military personnel.

Simultaneously to Alfano's study, the NASA and NSF partnership will deploy NASA clinical staff to Antarctica, which will give NASA's medical personnel (flight surgeons) a unique chance to treat individuals in the extreme environment. Participating flight surgeons will be on rotation during summer or winter-over stays.

At the Johnson Space Center, NASA flight surgeons are on call around the clock for remote consultations with astronauts who are on International Space Station missions. Allowing these doctors to work in the Antarctic environment will give them additional training to call upon when consulting with the astronauts during future long duration, deep space missions, including the journey to Mars.

"The first-hand experience of living and working at McMurdo and the South Pole will be invaluable for the flight surgeons' grasp of what astronauts encounter during long duration spaceflight," Dr. Terrance Taddeo, Johnson Space Center Chief Medical Officer, said.

"This is a win-win," Spence said. "Not only are NASA's flight surgeons gaining a better understanding of the ICE environment of the astronauts they work with, but NSF's Antarctic clinics will have additional onsite medical expertise."

Alfano's project, formally called "Characterizations of Psychological Risk, Overlap with Physical Health, and Associated Performance in Isolated, Confined, and Extreme (ICE) Environments," will conclude following data collection during the 2017 winter season.

As NASA prepares for future human missions to Mars, keeping the astronauts safe on the journey is a top priority. The southernmost continent on Earth will provide researchers with the perfect analog for studying the behavioral health effects of an extreme environment.

Explore further South Pole medical evacuation flight launched
A Professor at the University of Strathclyde has had his name written among the stars, after an asteroid was named after him.

Professor Massimiliano Vasile, who actively works on finding solutions to control the motion of asteroids, has received the honour from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in recognition of his work.

Professor Vasile said: "There are several hundreds of thousands of asteroids in space. Out of these relatively few are known, and even fewer are actively tracked.

"In honour of my work on asteroid manipulation, SpaceDyS, one of the partners in the Stardust network, submitted my candidacy to the Minor Planet Centre to name an asteroid after me. The Committee on Small Body Nomenclature of the IAU, part of the MPC, evaluated the submission and finally assigned my name to asteroid 2002 PX33.

"The one they picked is part of the asteroid belt. It is relatively big but, thankfully, not dangerous."

Professor Vasile is leading the Stardust Network, an international, EU-funded programme comprising researchers and leaders from 20 different institutions, with the purpose of advancing research into the manipulation of asteroids and space debris, and the aim of protecting the planet and space assets from catastrophic impacts.

Asteroid 2002 PX33, which has been named Maxvasile, is in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter. It measures an estimated 3.1622 km in diameter and has a minimum distance of 1.08 astronomical units -around 100,393,201 miles - from Earth, a similar distance to that of the Earth from the Sun.

The Maxvasile asteroid has a period of orbit around the sun of around three and a half years. The closest distance it reaches to the sun is 2.0794 astronomical units - around 193,292,305 miles. The asteroid was discovered in 2002 by an Italian observatory, with the first recorded observation in 1993.

Other famous people to have had asteroids named after them include astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, scientists Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking, novelists Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and musicians Stevie Wonder and Freddie Mercury.

Professor Vasile has made numerous media appearances, including on the BBC programmes Stargazing Live and Planet Ant: Life Inside the Colony.

The Stardust team at the University of Strathclyde was the winner in the Space Achievement/Academic Study Research category of the 2015 Sir Arthur Clarke Awards, presented at the UK Space Conference.

Explore further Far-away asteroid named after Freddie Mercury on birthday
Gravitational waves are produced by some of the most extreme events in the universe. Credit: NASA/SXS Lensing

Four hundred years ago Galileo pointed a telescope at Jupiter and saw electromagnetic waves (light) being reflected off its moons.

This profound observation displaced Earth from its position at the centre of the universe to just one planet among many. It also sparked a new golden era of optical astronomy, which continues to this day.

In September 2015 the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (aLIGO) detected the gravitational waves emitted by two coalescing black holes. This remarkable discovery opened up a new window on the universe, using gravitational waves rather than electromagnetic waves to peer into the far reaches of the cosmos.

A little before aLIGO's successful detection, I was invited to put together a team to bid for an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, to be known as "OzGRav".

Centres of Excellence are a scientist's idea of funding nirvana because they provide guaranteed funding for seven years. So instead of writing annual grant applications with a slim chance of success of getting a fraction of what you asked for, you can plan and execute a serious scientific agenda with critical mass.

But the competition is fierce, and the chances of success are small, and funding rounds are only held every three years or so. To be successful, Centres need bold visions and ambitious objectives.

Our main problem when we submitted our pitch was that no-one had detected gravitational waves yet, and we were relying on the promise of new instruments like aLIGO to deliver in an area that was still void of positive results.

But unbeknown to any of us, the enormous burst of gravitational waves from GW150914 was en route to Earth and due to strike it just two months after our initial application was submitted.

The gravitational waves were generated more than a billion years ago when two enormous black holes merged after a death spiral. And shortly after the aLIGO gravitational wave detector was turned on it saw the characteristic "chirp" as space time shook during its passage.

Many of my OzGRav team had aided in the construction of aLIGO, and its precision is mind-blowing. When the first source of gravitational waves ever detected (GW150914) were impacting the four kilometre long arms of the detector, they shook by the equivalent of less than the width of a human hair at the distance of the nearest star!

So when our grant was being assessed, gravitational waves were still just a twinkle in the scientific community's eye. One of our assessors even made it very clear that physicists were always promising to detect gravitational waves but none had been found.

With some luck we were selected to submit a full proposal; one of only 20 teams to do so.

By this time, many of my collaborators were fully aware that the first gravitational waves had been discovered. But they were bound by the strict rules of the LIGO Scientific Consortium that prohibited them from telling me (the proposed Director of the Centre) or putting this news in our proposal, or the rejoinder. It must have been killing them.

All we could say was the data were looking really exciting!

Fortunately for us, the discovery of gravitational waves was announced just prior to the interviews of the final 20 Centre of Excellence teams, and many of my team were invited to parliament house to describe their role in the discovery.

Last week we heard that we were one of the nine Centres fortunate enough to gain funding. I'm certain this is at least partly attributable to the fact that a billion years ago in a galaxy far, far away, two black holes, some 30 times the mass of our sun tore each other apart, releasing gravitational waves in the process.

The impact of this discovery has been remarkable. In only six months the discovery paper has already gathered 641 citations. Another black hole merger event was published by the LIGO consortium in June and the (now) "telescope" is gearing up for its second major run after some tweaks to its hardware that seems certain to discover more events.

Our role

OzGRav has three major themes that will be driving its research programmes: instrumentation, data and astrophysics.

The instrumentation behind these gravitational wave detectors is truly remarkable. OzGRav scientists will aid in the enhancement of aLIGO so that it is even more sensitive, using amazing tricks such as quantum squeezing. We will also help design and ultimately construct the next-generation detectors that aim to detect thousands of events per year.

To minimise the possible locations of these events, it would also make a lot of sense to build one of these new detectors in Australia.

But aLIGO isn't the only detector capable of discovering gravitational waves. Radio astronomers can use neutron stars (pulsars) that rotate many hundreds of times per second to sense "disturbances in the space-time continuum" induced by the gravitational waves coming from super-massive black holes.

OzGRav engineers are currently designing the supercomputers that will monitor dozens of these stars using the Square Kilometre Array. The CSIRO's Parkes telescope is also having a powerful new receiver fitted to continue its leading role in this area of science.

Swinburne University of Technology will host the Centre headquarters and design a supercomputer custom-built to process the data coming from the gravitational wave detectors.

These data will be processed to look for not just merging black holes, but also neutron stars. And the closest neutron stars will be monitored to see if tiny "magnetic mountains" on their surfaces cause them to generate detectable gravitational wave emission.

OzGRav's astronomers will also use a network of telescopes at traditional frequencies (optical and radio) to search for evidence of gravitational wave events at other wavelengths to help identify the host galaxies (or lack thereof?) to help understand where the sources of gravitational waves come from.

Finally, our astrophysicists will attempt to explain what our detectors see, and whether Einstein's theory of general relativity is correct or needs some tweaks.

Fortunately Australian scientists can fully engage with this new window on the universe and participate in the first decade of this exciting new era of gravitational wave astrophysics thanks to the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence programme.

Explore further Making waves in spacetime

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.


Samsung has suspended sales of the Galaxy Note 7 and recalled 2.5 million units following problems with batteries exploding or burning while charging

Samsung is warning consumers to stop using its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after a spate of battery explosions.

It was the latest in a string of lithium-ion battery fires on products ranging from laptops to hoverboards to airlinersand a reminder that pushing the technology envelope can sometimes be problematic.

Here are some things to know about the recall and why batteries can be a fire hazard.

How do these batteries work and why do they catch fire?

A lithium-ion battery is a kind of rechargeable battery that uses different materials, one holding positive ionsthe cathodeand the other holding negative ionsthe anode.

These ions move one way when charging, and back again when dischargingbeing used.

These two layersor conductorsare never supposed to touch, so manufacturers insert separators to keep them apart.

Unfortunately, the chemical reaction that makes batteries work also creates heat. Overcharging the packsor charging them too fastcan lead to fires.

What is the issue with Samsung's batteries?

We don't know exactly, but Samsung has given some clues. It said parts of the battery that should never touch came together due to a "very rare manufacturing process error".

Gadget makers weigh all sorts of factors like performance, cost and safety when rolling out their next-generation technology.

And the race to push more battery life into their latest phone or tablet can lead to unexpected results.

"Smartphone makers are trying to squeeze these batteries into a small, thin package," said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute in Tokyo.

"Since batteries generate energy through a chemical reaction, it's really hard to reduce the risk (of fire) to zero.

"Sometimes convenience comes with a price."

Samsung has suspended sales of the Galaxy Note 7 and recalled 2.5 million units following problems with batteries exploding or burning while charging

Has this happened before?

Yes. Battery fires have been reported in products including Sony Vaio laptops, last-year's must-have toy the hoverboard, electric bikes and even Boeing's Dreamliner jet.

In Samsung's case, faulty batteries caused some handsets to burst into flames during charging.

Cases of exploding batteries continued to emerge following the recall announcement, as users claimed a burning device had damaged a hotel room in Australia or set a car on fire in the US.

How extensive is the problem?

Not very. Millions of lithium-ion batteries are produced annually with a tiny fraction of those catching fire or exploding.

At the start of this month, Samsung had received reports of about 35 incidents involving the phone's batteries.

"It's not easy to know if Samsung's problem is the same as others...at this point," Yasuda said.

"If its battery suppliers sell these same ones to other producers,it could possibly affect them too."

What does this mean for Samsung and other gadget makers that use these batteries?

It will damage Samsung's reputation and likely hurt profits at a time when it is feeling the squeeze from Apple's iPhone and Chinese rivals in the lower-end category. The mobile business accounts for a major share of Samsung's profits.

It will also put pressure on gadget makers to figure out how to make battery packs safe for ever-smaller devices.

"We always want batteries to be safe but also to be more efficient," said Guy Marlair, a France-based safety expert.

"The more that we boost the battery's performance, the higher the energy density in a small space and the tougher it is to manage security."

Explore further FAA warns airline passengers not to use Samsung smartphone

 2016 AFP
Five years ago, researchers at the George Washington University, SRI International and George Mason University began a study of inclusive science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) high schools that target underrepresented minority students. The National Science Foundation-funded study, "Opportunity Structures for Preparation and Inspiration," is nearly complete and researchers have identified 14 critical components that eight exemplary inclusive STEM high schools had in common. They also prepared a toolkit to help schools self-assess their STEM programs, using the inclusive STEM schools in this study as exemplars.

These findings are significant because the eight study schools were spread across the U.S. and had no formal affiliations with one another. The schools chosen for this study had near-100 percent high school graduation and college admissions rates. They had a common mission to help students achieve STEM success, especially females and minority students, students from families of modest means and students who were the first generation in their families to attend college. Inclusive STEM high schools are different than the highly selective STEM-focused schools that target students who are already identified as gifted and talented in STEM.

In addition to preparing students for careers and college, this research shows that the schools studied had created curricular, instructional and organization structures that don't match notions of traditional high schools.

"Inclusive STEM schools aren't like most private schools, but are not really like traditional comprehensive schools either," said Sharon Lynch, professor of curriculum and pedagogy at GW's Graduate School of Education and Human Development and the principal investigator for the study. "This is a new kind of school that is much more inclusive and is bringing in students who want to be there and study STEM, no matter their backgrounds. They have figured out how to do things differently, to trust their students to achieve and their teachers to guide students toward STEM college majors."

Major Findings: What Made the STEM High Schools Studied Different?

The inclusive STEM high schools studied in this project had 14 critical components in common that distinguished them from traditional high schools and from STEM-focused high schools without an inclusive mission. The critical components are:

College-prep, STEM-focused curriculum for all Well-prepared STEM teachers with strongsometimes professionalbackground in STEM Supports for underrepresented students Flexible and autonomous administration Reformed instructional strategies and project-based learning Integrated, innovative technology use STEM-rich, informal experiences Connections with business, industry and the world of work College-level coursework Inclusive STEM mission Dynamic assessment systems for continuous improvement Innovative and responsive leadership Positive school community and culture of high expectations for all Student agency and choice

Among these 14 components, four critical components stood out as consistently prominent. The schools required all students to pursue STEM-focused college preparatory curricula. All students received high-quality learning experiences that prepared them for college STEM majors. This included mathematics through pre-calculus or calculus, a science sequence with chemistry and physics, and coursework in engineering, technology, or STEM career technical education classes.

Second, every successful STEM school had well-qualified teachers with strong STEM backgrounds, some had business/industry and research experience, others were well-prepared to teach through strong teacher preparation programs. STEM teachers were collaborative and worked with school leaders to develop innovative STEM programs of study. They also had humanities teachers who integrated STEM into their classes.

Third, because these STEM high schools had admissions by lottery and admitted a wide range of students, students naturally needed support for the demanding STEM programs. Students had access to a variety of virtual and in-person tutoring, joined study groups, and had online data systems to help monitor their progress and access help.

Finally, the schools in this study had achieved some degree of autonomy from school district level policies, and were free to innovate. Two of the eight schools were charter schools, but the rest were not. Because these high schools were relatively smallwith 350 to 600 studentsthey could be nimble in making decisions to create new kinds of instructional challenges that required students to work across STEM fields.

A Toolkit for Success

The researchers developed several resources, including a logic model and accompanying STEM Inventorytools for schools to self-assess their STEM programs. The study's website contains detailed case studies of the eight schools, "day in the life" narratives of students in comprehensive and inclusive STEM high schools, and links to scholarly publications and to other STEM education resources.

As supplements to scholarly publications developed throughout this study, researchers also created a set of three videos focusing on one of the study schools, Metro Early College High School in Columbus, Ohio. The videos provide an overview of this school and share the "day in the life" experiences of two students, one sophomore and one junior. Both students attended college as well as high school, and the junior was working on a research study at a nearby children's hospital.

Day in the Life Studies of Students

A second phase of the research focused on "Day in the Life" studies of students who attended STEM high schools and those who attended nearby comprehensive traditional high schools. Researchers captured what it felt like to be a high school student who was learning about STEM at these two types of schoolsfrom the moment the student arrived in the morning to the end of the day.

Researchers visited two traditional comprehensive high schools and two inclusive STEM high schools, and shadowed students for two days, documenting their classroom activities and their interactions with peers. This shed light on differences in student experiences with instruction and curriculum and the different relationships students had with each other and with teachers.

At the comprehensive schools there was more direct instruction and teacher lectures, accompanied by individual student work at their desks. At the inclusive STEM high schools students worked more in groups, could discuss and explain what they were learning and apply it to real world contexts. They seemed more excited about learning. They also had more developed college and career plans, whether they were aiming for STEM careers or not.

Schools Included in the Study

The research group identified eight inclusive STEM schools with successful track records. A group of STEM school experts who knew the schools by reputation nominated the schools. Consideration was given to schools that are highly racially diverse with approximately equal numbers of male and female students and with high proportions of low income families. All are schools of choice, meaning that the students chose to attend with admission through a lottery system. Test scores, graduation rates and college admissions rates were far above the state averages, and they served all portions of their populations well. Some had won awards for high achievement and had been recognized in STEM competitions.

The participating schools are: Manor New Technology High School (Texas); Wayne School of Engineering (North Carolina); Dozier-Libbey Medical High School (California); Denver School of Science & Technology: Stapleton High School (Colorado); Urban Science Academy (Massachusetts); Metro Early College High School (Ohio); The Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High (California); and Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences (Illinois).

Explore further Researchers release first case studies to analyze inclusive STEM-focused US high schools
Death research in the United States mostly overlooks bereavement customs of those who are not Anglo-Protestants, says a Baylor University researcher. She hopes to correct thatbeginning with a study of Catholic Latino communities, who often hold overnight wakes and present food to the deceased.

Candi K. Cann, Ph.D., who teaches courses on death and dying, took a group of her students in 2015 to a Latino funeral home in a Central Texas city in which nearly 30 percent of the total population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, according to U.S. Census statistics.

"My studentsnearly all Anglowere fascinated," said Cann, assistant professor in Baylor Interdisciplinary Core of the Honors College. While the Latino population is burgeoning, "this world was entirely foreign to them. The idea of eating and serving food at a wake was one that my students found not only foreign, but repelling, and they couldn't imagine eating in the presence of the dead.

"I realized that these practices reflect a central part of Latina/o identity formation, yet seem invisible to many, because the death industry in the United States remains so segregated."

But change is coming, Cann predicts. Hispanics are the country's largest minorityapproximately 17 percent of the populationand expected to double to 106 million residents in 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Funeral directors are seeing a need to expand their services, she said.

Cann's study"Contemporary Death Practices in the Catholic Latina/o Community"is published in the journal Thanatos. At the request of the Funeral Service Academy, a national education organization for funeral directors and embalmers, she has prepared training modules about Latino grieving and funeral practices.

The hallmark of the Latino funeral is the extended wake, which often lasts overnight, Cann said. Mourners bring their children with them, and it is common for families to set up card tables so that they can play dominoes and other games and exchange stories about the deceased loved one. Flowers and candles are placed near the body when the visitation begins.

"The wake is not a quiet affair, but often loud and emotional," Cann said. "Generally, from the time the deceased is brought to the funeral home, the person is not left on his or her own." Family members often help with washing, dressing and applying makeup to the deceased after they are embalmed, she said.

That is in marked contrast to most modern Anglo practices, in which the body is usually taken from the hospital, or much less frequently, the home, and then prepared by the funeral home, not to be seen again until visitation, Cann said.

In her article, Cann cited a researcher's previous study quoting two Cuban-American women in Floridaa mother and grandmotherabout spending the entire night at a Cuban mortuary, setting up recliners and drinking espresso.

"It's not like (Anglo) Americans . . . Once the body is there, we would stay with that body until it is buried," one woman said. When mourners were hungry, "we would go in shiftslike Grandma was going anywhere! But we couldn't leave her alone. Somebody was always there to keep her company."

While families sit and eat in the presence of their loved ones, even within the Latino segment of the United States population, those practices vary, Cann said.

Catered services for Mexican-American funerals are likely to include enchiladas, burritos, tacos, rice and beans; at Columbian visitations, empanadas and plantains are common. In funeral homes that are not equipped to offer catering, food will be shared as offerings to the deceased, with others gathering for meals at the church after services or at the deceased's home after burial, Cann said.

Many U.S. Latinos are Roman Catholic, but even among Protestant Latinos, Catholicism has a cultural influence, Cann said. Each Latin American country tends to favor certain saints, martyrs and icons, and immigrants carry those preferences into the United States and to subsequent generations, Cann said.

Statues and prayer cards with the pictures of these saints are often placed in the room of the deceased, as well as at funerals and anniversary Mass. The cards often display picture of the deceased, with birth and death dates, and a written prayer of intercession.

"These cards are portable and meaningful memorials," Cann said. "They operate as a sort of souvenirevidence of the relationship between the bereaved and the deceased and an assertion of the right of the bereaved to grieve."

But everyday items, as well as religious ones, play a role in Latino funerals, she said. Many family members and friends also purchase caskets that come with memory drawers or insert panels to hold photos, letters, jewelry and keepsakes.

"The casket, candles, pictures, making a plate and offering it to the dead and saying a prayer . . . Those things recognize the deceased person's role in your life and continuing your bond. But they are also a way of saying, 'We'll continue without you,'" Cann said.

In her research, Cann found that while the need for ethnic funeral services is growing, many funeral homes are not familiar with other cultures.

"The industry wants to serve this community, but it doesn't know how," she said.

Establishment of ethnic funeral homes with bilingual staff is on the rise, and some traditional funeral homes are actively recruiting bilingual staff, Cann said. Some also are making adjustments so that catered food can be served during wakes.

Cann said that her research is "an introduction. There is much more work to be done. Death practices in the contemporary United States are one of the few remaining places in which ethnic identity is emphasized and even solidified.

"I wanted to at least attempt to counter the myth of death in the United States as uniform and analogous."

Candi Cann is the author of "Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century." In her book, she explores how mourning the dead in the 21st century has become a virtual phenomenon, with the dead living on through social media profiles, memorial websites and saved voicemails that can be accessed at any time. Those practices make the physical presence of death secondary to the psychological experience of mourning for many, Cann writes.
Fifteen years ago, the tragedy of September 11, 2001 happened directly from the complete state failure in Afghanistan. This followed the negligence by the international community of Afghanistans post-Cold War stabilisation and reconstruction, after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from the country in 1989. For a decade (1979-1989), in order to defeat communism, the United States and its allies effectively capitalised on Afghans firm determination to free their country from the occupation of the former Soviet Union. When this strategic goal was achieved, Afghanistan was pushed back into Americas foreign policy blind-spot.





In the following decade from early 1991 to 2001, several of Afghanistans neighbours, which lacked a shared vision for a secure future together, filled the vacuum left by the West. Pakistan led the fragmentation of former Afghan resistance fighters, whom the country fully exploited to dismantle Afghanistans strong army, air force, civilian institutions, and key economic infrastructure. In an effort to end Afghans any hope of rebuilding their country, Pakistan created and launched the so-called Taliban movement. This mercenary force oppressed Afghans, particularly women and girls, while gradually isolating Afghanistan from the rest of the international community.





The Taliban also harboured Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama Bin Laden, who masterminded in Afghanistan the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Immediately following this tragedy, which killed more than 3000 Americans  including many Muslims  the international community, led by the US, re-engaged in Afghanistan. This brought an end to the tyranny of the Taliban, and ushered in the slow but ongoing transformation of Afghanistan.





Following the end of the transition process in 2014 when most of international forces withdrew from Afghanistan, the Afghan government expected a spike in exported and imposed violence from outside. Intelligence and military elements in Pakistan had calculated that by escalating violence across Afghanistan, the newly established NUG would dramatically weaken and most likely collapse, in the face of an economic depression, a die-hard enemy, and an under-resourced army. Indeed, these strategic weaknesses were caused by the abrupt withdrawal of foreign forces and the breakdown of a rentier economy, which they had fostered in Afghanistan since 2009.





In spite of systemic weaknesses and slow provision or unavailability of military enablers, Afghan forces have done the lions share of fighting the global war on terrorism. Unfortunately, however, this isnt recognised adequately. Afghanistans partners should take note of the fact that once regional terrorists and their transnational affiliates have regained a firm foothold in Afghanistan, they would immediately turn their attention elsewhere. This is exactly what they had been doing in the second half of the 1990s when Afghanistan was completely neglected by the international community. Of course, it was the tragedy of 9/11 that effectively ended international negligence of Afghanistans continued need to stabilise and develop on a sustainable basis.




Sanofi's Fixed-Ratio Combination Helps More Patients Reach Mealtime Blood Sugar Target than Insulin Glargine Alone

Details Category: Proteins and Peptides Published on Tuesday, 13 September 2016 17:09 Hits: 2218

PARIS, France I September 13, 2016 I Sanofi announced today that iGlarLixi, the investigational, titratable fixed-ratio combination of insulin glargine 100 Units/mL and GLP-1 receptor agonist lixisenatide*, offers greater control of mealtime blood sugar (post-prandial glucose, PPG) in adults living with type 2 diabetes compared to insulin glargine 100 Units/mL alone. A new post-hoc analysis of data from the LixiLan-L pivotal Phase III clinical trial found more patients who received the fixed-ratio combination reached their daily PPG target than those who received only insulin glargine 100 Units/mL. The new analysis was presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 52nd Annual Meeting in Munich, Germany. iGlarLixi is currently under review in the United States and Europe.

"Controlling mealtime blood sugar is an important element of maintaining overall blood sugar control, which plays a role in helping patients treat their diabetes," said Josep Vidal, Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, and lead author of the study. "This new analysis provides further evidence supporting the use of iGlarLixi by adults with type 2 diabetes who need mealtime blood sugar control alongside greater control of their HbA1c."

The analysis also showed that a significantly higher proportion of participants reached their PPG target after 30 weeks, according to self-measured plasma glucose (SMPG) taken at intervals throughout the day. As previously reported for LixiLan-L, incidence of symptomatic hypoglycemia was similar with the titratable fixed-ratio combination and insulin glargine 100 Units/mL.

"In the LixiLan-L pivotal Phase III clinical trial, investigational iGlarLixi demonstrated superior HbA1c reduction compared with insulin glargine 100 Units/mL alone," said Riccardo Perfetti, Head of Global Diabetes Medical Team, Sanofi. "With this new analysis, we see further evidence of the role iGlarLixi can serve in helping type 2 diabetes patients meet their PPG targets."

The presentation abstract is titled 'Post-Prandial Glycemic Outcomes of a Fixed Ratio Combination of Insulin Glargine and Lixisenatide in the LixiLan-L Trial (NCT02058147)' (Vidal, J et al. Poster presentation 801 - EASD 52nd Annual Meeting in Munich, Germany at 13:15 p.m. CET on September 13)

Summary of Results

The post-hoc analysis reviewed data from the LixiLan-L pivotal Phase III trial, which compared the effectiveness of the two treatments in 736 adults whose type 2 diabetes was not adequately controlled at screening on insulin glargine alone or combined with one or two oral anti-diabetic agents. The primary outcome of the LixiLan-L study, a statistically significant reduction in HbA1c (average blood glucose over the previous three months) compared with insulin glargine 100 Units/mL, was previously reported at the American Diabetes Association 76th Scientific Sessions, 2016.

In the 677 participants included in the post-hoc analysis with standardized meal test data at baseline and week 30, the fixed-ratio combination demonstrated greater PPG control compared with insulin glargine 100 Units/mL. The percentage of patients achieving PPG <=7.8 mmol/L at Week 30 was greater in the fixed-ratio combination group versus the insulin glargine 100 Units/mL group at 0.5 hour (difference: 16.4% [41.4% vs. 25%], p<0.0001); one hour (difference: 22.4% [30.7% vs. 8.3%], p<0.0001) and two hour (difference: 28.2% [33.6% vs. 5.4%], p<0.0001) after a standardized liquid meal.

The fixed-ratio combination also demonstrated greater PPG control compared with insulin glargine 100 Units/mL in the 592 participants included in the post-hoc analysis with 7-point self-measured plasma glucose (SMPG) data at baseline and week 30. Consistently, more patients reached PPG targets after all meals throughout the day. The percentage of patients achieving PPG <=7.8 mmol/L in a 7-point SMPG test at Week 30 was greater in the fixed-ratio combination group versus the insulin glargine 100 Units/mL group at 10 a.m. (difference: 32.5% [61.2% vs. 28.7%], p<0.0001); 3 p.m. (difference: 16.5% [41.1% vs. 24.6%], p<0.0001) and 10 p.m. (difference: 12.2% [45.9% vs. 33.7%], p=0.005).

As previously reported for LixiLan-L, documented (<=70 mg/dL /3.9 mmol/L) incidence of symptomatic hypoglycemia was similar with the titratable fixed-ratio combination (40% of patients; 3.0 events/year; E/Y) and insulin glargine 100 Units/mL (42.5% of patients; 4.2 E/Y). With the titratable fixed-ratio combination, 10.4% of participants experienced nausea, and 3.6% experienced vomiting; while with insulin glargine 100 Units/mL 0.5% of participants experienced nausea and 0.5% experienced vomiting.

About Sanofi Diabetes & Cardiovascular

Diabetes and cardiovascular disease affect millions of people worldwide, with many managing the complex challenges of both. Building on our portfolio evolution, heritage and expertise, Sanofi has a focused business unit dedicated to delivering innovative, value-based medicines and integrated solutions in these therapeutic areas. We are committed to a collaborative approach that involves strategic alliances with professional and patient associations, research institutions and leaders in healthcare and other industries, with the goal of advancing scientific knowledge, driving the convergence of science and technology, helping to improve outcomes and inspiring an evolution in care.

About Sanofi

Sanofi, a global healthcare leader, discovers, develops and distributes therapeutic solutions focused on patients' needs. Sanofi is organized into five global business units: Diabetes and Cardiovascular, General Medicines and Emerging Markets, Sanofi Genzyme, Sanofi Pasteur and Merial. Sanofi is listed in Paris (EURONEXT: SAN) and in New York (NYSE: SNY).

SOURCE: Sanofi
Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the American Authors Association

Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the Military Writers Society of America.
The unusually dry weather we have had this spring and summer has been a pain for farmers and those who want to keep their lawns from drying out, but it's been great for those who like to get out in the woods.

Mosquitoes have been almost non-existent the last couple of months. Many swampy areas have dried out, and with less water in streams, ponds and lakes and standing water in wheelbarrows, buckets, and pool covers, there is less breeding ground area for them. Even the pesky yard mosquitoes that always seem to show up in my backyard just after dusk seem to be less prevalent.

Black fly season was a breeze this spring, and the pesky late-summer gnats that seem to show up in August seem to be reduced.

I also read this article that explains that disease-carrying deer ticks have undoubtedly been hit by the dry weather as well.

I did some hiking in Maine, where a drought has been declared, and found leaves already off many trees. The trails on one mountain seemed like mid-October instead of mid-September.

We're not that bad here, but there has already been leaf loss for many birches and maples in some woodlots around here.

We are seemingly headed for an early foliage season, which will be god news for hunters who will enjoy better visibility in the woods.

-- Don Lehman
QUEENSBURY | A Brooklyn man who was arrested last year for using a stolen credit card number to buy $9,000 worth of gift cards at a local Wal-Mart store has pleaded guilty to a felony.

Kendall J. George, 26, was charged with felony counts of grand larceny, identity theft and criminal possession of a forged instrument last November after an investigation by State Police, authorities said. He pleaded guilty in Warren County Court to grand larceny.

He used a fraudulent credit card to make the gift card purchases at the store one day in March 2015. The credit card number had been stolen, and imprinted on another card that was used to pay for gift cards, police said.

George also faces charges in Greene County, where he was found to have numerous fake credit cards and fake identification cards as well as $27,000 worth of gift cards that were purchased with stolen credit cards at stores around upstate New York.

Warren County Judge John Hall put him on interim probation for a year. If he does well, he will spend 5 years on probation. If not, he faces a jail or prison sentence.
FORT EDWARD  Despite being called un-American by two members of the audience, members of the the Town Board said Monday they are not willing to allow the sale of nearly 200 acres of farmland to the state Department of Environmental Conservation as a wildlife management area.

Its absolutely un-American that you say they cant sell their land, Max Fruchter, a member of the Planning Board told the five Town Board members. It appears to me as though the board is being rapacious toward the sale.

This is really outrageous, Fruchter said. They have property rights. You dont pay the taxes. You didnt work the land. Do you live in America?

Former Town Supervisor Merrilyn Pulver-Moulthrop wants to sell nearly 200 acres of land to the state.

Next year we will have been there 50 years. Its time to move on, she said.

Pulver-Moulthrop said she knows she could get more money from developers but wants to preserve the land, as she previously did with 94 acres she has under a conservation easement.

But board members, particularly Terry Middleton, are concerned about the impact of a sale on the towns proposed Water District No. 3, which is in the planning stages and includes some of the land being considered in the sale.

I would rather see you sell it to a developer for smart development of 5-acre lots and make the water district happen, Middleton said to Pulver-Moulthrop.

Under state law, the board must approve the sale to the DEC for it go forward.

Board member Richard Mercier said extending water into the area is the only way to get additional development.

They are not going to look at it until theres water, he said.

Timothy Fisher, another board member, also said he was concerned about the impact on the proposed water district.

I am not opposing it for the taxes, he said. I am doing it for the people who want water.

A secondary concern is the loss of $3,840 in local tax revenue from the land. The state would not pay taxes on the land.

A bill that would allow the state to make tax payments and was sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Little, R-Queensbury, passed the Senate, but the session ended before the bill could be voted on in the Assembly.

Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, D-Round Lake, has pledged her support to bring the bill up for a vote when the new legislative session begins.

Town Supervisor Mitchell Suprenant said he is in favor of the sale even without a change in state law.

If it was up to me, I would do it. I am OK with it. I have no issue with it, he said.

Neal Orsini, a board member, said he could support the sale if the state changed the law. But, Orsini said during the meeting, he does not necessarily trust the state to make the tax payments on a permanent basis.

The rest of the board voiced opposition to the sale, citing the water district. Middleton said he would have to see the proposed law and whether the state would also pay into the water district if it built a visitors center. The wildlife management area could potentially include trails, viewing areas and a visitors center.

Pulver-Moulthrop also called parts of the boards commentary un-American. But Middleton said the owners of the lots in the proposed water district, need to pay for the water district. Whether its un-American or not, its based on assessments.

Pulver-Moulthrop contends only a small number of lots, perhaps as few as one, would affect the district.

The Friends of the Washington County Grasslands Important Birding Area group is supporting the proposal and had offered to make a payment in lieu of taxes until the state passed the new law. Pulver-Moulthrop said during the meeting she would pay the taxes if necessary.

The IBA already controls 15 acres of land that supports 10 of 11 endangered grassland birds listed in the states 2015 Wildlife Action Plan.

Pulver-Moulthrops land, located just off Plum Road between state Route 197 and county Route 46, is important to the IBA because it would almost double the size of state-protected grasslands in the area.

Pulver-Moulthrop sold a similar 100-acre parcel to the state in 2008 to preserve it. This sale would connect the two properties.
In a small Texas town, a place to follow Lucifer

There is a church in Old Town Spring, but God is not worshiped there.

Article by Nguyen Le

It has been a while since the Greater Church of Lucifers controversial, headline-grabbing first service. But while the protesting is no more, the emotions remain.

There were some people boycotting Old Town Spring, said Matthew Lynn, the local chef and owner of Ellens Cafe. Somehow they thought the shop owners have a say on who could open up down here. Were just individually owned properties.

Talk of the town Except for an episode in which his patrons reacted to the pentagrams, black clothing and tattoos that adorn the churchs members, Lynn said GCoL has been a quiet neighbor. He, however, regarded the Luciferian establishment as a challenge from the higher power. I didnt want the church here when I first heard about it, Lynn said. I was four-square against it, but if you dont give it any energy then it doesnt have any energy. The place also unnerved followers of the other religious establishment in the area, the Immanuel United Church of Christ, where Rev. Ron Krueger is the pastor. He has not yet visited GCoL, but did say that he would make time to do so in the future. It will be a welcome-to-the-neighborhood kind of gesture, Krueger said. It would be something different to the sign-waving, the shouting or the praying that occurred on Oct. 31, 2015. There were concerns about the people who were in that church that they may not be following a very good path, Krueger said. It sounded like something that wasnt fulfilling and certainly wasnt Christian, which is our path. I had a concern for the people of the church, too, that hopefully they would find the right path for them. On June 13, the churchs board of directors, HopeMarie Ford, Michael W. Ford and Jeremy Crow, posted a statement on GCoLs Facebookannouncing the resignation of co-founder Jacob No due to mismanaging donations and funds. The post also revealed his real name as Jacob McKelvy, the owner, digital marketer and consultant at JBM Consulting. Obstacles and challenges which we currently face will be overcome and conquered, the statement read. We are now putting together steps to ensure this does not happen again in the future. GCoLs official website is currently down as it is being transferred to an in-organization owner. Operators of GCoL declined to comment when contacted via email. GCoL went through two vandalism incidents. Their Facebook page has a video titled GCOL HATE CRIME showing a couple smashing the front window with a cherub statue. The second one, which made local news, revolved a branch of a 200-year-old pecan tree getting sawed off to damage the churchs roof. Maria Gagis, manager of The Black Sheep Bistro and The Italian Joint restaurants, thought the acts were horrific reactions to something you dont like. She is also a member of the Old Town Spring Preservation League, an association overlooking the areas lands and merchants. Id like to know in what church that any minister, rabbi, congregation thinks that that kind of behavior is OK? Gagis said. If you have enough time to chop down a tree, you should come to my house, trim some of my trees and Ill pay you for it.

Friction between faiths

To Pat, a metaphysical shop owner who kept her last name and business name hidden, extensive media coverage on the Luciferian church placed the town on the map.

Why dont people come and find out what they are? Pat said. If you truly believe in your faith, you shouldnt be afraid.

Besides GCoLs leaders, Pat would be the first to know about the happenings around the church because her shop is close by. It was also the proximity that got her harassed by the protesters.

On GCoLs opening day, a protester used oil to flick a holy cross onto the porch of Pats shop. When Easter came, two of Pats weekend employees got heckled while they were on a smoking break. She also said that the churchs sign was dented the night before.

The shop owner next door told me, This is not the Christianity I was taught, Pat said. She was appalled. They think religion gives them a right to do what they want.

There is a petition on Change.org calling for GCoL to be jettisoned for the sake of the towns image and prosperity. It has yet reached the halfway mark of its 500-signature goal.

Pat believes the petitions purpose ignores the true damaging agents to the town: layoffs from the recession, election year and lowered oil prices.

(GCoL members) only meet, at most, twice a month, Pat said. Theyre not missionaries going around and trying to convert you.

The Path ahead

Pat said protesters wont be around if the news cameras arent.

As long as you dont harm other people or children, what you believe is your own business, Pat said. How you treat other people tells who you really are.

Aaron Ott, an anthropologist and lecturer for UHs Religious Studies program, was not surprised at the visceral outbursts and GCoLs reclusive nature. He cited that, even though the West is in a post-Christian era, people dont want to give up what they know.

Because Luciferianism and Satanism are conflated by those historically Christian assumptions, a person may not be Christian at all but they will still react to it, Ott said. They think its an attack on the homeland.

Ott trusts that GCoL and Luciferianism can have a future in the U.S. One suggestion: refrain from using anti-Christian symbols such as pentagrams or the horned deity Baphomet.

Back at Immanuel United Church of Christ, Krueger said he would not shun people from the church should they come to his establishment. He specified that there wont be a form asking your beliefs upon arrival.

Jesus welcomes all, Krueger said.

[email protected]

Read more at: thedailycougar.com
















Syrian state television said the Syrian army shot down an Israeli fighter jet and drone Tuesday morning, a claim swiftly denied by the IDF. The statement from the Syrian army said one aircraft was downed over the skies of the Syrian town of Quneitra, near the Israeli side of the Golan Heights, and the other, a drone, was shot down closer to Damascus.

Our air defenses blocked the attack and shot down the military aircraft in (the southern province of) Quneitra and a drone west of Sasa in the province of Damascus, said the statement carried by state news agency SANA.

The IDF in a statement confirmed it had been shot at, but said aircraft used to target Syrian positions overnight were safe.





Two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission overnight to target Syrian artillery positions, an IDF statement said. At no point was the safety of IDF aircraft compromised.





Earlier Tuesday morning Israels army said it struck artillery positions belonging to the Syrian regime from the air in response to mortar fire that struck the Golan Heights Monday. The apparently errant mortar fire  the fifth such incident in just over a week  was recorded hours after a ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States took effect in Syria at sundown Monday.

Syrias army claims the Israeli strikes are being used to help rebel groups, including Syrias al-Qaeda affiliate, fight the regime. This blatant attack comes in the framework of the Zionist enemys support of the armed terrorist groups in a desperate attempt to raise their morale after their heavy losses in the Quneitra outskirts, the Syrian armys Tuesday statement said, apparently referring to fighting in the regime-held town of Hader on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

























The recently-proposed EU defense union, borne of a Franco-German initiative, will seek to avoid duplicating NATO's functions; instead, it will aim to act as an alternative to the alliance, and prevent the mass purchase of US-made arms and equipment by EU member states, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestiya.

On Sunday, French and German media reported that French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and his German counterpart Ursula von der Leyen had filed a proposal to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to set up the bloc's collective defense, including a new military HQ and swifter deployment of overseas missions.





The six-page Franco-German paper says that "in the context of a deteriorating security environment  it is high time to reinforce our solidarity and European defense capabilities in order to more effectively protect the citizens and borders of Europe," as cited by French daily Le Figaro.





"The proposal of the French and German defense ministers is aimed at strengthening the cooperation within the block and at setting up the union not only as a strong political and economic body but also as a military one," he further added.





One of the key points of the proposal is aimed at preventing the mass purchase of US-made arms and equipment by EU member states, the newspaper says.

























On Saturday, Iran threatened to shoot down two U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft flying near Iranian territory, three U.S. defense officials told Fox News on Monday.





Officials say a P-8 Poseidon with a crew of nine and an EP-3 Eries with about two dozen crew members were flying a reconnaissance mission in the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman, 13 miles off the coast of Iran. Per international maritime law, Iran's territorial waters extend 12 miles into the sea, and at one point, the Iranian military warned the planes that if they didn't change course, they were at risk of being shot down. One official told Fox News the aircraft ignored the warning, remaining in international airspace but near Iranian territory, because "we wanted to test the Iranian reaction. It's one thing to tell someone to get off your lawn, but we weren't on their lawn. Anytime you threaten to shoot someone down, it's not considered professional." Intelligence reports show there were no Iranian missile launchers in the area during the confrontation.





















President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday called for the withdrawal of U.S. special forces troops from a group of islands in the southern Philippines, saying their presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners. Duterte, who was in the spotlight last week over a televised tirade against the United States and President Barack Obama, said the Americans still in Mindanao were high-value targets for the Islamic State-linked Abu Sayyaf militants as counter-insurgency operations intensify. "They have to go," Duterte said in a speech during an oath-taking ceremony for new officials. "I do not want a rift with America. But they have to go." He added: "Americans, they will really kill them, they will try to kidnap them to get ransom." The comments by Duterte, a former southern mayor known for his terse words and volatile temperament, add to uncertainty about what impact his rise to the presidency this year will have on one of Washington's most important alliances in Asia.





















Churning the waters of the Northwest Pacific is the strongest tropical cyclone of the 2016 Northern Hemisphere season: Super Typhoon Meranti. It is the fourth Category 5 storm on Earth this year, which is close to the annual average of between four and five such storms.





Super Typhoon Meranti, which according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center had maximum sustained winds of 155 knots, or nearly 180 miles per hour, as of Monday evening eastern time, has southern Taiwan and coastal China in its sights for the middle of the week.

Fl uctuations in the storm's intensity are likely before Meranti makes its closest pass to southern Taiwan on Wednesday, but it is likely to still be a powerful Typhoon at that time. Taiwan's second-most populous city, Kaohsiung City, is located in the southwest part of the island.





















The horrific moment Hillary Clinton doesnt want you to see  may never be seen again. Paul Joseph Watson and other uploads are vanishing from the web almost as fast as they appeared after a mysterious company bought up the rights to the footage. Even the associated press has stopped distribution of the video because they no longer have the rights. Clearly the Hillary campaign is working overtime to kill this story before Hillarys health kills her. Please share this report.




























The Pentagon will respond to last weeks incident with a flyover intended to show solidarity with South Korea. On Friday, US officials promised a "swift response" to North Koreas latest nuclear test, which triggered a 5.3 magnitude earthquake early that morning.

"The North Korean regimes continued belligerence demands a strong and swift response," US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said in a statement. "The United States cannot accept a nuclear North Korea that threatens America and our foreign partners with mass destruction."





Details of that response have now been revealed, as the Pentagon plans to fly B-1B Lancer bombers over the peninsula. "These provocative actions destabilize the Korean peninsula and (the Indo-Asia-Pacific) region," US Force Korea (USFK) spokesman Christopher Bush said in a statement, according to the International Business Times

"The alliance is taking steps each and every day to defend the Republic of Korea and we are always maintaining a high state of readiness." While the flight was initially scheduled for Monday, weather has forced a delay until Tuesday. "Due to inclement weather conditions, the engagement at Osan Air Base scheduled for today been postponed," the statement reads.

The Lancer is a nuclear-capable supersonic heavy strategic bomber. A fleet of B-1Bs were deployed to Guam in August to send a message to Pyongyang.





Already facing heavy UN sanctions, North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test last week. A source with Russian security agencies told RIA Novosti that the test carried the explosive power of 30 kilotons, twice as much as the energy emitted by the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.





























With tensions escalating between Beijing and Washington, the US Senator has called on President Obama to increase military funding for Pacific allies. Beijings construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea has outraged the United States, concerned with their rivals growing influence. Throughout the dispute, China has maintained its right to build within its own territory and urged for calm.





Republican Senator John McCain has been one of the most vocal hawks in Washington. On Friday, he condemned Chinas militarization of the region and called Beijing a "bully." At the same time, he urged President Barack Obama to increase US military efforts in the disputed waterway.





"In the South China Sea, China has shattered the commitments that it made to its neighbors in the 2002 declaration of conduct as well as more recent commitments to the US government by conducting reclamation on disputed features and militarizing the South China Sea at a startling and destabilizing rate," McCain said, according to the Washington Free Beacon .









He added that the Pentagon needs to "maintain a favorable military balance in the Asia-Pacific" to ensure US interests.





"This begins with an effort to continue to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows," he said. "More broadly, the US must invest in robust naval, air, and ground presence to provide a forward defense in the Western Pacific."





























So much has been said about the Syrian conflict in numerous analyses, yet one of the least discussed topics concerns the strategy and the relationship of cooperation and conflict between the United States, Turkey, the Kurds and Daesh. From the beginning of the Syrian conflict, Washington and Ankara have never hesitated to exploit Daeshs advances. The occupation of Syrian towns near the Turkish border by Islamic extremists has been one of the preferred tactics endorsed by the United States and Turkey. Closing one eye, often both, concerning Daeshs operations meant attacking the Syrian state indirectly and threatening its integrity whilst simultaneously allowing the creation of safe havens where terrorist groups could receive weapons and material support to spread their attacks on the legitimate government of Damascus over the rest of the country.





What has altered the chessboard is the Russian military intervention in September of 2015. Moscow has been able to smash the wall of silence and collusion present in Syria involving terrorist organizations such as Daesh, Al Nusra Front, Jaysh al-Islam, Ansar al-Islam and countries like the United States, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. In addition to military action, the Russian Federation has been able to apply strong diplomatic pressure on Western countries and, through the RT news channel, has repeatedly exposed the support of terrorism at any cost by the opponents of the legitimate government in Damascus.





The second phase of the Russian plan, much more ambitious and difficult to achieve, is a military cooperation with Washington and its allies against terrorist organizations in Syria. The continued refusal of this proposal has once again exposed the real intentions of the United States and regional partners, namely the removing of Assad and the partitioning Syrias territory.









The clock is ticking, and it is all in the favour of Moscow, Damascus and Tehran, who observe the situation with relative calm. Their planned strategy is providing most of the desired results, and now America and its allies have only the ability to react to events on the ground, not to determine or create them. Compared to a few years ago, this is a resounding change. If Erdogan and Obama still will want to start doing the dirty work in Raqqa against the same terrorist group they instigated against Damascus, then they are free to do so.





All options available for Washington and its partners-in-terror will have negative effects on the fateful goal to undermine Syria. Raqqa is a Syrian city, inhabited by Syrians, and even if Ankara liberated it, it is never going to be incorporated into an imaginary Turkish territory.





Strategic contortions, moral contradictions, media deception, and the recent military defeats of terrorist groups have transformed Syria into a recipe for disaster for Washington, Ankara, Doha and Riyadh, from which there is no way out or path to victory.
































































Welcome Guest! You Are Here:

Home Regional News East
The teachers have for the past four years been pushing for an upgrade of their current status to that of teachers of other tertiary institutions to enable them enjoy the same remuneration.

READ ALSO:

The National Secretary of CETAG, Mr Prince Obeng-Himah, said the government has been lackadaisical towards their demands, and hence their decision to begin the strike on September 12.

However, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has appealed to the said teachers to rescind their decision and return to work as negotiations continue.

He said about three weeks ago he personally chaired a meeting which was attended by the leadership of CETAG, the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) and the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE), during which the FWSC assured that it had completed its part and forwarded the necessary recommendations to the Ministry of Finance.

After that meeting, the leadership told us that they were going to brief their members. We never heard from them until this development, he said, adding, We thought they understood us.

Ablakwa said that the Ministry of Finance had communicated to the Ministry of Education that it had concluded with all the analysis and that it will officially write to us.

So we are waiting for that official communication which will indicate the effective date the migration will take off, he said.
The statue glorified a man who was uncharitable in his attitude towards the Black race, and allowing it to remain made the university appear to hold double-standards, wrote three academics from the University of Ghana.

Professor of African and Gender Studies at the University of Ghana, Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Dr. Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua a senior lecturer at University of Ghana, and Dr. Obadele Kambon, a research fellow and Editor-in-Chief of the Ghana Journal of Linguistics wrote the petiton.

The online petition is addressed to the members of the University of Ghana Council and the chairman Mr. Kwamena Ahwoi. So far it has collected 270 of 500 signatures needed.

The statue was erected on June 14 this year at the recreational quadrangle, it was donated by India's president Pranab Mukherjee when he visited the campus.

Since then there has been agitation from many students, alumni and Ghanaians over the statue being on campus.

Mahatma Gandhi, born in 1869, was the primary leader of Indias independence movement and is also touted as the architect of a form of non-violent civil disobedience that would influence the world. However, through the world detractors have also pointed to his history of racism towards Africans.

With the slogans Gandhi Must Fall and Gandhi For Come Down (pidgin for Gandhi must come down), there are calls in Ghana for the immediate withdrawal of the statue.

The three University of Ghana academics are now publicly lending their voices through their petition on change.org.

They call for statues of Africa's own heroes and heroines on campus to be erected instead.

"We are of the view that if there should be statues on our campus, then, first and foremost, they should be of African heroes and heroines, who can serve as examples of who we are and what we have achieved as a people."

"Why should we uplift other people's 'heroes' at an African university when we havent lifted up our own? We consider this to be a slap in the face that undermines our struggles for autonomy, recognition and respect."

The petition writers say this is the only statue of an historical personality on the University of Ghana's Legon campus.

It would be more appropriate to erect a statue of the former member of the University Council, Mr. Sam Aboah, who financed the construction of the quadrangle, and also financed the planting of the teak trees on the top of the Legon Hill near the Registry, they wrote.

Having the statue on campus conflicted with the university teaching students on human rights, especially on South Africa's history of apartheid, they wrote.

They wanted The University of Ghana to align itself with other universities that are removing statues and symbols of controversial people and history. This includes Yale University which is in the process of removing stained glass windows that depict enslaved Africans.

It is also planning to name a residential college, set to open in 2017, after Anna Pauline Pauli Murray, a black Yale Law School alumna and civil rights activist.

"We can do the honourable thing by pulling down the statue. It is better to stand up for our dignity than to kowtow to the wishes of a burgeoning Eurasian super-power. Some harm has already been done by erecting the statue. We have failed the generation that look up to us, namely our students, the petition urged.

The petition highlights examples of Gandhi's own writings to illustrate their point.

The quote him as writing in 1894 that "A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.

He also wrote "Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

The term kaffir is considered a racial slur used in reference to indigenous Black South Africans.

The petition also notes Gandhi campaigned against the efforts of the Dalits, The Black Untouchables of India, and for the maintenance of the caste system right up to his death.

According to the University of Ghana website, when President Mukherjee visited the campus on June 14 he spoke about the partnership between Ghana and India.

The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey welcomed the President noting that Universitys ties with India have always been strong.

He expressed gratitude to His Excellency Mr. Pranab Mukherjee and the Indian government for presenting the gift statue of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he described as an international icon.

The Minister for Education, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman also spoke at the event and recounted ways in which Ghanas first president Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and Indias Mahatma Gandhi had left 'gold stepping stones for young people to follow'.
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 father of five identified as Victor Okon, was caught and handed over to the police in Afaha Atai, Akwa Ibom state.

Mr Okon was pictured handcuffed and being carted away in a police van as well as the stolen plantain which was tied to what seems to be his motorcycle.

Unfortunately, the state of the Nigerian economy has not made survival easy for the common man who has been reduced to stealing food supplies.
The suspect identified as Chinedu Strongson was paraded along with other members of the child trafficking syndicate on Saturday, September 10, at the police headquarters in Asaba, Delta state.

The state police commissioner, Zana Ibrahim, revealed that 12 children were recovered from the 48-year-old cleric, adding that he is alleged to have paid the sum of N400,000 for each child sold to him.

Despite the accusations levelled against him, Strongson has denied any involvement in child trafficking, saying that he helped humanity by assisting with the payment of the school fees for the children, the Nigerian Tribune reports.

One Aisha Yahaya based in Asaba revealed how two ladies had come under the guise of being police officers sent by her husband serving time at Ogwashi Uku prisons.

Aisha reportedly followed them to a junction where the trio met with one Abigail Nwakama, aka Madam Cash, who gave her N3,500 towards the care of her 0ne-month-old daughter.

The child was reportedly stolen by the syndicate in the process after which she raised an alarm, leading to the arrest of the two women.

The commissioner reveals that police officers had immediately swung into action following the reports and arrested one Onyinye Nwakama, daughter of Madam Cash, at a drinking bar in Asaba as well as Madam Cash (32) and Ifeoma Anyadike, (32) at Okpanam after which they led the officers to Ogidi where the pastor was arrested.

Other suspects arrested from other parts of the state include David Ikesinachi; Ebere Edwin, Adaeze Enyi and Chike Agwunenu.
GHOSPA began a nationwide strike on September 5, to protest against what it describes as persistent act of injustice, unfairness and deliberate delay by the National Labour Commission (NLC), the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) in relation to their Interim Market Premium, Grade Structure and Placement and the Conditions of Service.

Speaking on Kumasi-based Abusua FM, Chairman of GHOSPA Agyemang Badu said pharmacist do not wish to subject Ghanaians to the dilemma they find themselves in at the various government hospitals.

A number outstanding issues including; the Job Evaluation Review exercise and lately the Job Re-Evaluation exercise be used as a basis for the placement of pharmacists on the SSSS , existing relativities in the health sector which are backed by all previous job evaluations are upheld on the SSSS to ensure stability, equity and fairness, recommendation of the Cabinet Sub-Committee report on GHOSPAs issues pertaining to the Grade Structure and Placement and the Interim Market Premium be adopted and implemented are yet to be resolved, he said

We are not happy we are on strike. We dont want Ghanaians to see us as wicked people. Its not deliberate to punish Ghanaians. We just want the right things to be done to better the lives of our members, he added.

Background

The Government and Hospital Pharmacists Association (GHOSPA) has served notice of a planned strike action over the failure of the government to address discrepancies in their market premium payment.

Within the health service, we are having discrepancies in our interim market payment even comparable to our colleague pharmacists in some public sector institutions.

"Pharmacists working in university hospitals are at a premium of 1.14 meanwhile the Fair Wages and salaries Commissions are putting pharmacists working in the Ghana health services at 0.58 and that is a huge discrepancy, GHOSPAs General Secretary, Emmanuel Owusu Wiafe, told Citi FM on Friday.

He continued: We are very resolute and if things are not concluded for us where there is a clear instruction to the Ministry of Health and the Controller and Accountant General, we will not rescind on this strike.

GHOSPA in 2015 declared a partial strike across the country over migrating them unto the Single Spine Salary Structure after four years of negotiation.

The pharmacists have had a long haul, over four years talking about their single spine salary," Chairman of GHOSPA, Stephen told Pulse.com.gh then. "Their salaries even before they migrated were far higher than when than on the single spine. It reduced their pension and the general morale of the pharmacist was very low."
In the next four years, a percentage of annual funding amount that come from petroleum revenues should be assigned to the NHIS, he said.

President John Dramani Mahama made this known during his presentation of to a cross-section of Ghanaians, the highlights of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Manifesto for 2016.

The event comes ahead of the main launch of the Manifesto on Saturday September 17, in Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo Region.

READ ALSO: NHIS

Representatives of international organisations, the Diplomatic Corps, business associations and youth groups are at the event which is being held at the State Banquet Hall, State House, Accra.

Background of the NHIS

The scheme over the years has been hit with a lot of challenges with health service providers threatening on several occasions not to attend to subscribers because they have not been paid their claims.
According to the 22-year-old actor, his first paying job was a printing work he did for Kumon TVC which he did with his brothers; Kwesi Boakye and Kwame Boateng.

I started as a kid, when I was about 5 years old. Me and my brothers -- there's three of us and I'm the middle child -- started doing print work and my first one was a Kumon commercial. It was ages ago. When I was about 17-18, I started taking [acting] more seriously and that's when the TV work started picking up. I remember my first job that really shook the artist inside of me, I guess you would say, was "CSI." As soon as I did "CSI" I was like, 'This is fun.' I really wanted to do this on a level I knew I had to work for, he told CNN.

Read More:

He disclosed that, his parents are from Ghana and are not in the film industry.

Actually, no. My parents came from Africa. They were both born in Ghana, West Africa, and they came out here. My mom went to college out here and my dad went to college in Ghana. And yeah, they weren't born in the industry or know the industry. None of that, he said.

Talking about the audition process for America drama series "Queen Sugar", Kofi said he was really excited about it and knew there was something great on the other end of all the auditions he was going on.

It was exciting because I was in a place where I was really excited about auditions. And I just knew something great was on the other end of all the auditions I was going on. But I saw Ava tweet that she was looking for this character to be filled -- Ralph Angel. And you know when she tweets something you think, 'Wow she must really need somebody because Ava is a good name. I'm sure she's seen everybody -- except for me!' Clearly I hadn't gone in the room yet if she was looking for this character. So that was ironic because the next day I got an audition to play this character and I felt like it just fit perfectly, he said.

Kofi also disclosed that, working with film director Ava DuVernay and producer Oprah Winfrey was a dream come true and feels like the luckiest actor in the world.
According to the suit, A declaration that the conduct of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) on 27th August, 2016 by which the GJA, at its 21st Awards ceremony, gave the Overall Best Journalist of the Year, 2015 Award to Anas Aremeyaw Anas for his expose on so-called judicial bribery and corruption is inconsistent with or in contravention of Article 162 (5) of the 1992 Constitution and thus unconstitutional.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas at GJAs 21st award ceremony at the Banquet Hall in Accra was adjudged the overall best journalist for 2015.

He emerged the Journalist of the Year 2015 for exposing 22 Lower Court Judges and 12 High Court Judges who were caught on tape taking bribes to undermine justice.

Justice Paul Dery petitioned the GJA to withdraw the Best Journalist Award given to Anas over his investigative documentary into Judicial corruption.

In a twelve-page petition Dery argued that because he is contesting Anas petition to get him out of office, it is not right for the GJA to award him based on a documentary which is still in contention.

Dery and Logoh are in court contesting a petition by Anas. The other defendants in the case are Anas (1st defendant), Roland Affail Monney (2nd - GJA president), Mathias Tibu 4th defendant, Vice President (GJA), Dave Agbenu 5th defendant, General Secretary (GJA), Rogking Clottey 6th defendant, Organising Secretary (GJA), Linda Asante 7th defendant Treasurer (GJA), and Mary Mensah 8th defendant Public Relations Officer (GJA)

They, however, want the court to declare that the conduct of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) on 27th August, 2016 by which the GJA, at its 21st Awards ceremony, gave the Overall Best Journalist of the Year, 2015 Award to Anas Aremeyaw Anas for his expose on so-called judicial bribery and corruption is inconsistent with or in contravention of Article 3 (3) (a) and 3 (4) (a) of the 1992 Constitution and thus unconstitutional.

A declaration that the conduct of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) on 27th August, 2016 by which the GJA, at its 21st Awards ceremony, gave the Overall Best Journalist of the Year, 2015 Award to Anas Aremeyaw Anas for his expose on so-called judicial bribery and corruption when cases are pending in the Supreme Court and the High Court over the subject matter of the expose on the so-called judicial bribery and corruption amounts to contempt of court pursuant to Articles 19 (12) and 126 (2) of the 1992 Constitution.

An order nullifying the Award the Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) gave to the 1st Defendant pursuant to Article 1 (2) of the 1992 Constitution.

An order directed at the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) to withdraw the Award from Anas Aremeyaw Anas.

An order punishing the Executive Committee Members of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) herein for contempt of court.

Below are the reliefs being sought by the suspended judges:

1. A declaration that the Plaintiffs never demanded for any money from the 1st Defendant to influence their decisions in any cases pending before them.

2. A declaration that the audio visual recordings and transcripts therefore were fraudulently and unlawfully obtained by the 1st Defendant.

3. General damages for invasion of privacy against the 1st Defendant.

4. Punitive damages for invasion of privacy against the 1st Defendant

AND against the 1st to 8th Defendants jointly and severally the following reliefs.

1. General damages for defamation against the 1st Defendant.2. Aggravated damages for the malicious and fraudulent recordings, publication and circulation of audio visual recordings.

3. Exemplary damages against the reckless publications and circulations of the said audio visual recordings.

4. Compensatory damages against for the damage done to the Plaintiffs reputation.

5. A perpetual injunction restraining the Defendants from publishing any further malicious, unlawful and defamatory material about the Plaintiffs.
She said lawyers have an integral role to play in protecting the integrity of the polls and must not underrate their influence in the electoral process.

The speed with which matters are disposed off, depend to a greater extent, on the cooperation of lawyers, beside the nature of proceedings. Employing technicalities to delay proceedings is the lawyers version of abuse of power and must be avoided.

At the 2016/2017 annual BAR conference in Accra, she noted that "lawyers should contribute positively to the electoral process and should desist from giving disgruntled persons or losers the chance to scuttle the process when there is no merit. Lawyers must respect their profession in order not to be used by anyone.

I wish once again to caution learned colleagues against Media trials. Those media discourses come off to us as interviews, then they may decide to court sympathies to one spot and to incite public emotions against an opponents case on the bench.
According to the statement signed by the Regional Communications Officer,Samed Akalilu,the Party will launch its Campaign in the region on October 8,2016 at the Jubilee Park.

READ MORE:Election 2016 Police identifies 5000 flashpoints

Read full statement below:

The ruling National Democratic Congress in Ashanti wishes to bring to the attention of the party supporters and the general public, the seventeen (17) man campaign Taskforce for the 2016 general elections.

They are as follows :

1.Hon. Andy Osei Okrah, Deputy Regional Minister and Campaign Coordinator.

2.Hon. Yaw Owusu Obimpeh, Regional Chairman.

3.Hon.Raymond Tandoh, Regional Secretary.

4.Alhaji Sani Abddulai, Regional Organiser.

5.Mr.Samed Akalilu, Regional Communication Officer.

6.Mr.Brogya Genfi, Regional Youth Organiser.

7.Hajia Ajara Saddique, Regional Womens Organiser.

8.Hon.Muntaka Mubarak, MP, Majority Chief Whip -Member.

9.Hon.Nurudeen Hamidan, MCE, Asokore Mampong  Member.

10.Mr. George Abofra, Regional NDC Director of Elections- Member

11.Professor Kofi Annan, KNUST- Member

12. Dr Oteng Agyei, Former Energy Minister-Member

13.Madam Edith Amammo, Former Regional Deputy Treasurer-Member

14.Madam Ama Sarpomaa, Former Regional Womens Organiser- Member

15. Mr.Obeng Adutwum- Member.

16. Hon. John Alexander Ackon, Regional Minister-Member co-opted.

17.Hon.Kwame Peprah, Former Finance Minister- Member co-opted.

In addition, the party has formed five main campaign committees to help prosecute the agenda One Million Votes and a one touch victory for President Mahama.

The Regional Campaign Coordinator is confident in the ability and reservoir of knowledge, the 17-member team brings onboard towards the much anticipated one touch landslide victory of the NDC in December.

Hon.Andy Osei Okrah urges all party executives and supporters to accord the Regional Campaign Team the needed assistance to make the NDC victory a reality.

The Campaign Team also announces that Saturday, 8th October 2016 has been slated for the regional campaign launch at the Jubilee Park, Kumasi.
The Vice President was speaking at an event at the Banquet Hall of the State House where President Mahama gave highlights of the NDCs manifesto for the 2016 election.

The Vice President said even though the NDC has achieved a lot in since it took office, they also realise there is still more work to done for Ghana to be a better place.

In so doing he said the NDCs manifesto which is to be launched on September 17 is based on four key areas.
In a Facebook post on his timeline, Ras Mubarak described the reports as rubbish and argued that the overall population of the three communities from where the alleged defectors reside is a little above 1000 including children.

READ ALSO: Over 800 supporters of NDC defect to NPP

Mubarak accused the NPP in the constituency of fuelling this untruth because the partys parliamentary nominee is struggling to fly.

According to Accra-based Citi FM over 800 NDC members have defected to the opposition NPP. The defectors said the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) has deceived and neglected us for too long. This is the reason given by over 800 NDC members who defected to the opposition NPP in the Kumbungu Constituency in the Northern Region.
READ ALSO: Protests erupt in Northern and Volta Regions over poor state of roads

He said chiefs in the Region had tried on several occasions to meet with government appointees on development issues but that has proved futile.

"I have tried severally to engage political heads from the local level to the regional to discuss development in our areas but unsuccessful. I personally called and sent text messages but they were not honoured. Many other chiefs in the Region complained of same and you call us your world bank just for votes.

"If you dont meet the chiefs and deliberate on development issues then it means you are representing yourself in government and not the people," he stated.

Togbe Afede made this known when the Regional Executive and some members of the Regional Election Taskforce of the NDC paid a courtesy call to introduce the team to him.

READ ALSO: NDC leadership moves to quell tensions in Volta NDC

Mr Kofi Attoh, Chairman of the Regional Election Taskforce for NDC said the introduction of the Taskforce is to pave way for the launch of the Partys 2016 campaign launch and activities in the Region.

Togbe Afede also used the opportunity to call on parties to avoid tribal politics ahead of the elections.

He further condemned politicians who have reduced politics to enriching themselves at the expense of the people.
The actress who also doubles as a television presenter is 42 years old today. She was born on September 13, 1974.

She hit the movie scene with an appearance in the 1996 movie, "Pregnant Virgin" and later returned to school and graduated in 2000, after which she ventured fully into the movie industry.

In a successful run, the Nollywood beauty has starred in excess of 100 movies, upgrading her skill set to production of movies. Some of her films include "Kiss and Tell", "Weekend Getaway" and many others.
Starring Bimbo Akintola, Danny Glover, Tim Reid, Somkele Idhalama, Keppy Ekpenyong Gideon Okeke and other talented actors, 93 Days is a compelling story of dedication, sacrifice and resilience which celebrates the courage shown by the First Consultant Medical Team, the Lagos State & Federal Governments and well-meaning organizations in combating the Ebola virus, which broke out early 2014 in Nigeria.

The movie tells the story of how a few sacrificed their lives at the frontline of the horrendous battle against the Ebola virus, some of who lost their lives, but not without saving several lives. Noteworthy is the late Dr. Stella Adadevoh whose role is played by renowned Nigerian actress, Bimbo Akintola.

Working with her younger colleagues, her early detection of the disease in a patient and insistence on treating him contributed greatly to limiting the spread of the disease in our nation. This powerful movie has the central themes of triumph, heroism and a countrys determination to rise above the storm.

One of the Producers of the movie, Bolanle Austen-Peters in her statement said, 93 Days is a masterfully crafted story of bravery and sacrifice and is definitely a must see. It showcases the best of Nigeria; it is powerful, gripping and an emotive piece. I am more than proud to have played a part in this project.

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), widely recognized for showing the most outstanding films from around the world, has selected 93 Days for screening in September at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto Canada.
The 96th Miss America pageant, was held at the Boardwalk hall in Atlantic City ,New Jersey, on Sunday, September 11, 2016. The event was broadcast by ABC in the United States, the first in the network's newest agreement to carry the pageant until 2019, with Dick Clark Production producing the ceremony.

Betty Cantrel (Miss Georgia 2015) crowned her successor, Miss Arkansas 2016,Savvy Shields, at the end of the two-hour nationally televised event. After her run as Miss America, Shields will return to the University of Arkansas as a senior studying art. I want to hopefully work in a museum and teach at a collegiate level, she said about her plans for the future. Miss South Carolina Rachel Wyatt was the night's first runner-up, second runner-up was Miss New York Camille Sims, third runner-up was Miss Washington Alicia Cooper, and the fourth runner-up was Miss Mississippi Laura Lee Lewis.
According to Sahara Reporters, the oil marketers refused to supply the airline fuel - Jet A1, saying it is owing N3b to all its suppliers.

Also, there are insinuations that Arik Air's insurers in Europe have withdrawn, thereby, further incapacitating operations.

A stranded passenger, Chris Amokwu, who spoke to Sahara Reporters around 1pm, said his 7:30 am flight to Abuja is has not come up.

Amokwu also said Arik Air explained that the reason for the shut down of operations was its inability to get fuel, and poor weather conditions.

The spokesman of the airline, Ola Adebanji, however told newsmen that he is not aware of the situtation.

Reports also confirmed that other local airlines were operating, contrary to the reason by Arik, that there is scarcity of Jet A1 fuel.
A statement signed by Mr Ben Ugheoke, the Chairman, University of Abuja chapter of ASUU, stated that the Federal Government had failed to embark on meaningful dialogue with the union.

We have tried to dialogue with the Federal Government but they have been playing games with us; we will start with a warning strike to show them we are not jokers.

ASUU has being trying to get the attention of the Federal Government to intervene in the academic system of universities across Nigeria but it has all been abortive.

Consequently, ASUU will give a warning strike which will start on Oct. 2.

The strike will last for one week, and if they do not give us listening ears, we will start the indefinite strike in November,Ugheoke said in the statement.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that ASUU, had at a recent news briefing accused the Federal Government of reneging on the 2009 agreement with the union.

ASUUs Coordinator, Abuja Zone, Dr Theophilus Lagi, also said in the statement that the government had only implemented 30 per cent of the provisions of Universities Needs Assessment document.

He said that the fund was disbursed indiscriminately to university councils as a fall out of the six months industrial action the union embarked upon in 2009.

Lagi urged the Federal Government to fully implement the 2009 agreement it reached with the union in order to avert another industrial action by the nations public universities.

The struggle to implement the 2009 ASUU/FGN agreement is not about the union; it is not about the personal benefits of the members only.

The current issues in contention include funding of universities for revitalisation in line with the Memorandum of Understanding the Federal Government and ASUU had signed in 2013.

Re-negotiation of the FGN/ASUU 2009 agreement ASUU believes will reposition the entire education sector.
He said after 16 years that the party was in power, his administration inherited no savings and infrastructure.

The President said this in statement signed by the Presidents Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu and issued to newsmen in Abuja on Monday, September 12.

Buhari said: We should thank God this year; the report Im getting, which is very pleasing, is that we will have bumper harvest this year.

I want Nigerians to realise that what this government inherited after 16 years of PDP government was no savings, no infrastructure, no power, no rail, no road and no security.

Nigerians can see what we have done to Boko Haram and what we are doing to resolve the problem in the Niger Delta."

He further stated that before the 2015 elections, the All Progressives Congress (APC) identified three major problems confronting the country.

The first is security; we need to sufficiently secure our country and to manage it well," he said.

The second is economy, especially job for the youths and fighting corruption which is continuous.

For the youths, graduates and non-graduates who are interested in agriculture, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the Central Bank are doing something to provide employment for them.

ALSO READ: Read full text of President Buharis Sallah message to Nigerians
This is contained in a statement issued in Abuja by the presidents Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu.

Buhari made the call when he received more than 100 National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members serving in Daura Local Government Area of Katsina.

The President, who received the Corp members at his residence in Daura, urged them to make Nigeria great again through pursuit of knowledge, patriotism and commitment to values that promote national unity.

He pledged his unalloyed commitment to the unity and prosperity of Nigeria.

President Buhari, who specially recognised those corps members from the Niger Delta and South-Eastern states serving in Daura, praised the vision of former President Yakubu Gowon in setting up the scheme in 1973.

According to him, the scheme has creditably promoted national unity and cohesion by exposing young people to the uniqueness and cultural diversity of Nigeria.

I asked for those from the other extreme of Nigeria because I very much appreciate the NYSC scheme and whenever I see General Gowon, I always thank him for that.

Speaking specifically to corps members from the South Eastern states, the President said: tell your colleagues who want Biafra to forget about it.

As a military commander, I walked from Degem, a border town between the north and the east to the border between Cameroon and Nigeria.

I walked on my foot for most of the 30 months that we fought the Nigeria-Biafra civil war in which at least two million Nigerians were killed.

We were made by our leaders to go and fight Biafra not because of money or oil, because oil was not critical factor then, but because of one Nigeria.

So if leaderships at various levels failed, it was not the fault of the rest of Nigerians who have no quarrel with one another.

So, please tell your colleagues that we must be together to build this country. It is big enough for us and potentially big enough in terms of resources.

Those who work hard will earn a respectable living. I have seen this country, I fought for this country and I will continue to work for the unity of this country, the President said.

In his remarks, Mr Egbewumi Adebolu, the Corps Liaison Officer in Daura, thanked the President for the honour of receiving them and making their stay in Daura memorable.
According to a statement released by Buharis Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, the president said:

Nigerians can see what we have done on Boko Haram and what we are doing to resolve the problem in the Niger Delta. Before the elections, we identified three major problems confronting our country. The first is security; we need to sufficiently secure our country to manage it well.

The second is economy, especially job for the youths and fighting corruption which is continuous. For the youths, graduates and non-graduates who are interested in agriculture, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the CBN are doing something to provide employment for them.

Buhari also informed Nigerians that his administration did not inherit anything from previous administrations.
Answering questions from journalists in Abeokuta on Sunday, September 11, 2016, Osinbajo said almost 60 per cent revenue has been lost due to the activities of pipelines vandals in the Niger-Delta.

Osinbajo also disclosed that the nation has lost almost 40 per cent of the gas but expressed optimism that the country would soon overcome its challenges.

He said: One of the key reasons why we are in recession is the fact that we lost about 60% of our revenue due to the vandalization of the pipelines on the Niger/Delta and we lost almost 40% of the gas.

I have a strong belief that by the grace of God, we will be able to resolve that. Once we are able to resolve that, we would at least be able to earn more revenue. If revenue grows up, it is an added advantage, he said.
The PDP made the comments via a statement released by spokesman, Dayo Adeyeye.

The statement reads:

Mr. President in his Sallah message today, again blamed the present acute economic recession on the past administration and global economic downturn.

Let Mr. President and his party, the APC, be reminded that it took a smart and experienced world-class Economic Team in the Year 2010 to lead Nigerians through a cushioned global financial meltdown and beyond.

The Change is really with them (APC) and their barrage of falsehood.They were elected to further better the lots of Nigerians, and not to dish out constant complaints on the situation which they mindlessly created not minding the attendant consequences of their actions on our collective destinies.
He stated this on Monday, September 12, during a visit to the Benin Technical College in Egor Local Government Area of the state.

Obaseki said voters should assess the antecedents of all the candidates, including their achievements both in and out of government before making a choice.

He said: "Leadership is very important; that is the key issue in this election. Who do we give power to? What is his background? What has he done before, especially if he has been in power?

What are his achievements? We must ask these questions because a leopard does not change its spot. So, it is important (that) this election is not going to be about money but our future.

He said with the evident development in Edo in the past eight years, the Adams Oshiomhole administration has showed that the APC will deliver.

In the last eight years, the leadership of the state has started something that the people can see. Why do we want to change what is already working?," he said.

"I know there are personal complaints about the government. But, at least, we agree that government can build roads. By the grace of God, all the roads will be built.

"As the next governor, we know how to build roads and schools. We know how many we have done and those we have not done and we already have a plan over a period to ensure that the works continue."

ALSO READ: Edo Election - Why APGA wants poll shifted to October
According to Daily Trust, Ize-Iyamu also said that he would revive industries shut by the policies of an insensitive government in the past eight years.

I am prepared to increase your opportunities to be skilled, equipped and empowered with a small business loan in your community, to give you the power, ready to prosper by doing honest work, he added.

Ize-Iyamu is set to go head to head with Godwin Obaseki of the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the states governorship elections on September 28.

ALSO READ:PDP denies registering 8000 militants for Edo election
While some are okay with it, others think it is a sign of disrespect and distraction for worshippers.

Rev. Msgr Gabriel Osu, the Director of Social Communications, Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos, falls into the second group.

In a recent interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), he called for phones to be banned.

"People have turned a positive invention to misplacement of priority; such an act does not show reverence to God and should be prohibited in places of worship, he said.

ALSO READ: Pope Francis calls on youth to drop their phones and stand up to violence

The director was supported by Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of the Catholic Diocese of Oyo in a separate interview with NAN.

"Unfortunately, many of us do not acquire that understanding and it is not the duty of the technology companies to enlighten us.

Why should they care because our ignorance helps them make more money, we need an understanding of the use and the dangers of cell-phones, I-pads and all such technology.

The basic principle is to tell the phone and oneself, `I am the master here, not you. I can decide whether to pick you up, when to do so and when not to.

If people understand that technology also has an underlying characteristic of usurping and curtailing their freedom, they might use technology differently and exercise control over it.

When it then infringes on spiritual space in churches or at prayer, then the matter becomes a real crisis.

We need some public media education in this regard or some programme toward media independence in our school curriculum, he added.
He also called on Nigerians to give the President more time, saying it is too early to assess the current administration.

The controversial priest also alleged that some people are planning to pull Buharis government down.

Mbaka, who said he is yet to see the changed promised by the current administration, added that I am talking about change from corruption to moral probity, a time Nigeria will become a country that is worthy of emulation, that internationally when you mention Nigeria, Nigerians shall begin to smile. I am talking about change that is beyond embezzlement of funds meant for the development of the people and country. Only few people who call themselves politicians will be stealing the money and whatever they are doing with it nobody knows.

The poor masses are dying and they are enriching themselves wickedly calling themselves politicians, so, such team of people should be changed and if some of them are still remaining and they want to come back, I still pray that the broom of God will sweep them out because Nigeria must move forward.

These people are wicked, they are not Nigerians per say, I dont know where their blood came from because they are not representing us; they are representing themselves and the devil that is using them.

If you know the pattern of their regime, the way they move and the way they truncate the activities that will be for the wellness of the poor masses, youll know that some of them are possessed and they need deliverance before they enter that seat.

He said I pray that our authentic emancipation, what we call change will be supernaturally propelled because right now you can see the hand writing everywhere, many people are complaining of hunger but the hunger is not Buhari engendered.

Many are complaining that Buhari has not started changing everything, Buhari is not a magician.

Like I used to tell people, somebody had been cooking in the kitchen for six years and he did not feed us well and just few months ago, somebody entered the same kitchen and all of us want him to cook a very wonderful delicious soup whereby his water is still in the pot. He has not started putting ingredients and people are testing the water and saying he cannot cook well. Let us give him a chance to pour the whole ingredients into the pot and when he is done with cooking, we can now judge him.

It is too early to judge a man who has just entered few months ago, remember, even the budget is being attacked, padding or no padding and some people want to baptise criminal fraudulent machination with the name padding as a non criminal offence. So, when you steal money that is in billions, it is padding and that one is a no offence?
The suspect allegedly sat down next to the officer and tried to start a conversation, WUSA9 reported.

She then reached down and took a chip  known as a French fry in the US  from him as he was eating. The police officer warned her to stop, but she took another.

According to Metro UK, the officer repeated his demand that she cease taking his chips, warning her that she was engaging in theft and faced immediate arrest.

However, she proceeded to disregard this warning and take another chip  so she was arrested.
After Yang Gailan, 28, murdered her children outside their home in Agushan, China, she committed suicide by also drinking pesticide, police said.

After arriving home from work, Ms Yangs husband, Li Keying, also took poison and killed himself.

The family are believed to have been living in poverty and the children were not covered by national medical insurance. Metro UK added.

They were also not allowed to attend schools as they were not registered on the nations Hukou residence system until last year.

According to local media, the children were not allowed to attend public schools because they were not registered with the government. The family was also excluded from Chinas poverty relief scheme and had to survive on crops.

Ms Yangs story gained national attention and it was the most searched subject on Chinese social network Weibo.

One person wrote: Whats more terrifying than poverty is the loss of hope and faith. That is the extreme desperation of helplessness.

Some criticised Yang Gailan, calling her a murderer.

Others see the tragedy as a reminder to be grateful. One person writes, Im reminded of a line from The Great Gatsby, to not carelessly criticize others, because not everyones conditions are as good as your own.
Apparently, the trend is not a new one, as picture evidence on the Internet points to the presence of these colorful things as far back as 2012.Brides just seem to only recently begin to pick on the trend as its occurrences have only become common in recent times, with Ann Linkos attempt the most recent successful attempt.So far, there has been no recorded incident of it in Nigeria; but that is not really something to worry about, neither is it a sign of backwardness, because, as pointed out above, the style is only just starting to get in vogue.

As the trend continues to spread its tentacles and grab a hold of more and more brides, however, it is actually not hard to imagine that soon, Nigerian brides will pick up on it, too.

There are actually several reasons why this seems logical. First of them is the rate at which Nigerians embrace new fashion ideas and vogues- and this extends to wedding fashion, too.

One only needs to avert their thought back, for instance, to when brides wearing sneakers on their big day was the in-thing. Sure, Nigerians were just as crazy about making these statements as brides from other parts of the world.An additional thing to consider is how easy it is to actually get this tweak done. You could basically watch some DIY YouTube videos and youre good to go; though it is advisable to let professionals handle it for you.

Brides might want to consider the advantage that dyeing the tip of your wedding dress reduces the dirty look your hemline gets as you drag it all over the place during your ceremony.If these resplendent wedding hemlines keep popping up on the internet, it wont be long before a Nigerian gets infected with a desire to splash some colour on her wedding gown, and when she does [hopefully with astounding results], it will be only a matter of time before one or two more dreamy-eyed brides try it out and soon enough, itll be the order of the day.

There is a slight fear though, that after a while, we might be seeing some ridiculous dabbing of colors, and it is not totally absurd to imagine that someone will do something as absolutely bonkers as actually dyeing the whole dress. Yep. Its Nigerians we are talking about here.

Also, a certain part of the populace might come up with religious connotations of wedding dresses, how their whiteness symbolizes the purity of the institution of marriage, and how the soiling of the wedding dress might just leave a stain on the institution as a whole.Of course there might be merit to that argument, depending on what you believe; but since when has any of these argumentative discussions ever stopped anything?

Moreover, since a lot of emphasis is placed on the style and aesthetics of brides dresses on their big day, and the whole idea is to create something of beauty with your dress, something to literally dye for, then it sounds like something a lot of Nigerian brides, who crave nothing but the most fabulous wedding might want to try out.

As aptly explained by Kaylin Pound of american media outfit, EliteDaily, this beguiling fashion fad is the perfect way to instantly add a fun, edgy element to your plain white gown.
The mission, known as MONUSCO, said in a statement that it rescued another 268 people from Garamba National Park in northeastern Congo over the weekend. They had all fled South Sudan with the country's former vice-president Riek Machar, following fierce fighting in the capital, Juba.

"MONUSCO and the United Nations headquarters continue their discussions with the DRC government (and) regional organisations in order to find a favorable resolution to this situation, which could become a threat to peace in Congo and the region," the statement said.

Machar, who was picked up by MONUSCO with a leg injury on Aug. 17 and later transferred to Sudan for medical treatment, is the only one of the group known to have left Congo.

The most recent transfers bring the total number evacuated by U.N. helicopters to 634. Another 134 in the park are believed to still require assistance, the statement said.

The transferred fighters are required firstly to hand over their weapons, MONUSCO added.

Influxes of rebel fighters from volatile neighbours is a sensitive theme in Congo, where the flow of Hutu militiamen from neighbouring Rwanda after its 1994 genocide helped trigger years of regional conflict in eastern Congo that killed millions.

MONUSCO said in a statement on Sunday that, as of Sept. 8, 117 individuals had been handed over to Congolese authorities while another 183 were being held at two MONUSCO-run facilities.

Hundreds have been killed in battles that broke out in the world's youngest nation in July between troops loyal to Machar and President Salva Kiir, his long-time political foe. Over 20,000 South Sudanese refugees have crossed into Congo this year, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
The hospital near the Misrata airport will be staffed by about 100 doctors and nurses and guarded by some 200 soldiers.

It "should be a safe location, but not too far from the battle zone," the source said.

Libyan forces aligned with the U.N.-backed government have been fighting to drive Islamic State militants out of their former stronghold of Sirte for months, but they have faced stiff resistance and suffered numerous casualties.

Italy has already flown dozens of Libyan fighters to Rome for medical treatment, but the hospital will be a faster and more efficient channel for assistance, the source said.

No further details were provided, including the exact timing of the deployment.

While France, Britain, the United States and Italy have acknowledged having special military units in Libya, this will be the first overt troop deployment by a Western nation, albeit for a humanitarian mission.

Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti and Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni may provide further details when they address parliament on Tuesday about "the situation in Libya".

Italy has historic ties to Libya, which it colonised during the first half of the 20th century. Libya lies directly south of Italy, less than 500 km (310 miles) from the Sicilian coast.
"We saw the light, bright," said the Liberian political science graduate. "It was like we were reaching heaven."

But the coastguard caught him and he spent a month in a Moroccan jail.

That was in 2006. The experience was no deterrent.

European politicians worry about the influx of what they call "economic migrants" from Africa, saying more must be done to improve living standards there to stem the flow. But for all those who reach Europe, many are thwarted along the way.

"I am not prepared to go home  I cant go back empty-handed," said the 39-year-old between sips of pineapple juice in an outdoor bar in Agadez, Niger, the major crossroads for thousands of travellers from West Africa each week. "I want to go to school, earn a Masters... If I have a European degree I can work anywhere."

In all, Jallah reckons, he has spent about $14,500 on five attempts over a dozen years to reach what he calls "normal society." He made the money teaching, doing odd jobs in construction and bricklaying, and forging refugee documents.

War in Syria has driven millions from home and is the short-term focus of Europes migration crisis. Longer term, senior officials in Brussels say, Africa is what really worries them.

When the European bloc was founded 60 years ago, they say, Africas population was about half that of the countries now in the EU. Today, Africa has double the population. And by 2050, the United Nations median forecast is that Africas 2.5 billion people will be four times that of the EU. This suggests migratory pressures from Africa will increase.

In the near term, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) expects migration through the Agadez region this year to reach 300,000. That's more than double the 120,000 it estimates went through in 2015.

History shows it is not the poorest who leave. For example, 19th-century immigrants to the United States came mostly from Britain and other North Sea countries. Eastern Europe was poorer and followed much later.

Migration increases as a nation develops, said Giulia Sinatti, a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam who studied migration in West Africa for over a decade. It only starts to wane when the economy reaches a point where people have no economic interest in leaving. In much of West Africa, she said, that point is a long way off.

Remittances to Liberia make up $570 million or 28 percent of its GDP, according to an African Development Bank report released in May - a bigger percentage than any other African country. For Africa as a whole the total was $64 billion in 2015, more than 30 percent of all financial flows into the continent, according to the ADB.

"The more that a country develops, the more people have the means to leave," said Sinatti. "It is utopian to think we can end this. I think it will not stop."

RUN, RUN, RUN

Jallah is tall and skinny, his jeans pleated at the waist by a tight belt. Unlike other migrants in Agadez, he wears a suit jacket and shirt. He says he grew up with 10 other children in a bustling household in Liberia's capital Monrovia. They slept in two small bedrooms. There was often not enough food for everyone, but his parents were teachers, so they all attended school.

He remembers listening to the BBC World Service on his father's battery-powered radio.

"I knew from a young age about Europe and the development and the government," Jallah said. "I thought, when you get into that society you have more opportunity."

Like nearly all Liberians, Jallahs family was torn apart by conflict. Liberias devastating civil war, which broke out in 1989, lasted 14 years. He fled Monrovia with his father in 1994 to seek refuge in Ivory Coast - it was a month-long, 400-km (249-mile) slog on foot. They kept off the main roads and slept in forests. When they arrived in Ivory Coast, Jallah's feet were badly swollen and he was sick.

"It was always run, run, run, that was how I was brought up," he said. Liberian exiles were classed as refugees by the United Nations until 2012.

When Jallah eventually graduated from the University of Monrovia in 2001, he dreamed of studying conflict resolution at the United Nations' Institute for Environment and Security in Bonn. That year he applied for student visas for Germany, Norway and Canada, and was rejected.

Meanwhile, he spoke over the phone to friends who had made it to Europe. "They were working or made it to school," he said. "I started to think: where would be the best place to get back the wasted years?"

ROBBED AND ROBBED AGAIN

Jallah paid for his first trip, in early 2004, with $2,000 that he had managed to save from teaching in Ivory Coast, and small donations from friends. His younger half-brother Mitchel, a 33-year-old mobile-phone salesman in Monrovia and Abidjan, said he had encouraged his brother, believing it was Mayangos role as the eldest to help the family.

"I wanted him to go, it will be good for everyone," he said.

Jallah packed light: clothes, food, a photo of his parents, and a letter of recommendation from his university that he hoped would help at European customs.

The route was already established - by bus through Mali and Burkina Faso to Agadez, where migrants bought passage from people-smugglers towards Algeria or across the Sahara to Libya. From there, they took their chances with smugglers across the Mediterranean.

Jallah had almost reached Algeria when the open-backed truck he was sharing was hijacked by bandits in the desert. They beat him and stole most of his money.

He found work painting buildings and making bricks and cement in southern Algeria for about $4.50 per day, then moved east to Sabha in Libya, where there was more work. A childhood friend who had made it to Germany sent him hundreds of euros via Western Union. That helped Jallah reach the coastal city of Tripoli, where he paid $1,200 for a boat to Italy.

He bought bread and sardines and was shown into a crammed building where hundreds of other migrants were waiting for a boat.

"The waiting hall was close to the beach," Jallah said. "There were 200-300 people just waiting and watching the ocean every day."

On the sixth day, a band of militia entered the hall, opened fire and demanded cash.

"Everyone scattered," he said. Traumatised and with his money near gone, he headed back to Ivory Coast.

His second trip, the journey to Spain in 2006, was relatively cheap, he said. But that was the journey that ended in a Moroccan jail. When he got out, he found work in Ivory Coast, teaching English to refugees and aid workers for hundreds of dollars a week. He loved the job. But "even if you love teaching, you know you will not have a good life."

By winter 2008, he had saved $6,750, he says. "I thought it would be easier to just to go to Libya."

In Tripoli, the price of a boat ride to Italy had risen to $1,500. Again, bandits raided the house where he was waiting. "They took everything," he said. "It was normal - everyone knows it was a setup."

This time, none of his friends could send cash.

DOCUMENT FORGER

By 2012, Liberia and much of West Africa experienced rapid economic growth as commodities boomed. The United Nations stopped considering exiles like Jallah as refugees.

He turned, briefly, to crime.

"It was becoming an obsession," he said. "You travel once to Libya or Morocco and you see it was just one single mistake that stopped you from getting there. You just want to go and try again."

Eight months after the Arab Spring uprisings toppled leaders including Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Jallah set off again. By now, Libya was in chaos. No-one was willing to take him to Tripoli.

Stranded in Algeria, he started forging refugee documents for money. It was a small operation with only three customers, but it attracted official attention.

Police arrested him in an Internet cafe and dumped him in a packed cell. He was eventually sentenced to six months.

"LACK OF IMAGINATION"

In total, Jallah estimates, he has spent nearly $5,000 on boats across the Mediterranean. He has given thousands to police and army checkpoints along migrant routes in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. The smugglers who ferried him across the Sahara took up to $500 a time.

"I am the kind of person that doesnt retreat," he said.

Today, Libya, still lawless, remains the only viable route to Europe after Algeria, Morocco and the Canary Islands successfully blocked the way. Europe is searching for new ways to close the route.

"The European Union does not have a valid set of policies except exclusion," said George Joffe, professorial fellow at the Global Policy Institute in London Metropolitan University. "There is a lack of economic imagination and a lack of understanding about the limitations that exist."

Europe needs to try new methods, Joffe said. He advocates a policy of microfinance where the EU could donate small amounts of money to projects with quick returns. Others say short-term, targeted visas for certain workers could reduce the desire to migrate illegally.

For now Jallah, who is approaching middle age, says he plans to apply for a Cuban visa, something his friends have done successfully. From there, he will try to get a boat to Florida. His friends have connections in Miami, he said. His eventual goal is Canada. It will cost about $4,000.

He still reminisces about what might have been.

On that second attempt in 2006, Jallah recalls, he had urged the captain to leave before 7 p.m. so fishing boats on the water would offer camouflage. But they did not get going until 11 p.m.
Turning the ship before it hits the iceberg
What makes us who we are, and what divides us, is examined in A Borrowed Identity, a heart-tugging drama about Jewish and Palestinian Israelis and cultures that can both collide and embrace.

Eran Riklis, who also helmed The Syrian Bride, directed the story that begins in the 1980s in an Arab village, where a boy named Eyad (Razi Gabareen) and his family watch a newscast of Israeli jets attacking Lebanon (there is a running joke involving the family and its television).

Eyads extended family includes his grandmother (Marlene Barjali), who shares with him her burial wishes. Eyads father (Ali Suliman) is a laborer who wants Eyad to have a solid education. Eyad is a smart kid, and even at a young age knows he has a chance to continue his studies.

As a teenager, Eyad (now played by Tawfeek Barhom) attends a boarding school in Jerusalem. He may be the only Arab student in the school, where other students look at him with curiosity and sometimes hostility. He does the best he can to fit in so that he can graduate.

Among his small circle of friends is Naomi (Danielle Kitsis), who is unable to introduce Eyad to her Jewish family because she knows they will not approve of Eyad as a boyfriend. Although their friendship is public, they keep their romance secret. Eyads other good friend is Yonatan (Michael Moshonov), a fellow student who has muscular dystrophy.

The two become friends because of their shared love for rock music. Eyad also becomes friends with Yonatans mother Edna (Yael Abeccassis).

My favorite scenes involve Eyad and Yonatan. Their dialogue is natural and believable, and I love the way the two continue to tease each other, as good friends often do. While its true that their insults sometimes sting, these barbs simultaneously acknowledge that these two know each other, and respect each other, very well.

There comes a time when Eyad must leave school behind and transition into the working world. But its not easy to find work without an Israeli identity, and he finds himself in a difficult situation.

The performances are all laudable, particularly those of the young performers who portray Eyad and Yonatan. The chemistry of their friendship radiates good will and understanding.

Youll enjoy the way this film emphasizes the triumph of friendship over cultural and religious obstacles. Its also a great coming-of-age story about a young mans first love and the challenges of taking on adult responsibilities anyone, regardless of belief or culture, can relate to the obstacles Eyad faces.
The records are in.

Brandon was out.

In his final visit to the VA in Iowa City, Brandon Ketchum asked to be admitted to the psychiatric ward.

The 33-year-old Davenport man was a combat veteran who served two tours in Iraq as a Marine. He later was deployed to Iraq with the Army National Guard out of Davenport, despite taking anti-depression medications for the PTSD that already had been diagnosed.

Those who loved him, including his partner, Kristine Nichols of Bettendorf, say his PTSD and the related suffering were hounding him. Brandon was on the brink. When the VA turned him away, it sent him over.

Brandon's July 8 suicide and the Facebook post that preceded it moved Iowa's two U.S. senators and other members of Congress to demand answers to the questions: Was he really turned away? If so, why? And what can the VA do to prevent yet another post-appointment suicide?

The Inspector General for the Department of Veterans Affairs responded with a promise the case would be reviewed. Results are pending.

Meanwhile, I took receipt of a 1,200-page collection of Brandon's medical records, obtained through a public information request to the Iowa City VA. The documents include "psychiatric notes" from Brandon's final visit.

Portions of the notes maintained by Dr. Anthony Miller and other VA staffers are heavily redacted. Some pages are fully redacted.

Officials from the VA said the blacked-out portions contain private information, which the agency has an obligation to protect. Brandon's mom, Beverly Kittoe, also received the redacted records. When family members asked for the full record, the VA told them they would need a court order to get them, Brandon's brother, Brad Ketchum said.

About a week later, on the same day the Inspector General's office announced a review was underway, the VA released the full records to Brandon's family without a court order.

According to the notes from his July 7 appointment with Miller, "(Brandon) wants to know if he can go to 9W (psychiatric unit) ..." And, "(Brandon) States that he can't do it outpatient."

Brandon also said he expected to go into withdrawal that afternoon if he did not use heroin.

Miller told him "that unit is currently full."

Brandon was asking to be admitted for opioid detox, his brother said, which originally was redacted from Miller's account. Brandon previously was granted in-patient treatment for his addiction to pain killers and heroin and benefited from it. A month prior to his suicide, however, he relapsed. A deepening depression accompanied the setback.

Iowa City VA spokesman Jamie Johnson has said he cannot comment specifically on Brandon's case, but he explained Monday under what circumstance a veteran might be turned away when asking to be admitted. Shortly after Brandon died, Johnson said "all patients" requiring hospitalization are admitted at the VA or another facility.

But that's only when the veteran meets the criteria, he said.

"In the case of a patient who is seeking an elective admission, if the unit is full, the patient would not meet admission criteria for an outside facility," Johnson wrote in an email Monday.

According to Miller's July 7 notes, he told Brandon that the VA "usually" treats drug addiction on an outpatient basis.

And that was all the rejection Brandon needed.

Miller's notes show that he then tried to talk to him about getting someone to help manage his money, because he was spending on drugs what he should have been using to pay bills.

But Brandon was done listening.

"My thoughts about it don't matter," he told Miller, according to the appointment notes. "They are going to do what they want to do. They won't let me come in the hospital to get help, but they'll take my money."

Brandon then got up "abruptly" and left Miller's office. The doctor wrote that he followed him to the parking lot, but Brandon no longer was interested in talking.

Brad Ketchum said Miller left a voicemail on Brandon's phone after their final meeting.

"He reiterated that in-patient wasn't going to happen and told him to come back, anyway," he said of the message. "He just slammed the door in his face again.

"That's why Brandon got up and left. He knew he wasn't going to get the help he was asking for and knew he needed."

Records show spiral

In the weeks leading up to his suicide, Brandon did not appear to hide his struggles from the VA.

On July 1, he was asked a series of questions related to his mental health.

Asked how many days he felt depressed, anxious, angry or very upset through most of the day over the past 30 days, he responded, "Sixteen to 30 days."

Even earlier, on June 24, records show a series of questions and answers:

"Question: Veteran depressed?

"Answer: Yes. Increase.

"Question: Veteran anxious?

"Answer: Yes. Cravings and increase depression. Feeling like a burden to others."

Following a home visit with Brandon on June 24, a report was entered into his VA records. Although several paragraphs were redacted, it includes, "Veteran states that he has been having an increase in depression the last couple of months and seems like his lows are getting lower and more frequent."

Brandon expresses a desire to see Miller, adding that he is frustrated that he cannot get an appointment for nearly a month.

"Veteran denies current SI (suicidal ideation) but states feels hopeless and does have periods where he thinks about how things would be if he wasn't around and if it would take the burden off others."

He also acknowledged having called the VA's Crisis Line, saying, "... it was not as helpful as he anticipated it being and unsure about using it in the future."

Brandon then agreed to use the Crisis Line anyway and was urged to contact his mental-health providers about his increased depression. The caregiver who wrote the report also "assured him I would alert someone to follow up with him and to seek immediate MH (mental health) attention if (he) has suicidal ideations."

It appears she followed through.

A nurse made a follow-up phone call to Brandon on June 24 after being informed of his increased depression and a request "that patient be seen sooner," records show.

In her report, the nurse wrote, "Patient stated that he is in a really dark place right now."

She then indicated that Brandon said he wanted to meet with Miller.

Just six minutes after the nurse wrote her notes, records indicate, Miller made a report of a brief phone conversation he had with Brandon. The reason for the contact was listed as, "Not doing well, feeling depressed and stressed. Not suicidal."

The appointment then was scheduled for July 7  13 days later.

Although multiple resources were at work on Brandon's care, including psychiatrists, nurses, in-home social workers and group therapy, his spiral into deep depression was known, which is clear from their notes. In some cases, entire pages of treatment notes are redacted. Although VA officials have said they are protecting Brandon's privacy, the records include lengthy lists of his medications and details of other personal matters.

"It's not even a question of if he might be in a spiral," Brad Ketchum said. "It's a (expletive deleted) airplane crashing to the ground.

"The thing that struck me as a miss on Dr. Miller's case is that he knew Brandon called multiple times for the suicide hotline. My God, they knew he'd tried suicide before. They knew he had access to a gun. They knew he was addicted to heroin. They most definitely knew about the PTSD.

"Maybe the Inspector General will find all the things we think we're finding. Maybe the IG will see that he should have been helped. Or, it could be, 'Nothing to see here, folks.'

"I don't know what I want to happen, honestly. None of it's going to bring back my brother."
Blog Archive Oct 2022 (60) Sep 2022 (60) Aug 2022 (61) Jul 2022 (55) Jun 2022 (60) May 2022 (73) Apr 2022 (60) Mar 2022 (58) Feb 2022 (65) Jan 2022 (69) Dec 2021 (106) Nov 2021 (84) Oct 2021 (58) Sep 2021 (67) Aug 2021 (62) Jul 2021 (54) Jun 2021 (50) May 2021 (58) Apr 2021 (44) Mar 2021 (57) Feb 2021 (64) Jan 2021 (93) Dec 2020 (82) Nov 2020 (62) Oct 2020 (50) Sep 2020 (45) Aug 2020 (51) Jul 2020 (56) Jun 2020 (53) May 2020 (70) Apr 2020 (66) Mar 2020 (169) Feb 2020 (211) Jan 2020 (184) Dec 2019 (54) Nov 2019 (56) Oct 2019 (55) Sep 2019 (63) Aug 2019 (54) Jul 2019 (69) Jun 2019 (56) May 2019 (65) Apr 2019 (68) Mar 2019 (72) Feb 2019 (76) Jan 2019 (62) Dec 2018 (55) Nov 2018 (69) Oct 2018 (90) Sep 2018 (82) Aug 2018 (58) Jul 2018 (36) Jun 2018 (47) May 2018 (44) Apr 2018 (64) Mar 2018 (63) Feb 2018 (68) Jan 2018 (92) Dec 2017 (85) Nov 2017 (64) Oct 2017 (82) Sep 2017 (54) Aug 2017 (89) Jul 2017 (60) Jun 2017 (86) May 2017 (84) Apr 2017 (62) Mar 2017 (86) Feb 2017 (91) Jan 2017 (113) Dec 2016 (109) Nov 2016 (100) Oct 2016 (82) Sep 2016 (95) Aug 2016 (84) Jul 2016 (84) Jun 2016 (99) May 2016 (93) Apr 2016 (106) Mar 2016 (145) Feb 2016 (125) Jan 2016 (103) Dec 2015 (83) Nov 2015 (80) Oct 2015 (100) Sep 2015 (111) Aug 2015 (94) Jul 2015 (98) Jun 2015 (151) May 2015 (125) Apr 2015 (109) Mar 2015 (122) Feb 2015 (113) Jan 2015 (135) Dec 2014 (131) Nov 2014 (115) Oct 2014 (146) Sep 2014 (112) Aug 2014 (128) Jul 2014 (94) Jun 2014 (104) May 2014 (140) Apr 2014 (132) Mar 2014 (81) Feb 2014 (89) Jan 2014 (141) Dec 2013 (100) Nov 2013 (96) Oct 2013 (99) Sep 2013 (94) Aug 2013 (95) Jul 2013 (95) Jun 2013 (91) May 2013 (139) Apr 2013 (179) Mar 2013 (73) Feb 2013 (76) Jan 2013 (85) Dec 2012 (59) Nov 2012 (71) Oct 2012 (85) Sep 2012 (70) Aug 2012 (71) Jul 2012 (53) Jun 2012 (51) May 2012 (52) Apr 2012 (52) Mar 2012 (69) Feb 2012 (76) Jan 2012 (70) Dec 2011 (60) Nov 2011 (54) Oct 2011 (57) Sep 2011 (75) Aug 2011 (72) Jul 2011 (64) Jun 2011 (76) May 2011 (56) Apr 2011 (73) Mar 2011 (114) Feb 2011 (71) Jan 2011 (80) Dec 2010 (92) Nov 2010 (82) Oct 2010 (73) Sep 2010 (95) Aug 2010 (86) Jul 2010 (81) Jun 2010 (76) May 2010 (71) Apr 2010 (74) Mar 2010 (74) Feb 2010 (82) Jan 2010 (101) Dec 2009 (108) Nov 2009 (182) Oct 2009 (136) Sep 2009 (102) Aug 2009 (120) Jul 2009 (151) Jun 2009 (136) May 2009 (180) Apr 2009 (145) Mar 2009 (113) Feb 2009 (113) Jan 2009 (124) Dec 2008 (108) Nov 2008 (69) Oct 2008 (89) Sep 2008 (76) Aug 2008 (75) Jul 2008 (87) Jun 2008 (80) May 2008 (99) Apr 2008 (93) Mar 2008 (115) Feb 2008 (147) Jan 2008 (162) Dec 2007 (124) Nov 2007 (95) Oct 2007 (67) Sep 2007 (42) Aug 2007 (78) Jul 2007 (75) Jun 2007 (123) May 2007 (110) Apr 2007 (108) Mar 2007 (92) Feb 2007 (136) Jan 2007 (119) Dec 2006 (41) Nov 2006 (34) Oct 2006 (12) Sep 2006 (13) Aug 2006 (13) Jul 2006 (16) Jun 2006 (12) May 2006 (21) Apr 2006 (38) Mar 2006 (27) Feb 2006 (25) Jan 2006 (18)
Davenport's school superintendent Art Tate continues his practice of not accepting a salary raise in view of the district's budget challenges.

But a new contract approved during Monday's board meeting extends the agreement between Tate and the Davenport Community School District to June 30, 2019. He will continue to be paid $203,761.

School board members passed the measure unanimously, but two of them offered comments. Board president Ralph Johanson, who was re-elected to his position during the meeting, said he appreciated that Tate didn't take a raise in salary.

"The budget will be a big, big deal this year," he said. Johanson said the board has "100 percent confidence" in Tate.

Board member Clyde Mayfield also praised Tate. "I recognize all the good things that have happened in the district because of him. I really appreciate what he's been doing."

However, Mayfield pointed out schools have been closed during Tate's tenure and he does not agree with that. Mayfield also said he is concerned the closings will continue this year.

"There are reasons why we have low enrollment and problems in some schools," he said, pointing to the role of the superintendent, as well as the role of the school board.

In other business, the board:

 Elected Linda Hayes the new vice president. She defeated incumbent Richard Clewell 4-3 for the position. She started Monday's meeting by leading a presentation on poverty and its effects on education.

 Received a request from community members to name the new swimming pool at Central High School after Charles and Ann Toney, civil rights pioneers in Davenport.

Charles Toney, who died in 2009, was a leader in several civil rights actions, and was the first African American executive at Deere & Co. As a high school student, he was on the swim team in Clinton, and he and his wife, Ann, had an in-ground pool at their Davenport home where they taught swimming lessons.

The name suggested: Charles and Ann Toney Natatorium.

The contingent was led by Vera Kelly, president of the NAACP and included the Rev. Ralph Kelly, president of the People Uniting Neighbors and Churches, or PUNCH organization, the Rev. Melvin Grimes, the Rev. Rogers Kirk Jr. and John DeTaeye.

 Agreed to pay $25,000 to use the Adler Theatre, Davenport, for some high school performances. Central High School's auditorium is under construction in a $21.8 million project and will not be completed until next spring.

Board members questioned the cost, wondering if it could be offset by contractors on the project. Officials said the Adler stage is used when the crowd is too big for high school auditoriums, such as for the "Messiah," performed during the holidays.
Illinois State Police and local law enforcement investigators are searching a home at 5th Street and Illinois 71 in Standard, Ill., for clues regarding a missing Illinois woman.

Deborah K. Dewey, 62, of Spring Valley, has been missing since Aug. 22. On Aug. 29, her gray 2007 Buick LaCrosse was found unlocked at the TA Truck Stop on Illinois 47, just north of I-80.

Investigators are searching the residence and surrounding property for evidence of Deweys disappearance.

The search for Dewey continues with the assistance of the ISP Intelligence Support Unit, ISP Digital Crimes Unit, STIC, ISP Crime Scene Services, ISP District 17, Illinois Conservation Police, Bureau County Sheriffs Office, LaSalle County Sheriffs Office, LaSalle County States Attorneys Office, Putnam County Sheriffs Office, Ladd Police Department, and Kane County Sheriff's bloodhound unit.

The investigation into Deweys disappearance remains an open and ongoing investigation.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Dewey is encouraged to contact ISP District 17 Headquarters at (815) 224-1171.
Twenty-five years ago, Iowa had a U.S. senator named Charles Grassley who had the courage and integrity to stand up to a president from his own party and vote against the Gulf War. That Chuck Grassley won the respect of Iowans across the political spectrum.

That was then. This is now. Now, Chuck Grassley supports Donald Trump.

Donald Trump belittles John McCains heroism and suffering as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. I like people that werent captured, says Trump.

Chuck Grassley supports Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, handed a medal as a gift, jokes, I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier. Right, Donald. An American who actually served in uniform would have had to pay for it in blood.

And Chuck Grassley supports Donald Trump.

Donald Trump lashes out at a Gold Star family whose son, a U.S. Army captain, died in Iraq protecting his troops. Trumps tirade against the grieving family goes on for days.

Chuck Grassley issues a press release but still supports Donald Trump.

Donald Trump attacks an Indiana-born federal judge hearing one of the many fraud cases against Trump University simply because the judges parents came from Mexico. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan calls Trumps attack the textbook definition of a racist comment.

But Chuck Grassley still supports Donald Trump.

Again and again, Donald Trump denigrates women in the crudest physical terms. Megyn Kelly and Carly Fiorina are just two of the targets.

Still, Chuck Grassley supports Donald Trump.

Donald Trump now mocks American generals as rubble while praising Russian President and would-be dictator Vladimir Putin. Trump likes Putins very strong control over the people in his country.

How can Chuck Grassley still support Donald Trump?

Once upon a time, we had a senator who could put principle before party, patriotism before politics. That was then.

Now, Chuck Grassley supports Donald Trump.
SPRINGFIELD  Supporters of a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution that wouldve created an independent commission to redraw legislative districts once a decade are figuring out their path forward after the state Supreme Court dealt their plan a final fatal blow.

In a 4-3 party-line decision Monday, the high court denied a request for rehearing from the group Independent Maps, definitively blocking a redistricting referendum from the Nov. 8 ballot. As they did late last month in ruling the proposed amendment unconstitutional, the four justices elected as Democrats joined together to deny the rehearing, while the three elected as Republicans dissented.

Illinois voters have been denied their right to vote on a constitutional amendment to remove politics from the way state legislative maps are drawn, Independent Maps Chairman Dennis FitzSimons said Tuesday in a prepared statement. Four members of the states highest court have rejected an amendment that we firmly believe meets the state constitutional requirements for amendments that can be proposed by voters.

Meanwhile, Republicans, led by Gov. Bruce Rauner, are vowing to continue pressuring lawmakers to vote on a redistricting amendment when they return to the Capitol after the election for their fall veto session.

The Supreme Court ruled the Independent Maps proposal unconstitutional because the majority said it went beyond the scope allowed for a voter-driven initiative.

Proposed constitutional amendments placed on the ballot by petition are limited to making structural and procedural changes to the General Assembly, which currently controls redistricting. But the proposal at hand would have given the state auditor general a role in the process.

FitzSimons said the courts majority ignored debate transcripts from the convention that drafted the 1970 Illinois Constitution. His group argues that those records show the drafters believed redistricting was an appropriate subject for a petition-driven amendment.

The court also only ruled on one of seven arguments from opponents of the proposal, FitzSimons said, leaving those questions for another day. 

But that another day may never come, he said, noting that the court declined to offer guidance for future proposals.

The future of Independent Maps, which collected more than half a millions signatures in support of its plan, is uncertain.

Our coalition remains committed to reform and believes an independent redistricting commission would be one important step in changing state government and making the legislature more responsive to the voters of this state, FitzSimons said. Whether that is possible through a citizen-initiated amendment is now an open question to be discussed by supporters throughout the state.

Spokesman Jim Bray said Independent Maps is a diverse group that disagrees on many issues but came together in support of this specific proposal. It remains to be seen whether the same group would support other plans, Bray said, such as one from former Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn that would put the Supreme Court in charge of appointing a redistricting commission.

The Peoples Map, a group of minority business leaders that challenged the proposed amendment, didnt respond to requests for comment. The group was represented in court by Michael Kasper, an election attorney with ties to the state Democratic Party and its chairman, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago.

Rauner and fellow Republicans have argued that the courts initial ruling is evidence of entrenched political corruption, and theyve been using it is a campaign issue as they seek to cut into the Democrats supermajorities in the state House and Senate.

The Illinois Republican Party jumped on Mondays decision as another opportunity to attack Madigan and Democrats over an issue thats popular with voters across the political spectrum.

The court again sided with the political machine against the people of Illinois, state GOP spokesman Steven Yaffe said in a written statement. Now is the time for Democrats to show their independence from Mike Madigan and pledge to allow a vote on the Independent Map Amendment during the veto session this fall.

The partys message echoed that of its de facto head and chief financial contributor.

Speaking after addressing a law enforcement conference in Decatur on Tuesday, Rauner said he was very disappointed at the court's decision not to grant a rehearing.

Its a tragedy for the people of Illinois, he said. They are not going to be allowed to vote up or down on whether we can have nonpartisan districts so we can have competitive general elections and restore democracy.

Rauner said he will continue urging voters to put pressure on their local legislators to vote this fall on redistricting reform and term limits for elected officials, another popular proposal that he blames Democrats for blocking.

I will never give up on trying to get those reforms, Rauner said.

The chances of the lawmakers approving a future proposal to take themselves out of the redistricting process appear to be slim. The House and Senate each passed its own plan this spring, but neither idea advanced in the other chamber.

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said Rauner and Republicans could concentrate their efforts on winning support in the Senate for the House redistricting proposal.

Decatur Herald & Review staff writer Tony Reid contributed to this report.
CEDAR RAPIDS  Women who arent running for office this year ought to be thinking about getting on the ballot in 2018, according to Ruth Harkin, who cracked the glass ceiling for women in political office more than 40 years ago.

Its not too soon, the former business executive said Monday evening in Cedar Rapids at Winning Women, a fundraiser for Iowa female Democrats.

Too many women dont run for office because they think the timing isnt right for them, said Harkin, who broke new ground in 1972 when she became the first Iowa woman elected to the office of county attorney.

You never hear a guy say that. Certainly not my husband, said Harkin, whose husband, Tom, served in the U.S. Senate for 30 years before retiring in 2015. Thats the same year that Ruth Harkin, a senior vice president at United Technologies Corporation, completed a 10-year stint on the Iowa Board of Regents. The right time is when there is an opportunity. Timing and luck can be almost everything in politics. You have to be ready.

Today, Harkin said, there are 21 female county attorneys in the state. There are 65 female legislative candidates running this year and, for the first time, two female candidates  Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senate challenger Patty Judge  will appear at the top of the Iowa Democratic ticket.

I never thought I would see Democratic women all the way up and down the ticket, but thats the case in about five places in Iowa, Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire told the audience of about 90 people that included several female officeholders and candidates as well as a pair of former lieutenant governors  Jo Ann Zimmerman and Judge.

Women run to determine the future, our future, Harkin said. To have influence, to have power, to be in service in something we care about not only for ourselves, but our children and our grandchildren, to be a role model and to bring a new and valuable perspective.

We cant get these things done if we arent in the room, she said.

And when the opportunity presents itself, its important that women candidates have the support of other Democratic women. McGuire launched Winning Women last year in an effort to promote the contributions and achievements of Iowas female Democrats and inspire more women to run for public office.

When Democratic women elections, Iowa families win, McGuire said. Democratic women are proud to advocate for pro-family policies like equal pay for equal work, raising the minimum wage, paid family leave and education.

Too many women try to do it all on their own, but we are so much stronger together, Harkin said borrowing a campaign slogan from Clinton, who she has been supporting since the former first lady ran for the U.S. Senate in New York in 2000. Thats especially true once we are in office.
CLIVE --- Donald Trump reinforced many of his staple campaign issues during a rally Tuesday at an events center in this western Des Moines suburb.

There was not much new in Trumps 30 minutes of remarks during the Republican presidential candidates fourth, general election campaign trip to Iowa.

Instead, Trump addressed roughly 1,600 people, according to the local fire marshal, by hitting all his familiar campaign highlights.

He criticized Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State and questioned the role of the Clinton Foundation during the same period; restated his desire to have strong immigration laws and enforcement; noted the next presidents role in selecting at least one and possibly multiple U.S. Supreme Court justices; and said he will renegotiate international trade deals that he believes are bad for the U.S. economy.

Jon Bintner, a 72-year-old retired principal from Exira, said he has heard much of what Trump said Tuesday, but that it was good to hear it again.

I think Mr. Trump. He comes across as being honest and sincere. He doesnt give maybe enough details at times, but hes talking about things we understand, Bintner said.

Of course, not everyone --- even in first-in-the-nation Iowa --- has heard Trump speak in person. Richard and Rhonda Landrum traveled more than two hours from Shell Rock for Tuesdays rally to hear Trump speak for the first time.

I hope he wins, Rhonda Landrum said. I thought it was excellent. He said all the right things. Hopefully he follows through on them.

Bintner said he supports Trump because he feels the country is headed in the wrong direction, and he believes Trump can provide hope in a dismal world.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who introduced Trump at Tuesdays event, said 70 percent of Americans feel the same as Bintner.

According to Gallups most recent polling, 72 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country.

We see everything stagnant. Kids cant get jobs, farmers prices keep going down, everything seems to be government-based, Bintner said.

Trump also made a few pitches to Iowa voters, essentially the same he made at U.S. Sen. Joni Ernsts annual Roast and Ride fundraiser this past month in Des Moines. He called family farms the backbone of this country and said he would reduce regulations, particularly within the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and maintain a strong federal ethanol mandate, a program popular in Iowas agricultural industry.

Were going to grow family farming in America. Were going to grow the farms, Trump said.

Trump, Giuliani and Tana Goertz, the Iowa native and Trump campaign official, all made reference to Clintons recent remarks at a fundraiser, in which she said half of Trumps supporters belong in a basket of deplorables, accusing them of being racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamaphobic.

Youre a good-looking basket of deplorables, Goertz joked to the crowd.

The Clinton campaign presented millennial supporters at a press event earlier Tuesday at a labor hall near the Trump rally.

Monica Reyes, a 25-year-old undocumented Iowa resident who co-founded an organization that advocates on behalf of undocumented citizens, criticized Trump over his now infamous comments about Mexican immigrants.

Reyes said she encounters racism from Trump supporters while door-knocking for Clinton.

Trump has a dark and cynical view of undocumented immigrants like myself, Reyes said. All we ask for is protection, dignity and respect. All of this falls on deaf ears to Donald Trump.

In an August poll by USA Today, millennial likely voters overwhelmingly supported Clinton over Trump, 56 percent to 20 percent.

This election, millennials of all backgrounds are united when we say Donald Trump, you do not represent who we are or what we stand for, said Austin Wadle, a 20-year-old Grinnell College student and president of the College and Young Democrats of Iowa. We reject your dangerous policies, we reject your hateful campaign, and most especially we reject you and will elect Hillary Clinton the next president of the United States.
"Dignity" is slowing making its way across South Dakota.

The 50-foot stainless steel statue known as Dignity chugged down state Highway 44 at a speed of only 30 mph on Monday morning, blocking both lanes of traffic and causing a small jam up on the normally desolate road near Scenic.

The sculpture, created by Sturgis artist Dale Lamphere, depicts a Native American woman wrapped in a star quilt. The artwork is heading to Chamberlain where it will be erected on a scenic bluff at the Interstate 90 rest area above the Missouri River. A dedication is set for Saturday.

At nearly 50 feet tall and 35 feet wide, the sculpture was a large load for the two-lane Highway 44.

The red Mack truck hauling the sculpture looks tiny in comparison as the women's outstretched arms spill widely over both sides of the trailer.

On Monday, the truck had to drive in the middle of the highway, causing anyone approaching the sculpture to pass the vehicle by driving partially into the ditch.

Trucks equipped for over-sized loads warned other drivers as they approached the sculpture, but traffic was still backed up behind it trying to find the best spots to pass.

The sculpture is expected to finish the roughly 250-mile journey to Chamberlain by tonight. It will travel east on state Highway 44 before crossing the Missouri River west of Platte. From there, it will head north on state Highway 50 and then had back west a couple miles toward Chamberlain. It will then be erected in time for the dedication and lighting ceremony on Saturday.

The dedication begins at 11:30 a.m. at the Chamberlain Rest Area on I-90 between exits 263 and 265. The lighting ceremony starts at 7:30 p.m. Those interested in attending are asked to bring camp chairs because seating will be limited.

Norm and Enuabel McKie sponsored the sculpture with a $1 million donation.
Local woman hopes a group to fight this will be result

HOT SPRINGS  On Monday, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. at the Mueller Center, Sister Teresa Ann Wolf, director of the Benedictine Multicultural Center (BMC) in Watertown, is coming to Hot Springs to talk about sex trafficking, according to Hot Springs resident Joyce Hayes.

This is a community thing, said Hayes, who is hoping Sister Wolfs discussion will result in the formation of a local group dedicated to fighting sex trafficking locally.

Sister Wolf has been studying this for several years, said Hayes. It hasnt been thought of as taking place in South Dakota, but Watertown is going to fight it and this year there were things going on at the Sturgis rally to fight this. Highway 18 is an important route for these traffickers to Denver and we need to do something about this.

Hayes said at the talk, Sister Wolf will discuss what she has learned about sex trafficking and this will be followed by a question and answer session.

Sister Wolf has a doctorate in cross-cultural theology and a Masters degree in religious education. She has lived and worked with the poor on Standing Rock Reservation, the Papagao Reservation in Arizona, among indigenous groups in Guatemala and Peru and with migrants, immigrants and Hispanics in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio and South Dakota.

According to information from the BMC, sex trafficking is very real in South Dakota:

Since 2009, more than 30 federal sex trafficking cases have taken place.

Two 2014 State Attorney General reports shows that numerous cases of sex trafficking were successfully prosecuted, the violators receiving sentences of between 10 and 33 years in prison. These prosecutions were made possible by a collaborative effort between federal, tribal, state and local law enforcement.

Also according to BMC, whenever large groups of men gather  such as the Sturgis rally, hunting season and other tourist events - venues for sex trafficking were prevalent, especially in North Dakotas oil fields.

Poverty and family dysfunction on the reservations are a big worry for native women and children, who are at a higher risk than other racial groups, according to a 2014 study shared by BMC.

The BMC partners with the monastery in the Watertown Initiative to Prevent Sex Trafficking (WIPST).

Anyone who believes a person is involved in sex trafficking should call the national human trafficking hotline at 1-888-373-7888.
Ahead of any initiative by presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders or anyone else, Western Dakota Tech in Rapid City might be willing to offer free tuition to students.

But only in certain fields that are highly desired by employers.

Tuition-free courses through Western Dakota Technical Institute may soon be available to Rapid Citys healthcare, information technology, and manufacturing industry professionals.

To make that a reality, Western Dakota Tech is applying for a $1 million Americas Promise Grant, an action approved by the Rapid City School Board during its Monday evening meeting.

The Promote Rising Opportunities in Medical, Manufacturing, and Information Systems through Education grant  issued by the U.S. Department of Labor  is part of $4.5 million in funds being jointly applied for by South Dakotas four technical institutes, according to Chandra Calvert, associate dean at WDT.

The Americas Promise Grant funds would allow WDT to offer reduced or completely tuition-free courses to individuals in the healthcare, information technology, and manufacturing industries who are looking to advance beyond their current skill level.

Doing so could help lower the unemployment rate in Rapid City, 2.4 percent as of July.

For existing employees, if we can up-skill them and get them in those higher positions, that opens up entry level positions, Calvert said.

The state unemployment rate is 2.7 percent, among the lowest in the nation, where average is 4.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What that really means, Calvert said, is some industries that dont require education, they have an excess of employees; whereas the more technical skilled occupations, welding, nursing, those kinds of things, theyre experiencing shortages.

If awarded, the grant funds will be available to WDT on Oct. 1, and will last until Sept. 30, 2020, according to School Board documents. The grant will require a 25 percent match in local funds, which WDT officials estimate will be paid off within the first two years.

Some of the funds will be used to pay the salaries of two outreach employees tasked with raising awareness about the free courses, Calvert said.

In other business Monday night, the School Board gave WDT permission to apply for $250,000 in Rapid City vision funds. Awarded by the mayors office, vision funds are supported by a local sales tax and often used on capital projects in Rapid City.

If the application is successful, the $250,000 will be used to install a sidewalk in front of WDT along the north side of Omaha Street between Cambell Street and South Valley Drive.
Local authorities are searching for a male motorcycle driver who rammed into several vehicles over the weekend while wearing women's shoes.

According to a news release from the Rapid City Police Department, a male suspect wearing a brown coat, women's heels, with long black hair (possibly a wig) was reportedly ramming the red motorcycle he was driving into vehicles over the weekend in the area of Twilight Drive and Sweetbriar Street. The disturbance was being investigated by the Pennington County Sheriff's Office.

Later, at approximately 3:30 p.m. Saturday, police saw a red motorcycle and rider matching that description westbound on Omaha Street. Police initiated a traffic stop on the motorcycle, according to the news release, but the driver didn't stop. The motorcycle turned left onto Steele Avenue, and continued westbound onto the bike path. Police then terminated the pursuit for safety reasons.
PIERRE | The state's new school-funding system doesnt provide enough money to small-enrollment schools that dot the rural South Dakota landscape, some legislators said on Monday.

The lawmakers, including a pair from West River, said districts arent receiving enough funding to even cover one teacher per grade level in some schools.

The comments came from two Democrats and two Republicans during a presentation on the new formula by Tami Darnall, finance director for the state Department of Education.

Earlier this year the Legislature approved a request by Gov. Dennis Daugaaard to raise the state sales tax to 4.5 percent from 4 percent.

The money is targeted at raising teacher pay and providing statewide property-tax relief.

As part of the package, the Legislature also supported the complete rewrite of the school-funding system that had been in place for 20 years.

The new formula calculates the number of teachers that a school should have based on overall enrollment. The old formula used a per-student basis.

Darnall explained the new formula to the Legislatures Agricultural Land Assessment Implementation and Oversight Advisory Task Force on Monday.

The panels main purpose has been guiding the conversion of agricultural property values from a sales-based system to a productivity-based approach.

Property tax levies on farm and ranch lands are the main source of local funding for many rural school districts.

Rural schools saw about 300 of their teaching positions go unrecognized in the new funding system, according to Sen. Jim Peterson, D-Revillo.

The 300 are approximately two teachers per school district, but the 300 tended to be concentrated among smaller-enrollment schools with the smallest faculties.

I think work has to be done on this, Peterson told Darnall.

Only one of the schools in his legislative district receives enough funding to cover all of its teachers, according to Peterson, who described his reaction as quite upset when he saw the disparities.

It comes down to whats in statute, and theres opportunities to look at statutes every year, Darnall replied.

Rep. Julie Bartling, D-Gregory, said many school districts lost funding because the new formula uses one year of enrollment rather than two years. Darnall said 72 districts were using the two-year approach.

Rep.-elect Larry Rhoden said his impression was small-enrollment districts were treated more unfavorably than larger-enrollment districts. Rhoden, R-Union Center, is a long-time legislator who is returning in 2017 after a one-term break.

Answered Darnall: Those numbers werent arbitrary. She said the blue ribbon task force assembled by the governor put a lot of thought into it.

More money was provided for distance-education courses that Northern State University provides for high schools and school districts also could seek grants for sharing services of teachers, Darnall said.

Darnall said the small school adjustment was $17 million under the old formula. Now about $17 million is going to small schools, she said.

But Peterson said many small schools lost under the new formula when all funds are rolled into the measure of local effort. Many of those funds previously werent counted in the state aid calculation.

Rep. Lee Qualm, R-Platte, said school districts in his area were hurt by the changes. He said the Legislature should revisit the formula in the 2017 session.

I think its a huge issue how all this is shaking out right now, Qualm said.

Bartling agreed with him. Bartling said the enrollment methodology has really had a negative impact.

Darnall said she wouldnt know specifics until November when the schools file their 2016 enrollment data filed.

Bartling called for the Legislature to remedy the issue in the 2017 session.

School districts were allowed to stay under the old formula and see their funding remain at the previous level or move to the new formula and accept the changes. Darnall said Harding County, Hoven and White Lake opted to stay under the old formula.

Darnall noted the option was a one-time opportunity and each of the three districts can decide each year whether to convert to the new formula.

Bartling asked whether all of the other districts have lost their chance. Darnall nodded in agreement.
"Extreme Wildfire," a new book from National Geographic Kids, explains wildfire and firefighters in an easy to understand narrative and with spectacular photography. Photographer and author Mark Thiessen shows what it means to be a firefighter, the science behind fire and firefighting, and the people and machines that make it all possible.

The fury of the firefight, the strength of firefighters, the flash of tools and aircraft arcing in the sun, were made for film. Over more than two decades Mark spent weeks and then months with firefighters in Boise, Idaho, and across the country, in Canada, Russia and Australia, learning about fire and shooting pictures and taking notes all the while.

Several chapters use events in the Black Hills to illustrate the danger firefighters face. A fire near Hot Springs resulted in a burn over that left firefighters injured. Mark used the example to demonstrate the critical need for personal safety equipment, how it works, and what happens when even simple systems break down.

A few years ago Mark and I spent several hours in the middle of a large fire in Custer State Park so he could get a sense of fire from the inside out. The only firefighters we saw were a squad of Tatanka Hotshots moving across a meadow to establish an anchor point for the fire line. We stopped and took a group photo of those bemused veterans. That fire resulted in a picture that helped Mark win the International Photographer of the Year award for photo journalism a few years ago.

For all the glory we attach to firefighting and for all the risk involved, most firefighters love fighting fire. For many wildfire is the first really tough job requiring full commitment and attention to detail. For the more than 10 million Americans alive today who have fought wildfire in some form, those experiences are among the most indelible. Marks first person, you-are-there photography captures the fact and spirit of life on the line  from fire camp to the lead saws at the head of the pack.

Minute attention to things like the aircraft in use today, the equipment including iconic hand tools like the Pulaski, much of which is unchanged in 100 years, make this an authoritative summary of the fire world at this moment in time, a primer for anyone of any age wanting to know what its all about, from the time the fire starts to the time the fire is out.

Thiessen supports the Eric Marsh Foundation for Wildland Firefighters, a charitable organization that provides for families of dead or injured firefighters. Marsh was crew superintendent of the Granite Mountain Hotshots from Prescott, Arizona, when all save one of the 20-person crew was killed. Mark covers this subject with the tenderness it deserves, finding wisdom in the lessons learned.

The book is not a set piece in which lines are learned and delivered in multiple takes until the director likes the product. Its the real deal. There are firefighters with their sleeves rolled up in the heat of combat. There are firefighters with their gloves off cold trailing fire line. There are pictures taken in moments when it seems impossible anyone would think to take a picture.

In the end, like National Geographic Magazine, "Extreme Wildfire" is an adventure worth taking. For those of us living in the Red Zones of the West where fire is an ever-present threat, it could be required reading. In any event, I will return to its pages time and again to discover, to explain, to remember. It is available now at amazon.com and other outlets.
Defense lawyers of Russian anti-corruption official charged with bribery insist on bail

MOSCOW, September 12 (RAPSI)  Defense of acting head of Interior Ministrys anti-corruption department Dmitriy Zakharchenko, who is charged with receiving large-scale bribe, appealed his detention, asking to release him on 70 million rubles ($1 mln) bail, RIA Novosti reports on Tuesday.

On Saturday the Presnensky District Court of Moscow detained Zakharchenko until November 8 as a part of a large corruption case. Earlier it was reported that during searches at Zakharchenkos place a huge amount of money was found, valued at 8-9 billion rubles ($123-138 mln). The policeman was unable to tell where the money came from.

Officially Zakharchenko is charged with receiving 7 million rubles ($107,600) bribe from unknown source. According to investigators, money was transferred at the end of December 2015.
Russian prosecutors seek ban on Aum Shinrikyo

MOSCOW, September 13 (RAPSI)  Russias Prosecutor Generals Office has filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court demanding to put an official ban on activities of Aum Shinrikyo sect in Russia, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.

The lawsuit will be considered on September 20.

In April, Russian investigators launched a case over illegal activities of the organization. According to Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin, searches were conducted in Moscow and St. Petersburg in order to identify individuals who could be involved in the sect activities and to find literature, documents and other evidentiary items that are germane to the case.

Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) was set up in 1987 by Chizuo Matsumoto (aka Shoko Asahara). It combined Buddhist and Hindu meditation practices and apocalyptic teachings and was believed to have between 30,000 and 50,000 followers, with more than 10,000 members in Russia, where Aum was engaged in missionary activity and economic enterprise. The sect was banned worldwide in 1995, with Russia leading the crackdown.

In 1994, Aum Shinrikyo members dispersed sarin gas in Matsumoto, Nagano, killing seven people. After the March '95 attack on Tokyo, police arrested about 30 of the sect leaders, some of whom, including Shoko Asahara, were sentenced to death.

Now operating under the name of Aleph, the cult is still in business and is believed to have between 1,000 and 2,000 members in Japan.
BUTTE - Butte-Silver Bow County Attorney Eileen Joyce told jurors Monday a Texas man on trial killed a Whitehall man, injured two other men and abandoned them in the mountains southeast of Butte.

In her 10-minute opening statement in Butte district court, Joyce said Tony Dwade Sawyer, 48, made a conscious choice to shoot and kill 37-year-old Joe Powers in the back and wound Steve Drury and Hunter Smith, also of Whitehall, on Fish Creek Road on a snowy night in early November 2015.

Sawyer faces one count of deliberate homicide and two counts of attempted deliberate homicide in connection with the shooting spree.

Public Defender Ed Sheehy told the jury of six women and six men, who were selected from a pool of 85, that his client was in fear of his life and justified in his split-second choice to shoot the three men after they dug out Drurys Chevy Equinox from a snow-filled ditch.

Sheehy said Drury and Sawyer met in Texas in 2014 and had kept in touch. Sawyer accepted Drurys invitation to visit Montana, arriving Nov. 2. The public defender painted Drury as a gun-toting, somewhat unreliable man whose behavior unnerved Sawyer.

Sawyer was a little bit uncomfortable about all these guns  and drugs, Sheehy told jurors.

Both Joyce and Sheehy said the four men drove to the remote area with the intention of using glow sticks to light up skeets in the pitch dark. Drury brought a 9mm handgun, which police believe is the weapon.

The shootings occurred after the men shoveled out the Chevy, Joyce said, adding that the evidence  photographs, video, interviews and state crime lab analysis  would support Drury and Smiths testimony.

Joyce stood before jurors, saying the defendant made a conscious choice to shoot and kill Powers, and made choices that night that will forever impact the lives of Steve and Hunter.

Jefferson County Dispatcher Rebecca Warner, a witness for the state, testified that Smith made a 911 call from the alleged crime scene at 11:28 p.m. on Nov. 3. In the audio recording, Smith was breathing hard and his speech was garbled.

Toward the end of the call Warner asks Smith if he was shot in the face.

Yes, he whispers.

The trial before Judge Brad Newman resumes Tuesday with prosecutors hearing testimony from Jefferson and Butte-Silver Bow County law enforcement officers.
Privacy Policy

RealChoice is a BlogSpot blog. You get whatever privacy you get when you post on a blog. As Blogmistress of RealChoice, I do not collect information on my users or those who post comments. I will delete spam and offensive comments, and thoroughly cooperate with law enforcement, as I did in the case of Ted "Operation Counterstrike" Schulman, if people make terroristic threats on my blog.



So fight nice, kids.


Rick Moran

Iran threatened to shoot down two U.S. spy planes flying in international waters in the Straits of Hormuz. The planes were on a surveillance mission and were flying 13 miles off the coast of Iran when the threat was made.

Fox News:

At some point during the flight, the Iranian military warned the two aircraft to change course or risk getting shot down.

The US military planes ignored the warning and continued flying in international airspace, although close to Iranian territory, the officials told Fox.

"We wanted to test the Iranian reaction," one US official told Fox News when asked why the US jets were flying close to Iran.

"It's one thing to tell someone to get off your lawn, but we weren't on their lawn," the official continued. "Anytime you threaten to shoot someone down, it's not considered professional."

The official said the Iranian behavior was characterized as "unprofessional." Another official said the incident was not considered "unsafe" because there were no Iranian missile launchers in the area, according to the latest intelligence reports.

The latest incident between the US military and Iran is just the latest in a series of confrontations in region.

Last month, Iranian fast-boats harassed US Navy warships in the Persian Gulf on at least five occasions. One incident resulting in three warning shots being fired from a US Navy coastal patrol craft, when an Iranian vessel ignored repeated radio calls to change course. On another occasion, an Iranian boat stopped 100 yards in front of a US Navy ship forcing it to take evasive maneuvers.

Over the weekend, a senior Iranian military commander dismissed claims that his vessels had harassed US Navy ships in in the Persian Gulf saying his nation acted in accordance with internationally recognized maritime law.

"Iranian boats continue to act based on defined standards and are well aware of the international laws and regulations, so the claims are not only untrue, but stem from their fear of the power of Iran's soldiers," said Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, according to state news agency IRNA and reported by AFP.

Dangerous interactions at sea between Iran and the US Navy have doubled in the first half of 2016 compared to the same time last year, Fox News first reported last month.

On Aug. 30, the head of US forces in the Middle East was asked to explain Iran's perceived aggressiveness.

"This is principally the regime leadership trying to exert their influence and authority in the region. And they are trying to do it in provocative ways," said Gen. Joe Votel, commander of US Central Command at a Pentagon press briefing.

In other words, Iran is flexing its muscles by trying to humiliate the United States, making us look weak. So far, they are doing a damn fine job of it.

This is not what was expected after the nuclear deal was agreed to. Perhaps the administration didn't believe all would be clover and unicorns with Iran, but at the very least we were told that Iran would now cooperate in the fight against the Islamic State and take other steps with the U.S. to ease tensions in the region.

Instead, the exact opposite has happened. Iran is taking on the Islamic State entirely on its own terms without any U.S. assistance. And instead of lowering tensions in the region, the Iranians have sought at almost every turn to fan the flames of the Shia-Sunni conflict, threatening war with Saudi Arabia, all but taking over Iraq, and meddling in the civil war in Yemen.

It's a foreign policy disaster of epic proportions regardless of Iran making any progress to build a nuclear weapon. Our billions in cash payments to Iran have enabled the terrorist regime to fund not only Hezb'allah, who is killing U.S.-backed Syrian rebels, but also the Houthis in Yemen, who continue to fight the elected government. One would assume that Iran is also funding prominent terror groups in the region.

Former vice president Cheney wrote a few days ago that "no American president has done more to weaken the U.S., hobble our defenses, or aid our adversaries." President Obama will leave office considering his performance in that regard a job well done.
Guwahati : Miscreants killed a elderly woman and her daughter while another minor girl was critically injured in Assam's Morigaon district on Saturday night.

According to the reports, the incident took place at Bechapatty area in the central Assam district on Saturday night where miscreants killed a 50-year old woman and her 12-year old daughterwith sharp weapons and injuring another minor girl.

Local people had found the body of mother-daughter inside the house on Sunday morning.

The injured minor girl had rushed to Morigaon civil hospital and later shifted to Guwahati Medical College hospital.

Police said that the woman and her two daughters were alone in their home when the incident happened.

The deceased persons were identified as Rongmai Devi and Rekhamoni Devi. Police has launched investigation to nab the culprits.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati: Assam's students organisation Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) has asked the Centre to resume peace talks with ULFA and other rebel outfits to help Assam restore permanent peace.

The students organisation further threatens to launch a statewide agitation if the Centre fails to hold the peace parleys with the rebels afresh.

In a statement issued in Guwahati, AJYCP president Biraj Kumar Talukdar deplored that neither Delhi nor Dispur has invited the rebel outfits to resume the peace talks.

The Centre has invited not even a single rebel group for talks. Doesnt it suggest lack of goodwill and interest to allow peace to prevail in Assam?A said Talukdar.

The AJYCP leader said that the government would have to pay heavy price if it keeps mum on the issue. *

If the Government fails to resume the talks it would be missing another chance to help Assam restore peace. We find it difficult to understand why the Centre has yet to resume the talks or why the Sonowal Government fails to mount pressure on the Centre for it.

Over the years, we have noticed that the Centre has been downplaying the major issues in Assam as law and

order problem. The measures to quell these issues have been doing more harm than good," Talukdar said.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Biratnagar, Nepal: Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal Chairman Upendra Yadav has blamed the government for not showing any interest in constitution amendment as per the understanding reached with the agitating Federal Alliance (FA).

Talking to media persons at Biratnagar Airport on Tuesday morning, Yadav, who is also the coordinator of the alliance, also accused the government for delaying in implementing the three-point deal signed with them.

The government and the major political parties should stand together to make the constitution acceptable to all by addressing the issues of Madhes, Yadav said. Top priority should be given to the Madhes issues, Yadav said.

Hinting to the saying of the Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahala that constitution amendment proposal would be registered before leaving to the India visit, Yadav said that registering of constitution amendment proposal would not be considered sufficient.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte stepped onto the world stage last week with the swagger of a bad-boy rock star. Despite a patchy debut, including a rebuff from the U.S. president, Duterte has shown no loss of appetite for confrontation.

Returning from his first international trip as president -- to Laos for a global summit and then to Indonesia -- Duterte called the head of the United Nations a fool and repeated his vow for his nation to chart an independent foreign policy. He also denounced U.S. military killings when the Philippines was an American colony and thanked China for being generous to us." On Monday, he called for U.S. troops to leave the southern island of Mindanao.

While Duterte, 71, can say different things on different days -- in part because his nationalist outbursts help bolster his strongman image in the Philippines -- for now at least he seems to be moving away from close military ally the U.S. and toward main trading partner China, even though the countries have a long running territorial dispute. That has ramifications for geopolitics well beyond the Philippine archipelago.

One risk is that Duterte ends up making concessions to China in return for financial incentives, frittering away any advantage Manila gained from the international arbitration ruling in July that found Chinas extensive claims over the South China Sea had no legal basis. Thats a dangerous situation" for the U.S. and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, according to Malcolm Davis, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra.

Duterte is going to be a constant source of uncertainty and instability in terms of our understanding of the Philippines and where it is going, he said.

Dutertes trip got off to bad start before hed even left the Philippines. He told reporters that if U.S. President Barack Obama questioned him about the drugs war that has seen almost 3,000 suspects killed since the end of June, I will curse you in that forum.

I dont care about him, Duterte said. The Philippines is not a vassal state, he said. We have long ceased to be a colony.

When Obama consequently canceled their first one-on-one meeting set down for later that week, Duterte found himself on the defensive. He issued a statement on Sept. 6 expressing regret that his strong language had come across as a personal attack."

The episode may have impacted the markets. On Sept. 7, overseas investors pulled the most money out of the Philippines in almost a year as local stocks tumbled 1.3 percent.

Perhaps to reassure both investors and fellow claimants to disputed areas in the South China Sea, Philippine officials attending the summit in Laos suddenly released photographs on Sept. 7 of Chinese ships gathered around Scarborough Shoal, a rocky outcrop seized by China from the Philippines in 2012.

Later that day, however, Duterte -- sporting a black-velvet suit -- was seen at the venue walking over and introducing himself to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang for the first time. If you want to work on the side of peace, you shake the hand of the person right next to you, Martin Andanar, Dutertes communications secretary and former television news anchor, told reporters.

Shaking Hands

More important, Andanar said, was how much his boss was impressing his fellow Asian leaders, many of whom crowded around him to take selfies. The spokesman also announced that Duterte would be seated at that evenings gala dinner between Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Close all those tabs. Open this email. Get Bloomberg's daily newsletter.

Bearing Gifts

The tension appeared to take a toll on Duterte. On the morning of the final day, he canceled a meeting with Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi, skipped both the U.S.-Asean leaders summit and the India-Asean leaders summit, and was absent for the traditional leaders portrait.

Pressed by reporters, a frazzled-looking Andanar said that Duterte had a migraine. Its not regular, but when he is tired and he is always working, the spokesman said. When Duterte finally arrived in the cavernous marble foyer of the National Convention Center looking pale and deflated, he was met by his protocol chief, who handed him an elegantly wrapped gift to pass onto Obama.

Back in the Philippines the story changed: I purposely did not attend the bilateral meeting between the Asean and the U.S., Duterte said in a speech. The reason is not that I am anti-West, he said. It is simply a matter of principle."

Missing was an explanation for why he missed the India-Asean summit that preceded the U.S.-Asean meeting, or why he sent Yasay to take his place for the leaders portrait.

Open for Business

Dutertes performance in Laos received mixed reviews in the Philippines. One academic enthused that the  intelligently courageous  Duterte could become a regional statesman. Editorials in the Philippine Star and Daily Inquirer were more circumspect, noting that the meetings in Laos had been overshadowed by the Obama spat.

Asked on Friday if Dutertes behavior had impacted the Philippine economy, central bank Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo told reporters in Manila that the presidents more colorful rhetoric wouldnt make a difference as "long as the economy is doing well, and its expected to continue doing well.

Its a bet that Duterte clearly intends to keep on taking.

Stopping in Jakarta on Friday on his way home to the Philippines, Duterte was back to his former self. In a speech, he blamed media spin for the story about him cursing Obama, and later branded the UNs Bana fool for trying to raise concerns about human rights violations.

Hopefully he has learned a lesson in terms of the whole Obama name calling thing," said ASPIs Davis said of Duterte. But I am sure there will be something else that hell do that we see as irrational and cause for concern.

That statement turned out to be an embarrassing blunder. Duterte instead found himself sitting between Indonesias Joko Widodo and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Still, before the dinner, Duterte approached Obama to talk things over. "They were the last persons to leave the holding room," said Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay, insisting that relations with the U.S. were "firm, very strong."
Death toll from Saudi air aggression against Arhab's village rises to 30, including children - UNHC



SANAA, Sept. 12 (SABA)  United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, said Monday that death toll from Sept. 10 Saudi aggression against a water well in Beit Saadan village north of Yemeni capital Sanaa increased to 30 civilians, including two children, and 17 injured, in a statement received by Saba.



"On September 10, on the eve of Eid Al Adha, 30 people were killed and 17 others wounded, including first responders and two children, as a result of several air strikes on a water well in Beit Saadan village of Arhab District, in the north of Sanaa Governorate," McGoldrick said in the statement.



"These events follow weeks of intensified air strikes and ground fighting across the country," McGoldrick said.



"I remain deeply disturbed by the unrelenting attacks on civilians and on civilian infrastructure throughout Yemen by all parties to the conflict, which are further destroying Yemens social fabric and increasing humanitarian needs, particularly for medical attention at a time when the health sector is collapsing," McGoldrick added.



McGoldrick also called on all parties to "uphold their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law, to recommit to the April 10 Cessation of Hostilities and to support the initiatives of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen."



On Saturday, the Saudi aggression warplanes launched a series of strikes against residents' houses and farms in Arhab district. The warplanes waged five airstrikes against a water well in in Beit Saadan village, and resumed with three other strikes when rescue teams tried to pull out possible survivors, said local officials and residents, adding that many of rescuers were killed at the scene.



MA



SABA

Facebook Facebook

Twitter Twitter

Whatsapp Whatsapp

Telegram Telegram

Email Email

Print Print

[12/September/2016]
SNc Channels:



Search

About Salem-News.com



Sep-12-2016 14:48 TweetFollow @OregonNews Pakistani Christians with False Hopes of Refugee Status Religious minorities in Pakistan are persecuted under stringent blasphemy law.

Photo: www.ndtv.com (2013)

#WeAreOne

(ISLAMABAD) - Religious extremism has gone to its peak since Afghan refugees entered Pakistan. Due to terrorism, Pakistan has lost thousands of its precious lives and properties. Religious-banned outfits have attacked schools, worship places, parks and even law enforcement agencies and their places. In past years, those militant organizations have targeted religious minorities especially Christians. In the latest episode, four suicide bombers wearing suicide vests and carrying latest firearms attacked the Christian Colony at Warsak Dam, Peshawar but due to the prompt action by security forces they were saved. The Army Chief General Raheel Sharif played an aggressive role in combating terrorism in Pakistan and due to his proactive approach the ratio has been decreased. According to the recent statement by DG ISPR Lt. Gen Asim Bajwa, Pakistan Army has eliminated the militants groups in the country. But the very next day, the spokesperson for TTP JA, Ehsanullah Ehsan said, We have carried out the attack. He said the attack was a response to the Armys spokesperson (Lt. Gen Asim Bajwas) press Conference who said yesterday that militant groups had been eliminated. Religious minorities in Pakistan are already persecuted under stringent blasphemy law. Since military dictator General Zia ul Haq added new clauses in the law, minorities in the country feel insecure. Usually this law is misused and results in many people including Muslims either being killed or suffering in the prisons. In this critical condition, militant groups turned to attack Christians. Twin blasts in the Peshawar Church killed more than 80 worshipers and left many injured. Two churches were attacked in Youhanabad, Lahore killing dozens of worshipers and many more were injured. Later on the occasion of Easter festivity, a suicide bomb blast in Iqbal Park, Lahore again killed many innocent people. As a result of this difficult living environment, four years ago, persecuted Pakistani Christians started reaching Thailand, seeking resettlement in the West. Thailand was one of the few countries that allow Pakistani easy entry as tourists. Now, nearly 10,000 Pakistani are gathered in Bangkok, and now most of them are living an underground existence. Alas, the UNHCR offered false hope. The typical refugee waits years just for an interview, the first step to receiving official refugee status. So far, no one among them has moved on to Europe, America or anywhere else. In the meantime, Pakistan Today reported that the Hong Kong delegation has contacted the Interior Ministry to take up the issue of the increasing number of illegal Pakistani immigrants sneaking into Hong Kong with false hopes of refugee status. According to sources, the Thai government did the same about the Pakistani immigrants. Religious minorities in Pakistan face persecution. Christians are disproportionately targeted by blasphemy laws, often as retaliation for commercial and personal disputes. Sectarian murderers are publicly supported and applauded. Public response after the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri is a good example. The Government has failed to protect victims and a deep-rooted climate of impunity. Discriminatory attitude, sectarian threats and attacks have driven many Christians from their homes. Asylum seekers are struck in Thailand and other neighboring countries and endure a tenuous existence. On arrival, the UNHCR typically gives them an appointment set a year or two in the future; the date often is delayed as the appointment approaches. Once their visa expires, the asylum hopefuls are unable to work legally and subject to arrest whenever they leave home. The Thai authorities stake out neighborhoods and raid apartments where refugees are believed to live. Hundreds of unlucky asylum seekers have been ended up in detention and some even died during the mean time. Some welfare organizations do their best to help refugees, providing food, sundries and legal aid. But those can only assist a limited number of families. Much of the inward flow of families ebbed after word returned to Pakistan that there is no easy exit from Thailand, those already arrived are essentially trapped. They have sold their possessions. But they see no path forward either. The European and the U.S. have accommodated millions of Afghan, Syrians and Egyptian Muslims in their countries; resultant facing terrorist attacks in their countries. Why cant they bear the people with the same faith and values? The only feasible solution is that the UNHCR High Commissioner is supposed to make a designation with 90 days and should take up this issue on priority basis. The U.S. and other European Countries should admit people who are not only in desperate need, but who share the same faith and values as the people persecuted for their faith, as among the best candidates to receive asylum. _________________________________________

Pakistan | Religion | Politics | Human-rights | Most Commented on





Articles for September 12, 2016 | Articles for September 13, 2016
Rev. Michael Cunningham, of St. Mary's Episcopal Church, said it was in one of the toughest moments of his life that he received words of comf
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.




Its the dawn of a new era for Maryland horse racing.



Thoroughbred racing meets Standardbred harness racing.



Laurel Park and Pimlico meets Rosecroft.







When the gates swing open on the starting gate at 6:40 pm this evening for the first race at Marylands 67 year old harness track it will mark the first meet that Rosecroft Raceway has been under the operation of its new owner, the Stronach Group, parent company of the Maryland Jockey Club.



That means the harness track in Prince Georges County under the same management umbrella as Pimlico and Laurel Park.



And it appears that just like has been the case for the last couple years at Laurel Park, the new owners of Rosecroft are focusing their efforts on making improvements to the racing facility and fans experience at the track in Fort Washington.







If you havent been there since the spring meet, youll definitely do a double take when you roll into Rosecroft for the Fall Meet that runs through December 15tth.



How about a high-definition, 21-by-30 television (thats feet and not inches) that is being installed in the infield to replace the old tote board.



How about a newly-paved paddock.



How about a new starting gate.



How about a new Pick 5 wager with a low 12-percent takeout.



How about superfectas, trifectas and exactas offered on every race.



How about two daily doubles will also be offered.



Now thats some sweet action at Rosecroft Raceway that any railbird would appreciate.

And the powers-to-be say thats only the beginning.





Look, that's driver

Rosecroft



The Maryland Jockey Club will also try to grow Rosecrofts presence by featuring its simulcasts at Laurel Park, Pimlico and off-track facilities at the Horseshoe Casino in Baltimore, the State Fairgrounds in Timonium and the new OTB in Hagerstown, as well as outside the state. An example of that is for the first time since 2008 Rosecrofts races will be shown in Florida, at the home of The Stronach Groups Gulfstream Park.



Its the same management team led locally by Maryland Jockey Club President and General Manager Sal Sinatra that has been taking racing in Maryland to new heights at Laurel Park that is also charged with doing the same at Rosecroft.



Were going to observe and learn this fall at Rosecroft, much like we did when we first arrived at Laurel, said Sinatra, who arrived in Maryland in December of 2014. We want to learn the habits of our customers, what they like and dont like, and what needs to be improved.



We think the new infield television, along with a high-definition broadcast, will provide our fans a much crisper broadcast. The horsemen have reacted well to the newly-paved paddock. Well have a new tote system, and well also have a new starting gate. We think the Pick 5 with a low 12-percent takeout will also be welcomed by our fans. We think this will be popular since most races will have nine starters.







And for those who have never experienced harness racing at Rosecroft racing, youll be able to see what its all about each and every Tuesday and Thursday night thru mid-December with first post time at 6:40 pm.



Were really excited about the fall meet at Rosecroft, Sinatra said. We want to increase export sites, introduce more fans and bettors to the great sport of harness racing, and we look forward to working closely with the horsemen.



It seems as if the goal is to not only take it up another notch at Rosecroft (like theyve done at Laurel Park) for its regular horsemen and fans, but to also attract not only new fans to horse racing, but to also make it attractive for Marylands Thoroughbred community to embrace Standardbred harness racing.



Like both Laurel Park and Pimlico track announcer Dave Rodman and Rosecroft Raceway track announcer Pete Medhurst both say so well be it at any of Maryland's horse tracks..and theyre off!





Frank Milby.He has driven more than 2,000 winners and has won numerous driving titles atRaceway and Ocean Downs. In fact, the native of Easton has been one of Marylands leading drivers over the past 10 years.And after just missing the driver's title for the Spring, he says he can't wait for the Fall Meet to begin tonight.But this blogger disgresses.
Ralitza Petrova, an emerging filmmaker from Bulgaria, unveiled her powerful debut outing Godless recently at the Locarno Film Festival, where she ended up standing in the spotlight and holding the Golden Leopard award. She thus joined the ranks of talented newcomers initiating a curiosity of future prospect of their careers and how their body of work will eventually evolve.

Two years ago, Maya Vitkova, another Bulgarian debutant, appeared on the festival circuit introducing her surprisingly ripe feature-length debut Viktoria. Vitkova touched upon a myriad of subjects related to motherhood and raising a child in a totalitarian state, recalling the not so distant past of Bulgaria. Petrova follows in Vitkova's footsteps in terms of subject matter, while displaying exceptional talent, vision and personal style.

Similarly to Vitkova, Petrova does not cross beyond the borders of her homeland in the rather grim and raw story Godless unfolds to be. Despite the title, explained towards the end of the running time, Godless is a hopelessly unreligious film, although a subtext of spirituality scratches the theme, but in a fairly different manner than what could be expected.

It has become almost a stereotype of how the cinema of Eastern Europe, particularly the geo-political region of the former Soviet bloc, deals with its past still echoing in the present. The past that remains painfully etched in the nation's D.N.A. has bestowed generation after generation as though it were, in a religious context, a hereditary sin.

A sort of prologue opens the film, foreshadowing one of the main topics to be corrosive corruption. A cryptic epilogue, or coda, tops off Godless. In between, Bulgaria is looked upon through the lens of home care worker Gana (the perfectly cast Irena Ivanova). Unlike last year's Czech Acaemy Award submissionf or best foreign-language film, the dramedy Home Care, revolving around a similarly employed protagonist in like-minded space, Godless unpacks a full-on and almost tactile existential pressure and despair, a total depresso fare, the type of Eastarn European social drama that the region has became notorious for.

Short of any virtuous intentions and idealism the Czech counterpart harbors, Petrova paints her protagonist as an anti-heroine taking advantage, if not outright exploiting, her clients, most of whom suffer from various ailments related to dementia. The social group that is being victimized offers easily reachable opportunities, turning the viewing experience even more gut-wrenching and harrowing, as the Austrian iconoclast Ulrich Seidl has shown in the infamous scenes from the geriatric ward in Import/Export . Petrova does not add more oil to the fire, although the motif of the perils of old age bears undoubtedly a much wider and more universal statement in Godless.

Petrova embodies the disillusion of economically and socially limping Eastern European countries frozen in post-industrial gloom in a tight grip, and distills it illustriously through the character of Gana, equally archetypically as well as psychologically chiseled. Meanwhile, Ivanova's striking performance, based on passiveness and blank stares, channels the ultimate resignation. The nurse's anti-heroine image thus stems from the choice to succumb to the prevailing marasmus.

Another Czech film, We Are Never Alone by Petr Vaclav, tackled the very same condition through its male characters, who capitulated in favor of passiveness and wallowed in nihilism, more unwilling than incompetent to act against it. The thematic overlapping of both films (and several others) only confirms the shared universal and alarming endemic condition across the nations.

In the desolate setting of Godless, the answer does not sound as misplaced. On the contrary, the terse reply, maybe one of the most austere yet civic celebrations of the triumph of human will, revives Ganas numb senses the same way Yoan's (Orthodox Christian) choir does. The transcendental power of angelic voices reminds the protagonist of things beyond the murky cesspool of poverty, sickness and despair.

It is this kind of spirituality, freed from the shackles of organized religion, that eventually awakens a tiny piece of joy in Gana, the same way that the disturbing corporeality of Runar Runnarson's Sparrows is overcome by the protagonist singing and Iceland's pristine vistas.

Even though Ivanova has the largest amount of screen time, the director reserved a space to smear corruption in a scathing portrayal of the country's rotten political system, where people who are supposed to protect and assure justice are basically raping it on running basis without frowning a brow. The directors indictment is more urgent, as the disintegration that eventually affects the whole society, not only working class of a provincial town, runs to the upper echelons of the apparatus.

The art production and locations pungently invoke the general atmosphere of moral decay and omnipresent daily misery through a bare bone aesthetics that could be simply described as Eastern European dystopia. A necrotizing post-industrial town past its prime, riddled with concrete chunks of the Communist era architecture dilapidating along washed out interiors of decades ago form an overwhelming visual cacophony of disintegration, forsakenness, hopelessness and dehumanization, sprinkled with a suffocating spleen.

A similarly socially-conscious venture was explored in The Lesson, a poverty porn thriller by Bulgarian tandem Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva. Although poverty is still a factor in Godless, not as a catalyst but as a mundane reality, Petrova shifts the lens to deliver a moral thriller in the frame of a social drama, wielding the minimalistic and raw style to a piercing and lasting effect. It may seem that Petrova beats vigorously the very same drum as her predecessors did, but she makes sure to bring her own notes.
French critic-turned-filmmaker Olivier Assayas has always had a knack for combining verite, day-to-day life with stylish genre elements.

His previous film, The Clouds of Sils Maria, coaxed a assured performance out of Kristen Stewart as a confident personal assistant to a French movie star; to the point where she almost overshadowed the glamourous lead of the film, Juliette Binoche. Assayas collaborates once again with the young star in Personal Shopper - again in the employ of a famous actress - but here, he places her in practically in every shot.

Mixing the abstract with the mundane, Stewart plays Maureen, a budding amateur medium who trying to commune with her recently deceased twin brother. The movie starts almost like a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, with Maureen attempting to make contact with the beyond by spending the night in the a dark old French country manor. Her day-job involves buying insanely expensive clothing and jewelry for a wealthy young movie star. It is clear that Maureen hates this job, she confesses this outright to her employer's sleazy boyfriend, but it pays the bills while she tackles her unfinished spiritual business.

Not content with just restless spirits and luxury goods, Assayas also drops in an anonymous sexual stalker and murder-mystery to boot. And yet, Maureen spends nearly the entire film alone, in shops, on her scooter, or on the train between England and France. Her boyfriend is in Morocco and occasional talks to her via skype. Her boss is always in one city or another, for a film shoot or a fashion show, and communicates with Maureen via notes left in her upscale Paris apartment. And the stalker sends copious amounts of anonymous text messages. I mean a LOT of text messages. For a film that has its lead spend a good chunk of its runtime glancing down at her phone, one would think it might get boring, but it not so.

Assayas alternates between satirically observing the transactions around five-thousand dollar dresses and handbags in upscale boutiques and the sexual charge and danger from this texting while perhaps being watched. Look for an impressively effective suspense-gag around receiving a string of SMS messages after being coming out of 'Airplane Mode.' All of the busy goings on plot-wise point to a 21st century need to disconnect with a world of endless distraction and do a little bit of collective soul searching. While this idea is not a particularly new one, the way it is approached here certainly is.

Personal Shopper at times brushes with unconventionality of an Apichatpong Weerasethakul film, but then it swiftly browses through modes like its lead character, trying on this and that whether it has permission or not. The resulting je ne sais quoi is less a liability than a feature, with Stewart's frantic-in-slow-motion performance augmenting the odd story.

The ghost is present in the film, quite manifest in fact, but is also perhaps imagined by her as well. How can she often fail to see her own hallucinations is the unorthodox question at the centre of the film. The answer is surprisingly simple, but profound nonetheless.
If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE).
Apple, like much of the tech industry, has been criticized for a perceived lack of diversity in its leadership ranks. The recent unveiling of the company's new iPhone provided a very prominent opportunity for Apple to demonstrate that its commitment to diversity is more than just lip service. It was, according to Mic, a missed opportunity. However, it was in response to Mic's story that Apple's PR department really stepped in it  sending a tone-deaf email insisting that the piece was misguided and that the iPhone 7 launch was diverse because, among other factors, there was a Canadian on stage.

Mic primarily took aim at the lack of speaking roles for women at this year's keynote event, noting that while men spoke for over 99 minutes women were allowed merely 8. Calling Apple out on this discrepancy apparently angered an unnamed employee of the company, who wrote to the post's author to argue that the Apple event was, in fact, diverse.

"What I find misguided about your piece is that you provide only one way to look at the issue," wrote the PR rep. "By your measure, we will keep failing until we have a female CEO AND head of marketing who would admittedly own larger portions of the program. There was a lot of diversity on that stage that you don't recognize."

And just what type of diversity was that, exactly?

"Unrecognized by you," the email continued, "was the fact that we had a gay man, two African-Americans (Instagram and Nike), a Canadian and a British woman, Hannah Catmur."

Interestingly, the email began with the words "off the record." However, as Mic points out (and as those of you who feel like chatting with reporters should probably keep in mind), a conversation is only off the record if both sides agree in advance. Simply stating something is off the record doesn't make it so  a fact which, as an Apple employee emailing a reporter, this unnamed person should have known.

It was just earlier this year that Apple officially rejected a shareholder call for increased diversity among the company's "senior management and board of directors." The logic at the time, according to Apple, was that "the proposal [was] unduly burdensome and not necessary because Apple has demonstrated to shareholders its commitment to inclusion and diversity, which are core values for our company."

The official diversity measure wasn't needed because everyone already knew the company cared about diversity, the argument went. That, according to Mic, 72 percent of Apple's leadership is male and 67 percent is white suggests perhaps that not everyone at the company got the message.

Perhaps they were distracted by $159 wireless headphones.

Related: Apple Formally Opposes Shareholder Call For Increased Diversity
Could a rash of recent complaints against supposedly illegal Airbnb listings made mostly in the Noe Valley area be the work of one vigilante? Socketsite is wondering just that, observing that since the beginning of the year there have been a total of 400 claims regarding purportedly illegal short-term rental activity, acts including Airbnbing without registration and/or otherwise outside the law. But in the last week alone, 31 complaints have been registered. 90 percent of them pertain to Noe Valley.

That area, it appears, has no shortage of Airbnb units. On Airbnb's website, the company describes Noe as as "a delightfully sunny neighborhood in the midst of a city so often shrouded in fog," where "cafes and boutiques line this convivial neighborhoods tidy main street, making it a bustling daytime destination for moms and their tots, dogs and their owners, and couples strolling hand in hand." Ahhh, charming.

To make a a complaint regarding a suspected illegal short-term rental, anyone can call or email the office of short term rentals at (415) 575-9179 or email them at [email protected] If you don't feel the need to involve city government, complainants can always use a relatively new feature, "Airbnb and your neighborhood," which the company introduced in May, to report to the company directly. "Neighbors can submit information without having their name disclosed to a host or allow our team to pass along their contact information so the host can follow up with them directly," the company explained at the time. "We'll treat each case seriously and ensure that we give hosts and their neighbors the opportunity to resolve concerns themselves, whenever possible."

Related: Airbnb Announces New Plans, Tools, And Rules To Fight Bigoted Hosts
Treasure Island, the artificial swath of land beside Yerba Buena Island originally constructed for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, will soon be a place where the streets have no name. That's because a massive 20-year redevelopment project, begun in March, means a totally new system of roads for the island, as the Chronicle is taking note, presenting a rare opportunity for a city that's long ago run out of room for expansion to enshrine a new group of names on public roads.

The development of Treasure Island has been decades in the planning and will render the area largely unrecognizable by adding 8,000 units of housing and 300 acres of park space. In the process, All of the streets on Treasure Island will be reconstructed, Bob Beck, a spokesperson for the Treasure Island Redevelopment Authority, tells the Chronicle. That, not so tragically, means saying goodbye to existing Treasure Island street names like Avenues A, B, C, and so forth. The street naming would be either places and names from within the exposition or names of artists who designed the buildings and artwork, things of that nature.

To speculate, that might include then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the time of the Exposition, he had recently taken a tour of San Francisco including a spin around the new 49-Mile Scenic Drive, designed to show off our two cool new bridges (the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge).

In order to name a new street such as the ones headed to Treasure Island, suggestions are submitted to Public Works, who refers them to the Board of Supervisors. They need a majority to pass and the Mayor Lee, who has never exercised it in this regard, has veto power.

Although San Francisco has few new streets to name, existing streets are often rechristened. Consider, for example, the folks still saying "Army Street" instead of "Cesar Chavez." Phil Buscovich, who tells the Chronicle he is working on a book about San Francisco streets, says there's "a constant churning of street names... Theres no new streets, but people still have plenty of new names for the old ones."

The renaming of Treasure Island streets comes at a time when San Francisco schools are just beginning to consider renaming schools to better reflect the contributions of diverse local figures. That idea, encouraged by Board of Education president Matt Haney, who suggested example changes like renaming George Washington High School for Maya Angelou, who attended the school, school and quickly frowned upon by the likes of Fox News. Streets connect to the culture of our city, Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru tells the ChroniclePeople identify with their streets. It reflects a certain type of honor or achievement, giving people recognition for the things they have done. And because we are so diverse, our streets are, too. New streets reflect that.

Previously: Work Begins On Massive Treasure Island Redevelopment


With the embargo lifted this morning, all the tech writers who got first crack at playing around with the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus models announced last week have let loose with their thoughts. According to established protocol, everyone is expressing their undying love for Apple in their descriptions of the new phones, though a few critics are a bit more reserved in their praise.

Mostly everyone is incredibly relieved with the new water resistance  critics report that running phones under faucets and even dropping one in a pond didn't kill it  and mostly they say they can get used to the loss of the headphone jack  even though this would make charging with an external power supply and listening to music at the same time on a subway a new challenge, requiring some new dongle.

There's some resistance to the new sold-state home button, though, which isn't actually a button anymore, and creates some kind of unsettling buzz when touched.

And that jet-black model? It's highly scratchable.

Let's start with the gushing:

"Theyre they best, fastest, strongest iPhones yet. They also indicate, nine years into the iPhone experiment, that were nearing some platonic ideal of a smartphone, the device in its final minimalist form... the iPhone 7 wont blow your mind with its design or features. Its still a fantastic phone. And philosophically, it feels like Apple is throwing open a door. The iPhone 7 might not be a revolution, but it might be the catalyst for lots of them."  David Pierce, Wired

"The iPhone 7 is seriously water resistant; putting it under a faucet for a few minutes merely muffled the speakers and made the touch screen stop working until I dried it off. It's got louder speakers, a brighter screen and, in the larger 7 Plus, a second camera lens  a low-powered but useful zoom."  Anick Jesdanun, Associated Press





"The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are tremendously fast  more than double the speed of the two-year-old iPhone 6  and their cameras produce superb, vivid photos."  Brian X. Chen, New York Times

"Think of it as the anti-anxiety iPhone. Ponder for a moment the many ways Apple has elevated global blood pressure over the past decade: We beg, borrow and steal chargers for our depleted iPhones. Theres terror in getting these delicate rectangles anywhere near water.... Over the past five days, I have squeezed an hour-and-1/2 more battery life out of the 7 and 7 Plus in brutal tests. I dropped an iPhone 7 in a pond, and it survived! And Ive managed to snap more than a few after-sunset photos Im actually proud of. Thats how I spell relief!"  Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal

But even the gushing praise comes with some caveats and reservations:

"These benefits would make the iPhone 7 the best smartphone of 2015. Last year is when Apple should have put it on sale. Now Apples just playing catch-up to Samsung , which added an equivalent camera and waterproofing to its Galaxy S7 six months ago."  Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal

"The iPhone 7 Plus cant match a truly professional-level camera, but Ive gotten more detail and richness from my photos than I can ever remember getting off a smartphone."  David Pierce, Wired

"If you're an iPhone user, it may depend on how long you've held onto your current iPhone. If you're a proud owner of the iPhone 6S or its plus-sized cousin, you probably don't need to rush out for the 7."  Anick Jesdanun, Associated Press

"Apples iPhone, just short of 10 years old, has hit puberty. Like adolescents coping with awkward changes to their bodies, the iPhone 7, due for release on Friday, introduces some uncomfortable transitions."  Brian X. Chen, New York Times

"Youre not totally out of luck if you have a big investment in corded headphones, but youre going to want to stock up on those adapters if you regularly plug your phone into a car or have a variety of headphones you like to use  the dongle is small enough that its not obtrusive, but also small enough so that its destined to get lost if you move it around a lot. At $9, the headphone dongle is the cheapest Apple hardware you can buy; the company thinks people will just buy a few and keep them permanently attached to older headphones.  Nilay Patel, The Verge

But I cannot, for the life of me, get used to the iPhone 7s new home button. Its not a button anymore, just a capacitive surface that uses haptic buzzes and taps to provide feedback. Thats great for the longevity of your phone, since the home button tends to break before anything else But when I press to unlock my phone, my thumb vibrates like its about to dent the glass. Its not like it ruins the phone, but I miss the click.  David Pierce, Wired

[T]he older physical home button feels better to press than the new virtual one.  Brian X. Chen, New York Times

... And the negatives.

"After just five days  more than half of which Ive spent using the matte black iPhone 7 Plus  this jet black iPhone 7 has a few micro abrasions, to use Apples own term. I can only see them when Im looking for them, and only when I reflect light off the surface at the perfect angle, but theyre there. This is after two days of careful use, and never putting it in a pocket that contains anything else." Jon Gruber, Daring Fireball

"So lets talk about the other reason you might actually consider skipping the iPhone 7  the death of the headphone jack. Apple really blew it when it explained this. The iPhone 7 still comes with corded earbuds, but they plug into the Lightning port now instead of the old round plug, and the box comes with an adapter so you can use your old headphones. Theres one big downside: You cant plug in headphones and the charger at the same time unless you buy another strange adapter  for $40!"  Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal

"Getting rid of the most ubiquitous port in audio technology means that consumers are going to spend more money on adapters and accessories and Bluetooth stuff in the short term, which sucks, given that these damn rectangles with rounded corners already cost a fortune. But in my experience so far, there have been few repercussions and I generally think everyone needs to calm the F down."  Nicole Nguyen, BuzzFeed



And there's a benefit to the new lighting-port-connected EarPods:

"The new EarPods even have a small (albeit marginal) added benefit. The Lightning connection feels more secure than the old audio jack did: After the phone fell into the & Beyond crack between my bed and the wall, the EarPods cord saved it from hitting the floor, which felt like sweet, sweet victory. A very unscientific bounce test confirmed their superior strength."  Nicole Nguyen, BuzzFeed


The morning started with a dispute between mom and her grown son at the bathroom door. If youre going to stay here, youll have to use the bathroom downstairs, Sally says firmly. Ron runs downstairs and finds the room occupied by dad. His bladder bursting by then, Ron races to the kitchen and empties himself in a plastic container. Dad emerges, watching with dismay. Your mother puts orange juice in that thing, he says testily. Hearing a crash, they go upstairs and find mom on the floor.

The Hollars goes on like that: a comedy of contemporary family life spiked with sadness. The protagonist, John Hollar (John Krasinski), is the son who moved away and works a minor job in a New York publishing house. Johns pregnant girlfriend Becca (Anna Kendrick), a neurotic and compulsively focused scion of wealth, notifies him that Sally, his mom, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Returning to his hometown in the flat heartlands of memory, John finds nothing in good order.

Brother Ron (Sharlto Copley) is a 30-something who retreated to their parents basement after his divorce. He stalks his ex-wife, parking outside her house and peering at the windows through binoculars. Dragging along the bemused John, Ron spies his ex with her new boyfriend, Pastor Dan (Josh Groban) from their parents church, and when Dan emerges to confront him, Ron tries but fails to speed away. His car, like his life, is stalled. The male nurse attending Sally (Margo Martindale) is a resentful high school acquaintance who inherited Johns old girlfriend in a marriage that appears to be floundering. Johns dad (Richard Jenkins) is an ineffectual if well-meaning man who devoted his life to Hollar Heating and Plumbing, a business deep in unpaid bills. It wasnt supposed to be like this, he says after the banker, his friend, turns him down when he comes for another loan.

Although the gap between the American dream of guaranteed happiness and the reality of failure is a motif throughout the film, The Hollars never strays into depression or falls into despair. The potential for darkness is kept at bay by the screenplays low-key sense of humor and gently ironic sensibility. Most everyone has his or her moments of absurdity and beauty. The Hollars holds out the promise that the only thing as certain as death is life itself.

The Hollars

John Krasinski

Margo Martindale

Directed by John Krasinski

Rated: PG-13
Pliny the Elder recounts the story of a painting competition between two of ancient Greeces most skillful painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis presented his painting firsta depiction of grapes so realistic that birds alighted and tried to eat the fruit. Eager to cement his victory, Zeuxis urged Parrhasius to remove the sheet covering his painting, only to discover that Parrhasius had in fact painted the sheet itself. It is to Zeuxis credit that he conceded defeat, acknowledging that while he had fooled the birds, Parrhasius had fooled Zeuxis.

This art-as-imitation paradigm largely dominated aesthetics until photography obviated the endeavor to recreate reality. Liberated from the expectation of imitation, painters were free to embrace abstraction and all its expressive potential. Mark Mulhern: The Space Between, Sept. 16-Oct. 15 at Tory Folliard Gallery (233 N. Milwaukee St.) presents the latest batch of the artists whimsical paintings, which infuse their representation with abstract flair. The deceptive simplicity of Mulherns work derives from his preference for scenes drawn from everyday life as well as his childlike (but not childish) technique. The charming impression of the canvasses gives way to an appreciation of Mulherns rich layering of detail and the expert evocation of atmosphere.

Plein Air Shorewood 2016

Atwater Park

4000 N. Lake Drive

The popularity of plein air events is easily explained. They invite artists from the community to make art inspired by the community to be enjoyed by and sold to members of the community. They also allow local proprietors to hawk their wares and increase their visibility. And in Wisconsin, a state driven indoors for many months, plein air events draw us outdoors to enjoy Mother Natures gentler side. On Saturday, Sept. 17, Plein Air Shorewood 2016 features these conventional trappings as well as some novel additions. From 8-10 a.m., a community breakfast (including free coffee) will be offered before a rededication ceremony for Atwater Parks signature Jaume Plensa sculpture, Spillover II. Visit the events website for a comprehensive listing of the days goings-on.

Stay on top of the news of the day

Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays. SIGN UP

Broken Dreams/Suenos Rotos

Latino Arts Inc.

1028 S. Ninth St.

Broken Dreams/Suenos Rotos is a study in fragility by Chilean-born artist, poet and educator Ximena Soza. Utilizing found objects such as tree branches, Soza transforms these unassuming articles into works of art with the skillful addition of yarn and the delicate suspension of the branches so as to cast shadows on the wall behind. The use of frangible, even broken, objects represents for Soza dreams unrealized, but with the affirmative message that moving past the past grants us the freedom of the future. Broken Dreams/Suenos Rotos is on display from Sept. 16 through Oct. 14 at the Latino Arts Gallery.
When Siouxland Ethanol first fired up its machinery in 2007, the plant had the capacity to produce 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. Nine years later, as U.S. output of ethanol continues to grow and as alternative blends become increasingly common at gas pumps, Siouxland is ratcheting up its production in a big way.
SIOUX CITY | Iowa lawyers have overwhelmingly recommended that the state's judges facing retention election this fall be retained by voters.

The 63 judges and three Iowa Supreme Court justices up for retention received an average of 92 percent approval from lawyers participating in the Iowa State Bar Association's Judicial Performance Review.

"Our state is great in part because of the high quality of our judges. This review released today confirms that," said Guy Cook, past Bar Association president and chairman of the group's Fair and Impartial Courts Committee, which conducted the survey and released results at a press conference Monday in Des Moines.

Iowa Bar members rated judges in 12 categories, including: knowledge and application of the law, perception of factual issues, temperament and demeanor, clarity and quality of written opinions and whether the judge decides cases based on applicable law and fact and not by outside influence. Performance reviews were completed in August.

Most local judges up for retention in November received ratings above the 92 percent average.

Four judges in Iowa Judicial District 3A, which includes Buena Vista, Cherokee, Clay, Dickinson, Emmet, Lyon, Kossuth, O'Brien, Osceola and Palo Alto counties, are on the ballot.

Charles Borth received a 100 percent retention rating; Ann Gales, 97 percent; David Larson, 95 percent; and Mary McCollum Timko, 93 percent.

Four judges are on the ballot in District 3B, which covers Woodbury, Crawford, Ida, Monona, Plymouth and Sioux counties.

John Ackerman, Steven Andreasen and Patrick Tott all received 100 percent ratings. Jeffrey Neary received 98 percent.

Also on the ballot are Supreme Court Justice Daryl Hecht, of Sioux City, who received 88 percent.

Iowa Court of Appeals Judge Gayle Nelson Vogel, of Spirit Lake, received 91 percent.

Iowa judges are appointed by the governor, then periodically appear before voters on the ballot to stand for a retention election.

Cook said the Bar Association completes the review to help voters decide how to vote. It's information provided by lawyers, who have the chance observe a judge's behavior and performance on a regular basis.

"People with the best information are providing it to the public, and they can use it how they wish," Cook said.

In 2014, Iowans voted to retain all judges who were on the ballot.

The retention process gained national attention in 2010, when three Iowa Supreme Court justices were not retained as a result of an organized campaign to oust them after the court's ruling that legalized gay marriage in Iowa.

The 2016 performance review can be viewed at judicialfacts.org.
Turn on your TV, open a newspaper, or listen to the radio on any given day and you'll likely hear a barrage of reasons why pipelines are detrimental to our nation. The truth is there are two sides to every story, and it's high time the media tells the pragmatic side to this one.

Infrastructure projects such as natural gas and oil pipelines are critical in supporting our nation's economy and creating jobs for hard-working Americans. Not only are infrastructure projects good for our economy, they are critical for national security.

With a global atmosphere that is crucial for the United States to become energy independent. We must rely more on domestically produced energy rather than energy from foreign entities. Infrastructure projects such as pipelines allow us to do just that.

Although the media continues to praise aggressive protests of energy infrastructure projects here at home, we must remember the other side of the story. The side that provides jobs, increased tax revenue and more affordable energy for struggling American families.

It is simply not realistic to eliminate fossil fuels from our energy mix altogether, and I would much prefer our country rely on infrastructure projects that safely transport domestically produced energy. Mike Hobart, Sioux City
SIOUX CITY | A Sioux City man faces a 25-year prison sentence after pleading guilty Tuesday to stealing and later burning a pickup truck.

Brooks Olson, 19, entered his plea in Woodbury County District Court to second-degree theft and second-degree arson. He also admitted to violating his probation from a previous theft and burglary case.

A plea agreement calls for Olson to receive a 15-year prison sentence for the theft and arson charges, a sentence enhanced because of Olson's two previous felony convictions. Olson's probation also will be revoked, and a 10-year prison sentence from that case will be served consecutively for a total sentence of 25 years. Olson will have to serve at least three years before he's eligible for parole.

Charges of third-degree burglary, first-degree criminal mischief and first-degree fraudulent practice will be dismissed, according to terms of the plea agreement.

A sentencing date has yet to be set.

According to court documents, Olson and Christopher Aspleaf broke into Sioux City Ford, 3601 Singing Hills Blvd., on Feb. 21 and stole a 2012 Ford F250 pickup and later stripped it of parts. The two tried to submerge the truck in a pond on March 22. When the vehicle wouldn't sink, they doused it with gasoline and set it on fire, destroying it.

Aspleaf, 21, was sentenced in May to 60 days in jail and three years probation.
SIOUX CITY | Three of the eight people running for three Woodbury County supervisor positions said Monday the county board should create a panel to research whether to increase the hourly minimum wage. The other five candidates said the county should steer clear of the issue.

The county supervisor candidates on Monday shared stances on issues and their strengths as they took questions at the Rotary Club of Sioux City meeting at the Sioux City Convention Center. The candidates are pushing toward the Nov. 8 election.

The three Democratic candidates -- incumbent Jackie Smith in District 1, Marty Pottebaum in District 3 and Bruce Garbe in District 5 -- said they support creating a county committee to look at raising the minimum wage above the $7.25 per hour in Iowa. None of those three indicated they want the hourly pay to be raised, only that they would like to see the results of a study, for a possible vote at the county level.

The three Republican candidates and two independents said there is no need for a minimum-wage study, contending it is a state and federal issue and not one for the county to delve into.

"It is not an issue that the county board should bring up," said District 3 candidate Mark Monson, an independent.

Smith first raised the topic of increasing the minimum wage during a county board meeting earlier this year. Her June proposal to create a committee to investigate the matter was quickly killed within one week by the supervisors.

On Monday, Smith said the concept still has merit, since the state's minimum wage hasn't increased since 2007. Smith said neighboring-state Nebraska and South Dakota voters via referendums increased minimum wage rates, and since the Iowa Legislature will not act, it could be time for counties to get involved.

Pottebaum agreed, saying, "We deal with state and federal mandates all the time. It would be kind of nice to force their hand...This is something that could benefit our citizens."

Keith Radig, a Republican and Sioux City councilman, is running against Smith in District 1. He noted Taco Bell and Taco Johns already have a starting wage of $10 per hour.

"Your fast-food places are already paying $10 and $11 (per hour)," Radig said.

Monson, a current supervisor, voted against the June proposal. The other District 3 candidate vying with Monson and Pottebaum is Republican Brian Miller. Miller said the minimum wage proposal is not "in any way" a county issue.

The opponents of Democrat Garbe in District 5 are Republican Rocky De Witt and Gary Niles, an independent.

"I am not for a minimum wage (hike) at this time," Niles said, and De Witt said the topic is a state issue the county should avoid.

A meeting on the topic will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at Morningside College in Sioux City, with an event titled "Raise The Minimum Wage: An issue worth raising."

During the 35-minute forum, the candidates also discussed economic issues.

De Witt lives in Lawton, and Monson is from Sergeant Bluff. All the other candidates live in Sioux City or rural Sioux City.

Early voting in Iowa begins on Sept. 29.
Carnival Corporation & plc is a leisure travel company operating a fleet of cruise ships, hotels, and resorts with international destinations. Brands under the Carnival Corporation umbrella include Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America, P&O Cruises, Seaborn, Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises, and Cunard. The companys goal is to provide extraordinary vacations at an exceptional value. As of 2022, the company laid claim to nearly half of the global cruising market share with several new ships in the works.

Carnival Cruise Line was launched in 1972 with one second-hand ship and a tank of fuel. The first port of call was San Juan, Puerto Rico, but soon more were added. The original growth strategy included a festive atmosphere, features and amenities unlike any other cruise line at the time. Slow to start, the growth strategy shifted into overdrive in 1980 when Carnival shocked the world by building its own ship. The Tropicale became an iconic name in the cruising industry and sparked a wave of shipbuilding that is still underway.

The companys growth hit a new stride in 1987 following the IPO which floated 20% of the company on the open market. The proceeds from the IPO allowed the company to embark on a voyage of acquisition and now Carnival is the worlds largest travel and leisure business.

Today, Carnival Corporations 87 ships visit approximately 700 ports worldwide and employ more than 120,000 people while serving more than 13 million guests annually for a total of 85 million passenger cruise days per year. Net revenue, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, peaked out at over $6.5 billion annually.

Carnival Cruise Line is the companys largest brand serving guests on all coasts of North America. The brand's 22 ships make 1500 voyages per year with trips ranging from 2 days to 3 weeks and ports of call from the Caribbean to Alaska. The company's largest ship is named Panorama and can accommodate more than 4,000 passengers.

Carnivals 9 brands provide access to a wide range of cruising styles and destinations including the Caribbean, Alaska, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, England, and ports in Asia. The company is headquartered in Miami, Florida and has offices around the world. The company also has the distinction of being the only company included in both the S&P 500 and FTSE 250 indices.
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.
PRINCE FREDERICK, Md.

Amber Stoneman, 20, of Owings and Jahoon Naimi-Ezami, 32, of Owings. Booking photos.

Gary Wommack, 32, of Lusby and Raymond Williams, 21, of Prince Frederick. Booking photos.

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.

(Sept. 13, 2016)The Calvert County Sheriff's Office released the following incident and arrest reports.WEEKLY SUMMARY: During the week of September 6 through September 11, deputies responded to 1,278 calls for service throughout the community.BURGLARY CASE #16-51267: On September 9, Deputy J. Ward was dispatched to Ridgeway Terrace in Prince Frederick for the report of a burglary. He met with a home inspector who reported sometime between September 69th, someone removed kitchen cabinets, a sink, dishwasher and countertop from a home being renovated. The point of entry appears to be a rear sliding glass door, which was slightly opened.BURGLARY CASE #16-51172: On September 8, Deputy C. Callison was called to Sixes Road in Prince Frederick for a report of a burglary. The victim stated while he was away and working outside in his yard, someone entered his home and stole money from a container. This crime took place sometime between 8:00am to 7:30pm.BURGLARY CASE #16-50669: On September 6, Deputy J. Ward was dispatched for an attempted burglary of the Calvert Gallery located on S. Solomons Island Road in Prince Frederick. The complainant reported seeing scratches to the lock and front exterior door frame, which he did not observe the evening before.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-51799: On September 11, at approximately 7:00pm, Deputy N. Buckler responded to the Sunderland 7-11 on Dalrymple Road for the report of a female passed out behind the wheel of a vehicle parked at the gas pumps. He came in contact with, and determined she had used heroin earlier and was unable to drive. Stoneman was transported to the Detention Center for Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance (Heroin) and Possession of Paraphernalia (syringe).CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-51189: On September 8, at approximately 11:00pm, Deputy J. Livingston responded to the 7-11 on Hallowing Point Road in Prince Frederick for the report of a possible drunk driver. He observed a vehicle parked in the parking lot, with the engine running and the driver's door open. When he made contact with, he responded with slurred speech and was unable to keep his balance. He was charged and arrested for Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance (Oxycontin) and Possession of Paraphernalia (syringe).CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-50837: On September 7, at approximately 5:00pm, Deputy S. Moran was dispatched to Crazy Horse Trail in Lusby for the report of a trespassing and possible destruction of property. After speaking with the complainant, he was able to locate the suspect,, walking along Cattle Drive Lane/Catalina Drive. He observed Wommack to be in possession of a clear plastic bag containing a powdery substance. He was then transported to the Calvert County Detention Center, where he was issued the appropriate charging documents for Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance (Heroin).WEAPON VIOLATION CASE #16-51453: On September 10, at approximately 12:30am, Deputy R. Evans observed a vehicle at Wilson Court/Main Street in Prince Frederick drive through a stop sign without making the required stop. He was able to make contact with the driver,, at the intersection of Main Street/Old Field Lane. He discovered Williams to be in Possession of a gun and brass knuckles. He was arrested and transported to the Detention Center where he was issued the appropriate charging documents.DAMAGED PROPERTY CASE #16-50874: On September 7, Deputy P. Wood responded to Pine Trail in Lusby, for the report of a destruction of property. The victim reported that sometime between 4:30pm on September 5th and 1:30pm on September 6, an unknown person(s) scratched a vehicle on the driver's door, rear quarter panel and trunk. The vehicle was parked in the driveway; no known suspects at this time.THEFT CASE #16-51253: On September 9, Deputy R. Burggraff was dispatched to Old Airpark Lane in Owings in response to a theft complaint. The victim advised that he left his wallet in his unlocked vehicle overnight and discovered the wallet, several credit cards and money missing the next morning.THEFT CASE #16-50908: On September 7, Deputy B. Robinson responded to Old Jones Lane in Dunkirk for the report of a theft. The victim reported a rear license plate stolen from their vehicle sometime between 9:00am on September 44:00pm on September 7th.THEFT CASE #16-50895: On September 8, Deputy R. Spalding was called to the Sheriff's Office to speak with a victim who wanted to report a theft. The victim stated that someone stole a bag of clothes and medication from his vehicle. He believes the items were stolen between 8:00pm10:00pm that evening when he parked his vehicle at the Dunkirk Giant grocery store and the Dash In on Chesapeake Beach Road in Owings.THEFT CASE #16-50886: On September 7, Deputy R. Spalding was called to the Sheriff's Office to speak with a victim wanting to report a theft. The complainant stated he had a contractor working at his home on Bayview Drive in Chesapeake Beach, and upon finishing the work, he discovered his Bosch Jig Saw, several other saws and a carrying case were missing. This case remains open pending further investigative contacts.THEFT CASE #16-50846: On September 7, Deputy B. Robinson was dispatched to the Tractor Supply store, located on N. Solomons Island Road in Huntingtown, for the report of a theft. The management staff advised that thirty (30) wooden pallets, observed in their parking lot on September 4th, were missing from the side of the building.THEFT CASE #16-50647: On September 6, Deputy K. Williamson responded to the Nicks of Calvert store in Prince Frederick for the report of a theft. The Manager stated thirty-five (35) wooden pallets were stolen between 10:30pm11:30pm last evening and that this has been an ongoing issue. Sheriff Deputies have responded on previous occasions since February for the same crime.
(SS) A man accused of making online threats that referred to the Pulse nightclub shooting will be transferred to South Florida to face federal charges, a judge in Orlando ruled Monday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory J. Kelly ordered Craig Allen Jungwirth, 50, to remain in custody and be transferred to the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida in Fort Lauderdale.

Kelly also ruled there was probable cause that Jungwirth illegally threatened to injure others via interstate commerce communication.

In court documents, the FBI accuses Jungwirth of posting on Aug. 30 on Facebook slurs against the gay community in Wilton Manors, a small city in Broward County.

The posts threatened to kill gay people and said, "None of you deserve to live" and, "If you losers thought the Pulse nightclub shooting was bad, wait till you see what I'm planning for Labor Day."

Forty-nine people were killed and more than 50 were hurt in the shooting at the Orlando club. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The Florida Highway Patrol arrested Jungwirth two days before the holiday in Osceola County on a charge of driving on a suspended license. He was jailed in Seminole County and turned over to federal custody Thursday, the Sheriff's Office said.

Jungwirth had been living with his mother in southwest Orange County. On Sept. 2, the FBI subpoenaed records that showed the threatening posts were made from an Internet account registered to her address.

Jungwirth previously lived in Wilton Manors, court documents state.
Thu, 27.10.22 - 11:04

The temperatures will fall in the Murcia Region but the weekend still promises to be warm and sunny Autumn has ye...
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.
In just its second year of existence, the Berlin Coffee Festival has established itself as one of Europes premiere coffee events. The number of notable cafes and roasteries has literally doubled since last year, and the whole thing feels like a great big breath of fresh air for the established Berlin coffee scene.

Those lucky enough to have attended will tell you all about the excitement and enthusiasm throughout the festival. But whats that? You couldnt make it? Lucky for you, weve compiled a convenient list of what was poppingno need to say super danke.

The Format

There are a lot of things that make this festival unique, right down to the format. The majority of the coffee festivals we cover on Sprudge follow a fairly predictable format: coffee companies are allotted 3 square meters and a weekend in a convention center to differentiate themselves from their fellow booth-dwellers. Meanwhile, Berlins festival spanned the better part of a week and was comprised of mini-events all over the city, culminating in a single-day, bazaar-esque exposition in a historical venue.

The event really seems to have something for everyone, including cupping, educational workshops, competitions, and good ol fashioned parties. The resulting effect is a grassroots vibe that epitomizes the coffee industrys best attributes: community, passion, and education. Its the perfect representation of Berlins unique coffee culture.

The Venue

Markthalle IX originally opened its steel doors in October of 1891. After a turbulent century and multiple changes of ownership, the colossal building was acquired by a Kreuzberg community organization and transformed it to its current state in 2011. It is now home for all things delicious and epicurean, including local farmers markets, street food festivals, and full weekend brunch events. The venues convenience and relevance to the wider Berlin community makes it an obvious choice to host a coffee festivalthis is a place people hang out in Berlin all the time. Gorgeous setting aside, being set in a food hall meant having the best selection of grub Ive encountered at a festival.

Brew Box Coffee Porter

When two passionate artisans love each other very much, they get together to express their mutual appreciation. It starts with some innocent flirting, they discover they like the same bands, one thing leads to another and BAM: a beautiful collaboration is born. In this case the the proud parents are local craft beer legends Pirate Brew Berlin and nitro coffee heroes Brew Box. Their offspring came in the form of a delicious coffee porter that I wish I was still drinking.

Companion Coffee & Tea Lecture

A couple of Berlins most beloved coffee veterans decided to spit in the face of the festival and utilize the festivals Profi Area to talk about tea. The nerve! Shawn Barber and Chris Onton were among the original staff at Berlin institution The Barn. After helping build its reputation, the duo departed to open their own cafe, Companion Coffee & Tea. Aside from being garishly handsome, part of what sets Companion apart from other cafes is their ambitious and impassioned tea program. Barber believes that specialty cafe owners enthusiasm shouldnt stop at coffee:

The small cafe survives by being better than what the average is and now, more than ever, Barber tells Sprudge. With people searching for transparency and quality of the products they consume those things are becoming more normal. I think its important for cafes to have continuity among their products. So not just quality coffee, but everything that they offer, which is part of our approach to tea.

All of the teas in their line were sourced by Barber, and all but two are from farms that he visited personally. This is particularly impressive when you consider the small scale of their cafe and operation.

Kaffeeform

With a perpetual queue in front of their stall on Sunday, Kaffeeform were the apparent crowd-favorite for products at the festival. Personally, it warms my cockles to see such an ambitious business model come to fruition and succeedthese gorgeous cups are actually made of recycled coffee grounds. Those of us in Germany should consider ourselves lucky that these stylish wares popping up in our local cafes, since theyre sadly not yet shipping outside of Europe. You can read our full write-up on Kaffeeform here.

Sustainable Sourcing in Colombia and Cupping With Nordic Approach

A coffee festival wouldnt be complete without ample opportunities for people to get their slurp on. Unless youre a quantum particle, youre left making tough choices about which cupping to attend, since many overlapped with one another at different sites around the city. In addition to a cupping of this seasons freshest arrivals, Alec Oyhenart of Nordic Approach discussed in detail what their role as a coffee importer looks like in the Colombian supply chain. What I appreciated about this talk is that it was palatable enough for your average consumer, while still touching on concepts that are exceptionally important for all coffee professionals to understand.

Nano Kaffee Brew Up

Naturally, this festival attracts some of the finest talent in roasting from around Germany. Kreuzberg staple Nano Kaffee took advantage of the scene by inviting some legends to show off their goods as part of a batch-brew flight. This included the likes of Roestbar, Mr. Hobans, Loppokaffee Express, Neues Schwarz, Maachhoerndl, and District Five. In addition to getting to taste a myriad of German coffees, representatives from each of the roasteries were around for Q&A. Yet another great example of the strong sense of community in this countrys coffee scene.

Coffee Cocktails

Ive got to come clean: Im rarely impressed by coffee cocktails. I find that most often the complexity of the respective ingredients is lost for the sake of a gimmick. A 1 + 1 = 0, sort of thing. Then Damien Guichard came along and made me eat my words. His carefully curated coffee cocktail menu was the perfect way to wrap up a busy week. My personal favorite was the Dark & Brewy, a creative twist on the classic, using Brewbox Nitro cold brew, rum, lemon, apricot, and pale ale.

Gabriel Dunn is a freelance writer and photographer based in Berlin. Dunn has contributed photography to Sprudge since 2013; this is his first bylined feature for the site.
If theres one trend that remains smoking hot in the American coffee scene, its modeling a new cafe on the perceived norms of coffee culture in Australia and New Zealand. Typically that means a bunch of food in the cafe; occasionally it reaches full flower of inspiration from the source material, in which an actual restaurant is owned and operated by a coffee company.

Here in Willimantic, Connecticut, the concept behind Grounded Coffee Company came from travel to the AntipodesAustralia and New Zealand, to be exact, although you shouldnt lump the two together (you wouldnt lump Canada and America, right?). Grounded is offering up some of the East Coasts best coffee roasters, bundled together in a charming Victorian house. Lets go there!

As told to Sprudge by Nick Bentley, Quality Control Manager/Barista Trainer at Grounded Coffee Company.

For those who arent familiar, will you tell us about your company?

The idea behind Grounded Coffee Company came together when two peoples life passions became mixed with a love of the coffee culture Australia had to offer. While Steven and Victoria traveled Australia and New Zealand, not a day went by when the couple did not visit and enjoy the local coffee shops. Many of them featuring exceptional coffee with a laid back atmosphere. Grounded has become a mix of the couples values; Steve always dreamed of having a successful business while Victoria has always felt strongly about ethical values, fair wages, and giving back. Ive had the opportunity to create and coordinate our coffee program. Weve been extremely fortunate to work with a number of coffee roasters on our beloved East Coast who we think are exceptional at what they do. Sourcing and roasting coffee that is of the highest quality while having the farmers and producers best interest in mind. At its core, Grounded is committed to improving the quality of life for everyone involved; ranging from our baristas to the farmers who grew the coffee, to the customers we are fortunate enough to serve every day.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

We are very excited to be setting up shop in the bottom floor of a small Victorian house, right on Main Street, Willimantic. It is a little piece of history perfectly placed amongst the brick buildings lining Main Street. The house was built in 1831 and there is an awful lot of history running through both our building and the town surrounding it.

Whats your approach to coffee?

We believe that coffee is one of the most delicious and complex fruits that we have available to us. We are excited to be working with roasters who highlight seasonality and obsessively bring out the best that each coffee has to offer during the roasting process. We also believe that coffee has tremendous power to bring people together and elevate not only their day, but their lives as well.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We are really fortunate to be working primarily with Ceremony (Annapolis, Maryland) and Giv Coffee (Canton, Connecticut). We also look forward to implementing a rotating menu for manual brewing where we can highlight roasters such as Lofted (Bushwick, New York) and Tandem (Portland, Maine). This is a very exciting time to work in specialty coffee, and there are so many people who are doing great things both in our industry and outside of it.

For espresso service, well be using a Linea Classic EE two-group and Mahlkonig K30 Air. For filter coffee, well be using a FETCO XTS-3L, ceramic Kalita Waves, and glass handled Chemex. Grinding duties will be handled by a Mahlkonig EK 43.

Whats your hopeful target opening date/month?

September 10.

Are you working with craftspeople, architects, and/or creatives that youd like to mention?

We are handling most of the design for our shop in house, but we are working closely with Tim Schofield of Schofield Design & Remodeling who has been extremely helpful in connecting us to the right craftspeople and making some of our grand ideas a little more realistic. Our good friends MBK Murals made a whole collection of beautiful hand-painted signs for us that will be proudly displayed both inside and outside.

Photos courtesy of Winter Caplanson.
Hannelore Hanover will face the toughest challenge of her career when she meets nine rivals in Saturdays (September 17) $632,000 Maple Leaf Trot at Mohawk Racetrack, but with wins in 21 of her last 22 races, the four-year-old mare has already proven she knows how to ace a test.

The Ron Burke-trained standout brings a nine-race win streak to the Maple Leaf Trot as she tries to become the second consecutive female to capture Canadas top event for older trotters. Last years race was won by Bee A Magician, who is currently sidelined because of an injury.

Eight of this years 10 Maple Leaf Trot finalists are males, including 2015 runner-up Resolve. The other mare in the race is the United States 2014 trotter of the year, Shake It Cerry.

Hannelore Hanover, who defeated male foes in the Hambletonian Maturity as well as in several opens and invitationals this season, was supplemented to the Maple Leaf Trot for $45,000. She won her elimination last week by more than three lengths over Il Sogno Dream in 1:52.

It was the seventh time during her current nine-race victory streak that she won by more than three lengths.

Shes gotten to be one of the horses I count on for a solid effort each week, but this is the biggest thing weve asked her to do, said Ron Burke, who trains and co-owns Hannelore Hanover. Shes beaten the boys, but they were four-year-old boys (in the Hambletonian Maturity) or in short fields in opens.

Shes really good right now, but this is a full field of 10, so this is asking a lot. If she can do this I think it really would equate with her being something special.

Hannelore Hanover, a daughter of Swan For All-High Sobriety, has won 14 of 15 races this year (23 of 36 lifetime) and has accumulated more than $1 million in earnings. She has finished worse than second only four times in her career. The mare, an Indiana Sire Stakes champion last season, is owned by the Burke Racing Stable, the partnership of Mark Weaver and Mike Bruscemi, and Frank Baldachino.

In addition to winning the Hambletonian Maturity, Hannelore Hanovers triumphs this season include the Armbro Flight Stakes, Fresh Yankee, Muscle Hill, and Miami Valley Distaff.

Although Hannelore Hanover and driver Yannick Gingras won their six-horse Maple Leaf Trot elimination by open lengths, Burke knows it means nothing heading to the final.

She drew probably the easier (elimination) and she had some things go in her favour, Burke said. She really ended up getting the easiest trip. For her, everything worked out perfectly. Its hard to get a read on her. Im sure shes not that much better than those horses, but everything that had to work out for her worked out for her.

Resolve won the remaining Maple Leaf elimination, as he beat Shake It Cerry by one and three-quarter lengths in 1:51.1. John Campbell drove Resolve for trainer and regular driver Ake Svanstedt, who missed the race because of travel issues.

The Maple Leaf Trot is part of a stakes-filled card at Mohawk. Also on Saturday is the Canadian Trotting Classic for three-year-old male trotters  which will feature Hambletonian winner Marion Marauder  plus the William Wellwood Memorial for two-year-old male trotters, the Peaceful Way for two-year-old female trotters, and the Elegantimage for three-year-old female trotters.

The field for the Maple Leaf Trot, with drivers and trainers, appears below.

(PPHorseDriverTrainer)

1. ResolveAke SvanstedtAke Svanstedt

2. LookslikeachpndaleSylvain FilionLuc Blais

3. Flanagan MemoryChris ChristoforouRene Dion

4. Hannelore HanoverYannick GingrasRon Burke

5. Il Sogno DreamScott ZeronChris Beaver

6. JL CruzeJohn CampbellEric Ell

7. Windsun RevengeRick ZeronJeff Durham

8. NaharTBARobert Bergh

9. Musical RhythmMario BaillargeonBenoit Baillargeon

10. Shake It CerryDavid MillerJimmy Takter

This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.
While driver Brett Miller cannot be fined for a fist pump, he can be fined taking his hands out of the handholds during a race. So said the judges at Scioto Downs after Miller's winning steer aboard Always B Miki in the 2016 Jim Ewart Memorial Invitational Pace.

Rule 3769-17-17 (A) pertains to Use of the whip and states "All drivers must keep a line in each hand beginning when the horse is behind the starting gate and continuing through the finish of the race."

Miller took both lines into his left hand and gave a celebratory fist pump with his right arm. He did not use the whip while holding both lines in one hand.

On Sunday, news spread that Miller would in fact receive a $300 fine from the Ohio State Racing Commission for the violation.

Scioto Downs presiding judge John Yinger told The Horseman on Monday that Miller will not receive a fine. Yinger said after talking to Miller and discussing a possible fine, he called Ohio State Racing Commission executive director Bill Crawford to review the situation.

"After further review and discussions with the Ohio State Racing Commission, the judges felt that the fine was not warranted due to mitigating circumstances," said Yinger.
Wisdom of the Crowd: 55 % of respondents said that the Trust Bak set up by Fairprice will not be profitable as there are already too many d...
tech2 News Staff

Sony has followed up on its promise of bringing HDR to every PlayStation 4 (PS4) console ever made with update 4.00. The update is codenamed Shingen and arrives tomorrow. Beta users have had access to the build for a while now.

The main features of the update include HDR and folder support. Also included are a whole slew of new features that should enhance the experience. High-Dynamic Range or HDR adds a great deal of colour information to a game. Essentially, there will be a larger colour gamut to represent, which should do wonders for image quality.

PS4 users should find the HDR option in the video output settings of their PS4. Obviously, youll need a display thats compatible with HDR to take advantage of this feature. Another useful update involves the PS4s Quick Menu, which now gives quick access to music and Spotify. Youll be able to control music and spotify, browse playlists, etc. from within the menu.

Sony has in fact claimed that theyve worked with Spotify and game developers to create game-centric playlists to enhance the mood. The Whats New page will now get an enhanced social media feed of sorts. Sony says that the feed will show larger images as well as integrate an activity feed with recommendations on who to follow, people you may know, etc. Youll also be able to like, share, comment, etc. on the posts.

For those whore looking to upgrade their PS4, Sony says that you can transfer data over a wired LAN. This will transfer downloaded games, player info, game saves, etc. Its certainly a convenient option to have.
hidden

Sheep are a hot commodity in Senegal leading up to the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, when each family traditionally slaughters a ram for a feast that has become a boomtime for traders who often travel hundreds of miles to sell their livestock. It is a tradition stretching back centuries, but these days paying for the sacrifice is a whole lot easier and safer than it used to be.

Using mobile money services operated by telecoms firms, traders can accept cashless payments, bypassing the need for a bank. Drooping from the heat, the animals lolled on sidewalks and packed into vacant lots in the capital Dakar, where their numbers multiplied in the weeks before the holiday on Monday.

Called Tabaski in Senegal, Eid al-Adha commemorates the story of prophet Ibrahim - known to Christians and Jews as Abraham - who was willing to sacrifice his son but was given a ram to kill instead after proving his faith. On Monday morning, hundreds of men gathered outside a Dakar mosque and boys stood on tiptoe to get a glimpse of the first slaughter before running home to help with their own.

By midday, the streets were stained with blood in the culmination of the West African nation's biggest annual spending splurge. The government estimated that 700,000 sheep would be needed this year in Senegal, which is more than 90 percent Muslim. There are not enough available domestically, so traders come from neighbours Mali and Mauritania to supply more.

Buyers navigating crowded sheep pens with wads of cash often find their earnings nimbly pick-pocketed. So to avoid this, some sellers have partnered with French telecoms giant Orange, allowing customers to complete the transaction on their mobile phones. First launched in Kenya in 2007, mobile money services have since been rolled out across Africa by companies including Orange, South Africa's MTN and Vodafone, catering to millions of people who lack affordable bank accounts.

Orange's version, known as Orange Money, was launched in Ivory Coast in 2008 and now has over 18 million users in Africa. "It allows for greater security," said sheep seller Moustapha Deme, who made about a dozen mobile sheep sales the week before the holiday and said interest in the service was high. In a dusty pen on the side of the road, he prodded a white ram costing 1 million CFA francs ($1,715) - a Rolls-Royce among sheep made expensive in part because it had been raised with good quality food and vaccinations, he said.

A less discerning buyer might hope to bring home a scrawny animal for around $200, still exorbitant for many Senegalese. As with all commodities that shoot up in price because of a predictable surge in demand, the sheep attract speculators. That is despite Senegalese government efforts to clamp down on them.

Bassirou Gueye, a 22-year-old university student trying his luck in the business, and a friend bought ten sheep several days before the holiday, hoping to resell them at the last minute and make some extra cash. Even with mobile money, there are risks. "If you buy your sheep early it can get stolen," Gueye lamented, sitting in the shade of a market stall surveying his flock. "We stay up all night to guard them."

Reuters
hidden

Israeli technology start-up UPnRIDE Robotics is launching an innovative upright, self-stabilising wheelchair at a medical conference in Germany next month and the company hopes the device will hit the market next year. Before then, UPnRIDE needs to pass two clinical trials, one with the U.S. veteran association in New York, to help it get regulatory approval and ensure health insurance companies can assist customers with the hefty price tag.

The company was founded by Amit Goffer, 63, who created a robotic exoskeleton at his previous venture ReWalk Robotics that helps people paralysed from the waist down to walk. But Goffer, who has been confined to a wheelchair since an all-terrain vehicle accident in 1997, has never been able to use his first invention because his injuries left him with limited function in his arms.

With his new four-wheel chair, which uses a gyroscope similar to that in a two-wheeled Segway and self-stabilising software, Goffer can manoeuvre upright over uneven urban terrain and join conversations face to face with people standing up. "The dignity, self-esteem ... to feel like part of society again, the core of society, not the fringe of society - the psychological effect is dramatic," Goffer said.

For people with serious spinal cord injuries, the act of standing also helps stave off cardiovascular, respiratory and other problems that can arise, said Gabi Zeilig, director of the neurological rehabilitation department at Israel's Sheba Medical Center. "The (UPnRIDE) idea is fascinating," he said. "There are devices today to move from one place to another, but for short distances and never on a sloped ground."

In the coming weeks, Zeilig will run a clinical trial of the product while a second study will be done by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in New York, said UPnRIDE Chief Executive Oren Tamari. He said the key function was UPnRIDE's ability to adjust and stabilize itself, so no matter what surface angle the device was on, the user would always be upright, maintaining a steady centre of gravity and minimising the risk of falling over.

About one percent of the population uses a wheelchair, he said, but only 10 percent of that group has the sufficient upper body function to use the ReWalk exoskeleton, so UPnRIDE targets the rest. High-end wheelchairs cost between $15-50,000, Tamari said, and "our target is to be somewhere in the middle".

Reuters
hidden

Facebook, Google, and YouTube are complying with up to 95 percent of Israeli requests to delete content that the government says incites Palestinian violence, Israel's Justice Minister said on Monday. Perhaps spurred by the minister's threat to legislate to make companies open to prosecution if they host images or messages that encourage terrorism, their rate of voluntary compliance has soared from 50 percent in a year, she said.

"Our main aim is for those companies to do their own monitoring of material containing incitement," Ayelet Shaked said after a meeting with Facebook officials. "Just as ISIS (Islamic State) video clips are being monitored and removed from the network, we want them to take the same action against Palestinian material that incites terrorism," she told the International Conference on Counter-terrorism near Tel Aviv.

"The world now understands that (social) networks serve as a greenhouse for terrorists," Shaked said in her speech. Facebook declined to confirm Shaked's assertion that it complied with 95 percent of Israel's requests, but a spokeswoman said it constantly takes down offensive material and responds to requests from many countries, organisations and individuals.

"We came to listen and see if can be do better. We have zero tolerance for terrorism," she said, adding that Facebook's standards "make it clear there is no place for terrorists or content that promotes terrorism on Facebook." Both Shaked and Facebook said they would prefer companies voluntarily remove inciting content than be prosecuted.

A spokesman for Google, parent company of YouTube, which Shaked said complied with 80 percent of requests, declined to comment. Shaked said that in the past year, Israel had issued 120 indictments against Palestinians and 50 against Israeli citizens - both Jews and Arabs - for Facebook postings that contain incitement.

"These indictments are a deterrent and a very effective step," she said. Israel increased its calls to Facebook to remove posts amid a surge in Palestinian attacks that began a year ago, carried out by individuals without the specific backing of militant groups. The violence has waned. "People used to sit at the keyboard and think they could write whatever they wanted, that is has no significance. But we learned that words can kill ... and indicting those who sit at home and write 'Death to the Arabs', or 'Death to the Jews, or 'Slaughter the Jews', is effective and deterring."

Reuters
hidden

Major technology companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter are urging Congress to support a plan for the U.S. government to cede control of the internet's technical management to the global community, they said in a joint letter dated on Tuesday. The U.S. Commerce Department has primary oversight of the internet's management, largely because it was invented in the United States. Some Republican lawmakers are trying to block the handover to global stakeholders, which include businesses, tech experts and public interest advocates, saying it could stifle online freedom by giving voting rights to authoritarian governments.

The years-long plan to transfer oversight of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is scheduled to occur on Oct. 1 unless Congress votes to block the handover. The California-based corporation operates the database for domain names such as .com and .net and their corresponding numeric addresses that allow computers to connect. In the Sept. 13 letter, a copy of which had been reviewed by Reuters before it was sent, the technology companies said it was "imperative" that Congress does not delay the transition.

"A global, interoperable and stable Internet is essential for our economic and national security, and we remain committed to completing the nearly twenty year transition to the multi stakeholder model that will best serve U.S. interests," the letter said. Other signatories include Amazon, Cloudflare, Yahoo and several technology trade organizations. Former presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who leads the opposition against the handover, will hold a congressional hearing on Wednesday to review the transition, which he has criticized as a "giveaway of our internet freedom."

Tech companies, technical experts and academics have said the transition is overdue and necessary to keep the Internet open and globally oriented, and that the proposal includes safeguards against any potential abuse by any one country.

Reuters
hidden

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics were accused of agreeing not to poach each other's U.S. employees, according to a U.S. civil lawsuit filed last week, in what has become a familiar allegation in Silicon Valley. The proposed class action, filed in a Northern California federal court by a former LG sales manager, accuses Samsung and LG of antitrust violations and driving down employee wages. The case is similar to one against Apple Inc, Google and other tech companies which settled last year for $415 million.

Representatives for Samsung and LG declined to comment. The plaintiff, A. Frost, says in the lawsuit that a recruiter contacted Frost via LinkedIn in 2013, seeking to fill a position with Samsung. According to the lawsuit, the recruiter then informed Frost the same day: "I made a mistake! I'm not supposed to poach LG for Samsung!!! Sorry! The two companies have an agreement that they won't steal each other's employees."

It is "implausible" that such a deal in the United States could have been reached without the consent of each company's corporate parent in South Korea, says the lawsuit, which does not state a specific damages amount. Joseph Saveri, an attorney for Frost who had also filed the previous cases against Apple and Google, said the no-poaching agreements are inherently anticompetitive.

"There is nothing more fundamental than the ability to get fairly paid for one's worth and talents," he said. The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is A. Frost vs. LG Corporation, LG Electronics Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al., 16-5206.

Reuters
Naina Khedekar

LinkedIn, makes one of its first big post-Microsoft acquisition announcement for India. The company has announced three strategic initiatives that aim at students, professionals and companies. To put things into perspective, LinkedIn has 37 million members in India, that is now being considered as the growth field by many companies. The three initiatives are LinkedIn Lite, LinkedIn Placements and LinkedIn Starter Pack.

The three 'strategic steps' bring easy access with lite version, ensuring students across the country get on the platform, and finally going the enterprise way to offer a structured format to otherwise unorganised startups and SMBs. Lets take a look at them one by one, and see how they fit into Microsoft's plans for LinkedIn.

India is a mobile-first country, but mobile experience is marred with network-related hurdles. And, thats why weve been seeing an increase in companies opting for a simultaneous lite version. For instance, Facebook and Flipkart both have lite versions of their respective apps.

And, now Microsoft has ensured that network related issues wont cause a hindrance for its users, who largely access LinkedIn via mobile. The solution: LinkedIn Lite. A lite version is usually a stripped down version of the mobile app that utilises lesser system resources and has smaller installation size. In lite version, app memory and cellular data usage are usually a fraction of what the original app uses. This means quicker load times, and quicker access even over 2G, considering a lot of people are still on slower networks in India. Microsoft claims that the Lite version of LinkedIn will offer 4X load times irrespective of the mobile network or the device. This move is only going to increase the reach and accessibility by people, who would otherwise avoid such heavy apps. Fast seamless experience, faster load times and data efficiency will ensure that the app is accessible by all.

While that's about accessibility, it also ensures there are enough reasons for people to get onto the platform. LinkedIn is associated with networking for professionals, but Microsoft now wants to reach out to students and turn it into a placement platform in India. LinkedIns Placements feature was launched as a pilot back in November 2015. The product is now opened to students at colleges and universities in India. So, basically students can log into the site and take an online assessment test that will directly give them access to the thousands of openings in 35 corporates in India. For the assessment tests, the company has partnered with Aspiring Minds, CoCubes, HackerRank and Wheebox. The Placements feature can be accessed here.

This move is to provide a level playing field, bringing opportunities to students, whether they live in a village or a city. Microsoft believes that LinkedIn Placements is a game-changer for them, providing them with a unique platform to get countrys best jobs. However, this also means Microsoft will be able to reach out to people at the rudimentary level. Get students, teachers across in cities, towns and villages get accustomed to LinkedIn, which can very well become the placement platform for these students in future. Remember years ago, campus placements werent very big. But with this move, Microsoft LinkedIn could become a source of placements for students, and directly connect with students, and nor juts a place for professionals.

Finally, the third initiative is aimed at startups and small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). India has a booming startup space, and there are several SMBs. These, usually unorganized small companies, will be offered a single package of premium hiring, marketing and learning solutions with the Starter Pack. The company calls it LinkedIn a box. This package is now available here. Theres a pilot phase right now, wherein the package will be provided to 100 promising SMBs and startups, on a first-come, first-serve basis.

LinkedIn doesn't really have any competition is this space, and such initiates will only help bolster the growth. Microsoft had acquired LinkedIn for a jaw dropping $26.2 billion, and after the Nokia debacle, it was calculated risk Microsoft had to take. Though the company many not have much competition in this space, in tech industry it is only wise to keep evolving. We've seen Facebook evolve with time, while then there's the Yahoo story on the other side of the fence. And, with this move, Microsoft has begun addressing some problems at the grassroot level.
This Page

has moved to a new address:

Sorry for the inconvenience

Redirection provided by Blogger to WordPress Migration Service
Nothing is better than the Best Sheet Cake Recipes! You are going to love the sweet delicious flavors of these treats and that you can serve so many people with just one cake.

Best Sheet Cake Recipes

Nothing to me is better than a sheet cake. They have the most incredible and delicious flavors and they are the perfect dessert for when you need to feed a lot of people.

Sheet cakes are some of the most delicious desserts and there are so many different ways to make them. Included in this list are chocolate, fruity, coconut, apple, vanilla and a number of other amazing sheet cake flavors.

1. Caramel Apple Sheet Cake

From Belly Full :: Click HERE for the RECIPE This Caramel Apple Sheet Cake is moist and buttery, with cinnamon and apples throughout. Plus a silky icing infused with caramel flavor that is to die for!

2. White Texas Sheet Cake

From The Seasoned Mom :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Whether youre preparing a birthday treat for a child, a sweet dish for a school class, or a festive dessert for the next holiday, this easy homemade cake can be decorated with sprinkles to suit any special occasion!

3. Almond Sheet Cake

From Tastes Better From Scratch :: Click HERE for the RECIPE A delicious white sheet cake with a hint of almond flavor and a vanilla almond frosting. This amazing cake is one of my all-time favorites!

4. The Best Texas Sheet Cake

From Tastes Better From Scratch :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Ive tried several sheet cakes and this one completely surpasses them all! Its my husbands favorite recipe and its beloved by everyone in the family.

5. Pumpkin Sheet Cake

From The Novice Chef :: Click HERE for the RECIPE This Pumpkin Sheet Cake is a moist spiced pumpkin cake that uses melted butter for easiness. Then you pour on some gorgeous cinnamon cream cheese frosting that sinks a little into the cake as it cools. Its pure heaven.

6. Strawberry Sheet Cake

From Spicy Southern Kitchen :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Strawberry Sheet Cake with fresh Strawberry Buttercream Frosting has so much strawberry flavor and it is a cinch to make with a box of white cake mix. The cake itself gets its strawberry flavor from fresh strawberry puree and a box of strawberry gelatin.

7. Lemon Buttermilk Sheet Cake

From Gonna Want Seconds :: Click HERE for the RECIPE How yummy and delicious does this sheet cake look?

8. Caramel Pumpkin Sheet Cake

From The Novice Chef :: click HERE for the RECIPE This will be the BEST dessert you make this fall! The caramel-pumpkin combination is HEAVENLY! The cake is so moist and the caramel frosting is the perfect finishing touch!

9. Lemon Sheet Cake

From Tidy Mom :: Click HERE for the RECIPE This no-fuss Lemon Sheet Cake is super moist and makes a wonderful spring or summer dessert that easily feeds a crowd. It may not be a fancy cake, but each slice is pure lemon bliss!

10. Pineapple Sheet Cake Recipe

From Spicy Southern Kitchen :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Pineapple Sheet Cake flavored and moistened with crushed pineapple and topped with a sweet icing laced with shredded coconut, and sprinkled with pecans is a wonderful dessert to make to feed a crowd.

11. Cherry Chocolate Sheet Cake

From The Recipe Critic :: Click HERE for the RECIPE A moist and perfect chocolate sheet cake with cherries hidden inside. This cake is so easy to throw together and the perfect crowd pleaser!

12. Texas Sheet Cake Recipe

From Culinary Hill :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Texas Sheet Cake is moist and chocolatey with a butter-cocoa frosting. Its easy to make and always a crowd favorite with NO leftovers!

13. Gingerbread Texas Sheet Cake

From Lemons For Lulu :: Click HERE for the RECIPE This Texas sheet cake recipe is ready to feed a crowd! This chocolate cake is tender and soft and with lots of festive gingerbread flavor!

14. Caramel Praline Sheet Cake

From Chef in Training :: Click HERE for the RECIPE A moist and delicious brown sugar sheet cake with an amazing caramel frosting. The sheet cake is topped wight he most delicious sweet and crunchy pralines for a perfect bite each and every time!

15. Peanut Butter Sheet Cake

From Spicy Southern Kitchen :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Peanut Butter Sheet Cake is a moist sheet cake topped with a super creamy and sweet peanut butter icing. It is a peanut butter lovers dream and perfect for potlucks and picnics.

16. Eggnog Sheet Cake

From Chef in Training :: Click HERE for the RECIPE This Eggnog Sheet Cake is perfect for the holiday season! Even if you dont care for eggnog, you will LOVE this cake! It is so moist and the flavor is a fabulous addition. This cake is melt-in-your-mouth DELICIOUS!

17. Peanut Butter Texas Sheet Cake

From 5 Boys Baker :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Moist, buttery, rich, & absolutely divine, this Peanut Butter Texas Sheet Cake is melt-in-your-mouth amazing! Its a peanut butter lovers dream dessert!

18. Coconut Sheet Cake

From Chef in Training :: Click HERE for the RECIPE The hot frosting melts into the warm cake, making each bite infused with delicious coconut flavor. This cake literally MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH!

19. Skinny Texas Sheet Cake Recipe

From The Recipe Critic :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Skinny. Yeah you heard right! This cake is made with healthier ingredients. And trust me when I tell you that it is absolutely incredible. In fact, I think this is better than the original!

20. Peanut Butter Sheet Cake

From Chef in Training :: Click HERE for the RECIPE If you love peanut butter, then you absolutely need to try this MELT-IN-YOUR-MOUTH Peanut Butter Sheet Cake. It is truly amazing!

21. Key Lime Sheet Cake

From Chef in Training :: Click HERE for the RECIPE This Key Lime Sheet Cake is a tart and sweet cake with a delicious creamy frosting. It has a light and refreshing flavor and is loved by all who try it! If you love the citrusy flavors, then this cake is for you!

22. Easy Lemon Sheet Cake

From Plated Cravings :: Click HERE for the RECIPE An easy lemon sheet cake recipe that is made in a 913-inch pan and has a delicious simple lemon glaze on top. This lemon cake tastes even better on the next day!

23. Strawberry Frosted Sheet Cake

From Life Made Sweeter :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Strawberry Frosted Sheet Cake is a perfectly light and fluffy strawberry cake and best of all, its made from scratch with NO cake or jello mix. Its full of fresh and freeze-dried strawberries and topped with an easy buttercream cream cheese frosting.

24. Apple Cinnamon Sheet Cake

From Taste and Tell :: Click HERE for the RECIPE The perfect, no-fuss fall dessert, this Apple Cinnamon Sheet Cake is moist and full of apple flavor with the perfect amount of cinnamon.

25. German Chocolate Sheet Cake

From Chef in Training :: Click HERE for the RECIPE This German Chocolate Sheet Cake is so moist and SO delicious! The Coconut Pecan Frosting on top adds a richness and flavor that will blow you mind! This recipe is perfect for feeding a crowd!

26. Raspberry Fool Sheet Cake

From Willow Bird Baking :: Click HERE for the RECIPE This cake is so beautiful!

27. White Texas Sheet Cake

From Spicy Southern Kitchen :: Click HERE for the RECIPE White Texas Sheet Cake is an exceptionally moist almond-flavored cake with a delicious almond-flavored icing. One of the great things about this sheet cake is it gets better with time, so its perfect to bake for a party or potluck when you dont have the time to do it the day of.

28. Chocolate and Peanut Butter Texas Sheet Cake

From The Novice Chef :: Click HERE for the RECIPE The whole cake takes about an hour and is SO worth it! Its like a Reeses Cupbut in perfect cake form. If you feel like going over the top, you can sprinkle chopped up Reeses Cups on top of the finished cake!

29. Caramel Apple Sheet Cake

From Chef in Training :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Caramel Apple Sheet Cake this delicious apple cake is perfectly moist and has caramel frosting infused in each and every bite! It is heavenly!

30. 7-Up Sheet Cake with Strawberry Buttercream Frosting

From Valerie's Kitchen :: Click HERE for the RECIPE An incredibly moist and tender white cake with an easy-as-can-be strawberry buttercream frosting. This 7-UP Sheet Cake with Strawberry Buttercream Frosting will go over in a big way at your next summer gathering!

31. Brown Sugar Butterscotch Sheet Cake

From Life Made Sweeter :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Brown Sugar Butterscotch Sheet Cake is soft, moist and perfect for your holiday dessert table.. Topped with brown sugar frosting, a drizzle of butterscotch glaze with chopped pecans.

32. Boston Cream Pie Sheet Cake

From Chef in Training :: Click HERE for the RECIPE A simple and delicious yellow cake with an incredible cream layer and smooth chocolate frosting to top it off! This serves a crowd and will be a huge hit wherever it goes!

33. Texas Sheet Cake Skillet

From Life Made Simple Bakes :: Click HERE for the RECIPE Rich, moist chocolate sheet cake topped with chocolate frosting and toasted pecans. Made in a cast iron skillet in just a little over 30 minutes!!
Premier Li Keqiang welcomes visiting Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in front of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday. Wu Zhiyi / China Daily

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc's ongoing six-day visit to China, the first since he entered that office in July, sends an encouraging signal that the two countries are determined to keep their relations on the track of stable and smooth development despite the maritime disputes between them in the South China Sea.

China has always insisted that the shared interests between the two countries far outweigh their differences, and has worked to seek common ground and manage disputes through dialogues and consultations in a spirit of mutual respect. Only by doing so can the two countries boost their comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

Hanoi is showing it shares this sentiment.

There have been suggestions that Vietnam was willing to be used as a pawn by the United States and Japan in their efforts to contain China, as supposedly evidenced by the US lifting its arms embargo on Vietnam in May and Japan's plan to equip the country with new patrol ships. But during his stay in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, to attend the 13th China-ASEAN Expo, Phuc stressed that strengthening friendship with China is a "leading priority" for Vietnam's foreign policy.

He also expressed the wish that the two countries work together to effectively control the disputes, so as to maintain peace and stability in the region.

Dwelling on the maritime disputes serves neither side any good. Rather, it risks giving rise to the dangers of extreme nationalism in both countries.

The bilateral relationship of "good neighbors, good friends, good comrades and good partners" has been developed over decades. And for 12 years in a row China has remained Vietnam's largest trading partner, while Vietnam overtook Malaysia to be China's largest trading nation among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in the first half of this year. Bilateral trade may reach $100 billion this year, achieving the goal set by leaders of both countries one year in advance.

As developing countries, both face the task of growing their economies and improving their people's livelihoods. Vietnam, in particular, needs to invest heavily in infrastructure, which China has the experience, expertise and capital to help it with.

A foreign policy of "independence, multilateralization and diversification", as Phuc described his country's diplomacy, will help realize the bright prospects for trade and economic cooperation that will serve as a cornerstone for further strengthening bilateral ties.
Source close to the case tells The IND Russell Manuel is negotiating a plea deal in exchange for testifying against his alleged co-conspirators.

The trial of former Knight Oil Tools employee Russell Manuel, accused of plotting with oil patch multi-millionaire Mark Knight and two law enforcement officials to plant drugs on Knights younger brother, Bryan, was set to begin in state district court Monday but did not get underway.

A source close to the case tells The Independent a plea deal, which would likely include Manuels agreement to testify against his alleged co-conspirators, is in the works.

Manuels attorney, Pat Magee of the Voorhies & Labbe law firm in Lafayette, tells The IND neither he nor his client will comment on the status of the case at this time. The matter of State v. Russel Manuel is postponed until Thursday, Magee says.

Manuel, Mark Knight, former Lafayette Parish Sheriffs Deputy Jason Kinch and ex-Louisiana State Trooper Corey Jackson were indicted in July 2015 by a Lafayette Parish grand jury in connection with the alleged plot to plant drugs on Knights brother and have him falsely arrested, all in an effort to force Bryan out of the lucrative family business. The indictment says the quartet did intentionally or knowingly conducted or participated, directly or indirectly, in an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity... All four have pleaded not guilty.

Mark Knight and the two law enforcement officials face a state charge of racketeering, which carries a sentence of up to 50 years and a fine of up to $1 million.

Manuel, Knight Oil Tools ex-property manager, faces charges of criminal conspiracy, possession of cocaine, possession of Lortab, possession of methadone, extortion and intimidating a witness.

Bryan Knight has since filed a federal lawsuit against the four, alleging they violated his civil rights.

Learn more about the bizarre Knight saga, which wreaked financial havoc on the behemoth oil services company and reads like a soap opera script, by clicking here.
Cleco Power, which received approval because it had been in the pipeline before Edwards' executive order, will get more than $12 million in tax breaks over 10 years for a project expected to create 12 jobs in St. Mary Parish.

About $15 million in property tax breaks for manufacturing facilities were stalled Monday by a state board that reviews them, after Gov. John Bel Edwards said he wants the tax breaks tied to jobs.

Once seen as a rubber stamp on the tax breaks, the Board of Commerce and Industry deferred action on more than two dozen requests for the Industrial Tax Exemption Program.

In some instances, companies seeking the tax breaks can submit additional information to try to persuade the board. In others, the board is awaiting guidance from Edwards on how far he wants the new rules to go.

The governor announced in June that he was changing Louisiana's approach to the tax exemption program created decades ago.

New and expanding manufacturing facilities are allowed an exemption from local property taxes for up to 10 years. The Board of Commerce and Industry and the governor must sign off on the exemptions, which strip millions of dollars annually from local government agencies such as school boards and police departments.

The tax break applications often received little scrutiny from the board or a governor. But Edwards issued an executive order spelling out that he intends to tie the tax breaks to job creation and retention and to involve local government agencies in the decisions.

Together Louisiana/Source: LED

Monday's Board of Commerce and Industry meeting was the first since Edwards issued the order, which business organizations have warned could cause uncertainty and disrupt pending manufacturing projects.

The board stopped most of the applications before it from moving forward, approving only a handful whose paperwork had been filed before the June 24 executive order.

Representatives of companies whose tax break requests were deferred talked of the value of the new facilities, add-ons and upgrades to chemical plants and other manufacturing sites. They said the tax breaks helped keep jobs at their facilities and keep the sites operating.

A group of faith-based and community leaders known as Together Louisiana pushed for more scrutiny of tax break applications, saying severe flooding in mid-August devastated public schools, police property and other public facilities that need tax revenue for recovery.

"This is a new day, and we're under a disaster," said the organization's Dianne Hanley.

Robert Adley, a board member representing the governor, said many of the applications for tax breaks were "not pretty to me," with millions in exemptions proposed for companies that don't indicate their projects would create any new jobs.

For example, a Cleco Power LLC tax break application that received approval because it had been in the pipeline before Edwards' executive order will give the company more than $12 million in tax breaks over 10 years for a project expected to create 12 jobs in St. Mary Parish.

"At some point we have to stop this process of a million dollars per job," Adley said.
Lost Bayou Ramblers

The Oil Center After Hours music series returns this Wednesday to kick off its Fall 2016 season.

Lafayettes latest free, outdoor concert series features two great local bands performing at the Heymann Memorial Park in the Oil Center as the perfect way to celebrate Hump Day. This weeks performance features live performances from Louisiana Soul Revue and the one and only Lost Bayou Ramblers.

The next Oil Center After Hours will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 16 and will feature live music from Roddie Romero & The Hub City All Stars.

The Oil Center After Hours kicks off at 5:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. at the Heymann Memorial Park in the Oil Center. The event is a free, family-friendly event that is open to the public. For more information, find Oil Center After Hours on Facebook.
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:
U.S. Honors Nigerian Business Partners, Holds Session on Increasing Bilateral Trade

The Commercial Service of the United States Diplomatic Mission to Nigeria hosted its annual Networking with the USA Appreciation Forum (NUSA) and International Partner Awards on last week, Wednesday, September 7, 2016. The event took place at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, with over 400 local business executives in attendance.

The NUSA Forum honors Nigerian business leaders who promote U.S. products and services and who have contributed significantly to the achievement of the goals and objectives of the U.S. Commercial Service in Nigeria. Five categories of awards were presented to business leaders and companies demonstrating special creativity, resourcefulness and hard work in improving trade between the United States of America and Nigeria.

This year the ceremony featured presentations on topical economic issues affecting businesses in Nigeria, including access to foreign currency, the floating exchange rate and the dual impact on dollar- and naira-denominated transactions, said Senior Commercial Officer Brent Omdahl.

Distinguished guest speakers included Mr. Moses Kpughur Tule, Director of the Monetary Policy Department of the Central Bank of Nigeria, speaking on behalf of Governor Godwin Emefiele, addressed the topic of The New CBN Flexible Foreign Exchange Policy  What Has Changed? Mr. Edike Eporwei, Customs Area Comptroller for Zone A of the Nigerian Customs Service, also spoke on Promoting Nigerian-American trade through an effective import/export process, cargo inspection and enforcement of standards.

The ceremony, which was open to the Nigerian business community, also featured an interactive session with United States consular officers who explained the visa process and demystified common myths.

As part of the NUSA Forum, the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) held an information session on the process for accessing early stage funding to make infrastructure projects bankable.

Officers of the Nigerian Customs Service held discussions with participants on how best to manage the import process in a challenging business environment.

www.nta.ng
The Southern Illinoisan reached out to the candidates this past week to talk about the role of the rank-and-file lawmaker when so much power is centralized with the Democratic legislative leadership and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, and discuss in general terms what would be their approach to the job and to tackling the structural budget deficit facing Illinois.

Specifically, the legislative candidates were asked what taxes they could support raising or spending they could support cutting in order to balance a budget that is roughly $8 billion in the hole.

The Southern also asked for the candidates positions on what could be described as building-block issues as it relates to the makeup of the General Assembly and the electoral process: redistricting reform, term limits and campaign finance reform. A summary of their answers will be provided in stories broken down by district races throughout the week.

118th House District

Brandon Phelps, Democrat, incumbent

Jason Kasiar, Republican

Phelps

What do you see as the role of the rank-and-file lawmaker?

Phelps said that when he goes door-to-door, voters tell him that what they want is more bipartisanship in Springfield. And Phelps said he agrees with that and thinks hes done a lot to show his ability to work with members of both parties. And Im not bragging on myself, Phelps added. Im not that way, I promise.

He continued, Youve got both parties trying to take over everything and its all political and its shameful. I just wish we could work together more. Thats what people want. When I go door-to-door, I swear, they know we just dont have enough bipartisanship. Thats the most important thing a rank-and-file member can offer, Phelps said. Phelps said it is important that Southern Illinois lawmakers stick together so that they are not steamrolled by Chicago.

Asked about whether the bitter campaign season and vast amount of cash flowing throughout this election cycle will make compromise even harder when lawmakers return, Phelps said it is a difficult situation, but defended his own campaign strategy as doing what he feels is necessary to defend himself from attacks and win.

Youve got to have it, he said of campaign donations. Its a necessary evil.

Phelps noted that his opponent, Kasiar, criticized him in a Facebook post for supporting a budget deal in the Illinois House that Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed because it spent $7 billion more than the state would have in available revenues.

Therefore, Phelps said he approved sending fliers out in the district blasting Kasiar for opposing select items in that lengthy budget bill such as funding for locking up sexual predators, elderly services and meals-on-wheels. Its a strategy thats been deployed by Democrats facing opponents in other districts as well. While Phelps acknowledges that doesnt tell the whole story of the debate, he said neither do the attacks against him for supporting it. Democrats argued that it was well within Rauners line-item veto power to make the cuts he saw fit.

Thats been going on for years by both parties, Phelps said of the half-truth style of sensational campaigning. When you brag about not being for a budget you better read everything in there.

To be brutally honest, I think its fair, Phelps said because negative advertising works, and when its done to you, theres little choice but to strike back if one expects to remain competitive.

Phelps noted that early in the election cycle before the Republican Party pulled its support of Kasiars campaign, various fliers were sent out in the district portraying a cartoon caricature of Phelps as a toy soldier and puppet to Madigan.

Remember, I didnt pick the fight but Im not going to just sit there and take it, Phelps said. Im a fighter.

What taxes could you support raising and/or what spending could you support cutting in order to balance the budget?

Phelps said its his belief that Illinois cannot cut its way out of its financial problems. While Phelps said he believes there is still waste to be found, he said that there is no way to cut $8 billion from the budget without causing serious harm to vital programs and schools.

I think theres some departments out there that have already cut their own heads off already, Phelps said. I dont know if they can cut anymore.

Phelps said that there are some government restructuring efforts he could support to save money. He would like Illinois to do away with the lieutenant governors office. Phelps said another proposal he has floated is to get rid of CMS totally. Thats CMS as in the state agency known as Central Management Services.

CMS was created to provide a variety of centralized services for the operation of Illinois government, overseeing such things as employee benefits, purchasing, telecommunications and state property. But Phelps argued that many of CMS operations end up providing a duplication of services for a mark-up for items that could be better handled by the departments.

Phelps said he was told that such proposal could save upwards of $1.8 billion, though he wasnt able to say what additional costs that might lead to for other departments taking on new functions and staff, as Phelps proposal is to move CMS employees into other roles in state government.

I know people who work at CMS and Im not advocating firing them, Phelps said.

On revenue generation, Phelps said lawmakers have to start thinking outside the box. Phelps said he will study the various revenue options that might be put on the table, but said he opposes any type of income tax increase across-the-board or on retirement income not presently taxed in Illinois.

Phelps said one revenue generating proposal he could support is the expansion of gaming. For example, he said he supports the efforts of Walkers Bluff owner Cynde Bunch to expand her property to include a destination resort complex with a multi-purpose convention center, indoor waterpark, and a casino  among other amenities.

I dont know why I couldnt be for that, Phelps said. If people are going to gamble somewhere anyway, Id rather keep the money here.

Phelps said of gaming expansion, I could look at that more than I could an income tax increase. Im just not ready to put a burden more on the backs of working-class families."

With the Illinois Supreme Court ruling to keep the fair maps amendment off the November ballot, what should happen next?

Phelps said he was not supportive of the Independent Map Amendment coalitions ballot initiative. Phelps said hes concerned that the independent commission called for in the proposal would not be guarantee enough Southern Illinois representatives to sit on the commission to ensure the region is treated fairly in the process. Phelps said he would support reform but I want to make sure its done fairly.

Phelps did not provide an example of a proposal he would support under which he believed that Southern Illinois would get a better shake. Im for some form of commission, no doubt about it, but with equal representation, Phelps said.

Do you support term limits for Illinois officeholders?

Phelps said he does not support implementing term limits. He believes the people should decide if a lawmaker has served long enough in Springfield. We go through this every two years and its called an election, Phelps said. Phelps also said hes concerned that term limits could concentrate too much power with department heads appointed by a governor because there would not be any lawmakers serving with the institutional knowledge to ask critical questions.

Given the rising cost of elections, do you support any type of campaign finance reform?

Phelps said he didnt have a specific proposal but would like to see something done to rein in the amount of money that is being spent on Illinois political races. There needs to be campaign finance laws and limits on everybody, Phelps said. The U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United decision has hamstrung the limiting of Super PAC independent expenditures in campaigns, however. Phelps said he would also support reforms to enhance disclosure and make it easier to follow the money trail.

Kasiar

What do you see as the role of the rank-and-file lawmaker?

Kasiar said he thinks that Springfield needs more bipartisanship and that he could be part of the solution. He called party politics in Springfield atrocious with career politicians pointing fingers and making excuses.

Kasiar said that as a pharmacist and owner of a small business, a pharmacy in Eldorado, Thirty employees and families depend on decisions I make. I cant afford to make excuses. He said the fact that there is not a balanced budget is frustrating to many. Kasiar also is the president of the Eldorado Community Unit District 4 school board, and said hes seen firsthand how difficult it is for schools to plan ahead with so much uncertainty in Springfield. Budgeting stability has to become a No. 1 priority, he said.

Kasiar said he believes he can be an independent voice in Southern Illinois because hes not being supported financially by the leadership of either the Democratic or Republican Party. Kasiar is the Republican Partys primary election nominee but said he was asked by the Republican Party leaders sometime after the primary to step off the ballot so that another candidate could be appointed.

Kasiar said the reason they gave to him was concerns related to his pending divorce, but Kasiar said he doesnt believe that is the reason. He claimed that he was asked to step down because he was not handpicked by the party leadership as he claims the other Republican challengers in the area were. Other Republican challengers in the area have denied that claim.

According to the people I talked to that was my cardinal sin, he said. Kasiar said that he told the party he would not step down because he doesnt give up on things he starts. While he was given some support early on, Kasiar said he does not expect that the Republican Party will support him financially. Therefore, he believes thats another reason he makes a better candidate, because he would not feel beholden to party leaders in Springfield because he didnt benefit from their campaign money in the election cycle.

What taxes could you support raising and/or what spending could you support cutting in order to balance the budget?

Kasiar said he does not favor raising any taxes. He said the only one he would consider looking at is an expansion of the sales tax to cover certain services not currently taxed. He said he is inclined also to oppose a sales tax expansion, but at least would give it a look.

One of the first things I want to say is Illinois has a spending problem, Kasiar said. Thats what the legislators have is a spending problem. Its not necessarily a revenue problem. Theyre dumping all of the burden of that onto the taxpayers.

Kasiar said the most prudent way to grow revenues is to expand the number of employers in the area so that more people move here and say here and have decent-paying jobs to contribute to the state and local economy. So what we have to do is find a way to incentivize companies or businesses or individuals to want to stay here, he said.

But Kasiar conceded thats a long-game plan as far as providing enough revenues to the state to balance a budget that is billions in the hole and in need of an immediate solution. Kasiar also said that one of the first areas the state needs to address in order to draw more employers is stabilizing the budget. For example, as a pharmacist, Kasiar said he knows first-hand how difficult it would be for a health care business to set up shop that intends to serve state employees or people receiving state benefits because of how far the state is behind on paying its bills to medical providers.

But as for how the state should set about the difficult task of balancing the budget, especially given that he doesnt support any type of tax increase, Kasiar said he would have to look at the budget line-by-line to figure out where he could support making cuts.

Kasiar said he would support getting rid of waste and pet projects. He noted one example of the type of pet project he would cut, pointing to a $35 million state grant that was funded in full in the summer of 2015 to pay for a school in House Speaker Mike Madigans district at a time when the governor had frozen spending, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune. Kasiar said hes sure theres other things out there like that.

As for big-ticket items he could support cutting, Kasiar said he would have a better grasp on that once he gets to Springfield and can dive into the budget process. He said one area where he believes there might be a possibility for significant savings is in the Medicaid program.

Kasiar also said he would make sure that where programs are cut that the savings are redirected toward paying down the bills and not spent on the creation of new programs. He noted as an example of this concern that some years ago the state began limiting to four the number of prescriptions Medicaid would cover for an individual without special approval from the state for more. Kasiar said he doesnt understand what became of those savings.

Thats a lot of money, he said. Where did the money go? What seems to be part of the problem is that when you make these sacrifices and cuts and do something that will help, the money finds somewhere else to go. Kasiar said one promise hes making voters is that he will read every financial bill he votes on, no matter how long it takes him.

With the Illinois Supreme Court ruling to keep the fair maps amendment off the November ballot, what should happen next?

Kasiar said he supported the Independent Map Amendment coalitions ballot initiative. He said he likewise would support efforts in the General Assembly to do something similar or future citizen-driven ballot initiatives aimed at a fairer solution to drawing district lines.

Do you support term limits for Illinois officeholders?

Kasiar said he is a firm believer in term limits. Kasiar said he believes four terms or eight years in the state House would be plenty for anyone. If you cant make a difference, you dont need to be there, Kasiar said about that length of time. Of his own plans if hes elected, Kasiar said, No. 1, I have a career. This would be a service to the people of Southern Illinois and the 118th district, he said, and that the job is not something for which he plans to seek re-election again and again and again.

Given the rising cost of elections, do you support any type of campaign finance reform?
SPRINGFIELD  Supporters of a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution that wouldve created an independent commission to redraw legislative districts once a decade are figuring out their path forward after the state Supreme Court dealt their plan a final fatal blow.

In a 4-3 party-line decision Monday, the high court denied a request for rehearing from the group Independent Maps, definitively blocking a redistricting referendum from the Nov. 8 ballot. As they did late last month in ruling the proposed amendment unconstitutional, the four justices elected as Democrats joined together to deny the rehearing, while the three elected as Republicans dissented.

Illinois voters have been denied their right to vote on a constitutional amendment to remove politics from the way state legislative maps are drawn, Independent Maps Chairman Dennis FitzSimons said Tuesday in a prepared statement. Four members of the states highest court have rejected an amendment that we firmly believe meets the state constitutional requirements for amendments that can be proposed by voters.

Meanwhile, Republicans, led by Gov. Bruce Rauner, are vowing to continue pressuring lawmakers to vote on a redistricting amendment when they return to the Capitol after the election for their fall veto session.

The Supreme Court ruled the Independent Maps proposal unconstitutional because the majority said it went beyond the scope allowed for a voter-driven initiative.

Proposed constitutional amendments placed on the ballot by petition are limited to making structural and procedural changes to the General Assembly, which currently controls redistricting. But the proposal at hand would have given the state auditor general a role in the process.

FitzSimons said the courts majority ignored debate transcripts from the convention that drafted the 1970 Illinois Constitution. His group argues that those records show the drafters believed redistricting was an appropriate subject for a petition-driven amendment.

The court also only ruled on one of seven arguments from opponents of the proposal, FitzSimons said, leaving those questions for another day. 

But that another day may never come, he said, noting that the court declined to offer guidance for future proposals.

The future of Independent Maps, which collected more than half a millions signatures in support of its plan, is uncertain.

Our coalition remains committed to reform and believes an independent redistricting commission would be one important step in changing state government and making the legislature more responsive to the voters of this state, FitzSimons said. Whether that is possible through a citizen-initiated amendment is now an open question to be discussed by supporters throughout the state.

Spokesman Jim Bray said Independent Maps is a diverse group that disagrees on many issues but came together in support of this specific proposal. It remains to be seen whether the same group would support other plans, Bray said, such as one from former Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn that would put the Supreme Court in charge of appointing a redistricting commission.

The Peoples Map, a group of minority business leaders that challenged the proposed amendment, didnt respond to requests for comment. The group was represented in court by Michael Kasper, an election attorney with ties to the state Democratic Party and its chairman, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago.

Rauner and fellow Republicans have argued that the courts initial ruling is evidence of entrenched political corruption, and theyve been using it is a campaign issue as they seek to cut into the Democrats supermajorities in the state House and Senate.

The Illinois Republican Party jumped on Mondays decision as another opportunity to attack Madigan and Democrats over an issue thats popular with voters across the political spectrum.

The court again sided with the political machine against the people of Illinois, state GOP spokesman Steven Yaffe said in a written statement. Now is the time for Democrats to show their independence from Mike Madigan and pledge to allow a vote on the Independent Map Amendment during the veto session this fall.

The partys message echoed that of its de facto head and chief financial contributor.

Speaking after addressing a law enforcement conference in Decatur on Tuesday, Rauner said he was very disappointed at the court's decision not to grant a rehearing.

Its a tragedy for the people of Illinois, he said. They are not going to be allowed to vote up or down on whether we can have nonpartisan districts so we can have competitive general elections and restore democracy.

Rauner said he will continue urging voters to put pressure on their local legislators to vote this fall on redistricting reform and term limits for elected officials, another popular proposal that he blames Democrats for blocking.

I will never give up on trying to get those reforms, Rauner said.

The chances of the lawmakers approving a future proposal to take themselves out of the redistricting process appear to be slim. The House and Senate each passed its own plan this spring, but neither idea advanced in the other chamber.

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said Rauner and Republicans could concentrate their efforts on winning support in the Senate for the House redistricting proposal.

 Herald & Review staff writer Tony Reid contributed from Decatur.
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
CARBONDALE  Four former inmates from Illinois prisons shared a glimpse from a day in the life at Stateville Correctional Center, everything from a conversation between a new inmate and a lifer to discussions about such living conditions and food and access to educational services.

The reading was "A Day at Stateville," written by men who are serving natural life sentences, and read by former inmates, including one reader who said he was imprisoned at the maximum-security prison in 1969. This is the 127th reading of the script, which is shared in the hopes of having communities understand what those who are incarcerated face, one of the sponsors and a presenter from Sunday said.

About 100 people attended the reading at Rock Hill Missionary Baptist Church. The church's pastor, the Rev. Sidney Logwood, and James Chapman, a retired lawyer, both head the Center for Empowerment and Justice, which hosted the reading.

The readings followed a new inmate as he interacted with another inmate who was serving a natural life sentence, as the older man tells him how all of his toiletries and other possessions must fit in a single box under his bed and have to be in there whenever they leave their cell, about how there is virtually no access to programming  except that provided by volunteers to a miniscule number of men at the prison, and about how there are no educational or rehabilitation services offered. That inmate describes a cell that is just barely wider than his outreached arms and no longer than 10 feet.

The reading ended with a question-and-answer session with the audience members, which audience members asked about the educational/literacy level of the inmates, the state's funding of education and other issues.

The prison was opened in 1925 and has a capacity to house 4,134 men. For fiscal year 2014, the annual cost of incarcerating an inmate was $29,691, according to the facility's website.
WASHINGTON -- The most revealing moment in the presidential candidates' first joint forum Wednesday night came when Donald Trump told the world how much he admires Vladimir Putin.

Never mind that the Russian strongman invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea. Never mind that he supports the butcher Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Never mind that so many of his political opponents end up murdered or imprisoned. Never mind that U.S. officials suspect his government of trying to disrupt our election with cyberattacks. In Trump's star-struck eyes, all of this makes him "a leader, far more than our president has been a leader."

Putin, you see, once paid Trump a compliment. "If he says great things about me," Trump told moderator Matt Lauer, "I'm going to say great things about him."

There you have it, folks, the distilled essence of Trump's disgraceful campaign. It's not about immigration or foreign policy or making America "great again," whatever that means. It's entirely about Trump and his raging egomania.

Trump is sincere when he expresses preening self-regard. All the rest is just verbiage tossed with a light vinaigrette.

The candidates appeared sequentially, not face to face, at the USS Intrepid museum in New York before an audience of military service members and veterans. The old aircraft carrier, commissioned during World War II and retired after Vietnam, was an apt setting for hearing the candidates' positions on foreign and defense policy. But only one of them had anything meaningful to say.

Hillary Clinton went first and was immediately hit with a barrage of questions about her emails. Some commentators said afterward that she sounded defensive, but that line of criticism is absurd. How is one supposed to sound when pressed to defend oneself? Have we finally reached the point when a woman is allowed to speak forcefully on her own behalf? Or do we still expect, at all times, a demure smile?

As would be anticipated from a former senator and secretary of state, Clinton displayed her knowledge and experience. The headline, I suppose, would be this pledge: "We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again. And we're not putting ground troops into Syria." Those who worry she might prove too hawkish as president may feel relieved.

But the evening was really about Trump, and the stakes are far too high for him to be graded on a curve. No, he did not rant and rave like a crazy man or threaten to nuke anybody. But neither did he give the slightest indication he knew anything about the issues he was supposed to be talking about. Read the transcript and try to find one sensible and substantive thing he had to say.

On top of insisting that Putin is a great guy, Trump denigrated the U.S. military's high command. "I think under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble," he said. "They have been reduced to a point where it's embarrassing for our country."

Lauer recalled that Trump has long claimed to have a secret plan for defeating the Islamic State, but now says he would ask "the generals" to submit a plan within 30 days for victory over the terrorist group. Reminded that he has boasted that he knows more about the Islamic State than our military leaders do, yet now says he wants them to come up with a plan, Trump replied: "Well, they'll probably be different generals, to be honest with you."

In other words, he promises a purge at the Pentagon. Maybe his friend Vladimir can give him pointers.

And there's more: Trump repeated his complaint that the United States should have "taken the oil" in Iraq, noting that "it used to be, to the victor belong the spoils."

Yes, that was true in the time of Genghis Khan. Today, under international law, plunder is a war crime -- and not the only one Trump wants our military to commit. He has said in the past that our forces also should practice torture "worse than waterboarding" against suspected terrorists. He would ask our service members to dishonor the uniform and all it represents.

Trump defended a 2013 tweet about the problem of sexual assault in the military in which he asked, "What did these geniuses expect when they put men and women together?" He said the solution was to "set up a court system within the military." Unbelievable.

Face the truth: Trump has to be the most dangerously ignorant major-party presidential candidate in history.
As the nation remembers the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, there is reason to worry about future leadership and how it will approach the volatile world that is in part a legacy of that fateful day.

The United States has been at war since 9/11, openly in Afghanistan and Iraq, indirectly in many other places and constantly in obtaining and analyzing intelligence information designed to thwart terrorism.

This past week brought security issues to the fore in the presidential election campaign, with Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump and Libertarian Gary Johnson leaving more reason for Americans to have doubt about each.

Clinton, the only one of the three with direct experience with defense and foreign policy, fell into the trap of making a promise about U.S. actions when flexibility is needed by the commander in chief.

With her vote as a senator in favor of the Iraq war continuing to be used against her in the campaign, Clinton said in a nationally televised forum that she promises never again to send ground troops into Iraq. And then she said the same about Syria.

She declared, "We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again."

While most Americans agree now the Iraq war was a mistake and that U.S. forces en masse are not the solution in Syria, America has a crucial national security interest in fighting ISIS and stabilizing Syria. We have troops in Iraq and Syria now in the capacity of special forces.

Telling our enemies what we will and will not do with regard to action is simply not smart policy. Coupled with doubts on Clintons handling of national security information while she was secretary of state, there is reason for concern about her approach as president.

Trump, by contrast, has made much of the concept of not giving away plans to Americas enemies, but to the point of leaving many to wonder does he know enough to have a plan and does he have sound enough judgment to act responsibly.

What he does say is very troubling. Speaking also in the televised security forum, Trump did little to counter criticism that he lacks detailed policy proposals, particularly regarding ISIS.

He both insisted he has a private blueprint for defeating the extremist group and that he would demand a plan from military leaders within 30 days of taking office. But he was also harshly critical of the military, saying America's generals have been "reduced to rubble" under Obama.

With regard to Iraq, he continued to state that America should have left but not without taking control of that countrys oil supplies, presumably by using the military to secure the fields while the United States systematically takes oil to repay America for ousting Saddam Hussein.

And Trump continues to state a troubling admiration for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, saying Putin is a better leader than President Barack Obama.

A day after the forum featuring Clinton and Trump, Libertarian Johnson made a national television appearance to discuss the same issues. He was asked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" what he would do as president about Aleppo, the Syrian city at the center of the refugee crisis. Johnson replied, "And what is Aleppo?"

No matter how much he really knows about foreign policy and defense, those four words likely doomed any hope he had of being considered a truly viable alternative to the two candidates of the major parties.

We join South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a recognized authority on defense and foreign policy, in expressing frustration.

A longtime opponent of Clinton, Graham is equally adamant in his opposition to Trump.

He said characterizing Putin as a better leader than Obama, who has been a consistent target of Graham criticism on foreign policy, is a mistake.

Vladimir Putin is a thug, a dictator, an autocratic ruler who has his opposition killed in the streets in Russia, the South Carolina Republican told reporters on Capitol Hill. If you are running to be leader of the free world and you find admiration for Putin, well, then, youre losing me.

Graham said while he agrees that Obama has failed to stand up to Putin, Trumps comment crossed the line and unnerves me to my core.

Following Trumps and Clintons appearances at the NBC forum on defense and security issues, Graham said both candidates statements disturb (him) greatly.

If you were looking for leadership, you didnt find it in Hillary Clintons performance. If you were looking for competency, Donald Trump fell short, Graham said in a Facebook post.

We can only hope the winners decisions as president will be better than the positions espoused on the campaign trail.
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.
The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has met with Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Iyad bin Amin Madani, who is on a working visit in Azerbaijan.

They exchanged views on the level of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the OIC, its future priorities, bilateral relations with OIC Member States and other issues of mutual concern.

Secretary-General Iyad bin Amin Madani congratulated the state and people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of Eid al-Adha. He said that he highly appreciates the active role of Azerbaijan as an OIC Member State and its contribution to the activities of the Organization. Describing Azerbaijan as a country where the multicultural traditions and religious values are well preserved, Secretary-General expressed his confidence that cooperation with Azerbaijan will further continue at the highest level.

Minister Elmar Mammadyarov stressed that Azerbaijan attaches great importance to the relations with the OIC and emphasized that the Organization is a favorable platform for further development of bilateral and multilateral cooperation with Member States.

On the current status of the negotiations on the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, Minister Elmar Mammadyarov expressed his gratitude to the OIC and Member States for unequivocally supporting Azerbaijans fair position on the conflict. Praising the establishment of the Contact Group in the framework of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on the aggression of the Republic of Armenia against the Republic of Azerbaijan, he expressed his confidence that the activities of the Group will contribute to the resolution of the conflict.

They expressed their satisfactiona with the planned first meeting of the Contact Group to be held during the upcoming session of the UN General Assembly.

Secretary-General expressed his gratitude to Azerbaijan for the initiative to host the Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017.

Minister Elmar Mammadyarov noted that as it was case with the first European Games, Formula-1 European Grand Prix and other high-calibre events, the Islamic Solidarity Games will be organized at the highest level.

Minister emphasized that as an active OIC Member State Azerbaijan will continue to further contribute to the implementation of the issues on the agenda of the Organization.

They also noted the importance of strengthening the Islamic solidarity in the framework of the OIC.
The OSCE is expected to monitor the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops Sept. 14, said Azerbaijans Defense Ministry Sept. 13.

The monitoring will be held under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative along the line of contact near Alkhanly village of Azerbaijans Fizuli district, said the ministry.

On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring will be held by Jiri Aberle, Peter Svedberg, Simon Tiller, field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative.

On the opposite side, the monitoring will be carried out by Andrzej Kasprzyk, personal representative of the OSCE chairperson-in-office, Ghenadii Petrica and Hristo Hristov, field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative.

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.
McLarens, a leading global claims services provider, has introduced its newest office in Dubai, UAE to further support clients in the region.



The Dubai team will be led by Malcolm Addy, country manager  UAE, who will also oversee our existing operation in Abu Dhabi. Addy reports into Mike Barnes, Regional Director  Middle East & Africa.



Addy, who joins from Charles Taylor, has spent the past 19 years based in the Middle East and brings extensive regional experience in both the management of loss adjusting operation and handling of major losses in the power generation, energy, EAR/CAR and utility sectors.



He has acted as the sole adjuster on many LNG and petrochemical projects. Addy is an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute (ACII) and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters (FCILA).



Chris Panes, chief operating officer- Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific said: Were pleased to have someone of Malcolms calibre and positive reputation to run our operation in the UAE and to handle high-profile technical claims. His appointment complements our existing Middle East team and will strengthen our service offering in the UAE.



I am honoured to lead the UAE team and to develop and strengthen McLarens existing presence in the Middle East, Addy said.  TradeArabia News Service
Avaya, a global leader in business communications software, has announced the latest version of the Avaya IP Office Platform, the market-leading unified communications solution for small and midsize businesses.



Avaya IP Office release 10 is available as a cloud, hybrid cloud, or premises-based deployment, allowing organisations to deploy new capabilities based on business need, while benefiting from enhancements in security, resiliency and end-user experience, said a statement from the company.



With Avaya IP Office release 10, channel partners can deliver cloud-hosted unified communications (UC) and contact center (CC) solutions to customers, while maintaining an on-premises gateway, allowing the customer to take trunk lines from service providers and satisfy regulatory requirements in the Middle East, it said.



Among other enhancements, Avaya IP Office release 10 also increases security and resiliency. Now, built-in signalling and media encryption for endpoints and UC clients helps preserve privacy and data integrity  critical in any deployment, but especially in those delivered through pure or hybrid cloud services, it added.



This unique feature in Avaya IP Office is provided at no extra cost or added complexity, unlike many other over-the-top, pure cloud UC vendor offerings available today that only provide encryption as an optional line item - if at all, said a statement.



This increase in security is especially significant to the midmarket: According to a 2015 global survey, the number of attacks reported by midsize companies increased 64 per cent between 2013 and 2014, as cybercriminals turn to midsize businesses in hopes of easy access, it added.



Beyond other pure cloud deployments, the latest version of IP Office takes a unique approach to resilience, providing system failover cloud to cloud, cloud to premises, premises to cloud and premises to premises. Whatever the approach, the system stays active and users maintain connectivity throughout the outage, it said.



The Avaya IP Office Platform is available through authorised channel partners in three deployment options: premises-based, hybrid or pure cloud solution. With more than half a million systems shipped globally, Avaya IP Office is one of the most widely sold unified communications solutions for small and midsize businesses available in the market today, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service


Emirates for Universal Tyres (EUT), the sole distributor of Continental passenger, light truck and commercial vehicles tyres in the UAE market, recently celebrated the opening of the first Continental retail outlet dedicated to the end consumer in Abu Dhabi, UAE.



The opening of this new point-of-sale concept, in Mussafah M2 area, Abu Dhabi, comes as part of Continentals expansion plan to meet the growing demand for the brands ultra-high performance products and signals a new chapter in the way end consumers in the region can access the brand, said a statement from the company.



Customers will be able to enjoy a full Continental experience at the new retail outlet, served by a team of highly trained tyre specialists and benefitting from a range of services including tyre fitting, wheel balancing and alignment. With all staff members receiving ongoing training to ensure the highest service standards, customers will be able to expect fast and efficient assistance, it said.



The outlet will solely offer stocks of premium authentic Continental passenger and light truck vehicle tyres, available at competitive prices. The product highlights will include the award-winning ContiSportContact 5P, ContiPremiumContact 5 as well as ContiSeal which features a unique technology designed to seal a damaged tyre tread in case of penetration by foreign objects, it added.



Continentals wide range of products appeals to the UAEs most discerning customers thanks to the tyres technologically advanced features and high performance which are adapted to accommodate the countrys climatic conditions, said a statement.



The opening ceremony included Jose Luis de La Fuente, managing director of Continental Middle East; Michael Kriken head of PLT Sales; Ahmed Mowafy, general manager of Emirates Universal Tyres (EUT); and Sohrab Abdul Rahman, general manager of Gulf Tyre, it said.



The newly opened outlet is the first consumer-focused retail store of its kind in the UAE working to the German premium brands high standards and rigorous guidelines, giving customers a specialised one-stop-shop to take advantage of Continentals superior service standards and innovative products.



The outlet will join EUTs two showrooms and five state-of-the-art service centres and warehousing facilities across the UAE. These, themselves, are testament to the success of EUT, Continentals sole distributor of passenger, light truck and commercial vehicles tyres in the UAE market, it stated.



Ahmed Mowafy, general manager of EUT, said: The opening of the new facility marks a further opportunity for customers in the UAE to access premium, German-engineered Continental tyres and a team of specialists ensuring they get the best service.



Clientele will have the opportunity to have their tyres fitted, realigned or balanced at the retail outlet in an exclusively Continental environment that meets the highest German standards, he added.



Jose Luis de la Fuente, managing director for Continental Middle East, said: Our partnership with Gulf Tyre and EUT allows us to connect with our end consumers, helping us to build a closer relationship with our clients.



The outlet marks our companys first such venture in the market and opens the doors for further expansion in the future, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
The process industry has a lot in common with the construction sector in terms of ways of reducing energy consumption and CO2 emission. In both cases a key to sustainability lies in viable solutions that lower the operating costs by minimising heat transfer and therefore  the final energy demand. How much can a single factory save with proper insulation?



According to Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) regulations, organisations that qualify as large undertakings must choose one or more routes to compliance that cover all areas of significant energy consumption and are bound to carry out ESOS assessments every four years. These assessments are audits of the energy used by their buildings, industrial processes and transport to identify cost-effective energy saving measures. Unfortunately, the savings potential is not always recognised.



The level of insulation applied may be based on a minimum investment decision following requirements regarding the maximum surface temperature to avoid personal injuries, minimum process needs or based on generic maximum heat loss rates only, said Craig Treanor, technical support manager at Paroc Ltd and certified TIPCHECK engineer.



There is a recognised gap between current and cost-effective insulation levels. He added.



Recognising the potential



How much could we save? The answer to that question can be found in the European Industrial Insulation Foundation report "Climate Protection with rapid payback  Energy and CO2 savings potential of industrial insulation in EU-27.



According to the non-profit organisation, the share of equipment without insulation or with damaged insulation in EU is conservatively estimated to be 10 per cent, 6 per cent and 2 per cent for low- middle- and high temperature surfaces respectively. There is a significant energy saving and CO2 mitigation potential related to improved thermal insulation in industry. This potential is currently untapped, despite being cost-effective to implement.



The report covers several case studies where TIPCHECK energy audits were performed. In a chemical plant in France, 30 valves and 35 storage tanks rooftops were uninsulated, generating a total of 12.600 Mwh of unnecessary heat loss per year.



An investment of 100,000 ($112,000) which covered audit, insulation instalment and material costs, allowed to achieve approximately 405,000 of energy cost savings in the first year and 505,000 in the following years. Payback? Merely two and a half months, explained Treanor.



Benefits for European industry



The study goes the extra mile to describe the potential of energy and emission savings for all European Trading System members, including the UK. EIIF estimates that if the plant managers in EU-27 would consider economically viable solutions such as insulating bare surfaces to cost-effective levels and repairing damaged insulation in industry, we could save approximately 620 PJ of energy and cut the emission of CO2 by 49 Mt yearly.



This energy savings potential is equivalent to the energy consumption of all Dutch industry, while the annual CO2 reductions potential is equivalent to 18 million medium-sized cars each running 12,500 kilometres per year.



In order to tap into this potential, the assessors at EIIF estimate a one-time investment of 900 million is required. At current prices, it would help reduce industry production costs Europe-wide by 3.5 billion every year and diminish the gas import from Russia by up to 12.5 per cent.



The average payback period of industrial insulation improvements is 1-2 years and it is easy to achieve compared to other Best Available Techniques. It can be even shorter depending on energy prices, energy losses and insulation costs.  TradeArabia News Service
Qatar Petroleum is interested in the Mozambique gas business of Italian energy group Eni and could opt to join Exxon Mobil in buying a multibillion-dollar stake, sources familiar with the matter said.



State-controlled Eni is looking to reduce a 50 per cent stake in its giant Mozambique gas acreage as part of plans to sell 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) of assets over the next two years.



Last month sources told Reuters Exxon had reached a deal that could give it an operating stake in the onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant, while leaving Eni in control of the Area 4 gas fields feeding it.



Qatar Petroleum is in talks with Exxon and Eni on some kind of involvement in Mozambique which could involve a joint investment with the US major, one senior QP source said, adding the deal was not a classic joint venture structure.



A second Doha-based source, who declined to be named as not authorized to speak publicly, said Qatar Petroleum had been looking at Eni's Area 4 field as well as adjoining acreage of Anadarko Petroleum Corp but added the focus was on Eni.



"The expectation is that Qatar Petroleum and Exxon will go in on this together," the source said, adding a Qatar Petroleum delegation planned to visit Mozambique before the year end.



The sources cautioned no decision had as yet been taken by the Qatari company.



Qatar Petroleum did not respond to requests for comment and Exxon and Eni declined to comment.



Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar Petroleum CEO, recently confirmed the group was looking at assets in Africa.



Located in Mozambique's Rovuma Basin, Eni's Area 4 is one of the biggest discoveries of recent times, holding about 85 trillion cubic feet of gas.



Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi, who has spoken of selling a stake of up to 25 per cent, said earlier this month a detailed agreement had been reached with a partner.



In 2013 Eni sold 20 per cent of Area 4 to China's CNPC for $4.2 billion but since then oil and gas prices have dropped by more than half.



A banker with knowledge of the matter said a 25 per cent stake in the field could be worth in the region of 2 billion euros.



Exxon and QP are already close business partners in Qatar, where Exxon's technical know-how helped the tiny Gulf state to develop its gas resources and become the world's biggest as well as lowest-cost LNG producer.



Since then, both companies have jointly moved to exploit international LNG growth opportunities, including plans to build the Golden Pass liquefaction plant in the United States and bidding for exploration acreage in Cyprus.



A moratorium on new Qatari gas production since 2005 has hobbled domestic expansion opportunities at a time of intense competition for global LNG market share as new producers such as Australia challenge Qatar's dominance.



"The (Mozambique) gas will go east and so having Qatar on board with all its experience makes a lot of sense," a banker with knowledge of the matter said.  Reuters
Wednesday clubs and meetings

Alcoholics Anonymous: 6:30 a.m., 917 N. Beech; 8:30 a.m., 500 S. Wolcott; 10 a.m., 328 E. A; noon, 500 S. Wolcott; 2 p.m., 917 N. Beech; 5:09 P.M., 917 N. Beech; 5:30 p.m., 456 S. Walnut; 7 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott; 8 p.m., 8 p.m., 328 E. A; 8 p.m, 328-1/2 E. A, closed; 8:23 p.m., 719 3rd St., Evansville. Douglas: 7:30 p.m., 628 E. Richards (upstairs in back); 7:30 p.m,. 805 E. Richards, Ste. 1. Unless otherwise noted, all meetings are open. Casper info: 266-9578; Douglas info: 307-351-1688.

Al-Anon: 7-8 p.m.,500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200, 12-24 Club, for grades 6 and up. Info: 377-7260 or 258-1444; 7 p.m., First United Methodist Church, 302 E. 2nd. Use east entrance, meet downstairs in Room 12.

Narcotics Anonymous: noon, 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club; 8 p.m., 302 E. 2nd St., Methodist Church, enter east side. Web site: http://www.urmrna.org.

Nicotine Anonymous: noon, 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club. Info: Pam M., 577-0518; Troy Y., 267-6326.

OIF/OEF Support Group: 6:30-8 p.m., Casper Vet Center, 1030 N. Poplar St., Ste. B. All OIF/OEF Veterans are invited to attend. No need to pre-register. Info: 261-5355.

Teen Addiction Anonymous: 7- 8 p.m., 12-24 Club Teton Room. Info: 258-7439.

TOPS #35 Weight Loss: 6:45 a.m., First Presbyterian Church, 804 S. Wolcott. Weight Loss Support Group, Weigh-in is from 6:45 a.m.-7:10 a.m. Info: 258-2603 or 234-5644.

TOPS #162: 8:30 a.m., United Methodist Church, 1880 Poplar. Anyone interested is invited to join. Info: 472-4926.

Reveille hears fishing

Lee Tschetter and Spencer Amend, Wyoming Flycasters president and vice-president, will be joined by Lars Alsager, manager at Speas Fish Hatchery, at the Reveille Rotary Club meeting at 7 a.m. in the Central Wyoming Senior Services Center. The three gentlemen will be sharing successes and challenges of ensuring a viable aquatic environment to nurture and sustain a variety of aquatic species in local waterways. There will be, undoubtedly, a fish story or two told along the way.

Reveille Rotary meetings are open to the public and are held each Wednesday morning at 7 a.m. Guests and anyone interested in Rotary is welcome and invited to attend.

Tour residential respite care

Central Wyoming Community Respite Program hosts lunch and a tour of its Residential Respite Facility every Wednesday in September from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Join us at 304 S. Fenway and have your respite care questions answered. Call 577-4832 with questions. Come in for a tour and leave knowing your loved one will be in safe hands. Proudly brought to you by Central Wyoming Hospice and Transitions Program.

Once Upon a LEGO

The Natrona County Library will host a fairy-tale themed LEGO event for elementary-age students on Wednesday, September 14, at 4 p.m. Build castles, dragons, knights and more. All supplies provided. Call 577-READ ext. 5 for more information.

Margaritas & Mutts

The 4th Annual Margaritas & Mutts Happy Hour fundraiser will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on the Observatory Deck at the Natrona County International Airport. There will be a taco bar, door prizes, $5 margaritas and beers, shelter dogs, and music by Cory & The Crew.

Dog Day Afternoon  a special CD release of original songs by nine of Caspers local musicians  will be introduced and available for sale. All proceeds will benefit the Casper Humane Society.

Admission is $10 per person. This is a happy hour event and not suitable for youngsters.

For more information on the event, visit the Casper Humane Society Facebook page or call 265-5439.

The Casper Humane Society is a no-kill shelter supported entirely by local contributions and charitable donations. It receives no governmental support and is not affiliated with any national humane society, animal rights, or rescue group.

Casper Charla

Would you like to practice conversational Spanish or help others learn? Come and join the Casper Charla! Te gustaria platicar en espanol? Ven y charla con nosotros! Todos son bienvenidos!

Come and join us on the third Wednesday of each month this fall. We meet at a different restaurant and partake in food, drink and conversation. All levels of Spanish are welcome, from beginning to native-speakers.

Nos reunimos los miercoles en varios restaurantes en Casper. Ven por una copa, un antojito o simplemente una charlita.

The group will meet 5-7 p.m. Wednesday at Tacos Mexico.

Family continues suicide support

Good Grief, Support will continue at 5:30 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month at the 12-24 Club, 500 S. Wolcott, by request of attendees. The family of J.R. Hunter, who died from suicide in June 2015 began the support before the especially tough holiday season. Anyone who is grieving a suicide, death, or considering suicide is encouraged to attend. Attendance at the meeting, as well as the content, will be strictly confidential. The Fresh Start Cafe will be open, and you can eat during the meetings. This meeting place was offered by Dan Cantine of the 12-24 Club. You need not be a member to attend.

New depression group begins

J.R.s Hunt for Life is offering See it Clearly, a free peer support group for persons suffering from depression and other mental conditions that lead to suicidal thoughts and actions. They are not professionals but rather a group of like-minded peers wishing to support each other in these struggles. The group offers anonymity and confidentiality to all attending. Meetings are 6:45 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month at the 12-24 Club, 500 South Wolcott, in the conference room on the second floor. If you have ever considered or attempted taking your life or are struggling, please come. You are important.
A federal judge overseeing former Casper Councilman Craig Hedquists lawsuit against former City Manager John Patterson has delayed the trial.

Due to the timing, the number of pending motions and the complexity of the matters at issue, the Court requires additional time to consider pending motions, U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson wrote in an order filed Friday.

The order removed from the court calendar a jury trial that was set to take place Dec. 5 in Cheyenne. Johnson set a scheduling conference for Oct. 4, when new trial and hearing dates will be set.

Hedquists attorney John Robinson said he had no clue why the judge delayed the trial. John Masterson, the attorney representing the city, did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

The former city councilman sued Patterson in February 2014, alleging the then-city manager secretly worked to ensure Hedquist was not reelected to city council. He also claims that Patterson baited him into a confrontation with city engineer Andrew Beamer.

Hedquist, who resigned from the council last year, also alleges that Patterson blocked Hedquists construction company from winning bids for city business in retaliation for Hedquist raising questions about city spending.
Air quality tests performed two days after Midwest School was evacuated for a gas leak found benzene at 200 times safe levels, health officials said Monday.

Some areas of the school were also found to be oxygen-deficient.

The schools May 24 evacuation and subsequent indefinite closure was appropriate given the urgent health hazard, a federal agency determined. The agency also noted that it could not guarantee the future safety of students and staff, given drilling activity in the area.

It is possible that another events similar to the May 24th incident could occur in the future, a federal regulator wrote in a Sept. 1 letter to local health officials.

The formal review, conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, found benzene and elevated levels of carbon dioxide inside the school in May.

We do not know what indoor air quality looked like prior to that. It likely is fluctuating regularly, said Kelly Weidenbach, director of the Casper-Natrona County Health Department. What we do know is that folks in the school were reporting that that they smelled odors as far back as spring break, but we did not become aware of that until the school at already been evacuated.

Local officials lacked the ability to assess the initial samples, so they sent them out of state, causing the delay in results.

Benzene poses short- and long-term health hazards, according to a health department news release. Breathing in the chemical compound can cause dizziness, headaches and confusion. Inhalation of extreme concentrations of benzene can cause death, and long-term exposure can result in elevated risk of cancer.

After the evacuation, officials at the local health department conducted surveys for Midwest residents. Some people reported symptoms that could be related to benzene exposure, Weidenbach said.

The final results from the surveys will be made public when completed.

In a report to local health officials, federal regulators estimated the long-term risks of cancer based on the reported levels of benzene in the schools initial sampling from May. It found that the risk was relatively low, health officials said.

The increased risk for an adult was one additional diagnosis per 100,000 people, or three additional people with cancer per 1,000,000.

A month after the evacuation, officials performed more tests at the school after the district and the fields operator had begun addressing the issue. The June tests showed there was no health risk at the time.

Midwest staff reported gas-like odors on May 26. The school was closed the same day, and students finished the year in Casper. This school year, about 100 Midwest students are attending classes in Casper, with high-schoolers using the new Pathways Innovation Center and younger students using the old Westwood Elementary School.

The gas was later identified as coming from an oil well near the school.

The district also investigated an incident in 2014, after kitchen staff at Midwest reported lightheadedness and headaches. Ultimately, officials decided that improper storage of cleaning supplies was likely the cause, according to emails provided by the district to the Star-Tribune.

The school district hopes to hire an independent consultant by Oct. 1 to advise it on mitigation strategies as well as finalizing a plan to reoccupy the school while ensuring public health and safety.

The findings released Monday have not changed the districts plan to open the school after fulfilling each of the health departments recommendations, such as installing air quality monitors, said Superintendent Steve Hopkins.

Our desire and our interest is to reopen the school, he said. Its an important part of that community. Its critically important for the staff. I want to make sure we get the school open, but we will also complete every one of those steps.

The fields operator, FDL Energy, is awaiting recommendations from the school district on how to operate in the vicinity of the school safely, said Justin Westmoreland, spokesman for the company.

The Salt Creek Oil Field, which surrounds Midwest, has been drilled since the late 1800s. There are 120 abandoned wells in the 640 acres around Midwest, according to state records. FDL identified and plugged the well responsible for the leak and is monitoring other the wells in the area, under the guidance of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
Mike Sullivan has said that government works best when the executive branch was of one party and the majority of the legislative branch was of another, as it was in the 1980s and 1990s, when he was the Democratic governor of Wyoming. There was compromise and civility, he said.

But nowadays, hes not so sure.

Washington wouldnt seem to reflect that in the last eight years, he said. For a good part of the time, they didnt get anything done.

Al Simpson, a Republican and former U.S. senator, said he hears people in Wyoming and elsewhere say they hate Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump all the time.

When you just hate some S.O.B, your country has taken a serious decline, and thats what is happening today in America, he said. Its very real.

The lack of civility throughout the country concerns the Democratic and Republican statesmen, who are speaking on the topic at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Center for the Arts in Jackson. Former Wyoming Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Kite is moderating the discussion.

While on opposite sides of the aisle, Simpson and Sullivan had kind words to say to each other. They worked together when Simpson was in Washington and Sullivan was in Cheyenne. Sullivan even faced a Simpson family member in his 1986 race for governor.

Ive always been proud of the fact that I ran against Pete Simpson, Als brother, Sullivan said. We were friends when the campaign started and better friends after.

Simpson said some politicians are exploiting social issues such as bathrooms for transgender people because it distracts the public from real issues, such as the increasing burden of Social Security payouts.

These social issues mean nothing, he said. We havent had a budget for six years. You cant run your house or a nation without a budget.

Wyoming had been an example of how government worked well when Washington was hampered by bickering and name-calling. But both men said that the tone of politics and elections in the Cowboy State is degrading.

Last year, a Republican legislative leader kicked a member of her own party out of a committee meeting during a discussion about gay people. The lawmaker made a comment about pedophilia and wanted the bill enacted when hell freezes over.

This election season was highlighted by negative campaigning and no clear signs of who was paying for the literature.

I think part of what has happened is money, he said about elections. Its altering the course, in my view. And the ability of people to engage and involved in campaigns with having to be accountable.

At the national level, rhetoric is especially nasty because its election season. Simpson said it might tone down after Nov. 8, when the nation chooses a president.

But it might not, he said.

After all, Clinton and Trump are among the most disliked candidates in American history. Its an open question whether the victor will be respected.

Whichever way it goes, you may have an ungovernable country, Simpson said.
Editor:

I am the coordinator of Prayers and Squares, Chapter 578, in Laramie, Wyoming. We are an international ecumenical group of women that donate quilts to individuals and families that are hurting. They may have lost a loved one, they may be ill or injured or they may be emotionally hurting. We give quilts with no strings attached. We operate completely from donations.

We started this program on January 26, 2007, and have since given away 1,787 quilts. We have sent quilts all over the United States including Alaska and Hawaii. We have also sent quilts to Italy, Liberia, China, England, Kenya, Australia, Japan, Iraq, Puerto Rico and to victims of hurricane Sandy, the Oklahoma tornadoes, the Colorado floods, our local homeless and Laramie Hospice.

We also make prayer squares to send with our military troops when deployed. They can carry them to remind them of home and those who care about them. So far, we have given out 15,245 prayer squares.

We are so excited that we will soon reach our 1,800 quilt. Which should hopefully happen this month.
KOCHVILLE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP)  A Michigan man who paid a stripper with a counterfeit $100 bill after a lap dance could have the charges dropped if he stays out of criminal trouble for a year.

The Saginaw News reports (http://bit.ly/2cgAfvo ) that Stephen Gidcumb received a delayed sentence Monday and was placed on one years' probation for uttering and publishing counterfeit notes and carrying a concealed weapon.

Gidcumb was arrested May 13 after the fake money was passed at a strip club in Kochville Township, near Saginaw. Other bogus bills were found at his Mount Morris home. They were made on a computer.

Gidcumb pleaded guilty in August and told a judge Monday that the actions were "completely out of character."

He also was ordered Monday to pay $100 in restitution.

___

Information from: The Saginaw News, http://www.mlive.com/saginaw
Award recipients were selected by a panel of judges from 54 finalists and hundreds of nominees (finalists were highlighted in a special section Sept. 4 in the Arizona Daily Star). The winners are:
A felony arrest warrant was issued Monday for a second man in connection to an armed robbery and stabbing at Chariot Pizza Sept. 1.

Robbery detectives obtained the warrant for David Ryan Howe, 35, according to a post on Tucson Police Department's Facebook page.

Investigators said Howe is considered armed and dangerous, and should not be approached.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call 911.

On Sept. 4, police arrested Alex Joseph Haider, 18, in the robbery and stabbing at the pizza restaurant at 3930 N. Flowing Wells Road.

Haider was booked on suspicion of attempted armed robbery, aggravated robbery, aggravated assault with a weapon, kidnapping and an unrelated warrant.

Officers responded to a call from Chariot just before 11 p.m. on Sept. 1, police said. They found a man, who worked at the restaurant, with stab wounds. He was taken by Tucson Fire Department paramedics to Banner-University Medical Center Tucson with non-life-threatening injuries.

Another worker was treated on the scene for a substance that was sprayed into his eyes.

The pizza restaurant was closed and the two employees were cleaning up when two men entered through an unlocked back door. One sprayed what appeared to be pepper spray in the face of one of the employees and chased the other one, police said.

The second employee was stabbed multiple times and stomped on during a struggle, authorities said.

After multiple tips following media reports, Haider turned himself in to police.
AfricaRice is a CGIAR Research Center  part of a global research partnership for a food-secure future. It is also an intergovernmental association of African member countries. For more information visit: www.AfricaRice.org

A propos dAfricaRice

AfricaRice est un Centre de recherche du CGIAR  un partenariat mondial de la recherche agricole pour un futur sans faim. AfricaRice est aussi une association intergouvernementale composee de pays membres africains. Pour plus dinformations, visiter : www.AfricaRice.org
Reading, writing and Arabic is on the agenda at a handful of Tucson schools this year.

The Tucson Unified School District is rolling out Arabic programs at three campuses: Wright Elementary, Doolen Middle and Catalina High  made possible, in part, by a $111,000 grant.

The establishment of the programs at the midtown schools will mean that students have an opportunity to study one of the fastest growing second languages starting in kindergarten, without interruption, all the way through high school.

The grant was awarded to TUSD by Qatar Foundation International, which seeks to inspire meaningful connections to the Arab world through language education and cultural exchange. The funds will be used to cover the cost of the teachers, materials and professional development training.

Arabic is spoken by more than 400 million people worldwide and has helped U.S. students pursue careers in business, journalism, diplomacy, national security, and more, according to QFI.

While QFI has partnered with more than two dozen schools across the country, TUSD is the only Arizona district it is working with. None of Tucsons other major public school districts offer Arabic.

As part of TUSDs strategic plan, Tucsons largest school district is working to expand foreign language options for students. In addition to Arabic, which is also offered at Safford K-8 and Cholla High magnet schools, other language courses available to students include Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and Korean.

The main focus of the Arabic program is to give students the opportunity to learn another language and the district is happy to offer that option, said Tsuru Bailey-Jones, project director of TUSDs QFI grant. We think its important to have our students be global citizens and sometimes that will lead itself into learning different languages.

At the high school level and in middle school as well, Arabic is offered as an optional elective class. At the elementary level, all students are exposed to the Arabic language through teachings woven into standard lessons.

At Cholla, where TUSD first launched Arabic programming, enrollment has grown from less than two dozen students in its first year nearly a decade ago to 125 students today, said Principal Frank Armenta.

The west-side school has been recognized by QFI as one of the largest leading Arabic programs in the western hemisphere.

Through the program, Cholla students have not only learned the language and learned about Middle Eastern culture, they have also traveled to Washington, D.C., and Qatar, Armenta said.

Chollas Arabic program also complements the schools Army JROTC program, allowing cadets who are proficient in Arabic to earn additional money should they enter the military, Armenta said.

TUSDs Arabic program has also been backed by the U.S. Department of Education, which awarded the district a grant through the Foreign Language Assistance Program.

Between Wright, Doolen, Safford, Catalina and Cholla, more than 600 TUSD students are expected to be exposed to Arabic this school year.

Its a great opportunity for our district and we have to be a district that prepares kids for a global world, Armenta said.
PHOENIX  Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick is going to have to change a lot of minds if she hopes to oust John McCain in November, a new poll shows.

The survey done this past week for NBC and the Wall Street Journal by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion shows the five-term incumbent Republican with a 57-38 percent lead over his challenger. And just 6 percent said they were undecided or wanted someone else.

But the sample of 1,102 adults, including 946 registered voters and 649 likely voters, showed something else at the top of the ticket, with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a statistical dead heat. That could put the final results of that race into the hands of the nearly 20 percent who told pollsters they want neither presidential contender or are undecided.

D.B. Mitchell, press aide for Kirkpatricks Senate campaign, dismissed the results as a complete outlier.

He specifically cited the polls conclusion that McCain has a 5-point lead among Latino voters. Mitchell said that runs contrary to other surveys that show Hispanics leaning more toward Kirkpatrick. And he said that support for her is only going to increase as McCain continues his support for Trump.

But Latinos appear to be making a distinction between the states senior senator and the New York billionaire: Just 26 percent said they are currently leaning toward voting for Trump.

Mitchell prefers to cite a survey done by Public Policy Polling released last week that shows his candidate in a 43-43 tie. But a poll done for CNN before McCain crushed Kelli Ward in the Republican primary in late August showed him leading Kirkpatrick at that time by 52 to 39 percent.

Whats also working against the challenger is the money factor.

The most recent campaign filings last month showed McCain, who has raised more than $9.8 million this election cycle, still has more than $5 million in the bank. Thats more than twice as much as Kirkpatrick reported.

Mitchell said the campaign remains undeterred.

We are really confident in the position and the program weve put together across the state, both of our media and our grassroots operation to reach out to voters, he said.

The picture in the presidential race, at least in Arizona, is different.

Among likely voters, the survey shows Trump with 40 percent and Clinton at 38 percent. Libertarian Gary Johnson clocks in with 12 percent of those questioned, with 3 percent for Jill Stein of the Green Party, and the other 7 percent undecided or wanting someone else.

On Twitter: @azcapmedia
PHILIPPINE SEA  Sonar Technician (Surface) 3rd Class Terry Leininger, from Tuscan, Ariz., monitors active sonar in sonar control aboard the forward-deployed Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52) during Valiant Shield 2016. Valiant Shield is a biennial, U.S. only, field-training exercise with a focus on integration of joint training among U.S. forces. This is the sixth exercise in the Valiant Shield series that began in 2006. Barry is on patrol with Carrier Strike Group Five (CSG 5) in the Philippine Sea supporting security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kevin V. Cunningham/Released)
Browse volunteer opportunities on the Volunteer Center at United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizonas website, volunteer.unitedwaytucson.org, click on find needs and search for agency name.

United Way of Tucson  Looking for volunteers to become certified health-care navigators. If you are interested in supporting the health-insurance enrollment efforts in Pima County, this is the volunteer opportunity for you.

Sahuarita Volunteer Clearinghouse  Help people in the community stay safe and fall-free by providing a fall risk and screening visit to their home. In need of nurses and handymen to join the team.

St. Andrews Childrens Clinic  Volunteers needed to drive patients and parents from the border to Tucson International Airport or pick up patients at the airport and return to Nogales in clinic-provided van. Some trips to doctor offices in Tucson.

Tucson Celtic Festival Association  Seeking volunteers for the 30th Annual Tucson Celtic Festival and Scottish Highland Games, Nov. 4-6 at Rillito Raceway Park. Volunteers are needed for a variety of activities during the festival.

ICS: Interfaith Community Service  Volunteer drivers are needed to provide transportation to doctor appointments, the pharmacy, the grocery store and other basic errands to help seniors and disabled adults stay independent. Use your own vehicle. Flexible schedules allow you to decide your availability.
Daily Star Best of 2014

United States Marine Corps Sgt. Oliver Hand readies the U.S. flag as he and the members of the Bulk Fuel Company Alpha color guard prepare to present the colors for the East Lawn Palms Cemetery Memorial Day Service, Monday, May 26, 2014, Tucson, Ariz. Several hundred attended the ceremonies that included members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, Disabled American War Veterans and their auxiliaries and other veterans organizations, music from the Sons of Orpheus, the release of doves, the traditional rifle salute and laying of wreaths. Photo by Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star
PHOENIX  Leaving your cellphone in an apartment where you have been a guest doesnt give police the right to search it without a warrant, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday.

In a decision with major privacy implications, the justices also said the fact that someone does not lock his or her cellphone with a code is not an invitation for anyone, including the police, to see whats in it.

Personal belongings need not be locked for a legitimate expectation of privacy to exist, wrote Justice Ann Scott Timmer for the unanimous court. Cellphones are intrinsically private, the failure to password protect access to them is not an invitation for others to snoop.

She also rejected the contention by prosecutors that they should be able to use what they found on the phone because officers had a good-faith belief that it actually belonged to the owner of the apartment, who was dead.

Mondays ruling ends efforts by Pima County prosecutors to bring Robin Peoples to trial on charges of necrophilia and rape.

There is insufficient evidence to prove the crime in court without being able to present the video and the defendants statement, said Kellie Johnson, the chief criminal deputy county attorney.

Court records show Peoples lived next door to his girlfriend. They say he frequently spent time in her Tucson apartment.

About three months into the relationship, he spent a night there and used his cellphone to film the couple having sex.

The womans daughter, who lives in the same apartment complex, found her unresponsive in bed the next morning while Peoples was in the bathroom. She called 911 and Peoples ran from the apartment to direct the paramedics, leaving his cellphone behind.

She ultimately was pronounced dead. Peoples, meanwhile, went to a friends apartment.

A Tucson police officer, looking for medical information on the woman, found a cellphone in the bathroom. Assuming it belonged to the victim, he turned it on to search her contacts.

What he found was a paused video of the woman on her back in bed, mostly naked. When he pressed play, he watched part of a video showing Peoples having sex with a seemingly unresponsive woman.

When Peoples returned to get his cellphone he was arrested. He subsequently made statements that he had sex with the woman during the early morning hours, filmed it with his phone, and said she probably was dead, though he thought she was breathing.

A trial judge refused to let police use either the video or any statements Peoples made to prosecute him on necrophilia and rape charges. The state Court of Appeals reversed, ruling that police did not need a warrant because Peoples did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the womans apartment or for his cellphone.

Timmer said the appellate judges were wrong on both counts.

She said the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that cellphones occupy a special place in peoples lives and deserve special protection  even when someone has been arrested.

They essentially serve as their owners digital alter egos, Timmer wrote, calling them minicomputers that contain a digital record of nearly every aspect of peoples lives, from the mundane to the intimate.

The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought, she said, citing the U.S. Supreme Court.

Timmer also said the fact that Peoples did not have his cellphone on him when it was found by police does not change anything. She said the fact remains that it still contains the privacies of life that are entitled to Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless searches.

That privacy is no less worthy of protection when a cellphone is outside a persons immediate control, Timmer wrote.

She also specifically noted that while Peoples left his cellphone in the womans apartment, he had left to direct paramedics. And Timmer pointed out that when he returned a short time later, he specifically asked the officer at the door to retrieve the phone.
Instead of tubing down the Salt River, I spent my Labor Day burrowing through the biggest city in Latin America, where burritos are nearly a myth and 18th century basilicas point sideways toward mazes of people selling charred corn.

Sounds pretty romantic, but I was actually traveling alone because I found a last-minute American Airlines flight for $380. I flew out from Tucson on Friday and had to be back to work by Tuesday. In between, I saw two museums and one of the largest murals in the world, walked the staggering Chapultepec park, took a boat through ancient Aztec canals and saw Frida Kahlo's neighborhood Coyoacan.

I ate most of my meals on the street, which was faster and I believe, tastier. I wanted to share with you some of the things I encountered, because the experience really changed how I think about Mexican food and what makes Arizona's cuisine unique. Other than chimichangas.

I apologize ahead of time for A) not being a real expert, and B) not getting names, prices and exact locations. I wasn't taking notes, because I was on vacation ...

On my first full-day, I set out from the Hostel Mundo Joven Catedral on the fringes of the city's main Zocalo square, and walked west down the bustling Avenida Cinco de Mayo. I was looking for a bank, but got a little sidetracked by the massive spinning trompo of vermilion red pork meat (pictured up top).

Health department regulations have made this porcine spectacle a rare site in Tucson, but not even in Sonora have I seen a trompo this enormous. Central Mexico is the home of al pastor. It's a fusion food inspired by the shawarmas of Lebanese immigrants. Somewhere in the city you can find tacos arabes wrapped in pita bread, but I was content with these flawlessly suave corn tortillas, at this point the best I've ever had.

Walking further west past the Palacio de Bellas Artes, I happened upon a swapmeet style market straddling the Alameda Central park. Several vendors had big plump sausages strung from their stands, so I sat down and tried one in taco form. It was longaniza, a pork sausage that's similar to chorizo but a tad drier and intensely spicy. The taquero chopped it up into tiny little crumbles and tossed them on the flattop until they had an addicting salty crunch.

I also saw these chips there. I didn't get one, but what the heck. Green Cheetos???

While I'm at it, here are some candies I saw nearby. Mexico City vendors have a flair for sweets, and the varieties were countless and inspiring. FYI, those flag colored candies are probably there because Mexican Independence Day is coming up on Sept. 16. Red, white and green is the new black around here.

Register for more free articles. Log in Sign up

Quesadillas are known far and wide (in London pubs I've seen them with tzatziki sauce), but this is new. The cook takes a huge block of white Queso Oaxaca and rips off a few strings one by one. Then he stuffs it into the tortilla along with a spoonful of huitlacoche, a springy corn fungus that we estadounidenses consider a delicacy. (Apparently it's really common in Mexico City, and cheap too.) The quesadilla tastes like melted string cheese with mushrooms.

And then there's this one, also called a "quesadilla" by my chef. The freshly-pressed corn tortilla is fried in the oil, while a man crunches under the stove and fans off the smoke from the coals. My quesadilla was stuffed with those delicate squash blossoms you see in the summertime. Before they gave it to me, they split it open lengthwise and filled the center with shredded white cheese and green salsa. I ate it next to a plant, watching a Mexican street clown sing Juan Gabriel songs.

A few feet away I spotted a guy taking wet meat out of a tub and chopping it on a big wooden block that looked like a log. I sat down at his table, and he made me up a taco with barbacoa de borrego, succulent lamb meat that he'd been steaming in sweet banana leaves. I think I started to tear up at this point, but it may have been the clown music.

I was lucky to arrive during a massive festival of indigenous cultures, where hundreds of vendors set up in stately white tents that spanned the entire Zocalo plaza. The picture above was taken in one of the food tents, which was dominated by Oaxacan people selling moles and fresh white cheeses and meat stews from silver tubs.

I ended up eating this creation, which put me out of commission for several hours. (I could still explore, just no more food.) It's a tlayuda, the famous Oaxacan cheese crisp made from a large corn tortilla baked in an oven. Even the chico size was massive, rubbed black bean paste and fatty asiento pork lard, then smothered with cheese, avocados, tomatoes, beef strips and vibrant red chorizo. This is only the second tlayuda I've had, but I wasn't aware they could fold them in half. This makes it easier to eat with the velvety puree of chile de arbol salsa.

Not everything I ate/drank was on the street. After that tlayuda, I took the blue metro line south to the last stop. Then I took a bus to its last stop. Then I walked ... through a little town to a lake of colorful trajinera boats each decorated with people's names.

Xochimilco is the last living example of the city's ancient waterway system, before Spanish settlers filled in the massive lake and built Mexico City on top of it. Xochimilco is a famous tourist stop, but while there I mostly saw Mexican families who were renting out the boats to drink and eat together, dancing to mariachis who floated by playing Vicente Fernandez tunes.

I was all alone, but right as I was negotiating with the boat guys, I heard a male voice say the words in English: "I don't even know where we are right now." I turned around and saw a stylish couple about my age, one from Mexico and one from Brazil. We quickly made friends, and rode the boat together and drank micheladas from blue paper cups. Afterwards, we took a cab toward Coyoacan to see a mural. Then for the first time on my trip, I ate dinner in a restaurant!
Help India!

By IANS,

New Delhi : Even though Americas famous magazine for men Playboy is banned in India, the brand has forayed into the Indian market Wednesday by launching their perfume range for men.

Support TwoCircles



Indian people love international brands and there is a sense of excitement associated with our brand name. So our brand name is our strength and our aim will be to blend into the Indian market keeping our international standards in mind, Venkatesh Babu, regional managing director of the US based fragrance company Coty Beauty that looks after distribution of various perfumes all around the globe told IANS over phone from Mumbai.

Coty Beauty is the business unit of Coty Inc that has signed an agreement with Indian company J.L. Morison that will market and distribute Playboy perfumes in India.

Our strategy is simple, initially we are focusing on the distribution of our perfumes in departmental stores across India and reach to as many cities as possible, Babu said.

The four new fragrances that will be available in the Indian market are Hollywood playboy, Malibu playboy, Miami playboy and Vegas playboy with each fragrance capturing the essence of the lifestyle of some of the worlds most glamorous cities.

Babu felt that though the market is tough but with their strong brand name, affordable prices and good distribution networking, things will fall in place for them.

The mass market in India has a large potential for international brands at the right price point offering. Our strategy for India through our partners, who have strong distribution infrastructure, will help us garner respectable market shares in the first year. We look at being leaders in the mens deodorant and fragrance category with our brands in a few years, Babu explained.

Talking about future plans, Coty Beautys head of Asia, Fons Houtkamp said that after launching this fragrance in US and some parts of Europe six months back, they are now channelizing their energy in the Asian market.

We provide value for money and after launching here, our focus is to make our presence felt in the other Asian countries as well, Houtkamp said.

The deodorants are priced at Rs.199 and can go up to Rs.595.


Help India!

By Mohd. Ismail Khan, TwoCircles.net,

Ahmedabad: Delimitations of constituencies bring slipup and resentment within the parties during elections on the distribution of tickets. This often leads to confusion in newly formed constituencies that would not take much time to turn into a serious battle. This is exactly what is happening in Daryapura.

Support TwoCircles



Daryapura, a newly formed Muslim dominated constituency has been carved out from Kalupura and Shahpur constituencies, both earlier represented by Muslim MLAs.





Sheikh Mohammed Ghayasuddin



Kalupura was represented by Farookh sheikh, a three time MLA from Congress who rose into prominence during the wave of Janta Dal.

Shahpur was represented by Sheikh Mohammed Ghayasuddin, the most vocal voice of Muslims in Gujarat Assembly. He once made headlines by openly accusing Narendra Modi in Gujarat Assembly for 2002 riots.

When Muslim dominated parts of Kalupura and Shahpur were merged into one constituency, neighbouring MLAs have since become formidable rivals, since only one sitting MLA could become partys official nominee.

As announcements were made for second phase candidates and Ghayasuddin was selected by the congress for Daryapura and three time MLA Farookh Sheikh was dumped. Then Sheikh decided to take on the Congress official nominee as an independent to teach them a lesson, he says.

Farookh Sheikh has been MLA in 1998, 2002 and 2007 from erstwhile Kalupura constituency. In 15 years of representation of Kalupura he has earned a very rough and mixed reputation, some locals call him Lutaira.

One hotel manager in the area recalls how Sheikh seized his hotel when he refused to pay him hafta (weekly protection money). A rickshaw driver in the local nakka recollected how Sheikh once refused to give him money for buying some text books for his son.

But Sheikh is confident of his land slide victory, even though he is being criticized on the streets of Kalupura. He believes that his strong base of supporters and 15 years of work will prove him lucky the fourth time.

A house which serves election office of Sheikh, as this reporter reached; supporters of Sheikh were busy in chalking out plan for a street rally. Sheikh himself was busy answering phone calls at his election office bedroom.

Sheikh, a transport agent by profession, started his political carrier contesting municipal seats on Janta Dal tickets. He claims that the philanthropist activities he took during many communal riots to help the victims eventually brought him into politics.

Farookh Sheikh reiterates many times in his rustic voice that it was he, who has brought back Congress in Ahmedabad and won assembly seat when other Congress candidates lost even deposits after Babri Masjid demolition.

He also accuses the party functionaries of selling the ticket for Rs two crore to Gayasuddin. He further alleges that he has managed the Congress legislative party chief Shakti Singh by giving him partnership in his building contracts.

Sheikh who served in the Congress for 15 years now says that Congress is of the same ilk as BJP or Parivartan Party. To elucidate his argument he claims that Muslims in Gujarat are angry with the Congress for providing only seven party tickets, because going by the population ratio at least 15 tickets should have been given.

Elections in Muslim dominated constituencies are filled with instances where two powerful contesting Muslim candidates comes to an agreement even a day before the polling, as it happened in Shahpur where Gayasuddin was elected in 2007.

Another influential Muslim candidate offered support to Gayasuddin to avoid division of Muslim votes after reaching a settlement. When asked if such a settlement is possible? Sheikh for now has firmly said: No Compromise, I will teach them a lesson.

Sheikh Mohammed Gayasuddin Hussaini Miya, meanwhile, is campaigning hard to win some votes in the wards of erstwhile Kalupura constituency where Sheikh still commands substantial hold. Muslim community in Daryapura constituency lives in a state of division and confusion. Different constituencies merged together have been under the rein of two separate individuals till a month back. Gayasuddin is hence busy chalking out strategies particularly for the wards in the rival camp.

Patthasheri, a Muslim dominated most under-develop and deprived locality in Ahmedabad, appears to be in festive colour these days with young men roaming in the narrow streets in front of chicken shop converted into a Congress Party ward office. With party banners and hand symbols in their hands or hung from neck these young party workers are waiting eagerly for the arrival of Gayasuddin or Gayassubhai as he popularly known.

The scheduled time for public mulaqat (meeting) at Patthasheri ward of Kalapura was 4 p.m. He, however, arrived an hour late, apparently because he was performing Asar prayer. A day earlier he had addressed a public meeting at his core constituency Shahpur Adda.

Congress local workers, who five years back had campaigned for Farookh Sheikh said Karyakarta bada nahi Party Badi hai (Workers are not bigger, party is greater), accepting partys nomination.

Daryapura constituency has total 65% Muslim population and giving tough competition to two powerful Muslim contestants is BJPs notorious candidate Bharat Bhanoth who has been accused by local Muslims of playing a major role in 2002 communal riots or San do ka Toofan as locals call it.





Chicken shop turned into Congress party ward office



Living aside group divisions, Muslims of Daryapura constituency fear that their vote will get divided and it will benefit BJP indirectly. In Congress party office at Daraypur constituency congress Muslim supporters are hopeful that votes will not be divided as settlement between Farookh Sheikh and Gayasubhai are inevitable.

With Farookh Sheikh, not willing to concede his ground and determined to fight back, and Gayasubhai leaving no stone unturned in his campaign, it is Muslim representation that appears to be at stake.

TCN series on Gujarat elections
Help India!

By Mohd. Ismail Khan, TwoCircles.net

TCN Special Gujarat 2012 elections:

Support TwoCircles



Ahmadabad: Ab bhi bhajapa hi aana hai saab, Narendarbhai Modi hi jitega, that was the overzealous response of Govind Ram an Auto Rickshaw driver, who picks up rides at Ahmedabad International Airport, on the first typical question during elections Aap kis ko vote dalenge?. What Govind makes out of Narender Modis tenure was only vikas, but he had to think hard when asked what parivartan that vikas has brought to his life, after deep thinking he said good roads near the airport.

For another Autorickshaw driver name Aziz sheikh who does business in Kalupura area in old Ahmedabad, elections doesnt mean anything, as he believes that much propagated vikas wont touch the locality he stays. Aziz said he doesnt want development but security, so he doesnt have to live back the horrific days of 2002 which forced him to shift his home.







Congress and BJP billboards in Ahmadabad. [TCN Photo]



Gujaratis are energized for political battles, in Ahmedabad streets are decorated with banners and flags of different political outfits and their candidates busy in canvassing for votes in the narrow lanes of thickly populated bastis.

While chief minister Narendra Modi is eager to do a hat-trick of win in the State Assembly, Congress seems to be gaining ground especially in the urban pockets, and BJP rebel Keshubhai Patels Gujarat Parivartan Party is cutting BJP vote base in rural Gujarat.

Although the Congress gains from Keshubhais rebellion but it suffers from its own internal factionalism. Unlike other political parties Congress doesnt have a charismatic face for the voters.

Danish Qureshi a social and political activist is campaigning for Congress since last few months, he has toured 182 Assembly constituencies in Gujarat and campaigned for his party especially to target Muslim voters and to expose as he puts it, fake Sadbhavana of Narendera Modi.

Mr. Qureshi said that in his tour he has observed that Muslims are leaning towards Congress even after BJPs propaganda of Gujarati Muslims aligning towards BJP, he also added that BJPs move to outcaste Muslims in giving election tickets has further alienated Muslims from BJP.

Congress has given only seven tickets to the Muslim community, out of those seven, two constituencies is seeing fight between Congress Muslim rebel sitting MLAs and Muslim party ticket holders. Many Muslims on the streets feel upset with the Congress move, as they feel at least 14 tickets should have been provided to the community, keeping up with their population percentage in the state. Following BJP, the new born rebel political party Gujarat Parivartan Party of Keshubhai Patel has also not given any ticket to Muslims.

In 1984 Muslims were at height of their political power in Gujarat by winning 15 Assembly and 3 Lok Sabha seats. In 2007 elections only five Muslim MLAs, all on Congress tickets, were elected.

Mr. Qureshi alleged that Gujarat Chief Minister has created such hatred in the minds of majority community regarding minorities, now no party will like to see siding or even aligning with minorities.

Speaking on much hyped debate on Gujarati Muslims development Congress activist Danish Qureshi said Gujarati Muslims development is not a dramatic change, it happened on the on a natural cycle and Mr. Modi has nothing to do with it.

Qureshi even said that he is confident that Congress is not only going to give a tough fight, but also going to return to power in Gandhinagar, the state capital.

TCN series on Gujarat elections
Help India!

By Ram Puniyani,

Gujarat is going to have the assembly elections in December 2012. As per the surveys and the claims of BJP and Narendra Modi himself, the ruling Chief Minister, will be winning with great majority. The media has created a larger than life image for him, Modis own media management firm has been creating the image of Modi as a man for development, and the big industrial houses are pitching for his victory. While the big industrialists are having a great time in Gujarat, despite the claims of Modi and company, the average people are facing a rough weather as indicated by different indices of development, nutritional levels, hemoglobin levels of pregnant women etc. Still the popular perception in large sections is that Mdoi will romp home and thereby stake his claim to become the Prime Ministerial candidate from the BJP side.

Support TwoCircles



At the same time Modi has been trying to win over sections of Muslims to his side, businessmen, and affluent Muslims in particular. Some of them have openly advocated for Modi. One thing should be clear that till a decade ago, it was a myth that the whole community votes in unison. In earlier riots the major victims of violence were poor Muslims. Since Gujarat carnage the class divide of victims has been abolished and now even if one is as affluent person with reach, like Ehsan Jafri, he can also be the victim of violence. Thats the logic of communal violence today. Accordingly majority of Muslims may evolve a uniform policy of voting for a candidate, who can defeat BJP. This was sometimes contemplated and exercised in practices.





Narendra Modi



There is also a dilemma or confusion amongst some Muslims that since BJP and Congress both are equally bad, how does it matter as to who comes to power. This unfortunate perception of situation is due to the vacillations of Congress on communal front, its opportunism at times and its collusion with communal forces at times. Its lack of principled stand against communalism has given rise to this perception. Still on deeper thinking large sections of Muslims do become clear about the basic difference of BJP and Congress. The difference is that Congress is pragmatically communal and BJP is programmatically communal. That BJP is part of RSS combine whose agenda is a Hindu nation and to bring in such a state by working through the liberal space offered by Indian democracy.

BJP has been propagating that more communal riots have taken place in the rule of Congress so how come, Congress is better than BJP as far as communal violence, communalism is concerned. It is a clever use of the fact that though the Congress has been in power, the real culprit has been the BJP and its affiliates. Congress merely colludes or looks the other way. Also here the role of police becomes important, as large sections of police are not only very communal, police force is also heavily infiltrated by those who have sympathies with communal politics. In this complex situation, who do the Muslims vote for? The noted Islamic scholar, the liberal face of Indian Islam, Asghar Ali Engineer points out that though the Bohra Muslims and their religious leader, has good links with Modi, for business purpose, still most Bohras will not vote for Modi due to the larger picture. Maulana Vastanvi, who had earlier said that Muslims are doing better in Gujarat has also said that Muslims should not vote for Modi.

Modi has been trying his best to woo over the Muslim community by tying up with businessmen from Gujarat like Zafar Sareshwala. Still the larger section of Muslim community remains fearful of Modi, despite his Sadbhavna Meetings. His fasting and Sadbhavna meetings were well managed stage show where many with beard and cap paid their obeisance to Modi, but at the same time Modi got exposed as he refused to wear the skull cap offered by one of the clerics who came to meet him. At the same time he did put on all designer caps and pagadis (head gear) offered by Hindus and Jains. The Muslim community knows that in this stage managed state show Modi has spent millions to project his image of amity. But can the deeper wounds be done away by such attractive coverings?

The Muslim community recalls that the human Rights activist Dr. Bandookwala had asked of Modi to atone for his role in Gujarat violence and the Muslims community will forget the carnage and will move one. But that expression of remorse never came. In contrast Modi went to have more sophisticated defense to hide his crime in the carnage of Gujarat. Now ex-MP Syed Shahabuddin has come out with an open letter to Modi (Nov 2012) saying that if he wants Muslims to vote for him, he should apologize for the Gujarat genocide of 2002. Failing this Shahabuddin said that, Muslims will vote massively and united for one candidate, irrespective of party or religion who is likely to defeat the BJP in their constituency,





Bihar Panchayat election 2011



Shahabuddin landed up in another controversy due to the tone and tenor of his letter and the letterhead, but some of the points which he raises are very valid for the Muslim community of Gujarat, as Shahabuddin has asked Modi to also give full rehabilitation, reimburse medical expenses, suitable compensation, rehabilitation, rebuilding of the places of worship which were ruined due to the violence amongst other demands. The basic flaw in Shahbuddins letter is that to presume that Modi may be amenable to such suggestions and the very process of writing a letter to Modi itself is a misplaced one. Some may call it optimism but it is nothing short of a delusion about Modi.

The core question dodging the Muslim community is that they have been effectively relegated to the status of second class citizenship in Gujarat. It is a part of their daily experience. Politically marginalized, economically pushed back and facing the step motherly treatment from state, it is unlikely that Muslims can even think of voting for Modi. Surely, there will be some like Sareshwala, who will ask for the votes for Modi, but barring such elements, average Muslim has suffered and travails of living in the Hindu Rashtra of Gujarat, where the affiliates of BJP, the VHP, Bajrang Dal, Vanvasi Kalyan Ahshram and ABVP are making the picture complete by their brash ways of imposing their ways on minorities. While celebrations are already afoot for Modis victory, its unlikely that he can have a cake walk in Gujarat this time as apart from M factor the whole deprivation of dalits, Adivsis and other poorer sections of community are too deep to be won over by the rhetoric of Vibrant Gujarat. While psephologists are burning mid night oil to ratify Modis victory the real outcome of Gujarat 2012 elections may be a surprise to many who are undermining the impact of social development indices and the scars of 2002, which remain very much painful even now!

[Photos by Mudassir Rizwan, TCN]

TCN series on Gujarat elections
Help India!

By Mohammed Kashif Yunus for TwoCircles.net

If you go through the advertisement, cut outs, hoardings and pamphlets of Peace Party of India, you will find that in 90% of these displays, there is only one photograph on it: that of its National President Dr Ayub. It is true that other parties like Congress, BSP, SP are also involved in such hero worship but there are three things which Peace Party must mind before toeing such path of hero worship.

Support TwoCircles



First, is profile of the party. Peace Party as a party and its President as a leader does not have the profile that Congress, SP, BSP and its leader like Rahul Gandhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati have. Why does profile matter? Because when an already established political force indulges in hero worship then that weakness could be ignored in front of their other strengths like strong party structure, big and diversified vote bank etc. But when a Party which is struggling for its survival and growth does same mistake, it can be detrimental because projecting only one man also means undermining other office bearers of the party who belong to other castes, religion and region.

This becomes a hurdle in attracting new castes, religion and region people in Party because their leader get posts in party but not place and respect in party literature, hoardings, cut outs, advertisement etc. If you go through the advertisements given by party in different print media you will find that other than Dr. Ayub no ones photograph is there: not even of its state President Dr. Abdul Mannan.

Second thing is level of hero worship. No doubt that Congress, SP, BSP does the same, but to what extent? If you talk about Congress posters and hoardings, other than Rahul Gandhi you may easily see Ghulam Nabi Azad, Raj Babbar and Sheila Dixits photographs in the displays too. In the case of Samajwadi Party, you will find Azam Khan and others. In BSP you will find Naseemuddin Siddiqui, Advocate Mishra and others. But in Peace Party? Just Dr. Ayub.

Third thing is nature of hero worship. Other than the present leaders, it is often common to find some photographs of those great leaders and icons in different party posters who are no more: Kanshi Ram, Lohiya, Gandhi, Bose, Ambedkar, Maulana Azad etc. But Peace Party does not use the photographs of even those leaders and icons who are no more. Their story starts and ends with Dr. Ayub.

There could be 1-2 cases which are exception of the trend given above, other than that Peace Party follows the same trend. If you can visit the Peace Party Office situated in Vidhayak Awaas New Building in Lucknow you may find many posters pasted on the walls of office having just one photograph on it. If you cant go to Lucknow, go to any library and check the advertisement of Peace Party given to Print Media in last six months.

It seems that rather than concentrating on attracting vote of different castes and religions on different issues and by giving respect to the icons and leaders of different societies, Peace Party leadership is more busy in ensuring that Dr. Ayub controls the whole party and there is no one else who is having any kind of control and say in Party. Although there are a number of weaknesses and negativity which Peace Party carries but this negativity of extreme hero worship could be easily identified by a common mind.
Four people are feared dead after a train crashed at O Porrino station in the northern province of Galicia, Spain. According to Alberto Nunez Feijoo, the regional governments president, the dead included the Spanish ticket collector and the trains Portuguese engineer as well as 2 passengers who died in hospital.

Witnesses say that the train began derailing as it arrived at the Porrino station and moments later it hit the tower at the side of the track. Out of the three carriages, one came off the track completely while the other two were partially derailed.

The train was carrying about 60 passengers when the accident occurred.

Spanish rail network and local politicians express their condolences

Renfe, the Spanish rail network confirmed the incident and sent condolences to the accident victims and their families. Local politicians also expressed their condolences and announced that they were suspending their campaign rallies for the day ahead of parliamentary elections as a mark of respect.

The train is operated by Comboios de Portugal and it was en-route to Porto. According to the Spanish media, most of the passengers walked off the damaged train and only a few of the injured were badly hurt.

In 2013, Spain experienced one of the worst train crashes in years in the same region.

The accident occurred when a high-speed train went off the rail and slammed into a wall killing 79 passengers and injuring 170. Initial investigations blamed the driver for failing to brake in time before taking a bend.

The derailment occurred on a very straight line and visibility was good

A passenger claimed that the train started swaying from side to side.

"It wouldn't stop," she said. Witnesses say that they heard a loud bang which was followed by billowing clouds of black smoke. The reason for the accident has not yet been determined as officials say the accident took place on a very straight line and visibility was good. According to Mayor Eva Garcia de la of O Porrino, the derailed train seemed quite old.
Peru's firms peruse growth in China Updated: 2016-09-14 07:01 By Jiang Xueqing(China Daily)

Roberto Vargas, sales director of Agricola Norsur, a fruit supplier in Peru, made his first visit to the Chinese mainland in the hope of increasing the export of mandarins and blueberries to China.

"Currently, our company exports around 100 tons of mandarins to China a year, and we hope to increase the amount to up to 1,000 metric tons next year. I'm also looking forward to exporting 1.5 to 2 million kilograms of blueberries to China in the next three to four years," he said.

As a member of 25 Peruvian companies, associations and chambers of commerce, his firm attended a face-to-face meeting with 50 Chinese companies in Beijing on Tuesday, which was organized by the Chinese government and Bank of China Ltd, to discuss opportunities for business cooperation and investment.

During his meeting with Chinese companies, the vice-chairman of China Crop Protection Industry Association expressed her interest in selling pesticide to Peru. Vargas said his company is a huge consumer of pesticide, so it is highly possible for him to increase business with Chinese companies that produce quality pesticide.

Olivio Huancaruna Perales, president of Lambayeque Chamber of Commerce and Production, said his top priority during the visit was to seek Chinese companies' investment in port construction in Peru due to their great advantages in financing, construction and technologies, and to promote e-commerce transactions between the two countries.

Xiao Lijun, general manager of the preparatory team of the BOC's Peru Representative Office, said Chinese investment in Peru exceeded $14 billion by the end of 2015, and the number of Chinese companies in the Latin American nation reached more than 170.

"Apart from traditional sectors such as energy and mining, a growing number of Chinese companies have shown a great interest in other Peruvian industries, such as railway construction, agriculture, real estate and finance. We're trying to help Chinese companies explore the Peruvian market and help China import more superior products from Peru," he said.

Tian Guoli, chairman of BOC, said the bank has devoted great efforts to support international trade and investment cooperation. Ever since 2014, the BOC has organized 23 cross-border business matchmaking events for more than 8,000 Chinese and foreign companies from 52 countries and regions.

Tian said the Chinese banking regulator has given BOC permission to set up a representative office in Peru, and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, president of Peru, said he will rapidly push forward the upgrading of the bank's representative office to that of a branch.

Peru is looking to promote its industrialization through infrastructure construction and investment. Kuczynski said his country is seeking cooperation with Chinese companies to import mining technologies in high altitude areas from China and to build a main railway line that will increase the population of Lima, Peru's capital, to 20 million people in a few years.
Workers in Taiwan protest decline in mainland tourists Updated: 2016-09-13 07:28 (China Daily/Agencies)

Hundreds of Taiwan workers in tourism-related businesses rallied in Taipei on Monday to draw attention to a sharp decline in visitors from the Chinese mainland that is putting their industry under heavy strain.

Workers marched down a central street in Taipei before gathering at a square in front of the Taiwan leader's office building. They called for the preservation of jobs and assistance to the industry, including allowing the owners of tour buses to delay their loan payments.

"We only want the right to work. If (mainland tourists) do not come, we cannot work. This is just our need," said tour guide Debby Huang, 41.

"We want to survive", "We ask for jobs", "We need food and shelter" and "No jobs, no life" read some of the signs protesters held up as they marched through rain to the square.

"God is weeping for us," protest organizer Ringo Lee called out to the crowd.

"He is weeping for hundreds of thousands of our families that are being affected."

The sector was hit by a fire on a bus in July that killed 24 mainland tourists on their way to the island's main airport.

On Saturday, investigators released a report on the cause of the accident, saying the inferno that engulfed the bus was not sparked by a crash but by the driver, who poured gasoline inside the bus and locked its emergency exits before setting it alight in what prosecutors said was an act of suicide.

The tourism workers also urged the authorities to encourage visits and allow visa-free entry for travelers from the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations as an inducement.

The number of mainland visitors has fallen after independence-leaning leader Tsai Ing-wen took office in May.

Accidents and an unwelcoming attitude among some Taiwan residents have been blamed in part for the decline in mainland visitors.

Official figures show that the number of visitors from the mainland has fallen by 22 percent since Tsai's election, compared with the same period last year. Mainland travelers made up about 40 percent of tourist arrivals last year.

The island's authorities have already offered almost $960 million to bail out the industry.
Sections linked up on world's highest bridge in Southwest China Updated: 2016-09-13 07:50 By LI YINGQING in Kunming and LUO WANGSHU in Beijing(China Daily)

The Beipanjiang Bridge connects Xuanwei, Yunnan province, and Shuicheng, Guizhou province, in Southwest China. [Photo by WU DONGJUN/CHINA DAILY]

With the joining of two bridge sections from opposite sides of a gorge in Southwest China on Saturday, the world got its highest bridge.

The Beipanjiang Bridge in Guizhou province is expected to open to traffic by the end of the year.

The 1,341-meter-long structure, soaring 565 meters above a river, overtook the Sidu River Bridge in Hubei province as the world's highest, according to Guizhou transportation officials. Zhou Ping, director of the highway management office that is overseeing construction, told Science and Technology Daily that the bridge's height is equivalent to a 200-story building.

The three-year construction project began in 2013 with a total cost of 1.03 billion yuan ($156 million), an official statement said. Vehicles will be able to cross the bridge at up to 80 kilometers per hour.

"The bridge is built in a mountainous area above the Nizhu River Canyon," said Wang Chao, senior engineer at Ministry of Transport's highway planning institute. "Construction is affected by the wind, requiring a high degree of precision. Transporting materials to the canyon was very difficult. Usually, we transport assembled sections. But on this project we did the opposite, transporting parts and assembling them on site."

The bridge links Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, and is expected to reduce driving time to one hour from nearly five in the past.

The span is part of the Hangzhou-Ruili highway, which is expected to open to traffic at about the same time as the bridge.

The 3,404-km highway connects eastern and southwestern China, cutting across tourism cities, including Huangshan, Zunyi, Liupanshui, Kunming and Dali. Boosting tourism is one objective.

"We are about to build a bed-and-breakfast hotel to attract visitors when the bridge opens," said Liu Jiaen, head of Lalong village in Yunnan province, where one end of the bridge is located.

AFP contributed to the story
Macao chief visits Portugal to further cooperation on economy, language education Updated: 2016-09-14 06:25 (Xinhua)

LISBON - Visiting Chief Executive of Macao Special Administrative Region Chui Sai On has said Macao is keen to strengthen cooperation on economy and language education with Portugal.

Chief Executive of Macao Special Administrative Region Chui Sai On (L) meets with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in Lisbon on Monday. [Photo/Xinhua]

During his meeting with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Monday evening, Chui briefed the president on the fourth Macao-Portugal joint committee meeting, which was held earlier in the day.Chui said Macao would actively promote adequate economic diversification and regional cooperation while further strengthening cooperation on economy and Portuguese language education with Portugal.Meanwhile, the Portuguese president said both sides had been enjoying good cooperative relations in finance, economy, culture, and language and the Portuguese language was a key element for establishing good relationships.He cited the forum for economic and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries as an example of the Portuguese language's function in promoting friendly relationships between the two sides.Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said when meeting with Chui that Macao, an important bridge for maintaining a good relationship between China and Portugal, was actively promoting adequate economic diversification, which opened the door for cooperation for Portugal, and also helped to promote cooperation and development in economy and innovation in science and technology.Chui, who co-chaired the fourth Macao-Portugal joint committee meeting on Monday with Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva, told a press conference that through the efforts of both parties, Macao and Portugal had signed cooperation agreements on more than 120 projects, covering 33 fields.He said he was satisfied with the fruitful results, and hoped to make further enhancements in bilateral cooperation.For his part, Santos Silva said Macao was an important exchange platform for enterprises between China and Portugal and also a bridge for Portuguese language education and mutual exchange.He said the Portuguese government was duty-bound to offer appropriate support for training for Portuguese-speaking professionals and hoped that both sides would further enhance the cooperation in the high-tech domain.
Soul of Spain Updated: 2016-09-13 07:21 By Mike Peters(China Daily)

Oysters, paella, grilled prawns and an intriguing wine list are just the start at one of the city's oldest European eateries. Mike Peters reports.

Hangzhou is justly famous for its local cuisine, but it's not well-known as an outpost for foreign fare. So on a recent visit to Zhejiang's provincial capital, we were pleasantly surprised to discover La Pedrera - a Spanish restaurant with an impressive wine list tucked in a corner of a large Chinese hotel.

Our leisurely lunch got a pleasantly authentic start with a refreshing glass of sparkling cava, a bottle of mineral water labeled Vichy Catalan, a welcome platter of fresh-baked breads, and serving dishes with a mosaic edge as colorful as any you might find in sunny Spain.

Clockwise from top left: Steak tartare, Angus beef sirloin, grilled prawns and vanilla yoghurt dessert with summer fruits. Photos by Mike Peters / China Daily

As soon as we were settled at our table with this opening array, we were advised to choose a rice dish - that menu section was labeled "the most famous" - as these four specialties would take 25 minutes to prepare. These are generous iron skillets to serve two or more people. We gave the tempting lobster rice Caldoso (298 yuan or about $45) a longing gaze before opting for the black-rice paella (98 yuan) instead.

We started our meal with a pair of oysters from a list that included four French options as well as bivalves from South Africa and Tasmania. The steak menu was even more extensive, and we settled for an Angus beef striploin (218 yuan for 280 grams) with sides of rosemary-roasted potatoes and a lightly pungent confit of mushrooms and garlic.

While the chefs were practicing their art on the steak and paella, we enjoyed a small raw feast: the Geay oysters we'd chosen from the international oyster list and a stunning steak tartare. The patty of well-seasoned beef, served with a duck egg, a big pinch of arugula and thin crisp rounds of lightly toasted fresh bread, made the prettiest dish of the meal.

The taste winner, however, may have been the Argentine prawns, fried in citric oil and delectably tender amid chunks of dried red chili and devastatingly delicious garlic chips. The two menu pages of tapas also included lots of other tempting seafood, from grilled octopus and Spanish-style seafood croquettes to marinara clams.

The paella arrived next, well worth the wait with a pair of sauteed shrimps at the center, seemingly locked face-to-face inthe rice like apair of flamenco dancers. Afloat in the sea of squid-ink tinted rice around them were tasty clams and scallops, and a pair of lemon slices poised like tiny boats of brilliant yellow.

We were basically full when the steak arrived, but our appetites returned as the tender beef, perfectly cooked to our medium-rare order, was sliced and sprinked with a bit of freshly ground pepper and pink Himalayan salt. The sides of grilled mushrooms and potatoes gave the plate some visual and nutritional balance.

Among the dishes we passed over with regret were a turbot stew with baked beans, young garlic and saffron foam, and grilled octopus with potatoes and paprika oil. Those temptations will have to wait for a return visit.

Somehow, we found room for dessert - in fact, two of them. A fig "biscuit" turned out to be a creamy rectangle that was almost as dense as cheesecake; served with toffee and sweet cream, it was a sensation of textures and flavors. More conventional but perhaps more appealing as a summer treat: a vanilla yogurt impregnated with seasonal fruits: orange, berry and mango.

Besides its carefully sourced and prepared Spanish fare, the original La Pedrera is well-known for its gin and tonics - varieties including pineapple and apple caramelized by a small torch in front of you, fresh herbs and frozen figs. We were too sated with a big meal and a robust tempranillo to migrate to the bar for more alcohol, so a G&T sampling will also have to be saved for a return visit.

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/13/2016 page19)
Cuba, US hold first talks on intellectual property Updated: 2016-09-13 09:02 (Xinhua)

HAVANA - Cuba and the United States have held their first talk on the issue of intellectual property, the island's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday.

A statement revealed that Daniel Marti, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at the White House visited Havana on Sept. 8-9 and met with representatives of the Cuban Office of Industrial Property, the National Center of Copyright, the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment.

Marti was accompanied by officials from the State Department, the Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

"In this first official meeting between Cuba and the US on intellectual property, the parties exchanged views on current regulations in the respective countries ... and the legal framework of the two states for the protection of trademarks, patents and legal copyright," read the statement.

The Cuban officials explained to their US counterparts the guarantees offered for the protection of industrial property, including the registration of over 6,000 American brands.

They also expressed concern about the ongoing US embargo, which affects the recognition of the rights of Cuban trademarks and companies, especially in the case of the well-known Havana Club and Cohiba brands.

Havana and Washington reestablished diplomatic relations on July 20, 2015 after 54 years of political enmity.
ROK, US agree to seek further sanctions on DPRK over nuke test Updated: 2016-09-13 17:13 (Xinhua)

SEOUL-- Top nuclear envoys of the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States agreed on Tuesday to seek the strongest possible sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) over its recent nuclear test.

Sung Kim, special representative for DPRK Policy of the US Department of State, arrived in Seoul on Monday afternoon after holding talks with his Japanese counterpart in Tokyo.

The US official met with his South Korean counterpart Kim Hong-kyun, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs at Seoul's foreign ministry, to discuss how to address the DPRK's fifth nuclear test that was conducted on Sept. 9.

Kim said at a joint press conference that the two allies agreed to pursue the strongest possible sanctions and pressure on the DPRK by pressuring Pyongyang in an omni-directional way through UN Security Council measures, unilateral sanctions and international pressure.

Meanwhile, the US official said Washington will make best efforts to take strong actions as rapidly as possible through the United Nations, noting that the US, South Korea and Japan will consider additional measures toward the DPRK separately.

He said that if Pyongyang is really ready to talk about denuclearization, it can be discussed through six-party talks, but the US diplomat noted that the DPRK showed no interest in dialogue as it conducted unprecedented provocations.

The six-way talks, which involve DPRK, ROK, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, have been halted since late 2008.

The DPRK announced on Sept. 9 that it had successfully conducted an explosion test of nuclear warhead that can be mounted on ballistic missiles.

Seoul's military estimated the fifth test was the most powerful as it produced an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, stronger than 6 kilotons generated during the fourth nuclear detonation in January.
Clinton pledges to release more on her health Updated: 2016-09-13 12:19 By Bloomberg(China Daily USA)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Asheville, North Carolina, on Monday.Reuters/ Mike Segar

Hillary Clinton's campaign promised to release more details about the state of her health in an attempt to tamp down backlash and speculation after the delayed disclosure of the Democratic presidential nominee's bout of pneumonia.

Brian Fallon, Clinton's press secretary, said the campaign erred in not releasing information sooner about the pneumonia diagnosis and the reason for the candidate's abrupt departure from a Sept 11 commemoration Sunday in New York.

"In retrospect, we could have handled it better in terms of providing more information more quickly," Fallon said on MSNBC Monday. "It is our intention in the next couple of days - we will be releasing more medical information."

The sudden focus on Clinton's health threatened to create a political crisis for her in the closing stretch of the race because of her campaign's handling of the disclosure as much as the diagnosis itself.

It also prompted Republican nominee Donald Trump to vow he would soon release more information about his own health, an opportunity to quiet critics who say a doctor's short letter that he already released is insufficient.

Trump, at 70, would be the oldest person to assume the presidency if he gets elected. Clinton, 68, would be the second oldest, after Ronald Reagan.

The Democratic nominee's aides were moving to contain the damage of an eight-hour delay in releasing basic details about her status that revived scrutiny of her health and longstanding criticism about her lack of transparency.

The Clinton's campaign handling of the issue risks eroding voter confidence in her as she seeks to preserve a narrow lead in the race over

Trump, whose allies have raised questions and stoked rumors about whether Clinton is healthy enough to serve.

Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, according to her doctor, Lisa R. Bardack. But the campaign did not go public with that until after 5 pm Sunday, New York time, hours after she made an abrupt early departure from a Sept. 11 commemoration at Ground Zero in Manhattan.

While her campaign remained silent for almost 90 minutes - the reporters who travel with the candidate weren't even notified that Clinton was leaving - an amateur video showing her appearing to stumble as she was helped into a black van by aides and Secret Service shot across social media.

Trump said in a phone interview on Fox News on Monday that he'll provide a report from a physical exam he underwent in the past week. "I'll be releasing very, very specific numbers," he said.

"I hope she gets well soon. I don't know what's going on," Trump said, taking a relatively cautious approach to discussing Clinton's health. "We have to see what's wrong."

Trump said he expected to see Clinton at the first presidential debate on Sept 26 and that he didn't think Democrats would replace her as their nominee.

In a CNBC interview, Trump said campaigning is "grueling work. There's no question about it. I find the whole challenge to be very invigorating."
Fertilizer merger may face regulators'scrutiny Updated: 2016-09-14 03:56 (AGENCIES)

Canadian fertilizer producers Potash Corp of Saskatchewan Inc and Agrium Inc agreed to combine to navigate a severe industry slump by boosting efficiency and cutting costs, but the new company's potential pricing power may attract tough regulatory scrutiny.

The proposed all-stock tie-up announced on Monday comes as industry profits have fallen due to excessive supply and soft farm incomes. It would combine Potash's crop nutrient production capacity, the world's largest, with Agrium's farm retail network, North America's biggest, plus its own potash mine and fertilizer plants.

Potash shareholders will own 52 percent of the new company, with a market capitalization of $26 billion. Agrium shareholders will own the rest if the deal closes in mid-2017 as planned.

Agrium Chief Executive Officer Chuck Magro will be CEO of the merged company. Potash Chief Executive Jochen Tilk, who will become executive chairman, said the structure would create an "equal partnership."

"Chuck and I will run this company together," he said in an interview.

Tilk said he was confident the transaction would receive regulators' approval as proposed, without the need for divestitures.

But others were skeptical that regulators would approve a company that would control nearly two-thirds of North American potash capacity and almost one-third of phosphate and nitrogen capacity there.

Fertilizer makes up as much as one-third of costs for U.S. corn farmers, who are already hurting due to falling grain prices.

"This deal has some real antitrust concerns," said Seth Bloom, a US Justice Department veteran who is now at Bloom Strategic Consulting. An antitrust review is unlikely before January, when a new US president takes office, he added.

The merger would leave Mosaic Co as North America's only other major potash producer.

When just three companies dominate an industry, a merger of two of them is generally considered risky, said a US antitrust expert who requested anonymity to protect business relationships.

Agrium's Magro said the companies' plan to wring up to $500 million in synergies out of the deal, such as by combining Agrium's western North America-based nitrogen business with Potash Corp's in the East, would make for a more efficient industry.

"In commodities, lower costs will be good for everyone, including the farmer," he said in an interview.

Annual cost savings would come from areas including distribution and retail integration, production and procurement but not from shutting any potash mines.

The deal would dilute the importance of Agrium's retail system, which sells fertilizer, seeds and chemicals to farmers, making it less strategically sound in the long term, said Robert Spafford, portfolio manager at Cidel Asset Management, which owns Agrium stock.

"One of the reasons most investors own Agrium is the retail business," said Spafford. "(Retail) is a much more stable business than the wholesale business."

The deal may have implications for Canpotex Ltd, which the two companies own with Mosaic. Tilk and Magro said they were committed to keep selling potash to offshore markets through Canpotex.

Each of the three companies has equal sway in Canpotex board votes. Tilk said Mosaic would remain an equal partner, although details must still be worked out.

Mosaic spokesman Ben Pratt declined to comment on the merger but said the precedent within Canpotex was one vote per company.

After the transaction closes, the new company will be based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a key factor in winning over province Premier Brad Wall, whose influence is seen as important.

"On the whole, it looks quite positive," Wall told reporters.
Chinese firms' fresh success in anti-dumping cases Updated: 2016-09-14 04:21 By Dharmendra Choudhary(chinadaily.com.cn)

A number of US Anti-dumping (AD) proceedings are currently going on against Chinese exports, many involving chemical and steel products. Under US trade laws, the US Department of Commerce (DOC) performs annual reviews of the previous year's sales and cost data of Chinese exporters, who are subject to AD proceedings.

For administrative convenience, as a general rule the DOC subjects only the two largest exporters to a thorough examination to determine their individual AD margins. All other Chinese exporters who are found to be independent of Chinese government control (Separate Rate companies), are assigned a simple average of the AD duties of the two mandatory respondents. All those Chinese exporters that fail to rebut the presumption of government control (and so are presumed to be a sales arm of the Chinese government  the "PRC wide entity") are subject to a punitive level AD duty rate.

AD proceedings are quite complicated and the outcome of a case involving China is often unpredictable in view of the non-market methodology applied to China. On September 8, 2016, the US DOC published the final results of the eighth administrative review (2014-15) of Certain Activated Carbon from the People's Republic of China. In this review, the DOC selected two Chinese exporters for detailed examination  Datong Juqiang Activated Carbon Co, Ltd (DJAC) and Jacobi Carbons AB.

DJAC obtained a very favorable result ($0.02/kg), while Jacobi was hit with an AD duty of $1.756/kg. Fifteen companies that were found eligible for a separate rate were assigned AD duty rates of $1.357/kg. Finally, an AD duty rate of $2.42/kg was imposed on 181 PRC wide entity companies.

Notably, DJAC's success in this review follows its "zero" duty win in the previous year's review. DJAC was represented by a team of lawyers led by Francis J. Sailer of Grunfeld Desiderio Lebowitz Silverman & Klestadt LLP (GDLSK), the largest customs and international trade law firm in the US. One of the key factors behind DJAC's success was the outstanding surrogate value work by GDLSK lawyers.

In Chinese AD cases, the DOC determines the AD duties based on a non-market economy (NME) methodology where Chinese prices and costs are ignored in favor of "surrogate values" obtained from a third country market that is economically comparable to China (ie, a surrogate country).

These third country values for all material and non-material inputs are aggregated to determine the normal value of goods. The difference between this normal value and the price at which the product is sold to the US is the dumping margin, which when lower than the US price is to be offset by the imposition of an AD duty in that amount.

It is universally acknowledged that the final outcome in Chinese AD cases is primarily driven by surrogate value issues, which are often quite contentious. Over the last two AD review proceedings involving activated carbon, the DOC has selected Thailand as the surrogate country and attempted to value all inputs based on Thai surrogate values. However, there were several materials used in production as to which there was serious dispute regarding the best surrogate value data choice.

The GDLSK team worked tirelessly in Thailand and certain other countries to develop the best set of quality surrogate value data for all of the inputs on the one hand and the bases to reject those proposed by the US side on the other. Commerce ultimately accepted virtually all of the surrogate value data and arguments proposed by GDLSK and rejected several proposed by the US side, which resulted in DJAC's two successive AD review wins.

An ongoing debate continues to rage over whether China will be graduated from NME status on December 11, 2016, pursuant to Article 15 of China's WTO Accession Protocol. Nonetheless, there appear to be strong indications that the DOC will not abandon its NME methodology in Chinese AD proceedings in the foreseeable future. As a consequence, it is imperative that Chinese exporters implicated in AD proceedings focus a significant portion of their defense efforts on winning the "battle of the surrogates," and turn to experienced counsel to ensure success.

Dharmendra Choudhary is a Washington-based foreign trade counsel at the Grunfeld, Desiderio, Lebowitz, Silverman & Klestadt LLP.
Ramon A. Gutierrez discusses "Reies Tijerina, the Alianza, and the Apocalypse: The Biblical Sources of His Political Thought."

Ramon A. Gutierrez, University of Chicago Preston & Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of American History. will speak on:

"Reies Tijerina, the Alianza, and the Apocalypse: The Biblical Sources of His Political Thought" in NHCC's La Canoa Legacy Series. The series features presentations by Hispanic/Latino academic and community researchers with long-standing and distinguished records of research and teaching about New Mexico and the region. Like la canoareferring in New Mexican Spanish to several utilitarian objects used to receive and transport people and resources and thus provide a service to the communitythese talks are meant to serve the community by presenting new or overlooked information about our region to interested audiences. We want them to transport us to new understandings of our region and its rich cultural and historical inheritance, and to move the conversation back and forth in rich dialogue between presenters and audience members.

Library, History and Literary Arts Bldg.
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.
TAY NINH  The southern province of Tay Ninh aims to increase economic growth and farmers incomes by becoming a high-tech agricultural hub for the region, according to Tran Luu Quang, the provincial Party secretary.

Quang was quoted as saying on vnexpress.net that 70 per cent of the provinces residents made a living in the agricultural industry.

However, economic efficiency in the sector is low, he said.

Tay Ninh is calling for more investment in high-tech agriculture and it plans to give priority to land and strengthen connections with farmers, sciences and banks.

Lavifood, a company producing farm products from Long An Province, has signed a contract with Tay Ninhs farmers to grow 14,000ha of pipe apples.

Under the agreement, the company will buy all of the pipe apples and process them before export.

The firm also plans to work with scientists in teaching farmers how to choose seeds and plant pipe apples in the most effective way, said Director Pham Ngo Quoc Thang.

He said that harvested products would be processed at a plant in Long An Province and exported to the US, Japan and the EU. If it is successful, another plant would be set up in Tay Ninh Province.

Organic Life, which specialises in organic vegetables and fruit, will develop a project on an area of 94ha which will start in the last quarter of the year, said director Le Thanh.

His company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Japanese companies that were invited to visit the firms production model. Products grown in Tay Ninh will then be exported to Japan.

Tay Ninhs hot weather is suitable for growing spicy herbs and vegetables not planted in other provinces. If the model is a success, it will be expanded throughout the province.

Tay Ninh is currently negotiating with a supermarket chain in HCM City to distribute farming products. Markets and centres that collect products from farmers will be responsible for distributing products to buyers, according to Quang.

Along with providing clean vegetables for their own people in Tay Ninh, the province will supply vegetables to HCM City, Quang said.

Developing high-tech farming is expected to increase income from VN40 million (US$1,800) to VN100 million ($4,500) per hectare for each crop.  VNS
HCM CITY  inh La Thang, secretary of HCM Citys Party Committee, told a meeting of business leaders in Seoul late last week that the city would create more favourable conditions for South Korean investors in HCM City.

Speaking to representatives from 100 enterprises at the South KoreaViet Nam Business Forum, Thang said that South Korea was the citys fourth largest investor, but that huge potential between the two countries had yet to be fully realised.

Park Noh Wan, consul general of South Korea, told the business leaders that the country aimed to be the top foreign investor in HCM City.

During the forum, four Memoranda of Understanding were signed between HCM City and Korean enterprises in the fields of chemical industry, food processing, part supplying industry and infrastructure construction.

Thang said that Korean firms had shown a deep interest in Viet Nams investment climate and HCM City firms were determined to improve co-operation with South Korea.

HCM City is placing emphasis on continuing to be the countrys driving force and leading the southern regions development as well as the motivating force behind national strategic targets, Thang said.

Our ambition is to be a major hub for finance, commerce and science-technology in Southeast Asia, he added.

Kim In Shik, chairman of the Korea International Co-operation Agency, said the agency would enhance co-operation with Viet Nam, especially HCM City, and develop public private partnership (PPP) projects.

During the visit, Thang also met leaders of seven large South Korean groups, including CJ, Hyosung, GS, Lotte, Hanwha, E-mart and Samsung, who reported on their companies performance.

Investors from South Korea have topped the list of foreign investors in Viet Nam in the last two years.

The event was organised by the South Korean Consulate General, HCM Citys Department of Planning and Investment, Department of Foreign Affairs, HCM City Investment and Trade Promotion Centre, and the Korea Venture Business Association.

The forum was held under the framework of a week-long visit to South Korea by HCM Citys high-level delegation led by Thang from September 7-14.

South Korea was the largest foreign investor in Viet Nam in the first five months of the year, with a total of US$3.42 billion.  VNS
HA NOI  The State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) will continue to encourage the practice of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a solution to dealing with ailing credit institutions.

The solution is stated under the project of restructuring the credit institution system in the 2016-2020 period, urgently developed by the central bank.

According to the projects goals, by 2020, Viet Nams banking system must have at least 1-2 commercial banks with scale and capacity equivalent to large banks in the region to gradually meet the requirements of international economic integration.

Nguyen Van Hung, deputy chief inspector of the SBVs Inspection Agency, said M&A is a popular and effective solution to handle weak credit institutions and has many advantages compared with other measures.

In particular, with the support of the central bank, the process of M&A will not disrupt the operations of credit institutions, will continue to protect the rights and interests of shareholders and customers, and save costs, time and human resources.

In the 2011-2015 period, the number of banks decreased by 19 through the implementation of M&A, dissolution and by revoking licences. Of these, there were nine banks, two non-bank credit institutions and eight branches of foreign banks.

Currently, in the banking system, there are still 12 banks with charter capital of less than VN4 trillion (US$179.4 million). This source of capital is modest because in the context of fierce competition, banks need a strong financial capacity to boost lending activities and trade support as well as to invest in infrastructure such as information technology system and business-related services.

Therefore, in the near future, banks will have to continue restructuring so as to be able to develop sustainably. In case raising capital from existing shareholders is not feasible, banks will have to find potential M&A partners.

Nguyen Thuy Duong, deputy director of Ernst & Young Vietnams financial-banking services, told Tin Tuc (News) newspaper that with the increasing openness of the financial market, foreign financial institutions with abundant capital resources will seek to penetrate the market.

Meanwhile, the policy of the central bank is not to increase the number of banks. Therefore, it is quite possible that domestic small- and medium-sized banks will be acquired by foreign partners.

In addition, banks must divest capital in other banks to reduce the cross-ownership rate, Duong said.

At present, there are still a number of banks holding over 5 per cent of the shares of other banks or financial companies. For example, the Bank for Foreign Trade of Viet Nam currently holds 7 per cent stake of the Military Bank, 5.07 per cent stake of the Oriented Commercial Joint Stock Bank and 8 per cent of the Sai Gon Bank.

Viet Nam Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Industry and Trade holds 10.4 per cent stake of the Sai Gon-Cong Thuong Commercial Joint Stock Bank, while An Binh Bank owns 8.4 per cent stake in the EVN Financial Company.

However, according to SBVs Circular 36, commercial banks are only allowed to purchase and hold less than 5 per cent of voting shares of other banks.

Thus, banks which are holding more than 5 per cent will be required to divest to ensure compliance with the circulars regulation.

For this reason, it is expected that in the near future, the market will witness more cases of M&A among banks, Duong said.

Many banking insiders argued that to boost the practice of M&A, lifting the cap on foreign investors ownership is worth considering.

According to deputy chief inspector Hung, this issue needs a thorough study and an appropriate roadmap.

Hung said the limit of foreign investors ownership and shares owned by foreign strategic investors in Vietnamese credit institutions under the current regulations is suitable.

Specifically, a foreign strategic investor can own up to 20 per cent of the charter capital of a credit institution, while the total percentage of shares held by foreign investors is not allowed to exceed 30 per cent.

Hung added that the central bank was studying overall measures to report to the Prime Minister for consideration.

Economic expert Nguyen Tri Hieu said barriers to the restructuring of banks came from their internal resources. Strong banks are generally not interested in merging with smaller and less effective banks.

Even shareholders in these banks, especially strategic ones, are often opposed to the merger with ailing banks, unless theyre forced to do so.

Moreover, Viet Nam has yet to permit bank bankruptcy, thus it is difficult to reduce the number of banks.

Hieu said the number of banks is not a matter; the important thing is that banks must have good governance to be able to compete.  VNS
HA NOI  The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) will directly assess and supervise the development of the US$10.6 billion Hoa Sen Ca Na steel making complex in the south-central province of Ninh Thuan, an official said.

MoIT Heavy Industry Department Director Truong Thanh Hoai made the announcement after the public voiced concerns that the project, which will be built by Hoa Sen Group and produce about 16 million tonnes of products per year, may harm the environment.

Vietnamese citizens worried that the project near the sea could bring about damages similar to those caused by Taiwanese steel firm Formosa along the central coast, which resulted in massive fish death earlier this year.

The department said Ninh Thuan would have to ask for approval from Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc before implementing the project, and the Ministry of Planning and Investment would conduct a pre-feasiblity study of the scheme.

Viet Nam News reported late last month that construction of the project was expected to be done in five stages between 2017 and 2031. The first stage would begin operation in 2019, take up an area of 240ha and enable a capacity of 1.5 million tonnes per year.

Hoai said environmental issues at steel projects could be easily handled with current technologies. He also stressed the importance of investors conforming to investment regulations and State management agencies closely monitoring projects in their implementation process.

It is also necessary that the authorities co-operate more properly, while letting the public take part in project supervision, he said.

Currently, legal documents on the environment and construction and investment are relatively sufficient with tight regulations. We have also learnt many lessons from the case of Formosa as to assessing environmental impacts while operating steel projects," he said.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment will be the main monitor of environmental issues involved in Hoa Sen Ca Na, from basic design to conclusion, he added.

Hoa Sen Group leaders told the Vietnam News Agency that the company would try to minimise environmental impacts with various measures, including approaches that save materials and optimise production capacity.

Almost 97 per cent of Hoa Sen shareholders approved construction of the mammoth steel plant at a meeting held at their extraordinary meeting held earlier this month.

The company, based in the Song Than 2 Industrial Zone in southern Binh Duong Province, reportedly represents 40 per cent of the steel sheet market and 20 per cent of the steel pipe market in Viet Nam. It exports products to 65 countries and territories.

According to the department, Viet Nam has only been able to produce construction-grade steel and imports steel for manufacturing and support industries. The imported volumes amount to some 13 million tonnes every year, and annual trade deficits generated by the steel industry average around $7 billion.

A national scheme adopted in late 2014 for industry and trade restructuring, with vision looking toward 2030, targets the establishment of steel firms that can produce more than three million tonnes per year and can concentrate on developing products that are still domestically in short supplies.

Government directives stated that Viet Nam must have large steelmakers to ensure competitiveness and take advantage of iron-ore reserves amounting to billions of tonnes.

Viet Nam Steel Association Chairman Ho Nghia Dung has said Hoa Sen, alongside other major Vietnamese steel firms such as Hoa Phat and VnSteel, are capable enough to be responsible for large projects.

He suggested that the Government arrange suitable areas for domestic steel companies that prove capable to apply modern technologies that are environmentally-friendly in line with international standards.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam and Singapore have agreed to boost co-operation in defence and security, following discussions yesterday during the official visit to Viet Nam by Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister and Co-ordinating Minister for National Security, Teo Chee Hean.

Co-operation between military branches will be accelerated, as will co-ordination between the two sides in the fight against terrorism and pirates, people smuggling, hi-tech crime and money laundering, Vietnam News Agency reported.

In talks with his visiting Singaporean counterpart, Deputy PM Truong Hoa Binh was convinced that the visit would enhance the strategic partnership, established on September 11, 2013, between the two countries.

During their talks, the two leaders agreed that the economic relationship was a highlight in bilateral ties.

Deputy PM Binh applauded Singapore as Viet Nams leading trade and investment partner for many years. Singapore ranked third amongst 116 countries and territories investing into Viet Nam with bilateral trade reaching US$9.3 billion in 2015.

Delighted to attend the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Viet Nam-Singapore Industrial Park (IP), Deputy PM Hean said the success and expansion of Viet Nam-Singapore IPs throughout the north, centre and south of Viet Nam demonstrated fruitful co-operation between the two countries and Singaporean investors belief in the potential of the host country.

The two sides agreed to closely co-ordinate to take full advantage of benefits brought about by the Trans-Pacific Partnership when it comes into effect.

Deputy PMs Binh and Hean also agreed to intensify co-operation in justice, legislation, education, culture and tourism.

Besides bilateral ties, the leaders discussed regional and international issues, agreeing that Viet Nam and Singapore would support each other in regional and international platforms.

They agreed to promote solidarity and maintain the central role of ASEAN in the regional security structure; affirming ASEANs role in resolving disputes in the region; highlighting the importance of maintaining peace, stability, security and safety in the South China Sea (Viet Nam called East Sea); agreed to address South China Sea disputes through peaceful measures; co-ordinate with parties to implement the Declaration on Conduct for the East Sea and to soon reach a Code of Conduct.

President Tran ai Quang hosted a reception for Deputy PM Hean yesterday, suggesting the guest promote collaboration in training, support the prevention of terrorism risks, and cyber, organised, and trans-national crimes to ensure security in the respective countries.

The President also proposed the two sides implement new economic deals signed during his visit to Singapore, including one between the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) and the Government Investment Corporation of Singapore (GIC) and another between the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and Singapore Business Federation (SBF).

He expressed pleasure at the development of Vietnam-Singapore IP over the past 20 years. He said he hopes Singaporean enterprises will invest in Vietnam via venture capital funds while sharing information and experience to link Vietnamese firms with the global market.

Deputy PM Hean showed his delight at the thriving partnership between Viet Nam and Singapore, especially in trade and investment.

The most important factor for foreign investors, including those from Singapore, in the Vietnamese market is the countrys measures to improve its investment climate, he said.

Singaporean investors are interested in hi-tech development projects in Viet Nam, especially in high added value and highly-applicable industrial sectors, he added.

Regarding cyber security, Deputy PM Hean said Singapore has invited Viet Nams Ministry of Public Security to participate in the Asian conference in October to discuss challenges in the field with ASEAN ministers and extra-bloc partners.

Holding a reception for Deputy PM Hean during his three-day visit until tomorrow, National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan said the mutual attachment and trust between the leadership, government and people have further strengthened the partnership.

She hoped that Singapore would continue supporting Viet Nam as the host of APEC 2017.

Singaporean Deputy PM Hean asserted that the effective co-operation between the two countries in economics, education, defence and security has brought about benefits for both Singapore and Viet Nam.

Hean said since the first Vietnam-Singapore IP in the southern Binh Duong Province opened, there have been an additional six opened across Viet Nam, five of which accommodate 600 companies from across the world, employing 170,000 Vietnamese labourers.

Lauding Viet Nam as one of the TPP member countries, Deputy PM Hean said that the agreement would help Viet Nam gain advantages in drawing investment.

He said, apart from exchange of high-ranking officials, the two parliaments should soon establish a Group of Friendship Parliamentarians in each country to accelerate experience exchanges in legislation.

During the reception, some members of the Singapore Parliament said the new Investment Law, which took effect in 2015, specified new regulations, prompting more Singaporean investors to do business in Viet Nam.  VNS
President Tran ai Quang receives a delegation of Japans Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren) in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Nhan Sang

HA NOI  President Tran ai Quang said yesterday he supports the Viet Nam-Kansai economic dialogue mechanism, which will help Viet Nams authorised bodies to promptly remove investment obstacles and bolster bilateral economic links with Japan.

The President met yesterday with a delegation of Japans Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren), which organised the economic dialogue together with the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment.

Talking to Kankeiren Chairman Shosuke Mori, President Quang hoped that advanced technologies which are the strength of Kansai businesses will greatly help his country better its infrastructure and develop support industries, while protecting the environment.

Kansai, a southern-central region of Japans main island Honshu,. is among the top Japanese investors in the Southeast Asian nation with a number of big projects, he noted.

Shosuke Mori said his 1,300-company federation looks to enhance economic ties between Kansai and Viet Nam and seek business opportunities, especially when the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement takes effect in the near future.

Also yesterday, during a reception in Ha Noi, President Quang suggested the Governor of Japans Aichi prefecture Hideaki Omura encourage businesses to invest in Viet Nam, especially in the processing industry and agriculture.

As an economic and industrial hub of the central region, with a gross domestic product of nearly US$350 billion, Aichi holds great potential for reinforcing ties with Viet Nam, particularly in fields of its strength such as automobiles, support industries, agriculture and reception of Vietnamese graduates, Quang said.

Omura, for his part, informed the host of the outcomes of his working session with the transport ministry, saying that the opening of direct flights connecting Aichi and Ha Noi and HCM City will facilitate exchange and travel between Japans central region and Viet Nam.

The guest expressed his hope for further support from the State to expand ties with Viet Nam, thereby boosting the Viet Nam-Japan extensive strategic partnership for peace and prosperity in Asia.

The Governor was also received by Deputy PM Truong Hoa Binh.  VNS
BEIJING  Viet Nam and China have reached a consensus on further promoting their comprehensive strategic co-operative partnership.

The consensus was reached during talks between Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing yesterday.

Accordingly, both sides agreed to maintain their bilateral friendship and mutual respect, increase strategic exchanges, reinforce political trust and deepen mutually-beneficial cooperation by controlling and settling remaining differences and arising issues satisfactorily, for the practical benefits of their people and peace, stability and development in the region and the world.

PM Phuc asserted that Viet Nam consistently pursues a foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, co-operation and development, diversification and multilateralisation of relations. It gives priority to ties with neighbouring and major countries, integrates into the global economy, and joins regional and global co-operation mechanisms, particularly ASEAN and the United Nations.

Maintaining the traditional friendship with China and the stable, healthy and sustainable development of the bilateral strategic partnership is a consistent policy, a strategic choice and top priority in the diplomatic policy of the Vietnamese Party and State, he said.

The PM proposed facilitating high-level visits and exchanges between Parties, legislatures, trade unions and people, extending partnerships across the fields of national defence-security, diplomacy and co-ordination at multilateral forums while encouraging collaboration between localities, enhancing border management on the mainland, and controlling disputes at sea to maintain maritime peace and stability.

The guest invited Party Secretary General and President Xi Jinping to visit Viet Nam and attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) meeting to be held in the country next year.

PM Phuc raised problems in some economic-trade co-operation aspects between the two countries. He stressed that both sides need to urge their agencies and businesses to remove hindrances so as to boost economic and investment in a balanced and sustainable manner.

He asked China to co-operate in implementing practical measures to gradually balance bilateral trade. It should continue importing goods that Viet Nam has advantages in, especially agro-forestry-fishery products, and soon license Viet Nams export of its meat, dairy and processed juice products to China.

He asked China to increase investment in Viet Nam, particularly in hi-tech agriculture, machinery production, support industries, and renewable energy. It should expeditiously implement the additional loan worth US$250 million for the Cat Linh-Ha ong urban railway project in Ha Noi, while ensuring the projects progress and quality to put the facility into operation as scheduled.

China should also soon complete the planning of a standard gauge railway project linking Lao Cai, Ha Noi and Hai Phong. He also suggested the country consider the signing of an agreement on financial management of the two countries infrastructure investment projects using preferential credit so as to ensure the effectiveness and capital disbursement for those projects.

The Vietnamese Government leader affirmed that his country will actively promote projects connecting the framework of the two corridors, one belt with the appropriate contents in the one corridor, one road initiative on the basis of ensuring feasibility and suitability with both sides demand.

He asked the two sides to continue intensifying co-operation in regulating the released water volume in the upper Mekong River in the dry season, soon discuss the continued use of the hotline on unexpected fishery incidents arising at sea, and coordinate in properly dealing with these issues.

The two neighbours need to increase experience sharing in environmental protection and climate change response, while effectively carrying out agreements reached at the ninth meeting of the China-Viet Nam joint science-technology committee, he added.

They should also expeditiously discuss the signing of a new railway transport agreement, facilitate aviation co-operation, and create equality for each others goods and passenger transport vehicles to enter the other countrys territory. Additionally, they need to realise the tourism co-operation plan for the 2016-18 period, improve tourism services, and ensure order and safety for travel activities, the Vietnamese PM said.

In terms of sea-related issues, he underlined Viet Nams consistent viewpoint of persistently resolving East Sea disputes by peaceful measures in line with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and respect diplomatic and legal processes.

In the face of recent complex developments at sea, he said both sides must seriously comply with the agreements and common perceptions reached by the two countries leaders, including the agreement on basic principles guiding the settlement of sea-related issues.

They need to respect each others legitimate interests which are in accordance with the UNCLOS, control sea-related disagreements, and avoid actions that could complicate or expand disputes. It is necessary to promote negotiation mechanisms so as to soon attain substantive progress, satisfactorily address fishery-related issues, and continue fostering cooperation in search and rescue.

They should also join hands with ASEAN countries to comprehensively and effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), as well as build and finalise a code of conduct in the waters (COC) in 2017 on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the DOC signing, the PM added.

For his part, the Chinese Premier said the visit, the first by a Vietnamese leader after the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) held in January this year and the election of new deputies to the National Assembly, is of great significance to promote relations between the two Parties and States in the coming time.

He confirmed China attaches much importance to developing rapport with Viet Nam and persistently follows the motto of friendly neighbourliness and comprehensive cooperation with a long-term stability with Viet Nam.

He said China does not mean to run a trade surplus with Viet Nam and is willing to promote the balance of bilateral trade, seek measures to address the existing problems and encourage Chinese businesses to increase trade ties with Viet Nam and expand investment in the country.

China will also work with Viet Nam to control effectively maritime disputes and maintain the general relations between the two countries as well as peace and stability in the East Sea, he affirmed.

After their talks, the two PMs witnessed the signing of co-operation agreements, including the agreement to extend the supplementation to the five-year plan for Viet NamChina economic-trade co-operation in 2017-21; the economic and technical co-operation agreement on the provision of refundable aid packages; and the framework agreement on the additional loan of $250.62 million for the Cat Linh - Ha ong urban railway.

Others include the agreement on production capacity cooperation projects; the revised border trade agreement; the Memorandum of Understanding on building infrastructure in 2016-20; the agreement on collaboration between the two ministries of education in 2016-21; and the Memorandum of Understanding on presenting equipment to support climate change adaptation, worth 20 million yuan or $3 million.  VNS
BEIJING  Viet Nam pursues a consistent policy of attaching special importance to its friendship with China and giving it a top priority in the countrys foreign policy, affirmed Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

PM Phuc made the confirmation at his meeting with Chinese Party General Secretary and President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday during his official visit to China.

Viet Nam and China are embarking on an important phase of the renewal and open-door process so ensuring a peaceful, stable and cooperative environment for national construction and development are their common interests, according to the Prime Minister.

Fostering the time-honoured friendship and developing the relations in a stable, healthy and sustainable manner is crucial for the respective countries national construction and development and beneficial to peace, stability and development in the region and the world at large, he added, mentioning to the responsibility of generations of Party and State leaders in the work.

The Vietnamese leader also proposed several major orientations to further tighten the relations between the two Parties and countries, stressing the extreme importance of strengthening political trust and boosting results-oriented cooperation.

He asked both sides to soundly manage disputes at sea, comply with agreements and common perceptions of their high-level leaders, effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea and soon sign a Code of Conduct in the East Sea, in order to help stabilise the situation and contribute to peace, cooperation and development in the region.

Regarding economic and trade ties, PM Phuc confirmed that Viet Nam treasures its mutually beneficial cooperation with China and welcomes Chinese investors in fields meeting respective development requirements.

He requested the two countries ministries and agencies settle difficulties to develop the bilateral economic and trade relations effectively and sustainably.

For his part, Chinese Party General Secretary and President Xi said PM Phucs visit was significant for the consolidation and enhancement of the friendly neighbourliness and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries.

He expressed his belief that Vietnam would gain greater achievements in the process of reform and nation building.

He affirmed the importance that the Party, Government and people of China always attach to developing relations with Viet Nam, adding that China stood ready to work together with the country to grasp the development trend of the bilateral ties, maintain visits and high-level meetings, and step up pragmatic cooperation across fields as well as people-to-people exchanges.

At the same time, China would join hands with Viet Nam to manage their differences and satisfactorily solve disputes, thus deepening the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership in a stable and sustainable fashion, he said.

China also attaches importance to boosting mutually beneficial collaboration with Viet Nam. He suggested the two sides carry forward the role played by the China-Vietnam Steering Committee on Bilateral Co-operation in coordinating and forging the affiliation.

It is necessary for the two sides to ramp up their connectivity in the development strategy within the frameworks of the One Belt, One Road and Two Corridors, One Economic Belt, according to Xi.

They should beef up collaboration in production and tourism, soon build joint border economic zones and hasten the implementation of key cooperation projects.

The host promised that China would encourage businesses having high capacity and using high technology to invest in Vietnam, and would actively partner with the country in addressing problems hindering bilateral economic and trade ties.

As part of his official visit to China on the same day, PM Phuc met with Wang Jiarui, Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference.

He called on the Chinese official to make more contributions to consolidating and enhancing the time-honoured friendship between social organisations and people of the two countries, helping push forward the bilateral comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

The same day, he had a meeting with the staff of the Vietnamese Embassy in China and representatives of the Vietnamese community in Beijing.

Experts help

Earlier yesterday, PM Phuc met with families of former Chinese experts who lent Viet Nam a hand during past resistance wars.

The PM said he was touched by meeting the former experts and their relatives who have greatly contributed to the two countries friendship, solidarity and cooperation.

He described the former experts and their relatives contribution and sentiment to his country as a vivid demonstration of the time-honoured and strong friendship between Viet Nam and China.

The Party and State of Viet Nam always keep in mind their devotion to the nations amity and solidarity, he said, voicing his hope that their sincere sentiment will be upheld and developed by younger generations, thereby intensifying bilateral relations.

On behalf of the Chinese side, Zhang Dewei, formerly Chinese Ambassador to Viet Nam, recalled the time he and his Vietnamese comrades weathered difficulties during the resistance wars against invaders. He said he considered Viet Nam his second homeland.

Talking about the life and career of Viet Nams late President Ho Chi Minh, he noted that the Viet Nam-China friendship had been nurtured by Presidents Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong and following leaders of the countries. It is a precious asset shared by the two Parties, States and peoples, and it would need to be treasured and promoted by future generations.

At the meeting, representatives of former experts families also recollected the two peoples close connections throughout history, and promised they would continue educating their descendants about the priceless amity between the Chinese and Vietnamese Parties, States and peoples.

Meeting with banking, corporate executives

On the same day, Prime Minister Phuc affirmed that the Vietnamese government was striving to improve the business climate and offer all possible support to firms during meetings with Chinese banking and corporate executives in Beijing.

At a reception for the President of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) Yi Huiman, the PM made it clear that Viet Nam welcomes prestigious banks with high liquidity operating in Viet Nam, including the ICBC.

In this spirit, he asked the ICBC to work with the State Bank of Viet Nam to devise effective and practical methods of cooperation.

Yi, for his part, spoke highly of Viet Nams socio-economic achievements, especially in the field of finance-banking.

As one of the five Chinese banks operating in Viet Nam, the ICBC is funding a number of key socio-economic projects in Viet Nam and 80 percent of its staff there are Vietnamese, according to Yi.

He affirmed that the ICBC wanted to contribute more to Viet Nams industrialisation, modernisation and infrastructure upgrade.

Meeting the President of the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) Zhou Mubing, the Government leader lauded the ABC for its trans-border payment service over the past years, contributing to boosting Viet Nam-China economic and trade ties.

He told his host that the State Bank of Viet Nam would consider ABCs proposal to open a branch in the country.

Zhou described Viet Nam as Chinas largest trade partner in ASEAN, adding that the ABC has joined a number of projects to elevate bilateral economic and trade ties.

He hoped that the Vietnamese government would facilitate ABCs credit activities in Viet Nam in the near future.

During a meeting with the Asia Director of Zhongxing Corporation Fan Hu and Vice President of Huawei Corporation Wanghui, the PM asked the two leading Chinese telecommunications firms to forge closer ties with Vietnamese partners.

He said he supported their proposal to collaborate with Vietnamese localities to build smart cities and transport systems in Viet Nam.

The executives expressed their wish for continued support from the PM, ministries and local authorities to do business with Vietnamese partners in the mutually-beneficial spirit, for the sake of the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries.

Railway project

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc met with Ma Jiangqian, the general director of the Chinese company China Railway Sixth Group Co. Ltd, in which he asked the contractor of Ha Nois Cat Linh-Ha ong railway project to promptly address existing problems to ensure the projects scheduled progress.

The executive said the company would strive to launch a trial run of the railway in July 2017, and start official operation two months later.

The PM said a big and prestigious State-owned enterprise like China Railway Sixth Group Co. Ltd. should be aware of its responsibility and act immediately to deal with project delays.

The slow construction had seriously affected daily activities and traffic in Ha Noi, and caused dissatisfaction among the public, he said, noting that some accidents occured during the project implementation, killing several people.

The Vietnamese PM told the Chinese company to coordinate with its Vietnamese partners to ensure absolute construction safety. He also promised to convey the firms proposals to relevant ministries and Ha Noi authorities for consideration.

Ma Jiangqian reported to the PM the difficulties relating to the Cat Linh-Ha ong railway project. He submitted proposals and vowed to complete the basic construction work by the end of December 2016.

Also yesterday, PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc received Zhao Hongjing, Deputy General Director of Huaxia Xingfu Co. Ltd  a business with infrastructure-related activities.

He applauded the cooperation between Huaxia Xingfu and Vietnamese localities, expressing hope that the firm will make effective investments in Viet Nam.

The company provides comprehensive solutions for socio-economic development through public-private partnerships in infrastructure, industrial parks and high-speed rail.

Zhao hailed Viet Nams potential and development prospects and expressed his desire to boost investment in the country.  VNS
AK LAK  Experts from Animals Asias Viet Nam Bear Rescue Centre (VBRC) in Tam ao National Park rescued an Asian black bear and two monkeys from Buon Ma Thuot City in the central highlands province of ak Lak yesterday.

The male bear, weighing 60kg, had been held in a private home since 2007. He was sent to VBRC in Tam ao town of northern Vinh Phuc Province. The two monkeys (Macara Assamensis and Macara Acrtoides) will be freed into the Chu Yang Sin National Park in the central highlands province.

The Asian black bear is a vulnerable species, according to the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Animals Asia said some 150 bears rescued from households are living at the Bear Rescue Centre in Tam ao National Park.

Last month, Animals Asia also rescued an Asian black bear from a farm in Lam ong Province.

Over 1,200 bears have been taken in recent years from farms or households, where many are bred for milking their bile, for performances or as pets.  VNS
HCM CITY  HCM City is experiencing an ongoing shortage of blood for transfusions due to a lack of donors.

Nguyen Thi Kim Thuy, deputy chairwoman of the Viet Nam Red Cross in HCM Citys Go Vap District, is urging companies with a large number of workers to schedule voluntary blood donation programmes.

Speaking at a workshop late last week to review voluntary blood donation activities this year, she said: It took many years to make them agree. They are afraid the donation could affect their manufacturing.

So, to date, only a few companies have agreed. We have to pay attention to how to arrange things to ensure the workers work after donating blood.

That is one reason why she and her colleagues do not encourage workers to donate more than 250 millilitres of blood at a time.

The workers helped her district exceed the target set by the citys Humanitarian Blood Donation Centre, she said.

Nearly 7,000 people donated blood while the target for the first eight months was 6,100, she added.

Unlike Go Vap District, many other districts such as 6, Tan Phu and Binh Tan, have not achieved their target this year.

Dr Tran Thi Nhu To, head of the centre, said only 11,000 people have registered this month for blood donations at the centre, well below the targeted 16,000 donors for the Blood Transfusion and Hematology Hospital.

To added that since May, the centre has not been able to supply enough blood to the hospital.

According to the hospital, it faced a shortfall of 3,000 units in May and the shortage is continuing, she said.

To said the centre would focus on encouraging companies in the city to carry out blood donation programmes.

Le Quoc Chinh of the Binh Chanh Districts Red Cross in HCM City said it encourages members of the public to donate blood, but the centre lacks vehicles to transport donated blood, as well as doctors and nurses to manage blood donation programmes.

The centre should ask the city to buy more vehicles and should send enough doctors and nurses to collect blood, he said.

The centre said it plans to start courses to train its staff in blood donation programmes and first aid.

Last week it launched a website, www.hienmaunhandao.org.vn, to propagate life-saving humanitarian blood donations and publicise the benefits donors stand to get.

It hopes the website will put paid to illegal sales of blood. VNS
QUANG TRI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has asked central Quang Tri Provinces authorities to continue investigating the deforestation of a protected forest in Vinh Linh District and strictly penalise the violators.

Last month, the provincial agricultural sector confirmed deforestation was taking place after the local police investigated the case, following a series of articles published by the Lao ong (Labour) newspaper on August 3 and 4.

According to the Lao ong newspaper, ignoring Prime Minister Phucs order to close all natural forests in the country from June 20, poachers illegally chopped and transported trees from the protective forest in Vinh Linh District. Local forest wardens allegedly assisted the culprits.

The police discovered that trees had been cut down in the Vinh O and Vinh Ha communes. In Vinh O Commune, the police seized nearly 8cu.m. of timber of groups V and VI, used to make furniture or in construction.

In Vinh Ha Commune, the police caught two suspects in the act, illegally chopping 21 trees.

The deforested areas, located some 10-15km away from the residential areas, are under the management of Vinh Linh Districts forest management, Ben Hai River Basins protective forest management board and Quyet Thang Farm.

Poor management was blamed for deforestation in the two communes, the police said.

Vo Van Hung, director of the provincial Agriculture and Rural Development Department, asked the police to identify the culprits and the wrongdoers in the management agencies so that they could be strictly disciplined.

Hung told forest rangers to intensify patrolling and spread awareness among locals against destroying forests in an attempt to bring the situation under control soon.

PM Phuc also told the Peoples Committee of Quang Tri Province to strictly punish organisations and individuals involved in the incident in line with the current regulations and implement measures to prevent a reccurrence of such incidents.

Last month, right after the Lao ong newspaper published the articles, PM Phuc ordered the provincial Peoples Committee to quickly investigate the incident and report to the government.  VNS
HA NOI -- The Viet Nam Railway Corporation (VNR) will sell train tickets from October 1 for the upcoming Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday.

Passengers can book tickets online at www.dsvn.vn, vietnamrailway.vn and vetau.com.vn or at local train stations.

Passengers are not allowed to buy more than four online one-way tickets at a time, the Tien phong (Vanguard) newspaper reported.

Between September 25 and September 30, some 20 per cent of the tickets will be sold to passengers travelling in groups.

VNR announced it would run the trains from January 17 to February 12, 2017, to serve passengers during the Tet holiday.

To enhance transport capacity and demand according to the actual requirement, the railway sector has also prepared stand-by plans to serve passengers.

Beds on the first floor of the four bed-sleeper cabin can be converted to meet the high demand on peak days.  VNS
QUANG NAM  A dam at Song Bung 2 Hydroelectric Plant in the central province of Quang Nam broke yesterday afternoon, sweeping away two workers, said deputy chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee, Phan Viet Cuong.

Cuong said the province had mobilised search and rescue forces to look for the missing workers right after the incident.

A Lang Mai, chairman of the Peoples Committee in Nam Giang District where the power plant is located, told the media yesterday evening that he had not received information about loss of life or property damage. He said he and other district leaders were going to the scene of the accident, which is 80km away from the districts centre.

In the meantime, the districts authority bans local residents from going to the scene, he told the online newspaper zing.vn
For the second year in a row, USA Today has ranked Virginia Tech as the nations best for studying natural resources and conservation.

This ranking raises awareness of the quality of our academic programs in the college and helps us benchmark our programs in a national context, said Paul Winistorfer, dean of Virginia Techs College of Natural Resources and Environment. Our faculty are the foundation of all we do, and I am immensely proud of this ranking and the spotlight it shines on our faculty and staff.

Last year was the first time that natural resources programs were ranked. Ranking organizations traditionally focus on areas of study with the highest numbers of programs.

According to USA Today, natural resources and conservation programs have become critical to solving many of the worlds pressing issues today so the publication started evaluating the nearly 50 comprehensive natural resources programs in colleges across America.

The rankings show Virginia Tech has the best overall program in the nation in both natural resources and conservation. Forestry also ranks No. 1. Long a world leader in research and teaching, the forestry department ranked eighth in research dollars among all academic departments at Virginia Tech for the past year.

The natural resources and conservation component includes the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, which was fifth in total research dollars awarded for the past year. Total research dollars awarded for the college in 2015-16 were a record-breaking $21.5 million.

Two of the top 10 academic departments for total research award dollars are in our college, Winistorfer explained. Our research program provides excellent opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to be engaged in our discovery mission.

The rankings study pointed out, Natural resources and conservation are hot topics in our society. Many are concerned about the worlds quickly depleting resources, whether it is oil, forests, or endangered species.

From our strong and deep traditional disciplinary anchors, we have willingly embraced the future needs of society and our students through the development of new degree programs and majors in the college, Winistorfer said. This No. 1 ranking makes it legitimate for us to aspire to an even greater impact on our students and the world.

The college led the way in developing an undergraduate degree in water, the first of its kind in North America. Water is one of the worlds most challenging issues, and the new water major cuts across four other Virginia Tech colleges and 13 departments to address the complex problems in an interdisciplinary way. Every angle is looked at, from water science to law, economics, management, and the social sciences.

The colleges new degree in packaging systems and design was one of the fastest-growing new majors on campus in the last year. Graduates find many opportunities in the global packaging sector, which is believed to be the third largest sector on the planet.

We strive to develop students so that they have depth of knowledge in an area of study, complemented by a breadth in collaborating across disciplines to problem solve with a commitment to service, Winistorfer stated. Our students come to us expecting excellence and a mentoring atmosphere so they can go out into careers making a difference. Im thrilled each and every day that we are delivering on our promise to offer the best educational experience in the nation.
Virginia Tech ranks among the nations best universities, according to U.S. News & World Reports Americas Best Colleges 2017.

The annual rankings evaluate schools overall academic performance, as well as how they fare when it comes to specific programs of study and academic offerings.

Overall, Virginia Tech ranks No. 27 among public institutions and No. 74 among all national universities, tying with American University, Clark University, Texas A&M University, and University of Massachusetts  Amherst.

The university was also recognized on the list of schools with Academic Programs to Look For, noted for Internships/Co-Ops. Virginia Tech was also dubbed as one of the newsmagazines A+ Schools for B Students, meaning spirit and hard work are prized among applicants as a way to attract a broad and engaged student body.

We offer an excellent education for all students, including those who are first in their family to attend college and those whose academic achievement may mature in college, said Thanassis Rikakis, executive vice president and provost. The way we do that is to provide an education that is both deep and broad, includes opportunities to learn by doing, and is infused with a spirit of service. Our new Pathways program will assure that students have a vibrant, flexible general education experience and integrate their learning over their entire lifetime.

Virginia Techs commitment to learning by doing is reflected in being named to a list of schools that require or encourage students to apply what they are learning in the classroom to work in the real world.

All students are encouraged to seek career-related real world experience whether through internships, cooperative education programs, undergraduate research, or field studies. Career and Professional Development has advisors to guide students through the process.

In addition to its overall rankings, two of Virginia Techs colleges were recognized as standouts in their fields.

The College of Engineering ranks No. 16 among undergraduate engineering schools where the highest degree is a doctorate. The college was also highlighted as having one of the best industrial/manufacturing programs. The Pamplin College of Business ranked No. 43 in a listing of top undergraduate business programs.

The individual college rankings released by U.S. News & World Report are based on peer assessment surveys of deans and senior faculty at accredited business and engineering schools. Overall university rankings, which have been published annually since 1983, are compiled based on a number of criteria, including peer assessment, retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rates, and alumni giving.

For more details on the rankings, including how Virginia Tech ranked in other areas, visit U.S. News & World Report's website.



Related links:

Written by Annie McCallum


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.

Victorian Liberals announce free school lunch policy 03:20 Social advocates have welcomed the Victorian Liberals' policy to provide free lunch to millions of government school children across the state....

Regional university students and apprentices will be able to access $250 travel voucher 00:52 Regional university students and apprentices across New South Wales will be able to access a new $250 travel voucher which can be used for fuel,...

Our gas: Andrews makes national energy demand Victorias Premier has proposed solving the east coast's gas problems by creating a nationwide scheme similar to one already successful in the country's West.
CEDAR FALLS  A former University of Northern Iowa professor has had his license to practice psychology reinstated early.

The Iowa Board of Psychology in May 2015 suspended John E. Williams license for two years following allegations of habitual intoxication and making sexist and racist comments. Williams had agreed with the suspension, which allowed for a review after one year.

On Sept. 1, the board and Williams entered an agreement to lift the suspension.

Williams will remain on probation for two years. He will be barred from using alcohol and illicit drugs and will be subject to chemical screening, according to the boards order.

Williams had been a tenured psychology professor at UNI from 2002 until 2013. Accusations had included allegations of inappropriate touching and emails and the display of a twerking video in class, according to board records.
CEDAR RAPIDS -- The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation is looking into an officer involved shooting at an apartment complex on Edgewood Road NW Monday night.

Police were called to Valley High Apartments at 1735 Edgewood Road Northwest at 9:30 p.m. for a domestic disturbance.

Medical staff pronounced a 25-year-old male suspect dead at St. Luke's Hospital later Monday night.

The Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner in Ankeny is conducting an autopsy.

Cedar Rapids policesaid both officers will be put on administrative leave pending the investigation by DCI as per policy of the department.

At this time, police are not releasing the name of the suspect or the names of the officers involved.
WATERLOO -- Central Middle School sixth-graders returned from the media center with a book Monday, but not the sort they're used to checking out.

Chromebook computers are being issued to Central's newest students, part of a pilot program getting underway this fall. Sixth-graders at all four Waterloo Community Schools' middle schools are receiving the devices in the district's first one-to-one computer initiative.

"This week Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we're in the process of handing out 199 Chromebooks," said Central Principal Alissa Richards, five to 10 students at time. "We want to make sure the librarian has the opportunity to stress to the kids some of the rules and expectations."

Students will be able to use the computers in class and take them home to do school work. At the end of the year, they get returned to the school.

Sierra Moore was among five sixth-graders sent to the media center for their Chromebooks on Monday morning. "I'm excited, because when I do my homework my mom usually has to help me," she said. Now Moore expects to largely look online for those answers.

"I don't have to worry about spelling," noted Gabe Nordman. "I can just look up words on the Chromebook."

Laelanye Outlaw added the computer will make it easier to keep track of assignments that in the past have been completed on paper.

The students met with teacher-librarian Micki Hartwig, who gave each a computer and carrying case. Their names are written on a label on the computer and piece of duct tape stuck to their case they chose from rolls with multiple colors and patterns. "Nothing permanent can go on your bag or your computer," said Hartwig, since the Chromebooks will be returned to the school.

"I think it can take them in a lot more places to extend their learning," said literacy teacher Becky Mohorne, noting homework assignments couldn't be given in the past that would require a computer. Indicating the five students, she added, "These all luckily do, but the majority of our students don't have computers at home."

Teachers had already started working with students on the school's existing Chromebooks to make sure they could operate them and understood how to use various online tools needed in the classroom. Richards noted they were already seeing improvements in teacher feedback on writing assignments through Google documents and students taking more active roles in researching answers to their questions rather than relying on the teacher.

"Teachers are doing a phenomenal job of talking about appropriateness and what they should and shouldn't be doing," she added, noting district filters will block social media applications like Facebook. "We want to keep the focus on what the purpose of the Chromebooks are, and that's learning."

In May, the Board of Education approved the purchase of 900 Chromebooks for district sixth-graders at a cost of $193 each and a similar number of cases for $14 each as part of regular technology upgrades. Typically, the district maintains a ratio of three computers for every one student, but the change was made due to middle school teachers' concern about student access to technology and the pricing available for the Chromebooks.

A number of school systems in the region already have broader one-to-one computer initiatives in place, including Cedar Falls Community Schools and Cedar Valley Catholic Schools. Waterloo is the area's largest school district and has the potential to distribute more computers to students than the others if the effort is eventually expanded.

Matt O'Brien, the district's executive director of technology, said Bunger Middle School and George Washington Carver Academy distributed their Chromebooks last week. Hoover Middle School is also in the midst of its distribution.

He said an agreement with the district that had to be turned in by each family is one reason that "we didn't want to hand them out on Day 1." Hartwig said Central had received 112 of the agreements back so far, just over half.

"It was a sheet that you had to sign and your parents had to sign," said Halli Poock, another one of the Central sixth-graders. "It was like just saying you wouldn't break it."

If a Chromebook is damaged, lost or stolen, families are responsible for the cost. However, they can spend $25 to insure the computer. "The insurance, it takes the price down but you still have to cover it," said Poock.

For families that don't have access to the internet, the district has publicized low-cost services available. It also received a donation of 250 lines of service for four years from Sprint this summer to help with the initiative, a $480,000 value.

The district only needed to purchase the hot spot devices to access it, at an estimated one-time cost of $36,000. Families who receive free and reduced-price lunches are eligible to apply for the hot spots.

Hartwig sees nothing but benefits for the students receiving the Chromebooks.

"I would say the only negative on this is that seventh- and eighth-graders aren't getting them," she said. "So, I've been dealing with quite a few whiners."
WATERLOO  Actress Dana Delany, fresh off a starring role in TV drama China Beach, met now-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton while the pair campaigned for Bill Clintons presidential bid in 1992.

In introducing the then-potential first lady, Delany would say, This is the woman I want to be when I grow up.

Though separated by a little over eight years in age, Delany saw in Hillary Clinton a woman she thought could someday run for president, someone who could speak intelligently on any subject without notes and with a sense of humor and humanity.

I still feel that way, and now 24 years later, shes running, Delany said to a crowd of about two dozen in Waterloo on Monday. I am glad that its now, that its happening right now, because I dont think the country was ready then, and I think shes better than ever now.

Delany, who also had a role in Desperate Housewives, made her first trip to Iowa to campaign on behalf of Hillary Clintons bid for presidency.

Though it was organized as a women win event, Delany didnt focus much on why Clinton is good for women but rather on why Clinton is the most qualified candidate. Delany didnt mention the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, but she said she was inspired to call the Clinton campaign and get involved after feeling ill at the rhetoric from the Republican National Convention.

That offer to get involved brought her to Iowa on Monday, where she also made stops in Mason City and Cedar Rapids.

Delany said shes not worried Clinton will lose in the actress home states of New York and California, but she said people there are watching what happens in Iowa. Clinton has been locked in a dead heat with Trump in Iowa, where a poll Monday showed him edging her by 1 percentage point.

After hearing local field organizers stress the importance of voting for Democrats throughout the ticket, Delany also encouraged Iowans to vote out longtime U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, particularly for his role in preventing a vote on the Supreme Court nominee as Senate Judiciary chairman.

That affects me, and all of us personally, but as a woman, that really affects me, Delany said, referring to abortion rights.

Grassley is facing a general election challenge from Democrat Patty Judge.
DES MOINES  More agricultural and business organizations are joining the call for a state sales tax increase to fund water-quality, conservation and outdoor recreation programs.

Iowas Water and Land Legacy, a group that advocates for financing the states empty Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund, held a news conference Monday near the Raccoon River in Des Moines to say support for the groups cause is growing.

Were adding a lot more businesses to the coalition, said Jan Glendening, a coalition co-chair and state director of The Nature Conservancy. This has been broadening year after year after year, and we intend to keep broadening it.

The coalition includes organizations representing conservation, hunting, agriculture and recreation, among others.

In 2010, Iowa voters approved the creation of the outdoor trust fund. But state lawmakers and the governor have not enacted a sales tax increase of three-eighths of 1 cent in order to deliver money to the trust fund, so it has remained empty since its creation.

The movement to increase the sales tax and finance the trust fund has grown in recent years as Iowa has encountered water-quality issues.

The federal government has ordered the state to remove from its waterways harmful pollutants that are flowing into the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, where marine life in large areas in the gulf is dying because of a lack of oxygen in the water. The state developed a strategy to clean its waters, but the report calls for $4 billion in funding.

Also, a Des Moines water utility has filed a lawsuit against several northwest Iowa counties over agricultural runoff that it says is contributing to pollution in the Raccoon River.

A three-eighths of 1 cent sales tax increase would produce $188 million in fiscal year 2018 and surpass $200 million in fiscal 2020, according to an analysis by the states nonpartisan fiscal estimating agency.

If financed, the trust fund would devote roughly 60 percent of its resources to water-quality programs, coalition members said.

Coalition member said Monday they are more optimistic than ever that they can convince the governor and state lawmakers to finance the trust fund, despite previous opposition to a sales tax increase.
WATERLOO  The Iowa State Education Association is backing Democratic 1st District congressional candidate Monica Vernon in her bid for the office.

Monica Vernon will make equal access to education a top priority, Tammy Wawro, President of the Iowa State Education Association, said in a statement We know that Monica will work tirelessly to ensure that all of our children have the best chance to succeed. Our kids deserve a world-class education and Monica will always fight for them.

Vernon, a former Cedar Rapids City Council woman, said as a parent of three daughters she knows firsthand the importance of a quality education.

We have to give Iowas children every opportunity to reach their full potential, Vernon said in a statement. We need to invest in our teachers and classrooms at every level and make sure every child has a strong foundation for a bright future.

Vernon is facing first-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Rod Blum, R-1st District, in the general election. Blum is a Dubuque businessman.

The ISEA represents more than 34,000 education professionals at all levels across the state and is part of the National Education Association that represents education professionals across the country.
DES MOINES  A new Iowa-based poll on the states U.S. Senate race shows Republican incumbent Charles Grassley with a bigger lead over Democratic challenger Patty Judge than most other recent polls have found.

In a poll published Monday by Simpson College and RABA Research, Grassley leads Judge by 13 percentage points. Fifty percent of likely Iowa voters said they plan to vote for Grassley, and 37 percent said they plan to vote for Judge.

Most other polls on the race have showed Grassley leading Judge by roughly 7 to 10 percentage points. Real Clear Politics average of polls on Iowas U.S. Senate race shows Grassley with an average lead of 8.6 percentage points.

Kedron Bardwell, chairman of the Simpson College political science department, said that does not necessarily mean Grassley is expanding his advantage in the race.

I dont know that we can infer yet a widening of the lead, regardless of which poll youre looking at, Bardwell said. You want to look at where the averages are trending and wait and see for a couple more data points. 

For some people on the Republican side, its a small sigh of relief that she doesnt seem to be mounting the kind of challenge that would be realistically enough to knock him out.

Simpson/RABA polled 1,054 likely Iowa voters from Sept. 6-8. The polls margin of error is 3 percentage points.

Grassleys advantage in the poll is built in part on Judges inability to solidify support from within her own party. Ninety percent of Republican voters said they plan to vote for Grassley, while 73 percent of Democratic voters said they plan to vote for Judge, 11 percent said they will vote for Grassley and 16 percent said they are not sure.

That gives Judge room to grow her support, Bardwell said.

Grassley also holds a strong advantage of 16 percentage points among no-party voters, and he leads among both men, by 19 percentage points, and women, by 8 percentage points.

RABA Research is run by Brad Anderson, a Democrat who ran President Barack Obamas 2012 re-election campaign in Iowa and ran for Iowa Secretary of State in 2012, and Tim Albrecht, who was Republican Gov. Terry Branstads communications director.
CEDAR FALLS  As dozens stood around the Campanile, shifting silently in the warm evening air, Dave Glenn-Burns tried his best to offer words of comfort.

Some shook their heads as they cried  the death of University of Northern Iowa student Nathan Twedt, 20, didnt make sense.

Glenn-Burns knew it too. But Monday nights vigil on UNIs campus wasnt about making sense of the sophomores death.

We are gathered together, most importantly, to celebrate Nathans life, he said. So lets raise our lights.

Those in attendance with phones  nearly everyone  turned on their flashlights and raised them above their heads.

Family, friends and classmates gathered Monday evening around UNIs Campanile to remember Twedt as Glenn-Burns, director of campus ministry at the Wesley Foundation, which works with UNI, read poems and offered words of comfort.

Twedt, a business major, was found dead Saturday in the Iowa River. The cause of death, as of Monday, was still not public.

Someone called 911 around 6:30 p.m. Saturday night to report seeing Twedt go into the Iowa River near a railroad bridge north of the Benton Street bridge, according to Detective Sgt. Kevin Elliott with the Johnson County Sheriffs Office.

Elliott declined to give specifics. Emergency crews searched the river, eventually recovering Twedts body that night.

It was unclear what the cause of death was or why Twedt was in Iowa City that night. An autopsy is pending, and deputies continue to investigate.

Anyone who has information about that night is asked to call the Sheriffs Office at 356-6020.
WATERLOO  Mayor Quentin Hart said Monday he fully supports the Waterloo Police Departments efforts to improve community relations and declined to make any public statement on any city officials or employees job performance.

Hart made his comments following a difficult several weeks in which the city paid out cash settlements for abuse suits involving officers and brought in a community policing expert from North Carolina for meetings with police, city officials and the community, among several other measures.

I support the Waterloo Police Department and support any necessary change we need to bring about the type of change to better serve our community, the mayor said.

We are facing some challenges right now, Hart added. With the community and the Waterloo P.D., Im sure we can work together to face whatever challenges are in front of us right now.

Citing city policy, Hart declined to comment publicly on the job performance of any specific individual, including Waterloo safety services director Dan Trelka, who oversees police and fire operations and is the citys police chief.

Ive never done that publicly. Im not going to talk about his job. We dont talk about internal things like that, Hart said. Im in support of the Waterloo Police Department. I support seeing it being successful and Im not going to comment on anybodys position. He said that is consistent with the policy of past mayors and of the city government organization as a whole.

In response to the incidents and concurrent litigation and settlements, Trelka has redoubled training efforts, equipped police with body cameras, investigated incidents involving officers and took disciplinary action where deemed appropriate. Trelka, contacted Monday, declined comment on the mayors statements but did feel he has had the citys support in the initiatives taken.

Many of the abuse incidents involved white officers and black citizens, raising questions about the racial disparity between the predominantly white makeup of the police force in proportion to the overall population of Waterloo  which has the highest percentage African-American population in the state  as well as the citys challenges in recruiting black officers.

Trelka has admitted his officers have made mistakes, but he hopes new training for police and an educational effort geared toward the residents will help build bridges. He also said there is an ongoing dialog among himself, citizens and the U.S. Department of Justice and two DOJ training sessions have been offered.

Also, earlier this month, the department hired consultant Troy Cicero of Chicago to provide diversity training to its officers.

The department also brought in another consultant, Garry McFadden, a retired North Carolina officer who met with city and police leaders, NAACP representatives and the community last week.

Trelka has said one of the things working against the police department is the confidentiality that surrounds discipline that is handed out in instances of officer misconduct. Under state code, discipline and the reasons it may or may not be warranted, cannot be publicly discussed.

The city and individual citizens also have launched a number of public outreach efforts to improve police-community relations.

Operation Public Relations, a community-law enforcement family event organized by a group of black and white volunteers was attended by several hundred people in July at Sullivan Park.

Another event, in August, was National Night Out, the annual event held by Waterloos network of neighborhood associations throughout the city with the support of the city and law enforcement. Police and firefighters showed off equipment and received hugs from ordinary citizens.

One day after National Night Out activities, the Waterloo Human Rights Commission conducted a well-attended program, Reaching for Respect: Our Police, Our Partners, at Jubilee United Methodist Church. It was designed for law enforcement and residents to meet as neighbors and have some courageous conversation with each other, said Rev. Abraham Funchess Jr., Jubilee pastor and Human Rights Commission director.

In June, for the second year in a row, Mount Carmel Baptist Church, one of east Waterloos leading predominantly African-American churches, hosted a law enforcement appreciation day as part of its regular Sunday service.
COLWELL  The Beaver Creek watershed project has created a habitat for wildlife, and it is a dream come true for Doug Bohlen and his family.

There are bull frogs, water fowl, hundreds of doves, pheasants and more, Bohlen said.

The project, which includes areas of Floyd and Chickasaw counties, is meant to examine an entire watershed to find the best places to create wetlands and natural areas to reduce flooding.

These areas have benefits beyond flood control including increased water quality and creating wildlife habitats.

Bohlens father, Randy, owns the land on 130th Street in Colwell for Site 1 of the project, a 460-acre watershed.

There is a pond and a weir with a grouted riprap. To create the wildlife area, theyve added trees and seeded the earthen structure around the pond.

We use the area for recreation, Bohlen said. Were a hunting family.

Bohlen and his sons are building a hunting cabin on the property. They hope to have the building enclosed before winter.

Its always been a dream of mine to have a place like this, Bohlen said.

Though they enjoy the recreation, the top reason for participating in the program was improved water quality, Bohlen said.

While the work is complete, the areas are still in the early stages with trees and plant growth.

In five years it will be a special spot, Bohlen said.

Bohlen said it was a great decision for his family, especially looking to his grandchildren.

There are six shallow water/flow-control earthen structures built in the Colwell area.

The flood center hosted a bus tour Tuesday evening to visit properties where the structures and wetlands have been constructed. Bohlen took the tour with specialists, property owners and supervisors from several counties.

I was impressed to learn how these ponds work, Bohlen said.

Engineer Robert Larget from Short Elliot Hendrickson, Inc. and others explained how the structures were built.

The Iowa Flood Center was awarded federal grant money, which in turn was used for the Beaver Creek watershed project.

The IFC, established by the state at the University of Iowa after flooding in 2008, received $97 million in federal funds to replicate watershed projects around the state.
The heroin epidemic rages around us. Can Iowa act quickly enough as the threat spreads here?

This summers headlines chronicle the tragic toll: Milwaukee records 20 overdose deaths in two weeks. Doctors see a surge in newborns addicted to opiates. Emergency responders treat increasing numbers of overdose victims in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.

Driven by opioid abuse, drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S., according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. And most signs point to it getting worse.

The good news: As the crisis hits other parts of the nation first and more severely, Iowa has time to prepare. But the epidemics speed threatens to overrun governments ability to react.

Take the bill signed by President Barack Obama in July to address the crisis. Congress authorized $181 million in new spending, far less than Obama said was adequate. Lawmakers still must pass a budget and administrators must still write rules before states can apply for funding.

Were not sure how much and how quickly it will get here, said Dale Woolery, associate director of the state Office of Drug Control Policy. Plus, the competition will be fierce. Other states have larger numbers (of overdoses and users), and they might qualify before us.

The heroin crisis has caught policymakers by surprise. It can be traced in part to a surge in sales of prescription opiates and increased addiction, and then a resulting tightening of restrictions on the pills.

Mexican drug cartels saw an opportunity. They flooded the market with high-purity heroin that was much cheaper than Oxycontin and other prescription opioids, according to author Don Winslow, who has chronicled the drug wars for years. Pill addicts and heroin users alike werent ready for the potency of the drug, leading to an increase in overdoses.

An added danger: Heroin is being laced with synthetic opioids like fentanyl  which killed the musician Prince  and tranquilizers used in elephants and other large animals.

The synthetics can be 100 times more potent than heroin on its own, said Lt. Tony Sposeto, with the Des Moines Fire Departments emergency medical services team.

Sposeto measures the problem locally by how often Des Moines emergency responders have administered naloxone, better known as Narcan, a medicine that reverses an overdose. Through late last month, Des Moines medics have administered Narcan 125 times  20 percent more than the same period last year. Almost all of the overdoses were caused by heroin, he said.

If only there were a quick antidote to the crisis. Iowa needs a comprehensive approach to address opioid abuse. This must include:

Awareness: In a crisis, Iowans need up-to-date information. But the Iowa Department of Public Health only has preliminary numbers on overdoses and treatment admissions from 2015, for example. We need to get more timely information out, Woolery said.

Addiction prevention: Other states have passed requirements that health care professionals check online prescription registries before prescribing addictive drugs to patients. Doctors groups have resisted such requirements. In July, Gov. Terry Branstad said the state should take another look at passing a requirement. He also said the state should strengthen education requirements for health care professionals.

Overdose antidotes: The governor signed a bill this year allowing civilians, police and other first responders to obtain naloxone with a prescription. More access to the medicine can save lives. Sposeto said in a couple of recent cases, a friend or family member used a naloxone injector pen to revive an overdose victim before responders arrived.

But the new law also may increase the demand for Narcan. Prices of a dose of Narcan have risen from $14 early last year to $36 now, Sposeto said. Cities and states may need more assistance to handle the increased cost.

One piece of good news is fatal overdoses seem to have leveled off in Iowa. Heroin deaths hit a high of 20 in 2013 and dropped to 15 last year, according to preliminary numbers from the Iowa Department of Public Health. Deaths from other opioids reached a high of 45 in 2011 and fell to 22 last year.

Treatment: Admissions to treatment for heroin or other opioids increased 18 percent in 2015, according to preliminary numbers from the health department. State officials must prepare for that to grow. This month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services changed a rule intended to allow greater access to buprenorphine, a drug used to treat addiction to opioids. The rule nearly triples the number patients that can be treated with buprenorphine by a physician. It should help rural areas where few doctors are certified to prescribe the drug.

Enforcement: Law enforcement needs more intelligence tools to fight trafficking and get ahead of the cartels. Despite lots of rhetoric about secure borders, however, experts say the heroin will get through as long as demand exists. We also need a president who will foster strong relations with Mexico.

While policymakers address the crisis, Iowans should be vigilant for signs of opioid abuse among friends and family. Users frequently dont fit the profile of a stereotypical junkie. Sposeto said many overdose victims are first-time heroin users who turned to the drug after an injury and an addiction to pain medication.

Weve seen it across the board. People who seem like theyre fairly well put together, squared away, he said. Weve seen it from the extremely wealthy to the extremely poor.

That means we all should have motivation to act quickly.
Vote this election

BARB WALTERS

NEW HARTFORD - Voting is one of the most important American rights we have. Your vote matters and, yes, elections do have consequences, especially when you stay home. You, as a voter, have a responsibility to elect the candidate and to hold them accountable so these issues are addressed.

If you want something done for your children and community you have a role to play. If all you do is complain and blame, no change will come until you step up and choose the best candidate, an advocate and a strong voice to carry these concerns to the public arena and make sure those issues are being taken care of.

There are people who you can count on and there are politicians who campaigned on issues in supporting education, veterans, main street businesses and health care who have done nothing but the complete opposite. Check out their voting record and you will be surprised we are all under-represented.

Climate control

TOM HARRIS

Executive Director, International Climate Science Coalition

OTTAWA, Ontario  Regarding your guest column by Adriana Kelly in the Sept. 4 Courier: Climate has been changing since the origin of the atmosphere billions of years ago and there is nothing we can do to stop it. But the only place where carbon dioxide (CO2) increase causes a temperature increase is in computer models preprogrammed to show exactly that. Records show temperature increase precedes CO2 increase.

It is fortunate the world has been gradually warming since the depths of the Little Ice Age in the late 1600s. But recent changes are minute. 2014 set the record by seven-hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit; 2015 by 29 hundredths of a degree  amounts too small to even notice.

The ramifications of misleading climate claims are worrisome. Because of overconfidence of environmentalists about the causes of climate change, 94 percent of the more than $1 billion a day spent worldwide on climate finance is dedicated to trying to stop what might happen in the distant future. Only 6 percent goes to helping people adapt to climate change today. This is the real climate crisis.

Full Grassley

WILLIAM TEAFORD

CEDAR FALLS  The Full Grassley can best be defined by his response to any proposed solution to any kind of problem. It generally consists of three stages:

First: Obfuscate, conjure a horde of irrelevant unintended consequents that would obviate any government solution.

Second: Delay, wait for results from highly credible groups that are investigating irrelevant problems before addressing any solution for your specific problem.

Third: Deny, pontificate that the specified problem is simply not worth legislative consideration.

And that is what Sen. Charles Grassley if full of.

Digital billboards

SHERRI MURPHY

WATERLOO - City Council: Please vote -7-0 to reject the proposed billboard that is digital. Digital equals distraction while driving.

It also equals to me another Viking Road-Highway 58.

Editors Note: The Waterloo City Council voted Aug. 15 5-2 (it needed six votes) for the billboard near Crossroads Center, but the vote failed.
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)
At the start of the 2016-17 academic year, Willamette University welcomes several new tenure-track faculty members across several subject areas:

Shatha Almutawa, Religious Studies

Shatha Almutawa chose Willamette because she can see this is a community that truly cares about its members  students, faculty, staff and the larger community outside of campus. Almutawa is a scholar of Islam, Arab history and culture, and medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophy.

A native of the United Arab Emirates, Almutawa completed her B.A. at Mount Holyoke College and her masters and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. She has held various faculty positions including at Qatar University, George Washington University, Bradley University, Lake Forest College and Cornell College. She was also director of the Writing Center at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.

During 2014-15, Almutawa served as senior editor at Perspectives on History, where she wrote widely on topics as diverse as an Arabic soap opera set in Cairos Jewish Quarter, historic preservation in Brooklyn and history education in China. Her academic research focuses on the esoteric and eclectic teachings of the Ikhwan al-Safa, a 10th century Muslim secret society.

Daniel Borrero, Physics

Borrero comes to Willamette from Reed College, where he was a visiting assistant professor for the past two years. At Reed he was both an advisor for the Latino Student Union and a mentor for the STEMFemmes, a student group for women in STEM.

Originally from Bogota, Colombia, Borrero received his bachelor of science in physics from the University of Texas at Austin and a masters and doctorate in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on understanding how fluid flows make the transition from smooth, laminar flow to turbulence.

Borrero is also interested in developing techniques for data reduction in high-dimensional systems. He has already begun to set up his research lab in the basement of Collins and will be supervising two senior thesis projects this year. In his spare time, Borrero enjoys the outdoors and can often be found hiking, camping or rock climbing. Borrero said hes really excited to meet all of Willamettes wonderful students and faculty.

Vincent Pham, Civic Communication and Media

Pham earned his Ph.D. in communication from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. For the past five years, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at California State University San Marcos, where he revised the media curriculum and taught courses on social movements, visual rhetoric, popular culture and the media.

Coauthor of Asian Americans and the Media, Pham is working on the follow-up, Asian American New Media, which focuses on Asian American podcasters, YouTube stars, (micro)blogging culture and new media networks and their efforts, successes and failures in reshaping public culture and the media landscape.

Pham has been interviewed by NPRs Code Switch and U.S. News and World Report and has served on the awards jury of the San Diego Asian Film Festival. He is currently coediting the forthcoming Companion to Asian American Media collection set for release in spring 2017. He was excited by Willamettes enthusiastic students in small classrooms, dedicated faculty in an innovative program and a commitment to larger civic good.

Omari Weekes, English

Weekes was drawn to Willamette because of its quality student body. He says, It was clear that Willamette has some very seriously engaged students who love where they are and want to do everything they can to make it the best university it can be.

Weekes joins the English department after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His scholarship and teaching combine specialties in 20th century African-American literature, religious studies, queer studies, black feminist theory and affect theory. His dissertation, On a Path of Decent Pleasures: Sex, Spirit, and Affect in Late 20th-Century African American Literature, explores the expansive matrix of non-heteronormative social and intimate relations that characterize contemporary black spirituality. He will teach classes in African-American literature and American Ethnic Studies, as well as core courses in English.

Andrew Gilden, Law

Gilden says hes drawn to Willamettes intimate community of world-class scholars and loves its unique setting, with easy access to urban life and gorgeous countrysides. He will teach property, internet and copyright law, as well as trusts and estates.

His research focuses on intellectual property and internet law, as well as legal issues concerning free speech, civil rights, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Before joining Willamette, Gilden was a Thomas C. Grey Fellow and Lecturer of Law at Stanford University, where he taught social media law, intellectual property counseling, federal litigation and legal research and writing. He worked as an associate in the New York office of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP; his practice focused primarily on intellectual property and media litigation. He clerked for Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Aaron Simowitz, Law

Simowitz says he is very much looking forward to working with the extraordinary Willamette faculty and students have really impressed him after just a few weeks. He will teach international business transactions, debtor and creditor law, negotiation and a seminar on resolving business disputes. His research focuses on cross-border business transactions, litigation and arbitration.

Simowitz was previously a research fellow at New York Universitys (NYU) Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law and a fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU. He taught international litigation and arbitration with Professor Linda Silberman, and before that was an acting assistant professor in the Lawyering Program at NYU. He also taught international business transactions at Columbia Law School.

Romana Autrey, Accounting (MBA)

Autrey will teach accounting for decision making, accounting and incentives in organizations and accounting for managers. Prior to joining Willamette, Autrey taught decision making for accountancy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as financial reporting and controls at Harvard Business School. She has also performed a wide variety of forensic accounting investigations as a senior manager in KPMG's Intellectual Property Services and Channel Management Services groups.

In 2006, she was awarded first place for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation by the management accounting section of the American Accounting Association, one of several honors shes received.

Andrew Kach, Operations and Supply Chain Management (MBA)

Kach says hes most looking forward to engaging with students and having meaningful discussions surrounding global supply chain and sustainability-related topics. Prior to Willamette, Kach was a senior researcher/lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technologys (ETH Zurich) Chair of Logistics Management for four years. During his time there, he taught quality management within the Master of Advanced Studies program and purchasing and supply management within the Master of Science program. Andrew earned his Ph.D. from New Mexico State University, where he also taught operations management, purchasing and supply management, project management and business decision analytics.

His research interests in operations and supply chain management include institutional-stakeholder influences surrounding sustainability-oriented supply chain risks; the intersection between proactive environmental strategy and sustainable operations within developing countries; and the impact of environmental hostility on manufacturing capabilities and innovativeness.

Qiming Wang, Finance (MBA)

Wang says he looks forward to being immersed in the new culture and engaging and collaborating with students. He will teach investments and financial derivatives, corporate finance, corporate control and governance, international finance and financial markets and institutions. His research interests are corporate finance and investments: Initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, executive compensation, innovations and patents, insider trading and Securities Class Action Litigation.
I had a comment that expressed that Americans probably give lots of donations? 1% of the total donations come from the Americas and that means from the bottom tip of South America to the tundra of North America in Canada. The other 99% comes from the rest of the world

Europe as a whole is the biggest donator, with Germany in the lead. Russia as a country is right behind Germany and the UK is waltzing around there somewhere. My biggest reader section is the USA! Next is Germany and Britain follows right behind. Therefore, out of readers, the US with its thousands of daily return readers, ignores donations as a whole. Yes, we have had donations come from America, but they are few and far between, per reader

Case in point; Sammy the Volga is getting a new engine. It has to be done and Sveta and I are scraping the money together to do it, today someone came through. From Russia, a donation has come to put in her new engine.

Yes! From Russia! The money for Sammy the Volgas new engine comes from within Russia

As per policy, no names but a big big thank you!

Sammy will hopefully get a new engine this week or next week at the latest

Another interesting tidbit; India is the largest Asian area donator. It is surprising and yes we have a solid readership based in India. The Chinese while as large a readership, have never donated anything, but we have had donations from tiny islands all over the world. It is very interesting to track such data. Just like tracking data from who comes to read and for what reason. But it comes in useful at times

I do thank the world for donations and yes, I may have centered my readership on America, but it is the rest of the world that pays to keep Windows to Russia online and to pay for basic living in Russia

I said I track data and this is the kind of data that tells me something!

It should tell you something also. Once again people need to think and realize that there is a whole world out there. The world is not stop at the borders of the USA and the world is really doing pretty good and we need to join that world

Therefore, thank you to all who have donated and we will soon see Sammys new engine

I hope if all goes correctly? But life goes in circles and sometimes things happen

WtR
Sep 12, 2016 | By Benedict

EnvisionTEC, a global 3D printer manufacturer with headquarters in Detroit, Michigan; and Gladbeck, Germany, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Massachusetts-based Formlabs. EnvisionTEC CEO Al Siblani has offered a statement on the action.

Formlabs, creator of the mega-popular Form 1 and Form 2 SLA 3D printers, is once again making headlines for legal reasons. After being on the receiving end of a similar lawsuit from 3D Systems between 2012 and 2014, Formlabs must now deal with an accusation of intellectual property theft from EnvisionTEC. EnvisionTEC today issued a statement about the patent infringement lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. In the complaint, EnvisionTEC asserts that Formlabs 3D printers infringe upon two patents held by EnvisionTEC.

EnvisionTEC has been inventing, developing, manufacturing and selling 3D printers, materials and other related technologies and services for nearly 15 years, said EnvisionTEC CEO Al Siblani in a statement. Today, we hold numerous patents around the world covering a variety of our 3D printing products, methods and more. This intellectual property was researched and developed over many years by our innovative team of professionals and is invaluable to our business serving a variety of medical, professional and industrial markets around the world. We are committed to aggressively protecting our intellectual property in accordance with the laws of the countries in which we operate.

EnvisionTECs complaint seeks injunctive relief prohibiting Formlabs from continued infringement as well as remedies in the form of monetary damages for past and current infringement. In other words, Formlabs needs to stop producing 3D printers, and to compensate EnvisionTEC for the huge numbers of 3D printers it has already sold.

3D Systems lawsuit against Formlabs was dismissed in December 2014, with details of the settlement remaining private. 3D Systems also once filed a lawsuit against EnvisionTEC, with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division ruling in favor of 3D Systems in March 2011.

Formlabs is yet to comment on the EnvisionTEC lawsuit.

The Formlabs Form 2 SLA 3D printer

Updated Sep 15, 2016:

The two patents in question, both filed in 2002, around a decade before Formlabs' successful Kickstarter campaign for the Form 1, are US 7052263 B2, "Apparatus for manufacturing a three-dimensional object," and US 7195472 B2, "Apparatus and method for the non-destructive separation of hardened material layers from a flat construction plane."

The first patent describes an apparatus for manufacturing a three-dimensional object that includes a trough for holding material which can be solidified under the influence of light. The invention has a transparent plate under the trough, and on the transparent plate and side wall of the trough there is a resilient layer from which solidified material is easier to detach than from the transparent plate. An exposure and projection unit serves to expose and solidify the material in the trough from below through the transparent plate.

The connected second patent describes something similar to the separation-enhancing "resilient layer" mentioned in the first patent, used to remove 3D printed objects from the build plate. The second patent details an apparatus and a method for separating a material layer hardened on a flat plane by means of a flexible, elastic separating layer arranged between plane and material layer and designed in the form of a film or a gel-like material.

Posted in 3D Printer Company

Maybe you also like:









NoVisionTech wrote at 9/14/2016 3:27:19 AM:Siblani stands for chicken pussy in Yiddish.




Sep 12, 2016 | By Benedict

3D Systems is today unveiling a new strategy, new solutions, new partnerships, and an updated management team in order to help its additive manufacturing customers transition from prototyping to production. The announcements will be made by President and CEO Vyomesh Joshi at IMTS 2016.

3D Systems President and CEO Vyomesh Joshi

Most industry experts admit that the consumer 3D printer market has failed to live up to the hype once attributed to it, with the 2014 vision of a 3D printer in every household seeming a lot closer then than it does today. But while some big 3D printing companies are now shying away from the consumer market3D Systems abandoned its Cube 3D printer at the tail-end of 2015many of those companies are now redoubling their efforts to crack the industrial market.

3D Systems has made big changes in recent times in order to tackle the troubles facing the 3D printing industry. The appointment of new President and CEO Vyomesh Joshi in April marked a major turning point for the company, and Joshi will today outline his vision for the company: a move away from prototypingonce seen as the bedrock of 3D printingand towards end-use production. As part of this strategy, 3D Systems has announced a partnership with software giant PTC, the launch of its 3DXpert software for direct metal 3D printing, and several other changes.

3D Systems' launch event coincides with the opening of the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) 2016 at McCormick Place in Chicago. During the event, Joshi will explain why he believes 3D printing is at a critical juncture. "Rapid prototyping was the original application for 3D printing and will continue to be an important part of our business," Joshi commented in a press release. "However, we believe we have the technology and assets today to make 3D production real and provide profitable growth for our company.

As part of 3D Systems plan to become the go-to company for production-ready 3D printing systems, Joshi will today explain how the companys additive manufacturing ecosystem is capable of enabling customers to digitize, design, simulate, manufacture, inspect, and manage as they make the shift from rapid prototyping to end-use production using 3D printing technology.

One of the major areas of 3D Systems new business direction will be its approach to collaboration. The company will today announce a new partnership with PTC, a U.S. computer software company specializing in 2D and 3D design. Jim Heppelmann, PTC's President and CEO, will join Joshi on stage at IMTS to explain how the two companies are working together to integrate 3D Systems' 3D Sprint SDK into PTC's flagship Creo CAD platform. The collaboration will provide Creo users with seamless CAD-to-print functionality as well as a full set of print management tools.

"Partnering with 3D Systems allows our users to take full advantage of the power of 3D printing and work seamlessly from digital design to physical part," said Heppelmann. "The 3D Sprint SDK integration into Creo is just the beginning of what our two companies can accomplish across the digital manufacturing value-chain.

Another key part of 3D Systems latest announcement will involve demonstrating the latest features of Figure 4, the companys modular Stereolithography production (SLA) system which gives manufacturers the ability to make plastic parts on the factory floor with relatively little human assistance. With print speeds up to 50 times faster than conventional systems, and with the ability to integrate with secondary processes such as finishing and coating, Figure 4 could become a viable alternative to injection molding.

3D Systems' Figure 4 production system

3D Systems Figure 4 SLA production system can now incorporate automatic, in-line inspection of parts for closed-loop manufacturing. The system can now also generate real-time, detailed reports with go/no-go feedback while carrying out part inspection and measurement. This process gives users immediate confidence in part compliance while enabling highly diversified production.

Another important update from 3D Systems concerns the companys new 3DXpert software for Direct Metal Printing. The all-in-one software solution makes metal 3D printing simple by collating all necessary software features into one package, removing the need for multiple applications made by different developers. Data importing, geometry optimization, lattice creation, scan-path calculation, build platform arrangement, printing, and (when necessary) subtractive machining can all be controlled through the 3DXpert platform.

According to 3D Systems, 3DXpert lets users save valuable time and maintain greater flexibility on change handling with history-based parametric CAD tools, with the platform able to handle various geometries (STL, Surfaces, Solid). One of its most helpful features is an automatic weight-saving and material reduction feature, enabled by Volume Representation (V-Rep) technology, which automatically creates micro lattice geometries within an object. This feature can be used to turn a solid shape into a partially hollow structure which retains the highest possible level of strength. The software also enables optimal printing strategies to be assigned to different areas of a part and automatically fuses separately assigned zones into a single scan-path, reducing print time while maintaining part integrity.

3D Systems' 3DXpert software will simplify the direct metal printing process

While Joshi himself is a relatively new addition to the 3D Systems team, the President and CEO will be announcing further appointments as part of the new 3D Systems business plan. The company will now operate with a framework centered around regional execution teams, and Joshi has brought in several new management figures to oversee this change. Along with new CFO John McMullen, the new faceswho have each worked with Joshi beforewill bring experience in managing organizations structured in a similar, regionally divided fashion.

Some of the new faces joining the 3D Systems management team include Herbert Koeck, SVP, Go-to-Market, EMEA; Christopher Morgan, SVP, Go-to-Market, Americas and APAC; Jim Ruder, SVP, General Manager, Plastics; Phil Schultz, SVP, On Demand Solutions; Doug Vaughan, SVP, Marketing and Demand Generation; and Reinhard Winkler, SVP, Supply Chain.

"Our new management team combines the talent and domain knowledge of our existing leadership with new additions who have proven success in executing a regional operating framework that balances growth, capital and operational excellence," said Joshi. "With this world-class team, I strongly believe we can capitalize on opportunities in global markets and create value for our customers, partners and shareholders.

With Joshi expecting the shift from prototyping to production to take two to three years, time will tell whether the changes made by 3D Systems are enough to effect a major transition in the use of 3D printing technology amongst its current and potential customer base. However, with major companies like GE investing huge amounts of money in production-ready additive manufacturing specialists, and with industry-level additive manufacturing racing ahead of consumer-level printing, the signs suggest that the company is heading in the right direction.

Posted in 3D Printing Applications

Maybe you also like:









Fabricio M wrote at 9/20/2016 5:25:00 AM:Pls call him as VJ ! This sir it is a Mith on Printing Business.I.AM.Magic wrote at 9/13/2016 8:46:38 AM:Want to move from proto to production? make the materials and machines cheaper. Making them faster and more expensive at the same time doesn't help.Rick R wrote at 9/13/2016 5:31:12 AM:I saw the 3D exhibit at the Imts show today. I was impressed by the examples they showed. It was a real, useful application of 3D printing. It seems that the applications shown had actual financial benignity and we're not just neet parlor tricks.




Sep 13, 2016 | By Alec

While many industries are steadily adopting 3D printing for various purposes, few are doing so as quickly as the fashion industry  in which 3D printing provides a way for leaving textiles behind. As a result, 3D printed accessories and outfits are appearing all over the place. Just last week, the Rio Paralympics were opened by snowboarder Amy Purdy who wore a stunning 3D printed dress.

But Jaleesa van Beek of NEO NAIL TECH is focusing on a completely different part of the body with a collection of 3D printed adhesive nails, which can complete a unique look and make your nails more functional than ever before. In fact, while conventional painted nails are carefully guarded to prevent scratches or broken nails, these 3D printed nails from NEO NAIL TECH can be used to slice vegetables, pull of bottle caps and even screw in nails. Beauty and functionality are combined in a single, durable adhesive solution.

Of course fashionistas will know that NEO NAIL TECH was already launched two years ago, but the startup is now growing rapidly. Nail art is booming right now, and Van Beek is riding the wave with a collection of 25 different 3D printed nail sets  some made from plastic, others from metal. All come with special adhesive tabs that secure neo nails in place for up to 5 days. These are also water resistant and ensure that the nails are easy to apply and remove  without damaging the nails underneath.

As Van Beek explained, she started NEO NAIL TECH after graduating from the Free University in Amsterdam with a degree in Health Sciences. During my studies I was already becoming really interested in 3D printing. After graduating I started working with fashion and as a make-up artist in various perfumeries. Combining both passions and starting NEO NAIL TECH was thus a logical next step, she said. When I started out, a 3D print shop in Amsterdam brought me into contact with Oceanz, where I found a very professional and personal environment. I am still heavily relying on them for their flexibility and their focus on solutions.

Indeed, 3D printing is still crucial for NEO NAIL TECH today. 3D printing allows me to quickly transform ideas into prototypes, without incurring huge costs. The technology also makes it possible to develop state-of-the-art designs that cannot be achieved with any other manufacturing method. Whats more, we dont need to keep huge supplies on hand, as numbers dont affect the manufacturing costs at all.

So who are these nails intended for? In a nutshell, for trendy ladies who are open to new innovations, and NEO NAIL TECH is already collaborating with various labels such as Alexandra Frida to enhance their appeal. We see nails as an fashion extension, says Van Beek. We have already developed a capsule collection and have started selling it through various channels. We have also collaborated with Vogue, which could be seen during the latest Vogue Online Shopping Night.

This focus on fashion is clearly seen in the photos above, all taken from a photoshoot for a new fashion magazine from AMFI, called Madame Jeanette. The concepts of Madame Jeanette and that of NEO NAIL TECH overlap, and we combined both styles in a single shoot. Art director and photographer Joep Maasdam wanted to highlight the practical side of the 3D nails, and you really can do everything with them, the developer added.

Its just the latest highlight for NEO NAIL TECH, who can already look back on various catwalk launches  even at the New York Fashion Week. They were also selected for the Vogue Beauty It-List soon after launching their nails. But Van Beek is still dreaming about more. I would love to develop a customized set for Lady Gaga. Her style is very inspiring, so it would be an honor to see my nails on her, she says.

If youre interested, you can order these 3D printed nails on neonail.tech and in an increasing number of offline stores. Among others, NEO NAIL TECH can be found at the Kemist in the ST.Studio in the prestigious P.C. Hoofstraat in Amsterdam and at ByAMfi and Lenas Library.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

Maybe you also like:












Natalie Angier in The New York Times:

The female bonobo apes of the Wamba forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo had just finished breakfast and were preparing for a brief nap in the treetops, bending and crisscrossing leafy branches into comfortable day beds. But one of the females was in estrus, her rump exceptionally pink and swollen, and four males in the group were too excited to sleep. They took turns wildly swinging and jumping around the fertile female and her bunkmates, shaking the branches, appearing to display their erections and perforating the air with high-pitched screams and hoots. Suddenly, three older, high-ranking female bonobos bolted up from below, a furious blur of black fur and swinging limbs and, together with the female in estrus, flew straight for the offending males. The males scattered. The females pursued them. Tree boughs bounced and cracked. Screams on all sides grew deafening. Three of the males escaped, but the females cornered and grabbed the fourth one  the resident alpha male. He was healthy, muscular and about 18 pounds heavier than any of his captors. But no matter.

The females bit into him as he howled and struggled to pull free. Finally, he dropped from the tree and ran away, and he didnt appear again for about three weeks, said Nahoko Tokuyama, of the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University in Japan, who witnessed the encounter. When the male returned, he kept to himself. Dr. Tokuyama noticed that the tip of one of his toes was gone. Being hated by females, she said in an email interview, is a big matter for male bonobos. The toe-trimming incident was extreme but not unique. Describing results from their long-term field work in the September issue of Animal Behaviour, Dr. Tokuyama and her colleague Takeshi Furuichi reported that the female bonobos of Wamba often banded together to fend off male aggression, and in patterns that defied the standard primate rule book.

More here.
Tim Adams in The Guardian:

Sarah Szes intricate installations were described by the New Yorker as changing the potential for sculpture. She has been awarded a MacArthur genius grant and represented the US at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

Whats the history of the piece you have made for this Protest show? I originally made a version of the piece for a show in Philadelphia. Every day, I kept the front page of the New York Times and cut out the pictures and replaced them with pictures that were vast in terms of time and space  there could be an image of the ocean, an image from 500 years ago I was interested in contrasting what was newsworthy with these timeless images. That piece was then accepted for a triennial in Guangzhou. When we were shipping it we were contacted by the Chinese authorities saying they wanted specific front pages to be removed.

What was the problem? It turned out that every front page I was being asked to remove said something about China; it could be just a phrase or something. So I made a new version for China. The piece was actually on the floor, like it was protecting the floor, spattered with paint and so on. So I took black paint and painted out the parts they wanted redacted and then mentioned the fact in the wall note. For this show, I have done the opposite. I left in all the pieces I had redacted and painted black all the rest of the text.

More here. (Note: Thanks to dear friend Gayil Nalls)
While you might be tempted to fill your cooler with traditional Lager style beers this fall, we recommend you opt for two wilder German styles instead: Berliner Weisse and Gose.







Berliner Weisse is a wheat beer, lightly soured with Lactobacillus bacteria, with low levels of alcohol and hops. The crisp and refreshing brew was extremely popular in the 19th century when nearly 700 breweries were producing it in Berlin alone. Meanwhile, Gose (pronounced "GO-suh") is the wheatier, meatier and sometimes funkier cousin of Berliner Weisse. The style went extinct in the mid-20th century, but was resuscitated in the 1980s. Gose traditionally includes a light addition of salt and coriander.





This fall, Bay Area brewers are updating these traditional German styles by including a wide variety of stone fruits, berries, herbs and spices and you're likely to see both Berliner Weisse and Gose popping up all over local menus this fall. Here's where to sip some of our favorites.





Berliner Weisse Brews

Grab a pint of the new Golden Sunshine at 21st Amendment HQ this fall. (21st Amendment, via Twitter)

Golden Sunshine

21st Amendment is currently brewing their first Berliner Weisse, Golden Sunshine, in collaboration with Florida-based Cigar City Brewing. The brew will include Lactobacillus bacteria to provide sourness, 200 pounds of Valencia oranges for citrus notes, and Citra hops to enhance the orange essence. The draft-only beer will be be tapped on October 5th, exclusively at 21A in San Francisco and select locations. // 563 2nd St. (SoMa), 21st-amendment.com





Mandarina Tart

Old Bus Tavern brewmaster Ben Buchanan is working on a unique Berliner Weisse that will be available in mid September. Expect a dry, light-bodied and tart ale, soured with lactobacillus and generously dry hopped with Mandarina Bavaria and Huell Melon to give it fruity notes of mandarin orange and honeydew. // 3193 Mission St. (Mission), oldbustavern.com





1809 Berliner Weisse by Prof Fritz Briem

Healthy Spirits manager Angus Higgins recommends this classic German-brewed Berliner Weisse afor all your fall activities. The cloudy, straw-colored brew has a milky, rustic and tart aroma mixed with lemon citrus. A refreshing and lively mouthfeel meets a soft sweet wheat flavor and finishes with a tart bite. Pick up a case at Healthy Spirits in the Castro. // 1042 Clement St. (Castro), healthyspiritssf.com





Gose Brews

We're digging the tangy taste and quirky name of this new brew. (Courtesy of Anderson Valley Brewing)

The Kimmie, The Yink and The Holy Gose

Anderson Valley Brewing makes several Gose style beers every year. This year's thirst quencher boasts a light mineral aroma with a hint of lemon zest and tropical fruit. The finish is tangy, dry, effervescent, and lemony. We're digging the name too. // 17700 Hwy. 253 (Boonville), avbc.com





Salty Dog Gose

Local Brewing's take on the traditional Gose includes a hint of pink Himalayan salt and a touch of seasonal tart cherry to create a light, crisp brew with a lingering finish of pithy grapefruit. Get it while you still can! The beer has been very popular and the last few kegs are on tap now. // 69 Bluxome St. (Mission Bay), localbrewingcom





Gasthaus & Gosebrauerei Bayerischer Gose

If you're looking for something more authentic, Angus Higgins also recommended this classic German-brewed Gose for its strong aroma of bright lemon, floral coriander, and briny sea spray. The refreshingly dry beer is only slightly tart and carries a little bit of malty sweetness to back it up. // 1042 Clement St. (Castro), healthyspiritssf.com





Otra Vez
Should you find yourself in the market for a luxury condo in San Francisco, you have a host of options: the Four Seasons Residences, the Lumina, and the Infinity Tower are each loaded with amenities and located a stone's throw from numerous employers, tech or otherwise, and the city's cultural and culinary destinations. But none has a definitive point of view quite like The Harrison.





The new Harrison building, a 298-unit high-rise tower, stands out from other SoMa properties thanks to its interior designer, the unstoppable Ken Fulk. Even if you don't know Fulk by name, you've most likely seen his work. You may have been intrigued by his curious wall of taxidermy at Park Tavern, been drawn to his layered textures and surfaces at the expansive yet intimate members-only club The Battery, seen his transformation of Big Sur into Middle Earth for Sean Parker's wedding, or had the privilege of attending one of his talked-about bacchanalian parties thrown by his creative agency, the Magic Factory.





The Harrison is Fulk's first for-sale project, and he is eager to seduce deep-pocketed clients with his brand of luxury. For starters, The Harrison is unapologetically exclusive. "We out Battery The Battery," says Curt Alexander, a partner of Maximus Real Estate Partners, the developer behind The Harrison. Alexander is referring not to the condos' price per square foot, but to the building's 49th floor penthouse lounge, Uncle Harry's, where only residents are allowed to become members. Fulk says it is "meant to feel like the living room of your most interesting ancestor." When the space is completed next month, there will be a bar on one end, a dramatic double-sided fireplace on the other, a separate wine room, and a private dining area with an adjacent catering kitchen. The penthouse will be open to visiting chefs, winemakers, musicians, and curators, who through intimate sessions will deepen the residents' appreciation of the finer things in life. At Uncle Harry's, you'll have the keys to the best of the city.





Uncle Harry's bolsters another definition of luxury that's currently in vogue, one that places value on experiences that are enriching and lasting rather than on owning things. It's no surprise that travel is a recurring motif in Fulk's work. All of The Harrison's communal spaces, from its topiary-flanked entrance and seating layouts that facilitate encounters with mysterious beautiful strangers to its antique mirrored courtyard, alludes to the age of grand hotels and a life well lived. Hong Kong's Peninsula, London's Claridge's, and the recently torn down Hotel Okura in Tokyo serve as reference points. Inside the lobby, outfitted with a grand piano and floor-to-ceiling books and artwork, you may very well be an international person of mystery, not the harried startup executive frantically rushing out the door to catch an Uber.





While the communal spaces function to make a refined lifestyle statement, the interiors are designed as "sophisticated refugesmore restrained and tranquil than the public spaces," describes Fulk, which is not to say that the condos are Spartan by any means. They are Fulk's interpretation of luxe minimalism fitted with organic finishes, including wire-brushed oak floors, brass fixtures from Waterworks, and Studio Becker Ash Molina gray cabinetry. Windows span the entire wall and overlook the city, water, and bridges; and even the tangle of freeways from the 45th floor exudes serenity.





San Francisco may not be used to this kind of continental elegance, but the developers' bet on elevating the city's style is already paying off. The Harrison is currently the fastest selling building on the West Coast. One bedroom units start at $785,000. Amenities include a luxury attache for the building, a pool, valet parking, and access to Uncle Harry's.









Here are the details:



Location: 401 Harrison Street, San Francisco



Starting Price: $785,000

Bedrooms: 1

Bathrooms: 1

Living Space: 840 sq. ft.

Amenities: Attache, pool, valet parking, ocean views, penthouse lounge



Year built: 2016
Designate one staff member (or a small group of staff in larger practices) to handle all prior authorization requests. This strategy prevents the physician from sitting on the phone with insurers instead of treating patients, allows designated staff to become knowledgeable and efficient in dealing with insurers, and makes it easier for a practice to remain up-to-date with prior authorization requirements because fewer staff have to be informed of every change. The obvious drawback of this model is if the staff member gets sick, goes on vacation, or leaves the practice, there is a knowledge gap. One way to prepare for this situation is to store all of the prior authorization information, including requirements broken down by insurer and alternative medications or procedures, in a format that all staff can access. Cross training a staff member to serve as backup can help as well.
Pneumonia, an infection of the lungs, is a common disease, affecting about two million Americans annually, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

If you go around to the people you work with, youll have a hard time finding someone who hasnt had it in the last 10 years. Almost everybody has it several times through their life, Frank Esper, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, told FoxNews.com.

Pneumonia tends to be more dangerous in those over 65 (Clinton is 68), which is why its recommended that older adults get two pneumonia vaccines. The CDC now recommends that all adults age 65 or older get the traditional PCV13 vaccine first, followed by a dose of the newer PPSV23, at least one year later.
Laws crafted by those elected should do most good for most people

columns
The International Association of HealthCare Professionals is pleased to welcome Meera C. Menon, MD, Endocrinologist, to their prestigious organization with her upcoming publication in TheLeading Physicians of the World. Dr. Menon is a highly-trained and qualified endocrinologist with an expertise inall facets of her work. Dr. Menon has been practicing for over five years and is currently serving patients at the Arizona Endocrinology Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Her practice includes general endocrinology, diabetes treatment, thyroid disorders, cholesterol disorders, hormone imbalance, and testosterone deficiency.

Dr. Menon is a 2001 graduate from the Calcutta Medical College in India. Upon relocating to the United States, she served her residency in internal medicine at St. Lukes Hospital in Chesterfield, Missouri, and completed her fellowship in endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Board certified in endocrinology, Dr. Menon maintains professional memberships with the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and The Endocrine Society. She credits her success to her hard work and strong family support. When she is not working or teaching, Dr. Menon enjoys painting and interior designing.

View Dr. Menons Profile here: https://www.findatopdoc.com/doctor/Meera-Menon-Endocrinologist-Glendale-Arizona-85306

Learn more about Dr. Menon here:http://www.azendo.com/md-meera-menon.htmland read her upcoming publication in The Leading Physicians of the World.

About FindaTopDoc.com

FindaTopDoc.com is a hub for all things medicine, featuring detailed descriptions of medical professionals across all areas of expertise, and information on thousands of healthcare topics. Each month, millions of patients use FindaTopDoc to find a doctor nearby and instantly book an appointment online or create a review. FindaTopDoc.com features each doctors full professional biography highlighting their achievements, experience, patient reviews and areas of expertise. A leading provider of valuable health information that helps empower patient and doctor alike, FindaTopDoc enables readers to live a happier and healthier life. For more information about FindaTopDoc, visit: http://www.findatopdoc.com

Media Contact

Company Name: International Association of HealthCare Professionals

Contact Person: Lauren

Email: lauren.findatopdoc@gmail.com

Phone: 877-447-8360

Country: United States

Website: www.findatopdoc.com
The International Association of HealthCare Professionals is pleased to welcome Prasanna Chinthala, MD, Psychiatrist, to their prestigious organization with her upcoming publication in The Leading Physicians of the World. Dr. Chinthala is a highly trained and qualified psychiatrist with an expertise in all facets of her work, especially geriatric psychiatry and adult psychiatry. Dr. Chinthala has been in practice for over 11 years and is currently serving patients at Options Behavioral Health System in Indianapolis, Indiana, which she joined in 2014. Furthermore, Dr. Chinthala teaches Fellows in the Geriatric Fellowship Program at Indiana University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Chinthala attended Osmania Medical College in India, her native country, where she graduated with her medical degree in 1994. Upon relocating to the United States, she served both her residency and geriatric fellowship at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Chinthala holds board certification in psychiatry from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and additionally maintains professional memberships with the American Psychiatric Association, the Indiana Psychiatric Society, the American Medical Association, the Association for Academic Psychiatry, and the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin. Dr. Chinthala credits her success to her mom, who was her inspiration, and dedicates her spare time to music, traveling, and reading.

View Dr. Chinthalas Profile here: https://www.findatopdoc.com/doctor/Prasanna-Chinthala-Psychiatrist-IN-46032

Learn more about Dr. Chinthala here: http://www.optionsbehavioralhealthsystem.com/about/staff/dr-prasanna-chinthalaand read her upcoming publication in the Leading Physicians of the World.

About FindaTopDoc.com

FindaTopDoc.com is a hub for all things medicine, featuring detailed descriptions of medical professionals across all areas of expertise, and information on thousands of healthcare topics. Each month, millions of patients use FindaTopDoc to find a doctor nearby and instantly book an appointment online or create a review. FindaTopDoc.com features each doctors full professional biography highlighting their achievements, experience, patient reviews and areas of expertise. A leading provider of valuable health information that helps empower patient and doctor alike, FindaTopDoc enables readers to live a happier and healthier life. For more information about FindaTopDoc, visit: http://www.findatopdoc.com

Media Contact

Company Name: International Association of HealthCare Professionals

Contact Person: Lauren

Email: lauren.findatopdoc@gmail.com

Phone: 877-447-8360

Country: United States

Website: www.findatopdoc.com
The International Association of HealthCare Professionals is pleased to welcome Adam Fueredi, MD, FACR, Radiologist, to their prestigious organization with his upcoming publication in The Leading Physicians of the World. Dr. Fueredi is a highly trained and qualified radiologist with a vast expertise in all facets of his work, especially womens imaging. Dr. Fueredi has been in practice for more than 55 years and is currently serving patients at Radiology Regional Center in Naples, Florida. Prior to joining Radiology Regional Center in 2014, he practiced at Anchor Health and NCH Group, both located in Naples, Florida.

Dr. Fueredi is a 1961 graduate from the Medical College of Wisconsin, and additionally trained at Lutheran Hospital. He holds board certification in radiology from the American Board of Radiology and attained the coveted title of Fellow of the American College of Radiology. Dr. Fueredi maintains professional memberships with the South African Medical Association, the Chinese American Medical Society, and the Society of Breast Imaging.

Over the years, Dr. Fueredi has been honored with an award for helping the hungry in 1996, as well as the Patients Choice Award and Compassionate Doctor Recognition Award in 2015. Dr. Fueredi has participated in numerous mission trips around the world. Furthermore, he speaks multiple languages, including German and Hungarian. Dr. Fueredi credits his success to his dedication to his patients and research. When he is not practicing, he dedicates his time to traveling the world.

View Dr. Fueredis Profile here: https://www.findatopdoc.com/doctor/Adam-Fueredi-Radiologist-Naples-FL-34102

Learn more about Dr. Fueredi here:https://radiologyregional.com/ and read his upcoming publication in TheLeading Physicians of the World.

About FindaTopDoc.com

FindaTopDoc.com is a hub for all things medicine, featuring detailed descriptions of medical professionals across all areas of expertise, and information on thousands of healthcare topics. Each month, millions of patients use FindaTopDoc to find a doctor nearby and instantly book an appointment online or create a review. FindaTopDoc.com features each doctors full professional biography highlighting their achievements, experience, patient reviews and areas of expertise. A leading provider of valuable health information that helps empower patient and doctor alike, FindaTopDoc enables readers to live a happier and healthier life. For more information about FindaTopDoc, visit: http://www.findatopdoc.com

Media Contact

Company Name: International Association of HealthCare Professionals

Contact Person: Lauren

Email: lauren.findatopdoc@gmail.com

Phone: 877-447-8360

Country: United States

Website: www.findatopdoc.com
ACAs library of educational tools help members improve their business practices. ACA also holds the most popular industry conferences and offers credentialing for collectors, attorneys, and more. ACAs Training Zone subscription gives agencies access to almost all of our education for one low cost.
IMGCAP(1)] South Korea-based app Blind just launched for the Big Four, giving firm employees access to a completely anonymous forum where they can vent, share ideas and gossip.

If you have any familiarity with Yik Yak, youre halfway to understanding the new app, Blind. Both are anonymous messaging platforms, allowing users to sign up with email but make posts without any identifying information.

Similarly to Facebook, Yik Yak was first launched for college campuses only (since it is location based, if you happen to live around a college, you can use the app with reasonable ease, too). Blind, on the other hand, is exclusively for employees of businesses  all kinds.

The company allows users to sign up with a verifiable company email address. The app can be used by employees of a certain company only once a certain threshold of employees sign up as usersusually 50 to 100, Blinds head of operations expansion in the U.S., Alex Shin, told me. Blind allows employees to say whatever they want, like ask touchy questions or even gossip, without fear of repercussion.

The launch for Big Four occurred after several audit, tax and advisory employees from the firms got wind of Blind and signed up to its waitlist this summer. Blind then launched in order of the number of people on the waitlist, starting with PwC. Within two weeks of launching for PwC, Blind became available for EY employees and at the same time, opened up an inter-company channel it calls the lounge for all Big Four users. Now it is available for Deloitte and KPMG too.

Signing up with a work email seems like a risk to anonymity, but Blind has patent-pending technology that makes user information completely disappear once a user is signed up. Its not even viewable or accessible in any way to Blind, Shin claimed, which if true would mean the company would not be able to produce user information even if required to by a hypothetical legal investigation.

A Need for Stress Relief

This month, Blind was launched for the Big Four. Through networking with friends in San Francisco, where the app has found a strong foothold among tech companies, Shin discovered that there was an untapped market among stressed-out young firm employees looking for a venue to vent.

We had some friends who worked in the Big Four, and to our surprise, considering how prestigious they are, their work hours are insane and most of them that come to us are interested in transitioning to industry, Shin said. They want to put in their firm hours and leave. I heard stories about drug use to stay awake  lots of high pressure.

Overworked employees? Drug use? This is the perfect environment for an app that broke the Korean Air nut lady story that went viral in 2014. That year, Heather Cho, vice president of the company and daughter of the (now former) Korean Air CEO, was flying as a passenger, and caused a major disruption on board her Korean Air flight by throwing a fit over how the nuts were served. The story might have remained contained to those who witnessed the incident if it hadnt spread like wildfire on the Korean Air Blind forum.

A PwC employee who wished to remain anonymous told me that in the month hes been using the app, compensation and exit options were some of the most popular topics. But aside from such typically taboo topics, Its also nice to see perspective from all PwC regions across the United States, as opposed to just being focused on your one region or market, he said.

He compared the platform to well-known forums such as Reddit and Glassdoor, on which users can remain relatively anonymous. I think Blind is unique  its user friendly because its a mobile app platform, and for users its easier to use. Its more focused on discussion and community as opposed to Glassdoor, for instance, which is review focused. I like to see that differentiating aspect.

A Deloitte user said the stripping away of titles and hierarchies makes the app fun. Information flows much faster through Blind, he said, than it would or could through official company channels.

Lets say for compensation -- theres no way you can find out about that kind of thing, he said. Youd need to have friends in other offices. But because we have this lounge where all the Big Four firms can talk to each other, you can see what other people are getting.

A user from Ernst and Young told me that all the Big Four accounting firms internal social websites feel like places to propagate the firms vision, but that Blind sidesteps that and closes the huge gap between leadership and general employees.

All three accountants who spoke to me did have initial qualms about security, but those dissipated after they used the app. Whether that has more to do with actual security or with a false sense of security from an app thats addictive remains to be seen.

In the two years that Blind has been in operation, it has been the center of one or two big news stories, but none to do with compromised user identities. Last year, Starbucks South Korean operation had to apologize publically because screenshots from the app that showed users disparaging customers were leaked. Embarrassing for Starbucks, but not for the users, who were never identified.

Blind is not unique. It joins the ranks of apps such as the aforementioned Yik Yak, Whisper and Secret, all of which are (or were) targeted to different markets but had the same basic function of anonymous messaging. Secret, which was aimed at specific real-life friends networks, was shut down last year after its founder said the malicious gossip and rumors spread on the app went against his original vision for the platform. Whisper has been criticized for asking for access to users smartphone cameras and contact lists. Last year, Yik Yak was exposed for systematically deleting user posts that mention competitor apps.

And another outlet, Going Concern, will be familiar to readers. The blog-cum-news aggregator-cum-comment forum is popular among Big Four CPAs. Users vent and share stories similar to what they might share on Blind. However, the major difference is that the comments are more publicly viewable than comments on Blind, as anyone, user account or no user account, CPA or not, can view the comments. Understandably, users do anonymize themselves.

So far, Blind has avoided damaging controversy. It takes an extremely hands-off approach to user content, not censoring or curating it in any way. Its key feature is its much-hyped anonymizing security feature. Once the patent for that technology is filed, Blind will be at a different stage of growth. It will be interesting to see whether Blinds popularity in the Big Four will be sustainable, and how it will hold up against established forums for accounting pros such as Going Concern.
College Choice, an online resource ranking various college programs and institutions, recently unveiled their 2016 rankings for the most affordable online bachelor's and master's degrees in accounting. Fort Hayes State University in Kansas took top honors for online bachelor's degrees, while Western Governors University in Utah was first amongst master's programs.

As College Choice points out, the median salary for an accountant in 2015 was $67,190, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "What makes that salary go even further is earning your accounting credentials in the most affordable and convenient way - getting your accounting degree online," the publication writes. "Weve done the hard work of crunching the numbers for you, and these online accounting degrees offer the surest way to get you into the accounting job you desire while eating the fewest costs."

Fort Hays State University currently offers a 124-credit hour online Bachelor in Business Administration, which ranked as the "most affordable undergraduate accounting degree College Choice" found. Western Governors University offers a 30-unit Masters of Science in Accounting degree, offering courses such as "Fraud and Forensic Accounting," "Strategic Management," and "Government and Non-Profit Accounting."

College Choice's top 10 most affordable college programs in accounting for 2016 are as follows:

Most Affordable Online Bachelor's:

1. Fort Hays State University

3. (Tie) Belhaven University

3. (Tie) Baker College

4. Western Governors University

6. (Tie) Western International University

6. (Tie) Central Methodist University

7. Bemidji State University

9. (Tie) American Public University System

9. (Tie) University of Northeastern Ohio

10. Athens State University

Most Affordable Online Master's:



1. Western Governors University

2. American Public University

3. Western International University

4. National University

5. University of South Dakota

6. Kaplan University

7. Franklin University

8. Saint Joseph's College of Maine

9. Shorter University

10. Clarion University of Pennsylvania

For the full bachelor's rankings, head to College Choice's site here. For the full master's rankings, head here.
Di-Mentions Studio, a full service digital marketing and design agency has been selected as the digital agency of record for the Indian operations of automotive clean and care company Schutzen Car Care Private Limited. The 360-degree digital communication agency will provide complete digital branding to the brand from designing marketing collaterals, social-media strategy and execution, and media planning in its first phase. In phase two, the brand wants to venture into print, outdoor and video segments.

Schutzen provides a wide range of car care and bike care products that are enhanced with superior German technology providing complete car and bike cleaning solutions.

Anoushka Adya, Founder & Partner, Di-Mentions, says, We are happy to have Schutzen on- board as they have an aggressive plan going forward, not just building their brand in the Indian market but also extending their franchise in global markets. This gives us ample opportunity to extend our creative horizons and deliver all-encompassing solutions to maximize outreach and business for the company.

Commenting on this development, Raj Tanna, Founder & Director, Schutzen Car Care Private Limited, says, After doing months of R&D and setting things up for Schutzen to become operational, it was time for us to appoint an agency who understands the USPs of our products and its intended purpose, and brings a holistic communication strategy in place. We decided to go with Di-Mentions Studio because of their proven record in digital media and creative strategy. After detailed discussions of our prospects, it was time for us to get the ball rolling. We look forward to a long and dynamic association with our digital partner, Di-Mentions.

Schutzen plans to commence sale of its products from October through its website, social media platforms and other giant portals like Amazon.

Di-Mentions, started as a digital agency is fast-growing into a 360-degree marketing communication company providing end-to-end support to their vast array of clients. The company has grown from a two member team to now a 25 member team servicing big brands such as Amazon, Essel World, Tata Docomo, Times of India amongst various others.
In the last 5 years, the hair coloring market has seen an upward growth with women becoming more open to experimenting with their hair and using color beyond the concern of covering their greys. To celebrate the change in the attitude towards hair coloring and to encourage those who are still hesitant, LOreal Paris has released its latest campaign on Casting Creme Gloss range on its digital platforms. With this campaign, the brand wants to invite women to enter the joy ride by discovering fun with color. Conceptualized by McCann Erickson (India) Ltd, it features LOreal Paris ambassador Sonam Kapoor looking gorgeous as ever sharing the Joy of Coloring with her friends.

Commenting on the campaign, Raagjeet Garg, General Manager, L'Oreal Paris India, said LOreal Paris is the #1 hair color brand in the world and a pioneer in the category. Our aim is to make women feel confident, look beautiful and believe that they're worth it. With this campaign, we want to motivate women to discover the sheer joy of coloring, encourage experimentation and break myths linked to hair color. We're hoping that Sonam in this campaign, through her amazing and infectious joie de vivre will encourage consumers to indulge in their joy of coloring and be free of all concerns with our ammonia free, royal jelly enriched LOreal Paris Casting Creme Gloss."

On working for the campaign, L'Oreal Paris brand ambassador Sonam Kapoor commented, Colors add joy to my days, I wouldnt be able to imagine my life in dull black and white. It has such a beautiful way of inducing energy and life into everything it touches. Coloring my hair has made them look more glossy and beautiful but more so, it gives me confidence to indulge in my fashion choices and really play with my looks. Ive been a fan of the process for years now. LOreal Paris Casting Creme Gloss is genuinely the best option for anyone who wants to try DIY hair color at home without worry. Its range of colors is beautiful and application is super easy. I would ask all women out there to join me and indulge in the joy of coloring and treat their gorgeous locks to a dash of happiness, because they are all Worth It.

L'Oreal Paris Casting Creme Gloss is free from ammonia and enriched with Royal Jelly that helps make your hair soft and smooth. Casting Creme Gloss also ensures that post coloring; hair is left revitalized with a glossy shine. Lasting up to 28 washes, the range is easy to use. For those who want to try coloring at home, it is a great option.

The campaign went exclusively live on Sonam Kapoors app on 10th September and LOreal Paris social media pages and YouTube channel on 11th September. It was shot, edited and produced in June 2016.

here is the link to view the TVC- https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=IrtuKPNMNBY
IBD, a Percept Company, has won the strategic and creative mandate of Tokri.com, a hyper-local grocery and daily needs delivery brand operating in Pune. Multiple agencies pitched for the account, with IBD emerging victorious, riding on its creative and strategic brilliance.

Tokri.com is a one-stop portal where fresh fruits, vegetables and groceries are delivered at ones door step. The start-up follows a hybrid model comprising a marketplace and inventory. It sources grocery from distributors, wholesalers and neighbourhood stores to procure vegetables and fruits directly from farmers.

Winning this pitch entailed a thorough strategic understanding of consumer behaviour and the operating market dynamics. IBDs understanding of creating rapid brand value was put to use once again. IBD not only provided a differentiated strategy for Tokri.com, but also brought on board actor Shraddha Kapoor as brand ambassador to ensure credibility and avail the advantage of association with the brand. Despite the presence of big brands in the same domain across Pune, Tokri.com is already taking the market by storm, owing to the unique brand story and high credibility created by IBD.

On awarding the business to IBD, Neeraj Kansal, Founder, Tokri.com, said, IBD has added tremendous value in building our brand Tokri.com. They have been insightful and strategic, and delivered outstanding creative work. Having the right partner in todays world of brand and business is critical for success. We are happy to have IBD as our communication partner, as they understand the nuances and pace of both the market and consumers. We are looking forward for some great creative work from IBD.

Commenting on the win, Rahul Gupta, Managing Director, IBD, said, For Tokri.com, it was important to offer a differentiated positioning in order to facilitate trial opportunities. Our strategy of designing a city specialist for Tokri.com, coupled with outstanding creative execution was the key factor for this win. We are very excited to have bagged this mandate; it shows our mettle and potential at handling brands across diverse categories and domains. We are excitedly looking forward to doing some good creative work on the brand.

IBDs hugely diversified brand portfolio consists of brands from industries spanning Fashion, Consumer Electronics, Baby Care, Hospitality, Personal care and Spices. The client list includes Only Vimal, Morisons Baby Dreams, Tokri.com, Syska LED Lights, Syska Accessories, Syska Gadget Secure, Panasonic, Georgia Gullini, Deltin Group, Vasu Pharma, Witlinger Beer, Growel 101 Mall, and the Taj Group of Hotels.
Radio City, the leading radio network in the country, welcomes the festive spirit with nationwide celebrations for Ganesh Chaturthi. Listeners around the country revel in Radio Citys initiatives towards celebrating a noise-free, eco-friendly festival. Ganeshotsav celebrations for the network span across the nation, mainly highlighting Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

In Mumbai, the radio network has returned with its award-winning campaign Ganpati Guards, an initiative to return Mumbais most popular festival to its original glory and protect the sanctity of the citys most loved deity. Radio City has urged people to report if any pandals are playing item songs and making this sacred festival, a nuisance. The Radio City team would personally visit such pandals and give them Ganesh aarti booklets and Ganpati songs CD. Last year this initiative received a mammoth response with over 3500 SMSs and a gross impact of 48 lakh,which they aim to cross the mark this year. 11 lucky winners will be sent to Asthavinayak Yatra. Supporting this initiative are celebrities like the Meet Brothers who have asked pandals not to play any item numbers including their very own Baby Doll.

In Pune, Radio City has taken RJ battles to the next level by fuelling RJs to get maximum number of pledges. Citizens can sign a pledge to have an eco-friendly Ganesha this year. In this friendly rivalry, Radio City RJs spurs citizens on, to do the right thing: Go Eco Friendly! The Mayor and Commissioner of Pune have kick-started the campaign by pledging to buy eco-friendly Ganesha. This initiative covers more than 40 societies across Pune with studio shift in the famous and holy Dagdusheth, Kasba Ganpati and Mandai temple. In Pune the studio Shifts (Where the respective RJs would do their shows LIVE) - would happen at 3 most prominent places Kasba Peth - between 5pm-9pm, Dagdu Sheth 7am - 11am and Mandai at 11am - 2pm/2pm - 5pm)

Radio City Nagpur has put its RJs to war  an Eco-Friendly war. In an innovative effort to make Bappa happy, Radio City Nagpur is all set to celebrate an Eco-Friendly Ganeshotsav. The RJ Battle will be initiated by fueling RJs to get the maximum number of pledges from citizens. Citizens can sign a pledge to have an eco-friendly Ganesha this year. In this friendly rivalry, Radio City RJs spurs citizens on, to do the right thing: Go Eco Friendly! This initiative covers more than 10 societies across Nagpur with studio shift in the famous and holy Tekdi cha Ganpati temple.

Radio City Bangalore embraced the arrival of RJ Ganesha in their city in a canter improvised as a temple and a home for Ganesha. Radio City ran an on-air contest to encourage the listeners and invite the newly appointed RJ to their home. The canter visited the winners of the on-air contest along with a Radio City RJ to perform an aarti and distribute gifts to its devotees. The canter visited all the famous pandals of the city, ending on Visarajan day, with a huge procession of dhol-kunita.

Radio City introduced a new RJ in Hyderabad . RJ Ganesha in his own special canter improvised as a temple and his adorned abode paid a visit to all the famous pandals of the city, ending on Visarjan day, with a huge procession of dhol-kunita. Radio City ran on-air contest to encourage the listeners to invite the newly appointed RJ to their home. The canter visited the winners of the on-air contest along with a Radio City RJ to perform an aarti and distribute gifts to its devotees.

Even as this Ganesha draws to a close amidst much fanfare, modaks and love for the Bappa, Radio City has worked on making Ganpati a more devout experience for listeners across the nations via various initiatives which have worked on promoting devotional music at pandals and eco-friendly Ganesha idols. The network stands by the passion which lights up each city during the occasion celebrating the God of wisdom, Ganesha.
To build awareness and interest in the Rural Marketing domain among students and academia, Rural Marketing Association of India (RMAI) and Ayurvet Ltd has recently announced the 10th edition of RMAI Flame Students Award 2016. The awards this year will be held at Hyatt, Ahmedabad on Sep 24th and will see over 200 delegates from the corporate world, as well as rural managers, B School students, teachers and marketing specialists in attendance.



This year RMAI received 210 case studies from 42 B-schools such as IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Kashipur, Kozhikode, Raipur, Ranchi, Rohtak, Shillong and Trichy, IRMA, IRM Jaipur, IIFT, XISS, XIMB, XIMJ, Welingkar Institute, Vamnicom, Tripura Univeristy, Tapmi, SIIB, SIBM, SIMS, S P Jain, NID Ahmedabad, Nirma University, NAARM, MIT, MDI, Manage, KSRM, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Indian School of Mines, IMT, IIT Kharagpur,IIT Delhi, IIT Patna, Banaras University, IIPM, IIFM, IABM, Gitam School of International Business, Fore School, CUTM, Bulmim, BITS- Pilani, Bimtech and others for the awards.



The competition this year has been judged by an expert jury panel comprising of Adarsh Sharma, EVP (Sales) at Dabur India; Amal Bhattacharya, retired Marketing Professional from Amul India; Dr. Anup Kalra, Director Ayurvet Ltd; Biswabaran Chakrabarti ,Vice President - Brand & Channel Management, Crompton Greaves Ltd; Mridula Shekhar Head Marketing, Retail Business, Tata Steel; Puneet Vidyarthi, Head Rural Business & Digital Innovations, JCB India Ltd; Punit Chadha, General Manager & Divisional Head - Rural & Commercial, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd; Prashant Mandke, Vice-President heading the Rural Marketing Unit at Madison World; Sanjay Kumar Panigrahi, President - Rurban and Special Projects, Pidilite Industries Ltd; Siddhartha Choudhary, Head - Sales & Marketing, CropIn Technology; and Venkat Ram Vasantavada, President - Agribusiness, Deepak Fertilizers and Petrochemical corporation Ltd.



The top 10 shortlisted entrants will present their case studies at the RMAI Flame Students Awards 2016. Concurrent to the awards, knowledge sessions with experts will also be organized by RMAI on three topics; Opportunities and Challenges in Rural, Digital in Rural, and Impact of Govt. Initiatives and Spending in Rural.



Speaking about the event, Sanjay Kaul, President, RMAI says, The sheer number of summer project entries that we have received this year is a testament of how the youth is taking serious interest in rural marketing and the endless opportunities and possibilities rural encompasses for the Indian marketing ecosystem. We at RMAI, have always believed that rural is the next big destination for marketers and the response that we have received this year to Flame Student Awards not just from students but also from academicians, marketers and industry specialists is truly overwhelming.



Himanshu Shah, Joint Secretary, RMAI, comments, The Flame Student Awards since the past 6-7 editions have always been happening in Delhi but this year the idea was to take the property to the next level and create more awareness about it. And since this year we have received case studies from the top B schools of the country, we decided to host the property in the education hub of the country which is Ahmedabad. Interestingly, this time around the awards will not only see participation by students but also by top brand marketers, academicians and industry experts.



Speaking on the Jury evaluation, Dr. Anup Kalra said, I appreciate the enthusiasm and the participation of the students towards the award. The inclination indicates that rural businesses would be in the hands of the responsible younger generations and provide excellent opportunities to the management graduates


Social Media Week, a worldwide digital gathering that associates pioneers crosswise over ventures to re-imagining human connectivity. The point is to talk about force of innovation and its worldwide effect, Social Media Week has speakers who are specialists in the digital space.

Innovation has an extraordinary impact in the way masses associate, convey and disentangle messages. The driver for the global subject for 2016 is the acknowledgment of changing innovation and interchanges  The Invisible Hand: Hidden Forces of Technology (and how we can Harness it for Good). This worldwide gathering, Social Media Week - Mumbai is sorted out and facilitated by R Square Consulting, an integrated marketing services agency.

The evening started with the key speaker, Vivek Nayer, CMO, Mahindra and Mahindra. His main focus was on Power of Storytelling in the Landscape of New Media.

He explained this with a simple illustrated example, which showcased a beggar and his begging bowl written, IM BLIND. PLEASE HELP. But a passerby rewrites it as ITS A BFUL DAY AND I CANT SEE. And after this, gradually the donation in his begging bowl increases unexpectedly. Thats the power of storytelling, how differently you say it and touch human emotions for engagement.

He added, The key factor behind it is to make your story telling, Engaging, Believable, Memorable, Repeat Value. These factors inspire action and it travels. And of course, traditional media constraints to storytelling, and new media needs Innovation.

He further spoke about brand values central to storytelling, which mainly revolved around the campaigns of Mahindra. One famous campaign of Mahindra, Live Young Live Free, was of 2 minutes duration and was first released on digital platforms and later the shorter version was released on TV. This ad had Relevance, which gave an idea to opt to know more about the brand and Context, which made the campaign contextually relevant.

Long format video, ads, DIY, Digital only, Travellogues, Events, Mobile apps, etc., works on digital platforms, Nayer added. Moreover, User Generated Content also had an effective impact as such content is Topical, Real Time and Interactivity. These factors bring engagement and buzz and with innovation and become Viral, all for a good reason.

He further explained Storytelling in three stages for digital platforms:

Before: Content, Teaser, Countdowns

During: FB Live, Tweet, MiniClips, Updates, Drones, 160 technology

After: Picture Video and Videos

Taking the stage next was Rohit Verma, Founder, R Square Consulting Services, who emphasised on the Power of Communities.

Communities power social media, they drive conversations, engagement and they can fuel brands too. Humans like to be part of communities with same Interest, Passion and Belief, Verma noted. He further said that this gave more authority, more loyal users, repeat visits and much more, which helped in building a strong community. There are several communities existing like Bikers Community, Runners Community, Foodies Community, Music Community, Adventure Community, Photography Community, etc.

According to him, Coke Studio is the best example of Music Community as one will only find passionate people with music background, there is no dilution in this community. Similarly, NatureInFocus is a photography community where one can fill the form and upload their work, like a series of photos with or without text. The most shared and liked photos get uploaded on the site, thus giving passionate photographers and travellers a platform to showcase their work and get good exposure in art galleries and exhibitions.

What I have learnt from running this NatureInfocus festival and other festivals are  Understand, Support, Engagement, Plan for the long term, take opinions and feedback. He further added, Empower them, they will empower you.
This festive season celebrate the special occasions by gifting your loved ones a package of health. Tupperware, known for designing extra-ordinary home and kitchen solutions, introduces a contemporary Breakfast Set that meets every urban households need to prepare a quick and healthy breakfast. Tupperware Gift of Health is an attractive breakfast range from Tupperware that includes a combo offering, consisting MicroDelight & Juist.

The Breakfast set is designed keeping in mind the ease of preparing a wholesome breakfast on the go. The MicroDelight is equipped with special features like - special 8 shape that helps food cook evenly, vents for releasing steam and ergonomic rings that act as handles making it comfortable to hold. The contemporary product allows traditional cooking in a healthy manner with no oil.

With the Juist one can make healthy fresh and pulpy juices at any point of time. The product range promotes healthy living with natural vitamins straight from the kitchen. With a few twists one can sip fresh juices made from their favourite fruits and vegetables.

With its new product range, Tupperware promotes the concept of eating nutritious breakfast and make it the most ideal routine to kick-start the day. Breakfast provides the body and brain with necessary energy and nutrition after an overnight fast. People consuming a wholesome breakfast every morning are known to have better metabolism, higher energy and concentration levels, lesser risk of blood pressure, obesity & cholesterol.

So say hello to long term health benefits with a good healthy breakfast in the morning! MicroDelight and Juist are the best partners for everyone who wants to prepare a quick breakfast in the blink of an eye!

Product Specifications:

Micro Delight (1pc)  Rs. 950

Juist (1pc)  Rs. 1,250
TomTom (TOM2) today announced the opening of the TomTom Traffic Centre  a facility to showcase the full portfolio of TomTom assets and capabilities in traffic and travel management. The centre was formally opened by Melanie Schultz van Haegen, Minister of Infrastructure and the Environment at a ceremony highlighting the capabilities of the new centre.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005171/en/

Minister of Infrastructure and the Environment, Melanie Schultz van Haegen, TomTom's co-founder Corinne Vigreux and Traffic Team formally open the TomTom Traffic Centre (Photo: Business Wire)

The goal of the TomTom Traffic Centre is to demonstrate how TomToms technology can help pave the way to smarter cities and smarter mobility. It will showcase traffic management expertise to governments, B2B and automotive licensing partners and other stakeholders interested in how they can start planning for a smarter future. The Centre will show how TomTom turns data into actionable insights that can help traffic managers as well as drivers make smarter decisions to reduce congestion for all road users and enhance mobility in cities.

Occupying a dedicated room in the TomTom Head Office in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the Traffic Centre supports TomTom City, an initiative that offers access to up-to-date traffic information for cities, citizens and professionals in over 100 cities worldwide.

The TomTom Traffic Centre features multiple high-resolution screens that show how GPS data is fused to create the latest traffic information, and visualise congested hotspots. The Centre will demonstrate TomTom's expertise and how road authorities can immediately share traffic and road information with drivers via the TomTom communications platform.

Commenting on the opening of the centre, Melanie Schultz van Haegen, Minister of Infrastructure and the Environment, said: "This TomTom traffic centre is aiming to innovate for services in the field of transport and traffic management. This can contribute to a better distribution of traffic, which benefits governments, businesses and travelers alike, both nationally and internationally. Moreover, TomTom is also mapping the Netherlands with high quality HD maps, which supports the arrival of self-driving cars.

Ralf-Peter Schafer, Head of Traffic at TomTom, said: The TomTom Traffic Centre gives us the perfect setting to showcase our full suite of products that can be used as modules for licensing customers or as a full suite to help traffic professionals in cities manage their road network. We can demonstrate how easily TomTom can reach drivers in their cars within minutes of information being shared by road authorities. This is a significant step to help close the gap between drivers, their connected cars and cities  making a contribution to smarter transportation in any smart city development.

TomTom are dedicated to easing congestion for all drivers using the information from over 450 million GPS devices* globally with their live services.

You can find out more about TomTom Traffic here.

-Ends-

* Devices include dedicated Portable Navigation Devices, connected smartphone applications, in-dash navigation and fleet management systems.

About TomTom

At TomTom (TOM2) our mission is to make technology so easy to use, that everyone can benefit from it.

We created easy to use navigation devices, helping millions of people to get where they want to be. Today, we continue to simplify the complex, making technology more accessible for everyone.

We have four customer facing business units: Consumer, Telematics, Automotive and Licensing.

We make easy to use navigation devices, sport watches and action cameras for consumers. We enable businesses with vehicles to more easily manage and improve fleet efficiency whilst increasing overall business performance with our Telematics solutions. We also offer a world leading real-time map platform that is powering innovative location based services and helping to make automated driving a reality for the automotive industry.

Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, we have over 4,600 employees and sell our products worldwide.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005171/en/

TomTom Europe PR

Sebastian Mathews

Director Group Communications

+31 (0)20 75 74 135

tomtom.pr@tomtom.com

or

Investor Relations:

Bisera Grubesic

Head of Treasury and Investor Relations

+31 20 75 75 194

ir@tomtom.com
LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The grow lights market is expected to be valued at USD 4.19 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 9.63% between 2016 and 2022. A key influencing factor for the growth of the market is the emergence of vertical farming to meet the growing demands for fresh horticultural produce in urban areas across the world. Besides, the legalization of growing marijuana for medical and recreational purposes in North America is another factor that is encouraging the demand for grow lights in this market.



"LED set to be the dominating technology in grow lights market"

LED grow lights are expected to be the most preferred grow lights technology between 2016 and 2022. The growth is attributed to the improved energy efficiency offered by LED technology, long operational life, and the ability to vary the light spectrum depending on the type of plant being grown and its current growth stage.



"Vertical farming application expected to grow rapidly in the near future"

The grow lights market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR in the vertical farming application during the forecast period. The growth of vertical farms because of increased demand for horticultural produce would drive the grow lights market



"Europe to be the largest market for grow lights"

The European region is estimated to be the largest market for grow lights during the forecast period. The need to provide supplemental lighting to plants in commercial greenhouses set to drive the grow lights market in this region.



Break-up of profiles of primary participants for the report is given below:

- By Company Type: Tier 1  7%, Tier 2  23%, and Tier 3  70%

- By Designation: C-level 46%, Director level  24%, VP level  30%

- By Region: North America - 51%, Europe  32%, APAC  12%, RoW  5%



The key players in the market include Royal Philips Electronics N.V. (Netherlands), General Electric Company (U.S.), Osram Licht AG (Germany), Gavita Holland B.V. (Netherlands), LumiGrow, Inc. (U.S.), Heliospectra AB (Sweden), Iwasaki Electric Co. Ltd. (Japan), Illumitex, Inc. (U.S.), Hortilux Schreder B.V. (Netherlands), iGrow Induction Lighting LLC. (U.S.), and Sunlight Supply, Inc. (U.S.) among others.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3688666/



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: query@reportbuyer.com

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/grow-lights-market-by-technology-type-of-installation-application-and-geography---global-forecast-to-2022-300327311.html

SOURCE ReportBuyer
CHICAGO, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Dennis FitzSimons, Chair of Independent Maps, on Tuesday issued the following statement in response to the Illinois Supreme Court's refusal to reconsider its 4 to 3 decision disqualifying the redistricting reform amendment from the ballot:

With the Illinois Supreme Court's refusal to reconsider its 4 to 3 ruling against the Independent Map Amendment, Illinois voters have been denied their right to vote on a constitutional amendment to remove politics from the way state legislative maps are drawn. Four members of the state's highest court have rejected an amendment that we firmly believe meets the state constitutional requirements for amendments that can be proposed by voters.

Our bi-partisan coalition collected more than 563,000 signatures on petitions to place the amendment before voters and to allow voters to decide whether to change the redistricting process, which now gives legislators the power to draw their own district boundary lines  a clear conflict of interest and one of the reasons there is only one candidate running in 60 percent of this year's legislative elections.

Unlike what they had done in every single similar case, the majority of the Supreme Court refused to consider transcripts of the Constitutional Convention debates, which support our argument that the amendment is exactly what the framers intended to allow citizens to do. They ruled on only one of seven arguments made by opponents and did not consider the other six counts  leaving those questions "for another day." But that "another day" may never come.

We asked that, at a minimum, the court give voters guidance about what the majority believes is permissible in a citizen-initiated amendment to reform redistricting through a fair and impartial commission. Today, without comment, the court refused.

Our coalition remains committed to reform and believes an independent redistricting commission would be one important step in changing state government and making the legislature more responsive to the voters of this state. Whether that is possible through a citizen-initiated amendment is now an open question to be discussed by supporters throughout the state.

We are grateful to our thousands of supporters and contributors, to the many, many Illinoisans who gave up nights and weekends to circulate petitions and organize volunteers, and to the great outpouring of support from newspaper editorial boards and opinion leaders throughout Illinois.

Change is difficult, especially in Illinois government, but it is a battle worth fighting.

For a list of supporters and to read more about the arguments in support of the Independent Map Amendment, visit www.MapAmendment.org.

Paid for by Support Independent Maps. A copy of our report filed with the State Board of Elections is (or will be) available on the Board's official website (http://www.elections.il.gov) or for purchase from the Illinois State Board of Elections, Springfield, Illinois.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150423/201324LOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/independent-maps-responds-to-illinois-supreme-court-refusal-to-reconsider-ruling-on-redistricting-reform-amendment-300327157.html

SOURCE Independent Maps
A.M. Best and Bests Recommended Insurance Attorneys and Adjusters has released the latest installment of the Insurance Law Podcast, a series that examines timely insurance issues from an attorneys point of view.

This episode features Aaron French and Phil Graham, attorneys, from the law firm of Sandberg Phoenix & von Gontard P.C. in St. Louis, MO. Mr. French is a shareholder at the firm and specializes in representing insurance carriers in coverage disputes and extra-contractual litigation. He serves as the business litigation group leader.

Mr. Graham is also a shareholder at the firm and works within the firms business litigation and products liability practice groups. His practice includes enforcement and defense of contract rights and other contractual matters, business torts including fraud, negligent misrepresentation, tortious interferences with business relations trade secrets and other intellectual property. The podcast addresses the handling of third-party claims in Missouri.

Mr. French explains why Missouri is quickly becoming known as a risky state for insurers handling third-party claims. Mr. Graham details carriers options in Missouri for the duty to defend when there is an actual or potential defense to coverage. Mr. French clarifies the available actions that carriers can take if an insured rejects a reservation of rights, or ROR, defense. Mr. Graham defines the types of third-party bad faith that are recognized in Missouri and the best ways to avoid these claims.

Sandberg Phoenix & von Gontard P.C. is a qualified member of Bests Recommended Insurance Attorneys and Adjusters, a claims industry resource that has featured legal counsel, independent insurance adjusting services and expert service providers since 1928.

Listen or subscribe to the Insurance Law Podcast.

A.M. Best is the worlds oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright  2016 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913006232/en/

A.M. Best

John Czuba, +1-908-439-2200, ext. 5673

Managing Editor  Bests Recommended Insurance Attorneys and Adjusters

john.czuba@ambest.com
Leading dental support organization Marquee Dental Partners today announced an affiliation agreement with Mid Tennessee Dentistry. Founded by Sara B. Northcutt, DDS, Mid Tennessee Dentistrys operations include seven family and cosmetic dentistry locations, as well as one practice that focuses on specialty care. By providing dentists with both the support and clinical autonomy they need to succeed, Marquee Dental enables them to focus their attention on providing the best oral healthcare services possible.

We are pleased to partner with Dr. Sara Northcutt and the talented team at Mid Tennessee Dentistry, said Marquee Dental CEO James Usdan. They have built a tremendous reputation providing comprehensive dental care using the most advanced technologies and techniques.

Our partnership with Mid Tennessee Dentistry significantly expands Marquee Dentals footprint within the Nashville area and reaches into the growing communities of Franklin, Brentwood, Smyrna and Antioch, added Usdan.

From a patient perspective, the transition will be seamless. Dr. Northcutt will continue to be actively involved in the practices. Marquee Dental places heavy emphasis on dentists clinical autonomy and will leave in place the practices dentists and staff.

With Marquee Dental, we have found a partner that shares our commitment to our dentists, our staff and, most importantly, our patients, said Dr. Northcutt. Marquee Dentals experienced team will be extremely helpful in supporting our significant growth and maximizing efficiency, which will allow us to provide the highest quality dental care possible.

Marquee Dental affiliates with dental offices and group practices in growth markets that have a history of providing high quality care. Marquee has grown rapidly since its formation in 2015, initially focusing in the Mid-South.

The experienced Marquee Dental team is led by CEO James Usdan, a seasoned executive who has served as CEO of three public companies and five private equity-backed firms. Usdan has decades of experience in the dental industry and has led or served as a board member of four dental service companies.

About Marquee Dental Partners

Marquee Dental is a premier dental support organization dedicated to making dentists and their patients the priority. By providing dentists with both the support and the clinical autonomy they need to succeed, Marquee enables them to focus their attention on providing the best oral healthcare services possible. Led by a team of highly accomplished industry veterans, the privately held company is based in Nashville, Tennessee. For more information, visit www.marqueedentalpartners.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005553/en/

Laura Campbell & Associates

Laura Campbell, CEO, 615-579-6599

laura@laura-campbell.com
- Wins order for steam turbine and generator for eco-friendly geothermal power project -

Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO:6502) has won a major order to supply a flash steam turbine system and generator (STG) for Unit 2 of the Kizildere III Geothermal Power Plant in Turkey. Zorlu Energy, an independent power producer and member of Turkeys Zorlu Energy Group, will construct the plant in Kizildere, in the Aydin province of West Anatolia, Turkey. Toshiba will deliver the generation equipment in July 2017. Support for this major low-emission project will allow Toshiba to expand its green footprint in Turkey and support Turkey in deploying low-carbon power solutions.

Energy consumption in Turkey is growing fast, driven by population growth and economic development, and both the government and the private sector are promoting projects to increase capacity. Toshiba concluded a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Zorlu Energy Group in January this year, covering construction of geothermal, thermal and hydro power plants. Toshiba and Zorlu Energy Group have successfully worked together on past projects, and will continue to cooperate in developing Turkeys power sector under the scope of the MOU.

Kizildere III Geothermal Power Plant - Unit 2 is a 70,000 kW, high-efficiency triple flash combined-cycle geothermal power plant. It will integrate two systems: an approximately 50,700 kW flash steam generation system driven by steam under high pressure; plus an approximately 19,300 kW binary cycle power generation system that uses flash turbine exhaust steam to vaporize a working fluid with a lower boiling point and use it to drive a turbine.

Toshiba delivered a flash power generation system for the Zorlu Energy Groups Alasehir Geothermal Power Plant in 2014, its first in Turkey. Following smooth progress in installation work and proving tests, the plant started commercial operation ahead of schedule, in September last year. Following on from this, Toshiba received a further order for a flash power generation system for Kizildere III Geothermal Power Plant - Unit 1 Geothermal Power Plant in 2015, and the company is now manufacturing the STG. Toshibas performance to date had been highly evaluated by Zorlu Energy Group, resulting in this third order to supply a flash steam turbine and generator for this project. Toshiba has now won three of Turkeys last four contracts for geothermal plants, and this order will increase the companys share in Turkeys market for geothermal flash STGs to 48%.

Commenting on the contract, Mr. Takao Konishi, Vice President of the Thermal & Hydro Power Systems & Services Division in Toshibas Energy Systems & Solutions Company said, Geothermal power is an attractive solution in promoting environmentally friendly, low-emission power generation, and we are pleased to build on earlier projects and extend our green footprint in Turkey. This new order is a testimony to customer trust in the reliability and performance of our cost-competitive products. Toshiba will continue to promote high-efficiency STGs for geothermal plants in Turkey, East Africa, South America and other promising markets, where electricity demand is expected to increase in the future.

Toshiba is strongly focused on expanding its geothermal STG business, promoting a strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with US-based Ormat Technologies, Inc., a maker of binary systems, and is also utilizing a range of assistance measures, including financing by the Japanese government under its quality infrastructure export policy. Toshiba aims to expand the scope of its business beyond manufacturing to include operation and maintenance of geothermal power plants.

Project Outline Power Plant Kizildere III Geothermal Power Plant - Unit 2 Site location Kizildere, Aydin Province, Turkey Plant operator Zorlu Energy Scope of supply 50,700 kW Flash Steam Turbine and Generator Scheduled installation July 2017 (provisional) Scheduled operation December 2017 (provisional)

About Toshiba

Toshiba Corporation, a Fortune Global 500 company, channels world-class capabilities in advanced electronic and electrical product and systems into three focus business fields: Energy that sustains everyday life, that is cleaner and safer; Infrastructure that sustains quality of life; and Storage that sustains the advanced information society. Guided by the principles of The Basic Commitment of the Toshiba Group, Committed to People, Committed to the Future, Toshiba promotes global operations and is contributing to the realization of a world where generations to come can live better lives.

Founded in Tokyo in 1875, todays Toshiba is at the heart of a global network of 551 consolidated companies employing 188,000 people worldwide, with annual sales surpassing 5.6 trillion yen (US$50 billion) (as of March 31, 2016).

To find out more about Toshiba, visit www.toshiba.co.jp/index.htm

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006565/en/

Press Contact:

Toshiba Corporation

Motohiro Ajioka and Yuu Takase, +81-3-3457-2100

PR & IR Division

media.relations@toshiba.co.jp
WELLESLEY, Mass., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- U.S. News & World Report has ranked Babson College the No. 1 undergraduate school for entrepreneurship in the United States for the 20th consecutive time, ahead of such institutions as University of Pennsylvania, MIT, and NYU.

Other schools rounding out this year's Top 5 list are:



2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

3. University of Pennsylvania

4. University of California-Berkeley

4. University of Southern California (tie)

"We are honored to be recognized by U.S. News & World Report for an unprecedented 20th consecutive time," said Babson President Kerry Healey. "Babson College founded the academic discipline of entrepreneurship and has fostered its evolution throughout our history, redefining entrepreneurship to mean more than starting a business and redefining business to mean more than making a profit. As we approach our second century, Babson is the acknowledged leader in entrepreneurship education and we remain committed to educating entrepreneurial leaders who create great social and economic value everywhere."

Each year, U.S. News & World Report ranks undergraduate business programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. This reputational ranking reflects the high esteem that leaders in the field of business education hold for Babson College's faculty and undergraduate degree. The magazine surveys business school deans and senior faculty.

Read more about the ranking and methodology 

"We are pleased to receive this recognition from U.S. News & World Report. Such acknowledgment from peers and the press recognizes the pioneering and leading work of our faculty, campus community, and institutional partners. Together, they provide a transformative undergraduate education that integrates Entrepreneurial Thought & Action across a curriculum, bringing together an elite business education with the intellectual and cultural environment of the best liberal arts institutions," said Ian Lapp, Babson College Undergraduate School Dean.

This ranking success is just the latest achievement for the College's programs.

Babson College established its Global Entrepreneur in Residence Program  becoming the first private college to offer a program that retains talent and fosters innovation in the United States by supporting international entrepreneurs.

established its Global Entrepreneur in Residence Program  becoming the first private college to offer a program that retains talent and fosters innovation in by supporting international entrepreneurs. Babson Breakaway Challenge accelerates the growth of women-led businesses with a competition for $250,000 in funding. Grand prize will be awarded at the Finale on Friday, September 30, 2016 , as a part of HUBweek Boston.

in funding. Grand prize will be awarded at the Finale on , as a part of HUBweek Boston. Babson College's Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab continues to spark new women-led ventures with the launch of its newest program in Miami.

Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab continues to spark new women-led ventures with the launch of its newest program in Miami. Babson College expanded its Boston presence for students, alumni, and partners by relocating its city campus to Boston's Financial District.

About Babson College

Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds. The top-ranked college for entrepreneurship education, Babson is a dynamic living and learning laboratory where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society. We prepare the entrepreneurial leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, and motivate teams in a common purpose to make a difference in the world, and have an impact on organizations of all sizes and types. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought & Action as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407016

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-news--world-report-ranks-babson-college-no-1-for-entrepreneurship-for-20th-consecutive-time-300327039.html

SOURCE Babson College
Regulatory News:

VEXIM (Paris:ALVXM) (FR0011072602  ALVXM / PEAPME), a medical device company specializing in the minimally invasive treatment of vertebral fractures, today announces the signing of a distribution agreement with Creatori Health for the distribution of its portfolio in South Africa.

The South African market, with its 53 million inhabitants, is a promising Spine trauma market with a potential of 20.000 vertebral fractures. This could lead to a market of 40 million, according to our estimates.

VEXIMs portfolio already gained reimbursement from one of the leading medical health insurance in South Africa, which will benefit to the Creatori Health commercial team.

Creatori Health is a well-known medical device company established in South Africa since 2004 by the current MD, Dr. Jaco Van Der Walt. Supplying leading edge technology has been a core focus of the Company, and after 9 successful years namely in the Neurosurgery field, the company decided to expand its focus to Spine and Neurosurgery in 2014, streamlining the product portfolio to ensure the best possible servicing to their clients. SpineJack is a natural extension of its current business and a great strategic fit.

Creatori Health is looking forward to providing the South African medical industry with SpineJack  a clinically sound device that is not only unique, but will definitely add value as a treatment option to both patients and surgeons. With the support of VEXIM, and the granted reimbursement from a leading funder for medical insurance, we feel positive about the contribution SpineJack will bring to the medical industry in South Africa, said Dr WJ Van Der Walt, CEO of Creatori Health.

Thanks to our preparation activities in this market, and based on the strong clinical literature supporting SpineJack, reimbursement has already been granted by one leading health insurer. That will for sure benefit to Creatori Health and allow for a fast penetration of the market, said Vincent Gardes, CEO of VEXIM.

About VEXIM, the innovative back microsurgery specialist

Based in Balma, near Toulouse (France), VEXIM is a medical device company created in February 2006. The company has specialized in the creation and marketing of minimally-invasive solutions for treating traumatic spinal pathologies. Benefitting from the financial support of it longstanding shareholder, Truffle Capital1 and from BPI public subsidies, VEXIM has designed and developed the SpineJack, a unique implant capable of repairing a fractured vertebra and restoring the balance of the spinal column. The company also developed the MasterflowTM, an innovative solution for mixing and injecting orthopedic cement that enhances the accuracy of the injection and optimizes the overall surgical procedure. The company counts 62 employees, including its own sales teams in Europe and a network of international distributors.

VEXIM has been listed on Alternext Paris since May 2012. For further information, please visit www.vexim.com

SpineJack 2, a revolutionary implant for treating Vertebral Fractures

The revolutionary aspect of the SpineJack lies in its ability to restore a fractured vertebra to its original shape, restore the spinal columns optimal anatomy and thus remove pain and enable the patient to recover their functional capabilities. Thanks to a specialized range of instruments, inserting the implants into the vertebra is carried out by minimally-invasive surgery, guided by X-ray, in approximately 30 minutes, enabling the patient to be discharged shortly after surgery. The SpineJack range consists of 3 titanium implants with 3 different diameters, thus covering 95% of vertebral fractures and all patient morphologies. SpineJack technology benefits from the support of international scientific experts in the field of spinal surgery and worldwide patent protection through to 2029.

MasterflowTM 2, a high-performance orthopedic cement delivery system

The MasterflowTM is an innovative solution for mixing and injecting orthopedic cement that enhances the accuracy of the injection and optimizes the overall surgical procedure for treating vertebral compression fractures. The device provides a better control of the injection of biomaterials into the spine. A complement of the SpineJack, the MasterflowTM stands out for being both easy to use and precise, particularly in its ability to stop the cement delivery instantly without inertia. The MasterflowTM contributes to reducing pain in patients. Its first sales were recorded in the U.S. in February 2015, and the system has also received the CE marking in February 2015, a mandatory conformity mark for products marketed in Europe.

Name : VEXIM

ISIN code : FR0011072602

Ticker : ALVXM

1 Founded in 2001 in Paris, Truffle Capital is a leading independent European private equity firm. It is dedicated to investing in and building technology leaders in the IT, life sciences and energy sectors. Truffle Capital manages 550m via FCPRs and FCPIs, the latter offering tax rebates (funds are blocked during 7 to 10 years). For further information, please visit www.truffle.fr and www.fcpi.fr.

2 This medical device is a regulated health product that, with regard to these regulations, bears the CE mark. Please refer to the Instructions for Use.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006448/en/

VEXIM

Vincent Gardes, Tel. : +33 5 61 48 48 38

CEO

investisseur@vexim.com

or

PRESS

ALIZE RP

Caroline Carmagnol / Wendy Rigal

Tel. : +33 1 44 54 36 66

Tel. : +33 6 48 82 18 94

vexim@alizerp.com


New course allows pararescuemen to develop as leaders, obtain certification

It takes countless years of education, multiple deployments and temporary duty assignments to become a pararescue team leader.



The 68th Rescue Flight recently implemented the Combat Leaders Course, a 65-day course for 10 pararescuemen in which they develop their leadership abilities while obtaining their 7-level certification.



The 68th RQF created the course, with Air Combat Command guidance, not only to standardize the way team leaders were trained but also to provide the Air Force with a center of excellence that is solely dedicated to supporting the guardian angel weapon systems training and operational requirements. Guardian angel is comprised of combat rescue officers; pararescuemen; survival, evasion, resistance and escape specialists; and specially trained support personnel dedicated to one of the Air Forces primary functions of personnel recovery and combat search and rescue.



Historically, guardian angel units were forced to conduct upgrade training internally, said Capt. Michael Ellingsen, the 68th RQF commander. The 48th Rescue Squadron had their own method of training their team leaders, while the 58th RQS at Nellis (Air Force Base, Nevada), and the 38th RQS out at Moody (AFB, Georgia), also had theirs. Theyre all trained independently and to different standards, whereas now the process is more efficient and effective for the entire weapon system as a whole.



The thought process behind CLC was to identify what unique skill sets do we want our future team leaders and pararescuemen to possess, and what capability do we want them to provide to the squadron commanders and the combatant commanders downrange, Ellingsen continued.



The 10 students brought diversity to the course as they represented seven different major commands displaying a multitude of backgrounds and experiences. The knowledge and skills they learned during the course and from each other will be used in a variety of combat operations around the world.



The students planned their missions and executed a multitude of scenarios, including a jump mission with an overland movement, a mass casualty, and a technical rescue with the rotary wing exfiltration, all within the climates of southern Arizona and California. Aside from daily course tasks, peer performance feedbacks and intelligence briefings were included as well.



The environment  its like theyre downrange, said Staff Sgt. Steven Chubb, the 68th RQF NCO in charge of intelligence analysis. Theres a lot of helicopter landing zones that the guys can actually use and implement. (There are) a lot of things for them to do (during) their training and its away from everybody. So, if they want to do things like a real-life convoy or an improvised explosive device explosion, they can do that.



The current class is the third iteration of pararescuemen to take on the course.



This unit is unique in the fact that its the first of its kind to be implemented in the Air Force, Ellingsen said. Were not a traditional rescue squadron in the sense that we support deployment taskings. This unit provides a specific operational capability for the guardian angel weapon system in order to support the combatant commanders.
AFCENT briefs OIR effort in fight against ISIL

With significant progress and momentum in the U.S.-led coalitions fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the enemy will try to challenge the coalition in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, the commander of Operation Inherent Resolves combined force air component told reporters today.



Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, the commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, said a tough fight against an adaptive enemy still lies ahead as the coalition hones in on Mosul and Raqqa. But using the complement of coalition airpower, we will continue to deliver more destruction to (ISILs) command and control than they can absorb. We have gathered lessons from Manbij, and we will leverage the coordination with our partner ground forces (to) separate (ISIL) from the civilian populace, allowing us to remove tools of terror from the battlefield, he said.



Most precise air campaign



In an increasingly complex battlespace, OIRs airpower remains the most precise air campaign in history, Harrigian said. Our coalition includes various countries and multiple entities operating on land, sea, air, space and cyberspace domains, and all recognize that (ISIL) is an enemy that hides behind the civilian populace.



The general said his focus remains on creating an insurmountably tough and complex set of problems for ISIL across Iraq and Syria.



We will continue to shape the battlespace, going after their revenue streams, killing their leaders and creating organizational dysfunction, he said. We will seek to use the weight of airpower to remove (ISILs) legitimacy, shatter their vision and enable taking back the territory and resources they have stolen.



Capitalizing on enemy errors



The war requires increased persistence and the ability to remain vigilant in efforts to capitalize on ISILs tactical errors, the general said.



As new and evolving ISIL capabilities are discovered, such as small, unmanned aerial systems, well take it off the battlefield, Harrigian added.



You can be sure we will continue to work closely with our coalition partners to ensure were preparing the battlespace, pursuing opportunities and ultimately prevailing, he said.



Potential agreement with Russia



In addition to the complex air and battlespace in the OIR area of responsibility, there is a lot of activity across U.S. Central Command, such as a possible joint integration center with Russia, Harrigian said.



The first step is a cessation of hostilities for seven days, and this is something the Russians and the regime must do, and they must do it properly, the general said. The intelligence community will continue to monitor the cessation and ensure the U.S. is developing processes to execute the mission, if we can get that far, Harrigian added.



We are in close coordination with U.S. Central Command, the (combined joint task force) OIR, and our fellow components to work the details, the general said, adding that in such a complex battlespace, his intent is to not make it more complex.



But this will take some work, he added. As the terms of reference are finalized, we will take the guidance, review it and build an operational plan that executes the mission precisely while minimizing risk to the coalition team and civilians on the ground.



While the process is in its early stages, the U.S. will target specifics and assess resources to be able to execute in accordance with the agreement, Harrigian said.



Our intent is to ensure we dont impact coalition cohesion, our current momentum or the precision effects we demand, he said. Were still working out the details, but these are areas that will be addressed.


The 315th Airlift Wing, in conjunction with Google, conducted bias and inclusion training for wing senior leaders on Sept. 9, 2016.

This training came about by partnering with our local business leaders, said Col. Greg Gilmour, 315th Airlift Wing commander. The training that was conducted was extremely valuable to our wing leadership. We all have some inherent biases, recognizing those biases is the first step in overcoming them and we own that to our Airmen, he said.

The Bias Busting Training is a common training given to Google employees and Eric Wages, 315 AW honorary commander and Google site operations manager along with Sandra Figueroa, Google operations manager, conducted the training for nearly 50 members of the 315 AWs leadership team.

The goal here is to teach people about unconscious biases and to understand how those biases work with the people around you, said Wages. Having a diverse team leads to better decision making and more innovation so today is about making you aware of your own biases, he said.

According to Col. Gilmour, the bias training was part of his strategic plan by investing in our Airmen and creating a culture of inclusion in the wing. The training consisted of formal classroom instructions, small group discussions and role play scenarios. The group also openly discussed leading personnel from different backgrounds, cultures and sexual orientations and the challenges associated with a diverse workforce.

The plan now is to take this training to the Airmen, said Wages. I think it is important for Airmen at every level to understand what their internal biases are, he said.

Everybodys got a story and your job as leaders is to find out what that story is because they will be the leaders long after we are gone, said Col. Gilmour as he closed the training session.
At last justice has been handed over to stalker who killed a nurse in Bandra attack. This is a landmark verdict and it is the first one for such heinous crime. Court hands awarding capital punishment is an eye opener. All along people commit such crimes and wander without severe punishment. This verdict has given the feeling that the acid attack is cruel than rape and stringent action must be taken against the culprit. Castration for committing offences like rape and acid attack is an option open for long time and now death penalty is being awarded for the stalker. It is a right step in the right direction and women can show self-confidence after the landmark verdict and from now on stalker must exercise restraint as they cannot go scot free after committing the crime.

Punishment or castration would be a short-term solution. Agreed, severe punishment for rape would send a chill down the spine of criminals but a culprit will eventually figure out ways of saving himself from punishment. What our society needs is moral education. It is we who have corrupted the value system. Let us take responsibility for our acts and make efforts to correct the system. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India. Many sociologists and social commentators have attempted to analyse the various factors that could be leading up to this alarming rise in the number of rapes. Is it time to award severe punishment for such crimes?

What has led to a growing number of acid attacks on women is that the law to protect acid attack victims was weak until it was amended recently. What is worse is victims if only disfigured are not even acknowledged as physically disabled. This means that they are denied jobs etc. reserved for the disabled which otherwise could have provided some relief to them. Just like rape laws, even acid attack laws should be made more stringent. The law states the person should be 40 per cent or more handicapped to be eligible for a reservation. But they do not include acid attack victims in this list. However even laws to ensure inclusion and accessibility to the differently abled are often flouted by both government and private establishments. Women are considered as sex objects. Once women reject mens advances they try to disfigure their face by throwing acid. It is time to get tough with people opting for acid use in public places. Its use should be restricted for domestic purposes and not for violent activities.

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
Airtel to provide more point of interconnects to Jio

Bharti Airtel on Tuesday said following its bilateral discussions with Reliance Jio, it will provide additional point of interconnections (PoI) to Jio.

Airtel had extended an invitation to Jio to discuss its requirement of additional PoI.

The statement said: Airtel has been providing PoIs to Jio, well ahead of the commencement of its commercial operations. With the latest augmentation, the total number of PoIs will become three times the present number of PoIs.

Based on the current traffic pattern with all other operators, this capacity is sufficient to serve over 15 million customers, which is significantly higher than Jios existing customer base.

Having agreed to release the PoIs, Airtel said it would also need to take cognizance of the massive asymmetry in the volume of traffic between the two networks and ensure that the quality of service for Airtel customers is not affected.
Amid strict curfew across Kashmir on Eid, two youths were killed during protests and clashes that erupted across Kashmir which has left nearly 40 people injured.

The two killings took place in Bandipora and Shopian districts. Mustafa Mir, in his early 20s, was killed after he was hit by a tear-smoke shell during clashes in Bandipora town, while Shahid Ahmad was killed after being hit by a pellet in Bonabazar, Shopian.

Soon after the Eid prayers ended in Bandipora, a group of protestors started pelting stones at security forces who retaliated by firing tear smoke shells and pellet guns, a police official said.

He said 20-year-old Murtaza Ahmed was hit by a tear smoke shell resulting in his death. Several others were injured in the security forces action in Bandipora town.

Restrictions on assembly of large number of people have been imposed in view of the call by separatists for a march to the local offices of the United Nations today, coinciding with the global bodys Opening of 71st Session of the UN General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York.

The Army, which has been asked to be on standby, will step in if there is fresh outbreak of violence in the Valley, which has been witnessing widespread unrest for over two months leading to death of over 80 people so far, official sources said.

Army troops have already been stationed at vantage points in rural areas which have a history of violent protests, they said, adding curfew came in force from midnight.

In Shopian, the killing took place when violent clashes broke out in Bonabazar when people tried to defy curfew restrictions. Doctors at Shopian said Shahid was brought dead with pellet injuries in the chest. Many protesters were injured in the clashes in Shopian.

With these two fresh casualties, the death toll in the current unrest has reached 81. More than 10,000 people have been injured in clashes in over the past two months.

Nearly 40 protesters were injured in clashes on Tuesday in Srinagar, Shopian, Bijbehara, Tral, Kulgam, Bandipora and Baramulla.

The J&K government on Tuesday imposed strict curfew across the Kashmir Valley and did not allow Eid congregational prayers in Eidgah and main mosques amid fears of largescale protests and violence.

Government has deployed thousands of forces across Kashmir and pressed into service unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, for aerial surveillance to ensure peace.

Kashmiri separatist leaders leading the present agitation have called for a march to United Nations Military Observers Group for India and Pakistan on Tuesday.
Indias top women bankers, SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, ICICI head Chanda Kochhar and Axis Bank CEO Shikha Sharma, are among the 50 most powerful women based outside the US, according to a list by Fortune which is topped by Banco Santanders boss Ana Botn.

Bhattacharya, 60 is ranked second on the list, while Kochhar comes in on the fifth spot and Sharma on the 19th position in the Fortunes 50 Most Powerful Women International list, which has ranked the women based outside the US.

Botn, Group Executive Chairman of Banco Santander, Eurozones largest bank by market value, repeats as No. 1, in a time of economic and political volatility for all. The 2016 list spans 19 countries.

Bhattacharyas profile has risen during her three-year tenure atop Indias largest bank, Fortune said.

SBI Chairperson Bhattacharya, who was widely speculated to succeed Raghuram Rajan as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has continued her high-profile battle with the banks bad loans, while courting overseas partners to invest in the stressed assets.

In May, she also orchestrated SBIs merger with six other groups, a plan that, once complete, will result in one of largest lenders in Asia.

Though her term leading the bank is set to expire in October, most expect the government will extend her time so she can see the efforts through, Fortune said.

ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO Kochhar, 54, is regarded even by rival bankers as a visionary, Fortune said.

After seven years at the helm of Indias largest private sector lender, with consolidated assets of USD 139 billion, she has overhauled the nations consumer retail business.

Though bad loans took a toll on income growth this year, Kochhar has engaged turnaround experts to help ditch those distressed assets, Fortune said, highlighting her efforts to boost the banks digital growth and enable female employees to work from home for a year.

Sharma, 57, has grown Axis from an underrepresented bank to the nations fastest growing private sector lender, with revenue up 15 per cent to USD 7.9 billion in 2015 and nearly 3000 branches across 1,800 cities and towns, Fortune said.
The finance ministry plans to make a presentation to the Prime Minister on the proposed overhaul of the Budget by shifting to outcome-based budgeting, and merger of rail with the general Budget.

Bringing forward the Budget presentation date by a month to January end, scrapping the distinction of Plan and non-Plan expenditure and moving away from traditional budgeting based on inputs (how much can be spent) to one measurable by outcome (what can be achieved with the spending) are among the five pillars the ministry has identified as part of the exercise.

It wants to make a presentation on these points to Prime Minister Narendra Modi before putting them in a Cabinet note for approval, sources in the know said.

The necessity and benefits of merging rail with the general Budget will also be featured. It would detail how moving the Budget presentation to January-end will help complete all constitutional requirements before beginning of a fiscal.

The finance ministry will float a Cabinet note on this after the Prime Minister gives a go-ahead, they said.

Through outcome-based budgeting, the ministry is trying to shift from traditional performance-based budgeting by planning expenditure, fixing appropriate targets and quantifying deliverables of each scheme.

The outcome-based one will outline what can be achieved with what is being spent and will involve the process of defining the desired long-term outcome of schemes of various ministries.

Besides, the finance ministry is considering a multi-year approach in budgeting so that the Budget document gives a preview of the governments finances for the next 2-3 years.

A multi-year approach in budgeting helps utilise resources better and bring in more transparency in accounting, the sources said.

If the proposal of multi-year budgeting comes through, then the Budget document for 2017-18 will give capital and revenue expenditure for 2-3 years.

The document only gives details of Plan and non-Plan expenditure for the fiscal for which the Budget is presented and also the previous two financial years.

The finance ministry comes out with a Medium-term Expenditure Framework Statement which sets forth a three-year rolling target for expenditure indicators with specification of underlying assumptions and risks involved.
Activists of Raj Thackeray-led MNS on Tuesday allegedly disrupted a press conference called by an outfit seeking statehood for Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. MNS is strongly opposed to any division of Maharashtra.

Dozens of MNS workers, led by Corporator Sandeep Deshpande, allegedly barged into the conference, organised by Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti at Press Club in South Mumbai, and asked the media persons covering the event to leave the venue. They also forced the conference organisers to wind up the press meet.

We cannot and would not ever tolerate creation of a separate Vidarbha. We believe in Akhand (united) Maharashtra. We will fight for Akhand Maharashtra and would do whatever it takes (to keep the state united), Deshpande said. The Samiti is among a handful of organisations which are leading a movement for decades demanding statehood for Vidarbha, a cotton-rich region in eastern Maharashtra.

The conference was being addressed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Wamanrao Chatap who argued with MNS workers to allow activists to exercise their democratic right.

The Vidarbha movement includes political activities organised by various individuals, organizations and political parties, for creation of an independent state of Vidarbha, within the Republic of India.

Chatap, a former aide of peasants leader late Sharad Joshi, has been a strong advocate of the bifurcation. The MNS and Shiv Sena are strongly opposed to the demand while the BJP favours it.

The Congress has periodically changed its stand and currently opposes the demand to carve a separate state out of Maharashtra.
At least nine people were killed and eighteen others injured when a high-tension live wire fell on a roadways bus on the national highway near Etah in Uttar Pradesh.

Police personnel have been rushed to area to effectively warn and ward off any oncoming traffic in the region. The injured have been rushed to the nearby hospital.

The incident occurred at around 11.45 am when a UP roadways bus was moving on GT Road between Sainthia and Manpur villages, said senior superintendent of police, Etah, Ajay Shankar Rai. The bus was on its way to Bewar from Delhi.

The live wire fell on the running bus in which seven people got electrocuted. The deceased are yet to be identified, the SSP said.

The police personnel has been rushed to the spot to ward off oncoming traffic on the route.

The passengers tried to get down the bus and many jumped from the windows to save themselves. The bus was moving at a slow pace as the road was bad. Suddenly, the wire fell on the bus after which electric current ran through it, said Mukesh Yadav, a passenger who escaped unhurt.

With rainy weather on the highway, the contact with live wire seem to have exacerbated the damage of the accident.
More than seventy per cent of the newly-listed companies are trading well above their issue price, giving handsome returns of up to 98 per cent. Out of the 17 companies that came out with their IPOs and got listed on the bourses this year, 12 have seen remarkable gains against the price at which they had issued shares to investors, an analysis of the stock performance of the newly-listed firms showed.

The rest five companies, however, failed to see positive investor response and are trading below their issue price, falling up to 30 per cent. Among the gainers, microfinance player Ujjivan Financial Services which made its stock market debut in May has seen the biggest rally in its share price and is currently trading 98.35 per cent higher than its IPO price.

E-commerce player Infibeam Incorporation, whose shares got listed in April, comes second by surging 96.52 per cent as compared to the issue price. Shares of staffing firm Quess Corp has risen by 64.35 per cent, while Advanced Enzyme Technologies soared 61.38 per cent and Equitas Holdings gained 59.90 per cent.

Similarly, Parag Milk Foods shares have surged 54.88 per cent, Mahanagar Gas zoomed 47.24 per cent and Thyrocare Technologies jumped 36.32 per cent. In case of RBL Bank, its shares went up 32.8 per cent, while of that of TeamLease Services rose 27.64 per cent.

On the other hand five companies  Larsen & Toubro Infotech, Bharat Wire Ropes, HealthCare Global Enterprises, Quick Heal Technologies and Precision Camshafts  suffered losses and failed to trade above their IPO price.Shares of S P Apparels and Dilip Buildcon rose 21.88 per cent and 5.70 per cent, respectively.

Shares of software security solutions provider Quick Heal have fallen by 29.98 per cent.

In the stock market, the BSE benchmark Sensex has surged 2,236 points or 8.56 per cent, while the NSE Nifty gained 769.25 points, 9.68 per cent, so far this year. The Sensex touched its 52-week high of 29,077.28 on September 8.
Residents of several villages in Murbad town have reported hearing a mysterious tremor- like sound, weeks after some people in neighbouring Palghar district had a similar experience.

People in Mazgaon, Kanhale, Bangalpada, Tane villages have told the district authorities that they have been hearing an unusual sound emanating from the ground for the last one week.

Murbad Tehsildar Sarjerao Mhaske Patil said he along with a local police team visited the villages on receiving information in this regard.

Patil said many villagers told him they heard a peculiar sound on September 4 and a few times again last week.

We have written to geological experts in Nagpur and sought their help. We have requested to them conduct a survey, he said.

The sound was mainly heard in the area surrounding Padala, an earthen dam in the taluka.
The Cauvery Water crisis should have been considered resolved on 5 February, 2007, when the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal delivered its award. Water will be the cause of battles and bitterness in future. Unintended consequences of interconnecting all rivers in the country have not been properly studied. Canalization of river waters and passing them over to neighbouring states is creating more problems. Keralas argument for constructing a check dam in the Attapadi region is that there are no major or medium retaining structures in the command area of the project. It is rather unfortunate that even after centuries of so called civilization, we continue to depend upon rains for our water needs, and have made only puerile efforts to provide water in the quantity needed. Water crisis affect all southern Indian states Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka. Goa and Maharashtra too have water disputes. Most of the irrigation facilities are privately owned lift irrigation systems, which are confined to small patches. We cannot just weigh electoral advantages and act unfairly. Our policy makers should think twice before taking such decisions. There should be team of experts consisting of agriculture experts, engineers, farmers, meteorologists from both sides to evolve a workable solution. The need of the hour is for a face-to-face meeting between the Chief Ministers to defuse the crisis. Water being compulsory need for everyone the issue should be resolved through dialogue between stakeholders.

Vinod C. Dixit

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)








Web Toolbar by Wibiya

Building a professional website has not remain a tough work at all. There are plenty of resources which can help you to create your professional website, that too free. When you want to give your website your own domain name, you can do this with the support of professional website builders. You can customize your website, put your own thoughts in that as well as you can create your own social community and blog, which supports you to make your website popular. In this discussion we will discuss about Top 5 free professional website builder platforms. If you are not good at programming language no matters, because customer support or expert of the website builder will provide you complete guidance in building your website.

Wix

It is the professional free website builder, which provides you a way to create your own website. When you visit the website it will ask you about which type of website you want to build. It guides you to design you own website with support of SEO domain selection, secure hosting, Image collection, etc., along with this it provides you 24/7 customer support. Whenever you have a query on your mind you can reach out the customer support of WIX, and can create a professional website free with your own ideas. It gives you option to select the template for your website. There a huge collection of template of all kind of website, you can select any of them and continue building your own website for free.

Weebly

It is the free website builder which allow you to create the website, for your business. It gives you 1-year free support for your website, as well as it does offer long time support with its cost. It is not mandatory to pay during start, you can just check out the service for free, and if you liked it you can proceed further as a starter or you can select pro, business services too. For any business communication is the major to expand your business and when you make your mark of your business through website you can reach out to maximum number of users in less time.

Jimdo

It is a Germany based website builder company which provides web hosting service. Its provides different section of services, for different requirements. Suppose you want to build your website for free, you can adopt JimdoFree service, and if you would like to select premium services you can select, JimdoPro and JimdoBusiness. It is dedicated to meet your expectation in building your own professional website. If you are building a website for your business, then it is obvious that there will be increased number of users on your website and it requires a good server to be selected for your website. All these issues will be tackled by the Jimdo customer support which is available 24/7. It gives you facility to build your website with HTML5, where programming is comparatively easy than other language.

Moonfruit

It is a Uk based company which provide website building service. It is founded in August 1999 and since then it is providing website building service for free. It gives you option to crate Wikipedia also. If you have any doubt of domain, or doubt in selecting package you can take customer support of moonfruit which can help you select the package based on your requirements. It does provide blog building service too, so that you can spread your website to maximum number of users with the support of professional blogs.

Webnode

When you dont want to spend much during the start time of building your website, you can go for professional website builder service for free. Web node is one of the website builder company which offers free web hosting service. It is popular since January 2008. It provides three types of services like personal website, e commerce website and business website, based on your requirement you can select any one. It is also known as drag and drop online website, because it offers you to create forums, photos, blogs, libraries, feedback boxes etc.

So, in the above discussion we have discussed top 5 free website builder companies, which offers free website hosting service as well as premium services to expand your business.








Web Toolbar by Wibiya

Canadian judges by and large are champions of affirming the due process of law. However, the letter below written to the Ontario Judicial Council suggests that there are judges who are less than ethical in their conduct. In Ontario, two particular Justices have been responsible for breaching all sorts of judicial guidelines as a result of having been unduly influenced by efforts of the Defendant who has sought to manipulate the judicial system.





As a result of the activities of these Justices, an elderly woman has been subjected to over one year of abuse and neglect by her husband who sought to keep her son away from championing the rights of his Mother. Evidence points to an apparent illicit relationship between these two Justices and the abusive husband which have resulted in the Mother who has not seen her son in over one year no longer being able to walk, talk or write.







Ontario Superior COURT FILE NO: 15-66772

The Ontario Judicial Council - OPEN LETTER

P. O. Box 914,

Adelaide Street Postal Station,

31 Adelaide Street East,

Toronto, Ontario M5C 2K3





September 12, 2016









Criminal Misconduct - Justice P. E. Roger and The Hon. James McNamara









Dear Ontario Judicial Council,





It has been my experience that the great majority of judges in Ontario are steadfastly committed to principles of balance, fairness, impartiality, ethics and the due process of law, even when judgements have not been in my favour. I have also observed Court administrative staff emulating the professional tone set by these judges.





However, bribery and collusion can affect the integrity of justice.





Apparently Justice P.E. Roger and The Hon. James McNamara have been accepting tribute in exchange for favourable justice.





Does the Ontario Judicial Council support the practice of Judges meeting with a litigant in a case to then coordinate favourable justice for that litigant?





The Defendant was worried about possibly losing the Motion for Leave to Appeal to another Judge whom they could not unduly influence.





They then appealed to Justice P. E. Roger who looked for, and seized control of the Plaintiff's Motion for Leave to Appeal in violation of 12.06 of the Rules of Civil Procedure and the following principles established by the Ontario Judicial Council 

3.1 Judges should maintain their personal conduct at a level which will ensure the publics trust and confidence.





3.2 Judges must avoid any conflict of interest, or the appearance of any conflict of interest, in the performance of their judicial duties





In the Eastern Division of the Superior Court of Justice, certain lawyers are also aware of The Hon. James McNamara's reported support for what is referred to as donations.





 Donations is also a word used by high end escorts to avoid the legal jeopardy of clients paying for sex which is illegal. By making a donation prostitution laws can be circumvented. When a Judge correspondingly asks for a donation he or she seeks to circumvent laws of s 119 of the Criminal Code of Canada against bribery and collusion.





Bribery of judicial officers, etc. - Criminal Code (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46)

119 (1) Every one is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years who (a) being the holder of a judicial office, or being a member of Parliament or of the legislature of a province, directly or indirectly, corruptly accepts, obtains, agrees to accept or attempts to obtain, for themselves or another person, any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by them in their official capacity, or (b) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives or offers to a person mentioned in paragraph (a), or to anyone for the benefit of that person, any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by that person in their official capacity.







In Justice P. E. Roger's Endorsement dated 2016-09-07, he declared that he got the file for the Motion for Leave to Appeal as a coincidence  but it was no coincidence . Indeed, Justice Roger had specifically communicated to the Plaintiff in a very bellicose / hostile tone back in Fall 2015 that he regarded the matter as personal. This admission is in violation his Oath of Office and Ontario Judicial Council guidelines.





His so-called Endorsement which levied $1500.00 against the Plaintiff seeking to see his own sick and disabled Mother is little more than a polemic that seeks to take vengeance against the Plaintiff for having received Justice Patrick Smith's Order that went against Justice P. E. Roger's commitment to his handlers. In so doing, Justice Roger disregarded not only s. 96 of the Courts of Justice Act but Canadian laws which affirm the blocking of visitation access as constituting elder abuse by the Defendant.





Justice P. E. Roger violated the integrity of the Superior Court of Justice for his own personal self-aggrandizement and with the blessings of his accomplice The Hon. James McNamara. In the process, both these two Justices totally ignored all evidence and supporting documents by the Plaintiff in the execution of collusion and conspiracy.





Both these Justices have degraded the Superior Court of Justice to a corrupted modus operandi often found in the Third World. That is to say, a Kangaroo Court.





It's apparent that Justice P. E. Roger and The Hon. James McNamara have betrayed the high standards set forth by other justices of the Superior Court of Justice; and are acting as operatives of the Defendant. Justice P. E. Roger and The Hon. James McNamara have committed prima facie criminal acts that require immediate investigation.





Justice P. E. Roger and The Hon. James McNamara subverted the honourable decision rendered by Justice Patrick Smith on 11 February 2016 that enabled and empowered the Plaintiff to see his Mom on a daily basis, as a result of Justice P. E. Roger and The Hon. James McNamara having an illicit relationship with the manipulative Defendant.





Lacking a substantive Defence against the Plaintiff not being able to see his Mom who has been subjugated to abuse and neglect by the Defendant, criminal conspiracy became the only strategy to maintain the unlawful blocking of visitation access against the Plaintiff seeing his sick and physically disabled Mom who has sought to see her son.





Thanks for your consideration.









Regards,





HRC-S II




















































Web Toolbar by Wibiya

Date: August, 2016.

Place: St. Louis, State of Missouri, United States.

In August, a rare phenomenon occurred in the city of St. Louis, United States. According to an article published on online news site FoxNews.com, a strange light that hovered over the St. Louis Gateway Arch was filmed by a surveillance camera and also by YouTube user Chase Rhoads.

Surveillance footage recorded at Malcolm W Martin Memorial Park on Tuesday and posted to Facebook shows the mysterious object hovering over the famous arch, the report states. It also quotes a statement published on Facebook by the parks official account: We guarantee you will be perplexed if you watch all 5 minutes of this surveillance footage!

The alleged UFO looks like a grey, round metallic object that seems to be suspended in the air.

However, the Air Force base located in the area affirmed that they had not received any report of abnormal activity. Scott Air Force Base said there was nothing out of the ordinary to report when contacted by Fox 2 News, and a spokesman for the National Park Service said there were no reports of anything strange on Tuesday, expresses the article.

Some people suggest that this object could be a Chinese lantern or a drone, but some others prefer to believe that this is a real proof of extraterrestrial life.

This is not the first time a strange light is seen hovering over St. Louis. According to the previously quoted report, video from the same camera at Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park also captured an unexplained object that appeared in broad daylight on July 14 2016.

On this UFO sighting, ufologist and writer Scott C. Waring, of UFO Sightings Daily, expressed: This UFO is a metallic grey orb. The UFO is very big, car size when compared to the arch under it. He also said that the UFO does not look like its flashing light, but he believes that the surface of the UFO is dull grey metallic in nature.

Its shape is perfectly round, he expressed. Excellent catch by Chase Rhoads of Youtube.

Draw your own conclusions

For further information: http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/2016/08/ufo-over-st-louis-strange-light-over.html

UFO over St. Louis! Strange light over Famous Gateway Arch sparks debate, Aug 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: August 2016

Location of sighting: St. Louis Arch, Missouri

News source: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/08/05/ufo-over-st-louis-strange-light-over-gateway-arch-sparks-debate.html

This UFO is a metallic grey orb. The UFO is very big, car size when compared to the arch under it. The UFO does not look like its flashing light, but I believe one surface of the UFO is dull grey metallic in nature from what I see in the close ups I made. Its shape is perfectly round. Excellent catch by Chase Rhoads of Youtube.

Scott C. Waring

www.ufosightingsdaily.com

News states:

A strange light that hovered over the St. Louis Gateway Arch this week is sparking plenty of debate on the internet.

Surveillance footage recorded at Malcolm W Martin Memorial Park on Tuesday and posted to Facebook shows the mysterious object hovering over the famous arch. We guarantee you will be perplexed if you watch all 5 minutes of this surveillance footage! explained the Park, in a post on its Facebook page. The video has been viewed 615,000 times.

Possible explanations for the light suggested by commenters on Facebook include a drone with a unidirectional light or a Chinese lantern.

Fox 2 News also received video footage of the odd light from Chase Rhoads, who said that he saw something strange over the arch early Tuesday morning. Scott Air Force Base said there was nothing out of the ordinary to report when contacted by Fox 2 News, and a spokesman for the National Park Service said there were no reports of anything strange on Tuesday.

This is not the first time that a mysterious object has been spotted near the St. Louis landmark. Video from the same camera at Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park also captured an unexplained object that appeared in broad daylight on July 14 2016.








Web Toolbar by Wibiya

December 22, 2005 - Houston Native Clayton Lee and his wife Donna Lee claim that they have been abducted by aliens several times. The experience was nothing new to Clayton who experienced being abducted by aliens at a very young age. Clayton Lee's first experience in alien abduction happened at a Houston Park. He described that he was lifted up into the air. From then on, he claims to experience the feeling of being watched by unknown beings all the time.

Clayton Lee's wife Donna claims that a fetus was removed from her belly during one of the abductions. She was the one who drew a detailed sketch of how aliens look like. According to the article stated by Geers, J (2016, April 1) Donna Lee stated, "I felt like was being lifted into the air." She recounted, "And all that were around me were stars and blackness." She says that she has blacked out after.

The couple believes that they have been truly abducted although they do not want to talk about tests that were supposedly conducted by aliens when they were taken hostage. Their reason for this is because aliens purposely leave implants on the bodies of humans that they abducted.

The details about their abduction are terrifying that they have garnered the interest of several professionals. Susan Clancy, a psychiatrist is one of the people who became interested and she did a lot of research about their case. Clancy is a non believer of alien abductions. She stated that those who claim to have been abducted by aliens usually feel different psychological symptoms and have gone through a lot of psychological trauma. She cannot deny the fact however that the moment she posted an ad about alien abductions, a lot of people called to share their stories.

In the news, the couple was shown to have undergone hypnotism in order to remember what has occurred during their latest abduction. It led to the screaming of the female Lee saying, "They're touching me! - quit touching me!"

From the time that the couple has claimed to be abducted by aliens, a lot of supporters and skeptics have bombarded them with questions and even other stories claiming that they have also gone through experiences that are similar to theirs. The couple have been featured not only in articles but also in different alien abduction books from different parts of the globe.

While they have survived the terrifying abductions, they are positive that they will be abducted again and will be checked in the future. Believing in aliens and flying saucers may not be considered the norm at present time but the fact cannot be denied that some things that have occurred are hard to explain.

Sources and References:

1. htto://www.local6.com/news/5614405/detail.html

2. http://www.ufocasebook.com/leeabduction.html

3. http://thoughtcatalog.com/jacob-geers/2016/04/8-true-alien-abduction-stories-thatll-make-you-fucking-terrified-of-ufos/








Web Toolbar by Wibiya

Date: 18 December, 2015.

Place: Morristown, State of New Jersey, United States.

Located in the northern part of the State of New Jersey, there lies the small city of Morristown. In this town, on 18 December 2015, an unusual event occurred. According to an anonymous report published on UFO specialised website MUFON.com, a group of softly formed hover lights were seen moving across the sky.

While dropping off son in neighbourhood on drive from Burnham Road to the Hillcrest Area, I noticed softly formed hover lights, moving/changing direction, wrote the anonymous witness.

This person declared that these lights are not a new phenomenon to him, so he knew they were not conventional crafts. I noticed the lights as I have seen them before. We live in a busy flight pattern area, so I noticed these were not planes, or helicopter lights, the unnamed observer said.

My husband thought they could be advertising spotlights, but there was no "stream" or beam coming up from the ground, and there were more than 4 lights, this person stated.

It was also mentioned the fact that the orbs were considerably brilliant, and flew in a strange pattern. The objects were extremely, softly glowing orbs, moving in random pattern, the witness declared. There were 6-10 or more lights. They would move, crossing each other, reflecting off both the mild, sparse, clouds, and the black sky.

The Morristown citizen seemed to be very impressed, in spite of having seen these lights before. I was amazed to see these lights, as I have had frequent sightings (as reported in previous years), but this time, the lights were not in an ordered pattern, as they have been in the past. This person also affirmed having started feeling sick as soon as the object appeared. I had the start of a head ache just before I saw the lights in my neighbourhood, and by the time I was out filming these, I had a horrible migraine that intensified. I do not know if this was just coincidence, but it was the worst headache I have ever had.

Finally, I left, and the objects were still flying above, or at least viewable over the Hillcrest neighbourhood, the witness declared.

Draw your own conclusions

For further information: https://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/report_handler.pl?req=view_long_desc&id=78968&rnd=

Link to the video: https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/78968_submitter_file1__UFOsDec182015.mp4

Long Description of Sighting Report

1. While dropping off son in neighborhood on drive from Burnham Road to the Hillcrest Area, I noticed softly formed hover lights, moving/changing direction.

2. I noticed the lights as I have seen them before. We live in a busy flight pattern area, so I noticed these were not planes, or helicopter lights.

3. My husband thought they could be advertising spotlights, but there was no "stream" or beam coming up from the ground, and there were more than 4 lights.

4. The objects were extremely, softly glowing orbs, moving in random pattern. There were 6-10 or more lights. They would move, criss crossing each other reflecting off both the mild, sparse, clouds, and the black sky. The moon was up (seen in video as brightest light). The lights were so soft, but definitely visible.

5. I was amazed to see these lights, as I have had frequent sightings (as reported in previous years), but this time, the lights were not in an ordered pattern, as they have been in the past. I had the start of a head ache just before I saw the lights in my neighborhood, and by the time I was out filming these, I had a horrible migraine that intensified. I do not know if this was just coincidence, but it was the worst headache I have ever had. I was amazed I was actually filming this. For once, I had a camera that was working. (Side Note - The video submitted is rasterized, as this was the only setting I could get to see the orbs even slightly in the video. The orbs were extremely pale, so I had to play with contrast in order to see the objects even at a very pale glow.) I did not post immediately as my husband was trying to convince me these were advertising spotlights. I, of course, argued differently.

6. I left, and the objects were still flying above, or at least viewable over the Hillcrest neighborhood.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13, 2016  Finding a way to get welfare program recipients back in the workforce has been a tricky proposition, but on Tuesday, a House subcommittee dove into the issue.

The House Nutrition Subcommittee convened a hearing to study employment and training programs affiliated with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, specifically in a few states that received grants for projects through the 2014 farm bill. Subcommittee chair Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., said that these pilot projects provide a unique perspective on the conversation around getting SNAP recipients back to self-sufficiency.

This is evidence-based research, she told reporters after the hearing. This is real research, these are real, tangible things now that we have and these arent somebody throwing out hypothetical situations, this is going to make a difference.

One potential issue with using these pilot projects to influence policy decisions, specifically the upcoming farm bill, is that the pilot projects arent expected to be completed until 2021, about three years after congressional ag leaders hope to produce a new farm bill. Walorski brushed that concern aside, saying policymakers still can glean enough information from the programs.

I think interim reports are going to be important, and were going to be able to see different kinds of things that are going to start rolling out, but I cant stress enough: This is the first time that were going to be able to look at evidence-based research, Walorski said, pointing out that much of the prior conversation was driven by anecdotes or opinions.

Were going to see trends that work, and were going to see things that maybe havent been considered before, she added, but I am very optimistic after listening to these folks today that these pilots are working.

This was the 17th SNAP-related hearing either the subcommittee or the full House Agriculture Committee has held in the 114th Congress. Witnesses from three states  California, Georgia, and Washington  testified about their respective pilot programs that work to lead SNAP recipients back to the work force. In all, ten states received funding from the 2014 farm bill.

The program in California is focused on Fresno, where the Fresno Bridge Academy takes a holistic approach to fixing issues that lead to receiving SNAP benefits. The voluntary program deals with job training and workforce readiness, but it also takes a look at family issues and tackling things like drug problems or student truancy.

Learn about the benefits of subscribing to Agri-Pulse. Sign up for your four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





Pete Weber, the academys founder, said that if the whole picture is not considered, the employment education is not being used to its full potential.

If we werent there, that program for training would just go down the tubes really quickly, because their attention is going to the next crisis, he said.

Weber used an example of a couple with two children who were struggling to get by. Both parents had criminal records, presenting a barrier to entry to employment. Through the 18-month program, Weber said the father was able to obtain a job as a forklift operator, the mothers criminal record was expunged, and the family was removed from the welfare rolls.

The academy can boast 800 more success stories, Weber said. It is currently expanding to assist more people, but funding issues and a lack of professional program staff have proven to be obstacles to that expansion.

This hearing was absent the typical opposition from vocal Democrats frustrated with the approach to SNAP oversight. However, one of the amendments blamed in the failed 2013 farm bill vote in the House dealt with work requirements for SNAP recipients, so opposition from that side of the aisle could surface if a similar approach is tried again in the upcoming bill. With that in mind, Walorski said these programs could provide a way to change the conversation about SNAP recipients reentering the workforce.

I think this gives us a great amount of things to talk about and discuss  what we can best do to address the needs of people and protect taxpayers at the same time, she said.

#30

For more news, go to
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13, 2016 - U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman informed China today that the U.S. has launched a formal complaint at the World Trade Organization over Chinas price supports for corn, wheat and rice, saying they distort world markets and are costing U.S. farmers hundreds of millions of dollars.

At a press conference in Washington, Froman said Chinas breaches of WTO rules are massive. With Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at his side, Froman said that China exceeded the WTO maximum for domestic price supports for the three commodities by $100 billion in 2015.

In a statement, President Barack Obama endorsed the USTR action. Chinas government has set prices for wheat, corn, and rice well above market levels, which has led to unfair government subsidies that are in violation of WTO rules, Obama said. These unfairly distorted prices on important crops lead to overproduction in China and disadvantage American farmers who export these same crops around the world.

Alan Tracy, president of the U.S. Wheat Associates, said China routinely guarantees its farmers more than $10 per bushel for their wheat and that artificially pushes up production, distorting the international market and robbing U.S. exporters of sales. U.S. farmers received less than half of that for their wheat last year. Iowa state researchers have estimated U.S. wheat exporters lost roughly $700 million in 2015 because of Chinas domestic support programs that far exceed levels allowed for in the WTO.

Wheat production subsidies in China and other advanced developing countries are the single biggest policy issue affecting our farm gate prices and global trade flows, said Tracy. In taking this step, USTR and USDA are demonstrating that trade enforcement can ensure that our many trade agreements and a pro-trade agenda really work for American farmers.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., was one of a half-dozen lawmakers at the USTR announcement today and she applauded the complaint.

On top of challenging commodity prices, North Dakota farmers shouldnt have to deal with China breaching trade commitments and making it tougher for us to get market value for our crops, she said. When countries cheat on trade agreements and distort global markets, we need to hold them accountable, and thats what the U.S. Trade Representative and the Secretary of Agriculture are doing today. Addressing Chinese over-subsidization can help support the price of U.S. wheat and corn, and thats good news for North Dakota farmers.

All WTO members are required to submit totals for domestic crop support yearly to the WTO, Froman said, but China has not done that in six years.

The U.S. has confronted China multiple times over the crop price subsidies, U.S. trade officials said today, but the country was unresponsive.

U.S. officials say they will do their best to resolve the complaint with China through the WTO consultation process over the coming months, but they stressed the government is prepared to litigate. China is required to sit down with the U.S. within 60 days to address the complaint, but the officials said they hope to start next month when representatives of both countries are expected to meet in Geneva.

The complaints against China are numerous  beyond the price supports, China is believed to be subsidizing everything from the costs of seeds to fertilizer for its farmers  but the country is still the largest customer for U.S. farm commodities.

"Through tariff cuts and the removal of other trade barriers, China has gone from a $2-billion-a-year market for U.S. agricultural products to a $20-billion-plus market," Vilsack said today. "But we could be doing much better, particularly if our grain exports could compete in China on a level playing field.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway said today he appreciated the USTR complaint against China, but also stressed hed like to see further action, specifically on cotton.

Following trade? We cover it on Agri-Pulse. Sign up today for a four-week free trial subscription.





I am very hopeful that beyond the challenges announced today, that the U.S. government will also vigorously pursue a case against China concerning its cotton policy which has wreaked havoc on our domestic producers, said Conaway, who hails from Texas, the biggest U.S. cotton-producing state. Absent this, I fear that our domestic cotton production and all that it means to our nations economy will be lost in much the same way we forfeited our textile industry, once the largest manufacturing sector of our economy.

China kept domestic prices for cotton artificially inflated for years, a policy that attracted imports and helped create massive stockpiles in the country. Now China is trying to offload those stockpiles on the global market and thats pushing down international prices.

Todays press conference, which was held at USDA headquarters, was primarily about the trade complaint, but Froman and others used the platform to call for Congress to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade deal involving the U.S., Japan, and 10 other Pacific Rim countries.

China, which is not included in the TPP, isnt just breaking WTO commitments, Obama said. The country is also working to forge its own multilateral trade agreement and take the lead in the region.

Its all the more important that we finalize TPP soon because as we speak, China is negotiating a trade deal of its own  one that would carve up the growing Asia-Pacific markets at our expense, risking American jobs, businesses, and goods, Obama said. Unless we act now to set our own high standards, the fast-growing Asia-Pacific (region) will be forced to play by lower-standard rules that we didnt set. We cant let that happen.

(This story was corrected at 5:15 p.m., changing the dollar figure of China's alleged excess support to $100 billion.)

#30

For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com




WASHINGTON, Sept. 12, 2016  USDA reports released today did little to provide price support to American grain producers as signs still point to bin-busting crops.

The reports  the September edition of the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates and the monthly Crop Production forecasts  fell largely in line with analyst expectations yet still sent markets in a predictable downturn.

Regardless of the numbers, you just have too much grain the U.S. and in the world, Don Roose with U.S. Commodities said in an interview with Agri-Pulse.

The corn crop looks like a record-setter, albeit not to the extent USDA predicted a month ago. USDA today projected a 15.093 billion bushel crop, down about 1 percent from its August projection but 11 percent higher than last year. The means a yield average of 174.4 bushels per acre, down slightly from August but still 6 bushels higher than 2015. If realized, the production and yield figures would both set records.

Record-setting ways are also reflected in the soybean market, where a crop of 4.2 billion bushels was projected. Thats a 7 percent increase from last year and 3 percent higher than what was anticipated in August. The yield estimate of 50.6 bushels per acre would also be a record if realized.

Based on the information in todays reports, USDA raised the average corn price a nickel to somewhere in the $2.90 to $3.50 per bushel range. Soybean prices went down by the same amount to a range of $8.30 to $9.80.

Roose said that for any kind of price support to emerge from the markets, producers have to reduce acres.

Corn acres probably get reduced next year because we planted more corn acres versus beans (this year); wheat acres probably come down because its not profitable and marginal land will probably go out of production, he said. However, he added that those factors could lead to an increase in soybean acres.

Global estimates largely mirror U.S. projections with lowered corn expectations but higher anticipated production in oilseeds.

The export forecast for corn was left unchanged from the August report, reflecting the competitiveness of U.S. corn on the world market, the WASDE report said. Corn ending stocks were lowered from a month ago, but would still be a record high at 219.5 million.

Soybean exports, on the other hand, were increased 60 million bushels to a record 1.9 billion bushels, based on trade indications and a record high August export inspections. The increased exports were the main reason ending stocks were lowered to 195 million bushels, a 60 million decrease from last month.

Like what you see on the Agri-Pulse website? See even more ag, rural policy and energy news when you sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.

Roose noted that any kind of drastic shift in markets would require a substantial weather event. He said corn looks to be in a big, broad trading range and that soybeans still need to find a floor. Both corn and soybeans traded lower after the release of the reports.

Some other notes from todays reports:

--Although the cotton harvest will not be one for the record books, it still looks to take a sizable jump over last years production. USDA estimates production for all cotton types to be up 25 percent from last year to 16.1 million 480-pound bales. Upland cotton is projected at 25 percent higher and pima cotton production is expected to increase 30 percent.

--The WASDE report also offered insight into the global wheat market, where supplies were raised 400,000 metric tons; the U.S. marketing year average price was lowered a dime per bushel to $3.30 to $3.90.

--Sorghum production is forecast 14 million bushels higher than August numbers based on higher yields. Average prices are projected at $2.75 to $3.35 per bushel, a 5-cent increase from last month.

--Total rice production was lowered 7.2 million hundredweight due to lower yield and impact on harvested area due to flooding in Southern states. However, global rice supplies were raised 1.8 million metric tons, largely on projected increase in harvested area in India.

--Sugar production and beginning stocks were both increased while imports were reduced.

The next WASDE and Crop Production forecasts will be published on Oct. 12.

#30

For more news, go to www.Agri-Pulse.com
Why Dead Languages Like Akkadian Still Matter

Akkadian Tablet: A fragment of the Epic of Adapa. ( Morgan Library) I grew up hearing the Code of Hammurabi read out loud, in Akkadian, at the dining-room table. I did not know that my graduate-student mother was one of Akkadian's few regular readers. The language of the ancient Akkad region, or modern-day Iraq, is considered a "dead language," just like Ugaritic and Phoenician. All these dead tongues, however, fed into the Hebrew Bible, the most read book in history, and so they have a form of eternal life.

And so the language my mother read sounded familiar. Abum is like abba, the Hebrew word for father; imum like ima, or mother, and kalbum like kelev, or dog. For years I told myself that Akkadian, its strict legal code, and its dramatic descriptions of what would be done to losers in battle (hint: towering piles of body parts displayed for all to see) was my mother's terrain, not mine. But the truth is that it is nearly impossible to avoid Akkadian's influence on all of us.

The language of triangles and lines pressed into clay tablets has a stealth presence in Jewish culture and Western culture. Many of us say a word of Akkadian daily without realizing it; some of us even have Akkadian names. Leah comes from litum, the Akkadian word for cow. Laban, an idol-worshipping shepherd whose other daughter was Rachel, which means ewe, clearly named both his daughters after prized animals. But for centuries, Akkadian itself has been a prize, ensnaring the wealthy and the socially prominent, along with generations of devoted scholars.

Pierpont Morgan, the banker and financier, is a prime example. As a young man he became fascinated by antiquity, and helped fund the excavation of the biblical city of Nineveh. Luckily, these expensive acquisitions are available for public view, and so I trekked to The Morgan Library & Museum, in New York to see some tablets.

The lobby was full of patrons hoping to snag a table at the museum's restaurant. Two visitors from Japan were gaping at the hand-inscribed Dylan Thomas volume on display, disappointed that the security guard did not allow photos; a large group was clamoring to see Hemingway's love letters, from a special exhibit that was about to end, leaving me a surprisingly clear path to the antiquities. I rushed to take a good look before someone else -- another dead-language fanatic -- blocked my view.

Today, the unearthed treasures Morgan's millions preserved -- an agate piece, the size of a large ring, with an Akkadian inscription, along with several fragments of tablets -- are displayed in the longtime office of Morgan's librarian, Belle da Costa Greene (1879--1950), though "office" seems an odd word for such a lavish space; even the wooden door leading to "the office" is a work of art. I tried not to think I am becoming my mother as I ignored the office's ornate fireplace and strained to look at the three priceless Akkadian tablet fragments, all featuring tiny intricate writing on peach-colored clay, and all at least 3,500 years old.

Staring at Morgan's fragment chronicling "the flood" -- or the Akkadian version of the familiar Noah story, dating from 1646 to 1626 BCE, I thought of how Akkadian invariably reminds me that the Bible is not all Hebrew and that non-Jewish people and ideas have always shaped Judaism. The epic begins with the creation of man, and soon states that "great indeed was the drudgery of the God." Disappointed, the deities decided to destroy all of mankind. And so:

The flood roared like a bull,Like a wild ass screaming, the winds howled.The darkness was total, there was no sun.

This continued, we are told, for seven days and seven nights. This was the kind of drama I remember from my mother's midnight reading sessions. It was always violent, exciting, over the top. But now I find it strangely soothing; it's a reminder that the story of Noah and God's unforgettable regret over creating humanity is actually a common ancient narrative, something the neighbors used, too, to explain the world.

Akkadian slips into our day-to-day world, too. When I found myself thinking about gender in Hebrew, I noticed that there were ish and isha, man and woman, which clearly seemed to be related to each other, and then there were also zachar, or male, and nekaiva, or female -- words that had no commonality whatsoever.

The Even-Shoshan Dictionary hinted that the word zachar had Akkadian roots, and I wanted to know more. I knew that Chicago, where I now live, is home to the famous CAD -- the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. The CAD catalogs Akkadian and its dialects, and it is modeled on the Oxford English Dictionary. My mother has been talking about the CAD for years. As a girl, I often thought that perhaps if my parents had fewer children they could afford more dictionary volumes.

To my surprise, the famous dictionary has a phone number. I dialed, and someone actually answered.

"Dictionary," a voice said. "This is Ed."

I cleared my throat, and asked if the dictionary was open to the public.

"Sure," Ed said hesitantly. "Though you do know we now have PDFs online."

But I wanted to touch what my mother dreamed of. I drove to Hyde Park, the home of The University of Chicago, and pulled up to the Oriental Institute. The day I visited, there were prominent signs alerting visitors to the looting of antiquities in Iraq, and asking them to protest to their political representatives. The world, I thought, was still a violent place, a danger to humans and tablets. Several graduate students were hard at work, and two barely looked up. The third, Ed, who soon told me that he grew up Mormon and served in the military, graciously offered to give me a tour.

Ed explained that the dictionary project has been underway since 1921. He showed me thousands of handwritten index cards, kept in file cabinets; for 90 years, scholars had been hard at work, and the university was now digitizing their handiwork. He helped me with my word in question -- zachar, which indeed is derived from the Akkadian word zikarum. Of course, it had its own index card, as did several other similar-sounding words. I was dismayed to confirm that nekaiva, the word for female, comes from the word nekev, or hole. But that's Hebrew, not Akkadian.

Then Ed asked if I wanted a tour of the building. We visited the Oriental Institute's beautiful library, where an Egyptology graduate student helps with copies; then Ed took me to a closet.

I held my breath as he explained that, for decades, Akkadian scholars mailed copies of their books to the dictionary office so that there would be a record of their labors. In the book-stuffed closet, I spied a book by Von Soden, the Nazi officer who came to save Landsberger, his Akkadian teacher and my mother's professor's professor. Von Soden told Landsberger to leave the country -- now! -- and he put him on a train to safety.

Akkadian has always had its passionate defenders, a surprising community that spans time. For those who can't make it to New York or Chicago, there is a new, cheaper, at-home option. Not long ago, I was charmed to receive a link to a recipe for "cuneiform cookies."

Of course I clicked. The recipe is brilliant, and it levels the playing field.

You don't need to be Morgan wealthy. With some flour and butter, and a little patience, you can get a look at the ancient language of Akkad, and get a taste, too.
Kurds, Assyrians Join Forces to Protect Minority Rights in Syrian Peace Talks

Assyrian refugees from Syria protest in Beirut in early 2015. ( AFP) The Kurdish National Council in Syria (KNC, also known by its Kurdish initials ENKS) and the Assyrian Democratic Organization (ADO) held a meeting to develop Kurdish-Assyrian ties in Syria and to discuss the framework for a political solution to the Syrian war recently put forward by a coalition of opposition groups, which they said disregards the rights of minority groups. The High Negotiation Committee (HNC), representing a coalition of Syrian opposition groups at the UN-led peace talks, presented their 'Executive Framework for a Political Solution' to the civil war at a meeting in London on Wednesday hosted by the UK's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. The ENKS and ADO stated that they "neither approve the document published by the HNC nor do they consider it binding," in a joint statement published on Monday. The HNC's framework set a three-phase plan: Phase one is a six-month negotiation process that includes a ceasefire. Phase two is a year and a half-long transition period that would begin once basic principles of the transition process are agreed on and would see the establishment of a Transitional Governing Body. The third and final phase would see the implementation of a revised constitution and elections. The Kurdish and Assyrian groups said that the HNC disregarded their suggestions in developing the framework, noting that the document does not address the concerns of minority groups in the country. "The paper insists on emphasising the ethnic and religious affiliation of the country's majority, which means to discount the national and democratic rights of other groups, namely of non-Arab," reads the joint statement. "In this way, it inhibits that those groups take part in the design of Syria's future, manifesting a renunciation of the objectives of the Syrian revolution -- freedom and democracy." The head of ENKS, Ibrahim Biro, told Rudaw on Sunday that his organization does not agree to the first article in the framework declaring Syria a part of the Arab nation, saying that there is no such thing. The ENKS and ADO stress that they are committed to reaching a peaceful political resolution to the civil war, now in its sixth year, but that can be achieved through the framework set out by the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces (Etilaf), which Biro told Rudaw "safeguards the rights of the Kurdish nation." The Kurdish and Assyrian organizations call on the HNC and all parties to "eliminate the injustice and the arbitrariness against other ethnic and religious groups" and make amendments to the HNC's framework.
Kurds, Assyrians Reject Syrian Opposition's Peace Plan

Two Assyrian and Kurdish factions rejected a peace plan proposed by the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), an umbrella group for the main opposition groups, deeming it "Arabocentric" and Islamist. The Kurdish National Council in Syria (KNC) and the Assyrian Democratic Organisation (ADO) denied proposals made by the SNC at a weekend meeting in the city of Qamishli in Syrian Kurdistan. Last week, during a meeting in London, England, the SNC's High Negotiations Committee (HNC) announced a roadmap for peace to end the Syrian civil war in a document called "The Executive Framework for a Political Solution in Syria." The Syrian opposition presented the text at the London meeting of foreign ministers and diplomats of the Friends of the Syria Group. The committee called "The International Syria Support Group" includes the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Turkey, and Arab Gulf states. The head of the KNC, also known as ENKS in Kurdish, Ibrahim Biro said they did not consider the Syrian opposition's peace plan binding. "The opposition says Syria is an Arab and Muslim country, a view that disregards the rights of ethnic and religious minorities," said Biro in a phone call with Kurdistan24 from Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson described the opposition's peace plan as a "formidably important document." Johnson added the report was a "vision and plan for Syria that is democratic, pluralistic, that will take [the] country forward," according to a report on the website of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. When asked about the Kurdish and Assyrian dismissal of Syrian opposition's roadmap in a Monday press briefing, American State Department Spokesperson John Kirby said the US wanted to see a "unified, whole and pluralistic" Syria. For his part, Biro expressed dismay at the Western approach, adding that his group and its allies have sent letters of concern to American, British, and French officials. "After all these sacrifices the Kurds and other minorities have given, their rights must be enshrined in law and not words," he concluded.
September 13, 2016

CAIRO  Egypts Al-Azhar has tried to distance itself from an Islamic conference held in the Chechen capital late last month, after the forums closing statement received sharp criticism for implying that Salafist and Wahhabi groups, which are prominent in Saudi Arabia, were not part of Sunni Islam.

The conference  held in Grozny Aug. 25-27 under the title Who are the Sunnis?  was attended by Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb and a large Egyptian delegation. While Al-Azhar officials have downplayed their role in the conference, the consequences of what happened are still unclear, particularly concerning its impact on relations between Cairo and Riyadh. The latter has been a prominent supporter of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi since the June 30, 2013, revolution.

In statements to the press Sept. 6, Abbas Shoman, the deputy sheikh of Al-Azhar, said the conference had not been sponsored by Al-Azhar, and the institution did not participate in its activities or even its closing statement. According to him, the institutions role was limited to a speech given by Tayeb at the opening, the content of which has not been subject to criticism. In his view, Shaman said, had the conference organizers relied on Tayebs words in their closing statement, they would have avoided this controversy.

Speaking at the opening of the conference Aug. 25, Tayeb said that the Sunni community refers to Asharis, Maturidis and people of the hadith  referring to Salafists. This contradicted the closing statement, which limited the definition of Sunnis to Asharis, Maturidis by belief, followers of the four jurisprudential schools of Sunnis [Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali], and followers of pure Sufism in terms of ethics and chastity.

In the statement, the participants said the conference represented an important and necessary turning point to straighten the sharp and dangerous deviation that has affected the concept of the Sunni community following attempts by extremists to seize and monopolize this title. The statement also restricted that major Islamic schools to the old, prestigious institutions of Al-Azhar University, the University of Al-Quaraouiyine [Fez, Morocco], Al-Zaytoonah University [Tunisia] and Hadramaut University [Yemen], also making note of the religious institutions in the Russian Federation.

The General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia responded to the conferences recommendations, warning of what it described as calls aimed at inciting [division] among the Islamic sects, saying that such actions divide rather than unite the Islamic community. In a statement released Sept. 2, the council said, It is neither civil, wise nor prudent to use tragedies and crises [to support] political inclinations or intellectual affiliations.

Ahmed Karima, a professor of comparative jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University, said the conference was positive on the whole, since it reclaims the term Sunni community from extremists who had tried to seize and monopolize the classification. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Karima said Salafists themselves have tried to promote the idea that they are the only real Sunnis, excluding those who adhere to Ashari theology, which is adopted by Al-Azhar. They even went further, deeming us nonbelievers in the Al-Masira Encyclopedia of Contemporary Religions, Sects and Parties [published by the Saudi World Assembly of Muslim Youth], he added.

Karima noted that, according to Al-Azhars curriculum, the term Sunni was originally applied to followers of Imam Abu al-Hasan al-Ashari, in addition to those following Imam Abu Mansour al-Maturidi. The Chechnya conference was held to put things back in order, [to clarify that] Sunnis are the Asharis, he added, saying that Al-Azhars statement distancing itself from the conference was issued to correct the notion that the conference was based on sectarianism.

Twitter users responded, launching the hashtag #TheSeniorScholarsStatementRepresentsMe, which quickly became one of the top trending hashtags in Saudi Arabia, with more than 10,000 tweets.

Many of those using the hashtag expressed their support for the councils statement, noting their dismay at the objectives and title of the Chechnya conference. Some described the conference as a Russian message to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, other Twitter users called for avoiding conflict and warned against transforming the regions political crises into doctrinal and sectarian conflicts.

On the other hand, some used the hashtag #ChechnyaConference to praise the meeting and considered it a step in the right direction to fighting terrorism.

Saudi writer and journalist Muhammad al-Shaikh tweeted, Tayebs participation in the Grozny conference  will force us to change our behavior with Egypt. Our country is more important, and Sisis Egypt shall go to hell. In another tweet, he added, We used to support Sisi because the Brotherhood and the Salafists are enemies for us both, but [Egypt] turned its back on us in Grozny so let it meet its destiny alone.

Shaikh said it was clear the conference targeted Saudi Arabia, noting that Al-Azhars participation required Riyadh to act swiftly and decisively to contain what he described as the conspirators at the conference.

For his part, Ali Gomaa, the former grand mufti of Egypt and one of the participants in the delegation accompanying Tayeb to Grozny, has said that Salafism contradicts the salaf (an Arabic term meaning ancestors and referring to the first three generations of Muslims, after which Salafism took its name) in terms of variance in religious interpretation. Salafism had adopted a single view, he noted in a January television interview, and considers anything contradicting that to be void. He said that this rigid interpretation has given rise to extremist groups, including the Islamic State.

Gomaa, who is known for his frequent attacks on Salafists, said that Salafists only represent about 3% of Muslims, while the vast majority are comprised of Asharis.

Said al-Lawendi, an international relations expert at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor that this controversy will not affect the relations between Cairo and Riyadh. Despite what Lawendi described as some tactical differences between the two nations on how to deal with certain regional issues, he said that the ties are too strong to be impacted by Tayebs participation in the Grozny conference. He also noted that the grand imam attended in his capacity as an imam for the Islamic world as a whole, not just representing Egypt.

Mohamad Sadiq Ismail, the head of the Arab Center for Political and Strategic Studies, agreed with Lawendi, telling Al-Monitor that relations between the two are linked by several factors, including common interests. Thus, it is hard for relations to [seriously] strain due to a religious matter, despite the latters importance in Saudi foreign policy, he said.

Ismail said that Saudi-Egyptian relations have been stable ever since Sisi came to power following the June 30 Revolution, despite some differences on regional matters such as the Syrian conflict. While Egypt believes that a political solution is the best way to end the crisis, Riyadh supports a military solution.

Ismail said he believes Egyptian-Saudi coordination on the Yemeni crisis is one of the things strengthening ties between the two. Cairo participates in the Saudi-led coalition of Arab forces in Yemen, which is working to restore what it describes as the legitimate government led by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
September 13, 2016

The Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, which marks the end of the hajj pilgrimage, has become another opportunity for regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia to continue their propaganda wars against one another.

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a conservative cleric and interim Friday prayer leader, used Eid al-Adha to criticize Saudi Arabia over the Mina stampede during the 2015 hajj that killed over 2,000 people, including 472 Iranians. "When I was heading to prayers last year during Eid al-Adha, I was told about the tragedy at Mina, Khatami recounted.

Blaming Saudi Arabia for not reaching the pilgrims sooner, many of whom died of thirst, Khatami said, At the very least the issue is that they were at fault. With cameras they could see that Muslims had fallen to the ground, and delivering water by helicopter or other means could have saved half of the lives. They did not give permission to the Iranian Red Crescent and their officials did nothing; this means its a crime. The criminals must be sentenced and punished in an Islamic court.

He added, Rather than addressing the wounded, they put them in containers with the dead, martyring them alive.

Khatami said that of the 37 countries who lost citizens in the stampede, only Iran has raised its voice. He accused the countries that remained silent of materialism," adding that if 7,000 people had been killed in such a manner in a European country their yelling would have turned the world deaf. Iranian officials have put the total number of deaths from the Mina stampede at 7,000.

Khatami said that officials from Irans Foreign Ministry will pursue a legal case on behalf of the families of victims of the stampede.

As a result of the Mina stampede and the high number of Iranians killed, Saudi Arabia and Iran were unable to come to an agreement to allow Iranians to attend his years hajj pilgrimage. Iran said that they were put under special restrictions, while Saudi Arabia said that Iran wanted to hold protests.

Given the absence of the Iranians, Saudi Arabia decided to air a Persian-language TV program from Mecca. The goal of this program is to deliver the message of hajj  the lasting meaning of Islam  to Persian-language pilgrims around the world, said Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Adel bin Zaid al-Toraifi. Over 100 million people speak Persian in approximately half a dozen countries. The intended audience is likely Persian-language speakers in Iran; the program will air Sept. 10-15.

Irans parliament Speaker Ali Larijani issued a message in honor of the first anniversary of the martyrs of Mina, saying, This bitter reality is a great sign of the incompetence of the hajj organizers in Saudi Arabia and the irresponsibility of the rulers of this country in managing the hajj. Echoing comments by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Larijani said that human rights organizations should create a fact-finding mission to investigate what occurred during the stampede.
September 13, 2016

TEHRAN, Iran  Iran has been threatened by a water crisis for years, a situation that is being worsened by the mismanagement of scarce water resources. In just a few more years, the Water and Sanitation Organization may become unable to supply drinking water to densely populated urban areas in the country, including Tehran.

Tehrans population has ballooned so immensely in the past decade that Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian has warned of an impending failure to supply clean and safe drinking water to residents should the capitals population  currently hovering at 12 million  continue to rise, Hamshahri newspaper reported on Aug. 22. The water-security problem is very serious in Tehran and needs to be addressed immediately, Chitchian said.

Some signs are emerging. A rising number of Tehran residents have been experiencing a drop in water pressure, according to leading economic newspaper Donya-e Eqtesad. People living on the third floor or higher have had to install powerful water pumps to suck up more water from the urban pipelines, the paper noted. The wave of pump installations has further lowered water pressure, worsening the situation for citizens without pumps.

The use of pumps is now so widespread that water experts advise residents to also set up small water tanks on their roofs to draw from, to help minimize the pumps' impact on water pressure. Water pressure has dropped in recent weeks by 30% in some districts, Donya-e Eqtesad reported.

Many experts believe it was the city managers failure to provide the infrastructure needed for the massive construction of residential buildings in Tehran that caused the looming water crisis. In just the past five years, contractors have gotten licenses from the Tehran municipality to build 880,000 housing units in the Iranian capital. That number is equal to one-third of the total residential units already available in the city, Donya-e Eqtesad reported, citing official data. If this huge growth in residential developments continues, Tehran will be in deep trouble as far as water supply is concerned.

As a short-term solution to the crisis, experts suggest that the capacity of the pipeline system be increased. However, in the long run, the government is advised to shift from reactive to proactive management. Kaveh Madani, a senior lecturer on environmental management at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, said in a May article for Tehran Times that the current management structure must be drastically revised. He also urged the government to educate Iranians to help change water consumption patterns as well. At present, per capita water usage in Iran is twice the world average.

Mohammad Hossein Bazgir, the head of the Environmental Office of the City of Tehran, has warned that water rationing is most likely what the city needs. Iran is approaching the top 10 countries with the lowest annual rainfall. The water crisis is serious, and water rationing will begin very soon in Tehran, Shafaf quoted him as saying on Sept. 7. He also warned that 350 million cubic meters of surface water in Tehran is being polluted by unmanaged waste in public areas, and therefore not fit for consumption.

Babak Negahdari, the president of Tehrans Research and Planning Center, however, claims that the water authorities already employ modern technologies to efficiently collect groundwater and improve its quality.

Tehrans water is mainly supplied by five dams  Taleghan, Karaj, Mamlo, Latian and Lar  and 480 deep wells located across the city. As no further dams can be built around Tehran, the energy minister has warned that more water will have to be extracted from the wells if the situation gets worse  a move that could cause health problems for Tehran residents, as more intense extraction activities increase exposure to pollutants.

Mohammad Akhoundi, a businessman who represents Todaysure, a British company specializing in the design and manufacture of the Surefire range of incinerators, cremators and combustion systems, told Al-Monitor he agrees with Bazgirs comments, saying the groundwater in densely populated regions is highly vulnerable to industrial pollutants. Iranian hospitals and industrial units produce 8 million tons of special waste per year, and since the garbage is not treated under stringent environmental conditions, the liquid generated by it could pollute at least 1 million liters of the surface and groundwater after a time, he said.

Water management has been neglected for too long by the Tehran municipality, the Energy Ministry and the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development. The former are to blame for failing to create the infrastructure needed for the city's growth, and the latter for failing to stop the indiscriminate construction of multi-unit residential complexes. Only proper planning and the adoption of a truly sophisticated approach to water management can save Tehran and other big cities from a deathly crisis. Water rationing is the smallest price that residents of big cities can pay to give the authorities time to come up with a comprehensive action plan, ideally in cooperation with internationally respected water-management companies.
September 11, 2016

IRBID, Jordan  After years of trying to get Mohammed into a public school, his mother Alaa had almost given up. Since the family fled from Syria to Jordan in 2012, Mohammed has received no formal education. Year after year, school directors refused to sign him up for several reasons. Mohammed still doesnt know how to read and write at 11 years old.

In the beginning, they said they had no classroom space. Later, this changed to 'Your son is too old,' because Mohammed had been out of school for three years, Alaa told Al-Monitor at her friends small apartment in the city of Irbid.

When the Jordanian government announced policy changes to allow thousands of Syrian refugee children access to education in August, Alaa was skeptical but decided to try again for this new school year. After five years of struggling, Mohammed was signed up at a public school in Irbid.

The day after I signed him up, Mohammed jumped out of bed early in the morning to see if he could go to school that day. But his lessons havent started yet. They start on Sunday after the Eid holiday, so Mohammed has to wait just a little bit more. He is really excited," she said.

Mohammed is one of the more than 91,000 school-aged Syrian children in Jordan left out of school last year. Things are now changing. To allow more Syrian refugee children access to education, the kingdom has taken several measures supported by international funding. One of them is that from now on, state schools are allowed to enroll Syrian children even if their paperwork is not in order, government spokesman Mohamed Momani told Agence France-Presse. Families can sort out their situations during the school year.

Jordan has also created special classes for some 25,000 children ages 8-12 who had been deprived of schooling for the past three years or more. Falling behind has been one of the barriers that complicated many Syrian children's education. These new catch-up classes will prepare children to join their age group in just one year.

The measures were much needed, as some of the Syrian children in Jordan have never stepped inside a classroom. Mohammeds younger sister, Roqaya, 7, was also rejected due to lack of space, unlike her twin brother Shallan, who managed to get in last year. When asked if she looks forward to going to school, Roqaya smiled brightly. She wants to be able to write her own name, she told Al-Monitor.

I am so happy that all of my children are finally in school right now, especially because I cannot read and write myself. Thats why I think education is so important. I dont want them to end up like me, Alaa explained, adding that she got married 12 years ago at the age of 14. Her husband was 40 at the time.

Maybe I should sign up for a womens education program as well, she added softly.

The longer children remain out of school, the less likely they are to finish their education, organizations like Human Rights Watch warn. Education is also crucial to protecting children in situations of displacement. In Jordan and other host countries, early marriage among Syrian girls is rising as a way to ease the financial burden of the families. Child labor in Jordan has doubled in the last decade.

To accommodate as many children as possible, the Jordanian Ministry of Education has opened an additional 102 schools that will work in morning and afternoon shifts, bringing the total to 200 schools across the kingdom operating double shifts.

Although we dont have the exact enrollment numbers yet, the response from Syrian families has been very positive. Before, the biggest problem was the waiting list, Miraj Pradhan, a communication specialist for UNICEF Jordan, told Al-Monitor.

He said, We are really glad the government of Jordan is leading the nationwide school enrollment campaign. Ahead of the start of the new school year, the Ministry of Education made it really clear that all children in the country, regardless of their background or status, are welcome to register in public schools.

However, some challenges remain, according to Pradhan. Despite the governments best efforts in double-shifting schools, there are not enough schools to ensure that every child will be able to enroll nearby. We still hear from families that the classes are full. The Ministry of Education is planning to expand as well as build new schools, and they need the support of donors to ensure that every child in Jordan is in school, he added.

Hagar hopes that there will be an extra school in her neighborhood soon. When she found out about the back-to-school program, she tried to sign her three children up, but they were refused. Due to the large numbers of registrations, classes were full. A huge disappointment, she said, because her sons Ayman, 10, Yamin, 9, and Ahmad, 8, have never received any formal education, not even before they fled Syria. They attend classes at a local center in Irbid only a few times a week.

But they dont teach them anything at the center. I am really upset. What will become of them? Hagar asked bitterly.

She and her husband are illiterate, so home schooling is not an option. The only school that has room for my three boys is really far away from my neighborhood in Irbid. We cannot go there every day. We dont have any money. My husband is unemployed," she added.

Her son Ayman might be small, but he has big dreams. He proudly told Al-Monitor that he learned how to count to 15 and that he can recite the entire alphabet. Although he has never set foot into an actual classroom, he is sure he will like going to school every day.

When I grow up, I want to become a pilot. In school, they will teach me how to become one, he said.
September 9, 2016

RAMALLAH, West Bank  The Palestinian uprising in the West Bank that began in July 2015 has receded, but because the underlying causes still exist and resentment still smolders, observers say the violence could reignite at any time.

It has been a year since the popular uprising erupted after Israeli settlers were blamed for a July 31 arson attack that killed three of the four members of the Dawabsha family, including an 18-month-old boy, and severely wounded the boy's older brother. Clashes broke out in various parts of the West Bank between Palestinians and Israeli army forces and settlers, continuing for months. The Israeli army deployed hundreds of troops in Palestinian towns and villages.

Some aspects of the popular uprising  such as confrontations at military checkpoints and contact areas  have faded today. The number of individual attacks (stabbings and running people over with cars) carried out against settlers and Israeli soldiers has dropped.

According to statistics published annually by the Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, 609 attacks were carried out in October 2015 (including throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails), compared with 155 in March 2016. The monthly figure has continued to fall, to 101 attacks in May 2016 and 103 in June, the Shin Bet reported in additional data on its website. The number of Palestinians killed also has decreased, as 145 deaths were registered in just the last three months of 2015, compared with 92 this year through June.

The popular uprising has faded, as it failed to garner the political support of the Palestinian factions leaders," Khaled Mansour, a member of the political bureau of the Palestinian People's Party, told Al-Monitor recently.

He said, Both the leaders and factions were afraid of the popular uprising and decided not to pay close attention to it or provide it with the required support. This led to its regression amid an Israeli oppression exemplified by a vast wave of arrests, daily raids and field executions.

Yet conditions that contributed to the uprising remain, "notably young people's frustration with the political process and the occupations ongoing violations, including the building of settlements, confiscation of lands and field executions, Mansour said.

Just like us, the Israelis are aware that the popular uprising, despite its regression, could explode at any moment with more momentum and strength."

Asked what the uprisings waning could mean for Palestinians, Mansour said, The Palestinian public is very frustrated due to the intifadas failure to make any progress amid no political achievements, the continuation of the occupation and the daily aggression against them.

A poll published by the Arab World for Research and Development on Jan. 9 showed that 90% of respondents believed protests around that time were not being organized by political forces, and 51% said they didn't believe protests would develop into a full-scale intifada. Meanwhile, 97% cited three main reasons for the outbreak of the protests: Israeli threats to holy places in Jerusalem, the expansion of settlements and the blockade.

The Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies (Masarat) issued a paper July 13 estimating that the uprising in its current form and under the current circumstances cannot continue because uprisings must not remain spontaneous. Otherwise, they lose momentum and die regardless of the occupations repression. Uprisings tend to lose their compass in the absence of a 'political plan' that sets an organized framework.

The popular uprising developed on an individual and unorganized basis away from any political leadership. While this made it difficult for Israel to arrest or assassinate any leaders  as was the case with the two previous intifadas, in 1987 and 2000  it also meant the uprising "lacked any political vision," writer and political analyst Abdul Rahman al-Tamimi told Al-Monitor.

He said, "No Palestinian political parties or factions participated in it, and the Palestinian Authority [PA] wanted it to end for fear of its development and spinning out of control, and for its failure to reap any fruits a full year into its eruption. This caused frustration for the Palestinians.

The popular uprising failed to resolve the political deadlock between the Palestinians and Israelis that had arisen when negotiations stopped in April 2014 due to Israel's refusal to release a fourth group of Palestinian prisoners detained before the Oslo Accord.

Tamimi shared his political interpretation of the current situation amid the popular uprisings failure to develop and the political standstill. I think that Israel is proceeding with its strategic plans, which consist of separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank in order for Gaza to become a separate entity and for Israel to annex the Jordan Valley area to become fully Israeli, along with Jerusalem and the settlements.

Asked about the fate of the PA, Tamimi said, Israel and the international parties are not seeking to break down, but to weaken the PA. This will be done by activating the Israeli civil administration, which will exert pressure on the heads of Palestinian municipalities to force them to communicate with it by cutting services. This would turn the PA into an inactive entity.

However, Samira al-Hulaiqa, a Hamas leader in the West Bank, told Al-Monitor the popular uprising has not gone away.

"But it has changed, and it is ongoing in the villages, towns and refugee camps that confront the break-ins of the army occupation on an almost daily basis at night, Hulaiqa said. According to our reading, the uprising shifted from confrontation on the points of contact and checkpoints to confrontation with the Israeli army in every region that it raids. This keeps citizens in direct contact with the occupation."

The popular uprising has indeed faded but is still alive and could erupt again for the simplest reason, as the conditions that led to it still exist. Yet still, it will be hard for it to develop into a massive and comprehensive upheaval due to the lack of organized support from faction leaders.
September 13, 2016

A month out from the local elections scheduled for Oct. 8, the Palestinian High Court of Justice in Ramallah suspended the contest over the impossibility of holding the vote in East Jerusalem in addition to other procedural problems, including that courts in Gaza have been considering Hamas' complaints against the Fatah lists.

The local Palestinian elections were suspended after the Palestinian Central Election Committee received 163 objections to many of the electoral lists in the West Bank and Gaza. The committee rejected 158 of the appeals and took action on seven, banning those candidates from participation. The objections were mainly presented by Hamas to disqualify Fatahs lists in the West Bank city of Tulkarm and four cities in the Gaza Strip  Beit Hanoun, Um al-Nasser, Zahra and Nuseirat.

Fatah made no attempt to hide its pleasure with the suspension. Amal Hamad, a member of Fatahs Central Committee, told the press Sept. 9 that postponing the elections was a victory for Jerusalem and constitutional legitimacy. She accused Hamas of stifling democratic progress, as its courts in Gaza are not seen as legitimate amid the political division.

Faisal Abu Shahla, a member of Fatahs Revolutionary Council, told Al-Monitor, Suspending the elections was to the detriment of Fatah, which was seeking to compete in the electoral process, as our electoral lists have higher chances of winning. However, Hamas continued to try to disqualify our lists in the Gaza courts, indicating that the judiciary in Gaza is biased toward Hamas. Fatah has contacted Hamas to suggest both sides drop their appeals, but the latter insisted upon them. Hamas could have participated in the elections without any obstacles, but it had been objecting to our candidates for flimsy reasons, which prompted the court to issue its ruling without any pressure on our part.

Perhaps Hamas' seeking to sabotage the electoral process has been a long time coming. Hamas has been trying to disqualify Fatahs lists to undermine its chances of achieving gains in the Gaza Strip, which might have pushed it to pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to postpone or cancel the elections, a call he repeatedly rejected, most recently on Aug. 14.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Sept. 8 that the courts decision was politically motivated and intended to rescue Fatah, which sensed it was going to lose and thus turned to the high court. He added that the courts ruling was a result of Fatahs fear of losing the elections after the collapse of its electoral lists in a number of areas.

Yehya Moussa, a Hamas leader and the head of the Palestinian Legislative Council's Committee on Human Rights and Public Monitoring, told Al-Monitor, Hamas and the Palestinian factions had been expecting the Palestinian Authority to cancel the elections, even at the height of the preparations.

He said, Most Palestinians are convinced that Abbas was expecting these elections to work to his advantage and when he saw the ongoing objections and that his chances might be undermined, he resorted to the high court to issue a ruling, which is a political one par excellence, albeit issued by judicial order.

Moussa added, The time has come for all Palestinian forces, including Hamas, to speak up to stop Abbas political monopoly as he has the upper hand in approving the holding of the elections. But instead he incited the judiciary to cancel them without any consideration for any legislative, legal or constitutional institution. In light of the fact that the world and Fatah have yet to recognize the results of the 2006 legislative elections, we expected the same scenario to play out had Hamas won the elections that were scheduled to take place in October.

In further evidence for Moussas position, the Kuwaiti Al-Jarida newspaper reported Sept. 7 that some international human rights organizations warned the PA that they would stop support for all local bodies managed by winning candidates with ties to or support from Hamas. The report explained that a number of heads of international organizations that support the PA officially informed Local Government Minister Hussein Araj of this threat during recent private talks.

Abdul Sattar Qassem, a political science professor at An-Najah University in Nablus, told Al-Monitor, Canceling the elections for not including Jerusalem does not make any sense as the 2005 presidential elections, the 2006 legislative elections and the 2012 local elections did not include Jerusalem. Playing the Jerusalem card today further confirms the double standards of the PA and that the courts decision was politically motivated.

Qassem added, The decision to postpone the vote comes amid political tension and internal division among the supporters of Fatah and the PA that would have undermined their chances of victory in the local elections. Electoral blocs that are not loyal to the PA and supported by Hamas had higher chances of winning, which prompted the PA to postpone.

There may not be a single reason behind the postponement of the local elections. Various motivations include the appeals against Fatah lists in some areas, especially in Gaza, which would have increased Hamas chances of winning the elections. Also, Fatah, which is plagued by internal division, may not have been encouraged to participate in the elections in light of Egyptian, Jordanian and Israeli pressure on Abbas to suspend them for fear of Hamas' winning.

A former Palestinian minister well informed on the preparations of the local elections told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Many Arab countries, namely Egypt and Jordan, have been pressuring Abbas to postpone the local elections and maybe to cancel them, if necessary. This is because their security reports confirm Hamas high chances of achieving an overwhelming victory. Cairo and Amman share a long border with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and they do not want Hamas to have any political presence near them, should it win the elections.

The elections would have been the first democratic exercise for Palestinians in more than a decade, since late 2004 and early 2005 in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The suspension of the elections does not bode well for the situation in the Palestinian territories, where more negative events are likely to unfold. Meanwhile, the status quo of division will remain, with even lower chances of a reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. It appears that the Palestinians hopes for a breakthrough in their stalemate have disintegrated.

The political situation in the Palestinian territories remains uncertain after the announcement to delay the elections. Many scenarios are on the table now, including the possibility of holding the elections in Gaza and not in the West Bank, or vice versa. Hamas may also replace the current local councils in Gaza with the lists it had nominated.
September 13, 2016

On Sept. 9, the day that the ethnic cleansing clip by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made waves on both sides of the ocean, large banner ads reading "Decision at 50" appeared in the Israeli media. The website to which the ads directed readers says the campaign is being sponsored by Israeli men and women who think that after controlling the territories for 50 years, it is time to hold a referendum on their fate.

Activists involved in the initiative, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, said the organizers do not really expect their campaign to result in a referendum; they are seeking to use the opportunity of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War to restore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the occupation and the settlements to the top of the national agenda. The site also explains that formulation of the referendum question would be part of the public debate to which the campaign will give rise.

It would appear that any attempt to raise the Israeli-Palestinian issue to its rightful place is welcome. The problem is that the Zionist left faces a master of public relations, an alchemist who can in one breath turn occupier into victim, and a world chutzpah champion. Netanyahu swims through the diplomatic swamp like a fish in fresh water. The initiative that the Peace Now movement and additional partners on the left are seeking to impose on him comes just in time for Netanyahu  between a multitude of reports about police investigations against him and the fiasco of banning maintenance work on the countrys railways on the Sabbath.

Want a referendum? Go ahead. He will ask the people whether they favor or reject an ethnic cleansing of Jerusalems Old City, the Jewish Quarter in the Palestinian city of Hebron and the Etzion bloc of West Bank settlements. The question could also be phrased this way: Are you for or against turning Judea and Samaria Judenrein [German for 'clean of Jews']? After all, the Knesset will decide the language and there Netanyahu is assured of a majority.

The referendum campaign is illustrative more than anything of the depth of despair in the left-wing camp. The attempt to exempt the government and the legislature from making a decision reflects political defeatism, amounting to the loss of a moral compass. A referendum is a perfect emergency exit from all diplomatic moves. Who would want to conduct negotiations with the government of Israel on the two-state solution before the State of Israel decides that this is what it wants? How can the international community demand that the Israeli government avoid creating facts on the ground (expanding and building settlements) in controversial West Bank areas while a public debate is underway in Israel about the referendum question?

How can one expect US President Barack Obama to lend a hand to a United Nations Security Council resolution recognizing a Palestinian state if a majority of the Israeli public votes against ethnic cleansing? Clearly, by doing so, he will turn the dispute between the US administration and the Israeli government into an open rift between the American people and the people of Israel and a substantial portion of US Jewry. Not only that, the very suggestion to conduct a referendum on the fate of the territories legitimizes Israels control, contrary to the position of the international community. After all, a state cannot conduct a referendum on the status of foreign territory.

Lets assume that the campaign exceeds expectation and next year the citizens of Israel vote on the future of the territories. The referendum will pit against each other two entirely different groups in terms of their character and size. Members of one group are concerned about the moral damage to Israel as a result of the occupation and believe in a withdrawal from the territories as soon as possible. Members of the other group believe that the dangers inherent in withdrawing from the territories are greater than the moral damage (if such a thing exists) inherent in the status quo. The latest Peace Index of the Evans Program in Mediation and Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Democracy Institute, published Sept. 7, could serve as a tool to predict the results of the confrontation between these two groups.

Several social and political issues were examined in the latest index. A poll conducted by the Midgam Research Institute at the end of August for the Peace Index project found that a large Jewish majority (65%) justifies the actions of Elor Azaria, the soldier who shot to death an injured Palestinian terrorist in Hebron. Only 25% support the stand of the military authorities that Azaria violated the open-fire orders and shot the terrorist out of a sense of revenge; 10% did not respond. The percentage of those polled who think any Palestinian terrorist carrying out attacks against Jews should be killed on the spot  even if he is caught and is clearly no longer a threat to his surroundings  is almost identical to those who oppose this view (47% against 45%).

One can learn something about the state of play between Netanyahus supporters and opponents from the reactions of those surveyed to the Aug. 17 criticism of Netanyahu by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Of those polled, 68% believe Barak was motivated by political interests when he accused Netanyahu of causing severe damage to Israels national security through his faulty judgment and his shaky relationship with Obama. Only 10% said Barak spoke out of sincere concern for Israels security. Sixty-five percent of the Israeli Jews polled are not enthused about the campaign urging Barak to run (again) for the countrys leadership and believe it would be better if he stays in the private sector (making money).

Revolutions start out in city squares and during protest marches and sit-ins on the doorsteps of elected officials, not by signing a petition in the comfort of a living room sofa. One can assume that most of the 1.7 million Israelis who voted for the Zionist Camp, the Joint List of predominantly Arab parties, and the Yesh Atid and Meretz parties do not think that withdrawing from the territories in return for peace is tantamount to ethnic cleansing. Part of the estimated 1 million Likud Party voters, who took seriously Netanyahus 2009 commitment to the two-state solution in his Bar-Ilan speech, would also prefer to cut Israel off from the Palestinians and not from the enlightened world. Five years ago many of them took part in the social protest against the high cost of living. If salvaging peace and democracy cannot get them out of their homes, the funds for the referendum campaign would be put to better use for needy Holocaust survivors.
September 12, 2016

WASHINGTON  A shaky pause in major fighting went into force in Syria at sundown Sept. 12, three days after the United States and Russia announced they had reached a deal to try to establish a nationwide cease-fire, expand access to humanitarian aid and make way for Syrian combatants to return to the negotiating table.

US Secretary of State John Kerry urged all the parties to the cessation of hostilities  including a skeptical Syrian opposition  to support the truce deal that would eventually see the United States and Russia coordinating on the targeting of al-Qaedas Syria affiliate, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra). Kerry warned its failure could lead to an escalation of the conflict, which would make keeping Syria a unitary nation difficult after five brutal years of civil war that have killed an estimated half a million people.

I believe this is the only realistic solution to this conflict, Kerry told journalists at the State Department on Sept. 12. I urge all parties to support it. It may be the last chance one has to save a united Syria.

Under the plan, announced by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after daylong talks in Geneva on Sept. 9, a seven-day period of calm or at least reduced violence starting Sept. 12 would then lead to the establishment of a US-Russian Joint Implementation Center (JIC), which would share intelligence and coordinate the targeting of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham as well as the so-called Islamic State (IS).

Once the JIC is set up, the Syrian air force would no longer be permitted to carry out airstrikes in areas of Syria where the moderate opposition or Jabhat Fatah al-Sham is present, though it could continue strikes against IS.

But in a sign of the complexity of the deal and the relative secrecy with which it has been negotiated, there was confusion about what restrictions exactly would be enforced on the Syrian air force. Kerry, speaking at the top of the State Department press briefing Sept. 12, suggested the Syrian air force could seek permission from the JIC to strike targets in Jabhat Fatah al-Sham-dominant, predesignated areas.

But State Department spokesman John Kirby subsequently issued a statement indicating that was not correct.

"We have seen reports based on the Secretarys comments  and those of the spokesperson  this afternoon, that the United States and Russia could approve of strikes by the Syrian regime. This is incorrect, Kirby said in a statement Sept. 12.

To clarify: The arrangement announced last week makes no provision whatsoever for the United States and Russia to approve strikes by the Syrian regime, and this is not something we could ever envision doing, Kirby said. A primary purpose of this agreement, from our perspective, is to prevent the Syrian regime air force from flying or striking in any areas in which the opposition or Nusra [Jabhat Fatah al-Sham] are present. The purpose of the JIC, if and when it is established, would be to coordinate military action between the United States and Russia, not for any other party."

The Syrian opposition and armed groups issued statements offering lukewarm, conditional support for a truce, if not for the broader US-Russian plan, until receiving further information on it. One complaint they have is that they have not seen the US-Russian deal text, which Kerry and Lavrov said Sept. 9 would not be released for operational security reasons.

My feeling is that the concept of a cessation of hostilities is good, Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat now with the Syrian opposition High Negotiating Committee, told Al-Monitor on Sept. 12. Delivery of food is very good. The concept of Assad stopping barrel bombing would be great. At the same time, nobody saw the deal. We dont know how to endorse something that we did not see.

The US administration has offered briefings on the deal to High Negotiations Committee chief Riyad Hijab, Barabandi said, but Hijab has been attending the hajj, the religious pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, so has not been able to be reached. But it has not provided the text of the deal.

Syrias armed opposition groups agree in principle to a [cessation of hostilities], but they are not willing to fully sign onto the whole deal until they receive the clarifications and guarantees theyve requested in a new letter to [US Syria Envoy] Michael Ratney, Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Middle East Institute, said.

Syrias armed opposition groups are hedging their bets for now, Lister said. They will semi-abide by it, until theyre provided with an excuse not to.  They reserve the right to self-defense. They will protect aid deliveries around Aleppo, so long as the regime does the same.
September 13, 2016

Five days after the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan convened back-to-back meetings with the Council of Ministers and the National Security Council, installing a nationwide state of emergency. According to what he said at the time, the state of emergency, which empowers the government to restrict basic rights and freedoms and govern via legislative decrees, aimed to eliminate the putschist terrorist organization.

The measures, however, have gone well beyond the stated aim of purging the putschists of the so-called Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization (FETO), the term Ankara uses to refer to Gulen followers. Now, eight weeks later, the measures have begun to further complicate Turkeys long-standing Kurdish problem. Two decisions, announced last week under the state of emergency, have raised the specter of escalation in the conflict spawned by the Kurdish problem.

On Sept. 11, the Interior Ministry appointed trustees to run 28 municipalities in the predominantly Kurdish east and southeast, including two big cities  Batman and Hakkari  as well as 24 districts and two towns. This meant the ouster of elected mayors, whose ministry-appointed replacements took office the same day.

According to an Interior Ministry statement, 24 of the 28 mayors were removed for aiding and supporting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a designated terrorist organization, and its affiliate, the Kurdistan Communities Union. Twelve of them, the statement said, were already behind bars, arrested earlier pending trial.

The 24 Kurdish mayors were elected in the March 2014 local elections on the ticket of the Peace and Democracy Party, which soon became the Democratic Regions Party (DBP). The same year, the Kurdish movement, teaming up with some elements of the Turkish left, created the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), which aspired for a nationwide outreach. While the DBP focused on local administrations, the HDP won parliamentary representation in the two general elections last year to become the voice of the Kurds in national politics.

Among the seized municipalities are those of the districts of Sur and Silvan in Diyarbakir province, Nusaybin in Mardin province, and Cizre and Silopi in Sirnak province, which were all the theater of fierce clashes after Ankaras resumption of the war on the PKK in July 2015, suffering massive destruction, largely from artillery fire employed by the Turkish military.

The remaining four mayors were associated with FETO, including three from the ruling Justice and Development Party and the fourth from the Nationalist Action Party.

The ouster of the mayors had been expected for weeks, as Ankara did little to hide its intentions. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu  appointed last month to replace Efkan Ala, whose post-putsch performance reportedly failed to satisfy Erdogan  offered this justification two days before the move: Within 15 days, in line with the authority the legislative decree gives us, the administration of 28 municipalities will be no longer in the hands of terrorists [taking] instructions from the Qandil Mountains [where the PKK leadership is based in Iraq], but in the hands of people who carry this star-and-crescent flag in their hearts. The statement was a clear indication that, in the climate of the bloody war with the PKK, the government saw elected Kurdish mayors as PKK extensions who should be sidelined.

Several days earlier, HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas had used equally tough language, though for a different message to the Kurds. Dont obey the trustees, dont carry out their orders. Weve ushered to a dictatorship. We are not going to bow down to such a man, Demirtas said, referring to Erdogan.

Put side by side, the two statements illustrate how big the rift between Turkeys main Kurdish party and the government has grown.

And the tone and wording of the statement the HDP issued the day the mayors were ousted reflect how the move is perceived in the Kurdish political public opinion. The mentalities of those who on July 15 bombed parliament, i.e., the elected representatives of the people, and those who barged into elected municipalities, yelling Weve seized the administration and usurped the will of the people are in no way different, the statement said. Local administrations in Kurdish cities elected with vote shares of between 65% and 95% have been chosen as the essential target in the trusteeship coup. This unlawful and arbitrary action will deepen the existing problems in Kurdish cities and make the Kurdish problem an even more unresolvable one.

Thousands of teachers suspended

The second purge, for which the government used emergency-rule powers to battle the PKK, targeted thousands of Kurdish teachers. On Sept. 8, the Education Ministry suspended 11,285 teachers on grounds they were linked to the PKK. According to reports, the teachers were deemed to have lent support to the PKK by disrupting curfews in the southeast and taking part in demonstrations that obstructed the right to education.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim had said Sept. 5 that an estimated 14,000 teachers in the southeast were in some way involved with terrorism and implied they would share the fate of FETO members expelled soon after the putsch.

The purges  carried out by misusing the powers made available by the state of emergency, the original purpose of which was to fight the putschists  mesh with a short but memorable sentence that Yildirim had uttered in early September. Referring to the Kurdish problem, he declared, Therell be no settlement schmettlement.

And he was right. The settlement of the Kurdish problem is not on the governments agenda, not even as lip service. The termination of the solution process was the core of the bargain Erdogan struck with his nationalist and conservative Sunni base ahead of the Nov. 1, 2015, snap elections, which he called to reclaim his parliamentary majority, lost in the June 7 polls. And this deal will continue until the early elections or the referendum that Erdogan hopes for to formalize his de facto, authoritarian presidential regime with a constitutional amendment. This, in turn, means the conflict in the southeast will drag on indefinitely as no early election or a referendum has been scheduled.

With no settlement schmettlement on the cards and emergency-rule powers used to oust a legal Kurdish party from local administrations and teachers from schools, the repercussions in the southeast are not hard to predict. In the highly politicized Kurdish grassroots, the governments excesses are likely to erode faith in democratic processes and stoke the propensity to violence. The perception that Kurds are purged from the public sector just for being Kurds could spread far and wide, ossifying a sense of inequality that would be difficult to mend. Finally, the governments hard-line measures should be expected to strengthen the Kurdish separatist current that upholds violence and terrorism.
September 12, 2016

While Ankaras post-putsch crackdown on Gulenists is increasingly called into question  most recently by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself  the purges are now expanding to Kurdish quarters accused of backing the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a designated terrorist group. Days after some 11,000 teachers were suspended with a single decree last week, the government ousted two dozen elected Kurdish mayors, raising the specter also of company seizures and property confiscations. Such measures may have largely subdued the Gulenists, now labeled by Ankara the Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization (FETO), but can they produce the same results against the PKK and the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), which Ankara sees as the PKKs political extension? Is the government fanning tensions at a time when bloodshed in the Kurdish-majority southeast is already a daily occurrence?

When it comes to the rule of law, Turkeys record has never been spotless, but the measures employed since the July 15 coup attempt have sparked an alarm that compares to no other period in the past.

Armed with emergency-rule powers, the authorities have put tens of thousands of people behind bars, including hundreds of businesspeople who saw their properties confiscated, and dismissed more than 60,000 public servants, with the stated aim of dismantling FETO, which stands accused of carrying out the putsch.

The frenzy and severity of the purge seems to have irked even its standard-bearer, Erdogan, who last week grumbled that irrelevant people were being targeted. Then, addressing governors, he said, I dont want you to compete with each other on who gets more public servants dismissed. I want you to be fair.

Many are now worried that a similar crackdown on suspected PKK supporters will open irrecoverable wounds.

A retired Turkish diplomat with ample experience on the Kurdish issue told Al-Monitor that luring PKK sympathizers to legitimate politics was crucial, and warned that the purge of teachers posed serious risks for the future. When struggling with a separatist terrorist organization, drawing its proponents and supporters to a legitimate ground is extremely important. So constantly pushing the HDP around, trying to push it to a wall is wrong. Though the HDPs bond with the PKK is known, the state should seize every opportunity to force a party with more than 10% of the vote into the legitimate realm, he said on condition of anonymity.

According to the diplomat, a major opportunity to lure the HDP away from PKK influence was squandered after the June 7, 2015, elections, in which the party won 13% of the vote, drawing support also from ethnic Turks. The election aftermath saw the resumption of armed conflict between the PKK and the security forces, which, according to the diplomat, was a sign that neither the Turkish state nor the PKK wanted a stronger HDP.

Everyone should think why the PKK doesnt want to see a strong HDP, he said. And all procedures and actions today should be conducted accordingly. Thus, the dismissal of the teachers is not a sensible act and could pose great risks for the future.

The first signal of a clampdown on Kurdish public employees came Sept. 2 when Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said thousands of teachers would be removed from schools in the mainly Kurdish southeast and reappointed elsewhere on the grounds they worked to advance the PKKs agenda. In an even more ominous warning two days later, he said, They will face what FETO has faced, and this is not limited to teachers only. Terrorism is present within the state and local administrations as well. All public servants who rub shoulders with terrorism will be dealt with and weeded out one by one.

His statement drew harsh reactions from top officials of both the HDP and the main opposition Republican Peoples Party, which questioned how the targeted teachers were found to be PKK backers without any due legal process. Despite the outcry, the Education Ministry suspended 11,285 teachers Sept. 8, all of them members of the leftist Education and Science Laborers Union (Egitim Sen), which is popular with the Kurds.

For Egitim Sen Chairman Kamuran Karaca, the move confirms the governments intention to disable all its political opponents. Fresh from a meeting with Education Ministry officials, he told Al-Monitor the criteria used to single out the targeted teachers was their participation in a one-day strike on Dec. 29, called to protest the twin suicide attack that killed more than 100 people in downtown Ankara on Oct. 10 ahead of a rally for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict. Nine months have passed since the strike, and no administrative or judicial investigation had been launched against those teachers, he said.

Karaca believes the teachers had already been blacklisted as government opponents, with the help of a pro-government trade union. Our trade union advocates democratic, scientific and secular education. If any teacher has been seen digging trenches or taking part in armed clashes [along with PKK militants], then all necessary measures should be taken, but thats not whats going on, he said. They want to purge all their opponents, now that the law is suspended under the state of emergency. This will have a heavy cost and polarize people, leading to serious consequences.

Veli Demir, the head of the social democratic Education and Science Functionaries Trade Union, voiced similar misgivings, warning also that secular education was in danger. More than 1,000 FETO schools were seized, and the prime minister had said they would continue to operate in the fields they used to operate before July 15, Demir told Al-Monitor, recalling the seizure of hundreds of Gulenist schools soon after the putsch. But now, those schools are being converted to imam-hatip schools, he said, referring to schools that provide Quranic education.

Demir mentioned instances in which both spouses of middle-aged teacher couples had been suspended, stripped from their livelihood and retirement rights. This shows the goal is to destroy, to annihilate, he said. This measure will serve nothing but resentment, enmity and chaos.

In a parliamentary question to Yildirim, HDP parliamentary whip Idris Baluken said the scale of the purge meant that almost no native teachers would be left in schools in the southeast. Is the purge of Kurdish teachers meant as the beginning of a new assimilation process in the region? he asked.

The suspensions also raise the question of how safe the replacement teachers will be in the region as they are likely to face a hostile environment. Moreover, the PKK may call for a boycott of schools altogether, making the problem even more inextricable.

And beyond the field of education, Ankara ousted 24 elected Kurdish mayors Sept. 11, replacing them with trustees, mostly governors and district prefects. Four other municipalities met the same fate for alleged links with FETO. No democratic state can or will allow mayors and members of parliament to use municipality resources to finance terrorist organizations," Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Twitter. Being an elected official is not a license to commit crimes. In a defiant response, the HDP said it viewed the decision as null and void, warning that the move will deepen existing problems in Kurdish cities and make the Kurdish problem an unresolvable one.
September 13, 2016

Since its founding by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923, the Peoples Republican Party (CHP) has been the staunch defender of Turkeys French-style secularism. It always opposed using religious references in politics, arguing that it would amount to the exploitation of religion for political ends. It also opposed, for decades, religious symbols in the public space, such as the Islamic headscarf.

Yet the CHP has been changing lately, especially since Kemal Kilicdaroglu became its leader in 2010. First the CHP abandoned its intolerance for the headscarf, accepting hijab-wearing womens right to go to college or get public jobs. Then it welcomed some conservative politicians with Islamic credentials to its ranks, such as Mehmet Bekaroglu. Moreover, Kilicdaroglu began to allude to Islamic values to support his arguments.

One notable example of the latter trend came last weekend, when Kilicdaroglu gave a press conference criticizing the mass purges and arrests the government initiated after the failed coup attempt of July 15. One of the violations he criticized was the arrest or suspension of the family members of some of those who are accused of the coup plot. For example, when the police could not find Adil Oksuz, a suspected civilian mastermind of the coup who is on the run, the mans mother-in-law, father-in-law and sisters-in-law were detained. Against such persecution, Kilicdaroglu said:

There is a principle called individual criminal responsibility. They [the government], however, created a notion of collective crime.  Let me refer to the farewell sermon of our beloved prophet, which is accepted as one of the most important human rights declarations in history. Here our beloved prophet said, Everybody is responsible for his crime; a persons crime can never be associated with his mother, father or child. This, in fact, is a universal rule. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares the same norm.

The farewell sermon Kilicdaroglu referred to was delivered by the Prophet Muhammad to his followers near Mecca in 632, soon before his death. It has been one of the key documents in Islamic history, with important moral injunctions on various matters including, indeed, human rights. O people! Your Lord is one and your father is one, it reads, for example. It continues, There is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, nor of a non-Arab over an Arab, nor of a white over a black, nor a black over a white.

There are various versions of the text, and not all of them have the line that Kilicdaroglu referred to. But it does exist in the version presented by Turkeys Encyclopedia of Islam, which has the following clause: Everybody is responsible for his own crime. The father cannot be held responsible for the sons crime, nor can the son be held responsible for the fathers.

What is more important for Turkish politics today, of course, is not the content of the farewell sermon, but how it has become a reference for human rights  and in the hands of the all-secular CHP, among all parties. This, I believe, underlines two important facts.

The first is that the CHP is now finally getting religion. It is, in other words, understanding that religion, in particular Islam, is deeply rooted in Turkish society, and a political party that does not comprehend this fact is doomed to be marginalized. One could argue that this change was forced on the CHP by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The latter not only ended the secularist hegemony in the state, but also spearheaded the rise of a more religious rhetoric in society. But then the CHP is only wise to adapt this transformation, as its old, rigid secularism was already out of fashion.

The second important fact is that in the past few years, the CHP gradually established itself as the party that defends human rights, civil liberties and rule of law against an authoritarian state. That, too, is a novelty in Turkish political history. Because, with the exception of its short-lived flirtation of social democracy, the CHP has traditionally been the party that defended the state against those who defended human rights, civil liberties and rule of law. This was true even in the first decade of this century, when the AKP controlled the government and the CHP was in the opposition. As paradoxical as it may sound, the AKP was the defender of liberal values in those years, whereas the CHP still identified with the draconian state, which was then still under the control of the secularist military and judiciary. With the AKPs full dominance of the state, however, that anomaly ended. The CHP is now a real opposition party that opposes a growing authoritarian state.

What does this all mean? It all means that those who hope for a more liberal and democratic Turkey, including religious conservatives who are disillusioned with the AKP, should give the CHP a chance. Yes, the partys 20th-century heritage includes many unpleasant episodes of authoritarianism. Yet there is a increasingly New CHP that Kilicdaroglu has promised to mold. The very fact that the party now defends human rights with references to our beloved prophet is a remarkable indication of that new reality in Turkish politics.
September 12, 2016

A Syrian cease-fire brokered over the weekend by the United States and Russia went into effect Sept. 12, though it remains to be seen whether it holds.

Pessimism over the agreements prospects for success followed soon after it was announced Sept. 10 in Geneva by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. That pessimism is not entirely groundless. Indeed, Russians and Americans see what constitutes the key part of the agreement differently.

For the American party, the key is Russias willingness to restrain the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from conducting air operations over areas held by opposition forces and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra). The Russians, however, pin their hopes on the US ability to ensure the opposition groups Washington has been supporting refrain from violence and separate themselves from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. Therefore, each party expects that potential violations will by and large come from their opponents side.

However, some in Russia think sabotage might come not only from opposition forces and radicals but also from some groups inside the Syrian government. Anton Mardasov, the head of the Department of Middle Eastern Conflicts of the Moscow-based Institute for Innovative Development and one of Russias closest observers regarding the Syria crisis, explained the situation to Al-Monitor.

He said, Proponents of the Syrian regime are divided into those aligning with Iran and those inclined to support the Russians. Similar divisions exist within Syrian security and intelligence forces: While the General Intelligence Directorate and Political Security Directorate are currently cooperating with Moscow, the Syrian Military Intelligence and Air Intelligence Forces [align with] with Tehran.

Geographically, what makes the agreement difficult to implement is that in recent months Syria has become even more fragmented security-wise and in terms of zones of control. Enforcing jurisdiction of the agreement across all of the territories in this case is unrealistic and would require different tools in various provinces.

A big part of the agreement will not be made public; this became one of the main controversies of the deal, raising suspicions that it eventually will be imposed on Syria. Seeking to justify the need for such secrecy, Lavrov said, We cant make these documents public, for they contain quite serious and sensitive information. We wouldnt want them to fall into the hands of those who will most likely seek to derail the measures we agreed upon.

Washington and Moscow also barely concealed that in its ultimate form, the agreement has been received with skepticism and even opposition by some decision-makers on each side.

Reacting to news about the Pentagon feeling reluctant to cooperate with the Kremlin on the battlefield, a source in the Russian Press Corps noted that both sides came to agreement on their own interests but packaged it as a compromise, [even] a consensus.

Yet, even if that is true, it signals an important message that both Russia and the United States are committed to exercise their political will to ensure implementation of the agreement and exert influence over the respective parties. In that sense, its not a question of whether Moscow and Washington fully understand the set of challenges ahead  people involved in the talks are experienced and professional enough to forecast potential pitfalls at least as well as outside observers. The issue is whether Moscow and Washington accurately calculate how much actual influence they have over their proxies; past experience has shown that getting them under full control simply isnt always possible.

Another set of challenges may come from outside sponsors  Iran, Turkey and Gulf monarchies. A perception that the agreement fortifies the regional standings of Russia and the United States might easily trigger their temptation to manipulate respective Sunni-Shiite proxy groups inside Syria to weaken the position of the big powers. The agreement also seems to leave a chunk of Iranian and Saudi interests unsatisfied. Therefore, even if they support the agreement publicly, well-reasoned domestic skepticism about the deal in Tehran and Riyadh is understandable and should not be underestimated. At the same time, few believe the two can jointly put forward something constructive while continuing the war of attrition.

Neither should it be much of a surprise that Moscow is taking advantage of the agreement to strike some points about sanctions, and to flag as irrelevant Washingtons opinion of Russian isolation  it has become an attribute of contemporary Russian foreign policy and will be there for a long time. Preserving the focus on these matters, however  which certainly is an additional pressure for the Obama administration  will give the agreement zero chance to promote peace. Instead, the agreement should come as a litmus test for all responsible forces to show just how serious and responsible they actually are to place peace and security in Syria over their immediate political interests, which lack any true strategic depth.

For all the caveats, the significance of the agreement goes far beyond Syria and may spell something promising for a general framework of US-Russian relations in the region. Some of the experts with Kremlin insights believe that regardless of the profound crisis in US-Russian relations, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama ended up being the main interlocutors in the Syria crisis.

Fyodor Lukyanov, Russias foremost foreign policy analyst, argues in a Sept. 7 column for Russia in Global Affairs, Russia and the United States can no longer manage international processes the way they did during the Cold War. Yet they still come to the forefront as only strong-hand ultimate decision-makers in key crises: The EU has lost the attributes of a political entity  both as an institution and at the level of its individual members  while China, India and Iran, despite obvious growth in their ambitions, arent yet ready to play a big political-military game independently. He thus insists that relations between Putin and Obama are an example of rather effective risk-minimizing in a situation when the relationship has an antagonistic character and interests are diverging on core aspects, while the vision of the world is diametrically different.

Lavrov stated that despite a deep lack of confidence and trust between Russia and the American partners, the reached agreement is just the beginning of our new relations. That might be a stretch. Yet, if the parties end up establishing what they call a Joint Implementation Center to coordinate bilateral intelligence and start launching joint airstrikes against agreed-upon terrorist groups in Syria, it might indeed breathe new life into cooperation on Syria. It wont go far and will in no way be strategic  at the very best, tactical. Nonetheless, it might just be enough of a start to help shore up US-Russian relations enough to prevent further erosion of the region, which has entered a prolonged period of systemic instability.
September 9, 2016

Both the Yemeni civil war and the Saudi-led intervention have lasted longer than anyone expected or wanted, a point made clear by the toll the conflict is taking on both countries.

At the end of 2015, nine months after Saudi Arabia formed a 10-nation coalition to fight the expansion of Houthi rebels in Yemen, the kingdom  with a gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $700 billion  posted its highest recorded budget deficit, an indication that the wars economic implications are not to be taken lightly. Meanwhile, Yemen  which recorded its highest GDP at $37 billion in 2014  saw its GDP shrink by 35% in 2015. War damage estimates stand around $19 billion, and the imminent insolvency of public institutions is expected. Sanaa-based public institutions, including ministries and the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY), remain under Houthi control, whose takeover of the capital in September 2014 led President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee the country for Saudi Arabia in early 2015.

In July 2016 due to a liquidity crisis, the CBY suspended financing of all items in the state budget except for public servants' wages and domestic debt payments. The shortage of domestic currency in the banking system is now increasing the risk of a state default on the payment of wages and repayments to domestic lenders.

An August report by the Ministry of Cooperation and International Planning examined by Al-Monitor states that the amount of money removed from circulation in the first half of 2016 totaled 300 billion Yemeni rials (about $1.19 billion), with 44% of that leaving the banking system in June, compared to less than 50 billion rials (around $200 million) exiting in all of 2014. This not only demonstrates, in part, a lack of trust by the public in the banking system in such volatile times, but also gives one an idea of the extent of the shadow economy in the country.

The Houthi movement, originally outlawed, has been relying on the shadow economy and unofficial sources of funding to finance itself. The rebel group has been successful in capitalizing on its takeover of the state apparatus and territorial expansion to enlarge the size of the shadow economy, thereby diversifying its domestic sources of income. Since the start of the Saudi-led intervention in March 2015, foreign sources of funding for the rebel group have been vastly restricted.

State revenue, largely at the disposal of the rebel group, declined by 53.7% in 2015 due to the suspension of oil exports, which contributed to 45% of the states income in 2014, and a 19.2% decline in tax revenues, with businesses closing and laying off employees.

None of this, however, deterred the Houthis from cutting ministry budgets and redirecting the savings to their war effort. They also imposed a $20 war tax on civil servants, who constitute 1 million of Yemens 4.2 million employed workers. Last month, in a further attempt to cut spending on budgetary items unrelated to the war, the Houthi-controlled Ministry of Higher Education, without warning, stopped funding the studies of 800 scholarship recipients abroad.

Long before the current war, the Houthis had collected zakat (almsgiving) and cash donations to finance their many confrontations with the Yemeni army during the tenure of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, their current ally. After their seizure of the capital, they received large sums of cash, allegedly from Hezbollah and Iran, which were delivered in sacks via airplane, and they continued to collect local donations for the war against the Saudis.

The Houthis also developed a huge black market for fuel and cooking gas  basic commodities for daily survival  when they began issuing licenses for private individuals to import fuel. This was after they lifted subsidies on fuel, a move that completely contradicted the stance they took against lifting subsidies that they adopted in the cause of overthrowing the government in September 2014. The arrangement subsequently led to the formation of a cartel of oil importers closely aligned with the rebel group.

Meanwhile, the exiled government has moved the war beyond the battlefield by trying to prevent the CBY from accessing Yemeni funds held overseas, to stanch financing of the rebel group, but it is hard to see how this will have the desired effect, as the Houthis were able to finance themselves through unofficial domestic channels before taking control of the state apparatus. The grave danger lies now in the CBYs inability to pay public servant salaries, even after it began injecting mutilated banknotes into the economy. Another danger is in accelerating the rate of wealth transfer to the Houthis, a situation that will only prolong the rebel group's survival.

Much like in any other conflict, wealth gets transferred from the hands of the losers to the hands of the winners. Yemenis in need are and will be forced to sell off their assets at prices below their actual value. With the takeover of the state, the Houthis are currently the wealthiest group in the country, so they will be the ones purchasing these assets at bargain prices. This means a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the Houthi rebel group. At the same time, Hadis government is betting on being able to tighten the financial stranglehold on the Houthis to weaken their position, regardless of the human cost, which will be high after a year and a half of intense fighting in the country.

That the Houthis are believed to be largely responsible for the withdrawal of the 300 billion Yemeni rials from the banking system, by stashing banknotes outside official channels, and given their dominance over the shadow economy, it appears that the Houthis will not be significantly affected by public institutions' insolvency. Surviving the war in the months ahead is a luxury the Houthis can afford, while other Yemenis will remain in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

The states failure is the cornerstone for the prosperity of the rebel group. The Houthis managed to survive for two decades before they became the de facto rulers of Yemens capital and will be able to survive as long as the state remains weak. Strengthening the state and its public institutions, not allowing them to fail, is the only feasible way to weaken the rebel groups position.
Birmingham brewers could soon be serving a brew that's both local and international.

That's because one Birmingham beer industry veteran is traveling to Plzen in the Czech Republic, one of Birmingham's Sister Cities, to promote brewing in each of these cities.

Heather Blisard, Craft Beer Manager and Buyer for Birmingham's Piggly Wiggly, is traveling to Plzen this week to meet with craft beer industry leaders and to attend the "Sun in Glass" Beer Festival in Plzen.

Plzen is known worldwide for the Pilsner style of beer. It was created in Plzen in 1842.

Free the Hops and the Sister Cities Program are partnering the coordinate the collaboration. Plzen became a sister city in 2005.

Brewers from all of the local breweries have expressed interest in collaborating on the beer. The goal, Blisard said, is to create a beer with Plzen methods and ingredients and a signature Birmingham style. She's bringing samples of hops that Birmingham brewers use with her to share with brewers there.

"The goal is to create a worldly beer that can act as a bridge between cultures and be a model for others to do the same," Blisard said in a press release.

Birmingham has sister cities in Japan, Hungary, China, Zimbabwe, Italy, Ukraine, Senegal, Czech Republic, Isreal, Jorda, Ghana and the United Kingdom.
Here are the top stories in Alabama business for Monday, Sept. 12, 2016:

One Miss America contestant wore an Alabama-made adhesive to cover her glucose monitor, which keeps track of her insulin levels. The product was developed by GrifGrips, a Huntsville company that has created its own adhesives that keep diabetic technology securely attached to a person's body.

--

Want to get your photo taken with celebrity chef Paula Deen? Mobile-area fans will have their chance on Oct. 12, according to The Shoppes at Bel Air.

--

Frito Lay, Verizon Wireless and Wells Fargo will join other companies this week for a job fair at the Huntsville Career Center.

--

Walk through the Mobile Alabama Cruise Terminal these days, and you won't have to wonder about where $4.1 million in state and city money is going. It seems to be going into everything.

--

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle spent Friday morning doing something he's pretty familiar with: welcoming a new company to the Huntsville area.

--

The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board expects to change a proposed requirement that breweries and brew pubs record the names and other personal information of customers who buy beer to take home.

--

Follow all of Alabama's business news here anytime.
Oxford, Miss., chef and James Beard winner John Currence will be in Birmingham on Tuesday, Sept. 13, to launch his new cookbook, "Big Bad Breakfast: The Most Important Book of the Day."

Currence will sign copies of his cookbook at a kick-off party that starts at 7 p.m. at the Garage Cafe, 2304 10th Terrace South.

Signed copies of the "Big Bad Breakfast" cookbook will be available for $30 plus tax.

Currence, who won a James Beard Foundation Award for best chef in the South in 2009, opened the original Big Bad Breakfast in Oxford in 2008, and he is one of the co-owners, along with Birmingham restaurateur Nick Pihakis, of the Big Bad Breakfast that opened here on U.S. 280 two years ago.

Earlier this year, Pihakis announced plans to open another Big Bad Breakfast here in downtown Homewood.

In addition to Big Bad Breakfast, Currence's restaurant group includes the Oxford restaurants City Grocery, Boure, Snackbar and Lamar Lounge.

Before the event at the Garage Cafe in Birmingham, Currence will host a "Big Bad Breakfast" pop-up drive-thru Tuesday morning on the Square in downtown Oxford.

Signed first editions of his cookbook also will be available for $30 plus tax at the Alabama Booksmith, 2626 19th Place South in Homewood.
The September issue of Redbook included six winners of its annual Real Women Style Awards from all over the country - and two of them were from Alabama.

"In a month that's as fashion-focused as September, it's so important to show that style can come in all kinds of packages -- you don't need a size-zero body or a million-dollar budget to be on-trend and gorgeous," said Redbook Editor in Chief Meredith Rollins. "The six winners of our Real Women Style Awards really show that. Their lives are full of family and work and everything else, and they still put together incredible outfits that reflect their unique personalities. It's inspiring to see how they do it!"

Bertha Hidalgo, 38, of Birmingham, and LaShoundra Young, 34, of Mobile, were among the winners. Both women have fashion blogs in which they share photographs of themselves wearing some of their favorite looks and offer style tips.

Hidalgo is an assistant professor at UAB's School of Public Health, where she specializes in genetic epidemiology. She has two sons, ages 7 and 3.

"I love fashion and always have," said Hidalgo, who is originally from Los Angeles. "It's one way I've allowed myself to have something that's all mine. A good outfit makes all the difference."

Young, who has a 6-year-old son, is a service coordinator for Volunteers of America who works with the intellectually disabled. "Even at a young age," she said, "I knew that fit mattered."

At 5-foot-2, Young knew she was too short to work as a model, but she's always been into fashion shows and magazines, as well as TV programs like "America's Top Model."

Earlier this year, Hildalgo and Young were among 5,000 women who submitted photos of themselves in outfits they styled. The magazine narrowed the group down to 25, then opened the contest up to votes from readers.

During the voting, Young said, she was driving to Sam's Club in Mobile when a woman pulled her over and asked, "Aren't you the woman in the contest? I'm voting for you!"

In June, the women received word that they'd been selected for a trip to Hearst headquarters in New York City for a photo shoot. Hidalgo was one of the five judges' choices, and Young was named the "fan favorite." Each of the six winners was featured on a full page in the magazine.

"They treated us like little celebrities," said Young. "We got the experience of a real photo shoot."

During the two-day trip, they were picked up in private cars and whisked to a "fantastic hotel near Times Square," said Hidalgo. On the first day, they had fittings, complete with on-site seamstresses, and enjoyed having access to a closet full of clothing and accessories.

"It was like a scene from 'The Devil Wears Prada,'" she said.

Early the next morning, all six women met in the lobby of their hotel and were taken to the photo shoot, where they had their makeup, hair and nails done. Each one was photographed in three different outfits.

"Aside from being a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it was a day of pampering," said Hidalgo. "As a mom of two, I don't do that very often."

The magazine was mailed to subscribers in mid-August, and Young and Hidalgo could finally share the secret that they were among the Real Women Style Award winners. "I have a subscription to Redbook," said Young. "It was fun to see me coming through the mailbox."

Hidalgo's daily life, both as a scientist and a mom, "can be stressful and intense," she said. She thinks of her fashion blog as "brain candy." "It helps feed the right side of my brain."

"No one thinks of scientists as cover models," said Hidalgo. "This speaks to where we're moving in society. It's acceptable for women to be intelligent and fashionable. The two roles don't have to be mutually exclusive."

Young's blog, Young at Style, has more than 44,000 followers, and Hidalgo's blog, Chic in Academia, has more than 28,000 followers.
Matthias Kossmehl discusses his film Cafe Waldluft, which is an intimate look at the new home of 35 refugees.

Cafe Waldluft, nestled in the small village of Berchtesgaden amid the clouds-covered Bavarian Alps, was once a busy tourist destination. In 2015, however, it became home to refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan and Sierra Leone, as they navigate bureaucratic hurdles waiting to be granted asylum, while worrying about the families they have been separated from and wondering what the future has in store for them.

Flora Kurz, the nurturing, elderly owner of Cafe Waldluft, looks out for her new tenants. She now turns away would-be guests as her hotel is completely occupied by about 35 refugees, who call her Mama Flora.

Filmmaker Matthias Kossmehl followed Cafe Waldlufts residents as they get to know one another, tourists who come to eat at the hotel and locals from the village, sharing fragments of the rich cultures and lives they left behind, their customs and personal stories.

Al Jazeera spoke to Kossmehl about following this social experiment of sorts  a microcosm of what is happening across the European Union. His film uncovers an important vision of empathy towards accepting the ongoing refugee crisis as found in the remarkable place which Cafe Waldluft has become.

Al Jazeera: Why did you decide to focus on this hotel?

Matthias Kossmehl: I grew up in a small village near Berchtesgaden, Germany, a rural place where traditions are still very important. For many strangers, this place is Bavaria as they know it from idyllic postcards and films.

As a child, I grew up in a paradisal state, where problems like international conflicts were far away from western societies. The worlds crises were limited to television reports, watched to pass the time.

But within the past two years, I saw how the arrival of refugees transformed the sleepy villages and the societies within them. As a filmmaker from this region, it was interesting to observe how the environment in which I grew up in changed so much.

When I read about a small hotel nearby which hosted asylum seekers, I started my research into other nearby villages and visited a lot of different hotels. I followed the increasing number of refugee arrivals and heard about more and more hotels which were being transformed, overnight, into homes for asylum seekers and refugees.

These developments were sometimes followed by strong protests from the local residents.

WATCH: Germanys Refugee Crisis

I visited a lot of different locations until I came to Berchtesgaden and found the hotel Cafe Waldluft  a unique place, a very special place, which was so different from any of the hotels I had been to before.

Run by an old woman named Mama Flora by the refugee residents, the hotel impressed me from the very beginning. As I discovered the place, with its strange visitors and encounters, I found more and more a kind of utopia.

In all the discussions about the influx of refugees, the questions on how to handle the situation, how to integrate the people, to find this place of humanity, which showed how simple it could be and what unconventional ways people will find to get on with each other, were far away from any politics.

The hotels history is also interesting. It was built at the end of the 20th century, and it hosted the first tourists in Berchtesgaden, while the former owner of Cafe Waldluft, the mayor of Berchtesgaden, had to flee from the Nazis to the United States, where he started a new life.

Soon after he fled, Floras father-in-law bought Cafe Waldluft. He, too, was displaced from his former hotel in Obersalzberg, a place best known as the site of Adolf Hitlers former mountain residence. Berchtesgaden was also used by the Nazis as place of Arian propaganda.

Al Jazeera: How are the hotels compensated for taking in asylum seekers?

Kossmehl: As the amount of refugees arriving in Germany at the moment is so high, the government and the municipalities are desperately searching for hotels, apartments or rooms. Its a kind of situation in which they have to act without delay. They call hotels, ask homeowners or advertise in newspapers.

There is no one process; theyre mainly improvising and trying to handle the situation as best as they can. There are still people arriving on a daily basis, so this chaos is not about to get any smoother. It might even continue for the next few years. The government pays the hotels for hosting refugees.

OPINION: Could human rights protections reverse todays cruelty?

Al Jazeera: Are there many hotels that have become solely occupied by asylum seekers, like the one featured in your film?

Kossmehl: I dont know a precise number but there are many hotels all over Germany taking in refugees and asylum seekers. Its important to note that before the refugee crisis many of these hotels were not as profitable as they once were.

In recent years, the tourism industry in Germany has gone through a slow period, especially in former tourism hotspots such as Berchtesgaden. Until the late 1990s, tourists stayed in hotels, on average, for about one week. Now they stay for a maximum of three days or less. Basic bed-and-breakfasts are not what modern tourists expect any more.

Mama Floras old-fashioned Cafe Waldluft was struggling to make money so she decided to take in a handful of asylum seekers, to stay at the hotel, alongside tourists. The asylum seeker to tourist ratio was roughly 50/50.

This worked very well for international tourists, who didnt even identify the asylum seekers as such. But Mama Flora found that some local tourists refused to holiday in the same hotel as asylum seekers, which caused a lot of problems for her business. Flora then took the decision to host mainly refugees and only rarely makes an exception for her regular clients. Generally, hotels with asylum seekers dont take normal guests any more.

READ MORE: The German village helping Yazidi women raped by ISIL

Al Jazeera: Can you tell us a bit about the back stories of the main characters in your film?

Kossmehl: Twenty-seven-year-old Jamshid Hamta, from Afghanistan, became the cook and right hand of Mama Flora. He also became the accountant of Cafe Waldluft, so he managed to make the most of his time there, but things were not so good when he first arrived.

He had a good life in Afghanistan and was member of a well-respected family. In fact, his father was an officer in the Afghan army. After various threats by the Taliban, the family decided to send him out of the country, but the Taliban caught him before he left and beat him up very badly.

Soon after, he escaped out of the country and eventually ended up at the hotel with a bad head injury from the attack. After few days in Berchtesgaden, he received a call from Afghanistan and was told that his father was shot dead by the Taliban. He shut himself in his room, crying every night.

For Flora, it was the first time she understood that her new guests were special. It was also the moment that she found purpose in helping asylum seekers and refugees as best she could. She went beyond simply hosting the residents and did everything in her capacity to give Jamshid a new perspective on life. He is paid for his work at the hotel, and he sends the money to his mother and sister.

READ MORE: Zygmunt Bauman: Behind the worlds crisis of humanity

Abdul Razzak is from Syria. In his former life, as a trader dealing in pistachio nuts, he travelled all over Europe for business.

When the demonstrations in Syria began he went on the streets to protest against Bashar al-Assad. But he was arrested by the regime and spent 59 days in prison where he was tortured. He fled with his wife and his three children to Jordan.

From there, he travelled alone to Germany with the plan to be reunited with his family as soon as possible. While we were shooting the film, he was trying to bring his family to Germany, which he was unable to do because of missing papers. Some months ago, however, his wife arrived with his three children and she is now pregnant with their fourth child, who will be born in Germany.

Imthias Ahmad, 28, is from Pakistan. Currently in a state of limbo, he has spent the past four years away from home and misses his family terribly while he waits for a decision to be made about his legal status in the country.

Every day, he falls deeper into a state of depression about his unclear status. He has a job in Berchtesgaden as a painter and earns enough so that the government no longer has to supplement his income. Its not much, but it makes Imthias proud to be able to stand on his own two feet.

READ MORE: German church network shelters Afghan deportees

Hardy Jallo, also 28, from Sierra Leone, is another key asylum seeker at Cafe Waldluft. After staying for one year, his application to stay in the country was rejected and he was told that he would be deported.

He refused, and tried to kill himself by jumping off the balcony. But he survived and was told that he would be deported to Sierra Leone, after he had recovered from his injuries.

A group of people from Berchtesgaden, however, led by Mama Flora, intervened and fought against the deportation order.

They even brought him into church asylum in Berchtesgaden, where police could not enter. After a month of staying at the church, the government was forced to revisit his case. Jallo eventually won and now has permission to stay in the country legally. He has since found a job as a health carer.

Update: In 2017, Cafe Waldluft was forced to close because Mama Flora could not afford the 200,000 euros needed to meet new government fire safety regulations.

Only five refugees are allowed to stay at the hotel. Many of the the others had to relocate to fire-safe accommodation.
While an increasing number of police departments have the cameras, the rules governing their use can be unclear.

As more US police departments roll out body-worn cameras, getting officers to keep the cameras on during critical incidents, such as the use of excessive force situations, is proving to be a challenge.

Researchers and campaigners say the cameras are useless if police officers can turn them off when they want to.

As of January 2015, at least 72 police departments in the United States had adopted body-worn cameras or developed pilot programmes for their use, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Having the cameras but giving police officers discretion to turn them off whenever they want is a disservice to the public and to the officers, said Chad Marlow, an advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU in New York.

Marlow said that police departments needed to clearly outline those situations in their policy manuals and hold officers accountable for failing to record critical events.

He cited an April 2015 case in San Diego, California, where a San Diego Police Officer shot and killed Fridoon Rashawn Nehad, a mentally ill man, but the officer did not turn on his body-worn camera. Marlow says that the case is an example of why police departments need to have clear rules on what happens when an officer doesnt turn on his body-worn camera during a critical incident.

The police officer, Neal Browder, was put on administrative duty but was in no way disciplined, according to legal documents from the civil case against the officer. Browder was issued with a written reprimand, but was neither docked pay, suspended nor compelled to undergo any additional training.

RELATED: Shot in the back: Police violence in Albuquerque

SDPD spokeswoman Lisa Mckean says Browder is still on the force, but did not answer questions about Browder being investigated or disciplined in relation to Nehads death. She said that officer personnel records are exempt from public records according to California law.

Since police personnel records are not available to the public in most states, holding police departments accountable for disciplining officers who dont follow their departments body-worn camera policy is difficult.

The SDPDs current body-worn camera policy includes a detailed list of instances when officers must record. However, consequences of violating the policy are vague.

If the supervisor feels a violation of this procedure occurred, appropriate action will be taken, says the SDPD body-worn camera policy dated July 20.

At least 790 people have been killed by police so far this year in the US, according to Killed By Police, one of the websites tracking civilian deaths at the hands of law enforcement. In 2015, at least 1,207 people were killed by US police officers.

Who is keeping track?

At present, there are no US government agencies comprehensively tracking such incidents.

Civil rights campaigners say police departments are accepting officers claims at face value  that they didnt have time to turn on their body cameras; that the cameras fell off, or suddenly malfunctioned during critical incidents  including situations where excessive force might have been used.

Police officers, of all people, know that laws that have no consequences, have no value, Marlow said.

Civil rights groups are not alone in fighting for officers to keep their body camera on  US police departments are also grappling with the issue.

Chicago Police Department, one of the biggest law enforcement agencies in the US, has 2,100 body-worn cameras currently in use. However, only seven out 22 police districts in the city have body-worn cameras according to Chicago police spokesman Frank Giancamilli.

He says that body cameras are still new in law enforcement.

We are still in a pilot programme and because of that, our officers are not subject to the [body-worn camera] directive weve developed yet  we see it as a training exercise, Giancamilli said.

He says that they are trying to understand what the best practices are for the cameras and find a balance between using the cameras and protecting privacy.

Some of the more controversial police departments, such as the Baltimore City Police department, whose officers were charged in April 2015 for killing 25-year-old Freddie Gray, have open investigations into officers failing to turn on or off their body-worn cameras.

Baltimore City Police Department spokesman TJ Smith declined to discuss details of the investigations but said: If found in violation, the officers will be appropriately disciplined. Gray died as a result of spinal injuries sustained while in police custody, and his death led to mass protests in Baltimore and other US cities.

Smith said the Department had 350 cameras in service and a two-year plan to add 2,000 more cameras.

Our body-worn camera programme is in its infancy stages. We are one of the largest agencies in the country to implement the programme  We constantly evaluate our programme and look for best practice. We are mindful that we will have adjustments as we move forward in the future, said Smith.

Rules without consequences?

According to a recent scorecard of the camera policies of 50 of the largest police departments in the US by two Washington DC-based groups, only 24 police departments have policies that do not give officers discretion. These policies require officers to record all critical interactions with the public and required them to provide concrete justifications for failing to record required events.

The Policy Scorecard was released on August 2 by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 US civil and human rights organisations, and Upturn, a research group.

The other 23 police departments did not require officers to provide concrete justifications for failing to record required events. The body-worn policies of three of the departments were unclear or unavailable on their websites.

Police departments were evaluated on eight criteria, including how easily a member of the public could find a police departments body-worn camera policy on the departments website, whether the department limits officer discretion on when to record incidents, if personal privacy concerns of people being recorded are considered and whether the department prohibits offers from viewing the recording before filling out police reports.

READ MORE: Chicago police release video from fatal teen shooting

The scorecard included mostly large urban police departments including Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Baton Rouge and a few smaller towns such as Ferguson, Missouri and Parker, Colorado.

Ferguson was chosen because of the attention on the department after Michael Browns killing, and Parker was selected because it had one of the best examples of a body-worn camera policy, said Scott Simpson, spokesman for The Leadership Conference.

Simpson is referring to the August 2014 police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed at the time of the killing and whose death resulted in nationwide protests against police brutality.

The National Police Association of Police Organisations (NAPO), a coalition of more than 1,000 police unions and associations from across the United States, lists officer worn body cameras as one of its legislative priorities.

It has, however, noted concern about S.877 Police Camera Act, a US Senate bill that calls for establishing a pilot grant programme to assist state and local law enforcement agencies in purchasing body-worn cameras for officers.

Among other things, the bill requires an officer wearing a camera to provide an explanation if an activity that is required to be recorded is not recorded and to obtain a crime victims or witnesss consent to be recorded before interviewing him or her. According to NAPOs website, the group has concerns that the provisions in the bill are impractical and would be difficult to implement in the field.

William Johnson, the executive director of NAPO, declined Al Jazeeras requests for an interview.

According to the Scorecard, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia are some of the largest cities with body-worn camera policies that detail when officers are required to record incidents and provide concrete justification when they fail to record required incidents.

In many other cities including Baltimore, Miami, New Orleans, Phoenix and Fresno, police departments have policies that list what incidents or interactions with the public officers have to record, but dont require officers to justify when they dont record required events.

Since the creation of the policy there have been corrective actions or discipline taken for violation of the [body-worn camera] policy, said Fresnos Police Chief Jerry Dyer, in an emailed statement to Al Jazeera. Dyers spokesperson declined to describe the violations, saying they were personnel matters.

In Baton Rouge, where 37-year-old Alton Sterling was shot by police on July 5, police spokesman Don Coppola said, As of now we are unable to answer any specific questions you have addressed concerning body cameras as we are still in a pilot phase.

Cameras equal results

Researchers told Al Jazeera that police excessive use of force drops when officers consistently keep their cameras on.

This is according to findings from the Rand Corporation, a non-profit research organisation based in southern California, whose researchers equipped police officers from 10 police departments in the US and the UK, with body-worn cameras and collected the footage that was recorded.

When officers stuck closer to the protocol, police use of force fell by 37 percent over police officer shifts where the officers were not using cameras, said Alex Sutherland, a Rand Europe researcher and co-author of the May 2016 study.

When officers used their discretion, Sutherland says police use of force actually rose 71 percent over camera-free shifts.

The combination of the camera plus the early warning creates awareness that the encounter is being filmed, modifying the behaviour of all involved, the report said.

The researchers found that only four of the police departments complied with their request to keep the cameras on at all times. The exceptions were when officers took breaks, lunch or when they encountered victims of sexual violence or police informants.

We had a written protocol for when the officers could turn the cameras off  We dont know why some complied and others didnt, but the study results have raised questions about this issue in those departments, said Sutherland.

He wouldnt name the police departments the team studied but said the findings should be valuable to all departments.
It is clear that Hillary Clinton will not be visiting any Arab capital with a proffered fig leaf.

Stanley L Cohen is an attorney and human rights activist who has done extensive work in the Middle East and Africa.

Have the Palestinians ever faced a worse American electoral season? A sociopathic, New York strong-man narcissist versus a neo-liberal Zionist: whoever succeeds  and anything can happen this time  we know it wont be good for Palestine. Both candidates gave almost identical speeches to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committees (AIPAC) convention this spring.

The temptation is to think Republican Donald Trump  with his love for authoritarian winners like Israel, and his vow to bomb to hell out of every problem  makes a better friend to Israeli aggression. Yet the record reminds us, with Hillary Clintons long history of defending Zionism, the Palestinians are between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

The ironies run deep with this Democratic candidate. Clinton holds the unprecedented distinction of being the only major party nominee, man or woman, ever to have actually visited the Gaza Strip  a historic trip she made at her husbands side in the final weeks of 1998, when US President Bill Clinton faced impeachment at home.





Together during the first state visit by an American president to the occupied territories they attended the opening of the new Gaza airport, the signing of a revised Palestine National Charter, and meetings to shore up the Wye River Accords.

Demolition of Palestinian aspirations

I recall visiting the new $83m airport with local Rafah friends, months after her visit, and not a single commercial flight had been permitted.

The terminal stood shimmering and empty in the blazing midday heat, a mirage. The paint still smelled fresh, and for kicks, we raced in civil defence Jeeps down one of the empty runways, past the control tower and hangars.

READ MORE: The US election as an existential threat to the world

The next year, the whole place would be blown to bits by Israeli warplanes, the tower a smoking ruin, the runways full of bomb craters.

The Clintons were long-gone by then, and no one in the US government raised a hint of objection to what was both the symbolic and the practical demolition of Palestinian aspirations to fly free of the occupation  Gulf State and German money had built the place, who cared if the Israelis wanted it destroyed?

A year later, Clintons greeting with Suha Arafat stoked tabloid hysteria screams of blood libel, as if the First Lady, by embracing a Muslim woman, had committed treason  and she moved swiftly to a vocal, pro-Zionism position, where she remains today.

During that very same visit, Clinton campaigned to win the US senate seat for New York, while in the 51st state.

Every candidate makes pilgrimage there, to assure New Yorkers that they love Israel more than the next guy: it is a sloppy mess, with politicians competing for AIPAC approval, by kneeling to kiss the ring of a foreign power.

As a senator, she has visited the illegal wall destroying Palestinian life, praising it for its guarantee of Israeli 'security'; she visits Jerusalem, and repeatedly calls it 'Israel'... by

Yet Hillary out-did them all in her fawning, gratuitously inserting the Zionist formula for Jerusalems subjugation in an official letter to an Orthodox Jewish union, writing that she believed the city to be the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel, while promising to move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv.

The verbal formulation has long been a shibboleth of Israeli expansionism  Republicans in the Congress had passed a bill  the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995  ordering President Clinton to move the embassy, or face budget consequences.

However, the law contained a presidential waiver, and Clinton invoked it to get out of complying. This grotesque pantomime has has been repeated every year for the past 20 years, as Congress renews the law, each president opts out, and the embassy remains in Tel Aviv.

Naive or manipulated?

At the time, many wondered if the First Lady had been naive, or manipulated  her adoption of the language of Israeli conquest and annexation stood in sharp contrast to her party, her husbands official position,and international law. It also contradicted the US State Departments policy.

If she did not understand its dangerous implications, then her competency was in question; otherwise, it represented a shift for the party, signalling quiet abandonment of the Palestinians.

READ MORE: Donald Trump is the real deal

Her record since then speaks for itself. As a senator, she has visited the illegal wall destroying Palestinian life, praising it for its guarantee of Israeli security; she visits Jerusalem, and repeatedly calls it Israel; and as a 2008 presidential candidate, her campaign extolled Israels right to an undivided Jerusalem as its capital.

Since the beating she took for embracing Madame Arafat, Clinton is like the child who has touched a hot stove  she fears the Palestinians and their cause, and will not take it up again.

Palestinians will find no comfort at her official website. A look at her current Israel page, Hillary Clinton and Israel: a 30-Year Record of Friendship, Leadership and Strength, gives the general drift of her Zionism  record-breaking military budget increases for Israels war-making machine; opposing the Goldstone Report into rights violations during the Gaza conflict; criticising the United Nations for its votes against Israel; intelligence sharing with Mossad; and so on.

She promises, when she is president, to defend Israel on the world stage by opposing anti-Israel bias in international forums (the International Criminal Court and human rights venues), vowing the Security Council will never help Palestine; and to stand up against the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, while cutting off efforts to recognise Palestinian statehood.

It is clear that Clinton will not  as Obama did  be visiting any Arab capital with a proffered fig leaf. If, as Shakespeare warns us, Whats past is prologue, Clinton can be expected as president to mount the ramparts of Fortress Israel, and vigorously wave the flag  more aggressively than Bush or Reagan, or any president before her, portending hard times for Palestine.

Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rights activist who has done extensive work in the Middle East and Africa.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Clashes have erupted between residents of a village in southern China  once dubbed a symbol of grassroots democracy  and riot police who fired rubber bullets and used tear gas against crowds of stone throwers.

The violence broke out after 13 people were rounded up in pre-dawn raids on Tuesday in the fishing village of Wukan in southern Guangdong province.

The raids and arrests came less than a week after a democratically elected local leader, Lin Zulian, was jailed by authorities on corruption charges. Locals in Wukan, a village of 13,000 people, took to the streets in June to protest against Lins arrest and what they claim was his forced confession.

The riot police started attacking and shooting at us, one Wukan resident told Reuters news agency by telephone on Tuesday.

They are still fighting now. We want them to leave, he said.

Video and photos shared on Chinese social media, including a clip posted to the website of the South China Morning Post newspaper, showed clashes in what was said to be the streets of Wukan, including footage of Chinese police with riot shields and helmets retreating under a hail of bricks and stones.

https://twitter.com/wukanwukan11/status/775601474042638336

Other images showed bloodied civilians and people in the streets wearing crash helmets and holding Chinese national flags and rocks.

Lufeng county police, who oversee Wukan, stated in a micro-blog post on Tuesday that 13 people were arrested for organising illegal assemblies and using threats to force villagers to protest.

The police also issued a stern warning to people using social media, accusing them of spreading false rumours on the so-called Wukan issue, adding that Chinas cyber police were investigating the posts.

Wukan residents received international attention after their 2011 uprising led authorities to grant direct village-wide elections, and which saw the now jailed Lin, a protest leader at the time, elected as their village chief in 2012.

Allowing the villagers to choose their own leaders was seen as an attempt by the government to curb months of uncompromising protest by the residents against illegal land grabs by local officials and abuses of power.

When one of the protest leaders, Xue Jinbo, died in police custody, villagers barricaded roads leading into Wukan and faced off with security forces for more than a week, catching international media attention.

Against all odds, Chinese authorities backed down and promised rare concessions to Wukans residents, including pledges to investigate their land disputes and allow direct village-wide elections to be held.

The prosecution of Lin has once again outraged among many in Wukan, and Hong Kong-based human rights activists believe Tuesdays police operation could represent a push to silence potential protests in the area.

The government wants to use this crackdown to set an example and warn other neighbouring villages not to stage protests, Patrick Poon, Amnesty Internationals Hong Kong-based China researcher, told Reuters.

Police operations in Wukan also follow last weeks victories by several candidates in Hong Kongs legislative elections who favour self-determination for the special administrative region and possible separation from China.

The election was the first major polls since the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests in Hong Kong against Chinese goverment restrictions on political freedom.
Armed group acknowledges great pain caused by abductions as it prepares to sign deal to end half century of conflict.

Colombias Marxist FARC fighters have apologised for the great pain they caused by kidnapping thousands of people to finance half a century of conflict.

FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, acknowledged in a video recording late on Sunday that it had taken captives over the years but would not do so again.

The fighters and government are gearing up to sign the accord after reaching agreement on August 24 to end a war that has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions.

About 7,000 FARC fighters will be incorporated into society and permitted to form a political party.

READ MORE: Colombia ceasefire ends half-century-long war

We want to acknowledge, with the sentiment of humanity and reconciliation, that during the conflict the FARC also caused great pain with the retention of people for ransom, Ivan Marquez, FARCs commander and lead negotiator, said in the recording.

That conduct, while always used to sustain the needs of the rebellion, resulted in harming entire families.

Marquez was speaking from Havana, Cuba, where the negotiations took place.





About 27,000 people were kidnapped between 1970 and 2010, according official figures.

As many as 90 percent of those were seized by the FARC.

The two sides are scheduled to sign the peace agreement on September 26.

The deal will then be put to a vote in a plebiscite on October 2, allowing Colombians to decide whether to accept the accord.

Last week, the FARCs estimated 7,500 fighters started heading to collection points to give up their weapons under United Nations supervision.

Guerrillas who refuse to demobilise and disarm will be pursued with all the strength of the state forces, Juan Manuel Santos, Colombias president, told El Espectador newspaper.

Peace referendum

On October 2, Colombians will go to the polls to cast ballots in a referendum that Santos hopes will endorse the peace agreement.

A victory for the Yes vote will be a mandate from citizens for future governments, Santos was quoting as saying by El Espectador.

The plebiscite will grant the political legitimacy that is needed.

Colombia: Talking peace with a FARC commander

The territorial and ideological conflict in Colombia has drawn in various left and right-wing armed groups and gangs.

It has left up to 260,000 dead, 45,000 missing and 6.9 million people uprooted from their homes.

Efforts to launch peace talks with another, smaller rebel group, the National Liberation Army, have yet to bear fruit.
About 14 violations reported since the truce brokered by US and Russia went into effect across the country on Monday.

No deaths have been documented in Syria since a ceasefire brokered by Russia and the US entered its first full day, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

At least 14 violations were reported since the ceasefire took effect on Monday, but most parts of Syria remained relatively calm, the SOHRs Rami Abdulrahman told Al Jazeera.

No one has died from gunfire over the past 15 hours, he said on Tuesday at 12pm Damascus local time (09:00 GMT). This is so far the most successful ceasefire to take place in the country.

Al Jazeeras Stephanie Dekker, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border, said that while the guns have not gone quiet, there definitely is a military de-escalation.

No one expected the gunfire to totally stop anyway, including the US, she said.

The AFP news agency reported that residents on both sides of divided city Aleppo passed the night without opposition rocket fire into government-held areas or regime air strikes against rebel districts.

Eid al-Adha holiday

Residents remained out on the streets until midnight, AFP said, taking advantage of the truce to celebrate the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

In the opposition-held central Syrian town of Talbiseh, which came under heavy fire in the run-up to the truce, activist Hassaan Abu Nuh said the governments bombardment had stopped.

We usually stay up all night with the airplanes, but thank God last night we could all sleep, he told AFP.

In the largely rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib, where air strikes killed 13 people on Monday, an activist reported a quiet night too.

READ MORE: Syria ceasefire deal explained

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said in Washington that while it was far too early to draw conclusions about the success of the ceasefire, initial reports of the first two hours suggested some reduction in violence.

I urge all the parties to support it because it may be the last chance that one has to save a united Syria, he said.

The deal, approved on Friday by Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, aims to put an end to more than five years of war between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebel groups, and usher in a political transition.

The truce does not apply to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group or the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front, which changed its name after cutting ties with al-Qaeda in July.
Days after saying he was not a fan of the Americans, the president says he wants to reorient foreign policy with US.

Manila, Philippines  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has told American special forces to leave Mindanao, blaming their presence in the southern region for the continuing conflict, while signalling his desire to reorient the countrys foreign policy vis-a-vis the United States.

Just days after declaring that the Philippines will pursue an independent foreign policy, Duterte said on Monday in a rambling speech from the presidential palace.

For as long as we stay with America, we will never have peace in that land [Mindanao]. We might as well give it up.

READ MORE: Philippines  Inside Dutertes killer drug war

So, those [American] special forces, they have to go. They have to go. In Mindanao, there are so many American [troops] there. They have to go. We will reorient our foreign policy.

On Tuesday, Perfecto Yasay, the foreign affairs secretary, told ABS-CBN News Channel that there is no shift in so far as our policy is concerned, with respect to our close friendship with the Americans.

For decades, the Philippines had hosted major US naval and air bases. Current laws, however, prohibit that.

Still, executive agreements with previous presidents allow visiting US forces, to conduct joint military exercises with the Filipino troops.

No official comment

In March, a military agreement was announced opening more Philippine bases to host US troops and supplies.

Among the five bases is the Lumbia airport in Cagayan de Oro, a city in Mindanao.

US forces have also long been reported to be present in other parts of Mindanao, including the Zamboanga Peninsula.

But with no official comment from the Philippine military and the US, it is hard to determine how many American troops are currently in the southern region.

When Duterte took over as president in June, he had grown critical of the US security policy in the Philippines.

On Monday, he warned that armed groups could target the American troops.

I do not want a rift with America. But they have to go. It will only inflame [the situation], Duterte said in a mix of Filipino and English.

If they will see Americans, they will kill them. Theyll get a ransom, and will kill you whether you are black or white American, as long as you are an American, he said.

The Philippines is currently battling the Abu Sayyaf, and Duterte has ordered the deployment of more than 7,000 troops to the southern island of Jolo, Sulu.

Jolo massacre

During his speech, Duterte also waved pieces of paper with printed black and white images of Muslim Filipinos killed by US troops in the early 1900s.

This is the massacre of Jolo. Look at the bodies there. You [US] have not even apologised to the Filipino nation, he said, referring to the southern island of Jolo, Sulu.

At one point he vigorously flicked the sheets of paper, as he said that the history of American presence in Mindanao have provoked the unrest for years.

In a separate speech during an award ceremony in the presidential palace, Duterte also said that he purposely stayed away from the meeting between President Obama and the leaders of ASEAN in Laos.





I really skipped it. The reason is not that I am anti-West. The reason is not that I do not like the Americans. Its simply a matter of principle for me, Duterte said.

That is contrary to the explanation given by senior Philippine officials, who last week said that Duterte missed the ASEAN meeting with Obama, because he was not feeling well.

On Saturday, following his first foreign trip as president, Duterte said in Davao that he was not a fan of the Americans.

Richard Javad Heydarian, a Manila-based political science professor and Al Jazeera columnist, says Dutertes pursuit of a less subservient foreign policy is a noble goal and a strategic imperative.

But the tension, according to him, with the US could weaken the Philippines hand as it tries to deal with regional security issues, particularly its sea dispute with China.

Heydarian says Dutertes tirades against the US should be taken with a grain of salt, while saying that bilateral security ties are too entwined to be disrupted.

It will create huge reverberations and affect his domestic political standing in a profoundly pro-American nation.
Interior minister says the men were under observation for months and have suspected links to Paris attacks perpetrators.

Three Syrian men arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning an attack on behalf of ISIL have suspected links to the perpetrators of the Paris attacks, according to Germanys interior minister.

Thomas de Maiziere said on Tuesday that the three Syrian men appear to have used the same smugglers and received passports from the same workshop as some of those involved in the November 13 attacks in the French capital.

The three men were arrested in northern Germany in the early hours of Tuesday.

They had been under observation for months and there were no indications of any concrete plans for an attack, according to De Maiziere.

READ MORE: Germany considers face recognition tech to stop attacks

The men  aged 17, 18 and 26  arrived in Germany in November by posing as asylum seekers to either execute an existing mission or to stand ready for further instructions from ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, said the federal prosecutors office in Karlsruhe.

The Syrians were detained as part of a counterterrorism operation in which some 200 officers raided six locations in the states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, the Federal Criminal Police Office BKA said.

Prosecutors said that the three men were all arrested in Schleswig-Holstein, but have declined to confirm reports that the raids took place in refugee homes.
The US will reportedly provide Israels military with $38bn in a 10-year deal that also involves concessions by Israel.

The United States has agreed to a record multibillion-dollar deal to provide Israel with military assistance over a decade  the largest such agreement ever with any country.

Following 10 months of frequently tense negotiations, the State Department said on Tuesday the two allies had reached a deal with a signing ceremony planned for Wednesday in Washington DC.

Israel has long been a major recipient of US aid, mostly in the form of military assistance, against a backdrop of an ebbing and flowing conflict with the Palestinians and Israels neighbours.

The US and Israel have not disclosed the exact sum, but officials familiar with the deal told news agencies it totalled $3.8bn a year  up from the $3.1bn the US gave Israel annually under the previous 10-year deal that ends in 2018.

OPINION: Obama v Netanyahu  the strategic conundrum

The agreement was described as the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in US history, but it also reportedly involves major concessions by the Israeli government, which will no longer be able to seek additional annual funds from the US Congress over and above the new package.

Al Jazeeras Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington DC, said the annual $3.8bn figure did not mark a big change compared with what Israel was getting in 2015 or 2016.

It sounds like a bit of a difference, but then if you look at the money that the US Congress routinely gives Israel on top of that $3.1bn, its really not that much more, Culhane said.

In 2015, the US Congress gave Israel $620m for missile defence, so basically Israel is going to get the same amount as its been getting.

The reported figure also is significantly lower compared with the $4.5bn  $5bn sums that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was seeking when entering the negotiations 10 months ago, according to Culhane.

Israels government had no immediate comment on the deal.

READ MORE: Obama criticises Netanyahus divisive rhetoric

Under the agreement, Israels ability to spend part of the funds on Israeli military products will be gradually phased out, eventually requiring all of the funds to be spent on American military industries, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Israels preference for spending some of the US funds internally had been a major sticking point in the deal.

The new US-Israel agreement also includes, for the first time, funding for missile defence programmes. Under the previous arrangement, Congress approved funds for missile defence separately and on an annual basis.

The deal comes despite mounting frustration within US President Barack Obamas administration at Israels policy of building settler homes on occupied Palestinian territory.

Washington has warned that Netanyahus policies are putting at risk hopes of an eventual peace deal.
Two US jet bombers have flown over South Korea in a show of force and solidarity after North Koreas nuclear test last week.

The pair of supersonic B-1 Lancer strategic bombers, based in Guam, were escorted on Tuesday by South Korean and US fighter jets in a low-altitude flight over South Koreas Osan airbase.

The facility is 77km from the demilitarised zone border with the North and about 40km from the Souths capital Seoul.





Speaking in Seoul on Tuesday, Sung Kim, the US special representative on North Korea, said the US remained open to authentic, meaningful dialogue with Pyongyang on ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Our intention is to secure the strongest possible [UN Security Council] resolution that includes new sanctions as quickly as possible, Kim announced after meeting his South Korean counterpart.

He said the US would work with China, North Koreas major diplomatic ally, to close loopholes in existing resolutions, which were tightened with Chinas backing in March.

China has been very clear that it understands the need for a new UN Security Council resolution in response to the latest North Korean nuclear test, Kim said.

However, China and Russia, which strongly oppose a recent decision by the US and South Korea to deploy an advanced anti-missile system in the South to counter the Norths missile threat, have shown reluctance to back further sanctions.

Both sides think that North Koreas nuclear test is not beneficial to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula, Chinas official Peoples Daily newspaper said on Tuesday after a high-level China-Russia security meeting in Beijing.

READ MORE: South Korea  North Korea ready for new nuclear test

At present, we must work hard to prevent the situation on the peninsula continuing to escalate, and put the issue of the nuclearisation of the peninsula back on the track of dialogue and consultation.

Such flyovers are common when tension flares on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war as there has never been a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the US nuclear umbrella as a deterrent to North Korea.

The US also keeps more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.

Last weeks nuclear test, the Norths fifth, was its most powerful to date.

READ MORE: North Korea nuclear test  world leaders react

North Koreas claim to have used standardised warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the US mainland.

South Korea, the US and their allies have promised to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.

The United States and [South Korea] are taking action every day to strengthen our alliance and respond to North Koreas continued aggressive behaviour, General Vincent Brooks, commander of US Forces Korea, said in a statement.

Sung Kim, the US special envoy for North Korean policy, met South Korean officials in Seoul on Tuesday and said that the US is working closely with other nations to work out new, stronger sanctions on North Korea.
Death of two protesters brings death toll to 82, as security lockdown marred Eid festivities in the disputed region.

Two protesters have been killed and scores wounded in clashes with security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir, bringing the death toll after months of unrest to 82, as a security crackdown marred Eid festivities in the disputed region.

One protester was killed on Tuesday after being struck on the head by a tear-gas shell in the northern district of Bandipora, a police officer told the Associated Press news agency on condition of anonymity.

Another protester was killed by pellet ammunition fired from shotguns in Shopian, in the south of Kashmir, the officer said.

At least 60 people were wounded in clashes in 10 different places in the disputed region, which remains under curfew.

Most people stayed indoors for the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, which fell on Tuesday, while in Srinagar, the capital of the Indian-administered Kashmir, the bustling marketplaces were deserted.

Authorities did not allow congregational Eid prayers in Kashmirs main mosques or at Eid prayer grounds in the predominantly Muslim region, but prayers were held by people in small neighbourhood mosques.

The curfew seemed to have foiled a planned march called by separatist leaders to the Srinagar office of UN military observers, which monitors a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in the disputed region.

Thousands of people have been protesting against Indian rule in Kashmir almost daily since the killing of a popular rebel leader in a gun battle with soldiers on July 8.

READ MORE: Kashmir violence  Security or political problem?

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the two gained independence from British rule in 1947. Both claim the territory in full.

Several rebel groups have for decades fought Indian soldiers  currently numbering around 500,000 deployed in the territory  demanding independence for the region or its merger with Pakistan.

Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting.
Heads of states gather in capital to discuss regional issues, in talks hailed as an endorsement of countrys recovery.

African leaders have gathered in Somalias capital, Mogadishu, for the first regional summit to be held in the country after decades of conflict.

Security was tight and streets were shut down to traffic in Mogadishu on Tuesday for the one-day meeting of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development regional bloc, which includes Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Djibouti, Sudan and Somalia.

The presence of the heads of state in Somalia is a clear dividend of returning stability in the country. It is an endorsement of Somalias recovery, Francisco Caetano Madeira, the African Unions special representative for Somalia, said in a statement.

The United Nations mission in Somalia called it a great achievement.

READ MORE: Somalia in a Snapchat, more than just violence

Mogadishu has been a regular target of attacks carried out by the al-Shabab armed group, which once ruled most of Somalia and has been fighting to topple the countrys Western-backed government.

The regional leaders were scheduled to discuss Somalias upcoming vote for a new parliament and president, as well the situation in South Sudan, where fighting in July has further destabilised the five-year-old nation.

Al Jazeeras Mohammed Adow, reporting from Mogadishu, said the fight against al-Shabab was also high on the agenda.

One of the key issues the leaders have been discussing is how to make African Union peacekeepers and the Somali national army carry out more offensives against al-Shabab and retake more territory from them, he said.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn were all in Mogadishu for the summit.

But Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir stayed away to avoid defying a warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court.

The president of Djibouti was also expected to attend, but a plane carrying him had to turn back after developing engine problems that prevented it from landing at the airport, Djiboutis ambassador to Somalia said.

Many senior visitors to Mogadishu stay in the airport area, a compound surrounded by high-blast walls with barbed wire and patrolled by the African Union AMISOM force. Tuesdays summit was being held just outside the perimetre at a nearby hotel.

INTERACTIVE: Al-Shabab attacks in Somalia (2006-2016)

Mogadishu still bears the scars of war, with many buildings little more than bombed-out shells. But there has been a construction boom in recent years in which new buildings have been erected, often financed by Somalis returning from abroad.

Security concerns mean that only a fraction of Somalias 11 million people will vote in the election, with 14,000 people gathered from the federal states choosing the 275 members of parliament, before the politicians then pick the president.

But that is still an improvement on the 135 elders who chose parliament in 2012, and which in turn picked President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who seeks re-election later this year.

Somalia plunged into decades of conflict in 1991 when President Siad Barre was toppled.
South Sudans government says it will take legal action against a US-based watchdog that has accused the leaders of the countrys warring sides of amassing fortunes during a nearly three-year conflict that has left tens of thousands dead.

The Sentry group, founded by US actor George Clooney and rights activist John Prendergast, alleged on Monday that President Salva Kiir, opposition leader Riek Machar, and those close to them had looted state coffers, accumulated luxury homes and cars, and enriched themselves and family members through stakes in oil and other business ventures.





Responding to the allegations, presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said on Tuesday that even though there was corruption in the country, the statements that had been made against Kiir and other government officials were completely rubbish.

Their statement is a mere recipe for fueling gross misconception about the leadership of South Sudan, Ateny told Al Jazeera, accusing Clooney and Prendergast of conducting a politically biased investigation.

We will [take] them to court; we will hire the law firm in the US and we will sue them because they have relied on evidence that is completely rubbish, he said from the capital Juba.

They were actually interviewing 100 people who  only came to give evidence on condition of anonymity  but at the end of the day, [their identity] will be disclosed, because if we go to the court of law they will have to be disclosed.

OPINION: South Sudan, a country captured by armed factions

James Gatdet Dak, a spokesman for Machar, also denied that the rebel leader owned property in either Kenya or Ethiopia, as the report alleged.

It is a lie. Dr Riek Machars family does not own a house in Nairobi or in Addis Ababa as alleged, he told Reuters news agency.

They are renting a house in Nairobi, while the one in Addis Ababa was a temporary guesthouse provided to him by the Ethiopian authorities during the peace negotiations.

Violent kleptocracy

The two-year inquiry charged that Kiir and Machar, and their cronies, had amassed fortunes, including foreign properties and stakes in international firms, while prosecuting a ruinous conflict that has forced 2.5 million people from their homes.





Top officials families often live in multimillion-dollar mansions outside the country, stay in five-star hotels, reap the benefits of what appears to be a system of nepotism and shady corporate deals, and drive around in luxury cars, the report said.

The report also accused a system of international banks, businesses, arms brokers, real estate firms and lawyers of knowingly or unknowingly facilitating the violent kleptocracy that South Sudan has become.

Theres a lot of people here who have accumulated a great deal of wealth, said Al Jazeeras Anna Cavell, reporting from Juba.

This report raised the idea of someone looking into their bank accounts or checking on the registration of their companies, and thats made a lot of people very uneasy.

South Sudan, the worlds youngest nation, plunged into conflict soon after Kiir fired Machar from his post as vice president in 2013.

A peace deal reached a year ago under international pressure has been violated repeatedly by fighting, and Machar fled the country in recent weeks.
Catastrophic typhoon grazes Taiwan but has China in its sights.

Super Typhoon Meranti has become the strongest cyclone, hurricane or typhoon, of 2016 and is one of three most powerful typhoons ever recorded.

the Japan Meteorological Agency analysed Merantis central pressure at 890 millibars. This puts Meranti in the short list of the deepest tropical cyclones ever recorded anywhere on Earth

The eye of this Super Typhoon passed to the south of Taiwan early on Wednesday.

At least 200,000 households were reported as losing power.

The winds came in from the east so the cities to the lee of the mountains, for example Kaohsiung, were afforded some shelter from the brute force that hit the east coast.

The Chinese mainland will not be as lucky.

As it passed Taiwan, Meranti had sustained winds of 290km an hour (kph), and gusts of 350kph.

This makes it the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale.

Meranti will sustain most of its current strength of winds due to high sea temperatures (30 C), low wind shear [change of wind speed and direction with height], and high atmospheric humidity.

Little interaction with the island of Taiwan means that the cyclone will maintain its structure. This will result in Meranti striking the Chinese mainland probably as a Category 4 equivalent storm.

The coastline of Guangdong and especially Fujian is now at risk of large waves, a storm surge well in excess of two metres and damaging winds, exceeding those experienced during Super Typhoon Nepartak.

Landfall of the eye, around which scream the strongest winds, is due at 18:00 GMT on Wednesday.

Typhoon strength winds will likely affect 20 million people.

The effects are likely to be far worse than those of the most recent typhoon to hit Fujian, Nepartak.

Meranti is the fourth Category 5 equivalent storm of 2016, following Winston, Fantala and Nepartak.

Nepartak had a very similar track to the one Meranti is expected to follow. It, struck southern Taiwan, killing two people, before hitting mainland China at Fujian.

Here, at least 83 people died and damage was estimated at $1.5bn.

All this coincides with the release of a study which concludes that the typhoons of the northwestern Pacific have increased in strength over the past 40 years.

The research, by the University of North Carolina, found that the frequency of the strongest cyclones (Category 4 to 5) increased from once a year, to four times a year.

The researchers ascribed the increased frequency to a warming of around 0.8C in Asian coastal waters, although their research did not consider the reasons for that increase.
Syrian state media has said the army has shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone after an Israeli attack on Syrian military position in Quneitra, near the Israeli border.

Just minutes after the Syrian claim on Tuesday, Israel denied it had lost any aircraft.

SANA news agency said the alleged intrusion was part of its support to groups fighting President Bashar al-Assads troops.

This blatant aggression comes as part of Israels support for terrorist groups and its attempt to raise their crushed morals after their miserable failure and huge losses in the suburbs of Quneitra, SANA said on Tuesday.

READ MORE: Syria truce comes into effect under Russia-US deal

Syrian state media regularly refers to opposition groups as terrorists.

Rejecting the Syrian claim, the Israeli military said two missiles were fired in the direction of its aircraft but both missed their targets.

On Monday, the Israeli military said it had targeted artillery positions of the Syrian government in the Syrian Golan Heights in response to what it called a projectile launched from Syria into northern Israel.
The UN hails significant reduction in violence over the first 24 hours of a new ceasefire brokered by the US and Russia.

Aid convoys are waiting at the Turkish-Syrian border for the government in Damascus to give authorisation to enter Syria, the United Nations has said, as a fragile ceasefire that came into effect at sundown on Monday appeared to be largely holding across the country.

The UN envoy for Syria on Tuesday applauded the significant drop in violence, more than 24 hours after the declaration of a truce deal brokered by US and Russia.

Today, calm appears to have prevailed across Hama, Latakia, Aleppo city and rural Aleppo and Idlib, with only some allegations of sporadic and geographically isolated incidents, Staffan de Mistura told a news conference in Geneva.





Sources on the ground, which do matter, including inside Aleppo city, said the situation has dramatically improved with no air strikes, he said.

Twenty-four hours after the tentative ceasefire took effect, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that it had received not a single report of combatants or civilians killed by fighting in any areas covered by the truce.

This is so far the most successful ceasefire to take place in the country, the Syrian observatorys Rami Abdulrahman told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

The truce deal does not apply to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front that changed its name after cutting ties with al-Qaeda in July.

The truce agreement has been accepted by the Syrian government and, far more reluctantly, by most of the groups that oppose it, with rebel forces saying that the deal was skewed in favour of President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia said Syrian government forces were fully respecting the ceasefire but that rebel fighters had violated it 23 times.

Syrian government troops have completely stopped firing, with the exception of areas where the Islamic State [ISIL and Jabhat Al-Nusra fighters are active, senior Russian military officer Viktor Poznikhir said in a televised briefing.

Aid trucks waiting

Speaking to reporters, de Mistura dismissed earlier reports by Turkish state media that aid lorries on Tuesday had entered Syria heading towards rebel-held eastern Aleppo, saying that the UN was still waiting for authorisation from the government in Damascus.

We are asking them to issue them very quickly so that  we can take advantage of this reduction of violence in order to be able to make sure that, not only eastern Aleppo, western Aleppo but everywhere else, convoys can start moving, he said.

We have not yet received those authorisation letters but we are eagerly hoping and expecting the government to issue them very soon.

READ MORE: No civilian deaths in Syria as ceasefire brings calm

De Mistura also said that UN officials were awaiting assurances that the aid convoys would be unhindered and untouched after crossing from Turkey into Syria.

We are waiting for this cessation of hostilities to actually deliver the assurances and the peace before trucks can start moving from Turkey. As I speak, that has not been the case, Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, also said in Geneva on Tuesday.

We need to enter an environment where we are not in mortal danger as humanitarian organisations delivering aid.

READ MORE: Syria ceasefire deal explained

The Syrian government said it would reject any aid deliveries to Aleppo not coordinated through itself and the UN, particularly from Turkey.

The Syrian foreign ministry said: Commenting on the statement issued by the Turkish regime on its intention to send what it says is humanitarian aid into Aleppo, the Syrian Arab Republic announces its rejection of the entry of any humanitarian aid to Aleppo, particularly from the Turkish regime, without coordination with the Syrian government and the United Nations.

Turkey said it was already making preparations to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo, where some 250,000 people in the rebel-held east are under government siege.
Ankara formally demands US authorities to arrest the religious leader for ordering and commanding Julys failed coup.

Turkey has asked Washington to arrest a US-based religious leader and businessman for allegedly masterminding a failed attempt to overthrow the government, according to state media.

The Turkish justice ministry formally demanded that US authorities arrest Fethullah Gulen on charges of ordering and commanding the attempted coup, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other top Turkish officials have repeatedly appealed to the US government to extradite Gulen, sending them documents which allegedly show evidence of his involvement in the failed coup attempt on July 15.

Gulen has denied any involvement in the coup bid.

READ MORE: Turkish coup plotters acted early in fear of arrests

A delegation of US officials visited Ankara late last month to hold talks over Turkeys request for Gulens extradition.

The development marked the first concrete and public sign of progress in Turkeys efforts to get him returned to the country.





Early last month, an Istanbul court issued a formal arrest warrant for Gulen.

When US Vice President Joe Biden visited Ankara several weeks later, he said he understood the intense feeling in Turkey over Gulen.

The US has no interest whatsoever in protecting anyone who has done harm to an ally. None, he said.

But we need to meet the legal standard requirement under our law, he added.

Parallel state

Turkey says that supporters of Gulen within the army carried out the failed coup attempt, claiming that they had been running a parallel state within the civilian and military bureaucracy that followed the US-based clerics orders. Gulen denies the claims.

The US has previously asked the Turkish government for evidence of Gulens involvement, saying that the extradition process must be allowed to take its course.

In a statement to Al Jazeera in late August, Yasin Aktay, the deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party, said that Washingtons reluctance to return Gulen to Turkey, or arrest him, was unacceptable.

It is bizarre for us that they [the US] have not been convinced, considering the scope of evidence we presented to them, Aktay said.

The testimony of the suspects who were arrested red-handed and documents we gave them are clear. If you add the statements of Gulen regarding the goal of his organisational movement, we believe there is nothing to question. Strong American intelligence should be well aware of who he really is.

Gulen has had court cases pending against him for several years and Turkey has been demanding his extradition well before the failed coup attempt.

Following the July 15 events, more court cases have been opened against him.
Up to 20 youths viciously attack Polish man in Leeds, in what police say was a racially motivated assault.

Polands embassy in London has decried a racially motivated attack by up to 20 teenagers that left a Polish man hospitalised in the northern city of Leeds, the latest in a series of hate crimes against Poles in the UK.

Calling Fridays attack a disgusting act, the police and crime commissioner of the West Yorkshire region, which includes Leeds, issued a statement on Tuesday to reassure the areas Polish and Eastern European communities that hate crimes would not be tolerated.

There is no place in West Yorkshire for those who foster any kind of hatred and intolerance, commissioner Mark Burns-Williamson said, adding that extra police patrols have been ordered in the area.

[Police] are committed to working together with eastern European communities and others to tackle hate crime head on.

Following the attack, the Polish embassy said it was saddened by another assault on one of its citizens in the UK, where there have been around 30 xenophobic incidents in recent months.

The assault in Leeds has been the most serious of over 10 xenophobic incidents experienced by Poles in the north of England that the Consulate General in Manchester dealt with in the recent months, the embassy said in a statement on Monday.

The Consular Section of the Polish Embassy in London offered assistance in [a] further 17 cases in the South and the Midlands.





The latest attack occurred at 9:35pm local time on Friday night in Leeds when a group of up to 20 teenagers confronted a 28-year-old Polish man and his friend. The Pole attempted to escape but was chased down and punched and kicked by the group, who racially abused their victim during the attack, police said.

Hospitalised with a cut to his head that required stitches, the man had injuries that were not considered life-threatening, police said.

Appeal After Polish Man Attacked In Leeds. https://t.co/HdvQH7dfyi #police  West Yorkshire Police (@WestYorksPolice) September 12, 2016

Police also appealed for witnesses to the attack to come forward.

In the aftermath of the June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU, known as Brexit, xenophobic and racist hate crimes surged by 58 percent, according to the UKs National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), with Eastern European migrants, particularly the Polish community, being targets of attack.

While the huge surge had abated in recent weeks, hate crimes were still 14 percent higher in August that in the same period in 2015, according to the NPCC.

Polish embassy officials said they will meet members of the Polish community in Leeds later this week.
Feyisa Lilesa, who won silver for Ethiopia at Olympic Games in Rio, wants superiority of one ethnic group to end.
An insight into the spice islands culinary heritage and its struggle for greater autonomy and a new identity.

The Indian Ocean is one of the worlds oldest and largest free-trade zones. For centuries, trade and migration have marked the history of the many communities living along its shores.

But the name of one place on the coast of Africa has long captured peoples imagination: Zanzibar, also known as the spice island.

For centuries, merchants of all colours and creeds came to the island off the Tanzanian mainland on wooden vessels  and each of them left their mark on the island.

As a result, Zanzibar has one of the richest and most diverse food cultures in East Africa, encompassing influences from Arabia, India and Europe.

Street food is a term often interpreted literally as food served on the streets, but in Zanzibar the real roads are the ocean, dhows are the link between sea and the land, and the presence of seafood is everywhere on the menus.

The islands wealth was largely founded on the spice trade.

Zanzibars original settlers were Bantu-speaking Africans. But Arabs, especially Omanis, had a huge influence. They set up trading companies in Zanzibar in the 17th century, ending 200 years of Portuguese dominance on the island.

In 1832, the Sultan of Oman moved his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar, which had become a major slave-trading centre.

He encouraged the commercial farming of cloves, so when the slave trade was abolished in 1873, the spice trade continued to flourish  giving Zanzibar wealth and prestige as well as its legendary name, the spice island.

As anti-colonialism spread across Africa, Zanzibar gained independence in 1963. The following Zanzibari revolution, which aimed to give power back to Africans and became one of the bloodiest chapters in the islands history.

Most of the Omani people were killed, more than 14,000 people were killed, tortured, cut into pieces, murdered, butchered, says Nassor Mazrui, a businessman.





Professor Abdul Sherif, from the Zanzibar Ocean Research Institute, explains that Arabs were targeted in particular because they were the big landowners in the 19th century, who also owned slaves, so the ideology of slavery was revived to serve in the political struggle of the 1960s  If something like that happened now, we would call it ethnic cleansing.

The islands Indian community also suffered during the unrest. The aftermath of the revolution saw an exodus of the Asiatic community, but the trading port lost not only its traders; its whole identity was under threat, too.

In 1964, after the bloody revolution, Zanzibar hastily entered a union with Tanzania. The union was designed to prevent the spread of chaos in the region, but for many in Zanzibar, this was the beginning of Zanzibars decline as one of the most prestigious trading ports in East Africa.

In the past four decades, Zanzibars spice trade has gone into sharp decline. Today, the spice island, once the worlds largest clove producer, is more of a tourist resort.

Its cultural heritage has given Zanzibar a rich and varied cuisine, and it continues to inspire the islanders in their struggle for greater autonomy and a new identity.

Al Jazeera visits the island to discover its turbulent history, its culinary heritage and the changes taking place.

Editors note: This film was first broadcast on Al Jazeera English in 2008.
UFs College of Education was ranked No. 9 among U.S. undergraduate colleges of education by USA Today.

The survey, released Sept. 8, was conducted by USA Today and College Factual, an education technology company that provided data for the newspapers third annual ranking of the top colleges nationwide. The ranking looked at 10 factors, including graduates who are among the top earners after graduation and post-graduate resources.

Glenn Good, the dean of the college, wrote in an email that its the first time the college was included in USA Todays ranking.

From my perspective, the high rankings come in part from UF attracting exceptional students, the college preparing them very well and students becoming successful leaders in their professions following their graduation, he said.

Graduates of the college are in very high demand by employers, and students often receive multiple job offers after graduating, he said.

The college is now the highest ranked college of education in both the state and the southeastern region of the country, according to USA Today.

Nephtali Beauvais, a UF education senior with a specialization in early childhood education, said shes been able to do hands on learning through courses, an opportunity shes enjoyed.

The 21-year-old said hearing the colleges ranking came as a surprise.

I had no idea, Beauvais said. Its amazing to hear and makes the whole experience that much more worth it.

Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now
In Alachua County, about one in every four children dont have reliable access to food.

On Thursday, a Gainesville-based food bank will highlight its feeding efforts in Alachua county and across North Florida in observation of Hunger Awareness Month.

Bread of the Mighty Food Bank, in partnership with Feeding America, will host a Hunger Action Day event at the food bank, located at 352 NW 10th Ave.

Were trying to get more people to see who we are, said Loretta Griffis, the director of community outreach, so many people are blown away by how much we do.

The event, which will take place from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., will invite participants to tour the food bank and ask questions about food insecurity and efforts to combat it in Alachua County.

Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe will proclaim Sept. 15 Hunger Action Day, which Griffis hopes will mobilize more residents to get involved.

Last year, the food bank distributed 7.2 million pounds of food in five counties, including Alachua, Dixie, Gilchrist, Lafayette and Levy Counties, she said.

But despite its best efforts, the number of hungry people the food bank sees every day has increased in recent months, Griffis said.

At UF, students and faculty members are not immune to the struggle of food insecurity, she said.

The on-campus Field and Fork Pantry, which offers free non-perishable food to anyone with a Gator 1 Card, receives major donations from the food bank.

Julissa Rodriguez, an 18-year-old UF exploratory freshman, said it is important for students to learn about the hunger issue spreading through the city and UF campus. She said if more students knew that some of their peers may be struggling to feed themselves, they may feel compelled to get involved.

Being more aware grounds us and helps us to be more active members of the community, Rodriguez said.

Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now

Bread of the Mighty Food Bank, 352 NW 10th Ave.

Gainesville Community Ministry, 238 SW Fourth Ave.

Field and Fork Food Pantry, 520 Newell Dr.

Gainesville Harvest, 904 NW Fourth St.

Catholic Charities Bureau, 1701 NE Ninth St.
University Avenue, what happened?

Ever since we left Spring 2016 behind, you just keep changing. Balls and Gator City closed. Leonardos By the Slice is closing down one location. And now, with an eviction notice served on 101 Cantina, we may have to say goodbye to another University Avenue staple.

Of course, since watching a wrecking ball take off the roof of our last office Sunday, we at the Alligator have a personal attachment to the changes happening on our old haunting grounds. And since weve survived our own upheaval, were here to offer support to our fellow students in this time of need.

Heres what you need to remember: Itll be OK.

We know, we know. Change is scary. Its been hard coping with the loss of our favorite places to make questionable life choices, and possibly saying goodbye to bright blue fishbowls and #SundayFunday tequila shots on the hour seems like too much to bear.

But as a Student Body, well get through this together.

The memories will live on. Well never forget all those bookstore charges on our credit cards that really meant $2 doubles for all of your friends at Balls instead of textbooks. Or all the blurry Snapchats you took with bartenders and beers on your 21st. Or eating way too many garlic rolls at Leos when you already ate a massive slice of cheese pizza.

And amid all this change, we cannot be afraid to give new places a chance.

Midtown Social seems to have promise, especially with a rooftop bar and flavored macaroni and cheese. The Standard is not only offering new apartments, but a Chick-fil-A and Bento Cafe as well. And more restaurants have already signed on to move into the complexs building. Although were still not sure whats taking over Leos, well hold out hope that the university replaces it with something of quality.

We also cant forget about the classics that are still sticking around: the best drunk pizza slices you can ask for at Pizza by the Slice, greasy goodness at Relish and even the drunken mayhem at Grog House (we cant believe we just said that, but who can resist Beat the Clock?).

Chances are that in a couple years, when were visiting as insistent I-can-still-pass-for-a-student alumni, we may not recognize Midtown. But thats part of what makes Gainesville a great college town  its constantly changing to reflect new generations of students that pass through every four years. Speaking from personal experience, we say its pretty great to be able to reminisce about the old but still have an opportunity to embrace the new. And thats what well continue to do, fishbowls or not, in Midtown.

Just dont take Chipotle Mexican Grill or Dunkin Donuts. Thats all we ask.

Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now
If you have a question, please check the Frequently Asked Questions/ If you still cannot find your answer, feel free to email or call us.
Raul G. Valdes-Fauli, president and chief executive of Professional Bank in Coral Gables, Fla., has died.

The $390 million-asset bank said in a statement posted on its website Tuesday that it was "deeply saddened by the sudden loss." The bank said Abel Iglesias, its chief lending officer, was appointed president and CEO.

Valdes-Fauli's family told the Miami Herald that they were informed by police that Valdes-Fauil threw himself from the 36-story Conrad Miami Hotel on Friday morning.

Valdes-Fauli, 48, had been Professional's president and CEO since 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile.

"His professional legacy is a prosperous bank with depth of leadership and superior credit quality," the bank said in its statement.

Bankers who knew Valdes-Fauli told the Miami Herald that Professional, which had a five-star rating from Bauer Financial, was "doing well, although there was pressure from investors to grow." The bank's move to buy a nearby bank for $6.8 million fell apart during the summer, the report said.

Valdes-Fauli was the son of Raul Valdes-Fauli, a former mayor of Coral Gables.
Hilltop Holdings in Dallas has promoted Alan White to share the chief executive role with Jeremy Ford.

The $13.1 billion-asset company said in a press release Monday that White, who is vice chairman and CEO of its PlainsCapital unit, will share a title that Ford had held exclusively. Ford remains Hilltop's president.

Hilltop said the co-CEOs will concentrate on generating revenue and growth at its subsidiaries. White will oversee revenue generating operations at PlainsCapital Bank, PrimeLending, Hilltop Securities and National Lloyds Corp. Ford, who is the son of Hilltop Chairman Gerald Ford, will oversee corporate functions such as accounting and finance, risk and compliance, legal, corporate development, and corporate administrative areas.

As part of the re-organization, PlainsCapital, the holding company for PlainsCapital Bank and PrimeLending, will be fully integrated with Hilltop "to create a single, unified holding company for the entire organization," the release said.

In addition, PlainsCapital's former president and chief operating officer, James Huffines, was named COO for Hilltop's subsidiaries, while former chief financial officer, John Martin, was named chief accounting officer.

In August, Hilltop hired William Furr, a former KeyCorp executive, to become its CFO, and Darren Parmenter, the company's principal financial officer, was appointed to the new role of chief administrative officer.
At the outset of Steven Spielbergs 2005 remake of H. G. Wells science fiction classic, The War of the Worlds, Dakota Fannings character explains to her dad how there is no need to pull the splinter out of her finger -- When its ready, my body will just push it out. This foreshadows the means through which humanity will be saved from the invading Martians who begin obliterating the human race just a few moments after cute little Dakotas prescient statement.



 Illustration: Alexander Hunter, the Washington Times, September 20, 2011

The Martians end up succumbing to biological attack launched not by the militaries of Earth, but by the Earth itself. Biological agents which are harmless to the human race because of natural immunities built up over the course of mans existence on our planet, prove to be deadly to the aliens. After wreaking havoc on our society, the aliens suddenly, inexplicably, up and croak.

As it turns out, this also is an apt literary device for understanding what is happening now across the American political landscape.

During the past few years, we have seen the early stages of the Wellsian undoing of Washingtons political establishment. It is not microbes causing their ouster. However, it is something just as ubiquitous -- something benign and benevolent to Main Street Americans -- to the country class -- to what Hillary Clinton describes as the Deplorable class -- while at the same time representing a grave existential threat to the political class and all those who seek to engineer changing the nature -- the DNA -- of America and her people. That something is the human dignity of American exceptionalism.

Neither human dignity in general nor American exceptionalism in particular can tolerate or coexist with legislation and leadership antithetical to the nature of America and her founding and trajectory. Like Dakotas body detecting the presence of a splinter and, in its own time, naturally expelling the foreign presence, so too is America naturally rejecting the presence in Washington of ideologies foreign to her very soul. They are polar opposites that dont attract or conjoin or assimilate: They repel.

Its not simply the ideology of the left that is being rejected; it is Washingtons entire political establishment, which has been so amenable to the advancement of crony capitalism and expansion of big government. The overreaching, over-controlling Leviathan that Washington has become is being brought down by a simple belief held by all country class members but viewed as banal by the political elites -- American exceptionalisms respect for human dignity.

The ruling Democrat/Republican, Liberal/conservative, New York/Washington duopoly that has stood in judgment of Americas Deplorables faces rejection as its control diminishes.

The growing locus of the new American political establishment is not Washington: it is Main Street USA. It is the country class and it is pure grass roots, as it should be.

Black & White TV

As it turns out, everything needed to understand what is happening in our country today could be learned decades ago watching black and white Saturday afternoon science-fiction TV movies. Seriously. These movies were far more educational than anything that public funded PBS has ever produced.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Actually Happening

In 2013, the president turned United States Park Service employees into a beta test for his civilian national security force. In fact, Obama has co-opted several government agencies over the years to suppress those whom his administration has perceived as enemies.

Federal Workers essentially became the presidents private army: When the National Parks and Monuments were shut down as a result of sequestration, friendly, helpful, smiling park rangers overnight became unrecognizable, inhuman entities. They were no longer themselves.



 Relax. Dont mind the pods. Go to sleep. Youll see things differently in the morning.

Uniformed Park Service guards intimidated and bullied senior citizens at Yellowstone Park, ostensibly holding them hostage until they could be escorted off National Park property. A tour guide described the actions of the Park Service employees as "Gestapo tactics."

Washington, D.C.'s open-air war memorials on the National Mall were shut down and walled off by the Park Service to prevent WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam Vets in their sixties to nineties, often in wheelchairs, from paying homage to their fallen comrades.

And when private citizens, aghast at the inhumane treatment of our aging veterans, pitched in to provide porta-potties for the vets because the Park Service had chosen to lock the public restrooms, denying access to this most basic human need to our Vets, the delivery of those porta-potties was denied. Human dignity be damned. Care and compassion be damned. Let elderly vets soil themselves.

 Photo courtesy Michele Tennery

Don's Johns delivered Port-A-John's to the World War II Memorial. National Park Service Rangers refused to allow the delivery.

This is what was most disturbing: We ve witnessed a test to see if U.S. civil servants are willing to suppress their consciences and falsify their beliefs in order to continue to "fit in" at work. After all, IRS, EPA, Homeland Security, and U.S. Park Service employees can, like Adolf Eichmann, reassure themselves, saying, "I'm only doing my job."

More recently, IRS employees were used to hassle and suppress patriotic conservative groups. The department of Justice, the FBI, and the State Department no longer serve the American people and instead exist to maintain an invisible protective force field around just one person, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who, like Barack Hussein Obama who disdains those who cling to their Bibles, clearly deplores normal Americans.

The warning to the American people is Whatever you do, dont allow yourself or your family to fall asleep. Don't allow your neighbors to fall asleep. If they fall asleep, your loved ones may no longer be your loved ones and your countrymen may no longer be your countrymen. They might become anti-American Americans. They will become soulless strangers.

The Incredible Shrinking Man: Actually Happening

Six-foot one-inch Scott Carey passed through a radioactive cloud and later was exposed to a powerful insecticide. The chemical reaction caused by the interaction of these two agents then caused Carey to begin to shrink.

A man who once was lord of his castle and master of his domain is reduced to the size of a little boy, and then a Ken doll, and finally he becomes so small that no one can see him. He goes from being a proud independent American male providing for his family, to a man of continually decreasing stature, unable to go to work, drive a car or even open a refrigerator door. He then shrinks to the size of a little toddler, depending on his wife to supply all his needs. As he continues to shrink he is no longer able to live comfortably in his own house and instead endures the humiliation of being forced to live in a dolls house. Suddenly he is all alone in a strange monstrous world, despite the fact he is still in his own home. He fights to stay alive, surrounded by once familiar things that are now threatening and dangerous (e.g., the family cat who towers over him). He then approaches microscopic size, as if his life were trivial, valueless.

The rest of the world, including his wife, goes on without him.

In many ways, this is a metaphor for the personal experience of men of all colors in Americas heartland, along with the black men in Americas inner cities. They face diminishing stature in life, unattractiveness as potential spouses, the shrinking of their ability to provide for their families, and a truncating, if not obliteration, of hope and confidence in the future. Instead they see an alien urban, celebrity, academic, and crony capitalist culture deride them as Deplorables while illegal aliens are imported to supplant their lives. Like the shrinking man in the movie, their lives, hopes and aspirations are shrinking at an accelerating pace.

Photo: Doug Mainwaring

The Obama Administration sought to inflict maximum pain on Americans, especially vets, in order to win the sequestration debate.

A prime, very important example of this is the governments treatment of our veterans. Vets and active military have been the focus of the administration's contempt, suffering one indignity after another.

When peaceful protesting vets descended on Washington DC for a rally in October, 2013, unlike illegal aliens, they were treated like invading, marauding hordes by riot police.



 Photo courtesy Neil Pfieffer

The Veterans Administration seems to exist for its bureaucracys preservation, rather than for the interests of the vets they are pledged to serve. God bless our Vets and Active Military:



 Photo: Doug Mainwaring

Earth Versus the Flying Saucers: Actually Happening

Our culture is over run by aliens -- of both the illegal and ideological sort -- who overwhelm the goodwill of the American People. They seek to alter our American DNA. The result of their infiltration is a total breakdown of the Federal government. 1956s Earth Versus the Flying Saucers predicted the outcome of their unchecked invasion:

Fundamental alien transformation began with the 2009 taking of the White House... and continued with little resistance from Congress...



The United States Supreme Court, under the spell of alien thought control, forced Americans to submit to the strange notion that two men or two women can form a marriage. Now men no longer think they are men and women no longer think they are women. Truth has become stranger than science fiction. Seriously.

The attacks and undermining continue on many fronts and in many ways: Black Lives Matter accuses and attacks Police men and women all across the country as racists. Illegal aliens accuse and attack normal Americans as racists and xenophobes. LGBTs accuse and attack all Americans as homophobic haters because they rightly cant bring themselves to call two men a married couple or call someone like Bruce Jenner a woman. The IRS targets conservative groups while the EPA continues to choke the life out of the coal industry.

Evidence of the alien invasion is everywhere if you just open your eyes.

The War of the Worlds: Actually Happening

Our cities are being destroyed by decades of liberal governance that places ideology and the maintenance of existing political power structures over the wellbeing of people.

Who cares if much of Detroit is now a barren wasteland? Who cares if blacks kill blacks by the hundreds every year in Chicago? Who cares if inner city children get substandard educations? What is important is that liberal Democrats and the public service unions they are beholden to remain in power.

Who cares about Religious liberty? Who cares if the Little Sisters of the Poor are strongarmed by the federal government to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients? Who cares if religious schools and churches are forced to allow members of the opposite sex to invade the privacy of restrooms and locker rooms? Who cares if Christian bakers, florists, and photographers are made to knuckle under to serve sham weddings which dishonor the true, immutable meaning of marriage? Who cares if athletes are punished if they bend a knee or bow their head to pray on the playing field but are applauded is they take a knee to dishonor our National Anthem?

You and I both know who cares: The Deplorables.

The Rise of the Deplorables

When is enough enough? How long can alien ideologies infiltrating our land, antithetical to Americas founding, to the exceptional culture America has produced, and to human dignity itself be permitted free rein to wreak havoc?

Malcolm Muggeridge famously observed:

. . . other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over -- a weary, battered old brontosaurus -- and became extinct.

We are not ready for extinction, especially via cultural suicide.

In June, 2010, Dorothy Rabinowitz opined about our then new president in the pages of the Wall Street Journal:

A great part of America now understands that this presidents sense of identification lies elsewhere and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House.

We must avoid four more years of alien rule at all costs.

Pray that Donald Trump wins. Grassroots America could really use a strong ally like Mr. Trump in the White House. Explain to your neighbors and coworkers why he must be elected. Then pray that we can survive until January 20, 2017, our Independence Day.

Doug Mainwaring is a marriage and childrens rights activist. Portions adapted from several of the authors previous American Thinker and The Washington Times articles. Doug can be reached at doug.mgz@gmail.com

Doug is proud to be one of the millions in Hillary Clintons Basket of Trump-supporting Deplorables:
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Council for Islamic-American Relations, or CAIR, is the leading Muslim advocacy organization in the United States. CAIR states that its mission is "to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue ... and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding." CAIR also asserts ten core principles, the first being to support for  among other freedoms  freedom of expression.

On the homepage of its website, CAIR features a YouTube posting titled "Video: CAIR 'Confronting Fear' Report" In it, a measured, unsmiling narrator says the following:

What would you do with 205 million dollars? 33 organizations around the United States, what we call the inner core of the US Islamophobia network, use that much money to spread fear and hate of Islam between 2008 and 2013. Instead of using this money to do something positive, these groups are using it to spread fear and prejudice. They're spreading lies about what Muslims believe; they're spreading conspiracy theories about what Muslims are doing in this country. So go to islamophobia.org today; get a copy of our new report, 'Confronting Fear;' learn more about these groups; more importantly, we want you to learn what you can do to help push back [no call for "dialogue" or "mutual understanding" here] against their fear and prejudice.

The Islamophobia.org website that the speaker directs the listeners to is divided into four categories, the first two of which will be addressed here. The first is "Islamophobic Organizations." This category includes 45 organizations divided into two sub-categories: the "Inner Core" and the "Outer Core." The Inner Core is defined as follows:

Groups whose primary purpose is to promote prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims and whose work regularly demonstrates Islamophobic themes.

Note the wording. CAIR is not saying that these groups are misguided. (To say that would imply that CAIR's recourse would be to engage in dialogue with them.) Instead, CAIR says that their actual purpose is to promote prejudice. These groups are, in other words, knowingly engaging in an evil purpose. What dialogue can there be with them?

The Outer Core is:

Groups whose primary purpose does not appear to include promoting prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims but whose work regularly demonstrates or supports Islamophobic themes.

Here, CAIR is not charging evil intent. In fact, one could conclude from CAIR's description that such groups are simply misguided  in which case, CAIR's recourse would be not name-calling, but dialogue. But no, such groups fall within the general "Islamophobe" category nonetheless.

(This "Outer Core," incidentally, includes organizations such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which makes no direct advocacy itself [see mission statement], but only contributes to other organizations that do, which includes organizations CAIR deems to be Islamophobic.)

The second category is "Islamophobic Individuals," where CAIR lists 62 persons. Here, oddly enough, there is no distinction between "Inner" or "Outer Core." Either such a binary division does not, for some reason, apply to individuals, or they are all in the same sub-category, but one which CAIR neglects to identify. (In such case, we must assume that all such individuals would be considered to be "Inner Core.")

Whether "Inner Core" or "Outer Core," whether "Organizations" or "Individuals," CAIR addresses them all in the same way, which is to provide a brief, sometimes one-sentence description and a link to a fuller one. The fuller description includes statements, associations and actions of the alleged Islamophobes, etc. that CAIR does not comment on but appears to presume that they are damning on their face.

CAIR does not state that it has provided any of those listed as "Islamophobes" with an opportunity to respond their description, and there is no indication that it has done so. So let this writer respond for them generally. After reviewing several descriptions, he finds none that justify CAIR's designation of "Islamophobe."

This includes the description for the blog Bare Naked Islam. In connection with the smoke-bombing of a mosque, CAIR quotes BNI as saying, "We do not condone this act of violence but we support the courageous counterjihad efforts of the EDL, Geoff Ryan [the smoke bomber] ..." CAIR also states that, due to BNI's violation of terms of service relating to threats and/or incitement to violence, WordPress.com removed BNI from its hosting platform. While such facts certainly justify CAIR's identification of this blog, that identification is not justified by any Islamophobic beliefs, but rather by the group's apparent support for violence. It should be identified not under a category of "Islamophobic Organizations," but under "Organizations that Support Violence against Islam." However, CAIR has no such category.

Primarily, CAIR's descriptions rely on quotations from its designated Islamophobes. From Brigitte Gabriel, for example:

America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam.

Is this, on its face  the identification of Islam as "the real enemy"  evidence of Islamophobia? Not necessarily. Not if there is rational basis for it. And particularly not if we include the motives that CAIR ascribes to it  that is, the deliberate purpose of spreading fear and hate. If Gabriel believes what she says, then her purpose is not to spread fear and hate; it is to save America. Whether her statement is true or not is another question. But it is one that should be subject, not to demonization, but to debate.

CAIR, however, does not appear to be interested in debate. If that were the case, it would not be calling such persons "Islamophobes," ones "spreading lies," "fear and hate" in the first place; it would be calling them "critics" or "opponents of Islam."

In such "spreading fear and hate against Islam," in stating her assessment of Islam, Gabriel is doing no less than what Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Salman Rushdie have done  all of whom are under sentences of death from fatwas issued by Muslim imams.

Were Muslims a majority in America, that would perhaps be what CAIR would be calling for here. But Muslims currently are not a majority, so we do not have that. What we have instead is a listing of "Islamophobes" who "spread fear and prejudice." We have a kind of discreet, non-lethal fatwa, one might say  at least for the time being.

***

Not long ago, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (currently not listed by CAIR as an Islamophobe) said that Islam is not compatible with Western democracy. Certainly, CAIR, based on its website, is not compatible. To be compatible, CAIR must tolerate criticism that goes to the heart of Islam. Reliance on the word "Islamophobe" is not toleration. Nor is even silence really toleration. Real toleration is shown really only through engagement. If CAIR is to become compatible, it must not only tolerate criticism, but engage with it. And, as the leading Muslim advocacy group, it can start right now. It can, in public debate, defend its charges. Or, through Gingrich's charge, it can rebut the "Islamophobes" more generally. It can argue that Islam is, in fact, compatible with American democracy. (Its mere participation in such a debate would be its greatest rebuttal.)

And, because there are two candidates for the presidency with opposing views on this issue, there is a great opportunity to unite such a debate with those presidential campaigns. CAIR, and/or its allies, can join Hillary Clinton (who calls for greater Muslim immigration), and "Islamophobes," with Donald Trump (who has, in the primaries, called for a moratorium on it).

The debate wouldn't be between Clinton or Trump, but between advocates chosen by them. And, to make clear and to ensure that the advocates would be speaking for the respective campaigns, it would not be an oral debate, but a written one  one in which, prior to public posting, the candidates would have to approve of all statements and rebuttals made by their respective advocates. (Just for fun, a more informal, televised oral exchange between the advocates could follow.) So it would be more than just a debate between CAIR or its allies, and "Islamophobes." It would be something new in American politics  presidential candidates, exchanging, though selected advocates, the rationales for their policy positions. We could use something new.

And, it must be said, particularly on this issue. For if Trump loses, and Muslim immigration continues at its current or greater levels, and American Muslims, as reflected by CAIR's website, are in fact hostile to critical discussion of Islam, there will soon come a time when discussing this issue at the presidential level will not even be an option. (Indeed, but for the political anomaly of Donald Trump, it probably would not be an option even today.) It may well be much later than we think. Let us have a presidential debate on this issue, and let us have it now.
Donald Trumps praise of Vladimir Putin during the recent televised commander-in-chief forum has come in for widespread scorn, especially on the left, but also from some conservatives. The comments were perhaps politically ill-advised as they distracted attention from Hillary Clintons weaknesses and Trumps better messages. But objectively, Trumps observations, particularly his comparison of the relative effectiveness of Putins leadership to Barack Obama, are not obviously incorrect. Putin may be a ruthless, autocratic dictator, but he acts in ways that are clearly intended to promote Russias national interests. Obama on the other hand has consistently acted, and continues to act, in a manner that, by any traditional measure, undermines this countrys national interests.

Obamas destructive policies are not the result of a Democratic leader hamstrung by the sluggish and frustrating workings of a complex constitutional republic. Though Obama has done plenty of harm, and done so in ways that mocked and undermined those democratic processes, at least his worst inclinations have occasionally been delayed or frustrated by a Republican dominated Congress and a divided Senate. Had Obama Putins powers, something he and some supporters pretty obviously crave, we would really be in a fix.

At a purely personal level, it is not entirely clear why Trump esteems Putin. It could be an appreciation for Putins very real international accomplishments on his countrys behalf, or the Russians more obvious possible blandishments to which Trump is particularly susceptible. But even if Trumps admiration is based primarily on the latter, that doesnt diminish the former as a matter of fact.

During Obamas presidency Putin reclaimed Russian imperial territory in Ukraine, forestalled NATO missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, rebuilt Russias military, effectively demonstrated its military capabilities in several settings (Including by harassing American planes and ships), reestablished a Russian military presence in the Middle East, helped weaken American ties with Israel, Egypt, and Turkey, formed a strong alliance with a resurgent and still solidly anti-American Iran, gained political and economic leverage against Western Europe, and convincingly restored Russias status as a great power to be reckoned with.

To be sure, Putin was aided in all this by the utterly ineffectual, confused, and lazy policies of the Obama administration, starting with the disastrous Russian reset during Hillary Clintons tenure as Secretary of State. International politics is not always a zero sum game, but each one of Putins accomplishments in the laundry list above came at American expense. One need go no further to conclude that Trump was absolutely correct in his observation that Putins leadership is superior to Obamas.

Much of the media issued typically hysterical responses to Trumps observation, with lazy corresponding tut-tutting about it by many conservatives. These reactions are a function not only of a general dislike for Trump among elite political circles, but the way Obamas office and unique personal background protect him from a rational evaluation of his actions, and most importantly his motivations.

Obama is a terrible leader on the international stage not so much because of negligence, but as the deliberate result of policies that he embraces and his most ardent supporters admire. These policies are by any reasonable historical standard antithetical to the interests of his country. While Putin is a traditional leader who has sought to strengthen Russia and advance its political, military and economic interests, Obama has deliberately sought to weaken the United States in all these areas. It is no wonder Putin has run circles around him. In as sense they are both playing for the same objective -- the diminishment of American power.

Frank acknowledgement of this obvious truth is hampered not only by Obamas status as the first African-American president, but the office of the presidency itself, which makes Obama not only the head of government but also the head of state with all the symbolic power and authority that entails. In a parliamentary system or constitutional monarchy, where the head of state is an apolitical man or women of stature or a king/queen, attacking the motivations, ideologies, and even patriotism of the head of government is easier, producing the sometimes lusty parliamentary disputes that occur in those systems.

The American left takes full advantage of this fact, wrapping itself in the flag when its expedient, even as its minions despise their own country. Coincidentally we see some of this dynamic in the Colin Kaepernick brouhaha, where the left conveniently confuses assertion of a constitutional right with patriotism. Thus, Kaepernick is lauded as a patriot for doing an obviously unpatriotic thing. But if asserting ones constitutional rights is patriotic, then our prisons are filled with patriots.

The Reverend Jeramiah Wright had a constitutional right to declaim Goddamn America! in his church, where Obama sat in the pews for twenty years, but that was not patriotism. Likewise, unrepentant America-hating terrorist Bill Ayers (Obamas Chicago neighbor and likely ghost writer) has a right to spout his anti-America nonsense but few would call Ayers a patriot.

Its often been observed that electing Obama was akin to promoting a typical leftist academic to president. Many of us know such people, who share Obamas world view of American misdeeds and guilt. They are not all necessarily unpatriotic, but also dont usually attend church with blisteringly anti-American preachers, or hang out with known terrorists. Some of these people probably really believed that doing the things that Obama has done would redound to the countrys benefit. That experiment has now lasted nearly eight years and we can objectively judge that it has failed.

By any traditional and rational standard of evaluation, decreasing a countys international prestige, power, and influence is a bad thing. Obama has done all three.

Vladimir Putin for all his faults is a Russian patriot. His effectiveness is due in large part to that fact. By any reasonable historical model Obama is not an American patriot, a fact reflected in his serial failures. That is the truth that Trump got at and which so disturbs the left.
Hillary and Bill Clinton have a remarkable history of friends who are willing to lie, obstruct, and withhold information that would expose them. Webb Hubbell, Hillary Clinton's former law partner and former associate attorney general in the Clinton Justice Department, went to jail and still refused to give evidence against her.

Bernard Nussbaum, a prominent lawyer, then White House Counsel, initially agreed to allow the Department of Justice to review the documents in Vince Foster's office for evidence that might shed light on the cause of his death. That evening and the next morning, Nussbaum; Hillary Clinton; Susan Thomases, her personal counsel; and Maggie Williams, her chief of staff exchanged 10 separate phones calls. That morning, according to the DOJ employees, Nussbaum changed his mind and refused to allow the DOJ prosecutors to review the documents; instead, he reviewed them himself and segregated several as "personal" to the Clintons. Thomases and Williams just couldn't remember a thing when subpoenaed.

Federal officials complained that White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum thwarted a proper search of Foster's office and files. Nussbaum was forced to resign.

Susan McDougal served prison time as a result of the Whitewater controversy for failure to answer "three questions" for a grand jury about whether President Bill Clinton lied in his testimony during her Whitewater trial. McDougal received a full presidential pardon from outgoing President Clinton in the final hours of his presidency in 2001.

More recently, Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, did not dispute Bill Clinton's outrageous claim that during a "serendipitous" meeting on an airplane, Lynch and Clinton did not discuss anything other than "grandchildren." FBI director Comey risked a sterling reputation to spare Hillary Clinton any legal consequences for the e-mail and classified information scandal.

Now we have the case of Hillary's health and the most recent syncope episode on Sunday September 11, 2016.

Why is critical information on Hillary's health being withheld from the public? And by whom?

Her minions are now flooding the news with pictures of Hillary emerging from her daughter's home...smiling, chatting and repeating: "I feel fine...such a lovely day in New York."

Questions remain:

When she fainted and was lifted into the van, was she unconscious?

Was she carried up to her daughter's home? There are no pictures of her entering her daughter's home.

Who went inside with her?

What medicine or medicines were administered in her daughter's home?

If her doctor, a reputable internist named Dr. Lisa Bardack, diagnosed pneumonia the Friday before, why was Hillary still planning a tour of the West, and why did she attend the ceremony at Ground Zero? Any doctor would have proscribed such activities in a senior with pneumonia.

What medications is she taking for "allergies" and pneumonia?

Are both lungs affected? Is she contagious? This is pertinent, since she exchanged hugs and kisses with so many dignitaries.

Is she taking medications other than hormones for hypothyroidism and Coumadin?

What accounts for her strange episodes of documented strange head, eyes, and open-mouth grimaces?

What were her symptoms when she was hospitalized for a blood clot in the brain in December 2012, when her daughter was so visibly shaken? Why did initial reports omit the fact that she had had a previous episode in 1988, after developing a clot behind her right knee? Does she have a medical predisposition to clots? Would that affect her travel and schedule?

Furthermore, a 48-hour stay in the hospital for diagnosis and treatment seems very short for such a complex condition.

Will we ever know? Or will doctors or members of her inner circle succeed in hiding, obfuscating, deleting facts, and lying to keep her candidacy viable?
Have you heard the one about Hillary fainting in public, and then her staff claiming they had the same "gastrointestinal" illness? Sure you did, in 2005.

Hillary Clinton fainted during a speech in 2005, blamed then on "an acute gastrointestinal illness," according to Dr. Stephanie Pincus, "a leading doctor in New York and professor at the University of Buffalo." Why did CNN have to insert "leading" in front of "doctor"? To warn us there could be no other explanation? Settled science and all that. Convenient to have a complaisant doctor in the house.

But what caught my attention was this: "[a] number of Clinton's Senate staffers fell ill during a weekend staff retreat in Rye, New York, a staff member said." Caught my attention because just tonight on TV, I heard an apologist for Hillary say that many of her staffers have had the "pneumonia" she supposedly ails from. And that must be true, because here's Mediaite peddling the same thing, and their source is People magazine. Sounds deeply sourced to me.

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.
Iran threatened to shoot down two U.S. spy planes flying in international waters in the Straits of Hormuz. The planes were on a surveillance mission and were flying 13 miles off the coast of Iran when the threat was made.

Fox News:

At some point during the flight, the Iranian military warned the two aircraft to change course or risk getting shot down.

The US military planes ignored the warning and continued flying in international airspace, although close to Iranian territory, the officials told Fox.

We wanted to test the Iranian reaction, one US official told Fox News when asked why the US jets were flying close to Iran.

Its one thing to tell someone to get off your lawn, but we werent on their lawn, the official continued. Anytime you threaten to shoot someone down, its not considered professional.

The official said the Iranian behavior was characterized as unprofessional. Another official said the incident was not considered unsafe because there were no Iranian missile launchers in the area, according to the latest intelligence reports.

The latest incident between the US military and Iran is just the latest in a series of confrontations in region.

Last month, Iranian fast-boats harassed US Navy warships in the Persian Gulf on at least five occasions. One incident resulting in three warning shots being fired from a US Navy coastal patrol craft, when an Iranian vessel ignored repeated radio calls to change course. On another occasion, an Iranian boat stopped 100 yards in front of a US Navy ship forcing it to take evasive maneuvers.

Over the weekend, a senior Iranian military commander dismissed claims that his vessels had harassed US Navy ships in in the Persian Gulf saying his nation acted in accordance with internationally recognized maritime law.

"Iranian boats continue to act based on defined standards and are well aware of the international laws and regulations, so the claims are not only untrue, but stem from their fear of the power of Iran's soldiers," said Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, according to state news agency IRNA and reported by AFP.

Dangerous interactions at sea between Iran and the US Navy have doubled in the first half of 2016 compared to the same time last year, Fox News first reported last month.

On Aug. 30, the head of US forces in the Middle East was asked to explain Irans perceived aggressiveness.

This is principally the regime leadership trying to exert their influence and authority in the region. And they are trying to do it in provocative ways, said Gen. Joe Votel, commander of US Central Command at a Pentagon press briefing.
Like a lame wildebeest on the Serengeti, Hillary Clintons illness is attracting the attention of those who see opportunity. Make no mistake: the Clintons, for all the superficial unity the Democrats bludgeon each other into, have sparked a lot of resentment and made a lot of enemies over the years.

On top of that, there is a legitimate case to be made that the specter of losing to Trump is scary enough that For the Good of the Party, the DNC should meet in private and dump her.

Yesterday, it was the Morning of the Long Knives.

Cokie Roberts spread the word to NPR listeners (a Venn diagram of Democrat contributors and NPR contributors would show a lot of overlap, Id wager).

Its taking her off of the campaign trail, said Roberts Monday morning, indicating that the pneumonia has forced Clinton to cancel her upcoming trip to California. But as for members of the Democratic party, It has them very nervously beginning to whisper about her stepping aside and finding another candidate.

Keep in mind that Roberts is Democrat aristocracy in a party that worships dynasties, the daughter of two powerful House of Representatives members. Her father, majority leader of the House when he died in a plane crash, was first elected to the House half a century before Bill Clinton ran for national office. Her mother took over the seat.

To a certain kind of influential Democrat, Cokie speaks for much more than herself.

The other knife unsheathed came from David Axelrod, the red diaper baby whose major role in the rise of Barack Obama from obscurity to the presidency is poorly appreciated.

Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?  David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) September 12, 2016

An unhealthy penchant for privacy is an incurable disease, Axelrod is implying. Hillarys illness is, in the words of fellow Chicago pol Rahm Emanual, a crisis that should not go to waste.

Nobody is going to say it out loud, but the real message is that Hillary is blowing it, and it is time to convene the DNC and pull out all the knives.

The best response the Brooklyn Brain Trust could come up with was lame:

We could have done better yesterday, but it is a fact that public knows more about HRC than any nominee in history. https://t.co/Q50oHK85wQ  Jennifer Palmieri (@jmpalmieri) September 12, 2016

Then another party elder chimed in, just in case:

Now is the time for all good political leaders to come to the aid of their party, said Don Fowler, who helmed the DNC from 1995 to 1997, during Bill Clintons presidency, and has backed Hillary Clinton since her 2008 presidential bid. I think the plan should be developed by 6 oclock this afternoon.

Its nothing personal, Hillary. Just business.

Fowler said he expects Clinton to fully recover from her bout with pneumonia, which forced her to leave a Sept. 11 memorial event early and cancel an early-week fundraising swing. But he said the Democratic Party would be mistaken to proceed without a contingency plan. The party's existing rules empower the DNC to name a replacement candidate but include few guidelines or parameters. Its something you would be a fool not to prepare for, he said in an interview on Monday. He added a note of caution, should Clinton attempt an expeditious return to the campaign trail. She better get well before she gets back out there because if she gets back out there too soon, it might happen again, he said.

These rumbles are not to be ignored, for they are related to tectonic forces in the Democratic Party.

Hat tip: Dennis Miller
In a highly unusual move, Rep. Jason Chaffetz served a subpoena to an FBI official for all documents the bureau has gathered during the course of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server in the middle of a committee hearing.

The nearly unprecedented action reflects a growing frustration by the Oversight Committee with the FBI over what they see as a lack of cooperation in investigating the decision made by Director Comey in not indicting Clinton.

Daily Caller:

Will the FBI provide to Congress the full file with no redactions of personal identifiable information? Chaffetz asked Jason Herring, the FBIs acting assistant director of legislative affairs, during a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing. I cannot make that commitment sitting here today, Herring said. Chaffetz has sought all of the records related to the FBIs Clinton email investigation, including all interview notes, which are referred to as 302s. Earlier this month, the FBI released a heavily-redacted report of its conclusions from the investigation. The bureau also released Hillary Clintons 302 to the public. It gave Congress 302s from other witness interviews, but not all of them. Chaffetz has taken issue with that withholding as well as the FBIs decision to redact unclassified personally identifiable information in its report. Im going to issue a subpoena, and Im going to do it right now, Chaffetz said to Herring after being told that he could not commit to handing over all of the documents. Ive signed this subpoena. We want all the 302s, and we would like the full file. You can accept service on behalf of the FBI? Chaffetz asked, as an aide sitting behind him on the dais was seen leaving to server Herring. Certainly, the federal official said. You are hereby served. We have a duty and a responsibility. You can cite no precedent. Nothing in the Constitution. No legal precedent. You know this is important to us. You now have your subpoena. We would all like to see this information, said Chaffetz. Herring said that the FBI had planned to release other 302s as part of the Freedom of Information Act process.

The FBI can't hide behind the selective exposure of various parts of its investigation. Clearly, they are trying to protect Comey. When the full story is told, it's entirely possible that Comey's decision not to recommend prosecution of Clinton will be seen as even more inexplicable than it is now.

As for what the documents will tell us about Clinton, there are sure to be some nuggets of information that make her out to be a liar or worse. It may not be as important as it should be to the race, however. People have come to expect the worst when it comes to Hillary Clinton, and a few more revelations probably won't affect the race for president.
Amherst Senior Center celebrates 60th anniversary The Amherst Center for Senior Services celebrated its 60th anniversary Friday with a dinner, live music and several speakers. Its fitting that 60th anniversaries are associated with diamonds because they...

Village Board continues HPC and zoning code hearings, passes local LWRP law The Village of Williamsville Board of Trustees adopted its Local Waterfront Revitalization Project at its Monday meeting. The LWRP then heads to the New York Secretary of State for approval,...

Abortion, economy on ballot for November election On Tuesday, Nov. 8, voters throughout Western New York will head to the polls in what will prove to be a referendum on some major issues facing the nation. Abortion,...
The possibilities of a submersible boat that could cruise below the waters surface undetected and ambush enemy ships has fascinated military leaders of the world since antiquity. Legend has it that Alexander the Great himself had got into a primitive form of submersible to conduct underwater reconnaissance.

One of the first concepts for an underwater rowing boat was drawn up by an Englishman named William Bourne in 1578, but it was not until 1620 when the plans were eventually realized by the Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel. Drebbels submarine, built of wood and propelled by oars, could stay underwater for several hours. Floats with attached tubes brought air from the surface to the crew below. When he demonstrated the submarines capabilities by diving on the River Thames and staying underwater as rumor has it for three hours, the thousands of Londoners who had assembled on the banks to see the feat perform were convinced the men had perished.

A replica of Yefim Nikonovs submarine, believed to be the first military submarine built, stands at Sestroretsk, near St Petersburg, on Neva River. Photo credit: Serguei Fadeev/Wikimedia

The Dutch poet and composer Constantijn Huygens, who witnessed the tests, later wrote how this bold invention could be used at times of war, attacking and sinking enemy ships lying in apparent safety at anchor. Like Huygens, many others recognized the submarines military potential although it would take another one hundred years before the first military submarine could be built.

In 1718, a Russian carpenter named Yefim Nikonov wrote to Peter the Great claiming that he could build a secret vessel that could sail underwater and destroy all enemy ships with cannons. Curious and interested, the Tsar invited Nikonov to Saint-Petersburg and asked him to get down with the construction.

Nikonov finished constructing the model in 1721, and tested it in Peters presence, who was so pleased with the results, that he ordered Nikonov to build a full-sized secret battleship.

Nikonovs submarine was built out of wood and shaped like a barrel. It was armed with fire tubes, a weapon akin to flame-throwers. The submarine was supposed to approach an enemy vessel, put the ends of the tubes out of the water, and blow up enemy ships with some combustible mixture. In addition, he designed an airlock for aquanauts to come out of the submarine and to destroy the bilge of the ship.

The first trial of the submarine was conducted in autumn 1724. It was a disaster. The submarine sank, hit the bottom and broke the bilge. Nikonov himself, along with four oarsmen, were inside. It was only by a miracle that the crew managed to save themselves.

Peter was supportive and encouraged Nikonov to improve the design. But failures continued to plague Nikonov, especially after the death of his principle patron, Tsar Peter. In the spring of 1725, the second test of the secret ship ended in a fiasco, as did the third one in 1727. Finally, the patience of the Admiralty Board of the Imperial Russian Navy snapped. Nikonov was charged with abuse of public funds, reduced to the status of common carpenters and sent off to work at another shipyard on the Volga River.

Photo credit: Alex Panfiloff/Panoramio

Photo credit: zavodfoto.livejournal.com

The first successful use of a military submarine during actual combat happened during the American Revolutionary War in 1775. The submarine called Turtle was designed by an American inventor David Bushnell. It was a hand-powered egg-shaped device that could accommodate a single person, and it was the first submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement. The Turtle dived by allowing water into a bilge tank at the bottom of the vessel and ascended by pushing water out through a hand pump. Hand-cranked propellers provided vertical and horizontal movement with a maximum speed of 4.8 km/h. The vessel contained enough air for about thirty minutes of operation.

During the American Revolutionary War, the Turtle, operated by Sgt. Ezra Lee, tried but failed to affix a charge on the hull of a British warship, HMS Eagle. According to reports of the attack, Lee was discovered before he could carry out the task forcing him to abandon the submarine. However, the only records documenting the attack are American. There are no British records of an attack by a submarine during the war, which has caused some historians to doubt the authenticity of the story. Some believe that the entire story around the Turtle was fabricated as disinformation and morale-boosting propaganda.

Replicas of the Turtle's are now on display at several museums across the United States, as well as the Royal Navy Submarine Museum at Gosport, England.

Full sized mockup of the Bushnell "Turtle" at the U.S. Navy Submarine Force Museum and Library, Groton CT. Photo credit: divemasterking2000/Wikimedia

Sources: Wikipedia / Russiapedia / rusnavy.com
Earlier this year, Samsung surprised practically nobody with the announcement of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge during an event held in Barcelona, Spain as part of the annual Mobile World Congress. Not only had we heard a lot about the devices themselves prior to said launch of them, but weve also gotten used to the cycle that Samsung has put in place for its Galaxy S line of devices. The Spring of each year seems to be dominated by the Galaxy S line of devices, and this year, as well as the year before that, have been no different. This, unsurprisingly, leads us to 2017, and a possible date in February for the reveal of the Galaxy S8 and perhaps the Galaxy S8 Edge, assuming Samsung is to release two variants once again.

PhoneArena have been doing some crystal ball work, mostly involving history as well as a calendar, to come up with a date of February 26th, 2017 as the launch of the Galaxy S8. How they came up with such a number is down to the position of last years, as well as prior years. Mobile World Congress as well as the date of Samsungs own press conference for the Galaxy S. These have traditionally been just a day ahead of the main event itself, leaving Samsung to get all of the limelight ahead of anyone else. Last year, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge were announced on March the 1st, the Sunday evening before Mobile World Congress 2015 which opened its doors on March 2nd and ran through to March 5th. This year, we saw the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge get announced on February 21st  you guessed it  the Sunday before Mobile World Congress 2016, which ran from February 22nd through to February 25th. Next Spring, Mobile World Congress is to run from February 27th to March 2nd, which leaves Samsung February 26th to announce the Galaxy S8.

Given the hardship that Samsung is facing with the Galaxy Note 7s recall at the moment, its unlikely that Samsung will change course regarding the Galaxy S8. Not only do they need to polish up their brand a little bit, but they need to bounce back financially, too. Losing $1 Billion or so off of their market value is motivation enough to make sure that they will be following up with a quality flagship product, and its more than likely that plans for the Galaxy S8 have been in the works since before the Galaxy S7 even hit shelves.
Netflix thinks that data caps are unreasonable, and now has filed a formal request addressed to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to declare them as such. According to the filing Netflix feels this applies to both the fixed-line and mobile networks, citing that a major issue of data caps is the limitation it places on the ability to watch online video, in this case through their own service. The filing was submitted last week for the FCCs annual investigation of broadband deployment. As part of the investigation, the FCC must be prepared to take immediate action if they find that the deployment of broadband across the US is not happening in a reasonable and timely fashion. Usually, the annual review focuses on the speed and availability, but Netflix has requested that data caps be included in the review.

The company thinks that Data caps (especially low data caps) and usage-based pricing (UBP) discourage a consumers consumption of broadband, and may impede the ability of some households to watch Internet television in a manner and amount that they would like. Although Netflix has requested a review of data caps, the FCC may not opt to listen to the company and even if they do listen and eventually declare them unreasonable, it wouldnt require internet service providers to eliminate the data caps, but it could pressure them to do so. In the filing, Netflix states that a 300GB-per-month allowance is essentially a bare minimum requirement that just meets the Internet television needs of an average American, without taking into consideration other web-based activities. Netflix even references Comcasts recent increase on data caps from 300GB to 1TB as being more than enough now, but that it will at some point end up a bare minimum.

Regarding mobile data caps, the company did not provide a minimum amount of data it believes is necessary, but they did argue that consumers were less likely to watch online video when data caps are too low and overage charges are high. Also, the company argued that because data caps tend to be relatively low, it forces online services such as Netflix itself to pay internet providers to zero-rate their service in order for users to utilize their service and not have to worry about exceeding their data limit. Now, although Netflix is hoping that its filing will see the FCC push internet providers towards eliminating data caps, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association has said that these factors should not be reviewed by the FCC under its annual investigation and should instead be looked at when it delivers its Measuring Broadband America reports, the only downside to this is that the latter doesnt carry the same regulatory weight as the former.

Advertisement

Now, although Netflix is hoping that its filing will see the FCC push internet providers towards eliminating data caps, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association has said that these factors should not be reviewed by the FCC under its annual investigation and should instead be looked at when it delivers its Measuring Broadband America reports, the only downside to this is that the latter doesnt carry the same regulatory weight as the former.
NVIDIA has launched a lesser version of its Drive PX 2 in-car computer, designed for autonomous vehicle control, and has said that it will power Baidus autonomous vehicle mapping and control systems. The new Drive PX 2 system follows on from the first-gen unit, described as a liquid-cooled supercomputer for the car. The original unit combined two Parker CPU / GPU chipset units in order to deliver the sustained high computing performance needed for artificial intelligence, deep-learning systems necessitated for self-driving cars. The announcement that Baidu is using the second-gen Drive PX 2 unit follows earlier announcements that NVIDIA and the Chinese company were working together on a full self-driving system architecture utilizing cloud technologies together with artificial intelligence.

The new Drive PX 2 uses 10 watts of power and is half the size of the original, which was around the size of a briefcase. In order to shrink the unit, NVIDIA are using one Parker chipset module whereas the original used two. Each Parker unit contains two of NVIDIAs powerful, 64-bit custom Denver cores, four ARM Cortex-A57 application cores and a Pascal GPU unit. The Denver 64-bit core is a second generation version of the same chipset that powered the HTC-built Nexus 9, which scores highly in single-core operations but does not benchmark as highly as many competitor chipsets on account of these being two cores rather than a more usual four. However, the Parker chipset uses NVIDIAs fully coherent heterogeneous multi-processor configuration, in other words, the chipset can use as many cores as it needs to. Thanks to this combination of powerful application processors, NVIDIA claims that the Parker unit delivers between 50% to 100% better multi-core processor performance compared with competitors.

NVIDIAs efforts should help the overall industry. The original Drive PX unit has already achieved commercial success, but its an expensive piece of equipment that needs the original vehicle to be adapted in order to cope with the power requirements and heat output. NVIDIAs cut down version lowers these requirements (at the expense of reducing the performance), but should make it easier for manufacturers to develop and experiment with hybrid autonomous systems. NVIDIA is already well-known for its high performance gaming-optimized gaming chipsets, but has worked to adapt its GPU and CPU technologies for the self-driving and artificial intelligence industry.
The music streaming market is full of hot competition. The likes of Spotify and Apple Music dominate the market, while others such as Deezer and Tidal compete for market share and extra subscribers. Pandora, on the other hand, currently doesnt compete in the market, but has confirmed that its plans for a streaming music service are well under way and may be much closer than originally thought.

The online radio service has announced that it has signed licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Merlin Network, all in the hope of increasing the number of tracks it has on offer so that it can attract customers and compete with the huge catalogues that Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer boast. With the announcement of these deals, the only major label left to sign on for the service is the Warner Music Group. The way Pandora wants to distinguish itself from the rest is not through its music catalogue but through its pricing structure. The online service plans on expanding its current $5-a-month Pandora One subscription by increasing the amount of skips allowed per hour from six and will also allow users to store their playlists online, as well as removing ads and skip songs on radio streams. Without a doubt, though, the pricing of this package is the more enticing part of the deal and is whats likely to pull in customers.

As well as their $5 service, the company also plans on offering a more conventional $10-a-month service that will be similar to mainstream services: a catalog of songs available on-demand with zero restrictions or ads. The only thing that is unsure for now is whether the company will decide to launch the service without Warner Music being on board and risk not having the likes of Bruno Mars or Ed Sheeran in the catalogue, or if they will opt to wait until a deal is finalized.

Advertisement

Currently, Pandora has a lot of potential when it comes to competing in the streaming market thanks to its user base which currently includes over 78 million users and claims that they provide twice the engagement than users of competing services. If just 10% of these subscribers switched to one of Pandoras paid streaming packages, it would push the company into third position behind Apple Music and Spotify and possibly give both services a run for their money. A specific launch date has not been provided by Pandora but the company has confirmed that it will be launching the service soon.
When Android Pay first launched, it was another mobile payments system in a long line of payments systems. First we had Apple Pay, then we had Samsung Pay and perhaps inevitably we had Android Pay. Where the first two options were all about getting more users even more locked into their ecosystems, Android Pay is a lot more flexible and a lot more open, at least in terms of the number of users that can actually use the service. That being said, if your particular bank or card issuer doesnt support Android Pay, then that practically leaves you without support for the service, realistically. When it first launched in the UK earlier this year, back during the week of Google I/O incidentally, it did so with support for a number of large banks and building societies. Now, our friends across the pond can get access to Android Pay on even more banks.

It was announced not too long ago in the US that Chase bank would be supporting Android Pay, and in the same breath Google announced more banks in the UK as well. Now, those banks are going live so to speak, and Android users that bank with the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, Santander or the Ulster Bank can now register their cards with Android Pay and do less chip-and-pinning, and more tapping. For a lot of users of course, this is more than likely old news by this point, but it is good to see that Google is charging ahead with their rollout with Android Pay in the UK. Of course, there will always be some hard-to-crack banks such as Barclays, who seem more interested in their own mobile payments platform, which is arguably not quite as good as Android Pay, but appears to work in any store that accepts contactless payments, without the need for support for Android Pay.

If youve yet to use Android Pay, you can go ahead and hit the download button below to install it on your device and load up your cards now that your bank is supported. If your bank isnt supported yet, then your best bet is to contact Google directly, and let them know. TBS customers will be able to jump onboard later this month, while other unsupported banks might have to wait a little longer, sadly.
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry says knowledge is sexist

Did you see Emily Thornberry on Sky News? No? The Press Gazette explains what you missed:

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry tells Sky News it is sexist to ask her to name the South Korean president

Says Thornberry: Ive seen delegations of French and Ive seen quite a lot of the Norwegians  but not their foreign ministers. We are in the process of arranging for me to go to France and Germany.

Presenter Dermot Murnaghan asked her who the French foreign minister is. Thornberry didnt know. So she blathered and attacked the questioner.

Dont start pub quizzing me, Dermot. Do you know what, what really upsets me about your attitude to me is that you do this with me. I dont remember you doing it with anybody else you know. Have you done it to David Davis? Have you asked these questions? Do Sky journalists have a go at Boris Johnson on this basis? How about Liam Fox? Do you do pub quizzes with them?

The Guardian says it matters not that Thornberry is rubbish at pub quizzes:

Is it important that Thornberry should know, off the top of her head, who the French foreign minister is  or, for that matter, the answer to Dermot Murnaghans next question, the name of the president of South Korea? I dont know. On the one hand, shell obviously be given the relevant information before she meets either party, and since she is unlikely to ever be in government anyway, the question is more or less moot.

The Indy spots the real sexist:

When Thornberry complained to Murnaghan about the high bar imposed on women in politics, a more compelling example than her own foundering on basic facts would have been that of Angela Eagle, whose leadership challenge stumbled and ultimately faltered under a hail of abuse that included homophobic jibes and actual bricks through window. Invoking this toxic environment as cover for her own lack of preparation was an unsisterly act from Thornberry.

Remember when you were worried about Boris Johnson being Foreign Secretary?

Anorak

Posted: 13th, September 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
(ANSA) - Rome, September 13 - Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti told parliament Tuesday that Italy was ready to send 300 military personnel to Libya as part of an operation to set up a military field hospital at Misrata airport. Pinotti told the Lower House and Senate defence committees that operation Ippocrate will feature 60 doctors and nurses, 135 logistics personnel and 100 'protection force troops'.

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Tuesday that Italy will set up a military hospital for forces loyal to the national unity government after a request from Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. "The Misrata militias have suffered 400 deaths and 2,500 wounded," Gentiloni told the Lower House and Senate defence committees. "In the last few months Italy has helped by taking into hospital some of the most seriously wounded and, in this spirit, came the decision to respond to a formal request from Sarraj to set up a military hospital".

Italy will name as new ambassador to Libya Giuseppe Perrone and he will take up his post in Tripoli "as soon as possible", Gentiloni added. Italy will continue its commitment to Libya, he said, "trying to play a more advanced role in the crisis".

Gentiloni also said that "the military operations begun Sunday in (Libya's) oil crescent may have a destabilising effect." He said "the operations were conducted by Sudanese and Chadian militiamen loyal to (General Khalifa) Haftar". Gentiloni said "the situation is still unstable, one cannot say that Haftar has control nor that others have it, clashes are ongoing, albeit on a smaller scale".


(ANSA) - Vatican City, September 12 - The final details of Pope Francis's trip to Georgia and Azerbaijan between September 30 and October 2 were announced on Monday.

The first stop will be in Tbilisi, where in the early afternoon the pope will be meeting with the head of state at the presidential palace and will greet authorities, the diplomatic corps and civil society representatives. He will later meet with Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II at the patriarchate of Georgia and the Assyrian Chaldean community at the Chaldean Catholic church of Saint Simon Bar Sabbae. On Saturday, October 1, the pope will be officiating over mass at the Meski stadium, followed by meetings with the clergy and churchgoers and those working for and those receiving help from Church charity. His last appointment of the day will be a visit to the Svietyskhoveli Patriarchal Cathedral of Mskheta. On Sunday, October 2, the pope will go by plane to Baku, where he will receive an official welcome at the airport in Azerbaijan. Following the official welcome, he will celebrate holy mass in the Salesian centre in Baku. After lunch with the Salesian community, he will attend the protocol welcome ceremony in the presidential palace of Genclik, and pay a courtesy visit to the head of state. In the afternoon he will meet with the authorities in the Heydar Aliyev Centre, to be followed by a private meeting with the Sheikh of the Muslims of the Caucasus in the Heydar Aliyev Mosque, and a private meeting with the Orthodox bishop of Baku and the president of the Jewish community. A total of 13 speeches and prayers will be made by the pope during his three-day trip.


EU 'onlooker' on Syria says Mattarella Common defence policy needed says Italian President

(ANSAmed) - SOFIA, SEPTEMBER 13 - The EU cannot just be an "onlooker" on the Syria crisis, President Sergio Mattarella said during his official visit to Bulgaria Tuesday. What was needed, he said, was "a concrete relaunch of a European defence policy." While talks are ongoing on Syria, essentially between Moscow and Washington, "if the EU had a common foreign and defence policy it could be a protagonist," Mattarella said, noting that Syria is of great concern to Italy. Italy has recently been upping its calls for the EU to forge a common foreign and defence policy in order to better address crises. (ANSAmed).




Italy to send 300 military personal to Libya-Pinotti Operation 'Ippocrate' to feature 100 protection force troops

(ANSAmed) - ROME, SEPTEMBER 13 - Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti told parliament Tuesday that Italy was ready to send 300 military personnel to Libya as part of an operation to set up a military field hospital at Misrata airport. Pinotti told the Lower House and Senate defence committees that operation Ippocrate will feature 60 doctors and nurses, 135 logistics personnel and 100 'protection force troops'.



Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Tuesday that Italy will set up a military hospital for forces loyal to the national unity government after a request from Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. "The Misrata militias have suffered 400 deaths and 2,500 wounded," Gentiloni told the Lower House and Senate defence committees. "In the last few months Italy has helped by taking into hospital some of the most seriously wounded and, in this spirit, came the decision to respond to a formal request from Sarraj to set up a military hospital".



Italy will name as new ambassador to Libya Giuseppe Perrone and he will take up his post in Tripoli "as soon as possible", Gentiloni added. Italy will continue its commitment to Libya, he said, "trying to play a more advanced role in the crisis".



Gentiloni also said that "the military operations begun Sunday in (Libya's) oil crescent may have a destabilising effect." He said "the operations were conducted by Sudanese and Chadian militiamen loyal to (General Khalifa) Haftar". Gentiloni said "the situation is still unstable, one cannot say that Haftar has control nor that others have it, clashes are ongoing, albeit on a smaller scale".




No Italian 'boots on the ground' in Libya, Gentiloni More like 'medics on the ground' says foreign minister

(ANSAmed) - ROME, SEPTEMBER 13 - Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Tuesday that Italy's decision to send 300 military personnel to Libya to set up a field hospital did not mean Rome was stationing ground troops in the North African state. "There aren't any Italian boots on the ground in Libya," he said. "It's more like medics on the ground, medics who need military protection. We are sending a hospital, not an aircraft carrier".(ANSAmed).




West urges immediate withdrawal from Libyan oil ports Condemnation of attacks on Ras Lanuf, Es Sider, Zueitina, Brega

(ANSAmed) - ROME, SEPTEMBER 13 - Western governments have appealed to forces loyal to a powerful Libyan general to withdraw from oil ports taken from a militia loyal to the UN-backed national unity government at the weekend. "We call for all military forces that have moved into the oil crescent to withdraw immediately, without preconditions," the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain said in a joint statement.



The western powers condemned the attacks on the ports of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider, Zueitina and Brega and reaffirmed their "intention to apply (UN Security Council) resolution 2259 including measures against illicit crude exports, activities that could damage the integrity and unity of Libyan financial institutions and the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and individuals and organisations representing a threat to unity, peace, stability and security in Libya". The United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain also reafirmed their "full support for the fledgling national unity government as the only executive authority" in the country and called for "peaceful cooperation between Libyan armed forces and an immediate commitment to creating a professional army".



(ANSAmed).




Syrian media carry reciprocal charges of violating ceasefire

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, SEPTEMBER 13 - Media controlled by different sides in the Syrian conflict carried reciprocal accusations of violating the ceasefire on Tuesday particularly around Aleppo and the capital Damascus. The official news agency Sana accused "armed groups" of twice violating the truce in Aleppo, saying that artillery shots were fired on neighbourhoods in the weastern part of the city. Instead the pan-Arab television network Al Jazeera, owned by Qatar, said the regime had broken the truce "14 times since yesterday evening", particularly in Aleppo and in the Damascus region. Al Jazeera said there were no Al Qaeda positions in the affected areas. (ANSAmed).




Croatia: after elections, negotiations for new govt start Conservatives working towards coalition with Most populists

(ANSAmed) - ZAGREB, SEPTEMBER 13 - Following their success in Sunday elections in Croatia, the conservatives led by Andrej Plenkovic, who gained 36.5% of votes, have started negotiations for the formation of a new government.



EU lawmaker Plenkovic has invited the Most (Bridge) party for talks, a populist group which confirmed itself as the third political force during the elections, with just under 10% of votes.



Unlike his predecessor at the helm of Croatia's conservative Hdz party, Plenkovic has rejected the idea of choosing a compromise leader like outgoing prime minister Tim Oreskovic, a Canadian business manager with Croatian origins. Plenkovic is insisting that he should lead the new government, as the leader of the biggest party.



The negotiations are set to be tough due to the several preconditions specified during the election campaign by Bozo Petrov, leader of Most and the outgoing deputy premier (ANSAmed).




Italy's rating at risk if referendum No, Fitch 'Negative shock for the economy'

(ANSAmed) - ROME, SEPTEMBER 13 - A No in the referendum on a reform of Italy's political machinery would be seen "as a negative shock for the economy and the Italian credit rating," Fitch's head of sovereign ratings for Europe and the Middle East, Edward Parker, said Tuesday. "Any political turbulence or problems in the banking sector that may have repercussions on the real economy or on public debt could lead to a negative intervention on Italy's rating," he added. Italy is set to vote in late November or early December on the reform that would turn the Senate into a leaner, regionally based assembly with limited lawmaking powers, cutting gridlock and expenses. A No vote would have a knock-on effect on the government of Premier Matteo Renzi, who initially said he would quit if the reform was defeated but has recently hinted that would no longer be so.



Italy's business leaders have come out strongly for a Yes vote. (ANSAmed).




(ANSAmed) - BERLIN, SEPTEMBER 13 - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday defended her policy on refugees and asylum seekers against criticism from allies and opponents and from parties on the far-right. There are "many prejudices (today) that were also latent in the past" Merkel said in an interview with Tagesspiegel in Berlin.



"We have known since the right-wing violence of the 1990s and the assassinations carried out by the terrorist group NSU that there is a potential for resentment and hatred towards foreigners," she continued.



"But the task of politics is to counter it." "People responsible for taking political decisions must do so, even when these are polarising," Merkel added. The chancellor also reaffirmed her opposition to setting an annual limit to the number of refugees and asylum seekers entering Germany. (ANSAmed).


BEIRUT - Media controlled by different sides in the Syrian conflict carried reciprocal accusations of violating the ceasefire on Tuesday particularly around Aleppo and the capital Damascus. The official news agency Sana accused "armed groups" of twice violating the truce in Aleppo, saying that artillery shots were fired on neighbourhoods in the weastern part of the city. Instead the pan-Arab television network Al Jazeera, owned by Qatar, said the regime had broken the truce "14 times since yesterday evening", particularly in Aleppo and in the Damascus region. Al Jazeera said there were no Al Qaeda positions in the affected areas.

Israel denies Syrian claim its jets shot down

Syrian armed forces have shot down an Israeli fighter jet and drone in the southwest of the country, Sana news agency reported Tuesday citing an official statement. Damascus said the aircraft were shot down near Qunaytra in the region bordering the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. However, the Israeli army has denied the reports, saying Syrian forces fired two land-air missiles but that these did not hit any aircraft.

There have been several incidents along the border between Syria and the Golan Heights in recent days, with the Israeli airforce striking Syrian army positions in response to alleged mortar attacks. In recent years Israeli jets have also carried out numerous strikes against weapons convoys heading to Lebanon's Hezbollah Shia militias who are fighting in Syria alongside government forces.
Griffiths was also named the Business Leader of the Year for the aviation sector, which he has been an important part of since joining Dubai Airports as CEO in 2007. He played an instrumental role in the flawless opening of Terminal 3 and Concourse B in 2008, Dubai World Central (DWC) in 2010 and more recently oversaw the US$7.8 billion Strategic Plan 2020 expansion project, which concluded with the seamless opening of Concourse D in February this year. He also leads the ongoing operation and development of DWC, which is currently undergoing an expansion to 26 million passengers capacity by 2018 and will eventually be the world's biggest and best airport with an annual capacity to handle up to 240 million passengers and 16 million tonnes of cargo.



The ceremony specially acknowledged Griffiths leadership in the wake of a major incident at Dubai International recently when he led efforts to recover operations, while ensuring the comfort and safety of customers at the airport. In his acceptance speech, Griffiths paid homage to Dubai Airports team of fire fighters whose speedy response, selfless dedication and bravery saved lives that day.

A total of 25 awards  selected by an independent judging panel and public voting  were given away during the evening, which also celebrated the 20th anniversary of Gulf Business magazine. The awards seeks to applaud excellence in the corporate world and recognise companies and business leaders across nine industries including aviation and transport, banking, healthcare, energy, technology, real estate, retail, media and marketing, and tourism and hospitality.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh says the Azerbaijani forces made more than 45 ceasefire violations at the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijani line of contact.

The Ministrys announcement reads: Overnight September 12-13 the Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire regime more than 45 times by firing over 750 shots from various caliber weapons at the Armenian positions across Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact.

The Defense Army forces are in control of the situation in the frontline and continue carrying out the reliable protection of the military positions.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. The ARF will continue to implement various projects set under the coalition agreement with the Republican Party with the Government led by newly appointed Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, the ARF faction Secretary Aghvan Vardanyan said.

Of course, we will continue with the new Government to implement the projects which we were carrying out with the Government led by Hovik Abrahamyan. We will implement the projects that derive from the agreement on political cooperation. We have already carried out the first steps, he said, reports Armenpress.

To the question whether he expected Hovik Abrahamyans resignation, Aghvan Vardanyan said: There is a new situation, new approaches are necessary. Yes, it was expected.

The MP referred to the news which says the acting Economy Minister Artsvik Minasyan will assume the post of the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs in the new Government. He called not to spread rumors. Do not listen to what they are talking about. They will say a lot of things, wait for the Governments formation, and everything will be clear for you. You must spread objective information rather than rumors, he said.

To the question whether he sees himself in the new Government, Aghvan Vardanyan gave negative response.
Best Business Products and Services

Would you like to submit an article in the Business category or any of the sub-category below? Click here to submit your article.

Would you like to have your product or service listed on this page? Contact us.
Eight Missionaries of Charity work in the city-state, caring for the poor residents at the St Francis of Assisi Parish Church. Cooking, washing clothes, and give spiritual support are some of the services they render to the people of the neighbourhood. In 1976 Mother Teresa made her first visit to the country.

Singapore (AsiaNews/CatholicNews)  The Missionaries of Charity of Singapore welcomed "with joy and humility" the canonisation of Mother Teresa, who was declared a saint by Pope Francis on 4 September in Rome, said Sister Mary Carmel, religious superior in the city-state. "We want to imitate her example of service to the poor and we are challenged to do so with ever greater fidelity."

The link between Singapore and Mother Teresa marks its 40th anniversary this year. The saint of Calcutta visited the country for the first time in 1976, and shortly thereafter the Missionaries of Charity set up their first facility, the Home of Our Lady, in Paya Lebar, on the east side of the island.

In 1987, Mother Teresa returned, and on that occasion she was met by President Wee Kim Wee before speaking to 20,000 young people at Toa Payoh Stadium.

In the same year, the sisters opened the Home of the Gift of Love in Punggol (northeast), a facility for the elderly and the have-nots. In 2012 the home was moved to Boon Lay district, south-western Singapore.

Sister Mary Carmel describes a typical day for the sisters at the home, which is not far from the St Francis of Assisi parish. The wake-up call is at 4.40 am. After an hour of community prayer, the sisters go to the parish church for Mass.

After the celebration, they prepare breakfast for 32 people living at the church. The sisters also take care of washing their clothing.

Some missionaries visit families who asked for prayers or require spiritual advice, most of them non-Catholics

The nuns help local residents in many ways. Some help poor families in cooking and cleaning; others do the hair for those who cannot afford it. Once a month the missionaries provide basic necessities to several Christian, Hindu and families Muslim.

Sister Carmel explains that many volunteers (about 130) assist the sisters in their charity work each week. They are of different nationalities: Singaporeans, Koreans, Japanese, Indians and Germans. The area is home to many economic migrants.

In the afternoon the sisters rest for an hour before turning to community prayers.

After preparing dinner and caring for the neediest residents, they end the day with a prayer and time together.

"Sometimes we darn clothes, Sister Carmel said, but usually we rest and chat among ourselves."

A relic of Mother Teresa is held at the Home of the Gift of Love.

At present, the superior noted, eight missionaries are active in Singapore (three of whom are Singaporeans), whilst nine Singaporean sisters work in the overseas service, in the Philippines and Hong Kong.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The development of a template for guidelines on the protection of minors and the progress of the educational programs were at the center of the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Children (PCPM) held in the Vatican from 5 to 11 September. On the same days meetings of the working groups were held on guidlines, healing and care, education, formation, theology and spirituality, canonical and civil norms.



A statement released by the Commission reads that during the assembly, statement, members of the Commission reported the progress of the training projects in progress both locally and at the Vatican. The Committee members were also invited to give lectures and participate in meetings in all five continents. Other training programs planned for the coming months include workshops in Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia. The Commission has also been asked to hold a workshops with the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC) and the Conference of Major Superiors of the United States.



In the Vatican, the Commission members were invited to meetings of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy and the Congregation for Consecrated Life and meetings are planned with the Congregations for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Clergy and Bishops.



The Commission "was happy to learn" that many Episcopal Conferences have already taken steps to adopt the proposal for a day of prayer dedicated to child protection issues.



Finally, in the coming months the Commission will launch its own website, considered "key to promoting the Commission's efforts to work with local Churches and raise awareness of the importance of the protection and safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults."
by Pierre Balanian

The Israeli air force strikes Syrian army positions in response to a mortar shell. Tensions between Syria and the Jewish state along the borders in the Golan are growing. Local sources say Israel is directly involved in the conflict with air strikes, artillery shelling and supplying weapons to the mujahedeen.

Damascus (AsiaNews) - This morning, Israeli jets struck Syrian military positions in response to a mortar shell from Syrian territory that fell on Israeli-controlled Golan Height.

An Israeli military spokesman the mortar fire was likely accidental spillover from "internal conflict in Syria". This was followed by claims that an Israeli plane and drone were shot down in southwestern Syria, which Israel strongly denied right away.

For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus government Syria is behind the shelling the Golan, although, as in this case, the Syrian military does not seem to be involved. Yesterday's was the fourth incident in the past nine days.

Despite the truce following yesterdays ceasefire, tensions remain high on the southern front, in the Quneitra area, close to Israel. Yesterday irregular Islamic Mujahedeen groups, who are fighting against the central government, sought to advance and occupy Syrian army positions. Syrian forces responded by shelling Tal Al Himariya, south of Hadar, and the surroundings of the Amal farms in the northern plains of Quneitra. Anti-government fighters travelling along the road that connects Tarnaja to Jabana el Khashab were also hit.

In this part of the Syrian province of al Quneitra, near the Israeli-held Golan Heights, the Jewish state has opened a route for wounded Syrian mujahedeen to be treated in Israeli hospitals, Israels Channel 10 reported. Sources contacted by AsiaNews confirmed the information. A witness said that that so far at least 283 rebel fighters injured in attacks against regular Syrian troops were brought to Israel for medical treatment.

If confirmed, this figure would be much higher than the total number of injured taken to Israel for treatment for the whole of 2016.

In contrast, Syrian media whilst confirming the news of the transfer of wounded to the Jewish state, goes further and speaks of Israels open and unconditional support for anti-Syrian fighters. The help is said to go beyond rescuing the wounded, and includes intelligence and air reconnaissance, as well as "direct intervention with artillery shelling and air strikes."

The Syrian military has also accused Israels air force of recently striking Syrian artillery positions in Tal Ashaar in open support for Syrian rebels, in what they call the battle of the "Southern Qadissiya".

The historical reference here is to the battle of Al Qadissiya against Persia in the early years of the Islamic invasions, seen as the most important event in the history of Islam for the Islamisation of Iraq. The battle took place between 16 and November 19 636 A.D. and ended with a Muslim victory and the killing of the Persian commander Rustum Farkhazad.

According to Israel watcher Ghassan Muhammad, speaking on a Pan-Arab TV channel, "Israel is afraid of the success of Russian-American peace talks and of the possibility of reaching a political solution in Syria". This, he adds, would mean that Israel would end up losing "its instruments in the region and would fail to achieve its strategic objectives, which include the collapse of the Syrian state and the disintegration of the Syrian armed forces."

According to an Arab journalist, Husam Zaydan, who was present in the area of the clashes, Israeli military support for Syrian armed militias "in the back area of Quneitra is obvious." It goes to show the will to "revive the plan of a partition wall in Al Tayeb, in southern Syria."

On the evening of 11 September, thousands of people took to the streets in Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-held Golan Heights, to protest against the military, logistical and medical support by the Jewish state to the united armed groups who carried out a recent attack on Hadr against the Syrian army.

According to unconfirmed information, Israel has even delivered modern weapons and drones to anti-regime mujahedeen fighters.

Israel fears the creation of an opposition group near the Golan, a 1,200-km area it occupied in 1967 during the Six Day War, similar to the emergence of Hezbollah in South Lebanon during the years of Israeli occupation. This nightmare lasted years, until Israel was forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon without having, for the first time in its history, achieved a peace agreement in exchange for evacuated occupied territories.

Now the south Lebanon nightmare also haunts Israelis around the Golan.
After the Senate, even the US House passes the bill that allows the relatives of the victims to sue states. For the GCC secretary general the norm contradicts "the foundations and the principles of international relations". Obama geared to veto the law; but two-thirds of both Houses may reverse the decision.

Riyadh (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Gulf oil monarchies are concerned about a law passed by the US Congress, which allows relatives of Sept. 11 victims to sue the countries suspected of having supported the attacks, including Saudi Arabia.

In a statement released yesterday Abdullatif al-Zayani, Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), confirms the "deep concern" of the six member countries of the group, of which Riyadh is the most important member.



To GCC leaders believe the norm "contradicts the foundations and principles of relations between States" and, in particular, targets " judicial immunity." The Secretary-General of the block also hopes that the US administration "will not pass this bill" that "will set a serious precedent" and "will have a negative impact" in international relations.



The US House gave the go ahead on September 9, with a unanimous vote, to the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. Their colleagues in the Senate had already approved the law four months ago; the ball is in the US Presidents court now Barack Obama is responsible for signing its definitive entry into force.

White House sources have already leaked the news that the president's veto will fall on the law. However, it may be overcome by a joint vote of both Houses that has at least two-thirds of the votes of deputies and senators.



Abdullatif al-Zayani expressed the hope that the US administration "will not pass this bill ... that will eventually create a serious precedent."



It would mean that the United States "will fight terrorism by all available means" and that victims of terrorist attacks "in our country will have the opportunity to use the courts and obtain justice."



Saudi Arabia is a long standing ally of the United States. 15 of the 19 bombers who carried out the September 11 attacks in the United States, which killed about 3 thousand people, come from the Wahhabi kingdom. However, direct links to Riyadh in the attacks have never emerged.



Also yesterday, two nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council - Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - have issued notes strongly criticizing the law. Abdallah Ben Zayed Al-Nahayan, foreign minister of the Emirates, said that such a law - even targets Iran, regarded by the US as "chief sponsor" of terrorism in 2015  and will have "a negative impact on international cooperation in the fighting terrorism. "
by Mary Mee-Yin Yuen*

The vote for the Legislative Council has provided needed data to show that, after the umbrella movement, Hong Kong society is changing. Traditional pan-democrats are losing ground to separatists and localists, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. The "old" politics must find new ways of communicating with young people and with the people who have the common good at heart. The edifying examples of some leaders bode well for the future.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - On September 4, 2016 the first city-wide Legislative Council (Legco) election after the 2014 Umbrella Movement was held in Hong Kong. The election is considered to be the most important legislative poll since the handover of sovereignty from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

Two years ago, pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong occupied several busy areas of Hong Kong for weeks. Western media called it Umbrella Revolution or Umbrella Movement. Protesters were demanding greater democracy in Hong Kong and concerned that Beijing was increasingly interfering in the politics of Hong Kong, thus, breaking the one country, two systems agreement.

The election encountered a record high of 58% of the electorate or around 2.22 million voters casting votes. The voters included not only those who were dissatisfied with the incumbent Hong Kong government and those who were against filibustering in the Legco, but also those who were dissatisfied with the performance of the traditional pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong who were seen as not radical enough in striving for democracy in the city.

The election result allows the pro-democracy lawmakers retaining the veto in the legislature, to block a legislature supported by pro-Beijing lawmakers from passing unjust bills, if all non-establishment legislators work together. The pro-democracy or non-establishment camp had not only retained their numbers, but had expanded their presence in the legislature by taking 30 seats among 70, with three more seats than the last election. Of the 30 pro-democracy legislators, six new faces belong to the so-called Umbrella Generationyoung people who participated in the Umbrella Movement pro-democracy protests.

A Generational Shift

Undeniably, the result of this election demonstrates a cross-political party and cross-district generational shift. Although this younger generation are lack of experience in Legco, they can bring in their values and new ideas in the Legco. Some commentators think that these young legislators do not compromise easily and it may be difficult for legislators to reach agreement. But they can also be a force of hope with new ideas in this chaotic time in Hong Kong.

Among the newly elected legislators, Nathan Law Kwun-chung is one of them. Aged 23, he is the youngest lawmaker in the history of the Legco. Law was one of the student leaders of the Umbrella Movement. With other student activists and supporters of the Umbrella Movement, Law established the political party Demosisto which campaigns for self-determination, so that Hong Kong people can decide their own future. This means Hong Kong can maintain an independent judiciary; people are guaranteed their fundamental rights and enjoy real democracy.

Law said in a press conference that the miraculous election results reflect voters desire for change. Especially in light of stalemate and deadlock in the democracy movement, voters wish for a new way of doings things so that the democracy movement will have a new future. Thus, the peoples spirit of resistance can be strengthened.

Apart from the six newly elected legislators who are regarded as self-determinationists or localists, there are also new faces among the traditional political parties, including both pan-democrat and pro-establishment camps. Only a few senior legislators who joined the Legco in 1980s or 90s were able to win and remain in the Legco. It is a pity that a number of senior elected legislators, such as labour activists Lee Cheuk-yan and Ho Sau-lan, lost their seats. They contributed a lot in the protection of the underprivileged. It is true that the new legislators lack experience in legislative work or the Legco, some of them are social activists and are capable of social analysis. They are probably able to bring in new ideas and link up issues of concern in both Legco and civil society effectively.

Towards a Political Paradigm Shift

Generational shift is just change on surface. The real change is the agenda of resistant movement, that is, from advocating universal suffrage of electing political leaders and legislators to self-determination of Hong Kongs political future, as suggested by Hong Kong scholar Fong Chi-hang.

In the past, pan-democrat and pro-establishment were two big camps in the political scene of Hong Kong. This paradigm has dominated during all these years because democratization has been the core political agenda, thus, overriding other conflicts among various political parties.

However, after experiencing the political reform controversy and the Umbrella Movement, the relationship between the Beijing government cum the Hong Kong government and Hong Kong people turns sour, leading to the emergence of localists, self-rule and self-determinationists, and indigenous. Such relationship can be found in the Legco too. In order to block unjust and evil legislation which may infringe on the basic rights of people, some legislators employ radical tactics such as filibustering. Recently, attention is given to the rising thought of independence among young people. They are dissatisfied with the increasing intervention of Beijing government in Hong Kong affairs. They query the possibility of one country, two systems policy under the Chinese Communist rule.

In this election, localists and self-determinationists won six directly elected seats which share 19 percent of the votes, with pan-democrat and pro-establishment share 36 percent and 40 percent respectively. This means almost 400,000 Hong Kong people would like to give a chance to the young self-determinationists and localists to bring change to Hong Kong. During the election campaign, they proposed self-determination through democracy, the sustainability of the Basic Law, and the future of Hong Kong in 2047 should be decided by Hongkongers. While the localists force is still emerging, it has potential to expand. It may not be able to integrate with the traditional pan-democrat easily. In fact, the localists tries to keep a distance from the pan-democrat which is seen as old-fashion and not progressive enough. The other way round, some supporters of pan-democrat are also dissatisfied with the localists who have taken away votes and support from pan-democrat. The localists are even suspected of being undercover of the pro-Beijing government.

Besides, there are differences in the localists and self-determinationists faction, in regard to their vision and ways of resistance. While the self-determinationists incline to be leftists, emphasizing community-building, mutual assistance, and sharing resources; others localists incline to be rightists, focusing on ethnicity and separation between Hongkongers and mainlanders. The former insists on employing peaceful, rational and non-violent means whereas the latter upholds valiant means when necessary.

Nevertheless, localism and self-determination became two keywords in the political scene of Hong Kong. There is a tendency of forming two big camps: localists/self-determinationists versus pro-establishment. Thus, the core issue of political reform becomes the centre-periphery relations apart from democratization. Such political shift can bring many uncertainties. Not all citizens favor independence and employing violent and radical means to achieve democracy. It is also unknown whether they can cooperate easily in the Legco. However, it is no doubt that the new force in the Legco with their supporters hope to participate in the formulation of Hong Kongs future, not just waiting for others decision passively. This is exactly the spirit of the Umbrella Movement which focuses on the agency and subjectivity of Hongkongers, with the slogans determine our own future and not to forget the original goal. This is in line with the Catholic social thought which gives emphasis on human dignity, freedom to determine ones future, the social nature of human persons, social responsibility and participation, and common good. In the view of this, Hong Kong government should try every means to improve the social and political situation and listen to peoples voices, including the legislators who represent people to formulate policies and laws.

Speaking Truth and Courage

Apart from political reform, livelihood matters and peoples participation are concerns of candidates during the election campaign. Indeed, they are inseparable. The king of votes Eddie Chu Hoi-dick, who got 84,121 votes, the highest number obtained by any candidate, is a strong advocate of democratic self-determination and bottom-up democracy, that is, to build up and consolidate democratic forces in the community. At the same time, he is a core member of a community movement organization Land Justice League which suggests urban and rural areas co-exist and develop side-by-side. He has engaged in preserving farmland and developing a sustainable communal economy in the New Territories, environmental and heritage preservation activism, and accompanying and organizing people of forced eviction, for example, residents of a farming village called Choi Yuen Chuen.

During election forum, Chu disclosed the problem of the collusion between the government, businesses, rural forces and the triads as these forces try to monopolize political and economic power, reinforcing unjust policies on land planning and development. Chus in-depth analysis of the social problems and the courage to speak up allowed him to gain a landslide victory in the Legco election. However, he also faces intimidation and threats during and soon after the election. From his example, we can see the importance of possessing courage and intelligence as a political and community leader as well as among citizens. This is very much lacking in the existing political scene in Hong Kong. That is the reason why Chu can gain so much support from people of different walks of life and classes. All Hongkongers should have the courage to support such kind of leader too.

Mutual Support and Integrity

During the election, there are some touching stories which show the integrity and solidarity among candidates who are indeed competitors.

In Eastern New Territories, one of the geographical election districts, Alvin Yeung and Leung Kwok-hung, two candidates who have eminent fame and strong power to rally support, can win the election easily. However, both of them put the common good and welfare of Hong Kong as their priority rather their own self-interest. Instead of merely asking people to cast vote to them, Yeung and Leung offered help to other pan-democrat candidates and campaign for votes with them. Yeung and Leung asked people to support pan-democrat camp so that more candidates of this camp could win in the election. Just before the election, even when opinion poll showed that Leung may not gain enough votes to win, he refused to put forward urgent appeal as this may endanger other candidates. This indeed reflected the spirit of solidarity and mutual support. They are outstanding political leaders with long-term vision. Finally, in Eastern New Territories was the constituency that the pro-democrat or non-pro-establishment camp won most seats, including Yeung and Leung, the two political leaders who are capable in coordination and mutual support.

One of the candidates who got support from Alvin Yeung and is well-respected is Fernando Cheung. Cheung is famous for helping the vulnerable groups, including disabilities, people recover from mental illness, and asylum seekers. Since these marginalized groups are often blamed as burden of the society and they cannot secure votes, few Legco members stand on their side and concern about them. I saw other candidates in election forum challenged Cheung for helping fake refugees and wasted resources of Hong Kong. At a certain point, opinion poll showed that Cheung did not gain enough support. But Cheung stood firmly on the side of the vulnerable and insisted that he would not change his position in order to gain votes.

In the words of Cheung, Candidates of pan-democrat, though belong to different political parties and in competition with each other in election, should cooperate and unite with each other. Our goal is not only to secure individual seats, but to secure enough power in the Legco to resist the pro-establishment camp. Otherwise, the pan-democrat camp would lose the veto power in the Legco. Thus, we are not appealing for ourselves, but appealing for Hongkongers, for justice, and for the vulnerable of the society. In Cheung, we can see integrity, the virtues of courage and justice, and solidarity with the poor.

It is true that there are many uncertainties in regard of the Legco and future of Hong Kong. Moreover, many Hong Kong people still only concern their own interests. However, the active voting behavior of Hongkongers and employment of strategic voting to non-establishment candidates are compatible with the Umbrella Movement spirit saving Hong Kong by oneself. Moreover, we can see new ideas and hope among the new legislators of the younger generation and their supporters. We also find the virtues of mutuality, solidarity and courage among some old and new Legco members. These are important qualities of a political leader as well as every citizen. They are also imperative elements to overcome difficulties and a society with common good.

* Researcher at the Catholic Studies Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Today marks the feast of the "sacrifice to God" for the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims can not go to the most famous temple. The authorities impose prayers in local mosques. Helicopters and drones flying over the area to prevent gatherings.

Srinagar (AsiaNews) - For the first time in the history of India, today the Muslims living in Kashmir can not go to the famous Hazratbal temple in Srinagar, summer capital of the state, to celebrate the festival of Eid-al-Adha. In fact, the Indian authorities have imposed a curfew in all 10 districts and government have told the faithful to pray at local mosques.

Meanwhile security has been stepped up throughout the territory, while clashes continue between protesters and the police, which have increased the death toll of the most violent protests in recent years to 80 deaths.



Today the Muslims celebrate the "feast of sacrifice to God" that marks the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Usually in Kashmir celebrations include the pilgrimage to Hazratbal and the ritual sacrifice of sheep and goats. Today, however, the shops are closed, the streets and markets deserted. Only protesters are on the streets after separatist leaders called on them to block the national highway that runs in the Valley.

Meanwhile the authorities in Delhi have scrambled helicopters and drones for the monitoring of the area and to prevent public gatherings.



The security forces killing of Burhan Wani, one of the best-known separatist leaders, sparked a new wave of violence that is causing serious damage to the local population. To date, over 10 thousand have been injured, the schools are closed, children attend classes only through the work of volunteers who have opened the doors of their homes and mosques to ensure a continuity in teaching. Appeals for peace launched by prestigious personalities such as a group of imams and Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Laureate have fallen on deaf ears.
by Mathias Hariyadi

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - A Catholic teacher, responsible for a group for youth ministry, was found dead last night in Ilaga (Puncak Jaya district, Papua province). The news was disclosed in a note from the Commission for Youth Ministry of the Indonesian Bishops Conference (KWI Kompek). Yuni Yesra Patatang, 27, was head of the Catholic youth group (Orang Muda Katolik).



The teacher's body was found at about 18.30 with two bullet holes. The murder has not been claimed.



Yuni Yesra Patatang was born to a family of Toraja ethnic group and had graduated in catechetical studies. In addition to following the youth group, he was also a teacher of religion and catechism in elementary schools. working part-time as a taxi driver.



Next October, the Catholic youth will celebrate the National Day in the diocese of Manado (North Sulawesi). Young people are expected from 37 dioceses across the country, which will be hosted by local families for a few days of living together and prayer. In 2017 Indonesia will host the Asian Youth Day.



Puncak Jaya is one of the most dangerous districts in Papua province, where several separatist groups (such as Organisasi Papua Merdeka) are still active, fighting with government troops.
"Not just see but look. Not just hear but listen. Not just meet and pass by but stop. And dont just say what a shame, poor people, but allow ourselves to be moved by pity. And then draw near, touch and say in the language that comes to each one of us in that moment, the language of the heart: Do not weep, and donate at the very least a drop of life".

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Overcoming the culture of indifference and building a true "fruitful" culture of encounter, "that returns to each person their dignity as a child of God." This was Pope Francis invitation during Mass celebrated this morning in Casa Santa Marta, commenting on the Gospel passage (Lk 7.11 to 17) which proclaims to us: an encounter; an encounter between a man and a woman, between an only living son and an only son who had died; among a joyful crowd because they had encountered Jesus and were following him and a group of people, weeping, accompanying that woman, who had come out from the gate of the city; an encounter between the exit gate and the entry gate. The sheep fold. An encounter that makes us reflect on our way of interacting with each other.

In the Gospel, the Pope continued, we read that Jesus was moved with pity. He pointed out that the pity felt by Christ is not the same as we have when going out in the streets, we see something sad (and say) what a shame! Jesus doesnt pass by, he is moved with pity. He goes up to the woman for a real encounter and then performs the miracle.

In this gospel encounter, explained the Pope, we not only see his tenderness but also the fruitfulness of that encounter that restores people and things to their proper place.

We are accustomed to a culture of indifference and we must strive and ask for the grace to create a culture of encounter, of a fruitful encounter, of an encounter that restores to each person his or her own dignity as a child of God, the dignity of a living person. We are accustomed to this indifference, when we see the disasters of this world or small things: What a shame, poor people, look how they are suffering, and then we carry on. An encounter. And if I dont look, its not enough to see, no, (we must) look  if I dont stop, if I dont look, if I dont touch, if I dont speak, I cannot have an encounter and I cannot help to build a culture of encounter.

The message from todays reading, said Pope Francis, stems from that encounter between Jesus and his people and we all are in need of his Word and need that encounter with Him.

In our families, at the dinner table, how many times while eating, do people watch the TV or write messages on their cell phones. Each one is indifferent to that encounter. Even within the heart of society, which is the family, there is no encounter. May this help us to strive for this culture of encounter, just as simply as Jesus did so. Not just see but look. Not just hear but listen. Not just meet and pass by but stop. And dont just say what a shame, poor people, but allow ourselves to be moved by pity. And then draw near, touch and say in the language that comes to each one of us in that moment, the language of the heart: Do not weep, and donate at the very least a drop of life.
In our earlier piece Hybrid Warfare: The Killing of Mullah Akhtar Mansour; we have elucidated on the nature of Hybrid Warfare and how America used it conventionally and non-conventionally to target the Taliban chief in a drone strike in Pakistans Quetta province. The use of Drone warfare in striking the convoy of Taliban chief Mullah Mansour and simultaneously hacking the social media accounts/websites of Taliban to prevent propaganda is a classic example of asymmetrical warfare techniques deployed by the US in tackling terrorism. The concept of Hybrid Warfare is not new and novel as the same subversive techniques and tools have been used in the past by states and their intelligence agencies. KGB used disinformation and propaganda as a tool of asymmetrical warfare in the Cold War over large swaths of its populace and regions that fell under its sphere of influence as did CIA to prevent the spread of communism in the US.

However, Hybrid Warfare has taken a whole new dimension with the advent of technology and the digital world where cyberspace can be manipulated to spread propaganda and weaponised in the form of cyber hacking. Hybrid Warfare; with the marriage of technology with conventional methods has become a next generation tool which the world is slowly catching up with. We shall further read on as to how the powers like Russia, China, US and even Pakistan are using Hybrid Warfare against their enemies.

Russia has been one of the best exponents of Hybrid Warfare since decades (under KGB and now FSB); using disinformation and propaganda with technology as part of asymmetrical warfare. One of the prime examples of this was Russias sudden manoeuvre in Ukraine and the subsequent annexation of Crimea in March 2014 after the coup in Ukraine which deposed pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych. Russia has vociferously claimed that it was the US and its Deep State who engineered the Euromaidan Coup in a bid to encroach upon the Russian sphere of influence by forcing Ukraine to sign an association accord with EU and become a part of NATO. President Putin being an ex-KGB man responded to what he called asymmetrical warfare by the US by launching the most potent technique from the Soviet playbook blended with modern technology in the form of Hybrid Warfare.

President Putin retaliated to the engineered Ukrainian Coloured Revolution by the US by swiftly moving into Crimea and annexing it via a referendum that justified its occupation. How did this happen? Russian forces and its backed armed militias took over the airport and parliament in the autonomous province of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine and deployed information warfare that KGB was famous for during the Cold War. Russian-backed media carried out incessant propaganda in Crimea with ads, posters and billboards asking the majority Russian-dominated Crimean people to choose between the Neo-Nazis in Ukraine or the patriotic Russians who were touted as a liberators or saviours. The propaganda was carried out at a mass scale in Crimea to such an affect that in the Referendum that followed more than 90 percent of the local populace voted to join Russia; something that was viewed by the West as rigged and an illegal act of annexation of Ukraines sovereign territory. Thus, Russia carried out Hybrid Warfare most effectively by backing rebels in the provinces of Eastern Ukraine along with incessant information warfare blaming the West for the civil war in Ukraine.

Russia used multiple strategies as part of Hybrid Warfare in Ukraine like 1) Annexing Crimea after massive propaganda brandishing the Ukrainian Government as Neo-Nazis, 2) Backing the rebels in Donetsk and other provinces of Eastern Ukraine who were abetting the insurgency with the plausible deniability of Russian active backing, 3) Massive information warfare blaming the West for orchestrating unrest and civil war in Ukraine. Through all of this, Russia converted the Ukrainian conflict to its advantage; strengthening its position among the Normandy Four (a diplomatic group of senior representatives of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine formed to resolve the situation in East Ukraine) who acceded to granting greater autonomy to the rebel provinces in Eastern Ukraine while totally leaving the status of Crimea out of the purview of any settlement.

The Russian use of Hybrid Warfare also was exemplified in the aftermath of the MH-17 Malaysian Airlines shoot-down in Eastern Ukraine that killed more than 250 passengers in July 2015. While the western media drew the link of the crash to the Russian-backed rebels who had just days before shot down a Ukrainian Sukhoi military jet with a similar BUK missile; Russia countered the charges with a barrage of information warfare across the digital world, media and social media platforms suggesting that MH-17 was a Western conspiracy to blame Russia to divert and cover its role of backing the Neo-Nazis to power in Ukraine.

The information warfare carried by the US and its Deep State and the Russian counter to same provide apt examples of Hybrid Warfare where conventional methods are married with unconventional means such as disinformation, propaganda and subversive techniques using the digital world like Social Media, blogs, media outlets, etc. to propagate biased versions for the justification of actions. Russia has even blamed the Ukrainian Government of stopping the electrical supply to the Crimean Peninsula to target Russias control over the region.

The duel between the US and Russia on Hybrid Warfare was exhibited in Syria as well. The Russian backing of the Assad Regime along with Iran throughout the Syrian Civil War has mired the conflict into a never-ending saga with significant human misery in the form of war crimes and the refugee crisis. Here, Russia deployed Hybrid Warfare by covertly arming and backing the Assad regime and its sponsored Shia Militias, terror groups like Hezbollah, etc. who were engaged in a battle with the Wahhabi/Salafi terror groups like ISIS and/or other radical jihadists groups like Jabhat Al Nusra (Al Qaeda affiliate), etc. In response to the US threat of bombing the Assad regime and facing the advancing rebel militias, Russia quickly mobilized its forces into Syria; deploying its advanced air power into bombing rebel-held areas to help fortify the Assad regime. Russia, during its brief bombing attack launched a massive information warfare campaign about ISIS being pulverized by it to the extent that even some western media outlets carried out the Russian propaganda which was a clear exaggeration as Russia had bombed the Rebel-held areas like Idlib and Hama in North Western Syria where there was hardly any ISIS presence. Russian media outlets and blogger sites also blamed the West for the human catastrophe that the Free Syrian Army, Jaish Al Fateh, Arhar Al Sham etc. have brought on the region while totally ignoring the grave war crimes Russia has committed by aiding the barrel bombing campaigns of the Assad Regime on schools, markets, hospitals, etc.; turning cities into mass ghost towns and graveyards.

While the blame for the conflict in Syria lies with the US and its allies and Russia, Iran and their sponsored militias; the information warfare carried out by both the sides like Belling Cats expose of the Russian strikes and Sputniks expose of the Western charade on terror is a clear marker of the war that is being fought in the digital world and cyberspace. Belling Cat is a pro-West open source investigative journalism platform while Sputnik is an online news and radio broadcast service established by the Russian government. After maintaining a hard stand, Russia has used Hybrid Warfare to its absolute advantage by now offering a ceasefire to soften the moderate opposition to the Assad Regime and achieved its objectives of maintaining its strategic foothold like the Black Sea fleet in Crimea or the Tartus naval base on the Syrian coast in the Mediterranean.

Russia has further been able to weaponize cyberspace by hacking the DNC (Democratic National Convention) Server and looking into Hillary Clintons emails releasing them through Wikileaks and other platforms to influence the US elections in favour of Donald Trump. This is another example of marrying conventional war with asymmetrical weapons like Cyber Space, Internet and propaganda to gain an advantage over the opponent for your desired result. Russia has also been using Hybrid Warfare to target the EU states by first backing Assad and his bombings in Syria causing the refugee crisis in Europe and simultaneously backing the Anti-Refugee pro-right parties in Europe like Maria Le pens front in France and criticizing the EU refugee policy. This way Russia has been able to seed divisions within EU to maintain itself as a dominant power on the European Continent.

While Russia has been one of the best exponents of aggressive Hybrid Warfare, the Chinese play is more subtle but equally lethal. China also has a closed internet model where anti-China propaganda and access to anything western is blacked out. The Chinese have also mastered the art of Information Warfare by weaponising their populace by indoctrinating them with the CPCs nationalistic version of history (the Patriot Education Program); claiming the Chinese people as victims of the Western Imperial powers over the last few centuries. The Chinese regularly violate human rights on the Tibetans, ethnic Uighurs, Falun Gong practitioners, etc. by denying them basic freedom while professing a peaceful rise. We have explained the Chinese mindset and their psyche in our book The New Global Order and our earlier article on the MSS.

The Chinese have mastered the art of deception learnt from the Sun Tzu military doctrines. The Chinese deception is about pretending to be pacifist and a power that seeks a fair global order while in reality, it aims of being the sole hegemon, capable of replacing the United States as the sole super power of the world. The Chinese art of deception was craftily deployed in the early 1950s and 60s when China used the Panchsheel agreement with India to legitimize itself globally when it was considered a pariah to the international comity of nations. The Chinese deception strategy talks of biding its time and engaging with its rivals while quietly building capacities to ultimately overturn the apple cart of the Westphalian Order at the right time. China used the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union to open itself to the western capitals whilst legitimizing its claims of One China which includes the Autonomous region of Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan. The Chinese have also been using deception along with information warfare like relying on Qing dynasty maps to claim regions far across from Tawang in India to the Far East in Siberia and the South China Sea.

The Chinese have long used information warfare like espionage, hacking and stealing Intellectual Property of the critical US weapon systems like Predator Drones, F-22 Stealth Jets, developing their jets based on these technologies and providing cutting-edge technology to their armed forces. Along with this China has also been engaged in developing asymmetrical weapons that can take down critical communication satellites in Asia-Pacific and is developing systems that could jam GPS in the event of warfare, and laser-guided weapons that could provide more high-tech weaponry to an already advanced military in the world. Chinas marriage of Asymmetrical warfare techniques along with Russian style propaganda makes its version of Hybrid Warfare even more lethal given the economic might China enjoys in the world after the United States.

Chinas used of Hybrid Warfare can be best measured in the context of the battle of South China Sea. Just like Russia, China has deployed a multi-layered strategy of Hybrid Warfare to legitimize its claims over the entire region of South China Sea. China first used the Qing Dynasty maps for its 9 Dash Line to claim the entire area, then used its fishing militias as a low level subversive operation to stake claim to the region while keeping an eye on the international naval activities and finally used land reclamation as a tool to build artificial islands like the Spratly; operating civilian and military jets from a landing strip thereon. With this China can now impose an ADIZ (Air Defence Identification Zone) over almost the whole of South China Sea. Moreover, China fully anticipating the UN verdict going against it went on an extensive propaganda with campaigns advocating its claims in the South China Sea. It splashed out on full page ads in an Indian daily and even released a small video film in Times Square in New York revealing the depth of the Chinese propaganda machinery!

In addition, China has also used deception as a component of Hybrid Warfare. Examples are its offering Philippines a dialogue in wake of the UN Tribunal verdict i to assuage tempers and buy time before it is in a position to decisively tilt the scales in its favour or the Panchsheel agreement with India while quietly building on in the region of Aksai China which it claims to be its part based on its historical claims. The Chinese version of Hybrid Warfare is emboldened by Chinas economic might and with the entry of its Yuan in SDR that paves the way for a potential challenger to the US, the world will need to wake up to the masterful treachery that China seeks to carry out through the effective use of Hybrid Warfare. China is using Hybrid Warfare by keeping tensions below the point of escalation or conflict while gaining strategically. Chinas strength comes from its military might, and it is fully aware that in the current situation of a dull economy and weak growth, it can ill afford a war, and this is where asymmetrical warfare becomes very important.

While Russia, China and the United States have been the best exponents of Hybrid Warfare, there are other countries like Pakistan who have taken a leaf out of Afghan Jihad and used proxy war and propaganda as tools to validate their claims. Pakistan has for long funded terror groups operating from its soil in a proxy war against India to bleed it by thousand cuts and to wrest control of the region of Jammu & Kashmir. It has also been funding the separatists in the Kashmir valley who toe its line; decrying the Indian state as an occupying force. With the calibrated used of terrorists and separatists backed by an ecosystem nurtured over the decades through the Track II circuit; the Pakistani military intelligence has been able to build a vocal section of society in India that even questions the Indian claims on Jammu & Kashmir.

A section of the Indian Intellectual elite is a tool of Pakistans Hybrid Warfare as we have covered in our earlier article. In response to Pakistan, India has now upped its game in Hybrid Warfare by backing the Baloch Movement and the suppression of human rights in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir through media, cyberspace and diplomacy to isolate Pakistan; causing flutters in the region as the Hybrid Warfare between two countries reaches to a new level and the curfew in Jammu & Kashmir continues.

As time changes so will, the nature of warfare; and India and other countries across the world will have to wake to the new reality of the 21st century where wars are no longer fought on conventional battlefields alone but also asymmetrically over the digital world, cyberspace, social media, etc. The technology revolution has brought in a completely new dimension to warfare i.e. the battle of mind space or ideological subversion which we have extensively covered in our book The New Global Order. This form of Hybrid Warfare is lethal and potent. Moreover, its not just the countries and their intelligence agencies but also a host of terror groups that are using ideological subversion for their gains. The bloody nose that Israel received at the hands of Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon War and the use of cyberspace and graphic videos by terror groups like ISIS further underscore the importance of not only understanding the nature of Hybrid Warfare but also developing a credible deterrent and counter to the same.
Law firms of all scales are beginning to embrace technology in response to the forces of digital disruption.Tae Royle is the head of digital legal services at Ashurst . He makes the distinction between artificial general intelligence, the kind of AI suggesting robot lawyers, and artificial narrow intelligence which allows firms to streamline processes through machine learning.We see a lot of focus on technology, areas such as blockchain, contract automation and artificial intelligence, he told Australasian Lawyer.These are great initiatives because technology helps lawyers deliver legal services faster and more consistently which is better for all clients.But innovation isnt all about the technology. Ashursts innovation division, Ashurst Advance, is growing rapidly, now with around 60 employees.Royle said that following a survey of in-house counsel globally, Ashurst identified the need for in-house teams to innovate, but at the same time, a lack of resources to do so.We think it is crucial for law firms to partner with clients to help them innovate and achieve their targets, Royle said.The good news is that there is plenty of low hanging fruit  lawyers can achieve some fairly extraordinary efficiencies by making relatively simple changes to how they approach various issues.Royle will be one of many speakers at this months Lawtech Summit, exploring how many firms are responding to digital disruption.Kate Dillon, knowledge and innovation manager at Gilbert + Tobin, spearheaded the firms lawyer coding lessons as part of an innovation push.This is about better understanding client needs and the technology, she said.Law firms need to operate in a constant state of beta.In late October, the Summit will host its 11annual Lawtech awards, in conjunction with Chilli IQ, recognising industry leaders in digital disruption.
Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has announced a combination with Canadian firm Bull Housser & Tupper in Vancouver.While NRF already has a presence in much of Canada, the combination adds British Columbia to the mix and will bolster the firms growing Pacific Rim practice which includes a recently-added office in San Francisco.The global firms existing managing partner for Canada Charles Hurdon will remain in that role for the expanded business as will Vancouver office managing partner Janet Grove.Clyde & Co Australia has outgrown its Sydney office and will move down the street to a new landmark building.The firm has seen its headcount in the city more than double since the start of 2016, adding 5 partners and more than 40 staff from the boutique insurance firm Lee & Lyons. Hires from other law firms have resulted in a team of more than 120.The new location is the 18-storey 333 George Street where the firm will occupy 5 floors with staff on levels 9 to 12 and the client reception on level 15.The building is expected to be completed later this year with Clyde & Co expected to relocate early in 2017.Real estate special counsel Rahul Parrab is joining Squire Patton Boggs in Sydney from Baker & McKenzie.Parrab is a hospitality and real estate transactions expert and has recently advised on a number of high profile matters, including the sales and acquisitions of hotels, resorts and tourism assets in Australia and Asia Pacific.Olswang has expanded its capabilities in Asia Pacific with the launch of a one-man operation in South Korea.US-trained lawyer Steve Kim has joined the firm as a consultant and will work closely with the teams in Singapore and Olswangs association firms in the region.His focus will be on developing the firms profile with the growing South Korean technology sector including deals, litigation and IP advice.
Rocket Lawyer is expanding to continental Europe after inking a joint venture with European legal publishing company Editions Lefebvre Sarrut (ELS).



The US-based online legal services provider will first launch in France this autumn, hoping to expand to Spain and the Netherlands next, a report from The Law Society Gazette said.



The joint venture is backed by Google Ventures, Morgan Stanley Ventures and Swiss bank Salfort Privatbank.



Rocket Lawyer allows users to create legal documents researched and written by legal staff which can be signed online and accessed from any connected device. It also allows users to get legal advice such as for document reviews.



It initially launched in the United Kingdom four years ago and has since attracted more than 200,000 to sign up for the service there.



The Law Society Gazette said that users in the UK have already created more than one million legal documents and they work with more than 100 UK lawyers for the more complex tasks users of the service have.



According to The Lawyer, Rocket Lawyer has around 15 million registered users who create about 30 million legal documents a year and about 10,000 lawyer engagements every month.



Charley Moore, the founder and CEO of Rocket Lawyer, did not reveal his companys revenues but told the publication that it is in excess of $40 million.



He also told The Lawyer their plan is to grow organically in Europe as opposed to acquiring other companies.



Weve built a technology platform that enables us to support the laws of local jurisdictions and so our plan is to build organically rather than by acquisition, Moore said.



Our market is the entire adult population of a country. Were proud of the commitment ELS is making to deliver European lawyers with modern digital tools to bring the benefits of affordable legal services to all.
The State of Wisconsin has appealed a federal judges decision to overturn the murder conviction of Brendan Dassey which could see him remain behind bars.



On 12 August, US Magistrate Judge William E. Duffin granted the wrongly-convicted mans writ of habeas corpus. He said a jury convicted Dassey based on a coerced confession in light of the case investigators repeated false promises of having nothing to worry about to the then 16-year-old who had no supportive adult and had intellectual deficits.



Wisconsin State Attorney-General Brad Schimel told Variety that the overturning of Dasseys conviction is a mistake.



We believe the magistrate judges decision that Brendan Dasseys confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law, he said.



Schimel also stressed that Dasseys confession has withstood the examination of two courts.



Two state courts carefully examined the evidence and properly concluded that Brendan Dasseys confession to sexually assaulting and murdering Teresa Halbach with his uncle, Steven Avery, was voluntary, and the investigators did not use constitutionally impermissible tactics, he said.



Dassey, who along with his uncle Steven Avery was featured in the hit 10-part Netflix documentary Making A Murderer, was just 16 at the time freelance photographer Teresa Halbach was murdered and her burned body was found in the Averys auto salvage yard in 2005.



Dassey, who turns 27 this October, had been sentenced to 41 years in prison for first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilation of a corpse.



However, doubts were cast on the conviction of both Dassey and Avery after the popular Netflix documentary. The series even spawned a White House petition that got more than 130,000 signatures urging President Barrack Obama to pardon both men.



Avery was convicted for rape in the 1980s and spent 18 years in prison until he was exonerated due to DNA evidence, only to be imprisoned again for the murder of Halbach.



Dasseys release was scheduled to be within 90 days since judge Duffins decision on 12 August. Should the Wisconsin State appeal to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals succeed, Dassey will not be released from prison.



According to Schimel, the Halbach family have been notified of the appeal and fully supports the States decision to seek justice on behalf of their daughter.
I am Italian,I live in Milano now but I lived in Australia for 3 years, till last october. I have a PR visa and I might get back down under, one day or another, maybe...
My Wife is here on a tourist visa(no working rights, max 3 months stay).

Yesterday we applied for her 820(partner temp visa) and got a bridging visa A.



BVA is not currently in effect as the visitor visa is in effect, condition on BVA is NIL & mentions that once into effect she will have full working rights.



Q1. Will her BVA come into effect at end of three months? It's multiple entry visitor visa valid untill July 2017.



Q2. If BVA comes into effect will she have working rights?



Please let me know if you need more information.
Hi,

I got an officer send me email and she request more information such as police check and form 80.

However, i login to my immi account. I accidentally press "information provided" and now the status changed to "application in progress". But I am still waiting for police check certificate. I only submitted form 80



What should i do? Should I reply to officer by email and said i made a mistake.



Thanks

Emily.
Mark Fields, the CEO of Ford Motor Company , has announced that the automaker plans to sell driverless cars to the public by 2025. The statement was made in a speech held Monday at the companys headquarters. While the date is nine years away, it is worth noting that it is still a significant milestone when whatever automaker announces plans like these.It is interesting to note that Fields did not designate the year 2025 as the precise time when Ford will sell self-driving cars to the public.However, he referred to the moment as around mid-decade, which can be easily interpreted as the year mentioned above. There is a possibility that the carmaker will release autonomous vehicles sooner, as well as a chance that they may come later than 2025 to market.The most recent news from Ford comes after the automaker has confirmed plans to have a fleet of self-driving cars on its Dearborn campus in Michigan by 2018 , and the objective of bringing a fully autonomous car for ride-sharing on the market by 2021 Automotive News notes.The sale of driverless cars from Ford to the public would come almost four years after this typoe of vehicle will be available through ride-sharing.Even if Fords objective is about nine years away, the move is still significant in the global context of the automotive industry. Few automakers have announced precise goals regarding the date of launch of their first entirely autonomous cars. CEOs and officials avoid statements like these, because they can be interpreted in an unfortunate way if the promise does not come true.The Blue Oval is a major player in the domain, and making an announcement like this is not gratuitous for a corporation of this size. Furthermore, while Tesla might be first to sell fully autonomous vehicles to the general public, Ford might revolutionize the automobile once again and sell those cars at a more affordable price.
HP

4WD

The French brand made a switch from 2008 to 3008 , so that Peugeot could help promote the upcoming 3008 production model with the aid of its competition version, the 3008 DKR.With the unveiling of the all-new racing car from Peugeot Sport, the French brand has also published an image of the production model 3008, which is scheduled to be revealed at this years Paris Motor Show. We expect to see the 3008 DKR as well, especially since Paris used to have a link with the Dakar Rally.Peugeot has explained that it has improved all of the strengths of the 2008 DKR and placed them on the 3008 DKR, while weaknesses were reduced to the smallest possible degree. Evidently, all was done according to FIA specifications, so some restrictions were applied here and there.We already know that the 3.0-liter V6 turbodiesel unit will have an output that will be lower by 20because of new regulations. The latter which mandates the use of a 38-mm restrictor instead of a 39mm unit.Peugeot Sport says that its latest racing car should be faster regardless, because peak output will be reached sooner in the rev range and that drivability was improved.The suspension of this car has been overhauled, and the team has worked most on geometry and dampers. Another significant improvement is with the air conditioning system, which is meant to operate in scorching heat for up to 12 hours a day, so that the athletes onboard will have more focus when driving in the desert.Peugeot has not ditched the two-wheel-drive configuration with the 3008 DKR. The brand managed to win the Dakar with a 2WD car nine months ago, for the first time in 15 years.Therefore, the French believeis unnecessary to win in Dakar. To ensure their success, the reliability of this model was significantly improved, Peugeot says.The roster for the Peugeot Total Team of 2017 includes champions Sebastien Loeb, Cyril Despres, Stephane Peterhansel, and Carlos Sainz. None of the drivers above requires any presentation to a petrolhead.The first race that the new 3008 DKR will enter is the Morocco Rally, held this October, which will bring the new model against the 2008 DKR
All Nigerian cars must have speed limiting devices installed by Oct. 1, reports Premiumtimesng.com. Enforcement of the policy will start with commercial vehicles and fleet operators because they carry more passengers, according to the Nigerian Federal Road Safety Commission. Every vehicle in the country is expected to have the device within two years.

The technology was introduced in 2015, generating debate about its workability. The Nigerian Senate held a public hearing to discuss the policy, but ultimately supported its enforcement. The policy is expected to greatly reduce road accidents. Speeding causes more than 60% of collisions on Nigerian roads, according to the report.

Starting Oct. 1, any commercial vehicle without the device will be impounded and the driver will be arrested until the device is installed.
Photo by Mike Antich.

Ford Motor Co. plans to sell a fully autonomous car to the public by the middle of the 2020 decade, after it plans to supply a fully autonomous vehicle to ride-hailing companies, the company told Automotive Fleet.

Bloomberg, Road and Track and several other outlets initially reported that CEO Mark Fields said the company would offer driverless cars to the public by 2025, but sources told Automotive Fleet there is no precise timetable.

CEO Mark Fields provided an update about the company's autonomous vehicle initiative during a Sept. 12 speech at company headquarters. Fields told gathered reporters including Automotive Fleet that Ford sees the next decade being defined by "the automation of the automobile."

Ford will also begin shuttling its employees in fully autonomous cars at its Dearborn, Michigan headquarters in 2018, reports the Detroit News

Ford is setting itself up to become a broader mobility and automotive company. Earlier this month, Ford purchased Chariot, a San Francisco-based crowd-sourced shuttle service. Ford.

In August, Ford announced it would provide fully autonomous vehicles to ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. The company announced it would invest in  or collaborating with  four startups including Velodyne, SAIPS, Nirenberg Neuroscience, and Civil Maps. Ford is doubling its Silicon Valley team and more than doubling its Palo Alto campus.

Ford is also partnering with start-ups Spatial, HAAS Alert, and Cargo to explore next-generation vehicle technologies such as interactive mapping, connectivity, and ride-hailing.

Autonomous vehicles are part of Ford's Smart Mobility plan to become a leader in autonomous vehicles, connectivity, mobility, the customer experience, and analytics.

Originally posted on Automotive Fleet
Several thousand vehicles  from other states  have been moved to south Louisiana to accommodate the demand for rental transportation after thousands of cars, trucks, and SUVs were lost in the flooding last month, according to a report by the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.

Enterprise and Hertz have deployed more than 9,000 vehicles from other states, according to the report. Hertz had 3,000 additional rentals last month in Louisianas flood affected areas and filled 75% of vehicle reservations by the end of August.

We definitely have been working to ensure that we have vehicles here in the state, Bill Masterson, a Hertz spokesman, told the Business Report.

Hertz is still moving vehicles into Louisiana from cities as far as Savannah, Ga., and Jacksonville, Fla., Masterson told the Business Report.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau estimated that as many as 100,000 insured cars and trucks were damaged by the flooding, according to the report.

Click here for the full Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.
Samsung Electronics is advising consumers to return their Galaxy Note 7 smart phones immediately. The South Korean company announced the recall when several complaints on the device's defective batteries were reported just two weeks after the product was launched.

The product was made available to the public mid-August of this year. As of September 1st, 35 cases of the smart phone catching fire have been reported.

Most of these cases happened when the device was being charged.

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest smart phone maker, is urging everyone to surrender their units immediately and have them replaced.

Samsung's mobile president, Koh Dong-jin, in a statement, said, "We are expediting replacement devices so that they can be provided through the exchange program as conveniently as possible."

The phone's rechargeable lithium batteries were discovered to be flawed. This led to Samsung recalling 2.5 million units of their most recent product.

Just this week, a Jeep burst into flames while a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was being charged inside the automobile. Nathan Dornacher and his family were just coming home from a yard sale when they discovered their Jeep was on fire after leaving a Galaxy Note 7 to charge in the vehicle.

One of the latest victims of the defective battery is a 6-year-old boy from Brooklyn. The boy was watching videos on the phone when it suddenly exploded in his hands.

The boy suffered burns on his body. New York Post reports the boy has since been released from the hospital and that Samsung acknowledged the unfortunate incident and is now in touch with boy's family.

Several airline companies are now advising passengers to turn their Galaxy Note 7 smart phones off while onboard the plane. Some even started banning the device on flight.

The company has now stopped selling Galaxy Note 7 smart phones. New batteries for the device will be provided starting September 19.
Michael Schumacher, the legendary racer, is rumored to be out of a coma but does not seem to well enough to make a public appearance just yet.

Schumacher Health Situation

Doctors, family members and close associates of the former racer attending to him have refrained from making any sort of detailed presentation of his current health condition, thereby fuelling speculation as to what might be happening behind the scenes.

Some have even pointed out Schumacher is still very much in a critical condition and would require divine intervention to get out of it, FX News Call stated.

Ex-F1 Priest Weighs In

For instance, former F1 priest Don Sergio Mantovani recently said of the racer as one who believes in god even though he might have never been to the church. Mantovani further stated he knows quite a bit of Schumacher's health but won't reveal it all to the press to respect the racer's privacy.

The priest, however, admitted it has been sometime that he had met Schumacher and hence, he isn't aware of the most up-to-date information.

Gerd Kramer from F1 had earlier stated it would be nothing short of a miracle to see Schumacher regain full consciousness ever again, Movie News Guide reported. According to Kramer, the seven-time racing champion is paralysed, is unable to speak and is having trouble recollecting things as well.

Treatments to Continue, Hope Not Lost

Schumacher is being treated at his home in Geneva which has been transformed into a sort of an emergency response centre equipped to deal with all possible scenarios. Equipment needed for his treatment have also been made available to ensure he has the best possible treatment. Currently, a team of 15 highly trained heal professionals are attending to him round the clock.

Family sources had earlier reported the racing champ is responding well to treatments but hasn't confirmed if a full recovery is expected.

Schumacher has been bed-ridden with severe injuries to his brain ever since a ski accident suffered in 2013.
In November 2014, Uber legally entered the city of Houston and has since taken over the transport competition. Now, the city officials are planning in consolidating dispatch via a private smartphone app to try and keep up with their techier rival.

Arro - a company already coalescing dispatch in several cities such as New York, Boston, and San Francisco - has been called upon by the Houston's functionaries on Monday to develop a universal taxi app for the city's 146 taxi companies.

"We're excited to bring the taxi industry, fully, into the digital age," said Tina Paez, director of Houston's Administration and Regulatory Affairs Department. The move is to put a better system on the nearly 4,000 taxi and limo permits of roughly 9,000 drivers operating in the city.

The app would certainly help taxi and limo companies in dispersing their vehicle and finding people looking for a ride in various parts of the city, breaking its reliance on downtown cab stands and airport trips which are the standard practice for years.

"I think you will have people come to rely on faster cab service than they do now," said Duane Kamins, owner of Lone Star Cab Company.

Aside from improving how taxi and limo operates, the app also stands as an emergency lever should Uber move out the city before Super Bowl begins. Uber has been known to oppose some of Houston's rules such as stricter safety concerns and limitations where drivers can pick-up and drop-off passengers.

Lawmakers are also thwarting the fledgling company's expansion by imposing requirements on driver fingerprinting, vehicle inspection, and insurance fees. Since passing the legislation, more than 20,000 people in Houston who completed Uber's screening failed when it came to acquiring the city's licensing process, based on an Uber survey.

More than half of the numbers mentioned above - mainly minorities and low-income individuals - said that the regulations were too costly, complicated, and time-consuming turning them away from the company.
Jeremy Martin via Airlive and WSJ

The engine that came apart at altitude on a Southwest B737 last month lost one of its fan blades during the flight, the NTSB reported in an investigative update on Monday. The jet was en route from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida, when the incident occurred, and the crew diverted to Pensacola. They landed safely and nobody was hurt. Initial examination of the engine by NTSB investigators found that one fan blade had separated from the fan disk and the root of the separated fan blade remained in the fan hub; however, the remainder of the blade was not recovered. Initial findings from the NTSBs metallurgical examination include that the fracture surface of the missing blade showed curving crack arrest lines consistent with fatigue crack growth.

The fatigue crack region was 1.14 inches long and 0.217 inches deep. Also, the left engine inlet separated from the engine during the flight, the NTSB said. Debris from the inlet damaged the wing and empennage, and left a 5-inch-by-16-inch hole in the fuselage just above the left wing. No debris from the engine was found in the hole, and the passenger compartment was not penetrated. The cabin did experience depressurization during the incident. The jet engine was made by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and Safran. The NTSB investigation is continuing.
Pilots are not allowed to fly commercially in the U.S. if they have insulin-dependent diabetes, but a recent 18-month study of insulin-dependent commercial pilots flying in the United Kingdom found that no incidents were reported of pilot incapacitation due to blood sugar that was too high or too low. The study, conducted by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority and the Royal Surrey County Hospital, analyzed monitoring records from the 26 insulin-treated pilots flying for U.K. airlines, covering 4,900 flight hours. The pilots average age is 41. The records showed that 96 percent of the 8,897 readings were in the safe green range, and 0.2 percent, or 19 readings, were in the red range. Besides the U.K., only Canada and Ireland allow insulin-dependent pilots to fly commercially.

A growing number of insulin-treated pilots have successfully applied for commercial pilots licenses in the U.K. and most recently Ireland, said Dr. Julia Hine, who reported on the studys results at a recent medical gathering in England. To date, the CAA protocol has [been] shown to work well in the cockpit, with no reported safety concerns, and without deterioration of diabetes control. The CAA protocol mandates that pilots must show they have their condition under control, and then record regular blood glucose tests in the cockpit, to ensure that any variability in blood sugar is detected and can be corrected early. If pilots are unable to test their blood sugar due to operational demands, the protocol dictates that they should consume 15 mg of carbohydrate as a precautionary measure and then test within 30 minutes, Hine said. She added that the American Diabetes Association is working to develop recommendations to share with the FAA that would enable officials to identify diabetic pilots who are at no greater risk for incapacitation than any other pilot.

The ADA says its position is that individual assessment of people with diabetes is the appropriate approach to determining whether a person is qualified to perform certain activities, and the FAAs blanket ban is not medically justified. The Association is developing recommendations to share with the FAA that it says would enable the FAA to identify pilots who are at no greater risk for incapacitation than any other pilot.
Representatives of Armenias government and three major opposition parties signed on Tuesday a new agreement aimed at preventing possible fraud in next years crucial parliamentary elections.

The deal contains a set of anti-fraud amendments to the Electoral Code that are due to be adopted by the Armenian parliament soon.

The most significant amendment aims to preclude multiple voting by government supporters through the publication of the names of those voters that have cast ballots, according to official protocols. Opposition parties will be able to verify whether those voters actually live in Armenia.

The government also agreed to ensure live online broadcasts of voting and ballot counting in all 2,000 or so polling stations across the country.

Levon Zurabian, the parliamentary leader of the opposition Armenian National Congress (HAK), praised the government for displaying a political will to reach the historic deal. Despite our political rivalry, we cant fail to acknowledge that, he said after the signing ceremony.

Zurabian announced that Western donors have already agreed to provide Armenia with about 9 million euros ($10 million) for the purchase of equipment required by the amendments.

Davit Harutiunian, the chief of the government staff, said the deal bodes well for not only the proper conduct of the elections but also the emergence of a more democratic political culture in Armenia. Political dialogue is the basis for a countrys development, he told a news conference.

Zurabian also cautioned: I want everyone to keep in mind that this alone is not a guarantee of free and fair elections. We need to keep fighting for free and fair elections. But this is a foundation on which we can build such elections.

Naira Zohrabian, the leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), similarly said that the agreed amendments will substantially narrow the room for fraud in the general elections due in April 2017.

Mher Shahgeldian of the Orinats Yerkir Party, the third opposition signatory, echoed that assessment. But he also expressed concern at other Electoral Code provisions that restrict the number of observers and journalist who can be present in polling stations.

Several Armenian civil society organizations also pointed to those restrictions on Monday when they reacted cautiously to the announcement of the election accord. They said the agreed anti-fraud measures are a necessary but not sufficient condition for the freedom and fairness of the polls.

The government and the three opposition parties had already struck a similar deal in June. But it subsequently collapsed after the government cited logistical problems relating to the acquisition of expensive electronic equipment designed to prevent multiple voting.
13 September 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a phone call to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on September 12, Azerbaijani president's press service reported.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated President Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of Eid al-Adha and wished the people of Azerbaijan well-being.

The head of state expressed his gratitude to the President of Turkey for attention and congratulations. President Ilham Aliyev congratulated Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the people of Turkey, and extended his wishes for peace and prosperity of the people of Turkey.

The heads of states expressed their confidence that the friendly and brotherly relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey would continue successfully developing in all areas.

--
Anti-gay pastor Steven Anderson has been banned from visiting South Africa over his extremist homo-phobic views and sermons, which the countrys home affairs minister on Tuesday equated with hate speech.

Anderson, of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, notoriously welcomed the gunning down in June of 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida by saying theres 50 less pedophiles in this world.

South African gay and lesbian groups collected more than 60,000 signatures opposing his visit this weekend, when he was expected to preach and seek converts to his church.

However, his recent video rant sparked a petition, spear-headed by Gay SA Radio station manager, Hendrik Baird

Citing anti-discrimination laws designed to prevent and prohibit hate speech, Home Affairs minister Malusi Gigaba told a media briefing he was banning Anderson indefinitely.

Initially, the Home Affairs Department had said that it would be attaching serious conditions to him upon entry to South Africa.

The promotion of equality binds the state and all persons to prevent and prohibit hate speech, Gigaba said during the media briefing in Cape Town.

Pastor Anderson will be barred from travelling to South Africa for practicing racial hatred. He is an undesirable person. Anderson is a prohibited person in South Africa and so are members of his group.

South Africa became the first country in Africa to legalize gay marriage in 2006, but homosexuality is still widely frowned upon and same-sex unions are often decried as un-African. Also LGBT hate crimes run rampant. In South Africa, gangs of men, especially in poorer black townships, have raped lesbians in the belief it will cure their sexual orientation.

Anderson said he felt sorry for the South Africans.

Anderson wrote on his Facebook page.

I feel sorry for people who live in South Africa, but thank God we still have a wide open door in Botswana. Anderson wrote on his Facebook page.

It was not clear when and if he was due to visit Botswana.

Share this: Tweet



More

Email

Print




Bakeaholicmama is the leading source to find the best cookbooks. We review all of the cookbooks and pick out the best cookbooks in each category. Browse below for inspiration or use the search bar to jump to your favorite food type.

Made with  in the Midwest.
Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry. Her column runs Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at bakersfield.com, call her at 395-7373 or email lhenry@bakersfield.com

.
The Bakersfield Californian is a local newspaper in Kern County. It is the direct descendent of Kern County's first newspaper, The Weekly Courier, which was first published Aug. 18, 1866, in Havilah, Calif. At that time, Havilah, a small mining town about 50 miles northeast of the present site of Bakersfield, was the center of the 1864 gold rush, which brought the first major population influx to Kern County. The newspaper's name was later changed to The Havilah Weekly Courier.

As the mineral wealth of the area became depleted, and the population moved southward toward Bakersfield, so did the newspaper. In 1872, the newspaper moved to Bakersfield and set up shop as The Kern County Weekly Courier. In 1876, the Courier merged with another Bakersfield newspaper, The Southern Californian, to form The Kern County Californian. The newspaper's name was changed to The Daily Californian in 1891 with the advent of daily publication. In 1897, the Kern County superintendent of schools, Alfred Harrell, purchased the newspaper.

Harrell gave The Bakersfield Californian its present name in 1907. In 1926, he moved the newspaper into its present location in downtown Bakersfield at 1707 Eye Street. In 1983, that structure was placed on The National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the nation's cultural resources worthy of preservation. He served as editor and publisher of the newspaper until his death in 1946. During his almost 50 years in the newspaper business, he came to be respected as one of the best newspapermen in the country. In 1969, Harrell became the 24th person to be named to the Newspaper Hall of Fame.

Under Harrell's leadership, The Bakersfield Californian was recognized as one of California's finest newspapers, winning over 40 state and national awards for journalistic excellence while he served as editor and publisher.

After Mr. Harrell's death, his wife, Virginia, became president of The Californian. She held that position until her death in 1954 when the Harrells' daughter, Bernice Harrell Chipman, assumed the position of president. Mrs. Chipman died in 1967.

Berenice Fritts Koerber, granddaughter of Alfred Harrell, was the president of The Bakersfield Californian from 1967 until her death in 1988. Through Mrs. Koerber's leadership, the company sustained strong growth and in 1984 constructed a $21 million state-of-the-art publishing facility. This facility is named the Harrell-Fritts Publishing Center and is located at the company's airport business center near Meadows Field, north of downtown Bakersfield.

When the $21 million publishing facility was completed, The Californian became one of the most technically advanced newspaper companies in the United States. Included in the facility is a state-of-the-art offset press built by Tokyo Kikai Seisakusho Ltd (TKS) of Japan. The news and advertising copy gathered at The Californian's downtown offices is transmitted to the facility 6.3 miles away using an underground fiber-optic cable system, which was the first of its kind for a newspaper in the United States.

In January 1989, Virginia F. Moorhouse, daughter of Berenice Koerber, was elected chairman and president of The Bakersfield Californian.

In December 2014, Virginia "Ginny" Cowenhoven, daughter of Virginia F. "Ginger" Moorhouse, was named associate publisher, the fifth generation of the Harrell-Fritts family to serve in a leadership position at the locally owned media company.

On November 5, 2018, TBC Media moved its operations from downtown Bakersfield to 3700 Pegasus Drive, Bakersfield, CA 93308.

On July 1, 2019, Sound California News Media, Inc. became the owners of The Bakersfield Californian, Bakersfield Life, Delano Record, Kern Business Journal, Tehachapi News, The Voice including the corresponding websites, mobile app and e-Editions.
Carrs Flour Mills has registered an exclusive tartan for trade body Scottish Bakers to celebrate its 125th anniversary.

Created as a special gift to mark the milestone, the unique tartan design reflects the purple, green and yellow hues featured in the Scottish Bakers logo.

Carrs Flour Mills sales director Allan Burns commented: We decided to present a gift to Scottish Bakers and our customer base as a thank you for their loyalty and support. We started off with a Carrs tartan and then introduced the colours from Scottish Bakers logo and ended up with an absolutely fantastic tartan that all bakers should be very proud to wear."

Scottish Bakers chief executive Alan Clarke wore a kilt made of the tartan at a Gala celebration night held in Edinburgh earlier this month.

He said: Our 125th year is a milestone that we will never forget and having our own stunning tartan is the icing on the cake. As a trade association that works hard to support our sector, to receive such a gift in recognition of our achievements is a real honour.

With its motto for the good of all, Scottish Bakers promotes the interests of the bakery trade with its 20,000 employees in Scotland.

Carrs Flour Mills has just been sold to Whitworths in a 36m deal.

All about tartan

The English word tartan is most likely derived from the French tartarin meaning Tartar cloth. It has also been suggested that "tartan" may be derived from modern Scottish Gaelic tarsainn, meaning across. Today "tartan" usually refers to coloured patterns, though originally a tartan did not have to be made up of any pattern at all. As late as the 1830s, tartan was sometimes described as plain coloured ... without pattern.

It has been estimated that there are about 3,500 to 7,000 different tartans, with around 150 new designs being created every year.

The Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT) is Scotlands official tartan register. The SRT is maintained and administrated by the National Archives of Scotland. The aim of the Register is to provide a definitive and accessible resource to promote and preserve tartans.
The Great British Bake Off is to move from the BBC to Channel 4 from the next series on, after producer of the show Love Productions signed a new three-year agreement with the broadcasting company.

The multi-award winning show will remain on free-to-air television.

The first Bake Off programming on Channel 4 will be a celebrity version of the show in 2017, in aid of Stand Up to Cancer.

According to media reports, the BBC had indicated that financial demands made by Love Productions had made the show unaffordable. The launch episode of series seven drew in a record audience of 10 million viewers, the largest yet for the show.

A statement from the BBC press office said: Working with Love Productions we have grown and nurtured the programme over seven series and created the huge hit it is today.

We made a very strong offer to keep the show, but we are a considerable distance apart on the money. The BBCs resources are not infinite.

GBBO is a quintessentially BBC programme. We hope Love Productions change their mind so that Bake Off can stay ad free on BBC One.

The shows judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry, along with presenters Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, are not necessarily part of the switch although Love Productions is said to have indicated that it would be keen to retain them on the new channel.

Jay Hunt, chief creative officer at Channel 4, said: Channel 4 is very proud to be the new home for The Great British Bake Off. Im delighted we have been able to partner with the hugely talented team at Love Productions to keep this much-loved show on free-to-air television.

Richard McKerrow, creative director at Love Productions, added: We believe weve found the perfect new home for Bake Off. Its a public service, free-to-air broadcaster for whom Love Productions have produced high-quality and highly successful programmes for more than a decade.

Its tremendously exciting to have found a broadcaster who we know will protect and nurture The Great British Bake Off for many years to come.

Public reaction on twitter to the switch has been mixed, with some viewers clearly dismayed that the show will now be interrupted by advertising. For example, Andy Castell @AJ3 said: Great British Bakeoff has been bought by Channel 4... Ad breaks, sponsors and manufactured drama? Ill pass thanks.

Meanwhile, Caitlin Moran @caitlinmoran pointed out: I dont understand the decision to take Great British Bake Off off the BBC. How can it do better than being THE BIGGEST SHOW ON TV? Insanity.

Whats your view on the move? Contact us at bb@wrbm.com or on twitter to air your views.
Warren Brander Real Estate  Remax

Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit consistently top the list of places to live and retire to. With it's well developed infrastructure, excellent beaches, perfect weather, rich culture and wonderful people, this is no surprise. Puerto Vallarta and the surrounding areas are favourites among expats and Mexican nationals.

If you are looking for that perfect winter getaway, investment property, or to make a permanent move here, let Warren Brander's expertise make your dream a reality. With honesty and integrity Warren will work hard to find your dream place.If you are considering selling your property you can expect a thorough market evaluation, so you can set an appropriate selling price, and extensive professional marketing of your property in print, online and through social networking. Let Warren put together a plan that gets your place sold.

Originally from Toronto Canada, Warren has relocated permanently to Puerto Vallarta with his young family. So if you are looking for someone who truly understands the process of relocating to this wonderful area, whether it be finding a school, meeting other expats, moving your possessions, immigration, the buying process and of course finding your dream home, he is here to help.

As an expert agent working with Remax in Puerto Vallarta, Warren goes above and beyond to ensure your transaction is handled with professionalism, transparency, and a high degree of integrity. Count on Warren to help you start living the dream.







 C L I E N T C O M M E N T S 







 B E L O W T H E F O L D 





"We met Warren in Las Vistas Condominium while we were vacationing. After we made an offer for a condo in the same place, he gave us specific detail @ the process of buying a condo as a foreclosure. It was admirable for me to experience his patience with my American husband, who was ambivalent due to fear. Warren was not pushy, he answered so very many questions my husband had all along. He was diligent with the legal documentation, transferring of the fees and cost of the condo. I am very grateful for how warmth personality, commitment to get us through our barriers. Most of all, he earned our trust. I would highly recommend him to people who wish to have a resourceful, honest and compassionate agent." - Graciela"Warren recently helped me to buy a property in Puerto Vallarta. He was very willing to set up appointments and accompanied me to several viewings. He assisted me with my final choice, then helped me through the buying procedure. Warren is helpful and knowledgeable as well as polite and courteous at all times." - LynnetteRaising two young children in Puerto Vallarta, our family has become somewhat expert in local fun for kids, especially as ours aren't shy to share their opinions about what is cool and what isn't. Here are a few activities that our kids give a top mark to add to your list of family adventures.It's time for the monthly neighborhood clean-up hosted by Re/Max Puerto Vallarta! Set be held on Saturday, August 10, at 9:30 am, this month we will meet at the entrance to the Panteon (Cemetery) on Brasilia, and clean our way through the streets of Colonia 5 de diciembre.One of the risks of living in Puerto Vallarta is that if you are an animal lover you are at high risk of increasing the size of your pack! The large number of street animals and the Facebook posts of those needing help all make you think that maybe there's room for just one more family member.About 8 years ago we moved our family to Mexico. I wrote an article then about the trials and tribulations of the move. When we came to Puerto Vallarta our kids were 4 and 5 years old so we thought now would be a good time to give an update about the transition to a new country.Living a healthier lifestyle and exercising more frequently is one of the most common promises people make to themselves. If getting into better shape is one of your goals, Puerto Vallarta has many options to help get you on your way. Here are a few you may want to consider.Property taxes. Just the words make most Canadian and American homeowners nervous about potential damage to their bank balance, but in Mexico you don't need to worry. Property taxes for homes and condos in Puerto Vallarta and around Banderas Bay are exceptionally affordable.One of the benefits of retiring in Mexico is the affordable cost of living, meaning that retirement savings stretch further for a more comfortable lifestyle. For American and Canadian retirees, this includes government pensions, which can be received while living in Mexico.Many foreigners living in Mexico purchase insurance to use the private medical system, but for those on a smaller budget, IMSS, the health care plan run by Mexico's Social Security Institute, provides affordable access to quality healthcare. Here's how to apply for IMSS coverage.For many snowbirds and expats, moving money cross-border used to be a complicated process with few options. But with the internet and new banking technology, managing your finances while in Puerto Vallarta is at your fingertips from your smartphone or computer.Far from being just place for sunny, safe retirement living, Puerto Vallarta has a large population of expat families raising their children in our beautiful city. With school finishing up for the year, it's time to find some fun, summer activities to keep kids engaged during the school break.With so much new construction underway in Old Town Puerto Vallarta, that area of the city is attracting a lot of attention from real estate investors. However, three other PV neighborhoods are becoming more and more attractive to home buyers with different lifestyles and preferences.People living in large cities in the USA and Canada may not understand all the excitement surrounding the recent opening of a new Puerto Vallarta restaurant, Siam Cocina Thai. But for those of us in PV that love authentic Thai food, this opening has been a big deal and highly anticipated.There are numerous reasons why raising children in Puerto Vallarta is appealing. The ability for children to learn an new language and culture is one but, for many parents, a major reason is the high quality of private school education available here in the Banderas Bay area.Many visiting Puerto Vallarta will notice that we have more than our fair share of abandoned dogs and cats living on the street. A lot of visitors ask me what they can do. Here are a few of the charities that are working to control this situation and get these wonderful animals adopted.'Do you need to speak Spanish in Puerto Vallarta?' This is a question I get asked all the time by my real estate clients. The short answer is not really but the longer answer is you should try to learn the language of your new country. The more you learn the more you can enjoy life here.While temperatures are rising in Puerto Vallarta, the real estate market is also soaring. This year is turning out to be a record year for real estate sales, according to AMPI MLS system market statistics comparing January 1  April 30, 2017 to the same period last year.Options for housing in Colonia 5 de diciembre are many and the price per square foot tends to be lower than that in the south side of downtown Puerto Vallarta. There is something for everyone in this neighborhood with prices to fit any budget.The Ridge South Shore is an exclusive master-planned, gated community offering owners peace, relaxation and luxury living. Acclaimed architect Xavier Brockmann and developer Administradora San Pablo have taken advantage of the spectacular views of Banderas Bay and the jungle.Many homeowners believe that 'high season' is the best time to list their Banderas Bay area property. Here, Tropicasa Realty agent Warren Brander explains why summertime could be the right time for you to list your home for sale in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.When people find out I permanently relocated my children, then ages 4 and 5, from Canada to Puerto Vallarta, I get just about every reaction possible. Some stare at me in disbelief as though I'm jeopardizing their future, others think it's pretty cool.When searching for your Puerto Vallarta dream home, you might want to consider looking at some of the area's older properties that could use a bit of 'freshening up.' This article may have somewhat of a bias, as I always purchase the worst houses in the best areas and renovate them.
One Florida technical college is stepping in to help the thousands of students left without a school after ITT Tech closed its doors.

Florida Tech reaching out to former ITT Tech students

Online courses most likely to be affected by influx of ITT Tech students

Qualified students may also get tuition discounts

Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne is now in the beginning stages of helping students from ITT Tech transfer due to the school's sudden closing.



It was really shocking to see it happen so quickly, so I think a lot of us and Florida residents were unprepared to see it happen when it did, said Florida Tech Vice President of Online Learning Brian Ehrlich.



With more than 40,000 students without a place to attend college, Florida Tech said it's reaching out to those students to give them an opportunity to finish their degrees.



Officials believe while they will see some ITT transfers attend their campus, the majority of student transfers will probably have more of an impact on enrollment in their online courses.



"Most of the ITT tech students fit the demographic of our online course students, where theyre working and going to school at the same time, Ehrlich said.



Qualified students from ITT tech may also qualify for a tuition discount for online classes..



For more information or to apply, visit www.floridatechonline.com.
As a milestone in the financial compensation process for Pulse victims and families passed Monday, one family said it's grateful but still grieving.

OneOrlando Fund claim deadline is midnight Monday

Families, loved ones continue to visit Pulse site 3 months later

Donations to fund will be accepted through Sept. 23



Monday marks the last day for shooting survivors and victims families to file for OneOrlando Fund compensation. The fund will will accept applications online until midnight, and organizers will accept any postmarked Sept. 12, 2016.

In the three months since the tragedy that claimed 49 lives and wounded 53 others, more than 248 people have applied for compensation from the OneOrlando Fund, which has raised about $25 million.

"It still really feels like yesterday," said Tara Connell, who lost her 21-year-old son, Cory, the night of the shooting. He was at Pulse on June 12, salsa dancing with his girlfriend, when he was shot and killed.

Now, Connell said she is trying to cope with the thought that he's gone forever.

"I keep thinking he's going to walk through the front door and ask, 'Mom, what's for dinner?' "

On Monday, one chapter of Connell's journey through grief came to a close.

While families still struggle to say goodbye, donations collected by the OneOrlando Fund should help them and so many other families who have struggled to find normalcy since the tragedy.

"The quicker (the families) can get help, obviously the better," Connell said.

OneOrlando Fund organizers said the funds will be allocated after Sept. 27, once all the applications have been reviewed and the allocation formula has been approved by the fund's board. The fund will continue to collect donations for distribution through Sept. 23.

Connell said her family isn't concerned with how much they'll receive. They're grateful for any help, because work and life has been tough without Cory.

"It makes me very proud to be his mother, knowing that when he left that house, he made a difference," Connell said.

More assistance for those impacted in the LGBTQ community can be found at Equality Florida. The United Way Family Assistance Center will also provide counseling and financial aid to those directly impacted by the Pulse shooting for the next three years. You can visit them Monday through Friday at 507 E. Michigan St., Orlando, 32806, or call them on their 24/7 hotline at 407-500-HOPE.

Ceremony honors first responders



Law enforcement and first responders held a ceremony at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando on Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, in honor of emergency workers, survivors and victims of the tragedy 3 months ago. (Vincent Earley, staff)

First responders and members of the Central Florida community gathered at the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center on Monday morning to remember the Pulse victims and the emergency workers who helped them.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said the ceremony meant a great deal to him and his officers.

"On the heels of 9/11, it gives us a chance to honor and remember the sacrifice that our first responders did not only that night but every single day. Our officers have a very difficult job for strangers every single day."

Mina said all the officers who responded to the Pulse shooting have received counseling. One officer has not yet returned to work.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A Florida man's test of a protective jacket had tragic consequences.

Joaquin Mendez, 23, died Saturday after he reportedly tried on what he believed was a bulletproof vest and his cousin shot him.

According to news station WESH in Tampa, Mendez put on the vest about 10 p.m. and "wondered aloud whether it still worked."

READ MORE: Texas man who shot 2 teens, killing 1, says he talked to the devil

WESH reports a witness told police that Mendez's cousin Alexandro Garibaldi, 24, pulled out a gun and said, "Let's see."

When police arrived minutes later to the Tampa home, they found Mendez outside and wounded in the chest, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Garibaldi told officers he heard a gunshot and found his cousin outside, the newspaper reports.

READ MORE: Sentencing for 2nd Florida man in $4.8 million gold truck heist

Mendez was transported to a hospital, where he later died, the Times reports.

Garibaldi was arrested and is charged with manslaughter with a weapon and possession of a firearm by a felon. He's held without bond in Hillsborough County Jail, according to the Times.

Police told the Times on Monday that Mendez was wearing a flak jacket and not a bulletproof vest. Flak jackets are designed to stop fragments from explosives but not bullets, according to police. WESH and the Times did not report if Mendez agreed to be shot or if it was purely Garibaldi's decision.
Listicle-loving website Thrillist has released yet another spot-on look at suburban America.

This time it's "The Most Obnoxiously Rich Suburb of America's 35 Biggest Cities," and, at least for Texas, it's pretty accurate.

So where in this state are the metro outskirts where residents have access to pricey, often exclusive amenities?

In Houston the chosen community is The Woodlands, about 30 miles north of the city center. It's home to the second full-line Nordstrom in the entire greater Houston area, as well as to America's most famous closet. It also has a country club that ranges in annual membership fees from $10,000 to $100,000. The median home price here, according to Zillow, is $449,000. (Story continues below.)

SEE ALSO: The richest town in Texas

The least snobby aspect of this suburb might be the not-so-glamorous commute that can range anywhere from 45 minutes to nearly two hours.

In Austin it's West Lake Hills, which, of course, sits atop West Austin's hills. The better to look down upon Austinites. Thrillist calls children of West Lake Hills residents "insanely privileged spawn who terrorize the area around Westlake High School in their Range Rovers."

One might argue that several Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs could've made this roster, but Thrillist decided upon Frisco. The community just saw the addition of the $1.5 billion Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters at The Star. This suburb, which extends between Denton and Collin counties, is also home to several multimillion-dollar homes which puts the median home price here at a whopping $370,000.

RELATED: Where San Antonio's rich live and play

For the San Antonio area, it's The Dominion master-planned community, where, Thrillist claims, "literally every single famous person you can think of that might reside in San Antonio lives here." The wevbsite even quotes a source who says: "The Dominion is actually in Northwest San Antonio proper, I think, so this might be technically wrong, but if you pick anything else, everyone here will judge you, and you won't get a chance to talk about the fact that Stone Cold Steve Austin lives here, and that would be a mistake that could ruin your life."
NEW YORK - Folks in the audience at the Christian Siriano show Saturday afternoon cheered his models. They were delighted by the diversity in both race and body shape. The designer has become one of Seventh Avenue's most vocal advocates for plus-size women, and he made sure that they were represented on his runway.

As a cultural statement about inclusivity, Siriano's show was quietly eloquent. As a nod to the buying power of plus-size women, he made a smart business decision.

Now to the clothes. Siriano has made a host of striking one-of-a-kind gowns for the red carpet. But the gowns that he showed as part of his spring 2017 collection did not have the same sophistication and elegance as those he has made for actresses such as Christina Hendricks or Leslie Jones. His runway clothes often overwhelmed the models - except, notably, the plus-size women.

More often than not, they were the models on the runway who looked best. Because of their size and stature, they could wear the sweeping jacket, the exuberant bell sleeves and the bright teal, and not simply fade away.

Designers have all sorts of reason for not creating clothes larger than a size 12. Some of those reason are stoked by prejudice. Sometimes, it's ignorance. The difference between making a dress for a size 2 versus making one for a size 18 is not just a matter of grading the pattern up. The proportions change. So does the construction. A designer might need to reconsider the fabric.

So here the situation is somewhat flipped: Siriano understands how to work in larger sizes. And his collection is especially adept at showing plus-size women at their best. But his smaller models often look cowed by their clothes. A palette of orange and teal, ruffles and floppy hats are high hurdles.

Siriano speaks the truth when he says that designers should be in the business of helping all women look their best. Doing so, however, is a challenge. Not because it is extraordinarily difficult but because it simply requires a different way of thinking, organizing and, perhaps, manufacturing. It means expanding one's breadth of knowledge to become a fully literate designer.

Siriano is adept at the part of fashion that so often stymies other designers. He understands that inclusiveness isn't hard. The challenge for him is in making those size twos look good, too.

--

Robin Givhan is a staff writer and the Washington Post fashion critic, covering fashion as a business, as a cultural institution and as pure pleasure.
If the sky started falling, a catfish is probably the last thing you would expect to hit you.

A Philadelphia woman, however, can attest that catfish do indeed fall out of the blue.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The Sabine River swallowed Deweyville's elementary school, its Post Office, a barbershop, cafes and playgrounds. It infiltrated brick houses, trailer homes, churches, government buildings and the town's library. It sunk dozens, if not hundreds, of cars and trucks in the small Newton County town whose 1,000 residents can't return home to appraise damages.

Heavy piles of debris strained filtering fences, and in some spots along Texas 12, began to swirl.

The river's cloudy brown hue muted color throughout the town, except several patches of pink azaleas, the evergreen shrubs in bloom.

As of Wednesday evening, no fatalities or injuries were reported. A Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game warden said there were no missing person reports filed.

Residents, many without flood insurance, face rebuilding.

Some, like Justin McCullough, assistant chief of the local emergency service district, barely have time to think about the future between regular boat runs into town to check on and sometimes retrieve the roughly 20-30 residents who decided to stay along with their pets.

"As long as I keep my adrenaline up, I'll be alright," McCullough said.

McCullough, 35, is a lifelong Deweyville resident. He moved into his home six months ago. He doesn't carry flood insurance.

Devastation and outrage

The devastation, in many cases combined with outrage at keepers of the Toledo Bend dam they say should have better regulated the water, is apparent as displaced residents await the water to drain so they can begin calculating the costs.

In the meantime, some are waiting to see whether the federal government will declare a disaster, which would include financial assistance.

"I've never been one for a handout, but this time I am," said Tommy Spears, the 63-year-old meat butcher at a Stuckey's gas station on the outskirts of town.

Several feet of water, combined with sewage that backed up through his toilet, has inundated Spears' home, he said a friend told him. The friend had to sneak around barricades to check on homes, Spears said.

Spears doesn't carry flood insurance.

That's because it costs thousands of dollars a year and because his home stayed dry in 1989, the flood locals previously used as a benchmark. His father's home, built in 1904, took water for the first time this time around, he said.

President Barack Obama on Monday declared a major disaster in Louisiana. Texas could follow, though it must sustain a higher dollar figure of damages than Louisiana in order to qualify.

Without it, the prospects of the 400-home town rebuilding are unlikely, said Billy Ted Smith, coordinator of emergency management for Jasper, Sabine and Newton counties.

Talk of lawsuit

A flier on the double doors to Stuckey's advertised a town hall meeting Thursday night to talk about a possible lawsuit against the Sabine River Authority, which is tasked by the federal government to manage the Toledo Bend reservoir as means to generate hydroelectricity.

Many Deweyville residents feel the SRA could have lessened the flood's impact had they opened their gates sooner and not allowed the reservoir to build up, Spears said.

Ann Galassi, assistant general manager of administration at the SRA, said they are "saddened" the flood "devastated so many people's homes" and that the event could cause the bureaucrats and policy makers who set the rules on regulating the dam to reconsider how it is managed.

"A new flood of record spurs a lot of events," Galassi said. "That spurs people rethinking where they are living, a lot of events. As your variables change that are considered in developing those guidelines, you could review them. I'm sure it's something we need to consider."

Reporter Brandon Scott contributed to this article.EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/EricBesson_news
AUSTIN -- The textbook experts say is laden with errors, omits key history and characterizes Mexicans as lazy is "dead on arrival" at the State Board of Education, according to the board's vice chairman.

Former boards of education known for heated debates over teaching creationism and the promotion of Moses as a major influence on the U.S. Constitution probably would have approved the textbook, but the current board probably will not, said Thomas Ratliff, a Mount Pleasant Republican.

"I have not talked to all my colleagues because I can't violate the Open Meetings Act, but I've talked to a few and enough to know that book is dead on arrival. There is no way in the world that book gets passed by the State Board of Education," Ratliff said.

Hours before the Board of Education would hear from more than 100 people wanting to opine on the book, hundreds of people ranging from lawmakers, professors, activists and students gathered outside the Texas Education Agency building in downtown Austin Tuesday to rally against the textbook they said should be rejected on academic and moral grounds.

"If we permit materials like the ones in this textbook that express a clear and pointed bias, a disrespect for culture and community and, in essence, plan for that culture to be pushed out of the educational pipeline, out of growth, out of self esteem, out of competence, out of society's advantages and opportunities, we are allowing a design to push Mexicans to the bottom of society and keep us there," said Dr. Carmen Tafolla, an associate professor at the University of San Antonio and, most recently, Texas' poet laureate.

The board is expected to make a final decision to accept or reject the book in November.

Almost all the people who signed up to testify signaled that they oppose the proposed book "Mexican American Heritage," a text published by a company run by Cynthia Dunbar, a former conservative Republican member of the board. The book is the only Mexican-American history textbook submitted to the board for consideration.

The problem is the textbook does not synthesize the literature, said Dr. Emilio Zamora, a professor from the University of Texas at Austin, who called some of the errors in the book "beauties." The book referred to wrong river as the southern border of Texas, misreported how long certain people served in leadership roles, got names wrong and omitted six Mexican Americans who won the Congressional medal of honor, among other errors, he said.

"It is very obvious the book does not consult the vast literature of Mexican-American studies," he said.

Critics have lambasted the book, calling it offensive, hateful and insulting to Mexican Americans for months. Ratliff said he agrees.

"Just the blatant racist comments that are in this book are in and of themselves factual errors, not to mention dozens of others. The wrong name is under a picture, the wrong dates. It's really laughable that they would consider this to be an academic work," Ratliff told the Chronicle.

Others on the board agreed, including Patricia Hardy, a longtime educator and Republican from the Fort Worth area.

"It seems to me like it would cause more trouble than it would be worth," said Hardy. "I'm telling you, I don't think that there would be enough votes to support it on the board at this particular time. You'd have to show me something a lot different from what I've seen thus far as far excerpts and so-forth out of the book."

Sue Melton-Malone, a retired educator and Republican board member from the Robinson area, agreed.

"And I, as well as Pat, are going to do some more investigation into the book, check into it, look into it, read some more of it, but right now I don't think it would even be feasible to even consider letting it out," she said.

Opponents need eight votes to reject the book a committee of Mexican-American history experts has said is derogatory, inaccurate and laden with misinformation. The board's five Democrats, who normally vote together, have said they would oppose the book, leaving the decision up to the remaining 10 Republicans who are split evenly as moderate and conservative.

Schools that opt to offer a Mexican-American studies course have the freedom to choose books freely for the class and would not be required to use the book should it be approved.

Board Chairwoman Donna Bahorich, who is not required to vote, is unsure whether she will. She said she is reserving judgement on whether she would reject the text until she hears testimony from the public and the state education department.

"I'm not a Mexican-American expert or specialist. I'm just not," she said. "You have to depend on the review committee that looked at it and then the expertise that's giving us feedback, because I don't have that expertise myself.

"I haven't heard positive things, anecdotally," Bahorich said, adding she does not know how the board will vote. " I'm not polling people saying, what are you going to do or that kind of thing."
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Tropical Storm Ian organized into the ninth named storm of the Atlantic season on Monday, but the National Hurricane Center predicts its track will keep it safely over salt water heading into the North Atlantic next week.

Ian began as a typical Cape Verde tropical wave spinning west of Africa, which is where most of the tropical season's systems originate, like one eight years ago that looked unremarkable as it started a two-week long march that ended up trampling the Bolivar Peninsula and pushing inland.

That, too, was the ninth named storm of the 2008 season. It was called Ike, a name that never will be used again because Ike was a killer and the third-most destructive storm in dollar value to strike the United States.

Ike's estimated $29 billion in property damage was exceeded only by Katrina in 2005 and Sandy in 2012.

Ike almost completely wiped every structure off the Bolivar Peninsula when the storm made landfall on Sept. 13, 2008, leaving behind one now-famous yellow beach house that was built to hurricane code.

Ike killed several Bolivar residents who underestimated its power and the storm surge it pushed ahead on an unusually high tide.

That surge took Orange County by surprise as the high tide crashed into Sabine Pass and into Sabine Lake and on into low-lying Bridge City. The surge swamped the city of Orange and flooded inland cities like Rose City and Vidor.

Ike's surge lapped the top of the seawall in Port Arthur, built after Hurricane Carla in 1961 shocked Houston-area residents.

Forecasters could not predict the extent or the power of the surge except to generally define the combination of a Category 2 hurricane-force wind with a high tide at landfall. Category 2 is not considered a "major hurricane."

Jefferson County Commissioner Brent Weaver, then a deputy in the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, tried to sleep in the courthouse the night Ike made landfall and remembers how the hurricane shook the structure.

Ike hit Southeast Texas exactly a year to the day of Hurricane Humberto, which came ashore at almost the same spot as Ike, having formed a mere 18 hours earlier in the Gulf, almost a freak in the history of storms.

It was a minimal storm, not having sufficient time or mass to grow in power. But it was enough to kill a man in Jefferson County who was curious enough to peer outside his house during Humberto. His car port blew down on top of him.

DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/dwallach
Hanover, N.H.-based Dartmouth College researchers created the Affordable Care Act's accountable care organization model, which aims to improve care while lowering costs. However, the college's decision to leave the ACO program has many wondering if ACOs are sustainable, according to The New York Times.

Here are five insights:

1. Currently, Medicare has more than 400 ACOs that serve nearly 8 million of 57 million Medicare beneficiaries.

2. While the Obama administration has said ACOs are fulfilling their promise of saving money and improving care, some have doubts. Ashish K. Jha, MD, a professor at Boston-based Harvard School of Public Health said, "There's little in the way of analysis or data about how ACOs did in 2015. The results have not been a home run."

3. Dartmouth's ACO did cut Medicare spending on medical procedures, hospital stays, imaging and tests while meeting its achieved goals for quality of care. However, the college suffered financial penalties after it failed to meet the money-saving benchmarks that federal officials set.

4. Elliott S. Fisher, MD, director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, was among Dartmouth faculty members who spearheaded the ACO concept in a 2006 paper. The paper said the government should measure both the performance of hospitals and physicians, as opposed to solely a physician's individual performance.

5. Dr. Fisher said while research illustrates ACOs have yielded moderate savings, they have failed to meet the overall savings goal.

More articles on coding & billing:

Former Rep. Ellen Tauscher: Increasing public-private competition will encourage healthcare reform: 4 takeaways

AMA, Medical Society of the State of NY implore regulators to block Anthem-Cigna merger  4 highlights

Medicare proposal to have surgeons code day in 10-minute segments widely disliked: 3 thoughts
A study found payers can partner with physicians to both save costs and deliver care more efficiently, according to Health System Management.

In the study, Cigna partnered with Dallas-Forth Worth-based Medical Clinic of North Texas to enhance its service quality while truncating costs.

Here are five key notes:

1. The partnership was part of Cigna's Collaborative Accountable Care initiative, a shared savings program that provides practices in their first participation year an up-front coordination fee that pays for infrastructure investment.

2. Cigna also helped MCNT hire a nurse that could aid in hospital discharge coordination for those patients at a higher readmission risk. The nurse also could head outreach efforts to high-risk patients, patient education as well as patient prescription-compliance.

3. Through the partnership, Cigna vowed to share any realized cost savings with MCNT from moving to a coordinated care model.

4. For the practice's Cigna patients, costs were lower by nearly 6 percent when compared to other Cigna patients in the north Texas area. For MCNT patients, nearly 50 percent of the savings were due to fewer services used, while the remaining 50 percent was due to price reduction.

5. Other studies yielded mixed results in showing whether coordinated care lowers costs. However, this study demonstrated the study could effectively lower costs as the agreement was formed directly with physicians.

More articles on coding & billing:

Former Rep. Ellen Tauscher: Increasing public-private competition will encourage healthcare reform: 4 takeaways

AMA, Medical Society of the State of NY implore regulators to block Anthem-Cigna merger  4 highlights

Medicare proposal to have surgeons code day in 10-minute segments widely disliked: 3 thoughts
Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., has dropped out of the accountable care organization program it helped develop, reports The New York Times.

Dartmouth attributed the decision to mounting financial losses in the federal program.

Dartmouth's ACO cut Medicare spending on hospital stays, medical procedures, imaging and tests, an evaluation for the federal government showed, according to the article. However, the report states, the ACO faced possible financial penalties because it failed to meet federal officials' money-saving benchmarks.

"We were cutting costs and saving money and then paying a penalty on top of that," Robert A. Greene, MD, an executive vice president of the Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock health system, told The New York Times. "We would have loved to stay in the federal program, but it was just not sustainable."

The report points out that the dropout of Dartmouth raises questions about the future of ACOs.

ACOs overall saw mixed financial results in 2015. Across the board, 2015 was a great year for quality improvement among Pioneer ACOs, but not all participants did as well financially, according to CMS data. Together, the Pioneer ACOs generated net savings of $37 million for Medicare in 2015, and every organization improved in overall quality.

Eight of the 12 Pioneer ACOs were able to generate savings for Medicare, but just six shared in savings. Four generated shared losses, but just one had to pay back those losses to CMS.

In the fourth performance year of the Medicare Shared Savings Program  2015  ACOs generated net savings of $429 million for Medicare and improved quality performance on several different measures, according to CMS data. About 30 percent of the 393 ACOs participating in 2015 earned shared savings.

CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt said the advantages of ACOs were starting to be felt, the report states. The version right now is an early version "like the iPhone 2," he said on Twitter.

Elliott S. Fisher, MD, the director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, said he was cautiously optimistic about the future of ACOs, according to the report. "Evidence on spending suggests modest savings over all," he said, according to The New York Times, though he acknowledged that in Medicare "the model has yet to achieve the benefits many advocates hoped for."
Princeton, N.J.-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA, is stepping down. She will leave once the organization has named a successor.

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey has led the foundation for 14 years. She is the first woman and the first African American to lead the $10 billion private foundation. During her tenure, Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey headed a number of health initiative, including one to stem the childhood obesity epidemic in America. Under her leadership, the foundation has donated around $1 billion to the cause. She also helped redesign a number of the foundation's leadership, fellowship and scholarship programs, making them more interdisciplinary.

Fred Mann, vice president of communications for the foundation, told The Philadelphia Inquirer, that Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey had initially planned to stay on as CEO for 10 years and he thinks "she just wanted to take some time off and figure out what her next act might be."

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey completed her residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She also earned her master's degree in business administration from the Wharton School in Philadelphia.

"Risa's commitment to improving the health of this nation during her tenure as CEO is simply unparalleled, and she has led this Foundation with an extraordinary sense of purpose and passion. It is difficult to see her leave but we are fortunate that she will remain at the helm until a successor is in place," said Roger Fine, chairman of the RWJF board of trustees in a statement.
Chicago-based consulting firm Huron revised its brand strategy to better reflect the company's evolution and client approach.

Under the rebrand, the global firm will emphasize its name simply as Huron. Its new logo, visual style and redesigned website unify the company's business under one identity.

The logo includes an image called the "Huron link," which stands for Huron's collaborative culture and entrepreneurial spirit, according to a Huron statement. The firm said the website, redesigned to look more modern and enhance navigation, will help clients connect with its business. Huron also said it will continue to update the website to improve functionality and add more solution portals and intelligent search capabilities.

"Huron's new brand strategy captures our commitment to achieve meaningful change in partnership with clients," James Roth, CEO and president of Huron, said. "Our new brand identity better represents our culture and our vision for the future."

More articles about leadership and management:

Jonathan Bush donates $10k to support legalizing marijuana

5 thoughts on hospital leadership with Bronx-Lebanon administrator Chrissy Manning

5 latest healthcare layoffs
Mountain View Regional Hospital in Casper, Wyo., laid off 15 employees Monday, representing nearly 5 percent of the organization's workforce, reports Casper Star-Tribune.

Here are four things to know about the layoffs.

1. The hospital's co-CEO, Tom Kopitnik, MD, told the Casper Star-Tribune the layoffs represent the largest reduction in staff the surgical specialty hospital has had since opening in July 2008.

2. In discussing the layoffs, Dr. Kopitnik, a neurosurgeon, cited a decline in surgeries at Mountain View. He said in the article that many patients are delaying procedures because of concerns about the cost of their deductibles, or they're concerned about missing work while in recovery. And although the hospital has tried to move employees to departments where there is a greater need for employees, it hasn't always been able to, he said.

3. In addition to the layoffs, some positions at Mountain View were left vacant due to attrition and weren't filled.

4. The hospital may have laid off 15 employees, but it is expanding and hiring in other areas  including ears, nose and throat; allergy; audiology; and interventional pain management, according to the article.

More articles on leadership and management:

Want to be a CEO? Diversify your experience, study says

Corner office: Virginia Mason Health System Chairman and CEO Dr. Gary S. Kaplan on what he learned working in a hardware store

5 things to know about CMS' disaster preparedness guidelines
More than 1,000 independent physicians in North Carolina have joined the Community Care Physician Network, a clinically integrated network that supports independent physicians and safety-net providers across the state, reports Winston-Salem Journal.

CCPN allows independent practices to participate in Medicaid accountable care organizations, Medicare shared savings plans and other new value-based healthcare models, according to the network's website. It also is supported by Community Care of North Carolina's population health management expertise.

A north-central region of North Carolina, called the Triad, has the largest CCPN branch in the state with 262 independent practitioners and 56 independent practices, according to the article. Across North Carolina, there are 1,070 practitioners and 310 practices.
The following healthcare mergers, acquisitions and general partnerships took place or were announced in the past week.

1. Meadowlands Hospital draws $12.2M bid

Yan Moshe, owner and CEO of Hackensack, N.J.-based Excel Surgery Center, offered to purchase 204-bed Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center in Secaucus, N.J., for $12.2 million.

2. German hospital network adds 43 Spanish hospitals in $6.42B takeover

Bad Homburg, Germany-based Fresenius SE, Europe's largest publicly traded healthcare provider, purchased Spain's largest private hospital operator, IDC Salud Holding, for $6.42 billion

3. KU Hospital partners with Hays hospital

Kansas City-based The University of Kansas Hospital signed a letter of intent to partner with Hays (Kan.) MedicalCenter to enhance patient care in rural areas.

4. State makes final offer on LSU hospital deals

State officials will make their final offer to the Shreveport, La.-based Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana for a renegotiated contract to continue operating hospitals affiliated with Louisiana State University in Shreveport and Monroe.

5. Dartmouth-Hitchcock wins $36.5M contract to staff NH hospitals

Lebanon, N.H.-based Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, owned by Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, will officially provide staffing and administrative services to various state medical institutions.

6. CHS ups divestitures, will sell more than 12 hospitals

Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems will divest more hospitals than anticipated as it continues to develop its downsizing plans.

7. Connecticut officials approve L+M Hospital, Yale-New Haven affiliation: 4 things to know

State regulators with the Office of Health Care Access gave approval for New London, Conn.-based Lawrence + Memorial Hospital to join Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Health System.
The Rhode Island attorney general approved the affiliation proposal designed by Westerly (R.I.) Hospital and Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Health Services, according to Legal News Line.

The institutions submitted the application to the attorney general's office June 11. The state's Hospital Conversions Act specifies that the attorney general has 90 days to review an application once it's been submitted for review.

"This is the second time in three years my office has reviewed a sale of Westerly Hospital, which I believe is representative of the continuing shift in the health care landscape from stand-alone community hospitals to larger health care networks, said Attorney General Peter Kilmartin.
From a Florida nurse arrested on 131 felony charges to a medical equipment company settling False Claims Act allegations for $12.2 million, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits and settlements making headlines.

1. Ohio hospital sues West Virginia over CON changes

Marietta (Ohio) Memorial Hospital sued the West Virginia Health Care Authority in federal court over changes to West Virginia's certificate-of-need process.

2. Medical equipment companies settle false claims allegations for $12.2M

Milford, N.J.-based U.S. Healthcare Supply and the owner of Milford-based Oxford Diabetic Supply agreed to pay the federal government a total of $12.2 million to resolve allegations they violated the False Claims Act.

3. UPMC settles another mold death lawsuit for $1.35M

A second lawsuit stemming from the deadly mold outbreak at Pittsburgh-based UPMC was settled for $1.35 million.

4. Prime claims DOJ fraud suit wrongly relies on statistical sampling

Prime Healthcare Services asked a federal court to exclude certain evidence used by the Department of Justice in a lawsuit alleging the Ontario, Calif.-based hospital chain violated the False Claims Act.

5. Lee Memorial sues Florida Blue over ER payments

Fort Myers, Fla.-based Lee Memorial Health System is suing Florida Blue, claiming the health insurer underpaid the system's hospitals for emergency care.

6. Florida nurse arrested on 131 felony charges

Alex Rodriguez, a nurse previously affiliated with Fort Myers, Fla.-based Lee Memorial Health System, was arrested on 131 felony counts, including charges related to fraud, drugs and forgery.

7. Employee at Kansas health center charged for setting supervisor on fire

A civilian employee at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.-based Munson Army Health Center is charged with one count of assault with intent to commit murder after he allegedly poured gasoline on a female supervisor and set her on fire.

More articles on health law:

Stark Law: The 27-year-old act killing healthcare reform before it can begin?

How the courts define this word will significantly impact future false claims litigation

12 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements
Marietta (Ohio) Memorial Hospital has sued the West Virginia Health Care Authority in federal court over changes to West Virginia's certificate-of-need process, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

Under the changes, which were made in the most recent legislative session, in-state hospitals are exempt from West Virginia's CON process, but out-of-state hospitals are not. Marietta Memorial claims the changes are unconstitutional, as hospitals must be treated the same regardless of their status as in-state or out-of-state under the U.S. Constitution's dormant commerce clause.

Marietta Memorial's lawsuit asks the judge to either make all hospitals undergo the CON process in West Virginia or give all hospitals an exemption, regardless of where the facility is based, according to the report.

More articles on health law:

Stark Law: The 27-year-old act killing healthcare reform before it can begin?

How the courts define this word will significantly impact future false claims litigation

12 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements
Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealthcare agreed to expand its coverage of hepatitis C medication in an effort to settle a $300 million class-action lawsuit brought against the company by policyholders, according to The Daily Business Review.

The settlement agreement filed in a federal Miami court on Sept. 9 resolves claims the insurer wrongfully denied policyholders coverage of Harvoni, a drug used to treat hepatitis C. The medication is the only drug of its kind that cures hepatitis C in 95 to 99 percent of cases, according to the article.

Prior to the lawsuit, UnitedHealthcare would only cover the cost of the drug for hepatitis C patients with severe liver fibrosis. The insurer removed the stipulation seven months after the lawsuit was filed. The company also agreed to remove the stipulation that policyholders prove they abstained from drug and alcohol use for six months prior to the treatment, according to the article.

As part of the settlement, UnitedHealthcare agreed to create a $500,000 fund to help former policyholders to buy insurance from United or another insurer.

The settlement is currently awaiting approval by the district attorney.
President Obama spoke with a number of health insurer CEOs in light of recent high-profile Affordable Care Act exchange exits and growing industry concern of the health law, The Hill reports.

Here are five things to know about the meeting.

1. Executives from Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and CEOs of Louisville, Ky.-based Humana and Long Beach, Calif.-based Molina Healthcare were among those who attended. HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett were also present.

2. The White House said the meeting allowed insurers and HHS to talk about how to increase new consumer enrollment and encourage returning consumers to shop around before reenrolling. "Administration officials underscored the importance of continuing the work that has helped bring the nation's uninsured rate to the lowest level on record and solicited ideas for how to further strengthen the Marketplace," the White House said.

3. In addition, on Monday the president sent a letter to every insurer offering plans on ACA exchanges highlighting the administration's efforts to address their concerns. President Obama wrote "this progress has not been without challenges," and the majority of "new enterprises have growing pains and opportunities for improvement. The Marketplace, while strong, is no exception. Time and experience will help drive that improvement, as will constructive policy changes."

4. In his letter, the president also alluded to HHS' effort to enroll more young consumers through ACA exchanges. The administration said it will contact individuals who paid the tax penalty for not purchasing insurance with information about how to enroll. Experts see the next open enrollment  beginning Nov. 1  as a test to see if enrollment numbers can increase and if younger, healthier consumers will enter the market, The Hill reports.



5. One of the attendees, Molina Healthcare, recently announced its support of HHS' Notice of Benefits Payment Parameters for 2018. In late August CMS proposed changes to its risk adjustment program. The permanent program was intended to shift funds from insurers with low-cost enrollees to plans with high-cost enrollees. It also proposed more stringent rules for special enrollment periods, which insurers have said allow recently sick individuals to enter risk pools and drive up costs.

More articles about payer issues:

Cigna simplifies claims process for short-term disability, critical illness benefits

Illinois extends hepatitis C treatment for Medicaid recipients

Ohio's proposed Medicaid fee nixed by feds: 3 things to know
With less than two months to election day, Hillary Clinton's recent health scare has elicited support and criticism from various individuals who call on both Ms. Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump to be more upfront about their medical histories.

But it isn't the first time a candidate's health has impacted their ability to sell themselves to voters. Here are three more candidates whose health concerns impacted their run for presidential office:

1. Richard Nixon. With two months until the election, former President Nixon slammed his knee with a car door, forcing him to spend the first half of September 1960 recovering from the injury, according to Mic. President Nixon's injury led him to look ill and thin during the first, live television presidential debate, giving his opponent John F. Kennedy an edge. Kennedy would go on to win the election.

2. Jimmy Carter. President Carter was an avid runner, often running 40 to 50 miles a week, according to Mic. However, in late September 1979, a photo surfaced of the former president nearly collapsing during a run. While The New York Times reported President Carter was treated for dehydration and heat exhaustion. President Carter lost the 1979 election to his opponent, Ronald Reagan.

3. John McCain. Former Senator John McCain faced intense scrutiny from the media pressuring him to release his medical records to prove he was healthy enough to be president. According to a US News article, nearly a third of voters in 2008 believed Sen. McCain was too old for the presidency. Sen. McCain's campaign eventually released more than 1,100 pages of medical records to the media. His physician at the time claimed there was no reason Mr. McCain couldn't run for president.
Researchers claim to have discovered the cause of the 1665 Great Plague of London, which killed more than a quarter of the city's population in the span of a year, according to CNN.

Scientists from the Jena, Germany-based Max Planck Institute sequenced DNA from 20 skeletons from the 17th century found in a mass burial site for plague victims. The findings showed Yersinia pestis, a bacteria that typically lives in fleas or small animals and rodents, was responsible for the infection. The bacteria was also reportedly found in DNA sequences from skeletons epidemiologically linked to the 14th century Black Death and the 1720 Marseilles Plague, according to the article.

Because any trace of the bacteria on the surface of the skeletons would have died long ago, scientists extracted DNA samples from the skeletons' teeth, where traces of the bacteria may have been preserved, according to the article.

Researchers from the Institute said the DNA investigations may help health professionals understand the contemporary plague, which continues to affect hundreds of each year. In 2013, more than 780 cases and 126 deaths from the plague were reported, according to the article.
In a heavily employed healthcare environment, independent physicians may fare better joining together to meet the demands of value-based care and contracting.

North Texas CIN, a Dallas-based accountable care organization, is providing the platform for more than 1,100 independent physicians to ban together to face the tide of change. The participating physicians all maintain their autonomy as they continue to head their own practices, both in the primary care and specialty sectors.

Called TXCIN for short, the ACO jumped around Texas' corporate practice of medicine law by establishing itself as a 501A organization. Independent physicians created TXCIN in late 2014 with the mission of helping other independent physicians enter into value-based contracting, holding participants accountable for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction.

TXCIN saw significant growth in the first half of 2016, aligning with three independent practice associations encompassing between 2,800 and 3,000 physician members. So far, about 1,100 of these IPA physician members have agreed to enter the first commercial ACO contracts.

"The physicians independently determine whether they want to be in TXCIN's value-based ACO contracts or whether they want to participate through other ACOs in the community," says Jim Walton, DO, MBA, president and CEO of TXCIN. The ACO currently serves approximately 90,000 Blue Cross Blue Shield members and 15,000 Cigna members in North Texas.

With a higher than average rate of healthcare costs, North Texas presented an opportunity for an organization like TXCIN to thrive.

"North Texas has not been able to significantly bend the cost curve with existing models of physician networks, particularly those that are aligned with regional health systems," Dr. Walton says.

If independent physicians collectively embraced value-based care outside of hospitals, they have the potential to "move the needle faster while better controlling the rate of rising costs," adds Dr. Walton. Additionally, he believes a value-based market must offer an independent solution, as not all physicians want to be employed or controlled by health systems.

"The impact is that all boats will rise as independent physicians become more discerning in how to apply population management methods to a larger number of patients in their panel," Dr. Walton says. "Independent physicians are just the most recent expression of moving population management to all physicians that take care of patients in North Texas."

In order to succeed in the value-based care arena, TXCIN implemented real-time, web-based software to cut healthcare spending and enhance patient care. All participating TXCIN physicians use Dallas-based revelationMD technology. The technology allows providers to see how they are performing in real time, in terms of quality and efficiency. The physicians also use revelationMD to make referrals to more efficient outpatient services or specialists.

Since independent physicians utilize varying electronic medical record systems, revelationMD helps streamline data. The technology essentially serves as a "new software tool that helps to connect and extract clinical data from physicians and make it available at the point of care," explains Dr. Walton.

Ultimately, Dr. Walton sees population management skills as the key to success in value-based care contracting, while adding that "independent physicians' total costs of care is historically more cost efficient than their hospital-employed colleagues."

"We are working to preserve the option for physicians who want to be independent entrepreneurs of their own private practices, so communities and patients don't have to rely on the total corporatization of medicine to control costs and improve quality," says Dr. Walton.
Robert Hunter, MD, is supporting the troops in a way only he and other orthopedic surgeons can; by teaching them the latest and greatest orthopedic practices, The Chaffee County Times reports.

Here's what you should know.

1. Dr. Hunter is the director of the Orthopedic Center of Excellence at the Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center.

2. Dr. Hunter develops a yearly course that teachers military orthopedic surgeons the latest arthroscopic surgical techniques.

3. Dr. Hunter started the program in 2010 after the Society of Military Orthopaedic Surgeons approached the Arthroscopy Association of North America looking for help training their surgeons.

4. AANA fully funds the course for all military attendees.

Dr. Hunter is limited by the size of the training facility, but for the 48 surgeons who get to attend his class, the training is integral.

More news related to practice management:

Independent physicians band together in Dallas ACO to thrive in value-based world

Nuffield Health Exeter Hospital decreases length of stay by 40%: 4 takeaways

Princeton Orthopaedic Associates now serving patients on Saturday mornings: 3 notes




Montana's Governor Steve Bullock announced a CMS initiative that will transform how primary care physicians in the state are paid, according to Montana Public Radio.

Here are five insights:

1. Under the initiative, primary care physicians will receive payment based on their ability to maintain their patients' health.

2. Medicare, Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana and PacificSource are all on board with the new payment program.

3. Montana is one of only 14 states to implement the new program for primary care physicians, because the state's private payers agreed to participate.

4. Some key measures are cutting the number of emergency room visits and unnecessary hospitalizations.

5. More than 100 Montanan hospitals, clinics and physician offices have expressed interest in participating in the payment model, so far.
To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below
Business leaders have warned around 7,500 jobs are at risk in the Republic following the UK's Brexit vote

More than 7,000 jobs are at risk in the Republic following the UK's Brexit vote, business leaders warned.

The UK is one of the Republic's biggest trading partner and a fall in the value of the pound makes Irish products more expensive for British consumers.

An Ibec report warned if sterling was to weaken further towards the 0.90 mark, this would translate to losses of more than 700m in food exports and around 7,500 Irish jobs.

The organisation's food and drink industry director Paul Kelly said: "Urgent action is now required to protect our vital exports to the UK market, limit damage in the domestic market from imports, and address competitive pressures caused by the fall in sterling.

"A failure to act will compound the pressure on exporters, undermine Ireland's long-term position in the market and threaten jobs."

Ibec called for a review of the agri-food strategy, tax reform in the budget to improve competitiveness and an employment subsidy scheme.

Mr Kelly added: "In addition to an immediate response to the currency shock, we need to work towards a positive outcome in formal exit negotiations. The main objective must be to maintain full unfettered access to the UK market for Irish exporters. UK access to the EU single market is much more preferable to UK bilateral agreements with third countries."

He warned a structural shift in exchange rate relationship combined with Brexit-related trade risks meant UK buyers were planning significant supply chain restructuring following the June 23 British vote to leave the EU.

"The real threat is a loss of confidence in Ireland as a competitive supply base resulting in loss of markets and exports."

Mr Kelly said the government's short-term objective must be to support companies as they reposition their businesses during this period of uncertainty.

"The focus must be on maintaining markets in the UK, developing other markets as well as ensuring that, in the domestic market, companies remain competitive against imports and the threat of cross-border shopping."

The newly published report recommended a review of the national agri-food strategy FoodWise 2025; budget tax reform to improve Ireland's competitive position; and the re-introduction of the Employment Subsidy Scheme and the Enterprise Stabilisation measures that were last applied in 2009-11.

The document, entitled 'Brexit: The challenge for the food and drink sector', also included a survey of food and drink companies: 64% said exchange rate movements would have a negative impact; 42% expected negative impact on the value of export sales; 42% identified exchange rate volatility as the biggest problem and 51.5% have hedging or pricing arrangements in place.
The Sea Source team used simple recipes to show off the Northern Ireland produce

Monkfish was just one of the dishes which went down particularly well

Steven Pryce of Sea Source and Shane McArdle from Invest NI highlight our best fish in Hong Kong

Some of Northern Ireland's top fishermen have ventured to Hong Kong to fly the flag for the region's best catches.

It comes as many in the industry hope that opportunities arising from the UK's vote to leave the EU will open up new exports and allow the region's own fishermen exclusive fishing rights in the waters surrounding Northern Ireland.

"It's time to get down to business and make the most of trade opportunities," said Alan McCulla, chief executive of Anglo North Irish Fish Producers' Organisation (ANIFPO).

The co-operative is run by fishermen and owns Sea Source, a company which markets, processes and sells Northern Ireland caught fresh fish.

ANIFPO sent a team of two to a major Asian food industry event - Restaurant & Bar Hong Kong - which is a food industry trade exhibition boasting thousands of the finest food products in the world.

Accompanied by a representative from Invest NI and Jim Hannan of Hannan Meats, the team set out on a mission to meet those ordering fresh sea produce for Asia's top seafood restaurants and raise awareness of the quality found in Northern Ireland fish.

Restaurant & Bar Hong Kong is an influential fine dining and bar exhibition for Asia-Pacific countries. The event focuses on the high end of the food service and bar industry.

Last year the expo was attended by more than 20,000 industry professionals and featured 350 exhibitors. And this year's show is expected to be even bigger.

The event is strictly limited to those working in the industry and is not open to members of the public, making it an ideal venue for doing business.

ANIFPO's presence at the event cost the body almost 10,000 - a sure vote of the confidence by members in the region's ability to export.

No deals have been signed in Hong Kong yet, but Mr McCulla said he was confident that the Northern Ireland produce had gone down well.

"We have found the experience to be really positive," he said. "Chefs have been very impressed with the quality and the freshness of our produce. They've been smelling it, nosing it, pulling it apart - seeing what they can do with it."

Going down particularly well were the region's langoustines, monkfish and scallops - which some chefs noted to have a better consistency than scallops they were used to working with.

"They're also impressed with how quickly we can get it from our boat out to their restaurants," said Mr McCulla.

"Catch landed in Kilkeel on a Thursday morning will be brought to the fishermen's own processing factory that same day, taken straight to Dublin Airport, fly out with Emirates freight and be with them on Sunday.

"We're making the most of opportunities we should have been looking at even before Brexit. Three weeks ago we were out in Toyko in Japan."

Sea Source is a company owned by Northern Ireland's fishermen involved in the harvest, sale and processing of fish, as well as other marine based activities.

In July, the co-operative opened the UK's first fishermen-run shop.

The Northern Ireland Fish Producers Organisation Ltd (NIFPO) was formed in 1975. Their headquarters is located in the old Coastguard Cottages in Portavogie.

NIFPO today has approximately 150 member vessels predominately based in Northern Ireland's fishing ports of Portavogie, Ardglass, Annalong and Kilkeel as well as at other ports throughout the UK and Ireland.
Belfast travellers may have to wait some time for Emirates flights to Dubai

A direct flight between Belfast and Dubai is still some way off, according to the boss of Emirates in Ireland.

But Enda Corneille told the Belfast Telegraph the number of passengers from Northern Ireland using its Dublin services has increased by around 25% in the last year.

And he said a multi-million pound bailout package to save the Belfast to New York route tells a tale about how international links perform here.

Speaking about bringing a regular route to Belfast International Airport, he said: We were up a couple of months ago, and met with Invest NI. Its an airport of interest to us, and in its favour there is an active business community.

That shows a commitment.

There are no plans for it at the moment. Never say never, but its not on the cards at the moment.

And he said the model is all or nothing.

Emirates now runs a double-daily flight from Dublin to Dubai, and onwards to around 140 different locations.

Around 20% of flights finish in Dubai, with 80% going on to other destinations.

It now deals with 22,000 passengers a month and 1,500 tonnes of cargo.

Speaking about the links and the volume of Northern Ireland passengers using the route, Mr Corneille said: We were looking at this the other day. (The increase in traffic) is about 25-30% compared with last year.

Emirates now has a dedicated sales team in Belfast in order to meet demand for the routes.

Its a mixture of business and leisure, he said.

Business is about 35%, and 65% of it is leisure. Thats quite high. People are travelling for business, and people are travelling for leisure to just treat themselves.

Speaking about the overall performance of the Dublin flights, Mr Corneille said: The flights are around 80% full and are very good. They are big aircraft and there are 22,000 passengers a month  thats going to go up in 2017.

And he said there is more gas in the tank when it comes to growing the frequency of flights, or expanding routes.

Speaking about plans for Belfast, Mr Corneille said while it could be on the cards down the line, the close proximity to Dublin remains a difficulty.

The model is all or nothing. For our business, you have to have the frequency, he said.

Asked whether the issues around Northern Irelands only transatlantic route, linking Belfast to New Yorks Newark airport with United Airlines, would help sway any decision to come here, he said: That tells a tale. All that goes into the mix. We tend to have a pretty good record in getting routes right.

A lot of scrutiny goes into it. At the same time, there is no slowing in Northern Ireland customers travelling out of Dublin (to Dubai).

Dublin Airport was the fastest growing major airport in Europe in the first six months of this year, according to the latest figures released.
Paddy Cosgrave is in a pretty good mood. After years of trying, he has just got hold of the internet domain websummit.com. And for 1% of the original asking price. "The first time I went for it, the person who had it asked for a million dollars," said Paddy. "I sent him a picture of Dr Evil with his cat."

Cosgrave and his Web Summit co-founders shrugged off the ransom demand, defaulting to WebSummit.net, which has become the established internet address for the annual conference.

But he didn't give up on WebSummit.com. "For a few years, their price stayed at 100,000," he says. "But there was no way we were going to pay that. Eventually the person started to relent. In the end, we got it down to 10,000. We got an incredible deal."

Snagging the web domain comes just as Paddy is gearing up to host his first annual Web Summit outside Dublin.

For many Irish people, the Web Summit bowed out of Dublin in high drama last year.

Accusations and counter-accusations flew between the event's organisers and government officials as to whether the Web Summit was being supported or neglected by Dublin authorities.

Cosgrave said that the Government hadn't bothered trying to keep the event in Ireland, while Enda Kenny's ministers said the event had outgrown Dublin.

Aside from the main attraction, Paddy Cosgrave also pulled his Moneyconf event from Belfast after just one year.

It drew thousands of visitors and attendees from more than 40 countries at T13 back in June last year. It was said to be worth 3.5m to Belfast's economy

Afterwards, event organiser Paddy Cosgrave said it would be returning in 2016. But it was revealed last year that he's moving the event to Madrid.

"I'm sure we'll see a number of Irish Government people there. Maybe the Taoiseach. Maybe a minister. There are ministers from just about other major European nation attending."

So no regrets about how it flared up in the public sphere last November?

"No, I don't think so. For us, it ended fantastically. The actual attendees were very happy with it."

Nevertheless, when Paddy announced the Web Summit was to leave Dublin for Lisbon, people queued up to say that the event "wouldn't work" outside Dublin. There would be no pub crawls, no cheeky Irish wit to charm international tech moguls looking for a 'fun' environment in which to do business. "I heard there was going to be a great party," Tesla founder Elon Musk had said when asked why he came to the Web Summit in 2014.

So why would Elon go now?

As it turns out, predictions about Dublin's unique selling points over Lisbon (or anywhere else) have been tempered a little.

According to Cosgrave, there are already 36,500 registered attendees signed up for Lisbon. He says by November, the final number will "be capped" at 50,000.

What's more, he claims that there are over 1,000 "commercial partners" and exhibitors, including megabucks firms such as KPMG, Accenture, Cisco, McKinsey and BNP Paribas.

Meanwhile, speakers, which can be a barometer of interest in a conference, include the likes of Tinder's Sean Rad, Renault boss Carlos Ghosn, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and a phalanx of senior public policy people such as the president of the UN Assembly and the director of the World Trade Organisation.

"We're already at about 30% more attendees than last year," said Paddy. "This year it will be about twice the size of last year."

But what about the lack of a direct flight from San Francisco to Lisbon? Wouldn't that hit visitors coming from Silicon Valley?

"Most people who came to Ireland last year came through London anyway. From their point of view, there's no difference in flying to Lisbon. So it hasn't impacted them in that regard."

One irony of the Web Summit's increasing size is that it may now be more important for Ireland to sell itself there than in previous years back in Dublin. Paddy wouldn't be drawn on the exact numbers of Irish officials expected to attend.

However, he said his company is still working closely with the IDA, as well as organisations such as the ESB which has stayed on as sponsor of the Web Summit's 'Spark Of Genius' startup competition.

"I don't want to sound cynical, but now it's on outside Ireland, there's a sort of perverse thing where people at home might now consider taking three nights to attend a big conference abroad. Suddenly, it's sort of legitimate."

The Web Summit currently has a deal with Lisbon authorities to host the event there for three years. But Cosgrave remains hopeful that the Web Summit, or another conference like it run by him, will return to Ireland.

"One day we'll be back," he said. "Maybe that will be in five or six years' time when we've figured out a way to use the Convention Centre, the RDS and the Aviva together for the Web Summit."

"I've no doubt that the Web Summit could grow to that size in Dublin. It's just limited by the space available."

The Web Summit was started in 2010 by Cosgrave, journalist Daire Hickey and David Kelly. According to recent Irish accounts filed by the Web Summit's parent company, Cosgrave owns the majority of the enterprise outright.

While no revenue or profit figures were disclosed in the accounts, the organisation doubled its cash pile to 2.5m in 2014 but has not published revenue or profit figures. The company reportedly rejected a takeover bid last year.

Cosgrave and co-founder Daire Hickey have previously spoken of wanting to create a billion-dollar company. One way of doing it is to try and broaden the appeal. This year, for example, the Web Summit is trying to reach out beyond its tech roots by styling itself as 20 different 'summits', including individual "city", "society", "fashion" and "music" summits. "It's taken a while to grow as big as it's already become," said Cosgrave. "But it now matters an awful lot in different ways to leaders around the world. This year will be the first time that we have a lot of mayors and officials talking about civic plans like autonomous vehicles. We have the president of the UN General Assembly and the director general of the WTO.

"This is happening as there's a huge amount of interest in new trade agreements such as TTIP being hammered out, perhaps not always in the open. A lot of these people have a big role to play."

Cosgrave hasn't been as hands-on with the Web Summit over the last nine months as in previous years. His company now runs five different global tech and financial conferences, from Hong Kong and India to the US, Spain and Portugal. He recently married and is preparing for family life. But he said large parts of the organisation now run themselves, thanks to a staff of "around 150" working year round at the company's office campus in Dublin's Rathmines.

"We're still growing," he said. "At the moment, we're mainly focused on hiring."

Raiding multinationals is becoming one of the Web Summit's most pointed ways of doing this.

Cosgrave harbours mixed views about the privileges granted to multinational companies (such as complex tax-avoidance schemes). But he said the global firms are, at least, giving Irish companies a boost in terms of the sales people they're cultivating for recruitment into indigenous firms like his.

"We've had a lot of success hiring sales people out of Google, Linkedin and Facebook in Dublin," he said.

"That's one of the things about multinationals in Ireland. You're starting to see people move out of them into start-ups. People don't realise how fortunate we are, with Facebook training salespeople to a world class standard here."

This, he thinks, is helping an "unbelievable generation" of start-ups in Ireland find their way on a foreign stage.

As he sees it, the Web Summit is one of these start-ups. And while moving the conference to Lisbon has been straightforward ("everyone in Portugal speaks English, it's really quite easy," he said) he refers to Ireland as "home".

"I'm sure we'll be back at some stage," he says. "It's just a matter of when."
Last years Digital Future winners Liam Broadway and Sam Stuart, pupils at Dominican College, Portstewart with park ranger Rik Penn at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco

A programme aimed at finding the next generation of young and innovative entrepreneurs kicks off this week, when the Digital Futures roadshow rolls into schools across the country.

The six week programme, created by the team behind Digital DNA, challenges young people aged 12-17 across Northern Ireland to work in teams, putting their creative minds together to overcome a challenge or harness an opportunity faced by businesses or consumers through digital technology.

In partnership with the educational charity Sentinus and Aer Lingus, the competition offers the winning pupils a trip to Silicon Valley next March to visit some of the biggest technology companies in the world and the opportunity to gain valuable advice on how to further develop their digital idea.

"Northern Ireland has a rich history of innovation and we are hugely passionate about our Digital Futures programme which, through our fantastic partners, continues to inspire our young people to embrace invention and entrepreneurship," said Digital DNA founder Gareth Quinn.

He added: "Digital technology has an increasing role in all our lives and we are very fortunate to be able to work alongside so many companies in the private sector that share our passion to create digital leaders of the future."

Since launching in 2013, Digital Futures has involved thousands of school pupils across the country, including Liam Broadway and Sam Stuart from Dominican College in Portstewart, who won the competition in 2015 after developing an app aimed at increasing productivity and efficiency in the workplace.

The boys travelled to California where they visited Uber, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, Evernote, Google and Stanford University to meet the world's leading digital thinkers.

Sentinus director Bill Connor said: "Digital Futures offers young people across Northern Ireland the chance to use real-world technology to enhance their learning, while developing digital skills that will enable them to become valuable contributors to the local economy - now and in the future.

"The challenge helps build an understanding of digital technology among young people and provides them with the opportunity to engage with some of the world's leading digital experts."
Shoes worn by Theresa May when she was home secretary

Frances O'Grady said high heels should be a choice, not a condition of a job

The Prime Minister has been urged to swap her leopard skin shoes for comfortable footwear to support a campaign against women being forced to wear high heels.

The TUC Congress in Brighton approved a campaign to warn bosses and workers of the danger of inappropriate footwear, following the row over a receptionist sent home for refusing to wear high heels.

Over 140,000 people signed a petition supporting Nicola Thorp who objected to being told to wear shoes with a heel.

Penny Robinson of the GMB union took off her high heeled shoes to tell delegates that women were expected to wear "totally inappropriate " shoes to work.

She noted that Theresa May had attracted comments about her leopard skin shoes and suggested how the new Prime Minister could support the union campaign.

"She could make a point of wearing pumps, flats or comfortable shoes for Cabinet meetings or when she meets EU leaders," she said.

Katie Collins of the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists said 80% of adults had a foot problem, often caused by work.

Some employers enforced a dress code which included shoes, she said, adding: "Wearing high heels has real long term health implications."
Ed Balls with Katya Jones on the new series of Strictly Come Dancing

Former shadow chancellor Ed Balls has revealed that Gordon Brown has given him the seal of approval for Strictly Come Dancing.

Mr Balls received a good luck email from the former prime minister, and admitted he was pleased as he had assumed that Mr Brown thought he was "mad".

He told Radio Times: "Gordon sent me an email yesterday saying, 'Congratulations on Strictly, the whole nation is enjoying every minute of it'.

"I had thought he was sitting there thinking 'Oh my God, he's mad'.

"So it was nice that the email actually said, 'You go for it'."

The ex-politician made his Strictly debut on the launch show earlier this month when he was paired up with professional dancer Katya Jones, and he is now in training for the live shows.

His attempts to sidestep the sparkles and sequins have already been thwarted.

Mr Balls said: "I spent the whole week saying, 'I'm not having any sparkles, I don't think it's me', and then just before the launch dance they said, 'You are going to have to change your shirt', and it had sparkles all over it.

"My shirt made me look more like a beer barrel than a dancer. In retrospect the hoops on it were a mistake.

"Someone on Twitter said the wardrobe department just went, 'Sod it, darts player'."

Mr Balls suggested he is unlikely to be too upset by any negative comments about his moves on the BBC show.

"In politics you need a Goldilocks skin. Not too thick, not too thin," he explained.

"Because if you're thin-skinned then you can't survive, but if you're thick-skinned, you become inhuman and insensitive."

:: This week's Radio Times is on sale on Tuesday.
Lucy Watson (top second right) with her dog Digby joins campaigners outside Parliament urging Boris Johnson to encourage South Korea to end its dog meat trade

Former Made In Chelsea star Lucy Watson posed outside Parliament with caged campaigners dressed as dogs as she joined calls for the Government to "vigorously encourage" South Korea to end its "cruel" dog meat trade.

The stunt comes as celebrities including Dame Judi Dench, Downton Abbey star Peter Egan, author Jilly Cooper and Watson, signed a letter urging Boris Johnson to press for reforms.

The letter, co-ordinated by Humane Society International (HSI), claims up to three million dogs a year in South Korea are "raised and killed largely to be made into a supposed 'health' soup" known as Boshintang.

Mr Johnson has come under pressure to speak out in favour of outlawing the trade ahead of a parliamentary debate on Monday, triggered by an online petition which received 102,131 signatures.

Watson, who was joined by her beloved pet dog Digby as she met campaigners, said she had been shocked by "horrific footage and images" of the dogs in South Korea and hoped the debate would make a difference.

"I have to say that the cruelty out there is immense and overwhelming and it shouldn't happen to any living being," she told the Press Association.

Estimates on the number of dogs slaughtered for food in South Korea vary, with animal welfare campaigners criticising the methods used, which are said to include electrocution and hanging.

The reality star, who announced her departure from E4 series Made in Chelsea last week, said she now had more time to "really focus on making a difference for animals" and campaign on issues close to her heart.

She added: "Since I was born I've been obsessed by animals and had a really close connection with them.

"I grew up on a working farm so I was open to animal cruelty from a young age and instantly knew it was wrong.

"And now I'm in a position that I have a large following and a platform that I can use for good, that's all I really want to do."

During the 1988 Seoul Olympics, South Korea banned dog meat by invoking a law which prohibited the sale of "foods deemed unsightly" although this was not strictly enforced after the event.

HSI executive director Claire Bass, in the letter on behalf of the celebrities and animal welfare campaigners, said support from the Government and MPs would be a "tremendous boost" to South Korean politicians who oppose the trade.

The letter, signed by celebrities including Watson, adds: "With just 18 months until the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, which will bring global media to South Korea's door, we urge the British Government's ministers and representatives overseas to reach out to their South Korean counterparts and support the growing number of Korean politicians and citizens who want to see reform.

"In recent months, draft amendments have been submitted to South Korea's Animal Protection Act that offer a real opportunity to move towards an end to the dog meat trade.

"We urge the UK Government to vigorously encourage such legislative reforms, as well as to offer insights into the successful government-orchestrated phase-out of fur farms in the UK that offers a template for reform that South Korea could follow."

Wendy Higgins, spokeswoman for HSI, said she was "optimistic" that the trade could be brought to an end as attitudes change in South Korea.

"Young people in particular feel very energised and emotional about this subject and really want their country to end the practice of dog meat farming, so I feel that we are turning a corner," she said.

"We've got a long way to go but something that would really make an impact is for the British Government to reach out to their counterparts in South Korea and offer assistance and guidance."

In response to the petition, the Foreign Office said: "The British Embassy in Seoul has raised the issue of cruelty towards animals on numerous occasions with the South Korean authorities and explained that the UK public and parliamentarians would like to see Korean regulation that would bring the practice to an end.

"We will continue to seek further opportunities to raise the issue, in particular as we approach the Winter Olympics in 2018, and will monitor developments in the practice in the Republic of Korea."

It noted that changing attitudes mean dog soup is declining in popularity, adding: "The trend is such that dog meat eating is likely to die out of its own accord, though that day could still be some years off."
Time for change: A group of Manx women are at the forefront of a campaign to see the Isle of Man modernise their laws over unwanted pregnancies. Image posed by model

Time for change: A group of Manx women are at the forefront of a campaign to see the Isle of Man modernise their laws over unwanted pregnancies. Image posed by model

The Isle of Man's 'medieval' laws deny women access to basic medical care and force them into secrecy and shame. Ahead of elections later this month, a new campaign being fought on similar lines as to that in Stormont aims to bring about reform, writes a special correspondent.

Abortion rights have been in the spotlight in recent years. It can't have passed anyone by that Irish women - north and south - struggle to access basic reproductive healthcare. But on an often overlooked island a few miles closer to the UK mainland, women are also being endangered by restrictive legislation on abortion. The Isle of Man seems to be the island that feminism forgot.

But not anymore: a group of Manx women are fighting for their right to choose to terminate unwanted pregnancies. The Campaign for Abortion Law Modernisation (Calm) wants to bring Manx law in line with the UK. The Termination of Pregnancy (Medical Defences) Act is up for review in the next parliament and the feeling on the island is that the time is ripe for a long-overdue change.

Beyond offshore tax avoidance, the TT motorbike race and Mark Cavendish's Olympic successes, the Isle of Man rarely makes the headlines. A Crown dependency, the Isle of Man is part of the British Isles, floating in the Irish Sea between Liverpool and Dublin.

Manx citizens can travel to the UK for healthcare that can't be provided on the island, such as cancer treatment, neurological surgery and even complicated antenatal care. The NHS on the Isle of Man foots the bill. Abortion is one of the few exceptions.

The campaign was only set up a few months ago and despite the strides that Calm has already made, abortion is still a very taboo subject on the island.

"We are calling on Tynwald (the island's parliament) to amend and modernise the Termination of Pregnancy Act, core sections of which are unacceptably restrictive," Calm spokeswoman Sam Morris says.

"Women and families are suffering due to a two-tier system that means, if you have money, you have choices." Women without access to hundreds - if not thousands - of pounds at short notice have fewer options.

Last year, more than 100 women travelled to the UK from the Isle of Man for a termination, although the numbers are thought to be much higher as many women do not give their real address to the clinic. Including travel and accommodation, the procedure typically costs upwards of 1,000 and women have to make the arrangements themselves.

The island's Termination of Pregnancy Act allows for abortions in specific circumstances - rape, incest, mental health and severe foetal abnormalities - but in reality it is almost impossible to access on the island.

I spoke to a number of young women among my own circle (I don't live on the island, but am married to a Manx man) for this piece. Most of these liberal, middle-class women know somebody who has "gone away". One who herself had to cross to the UK for a procedure while in her teens describes the current law as "vile".

"Lots of my friends have had to go away," she says. "It is a lot more common than people think. The statistics are definitely wrong. I personally know a number of women who have had abortions and not given their correct details, so wouldn't be registered in the official figures."

The Termination of Pregnancy (Medical Defences) Act is up for review in the next parliament, though as low priority, and not until 2018 - for now. Calm are hopeful that Tynwald will pass more progressive legislation. The Manx Chief Minister, Alan Bell, has made comments in support of a change to the law.

Sadly, however, there is opposition to such progressive sentiment on the island. Another group campaigning for quite a different change in the law was launched this month.

Humanity and Equality in Abortion Reform wants to see abortion even further restricted.

Abortion is now firmly on the political agenda on the Isle of Man, but change isn't expected any time soon; the island moves at its own pace.

In the meantime, hundreds of women will continue to be let down at a time when they are most vulnerable.

Rebecca's story: The doctor wasnt very nice... he just told me to Google what to do

When I had my first abortion in early 2013, aged 17, I had just left college and didn't have a job. I was young and a bit stupid and wasn't using contraception. I didn't think twice about terminating the pregnancy as I knew it was the right decision, but I felt so ashamed of not wanting to stay pregnant. I was really nervous about going to the GP - he was our family doctor and even looked after my mum when she was pregnant with me. It's such a small world here.

The GP wasn't very nice. He said that he didn't believe in abortion and that it was illegal on the Isle of Man, so told me just to Google what to do, or look on the NHS website.

Thankfully, my mum was great and organised everything. She booked the procedure at the Marie Stopes clinic in Manchester and came with me when I was nine weeks along. It was okay, but it felt a bit like a conveyer belt. My mum paid for it - it was 1,000, but the guy who made me pregnant would only give me 200. It is so unfair that it is always the women who have to face the financial consequences.

I went to the family planning clinic after I came back and they made me feel so ashamed and stupid, and basically forced me to get a contraceptive implant. Despite this, just months later, I became pregnant again. I didn't see the point in going back to the GP.

The guy I was dating then was older than me. I tried to be mature about it, but he was so awful and didn't support me at all, just told me I had to have an abortion. I didn't want to do that again and I didn't know how I would afford it.

My mum ended up having to pay for the termination again because my boyfriend wouldn't give me any money. Three years later, I am glad that I didn't have a baby, but I do want to be a mum one day. I really hope that speaking out will help change the law, because women who want to have abortions will always find a way."

Emma's story: We hadnt much choice... it was the worst day of my life'

When you are told to go for a walk and come back in for a chat after your 20-week scan, you know that you aren't about to get good news. Though at that point, I didn't realise just how bad it was going to be. "We have some concerns about your baby," they said.

I was upset, my partner and I both were, but I was adamant everything was going to be fine. We were advised to seek a second opinion in the UK. We were cautiously optimistic, although we knew already that it would be unlikely that our daughter would ever be able to walk. But it quickly became apparent that things were worse than we feared.

We were told that our daughter wouldn't be able to swallow or breathe without help and would likely have severe learning difficulties. They were quite candid and told us that most parents in our position would choose to terminate the pregnancy.

You might wonder why I wanted to know the sex after getting news like that, but I just needed to hear something lovely rather than something awful and scary.

We did look seriously at the option of palliative care but we were advised that if we didn't subject our daughter to surgery as soon as she was born, there was a risk that the hospital would do it anyway and argue it later in court.

We didn't want to put her through all those operations and so we felt like we didn't have much of a choice but to terminate. The NHS on the Isle of Man funded it. I was one of the handful of women who meets the criteria. It was the worst day of my life.

I was sent to the UK to have the procedure to terminate the pregnancy and then came back to the Isle of Man to deliver her that day. I could have delivered her in the UK, but I wouldn't have been able to bring her body back and having a funeral was really important to us.

I wasn't sure where I stood on the abortion issue before this happened. I certainly didn't think I would ever terminate a pregnancy. My eyes have really been opened now and I don't think it is my place, or anyone's place, to tell women what they should do in whatever circumstances they find themselves in.
A woman who suffered heart disease despite leading a healthy lifestyle has urged anyone with concerns to seek help before it's too late.

Monica McCann (53), from south Belfast, was speaking as shocking new figures revealed that one in four deaths among women were from heart and circulatory disease each year in Northern Ireland.

That adds up to five women every day - meaning twice as many women die of heart disease than breast cancer. The British Heart Foundation Northern Ireland (BHF NI) said that women are more likely to ignore or dismiss symptoms of heart disease, even though they are just as likely as men to have it.

Jayne Murray, the head of BHF NI, said that women might not seek help for a number of reasons. She said: "This might be because women are less likely to recognise the symptoms, they're reluctant to cause a fuss, or they don't want to be embarrassed if it turns out that their situation isn't serious."

But this could mean those women might not survive.

"Heart disease kills as many women as men," Ms Murray said.

She said the stereotype for a person with heart disease is a middle-aged man with diabetes and who smokes. In reality, that's not the case.

"We need to work harder to shift the perception that heart disease only affects a certain type of person. Heart disease affects the wider spectrum of the population - including women," Ms Murray said.

Monica, too, had that perception. She is a healthy woman who exercises and eats well. She doesn't drink and she doesn't smoke.

She kept herself busy with her job as an assistant director of a local charity and her three teenage sons, one of whom has a learning disability.

"I'm a really active person. I'm quite energetic," she said.

But last year she started having chest pains. When they started, two of her brothers were in hospital, one for a heart attack and one for a stroke.

"I can remember one day rushing from one hospital to the other when I felt a pain in my chest but thought nothing of it. Over the next few months it kept happening," she said.

She thought maybe the stress was getting to her or that she was drinking too much coffee. She didn't see a doctor for six months and thought she was just getting out of shape.

"I was exhausted all the time," she said. "I sort of worked around it, but it was getting worse."

Ms McCann eventually went to her GP for a different reason, but mentioned that she was having chest pains.

Her doctor recommended that she get some tests done just in case.

When she went in for the tests, they found she had severe narrowing in an artery.

"They told me there and then they were going to have to put stents in. I just felt like, 'This can't be happening to me'. I had two stents fitted and the doctor told me straight that I probably wouldn't have survived a heart attack."

Now that she's recovering she realises she has to learn to pay attention to how she's feeling instead of pushing herself to keep going.

She didn't realise then that she was in so much danger.

"I thought because I was doing everything right, it wouldn't happen to me," she said.

"I've just been very grateful and I'm just very lucky I'm here."

Ms Murray said that to clear up misconceptions, stories like Ms McCann's are vital. "As we try to raise awareness, people sharing their stories is really, really important," Ms Murray said.

She added that more has to be done for women with heart disease in research and creating awareness.

She mentioned that cancer is given much needed attention, but that same amount of attention should be given to heart disease.

"There's a lot of misconceptions," she said.

"Heart disease kills twice as many women as breast cancer."
Concern continues to grow over Northern Ireland's bail policy as terror suspects implicated in two separate prison officer murders were free to associate with each other at a dissident republican rally, it can be revealed.

Damien McLaughlin, who is charged in connection with the murder of David Black, and Christopher Robinson, who is accused of Adrian Ismay's murder, were pictured together at an anti-internment protest outside a west Belfast police station last week.

Both suspects are on court bail.

Although conditions are attached to their bail, including curfews, there is nothing to prevent them from associating with other terror suspects or convicted terrorists.

It can also be revealed police officers have been told not to conduct bail checks on Robinson, who has been returned to court three times for breach of bail.

An email was issued to officers in Belfast from a police sergeant advising them not to call at Robinson's house at Aspen Park in Dunmurry. The email stated that as Robinson had been fitted with an electronic tag, the security firm G4S could monitor his movements.

The PSNI defended the move saying there was no reason for police to duplicate the work of the security firm.

A PSNI spokesman said: "The PSNI has a duty to keep people safe and ensure offenders are brought to justice. This means we will rigorously enforce all bail conditions set down by the courts.

"If a person is required to wear an electronic tag as part of their bail conditions, there is no reason for police to duplicate this monitoring unless otherwise requested or directed by the investigating officer or senior police officer or the court."

The spokesman added: "Police will continue to rigorously, but impartially, enforce all bail conditions set by the courts and we will not hesitate to arrest those who breach their bail conditions so they can be brought back before the court to ensure that the court has all the necessary information to allow it to decide if continuing bail is appropriate or to remand in custody, if necessary."

In May, Robinson was arrested for breaching his bail conditions when he failed to respond to a police check at his home. The following day he was arrested for tampering with his electronic tag.

Last month he was arrested again for failing to report to police on time to sign his bail. He claimed he had fallen asleep and was released on court bail.

A legal source close to the case said: "He's a terror suspect. Police should be breathing down his neck every few hours. Bail is a privilege not a right."

Robinson, who is accused of killing prison officer Adrian Ismay in March, joined McLaughlin at an anti-internment rally organised by Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association (IRPWA) outside Woodbourne Police Station on Thursday.

Last month McLaughlin was granted permission by a court to skip his curfew and stop signing bail for three days while enjoying a mini break at a luxury lakeside hotel in Co Fermanagh, as revealed by the Belfast Telegraph.

On the first day of his relaxed bail conditions, McLaughlin was photographed fronting another republican anti-internment protest in west Belfast, alongside convicted terrorists Sharon Rafferty and Conor Casey. He was also joined at that protest by Brian Shivers who was acquitted after retrial two years ago of the murder of two soldiers and six attempted murders at Massereene barracks.

McLaughlin, from the Kilmascally Road in Dungannon, is facing four charges in relation to prison officer David Black's killing. Mr Black was shot dead on the M1 in Co Armagh in November 2012 en route to work at the high security Maghaberry Prison.

Charges against McLaughlin include aiding and abetting murder, having a Toyota Camry for use in terrorism, preparing a terrorist act by starting and moving the vehicle which the killers used, and belonging to a proscribed organisation, namely the IRA.

The McLaughlin and Robinson bail cases have raised fresh questions over bail policy for terror suspects. Policing Board member Nelson McCausland said the current situation "makes a mockery of the legal system".

The DUP MLA said: "There is a widespread concern about several cases where a very lenient approach is being adopted by the judiciary in setting or amending the bail conditions for people facing serious charges relating to dissident republican terrorism.

"This lenient approach fails to take account of the seriousness of the offences and the threat posed by dissident republicans.

"At a time when these republican organisations are intent on murdering police officers and prison officers, most people find these decisions incomprehensible."

He added: "The PSNI and other services devote a lot of time and manpower to apprehend those suspected of terrorism and the seriousness of the offences demands more stringent bail conditions. I am appalled when I see reports of some of those who have been charged being out on bail and turning up at republican rallies in support of alleged republican terrorists.

"This situation makes a mockery of the legal system and must come to an end. It is time for the judiciary to rethink their approach."
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood with colleagues Nichola Mallon and Alex Attwood before a meeting with Secretary of State James Brokenshire at Stormont

It was shiny shoes and full attendance at Stormont yesterday as MLAs returned to work for the first time after their long summer recess.

From the basement canteen to the Great Hall, it was all about catching up after a not so restful summer.

Inevitably unionists sparred, on this occasion gently, over the Ulster Unionist Party's 10-point Brexit plan. "Where was the DUP's?" asked UUP MLA Alan Chambers.

"In our manifesto," retorted the DUP's Paul Girvan.

And outside a busy question time for Education Minister Peter Weir, the talk was of Jim Allister's challenge to the Speaker over why the Nama controversy was not on the agenda, and DUP MLA Brenda Hale's revelation in the chamber that she had been the victim of a stalker.

As he lined up his prepared answers, Mr Weir joked: "First day back is not dissimilar to the first day back at school, but in my case I had a lot of homework too."

His party colleague Mervyn Storey, on the other hand, said that no longer being Finance Minister meant that he was enjoying the opportunity to refocus on his constituency work.

New shoes may be a back to school essential, but the North Antrim man said he had simply had his re-heeled for 5.

"People say that's because I walk very quickly and am hard on my shoes," he said.

One of the newest MLAs, Carla Lockhart (DUP), said some of the longest-serving Assembly members such as Mervyn have been a great source of guidance to her as she finds her feet.

She was dressed very smartly in a pencil dress, form-fitting jacket and high heels but, perhaps following Mervyn's thrifty example, said she hadn't invested in a new pair of shoes for the occasion.

"I posted on my Facebook this morning: give a girl the right pair of shoes and she can conquer the world," she said.

"It's a Marilyn Monroe quote."

There were different pressures for the SDLP leader Colum Eastwood.

"Any 'night before the first day back' rituals I had are out of the water now we have a baby," he joked. "But we had a nice day out on Sunday to the north coast, Portstewart and Portrush.

"It was great today to see all the party group back again, and a lot of new faces who are raring to go."

As well as the newer faces, there was also the return of some more familiar faces, such as DUP veteran William McCrea, who lost his Westminster seat last year.

He received a party pass for the building to keep his hand in. "I don't like not being busy," he said.

Ulster Unionist MLA Jo-Anne Dobson said her essential first day preparations included ensuring the car was filled with petrol for her commute from Banbridge.

"It is a bit like going back to school or uni, you need to make sure you are prepared and have done all your reading," she said.

"It is exciting too, being back and seeing colleagues from across Northern Ireland you may not have seen for a while, with everyone being back in their constituencies."

Sinn Fein MLA Conor Murphy joked that living amid the beautiful scenery of South Armagh he didn't need to go away anywhere, but relented to reveal he had holidayed on the continent for a week during the summer.
Colin Murray is back in the chair of the BBC Radio 5 live show Fighting Talk on Saturday.

It comes less than two weeks after he presented his last show on Talksport.

The Belfast broadcaster first presented Fighting Talk between 2006 and 2013, playing judge and jury as panellists tried to earn points for punditry.

In July he said it was "unsustainable" for him to continue to front his popular Talksport show after a buyout of the station by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which also owns The Sun. As a committed Liverpool fan, Murray was one of many to boycott the paper after it accused supporters of stealing from those who died.

BBC Radio 5 controller Jonathan Wall said: "Colin is pretending he is not excited, but trust me, he's thrilled to be back on Fighting Talk and I'm delighted he's back too."
The inquest into the death of Charlie Patterson took place at Laganside courts yesterday with (from left) his daughter Anne Drain and his grand daughters Grainne and Bronagh Boyle in attendance

The daughter of a Dunmurry pensioner said she has been "haunted" after her father waited for hours in a hospital - scared and alone on a trolley - before his death.

Charlie Patterson, a grandfather and retired painter and decorator, was 86 when he died in Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital on January 30, 2013.

A hospital investigation found there were serious failings in his care, such as waiting too long for a CT scan and delays in receiving the proper medication, Octaplex.

Mr Patterson had fallen and hit his head while at evening mass in St Peter's church in Belfast at around 6pm on January 27.

His family were not contacted until 2am, eight hours later. By this point he had suffered a serious internal bleed of the brain and never regained consciousness. He died, surrounded by his family, three days later.

His daughter Ann Drain, joined in court by her nieces Grainne and Bronagh Boyle, said the family felt "robbed" of his final hours and the chance to say goodbye.

A statement from Ms Drain was read out by the court clerk.

"He was 86-years-old and alone in a scary place and must have been confused about what happened to him," she said.

"Why did no one phone his next of kin when his details were found on the hospital records? It nearly killed us all to think of him without us for that length of time."

"Charlie was transferred to a ward before 4am. We kept a 24/7 vigil by his bedside and held his hand till he took his last breath and slipped away on the afternoon of January 30."

Ms Drain said her father was always seen in his flat cap and enjoyed having his children and grandchildren around him.

She said learning of the failings in his care a year later, through media reports, was like suffering another bereavement.

"As a family this haunts us," she said.

"We were robbed of those last few hours with him."

Grainne Boyle also paid tribute to her grandfather in court.

"My sister and I lived with him for a long time after my grandmother's death," she said. "He said he was fine but he was lonely and he loved company. Later, we still had dinner with him every day."

She added: "He was very independent, he was out every day. Bronagh and I remarked he was fitter than us."

A statement released by the family after yesterday's inquest read: "The unacceptable delay in treatment in this case and others demonstrates that we have a National Health Service under unsustainable pressure which has resulted in seismic failures in the treatment of patients.

"The politicians need to try harder to get the resources to ensure that the failings which contributed to the passing of Charlie Patterson do not happen again."

Paul McCann of Madden and Finucane solicitors said: "The family welcome the change in policy by the Belfast Trust in dealing with head injuries as a result of this case, in that there is now a speedier assessment process which leads to earlier and potentially lifesaving treatment."

In his findings, Coroner Joe McCrisken stated: "A three hour and 36 minute wait in the emergency room - it is my view that for an 86-year-old gentleman to have to wait that long in triage is nothing short of deplorable.

"I think that is accepted by the trust."

He told the family they had acquitted themselves with great courage and that Mr Patterson would have been proud of their persistence.

"They were robbed of precious time with their grandfather in his last hours. It's so regrettable that had happened," he said.

He said he was pleased that the systems in place had changed and said he was "looking forward" to a tour of the RVH's new emergency facilities.

He continued: "I hope you've got a great many of the answers and some satisfaction in knowing that big changes have occurred directly as a result of Charlie's death."

The changes include a simplified and faster procedure for treating patients with Mr Patterson's symptons, as well as keeping a supply of the drug Octaplex available without delay in emergency rooms.

The clinical director for the RVH's emergency department, Dr Ian Wiggins, told the court that five doctors were on duty on the night of Mr Patterson's death.

He admitted that was not enough to meed demand, but said that the number had now been increased to 13.
A fire at a derelict building in Downpatrick is being treated by police as deliberate.

The suspicious fire happened in the Pound Lane area on Monday September 12.

Police received the report of the blaze just after 8.50pm.

Sergeant Ballard said: "The NIFRS have declared this fire to be deliberate. It is reported that a number of youths were seen at the premises earlier that evening.

"This site is derelict and dangerous and should not be entered without authority. I do not want to see anyone get hurt, seriously injured or worse so my advice is simple  think about your own safety and do NOT enter.

I would ask anyone with any information about this incident to contact Downpatrick Police Station on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference number 1304 of 12/09/16.

"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 widow of Seamus Heaney has revealed how she is just starting to recover from the sudden death of her Nobel laureate husband.

Three years after the poet's death, Marie Heaney has spoken about her loss and the grieving process she has gone through.

"I will never get over it, but I'm now beginning to feel like myself again," she said.

Mrs Heaney added she was surprised by all the publicity her husband's death had received around the world.

"I was astonished because he was such an unassuming man and we really did live a quiet life," she said.

"You didn't hear about us. But I was astonished at the effect he had on people."

She attended events around the world to honour his death, in places like New York, Boston and Tokyo, but they took a toll.

"I had a very public grief, don't forget," she said.

"I closed down.

"You're numb for a while, on autopilot.

"I was able to get through. It was very public, and every time you turned on a television or opened a paper there was something. For a long, long time."

Heaney died in a Dublin clinic on August 30, 2013, aged 74, following a short illness.

His death caused an outpouring of grief that stretched far beyond his native Bellaghy in Co Londonderry, where he was buried.

Touchingly, he sent a text message to Marie 15 minutes before his death that read Noli Temere - don't be afraid.

"He used Latin all the time. He was saying, 'Don't be afraid, I'll be all right' - and he wasn't," said Marie.

"He just died on the way to theatre... just stopped talking. But what a way to go. Extraordinary."

But even after all the publicity and the memorials around the world, Mrs Heaney said she still had to separate the public and the private man.

"In an odd way I was used to the public Seamus, and so what upset me was suddenly finding the glasses that I knew he had lost and hadn't been able to find, and I find now, and he's gone.

"What I grieved was my husband, not Seamus Heaney the poet."

She also received about 800 letters and poems from people who were influenced by Mr Heaney and wanted to tell her all the things he did for them.

"I knew nothing of this, because he was an extraordinarily kind person who used to spend his life doing things for people," she said.

She said one of the nicest things ever said about her husband was in a letter to the Irish Times.

It was signed by a Co Kildare man, Frank Munnelly.

It read: "Sir, I am saddened. As a nation we are a man down."

Mrs Heaney said: "I thought that was a wonderful, wonderful testament to Seamus."

But even with all the praise in the letters and obituaries for his work, Mrs Heaney remembers her husband's human qualities.

"I wouldn't want to make a saint out of Seamus; he was a perfectly ordinary human being. But he was a good person, a genuinely thoughtful person."

Mrs Heaney explained that her family was together for his anniversary, but she didn't visit his grave.

"A lot of people go there then. But I go regularly, and I talk to Seamus all the time," she said.

Mrs Heaney also spoke about her new book, All Through the Night, a collection of lullabies and poems. She said part of the inspiration was Mr Heaney's request to have Brahms' Lullaby played at his funeral.

"It was one of the most moving parts of the funeral. He'd asked me many, many years ago, long before mortality was on any of our minds. He said that when he went to school as an infant and he heard the big boys sing Brahms' Lullaby, that was his first intimation of the beauty of art, music in that case, that he had as a small child," she said.
A man allegedly performed a sex act on a busy Belfast city centre street as porn was shown on a portable DVD player, the High Court heard today.

Martin Coll is accused of masturbating in front of two shocked women in broad daylight close to the five-star Merchant Hotel.

The 54-year-old defendant denies a charge of indecent exposure over the incident on September 5.

Coll, originally from Derry but with an address at Victoria Street in Belfast, was refused bail.

He was arrested after police were called to the scene at Waring Street in the middle of the afternoon.

Conor Maguire, prosecuting, said two women had been viewing a tourist information sign when their attention was drawn to a man dressed in black.

One of the pair saw movement and believed he was waving at them, the court heard.

But on closer inspection she realised he had exposed himself and was masturbating, according to Mr Maguire.

The barrister continued: "She described herself as shocked and repulsed by the man's actions."

Mrs Justice Keegan was told the incident took place in a popular and busy part of Belfast, close to bars and restaurants.

On being asked by the second woman why he was performing a "disgusting" act, the man allegedly replied: "I didn't know I couldn't."

It was revealed that police also seized a portable DVD player as they detained Coll.

Mr Maguire added: "It was noted to be turned on and playing pornographic images."

Opposing bail, he claimed there was a risk of further offences and a need to protect the public.

Police were also said to be concerned for Coll's own safety amid claims others may have taken action against him if he had not been arrested.

Defence counsel Sean Doherty described his client as a homeless man, estranged from his family and with complex mental health needs.

The court also heard Coll suffered a serious head injury when he was younger. Mr Doherty confirmed: "He indicates to me that he wants to contest the charge."

Denying bail, however, Mrs Justice Keegan held there was a high risk of re-offending.

She indicated that a further application could be mounted if suitable supervision is obtained.
The kebab shop in Coleraine targeted by Samuel Martin

A man who downed a bottle of Buckfast claimed he shouted abuse about Muslims and damaged a kebab shop owner's car as he feared for his son's future "because of Islamic things in the world", a court has heard.

Samuel Marshall Martin (47), a caretaker from Windsor Avenue, Coleraine, was handed probation for a year and ordered to carry out 80 hours community service.

He had been charged with causing criminal damage and being disorderly in Railway Road in Coleraine on July 8 this year.

A prosecutor told Coleraine Magistrates Court the incident happened at 10.45pm and was being treated as a hate crime.

He said Martin had gone to a Turkish kebab takeaway and asked staff why they had bacon on their menu before wondering if they would "die a Muslim".

He also shouted "f*** Muslims" and scraped the owner's car, which cost 390 to repair.

When arrested he told police: "The Muslims have won again."

He told police after drinking a bottle of Buckfast he bought a second bottle and couldn't remember much.

Martin also said he feared for the future of his seven-year-old son because of Islam.

Defence solicitor Denise Gillan said her client had brought 390 to court and "finds it difficult to be labelled a racist" as his wife is Thai.

Ms Gillan said the incident arose out of taking far too much alcohol and a "very marked lack of judgment".

She said Martin is the sole carer for his son as his wife has returned to her Far East home.

Ms Gillan said Martin had been watching news stories circulating in the media and events in Europe were on his mind.

"That is why he acted as he did," she added.

She said that Martin wished to apologise for his conduct.

Deputy District Judge Liam McStay said it was a "serious" incident and one which he found to be a hate crime motivated by religion.

He noted the defendant was married to a Thai woman and his son had half her genes.

The judge described the offence as "mean" with no point to it, but said it was to Martin's credit he had brought compensation to the court and he read into that there was "genuine remorse".
The men made off with a safe of money.

Masked men armed with a crow bar and a sledgehammer have robbed a Domino's in south Belfast.

It happened on Tuesday September 13 on the Lisburn Road.

At around 6am, two masked men entered the fast food restaurant armed with a crow bar and a sledgehammer.

They made off with a safe containing a sum of money.

A male staff member, aged in his 20s, was not injured in the incident.

The two men were dressed in dark clothing and gloves.

Detective Inspector Nigel Snoddy said: I would ask anyone with any information about this incident to contact detectives at Musgrave Police Station on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference number 126 of 13/09/16.

"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.
MLAs Brenda Hale and Clare Bailey (pictured) have both spoken out about their stalking ordeals

MLAs Brenda Hale (pictured) and Clare Bailey have both spoken out about their stalking ordeals

A DUP Assembly member has told of her terrifying ordeal at the hands of a stalker who refused to leave her alone and told her: "We have to keep working at this relationship."

Brenda Hale, whose soldier husband Mark was killed in Afghanistan in 2009, spoke for the first time of her experience as the Assembly urged Justice Minister Claire Sugden to consider laws to tackle stalking.

And Green Party MLA Clare Bailey also revealed how razors were stuck in her car tyres, which exploded as she left her children to school.

Breaking her silence on her six-month ordeal, Lagan Valley MLA Mrs Hale said she had lain in bed at night, thinking her "obsessive" stalker could be outside the door. Her stalker was from Dublin, in his mid-50s, always well-dressed and, Mrs Hale said, softly spoken.

"It was during the 2011 election, just two years after I had lost Mark and this man became aware of me during the election," Mrs Hale said.

"He had built up a profile of me and seen my photograph and read the stories about the war widow standing for election.

"He first approached me in Marks and Spencer at Sprucefield and offered his congratulations on my election and I thanked him and spoke to him, thinking he was a constituent.

"The first text came that same night. He had phoned Stormont and somehow got my mobile. He wanted us to meet up.

"From then on it was constant texts, always wanting to meet, but I have to admit it was six months before I went to the police, although with my military background I was always aware that the police were an option."

Mrs Hale, who was 42 at the time, said she finally realised something was "seriously wrong" when she asked the man to stop contacting her and he replied: "We have to keep working at this relationship."

"He was saying: 'We can't let what we have built up fall apart.'

"I felt incredibly vulnerable. I would lie awake in bed at night and think this man could be outside the door.

"I was also very fearful for my daughters Tori and Alex, who were still going to school by bus in the dark mornings."

Finally she went to the PSNI and believes the Garda visited the man in Dublin, and she heard nothing more.

"I don't know why I waited so long to report it.

"Obviously at the time I was beginning to learn my job as an MLA and I was still very much grieving for Mark. But unlike many stalking cases, this was somebody I did not know from Adam.

"I was very conscious that he would be able to see me when I was on television, and in Assembly debates, and online." Mrs Hale was one of a number of DUP MLAs behind a motion warning that for too long stalking has remained a hidden crime because so much of it goes unreported. Unlike other areas of the UK, stalking is not a specific crime in Northern Ireland, and tends to be dealt with as harassment and intimidation.

The Lagan Valley MLA said she had recently asked the Justice Minister to detail the number of prosecutions over the last five years.

The Department had replied by saying: "Stalking is a colloquial term and there is no specific offence of stalking in Northern Ireland."

Mrs Hale told MLAs: "If I were not so angry, I would have laughed. These people are delusional.

"They have no idea what they are doing, or else they do know what they are doing and are doing it deliberately. They know the law so well now and are using it to attack their victims.

"We must put in place a framework that enables the justice system and the PSNI to protect victims and prosecute perpetrators. The women who I have been trying to support, deserve the freedom to walk down the street, sleep without fear and feel safe in their home, and not to be made to feel as though they are wasting police time and making a nuisance of themselves.

"Stalkers are manipulative and cunning and, in some cases, use a protection from harassment order to harass and legally stalk their victims. I know of that happening right now."

South Belfast MLA Ms Bailey said that the average victim is stalked 100 times before they even report it to police, "and even then the response from the police may not be what is required".

"I know this from personal experience," she added.

"I had razor blades stuck in my car tyres, which caused the tyres to blow up after dropping my children to school.

"I decided then to report the stalking to the police, but the response was: 'What do you want us to do about it?' I couldn't answer their question, but I didn't report any further incidents."

The Green deputy leader also argued: "It is disappointing that in 2016, we are continuing to fail to take the crime of stalking seriously, leaving victims and their families to struggle alone until something more serious occurs."

Ms Sugden said that while she could not fully commit to legislation on the issue, she was "minded to consider" it.
A Northern Ireland barrister has died whilst on holiday in Spain.

Shona Killen was on holiday with her partner. She was 27 years old.

She has been described as a highly-respected lawyer.

The Bar of Northern Ireland - which represents barristers - expressed its sympathy.

Liam McCollum QC, Chairman of the Bar Of Northern Ireland said: "It is with shock and great sadness that the Bar of Northern Ireland has learned of the sudden passing of our esteemed member, Shona Killen this weekend while on holiday in Spain.

"Called to the Bar in 2011, Shona was a well-known and highly respected young barrister, endeared to all who knew her and renowned for her fundraising efforts.

"On behalf of the Bar, I would like to express our deepest condolences to her friends and family, assuring them of our thoughts and prayers and the provision of any and all support we can offer during this most difficult time.

Shona began works as a barrister after graduating from Queen's and specialised in criminal, family and personal injury cases.

On the Bar Library website she described her main objective as "client care".
Scene of the incident on the Lisburn Road in which a man was badly injured after being struck by a car

A pizza delivery driver appeared in court accused of a hit-and-run collision in south Belfast that left a man critically injured

Scott Johnston, 23, was allegedly behind the wheel of a car that hit the victim on the Lisburn Road last Saturday night.

The pedestrian, aged in his forties, was taken to hospital for treatment to his injuries.

Johnston, of Springhill Heights in Bangor, Co Down, is charged with causing grievous bodily injury by dangerous driving.

He also faces counts of failing to stop, remain or report an accident where an injury occurred.

Standing in the dock at Belfast Magistrates' Court on Tuesday, he confirmed that he understood the charges by nodding and replying: "Yes."

A PSNI constable said he could connect the accused to the alleged offences.

No questions were put to the officer during the brief hearing.

Police did not object to Johnston being released on bail to live at another address in Bangor.

He is prohibited from having any contact with the victim. District Judge Fiona Bagnall was also told that it was unnecessary to ban him from driving.

"Police have seized his car, so he doesn't have a car at this stage," the officer revealed.

Johnston was released from custody to return to court for an update in the case on October 25.
Police chiefs have advised officers to stop conducting bail checks on the man accused of murdering prison officer Adrian Ismay, an MP has claimed.

Democratic Unionist Gavin Robinson said a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) email called for changes as the checks resulted in "far too many complaints" from the suspect's solicitor and it was seen as "offending his sensitivities".

Mr Robinson made the claim during a parliamentary debate focused on securing compensation for victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA terrorism.

Mr Ismay, 52, suffered injuries when a device exploded underneath his van in east Belfast on March 4 and died later that month.

A dissident republican group calling itself the New IRA, which opposes the Northern Ireland peace process, claimed to have carried out the attack.

Christopher Alphonsos Robinson, from Aspen Park in Dunmurry, west Belfast, has been charged with the murder of Mr Ismay.

Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate, MP Mr Robinson (Belfast East) criticised the lack of legal aid support for victims of the 1982 Hyde Park bomb attack as they seek to pursue a civil case.

He said: " There are many perpetrators of violence against the state who run to the courts, who get support, who continue to claim that they need further compensation or transparency or justice from the state - those who perpetrated violence against the state and our citizens.

"If we are able, and it sticks in our craw, to stand up for them then I think it is incumbent for the victims of Libya-sponsored IRA violence.

"I want to particularly focus just on one case this year in March when a constituent of mine, Adrian Ismay, was blown up by a bomb planted by the new IRA containing Semtex, which is presumed - since there have been no recent purchases - that it is of the same origin and extraction, sourced from the Czech Republic, through Libya to the IRA and disseminated through their splinter organisations.

"This year a citizen of this country, a serving prison officer, somebody who believed in his community... was blown up by Semtex with origins from Libya.

"And the chief suspect in that case is walking the streets of Belfast today on bail.

"Having breached his bail on three separate occasions and returned to court, he still walks the streets today.

"I received information at the weekend that PSNI chiefs sent an email to their officers not to conduct bail checks because it was generating far too many complaints from his solicitor and offending his sensitivities.

"Offending the sensitivities of a man who is alleged to be the murderer of my constituent in March - and the police are concerned about his sensitivities."

A PSNI spokesman, in a statement, said: " If a person is required to wear an electronic tag as part of their bail conditions, there is no reason for police to duplicate this monitoring unless otherwise requested or directed by the investigating officer or senior police officer or the court.

"Police will continue to rigorously, but impartially, enforce all bail conditions set by the courts and we will not hesitate to arrest those who breach their bail conditions, so they can be brought back before the court to ensure that the court has all the necessary information to allow it to decide if continuing bail is appropriate or to remand in custody, if necessary."
Ryanair is ending flights to London and Faro, Portugal, from Londonderry

Ryanair is ending its Londonderry to London route from next spring.

Summer flights to Faro in Portugal are also being dropped, the City of Derry Airport disclosed.

Stansted services will stop in March next year and Faro in April.

From April 2017 Ryanair will operate five weekly services to Glasgow International and two to Liverpool from City of Derry Airport

Derry City and Strabane District Council's chief executive John Kelpie is seeking a Public Service Obligation (PSO) commitment from the Government that a direct route be operated between Derry and London.

He said: "We believe our peripheral location where connectivity to London is vital for the development of our regional economy and the social development of our region, will put us in a strong position to secure a PSO."

Key challenges facing the loss-making airport include air passenger duty, the legacy of the global financial crisis and the low-yield environment this has created, competition from Dublin which pays no tax and a reducing pool of airlines which are averse to risk.

Mr Kelpie added: "We are committed to continuing to work proactively over the coming weeks and months to safeguard the airport's future and put in place a strategy that will ensure the airport continues to provide air connectivity for business and tourism, and remains an important regional gateway and the airport of choice for the North West."
MLA Clare Bailey told the Assembly she had been targeted by a stalker

An Assembly member has revealed that a stalker stuck razor blades in her car tyres, causing them to blow up on the school run.

Clare Bailey outlined details of the ordeal after a Stormont debate on the lack of specific legislation to combat stalking in Northern Ireland.

The Green Party NI deputy leader and MLA for South Belfast claimed she received an inadequate response from the police when she reported her experience.

"I had razor blades stuck in my car tyres, which caused the tyres to blow up after dropping my children to school," she said.

"I decided then to report the stalking to the police, but response was 'What do you want us to do about it?' I couldn't answer their question but I didn't report any further incidences.

"It is disappointing that in 2016, we are continuing to fail to take the crime of stalking seriously, leaving victims and their families to struggle alone until something more serious occurs."

Assembly members from all sides of the house backed a DUP motion calling for beefed up measures to crack down on stalking in the region.

Tabling the motion, the DUP's Brenda Hale said she also had experience of being stalked.

She described it as a "hidden crime".

"It is terrifying and can result in psychological harm and, in more serious cases, physical harm," she said.

"I, along with my colleagues, am calling on the Minister of Justice to look into the seriousness of stalking and to conclude that legislation should be introduced to safeguard the victims of stalking in Northern Ireland.

"This is something I have had the anxiety of dealing with myself, and I have a number of constituents who are currently trying to protect themselves from stalkers."

Mrs Hale outlined the experience of one of those constituents - Vicky Clarke - to the chamber.

"Every day I woke up with a feeling of dread, knowing no matter what was ahead I could see him, or he would follow me," she quoted.

"It was like a very heavy black cloud following me everywhere I went. Only I could see it."

Responding to the debate, Justice Minister Claire Sugden said she was minded to consider fresh legislation if necessary.

"As Justice Minister, I am keen to ensure that the criminal law in Northern Ireland is fit for purpose and that we learn from the experiences of other jurisdictions, where such laws can make a difference for the better," she said.

"I have already asked my officials to review the existing laws on stalking here and elsewhere and to report to me on the need for the introduction of additional legislation to safeguard victims of stalking in this jurisdiction."
Actor Colm Meaney has described Sinn Fein politician Martin McGuinness as an "extraordinary statesman" after playing him in a new film.

Meaney said the former IRA commander, now Deputy First Minister, is an "astute politician" working towards the "laudable goal" of uniting the island of Ireland.

The Irish actor stars in The Journey, a fictional drama about the friendship forged between McGuinness and his political opponent Ian Paisley during the peace process.

Appearing at the Toronto International Film Festival, Meaney said: "I think Martin McGuinness has become an extraordinary statesman, a real statesman.

"I supported him in his candidacy for president of Ireland at the last election because I thought he was the most qualified person to do it.

"He's proved himself over the last 10 years to be a very astute politician and a remarkably competent statesman, which surprises a lot of people."

Meaney - known for his roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa - brushed off controversy surrounding Mr McGuinness, saying: "Anyone who is involved in politics in Ireland is controversial."

He added: "I think what Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein have achieved in Ireland in the last 10 years is tremendous.

"They're moving towards bringing the island of Ireland together which I think is a laudable goal."

Mr Paisley, the DUP leader who died in 2014, is portrayed in The Journey by English actor Timothy Spall.

His widow, Baroness Paisley, is believed to be boycotting the film, reportedly saying: "I don't think it was written with great knowledge."

Director Nick Hamm insisted the film is a fictionalised account of "two A-list politicians".

"We were looking to present a balanced argument where both sides would be equally comfortable and equally uncomfortable," he said.
Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire has vowed to smash paramilitaries in the region.

Just weeks into the job, the Conservative minister has delivered his most hard-hitting rebuke to date on those still engaged in loyalist and republican violence.

Signing an international treaty with Dublin to set up a new paramilitary watchdog, Mr Brokenshire warned he was intent on putting more of them behind bars and out of business.

"I am determined to make progress," he said.

"We cannot tolerate cold-blooded murder in alleyways masquerading as justice.

"It has to stop and these groups must be put out of business for good."

Mr Brokenshire and Irish foreign affairs minister Charlie Flanagan both signed an accord in Dublin which paves the way for the setting up of the Independent Reporting Commission (IRC).

Jointly formed by the UK and Irish governments, it was one of the measures agreed in last year's Fresh Start Agreement between the two governments and Stormont leaders.

Confirming a 3 million war-chest for the new watchdog, Mr Brokenshire said he hopes it plays a "key role in confronting the scourge of paramilitarism" that still affects people in Northern Ireland.

"Those engaged in what is often described as paramilitary activity serve no political cause," he said after signing the treaty at Iveagh House in central Dublin.

"They commit crime using the cloak of paramilitarism to line their own pockets.

"They use intimidation and fear to exert power and influence within their communities.

"They hold communities back - deterring investment and jobs and preventing people from moving on with their lives."

Mr Brokenshire said he will work with Dublin and Belfast to stop young people joining loyalist and republican groups and help communities stand up to them.

Furthermore, he vowed to get more people coming forward giving evidence and to ensure the criminal justice system prosecutes more paramilitary figures, putting "more of them behind bars for longer".

"There should rightly be high expectations of what we seek to achieve," he said.

Mr Flanagan said while paramilitary murders were now infrequent compared with recent decades, communities are still being targeted.

"Under the radar, some communities in Northern Ireland remain subject to daily intimidation, bullying and indeed control by thugs and criminals," he said.

"This is not acceptable in any society."

Mr Flanagan said the treaty setting up the IRC provided a framework for ending paramilitary activity.

Legislation being introduced this week in the House of Commons and later in the Irish parliament, the Dail, is expected to see the IRC up and running by the end of the year.

Its annual reports will be published by the UK and Irish governments, which are also entitled under the terms of the treaty to jointly request further reports as required.

The commission may make recommendations to the Northern Ireland Executive to inform future Programme for Government priorities and commitments.

The IRC will have four members, including persons of "international standing".

The UK and Irish governments will nominate one member each; the Northern Ireland Executive two members.
Arlene Foster criticised UUP proposals for all Northern Ireland to be an enterprise zone as uncosted and old

Ulster Unionist proposals for the whole of Northern Ireland to become an enterprise zone are uncosted and old, the First Minister claimed.

Arlene Foster said some of the ideas were first mooted in 2010 and suggested the rival unionists were badly divided over Brexit.

This week the UUP published a 10-point plan setting out its vision for Northern Ireland outside the European Union. It called for a trebling of spending on infrastructure.

The First Minister said: "I have read the document which was published to much fanfare yesterday from, I am not sure whether it is the official Ulster Unionist document, whether it is the official Opposition document, whether it is the Continuity Ulster Unionist document.

"However, I have the document.

"It is an entirely uncosted document, no surprise there. It is also a document that brings forward propositions which are some six to 10 years old."

She said a Northern Ireland-wide enterprise zone was first mooted by the Ulster Unionists in 2010.

The Ulster Unionists called for a united approach from Stormont departments to Brexit.

They sought more focus on education and a new peace centre, at the site of the former Crumlin Road courthouse in North Belfast.

UUP Assembly member Steve Aiken said the document was ambitious and envisaged Northern Ireland becoming a gateway to Europe.

The UUP, Sinn Fein and the SDLP campaigned to stay in Europe before the June 23 referendum, but the DUP sought an exit vote.

Mr McGuinness said: "What we have to do is work in a very common sense, practical way to ensure that we defend the interests of the people that we represent north and south.

"So Brexit obviously has very profound implications for the south and they have expressed that publicly.

"I believe it has profound implications for us in the north but we all have to work together and I think a clear signal of our ability to work together is the joint letter that the First Minister and I sent to Theresa May identifying a number of areas of real concern to ourselves and I am sure those concerns are shared by the Irish government."

He added: "We are working together to try and make the best of what is a very difficult situation for all of us."
Jaafar Al-Hasabi outside the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin where he lost his case against the Attorney General of Bahrain

A torture victim has vowed to continue to fight for justice after failing to get the Attorney General of Bahrain to face his claims in an Irish court.

Jaafar Al-Hasabi, who lives in London, claimed he suffered electric shocks, prolonged sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of his feet and other attacks while imprisoned in the Gulf state in 2010.

The 43-year-old sought summonses for the country's chief prosecutor, Ali Bin Fadhul Al Buainain, to appear in the District Court in Dublin over three allegations.

The IT professional and UK citizen, who still campaigns for human rights in his homeland, was held for five-and-a-half months from August 2010 to February 2011 in a complex known as The Fort.

Mr Al-Hasabi told the court the Attorney General was responsible for overseeing the detention centre, operated by Bahrain's National Security Agency.

His senior counsel, Giollaiosa O Lideadha, said that in August 2010 Mr Al Buainain authorised a 60-day extension to his client's incarceration and another 10-day extension was signed off by his office.

Judge Grainne O'Neill refused the request to order the Bahraini Attorney General to appear on complaints of torture, conspiracy to torture and aiding and abetting torture.

"I'm not satisfied that you have established a sufficient nexus between the behaviour alleged and the proposed accused in this case," she told the court.

Outside the Criminal Courts of Justice, Mr Al-Hasabi said: "This is disappointing, not just for me. The people who are looking for change and democracy and human rights without abuse from the government, this is disappointing for them."

Mr Al-Hasabi, who was supported by the Global Legal Action Network, took the case in Dublin as Mr Al Buainain is due to attend a conference in the city this week as vice-president of the International Association of Prosecutors.

"We hope in the near future, if it is not in Ireland, we will put this case in many different places and hopefully one of the places will bring them to justice," Mr Al-Hasabi said.

"I have been working in this field for more than 20 years and I will continue until the day that comes to bring justice to our people.

"There were more than 4,000 people, activists and political figures, are in jail. The torture in Bahrain is still going. There is no justice in Bahrain.

"If I don't fight for their freedom it would be disappointment for our next generation that we have not done any good for their future."

Mr Al-Hasabi fled Bahrain a second time after being released without charge in 2011, despite facing repeated allegations from Bahraini authorities that he was part of a terrorist network.

He made a statement to gardai describing the torture he endured and outlining allegations against the Attorney General of Bahrain.

The tiny Gulf state is ruled by a Sunni monarchy which has faced down calls for deeper democracy for the Shia majority population.

Mr Al-Hasabi became a refugee in Britain after first fleeing Bahrain in 1995.

In 2009 he became a UK citizen and returned to his homeland the following year to visit his father but was imprisoned without charge and incommunicado.

Gearoid O Cuinn, director of Global Legal Action Network (Glan), said: "Today's decision is a failure by the courts to adhere to commitments given by Ireland under international law."

Sayed Ahmed Al Wadaei, director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, said: "We are extremely disappointed at the decision today. It has undermined Ireland's commitment to the Convention against Torture."

The New York-based Human Rights Watch reported in 2010 that torture was endemic and systemic in Bahrain prisons.

After Mr Al-Hasabi's detention, United Nations rapporteurs warned the Bahrain government that it had concerns for him and a number of others who were in custody.

Swiss prosecutors last year launched an investigation into Mr Al Buainain after similar allegations were made on Mr Al-Hasabi's case.
Burma's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Theresa May agreed that Britain must remain an outward-facing country in the aftermath of Brexit during a Downing Street meeting.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate had earlier remarked that the Prime Minister must be "extremely busy" in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union, to which Mrs May said there was "certainly a lot to do".

The pair then held a "very friendly" meeting at No 10 in which Brexit was "briefly discussed" alongside Burma's importance to the UK as a trading nation , Downing Street said.

A spokesman added: "Obviously both countries agree on the importance of the UK remaining an outward-facing, engaged country.

"With Burma having one of the fastest growing economies, its importance to us as a trading nation is clear."

The human rights abuses perpetrated by the Burmese military, such as the oppression of the country's Rohingya Muslims, were also "touched on" during the bilateral talks, the spokesman said.

Ms Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party swept to victory in 2015 elections, endured years of house arrest and harassment by military rulers while continuing her non-violent campaign to unseat them and usher in the first civilian government in more than five decades.

She holds the country's specially-created post of state counsellor - her two sons' British citizenship prohibiting her from becoming president because of the country's military-era constitution.

The Downing Street spokesman said: "It was a very friendly meeting.

"It was her (Ms Suu Kyi's) first visit outside of Asia since the election victory last November.

"The PM congratulated her on the progress that has been made so far on the political transition after the military dictatorship and in return the Prime Minister was thanked for the support and friendship that Britain has shown, continues to show to Burma."

Ms Suu Kyi had on Monday met Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who welcomed the establishment of the Rakhine Commission, led by Kofi Annan, to tackle the situation facing the Rohingya community.
The UK Government has committed to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020

The total cost of the Government's expanded resettlement programme for Syrian refugees could top 1.7 billion, spending watchdogs estimate.

Ministers committed to take in 20,000 people driven from the war-torn country by 2020 following a public outcry over the fate of those attempting the perilous journey across the Mediterranean.

As well as providing the first estimate of the potential bill for the scheme, the National Audit Office(NAO) warned that a shortage of housing and school places could pose a threat to the chances of meeting the pledge.

Costs associated with the initiative fall to different central government departments and councils taking part, and no official total has been given so far.

The sum is uncertain as it depends in large part on the characteristics of those entering the country, the extent to which refugees need medical treatment or welfare services and the extent to which they can gain employment and become self-sufficient, according to the NAO.

Based on department assumptions, it estimated that the cost to the end of 2019/20 could be up to 1.1 billion, and up to 1.73 billion over the lifetime of the project.

The estimated total sum , which includes potential costs for healthcare, education and welfare, equates to 17,340 per refugee per year on average for their first five years in the UK.

Nearly 5,000 houses or flats, and more than 10,000 childcare and school places will be needed for the initiative, according to the NAO.

Its report said: "The future of the programme could be put at risk by local authorities' lack of suitable accommodation and school places."

As of June 2,659 refugees had been resettled in the UK through the programme - 13% of the target, with those arriving dispersed across 118 local authority areas.

Enough "indicative" pledges have been secured from local authorities to meet the aim.

" It is essential that these pledges materialise into firm offers of support as more refugees will need to be resettled each quarter during the remainder of the programme than have been so far", the NAO said.

The report said the scheme expanded the original programme successfully to resettle 1,000 refugees by Christmas.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: " The programme team achieved a great deal in a short amount of time, resettling much larger numbers of refugees than previous programmes, due in large part to the dedication and goodwill of those involved.

"The characteristics of the refugees arriving in the UK will become clearer over time. With this new information, the programme team must adapt budgets so that no organisation taking part in the programme struggles to participate effectively due to cost pressures."

David Simmonds, of the Local Government Association, said: "We have previously said that we were confident in ensuring that there would be sufficient pledges to support the Government's aim to resettle 20,000 people by 2020 and the Home Office has now confirmed this to be true. The focus must now be on ensuring families are well supported."

A Government spokesman said it is on track to meet the 20,000 commitment.

He added: " We have secured all the local authority pledges required to meet this commitment and the hard work across Government involving the devolved administrations and local authorities will continue until we have turned all of these pledges into places and resettled 20,000 people.

"This is a humanitarian programme and the level of funding enables local authorities to provide vulnerable refugees with a safe environment and the chance to rebuild their lives.

"We ask local authorities to consider carefully whether they have the necessary infrastructure and support networks before a resettlement occurs and we will only resettle individuals to a particular area once we've ensured these arrangements, including school places and housing, are in place."
Edward Snowden has made his feelings known about Theresa May, describing the British Prime Minister as a sort of Darth Vader in the United Kingdom.

The exiled NSA whistleblower compared Ms May to one of film's most notorious film villains over her Investigatory Powers Bill currently undergoing legislative scrutiny.

In its earlier form, the bill proposed by the then Home Secretary would see records of internet browsing activity, correspondence and mobile phone messaging services stored by internet and phone providers for 12 months. It was blocked by the Liberal Democrats.

The Human Rights Committee has said the bill dubbed the Snoopers Charter is still a significant step forward in its newest form, but privacy concerns surrounding the bulk gathering of data are still a major issue.

The bill will mean police and intelligence bodies will be able to access metadata of those living in the UK without a warrant. Snowden has been a vocal critic of the legislation which he says legitimises mass surveillance, warning the public: Your web records are not like an itemised phone bill, they're like a list of every book you've ever opened.

The Human Rights Committee has said the bill dubbed the Snoopers Charter is still a significant step forward in its newest form, but privacy concerns surrounding the bulk gathering of data are still a major issue.

The bill will mean police and intelligence bodies will be able to access metadata of those living in the UK without a warrant. Snowden has been a vocal critic of the legislation which he says legitimises mass surveillance, warning the public: Your web records are not like an itemised phone bill, they're like a list of every book you've ever opened.

Expand Close Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech at the British Academy in London. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech at the British Academy in London.

Snowden, who has lived in Moscow for the three years since he leaked thousands of classified documents, told the Guardian her surveillance bill is an egregious violation of human rights, that goes far further than any law proposed in the western world.

Snowden is now setting out his reasons why he believes he should be pardoned by Mr Obama before his presidency draws to a close. Already an unlikely prospect, it becomes increasingly improbable should Mr Obama be succeeded by Hillary Clinton and almost incomprehensible if his fate is left in the hands of Donald Trump.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and other human rights groups are reportedly due to launch a campaign urging the Obama administration to grant Snowdens pardon on Wednesday.
Facebook has failed in a bid to halt legal action over a naked photograph of a 14-year-old Northern Ireland girl being repeatedly posted on an online "shame" page

Facebook has failed in a bid to halt legal action over a naked photograph of a 14-year-old Northern Ireland girl being repeatedly posted on an online "shame" page.

A High Court judge in Belfast rejected the social media giant's attempt to have the claim against it struck out.

In what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world, the child is suing Facebook and the man suspected of posting her photo. Her lawyers allege the image was blackmailed from her and then published as a form of revenge porn.

The girl, who cannot be identified, is seeking damages for misuse of private information, negligence and breach of the Data Protection Act.

Her photo was said to have been posted on a so-called shame page on Facebook several times between November 2014 and January 2016.

Counsel for the teenager likened it to a method of child abuse.

It was contended that Facebook had the power to block any re-publication by using a DNA process to identify the image.

The court heard that putting a naked picture of a 14-year-old should have been a "red-line" issue for the company.

If the image had been blocked all subsequent publications would have been avoided, according to her legal team.

Barristers for Facebook mounted an application to have the case dismissed at a preliminary stage.

They relied on a European directive, claiming that it provides protection from having to monitor a vast amount of online material for what is posted on one page.

It was also stressed that the social network always respond to any reported breaches brought to its attention.

The picture was taken down as soon as notification was received, the court heard.

However, Mr Justice Stephens refused Facebook's bid to bring proceedings against it to an end.

Instead, the case will now advance to full trial at a later date.
Amina Al-Jeffery says she has been imprisoned at her father's home Saudi Arabia after she "kissed a guy"

A British lawyer is prepared to travel to Saudi Arabia for a face-to-face meeting with a young woman who claimed she was being imprisoned by her father.

The move has been given the backing of a High Court judge in London in the case of 21-year-old Amina Al-Jeffery, who grew up in Swansea.

Mr Justice Holman said he believed that a visit by Miss Al-Jeffery's solicitor Anne-Marie Hutchinson "is the only way to get to the bottom of this matter".

Miss Al-Jeffery, who has dual British and Saudi Arabian nationality, had complained that 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, Saudi academic Mohammed Al-Jeffery, disputed her allegations and said he was trying to protect her.

On August 3 Mr Justice Holman said her father had to "permit and facilitate" his daughter's return to England or Wales by September 11.

She has not returned and a further hearing was held before the judge on Tuesday when he was given an update on the current situation.

He was told that Miss Hutchinson, a partner at London law firm Dawson Cornwell, was prepared to make the trip to Saudi Arabia to talk to Miss Al-Jeffery at a private meeting about her wishes, and to ensure "as best she can that any decisions taken by Amina are informed".

The judge said Miss Hutchinson was concerned, on the basis of all of the material in her possession, that Miss Al-Jeffery's position appeared to be "equivocal", and the solicitor "wishes to make further inquiries".

The judge said there had been a "significant development" in the case on September 12 when Miss Hutchinson and other colleagues at her firm "received an email which comes from what is known to be the email address of Amina".

He added that it "does not follow of course that Amina sent the email". A document was attached described as "Amina's statement" to be submitted to the court.

The document stated that she and her father had been "building our trust", that she wishes to stay in Saudi Arabia to "work on my relationship with my father and get my life back on track", and that she wants to " withdraw my charges and end this case".

Mr Justice Holman said that on the "face of it" the language of the statement sent from her email was "clear and unequivocal".

But the view of her lawyers, taking into account other material, was that her position appeared to them to be "equivocal".

The judge added: "It seems to me in this situation that there is only one efficient, effective and reliable way for all of us, and ultimately myself - this court - to get to the truth of the matter, and that is for Miss Hutchinson to be enabled to have a direct face-to-face meeting with Amina with no-one else present in the room."

The judge said it would be "wrong of this court simply to give up on Amina at this stage and bring these proceedings to an end".

It was hoped that by the time of the next hearing in late October there could be "clarity in this case".

He said he was "immensely grateful" to Miss Hutchinson for her "personal preparedness" to make the journey to Saudi Arabia.

The judge said that Miss Al-Jeffery's father must "permit and facilitate" his daughter's attendance at the meeting.
A killer taxi driver told police he would "resolve the matter" of a sex worker he is accused of murdering if they did not pursue him for other crimes, a court has heard.

Christopher Halliwell, 52, is alleged to have strangled Becky Godden, 20, and buried her in Oxo Bottom field in Eastleach, Gloucestershire, in 2003.

He is currently serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 25 years after admitting stabbing and strangling officer worker Sian O'Callaghan, 22, in 2011.

Bristol Crown Court has been told Halliwell initially confessed to strangling Miss Godden and led police to the exact spot of her remains.

Halliwell has since pleaded not guilty to murder and is representing himself at his trial.

Police arrested Halliwell, formerly of Ashbury Avenue, Swindon, Wiltshire, on suspicion of Miss Godden's murder on February 18 last year.

The jury heard Halliwell underwent three interviews at Worcester police station and appeared to offer police a deal to resolve the case.

He told officers: "If I get charged with this and found guilty, I'll get a natural (a whole life order). That's it. Curtains, over.

"I mean, I'm not being funny. I'm 50 now, but 25 years to go so chances are not looking good as it is.

"If I wrap this up in the next few hours, any other charges against me that will be brought, that's bits of past.

"I think you probably know about various things in the past, there's car thefts, break-ins, bits and pieces, some more serious.

"Will that, will clearing this up be enough to stop everything else? If I can clear this up in the next few hours, will everything else be forgotten?

"I can resolve the matter but I don't want you coming back every couple of years, every five years, every 10 years whatever with this, with this.

"I'm sick of it. If it goes to court and I'm found guilty, that's it, they're locking me up and throwing away the key. I'm under no illusion, I'm not stupid so be that it."

During the interviews, Halliwell was handed a letter by Detective Superintendent Sean Memory stating that he was not aware of any other investigations.

Halliwell asked for the letter to be rewritten, adding: "There aren't any outstanding crimes that are as serious as murder without doubt."

He later was asked a series of 31 questions about Miss Godden's case and replied "no comment" to each one, the jury heard.

The court was told Halliwell called his daughter Natasha from prison at 10.23am on February 22 and spoke to her about the interviews.

"On Wednesday I was taken out of here and rearrested for Becky," Halliwell said in the phone call, which was recorded.

"I spoke to Detective Superintendent Sean Memory, the bloke in charge of the case.

"I said 'I will help you if I can but I want something in return'.

"They gave me a bit of paper that was way, way, way short of what I asked for but I have it in writing that the police don't want me for anything else.

"I got it off my chest. As far as I am concerned, I have offered them the goose that lays the golden egg and they have let it fly away.

"I'm not going to say anything without any safeguard for you lot."

Halliwell is said to have described himself as a "sick f*****" to Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher of Wiltshire Police in March 2011.

At the time, he was under arrest for kidnapping Miss O'Callaghan and was standing in Uffington, Oxfordshire, close to where her body was found.

The jury heard Halliwell then directed officers to Oxo Bottom field in Eastleach, where Miss Godden's remains were discovered.

Prosecutors allege that Miss O'Callaghan and Miss Godden disappeared from outside nightclubs in Swindon after getting into Halliwell's taxi.

The trial continues.
The first female chairman of the BBC Trust Rona Fairhead is to step aside after two years in the role, the organisation has confirmed.

Ms Fairhead said she decided to quit rather than take part in the process to become the chair of the new board - which will replace the BBC Trust early next year.

In a statement she said: " The Prime Minister strongly encouraged me to take part in the new appointment process, for what would be a new four year term as BBC chairman.

"However, after much thought I have come to the conclusion that I should not do so.

"It is my belief that it will be better to have a clean break and for the Government to appoint someone new, and for me to continue my career in the private sector as I had always planned to do after my existing term ended in 2018."

Ms Fairhead has held the role since October 2014.

In May, following the publication of the BBC White Paper, she was asked to continue in the role for four more years by David Cameron's government.

She will remain in the role until someone is appointed chair of the new board, which will replace the trust.

Upon her resignation BBC director-general Tony Hall said she had made a "real contribution to the BBC and at a really important time".

He added: "On behalf of all the staff, I'd like to thank her for that and wish her the very best for the future. We will continue to work together in the interests of licence fee payers until the new governance arrangements are in place."

Announcing her resignation, Ms Fairhead said: "I took on leadership of the Trust to help stabilise, strengthen and develop the BBC following a very difficult period in its history and through charter review.

"I was always clear that I was willing to serve for four years, after which I would continue my career in the private sector.

"I am proud of what I and my colleagues, both at the Trust and the BBC, have accomplished during the past two years. I believe the draft charter will secure the strong, confident and independent BBC that the public want and deserve.

"The BBC is a wonderful organisation and I have huge confidence in its future. I wish the new chairman, the board and everyone at the BBC every success.

"The Government and the BBC will have my full support in transitioning to the new governance arrangements to ensure the BBC remains the bold, creative institution that is loved and admired by so many."

Ms Fairhead was chief executive and chairman of the Financial Times Group between 2006 and 2013 and has also held senior roles in financial and global business.

A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said: " The Government thanks Rona Fairhead for her service to the BBC.

"Full details of the BBC charter will be announced shortly."
A teenager has appeared in court accused of planning to carry out a mass-casualty terror attack in London.

Haroon Ali-Syed, 19, from Hounslow in west London, was arrested on Thursday September 8 on suspicion of a terror offence.

It is alleged that between April 2016 and September 2016, Ali-Syed attempted to obtain weapons online, including an explosive device, with a view to launching an assault on a busy area of the capital.

It is believed that Oxford Street and military bases were among the targets the defendant had allegedly considered as a location for the attack.

Ali-Syed was charged with the intention of committing acts of terrorism engaged in conduct in preparation for giving effect to that intention.

During an 11-minute hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Tuesday afternoon, Ali-Syed, dressed in grey, spoke only to confirm his name, age and address.

District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe told the defendant he was to be remanded in custody until a hearing on September 19 at the Old Bailey.

Two other men arrested at the same time have been released on police bail pending further investigation.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres was rushed to hospital (AP)

Former Israeli president Shimon Peres has suffered a stroke and has been rushed to hospital.

His office said doctors had sedated the 93-year-old and placed him on a respirator. Mr Peres, who is expected to undergo a CT scan, is reported to be in a serious condition.

Israeli TV stations, citing hospital officials, said Mr Peres was suffering from bleeding to the brain and described his condition as serious.

Earlier this year, Mr Peres was twice taken to hospital for heart problems but quickly released.

Mr Peres has held virtually every senior political office in Israel over a seven-decade career, including three terms as prime minister as well as stints as foreign minister and finance minister.

He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in reaching an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians.

As president, a largely ceremonial office, he cultivated an image as the country's elder statesman and became a popular fixture at international conferences such as the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Mr Peres has remained active since completing his seven-year term as president in 2014, and is one of the country's most popular public figures.

He often hosts public events at his peace centre, bringing together Arabs and Jews in efforts to promote peace and coexistence.

In a message posted on Facebook, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished Mr Peres a speedy recovery.

"Shimon, we love you and the entire nation wishes you get well," he said.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres has been rushed to hospital after suffering a stroke.

His office said doctors had sedated the 93-year-old and placed him on a respirator. Mr Peres, who is expected to undergo a CT scan, is reported to be in a serious condition.

Israeli TV stations, citing hospital officials, said Mr Peres was suffering from bleeding to the brain and described his condition as serious.

Earlier this year, Mr Peres was twice taken to hospital for heart problems but quickly released.

Mr Peres has held virtually every senior political office in Israel over a seven-decade career, including three terms as prime minister as well as stints as foreign minister and finance minister.

He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in reaching an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians.

As president, a largely ceremonial office, he cultivated an image as the country's elder statesman and became a popular fixture at international conferences such as the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Mr Peres has remained active since completing his seven-year term as president in 2014, and is one of the country's most popular public figures.

He often hosts public events at his peace centre, bringing together Arabs and Jews in efforts to promote peace and coexistence.

In a message posted on Facebook, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished Mr Peres a speedy recovery.

"Shimon, we love you and the entire nation wishes you get well," he said.

AP
A dolphin is delighting bathers in northern Germany, but authorities are warning people not to get too close.

The mammal appeared in the Kieler Foerde inlet several days ago and has been swimming in and out of the Kiel Canal, a busy waterway that connects the Baltic Sea to the North Sea.

Bathers have been swimming out to touch the dolphin, but police are warning that the animal may feel harassed by this and that swimmers must not get in the way of ships using the canal.

Kiel police spokesman Oliver Pohl said that dolphins have been visiting the Kieler Foerde for a number of years, but he could not say if it was the same individual each time.

AP
Hillary Clinton attending the ceremony at the September 11 memorial in New York (AP)

US President Barack Obama has mounted a vigorous defence of Hillary Clinton, her campaign's transparency and her fitness for the presidency, and accused Republicans of fanning "anger and hate".

Mr Obama painted a stark picture of the stakes in the face-off between Mrs Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump, and tried to persuade Democrats that he is fully behind his former secretary of state's bid for the White House.

"Hillary Clinton is steady and she is true," Mr Obama told a group of cheering Democrats at an outdoor rally. "I need you to work as hard for Hillary as you did for me."

Mr Obama aggressively stepped into a void left by Mrs Clinton, who is taking time off from campaigning after being diagnosed with pneumonia.

Mr Obama is seeking to generate momentum for Mrs Clinton in a race that has become uncomfortably close for many Democratic supporters. The latest poll by Quinnipiac University found her with a five percentage-point edge over Mr Trump in Pennsylvania.

Mr Obama's campaign appearance at an outdoor plaza in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art was his third for Mrs Clinton, including his speech at the Democratic National Convention. The president, who remains broadly popular among the Democratic base, is viewed as a key asset in pushing die-hard Democrats to the polls.

But the president's day job has kept him from being a fixture. Mr Obama recently returned from 10 days abroad in Asia and will attend a United Nations meeting next week, leaving him just six weeks of full-throttle campaigning for Mrs Clinton.

Mr Trump's campaign, meanwhile, responded to Mr Obama's appearance with a statement suggesting he was shirking his duties.

"Shouldn't you be at work?" it read. "President Obama would rather campaign for Hillary Clinton than solve major problems facing the country."

At the rally, Mr Obama made both the case for Mrs Clinton and for his own presidency.

He claimed successes on diplomacy, health care, winding down the war in Afghanistan and reviving economy, which showed new strength on Tuesday in a Census report documenting a jump in household incomes in 2015.

"Republicans don't like to hear good news right now but it's important to understand this is a big deal," Mr Obama said of the new report, later joking: "Thanks, Obama."

The candidate whom Mr Obama hopes will succeed him left a 9/11 ceremony after about 90 minutes on Sunday and struggled to stay on her feet while she was helped into a van.

Mrs Clinton's campaign said she had "overheated", but later revealed that she had been diagnosed on Friday with pneumonia. The episode played into Mr Trump's efforts in recent weeks to raise doubts about Mrs Clinton's stamina.

Mrs Clinton's campaign was already on the defensive after she used the term "basket of deplorables" to describe half of Mr Trump's supporters.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Mr Obama does not feel like he needs to help Mrs Clinton with damage control.

"I think the president's belief that she'd be an excellent president of the United States is something that you've heard him say many times. And I can tell you there's nothing that happened yesterday that has changed that assessment at all," Mr Earnest said.

AP
Researchers from MIT and Georgia Tech in the US have figured out a way to read the pages of a book without actually opening it.

The team from the two institutions pulled it off with a system they developed that looks like a cross between a camera and a microscope.

They said it could someday be used by museums to scan the contents of old books too fragile to handle or to examine paintings to confirm their authenticity or understand the artist's creative process.

Writing in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications, the scientists explained how they used terahertz waves - a type of radiation situated on the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared light - to read a stack of papers with a single letter handwritten on each page.

The device, called a terahertz spectrometer, managed to clearly read only nine pages, though it could see writing on up to 20.

"We were very excited because we didn't think we would be able to see as deep as we did," said Barmak Heshmat, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab.

While the device is still a long way from actually scanning an entire book, Mr Heshmat said the team is already talking with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York about using it to inspect some of its artworks and antique volumes.

He said it could also be used in industry - for example, to see whether there are cracks or other defects beneath the paint on an aircraft part.

Mr Heshmat said that for now, broader uses would be limited by the cost of the device, which runs about 100,000 US dollars (75,000).

The device works by directing ultrashort bursts of terahertz radiation at stacks of paper. Some of it is absorbed by the paper, and the remainder is reflected back. The signals that bounce back are then analysed with algorithms that can discern individual letters.

In the study, the stack of paper had no cover, but Mr Heshmat said he is confident the system could see through one.

Mr Heshmat said the system works much better than X-rays, which are currently used to scan documents and paintings but entail harmful levels of radiation.

With X-rays "you won't be able to read the pages unless the ink is written by some metal like silver or gold", he said.

"But with our system, because it uses a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, it can identify many other chemicals, so it can contrast between the blank paper and the part that has ink."

AP
White House press secretary Josh Earnest listens to a question during his daily briefing at the White House. (AP)

The White House says President Barack Obama continues to believe that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden should return to the United States to face charges for leaking classified information.

Snowden's supporters are pushing for Mr Obama to pardon him, and a new movie is coming out on Friday about the case.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest has reiterated Mr Obama's position that Snowden's leaks "damaged the United States," harmed national security and put Americans at risk.

Mr Earnest says Snowden will be "treated fairly and consistent with the law" if he returns to the US.

As an NSA contractor, Snowden leaked classified details in 2013 of the US government's warrantless surveillance programme before fleeing to Russia. He faces US charges that could land him in prison for up to 30 years.
Jacob Barajas, the uncle of a boy who was fatally beaten over a missing piece of birthday cake (AP)

The uncle of a nine-year-old Maryland boy who was beaten to death over a missing piece of birthday cake has pleaded guilty to first-degree child abuse.

Jacob Barajas, 24, entered the plea on Tuesday as jury selection was set to begin for his trial in Hagerstown.

He faces up to 15 years at his sentencing, which has not been scheduled. The offence carries a maximum penalty of 25 years.

Prosecutors dropped other charges, including second-degree murder.

Barajas is among three people charged in the July 2015 death of Jack Garcia.

Robert Wilson, the mother's boyfriend, is serving a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder for beating Jack after Barajas had handcuffed him to a chair.

The mother, Oriana Garcia, is scheduled for trial in February on charges including second-degree murder.

AP
Assembly members Brenda Hale and Claire Bailey have done women throughout Northern Ireland a signal service by revealing that they were victims of stalking

Assembly members Brenda Hale and Claire Bailey have done women throughout Northern Ireland a signal service by revealing that they were victims of stalking.

By raising the matter at Stormont they have concentrated the minds of all 108 members, and also of Justice Minister Claire Sudgen on an issue which certainly deserves greater attention nowadays.

For it is a way of instilling fear in those being stalked without any necessary physical contact - although that can also be a development if the stalking is allowed to continue.

In the case of Brenda Hale her stalker was someone she did not know who out of the blue approached her in Marks & Spencer at Sprucefield two years after her soldier husband was killed in Afghanistan. He then somehow obtained her telephone number and began making calls to her on a regular basis.

It was only when she contacted police that the matter was resolved and the calls ended.

In Claire Bailey's case razor blades were stuck in her car tyres causing them to explode. Imagine the result if she had been travelling with her children at high speed on the motorway or had swerved into the path of another vehicle.

Astonishingly, given the prevalence of stalking, it is not a specified legal offence in Northern Ireland. Yet we regularly read or hear of women - and occasionally men - being stalked via social media, telephone or by physical calls to their homes or workplaces.

It is often discovered that stalkers are delusional, believing that the victims really do want a relationship of some kind with them. Quite naturally that leaves the victims in even greater fear. As Mrs Hale pointed out she often lay awake at night wondering if her stalker was outside - he was actually in Dublin - and if she and her two young children were safe.

As the law stands it is difficult for victims to obtain non-harrassment or non-molestation orders, especially if the stalking is done remotely. Quite rightly Mrs Hale describes it as a hidden crime often going unreported because of the difficulty of stopping it.

While the Justice Minister has not committed to introduce an offence of stalking, it is clear from the cross-party opinions in the Assembly that such a move would gain popular support. No one deserves to have their life turned upside down and anyone guilty of doing that should be punished.
Your correspondent Honest Man ("Christians can't deny reality of evolution", Write Back, September 12) claims "it cannot be reasonably denied that evolution is evident in nature today".

Unfortunately, the examples he cites - "many new strains of microbes which have developed resistance ... moths in polluted inner cities (which) have darker wings ... birds (which) have evolved different breeding times to cope with climate change" - are all examples of micro-evolution which involves variations WITHIN a species.

This is something different from the generally understood concept of evolution, in which a new - and quite distinct - species arises.

The latter has never been observed in nature, so it is incorrect for Honest Man to deduce that "the truth is that evolution is real, current and all around us" - the microbes, moths and birds remained microbes, moths and birds respectively and revert to their previous forms when circumstances change.

The above distinction has nothing to do with adherence "to a selective literalist interpretation of the Bible", but, rather, an unbiased consideration of the evidence.

While the theory of evolution may be true, the arguments presented fail to establish it - we simply do not know the reason for the diversity of nature.

Once this is understood, the assertion that those who do not accept his pseudo-scientific dogma to the contrary "have no right to deliberately misinform the wider public on accepted scientific theory" is exposed as dishonest propaganda designed to suppress opposition, rather than an attempt to further rational discussion in order to elucidate the truth.

MARTIN D STERN

Salford, Greater Manchester
Amnesty International is bringing scenes showing devastation in the Syrian city Aleppo to the streets of Belfast with virtual reality headsets showing the destruction caused by Syrian government barrel bombing of the besieged city.

Using the Amnesty headsets, people in Belfast will be able to place themselves in Aleppos rubble-strewn streets for a powerful and disturbing immersive experience. The 360-degree images capture some of the apocalyptic scenes after barrel bombing attacks in civilian areas like markets and mosques.

In advance of Culture Night on Friday, when members of the public will be able to try out the technology, Amnesty will be demonstrating the headsets in front of Belfast City Hall on Thursday morning.

Amnesty Internationals Northern Ireland Programme Director Patrick Corrigan said: This truly shocking virtual tour will transport people from downtown Belfast to the bombed-out streets of Aleppo.

Culture Night is a great opportunity for fun, but its also an opportunity to see the world through others eyes. That's why we are bringing our VR headsets to Belfast on Friday night.

The barrel bombing of Aleppo is one of the great crimes of the 21st century. The more we can document and demonstrate the evidence, the more likely it is were eventually going to see people brought to justice for these terrible crimes.

Members of the public can try out virtual reality headsets showing the devastation of the besieged city of Aleppo at the front of Belfast City Hall on Thursday at 10:30am.

Syria VR video is available at 360syria.com/intro

VR viewers at Culture Night Belfast

Visitors to Culture Night Belfast can try out Amnestys virtual reality headsets on North Street between 6pm and 8pm on Friday evening
Administrators of a Thai Facebook page arrive at a military court in Bangkok for their trial on sedition charges, Aug. 23, 2016.

Rights advocates called on Thailands junta Tuesday to transfer hundreds of current cases against civilians out of military courts, a day after the regime announced there would be no new military trials of civilians on charges related to national security.

Military courts usually are reserved for military personnel but the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), as the junta is known, had expanded their jurisdiction after seizing power in May 2014.

Since then military tribunals have tried upward of 1,800 Thai civilians in more than 1,500 national security cases ranging from royal defamation (Lese-Majeste), to sedition, defying NCPO orders, and illegal arms possession, according to human rights advocacy groups.

There are 517 unfinished cases and they will continue to be tried by military courts unless the announcement is made retroactive, Poonsuk Woonsukcharoen of Thai Lawyers for Human Rights told BenarNews on Tuesday.

All the cases must be transferred to civilian courts.

NCPO seeks leniency where we can

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, who heads the junta, on Monday issued NCPO Order 55/2016, which said that the regime was phasing out new cases in which civilians would be prosecuted in military courts.

The offenses committed before Sept. 12, will go to military courts and the offenses after Sept. 12 will go to civilian courts.  After this we wont see civilians going to military court, NCPO spokesman Col. Piyapong Klinpan told BenarNews by phone on Tuesday.

The situation of Thailand is calm. The NCPO seeks leniency where we can, he added.

The junta announced the move a little more than a month after a majority of voters backed a referendum for a controversial draft constitution that, according to critics, would allow the military to influence the outcome of future elections.

Don Pramudwinai, the Thai minister of foreign affairs, told reporters on Tuesday that the decision on trying civilians before military courts was not a ploy designed to ease international pressure on Thailand as Prayuth prepared to attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week.

I heard about the revocation of the extra power for the military courts for months," Don said. Now, the atmosphere is good and confidence in public security is regained.

No one should be fooled

The two-year-old practice of trying civilians in military courts for perceived public slights against members of the royal family or for criticizing the Thai military government, among other alleged offenses, has drawn criticism from human rights groups and organizations both at home and abroad.

Almost 2,000 civilians have faced an unjust process and unfair trials before military tribunals, many of whom were prosecuted for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly, Sam Zarifi, Asia director of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), said in a statement reacting to Thailands announcement.

All pending cases should be transferred to civilian courts and the convictions of all civilians prosecuted in military courts since the 2014 coup should be set aside, he added.

The Thai move also came a day ahead of the opening of a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, which is reviewing Thailands periodic report on the climate for rights in the country.

In mid-August, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesman for the U.N. body, said it was calling on Thailand to suspend the use of military courts and military orders in cases involving civilians.

On Tuesday, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch issued a statement that described the move by the junta as a limited step that appeared intended to deflect international criticism of Thailand at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

No one should be fooled by the Thai juntas sleight of hand just before the Human Rights Council begins meeting in Geneva, HRW Asia Director Brad Adams said.

The decision will spare many Thai civilians the injustice of a military trial, but repressive military rule is still a reality in Thailand.
Men greet each other after offering prayers at the Shah-e-Mardan mosque in Delhi, Sept. 13 2016. [Kshitij Nagar/ Benar News]

An imam leads worship at Shah-e-Mardan mosque in the Jorbagh area of Delhi, India, Sept. 13 2016. [Kshitij Nagar/ Benar News]

Children line up to get money from elders as part of Eid-ul-Adha festival at Padaeru Mosque in Yala province, Thailand, Sept. 12, 2016. [BenarNews]

Villagers prepare a cow for slaughter at Lubuk Merbau Village in the state of Perak, Malaysia, Sept. 12, 2016. [HaireezAzeemAzizi/BenarNews]

Thousands of people pray at the Jama Masjid in the old quarters of Delhi, India, Sept. 13, 2016. [Kshitij Nagar/ Benar News]

Millions of Muslims in South and Southeast Asia celebrated Eid-ul-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice that honors Ibrahims willingness to sacrifice his son to God and also marks the end of the Hajj.

In some parts of the South and Southeast Asian region, Eid was celebrated on Monday while in other areas the holiday occurred on Tuesday.

In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak said the festival should motivate Muslims to persevere in the face of struggle.

In conjuction with the Eid-ul-Adha, we should learn that sacrifice requires perseverance and it should start from yourself. This is what we learn from Prophet Muhammad that provides inspiration and strength in our struggle, Najib told Malaysians.

A Malaysian from Lubuk Merbau Village in the state of Perak thanked donors who provided animals for slaughter, a key part of the festival.

Were able to sacrifice four cows and one goat, compared with three cows last year, Hassan Sulaiman told BenarNews.

Alhamdulillah, thank God that we are given the opportunity again this year to celebrate this holy ceremony of Eid-ul-Adha. I would like to say my thanks to the generous people who are willing to donate their part in this ceremony.

Indian leader Narendra Modi, a Hindu, greeted Muslims on the second holiest day of the Muslim calendar.

May this festival enhance the spirit of peace and togetherness in our society, he said in a tweet.




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.




First up, Joe Biden is thinking about dropping tariffs against China. But theres a spy in prison this morning that helps us understand why he shouldnt. Ill explain.





Your second brief, If youre looking for a good paying job, you might consider being a CEO for a health insurance company. One executive made $142M dollars last year. Let's talk about that.





And as always, Im keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Mexican cartels are grooming American kids online and paying them cash to traffic illegals or run drugs across the border. Ill share details.





If you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief, remember to subscribe and listen daily at podfollow.com/pdb.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices


For Immediate Release, September 13, 2016 Contact: Tierra Curry, Center for Biological Diversity, (928) 522-3681, tcurry@biologicaldiversity.org

Dave Imper, dimper@suddenlink.net Rare Alpine Flower in Northern California Moves Toward Endangered Species Act Protection Lassics Lupine Threatened With Imminent Extinction Due to Climate Change EUREKA, Calif. In response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity and allies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that the Lassics lupine, an imperiled pink alpine wildflower, may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. In January the Center, joined by two scientists and the California Native Plant Society, sought emergency protection for the flower, which is at risk of disappearing due to climate change. Photo by David Imper. Photos are available for media use. There are only two known populations of the lupine, both growing above 5,000 feet in elevation on the talus slopes of Mount Lassic and Red Lassic Mountain in Humboldt and Trinity counties. The flowers total global range is less than four acres, and the total current population is estimated to be as few as 60 reproductive individuals, with recent surveys showing it is on the brink of extinction. We are at great risk of losing the Lassics lupine to extinction so protection and recovery actions cant some soon enough if we are to save this beautiful flower, said David Imper, former plant ecologist for the Arcata office of the Fish and Wildlife Service and leading researcher of the flower. We urge the Service to grant emergency protective measures for this wildflower. The Lassics lupine is threatened by climate change, altered fire regimes and increased predation by mammals due to climatic and vegetative changes in recent years. Over the past 15 years, the lupines range has been shrinking due to increasingly harsh conditions caused by decreasing rainfall, decreased snowpack and increasing temperatures. As conditions have become hotter and drier, predation on the flowers seeds has increased. Small mammals have been documented eating nearly 90 percent of the lupines seeds. The plight of this gorgeous mountain wildflower highlights the need to take urgent action to protect ourselves, and the other species we share the planet with, from climate change, said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center. Climate change isnt a vague, future threat. Its driving species to extinction right now, so we have to do something about it right now. Surveys estimate the Lassics lupines population fluctuated between 500 and 1,000 plants from 2005 to 2014, but the number dropped dramatically last spring following two of the driest and warmest years on record. The Lassic fire burned the area in July and August 2015, and subsequent surveys estimated that 60 or fewer individuals survived.

New plants germinating in 2016 offer some hope in the near future, if mild weather conditions continue. Following todays announcement that the lupine may warrant protection, the Service will accept public comments and conduct a one-year review of its status and will then issue a 12-month finding determining that protection is warranted, not warranted, or warranted but precluded, which would put the flower on the candidate waiting list for protection. The Lassics lupine exhibits striking, pink-tinged flowers above white-silver foliage, in sharp contrast to the surrounding black and reddish barren rocky slopes where it grows. It is dependent on sufficient snowpack and adequate shade to survive on the steep mountainsides. Both surviving populations of the flower are found on the Six Rivers National Forest. The plant was discovered to be a unique species in 1983. The species Latin name is Lupinus constancei, named for the famous California botanist Lincoln Constance. The Lassics Mountains were named after the Athapascan Lassik tribe, which was forcibly removed from the region in 1862. 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.
Ericsson and Galaxy Backbone, the government ICT shared services provider in Nigeria, has announced a partnership to design and deploy ICT based solutions and services supporting the delivery of efficient public services in the country.

Image by 123RF

This partnership is in keeping with the Nigerian Governments commitment to leverage ICT for job creation, improved security, economic diversification and social inclusion. It also supports the Minister of Communications vision to deploy e-Government as a tool to improve governance and efficiency in the delivery of quality public services.

Yusuf Kazaure, chief executive officer, Galaxy Backbone says: The transformative role of ICT for improved delivery of public services has become quite significant and in Nigeria Galaxy is at the forefront in terms of the provision of the infrastructure and services that empower MDAs to achieve their mandates through better service delivery to the citizens they serve.

Under the terms of the partnership, spanning three years, Ericsson will serve as advisor, systems integrator and implementation partner for ICT based solutions and services covering the transport, utility and safety and security sectors.

Ericsson will also manage all deployed solutions and services while building capacity within Galaxy Backbone and partner public parastatals ensuring that all deployments are eventually handed over to the government along with selected private sector players.

Johan Jemdahl, head of Ericsson Nigeria, says: A recent report by Ericsson and the Earth Institute at Columbia University on the impact of ICT on sustainable development, calls on governments to harness technology, investment and new types of partnerships to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This partnership with Galaxy Backbone touches upon all of these criteria and places Nigeria on a clear path towards meeting the needs of a growing economy using ICT. This partnership also supports our vision of building a networked society in Nigeria and we are excited to be partnering Galaxy Backbone on this journey.

Upon the finalisation of scoping the required solutions, all involved parties will jointly agree on the investment business models that best suit what is required to most efficiently roll out this new vision. Additionally, the inclusion of outside participation from third party investors will be discussed and finalised.
Food Lover's Market recently launched The Goodness Gang - a line-up of fresh produce plushies to hero healthy eating and nutrition. The Goodness Gang is designed to help parents of Grade RR to Grade 3 learners teach their kids about the healthy benefits of eating their fruit and veg. The veg characters are available for collection via stickers earned over the course of the six-month campaign.

Introducing the gang

Each of the cute, collectible plush toys come with their own message on the benefits of healthy eating.

Leading the Goodness Gang is Sally Strawberry, sweet and tasty and helping the heart beat the way it should, while Benny Banana is packed with vitamins to ensure plenty of energy for learning and playtime. Gary Garlic is full of flavour and good for the heart. Meanwhile, boosting the immune system is Betty Broccolis speciality.

Charlie Carrot is the protector of teeth and gums and improves eye-sight and while Anna Aubergine might be a funny purple colour, she is packed full of vitamins to help bones grow big and strong. Finally, theres Pamela Pear who is juicy, sweet and helps with healing.

Fun activities in-store and at selected schools in the Western Cape

To reinforce the message of healthy eating and nutrition, the Goodness Gang mascots will be visiting stores and schools in the Western Cape over the next few months.

Selected Western Cape schools will be visited by the Goodness Gang puppet show, while Fresh Cooking with the Goodness Gang cooking classes will be held at seven selected Food Lovers Market stores over the school holidays in October. For additional information on the Goodness Gang puppet shows and the Fresh Cooking with the Goodness Gang cooking classes visit Food Lovers Market.

The campaign runs from August to the end of January 2017. The Goodness Gang is exclusively available at Western Cape Food Lovers Market stores.
A key regulatory protein in cells has been seen for the first time using a state-of-the-art custom-built microscope.

The protein, NF-kB essential modulator (NEMO), is critical to several basic cellular processes and is implicated in immune and inflammatory responses, as well as in cancer. A mutation in NEMO causes the severe genetic disease incontinentia pigmenti (IP) in females. IP, also known as Bloch-Siemens syndrome, is a genetic disorder affecting the skin, hair, teeth and central nervous system.

Source: Nature Communications Journal

Until recently, there were no simple approaches to visually prove the existence of such highly ordered and organised cytoplasmic structures. This is largely due to the basic physical properties of light itself, which cannot resolve objects below 200 nanometres in size. Since many structures in the cell may be smaller than this, they cannot be viewed with conventional microscopy.

"Fortunately, by combining the fields of physics, biology and chemistry, scientists have been able to overcome this problem," says Professor Musa Mhlanga, co-author of this study and technical manager of the biomedical translational research initiative (BTRI)  an initiative based at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and University of Cape Town (UCT), funded by the department of science and technology (DST). "So extraordinary was this technological advance that in 2014 a Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy."

Scientists from both institution worked in collaboration with colleagues at the Institut Pasteur and University College London (UCL) and the landmark finding appears in the Nature Communications Journal, published on 2 September 2016.

Higher order structure

Prof. Ricardo Henriques, also a co-author of the paper and research group leader at UCL, says, "From the first moment we started imaging NEMO, it was clear that it was forming an organised structure close to the cell surface. This was surprising, as it had never been described before. It was only through the recent advancements in microscopy that we could now observe how NEMO forms higher order structures or lattices."

Dr Fabrice Agou, another co-author on this study, who heads up the chemogenomic and biological screening platform at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, along with his colleague, Professor Alain Israel, was among the first researchers to discover and biochemically characterise the NEMO protein.

Building block

"NEMO acts like a protein building block that allows other proteins to build upon it, thus integrating and relaying critical signals within the cells," says Agou. "Generally, we imagine the cell to be a bag of molecular soup, with an absence of defined structure within the cellular space or cytoplasm. However, through extensive research it became apparent that there was likely to be a special way in which the NEMO protein was structurally assembled in the cytoplasm."

Answering the question

Mhlanga says the work germinated from an insight of Agou and a desire to answer a fundamental, long-standing question regarding signal transduction  the binding of extracellular molecules to receptors that trigger events inside the cell  using cutting-edge technology developed in South Africa.

Co-authors Dr Janine Scholefield and Dr Anca Savulescu  both from the CSIR  were able to interrogate the structure and prove its existence. They also showed that only a few of these supramolecular organising centres were required for a cell to respond to an outside signal.

African scientists as active contributors

Says Scholefield, "This study is not only a testament of how the pursuit of basic science can contribute to our greater understanding of how exquisitely our immune system is controlled, but, more importantly, the necessity of international collaborative teamwork for successful scientific research. It also points to the potential to use super resolution in medical diagnostics."

Mhlanga indicated that such research had a broader significance. "Our goal is that scientists in Africa should not simply be consumers of fundamental scientific discoveries; rather they should be active contributors and producers to this body of knowledge. We would like to train the next generation of scientists to routinely produce ground-breaking work. In this regard, we are very grateful for the continued support we receive from the DST."

Agou says, "We are very pleased with this fruitful collaboration with Mhlanga and his colleagues in South Africa. The only desire we now have is to continue to work together on many new projects that are as innovative and ambitious. No doubt the synergy between our two laboratories at the Institut Pasteur in France and the BTRI in South Africa, especially in structural biochemistry and cell imaging, will lead to new discoveries to decipher the complex biological mechanisms associated with human diseases."
Taste Holdings CEO Carlo Gonzaga says bringing Starbucks coffee into SA could yet prove a masterstroke for the company he founded, with Taste having recently refined the business model at its Starbucks stores.

Taste Holdings CEO Carlo Gonzaga.Picture: Martin Rhodes

Starbucks is a US company founded in Seattle in 1971. Taste is the first South African company to bring the brand officially to the African continent.

The first store opened in Rosebank, Johannesburg, in April, followed by a second store in the newly built Mall of Africa in Midrand soon after. At the end of September, a Starbucks outlet will launch at Menlyn Maine Central Square in Pretoria. The square, said to have cost R1.8bn to develop, is located near Menlyn Park Shopping Centre.

Gonzaga spoke about attracting international brands to SA at the South African Council of Shopping Centres conference held on Friday in Sandton. While he was pleased at how his team had improved the stores operations, he admitted that the other brand Taste had brought into SA, Dominos Pizza, had so far disappointed.

"It took nearly three years to bring Starbucks. We conducted all kinds of studies and we had to convince Starbucks that SA would be a market where consumers would accommodate their brand. There were incredible queues when the stores eventually opened and we have spent the last few months improving the service and speed of service at those stores," Gonzaga said.

In the past four months, service at the Rosebank and Mall of Africa Starbucks outlets has increased 60%, according to Gonzaga. "It has turned out that having a third Starbucks store in our head office has been an important tool for improving the service at the two stores. We can train staff at our headoffice stall and test strategies there," said Gonzaga. He said Starbucks would gradually roll out more stores in SA, but Taste would be careful not to roll out stores too quickly. Gonzaga did not want to repeat any problems that had occurred with the introduction of the Dominos Pizza brand.

"We probably got Dominos wrong. We are working on meeting the challenges which we have faced with respect to launching the brand," he said.

Development costs in rolling out the Dominos Pizza franchise had been higher than expected.

Gonzaga has predicted that Taste would break even on Starbucks after five stores were up and running.
SA's bulk export volumes fell 4.9% year on year (y/y) August to 12.6-million tonnes after dropping by 15.4% y/y in July to 11.6-million tonnes and rising by 6.2% y/y in April to the second-highest monthly total of 16.2-million tonnes, data from the Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) showed on Monday. The record monthly tonnage of 16.4-million tonnes was achieved in January 2015.

Peter Titmuss via 123RF - Iron ore, Saldanha Bay Terminal

The July drop was in part due to the closure of the coal line between Mpumalanga and Richards Bay for the annual maintenance period between July 11 and July 24. On average, 230,000 tonnes per day is railed down the corridor, but export orders can be filled from the stockpile at Richards Bay Coal Terminal during the maintenance period. The maintenance was normally carried out in May, but shifted to July this year at the request of coal miners, as overseas coal demand is seasonally weak due to the Northern Hemisphere summer.

The June and April y/y increases of 3.4% and 6.2% were the only two y/y rises in the first six months of 2016 after declines of 6.1%, 11.7%, 15.7% and 12.2% in May, March, February and January respectively. This followed a 7.3% increase in 2015 to a record annual tonnage of 168-million tons. Despite the June and April y/y increases, total bulk exports are still down 7.5% y/y in the first seven months of 2016.

Bulk exports out of Richards Bay, which are mostly coal, fell by 16.9% y/y in August to 6.4-million tonnes after plunging by 18.5% y/y in July to 6.2-million tonnes from 6.9-million tonnes in June and growing by 8.2% in 2015 to 93-million tonnes. As Richards Bay Coal Terminal no longer releases operational statistics, economists are finding it more difficult to track economic performance in SA in a timeous manner.

Despite the 40% plunge in the iron ore price in 2015, bulk exports out of Saldanha, which are mostly iron ore, increased by 12.7% in 2015 to 63.4-million tonnes, but in July 2016 there was a 17.8% y/y fall to 4.3-million tonnes before a 12.1% y/y increase in August to 5.1-million tonnes.

The surprise in the August data was the 11.5% y/y rise in bulk exports, which are mostly grains and sugar, from other ports such as Durban to 1,048,320 tons after falling by 19.3% in 2015 to 11.6-million tonnes.

Source: BDpro
PRISA Members, conference speakers, partners from industry and academic institutions, delegates from Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia and Cameroon, our sponsors, PRISA Honorary Officers and Chairs of the various committee, distinguished guests, I am humbled by the opportunity to participate at our 59th Conference in the beautiful city of Durban.

Firstly, let me thank the contributions from the various tracks and panels yesterday  your contribution has set the tone for the conference and we continue today and beyond better equipped to face the challenges facing us as professionals and the industry in general.

I was reminded of a quote by Francis of Assisi: "Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible." It captures for me what I believe should be our attitude as we reflect on the state of our industry and consider what we need to do to restore our position on the back of the great work that was cemented with the formation of PRISA, 59 years ago.

Prof. Verwey raised a key question; are we alive to the potential of a Kodak moment for our industry? Scary thought but necessary because it reminds all of us not to take ourselves and industry for granted.

The PR profession has an internal crisis in a time when the world is yearning for its meaningful contribution. Now more than ever, organisations whether public or private are realising that a good reputation and stable relationships are critical in creating environments conducive for the success of any business.

The internal crisis I am referring to talks to an identity crisis that has resulted in many of us playing around with semantics to get a name that is relevant enough to gain a seat in the centres of power. All this not realising that the industries that rely on our support are more concerned about the value we can add rather than a naming convention. As an example, an industry that is close to ours, human capital moved from manpower to personnel to human resources and recently, human capital and in spite of all of these names, that industry is single minded about its focus and objective  delivering the people to deliver on organisational objectives. So my question as we deal with this crisis, are we clear as professionals what we are about and how our industry should be positioning itself relative to others or as spin doctors most of us have been trained to become we are peddling smoke and aligning mirrors to mask the fundamental challenges facing our profession.

The challenges are for me two-fold; technical competence and relevance. Yesterday, I sat in the academic tracks because it is important for me that we go back to the basics when it comes to professional development. We cannot continue to talk about a profession when we dont spend time in looking at what are the building blocks that are required to build the professionals. We have to join forces with academic institutions to develop curricula that is relevant but firmly rooted in solid academic theory. The temptation to be relevant is corroding the essence of our profession where we seem to be churning out graduates who are technically competent but strategically inadequate. The reality is that there should be a theory backing technology. My appeal is therefore for us not to be excited but the immediacy of new technologies forgetting that when the technology changes, we still need to have the flexibility to grow with the times  flexibility that can only happen if we understand the fundamentals of our profession through a solid theoretical framework. The definition of PR is a strategic communication process that builds beneficial relationships between organisations and their publics. While this is seen as a 2011 by the Public Relations Society of America, the reality is that the fundamentals have not shifted, it is still the same definition associated with the establishment of the Publicity Bureau in the 1900s. While I am not competent to reflect on the history of the industry, I am just illustrating the point that we have to go back to basics and do what we know we have to do and not what is fashionable and trendy. Coco Chanel`s skirt was tubular, and David Tlale`s is the same but just adapted for the time. Being relevant is important but we need to be clear on what relevance means. For me, relevance is not flowing with every river, it is finding the right boat to navigate all the rivers. Yes, new technologies have disrupted the way we do business, but as one of the speakers yesterday, we cannot be led by technology, we have to use technology to drive our industry. Many years ago, with my first job at the university of South Africa, media clippings used scissors, Prit, a stapler and lots of footsteps as technology. The reason for the clippings remains, we have taken advantage of technology to do it smarter, better and quicker. Therefore, we need to reflect on what is being thrown our way because the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world are developing technologies everyday to make life easier and not for the purpose of making our industry better because that is our role.

So for me, we need to take advantage by beginning to collaborate and perhaps in future sitting with these techies to explain what our function is about and asking them to develop technologies to help is optimise on our output. After all, industries such as health care are doing it already  surgeons are working with IT companies to make it easier for them to operate. So in my view, to become relevant, we have to be proactive and innovative  working with what is already to advance our interests.

With all of the above, there are a lot of exciting opportunities for the profession. Our universities are affording us with research that is not only relevant but we should leverage to re-engineer some aspects. I was excited to hear about the development of Afrocentric theories by some the esteemed Professors Ronel Rensburg and Gary Mersham. Before his passing, Chris Skinner was single minded about that. He and many others are flying the flag for theories out of Africa and are giving the world the run for their money. Where there is a disconnect, is the collaboration between the industry and the academics. I am hopeful through some of the engagements we are having as PRISA, we will be able to build the bridges.

The issues of transformation are close to my heart, not only because of the demographical elements but transformation will foster collaboration, diversity of expertise which can only be for the industry. I know there are some challenges with the recent codes  a reality that goes beyond our industry. But the opportunity lies in continuous engagement until we get to a solution that is mutually beneficial for both the legislators and the industry. Therefore that there is legislation even, means we are recognised as an industry and that is a great starting point of a very long journey, we should all be prepared to walk.

Now looking into PRISA, yesterday, a membership research was presented highlighting one important aspect, value add for members. This research validated what we already know, the intention of our founders remains  we are an industry body tasked to represent the interest of our members.

We have spent most of this year and the latter part of last year working with the PRISA management to do just that but find ways of doing better and smarter noting the dynamic environment in which we operate. We aspire to become a research based centre of excellence that supports the communications industry through quality education, continuous professional development and strategic collaborations.

And this we aim to achieve by:

Working with organisations and individuals to ensure that professional communication is valued as a critical function in organisations.



Lobbying for professional accreditation to raise the barrier of entry



Delivering research-based thought-leadership to foster continuous professional advancement



Supporting skills development with relevant Continuous Professional Development and best practices for continuous improvement.



Collaborating with other organisations to build an inclusive and representative community of professional communicators.



Celebrating and highlighting communication excellence.

However, it is not these statements that will make things work. It is service excellence, relevant information and relationships that will make PRISA become. Our theme for our conference aptly captures our approach going forward. We know now is the time to rise to reclaim our rightful position, but to do that we have to grow ourselves and our profession so we can advance and rise to the challenges of the dynamic environment we are operating in.

How are we going to achieve this given the crisis I alluded today? The industry has got some of the best expertise in the country. It is not the shortage of players that is the problem but the shortage of willing participants in the development of the industry. In my language they say, Uzo ithola kanjani, uhlezi e khoneni, but since I am in Durban I wish to conclude with Mahatma Ghandi's quotes which I am directing to the PRISA as an organisation and to the PR professionals: "Without action, you arent going anywhere, and for us to regain our place in industry and restore our image, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

Thank you once again for making the time to be part of this conference. We have yet another exciting day ahead of us. Let us continue the conversations beyond Durban so that no one can drive our industry, without us.




Aspen Pharmacare (APN) has signed a deal with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to acquire a global portfolio of anaesthetics products.

The deal excludes certain territories, primarily North America.

The generics company said it had identified anaesthetics as a key element of its expansion strategy into niche therapeutic categories that complement its existing operations.

The portfolio comprises five established medicines, which are sold in more than 100 countries including Japan, Brazil and Italy.

 Juan Carlos Herrera Arango 123rf.com

As part of its acquisition of the thrombolytic products Fraxiparine and Arixtra from GSK in 2014, Aspen also acquired an option to acquire the same products in certain countries to which GSK retained the rights, most notably China.

Separately, Aspen also announced the cancellation of collaboration with GSK in sub-Saharan Africa.

The cancellation of the collaboration, which generated about R2,1bn of gross revenue in Aspen 2015 financial year, will enable GSK to focus on its recently communicated strategic initiatives in Africa.

Aspen is retaining its existing African operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda and will also continue its exports into approximately 15 other African countries.
The sale of Firestone Diamonds' operations in Botswana collapsed after the proposed buyer, Tango Mining, failed to meet the conditions of the sale agreement by the deadline date.

The company's Botswana operations, including Firestone's interest in the low-grade high-value BK11 mine, are currently under care and maintenance.

Whilst Firestone Diamonds is currently focused on the completion and commissioning of its Liqhobong diamond mine in Lesotho with initial production expected to commence in early Q4, 2016, management remain committed to seeking ways of advancing/unlocking the shareholder value from its Botswana assets, which the company continues to believe has value.

Source: Firestone Diamonds

Firestone Diamonds continues to forecast that, as previously announced, it will have cash of approximately US$9m as at the end of December 2016.

This does not include the $15m standby facility available to the company or the proceeds of the disposal, which had not been included in the cash flow projections.

Accordingly, Firestone Diamonds believes that there will be no impact on the company's cash position as a result of the disposal not proceeding.
Changing climate is slowly altering the Eastern Cape agricultural landscape, and farmers will need to adjust practices and look at alternative products to adapt to steadily migrating weather patterns.

NJR ZA via Wikimedia Commons - Agriculture in Langkloof, Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Climate shifting alters agriculture landscape

Agricultural Research Council (ARC) specialist Harold Weepener said the changes were slow, but studies showed climates from the northern parts of South Africa were gradually shifting south.

Regions along the Wild Coast and the eastern shore could become more sub-tropical and start to support products currently grown in provinces like Mpumalanga and Limpopo.

Areas of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal could become more suitable for growing nuts, like macadamias, while Limpopo could no longer be suitable for nut production by the year 2090.

According to Weepener, the research stretches over many years and is used to predict likely conditions up to the year 2100.

Findings include that the Sundays River Valley, where citrus is grown, could become suitable for macadamia nuts and avocados. But citrus could become completely unsuitable and would either have to shift to another region or be set aside.

Stock farmers may also need to plant alternative grass types for feed, and over a longer period of time certain areas could become less and less conducive for farming with animals. "Dairy farmers could be first to feel the effect among stock farmers. Milk production is very easily affected by different climates, so just changing feed might not be enough," he said.

Further inland, effects may vary and might not be as prominent as they are expected to be along the coast.

Research shows farmers will have to adapt over time

Weepener conceded that the research looked only at changing weather patterns, and did not take into account factors like any technological advancement within agriculture or the possible occurrence of diseases among plants and animals brought on by the climate changes. He said these changes were not expected to happen overnight, but all the scenarios looked at showed the same pattern over different periods.

Six different models are being researched, each looking at different levels of sustainability measures being implemented by the government and the agricultural sector. "The model we refer to most takes current factors into account and assumes no sustainability changes are made. But even on the model where industries become as sustainable as possible, climate effects still show a rising trend," Weepener said.

Their conclusion is that farmers and the industries they represent will have to adapt over time.

A picture of possible future agricultural developments

Agri Development Solutions chairman Johann Bornman said research like this was very useful and should be considered together with additional studies to get a comprehensive picture of possible future agricultural developments. "A number of factors could influence our agricultural economy, and climate change is just one of them," Bornman said.

"The current drought cycle, population growth and the use of our natural resources could have a major effect on the province's economy."

Aside from the current continuous drought, Bornman said the availability and price of water was the most crucial aspect of climate change, and could end up affecting consumers' pockets.

Key to the future would be the management of the land and natural resources, particularly water. One option was to turn to "underperforming" areas to keep up with the additional demand. "That being said, we should be careful of radical changes without putting enough thought into it," Bornman said.

"There may come a time when new products should be brought into different regions but more time and informed decision-making is required before we do anything drastic."

Source: Herald
As the Limpopo Department of Education's resources have been stretched to their limit, the community of Vuwani requires further support in rebuilding the 24 schools destroyed in the area earlier this year.

 Wavebreak Media Ltd  123RF.com

Global child advocacy and humanitarian organisation World Vision South Africa says government, faith-based organisations, civil society and corporates all have an important role to play in providing over 30,000 children from Limpopo with a stable education.

Says Paula Barnard, national director of World Vision South Africa: The Limpopo Department of Education cannot carry this burden alone as its budget and resources are already stretched beyond breaking point. It is therefore up to us to rebuild the schools in Vuwani and provide access to safe education for its children.

Storm damage

World Vision SAs statement follows a recent donor breakfast briefing held by the Department of Education in Limpopo where it outlined the education challenges faced Limpopo. The department for example has already allocated most of its budget towards repairing the 147 schools that were severely damaged by storms earlier this year.

The reality is no governmental department can budget for and then repair facilities destroyed by communities. It creates a vicious cycle with no permanent solutions. However, as an organisation, we believe the schools must be rebuilt in order to give these children a fair chance at succeeding in the real world.

Without access to proper schooling, we will be dealing with a lost generation of uneducated individuals which is unacceptable in a time when we all have the right to education."

Calling on the community

World Vision South Africa has also urged Vuwani community members to pool their skills and resources to provide access to schooling. Were calling on the community to assist in the repair of salvageable classrooms and other facilities. These facilities can be used in the interim while these schools are rebuilt, says Ernest Fraser, advocacy team leader at World Vision SA.

Also, the community needs to engage government in a positive manner, constructively finding solutions to the disputes plaguing Vuwani. It is also up to them to ensure that children go to school free of intimidation.

The point is the snake is already in the house. Lets not ask where it came from but rather find ways of dealing with it. And it starts with the Vuwani community that must become part of the solution, he adds.

Almost 3,000 World Vision-sponsored children from seven schools are impacted by the Vuwani school crisis that includes two high schools (Tshinange and Malovhane schools) and five primary schools (Masakona, Rasikhuthuma, Muvimbi, Rembuluwani and Maweles schools).
Nietzsche must have been thinking about insurance claims when he said that the lie is a condition of life. In a ground-breaking decision , the UK Supreme Court has ruled that collateral lies do not invalidate an insurance claim.

The court held that public policy requires that if the insured has a valid claim, the insurer should disregard any collateral lies told by the insured, which were not material to the claim. The previous position was that the insured would forfeit the whole claim in the event of fraud no matter how immaterial.

Insurance reforms in UK stop insurers slithering out of claims obligations

The insurance industry in the UK, like South Africa, has been undergoing the most significant reform it has faced in more than a century. This has culminated in the enactment of the new Insurance Act of 2015, which came into effect for commercial contracts of insurance and reinsurance from August 2016.

Similarly, the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 was enacted and applies to contracts of insurance which are entered into with consumers.

This new legislation benefits consumers because:

it has removed the duty for consumers entering insurance contracts to act with utmost good faith uberrima fides and a duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation to the insurer; and

it prevents an insurer from avoiding a policy based upon a non-disclosure that was not material but becomes a term of the contract.

Versloot Dredging judgment

Some commentators are of the view that despite the new legislation, the UK Supreme Courts decision went too far and will open up the flood gates to false insurance claims. The insured was a ship owner and had told lies about attending to an alarm to make his claim stronger.

The claims investigation revealed the cause of the loss was attributable to four reasons:

The crews negligence in failing to close the sea inlet valve in the emergency fire pumps.

Damage to the pumps.

The negligence of previous contractors who had failed to seal bulkheads.

Defects in the engine room pumping system.

The insurance company repudiated the claim on the basis of the lies told about the alarm. The Supreme Court, which is the final court of appeal for civil matters in the UK, held as follows:

That it was a disproportionately harsh sanction to deprive the insured of a valid claim of about 3,2m, as a result of a reckless untruth which was immaterial to the claim.

If a collateral lie is to preclude the claim, then it must be material.

Public policy requires that the collateral lie be irrelevant to the insureds claim, if the claim is valid.

The court had regard to an Australian case in which the insured had experienced loss as a result of forced entry into his premises and wanted to make his incident more believable.

In their claim submissions, the insured embellished the forced entry by damaging his door and his lock further and sent photographic evidence to the insurer.

The court held that the insurer could not repudiate the claim because there never was an intention on the part of the insured to claim more than what they had really lost.

The position in South Africa

The South African insurance sector is also undergoing reforms. Proposed changes to the long-term and short-term insurance acts do not advance the position of the consumer to the extent that the UK legislative changes have done.

However, it appears that our courts are slowly developing insurance law to bring it in line with the 21st century way of doing business through their decisions.

Most recently, in the appeal of Jerrier vs Outsurance, the insured did not report two previous incidents to Outsurance and he had resolved to carry the cost of the damages sustained because he wanted to preserve his OUT bonus.

The court held that Outsurance could not avoid liability under the insurance agreement in respect of loss sustained in a later, unrelated accident. The underlying intention of Jerrier was not to commit fraud, but to preserve the reward of a refund, being of a percentage of his premiums for not claiming.

Fraud costs the SA insurance industry billions annually

A famous author once said that nothing quite has reality for her until she writes it all down  revising and embellishing as she goes along.

Statistics show that the humble insurance claim form often inspires people to relook at the incident that gave rise to their claim, through a more creative lens.

Claims assessors sift through thousands of claims each year: some honest and truthful, some magnified and embellished, and others show symmetry of form only achieved in pure fiction.

ASISA (Association for Savings and Investment South Africa) reported that the number of fraudulent and dishonest long-term insurance claims that were detected by insurers increased from 4,690 in 2013 to 8,306 in 2014.

Had these claims gone undetected it would have cost the long-term insurance industry R755,2m to dishonest policy holders and criminals. The cost of insurance fraud is ultimately passed on the consumer through higher premiums.
As the impact of an extended period of drought across much of South Africa and the Southern African Region continues to be felt, the realisation is setting in amongst both commercial and small-scale farmers that a water-constrained environment is no longer a short-term challenge but could, in fact, become their new normal.

Zhann Meyer

While this realisation is also dawning amongst agriculture stakeholders across much of the planet, its a reality that is particularly difficult for farmers in SA to deal with. Thats because theyre already challenged by having to operate in an environment of very low water supply per capita, compared to most other countries, not to mention an extremely low ratio of annual rainfall to annual water run-off. In fact, research done by WWF-SA showed that only about 9% of rainfall actually makes it into our rivers.

Since irrigated agriculture already accounts for more than 60% of SAs total water usage, its highly unlikely that farming is set to enjoy a higher allocation of this scarce, vital resource anytime soon. In fact, the opposite is probably true. National government has declared its intention to significantly expand irrigation-based crop farming land use in the country, but no increased allocation in water rights have been specifically earmarked for this purpose.

A shift in farming mindset required

Clearly then, the onus now falls on SAs agriculture sector - and its commercial farmers in particular - to shift the farming mindset from one of water usage to water stewardship, and proactively embrace more water-friendly technologies, practices, and attitudes.

The latter is arguably the most important paradigm shift that has to take place in order for agriculture in SA to achieve the levels of sustainability required. In previous eras, it has been acceptable for farmers to focus more on the profitability and yield potential of crops than on how thirsty they were. Today, the picture is vastly different, and profit margins have to be carefully balanced with water demand considerations of crops. Thats not to say that farmers with established water-intensive crops like tree nut or citrus orchards need to pull up their orchards and replace them with water-friendly alternatives. But where new farms or crops are to be established, indigenous or water-wise crops should now take precedence over high-profit, water intensive options.

There is also much that farmers with existing non-water-wise crops can do to lessen their impact and dependence on water. In many cases, achieving this merely requires a willingness to challenge practices that have been passed down for generations. It may also involve some short-term financial investment into water saving technology, but this will almost certainly deliver long-term sustainability returns.

One prime example of this change in mindset is being willing to invest time, effort and capital in converting a farming operation from spray to drip irrigation.

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service via Wikimedia Commons

Then there are of course also the proven water and soil preservation benefits of shifting from the historically accepted practice of seasonal tilling of farmland to a low-till or no-till farming approach.

The bottom line is that there is so much information and technology available to farmers today, that there really is no excuse for anyone to be practicing farming methods that involve excessive amounts of water usage or wastage. And the simple truth is that only those farmers who are willing to invest the time and effort into learning how best to manage their farms water requirements will be the ones who are still in business, and producing, a decade from now.

The future of SA farming rests on emerging farmers

While its relatively easy for large-scale commercial farms to invest in water management technology and processes, the future of SA farming undoubtedly rests on the long-term success potential of its growing contingent of emerging farmers. In this regard, the industry has a clear responsibility to educate, enable and support this vital agriculture sector when it comes to instilling an attitude of water stewardship and effective water management at the outset.

Key to this large-scale adoption of water-efficient practices is the understanding by farmers - established and emerging - that managing water more effectively is not just a green consideration, it has become a prerequisite for ensuring long-term economic viability. For SAs farmers the bottom line is that, when it comes to water usage, there is no longer a place for business as usual. The new, water-constrained normal demands an absolute commitment to water efficiency - even if that means drastically changing the way they farm.
Some farmers in the Western Cape have stopped planting oranges because of spiking crime levels in the region. In Wellington, farmers had done away with citrus orchards because produce theft made it impossible to continue farming sustainably, said Agri Western Cape CEO Carl Opperman.

Hans via pixabay

In Philippi on the Cape Flats - an area that plays an important role in food security for the province with three annual vegetable crops - producers are making provision that at least 10% of their crop will be stolen, mostly in broad daylight.

Western Cape seriously affected by crime in agriculture sector

Opperman said the police in the province had referred in the past to fruit and vegetable theft in Western Cape as "petty crimes". "This is an indication of the total ignorance with regard to food security, affordable food and the ripple effects of crime on the economy," said Opperman.

"The cost of the damage caused to orchards, vineyards, and farmland by criminals also needs to be taken into account. So do the millions of rand in damage when pumps, fences, pivot wheels, cables, pipes and other infrastructure are stolen or when produce suffers damage when irrigation cycles are interrupted during critical production periods because of crime. Violent crimes on farms and in rural areas are also on the rise, which is extremely worrying."

Many farmers could not afford 24-hour private security and, despite repeated calls in the media, criminals were still being supported by motorists who bought stolen produce on the streets. The stolen produce was also sold in informal settlements, he added.

Opperman said crime statistics showed that the agricultural sector in the Western Cape was seriously affected. "This is evident from, among others, livestock theft that increased 3.6% in the Western Cape, while declining 1% nationally. Should official statistics be available for fruit theft, vegetable theft, and theft of agricultural infrastructure, it would also have shown a definite increase, according to Agri Western Cape's data," he said.

Plan to tackle crime

Agri Western Cape is in the process of presenting to stakeholders its plan to tackle crime. The plan was compiled by the organisation's policy committee for rural safety, which expects to present it to the Western Cape legislature in the coming weeks.

The committee is in contact with farm guards, the police, affiliates and other stakeholders, and conducts regular crime surveys among affiliates to communicate crime trends and figures to producers and role players. Based on its own data, Agri Western Cape compiled a strategic solution on the premise that social welfare conditions needed to be attended to.

Opperman said social decay led to an environment in which there was no respect for the law. "It is necessary to balance the scales with crime-prevention on the one hand, and the country's social welfare problems on the other," the Agri Western Cape CEO said.

Western Cape police spokesman Andre Traut was yet to respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Source: Business Day
The Kommetjie Road project in Cape Town is set to commence by the end of October 2016. Transport for Cape Town, the City of Cape Town's transport authority, will be hosting a public information session on 21 September.

Residents from Kommetjie in the far south and interested and affected parties have been requested to attend.

Cape Town has committed to spend R750m on road infrastructure projects over the next five years to address traffic congestion across the city. The R750m is being spent in accordance with the Congestion Management Programme which has prioritised Kommetjie in the far south as one of the main congestion areas in the city, among others.

The Kommetjie Road project is to commence by the end of October 2016 if all goes according to plan. The city will spend approximately R171m on this project which is intended to relieve congestion:

along Kommetjie Road (M65) to the west of the Ou Kaapse Weg intersection

along Ou Kaapse Weg (M6) between Noordhoek Road and Kommetjie Road

at the intersection of Ou Kaapse Weg and Silvermine Road

at the signalised intersection of Kommetjie Road and Capri Drive

The project includes the upgrading and replacement of certain underground electrical and water supply services, as well as the construction of stormwater pipelines.

The information session is take place at the King of Kings Baptist Church, corner of Ou Kaapse Weg and Buller Louw Boulevard, Kommetjie from 4pm to 7pm.

Four-lane dual-carriageways

The capacity of the existing road infrastructure will be improved by turning sections of Kommetjie Road and Ou Kaapse Weg into four-lane dual-carriageways for vehicular traffic. Furthermore, the intersection at Ou Kaapse Weg and Silvermine Road will be upgraded to improve the sight distance and therefore the safety of this intersection for all road users.

"Further to the improvements for vehicular traffic, the city will also address the lack of infrastructure for pedestrians along Kommetjie Road and Ou Kaapse Weg. A significant number of pedestrians walk to their destinations along these routes every morning and afternoon. Due to a lack of proper infrastructure, the pedestrians are often forced to either walk in the shoulder of the road or along dilapidated sidewalks and informal footpaths. Part of this project is to build walkways that are separate from the road so that pedestrians have a safe and convenient access route to their destinations. The newly constructed carriageways will also have shoulders that are wide enough to accommodate cyclists," said the Citys Mayoral Committee Member: Transport for Cape Town, Councillor Brett Herron.

It is the intention to have two-way traffic flow at all times for the duration of this project and this requirement has been written into the construction contract.

No stop/go system

"This means that the implementation of a stop/go system, similar to the one that was implemented along Main Road in Clovelly, will not be allowed (apart from during an emergency). In terms of their contract with TCT, the contractor is obliged to ensure that the current road capacity along Kommetjie Road and Ou Kaapse Weg is maintained at all times and for as long as the project continues. In practice this means that commuters will have access to the same number of lanes during the construction period as they have available right now," said Herron.

The precautions mentioned above, are stipulated in the project contract to try to limit the inconvenience and delays to traffic as far as reasonably possible and not to worsen the current traffic congestion.

Expect unforeseen delays

"That said, roadworks are disruptive in nature and we must say upfront that unforeseen challenges can derail our best intentions and precautions. I therefore want to caution residents and visitors to expect some unforeseen delays and to please be patient. We will try our best to ensure the safety of all road users, and to work as speedily as conditions will allow. We will also communicate continuously with the local residents and affected parties through notices and alerts, updates, and newsletters with useful information for the duration of the project," said Herron.

The purpose of the public information session is to inform local residents of the upcoming roadworks.

"Maps indicating the intended road upgrades will be on display at the meeting so that residents and interested and affected parties can familiarise themselves with the project and the impact thereof. City of Cape Town officials and the contractor will be present to respond to questions. I urge Kommetjie residents and business owners to please attend the meeting so that they can plan ahead and be prepared as far as possible," said Herron.
Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba says American Pastor Steven Anderson and members or associates of his church have been denied entry into South Africa and his visa exemption status will be revoked.

The Minister said this when he briefed journalists in Cape Town on Tuesday, 13 September 2016, after he was petitioned by the LGBTI community, who accused Anderson of hate speech following his anti-gay comments.

Mr Steven Anderson and members or associates of his church are prohibited from entering the Republic of South Africa.

This prohibition will be implemented in terms of section 29(1)(d) of the Immigration Act.

This section affords the department the legal means to prohibit a foreigner who is a member of or adherent to an association or organisation advocating the practice of racial hatred or social violence, he said.

The controversial American pastor stands accused of making repeated anti-gay comments. He later recorded and posted a video on social media making derogatory remarks about the LGBTI community and also making inappropriate insults against Minister Gigaba.

The Minister said he had informed Home Affairs Director-General Mkhuseli Apleni that he has identified Anderson and his associates as undesirable persons, adding that such people are barred from travelling to South Africa for periods determined by the department.

Furthermore, I have withdrawn their visa exemption status, enjoyed by all Americans.

This is on the basis that I am certain they promote hate speech as well as advocate social violence.

Accordingly, Steven Anderson will be advised that he is a prohibited person in South Africa, he said.

The Ministers decision comes after weeks of consultations with leaders from the LGBTI community and other stakeholders, including the South African Human Rights Commission.

He said South Africa has to work towards reaching its constitutional values to build a democratic, united, non-racial and non-sexist state. This means it is a constitutional imperative for organs of state and society at large to protect and jealously defend the rights of all people.

He said the department has also had instances in the past wherein its own officials had treated LGBTI persons in a manner that is inconsistent with our laws.

It is common cause that LGBTI persons, not only in this country but worldwide, face daily atrocities for defining their identity, including ridicule, abuse, bullying, homophobia, brutal assault and rape.

He said according to a Progressive Prudes survey released last Friday, over the previous 12 months, around half a million South Africans have physically harmed women who dressed and behaved like men in public, and 24,000 have beaten up men who dressed liked women.

The Minister also said that approximately 700,000 South Africans verbally abused gender non-conforming people.

The Minister said over 60,000 petitions were collected and presented by Gay Radio SA to the Department and the South African Human Rights Commission, pleading for the protection of the rights of the LGBTI.
With just over a month to go until tertiary student hopefuls sit for their matric exams, the Department of Basic Education says it's all systems go for this year's Grade 12 National Senior Certificate examinations.

Priscilla Ogunbanjo, the departments director responsible for examinations, said the department was working tirelessly to ensure it presides over incident-free, quality exams this year.

She said this on Tuesday, 13 September 2016, when she briefed the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education on the departments state of readiness ahead of this years matric exams.

The Department of Basic Education is hard at work to ensure that the 2016 National Senior Certificate examination is of the appropriate standard, error free and irregularity free.

Registration of centres and candidates has been completed and final verification of candidate registration is currently in progress, she said.

The examinations will commence on 25 October and conclude on 29 November. The Minister of Basic Education will announce the outcome of the 2016 Grade 12 exams on 4 January 2017. Candidates will collect their statements of results on 5 January at the place where they wrote their examination.

Registration underway

Ogunbanjo said registration of centres and candidates has been completed and that the final verification of candidate registration is currently underway.

There are 677,141 registered full time and 150,183 part-time candidates in 2016 examinations, 9,000 more than 2015.

KwaZulu-Natal topped the list on the number of enrolments with 169,769, followed by Gauteng with 112,069 learners.

In Limpopo, 102,618 Grade 12 learners will sit for this years exams, while 89,740 will put pen to paper inside examination halls in the Eastern Cape.

Support and security

Ogunbanjo said the education sector had recorded tremendous improvements in access, redress and equity. She said learning outcomes have shown an upward trend in the national, regional and international tests.

The department did not only focus on system readiness but that it was implementing programmes to ensure that learners received support.

The department had put in place measures to complement normal teaching and learning programmes to bring about improvements in performance since 2014.

This includes language support, subject specific content support, tracking learner performance, and support for progressed learners.

To avert the leakage of 2016 question papers, Ogunbanjo said all storage points across the country will be audited to ensure they comply with the minimum security standards.

She also said storage points that do not comply will not be allowed to store question papers.

Vuwani

The briefing to the portfolio committee comes a day after Minister Angie Motshekga visited Vuwani to check the progress made by the collaborative efforts of the department labour civil society and the provincial education department to restore schooling in the Limpopo town as well as to assess the readiness.

Some 20 schools were set alight in the area over violent protests in May.

The Minister reportedly said she was confident that based on the work that had been done in the area so far, learners would be ready to sit for their grade 12 exams.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has received claims amounting to R373.3 million for 17,580 students, says Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande.

The Minister was giving a progress update on the implementation of the R4.5 billion that government committed for financial assistance to poor students.

He reiterated that access to higher education and training cannot be determined by students socio economic conditions but by the capacity to excel in studies.

Institutions are experiencing difficulties with locating students that are on the historic debt list as some of the students had managed to source funding elsewhere, prior to the governments announcement.

Thus, it is envisaged that a large amount from the historic debt allocation will be made available to support unfunded first year students. A further R68.5 million for 1,269 registered continuing students who were on the historic debt list and who qualified academically for continuing funding has been claimed by universities, said Minister Nzimande.

The deadline for institutions to submit claims to NSFAS was 31 August 2016.

The Minister said he trusts that the amounts claimed by institutions will improve significantly.
SEOUL: Samsung Electronics will sell its printer business to US computer maker HP, the companies said Monday, as the South Korean giant accelerates restructuring efforts amid a generational power transfer in the founding Lee family.

HP said it will buy the unit for $1.05 billion and that the deal will boost growth opportunities in the copier segment, while Samsung made clear the transaction was "part of the company's efforts to concentrate on its core business areas".

Samsung's printing unit has 6,000 employees and posted total revenue of 2 trillion won ($1.8 billion) in 2015, the company said in its statement Monday. Samsung Electronics - the world's largest smartphone maker that also produces home appliances and memory chips - is a flagship unit of the Samsung Group.

The group, currently chaired by Lee Kun-Hee, has merged, broken out or newly listed some of its key units in recent years as Lee prepares to hand over the reins to his son and company vice chairman J.Y. Lee. Recent health problems concerning the senior Lee, currently bedridden after suffering a heart attack in 2014, have prompted the business to step up these efforts. The Samsung Electronics board proposed a plan Monday to nominate J.Y. Lee as a new board member.

"More than two years after the hospitalisation of chairman Lee... the board of Samsung... believes that the time is now right to nominate Jay Y. Lee as a member of the board to allow him to take a more active role in the company's strategic decision-making," the statement said.

The sale of the printing business and Lee's nomination were approved by the board Monday but remain subject to shareholder approval in October. Despite effectively controlling the Samsung Group in recent years, the younger Lee has so far not taken any official board seat, maintaining a relatively low profile.

The group, comprised of dozens of units ranging from electronics to hotels, posted total revenue of $287.8 billion in 2014, making it South Korea's largest business group.

Source: AFP
South African Airways (SAA) has banned the charging of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on board all its aircraft effective from Saturday, amid battery explosion reports. "South African Airways has taken a decision to prohibit the charging of Samsung Note 7 mobile phones on board all its aircraft," SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali told Fin24.

"SAA will make appropriate announcements on board to remind passengers of this restriction and our crew has been briefed as well.

"This does not amount to an outright ban of the device on our flights. We trust that all our customers will cooperate fully and observe this request which the airline is making based on safety considerations for passengers and crew," he added.

Tlali said that the decision will be effective as of Saturday 10 September until further notice.

Civil aviation authority, Comair respond

The South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) has also taken note of recent reports of exploding Note 7 batteries and concerns raised regarding the device. "Moreover, the SACAA has also noted the announcement by Samsung to stop the sales of the Galaxy Note7, and the company's offer to replace similar devices already in customers' possession," SACAA said in a statement to Fin24.

"In light of these developments, the SACAA is currently and carefully looking into this matter and will take an appropriate decision in due course," the statement read.

However, the SACAA said that the current regulations do not prohibit airlines and operators from introducing additional and appropriate measures that would enhance civil aviation safety and security.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Comair - which operates Kulula.com and British Airways flights in South Africa - said that the company's aircraft were not fitted with power sockets, so they would not be affected by faults which have been encountered with the Samsung Note 7. "It's thus not necessary to ban the Samsung Note 7 from our flights," Martin Louw, Comair operations director, told Fin24.

"That said, we adhere precisely to the very specific procedures outlined by the Civil Aviation Authority and Boeing, including those procedures which involve electronic devices. The safety of our crew and passengers is always our foremost priority," Louw said.

Comair said it had not yet received instructions from regulators on the use of power banks and personal chargers. But if that changed, they would ensure adherence on board aircraft to any new instructions. "As stated, the safety of our crew and passengers is always our foremost priority," Louw said.

Samsung halts pre-orders

Samsung South Africa on Thursday put a stop all pre-orders of the Note 7 in the country, amid 35 cases of faulty devices as reported by the company.

Initial reports suggested that charging the device without the original charger led to the risk of exploding batteries.

The company also told Fin24 earlier that the availability date, which had initially been set as 23 September, has also been postponed until further notice.

Meanwhile, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has this week joined four Australian airlines in banning usage of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on board flights.

Source: Fin24

Read this report on News24Wire.com.
According to the Department of Tourism's annual report, international tourist arrivals in South Africa have surged by 18,7% in the last quarter of the 2015/16 financial year. Domestic tourism numbers are also up and are likely to grow substantially over the next two years. This rise in tourism has, unfortunately, also lead to an increase in instances of fraud in this sector.

Aleksandr Davydov via 123RF

This is according to national director: forensic services at Mazars, Christo Snyman who notes that the travel industry is particularly vulnerable to various types of fraud. I receive at least one phone call a week from agents or companies that have become victim to fraud.

Agents at risk of cybercrime

Snyman comments that cybercrime is one risk that has increased sharply for agents and individual tourists alike. We recently dealt with a case where a travel agent fell victim to a syndicate while booking accommodation for a group of tourists to the DRC.

The agent confirmed the groups booking with the hotel but before she could make payment, she received a second email from the hotels email address which stated that their banking details had changed. The agent proceeded to make payment to the new bank account provided in the email. In reality, however, the second email had been sent by a fraud syndicate utilising a website that facilitates the falsification of an email address, Snyman explains.

In the meantime, the actual hotel wouldnt let the tourist leave the hotel until they had paid for the accommodation. This scenario luckily had a happy ending for the agent as we were able to intercept and recover the funds with the help of international law enforcement with whom our division has built up relationships over the years."

However, agents risk potentially being held liable for the amount that has been defrauded, as well as other damages that their clients may have suffered as a result, Snyman warns.

Self-service travellers also at risk

Naturally individuals who book their own travel also need to take note. Syndicates are definitely increasing their activities online and tourists could potentially find themselves stranded in a foreign country, he adds.

Mazars Forensic Services helps manage risk by accurately and expediently unraveling financial mysteries. We use cutting edge methodologies to identify and prevent businesses from becoming a victim of fraud, corruption or any form of white collar crime.

Whether the threat of fraud comes from a faceless syndicate or within the company, Snyman says that potential victims can protect themselves.

He concludes with the following tips:

1. Pick up the phone. If your supplier or hotel says that theyve had a change in banking details, confirm telephonically that this is the case.

2. Conduct regular malware sweeps to ensure there is no spyware on your computer.

3. Change your username and password on a regular basis.

4. Never just hit reply. Fake e-mail addresses are designed to redirect all correspondence to the fake address only, by retyping the suppliers original address, you will begin corresponding with the original supplier again.

5. Be wary of suppliers with Yahoo or Gmail accounts as they are more vulnerable to fraud.

6. Check the spelling of e-mail addresses carefully  sometimes fraudsters simply change a letter in the fake address and rely on the victim not noticing.
"To affect through the eyes what we fail to convey to the public, through their word-proof ears." ~ Florence Nightingale ~

Frans Vermaak, Managing Director at Praesignis

What do we mean when we talk about data visualisation? Essentially it depends on what your background and data is. Looking at data from a scientific or research point of view, many people wouldnt realise that they are analysing or visualising data, but at the end of the day, that is exactly what they do.

Be it the utilisation of sound or sonar frequency to map and analyse data, or using biological molecules, and then using computers to select what kind of molecules to use in combination or simulation of them. These are all data points. So visualising data has so many different formats.

In a recent study, researchers from Miami USA and the UK worked together to create a 3D and 2D image of what a Dolphin would see underwater, using its Sonar. They measured the sonar with a diver down below and recorded the reflection and then visualised it the way a Dolphin would see it. That is one example from a scientific way, of looking at data. One would not really perceive this to be data visualisation, but that is exactly what it is.

Data visualisation is very powerful in storytelling. An outstanding example is what Florence Nightingale did for the British army. The problem they were experiencing was a high death toll within their army, and they could not identify what the main causes of death were. It was assumed and perceived that they were dying from their injuries as a result of the war. Florence Nightingale graphed the deaths, including specific diseases, and of course the war itself, and it turned out, that the majority of deaths, by far were as a result of disease. Florence Nightingale knew that words alone would not convince the British army of the facts. Instead, she decided to put the information on a graph, very clearly, for a specific period, 1854  1856 to indicate the causes of death, diseases or injuries from the war. The words she used are so true. When we talk about Data Visualisation, people really need to understand that a picture tells a thousand words. Florence Nightingale said, To affect through the eyes what we fail to convey to the public, through their word-proof ears.

People dont hear the words you say, they make assumptions while you talk. When you show statistics on a graph, with the right visualisation, the audience cannot deny what you are trying to convey. They cannot deny the truth.

Another great example is of Napoleons invasion of Russia during the war of 1812. When Napoleon started with his war, you can see on the graph below, how his troops shrank on the way to Russia, and again on the way back.

A couple of things happened here. First the temperature changed completely. The army was not ready for the temperature change and that was the major factor. As they progressed there were a couple of small battles happening on the way to Moscow, but by the time they got to Moscow, they had completely lost their appetite to fight the Russians, and decided to retreat. But, that didnt stop the decrease in their army. On the way back, the weather got even colder, and they lost more people. They had started off with a major amount of people in their army, and ended up with hardly any. Its not just about the facts on their own, but about how you can tell the story more effectively using visualisation.

It is very interesting to note when these visualisations were done. This was in the 1800s, long before the age of computers. Today, theres still huge power in using visualisation to tell an accurate story with facts.

Understanding the story and understanding what methods to use is really important. Let us take a look at some of the more well-known data visualisation products and tools.



IBM Cognos

A very powerful reporting tool. It does reporting and Dashboarding and has the ability to read data on OLAP and relational sources. Built on a service orientated architecture (SOA), it integrates well with tools like TM1 and SPSS, also in the IBM stack, very powerful predictive analytics tools and forecasting capabilities. With its powerful modelling capabilities, structure environment and very effective visualisation, Cognos is in my opinion, a very good enterprise scale BI reporting and analytics tool.

Microstrategy

Focused on Business Intelligence. Their visualisations are very impactful and very clear. Microstrategys stronghold is their ROLAP engine. Forrester notes that many Forrester clients who use the ROLAP engine, site lower long term costs of BI ownership, because it allows them to build fewer cubes and reports. However, leveraging the ROLAP engine can be very complex and time-consuming. This platform has a steep learning curve, which should be considered.

QlikView

Another very hot tool in the last couple of years has been QlikView from QlikTech, as well as a more user-friendly License product, which is focused on the Dashboarding capabilities. QlikView is very powerful in memory consumption and speed of analysis. Many customers rate it as easy to use when you compare it directly with other BI products, because it does allow for external data sources to be included as well. For end users, it is not the easiest tool to use, it requires some IT scripting, especially when you start getting into complex reports with various data sources, but it is easier than some of the BI tools out there.

SAS

ASs value is far greater than just the standard BI type use of visualisation. It has very powerful algorithmic capabilities, for statistical analysis, predictive analytics, and such, it is extremely powerful. SAS has the graphing capabilities to render whatever you find through your analysis. Gartner notes that clients consider SAS product the most difficult to use for business users, compared with offerings from other vendors. Truth be told, SAS is not the easiest tool to use, but once you get it down, and have a decent SAS Developers, the capabilities are vast.

R

R is more a platform than a tool. With powerful algorithmic capabilities as well as Machine Learning capabilities, it is a statistical package used to parse large datasets. R is a very complex tool and one that takes a while to understand, but it has a very strong community and library. At the end of the day, the power is in the community that you have online. R is mostly open source, so you can have the platform at no cost, but the truth is there is a huge community out there that you can tap for support and training.

Weka

This is a very interesting tool currently being used by many Universities. It is not the most advanced tool, and probably not enterprise scale, but very useful and very capable, particularly for Data Scientists. Weka is not the most complex tool to learn. Its capabilities vary from its visualisation capabilities to strong data mining capability. Weka is a good tool for classifying and clustering data based on various attributes, both powerful ways to explore data, and it also has the ability to generate simple plots.

Processing

A product that I do not know very well, but it has become the Poster Child for interactive visualisations. Great on visualising and it enables you to write much simpler code, which is compiled into Java. It includes a Processing.js project, which makes it easier for websites to use Processing without Java applets, plus a port to Object-C, that can be used on iOS if you choose. Processing is a desktop application, but can be run on all platforms. There are plenty of examples and code from the community available because it has been around for many years.

Google Charts

Google Charts is a great charting solutions for much of the web. Google Charts is highly flexible and has an excellent set of developer tools behind it. It is especially useful tool for specialist visualisations like geocharts on maps and gauges. It also includes built-in animation and user interactive controls.

Better World Flux

I like the explanation of what this tool is. It says that it takes boring data and makes it interesting. A simple tool, that doesnt necessarily take on the enterprise scale charting or visualisation, but it takes boring information and makes it a bit prettier. Something to consider is that Better World Flux is orientated towards making positive change to the world by using impressive visualisation. This tool doesn't allow you to upload your own data, but does offer a rich interactive output.

Tableau

Tableau, at this point in time, is leading the visualisation and visual analytics. It has some unique capabilities, one of which is the patented VizQL language. Tableau is very powerful and very easy to use. Gartner says its clients give Tableau top or near top marks for ease of use, functionality, product quality, product performance, support, customer relationship, success, achievement of business benefits and view of its future, as it achieved 94 percent revenue growth in 2011. A top notch company background, very good development of product, and easy to use.

RapAnalyst

This is another very unique product. It is a fairly old product, yet really powerful on machine learning. RapAnalyst is not a very big or complex application, but it is very powerful at what it does, creating visual maps of data and finding anomalies and groupings. Very useful, specifically on data mining.

The next tools are very unique and brand new in South Africa. Praesignis will be launching these tools on 13 September 2016.

Our Voice Analytics tool does voice to text, allowing you to record, video, sound, real-time voice to text. It does the analysis, highlights and indexes specific key words and when you select those keywords to do analysis. As soon as you click on the text, it takes you to five seconds prior and starts playing so that you can listen to the context and read it while you listen to the sound. The indexed words allow you to analyse the words across your dataset. You can then investigate the word in context with all related metadata like the time and the person. You can immediately click on those recordings and listen to the recordings in context. This makes it a very powerful tool for investigations and for mining text, because it takes the voice to text. With the visualisation capabilities of this tool, you can see what the relationships between the words or the people or the recordings etc. is. There are endless analytical possibilities for this kind of technology.

Another brand new tool that we are launching is more a content / social media analytics tool. It is extremely powerful and very unique. This is cutting edge technology, using a range of visualisations with bubble charts, line charts, maps, scatter charts, and a range of other visualisations that can be used to visualise the content or social media. When you need to know what people are saying about a subject matter like your brand or a marketing campaign, and who those people are, the role players and influencers. Determining whether the sentiment is positive or negative, and seeing the relationships between the people. You might want to know what the keywords are that the person is using, where they are located and even what devices they are using, there age and gender groups. Whether it is a brand or a company, whether it is a marketing campaign being launched, whether it is a hashtag movement against a government, perhaps something like an election in a country. It is extremely powerful from a social media point of view, but it doesnt stop there. The big thing with this, is really analysing external information from the internet with your internal structured and unstructured information. Analysing social media information with your internal email communication or call centre information within one analytics platform; Or using something like the voice to text tool to bring the voices in your call centres to text, and then analysing that in combination with social media. The next step is to go from reactive to proactive. Now you can pick up on trends or issues early enough so that you can push back the right information to influence externally and internally with proactive programs. You can then monitor the success of those programs.

Another brand new, cutting edge tool that Praesignis is bringing into South Africa, is one that is extremely powerful for regulatory or forensic financial intelligence or analytics. It is very powerful in detecting fraud in process, checking that processes happen in the right way, reducing the false positives when you go through your anti money laundering processes etc., or compliance type testing. It has the ability to take your current compliance or anti money laundering processes and testing it in a look back analysis. We look at your data and visualise how successful your current processes are in detecting fraud. The next step is to go ahead and make sure that we identify and adjust those rules so that we get the right level of security and compliance for the customer. It also reduces the false positives and therefore costs.

We have the skills and the associations with the right partners, to be able to deliver this capability to any organisations.

What data visualisation means to you depends on your background and the data you are looking at. The crux is to understand that visualisation is there to really explain the data in a clear and concise manner so that people or systems can make the correct decisions. It should highlight those anomalies, changes, trends, segmentations, groupings etc.

It is the way you look at the data that really gives you the value of it. Visualisation is important. It needs inventive thinking. It needs you to understand the data and what the potential outcome or the potential value of your data could be. By using the right visualisation you might even discover things that you never knew. In my opinion, data visualisation is really the way forward. Visualisations is a very old concept, but yet it is a huge challenge for organisations to do the right visualisation on the data. Praesignis is all about Data. We have the expertise to make sense of data. We challenge everyone to look at their data in a different way, and present it in a new and different way.




Gemalto, a world leader in digital security, is supporting DGSN, the General Delegation for National Security in Cameroon, in tackling fraud and document counterfeiting with the deployment of Sealys Color in PC for polycarbonate eID cards, a first in Africa.

Gemalto sample eID card

This innovative approach consists of laser engraving high resolution colour photos into the durable Sealys card body to provide Cameroon with the benefits of irrefutable proof of identity for its 20 million citizens. Gemalto also contributes to the countrys comprehensive identity modernisation program with its Coesys enrolment solution, its personalisation platform implementing color laser engraving technology and eID verification terminals.

The eID offers DGSN significant security benefits compared to solutions that simply print photographs on the surface of a card. Furthermore, the tamper-proof image is combined with a digital copy of the card holders fingerprint stored within the embedded microprocessor. Additional levels of protection are provided by a series of visible and invisible document security features. The card body, which is entirely made of polycarbonate foils, guarantees a minimum 10 year service life with outstanding resistance to extremes of temperature and mechanical stress.

The technology enables DGSN to operate the fully integrated system autonomously via a comprehensive training, maintenance and knowledge transfer program. DGSN will therefore be in a position to take full responsibility for enrolling citizens and issuing personalised eID cards, then verifying eIDs on the terminals supplied.

Gemalto is the perfect match for our ambitious project goals. The end to end solution will give us full flexibility and autonomy to manage and operate our new national eID program in house, said Martin Mbarga Nguele, the general delegate to the National Security, head of DGSN. Establishing and verifying every citizens identity is at the heart of a successful and secure nation state, and we are confident this solution will help us achieve this key strategic objective.

Said Frederic Trojani, executive vice president, Government Programs at Gemalto: As well as a technological leap towards greater security and efficiency, it will provide the foundation of trust on which a modern digital society and economy can be built. With this new contract, Gemalto surpasses 100 references in government programs.
Launched on 1 June 2016 at DISCOP AFRICA Abidjan, the Digital Lab Africa call for projects closed with a bang on 31 August 2016, with 522 entries from over 30 African countries. Entries range from transmedia projects to virtual reality.

This overwhelming response confirms Africa's creative potential in multimedia content and reinforces Digital Lab Africa as a springboard for African talent in this field. The expected outcome of DLA is market ready content/productions showcasing African creativity at its best.

In terms of numbers, South Africa and Nigeria are leading the pack with 159 and 86 entries respectively; followed by Ivory Coast (49) and Cameroon (48). In terms of categories, web creation and transmedia registered the highest number of entries (225), ahead of digital music (150), video games (82) and virtual reality (59).

The selected projects for each of the categories (three per category), will be announced on 30 September 2016. From 2 to 4 November, the finalists will take part in a pitch competition at DISCOP AFRICA Johannesburg, partner of the DLA.

The selected projects will get a chance to win a 3,000 Euro cash prize and a Digital Lab Africa incubation ticket, including mentorship and project development support by leading French multimedia companies on board. Additionally, the incubation programme will comprise a one month residency in France within digital hubs and participation in benchmark multimedia events.

We would like to thank all the applicants for submitting their projects. The incredible number and variety of entries we received is a true reflection of Africa's creativity and potential in multimedia production and digital content, said Frederic Chambon, DLA Director and regional head of film and media at the French Embassy in South Africa.

Digital Lab Africa

The Digital Lab Africa is open to any professional or individual from Sub-Saharan Africa (artists, producers, startups, developers, students) who have an innovative project in four categories of multimedia production: web creation/transmedia; virtual reality; video games; and digital music.

The objective of Digital Lab Africa is to provide a springboard for African talent in multimedia creation and to make their project happen with the support of French companies which lead in this industry (studios, producers, broadcasters, distributors), such as ARTE (Transmedia), Lagardere studios (web creation), Okio-Studio (virtual reality), CCCPA (video games), and 1D Touch/Believe Digital (digital music).

The Digital Lab Africa is initiated by the French Embassy and the French Institute in South Africa as part of their support to the creative industries in the region, in partnership with DISCOP AFRICA and TRACE.
In 2016, global ecommerce sales are expected to reach just shy of $2 trillion and Africa represents approximately 2% of this. It is the continuing rise of mobile connectivity and the rapid development of fintech products that is driving the ecommerce environment in Africa.

Just over 80% of Africans do not have access to traditional banking, yet the continent boasts more than 220 million registered mobile money accounts. Understanding and accessing this increasingly connected, tech-savvy market should be the focal point for all ecommerce vendors going forward.

The 2nd ecommerce Africa Confex took place at the CTICC in February 2016, with 63 speakers, 18 partners, 31 sponsors and a 140% increase in overall attendance from 2015. Findings from the event indicated that it was imperative to include a fintech/mobile payments focus for 2017.

As a result and after many discussions with industry leaders, Kinetics eCommerce Africa Confex 2017 has introduced Money Africa.

East Africa fintech

The rise of telecom-driven financial services has left many banks and financial institutions chasing the market. Fintech products are creating a cashless society, facilitating borderless transactions and encouraging frictionless peer-to-peer financing. In East Africa alone, over $3 million worth of transactions are expected to take place through fintech platforms every hour, every day.

The future of financial services and payments is therefore geared towards customer service, driving loyalty, creating new revenue streams and services, and banking in the informal trading sector.

Money Africa 2017 will examine how existing businesses should align itself with this junction of mobile, retail and financial services, marketing capabilities, customer data and peripheral technology.

"Fintech innovation is rapidly changing the way ordinary people in Africa use and manage money, explained Terence Southam, co-founder and joint managing director, Kinetic.

New technology has made it easier to access financial services and this has empowered consumers to better manage their personal and business financial affairs. The event aims to enable banks, retailers and payment processors to keep up with the changing trends in consumer spending and payment solutions.

eCommerce Africa Confex 2017

The Annual eCommerce Africa Confex, powered by Kinetic for a third year, will take place at the CTICC on 22-23 February 2017. Sponsors confirmed to date are One World Express, Nedbank, TrueERP, Paypal and DHL.

Ecommerce is growing strongly globally and set to grow explosively in Africa. Key drivers for ecommerce growth are secure, efficient and convenient logistics of goods and payments, said Patrick S. Martin, senior vice president DHL Ecommerce, Middle East and Africa.
CAIRO, Egypt - Orange Egypt has commissioned Nokia to deploy its Subscriber Data Management (SDM) platform to be able to launch new, customised services faster to its subscribers. The platform, based on Nokia One-NDS (One-Network Directory Server) platform, will consolidate the operator's customer data, previously distributed across different systems in its network, into a single database.

Philippe Chomel De Jarnieu, head of Orange MEA Customer Business Team at Nokia

This will enable Orange to access subscriber data instantly across multiple applications. In addition, it will help significantly reducing its operating costs as well as maintaining and evaluating subscriber data on one system, instead of several.

One-NDS assists operators such as Orange Egypt to analyse and monetize their subscriber profile data. The project also involves introduction of NT-HLR (New Technology Home Location Register) and Home Subscriber Server (HSS) along with NetAct. These components together enable management of subscriber data from a central location, leading to greater network efficiency, faster reporting and creation of new services.

Hisham Siblini, chief technology officer, Orange Egypt said: "We have more than 33 million subscribers in Egypt, and it is important for us to have an approach that accommodates a big subscriber base while enhancing network reliability and user experience. With its SDM approach, Nokia, our long-term global technology partner, will provide us a unified view of our subscriber data, enabling us to launch services as per our subscribers' usage pattern. This will help us to prepare our networks for the next generation, higher speed data services."

Philippe Chomel De Jarnieu, head of Orange MEA Customer Business Team at Nokia, said: "We are committed to enabling Orange Egypt to have a centralised repository that will provide the operator with a complete view of all services used by its subscribers in real time, as well as valuable insights on service and usage patterns of its subscribers. Additionally, our SDM platform will provide a reliable, stable and flexible system for the operator's network to cope with rapid customer growth."

The deal will include:

Nokia's SDM platform including its One-NDS and NT-HLR is capable of supporting 2G, 3G and 4G networks. NT-HLR optimises mobile subscriber data management.

Nokia HSS, which can be combined with One-NDS, to consolidate the subscriber data into a common repository to manage the data and provide user authentication and authorisation.

Nokia professional services such as the system integration and care services including hardware as well as software management. Its professional services will ensure smooth migration and integration within the given timeline.

In addition, Nokia will provide its latest NetAct network management system for consolidated and effective monitoring, management and optimization of Orange Egypt's network.

Nokia has been collaborating with Orange Egypt (Mobinil) since 2001, supplying radio and core networks as well as services for all technologies. France-based Orange Group acquired Mobinil in 2015 and the company's name was subsequently changed to Orange Egypt. Egypt is its largest operation with 33.4 million subscribers at the end of December 2015.

Source: African Media Agency.




Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries

SUBSCRIBE
Researchers polled people in the US, UK and Germany and found that about half of consumers in all three countries are worried about financial hacks. In the US and UK, more than half are concerned about these threats and in Germany about 43% say they are concerned about financial breaches. Of the hacks people are least worried about  hacks to online data sites, web browsing history and criminal history.

Consumers can no longer afford to put their data at risk, said Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify. To protect themselves and their personal information, consumers need to follow a number of precautionary steps, such as monitoring accounts and frequently changing passwords. They should also look to transact with businesses that provide next-level security such as multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA adds a layer of security that protects against the leading cause of a data breachnamely, weak passwords.

Other interesting findings from the report include:

a 52% of Germans said they would spend 10+ minutes on security improvements to protect themselves

a 46% of US and 30% of UK residents agreed

a Fingerprint IDs top the list of most-trusted authentication methods for half of respondents

a 4-digit passwords and voice ID were ranked behind fingerprints
The comments were made by the Mon State Hluttaw (parliament) Deputy Speaker Dr Aung Nai Oo at the press launch of a Mon Youth Progressive Organisation (MYPO) report entitled In the Balance, held at the Ramanya Hotel in Mawlamyine, Mon State on 9 September.

About 100 people attended the event, as well as Dr Aung Nai Oo also attending were Nai Khaung Htaw Zit from the NMSP and civil society organisations from Mawlamyine.

Dr Aung Nai Oo said: Hundreds of social associations in Sagaing, Irrawaddy, and Mandalay regions will not accept the Myitsone [dam project]. The amount of compensation to be given to China will be too high if the Myitsone is not going to be built. So, will our Salween River become a payoff [as compensation for Myitsone]? I believe we need to prepare ahead in case the idea shifts towards here [the Salween River].

He also said that the Irrawaddy and Salween rivers are the lifeblood of Burma and there may be conflicts if local ethnic people refuse to accept the implementation of dam projects in their areas.

Mi Ah Chai, the lead researcher for the In the Balance report said: The Burmese government and Thai investors are planning to rebuild the controversial Hatgyi Dam [on the Salween] now. Local residents are worried about the impacts of the Salween dams on the livelihoods and natural environment of people residing further down the river and other residents living along the river.

She also claimed that the Salween River dam projects will not bring any benefits to local residents and that the natural environment and ecosystem downstream from the dams and in the Salween delta area will be damaged.

U Htain Lwin, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Electric power, announced on 12 August that the Salween River dam projects would be implemented because there was a need for electricity.

Six dams have been proposed for the Salween River, but Burma will only receive 10 per cent of the electricity they generate whilst Thailand and China will each receive 45 per cent of the electricity they generate, according to the report.

The Salween River runs through four states in Burma and ethnic people depend on the river for their agriculture, fishing, transport and other livelihoods.

The proposed dams for the Salween are: the Kun Long Dam (1400 megawatts), the Nawngpha Dam (1200 megawatts), the Mong Ton Dam (7110 megawatts) and the Man Taung Dam (225 megawatts) in Shan State; The Ywathit Dam (4000 megawatts) in Karenni State and the Hatgyi Dam (1360 megawatts) in Karen State.

Reporting by Mon Htaw for M.N.A

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
Ardha Chakrasana (Standing Backward Bend Pose) To Aid Digestion Wellness oi-Staff

The food that you eat might cause indigestion. You might have that feeling of fullness, stomach discomfort and this disturbs your health. So if you are looking out for a way to improve your digestive system, then certain yoga asanas would help to improve digestion.

Ardha Chakrasana, which is commonly known as Standing Backward Bend Pose is one of the best known yoga asanas which aids in digestion. The word Ardha Chakrasana comes from the Sanskrit words 'Ardha' which means half, 'Chakra' which means wheel and 'Asana' which means pose.

Also Read: Yoga For Strong Arms

Initially, when you have digestion problem it might not look serious but if not taken care it might turn serious as well. It can lead to stomach pain, bloating, vomiting and gastric ulcer as well.

There might be several medications available over the counter to treat digestion problem. But if you are looking for a long term solution then yoga would be the best option.

Also Read: Yoga For Strong Legs

Though this asana is simple and easy but beginners should be cautious as this requires a balance of the body, especially the back when you bend.

Here is the step-wise procedure to perform the asana. Take a look.

Step-by-step Procedure To Perform Ardha Chakrasana:

1. To begin with stand straight in tadasana.

2. The feet should be placed together and the arms should be placed straight on either side of the body.

3. Your body weight should rest equally on both the feet and should be balanced.

4. Stretch your arms above your head with your palms facing each other.

5. Take a deep breath and then slowly bend a little backwards and at the same time the pelvis should be moved forward.

6. See to it that the arms are in line with the ears.

7. Both the knees should be held straight.

8. The head and the chest should be facing upwards.

9. Take a deep breath, and remain in the position for a few seconds.

10. Slowly come out of the position.

Other Benefits of Ardha Chakrasana:

It helps to tone the arms and shoulders.

It helps provide relief from lower back pain.

It helps to provide relief for those having respiratory diseases.

It helps to stimulate the abdominal organs.

It helps those having menstrual problems.

It helps to improve the heart rate.

It helps to stretch the upper torso.

It helps to regulate the blood pressure.

Caution:

Ardha Chakrasana is one of the best yoga asanas that helps in proper digestion but it should be practised with caution. Those having spinal injury or pain and high blood pressure should avoid this asana.
Human rights defender and High Court Judge Dr Key Dingake has called for strong legislation to curb the menace of violence against women and the girl-child.

Dr Dingake made this call on Wednesday while opening a roundtable discussion addressing the Links between Gender Based Violence and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the SADC Region at Avani Hotel in Gaborone.

Gender equality, gender-based stereotypes, engaging men as change agents as well as the constitutional, legal and policy environment in SADC member states were among the main topics of the discussion. Some 40 members of parliament within the region and civil society representatives were in attendance.

Describing the two-day meet as an apt and timely intervention, Dr Dingake urged Members of Parliament to use their power to legislate in a manner that will ensure health and well being of men, women and children are protected. If you dont, that makes you complacent and just as bad as the perpetrator. Adding, To tolerate it, is to violate your oath.





According to a 2013 report by the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, despite numerous developments, violence against women remains endemic and the lack of accountability for violations experienced is the rule rather than the exception in many countries. The report noted that between 2005 and 2013, the number of violent deaths of women rose by 263.4 percent. Gender based violence takes many forms including intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, early and forced marriage, trafficking, female genital mutilation and honour killings.

Much closer to home, a 2012 Gender-based violence indicator study revealed that more than 67 in every 100 women in Botswana have experienced some form of gender-based violence in their lifetime. A high proportion of men (44 percent) admitted to perpetrating violence against women. In dealing with issues of gender-based violence, Dr Dingake said it was important to not tell half-truths. He said the chief underlying cause for GBV is the structural gender inequality and unequal distribution of power between men and women driven by the patriarchal societies we live in. This, he explained was reinforced through countless subtle ways which, at national level tend to be reflected in laws and mens behaviour.

He suggested that governments need to do their budgets in a gender responsive manner that shows awareness that men and women face unique challenges and should be attended to as such.

In his opening address, Secretary General of the SADC Parliament Forum, Dr Esau Chiviya said the implication of not addressing issues around violence against women and girls is far more than what has been envisaged. Left unchecked, Dr Chiviya said gender based violence can lead to fear, deep seclusion, deprivation, physical and emotional harm or even death as well as economic inequality. He stressed that without addressing the issues now, the future would be gloomy, because women and girls play prominent role in the healthy evolution of any human society.
Iwill tell you what misconduct in parliament and councils is; it is when a Speaker is very biased and needlessly evicts opposition MPs from the house. It is when a Speaker brings in security agents into the National Assembly to intimidate the MPs on the opposition isles.

It is when there is manipulation of the scheduling on tabling of questions and motions such that it appears as though opposition Members of Parliament are not contributing. It is when parliament is steam-rolled through the night in order to pass controversial legislation without adequate debate. It is when a councillor beats another and leaves him bloodied and his party simply ignores such an incident. This is what misconduct is and this is what should bother Batswana.

The bottle throwing incident should not have happened. It was an isolated case and the person concerned was made to apologise.



In recent times, we have been seeing church leaders becoming active in politics including opposition politics. Does the Bible not say leaders should be obeyed and not opposed because they have been appointed by God?



The Bible is a radical book that presents narratives of struggles against empires and systems of oppression. The first such political narrative is the story of the Exodus, which is about the resistance of the Hebrews who were oppressed by the Pharaohs in Egypt. Moses and his followers opposed the oppressive political system of the time. The second major narrative is that embodied by the resistance of the prophets. Their language is a language that challenges and chastises oppressive rulers and they speak of the need for justice to roll like a stream, or the need to break the bonds of oppression and such other militant language.

Other narratives include the book of Daniel whose opposition to the king led to him being put into prison and in a lions den. In the New Testament it is John the Baptist, Jesus himself and the early church leaders who are ever in conflict with the rulers of the time because the latter sought to keep the majority of Gods people under bondage.





As for the text in Romans 13 which says that believers should obey the rulers, because they are ordained by God, we have to take note of a few things. The first thing is that we should realise that this is a unique text and there is none similar to it throughout the Bible. The context is that the church in Rome, which had been started by Paul, was over-zealous. They believed that the return of Jesus was going to be in their lifetime. So they lived together and waited for the second coming of their Lord and were not interested in being part of secular governments. They refused to pay taxes and did not want to be part of the secular state. It is for this reason that St Paul admonishes them to obey the king and those who are in leadership. St Paul was dealing with a particular situation and his statement cannot be universalised Is it not difficult for a Christian like you to lead a political party? Do you not find some of the practices and language reprehensible to you as a Christian?



I think we can do without foul language in our political contestations. We need to learn the oratory of older politicians who could speak in jest to or about each other without being disparaging. We can employ a category of speech akin to the jape that often exists between cousin ethnic groups in our Setswana culture.



The institution of marriage even among political leaders in this country has lost value. Is this a concern especially on the background of media reports about issues of defilement?

This is a broad question that can be discussed on its own. However, the one point I would like to make is that we need ethical leadership, especially in public life. Those who are involved in issues of defilement and any form of sexual impropriety should be struck off their leadership positions immediately. This is an issue that cuts across all parties and we all have to address it urgently and earnestly.



Also of late, we have seen high profile people from the civil service joining the opposition. What is the meaning of this given the fact that in the past, former civil servants almost always chose the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) for a political home?



The public service has been de-valued under the leadership of General Khama. Many were summarily dismissed and described with pejorative terms such as deadwood. The public service salary scales and conditions have remained the same for many years and when they appeal for increases the government of the day is very flippant and condescending towards the workers. Many who have worked for many years building effective public service machinery have seen it obliterated through the governing directives of General Khama. Obviously such people cannot rush to the party that has caused them so much heartache. Many see the UDC as the hope for Batswana.



Although the BNF has been applauded for stability which had hitherto eluded it for a long time, there are concerns that party members are ideologically illiterate? Is this a concern for the party leadership and what are you doing about it? Where are the study groups?



I do not agree that party members are ideologically illiterate. Many people join the BNF because of its traditional emphasis as a movement of the workers, students, farmers and rural dwellers and the urban poor. However, I do agree that we need to revive study groups to teach Pamphlet No. 1 and other literary corpus that exists within the BNF.

Through such study groups we would be able to create space for ordinary people to problematise the so-called poverty eradication programmes of the BDP and other wasteful projects such as the so-called Economic Stimulus Programme.



What is the one thing that, if the BNF were to take power today, you would have them do first?



It will be a UDC government. I would hope that we would create a platform(s) through which we would focus on how we re-structure our economy with the view to decentralising it by way of giving more powers to the District councils in the budgeting, revenue creation initiatives and project implementation. Such restructuring would also include revamping the public service, removing draconian acts of parliament that contravene International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions and setting up a think-tank to drive the economy.

I hope we would divert the Ipelegeng budget and other poverty eradication expenditure to massive infrastructure development such as electrification, water reticulation, roads construction and internet connectivity.

I believe these can be done within the first term of our government.
Bashi Gaetsaloe, the day-to-day manager of Botswana Development Corporation is the right man to lead the government investment arm. The same also applies to Blackie Marole, who chairs a well-composed board of directors that gives BDC management strategic advice periodically.

Gaetsaloe is a shrewd business manager. On the other side, Marole is a well-rounded leader and economist, who at some point was Managing Director of gem producer, Debswana. Similarly, his management head has led high profiled blue chip companies with astute acumen such as KPMG and Accenture Botswana. Although Marole was appointed in 2011, while his Managing Director was only appointed in April, 2014, we all punched the air in the hope that these two men are perfectly placed to lead BDC, which at the time was not performing well.

However, there are some developments that are coming from BDC; especially its cash raising exercise and which projects they will be investing in after they get the nod from government. News coming from Fairscape, BDC headquarters, is that the governments investment arm wants the sole shareholder, government, to act as a guarantor for its loans amounting to just over P1 billion. In basic economic terms, this means government will pay the loan should by any means BDC default in its payment for whatever reason. This happens all the time in Botswana and elsewhere. The burning matter, however, is thatBDC wants to invest in projects which are already mature and cannot change the economic landscape of the country and create the much-needed jobs.





For example, the P1billion loan will among others be used to fund BSE listed micro-lending titan, Letshego Holdings. The last time we checked, this Gaborone-based companys balance sheet was on the green. The companys market value is even bigger than that of BDC. Letshego is fully capitalised to fund its African push. It has just received a banking licence in Namibia. Its Managing Director, Chris Low, has told Botswana Guardian in a previous interview that, should they need any funding, they will tap into their medium term notes (bonds) to raise cash. So the question is, what is attracting BDC to Letshego?

The company is well on its feet, as is a market leader in the micro-lending industry. It is poised to become a market leader in the continent in the medium to long term. At his maiden press conference, Gaetsaloe said he wants BDC to invest in projects that can have a meaningful impact on the economy and create jobs. However, Marole and Gaetsaloe must tell us, how by funding Letshego, they will ensure jobs are created by taxpayers funds.We want the two gentlemen to shows us that, if parliament approves their request, how will they ensure that, Ba Isago University will create more jobs. Ba Isago, like any tertiary institution in Botswana, depends on government-sponsored students for survival. Government, which is likely to post an expanded budget deficit in the current financial year, has announced plans to cut tertiary institutions funding for students. This basically means Ba Isago, like its peers, will be adversely affected by the move, which is forced by governments tight budget.

Then where will BDCs return on investment come from? Does this mean BDC wants to gamble with our taxes? This does not in any way mean investment is not a risky undertaking, but there are instances where risks can be avoided at all costs. We also read that governments investment body wants to invest in a dairy project in Lobatse. The project is owned by a company called MilkAfric. As things stand, it has partnered with Lobatse town council for the development of dairy plant. There are questions that we need BDC to answer before they invest in the project.

Some years ago, BDC mulled the establishment of a dairy project. However, it would later abandon the project reasoning that it was not a viable project. So what is making dairy production a viable project at this point in time? What else has changed in the market since they abandoned the project? We need these questions answered first before BDC sinks its capital there. This does not in away take away the fact that Botswana gets more than 80 percent of its dairy needs from South Africa. By this, it cannot be taken that BDC should invest in dairy projects, whose sustainability and profitability cannot be guaranteed now. What we need to hear more from BDC is that, now that they have been given the leeway to invest beyond borders, where are such plans?

Some African countries such as Ethiopia are registering double-digit growths. Is the company not seeing this? We all know the past challenges of BDC. Our belief and indeed our hearts tell us that, Marole and Gaetsaloe know the painful past that BDC had to go through in the past five years or so. They cannot allow BDC to fall in the same pit. So while they have made an impassioned plea to government to back their financial needs, we are of the view that there are other viable projects that need to be funded. There is a bold statement on the BDC 2015 annual report that, Leading the way towards the industrilisation of Botswana.

We need BDC to live by this. We want a BDC which invests in projects that can industrialise Botswana. Surely, not in the above mentioned entities.

*Koobonye Ramokopelwa is a Business Editor at Botswana Guardian
It was an event meant to celebrate the life and bravery of the late Kgosi Samuel Bimbo of Omaueneno village near Tsabong. However, it turned into a sombre ceremony as many a speaker recalled the four years, in 1904 until 1908, of German soldiers brutally killing over 65, 000 ethnic Ovaherero in Namibia the then South West Africa at the time.

This past Saturday, many speakers at the unveiling of Kgosi Samuel Bimbos tombstone, including the Ovaherero Traditional Authority Paramount Chief, Advocate Vekuii Rukoro recalled deep wounds of suffering at the hands of the Germans that led to the Ovaherero and Nama fleeing to countries such as Botswana and South Africa.Reverend Rupert Hambira left the stage in tears as he quoted from the Holy Bible. Former Permanent Secretary in the ministry of Agriculture Dr. Mircus Chimbombi described the event as painful and evoking sore memories.

Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head, said Hambira as he quoted from the book of Luke 9:58. Before then, he said the Ovaherero tribe suffered a lot during the war against the Germans. We were forever on the run, he said. Germanys crackdown on Ovaherero in 1904 to 1908 was under the commandership of Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha. According to Isabel V. Hull of the Cornell University, the military campaign in Southwest Africa in 19041907 was the largest and in every respect the costliest undertaken by Imperial Germany before World War I.





It began in response to a revolt by the Herero who were angered by the dispossession of their land, the death of their cattle in a series of epidemics, and their treatment at the hands of settlers and colonial officials. Speaking over the weekend, Paramount Chief Rukoro said there is nothing as cruel compared to the Ovaherero and Nama genocide. But there is one thing that is even worse, than the physical genocide and that is the cultural genocide of the people. This is when people have lost their cultural identity and their language, he said. The Ovaherero in Omauaneno and Tsabong have lost their culture and language. Many of them speak Sekgothu and do not wear the traditional attire of the Ovaherero tribe.

According to Moses Chimbombi of Ritungee Association in Kgalagadi South, which houses Omaueneno and Tsabong, our Herero culture has reached a cul de sac. But he noted that they have not lost their culture and language by choice. We are not lesser Herero, he stated as a matter of fact before calling for an institution where their children can be taught the language in the area. Rukoro stated in his speech that he understood Ritungees pleas, but tore at the German government for refusing to compensate Ovaherero and Nama. This is what the German government does not seem to understand. This is what the Namibian government does not seem to understand when it says it wants to speak for us but without us, he said. Ovaherero and Nama are currently engaged in a heated reparation battle. The tribes have approached the International Tribunal in The Hague on the issue as the German government is refusing to negotiate with the affected tribes but rather with the Namibian government.

Rukoro tore at African governments in particular the SADC region saying they are just standing aside as spectators and witness as we powerless Ovaherero and Nama are taking on the mighty imperialist government of Germany. He said, this is what our African brothers and sisters especially African presidents dont seem to understand and appreciate when they do not extend solidarity to us in this fight against the results of a genocide which was committed against us and which effects we are still feeling today. According to him African presidents continue to sip champagne and cocktails with the Germans and not show solidarity with Ovaherero and Nama who continue to suffer cultural genocide of the German actions. The Paramount Chief has previously made appeals to SADC and the African Union for help in the matter but according to him none of the two organisations heeded their plea. Rukoro argues that the Namibian government should be there as a witness not as negotiator.

We feel that the blood of our parents should be compensated. Our view is that we dont trust the Namibian government to negotiate for us in our absence. According to him Ovaherero and Nama in Botswana, South Africa and those in the Diaspora should be part of the negotiations. They seem not to know that there are Ovaherero and Nama in Botswana and South Africa. We tell the government that the people in South Africa and Botswana are witness enough about the genocide. We say there should be representatives from Botswana and South Africa.

Meanwhile, Rukoro said there is a need to have an institution in Omauaneno where we can start teaching our people here the culture, traditions and the language of our people. At the event there were those who blamed Christianity saying it also brought ills against the tribes noting that church ministers were also involved in the genocide.People were killed in church while praying, said Jacob Kapeko.

Moses Chichindua from South Africa also recalled how the Germans sent church ministers into the Lutheran church to look for Ovaherero and kill them. Meanwhile, Rev Rupert Hambira argued that while Kapeko was right about the ills of Christianity, the one thing that was good about the late Kgosi Samuel Bimbo is that he held dearly to Christianity. And by doing so a school was brought to them. We are a very educated tribe, we have acquired education. Christianity opened that gate that nothing else could have opened, he said.
An effort by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to court political parties to support recent amendments to the electoral process looks set to fail after a meeting with the opposition Botswana Congress Party (BCP) did not achieve the desired results. Following the introduction of several electoral reforms, some of them generating a lot of controversy and resistance from opposition parties, the IEC rolled out a programme to hold meetings with all the registered political parties individually.



We believe in taking the stakeholders, especially the political parties on board. Through these meetings, we want the political parties to understand the implications of these reforms and assist in the dissemination of information to the public regarding the recent changes in our electoral processes, said the Principal Public Relations Officer of the IEC, Osupile Maroba. Among the changes forming the subject of the consultation is the increase of the fees paid by the council and parliamentary candidates. Those intending to contest for council will, from 2019, be required to pay P1000.00 instead of the current P100 while registering to contest a parliamentary seat will cost a candidate P5000.00 as opposed to the current P500.00.

On the agenda too is the cancellation of supplementary registration. The introduction of electronic voting, which is also on the agenda, has caused angst in the opposition ranks. Speaking to this publication on Wednesday after his partys meeting with the IEC on Tuesday, the secretary general of the BCP, Kentse Rammidi, who led the six-member delegation to the meeting addressed by the Secretary of the IEC, Gabriel Seeletso in Gaborone, confirmed the meeting albeit making it clear that the BCP would not join the IEC in marketing the reforms to the voting public.

Participatory democracy is about affordability. The moment you charge such high fees for candidates to contest will automatically exclude a lot of people who would have liked to contest had the fees been affordable. We also, as BCP have a problem with the discontinuation of supplementary voter. All IEC reports after the elections have shown that voter apathy is the bane of our democracy. It is not registration clear what the IEC will do to ensure that people register in good numbers during the normal registration period.

Regarding the electronic voting machine, we do not really have any problems with the machines.





The problem is that there are no safeguards, said Rammidi who added that, the credibility of an election is centred on the ability by those concerned to audit the data. Although we have been talking about election unfairness in this country, we drew sustenance from the fact that, as far as our traditional mode of voting was concerned, you could audit the ballots, he said noting that the BDP is likely to use the machine to rig the 2019 general election. We are not going to be party to the public education effort by the IEC. We are still pursuing this matter through other avenues, said Rammidi without elaborating.

Certain quarters of the opposition have intimated taking government to court over the introduction of electronic voting arguing that it is unconstitutional. For his part, the secretary general of the Botswana National Front (BNF), Moeti Mohwasa, whose party also met the IEC on Wednesday, expressed displeasure at the fact that government is engaging the parties at the implementation level and not the policy making level. We indicated our misgivings about the electronic voting machine at the meeting and we have got no intention to participate in the public education programme because government does not take us seriously.

The machine is hackable. Regarding the increase of the fee for election candidates, our view is that the amounts are clearly out of reach for many people. Concerning the cancellation of supplementary registration, many people do not register at the first go, said Mohwasa. By press-time on Wednesday, the BDP was still locked in their meeting with the IEC. Meanwhile, the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) and the Botswana Peoples Party (BPP) were scheduled to meet the IEC yesterday (Thursday). This is, according to its vice president, Wynter Mmolotsi. Contacted for comment, the leader of MELS, Themba Joina indicated that his party had not been invited to any meeting by the IEC.


A file photo.

BEIJING (PTI): China and Russia on Monday launched a major naval exercise in the South China Sea, firming up their growing strategic alliance apparently to counter military push by the US into the region amidst muscle-flexing by the PLA into the disputed waters.



The eight-day "Joint Sea 2016" drill will feature the highest ever level of standardisation, combat and digitalisation in recent China-Russia drills, Chinese Navy spokesperson Liang Yang said.



China has not clarified whether the exercises would be held in the disputed parts of the South China Sea, especially Beijing's nine dash-line which was struck down by international court of arbitration in July.



However, the state-run Xinhua news agency said a Russian fleet on Monday arrived at Zhanjiang port in the Guangdong province and the exercises would be held off the Guangdong coast, which is further away from the contested areas.



The participants will undertake joint air defence, anti-submarine operations, landing, island-seizing, search and rescue and weapon use.



The Russian Navy deployed three surface ships, two supply ships, two helicopters, 96 marines, as well as amphibious armoured equipment.



Most of the Chinese forces came from the Nanhai (South China) Fleet under the People's Liberation Army Navy, with some from the Beihai Fleet and Donghai Fleet.



A total of 10 ships from the Chinese Navy, including destroyers, frigates, landing ships, supply ships and submarines, are taking part in the drill, as well as 11 fixed-wing aircraft, eight helicopters, amphibious armoured equipment and 160 marines.



Wang Hai, Chinese chief director of the exercise and deputy commander of the Chinese Navy, said this year marks the 20th anniversary of the two sides establishing strategic cooperation.



The two sides have conducted six joint navy drills in five years, and the drill will enhance the abilities of both sides to counter common security threats, Wang said at the welcoming ceremony.



A Chinese Defence Ministry spokesperson in July said the drill will not target a third party but the growing alliance firmed up steadily after Russia annexed Crimea, widening Moscow's estrangement with US and European Union, and prompting it to move closer to Beijing.



China's claims over almost all of South China Sea was fiercely contested by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan which have counter claims over the area.



China has rejected the international tribunal's verdict which invalidated Beijing's extensive claims in the area, saying the tribunal has no legal standing.



Russia backed China's stand of rejecting the verdict while asserting that the dispute should be resolved directly by parties concerned.




An internet imagery.

ISLAMABAD (PTI): Pakistan and Russia are set to hold their first-ever joint military exercises later this year, media reported on Monday, reflecting increased military cooperation between the two former Cold War rivals.



Around 200 military personnel from the two sides would take part in the joint military exercises, The Express Tribune quoted a senior Pakistani official as saying.



The move comes amidst increasing defence ties between Moscow and Islamabad as the latter was also thinking to buy advanced Russian warplanes.



Pakistan's Ambassador to Moscow Qazi Khalilullah told the newspaper that this is the first time that military personnel from the two countries would be taking part in joint military drills called 'Friendship-2016'.



He, however, did not divulge further details about the nature of the exercises or dates.



The development, Khalilullah said, reflected increased cooperation between the two countries.



"This obviously indicates a desire on both sides to broaden defence and military-technical cooperation," he told a Russian news agency last week.



The joint military drill is seen as another step in growing military-to-military cooperation, indicating a steady growth in bilateral relationship between the two countries, whose ties had been marred by Cold War rivalry for decades, the paper said.



Islamabad decided to broaden its foreign policy options after its relations with the US deteriorated after secret CIA raid in Abbottabad killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in May 2011.



Pakistan's relations with the US were soured recently when US lawmakers blocked funds for the sale of eight Lockheed Martin Corporation s F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.



Pakistan decided to look at alternative sources to purchase the aircraft including from Jordan.



Over the last 15 months, the chiefs of Pakistan s Army, Navy and Air Force travelled to Russia. The flurry of high-level exchanges between the two nations resulted in the signing of a deal for the sale of four MI-35 attack helicopters to Islamabad.



The formal agreement, which was signed in Moscow in August 2015, was considered a major policy shift on part of Russia in the wake of growing strategic partnership between the US and India.



Islamabad is eager to improve its ties with Moscow to diversify its options in the event of any stalemate in ties with Washington, The Express Tribune said.



After securing a deal of MI-35 helicopters, Pakistan is also exploring options to buy Su-35 fighter jets from Russia, it said.



For this purpose, Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman visited Moscow in July.



The Pakistani ambassador said the PAF chief held 'fruitful' discussions with Russian authorities but would not provide further details of new military purchases, including the multirole, air superiority fighter Sukhoi Su-35.


The Finance Minister Michael Noonan has said he will not rule out a Commission of Investigation into the sale of Nama's Northern Irish loans.

However, he said an inquiry can only be ordered if the Public Accounts Committee investigates the issue first.
Ryanair is ending its Derry to London route from next spring.

Summer flights to Faro in Portugal are also being dropped, the City of Derry Airport disclosed.

Stansted services will stop in March next year and Faro in April.

From April 2017 Ryanair will operate five weekly services to Glasgow International and two to Liverpool from City of Derry Airport

Derry City and Strabane District Council's chief executive John Kelpie is seeking a Public Service Obligation (PSO) commitment from the British Government that a direct route be operated between Derry and London.

He said: "We believe our peripheral location where connectivity to London is vital for the development of our regional economy and the social development of our region, will put us in a strong position to secure a PSO."

Key challenges facing the loss-making airport include air passenger duty, the legacy of the global financial crisis and the low-yield environment this has created, competition from Dublin which pays no tax and a reducing pool of airlines which are averse to risk.

Mr Kelpie added: "We are committed to continuing to work proactively over the coming weeks and months to safeguard the airport's future and put in place a strategy that will ensure the airport continues to provide air connectivity for business and tourism, and remains an important regional gateway and the airport of choice for the North West."
Can you think of a better name for a Chinese gorilla than Harambe McHarambeface?

We certainly can, but it probably wouldn't be as popular.

A naming contest was held for a Chinese baby gorilla at Jinhua Zoo, looking for a popular name for the new arrival.

The competition was going well, with a lovely Chinese name Heijin topping the poll until a link to the naming contest was shared on social media in the US.

Suddenly thousands of voters began submitting suggestions and Harambe McHarambeface began to take off.

73,345 votes later Harambe McHarambeface was the most popular name in the competition.

The name is a combination of a salute to 'Boaty McBoatface' a name which was suggested for a 400m British polar research ship but was refused by the British Government who named the vessel RSS Sir David Attenborough.

Harambe McHarambeface also pays tribute to a 17-year-old Western lowland gorilla who was killed in May 2016 at Cincinnati Zoo when a three-year-old climbed into the gorilla's enclosure and the animal was shot to ensure the safety of the child.

The little Chinese gorilla baby will now have two names, a Chinese name Heijin and an English name Harambe McHarambeface which zoo officials hope will bring more visitors to their zoo.

Well, we want to visit anyway!
A total of 45 people have been arrested today in a major Garda crackdown on criminal activity in Co Carlow.

Gardai made four significant drug seizures and seized four vehicles.
Dublin Bus has confirmed services will terminate tomorrow night at 9pm, ahead of a second two-day strike by drivers on Thursday and Friday.

The company says the move is to ensure the safe return of buses to their depots.

Dublin Bus says each day of industrial action is costing the company more than 600,000.

It claims this will make it more difficult to fund the original 8.25% pay rise recommended by the Labour Court.

Meanwhile, the trade union Siptu has accused the company, the Department and the Minister for Transport of "complete intransigence" in relation to its pay claim.

Siptu's John Murphy, said: "The complete intransigence shown by Dublin Bus, the Department and the Minister for Transport in response our members need for an acceptable pay rise, has created real anger and frustration.

"The fact that the work stoppage on Friday will also impact on Culture Night in Dublin is regrettable.

"Siptu representatives will meet with their colleagues in the four other trade unions in Dublin Bus on Thursday to discuss further industrial action. Our members deeply regret they are being forced into a situation where they may have to further disrupt this vital public service and the lives of those that rely on it.

"Siptu representatives have repeatedly stated we are available to enter negotiations to resolve this dispute but this has not been reciprocated by management or the Department of Transport."

The NBRU has also urged Dublin Bus management to return to the negotiating table.

General Secretary Dermot O'Leary said: "The 400,000 bus commuters in Dublin deserve more than silence from Official Ireland. There has been absolutely no contact, either directly or indirectly, with staff representatives from the Minister's Office, Department of Transport Officials, the National Transport Authority or those in the CIE Group since the commencement of this dispute.

"Such a state of affairs is simply not good enough, playing foot loose and fancy free with a vital public service which underpins the economic and social fabric of Dublin is intolerable and suggests that those directly charged with its provision are devoid of the ability to work towards a solution.

"This dispute will only be resolved around the negotiating table, of all the options that may be available, sitting on one's hands is surely not one of them."

"We as representatives of the workers also have an equal responsibility to work towards a resolution to such disputes, traditionally with the assistance of the State's industrial relations institutions. We remain available to play our part."
Update 2pm: The Department of Transport has launched an investigation to establish the circumstances surrounding the death of volunteer coastguard Caitriona Lucas yesterday.

In a statement, Minister for Transport Shane Ross said Caitriona "made the ultimate sacrifice" in her service to others.

"Caitriona was a member of that extraordinary group of men and women who dedicate their skills, time and passion so that others may be safe on our coastlines.

"This is an appalling tragedy; the loss of a brave and valiant woman engaged in the most heroic of and unselfish of duties.

"Such remarkable courage and heroism in the service of others is rarely equalled and never surpassed."

Coast Guard manager Declan Geoghegan told Newstalk Breakfast that there is always a "degree of trepidation" every time a rescue team is sent out.

He said: "They were in the last leg of their search and they had radioed in that they were prepared to return home.

"A couple minutes after that, they broadcast a mayday. Whatever happened in those intervening minutes is what we have to establish."

Update 11.45am: Clare County Council is to open a Book of Condolence in memory of Caitriona Lucas who died while on a rescue mission with the Coast Guard yesterday.

Councillor Bill Chambers and Pat Dowling opening the book of condolence for Caitriona Lucas today.

The book will be opened at 2pm today at Clare County Hall in Ennis and Councillor Bill Chambers expressed deep regret at the very tragic loss" of Caitriona who was employed by Clare County Council.

Councillor Chambers said: I wish to extend the sympathy of the elected members and the people of Clare to Caitrionas husband, Bernard, their children, Ben and Emma, and her family."

Pat Dowling, Chief Executive expressed his condolences to Caitrionas family on behalf of local authority staff whose thoughts and prayers are with her family following their very sad loss.

Caitriona worked for the Clare County Library Service for 16 years in the branches at Ennistymon, Corofin and Lisdoonvarna.

Helen Walsh, County Librarian, paid tribute to her saying: This is a particularly difficult time for the Library service, who recently lost another colleague.

The library at The Square in Ennistymon will also open a Book of Condolence from Wednesday at 10am.

Earlier: Investigators are hoping to discover exactly what led to the death of Coastguard volunteer Caitriona Lucas, who drowned off the coast of Clare yesterday.

The 41-year-old is the first ever Irish Coastguard volunteer to die during a rescue. It is thought a freak wave hit her boat.

Ms Lucas was on a rigid inflatable with two colleagues. They had gone to sea in testing conditions off Kilkee in a search for teacher David McMahon, from Lissycasey, Co Clare who went missing on Friday.

The two other crew members -Jenny Carway and James Lucy - were airlifted to safety, and are recovering in hospital today.

Mother-of-two Ms Lucas, 41, lived in Liscannor with her husband Bernard, who was also involved in Doolin Coast Guard.

Kilkee Marine Rescue Service member Manual De Lucia knows both survivors of the tragedy, and said locals were shocked by the news of Ms Lucas' death.

"The whole area devastated. We're a very tight-knit community here and everybody looks out for everybody else.

"It's so tragic. It'll take a long time to get over this."
Fine Gael's deputy leader James Reilly has said Independent TD John Halligan should consider making "alternative arrangements for himself".

James Reilly (pictured) said such a move was the only alternative if the junior minister does not accept proposals for the existing cath lab at University Hospital Waterford.
Update 10.45am: Environment Minister Denis Naughten has said people need to pay for wasting water.

We need investment in our water system and we need to stop the waste of water, he said.

`My view is that every single person in the country should be given an allowance and if they go over that allowance, they should pay for it.

Thats the only way were going to encourage conservation and thats crucially important if were going to be able to invest in our water network across the country.

Earlier:

Minister Simon Coveney has said water charges are unlikely to return in the same model as before the current hiatus.

However, he said that water still needs to be paid for.

Fianna Fail are calling for water charges to be paid for through general taxation.

Former Environment Minister Alan Kelly (Labour) said it would be illegal to scrap the charges, and The European Commission has said there is no way for Ireland to legally abolish its system of water charges..

However, Simon Coveney conceded the way that water charges are paid for is likely to change.

"It's very unlikely we'd introduce water charges on the same model as before. There's a need for a change in approach," he said.

"(However,) I think a lot people in Ireland understand the logic behind people making a contribution linked to the amount of water that they use."
26-year-old Nicola Kenny from Thurles in Co. Tipperary tragically died last week when the car she was in was hit by a truck in the hard shoulder on the M8.

The young woman had only given birth the day before and was being driven up to Dublin by her mother Ann after her little baby Lily-Rose was transferred up to Temple Street hospital because of health worries.

Her mother pulled into the hard shoulder so the family could take the call giving her good news about her newborn when the incident occurred.

Nicola was laid to rest on Thursday of last week and since then her friends have started an online campaign for Olly Murs to pay tribute to the young teen, as she was a massive fan.

With most of her Tweets on her social media account dedicated to him.

She even received this custom pillow case as an early Christmas present a few years ago.

Today Olly took to the social media platform to pay his respects to a fan.

Heartbreaking.
Hillary Clinton has said she became dizzy but did not lose consciousness when she stumbled on the way out of the 9/11 memorial ceremony on Sunday.

The Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview on CNN that she felt dizzy and "did lose my balance" while waiting for the motorcade. But she felt immediately better after getting into her air-conditioned vehicle.

She said she did not immediately disclose that she has been diagnosed with pneumonia because she "just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal".

Mrs Clinton said her doctor had told her to rest for five days, but she "didn't follow that very wise advice".

She added that she will be back on the campaign trail "in the next couple of days".

Asked whether she had fainted at the New York event, Mrs Clinton replied: "No, I didn't. I felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute. But I got in, once I could sit down, once I could cool off, once I got some water, I immediately started feeling better."

She later told supporters via text message and Facebook: "I'm feeling fine and getting better." She added: "Like anyone who's ever been home sick from work, I'm just anxious to get back out there."

Her comments came as her campaign scrambled to head off lasting damage from a difficult weekend. Aides are promising to release more of her medical records following her bout of pneumonia and conceding they were too slow in providing information about her condition.

An outbreak of respiratory illness swept through Mrs Clinton's campaign in the weeks before she was diagnosed with pneumonia, campaign aides said.

They said it was Mrs Clinton's decision to attend weekend fundraisers and the Sunday ceremony in lower Manhattan, despite the diagnosis of pneumonia.

Late on Sunday evening, she cancelled a California campaign trip scheduled for early this week. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, will headline some of her events.

Read: Read More: What happens if Hillary Clinton pulls out of US Presidential race?

Her Republican Party rival Donald Trump, who has long questioned Mrs Clinton's fitness for the presidency, was notably restrained on the health matter, saying he hopes she feels better soon.

He focused on her remark last week that half of his supporters belonged in "a basket of deplorables," denouncing the comment as "an explicit attack on the American voter" and suggesting that it makes her unfit for the presidency.

"You cannot run for president if you have such contempt in your heart for the American voter," he said at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina. "You can't lead this nation if you have such a low opinion of its citizens."

But even as the tycoon defended his backers, one lashed out at protesters in the hall by appearing to punch and slap them.

The rally was interrupted several times by demonstrators and, at one moment, brief violence.

As several protesters were being escorted out by security, a man in the crowd grabbed a male protester around the neck and then punched him. He then slapped at a woman being led out. The Trump supporter was not ejected by security.

The celebrity businessman talked through the scuffle and said after the disturbance: "Is there any place more fun than a Trump rally?"
Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg has apologised to Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg for deleting a photograph from its pages and conceded that "we don't always get it right".

Facebook's chief operating officer Sandberg said in a letter to Ms Solberg that she had raised important issues about Facebook's decision to remove postings of an iconic 1972 image of naked, screaming, nine-year-old Kim Phuc running from a napalm attack in Vietnam.
Shimon Peres has suffered a stroke and been rushed to hospital, according to a spokeswoman for the former Israeli president.

Ayelet Frisch said that he was stable and fully conscious.
Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey has been accused of allowing an incorrect temperature to be recorded during a "chaotic" screening process on returning to the UK.

The Scottish medical worker, 40, was infected with the virus while working in Sierra Leone in December 2014.

The nurse, from Cambuslang near Glasgow, is also accused by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of leaving the screening area at Heathrow without reporting her true temperature and not declaring that she had taken paracetamol.

A hearing at the NMC in Edinburgh got under way on Tuesday and is examining the allegations.

But the panel hearing the misconduct case has been urged to strike out any allegation that Ms Cafferkey acted with dishonesty.

Anu Thompson, for the NMC, told the hearing that the Scot was at that time in the early phases of an "extremely serious virus" and quoting from a medical report, said her "ability to make decisions and reason properly were affected at the relevant time".

She said the "dishonesty test has not been met" as "her actions were not actuated by dishonesty".

It was stated that Ms Cafferkey was among a group of doctors and nurses returning to Heathrow after a six week deployment to Sierra Leone in 2014.

But the hearing heard that screening staff from Public Health England (PHE) at the airport "were not properly prepared to receive so many travellers from at risk countries" and this resulted in it being described as "busy, disorganised and even chaotic".

Ms Thompson continued: "The mischief in this case is that Ms Cafferkey, realising she had an elevated temperature, allowed an incorrect temperature to be entered on her screening form and left the screening area without disclosing to anyone in authority what her true temperature was."

The hearing was told that a doctor took Ms Cafferkey's temperature and found it to be 38.2C, then 38.3C.

"Dr 1 says that Registrant A (someone else in the group) stated at this point that she would record the temperature as 37.2 degrees on Ms Cafferkey's screening form and then they would 'get out of here and sort it out'," Mrs Thompson told the hearing.

"Ms Cafferkey has stated she recalls the words 'let's get out of here' being used but now cannot remember who said it or who entered the temperature of 37.2 on her screening form.

"Ms Cafferkey accepts that she knew at the time that she was in the screening area with Dr 1 and Registrant A that her temperature had been measured at 38.2/38.3 degrees. It is agreed that a temperature above 37.5 degrees is an elevated temperature that requires further assessment and should be reported to a consultant."

The panel was told that, at some point after realising she had an elevated temperature, Ms Cafferkey took paracetamol.

She left the screening area but later returned to it, where - with a temperature reading of around 37.5 degrees - she was cleared for onward travel by another doctor.

The nurse arrived in Glasgow late in the evening and awoke feeling "very unwell" the following day. She was diagnosed with Ebola the same day.

The hearing was told: "Ms Cafferkey had an extremely severe presentation, requiring non-invasive ventilation and multiple medical interventions with a very protracted illness course.

"Additionally, she is receiving psychological support following the trauma of requiring a prolonged admission inside an isolation tent, having a life-threatening illness and the effect of media intrusion during this very difficult process."

The Scot has since had two further admissions to hospital - one with a relapse of the Ebola virus and the other with chronic meningitis.

A report from a Glasgow-based doctor states: "Pauline's prognosis is uncertain. She is the only patient ever to have developed a reactivation of the Ebola virus infection 10 months after the initial illness."

The hearing began with a discussion about whether it should be held in private.

After representations from the media, both Ms Cafferkey's representatives and the NMC agreed that a statement of facts could be read out in public.
A 26-year-old man has been airlifted to hospital after being found on fire outside a Frankie and Benny's restaurant in England.

Emergency services were called to Sandbrook Retail Park in Rochdale at around 11.20am today following reports that a man was on fire, Greater Manchester Police said.

The man was found to be suffering from severe burns from the waist down, including his hands, a spokeswoman for North West Ambulance Service said.

He was taken to Wythenshawe Hospital, which has a specialist burns unit, by air ambulance, she added.

Greater Manchester Police said the man remains in a "critical condition" and inquiries into the incident are ongoing.

Anyone with information should contact police on 101 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service said: "We were called at 11.19am and firefighters and officers were called to the restaurant.

"On arrival there had been a fire, but it was out by the time we got there."

She added that firefighters gave first aid to the man before he was airlifted to hospital.
Detectives in England involved in the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry have received "significant information" after a fresh appeal.

Scotland Yard said the investigation team received "up to 30 calls" with information which is being followed up.

A reconstruction was aired on Crimewatch on Monday night, alongside media appeals.

Police are attempting to identify a woman whose DNA was found on a bag strap found at the scene where Mr Lawrence, 18, was stabbed to death in Eltham, south east London, on April 22 1993.

Officers have stressed the woman is a witness, not a suspect.

Detectives are also continuing to appeal for information about another possible witness - a man reportedly seen in a distinctive green jacket with a V emblem near Well Hall Road Roundabout at about the time Mr Lawrence was attacked.

Chris Le Pere, the senior investigator in the case, said today: "Given the length of time this inquiry has been running, I am happy with the positive result.

"Some of the calls hold significant information, and will take time to work through."

He also appealed for a man who rang Crimewatch and Crimestoppers in 2013 to contact the incident room on 020 8785 8310.

Mr Le Pere added: "We are offering a reward of up to 20,000 for information leading to the identification and prosecution of persons responsible for the murder of Stephen Lawrence."

Mr Lawrence was stabbed to death by a group of up to six white men in an unprovoked racist attack as he waited at a bus stop with a friend.

In January 2012, Gary Dobson and David Norris were found guilty of being involved in the attack and jailed.
The Russian military has said US-backed rebels have repeatedly violated a ceasefire in Syria, but that the nearly day-old truce has largely held.

Col Sergei Kopytsyn said in a video call from an area near Aleppo that six people have been killed and another 10 have been wounded in the northern city since the truce went into force at sunset on Monday.
The ceasefire in Syria appears to be holding since coming into effect on Monday night, despite sporadic and minor violations, according to Syrian opposition activists and monitoring groups.

Rami Abdurrahman from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says "calm is prevailing" in most of the country on Tuesday, although there were minor violations in central Hama province.

Another activist group, the Local Co-ordination Committees, reported some shelling in Aleppo and the southern region of Quneitra, while state media said there were "breaches" of the truce by rebels in the contested city of Aleppo.

Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the southern province of Daraa, where Syrias crisis began in 2011, said the region was also calm.

The week-long ceasefire brokered by the US and Russia started at sunset on Monday.

Meanwhile, the UN humanitarian aid coordinator says the aid agency needs to make sure its staff and partners "are not in mortal danger" before starting convoys into parts of Syria.

OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said humanitarian aid teams are ready to move into areas such as the troubled northern city of Aleppo.

He said the agency needs "peace to be reinstated before we can go in".

Mr Laerke told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that he did not know who would make the final assessment when conditions were safe enough for deliveries to resume.

He said no deliveries had been made since the US-Russia brokered ceasefire went into effect on Monday at sunset.

The deal is expected to pave the way for UN-led aid convoys to resume.
The uncle of a nine-year-old boy who was beaten to death over a missing piece of birthday cake in the US has pleaded guilty to first-degree child abuse.

Jacob Barajas, 24, entered the plea on Tuesday as jury selection was set to begin for his trial in Hagerstown.
Move over Lady Gaga - there's another big new album in the works.

Canberra's iconic National Carillon will be releasing an album early next year.

Ten composers from around the country will play songs at the National Carillon for a new album. Credit:Melissa Adams

The ANU School of Music has partnered with the National Capital Authority to commission the album of songs from 10 of the country's leading composers, including Emeritus Professor Larry Sitsky AM and Dr Natalie Williams at the ANU School of Music.

Together they will work with senior carillonist Dr Thomas Laue and the Carillon's lead carillonist, Lyn Fuller.
A Fairfax investigation of all 131 Catholic brothers listed in St Edmund's staff records up to 2004 has found a further five came to the school in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, despite complaints they had previously abused children. The late St Edmund's College headmaster from 1960-65, Noel T Landener. Knowledge of the complaints went to the top of the Christian Brothers' order. One brother, Enda Hynes, was known as a sexual predator to the world's highest-ranking Christian Brother, the Dublin-based superior-general, decades before he came to the ACT. Superior-general J. P. Noonan wrote to his Australian subordinates in 1934, urging they deal with Hynes and another offender urgently.

"There has been too much delay, it appears to me, in dealing with these two cases," he wrote. It is not fair to the congregation or to our pupils whose guardians we profess to be to keep a corrupter of youth on the staff. The secular state would not do this. Our standards should not be lower. Christian Brothers superior-general JP Noonan "It is not fair to the congregation or to our pupils whose guardians we profess to be to keep a corrupter of youth on the staff. "The secular state would not do this. Our standards should not be lower." Despite the admonitions, the superior-general left it to the Australian clergy to determine Hynes' future. They allowed him to stay in the order.

Hynes molested another child in 1955 but again escaped with a warning. He turned up at St Edmund's two years later, where he taught from 1957-59. Another brother, Patrick Timothy Farrell, came to St Edmund's from a boarding school in Tasmania, where senior staff had learned he was abusing boys in the junior dormitory he was in charge of in the mid-1950s. One of those boys, Tony Rayner, was anally raped and abused, crimes that inflicted a terrible physical and psychiatric toll. Mr Rayner, who has spoken publicly about his abuse, says he has come to understand Farrell's offences as symptoms of a mental illness. But the silence and willful inaction of other Christian Brothers still greatly troubles him.

"The fact that I was raped by a sexual predator is obviously evil, but it's just one person," Mr Rayner said. "The really evil thing was that it was covered up by other people who felt it was easier to do that than to stop it. "There's something totally, stupidly wrong about that. It's so pathetically wrong it's almost incomprehensible." Another brother, Thomas Coman Seery, abused boys twice in the seven years before he arrived at St Edmund's, receiving a censure and a canonical warning from the order's provincial council, a group of Australia's most senior clergy. Still he was not removed. Instead, Seery was harboured in the order and arrived to teach at St Edmund's in 1961.

Brother Geoffrey Claver Baumgartner committed offences so serious that the order was to consider dispensing him from his vows  in other words, kicking him out  in the mid-1950s. Yet, for unknown reasons, the punishment was not meted out, and Baumgartner instead came to St Edmund's in 1960. In 1956, Brother Romuald Hills was caught kissing boys and punishing their bare buttocks at a Christian Brothers facility interstate. He was censured, or warned, and arrived at St Edmund's College six years later. Another brother, who cannot be named, was jailed for abuses at a NSW school where he worked after leaving Canberra.

The Christian Brothers say they have no records of the six brothers offending while they were at St Edmund's, and Fairfax has no evidence to suggest otherwise. Current evidence suggests only three individuals were alleged to have offended at St Edmund's: the headmaster Landener, Brother Roberts, and a lay teacher Patrick O'Flaherty. O'Flaherty abused St Edmund's students and was charged, convicted and sentenced in 1970. He was kicked out as soon as staff became aware of complaints. He was charged with abusing five children, not all of whom were from St Edmund's, but appears to have made a plea deal and avoided jail time.

In a statement, the Christian Brothers acknowledged fully their past failings, noting they had been revealed and reported on widely in several inquiries, including the royal commission. The order accepted that its failure to respond properly to child abuse was a "matter of deep sorrow and regret for all Christian Brothers", and accepted criticism of its "dark history". "From 1993 onwards, the Christian Brothers have publicly acknowledged past failures where children were not protected, suffered abuse perpetrated by some of our own and lay staff, and that the consequences of such abuse are devastating, far reaching and ongoing for victims of this abuse and their families," the order's statement read. Loading "The Christian Brothers have also accepted that some brothers, against whom allegations had been made, were not removed, as they should have been, from any environment involving children after allegations were received."
Former Goulburn mayor Geoff Kettle will contest the ACT election for Richard Farmer's new political party, taking the fight to Labor in Ginninderra.

Mr Kettle could prove to be the high-profile conservative candidate that the Liberal cause needs in the Belconnen seat, which has been a Labor stronghold.

Former Goulburn mayor Geoff Kettle, who is standing for the new Canberra Community Voters party in the ACT election. Credit:Goulburn Post

Mr Farmer announces his candidates on Wednesday, but Mr Kettle has already changed his Linked-in profile to declare his candidacy.

After six years as Goulburn mayor, Mr Kettle decided not to stand again this year, and moved to Canberra in February, where he lives in the city and his wife works in the private sector. He said he knew of Mr Farmer because "everybody knows who Richard Farmer is", but had not met him until Mr Farmer called him a week ago asking whether he would stand.
I'm beginning to think the whole sordid American presidential campaign is being blown along by an acrid gust of distrust. The two main candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are remarkably distrustful. They have set the modern standards for withholding information  his not releasing tax and health records, her not holding regular news conferences or quickly disclosing her pneumonia diagnosis. Both have a problem with spontaneous, reciprocal communication with a hint of vulnerability.

Both ultimately hew to a distrustful, stark, combative, zero-sum view of life  the idea that making it in this world is an unforgiving slog and that, given other people's selfish natures, vulnerability is dangerous.

Trump's convention speech was the perfect embodiment of the politics of distrust. American families, he argued, are under threat from foreigners who are as violent and menacing as they are insidious. Clinton's "Basket of Deplorables" riff comes from the same spiritual place. We have in our country, she jibed, millions of bigots, racists, xenophobes and haters  people who are so black-hearted that they are, as she put it, "irredeemable".

The parishioners at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, felt that even the man who murdered their close friends was redeemable, but Clinton has written off vast chunks of her fellow citizens as beyond hope and redemption.
In the Second World War the foreigners tried to invade Australia to take our land, now they are buying it instead. That, at least, is the popular catch cry surrounding foreign ownership of agricultural land. Oh, and the subscript is that the Chinese are the villains.

This is not what is really happening, however. The Register of Foreign Ownership of Agricultural Land now makes the facts around foreign ownership clear.

Farmland must be maintained to prevent weeds and feral animals from taking over, Credit:Jessica Shapiro

However, the real issue is how well foreigners are managing and using the land. That is something neither side of politics is willing to grapple.

The nation that has the biggest stake in agricultural land in Australia is the United Kingdom. UK owners hold almost 60 per cent of foreign owned agricultural land in Australia, and those from the US another 16.7 per cent.
The Liberal-National Party has decided not to challenge the election result in the north Queensland seat of Herbert, although one of its senators believes it could have mounted a strong case.

Herbert was the last electorate decided, falling to Labor's Cathy O'Toole by just 37 votes.

Senator Ian Macdonald with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Cairns during the federal election campaign. Credit:Andrew Meares

Had sitting Liberal Ewen Jones managed to hang on it would have doubled the government's majority in the House of Representatives.

The LNP had been considering taking the result to the Court of Disputed Returns.
The Coalition and Labor have agreed to cut back a baby bonus payment worth $367 million as part of the deal to pass the $6.3 billion omnibus savings bill, which will also water down proposed cuts to renewable energy funding and preserve the clean energy supplement for "vulnerable" recipients.

As the Coalition party room continued to grapple with the details of the same-sex marriage plebiscite, Labor was first to announce the compromised legislation, with shadow treasurer Chris Bowen saying both sides had worked together in the national interest.

The baby bonus payment, which formed a key element of the Coalition power-sharing agreement struck by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce in September 2015, would have given eligible families with a youngest child under one year an extra $1000 a year through an increase to their Family Tax Benefit part B payment.

The clean energy supplement will not be abolished - which would have saved $1.3 billion - for most new recipients of welfare payments. There had been intense pressure from welfare groups and internally from Labor's left faction to block this cut.
Two panels of MPs and "citizens" would run publicly-funded advertising campaigns for and against same-sex marriage under a plebiscite plan endorsed by the Coalition partyroom on Tuesday.

But there was no guarantee that taxpayer-funded advertising would be truthful or even directly relevant to the subject of marriage.

The plebiscite mechanics were revealed for the first time in a briefing paper obtained by Fairfax Media, which confirmed each side would be allocated $7.5 million in taxpayer funds through "yes" and "no" committees. The committees would also accept donations that are tax deductible up to $1500.

Each committee would consist of two government MPs, two opposition MPs, a crossbencher and five "citizens", who are expected to be prominent advocates on either side. They would be appointed by Attorney-General George Brandis and Special Minister of State Scott Ryan.
It was Tony Abbott's own backers who singled out the British tradition of former leaders who remained in Parliament when mounting a case for him to stay in politics.

But on the eve of the first anniversary of Mr Abbott's overthrow, it was the departing David Cameron who put a long skewer through the argument when he lamented that it was not possible for an ex-British PM to become a backbencher and "retain their reputation".

"Everything you do will become a big distraction and a big diversion from what the government needs to do for our country," Mr Cameron said.

Fairfax Media has spoken to a number of elected colleagues of Mr Abbott and senior Liberal Party figures and found bafflement, some anger and some support for his decision to remain on the national political stage.
Liberal MP Tim Wilson has apologised to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for an apparent clash during a lengthy Coalition party room meeting on same-sex marriage.

The crossed words took place as the details of the plebiscite - it will cost $170 million, be held on February 11, 2017 and the "yes" and "no" campaigns will receive $7.5 million each in funding - were agreed in Canberra on Tuesday.

At least ten Coalition MPs spoke on the details of the plebiscite during the meeting, including Mr Turnbull, deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and former prime minister Tony Abbott.

Other MPs who spoke included Andrew Broad, Dean Smith, Michael Sukkar, Warren Entsch, George Christensen and Russell Broadbent.
And that's where we will leave you today - but first, a recap.

As it has all week, the same-sex marriage plebiscite dominated the agenda - but we finally saw the legislation (which Labor has all but said it will be opposing) introduced into the House.

And it had some interesting bits and pieces contained within it about the publicly funded yes and no campaigns.

With the first anniversary of the Turnbull Government approaching - so are the critiques. Peta Credlin made her views clear - but does that mean Tony Abbott could ever be back? And has Malcolm Turnbull delivered - My colleague Peter Martin gives his view here.

Stephanie Peatling, Andrew Meares and Alex Ellinghausen will be with you as soon as the Parliament files back in for the Thursday sitting day. Enjoy your evening - and thanks, as always, for reading.
Film star and comedian Amy Schumer has been hospitalised for a bout of food poisoning during a trip to Paris with her boyfriend, a situation she nevertheless managed to mine for humour.

The 35-year-old New York born stand-up comic and actress revealed her plight via Instagram.

"Thanks for everything Paris! Except the food poisoning," she said.

The post was accompanied by an image of Schumer and her boyfriend Ben Hanisch looking unwell in bed.
As Linnea Dunne pointed out in a moving blog post that has gone viral, "It is almost as if we've already forgotten: they were a family of five. Rest in peace, invisible mother." This month, an article reporting on the shocking rape of a 6-year- old girl at an Australian primary school read that, "Both boys [the suspected perpetrators] were allegedly present during both incidents but only one of the boys had sex with her in the second incident, police allege." The term "had sex with" is not a substitute for the terms "sexual assault", "rape" or "child abuse". One is consensual, the other is a crime. (When contacted, the reporter voluntarily corrected the wording, which I appreciate.) When I spoke publicly two years ago about a sexual assault I had survived in Canada, the terminology often used in the media revealed a great deal about prevailing attitudes towards survivors of these crimes, with the frequent use of the word "confess" and headlines like Tara's Dark Past and Tara's Demons. On radio I was questioned about my decision to speak out in solidarity with other survivors of rape: "What did your husband think of you deciding to confess these things publicly?" I had to point out that while survivors of crime share their stories if they choose to, it's the criminals who "confess". To confess is literally to "Admit that one has committed a crime or done something wrong." Another writer published a piece titled What We Can Learn From Tara Moss's Rapist, contacting the convicted rapist for a quote. Whether intentional or not, the implied lesson was that we could "learn from" the man who committed the crime, but not the other person who was there - the woman who survived it, a woman who was voiceless in the piece, with only a photo and the caption: "Tara Moss: Raped at 21."

This tendency to erase the accounts of women's experiences of violence is consistent with the findings of The Media Representations of Violence Study launched in June of this year, commissioned by Our Watch and Anrows, showing that there has been a tendency in the media to "mute" the victim's perspective. Further, reporting tended to focus on how perpetrators' futures were harmed by the cases, rather than victims' lives impacted by the attacks. Make no mistake - from those judge's comments, to erasure of survivor's stories and the downplaying of rape to "sex", survivors of sexual assault, abuse and violence see these articles. One in three women will experience violence in her lifetime, and one in five women will be raped, as will about one in 22 men. (17 per cent of women and 4 per cent of men experienced sexual assault since the age of 15 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics - Personal Safety Survey, 2012.) The many survivors of these crimes read. They are informed about how they will be regarded and what they may be subjected to if they speak out. Every time we write about survivors of crime "confessing" they have been attacked, every time we erase the woman who was murdered, every time we call rape "sex" and we mute the experiences of survivors, and every time we victim blame, we do the public an injustice, because we miss a real opportunity to inform, and instead we further cement damaging social attitudes that minimise, excuse or ignore the hard reality of violence. And we teach survivors that they should think twice before speaking out. We teach them that their voices are not valued. As a writer and journalist myself, I know the pressure writers can find themselves under. Reporting on these troubling and sensitive issues can be challenging, but it is vital, which is why we must not only encourage continued reporting in this area but celebrate excellence in that reporting. This is why I believe the Our Watch Awards, now in their second year, are an important development.
Tim Heiderich did not come to Sydney to fight for its arts culture. The former software developer left a six-figure job in Los Angeles to come to Sydney to complete a masters in film.

But the international student has become collateral damage in the University of Sydney's plans to close its art school at Rozelle.

"It's like that old story about the chicken and the pig that go into business. The chicken says, 'Hey, I'll provide the eggs and you provide the ham'," Mr Heiderich says.

"In this case, the students are the ones providing the ham."
The Immigration Department failed to rein in spending on Australia's overseas immigration detention, which costs taxpayers more than half a million dollars a year for each asylum seeker, an audit has found.

Auditor-General Grant Hehir's searing report also shows officials could not explain how they selected the businesses that received more than $3 billion to build and run the detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.

The report, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, examines how the department managed the contracts for security, cleaning, catering, health and welfare services for detainees.

It said the department fell "well short of effective procurement practice", and identified "serious and persistent deficiencies" in its efforts to build the centres in 2012 and then to reduce costs over the following four years.
A landmark class action lawsuit aiming to claw back the stolen wages of about 300 Aboriginal Queenslanders could be the beginning of something much bigger, with similar moves planned nationally within months.

Hans Pearson, the uncle of prominent Aboriginal rights campaigner Noel Pearson, is spearheading the claim in Queensland.

Noel Pearson, Hans' nephew, likened the lawsuit to the Mabo decision, in terms of its significance. Credit:Peter Eve / Yothu Yindi Foundati

In a statement of claim filed to the Federal Court on Monday, a class action involving 300 Aboriginal workers accused the Queensland government of breaching its fiduciary duty and the trust of Aboriginal people.

In 2002, former premier Peter Beattie acknowledged the total figure for stolen wages in Queensland alone could be as high as half a billion dollars.
A man has been charged with attempted murder following a vicious stabbing attack at a home north of Brisbane in July.

A 32-year-old woman was reportedly found slumped on the front steps of her Paul Street home at Kallangur with multiple stab wounds to her face, chest and legs on the night of July 27.

The woman was reportedly found slumped at her front door after she was viciously attacked. Credit:Pippa Sheehan/Ten News

Police said she was attacked after she had returned home at 7pm.

She was transported to Royal Brisbane Hospital in a critical condition, but was later upgraded to stable, police said.
A horse that fell into a backyard swimming pool on the Gold Coast has managed to get itself out after fire crews drained the water.

The horse had been in the pool for more than two hours before it climbed out of the pool itself.

EARLIER

An emergency rescue is underway to retrieve a horse that is trapped in a backyard swimming pool on the Gold Coast.
One of 44 broken or rotting sleepers near Roxburgh Park railway station on Tuesday. Credit:Jason South It has asked Ms Allan to take the rail network back into public hands, or at the very least run a competitive tender in which other companies can bid against Metro. A report by Metro staff, compiled by track inspectors in the middle of August, showed there were 5838 track faults on the network. The faults ranged from the mundane  broken bolts, loose screws, cracked sleepers  to more serious matters such as deep mud holes or a pedestrian crossing that was a "hazard for wheelchairs and walking aides".

Scores of track faults were reported up to two years ago and remain broken. Those included on the list and inspected by Fairfax Media on Tuesday included parts of Oakleigh station. The leaked report notes that in August 2015 a site inspection revealed Metro staff concerns about "drainage around the subway roof on the up [city-bound] track where the rails are directly fixed to the concrete deck". Train passengers using the subway on Tuesday morning had to find gaps in the dripping water to avoid getting wet. Some used their umbrellas to stay dry. The report lists hundreds of rotting sleepers throughout the rail network that need replacing.

One fault report notes "44 sleepers in a row in poor condition need to be replaced ASAP" near Roxburgh Park station. The report was first made in September 2014. On Tuesday, an inspection of the rail line in that section revealed timber tracks still broken and rotting, although they had been covered with fresh ballast. A more recent report from July this year said the level crossing next to Glenhuntly railway station had "bitumen [that] has broken away around the rails ... exposing them, vehicles can possibly damage their wheels travelling over the crossing". A visit to the site on Tuesday showed the crossing had not yet been repaired. The level crossing next to Glenhuntly railway station, noted in Metro Trains' track fault report. Credit:Joe Armao

An email obtained by Fairfax Media that was sent on August 18 by one of Metro's track maintenance managers said that the operator had completed a "bulk close-out" of track faults. This meant Metro would not be fixing these faults because, the email said, "it was reasonable to assume the vast majority of these old faults  should have been fixed or since failed in track due to the extensive time interval". Metro spokeswoman Sammie Black said the email was "an internal and confidential communication" that was part of a review of track fault data that had "identified some administrative anomalies". It meant some older track faults were still being recorded as needing to be fixed but "had been fixed or superseded". She said the rail company's maintenance program complied "with the standards expected of us", and that Metro was spending "more than $1 million each working day on maintenance and renewals". "Our track inspection methods both with track inspectors as well as our mechanised track inspections ensure all faults are safely managed," Ms Black said.
VicRoads has closed roads around Victoria because of the heavy rain and flooding. "Walpeup received 33.6mm in 24 hours, and their monthly average is 32.6mm," Mr Arndt said. And there is a lot more rainfall to come for regional Victoria "especially through central parts as the rain contracts to the east". A severe weather warning has been issued for the areas highlighted in yellow. Credit:Bureau of Meteorology

"There will be some showers in the west but they should ease, and there is a lot of water on the ground around the state," Mr Arndt said. A severe weather warning was issued at 6am on Wednesday for people in the Northern Country, North Central, North East and parts of the Central, East Gippsland and South West Forecast Districts. The current weather situation in Melbourne. Credit:Bureau of Meteorology There are a number of current flood warnings for the state: for the Snowy, Werribee, Barwon, Glenelg, Kiewa, Ovens and King, Campaspe, Loddon, Avoca, Wimmera and Murray rivers. Flood watches have been issued for several parts of the state.

Emergency services received about 70 requests for help overnight on Tuesday, with the SES expecting that number to climb as people wake up and notice damage or flooding at their properties. "Most of the calls are for property owners reporting flooding, asking for sandbags - water coming into properties, through gutters and ceilings," an SES spokesman said. "We've also had some trees come down due to the sodden nature of the state, it weakens the trees and that can blow them over," he said. "It's been a steady rise in the rivers, we' expect it to continue to soak in but there's always potential of a thunderstorm bringing a lot of rain down on a community so we need to be across that," the SES spokesman said.

He said the SES wanted to stress that those in towns with flooding do not attempt to drive in floodwater. "We know there's a lot of damaged roads and a lot of roads that will have water on them so we ask people to never drive over floodwater," he said. One person was rescued from flood waters at Waterloo, near Beaufort, with police, CFA and the SES all working together in the operation, The Courier reports. SES deputy controller of operations Craig Elliott told The Courier there were concerns for the township of Clunes, with fears the banks of Creswick Creek could burst in the middle of the town. However, Mr Elliott said the town of Creswick currently appeared to be safe, unlike when floods ravaged the town in 2010-2011.

"We had some concerns around Clunes overnight but that appears to be safe for now," he said. "The ground just can't soak up any more rain anywhere at the moment." Mr Elliott also sent out a strong message to those who tried driving through flood waters. The SES received 200 calls for assistance across Victoria from midnight on Monday, mainly for flooding emergencies. The spokesman said SES volunteers had been door knocking in regional towns, handing out sandbags and letting people know the risks of flooding.

A lot of the calls for assistance have come from the western part of Victoria, which has been hammered by rain in recent days leading to high rivers and flooding. Water is gushing through the Hume Dam spillway gates for the first time in six years. Water storages across Victoria are filling rapidly following steady rain over recent days and a wet winter. Major regional roads included parts of the Western Highway, the Wimmera Highway and the Pyrenees Highway have been closed due to flooding, with the VicRoads traffic map showing road closures scattered around Victoria. Trains commuters endured wet-weather delays of up to 50 minutes after a power outage brought the Metro network to its knees on Tuesday evening. There were delays on Wednesday morning to the Belgrave, Frankston, Alamein, Cheltenham and Upfield lines, from about 5.30am onwards.
The builder of the $1.2 billion Perth Children's Hospital John Holland has not been blamed for asbestos found in ceiling panels but should have done more to protect the health of workers.

Instead, the finger of blame is being pointed at suppliers in China.

WA's Building Commissioner Peter Gow has said John Holland is not to blame for the discovery of asbestos in materials at the $1.2 billion Perth Children's Hospital.

Those are the findings of WA Building Commissioner Peter Gow who's just published an interim report of the investigation into the discovery of asbestos inside fibre-cement ceiling panels in the new hospital.

Back in July a worker uncovered the asbestos in panels he had been cutting into, sparking fears he and his colleagues could suffer ill health from exposure to the dangerous material.
Hat, sunnies, thongs. Passport, plane ticket and wallet.

You don't need much to travel to Bali, and if you forget anything, the usual logic is that you can always buy it in the shops for prices far cheaper than back in Australia.

Solemen founder Robert Epstone and Solemen colleague Sarah Chapman with Agus, who suffers from Harlequin ichthyosis, a genetic disorder that causes a hardening of the skin. Credit:www.solemen.org

But there are a few things you can't get, and if you're a local suffering from a rare illness, the things we take for granted in our local pharmacies are impossible to find on the shelves.

That's why the Bali-based not-for-profit Solemen is urging Aussies taking a trip to Bali to pack a few extras in their luggage:
WA Police fined 57 drivers in just 90 minutes on Perth roads on Tuesday morning in a crackdown on mobile phone use at the wheel.

Radio 6PR reporter Lisa Barnes went on patrol with Sergeant Simon Baxter and Senior Sergeant Levinia Hugo as police targeted driving phone users.

Police were out in full force this morning cracking down on mobile phone use at the wheel. Credit:Lisa Barnes: 6PR

Ms Barnes told Mornings host Gary Adshead drivers were spotted checking Facebook, their emails and Snapchat.

"What we were doing this morning was really targeting areas where there's high traffic flow, so where lots of people are coming into the city... really where you find that people are starting to sit in traffic because traffic is banking up," she said.
An experienced camper and bushwalker who went missing in a remote part of Western Australia almost two years ago is likely to have been a victim of mother nature, a coronial inquest has been told.

Rowan Wallace Cook, 40, travelled to WA from Sydney in 2013 and went missing while camping at Aldridge Cove in Walpole Nornalup National Park.

Rowan Wallace Cook went missing while camping at Aldridge Cove in Walpole Nornalup National Park. Credit:ABC News

Mr Cook is believed to have disappeared between October 2, when he was last seen in Walpole, and November 18, when his abandoned campsite was discovered by other campers.

Sergeant Cameron Clifford testified on Monday that Mr Cook, who was considered to be insular and a loner, was never found despite an extensive search.
Berlin: Three Syrians who entered Germany as migrants last year have been arrested on suspicion of belonging to Islamic State and may have had links to those who carried out the Paris terrorist attacks, authorities said.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the travel documents the men were carrying when they were arrested on Tuesday had been issued by the same authority as ones found on some of the men who carried out the attacks in and around Paris in November.

One of three terrorism suspects, second right, is led away at the German Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, Germany, on Tuesday. Credit:AP

Authorities also said that the three Syrians appeared to have used the same smugglers to enter Germany and to apply for asylum as some of those involved in the terrorist assaults in France.

"It could be that this was a sleeper cell," de Maiziere told reporters.
A Nigerian woman has given birth to a boy while on board a rescue ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

The newborn's nationality is uncertain because he was born in international waters.

The Nigerian mother with her new baby, son and midwife. Credit:MSF

Faith Oqunbor, the child's mother, had been taken from an overcrowded rubber boat onto a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) rescue ship.

The medical charity announced the child's birth on Twitter, and recounted the experience of Mrs Oqunbor.
For another, the Trump Foundation seems to have repeatedly defied the Internal Revenue Service rules that govern nonprofits. It gave a prohibited political gift to help Florida Attorney-General Republican Pamela Bondi. It appears to have bought items for Trump - including a $US12,000 ($16,000) football helmet and a $US20,000 portrait of Trump - despite IRS rules against "self-dealing" by charity leaders. And, in at least five cases, the Trump Foundation may have reported making a donation that didn't seem to exist. These five cases turned up in The Post's reporting, which looked at 24 years of tax filings and reached out to more than 200 people and groups listed in those filings as donors or recipients of gifts. Five times, the Trump Foundation's tax filings described giving a specific amount of money to a specific charity - in some cases, even including the recipient's address. But when The Post called, the charities listed said the tax filings appeared wrong. They'd never received anything from Trump or his foundation. The Post asked Trump's staff to explain these five apparent errors.

It has explained one. Regarding that one (No. 5 on the list below), the Trump organisation's explanation showed something very unusual. The incorrect gift had been listed on the Trump Foundation's tax filings in a way that served to hide a real gift - the improper donation to Bondi's group - from the IRS. Trump's staffers say there was no intent to mislead: The improper gift was left off, and the false gift was added, by accident. It's still unclear how the four other apparent errors arose. We post them here, in case somebody out there knows more of the story than we do. 1. $US10,000 gift to the Giving Back Fund in 2008

The Giving Back Fund is a Los Angeles-based charity that serves as an umbrella group for smaller charities run by actors and celebrities. Marc Pollick, the group's president and founder, said the group had searched its donor files and found no evidence of this gift. "We have already reached out to the Trump Foundation to ask them to actually SEND us the $10,000 that they claimed they sent in 2008!" he wrote in an email. Trump's campaign did not respond to a request for an explanation of this gift. The Trump Foundation's accountants - the firm WeiserMazars - declined to comment about this gift, and all the others, citing company policy. 2. $US5000 gift to the Children's Medical Centre in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2010 "Children's Hospital & Medical Centre's Foundation does not have a gift from the Donald J. Trump Foundation or Donald Trump in its records," said Sarah Weller, a spokeswoman for the medical centre.

Weller suggested that the Trump Foundation may have sent the money to another children's hospital, in another city. But the foundation's tax returns had the right address for the one in Omaha, down to the suite number. Trump's campaign did not respond to a request for an explanation of this gift. 3. $US10,000 gift to the Latino Commission on AIDS in 2012 This was one of the gifts that Trump promised on air during a taping of The Celebrity Apprentice. During an episode in 2012, contestant Dayana Mendoza - a former Miss Universe - was there when Trump made a sweeping promise. "I'm gonna give $10,000 each to each one of you, everybody sitting at this table, for your charity," he said. Five other contestants were at the table. The Trump Foundation sent $10,000 to each of their charities. This was typical for the show: Although Trump often made seemingly heartfelt promises to donate his own money, it seems that he never did so. Instead, the donations were made by a production company, or by Trump's foundation - by then, filled with other people's money.

The Trump Foundation told the IRS that it also had given $US10,000 to Mendoza's charity, the Latino Commission on AIDS. But the money didn't arrive. "No ... donations of any kind from Donald Trump or the Donald J. Trump Foundation were received," said Daniel Leyva, at the commission. Trump's campaign did not respond to a request for an explanation of this gift. 4. $A1000 gift to Friends of Veterans in 2013 We told the tale of this gift in our article Sunday:

This January, the phone rang at a tiny charity in White River Junction, Vermont, called Friends of Veterans. This was just after Trump had held a televised fundraiser for veterans in Iowa, raising more than $5 million. Trump's campaign did not respond to a request for an explanation of this gift. 5. $US25,000 gift to Justice for All in 2013 Justice for All is a nonprofit group in Kansas that seeks to "make abortion unthinkable" by training opponents of abortion to change minds about the issue. "Our organisation, Justice for All Inc., did not receive a $US25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation in 2013," staffer Tammy Cook told The Post earlier this year.
What is she hiding behind the glasses? Hillary Clinton on September 11. Credit:AP Voters will have to determine if the murky health status of Clinton and Trump should be a factor in the November decision. What's certain is that the campaign trail can be brutal, and the presidency itself can pound away at the health of whoever occupies the Oval Office. Four presidents - William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren G. Harding and Franklin Delano Roosevelt - died in office due to ill health. The desire to keep their physical condition secret led many American presidents to avoid the best doctors, says historian Matthew Algeo, who wrote about Cleveland's surreptitious cancer surgery in his book The President Is a Sick Man. Privilege and POTUS: John F. Kennedy was a member of Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club.

"With presidents, a lot of times they don't get the best care. You would expect they would, but they're so paranoid about anyone knowing what's wrong with them that they employ old family doctors," Algeo said. Cleveland, Algeo said, concealed his surgery in part because cancer was such a dreaded disease. But Cleveland also did not think his medical condition was anyone else's business - and he distrusted reporters intensely. At 70, Donald Trump would be the oldest person to assume the presidency. Credit:AP The public had limited information about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's physical condition when he ran for president in 1932, already disabled by a viral infection. The press corps avoided mentioning that Roosevelt used a wheelchair. By the time he ran for a fourth term in 1944, he had heart disease, was constantly tired and had trouble concentrating. Frank Lahey, a surgeon who examined Roosevelt, wrote a memo saying FDR would never survive another four-year term. The memo was not disclosed until 2011. Harry Truman, FDR's final running mate, was shocked when he saw Roosevelt for the first time in a year, because, as he told an aide, "physically he's just going to pieces" - a moment recounted in Michael Beschloss's book The Conquerors. When a friend told Truman to take a close look at the White House because he would soon be living there, Truman answered: "I'm afraid I am, and it scares the hell out of me."

Former US president Franklin D Roosevelt. But the public didn't know any of this, Beschloss writes. Roosevelt's opponent, Thomas Dewey, derided "tired old men" in the White House, but Roosevelt sailed to victory that November. He died just months later, in April 1945, leaving Truman to close out World War II. Truman had known nothing of the Manhattan Project and had to make the difficult decision about dropping atomic bombs on Japan. Eisenhower's health problems were initially concealed as well. After he suffered his first heart attack, reporters were told he suffered "a digestive upset during the night," notes John Dickerson in his book Whistlestop. Ronald Reagan presided over a bull market, but there were substantial ups and downs. Kennedy had to take steroids and other drugs to ward off the symptoms of Addison's disease, but he did so secretly. As the Los Angeles Times reported: "During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy's opponents said he had Addison's. His physicians released a cleverly worded statement saying that he did not have Addison's disease caused by tuberculosis, and the matter was dropped. Kennedy collapsed twice because of the disease: once at the end of a parade during an election campaign and once on a congressional visit to Britain."

Historian Robert Dallek told the Post that public disclosure of Kennedy's health problems might have kept him from becoming president. But Dallek offers a different perspective about the health challenges facing political leaders. He said lethal cancer should prevent someone from running for president, but other health problems are not disqualifying. Theodore Roosevelt: A more eloquent exposition of the truth that life is tough might be hard to find. "Franklin Roosevelt was a paraplegic and he served there for 12 years. Now, Kennedy had all these health issues, and he did a fine job as president," Dallek said. "You overcome challenges, disabilities. And that was true with Franklin Roosevelt, and it served FDR brilliantly in the presidency because people in the Depression thought he had recovered from his polio and now he's the one to lead the country through a recovery, so psychologically it gave him a hold on the public that was really helpful." Earlier presidents had capitalised on a similar reputation for overcoming physical challenges. Dickerson points to Andrew Jackson, "Old Hickory", who famously walked around with two bullets lodged in his body from youthful duels and who regularly bled himself before going to bed at night. Theodore Roosevelt was sickly as a boy, for which he compensated by pursuing "the strenuous life". Roosevelt, campaigning for president on the Bull Moose ticket in 1912, survived an assassination attempt when a gunman's bullet was slowed by a folded 50-page speech and an eyeglass case jammed in his coat pocket. The bullet ended up between two ribs, and Roosevelt, bleeding, insisted on going to an auditorium anyway to deliver his speech.

"I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot - but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose," Roosevelt told his supporters, according to Smithsonian magazine. That bravado wasn't enough on Election Day, when the frail Wilson beat both Roosevelt and the incumbent, William Howard Taft, who carried well over 135 kilograms on his frame and holds the title of America's heaviest president. Reagan's age, 69, was an issue during his bid for the presidency in 1980. But he appeared vigorous when he first took office, regularly lifted weights and rode horses on his ranch. He survived a nearly fatal gunshot wound in his chest in an assassination attempt early in his first time. Running for re-election in 1984, he appeared confused during the first debate with his opponent, Walter Mondale, but recovered nicely in the next debate by joking that he would not exploit for political purposes his opponent's "youth and inexperience". Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994. Journalists and historians - and even Reagan's son Ronald jnr - have speculated that he showed signs of the disease in his second term, when he was in his mid-70s. That remains a contentious topic, and many aides have insisted that Reagan did not have the disease while in office. The 25th Amendment provides for a transfer of power to the vice-president if the president is incapacitated. Twice, in 2002 and 2007, George W. Bush invoked the amendment to transfer power to then vice-president Dick Cheney while Bush underwent routine colonoscopies. The relinquishment of executive authority lasted only a couple of hours in each instance.
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

Online home loan HashChing has attracted another major name with former Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia ( MFAA ) chief executive officer Siobhan Hayden joining its advisory board.Haydens appointment is the latest in a string of notable ones made by HashChing, with financial services regulatory lawyer Claire Wivell Platter and financial service senior executive Helen Lorigan both having been appointed to the advisory board in recent weeks.Hayden stepped down from her MFAA role in June this year and said she believes HashChing will have a significant impact on the the Australian home loan market.HashChing sits at the intersection of customers, brokers and lenders and provides a pathway to timely and convenient solutions in the mortgage market, she said.HashChing is a great business with a very authentic brand built on principles of integrity, transparency and genuine customer service.Mandeep Sodhi, HashChing chief executive officer, said Hayden is an ideal appointment to help HashChing build market share across both broker and consumer channels.No one understands the Australian home loan market better said than Siobhan, Sodhi said.Shes worked on the front line of the mortgage industry and understands trends, behaviours customer patterns and technology. Her deep understanding of the mortgage brokers behaviour and pain points will help us further enhance our automated algorithm which matches borrowers with the right mortgage broker. Were very lucky to have her, he said.Atul Narang, HashChing chief operating officer said Haydens appointment means the company now has an advisory board that will truly help it meet its growth targets.Launched in August 2015, HashChing is completely free for consumers and has so far seen more than $1.5bn worth of loan applications lodged across its panel of 40 lenders.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

Brooklynites the borough across dressed in red, white, and blue to honor the memory of those who perished on 9-11 at three separate events marking the 15th anniversary of a day that shook our city and country.

In Sheepshead Bay, community members gathered in front of the 9-11 mural in Bill Brown Park that includes names of 400 southern Brooklynites who died in the attacks. Speakers shared stories of loved ones lost, and some who made it out of the World Trade Center discussed their experiences.

Boy Scout Troop 238 served as the color guard for the event, leading the ceremony with a parade of flags. It was an experience that will hopefully stick with the kids  many of whom were not born when the towers fell, but can learn a lesson from their demise  according to their scout master.

I feel its important for the young children to know what was going on during 2001, said David Migdal, scout master for troop 238. And hopefully we can convey a message that its better to solve things peacefully through diplomacy than with violence and weapons.

And Bay Ridgites commemorated the fallen at the American Veterans Memorial Pier with prayer, a three-volley rifle salute by the New York City Recruiting Battalion, and patriotic musical performances by the Xaverian High School Pipe and Drums.

Residents and local pols packed the pier to join state Sen. Martin Golden (RBay Ridge) in paying tribute to the victims.

Its hard to believe that 15 years have passed since that day that changed our country forever, Golden told the crowd. Many things have changed, but what remains constant is our resolve to show terrorists across this world that, despite their cowardly attempt to destroy our nation, brave Americans continue to stand tall, shoulder to shoulder.

Golden also hosted a Marine Park tribute where the local girl scout troop handed out American flags, community members came together in a moment of silence, and a veteran played military funerary staple Taps on a bugle. Memory of the event and those who died on that day must continue to be preserved, said one attendee.

It was important for me to be there, because America is my home and we have to come out and show our support, said Barry Berger, the Vietnam vet who played the bugle. Its 15 years later and people are starting to forget. We have to remind people. We can never forget.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

When a Mossad mission goes horribly wrong, only one agent can save the day!

The tantalizing screamer is a teaser of the red meat each page hurls into the voracious jaws of the reader of Roni Dunevichs gritty spy shocker, Ring of Lies.

The high-speed, contemporary potboiler of violence, cold-hard calculation, and industrial-strength chutzpah is the internationally best-selling Israeli crime writers stateside debut of his suspenseful Alex Bartal series, which was serialized in Israels biggest newspaper.

Its a nail-biter from the get-go.

Bartal is director of operations at Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, a job requiring the hardscrabble sleuth to sleep with one eye open on good days, but the week that follows brings him to the brink of disaster when one of his agents is kidnapped during a top-secret assignment to capture, work over, and kill an Iranian general. The toppled plot triggers the deaths  one member at a time  of a sleeper-cell network of Mossad spies, propelling a series of intensifying calamities that drip, drip, drip a trail of blood, treachery, and infamy across two continents.

Convinced of a mole within Mossad, Bartal hot-foots to Europe and Asia to hunt and destroy the turncoat, his adrenaline-packed, action-mobbed investigation ascending to the highest levels of international espionage and government  and sinking into the deepest recesses of a tortured past. Along the way, we make the acquaintance of enigmatic sleepers from the Ring of the Nibelungs  named for Richard Wagners German-language epic music dramas based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas  and a cast of unsavory actors, including The Disfigured One, The Pockmarked One, and The Bald One Without Eyebrows.

Bartals relentless pursuit unleashes personal demons that clash with Europes murky and troubled history, and make him wonder if he is hunting an apparition or a merciless murderer who will stop at nothing to achieve his deadly purpose.

Mossad is the break-out star, riveting readers to the inscrutable operatives and clandestine operations of the Israeli spy intelligence agency which brought Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann to justice.

Dunevichs inaugural English-language novel in his award-winning Alex Bartal series is liquid prose, tumbling drop by drop like a rich brandy  this reviewer gulped it down, cover to cover, in a weekend!

Its nail-biting journey through the lairs and labyrinths of intercontinental undercover work is already out in paperback and captivating whodunit fans across America.

Ring of Lies [HarperCollins, 480 pages, 2016, $15.99].

Roni Dunevich was born in 1961 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He began his literary career as a copywriter and a strategic consultant.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

The city last week honored a late Clinton Hill businessman for investing in the neighborhood when few else would, co-naming a block of Putnam Avenue between Grand Avenue and Downing Street for him .

Cecil Collymores family and friends gathered on the corner on Friday evening to unveil Cecil Collymore Way, marking the end of his daughter Renees controversial five-year campaign to get the sign installed, and she said it was a great feeling to know her dads name is finally a permanent fixture in the community he helped improve.

It feels fabulous, said Renee Collymore after Council approved the co-naming in July. My father put his life on the line trying to help the police and clean up the area.

Cecil Collymore first bought property along the street in the late 70s, and eventually opened a laundromat, a 99-cent store, and a coffee shop on the strip. He also used his clout to help save a local high school from closure, and to clean up the neighborhood of crime and drugs by organizing patrols and installing street lights, says his daughter, who was joined at the sign unveiling by her mom Beatrice.

Yet she faced an uphill battle in trying to get her dad recognized with the sign  an idea she first pitched in 2011 to the local community board, which submits recommendations to the Council on proposed co-namings.

When she brought the idea back before the board most recently in October last year, the panel members abstained from voting, saying they didnt know enough about Cecil Collymore to make a judgment. Some also said they were also suspicious that the bid was politically motivated as part of Renee Collymores campaign to regain the position of local Democratic district leader  an unpaid, low-level party position that she lost in 2014.

The rejection made headlines a few months later, when the board members nevertheless approved co-naming a Boerum Hill block for Hope Reichbach  an aide to Councilman Steve Levin (DBrooklyn Heights) who died at age 22.

Collymore and a chorus of local leaders  including Borough President Adams, Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo (DClinton Hill), and Black Institute activist Bertha Lewis  questioned the age and racial disparities in the two decisions and called for the businessman, who was black, to be given the same recognition as the young white staffer.

Community Board 2 didnt vote again, but Cumbo put the idea before Council anyway, and her fellow legislators unanimously approved it in a vote alongside Reichbachs dedication, which was unveiled in a ceremony last month.

Reach reporter Lauren Gill at lgill @cngl ocal.com or by calling (718) 2602511. Follow her on Twitter @laurenk_gill
Check out which Bucks County homes are selling for seven figures
Quanxi Jia rejoins UB to boost material science efforts

The acclaimed scholar, who holds 48 U.S. patents, will serve as a faculty member and scientific director of the UB's NYS Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics

Jia has authored or co-authored more than 450 peer-reviewed journal articles, delivered more than 100 invited lectures, and holds 48 U.S. patents.

BUFFALO, N.Y.  Quanxi Jia, PhD, a world-renowned scholar and University at Buffalo alumnus, has rejoined his alma mater to help build the universitys materials science programs.

Jia, who returns to UB after a decorated 23-year career at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, has been named the Empire Innovation Professor and National Grid Professor of Materials Research in the universitys Department of Materials Design and Innovation (MDI). He also will serve as scientific director at UBs New York State Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics (CMI).

Jias appointment was announced by Liesl Folks, PhD, dean of UBs School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Robin Schulze, PhD, dean of UBs College of Arts and Sciences; Krishna Rajan, ScD, Erich Bloch Endowed Chair of MDI; and Mark T. Swihart, PhD, executive director at CMI.

Materials science is a critical element to many industries, ranging from aerospace and medical devices to renewable energy and consumer electronics. We are delighted that Quanxi Jia, an internationally-recognized expert with an exemplary record of research and service, has joined UB in this strategically important role. He will boost UBs position as a premier public research university and enhance important regional and national initiatives that will help Buffalo grow as a hub for advanced manufacturing, Folks, Schulze, Rajan and Swihart said in a joint statement.

A collaboration between the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the College of Arts of Sciences, MDI builds upon UBs existing faculty expertise in computer science, physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, environmental engineering, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, and chemical and biological engineering.

The department trains future materials scientists and engineers, with an emphasis on the use of advanced computational tools, in conjunction with bench science, to reduce the cost and time it takes to discover and commercialize new materials that are critical to the economic security of the region, nation and world.

CMI is one of two New York State Centers of Excellence at UB. The center advocates for the universitys technology-based economic development programs and cultivates industry collaboration, while further growing UBs expertise and reputation in the fast-moving field of materials informatics, including discovery and commercialization of innovative new materials.

The goals of MDI and CMI match those of the White Houses Materials Genome Initiative and its Big Data Research and Development Initiative, and state initiatives  such as the Western New York Regional Economic Development Council  that work to boost economic development in Buffalo and beyond.

Prior to joining UB, Jia was the director of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a U.S. Department of Energy nanoscale science research center operated jointly by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.

His research areas include the synthesis and study of structure-property relationships of nanostructured materials, multifunctional materials, and thin films; the development of innovative deposition techniques for the growth of electronic materials; and the development and fabrication of novel solid-state microelectronic and electro-optic devices.

Jia received bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from Xian Jiaotong University, China, and a PhD in the same field from UB in 1991.

He has authored or co-authored more than 450 peer-reviewed journal articles, delivered more than 100 invited lectures, and holds 48 U.S. patents. He serves as the co-editor-in-chief of Materials Research Letters, and sits on the editorial board of several academic and professional journals.

Among his many awards and honors are two prestigious R&D 100 awards, the 2005 Asian-American Engineer of the Year Award, and the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer Awards for Excellence in Technology Transfer. He is an elected Fellow of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Materials Research Society, American Physical Society, American Ceramic Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Days after telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) brokered truce between warring telcos, Bharti Airtel released additional interconnect bandwidth to Reliance Jio, taking the tally up to 2,000 points of interconnect (PoIs). Both Idea and Airtel red-flagged the issue of traffic asymmetry, while announcing release of fresh PoIs to Jio.
Management has emerged as the front runner to buy 30 per cent stake in the GMR Group's Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL) for Rs 2,000 crore, amid heightened interest among global investors for infrastructure projects in the country.
Every company in the would have to earn its right to grow, said Chairman Cyrus Mistry in his first-ever interview since taking over the reins four years back.
Palo Alto-based education startup Stoodnt, which helps students aspiring to study abroad by connecting them with high-quality college admission counsellors, and providing guidance, insights and online tools, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Rajan Anandan, Vice-President, Google, South-East Asia and India.

The funds will be used to enhance the user experience, for product development and to expand the user and brand base.
Semiconductor Technology, a Hyderabad-based semiconductor company, today announced that it has signed final agreements for the acquisition of three companies: elitePLUS Semiconductor Technologies, and Orange Semiconductors, both located in Bengaluru, as well as Maven Systems in Pune.

The company did not disclose the exact investment in acquiring these three firms but said that to fund the acquisitions and additional working capital requirements, obtained Board approval to raise an additional Rs 41.25 crore (approximately $6.15 million) by issuing shares and warrants to Techwave Pte. Ltd.

has made the acquisitions as part of the company's growth plans in the Internet of Things (IoT) area and semiconductor industry as well as to expand client base in North America, EU, and APAC regions.

The acquisitions of elitePLUS Semiconductor Technologies and Orange Semiconductor will strengthen MosChip's end-to-end capabilities in VLSI services by adding more than 75 experienced resources in Bangalore. Maven Systems has several products and service offerings in M2M, IoT domains of remote monitoring, smart lighting, smart metering, smart cities and analytics with clients in more than 20 countries. Maven Systems is part of the growth strategy to allow MosChip to be a leading player in the IoT area.

The three acquisitions will help MosChip to increase the company's global headcount to more than 250 experienced engineers across Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Pune in India; London; and Silicon Valley. MosChip also plans to add another 150-200 engineers across all locations.

Ram Reddy, CEO of MosChip, said: "The investment by Techwave, coupled with recent strategic actions, already are showing positive results. MosChip showed significant financial turnaround in the first quarter of the company's 2016-17 fiscal year."

MosChip's focus areas include solutions in IoT, investing in development of IP, and expanding VLSI services globally.
The two year old eye wear e-commerce portal LensPick.com has raised second round of funding for inventory enhancement and technology upgradation as part of its plans to increase its online presence.

US-based Scadea Solutions Inc., has picked a 10 percent stake in LensPick.com at a valuation of $5 million, according to Venkart ECom Private Limited managing director Dileep C Byra, who is the promoter. The first round of funding was made by a Hyderabad-based HNI for a similar stake.
As PepsiCo reshapes its portfolio to focus on health and wellness category, its Chairman and CEO visited a local restaurant here to stir up a conversation on how to make familiar food healthy.

Nooyi, on a two-day visit to India, visited a traditional south-Indian eatery here with PepsiCo's nutrition ambassador Michelin star chef Vikas Khanna.

The two discussed plans and ideas for PepsiCo to make familiar traditional foods healthy as part of the company's aim to expand its offering to include whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

Speaking about her experience and nostalgia of eating at a local eatery, she said, "As lifestyles continue to change, PepsiCo is on a mission to dial up the nutrition in our portfolio."

In April, she had stated that PepsiCo's trademark Pepsi soft drink account for just 12 per cent of the company's revenue as the US firm focuses on the health and wellness category.

"Chef Vikas has provided great inspiration for the company here in India and has played a key role in developing new recipes that are convenient, affordable, delicious and healthy," she said on Tuesday.

"We had a great time sitting down at a local eatery and enjoying some of my favourite traditional dishes, while exchanging ideas on how we can adapt these time-honoured recipes with a knowledge of nutrition informed by the latest science," she added.

Khanna said talk was on how health with taste in familiar Indian food can be combined.

"Indra's commitment and passion to drive its nutrition credentials at PepsiCo is stellar! It was fun to add nutritious ingredients like Oats and beetroot into familiar South Indian dishes for a special breakfast.

"I am glad that she enjoyed her experience and excited to know that some of these flavours will be hitting the Indian market soon through infusion of Quaker Oats and grains," he said.
Britains drug regulator last month revoked its good manufacturing practice certificate for Pfizer's Chennai plant and put out an alert on products made there. This points to continued quality lapses by pharmaceutical units in the country despite an industry-wide effort to clean up the rot.
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.
Information- behemoth Wipros expansion plan at its Bhubaneswar development centre is in the slow lane. Wipro, which had committed to scale up its headcount in the city to 2,000 by April this year to catch up with larger peers like Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is yet to deliver on its promised expansion plan.
Bengaluru came to a halt on Monday, the second time in a week, after protesters targeted property and vehicles of Tamil speaking people over the Cauvery river water dispute. One person was killed and another injured in police firing in the city.
An additional 700 riot control police personnel have been rushed to Karnataka to tackle the situation arising out of the protests over Cauvery river water sharing.

The Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel have been sent to the violence-prone areas of Karnataka to assist the local administration to ensure peace, official sources said.

With this, a total of 1,700 paramilitary personnel have been deployed in violence-hit areas of Karnataka for maintaining law and order

An uneasy calm prevailed in Bengaluru on Tuesday after outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery River water with Tamil Nadu, as Karnataka's Siddaramaiah government warned of "stringent" action against vandalism or attempts to disturb peace.

On Monday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh called up Chief Ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and assured them all central assistance in handling the law and order situation in the two states which have been hit by violence over Cauvery dispute.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday assured Tamil Sangam of protection for Tamils in the state in the wake of violence in the city following a Supreme Court direction to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery water everyday for next ten days to Tamil Nadu.

Siddaramaiah also informed the Sangam leaders, who met him at his residence, that a suo motu case has been filed against culprits who had assaulted a youth Santosh Deena for posting comments on Cauvery issue on Facebook on September 10.

A suo motu case has been filed against the persons who had assaulted Santosh, Sangam president George Damodaran told reporters here.

The youth was allegedly beaten up by culprits as he had questioned Kannada film stars for protesting over Cauvery issue.

Siddaramaiah also asked the Sangam leaders to petition Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa to give protection to Kannadigas living in Tamil Nadu, Damodaran said.

"We are petitioning the Tamil Nadu chief minister via email," he said.

The chief minister has directed the police to maintain law and order and provide security to Tamils living in the state, the Sangam president said.

Damodaran said he also brought to the notice of the chief minister the "provocative" statement of Narayana Gowda who is heading 'Karnataka Rakshana Vedike'.

Gowda had reportedly said the situation that prevailed in 1991 should prevail and all Tamil films should be stopped from screening to teach them lesson.

In 1991, during Bangarappa's tenure as chief minister, anti-Tamil violence had taken place in Bengaluru in which 18 people had died and hundreds fled.
A vehicle from Tamil Nadu in flames after it was torched by pro-Kannada activists during a protest over Cauvery water row, in Bengaluru

A day after being rocked by large-scale violence, Bengaluru appeared to limp back to normalcy on Tuesday with sporadic protests, even as the Karnataka government decided to comply with the Supreme Court's modified order to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

As the Cauvery unrest kept the country's information technology capital on the boil, the government warned of dealing any violence with an iron hand after an emergency cabinet meeting which took stock of the situation and decided to comply with the apex court order passed on Monday.

A 30-year-old man died on Tuesday of multiple injuries he suffered while escaping police lathicharge when he jumped in panic from a three-storey building in Bengaluru on Monday, police said, with the toll in the unrest over rising to two.

One person had died in police firing on Monday.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the victim did not die due to police action, but due to the injuries he had suffered.

Facing more pressure after the apex court's modified order, Siddaramaiah held an emergency cabinet meeting which decided that though it was most difficult to follow, the direction could not be disobeyed or rejected as it would be against the Constitution.

"This order is the most difficult to follow. But when we are functioning within the framework of the Constitution, though it is a difficult order, as a constitutionally formed government it is difficult to violate or reject the Supreme Court order. It will be a violation of the Constitution," he told reporters in Bengaluru.

Siddaramaiah said the cabinet, after weighing the pros and cons "constitutionally, legally and politically" and keeping in mind the main Special Leave Petition challenging the Cauvery tribunal's final award coming up on October 18, decided to obey the court order.

He said the first order passed on September 5 itself was difficult and Monday's was most difficult to follow.

"But we have accepted the federal set up and that the legislature, executive and judiciary should function in a way complementary to one another," he said

In its September 5 order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighbouring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September 9.

The chief minister said he would meet the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention and requesting him to call a meeting of Chief Ministers of both states to resolve the issue.

"An immediate appointment had been sought and probably we will get it tomorrow," he informed.

In Bengaluru, under prohibitory orders till Wednesd and where 16 localities remained under curfew, there were palpable signs of normalcy returning, as city police assisted by central forces kept a close vigil.
Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday appealed for calm and peace in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu following violence over the Cauvery water dispute and urged the media to play a constructive role while reporting on the prevailing situation in both states.

"The violence in the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu further to the direction of the Supreme Court on release of Cauvery waters to Tamil Nadu is quite disturbing. Such violence can't be justified on any ground and particularly after the direction of the highest court of the country," Naidu said.

He said such violence and destruction of property negates the rule of law and ultimately impacts the life of a common man.

"Water is no doubt a sensitive and emotive issue and particularly, in times of scarcity. It is in the fitness of things that such issues are resolved through discussions among the concerned parties. The Cauvery Waters issue is sub-judice and the Supreme Court has given a direction after listening to both the states," he added.

Naidu advocated that the leadership of both states should come out with a way forward and hold dialogue to sort out the tension.

"A large number of people from each other state live in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and have been making significant contribution to the development of the state of their choice of living. They should not be made to feel insecure as it is the Constitutional right of every citizen to live in a place of choice in the country," he added.

Naidu said violence and counter-violence would only further complicate the matter and is not in the interest of any state.

"Both the state governments should take effective measures to check the violence immediately. I fervently appeal to the people of both the states to immediately stop indulging in violence and ensure peace and normalcy. I also appeal to both the state governments and leaders of political parties to take necessary effective measures to stop violence and ensure protection to the people from other state," he added.

Naidu said that he has already urged the media to exercise restraint while reporting on the law and order situation in both states.

"Highlighting such incidents visually and otherwise might incite further violence. I hope media would play a constructive role in ensuring peace and normalcy in both the states," he added.

Following the ongoing unrest in Bengaluru over the Cauvery water sharing row, central forces have been deployed to assist the city police to maintain law and order.

The Hyderabad Police has issued an advisory to all the cable TV channels and network operators over protests in Bengaluru and said no program shall be transmitted in the cable service which is likely to incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday assured full assistance to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Governments to deal with the current state of violence that is prevailing in both the states over the Cauvery water issue.

Singh has assured assistance to both Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and her Karnataka counterpart Siddaramaiah to tackle the present state of unrest.

In wake of the protests erupting over the Cauvery issue, Jayalalithaa has written to Siddaramaiah, requesting him to ensure safety and security of Tamilians residing in Karnataka.

Siddaramaiah has also appealed for peace and has written to his counterpart in Tamil Nadu, urging her to ensure the safety of Kannada speaking people living in the state. He also urged the Tamil Nadu authorities to take action against those indulging in violence.

In Karnataka, one person was killed and another injured in police firing in Bengaluru on Monday.

ALSO READ: Cauvery row: Bengaluru on the boil, 1 killed in police firing

With protests escalating in the wake of Cauvery water dispute that escalated between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the Bengaluru Police on Monday imposed Section 144 of the CRPC, meaning that no more than five people will be allowed to gather in public places in the city.

The protesters targeted vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu registration numbers and set them on fire. They also vandalised trucks near Hubli bypass in Karnataka.

Modifying its September 5 order, the Supreme Court on Monday asked the Karnataka Government to release to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water every day to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

The apex court had earlier directed the Karnataka Government to release of 15,000 cusecs of water for 10 days as immediate relief to farmers in Tamil Nadu.
One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Karnataka as the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu turned violent on Monday, escalating tensions between the two states.

As Bengaluru witnessed widespread violence bringing it on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late Monday night.

Police said Rajgopal Nagar, Kamakshipalya, Vijaynagar, Byatarayanpura Kengeri, Magadi Road, Rajajinagar, RR Nagara, KP Agrahara Chandra layout, Yeshwanathapura, Mahalakshmi layout, Peenya, RMC Yard, Nandini Layout and Jnanabharathi are under curfew.

Widespread violence erupted on Monday in Bangaluru and some other parts of Karnataka, while sporadic trouble was witnessed in Tamil Nadu following Supreme Court's modified order on sharing Cauvery water by the two riparian states.

Police opened fire when a mob tried to attack a patrol vehicle at Hegganahalli in Rajagopal Nagar police limits as violence flared up in Bengaluru city with rampaging mobs setting fire to buses and trucks with Tamil Nadu registration plates.

"Two were brought with bullet injuries. One with bullet injury near the heart has died. The other is being operated for injury on right thigh," Dr Giridhar, managing director of Lakshmi Multi-Speciality Hospital, where they were taken, told PTI.

Soon after the apex court gave its amended order, directing Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of water daily to Tamil Nadu till September 20, violence and arson flared up in Bengaluru, with rampaging mobs setting afire at least 30 vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu number plates.

As violence broke out sending a wave of panic across Bengaluru, the city was brought under prohibitory orders till September 14.

A prominent transport company depot in the city bore the brunt with at least 30 buses going up in flames.

Managing Director of Salem headquartered KPN Tours and Travels Limited Rajesh Natarajan claimed in Chennai 40 of his buses were set on fire.
Indian cities' air pollution was even higher than the WHO set standards and worse than most cities even on the days pollution was at its lowest
All India Jat Aarakshan Sanghrash Samiti (AIJASS) on Tuesday said that they would resume their agitation for reservation in government services in the state as well the centre for the community.

Agitation would start on commencement of the next Parliament session , AIJASS president Yashpal Malik said. Malik was addressing a rally in village Mayyar, near Hisar in Haryana.

The rally was organised to mark the death anniversary of Sunil Sheoran who died during the in 2012 in Mayyar village.

During the arson at the time of in February this year 30 people had died and properties worth crores was damaged at many places in Haryana.

Malik alleged that previous Congress government and the present Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government were not working honestly for their demand.

"Congress as well BJP has betrayed Jats on their demand for reservation," he said.

"If the BJP government continued with its policies against reservation for Jats, they will cease to exist," he said.

"Central and state governments are adopting dual policies on reservation issue and wasting time by hanging the issue in the court," he said.

Inspite of assurance given by the Centre and the BJP president Amit Shah, the matter of Jat reservation is still hanging and resentment is prevailing in the Jat community, he said.

He said the community is now planning an all-out battle for their reservation against the governments.

Speaking on the riots that occurred during last in the state, Malik alleged an MP  referring to Kurukshetra lawmaker Raj Kumar Saini  had hatched the whole plan in which several were killed.

Action should be taken against the responsible MP, he said without naming Saini.

Malik admitted that due to split in the Jat community, the agitation could not get success previously but this time it will be a big agitation.

The community has been a victim of politics, he said.

Jat leaders and a number of people of the community from Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan addressed the rally.
Unfazed over criticism related to his visit to a Lord Hanuman temple in Ayodhya last week, Congress vice-president will pray at the popular Vindhyachal Devi temple in Mirzapur on Wednesday but balance it out by visiting the Kantit Sharif dargah as well.
Retailers in Tamil Nadu have said that their industry, along with the bus and truck transport sector, would have lost around Rs 2,000 crore due to the ongoing violence in Karnataka. The associations representing these retailers have called for state-wide closure of shops for one day on Friday to mark their protest.

The Tamil Nadu Vanigar Sangangalin Peramaippu (Federation of Tamil Nadu Traders' Association) an apex traders' body, has called for a day-long bandh to protest against the attacks on commercial establishments in Karnataka in the wake of the ongoing Cauvery crisis.
After three days, Army and Police on Tuesday declared that an encounter in Mini Secretariat in was over with the killing of four terrorists.

Personnel of Army and Police stormed the under- construction complex this evening and eliminated the last of the four terrorists, a police officer said.

"The encounter has ended," said Inspector General of Police (IGP) Jammu Zone Danish Rana.

The encounter began at around 7.30 am on Sunday when the terrorists fired at a police party killing one cop. The terrorists then took shelter in a house, where an elderly couple lived, and the under-construction Mini Secretariat.

Security forces had safely evacuated the couple.

One militant was killed on Sunday, two were killed yesterday and the remaining one was eliminated on Tuesday, a police officer said.

Earlier, the police had said that three terrorists had been killed on Sunday and one on Monday.

DGP Rajendera Kumar had said, "There might be a group of 4 to 6 involved in this incident.. We have recovered bodies of two militants. Two more militants have been killed. We feel one or two militants are still alive."

Explaining the confusion, DIG Johny Williams said there was a perception that three militants had been killed on Sunday. "But one militant had survived and was firing. He was gunned down today," he said.

Asked whether the slain militants were Pakistanis, SSP J S Johar said it was a matter of investigation.

He said four AK rifles and a large quantity of ammunition was recovered from them.

The terrorists had taken position inside the building which has two floors and several rooms and the terrorists were taking benefit of it by firing from different areas, an army officer said.

He said mortars had to be used to eliminate the holed up militants.

Two security personnel were injured last evening when they launched an assault on the building to eliminate the holed up terrorists.

The DGP had said militants had come with full preparation to disturb peace in the border district as there is calm and communal harmony in the area.

"Militants infiltrating a day before Eid is clearly pointing towards the fact they had come here to disturb peace on Eid," Kumar said.
Travel time between Mumbai and Maharashtra's second capital Nagpur can be reduced to a flat 35 minutes on the Hyperloop, a superfast mode of travel envisioned by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Union minister of roads, highways, ports and shipping, Nitin Gadkari, said on Tuesday that he had already held a meeting with Musk and senior officials from Tesla in the US and in New Delhi, and suggested that they explore opportunities in India for the deployment of the Hyperloop, an above-ground tube with very low air pressure inside, which allows bus-sized capsules to travel within it at near supersonic speeds.
Senior Indian and Chinese officials on Tuesday met in the Capital to discuss New Delhis bid to become a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which Beijing, along with a handful of other countries, had scuttled at the nuclear non-proliferation clubs plenary meeting in Seoul in June. The meeting concluded with the two sides agreeing to meet again at a mutually convenient date, indicating no consensus was reached.
After initial confidence among government officials that India would swiftly sign bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with partner nations, it has now emerged that a number of countries, including the US, Canada and the European Union (EU) nations, have expressed reservations on some issues, including international arbitration.
With a view to boost the real estate sector, the Cabinet on Monday decided to abolish the stamp duty of two per cent levied on immovable property while awarding the power of attorney.

A decision to this effect was taken by the Cabinet in a meeting held under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal here.

Speaking on the matter, a spokesperson of the Chief Minister's Office said the decision would be a major relief for people aspiring to buy their own houses.

The stamp duty would now be a nominal Rs 1000 on the General Power of Attorney and Rs 500 on Special Power of Attorney, irrespective of the market value.

In another major decision, Cabinet decided in principle to offer the proprietary rights under concessional terms and conditions to the small and marginal agricultural farmers cultivating up to five acres of provincial government agricultural land.

These tillers who have been cultivating government land for at least 20 years would be entitled to allotment at significant discount from the collector rates.

The Cabinet also gave nod for appointing Senior vice-president in the various boards and corporations from among the non-official members.

Following this decision, the Cabinet approved the creation of post of Senior vice-chairman in State Board of Technical Education and Industrial Training and Khadi & Village Industries Board.

It was also decided in the meeting to constitute a Cabinet sub committee comprising Food and Civil Supplies Minister and Finance Minister to negotiate with banks for a lower rate of interest on previous loan accounts.

The Cabinet also approved the proposal mooted by the local government department to make suitable amendment in the Punjab Municipal Act, 1911 and the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976 for the disposal of Municipal properties under possession of occupiers for a period of twenty years or more.

In the meeting, the Cabinet also decided to make amendments in the rates of property tax of hotels in the urban areas from the year 2015-16 by including this type in the category of commercial property.
Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Limited is the biggest defaulter of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), with dues of over Rs 1,576 crore against it, shows an right to information (RTI) response.
India on Tuesday congratulated Mauritius for revising the bilateral Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC), which had been a source of stress in their mutual ties. To help Mauritius tide over the immediate loss to its economy, New Delhi committed to assist it in implementing key infrastructure projects.
Eleven heads of states, nearly 800 delegates and a chock-a-block schedule of meetings between member states of and BIMSTEC countries and quick bilateral huddles on the sidelines will mark the two-day summit which will be held in Goa on October 15-16, a ministry of external affairs (MEA) ministry said on Monday.

Speaking to reporters in Panaji late on Monday, chief protocol officer at the MEA Sanjay Verma said that while the VVIPs would be busy deliberating issues related to counter-terrorism, trade, investments, environment, security, their spouses, delegates and some accompanying ministers would also be given an opportunity to sample Goa's cuisine, heritage as well as religious sites.

"Apart from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa who are part of BRICS, our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited leaders from Bay of Bengal initiative for multi-sectoral technical and economic cooperation (BIMSTEC) countries -- Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand, who will also be participating in a retreat which will follow the BRICS summit on October 16," Verma said.

The official also said that apart from the two formal meets, the heads of states will also be conducting bilateral meetings on the sidelines.

The sum of the BRICS meet would be articulated in a 'Goa Declaration' on the summit's concluding day, he said.

Some of the key issues which will be discussed during the BRICS meeting will be counter-terrorism, trade, investments, environment, security, Verma said.

Verma also said that as hosts, a special programme had also been devised for spouses of VVIPs, delegates and accompanying ministers on the sidelines of the summit.

"At events like these VVIPs rarely travel to tourist destinations. We have specially curated a programme including heritage sites, temples churches, old villas, Goan restaurants for delegates, spouses and some ministers," he said.

Verma also said that the BRICS summit, has provided Goa a great opportunity to position itself as a prime tourism and conferencing destination and that the state beat a Southern Indian city to emerge as the host city for BRICS.

He, however, said that there was need to get over some obvious limitations of India's smallest state, one of the major encumbrances, being its narrow roads.

"Well that is a concern, but we are taking precaution. Two things happen when a road is narrow. The speed of the movement of the convoys is compromised," he said, adding that small roads with habitation in close proximity also adds to the element of risk.

"Goa is not perfect for an event of this nature. We are going to live with those limitations, work around them and ensure that these do not become limitations and we look at the larger picture of what is intended by making Goa the centre," he said, adding that the BRICS organisers were seeking help from the Delhi police, Maharashtra police, National Security Guard, Special Protection Group, Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard to ensure comprehensive security.
Blue Origin, the secretive space company created by Jeffrey P Bezos, offered a look at its newest rocket design on Monday - and, by extension, its ambitions to make space travel more frequent and inexpensive.
plans to release a free coding education app on Tuesday that it developed with middle-school students in mind, in the latest salvo among technology to gain share in the education market and to nurture early product loyalty among children.
US President Barack Obama believes that Hillary Clinton is the best person to lead the country, the White House has said, a day after the Democratic presidential candidate fell ill during a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York.

Brushing aside questions about Clinton's health impacting her presidential campaign, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, "I think it certainly does not impact his (Obama's) assessment that she is the best person in the country to succeed him in the Oval Office".

Later this week, Obama is slated to do a major fund-raiser and hold rallies in support of Clinton.

"He (Obama) has had an opportunity to work closely with her when she was secretary of state. They travelled around the world. She pulled long hours. She bore a significant burden, both mentally and physically. She did not just succeed in that role, she thrived and the interests of the US were well represented as a result of it," Earnest told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday.

"The President, as you have heard him say on many occasions, is confident that she will bring those same skills and that same endurance to the job as President.

"The President has taken a close look at the agenda and philosophy that has been put forward by secretary Clinton. And he has enthusiastically endorsed it. So I think the President's belief that she would be an excellent President of the US is something that you have heard him say many times. And I can tell you there is nothing that happened yesterday that has changed that assessment at all," he said.

He said it is up to the two campaigns to release information about the health of their candidates.

"The President believes that it is the responsibility of the two candidates to make their own decisions about their campaign. What is true is that as President, President Obama every couple of years has asked his physician to put together a memo that we release to the public, detailing the President's health," Earnest said.

"We did something similar when then senator Obama ran for President, as well. And obviously the requirement that the American people have some understanding of the health of their President is I think a pretty common-sense proposition.

"But for individual candidates, they ultimately have to make a decision on their own about what kind of information and what kind of detail about their health they are prepared to disclose," he said.

He said there is a reason that there is a longstanding tradition in this country of individual candidates disclosing information about their health to the American public before the election.

"But I do not have any advice to dispense to the individual candidates about how they should handle this question. What I can do is point you to what Senator Obama did when he was running for this office and what President Obama has done while serving in this office," Earnest added.
Boeing lifted its forecast for aircraft demand in China in the next two decades, saying a rising middle class would spur leisure and business travel. The planemaker projects demand in China for 6,810 aircraft valued at $1.025 trillion, making the nation the first trillion-dollar aviation market in its forecast, Boeing said in a statement distributed in Beijing Tuesday. The aircraft maker last year predicted China would need 6,330 new planes worth $950 billion in the next two decades. In China, "we continue to see very strong passenger traffic growth. We've seen a very strong ...
Ahead of Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal's visit to India, on Tuesday made it clear that the issue of Constitution amendment was an internal matter even as it said that both countries need to "introspect" on past issues like the "blockade".

Visiting Nepalese Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat also assured full cooperation to India on security issues and said will not allow its soil to be used against India.

He said all bilateral problems need to be conveyed only through diplomatic channels.

Mahat stressed that wants to see tangible results on ground and for this faster implementation of Indian projects was necessary besides complete market access.

"I think the coming visit of Nepalese Prime Minister will be very fruitful and we will start a new chapter of our relationship," Mahat said speaking to reporters here before leaving for Nepal.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, commonly known as 'Prachanda' is coming here on a four-day visit this week, in his first overseas trip after taking over office last month.

Nepal's ties with India had strained after a months-long border blockade last year by the ethnic minority protesters over the new Constitution, which they claim is discriminatory to their interest. The Oli government had accused India of imposing an "unofficial blockade" on the landlocked nation to support the Madhesi demand of more political representation.

"Our Constitution is basically very inclusive but of course there is scope for improvement as there is no Constitution in the world which is perfect," he said.

Admitting that there are "some grievances", he said the new government is working on it.

"We have had several round of discussions with various stakeholders. We are taking it very seriously but it is a subject which the Nepal parliament, Nepal government and Nepal people will decide. It is our internal process. Whatever is good for Nepalese, we will decide.

"Whatever change that needs to be amended is completely internal Nepali process and based on demand and aspiration of the people of Nepal, we will keep on improving our Constitution," he said.

Asked about the new government's expectation from India, the Foreign Minister said he would rather talk about building relationships based on trust, friendship and cooperation.

"That is what this visit is all about," he said noting that besides his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj, he met with Water Minister Uma Bharati, Power Minister Piyush Goyal. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, BJP leader Ram Madhav and Congress leader Janardan Dwivedi.
NASA's Curiosity rover has sent back spectacular colour images of layered rock formations on the Red Planet.

Curiosity, which is currently exploring the "Murray Buttes" region of lower Mount Sharp, took the images with its Mast Camera (Mastcam). The new images represent Curiosity's last stop in the Murray Buttes, where the rover has been driving for just over one month, NASA said.

"Curiosity's science team has been just thrilled to go on this road trip through a bit of the American desert southwest on Mars," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, California.

The Martian buttes and mesas rising above the surface are eroded remnants of ancient sandstone that originated when winds deposited sand after lower Mount Sharp had formed.

"Studying these buttes up close has given us a better understanding of ancient sand dunes that formed and were buried, chemically changed by groundwater, exhumed and eroded to form the landscape that we see today," Vasavada said.

Curiosity landed near Mount Sharp in 2012. It reached the base of the mountain in 2014 after successfully finding evidence on the surrounding plains that ancient Martian lakes offered conditions that would have been favourable for microbes if has ever hosted life.

Rock layers forming the base of Mount Sharp accumulated as sediment within ancient lakes billions of years ago.

On Mount Sharp, Curiosity is investigating how and when the habitable ancient conditions known from the mission's earlier findings evolved into conditions drier and less favourable for life.
Five Indians have been arrested by Chinese immigration officials at an airport in Yunnan province for allegedly smuggling about 18 kgs of cannabis from India.

The five accused who had kept cannabis in food packets and laptop bags were held at Kunming airport after they came from Kolkata on September 7, officials said.

The drug packets were discovered by the scanners at the airport.

Their arrests have been notified to Indian officials and they have been granted counsellor access on September 21, the officials said.

Currently, seven Indians are held in prisons at Guangxi and Guangzhou on drug smuggling charges.

Drug smuggling in China is treated as a serious offence and in some cases the crime attracts death penalty or long prison terms.

In July, a Colombian model was sentenced to 15 years in jail for drug smuggling in China.
China has urged the United States to take due responsibility for the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue and provide effective solutions after the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) set off its most powerful nuclear blast to date on September 9, saying it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile.

"The essence of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is the conflict between the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and the United States," Xinhua quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying saying on Monday.

Hua said that as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and a close neighbor of the DPRK, China has made unremitting efforts to maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and safeguard the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

The Chinese statement comes as DPRK's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that the US compelled it to develop nuclear warheads and the nuclear threat Washington has constantly posed to the country for decades is the engine that has pushed it to this point.

Blindly increasing the pressure and the resulting bounce-back will only make the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula "a firm knot," Hua said, calling for responsibility from all the relevant parties.

She reiterated that China will remain committed to resolving issues concerning the Peninsula through dialogue to realise long-term peace and stability.

"China strongly urges all parties to speak and act cautiously with the larger picture in mind, avoid provoking each other and make genuine efforts to achieve denuclearisation, peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," she said, adding that simply putting sanctions on the DPRK cannot solve the issue.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said on Saturday that there should be more "creative" ways of responding to Pyongyang's activities than simply sanctions, adding that ways could be found to resume the six-party talks while condemning the DPRK's nuclear test.

The six-party talks, involving China, the DPRK, the United States, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Russia and Japan, were a multilateral mechanism aimed at solving the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue.

The talks began in 2003 and stalled in December 2008. The DPRK quit the talks in April 2009.

"Resuming the six-party talks is difficult, but we cannot give up easily," said Hua.
The United States today sent nuclear-capable supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow after its recent nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by US and South Korean jets, were seen by an Associated Press photographer as they flew over Osan Air Base, which is 120 kilometres (75 miles) from the border with North Korea, the world's most heavily armed. The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, without landing in South Korea.

Such flyovers are common during higher-than-normal animosity on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war as there has never been a peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the US "nuclear umbrella" as a deterrent to .

Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South.

is keenly aware of the US presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the US nuclear threat. It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as proof of US hostility that it claims as the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

"The United States and (South Korea) are taking actions every day to strengthen our alliance and respond to North Korea's continued aggressive behaviour," Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of US Forces Korea, said in a statement.

Last week's nuclear test, the North's fifth, was its most powerful test to date. Pyongyang's claim to have used "standardised" warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the US mainland.

After the test, the North's nuclear weapons institute said it will take unspecified measures to further boost its nuclear capability, which analysts said hinted at a possible sixth nuclear test.

South Korea's Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said yesterday that South Korean and US intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device at any time at one of its tunnels at its main Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place.

Moon refused to say what specific evidence pointed to another possible nuclear test. But the South's Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified Seoul government sources, reported yesterday that there were signs the North had finished test preparations at one tunnel that has never been used. Yonhap did not elaborate.

Seoul, Washington and their allies have vowed to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.
105-year-old Kunwar Bai, who was felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for building toilet by selling off her goats, has been chosen as the 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' mascot.

Prime Minister Modi will felicitate Kunwar Bai at a function in the capital to mark 'Swachhta Diwas' on September 17.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in February touched her feet during a rally in Rajnandgaon.

The Prime Minister, who was in Chhattisgarh to launch the ambitious Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Rurban (rural-urban) Mission, felicitated Kunwar Bai from Kotabharri village of Dhamtari and then touched her feet to seek blessings.

Kunwar Bai had sold-off her 8-10 goats to build two toilets at her home. Subsequently, she started showing other villagers the toilets at her home while informing them about its importance.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai will arrive here on a two-day official visit tomorrow during which he will hold close consultations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on several issues of strategic importance to both sides.

It is assumed that India is during his visit likely to accept Kabul's demand for increased military assistance.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) earlier on Saturday said the discussion will cover a wide range of matters of mutual interest to both sides.

"The upcoming visit will provide an opportunity to continue the close and frequent consultations between the two friendly neighbours, including at the highest level. Such interaction is the hallmark of their strategic partnership and has guided the strengthening of all-round cooperation between the two countries," said a statement issued by the MEA.

The Afghan President during his visit will also interact with the business community and deliver an address at a prominent think tank in New Delhi.

India and Afghanistan have a strong relationship based on historical and cultural links.

In recent past, Indo-Afghan relations have been further strengthened by the Strategic Partnership Agreement signed between the two countries in 2011. As Afghanistan was undergoing three simultaneous political, security and economic transitions in 2015, India had allayed its fears about its future by making a long-term commitment to the security and development of Afghanistan.

The Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) between the two sides, inter alia, provides for assistance to help rebuild Afghanistan's infrastructure and institutions, education and technical assistance to re-build indigenous Afghan capacity in different areas, encouraging investment in Afghanistan's natural resources, providing duty free access to the Indian market for Afghanistan's exports support for an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned, broad-based and inclusive process of peace and reconciliation, and advocating the need for a sustained and long-term commitment to Afghanistan by the international community.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a major development signalling trouble for former RJD parliamentarian Shahabuddin who is out on release, a video has gone viral in which wanted sharpshooter Mohammad Kaif can be seen standing with the leader after his release from prison.

Kaif is one of the accused in the murder of Hindustan daily's Siwan bureau chief Rajdev Ranjan.

"Police probe against the accused Mohammad Kaif) in case of journalist Rajdev Ranjan's murder is underway," Siwan SP Saurabh Shah told ANI.

In the video clip, Kaif can be seen standing right next to Shahabuddin and cheering him on, as he spoke to media after being released on bail on Saturday.

Patna High Court granted Shahabuddin bail in the case of a murder of a witness to the 2004 killing of two brothers in Siwan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) on Tuesday said the state of Tamil Nadu has all the right on Cauvery River as it also belongs to them, adding that the Supreme Court has given its first directive on the issue and made it clear that Karnataka government must oblige to it.

Talking to ANI, AIADMK spokesperson C R Saraswathi said that the Congress government cannot control the state and the people.

"The matter has gone to the court and the Supreme Court has said that Karnataka must oblige and they must give water to Tamil Nadu and Cauvery belongs to us also. It is not written that it belongs to Karnataka, it belongs to us too. We have all the rights," Saraswathi told ANI here.

"Two days back a Tamil Nadu boy was hit by Karnataka people, it has come in all channels, everyone is watching all over. What is honourable Chief Minister of Karnataka doing? Till today he has written to our honourable Chief Minister that he will take action. He has not arrested those people till today. As a Chief Minister he has taken action immediately then it would have been in control. Everyone knows that they don't want to give water so they are creating problems," she added.

Meanwhile, the pro-Kannada activists continued their protest in Mandya, Karnataka over the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday assured full assistance to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka governments to deal with the current state of violence that is prevailing in both the states over the Cauvery water issue.

Singh has assured assistance to both Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to tackle the present state of unrest.

In wake of the protests erupting over the Cauvery issue, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has written to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, requesting him to ensure safety and security of Tamilians residing in Karnataka.

With protests escalating in the wake of Cauvery water dispute that escalated between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the Bengaluru Police on Monday imposed Section 144 of the CRPC, meaning that no more than five people will be allowed to gather in public places in the city.

The protesters targeted vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu registration numbers and set them on fire. They also vandalised trucks near Hubli bypass in Karnataka.

Siddaramaiah has also appealed for peace and has written to his counterpart in Tamil Nadu, urging her to ensure the safety of Kannada speaking people living in the state. He also urged the Tamil Nadu authorities to take action against those indulging in violence.

Modifying its September 5 order, the apex court on Monday asked the Karnataka government to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water every day to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

It had earlier directed the Karnataka Government to release of 15,000 cusecs of water for 10 days as immediate relief to farmers in Tamil Nadu.

The Hyderabad Police had earlier issued an advisory to all cable TV channels/cable TV network operators over protests in Bangaluru and said no program shall be transmitted in the cable service which is likely to incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order.
The pro-Kannada activists on Tuesday continued their protest in Mandya, Karnataka over the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh yesterday assured full assistance to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Governments to deal with the current state of violence that is prevailing in both the states over the Cauvery water issue.

Singh has assured assistance to both Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to tackle the present state of unrest.

Meanwhile, in wake of the protests erupting over the Cauvery issue, Jayalalithaa has written to Siddaramaiah, requesting him to ensure safety and security of Tamilians residing in Karnataka.

With protests escalating in the wake of Cauvery water dispute that escalated between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the Bengaluru Police yesterday imposed Section 144 of the CRPC, meaning that no more than five people will be allowed to gather in public places in the city.

A massive violence broke out yesterday in parts of the city as several trucks, school buses and bus stands were seen being set on fire by the pro-Kannada protestors in West Bengaluru.

The protesters targeted vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu registration numbers and set them on fire. They also vandalised trucks near Hubli bypass in Karnataka.

Meanwhile, saying "we will fight it legally", Karnataka Home Minister G. Parameshwara has requested pro-Kannada activists and farmers associations to maintain peace.

He also informed that 10 companies of CRPF and the Rapid Action Force (RAF) have been sent.

Siddaramaiah has also appealed for peace and has written to his counterpart in Tamil Nadu, urging her to ensure the safety of Kannada speaking people living in the state. He also urged the Tamil Nadu authorities to take action against those indulging in violence.

Modifying its September 5 order, the apex court yesterday asked the Karnataka Government to release to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water every day to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

It had earlier directed the Karnataka Government to release of 15,000 cusecs of water for 10 days as immediate relief to farmers in Tamil Nadu.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain on Tuesday blamed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) for the recent death caused by Chikungunya in the capital.

Jain said it is the local body which is not doing its duty whereas the Delhi Government has taken all measures to combat the vector borne disease.

'We are making all efforts and keeping track of everything. One should ask what the MCD is doing. All of it is MCD's job. To curb all these diseases is the job of MCD. They are not doing anything. No fogging is being done, they are taking no measures to combat the spread of vector borne diseases," said Jain.

"We are doing everything on our part. We have made all arrangements in the hospitals, there are sufficient numbers of beds, patients' are being attended. We have taken care of everything. Delhi government hospitals are fully equipped to deal with any crisis," he added.

Clarifying his stand over the apt preparations to combat vector borne disease, Jain said, "The person, who died yesterday due to chikungunya was from Uttar Pradesh. The people come for treatment at last stage. It gets difficult."

Delhi recorded its first case of Chikungunya casualty with the death of a 65-year-old man, who yesterday succumbed to the vector-borne disease.

The victim R. Pandey succumbed to the disease at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

According to reports, Chikungunya cases in the capital has sharply risen to over 1,000 this season, marking a jump of nearly 90 percent from its count last week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thousands of Muslims all across Tripura gathered at the central mosque Gedu Mia Masjid in capital Agartala to offer morning prayers on the occasion of Eid-ul-Zuha.

The Eid prayers started around 8.30 a.m. when Imam of the mosque Maulana Abdul Rehaman read out the prayer.

Eid-ul-Zuha is one of the most celebrated Muslim festivals all over the world.

Muslims hugged and exchanged greetings of peace and love to spread in the society irrespective of religion.

It is the festival of sacrifice celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son to keep his word to God.

"Islam gives the message of sacrifice and this celebration of Eid basically for sacrifice of the loved ones. On this occasion those who have money are suppose to slaughter an animal and distribute to the poor people. It spreads the message of love, how you can sacrifice the dear ones and continue with life," said Akhil Ahamed, who came along with his son to participate in the Namaz.

Meantime, Md. Sheikh Aktar a resident of far Jammu and Kashmir who is celebrating his Eid away from home said, "Since I have happily taken part in the Namaz (prayer) and as I am posted here so celebrating Eid away from home in Tripura where the atmosphere is very peaceful."

He appealed to the youths of his state, where violence is continuing for sometime to maintain, peace and which is the message of Islam.

"I will ask the youths to maintain peace and prosperity in your state and nation so that due to us others are not disturbed and faces trouble," said Aktar.

Baharul Islam Majumder, a participant in the prayer said, "If you go by the Islamic philosophy it is a religion of sacrifice. On the basis of that philosophy today is the day of Kurbani, so we are commemorating the sacrifice give by our Prophet and also following that practice. In the same way we will appeal to all human kind especially the Muslim brothers so that we can keep the values Islam religion true to the spirit and philosophy. Whatever happening throughout the world is not Islamic rather opposite to Islamic philosophy."

Muslims across the world celebrate this historical event with great enthusiasm and respect.

Each Muslim family which is capable of sacrificing any animal prescribed in the Holy Koran sacrifices an animal and distribute the meat to the poor and downtrodden people and relatives and also give donations to various institutions those run orphanages and elderly homes.

Goats are sacrificed on this holy day, also known as Bakri-eid, and divided into three parts to be shared among the poor, family and friends and themselves.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a unique example of friendship that helps us restore our faith in humanity, a Hindu and a Muslim donated their kidneys to the other's wife in Rajasthan.

This story is about a Hindu woman Anita and a Muslim lady Tasleem Jahan who were both suffering from kidney disease and were in urgent need of kidney transplants.

The situation became even more tense for the two families when they came to know that their blood group was not matching to their spouses. Co-incidentally, their husbands came to know that they can donate a kidney to each other's wives as their blood groups were matching.

Dr. Abhishek Soni of Monilek Hospital told ANI that it was a clear message that humanity is higher than any religion and an apt example of the highest standard of communal harmony.

"Tasleem was undergoing dialysis at the hospital for two to three months. Anita was undergoing dialysis here for two years. Both of them are young and transplantation was the best option for them. Transplantation can be done even if the blood group doesn't match, but it is a costly process and both of them could not afford it," he added.

It was a very big decision to take on religious grounds, but no religion is above humanity so both men decided to go ahead and the transplant was a success.

This case of kidney transplant is historic in another sense as both donors were male, and 90 percent of such cases, the donors are females. Vinod, Anita, Anwar and Tasleem are true icons of communal harmony.

Vinod Mehra said, "Our blood is red, it's the same. If we cared about Hindu-Muslim, our wives wouldn't be alive. We all are brothers, we should not do discrimination between people. We all are same."

Anwar said "I am very happy that he didn't think about religion and gave his kidney to my wife. To take the decision was very hard for us."

This Eid-Ul-Azha is not only special for Anwar and his wife, but also for Hindu couple Vinod and Anita as both couple can go for another fresh and healthy inning for rest of their lives.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan's National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR) Chairman retired Justice Ali Nawaz Chohan has said that the August 8 suicide bombing at the Civil Hospital Quetta has exposed the failure of intelligence agencies in combating terrorism.

In an address at the Quetta Press Club recently, he said agencies responsible for providing security to the people have failed to study patterns of terrorism that are often repeated.

He added that the security forces, government departments and doctors have urged the government to conduct a 'mercliess inquiry' into the incident to fix this responsibility.

He also pointed out that doctors working at the government hospitals in Quetta lack professional skills and training to deal with an emergency situation and urged the health department to ensure the doctors' capacity building in this regard.

The Quetta attack killed at least 70 people, mostly journalists and lawyers as the attack targeted a group journalists and mourning lawyers, who had gathered there to accompany the body of murdered Bilal Anwar Kasi, former president of the Balochistan Bar Association.

Kasi was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on the same morning in a different incident.

Repeated incidents of bombings, targeted killings and kidnappings have a long history in Quetta.

In February 2013, at least 110 people were killed and 200 injured after a bomb hidden in a water tank exploded at a market in Hazara Town on the outskirts of Quetta.

The region has also witnessed sectarian attacks against minorities.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Government of India has come up with guidelines on Direct Selling, a much awaited advisory which will bring relief to the Direct Selling Industry towards regulatory front.

These guidelines will help in making a distinction between legitimate Direct Selling and Fraudulent Schemes, operating under the guise of Direct Selling.

"Indian Direct Selling Association welcomes the guidelines on Direct Selling with open arms. This will be very encouraging for the development of the Industry. We wish to thank the government, especially, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs for coming out with Guidelines for the Direct Selling Industry," said Chairman Indian Direct Selling Association (IDSA), Jitendra Jagota.

"We also appreciate and thank the Inter-Ministerial-Committee, which shared its inputs towards formulating these guidelines," added Jitendra Jagota.

There have been several rounds of meetings among the members of Inter-Ministerial Committee, which comprises of representatives from Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Department of Revenue, Department of Information Technology, Department of Law, along with Chief Secretaries of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Delhi, as well as interaction with the Industry stakeholders and trade bodies, after which the draft Guidelines were formulated.

"As an Industry body, IDSA has shared its views and suggestions on draft Guidelines to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs. It is heartening to see the Government making efforts to provide regulatory backing to Direct Selling Industry. These Guidelines also take into account the consumer protection and safety; something that has been a prime concern for the Direct Selling Industry also," said Secretary General IDSA, Amit Chadha.

"In the absence of proper policy or guidelines, numerous fraudulent players have been taking advantage of the situation. Now that the Guidelines are out, it shall address the current concerns of the Industry and provide much needed impetus. We appreciate the government for its efforts for ensuring consumer safety and now await an exhaustive Legislation for the Direct Selling, which will further strengthen the position of the Direct Selling industry having potential to reach Rs. 15,000 crore mark by 2019-20 thereby empowering more and more women of India, the prime contributors of the Direct Selling," added Chadha.

"The Socio-Economic impact of Direct Selling Industry has been immense in the last 20 years, much on the lines of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision on Skill Development, Entrepreneurship and Women Empowerment. Not only the Direct Selling companies generate self-employment opportunities, they also give training to its sales force. As a result, there has been an increase in skills-sets of millions of Indians. Also, since it does not require a huge investment to start Direct Selling business, every Direct Seller is an entrepreneur in his/her own right. This industry virtually creates leaders out of masses; identifying and recognizing the true potential of a person," Jagota further said.

"One of the best contribution of Direct Selling is empowerment of women; a boon in the lives of millions of women in the country. It offers the women the opportunity to be financially independent by the way of self-employment on their own time, giving women the flexibility to manage their time and maintain balance between their work and personal lives. An Industry having contributed so much to the lives of people will rightly get its due recognition through the Guidelines," opined Jagota.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With Arunachal Pradesh governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa being sacked from his post, the Samajwadi Party (SP) has asserted that this is a step further in ensuring that Governor Houses are completely politicised.

Speaking to ANI here, SP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) should come out and let everybody know the reasons why Rajkhowa has been shifted from one Governor House to another.

"Even earlier when the BJP Central government had changed the governors of various states, we had said that a fixed tenure is something that is guaranteed under the Constitution, and only under exceptional circumstances the governors should be changed," he said.

Adding that in the case of Rajkhowa, the appointment was made by the BJP Government, Bhatia stated that it seems that because they were not able to succeed in their "sinister design" of changing the government in Arunachal, now they are penalising the Governor.

"They were very serious questions raised by the Supreme Court regarding the conduct of Rajkhowa, so I think at least the BJP should come out and let everybody know the reasons why he has been shifted from one governor house to another. I hope it is not for destabilising the government elsewhere," Bhatia said.

President Pranab Mukerjee yesterday directed that J.P. Rajkhowa shall cease to hold the office of the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh.

The President appointed V. Shanmuganathan, Governor of Meghalaya, to discharge the functions of the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, in addition to his own duties, until regular arrangements for the office of the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh are made.

The move comes after Rajkhowa said on September 6th that he would not resign despite being asked by the Centre to step down on medical grounds, saying that he wanted the President to dismiss him.

"I want the President to dismiss me. I will not resign. Let the President express his displeasure. Let the government use provisions of Article 156 of the Constitution," the Governor told a Guwahati-based TV news channel.

On July 13, the Supreme Court had ordered restoration of the Congress government in the state, declared the decision taken by Rajkhowa as "unconstitutional", which first led to imposition of President's rule and then formation of a new government led by a breakaway faction of the Congress.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With the violent situation in Bengaluru refusing to simmer down over the Cauvery river issue, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah asserted that he had no choice but to comply with the Supreme Court's order to provide water to Tamil Nadu, adding that he has asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and will probably meet with him tomorrow.

Addressing a press conference here after the Cabinet meeting, the Chief Minister admitted that he was having a tough time in following the apex court's order as the state was facing water shortage, but admitting that he has no choice as he respected the Constitution and the judiciary and was bound by law.

Siddaramaiah also emphasised that their inability to fulfil the September 5th order by the Supreme Court had lead to the violence on Monday.

Stating that he has asked the Prime Minister to intervene in the situation and provide respite to the state, Siddaramaiah said that he will most probably meet him tomorrow and discuss a solution to the crisis.

However, he assured that the state government will continue to provide drinking water for Bangalore, Mysore, Mandya, other Cauvery basin area.

"We have been facing injustice on the Cauvery issue for a very long time. We followed the Supreme Court's order for six days straight and we pleaded them to revise the order as we can't release 15,000 cusecs for 10 days. Despite all difficulty, it will be impossible for us to condemn or reject the order," he said.

Asserting that they have had to deal with the situation arising out of it, the Chief Minister added that his government has had to implement in the executive what judiciary has directed.

Talking about the action taken on protestors and vandals who have been on a rampage across the city, state Home Minister G Parameshwara stated that based on the evidence provided by the media and the police, 315 arrests have been made so far and that additional troops have been deployed keeping law and order in mind.

Siddaramaiah reiterated his appeal to the protestors to maintain calm and not cause any more damage to public property.

"People should not take law into their own hands. Violence is not a solution to any problem. We have to maintain peace and tranquillity in the society. In sensitive areas where Ganesh Chaturthi, Onam and Bakr Eid are being celebrated we have deployed security forces," he said.

He also announced Rs.10 lakhs to the family of the deceased who was killed in police firing during the protests.

Assuring full security to all linguistic minorities and people from other states, Siddaramaiah appealed to the Tamil Nadu Government to safeguard all Kannadigas in the state as well.

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Bengaluru yesterday after the Supreme Court ordered Karnataka for release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

Violence rocked Bengaluru, as about 30 vehicles from Tamil Nadu were torched, prompting Siddaramaiah-led government to issue prohibitory orders in the IT city, besides shutting metro rail operations, schools, colleges and some offices.

Retaliatory violence also erupted in Tamil Nadu as groups hurled bombs at Chennai's New Woodlands Hotel and attacked seven Karnataka buses in Rameswaram.

About 15,000 cops were deployed across the IT city with focus in areas where Tamils live in large numbers.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh yesterday assured full assistance to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Governments to deal with the current state of violence.

Describing the violence in Karnataka as "alarming", Siddaramaiah wrote to his Tamil Nadu counterpart J. Jayalalithaa to ensure that the perpetrators of the violence are brought to book.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday took a jibe at the JD(U)-RJD grand alliance and said that Mohammad Shahabuddin's statement on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has affected the relations between the two political outfits.

BJP leader Nand Kishore said that if relations between the outfit had been good, then they would have sorted the matter internally.

"If Shahabuddin is not a matter of concern then why did the party issue a show cause notice against Girdhari Yadav who met Shahabuddin. Leaders of JD(U) are doing a drama and they are tensed. If you see the press conference, then you may notice that the whole time they were blaming RJD," said Kishore.

"I have said this before that JD (U) and RJD have a very sour relationship. And this sour relationship has become evident. If these two parties had good relations then they would surely have discussed the matter internally and solved it," he added.

JD(U) on Monday strongly reacted to the comments of on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

The party also appealed to the RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav to enforce the code of 'gatbandhan dharma (coalition principles)' among his partymen.

Shahabuddin's last week said that Nitish Kumar became the Bihar chief minister due to "circumstances".

However, Nitish responded saying that he had been chosen by the people of Bihar and he 'did not care' about the comments made by anyone else.

Shahabuddin had been sent to jail in November 2005 in connection with the murder of Rajiv Ranjan, a prime witness in the murder of his two brothers Girish Raj and Satish Raj. The brothers had been murdered in Siwan in August 2004.
Three young Syrian nationals who claim to be ISIS members have been arrested in Germany on Tuesday morning, in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein by special police forces.

According to the CNN, the German Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement that they apprehended two Syrian teenagers and one man in his 20s, and that investigations suspect them entering Germany on the orders of the ISIS in November last year.

The intentions of the three men, charged with being members of a foreign terrorist organization, were either to commit a major act of terror or wait for further instructions and then proceed.

One of the accused, who is a 17-year-old joined ISIS at the end of September 2015 in Raqqa, Syria and is suspected of receiving training there, including the handling of weapons and explosives.

The Prosecutor's Office further alleged that the trio had pledged to go to Europe and were provided with passports and thousands of US dollars as well as mobile phones.

The three came to Germany in the middle of November 2015 via Turkey and Greece, the Office added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 11 persons were injured when a suicide blast hit an Eid prayer gathering in Pakistan's Sindh province on Tuesday, the police said.

The incident took place when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden jacket at the entrance gate of a mosque when police guards stopped him for body search in Khanpur area of Sikharpur district, Xinhua news agency reported.

Following the first blast, another suicide bomber also attempted to enter the mosque, but police guards shot at him and injured him, authorities said.

The second suicide bomber was arrested.

Three policemen were among the injured, with two others reported to be critical.

According to locals, hundreds of people were present in the mosque to offer prayers.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Five operatives of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda branch were killed when a US drone strike targeted their vehicle in Yemen's central province of al-Bayda on Tuesday, a military official told Xinhua.

The military source confirmed that missiles fired from the unmanned US aircraft destroyed a vehicle carrying Al Qaeda operatives in the mountains of Radaa area in central al-Bayda province.

The military source said that "the slain Al Qaeda men were apparently travelling from Marib province and heading to meet their comrades in the al-Bayda province".

On Tuesday, the United States announced that its military killed 13 Al Qaeda militants in three separate strikes in in recent weeks, but it did not specify how the strikes were conducted or reveal the identities of the militants targeted.

has recently seen a growing number of Al Qaeda activities due to the prolonged security vacuum resulting from the 19-month civil war between the exiled government and Houthi rebels who seized much of the country's north, including capital Sanaa since 2014.

The military conflict has left more than 6,400 dead, according to the UN, displaced thousands and left the country's civilians facing a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
Brazil's lower house was considering whether to expel former Speaker Eduardo Cunha amid accusations that he lied about undeclared Swiss bank accounts, a media report said on Tuesday.

Cunha denies wrongdoing and has said former president Dilma Rousseff's supporters are seeking revenge, the BBC reported.

He has also threatened to reveal compromising information about other politicians.

"This criminal government has been removed thanks to me," he said during the session on Monday, accusing Rousseff's Workers' Party of seeking his removal to bolster her claim that the impeachment process against her had been a "coup".

Cunha was also being investigated by the Supreme Court for allegedly taking millions of dollars in bribes to secure contracts with state oil giant, Petrobras, the BBC reported.

Petrobras is at the centre of a massive kickbacks scandal which cost the company $2 billion and has led to the arrest of dozens of lawmakers and top businessmen.

At least three businessmen have said under interrogation that they paid bribes to Cunha, which they deposited in his overseas accounts.

In March 2015, Cunha stated that he did not have "any type of account anywhere that is not declared on my income tax", the BBC noted.

But authorities in Switzerland later gave information to a corruption inquiry in Brazil stating that Cunha and his wife, Claudia Cruz, were beneficiaries of secret accounts worth about $5 million.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In what can be a sign of China relenting on India's bid for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a Chinese delegation visited New Delhi on Tuesday and discussed the issue with the Indian side.

"A Chinese delegation led by Director General Wang Qun of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs visited India on September 13 for talks with an Indian delegation led by Amandeep Singh Gill, Joint Secretary (Disarmament & International Security) in the Ministry of External Affairs," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

"The talks covered issues of mutual interest in the area of disarmament and non-proliferation," it stated.

At the NSG plenary in Seoul in June, Beijing blocked New Delhi's membership bid saying that for a country to be a member of the 48-nation bloc, it has to be a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

During Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to India last month, it was agreed that China's Director General for disarmament would hold talks with his Indian counterpart on the issue.

Wang Qun heads the Chinese side during NSG meetings.

"As agreed by the External Affairs Minister (Sushma Swaraj) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in their meeting on August 13, the two sides focused in particular on an issue of priority for India - membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group," Tuesday's External Affairs Ministry statement said.

"The discussions were candid, pragmatic and substantive. The two sides agreed to meet for the next round on a mutually convenient date," it added.

--IANS

ab/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Chinese Air Force sent multiple aircraft models to the West Pacific, via the Bashi Strait, for a routine combat simulation drill at sea, a spokesperson said.

Shen Jinke, spokesperson of the People's Liberation Army Air Force, said the fleet included H-6K bombers, Su-30 fighters, and air tankers, the People's Daily reported.

The fleet on Monday conducted reconnaissance and early warning, sea surface cruising, inflight refuelling, and achieved all the drill's targets.

The drill was a routine arrangement as part of the Air Force's annual training plan, and conformed to international law and practice, said Shen.

Drills at sea were common practices of coastal countries and a requirement of Chinese defence.

The Chinese Air Force will organise drills at sea, off island chains at regular basis, the spokesperson said.

The Air Force will focus on improving the quality of combat simulation drills, flying over island chains, controlling the East China Sea and cruising the South China Sea. It will also improve capability in plateau areas.

The Air Force will also speed up its advanced new military equipment system in a bid to promote strategic transformation, Shen added.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Cuba and the US held their first talk on the issue of intellectual property, the island's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday.

A statement revealed that Daniel Marti, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at the White House visited Havana on September 8-9 and met with representatives of the Cuban Office of Industrial Property, the National Centre of Copyright, the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment.

Marti was accompanied by officials from the State Department, the Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Xinhua news agency reported.

"In this first official meeting between Cuba and the US on intellectual property, the parties exchanged views on current regulations in the respective countries ... and the legal framework of the two states for the protection of trademarks, patents and legal copyright," read the statement.

The Cuban officials explained to their US counterparts the guarantees offered for the protection of industrial property, including the registration of over 6,000 American brands.

They also expressed concern about the ongoing US embargo, which affects the recognition of the rights of Cuban trademarks and companies, especially in the case of the well-known Havana Club and Cohiba brands.

Havana and Washington re-established diplomatic relations on July 20, 2015 after 54 years of political enmity.
The Delhi government on Tuesday blamed Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung and BJP-controlled municipal bodies for the spread of chikungunya in the capital.

Delhi Water Minister Kapil Mishra demanded to know why no fogging had been done this year by the three wings of municipal corporation.

"Where is LG who has proclaimed himself as government, three mayors, seven MPs, 272 councillors now? All are busy protesting," he tweeted.

The reference was to a Delhi High Court decision of August 4 which ruled that the Lt Governor would be in-charge of administrative affairs in Delhi and not the elected government.

All the Mayors and MPs in Delhi are also from the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Delhi's Health Minister Satyendar Jain accused the BJP-controlled civic bodies of not taking preventive steps to control the spread of vector-borne disease.

Jain said the Delhi government hospitals were "fully capable" and well equipped to treat the patients.

The minister's remark came after a 65-year-old R. Pandey succumbed to chikungunya on Monday at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

Jain, who is now in Goa, said: "We are taking every necessary step and proper care from our (Delhi government's) side."

"It is the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) that has to take preventive steps like fogging and sanitation in the city to check the spread of dengue and chikungunya.

"The three civic bodies are not performing their duties properly to keep Delhi clean," the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader said.

Jain added that the patient who died of chikungunya was from Uttar Pradesh.

"Lots of patients arrive in the national capital in critical condition. I am going back to Delhi today (Tuesday) to take stock of the situation," he said.

Mishra, meanwhile, appealed to the people of Delhi not to panic and warned private hospitals not to deny treatment to patients.

"All private hospitals and nursing homes need to ensure that they are not denying treatment and not creating panic. Any violation will invite strict action."

Mishra wanted to know what happened to all the money that was released to the MCD.

--IANS

am/in/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Whistleblower Edward Snowden believes that US President Barack Obama should pardon him before he leaves office in January, arguing that the disclosure by WikiLeaks of the scale of surveillance by the US and British intelligence agencies was not only morally right but had left citizens better off.

In an interview to The Guardian via video link from Moscow, where he is in exile, Snowden said any evaluation of the consequences of his leak of tens of thousands of National Security Agency and GCHQ documents in 2013 would show clearly that people had benefited.

"Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing but that is perhaps why the pardon power exists -- for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things, these were vital things," Snowden said.

"I think when people look at the calculations of benefit, it is clear that in the wake of 2013 the laws of our nation changed. The [US] Congress, the courts and the President all changed their policies as a result of these disclosures," he added.

"At the same time there has never been any public evidence that any individual came to harm as a result," he told The Guardian.

Snowden's came as supporters, including his US lawyer, stepped up a campaign for a presidential pardon. Snowden is wanted in the US, where he is accused of violating the Espionage Act and faces at least 30 years in jail.

Obama's former attorney-general Eric Holder, however, gave an unexpected boost to the campaign for Sonwden's pardon in May when he said Snowden had performed a public service.

The campaign could receive a further lift from Oliver Stone's film, Snowden, scheduled for release in the US on Friday.

Snowden was confident that he will end up back in the US.

"Once the officials, who felt like they had to protect the programs, their positions, their careers, have left government and we start looking at things from a more historical perspective, it will be pretty clear that this war on whistleblowers does not serve the interests of the US, rather it harms them."

--IANS

ask/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Three Syrian men were arrested in Germany on Tuesday on suspicion of being sent by the Islamic State (IS) terror group to launch attacks, prosecutors said.

The men -- aged 17, 18 and 26 -- were detained after a series of pre-dawn raids in the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony, BBC reported.

The police have seized "extensive material", the prosecutors added.

But no concrete missions or orders have so far been found, BBC reported.

In a statement, the Federal Public Prosecutor's office said investigations so far suggested the three had come to Germany in November 2015 with the intention of "carrying out a previously determined order (from IS) or to await further instructions".

They were said to have travelled through Turkey and Greece on false passports.

--IANS

ksk/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
French President will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel here in Paris on Thursday to prepare for the EU meeting in Bratislava, his office on Monday.

On the eve of EU meeting of European leaders scheduled for September 16, Hollande will receive Merkel for "preparatory consultations", Xinhua news agency reported.

According to a statement, the two leaders will hold a joint press meeting at 00:50 pm local time before sharing a working lunch.
Automobile major Hyundai Motor India (HMIL) on Tuesday launched a new variant of its premium compact hatchback Elite i20 with automatic transmission and enhanced safety features.

According to the company, it has introduced new 1.4L Kappa petrol engine with four speed automatic transmission in Elite i20.

The company has also added safety reinforcement features such as six airbags, speed sensing auto door lock and height adjustable front seat belts on Elite i20 and i20 Active.

The Elite i20 has been priced between Rs 7,75,828 and Rs 9,01,812 for the automatic variant (Ex-Showroom Delhi). The i20 Active comes with a price tag starting from Rs 8,33,467 to Rs 9,71,269.

"The Hyundai i20 is a super performer brand in the premium compact segment," said Rakesh Srivastava, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, HMIL.

"Hyundai has developed a solid reputation for quality, design, performance and premium features. As customer centric company, our goal is to enhance overall value proposition of i20 brand and make it more aspirational and desirable for wide range of different people."

The i20 brand has crossed one million units in sales across the country.

--IANS

rv/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Protesting against the Speaker's decision to disallow a debate on a no-confidence motion, 27 lawmakers of the opposition Congress spent the night in the house and said they will stay in it till Wednesday morning when it assembles again.

Meanwhile, the other party legislators staged a sit-in outside the secretariat.

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday went to the assembly to meet the protesting members and urged them to end the stalemate and vacate the house but they refused to relent, demanding a discussion in the house on their no-confidence motion moved a day earlier.

"All the Congress legislators participated in the day-long protest on Monday over the Speaker's refusal to allow our members to speak on a no-confidence motion," Congress Legislative Party leader Charanjit Singh Channi told IANS.

He said the legislators spent the night inside the house to lodge their protest despite the electricity supply being disconnected.

"Our protest inside the assembly would continue till the house assembles on Wednesday," Channi added.

The Congress was demanding a debate on the government's failure to protect the interests of the state on the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal and deteriorating law and order situation in the state.

The protesters inside the assembly included four women legislators, who wore aprons that read " da cancer, Badal sarkar".

"We had requested the assembly secretary to provide three or four women support staff to ensure our safety in the night but no one was there," said legislator Karan Kaur Brar.

She said they spent their night in the house without lights and air-conditioning.

Official sources said initially the electricity was disconnected on Monday but late in the evening it was restored. Likewise, the staff attached with the legislators was allowed to stay with them on Tuesday.

Describing the first-of-its-kind incident in the state unfortunate, Congress leader Amarinder Singh said the government did not want to discuss the issues related to the common man in the house.

"For the first time in history the opposition has made the government to walk out of the house," he said in a statement.

"You may be able to run away from the Vidhan Sabha, how long can you run away from the people and we are going to drag you to people's court," the former Chief Minister added.

This is the last session of the assembly before the state goes to the polls early next year.

Other Congress legislators, comprising former Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Kewal Dhillon and former ministers Lal Singh and Brahm Mohindra who were denied entry into the assembly on Tuesday, staged a sit-in protest outside the secretariat in Chandigarh.

The trouble started on Monday evening when the no-confidence motion was defeated even before the debate could take place by a voice vote and amidst pandemonium, Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal adjourned the house till Wednesday.

"Unless we are assured that the debate on our motion will take place on Wednesday, we will not relent," Bhattal told reporters.

She said the Speaker had allotted three hours for debate on the no-confidence motion but at the last minute, he adjourned the house.
Authorities foiled a protest march called by separatists on Tuesday to the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) here by imposing a curfew.

The separatists had called for the march from all parts of Srinagar to the high-security Sonwar area where UNMOGIP is headquartered.

All roads leading to Sonwar were sealed off with heavy deployment of police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), blocking all vehicles and even pedestrians.

The Eid congregation near a shrine in Sonwar was also disallowed by the authorities fearing that the devotees might march to the nearby UN office.

All the separatist leaders have been placed under detention since the ongoing unrest that started a day after Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was killed on July 8.

The UNMOGIP has officers at Srinagar, Baramulla and Muzaffarabad and it is mandated to ensure that ceasefire violations don't occur between India and Pakistan on the Line of Control (LoC) between the two countries.

Despite its limited mandate, it has become customary for separatists to hand over memoranda to officials posted at UNMOGIP.

--IANS

sq/ss/mr/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
South Asian Human Rights Association (SAHRA) recommended the repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code here on Tuesday in its anual report launched in collaboration with the resource centre on sexuality -- Sangma.

The report on "Human Rights Violations based on Sexuality and Gender Identity in South Asia", addresses the urgent need to document the violence and discrimination that goes unreported and continues with impunity.

"It recommends to repeal Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and implement the provisions from the NALSA judgment that guarantees transgender people freedom from discrimination by the state, equal employment and education opportunity," said programme director of Sangma, Rajesh Srinivas.

"The aim of the SAHRA for people, who are marginalised because of their sexuality and gender identity/expression, is to systematically document human rights violations against sexual and gender minorities in the South Asian region (Bangladesh, India,Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Afghanistan and the Maldives)," he added.

SAHRA has collected 156 cases of human rights violations during 2014 and 2015.

The cases have been documented by a community of grassroots activists in the South Asian countries. Sixteen cases from India, 56 from Bangladesh, 62 from Nepal and 22 from Sri Lanka are included in this report.

"It is community-driven and the data is segregated based on issues. Police and family are the sites of violations," said lawyer and researcher Siddarth Narrain.

The age of the victims lies between 14 to 57 years. Among those of the perpetrators, the police constitute almost 50 per cent. When victims are transwomen, the police constitute 69 per cent of the perpetrators.

Among lesbians, bisexual women and transmen, the picture is starkly different.

Family members (16 per cent) and neighbours (17 per cent) are the major perpetrators of violence. The gay and bisexual men in this sample experience violence chiefly from family members (26 per cent), neighbours (10 per cent) and the police (17 per cent).

According to Advocacy and Media Associate of Sangma Christy Raj: "Female born sexual minorities are further marginalised within LGBT movement. The family and the state are two sites of violations. We are forced into marriage and stripped by doctors at health care."

The report also recommends to incorporate comprehensive sex education in the national curriculum and raise awareness on sexuality and gender issues and to introduce provisions for 'sex reaffirmation/reassignment surgery' within the public health system.

"Section 377 needs to repealed. When Shashi Tharoor introduced the bill, the bill was not even listed for discussion," Narrain said.

He referred to the recent surrogacy bill and said that the message sent out by it was that "single persons and homosexuals are not capable of being parents".

Inclusion of sexual and gender minorities within national level surveys on health, education and other indicators and sensitization of government officials including on human rights of all have also been recommended in the report.

"It is a valuable and important documentation beyond the litigation process. It is also our individual understanding and our responsibility," said Senior Supreme Court Lawyer and Feminist Rights Activist Vrinda Grover.

"The LGBT community is excluded from citizenship. The TG bill is going in wrong direction, the medical fraternity is trying to fit people in boxes," she said.

"The entire spectrum of human lives gets destabilized by social practices and norms. We need to come to terms that our society is based on violence and discrimination," she added.

--IANS

mg/pgh/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thailand's military junta approved to discontinue prosecution of civilians in the military courts after human rights organisations criticised it for the trial of hundreds of opposition members.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and head of the junta passed the order published in the Royal Gazette on Monday night with its immediate effect.

However, the order does not apply to the current open cases, EFE news reported.

The use of military courts was one of the first measures adopted by the junta shortly after seizing power in a coup in May 2014.

The military government tried all cases, including those they considered a threat to national security or in disobedience of its orders and illegal possession of weapons, in these courts.

According to Thai lawyers, at least 1,811 civilians were prosecuted in military courts since the coup, denouncing the lack of legal guarantees provided in these courts, including refusing the right to appeal or bail.

The junta justified the decision to return all civil cases to the ordinary courts for the betterment of the situation, following the approval of a new Constitution in a referendum in August, which strengthens the military hegemony in the country's politics.

In the last two years peace and has been restored with people cooperating well to move the country towards sustainable development, reform and a fair reconciliation, stated the order.

The decision, which retains the ability of the military to perform police duties - including the detention of suspects up to seven days in barracks - was described as a "limited step" by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

HRW condemned the measure as being "the military junta's way of deflecting criticisms by the UN Human Rights Council" which meets on Tuesday in Geneva.

--IANS

ss/ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who has extended his support for the Global Citizen movement in India, says it was "a bit disturbing" for him to be part of the campaign with young stars like Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, and Farhan Akhtar.

The movement was formally announced on Monday here with Indian celebrities joining their forces for the campaign. Though Amitabh was disturbed after sharing the stage with young stars, he shared that it was a "rewarding" experience.

The 73-year-old expressed his views about the movement on his official blog.

He posted: "The future the present the carrying forward and the thrust of will to move this campaign forward centered around the youth and the young...which I might add was a bit disturbing for the aged ol'man, trying to hold his own amongst a stronghold of the young! But it was a rewarding experience and we shall be working toward its building and expanse."

He added: "Expanse? They talked about efforts that should be made for the future 15 years to come...which kind of excluded me from it altogether...15 years and if it is willed I should be well into what, 90 years...that is a tall order...90...it shall not happen this far."

The inaugural Global Citizen Festival India, to be held here on November 19, will be its first initiative, and will be headlined by Coldplay, Jay Z, Aamir, Ranveer Singh, Katrina Kaif, A.R. Rahman, Farhan, Shraddha Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Arijit Singh, Dia Mirza, Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Monali Thakur.

Several major artists and international guests will be announced at different stages of the campaign.

The "Paa" star added: "Global citizenry beckons...the nature of the intent and its inception brings many of us on a common platform to work and ope to succeed in ridding poverty form India by 2030."

On the film front, the actor is awaiting release of Shoojit Sarkar's "Pink". The courtroom drama-thriller directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury is written by Ritesh Shah and produced by Rashmi Sharma and Shoojit Sircar. The film also stars Piyush Mishra, Angad Bedi and Dhritiman Chatterjee. It is scheduled to release on September 16.

--IANS

sug/nv/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An uneasy calm enveloped Bengaluru even as protests erupted at Mandya and Mysuru in southern Karnataka on Tuesday over the Cauvery water row with Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu was peaceful, with security beefed up for businesses owned by Kannadigas and also for popular personalities of Karnataka origin.

However, angry truck owners in Tamil Nadu told the media that they would hold a demonstration in Hosur town, condemning the burning of around 45 trucks by hooligans in Karnataka.

In Bengaluru, India's IT hub, one person was killed and two others were injured in police firing on Monday night to quell violence.

Violence erupted in Karnataka on Monday following stray incidents of violence in Tamil Nadu in retaliation to the attack on a Tamil youth in Karnataka.

A hotel promoted by a Kannadiga and some vehicles with Karnataka registration were attacked at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu.

In Bengaluru, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said: "It is true that violence is not a solution to any problem. We have decided to impose law and order with an iron hand."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed for peace in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. "The violence and arson seen in the last two days is only causing loss to the poor, and to our nation's property."

Referring to the Supreme Court order to Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu till September 20, Siddaramaiah said: "It is difficult to implement the order but we will ensure enough drinking water for Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mandya and other Cauvery basin areas."

According to him, the Supreme Court's Monday order on release of 12,000 cusecs water to Tamil Nadu till September 20 reflects Karnataka's inability to implement the September 5 judgement to release 15,000 cusecs per day.

Bengaluru police imposed curfew for three days from early Tuesday in the city's north-west, south-west, north east and central areas. "The situation is peaceful across the city," said Bengaluru Police Commissioner N.S. Megharikh.

Curfew was relaxed since morning for Muslims to offer Eid prayers at mosques and Idgah maidan in some localities.

Though schools, colleges, government and private offices and banks have holiday for Eid, several IT firms and back offices which are working told their techies to work from homes.

Shops, markets, malls, hotels, restaurants, cinema theatres and commercial establishments observed an undeclared shutdown across the city due to fear of being attacked by protesters.

Buses, taxis and auto-rickshaws went off the roads. The metro rail has been suspended till evening.

Hundreds of passengers alighting at railway stations in Bengaluru and at the airport on the outskirts had a harrowing time reaching home in the absence of taxis, autos and buses.

State-run and private bus services to and from Tamil Nadu have been suspended from Karnataka. But trains and flights are operating to Chennai and other cities in Tamil Nadu.

Cable operators in Bengaluru blocked all the 52 Tamil television channels to prevent retaliatory attacks and check emotions.

A quarter of the 10 million people in Bengaluru are Tamils -- the second largest community after Kannadigas.

Vehicular traffic on the 150 km Bengaluru-Mysuru highway remained affected due to protests.

Condemning the attacks on Kannadigas and their properties in Tamil Nadu over the century-old row, Siddaramaiah said the people in other states should cooperate in maintaining law and order.

In Tamil Nadu, police took several steps to prevent any violence. More than 100 police patrol teams were pressed into service for round-the-clock protection of businesses owned by people of Karnataka origin.

--IANS

vj/mr/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The US with other countries sought to impose more sanctions on North Korea after its latest nuclear test, said an official on Tuesday in Seoul.

US State Department's Special Representative for North Korea Policy Sung Kim said Washington will try to seek approval for a new, strong resolution in the UN Security Council as soon as possible to include tougher sanctions on Pyongyang, Efe news reported.

The US envoy alluded to the need "to demonstrate to North Korea that there are indeed serious consequences for its unlawful and dangerous actions".

Pyongyang on Friday carried out its fifth and most powerful atomic test, in which it allegedly detonated nuclear warheads that can be attached to its missiles.

According to the US envoy, the test "has strengthened, bolstered international resolve to hold the North Korea accountable".

Following the nuclear test by Pyongyang, the UN Security Council issued a harsh statement condemning the act, and began preparations to draw up a new resolution to punish North Korea and force it to abandon its development of nuclear weapons.

The UN in March issued Resolution 2270, which imposed harsh commercial sanctions on Pyongyang, as a response to its fourth nuclear test and the launch of a space rocket carrying missile technology in January.

Although the latest sanctions imposed tough blocks on North Korea's financial transactions abroad, Pyongyang has reaffirmed its willingness to further develop atomic weapons to guarantee its "survival".

--IANS

ss/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi held a feast on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate Id-ul-Zuha. Those who came calling included some members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, though most senior BJP leaders and Cabinet ministers skipped the event.
Reliance Jio has generated a lot of buzz with its Welcome Offer, which promises free voice and data services for three months. Had Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani consulted arch-rival Sunil Mittal, founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, he might have had second thoughts before promising such freebies.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday urged NCW Chairperson Lalitha Kumaramangalam to initiate an enquiry against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah over the alleged snooping of a young woman in Gujarat.

"I am annexing here with substantive documentary and digital evidence of how Modi and Shah snooped and spied on a young woman half their age only because Modiji, who at the time was Chief Minister of Gujarat, had developed 'unusual interest' in that woman," Kejriwal said in his letter to the chief of the National Commission for Women.

"I would urge you to initiate an enquiry and take the strongest possible action against the duo," he added.

Kejriwal's letter followed a letter to him two days ago from the NCW chief, who said the Commission was deeply disturbed by the alleged sexual molestation of a woman by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator Amanatullah Khan.

"Moreover, this being no isolated incident, on several previous occasions specially in the last couple of months there have been allegations of violations against women committed by those in position of authority in legislature," she said.

In his letter, Kejriwal said his government was committed to taking strictest possible action against those found to be involved in crimes against women.

"However, it is a matter of deep regret that the government at the Centre has been waging a proxy war against my government and my party through unscrupulous officers in Police and other nefarious elements.

"Politically motivated cases are being foisted upon AAP legislators. In many cases, the courts have castigated the Delhi Police for its malafide action against AAP leaders.

"Though you have been a BJP politician in the past, I am sure you will rise above your narrow political affiliations and find the full truth in the cases alluded by in your letter.

"As in the past, my government will take exemplary action if credible evidence of wrongdoing is found against anyone," the Chief Minister said.
Delhi Chief Minister took to twitter to hit out at veteran journalist Shekhar Gupta over the latter's tweet about the resurgence of Malaria and Chikungunya caused deaths in the capital.
Coming down heavily on the ongoing rift between the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Janata Dal (United) over Mohammad Shahabuddin's comment on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday said the people of are suffering due to the 'jungle raj' of the grand alliance.

"The issue between the JD (U) and the RJD and Nitish Kumar being upset, the 'jungle raj' has definitely come in after the way Shahabuddin has been released. But at the same time, there is a mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) for the development and good governance of . There is a jungle raj there itself because the RJD is accusing JD (U) and the JD (U) is accusing RJD. Both the partners are fighting as if it is a free for all in Bihar," BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh told ANI.

Singh said the people of Bihar are the sufferers because they are not getting good governance.

After being released from jail, Shahabuddin had last week said that Nitish Kumar became the Bihar Chief Minister due to "circumstances".

However, Nitish responded saying that he had been chosen by the people of Bihar and he 'did not care' about the comments made by anyone else.

Shahabuddin had been sent to jail in November 2005 in connection with the murder of Rajiv Ranjan, a prime witness in the murder of his two brothers Girish Raj and Satish Raj. The brothers had been murdered in Siwan in August 2004.
Senior leaders are breaking rotis together in a bid to resolve disputes within the Grand Old Party, especially in poll-bound states where it is planning to stage comebacks.
Drawing battle lines with the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) over the issue of medium of instruction (MoI), the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Goa on Monday reiterated its stand that it would not withdraw grants given to the English-medium schools in the state.

"BJP is a political party and we believe in taking all people along. We respect the decision of (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) to support mother tongue, but our stand on MoI will continue to be the same," BJP MP Narendra Sawaikar told reporters here on Monday.

Sawaikar's statement comes a day after 'Goa Prant' held a mega convention appealing people to vote against BJP, and RSS' newly-appointed Goa Vibhag Sanghchalak Laxman Behre's demanded that BJP should withdraw grants to English-medium schools.

The Lok Sabha MP clarified that the party has utmost respect for . "RSS is one of the rewarded and respectable organisation, not only in India but across the world," he said.

When asked about the call given by the Subhash Velingkar-led 'RSS Goa Prant' not to vote for BJP in the upcoming Assembly polls, Sawaikar said such things will have no impact on the party's prospects.

"BJP will win election because of its work. Our work will speak and we are confident of winning 2017 election," he said.

BBSM has been vociferously opposing grants to English medium schools in Goa and led agitations against the Laxmikant Parsekar government demanding that primacy be given to Marathi and Konkani languages as the MoI in schools.
One more person died of injuries he suffered while escaping police lathicharge, as sporadic protests were today reported in the city, where an uneasy calm prevailed, and other parts of Karnataka, a day after Bengaluru was rocked by violence over the raging Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu.

The toll in the Cauvery stir related violence rose to two with a 30-year old man, who had jumped in panic from a three- storey building while trying to escape police lathicharge, succumbed to multiple injuries this afternoon.

"Kumar, about 30 years old, has died. He was brought to ourhospital at 9:30 last night in a critical stage.He is said to have jumped from third floor of a building as he was trying toescape from a lathicharge yesterday," Dr Giridhar, Managing Director of Lakshmi Multi-Speciality Hospital, told PTI.

"He had several injuries on his body like head,facial and pelvic. Both his legs were also fractured," he said.

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in the country's IT capital yesterday after sudden eruption of widespread violence, escalating tensions between the two states.

Curfew, imposed late last night, continued to remain in force in 16 police station limits of the city which is under prohibitory orders till September 14.

A bus that was half burnt yesterday was torched once again today near New Timber layout and another vehicle was also set on fire near Tigalarapalya.

Both had Tamil Naduregistration number plates.

Police lobbed tear gas at Hegganahalliand Pattegarapalaya as protesters tried to burn tyres on the streets, defying curfew.

Police are also conducting combingoperations in several sensitive areas and dispersing crowds thatare gathering.

Senior police officials said curfew would continueuntil further orders and would be reviewed this evening.

Sporadic protests have been reported in differentparts of the state like Mandya, Chitradurga, Ramanagara andMysuru.

In Chitradurga, a lorry bearing Tamil Nadu registration number was burnt, while in Ramanagara protesters held demonstrations in front of a farmhouse that reportedly belongs to a daughter of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.

Shooting of a Tamil film was stopped by protesters at



Jaganmohan palace in Mysuru, police said.

In a video message to the people of the state, Karnataka Chief Minister Sidddaramaiah warned of stringent action against any act of vandalism or disturbance to peace.

Home Minister G Parameshwara said anyone who takes the law into their hands would not be spared and stringent action would be taken against them.

"We will take stringent action against them. No one will be spared. We will not allow anyone to take law into their hands and we want your cooperation for this," he said.

Noting that a few organisations and political forces were behind yesterday's violence, Parameshwara said more than 300 people had been arrested so far and more would follow.

He said it is government's responsibility toprotect public and their property and "we will do our workwithout any hesitation," he added.

Asked whether the government had failed in assessing thesituation yesterday and in maintaining law and order, he said, "we did our best and we showed some sort of tolerance, but that has been misused."



Pointing out that the violence was an instantaneous reaction to the developments in Tamil Nadu, Parameshwara said "we have controlled it as far as possible, or else therewere chances of it going out of control and more loss oflives."



He said that other than a couple of stray incidents, the situation is peaceful.

Parameshwara said government has decided to give Rs 10 lakh compensation each to families of the two persons killed.

Sidddaramaiah held consultations with senior Congress leaders from the state on the prevailing situation.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Congress Leaderin the Lok Sabha Mallikarjuna Kharge sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention.

He said the Prime Minister has to convene a meeting of Chief Ministers from riparian states for an out of court settlement of the issue. "I request the Prime Minister at this critical juncture as it involves inter-state water dispute. His role is important for peaceful settlement of the dispute."



The city that saw widespread violence, appeared to be limping back to normalcy, with no fresh incidents of violence being reported since last night.

The bustling IT city was bereft of its monstroustraffic. There were very few vehicles moving on city roads,with schools and colleges and also government offices remaining shut due to Bakrid today. State run transport services remained skeletal with veryfew buses plying on roads in select areas.

Officials saidtransport services to Tamil Nadu remain suspended. MetroRail services have been temporarily stopped.

The Supreme Court, modifying its September 5 order, had yesterday asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu tillSep 20.

On Sep 5, it had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of Tamil Nadu, triggering protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on Sep 9.
At least 10 people, including two policemen, were injured today when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Shia mosque during Eid-ul Azha prayers in Pakistan's southern Sindh province.

The suicide blast took place in Shikarpur district's Khanpur tehsil, around 470 kilometres north of Karachi, police said, adding another attacker fled from the spot.

Police also foiled a separate suicide blast at another Shia mosque in the Shikarpur district where last year at least 61 people were killed in a suicide attack on a mosque.

Police said four suicide attackers had infiltrated Khanpur during Eid prayers, the Dawn reported.

Two attackers had targeted a Shia mosque but were stopped by police at the entrance on account of appearing suspicious. When the attackers attempted to flee, one was gunned down by a policeman and the other was arrested.

Pakistan has been hit by frequent sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shia Muslims.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two gymnasts, including a member of the 2000 US women's Olympic team, say they were sexually abused by a former longtime doctor for USA Gymnastics, court documents and interviews show.

Larry Nassar, 53, who worked for decades for the gymnastics organization until his dismissal last year, sexually groped and fondled the teenage Olympian under the guise of physical therapy during her elite career, according to a lawsuit filed last week in California.

The Olympian is identified as "Jane Doe" in the lawsuit against Nassar and the USA Gymnastics organization. Her attorneys on Monday identified her only as a medal-winning member of the team that competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The second gymnast, Rachael Denhollander of Louisville, Kentucky, told the Indianapolis Star newspaper that Nassar sexually abused her in 2000 while she underwent treatment for lower back pain at Michigan State University, where Nassar is a faculty member.

Denhollander, who was 15 at the time, told the Star that Nassar became gradually more abusive over the course of five treatments, including massaging her breasts and penetrating her. She said she filed a complaint last month with university police.

Denhollander said her mother was at the therapy sessions, but that Nassar positioned himself in such a way that she couldn't see what was happening.

"I was terrified," Denhollander said. "I was ashamed. I was very embarrassed. And I was very confused, trying to reconcile what was happening with the person he was supposed to be. He's this famous doctor. He's trusted by my friends.

He's trusted by these other gymnasts. How could he reach this position in the medical profession, how could he reach this kind of prominence and stature if this is who he is?" Nassar's attorney, Matthew Borgula, said in an email to The Associated Press that Nassar plans to "vigorously defend himself."



"Nassar denies any misconduct relating to any gymnast, patient or anyone else," Borgula wrote. "To the extent he provided medical treatment to anyone, that treatment was always done with consent of the patient. He is proud of his 29 years of volunteer service with USA Gymnastics."



The California lawsuit says that USA Gymnastics negligently suppressed, concealed or failed to disclose knowledge that Nassar had engaged in sexual conduct with team members.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least seven workers were trapped today after a highway tunnel collapsed during construction in southwest China.

The accident occurred in a tunnel along the Zhipu expressway of Guizhou Province, a 51-kilometre highway under construction in the province.

Bijie city, where the tunnel is located, has sent rescuers to bring the trapped workers out.

The cause of the collapse is not yet known, but it had been raining before the accident, state-run Xinhua agency reported.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As many as 84 Jan Aushadhi stores will be opened in Arunachal Pradesh with the signing of an agreement between the Centre and the state government.

Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Mansukh Mandaviya inaugurated the state's first Pradhan Mantri Jan Aushadhi Store at Naharlagun, Itanagar yesterday, an official statement said.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between Health & Family Welfare Department of the state and Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India (BPPI), an agency under Department of Pharmaceuticals, Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers.

"As per the MoU, 84 Jan Aushadhi Stores will be opened in Arunachal Pradesh," the statement said.

Mandaviya said that the central government is committed to development of the border state.

The government has decided to open 3,000 stores under Pradhan Mantri Jan Aushadhi Yojana (PMJAY) during 2016-2017 and to reinvigorate the supply of generic drugs.

Jan Aushadhi scheme is being implemented in the country through BPPI. 423 Jan Aushadhi Stores are functional across the country.

Stating that the PMJAY scheme is for the poor and needy, Mandaviya said the Ministry is working hard to open more and more stores under the scheme. He called upon the doctors to prescribe generic medicines, which cost a fraction of the branded drugs.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In an unfortunate incident, shortage of firewood on the funeral pyre led to stalling of the cremation of an Army jawan today in Sirohi district of Rajasthan.

Gunner Operator Ramesh Kumar Chaudhary had died at the military hospital in Srinagar on September 10. His body was brought to his ancestral village of Nagana in Sirohi where his family members conducted the cremation ceremony in the presence of his army unit and another unit from Mount Abu.

The funeral pyre was lit but after sometime, the process was nearly stalled due to shortage of firewood pieces and family members present had to scramble for additional pieces to place on the pyre.

There were unconfirmed reports that unburnt parts of the body were pulled out of the extinguished pyre and burnt separately.

State's Minister Otaram Devasi, who was also present at the funeral, said, "I did not see this till I was present there and I am not aware of what happened after I left."



The jawan's family said the funeral had to be stopped for sometime due to shortage of firewood but resumed after sometime.

Sirohi District Collector L N Meena is currently on leave, while ADM Prahlad Sahay Naga refused to comment on the matter.

"The Gunner Operator Ramesh Kumar Chaudhary died in the military hospital of Srinagar on September 10. The body was brought to New Delhi by an aircraft and from there it was brought to Sirohi by road. A unit also came from Mount Abu," District Soldier Welfare officer D S Bhati told PTI.

Sirohi's District Public Relations Officer Hemlata Sisodia said the jawan was given a guard of honour by the Army unit.

"A guard of honour was given at the time of funeral. MP Devji Patel and others were also present on the occasion," she said, adding the funeral was conducted in a normal manner.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Aam Aadmi Party today announced the first list of four candidates for the Goa Assembly elections due in March 2017.

The names include AAP's state secretary Walmiki Naik who will contest from the Panaji constituency, which was earlier held by Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar.

BJP legislator Siddharth Kuncolienkar currently represents Panaji constituency, a traditional bastion of the saffron party.

Besides, former Shiv Sena Goa chief Ajitsingh Rane, who had recently joined AAP, will be contesting from Mayem constituency in North Goa, which is currently represented by BJP legislator and Goa Assembly Speaker Anant Shet.

Rane is a labour union leader and has been at the forefront of various agitations in the state, the most recent one being a protest by drivers of trucks operating in iron ore mines who were demanding compensation for loss faced due the long ban on the industry in Goa.

Molu Velip, a former aide of BJP state minister Mahadev Naik, has been announced as AAP's candidate from Shiroda constituency in South Goa.

The party also announced candidature of Cruz Silva, a businessman, from Velim constituency, which is currently represented by Independent legislator Benjamin Silva.

AAP has already announced that it will contest all the 40 constituencies in the coastal state.

Top AAP leaders from Delhi including Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain have campaigned in the state for the polls.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's famous slogan of 'acche din' had originally been coined by his predecessor Manmohan Singh but has now become the "millstone" around the NDA government's neck, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said today.

"Acche din maanne se hota hai (Good days depends on one's belief). It was at an NRI meet in Delhi that Manmohan Singh had said that 'Acche din ayenge' (good days will come).

"When asked when 'acche din' will come, Singh had replied, 'in the future'. Modiji said the same thing somewhere and it has now become the millstone around our neck," Gadkari said at an event here.

Modi had extensively used the 'acche din' slogan during the last Lok Sabha elections.

(REOPENS DEL78)



"Achhe din kabhi nahi aate. Achhe din ke naare gale mein fasi haddi hain (Good days never come. The slogan of Achhe din is a bone stuck in the throat for the National Democratic Alliance government," Gadkari said.

Responding to a query by former MP Vijay Darda, the minister quipped, "We just used the words 'Achhe Din' and it should not be taken in the literal sense. It should be interpreted as progress is being made."



Gadkari said, "If a person has a bicycle, he would want a motorcycle, once the motorcycle is bought, the next target would be a car. Therefore, no one ever feels that good days have arrived.
An open war broke out on Tuesday in the (SP) with the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav stripping his uncle Shivpal Yadav of key ministerial portfolios, hours after his removal as the party's state unit chief and appointment of the latter in his place.

Sharp differences in the Yadav family were open on Tuesday as Akhilesh Yadav shunted Chief Secretary Deepak Singhal, considered close to Shivpal, barely two months after his appointment. This has set off a chain of developments that saw the SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav ousting his son as the state party chief and replacing him with Shivpal.

Hours after Mulayam made his brother and senior cabinet minister the UP unit head of the ruling party, in an angry retort, Akhilesh clipped his uncle's wings by stripping him of the plum PWD, irrigation and cooopetative portfolios.

"Singhal has been removed and put on wait list. Principal Secretary (Finance) Rahul Bhatnagar has been made new Chief Secretary," an official spokesman said in Lucknow.

Though no reason was cited, the SP insiders said the Chief Minister was not happy with him as he had attended a dinner hosted by the SP Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh in Delhi which Akhilesh gave a miss. Mulayam and some other top party leaders were peresent at the dinner.

Differences between Akhilesh and Shivpal have been reported on several occasions, including on the choice of official to be appointed as the state's chief secretary after Alok Ranjan's term ended, and stalling of Qaumi Ekta Dal's (QED) merger with the SP. Shivpal was said to have shepherded the merger of gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari's QED with the SP.

Singhal was earlier Principal Secretary (Irrigation), a department held by Shivpal.

Hours after Singhal was eased out as the state's top bureaucrat, Mulayam's cousin and the SP general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav wrote to Shivpal, "SP President Mulayam Singh Yadav has appointed you as the president of the Uttar Pradesh unit. It is hoped that with your hard work, you will further strengthen the party."

A copy of the letter was also marked to Akhilesh Yadav.

Not to take it lying down, the Chief Minister immediately divested his uncle of key departments, keeping with himself the PWD portfolio and giving irrigation to minister Awadhesh Prasad and revenue and cooperatives to Balram Yadav, an official release said late tonight.

Shivpal, who is now left with land development, water resources and social welfare ministries, is likely to resign from the cabinet. Though there was no official word from him, sources in the party said he was most likely to tender his resignation on Wednesday.
Taking strong exception to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar asking the services chiefs to implement the seventh Pay Commission recommendations despite their objections, Punjab Congress chief on Tuesday asked him to stand by the defence services and not the "babus" in the government.

"The babus not only know nothing about the defence services, but also seem to be congenitally hostile towards the services," said Amarinder, himself an ex-army officer.

He said Parrikar had no right or authority to order the services chiefs to accept what is not acceptable to them, adding he had once again shown his inability to understand the services.

"You can order them in operational matters and they will do as ordered, but on what grounds can you order them to accept the 7th Pay Commission recommendations when these are prejudicially biased against them?" he asked, while adding, "is this Nazi Germany and are you Hitler to issue such a dictatorial order?"

The former Punjab chief minister said, the three services chiefs are reflecting the views of each and every soldier in uniform or out of it.

"Instead of you standing by your defence services you are toeing the line set by your babus," he told the minister while asking, "do you realise the implications of your attitude?"

"You have a highly disciplined force, perhaps the only pillar in our democracy that works without ever commenting or objecting," he said asking, "do you want a disgruntled service?"

He said, "If the services are to lose their standing by placing them below the babus and the police, that is exactly what you will have, and then God help our country with a belligerent China and Pakistan around. Will you then lead your babus into battle?"

He asked Parrikar to look beyond the babus and stand by the forces.

"Demoralising them will affect the security of our nation," he warned while asking Parrikar to either stand by the services or quit as the Prime Minister can perhaps find another defence minister and a better one.

Amarinder also sought the Prime Minister's personal intervention and asked him to look beyond those who "lack foresight".

"This is a matter of security and beyond that of the comprehension of the babus. The three chiefs are absolutely correct in their stand. Their officers and men expect nothing less from them. They have complete admiration and total support of the nation," he asserted.
Anupam Kher met Oscar winner Robert De Niro during his visit here and the Bollywood veteran says meeting the Hollywood star is always inspirational.

Kher has worked with De Niro, 73, in filmmaker David O Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" (2012).

The 61-year-old actor shared the picture of himself on Twitter along with De Niro, saying his meets with the "Taxi Driver" star always make him happy.

"Meeting legendary actor #RobertDeNiro in New York is always a highlight of my trip. Inspirational and Joyous. #JaiHo," he wrote.

Kher will now head to Canada for the gala premiere of his forthcoming Hollywood film, "The Headhunters Calling", at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

In another post he also unveiled his first look from "The Headhunters Calling", which also stars Gerard Butler, Alison Brie and Willem Dafoe.

"Happy to know that all tickets for the Gala Premiere of #TheHeadhuntersCalling at #TIFF16 are SOLD OUT. #MyFirstLook," he tweeted.

In the photo, he is seen wearing a dark blue turban and the doctor's coat with stethoscope around his neck.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As turbulence continues unabated in the Valley, the army has quietly moved an entire brigade into South as part of operation 'Calm Down' to clear it of militants and protesters.

Amid intelligence reports of a virtual 'Jungle Raj' prevailing in the area, with militants and their sympathisers calling the shots, holding protests and blocking arterial roads, nearly 4,000 additional troops have been pressed into service to restore normalcy, but with clear instructions to use minimum force, official sources said.

The troops, mobilised from reserves have fanned out in all the four districts of South Kashmir--Pulwama, Shopian, Anantnag and Kulgam. These districts have borne the brunt of the current spiral of violence in the Valley triggered by the encounter killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. Wani hailed from this region.

The army troops assisted by CRPF and the state police are combing the areas minutely and clearing the road blocks put by the protesters by felling trees, electric poles and placing huge boulders and burnt vehicles, to facilitate movement of people, they said.

After "clearing" Karimabad area of Pulwama, the troops have moved into Shopian and Kulgam. The process, which was halted briefly for Bakrid, will resume after the festival, sources said, adding more troops were likely to be pressed into service.

The decision was taken after intelligence reports claimed that Kashmiri youth, armed with batons, stones and petrol bombs, were patrolling the arterial roads leading to the Highway and preventing people from venturing out of their homes or moving towards Srinagar.

There were reports that around 100 militants had crossed into South since the unrest broke out after Wani's killing on July 8.

The areas where they were suspected to be hiding included Heff-Shrimal in Shopian district, Samboora, Lillahar, Pulwama town, Tral and Kakpora of Pulwama district, Qaimooh and Redhwani in Kulgam district and Redhwani in Anantnag district.

Dotted with poplar and pine trees, the adjoining jungles provide the militants a perfect setting for training recruits, officials said. There was information that militants were being trained in Kamla forest of Shopian district but when raids were conducted, nobody could be found.

According to reports, militants crossed over to Pulwama district of South from Pakharpora of Budgam district in Central Kashmir and later fanned out to other areas facilitated by the absence of security personnel on ground, they said.
BJP on Tuesday took potshots at Bihar's ruling alliance over a "free-for-all" following controversial RJD MP Mohammed Shahabuddin's release, saying "Jungle Raj" has returned to the state with development being a casualty.

BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh also hit out at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, wondering what happed to his "so-called ideals" he claimed to stand for.

"Jungle Raj is not only back in after the release of Shahabuddin followed by grand celebrations but there is Jungle Raj in Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance), too. It is a free-for-all between the two major partners RJD and JD(U) leaders.

"In this fight people of are suffering and in that process development is being thrown out of the window. Their leaders are making uncharitable remarks against each other but in reality their conduct has become uncharitable for Bihar," he said.

Alleging that the alliance partners  JD(U), RJD and Congress  were together for serving their own political interests, Singh attacked Kumar, saying he has "compromised his ideals to save his chair".

"Nitish Kumar has compromised all the values he once claimed to stand for only to remain the Chief Minister. Lalu Prasad is keen on remaining a partner in the alliance only to make his son the true Chief Minster, while Congress is there just for the sake of "Main Bhi Hu Na" (I am also there). BJP will raise its voice against this opportunistic alliance," he said.

The BJP leader said the "leadership crisis" was there because Lalu's RJD had more MLAs than Nitish Kumar's JD(U).

"Nitish may be the Chief Minister but Laloo and his men are fighting for the unofficial position of 'Super CM'," he said.

"Why should the people of suffer because of the fight among leaders within the grand alliance for supremacy?" he asked.
A 48-year-old Bolivian woman, a member of an international drug ring, has been arrested here for smuggling drugs worth 40 million Lankan rupees after arriving on a flight from India.

The Customs spokesman Dharmasena Kahandawa said the woman was arrested yesterday when she landed at the Colombo International Airport from India. She is a member of an international drug ring.

She had flown from Brazil to Ethiopia and then to India carrying close to 3 kilos of cocaine valued at 40 million Sri Lanka rupees, the officials said.

The arrest came as the President Maithripala Sirisena announced last week that security forces are to be placed on high alert to prevent the smuggling in of heroin to the country.

In July, the Sri Lanka Customs seized 80 kilos of cocaine inside a sugar container which was imported from Brazil.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Brazil's lower house of Congress has voted to oust its former speaker Eduardo Cunha, who spearheaded the drive to impeach president only to suffer his own graft-stained downfall.

Cunha, who is often compared to the dark, manipulative villain Frank Underwood of the hit Netflix series "House of Cards," was stripped of his seat in the Chamber of Deputies by a resounding vote of 450 in favor, 10 against and nine abstentions.

"I declare lawmaker Eduardo Cunha stripped of office for conduct incompatible with lawmakers' duties," said the decision read out at the conclusion of the late-night session.

Cunha, a 57-year-old conservative allied with the Evangelical Christian right, was a central figure in Brazil's long impeachment drama.

His enemies accuse him of using his power to launch impeachment proceedings as a trump card to stave off his own prosecution for allegedly taking millions of dollars in bribes.

He resigned as speaker in July amid swirling accusations of corruption linked to the huge state oil company Petrobras.

He was forced to face the music in Congress for having "lied" to other lawmakers about his possession of secret Swiss bank accounts.

Cunha, who denies any wrongdoing, handled his own defense at Monday's session. He mainly displayed the cool and calculating persona he is known for, but occasionally his voice broke with emotion.

"I didn't lie. There's no bank account. Where's the proof?" he said.

"Don't judge me based on what public opinion says," he implored, reminding his colleagues that at least 160 of them also face judicial investigations.

But his appeals fell on deaf ears. The vote against him was well clear of the simple majority of 257 needed in the 513-member chamber.

Cunha was first suspended in May, less than a month after lawmakers voted to open impeachment proceedings against Rousseff, Brazil's first woman president.

Rousseff was definitively removed from office on August 31, and replaced by her vice president turned nemesis, Michel Temer.

The new center-right administration brought an end to 13 years of leftist rule in Brazil.
A day after outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery water with Tamil Nadu, offices of IT giants TCS, Infosys and Wipro as also e-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon remained closed in the city today.

Many employees were asked to work from home as the companies invoked business continuity plans to ensure there is no disruption to mission critical projects.

India's top three IT firms  Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro  which have a significant presence in the city declared a holiday on Tuesday. The three alone have over 70,000 people working at their campuses in the country's IT capital.

In an e-mailed statement, Wipro said: "Wipro has declared a holiday for employees in Karnataka on Tuesday, September 13. In lieu of this holiday, Saturday, September 17, will be a working day for offices of Wipro in the state."

It added that business continuity plans had been invoked to avoid disruption to mission critical projects.

An Amazon India spokesperson said delivery of products has been temporarily impacted owing to the current situation.

"We will resume all deliveries at the earliest. We have advised our employees to work from home today and continue to monitor developments," she added.

Flipkart Head (Supply Chain Operations) Neeraj Aggarwal said the company has stalled operations to ensure safety of its delivery staff.

"We are trying to mitigate all customer impact by keeping them informed about expected delays," he added.

ALSO READ: Cauvery row: Normalcy appears to return; Karnataka govt to comply with SC order

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Karnataka yesterday as the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu turned violent, escalating tension between the two states.

Bengaluru city police, bolstered by central forces, is keeping a tight vigil, particularly in areas inhabited by Tamils and other "sensitive" localities.

Violence targeting Tamil Nadu buses and lorries and other vehicles put the city on edge yesterday and curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits last night. The entire city is under prohibitory orders till September 14.
The AFC Cup quarterfinal between Bengaluru FC and Singapore's Tampines Rovers will be played behind closed doors here tomorrow after incidents of street violence and vandalism in the city owing to the Cauvery water dispute.

Bengaluru FC took the decision after consultation with the Bengaluru Police, AFC and AIFF as tension in the state escalated following the Supreme Court directive to Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of water from Cauvery to Tamil Nadu.

"The match will now be played behind closed doors, and has been rescheduled to 4 pm. Earlier the match was scheduled for 7 pm start," a BFC official told PTI.

The BFC said in a statement on its website, "It has been a rather delicate 24 hours for the state of Karnataka and specifically, the city of Bengaluru. In the wake of the recent turn of events and after lengthy consultation with the Bengaluru Police, the AFC and the AIFF, we at Bengaluru FC have to take this extreme decision."



The areas falling under Cauvery basin have been witnessing tension and violence with pro-Kannada outfits causing damage to properties and torching Tamil Nadu vehicles.

Following violence in the city, which also claimed two lives including a person falling prey to a police bullet, the Karnataka Government had imposed curfew in areas falling under 16 police station limits and clamped section 144 in the entire city.

The official also said fans and media will not be allowed to watch the match due to security reasons.

"We always thrive on the support that you - our passionate home fans bring to the stands, and as much as we will be handicapped by your absence, your safety and security will always mean more to us than everything else," the statement said.

Commenting on the match, incumbent BFC manager Albert Roca expressed his disappointment saying it was an unfortunate development, but pledged to put up a good show.

"It is unfortunate that we will not have our fans. It's a real shame but we need to accept it and put on a good performance. I have spoken to the players, and it won't be an excuse. Everyone wants to play with support but we will try to do our best," he said.

Fans expecting an exciting clash expressed their disappointment.

"We are extremely unhappy and it is a huge blow for the home team as they would be devoid of support coming from the fans, who are quite vociferous in the stadium," Shamshuddin, an avid BFC fan said.

Replying to a query Roca said Udanta Singh was fit, but would be used adequately.

Replying to yet another query, Roca said Sunil Chettri will be playing the match despite signing for Mumbai City FC in the Indian Super League.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Condemning instances of violence targeting Tamil speaking people and their property in Karnataka, Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry here today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and hold talks with both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for an amicable settlement.

"The violence including burning and damaging of more than 50 buses and many other vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu registration and also torching of properties belonging to Tamilians is deplorable," chamber president Vanitha Mohan said in a statement here.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi should intervene and hold talks with both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for an amicable settlement on the issue," she said.

A large number of youths from Tamil Nadu are employed in several IT companies in Bengaluru, she said and sought the intervention of the Karnataka Chief Minister in ensuring their safety and protection from untoward incidents.

She also urged the Karnataka government to initiate stringent action to maintain law and order in the state "as mob attacks, violence and damage to properties will not in any way resolve the issue.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In the backdrop of violence in Bengaluru and other parts of Karnataka over the Cauvery water issue, the city police here today issued advisory to TV channels asking them not to air visuals pertaining to the violence, which may potentially create law and order problem here.

"It has been brought to the notice of the Authorised Officer under The Cable TV Networks ( Regulation) Act 1995, that visuals having huge potential for inciting mob violence which relate to the ongoing violence in Bangalore (Bengaluru) city are being transmitted/retransmitted through the Cable TV Networks in Hyderabad city," the police said in a statement.

"As per the Program Code under the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, no program shall be transmitted/ retransmitted in the cable service which is likely to encourage or incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order," it added.

The managements of the concerned channels are liable for prosecution for Violation of Program Code under section 16 of the said Act if they disobey the law, said the statement.

In view of the large congregations of people expected on account of ongoing Bakrid and Ganesh Festivities here, the managements of all the TV channels and Cable TV network operators are advised to adhere to the program code in the interest of maintenance of public order and peace in the city, it added.

A day after being rocked by large-scale violence, Bengaluru appeared to limp back to normal today with sporadic protests, even as the Karnataka government decided to comply with the Supreme Court's modified order to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The violence in the Cauvery water dispute claimed its second life today, as an uneasy calm hung over worst-hit Bengaluru amid sporadic protests in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu marked by targeted attacks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed pain over the attacks in the two states locked in a bitter river water sharing row and appealed for calm while stressing that violence cannot provide solution to any problem. He asserted that the dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit and "breaking the law is not a viable alternative".

As the country's IT capital and other affected districts showed signs of limping back to normalcy, Karnataka government decided to obey the Supreme Court's modified order asking it to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu till September 20 and warned of dealing with violence during protests against it with an "iron hand".

The decision was taken after an emergency Cabinet meeting presided by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was held in Bengaluru to take stock of the Apex Court direction and yesterday's violence over release of water.

Hundreds of security personnel kept a tight vigil even as police said 365 people were arrested in connection with the violence in Karnataka which was blamed on Kannada activists and fringe groups. Police are conducting combing operations in several sensitive areas and dispersing assembled crowds.

Protests over the Cauvery issue continued in some parts of Tamil Nadu for the second day with fringe outfits like Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK) holding agitations outside Kannada establishments in Chennai and in Coimbatore. Inter-state bus movements between the two states were also affected.

The toll in the Cauvery stir related violence rose to two when a 30-year old man, who had allegedly jumped in panic from a three-storey building while trying to escape police lathicharge in Bengaluru,succumbed to multiple injuries today.

"Kumar, about 30 years old, has died. He was brought to ourhospital at 9:30 last night in a critical stage. He is said to have jumped from third floor of a building as he was trying toescape from a lathicharge yesterday," Dr Giridhar, Managing Director of Lakshmi Multi-Speciality Hospital, said.

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in the country's IT capital yesterday after sudden eruption of widespread violence, escalating tensions between the two states.

Curfew, imposed late last night, continued to remain in force in 16 police station limits of Bengaluru which is under prohibitory orders till September 14. There were very few vehicles moving on city roads, with schools and colleges and also government offices remaining shut due to Bakrid holiday.

A bus that was half burnt yesterday was torched once again today near New Timber layout and another vehicle was also set on fire near Tigalarapalya. Both had Tamil Naduregistration number plates.

Police lobbed tear gas at Hegganahalliand Pattegarapalaya as protesters tried to burn tyres on the streets, defying curfew.

Sporadic protests have been reported in differentparts of the state like Mandya, Chitradurga, Ramanagara andMysuru.

In Chitradurga, a lorry bearing Tamil Nadu registration number was burnt, while in Ramanagara protesters held demonstrations in front of a farmhouse that reportedly belongs to a daughter of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. Shooting of a Tamil film was stopped by protesters atJaganmohan palace in Mysuru, police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The CBI today filed a petition before the Calcutta High Court seeking cancellation of the bail granted to former West Bengal transport minister Madan Mitra, an accused in the multi-crore Saradha scam, by a city court.

The Alipore Sessions Court had, on September 9, granted bail to Mitra, after he spent over 21 months in prison in connection with the chit fund scam.

The matter is likely to be taken up by an appropriate bench of the High Court later this week.

The CBI challenged the bail on the ground that Mitra was still "influential" and "an inseparable part" of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the state, despite not being a minister or an MLA at present and thus, him being out on bail could affect the witnesses in the case.

"We have included every relevant point in the petition to prove that Mitra is an influential person," a source close to the development told PTI.

Alipore Sessions Court judge Uttam Kumar Nandy had, on Friday last, granted the relief to Mitra on a bail bond and surety of Rs 15 lakh each, rejecting the CBI's opposition.

Imposing conditions on his bail, the court had directed Mitra to appear before the CBI investigating officer once a week, surrender his passport and not to leave Bhowanipore police station limits.

The former minister has been charged under sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant), 420 (cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.

Mitra's counsel had pleaded for bail contending that he was no longer an influential person since he was neither a minister nor an MLA, nor was he holding any party post now.

He had also alleged that the CBI was delaying the investigation and as such, Mitra should be granted bail.

The CBI counsel opposed his plea, saying the investigation into the Saradha scam, involving over Rs 2,500 crore of public money, was at a "crucial stage" and releasing Mitra now could hamper the process because the former minister was still "a very influential person" and had access to key witnesses in the case.

Mitra, who was arrested on December 12, 2014 for his alleged complicity in the Saradha scam, was earlier granted bail by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) of Alipore Sessions Court on October 31, 2015 after several of his bail pleas were rejected by different courts.

But, the breather had turned out to be a brief one as the Calcutta High Court cancelled his bail on November 19 on a petition by the investigating agency.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The three BJP-led municipal corporations today sought to downplay the health crisis gripping Delhi, even as the city has reported four more deaths due to chikungunya, including one at a civic-run hospital.

Senior leaders from the three corporations, at a press conference, claimed that the "situation was under control" though health experts have termed the spiralling number of chikungunya cases, an "outbreak situation".

According to a report released yesterday by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, at least 1,057 cases of this vector-borne disease have been recorded till September 10, however, hospitals in the city altogether are reporting much higher number.

SDMC is the nodal agency for tabulating the report on the cases of the vector-borne diseases, on behalf of all civic bodies in Delhi.

Leader of House in SDMC and former South Delhi mayor Subhash Arya said, "People should not panic as the situation was still under control."



Arya, who was accompanied by Leader of House in NDMC, V P Pandey, East Delhi Mayor Satya Sharma, SDMC Standing Committee Chairman Shailendra Singh Monty and NDMC Standing Committee Chairman Pravesh Wahi, faced a barrage of tough questions from the press, even as the leaders claimed "adequate measure" were being taken to combat the situation.

"Fogging is being done in all our areas. We have already pressed 12 mobile fever vans in south Delhi and now we are planning to run them in two shifts instead of just one. Leaves of all health personnel have been cancelled from August onwards," Arya said.

Incidentally, mayors of North Delhi and South Delhi were conspicuous by their absence. North Delhi Mayor Sanjeev Nayyar is out of country while South Delhi Mayor Shyam Sharma is out of Delhi, a senior civic official said.

While hospitals in Delhi have reported at least nine deaths from dengue this year and five from chikungunya, including one this evening, the civic bodies have acknowledged only four deaths from dengue and fatality from chikungunya is still unaccounted.

75-year-old Prakash Kalra, a resident of Mathura, died of the disease this evening at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, where three other elderly men succumbed to it yesterday.

22-year-old Isha died on September 1 at the Hindu Rao Hospital which was also reported today. She died of cardiac arrest triggered by complications from chikungunya, a senior doctor of the hospital said.

Hindu Rao is run under the North Delhi Municipal Corporation and is one of the biggest hospitals in Delhi.

"Given the number of cases and five deaths in quick succession, it is an epidemic-like situation," a senior doctor at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China and Vietnam have agreed to "properly manage" their differences over territorial disputes in the South China Sea and "safeguard stability" after an international tribunal rejected the Chinese claims over the region on a petition brought before it by the Phillipines.

The decision came after talks between Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang here.

Phuc's visit to China is the first by a top Vietnamese leader after the tribunal verdict on July 12.

China had rejected the verdict by The Hague-based tribunal, which has said that "although Chinese navigators and fishermen, as well as those of other states, had historically made use of the islands in the South China Sea, there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or their resources."



China is now persuading other claimants - Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei - to settle the disputes bilaterally, without approaching for international arbitration.

State-run Xinhua reported that China and Vietnam have agreed "to properly manage maritime differences and further enhance bilateral substantial cooperation" after Phuc-Li talks last night.

Li and Phuc witnessed the signing of agreements on economy and trade, production capacity, infrastructure and education, the report said, without giving details.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters that the two leaders had a "good" conversation and the new government of Vietnam shows "positive willingness" to further develop relations with China.

During the talks, Li told Phuc that the SCS issue is related to territorial sovereignty, maritime interests as well as national sentiment.

"China and Vietnam need to work together to abide by agreements reached by the leaders of the two countries, safeguard stability in the South China Sea, and build consensus to advance bilateral ties and safeguard maritime and regional peace," Li said.

Phuc said Vietnam would like to properly resolve maritime issues with China in the spirit of equality and mutual respect and in a peaceful way, the report said.

He suggested the two sides manage their differences, conduct maritime cooperation in areas of low sensitivity and maintain a stable situation in the South China Sea to prevent the maritime issue from casting a shadow over bilateral ties.

Phuc is leading the largest Vietnamese delegation ever to China, consisting 32 ministerial officials and other delegates, Liu said.

His visit to China comes in the back drop of this month's visit to Hanoi by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during which the two countries agreed to step up their ties form strategic partnership to a "comprehensive strategic partnership".

Officials here say by stepping up ties with India, US and Japan, the Communist Vietnam is trying to balance ties to increase leverage with China.

Li also suggested that China, Vietnam carry out cultural and people-to-people exchanges and enhance cooperation in areas including defence and law enforcement.

(Reopens FES 91)



In his meeting with Phuc today, President Xi Jinping said China and Vietnam should solve the SCS dispute through talks.

Common interests between the two countries far outweigh the differences, Xi said adding that China and Vietnam can manage their differences and promote maritime cooperation through friendly negotiations.

Both sides should use the current negotiation mechanisms to actively push the follow-up work of joint exploration of waters outside the Beibu Gulf, Xi said.

He called on the two countries to achieve substantial progress on the joint development of wider areas of the South China Sea at an early date and transform maritime challenges into opportunities for cooperation.
Former Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president E V K S Elangovan on Tuesday demanded that the Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa to form an all party delegation and meet the Prime Minister on the Cauvery issue and also the alleged attack on Tamilians and destruction of their properties at Bengaluru.

Speaking to reporters in Erode, he said the Chief Minister should get necessary compensation for the affected Tamils from the Karnataka government and distribute the amount.

Elangovan welcomed the Supreme Court directive to Karnataka for release of water daily to Tamil Nadu and said the present quantum of water released by that state was inadequate. At least 30 thousand million cubic feet of water should be released.

He also urged people of Tamil Nadu not to retaliate by destroying Karnataka registration buses and other vehicles.

Elangovan lambasted the Tamilnadu Chief Minister for her 'failure' to meet the Prime Minister on the Cauvery issue and subsequent attack on Tamilians.

To a question he said, a party delegation may meet the All India Congress Committee president and explain the necessity for water from Karnataka and also to instruct the Karnataka CM to take steps to provide necessary water for Tamilnadu.

He claimed there was no vaccum in the Congress in the state after his resignation.

Elangovan said the alliance with Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam would continue for the coming local body elections also and seat sharing would be only after declaring the date was made known.
A policeman injured in a militant attack on security forces on Independence Day in Kashmir died at AIIMS on Monday.

Constable Rous Ahmed had sustained injuries in the terror attack in Srinagar's Nowhatta area. He succumbed to injuries at the hospital this morning, a police official said.

A CRPF officer and two militants were killed while nine security personnel were injured when militants attacked security forces at Nowhatta in downtown Srinagar.
The says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for killing.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, speaking in Paris, said dialogue "is the only way," but didn't elaborate on how it should take place or with whom.

He insisted that Islam should never be conflated with terrorism.

"A genuine practitioner of Islam must respect others' lives," he said, adding that someone who kills in the name of Islam or Buddhism "is no longer a Muslim, or a Buddhist."

He urged European countries to take in refugees, such as those fleeing Syria's war, but said European governments should also work toward ending the war so that the refugees can go home.

The himself fled Tibet and has lived in India for decades, effectively as a refugee, and is viewed by China as a separatist.

He slammed Chinese censorship as "immoral" but said he's optimistic that China will eventually relax restrictions and open up more.

He is on a weeklong visit to France for conferences on the environment, spirituality, secular ethics and preserving Tibetan language and culture.

While he is no longer involved in politics, the said he'd be happy to meet French President Francois Hollande. Hollande's office said no such meeting was considered, however.

China has frequently imposed diplomatic and economic punishments on countries whose leaders meet with the Dalai Lama.
A psychological crime thriller set in the Scottish Highlands and the tale of a disturbed young woman in 1960s Massachusetts are on the shortlist for the prestigious Man Booker prize which was unveiled today.

Nobel-winner JM Coetzee failed to make the six-name list for the world's leading English-language fiction award, which featured only one previous nominee, South African-born British author Deborah Levy.

Her "Hot Milk" is a story of an intense relationship between a sickly mother and her daughter set in a small Spanish fishing village which the jury said in a statement examines "female rage and sexuality".

Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet's "His Bloody Project" thriller "paints a painfully realistic picture of poverty in the tiny crofting community of Culduie in the Scottish Highlands," the jury said.

First-time author Ottessa Moshfegh, a Boston-born 35-year-old, was selected for "Eileen", a portrait of "an unassuming yet disturbed young woman" trapped between caring for her alcoholic father in a squalid house and her job as a secretary at a boys' prison.

The three other books shortlisted are David Szalay's "All That Man Is", a portrait of masculinity, Madeleine Thien's "Do Not Say We Have Nothing" about classical music in revolutionary China and Paul Beatty's "The Sellout", a satire on US urban life.

"The final six reflect the centrality of the novel in modern culture -- in its ability to champion the unconventional, to explore the unfamiliar, and to tackle difficult subjects," jury chair Amanda Foreman, a historian, said in a statement.

"As a group we were excited by the willingness of so many authors to take risks with language and form," she said.

The Foyles bookshop chain said in a statement that the shortlist was "excitingly wide-open, with Deborah Levy the only well-known author left".

The winner will be announced in London on October 25.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Aam Aadmi Party and Opposition indulged in a blame game today over the spread of vector-borne diseases in the national capital with the ruling party attacking BJP-led MCDs and Lt Governor Najeeb Jung holding them responsible for the "mess".

Earlier in the day, Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay denounced Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his ministers for "remaining absent" from the city as it fights to halt the spread of chikungunya and dengue.

Attacking Jung, AAP's Delhi unit Convener Dilip Pandey said the Lt Governor "claims to be the government in Delhi", but is nowhere to be seen.

He said the AAP dispensation is "working round the clock" to treat the patients not only of the national capital, but also from neighbouring states.

Blaming the MCDs, Pandey alleged they have failed to spend even 1 per cent of funds allocated to them under the Swachch Bharat Mission.

He said the Delhi government has made arrangements for an additional 1000 beds meant for fever patients and 262 fever clinics have been set up. Besides,, 106 'Mohalla Clinics' and 26 Delhi government hospitals are also serving the patients.

The AAP government faced criticism over absence of its ministers from the national capital while there is an oubreak of dengue and chikungunya.

While Kejriwal left for Bengaluru today for undergoing a throat surgery, his deputy Manish Sisodia is in Finland to study the country's education system.

Satyendar Jain, who holds the Health portfolio, was touring poll-bound Goa. He returned to capital late afternoon. Labour Minister Gopal Rai is in Chhattisgarh and Environment Minister Imran Hussain is on Haj pilgrimage. Only Water minister Kapil Mishra is in the national capital.

"The Modi government itself has accepted that in the year 2015-16, the North MCD was allocated a sum of Rs 46.28 crore under Swachch Bharat Mission and the entire sum remains unspent. Similarly, Rs 31.63 crore were allocated to South MCD, of which it has failed to spend even one percent.

"Same is the story of funds allocated by the Delhi government to BJP-ruled MCD. The MCDs have failed to give utilisation certificates for the money allocated to them," Pandey claimed.

He added that instead of taking preventive measures like sanitation and fogging, the BJP leaders in the municipal bodies are fighting for credit and indulging in blame game.

Attacking the BJP and the media for raising the issue of absence of Jain from Delhi, AAP leader Ashutosh said, "TV harping on Minister in Goa.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The government on Tuesday claimed it was at the receiving end of a "criminal conspiracy" as part of which Lt Governor Najeeb Jung "deliberately sent" the secretary on a 12-day leave.

Addressing a press conference, Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra defended the government, which is under fire over the spread of vector-borne diseases in the city, saying it has taken all the necessary steps including increasing the number of hospital beds.

He also sought to brazen it out on the issue of ministers missing in action by underlining the absence of Lt Governor Jung and North and South municipal bodies "from the city".

"This is a criminal conspiracy against the people of . First the secretary was transferred despite (Deputy CM) Manish Sisodia's request not to do so. Then the person who sat on the file of Chinese Manjha ban for six days was made the new Secretary.

"He refused to meet Minister Satyendar Jain time and again since being appointed. And then LG deliberately sent him on a leave of 15 days and himself disappeared. Where did he go?" Mishra asked.

Principal Health Secretary Chandraker Bharti is on leave till September 16. His leave was sanctioned by the LG office on September 6.

"No one knows where the mayors, councillors, the seven MPs and India's Health Minister are. Medicine was not sprayed, fogging was not undertaken. On our part, we have made arrangements for 1,000 beds, 256 clinics, have capped test rates," Mishra said.

Mishra is among the two ministers to be stationed in the city at this moment apart from Jain, who came back from poll-bound Goa earlier on Tuesday.
Delhi government today ordered a probe into the deaths reported in the capital in the last two days.

Four elderly persons have succumbed to this vector-borne disease at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here while a 22-year-old girl also died at Hindu Rao Hospital after suffering cardiac arrest due to complications triggered by .

"4 Deaths due to reported from one pvt hospital (Ganga Ram). No death in any Delhi govt hospital. Enquiry ordered," Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain tweeted tonight.

Jain today returned to Delhi from Goa, where he was campaigning for AAP.

"Medically, there is no death due to chikungunya, but media is showing deaths due to this disease. I want to make it clear that chikungunya is not fatal. There are 200 deaths in Delhi every day, but nobody asks about it," he told a press conference here, earlier in the day.

Doctors say that chikungunya is not a life-threatening disease in general, but in rare cases leads to complications that prove fatal, especially in children and old persons.

Sources said the probe would seek to find the exact cause of death.

Jain had also accused the Lt Governor of "paralysing" the health system in Delhi.

The Health Minister also carried out inspections of five Delhi government hospitals today and appealed to people to not panic.

"Visited 5 hospitals of Delhi govt, very good arrangements for treatment of Dengue & Chikungunya. No need to panic," he tweeted.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain today accused Lt Governor Najeeb Jung of "paralysing" the city's health system to deal with vector-borne diseases, at a time when the national capital is grappling with rising cases of chikungunya and dengue which have claimed eight lives this season.

Chikungunya is taking its toll in Delhi, with at least four deaths due to the vector-borne disease reported in the last two days even as its cases in the city have mounted to over 1,000, triggering blame game among the AAP dispensation, the BJP-ruled three civic bodies and the Centre.

"We had made all the preparations to deal with any outbreak situation four-five months ago, but the Delhi government-appointed Health Secretary was suddenly transferred by the LG.

"And, the new Health Secretary appointed by Jung has been given a 15-day leave at a time when dengue and chikungunya are on the rise. Our health system has been paralysed," Jain told reporters here.

Slamming all three the BJP-led municipal corporations, the Delhi Health Minister said that civic bodies are responsible for fogging in Delhi to keep mosquitoes away and they have "failed" in their duty.

Alleging that Delhi government officers were not following the instructions, Jain said, "Officers say that Lt Governor will complain against them to the Centre if they follow Delhi government's instructions. LG is terrorising officers and threatening them of sending to jail."



The Minister also blamed media for creating panic among the people about chikungunya and dengue, saying it is "media creation".

"Media has been given the contract (supari) to create panic. Medically, there is no death due to Chikungunya, but media is showing death due to this disease. I want to make it clear that Chikungunya is not fatal. There are 200 deaths in Delhi every day, but nobody asks about it," he told a press conference.

"LG claims that he is the government but where is he, at the time when Delhi is reeling under health crisis," he said.

Asked about the responsibility of an elected government in Delhi when the Centre and LG have all powers, he said that he is doing what he can do as per the rules.

Jain asserted that at present there was no dearth of beds in Delhi government hospitals but said in the wake of sudden spurt in vector-borne diseases, there may be a shortage of beds in near future.

"There is no dearth of beds in government hospitals. There are a total of 40,000 beds in hospitals situated in Delhi and out of this, only 40 per cent of beds are with Delhi government.

"Our hospitals are not refusing to admit patients, but other Centre-run hospitals including AIIMS are not admitting them," he said.

According to the government, there are 262 fever clinics, 106 mohalla clinics and 26 Delhi government hospitals.

Treatment and diagnosis of dengue and chikungunya are available free of cost in all Delhi government Health institutions.

"DHS Control Room has been established and a helpline number 011-22307145 provided for the assistance of general public for guidance and advice on Dengue/Chikungunya fever," he said.
The Delhi government today put the onus on Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and the Centre for the outbreak of dengue and chikungunya in the national capital even as Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues came in for criticism for remaining "absent" from the city.

Kejriwal, who returned from Punjab yesterday, said Jung and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be "questioned" over the issue as "all powers" rested with them.

"CM n min left wid no power now, even to buy a pen. LG n PM enjoy all powers wrt Del. LG abroad. Question them for Del, (sic)" he tweeted.

Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said in a tweet that officials of the Delhi government were busy following the "LG's instructions" of going through the files of the past 18 months and sending these to him.

There are five ministers left in the Kejriwal cabinet after Sandeep Kumar's removal. They are Manish Sisodia, Gopal Rai, Satyendra Jain, Kapil Mishra, Imran Hussain.

As the city reels under a major health crisis, virtually the entire Delhi Cabinet is missing from action as Sisodia, Rai and Hussain are out of station. Only Mishra and Jain are in the city. Jain, who was on a two-day Goa visit, returned to Delhi this afternoon.

Kejriwal left for Bengaluru, where he is scheduled to undergo a throat surgery today. He will remain there for 10 days.

Sisodia is in Finland to study its education system for about two-three days. Labour Minister Gopal Rai is in Chhattisgarh, while Environment Minister Imran Hussain is on Haj pilgrimage.

Also, Lt Governor Najeeb Jung is in the United States for 10 days.

Three persons have died due to chikungunya in Delhi. While one death was reported yesterday, two more fatalities were recorded today. The dengue and malaria toll stand at nine and two respectively.

Former chief minister Sheila Dikshit hit out at Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues for "touring other states while Delhi is reeling under chikungunya".

"As far as I know, all the ministers are out of Delhi. It is the responsibility of the government...More than negligence, it is a matter of playing with the lives of people," Dikshit said.

Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken slammed Kejriwal and Jung for "passing the buck".

State BJP chief Satish Upadhyay also denounced Kejriwal and his ministers for "remaining absent" from the city even as he directed the party-ruled MCDs to make best efforts to halt the spread of chikungunya and dengue.

At a press conference, the Delhi Health Minister said



Jung is "not allowing the government to work for the people of Delhi. He recently transferred the Health Secretary without my concurrence and has now given a 15-day leave to the new Health Secretary at a time when people are facing a health crisis."



"There is no dearth of beds in government hospitals.There are 40,000 beds in the city and central government-run hospitals, but only 40 per cent of beds are with the Delhi government. Our hospitals are not refusing to admit patients.

"The LG claims that he runs the government. Where is he now when Delhi is reeling under a health crisis?," he said.

Jain also accused the media of creating "panic" about chikungunya and dengue.

"Media has been given a contract to create panic. Chikungunya has not caused a single death in the world, but media is showing death due to chikungunya in Delhi. I want to make it clear that chikungunya is not fatal," he said.
An association representing dental doctors today sought increase in retirement age to 65 years.

A delegation of the association met Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh seeking his intervention against alleged discrimination towards them in the matter of age of superannuation.

The delegation led by H P Singh, president of Central Government Dental Doctors' association handed over a memorandum to Singh.

The doctors pointed out that whereas the central government has raised the superannuation age of non-teaching specialists sub-cadre, public health sub-cadre, General Duty Medical Officer sub-cadre of Central Health Service to 65 years, the same rule somehow, did not became applicable to dental doctors working.

This has led to feeling of discrimination and grievance among the central government dental doctors, they alleged.

The memorandum said that out of 34 sanctioned posts of dental doctors all over India under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, at present only 24 posts are filled and occupied, a release issued by the Personnel Ministry said.

The delegation underlined that they had represented their grievance to the Health Ministry and were now approaching Singh in the hope that, being himself an eminent medical professional, he would be able to appreciate their predicament better and project it appropriately to the concerned quarters.

Singh gave a patient hearing to the members of delegation and said that he would take up their grievance with the Health Ministry.

Other prominent members of the delegation included Gautam Khatak, D Kabi, Rahul Minotra, M Vasu, Meenakshi Panda and Nishtha Ramawat.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hillary Clinton has said that she thought her falling ill at Ground Zero was not going to be "that big a deal" as she promised to resume campaigning this week amid calls for transparency into her health condition.

In her first interview since she wobbled, stumbled and nearly collapsed during the 15th anniversary of 9/11 attacks in New York on Sunday, the Democrat presidential candidate said she felt dizzy and lost her balance, but did not lose consciousness, and is now "feeling so much better."



"I just did not think it was going to be that big a deal. It is just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you are a busy, active person, you keep moving forward," she told CNN last night.

The health scare forced the 68-year-old former secretary of state to cancel campaign and fundraising trips to California and has fuelled concerns about her medical fitness less than two months to go for the November 8 election.

It also prompted Republican rival Donald Trump a new opening and seek her medical record, which has remained an area of intense speculation since this was not the first time she has had issues surrounding her health condition.

Previously Clinton was afflicted by an uncontrollable cough for several minutes which forced her to stop speaking during a rally in Cleveland. And in December 2013, she had to be rushed to New York's Presbyterian Hospital after a medical scare following a fainting spell and concussion.

Her campaign initially attributed Sunday's health scare to overheating and dehydration. But later said she was diagnosed with pneumonia - an inflammatory condition of the lung.

"What happened (on Sunday) was that I just was incredibly committed to being at the memorial - as a senator on 9/11, this is incredibly personal to me. And I could, feel how hot and humid it was. I felt overheated. I decided that I did need to leave," she said.

Clinton, however, tried to defend her past medical record but admitted that it was something that has occurred a few times over the course of her life.

"I think it is fair to say that people know more about me than almost anyone in public life. They have got 40 years of my tax returns, tens of thousands of e-mails, a detailed medical letter report, all kinds of personal details," she said.

"I should have gotten some rest sooner. I probably would have been better off if I had just pulled down my schedule on Friday. But, like a lot of people, I just thought I could keep going forward and power through it. And, obviously, that did not work out so well," she said.

"As soon as I got into the air-conditioned van, I cooled off, I got some water and very quickly I felt better."



The abruptly rapid turn of events has called into question why Clinton delayed by two days revealing the pneumonia diagnosis.

Both Clinton and Trump have said they intended to release more of their medical details in the coming days.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to answer questions from Swedish investigators probing rape allegations against him from October 17 in Ecuador's embassy in London, Ecuadoran justice officials said today.

The Australian has been holed up in the embassy since June 2012, when he took refuge there to escape extradition to Sweden to face a police investigation into the rape claims.

Ecuadoran prosecutor Wilson Toainga has been tasked with taking Assange's statement in response to questions submitted beforehand by Swedish officials, who will be present during the process.

"Toainga will take the statement based on a list of questions submitted by the Swedish justice ministry," the office said, adding that he also would be responsible for "the possible taking of samples of body fluids" from Assange.

Two Swedish officials, prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and police officer Cecilia Redell, have been authorized to be present during the proceedings which will start on October 17, it said.

The attorney general's office said the questions submitted by Sweden would not necessarily be put to him the same day.

Swedish prosecutors contacted by AFP today did not comment on the announcement from Ecuador.

Assange, 45, who denies the rape accusation, fears the Swedes will turn him over to the United States to face charges for publishing a massive trove of US military and diplomatic documents.

He has previously welcomed the idea of Swedish prosecutors travelling to London to take his statement.

In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed an international arrest order against Assange, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention.

Britain also rejected the finding of the UN group, which is not binding.

A Swedish appeal court is due to rule on the arrest order on Friday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Environment Ministers of BRICS countries will meet later this week in Goa to prioritise actions for cooperation in critical areas, including air and water pollution and climate change.

The Environment ministers of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) will meet on September 16.

"The meeting is expected to discuss MoU and the Joint Working Group on environment. The BRICS ministers are also expected to discuss thematic areas of mutual interest and prioritise actions for cooperation in critical areas like air and water pollution, liquid and solid waste management, climate change and conservation of biodiversity. This meeting will be preceded by discussions at official level," an official statement said.

As minister of the host nation, Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave will arrive in Goa tomorrow to participate in the meeting.

The meeting assumes significance after the adoption of landmark global environmental agreements like Addis Ababa Action Agenda on financing for development, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Agreement last year.

During the Paris climate meet last year, more than 190 nations had agreed on setting ambitious goals for capping global warming and funneling trillions of dollars to poor countries facing climate catastrophe.

The pact will come into force after it is ratified by at least 55 countries that account for 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

India has, however, made it clear that no decision to ratify the Paris climate change agreement has been taken so far as its domestic processes in this regard were still underway.

The Environment Ministers' meet in Goa is one in a series of meetings being organized by various central government ministries in the run-up to BRICS Heads of States Summit in October 2016 at Goa after India assumed BRICS Presidency this year from Russia.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa comprising BRICS block, together accounts for 41.6 per cent of global population, 29.31 per cent of total world's territory and about 22 per cent of world's total GDP.

These nations have rich biodiversity and natural capital and the choices made by the BRICS nations have a global significance, the statement added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Madras High Court has asked the Tamil Nadu government to explain to it on September 19 why it had not given effect to a 1997 law aiming to regulate hair transplant centres, spas and beauty salons.

Justice N Kirubakaran said the state government must explain why successive governments had not framed the rules and when will it adopt the central Act.

The case was adjourned till September 19.

The matter relates to the death of a final year MBBS student, less than two days after undergoing hair transplant procedure a couple of months ago.

The issue came under judicial scanner when ARHT Global Hair Services Pvt Ltd approached the court to reopen its business in Chennai. It was locked and sealed on June 1, after the student's death.

When the petition filed by ARHT Global Hair Services Pvt Ltd came up for hearing on Friday last, senior counsel Vijay Narayan, assailed the closure order. He argued that it had licence under Chennai City Metropolitan Corporation Act, 1919, and was registered under the Tamil Nadu Shops and Establishments Act.

The judge pointed out that Tamil Nadu does not have a regulatory mechanism because it had not framed rules for its own special law (Tamil Nadu Private Clinical Establishments (Regulation) Act, 1997) enacted in 1997, and it also did not adopt the central law enacted in 2010.

The judge said the case established the fact that successive governments failed to take any follow up action.

Justice Kirubakaran said only four states--Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim, besides the union territories--adopted the central Act.

Karnataka enacted a law--Karnataka Private Medical Establishment Act (KPME)--immediately after the incident in which the student died, requiring beauty clinics, spas and salons in the state to register under the new Act.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A private medical college in Solan has allegedly denied admission to 150 medical aspirants, who were selected after counselling by Himachal Pradesh University, over the demand of fee hike, which has been struck down by the state government.

Parents of the students have complained that the college was not admitting students and have approached the government.

Principal Secretary (Health), Prabodh Saxena has directed the college to admit the selected students under both government quotas (75 seats) and management quota (75 seats including 13 NRI seats).

"The management of the college has demanded hike in fee but we have made it clear that no change can be made in the fee structure after the prospectus is published and counselling was over and have asked the college to complete the admission process," Saxena said.

The state BJP president Satpal Singh Satti has accused the government of mishandling the issue and said it should ask the college to admit the students and also no extra fee is paid for the seats under quota.

"The tussle between the government and the University is hurting the interests of the students and it is high time that the government intervened and admission to 150 seats is made and students were not burdened with hiked fee," he added.

"The government has already fixed an exorbitant fee of Rs 5-lakh per annum for government quota seat which is nearly 10 times the fee charged by the government colleges, negating the very concept of government quota, said a parent whose son has been nominate against government quota seat.

The process of admissions in three government medical colleges has been completed and classes would start from tomorrow but the students seeking admission in the collegehave been left in the lurch, said another parent.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden called on President Barack Obama to pardon him, saying in comments published today it had been morally "necessary" to shine a light on mass surveillance.

The former intelligence contractor has spent three years in exile in Russia after initiating the largest data leaks in US history, fuelling a firestorm over the issue of mass surveillance.

"If not for these disclosures, if not for these revelations, we would be worse off," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper in a video-link interview from Moscow yesterday.

"Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing, but that is perhaps why the pardon power exists -- for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things," he said.

The 33-year-old insisted he had widespread support, saying the "public by and large cares more about these issues far more than I anticipated."



Snowden, whose residency permit in Russia runs out next year, explained he was prepared to spend time in jail in the US, adding he was "willing to make a lot of sacrifices for my country".

US anti-establishment director Oliver Stone called for Obama to pardon Snowden while unveiling his espionage thriller biopic about the whistleblower at the Toronto film festival earlier this month.

Last year, the White House rejected a petition signed by over 150,000 urging a pardon for Snowden, saying he should be "judged by a jury of his peers".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The collapse of a British-era bridge at Mahad in Maharashtra last month could have been avoided had land acquisition and green clearances for an alternative structure been secured in time, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Tuesday.

"If land acquisition and environmental clearances had come in time, a new bridge would already have been constructed over river Savitri," he said at the Lokmat Infra Conclave in Mumbai.

The Union Road Transport Minister, who had owned up responsibility for the August 2 tragedy, rued people are dying on the Mumbai-Goa National Highway (NH) due to troubles with land acquisition, environmental clearances and shifting of encroachers.

"The Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, is concerned about this, I am also very concerned. But what can we do?" he said.

Gadkari said his ministry has prepared a Rs 12,000 crore plan for four-laning the busy highway and announced that full concrete road will be completed by 2018.

As many as 26 people were killed when a part of the over a century-old bridge on Savitri river near the town of Mahad handling north-bound traffic collapsed last month.

At least two state transport buses and a multi-utility vehicle plunged into the river, which was swollen due to torrential rains.

Noting that there has been a four per cent rise in deaths on roads over the last two years, he said the government's top priority is to bring down such accidents.

Having identified faults in road engineering as a major factor leading to accidents, Gadkari said a Rs 11,000 crore plan has been prepared to improve the roads at 786 specially identified spots across the country.

He said the government is targeting to reduce accidental deaths on roads by 50 per cent before its term comes to an end in May 2019.

The Lok Sabha MP from Nagpur said Maharashtra will receive special attention as part of the highway expansion and safety upgradation.

Maharashtra has 22,000 km of the overall 1.70 lakh km of NH, Gadkari said, announcing a plan to upgrade the Dehu-Pandharpur and Alandi-Pandharpur roads to four-lane concrete roads.

It can be noted that Pandharpur in the Solapur district in western Maharashtra is an important centre of pilgrimage and Gadkari said the roads will also help the warkaris (devotees of Lord Vitthal) who converge in the town every monsoon.

The minister announced that work on the over 320 km Vadodara-Mumbai express highway, which will be constructed at a cost of over Rs 42,000 crore, will commence from January 1 next year.

He said the total investment in road infrastructure in Maharashtra will exceed his previously announced target of Rs 2 trillion during the NDA rule, and can go up to Rs 3 trillion.

Gadkari said there is a potential to have at least 500 'bus-ports'  having same modern facilities as those available at airports  in Maharashtra alone, and suggested an equal joint venture between the Centre and the State Government as one of the ways of working on this project.
German police today arrested three men with forged Syrian passports accused of being Islamic State (IS) militants and labelled a possible "sleeper cell" with links to the Paris attackers.

More than 200 police commandos took part in the pre-dawn raids in northern Germany to detain the men, who were suspected of either plotting an attack or awaiting orders to commit one.

The men were identified only as Mahir al-H., 17, Ibrahim M., 18, and Mohamed A., 26, in a statement issued by federal prosecutors.

They left Syria last October and travelled via Turkey and Greece -- a route used by tens of thousands of refugees and migrants -- and arrived in Germany in mid-November.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the three apparently used the same migrant trafficking network as several of the IS gunmen who killed 130 people in Paris in November last year.

"According to what we know so far, the investigation of the (federal criminal office) BKA points to links to the attackers of Paris from November 2015," de Maiziere told a press conference.

"There is every reason to believe that the same trafficking group used by the Paris attackers also brought the three men who were arrested to Germany," he said, adding that their forged travel documents came from "the same workshop".

He said German police had surveilled the men for months and tapped their phones, meaning that at no stage was there a risk of an attack.

Prosecutors said in their statement that Mahir al-H. Had joined IS in its de facto capital of Raqa, Syria by September 2015 and received some weapons and explosives training.

The following month, all three men had pledged to travel to Europe in talks with an IS fighter who was "in charge of missions and attacks" outside of the Syria-Iraq region where the group has its self-proclaimed caliphate.

In Europe, "the three accused were meant to either execute a mission or await further instructions," the prosecution service said in the statement, adding that no evidence of "concrete orders or instructions" had been found.

The men had received mobile phones and four-figure cash sums in US dollars, as well as the fake passports, from IS, the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Alarmed by a slew of rallies by Marathas demanding amendments in Atrocities Act and quota, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said his government was taking steps to resolve "various social issues" concerning the politically powerful community.

The rallies have assumed significance in the view of forthcoming elections to civic bodies in state.

"The government has taken a serious note of the morchas being taken out across the state. The morchas are a reflection of the pent up resentment of many years within the Maratha community," Fadnavis said told Maratha leaders.

Marathas, who constitute 32 per cent of population in Maharashtra, are reportedly in sulk.

The rallies have been held since August at Aurangabad, Osmanabad, Jalgaon, Beed and Parbhani, and more are planned in Nanded, Jalna, Solapur, Navi Mumbai, Ahmednagar, Pune, Sangli, Satara and Mumbai from September 18.

Assuring the community that government was positive towards their demands, the CM said more consultations will be held with legislators, senior leaders, senior officers in the administration, various social organisations and student bodies.

"The government is taking steps to resolve various social issues of the community through dialogue without creating any caste tensions," he said.

State BJP president Raosaheb Danve later said the government was in agreement with various demands of the Maratha community.

"There is no cause for anyone to oppose the demands of the community," he said.

Sources said that BJP is dealing cautiously given that elections to major municipal corporations are due soon.

The trigger for holding the rallies was the gangrape and murder of a teenage girl in Ahmednagar district, as the accused in the case belonged to different caste.

Following the incident, Marathas are raising demand for amendments to the SC and ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, and quota in government jobs and education.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Hindu charitable organisation in the US has raised $100,000 for the plantation of a billion trees by 2025.

Raised through BAPS Charities Walk Green in more than 50 cities in the US, BAPS Charities presented the money to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in New Jersey.

$100,000 would help plant 70,000 trees in 2016, a Bochasanvasi Akshar Purushottam Sansthan (BAPS) media release said.

In all some 17,000 BAPS volunteers made donations for the event.

"It means a lot to us that your support is made possible by the thousands of BAPS Charities volunteers who believe, like we do, that a healthy planet is critical to building healthy communities where both nature and people can thrive," said Mark Tercek, president and CEO of TNC.

"BAPS Charities has shown that serving as good stewards of the planet is the collective responsibility that you take seriously. We also appreciate how you bring awareness to environmental issues and environmental opportunities on occasions like Earth Day and by supporting initiatives like planting trees, promoting water conservation and renewable energy sources," Tercek added.

"The leadership, support and successful promotion of conversation through the BAPS Charities nationwide walkathons, has raised awareness and support for the restoration of forests in US," said John Stapleton, TNC's Legacy Club Donor relations manager.
Megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who has joined the campaign of Global Citizen initiative to support causes like education and gender equality, says he is trying to hold his own personality among the young Bollywood stars, who have also come forward to become its part.

Besides Bachchan, stars like Aamir Khan, Ranveer Singh, Farhan Akhtar, Katrina Kaif, Shraddha Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor Khan support this initiative, and many of these actors will be performing with British band Coldplay in November as a part of the campaign.

The 73-year-old actor said he might be old as compared to the other stars but he will do the best he can.

"The future, the present, the carrying forward and the thrust of will to move this campaign forward centered around the youth and the young... Which I might add was a bit disturbing for the aged old man, trying to hold his own amongst a stronghold of the young!!!" he wrote on his blog.

The "Piku" star said he will work towards the expansion of this campaign in the country, hoping that it should not run for too long time as the actor is old and wants to see India get rid of poverty, illiteracy and inequality in his lifetime.

"It was a rewarding experience... And we shall be working toward its building and expanse... Expanse? They talked about efforts that should be made for the future 15 years to come...

"Which kind of excluded me from it altogether... 15 years and if it is willed I should be well into what, 90 years... that is a tall order... 90... It shall not happen this far...," he wrote.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The seventh edition of India International Tea Convention, IITC 2016, will be held at Udhagamandalam near hear for three days from September 22.

The event is being jointly organised by the Tea Board of India and United Planters' Association of Southern India (UPASI) under the aegis of the Consultative Committee of Plantation Associations, in association with the Indian Tea Exporters' Association, South India Tea Exporters Association and Federation of All India Tea Traders Association.

The three-day programme includes presentations by internationally renowned speakers and tea professionals on various topics and exhibition.

Tea Board Vice Chairman Bidyanand Barkooty and Commerce Secretary Rita A Teotia will participate in the inauguration function, UPASI Chairman N Dharmaraj said in a release today.

The 123rd UPASI Annual Conference will be held at the same venue on September 24, he said.

Preceding the main conference, there would be a commodity outlook session where presentations would be made by respective Commodity Board Chairmen and representatives on the current scenario and various initiatives implemented and contemplated with respect to plantation commodities.

Union Labour and Employment Secretary Shankar Agarwal and Additional Secretary Commerce and Industry Alok Chaturvedi will address the inaugural session, Dharmaraj said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a major boost to their energy ties, India and Russia today launched a Working Group for creating an "energy bridge" for a possible direct gas delivery from Russia and also directed their concerned ministries to finalise "concrete outcomes" in key areas of trade and investment by the next month's summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The discussions were held during the 22nd Indo-Russia interGovernmental Commission meeting today which were co-chaired by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

"The Intergovernmental Commission reviewed the preparations for the forthcoming India-Russia Annual Summit to be held in Goa on 15 October 2016.

"While expressing satisfaction at the progress made in regard to some projects, the Commission also directed concerned Ministries and Departments to focus on key sectors in the trade & investment spheres to finalise concrete outcomes by the forthcoming summit in October 2016," MEA said after the meeting.

Noting that on the investment front, there has been substantial progress with expanding cooperation in oil and gas sphere, MEA in a release said Indian and Russian oil and gas companies are working towards finalisation of investments in each other's countries.

"Both sides launched an industry level Working Group- led by Gazprom, biggest Russian gas company, and a consortium of Indian oil and gas companies- for creating an 'energy bridge' between the two countries through possible gas pipelines for direct gas delivery from Russia to India," it said.

India and Russia reiterated their strong desire to further broaden their strategic cooperation with emphasis on key sectors such as nuclear energy, space, modernisation, high technology, disaster management, and supercomputing.

Asserting that a new milestone was recently achieved in the India-Russia cooperation in nuclear energy with the dedication of Unit 1 of the Kudankulam nuclear power project by Modi and Putin last month, it said the two sides renewed their commitment to work together on remaining stages of Kudankulam 2,3,4,5 and 6; and other projects through localisation under the Make in India programme.

Stating that connectivity was a major theme of discussion during the meeting, it noted that implementation of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) project and the launch of the 'Green Corridor' project for customs facilitation are major steps towards better connectivity and trade facilitation.

Cooperation between Indian and Russian railways in the field of dedicated freight corridor, modernisation of railway stations, and training of railway personnel emerged as a new area to broaden cooperation in transports and logistics, it added.

India-Russia cooperation in pharmaceutical sector is also



expanding rapidly with Indian companies closely engaging with Russian partners to develop cooperation under the Russian 'Pharma 2020 programme'.

On the sidelines of the Commission's meeting, an Indian company Wockhardt and a Russian company PharmEco signed an agreement for joint project for insulin production in Russia under the Pharma 2020 programme.

Student and faculty exchange, cultural cooperation and tourism have emerged as new areas for bilateral cooperation, it said, noting that there has been 20 per cent increase in the number of Indian students studying in Russia, while there has been 14 per cent increase in Russian tourist visiting India in recent months.

It further said that a series of activities were being planned to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between India and the erstwhile USSR (now Russian Federation) in 2017.

"There will be a new emphasis on promoting cooperation among various states in India and federal regions in Russia, especially the Far East region of Russia- as attractive investment destinations," it added.
India and Mauritius on Tuesday explored greater collaboration in the area of defence and security even as discussions on the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Partnership Agreement (CECPA) between the two countries restarted.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday met visiting Finance Minister of Mauritius Pravind Kumar Jugnauth.

She appreciated Jugnauth for giving priority to visiting India on his first tour abroad which was in keeping with the very special blood relationship between India and Mauritius, official sources said.

She said India has always given full support to the development priorities of Mauritius.

We are finalising a memorandum of understanding under which the Metro Express project and other projects announced by Jugnauth in his budget could begin to be implemented, sources said.

The long-standing request from Mauritius for restarting negotiations on the CECPA and the Preferential Trade Agreement had also been met with discussions held on Monday in Port Louis, they added.

Swaraj thanked Jugnauth for the forward looking decision which had made the protocol on amendment of the Double Taxation Avoidance Convention possible.

This, she said, had added to Mauritius' financial credentials.

Swaraj said long-standing partnership between India and Mauritius had played a critical role in ensuring peace and stability in the Indian Ocean region.

In this context, both leaders called for greater collaboration in the area of defence and security. India offered to provide assistance in terms of hydrographic surveys, sources said.

The two leaders also discussed their concerns on terrorism and agreed to increase the collaboration in this area.

Jugnauth reiterated Mauritius' consistent support for India's bid for permanent membership of the reformed and expanded United Nations Security Council.

In terms of people-to-people contacts, the two leaders discussed the construction of the World Hindi Secretariat in Mauritius.

Swaraj invited significant participation from Mauritius in the forthcoming Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, 2017.

She said India would be sending a delegation this month to examine whether it can use the Girmtiya records for giving Overseas Citizen of India cards.

Girmitiya records relate to indentured labourers from India working in plantations in Mauritius.
India on Tuesday reacted sharply to remarks by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) on the Jammu and (J&K) situation, saying terrorism is the grossest violation of human rights and should be so acknowledged by any impartial and objective observer.

It also asserted that the unrest in the Valley has been aggravated by sustained cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

Maintaining that the UNHCHR has received conflicting narratives on the cause for the confrontations in the Valley, External Affairs Ministry said there is no comparison between the situation in the Indian state of J&K and Pakistan-occupied .

"The former has a democratically elected Government, while the latter has seen a Pakistani diplomat arbitrarily appointed as its head," it said reacting to the UNHCHR's suggestion asking India and Pakistan to grant it unconditional access to both sides on the Line of Control to establish an objective assessment of the situation in .

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein also said Pakistan has already handed over a letter formally inviting a team to the Pakistani side of the line of control, but in tandem with a mission to the Indian side.

In a statement, the MEA said the present situation arose from the death of a self-acknowledged commander of the terrorist organization, Hizbul Mujahideen, who was wanted for several terrorist acts.

"It was further aggravated by sustained cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan. Terrorism is the grossest violation of human rights and should be so acknowledged by any impartial and objective observer. The high number of casualties sustained by Indian security forces is a reflection of the tremendous restraint they have displayed in difficult circumstance," it said.

The ministry said the issue of an external mission was considered by the All-Party Conference on August 12, 2016 to discuss the situation in J&K.

"It was unanimously felt that Indian democracy has all that is required to address legitimate grievances. Accordingly, an all-party delegation visited Srinagar. Despite cross-border terrorist infiltration that saw an encounter only yesterday, the government remains fully engaged in normalizing the situation as soon as possible," it said.

India hopes that the connection between terrorism and violation of human rights would be recognized and deliberated upon in Geneva, the ministry added. The 33rd session of the Human Rights Council got underway in Geneva on Tuesday.

In his opening statement at the meet, Hussein said, "We had previously received reports, and still continue to do so, claiming the Indian authorities had used force excessively against the civilian population under its administration. We furthermore received conflicting narratives from the two sides as to the cause for the confrontations and the reported large numbers of people killed and wounded."

He added, "I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides."
India's rise on the world stage can shape a brighter future for Asia and beyond, as hearing its voice is "essential" at a time when the rule-based global order comes under attack, the US said today.

"United States unabashedly supports India's rise as a great power on the world stage. India's reach and influence reaches well beyond the Indian Ocean and South Asia," US envoy to India Richard Verma said.

The remarks came in the backdrop of China rejecting a ruling by an international court of arbitration rejecting its territorial claims over islands in the South China Sea.

Speaking at the National Law University here, Verma said India's rise was a good development for the rules-based Post World War II order, upon which both India and US have relied.

Since the end of World War II, the international system has been built through global institutions, international rules and norms, with key tenets such as resolving disputes peacefully under the rule of law, he said.

"When this order comes under attack - and it does from state and non-state actors alike - hearing India's voice and understanding its views is essential," Verma said.

The envoy said US-India relations have made great strides in the past two years in particular, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama having met 8 times, including last week in China and then again in Laos.

"We have well over 100 initiatives that were launched in three big bilateral summits and there are nearly 40 working groups that meet regularly on everything from global health and defence to cyber security," he said.

Verma said both countries have bi-cameral Parliaments, with one chamber designed to be closer to the will of the people, and the upper house, a more deliberative body, serving as a critical check on unfettered power.

"Our exceptional militaries are overseen by civilians, a key facet of a well-functioning democracy. Both our countries are melting pots - we celebrate and embrace diversity, we protect minority rights; we guarantee our people equal protection under the law and we embrace and protect free speech, the freedom of religion and the freedom of assembly," he said.

Noting that India too has gone through its share of challenges, he said like any democratic system, it will continue to face stresses and strains inherent in adapting to the needs of society, particularly in a more globalised world, and one where India is a leading power on the world stage.

Verma, who graduated from law school 23 years ago, said the two countries have established "a new paradigm" to address global issues based on the universality of legal principle and universal rights.

(REOPENS DES-42)



"As we know, not all countries choose democracy, inclusiveness, equal rights or free elections. Therefore, these are the roots of a special bond we share with India," the US ambassador said.

Referring to the changes India has undergone, in economic and political arena, Verma said that the excitement and confidence about the future is the vision of India his parents hoped for.

"Their India was quite different - uncertain, riven with conflict and division, and the daily struggle to make a new democracy succeed," he said talking about his first-generation immigrant parents.

"My dad often tells the story about how he was supposed to graduate from high school in Punjab in 1947, but the graduation was put off for a full year given the turmoil of Partition and independence. How times have changed," The US Envoy said.
Indian captain Anand Amritraj today hinted that Saketh Myneni could be Leander Paes' partner for the doubles rubber in the World Group Davis Cup play-off tie, in which he thinks the hosts have a "good chance" to earn a point against the formidable Spain.

Not only India but Spain are also undecided about the doubles combination as the two captains said the pairings would depend on proceedings of the first day.

Amritraj said if Saketh is not drained out completely on the opening day, he could well be fielded on Saturday.

"I am waiting to see end of day one. How long and tough is the first match for Saketh. We have three options," Amritraj said at the pre-draw press conference where Spicejet was announced as sponsor of the Indian team.

Spanish captain Conchita Martinez also said that outcome of the first day will determine who they field on Saturday.

They have French Open champions Mark and Feliciano Lopez and Rio Olympics gold medallists Mark and Rafael Nadal to choose from.

In a sort of damage control, Amritraj said in hindsight he feels playing in the evening is a good option as he would need Saketh to play on two days in absence of Rohan Bopanna.

"I changed my mind. Now we don't have Rohan anymore. Saketh has to be ready for two matches. If we had played in the morning, would have been tougher. In hindsight, looks like a good option," he said as the packed press conference burst into laughter.

The 64-year-old, though, said he still has fitness concerns about his players even though the matches would be played in the evening.

"I am still worried about fitness issues. Just because sun is not beating down at 5pm, it does not mean it is not humid. It's still tough, even for the Spanish guys as well. In morning, they looked like half dead, Feliciano Lopez I am talking about. In our case, our guy has to be in good shape to give it a best shot," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Singapore-based Indian-origin businessman Sunny Verghese has become a member of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, which will help accelerate sustainable growth in agri-business.

Verghese, Co-Founder and CEO of Singapore's agri-business group Olam International Limited, joins roster of leaders from the private sector, academia and civil society, who are committed to accelerating the world's transition to inclusive and sustainable growth.

The Business Commission's mission is to make a powerful case, supported by sound evidence, rigorous research and compelling real-world examples, for why business leaders should seize upon sustainable development as the greatest opportunity of a lifetime.

Its purpose is to show how the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide the private sector with a framework for making a real difference in addressing the major developmental challenges that we face.

"The world cannot achieve sustainable development without the full engagement of the food and agriculture sectors, which are critical to achieving not just one, but the majority of the Global Goals," said Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, Chair of the Business Commission.

"Sunny's leadership in agri-business will be essential to increasing the number of leaders who understand the incredible opportunity for both growth and sustainability in this sector," Mark said.

The SDGs, launched in 2015, are 17 ambitious targets for ending hunger and poverty, reducing inequality and tackling climate change by 2030.

"One of the meanings of the word Olam is 'enduring' or 'everlasting'. I believe the only way we can build an enduring business is to put sustainability at the heart of our business. This is reflected in 'Growing Responsibly', our core purpose, which guides us to pursue profitable growth in an ethical, socially responsible and environmentally sustainable way," Verghese said.

"I am excited to join the Business Commission, as it seeks to inspire and catalyse companies to embed sustainability at the core of their businesses and aims to foster collaborations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian-origin engineer Naveen Rabelli drove for 10,000-km on a solar-powered auto-rickshaw from India to London to create awareness of alternative mobility solutions for passenger vehicles in Asian and European countries using renewable energy.

The auto, also known as 'tuk-tuk' in some parts of the world, had set off from Bengaluru in February.

Rabelli, 35, arrived at Dover ferry crossing in the UK yesterday, five days later than expected because he was robbed during a toilet break last week as he approached the ferry crossing from France.

The diesel-powered autorickshaw cost him USD 1,500 to buy, on which he spent an additional USD 11,500 to get it ready for the zero-emission adventure, entitled 'Tejas'.

"The purpose of this journey is to create awareness of alternative mobility solutions for passenger vehicles in Asian and European countries using renewable energy - mix of solar and electricity," explains Rabelli, who refused to let the robbery in France get him down.

"My passport and wallet were stolen when I parked to go to the toilet at a fast food restaurant at Sarcelles, about 45 km west of Paris.

I reported it to the police, where there were some language issues but after a few hours they found an officer who could speak English.

They are very helpful and sorry when they heard that I was about to finish my trip," he said.

India-born Rabelli, who now holds an Australian passport, was able to acquire an emergency travel document and complete his journey.

He plans to drive up to Buckingham Palace in London this week and also attend the Low Carbon Vehicle Event 2016 in Millbrook, Bedfordshire, tomorrow and Thursday.

"The aim was to highlight an entirely Indian solution to the world and show the benefits of using a prototype that is reliable, feasible and affordable," said Rabelli.

The specially-modified autorickshaw, which is equipped with a bed, food cupboard and solar-powered cooker, was shipped from India to Bandar Abbas in Iran from where he kick-started the overland mission to drive through Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Austria, Switzerland, Germany and France before arriving in the UK.

His website solartuktuk.Com offers people the chance to track his journey and donate to his cause of promoting green transport.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Relation between Bangladesh and India has now reached a new height and both the countries are now keen in sub-regional cooperation in different sectors, Indian High Commissioner to Dhaka, Harshavardhan Sringla has said.

"Relation between Bangladesh and India has now reached to a new height and the relation between Tripura and the neighbouring country is also very cordial," Sringla, who is on a three-day trip to Tripura, told reporters here last night.

He said Bangladesh has taken very pro-active role in combating terrorism and India has also assured it to extend all possible help in battling the cross-border terrorism.

Sringla said Dhaka has allowed using its waterways and Ashuganj river port on Meghna, about 50 KM from here, for transshipment of iron rod and rice from Kolkata when the Assam-Agartala national highway was in bad condition and it also allowed using its roadways to bring petrol and diesel from Assam to Agartala.

"There is a responsible government in Bangladesh headed by Sheikh Hasina as Prime Minister which wants to build up a very amiable bilateral relation with our country," Sringla said.

He also met Chief Minister Manik Sarkar last evening.

"I have recently been appointed as the High Commissioner to Dhaka and as part of convention, I am visiting Tripura, he told reporters.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There would be continuity in Indo-US relations, irrespective of who wins in the US Presidential elections, an official of US Embassy in New Delhi said here today.

Mark Azua, Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer at the US Embassy, was addressing students at Khalsa University (KU) here on the subject of 'US electoral process and its ramifications for Indo-US ties'.

Mark said that US views India as its most significant strategic partner in South Asia and change of Presidency will not impact these perceptions.

He said the Indo-US relations will continue to be marked by mutual trust and cooperation in fighting against terrorism and pollution.

Mark was earlier welcomed by KU Vice Chancellor Dr S S Chahal who said that all eyes around the world were on who wins the US elections.

"US is an economic and military super power and change of Presidency will certainly affect world politics. Both India and the US are democracies fighting the common enemies of terrorism and religious fundamentalism, so the relation of the two countries would continue to be marked by the shared perceptions and challenges," said Chahal.

During an interactive session with students, Mark said, "Pakistan's across the border support to terrorism against India has been a major concern of the US."



"The emergence of China and its military-oriented aggression in South China Sea is also a matter of grave concern for India as well as US and thus both the countries foresee a future cooperation in strategic affairs," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Gujarat government has identified more than 200 infrastructure projects for foreign investment, a senior official from the state has told US investors.

"More than 200 infrastructure projects have been identified by the state government where there are investment opportunities for the companies," Bharat Lal, who is heading a high-powered Gujarat delegation, told a group of American investors during a road show in Chicago yesterday.

The Gujarat delegation comprising of officials and business leaders is currently on a trip to the US and Canada wooing companies to attend the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in January 2017.

More than 75 government officials and business leaders attended the roadshow organised by US-India Business Council (USIBC) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) at the Baker McKenzie office.

"Gujarat is the most progressive and trend setting state in the country and is years ahead on their approach in attracting global fraternity/investors into the state, said Ausaf Sayeed, Counsel General of India, Chicago in his address.

Lal said Gujarat is also keenly focusing on sectors like - Agro & Food Processing, Chemical & Petrochemicals, IT & ITeS, Healthcare, Renewable Energy and many others.

He further elaborated that the very culture of entrepreneurship that exist in Gujarat and the ethos of government, promotes business and industry as this creates opportunities for the people of not only Gujarat but whole India.

"Due to these characteristics, Gujarat has become preferred destination of business," he said.

Ajay Kumar Pandey, CEO, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) said it is India's first model smart city with world-class infrastructure, offering ease of doing business and numerous tax benefits to the companies who operate in the GIFT City.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Islamic community says it will repair and reopen the arson-damaged Florida mosque that was occasionally attended by Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen.

Hamaad Rahman, assistant imam of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, said the mosque's approximately 100 members are "saddened and scared" by the fire, which was started late Sunday and burned for more than five hours before it was extinguished yesterday.

The fire was started on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha.

"Our community is bigger than a building. We are stronger than that," Rahman said yesterday. "I feel we will be able to pull together from this, and as time goes by we will be able to rebuild."



The mosque has been subjected to more threats since June's nightclub shooting than it did in its previous 20 years of existence, Rahman said.

Given the timing of the blaze, investigators believe it may have been a hate crime, St. Lucie County sheriff's spokesman Maj. David Thompson said.

No one was injured. The fire burned a 10-by-10-foot hole in the roof at the back of the mosque's main building and blackened its eaves with soot.

A surveillance video from the mosque showed a man on a Harley-Davidson type motorcycle approaching the building with a bottle of liquid and some papers, then leaving when there was a flash and shaking his hand as though he may have burned it, Thompson said.

The first 911 calls were made about 45 minutes later after the fire had spread to the attic. It took about 4 1/2 hours for firefighters to extinguish the blaze. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, he said.

The arsonist "is terrorizing our community because we don't know where he is at and we don't know what he is capable of doing," said Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, Florida spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations who was representing the mosque's leadership.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The United States will provide Israel's military with $38 billion during the next 10 years, officials said today, the largest batch of military assistance the US has ever pledged to another country.

Following months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the State Department said the two countries had reached a 10-year agreement, with a signing ceremony planned tomorrow.

The US and Israel haven't disclosed the exact sum, but officials familiar with the deal said it totals $3.8 billion a year, up from the $3.1 billion the US gave Israel annually under the previous 10-year deal.

Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, planned to attend the ceremony at the State Department, a senior Obama administration official said.

Israel's acting national security adviser, Jacob Nagel, arrived in Washington ahead of the announcement and was also expected to attend.

Israel's government had no immediate comment on the deal.

Under the agreement, Israel's ability to spend part of the funds on Israeli military products will be gradually phased out, eventually requiring all of the funds to be spend on American military industries.

Israel's preference for spending some of the funds internally had been a major sticking point in the deal.

The new agreement also eliminates Israel's ability to spend a fraction of the funds on fuel for its military.

In another apparent concession, Israel has agreed not to ask Congress to approve more funds than are included in the deal, said the officials, who weren't authorised to discuss the details publicly ahead of a formal announcement and requested anonymity.

The agreement concludes many months of negotiations that involved a delicate calculation by Jerusalem about whether to strike a deal with the outgoing US president.

In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quietly floated the prospect of waiting for Obama's successor in hopes of securing a better deal.

But the Obama administration has been eager to lock in the agreement before leaving office to help bolster Obama's legacy and undercut the criticism that his administration was insufficiently supportive of Israel.

Obama's relationship Netanyahu has been famously fraught for years, and ties between the countries worsened significantly when the US and world powers struck a deal with a nuclear deal with Iran.

Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat and disagreed sharply with Obama's contention that the deal actually made Israel safer by limiting Iran's nuclear program.
has immense prospects in textile sector, which could create employment opportunities, state Chief Minister Raghubar Das said on Tuesday.

People of the state could be attracted to this sector with the government helping the textile companies evincing interest in setting up industries, an official release said quoting Das, who had a meeting with a delegation of Orient Craft.

According to the decision, the Orient Craft would set up an apparel unit in Ranchi and would begin construction from March next year, the release said.

The company would also assist in constructing Textile Park in Jharkhand, the release said.

Das said the company would help train the youth in the villages for employment with main focus being on districts where more migration take place.

The first phase of the training would be held in Gumla, Dumka, Khunti and Simdega, the release said.

It added that the company has a training centre in Lohardaga and imparts a three-monthly course.

Chief Secretary Rajbala Verma, Development commissioner Amit Khare, the Chief Minister's Principal Secretary Sanjay Kumar, Building Construction Secretary K K Soan, the Chief Minister's Secretary Sunil Kumar Burnwal were present in the meeting.
One of the two death row convicts in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case has moved the Delhi High Court challenging his conviction and the sentence awarded to him by the trial court.

Convict Amit Shukla, who along with accused Ravi Kapoor was handed down death penalty has approached the high court, saying the trial court has awarded him the capital punishment by "wrongly holding that the case falls in the category of rarest of rare".

The trial court on July 14 held Kapoor, Shukla and Baljeet Malik guilty on various counts, including the murder of 28-year-old IT executive Jigisha.

The court while sentencing Kapoor and Shukla to death on August 22, had said the girl was killed in a "cold-blooded, inhuman and cruel manner" and "brutally mauled to death".

The third offender Baljeet Malik was given reprieve from the gallows for his good conduct in jail. Malik has already challenged his conviction and sentence of life imprisonment by the trial court before the high court.

While seeking setting aside of his conviction and order on sentence, Shukla through his counsel Amit Kumar said the trial court has committed error by awarding death penalty simply on the basis of biased jail/probation report about his client.

"It has also not been noticed that for the similar offence one of the convict has been sentenced for life imprisonment," the appeal, which would come up for hearing on September 15, said.

Meanwhile, the trial court, which has awarded death to two of the accused has sent the case file to the Delhi High Court for confirmation of the capital punishment.

It is mandatory for a trial court to refer a death penalty case to a high court for confirmation of sentence within 30 days of the pronouncement of the verdict.

The trial court had also imposed varying fines on the



convicts, with Kapoor being slapped with a fine of Rs 1.2 lakh due to his inability to pay, while Shukla and Malik were directed to pay Rs 2.8 lakh and Rs 5.8 lakh respectively as pre-sentencing report suggested they were financially stronger.

The trio are also facing trial for the murder of TV journalist Soumya Viswanathan, killed a year before Jigisha.

It had also directed that out of the total fine of Rs 9.8 lakh, Rs six lakh be paid to the parents of the victim, and an adequate compensation amount be decided by the District Legal Service Authority (South).

It had held the three men guilty under several sections of IPC, including 302 (murder), 364 (abducting for murder), 201 (destruction of evidence), 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document).

The additional sessions judge, however, held that the charge of criminal conspiracy (120-B of IPC) could not be proved against them.

The police had filed the charge sheet in the case in June 2009, stating that Jigisha's post-mortem report revealed that she was killed by smothering. The trial in the case began in April 2010.

Recovery of the weapon allegedly used in Jigisha's murder had led to cracking of the murder case of Soumya Vishwanathan, who was a journalist with a channel.

Soumya was shot dead on September 30, 2008 while she was returning home in her car from office in the wee hours.

The police had claimed robbery as the motive behind the killings of both Jigisha and Soumya.
An uneasy calm prevailed in the city this morning after outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery River water with Tamil Nadu, as the Siddaramaiah government warned of "stringent" action against vandalism or attempts to disturb peace.

As the city police bolstered by central forces kept a tight vigil, particularly in areas inhabited by Tamils and other "sensitive" localities, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah made a fresh appeal for peace.

In a video message to the people of the state, Siddaramaiah warned of stringent action against any act of vandalism or disturbance to peace.

"There is pain among Kannadigas that Karnataka has been facing repeated injustice over Cauvery river water sharing issue.

"We are emotional on the issue of land, water and language, but we should not forget that humanity and human relationship within us is above all this," he said.

Holding that attack on Kannadigas and their properties in Tamil Nadu is "condemnable", he said, "At this time of difficulty we should not allow anger to take over.

"People of both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu should cooperate in maintaining law and order in both states. I would also warn strict action against any one indulging in any kind of vandalism or disturbing peace," hesaid.

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in the country's IT capital on Monday after sudden eruption of widespread violence, escalating tensions between the two states, now locked in a bitter tussle over release of Cauvery water.

As the orgy of violence targeting Tamil Nadu buses and lorries and other vehicles brought the city on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late last night and the entire city is under prohibitory orders till September 14.

Elaborate security arrangements are in place with 15,000 policemen being deployed, besides Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve Police, Rapid Action Force, Quick Reaction Teams, special forces, Central Industrial Security Force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force.

In view of the tense situation, the Centre has also rushed 10 companies (about 1,000 personnel) of the special anti-riot paramilitary force RAF to Karnataka after the Chief Minister spoke to Home Minister Rajnath Singh.



The city that saw widespread violence, appeared to be limping back to normalcy, with no fresh incidents of violence being reported since last night.

Maintaining that the situation is peaceful, police said stringent action would be taken against miscreants or vandals.

The bustling IT city was bereft of its monstrous traffic. There were very few vehicles moving on city roads, with schools and colleges also government offices remaining shut on account of Bakrid today.

State-run transport services remained skeletal with very few buses plying on roads in select areas.

Officials said transport services to Tamil Nadu remain suspended.

According to Metro Rail authorities, its services will remain temporarily suspended.

Prohibitory orders were relaxed in Idgah ground areasto facilitate Muslim community to offer Bakrid prayers.

Sporadic protests were reported in Mandya, the nucleus of the Cauvery agitation, where protesters burnt Tamil newspapers.

Meanwhile, Siddaramaiah held a meeting with senior Congress leaders from the state. The state Cabinet is also holding an emergency cabinet meeting today.

Water Resource Minister M B Patil said the cabinet woulddiscuss and "we will decide on what has to be done next."

The Supreme Court, modifying its September 5 order, had yesterday asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

In its September five order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighboring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September nine.
Two top US Senators have asked the US Secretary of State John Kerry to approve with "utmost urgency" India's request to buy unarmed Guardian Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) to improve its maritime surveillance capabilities in the Indian Ocean region.

"Guardian would aid the Indian Navy in meeting a vast spectrum of maritime security and maritime domain awareness challenges, such as maintaining freedom of navigation, maritime search and rescue, protection of commercial activity and disaster response," Senators Mark Warner and John Cornyn wrote in a letter to Kerry.

Warner from the Democratic Party and Cornyn from the Republican Party are Co-Chairs of the Senate India Caucus - the only country-specific caucuses in the US Senate.

The two top Senators wrote the letter to Kerry days after the issue was discussed by Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar with the US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter at the Pentagon on August 30.

It is understood that the Pentagon has extended its full support to the request made by India in this regard.

But a section of the State Department still needs to be convinced on this issue, informed sources said attributing this to a result of the strong Pakistani lobby here having launched a campaign against sale of unarmed Guardian drones to India.

In their letter dated September 2 - a copy of which was obtained by PTI today - the two Senators reminded the top American diplomat that improving India's maritime domain awareness is a key priority in the Joint Statement released by Carter and Parrikar in April 2016.

Deepening cooperation in the field of maritime security and expanding maritime cooperation was also a key part of US-India Joint Statement issued by the US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 2015, they said.

"Guardian is the only RPAS system that would fulfill India's maritime security and maritime domain awareness requirements," they said.

"The maritime environment in which the Indian Navy operates is both vast and diverse. Guardian provides persistent 360-degrees wide areas surveillance and is capable of operating at high altitudes, avoiding changing and unpredictable weather patterns over the Indian Ocean and beyond," the Senators wrote.

Cornyn and Warner argued that Guardian would enable increased US-India interoperability and would act as a force multiplier for our own forces in the region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sri Lanka will not go ahead with the joint venture with India's National Thermal Power corporation (NTPC) to build a coal power plant in eastern Trincomalee district, the Supreme court was told today, after strong objections from environmentalists and the public.

The decision of the Ministry of Power and Energy not to go ahead with the project in Trincomalee district's Sampur, was informed by the Attorney General.

The Environmental Foundation Limited had filed the rights petition on May 31 objecting to the coal power plant over its environmental impact.

They had highlighted the long term environmental impact from the project and its resultant health effects.

Sri Lanka government's Central Environmental Authority, Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and the Ministry of Power and Energy were cited as respondents in the case.

There had been protests over the resettlement of people displaced by the war with the LTTE in Sampur. Since the war ended, Sampur had been declared a high security zone due to the proposal to build the coal power plant.

The Sampur Coal Power Plant was proposed as a joint venture between the CEB and National thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC) of India and a Memorandum of Agreement was signed between the government, CEB and NTPC in 2006.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Syria ceasefire billed as the "last chance" for peace appeared to be holding on its first full day today, with residents across the country reporting a quiet night and anxious for aid.

The truce brokered by Russia and the United States saw guns fall silent at sundown yesterday, with the next anticipated step being urgent relief deliveries to desperate civilians.

In second city Aleppo - a key battleground in recent weeks - AFP correspondents in both the rebel-held east and the government-held west reported the night had passed without air strikes or rocket fire.

Residents remained out on the streets until midnight, taking advantage of the lull in fighting to celebrate the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

AFP correspondents in the government-held capital and its rebel-controlled suburbs reported they too were quiet.

Britain-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the main battlefronts were "completely calm".

US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Washington it was "far too early to draw conclusions" about the success of the ceasefire but urged all sides to seize the opportunity.

"For all the doubts that remain, and there will be challenges in the days to come, this plan has a chance to work," he said of the deal he agreed on Friday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

"I urge all the parties to support it because it may be the last chance that one has to save a united Syria," he added.

In the opposition-held central town of Talbisseh, which came under heavy fire in the run-up to the truce, activist Hassaan Abu Nuh said the regime bombardment had stopped.

"We usually stay up all night with the airplanes, but thank God last night we could all sleep," he told AFP.

In the largely rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib, where air strikes killed 13 people yesterday, an activist reported a quiet night too.

"This time, we were able to sleep well. Last night was amazing," Nayef Mustafa told AFP from the town of Salqin.

But he voiced skepticism about whether the truce would last.

"People are only expecting it to stay calm for the (Eid) holiday," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Forces opposed to Libya's unity government today seized a fourth oil port, completing their takeover of vital installations in the North African country's "oil crescent", a military source said.

Colonel Muftah al-Muqarief said his forces, who are loyal to controversial General Khalifa Haftar, seized the port of Brega "without any fighting", after having already taken control of Ras Lanuf, Sidra and Zuwaytina since Sunday.

"The entire oil crescent region is now under our control," Muqarief told AFP about the area along Libya's northern coast.

The officer said Haftar's forces took control of Brega, between Ras Lanuf and Zuwaytina, largely thanks to "mediation involving residents and town elders".

Libya has been in chaos since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with rival authorities and militia vying for control.

Control of Brega will be a fresh blow to the Government of National Accord which has been struggling to assert its authority.

The Tripoli-based GNA is opposed by an internationally recognised parliament based in Libya's remote east near the border with Egypt.

Haftar, 73, who sees himself as Libya's saviour after battling jihadists out of most of second city Benghazi in the east, backs the parliament which has refused to grant the GNA a vote of confidence.

The Brega takeover comes hours after the United States and its major European allies, which back the GNA, condemned Haftar's offensive, echoing remarks by UN special envoy Martin Kobler.

"I call for the respect of UN Security Council Resolution 2259 which recognises the Government of National Accord... As the sole executive authority in Libya," Kobler said yesterday.

Oil is Libya's main natural resource with reserves estimated at 48 billion barrels, the largest in Africa, but production has plummeted since 2011 as the country plunged into chaos.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A gang of four unidentified persons allegedly looted Rs 33.68 lakh from a cash van in Bhiwandi area here after stabbing two employees of the toll collection firm, police said today.

The incident took place yesterday at Kalwar when the accused waylaid the four-wheeler carrying the cash, which was to be deposited in a bank, a press release by the Thane District Rural Police said.

The four accused, who came in a car and a two-wheeler, also threw chili powder on accountant Ganashyam Tiwari and another employee of the firm and stabbed them, it said, adding the injured have been admitted to a hospital.

Following a complaint by Tiwari, a case under relevant sections of IPC has been registered and a manhunt was launched to nab the accused, said the release.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As a first Public Private Partnership between National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the apex bodies of Disaster Management in India, with a Private sector Corporation, a Master Trainers Training Programme was today launched in Tata Steel here.

The programme is aimed to augment its internal capability for structured emergency response as a part of Disaster Management Plan.

The training programme will continue till September 23 for 30 Tata Steel officers including doctors, selected across all locations in India, a Tata Steel press release said.

The ten-day programme will be conducted by the training team of NDRF.

Commissioner Amit Kumar, also the Chairman District Disaster Management Authority, explained about the urgent need of setting up of an Emergency Operation Centre at Jamshedpur to deal with any emergency effectively.

He appreciated the initiative of Tata Steel to skill the Master trainers on Disaster Management who in turn will train other employees and the members of community.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Writer Meghna Pant will be honoured with Kumaon Literary Festival's FON (Fellows of Nature) South Asia Short Story Award in Nature writing in October for her short story "People of the Sun."



The annual travelling literary festival gives this award in partnership with the French Institute of India and Wildlife Trust of India to "revive nature writing and bring the spotlight on critical environment issues like climate change through this form of literature."



"Nature writing was once considered to be the rock and roll of literature. In the last few decades, it has shown a steady decline. Like all extinctions, nature writing's gradual disappearance represents a profound loss. FON is our little effort to revive this art," Sumant Batra, founder of Kumaon Literary Festival, said.

The award was founded to build a community of writers who can become instrumental in reviving interest in nature writing and at the same time build awareness among public in order to facilitate the conservation of our surroundings



Pant's story was shortlisted from over 165 entries received from across South Asia. The Mumbai-based writer has also penned a novel, "One & A Half Wife" and a collection of short stories called, "Happy Birthday!".

She will be felicitated with the award as well as a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh here next month.

The winner was selected by a jury comprising of writers Jerry Pinto, Sidhartha Gigoo, Mridula Koshy and Shinie Antony from India, James Champion from the UK, Samrat Upadhyay from USA and Afia Aslam from Pakistan.

"Writing about the close relationship between humankind and nature plays an important role in creating interest and building respect for it amongst book lovers and others. There is a pressing need to restore this literary art," Asha Batra, Founder of FON Award said.

The organizers also announced the first and second runners up - Shabir Ahmad Mir from Jammu and Kashmir and Vrinda Baliga from Hyderabad respectively.

Sujata Parashar, Director of FON, said that an anthology of the top stories from the received entries will also be published.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A vehicle from Tamil Nadu in flames after it was torched by pro-Kannada activists during a protest over Cauvery water row, in Bengaluru

Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy on Tuesday urged the Karnataka government to take immediate steps to curb sporadic violence in that state, which has triggered following the Supreme Court's directive on sharing Cauvery river water with Tamil Nadu.

Talking to reporters in Puducherry, he said though Karnataka was releasing water to Tamil Nadu, the attacks on Tamils and their properties in that state deserves condemnation.

"It is indeed a matter of serious concern that Tamils had no protection in Karnataka," he said, adding that he would contact his Karnataka counterpart and request him to ensure protection for Tamils in that state.
The national capital will play host to India-UK tech summit in November this year which aims to bring together leaders in government, industry and research from both countries to broker new partnerships.

The India UK TECH Summit 2016, scheduled to take place from November 7-9, 2016 will provide a platform for promoting technology-intensive trade and investments between the two countries.

"Tech summit will show that when we work together, the UK and India are an 'unbeatable combination' as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stated. Britain is open for business and we want to do even more business with India.

"The UK has been the top G20 investor in India, consistently, since the turn of the century, and India invests more in the UK than it does in all other European Union countries combined. Our trade relationship is booming, our researchers collaborate on all manner of issues, and our people visit each other's countries for study and tourism.

"The TECH Summit will see British and Indian entrepreneurs, experts and leaders in various fields related to technology converge and drive our partnership further still," a British High Commission statement quoting British Deputy High Commissioner to India Alexander Evans said.

The summit will comprise of separate thematic summits on 'Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship' and 'British Expertise in Higher Education', 'Design and Intellectual Property'.

The summit will also host a major delegation from the UK, highlighting the UK's capabilities across important sectors like smart cities, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, agri-tech, education and skills.

The Summit will also host a major exhibition of UK-India technological collaboration and excitingly, a Hackathon organised by Barclays Rise, where young Indian students, entrepreneurs and tech-professionals will participate in a competition to find a solution to a specially-posed technical problem.

There will also be a focus on Indian investment and entrepreneurship in the UK and the 10 winners of the Tech Rocketship Awards will be announced at the Summit.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Britain's newest Indian-origin peer marked his entry to the House of Lords by swearing his oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II on the 'Rig Veda'.

Jitesh Gadhia took along his own later edition of the ancient collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns dating back to around 1,200 BC and has now gifted it to the British Parliament.

The 49-year-old investment banker of Gujarati-origin had been nominated for his peerage as part of former Prime Minister David Cameron's resignation honours list and he coincidentally took his oath of allegiance to the country's monarch on the day Cameron announced his resignation from Parliament yesterday.

"History will judge him (Cameron) to have been a great reforming Prime Minister, who brought the country back from the financial brink. I will be joining Parliament at a defining moment in British history as we grapple with the new realities post-Brexit," said Gadhia, who was accompanied at the traditional swearing in ceremony dating back to 1621 by his 90-year grandmother Gulabben Gadhia, mother Hansaben and wife Angeli.

"Having multiple generations of my family with me for this ceremony was hugely important. I wanted a copy of the original Sanskrit text of the Rig Veda but my research took me to this edition," he explained.

The copy of the 'Rig Veda' used by Gadhia, now Lord Gadhia, was edited and published in the traditional Devanagari script in 1849 by German academic Max Muller, a well-known pioneer of Vedic Studies in the West.

Gadhia, board member of UK Government Investments Limited and formerly managing director at private equity firm Blackstone Group, is well known in British Indian circles as a leading Conservative party donor. He had played an active role during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the UK last November and was a close aide of Cameron during his prime ministership.

Along with other new peers, he dressed up in traditional red robes to take a writ from the serving monarch called the Letters Patent. As part of the investiture ceremony, new members pledge their allegiance to the monarch and sign the Roll of Peers and the House of Lords Code of Conduct in a ceremony originally introduced by King James I. Over the past few years, new peers have been given the choice to choose their own religious text for the purpose.

There has been some criticism of Cameron as having created more peers than any other modern British prime minister, taking the total active membership of the House of Lords to more than 800 and making it one of the world's biggest legislative chambers.

He also came under attack for using peerages and other honours to reward his Downing Street aides and key Conservative party figures.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 30 activists of a fringe Tamil outfit were arrested here today when they tried to stage a demonstration in front of Karnataka Association office here, in protest against attacks on Tamils in that state over the Cauvery issue.

The activists of Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NMK), led by its district secretary Wahab raised slogans against Karnataka and proceeded to the association hall in Tatabad, police said.

However, police stopped them near the Association building and they were arrested.

Meanwhile, the Coimbatore district Omnibus Owners association decided not to ply their vehicles to Karnataka for fear of attacks on their buses and crew.

P Senthilkumar told reporters after a meeting of the association that 12 buses had been severely damaged in the last two days.

Considering the prevailing situation, it was decided not to ply buses to Karnataka till normalcy returned in that state, the Secretary of the association added.

Yesterday, one person was killed and another injured in police firing in Bengaluru after widespread violence erupted in that city and other parts of Karnataka following the Supreme Court's modified order on sharing Cauvery water by the two riparian states.

The Apex Court, modifying its September 5 order, had asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu tillSeptember 20.

The Court had on Sept 5 directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of Tamil Nadu, triggering strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September 9.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A man had to roam around for several hours with his wife's body in an ambulance as his landlord allegedly did not allow to keep it at his rented accommodation in Karkardooma village in east Delhi.

Chhote Lal, who runs a tea shop, had admitted his wife Anju, who was 35, to Hedgewar Hospital two-three days ago after she complained of high fever.

She died in the hospital yesterday, and it was suspected to be a case of "chikungunya", police said today.

When the grieving husband took her body to his rented home in Karkardooma, his landlord allegedly didn't allow him to keep it there.

He then tried to keep the body in the lane where his house is situated but some neighbours allegedly objected saying children in the locality could get scared.

However, Babloo, Lal's landlord told police he helped him with money so that he could get an "AC ambulance to keep the body".

He said Chhote Lal stays on the third floor of the house in a single room and the body would have started decaying had it been kept in the cramped space with no ventilation.

He told police that he had given Rs 2,000 to Chhote Lal and got an AC ambulance arranged for him to preserve the body for the night before cremation.

He also tried to take back the body to the hospital where he was allegedly told that they couldn't keep it there.

"With no option left, Chhote Lal then kept roaming with the body of his wife in the ambulance for close to four hours before he was spotted around midnight by the police beat staff near the Cross River Mall who came to know about his plight.

"When he revealed that he wasn't allowed to keep his wife's body at his rented accommodation, the staff called up one Bhanwar Singh, a businessman residing in the area around 12.30 am," said a senior police officer.

"Singh extended help to Chhote Lal and the body was kept at his house overnight. Some policemen and Singh's staff later helped Lal arrange for the last rites of his wife who was cremated in this morning," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The UN said today it had readied help for civilians in Syria's ceasefire but aid convoys would not roll until security was assured.

"We have been mobilising, stockpiling, readying ourselves for this great opportunity to deliver this very urgent aid but we need that peace to be reinstated," UN humanitarian office (OCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters.

A truce brokered by the United States and Russia last week appeared to be holding on its first full day today.

A key test of the deal will be whether warring parties allow relief to reach people in Syria's besieged areas.

Laerke said the UN was taking time to assess the truce's durability before it deployed aid to hotspots like east Aleppo.

Since the deal was reached on Friday, "there has been a lot of mobilisation, frantic activity to be able to rush in aid... As soon as it is safe to do so, however, up to this moment, no, the convoys have not been rolling," Laerke said.

"We need to enter into an environment where we are not in mortal danger."



The UN got the regime's approval on September 6 to deliver aid to nearly one million people this month, including to the rebel held eastern part of Aleppo, which has been encircled by government forces.

Syria's second city has been a key battleground for weeks.

East Aleppo would initially be supplied with food in trucks coming across the Turkish border if security is guaranteed, OCHA said.

East Aleppo's estimated 250,000 people have not received aid since early July, when regime forces cut off the last supply route.

The other towns covered in the September 6 agreement are Moadamiyat al-Sham Madaya, Zabadani, Foua and Kefraya.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Few people were feared trapped in the debris of an old three-storied building which caved in at Pathuriaghata area in North Kolkata late tonight.

The dilapidated building, falling under Goabagan police station limits, collapsed at around 10:30 PM but there was no report of any injury or casualty, a senior Kolkata Police officer said.

Personnel of fire brigade and disaster management force were working at the spot - 42 Pathuriaghata Road - to rescue the people trapped in the debris.

The entire place was cordoned off by the police to prevent onlookers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 1,100 postcards with a small message and tagline 'Badbu (stink) Gujarat Ki' were sent today to state tourism's brand ambassador and Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan by Dalits as part of a campaign to highlight "atrocities" against them in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The punchline of the campaign is a parody of the Tourism Department's famous television advertisement "Khushbu Gujarat Ki (scent of Gujarat)" featuring the megastar.

The campaign kicked off from Kalol town in Gandhinagar district.

'Una Dalit Atyachar Ladat Samiti' convener Jignesh Mevani claimed that hundreds of carcasses of cows are rotting in the state and Dalits want Bachchan to come and "enjoy the stench of Gujarat".

The unique protest was conceptualised by 'Una Dalit Atyachar Ladat Samiti' and 'Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch' against the backdrop of flogging of Dalits for allegedly skinning a dead cow.

At least 1,100 such postcards were sent to the residential address of Bachchan in Mumbai, Mevani said.

"We have started this campign from Kalol, where at least 1,100 Dalits sent one post card each to Bachchan. All the postcards bear a common printed message which urges him to visit Gujarat and sniff the stink coming out of cattle carcasses, as Dalits have stopped disposing them of as part of their protest against atrocities in Una," he said.

The flogging incident in July, allegedy perpetrated by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes, had sparked off a massive unrest in state.

"We have given up disposing the carcasses. Hundreds of cows are lying dead and stinking all over the state. Now that we have given up disposing dead cows, we are inviting Bachchan to come here, spend some time and enjoy the 'badbu' of Gujarat," Mevani said.

He said more such postcards will be sent to Bachchan from various cities of the state.

Mevani claimed that a team of Dalit leaders would also visit Mumbai to hand over one such postcard in person to Bachchan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than seventy per cent of the newly-listed companies are trading well above their issue price, giving handsome returns of up to 98 per cent.

Out of the 17 companies that came out with their IPOs and got listed on the bourses this year, 12 have seen remarkable gains against the price at which they had issued shares to investors, an analysis of the stock performance of the newly-listed firms showed.

The rest five companies, however, failed to see positive investor response and are trading below their issue price, falling up to 30 per cent.

Among the gainers, microfinance player Ujjivan Financial Services which made its stock market debut in May has seen the biggest rally in its share price and is currently trading 98.35 per cent higher than its IPO price.

E-commerce player Infibeam Incorporation, whose shares got listed in April, comes second by surging 96.52 per cent as compared to the issue price.

Shares of staffing firm Quess Corp has risen by 64.35 per cent, while Advanced Enzyme Technologies soared 61.38 per cent and Equitas Holdings gained 59.90 per cent.

Similarly, Parag Milk Foods shares have surged 54.88 per cent, Mahanagar Gas zoomed 47.24 per cent and Thyrocare Technologies jumped 36.32 per cent.

In case of RBL Bank, its shares went up 32.8 per cent, while of that of TeamLease Services rose 27.64 per cent.

Shares of S P Apparels and Dilip Buildcon rose 21.88 per cent and 5.70 per cent, respectively.

On the other hand five companies - Larsen & Toubro Infotech, Bharat Wire Ropes, HealthCare Global Enterprises, Quick Heal Technologies and Precision Camshafts - suffered losses and failed to trade above their IPO price.

Shares of software security solutions provider Quick Heal have fallen by 29.98 per cent.

In the stock market, the BSE benchmark Sensex has surged 2,236 points or 8.56 per cent, while the NSE Nifty gained 769.25 points, 9.68 per cent, so far this year.

The Sensex touched its 52-week high of 29,077.28 on September 8.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Residents of several villages in Murbad town here have reported hearing a mysterious "tremor- like" sound, weeks after some people in neighbouring Palghar district had a similar experience.

People in Mazgaon, Kanhale, Bangalpada, Tane villages have told the district authorities that they have been hearing an "unusual" sound emanating from the ground for the last one week.

Murbad Tehsildar Sarjerao Mhaske Patil said he along with a local police team visited the villages on receiving information in this regard.

Patil said many villagers told him they heard a "peculiar" sound on September 4 and a few times again last week.

"We have written to geological experts in Nagpur and sought their help. We have requested to them conduct a survey," he said.

The sound was mainly heard in the area surrounding Padala, an earthen dam in the taluka.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says he won't allow government forces to conduct joint patrols of disputed waters near the South China Sea with foreign powers, apparently scrapping a deal his predecessor reached with the US military earlier this year.

Duterte also said today that he was considering acquiring defense equipment from Russia and China. The Philippines has traditionally leaned on the US, its longtime treaty ally, for its security needs.

Duterte said that the Philippines does "not go into a patrol or join any other army from now because I do not want trouble."



Like other security pronouncements, Duterte did not provide details, but his rejection for joint patrols apparently goes against such an arrangement announced in April by the US and Philippine defense chiefs.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The assured the United States on Tuesday thet it will honour its obligations as a military ally following volleys of profane tirades by unpredictable President Rodrigo Duterte.

After calling US leader Barack Obama a "son of a whore" last week, Duterte said he was "not a fan" of Washington and called for the small number of US military advisers to leave the southern .

Duterte also said Filipino forces would not participate in future joint patrols with the US in the South China Sea, where Manila claims waters that China insists are part of its territory.

But top officials moved to stem the damage, saying that it was business as usual between the and its powerful ally, whose backing is essential as it jousts with China over the maritime dispute.

"There is no shift in so far as our policy is concerned with respect to our close friendship with the Americans," Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said on Tuesday.

The president's spokesman also insisted that Duterte's comments were providing context to the conflict in the south, not a reversal of policy.

"These were not directives to leave, OK? But this was a context on why we have a conflict (in Mindanao). In other words, he's giving a broad historical, cultural landscape," Duterte's spokesman Ernesto Abella said.

Yasay, who was flying to Washington later in the day for talks, added the Duterte administration would honour existing defence agreements including a 2014 accord giving the US military access to at least five Philippine bases.

One of the bases is located in the southern region of Mindanao, where the government is battling Islamic militants who have offered allegiance to Islamic State gunmen in the Middle East.

The Pentagon in June also deployed warplanes and about 120 personnel in the northern Philippines for short-term training missions aimed at ensuring the allies' access to the South China Sea.

Duterte's predecessor Benigno Aquino had pursued closer military ties with the United States as part of plans to improve the deterrence capability of his militarily weak nation.

In April, the Philippine Navy began joint South China Sea naval patrols with the US as the Pentagon responded to muscular Chinese actions in the sea, including building artificial islands over disputed reefs.
The world famous Ambaji Temple in North Gujarat's Banaskantha district has insured the pilgrims visiting the shrine against any natural calamity, including storm, cyclone and earthquake, for a period of 21 days this year.

Ashish Raval, Media Convener of the Shri Arasuri Ambaji Mata Devasthan Trust (SAAMDT), which looks after the shrine's affairs, today said the trust has paid a premium to the New India Assurance Company for cover ranging from Rs three to five crore, depending upon the circumstances and nature of calamity and extent of damage thus caused.

"The insurance cover is effective from September 1 to 21 and in the 20 km radius from the temple," he said.

Raval also said in the first two days of the 'Bhadaravi Poonam' mela, which is to conclude on September 16, a total of 4,35,103 pilgrims visited the temple.

During the same period, cash and kind offerings worth over Rs 65 lakh were received by the temple authorities, he said.

Lakhs of devotees from across the country and abroad visit the shrine every year during 'Bhadarvi Poonam' mela period.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 16-year-old girl, who was sold off and married to a boy in Noida, has been rescued and four persons, including a woman, arrested in this connection, police said today.

The girl's mother, who recently divorced her husband and had married another man from Jaipur, left her at the residence of the woman whom she referred to as her maternal aunt, before leaving for the Rajasthan's capital on September 4, they said.

Few days after returning from Jaipur, she complained to police that the woman, alongwith her associates, sold her daughter to some unidentified persons in Noida.

A case was registered under relevant sections of IPC at Nand Nagri police station and investigation was initiated.

Police raided several places after investigation and the girl was rescued from Noida, they said.

The girl told police that she was taken for a walk on Janmashtami by the accused woman who was accompanied by another man to Char Khambha in Nand Nagri where three other boys were present.

"The boys took her to Noida where her marriage was solemnised with a boy. She was allegedly raped by the boy who claimed that he had bought her by paying Rs one lakh to the accused," a police officer said.

Medical examination of the victim has been done and she was counseled by an NGO. Her statement was recorded under section 164 CrPC after which other sections were added to the case registered earlier.

The accused woman, the boy who allegedly raped the girl, and two associates of the woman have been arrested. Further efforts are being made to arrest two other accused in the case, the officer added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ahead of his India visit, Nepal Prime Minister Prachanda today said the main thrust of his trip would be to "clear all doubts" in bilateral ties and build an environment of confidence and trust.

Prachanda will travel to New Delhi on September 15 for a four-day goodwill visit, his first foreign visit after assuming power some six weeks ago.

"The main expectation of my visit is to improve and strengthen Nepal-India relations that have gone through some bitter experiences in the recent past," said 61-year-old Prachanda responding to a question during an interaction with a group foreign correspondents at his official residence in Baluwatar.

"I am also expecting that India would help us to get out of the current difficult situation that would help strengthen our ties," he said.

"What had happened last year (indicating to border blockade) was very much painful to the Nepalese people and it was also not a pleasant thing for India," said Prachanda adding, "we will move towards adding a new dimension in the bilateral relations by learning from the past."



"My visit will clear all doubts and an environment of confidence and trust will be built," he claimed.

Prachanda said the environment in Delhi is favourable for Nepal this time as he had sensed from Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat, who had just concluded his two-day visit to India.

"From the feedback I received from our Foreign Minister, it is certain that this time I would not have to bear much pressure during my visit to Delhi this time and I will be visiting there in a much relaxed manner," said the Prime Minister.

Prachanda said he would hold discussions tomorrow with the Madhesi parties and other ethnic groups, that had launched months long anti-Constitution agitation last year resulting in death of over 50 people, to resolve the crisis.

"I will hold talks with the agitating parties to address their key demands including re-demarcation of provincial boundary and citizenship issue, and I am hopeful of reaching an agreement t with them to amend the Constitution by accommodating their demands," Prachanda said.

He said that he would do everything to make the new Constitution acceptable to all the sections of Nepalese society including the Madhesis and ethnic minority groups and also expressed hope that "an environment would be created for India to welcome it."



He said his government is committed to develop a balanced, warm and cordial relations with the neighbouring countries and for the purpose he had recently sent his special envoys to India and China soon after assuming office.

Prachanda had sent Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara to China and Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bimalendra Nidhi to India as special envoys.

Prachanda said that Nepal is expecting high-level



important visits within this year from both the neighbouring countries.

After Prachanda's visit to Delhi, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee and Chinese Prime Minister are expected to visit Nepal in November.

Prachanda said he was also expecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Nepal within a couple of months, adding "this time I will extend him invitation to visit Janakpur, Lumbini and Muktinath, important Hindu and Buddhist pilgrim sites of Nepal."



He said during his visit to India, he will emphasise on expediting and implementing already agreed projects between the two nations rather than signing new agreements.

To a question whether Nepal is still committed to generating 10,000 MW of electricity within ten years, which he had promised during his first tenure, Prachanda said, "The scenario has changed and now we have to generate 20,000 MW of electricity in the next ten years."



He said discussions will be held to move forward Mahakali project, Pancheshwor project as well as development of rural roads and east-west railway line construction in the country with the Indian officials during the visit.

Prachanda said he would also ask India to provide a grant a 400 MW Lower Arun hydropower project.

In the past, India had assured to provide money to construct 250 MW Naumure hydropower, which could not be materialised due to unfavourable situation.

Prachanda also promised to provide additional Rs 100,000 to each of the 5 lakh families affected by the last year's earthquakes.

The government has already promised to provide Rs 200,000 as financial assistance to rebuild their houses.

During his visit to India, Prachanda said he would also seek additional grants meant for post-quake reconstruction works.

India last year promised to provide USD one billion financial assistance to Nepal for the reconstruction works after the devastating earthquakes.
An outfit seeking statehood for Vidarbha region today criticised the BJP-led governments in Maharashtra and at the Centre for not showing "political will" to resolve the decades-long issue and gave them a deadline of January 1 to meet its demand.

Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti (VRAS) said the "backward region" in eastern Maharashtra can achieve all-around development only when it is granted statehood which will allow it to take decisions independently.

Addressing a press conference here, Wamanrao Chatap, a member of the core committee of VRAS, said, "We strongly believe the overall development of Vidarbha is only possible when it is made a separate state."



"Unless elected leaders of Vidarbha get full authority to take decisions on utilising resources of the region and creating new opportunities, issues like farmers suicides can't be resolved.

"We are not against Maharashtra or its leadership but we want freedom of decision-making by focusing only on development of Vidarbha, which is experiencing neglect of more than half a century," said the former MLA.

He said the Samiti has organised a mock session of 'Vidarbha Assembly' on October 3 and 4 at Vasantrao Deshpande Hall in Nagpur. "We will highlight the revenue model of a separate Vidarbha in the mock Assembly, where the Budget for 'Vidarbha State' will be tabled and discussed."



History stands testimony to the fact that whenever a state has been formed, its growth in terms of GDP has been far better than the mother state, the VRAS leader maintained.

VRAS has demanded that issue of granting statehood to the region, comprising 11 districts, which is famous for growing oranges and cotton, be resolved by January 1, 2017.

The central and the state government lack "political will" to resolve the issue, the Samiti leader alleged.

"If the governments (at the Centre and in Maharashtra) do not pay serious attention to our demand before January 1, the people from all the walks of life in Vidarbha would come out on the streets and launch an agitation," he said.

Chatap claimed it was very unfortunate Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who belongs to Vidarbha, was "not interested" in giving statehood to the region.

"BJP fought the election on separate Vidarbha issue. It gave a Chief Minister who hails from Vidarbha, but neither BJP nor Fadnavis has shown any interest to resolve the issue. The party is running its government with the support of Shiv Sena, which is vehemently opposing statehood for Vidarbha," he alleged.

The press conference was allegedly briefly disrupted by members of Raj Thackeray-led MNS, which is vehemently opposed to any division of Maharashtra.

Terming MNS' protest as "undemocratic", Chatap said everyone has right to express his or her views.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Protests over the Cauvery issue continued in some parts of Tamil Nadu for the second day today, with fringe outfits like Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK) holding agitations outside Kannada establishments here and in Coimbatore.

In Chennai, unidentified men pelted stones at an ATM of Karnataka Bank, damaging the glass panes, police said.

Activists of NMK held protests outside hotels owned by natives of Karnataka in different places in Chennai and around 12 people were arrested when they tried to enter the premises at Mylapore.

At Coimbatore, at least 30 NMK activists, led by its district secretary Wahab, raised slogans against Karnataka and went to Karnataka Association hall in Tatabad, police said.

However, they were stopped near the Association building and arrested.

At Neyveli, police foiled protestors' bid to burn an effigy of Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramiah and detained activists of the Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi.

Police protection continued for Karnataka establishments and buses from that state.

Meanwhile, Coimbatore district Omnibus Owners Association decided not to ply their vehicles to Karnataka for fear of attacks on the vehicles and crew.

It's secretary P Senthilkumar told reporters after a meeting of the association that 12 buses had been severely damaged in the last two days. Considering the prevailing situation, it was decided not to ply buses to Karnataka till normalcy returned in that state, he added.

A traders' body also announced holding a day-long bandh on September 16 against attacks on commercial establishments in Karnataka in the wake of the ongoing Cauvery crisis.

A M Vikramaraja, President,Tamil Nadu Vanigar Sangankalin Peramaippu (Federation of Tamil Nadu Traders' Association) claimed that Tamil traders, lorry and bus operators had incurred Rs 2,000 crore loss in the protest by Kannada groups, targeting commercial establishments,besides torching vehicles.

Commercial establishments owing allegiance to the Federation would down shutters on Friday, he said while appealing for the support of other trade bodies also.

Yesterday, one person was killed and another injured in police firing in Bengaluru after violence erupted there and other parts of Karnataka following Supreme Court's modified order on sharing Cauvery water by the two riparian states.

The Apex Court, modifying its September 5 order, had asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu tillSeptember 20.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India Post and Railways are in the process of working together to tap the parcel business opportunity in the country, specially in rural areas, Union Minister Manoj Sinha said.

"Recently, there was a joint meeting meeting of Railways and Posts. We have said that you (Railways) have transport and Posts has infrastructure. Both the departments should jointly make efforts to attract parcel business in rural areas in a big way," Communications Minister Manoj Sinha told PTI in an interview.

He said that Railways has 3-4 per cent share of the parcel business in rural areas, while that of India Post is estimated to be in decimals.

However, the minister said that India Post has wrested a major share of parcel business from e-commerce companies, adding that there are ample opportunities in the country.

The Department of Posts (DoP) has established 57 Integrated Parcel Booking Centres and upgraded infrastructure of 27 Parcel Booking Centres during 2013-14 to 2015-16 with total expenditure of Rs 22.58 crore.

The DoP is also selling Gangajal in the price range of Rs 101-151 per bottle.

"People don't want to bathe in Ganga during rainy season for known reasons. Gangotri water is pure. There are many people who give importance to Gangajal due to their religious faith. The postal department is delivering Gangajal from Gangotri and Rishikesh. There is massive demand for it across the country," Sinha said.

Talking about India Post Payments Bank (IPPB), Sinha said the first meeting of the postal bank board was held on September 1 and search for CEO has started.

"CEO will be appointed soon. A retired managing director of a nationalised bank has been given charge for the time being to look after the work of the payments bank," Sinha said.

He said that government is working as per set timelines and will open the first IPPB branch by March and 650 branches by September 2017.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A G Peralivalan, one of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, was today assaulted with an iron rod inside inside the high security central prison here by another inmate.

Perarivalan, who has been lodged in the high security block, was attacked by another inmate Rajesh Khanna, a life convict in a murder case.

"Perarivalan was attacked with a piece of iron....An iron rod and it was used by another convict who is also in the high security block, to assault the Rajiv case convict," a top jail official told PTI, adding he was now doing well.

Police sources said the Rajiv case convict received blows from the rod on his forehead, scalp and also his arms when he tried to fend off the attack. He was taken to hospital where his wounds were sutured, dressed and treated.

They said an enquiry was being held by senior prison officials.

On the reason for the attack, they indicated it was related to shifting Khanna to another block. They declined to go further into it, since an enquiry was being held.

Learning about the incident, Perarivalan's mother Arputhammal visited him.

Later speaking to reporters here, she wondered how her 'soft-spoken' son could have become the target of an attack.

Perarivalan, also known as 'Arivu' has been in prison for over 25 years after he was convicted in the case.

Political parties, including the PMK, have demanded that the culprits behind the incident be punished.

PMK chief Ramadoss said those behind the attack should be punished. He urged the Tamil Nadu government to free all seven convicts on remission and in case of the legal process delaying their release, the State should give them leave.

MDMK chief Vaiko condemned the attack, saying the incident raised doubts if it was an attempt to murder Perarivalan. He demanded that the state provide him adequate security and wanted it to find out the background to the attack. He also urged the government to release Perarivalan on parole.

Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber at Sriperumbudur near Chennai on May 21, 1991. Seven persons - Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan, Nalini, Robert Payas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran, were convicted in the case.

Nalini's death sentence was commuted to life in 2000 following a cabinet recommendation and appeal by Rajiv's wife, Sonia Gandhi.

The Supreme Court had commuted the death sentence of Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan in February 2014 following delay in deciding on their mercy plea.

The Tamil Nadu government had in March this year decided to remit the sentences of all the seven convicts.

However, the matter soon went to the Apex Court and is pending there, with the Centre questioning the State's powers to grant remission to them on specific grounds.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Union Minister of State for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Sanjeev Kumar Balyan today assured that effective steps will be taken for speedy solution of flood and erosion related problems in Assam.

The Union Minister is currently visiting Assam to assess the extent of damages caused by floods and erosion and held a meeting with Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal in Dibrugarh where he was requested to ensure Centre's financial aid along with other assistance to save the state from the recurrent problems of flood and erosion.

Sonowal also submitted a report highlighting the magnitude of damages induced by waves of floods in Assam this year and drew the Union Minister's attention to the perennial problem of flood and erosion and their effect on the lives and economy of the state, an official release said.

The Chief Minister emphasised on using modern technology to tame the Brahmaputra river to minimise its mayhem along the downstream.

He told Balyan that heavy siltation on the river bed substantially reduced water bearing capacity of the Brahmaputra and to check floods, the Brahmaputra and its tributaries have to be controlled in line with the Huang Ho river of China.

Balyan assured that the Centre has accorded top priority to the problems of flood and erosion and "Our sincerity became evident when Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked him to visit the erosion-hit areas and assess flood inflicted damages in the state."



Assam Water Resources minister Keshab Mahanta, Member of Parliament of Dibrugarh Rameswar Teli and several MLAs were present at the meeting.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Saudi King Salman today said the kingdom rejects any attempt to play politics with the hajj, the annual pilgrimage which has added to tensions between Riyadh and Tehran.

For the first time in nearly three decades, Iran's 64,000 pilgrims are not attending the hajj in Saudi Arabia after the two regional rivals failed to agree on security and logistics.

Among its concerns, Riyadh said Tehran had demanded the right to organise demonstrations.

"The kingdom categorically rejects that the hajj serves any political purpose," Salman, 80, said in a brief address to international VIPs attending the pilgrimage.

Tehran had accused Riyadh of "blocking the path leading to Allah."



Among the contentious issues was security after last year's hajj stampede which, according to foreign officials, killed roughly 2,300 people.

Iran reported the largest number of victims, at 464.

Just days before this year's hajj, which began on Saturday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei questioned Saudi Arabia's right to manage Islam's holiest sites.

He called the Saudi ruling family "puny Satans" who had politicised the pilgrimage. Khamenei also said Saudi authorities "murdered" the stampede victims.

His claims led to mutual accusations throughout last week.

Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh retaliated by telling a newspaper that Iranians "are not Muslims".

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, of which Saudi Arabia is the most powerful member, accused Iran of "a desperate attempt to politicise" the hajj and said Khamenei's remarks were offensive.

More than 1.8 million faithful from around the world have been attending the annual pilgrimage which officially ends on Thursday.

"Serving the guests of God is an honour for us," Salman told the VIP delegates.

"God almighty orders that hajj be performed by all Muslims without distinction."



Saudi Arabia had said Iranians were still welcome at the hajj if they came from another country. The hajj ministry's spokesman said "a number" who held other passports were in attendance.

He was not more specific.

Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran have no diplomatic relations and are at odds over a number of regional issues including the wars in Syria and Yemen.

Salman also called for Muslim unity in order to eliminate the "scourge" of extremism.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Shiv Sena, which has not been a strong political force in Goa, has now set its eyes on the upcoming state polls with party chief Uddhav Thackeray scheduled to meet the functionaries here next month.

"Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray would be in in mid-October to guide our party functionaries. We have already begun building up a base in all constituencies," chief of unit of Shiv Sena, Sudip Tamankar, told PTI today.

"The local leaders are also planning to organise a mega public rally of Thackeray in November, which will give momentum to party's campaign in the state," he said.

The party reiterated that it was ready to forge an alliance with ousted RSS chief Subhash Velingkar if he floated a party before the state polls.

Tamankar said Sena MP Sanjay Raut, who was recently in Goa, met Velingkar and held talks with him.

"Discussions are on. We are on the same page with the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) and RSS Goa Prant led by Velingkar. If they float a party, we are willing to join hands with them and have pre-poll alliance in Goa," he said.

The state unit chief also said BBSM has been fighting for regional languages, which eventually will lead to protection of rights of 'bhoomi-putra' (sons of the soil).

BBSM has been vociferously opposing grants to English medium schools in the state and had led agitations against the Laxmikant Parsekar government, demanding that primacy be given to Marathi and Konkani languages as the Medium of Instruction (MoI) in schools.
Needling India yet again, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today dedicated Ei-dul Azha to the "supreme sacrifices" of Kashmiris and said Pakistan will continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is resolved.

"We cannot ignore sacrifices of Kashmiris. They will succeed through their sacrifices. We dedicate this Eid to the supreme sacrifices of Kashmiri people and wewill continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is not resolved according to their (Kashmiri people) wishes," the Prime Minister said in his message on the occasion of Eid-ul Azha.

Sharif offered Eid prayer along with other family members in the mosque at his Raiwind residence here.

He said, "Kashmiri people have sacrificed their third generation in their struggle to get freedom from India."



"They are struggling for their right to self- determination and facing Indian atrocities. Their voice cannot be suppressed through force," he said.

President Mamnoon Hussain, in his message on the occasion, said Pakistan must remember "our Kashmiri brothers and sisters affected by terrorism".

"During this hour of need we must support the Kashmiri people. They are facing the worst atrocities to get their right to self-determination. Time is not far away when the Kashmiri people will get dividend of their supremestruggle. They will sooncelebrate such festivals in free land," the President said.

Meanwhile, Jammat-ud-Dawah chief and Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed led Eid prayers at Gaddafi Stadium and prayed for the "success of Kashmiris fighting against Indian forces."



He urged the Nawaz government to take firm stance on Kashmir and "help them get freedom".

India and Pakistan are engaged in a fierce verbal battle over terrorism and the situation in Kashmir in the aftermath of the unrest in the Valley that broke out on July 8 after Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces.

While India has accused Pakistan of supporting cross border terrorism, Pakistan, on its part, has been trying to internationalise Kashmir, alleging New Delhi of human rights violations.

Sharif had earlier called for investigation into the "atrocities" committed by Indian forces, protection of Kashmiris' fundamental rights, a fair inquiry into the killing of Wani and implementation of UN resolutions.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is currently living in Russia on political asylum, would be offered due process of law, but he should first return to the country and face charges, the White House has said.

Snowden, 33, the former intelligence contractor with the US National Security Agency (NSA) would be offered due process of law on return, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said yesterday, adding that President Barack Obama continues to believe that he has done harm to the national security interest of the US.

"The first is that Mr Snowden has been charged with serious crimes and it is the policy of the administration that Mr Snowden should return to the US and face those charges. He, of course, will be afforded due process and there are mechanisms in our criminal justice system to ensure that he is treated fairly and consistent with the law. That is what the President believes.

"With regard to the impact that he has had on the broader debate, the fact is the manner in which Mr Snowden chose to disclose this information damaged the US, harmed our national security, and put the American people at greater risk," Earnest said.

"There are mechanisms that Mr Snowden could have availed himself of, if he had concerns about information that he had access to, to communicate this information more responsibly and address some of the policy concerns that he purports to have.

"But the impact of his actions, because of the way he chose to disclose this information, did harm our national security. The President said that on a number of occasions, and his assessment of that situation has not changed," Earnest said.

Refusing to entertain questions on presidential pardon of Snowden, Earnest said he is not going to get into the President's thinking about anybody being considered for a pardon.

"Obviously there is a process that people can go through in requesting a pardon. But right now, Mr Snowden has not been convicted of crimes with regard to this particular situation, but he is charged with various crimes.

"It is the view of the administration and certainly the view of the President that he should return to the US and face those charges, even as he enjoys the protection of due process and other rights that are afforded to American citizens who are charged with serious crimes," Earnest added.

Snowden, charged by the US with espionage and theft of government property after leaking sensitive documents to the media about NSA's internet and phone surveillance, has been living in exile in Russia since June 2013.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Sri Lankan national was arrested en route to Dhanushkodi this morning for illegally entering the country, police said.

Anthony Arul Jayarathnam (42) of Mullaitheevu in Jaffna peninsula was held near the third sand dune off Arichalmunai.

Police said Anthony had arrived in the country illegally by a ferry after paying Rs one lakh to the operator. He had left behind his wife and three children in the island nation, they said.

Further investigation is on, Coast Guard officials and police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A three-member committee formed by Gujarat Government to probe the suspected hooch tragedy, which claimed 16 lives in Surat district, today submitted its report to the state Home Department.

The probe panel is being headed by Additional Director General of Police (ADGP- Police Reforms) V M Pargi. Two other members of the committee are Director of Prohibition and Excise B K Kumar and Deputy Director of Gandhinagar-based Forensic Science Laboratory M S Dahiya.

"As mandated by the state government while forming this committee on September 10, we completed our probe in three days and submitted the report to the Home Department today. The report carries our observations about the suspected hooch tragedy in Surat," Pargi told reporters after submitting the report today.

Pargi, however, refused to divulge details about the contents of the report.

"The report has been prepared after meeting officials, doctors, forensic experts, patients, family members of victims as well as villagers. It is Gujarat government's prerogative to share the conclusions mentioned in the report," said Pargi, adding that the report also carries recommendations to prevent such tragedies in future.

The government has not officially called the incident as a hooch tragedy and instead termed it as "unnatural deaths".

The death of 16 persons, attributed to hooch, were reported mainly from Vareli and nearby Haripura village in Palsana taluka of Surat during last one week.

Chief Minister Vijay Rupani had yesterday held a video conference with senior police officials on the issue and had announced handing over the probe related to the use of methanol to Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 300,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since March 2011, a monitor said in a new toll on Tuesday, the first full day of an internationally-brokered truce.

More than 86,000 civilians were among the 301,781 people killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The civilian toll includes 15,099 children and 10,018 women, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

Rebel fighters made up 52,359 of those killed.

A total of 59,006 Syrian soldiers have been killed, in addition to 48,048 other pro-government fighters from countries including Iraq, Iran and Lebanon as well as .

Jihadists of the Islamic State group and the onetime Al-Qaeda affiliate now renamed the Fateh al-Sham Front accounted for 52,031 of the dead.

The Observatory said another 3,645 victims could not be identified.

The figure is an increase of nearly 9,000 on the last death toll published by the Observatory in early August.

The United Nations and the major powers have made repeated efforts to end the bloodshed in but all have so far failed.

A new ceasefire brokered by Moscow and Washington went into effect at sundown on Monday and AFP correspondents and residents reported that it appeared to be holding on its first full day on Tuesday.
Syria's army said it shot down two Israeli military aircraft including a drone today, alleging they attacked a government-held position in the country's south.

"Our air defences blocked the attack and shot down the military aircraft in (the southern province of) Quneitra and a drone" in the province of Damascus, said the statement carried by state agency SANA.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actress Taapsee Pannu-starrer "Naam Shabana", which is a part of action-thriller "Baby" franchise, has gone on the floors.

The film, directed by Shivam Nair, also features a cameo of Akshay Kumar, who starred in the 2015 film.

The 29-year-old actress shared the on Twitter saying she will be playing the lead role first time ever.

"Another adventurous journey begins.... #NaamShabana my first ever title role. Get ready for some serious action," she wrote.

Akshay, who recently came back from Maldives after a family vacation, also took to micro-blogging site to share his excitement, calling "Naam Shabana" to be a unique attempt in the history of Indian cinema.

"A unique attempt for the very 1st time in Indian cinema. Get ready to be surprised, #NaamShabana coming your way next year," he tweeted.

"Naam Shabana" is being produced by Neeraj Pandey, who directed "Baby".

In another tweet, Akshay posted a picture of himself on the bank of Ganges by captioning it- "Taking a moment to admire the beauty around... Of the holy Ganges, almost tempted to take a dip, what say?"



Taapsee is currently awaiting the release of her next film "Pink", also featuring megastar Amitabh Bachchan.

The drama-thriler, directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and produced by Rashmi Sharma and Shoojit Sircar, is scheduled to release on this Friday.

While Akshay has just wrapped up the Lucknow schedule of his forthcoming courtroom comedy drama "Jolly LLB 2".

The 49-year-old actor and Neeraj will soon team up for the sequel to "Baby".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tata group, which commands a portfolio of over 7,000 patents, is looking at internal collaboration on joint projects as the USD 103-billion conglomerate bets on innovation and technology as "growth differentiators", Chairman Cyrus Mistry said today.

The group has also invested in incubating three companies -- Tata CLiQ, Tata iQ and Tata Digital Health -- to cash in on the opportunities in areas like e-retail, healthcare and data analytics, Mistry said in an in-house interview on the company's website.

"The world has moved away from large industrial innovation labs to more distributed innovation at multiple locations...We may in the future also look at bringing together in a physical space some of our group companies to work on joint projects," he said.

"Across group companies, we recently crossed the milestone of 7,000 patent applications, and the number of patents secured each year by the top five Tata companies has tripled in the last three years. I think we have done a significant amount of work through Tata Innovista, the collaborative platform created by the group to promote innovation," he said.

He added that harnessing innovation and technology as differentiators will drive growth.

"The best companies future-proof their strategies by exploiting industry trends, and stress-test these strategies for sudden environmental changes," he said.

The group has invested Rs 4,15,000 crore (USD 79 billion) in capex, including areas like technology and research over the last decade. Investment over the last three years alone has been in excess of Rs 1,70,000 crore (USD 28 billion).

Mistry said the group has incubated three companies in the digital space at this point in time.

"Tata CLiQ, our e-commerce platform, is an omni-channel marketplace with curated products that deliver value to our customers. It is quite a unique positioning we have chosen. We also have Tata iQ, our big data play, which effectively uses data analytics to connect the dots with respect to our many consumers so as to ensure we have a more holistic picture of their needs," he said.

Mistry added that with Tata Digital Health, the group is creating a platform where it is experimenting with different business models to build the de facto platform for healthcare in India.

"I am delighted to see many Tata companies adopt different elements of digital in their operations, and our people using digital in the consumer and marketing side of their businesses. While we have had early successes within our companies, the more important aspect is that they are learning to use digital in a manner that brings value to customers," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tata Steel India's strong brand, cost optimisation and a differentiated product portfolio has helped it survive in a market where producers globally are "underwater", Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry said today.

On the Kalinganagar (Odisha) steel plant, he said it is one of the largest greenfield industrial projects undertaken in India in recent years.

"Each of our group companies is charting its own strategy and growth story, with the focus on sustainable, profitable growth," he said in an in-house interview on the company's website.

Each of these companies has identified critical factors that make them sustainable over a longer time horizon, he added.

"If we consider Tata Steel in India, for example, the fact that they are low on the cost curve, produce differentiated products and are a strong brand in the market, has helped them survive in a period when most steel producers globally are underwater," Mistry noted.

Similarly, the main factors underpinning sustainability in each company would be different, he explained.

Mistry's comments come even as the Mumbai-based steel maker has posted a net loss for the third consecutive quarter in April-June period.

The steel major's consolidated net loss widened 10 times to Rs 3,183 crore in the April-June quarter of 2016-17 compared to Rs 317 crore in the year-ago period.

Similarly, it had posted a consolidated net loss of Rs 3,213.76 crore and Rs 2,127.23 crore for the January-March and October-December quarters of 2015-16, respectively.

On Kalinganagar plant, Mistry said: "This is indeed one of the largest greenfield industrial projects undertaken in India in recent years and includes several engineering firsts for the country's steel industry. About 49,000 workers were mobilised at the peak of construction in 2015."



Further about 50,000 cubic metre per month of concrete was poured for ten consecutive months, possibly the highest in India. Phase 1 of the project, for 3 million tonnes (MT), has been set up at a cost of Rs 25,000 crore, including needed infrastructure for full 6 MT capacity, he added.

"Commercial production has commenced since May 2016 and will reach its rated capacity in 18 months. Tata Steel's Kalinganagar facility has the potential to grow significantly and produce world class and value added products for growth segments of the market," Mistry noted.

He further said: "The experience has taught us a lot in terms of carrying out large-scale, transformative projects."



Mistry said Tata Steel in 2004 decided to set up another steel making facility as part of its long-term strategy to expand in India, which continues to be a growth market for the steel industry.

After reviewing several options, Tata Steel signed an agreement with the Odisha government to build a 6 MT per annum steel plant in Kalinganagar, he added.

The chief of the over USD 100 billion Tata Group said



that there were several challenges when Tata Steel started out to establish the integrated steel plant in Kalinganagar.

"There were significant challenges and hurdles in land acquisition and possession of the government-owned land in Kalinganagar for several years," he said.

An independent study in mid-2012 assessed a huge cost overrun and over a year's delay in completion, among multiple issues identified, Mistry revealed.

"Of the total project work, only 11 per cent construction had been completed by then. The first task before me was to strengthen the team leading the project and then put in place clear governance and robust review processes," he said.

To overcome these challenges the firm identified key project risks and measures were put in place to address them and mitigate these risks, he explained.

"A closer working relationship with our principal contractors allowed the early sighting of warnings on likely issues and the finding of solutions," he added.

The apex governance mechanism included setting up a specific board committee dedicated to reviewing the project. Frequent reviews helped pull back some of the cost and time overruns, Mistry noted.
The Speaker of Tripura Assembly Ramendra Chandra Debnath has rejected the demand of Trinamool Congress (TMC) to grant status of the Leader of Opposition to its MLA Diba Chandra Hrankhawl on the plea that the party has no numerical strength.

"The numerical strength of the Opposition must be equal to the quorum to get the status of the Leader of Opposition, which means the Opposition should be at least ten in number to represent the House.

"As the strength of the TMC MLAs is less than ten in number no LoP status will be given to the party," the Speaker told reporters here today.

The six TMC MLAs, who switched sides from Congress in June, were recognised as TMC MLAs by the Speaker on August 29 citing rules and a Supreme Court verdict, but refused the main Opposition party status in the Assembly.

Soon after the TMC MLAs were recognised by the Speaker, chairman of the Trinamool Congress state unit Ratan Chakraborty wrote fresh letters demanding Leader of Opposition status to their senior MLA Diba Chandra Hrankhawl, who was appointed as the chief of the TMC legislature party.

"I have further studied the issue and TMC cannot be given the status of main Opposition party and thus, cannot be given the status of the Leader of Opposition from their party. According to the verdict of apex court and rules and practices of Lok Sabha and Tripura Assembly, TMC cannot get the Opposition party status in the House," Debnath said.

Chakraborty, however, said TMC was eligible to get the LoP status according to the legislative Assembly Acts of 1972 and 2008.

"We are consulting legal experts on this and might challenge the Speaker's verdict," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine today announced a unilateral cease-fire starting at midnight tomorrow, which could be a major step in solving the conflict that has raged for more than two years.

The conflict between Russian-backed separatist rebels and Ukrainian government troops has killed more than 9,500 people since it began in April 2014.

Representatives of Ukraine, the separatists and Russia signed a February 2015 Minsk peace deal brokered by France and Germany, but frequent clashes have continued to claim lives and political provisions of the agreement have never been implemented.

Alexander Zakharchenko, rebel leader in Donetsk, made the cease-fire announcement in a recorded statement aired on Russian television today, berating Kiev for a "lack of willingness to solve the problem in a peaceful manner."

Zakharchenko said he has ordered rebel troops to cease fire at midnight tomorrow and urged Ukraine to do the same.

Wearing a suit instead of his normal camouflage for the televised statement, the separatist leader said the rebels are "fully committed to the Minsk agreements" and see them as "the only solution."

Igor Plotnitsky, leader of the self-proclaimed part of the Luhansk region, also announced a cease-fire today.

It's the first time that that the separatists, who are widely believed to be controlled by Moscow, have come with an idea of a unilateral cease-fire.

At least three government troops have been killed and 15 wounded in fighting in eastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, officials said.

One more person was reported missing.

In Donetsk, the rebel mouthpiece Donetsk News Agency said three of its men have been killed.

The announcement comes a few hours after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he expects the parliament to vote soon on constitutional amendments granting more autonomy to Ukrainian provinces, including the rebellious eastern regions.

"Decentralisation is a policy that has no alternative," Poroshenko tweeted today. "I expect the Verkhovna Rada to support the constitutional amendments regarding decentralisation."

Ukraine has blamed Russia for not doing enough to get the rebels to relinquish control over parts of the Ukrainian-Russian border while Russia is unhappy that Ukraine still has not adopted the constitutional amendments.

Poroshenko is set to meet with top diplomats from France and Germany tomorrow, and also hold separate talks with the foreign ministers of Britain and Poland in what appears to be part of a diplomatic blitz to discuss the conflict settlement.
The 71st session of the UN General Assembly is set to begin here on Tuesday setting the stage for the annual high-level gathering of global leaders amid North Korea's growing nuclear threat, unprecedented refugee crisis and greater push to ratify the Paris Climate deal.

The session will be the last for Barack Obama as the US President and opens less than two months before America goes to polls to elect its next commander-in-chief.

The 71st session is also the final one for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon with his 10-year tenure ending on December 31.

Heads of State and government and foreign ministers from 193 nations will descend at the world body's headquarters here next week to participate in the high-level General Debate, which opens on September 20, to highlight their national priorities and global concerns.

Obama will give his last address to the General Assembly as US President on September 20.

India will be represented by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who will address world leaders from the iconic green lectern of the UN General Assembly hall on September 26.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given his maiden address as India's leader in the General Assembly in 2014 and last year he had attended the Sustainable Development Summit when the ambitious 2030 global agenda was adopted by world leaders.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will address the General Debate on September 21 and Islamabad has made it clear that he will raise the issue of Kashmir at the multilateral platform.

Last year, Sharif had proposed a four-point "peace initiative" on Kashmir.

In a strong response, Swaraj, in her address had said India does not need four points but just one that Pakistan should "give up terrorism and let us sit down and talk".

The 71st session is also expected to help efforts to secure early entry into force of the Paris Climate Change agreement.

US and China, the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, formally joined the Paris climate accord earlier this, submitting their signed documents to Ban Ki-Moon in Hangzhou, China.

Given that the session will be the last for Ban as UN Secretary General, he will hold a special event on September 21, inviting world leaders to deposit their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession to the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The event will also provide an opportunity to other countries to publicly commit to joining or ratifying the agreement before the end of 2016.

In his invitation letter to world leaders, the Secretary-General said, "The next step in our collective journey to a low-carbon, climate-resilient future is to ensure the rapid entry into force of the Paris Agreement. Doing so will create incentives for early implementation of nationally determined contributions and build support within markets and societies for increased climate ambition."

He added, "I urge you to accelerate your country's domestic process for ratification of the Agreement this year."

So far, 26 countries have ratified the agreement, which will enter into force a month after at least 55 countries, accounting for 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, deposit their instruments of ratification or acceptance with the Secretary-General.

In the wake of the unprecedented refugee crisis engulfing the world, Ban will also host a summit on Refugees and Migrants on September 19, a day before Obama hosts a summit on the issue on September 20.

Tensions in the Korean peninsula will also be Bundestag at the session, with North Korea conducting its fifth and biggest nuclear test last week and drawing strong global condemnation, including from the UN Chief and the Security Council.
US President Barack Obama launched legal action against "unfair" Chinese rice, wheat and corn subsidies at the World Trade Organization today, setting up a culturally sensitive multi-billion-dollar trade spat.

The United States alleges that China doled out USD 100 billion in "market price support" for the grains, above levels agreed at the Geneva-based WTO.

"When other countries flout the rules to try and undercut American workers and farmers, we hold them accountable," Obama said in a statement announcing the action.

China is the world's largest producer of wheat and rice, holding significant sway over world markets.

Rice, in particular, is a food staple, with important cultural and political significance.

Just six decades ago, Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, a drive to industrialize China, spurred mass famine that killed as many as 45 million people.

Today, China's government has put a premium on agricultural self-sufficiency and safeguarding supply, much to Washington's ire.

It believes that Chinese state aid lowers production costs for the country's farmers, making them more competitive around the world.

The US government estimates that its own rice, wheat and corn industry is worth an estimated USD 20 billion a year and accounts for 200,000 American jobs.

Many of those jobs are in states like Iowa and Kansas which, because of peculiarities of the US electoral system, have an outsized role in deciding presidential elections.

In a nod to that reality, Obama's statement had a distinctly political edge.

"China's government has set prices for wheat, corn, and rice well above market levels, which has led to unfair government subsidies that are in violation of WTO rules," Obama said.

"These unfairly distorted prices on important crops lead to overproduction in China and disadvantage American farmers who export these same crops around the world."



The 2016 election race has seen Republican and Democratic presidential candidates take a much more protectionist line on trade.

China has been the target of particularly tough campaign rhetoric.

Republican nominee Donald Trump has skewered China for stealing US trade secrets and called Beijing "the greatest currency manipulators ever."



Obama's administration has made a bet that binding China into international rules, like those at the WTO, will ultimately serve US interests better than sanctions.

(REOPENS FGN 3)



Though they stressed the importance of cooperation between the two countries, the officials made it clear that China's intention to maintain a stable economic and trade relationship with the US, but also stressed China is not afraid of protecting its interests when threatened, Gu Xueming, president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the MOFCOM, told the daily.

"Obviously, we are not willing to engage in a trade war, but we are also not afraid if it's necessary," Gu said, adding that the commerce minister's enumeration of top US exports to China could be a message to the US that "if you hurt our interests, we know where to start to respond."



Jiang said China has to set a bottom line, and that if the US crosses that line by threatening bilateral trade, China "will have no option but to respond."



He said, at the moment, both sides are likely just testing each other's bottom lines and will likely arrive at a compromise, and "China needs to be firm on its core interests and let them know these are off the table at any negotiation, just like the one-China policy."



Such US government policies, especially one that implies the US should ignore WTO rulings it deems harmful to its economy, could fuel a full-fledged trade war between major economies, said Jiang Yong, a research fellow at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

"If the US ignores WTO decisions and resorts to protectionist measures, that would almost certainly lead to retaliation from other countries and start a trade war," Jiang was quoted as saying in the report.
The Madras High Court bench here has maintained that victims of crime cannot expect the courts to be rigid regarding negligible deviations in complying with the bail conditions.

Justice P Devadoss gave the opinion recently dismissing a petition filed by a complainant in a woman harassment case challenging the refusal of the lower court to cancel the anticipatory bail given to two accused in the case as they failed to appear before the Judicial Magistrate at the scheduled time as per bail conditions.

"Victims of crime may keep an eye on the accused all the time, but they can't expect the courts also to be rigid" the judge said.

The petitioner Jesintha Mary said that the accused Selvaraj and Sebastiammal did not appear before the Judicial Magistrate at Thiruvadanai at 10 am as per the bail condition on November four last year.

Selvaraj and Seastammal submitted that there was delay to appear before the Judicial Magistrate on the particular day as they had to go to the hospital for treatment.

The also submitted that the petitioner had no locus standi to seek the cancellation of the anticipatory bail and so the sessions judge who gave the conditional bail dismissed the plea Jesintha Mary.

However, on the question of locus standi, the judge said the petitioner had every right to seek the cancellation of the bail on the ground of violation of conditions imposed by the court as she was the victim of crime.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Fashion designer Victoria Beckham relies on the support of her husband David and his help in running the house.

The 42-year-old fashion designer knows her husband is always there for their four children so, she doesn't have to worry when her work is busy because he is the "best dad", reported Female First.

"David is so great. I couldn't do any of this without him. He is very supportive and it means I can come away and work and know he is being the best dad looking after the kids. We work very well together, because David travels a lot and when he travels I am at home. There is always someone there with the children."



David, 41, and son Brooklyn were on the front row for Victoria's New York Fashion Week presentation at the weekend, but her younger children couldn't attend because of their school commitments.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil today questioned Raju Shetty-led Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana's (SSS) silence over the problems faced by soybean and onion farmers as well as milk producers despite it being a part of the ruling dispensation in Maharashtra.

Vikhe-Patil, who is Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, also demanded that the state government should conduct a panchanama (assessment) of these crops to ensure that farmers get proper compensation.

Addressing a rally at Shirdi in Ahmednagar district, he also accused the Centre and state government of having their "anti-farmer policy and inactive governance".

"The BJP government is changing the name of schemes which were brought by our (Cong) government. Though they have changed the names, the aim and the targeted beneficiaries remain the same. This proves that BJP government is pushing policies and schemes of Congress government and failed to bring any new scheme during almost two years of their rule in Centre as well as in the state," Vikhe-Patil said.

Speaking on the loss of soya beans, onions crops and milk, he said farmers are in trouble and government should support them in terms of cash compensation.

"Onion producers in Nashik area had sold onion at mere 5 paise per kg. This is shameful for the government. Farmers are committing suicide so state should have given priority to waive their loans," he demanded.

He attacked the ruling BJP and Shiv Sena for engaging in each other's criticism when the state was once again facing the threat of drought.

"The state government is killing the cooperative movement. They are destroying sugar mills as well as market committees. They have revoked export policy of sugar and ultimately loans owed by sugar mills could not be restructured," he said.

"Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, which had organised protests for hike in rates of sugarcane, is now keeping mum on the problems faced by soybean, onion and milk producers due to crop losses. They have left the farmers to fend for themselves," he said.

While Raju Shetty is an MP, his colleague Sadabhau Khot is the Minister of State for Agriculture in Devendra Fadnavis-led Maharashtra government.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actor Daniel Radcliffe says he will not rule out playing Harry Potter again but thinks returning to the wizarding series would be "strange".

It was recently reported that Radcliffe was being eyed to reprise his most popular on-screen avatar in the film adaptation of West End play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child".

The 27-year-old actor said he would love to get back to the role but he is "happy and secure" enough for someone else to portray the character, especially if "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child", which depicts his magical alter ego as a 40-year-old married father, gets turned into a film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"I'm never going to close the door; that would be a stupid thing to do. But I think I'll be happy enough and secure enough to let someone else play it," he said.

"At the moment it's not even a concern because I'm too young to play the character, but even in 10 years' time I would still feel strange about going back to it."



The British star joked he worried if he made a return, it would be met with criticism and "sour" the original film series.

"There's a part of me that's like, some things are better left untouched. If we went back to 'Potter', there's a chance we'd make what 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' was to the original 'Star Wars', but there's also the chance that we'd make 'Phantom Menace'.

"So I don't want to go back to anything like that and maybe sour what people have already loved."



Radcliffe insisted he has no idea about any of the details of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", author JK Rowling's spin-off tale, set in the same wizarding universe as Harry Potter, but doesn't think lead actor Eddie Redmayne will be coming to him for any tips.

"He's an Oscar winner, dude, he doesn't need my advice," the actor joked.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Zimbabwean police have announced a fresh ban on protests in the capital Harare, state media said today, in another attempt to end demonstrations against veteran ruler President Robert Mugabe.

The order came hours after a coalition of opposition parties said they would stage mass rallies across the country on Saturday to push for reform before elections due in 2018.

Anti-government campaigners vowed to defy the order and also appeal to the courts.

"These are the last kicks of a dying regime and we expected no better from them," Douglas Mwozora, spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) opposition party, told AFP.

"They have no respect for the law but we are not going to surrender our constitutional right. We are going back to the courts to challenge this illegal ban."



An earlier protest ban in Harare was overturned by the courts last week, despite Mugabe vowing a crackdown on dissent and blasting judges for "reckless" rulings allowing previous rallies.

In a notice in the state-run Herald newspaper, Harare police chief Newbert Saunyama said a ban would be imposed on the "holding of public demonstrations" for one month starting on Friday.

Hardlife Mudzingwa, spokesman for the pressure group Tajamuka (We are agitated), told AFP "We will not heed this unconstitutional declaration by the police."



Mugabe's ZANU-PF party won the last general elections in 2013 which were marred by electoral fraud.

Opposition to Mugabe's 36-year reign has grown in recent months with a surge of public demonstrations, triggered by an economic crisis that has left banks short of cash and the government struggling to pay its workers.

Two weeks ago, police detained scores of people including activists and bystanders following violent demonstrations in the capital.

Mugabe, 92, has often used used brutal force to silence his opponents, and at the weekend he warned the protestors they were "playing a dangerous game".

"Let the opposition parties and all those angling for chaos, mayhem and violent demonstrations be warned that our patience has run out," Mugabe said in an address to his party's central committee.

"They are planning to terrorise the rural areas in the mistaken belief that they can intimidate and harass our supporters. Let them be warned. They cannot win that war.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery water with Tamil Nadu forced IT firms such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro to shut their Bengaluru offices on Tuesday.

Offices of e-commerce firms Flipkart and Amazon were also closed as a precautionary measure. The big three IT firms have over 70,000 people working at their campuses in the country's IT capital.



A Reuters report said global outsourcing firm Accenture closed offices in the city and told staff to stay home.



Many employees were asked to work from home as the companies invoked business continuity plans to ensure there is no disruption to mission critical projects.

In an e-mailed statement, Wipro said: Wipro has declared a holiday for employees in Karnataka on Tuesday, September 13. In lieu of this holiday, Saturday, September 17, will be a working day for offices of Wipro in the state.

It added that business continuity plans had been invoked to avoid disruption to mission critical projects.

An Amazon India spokesperson said delivery of products has been temporarily impacted owing to the current situation. We will resume all deliveries at the earliest. We have advised our employees to work from home today and continue to monitor developments, she added.

Flipkart Head (Supply Chain Operations) Neeraj Aggarwal said the company has stalled operations to ensure safety of its delivery staff.

"We are trying to mitigate all customer impact by keeping them informed about expected delays," he added.

Meanwhile, Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Coimbatore has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and hold talks with both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for an amicable settlement.

The violence including burning and damaging of more than 50 buses and many other vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu registration and also torching of properties belonging to Tamilians is deplorable, chamber president Vanitha Mohan said in a statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi should intervene and hold talks with both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for an amicable settlement on the issue, she said.

A large number of youths from Tamil Nadu are employed in several IT companies in Bengaluru, she said and sought the intervention of the Karnataka Chief Minister in ensuring their safety and protection from untoward incidents. She also urged the Karnataka government to initiate stringent action to maintain law and order in the state as mob attacks, violence and damage to properties will not in any way resolve the issue.

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Karnataka on Monday as the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu turned violent, escalating tension between the two states.

Bengaluru city police, bolstered by central forces, is keeping a tight vigil, particularly in areas inhabited by Tamils and other sensitive localities. Violence targeting Tamil Nadu buses and lorries and other vehicles put the city on edge yesterday and curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits last night. The entire city is under prohibitory orders till September 14.



(With PTI inputs)


The government has relaxed one of the rules of Companies Act 2013 doubling the limit on managerial remuneration for public companies without or inadequate profits in a particular financial year.

Relaxing the Schedule Five of the Companies Act, the government has increased the managerial remuneration limit from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 60 lakh for companies with effective capital of less than Rs 5 crore. This is the maximum salary a company with no profit or inadequate profit can pay to its managers without taking government approval. For paying a higher salary, such companies would have to take approval from the government.

For companies with effective capital of Rs 5 crore or more but less than Rs 100 crore, the limit has been increased from Rs 42 lakh to Rs 84 lakh and for effective capital of Rs 100 crore or more but less than Rs 250 crore, the limit has been increased from Rs 60 lakh to Rs 120 lakh.

For companies with effective capital of Rs 250 crore or more, the new limit is Rs 120 lakh plus 0.01% of the effective capital above Rs 250 crore. Earlier, the limit was Rs 60 lakh plus 9.91% of excess effective capital over Rs 250 crore.

(Effective capital of a company includes paid-up capital of the company, money in the premium account, reserves and surpluses and long-term loans and deposits payable after one year.)

The salary cap is applicable for managing directors, whole-time directors and part-time directors. A public company is one which has a minimum paid-up capital of Rs 5 lakh or more.

The move is seen as giving more leg room to companies to decide their managerial salaries. "The question was being asked by companies that what value the government was adding to their decision-making when they go for approval of remuneration higher than the limit as laid down in the (Companies) Act. You need to pay salaries to people to run business and therefore, it makes sense to relax the salary cap," says Sandip Khetan, partner, Indian member firm of EY Global. Khetan says it is a move towards more ease of doing business.

It is to be mentioned here that the Companies Act does not allow public companies to pay its managing director and whole-time directors salaries that exceed 11% of its net profit.
As PepsiCo reshapes its portfolio to focus on health and wellness category, its Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi visited a local restaurant to stir up a conversation on how to make familiar food healthy.

Nooyi, on a two-day visit to India, visited a traditional south-Indian eatery in Chennai with PepsiCo's nutrition ambassador Michelin star chef Vikas Khanna.

The two discussed plans and ideas for PepsiCo to make familiar traditional foods healthy as part of the company's aim to expand its offering to include whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

Speaking about her experience and nostalgia of eating at a local eatery, she said, "As lifestyles continue to change, PepsiCo is on a mission to dial up the nutrition in our portfolio."

In April, she had stated that PepsiCo's trademark Pepsi soft drink account for just 12 per cent of the company's revenue as the US firm focuses on the health and wellness category.

"Chef Vikas has provided great inspiration for the company here in India and has played a key role in developing new recipes that are convenient, affordable, delicious and healthy," she said today.

"We had a great time sitting down at a local eatery and enjoying some of my favorite traditional dishes, while exchanging ideas on how we can adapt these time-honored recipes with a knowledge of nutrition informed by the latest science," she added.

Khanna said talk was on how health with taste in familiar Indian food can be combined.

"Indra's commitment and passion to drive its nutrition credentials at PepsiCo is stellar! It was fun to add nutritious ingredients like Oats and beetroot into familiar South Indian dishes for a special breakfast.

"Am glad that she enjoyed her experience and excited to know that some of these flavours will be hitting the Indian market soon through infusion of Quaker Oats and grains," he said.
The U.S. International Trade Commission determined that imports of hot-rolled steel from Australia, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom unfairly harm domestic producers.



The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Monday determined that imports of hot-rolled steel from Australia, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom unfairly harm domestic producers and that these products in the case of Turkey are sold in the United States at less than fair value.

However, while the ITC agreed with an initial determination by the Commerce Department that the Brazilian and South Korean governments are subsidizing their hot-rolled steel exports, the commission found that the Turkish governments subsidies to this industry are negligible.

As a result of the ITCs affirmative determinations, Commerce will now issue countervailing duty orders on imports of hot-rolled steel products from Brazil and South Korea and antidumping duty orders on these imports from Australia, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Turkey and the United Kingdom. No countervailing duty order, however, will be issued on these imports from Turkey, the ITC said.

The petitioners for these investigations included AK Steel Corp. of Ohio, ArcelorMittal USA in Illinois, Nucor Corp. of North Carolina, SSAB Enterprises in Illinois, Steel Dynamics of Indiana, and U.S. Steel Corp. in Pennsylvania.

In 2015, Commerce estimated that imports of certain hot-rolled steel from South Korea totaled $649.5 million, followed by Japan at $314.7 million, Brazil at $252.6 million, the Netherlands at $208.4 million, the United Kingdom at $197.1 million, Turkey at $181.7 million and Australia at $122.5 million.
India's top women bankers, SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, ICICI head Chanda Kochhar and Axis Bank CEO Shikha Sharma, are among the 50 most powerful women based outside the US, according to a list by Fortune which is topped by Banco Santander's boss Ana Bot n.

Bhattacharya, 60 is ranked second on the list, while Kochhar comes in on the fifth spot and Sharma on the 19th position in the Fortune's '50 Most Powerful Women International' list, which has ranked the women based outside the US.

Bot n, Group Executive Chairman of Banco Santander, Eurozone s largest bank by market value, repeats as No. 1, in a time of economic and political volatility for all. The 2016 list spans 19 countries.

"Bhattacharya's profile has risen during her three-year tenure atop India's largest bank," Fortune said.

SBI Chairperson Bhattacharya, who was widely speculated to succeed Raghuram Rajan as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has continued her "high-profile battle with the bank's bad loans, while courting overseas partners to invest in the stressed assets.

In May, she also orchestrated SBI's merger with six other groups, a plan that, once complete, will result in one of largest lenders in Asia.

"Though her term leading the bank is set to expire in October, most expect the government will extend her time so she can see the efforts through," Fortune said.

ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO Kochhar, 54, is regarded even by rival bankers as a "visionary", Fortune said.

"After seven years at the helm of India's largest private sector lender, with consolidated assets of USD 139 billion, she has overhauled the nation s consumer retail business.

"Though bad loans took a toll on income growth this year, Kochhar has engaged turnaround experts to help ditch those distressed assets," Fortune said, highlighting her efforts to boost the bank's digital growth and enable female employees to work from home for a year.

Sharma, 57, has grown Axis from an underrepresented bank to the nation's fastest growing private sector lender, with revenue up 15 per cent to USD 7.9 billion in 2015 and nearly 3000 branches across 1,800 cities and towns, Fortune said.

"First quarter profit this year was hurt by a spike in bad loans, but Sharma deserves accolades for publicising a 'watch list' she created to monitor four per cent of the bank's potentially-troubled assets," it said.

Last week, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi was ranked second and was the only woman of Indian-origin in Fortune's list of the 50 most powerful women in the US, a compilation topped by General Motors CEO Mary Barra.

The international power list also includes Singapore Telecommunications Group CEO Chua Sock Koong on the 4th spot, Walgreens Boots Alliance Co-COO Ornella Barra (10), chairwoman and co-founder of Chinese real estate developer Longfor Wu Yajun (26), CEO and President, GE China, General Electric Rachel Duan (35), Huawei Technologies Chairman Sun Yafang (38), President, International Markets, MasterCard Ann Cairns (44) and Coca-Cola Amatil Group Managing Director Alison Watkins (47).
In order to protect consumers from frauds, the Centre on Monday issued new guidelines mandating direct sellers to put in place a proper mechanism to redress consumer complaints and maintain a record of such cases.

The rules also make it mandatory for e-retailers and online marketplaces to get prior written consent of the direct selling entities like Amway before soliciting sales.

The model guidelines, which have been sent to states, also seek to define direct selling and direct sellers as well as pyramid schemes involving chain of subscribers wherein a buyer enrols one or more subscribers and the chain continues.

The norms provided for direct selling companies for setting up a Grievance Redressal Committee to attend to consumer complaints that will necessarily have to carry a unique number through which they can be tracked.

Also, the guidelines mandate such firms to provide name of purchaser and seller, delivery date, procedure of returning goods and warranty.

The direct selling industry was pitching for a clearcut guidelines for the sector to remove legal ambiguities to differentiate between fraudulent ponzi schemes and genuine businesses run by them.

The process for framing proper guidelines was started in 2013 by the government after the police arrested the then Amway's India Chairman William S Pinckney and two company directors over allegations of fraud in Kerala under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act.

The guidelines stipulate that the direct selling entity will be liable for grievances arising out of sale of products, services or business opportunity by its direct sellers. The new guidelines mandate a seller to provide information about the name of the purchaser and seller, delivery date of goods, procedure of its return and its warranty.

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs issued the guidelines for states to regulate direct selling and multi-level marketing (MLM), that prohibited pyramid scheme as well as money circulation schemes under the garb of direct selling business.

The 'Direct Selling Guidelines 2016' framework was released by the Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and has been sent to the states/Union Territories for adoption.

The industry welcomed the move saying that it will bring clarity in the Rs 7,500 crore-sector and end regulatory conflicts, leading to future growth in direct selling segment.

The government has defined legitimate direct selling and differentiates it from pyramid and money circulation schemes to help investigating agencies identify fraudulent players.

We are sending the model guidelines to all state governments. States can make some changes as per their localised requirements. The guidelines were necessary for better growth in the direct selling business, Consumer Affairs Secretary Hem Pande told reporters here.

Guidelines are always optional, he said when asked whether it would be mandatory for states to adopt these norms.

Indian Direct Selling Association (IDSA) President Jitendra Jagota said: In the absence of proper policy or guidelines, numerous fraudulent players have been taking advantage of the situation. Now that the guidelines are out, it shall address the current concerns of the industry and provide much needed impetus.

In association with Mail Today Bureau


With a view to boost the real estate sector, the Punjab Cabinet on Monday decided to abolish the stamp duty of two per cent levied on immovable property while awarding the power of attorney.

A decision to this effect was taken by the Cabinet in a meeting held under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.

Speaking on the matter, a spokesperson of the Chief Minister's Office said the decision would be a major relief for people aspiring to buy their own houses.

The stamp duty would now be a nominal Rs 1000 on the General Power of Attorney and Rs 500 on Special Power of Attorney, irrespective of the market value.

ALSO READ: Now shop online while texting your friends on Facebook Messenger



In another major decision, Cabinet decided in principle to offer the proprietary rights under concessional terms and conditions to the small and marginal agricultural farmers cultivating up to five acres of provincial government agricultural land.

These tillers who have been cultivating government land for at least 20 years would be entitled to allotment at significant discount from the collector rates.

The Cabinet also gave nod for appointing Senior Vice President in the various boards and corporations from among the non-official members.

Following this decision, the Cabinet approved the creation of post of Senior Vice Chairman in Punjab State Board of Technical Education and Industrial Training and Punjab Khadi & Village Industries Board.

It was also decided in the meeting to constitute a Cabinet sub committee comprising Food and Civil Supplies Minister and Finance Minister to negotiate with banks for a lower rate of interest on previous loan accounts.

The Cabinet also approved the proposal mooted by the local government department to make suitable amendment in the Punjab Municipal Act, 1911 and the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976 for the disposal of Municipal properties under possession of occupiers for a period of twenty years or more.

In the meeting, the Cabinet also decided to make amendments in the rates of property tax of hotels in the urban areas from the year 2015-16 by including this type in the category of commercial property.
The unending queue and uneasy checkmate at our border check posts paint a stark picture of our logistics industry, while giving any foreigner travelling through our highways a real taste of "ease of doing business in India". The overwhelming feeling is that the Goods and Service Tax (GST), which got Parliament's nod after a 13-year-long hiatus, will untie the knots at our check posts at one go and transform India into a manufacturing destination in line with the Make in India drive. With experts after experts listing out the gains of GST for the logistics industry and plethora of analyses eating up rolls of newsprint, there is an impression that GST is going to be the biggest game changer for logistics players. Some have also predicted that the sector will be saving $200 billion annually on account of GST. Logistics players have started dreaming about a border-less, barrier-less tomorrow when goods roll on seamlessly.

ALSO READ: Punjab Cabinet abolishes 2 per cent stamp duty tax



But, as a player in the logistic industry, I don't think that GST is going to be the one-shot panacea to cure all ailments in the logistics sector. It is surely a critical and decisive step to ease some of the current woes in the sector to a certain extent. But, it is not yet enough, though it can be the beginning of a new phase. If we want to build further on the GST advantage, what we need now is an ardent and aggressive `Move in India' campaign with strong growth levers.

As per a study by IIM-Calcutta, the estimated annual loss due to delays and extra fuel consumption at toll plazas is Rs 87,000 crore. Going by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) data, on an average a truck spends nearly 16 per cent of the time at check posts. A truck in India covers an average annual distance of only 85,000 km as compared to 150,000 to 200,000 km in advanced countries. Truck transports account for 65 per cent of the country's total freight movement. Given this backdrop, any step to ease the congestion at the borders will have considerable impact on the logistics sector and resultantly in our economy.

But, everything depends on the fine print of the GST after passage of the same by 50 per cent of the States and permutations by the GST council over the rates, inclusions and exceptions. And in order to have a big impact on the ground, the multiple registration and filing process have to be carried out under the GST regime. So, it is too early to assume that trucks will have a totally unrestricted movement as expected by many now.

Secondly, a GST without due stress by the government on improving the infrastructure will not yield the desired results. The logistics industry is significant as 13 per cent of our GDP is spent on the development of logistics framework. As per logistics performance index (LPI), India ranks 53rd across 115 countries recording an efficient logistics system score of 3.08 out of five. Studies suggest that India ranks 32nd on global competitiveness in logistics sector due to insufficient infrastructure. We are below our BRICS partners like South Africa (20) and China (27). After the roads, it is railway that moves cargo most in India with 33 per cent share, while inland waterways and air contribute less than 1 per cent. In the last 64 years, freight loading has grown by 1,344 per cent, but railway capacity (route kilometres) have grown by only 23 per cent. That shows our progress made in infrastructure development. The very Indian model itself is skewed, with heavy dependency on roads while leaving air and waterways underutilized.

Thirdly, GST or the tax reforms is just one of those many woes prevailing in the logistics sector which has been clamouring for industry status and integrated policy as at present it is manned by different departments. A blueprint for infrastructure development, and integration of multimodal logistic parks to improve storage facilities, large-scale container terminal projects to connect to the hinterlands, better amenities and more airport facilities are some of the pending demands by the industry. Apart from these, shortage of skill and insufficient use of IT are the persisting worries in the sector, dominated by the unorganised players.

It does not mean that GST has no merits whatsoever. Right from cutting down freight movement time to improved warehousing, it will usher in many positive impacts. Under the GST, the entire warehousing landscape is going to change for the better as the country will become a single unified market.

The logistics sector in general and logistics parks in particular have the potential to attract huge foreign investment. PE firms and NRIs will now be willing to invest. But, we are yet to make a serious effort to showcase it well. A sound infrastructure with an integrated policy will be the foundation for 'Move in India' that can officially take off with GST, especially when e-tailing is giving added fuel for growth.



The writer is vice-chairman, Patel Integrated Logistics
The Central Bank of Ireland has today issued guidance on IT risk management and cybersecurity for financial services firms.

The Central Bank highlights their key concerns given their potential impact on firms and their customers, and the risks for financial stability.

The incidence of cyber-attack and business interruption is on the increase and firms should assume they will be successfully targeted. The security and resilience of IT systems, their governance and management must improve to reflect this reality.

The Central Bank expects Boards and Senior Management of regulated firms to fully recognise their responsibilities for these issues and to put them among their top priorities.

The Central Bank implores firms to robustly address key issues such as, outsourcing, change management, incident response and disaster recovery as areas that could potentially leave a company vulnerable to cyber threats.

Director of Policy & Risk, Gerry Cross, said: Developments in technology have fundamentally changed business processes and models in financial firms. These advancements have resulted in benefits for firms and their customers. However, they also bring significant risks as firms become increasingly interconnected and more reliant on complex IT systems, including outsourcing service providers.

The Central Bank is demanding increased effectiveness in this area. We are undertaking considerable work to require improved IT risk management and cyber resilience across regulated firms. This includes enhanced supervisory capabilities and increased focus on these risk areas." He added.



Source: www.businessworld.ie
Ortec Inc., a US pharmaceutical company, today announced it is to establish a European Headquarters, Manufacturing and Operations Centre in Newcastle West, Co. Limerick.

The new European base will create up to 110 skilled engineering and science jobs in the region over the next several years once the plant is operational.

Founded in the US in 1980, Ortec operates in multiple markets including: pharmaceuticals, medical devices, hygienic products, cosmetics, and nutritional additives.

Ortec currently operates from three facilities in Greenville, South Carolina.

Ortec Inc. will commence its manufacturing operation in a 13,000ft2 leased building at Newcastle West Business Park. The company plans to double capacity at the facility to 26,000ft2 in the coming months subject to planning permission.



The project is supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation through IDA Ireland.



Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Employment, Mary Mitchell OConnor, welcoming the announcement, said: I am delighted that Ortec Inc. has decided to establish its European Headquarters and first investment outside of the US in Limerick. I wish Ortec Inc. and their team every success in Ireland.

Ortec Inc.s Senior Vice President Christopher Brotherton announcing the investment today, said: This is our first investment outside of the US, and we are pleased to be doing it in Ireland. It is a strategic part of our global expansion. Bringing the project to this stage has required a great deal of collaboration. We have received tremendous support from IDA Ireland, Limerick City and County Council, Shannon Properties, and a multitude of local professional advisors.



Source: www.businessworld.ie
Celtic Linen today signed an agreement with Vayu Energy worth 1.2 million per annum, which will see Vayu supply Celtic Linen with gas and 100% green electricity to meet the year-round energy requirements for its operations at its main processing plants in Wexford and sites across the country.

Celtic Linen operates from a state-of-the-art facility in Drinagh, County Wexford, where it processes approximately 1.2 million pieces of linen each week  supplying laundry, rental services and product sales to hotels, hospitals, clinics, government bodies and businesses.

Vayu will supply gas to the Wexford site for the first time in mid-August, as well as also providing Celtic Linen with direct access to wholesale market prices for both gas and electricity.

Stephen Behan, energy specialist at Vayu said: Irelands energy market is undergoing a fundamental change in the way businesses procure and manage their energy. Minimising energy costs is becoming an even greater consideration and this is having a direct impact on the way companies across Ireland source their energy. As such, were seeing an increasing trend among larger users opting to procure energy directly on the wholesale markets.



Source: www.businessworld.ie
Multinational companies should refrain from tax-avoidance practices and pay their fair share, the head of euro zone finance ministers said on Saturday in a new endorsement of the European Union's fight against tax-dodging.

In the wake of the 'Panama Papers' revelations of widespread tax-avoidance practices, Brussels has toughened up its drive for fairness by tightening controls and adopting stricter rules.

The recent shock multi-billion euro tax demand on Apple was part of that trend as the EU also drafts plans for a common corporate tax base and a single European blacklist for tax havens.

"My message to those companies is you are fighting the wrong battle. You have to move on. Times are changing," the head of the eurogroup and Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters on arriving at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Bratislava.

"You need to pay your taxes in a fair way. Part of that would be in the U.S., part of that would be in Europe. So get ready to do that," Dijsselbloem added.

The Commission, which is in charge of protecting market competition in Europe, is investigating multinationals' tax arrangements in several EU countries to assess whether, by lowering corporations' tax bills, illegal state aid may have been given.

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc and hamburger group McDonald's Corp face European Commission probes over taxes in Luxembourg, while coffee chain StarbucksCorp has been ordered to pay up to 30 million euros ($33 million) in back-taxes to the Dutch state.

The Netherlands has appealed against the Commission's decision, and Ireland did the same in the Apple case, fearing it could undermine the country's long-established policy of attracting multinationals with low taxes.

European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici plans to unveil proposals in the coming weeks on a common tax base for multinationals operating in the EU, telling reporters the initiative was about the tax base rather than rates, which will remain in the hands of member states.

He also said the Commission will move forward with plans to align taxes on ebooks and online press with paper publications, in line with earlier announcements.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble welcomed the efforts while EU Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen said new rules were needed to eliminate mismatches and loopholes between member states' tax systems that companies exploit.

"What is clear is that with every new case of unfair tax practise or abuse, public frustration grows," he told a news conference at the conclusion of the summit.

Ministers at the meeting also discussed a paper presented by the Slovak presidency of the EU calling for more tax certainty for multinationals. It aims to step up cooperation among EU states and also make companies' tax bills more predictable.(Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Opening arguments are set to begin on Tuesday in the trial of former American International Group Inc chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg over accounting fraud at the insurance giant some 16 years ago.

Greenberg, 91, is facing civil charges of orchestrating a $500 million transaction to conceal the insurer's financial difficulties from shareholders. He is expected to testify during the trial.

The case, filed by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2005 and which also names former AIG chief financial officer Howard Smith as a defendant, did not go to trial for more than a decade, thanks to legal wrangling that twice made its way to the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has said he continued to pursue the case to show "no one, no matter how rich or powerful can evade responsibility for misconduct."

David Boies, Greenberg's lawyer, plans to argue the lawsuit was politically motivated.

"This case was brought by Eliot Spitzer expressly because he was angry at Hank Greenberg," Boies said in an interview on Monday. He plans to enter evidence that Spitzer was irate about statements Greenberg made about the attorney general's overly aggressive approach towards alleged corporate misconduct.

Greenberg and Smith tried for years to have the case thrown out as having no merit, but the Court of Appeals said there was enough evidence to proceed to trial.

Greenberg nearly settled the case in 2008 with a $100 million gift to charity, Boies said, but the market crashed that September along with the value of Greenberg's AIG stock holdings.

Damages are no longer on the table after Greenberg, Smith and other executives separately reached a $115 million settlement with AIG shareholders, but the Court of Appeals ruled in June that Schneiderman could seek to recoup millions in bonuses paid to the defendants during the time the alleged fraud took place.

Justice Charles Ramos of New York state court in Manhattan will decide the non-jury case, which may run into early next year with breaks between trial dates. Some 20 to 25 witnesses are expected to testify, according to Boies.

Greenberg led AIG for four decades before he was ousted in 2005. The following year, AIG paid $1.64 billion to settle federal and state probes into its business practices. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
FARMINGTON, Utah (AP)  A man accused of tying up five women in a basement took a plea deal in Utah on Monday but still faces a murder case in Wyoming, where he is charged with killing a train worker while on the run from police.

Dereck James DJ Harrison, 23, pleaded guilty to five counts of aggravated kidnapping for restraining and beating a woman and her four teenage daughters in May. He and his father then went on the run, snatching the rail employee and beating him to death on their way to a remote Wyoming hideout, prosecutors say.

The rest of Harrisons 16 charges in Utah were dropped. He faces at least 15 years and up to life in prison on each count, but prosecutors agreed to recommend the first four sentences run at the same time.

He also wont fight extradition to Wyoming after his sentencing, set for Oct. 24. He faces murder and kidnapping charges there that carry the possibility of the death penalty. Wyoming prosecutors will decide whether to pursue capital punishment after Harrison arrives.

Lincoln County Attorney Spencer Allred said hes ready to move forward, having done a thorough investigation.

We still are receiving evidence back on a daily basis, Allred said.

Harrison appeared in court outside Salt Lake City in a striped jail jumpsuit, his hands shackled in front of him and shoulders rounded. He quietly answered a judges questions about whether he understood the charges and his guilty pleas. His lawyer declined to comment after the hearing.

His father, Flint Harrison, also was charged in both cases but killed himself in jail in July.

The Harrisons were accused of luring the five women to a house with an invitation to a barbecue, then tying them up and beating them before they managed to escape. The men had been using drugs heavily and thought the mother had reported them to police, authorities said.

The pair got away and laid low in Salt Lake City, encountering Kay Ricks, 63, during his shift maintaining rail lines, police said. They are accused of forcing the man into his work truck and taking off for a hideout near Flint Harrisons Wyoming home.

They stopped in the southwestern Wyoming countryside along the way and killed Ricks, beating him so severely that he was unrecognizable when his body was found, prosecutors said.

Flint Harrison surrendered following a five-day manhunt, and he and his son were arrested.

Ricks family is relieved that Dereck Harrison will be sent to Wyoming to face murder charges, spokesman Richard Massey said.

There is no way that anything he says or does, cooperatively or not, will make us feel any better about the loss of Kay, he said. We only hope that he never sees the light of day again.

The family plans to attend his sentencing in Utah. They also plan to sue Dereck Harrison and his fathers estate to get additional information about Ricks death, he said.
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 []
Gabina VOA is designed to be an infotainment youth radio show broadcasting to Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Amharic language. The show brings varied perspectives on issues concerning young people in the Horn of Africa region. Gabina in the Amharic language is a front row taxi ridesymbolic of the shows content as a fun ride that takes audiences from point A to point B. Gabina VOAs main goal is Enlightening young people, introducing them to cutting-edge technological innovations, exposing them to new processes and ideas so they can be productive, informed and self-governing citizens.
Q: How can I establish my business as a brand?

A: Boston Consulting Group recommends eight rules for establishing what they call an apostle brand, meaning customer trust, loyalty, endorsement and advocacy. They say if 2 percent of your customers are apostle customers they can contribute 20 percent of sales and drive 80 percent of sales with their recommendations and endorsements.

Rule No. 1: Don't ask your customers what they want because they don't know. Instead show them. For example, Facebook gets credit for creating social media and convincing customers they needed it. Likewise, Apple gets credit for creating smartphones. However, the underlying customer need was for communication and recognition.

Rule No. 2: Woo your biggest fans because they are worth it. Your 2 percent apostle customers can produce 20 percent of sales, but be responsible for 80 percent of sales through their advocating to friends and acquaintances. One apostle customer can create many other apostle customers who in turn can create still more.

Rule No. 3: Welcome your customer's complaints. A complainer is emotionally involved. If you can satisfy them, they are likely to become apostle customers. Listen, find out what the real complaint is. Be polite and thankful. Fix it to the customer's satisfaction and don't let it happen again.

Rule No. 4: Looks and appearance do count. Disney has been a master at creating visual impressions that people like.

Rule No. 5: Transform your employees into passionate disciples who love their jobs. The key words are listening, helping, engaging, suggesting. Passion is infectious and stimulates a similar response from customers.

Rule No. 6: Ramp up your virtual relationships with customers online. That means frequent good communication with customers online with helpful information they need and appreciate. Customers with the most disposable income have the least amount of time and use the Internet to efficiently use that time.

Rule No. 7: Take giant leaps because you're not going to win with timid steps. Most businesses strive for continuous improvement and incremental advances followed by consolidation. However, that strategy won't produce rapid growth. I once had a SCORE retail client who expanded their sales space by three times in one step. I cautioned a more deliberate pace, but it worked.

Rule No. 8: Find out what schismogenesis means to save your customer relationships. It's an anthropology term meaning relationships are not stable. Brands are always moving up or down not stable. Once they start down, it's hard to turn them around. Apostle customers can help you a lot, but if you disappoint them, they can hurt you a lot, especially with social media.

Ralph Coker, a retired refinery manager, volunteers with the local chapter of SCORE, counselors to small businesses.
Contributed artwork/Carmen Lomas Garza Quinceanera, a painting by Carmen Lomas Garza, is exemplary of much of her work, which shows scenes from the livives of Mexican-Americans in in South Texas.

SHARE Contributed photo/Carmen Lomas Garza Carmen Lomas Garza, an artist who is a Kingsville native, will speak at a reception for Mi Familia, Mi Communidad on Friday at the Cesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Center. Contributed artwork/Carmen Lomas Garza "Cakewalk", a painting by Carmen Lomas Garza, showcases the bright colors and simple styles the artist uses in her work. She said she wants her work to be accessible for viewers of all ages, including children. Contributed artwork/Carmen Lomas Garza "Tamalada," an oil painting by Carmen Lomas Garza, depicts a family who gathered in a kitchen to make tamales. Garza said her mother is one of the biggest inspirations for her artwork.

By Mary Lee Grant of the Caller-Times

Carmen Lomas Garza paints the everyday life of South Texas with bright colors and simple, almost childlike style. From a pinata party, to a quinceanera, a folk remedy, or even a backyard barbecue, Garza has brought South Texas to life in her work.

Garza earned her place as one of the most revered artists of the Chicano art movement by documenting the ordinary rituals of Mexican-Americans in South Texas. She will return to her hometown, Kingsville, for a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday to discuss how her childhood shaped her art at a reception at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Center at 1730 Corral Ave.

The public is invited to the event, which will mark Mexican Independence Day as well as serve as the kickoff for a National Endowment for the Humanities Common Heritage grant project, "Mi Familia, Mi Comunidad," awarded to the John E. Conner Museum and the South Texas Archives. The project will document the lives and heritage of Kingsville residents, as locals submit photos and histories of their families for a museum exhibit slated for next spring.

"Her work is perfect for this project because she captures her memories of childhood and of local culture in her art," said museum director Jonathan Plant.

Garza was born in Kingsville in 1948, encountering discrimination and segregation even as her parents fought for civil rights while working with the American GI Forum. At a time when the dominant Anglo population  and even many Hispanics  downplayed traditional Mexican-American culture in favor of assimilation, Garza recognized the beauty in the everyday life of her community.

Her work shows families gathered in the kitchen making tamales and sitting on the front porch eating watermelon in the evening. It depicts folk religious cures, celebrations, and bonds of kinship and community.

"I want my viewers to see themselves in the artwork and find familiarity in the images," Garza said. "I want them to recognize characters that they know and feel proud of who they are."

Her interest in the Chicano art movement as a student at Texas A&I, now Texas A&M-Kingsville, made her see the importance of recording the culture of small-town Mexican-American life.

She has written several picture books for children in English and Spanish, which she will autograph and sell at the event. They include "Family Pictures" "In My Family," and "Magic Windows."

In 2007, the Los Angeles school district named a new East Los Angeles elementary school after her, the Carmen Lomas Garza Primary Center, which serves primarily children of Mexican descent.

"This great honor comes as a result of teachers using my children's bilingual picture books for curriculum development since the first book was published in 1990," she said.

Her artwork is accessible to children, even when not aimed at them.

"I wanted to keep it simple so that everybody could relate to it and understand it," she said.

Her influences have included the great Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera, who painted scenes glorifying common people and made art that was accessible to the public, both in style and by its large size and public placement.

She also has followed the muralists with her many large public commissions. These include a commission by the San Francisco Airport for a copper cutout wall sculpture entitled "Baile". She's completed a series of eight paintings designed for the San Francisco Water Department. Her work is featured in Texas in an outdoor metal cutout painting for New Hope Housing in Houston; a painting, "Barbacoa para cumpleanos," for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and a 36- by 48-foot acrylic painting "A Plaza in Texas in the 1930s" for the Institute of Texas Cultures.

"It is similar to what you still see in a plaza in Mexico," Garza said. "People dancing, listening to music. Guys going around the perimeter of the plaza asking the girls to dance. I had a ton of fun depicting the cars of the 1930s."

Although Garza, who earned her master of fine arts from San Francisco State University, has been living and painting in San Francisco since the 1970s, she said her work continues to look back at her personal history and the Kingsville community.

"One painting I did recently depicts the backyard retirement party of a teacher, Mrs. Ramirez," she said. "Since teachers know everybody, all sorts of people are there, from break dancing kids to salsa musicians to a Chinese fan dancer."

One of the greatest inspirations for her art was her mother, hosting parties, painting, decorating, designing loteria cards, baking cakes, and working as an activist.

"She was the first artist I knew," Garza said.

if you go

What: Mi Familia-Mi Comunidad reception, featuring artist Carmen Lomas Garza

When: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday

Where: Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Center, 1730 W. Corral Ave.

Information: 361-593-2810
COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES Calallen School Board members and public officials take part in a ribbon cutting for the school district's new multi-purpose venue and FEMA emergency shelter on Monday.

SHARE COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES Calallen ISD Superintendent Arturo Almendarez speaks during a ribbon cutting for the school district's new multipurpose facility and FEMA emergency shelter on Monday. COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES A look at Calallen ISD's new multi-purpose facility and FEMA emergency shelter, which was dedicated during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday.

By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times

Calallen ISD officials opened the district's estimated $4.8 million gymnasium and Federal Emergency Management Agency safety shelter Monday.

The 20,289-square-foot dome took about a year to complete and was built on a 56-acre lot along Wildcat Drive.

"Thanks to the vision of past and present school leaders, school board trustees and a dedicated Northwest community, Calallen ISD has expanded its facilities to embrace the ever-evolving rich history of the Calallen Wildcats," said Calallen ISD's Superintendent Artie Almendarez. "The official opening of this FEMA dome and the multi-purpose covered practice facility are first class venues that visibly display a long standing tradition of Wildcat pride."

Calallen and Tuloso-Midway independent school districts, along with Del Mar College and the Corpus Christi International Airport, teamed with city officials in 2012 to seek federal grant funds through the Texas Safe Shelter Initiative for the construction of disaster shelters.

The facilities will be used by first responders for emergency operations during a natural disaster, such as a hurricane.

For daily operations, the school's dome can be used as a gymnasium, auditorium, training facility or instructional space.

Twitter: @CallerBetty
JOHN C. MORITZ/CALLER-TIMES Opponents of the " Mexican American Heritage" textbook that believe it's anti-Hispanic rallied Tuesday before the State Board of Education began the process of deciding whether to have it taught in Texas public schools.

SHARE

By John C. Moritz, USA Today Network Austin Bureau

AUSTIN  A proposed textbook called "Mexican American Heritage" was denounced as an error-plagued misrepresentation of Hispanic culture by more than 100 demonstrators just as the State Board of Education began the process of deciding whether to have it taught in Texas public schools.

"I would not want this book taught to my children," Board member Ruben Cortez, a Democrat whose district includes the Coastal Bend, said during a rally before the full board's hearing. "This is not the Texas I know. This is not the Texas I love."

The text, published by a company called Momentum Instruction, has been criticized by such organizations as the Texas House and Senate Hispanic caucuses, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and the largest Texas teachers union. Specifically, the objections centered on passages in the books saying people of Mexican descent have been stereotyped as "lazy" and unambitious and immersed in a "manana " attitude, suggesting that responsibilities are best shrugged until another day.

Several took offense at another reference to the Chicano movement "adopted a revolutionary narrative" bent on destroying Western civilian.

State Sen. Jose Rodriguez, D-El Paso, said he was part of the Chicano movement as student in Pan American University  now UT-Pan Am  and said participants wanted to solidify their place in American life, not to withdraw from it.

"From my point of view, the well has been poisoned," Rodriguez said, referring to any value the textbook might have as an instructional tool for school children.

More than 100 people signed up to testify on the textbook; most checked "against" in the box seeking their viewpoint. Several said they simply wanted to "comment on" the book. None indicated support for the book's adoption by the board.

Cortez, a Brownsville school board member before his election to the state board, has formed a committee of educators and activists to review the textbook and examine the allegations of bias. The group said it identified nearly 70 fact errors and more than 40 "interpretive errors" in its report.

Board members are not scheduled to take action on the textbook until November. Several members noted, without endorsing the book or its contents, that no other textbook on Mexican-American studies was submitted for their consideration.

Some, including Republicans Ken Mercer of San Antonio and David Bradley of Beaumont, pointed out the legislation passed in 2011 offered publishers a way of bypassing the state board and selling books directly to local school districts under limited conditions.

Former State School Board member Cynthia Dunbar, a conservative Republican, leads Momentum Instruction's education curriculum.

Dunbar, who served on the board from 2007 until 2011, told the Texas Tribune in a report published Monday that many of the errors cited are being corrected and disputed that it contains an anti-Latino stereotypes. She said the book points out that over the course of history, Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans have been victims of stereotype.

But several speakers suggested that the book does not provide sufficient attribution or context to debunk stereotypes they described as harmful to impressionable school-age children.

"Regardless of what was going through their minds of the authors," said Emilio Zamora, a UT-Austin history professor, "they need a crash course in Mexican-American history."

Twitter: @JohnnieMo
Contributed photo Corpus Christi police are asking for the public's help to find a man they believe stole prescription drugs from a Walgreens in the Southside.

SHARE Mark Garcia

By Fares Sabawi of the Caller-Times

No one at the pharmacy recognized the man who pointed a gun at them and demanded drugs, but when police saw him on video, they knew.

Corpus Christi officers noted, in an arrest affidavit, that it was tattoos and a gang-related past that gave him away.

The department's gang unit arrested the suspect Monday in the 1600 block of Hickory Place.

On Sunday morning, an employee of a pharmacy in the 5600 block of Saratoga Boulevard called police about an armed robbery.

The man walked up to the pharmacy counter, pointed a gun at two employees and demanded Xanax and codeine, leaving the store with about $2,980 worth in drugs, the arrest affidavit states.

When police viewed surveillance footage provided by the pharmacy, an officer recognized the suspect as a gang member he'd before encountered.

The detective compared documented photos of the suspect's tattoos with those in surveillance images and made a positive match, using the information to obtain an arrest warrant.

While executing the warrant at the Hickory Place home searching for Mark Garcia, officers encountered a man and woman who became combative, according to a probable cause statement.

When police placed the man and woman in handcuffs, Garcia became irate and banged his head against kitchen cabinets, according to an arrest affidavit.

Inside Garcia's bedroom, police found three plastic baggies containing a white substance officers believe are narcotics, according to an affidavit.

Garcia, 25, remained in Nueces County Jail on Tuesday, jail officials said. He faces two drug possession charges and an aggravated robbery charge. His bail is set at $200,000.

The man who police said was confrontational with officers during Garcia's arrest also was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, a misdemeanor offense. The Caller-Times does not typically name individuals charged with a misdemeanor.

Twitter: @Caller_Fares Staff writer Natalia Contreras contributed to this report.
Since 2006, Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections has been an independent view of family history resources and developments seen from an Ottawa perspective.
Caller-Times File Photo Prosecutor Angelica Hernandez questions a witness during a 2009 hearing related to one of Mauricio Celis' cases.

SHARE Caller-Times File Photo Mauricio Celis

By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

The prosecutor who secured a conviction against former law firm operator Mauricio Celis in 2009 says he was denied a fair trial.

In an affidavit filed last week in federal court, Angelica Hernandez said she felt the original trial judge showed favoritism to the prosecution and influenced the jury that convicted Celis of several counts of falsely holding himself out to be a lawyer. He was sentenced to 10 years probation.

Visiting Judge Mark Luitjen was later removed from the case by another judge who found an appearance of bias. Seven jurors said they believed Luitjen was biased because of his demeanor, expressions and rulings. Their affidavits and testimony in a later hearing furthered Hernandez's feelings that Luitjen was not impartial.

"It was clear the jury was watching the judge and all of his conduct and absorbing it," Hernandez wrote in her affidavit. "Of course, I also felt it was very good for the state at the time."

Hernandez, who did not respond to requests Monday seeking comment, later became a judge and has since become ineligible to seek judicial office because of unrelated matters.

Carlos Valdez, who was district attorney at the time, said he was out of the office Monday and had not read the affidavit. He referred calls seeking comment to Austin lawyer and special prosecutor Eric Nichols. Nichols did not immediately return calls.

Hernandez's affidavit was submitted as part of Celis' ongoing appeal of that conviction. He has repeatedly said he is a lawyer in Mexico and maintained he never presented himself as a Texas lawyer.

"I've been fighting this for a while and at no time have I pled guilty to anything and now finally the truth is coming out," Celis told the Caller-Times.

Celis, now 44, was also convicted of falsely identifying himself as a peace officer, a misdemeanor, related to a 2007 incident in which he used a Duval County reserve deputy badge.

During that trial, Hernandez had argued a "good ol' boy system" had allowed Celis to go on unchecked.

"This (case) was never supposed to get to you," she told jurors.

The conviction was overturned after a judge found his trial lawyers were ineffective.

Celis had also faced charges of theft, aggravated perjury and money laundering. But within the past two months, prosecutors dismissed the theft and aggravated perjury. A status hearing on the money laundering case is slated for Wednesday in 148th District Judge Guy Williams' court.

Twitter: @CallerKMT

Angelica Hernandez's affidavit by callertimes on Scribd
Photo by Krista M. Torralva Darien Marshall appeared in court with his newly appointed lawyers, Luis Garcia and Mark Gonzalez.

SHARE Jeremiah Jenkins Darien Marshall Filamir Gomez Jr. Truanser Hughes

By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

Darien Marshall spent a "last day" with his family before turning himself in to Corpus Christi police Saturday, he told a judge Monday.

Marshall, the fourth suspect arrested in a fatal shooting of a gun store owner, was the first to appear before a state district judge.

Marshall said his family was putting money together to hire a lawyer. State District Judge Jack Pulcher appointed attorneys Luis Garcia and Mark Gonzalez to represent him. Gonzalez is campaigning for Nueces County District Attorney against Republican James Gardner and will have to remove himself from the case if elected.

Gonzalez was appointed to the case because he was the next lawyer on a local rotational list of attorneys approved for capital murder cases.

Marshall, Jeremiah Jenkins, Filamir Gomez Jr. and Truanser Hughes are charged with capital murder in the Sept. 1 robbery and shooting death of 62-year-old George Koumbis at his store, Shooters Depot on Leopard Street. Another employee was shot and is recovering in the hospital.

Capital murder is punishable by life in prison without parole or the death penalty. Prosecutors have not decided whether they'll waive the death penalty, prosecutor Lorena Whitney said.

Twitter: @CallerKMT
SHARE

Andrew Adams

I'd go AWOL

Referencing Laura Lee Trueblood's letter which stated that Trump was a draft dodger: He was deferred five times, not the same. Draft dodgers burned their draft cards and fled to Canada. She compared Trump unfavorably to JFK. OK, let's compare Clinton to Nixon. She deleted thousands of emails. Nixon erased 30 seconds of a tape and was banished from the White House.

I served under six presidents while in the Navy  Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Now, if I were still in and Hillary Clinton became the president I would go AWOL.
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.
| BY Ricki Green |

Applications have opened for the latest Copy School, sponsored by NewsMediaWorks, featuring some of the countrys best creative talent as guest tutors.

Copy School is designed to encourage the best quality copywriting across all media channels and engages some of Australias leading advertising creative writers and creative directors, as well as news media editors, to pass on their knowledge and experience.

Copy School, to be held in Sydney from Monday 10th to Friday 15th October, is seeking 20 young copywriters, or those wanting to become a copywriter, to attend the workshop series.

For further information and applications, contact Kylie Hannah on 02 9692 6320 or kyliehannah@newsmediaworks.com.au.

Some of the industrys most respected creatives and a senior newspaper editor will donate their time to be guest tutors at the Sydney Copy School including:

Jonathan Kneebone, co-founder and writer/director, The Glue Society

Mark Sharman, Sharms Consultancy

Dennis Koutoulogenis, creative, The Monkeys

Julian Schreiber, ECD/partner, Cummins&Partners

Wayne Moose Moore, creative consultant

Rowan Dean, editor at The Spectator Australia and Australian Financial Review and columnist for the Courier Mail

Philip Putnam, creative consultant

Ted Horton, founder/chairman, Big Red

Stephen Hutcheon, digital editor, The Sydney Morning Herald

Hosted by creative veteran Ray Black, Copy School will provide participants with a real world brief that must be presented on the final morning of the course.

The workshop fee is just $250 per student. Copy School will donate fees to The Salvation Armys Oasis Youth Support Network and the fee is fully tax deductible.
| BY Ricki Green |

Global advertising expenditure will grow 4.4% this year to reach US$539bn, ahead of the 4.1% previously forecast in June, according to Zeniths new Advertising Expenditure Forecasts, published today. Advertising expenditure will then expand by 4.5% in 2017 and 4.6% in 2018  up from the previous growth forecasts for both years, which were 4.3% and 4.4% respectively. By 2018 global advertising expenditure will total US$589bn, US$4bn more than forecast in June.

Mobile advertising taking over from desktop even faster than expected

In June Zenith forecast that mobile advertising would overtake desktop in 2017. It still expects that to happen, but it has upgraded its forecasts for mobile growth for this year (from 46% to 48%) and next year (from 29% to 33%), and now expect mobile ad spend to exceed desktop by US$8bn in 2017, up from the US$2bn it predicted in June. By 2018 Zenith expects mobile to account for 60% of all internet advertising, up from its previous forecast of 58%.

Desktop to shrink by more than newspapers or magazines to 2018

Desktop advertising peaked in 2014 at US$99.0bn and shrank 0.1% in 2015 to US$98.9bn as advertisers switched their budgets to mobile. Zenith expects the decline of desktop advertising to gain momentum over the next few years, with desktop ad spend falling by 0.8% in 2016, 2.9% in 2017 and 7.4% in 2018. Between 2015 and 2018 desktop ad spend will shrink by US$10.7bn, more than the other two declining media  newspapers (which will shrink by US$9.6bn) and magazines (US$4.4bn). Meanwhile mobile ad spend will grow by US$81.3bn over the same period, seven times more than the combined growth of television (US$7.3bn), outdoor (US$3.0bn), radio (US$0.9bn) and cinema (US$0.7bn).

The US, the Philippines and Western Europe drive faster adspend growth

This upgrade is mainly the result of stronger-than-expected growth in the US, where a strong labour market has encouraged consumers to increase their expenditure, and advertisers have fought harder for their share of the expanding market. Zenith expects US network TV to return to growth this year (at 1%) after shrinking 5% last year, thanks to new spending by pharmaceutical and consumer packaged goods companies and a strong upfront. Zenith also expects social media to accelerate from 32% growth last year to 35% growth this year, as advertisers take advantage of new formats, such as in-feed video, and the transition to mobile internet consumption continues. Overall Zenith forecasts US ad spend to grow 4.4% this year, compared to its previous forecast of 3.8%.

Zenith has also made slight upgrades to its ad spend forecasts for Asia Pacific and Western Europe. It now expects Asia Pacific to grow 6.3% this year, up from Zeniths previous forecast of 6.2%, thanks to heavy political spending in the Philippines in the run-up to the May 2016 elections. Zenith has also increased its forecast for Western Europe, where improved conditions in Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Portugal and Sweden have compensated for slowdown in the UK. It now forecasts 3.6% growth in Western Europe this year, up from 3.5% in June.

Mild weakening of UK ad market after Brexit vote

Although the vote for Brexit in the UKs EU referendum came as a shock to many in the market, so far advertisers have reacted calmly, with no widespread budget reductions. Zenith forecasts 5.4% growth in ad spend this year, fractionally less than its 5.6% forecast just before the vote. As Zenith has argued before, most of the impact that Brexit will have on the UK ad market will come in the long term. The UKs new terms of trade with the EU and other countries  whatever they turn out to be  are likely to restrict flows of trade and investment in comparison with the pre-Brexit status quo, leading to slower economic growth and slower growth in advertising expenditure. In the short term, uncertainty about the consequences of the vote will make companies less likely to invest in new products, and consumers less likely to take on big spending commitments. This could lead to anything from disappointingly slow growth to outright recession. Zeniths current forecasts assume that economic growth will slow but remain positive, in which case UK ad spend will grow 3.4% next year, down from our pre-vote forecast of 4.0% growth.
| BY Lynchy |

The Singapore Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) has reappointed incumbent Ogilvy & Mather Singapore as its digital agency of record following a competitive pitch.

The MCCYs vision is building a more cohesive and vibrant society in Singapore, and to deepen Singaporeans sense of identity and belonging.

We are happy to partner O&M to continue inspiring the Singapore spirit, and engaging our citizens in making Singapore home. O&M has demonstrated creative insights, digital expertise and a good understanding of our objectives, said Tangie Kay, Deputy Director, Marcomms, Resilience Division, MCCY.

Since its inception in 2012, MCCY has been actively engaging and inspiring Singaporeans through the arts and sports, strengthening community bonds, and promoting volunteerism and philanthropy.

Chris Riley, Group Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather Singapore, said, We are proud to be working with MCCY to champion the values and beliefs that define and unite Singapore as a nation. We embarked on this journey with MCCY three years ago with the SG50 thematic campaigns as the Creative Agency of Record, and look forward to fresh ways of connecting with Singaporeans through engaging digital content and platforms.
" " A study examining chimpanzees who were taught to walk on two legs indicates that humans began walking on two legs to be more energy efficient. See more pictures of monkeys. Photographer: Norma Cornes | Agency: Dreamstime.com

For years, scientists and armchair philosophers have pondered one of humanity's great evolutionary concerns: Why do humans walk on two legs? We have four limbs, and our ape friends seem to get along well on all fours (by doing what's called knucklewalking), so what makes walking on two legs better? Or, if it's not better, why do we do it at all?

Monkey Image Gallery

Advertisement

Scientists know that bipedalism was one of the first features to develop in early hominids -- early human ancestors that had already diverged from apes. And a variety of theories attempt to explain why, yet some of the theories seem to contradict one another. A study published in the July 2007 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences attempts to provide a definitive answer. It claims that human bipedalism boils down to one thing: energy.

The study, performed by three researchers from the University of Arizona, the University of California, Davis, and Washington University in St. Louis, examined differences in upright walking between four adult humans and five adult chimpanzees. Chimpanzees were used because they're the closest modern-day relative to humans. (Four to seven million years ago, humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor. They then developed independently.)

Researchers taught the five adult chimpanzees to walk on treadmills. They walked upright on their hind legs and knucklewalked on all fours. The chimps wore masks that tracked how much oxygen they used. The researchers also measured how much pressure was exerted on the treadmill. This revealed which muscles the animals were using. The same measurements were taken for the four adult humans.

The walking tests showed that the chimps, as a group, averaged the same energy expenditure walking on all fours as they did walking on two legs. As a group, the humans used 75 percent less energy walking upright than the chimps used walking on all fours. Essentially, walking upright seemed to be beneficial because it saved energy.

But what appeared even more interesting was that the amount of energy expended by the chimps varied between them. One chimp used less energy on two legs than on all fours. Another used the same in both walking positions, and the other three used more energy when walking on two legs. The variations were traced to how the chimps walked and differences in body structures. One of the scientists expressed excitement at this variation, saying that it reflected an essential part of evolution [source: Discovery News].

Analysis of videotapes of the walking chimps showed that chimps generally use large hip muscles and take short steps when walking upright. Humans tend to use smaller muscles, like those in their lower legs, and to take longer steps. This leads to improved energy efficiency. Not coincidentally, the chimps that took longer upright strides than their peers consumed less energy.

The experiment's results illustrate how energy expenditure contributed to human evolution. Early humans who adapted to expend less energy walking upright are represented in the fossil record. Fossils show that some ancient humans developed longer legs, different hip structures or thicker leg bones, consistent with modern-day humans. These adaptations made upright walking easier and lessened the amount of energy required to walk upright.

On the next page, we'll look at other theories about why humans walk upright and at more links between humans and primates.

Video Gallery: Evolution Video Gallery: Evolution Watch this video to learn about a fossil that may represent the first vertebrate to emerge from the ancient seas, discovered by scientists from the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. In this video courtesy of TED, author Robert Wright explains his views on evolution and why he believes humans continue to evolve through culture and technology. Helen Fisher is an anthropologist who specializes in gender differences and the evolution of human emotions. Check out this video to learn about her views regarding the evolution of human emotions. Read More
Tuesday, September 13, 2016 at 3:46PM

Coding can be fun and easy to learn if you spend time with Apple's Swift Playgrounds app now available for iPads.

With Swift Playgrounds, real coding concepts are brought to life with an interactive interface that allows students and beginners to explore working with Swift, the easy-to-learn programing language from Apple used by professional developers to create world-class apps.

The Swift Playgrounds app is approachable enough for students with no previous programming experience to begin exploring key coding concepts, but also powerful enough for skilled programmers to experiment and express their creativity using Swift.

Everyone should have the opportunity to learn coding, and we are excited to bring Swift Playgrounds to the next generation of programmers looking for a fun and easy way to explore key coding concepts using real code, said Craig Federighi, Apples senior vice president of Software Engineering. More than 100 schools around the world have already committed to adding Swift Playgrounds to their fall curriculum, and we cant wait to see what students create with it.

Swift Playgrounds includes Apple-developed programming lessons that guide students through a series of challenges and puzzles to guide three on-screen characters through an immersive graphical world as they learn core coding concepts, like issuing commands, creating functions, performing loops and using conditional code and variables. Apple will also regularly release new standalone challenges so users can continue learning new skills.

Swift Playgrounds also features built-in templates that users can modify and build on to create their own programs with graphics and touch interactions. They can then share their creations with friends using Mail or Messages or even by posting to the Web. And since Swift Playgrounds uses real Swift code, projects can be exported directly to Xcode and ultimately be turned into full-fledged iOS and Mac apps.

Availability

Swift Playgrounds is available today on the App Store for free. Swift Playgrounds is compatible with all iPad Air and iPad Pro models and iPad mini 2 and later running iOS 10. For more information including videos, images and demos, visit: www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds.
Tuesday, September 13, 2016 at 12:20PM

By Sonya Davidson (above photo courtesy of TIFF)

There is much buzz already with the World Premiere of Garth Davis's LION here at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. The first screening apparently received a standing ovation and the trailer is enough to have me go through several tissues.

The film stars Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) in the lead adult role in the real life story of Saroo Brierley who was separated from his family at four years old in rural India. Based on his book A Long Way Home, Saroo gets lost on a train which takes him thousands of kilometres across India away from his home and family. Saroo learns to survive alone in Kolkata before ultimately being adopted by an Australian couple.

Twenty five years later Saroo who recalls a handful of childhood memories was determined to find his family. He took to technology known as Google Earth to help map his way home. He began to piece together his journey and was eventually reunited with his birth family.

We were invited to Google Canada's special press conference to delve a little deeper into the film's theme of home, belonging and how we find it with Dev Patel, Garth Davis along side Gopal Shah, Product Manager, Google Earth and Aaron Brindle, Mapping Expert, Google Canada during TIFF. Hosted by Piya Chattopadhyay.

Google Earth has been used in various ways including tracking climage change, discovering new coral reefs, and even finding landmines. In this film we follow Saroo's journey of using the technology to find home. For Saroo, the struggle was to learn about where he's from to help answer the personal question of who he is.

Patel explained that when he received this script he thought it was so moving and was probably the only time he sat down and cried after reading it. When he auditioned for the part of adult Saroo, he felt that Davis would treat this story with delicacy and respect. "I knew he would do justice to this vast story," said Patel. "I share this part with a wonderful young actor named Sunny so I come to the story later when he's more Australian than he is Indian at that point. Trying to connect to his past and his roots is something I could relate to. Growing up I wasn't really connected to India in any way so I had all these preconcieved notions of what it was going to be like."

When Patel was there to shoot his first film Slumdog Millionaire, he tells us that he was completely blown away. "It was one of those eye opening moments so, I could relate to that part of going there as an alien of this land even though I look like everyone else," said Patel.

The film's central theme questions "who am I?" and takes place in two very different places that Saroo calls home. Davis explained that while researching the story, what amazed him was how Saroo remembered things. He travelled back to the village with him and he said the environment seemed so natural to him as though he had never forgotten. "The film is about emotional mapping, landscaping mapping and it's not so much a story of trying to remember who you are or searching for something," says Davis "but it was more about being lost but he had some really great clues and memories that were very powerful to him. He actually had thoughts as a child of flying back to India and crawl into his house and whisper into his mother's ear. I felt a very spiritual connection amongst all the characters in a deep visual memory of where he came from."

Davis also explains that it was incredible for Saroo to remember details of his childhood. Since he left at five. "For a child, India is a fascinating place. There are animals and damns. They could jump on backs of buffalos,"says Davis and much different from his own upbringing and of many of ours like travelling in cars.

Davis explained that locations played a big part in this film and helping the audience understand how all the places were connected. Even landscapes and different terrains shown on Google made a better realization of what Saroo was challenged with.

In real life, Saroo technology availability was of it's time. It was dial up service and Google Earth was not like it is today. Davis wanted to recreate the set using the technology of what he had experienced. "The texture of the visuals at that time was more emotional for Saroo."

Gopal Shah, Product Manager of Google Earth took us on a visual journey using the technology to retrace Saroo's steps in searching for his home. Pins were placed on where Saroo and lived including his impoverished small village and the train station where he started his accidental separation from his family 16 miles away. Then eventually travelling 10,000 miles to his adopted home in Australia and coming full circle to his village. What was fascinating was how Saroo was able to finally connect landmarks to pinpoint the one of hundreds of similar looking train stations nearest to his family home 25 years later.

And as for how much of a techy is actor Dev Patel? Not so much he admits. He explains that he has a hard time with a coffee machine. But in between accent training he also was taught how to use Google every week. "It's so integral to the story but you know, for me, being a British-Asian actor you kinda get these tech-centric roles...but you gather the information and run to someone more important." says Patel. "But for this, it was his therapy. He was trolling through his past and unearthing ghosts from his past. He's discovering himself and it was therapy for me. It was so emotional for me. Using the app function and learning how close he was getting to his mother, you could feel the emotions."

Definitely worth keeping an eye on this film. TIFF has added two more screenings of LION starring Dev Patel, Rooney Mara and Nicole Kidman during the Film Festival but we're certain it will be coming to theatres soon.

You may also be interested in learning more about Google Earth Outreach that gives non-profits organizations the resources needed to help visualize their stories. Currently Google Canada's Aaron is working on a project in the Arctic to help communities map out their situations. The Jane Goodall Institute uses Google Earth and Open Data Kit for their REDD+ forest monitory projects in Tanzania and Uganda. Cheif Almir Surui now uses Google Earth instead of bows and arrows to help protect their land. His tribe had their first contact with outsiders just fifty years ago.
"There was actually an incident in Tuggeranong on Monday that it could have been used for and they tried to get the Bronto out of the workshop before they got the double neg," he said.
At the scene of the police chase on Sunday, September 4, Mr Rigo said he wasn't able to transport the woman, but instead waited with her. After 20 minutes, Mr Hourigan called the ambulance to check where it was and was told a crew had been dispatched from Fyshwick seven minutes earlier. With no one there after another 23 minutes and the woman complaining of neck pain, they called again and were told the ambulance had been diverted. A few minutes later they were told an ambulance had been sent from Gungahlin. It arrived about 7pm.
Given the freakish re-occurrence of MND in Ms Baker's family, she has committed to run 45 kilometres from Queanbeyan to Gundaroo on October 8 to raise funds for communication devices for people with MND. It's a huge challenge for the Gordon woman who is not runner, but she is determined to help those suffering from the aggressive condition.
"Labor and Liberal must immediately clarify what the finance minister meant when he said he'd reduce funding from other areas so that there was no net effect on the government's financial position," she said.
" " The iconic polar bear has fascinated people for millennia. Brad R Lewis Photography - InMyLens.com/Getty Images

Polar bears have captivated humans since the beginning of recorded time. Writings dating back to 57 C.E. in ancient Rome describe flooded amphitheatres where polar bears and seals were pitted against each other (not much of a fight, as it turns out). Kings of ancient Egypt and early Norway were the first to keep polar bears captive, and the fascination with them has held through the centuries [source: Polar Bears International]. A terrifying version of the animal inexplicably shows up on a tropical island in the TV series "Lost." Ad campaigns all over the world feature polar bears to sell everything from bottled water to transportation systems to soda.

A Coca-Cola ad campaign in the 1990s added "adorable" to the polar bear's image. The ads featured a clumsy, animated cub that bridged the natural wariness between polar bears and penguins to share a nice, cold bottle of Coke. Polar bears don't actually have a natural affinity for penguins, as the two don't live in any of the same regions and never see each other. But still, cute is cute.

Advertisement

Polar bears' shocking whiteness, ferocity and sheer size make them icons of purity and power. Males can grow up to 10 feet tall (3 meters) and weigh up to 1,500 pounds (680 kilograms) [source: National Wildlife Federation]. A single bear can take on a 2,500-pound walrus, and hang on to the massive catch with 2-inch claws (5 centimeters). They walk hundreds of miles across ice sheets every winter, following their prey.

In the Arctic, polar bears are at the top of the food chain, and it's not just because of their size. They're so well-adapted to their environment that they experience no change in body temperature at minus 34 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 37 Celsius). However, the incredible survival mechanisms that let them thrive in frigid winters may prove to be their undoing. Because of global warming, winters are getting less cold and polar bears are dying. Some scientists project that if climate trends continue, 30 percent of the current polar bear population will be wiped out by 2050 [source: IUCN].

What's life like for an animal that needs such extreme cold to survive? Let's head to the Arctic and see how polar bears live on the ice.
Most of the loan comes via a syndicated facility arranged by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) but 50 million is from a parallel bilateral loan from the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB).

For the next four years, we are implementing an ambitious 1.3 billion investment plan. Our country needs networks and telecommunications of high standards to return to a growth track, said OTEs chairman and CEO, Michael Tsamaz.

OTE  which is 40% owned by Deutsche Telekom  said that its investment plan in Greece includes the development of NGA, the IP network transformation, as well as the launch of innovative products and services.

Investments in NGA are an important lever for economic growth and business development, said OTE, offering to consumers faster internet, improved quality and wider coverage, bridging the digital divide.

OTE said the investment will not only support the growth of the Greek economy but also contribute substantially to Greece achieving the European Unions Digital Agenda for Europe 2020 targets.

EBRD, based in London, was originally focused on providing loans for former Soviet bloc countries to help their development. The mandated lead arranger of its syndicated loan is the National Bank of Greece, and lead arrangers are HSBC and Hellenic Bank. BSTDB, based in Thessaloniki, Greece, is a development bank serving the 11 countries that are members of the Organisation of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, a regional economic organization.

Dirk Werner, EBRDs director for information and communication technologies, said the loan is sending a very strong signal to the market that the Greek financial market is open for business again. We hope that this will encourage other investors to take a close look at the opportunities Greek companies are offering.
The microwave networking solutions provider won the contract with the State of Colorado and it will support all state-wide mission-critical communications for public safety, first responders and various state agencies throughout Colorado.

"Aviat Networks is very proud to provide this mission-critical IP/MPLS microwave communications network for public safety officials in Colorado," said Michael Pangia, president and CEO of Aviat Networks.

"We have a highly differentiated offering for state and local government customers with products, services and support specifically designed for this market segment."

The company said it was selected based on its unique and highly differentiated capabilities, which include:

- IRU 600 EHP, which enables the State to use smaller antennas and avoid spending millions of dollars in costly tower retrofits;

- Turnkey services, including hardware, software and all services for planning, engineering, installation and support to design and implement this network;

- Integrated microwave and routing solutions, hybrid all-indoor radios for seamless migration to IP and USA-based design, manufacturing and support.
My first trip to Greece was as an exchange student the summer after I graduated from high school. I had never left the country, except for a very brief and rather surreal dip into Mexico during a family road trip to California, and had never flown in a plane. To say I was unworldly, naive, and reticent would have been akin to calling Heracles a plucky fellow. Yet somehow I knew I wanted to go to Greece.

In Crete, the program placed me with a young office worker, a woman only a couple of years older than me. Her family lived in a tiny village two to three hours drive inland from Iraklion, the islands capital, where Katherine had moved alone. Her tiny room held two cots, a table with two chairs, a hot plate, and a large sink that we used to wash produce, dishes, teeth, clothes, and ourselves, while standing on a towel. The toilet occupied a closet. We spent most of our time elsewhere.

Katherine spoke reasonable English, but her friends didnt, nor did her family when we visited them. (The exchange program was in the summer because organizers assumed no American kid had learned enough Greek to attend school.) She usually worked six days a week, and she had a boyfriend, leaving me alone much of the time. Greeces mail service never found me, if it even looked, and no one ever entertained the idea of making a fantastically expensive overseas phone call. I was on my own.

So I wandered, sat at the beach, and atea lot. Food on the island was quite inexpensive then, and if I was lonely or bored or unhappy, eating was always a pleasure. The discoveries I made!

Olive oil was the firstpotatoes fried in it, greens doused with it, yogurt (also new) blended with itall delicious. Lamb, which my father had kept off our table, now tempted me, heaped in gyros or roasted whole. During interludes between late lunches and truly late dinners, Id meander to the corner stand for souvlaki, skewers of grilled pork. A neighboring kiosk beckoned me next, where a fellow fried balls of pastry dough and dropped them, hot and crispy, into honey syrup to soak before selling them in paper cones.

Decades later, my mother confided that when, at the end of the summer, I walked off the plane at Willow Run Airport, she and my father feared I was pregnant. Im sure the billowing sundresses then in fashion didnt make for a willowy figure, but the truth was I had gained so much weight during my Greek summer I could wear little else.

Ive never lost my enthusiasm for the simple street foods of Greece. KouZina on Main St., where Middle Kingdom used to reside, lets me indulge again. Quirky imagined scenes of Ann Arbor life, often featuring vintage cars and U-M edifices, dot rustic painted brick walls. Polished concrete floors support butcher-block counters and tables with simple steel stands. The contemporary rear patio is sleek and invitinga real boon to those whod rather sit outside without the odors of Main St. traffic.

The menu is short, simple, and inexpensive, with a gyro ranging from $6.50 to $8 and a regular Greek salad costing $5.50. The lamb gyro is first-rate, with a fresh, made-as-you-watch, white, multi-grain, or gluten-free pita, thick and chewy, enfolding pressed meat sliced off the vertical rotisserie, tomato, onion, and tzatziki (yogurt sauce). Its a standard formula, but the quality is several notches up from diner fare. My colleague loved the pork versionslices of shoulder marinated and stacked and slowly roastedand theres a chicken option for those (not me) who enjoy boneless, skinless breasts. Nor would I suggest the vegetarian gyro my friend tried. A zesty feta sauce, made with roasted peppers, couldnt add enough spark to the fresh but essentially unseasoned raw and cooked vegetables to make an interesting sandwich. Whichever gyro you choose, add an order of fries, hand cut and crispy delicious.

As an alternative, the sandwich fillings can be had as a rice bowl, making for a pretty hearty meal. The filling in the spinach pie, spanakopita, is liberally laced with feta cheese, though one time it arrived with the phyllo under-baked and doughy. We liked the plain, sturdy lentil soup, but didnt get to the Greek salad. Next time I will, to try their Greek dressing.

For dessert, KouZinas creamy house-made yogurt comes with granola and seasonal fruitin our case, a bright strawberry compote. Their baklava is thick with walnuts. Spying bougatsa on the countera phyllo pastry wrapped around a custard fillingI was initially thrilled, mistaking it for galaktoboureko, a past favorite somewhat similar in construction but bathed in a scented syrup. KouZinas bougatsa is barely sweet; it could be eaten as an interesting breakfast entree or at lunch with a salad.

And that, minus the avgolemono lemon-rice soup and pita chips, is KouZinas entire eat-in menu. Their website also lists a catering menu, coming out of their original Royal Oak store, that features a few additional dishes.

I hope those eventually migrate to the restaurant. Indulging in a couple of tiropitakia (cheese pies) and dolmades out on KouZinas patio would be an ideal reminder of where I once was, where I am now, and the grand adventure in between.



KouZina

332 S. Main St.

997-5155

gokouzina.com

Daily 11 a.m.-10 p.m.

All items $3-$8.

Wheelchair friendly
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.
A federal appeals court on Monday revived a former JPMorgan Chase & Co private bankers whistleblower lawsuit accusing the bank of firing her in retaliation for warning that an Israeli client might be committing fraud.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York found enough evidence to suggest that former JPMorgan employee Jennifer Sharkey had a reasonable belief that the client was engaged in fraud and money laundering involving Colombia.

Sharkey said she was fired as a vice president and wealth manager in August 2009, just a week after formally urging the bank to heed red flags and sever its ties with the client, who generated about $600,000 of annual billings.

The client was not identified in court papers. Sharkey was terminated eight months after the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme of longtime JPMorgan client Bernard Madoff was exposed.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet in Manhattan dismissed Sharkeys lawsuit last October.

Sweet said JPMorgan could have fired Sharkey based on her performance, or for having purportedly lied about communications involving another client. Sharkey disputed having lied.

But the appeals court said the close temporal proximity between Sharkeys warning and her firing justified letting the case continue. It also said her qualifications as a whistleblower was an issue of fact to be resolved at trial.

The court returned the case to Sweets courtroom.

JPMorgan spokesman Darin Oduyoye said the bank believes the lawsuit is without merit, and looks forward to presenting its case in court.

Lawrence Pearson, a partner at Wigdor LLP representing Sharkey, said he was pleased with the decision and looks forward to a trial.

Sharkey had sued under the whistleblower provisions of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance law.

Sweet had dismissed Sharkeys case in December 2013. Last Octobers dismissal came after the appeals court in the interim imposed a more lenient standard for whistleblower protection.

JPMorgan agreed in January 2014 to pay $2.6 billion to settle litigation over Madoff, and in a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. government acknowledged responsibility for failing to stop him.

The case is Sharkey v. JPMorgan Chase & Co et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 15-3400.
With the countdown to the new Stelvio SUVs world premiere at the 2016 LA Auto Show in mid-November officially on, Alfa Romeo is getting ready to begin production at the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Cassino Assembly Plant.



A new FCA video showcasing the factory that also manufacturers Alfas Giulietta compact hatch and new Giulia sedan gave us a (deliberately?) quick glimpse of the Stelvio on the assembly line.

The design of Alfas first true SUV seems to be more in the mold of the BMW X4 and Mercedes-Benz GLC Coupe than the X3 and GLC, but at the end of the day, it will compete with all compact premium crossovers, including the Jaguar F-Pace, Porsche Macan and Audi Q5, regardless of the shape of their roof.

The front end styling wont be the only common element between Tipo 949 codenamed Alfa and the Giulia saloon, as the two models will share interior bits  as seen in recent spy shots, platform and engine range, including a selection of 2.0-liter turbocharged gasoline and 2.2-liter diesel lumps, and a twin-turbocharged 2.9-liter V6 with around 500 horses in the Quadrifoglio high-performance model.

It is understood that Alfa will offer the Stelvio with both rear- and all-wheel drive, paired to manual or automatic gearboxes.

The Italian SUV will go on sale worldwide next year.

Thanks to Motorionline for the heads up!

Photo Gallery

Video
The 1500 PS (1479 HP) Bugatti Chiron is an intricate piece of machinery, capable of achieving ridiculously high speeds.



But just like its predecessor, unlocking the Chirons additional potential requires a supplementary key, lots of courage, and a long stretch of road.

Thats because, due to safety reasons, both the Veyron and the Chirons top speed are electronically limited; but while the formers acceleration topped out at 415 km/h (258 mph) (for the SS variant)  in order to protect the tires from disintegrating  the Chiron stops accelerating at 420 km/h (261 mph).

Bugattis profile of the average Chiron customer has roughly 42 cars, 1.7 jets and 1.4 yachts. Will they accept the new car being slower than the old?

Well, in a recent interview with Autoblog, Willi Netuschil, head of Bugattis engineering department, said the top speed can be increased to about 458 km/h (285 mph) if a customer so wishes.

You have to remember how much greater the braking distance needed is as those levels. The Volkswagens Groups track near Wolfsburg has a specially designed long straight that can be used for these type of high-speed stunts. Theres also a military base in Germany we can get access to that has a long enough runway, said Netuschil.

Now, the real brain bender remains the Chirons actual top speed capability. In true Bugatti fashion, 458 km/h (285 mph) shouldnt be the absolute limit, as the car maker always leaves room for errors and a safety margin.

PHOTO GALLERY
Toyota is getting ready to greet visitors at the 2016 Paris Auto Show with a host of European debuts.



Among those, the Japanese-based manufacturer will mark the local premiere of the all-new Prius Plug-in Hybrid, which will hit showroom floors after debuting earlier this year at the 2016 New York Auto Show.

Joining it is the FCV Plus, a concept presented in 2015 during the Tokyo Motor Show, which is said to help the automaker examine how future hydrogen cars can contribute to society. One of the most important features of the study is its ability to generate electricity from hydrogen stored outside, besides the one found in its own tank, transforming it into a stable source of electric power.

A large section of the stand will be reserved for the display of the C-HR small crossover, which makes its full public debut in Paris, after its exterior design was revealed at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. Based on the companys new global architecture, which is also found under the latest Prius, it features a 112 HP 1.2-liter turbo or a 122 HP 1.8-liter hybrid. The crossover is expected to become a best-seller in Europe, where Toyota wants to move between 50,000 and 100,000 units.

Finally, the automakers booth will celebrate the launch of Toyota Gazoo Racing, an entity that unites all Toyota motorsports activities under one umbrella, which aims to put the racing technology in the development of ever-better cars.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: transmountain.com

The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a challenge filed by a North Vancouver First Nation that claimed the National Energy Board's review of the TransMountain oil pipeline expansion was unlawful.

The Tsleil-Waututh Nation filed a challenge of the energy board's review process in April 2014 on the grounds that it violated their aboriginal rights and the Crown had breached its duty to consult.

But the court has ruled the First Nation had numerous opportunities throughout the process to fully express its concerns, including the impact of increased marine shipping on Burrard Inlet.

The ruling says the consultation process is still ongoing and the federal cabinet will determine whether the Crown breached its duty to consult before issuing a decision on the project in December.

The National Energy Board issued a report in May that recommended the government approve the $6.8-billion Alberta-to-B.C. pipeline expansion with 157 conditions.

A number of interveners have since filed challenges of the NEB's recommendation, including the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, and those cases have not yet been heard.
Business is booming at Rose Ridge Orchard and Market after word spread they could be harbouring the worlds largest peach.

Owner Robert Hogue hopes the rumour is true as he is submitting a piece of fruit to the Guinness Book of World Records.

He says they discovered the peach during harvest.

Its an Autumn Star variety and it is a very late maturing variety, he explained about the peach, which has a preliminary weight of 820 grams.

The peach was picked on Hogues East Kelowna family orchard. Hogue says it was a very good year for peaches, as the majority of the crop came in 30 per cent larger than years previous.

The current record holder was a peach in Michigan in 2002 at 720 grams.

The Rose Ridge peach will be taken to UBC Okanagan on Monday to be officially weighed on a scale that measures to a precision of 10 miligrams.

Hogue has already filled out the paper work for the Guinness Book of World Records.
Photo: Flickr/BC gov't

B.C.'s food business is booming, selling more products outside of Canada in 2015 than ever before.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, exports reached a record $3.5 billion in 2015, and that number is anticipated to grow as the governments of Canada and British Columbia continue efforts to promote B.C. food overseas.

The partnership between the B.C. and federal governments and B.C. food companies has resulted in a 20 per cent growth in exports in one year, said Norm Letnick, agriculture minister.

One way the two governments are working with B.C. companies to build the growth in exports from 2014 is through an Export Ready Business Catalogue.

The catalogue features close to 100 B.C. producers of fruits and vegetables, seafood, meat, packaged food, natural health products and beverage makers, and all of them are ready to sell.

Each profile includes an introduction to the company or association and their products, their current export markets, and markets they are interested in expanding to.

The guide represents B.C.s diverse agri-food and seafood sector, and includes everything from sea urchins to cereals, and waffles to wine.

The guides will be available in multiple languages, online and at trade offices and shows.

B.C. companies exported more than 600 types of foods to over 150 markets in 2015.
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
An outbreak of respiratory illness swept through Hillary Clinton's campaign in the weeks before she was diagnosed with pneumonia and fell ill at this year's 9-11 memorial ceremony, campaign aides said Monday.

The Democratic presidential candidate abruptly left Sunday's event after feeling "overheated." A video later posted on Twitter showed her staggering and eventually slumping forward before being held up by three people as she was helped into a van.

On Sunday, her campaign answered questions about Clinton's health and whereabouts with two short statements, both issued hours after she left the memorial in lower Manhattan. More than 20 hours later, her campaign gave a fuller accounting of the episode, which sparked a wave of bipartisan concern about her health and questions about her political transparency.

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the former secretary of state started to feel hot at the event, which took place on a muggy day in New York. There was little shade where Clinton was standing alongside other dignitaries.

As family members of 9-11 victims read the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks, she decided to leave and get a drink of water. She was wearing a wool suit and had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, a fact her campaign had not made public.

In fact, campaign aides said Monday, a number of staff members at her campaign headquarters had been ill in recent weeks, including campaign manager Robby Mook.

"I probably came in a few more days than I should have over the last few weeks," he told MSNBC on Monday. "I'm still actually recovering from the cough that I got through that."

As Clinton walked to the motorcade, she began to feel dizzy and had to be helped into her van. She never lost consciousness, Fallon said. Shortly after entering the air-conditioned vehicle, he said, she began calling aides and requested to go to her daughter's Manhattan home.
As a resident of the Upper Mission neighbourhood for 10 years, I am frustrated by the worsening traffic situation coming out of my neighbourhood on school days. When it takes over 20 minutes to drive the first 2 kilometres away from your home during the morning commute, it is a good indication that there is a legitimate problem the City of Kelowna needs to address.

Fred Wollin (Traffic Operations Supervisor at the City of Kelowna), was quoted recently in the media saying, "People just need to leave a minute earlier. It's a minor impact and it is funny how most of the comments are from the mission area. We have those two roads that get congested and most of the people in that area drive or leave at the same time.

Is that the best solution that a well-paid public servant of the City of Kelowna can offer to exasperated residents? Sure, in a perfect world, everyone just leaves a minute earlier - which I suspect would only cause the traffic back-up to start a minute earlier as well. Like most taxpaying residents of the Upper Mission, I live in a not-so-perfect world where life and kids dont always co-operate in the mornings. Getting everyone out of bed, dressed, groomed, fed and loaded into the vehicle on time (or earlier) for work/school/daycare is a monumental feat. With winter around the corner, frost and snow on vehicles and roads will just add to that challenge.

To be clear, Im not arguing against the recent expansion of school-zone hours (safety of children is a priority), but like most residents of the Upper Mission, I want to know what the City plans to do in order to address this long-standing and deteriorating problem. The Upper Mission neighbourhood generates a substantial amount of revenue for Kelowna every year through property taxes and development fees from the countless new homes that the City is permitting in the area. The City recently spent millions of dollars upgrading Lakeshore Road around Anne McClymont School with new sidewalks, bike lanes, street lighting, curb, gutters and other items. While this all looks great now that the project is complete, none of those things improved traffic flow in any way.

There are thousands of residents already living in the Upper Mission and many more are added every year as all those new homes are occupied. The entire area is currently serviced by two roads (Lakeshore Road & Gordon Drive). Both of these roads are single-lane in each direction and both have school zones at the bottom. My wife unexpectedly went into labour at 8oclock in the morning on a Thursday in early June a couple years ago. As usual, traffic was at a standstill and backed-up all the way up the hill on both Gordon and Lakeshore. I had to resort to turning on my hazard lights, driving up the centre median on Gordon and even ducking into the oncoming traffic lane at times. Luckily, we managed to make it to the hospital without incident and with about 5 minutes to spare before the baby was born.

Does the City have any better suggestions regarding how to handle medical emergencies out of the Upper Mission other than recommending that residents plan to have their emergencies strike earlier in the morning? What is the City doing to actually solve the Upper Mission traffic problems and what is the timeline for doing so? Ive been hearing about the proposed South Perimeter Road for years, however, the Citys website hasnt provided any useful updates in a while. The status of this project is shown as currently in preliminary design which has been the case for quite some time now (http://www.kelowna.ca/CM/Page4744.aspx).

Eric Fleury

Speaking on behalf of many Upper Mission residents who share my concerns
Photo: Getty Images

Pig lovers will be squealing with delight over a decision by Vernon City Council.

Mayor Akbal Mund said the city will look at legalizing pot bellied pigs as pets.

The pet porkers were a subject of much debate earlier this year when a Vernon resident protested a bylaw saying she could not keep her pig because it was a farm animal.

She argued the pig was a pet like a cat or dog and she should be allowed to keep it.

Mund said things change and the city must change with the times and not everyone wants a traditional pet.

He said the city will look at each case involving a non-traditional pet on an individual basis.
Take down the zombies Penticton - 6:45 pm
Photo: The Canadian Press

The heels came off but the crown stayed on as Miss America began her reign with a romp in the Atlantic City surf Monday, hours after winning the title.

Savvy Shields, who represented Arkansas, won the crown Sunday night to become Miss America 2017.

She drew wide attention by calling on Democrats and Republicans to learn to compromise with each other again.

On Monday morning, she kicked off her sandals and walked across the seaside gambling resort's shell-strewn beach to the surf line, where she ran ankle-deep in the incoming waves and jumped into the air twice. She then posed next to a lifeboat in the traditional pose that Miss Americas strike the morning after winning the crown.

"This is such an iconic moment, the toe dip in Atlantic City that every Miss America does," she said.

Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian played on his name and that of the new Miss America in promoting his city.

"Obviously you have to be pretty savvy to become Miss America," he said. "And with Shields and a Guardian, Atlantic City will be safe for another year!"

Shields is an art major at the University of Arkansas who wants to help people make better food choices.

Her response to her onstage interview question helped propel Shields to the title. She was asked what she thought of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton; she answered that while both Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have done a good job thus far, "they also need to watch what they're doing."

Meeting reporters after the pageant, Shields elaborated.

"What I want both candidates to focus on is compromise," she said. "Our country was founded on compromise. We're in a state now where both parties just seem to be yelling at one another. I hope that at the end of my year, we're starting to reward politicians for compromise."
Photo: Contributed

UPDATE: 7:45 p.m.

A Good Samaritan has found the wheelchair abandoned at the local school.

Millikin said a neighbourhood search party was formed and the wheelchair was found behind the school.

She was told some kids took it for a joyride all over the neighbourhood before ditching it.

Thank goodness for kind and observant neighbours! said Millikin. We are so happy.

ORIGINAL: 7:15 p.m.

A Kelowna father cannot play with his children tonight after his wheelchair was stolen Monday.

Heather Millikin emailed Castanet distraught after her husband's wheelchair was stolen out of their garage in the Kettle Valley area in broad daylight.

My husband is a quadriplegic and is confined to a wheelchair, said Millikin.

We are very upset as John needs this wheelchair. We have two children under the age of three and this has a profound impact on our life and his ability to be an active part of our family.

She explained that they were in the process of moving when it was stolen from the garage while she was inside packing.

We cannot afford to buy another wheelchair of this caliber as this wheelchair was recently adapted to accommodate his specific needs, said Millikin.

Whomever stole this wheelchair has really upset the dynamics of our young family and has completely reduced my husband's mobility.

She said she hopes the person who stole the wheelchair will look into their heart and come forward.

We will offer a cash reward if that's what it takes, we really need this chair as it is specific to his requirements and cannot be easily replaced, added Millikin.

It will take a lot of time and a shocking amount of money to replace.

If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of his wheelchair please call the Kelowna RCMP at 250-762-3300.
Photo: Contributed

More than 300 people showed up for Kelownas inaugural Our Future City conference.

Organizers said they were thrilled with the communitys response to the event at the Rotary Centre for the Arts.

Weve been blown away by the level of community enthusiasm and support for this event, the first of its kind here in Kelowna and we feel that we have achieved what we set out to do, which was to spark conversations around some of the key topics and issues that we will all have to grapple with as our community develops and grows, said Andrew Gaucher, president of the Urban Development Institutes (UDI) Okanagan Chapter, which organized the conference.

Last week's event, which explored leading topics related to the future growth and direction of Kelowna and the Okanagan, saw a wide range of attendees from both within and outside of the development industry.

Most of our events are geared specifically towards our members, said Gaucher. This time, we wanted to put something on that would be relevant to both our core membership base as well as members of the general public. It seems to have worked.

Some of the topics that were discussed this year included a keynote address on the rapid technological change that is shaping cities and the opportunities that this offers to Kelowna and the Okanagan, future architectural styles in the Okanagan and initiatives coming out of the University of British Columbia and Okanagan College.

Going forward, UDI intends to build on the success of this first event and plan the next Future of Our City conference in two years.

We want to continue to advance the important dialogue around the issues facing our community and we are glad that the community is as interested in this as we are, added Gaucher.

The Urban Development Institute is a national association of the development industry and its related professions.

The corporate members of the UDI  Okanagan Chapter represent hundreds of individuals involved in all facets of land development and planning including: developers, property managers, financial lenders, lawyers, engineers, planners, architects, appraisers, real estate professionals, local governments and government agencies.
Photo: The Canadian Press

While the provincial government fears a two-tier medical system would undermine our Canadian principles, a retired Kelowna physician says we already have a two-tier system and the public model is broken.

Dr. Mark Fromberg spent decades as a family physician throughout B.C. and other parts of Canada, working in Kelowna's Mission area for the final 15 years of his career.

He said the medical system in Canada is falling apart and something has got to give before patients start to get better access and treatment in this country.

There are already two classes of people, those who have benefits and those who don't, said Fromberg who explained that many will go without prescriptions, dental and other treatment, as they cannot afford it without work benefit plans.

Fromberg shared his perspective as a lawsuit challenging the public health-care system plays out in Vancouver  and has the potential to spawn a Canadian two-tier model.

While the retired doctor said he fundamentally believes in our public health care system, he said private health care can help alleviate pressures by allowing those who can afford to skip the line to free up ever-growing wait times for those who can't.

They are people crying for access. Do you want to deprive them of that just because we are trying to uphold this holy grail of a universal system, said Fromberg. We have two choices; somehow put more money into the system so it will pay for all this  which is increasingly impossible, or, contemplate some kind of balanced process.

It is a wonderful ideal to have this great universal medical system, but it is crumbling at the seams.

At the heart of it, he and many other doctors throughout this country believe Canadians should have free access to the care they need, but to allow this to happen, the model needs to change.

Fromberg told Castanet he has a suggestion that could fix the system within a year, but the government needs to listen.

He presented his ideas to the Select Standing Committee on Health in July, arguing politicians need to start thinking like physicians.

He argued that the government needs to eliminate the barriers on general practitioners, or family physicians, that literally limit their ability to provide more care.

As it stands, explained Fromberg, GPs are punished by being paid less per patient, after the mandated 50 patient/day cap.

Every other job I can think of you get paid more for staying longer, said Fromberg. It is a fundamental flaw in our system.

He said early in his career in Ontario he would see about 40 patients during the day at his office and then see another 40 patients during a shift in the ER, but the system now provides no incentive for doctors to do those long hours.

That is a major barrier to primary care, said Fromberg. GPs are the only ones punished this way.

His argument also includes changes to the system that would allow doctors to actually delegate easier tasks like prescription renewals and dressing changes, so that they can take on more patients.

The nurse practitioner programs all say a nurse practitioner can fully do 80 per cent of what a GP can do, so let's run with that, said Fromberg, who added that the nurse practitioners would be under medical and legal responsibility of the physician.

If I was allowed to delegate, and that cap goes out the window, my capacity in my GP office can literally double, said Fromberg. My capacity has gone up, the waiting lists to see me will disappear and I could probably take on another 800 or 1,000 patients.

The beauty of this is that they are just policy changes, somebody just needs to change their damn mind. Let us do what we can do.

The Cambie Surgery Centre, a private clinic in Vancouver, is currently suing the B.C. government for using the Medicare Protection Act to prevent doctors from providing medically necessary treatment in both the public and private systems and to forbid private insurance for core medical services.

Along with the Cambie Surgery Centre, plaintiffs include several patients who argue that forcing people onto wait lists for medically necessary procedures violates Canadians' charter rights.
Photo: University of Victoria

Police in Saanich say a young man has been arrested for allegedly performing an indecent act at the University of Victoria.

They say a young woman was walking on campus Sunday evening when she noticed someone near some bushes, who yelled at her shortly after she passed.

Police say when the woman turned around, she saw that the young man was masturbating.

Campus security called police, who found the youth and placed him under arrest.

Saanich Police say he is now facing one charge of performing an indecent act.

They say officers are also investigating similar events and there may be additional charges.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Once a week, Peter Sanagan brings a whole wild boar carcass to his Toronto butcher shop. He divvies it up into chops and other cuts, selling it to adventurous eaters who wander into the Kensington Market store.

While more familiar meats like beef and pork account for up to 90 per cent of sales at Sanagan's Meat Locker, the remainder comes from people seeking so-called exotic meats like wild boar. Game birds are popular, too.

"When in season, we'll have things ... like pheasants and partridges and squabs, wild turkey," Sanagan says.

Though exotic meat consumption is not well tracked, demand for it appears to be rising and some industry insiders and watchers say that's likely to continue as foodie culture grows.

In Canada, consumption of less traditional meats like horse, venison, camel, rabbit and game grew an average of 10.6 per cent a year between 2010 and 2015, according to estimates from market research firm Euromonitor International.

Fine-dining restaurants are the main drivers of these types of meats' surge in popularity, according to Michael von Massow, an assistant professor at the University of Guelph's department of food, agricultural and resource economics.

"Restaurants are pushing the envelope to try and give us an experience," he says.

Canadian chefs have been experimenting with horse, quail, kangaroo and other meats. Toronto restaurant The Beast, for example, allows customers to pick from a list of animals, like water buffalo or elk, and will create a six-course tasting menu using the whole animal.

But it's not just chefs wanting to experiment with different proteins.

Shai Bomze, director of sales for Toronto meat distributor La Ferme, says that while his company mainly supplies exotic meats to fine-dining restaurants, they do supply some of their product to high-end butcher shops and privately owned grocery stores.

These types of products come with premium price tags. At Sanagan's Meat Locker, its owner says wild boar costs between $12 and $22 a pound, venison and elk runs $18 to $30 a pound depending on the cut, and game birds range from $15 to $30 a piece based on size.
Photo: Twitter - @PuzzledErica

SkyTrain commuters faced major delays Tuesday morning in Vancouver.

Track problems halted service between the Metrotown and Commercial-Broadway stations.

According to TransLink, a rail grinder that went off the rails before 4 a.m. as crews were doing maintenance.

Removing the grinder proved to be a challenge, Transit Police spokesperson Anne Drennan told CTV.

A track switch was also damaged in the incident.

Service was restored just after 8 a.m., but delays persisted as the trains slowly cleared the backlog of riders.

Shuttle buses moved riders from stations that werent in service.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: The Canadian Press

National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier has asked the Canada Revenue Agency to look into the actions of real estate speculators in B.C. following a newspaper investigation.

The Globe and Mail reported on the weekend that some foreign investors allegedly profit in buying homes in B.C. while evading taxes.

The federal minister says she is concerned by the allegations and has asked the CRA to look into them.

The request by Lebouthillier follows comments by B.C. Finance Minister Mike de Jong, who said the CRA must be diligent in enforcing the law in order to maintain the confidence of taxpayers.

De Jong says the 15 per cent tax on foreign homebuyers introduced in Vancouver last month was intended to address some of the issues raised in the Globe and Mail story, but did not specify whether the government would be taking any new actions.
Photo: Peter Wannop A 'Yes' sign was stolen and turned inside out before having a very different message written on it.

West Kelowna residents have a second chance today to make their mark on the city hall referendum.

The municipality is asking residents for permission to borrow $7.7 million for construction of a new city hall and related project work  with repayment to take place over 20 years.

The second advance poll is open today from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Westbank Lions Community Hall, 2466 Main Street.

General voting day is Saturday and polls will be open from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. at four different locations:

Constable Neil Bruce Middle School, 2010 Daimler Drive

George Pringle Elementary School, 3770 Elliott Road

Glenrosa Middle School, 2974 Glen Abbey Place

Mar Jok Elementary School, 2101 McDougall Road

Those who are looking for more information can also attend an open house about the project from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Mt. Boucherie Municipal Hall, 2760 Cameron Road.

"Interested attendees can take part in a tour of the current municipal hall. Staff and council members will be on hand to answer any questions," said the city.
Photo: Carmen Weld

Kelowna's top cop is off the job  and it's not known when he'll be back.

Supt. Nick Romanchuk has skipped several appointments and interview requests over the summer, and now the RCMP's senior media relations officer in B.C. says Romanchuk "will be off for an undetermined amount of time."

Romanchuk has been away from the office since Sept. 6, Staff Sgt. Rob Vermeulen said in an email.

In the meantime, Insp. Brent Mundle is the acting officer in charge of the Kelowna detachment.

Romanchuk became Kelowna's superintendent in 2013.

He was previously OIC of the Kootenay Boundary Regional Detachment and replaced Bill McKinnon, who stepped down earlier that year.

Romanchuk has 25 years of service with the RCMP, joining the RCMP in 1991.

He has served in Lillooet, Kamloops, the Southeast District Customs & Excise Section, Nakusp, Lumby, Trail, Kootenay Boundary, and Kelowna.
Photo: Contributed

Legal documents have been filed in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, alleging a provincial law used to justify treatment of mentally ill people violates the charter.

The Council of Canadians with Disabilities and two plaintiffs, 66-year-old Louise MacLaren and a 24-year-old identified only as D.C., are demanding changes to B.C.'s Mental Health Act.

The council says patients involuntarily detained under the act do not have the right to give or refuse consent to any psychiatric treatment.

The suit says patients are legally "deemed to consent" to treatments ranging from forcible medication to electroconvulsive therapy, and cannot select a substitute decision maker, such as a family member, to give or refuse consent on their behalf.

Council spokeswoman Melanie Benard says B.C. is the only province to retain the "deemed to consent" model and the outdated legislation also violates United Nations conventions regarding people with disabilities.

The case is being handled by lawyers from the Community Legal Assistance Society, including Laura Johnston, who says many people refuse or delay seeking care because they fear losing all control of their treatment under the Mental Health Act.

"This law equates having mental health problems with being mentally incompetent to make decisions." she says.

Johnston says that is a prejudiced and inaccurate assumption and it has no place in the laws of Canada.
The dream of winning the lottery is something everyone can relate to.

For two Kelowna siblings their hopes of hitting it big were not so they could be rich and famous. Rather, it was to give back.

Adonie and Lydia Sacallis have always been interested in helping others, the environment or any cause that needed attention.

What we wanted to do is give at least 80 or 90 per cent to charity and keep like 10 or five per cent for ourselves, said 11-year-old Adonie. But when we didnt win (the lottery) we were quite sad, but our mom said we dont have to win the lottery to give. So we tried to raise our own money.

Thus began the foundation Just Give Today, a mission set out by a brother and sister to travel 12 countries in 12 months raising money for charities that they will then hand deliver themselves.

We are raising $1 million to go around the world and donate $1 million to 34 charities, explained Lydia.

This September, the home-schooled duo will set sail on their voyage starting here in Kelowna by giving to the Central Okanagan Food Bank, BC SPCA and donating several baby items to those in need.

Tammy Jackson with the COFB says the kids' goals are ambitious but believes they have a good grasp on how much they need to raise, and she thinks they could be successful.

Their journey will take them to the East Coast where they will donate to more food banks and hope to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

We want to show that kids they can make a difference and that nothing is impossible for them to do, said eight-year-old Lydia.

They say they want to make sure the money they raise is going directly to those that need it, and the only way to do that is to deliver it themselves.

The siblings want to show every donor exactly where their money is going.

Starting in Canada the two accompanied by their mother will head to the Dominican Republic, then Mexico, Costa Rica, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Peru, Galapagos, Greece, Turkey and will finish up the tour in the U.S. next August.

Follow their journey on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and their website Justgive.today.
Photo: Google Street View

RCMP are looking for a road-raging driver after a violent incident in Richmond.

Witnesses are asked to come forward after a woman was cut off in her Toyota pickup, Saturday morning on No. 2 Road at Steveston Highway.

The 58-year old honked when the driver allegedly veered into her lane, requiring her to take evasive action.

While stopped at the intersection of Steveston and No. 3 Road, the second driver got out of a grey four-door sedan, shouted obscenities and reached into the drivers side window. She dragged the woman from her truck and physically assaulted her.

Several good Samaritans intervened, and the shaken victim contacted police some hours later from home.

This level of behaviour far exceeds what is acceptable or lawful. We are thankful for the decency of the good Samaritans who chose to stop and intervene, said Cpl. Dennis Hwang.

Police hope the good Samaritans, or any other witnesses, including drivers with dash cameras, will come forward.

We are looking for a woman, around five-foot-five, slim build, olive skin, medium length black hair, and was wearing a light long sleeve sweater and blue jeans. She apparently had a round face and was wearing large round sunglasses.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Const. Shawn Steinlauf at 604-278-1212, email [email protected] or call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. The United States and Cuba held the inaugural Economic Dialogue in Washington, D.C., on September 12, the U.S. Department of State said in a press release.

Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs Charles Rivkin led the opening of the dialogue. U.S. Department of State Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs John Creamer, Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs Ziad Haider, and U.S. Department of Commerce Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Industry and Security Matthew Borman co-chaired the U.S. delegation. Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment Vice Minister of Commercial Policy Ileana Nunez Mordoche led the Cuban delegation.

The Economic Dialogues goal is to discuss long-term bilateral engagement on a wide range of topics as part of the ongoing normalization process between our two countries. The delegations discussed trade and investment, labor and employment, renewable energy and energy efficiency, small business, intellectual property rights, economic policy, regulatory and banking matters, and telecommunications and internet access.

Both parties agreed to continue the dialogue and, under its auspices, convene working groups to continue technical discussions in the coming months.
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. While on a working visit to Nagorno Karabakh from September 8 to 11, by the Armenian Ombudsman Arman Tatoyans request NKR Ombudsman Ruben Melikyan presented the ongoing results of the fact-finding works about the atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani armed forces in April, the Armenian Ombudsmans office informed Armenpress.

During the visit the two Ombudsmen visited Mataghis village, Mataghis reservoir and carried out respective research. The targeted attacks by the Azerbaijani armed forces towards Mataghis village and the reservoir in April were recorded. The targeted attacks towards the reservoir aimed to cause huge damage to the civilians of the NKR. Such act grossly violates the requirements set by the international human rights law, as well as the international humanitarian law.

The two Ombudsmen visited also Alashan district of Mataghis region and met Talish residents who had left their homes and settled there due to the April attack by Azerbaijan.

The Ombudsmen are calling the international structures attention on the fundamental violations made by the Azerbaijani armed forces against the NKR civilians. That information with respective justification will be submitted to the international organizations dealing with human rights.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Ambassador to Lithuania Tigran Mkrtchyan met Political Director of the MFA of Lithuania Rolandas Kacinskas on September 12, press service of the Armenian MFA told Armenpress.

Issues related to the development of bilateral relations were discussed during the talk. The sides also talked about the initiatives aimed at promoting bilateral political, economic and cultural ties.

Rolandas Kacinskas attached great importance to the successful negotiations over Armenia-EU new framework agreement. The Armenian Ambassador said the negotiations are expected to be completed soon. He added that Armenia develops its relations with various countries and structures based on the cooperation and good neighborly relations principles.

Regional security and stability related issues were also covered at the meeting.

A special reference was made to Armenias approaches and efforts aimed at the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, especially after the April aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. There is an absence of political will over the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement only in the Azerbaijani side, Deputy Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov said.

We have said our opinion. After the meetings in Vienna and St. Petersburg, the Foreign Ministers issued a statement, and Armenias President clearly stated in Moscow there will not be unilateral concessions, and the elimination of causes, rather than consequences is important. And the causes are related with the fact that Azerbaijan doesnt want to recognize the NKR peoples full right to self-determination, Sharmazanov said, reports Armenpress.

He said the Armenian sides opinion is clear, the de jure recognition of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic is just a matter of time.

Karabakh will never be a part of Azerbaijan. This is our stance, and we express it both in Yerevan, in Moscow, in Buenos Aires and everywhere, he said.

Referring to the talks over territorial mutual concessions, Sharmazanov said the settlement issue is the most important. We must not talk about territories, and I have repeatedly showed them the place of territories. The Republic of Armenia will support the NKR peoples fair fight which started in 1988, he said.

He said the agreements reached in Vienna and St. Petersburg are not implemented due to Azerbaijans unconstructive policy. The NKR people must solve the issue, and we are the guarantor of that fight. The people of Karabakh must be able to exercise their right to self-determination based on the international norms, Sharmazanov said.

Azerbaijan is trying to present all this as a territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but this is not a territorial dispute, this a fight to exercise the right to self-determination, Sharmazanov said.

He said the NKR leadership must become a full party to the negotiations and they must make the final decision.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. Artsakh EthnoFest is an international festival to be held annually in the Nagorno Karabakh Republic with the participation of representatives of different countries. Each festival will have its own frame and will feature a particular trend of national culture, the NKR Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs informed Armenpress.

The first festival named Taste of Country and representing national cuisines of different countries will be held on September 15-17, 2016. Both skilled chefs and people of different occupation from France, Romania, Moldova, South Korea, Syria, Georgia, Armenia and the NKR will take part in it. They will cook and serve the guests their national dishes.

The event will be held on September 16 at Isahaki Aghbyur (Isahaks Spring) resort in Shushi. French crepes, Romanian mamaliga, Korean dishes with rice, Syrian salads and Oriental sweets, Georgian satsivi together with the visit card of NKR cuisine  zhengalov hats, as well as kurkut and traditional barbecue will be presented. The foreign guests will be given the opportunity to take part in zhengalov hats masterclass and contest. The festival will be accompanied with fascinating concert.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. On September 13 an agreement on Improving the Legislation and Supporting the Creation of Legal Research Center was signed between the Armenian Ministry of Justice and the USAID, press service of the Justice Ministry informed Armenpress.

The agreement was signed by the acting Minister of Justice Arpine Hovhannisyan, US Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills and Director of USAID Armenia Mission Deborah Grieser.

The Justice Minister expressed gratitude to the US Ambassador and present and former Directors of USAID Armenia Mission for believing in and active participation in the initiative of implementing the idea.

Every idea that you start, you must believe in it: my belief was great over the creation of the Center, the Justice Minister said.

Ambassador Mills highly appreciated the cooperation with the Justice Ministry stating that over the last one year it has entered a qualitatively new stage and said the opening of the Center on Legislation Development and Legal Research is one of the vivid examples of the strong cooperation and partnership with the Justice Ministry aimed at strengthening the fight against terrorism and productive management in Armenia. He said the USAID will provide strong assistance to the Center during the first 12 months of its activity.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. The information that eggs of inferior quality are being imported to Armenia does not correspond to the reality, press secretary of the head of the State Food Security Service of the Ministry of Agriculture of Armenia Nvard Arakelyan told Armenpress. She informed that each batch of the imported egg has undergone a veterinary laboratory examination at the checkpoints. As a result, no deviation of standards has been recorded in the eggs imported from the Russian Federation.

The State Food Security Service found 400 boxes or 144 thousand unprocessed eggs (there were 900 boxes in this batch). Despite the eggs were fresh and corresponded with all the safety standards, the State Food Security Service banned its realization as the legislative requirements for labeling were not complied with. The unprocessed eggs are subject to utilization, destruction or return.

The representative of the service recently attended a discussion with egg producing entrepreneurs where she introduced the activities of border checks and assured that the service will be consistent in revealing irresponsible entrepreneurs. At the same time the sanitary and veterinary requirements for egg imports, as well as the EAEU norms for transporting and maintenance of eggs were introduced to the entrepreneurs.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs that on September 13 the USD exchange rate was 474.14 AMD which is a decrease of 0.12 AMD compared to the previous day.

Armenpress reports that the Euro decreased by 2.56 AMD forming 532.03 AMD. British pound decreased by 2.48 AMD forming 628.52 dAMD, Russian ruble decreased by 0.07 AMD forming 7.32.

The prices for precious metals are as follows: the price for silver per gram is 285.37 AMD, gold-20,192.14 AMD, and platinum-15,899.44 AMD.
STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 13, ARTSAKHPRESS: The Presidents decree reads:

Guided by the 4th point of the Article 55th of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia amended in 2005, I decide:

Appoint Karen KARAPETYAN as Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia.
Armenian Ombudsman Arman Tatoyan, who is in Nagorno-Karabakh on a working visit, has been briefed on the Azerbaijani militarys devastations in the wake of the four-day heavy fighting in April.

STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 13, ARTSAKHPRESS: Accompanied by Ruben Melikyan, the ombudsman of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Tatoyan visited the village Mataghis to evaluate the damages caused, reports the Armenian Human Rights Defenders press service.





The targeted attacks by the Azerbaijani armed forces towards Mataghis village and the reservoir in April were recorded. The targeted attacks towards the reservoir aimed to cause huge damage to the civilians of the NKR. Such act grossly violates the requirements set by the international human rights law, as well as the international humanitarian law.
STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 13, ARTSAKHPRESS: Each festival will have its own frame and will feature a particular trend of national culture, the NKR Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs informed.

The first festival named Taste of Country and representing national cuisines of different countries will be held on September 15-17, 2016. Both skilled chefs and people of different occupation from France, Romania, Moldova, South Korea, Syria, Georgia, Armenia and the NKR will take part in it. They will cook and serve the guests their national dishes.

The event will be held on September 16 at Isahaki Aghbyur (Isahaks Spring) resort in Shushi. French crepes, Romanian mamaliga, Korean dishes with rice, Syrian salads and Oriental sweets, Georgian satsivi together with the visit card of NKR cuisine  zhengalov hats, as well as kurkut and traditional barbecue will be presented. The foreign guests will be given the opportunity to take part in zhengalov hats masterclass and contest. The festival will be accompanied with fascinating concert.
Amy Hysick, a lifelong central New York resident and a Cicero-North Syracuse High School teacher, has been named New York's Teacher of the Year.

The award was announced Tuesday by the state Department of Education.

Hysick has taught in the North Syracuse Central School District for 12 years. She currently teachers biology in the high school.

A former student of the school district, Hysick earned her bachelor's and master degrees at Binghamton University. She is certified by the state to teach biology (grades 7 to 12) and chemistry (grades 7 to 12).

"Teaching offers a priceless gift  the chance to impact students' lives," said state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia. "That's exactly what Amy Hysick does each day in her classroom.

"Her dedication to engaging students in a hands-on way, her drive to continue her own learning and growth as an educator and her generosity in sharing best practices with her colleagues makes her the perfect example of a great New York state teacher."

Hysick was recognized for her ability to build relationships with students. The school's reptile collection is kept in her classroom and she sewed costumes for Cicero-North Syracuse's spirit week.

Annette Speach, North Syracuse's superintendents of schools, said Hysick is giving back to her community.

"She is an outstanding educator whose dedication is evidenced beyond her commitment to students in the classroom; a true teacher leader consistently modeling and sharing best practices, an inspiration to all," Speach said.

Hysick will be an ambassador for New York's educators over the next year. She also will be the state's nominee in the National Teacher of the Year competition.
With all the talk of marijuana legalization in the United States, it can sometimes seem like marijuana use is rampant across the country. Its true that more states than ever now offer legalized recreational pot, but there are also a handful of states where it seems unlikely that theyll ever pass a law to allow marijuana  whether its for recreational or medicinal purposes.

According to Gallup polls, the number of American adults who smoke marijuana has been increasing over the past three years, from 7% in 2013 to 13% in 2016. Its hard to tell whether that number is increasing because more adults are actually smoking weed, or if people are more willing to admit they use marijuana as the stigma for doing so fades. Overall, 43% of Americans admit to having tried cannabis at some point in their lives.

Still, some cities and states have more pot users than others. It goes without saying that states that have legalized recreational cannabis tend to have higher concentrations of people who use the drug, but even those states have hot spots with a higher percentage of users.

Marijuana use nationwide: City and regional hotspots

To get an idea of which cities and regions in the United States have the most marijuana users, we took a look at data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA. The organization gathered data from 204,000 people ages 12 and older from 2012 to 2014 across the nation, asking them about a variety of behaviors including marijuana use. SAMHSA then outlined the regions in each state where pot use was the highest, based on people who said they had used cannabis in the previous month. Though some of those regions are reported as regions in the state, we took a look at the largest cities in those areas to determine the locations where marijuana use is the highest in the nation.

Nationwide, an average of 7.73% of people ages 12 and older had admitted to using marijuana in some form in the previous month. In each of these top cities, that percentage is well above that benchmark, and in several cases is more than double the national average. Keep in mind that SAMHSAs report deals with percentages, meaning that a smaller city could make this list if a greater ratio of marijuana users live there. However, some of the cities on the list have a high percentage paired with a large population, meaning the use of marijuana in those locations is truly significant.

15. Boston, Massachusetts

Percentage of marijuana users: 13.12%

Massachusetts is one of the 27 states (along with Washington, D.C.) that permit medical marijuana in at least some circumstances, which could be part of the reason Bostons percentage of marijuana use is one of the highest in the country. The citys notoriously large college student population could also be a factor here, as millennials are much more likely to support marijuana use than other generations. (The Pew Research Center reports a 68% approval rate for younger people, versus 52 and 50% of people in the Baby Boomer and Gen X age groups.)

14. Bangor, Maine

Percentage of marijuana users: 13.25%

The central census region of Maine, known as Penquis, is home to the 14th-largest rate of marijuana use in the nation. Though the two Penobscot and Piscataquis counties in the region contain several cities, Bangor is likely the most recognized city among them.

13. Portland, Oregon

Percentage of marijuana users: 13.32%

Roughly 13.32% of residents in Multnomah County, Oregon use marijuana. Portland is the countys largest population center, and its high rate of marijuana use keeps up appearances with the citys decidedly progressive and young tendencies.

12. Fort Collins, Colorado

Percentage of marijuana users: 13.33%

In what should be a surprise to no one, Colorado reports the highest rate of marijuana use in the nation. The states recreational marijuana laws make the drug easy to access and less stigmatized, and marijuana use is widespread across the state. Statewide, about 14.01% of people report using marijuana, almost double that of the national average. Of Colorados five regional zones for the report, three of them are in the top 15 in the nation. Region 3, located in the center of state, has the lowest rate at 11.73%  which still beats many regions in the nation.

Colorados Region 1 lands at the No. 12 spot in the country. The cities include places like Yuma and other rural areas in the Northeast part of Colorado, but also include Fort Collins, one of the largest cities in the state and the home to Colorado State University.

11. Burlington, Vermont

Percentage of marijuana users: 13.87%

Bernie Sanderss recent presidential bid cemented the view that Vermont is a pot-friendly state, and the four census regions in the state all report high rates of marijuana use. The Champlain Valley region, which includes Burlington (and the University of Vermont) reports a higher rate of cannabis use than many cities in the nation.

10. Washington, D.C.

Percentage of marijuana users: 13.91%

Many of the residents in the nations capitol report using weed in some form. Ward 2 in particular  which includes the area where the White House is located  reports a rate of 13.91%, cracking the Top 10 regions in the nation for marijuana use.

9. Redding, California

Percentage of marijuana users: 13.97%

The entire northern section of California is grouped together in the SAMSHA report, which includes cities like Redding and Eureka, among others in a more rural area of an otherwise heavily populated state. Lower populations of people overall in the northern region could contribute to the higher percentage of usage, especially considering Californias longtime friendly attitude toward medical marijuana.

8. Warwick and East Greenwich, Rhode Island

Percentage of marijuana users: 14.23%

Despite its small size, Rhode Island boasts a hugely accepting attitude toward cannabis in general. Of its four regions in the SAMHSA report, three of them make this list  all of which are in the top 10. The entirety of Kent County comprises the No. 8 spot, with the city of Warwick likely the largest in the region. The coastal city of East Greenwich, the traditional county seat, also helps to add to those numbers. The region also marks the first in our list to have a rate of marijuana use higher than 14%.

7. Seattle, Washington

Percentage of marijuana users: 14.31%

Washington is one of eight states to have approved recreational pot in recent history, understandably increasing the number of marijuana users in the state (or at least increasing the chances that people will admit to it). King County, with the seventh-highest rate of cannabis use in the nation, includes Seattle, but also other large cities like Bellevue, Renton, Kent, and Redmond.

6. Newport and Bristol, Rhode Island

Percentage of marijuana users: 14.45%

Though its not necessarily scientific, part of the reason for Rhode Islands high rates of cannabis use could be the fact that its relatively small, but highly influenced by the number of college students that come into the state from all over the nation. According to one report, the state attracts and enrolls 142% more students than it produces  meaning the states younger population grows significantly for nine months every year.

Of those regions, the combined areas of Bristol and Newport (along with surrounding cities) take the No. 6 spot.

5. Denver and Boulder, Colorado

Percentage of marijuana users: 14.8%

The SAMHSA report groups a few large cities together in its report, and the Colorado cities of Denver and Boulder are counted together for a total rate of cannabis use at 14.8%. The large cities are home to a number of universities, but also are some of the most concentrated areas for medical and recreational dispensaries in the state.

4. Aspen, Durango, Grand Junction, and Telluride, Colorado

Percentage of marijuana users: 14.84%

The entire western half of Colorado is grouped together in the report, comprising of many cities in and around the Rockies and more rural parts of the state. The region includes 21 counties, obviously comprising of too many cities to name. However, the ones listed above represent some of the more populous and recognizable in the area, which also have a collective high rate of pot use.

3. Charleston, Narragansett, and South Kingston, Rhode Island

Percentage of marijuana users: 14.85%

Washington County is the southernmost region in the nations smallest state, but boasts one of the highest rates of weed users in the country. Historic towns like Charleston and Narragansett are part of this, along with South Kingston, which is home to the University of Rhode Island.

2. Denali, Fairbanks, and Nome, Alaska

Percentage of marijuana users: 14.93%

Alaska boasts a higher-than-normal rate of cannabis use overall, likely in part because of its pot-friendly legislation but also because of its remote nature. It doesnt get more remote than the northern region of Alaska, which has the second-highest percentage of pot users in the nation. Small populations in many cities within the census region mean that it doesnt take many cannabis enthusiasts to bloat the rate of marijuana use. Nonetheless, youre likely to find a higher percentage of pot users among the people you do meet in this part of the country.

1. San Francisco, California

Percentage of marijuana users: 15.46%

Colorado might have the highest percentage of pot users on a statewide basis, but California has the highest rate when it comes to sheer numbers. According to 24/7 Wall St., the state boasts more than 4.6 million cannabis users, the highest number of any state in the nation. The state does have some of the largest variations in pot use by region, but San Franciscos place at the No. 1 spot is truly impressive. Not only is the percentage the highest in the country  and beats out the No. 2 spot by almost a whole percentage point  but its population makes that an especially impressive feat.

San Francisco is in the Top 15 largest U.S. cities by population, with more than 805,000 residents. To get the highest percentage of pot use, it means that the weed culture must be especially pervasive throughout the city. To put that rate in perspective, an estimated 124,500 people are frequently using pot at any given time within the city limits.

Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook!
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is coming to the aid of New York's craft beverage producers  again.

Cuomo signed two bills Tuesday that will allow farm breweries, cideries and wineries to sell beverages by the glass at production facilities or off-site stores.

Prior to this change, farm beverage producers could only sell drinks by the glass at the production sites. Now, the businesses can showcase beverages made by other New York companies in addition to their own.

The new laws are part of a push to modernize the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control Law. Cuomo signed legislation last week that would make a slew of reforms, including allowing bars and restaurants to sell alcoholic beverages at 10 a.m. on Sundays.

"These new laws further break down artificial barriers and help increase exposure to New York's world class beer, wine, cider and spirits, which will help this already booming industry grow further," Cuomo said in a statement. "As I've said many times, when New Yorkers buy and support New York products, everyone wins."

Cuomo has said the new laws will help an industry that has exploded in recent years.

According to the governor's office, the number of farm wineries rose from 195 to 315 today.

In 2010, there were just 10 farm distilleries in New York. There are now 95.

New York established licenses for farm breweries and farm cideries in 2013 and 2014, respectively. There are 129 farm breweries and 22 farm cideries in the state.

Alejandro del Peral, co-founder of Nine Pin Cider Works in Albany, said the state's efforts have helped his company and the industry as a whole.

"We are thrilled to finally have the opportunity to showcase and serve the beer, wine and spirits products crafted by friends in the New York farm beverage sector," del Peral said. "As the state's first farm cidery, Nine Pin is committed to supporting New York agriculture through our local counterparts."
About 900,000 Illinoisans lacked health insurance in 2015, down from 1.2 million uninsured in 2014 and 1.6 million in 2013. (Andrew Harnik / AP)

The number of Illinois residents without health insurance dipped below the 1 million mark last year after implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday.

About 900,000 Illinoisans, or 7.1 percent of state residents, lacked health insurance in 2015. That's down from 1.2 million uninsured in 2014 and far fewer than the 1.6 million who were without insurance in 2013, before many provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect.

Advertisement

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, requires all Americans to have health insurance or pay a fine and bars insurers from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Nationally, 9.4 percent of Americans were uninsured in 2015, down from 14.5 percent in 2013.

The law also led to the creation of online marketplaces, or exchanges, where individuals can buy health insurance and often receive tax credits to offset the costs of that coverage. A number of states, including Illinois, also expanded Medicaid, a safety net health insurance program funded by state and federal dollars, under the law.

Advertisement

Given where Illinois was just a few years ago, the numbers are cause for celebration, said Kathy Waligora, director of the health reform initiative of EverThrive Illinois, a maternal and child health advocacy organization.

"This is exactly what we've been working toward for six years now," Waligora said. "It's exciting to be at a point now where we're really starting to see the fruits of that labor."

Jonathan Gold, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, also touted the data. "Before the ban on discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and the tax credits made available through the ACA, coverage was unattainable for millions of Americans, and real comparison shopping was all but impossible," Gold said in an emailed statement.

The department previously said that 7.9 percent of Illinoisans lacked insurance in 2015. That number doesn't include older adults eligible for Medicare, whereas the Census number does.

The Census figure is a bright spot amid a series of disappointments for Illinois residents who buy health insurance through the exchange.

The Illinois Department of Insurance recently submitted to the federal government rate increases ranging from averages of 43 to 55 percent for some types of plans that will be offered on the exchange next year. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will finalize those rates.

Also, a number of insurers have abandoned the exchange in Illinois because of financial losses. Land of Lincoln, Aetna and UnitedHealthcare will no longer offer individual plans on the exchange next year, though Cigna will begin offering individual exchange plans in Illinois next year.

Consumers in Lake and McHenry counties shopping for individual plans on the exchange next year will likely only have one choice of insurer. Consumers in Cook County will likely have four from which to choose. Those in DuPage County will likely have three choices of insurers, and those in Kane and Will counties will likely have two choices.

Advertisement

Phil Lackman, CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents of Illinois, believes the uninsured rate in Illinois will bottom out and might even start to creep back up.

"There's fewer choices, the prices of the plans are going up, and that's going to impact everyone whether you're getting subsidies or not," Lackman said.

Sarah Hester, a Round Lake computer programmer who buys insurance on the exchange,

said her family doesn't qualify for much in tax credits because of the family's income level. About 25 percent of Illinoisans on the exchange don't get the credits. Hester and her husband are expecting their first child in November, and their monthly premium is already almost as high as their rent.

"For me personally, I feel like especially with a baby on the way, it's really not an option to go without," Hester said.

She knows, however, that those without immediate medical needs might feel differently about buying insurance. Hester didn't have health insurance for two years when she was younger because she feared paying high premiums.

Advertisement

Still, others are optimistic that Illinois' uninsured rate will continue to shrink.

"While the marketplace has been open three years now, it's easy to forget we're still in a transition," said EverThrive Illinois' Waligora. "Implementing any sort of meaningful change takes time."

Gold noted that even with potentially higher premiums, most Illinoisans who buy insurance on the exchange will spend less than $75 a month for coverage after tax credits.

Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said she also expects progress can be made nationwide.

"I do think with aggressive outreach and enrollment efforts we can make a much bigger dent than we have in the uninsured rate," Corlette said.

According to the Census Bureau, 26-year-olds had the highest uninsured rate nationally at 19.5 percent in 2015. That's the age at which insurers no longer have to cover young adults under their parents' insurance policies.

Advertisement

lschencker@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @lschencker
WASHINGTON  There's trouble brewing in appraiserville  and it's beginning to cost some unsuspecting homebuyers money. If you're planning to buy in the coming months, be aware.

The problem is part work overload, part resentment over fees. In many markets, diminishing numbers of experienced appraisers are available  or willing  to handle requests for their work on tight timetables and at fees that are sometimes lower than they earned a decade or more ago.

Advertisement

The net result: The system is getting gummed up. Scheduled home sale settlements are being delayed because banks and appraisal management companies can't find appraisers who'll do valuations on timetables needed for closing dates in realty contracts. A recent survey of agents by the National Association of Realtors found that appraisal problems were connected with 27 percent of delayed home sale closings, up from 16 percent earlier this year.

In some cases, panicked lenders and management companies are offering appraisers fat bonuses and "rush fees" just to complete valuations to meet deadlines. The extra charges can range anywhere from $200 to $1,000 or more, turning $500 appraisals into $1,200 or $1,500 expenses that typically get paid by homebuyers.

Advertisement

Take this example from a mortgage broker in the Seattle area. Matt Culp, owner of Bainbridge Lending Group, says clients who urgently needed to close on a newly built house  and to move out of their rented dwelling  were squeezed into paying $2,000 for an appraisal that normally would cost $625.

An appraisal management company had said that the quickest the valuation could be delivered was Oct. 6, weeks after their hoped-for closing date. Waiting that long, however, would have cost the borrowers their favorable rate lock and forced them to pay another month's rent. But when Culp inquired about a rush fee, the appraiser agreed to a $2,000 total fee  $1,375 more than the earlier quote. For the extra money, the appraiser would put Culp's clients at the top of the to-do list. The buyers agreed. The extra $1,375, charged to the borrowers' credit card in advance of any work performed, was "extortion," Culp said. But it was less expensive than the alternatives.

Here's another example, this time from the perspective of an appraisal management company. Brian C. Coester, CEO of Coester Valuation Management Services in Maryland, said a lender in Nashville, Tenn., recently was willing to pay appraisers $1,100 for work that normally would have cost less than half of that, but still had difficulty finding takers. Coester's firm, like other management companies, helps lenders link up with appraisers around the country. For its services, it takes a piece of the appraisal fee.

Appraisers have complained for several years that management companies are themselves a big part of the problem because they pay low fees to the appraiser and pocket 25 percent to 30 percent or more of what homebuyers are charged. Plus they have unreasonable expectations about how quickly appraisers can churn out reports. Management company executives like Coester deny they underpay appraisers and instead suggest that there is an underlying "shortage" of appraisers caused in part by the aging of members of the profession, tougher qualifications and regulations, and by fewer new recruits coming in to replace them.

The Appraisal Institute, the profession's largest trade group, confirms that there are fewer appraisers active today than in previous years  the ranks are down by 22 percent since 2007 to a total of 76,800 as of Dec. 31. But J. Scott Robinson, president of the group, said one of the key reasons for the dwindling numbers is that management companies and lenders aren't paying adequate fees to retain experienced appraisers or attract newcomers.

Jonathan Miller, a prominent New York-based appraiser, wrote in a recent blog that "there is no shortage of appraisers. There is a shortage of appraisers willing to work for half the market rate"  which is what he believes many appraisers get when they work for management companies as opposed to directly dealing with banks.

Whatever the causes  whether there is a true "shortage" or simply fewer appraisers willing to work for low net compensation  appraisal delays, combined with requests for "rush fees," are realities in the marketplace. When setting contract deadlines for your closing, ask your real estate agent about conditions in your area. The more realistic the settlement date, the lower the likelihood you'll be charged extra to get the work done.

kenharney@earthlink.net
The Concord Grape Julep is a punch of booze in the grand tradition of that drink, with bourbon and cognac settling below the ice before eventually being mellowed out by the grape juice. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

At Spilt Milk Tavern, you won't find encyclopedic tomes of cocktails with descriptors rivaling a tech startup's buzzword-suffocated "About" page. You won't find Tom Cruise-in-"Cocktail" theatrics. You won't see feats of modern mixology. You won't experience hushed, reverent tones for magpie-size shareable bites.

What you'll find is a watering hole that serves one hell of a drink.

Advertisement

You'd think at this point that Logan Square couldn't handle yet another cocktail bar, but the partnership between the industry veterans of Equal Parts Hospitality (Matty Eggleston, Tony Selna and Jason Turley) and Footman Hospitality (Chris Haisma, Jason Freiman and Nick Podesta) is banking on another experience entirely.

"We didn't want to be heavy-handed with the drinks," says Eggleston. "We don't want to be precious."

Advertisement

Which is somewhat ironic given the beautiful William Morris wallpaper spread throughout the dark, moody space. That wallpaper  a flourish of lilies and flowers on a dark field of blue  is a modern, feminine touch in an otherwise masculine, inviting den of warm-colored, polished woods, not least of which being the gleaming 40-foot mahogany bar. Milky-white pendant lights evoke the spot's name, but if you strip down the space to its bones, you've got the makings of a Chicago classic: the corner bar.

Anthony Selna, a partner and bartender at Spilt Milk Tavern explains the bar's history and cocktails. (Louisa Chu / Chicago Tribune) (Louisa Chu, Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

Chicago's corner bars and taverns  next of kin to pre-Prohibition saloons  have always acted as boozy anchors in the city's neighborhoods, and Spilt Milk wants to re-create that sense of a gathering space with straightforward drinks and accessible beer and wine lists.

It helps that the address has a deep history of serving the public, according to Eggleston. "It was a popular Puerto Rican social club before, plus one or two other bars," he says. "For the last few years, it was derelict and needed love and rejuvenation."

When Eggleston and his partners stepped in, they decided not to define the project with a theme. "We want to be nimble enough to grow into whatever we become. It's our hope to grow into a role, as opposed to telling people, 'This is what we're doing.' We want to harken back to the time of original tavern keepers who served people and operated with a sense of pride."

The cocktail list can be described as skeletal  but that's not a pejorative. "Going out should be fun," says Eggleston. "No one wants to decipher a dense menu." The drinks themselves are straightforward and at the same time playful, inspired by the building's past life as a pharmacy, in the 1920s. "We wanted to strike your fancy with a quick look. We just want to put out tasty drinks quickly."

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

You've got the classics  a julep, a margarita, a Sazerac, a pisco sour  each tweaked with the clever aplomb of a life behind the bar. The Concord Grape Julep ($10) is a punch of booze in the grand tradition of that drink, with Ancient Age Bourbon and Pierre Ferrand 1840 Cognac settling below the pellet ice before eventually being mellowed out by Concord grape juice. The pisco sour-like Bobby Peru ($11) is frothy, a whipped egg white forming a cloudy cap over a brandy-driven cocktail, while the Madras Margarita ($11) gets both mezcal and tequila, along with a sweet-tart mix of lime, tamarind and curacao.

If you don't want a cocktail, six beers on tap as well as a rotation of bottles and cans are on offer ($4-$11). The wine list, too, is an upgrade from house wines infamous at Chicago bars for being, in the opinion of this writer, rotgut.

"If we have great drinks and great beer, we should have wine too," says Eggleston. "It should be more commonplace, and we picked wines that don't need to be paired with food. Again, just trying to get rid of preciousness." The baker's dozen of wines (truly international; the only domestic wine is from Oregon) are categorized as "easy," "geeky" and "the cream," and available by bottle (starting at $36) or in stemless tumblers (starting at $8).

Advertisement

Even as Logan Square rapidly has become a nexus for bars, Spilt Milk balances its pedigreed talent and stylish interiors with a humble approach and approachable prices. "We want to be a place for our neighbors and visitors, but we're not definitely not trying to carpetbag," says Eggleston. "We're just career barmen who found a home."

Spilt Milk Tavern, 2758 W. Fullerton Ave., 773-413-8440, www.spiltmilktavern.com

jbhernandez@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @joeybear85






Peter Thiel delivers remarks in the Quicken Loans Arena on the final day of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 21, 2016. (Shawn Thew / EPA)

Chicagoans can offer a profound thank you to billionaire Peter Thiel, who deigned to make a flying visit to our cow town to share a few pearls of wisdom Tuesday.

"If you are a very talented person, you have a choice: You either go to New York or you go to Silicon Valley," the 48-year-old PayPal founder tactlessly informed a presumably slightly less talented crowd at Roosevelt University during a lunchtime talk.

Advertisement

San Francisco-based Thiel  who spoke in support of Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention and has been in the headlines recently for bankrolling a lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan against Gawker Media that forced it into bankruptcy  was given a gentle ride onstage by moderator Stuart Warner, a philosophy professor at Roosevelt.

Neither his support for Trump nor the First Amendment implications of his campaign to destroy Gawker nor his slight to Chicago came up during the wide-ranging discussion of the state of the American Dream.

Advertisement

But asked at the end of the event by an audience member, "Who comes to Chicago if first-rate people go to New York or Silicon Valley?" a stammering Thiel said, "I didn't, I didn't, I didn't say that!" going on to explain that he used New York and Silicon Valley only as "extreme versions" in a metaphor about the competing lures of globalization and technology  not as a slur on the Second City.

Thiel said he doesn't know "exactly what Chicago should be doing right now" but said, "it's an extremely important question, and it's the type of question that we don't ask enough."

Sounds complicated, Mr. Thiel. We're sure you meant well, just like when New Yorker Dick Wolf called us fat!

kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews
There have been many claims made in the 54th Senate District race. Republicans vying for the party's nomination have been exchanging allegations using their preferred method of communication: mail.

A mailer that was sent to GOP voters in recent days takes aim at Canandaigua businessman Floyd Rayburn, one of the leading candidates in the primary. The mailer labels Rayburn as being "pro-amnesty" and "weak on illegal immigration."

But there's more.

The mailer claims Associated Builders and Contractors, a group that endorsed Rayburn in the GOP primary, once said it wants 1.8 million new immigrants by 2020 and "thought Chuck Schumer's amnesty bill didn't go far enough."

Below the claims are links to two documents on Associated Builders and Contractors' website. And that's where the mailer's accusations fall apart.

The first link directs recipients to a letter sent by the organization in 2013. In the letter, ABC comes out against the immigration reform measure sponsored by Schumer, a New York Democrat. The group opposed the bill because it "fails to provide for a workable legal immigration system for our industry."

It's not that ABC didn't think the bill went far enough, as the mailer suggests. It's that ABC didn't believe the bill would help its industry  a much different position.

In fact, the second link referenced in the mailer  a news release ABC sent in April 2013  outlines the group's position on a guest worker program, which isn't the same thing as "amnesty."

So where did the authors of the mailer get that 1.8 million new immigrants claim from?

In the aforementioned letter ABC sent to U.S. senators, the group cited the Bureau of Labor Statistics which estimated that the construction industry "is expected to need about 1.8 million new workers by 2020."

ABC added, "With an aging workforce, in order for the industry to continue to meet U.S. construction demand, there must be a way for the industry to legally supplement its workforce when there are not a sufficient number of willing or able American workers."

In short, ABC wasn't saying it supported bringing 1.8 million new immigrants to the United States. It said that the construction industry needs 1.8 million new workers by 2020 and to help address that demand, guest workers may be needed.

Joshua Reap, director of government affairs for Associated Builders and Contractors in New York, accused Pam Helming's campaign and Albany Republicans of sending the mailer. (The Citizen reviewed the mailer and couldn't find any information about who sent it or who paid for the literature.)

"The statement made by this mail piece is inaccurate, tasteless and serves as a deflection from a critical issue: the need for skilled workers in construction," Reap said. "The majority leadership in Albany has failed to do enough to promote merit shop construction trades as a viable, well-paying, middle-class career choice for students coming out of high school.

"Finding no help from Albany, our association joined other national organizations to petition Congress for better resources to help stop unwarranted hiring of illegal immigrants, while at the same time calling for the construction industry to have a higher cap to the number of slots allocated in an already existing temporary worker program. It did not then, nor does it now, call for amnesty."

There were several questionable mailers sent by all sides in this primary campaign. Some were factually inaccurate. Others could be considered low blows.

But this mailer was arguably the worst of them all. Instead of targeting a candidate, it went after one of the groups endorsing that candidate.

Not only did it attack Associated Builders and Contractors, but it misrepresented the group's position on a major bill  a piece of legislation, it's worth noting, that has nothing to do with the New York State Senate.

The mailer played it fast and loose with the facts. It was dishonest. That's why we rate the mailer's claims as false.
Hillary Clinton revealed a disconcerting flaw when she fell ill at a 9/11 event on Sunday.

She showed us that she is human. Not the superhuman we have demanded she be, only human.

Advertisement

That's something a woman can't afford to disclose when she's competing in a race that always has been dominated by men.

One of the lessons women learn early in life is that they've got to be tough in order to succeed. Fragility can be a fatal flaw that has brought an end to many a promising career. And whatever you do, we're told, never let them see you cry. The bigger bitch you are at work, the more your peers will respect you. These are rules from the workplace playbook women memorize before we're even out of high school.

Advertisement

Now that we have our first female presidential nominee, we are hearing about other rules that apply to women seeking the nation's highest office: Never let them see you cough or take a sip of water to clear your throat. And for God's sake, don't stumble while getting into your campaign SUV.

Pictures of the would-be commander in chief being supported by a staff member as she abruptly left the 9/11 memorial event in New York put Clinton's health on showcase in her contentious race against Donald Trump. And the video showing her nearly collapsing into the arms of Secret Service agents as she stepped into her vehicle was enough to convince some that she is hiding a serious illness.

The fact that her doctor said later that Clinton had been diagnosed with pneumonia a couple of days before was met with skepticism. Her doctor's note carried far less weight than the one Trump's physician quickly scribbled giving him a clean bill of health while the candidate waited outside in a car.

At age 68, Clinton is two years younger than Trump. But by America's sexist double standard, she's the equivalent to 100 while he's considered to still have the virility of a 30-year-old. As a result, her health is deemed more vulnerable than even the Republican Party's beloved Ronald Reagan, who was 69 when first elected president.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani summed up Clinton's health this way after she attended a recent news conference with New York police officers. She "looked tired" and she "looked sick," he said.

The not-so-subtle point is that Clinton is an old woman, way past her prime and usefulness. Rather than trying to be president, she should be content sitting at home, spending her twilight years enjoying her grandchildren.

When it comes to electing a female head of state, the U.S. lags behind other countries, even some that are considered far less progressive. At this moment, there are more than a dozen female presidents, ruling countries such as Chile, South Korea and Liberia. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has been calling the shots for more than a decade. And in Great Britain, Theresa May just took over as prime minister, following a path set by Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

But in the U.S., we are still lukewarm to the idea of having a woman at the helm of our government. Part of the reason is that many Americans still don't consider women as equal to men.

Advertisement

We work the same jobs as men, but with less pay. We work as hard as men do, but often don't get the same opportunities for advancement. And as the recent debacle at Fox News shows, women are still subjected to sexual harassment and often treated as though they are a disposable commodity in the workplace.

So when Hillary Clinton stumbled on Sunday, she let her guard down and showed her weakness, her vulnerability. In that moment, it was easy to forget what an accomplished statesman she is, that she has served in the U.S. Senate and held one of the most important jobs in our democracy  secretary of state.

She didn't look like a seasoned diplomat. In the eyes of some, she was merely a woman and a sickly one at that. Even some of her ardent supporters panicked. Is she strong enough to stand up to bullies like Vladimir Putin and loose cannons like Kim Jong Un? Is she a match for our most ardent foe, ISIS?

There's no question that Clinton is smart. She can run circles around Trump when it comes to, well, any issue. But for some people, that still isn't good enough. In order to feel like America is still on top, they need a man in the forefront. Trump proves that for some, any man will do.

So why did Clinton continue on the campaign trail, even when her doctor advised her to get some rest? Why did she open herself up to more questions about her health, her stamina, her ability to serve as the first female president?

She kept going because she's a woman, a strong one at that. And a woman can't afford to stay home and nurse a cold  or even recover from pneumonia  when she's trying to break through a glass ceiling.

Advertisement

dglanton@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @dahleeng
On Tuesday, Russian intelligence services released a new batch of top-secret emails from the private server of Hillary Clinton, candidate for president of the United States. We are publishing them today in the interests of national security.

To: cpowell3@secretserver.com

Advertisement

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: sick

Advertisement

Colin, old friend. Why the bleep didn't you tell me that getting sick was a criminal offense? I depend on your guidance in these things. Or maybe I'm just a victim of a double standard???? Duh.

I swear I remember a time when YOU stayed home sick and nobody hassled you. Very disappointed that you're not out there telling the media that you've had to take sick days too. Don't deny it, pal.

Respectfully,

Me

To: customerservice@thetimes

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: Deplorable

I am writing on behalf of a friend to express extreme dissatisfaction with your coverage of Hillary Clinton's health. You devote a headline  a headline!  to the "fact" that pneumonia is really risky for people over 65, while pointing out that Senator Clinton is 68.

Advertisement

Who wrote that b.s.? One of your underpaid millennial interns who wants all baby boomers dead because we're hogging the good jobs?

Let's see that kid survive on as little sleep as Senator Clinton has lived on for months. Let's see that punk stand outside in the heat in a pantsuit listening to speeches and not need a nap.

You call yourselves journalists? No wonder your deplorable newspaper is failing.

To: customerservice@thetimes

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: Sorry

Advertisement

I would like to retract my previous comments. It was the medication talking. I hold firm to my point, but I should have found better words.

To: huma@dumpweiner.org

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: Going out of my mind!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The doctors say I should be sleeping but, dear Lord, how can I be holed up here when I should be campaigning?

And now Bill is out there stealing my limelight????? Again????

Advertisement

Pneumonia's not going to kill me, but I'll tell you what might  watching cable TV and reading Donald's Twitter feed.

Did you see that rumor that it was my body double who came out of Chelsea's apartment on Sunday claiming to feel great? Hey, when I hire a body double, it's going to be Jennifer Lawrence.

(And they say I don't have a sense of humor.)

Want to come over and re-watch "House of Cards"?

To: hillbilly@secretserver.com

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Advertisement

Subject: Thanks

Bill,

Thanks for covering for me on the campaign trail. You're always there for me when I need you.

Xoxox

To: hillbilly@secretserver.com

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Advertisement

Subject: p.s.

But, listen, you hound dog. If you think you can outshine me 

More later. My cell just beeped.

To: chelsea@secretserver.com

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: Guess who just called?

Advertisement

I'm not going to say  you never know when Russian hackers might get ahold of my emails.

How are my grandbabies?

Xoxox

To: timk@kaine2016.org

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: Oh, come on!

Advertisement

Tim,

You know I love you, pal. Have I ever told you  don't blush  that I know a bunch of women my age who have a little crush on you?

But I'm worried that you're letting all those stories about my "illness" go to your head.

Ditch the new "kaine2016" email address! Now!

Please don't start acting like another joker in the boys club, OK?

Xoxox

Advertisement

To: timk@kaine2016.org

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: p.s.

Tim. I was out of line when I said a bunch of middle-aged ladies have crushes on you. It was the medication talking.

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Advertisement

To: shivashaktiom@yogabliss.com

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: Need to cancel

Shivashakti, I am so sorry but I'll have to miss our yoga private today. Docs won't let me out of the house. Please send me some healing vibes. I swear I'm going to kill somebody before this b.s. "sickness" story plays out.

Namaste. (Is it true your real name is Karen Elizabeth?)

To: campaignstaff@hillary.com

Advertisement

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: My position paper on sick days

Staff,

During my unfortunate incarceration at home, I have written a 299-page brief on the history and future of paid sick days. In a word: Everyone gets sick sometimes and when they do they should not be demonized or otherwise punished.

See attached.

H.R.C.

Advertisement

To: thebiggest1@thebiggest1.com

From: nextprezme@secretserver.com

Subject: Hey

Don,

Ivanka gave Chelsea your private email and she passed it on to me. Hope you don't mind! (Where would we be without our daughters?)

Anyway, I know you miss me. But not to worry. Can't wait to see you at the debate!

Advertisement

Hugs,

Hillary Clinton, next president of the United States

mschmich@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @MarySchmich
This rendering shows the design of a new pedestrian/bicycle bridge, crossing the North Shore Channel south of Devon Avenue and north of Lincoln Avenue. (Chicago Department of Transportation)

The city plans to fill a gap on the North Shore Channel Trail on the North Side so cyclists and pedestrians can avoid crossing a busy street.

A bridge is designed to cross over the North Shore Channel north of Lincoln Avenue and south of Devon Avenue, creating one contiguous route along the multi-use trail that runs from Evanston south to Lawrence Avenue, city officials said.

Advertisement

"There's always been this gap where people get off and cross the street and get back on the trail," said Ald. Debra Silverstein of the 50th ward. She said her constituents have wanted this project since before she became alderman in 2011. Once the bridge is built, bike riders, walkers and joggers won't have to use the heavily traveled Lincoln Avenue.

City officials unveiled details of the bridge project at a community meeting Tuesday.

Advertisement

The project is estimated to cost $3.4 million for the design and construction, and is funded by a combination of money from the federal government, open space impact fees paid by developers and city funds allocated to the alderman for infrastructure projects, according to Mike Claffey, spokesman for the city's Department of Transportation. Construction is expected to start in early 2018, he said.

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

North of Lincoln Avenue is an unnamed park, identified as No. 526, which the Chicago Park District is looking to expand west of the channel, creating more passive green space alongside the trail.

The North Shore Channel Trail bridge is another project that will put residents in closer proximity to the river, which Mayor Rahm Emanuel has dubbed the city's next recreational frontier. He announced the release of the "Our Great Rivers" report last month on the North Side at the site of the Riverview Bridge project.

The report laid out a vision to make the Chicago, Calumet and Des Plaines rivers more accessible, inviting and cleaner by years 2020, 2030 and 2040.

The Riverview Bridge project calls for a bridge to cross over the north branch of the Chicago River, go underneath Addison Street, near California Avenue, and connect to existing trails for cyclists, runners and pedestrians between California Park and Clark Park without crossing busy intersections.

To the north of that project, the city plans to build a new multi-use path to run along the river and under Irving Park Road. It would connect Horner Park to the existing path south of Irving Park. Once both projects are completed, a continuous riverfront trail will stretch for roughly two miles from Montrose Avenue south to Belmont Avenue.

lvivanco@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @lvivanco
The cost to restore Grant Park after four days of Lollapalooza this summer reached more than $450,000, nearly double the cost of repairs last year, when the festival was only three days long.

The cost of repairs was $453,000 this year, considerably more than last year's tally of $236,000, according to the Chicago Park District. C3 Presents, the promoter of Lollapalooza, which was held July 28-31, is responsible for paying the bill. The tab was far less than the nearly $1 million in repairs in 2011, when a 3-inch rainstorm soaked concertgoers on the final day of the concert.

Advertisement

Anna Pietkiewizc, 19, picks up recyclable trash after day three of Lollapalooza in Grant Park on July 30, 2016, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Restoration of the park property  often referred to as Chicago's front yard  began following the festival and included sodding, seeding, aeration and replanting of shrubs, Park District spokeswoman Jessica Maxey-Faulkner said in an email. Rehab work on Arvey Field, just north of Roosevelt Road, will begin in the spring, she said.

Bob O'Neill, president of the Grant Park Conservancy, said the higher repair cost could be attributed to a combination of factors, including the thousands of concertgoers who attended the extra day of the festival. The festival expanded to four days for the first time this year to celebrate its 25th anniversary and drew a record 400,000 people. The festival is set to be four days long again next year, from Aug. 3-6.

Advertisement

Wet weather also hampered restoration efforts.

"Severe weather experienced during the build, along with rain during first two days of the festival increased the remediation cost for 2016," C3 Presents said in an email.

Heavy rain made the park muddy and washed away grass seeds, so crews had to redo the work, O'Neill said. Additionally, Lower Hutchinson Field  the site of two music stages between Lake Shore Drive and Columbus Drive and south of Balbo Drive  requires more restoration work because it collects water, he said.

Fencing still surrounds Hutchinson Field, but most other areas of the park are open, said O'Neill, adding that he plans to request that Lollapalooza organizers pay for additional trees to improve the landscaping at the skate park on the south end of the park. He noted their commitment to leave Grant Park in a better condition than they found it.

"It looks really good now," O'Neill said.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 100 James Murphy returns with LCD Soundsystem Sunday, July 31, 2016 to Lollapalooza in Grant Park on its final night. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune) (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)

lvivanco@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @lvivanco
The Lake County Council approved a resolution Tuesday seeking a study to assess the feasibility of building a convention center.

The resolution asked the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority to do an economic analysis and feasibility study on whether Lake County needs and can sustain a convention center.

Advertisement

Bill Hanna, president and CEO of the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, said the organization's board will have to consider the proposal and then work with county officials to define the scope of work.

If the study moves forward, Hanna said the authority will work closely with the county throughout the process. He said the study would be similar to the work done by the development authority to assess the feasibility of a trauma and teaching medical facilities in Northwest Indiana.

Advertisement

What the county is looking for from the study would define the length of time and amount of resources needed, Hanna said.

"The hospital study took close to a year," Hanna said.

Council President Ted Bilski, D-Hobart, introduced the resolution last week and told the Post-Tribune he was curious to see if there will be a need for a convention center now that the owners of the Radisson and Star Plaza Theatre in Merrillville announced the facility will be demolished.

Bilski said last week that questions about how the facility would be paid for, what it would look like and where it would be located will all be answered after the feasibility study is complete. He said the first step is finding out whether it's needed.

clyons@post-trib.com

Twitter: @craigalyons
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's top attorney said Tuesday that he's working to address the two biggest concerns expressed by critics of the administration's plan to revamp the police accountability system but offered few specifics with 15 days left before a City Council vote.

Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton said the mayor's office is working to identify a minimum funding level for a new agency that would investigate shootings by cops and allegations of police misconduct. He also said he was trying to work out a way for the head of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability to hire the agency's own attorneys without administration involvement.

Advertisement

"I'm confident that we will get there and that those issues will be included in a revised version of this ordinance," Patton told aldermen. Council members were pressing him on those two issues, with Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, saying, "We want to make sure that there is not an opportunity to starve this agency for resources."

But Patton declined to say what the minimum funding level would be, saying it was still being figured out and adding that he "would not be surprised if where that ends up is being a percentage of some benchmark." He further suggested that his Law Department and COPA could agree on a pool of outside attorneys from which the new agency chief could hire.

Advertisement

Some police accountability experts have called for COPA's minimum annual budget to be a percentage of spending on the Police Department. Requiring a minimum level of funding could help prevent the mayor and City Council from diminishing the agency's power by cutting its budget.

The experts also have called for the ability of COPA's chief to hire outside attorneys to handle the enforcement of subpoenas and other matters, given that the Law Department could have a conflict of interest because it would defend many officers being investigated by COPA who are sued in civil court.

Patton's comments came during the first public airing of Emanuel's plan to revamp the city's police oversight system, which has long been criticized as plodding and ineffective at reining in wayward officers. The issue fell under the glare of a national spotlight last November when a court ordered the city to release police dashboard camera footage of white Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting black teen Laquan McDonald. Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder 13 months later, hours before the video was released.

The case spurred weeks of protests, calls for Emanuel's resignation and a U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation into Chicago police practices. Emanuel fired his police superintendent and formed a Police Accountability Task Force, while the previous head of the oversight agency resigned.

Patton said many of that task force's recommendations are included in the ordinance, like creating a deputy inspector general to audit police practices and the oversight process and giving COPA broader authority. COPA, unlike the current Independent Police Review Authority, would look into allegations of illegal search and seizure and denying suspects access to an attorney.

But Lori Lightfoot, head of the mayor's police task force, told aldermen that minimum budgeting and the ability to independently hire outside counsel were "critically important," so neither COPA's chief nor the new deputy inspector general has to go to city officials every year at budget time and "ask, 'Mother, may I?' for basic budgetary authority to do the work that's necessary to be done."

Paula Thornton-Greear of the Chicago Urban League seconded that sentiment and also said the ordinance should prevent former Chicago cops from working as investigators at COPA  something the current ordinance does not rule out.

Meanwhile, Brian Hlavin, an attorney for the Fraternal Order of Police, objected to several aspects of the ordinance, including the expanded investigative authority COPA would have, and contended the city should set higher training requirements for COPA investigators.

Advertisement

Emanuel has scheduled a Sept. 20 speech on public safety and a Sept. 29 special council meeting to vote on his oversight plan.

And months off yet is a third task force-recommended piece: creation of a citizen oversight board for the police accountability system. That board would play a key role in picking COPA's chief, and accountability experts are concerned about who will pick its members.

hdardick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ReporterHal
The Republican candidate for Cook County state's attorney on Tuesday said that Democrat Kim Foxx would have a conflict of interest if she oversaw settlements of lawsuits brought by the firm that is now paying her, further eroding public trust in the prosecutor's office.

Foxx, however, said if elected, she won't recuse herself from cases involving the powerful personal injury firm Powers Rogers & Smith. She tried to reframe the issue, saying there's no "actual conflict" because during the year she has been a legal consultant for the firm, she hasn't worked on any cases involving Cook County.

Advertisement

That sets up a situation in which Foxx, the favorite to win Nov. 8 in heavily Democratic Cook County, would enter office facing questions each time her administration tried to negotiate a settlement or went to trial in a case brought by the firm. In addition to paying Foxx an undisclosed amount since she left her $181,867-a-year county job in August 2015, the firm's attorneys have donated $18,500 to Foxx's campaign fund.

The dynamic, which her opponent said creates "the appearance of impropriety," chips at the political halo Foxx has tried to create for herself through TV ads telling voters her up-by-the-bootstraps personal story and her campaign pledge to reform the office following the widespread criticism State's Attorney Anita Alvarez has received for her handling of the Laquan McDonald police shooting case and its aftermath.

Advertisement

On Tuesday, Republican opponent Christopher Pfannkuche spelled out the conflict: It's not whether Foxx has worked on lawsuits involving the county while at the private law firm, as she suggests, but the fact that Foxx is likely to be in the position of signing off on legal settlements involving her former firm, which has been helping her stay afloat financially for a year as she runs for office.

Republican Christopher Pfannkuche and Democrat Kim Foxx, candidates for Cook County state's attorney, meet with the Tribune Editorial Board on Sept. 13, 2016. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

"Kim Foxx works for a law firm that regularly sues Cook County, that has gotten millions of dollars in judgments from Cook County," Pfannkuche said. "Should she be elected state's attorney, it will be her tasked duty under the statutes to defend against these lawsuits. And if her firm, her former firm who has donated heavily to her campaign, continues to sue the county, she'll be in the position, the unenviable position, of having to defend lawsuits against her former colleagues.

"That is an appearance of impropriety," Pfannkuche said during a Chicago Tribune Editorial Board endorsement session. "That is, in part, what has given the state's attorney's office such a bad name with the Laquan McDonald case. Whether it was right or wrong, there was an appearance of impropriety about the way that case was handled by this office. We should not have a prosecutor that has even the appearance of a conflict of interest handling these cases."

Power Rogers & Smith has sued the county numerous times. This year, the county paid $6 million to settle a suit with the family of a Dolton teen who was killed by a car being chased by sheriff's police.

Democratic candidate for Cook County state's attorney Kim Foxx and Republican candidate Christopher Pfannkuche give their closing statements to the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board on Sept. 13, 2016. (Chicago Tribune)

The firm's website lists other verdicts and settlements, among them a $3 million settlement in a 2000 medical malpractice suit against Cook County Hospital and a $3.1 million verdict in a medical negligence case the same year against the county. The attorney in the Dolton suit and the medical negligence case was Larry Rogers Jr., a partner at the law firm who also is paid $100,000 a year as an elected commissioner of the county Board of Review, which considers property tax appeal cases.

Foxx joined the firm as a consultant in September 2015 but did not publicly disclose her work for the firm until the Tribune asked about it last week. On Tuesday, she told the editorial board it "wasn't a secret" she was at the firm.

"I've gone there every day for about the last 12 months, and the staff and the folks know me there," Foxx said. She has said she also has done consulting for other clients, whose identities she has declined to divulge, citing privacy and ethics concerns.

Foxx argued that people in law enforcement positions constantly face "potential conflicts," and there's only a problem if they become "actual conflicts."

Advertisement

"There's a potential for conflict if my daughter gets into a fight at her school and is arrested for fighting on school grounds," Foxx said. "It is the state's attorney's office who would be charged with charging my daughter. That is an actual conflict of interest I would have because she's my daughter."

Foxx told the editorial board she only handled cases at the firm with clients outside Cook County.

"In terms of the work that I've done for Power Rogers & Smith, I've made deliberate effort to make sure that none of the work had anything to do with anything that could ever resurface as state's attorney," she said.

"I understand the concern of the public. We do have a crisis of confidence here in Cook County, and I take that very seriously," Foxx added. "The work that I've done for Power Rogers & Smith does not contribute to that. I will continue to operate in an ethical fashion as guided by my oath of office, and my oath to the bar."

Speaking to a reporter afterward, Foxx said she does not think refusing to recuse herself adds to the crisis of confidence.

"For most people who are familiar with how lawyers and the county operate, is if you are looking at  lots of law firms in this city have sued the county and have contributed to campaigns for judges, for prosecutors, across the board," she said. "And the bar of saying 'You have had some contact with them would disqualify you from exercising judgment and exercising the ability to discern cases which you should not be on,' I think is wrong. I think that's a slippery slope."

Advertisement

Asked whether county residents care about the distinction between an actual conflict and a potential one when public confidence in the state's attorney's office is at an all-time low, Foxx demurred.

"I don't assume to speak for the average voter," she said. "What I try to do is deal with actual facts. What I'm concerned about for voters in this county is that we talk about the reality, and not give them reasons to distrust where there's none that exist. We've had instances in Cook County where that trust has been eroded by actual events. That's what I'm concerned about."

The two candidates also differed about how the state's attorney should investigate police-involved shootings. Foxx favors an independent prosecutor for each, saying it helps remove the politics from the equation.

Pfannkuche wants to permanently assign a team of prosecutors to the official misconduct unit within the office, which he said would prevent those attorneys from developing close relationships with police officers while working together on other types of cases.

On the question of saving money, Foxx said she would aggressively pursue government grants and funds from criminal justice foundations to help offset the tightening county budget belt. And she said she would look into shrinking the office's fleet of vehicles.

Pfannkuche said resources in the office should be focused on prosecuting violent crimes, and added that money could be saved by putting trial discovery documents on disk and going paperless in other areas as well.

Advertisement

Both said fighting gun violence would be a top priority, with Pfannkuche promising to aggressively apply a new state law aimed at curbing illegal gun trafficking, and Foxx calling for collaboration among prosecutors, police and other agencies to try to build a better database for predicting violence and dealing with the worst offenders.

jebyrne@tribpub.com

Twitter @_johnbyrne
The Illinois Supreme Court has rejected a request to reconsider its split decision that removed from the Nov. 8 ballot a proposed state constitutional amendment aimed at removing much of the politics from the redrawing of state legislative district boundaries.

Without comment, the high court's 4-3 Democratic majority reaffirmed its decision that the proposed amendment was unconstitutional because it did not conform to the narrow legal window for petition-driven citizen initiatives to appear before voters.

Advertisement

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who backed the proposal, said Tuesday that the decision was "not unexpected." He urged lawmakers this fall to move on their own to put before voters a pair of proposed amendments he has adopted as part of his "turnaround agenda."

"Now that the courts have denied Illinoisans the right to vote on a redistricting referendum in November for the last time, it is up to the General Assembly to address political reform  term limits and independent redistricting  as soon as they reconvene this fall," he said in a statement.

Advertisement

The Independent Maps coalition gathered more than 563,000 signatures to try to get the proposed amendment on the ballot. It would have created a multiphase process resulting in an 11-member commission to redraw Illinois House and Senate district boundaries after the every-decade federal census.

Lawmakers are charged with drawing the boundaries through a bipartisan commission of their choosing. When the commission deadlocks, as it often has, a tiebreaking member is chosen in a lottery. That didn't even have to happen this time as the current map was drawn by majority Democrats and signed by Rauner's predecessor, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn.

The Independent Maps group contends the current method of redrawing districts presents a conflict of interest in which legislators pick their voters, resulting in a lack of competition at the ballot box.

The state Supreme Court originally ruled last month that the Independent Maps proposal went beyond the narrow scope for citizen initiatives, which are limited to changing the legislative article of the constitution. The ruling came in a legal challenge from the People's Map, a group of prominent ethnic and racial minority businesspeople represented by attorney Michael Kasper.

Kasper is a longtime ally of Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan and is legal counsel for the state Democratic Party, which Madigan chairs.

While the court's majority wrote in its original ruling that a redistricting proposal could be constitutional, it said the Independent Maps plan strayed by giving new duties to the state auditor general, outside the constitution's legislative article.

"We asked that, at a minimum, the court give voters guidance about what the majority believes is permissible in a citizen-initiated amendment to reform redistricting through a fair and impartial commission. Today, without comment, the court refused," said Dennis FitzSimons, the chairman of the Independent Maps group and chairman of the McCormick Foundation board.

"Our coalition remains committed to reform and believes an independent redistricting commission would be one important step in changing state government and making the legislature more responsive to the voters of this state. Whether that is possible through a citizen-initiated amendment is now an open question to be discussed by supporters throughout the state," he said.

Advertisement

rap30@aol.com

Twitter @rap30
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, seen here at a "Worldwide Day of Play" event featuring Chicago Bulls star Dwyane Wade, will see his police reform ordinances get a first public hearing today. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

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

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plan to revamp the oversight system for Chicago's beleaguered Police Department will get its first public airing Tuesday at a City Council committee meeting.

Advertisement

Administration officials and aldermen are likely to get an earful, given the early reaction of police accountability advocates made to reporters when Emanuel unveiled his plan in late August.

They criticized the mayor for not including a fixed minimum budget in the ordinance, which would eliminate the Independent Police Review Authority and replace it with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. That omission, they say, would allow the mayor or council to gut the agency's power through budget cuts.

Advertisement

The critics also have called for allowing COPA's chief to hire his or her own attorneys, given that the city Law Department also defends cops accused of wrongdoing in civil lawsuits who would be the subject of COPA investigations.

And they're concerned that it's not yet known how a new citizen oversight panel that would play a key role in picking COPA's chief will be set up and what authority it will be given.

There are aspects of the ordinance that police accountability experts do like, including the creation of a deputy inspector general's post to audit the new police accountability system and identify patterns and practices that violate constitutional rights.

They also like Emanuel's idea of expanding the agency's authority to not only probe police misconduct, but also alleged Fourth Amendment violations, such as illegal searches and seizures, and alleged psychological coercion and intimidation of witnesses and suspects  all of which now are handled by the department's Internal Affairs division.

Tuesday's 10 a.m. hearing in the City Council chambers won't be the last. Aldermen expect at least one more before a special Sept. 29 meeting to vote on the plan. Also taking place between now and then is the mayor's planned Sept. 20 speech on law enforcement and crime.

The whole exercise comes as the U.S. Department of Justice conducts a civil rights investigation of the Police Department in the wake of the November 2015 release of a video showing a white police officer fatally shooting black teen Laquan McDonald, an incident that set off a series of protests and calls for Emanuel's resignation. (Hal Dardick)

What's on tap

*Mayor Emanuel will attend a luncheon for this year's Fifth Star Award honorees.

*Gov. Bruce Rauner will attend the 2016 Illinois Criminal Patrol Conference in Decatur, and the Illinois Technology Manufacturing Show and a Chicago Police Memorial candelight vigil in Chicago.

Advertisement

*The Cook County state's attorney's candidates will square off before the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board at 10 a.m. The event featuring Kim Foxx (D) and Christopher Pfannkuche (R) will be livestreamed here and also run on Facebook live here.

*Dr. Julie Morita, the city health commissioner, speaks to the City Club of Chicago. Livestream here after 12 p.m.

What we're writing

*Democratic state's attorney candidate Foxx defends legal work for firm that sues Cook County.

*Emanuel's red-light camera second-chance program now poised for approval.

*Bagman in red-light camera scandal gets six months.

*Shared Argyle Street off to rough start.

Advertisement

What we're reading

*Chicago passes another grim milestone: 3,000 shot this year.

*David Axelrod zings Hillary Clinton again, this time on privacy obsession.

*Illinois Supreme Court opens door to experts who say witness IDs are unreliable.

From the notebook

*Rauner Republicans hit Madigan again in TV ad: The Illinois Republican Party is up with a new ad targeting the Democratic challenger to the lone Chicago Republican in the Illinois House, but it's Speaker Michael Madigan who figures most prominently in the ad.

The spot follows a narrative that Republican Gov. Rauner has been pushing for more than a year  that Madigan has personally profited off his position as a powerful lawmaker because he also has a law firm that specializes in Cook County property tax appeals.

Advertisement

"Mike Madigan made a fortune on tax appeals, representing the powerful and politically connected," the ad says, calling it "an inside game, played by people like Merry Marwig, Madigan's hand-picked candidate."

Democrat Marwig, a political newcomer, is challenging Republican Rep. Michael McAuliffe, who has been up on expensive broadcast TV with positive biographical ads for months. According to the latest ad, Marwig "thought her property taxes were too high," and "got them lowered, at your expense."

Appeals of property taxes are common, and you don't have to be politically connected to file an appeal. But Republicans are trying to make the November election a referendum on Madigan, so Marwig's property tax history is an easy way to try to draw a connection between her and the veteran speaker.

Marwig defended the property tax appeals. "Like many residents of the 20th District, I filled out and turned in a form to appeal my property tax bill on my own, without any outside help," she said in a statement.

It's the second time in little more than a year that Rauner's Republicans have gone after Madigan in a TV ad. A spot that aired for a couple of weeks in June 2015 accused Madigan of blocking Rauner's economic agenda. The attack came at the start of the state budget impasse, which has been put on hold with a stopgap spending plan that theoretically will keep state government afloat until year's end. (Kim Geiger)

*Aldermanic opposition fizzles (again): An aldermanic mini-revolt over lack of diversity in city bond firms fizzled out Monday, as the Finance Committee voted to allow the Aviation Department to grant up to $3.5 billion in bonds for work at O'Hare International Airport.

Advertisement

Black and Latino aldermen and their allies blocked the bond measure Friday, with the Finance Committee voting 14-11 to defer it. That came after several hours of testimony during which council members pressed Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans and representatives of the bond companies to hire more African-Americans and Hispanics.

But on Monday, when the ordinance was back on the Finance Committee agenda, it was approved without debate. Just two aldermen, Pat Dowell of the 3rd Ward and Leslie Hairston of the 5th Ward, cast "no" votes. It's the latest installment in the venerable City Council parlor game of aldermen doing a little saber rattling but then knuckling under when it comes time to really throw a wrench in Mayor Emanuel's works. (John Byrne)

Follow the money

*The group pushing an Illinois gas tax lockbox amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot reported another $122,000 in contributions, led by $50,000 from a couple of operating engineers union funds. The group has now collected more than $1.5 million since forming in late June.

*Track Illinois campaign contributions in real time here and here.

Beyond Chicago

*Under scrutiny, Clinton campaign to release more medical details this week.

Advertisement

*Trump is more disciplined now (Part 2,122), says AP.

*The Washington Post looks at five phantom donations in Trump Foundation files.

*Syrian cease-fire off to rocky start.
Chicago aldermen on Monday unanimously advanced Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plan to try to get in front of a lawsuit challenging the validity of automated red light and speeding tickets by giving nearly 1.5 million people a second chance to contest citations.

Speaking out against the measure were attorneys in the lawsuit who contend the city is trying to do an unconstitutional end run around the court system.

Advertisement

"The City Council is being asked to add another chapter to this scandal-plagued program," Jacie Zolna, a lawyer in the case, told aldermen. "People are sick and tired of this kind of politics and they will see this ordinance for what it is: a farce and a cover-up at their expense."

Zolna was responding to statements by City Hall's top attorney, Stephen Patton, that the second-chance plan is designed to "bolster" the city's case in court. But aldermen reacted with skepticism, with several noting that the attorneys stood to make millions of dollars if their case prevailed.

Advertisement

And Patton chafed at the notion that it would be a constitutional violation, calling it "absolutely false. ... What we are proposing can only benefit the people he's purporting to represent."

Even if the full council approves the mayor's program Wednesday as expected, those who received the $100 tickets shouldn't count on getting their money back. Emanuel administration officials maintain that the vast majority of the citations were valid  even though City Hall admits it didn't follow a rule requiring that a second violation notice be mailed out before fines and late fees were imposed  and those who promptly paid their fines won't be eligible.

Zolna's suit called for complete refunds of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fines and late penalties from the time the red light camera ticketing program started in 2003 through May 2015.

The city's review period covers a shorter period of time. Under the ordinance, people hit with red light citations between March 23, 2010, and May 14, 2015, would get a notice in the mail giving them the right to request an administrative hearing to contest their ticket. The same process applies to those who got speed camera tickets since the program started in mid-2012.

Left out of the second-chance program, however, would be people who either paid or contested the original ticket before a subsequent notice of violation was sent out, Patton said. That accounts for about half the people who got tickets during the five-year period, he said.

People receiving the new notices would be given 30 days to contest the ticket and seek a refund of the $100 fine, and any penalties  such as a $100 late payment fee or collection fee. To get a refund, they would have to prove to an administrative law judge that the ticket was improperly issued.

"Historically, including during this period, about 5 percent of the people that received automated enforcement tickets challenged them, and of that 5 percent, about 10 percent prevailed," Patton told committee members. "That means one-half of 1 percent would have been entitled to refund. ... If past is prologue, a very small number will take the second chance."

If those numbers hold, the city would owe about $1 million in refunds and would write off an additional $700,000 in debt, Patton said.

Advertisement

Another provision in the ordinance would affect a much smaller group of people who received tickets, but those folks would be far more likely to get some money back.

In July 2012, city code was changed to allow late penalties to be assessed starting 25 days after a ticket payment was due, instead of the 21-day window that had been on the books. City Hall, however, in some cases still assessed $100 late-fee penalties at 21 days.

Under the ordinance, fewer than 5,000 people who paid late penalties in the small window between 21 and 25 days after receiving their tickets following the code change would get a notice of their right to get their $100 penalty back, Patton said. They would be given 60 days to request that refund.

hdardick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ReporterHal
The candidates include a retired police officer, two town supervisors, a prominent businessman and a former state legislator.

Needless to say it's a crowded field in the race for the Republican nomination in the 54th Senate District.

Before February, it seemed the 54th District contest wouldn't be much of a competition. State Sen. Michael Nozzolio has held the seat since 1993. There was no indication he would be giving up his post anytime soon.

And then came the surprising announcement. Nozzolio, R-Fayette, decided to retire after learning he needed to undergo surgery to repair heart valves. Almost immediately, several Republicans expressed interest in the race.

The list was long. Nearly a dozen candidates entered their names for consideration at a May endorsement meeting. Canandaigua Supervisor Pam Helming narrowly won the GOP designation in the final round of voting over Lyons Supervisor Brian Manktelow.

That's where the primary was born.

Helming quickly picked up other endorsements from the Conservative, Independence and Reform parties. Manktelow, after some deliberation, decided to stay in the race.

Floyd Rayburn, a Canandaigua businessman, had no intention of dropping out. Former Assemblyman Sean Hanna and retired Greece police officer Jon Ritter hung around.

Over the past few months, the race has seen the two Canandaigua candidates duke it out. Helming and Rayburn have emerged as the favorites to win the GOP nomination.

Helming is the party's preferred candidate. She has support from party leaders in the district and Albany Republicans. But Rayburn is trying to appeal to voters who would prefer an outsider  someone who hasn't served in government and wants to shake things up in Albany.

Hanna, Manktelow and Ritter aren't far behind. In a five-way primary, anything can happen.

Here is a closer look at the five candidates in the field:

SEAN HANNA

Hanna is a former Monroe County legislator and had a stint as the state Department of Environmental Conservation's regional director under Gov. George Pataki. He was elected to the state Assembly before mounting an unsuccessful campaign for state Senate.

Hanna's platform has focused on a handful of key issues, including the need for ethics reform and tax cuts for homeowners and small businesses. He also supports repealing the SAFE Act  a controversial gun control law signed in 2013.

In a letter to primary voters published on his Facebook page, Hanna said "we need to elect the right Republicans."

"A senator can't outsource experience, can't delegate expertise and can't assign integrity to someone else," he wrote. "When it's time to push back against Gov. Cuomo and the Long Island Republicans in closed door meetings, your senator needs to know his stuff on a sweeping range of issues and legislative procedures. He also needs the ability and the integrity to walk away from politics at any time. I do."

PAM HELMING

Helming is town supervisor in Canandaigua and previously served as a member of the council. She represents the town as a member of the Canandaigua Lake Watershed Council.

Her career in public service dates back to 1992, when she was appointed to the town of Canandaigua Zoning Board of Appeals. She chaired the panel for two years, from 1997 to 1999.

Helming, like other Republicans in the race, wants to lower taxes, focus on small businesses, cut regulations and opposes the SAFE Act. But she also places an emphasis on water quality concerns and the need to preserve the Finger Lakes.

She recently came out against two bills that would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain certain benefits, including access to the state's Tuition Assistance Program.

"This is an issue of basic fairness," Helming said in a statement. "How can we give free college tuition to people who are illegally in our country while our own sons and daughters go into deep debt to obtain a college degree?"

Helming is the only candidate in the race with minor party support. She has been endorsed by the Conservative, Independence and Reform parties.

BRIAN MANKTELOW

The only candidate outside of Monroe and Ontario counties is Manktelow, who came close to securing the GOP designation in May.

Manktelow runs a 3,500-acre farm in Lyons and has served as town supervisor since 2011. He was one of the first candidates to publicly announce a run for the 54th Senate District seat.

If he's elected state senator, Manktelow wants to focus on veterans issues and challenges facing farmers throughout the state. He also wants to tackle unfunded mandates, lower property taxes and repeal the SAFE Act.

In April interview with The Citizen, Manktelow touted his knowledge of the 54th District.

"I think I could the district justice and I know how things that happen in Albany don't seem big down there, but when you get to our communities our size  small, grassroots communities  the things they decide down there can be very tough on us."

FLOYD RAYBURN

Rayburn owns F.G. Rayburn Mason Contractors in Canandaigua. He started the business in the 1980s and he's worked on several major jobs throughout the region. (In a recent interview, he said he did some masonry work for the Wegmans in Auburn.)

This campaign is a new experience for Rayburn. Unlike most of the candidates in the field, he hasn't been a candidate for political office.

Rayburn, if elected, wants to focus on economic development  he wants a moratorium on all new business regulations  and mandate relief for local governments. He, too, opposes the SAFE Act.

On ethics reform, Rayburn says he will propose legislation to require mandatory jail time for elected officials who are convicted of public corruption. And he supports term limits for state legislators and statewide officials.

Rayburn said he will impose term limits on himself if elected to the state Senate. He will serve no more than three two-year terms if elected to represent the 54th District.

"I plan to build a team down there that's going to change the direction this great state is in," he said in May.

JON RITTER

Ritter's platform is similar to the other candidates in the race. He isn't a fan of the SAFE Act, for example. He also wants to cut taxes, pass tougher ethics guidelines and focus on economic development.

What he hopes sets himself apart from the other candidates is his career as a police officer.

Ritter was a member of the Greece Police Department for two decades. He was recognized for his heroism on Christmas Eve 2012 when he responded to a shooting in West Webster.

The shooter, William Spengler, killed his mother and started his house on fire. Two firefighters who responded to the scene were shot and killed by Spengler.

When Ritter arrived near the home, Spengler shot at him. Ritter used his truck to block the road to the residence. He was commended for his actions and credited with saving the lives of other first responders.

As a longtime law enforcement officer, Ritter believes he's best suited to represent the 54th District.

"I think I bring a completely different objective to it," he said in an interview in July. "I've literally worked with people  these are probably the same people that I'm going to be working with in the district."
A Muslim Marine said he was called a terrorist and ordered into an industrial clothes dryer multiple times by a drill instructor who then turned it on, burning him, according to investigative documents that describe the abuse of recruits at the service's training center at Parris Island, South Carolina.

"You're going to kill us all the first chance you get aren't you, terrorist?" the drill instructor thundered at the recruit, the new Marine later alleged, according to the documents that have not been released publicly but were reviewed by The Washington Post. "What are your plans? Aren't you a terrorist?"

Advertisement

The issue of hazing and abuse at Parris Island surfaced March 18, when a 20-year-old recruit with Pakistani roots - Raheel Siddiqui of Taylor, Michigan -- died after leaping from a stairwell landing that was nearly 40 feet high while running away from the same drill instructor who used the dryer. The instructor had just slapped Siddiqui before he jumped. Siddiqui's death drew public scrutiny to a culture of harsh punishments at Parris Island - one that Marine officials were already examining, the documents show.

Last week, service officials announced that 20 members of Parris Island's staff could face criminal charges or administrative discipline following the conclusion of three investigations into various abuse allegations. But the documents raise questions whether more Parris Island Marines could be implicated in the scandal.

Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller, addressing the abuse allegations last week, said in a statement that recruit training will remain physically and mentally challenging, but that the manner in which Marines are made is as important as the final product.

Advertisement

"When America's men and women commit to becoming Marines, we make a promise to them," he said. "We pledge to train them with firmness, fairness, dignity and compassion."

Some details of the abuse have previously been reported, but the investigative documents describe an environment in which one unit in particular - 3rd Recruit Training Battalion - had drill instructors who not only tested recruits' mettle, as is expected, but abused them physically and emotionally.

Ethnic and gay slurs were also used regularly, and drill instructors ordered repeated, unauthorized physical training that sometimes injured recruits. The drill instructors also sometimes were drunk on the job, bringing Fireball whiskey into work on at least one occasion, recruits told investigators.

In one case, a senior drill instructor who had seen a photograph of a recruit's sister made him log into his Facebook account so he could request that she call Parris Island on the telephone. When she did, the drill instructor took the phone away from the recruit, introduced himself and said that he had heard she was single and wanted to know whether they could get to know each other. The drill instructor later denied it, but the sister corroborated the recruit's story with copies of the Facebook messages, according to the documents.

The drill instructor involved in the dryer case, an unidentified sergeant, was allowed to continue training recruits after allegations of abuse were made, in part because Marine officials did not take the accusations seriously, one investigation found.

The alleged incident occurred in 2015, and was reported last November by the targeted Marine and two enlisted colleagues who by then had moved on to initial aviation training in Pensacola, Florida. The new Marine said he was also accused of participating in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The former recruit said he was kept in the dryer long enough that his neck and arm started to burn and he began to cry, according to the documents.

Recruits who were abused were also warned that "snitches get stitches." Instructors also bribed recruits with protein bars and other food to keep them quiet, according to the documents.

Advertisement

The allegations are highly sensitive for a service that has long prided itself on what it calls the transformative process of "making Marines." And it has shocked drill instructors at the service's only other enlisted training depot in San Diego.

"The atmosphere of recruit training is much different in San Diego," said one Marine instructor there, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. "Officers and staff continuously walk around decks to keep eyes on drill instructors and recruits, as well as to ensure our [procedures] are followed as closely as possible. Recruit abuse is absolutely not tolerated here, and I've seen many drill instructors being held accountable and investigated for even minor infractions."

Drill instructors are directed specifically to not discriminate against recruits on the basis of race or religion, and anyone who saw such discrimination should have stood up against it, a retired senior enlisted Marine said.

"Even back in the day when they were really brutal at Parris Island, I can't imagine that happening. That's abuse," the Marine said when informed of the dryer incident. "It's beyond me. We are entrusted to take care of those recruits and train them. There was clearly a breakdown in leadership at Parris Island."

Parris Island's most senior leaders have been aware of hazing problems since at least 2014, the documents show. In fact, one officer who took over 3rd Recruit Training Battalion came in with the perception that it was a major issue and removed so many Marines from their jobs that he created morale problems in his unit, the investigation found.

The officer's name is redacted, but Marine officials identified him as Lt. Col. Joshua Kissoon, who was removed from his job in March. The documents describe him as a "toxic leader" whose "derisive attitude toward his company grade officers, and perceived self-interest caused his officers to lose confidence in his leadership."

Advertisement

Kissoon's boss, Col. Paul Cucinotta, and his senior enlisted adviser, Sgt. Maj. Nicholas Deabreu, were removed from their positions leading the Recruit Training Regiment at Parris Island in June after an investigation found that they had not done enough to stop the mistreatment of recruits.

Cucinotta, Kissoon and Deabreu did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The Marine official with knowledge of the investigations said it is likely that the service will move forward with criminal proceedings against some Marines involved, beginning this fall.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed to this report.
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) told religious conservatives at the Values Voters Summit this weekend that blood might have to be shed if Hillary Clinton is elected president.



"I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don't have to do it physically," Bevin said Saturday. "But that may, in fact, be the case."



He added, citing Thomas Jefferson's "blood of patriots and tyrants" quote: "The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood. Of who? The tyrants, to be sure. But who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren."



Bevin, a tea party supporter who has been known to make a controversial comment or two, clarified his comments to the Lexington Herald-Leader, saying he was referring to military sacrifice.



"Today we have thousands of men and women in uniform fighting for us overseas, and they need our full backing," Bevin said in a statement. "We cannot be complacent about the determination of radical Islamic extremists to destroy our freedoms."



Bevin's comments echo a tea party rallying cry that has cropped up from time to time. Activists and even some lawmakers have cited Jefferson's quote to reinforce the stakes for their political movement.

Advertisement



As for the 2016 campaign, Bevin's comments are the latest example of elected officials promising very bad things if the wrong candidate is elected. And it's not just Democrats warning about Donald Trump having his finger on the nuclear button -- a prospect that has been the subject of a Hillary Clinton campaign ad.



Former congresswoman Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., warned recently that a Clinton win might mean this could be the "last election" in which Americans would be able to elect a president with "godly moral principles."



Similarly, other Republicans have warned that nominating Trump might lead to the end of the Republican Party as we know it. George W. Bush even suggested he might be the last Republican president.



Conservative talk show hosts have warned of even worse, up to and including civil war. But Bevin's comments appear to be the most full-throated warning about a Clinton presidency so far from a high-ranking GOP elected official.
Some political debates are about ideas and issues. The 1858 U.S. Senate debates in Illinois between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln focused on the future of slavery in America. The candidates talked for a total of three hours in each of seven sessions, exploring, as Douglas put it, the "leading political topics which now agitate the public mind."

Three hours? We're against that.

Advertisement

Modern presidential debates owe a debt to Lincoln-Douglas for setting the precedent of candidates jousting on a shared stage, but each election also exists in its own time. And so we're struck by how different this year's debates are shaping up compared with contests recent and distant. Two weeks before the first scheduled presidential debate from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Chicago time Sept. 26, the single question agitating the public's mind is not whose ideas are more substantial or exciting, but something far more prosaic: Who is fit to lead our nation?

And given events of recent days, the stakes couldn't be much higher for this year's major-party candidates. Then there's a certain third-party candidate ...

Advertisement

If you think about presidential elections since the first televised debate (Kennedy vs. Nixon on Sept. 26, 1960, here in Chicago), you find stark contrasts in backgrounds and politics. But we've seen nothing like Clinton vs. Trump in terms of the public's skepticism of both candidates.

Donald Trump, a real estate developer and reality TV star, has no prior experience in public service or even public accountability. His campaign M.O. is to make grandiose promises, avoid specifics about what he'd actually do as president and fill most of the rest of his waking hours with outrageous comments. Then he wakes up the next morning and does it again. A majority of voters find him unlikable and unqualified to be president.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is a former secretary of state, senator and first lady, steeped in national leadership experience. Yet her candidacy divides the country more than it unifies voters behind the history-making prospect of electing America's first female president. Clinton's problems center on trust and judgment: The head of the FBI cites her for being "extremely careless" for mishandling sensitive emails as secretary of state. That scandal feeds a nagging sense that she's a corner-cutter whose ambitions drive her decisions. A majority of voters find her unlikable and untrustworthy.

Polling is clear on the public's antipathy for both candidates, but we saw something new and, frankly, shocking in a 50-state survey by The Washington Post and SurveyMonkey: Nationally, 55 percent of respondents say Clinton would threaten the nation's well-being. The number for Trump is 61 percent. Threaten the nation's well-being? You'd think the question was asked about Vladimir Putin and the ayatollah of Iran.

This election will go on even if, on a dark and stormy night, many voters wouldn't invite a stranded Trump or Clinton to sleep on the sofa. The last few days have raised even more questions about each candidate's capacity to lead. During a televised forum broadcast from the decommissioned aircraft carrier Intrepid in New York, Trump went on a bizarre jag about Putin (the otherwise ruthless Russian dictator who invaded Crimea and supports Iran) being a better leader than President Barack Obama.

Clinton, meanwhile, opened herself anew to criticism by her secretive and misleading management of a medical issue. Diagnosed on Friday with pneumonia, a treatable ailment, the candidate kept the news to herself but then appeared frail at Sunday's 9/11 memorial event in New York. Her staff said the candidate became "overheated" but soon-viral video showed her in a swoon or slump. Soon after, she reappeared and declared she was "feeling great." Finally, after hiding the truth, her camp acknowledged the pneumonia. Let's assume she'll recover from that soon enough. But will Clinton ever get over her consuming fear of straight talk?

The good news is that the debates will provide the biggest stage and least scripted opportunity for voters to assess the candidates. Our view is that given the public's discomfort with Clinton and Trump, the leading third-party candidate, Gary Johnson of the Libertarians, should be invited to participate.

Regardless of whether Johnson is included, this year's debates will be historic because there is an unusually strong chance they will prove decisive. Trump and Clinton, edging closer in the polls, have a lot to prove to the American public. We won't be looking for a reboot of Lincoln-Douglas. We'll be listening for direct, specific answers from each about their respective visions of the presidency.

Advertisement

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
In response to "We left Chicago, just in time," in the Monday Perspective, I have little doubt that the author feels his family is much safer in the southern suburb where he has chosen to live.

I perhaps should have also left the city many years ago. Moving here in 1968 right after the Democratic National Convention, I was warned that the city was in dire straits, anarchy controlled the streets, and the city wasn't a good place for a single woman. But I stayed.

Advertisement

In 1975, after I moved into a new North Side neighborhood, two gang members were killed in an alley a half of a block from my apartment. Graffiti and tagging notified the residents as to who really controlled the neighborhood. A pervert exposed himself to me as I was walking to the bus one morning. Our local high school was posting record low scores in math and reading. Chicago had one of its worst-ever murder rates that particular year. I probably should have moved to the suburbs, but instead bought a home in another North Side neighborhood.

And now, after 37 years in our Chicago home, two separate shootings have occurred in alleys within one block of our home. I probably should move to a safer neighborhood or suburb, but have always found the word "safety" too elusive upon which to base a life decision. Where is "safety" to be found?

Advertisement

Admittedly, some suburbs are less prone to shootings and gangs, and there is a feeling of security for individuals and families. But what is lost in achieving this sense of security?

What is lost is the heartbeat and vibrancy of a thriving city, the mix of cultures and races, the beauty of our physical environment, the theater, the art, the music, the pace of a people trying better themselves. What is lost is the attitude that we can confront our problems and work together to solve whatever issues conflict our people. The greatness of a city is not defined by the problems, but how the problems are approached and resolved.

When you live here, the city is at hand, at the doorstep, not a train ride into town twice a year. By leaving Chicago, you acknowledge that a bunch of bad seeds are able to control your destiny  and that knowledge is disguised as the pursuit of "safety."

 Lorraine Klabunde, Chicago
Hillary Clinton kept her pneumonia diagnosis under wraps for two days because she "didn't think it was going to be that big a deal." Right. That's what she used to say about her private email server.

Yes, I know Clinton's email server is an obsession that Clinton's rivals on the right will not let go of. Fear and loathing motivate great political fundraising. But as I have written before, the former secretary of state knew that she and her ex-president husband had an abundance of political enemies before she gave them more ammunition to use against her.

Advertisement

What irritated me most about the news that Clinton really was ill with pneumonia, forcing her to leave the Sept. 11 memorial ceremony in New York early, is how it gave a moment of undeserved "I told you so" satisfaction to the industry of conspiracy theorists.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during a memorial service at the National 9/11 Memorial Sept. 11, 2016 in New York. (Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images)

Even WikiLeaks appeared to be taking sides Sunday, posting a poll that asked users to speculate about the cause of Clinton's "collapse." The poll, which WikiLeaks later deleted, looked to seasoned political eyes like a push poll, a legal but unethical practice of writing a poll not to measure public opinion but to sway voters with loaded or manipulative questions that help spread negative rumors.

Advertisement

For months various conservative cable TV and internet conspiracy theorists have been alleging that the former first lady has Parkinson's disease, epilepsy or dementia, which she is covering up with the help of a look-alike stand-in and a Secret Service agent who actually is a doctor and a hypnotist.

Like most conspiracy theories, all of this is going to make a really cool horror movie someday, but it has no basis in the real world.

More troubling for Clinton's supporters is the behavior pattern of which her pneumonia cover-up is only the latest example. David Axelrod, director of the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, captured it well in a Monday morning tweet: "Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?"

Axelrod, who helped President Barack Obama beat Clinton to the Democratic nomination in 2008, understands that Team Clinton has plenty of right-wing critics and conspiracies to be paranoid about. But that's an excellent reason to be more transparent, not less.

Unfortunately, transparency is the opposite reflex to what Clinton has been inclined to offer. Clinton aides who derided reporters' health questions were admitting on Sunday that they should have let the world in on her health problems sooner.

Clinton, once a young staffer on the House Judiciary Committee weighing President Richard Nixon's possible impeachment, has taken on a Nixonian tendency toward self-destructive obsessions with privacy.

Her critics call her lazy when she doesn't do enough and a workaholic when she does, but one has to admire her stamina, which has been challenged by Trump in his characteristic schoolyard-bully fashion.

Yet one has to wonder how much her illness had to do with her other big stumble of the weekend. On Friday she said at a fundraiser that "half" of Trump's supporters belonged in a "basket of deplorables" that were "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic  you name it."

Advertisement

She was talking about the white nationalist and alt-right faction of Trump's supporters to which Trump has given little objection and a bonanza of publicity. Although she later retracted one crucial word, "half," from her statement, she did point out that many Trump supporters "feel the government has let them down" and "those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

Nice try. Clinton obviously was trying to separate the right's racist-sexist factions from the persuadable mainstream. Trump countered by treating Clinton's critique as "hatred in her heart for working-class Americans."

It's hard to say that Clinton's illness led to her less-than-artful statement, which reopened charges that she's too aloof about ordinary Americans. But it would be even harder to argue that it helped her.

Clinton did catch a break on the health question from a familiar source, the shortcomings of her opponent. Trump has been almost as reluctant to release his medical records as he has been about releasing his tax returns. Compared to him on both issues, Clinton has been a model of candor and accountability.

Physical health is a legitimate issue as we voters judge candidates. But for reliable information we need to turn to the candidates and their doctors, not to rumor mills.

Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.

Advertisement

cpage@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @cptime
"It was said with such anger, such unbelievable anger, and I think this is the biggest mistake of the political season. I really do."  Donald Trump , speaking Monday on Fox News about Hillary Clinton 's accusation that half his supporters belong in a "basket of deplorables."

First, no, there wasn't a hint of anger in Clinton's voice Friday when she called out "the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic (and) Islamophobic" elements in Trump's base. "Unfortunately there are people like that," she said in a matter-of-fact, even slightly sorrowful tone obvious to anyone who has watched video of the moment. "And he has lifted them up."

Advertisement

It was reminiscent of Trump's hyperbolic assessment of moderator Megyn Kelly 's exchange with him at a Republican primary debate in the summer of 2015: "She had great anger when she was questioning me  she became very angry," he said, even though viewers plainly saw that Kelly was calm and measured when pressing Trump on remarks he'd made that were critical of women.

Second, no, Clinton's remarks were not "the biggest mistake of the political season."

Trump's seemingly gynecological assessment of Kelly's demeanor  "there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her ... wherever"  was a bigger mistake.

Advertisement

As was Trump's bashing of the Gold Star family that criticized him during a speech to the Democratic National Convention.

As was Trump's spastic imitation of a disabled reporter with whom he had differences.

As was Trump's declaration that American-born U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel couldn't be fair when presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University because he "is of Mexican heritage"  a remark that Republican U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan called "textbook" racism.

As was Trump's denial that he knew anything about famed white supremacist David Duke.

As was Trump's cavalier dismissal of the service record of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain , who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five years: "He's a war hero because he was captured," Trump said. "I like people who weren't captured."

As was Trump's preposterous assertion that he knows more about how to combat the Islamic State than U.S. military generals.

As was Trump's invitation to his pals in Russia to do additional computer hacking into Democratic party servers.

As was  well, you get the idea. Trump has cornered the market on preposterous, offensive, ill-advised and utterly false utterances.

And third, no, Clinton's remarks probably weren't a mistake at all. The words seemed pretty well-scripted as she delivered them  this was not a classic political gaffe in which someone inadvertently blurts out what he or she really thinks, but a well-aimed shot at a disquieting weakness in the Trump campaign.

Advertisement

His fervid nationalistic rhetoric has given succor to racists, homophobes, xenophobes and Islamophobes. In drawing them from the margins (back) into the mainstream, Trump is creating a social climate that increasingly threatens the progress America has made toward pluralism and multiculturalism.

The next day Clinton issued a qualified retraction, saying she regretted the specificity of the "half" estimate that has so aggrieved those who presumably think of themselves in the non-deplorable half. "What's really deplorable is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called 'alt-right' movement to run his campaign," she went on, "and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values."

She left it to the media to unearth poll after poll suggesting that birthers, racists and religious bigots are generously represented among likely Trump voters. Why would that be? What does it tell us about the consequences of a Trump victory in November?

It's a national conversation the Clinton campaign was pleased to have kick-started.

But yes, Clinton short-circuited that conversation with a blunder that may actually rank up there with the biggest mistakes of the political season: She chose not to go public with the information that she'd been diagnosed with pneumonia Friday and to take it easy while she recovered, and instead to try to power through and hope no one noticed.

We've all seen the result by now  a health "episode" captured on video as Clinton was leaving early Sunday from a 9/11 memorial service in New York, reportedly suffering from the heat. She appeared nearly to collapse while being helped into an SUV, a frightening moment that, combined with her failure to disclose the pneumonia diagnosis, drew out from the fringes the wild rumors that she's actually suffering from a seriously debilitating condition.

Advertisement

If she's unable to clear that up  prove a negative and reassure voters that she's up to the rigors of one of the most rigorous jobs in the world  then we may not return to the topic of the passionate support Trump enjoys among the very worst of us.

And that would be deplorable.

Twitter @EricZorn
Questions have been raised on Election Day about a robocall that went out to Republican voters in Seneca County on the eve of the GOP primary in the 54th Senate District.

SueAnn Fisher, first vice chair of the Seneca County Republican Committee, recorded a call on behalf of Canandaigua businessman Floyd Rayburn, who is one of five candidates seeking the GOP nomination.

Time Warner Cable News' State of Politics blog obtained a recording of the call which didn't identify Fisher and only mentioned "chairman of the Seneca County Republican Committee."

Fisher, of course, isn't the chair of the party. The chairman is Lee Davidson.

Rayburn's campaign was accused of attempting to mislead voters. An unnamed Republican operative told Capital Tonight that the call "is the latest in a series of negative, dishonest attacks from Floyd Rayburn's negative and dishonest campaign."

Mike Sigler, a spokesman for Rayburn's campaign, accused Senate Republicans of "doctoring" the call.

"They are afraid and they should be, because Floyd Rayburn is not gonig to stand for their typical shenanigans that brought us Common Core, higher taxes and the unconstitutional SAFE Act," Sigler said.

He added, "Someone in the Senate leadership owes first vice chairwoman Fisher an apology. Someone owes Floyd Rayburn an explanation. And someone owes the people of the 54th Senate District a whole lot better than they are getting."

The audio of the call, which was also obtained by The Citizen, was recorded off an answering machine. It appears the robocall wasn't doctored, but the beginning of the message was cut off by the answering machine's greeting. (The Citizen won't publish the file because it mentions the recipient's phone number.)

The Citizen was provided the complete audio of the robocall, which clearly identifies Fisher at the outset.

Republicans are heading to the polls today to select their nominee in the race to succeed state Sen. Michael Nozzolio, who is retiring at the end of this year.

Rayburn, Canandaigua Supervisor Pam Helming, retired police officer Jon Ritter, former Assemblyman Sean Hanna and Lyons Supervisor Brian Manktelow are vying for the party's nomination.

The polls close at 9 p.m.
As colleges and universities across the U.S. confront the issue of establishing so-called "safe spaces" on campus, local public school officials in Arlington Heights say they've long had policies in place for families requesting their children opt out of potentially controversial classroom assignments.

While officials at Township High School District 214 said they have not defined so-called "safe spaces" or "trigger warnings" that are currently being debated in higher education, the school board approved a policy in 2008 giving parents the ability to request that their student receive an alternative assignment in instances when a family is not comfortable with the subject matter of a particular book or classroom discussion, said Lazaro Lopez, District 214's associate superintendent for teaching and learning.

Advertisement

The policy was forged in the wake of a volatile debate at the Arlington Heights-based high school district that erupted in 2006 after a school board member proposed removing several books from the curriculum that she deemed inappropriate for teenagers, including titles such as, "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien and "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin.

The contentious chapter in District 214 history prompted hundreds of local residents to join forces at school board meetings, most of whom lambasted former District 214 board member Leslie Pinney's proposal to remove nine titles from the district's reading list as a de facto book ban.

Advertisement

While the school board ultimately voted against the proposal to remove the books from the reading list, Pinney's mission garnered support from conservative family groups, who applauded her for her stance against teens reading what they deemed "pornographic" literature.

A decade later, Lopez said it's rare for a District 214 parent to request that their children be given an alternate book or assignment, but when the issue does arise, the district's teachers and administrators are now prepared.

"The reality is, very few parents are asking for their students to opt out, and if it does happen, it's usually a health-related course, where the topics might include sex education," Lopez said.

"In those cases, we certainly respond to the parents, who can simply contact the teachers and request an alternative assignment, and the teachers will comply with that," Lopez said.

Parents with children in kindergarten through eighth grade at neighboring Arlington Heights School District 25 also have the opportunity to request that their students be allowed to complete an alternative assignment if a family expresses concerns to officials about a particular book or topic, said Eric Olson, District 25's assistant superintendent for student learning.

Like District 214, Olson said it is uncommon for parents to request that their children opt out of an assignment, but the district has had requests for children as young as kindergarten to not partake in the state's "Erin's Law" curriculum, which is included as part of public school health classes, and aims to prevent child sexual abuse.

"Some parents feel they want to be the one to explain this to their children, so we let them know when it's coming up, and they have the option to opt out," Olson said.

As colleges and universities across the U.S. struggle with the issue of establishing so-called "safe spaces" on campus, local public school officials in Arlington Heights say they have long had policies in place for families requesting that their children not be exposed to potentially controversial classroom assignments. Pictured here is John Hersey High School English teacher Britt Connell, right, leading a recent forum on individulaism. (Karen Ann Cullotta / Pioneer Press)

Olson said the situation of having students whose parents request they not partake in an assignment is handled with sensitivity by teachers, and with many youngsters leaving the classroom during the school day for extra help, a classmate's departure for a period of time is not unusual.

Advertisement

"If a parent were to say, 'we don't want our child to learn about nouns,' of course, we'd have to tell them, 'sorry, but we have to teach everyone nouns,'" Olson said. "But when it comes to sensitive topics, where we can teach the same skills through another lens, it just isn't an issue."

Nonetheless, some critics of the "opt out" policies at public schools suggest that offering an alternative assignment is unfair to students who will miss the opportunity to engage with their classmates in passionate discussions that develop key critical thinking skills.

"The 'opt out' offers a woefully diminished academic experience for the student," said Laurie Higgins, the cultural issues writer with the Illinois Family Institute, a conservative organization based in Tinley Park.

"When they're reading a book on their own, there's no ability for them to join in a classroom discussion," Higgins said. "So why not choose books and plays that are not controversial, and that honor the beliefs of all families? It would be so easy to do."

Back in Arlington Heights, a recent John Hersey High School forum did not shy away from controversial topics, and instead embraced an array of sophisticated subject matter, ranging from the Ayn Rand classic, "The Fountainhead" and the rejection of binary gender identification when it comes to celebrity fashion, to a glimpse at Lady Gaga's support for LGBT youth through her LittleMonsters.com website.

Still, when a video clip of Republican Sen. and former presidential candidate Ted Cruz prompted guffaws from the teen crowd, English teacher Britt Connell reminded her students to try to keep an open mind, even when listening to those with profoundly different political views.

Advertisement

"Try to understand him  don't just groan," Connell said.

Hersey junior Jamie Anderluh, 16, said her parents strongly support her participating in potentially controversial classroom discussions like the one featured in the recent forum on individualism.

"I think it's very important, because if you hear just one side of anything, you're closing yourself off," Jamie said. "In our forums, we hear all different perspectives and many different opinions. At Hersey, it's a very open space, so you learn to respect different opinions, so we can all work together."

kcullotta@tribpub.com

Twitter @kcullotta
Three decades after Forest View High School was shuttered, hundreds of former Falcons gathered at the Arlington Heights campus Saturday for an all-years reunion, including these members of the class of 1984, from left: Roberta Brindley Frey, Eric Serchuk, Corey Tridemy, Kristi Swier, Eileen Quinn, Joanne Pospisil Knourek, and Lisa Campobasso. (Karen Ann Cullotta / Pioneer Press)

More than four decades have passed since Mark Bailey was a teenager, huddled around a TV set with his buddies in the Forest View High School cafeteria, watching a somber broadcast of the Selective Service draft lottery numbers being pulled for the Vietnam War.

Just nine years later, students at the Arlington Heights school packed the gymnasium during their lunch hour to view a dramatically different TV program  the November 1981 episode of the wildly popular soap opera "General Hospital," featuring the wedding of characters Luke and Laura.

Advertisement

"I have all these great memories of being on the swim team, and goofing around with the guys in the cafeteria at lunch," said Bailey, a member of the Forest View class of 1972, and one of hundreds of proud Falcons  the writer of this column included  who gathered Saturday for an all-years reunion, 30 years after the high school was shuttered due to declining student enrollment in Township High School District 214.

While some of the high school experiences of Baby Boomer graduates like Bailey are far removed from those of Generation Xers, who attended Forest View in the mid-80s, our former teachers who returned to the campus on Saturday provided a common thread, binding our disparate memories from across the decades.

Advertisement

And for this 1980 graduate, a long overdue "thank you" to my former English teacher, Barbara Fryzel, was in order.

Like many of the high school's longtime teachers, Fryzel, 69, taught at Forest View from 1969 through its closing in 1986, and then went on to teach 17 more years at Prospect High School before retiring.

"I remember teaching an American Literature class the morning after John Lennon was assassinated, and it was horribleI had the students read an Emily Dickinson poem, about mourning," Fryzel recalled.

"The teachers in the English department at Forest View were some of the best people I've met in my lifeso caring and dedicated," Fryzel said.

While I typically refrain from partaking in any refreshments when on assignment, in the interest of investigative reporting, I made an exception on Saturday, and sharing a table in the cafeteria alongside my high school buddy, Dean Miller, class of 1981, and his husband, Rick Damato, proceeded to devour an order of the legendary tater tots, which were just as tasty, and greasy, as I remembered.

"There's Mrs. Bogan!" exclaimed Dean, pulling me from my chair. And just like the old days, there I was, running after him and giggling as he led me, his goody two-shoes friend, on a mad caper across the cafeteria to greet our former Shakespeare teacher, unchanged after all these years.

"I was so lucky to have had all of you," said Marylyn Bogan, a native of Surrey, England, who back in the day was renowned for her teaching of "Macbeth," which began with a darkened classroom, candles burning, and her impassioned and terrifying reading aloud: "When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightening, or in rain?"

As I marveled over memories of how the stormy weather outside my classroom window that morning had provided the perfect, haunting backdrop to her lecture, Bogan smiled.

Advertisement

"I always had a phonograph under my desk, playing a thunder album," she said.

Also surrounded by adoring former students, retired business education teacher Erna Bringe recalled how teen girls would confide in her during their predominantly-female typing and shorthand classes.

"Your parents would come in for parent night, and I already knew all of your stories," Bringe said. "You were all my girls, and I absolutely loved it."

Holding the distinction of being a member of the class of 1964, Forest View's first graduating class, Dan Rumowski, 70, said he still remembers the thrill of attending a brand new high school.

"Everything was shiny and spotless, and it seemed like the high school was in the middle of nowherejust fields as far as you could see," Rumowski said.

During his senior year, Rumowski recalled learning for the first time about a faraway country in Asia where tensions were simmering. Just two years after his high school graduation, Rumowski would join the U.S. Air Force and head to that country - Vietnam - where he served for two years before starting a career at United Airlines, where he worked until his retirement.

Advertisement

Forest View was also where he met his wife of 50 years, Judy Cuttle Rumowski, class of 1965, he said.

With the District 214 school board voting to close Arlington High School in 1984, members of the Forest View class of 1984 would graduate just two years before their own high school would shut down in 1986, with a redistricting plan sending students to neighboring high schools including Prospect, John Hersey, Rolling Meadows and Elk Grove.

"It was sad to watch Forest View close two years after we graduated," said Joanne Pospisil Knourek, 50, who is part of a close-knit group of fellow 1984 graduates.

"Because there's no homecoming games for us to go to, we decided to start doing all-class reunions," said Pospisil Knourek, referring to the annual gathering of Forest View alumni at Durty Nellies restaurant in Palatine.

"It's become even more important for us to see each other, because, well, we're all getting olderalthough when we're all together, I don't feel old at all," she added.

Forest View's former longtime principal, Jack Martin, 82, and his wife, Helen Martin, 82, recalled hosting hundreds of students at their Arlington Heights home each December for an annual holiday party.

Advertisement

The party preparations included choir members like myself working elbow-to-elbow in the Martin's kitchen, mixing up giant bowls of mustard, onions and poppy seeds to spread on the ham and cheese "Towne Crier sandwiches."

The sandwiches were named after a show choir headed by our choral department director Jerry Swanson, who, upon Forest View's closing, would join many of his colleagues in teaching at Elk Grove High School for the remainder of his career.

As the all-school reunion wound to a close, an enthusiastic Jack Martin exclaimed, "I've never had so many pictures taken of me in my life."

"The whole purpose of hosting an all-school reunion was to get everyone from Forest View back together again," Martin said. "It couldn't have been any better. And I think everyone loved the tater tots."

kcullotta@tribpub.com

Twitter @kcullotta
What started as an event to celebrate New York's agricultural community has become "one of the best days of the year on Capitol Hill," U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said Tuesday.

Gillibrand, D-N.Y., will be hosting the 15th annual New York Farm Day in Washington Wednesday. The event will feature farms, craft beverage producers and other entities from throughout the state.

Central New York will be represented at Farm Day by Empire Brewing Company in Syracuse, which recently opened its farmstead brewery in Cazenovia, and Chobani in Norwich.

Mercer's Dairy, which is based in Boonville, will be serving its popular wine ice cream at Farm Day. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who represented New York in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2009, recalled during a visit to Syracuse in April that the idea for wine ice cream was developed at New York Farm Day.

The Finger Lakes region's representatives will include Geneva-based Red Jacket Orchards and four wineries  Anthony Road Wine Company and Fox Run Vineyards, both of Penn Yan, and Lakewood Vineyards of Watkins Glen.

Cornell University also will have a presence at Farm Day.

Gillibrand, who serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said Farm Day gives New York's producers an opportunity to show Congress how important the state's agricultural industry is to the entire country.

"Many of my colleagues aren't aware that New York is one of the major farm states in the nation," she said on a call with reporters Tuesday. "Farm Day gives New York's agricultural community a great opportunity to showcase some of the best made New York food and beverages from around the state."

Gillibrand later said the day has turned into a "little bit of a foodie event," but added that it's more than just a chance to taste New York-made products.

She said Farm Day gives New York farmers and producers an opportunity to discuss important issues, including how low milk prices are affecting dairy farms and the need for improved programs to support specialty crop growers.

The feedback collected at the gathering will be used to plan for the next farm bill, according to Gillibrand.

The current farm bill runs through 2018.
Members of the 8th Illinois Cavalry during a Civil War event at Camp Kane in St. Charles. A family campout with a Civil War theme will be held this month at Camp Kane. (Camp Kane / Handout)

Families are invited to an overnight Civil War campout at Camp Kane in St. Charles.

The event is set for Sept. 24 and 25. Camp Kane, 215 E. Main St. is the training camp where thousands of soldiers trained and prepared for battle in the Civil War.

Advertisement

The Camp Kane Heritage Foundation and 8th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry Regiment are presenting the campout, a family-oriented fundraising event to benefit the Heritage Foundation's efforts to build an education center at the camp.

According to Bob Johnson, president of the 8th Illinois unit, the event will feature many familiar camping activities such as sleeping in tents, hot dogs and marshmallows over the camp fire, combined with an opportunity to learn the history of the Camp Kane site.

Advertisement

"Members of the 8th Illinois Cavalry will also camp overnight in their tents, with their gear indicative of the Civil War era," Johnson said in a news release.

"They'll talk with the family campers about life as it was during the Civil War, and the rigorous training they went through to prepare for battle," he said. "We'll also go through some training exercises with the kids and their parents. After it gets dark, they'll have an opportunity to go on picket duty with the soldiers."

The event begins at 3 p.m. Sept. 24 Registered families must bring their own tents and camping gear. Also, they are encouraged to bring snacks, beverages (no alcohol) and breakfast, according to the release.

The Heritage Foundation and the 8th Illinois members will provide hot dogs and chips for dinner Saturday night, along with marshmallows.

The cost per family is $20. Proceeds will go toward the Camp Kane Heritage Foundation's plans to construct a circular pad with tiered seating for an education center.

"This land is the last remaining Civil War training camp in Illinois," Johnson said in the release.

He said that "1,200 soldiers trained here in 1861, as the 8th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. They went on to fight in many of the most famous battles of the Civil War ... another 700 men trained here in 1863, and served in the 17th Illinois Cavalry Regiment. These soldiers also came from throughout the greater northern Illinois region, and served with honor."

Camp Kane was established by Col. John Farnsworth, a St. Charles resident, a U.S. congressman and personal friend and confidante of President Abraham Lincoln, Johnson said. Farnsworth also was a staunch abolitionist whose mansion on the hilltop on the west side of the Fox River is believed to have been a stop along the Underground Railroad, he said.
From left, Tara Smith of the FBI;CaraLee Murphy with Abolish Injustice in the 21st Century; Frank Massolini, director of Chicagos Salvation Army PROMISE program; Greg Tosi, filling in for U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk; and Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow discuss the problem of sex trafficking during a forum at Aurora University. (David Sharos / For the Beacon-News)

Sex trafficking is happening in the Fox Valley and residents need to know about it, participants at a forum at Aurora University said.

Paul Baker, who works for the university's communications office, said education about the problem is important.

Advertisement

"Certainly the No. 1 goal is awareness, as it is important students and parents are aware of this and know it is happening in our area," Baker said. "It has been estimated that anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000 women and children are victimized by trafficking each year here in the Chicago area."

The forum drew a packed house of more than 500 people to listen to the panelists, who included James Glasgow, Will County state's attorney; Frank Massolini, director of Chicago's Salvation Army PROMISE program; Tara Smith, a Chicago FBI agent; CaraLee Murphy, who works for Abolish Injustice in the 21st Century; and Greg Tosi, who was filling in for U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk.

Advertisement

Panelists said sex traffickers frequently use social media and that "recruiting has become so much more sophisticated."

"The skill of the people that do this has improved tremendously over the past 10 or 15 years to the point where people don't even know what's happening to them," Baker said. "We've also received a lot of feedback about this from our student population, and they want to know what they can do to help stem the traffic in hotels and other places."

Aurora University Executive Vice President Theodore Parge confirmed that the topic is an important one to students.

"This is an issue and a concern raised repeatedly by students, and the idea is that trafficking is not something that is happening across the ocean somewhere  it's right here in our communities," Parge said.

Glasgow said "there has been trafficking as long as mankind has existed" and that "the law has been slow to react."

"In the year 2000, federal legislation was finally enacted, and while no one in Washington supports this, not everyone agrees about how to combat it," Glasgow said. "As soon as you touch the internet today, you get the attention of some powerful people. But there are always issues about the free flow of information on the internet as well as freedom of speech."

Murphy said in her work with minors in the Abolish Injustice program, young people are taught that "their bodies are not commodities."

"We teach a course where we say that a cellphone is a commodity that is updated, used and thrown away  but humans are not," she said.

Advertisement

Smith said one of the targets of her division is working with those who are victims of extortion and "made to manufacture their own online pornography."

"Predators meet kids posing as friends or someone their age, when they are maybe 50 years old and grooming these kids to make their own porn," Smith said. "Maybe these are kids who don't get enough attention from their parents, but they get them to post things and then threaten to show them to their parents or steal their whole address book of contacts if they don't post more."

Kara Fenne of Geneva said she taught in Aurora University's College of Nursing and that sex trafficking is an important issue.

"This is something that definitely affects our community," she said.

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
AURELIUS  The newly opened Three Guys Barbershop at Fingerlakes Mall is a bit of a misnomer  and a heartfelt one, at that.

Owner Kellie Ellis is the only licensed barber working at Three Guys, one of Fingerlakes Mall's newest tenants. The Aurora woman's shop opened Sept. 3, though her first business is not named after the number of men she employs.

Rather, the name stems from some of the most important guys in her life.

Six-year-old Trevor, is the child of her longtime partner, Josh St. Martin, while their son Cooper is 1. The third of the Three Guys trio is due in November, she said.

St. Martin, an apprentice barber himself, will likely take the barbershop's reins when the next little guy comes around, Ellis said. Until then, Ellis will look to build her business at the Aurelius shopping center in the J.C. Penney side of the mall.

"Contrary to the sign, it is a one-woman operation," Ellis said. "A barber stopped in and said, 'I heard there were three barbers in here.' Nope. Just me."

Barbering  and owning a barbershop, for that matter  was never her first choice for a career.

Ellis said she wanted to pursue a career as a forensic pathologist after six years with the Army National Guard, including a one-year deployment to Afghanistan. However, getting her barbering license, she said, was more appealing after she started having more children.

She has been cutting hair for the last four years  including one year as a licensed barber. Opening her own shop, Ellis said, was a decision that came together quickly. St. Martin pushed the idea of being her own boss, and the two worked since early August to make Three Guys into a reality.

"I had been a stay-at-home mom for about a year," she said. "We wanted something we could do together. It's quick schooling, we could have our kids there, and nobody could tell us what to do."

St. Martin, who is also a veteran, anticipates getting his barbering license and helping out Ellis when he can  particularly when their next child is born. He helped out with the interior design of the place, while adding that the mall staff was also supportive in getting the shop up and running.

The new business helps fill a void at the mall created in 2015 when two hair salons, Regis Salon and MasterCuts, shut down.

Ellis sees Three Guys as a "traditional barbershop" that services mostly men's cuts with fades, buzz cuts and others. In the future, Ellis said she will also do facial massages.

She added that she hopes to hire additional barbers if the business does well. In the meantime, Ellis said she has found herself cutting a lot of hair for rowdy toddlers getting their first haircuts  clientele she does not particularly mind.

"If you think your kid is too bad for a haircut, it's not bad to bring them here."
East Dundee officials are trying to find a tenant for the Haeger Potteries building at 7 Maiden Lane. (Erin Sauder / The Courier-News)

Interest is building in two now-shuttered, longtime East Dundee businesses.

Haeger Potteries, 7 Maiden Lane, closed its doors for good at the end of July after 145 years in business. D'Angelo Natural Spring Water, on about 15 acres at the intersection of Route 72 and Penny Road, closed in late spring.

Advertisement

At Monday's board meeting, Immanuel Lutheran Church's business manager, Chris Wendt, told board members that church officials have entered into a contract to purchase the D'Angelo property.

"Whenever you have an opportunity to buy contiguous land, you do everything in your power to do so because there are only so many ways you can grow your campus," Wendt said. "This kind of fell out of the sky. We didn't know it was going to be up for sale, and all of a sudden it was."

Advertisement

The plan for the D'Angelo site, Wendt said, would be to use some acreage to either upgrade and expand the more-than-100-year-old Immanuel Lutheran School, or build a new one. Officials would then like to sell a portion of the property to a developer to bring residential housing to the area in the form of more than 200 market-rate apartment units in several buildings.

"How do we purchase this? There's no pot of money underneath pews," Wendt said. "So we thought maybe we sell a portion of it and keep our out-of-pocket expenses as small as possible. What we're looking for is to gauge the board's thoughts on that. Is there support? Because then we need to talk to developers to invest money and build those apartments."

While the majority of trustees supported the idea of a residential component, they said they would rather see a development with townhomes or condos.

"It's extremely close to what is a very quiet neighborhood right now," Trustee Rob Gorman said. "You get a different character when someone buys something versus when they rent it. I'm all for a high-density townhome type of development. But I struggle with apartments, especially given the location. It would change the character of the adjoining property."

"I love the idea of Immanuel taking this property," added Trustee Allen Skillicorn. "It's good for the school and it's good for the church. But the density does bother me. And I agree with Rob on the rental versus ownership  obviously somebody could rent the condo, but there's still that ownership component."

Board members agreed to continue discussions with Immanuel officials.

Regarding the Haeger Potteries site, Gene Staples, of Golden Plastics USA, formerly Golden Bag, was introduced to board members by Jonathan Knight, a representative for Haeger.

"As you know, the Haeger property came on the market a few short months ago. In my travels I met Gene, who was in the process of acquiring property in Chicago to suit his business needs," Knight said. "I talked to him about considering the Haeger property."

Advertisement

Staples purchased the company, which has an East Dundee mailing address but is located in Carpentersville, last November. Golden Plastics USA, 290 Illinois St., specializes in film and plastic bag processing.

"Our current location is under-serving our needs," Staples told East Dundee trustees. "I was about to pull the trigger on a property in Chicago when John brought up a number of points where we think the Haeger building would be an excellent fit for our group."

Staples said there needs to be about $1.2 million worth of upgrades to the Haeger Potteries building to meet his company's needs, much of it electrical. He said he would seek financial assistance from the village in the form of funds generated by a tax increment financing district.

As for his time frame, Staples anticipates having the building completely rehabbed within a year.

"Going in, we want to move quick," he said. "We're losing some opportunities on some new contracts we recently signed. We can't produce until we move into a new facility. So we're going to do some of the items necessary for us to occupy the building on the inside quickly."

East Dundee Village President Lael Miller said "time is of the essence" for Staples.

Advertisement

"Simply because he has to make a choice  East Dundee or Chicago. There will be some property tax benefit to us in this. There will be some sales tax component to this, although we certainly don't know what that is," Miller said. "The bigger benefit to the village is the lights stay on at Haeger. Somebody fixes up the building and the property taxes increase. He can go somewhere else and then we can have a dark facility we can address with someone else."

Gorman said he is open to having a conversation about funding from the special taxing district.

"We don't know if it's going to create a tax increment or not. That would be my view. If it doesn't create a tax increment, that's where it becomes a problem," he said.

Trustee Jeff Lynam said Staples' proposal would not be his first choice for the site.

"This is a very unique spot. I realize what it is and what it would take to become what it is in my head. However, we have one opportunity with this, and I'd much prefer we develop the retail and residential on Route 72 that we don't currently have," he said.

Gorman said he loves the idea that Staples wants to not only purchase the property, "but he wants to improve it and partner with us to make it a community aspect more than it is."

Advertisement

"I think Gene and his team have brought something forward that is going to be viable for the community and add some value," he said.

Other board members agreed with Gorman.

"Everything he's proposing is going to add value," said Trustee Kirstin Wood.

"Gene, I'd love to have you in town," Skillicorn said.

Miller said the consensus seemed in agreement the relocation would be a good opportunity for the village.

"So my question is, having seen this will increase the value of the property with this amount of work, are we willing to help Gene out to have him move here by sharing back any of the property tax increase we'd be able to get?"

Advertisement

Board members agreed to move the proposal forward to next Monday's meeting.

Erin Sauder is a freelance reporter.
AUBURN  In the early 1900s, a Michigan man came up with a simple, cheap design that changed life in America.

His name was Henry Ford, and by the 1920s, his production of the Model T put the automobile on the map for many middle-class Americans. But as more and more families acquired that first affordable car, less and less business was done downtown.

And downtown Auburn was no exception.

Michael Long, a planner with Finger Lakes Planning and Development who worked in the city's planning office from 1980 to 2008, said that before the invention of the automobile, downtown Auburn was the heart and soul of the city.

Before cars, people worked and lived and shopped downtown, he said. There was a lot of commercial activity on the ground floor of buildings and then people lived upstairs because they didn't have transportation. ... But the automobile changed that.

Urban renewal, revisited A series examining the impact of Auburn's urban renewal initiatives, including the Arterial:

Suddenly, several stores and residents began shifting to the outskirts of town, creating suburbs outside the city and highways that helped people commute. And by the mid-1950s, parts of the New York State Thruway had opened up while central business districts seemed to be shutting down.

Something had to change.

It was around this time that two projects emerged in the city of Auburn: the Auburn Arterial and City Center Urban Renewal.

Urban renewal was a national initiative in which federal funds could be used to knock down decaying parts of cities and replace them with new buildings, businesses and houses, Auburn City Historian and Cayuga Museum Director Eileen McHugh explained.

"Urban renewal was a vision to revitalize the city," she said. "And here in Auburn, it was coupled with the state's plan to improve transportation because it was difficult to get from one side of the city to the other. The roads were not planned for automobiles and it was hard to get around by car.

So in 1957, the state Department of Public Works submitted an Urban Area Report to Auburn city officials, outlining proposed routes for several so-called arterials.

The plan met with some local objections because of the severe residential property damage that it would inflict, a 1965 Urban Area Report stated, noting that the arterials would primarily be installed along North Street and Grant and Lake avenues. However, since it was at that time the best plan that would solve the local traffic ills, the city officials approved the plan in 1958.

Still, as traffic patterns changed, the superintendent of the city's engineering services, William Lupien, Jr., said there were many different locations discussed before construction actually began.

One of the designs put the Arterial completely north of the city of Auburn to basically bypass the city, he said. Another time they were thinking of York Street, and then there were serious talks of putting it on Seymour Street.

But the central business district complained.

Because all of the traffic went through the middle of downtown ... merchants were thinking they were going to lose their business, Long said. All of a sudden people weren't going to be driving by their stores and they're not going to stop in on impulse buying. ... They wanted to keep people downtown as much as they could.

It wasn't until 1964 that the state settled on a design.

The final Auburn Arterial Plan consisted of five arterial routes within the city  the East-West Arterial, North Street Arterial, Grant Avenue Arterial, West Side Arterial and Owasco Street Arterial  which totaled nearly 11 miles and would cost an estimated $7,695,000.

All of the arterials avoid passing through the central business district, yet they are close enough to provide easy access for vehicles destined for this area, the 1965 Urban Area Report stated.

The East-West Arterial proved to be the biggest part of the project, a projected $4.2 million stretch of divided road that began at the west city line and morphed into Grant Avenue at Franklin Street. And while the western and eastern portions of the route used vacant land and an existing right-of-way, the center portion did require the destruction of "a few properties," according to the '65 report.

In 1970, demolition for the Arterial began and nearly 200 homes and business properties were brought down to pave the way.

"In order to implement the plan, they had to make major swaths of demolition through the city," Long said. "A lot was lost."

That's why Vijay Mital, the former director of the Office of Planning and Economic Development for the city of Auburn, said he would have designed something different.

I was more for putting money towards preservation rather than demolishing the buildings, he said, explaining that he was assigned to work on the project in 1970. The plans were prepared way before I joined and I was not familiar with all the traffic studies that were done ... but in my opinion, this project could have been done differently.

By the time the road was opened to traffic in late 1976, the East-West Arterial alone had cost $16 million to construct and took six years to complete. And when it was finished, it ran 4 1/2 miles through the heart of the city.

Of course, at the same time the state was planning the Arterial, the city was working on urban renewal.

In 1965, the Auburn Urban Renewal Agency (AURA) was established and, by '68, it was made up of seven members  the newly elected mayor and chairman, Paul Lattimore, four councilmen, the city manager and the city comptroller.

"Paul Lattimore was a very strong-willed person (and) he wanted to be a strong mayor who controlled what was going on and told everybody, 'This is what we're going to do,'" Long said. "And he was good at getting money ... so you could do more work."

On Dec. 6, 1968, the City Center Urban Renewal Project (CCURP) was approved to build a traffic ring  connecting Dill and William streets in a loop around downtown  and design new shopping centers to bring life back to the district.

"We were trying to modernize downtown because business had dropped off," said George Diehl, former member of the Citizen's Advisory Committee on Urban Renewal.

According to a brochure from the Auburn Urban Renewal Agency dated April 1, 1968, the project would cost an estimated $11,492,900. Seventy-five percent of that would be covered by federal grants worth nearly $8 million, while the state and city would split the remaining 25 percent  around $1.3 million each  with another million coming from the sale of land.

In addition, CCURP planned to remove more than half of the 236 structures in the central business district, which were deemed substandard, the brochure stated. And 283 households would have to be relocated.

This meant a lot of mixed feelings throughout the city, said Lupien, Auburn's superintendent of engineering services.

"Auburn had a lot of businesses that weren't doing too well before Urban Renewal, so it was a God-send for some of them because officials came in and bought their buildings that they were probably going to have to demolish themselves on their own nickel," Lupien said. "But there were also some people who didn't want to lose their business."

Still, those who refused the Auburn Urban Renewal Agency's offers to purchase their property were fighting a losing battle, as condemnation proceedings began.

As it turned out, the agency had the power to take private property for public use as long as they paid "just compensation" to the owner.

Most of the buildings that were bought out and demolished for urban renewal were along Genesee Street, Long recalled, including the Flatiron Building at the corner of Genesee and Market streets  a building that many community members tried to save.

"When you superimpose the urban renewal of downtown and the Arterial right next to it, the devastation was really significant," Long said.

By 1980, both the Arterial and urban renewal had been completed in Auburn. But, city historian McHugh said, some of the demolition sites were never rebuilt as many business owners did not return to downtown.

In many cities, officials eventually realized that a building is more than a building," McHugh said. "A building can be the heart and soul of a community and when they made whole blocks of buildings disappear, they destroyed more than just the buildings themselves. They destroyed the sense of place that was tied up with them, and I think that's what happened here in Auburn.

And in many cases, the vision to revitalize cities failed.
The Cayuga Community Health Network and the Human Services Coalition of Cayuga County will host workshops for landlords and property owners in the next few weeks.

The first training session is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29 at the Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES. The seminar is for individuals who want to know more about renting and will detail topics including fair housing, legal issues, evictions, Section 8, law enforcement and dispute settlement.

A similar session, only for property owners, is scheduled for Oct. 6 at BOCES, 1879 W. Genesee St. Road.

The class is free to attend and includes a free lunch and resource guides. Registration for the Sept. 30 workshop is free by Thursday, Sept. 22.

To register or for more information, contact Sara Douglass with ARISE at (315) 255-3447 ext. 318 and sdouglass@ariseinc.org, or Jessica Soule with the Cayuga Community Health Network at (315) 252-4212 and jsoule@cayugahealthnetwork.org.
By Dezan Shira & Associates

China is currently experiencing huge growth in its e-commerce industry. In this podcast interview by AustCham, Sabrina Zhang, China National Tax Partner at Dezan Shira & Associates Beijing office, discusses the e-commerce industry in China. During the discussion, you will learn more about the current state of e-commerce in China, licenses required and the latest changes and upcoming trends.

Key takeaways

E-commerce, by definition, is the trading or facilitation of trading in products or services using computer networks. With the largest population of online shoppers in the world, China is becoming one of the most attractive markets for e-commerce operators. Even though e-commerce is not a concept defined in the Chinese law, various rules and regulations apply to foreign investors looking to sell products online. For example, foreign investors aiming to sell products via their own China-hosted website needs to first register a Foreign Invested Commercial Enterprise (FICE) and set up a physical store or a showroom. After that, they can proceed to register a website and complete the ICP filing procedure. FICEs seeking to provide services to other trading parties with their own online platform need to apply for an ICP license.

RELATED: Find more podcasts on Dezan Shiras Knowledge Sharing Platform

As a general trend, the Chinese government is willing to open up the e-commerce market and further open up Chinas economy to the world. In the long term, one of Chinas current economic development goals is to promote domestic consumption, and e-commerce will play a significant role in this growth.



About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email china@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight.

China Investment Roadmap: the e-Commerce Industry

In this edition of China Briefing magazine, we present a roadmap for investing in Chinas e-commerce industry. We provide a consumer analysis of the Chinese market, take a look at the main industry players, and examine the various investment models that are available to foreign companies.



E-Commerce in Asia

Rising internet penetration, a growing consumer base, and rapidly developing logistics infrastructure contribute to burgeoning e-commerce activity in all three of China, Vietnam, and India. This report outlines the e-commerce markets in these countries and offers guidance on establishing a presence in these vibrant regions.

Selling, Sourcing and E-Commerce in China 2016 (First Edition)

Selling, Sourcing & E-Commerce in China 2016, produced in collaboration with the experts at Dezan Shira & Associates, provides a comprehensive analysis of all the aspects of commerce in China. It discusses how foreign companies can best go about sourcing products from China; how foreign retailers can set up operations on the ground to sell directly to the countrys massive consumer class; and finally details how foreign enterprises can access Chinas lucrative yet ostensibly complex e-commerce market.
China's Amperex Technology Limited is now providing batteries for Samsung Electronics Co's Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, after faulty batteries prompted a worldwide recall of the phones, an ATL manager said on Monday.

Battery shipments from ATL, whose headquarters are in Hong Kong, will increase greatly, said the manager, who declined to give his name. He did not provide the number of batteries to be shipped.

ATL also offers batteries for other domestic and foreign smartphone manufacturers

The confirmation followed a report by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency that Samsung will now use only batteries provided by ATL for the Galaxy Note 7.

Samsung declined to comment on Monday.

Following the recall, which was announced earlier this month, Samsung ordered an additional 4 million batteries from ATL, Yonhap reported on Sunday, citing unidentified industry sources.

Shares of Samsung Electronics plunged by 6.98 percent on Monday after the South Korean electronics giant urged users worldwide to stop using its Galaxy Note 7 following reports of exploding batteries.

Some Chinese experts urged further investigation of the reports that the smartphones had exploded, saying other parts might have been faulty.

Meanwhile, international airlines and aviation agencies have banned passengers from switching on or charging the Samsung phones during flights.

Chinese airlines such as Air China said they haven't received a notification to ban in-flight use of Galaxy Note 7 phones.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung decided to cease sales and recalled 2.5 million Note 7 units in 10 markets, including Singapore, the United States and South Korea, on Sept 2. The decision came after some of the phones were found to have faulty batteries.

The Galaxy Note 7 recall does not cover customers in China. A statement from Samsung China confirmed that the smartphones sent for customers in China use batteries from a different supplier.

ATL is poised to become the only battery provider for Samsung, which is the world's largest smartphone maker by shipments, the Yonhap agency said.

Since ATL also supplies batteries for Apple's iPhone series, Samsung could face supply problems if demand soars for the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, Yonhap said.
The country's first commercial space industry base will be built in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, according to an agreement signed on Monday.

The Wuhan National Space Industry Base will focus on the development of carrier rockets and satellites, commercial launch services and applications of satellite data.

The base plans to establish an annual production capacity of 50 carrier rockets and 140 commercial satellites by 2020, said Zhang Di, deputy head of the Fourth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, after a signing ceremony between his company and the governments of Hubei and Wuhan at the Second China Commercial Aerospace Forum.

More than 700 government officials, military officers and experts from the space industry and universities attended the forum in Wuhan.

In mid-February, the Fourth Academy set up the nation's second commercial launch provider, Expace Technology Co, as the backbone of the Wuhan space base, with Zhang as the new company's chairman.

The company, which has registered capital of 300 million yuan (US$44.9 million), has signed a 100 million yuan launch contract with several domestic clients, Zhang said. He declined to give clients' names due to business confidentiality.

He added that Expace has received orders for more than 10 launches using the academy's solid-fuel Kuaizhou, or Fast Vessel, rockets.

"In fact, orders have been continuing to swarm into our company, but we have to reject some of them because we must guarantee a good service quality," Zhang said. "We don't worry about orders because our rate, around $10,000 for each kilogram of payload, is much lower than the average charge in the international market, which ranges from $25,000 to $30,000."

In China, a commercial launch generally refers to a space launch activity paid for by an entity other than a Chinese government department or military agency.

China has launched 53 Long March rockets to carry 61 satellites into space for 24 foreign clients.

However, all of these commercial missions were undertaken by the country's Long March rockets, which were developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, another major contractor in China's space sector.

Because of different mission requirements, the Long March series, which mainly uses liquid propellant, has heavier launch capacities and longer flight ranges.

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp began to develop Kuaizhou solid-fuel rockets in 2009, intending to form a low-cost, quick-response rocket family for the commercial launch market.

The first flight of a Kuai-zhou rocket occurred in September 2013, when the company launched the Kuaizhou 1 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province to put an Earth observation satellite into orbit. In November 2014, the Kuaizhou 2 sent another satellite into space from the same launch center.

The Fourth Academy is now making the Kuaizhou 11 and plans to launch it in 2017, according to Liang Jiqiu, chief designer of the Kuaizhou program at the Fourth Academy.

Liang said the Kuaizhou 11 has a liftoff weight of 78 metric tons and will be capable of placing a 1-metric-ton payload into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers, or a 1.5-metric-ton payload into a low Earth orbit at an altitude of 400 km.

He said the road-mobile rocket's prelaunch preparations will take very little time, and the launch can be conducted on rough terrain.

Gao Hongwei, chairman of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, said the Kuaizhou rockets have a high level of strategic importance and a huge market potential.

He said investments in the commercial launch sector bring a return of up to 14 times the original input.

Hu Shengyun, a senior rocket engineer at the Fourth Academy, estimates that by 2020, the market value of commercial space activities in China will reach 30 billion yuan annually.
AUBURN  A Liverpool man could face up to seven years in prison for sending obscene text and Facebook messages to a minor in Cayuga County.

Steven Levine, of 4129 Birchwood Drive, pleaded guilty Tuesday to felony first-degree disseminating indecent material to a minor. The 40-year-old admitted to sending sexually explicit messages to the child in May 2016.

"I was texting with the victim about things that I did in the past ... and I did it for my own pleasure," Levine said, noting that he knew the child's age and invited the victim to masturbate, among other things.

A second-felony offender, Levine could face a maximum of 3 1/2 to 7 years in prison. However, Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann recommended he receive three to six years.

Levine was remanded to Cayuga County Jail without bail. Judge Mark Fandrich will sentence him Dec. 13.

Also in court:

 A Moravia man was sentenced to one to three years in prison Tuesday, and both the defense and the district attorney's office said the move might keep him alive.

Last month, 31-year-old Dakota Beckwith, of 9 Central St., pleaded guilty to fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property for possessing a stolen credit card.

According to Budelmann, Beckwith has struggled with a serious addiction to drugs, including heroin, K12 and bath salts.

"This will hopefully be enough to get him clean," Budelmann said, noting that the promised sentence also included a shock camp recommendation, which would allow Beckwith to receive substance abuse treatment.

Defense attorney Rome Canzano agreed.

"It's my goal to keep (Beckwith) alive, and I think this sentence is his best chance," he said.

 A Syracuse woman was sentenced to six months in jail and five years probation Tuesday for driving with a blood alcohol content nearly three times over the legal limit.

Jillian Petrera, of 112 Matterson Ave., pleaded guilty in June to aggravated DWI and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. The 33-year-old admitted she had a blood alcohol content of .22 percent and was driving without a license Jan. 16 when she struck another car on County Line Road in the town of Sennett.

Petrera was charged with felony DWI in the case due to a previous drunk driving conviction in Skaneateles.

According to Judge Thomas Leone, the defendant already served her time in Cayuga County Jail and will be transferred to Onondaga County's probation department. She will also have to pay more than $3,500 in fines and surcharges.
An Australian auction to sell off a massive iconic Coca-Cola signage in Sydney has come to an end with more than 100,000 Australian dollars (US$75,000) received from local and overseas bidders, local media reported on Tuesday.

The Coca-Cola signage which has been a part of the Kings Cross skyline for more than 40 years was auctioned letter by letter on eBay on Monday night with the proceeds expected to be given to the homeless in Sydney.

The two largest letters, the "Cs", were more than 5.4 meters tall, up to 6.6 meters wide, 29 cm deep and 65 kg in weight each while the smaller letters were around 2.8 meters tall, between 1.2 meters and 2.6 meters wide, 29 cm deep and between 25 kg and 40 kg in weight.

Organizers said that the most popular letter from the signage was the little 'C', which went for 18,700 Australian dollars (US$14,000).

The other two 'C' signs were tied for the title of the cheapest letter, selling for 10, 300 Australian dollars (US$7,700) each.

The letters were put up for sale at the end of August.
You are here: Home

Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong on Monday called for more efforts to popularize the standard Chinese language.

Addressing a symposium to mark the 15th anniversary of the Law on Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, Liu said popularizing the standard Chinese language could help boost social and economic development and safeguard national unification and unity among ethnic groups.

The language law, which took effect in 2001, sets Putonghua, or Mandarin, and standardized Chinese characters as the standard spoken and written forms of Chinese and China's official language.

Standard Chinese language should be basically popularized nationwide during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) period, Liu said, adding that efforts should be improved in ethnic and rural areas.

Liu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, called on the authorities to accelerate the standardization process and help improve the general public's ability to use standard Chinese.

Stronger efforts should be made to boost international communication and showcase the Chinese culture, she added.
You are here: Home

Three workers missing after a bridge collapsed in east China's Jiangxi Province have been identified, though the search for their whereabouts continues.

The missing, Guo Weifeng, 38; Yan Chunqi, 50; and Zeng Zhaoqin, 41, are all natives of Jiangxi, the Taihe county government said.

Guo and Yan work for Jiangxi Rongda Blasting New Technology Development, which is responsible for dismantling the bridge. Zeng works for Nanchang Dismantling.

The collapse at 9:17 a.m. on Sunday, above the Ganjiang River in Taihe County, left five workers injured. They are receiving medical treatment.

At the time of the collapse, Chen Debo, who suffered slight injuries, was driving an excavator to clear the area, while two other workers were checking the bridge floor.

"I heard someone cry out on the intercom, 'danger, move away,'" Chen said. He jumped out of the vehicle and ran, falling down before he could reach the end of the bridge.

The 828-meter bridge was built in the early 1990s. An inspection in December 2012 concluded that the bridge was in need of repair. Workers had been dismantling the bridge since August this year.

More than 500 rescuers are looking for the missing workers.

A taskforce is investigating the cause of the accident.
You are here: Home

Millions of Muslims around China celebrated Eid al-Adha on Monday, one of Islam's most important festivals.

Ma Fuxiang, a Hui Muslim in Xining, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province, took his two sons to attend prayers at a Dongguan mosque early in the morning.

"Today is Eid al-Adha, an important festival, so we had to get out early," Ma said.

"Every Eid al-Adha, at least 200,000 Muslims gather around the mosque," said Wang Shaofeng, an imam at the mosque.

After prayers, many people visited markets around the mosque, buying beef, mutton, desserts and fruit.

Eid al-Adha, or feast of the sacrifice, centers around a large feast, where Muslims slaughter lambs to share with the family. They also attend prayers and visit relatives and friends, sending best wishes.

At around 9 a.m., Zhou Shengqi, 80, in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, left the mosque in his village after prayers to return home to join the annual family celebration with 33 of his relatives.

"Eid al-Adha is one of the most important festivals for Muslims. I am so happy that most of my family have returned from the cities to break bread with me," said Zhou.

In Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Amangul feasted on delicious food with her relatives and friends in her courtyard on Monday.

"We celebrate Eid al-Adha with pilaf and milk tea today, and in three days we will celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with mooncakes," Amangul said.

Muslims enjoy a week-long holiday for the two festivals.

China has more than 20 million Muslims, mainly Uygurs, Hui, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kirgiz, living in various regions.
A Port Byron woman suffered minor injuries during a two-car collision Monday caused by an illegal turn at an Auburn intersection, according to the Auburn Police Department.

Danielle Horner has been ticketed for disobeying a traffic control device, police said Tuesday. Horner, 47, was one of the drivers involved in an accident at around 1:10 p.m. Monday at the intersection of Grant Avenue and Seymour Street.

Police said Horner, driving a Hyundai Tiburon, was heading east on Grant Avenue when she attempted to turn left onto Seymour Street. She then crossed into the path of a Ford Mustang driven by Moravia man George Case Jr., resulting in a collision.

Horner, who remained conscious at the scene, was transported to Auburn Community Hospital with neck pain, police said. Case Jr., 63, was reportedly uninjured.

Drivers heading east on Grant Avenue have not been allowed to turn left onto Seymour Street for nearly a year since the state Department of Transportation added restrictions to the traffic signals at the intersection.

The change was made after a motorcycle accident at the intersection that killed 35-year-old Nathan Switzer on July 6, 2015. Following Switzer's death in July, the DOT reviewed the signal configuration at the request of Auburn city officials.
Instability, uncertainty for the future, personal tragedies and the need to flee the country have been almost daily characteristics for Syria and its citizens since the beginning of 2011. Efforts made principally by the United States and Russia to end hostilities have only yielded provisionary results and have not created the conditions necessary for long-lasting peace.

China has so far closely monitored developments in Syria and supported political negotiations. However, the country has refrained from being actively involved at the military level. Can the recent visit of Chinese Rear Admiral Guan Youfei in Damascus change Beijing's approach? This question is currently dominating political discourse.

Several Western scholars have already started to challenge Beijing's non-interference dogma, specifically citing the reform of the People's Liberation Army and Navy. In that regard, the most recent pretext was the establishment of logistics facilities for the Chinese navy in Djibouti. And now, with the case of Syria, these scholars see another indication that China is determined to practically protect its overseas interests by militarily intervening in conflict zones.

Nevertheless, it is too early to draw conclusions about the future course of Chinese foreign policy. Although a relevant white paper stipulates that the Chinese armed forces can participate in both regional and international security efforts, Beijing has been very careful about not taking unnecessary risks. The experience of Syria suggests that bombardments made by great powers -- the United States, Russia and France -- have not been sufficient.

More cooperation with Syria does not automatically mean a direct confrontation with rebels fighting against Bashar al-Assad. Also, this cooperation is not a new phenomenon.

It is not surprising that the United States attempts to criticize China for allegedly adopting a one-sided approach in Syria. Its purpose is to connect Beijing's policy with that of Moscow and therefore associate it with the continuity of chaos in the country. That is because -- Washington believes that the regime of Bashar al-Assad is alone responsible for the deadlock. Following this logic, every country arguably supporting the regime also bears responsibility and should be stopped.

At this stage, it cannot be predicted whether Assad will rule Syria in the future. However, members of his regime -- if not himself personally -- need to be part of a government guaranteeing stability in the post-civil war era. The main challenge for the country is to avoid a de facto sectarian division as is happening, for example, in Libya. Furthermore, an equally significant objective is that Syria will not be a hub for terrorists in the future or a launching ground for attacks against states like Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did recently say that his country is not involved in any attempts to unseat Assad, as other security priorities about the future of Syria matter more. Removing Assad from power can be as risky as offering unequivocal support to him.

All in all, the world community could benefit from China's active involvement in Syria and the greater Middle East. Distinguishing between military engagement in the context of an international security cooperation framework and continuous military strike that often kill civilians and spread instability, the more multilateral collaboration is strengthened the better it is for peace to be established. The role of China will be of cardinal importance in achieving this goal.

George N. Tzogopoulos is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/GeorgeNTzogopoulos.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
Leading experts aired their views on the manifold political and economic implications of China's "One Belt One Road" initiative, as well as the cultural and financial challenges expected in its implementation, at a seminar held at the Shanghai Center of Photography on Sunday.

In his keynote speech, Professor Wang Yiwei explained the need to approach the Belt-Road initiative in light of inclusive globalization, or from the perspective of the transformation of Chinese civilization.

Wang is professor at the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China, and director of China-Europe Academic Network.

Wang cited the importance of explicating the Belt Road in terms of politics, economics and culture in a uniquely Chinese context.

Due to its richness in connotation, it should certainly transcend discrete disciplines and call for a holistic approach informed by integration of many diametrically different inquiries.

Much like the saying in traditional Chinese medicine that "when blood and vigor flows, pain is gone" (tong ze butong), Wang predicted that free flow of trade and commerce will lead to peace and improved governance.

The West has contributed significantly to globalization, but today it has essentially turned against globalization, due in part to self-centered outlooks.

As a matter of fact, the use of "One Belt and One Road," rather than Silk Road or New Silk Road, is itself a nuanced, characteristically Chinese concept pregnant with new insights.

As it is, the "Belt" refers to an economic development area.

In the past a developing country would normally be engaged in production by using materials imported from overseas, and turning out finished products for export. The problems with this is that the whole process can be easily disrupted by issues elsewhere in the world.

The new approach suggested in the Belt and Road would involve wholesale transferring of manufacturing capacity, thereby significantly reducing the dependence on maritime trade.

Thus the Belt and Road initiative symbolizes a distinctly Chinese program, since free market, so stressed by Western thinkers and policymakers, cannot wholly address such issues as the lack of infrastructure in some sparsely populated areas in underdeveloped countries.

The Chinese model, driven by the twin engines of government and market forces, does not have such drawbacks.

For instance loans will provide some countries thirsty for development with a bucket of gold, which would enable them to then secure further funding from the market. This explains the popularity of the Chinese way of doing things in some developing countries.

By contrast the Western mode cannot possibly address the lack of infrastructure in these countries.

In addition, in China's foreign aids policy, there are no political strings attached, unlike Western aids which are often no more than political or strategic tools, inherently disdainful of local conditions.

Take the US, for instance. For decades it has been pursuing the initiative of exporting weapons in return for oil, fueling regional hostilities.

Disillusioned with the West

Some developing countries, disillusioned with the West, would naturally turn to China.

The need for infrastructure development in some countries is pervasive.

In some African countries, for instance, there are no direct flights between two neighboring countries. This means people sometimes have to fly to Paris first in order to get to countries adjacent to their own.

This explains the Belt and Road stress on infrastructure construction, in the form of superhighways, high-speed railways and regional aviation networks.

Infrastructure development would help build indigenous capacity for production, which has been lacking in globalization as we've known it so far  hence the significance of inclusive and balanced globalization, rather than partial globalization.

Of course, success of the whole initiative can only be achieved incrementally, built on experiences on a case-by-case basis. Here China can borrow liberally from its experience in achieving its own economic development during the recent decades, for China's industrialization and urbanization goals have been realized fairly recently  while Western practices, gained a century ago, are unfit for emulation today.

In Nairobi, Kenya, for instance, the country's old railway fell into disuse, since it originally was meant to serve the interests of colonialism, not build local prosperity.

"We would continue to learn from the West, but increasingly our attention would be directed to developing countries, particularly those around us, for they are in need of acquiring production capacity," Wang observed.

China is in a critical stage of development as it moves toward high-end production, while some countries along the Road are looking to China for funding, technology and talent, just as China did with respect to the West in the 1980s.

These countries could access loans that would help finance their purchase of Chinese equipment. Tapping into regional demand would go a long way towards kickstarting global growth.

Cultural confidence

Since China is uneven in its own development, with its heavily populated coastal east dependent on the resources of the sparsely populated west, its expertise in balancing its development is eminently transferable to other underdeveloped countries.

It's best not to gauge individual projects in cost-efficient terms, but to assess their benefits in a larger context, using a holistic approach.

China's generosity in extending aid to African countries in the past also seems to make these countries more ready to accept Chinese support.

But challenges also exist.

Professor Pan Zhongqi from Fudan University cited the challenges of creating and abiding with international rules in implementing the Belt and Road initiative, for China is sometimes criticized by the West for not being respectful of global rules and norms.

"We need to pay attention to the rules, and avoid punitive diplomacy, with the message that those who listen to us stand to gain," Pan observed.

To succeed, China must learn how to woo the hearts and minds of peoples along the Belt and Road in view of their distinct histories and cultures, rather than just in terms of trade.

As the Belt and Road initiative involves countries very diverse in their culture and religion, working out rules on the basis of negotiations will be a great challenge.

"Could China resuscitate its ancient belief in liyi (ceremony and propriety) as the basis to achieve governance between different countries?" Pan pondered aloud. But Pan was sure that "We need cultural confidence, otherwise we cannot but be Westernized in our outlook and attitude."

Pan mused that "the more I read Chinese books, the more I realize why li and yi could be an important dimensions to the Belt and Road concept."

Professor Zhu Weilie from Shanghai International Studies University also noted the need of a superstructure in the conception of the Belt Road initiative.

He stressed the importance of the support of values, without which there can be no common ground for dialogue.

Professor Huang Renwei, President of Shanghai Association of American Studies, cited security threats that might emerge with the implementation of the initiative, and the need for significantly more funding to finance future projects. These were among just a few of the potential problems raised.

Solving these challenges will involve knowledge and expertise from multiple disciplines, and the pooling of talent in countries along the road.

Hopefully, all these efforts would help build a new global development model that is open, inclusive, balanced and mutually-beneficial.

Wan Lixin is professor at the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China, and director of China-Europe Academic Network.
The "251 dash-line" map on Ministry of Harmony, a satirical "news" site.

In May, the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University hosted an international conference to explore the South China Sea dispute. The conference brought together experts from universities and research institutions from around the world and across the United States, including U.S. Naval War College, Harvard Law School, and Yale's CSEAS, to speak about the South China Sea issue. The conference was a typical academic workshop with panels of experts talking about their work and promoting their ideas, but this particular conference may have raised an even more important issue regarding deeply ingrained Western misperceptions about China.

In a recent article penned by Dr. Harry Kazianis, Director of Defense Studies at The Center for the National Interest, the author describes some of the more lively backroom drama at the conference. He writes that on the sidelines of the conference most panel experts were focused on rumors of China's "latest territorial claims" about a "251 dash-line" that extends Beijing's claims to Hawaii and almost the entire Pacific Ocean, something he calls "mapfare." As it turns out, Dr. Kazianis and unspecified other experts were actually fooled by a 2-year-old piece of political satire.

How China's "latest territorial claims" got the conference buzzing in the first place is not talked about, but the "251 dash-line" mapfare that caused the stir is from a little-known satirical "news" site called Ministry of Harmony. One might expect a different conclusion to soon emerge after the experts realized the outrageous territorial claims were a joke, but the story continues along the same line in an attempt to drive home a much larger point. The point being that China is perceived as some sort of rogue state and this ingrained perception of China on the world stage as a power bent on domination is none other than China's fault. Dr. Kazianis writes: "The fact that none of us at the conference were shocked speaks volumes to the now ingrained perception of China on the international stage as a power bent on changing the status-quono matter what the cost." He closes by saying, "It's something Beijing should bear in mind."

The story is amusing but also alarming and ultimately insightful. Well-studied, experienced authorities fall for an Onion-esque article that is 2 years old at a major academic conference and after realizing that they were duped nevertheless reach the same exact conclusion and then blame China for the negative perception. What does this tell us about how the West perceives China? Old thinking that is out of step with the new realities of world politics and not "the fact that none of us at the conference were shocked" is what really speaks volumes about the whole perception issue. The deeply ingrained Western belief that China has no choice but to act aggressively and therefore will and must act aggressively just like Western powers of the past is pushing a narrative that Beijing wants to avoid. Simply put, China's negative image on the world stage is more manufactured by the West than it is shaped by China's actions, and perhaps this is the something we should carry in our mind. If you open up the black box and study China's actions, it is clear that leaders in Beijing want to tamp down geopolitical rivalry, not promote it.
You are here: Home

The international news agency Thomson-Reuters recently published a ranking of the Top 75 Asia's Most Innovative Universities.

The winner was KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, thanks to its original and influential research. The runner up was the University of Tokyo and the second runner up Seoul National University.

Seventeen of the top 20 are based in Japan and South Korea.

In total there are 22 Chinese universities on the ranking, more than any other country. Unfortunately, none of them made into the top 10. The highest is Tsinghua University, which ranked 13th, while Peking University was No. 16.

The criteria that contributed to the composite score include volume of patent submissions, patent success, global patents, patent citations, patent citation impact, percentage of cited patent, patent to article citation impact, industry article citation impact, percentage of industry collaborative articles, and total web of science core collection papers.

The following are the top 10 most innovative universities in Asia.

Keio University

Keio University [File photo]

Location: Japan

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
You are here: Home

 Flash

Organized by Beijing International Studies University, the 13th Beijing Dialogue of China Tourism Development was held on Monday in Hongya county, Sichuan province.

The dialogue drew more than 300 government officials, researchers and leaders in the tourism and medical tourism sectors to Qiliping in Hongya to compare notes on the development of the sectors and of tourism in the area.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Cao Weidong, president of Beijing International Studies University, said that the dialogue was of great significance to the development of China's tourism and medical tourism sectors as well as poverty alleviation in West China.

Monday marked the first time the dialogue has been held in West China since its debut in 2004, said Yang Yunliang, Party chief of Hongya.

Hongya is one of Sichuan's less developed county's, but it boasts abundant tourism resources.

Qiliping is known as the mountainside of Mount Emei, one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in China.

The others are in Wutai, Shanxi province; Jiuhua, Anhui province; and Putuo, Zhejiang province.

Buddhism spread to Mount Emei about 2,000 years ago, and the mountain, with its approximately 30 monasteries, is a pilgrimage destination for Buddhists today.

Emei is a poetic term for "beautiful women" in Chinese.

Covering 154 square kilometers, Mount Emei was included in the UNESCO World Natural and Cultural Heritage List in 1996.

The mountain offers a panoramic view of the landscape throughout the year.

In spring, its azaleas are a vibrant red.

In summer, its lush green trees and grass give it a verdant look.

In autumn, the mountain is a riot of colors; the green, yellow, orange and red of the trees mingling with the blue sky.

And in winter, the mountain becomes a white wonderland, with the ancient temples, trees and mountain slopes covered in snow.
 Flash

China and Vietnam pledged on Monday to properly manage maritime differences and further enhance bilateral substantial cooperation.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) shakes hands with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 12, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The pledge came as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang held talks with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who is paying an official visit to China starting Saturday.

During the talks held at the Great Hall of the People, Li told Phuc the South China Sea issue is related to territorial sovereignty, maritime interests as well as national sentiment.

"China and Vietnam need to work together to abide by agreements reached by the leaders of the two countries, safeguard stability in the South China Sea, and build consensus to advance bilateral ties and safeguard maritime and regional peace," Li said.

Phuc said Vietnam would like to properly resolve maritime issues with China in the spirit of equality and mutual respect and in a peaceful way.

He suggested the two sides manage their differences, conduct maritime cooperation in areas of low sensitivity and maintain a stable situation in the South China Sea to prevent the maritime issue from casting a shadow over bilateral ties.

This was Phuc's first visit to China since he was elected prime minister in July during the first session of the 14th National Assembly of Vietnam.

It is also the first high-level visit to Beijing by Vietnamese leaders since the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) held in January.

Li said China is willing to continue the policy of promoting friendship and partnership with its neighbors on the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, adding that China is willing to enhance strategic communication and high-level exchanges with Vietnam.

Stressing that both China and Vietnam are in a critical period of reform and development, Li said the two countries need to continue maritime, land and financial cooperation, synergize bilateral and sub-regional development strategies and strengthen cooperation on infrastructure construction, production capacity, trade and investment.

He also suggested both countries carry out cultural and people-to-people exchanges and enhance cooperation in areas including political parties, defense and law enforcement.

Phuc said friendly cooperation has always been the main trend in bilateral ties over the past 66 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties.

Vietnam will always remember China's huge support to the cause of its national liberation and construction, said Phuc.

He said it is the consistent stance of the CPV and the Vietnamese government as well as his country's foreign policy priority to maintain its traditional friendship with China and consolidate the steady and healthy development of bilateral ties.

Hailing the positive momentum of the relationship, Phuc said Vietnam is willing to enhance cooperation with China on political, economic and cultural fronts and further coordination in international affairs.

Prior the talks, Li held a welcoming ceremony for Phuc.

After the talks, Li and Phuc witnessed the signing of documents on the economy and trade, production capacity, infrastructure, education and other areas.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters after the talks that the two leaders had a "good" conversation and the new government of Vietnam shows "positive willingness" to further develop relations with China.

According to Liu, the delegation led by Phuc, consisting of 32 ministerial officials and other delegates, is the largest Vietnamese government delegation to visit China in recent years.

Phuc arrived in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, on Saturday to attend the 13th China-ASEAN Expo and the China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit, where he met with Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli on the sidelines of the meetings.

He also met with Chinese top legislator Zhang Dejiang and top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng in Beijing on Monday and is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday, said Liu.

Phuc will leave Beijing for Hong Kong on Wednesday.
 Flash

A Russian fleet arrived at a port in Zhanjiang in south China's Guangdong Province on Monday, with Chinese naval forces gathering for a joint drill.

Officers and soldiers of Chinese Navy hold a welcome ceremony as a Russian fleet arrive at a port in Zhanjiang, south China's Guangdong Province, Sept. 12, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The "Joint Sea 2016" drill will go ahead between Sept. 12 and 19 in the South China Sea, off Guangdong.

Wang Hai, Chinese chief director of the exercise and deputy commander of the Chinese Navy, said that this year marks the 20th anniversary of the two sides establishing strategic cooperation.

The two sides have conducted six joint navy drills in five years, and the drill will enhance the abilities of both sides to counter common security threats, said Wang at the welcoming ceremony.

Chinese Navy spokesperson Liang Yang said the drill will feature the highest level of standardization, combat and digitalization in recent China-Russia drills.

Participants will undertake joint air defense, anti-submarine operations, landing, island-seizing, search and rescue, and weapon use.

The Russian Navy will bring three surface ships, two supply ships, two helicopters, 96 marines, as well as amphibious armored equipment.

Most of the Chinese forces come from the Nanhai Fleet under the People's Liberation Army Navy, with some from the Beihai Fleet and Donghai Fleet.

A total of 10 ships from the Chinese Navy, including destroyers, frigates, landing ships, supply ships and submarines, will take part in the drill, as well as 11 fixed-wing aircraft, eight helicopters and 160 marines, and amphibious armored equipment.

According to a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson in July, the drill will not target a third party.

Liang said the joint navy drill will feature in-depth coordination between the navies of the two countries.

The drill will make use of a China-Russia joint command information system for the first time, Liang said, adding that the system is capable of sending, receiving and sharing information among all command posts and combat units at all levels.p The paperwork and command processes during the drill will be standardized and optimized to make organizational work more effective, the spokesperson said.

Liang said the "deep coordination at a high level" between the two countries' navies will further deepen practical cooperation, promote friendship and enhance mutual trust between the two navies.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
 Flash

Libya's eastern government forces said Monday that they have taken over Zueitina, a major port in the oil crescent region.

"Our armed forces managed to take control over the port of Zueitina and fully secure it," said Mohamed Al-Azumi, spokesman of the forces led by Maj. Gen. Khalifa Haftar.

Haftar's forces on Sunday launched a sneak attack on the oil crescent, a region containing Libya's largest oil ports, and announced taking over the ports of Ras Lanuf and Sidra.

The Tripoli-based, United Nations-backed government of national accord denounced the attack.

"The Presidential Council of the Government of National Accord believes that this unjustified escalation will only prolong the conflict and will cause losses of Libyan lives and livelihood," it said in a statement.

"The Presidential Council of the Government of National Accord is following up the news about the possibility of some foreign troops exploiting the current situation and entering some vital and strategic areas," the statement said. "It this regard, the Council will spare no effort to eliminate those forces, should such information be correct."

The oil sector, Libya's main source of income, has been suffering drastically since the upheavals that toppled Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011, due to armed attacks and political division.

The north African country remains divided politically between two governments and parliaments, despite a UN-brokered peace agreement signed by the country's political rivals in December 2015.

Meanwhile, in Sirte, a city not far from the oil ports, unity government forces fighting Islamic State (IS) affiliates said they have taken control of most of the city, trapping the remaining IS fighters in a small area in Sirte.

The recent spate of attacks on oil ports is believed to have further complicated the situation in Libya.
 Flash

Kenya's security officers have intensified operations to hunt for more terror suspects behind Sunday's foiled suicide bomb attack at a police station in the coastal city.

Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet said on Monday that three more suspected accomplices of three suicide bombers shot dead on Sunday have been arrested in connection to the foiled attack at the central police station in Mombasa

Boinnet said the police investigators have also managed to identify two of the three women shot dead on Sunday while trying to bomb the station.

This brings the total number of suspects to four after one person was arrested earlier on Sunday for housing the three women within Kibokoni estate in Mombasa.

"Immediate investigations into the incident revealed the attackers as Tasnim Yakub Abdullahi Farah and Fatuma Omar who hails from Kibokoni, Mombasa County. The third attacker is yet to be identified," Boinnet said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

He said further investigations have led to a thorough search at the residence of Tasnim in Mombasa where three other suspected accomplices -- all Somali refugees -- were found and arrested.

"The three suspected accomplices were established to be Somali refugees - Saeda Ali Haji, Naema Nahamed Ahmed and Shukri Ali Haji. The three were being hosted by Tasnim in Kibokoni and are now in custody, assisting the police with investigations," Boinnet said.

He said security operations are ongoing in the tourism resort city to identify and arrest all those who may have been involved in the planning and execution of the Sunday attack.
Flagstaff Fire Department responded to three suspected arson wildfires in the Pine Knoll and Brannen Homes neighborhoods early Tuesday.

All three fires were reported within a 20-minute period starting at approximately 2:30 a.m. in the 1300 block of East Sundrop Lane. The other fires were in the 100 block of South Woodland Circle and the 1100 block of East Jen Drive. They were all burning in close proximity to several homes.

Flagstaff Fire Department crews worked with Flagstaff Police Department personnel and neighborhood residents to quickly contain and extinguish the blazes. No injuries or serious property damage were reported.

The fire department said all three wildfires were human caused.

Arson wildfires have been an ongoing problem in the Pine Knoll and Brannen Homes neighborhoods. In July, an early morning, human-caused wildfire threatened multiple homes near East Trail of the Woods Street, prompting evacuations.

Firefighters also responded to a human-caused wildfire that started near the Flagstaff Urban Trail System and the Brannen Homes neighborhood one night in June. The police evacuated residents of nearby apartments while the fire department worked to stop the flames from spreading uphill toward the residences on Calle Contenta.

Investigators are still working to identify those responsible for the recent wildfires. Flagstaff Fire Department is asking everyone in the wooded areas near Pine Knoll and Brannen Homes to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity.
 Flash

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Monday launched a national strategy to counter violent extremism in the Horn of Africa nation which has been grappling with frequent terror attacks.

Mohamud said the Comprehensive National Strategy on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) for Somalia is in line with the United Nations' call to the member states to develop national strategy for CVE.

"I am very pleased that Somalia now has a comprehensive national strategy on P/CVE, which will greatly help us to reduce violent extremism and at the same time to better coordinate all programs and activities relating to Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism," he said during the launch in Mogadishu.

Mohamud said majority of Somalis have denounced violent extremism, and the strategy has been developed in consultation with government officials with the active involvement of regional administrations as well as civil society.

The Somali leader said his government also carried out an online public consultation in order to reach out to all citizens including Somalis in the diaspora.

"This will be based on a better understanding of the process of recruitment and the drivers of violent extremism as well as the development of sufficient capacity to support resilience within communities so they can live and prosper in a more peaceful Somalia," said Mohamud.

He said the national strategy will be regularly updated based on assessments that evaluate government's implementation efforts, measure the impact of those efforts, account for new findings and data from research and take into consideration any significant changes that have occurred in the threat or information landscape.

The president added that this strategy will serve as an integral part of national security.

"Violent extremists are also actively recruiting children, some of whom are barely teenagers; therefore, it is our own national interest. Furthermore, military alone cannot bring peace and stability and that is why we needed prevention and countering of violent extremism in our country."
 Flash

Hillary Clinton's campaign acknowledged on Monday it mishandled public concerns about Clinton's medical condition and said additional medical details of Clinton would soon be released.

The offer to release more Clinton's medical details came after weeks of blunt refusal to do so and was the latest step for the campaign to quell long-time speculation about Clinton's health that climaxed on Sunday after Clinton was videotaped being helped into a van while her feet appeared to be dragging on the ground.

"I think that in retrospect, we could have handled it better in terms of providing more information more quickly," said Clinton's spokesman Brian Fallon in an interview with MSNBC.

Clinton on Sunday morning abruptly left a 9/11 memorial in New York and her campaign initially told reporters that Clinton had been "overheated".

Soon a video shot by a witness surfaced online, in which an apparently ailing Clinton struggled to steady herself and had to be helped by two Secret Service agents into her van.

About 90 minutes after the episode, Clinton emerged and waved to onlookers.

Almost five hours after the release of the video, the Clinton campaign released a statement from Clinton's physician which read that Clinton had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday and left the memorial after becoming dehydrated and overheated.

The Clinton campaign did not disclose the diagnosis until the episode on Sunday.

"There's no other undisclosed condition. The pneumonia is the extent of it," Clinton's spokesman Fallon told MSNBC.

While Republicans seized on the secrecy surrounding Clinton's medical record to attack Clinton, even Clinton's allies criticized the Clinton campaign on Monday for lack of transparency.

"Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia," wrote David Axelrod, U.S. President Barack Obama's senior adviser on Twitter. "What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?"

Meanwhile, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who shared even less information about his own medical details than Clinton did, was also bogged down in controversy surrounding his brief medical report that stated that Trump would be the "healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

It was later disclosed that the doctor who wrote the only public documentation about Trump's health spent five minutes writing the report.

In his interview with Fox News on Monday, Trump said he would release "very, very specific numbers" from a medical exam he took last week.
 Flash

The South African government on Monday called on all stakeholders to work together to eradicate illegal mining in the country.

"One of our biggest tasks is to get to the syndicates behind these operations, as well as the markets they're supplying," Minister of Mineral Resources Zwane said.

This came amid reports that a number of illegal miners were trapped underground in an abandoned gold mine in Johannesburg.

A rescue team managed to save four miners on Sunday, but suspended the search later due to high levels of carbon dioxide underground.

Six miners reportedly remained trapped underground. It is still unclear when the miners got into the mine. The illegal miners are believed to come from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Zwane said rescue teams will later on Monday assess the levels of carbon dioxide underground, to determine whether rescue operations can resume.

Meanwhile, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday also called for the speedy rescue of trapped miners. However, it said the number of trapped could be more than 50. The DA's figures cannot be officially confirmed.

"We call on law enforcement to exact the full might of the law on these syndicates who lethally exploit desperate people looking to put food on the table," the DA said in a statement.

"The scale of the disaster at the Langlaagte gold mine is unknown. One report said 51 miners were down the abandoned mine. So far seven are believed dead with others trapped underground," said James Lorimer, DA Shadow Minister of Mineral Resources.

"These tragedies will continue until there is credible action by the state to stop illegal mining," said Lorimer.

He said unstopped illegal mining indicates state failure on multiple levels such as unpoliced borders which allow the easy ingress of illegal miners, lack of legislation making illegal mining itself a crime and little action to close down and arrest people working at gold washing tables scattered across the area.

Zwane, on the other hand, said the mineral resources ministry is working together with law enforcement agencies to ensure that perpetrators are brought to book, he said.

Thus far, over 800 arrests have been made and weekly disruptive operations are undertaken, according to the minister.

Over 200 holes have been closed by the department and mining companies, thus cutting off illegal access to disused mining operations, Zwane said.

According to the South African Chamber of Mines, over six billion rand (about 420 million US dollars) is lost through illegal mining annually.

About 70 percent of illegal miners are illegal immigrants, according to the chamber, adding about 14,000 people are involved in illegal mining in South Africa.
 Flash

U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's health scare has triggered fresh speculation about her health and revived concerns about her physical fitness for running for the White House.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks during a voter registration rally at the University of South Florida September 6, 2016 in Tampa, Florida. [Photo/Xinhua]

The former secretary of state on Sunday morning abruptly left a 9/11 memorial in New York and her campaign initially told reporters that Clinton had been "overheated."

Soon a video shot by a witness surfaced online, in which an apparently ailing Clinton struggled to steady herself and had to be helped by two secret service agents into her van. She was driven to her daughter's apartment in Manhattan.

About 90 minutes after the episode, Clinton emerged and waved to onlookers. As she came out of the apartment shortly before noon, Clinton said, "I'm feeling great. It's a beautiful day in New York." She was then driven to her home in suburban Chappaqua, New York.

Almost five hours after the release of the video, the Clinton campaign released a statement from Clinton's physician which read that Clinton had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday and left the memorial after becoming dehydrated and overheated.

The Democratic nominee said she did not disclose pneumonia diagnosis immediately because she did not "think it was going to be that big a deal."

"There's no other undisclosed condition. The pneumonia is the extent of it," Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC.

Her campaign acknowledged on Monday it mishandled public concerns about Clinton's medical condition and said additional medical details of Clinton's would soon be released.

In an unusually restrained manner, her rival, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, offered her his wishes for a rapid recovery in his first public comments since Clinton left Sunday's Ground Zero ceremony.

"Something is going on but I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail, and we'll be seeing her at the debate" in two weeks, the Republican told Fox News.

But he also said Clinton's health issues were of longer standing than admitted, and promised to release "very, very specific numbers" from a medical exam he took last week.

Trump and his supporters have questioned Clinton's health, saying Clinton is physically unfit for the White House and accusing her of being "exhausted" and sleeping too much.

However, Trump, who shared even less information about his own medical details than Clinton did, was also bogged down in controversy surrounding his brief medical report that stated that Trump would be the "healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

It was later disclosed that the doctor who wrote the only public documentation about Trump's health spent five minutes writing the report.

Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, said in an interview Tuesday with PBS that Hillary Clinton is "doing fine" after a good night's sleep. He added that if there are more health problems that caused her apparent weakness Monday, "then it's a mystery to me and all of her doctors."

He said that "on more than one occasion" over the years "the same sort of thing's happened to her when she got severely dehydrated."

According to an aide to the former president, Bill Clinton will fly to a campaign event Wednesday in Nevada on behalf of his wife, who was forced to cancel a series of campaign fundraisers in California scheduled on Monday and Tuesday.

Speculation about Clinton's health dates back to 2012, toward the end of her tenure as secretary of state.

A stomach virus and dehydration prompted her to faint, causing what her doctor said was a concussion. Doctors said they found a blood clot in the brain. Clinton later received the all-clear.

On Monday, Fallon insisted that "there was nothing here in terms of anything that was caused by what happened in 2012."

He also said Clinton's team would be releasing medical records "in the next few days" in order to "further put to rest any lingering concerns about what you saw yesterday."
You are here: Home

 Flash

A Russian navy ship arrives at a port in Zhanjiang, south China's Guangdong Province, Sept. 12, 2016. A Russian fleet arrived in Zhanjiang on Monday, with Chinese naval forces gathering for a joint drill. The "Joint Sea 2016" drill will go ahead between September 12 and 19 in the South China Sea, off Guangdong. [Xinhua]

China and Russia started a joint naval drill off Guangdong Province in the South China Sea on Tuesday.

The "Joint Sea 2016" drill will run from September 12 to 19, and feature navy surface ships, submarines, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, marines and amphibious armored equipment.

Wang Hai, Chinese chief director of the exercise and deputy commander of the Chinese Navy, said that the joint drill is "a strategic measure" and concrete action to promote the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination and deepen exchanges and cooperation between the two militaries, especially the two navies.

The drill will highlight real combat, digitization and standardization to promote naval cooperation.

Several procedures will be undertaken during the drill, including joint air defense, anti-submarine operations, landing, island-seizing, search and rescue, and weapon use.
 Flash

India and the United States will embark on a two-week joint military exercise in the hilly state of Uttarakhand Wednesday.

The 12th edition of joint military exercise "Yudh Abhyas" (war exercise), focusing on anti-insurgency and anti-terrorist operations, will be held in the hills of Uttarakhand from September 14 to 27, according to an official statement Tuesday.

"Yudh Abhyas" 2016 will simulate a scenario where both nations are working together in a counter insurgency and counter terrorism environment in mountainous terrain under a United Nations charter, the statement said.

Over 200 U.S. Army personnel and 200 Indian Army personnel will take part in the military exercise, the curriculum of which "is progressively planned where the participants are initially made to get familiar with each other's organisational structure, weapons, equipment and drills."

"Subsequently, the training advances to joint tactical exercises wherein the battle drills of both the armies are coherently unleashed," the statement added.
 Flash

China has condemned Japan's weapon sales to India as a "shameless move."

According to media report, the Japanese Government is promoting the sale of weapons worth 1.6 billion U.S. dollars to India. Japan will lower the prices as much as possible in exchange for strengthened cooperation in defense and security and to encourage India to become more involved on the South China Sea issue.

Hua Chunying, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Tuesday that China has no objection to normal defense cooperation, but it would be a "shameless move" if somebody uses this for ulterior motives.
PHOENIX -- Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick is going to have to change a lot of minds if she hopes to oust John McCain in November, a new poll shows.

The survey done this past week for NBC and the Wall Street Journal by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion shows the five-term incumbent Republican with a 57-38 percent lead over his challenger. And just 6 percent said they were undecided or wanted someone else.

Thats in stark contrast to a survey done by Public Policy Polling released last week that shows the race in a 43-43 tie.

But a poll done for CNN before McCain crushed Kelli Ward in the Republican primary showed him leading Kirkpatrick at that time by 52 to 39 percent.

D.B. Mitchell, press aide for Kirkpatrick's Senate campaign, dismissed the results as "a complete outlier.''

He specifically cited the poll's conclusion that McCain has a 5-point lead among Latino voters. Mitchell said that runs contrary to other surveys that show Hispanics leaning more toward Kirkpatrick. And he said that support for her is only going to increase as McCain continues his support for Trump.

But Latinos appear to be making a distinction between the state's senior senator and New York billionaire Donald Trump. Just 26 percent said they are currently leaning toward voting for Trump.

What's also working against the challenger is the money factor.

The most recent campaign filings last month showed McCain, who has raised more than $9.8 million this election cycle, still has more than $5 million in the bank. That's more than twice as much as Kirkpatrick reported.

Mitchell said the campaign remains undeterred.

"We are really confident in the position and the program we've put together across the state, both of our media and our grassroots operation to reach out to voters,'' he said.

HATE-HATE

The picture in the presidential race, at least in Arizona, is different. The sample of 1,102 adults, including 946 registered voters and 649 likely voters, showed Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a statistical dead heat. That could put the final results of that race into the hands of the nearly 20 percent who told pollsters they want neither presidential contender or are undecided.

Among likely voters, the survey shows Trump with 40 percent and Clinton at 38 percent. Libertarian Gary Johnson clocks in with 12 percent of those questions, with 3 percent for Jill Stein of the Green Party, and the other 7 percent undecided or wanting someone else.

Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said what appears to be driving the race in Arizona and some other states is not that voters particularly like one or the other.

"In fact, the electorate is so turned off by these candidates that about one in five likely voters in these states have a hate-hate view of both of them,'' he said in a prepared statement. It was even more pronounced in Arizona, Miringoff said, where 24 percent of likely voters questioned "have a negative impression of both Clinton and Trump.''

For all adults, the margin of error is 3 percentage points. That increases to 3.2 points for registered voters and 3.8 percentage percent for those considered likely voters.
Three years after a reshuffling of duties, two organizations working on food security in Coconino County say they are on improved footing and are embarking on new efforts as fall begins.

St. Marys Food Bank Alliance is continuing a pilot program to provide summer and after school food assistance to local children while the Flagstaff Family Food Center, Food Bank and Kitchen, led by a new executive director, has begun more sophisticated fundraising efforts and improved its data collection to go after state and national grants for the first time.

Hunger relief work in the greater Flagstaff area was jostled in 2013 when Phoenix-based St. Marys Food Bank Alliance decided to close its Flagstaff warehouse for cost and efficiency reasons. That left a void in local food box packing and distribution services as well as food rescue services.

Soon after, the Flagstaff Family Food Center and the Northern Arizona Food Bank agreed to merge their operations to fill those service gaps, but the transition hasnt been without challenges. A year after the new Flagstaff Family Food Center, Food Bank and Kitchen was created, it laid off four full time workers to address a $200,000 shortfall created as the organization struggled to fill its expanded mission, according to the former director.

Going into this fiscal year, new Executive Director Lindsey Spear said she doesnt think the organization is in the same panic financially as it was a couple of years ago. Spear officially stepped into the director position three weeks ago after previously serving as the organizations development director.

Spear said her aim now is to build up enough of a financial cushion for the nonprofit to avoid being vulnerable to annual ups and downs. That goal, as well as several major one-time maintenance needs  for forklifts and refrigerated trucks, for example  led the organization to set its fundraising goal $70,000 higher than the $830,000 it took in last year, Spear said.

The director said she recognized that going for the additional dollars is really going to be the stretch.

The community has been sustaining us at the $800,000 level and now we're going to be asking for a bit more, she said.

Thanks to a new data collection system, though, the Food Center will be able to go after state and federal grants to fulfill at least part of its fundraising goal, Spear said. An entire years worth of reliable, consistent data is a base requirement for many of those grants that the nonprofit has thus far has been unable to meet, she said.

For its part, St. Marys provides the majority of the food for Flagstaff Family Food Centers operations, bringing two truckloads a week from its Phoenix distribution center. St. Marys is also the umbrella agent for the Food Centers food recovery efforts from grocery stores.

Between that food recovery and deliveries from Phoenix, 1.8 million pounds of food went through St. Marys to the Flagstaff Family Food Center last year, said Sean Hurley, the agency relations manager for northern Arizona. Thats about half of the 4.5 million pounds that went to all St. Marys partner agencies in Coconino County, Hurley said.

Some of that food is going to an after-school program that is still in the pilot phase. This fall will begin the second year that St. Marys is providing after-school food assistance to Flagstaff students at the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Club, Hurley said. A similar program, called Kids Cafe, will begin this fall at Pine Forest Charter School, he said.

Both nonprofits have received assistance from the Coconino County Board of Supervisors in recent months. Flagstaff Family Food Center received $6,300 for a walk-in cooler repair in March while St. Marys received $10,000 in August for food distribution throughout the county.

They serve distinct purposes, Todd Madeksza, the countys government relations director, said of the two nonprofits.

While Flagstaff Family Food Centers work is concentrated in the Flagstaff region, St. Marys has been instrumental in providing food to rural parts of the county like Kaibab Estates West and the Havasupai Indian Reservation, said Art Babbott, who provided the bulk of the recent funding for both organizations out of his districts pot of community initiative grant money.

Its important to me that we value the variety of partners that do such important work in our community, Babbott said.
By Leah Marieann Klett

May 25, 2016 12:05 pm EDT

 A new report from persecution watchdog ChinaAid has revealed that a total of 20,000 Chinese Christians suffered religious persecution in 2015 as the Communist government continues its campaign seeking to stunt the growth of Christianity in the country. However, Christianity continues to grow at a dramatic rate.

In 2015, ChinaAid documented 634 cases of persecution in which 19,426 religious practitioners were persecuted, representing an 8.62 percent increase from 2014s 17,884 religious practitioners persecuted, read a statement in the 2015 Annual Report Chinese Government Persecution of Christians and Churches in China conducted by ChinaAid.

By 2030, Chinas total Christian population, including

Catholics, is predicted to exceed 247 million, placing it above

Mexico, Brazil and the United States. Photo Credit: Reuters

The report reveals that Christians have particularly been targeted in Chinas Three Rectification and One Demolition beautification campaign, which has seen the demolition of at least 1,200 crosses and numerous places of worship in the past couple of years. Earlier this year, the demolition of one church led to the death of a pastors wife in in Zhumadian, Henan province.

Hundreds of Christians, including pastors, lawyers, and activists, have been arrested for speaking out against the ongoing persecution, and many of them are still detained.

The report also pointed out that aside from Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims likely experienced even more intense government persecution by the atheistic Chinese government.

ChinaAid, which has been monitoring the development of religious freedom in China since 2002, notes that Christianity in the Communist country continues to grow despite ongoing persecution.

Christians fasted, prayed and organized protests, and the steadfast response of these churches spread to other places, producing widespread public opposition to the governments brutal cross demolitions, it explained.

These included large-scale fasting and praying by Christians everywhere, believers tying themselves to crosses, street protests of Christians holding small wooden crosses, church members re-erecting downed crosses, and even Christians physically fighting the governments cross demolition efforts.

In addition, the faith of many church members was strengthened by the victories of human rights lawyers who took to court Christian cases in the form of civil law, administrative law, and property rights law, the report notes.

Because of this, ChinaAid is optimistic that the Christian faith will eventually overcome all obstacles.

Despite the worsening situation of religious freedom in China in the last decade, China Aid sees great hope in the fast growth of the house church movement across China and firmly believes that Gods love and justice will eventually cover the vast expanse of this nation, concludes the report.

Another persecution watchdog, Open Doors USA, has placed the country at 33rd on its World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most persecution.

In April, retired Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun of Hong Kong called on Beijing to end the persecution of Christians and allow religious freedom, insisting that those who keep silent about such matters are guilty of being accomplices.

Facing all this persecution, we cannot take it for granted. We cannot stand idly. If we keep silent, we are accomplices, he said.

China Aid Contacts

Rachel Ritchie, English Media Director

Cell: (432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+ (888) 889-7757 | Other: (432) 689-6985

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.chinaaid.org
The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Saturday, Sept. 10:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a master propagandist. Media manipulation is his forte. But he cant do it all on his own. Hes needs minions who can chip away at that furrowed brow the West always has when it thinks about the Kremlin, a few good messengers who can disseminate the storyline that Vlads not so bad after all  certainly not the shadowy, scheming authoritarian the West always portrays him to be.

RT, a state-owned Russian television network once known as Russia Today, was created by the Kremlin in 2005 to provide that very function. But the network needs household names in its programming, personalities with enough street cred to at least get headline-grabbing attention from London to Los Angeles.

Maybe thats the way we should interpret GOP presidential candidate Donald Trumps perplexing decision to agree to an interview aired on RTs American arm, RT America  was it a tryout? The Donald always has so many lines in the water  was he auditioning to be a Putin propagandist?

We jest, of course, but were once again scratching our heads about the Trump teams judgment, and more specifically, its inability to see the folly in appearing so charmed by a world leader who has spent a decade and a half trampling on human rights, snatching up sovereign territory and eliminating political opponents.

Well grant that Trumps not playing for the other team. Nevertheless, unwittingly he still fell in lockstep with what makes RT tick. On a network that represents the antithesis of free expression, he accused American media outlets as being dishonest. Putin must have been beaming. And when asked if he believed Russian hackers sneaked into Democratic Party databases, Trump said thats probably unlikely. Congratulations, Comrade Trump, youre hired!

Trump was interviewed by former CNN journalist Larry King, who now anchors a prime-time interview show that airs on RT. Trumps people contend they didnt know that the interview would appear on RT. Its widely known that Kings show appears on RT, so either their researchers should be sacked or theyre not telling the truth. The interview also comes at a time when Trump faces still more criticism about Kremlin cozying, this time for remarks at an NBC candidates forum Wednesday in which he said of Putin, Certainly in that system hes been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.

Weve said before that Trumps perspective on Putin is naive  and dangerous. And as far as the Russian leader is concerned, he doesnt really have to put Trump on the payroll. Trumps playing patsy as laid out in the Kremlin playbook  whether he knows it or not.

What Congress didnt do

The following editorial appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, Sept. 7:

Welcome back to work, Congress! We see the Senate picked up where it left off before its seven-week summer recess  blocking a bill to provide $1.1 billion for Zika prevention efforts because of a provision barring funding for Planned Parenthood.

While you were out campaigning or barbequing, however, the number of Zika cases in the U.S. more than doubled to 2,700, and people infected with the virus turned up in every state. A total of 17 babies have been born with Zika-related birth defects, and about 1,600 pregnant women are known to have been exposed. And those are just the cases we know about; some 80 percent of those infected with the disease have mild or no symptoms.

These figures come from the nations top health officials, who have been working hard this summer to keep track of Zikas spread, help local public health agencies deal with cases and develop a vaccine. These efforts were made all the more difficult when you took a reasonable Zika funding compromise and somehow turned it into yet another fight over reproductive rights.

The agencies have done an admirable job keeping the anti-Zika work going despite receiving no extra dollars, borrowing from the funds intended for fighting cancer and Ebola. But they are down to the last few millions, and this shell game cant last.

Its up to you now to put aside the politics and free up money for Zika research and prevention. Congress is expected to take up a measure soon that would be the perfect vehicle: a stop-gap spending bill to prevent a government shutdown. If that bill fails, you will not only endanger unborn babies but also real-live voters.

Elephants under siege

The following editorial appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday, Sept. 7:

The results of a two-year air and land survey of Africas savannah elephants released last week revealed that the population had dropped by 30 percent in seven years.

Measured in the 18 countries that contain most of the population, the study counted 352,271 elephants remaining, an astonishing drop of 144,000 from 2007 to 2014. Called the Great Elephant Census, it was underwritten by the family foundation of Paul G. Allen, the Microsoft co-founder.

It is obvious that the total extermination of the African elephant, achieved mostly through poaching for ivory but also through habitat loss, is approaching real possibility. This is occurring in spite of the growing popularity of ecotourism and greater general environmental consciousness on the part of the world population.

Analysis of what is going on becomes more interesting looking at the countries involved. There are African countries that are relatively safe havens for elephants. These include Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Namibia, South Africa and Uganda. There are other African countries that either because of corruption, lack of attention to protection of the animals or out-of-control warfare are seeing their elephant stocks drop sharply.

Tanzania, a country where tourism is an important component in its economy, has lost two-thirds of its elephants. Angola, Cameroon, Mali, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are losing theirs. Namibia did not make numbers available for the survey. The Central African Republic, home to forest elephants found in the Congo River basin area, and South Sudan were considered too dangerous to be surveyed.

China is considered the richest market for ivory. It is either unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps to put an end to the market that causes the slaughter of the elephants, to its shame.

It will be to the great dishonor of humankind if the eventual disappearance of the African elephant occurs. Humans can obviously survive without elephants on this earth. But they can much more easily do without the geegaws and tacky works of art that are bringing about the extermination of elephants.

Schlafly was one of a kind

The following editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday, Sept. 7:

Phyllis Schlafly was an anti-womens rights activist with a law degree, two-time candidate for Congress and a successful businesswoman. Whether heralded as a giant of the American conservative movement or vilified as a hypocrite who set the womens rights movement back decades, Schlafly was always controversial and often successful.

Her death on Monday at age 92 is symbolic of a dying era in which American conservatives have tried desperately to preserve traditional male-female roles at a time of rapid change and demand for workplace gender equality. She killed off the Equal Rights Amendment long before her passing. Schlafly, the daughter of an attorney and a librarian, was born and raised in St. Louis.

Ambitious, determined and shrewd, Schlafly did not let a husband and six children slow her conservative Eagle Forum crusade. While admonishing women for not staying home with their children, she was out on the hustings as the architect of a flag-waving campaign style that inspired Republican strategies of today.

When Schlafly set her sights on defeating the proposed constitutional amendment to guarantee equal rights for women, it already had lopsided approval in both houses of Congress. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter supported it, while First Ladies Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter actively lobbied for its passage.

The amendment was first introduced in 1923. By the time Congress passed it in 1972, it had widespread popular support and was expected to easily acquire the required ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.

Schlafly launched her effort as the ratification effort neared completion. She had no organized network at the time, only a monthly newsletter that she mailed to a few thousand supporters. She used that as a springboard to demonize the ERA, mixing fact with sensational charges to create fear about what it could do to women, families and the American economy.

She taunted feminists, getting her followers to bring home-baked cookies to Illinois legislators they were lobbying to vote against the ERA and by appearing unfailingly well-groomed and cheerful in the face of anger and hostility.

She offered dire warnings that ERAs passage would lead to unisex bathrooms and women being drafted into the armed forces. Though ERA failed, Congress has recently debated including women in the draft, and unisex bathrooms are commonplace.

She argued that women didnt need equal pay because the men they married would serve as breadwinners. Her work unquestionably helped stall the equal-pay movement. Women still only make an average of 79 cents for every dollar men earn.

Fiercely combatant to the end, Schlafly fought in court this year to block a trademark for Schlafly beer, claiming she had made the name famous. She lost the case in August, but her point is well-taken. There was only one Phyllis Schlafly.
Wen Xiaowu (Photo: China Aid)

China Aid

By Brynne Lawrence

Updated at 3:59 p.m. CDT on Sept. 9, 2016





(Wenzhou, ZhejiangSept. 9, 2016) China Aid confirmed the release of a pastor in Chinas coastal Zhejiang province yesterday evening after four months of imprisonment.

Wen Xiaowu, a pastor in Ruian, was originally detained on April 25 with his wife, Xiang Lihua, and their eldest son, Wen Eden Yidian, after contacting U.S. Consulate officials and foreign journalists. Two days later, Wen Xiaowu and Xiang were officially charged with gathering a crowd to disturb social order and criminally detained. Wen Yidian was taken into police custody the same night and accused of obstructing public service for resisting his parents arrest.

According to the stipulations of his release, Wen still must serve six months under residential surveillance.

Wens family wishes to thank the international community for advocating for his release and says that they believe persistent, focused and high-level pressure works well when confronting China on human rights issues.

China Aid exposes religious freedom abuses, such as those suffered by Wen Xiaowu and his family, in order to stand in solidarity with persecuted Christians and will continue reporting on this case as more information becomes available.

ChinaAid Media Team

Cell: (432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+ (888) 889-7757 | Other: (432) 689-6985

Email: [email protected]

For more information, click here
Schoolchildren stand on the platform next to a life-sized Thomas the Tank Engine at Shinkanaya station in Shimada in Shizuoka prefecture, west of Tokyo. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Giant toy firm sets out ambitious plans for China growth

Global leading toy producer Mattel Inc, owner of renowned brands including Barbie and Fisher-Price, is enhancing its brand awareness in China with plans to build more Thomas & Friends Towns in major cities and by introducing the first Chinese character to its 70-years-old train story.

Hailey Wu Sullivan, senior director and head of Marketing for Mattel Asia-Pacific, said the company will open its first Thomas & Friends Town in Chongqing in western China in October.

Covering an area of 1,200 square meters, the amusement park will have a host of features, such as theme restaurants, multifunction classrooms and an adventure castle.

"It is an immersive experience for kids to walk into the town and bring Thomas to life," she said.

Themed parks and play zones have been established by toy makers to better connect with young consumers, such as LEGO's exploring centers.

"Such themed facility increase their sales efficiency," said Du Jiaqi, research manager of Euromonitor International.

Sullivan discussed the amusement park at a ceremony to introduce a new member of the Thomas & Friends' family, Yongbaoits first Chinese character.

"The new member Yongbao and his story will further promote the Thomas & Friends brand from a more Chinese angle and helps the world to learn about China," said Sullivan.

In addition to actual toys, Yongbao will also be featured in short animated features and the upcoming motion picture of the Thomas series early next year, which will be screened worldwide, she said.

In addition to innovating content, the toy maker has also diversified its distribution by collaboration further with JD.com since 2013.

By the end of 2015, its five major brandsBarbie, Fisher-Price, Thomas & Friends, Hot Wheels and Megahave launched official stores on JD.com, and have seen a combined growth in sales of more than 150 percent.

Mattel said that the Thomas series is the No 1 preschool toy brand for consumers aged two to four.

Du of Euromonitor International said Thomas & Friends brand has grown rapidly in China as parents have grown increasingly aware of branded products due to their safety.

The train brand also has visible displays at bricks and mortar toy retailers and its diversified product design from one train to packaged trains has encouraged consumers to extend their purchases, said Du.

But Mattel's other brands, such as Barbie, have under performed in China due to wide range of choice in the market, with Japanese dolls proving more popular among Chinese children.

Mattel's market share accounts for 2 percent of toy sales in China, according to statistics from Euromonitor International. Chinese traditional toys and games had a market scale of 64.26 billion yuan ($973 million) in 2015.
Shanghai-based developer Greenland Group said a 67-story, 241-meter tower it is building in London is set to become the tallest residential building in Western Europe.

Despite market concerns over uncertainties about London's real estate landscape after the Brexit referendum, Chinese developers remain confident and optimistic about the future in the city.

The 800-million-pound ($1.06 billion) development with a gross floor space of 98,000 square meters in West India Quay at Canary Wharf, known as The Spire London, will be the second-tallest building in London when it is completed in 2020, just second to the 310-meter Shard.

Zhang Yuliang, chairman and president of Greenland Group, said The Spire London is going to become an unique part of the landscape in London.

Zhang said the project is Greenland Group's most important in Europe so far, and it will provide good quality new housing resources to London residents.

Price of the apartments are expected to between 595,000 pounds and three million pounds, according to the developers' project prospectus. Sale of the apartments will start as early as October this year.

Greenland Group purchased the land parcel for The Spire London from Commercial Estates Group earlier this year, the second purchase it has made in London in recent years. In 2014, Greenland Group purchased a land parcel at the Ram Brewery in Wandsworth London, which is expected to be developed into a residential community.

Greenland Group is not alone among Chinese developers that would like to make their mark in London's thriving real estate market. In June 2013, Wanda Group announced that it would develop the 203-meter-tall One Nine Elms, a residential community.

Researchers said that Chinese buyers' demands for high-end overseas properties is a major aspect of these developers' ambition and confidence in expanding overseas, particularly in cities with good education resources.

A major factor influencing Chinese people's overseas property purchases is their children's education and the proximity of real estate to decent schools, according to a recent report issued by online overseas property information platform Juwai.com.
Senior officials from northeast China's Liaoning province marketed shares of seven State-owned enterprises to private investors on Monday in order to balance the province's fragile social security accounts and improve the companies' performance.

Private investors will be allowed to buy up to 20 percent of each of the seven SOEs. The companies are Liaoning Transportation Construction Investment Group Co Ltd, Liaoning Water Resources Management Group, Liaoning Energy Investment (Group) Co Ltd, Liaoning Dalian Fishery Group, Fushun Mining Group Co Ltd, Shenyang Coal Trade Group Co Ltd, and Tiefa Coal Industry Co Ltd, according to Shenyang United Assets and Equity Exchange.

Two of these have listed companies. The market value of the seven companies is 401.07 billion yuan ($60.04 billion).

Chen Qiufa, governor of the province, required the Liaoning State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission to organize sales "to accelerate diversity of SOE equity, and solve the problem of 'a dominance' of SOE shares" in an early meeting about SOE reform.

As the so-called "last base of China's planned economy", SOEs of the central and local governments stationed in the province accounted for more than 30 percent of the GDP, compared to the national average of 23 percent.

"Two key purposes of the deal are to accelerate SOE reform and the supplement social security funds," said Zhou Rongqiang, vice director of the Liaoning State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

Due to an aging population, Liaoning had a dependency ratio of 1.79 last year, almost double that of nation's average. Combined with a sluggish economy, this put Liaoning's social security fund in a rather fragile situation. And, it may become worse in the coming five years, as the funding gap will amount to 254.6 billion yuan.

The northeastern province's GDP for the first half of the year dropped 1.3 percent, the only Chinese province that saw negative growth in GDP in that period, according to local government statistics. Its industrial output value plunged 7.7 percent during that period, while the national average grew 6 percent, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

In fact, the proposal has led to hot debates since its launch late August.

An expert who declines to be named says that although selling shares in SOEs is a reasonable solution for the current difficulties, it will also will have long term effects on the economy. He suggests the government should have a substantial discussion on how to preserve and raise values, rather than selling shares.

Zhang Min, a Shenyang born investment manager, told China Daily: "I don't care how much they sell. I'm more concerned about what kind of the assets they hold and about the management team."
BEIJING - The profit decline posted by China's State-owned enterprises (SOEs) narrowed during the first seven months of the year, official data showed Monday.

Profits fell 6.5 percent year on year to 1.31 trillion yuan ($195.8 billion) during the January to July period, according to a statement by the Ministry of Finance.

The pace of decline was slower than the 8.5 percent drop registered in the first half.

SOEs fared better and their profits showed signs of stabilizing, the statement said.

Profits of SOEs under central government control dropped 9 percent while those of locally-administered SOEs edged down 0.3 percent compared with one year earlier.

SOE revenues edged up 0.2 percent to 24.88 trillion yuan, compared with a 0.1 percent drop in the first half.

SOEs in the coal, transportation, property development and pharmaceutical industries posted substantial profit growth, while the oil, petrochemical and tobacco sectors reported a plunge in profits. Steel and non-ferrous metal companies suffered losses.

An economic downturn, which trimmed China's economic growth to 6.7 percent in the first half, has put pressure on SOEs, which are at the forefront of an official drive to reform the country's growth model and cut overcapacity.
GUIYANG - The profitability of Chinese baijiu makers recovered last year, according to a report published by the World Alcoholic Beverage Alliance on Monday.

The gross margin of baijiu, or "white liquor," producers' main business grew to 33.1 percent in 2015 from 32.1 percent in 2014, said the Development Report of Global Alcohol Industry of 2016, which was issued at the ongoing International Alcoholic Beverage Expo held in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province.

Their net profit margin increased to 14.85 percent from 13.68 percent in 2014, said the report.

However, the industry's sales revenue dropped to around 512 billion yuan ($76.5 billion) from 528 billion yuan in 2014.

China's baijiu producers have experienced a downturn since 2012 due to a national frugality campaign restricting government spending on banquets. In 2012, the industry's gross margin stood at 37.9 percent.

The producers have tried to cope with the challenge by diversifying products and embracing e-commerce.

Several baijiu giants reported remarkable sales growth this year. Among them, Kweichow Moutai, dubbed the "national liquor," saw its January-August net profits rise nearly 6.7 percent year-on-year to 16.4 billion yuan.
WASHINGTON - The US Commerce Department on Monday announced its preliminary affirmative determination in the antidumping duty investigation against imports of stainless steel sheets and strips from China, signaling that it may pose punitive duties on the products.

The department said that such products from China had been sold in the United States at dumping margins of 63.86 percent and 76.64 percent.

As a result of the preliminary affirmative determinations, the Commerce Department will instruct US Customs and Border Protection to require cash deposits based on these preliminary rates.

The Commerce Department launched antidumping duty and countervailing duty (CVD) investigations against imports of such products from China in March 2016, in response to a request from AK Steel Corporation and three other US steel companies.

The Commerce made its preliminary affirmative determination in the CVD investigation in July, saying that producers and exporters of such products from China had received countervailing subsidies from 57.3 percent to 193.12 percent.

Imports of these products from China were estimated at about $302 million in 2015, according to US official data.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has kept urging Washington to abide by its commitment against protectionism and help maintain a free, open and just international trade environment.

Punitive duties would be imposed after both the Commerce Department and the US International Trade Commission (USITC) make affirmative final rulings.

The Commerce is scheduled to make its final determinations in November this year and the USITC is slated to make its final determination in January 2017.
BEIJING - China and the Netherlands signed a social insurance agreement on Monday that will exempt company personnel sent to work in each other's countries from mandatory social insurance contributions.

The deal was signed in The Hague after three rounds of negotiations since November 2014, China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security announced.

The agreement will take effect following legal procedures in the two countries, the ministry said.

Without the agreement, Dutch citizens working in China have to participate in five insurance programs -- pension, medical, work-related injury, unemployment and maternity insurance -- in accordance with the law, and both employee and employer must contribute to the social insurance premiums.

According to Chinese rules, if a foreigner leaves China prior to reaching the statutory age for pension withdrawal, his or her social insurance personal account will be retained, and the contribution years will be calculated on a cumulative basis if he or she comes back to China to work again in the future.

The insurance premiums account for nearly 40 percent of a foreign employee's wage, but employees cannot receive pensions until they have paid premiums for a total of 15 years.

China has signed similar bilateral social insurance agreements with Germany, the Republic of Korea, Denmark, Finland, Canada and Switzerland, in addition to the Netherlands.
BEIJING - Innovation and structural reform are key to recovery of the global economy, which is a prescription given by China at the 2016 Group of 20 (G20) Summit for the world economy that has yet to recover from the global financial crisis in 2008.

Innovation

World leaders have agreed to raise mid-to-long term growth potential through innovative growth in the two-day G20 Summit concluded in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Sept 5.

Consensus has been reached to encourage the creation of innovation ecosystems that catalyze creativity and support the combination of creative ideas with entrepreneurship, science and technology for innovative growth and job creation, according to the G20 Blueprint on Innovative Growth.

"The G20 Blueprint on Innovative Growth represents an ambitious agenda toward a new paradigm for growth based on knowledge and on new and cleaner technologies," Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer told Xinhua in an interview, "Many countries have, since the global financial crisis of 2008, relied too heavily on monetary and fiscal easing."

World leaders, international institutions, and company representatives have echoed the emphasis when attending the second "Investing in Africa Forum" held on Wednesday in Guangdong which called for innovative ways to rejuvenate economic growth.

"I think innovation and making better use of technology is going to be very helpful. I've seen it in Africa," said Haleh Bridi, director of external communications and partnerships at the World Bank Africa region, while attending the forum.

Bridi said because of innovation, Africa has moved from being a continent where nobody has a phone to one where almost everybody uses a cell phone.

"This telephone revolution has really changed the face of Africa, and this can happen in so many other sectors, including in education, as you can get the top notch education online today," Bridi said.

Structural reform

Since the global financial crisis broke out in 2008, there has been broad consensus that structural reforms are required to get the world economy back on track.

"There is widespread recognition that structural reforms are required," said BCG Chairman Hans-Paul Burkner in an interview with Xinhua.

Structural reform is key to higher productivity and potential output plays an essential role in achieving strong, sustainable and balanced growth, as well as promoting innovative growth, according to the G20 Blueprint on Innovative Growth.

The Group of 20 should use multiple policy tools including fiscal, monetary and structural reform to ward off short term risk and explore medium- and long-term growth potential, Chinese President Xi Jinping said at a press conference on Sept 5.

The Business 20 Summit (B20) which concluded on Sept 4 in Hangzhou also worked to discuss structural reforms to improve labor and capital deployment, as well as to create conducive environment to spur efficiency and innovation.
LeEco

A Le Holdings Co Ltd sign at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Asia 2016 in Shanghai, China, May 12, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Competition in China's internet market has turned into a fierce contest among ecosystems, market research firm International Data Corporation wrote (IDC) in a report released on Thursday.

IDC analyzed the strong growth of internet giants Alibaba and Tencent in the second quarter, saying the two have formed complete and solid ecosystems, thus helping startups achieve rapid growth and enhance their own competitive advantages.

According to the IDC, Alibaba's ecosystem is based on its core business - ecommerce, while that of Tencent's centers on social networking and online gaming.

An internet ecosystem is a concept that has gained increasing popularity in the industry. As defined by economist Song Qinghui, an internet ecosystem is a brand new system evolved from the internet, enabling a comprehensive restructuring of value chains across industries.

Xue Yu, an analyst with IDC, endorsed the idea in a note, saying an internet ecosystem featured openness, innovation and win-win solutions and that there would be many more such systems across different industries in the future.

Currently, Baidu Inc, Xiaomi Corp and Le Holdings Co Ltd have all made headway in building their ecosystems.

Tencent and Alibaba's ecosystems are more developed in comparison with other companies Baidu and Xiaomi, who lag behind in user interactivity because their core businesses, namely search and mobile phones respectively, serve more as tools, Xue said.

Le Holdings' ecosystem is not built on a certain core business, but on a combination of platforms that seek to satisfy customers' various demand including TV, films, sports, among others, he noted.

Besides these companies, JD.com and Didi Chuxing also have the tendency to build their ecosystems based on their strengths, he said.

Let's take a look at the top five most influential internet ecosystems in China.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/duterte-signals-shift-in-u-s-philippine-military-alliance-1473774873





By Trefor Moss

Updated Sept. 13, 2016 12:16 p.m. ET

69 COMMENTS

MANILAPhilippine President Rodrigo Duterte signaled an abrupt departure from his nations longstanding military reliance on the U.S., ordering his defense secretary to seek gear from suppliers in China and Russia to fight drug traffickers and insurgents.

In another shift, he also said Tuesday that the Philippines would stop patrolling the South China Sea alongside the U.S. Navy, to avoid upsetting Beijing. Instead, he said the nations military would focus on combating drugs and terrorism.

The Philippines has had close ties with the U.S. for decades, most recently bolstering military cooperation through a 2014 pact. Both Washington and Manila have leveraged their alliance to counter China, whose increasingly assertive actions in support of its maritime claims have stoked unease in the region.

But since coming to power on June 30, Mr. Duterte has indicated he wants to distance the Philippines from the U.S., a stance that threatens to alter the Asia-Pacific regions strategic balance. He said Monday he wanted the U.S. military to leave Mindanao, the site of a strategic base set to host American forces.

Mr. Dutertes statements this week were the latest in a string of developments that have pleased, surprised and horrified his audiences since he took office. His so-called war on drugs and crime has already claimed 2,956 lives, according to police on Monday, and his sometimes crude statements have insulted targets as varied as the pope, the United Nations head and U.S. President Barack Obama.

But no shift is arguably as important as Mr. Dutertes political turn from the U.S., the Philippines former colonial ruler until 1946.

In the speech Tuesday, the Philippine leader told officers to concentrate on domestic priorities. Rather than a possible battle in the South China Sea, Mr. Duterte said the military should focus on fighting drug traffickers and insurgencies.

Until now, the Philippines has bought the gear needed to fight such battles from suppliers in the U.S. and its Asian allies such as South Korea. But on Tuesday Mr. Duterte ordered Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana to seek suppliers in Russia and China, saying they offered soft loans payable in 20 to 25 years.

I want weaponry and armamentsWe dont need F-16 jets, that is of no use to us, he said, referring to the U.S.-made aircraft. We dont intend to fight any country. Lets content ourselves even with propeller-driven planes that we could use extensively in anti-insurgency.

Neither the U.S. Embassy in Manila nor the foreign and defense ministries of China and Russia immediately responded to requests for comment.

The Philippine military seemed caught off guard by the presidents remarks. We are awaiting guidelines on how the presidents policy statements will be implemented, a defense spokesman said.

Mr. Duterte enjoys a huge majority in the Philippine Congress and has few opponents willing to criticize him publicly. Additionally, he has courted the military and the police by pledging to double their salaries.

Although Mr. Duterte is unlikely to abrogate the U.S. defense treaty, he risks damaging ties with its closest ally since friendly and constructive relations at the political level oil the wheels of the alliance, said Angelica Mangahas, deputy executive director of the Albert del Rosario Institute for Strategic and International Studies in Manila.

The U.S. provided $441 million in security funding to the Philippines between 2002 and 2013, according to Rand Corp., a U.S. think tank. The Obama administration has earmarked a record $120 million in military aid to the poor country this year alone. The U.S. provided substantial aid to the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan devastated the country in 2013.

There are two camps in Washingtonone that thinks Duterte is about to push the alliance off a cliff and there is nothing U.S. policy makers can do about it, and one that continues to argue that the alliance is just too important to both countries and so a way forward must be found, said Gregory Poling of the Center for International and Strategic Studies. But that latter group is losing the argument day by day as Duterte continues this anti-American rhetoric.

During his successful campaign for the presidency, Mr. Duterte spoke of wanting to improve relations with Beijing but didnt speak publicly of wanting to diminish ties with Washington; indeed, foreign policy played almost no part in the presidential race.

We are not cutting our alliances, but we will follow an independent foreign policy, Mr. Duterte told members of the Philippine Air Force on Tuesday.

Now, Mr. Dutertes apparent tilt toward Washingtons strategic rivals in Beijing and Moscow and open hostility toward the U.S. imperil that relationship.

I do not like the Americans. Its simply a matter of principle for me, Mr. Duterte said Monday.

Last week, Mr. Duterte sparked controversy by appearing to call Mr. Obama a son of a whore during a media briefing, leading Mr. Obama to cancel planned talks with the Philippine leader.

On Monday, Mr. Duterte said U.S. forces in Zamboanga on the island of Mindanao, which advise local troops on counterterrorism operations, should leave, saying they were targets for insurgents. They have to go; I do not want a rift with the U.S. but they have to go, Mr. Duterte said.

The Philippine military said American personnel would be eased from harms way in the southern Philippines, where the army is waging a campaign against the extremist Abu Sayyaf group. We assure our people and allies that Philippine-U.S. defense relations remain rock solid, the military said.

The 2014 security pact was one of the main foreign-policy initiatives of former President Benigno Aquino III, who aimed to secure American backing in the Philippines struggle against China over disputed territory in the South China Sea.

The pact was also an important plank of Mr. Obamas strategy of rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region in response to Chinas rising power. The two countries began joint patrols of the South China Sea in April.

Earlier this year, the two nations agreed to deploy thousands of American troops to five strategic Philippine bases. A timeframe wasnt disclosed. Mr. Dutertes spokesman said on Tuesday the leader still planned to honor the defense pact.

The Philippine leaders U.S. criticism falls on fertile ground. Resentment over the U.S.s nearly half-century of colonial rule here remains strong in some quarters. Yet Philippine society is on the whole notably pro-American. A June survey by local polling service Social Weather Stations found that the U.S. had a net trust rating of 72% among Filipinos. China had a net trust rating of minus 24%, with many Filipinos regarding China as a bully.

Still, Mr. Duterte has sometimes contrasted the U.S. unfavorably with China. On a trip to Indonesia last week he thanked China for being so generous to us by offering to build drug-rehabilitation centers in the country.

Only China will help us, he said. America just gave you principles of law and nothing else.

Cris Larano in Manila contributed to this article.
Pedestrians walk past hoardings of foreign banks in Shanghai. [Yan Daming/China Daily]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the Chinese mainland rose 5.7 percent year on year in August, compared with a 1.6-percent drop in July, official data showed Tuesday.

FDI hit 57.3 billion yuan ($8.8 billion) last month, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC).

The rebound came as a slew of data released Tuesday showed China's economic activity was in better shape last month despite lingering downward pressure.

Fixed-asset investment, industrial output and retail sales all accelerated in August, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The MOC said FDI in the first eight months of 2016 increased 4.5 percent year on year to $85.9 billion, up from 4.3 percent in the first seven months.

Services continued to attract more foreign investment from January to August.

FDI in the service sector, accounting for over 70 percent of the total investment, went up 10 percent year on year, quickening from a 7.7 percent growth for the January-July period.

Meanwhile, FDI in high-tech services nearly doubled from a year earlier to reach 67.1 billion yuan.

In the first eight months, FDI from the United States surged 79.7 percent, while that from Germany and the U.K. soared 79.2 percent and 96.6 percent, respectively.

Altogether 18,538 new foreign-funded enterprises were established in the country in the first eight months, up 10.2 percent on a year earlier, according to the MOC.
An engineer examines equipments at Alibaba's data center in Zhangbei county, Hebei province, Sept 11, 2016. [Photo/China Daily]

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd launched on Monday its very first self-designed, self-built data centers in Hebei province, beefing up its cloud computing capability to better serve online shoppers and entrepreneurs in northern China.

The two newly launched data centers in Zhangbei county in Zhangjiakou are expected to become Alibaba's key computing infrastructure in northern China, providing services to the giant's core businesses in cloud computing, big data and e-commerce.

Jeff Zhang, chief technology officer of Alibaba Group, said that the e-commerce giant had previously teamed up with telecom operators in building data centers.

"The two centers in Zhangbei are the first centers we have exclusively designed and built to support our business," he said, adding that he estimates the centers will shoulder about half of the computing tasks of the company in the future.

According to Zhang, the new centers will soon provide services during Alibaba's upcoming Nov 11 shopping festival, the biggest annual online shopping event in China. The centers are also expected to provide clouding computing and big data services to 2 million small and medium-sized companies.

"Alibaba has become one of the world's leading big data companies. We are fully committed to building our platform, at the heart of which are efficient data centers that are highly available and robust, of large enough scale to match our growth and make use of a reproducible IT infrastructure," said Zhang, adding that the company may build another data center in the future.

The launch of the new data center is in line with Alibaba's "going North" strategy.

The move is aimed to help Alibaba gain an increased market share in northern regions in the intense competition with its biggest online shopping rival, Beijing-based JD.com Inc.

Lu, an e-commerce expert, said "computing infrastructure is important for Alibaba to enable users in north China to enjoy more and better services".
Hundreds of Taiwan workers in tourism-related businesses rallied in Taipei on Monday to draw attention to a sharp decline in visitors from the Chinese mainland that is putting their industry under heavy strain.

Workers marched down a central street in Taipei before gathering at a square in front of the Taiwan leader's office building. They called for the preservation of jobs and assistance to the industry, including allowing the owners of tour buses to delay their loan payments.

"We only want the right to work. If (mainland tourists) do not come, we cannot work. This is just our need," said tour guide Debby Huang, 41.

"We want to survive", "We ask for jobs", "We need food and shelter" and "No jobs, no life" read some of the signs protesters held up as they marched through rain to the square.

"God is weeping for us," protest organizer Ringo Lee called out to the crowd.

"He is weeping for hundreds of thousands of our families that are being affected."

The sector was hit by a fire on a bus in July that killed 24 mainland tourists on their way to the island's main airport.

On Saturday, investigators released a report on the cause of the accident, saying the inferno that engulfed the bus was not sparked by a crash but by the driver, who poured gasoline inside the bus and locked its emergency exits before setting it alight in what prosecutors said was an act of suicide.

The tourism workers also urged the authorities to encourage visits and allow visa-free entry for travelers from the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations as an inducement.

The number of mainland visitors has fallen after independence-leaning leader Tsai Ing-wen took office in May.

Accidents and an unwelcoming attitude among some Taiwan residents have been blamed in part for the decline in mainland visitors.

Official figures show that the number of visitors from the mainland has fallen by 22 percent since Tsai's election, compared with the same period last year. Mainland travelers made up about 40 percent of tourist arrivals last year.

The island's authorities have already offered almost $960 million to bail out the industry.
A bailiff introduces visitors to a judge's robe at Fujian Provincial High People's Court in Fuzhou on the Open Day on Aug 25, 2016. [Photo by Zheng Shuai/China Daily]

Editor's note: The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China on Monday issued a white paper on new progress in the judicial protection of human rights in China. Following is the full text of the document.

Foreword

Respecting and protecting human rights is a constitutional principle in China. It also reflects the will and pursuit of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Chinese government and the Chinese people. The judiciary is the last line of defense to safeguard social fairness and justice, and judicial protection of human rights is an important part of human rights progress in a country. In recent years, especially since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, China has upheld the dominant position of the people, taking a people-first approach and ensuring that the people are the masters of the nation. The state strives to ensure the rights of the people, fully protects their interests, and promotes legislature based on rational analysis, strict law enforcement, judicial justice, and observance of the law by all citizens. Progress has been made in modernizing the system and capacity of state governance. China has effectively protected the people's rights and freedoms in an extensive array of fields in accordance with the law, while its people duly fulfill their obligations.

As China enhances the rule of law in all respects, new progress has been made in human rights protection in the field of justice. The reform of the judiciary has been driven to a deeper level, with improvements in the allocation of judicial powers and responsibilities, judicial accountability and opening-up, and the protection of lawyers' right to practice their profession. Channels of public participation in justice have been expanded, and the judicial protection of human rights has been improved. China has implemented a case-filing register system, revamped and improved its litigation system, and strictly enforced principles of legality, in dubio pro reo, exclusion of unlawful evidence. The state is resolute in preventing and correcting miscarriages of justice, and the procedures for protecting human rights in judicial practice have been raised to higher standards. The judiciary exercises its power independently and impartially in accordance with the law, leading to strengthened public credibility. Further efforts have been made in terms of state compensation and legal aid. Judicial fairness and justice is safeguarded, and citizens' rights are effectively protected. Crime suspects, defendants and criminals are treated in a more civilized manner, punishments are meted out in a more standardized way, and the personal dignity, safety, and legal property of detainees are all well protected, as are their rights of appeal, accusation, and impeachment.

There is no end to mankind's pursuit of progress. There is still much room for improvement for the rule of law in China. Strengthening judicial protection of human rights will continue to be a major task in implementing the rule of law. China will proceed from its prevailing reality, learn from the achievements of other countries regarding the rule of law, enhance judicial protection of human rights, safeguard social fairness and justice, and implement the rule of law in all respects.

I. Strengthen the Mechanism of Judicial Protection of Human Rights

China is striving to drive reform of the judiciary to a deeper level, allocate judicial powers and responsibilities in a more rational way, improve the judicial accountability system, promote judicial transparency, establish a national judicial assistance system, and ensure the right of lawyers to practice their profession and the rights of citizens to act as assessors and overseers.

Further improve the allocation of judicial powers and responsibilities, and ensure the independent and impartial exercise of the judicial and procuratorial power. Major plans for deeper reform of the judiciary were made at the 18th National Congress of the CPC and the third and fourth plenary sessions of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC. In 2014-2015, the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform held 19 meetings, 13 of which involved reform of the judiciary. The Group examined and approved 27 judiciary reform documents in total. Public security organs have improved the mechanism of law enforcement, changed the case-filing review system to case-filing register system, and strengthened examination and supervision of case admitting work. The Supreme People's Procuratorate has issued the "Opinions on Deepening Procuratorial Reform (Work Plan for 2013-2017)," and the Supreme People's Court has released the "Opinions on Deepening the Reform of People's Courts in All Respectsthe Fourth Five-Year Reform Plan of the People's Courts (2014-2018)." Since 2014, pilot programs have been promoted nationwide to improve performance in the following areas: judicial accountability, category-based management of judicial personnel, job security for the judicial profession, and unified management of the personnel, finance and property of people's courts and procuratorates below the provincial level. The reform of trial-centered litigation is making headway.

In 2014, people's courts and people's procuratorates transcending administrative boundaries were established in Beijing and Shanghai, to handle major cross-regional criminal, civil and administrative cases. This was to address certain parties' concerns over the authority of the jurisdiction in charge of their cases, and to promote the unified and correct application of laws. In 2015, the Supreme People's Court set up its first and second circuit courts in Shenzhen and Shenyang for major cross-regional administrative, civil and commercial cases. In 2015 the circuit courts handled 1,774 cases and concluded 1,653 of them, concluding all cases within the time limit.

Improve the judicial accountability system, and enhance the central role of judges and prosecutors in case handling. We will improve the accountability systems of presiding judges, collegial benches, and prosecutors for the cases they handle. The powers and responsibilities of judges and prosecutors have been made clear, and they have lifelong accountability for the cases they adjudicate. A strict accountability system for misjudgments has been implemented. Thus a judiciary operation mechanism with clear distinction between and unification of powers and responsibilities, and well management has taken shape. The judiciary has reformed the signing of written judgments, with a clear provision that other than in cases decided by a judicial committee, the presidents, vice presidents and divisional chief judges will not review and sign the written judgments of cases they did not participate in. It has been made clear that presidents and divisional chief judges of people's courts are not allowed to air judgmental opinions on cases they did not hear, or negate the opinion of trial judges and collegial benches, unless they attended deliberations, on such cases at the judicial committees or meetings of judges with specialized knowledge.

Reform has been carried out in judicial committees. The deliberation sessions of judicial committees are recorded with audio-visual devices from beginning to end, and all committee members who have participated in the discussion and cast their votes must sign their names in the meeting minutes. A performance appraisal and internal public evaluation system has also been established for judicial committees. In pilot courts of Shanghai, the rate of cases handled independently by trial judges and collegial benches reached 99.9 percent of all cases, with only 0.1 percent of cases submitted to judicial committees for discussion.

The Ministry of Public Security amended the Regulations on the Appraisal of Law Enforcement by Public Security Organs, and the Regulations on Law Enforcement Accountability of People's Police of Public Security Organs, establishing a complete and effective appraisal system for monitoring the quality of law enforcement and for improving accountability in the investigation of misconduct during law enforcement. Forced confessions and illegal employment of police instruments or weapons are subject to strict investigation for their responsibility. The Chinese authorities issued the Regulations on the Recording, Notification, and Accountability Investigation of Leading Officials for Interventions in Judicial Activities and Handling of Specific Cases, and the Regulations on the Recording and Accountability Investigation of Staff Members of Judicial Organs for Their Intervention in Case Handling. People's courts at all levels have set up special archives in their case information management systems for recording internal and external interest and intervention in case-handling, so as to record in a complete, strict, and timely fashion any intervention in judicial activities by leading officials and any interest in cases expressed by staff members. On November 6, 2015 and February 1, 2016, 12 such cases were made public, and those adjudged to have transgressed received punishments pursuant to the law. Promote judicial transparency, and ensure the right to know and the right to supervise for concerned parties and the public. The Supreme People's Court has established three platforms for releasing information on judicial process, written judgments, and the execution of judgments. By the end of 2015 China Judicial Process Information Online had had a total of 878,500 visits, China Judgments Online had released 14,480,000 copies of written judgments and garnered 410 million visits, and China Law Enforcement Information Online had publicized 34,347,000 information entries about persons subject to judgment execution, and offered information services to 36,850,000 visitors. In 2015, Chinacourt.org broadcasted 3,795 live trials online. The January 2016 online broadcast of the Qvod Player (Kuaibo) case attracted more than one million viewers. The case information disclosure system of the people's procuratorates was officially launched in October 2014, and by 2015 it had released 2,540,000 pieces of information about the judicial process, 1,020,000 entries providing information on key cases, and 760,000 copies of effective legal documents.

Judicial organs have innovated the form of releasing judicial information, such as press conferences, websites, Weibo (microblog), WeChat, and news apps. In 2015, the Supreme People's Court held 26 press conferences. The Supreme People's Procuratorate held 14, and the Ministry of Public Security held 12. By 2015, people's courts at all levels nationwide had opened 3,980 Weibo and 1,447 WeChat accounts, and created 1,468 news apps. People's procuratorates at all levels nationwide had opened 4,085 Weibo and 3,186 WeChat accounts, and launched 2,550 news apps. Public security organs had opened 26,000 Weibo and WeChat accounts, and administrative organs of justice at all levels had opened a total of 8,000 Weibo and WeChat accounts and legal education apps and websites. The Supreme People's Court launched a mobile TV app, releasing 2,862 videos by 2015, with 22,245 minutes of updated content and 651,800 users.

Ensure lawyers' right of practice, so that lawyers are playing a bigger role in safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of parties concerned. In 2015, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, and the Ministry of Justice jointly issued the Regulations on Protecting Lawyers' Right of Practice in Accordance with the Law, which further implements relevant legal provisions, makes clear various measures to protect lawyers' right of practice, makes it more convenient for lawyers to participate in litigation, and improves the remedy and accountability mechanisms for ensuring lawyers' right to practice. Within the scope of their functions and duties and as prescribed by the law, judicial organs have protected lawyers' rights to know, their rights of application and appeal, and the rights to meet their clients, to read case files, to collect evidence and ask questions, to cross-examine, and to debate in court. Judicial organs have ensured that lawyers are not deterred from defending and representing the parties concerned, whose legitimate rights are protected in accordance with the law.

Public security organs at all levels have accelerated the provision of lawyers' meeting rooms, and opened online platform for lawyers to make appointments to visit their clients and made known to the public such appointment phone numbers, providing convenience to meetings between lawyers and their clients and ensuring their conversations are not monitored. Procuratorial organs have effectively fulfilled their role of supervision over the obstruction of lawyers' right to practice. In 2015, procuratorial organs at all levels resolved 1,093 cases involving infringement of lawyers' procedural rights pursuant to the law. In December 2015, the Supreme People's Court launched a lawyers service platform, collating 21,707 entries concerning law firms and 81,476 entries concerning lawyers. The platform offers convenient legal services to lawyers, including online case register, online access to case files, case information inquiry, electronic service of legal documents, and judges' contact details.

By 2015, 1,734 courts had opened the "12368" litigation service hotline, providing self- or staff-service information for parties concerned and lawyers, and handled a total of 76,270 inquiry calls.

In January 2016, the Supreme People's Court issued the Regulations on Effectively Protecting Lawyers' Procedural Rights in Accordance with the Law, which further clarifies the protection of lawyers' procedural rights and personal safety by people's courts, and stipulates that courts should, if conditions allow, provide lounges with desks, chairs, drinking water and other necessities for lawyers participating in court trials. Some courts in Beijing and Sichuan have provided changing rooms and waiting rooms for lawyers, protecting their dignity in litigious activities.

Conduct pilot programs to reform the system of people's assessors and supervisors, and ensure citizens' right to act as assessors and supervisors. In April 2015, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) issued the Decision on Authorizing the Implementation of the Pilot Program to Reform the System of People's Assessors in Certain Areas. In May 2015, the Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Justice jointly issued the Measures on Implementing the Pilot Program to Reform the System of People's Assessors, rolling out reform at 50 courts in 10 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government). By 2015, these courts had welcomed 7,800 new people's assessors, four times the number of judges. In 2015, people's assessors took part in the trial of 2,846,000 cases. At the Dongying Intermediate People's Court of Shandong Province, people's assessors participated in a major work-related crime for the first time when hearing the trial of Ni Fake for accepting bribery and obtaining significant revenues from unclear sources. In September 2014, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Justice jointly launched a pilot program to reform the system of people's supervisors in Beijing and nine other provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government), supervising the handling of 1,505 cases according to the new reform requirements. Currently there are 15,000 people's supervisors at all levels of procuratorial organs. In 2012-2015, people's supervisors participated in 8,161 cases of work-related crimes, which are under the categories of "might be revoked" and "might not be prosecuted." Of the 216 cases in which people's supervisors gave opinions different from the preliminary decisions of procuratorial organs, 109 cases, or 50.5 percent, were ruled in favor of the people's supervisors. People's supervisors also presented 1,040 opinions regarding the nine situations within their supervisory scope.

Appropriately handle letters and visits involving lawsuits in accordance with the law, and improve the channels of rights relief. A working mechanism of handling letters and visits involving lawsuits has been established, which runs according to the principles that litigation and letters and visits are separated, that letters and visits are divided in an orderly manner, and that letters and visits are handled in accordance with the law. There has been greater standardization in the scope, procedure, and responsibilities involving letters and visits concerning lawsuits. More channels are now available for people to air their grievances, including letters, visits, telephone calls, the internet, and videos, and integrated online platforms have been introduced for this purpose, ensuring that the people have access to claim their rights in accordance with the law. Lawyers have been invited to participate in activities of receiving letters and visits, and act as agents to handle them, in a way that strengthens public faith in the letters and visits system.

The Supreme People's Court opened an online platform for complaints and appeals in February 2014, and an online video system to receive complaints and appeals in May of that year, which handled a total of 8,200 cases by 2015. In 2015, visits to the Supreme People's Court of those who were seeking legal justice to their own case dropped by 12 percent on a year-on-year basis. The Supreme People's Procuratorate established an online video system to receive appeals, which connects procuratorial organs at all four levels. In 2015, procuratorial organs at all levels received and handled 1,148,000 letters and visits. In 2012-2015, the Ministry of Justice received 19,788 people, registered 6,537 visits, and received 73,843 letters, including 10,337 letters on matters relating to the administrative organs of justice. Abolish the system of reeducation through labor, and strengthen social governance with the rule of law. For more than 50 years, the system of reeducation through labor played a positive role in China, appropriate to the historical circumstances, in protecting public security, maintaining social order, ensuring social stability, and educating and rehabilitating lawbreakers. But over time its functions were gradually replaced with the implementation of laws such as the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security and the Law on Narcotics Control, and also through improvements in the Criminal Law. Over the years, as the relevant laws became increasingly applicable in cases of reeducation through labor, the correction system played a lesser role. In December 2013, the Standing Committee of the NPC passed the Decision on Annulment of the Regulations on Reeducation Through Labor, putting an end to the system. It was also decided that persons who were receiving reeducation through labor as prescribed by law should be released and exempted from their remaining terms.

Establish a national judicial assistance system, and strengthen the protection of victims. In 2014, six state organs, including the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and the Ministry of Public Security, jointly issued a document for establishing the national judicial assistance system. Under the framework, the state provides economic assistance to victims of crime who are unable to obtain financial compensation, to help them through difficulties. Judicial organs strictly perform their duty of notifying such victims of their right to apply for judicial assistance, and ensuring that eligible applicants receive timely relief. In 2015, 1.67 billion yuan went to 71,700 victims and their families. By the end of 2015, public security organs had given 140 million yuan in judicial assistance to 6,338 persons. From January 2014 to October 2015, procuratorial organs at all levels received 13,000 applications for judicial assistance, and granted 120 million yuan of relief. From 2013 to 2015, people's courts at all levels allowed 625 million yuan in reduction or exemption of litigation fees for parties in economic difficulty.


The small village in northwest China's Gansu province which saw a whole family poisoned. [Photo/CCTV]

A mysterious case of murder in a small village in northwest China's Gansu province, which saw a whole family poisoned, had grabbed the attention of authorities and the public alike.

Yang Gailan, a 28-year-old mother is thought of administrating poison to her four kids aged from three to six, including a pair of five-year-old twins, before taking her own life on August 26.

It is argued that the suspect is herself a victim of poverty, having succumbed to despair as the destitute family led a life of frugality and misery.

The grief-stricken husband, Li Keying, was found dead a few days after the incident. He had returned back to the village a day after the incident took place, and went missing on September 2. His lifeless body was found in nearby woods after a two-day search operation.

Poison was confirmed to be behind his demise, yet it is unknown whether it was a case of suicide.

The case further proved to be an enigma, with mystery shrouding the details of what happened on that unfortunate day.

One witness, a villager who is surnamed Shi, said she heard shouting and cries coming from the house.

When people rushed to the ramshackle house, they found all four kids injured. Three had died, but the oldest daughter, who had sustained a crack on her skull, and the mother were still heavily breathing. Both were sent to the hospital immediately, but it was too late.

"Their family is poor, but Yang was always nice and cheerful. I can't imagine why she did this to her own children," one villager said.

Yang's 52-year-old father Yang Mantang and her 70-year-old grandmother Yang Lanfang, who shared the same living space with the family of six, spoke with heartache about their loss.

"I witnessed my great grandkids dying and I tried to stop Gailan and ask why she had to do this. Gailan grabbed me and said she would take all her children with her, no one will be left behind," the traumatized lady said, adding she could not understand her granddaughter's act.

Investigators are contemplating poverty as a motive that guided Yang to kill her own blood.

The family was financially struggling, and unable to make ends meet. Yang worked the land, and Li was a worker in the city. Of the estimated 7,000 yuan (over $1,000) he earned per year, over 3,000 (over $450) were sent home for his family's subsistence. Livestock helped the need family earn a few pennies.

However, the family was deprived of government allowance in 2013, when it was evaluated that the average personal income stood at 4,000 yuan (about $600) annually, higher than the 2,300 yuan ($343) limit set by the government.

The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development is now jointly working with local police and Gansu Provincial Department of Civil Affairs to conduct further investigation.

At the end of 2014, China had 70 million people living below the nations poverty line of 2,300 yuan in annual income. However, poverty elimination is one of the countrys major goals, and Beijing aims to end poverty by 2020, when Chinas 13th Five-Year Plan comes to an end.
China and Canada agreed on Monday to start discussions on a bilateral extradition treaty that would facilitate the return of corrupt fugitive Chinese officials who remain at large in Canada.

The agreement was reached at the China-Canada High-Level National Security and Rule of Law Dialogue in Beijing, where discussions were held on ways to improve cooperation on issues such as law enforcement, combating transnational organized crime, judicial cooperation and exchanges on the rule of law.

In depth talks of an extradition treaty and the signing of an agreement on sharing the recovered stolen assets will occur in the coming months, while negotiations are finalized on a yearlong memorandum of understanding on a pilot project in which Chinese experts will be invited to help identify Chinese immigrants who use fraudulent means to enter Canada.

"The start of such a discussion is a positive sign preparing the way for formal negotiations on the bilateral extradition treaty," said Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director-general of the Judicial Assistance and Foreign Affairs Department at the Ministry of Justice.

Huang Feng, a law professor at Beijing Normal University said, "It marks great progress toward formally signing in the near future a bilateral extradition treaty between the two countries."

"The two countries do not have major political or legal obstacles and have established good cooperative foundation, which will help them to communicate effectively and exchange views on signing an extradition treaty," he said.

In recent years, the United States, Canada, Australia and Singapore have become popular destinations for corrupt fugitive Chinese officials. They lack bilateral extradition treaties and have legal differences with China, complicating their return, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Many such fugitives have transferred billions of illegally acquired yuan to foreign accounts via money laundering and underground banks, the ministry said.

Since April, when Interpol issued alerts for the capture of 100 major fugitive Chinese officials and confiscate their illegal assets, seven corrupt officials have been returned from Canada for trial.

Huang said that Chinese judicial officials have found their best law enforcement cooperation with their counterparts in Canada. Among the fugitives Canada helped repatriate for trial was Gao Shan, former head of a sub-branch of Bank of China in Harbin, Heilongjiang province.

Gao was suspected of embezzling more than 800 million yuan ($129 million) in 2004 and pleaded guilty to judicial authorities in 2012, eight years after fleeing to Canada.

Zhang, of the Justice Ministry, said that although a good beginning has been made, many legal procedures need to be worked out for a bilateral extradition treaty.

Huang said, the practical challenge facing Chinese judicial authorities is that many fugitive Chinese suspects have obtained permanent residence in Canada, so the first step is "to improve judicial cooperation with Canada regarding the fugitive suspects and revoke their Canadian green cards, to be able to repatriate them for trial."
Peverani Givseppe, a member of a visiting delegation from San Marino, tries Chinese massage at Central Hospital of Shanghai Putuo District on Monday.[Photo by GAO ERQIANG/CHINA DAILY]

Lying in a Shanghai hospital and experiencing TCM cupping treatment for the first time, Republic of San Marino resident Fernando Ceccoli says the pain on his lower back was relieved after a short time.

"I feel the comfortable warmth of the bamboo cups," said Ceccoli, a 58-year-old retiree from the landlocked country on the northern Italian Peninsula. "I've never tried this before and I would like to try it again."

Ceccoli, along with another 50 members from the microstate, was taking part in an exchange program at Central Hospital of Shanghai Putuo District, organized by the Shanghai People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

In the room next door, his counterpart Peverani Givseppe had just finished a short massage treatment on his shoulder and neck.

The foreign guests had been shown around the hospital and were invited to try the Traditional Chinese Medicine therapies on Monday.

"The TCM therapy is amazing. I'm glad I had the opportunity to try this magic," Givseppe said through an interpreter.

Liu Guizhen, chief physician at the hospital's rehabilitation department, explained: "Every year, 40 to 50 people come from overseas, including from countries like the United States, France, Belgium and Japan, to seek treatment here."

The hospital is known for combining TCM techniques, such as acupuncture, cupping and massage, with an evaluation system derived from Western medicine.

Liu said the exchange programs organized by the friendship association are helpful, as they promote cultural exchange and help more Westerners understand Chinese medicine and culture.

Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, the association organized delegations from San Marino, New Zealand, Singapore and some expats from other countries on Monday to visit a middle school, a hospital, a farmers' market and community recreational centers in Shanghai.

Monday's celebration also featured a performance of the San Marino delegation's exotic flag-waving show, a square dance by Shanghai women and a martial arts performance by local students.

"It is such a delight to have friends coming from afar to review the stormy history we've weathered, to look toward a better future and to create a new chapter in exchanges between Chinese and foreign people," said Zhou Minhao, head of Putuo district, at the ceremony.
The double-track work permits, involving border entrance work permit and foreign experts work permit for overseas employees in China, will soon be streamlined into one system under reforms initiated by the State Council and implemented by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs.

This will allow applicants to download online forms for completion and submission, triggering a lifetime individual code for the storage of personal information, such as, working experiences, services and credits. All the applications are expected to be finished through one service window within five working days, half the time of the previous application and cutting out approximately 70 of the old procedures.

"The integration of the two different work permits is designed to remove impediments, such as inconsistent administration, policies and inefficient communication related to different and often complicated issues related to the jobs, identities and social status of foreigners," said Zhang Jianguo, head of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs.

"It will help reduce repetitious checks and approvals, avoid administrative loopholes and improve efficiency by building a more active, open and efficient personnel introduction system as was required in the Government Work Report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang, this year," Zhang added.

Trials of the integrated mechanism will be officially launched in Beijing, Hebei, Tianjin, Anhui, Shandong, Guangdong, Sichuan and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on November 1. Based on their experiences, such as how to distribute duties, streamline procedures and systems and improve coordination among different departments, the system is expected to be expanded to other provinces and regions next year.

"We'll learn from the experiments in the pilot cities and regions, becoming aware of their problems and searching for pertinent solutions," Zhang said.

The administration will issue new work permit cards equipped with contactless chips of RFID technology, carrying foreigners' names, photos, visa numbers, the duration and expiry date of permitted stay, and the workplaces.

The integrated work permit, under the concerted efforts of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security, will be widely recognized by the government authorities across the country where the information is expected to be shared.

Categorized into A, B and C groups, the work permits will identify the status of the holders, respectively high-end personnel, professional personnel and the temporary and seasonal personnel in service or non-technical sectors in response to market demand.

The highlights to evaluate the credits of the foreign employees contain the criteria of their salaries, educational backgrounds, length of service, working hours in China, Chinese language proficiency, workplaces (concerning regional disparities), ages and working experiences (including, teaching in prestigious universities or working for well-known multinational companies). Scores are added up to 60 minus for group C, 60 plus for B and 85 plus for A.

National personnel schemes and international standards are counted for the evaluation of the top-end foreign experts accredited to Group A.

There are various perks also emerging to facilitate the lives of foreign employees. In Tianjin, the municipality has launched an online hospital registration system on Wechat (a social networking platform in China) for the visits of foreigners who will be accompanied during their visits to doctors through easy access.

Competition in the international human resource arena is becoming increasingly ferocious, which drives China to break the shackles of fossilized personnel mechanism to attract more high-end talents for their efforts in building the innovation-driven society, Zhang said.
A medal with panda images exported to US. [Photo/provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Shenyang Minting, China's oldest mint with 120 years history, exported 6,703 medals to US for the first time on Tuesday.

The company signed a contract worth $725,323 with US operator Martin Weiss & Company early this year. Each set has seven medals with different panda images.
Four executives from an online video service company have been handed jail sentences ranging from three years to three years and six months for broadcasting pornography on the internet, a Beijing court said.

Beijing Haidian District People's Court publicly announced the judgment on Tuesday and posted it on its official microblogging platform.

Wang Xin, chief executive officer of Shenzhen QVOD Technology in Guangdong province, was named as the key suspect, sentenced to three years and six months in prison, and fined 1 million yuan ($149,705).

The other three defendants were fined between 200,000 yuan and 500,000 yuan, the judgment said.

The company was ordered to pay a fine of 10 million yuan for uploading pornographic material, it added.

The four executives pleaded guilty in the second trial on Friday last week, in a change of plea from the first trial at the beginning of this year.

The court said that the defendants knew that videos uploaded on their platform contained pornography, but they chose not to intervene, adding that they also benefited financially from advertisements on such videos.

"Although the defendants said they worked for a technology company and they did not upload the videos, they had a duty to use their technical skills to examine uploaded content and maintain cybersecurity," the judgment said.
Survey suggests concerns about 'filial duty' leave (Xinhua) Updated: 2016-09-13 15:03

BEIJING - A survey released by China Youth Daily on Tuesday showed that over 72 percent of respondents find "filial duty" leave necessary, while over 84 percent are concerned about the new leave.



Beijing recently adopted a plan to encourage employers to provide leave for employees to visit and take care of elderly members of their family on birthdays, or when they need help.



Filial duty leave is definitely a good move, said Zhang Xingshui, a Beijing-based lawyer, adding that office workers have considerable work pressure and often do not have siblings, so they may only see their parents or grandparents once a year.



"The encouragement of filial duty leave demonstrates the government's support for young people to care for the elderly. The leave also signals the rejuvenation of traditional culture," Li Wenzhao, an associate professor at Renmin University of China, told China Youth Daily.



However, the majority of those surveyed were concerned about filial duty leave, particularly regarding lack of enforcement, labor costs, and the unequal employer-employee relationship.



The survey had 2001 respondents, including employees of private companies, state-owned enterprises, foreign companies, government agencies as well as the self-employed and retired.
Hypoxia, or a deficiency of oxygen reaching the tissues of the body, will cause animals in both laboratory and nature to have longer life spans than their peers in normal conditions, scientists from the Kunming Institute of Zoology under Chinese Academy of Sciences found.

Observations showed that the life spans of animals, such as caenorhabditis elegans, have extended when they are subjected to hypoxic conditions in the laboratory.

In addition, wild mammals with hypoxic habitats, such as the naked mole rat that lives in burrow, and whales that must hold their breath as they dive, seem to live longer.

Scientists tried to figure out the relationship between the genetic difference and the longevity by researching on the domestic animals living on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with adaptive characteristics.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as the "third pole of the earth," has low oxygen, strong radiation and low temperature, a typical place with the natural hypoxic environment.

They found that the Tibetan mastiff has genes of hypoxia inducible pathway and chicken there have evolved to a potential genetic mechanism with calcium signal pathway to adapt to the plateau's conditions.

Scientists also discovered that the aging genes in Tibetans and plateau animals have fast evolution and different expressions comparing with those at lower altitude areas.

However, the rate of Tibetans aged above 60 was lower than that of people living at lower altitudes according to the national population census in 2010.

Zhang Yaping, a scientist who took part in the research, said that it might be caused by poor living and medical conditions.

Zhang pointed out that the census did show that the rate of Tibetans aged above 100 is higher than that of people at lower altitudes, which is echoed with "long life villages" found in the Andres area.
Losang Gyaltsan, chairman of the Tibet autonomous region, was addressing the opening ceremony of the first China Tibet International Forum on Tibetan Medicine. [Palden Nyima/China Daily]

An international forum on Tibetan medicine was held at the InterContinental Resort Lhasa Paradise on Tuesday as part of the Institute of Tibetan Medicine and Astrology's activities to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding.

More than 450 participants, including scholars and professors in the field of Tibetan medicine, and officials from central and regional governments attended the forum.

Wang Guoqiang, deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said the forum marked a milestone in Tibetan medical history.

"As one of the 'five major sciences' of Tibetan traditional culture, Tibetan medical science is a great treasure house," Wang said.

The forum was opened with an address by Losang Gyaltsan, chairman of the Tibet autonomous region.

"Tibet is the birthplace of Tibetan medicine and the regional government has always placed a high importance on its development," Losang Gyaltsan said.

"The state has invested more than 800 million yuan ($107 million) over the past five years in boosting the infrastructure and supporting the development of Tibetan medicine."

The institute was formed from an existing facility, the Mentsekhang (Tibetan Traditional Hospital), which was established in 1916.

There are 30 public institutes of Tibetan medicine and astrology in the region now, with 80 percent of township hospitals and 20 percent of village clinics able to provide Tibetan medical services.

Dr Stephan Kloos, ERC project leader of the Institute for Social Anthoropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, presented a thesis entitled "Tibetan Medical Education outside China" to the forum.

"From its beginning, Tibetan medicine as we know it today has been an international assemblage, incorporating the best medical knowledge from China, India and Persia into a uniquely Tibetan framework, and then re-exporting it along with Tibetan Buddhism through vast parts of Inner Asia," Stephan Kloos said in his thesis.
Courts at all levels in China are stepping up efforts to speed up efficiency in processing the increased number of cases as the country's judiciary suffers from a shortage of judges.

Hu Shihao, head of the judicial reform office at the Supreme People's Court, said on Tuesday that a guideline for improving the efficiency of court procedures has been mapped out as a primary principle guiding all courts to better use of judiciary resources.

The guideline, issued by the top court on Monday, sets up standards for all courts to handle cases of the same type and encourages the use of modern technology to replace clerks' manual work.

It stipulates that courts are allowed to carry out trials through video with the consent of litigators and to employ voice recognition techniques to transform voice recordings to scripts of court trials.

It also allows courts to use voice recordings and video recordings to replace written scripts of court trials.

Hu said courts in a host of regions including Guangdong and Guizhou provinces have gained valuable experience in classifying cases into different levels according to their complexity.

Judges in these regions are assigned with cases of different complexity. Eighty percent of the judges are allocated to handle complicated cases while the rest are given simple cases.

Nearly 18 million cases were filed in courts across the country last year, triple the number of the previous year. As of Tuesday, more than 14 million cases have been filed since the beginning of this year.

At present, there are nearly 200,000 judges in the country. "The increase in the number of cases far exceeds the growth in the number of the judges, and there is a shortage of auxiliary staff for judges," Hu said.
The proportion of Chinese people who can communicate in Mandarin Chinese is expected to exceed 80 percent by the year 2020, according to a work plan for popularizing Mandarin during the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020).

The work plan was released by the National Language Committee together with the Ministry of Education in Beijing on Tuesday.

Statistics from the language committee showed that as of 2015, more than 70 percent of people across China can use Mandarin Chinese for purpose of daily life. However, at the end of the 20th century, the proportion was 53 percent.

Yao Xishuang, director of the Education Ministry's department of language and character management, said a lot of efforts were made during the past decade to popularize the use of Mandarin  a universal language in China  among people from across the country.

Among the efforts is the Mandarin Chinese Week, an event launched in 1997 to help people from different ethnic groups to learn to use Mandarin Chinese.

This year, the event was held from Sept 8 to 14, for the 19th time. Some outstanding learners from ethnic groups like Uygur and Tibetan were asked to share their experiences and benefits of learning the language.

The work plan also included increasing efforts to protect the languages of the country's other ethnic groups, particularly some endangered ones.

"The languages of ethnic groups are part of the Chinese language and culture and we will try to work out more scientific and effective ways to prevent them from dying out," Yao said.
China and Russia announced on Tuesday that they would start a joint naval drill off Guangdong province in the South China Sea.

The "Joint Sea 2016" drill will run until September 19, and feature navy surface ships, submarines, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, marines and amphibious armored equipment.

Wang Hai, Chinese chief director of the exercise and deputy commander of the Chinese Navy, said that the joint drill is "a strategic measure" and concrete action to promote the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination in order to deepen exchanges and cooperation between the two militaries, especially the two navies.

Ten Chinese Navy ships - destroyers, frigates, landing ships, supply ships and submarines - are participating in the drill, as well as 11 fixed-wing aircraft, eight helicopters, 160 marines and amphibious armored equipment.

The Russian Navy has three surface ships, two supply ships, two helicopters, 96 marines and amphibious armored equipment participating in the drill.

The drill will highlight real combat, digitization and standardization to promote naval cooperation.

Several procedures will be undertaken during the drill, including joint air defense, anti-submarine operations, landing, island-seizing, search and rescue, and weapon use.
China's top legislature on Tuesday declared the disqualification of 45 national legislators from Northeast China's Liaoning province for their involvement in unprecedented electoral fraud.

A report by the National People's Congress Credentials Committee said it believes that the acts by the 45 deputies violated the electoral law, and thus their election should be nullified by the NPC Standing Committee.

An NPC Standing Committee session that closed on Tuesday afternoon voted to unseat the 45 NPC deputies, who were elected from the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress, for vote-buying and bribery during the election in 2013.

Lawmakers also voted to set up a panel to prepare for a new session of the Liaoning provincial legislature.

A total of 523 deputies to the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress were implicated in the election fraud and have now either resigned or had their qualification as deputies terminated. No additional details, such as whether these deputies will face further punishment, were released.

Given that among the 62 members of the Standing Committee of the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress, 38 have been disqualified and cease to serve on the Standing Committee, the committee is now unable to convene to perform its duties.

"The Liaoning electoral fraud has been the first such case that ever happened at a provincial-level election since the founding of New China," Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, said at Tuesday's NPC session.

"It is a challenge to the people's congress system, a challenge to socialist democratic politics and a challenge to the country's laws and Party disciplines," Zhang said. "It has touched the bottom line of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and the ruling of the Communist Party of China."

Zhang said the thorough investigation of the illegal election represents the central leadership's firm determination to govern the country by the rule of law and to administer the Party strictly, which maintains the dignity and authority of both the people's congress system and the socialist rule of law.

Since a new round of people's congress elections will start this year, Zhang called on people's congresses at all levels to "rethink profoundly the case in Liaoning and learn a lesson from it".

"Under no circumstances should money for votes be brought in elections," he said.

People's Daily, the official newspaper of the CPC, will publish an opinion article on Wednesday under the headline "Zero Tolerance for Electoral Bribery", according to a report by China Central Television on Tuesday.

"We must unswervingly uphold and improve the people's congress system, and provide a strong institutional guarantee for the country's long-term stability and prosperity," the opinion piece says.

The NPC Standing Committee session usually convenes every two months, but it can also be convened provisionally as needed.
One family hotel has hung the photos of President Xi Jinping's visiting on their houses on the wall for memory. [Photo by Zhang Xingjian/chinadaily.com.cn]

Fancy a Kindle? Take the Long March quiz

One year ago, President Xi Jinping made a stop in Huamao village of Zunyi city that has been lifted out of poverty in recent years.

He visited greenhouses, financial centers, bamboo and poverty workshops to learn how poverty reduction projects were running. Xi also spoke with the villagers, saying the Communist Party of China (CPC) central committee cares a lot about farmers, particularly those in poverty, and has enacted various policies to boost rural development.

One year later, I had the chance to visit Huamao village on my Long March trip in Southwest China's Guizhou province and found a rags-to-riches story to share with you.

Clean and tidy streets, neat and beautiful dwellings, white clouds and green mountains as well as simple and nice locals, all these mixed together render me a sense of peace and belonging.

They form my first impression of Huamao village.

"Our village was once called Huangmao Tian, which literally means a desolate and uninhabited place for human beings. Later, we changed the name into Huamao, a symbol of prosperity and flourish. And it really works," one local people said to me.

In recent years, the local government has taken a series of measures to reduce poverty and support the poor by developing efficient modern agriculture and guiding local to explore rural tourism.
Oysters, paella, grilled prawns and an intriguing wine list are just the start at one of the city's oldest European eateries. Mike Peters reports.

Hangzhou is justly famous for its local cuisine, but it's not well-known as an outpost for foreign fare. So on a recent visit to Zhejiang's provincial capital, we were pleasantly surprised to discover La Pedrera - a Spanish restaurant with an impressive wine list tucked in a corner of a large Chinese hotel.

Our leisurely lunch got a pleasantly authentic start with a refreshing glass of sparkling cava, a bottle of mineral water labeled Vichy Catalan, a welcome platter of fresh-baked breads, and serving dishes with a mosaic edge as colorful as any you might find in sunny Spain.
CD Rev, a rap group from Chengdu, Sichuan province, is expected to release a new single, This Is Our Generation, in October, a sign of the rising popularity of using rap to explain China to the outside world.

The group's earlier song, This Is China, became an online sensation after it was released in June.

This is China, in which group members talk about why they love the country, has been viewed more than 10 million times. The four-member hip-pop group also has about 100,000 followers on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like social platform.
A scene from "I Am Not Madame Bovary". [Photo/Mtime]

A number of Chinese film s are premiering at this year's ongoing Toronto International Film Festival.

Famed Chinese director Feng Xiaogang has brought his much-anticipated black comedy "I Am Not Madame Bovary" to Toronto.

The film tells the story of a cafe owner spending a decade fighting for her legal rights after being swindled by her ex-husband.

Some 1,700 tickets to the movie's world premier in Toronto were sold out in a day, with audience members giving it the thumbs-up after the showing.

Additionally, "Soul on a String", a mystical epic about a killer on the run, has also made its world premier in Toronto.

Combining two novels from writer Tashi Dawa, the film by director Zhang Yang provides a beautiful showcase of the local culture in China's Tibet.

Two other films, "Birth of the Dragon" and "Old Stone", are also set to meet audiences in Toronto later in the week.

US-China-Canada collaboration "Birth of the Dragon" is based on the legendary life of Bruce Lee, while "Old Stone", a joint effort by China and Canada, is about a cab driver's nightmare after he takes an injured man to the hospital.

Related:

'Crosscurrent' applies for Oscar competition
Poster for the Franco-Chinese Month of the Environment [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The 3rd Franco-Chinese Month of the Environment will begin on September 27, according to a news conference held on Monday.

Organized by the French embassy in China, this year's month-long project will focus on the theme of biodiversity. A wide range of cultural events, including exhibitions, film screenings, concerts, art workshops, lectures, seminars and forums will be held in 25 Chinese cities.

"This year's event covers more diversified disciplines compared with the last two years and targets wider audiences, enhancing interaction with the general public," said Matthieu Berton, technical coordinator of the Environment, Heritage, and Sustainable Development Department of the French embassy. A variety of topics and subjects will be discussed and explored throughout the month, such as natural resource management, urbanization and lifestyles, environmental protection and technological innovation, promoting public awareness of biodiversity richness and exploring more balanced relations between people and the natural world.

Famed Chinese actress Tao Hong was present as the image ambassador of the event. After stressing the importance of environmental protection and prevention of climate change, she recommended two films that will be screened during the event.

"French films have their distinctive taste and style," Tao said. "They dont cater to commercial trends and have their own focus." Tao said that the French documentary Oceans (Oceans) and its sequel Seasons (Les Saisons) are two must-sees. The latter will be on big screens in China later in September.

The Franco-Chinese Month of the Environment was started in 2014 and is the only multi-disciplinary festival dedicated to the environment organized by an embassy in multiple Chinese cities. It will last until October 27. For more information please visit its website: http://mfce.faguowenhua.com/
Wu Biduan (right) is showing his signature works, like The Iron Flood (left), in Beijing.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Wu Biduan is holding his first retrospective exhibition at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where the 90-year-old taught for several decades until his retirement in 1988.

A noted lithography artist, Wu produced many iconic works, including a portrait of New China's founding father Mao Zedong, in which he incorporated the style of traditional Chinese New Year paintings; a portrait of Zhou Enlai that resonated with the public after the premier's death in 1976; and Sunflower Field, in which Wu talks of social transformation after the reform and opening-up.

The ongoing exhibition, titled Incised Traces, celebrates the artist's versatility in sketches, illustrations, comic strips, watercolors and ink paintings. His artistic career spanning seven decades is typical of a lot of artists of his generation, who devoted their time to portraying common people's lives.

Wu's first association with art can be traced back to his student days at the Yucai Middle School, founded by the famed educator Tao Xingzhi in Chongqing in 1939. It took in many refugee children like Wu, who escaped from their hometowns during the Japanese invasion.

Wu joined a painting group in school, in which he studied sketching, drawing and coloring, and was introduced to Western art. He created his first published work at age 15, a woodcut titled Bloody Accusation that appeared on Xinhua Daily, the first newspaper published by the Communist Party of China.

The woodcut reproduced a tragic scene of children killed in Japanese bombings of Chongqing in 1938. People's agonies back then led Wu to create more such artwork throughout his career.

A graduate of the erstwhile Northeast Associated University, Wu went for advanced studies to the Ilya Repin State Academic Institute of Fine Arts, Sculpture and Architecture in St. Petersburg from 1956 to 1959.
The Ordeal by Roses series by Eikoh Hosoe, a pioneer of Japanese experimental photography.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Photography's purpose is to capture slices of life and freeze them for eternity on paper. And, with new technology, artists have moved beyond realistic depictions to monologues through photography.

Pretend to Be Romantic, an exhibition at Beijing's Hui Art Space, is about the distinctively expressive approaches to photography of six artists from China and Japan. Its curator, Shi Zheng, says the show is not about techniques but how photographers transform their instant, romantic emotions into the images on display.

Eikoh Hosoe, 83, is known as the father of Japanese experimental photography. On show is a photo from his iconic Ordeal by Roses series in collaboration with compatriot Yukio Mishima in 1961.

Mishima, who was a noted author, is seen kissing a rose in a photo. His thick eyebrows, sharp eyes staring into the camera and naked shoulders are visible in the same image.

The photo emits a mystic feeling that distinguishes Hosoe's works. By highlighting Mishima's masculinity, the photographer explored the subject of life and death. Years later, Mishima's suicide in his prime made the series significant.

Nobuyoshi Araki, 76, approaches the theme of death most famously with his photos of female bodies. His two series on show, one of black-and-white photos and another taken by instant cameras with color film, focus on blossoming flowers that represent sexy women. But the flowers are said to smell bad, giving a hint of death as a destination of every one.

The media quoted Araki as saying earlier: "Life and death are essentially an integration."

Today's young photographers are carrying on with more conceptual, vanguard experiments as the exhibition shows.

Beijing-based artist Chi Peng shows his photographic installations in which he pairs one photo with a mirror, with the audience being able to see only the reflections of the photos.

By doing so, Chi invites people to examine the relationship between two lovers and between one's true self and his or her physical appearance in others' eyes, according to curator Shi.

Chi says it's become difficult for new developments in photography. "Rather than how to photograph, one should focus on what he wants to express."

Photos of both Cheng Yinan and Yoshinori Mizutani are quite poetic. Cheng's works offer a feeling of both motion and aloofness, which is attributed to his student years in the United States.

Mizutani zooms in on the beauty of nature in his photos of 2014, titled Yusurika (buzzer midge in Japanese). The small flies turn into white balls of light with cameras flashes and form a fantastic landscape in his works.

Mizutani traces his close bond with nature to his childhood, which he spent in a place surrounded by mountains, creeks, paddy fields and insects. He says after he moved to Tokyo more than 10 years ago, he has been "seeking nature", dreaming of landscapes of his childhood.

If you go

9 am-9 pm, through Sept 20. Hui Art Space, Grand Summit, Liangmaqiao, 19 Dongfang East Road, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-8531-5282.


Japanese Devil, oil on canvas, 200x240cm, 2015, by Wang Xingwei. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Chinese artist Wang Xingwei's latest show mockingly depicts the exaggeration of Chinese people's fictionalizing power to fight against Japanese soldiers during China's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), a once popular subject put on air by many TV dramas in the past few years.

The show Honor and Disgrace features oil paintings and sketches and drafts the painter drew for his final-version paintings. Most of the works on display were painted between 2015 and 2016.

In the section of disgrace, Wang ironically portrays the Japanese soldiers as clowns, the inspiration for which he says he got from TV dramas once aired on Chinese screens but banned last year. These TV series often exaggerate Chinese people's power when they fight against Japanese invaders, such as people using their fist to repel many soldiers.

"I paint my works in the style of cartoons. In fact, I don't focus much on the content of my paintings. I want to show the composition and colors of my drawings, more concentrating on techniques, " Wang, 47, said.

To show his painting techniques, he chooses Jigong --- a well-known Buddhist monk who lived hundreds of years ago --- as the subject against a modern scenario.

Wang was born in Shenyang in Northeastern China's Liaoning province and lives in Beijing. He has put on many solo shows across the world. The latest show is being held at the China Contemporary Art Institute and will last until October 23.
An exhibition at the National Art Museum of China shows how modern oil painters try to adapt the technique of "xieyi", or painting the meaning, into the realm of oil painting. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"Xieyi", literally meaning painting the meaning, has been a tradition of Chinese ink art which skips the depiction of details but stresses on bringing out the inner meanings and spirits of the subject matters.

An exhibition at the National Art Museum of China shows how modern oil painters try to adapt this practice of Chinese painting into the realm of oil painting.

The works are produced by both established and younger members of the China Oil Painting Society in Beijing, exhibiting the scope and depth of their achievement of "xieyi" aesthetics.

The exhibition runs from Sept 14 to 25.

Related:

The Disgrace and Honor on canvas
Clockwise from top left: Steak tartare, Angus beef sirloin, grilled prawns and vanilla yoghurt dessert with summer fruits. Photos by Mike Peters / China Daily

Oysters, paella, grilled prawns and an intriguing wine list are just the start at one of the city's oldest European eateries. Mike Peters reports.

Hangzhou is justly famous for its local cuisine, but it's not well-known as an outpost for foreign fare. So on a recent visit to Zhejiang's provincial capital, we were pleasantly surprised to discover La Pedrera - a Spanish restaurant with an impressive wine list tucked in a corner of a large Chinese hotel.

Our leisurely lunch got a pleasantly authentic start with a refreshing glass of sparkling cava, a bottle of mineral water labeled Vichy Catalan, a welcome platter of fresh-baked breads, and serving dishes with a mosaic edge as colorful as any you might find in sunny Spain.

As soon as we were settled at our table with this opening array, we were advised to choose a rice dish - that menu section was labeled "the most famous" - as these four specialties would take 25 minutes to prepare. These are generous iron skillets to serve two or more people. We gave the tempting lobster rice Caldoso (298 yuan or about $45) a longing gaze before opting for the black-rice paella (98 yuan) instead.

We started our meal with a pair of oysters from a list that included four French options as well as bivalves from South Africa and Tasmania. The steak menu was even more extensive, and we settled for an Angus beef striploin (218 yuan for 280 grams) with sides of rosemary-roasted potatoes and a lightly pungent confit of mushrooms and garlic.

While the chefs were practicing their art on the steak and paella, we enjoyed a small raw feast: the Geay oysters we'd chosen from the international oyster list and a stunning steak tartare. The patty of well-seasoned beef, served with a duck egg, a big pinch of arugula and thin crisp rounds of lightly toasted fresh bread, made the prettiest dish of the meal.

The taste winner, however, may have been the Argentine prawns, fried in citric oil and delectably tender amid chunks of dried red chili and devastatingly delicious garlic chips. The two menu pages of tapas also included lots of other tempting seafood, from grilled octopus and Spanish-style seafood croquettes to marinara clams.

The paella arrived next, well worth the wait with a pair of sauteed shrimps at the center, seemingly locked face-to-face inthe rice like apair of flamenco dancers. Afloat in the sea of squid-ink tinted rice around them were tasty clams and scallops, and a pair of lemon slices poised like tiny boats of brilliant yellow.

We were basically full when the steak arrived, but our appetites returned as the tender beef, perfectly cooked to our medium-rare order, was sliced and sprinked with a bit of freshly ground pepper and pink Himalayan salt. The sides of grilled mushrooms and potatoes gave the plate some visual and nutritional balance.

Among the dishes we passed over with regret were a turbot stew with baked beans, young garlic and saffron foam, and grilled octopus with potatoes and paprika oil. Those temptations will have to wait for a return visit.

Somehow, we found room for dessert - in fact, two of them. A fig "biscuit" turned out to be a creamy rectangle that was almost as dense as cheesecake; served with toffee and sweet cream, it was a sensation of textures and flavors. More conventional but perhaps more appealing as a summer treat: a vanilla yogurt impregnated with seasonal fruits: orange, berry and mango.

Besides its carefully sourced and prepared Spanish fare, the original La Pedrera is well-known for its gin and tonics - varieties including pineapple and apple caramelized by a small torch in front of you, fresh herbs and frozen figs. We were too sated with a big meal and a robust tempranillo to migrate to the bar for more alcohol, so a G&T sampling will also have to be saved for a return visit.
US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) shake hands at the conclusion of their news conference following their meeting in Geneva, Switzerland where they discussed the crisis in Syria, Sept 9, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

A cease-fire brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday offers a ray of hope for an end to the conflict in Syria that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Russia and the United States reached a truce agreement in February, but it failed to stop armed conflicts between Syria's government and opposition forces. The new deal demands the Syrian government and opposition factions not use force so that humanitarian aid can be provided to long-besieged towns and villages.

At the same time, Russia will urge the Syrian government to stop military actions against opposition forces in specific areas, and, in return, the US will demand Syria's "mild" opposition forces separate themselves from the extremist Fateh al-Sham Front. If a cessation of hostilities holds for one week, the US and Russia will strengthen their military cooperation in Syria, such as sharing intelligence and conducting joint operations against jihadists.

The latest truce deal reflects the complicated situation in Syria and the changed policy considerations of Moscow and Washington. The emergence of the Islamic State group, with which Syria's opposition forces have links, seems to have created a joint enemy for both Russia and the US in Syria and thus prompted them to change their previous stances.

The US previously insisted that Syrian President Bashar Assad must resign, but Washington has budged from this stance. Strained ties with the West on the Ukraine issue and its lingering economic woes have also prompted Russia to pursue cooperation with the West while ensuring its traditional interests in Syria.

In fact, Russia has been pursuing cooperation with the US in the past months in the fight against extremist groups such as the IS. At the same time, the unclear future of Turkey's ties with Russia and the US has also prompted the US to pursue cooperation with Russia.
The so-called 996 work schedule, which refers to employees working from 9 am to 9 pm six days a week, has become the norm for employees of internet companies.

The working hours have become an "unspoken rule" in many enterprises.

But what these companies are doing goes against the Labor Law.

The Labor Law stipulates that the normal working hours should be no more than eight hours a day, 44 hours a week.

Overtime should not exceed three hours per day and 36 hours per month, and enterprises should pay employees no less than 150 percent of their hourly wage for each hour of overtime. From the perspective of protecting employees' rights, many enterprises, especially internet companies, violate the law.

Some companies inform employees that the 996 work schedule without any overtime payment is compulsory. Even in those companies that do not make 996 compulsory, many employees abide by the working schedule as they fear for their jobs otherwise. This shows insufficient protection of employees' rights.

Many internet companies claim they pursue innovation, equality and freedom, and their long-term target is to change the world for the better. Compulsory overtime that undermines employees' rights and interests shows what a load of hogwash this is.
Homestead National Monument of America is hosting the Prairie Visions Photography Festival on Sunday September 25, 2016 at Homestead National Monument of Americas Education Center from 2 to 4 p.m. Photographer Matt Elwood will lead a discussion on taking good photographs.

Learn how to integrate photography basics such as lighting, composition and subject matter into everyday photography, both indoor and outdoor. As an event and portrait photographer, Elwood specializes in complex and on-the-go photography skills which can be carried over across a diverse range of scenarios, such as wildlife, portrait and landscape photography. With over 13 years of professional experience, Elwood travels around the world learning, A good camera takes a great photo but it can also take a bad photo. The person behind the camera can be trained.

We are excited about having Matt Elwood at Homestead to share his photographic knowledge and hope participants will share their photographs of the park with others, said Superintendent Mark Engler. The prairie is particularly beautiful this year.

Remember, Homestead National Monument of America has an exciting schedule of events planned for 2016. Keep up with the latest information by following us on Twitter (HomesteadNM) and Facebook (Homestead National Monument of America).

Homestead National Monument of America is a unit of the National Park Service located four miles west of Beatrice, Nebraska. Hours of operation are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekends. Admission is free of charge. For additional information, please call 402-223-3514 or visit http://www.nps.gov/home/index.htm.
A bailiff introduces visitors to a judge's robe at Fujian Provincial High People's Court in Fuzhou on the Open Day on Aug 25, 2016. [Photo/ ZHENG SHUAI/CHINA DAILY ]

Editor's note: The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China on Monday issued a white paper on new progress in the judicial protection of human rights in China. Following is the full text of the document.

Foreword

Respecting and protecting human rights is a constitutional principle in China. It also reflects the will and pursuit of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Chinese government and the Chinese people. The judiciary is the last line of defense to safeguard social fairness and justice, and judicial protection of human rights is an important part of human rights progress in a country. In recent years, especially since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, China has upheld the dominant position of the people, taking a people-first approach and ensuring that the people are the masters of the nation. The state strives to ensure the rights of the people, fully protects their interests, and promotes legislature based on rational analysis, strict law enforcement, judicial justice, and observance of the law by all citizens. Progress has been made in modernizing the system and capacity of state governance. China has effectively protected the people's rights and freedoms in an extensive array of fields in accordance with the law, while its people duly fulfill their obligations.

As China enhances the rule of law in all respects, new progress has been made in human rights protection in the field of justice. The reform of the judiciary has been driven to a deeper level, with improvements in the allocation of judicial powers and responsibilities, judicial accountability and opening-up, and the protection of lawyers' right to practice their profession. Channels of public participation in justice have been expanded, and the judicial protection of human rights has been improved. China has implemented a case-filing register system, revamped and improved its litigation system, and strictly enforced principles of legality, in dubio pro reo, exclusion of unlawful evidence. The state is resolute in preventing and correcting miscarriages of justice, and the procedures for protecting human rights in judicial practice have been raised to higher standards. The judiciary exercises its power independently and impartially in accordance with the law, leading to strengthened public credibility. Further efforts have been made in terms of state compensation and legal aid. Judicial fairness and justice is safeguarded, and citizens' rights are effectively protected. Crime suspects, defendants and criminals are treated in a more civilized manner, punishments are meted out in a more standardized way, and the personal dignity, safety, and legal property of detainees are all well protected, as are their rights of appeal, accusation, and impeachment.

There is no end to mankind's pursuit of progress. There is still much room for improvement for the rule of law in China. Strengthening judicial protection of human rights will continue to be a major task in implementing the rule of law. China will proceed from its prevailing reality, learn from the achievements of other countries regarding the rule of law, enhance judicial protection of human rights, safeguard social fairness and justice, and implement the rule of law in all respects.

I. Strengthen the Mechanism of Judicial Protection of Human Rights

China is striving to drive reform of the judiciary to a deeper level, allocate judicial powers and responsibilities in a more rational way, improve the judicial accountability system, promote judicial transparency, establish a national judicial assistance system, and ensure the right of lawyers to practice their profession and the rights of citizens to act as assessors and overseers.

Further improve the allocation of judicial powers and responsibilities, and ensure the independent and impartial exercise of the judicial and procuratorial power. Major plans for deeper reform of the judiciary were made at the 18th National Congress of the CPC and the third and fourth plenary sessions of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC. In 2014-2015, the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform held 19 meetings, 13 of which involved reform of the judiciary. The Group examined and approved 27 judiciary reform documents in total. Public security organs have improved the mechanism of law enforcement, changed the case-filing review system to case-filing register system, and strengthened examination and supervision of case admitting work. The Supreme People's Procuratorate has issued the "Opinions on Deepening Procuratorial Reform (Work Plan for 2013-2017)," and the Supreme People's Court has released the "Opinions on Deepening the Reform of People's Courts in All Respectsthe Fourth Five-Year Reform Plan of the People's Courts (2014-2018)." Since 2014, pilot programs have been promoted nationwide to improve performance in the following areas: judicial accountability, category-based management of judicial personnel, job security for the judicial profession, and unified management of the personnel, finance and property of people's courts and procuratorates below the provincial level. The reform of trial-centered litigation is making headway.

In 2014, people's courts and people's procuratorates transcending administrative boundaries were established in Beijing and Shanghai, to handle major cross-regional criminal, civil and administrative cases. This was to address certain parties' concerns over the authority of the jurisdiction in charge of their cases, and to promote the unified and correct application of laws. In 2015, the Supreme People's Court set up its first and second circuit courts in Shenzhen and Shenyang for major cross-regional administrative, civil and commercial cases. In 2015 the circuit courts handled 1,774 cases and concluded 1,653 of them, concluding all cases within the time limit.

Improve the judicial accountability system, and enhance the central role of judges and prosecutors in case handling. We will improve the accountability systems of presiding judges, collegial benches, and prosecutors for the cases they handle. The powers and responsibilities of judges and prosecutors have been made clear, and they have lifelong accountability for the cases they adjudicate. A strict accountability system for misjudgments has been implemented. Thus a judiciary operation mechanism with clear distinction between and unification of powers and responsibilities, and well management has taken shape. The judiciary has reformed the signing of written judgments, with a clear provision that other than in cases decided by a judicial committee, the presidents, vice presidents and divisional chief judges will not review and sign the written judgments of cases they did not participate in. It has been made clear that presidents and divisional chief judges of people's courts are not allowed to air judgmental opinions on cases they did not hear, or negate the opinion of trial judges and collegial benches, unless they attended deliberations, on such cases at the judicial committees or meetings of judges with specialized knowledge.

Reform has been carried out in judicial committees. The deliberation sessions of judicial committees are recorded with audio-visual devices from beginning to end, and all committee members who have participated in the discussion and cast their votes must sign their names in the meeting minutes. A performance appraisal and internal public evaluation system has also been established for judicial committees. In pilot courts of Shanghai, the rate of cases handled independently by trial judges and collegial benches reached 99.9 percent of all cases, with only 0.1 percent of cases submitted to judicial committees for discussion.
Police officers make a list of bank cards seized in a telecommunication fraud case in Xuchang, Henan province, in January. NIU YUAN/CHINA DAILY

Twenty-eight suspects involved in recent telecom scam cases have been detained by local police in East China's Shandong province and South China's Guangdong province. Their arrest exposed a nationwide network of telecom fraudsters and hackers. The Beijing News commented on Monday:

Xu Yuyu, a prospective college freshman in Linyi of East China's Shandong province, died of heart attack after 9,900 yuan ($1,480) was fraudulently stolen from her in August. It is reported that someone hacked into this year's candidate online registration system for the college entrance examination in Shandong province and stole tens of thousands of candidates' information, including Xu's.

Meanwhile, a nation-wide "industry chain" among fraudsters, hackers and even government officials has gradually received more attention. In Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning province, an auxiliary traffic police officer reportedly sold the personal information of more than 20,000 local drivers via WeChat, a popular Chinese social network platform, and illegally raked in over 50,000 yuan.

It is encouraging that the fraudsters blamed for Xu's death have been detained by local police, who had a timely response to public concerns. Yet, the bigger problems have not been solved.

The longevity of the coalition of fraudsters, hackers and other parties involved has much to do with the poor management of our personal information. Perhaps collecting people's personal information can enhance the efficiency of social governance. However, people may constantly feel insecure knowing their information is under insufficient protection, as the three latest telecom fraud cases unveiled.

Personal information needs to be better protected, as there are several loopholes in data management that can be exploited. In many aspects, whether reluctant or inapt, information collectors and managers have done little to fulfill their duties. As a result, an increasing number of people's information has been stolen, leaked or traded.

In this regard, all levels of government should shoulder the responsibility to protect all citizens' personal information, and incompetent officials who leak information should be held accountable.
A screenshot of lists of 2017 US News Best Colleges Rankings.

Princeton University remains the best private university in the US, according to the latest US News & World Report college rankings, and the University of California Berkeley  which has a large Chinese-student presence  is the top public school in the US.

US News released its 2017 Best Colleges rankings on Tuesday, and the top private universities are Princeton, Harvard University, University of Chicago, Yale University, Columbia University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University.

Of those, Columbia University has the most international students from China.

The top public universities in the country are UC Berkeley, UCLA, the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina.

Of the public universities, UC Berkeley and UCLA have the highest number of Chinese international students, according to a list compiled by Foreign Policy magazine.

Williams College in Massachusetts was selected as the best liberal arts college for the 14th year in a row.

The list of schools, published annually and used often by prospective college students, is based on 15 measures of academic quality, such as student graduation and retention rates.

US News also included a list of schools with the most international students to better help international students who are interested in studying abroad. The list is widely consulted by Chinese students, and the media company publishes articles in Chinese to let students and their parents understand the college admissions process, how to work with agents, and paying for college.

"US colleges and universities are becoming increasingly global and are finding new ways to support their international students. There is an influx of Chinese students looking to study in the US, and US News wants them to have easy access to trusted information that caters to their unique needs and helps them find the right college," said Anita Narayan, managing editor of education at US News.

"For both international and US students, a college choice can profoundly affect career opportunities, financial well-being and quality of life. The US News rankings can help prospective students navigate through the process of finding the right college, and can provide security and set expectations for their investments," she said to China Daily.

Despite the popularity of the rankings list, it also has faced criticism from education experts who say that the way US News ranks the colleges is inconsistent year to year, making it hard to gauge why a certain college outranks another.

Critics, such as the non-profit Education Conservancy, say that the list implies a "false precision and authority that is not warranted by the data US News uses" and overweighs a university's prestige.

The education organization said in a 2007 letter to college presidents protesting the ranking that the list reflects little to nothing about students' abilities to learn at the universities.

There also have been examples of colleges trying to game the system in order to earn a higher ranking on the list, such as Claremont-McKenna College in California, which was caught in 2012 for providing US News with false SAT scores.
SEOUL - The US military on Tuesday flew two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers over the Republic of Korea in a show of force following the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s recent nuclear test.

Two B-1B Lancers, which can carry nuclear weapons, flew over the Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, some 70 km south of capital Seoul, at about 10 am local time (0100GMT), according to local media reports.

The one was flanked by four ROK's F-15K fighter jets, while the other was joined by four US F-16 fighter planes before returning to the base. The high-speed bombers made a sortie from the US air base in Guam.

The flights are a day later than scheduled. The United States reportedly planned to send the bombers to South Korea on Monday, but it was delayed due to unfavorable weather conditions.

The United States allegedly forward-deployed several B-1Bs to Andersen base in Guam in early August from Ellsworth air base in South Dakota to replace B-52 strategic bombers.

The flight of B-1Bs over South Korean territory near the inter-Korean border came just four days after the DPRK announced its successful explosion test of nuclear warhead that can be mounted on ballistic missiles.

The ROK's military estimated the fifth nuclear test was the most powerful as it produced an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, bigger than 6 kilotons generated in the previous test.

Following the Jan 6 nuclear detonation, the fourth from the DPRK, the US military staged an armed protest by flying a B-52 strategic bomber over the Osan Air Base.
CHON BURI - The search continued on Monday for a Chinese woman who went missing while visiting Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Si Racha district on Sunday evening, Bangkok Post reported.

Pol Col Chanapat Nawalak, chief of Nong Kham police, identified the Chinese tourist as Gao Liping, about 36. She was wearing a white T-shirt, red shorts and a white wide-brimmed hat.

Mrs Gao was reported to have last been seen about 6pm on Sunday while touring the zoo.

About 100 police and search and rescue staff of a local charity foundation began scouring zoo in steady rain to find her.

The search was called off on Sunday night without any trace beikng found of her.

A Chinese tour guide told police Mrs Gao travelled to Thailand after breaking up with her husband. She appeared to be under stress and often separated from the tour group to be alone.

Pol Chanapat said the search resumed on Monday morning and footage from the 122 security cameras installed around the zoo was being examined in the hope of locating her.

By late Monday afternoon there were still no reports her being found.
Zhang Wenhui, a veteran of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, unveils the monument to Norman Bethune at Chengdu's Jianchuan Museum, in Southwest China's Sichuan province, on April 15, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese and Canadian art institutions will co-create a musical, "Bethune", to commemorate Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, a household name in China who devoted his life to healing people of this land during war, according to a report at xinhuanet.com on September 2.

Chinese musical writer Yu Rongjun will join Canadian director Brian Hill and composer Neil Bartram for the musical creation, according to an agreement signed by the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre and the Canada Sheridan College Musical Theater in Shanghai.

Chinese artists will launch an art collection tour and a workshop in Canada next year and release the Chinese version of the musical in 2018, while later releasing the English version on a North America tour in 2019.

"Bethune stayed in North China's Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hebei province after arrived at China in 1937," Yu said. Those regions are famous for their folk music and songs, and we are looking for Chinese composers to work with Canadian composers for musicals with both international and Chinese elements."

The musical will present both international war scenes and Chinese style music on the stage, Yu says.

"From Canada to Spain to China, Bethune experienced a lot through his short but brilliant life. He must have looked for some kind of spirit, and the spirit has supported him travelling from a peaceful and plentiful land to a war-ridden place far away from home. The spirit also supported him to adapt to the enormous change in his life and finally devoted his life to the people of another country. This kind of spirit is rare and precious at any time and in any place," Yu said.

As a member of the Canadian Communist Party, Bethune went to China as head of a medical team to help with the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in 1937. The doctor set up a mobile hospital in Yan'an, a center of the Chinese revolution, and helped save the lives of thousands.


Zhang Xinsheng is re-elected president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and chairman of the IUCN Council for another four-year term. Provided to China Daily

Zhang Xinsheng, president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has been re-elected to serve another four years.

As the only candidate nominated by the IUCN Council at the 6th IUCN World Conservation Congress meeting in Honolulu, Zhang was also elected chairman of the Council by nearly 1,000 members of IUCN from more than 160 countries.

"I swear that I will continue my dedicated service to global conservation of nature and environment. I will try my best to inherit the past and usher in the future," said Zhang at the closing ceremony on Sept 10 of the 10-day gathering where more than 10,000 participants met and discussed world conservation.

Formed in 1948, the IUCN is the world's largest and most diverse environmental network with 1,300 government and private organizations as members.

The Honolulu meeting, which had as its theme "Planet at the Crossroads," marked the first time that the IUCN World Conservation Congress has been held in the US. It was the largest environmental conference in IUCN and US history.

Representing China as a member country, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs joined the IUCN in 1996. Since then, about 30 organizations in China have also joined, according to Hou Bo, a staff member of IUCN's China office.

"It shows that China has grown strong, not only as an economy but also a soft power," said Zhang. He said that Western countries have gone the way of "treatment after pollution", which has caused severe environmental problems.

"China is going a totally different way," said Zhang. He said the principle that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" raised by Chinese President Xi Jinping, along with the concept of eco-civilization, show Chinas leading role in conserving the worlds ecosystem.

Proposed in 2007 by China, eco-civilization focuses on respecting, adapting to, and conserving nature in meeting social and economic needs.

Together with about 30 IUCN members from China, the State Forestry Administration of China attended the congress. The Chinese delegation held four themed activities, including a discussion about eco-civilization, a workshop on forest landscape restoration and an exhibition of Chinas wildlife protection.

Zhang Yongli, deputy director general of the forestry administration, said that the forest area in China has been growing in the past 30 years, reaching a total of 208 million hectares.
Students from the University of Leeds in the UK pose for photos at the Heathrow Airport in London ahead of their flight arranged by China Eastern Airlines, Sept 12, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

This year marks not only 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare, but also that of his Chinese counterpart, great Ming dynasty playwright Tang Xianzu.

A Midsummer Night's Dream Under the Southern Bough is a contemporary adaptation and reimagining of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Tang Xianzu's Nanke Ji, one of his quartet of dream stories.

The global theatre collaboration features students from the University of Leeds in the UK and the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. The production left for Beijing on Monday and will tour in China after premiered in Leeds and performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
China and Russia have decided to enhance law enforcement and mutually support each other to maintain regional safety and stability, according to Chinese authorities on Tuesday.

The agreement was made at a China-Russia High-level Law Enforcement Security Cooperation Mechanism Meeting held in Beijing, where the two sides discussed their concerns and exchanged their views about issues involving counter-terrorism and law enforcement cooperation.

"Deepening judicial security cooperation between China and Russia has played a significant role for their comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership," said Meng Jianzhu, China's top law enforcement official.

He said the two countries have achieved fruitful results in terms of law enforcement, counter-terrorism, prosecution and administration of justice in the past two years, and hope to deepen their cooperation to a new level.

Russia expressed their willingness to work closely with China, then offered new contributions for safeguarding their security interests and regional stability.
President Xi Jinping announced on Sunday that China would donate $10 million to the United Nations toward women's rights, marking the latest effort by Beijing to shoulder more responsibility for global development.

Addressing a forum on gender equality co-hosted by China and the UN Women at UN headquarters in New York, Xi also vowed that in the next five years, China will help developing countries start 100 projects related to the health of women and children; send medical teams; and help girls from poor families gain access to education.

The summit meeting, to recognize the 20th anniversary of a landmark women's rights conference in Beijing, is one of a number of initiatives taken by China to promote development alongside UN events marking the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the global body.

More than 80 world leaders attended Sunday's forum and shared views on promoting gender equality.

UN Women chief Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said it was the first time that world leaders had attended such a high-level meeting to deliberate and commit to women and girls.

She said she also expected global leaders to come up with a universal message to address problems facing women and girls.

"China will do more to enhance gender equality as its basic state policy," Xi told the forum, where he acted as a chairman and cited a Chinese proverb that women "hold up half the sky".

"In many parts of the world ... inequality still exists between men and women in rights, opportunities and access to resources," he said.

Beijing will invite 30,000 women from developing nations for training sessions in China and also will help such countries train 100,000 female technical personnel locally, Xi said.

"Let's join hands in speeding up to build and share a world that is better for all women and all people," Xi said.

The president is making his first appearance at the UN, completing his first state visit to the United States. Since Saturday, he has immersed himself in a cluster of events.

Experts said China's increased role in a series of summits with UN bodies showcases the country's growing leadership in global affairs.

On Saturday, Xi addressed the UN Sustainable Development Summit, saying that China would provide $2 billion for a new development fund for poor countries. He also put forward a series of initiatives to support developing countries.

Agence France-Presse reported that the moves showcased Beijing's growing global role.

Tao Wenzhao, a researcher in US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said China has started to provide more public products to the world as its national capability increases, and the president has referred to that in his speeches.

"Sunday's forum co-chaired by China and UN Women at the UN headquarters is testimony to this," he said.

A wide range of world leaders spoke at the Sunday morning session presided over by Xi, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed gratitude for China initiating the meeting and said it would be a milestone for women's development globally.

Merkel, addressing the forum, said it was particularly critical to protect women facing rape, slavery and other abuses in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria and other troubled countries.

"Women's rights are human rights, too. Isn't it disgraceful to humanity that we need to underline this?" Merkel said. "But it is true - women urgently need more protection, particularly in war zones and crisis regions," she said.

The summit produced positive achievements and this is another milestone in the progress of women globally after the Beijing Women's Summit, said Li Junhua, director-general of the International Organizations and Conferences of the Foreign Ministry of China.

Ren Qi in New York contributed to this story.

wujiao@chinadailyusa.com
13 September 2016



Kapiti Coast writer Tina Makereti is the recipient of the New Zealand Society of Authors Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship 2016.

The NZSA Peter and Dianne Beatson Fellowship of $7,000 is awarded each year to a mid-career or senior writer to work on a project that shows a high level of literary merit and national significance.will use the fellowship to work on her fiction project the Imaginary Lives of James Poneke. Tina said "I'm so very grateful to receive the NZSA Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship as it means I'll be able to take valuable time out to complete this novel. The Fellowship not only supports the project financially, but provides crucial encouragement and just the right amount of time pressure to get things done! Nga mihi nui ki te whanau Beatson mo tenei taonga miharo."Selection panel convenorcommented: "there were a number of most worthy applications for the fellowship and the final eight applications were so close in merit that the task of choosing one was enormous. The panel were eventually unanimous in their choice of Tina Makereti for The Imaginary Lives of James Poneke. It is very fine writing and an entertaining concept which should guarantee a wide market".This annual award is made possible with grateful thanks to the generosity of the Beatson's. In 2015 the fellowship was awarded towho used the time to work on his manuscript All the Pianos in the Wood. He also used the stipend to accept an invitation to represent NZ at the Europa in Versi Poetry Festival at Lake Como, Italy. Previous recipients have includedandWe congratulate Tina Makereti and also the applicants who were shortlisted.
President Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan presented a gift from China to the United Nations at a ceremony with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at UN headquarters in New York on Sunday.

Xi said the gift - called Zun of Peace - was to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the UN.

The Zun, or vase, was inspired by ancient traditional Chinese bronze ware and carried to the UN best wishes from more than 1.3 billion Chinese people, Xi said.

Xi explained that the gift not only expressed China's long history and modern civilization, but also embodied the mutual learning and tolerance between different civilizations and cultures, which stimulates social progress and development.

The Zun of Peace conveyed the Chinese people's desire for and belief in peace, development and cooperation for win-win outcomes, which is consistent with the spirit of the United Nations Charter, Xi said.

In the coming decades, China looks forward to working with other nations to achieve the UN's dream, Xi said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the gift represents the common values and close cooperative relationship between China and the UN. He thanked China for its contributions towards world peace and development.

Ban said the UN was eager to continue strengthening its cooperation with China in realizing the Millennium Development Goals, reducing world poverty and tackling climate change.

The Zun of Peace was created using the cloisonn technique, an art form regarded to be part of China's intangible cultural heritage.

Using "Chinese red" as the main color, the vase is decorated with dragon ornamentation on top, symbolizing the quest for peace, and elephant heads and phoenix ornaments on both sides, representing social harmony and people's well-being.

The body of the vessel is decorated with traditional Chinese auspicious patterns, with elements of the Silk Road inserted, bearing the concepts of peaceful development, exchange and cooperation.

There are also seven doves representing the 70 years that the UN has been fighting for world peace.

Hong Xiao in New York contributed to this story.
President Xi Jinping addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Monday.[Photo/Xinhua]

Xi says nation will provide millions in aid for the African Union in next 5 years

China will establish a $1 billion "China-UN Peace and Development Fund" to support the United Nations' multilateral cooperation and boost world peace, President Xi Jinping said on Monday.

Xi's announcement came in his first speech at the UN headquarters in New York City, at the annual debate of the 70th session of the General Assembly.

He said China would take the initiative in forming a police peacekeeping team and building a peacekeeping force of 8,000 as the country prepares to join the new UN peacekeeping stand by mechanism.

In the next five years, China will provide $100 million in aid to the African Union to support the building of an African standby force and an emergency response and quick-response force, Xi said.

China "firmly supports" expanding the representativeness and say of developing countries, especially African nations, in the international governing system, Xi said. "China's vote in the UN always belongs to the developing countries," he added.

Over the weekend, he announced several proposals to help the least-developed countries, including exempting their debt.

At the UN Sustainable Development Summit on Saturday, Xi said China would provide $2 billion to support South-South cooperation.

This refers to the mutual sharing of development solutions among developing nations, primarily in the Southern Hemisphere.

China would exempt the debt on the outstanding intergovernmental interest-free loans owed by the least-developed countries and due by the end of this year, Xi said.

Speaking at another meeting on Sunday, he said China would invite 30,000 women from developing countries to take part in training programs in China and would help such countries to train 100,000 female technical personnel. China would also donate $10 million to the group UN Women.

Chen Jian, a former UN undersecretary-general and a veteran Chinese diplomat, said Xi had dismissed doubts by some UN member states over China's rapid rise.

The president's promises are "very powerful and impressive", and China's follow-up efforts will be tested over time, Chen said, adding that in the past two years, China had been increasingly proactive in offering diplomatic initiatives.

"Although China is still a developing country, most UN members believe that it should contribute more to the UN, as it has become the second-largest economy in the world," he said.

Su Ge, president of the China Institute of International Studies, said that as a beneficiary of the existing international system, it is China's duty to make more contributions to the international community.

Before attending a series of UN summits from Saturday to Monday, Xi made a four-day state visit to the United States.

The UN General Assembly, comprising all 193 members of the UN, meets in regular session from September to December each year. It provides a forum for multilateral discussion of the full range of international issues covered by the UN Charter.

Contact the writers through zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn
China on Monday vowed to be a firm partner for Cuba, as President Xi Jinping met a special envoy sent by Cuban leader Raul Castro.

Xi met Salvador Valdes Mesa, the special envoy, at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.

Valdes, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), was in Beijing to brief the Chinese on the Cuban Party's seventh congress.

Xi, also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, congratulated Cuba on the congress and asked Valdes to convey his greetings to comrades Fidel Castro and Raul Castro.

The president said China is happy with Cuba's achievements over the past more than 50 years, adding he believed that the Cuban people will achieve even more in the socialist cause under the leadership of the new PCC Central Committee with Raul Castro as first secretary.

Xi said the relationship between China and Cuba withstood the test of changes in the international arena and that the two socialist countries led by communist parties share a common ideal and bear deep affection for each other.

Recalling his state visit to Cuba two years ago, Xi said he hopes the two sides will cement their friendship and boost cooperation.

Valdes said Cuba cherishes the friendship with China and that Cuba's new leadership attaches great importance to the ties between the two parties as well as the two countries.

Cuba looks forward to closer exchanges on governance and practical cooperation, he said.
President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Cuban leader Raul Castro's special envoy Salvador Valdes Mesa (L) at the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing on June 27, 2016.[Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - President Xi Jinping met with Cuban leader Raul Castro's special envoy Salvador Valdes Mesa on Monday at the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing.

Xi welcomed Valdes, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), to Beijing to brief the Chinese side on the Cuban Party's seventh Congress.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, congratulated the Cuban side on the congress and asked Valdes to convey his greetings to comrades Fidel Castro and Raul Castro.

Hailing Cuba's achievements over the past more than 50 years, Xi said he believed that the Cuban people will achieve even more in the socialist cause under the leadership of the new PCC Central Committee with Raul Castro as first secretary.

Xi said the relationship between China and Cuba withstood the test of changes in the international arena and that the two countries share a common ideal and bear deep affection for each other.

Recalling his state visit to Cuba two years ago, Xi said he hopes the two sides will cement their friendship and boost cooperation.

Valdes said the Cuban side cherishes the traditional friendship between Cuba and China and that Cuba's new leadership attaches great importance to the ties between the two parties as well as the two countries.

The Cuban side looks forward to closer exchanges on governance and practical cooperation.
Premier Li Keqiang chats animatedly with Mongolian president Elbegdorj and German Chancellor Merkel before the leaders attending the 11th ASEM summit take group picture on July 15.[Photo/China News Service]

ULAANBAATAR - In Mongolia over the weekend, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's effort to promote China's stance on the South China Sea issue received broad support during the 11th Asian-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit.

Li said Saturday before he returned to China that the South China Sea arbitration award will have no impact on China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests.

Speaking in an informal meeting during the summit, Li said the South China Sea issue should not be subject to multilateral discussions from the very beginning, or be included in the summit's agenda.

"But since certain countries commented on the issue, it is thus necessary for China to come out to clarify its stance and spell out the truth," he said.

Li said China has never participated in the arbitration unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, adding that his country neither accepts nor acknowledges the so-called arbitration award.

"By doing so, we are both exercising our rights in accordance with international law, and safeguarding the dignity of international law," he said.

"Under no circumstance will the arbitration award exert any impact on China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea," Li added.

The Chinese premier said China remains committed to settling the South China Sea disputes via dialogue and consultation with countries directly involved on the basis of historical facts and in accordance with international law, so as to safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.

This is the first time the Chinese premier has made an open statement on the South China Sea issue at an international forum following the South China Sea arbitration award issued Tuesday.

Li did not include the issue in his keynote speech at the start of the two-day summit. However, faced with certain nations' attempts to stir up tension and interfere in the South China Sea issue in the summit, Li expounded China's stance of non-acceptance of and non-participation in the arbitration proceedings, as part of his diplomatic offensive.

In a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc Thursday, Li said the South China Sea issue should be solved through bilateral negotiations between relevant parties in line with historical facts, international law and the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).

One day later, he told Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen that China will work with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to protect regional peace and stability as well as the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
HAVANA - Cuba and China on Friday signed new agreements aimed at deepening bilateral cooperation in a number of fields.

Zhang Xiangchen, deputy international trade representative with China's Ministry of Commerce, and Rodrigo Malmierca, Cuba's Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, signed the conclusive documents for joint projects in the sectors of telecommunications, industry and water resources.

"We have reviewed the advances made in our relations and planned out our economic collaboration for the next year," Zhang told reporters after the signing.

Malmierca said the agreements prelude an expansion of bilateral economic cooperation.

"Chinese investments in Cuba are starting to blossom and we have a joint strategic vision of the future," he said.

China is Cuba' s second largest trading partner. Chinese enterprises have participated in many joint projects contributing to Cuba's economic and social development.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at the China Entrepreneur Club Leaders Forum in Beijing, on Aug 30, 2016. [Photo by China Entrepreneur Club]

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Beijing on Tuesday that Canada welcomes Chinese investment and he would try his best to offer more opportunities to Chinese enterprises.

He made these remarks while talking with more than 70 Chinese entrepreneurs at the China Entrepreneur Club Leaders Forum organized by the China Entrepreneur Club. This is his first stop of his China visit from Aug 30 to Sept 6.

He says that as the world's second largest economy, China plays a central role in driving global economic growth. The strengthening relationship with China is beneficial for both sides. Canada, as a country that is willing to support the development of enterprises, is very willing to cooperate with Chinese enterprises and support their development.

Established in 2006 as an NGO by 31 Chinese business leaders, the China Entrepreneur Club has been promoting the sustainable development of the economy and entrepreneurship. At present, most of the member companies are leaders of various industries, and the annual income of the 50 member companies totaled more than 3 trillion yuan ($0.44 trillion).

Leading Chinese companies in different areas asked separate questions of Trudeau.

Trudeau says that as Chinese's growing middle class are looking for more high-quality and safe products from all over the world, Canada is very passionate about working together with Chinese investors to help Canadian products enter the Chinese market.

"Canada has always had the reputation as a very safe, clean, responsible country, in our agriculture, we create high-quality products and goods," he says.

Meanwhile, as Canada has a long cold winter, they have also researched some very advanced agricultural technology that might be applicable to the Chinese market.
A Chinese talk show host has blasted the Canadian Tourism Commission for what he said was an attempt to censor his show.

Host and musician Gao Xiaosong said on his Sina Weibo account that the release of an episode on iqiyi.com, an online video platform, had been "delayed indefinitely" because of "strong obstructions" from the commission.

The episode was supposed to be available on Friday. After a preview of the episode, which includes content about aboriginal people in Canada, the commission blocked its release, Gao said on Weibo, where he has nearly 40 million followers.

Posts by Gao include emails in Chinese from people who appear to be associated with the commission.

"We have always emphasized not to mention the aboriginal peoples because it's a very sensitive subject, and the preview includes history that is not to be proud of," one email said.

In another email, Gao said: "No matter from the history or human rights aspect, we have in the meeting again emphasized to avoid the aboriginal peoples. ... This is really serious. If not worked out properly, it could be upgraded to political levels and cause very serious consequences."

Gao also questioned the commission's right to weigh in on the show's content, saying he did not sign any contract with the commission and the organization is not a sponsor.

The episode in question is the second in a four-part series. The first aired earlier.

"As a promotion agency for a tourism destination, we hope the show will focus on promoting the destination. We have only provided opinions on amending the priorities of the episode," the commission said.

Derek Galpin, the commission's managing director for China, said he had nothing to add when reached by Xinhua News Agency.

Gao was apparently unsatisfied with the response.

"The commission is not in any way a direct party to the show," he said in a recent post. "The changes and omissions that the commission demanded account for up to 20 minutes. Even if we had a contract, which we don't, the harm to the episode would be unacceptable," Gao wrote.
Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau attend a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday. [Photo/China Daily]

Canada will apply to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a move that the bank's president said will contribute "significantly" to the institution.

If Canada joins the AIIB, it will be the first North American member of the multilateral bank.

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced the decision at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

AIIB President Jin Liqun welcomed Canada's decision, which he said "shows its confidence in the strong foundations the bank has built in our first few months".

"Canada has a remarkable track record of multilateral engagement, and I believe it will contribute significantly to the development of this bank," said Jin at the news conference in Beijing.

Jin said that, including its 57 founding members, the AIIB will have more than 90 members by the end of the year. Jin said all countries are welcome to apply for membership.

Morneau said that helping fund high-quality infrastructure in Asia will contribute to global economic growth and help Canadian companies to explore new commercial opportunities.

"Canada can also make constructive contribution to the AIIB, thanks to our country's proud tradition and international leadership on the global stage," he said.

The AIIB will help sustain growth in Asia, and it represents an opportunity for Canada to further engage in multilateral infrastructure efforts that support inclusive economic growth in Asia and beyond, Canada's Department of Finance said in a news release.

Su Ge, president of the China Institute of International Studies, said: "It's a wise decision for Canada to join the AIIB. The move is beneficial for both sides."

Su said it will help prove the AIIB's value and give Canada a new platform for international investment.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presents a memorial medal of Norman Bethune to Premier Li Keqiang on Aug 30, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A memorial medal, made 43 years ago honoring the work of an inspirational doctor, was presented to Premier Li Keqiang by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when they met in the Forbidden City on Tuesday.

"I am honored to present Premier Li Keqiang a memorial medal of Norman Bethune, which was made in 1973 during my father's visit to China," Trudeau said on WeChat.

The Canadian physician Bethune was well-known and widely respected in China. He has been seen as symbolizing friendship between the two countries for treating wounded Chinese soldiers and sick villagers against Japanese invaders during World War II.

Trudeau is on an eight-day visit to China, including three and a half days in Beijing. He will also go to Shanghai and Hong Kong and will attend the G20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

In 1973, his father Pierre Trudeau was the first Canadian prime minister to visit Beijing, three years after the establishment of diplomatic ties. He also visited the Forbidden City.

Pierre Trudeau made 50 medals of Norman Bethune and presented two of them to Chairman Mao Zedong and former Premier Zhou Enlai.

Trudeau also posted pictures of his trip to Beijing, including meeting with entrepreneurs and the moment when he presented the medal.
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."
Defense ministers and representatives from more than 70 countries and institutions attend the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial 2016 in London, September 8, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

China is ready to participate in the United Nations' new fast-response peacekeeping force.

Minister of National Defense Chang Wanquan said on Thursday that Beijing will fully support the UN Peacekeeping Department's initiative to set up a "vanguard brigade" of 4,000 rapidly deployable troops.

It will do so by ensuring a contingent of its force of 8,000 troops set aside for peacekeeping work meets the UN's Level II readiness requirement of 60 days.

"We will maintain close communication with the UN Peacekeeping Department on when the Chinese troops will join the vanguard brigade' and the number of such troops," said Chang.

China will also jointly host a seminar with UN authorities next year to share experiences relating to the safety and security of peacekeepers.

Chang was speaking at the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial 2016 in London, which was attended by defense ministers and representatives from more than 70 countries and institutions.

China promised to join the new Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System and committed a standby military force of 8,000 when President Xi Jinping addressed the 2015 Leaders' Summit on UN Peacekeeping. Xi said China would also train 2,000 international peacekeepers, give $100 million in military aid to the African Union, and send its first helicopter squad to peacekeeping operations in Africa.

Herve Ladsous, United Nations under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, said he visited China earlier this year and saw "exciting progress" in its implementation of the peacekeeping commitments Xi made last year.

Chinese Minister of Defense Chang Wanquan attends the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial 2016 in London, September 8, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Ladsous also praised Chinese peacekeeping troops. "They are deployed in very difficult environments, they have suffered tragic casualties in Mali and South Sudan not so long ago, and I think China is demonstrating courage and commitment to the international community," he said.

Chang said China is on track to fulfill its commitments. It has already trained about 500 peacekeepers, is set to complete registration of its standby force of 8,000, and the helicopter squad is ready for deployment. Discussions about the $100 million in military assistance are underway.

Chang said in his speech that China has long contributed to the UN's work and has dispatched the largest number of peacekeepers among the five Security Council permanent members. It is the second largest contributor of peacekeeping funding and, in the next three years, will cover 10.2 percent of UN peacekeeping expenses.

In China's 26 years of participation in peacekeeping operations, 33,000 military personnel have taken part. Today, 2,500 Chinese military personnel are on active duty in nine mission areas.

International experts recognize China's contribution to UN peacekeeping  both financial and non-financial  including its sharing of engineering expertise and equipment, said Walter Dorn, professor of defense studies at the Royal Military College of Canada.

"Chinese peacekeeping units are well trained and very experienced," he said.

Yongjin Zhang, a professor of international politics at the University of Bristol, said China's peacekeeping contributions show its willingness to accept responsibility in safeguarding international security.

Catherine Gegout, associate professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham, said: "It is gaining experience in working with partners at the United Nations, meaning further cooperation with French, British or African Union troops can happen in future conflict areas."

Chang also met with UK Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon for a UK-China bilateral discussion during the summit.

Fallon said China's announcements on Thursday marked "a watershed in China's evolution in playing a greater international role".

Fallon also said his meeting with Chang was "fruitful", adding that he hopes defense relations will be part of the new era of British-Chinese relations.

Contact the writers at liwensha@chinadaily.com.cn
UNITED NATIONS - The international community should prevent children from becoming the victims of terrorist and extremist ideologies, a Chinese envoy said on Tuesday.

Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, made the appeal at a Security Council debate, while calling on countries to take effective measures to combat the use of internet by terrorists to spread terror.

"We should increase education of children and help children form a mentality of respect, openness and tolerance, reject violence and avoid negative influence of terrorist and extremist ideologies," said Liu.

"We should give full play to the role of families, schools and communities to form a protective umbrella against the encroachment on children by terrorist ideologies," he added.

In addition, Liu noted there should be a resolute fight against terrorism and the international community should firmly combat the crime of killing, abuse and abductions of children by terrorists.

At the debate, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said "children still pay the highest price in wartime."

"Extremists are torturing, detaining and killing children, sending them on suicide missions and selling them as sex slaves," Ban said.

According to a UN report on children and armed conflict, children have been significantly affected by violent extremism in recent years and were often the direct targets of terrorist acts.

In this regard, Ban called on the Security Council to do everything possible to protect children from the scourge of armed conflict and spare others in the future.
Twice in the last week, Chinese companies have sought to subject clients to one of the classic international business tricks: changing the deal right before an in-person overseas signing.

This trick typically goes like this:

You [the foreign company] agree to the general terms of a deal with your Chinese counterpart. You schedule your China flight to sign the deal and celebrate your new relationship. You arrive in China for the signing and only upon arrival do you learn that the contract you are to sign is very different from the contract to which you previously agreed.

There was a slight variation from the above with our two clients because we had insisted on receiving the contract in sufficient time to review it before anyone was to get on a plane. We had made very clear we would need to get the contract back at least two weeks before our clients scheduled departures or there would be no departures at all. In both cases, we got the contract (which was nothing like that which had been tentatively agreed upon) only 2-3 days before departure. In both cases, our clients chose to remain at home while re-negotiations proceed apace.

I think this trick is tried on Americans more than on those from other countries. I think the Chinese (somewhat rightly) view Americans as impatient. We Americans love thinking of ourselves in the following terms:

Can do attitude

Focused on getting the job done

Solutions oriented

Hands on

Heck. I like to think of myself in those ways and my own law firms philosophy, reflects this:

We have done this by developing close relationships with a worldwide network of key personnel, including government officials, consultants, expert witnesses, local legal counsel, critical to getting the job done for our clients.

We operate in the fast-paced international business world where we promise and deliver dynamic, results-oriented advice. Our solutions will put you ahead of your competitors. We are practical lawyers and problem solvers who take a hands-on, get out from behind the desk approach to solving client problems.

Do not think the world does not know these things about we Americans. And do not think that this is not incorporated into just about every instance of American companies doing business in China.

The thinking in China seems to be that once an American comes to China to do the deal, he or she will be unwilling to return home empty-handed and will instead end up signing something less favorable than what enticed them to go to China to sign. In most instances, your strategy should be not to get on the plane unless and until it is clear the right contract will be there for you when you land.

Doing business in China requires patience.
In the early 1980s the US Air Force commissioned Lucian Pye, an eminent sinologist, to write a report on how Chinese negotiate with foreigners. Published in 1982, it was called Chinese Commercial Negotiating Style.

Based on extensive interviews with foreigners engaged in China trade, Pyes paper analyzes the negotiating style the Chinese use with foreign businesspeople. Pyes overall conclusion was that the way most negotiations are initiated usually sets in motion a process that helps the Chinese side achieve its preferred strategies and tactics.

Though some of Pyes political and economic observations are now somewhat dated, I was nonetheless struck by his reports enduring relevance and I now recommend it to anyone interested in doing business with China. A recurring theme is Chinese mastery of contractual preliminaries.

One key point: Pye never moralizes or suggests there is anything wrong with the Chinese approach. He merely points out how different it is from the typical Western approach, leaving readers to conclude that foreigners ignore or disregard the Chinese negotiating tactics at their own peril. This is certainly consistent with our view that one should not rush to blame the Chinese when things go wrong.

The Courtship Phase

In Pyes view, foreigners often follow the historical practice of coming as guests seeking permission to do business in China. This naturally casts them in the role of supplicants asking for Chinese beneficence. They are visitors from afar and their hosts call the tune on the procedures and the timing of meetings. Problems associated with visas, invitations and access to officials or business leaders contribute to foreign anxiety about doing the wrong thing when doing business in China. So when problems arise, the foreigners are prone to suspect they are somehow at fault. In this way, the Chinese hosts gain the advantages of surprise and uncertainty in agenda arrangements.

According to Pye, the Chinese tend to limit preliminary exchanges to generalities so as to size up the foreign party and to determine its vulnerabilities, especially any lack of patience. At the same time, foreign business leaders tend to jump straight in. The novelty and status associated with visiting China frequently compel foreign CEOs to be the first to engage in talks with the Chinese, without waiting for subordinates to prepare the ground. The graciousness and bountifulness of Chinese hospitality can make the foreign visitor feel awkward about being too businesslike. Consequently, foreign CEOs tend to be very obliging in following the Chinese practice of seeking initial agreement on very general principles, without clarification on the specific details. Much of what occurs at the preliminary stage has a tacit quality and foreigners frequently misjudge their progress. In taking this approach, Pye says, foreigners violate one of the first principles of negotiations and diplomacy  summit meetings should never take place without extensive preliminary spadework by subordinates.

When mid level executives are later sent to work out the details of a contract they usually discover the Chinese want to rely on the agreed principles put in place by the CEO. Such principles were often taken by the foreigners to be no more than ritual statements, but the Chinese tend to use them to practical advantage by suggesting the other party has not lived up to their spirit. See China LOI and MOU: Dont Let Them Happen to You. Instant authorities on China, these CEOs returned from their initial visits to report success, saying they found the Chinese to be cooperative and gracious. The mid level executives and others tasked with working out details then come under great pressure. They are constrained to avoid acting in ways that might irritate the Chinese and spoil relationships established by the boss. So, when the big guns are sent in first the foreigners lose the advantage of dispatching their highest people for critical negations at the consummation of the deal. Their second appearances must now be limited to generalities where civilities prevail.

The Contract Formation Stage

Chinese culture traditionally shuns legal considerations and instead stresses ethical and moralistic principles. By contrast, Westerners are thought to be highly legalistic. The Chinese tend to reject the typical Western notion that agreement is best sought by focusing on specific details and concrete matters, while avoiding discussions of generalities or rhetoric. The Chinese prefer to agree on general principles before dealing with details. They can, Pye says, be tenacious in holding to their principles but surprisingly flexible about details. The Chinese focus is on the spirit of the deal. Agreement on principles usually takes the form of letters of intent or protocols, the purpose of which often mystifies the Westerner. The Chinese attach great importance to symbols and symbolic matters. Symbols such as the spirit of the agreement have a reality for the Chinese and there is a distinct Chinese bias in favor of the publicity or face these symbols can generate.

The Chinese, Pye says, conceive of their business relationships in longer and more continuous terms than Westerners. They expect an agreement to set the stage for a growing relationship in which it will be proper for the Chinese to make increasing demands. A proclivity for seemingly unending negotiations can even make the Chinese insensitive to the possibility that canceling contracts may cause trouble in the relationship with the foreign party. From the Chinese perspective, nothing about a contract is ever final. Westerners usually think a contract will provide for a given period of fixed and predictable behavior but the Chinese look for continuous bargaining and regard this bargaining itself as suggesting an enduring relationship. For Westerners there can be a great deal of give and take before agreement is reached, but afterwards the expectation is that neither party should lean on the other to seek further advantages. For the Chinese, the very achievement of a formalized agreement, like the initial agreement on principles, means that the parties now understand one other well enough that each can expect further favors. They will therefore not hesitate to suggest changes immediately on the heels of an agreement. They tend not to treat the signing of a contract as signaling a completed agreement.

Pye advances several explanations for the Chinese tendency to seek early agreement on general principles. First, he says, it is easier to extract concessions when details are to be worked out later on. Second, agreement on principles can easily be turned into agreement on goals. This can in turn support a later insistence that all discussion of concrete issues must support these goals. Finally, Pye says, agreement on general principles can be used later to substantiate tactical claims of bad faith.

Specific Negotiating Tactics

According to Pye, Chinese negotiators tend to use the following tactics:

Open with flattery  In response to flattering remarks the foreigner feels compelled to give an enthusiastic affirmation. The foreigner is then called on to give an emphatic denial of a feigned, self-deprecating remark. This puts the foreigner on the back foot from the outset.

Operate on two levels  There is the manifest level of bargaining about the concrete and there is also the latent level at which attempts are made to strike emotional bargains based on dependency. Chinese negotiators seek relations in which the foreigner will feel solicitous toward China, thus implicitly becoming a protector and more a superior than an equal.

Focus on mutual interests  Westerners like to think of themselves as conciliators. The Chinese tend to reject the principle of compromise and prefer instead to stress mutual interests. When mutual interests have been established it is easier to ask the foreign party to bear a heavier burden without protest.

Use meetings as seminars  Negotiations are seen partly as information-gathering operations. Foreign competitors are played off against against one another to extract maximum technical intelligence from presentations. Negotiating sessions are used frequently for training purposes. The foreigner is encouraged to perform so as to impress the passive Chinese host. The obliging guest entertains in repayment for hospitality and brings gifts of knowledge. Put simply, Chinese companies often claim to want to do a deal with you when all they really want is to get access to your technology or know-how. I cannot stress enough how often our China lawyers see this sort of situation.

Blur the lines of authority  You cant tell who reports to whom or where the apparent leader fits in the hierarchy of the Chinese company. Negotiating teams tend to be large but the lines of authority are diffuse and vague. Chinese negotiators are often unsure of their mandates and of the probable decisions of their superiors. They therefore tend to give inaccurate signals about the state of negotiations. Foreigners persist in trying to find a particular person who has command authority at each level. In China it cannot be assumed that power is tied to responsibility. Proof of a persons importance often lies precisely in their being shielded from accountability.

Never say no  Chinese negotiators will frequently seem to be agreeing when they say something is possible but often this is an ambiguous way of saying no. They will often respond with silence to a proposal and then at a much later date suddenly return with interest.

Never telegraph their next move  Chinese negotiators dont telegraph their next moves through displays of emotion. The level of friendliness or impersonality remains the same whether negotiations are heading for success or failure. This brings surprises. Warm and progressively friendly meetings can lead to disappointing outcomes. Chinese negotiators are quite prepared to end meetings or negotiations on a negative note. As negotiators often have little authority they often find it prudent to maintain a negative attitude. At the same time, apparently disinterested negotiators can suddenly announce that a positive agreement is possible.

Exploit Chinese members of the foreign team  Ethnic Chinese associated with the foreign team will be sought out in the belief that they are naturally sympathetic to China. Our China attorneys have also seen many instances where an Ethnic Chinese person on the foreign side is accused of disloyalty for not siding with the Chinese side in the negotiations  always in Chinese, of course.

Use shaming  Chinese negotiators may be quick to point out mistakes in an effort to put the foreign party on the defensive. There is a deep belief that people will be shattered by the shame of their faults so there is a tendency to make an issue over trivial slip-ups and misstatements.

Make big asks  Chinese negotiators often have no hesitation in presenting what they must understand are unacceptable demands. These demands are often accompanied by a hint that they will be withdrawn in return for only modest or symbolic concessions. Extreme language is often used to obtain symbolic victories.

Stall  Chinese negotiators are masters of creative use of fatigue. They have, according to Pye, great staying power and almost no capacity for boredom. These traits keep foreigners hopes alive. This approach may also reflect lack of experience, bureaucratic problems or a subordinates fear of criticism from above. Conversely, when agreement reached it is often the Chinese who become impatient for deliveries by the foreigners.

Negotiation Tips for Foreigners Negotiating with Chinese Companies

Take general principles seriously. According to Pye, the Chinese usually prefer to begin with agreement about general principles before moving to concrete items, while foreigners like to begin with specifics and avoid generalities. Agreement on generalities allows the Chinese to make headway by drawing subsequent negotiations back to the spirit of the agreement. If you follow the Chinese route it is imperative you decide ahead of time the precise general principles you are prepared to accept.

Avoid the indebtedness trap. Chinese negotiators often seek to put foreigners in a position where they will feel obligated or indebted. Pye says that foreign negotiators need to be aware of the obligations they may be accruing. They should be skeptical in the face of the effusion of personal friendship often used to elicit an acknowledgement of the indebtedness. See How NOT To Choose Your China Business Partner.

Prevent exaggerated expectations. Exuberant Western sales techniques are often read to mean the foreigner is prepared to do more than they intend. Once the Chinese assume a relationship has been established they will genuinely count on generosity and flexibility from their partners. If the Chinese decline an offer of generosity in one instance, they may consider themselves entitled to ask for the same kind of generosity in future. Chinese face-saving can involve turning down initial offers but there is no loss of face in asking for help later.

Handle the shaming. When disappointed, Pye says, Chinese negotiators tend not to search for appropriate counter moves but attempt to shame the foreign party with moralistic appeals and denunciation. They believe that if the other party can be shamed into doing the right thing they will be grateful and not resentful. You can often satisfy the shaming tactic with symbolic responses.

Master the record. A Chinese negotiator will normally be completely knowledgeable about the deal history and will test the other sides memory to advantage. What was previously discussed or settled may be contradicted in an attempt to take advantage of new negotiators or changed circumstances. There is a belief that foreigners are careless and deserve to be penalized if they make mistakes. Pyes tip is that you keep an exact record of your negotiation history.

Control the damage. It will inevitably be necessary, at times, to adopt positions the Chinese may find offensive or that may violate their beliefs about how people with mutual interests should behave. Pyes tip is to concentrate on limiting the damage and not engage in mutual recriminations, which will only convince the Chinese side that the foreign side is insecure. According to Pye, the Chinese have a strong need to publicize what they perceive as mistreatment. Avoid an aggressive defense at all cost. Better to pass something off as an unavoidable misunderstanding about which the Chinese side has the right to be upset.
Tillis Encourages Constituents To Contact His Office If They Experience Issues With Any Federal Agency

Charlotte office: 704-509-9087

704-509-9087 Greenville office: 252-329-0371

252-329-0371 Hendersonville office: 828-693-8750

828-693-8750 High Point office: 336-885-0685

336-885-0685 Raleigh office: 919-856-4630

Senator Tillis Op-Ed: My Office Is Here To Help

A veteran from Randolph County who contacted my office because he was having a difficult time receiving an oxygen concentrator from the VA so that he could continue to be mobile. The VA would not provide him with the equipment he needed, stating they did not have any available. After the veteran contacted my High Point office, my staff then reached out to the VA and were able to locate one available concentrator pump that the veteran needed.

A constituent from Jackson County who reached out to my Hendersonville office seeking help in obtaining her deceased grandfather's World War II military medals. My office worked directly with the National Personnel Records Center to assist with the request, and she was soon presented with her grandfather's five military medals.

A constituent from Rocky Mount who recently suffered a heart attack and was in drastic need of a hip replacement, all while battling the federal government to receive his Social Security benefits. The constituent had been fighting for their benefits for over a year before contacting my Greenville office. My staff worked directly with the Social Security Administration and succeeded in expediting his benefits.

Contact: Daniel Keylin

Daniel Keylin daniel_keylin@tillis.senate.gov

WASHINGTON, D.C. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) is encouraging North Carolinians to contact his regional offices if they experience difficulty dealing with a federal agency. In less than two years, Senator Tillis' office has closed thousands of cases for constituents, with many resolving issues North Carolinians have had with agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.Senator Tillis recently penned an op-ed that detailed the constituent services offered by his office and featured specific stories of local constituents his office has assisted. Localized versions of the op-ed were published in newspapers across North Carolina, including the Asheboro Courier-Tribune, Asheville Citizen-Times, Hendersonville Times-News, Hickory Daily Record, High Point Enterprise, Lincolnton Times-News, New Bern Sun Journal, Richmond County Daily Journal, Salisbury Post, Washington Daily News, Wilmington Star, and Wilson Times.North Carolinians experiencing issues with a federal agency should call one of Senator Tillis' five regional offices in North Carolina:Over the last two years, I've had the honor of representing the state of North Carolina in the United States Senate. I've worked to help advance commonsense, bipartisan initiatives, including reforming the VA, supporting military families, confronting the growing opioid and heroin epidemic in our communities, and pursuing legislation that makes it easier for North Carolina's small businesses to create good-paying jobs and grow our economy.With that said, the most important work I do as your Senator is done back home in North Carolina. Since the day I was elected, my number one priority has been establishing a dedicated and experienced constituent services team that is always ready and willing to serve the needs of North Carolinians. The constituent advocates in my five field offices across the state have more than 100 years of combined prior experience serving North Carolina constituents.In the span of less than two years, my office has closed thousands of cases for North Carolinians, and we have processed and responded to hundreds of thousands of emails and letters from constituents about important policy issues. When it comes to assisting constituents, we've helped resolve a wide range of federal issues, from helping seniors get timely responses from the Social Security Administration to expediting last-minute passport renewals to ensuring veterans get appointments at VA providers and receive the VA benefits they need and deserve.The one regret I've repeatedly heard from North Carolinians who have reached out to my office is that they simply wish they knew about the constituent services we offer sooner. All too often, people make endless phone calls to a federal agency that go nowhere, sometimes for months or even years. Navigating through layers upon layers of government bureaucracy can be daunting and stressful, especially when someone's health or financial livelihood is at stake.That is where my office comes in. We want to hear your story and help in any way we can. In many cases, my office can serve as your personal advocate by making the phones calls for you, cutting through the red tape and directly corresponding with the federal government on your behalf.Some of the specific examples of North Carolinians my office has assisted include:If you or a family member is having difficulty with any federal agency and you're not receiving the answers you need, make sure the next call you make is to one of my five regional field offices across North Carolina or visit my website at tillis.senate.gov I look forward to hearing from you soon.
US troops in Zamboanga City In Mindanao, 2011.

Advertisement

The Philippine government's official spokesman again tried his best to explain President Rodrigo Duterte didn't mean what he meant to say when he said he wanted U.S. Special Forces advising the Philippine Army fight terrorism in Mindanao to leave the Philippines.



Revealing once again his long-held anti-U.S. bias nurtured as a sympathizer of the communist movement in the Philippines, Durtete said in another rambling rant the U.S. is to blame for the violence in Mindanao and its military advisers on the island are worsening that violence.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

He also claimed the presence of U.S. Special Forces in heavily guarded Philippine Army camps on the island is inflaming Muslim insurgencies.



A look at the situation on the ground belies Duterte's claim, however. The major armed Muslim independence movements in Mindanao are the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front. Both signed peace treaties with the Philippine government, however, and are no longer attacking government troops.



The Muslims Duterte said were being inflamed by U.S. soldiers are likely the bandit Abu Sayyaf Group responsible for a spate of kidnappings and beheadings of their foreign and Filipino victims. Duterte was particularly galled when the Abu Sayyaf detonated a bomb in a Davao City market last Sept. 2 killing 14 persons to send him a message they aren't scared of him.



Duterte was mayor of Davao City before becoming Philippine president. He boasted that under his watch, Davao City was the most peaceful city in the Philippines.



A few weeks ago, the bandits slaughtered 15 Philippine Army troopers chasing them. The army estimates there are only 300 Abu Sayyaf bandits.



"For as long as we stay with America, we will never have peace in that land," said Duterte in a remark blaming the U.S. for the violence in Mindanao.



"The special forces, they have to go. They have to go in Mindanao. There are many whites there, they have to go," said Duterte.



"I do not want a rift with America, but they have to go."



"The situation there (in Mindanao) will worsen. If they (Americans) are seen there, they will be killed," claimed Duterte.



Before launching into his rant, Duterte showed photos of what he said were Muslims slain by U.S. troops in Bud Dajo, a "kota" or Muslim fort in a volcanic crater on the Sulu archipelago off the western coast of Mindanao.



The Americans overran this Muslim stronghold in March 1906, massacring some 1,000 of the Muslim defenders, including women and children.



Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella claims Duterte merely issued an "injunction" and a "warning" about the risks being faced by U.S. troops in Mindanao.



"Those statements are not policies set in stone," said Abella. "It's not a policy yet ... Nobody acted on it yet. It serves as a notice," he added.



Admitting Duterte doesn't seem to mean what he says, Abella said Duterte's remarks are "layered" and can be interpreted in several ways.



Reminded that statements made by Duterte are perceived as a policy, Abella argued "It's not automatically policy but it is a basis of policy."



"We're not turning back on anybody. We are just charting an independent course," according to Abella.



U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. is aware of Duterte's comments, but was "not aware of any official communication by the Philippine government to that that effect and to seek that result."



There are fewer than 200 U.S. advisers in Mindanao, said military sources in the Philippines.



These U.S. troops are barred from entering combat. Their role is limited to training Filipino troops and sharing information with them because the Philippines' 1987 Constitution forbids foreign troops from joining combat operations.



Advertisement

TagsRodrigo Duterte, U.S. Special Forces, Philippine Army, Mindanao, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Moro National Liberation Front, Abu Sayyaf, Bud Dajo, Ernesto Abella
(Photo : Getty Images ) Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (left) shakes hand with President Xi Jinping (right).

Advertisement

China will hold another round of maritime talks with Japan this week on the issues of common concerns.



China's Foreign Ministry on Monday said the fifth round of high-level consultation between Beijing and Tokyo on maritime-related issues would be held in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Senior officials from the foreign affairs, defense and maritime affairs ministries of both country will take part in the dialogue.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

"The mechanism of high-level consultation on maritime affairs is a comprehensive mechanism for communication and coordination between China and Japan on maritime affairs," China's foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said during a daily press briefing in Beijing. "The Chinese side looks forward to a thorough exchange of views with the Japanese side on maritime issues of common interest during the consultation, in a bid to build mutual trust and understanding," she added.



The talks come amid rising tensions in the East China Sea. Last week, Japan expressed concern over the presence of four Chinese naval vessels in its territorial waters around the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.



The uninhabited Senkaku Islands, located in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture, has long been the center of a territorial dispute between two Asian giants. Beijing claims ownership of the disputed islands, which are currently under the control of Tokyo. The Japanese government recently announced its plan to deploy an advanced version of the medium-range surface-to-air Type 03 Chu-Sam missile near the disputed islands to counter China's growing military influence in contested area.



Advertisement

Tagschina, Japan, East China Sea, East China Sea dispute, maritime dispute
(Photo : Getty Images ) Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has suggested that US troops leave southern Philippines.

Advertisement

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has continued his tirade against the United States, suggesting that American troops should leave country's troubled south.



Duterte warned on Monday that the presence of U.S. troops in the island of Mindanao is causing the situation to deteriorate further. He suggested that the American troops must leave the troubled region.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

"The US Special Forces, they have to go. They have to leave Mindanao. There are many (Americans) there. I just could not say it at the ASEAN summit in Laos because I don't want a rift with America," Duterte said during an official ceremony at Presidential Palace in Manila. "The situation in Mindanao will be more volatile. If they are seen there, they will really be killed."



Duterte holds the U.S. responsible for the rise of Islamic terrorist groups in the Mindanao, which is the second largest island in the Philippines. He warned American soldiers that they remain on top of the Islamic extremists' list of targets in the region.



The Philippines presidential palace has tried to downplay Duterte's remarks. Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella on Tuesday said that President Rodrigo Duterte's remarks regarding U.S. troop withdrawal from southern Philippines is not a policy statement.



"Those statements are not policies set in stone. It's not a policy yet...Nobody acted on it yet. It serves as a notice," Abella said at a regular press briefing in Manila. "We're not turning back on anybody. We are just charting an independent course."



Advertisement

Tagschina, US, Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, Mindanao
(Photo : CCTV) Beipanjiang Bridge in mountainous Guizhou is the world's highest bridge.

Advertisement

The two ends of the Beipanjiang Bridge in Guizhou Province were linked on Sept. 10, setting the stage for the opening of the world's highest bridge by the end of this year.



The Beipanjiang Bridge spanning the Beipanjiang Valley rises 565 meters above a river and is located amid precipitous mountains and dangerous gorges in Guizhou in southwestern China.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

As tall as a 200-storey building, the suspension bridge is the highest in the world measured by the vertical distance from the bridge deck down to the water surface beneath the bridge span. It's part of a highway linking Hangzhou City in east China's Zhejiang Province and Ruili City in Guizhou's neighboring Yunnan Province.



The construction of the 1,341 meter-long cable-stayed suspension bridge began in 2013 at a cost of $150 million. The bridge should be opened to traffic at the end of this year.



It will cut travel time from Liupanshui in Guizhou to Xuanwei in next door Yunnan province from around five hours to less than two, said state-run China Central Television.



As the highest bridge in the world, the Beipanjiang Bridge overtook the Si Du River Bridge in Hubei province for that honor.



The Sidu River Bridge is a 1,222 meter-long suspension bridge crossing the valley of the Sidu River near Yesanguan in Badong County, Hubei Province. It opened in November 2009.



Several of the world's highest bridges are in China and Guizhou is home to seven of the 10 highest bridges in China.



France's Millau Viaduct at 343 meters tall remains the world's tallest bridge measured in terms of the height of its own structure, rather than the distance to the ground.



The Millau Viaduct is a cable-stayed bridge that spans the valley of the River Tarn near Millau in southern France. It was inaugurated in December 2004.



Advertisement

TagsBeipanjiang Bridge, Guizhou Province, world's highest bridge, Beipanjiang Valley, Sidu River Bridge, Millau Viaduct
(Photo : Getty Images) China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called on all the parties involved in the tension in the Korean peninsula to restrain from any action that could jeopardize peace in the region.

Advertisement

The foreign ministers of China and Russia on Monday discussed the recent nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) over the phone.



The two foreign ministers, Wang Yi and Sergey Lavrov, also talked about the latest cease-fire in the war-ravaged Syria and the new U.S.-Russia agreement, according to Xinhua.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test last Friday. This test followed its fourth nuclear test conducted in January. Wang told his Russian counterpart that China urges North Korea and related parties to maintain calm and restrain from taking any action that would escalate the situation.



China is also urging North Korea and related parties to adhere to the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions, and implement them, according to Xinhua. Wang said that Beijing would like to see the resumption of dialogue and the de-escalation of the post-nuclear-test situation on the peninsula.



Russia's foreign minister reportedly told Wang that Moscow supports China's stance on the recent development in the peninsula, and Russia is also willing to cooperate with China, to maintain peace in the region. China, on the other hand, is willing to develop stronger cooperation with Russia on regional as well international issues.



On the issue of cessation of hostilities in Syria as a result of the new U.S-Russia agreement, Wang told Lavrov that China welcomes the new agreement and hopes that a political solution will be found to the Syrian issue.



The cease-fire in war-torn Syria came into effect at sunset on Monday. The seven-day truce deal, negotiated by U.S. secretary of state John F. Kerry, and the Russian foreign minister, is backed by Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.



Advertisement

TagsNorth Korea nuclear test, China-Russia talk, Syrian ceasefire agreement
(Photo : Getty images) People try to hide from tear gas and rubber bullets

Advertisement

Chinese riot police raided the Wukan village in Guangdong province on Tuesday firing tear gas and rubber bullets to a group of angry protestors.



The villagers were protesting over the three-year jail sentence issued to the village's chief Lin Zulian for corruption.



As a leader, Lin had strived to re-acquire the once sold Wukan land. The court found him guilty of planning a renewed push for the re-acquisition of the land when he was detained in June.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

"We've never been able to reclaim our land because the developer used them as collateral for bank loans," said one villager.



A similar protest in 2011 over the sale of the land led to the dismissal of the Communist Party officials in charge, thus the paving way for Lin.



Human rights activists believe that the riot police were sent to silence the village.



"The government wants us to crack down to set an example and warn other neighboring villages not to stage protests. They are using so much force, it's quite possible the villagers may not be able to do anything for a while," said Amnesty International's Hong Kong-based China researcher, Patrick Poon.



Residents reportedly flooded the streets armed with bricks while securing themselves with shields and helmets. The riot police allegedly set off tear gas grenades and fired live bullets to disperse the crowd.



The police also arrested over a dozen people. A statement released by the police said that officers arrested people who "disturbed order," interrupted transport, and prevented fishermen from launching their boats.



Authorities have also warned against the spread of "fake" videos of the incident.



Advertisement

Tagschina, Wukan Village, riot police, Amnesty International
(Photo : Getty images) Preparations for the Fortune Global Forum 'Beijing Night' banquet at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, China

Advertisement

Guangzhou, China will be the venue for the 2017 Fortune Global Forum, according to Time Inc. Chief Content Officer and Fortune Editor-in-Chief, Alan Murray.



This is the fifth time the group would host the Fortune Global 500 in China since it began in 1995.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

Alan noted that Guangzhou is a perfect venue for the forum, highlighting its historical experience and current standing in the trade market.



"Guangzhou, the third largest city in China, is perfectly suited for next year's gathering," he said. "It has more than 2000 years of history in global trade and already serves as home for investments for more than half the Global 500."



The forum brings together CEOs in different fields with the goal of exploring globalization and digitization as a tool for business.



"The two trends (globalization and digitization) are deeply entwined; they are irreversible; and if properly guided they are still the best routes for prosperity for the broadest number of people," he added.



Murray encouraged big companies to perfect the two areas else the two would overtime outdo them. He said he is optimistic that the annual gathering would create a platform for plans.



The attendance is limited to the Fortune Global 500 Company CEOs only. However, upon request, one can be invited to the forum.



Vice Mayor of the People's Government of Guangzhou Cai Chaolin has assured Fortune of the city's commitment to ensuring a successful forum.



"Choosing our city to host the 2017 Fortune Global Forum is a recognition Of Guangzhou's distinctive progress and promise as a hub of globalization and international exchanges," said Cai.



The forum would be held late in November or early December in 2017.



Advertisement

Tagschina, Fortune Global 500, Guangzhou, Fortune, Alan Murray
(Photo : getty images. ) The leaders of China and Vietnam have sought to strengthen the bilateral ties between both nations despite the South China Sea row.

Advertisement

China and Vietnam are bonded by common interests that far outweigh all their differences, China's President Xi Jinping told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Tuesday. Phuc is currently on a visit to China amid the escalating tension in the disputed the South China Sea region. He is the first Vietnamese prime minister to visit China in six years.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

"China and Vietnam can manage their differences and promote maritime cooperation through friendly negotiations," Xi told the Vietnamese Prime Minister, according to Xinhua.



Xi added that the South China Sea dispute must be resolved through bilateral discussion and all the challenges borne out of maritime disputes must be transformed into opportunities for cooperation.



A day earlier, Phuc met Chinese Primer Li Keqiang, Reuters reported. Li told Phuc that China and Vietnam must mutually work to maintain peace and stability in South China Sea region, China's foreign ministry revealed.



Phuc reciprocated Li's call for peace, saying that maritime disputes must not be allowed to affect bilateral relation, adding that territorial rows must be addressed through mutual respect and on the basis of equality.



Phuc's high-profile visit to China comes at a time when Vietnam has been steadily beefing up its military buildup to counter China's growing aggression in the South China Sea region. In a major boost to its defense procurement, earlier this month Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed a host of defense agreements with Vietnam. Later Japan announced that it would soon offer two patrol ships to Vietnam to boost Hanoi's maritime security.



Expert say Vietnam's military buildup is primarily focused on securing its 200 nautical miles exclusive economic zone from encroachment and external aggression.



Advertisement

Tagschina, Vietnam, Xi Jinping, Nguyen Xuan Phuc
Jeffress: Christians who don't vote for Trump are 'hypocrites' and 'fools' 13 September, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

DALLAS (Christian Examiner)  Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, known for his outspoken support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, has opened fire on other religious conservatives who have expressed misgivings about the New York billionaire.

In an interview on Fox News, the pastor of First Baptist Dallas told host Sean Hannity that Trump made inroads with religious conservatives at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit Sept. 9.

"He spoke about the issue that not only resonated today but it is resonating with evangelicals everywhere, and that is the appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices," Jeffress said.

"Trump has made a commitment that he is going to appoint justices who interpret the law using the Constitution rather than political correctness as the standard."

I am getting sick and tired of these namby-pamby, pantywaisted, weak-kneed Christians who say they are going to stay home in November out of moral principle. Will you please tell me what great moral principle there is the universe that would allow a pro-abortion, anti-religious liberty candidate like Hillary Clinton to become the president?

Jeffress said the election choice between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton boils down to the issues that will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future. Those issues include religious liberty and the sanctity of life.

For that reason, Jeffress said he has little patience for Christians who don't support Trump.

"I am getting sick and tired of these namby-pamby, pantywaisted, weak-kneed Christians who say they are going to stay home in November out of moral principle. Will you please tell me what great moral principle there is the universe that would allow a pro-abortion, anti-religious liberty candidate like Hillary Clinton to become the president?"

Jeffress then said any conservative Christian "who refuses to vote or throws away his vote in November is nothing but a hypocrite and a fool."

In his address to the Values Voter Summit, Trump said the vacancy on the Supreme Court and future vacancies would be the greatest priority for his administration because the choice of justices could affect the course of the country for the next 100 years.

"You pick the wrong people, and your country is no longer your country," Trump said as he reminded voters that the next president could pick four justices and, perhaps, even five.

Trump has already proposed a list of 11 judges he would consider appointed. All have been approved by Federalist Society as conservative justices like Antonin Scalia, who died earlier this year. Scalia, Trump said, was "the ultimate example of what we're looking for."

"This will determine whether or not we remain a constitutional republic," Trump said.

Trump said Clinton would chose radical justices who would rule in such a way that that she could control health care, the economy, religious liberty and the Second Amendment.

"We reject judges who rewrite the Constitution to impose their own personal views on 300 million-plus Americans," Trump said.
A ministry director in Turkey says that refugees in camps who convert to Christianity must hide their faith from the Muslim community.

The ministry director works with Christian Aid Mission and has chosen to remain unnamed for security reasons.

Many of the refugees in Turkey are from Syria, but there have been several terror attacks in the country and even a failed coup against the government.

"The situation is bleak for refugees in the country," the ministry director told The Christian Post in an interview.

Still, the incoming refugees have been open to Christianity, he said.

We have earned the trust of refugees, they just are very pleased to welcome us to their tents," he said.

He said that more than 120 have accepted Christ and about 20 have been baptized.

"They have to hide it from others and live their religion secretly," he said, adding that Christians get treated as infidels.

Life in the refugee camps is difficult; many are in need of daily food, clean water, diapers and other necessities.

The ministry director said the ministry he is part of helps around 8,000 refugees. About 45 percent of those refugees do not want to return to Syria.

Publication date: September 13, 2016
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Lord Jonathan Sacks, a British rabbi who won the 2016 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religiona prize Chuck Colson also won. Lord Sacks told me that every American ought to read Alexis de Tocquevilles classic book, Democracy in America, at least once a year. Why? To remind ourselves that citizens acting together can do far more good than a far-off government.

Just ask the citizens of Baton Rouge. Following a catastrophic flood recently which killed 13 people and rendered thousands homeless, residents learned yet againas they did after Hurricane Katrinahow unreliable the government can be. U.S. Congressman John Mica called the federal governments response pitiful.

But that didnt mean Baton Rougers were without helpfar from it. Hundreds of volunteersmembers of churches, civic groups, and rank and file volunteersshowed up to pitch in. Volunteers in boats rescued some 30,000 people.

Wesley Pruden, a columnist at the Washington Times, marveled at the private citizens who worked to ease the suffering. For example, a Notre Dame student organized food contributions. Citizens in Appalachia loaded up a truck with diapers, baby food, basic groceries, odd pieces of furniture and tape guns. And University of South Carolina athletes organized a truck to Baton Rouge for the benefit of their rivals at Louisiana State University.

Alexis de Tocqueville would not have been surprised. During his long visit to America nearly 200 years ago, the Frenchman applauded the American habit of forming civic associations for the purpose of doing good. As Tocqueville put it, in the U.S., Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite, forming associations religious [and] moral . . . immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fetes, to found seminaries . . . to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools.

Finally, Toqueville writes, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate.

And when they form associations, Tocqueville adds, Americans are no longer isolated but have become a power seen from afar whose activities serve as an example and whose words are heeded.

Civic groups not only meet immediate needs, such as feeding flood victims; they can also work to protect us from a too-powerful government that seeks to take over jobs it is ill-equipped to door worse, take away our freedoms. In fact, as I write in my new book If You Can Keep It, if were going to keep our freedoms and our Republic, we need to do the things Tocqueville is talking about. This is why, for instance, I admire the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, whose members banded together to protect the religious rights of all Americansfreedoms which are occasionally stomped on by bureaucratic bullies.

So I encourage all of you to look around, search out local needs, and join, or even found, a civic society to meet that need. Ive done this myself: About a dozen years ago, I saw a need for busy professionals to have a forum where they could think about the bigger questions in life, and hear notable thinkers talk about life, God, and other small topics, as we put it. Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life, was born.

Finally, I hope youll take Lord Sacks advice: Find a copy of "Democracy in America," climb into a comfortable chair, and read it from cover to cover. You will learn that our enthusiasm for forming groups to do good is a big part of what makes America great.

BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on todays news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.

Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Publication date: September 13, 2016
The New York State Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that non-biological and non-adoptive parents are allowed to ask for custody and visitation rights, broadening the definition of what it means to be a parent.

In its ruling, the appeals court overturned the 1991 ruling in Alison D. v. Virginia M that defined a parent as biological or adoptive.

Tuesdays ruling came out of two custody dispute from two same-sex couples in New York.

One case involved two women who had a child together through artificial insemination. After the relationship ended, the biological mother tried to cut off her former partners contact with their son. The nonbiological parent sued but was denied custody and visitation privileges by a lower court based on the precedent established in 1991.

In the second case, involving an unmarried same-sex couple who had a child before their relationship ended, the biological mother sought child support from her former partner but attempted to keep her partner from being able to see her child.

In both cases, the nonbiological parent had no legal rights under the 1991 precedent.

Tuesdays decision, written by Judge Shiela Abdus-Salaam, wrote that the definition of parent established by this court 25 years ago in Alison D. has become unworkable when applied to increasingly varied familial relationships.

New York allowed gay marriage in 2011, followed by the Supreme Court decision in 2014 that legalized same-sex marriage across the country.

Opponents express wariness over the possibility of abusive partners alleging ties to the child for the purposes of bringing the biological parent to court.

As long as a partner shows by clear and convincing evidence that the parties agreed to conceive a child and to raise the child together, the nonbiological, nonadoptive parent has the legal standing to request visitation and custody rights under the new ruling.
Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron quit the parliament on Monday, about three months after he resigned as the country's leader over June's EU referendum which had paved way for Brexit.

A by-election is expected in Oxfordshire, Witney, to fill his position since he stepped down from his seat of MP in the area.

"In my view, with modern politics, with the circumstances of my resignation, it isn't really possible to be a proper backbench MP as a former prime minister," Cameron said.

"I think everything you do will become a big distraction and a big diversion from what the government needs to do for our country."

Just 16 months ago, Cameron registered an overwhelming victory in the general elections for the Conservative Party.

Rumors were afloat in the British media that he quit over his differences in opinion with acting Prime Minister Theresa May on grammar schools. But he denied such claims.

"There's very many good things in the policy. When I was PM we agreed to the expansion of grammar schools in areas where they already were. We set up sixth forms that were selective in our big cities as free schools. Lots of merit in the policy. Frankly I don't want to get into the wheres and whys of this individual policy," he was quoted as saying by Politics Home.

"My announcement today is not about grammar schools. There's no connection with grammar schools, it's purely one of timing."

Cameron told ITV News that he made the decision to step down as an MP after "long and hard" deliberation.

May said in a statement that she was proud to have served in Cameron's government, and that "under his leadership we achieved great things. Not just stabilizing the economy, but also making great strides in delivering serious social reform."

"His commitment to lead a one-nation government is one that I will continue," she added.

Cameron was first elected as Member of Parliament for Witney in 2001, and became a Conservative Party leader in 2005. He served as Prime Minister of the UK from 2010 to July 2016.

Cameron released a formal statement saying that he hopes to serve the country through public service even after withdrawing from the parliament.

"I now look forward to a life outside of Westminster, but hope to continue to play a part in public service and to make a real and useful contribution to the country I love," he said.
Sisters of Compassion Deliver Gifts -- and Hope -- to Remote Villagers in India Widows now have decent roofing; Children can now learn with good school supplies



Contact: 972-300-3379, pressrelations@gfa.org



WILLS POINT, Texas, Sept. 13, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Gospel for Asia-supported Sisters of Compassion recently delivered gifts to improve the lives of children and poor widows in a remote village in northeastern India. The Sisters of Compassion are specialized women workers trained to minister to the poor. The items they supplied included school supplies for the children and tin roofing material to protect the widows from the elements.



Photo: The children of a remote village in northeast India now have school supplies, thanks to gifts delivered by Gospel for Asia-supported Sisters of Compassion. The supplies will help them learn in the tutoring center the sisters established this year.



The villagers welcomed the arrival of the gifts in a celebratory meeting that included guest speakers and people from the surrounding areas. The children displayed their new supplies and were reminded that God loves and cares for them.



"It's amazing how much even simple gifts can improve people's lives," said Dr. K.P. Yohannan, founder and president of Gospel for Asia. "These villagers live far from the cities and markets, so they have to struggle to survive. We're grateful to have had a part in helping them attain a better future."



The villagers depend on jhum cultivation to grow their own fooda process that involves clearing the land of vegetation to plant crops. They have few other source of income.

The Sisters of Compassion began serving the villagers in February 2016. Among their other projects, they founded a tutoring center to educate the children. But until now the children were lacking in basic supplies such as notebooks, pens, pencils and erasers.



The Sisters also provided geometry boxes for the children to help them learn mathematical skills. These kits typically include compasses, dividers, rulers, and other tools. To the children, they represent opportunitywhich was scarce before these gifts arrived.



"I never thought that I would own a geometry box," said Pritimala, a fifth-grade student. "This is very useful for my math class. I did not even tell my parents to buy a geometry box because I knew they have no money."



The roofing material will provide protection for villagers during the rainy season, which can be life-threatening in this part of India. The widows especially appreciate receiving this material that will allow them now to live in safety and comfort.



"I cannot explain how happy I am by getting tin sheets," said Kartarung, one of the widows. "Each year I and my sons used to work hard to replace the portion of the thatch where water drips during the rainy season. Now we can replace the thatch roof with tin sheets, and I am very excited for the gift. We can get sound sleep, even in rainy season."



This is just one of the long-term improvements Sisters of Compassion expect to bring to the people of the remote village.



"God loves these people so much," said Dr. Yohannan, "and we want them to know that. Let's pray that these expressions of God's love will make a lasting impact on their hearts."



More information is available at www.gfa.org.



GOSPEL FOR ASIA has  for more than 30 years  provided humanitarian assistance and spiritual hope to millions across Asia, especially among those who have yet to hear the Good News. Last year, this included more than 75,000 sponsored children, free medical services for more than 180,000 people, 6,000 wells drilled, 11,000 water filters installed, Christmas presents for more than 400,000 needy families, and spiritual teaching available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry.



To schedule an interview with a Gospel for Asia representative, contact pressrelations@gfa.org.

Share Tweet
The Heart of Holiness is Friendship with ... Redemptorist priest explains how friendships lead to holiness in new book



Contact: Kevin Wandra, 404-788-1276,



SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 13, 2016 /



With simplicity and grace, Lauenstein shows us how to meditate on our understanding of ourselves, others and God, and to look at each relationship in the light of their purpose  to give and receive the love of God.



Lauenstein, an experienced and certified spiritual director, examines the importance, in any relationship, of attentiveness, communication, disinterestedness and joy. He shows how our path to God passes through and encompasses our friendships with one another.



Lauenstein bases THE HEART OF HOLINESS on his own life's journey. From an anxious period as a Redemptorist novice in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council was changing the face of Catholicism, to years of seminary studies and pastoral experiences, he began to understand holiness as a friendship with God. And to understand friendship with God, he began to examine his own friendships with other people, which led him to write THE HEART OF HOLINESS, a call to unity and love.



"Filled with wisdom and anecdotes, this is a wonderful and unique book on holiness," Vinny Flynn, author of 7 Secrets of Divine Mercy, says of THE HEART OF HOLINESS. "With quotes from Aristotle, G.K. Chesterton, John Paul II and many others, this profound yet readable and practical work presents beautiful reflections on the invitation to deep friendship with God."



For more information, to request a review copy or to schedule an interview with Fr. Gary Lauenstein, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or

Share Tweet Contact: Kevin Wandra, 404-788-1276, KWandra@CarmelCommunications.com SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 13, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Do you understand holiness? Does friendship lead to holiness? Reflecting on Scripture, writings of the saints and his own experience, Redemptorist Father Gary Lauenstein demonstrates that the heart of holiness lies in an intimate relationship with God in his new book, THE HEART OF HOLINESS: Friendship With God and Others.With simplicity and grace, Lauenstein shows us how to meditate on our understanding of ourselves, others and God, and to look at each relationship in the light of their purpose  to give and receive the love of God.Lauenstein, an experienced and certified spiritual director, examines the importance, in any relationship, of attentiveness, communication, disinterestedness and joy. He shows how our path to God passes through and encompasses our friendships with one another.Lauenstein bases THE HEART OF HOLINESS on his own life's journey. From an anxious period as a Redemptorist novice in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council was changing the face of Catholicism, to years of seminary studies and pastoral experiences, he began to understand holiness as a friendship with God. And to understand friendship with God, he began to examine his own friendships with other people, which led him to write THE HEART OF HOLINESS, a call to unity and love."Filled with wisdom and anecdotes, this is a wonderful and unique book on holiness," Vinny Flynn, author of 7 Secrets of Divine Mercy, says of THE HEART OF HOLINESS. "With quotes from Aristotle, G.K. Chesterton, John Paul II and many others, this profound yet readable and practical work presents beautiful reflections on the invitation to deep friendship with God."For more information, to request a review copy or to schedule an interview with Fr. Gary Lauenstein, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or KWandra@CarmelCommunications.com ) of Carmel Communications.
For the Record, I am not the clown that has been seen in South and North Carolina recently. The clown suit is long gone and no longer fits but the persona remains. Bobby Tony

Not one friend or relative of mine thinks that I am a passive person, but Microsoft Word says that I am and who can argue with Bill Gates.

English was not my best subject in school. I hated it and hated it even worse when I took Latin, which I was told would help me understand English. You see they used to think that you needed to know Latin to be a doctor, lawyer, or beggar man thief. My Latin teacher was a Mrs. Elizabeth Smith who spoke with a heavy French Accent. I think the "Smith" part was a ruse to keep me from noticing. I could not understand her in English much less Latin. Alas, being a doctor was not in my deck of cards. I was required by my English teachers to learn how to diagrams sentences. I was never a good artist and drawing a straight line without a ruler was way beyond my skill level.

I managed to muddle through both Latin and English with out much enthusiasm. But several notes between teachers and my mom indicated that I was not taking the courses seriously.

Calm down now Mrs? Kathryn Mercer, I am doing just fine. I am not sure if it was being an English teacher or the fact she graduated from Emory is the problem. Both will warp your personality.

I blame most of my English problems on the fact that "Common People" can express themselves in speech without knowing a damn thing about dangling participles, or prepositions, adverbs and adjectives. As a child I was surrounded by quite a few common people.

One word of caution here though. A quote often attributed to Abraham Lincoln is that "The lord must have loved the common man because he made so many of them." That may sound great in an internet MEME with a picture of Abe but if you want to get your butt whipped just try to tell someone he is nothing more than a "COMMON MAN."

My dislike of basic English grammar gradually eroded. I was told to write proper memos, reports and eventually the thousands of emails that made the industrial world go around. My saving grace was the discovery of English literature. I did enjoy reading about the adventures of the knights and various other exploits of the past. However, as a "common boy" I must admit I have been overwhelmed with the Bard, Chaucer and Middle English Vernacular. Fortunately I was advised to find an interpretation by a "common man' in the Cliff's notes. Old Cliff really had a way with words and meaning. He actually wrote in plain English.

I have come by my plain spoken English honestly. Like all things in my life that people find fault with, I blame my dad. He spoke in plain English without 'beating around the bush' or the Middle English Vernacular.

Before it was politically incorrect to use the term, there was an expression used to explain plain English. For the record, spade refers to a shovel. Get your mind out of the gutter Hillary.

"Calling a spade and spade"

I blame all my problems on my dad because he was probably the most politically incorrect person I have ever known. It wasn't just a spade to him.

"It was a f#&%in spade"

I rest my case. I was told by Microsoft that I had several passive voice phrases in this article. I have highlighted in red the phrases just to pi$$ off Bill and Melinda Gates, whom I was told are not "Common People."
home World When is Eid al-Adha 2016 in U.S.? What is Eid and why do Muslims celebrate?

Muslims will be greeting each other with "Eid Mubarak," meaning "Blessed Eid" in celebration of Eid al-Adha or the Feast of Sacrifice. The holiday commemorates the day Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son to God.

Eid al-Adha signals the end of hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims are strongly encouraged to participate in the hajj at least once in their lifetime. The festival usually begins with morning prayers followed by visits to family and friends.

Animal sacrifice or "qurbani" is also a part of the celebrations. Cows, sheep and goats are slaughtered and distributed among the poor. Muslims are also expected to exchange gifts and donate to charities during the holiday.

The date of the festival is different every year because it is based on the lunar cycle. Saudi Arabia has been known to deploy fighter jets to determine the arrival of the new moon.

Eid was expected to begin on Sept. 11 but the moon did not appear on Sept. 1 so the Saudi Supreme Court declared Sept. 12 as the beginning of the festival. The feast is traditionally celebrated for four days but each country differs in the declaration of public holidays.

In America, the Fiqh Council of North America decided to follow the date set by the authorities in Mecca. The European Council of Fatwa and Research will also be celebrating the feast on the same day.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim declared a nine-day public holiday beginning on Saturday, Sept. 10, until Sunday, Sept. 19. The UAE and Kuwait are also expected to observe a nine-day holiday. Pakistan has declared a three-day holiday starting on Sept. 12. Bangladesh will be observing the holiday for six days from Sept. 9 to Sept 14.

Eid al-Adha is considered as the holier festival of the two Eids, the other one being Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the monthlong fast known as Ramadan.
home World World Vision shuts down operations in Gaza, lays off 120 employees amid Hamas funding controversy

World Vision has announced that it is terminating contracts of employees and freezing its projects in Gaza amid allegations that funds have been used to aid terror group Hamas.

The letter to its contractors revealed that the bank accounts of World Vision in Jerusalem have been frozen. The charity is now unable to transfer money to Gaza and pay its employees.

"Because of the crisis, we have frozen all our activities in Gaza. Our bank accounts in Jerusalem were frozen by the (Israeli) authorities, which also prevented us from making any transfers to Gaza," the letter stated.

"Because of these conditions that are beyond the control of World Vision, we will not be able to keep your job at the present stage because we will not be able to transfer any salaries or any other payments," it continued.

The workers were also asked to hand over equipment they received from the charity including mobile phones, computers and identity cards. The letter also stated that World Vision was conducting a full review including a forensic audit.

An unidentified employee said to Reuters that senior employees of World Vision will still receive partial salaries. World Vision will eventually rehire the workers after resolving the crisis, said the employee.

Mohammad El Halabi, the manager of World Vision's Gaza operations, has been accused of transferring $50 million to Hamas. Israeli authorities stated that the money was used to purchase weapons for Hamas fighters in Egypt. Hamas reportedly used $80,000 of funds to build a military base.

World Vision released a statement afterwards denying the allegations. The charity claimed that its budget for Gaza for the past 10 years only amounted to $22.5 million. The organization added that El Halabi became the manager of the Gaza operations only in October 2014.

The Australian government immediately suspended the funding for the organization after news of the allegations broke out. Australia has sent over $4.35 million to World Vision in the past three years to aid Palestinians.
Catholic bishops to be trained in how to deal with sex abuse in the Church

As part of efforts to root out sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, newly appointed bishops will take part in training on how to deal with child abuse, it was announced on Monday.

Members of the sex abuse commission set up by Pope Francis, who has taken a hard line on the issue during his papacy, will deliver the training.

Scores of allegations of sex abuse by clergy have been made against the Catholic Church in recent years, and the Vatican admitted in 2014 that it had defrocked almost 850 priests in the past decade as a result.

Pope Francis has denounced clerical abuse as "intolerable" and "the most terrible and unclean thing imaginable", and has met with survivors several times.

The panel of experts is made up of clerics and lay people, including women, and has thus far struggled to be fully accepted within the Church's power structure.

The decision to draw on the expertise of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors comes after a French monsignor who taught so-called "baby bishops" courses for new Church leaders, caused an uproar by telling them they did not necessarily have to report abuse to civil authorities.

Monsignor Tony Anatrella was later rebuked by the president of the commission, Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, who said bishops had "a moral and ethical responsibility" to do so.

The worldwide sex abuse scandal first came to light in Boston in 2001 when it was revealed that predatory priests were shunted from parish to parish instead of being defrocked and handed over to the police.

Francis has compared the abuse of children by priests to devil worship and vowed a "zero tolerance" approach, setting up the commission in 2014, a year after taking office, to advise him on how to root out sexual abuse within the Church.

But some commission members have complained about the slow pace of change in the Vatican and a British member who went public with his criticisms was put on leave of absence after the panel passed a no-confidence motion in him.

Peter Saunders, head of Britain's National Association for People Abused in Childhood, who was abused by two priests as a child, called for the commission to go beyond its advisory mandate and speak out on specific cases.

After the commission met over the weekend, it was decided it would participate in two courses in the Vatican for new bishops, including the one that the French monsignor Anatrella spoke to last year.

Additional reporting by Reuters.
China: Christian summer camp organisers detained by police for 'indoctrinating minors'

Two Christian summer camp organisers were detained in China last month on the charge of "indoctrinating minors with superstitious beliefs".

Zhou Yanhua and Gao Ming, members of Yining County Church in Xinjiang region, had been getting ready to drive a group of children to a Christian summer camp.

Just as they were about to leave, police turned up, took the two women into custody and also took the children to the police station to register their identities.

An elder from Yining County Church, Xie Xianhua, said officials also called the families and school teachers of the children involved, threatening to deduct the teachers' wages or keep the students from being admitted to higher grade levels, according to the human rights organisation China Aid.

Gao, 27, who is a student at Yanjing Theological Seminary, was held behind bars for 15 days.

Zhou, the head of the church sponsoring the summer camp, was held for 10 days.

Chinese law forbids religious instruction being given to anyone under 18. It is held to be brainwashing.

Christian parents and church leaders can get into trouble with police if they involve their children in any Christian activities, according to China Aid.

"Gao's status as a student at an official, government-sanctioned seminary reveals that not only house churches are at risk for government suppression. Members of China's official Protestant church, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, are also targeted," the charity reported.

A conversation took place on the Chinese messaging app WeChat between other students at the seminary.

China Aid translated some sections, where students prayed to "strengthen the faith of the co-workers, strengthen the church and also protect the children could continuously follow the Lord".

One student seminarian said: "Also, pray for the parents and the kids. It is common to be detained because of things like this."
Christian woman hacked to death in India

A 55-year-old Christian woman with mental disabilities has been hacked to death outside her home in India.

Balwinder Kaur, from the Dalit caste, had been accused of desecrating the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the poetic work which forms the central scripture of the Sikh religion.

She was booked and bailed by police for the alleged desecration after she had entered the local Sikh temple in her village of Veroke in Moga, Punjab.

Kaur, who had two sons and a daughter, had suffered from mental disabilities after getting an electrical shock.

Police said she was beaten with sharp instruments and died from loss of blood. Kaur crawled 40 feet to her granddaughter's room but it was too late to save her, the Times of India reports.

Police are investigating whether she could be a victim of radical Sikhs seeking revenge for sacrilege.

India is currently at number 17 on the Open Doors world watch persecution list. Since May 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party was elected, radical Hinduism has increased and minorities including Christians are regularly persecuted.

Her husband Labh Singh said after desecration incident the family left to stay with relatives and returned home two months ago. He told Indian Express: "We would have taken precautions had we known there was a threat to her life. She worked as a labourer all her life. She even worked as a volunteer in the construction of the village gurdwara [Sikh temple]."

He added: "She suffered an electrocution around 20 years ago. Since then she has not been mentally fully fit. When she visited the gurdwara that day, it is clear she was not in control of herself."
Christians in Iraq 'desperate' for help, report Archbishops

Thousands of Christian families have left refugee camps in Iraq, a senior church leader has reported. He attacked the Iraqi government in Baghdad for failing to help the displaced Christians who are hungry, often sick and in need of places to live.

Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, who is overseeing aid efforts in the beleagured country, said numbers of Christian families in the camps had fallen from 120,000 to 100,000. Many families have left the country.

Archbishop Warda was speaking to a delegation to the aid distribution centre in Erbil, organised by Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic charity that supports persecuted Christians around the world.

He told members of the UK Parliament visiting the centre that there is still a need for homes for the displaced, medical centres, food and pastoral and spiritual support.

He deplored the lack of aid from the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which he said had provided no help at all. This is in contrast to charities such Aid to the Church in Need which helped in Iraq with 10 million donations last year alone.

Warda told the MPs: "We rely on you telling the story of the situation and the importance of Christians remaining, so that the Christians can help be a bridge between the different groups."

As a sign of life in the Christian community in Iraq, which has suffered terrible losses as a result of the Islamic State reign of terror, the delegation attended an ordination service in Ankawa. The new priests included Father Martin Banni, aged just 25, who trained at St Peter's Seminary, Erbil. While many members of Father Banni's family have left Iraq for the US or Sweden, he decided to remain in Iraq to pastor to its remaining Christians.

Head of the Chaldean Church Patriarch Raphael Sako said: "This ordination is a sign of hope  we hope that the refugees will be able to go home soon. Father Martin should be a model of Christ  of courage and sacrifice."

Jim Shannon MP for Strangford, and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief, said: "It was illuminating, it was heartening, it was humbling. For me, it was an opportunity to see in some places a very thriving Church, and in other places a very persecuted Church, to meet some of those who had to flee with only the shirt on their backs as Daesh descended upon them to do their worst."

Jim Shannon MP described visiting one of the camps. He said: "There were many things that impressed me, but one thing that impressed me greatly was when we went around the camps and I met some of the displaced people was this  they had lost so much, but they had on their walls a picture of the Lord Jesus with the words: 'Jesus I will trust in thee'. For me though it was their faith that was sustaining them, so it was an important visit to make and one that I'll never forget."

Aid to the Church in Need reports that Iraqi Christians are currently in a desperate situation, especially as many aid agencies are pulling out or scaling back their activities.
Coptic Christians hospitalised in clash with Muslims

Two Christians have been hospitalised and dozens arrested in a fight between young Copts and Muslims in Egypt's Minya province, according to local media.

Daily News Egypt reports that the clash between the Muslim and Christian youths took place in the village of Assem on Monday.

Police arrested 17 Christians and 20 Muslims, but said that no reason had yet been determined for the violence.

Bishop Makarios of Minya, a Coptic Orthodox cleric, reportedly confirmed the incident in a post on social media.

Tensions between Christians and Muslims have intensified in the country since the 2011 Arab Spring, and clashes have been especially fierce in Minya.

On July 16, five Christian homes were set alight in a village in the province after rumours spread that a church was to be built in the area.

A day later, a Muslim mob attacked two priests in Tahna El-Jabal village following a disagreement between Muslim and Christian children. A 27-year-old man died in the incident.

Recent weeks have also seen the assault on homes of Christian families in the village of Karm el Loofy, the burning of a kindergarten run by Christians in Minya, and the murder on June 30 of Rafael Moussa, a Coptic Orthodox priest of the church of St. George.

Egypt has an estimated population of nine million Christians. Mostly Orthodox Copts, they account for about 10 per cent of Egypt's population, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.
David Cameron matured as prime minister. Who can blame him for quitting the Commons?

It was easy once to dislike David Cameron intensely. If you grew up observing the genuine reform of the Labour party, under Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, it was grating to watch Cameron pretend to have done the same to the Conservative party in opposition.

After all, the Tories throughout his leadership remained unreconstructed on the major issues of the day: fiscal policy, immigration and, of course, Europe, as Cameron found dramatically to his cost. There was no 'Clause IV moment' as there was when Labour abolished its commitment to nationalisation. Instead, Cameron's commitment to gay rights and, eventually, same-sex marriage acted as a fig-leaf awarding him the title 'moderniser' in an often all-too-accommodating media. Cameron's social liberalism masked his party's ongoing, and unchallenged traditionalism and isolationism on areas that are arguably more important.

Yet Cameron, a practising Christian, himself matured as a One Nation prime minister in the Harold Macmillan mould  campaigning passionately for the Union with Scotland and then, less successfully of course, for Britain to stay in the EU  just as he has grown in his faith.

Cameron, who was raised in an old rectory in Berkshire next to a church where his father Ian was a warden, famously said in opposition that his faith came and went like the London radio station "Magic FM in the Chilterns".

Yet his belief is said to have deepened following the deaths of both his son Ivan in 2009, and his father, whom he idolised, in 2010. In office, he could occasionally be spotted quietly attending weekday Eucharist at St Mary Abbots Anglican church on Kensington High Street in London, next to the school attended by his daughter Nancy.

Michael Gove, who came out as a Christian in the Spectator last Easter, used sometimes to join him there. They no longer sit together, apparently. For the betrayal by Gove  even more than that of Boris Johnson  over the EU referendum which sealed the former prime minister's fate and ultimately led to his resignation from the House of Commons yesterday, is still raw. Just as Gove's anti-Europeanism was real, unlike that of Johnson, Gove's one-time friendship with Cameron was real, unlike that of Johnson.

Resigning as an MP, Cameron himself hinted last night that the referendum fall-out  what he called "the circumstances of my resignation [as prime minister]"  led directly to his decision. "I will give the Conservative candidate [in Witney] my full support," he said. "But in my view, with modern politics, with the circumstances of my resignation it isn't really possible to be a proper backbench MP as a former prime minister."

Perhaps predictably, Cameron has received a battering by the right-wing press today. The Daily Mail  which supports Theresa May, who appeared noticeably lukewarm about her predecessor yesterday  accused him effectively of abandoning the country. In its op-ed, Peter Oborne wrote: "David Cameron has gone and done a Tony Blair. In other words, he has deserted British politics and flounced off to make money... What a tragedy. If Cameron had any sense of genuine public service, he would have remained in Parliament, continuing to serve his constituents and the country he claims to love." He continued: "Not only has he damaged his own reputation, he has damaged Parliament and the image of Britain. What a pity. What a betrayal."

Oborne is a highly distinguished commentator and to be fair to him, he does not have an axe to grind against Cameron, as he does, perhaps, against Blair. But is it fair to attack a man whose close allies effectively destroyed him by campaigning against the EU, for leaving the parliamentary hot-house in which those new enemies still hold ambitions? There is also something curious about directing such venom at a man on the basis that you want him to stick around. There may be a hint of Richard Nixon's parting words about Cameron's move: "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more."

There is no evidence that Cameron made his decision to quit as an MP in order to make money (of which he has plenty), certainly not on the scale of Tony Blair. Yes, he has his memoir to write. But Cameron also has a hinterland. He reportedly enjoys "chillaxing" over lingering Sunday roasts and a glass of wine, long-ish walks and yes, occasionally, going to church. There is also some suggestion that Cameron wants to take on an international public policy job.

True, Cameron's fatal misjudgement on holding an EU referendum  as ever, to placate the insatiable Right damaged much more than Cameron's own reputation: it has deeply damaged the country. But true, too, Cameron has a sense of public duty, and  shock, horror  what if he is telling the truth when he says that he wants his constituency of Witney to be represented by an MP who is "fully engaged" with parliamentary life?

You don't have to believe the fevered Westminster speculation that Cameron couldn't stomach May's reintroduction of grammar schools, to understand that life inside the Commons, the most gossipy club in the UK, did not appeal to a man who has seen his political legacy go within months from hero to zero.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Cameron failed to change the Conservative party. But for a man who has undergone a change himself, it is understandable that he does not want to spend further years locked inside Parliament. He is not like Ed Miliband, who has stayed on in the Commons post-leadership despite not serving under Jeremy Corbyn, because he loves politics.

Cameron, who even critics accept is a fairly straightforward person, says he wants "to start to build a life outside Westminster". Who can blame him for that?
Donald Trump calls out media for mocking Christians

Why are some Christians being discriminated against in the United States? For Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, it's the media's fault.

In a speech before social conservatives in Washington on Friday, the controversial businessman criticised American media organisations for their supposed mockery of Christians while promising to champion religious liberty if he wins the U.S. presidency this November.

"Our media culture often mocks and demeans people of faith," Trump said, as quoted by The Hill.

"All the time, I hear from concerned parents how much harder it is for Christian families to raise their children in today's media environment. Your values of love, charity and faith built this nation. So how can it be that our media treats people of faith so poorly?" he added.

Trump also attributed the "poor" media treatment of Christians to his rival, Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

"One of the reasons is that our politicians have abandoned you to a large extent, and Hillary Clinton you can forget about her," the Republican presidential bet said.

As part of his platform, Trump also promised to allow churches and church-based organisations to endorse political candidates by repealing the Johnson Amendment.

"The first thing we have to do is give our churches their voice back," Trump said. "The Johnson Amendment has blocked our pastors from speaking their minds from their own pulpit. If they want to talk about Christianity, if they want to preach or talk about politics, they're unable to do so, they take a tremendous risk that they'll lose their tax-exempt status."

The Republican candidate also spoke about the Islamic State and its persecution of Christians. He vowed to prioritise "hunting down and exterminating" members of the terror group.

"ISIS is carrying out a genocide against Christians in the Middle East and we cannot let this evil continue. ISIS must be destroyed," Trump said.
Is inequality a deadly sin?

There are certain words that get used in the media to convey a whole set of emotions and conclusions from readers, listeners and viewers. 'Fundamentalism' (bad, scary, evil) is one of them; 'iconic' (old, famous, revered) is another; 'robust' (reliable, trustworthy, strong) yet another.

One word which gets thrown around a little too easily is 'inequality.' It's seen as an automatic 'bad thing' and something which politicians, campaigners and economists should be 'solving.' Yet, as is often the case with these words, inequality is a complex issue and not something which can be easily solved. In fact, it's worth asking, can inequality be solved, and should we even be trying?

Today, the development charity Oxfam released research covering inequality not in the developing world, but in the UK. It presented the country as being riven by the consequences of inequality: "The UK is one of the richest countries in the world, but it's a nation divided into the 'haves' and have-nots'".

The media response was predictable. Left-leaning publications used it as an opportunity to critique the government, "Oxfam calls on Theresa May to tackle rising UK inequality," headlined the Guardian. Meanwhile, the right-leaning media jumped in as well. "Oxfam's Monstrous Idiocy About Inequality In The UK," screamed Forbes, histrionically.

We need to dig into the data and also into the meaning of the word 'inequality' to get a better idea of what's going on. First, it's important to note there are different kinds of economic inequality. There's pay inequality ("the difference between people's pay"), income inequality ("all the money received from employment, investments, savings, benefits and pensions") and wealth inequality ("the total amount of assets of an individual or household").

This matters because it's possible to be asset rich, yet still struggling. Think of an older person who owns a house in London. On paper, that person is doing well  but if she can't afford to heat it, pay bills or even eat properly because her income is too low, then there is a problem.

The perfect storm comes when someone is asset poor and also has a low income. The number of people and households at risk of this situation is very large indeed. The Oxfam report points out that, "the richest 10 percent of the UK population own over half of the country's total wealth (54 percent) and the richest 1 percent own nearly a quarter (23 percent), whilst the poorest 20 percent of the population  nearly 13 million people  share just 0.8 percent of the country's wealth between them."

These statistics are a stark and shocking reminder of the division of wealth in the UK. But hasn't this always been the case? And isn't it the price we pay for living in a 'free' market economy?

The Bible is clear that we are all equal before God. Proverbs 22:2 states that, "The rich and the poor have a common bond, The Lord is the maker of them all." But does this mean we should be striving for economic inequality for all as well? There's certainly some evidence for that.

Old Testament laws relating to economic activity are a rich source of inspiration even today. Leviticus 23:22 says, "When you reap the harvest of your land, moreover, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field nor gather the gleaning of your harvest; you are to leave them for the needy and the alien." This shows how there was a minimum standard below which the poor were not to be allowed to fall. Landowners had to ensure there was food available for the dispossessed.

The Hebrew Bible goes much further than this. The sabbatical years saw servants released from duties, while the Jubilee year (every 50 years) was even more radical  with all property to be given back to the family which had owned it originally. This meant that vast inequalities couldn't build up  because property would always have to be returned. Historians debate how often the Jubilee was actually enforced, but it is clear that this law would have an effect on inequality.

Although the Jubilee year wouldn't mean complete equality (property was returned to its original family owner, rather than distributed entirely equally) the Jubilee is an important plank of Christian teaching. It shows that ultimately, everything belongs to God.

This theme is taken on into the New Testament. Jesus' teaching doesn't imply that entrepreneurship is bad  far from it  the parable of the talents suggests, among other things, that wealth creation is praiseworthy. But Jesus also upsets our idea of what equality might mean. The parable of the workers in the vineyard isn't primarily about wages but instead about grace. However, Jesus' teaching that those who work a shorter day can still expect full payment is instructive  ultimate pay equality may not always be possible.

Having said that, the evidence presented by Oxfam is damning. The richest one per cent of the UK population owns more than 20 times the wealth of the poorest fifth. Not only does this flout the principle that God values us all equally, it is also demonstrably bad for our society  the Equality Trust notes that the impacts of such an unequal society range from increased crime rates to poorer health outcomes.

The Oxfam recommendations should all find support from Christian teaching too  more representation on companies' boards, encouraging benefit claimants to undergo training and education, pay ratios of 20:1 so that the best-paid person at a company can earn no more than 20 times the salary of the lowest-paid worker and tackling corporate tax avoidance all make a lot of sense.

Ultimately, perfect economic equality is difficult to achieve. Given the inherent dignity of every human made in the image of God, we should strive for a level of economic equality which ensures individuals have the chance to thrive, protects children against poverty and mitigates against the atomised and divided society that too much inequality produces. Oxfam's initiative is to be welcomed. The Church should be encouraging government, business and civil society to act to reduce the gross inequality we now suffer from.

Follow Andy Walton on Twitter @waltonandy
More than 3,500 Muslim refugees in Germany baptised into Christian faith

More than 3,500 Muslim refugees have turned to Christ and been baptised in Germany in the last two years, a new survey reveals.

Churches report that many of the refugees being baptised had converted in their home countries such as Syria and Iraq, and especially Iran, but had lived in fear of being murdered if they disclosed their new faith.

As soon as they were able to flee and find safety in Germany, they were able to live openly in Christ and be baptised.

All Germany's 20 Protestant state Churches and the five largest free Churches were surveyed by the German evangelical organisation Idea.

The survey found that most of those baptised are former Muslims from Iran, Iraq and Syria.

There were more than 2,500 baptisms in the Evangelical Free Churches and more than 1,000 in the Federation of Pentecostal Churches. There were 850 baptisms in the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church and 700 in the Union of Evangelical Free Churches, made up of Baptist and Brethren churches.

According to nine of 20 Protestant Churches, at least 1,000 refugees have been baptised since 2014.

Pastors were confident they could exclude baptisms for "purely opportunistic reasons", a spokesman for the Wurttemberg church told Idea.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Wurttemberg recorded as many as 300 Muslims baptised into the Christian faith. The Evangelical Church of Westphalia recorded 200 refugees baptised in the last three years, with many from Iran. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany reported "several hundred" baptised.

Some of them, such as from Iran, had previously been in contact with Christian house churches already in their homeland. Some churches have appointed special pastors to minister to the large numbers of Iranian refugees arriving in their parishes.

The Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau counted up to 200 baptised refugees since 2015: "It is thus not a mass phenomenon, but does happen," Idea was told by the Church.

No pastor baptises a Muslim refugee "lightly", Idea was told. All converts are questioned as to their motives and faith, although this is not remotely an "an inquisitorial conscience control".
Moscow v Constantinople: The battle over Ukraine's Orthodox Christians

Russian military intervention in Ukraine, including annexing the Crimea and supporting separatists in the east of the country, has poisoned relationships between the two states and outraged international opinion. Originating from Russian fears about Ukraine's perceived pivot to the West, there are no signs of the situation being resolved. However, the Orthodox Church in Russia and Ukraine is deeply involved in national affairs, and is fighting its own territorial battles alongside those fought by soldiers and diplomats. The stakes for national pride and long-term harmony are just as high. Now, a move by Ukrainian politicians to enlist the support of the Orthodox world's premier patriarch has raised the stakes very considerably.

Are you perhaps over-dramatising a little? What exactly has happened?

Not in the least. According to the Religious Information Service of Ukraine, two former presidents of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor Yushchenko, have presented Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew with a 5,000-signature petition asking him to grant independent or "autocephalous" status to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This follows a previous vote in the Ukrainian Parliament back in June to approach him.

But what' s it got to do with Russia?

The Orthodox Church in Ukraine is technically under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, though it has a large amount of autonomy. There was an act in 1686 that subordinated Kiev to Moscow, and that's what Ukraine's Parliament wants Bartholomew to revoke.

Still not sure why it's such a thing.

In the old days of the USSR this subordination wasn't so much of a problem. But Ukrainian independence and particularly recent Russian aggression have led to increasing dissatisfaction with the current situation. There's even a social media hashtag that translates as "#occupier'schurch" to refer to the ROC. As one commentator, Kiev Metropolis Vicar Okeksandr Drabynko says: "The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is no longer perceived as a local church body. No matter whether we like it or not, in the eyes of a significant part (if not the most part) of modern Ukrainian society we have become a 'church of the aggressor state'."

So while most Ukrainian Orthodox believers adhere  many of them grudgingly  to the 'Moscow Patriarchate' of the UOC, there's a breakaway 'Kiev Patriarchate' which wants the UOC to be a separate national Orthodox Church. The logic is that Ukrainians, who bitterly resent Moscow's treatment of their country, just don't want to go to Russian-dominated churches.

This all seems very reasonable. It's all about the gospel, after all.

In a perfect world, no doubt. But there isn't the proverbial cat in hell's chance that the ROC is going to let the UOC go independent. Patriarch Kirill strongly believes Ukraine is part of his 'canonical territory'. The ROC is big, rich and powerful, and he's not going to let any of that go. But there's also a historical force behind this reluctance: Ukraine is where Russian Orthodoxy first began, and there's a deep attachment to the territory because of it. Aside from these religious reasons, however, there's more of a nationalistic one: with Ukraine and Russia at each other's throats, Kirill has to tough it out.

So where does Bartholomew come in?

He is the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the oldest and most prestigious of all the Orthodox Churches, and first among equals among all the 14 autocephalous patriarchs. The Ukrainians are effectively appealing to him over Patriarch Kirill's head.

That would go down well, I imagine.

Since we're doing proverbs, the lead balloon springs to mind. The ROC is engaged in a power play with the Ecumenical Patriarch, whose native flock in Turkey is tiny. Some in the ROC think its day is done, and that the Orthodox future is Russian. That is what lay behind its sabotaging of the Pan Orthodox Council by withdrawing at the last minute.

So this is a particular problem for Bartholomew?

Yes, and he will want to be very careful about how he responds to it. In the Orthodox world, unity  and particularly unity in national territorities  is terribly important, and no one is really happy with the situation as it is at the moment. But the ROC is very powerful, and he will want to avoid offending it as far as he can. The restoration of Estonia's autocephalous status in 1996 resulted in the breakdown of relations between Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarchy for two years; this would be much, much worse.

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
Nicaragua ends restrictions targeting Christian missionaries

Evangelical missionaries will no longer face restrictive legislation in Nicaragua after the government heeded calls to void it.

Church leaders have praised God for the move, which means missionaries will once again be allowed to enter the country freely.

"We want to thank God because now the churches will only have to meet a short administrative rule, so that all ministers and missionaries will be able to come to our country as many times as they want", said Rafael Arista, president of the Assemblies of God, according to Evangelical Focus.

"We also thank the government for being understanding, listening to us, and let us work as we have done in the past," he said. "We have received explanations from the government and we have come to very positive results, because the previous legislation has been declared void. Nicaragua has won with this agreement which reduces the procedures missionaries needed to do here and abroad."

Legislation brought in last month stipulated that missionaries must inform the Nicaraguan government prior to entering the country, and receive official permission to work.

Arista previously told Evanglical Focus that the regulation was "affecting the life of the Church".

"The pastoral and social work should not be hindered just because of a regulation," he said. "Our calls to President Ortega is definitely to revoke this legislation".

The Nicaraguan Evangelical Alliance also urged the government to repeal the laws.

The Catholic Church in Nicaragua, however, supported the legislation, which only targeted evangelical churches.

The secretary of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua told Fides that government officials had explained that some people used evangelical mission as a cover for child trafficking.

There are approximately 3,600 evangelical churches in Nicaragua, which are attended by around 15 per cent of the population. The majority of Nicaraguans are Roman Catholic.
Orlando nightclub shooter's mosque damaged in arson attack

The mosque attended by the American Muslim mass murderer Omar Mateen has been damaged in an arson attack.

Mateen murdered 49 people and wounded 53 the worst mass shooting in US history at the gay Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida in June. He was himself killed in a police shootout.

Flames were seen rising from the mosque and police called, according to Major David Thompson of St Lucie County Sheriff's office.

The attack occurred at the start of the Islamic holiday of Eid ul-Adha.

Thompson said the attacker was caught on security cameras: "Immediately after the individual approached, a flash occurred and the individual fled the area."

Mateen himself was initially reported to have been a patron of the club and to have used gay dating websites, but the FBI has said it has not substantiated these claims. According to the CIA, no links have been found between Mateena and Islamic State.

The US Muslim Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, who drove suicide bomb truck into a restaurant in Ariha, Syria in 2014 killing several members of the Syrian armed forces at the same time, attended the same mosque.

There have been several incidents around the mosque targeting Muslims since the shooting.

Additional reporting by Reuters.
Pope says divorced and remarried Catholics can in some cases receive Holy Communion

Divorced and remarried Catholics can in "some cases" receive Holy Communion without living as "brother and sister" and without getting an annulment, Pope Francis himself has confirmed.

In a leaked letter to Argentine bishops Pope Francis gave his own interpretation for the first time of Amoris Laetitia, his exhortation that followed the recent synods on the family dominated by controversy over the Church's strict rules on divorced and remarried Catholics.

Many believe the rules excluding such couples from communion, even where they were the innocent party in a marriage breakdown, are cruel. Traditionalists however stand by what they say is biblical teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman for life and that there can be no flexibility.

The pope's letter to bishops in Argentina, in response to a document the bishops produced on the issue, was leaked by a priest. The Vatican has today confirmed the letter from Pope Francis is authentic.

In their document, the Argentine bishops focus on the need to integrate divorcees into the life of the Church. They say that "in certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments".

In his letter, translated by LifeSite, Pope Francis speaks of "pastoral charity" and "welcome" into the church community to those who have become distanced.

He calls for "urgent" training for priests in "discernment".

He says there is "no other interpretation" of Amoris Laetitia than to admit divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion in some cases.

The story was first published by the Spanish-language Catholic news service InfoCatolica and also an anonymous Argentine Catholic blogger.

LifeSite learned that the blogger's source was a priest in Buenos Aires.

At a meeting in Argentina to discuss the documents, some priests criticised both their bishops and the pope.

LifeSite reports: "The leaked document is the first time there is explicit confirmation that Pope Francis interprets Amoris Laetitia as allowing communion for divorced and remarried Catholics without the condition that the couple in the irregular situation live as brother and sister without sexual relations, as was always required by the Church."
South Africa bans American pastor over gay hate speech

South Africa has banned an American pastor from the country as a result of his statements about gay people.

Steven Anderson has become notorious for his outlandish comments on homosexuality  which include describing the massacre of 50 people in an Orlando nightclub as "good news".

Anderson's potential visit had stirred a great deal of criticism in South Africa and now the Home Affairs minister says he won't be granted a visa. Hate spech is banned in South Africa and this has been cited as the reason.

Christian Today previously reported the adverse reaction from Christians in the country to the prospect of a visit from the Arizona fundamentalist.

In a statement, the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa warned Anderson's "hatred for LGBTs may be spread here". General secretary Moss Ntlha said:

"The constitution lays the basis on which South Africa's many cultures agreed to live together. White-black, religious and secular, LGBT and straight, rich and poor, we all stand as one rainbow nation."

He continued: "As South Africans we accept that people with LGBT orientations have rights to dignity and freedom, as indeed all other South Africans."

Ntlha said: "The Jesus Anderson claims he comes to South Africa to preach, taught, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life'."

The Baptist Union of Southern Africa also distanced itself from Anderson and his Faithful Word Baptist Church, saying it was an "independent fundamentalist church".

In a post on his Facebook page, Anderson said: "I feel sorry for people who live in South Africa, but thank God we still have a wide open door in Botswana".
There are many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton. Health is not one of them.

Is it fair  or Christian  to attack someone over their health?

There are many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton. You can be a passionate Democrat, desirous of there to be a woman in the Oval Office, and even a believer in the Clinton legacy, but there's still something about Hillary that's just hard to love.

A reminder of this came last week when she agreed to share a plane with the press pack. Making her way to the back, she tried to greet the reporters. But she appeared to be dripping with sarcasm and, frankly, bitterness, when she said: "I'm so happy to have you all with me  I've been just waiting for this moment."

The "moment" ended up being a cold one, and coldness is what many of her critics accuse her of. For all the carefully choreographed photo opportunities, when she points and smiles at the crowd after a speech, as if singling out an individual, she can come across as aloof, a touch ruthless in her ambition, a little out of touch.

These are valid personal criticisms of the presidential candidate. Character does indeed matter in politics. Linked to character but even more important is judgement, and Clinton can also be criticised for that: she is a fully paid up member of the Washington establishment who  unlike Barack Obama  backed the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq.

She is a foreign policy hawk, a strong defender of Israel, even under its current right-wing leadership. Palestinians are not hopeful at all of any kind of breakthrough under a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Domestically, conservative Christians can be forgiven for raising eyebrows at what her campaign describes as as "the most progressive platform in party history". On abortion, she has drastically liberalised the party's position. Crucially, the platform calls for a wide expansion of abortion access, including the overturning of two key amendments in US law: the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal money from directly funding abortions, and the Helms Amendment, which bans federal dollars from funding abortions abroad.

There are, in other words, a range of reasons to be sceptical of the Clinton candidacy.

But what Christians should be phobic of are judgements relating to her health.

A few coughing fits and fainting at a 9/11 memorial are not any basis on which to judge a 68-year-old who has been for months fighting in the most brutal campaign in American history.

As the former Foreign Secretary William Hague writes in today's Telegraph: "There are people attacking her staying power now who, if asked to undertake one fortnight of how she did that job, would have to be taken straight to hospital. The Hillary Clinton I got to know was a living, breathing advertisement for unrelenting stamina."

Right-wing bloggers may whisper darkly about 'post-concussion syndrome' or similar, but there is no evidence that she is suffering from anything more than pneumonia.

Even if she were, is that a good enough reason to dismiss her from high office? Ronald Reagan's son revealed that his father's Alzheimer's began in office. And John F Kennedy was known as a "walking pharmacy" while suffering from Addison's disease and other ailments while president. Could it be that sexism is at play in the case of Clinton?

Meanwhile, let's hope that ageism too is not creeping into the American political discourse. For up until very recently, the US was immune to the sort of attitude that meant in Britain, some of the best politicians have been dismissed on the grounds of their advanced years. In 2001, supporters of Iain Duncan Smith put it about that Kenneth Clarke was "too old" to be Tory leader, at 61. Yet many were left wondering why he was not running to be leader 15 years later, when, not realising he was being filmed by Sky News, he entertainingly dismissed the candidates in this year's contest. Menzies Campbell, though less appealing than Clarke, suffered the same red-herring judgement when he became Liberal Democrat leader in 2006 at the age of 66.

At the same time, an over-emphasis on youth has led to a paucity of experienced leadership candidates here. David Cameron, who quit politics yesterday at the age of 49, has been accused of never having had a "proper job" outside Westminster, and his former rival leaders Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg both, like Cameron, cut their teeth advising other politicians.

In the Middle East, Africa and until recently the US, being older has been considered synonymous with being wiser.

If the worst comes to the worst and Hillary Clinton has to pull out of the race at this late stage, it can be hoped that she is replaced with Joe Biden, who at 73, unlike Clinton, is older than Donald Trump (70). He is warmer, a natural, and more liberal on foreign policy.

There are many reasons to regret the choice of candidates in this race, and there are many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton from a Christian, even progressive, Democratic perspective.

But for Christians at least, health is surely not one of them.
We will take Jesus onto the streets, say Archbishops of Canterbury and York

Older generations in the Church of England will remember a time of tea and cake on the vicarage lawn, of talking about the weather, and gossiping about women who wanted to be priests and the latest revision to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

It was almost more common to talk about how to be a Christian without believing in the bodily resurrection than to talk about the good news of Jesus Christ.

There were even some occasions when, it has to be confessed, to mention Jesus' name at all was even just a little bit embarrassing.

Those times, it seems, have gone for good. And, apart from the cakes and lovely summer vicarage parties of course, that is probaby for the good as well.

The latest videos from CofE headquarters in London have passionate Christians, men and women from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on down, sharing passionately about taking the message of Jesus Christ onto the streets of England.

This is part of the "Renewal and Reform" programme, a bold new attempt by bishops and laity to reverse the long-running decline of the Church of England which, according to latest figures released earlier this year saw the number of people attending Church of England services each week falling below 1 million for the first time.

However, for the man whose vision has made this new strategy possible, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, it actually is not about reversing decline at all. Nor is it about putting more bottoms on pews  or on cushioned chairs, as in many cases they now are.

Two new videos have been published which show how the Church is harnessing new digital strategies to the evangelism imperative.

Archbishop Welby explains: "Witness to who Jesus is and seeking to bring others to know him, what we often call evangelism, is the overflow through us of what God has given us in Jesus Christ.

"It's nothing to do with survival strategies or rebuilding the numbers in the Church.

"It's that we have found and experienced the love of God in such transforming power, in ourselves and in our communities, in our households, in all those around, that we want others to find the hope, the security, the reality, the challenge, the excitement of following Jesus Christ as his disciple."

Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu says: "Our job is to be out there, on the streets, wherever it is, sharing this amazing message of Jesus: that he actually forgives us our sins, gives us new life in the present and hope for the future."

The second of the four films currently being uploaded is themed on the vision and narrative.

Bishop of Burnley Philip North says: "The renewal and reform programme is serious about the major challenges that confront the Church. But it faces those challenges, not with anxiety, but with a real hope, a hope born out of utter confidence that Jesus has won the victory and that the triumph of his love is sure."

He says this is not some "vague wish list or a letter to Santa".

These hopes are based in utter confidence in the goodness of God.

"We can at times fall into the temptation of being an anxious Church, worried about our future as an institution. But there's no place for anxiety in God's kingdom. The future is hopeful and the renewal and reform programme invites us to embrace that hope for the future, a hope based in the promises of God."

Youth Council representative Alexandra Podd says: "For me a hopeful future is about there still being a Church in 20 years that my generation can serve and be served by. It's so important that we equip the young people in our churches to go out in their communities and share the good news of Jesus.

"We've got to remember the hundreds and thousands of people out in our areas who don't know the good news of Jesus Christ especially in this bleak media world, we have to share our hopeful future with them."
Yazidi girl who escaped ISIS: Militants 'sang happily' as they entered Sinjar to massacre thousands

Fahima Hassan Saleh was 22 years old when ISIS overran her hometown in Sinjar, northern Iraq, in August 2014. As the militants closed in she and her family fled in their car, cramming their neighbours in to the already overflowing vehicle.

They eventually made it to Kurdistan, and are now living in a camp in Zakho, Dohuk, along with thousands of other displaced people  Yazidis, like Fahima, but Muslims and Christians too. Hundreds are orphaned children.

Speaking to Christian Today through an interpretor, Fahima recalled the day the militants came. She was sitting at home with her family when someone told them that ISIS forces had entered their village.

"There was no way to escape," she said. "Only the mountain, if you wanted to survive."

"We heard shooting in the streets, and Daesh [ISIS] forces entered with their cars and they were singing happily that they would capture us all.

"We were terrified so we tried to escape."

All seven members of Fahima's family squashed into their small car, and on the way saw their neighbour and his son, travelling on foot. They picked them up and drove to the bridge that links Sinjar Mountain with Kurdistan in the north of Iraq.

But when they got there, the army at the border refused to let them through. "They said, 'There is no problem, why are you escaping?'" Fahima recalled. "Then they heard the news that 5,000 women were missing, most of the men were killed, and they believed there was a very big danger, so they opened the borders and let us enter Kurdistan."

UN researchers have confirmed that as ISIS militants took over the Sinjar region, up to 5,000 Yazidi men were killed in a series of massacres that forced more than 400,000 people like Fahima to flee. Thousands of women were taken captive and disturbing accounts of have emerged from those who have since managed to escape. Women and children have been brutally raped and abused; bartered and sold among jihadists for pennies.

In the weeks following the insurgency, 40,000 people  mostly Yazidis, a religious minority considered "devil-worshippers" by ISIS  were stranded on the Sinjar mountainside without food, water or shelter. Food and water drops were made by international agencies, but at least 300 people, most of them children, perished in the blistering temperatures.
If you've binge-watched the second season of "Narcos" on Netflix already, you know DEA agents Javier Pena and Steve Murphy are more than likely going to focus on a drug lord other than Pablo Escobar in Seasons 3 and 4.

If you haven't seen all of Season 2 yet and don't want any spoilers, we suggest you stop reading now.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Austin-based burger hotspot Hopdoddy Burger Bar has reportedly decided on its second Houston location.

The restaurant debuted its first local outpost to long lines at the River Oaks District, 4444 Westheimer, back in May.

According to trusted local food blog In The Know, a new Hopdoddy Burger Bar outpost will open in the Rice Village Arcade at 5510 Morningside, where Baker St. Pub & Grill once stood (across from Little Woodrows). The blog found permits filed with the city which tracked back to that Rice Village locale. (Story continues below.)

Baker St. shut down in January after the pub's lease expired, and the space has remained vacant since then.

RELATED: The biggest bar & restaurant closings so far this year

Hopdoddy Burger Bar has locations in Texas, Arizona, California and Colorado. It's known for its creative roster of burgers, cocktails, fries and boozy shakes.

"Our goal is to serve the Average Joe a 5-star burger at a 2-star price," Hopdoddy's vice president of operations, C.B. Gersch, told the Chronicle just before the opening of Hopdoddy at River Oaks District. "You put one of our burgers up to Cartier? We are the Cartier of burgers. We're not the typical fast-casual restaurant. There's so much pride in what we do."

SEE ALSO: The best cheap eats near Houston's colleges and universities

As of today, Hopdoddy Burger Bar has not released an anticipated opening date at this address. We'll update when we have more information.

The Rice Village has recently undergone several changes, including the closing of longtime establishment Kubo's Sushi Bar & Grill.

New York City-based Shake Shake will also be setting up shop in Rice Village. It's expected to open at the space now occupied by La Madeleine, but no anticipated opening date has been announced.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Two people were injured Tuesday morning in a house fire in northeast Houston.

The 1-alarm blaze broke out about 9:30 a.m. in the 4800 block of Leffingwell near Rand, inside the 610 North Loop, according to the Houston Fire Department.

Officials said two residents scrambled from the flames with minor burns. They were taken to a nearby hospital. Details of their injuries and condition were not released.

No other information was available.

More details will be reported as the story develops.
A man who smuggled people into the U.S. and held undocumented immigrants hostage in Houston-area stash houses will spend the rest of his life in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy that resulted in the deaths of two people, authorities said Monday.

In his plea deal, Noe Aranda-Soto, aka "Diablo," 36, admitted running an alien-smuggling and hostage-taking ring that brought people from the border region to Houston. In 2010, his brother was driving a truck loaded with people that rolled over near Victoria. Authorities said two people died as a result of the crash.
Police are searching for a man who stole a cellular phone from a student on campus at the University of Houston while the woman was talking on the phone, officials said.

The robbery happened about 9 p.m. Monday near the Student Services Center on the south side of the E. Cullen Building, according to the University of Houston Department of Public Safety.
Cape Breton is a small island at the eastern end of Nova Scotia. It features all four seasons, the population (as or 2001) is just under 150,000 and the community is true to its small town roots.

The Farmer's Daughter Country Market, a bakery and general store, is a staple of this hidden paradise and it is looking to expand. They have everything they need, except people.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

When Kimberly and Jerry Benz moved into their Cincinnati apartment, the couch had to be pushed in over the balcony from a ladder. Moving out was definitely going to be a challenge but one that Jerry and his brother, Joe Benz, were up to.

The couch wouldn't fit through the door, which seemed to narrow the options to two: throw the sofa over the balcony or leave it. Neither was an option for Kimberly Benz.

"I wanted my husband to call in a moving company and rent the machine that would reach up to the third floor balcony and have it taken down that way," she said. "No place had a machine big enough for the couch to fit it, so we had one of two choices- throw it over the balcony or try their idea with the ropes."

Jerry Benz, who works as a train conductor, got inspired to lower the couch out of the balcony on a train ride from Louisville to Cincinnati.

DID YOU SEE THAT? Bizarre home listing includes person in a panda suit in every picture

A Facebook video shows him and his brother lowering the unwieldy piece of furniture from the third-story balcony using only rope, anchor stakes and a couple pillows.

"I only videotaped it because I honestly thought the couch was going to fall and be ruined and I wanted evidence," said Kimberly Benz. "It was such a simple idea but it seemed so complicated. I was amazed when it landed perfectly."

A NEW LOOK: 4 quick tips for redesigning and organizing a kitchen

The viral video from 2014 has recently resurfaced and been viewed over 14.5 million times, but Benz is not sure why. All she knows is that the video has seen crazy success. So much so that moving companies have been calling her.

"As a joke my sister and I made a Redneck couch moving kit. It's just two anchors and the rope and instructions. We thought of it as a joke but people really could use it, I suppose."

Given the popularity of the video, this is definitely marketable, if you ask us.
Video of a brawl at a San Marcos pool party posted on Twitter over the weekend is gaining viral attention online, but went unreported to local law enforcement.

Twitter user @WhiteBoy_Ejyay posted the video Saturday and said the party occurred at Capstone Cottages, a student housing apartment complex located about 2 miles from Texas State University.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett has called for a summit of county and Houston city officials and animal welfare organizations to address the region's "outrageous" problem with stray animals.

"I'm going to try and call everybody together, get everybody in one room and say 'What do we really need to be doing here' so we're more coordinated," Emmett said.

Emmett's comments follow news reports about Harris County shelter employees refusing to pick up and euthanize a German shepherd mix that lay dying from a gunshot wound across the street from the facility.

The county facility, located inside the Houston city limits, handles animals from unincorporated sections of Harris County and has no jurisdiction in its own backyard -- that's the province of the City of Houston's BARC shelter, several miles to the south.

The Houston Chronicle published an in-depth report about the jurisdictional problems last month.

Emmett called the situation "ridiculous."

Volunteers have found at least four dogs with gunshot wounds across the street from the shelter at Melrose Park this year, and two puppies were discovered with slashed throats. The park has become the latest hot spot in a county with a serious and growing stray animal problem.

Both the city and county shelters run at or above capacity almost every day. The county shelter takes in some 23,000 animals each year and the city shelter accepts 25,000 to 27,000.

Emmett said he has been discussing the issues with other members of Harris County's commissioners court, but he did not immediately give any concrete proposals on what might be discussed at the summit.

He said a main focus would be responsibility for responding to stray animals in different areas of the city and county. Emmett there could be potential agreements signed with the city but he said he had not yet spoken with Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Texas university officials urged the state to either absorb millions of dollars in higher education benefits for veterans and their dependents or limit who can access the funds.

During Tuesday's joint hearing before the House higher education and veterans affairs committees, college officials discussed who exactly receives benefits from the Hazlewood Exemption law, which covers college costs for veterans and their dependents under the age of 26.

The state's colleges have protested the high price of waiving these tuition and related costs  in 2014, that figure was $169.1 million in lost tuition income, officials said  for a population that they say largely consists of veterans dependents. Veterans can transfer their unused hours to a dependent through a 2009 legacy act, which expanded the original law that dates to the 1920's.

Some supporters say that these benefits incentivize military participation and help repay the service to veterans and their families.

But universities, who pay most Hazlewood-related costs, say the law pushes steep costs to tuition-paying families. At the University of Houston, for example, non-Hazlewood students pay $186 each to fund the program, which predominately supports veterans children, each year, President Renu Khator said at the hearing.

Right now, the Hazlewood Act can benefit those who have served in active duty for 181 days, a figure that university officials urged lawmakers to increase. Committee members and panelists stressed that they needed better data on how long recipients served before limiting access.

Projections vary on how many students will receive these college benefits in the next decade. Rice Universitys Hobby Center for the Study of Texas projects that by 2025, about 61,500 people will use Hazlewood benefits, higher than 2014s 36,747 students, even though the number of veterans under the age of 50 and their children is expected to decline.

The value of awards increased to $169.1 million in 2014 from $24.7 million in 2009, according to the Legislative Budget Board. From 2012-14, about 80 percent of that increased cost was connected to the rise of legacy exemptions, The Hobby Center found.

I have a difficult time supporting the situation, said University of Texas chancellor Bill McRaven, a retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral.

Rep. Cesar Blanco, who served in the U.S. Navy, said he would be open to the state funding the program. We owe that to our veterans, he said. In 2015, House budget-writing committee members also said they would be open to funding the program.

Lawmakers heard some people say they were concerned that limiting the program would reduce the heavy draw of education incentives in military service.

Nearly three-quarters of military recruits said education benefits were a primary reason for enlisting, said National Guard recruiter Jim Carney, who added that he thought that limiting Hazlewood would hurt recruiting and therefore perhaps national security.

I dont care where the money comes from. I dont care if someone grows a tree and gets the money from there. We just need to continue to fund our veterans and their families, former Rep. Joe Farias told the joint panel of state legisators.
Mickey Leland's wanderlust led him across the globe, often to sub-saharan Africa to see countries like Sudan, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Instead of returning to Houston jubilant from seeing the world, he came back emotionally drained, family and friends said. His heart grew heavier navigating grocery stores' mountainous piles of produce, aisles of food and shelves stocked with medicine.

Children half the world away were starving. Many failed to survive a simple case of diarrhea, as some 8 million people were at risk of starvation in Ethiopia in 1984. He watched one girl from Sudan die in front of him that year.

Feeding the hungry became George Thomas "Mickey" Leland's life's work. The schmoozing pharmacy graduate-turned-civil rights protester who won election to the Texas Legislature, then Congress, lived with a drive to improve conditions for his fellow man before time ran out.

"He was someone who felt he had to squeeze as much life and activity and action as he possibly could into a short time," recalled his widow, Alison, who gave birth to his twin sons five months after his death. "In retrospect, it was as if he had a sense that his time was limited and he wanted to be sure that he could do the things that he was determined, set out to do. That he could really make an impact, that he could make a difference."

More Information Timeline Nov. 27, 1944 George Thomas "Mickey" Leland born in Lubbock. 1963 Graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston. 1966-69 Attended Texas Southern University, where he was active in the civil rights movement. 1972 Elected to the Texas Legislature. 1978 Elected to the 18th Congressional District. 1984 Worked with Reps. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., and Tony Hall, D-Ohio, to establish the House Select Committee on Hunger. Aug. 7, 1989 Died in plane crash delivering supplies in Ethiopia. Jan. 14, 1990 Leland's twin sons, Austin Mickey and Cameron George, Leland are born. See More Collapse

Leland and 15 others were delivering supplies to Ethiopia when their plane crashed into a mountainside there in 1989. He was 44.

"I am as much of a citizen of this world as I am of this country," he said a few months before his death, responding to critics who said he should focus on hunger here before focusing abroad. "To hell with those people who are critical of what I am able to do to help save people's lives. I don't mean to sound hokey, but I grew up on the Christian ethic, which says we are supposed to help the least of our brothers."

Leland is remembered as one of Congress' most prominent black legislators and its conscience on world hunger. He served there 10 years.

Leland spent five of those years urging Congress to establish the House Select Committee on Hunger and then became its chairman.

He persuaded President Ronald Reagan to spend $800 million to feed the hungry in Ethiopia and other nations in crisis and took on myriad other battles, including developing a friendly relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, which helped him win the release of American political prisoners there; pushing for generic prescriptions and universal health care; fighting minority and gender discrimination in the telecommunication industry; and devising a way to send black teenagers to Israel for the summer to learn more about the world. The Leland Kibbutzim internship sent its 36th class there this summer.

"Some people measure success by the percentage of initiatives that they throw out there and they pass. Mickey measured success by how many ideas you would pursue, always a very ambitious agenda," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat, Leland's former chief of staff and roommate.

Her husband often was bursting with ideas, said Alison Leland, now a political science professor at the University of Houston.

"He was smart and funny and unorganized and impulsive and passionate and creative and filled with ideas. Many of them were good ones, maybe not all of them."

Born in 1944 in Lubbock, he and his brother grew up in Houston's Fifth Ward, watching his mother work her way through school as a short-order cook to become a teacher. He studied pharmacy at Texas Southern University, stayed to teach and helped open free rudimentary health clinics in areas where people lacked access to health care.

"He was always frustrated by, even in Houston, the oil capital of the world, our infant mortality rate was higher than many Third World countries," said Keith Wade, senior adviser to Mayor Sylvester Turner and Leland's former district director in the Legislature. "It was not that the health care wasn't here, it was that it was not available to all segments of the community."

He heeded the influence of Roman Catholic principles and black writers, like Malcolm X, fashioning himself a Marxist and a revolutionary. He protested police brutality on the streets of Houston as the organizer and leader of the Black Citizens Action Teams, known as the "Black Cats." It was at one such demonstration that he was arrested, sparking a realization that he could effect change better from inside than out.

Voters elected him to the 88th District of the Texas Legislature in 1972, sending to Austin a 28-year-old with an Afro, platform shoes and an African dashiki on his first day. He would wear the eye-catching outfits "on days he wanted to make a point" to the conservative Texas Legislature, said Ellis, who interned in the Senate at the time.

It was during his six years in the Legislature that he made his first visit to Africa, a three-week trip that turned into a three-month mission to better understand the continent. The trip planted the seed for Leland's belief in a worldwide kinship that blossomed into his advocacy to fight hunger across the globe.

He later ran for Congress, winning Houston's 18th District seat in 1978, when Barbara Jordan retired. He hung up his dashikis and switched to Giorgio Armani suits to take on the roll of a statesman, but he kept the swagger and the passion. He argued in Spanish on the House floor for maintaining bilingual clauses in the Voting Rights Act, stepped into leadership as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus for two years and served on the Democratic National Committee's Black Caucus from 1981 to 1985.

He was on his sixth tour of refugee camps along the Ethiopia-Sudan border in five years when his plane went down. The fatal trip was his second venture that year.

A federal building in downtown Houston is named for him, as is Terminal D at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy for Young Men in the Fifth Ward and the Mickey Leland Environmental Internship Program with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Ellis, the state senator, named his son, Leland, after his friend.

Extensive archives of his papers, notes and photos now live on at the Texas Southern University Mickey Leland Center for Environment Justice and Sustainability at the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs where Patriccus Fortiori, an archives specialist there, says researchers and the public are beginning to get a greater sense of the depth of his work.

"At a time where politicians were moving comparatively at the speed of sound, Mickey was moving at the speed of light," Fortiori said.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Police are investigating a fatal traffic crash Tuesday in southeast Houston.

The wreck happened about 12:40 p.m. on Old Galveston Road near Dixie Farm Road, according to the Houston Police Department.

No other information about the crash was available.

The wreck forced officials to block old Galveston Road in both directions while crews cleared the scene.

More information will be reported when it is released.
BISMARCK, N.D.  North Dakota's chief archaeologist plans to inspect an area along the route of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline where Standing Rock Sioux officials say they've identified cultural artifacts.

Paul Picha said that the trip likely won't happen until next week. If any artifacts are found, pipeline work would cease.

State officials earlier surveyed the route, but not the disputed site, which is on private land west of State Highway 1806, Picha said.

Last weekend, tribal officials said crews bulldozed several sites of "significant cultural and historic value" in that area, which Texas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners denies.

A federal judge allowed construction to continue there earlier this week, but is expected to rule by Friday on the tribe's lawsuit challenging federal permits.
On any given day there are two or three critically ill or injured children being treated in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at St. Vincent Healthcare, although that number can increase to seven on occasion.

Usually referred to as the PICU, it opened in 2009 as Montana's first and, still, only such unit staffed 24/7 with certified pediatric intensivists, who care for infants, children and teenagers whose conditions, illnesses or injuries need extra care and could be life threatening.

And while the PICU is meeting those patients' medical needs, St. Vincent is raising funds for a $2.3 million renovation that will update the unit and create more privacy for the children and families who use it.

"We definitely need to modernize the PICU," said Dr. Richard Salerno, a pediatric intensivist at the hospital. "This will help with concerns for family comfort and privacy, our workflow and things like nursing efficiency."

Aiding that effort will be this year's SAINTS Ball, the St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation's annual fundraising event, which will be held on Oct. 1 and aims to bring in about $1 million for the effort.

"We've had really great success in the past, and our most generous donors have really just come out and supported the cause, no matter what it is," said Dennis Sulser, foundation president and CEO. " ... We're going to have (the PICU) up to modern standards, with the capacity and the right space, as well as updated technologies."

The PICU was initially constructed in part with funds raised at the 2008 SAINTS Ball. It occupies a space within the hospital's pediatric care unit and features an open floor plan, serving about 250 patients annually.

According to St. Vincent, from then until 2015 the number of pediatric patients transferred to out-of-state hospitals dropped from 400 to 41.

Children and youth with a wide range of ailments  such as diabetes, pneumonia, viral infections, asthma and injuries from trauma  come from around the region to receive care from the hospital's pediatric intensivists and a nursing staff of 26.

While the children are there, their families also spend long hours by their sides, something that's an important duty for the staff and a major driving force in the new renovation plans.

"We enjoy taking care of them," said Melanie Walston, a registered nurse in the unit. "You don't just take care of the kids. You take care of their families, too."

With that in mind, the renovation will convert the PICU space into five individual rooms, allowing more privacy and personal space for families.

Salerno said having such a unit nearby means children and their families don't have to travel out of state to hospitals in Colorado or Utah for some specialized or intensive care and that the remodel could help them all feel more comfortable.

"It means kids with what can be routine problems aren't having to go to those places, Denver or Salt Lake City," he said. "For a lot of our families, that can be a big hardship. ... You just can't put a value on keeping people either home or close to home."

The PICU also hosts nursing and medical students on rotations, as well as area medical residents, as part of its educational efforts.

The new design was created with input from and consultation of Salerno, other doctors and the nursing staff to create a space that meets their needs and those of their patients.

Sulser said that "a good portion" of the $2.3 million has been raised already. Work is expected to begin in October, after the fundraiser, he said. If the SAINTS Ball reaches its $1 million fundraising goal, those funds "would almost close out" the campaign, he said.

The title for this year's ball is Go Wild for Kids and features a zoo theme.

Lining up with the theme is a new educational partnership the hospital has formed with ZooMontana and the San Diego Zoo that, among other things, will bring a team in September to kick off a zoo channel that will be available to every patient in the hospital via its closed-circuit television network.

Sulser noted that the fundraiser is a longstanding tradition with the hospital and that it has for more than 100 years connected with philanthropic locals and businesses to improve its care.

"We're celebrating those kinds of things on this evening," he said. "We continue our efforts because of the generous efforts of the people in our community, and those who came before us."
Despite protest from a number of affected property owners, the Billings City Council on Monday approved establishing a special improvement district to construct a left-hand turn lane off of 62nd Street West onto Masters Boulevard, north of Rimrock Road.

The vote was 8-3, with council members Shaun Brown, Ryan Sullivan and Rich McFadden voting no on the proposal. By a 6-5 margin, the council had earlier defeated a motion by Sullivan to table the proposal indefinitely.

The $354,000 project will cost affected property owners in the Falcon Ridge Subdivision, 3rd Filing, $2,645 per property, spread out over 15 years.

Public Works Director Dave Mumford said that 84 of the 103 affected property owners opposed forming the district. But their protests are considered invalid, City Attorney Brent Brooks said, since a waiver of the right to protest was referenced in their title reports when they purchased their property.

Property owners testifying during Mondays public hearing said they saw no such language in their subdivision improvements agreement, nor the reference of a special improvement district. They also argued that nearby development outside the special improvement district contributed to most of the additional traffic.

Copper Ridge (subdivision) has increased traffic tenfold, Nick Longin told the city council. I agree it would probably increase safety, but we dont feel it is incredibly dangerous and something that needs to be done. If (the cost) was more equitably distributed, that would make it more palatable.

By an 11-0 vote, the city council approved downtown parking rate increases.

The new parking program, which goes into effect in November, allows people to park free for an hour in any of the citys four downtown garages. It also includes the purchase of 150 meters that can be operated by credit cards.

Before their business meeting, city council members met in executive (closed) session to discuss Park County District Judge Brenda R. Gilberts ruling last week that the city must pay police officers more than $2.7 million in longevity pay, attorneys fees, plaintiffs costs and a fine of about $1.03 million in a lawsuit filed by 27 officers in 2009.

Mayor Tom Hanel said the city council did not reach a decision during the 55-minute executive session whether to appeal Gilberts ruling to the Montana Supreme Court, which the city has 60 days to do. That decision will be debated and voted upon during an upcoming meeting in open session, Hanel said.
Galveston's redevelopment authority is pushing back aggressively against a lawsuit critical of its oversight of a beachfront development project.

The board of the agency, which oversees the island city's Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones, voted 5-0 on Friday to negotiate a contract with Houston attorney Ramon Viada, the Galveston Daily News reported. And the authority's chairman wants the plaintiffs to pay its legal fees, according to the newspaper.

As I explored in a July 29 column, the lawsuit focuses on Beachtown, a high-end development on the island's east end. The development has benefited from public financing through a TIRZ, and the terms of the deal were changed in a way that was extremely favorable to the developer, Tofigh Shirazi. Discussions of the new deal took place in secret.

Shirazi declined to comment for my column, and the chairman of the redevelopment authority, James Ware, did not return my calls. In the Daily News article, however, Ware said he believes the judge hearing the case should require the plaintiffs to pay the authority's legal fees if it prevails, as he believes it will.

"I feel good about everything we did as far as notices and the way we conducted meetings," Ware said, according to the Daily News. "If I'm correct, and the RDA wins, then we should be entitled to our attorneys' fees."

The plaintiffs in the case -- Elizabeth Beeton, Jackie Cole and Joss Wristers -- have created a website with numerous documents and links related to the case, as well as a timeline of events. Beeton and Cole are former Galveston City Council members, and Beeton previously served on the redevelopment authority board. (Cole is the wife of Houston Chronicle reporter Harvey Rice.)

Beeton told me that the website was created to educate the public so that voters will demand that the redevelopment authority make a better deal for taxpayers.
Montana is a state built by the hands of working men and women  from the farms and ranches of the Hi-Line, to the mines of Butte, the natural resource industries in Eastern Montana, to the teachers who educate our children, the nurses who take care of our vulnerable, and the entrepreneurs who turn good ideas in businesses and jobs for fellow Montanans.

Thanks to the work of Montanans, our states economy is strong and getting stronger every day.

While other states face stagnant wages and limited job growth, here in Montana more folks are on the job than ever before, wages are rising, and unemployment remains low.

Montanas GDP is growing fifth fastest in the nation, wage growth is ranked sixth in the country, and our payroll employment is growing nearly two times faster than the historic average.

Montana continues to be the best in the nation for entrepreneurs and new business start-ups. We are consistently ranked by outside entities among the top 10 in the nation for innovation, entrepreneurship, business tax climate, and income growth.

There is plenty for Montanans to be proud of. But were not stopping here.

As your governor, I have a responsibility to keep an eye towards the future and to seek out ways to build on our strengths and make improvements wherever we can; to lift each other up, not to bet against Montana. Where others may see obstacles, we see opportunities.

We are a state of just over 1 million people spread out over 147,000 square miles. We have an aging workforce. Montana businesses are looking for workers that have the skills, knowledge and training to fill good-paying, in-demand jobs.

This presents us with an opportunity to invest in Montana workers. To find innovative ways to bridge gaps that have made it difficult for businesses to find the right workers with the right qualifications.

Ample opportunities exist for Montanans to join the workforce in new and high-paying jobs due to continued job growth, combined with many upcoming retirements in the aging populations.

We are already taking important steps. Weve brought together businesses, educators, and workforce professionals to ensure that we have a pipeline for young Montanans to get the skills they need and for experienced workers to up-skill to continue to compete for the jobs of tomorrow in growing fields like health care, welding, bioscience, and high-tech manufacturing.

Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney and I get out of Helena as often as we can to hear from hard-working Montanans all across the state, and to reaffirm our commitment to protecting Montana workers, their families and their jobs  always looking for better-paying jobs and new ways to save taxpayers money and to live within our means as Montana families do.

How? By making responsible decisions about the states finances. By improving health care and access to mental health services. By improving transparency in our government and our elections. By serving our kids and teachers with the best public education possible. By protecting the rights and freedoms of all Montanans. And by fighting for equal pay for equal work for all Montana workers.

By working with Republicans, Democrats and independents alike, we are turning our challenges into opportunities to ensure a stronger, better economy for all Montanans. A state built by workers deserves no less.
CANNON BALL, N.D.  Online fundraising efforts for the Sacred Stone Camp and other Standing Rock Sioux Tribe encampments against the Dakota Access Pipeline had topped $800,000 and were still growing as of Saturday, Sept. 10.

The Sacred Stone Camp was started by members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in April and is dedicated to stopping and raising awareness of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Since it began, people from across the country and world have visited and participated in protest activities, including members of tribes from across the nation. The effort has expanded into additional camps, including the Red Warrior Camp.

But building such large camps isnt free, and organizers early on turned to a variety of fundraising efforts to keep their mission going. While people can mail money and supplies, much of the effort has centered around online services.

The Sacred Stone Camp GoFundMe campaign (https://www.gofundme.com/sacredstonecamp) had raised more than $566,000 from more than 11,000 donors through 10:30 a.m. Saturday. The page for the fund says money raised will go toward water, propane, food and blankets.

Neither Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault nor Ladonna Brave Bull Allard, who started the GoFundMe campaign, returned calls seeking information on the fund and the support the tribe has received. But an update posted to the GoFundMe site last week expressed appreciation for the support.

The camp is increasing in size every day and all the support is most graciously appreciated! it said.

Archambault on Thursday addressed the support the tribe has received in a statement on KLND radio.

We welcome all the support, and were thankful for all the support, he said. Its a blessing. And that spirit in each and every one of us who are starting to rise and stand up  its a beautiful thing.

The camps legal defense fund, on FundRazr, had raised more than $310,000 by 10:30 a.m. Saturday from nearly 6,000 donors. The Red Warrior Camp Legal Fund, on Generosity, had raised more than $11,000 by 10:30 a.m. Saturday.

Additionally, more than $9,500 in items had been purchased on the Sacred Stone Camps Amazon wish list, including clothing, tires, trail cameras, a storage shed, Amazon gift cards, a GoPro camera and stoves. Similar items also had been purchased off Red Warrior Camp wishlists.

The Sacred Stone Camp also has sought funds via PayPal.

Numerous other campaigns have popped up online since the camp began. Some have been started in support of the camp, while others have been for people seeking funds to travel to North Dakota and join the camp. A number of campaigns were tied to the flotilla of canoes that traveled from Bismarck to the camp Wednesday and Thursday.

The biggest of the campaigns not directly tied to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is one started by Lynne Colombe, of Mission, S.D. Colombes campaign to raise $30,000 began on Aug. 19. By 10:30 a.m. Saturday, it had raised more than $33,000. The information on GoFundMe said the effort would support purchasing teepee supplies, communication devices, clothing, stoves, generators, first-aid supplies and food.

Cynthia Pulham, of Colorado Springs, Colo., also had a fund on the site, now closed to donations, that raised $3,364. With that money, Pulhams update on the site said she and her husband purchased steel-frame shelters, forced-air heaters, insulation, plywood and building supplies, an outdoor shower, first-aid items, cooking supplies and food.

I am so grateful and honored to be part of this community. We may live (literally) from sea to shining sea, but we're a community nonetheless. Love knows no borders, and it transcends all boundaries, Pulham wrote in an update the day after she delivered supplies. We're now all literally a part of the Standing Rock action; that's one of the things they said yesterday. The stuff we brought to them is there because of our energy, and, for them, that makes us literally a part of the Sacred Stone camp.

Stacey Patel, of Satellite Beach, Fla., put up a campaign on GoFundMe on Wednesday seeking $3,000 to buy supplies and take them to Standing Rock. By 10:30 a.m. Saturday, her campaign had raised more than $3,100. She was hoping to buy things such as matches, lighters, rain ponchos, batteries, detergent, sanitary pads, money, cell phone chargers, folding tables, hats and gloves, tarps, walkie talkies, sleeping bags, sweaters and winter-ready shelter and bring them to the camp.

Financial support also has come in other forms. Musician Jackson Browne has announced that he will be donating all of his proceeds from a tribute album made by other artists of his songs. The album was produced by Music Road Records  which is owned by Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind Dakota Access Pipeline.

I do not support the Dakota Access Pipeline, a statement on Brownes website said. I will be donating all of the money I have received from this album to date, and any money received in the future, to the tribes who are opposing the pipeline.
MISSOULA  Mary Hanson was going through an odd time in her life, as she describes it.

The Milwaukee resident, now in her 60s, said she'd been losing some friends and relatives.

The news, meanwhile, was filled with election controversies and the racial tumult in her home city.

At the end of a week of 90-degree weather, she went to check her mail.

Among the junk mail and the bills, she found "this little bright pineapple" painted in watercolor and acrylic on a postcard. It's a simple thing, she said, but it touched her.

"It just was very compelling to have that physical thing," she said in a phone interview. Not an ad, a tweet or a Facebook post, but a small painted card from a complete stranger.

It was mailed to her on Aug. 30 by Linds Sanders, a Missoula artist and Billings native, as part of her Art by Post project, in which she creates one card a day and mails it to someone, either by request through a website or other means. She might even meet a stranger in the airport and ask for their address.

She modeled her yearlong endeavor after a haiku project by Andrew O. Dugas, a writer and poet who lives in San Francisco. Dugas wrote 1,001 haikus, one per day, and mailed them to strangers.

Sanders received one in January 2014, in the midst of a stressful day.

Its message was simple, but more poignant for a Montana resident that Dugas may have realized:

"official winter!

at long last we can begin

the countdown to spring"

"It hit me at a time when I really, really needed it," Sanders said, so much so that she contacted him and said she wanted to create her own version.

"He was amazed and flattered and helped be a mentor through the project," she said.

'Warm greeter'

A community-minded art project seems a natural fit for Sanders, who has a full-time job as the manager of the Zootown Arts Community Center, the bustling Northside arts center that encourages creativity for students of all ages.

If you walk into the ZACC, she's probably the first person you'll see at the front desk, ready to help you find the class you're looking for or the activity that suites your needs.

ZACC Executive Director Kia Liszak called her "the warm greeter who takes care of everyone" when they first arrive.

"My favorite people are the people who feel like they don't belong," Sanders said. "The biggest step they made was walking through the door. By walking through the door, they're admitting they have a creative bone in their body."

Adults in particular can feel more self-conscious about trying out art, but she believes everyone brings talent  some might just need to be patient because it takes time to develop a new skill.

Liszak, who hired Sanders, said she was impressed with everything Sanders had accomplished at such a young age.

Sanders' signature is simply asking everyone who walks in a question: "What has been the highlight of your day?"

It sounds so simple, Liszak said, but it always makes them stop and think.

Journey to art

Sanders came to Missoula to study journalism at the University of Montana. For an unofficial minor, she took every art class she could.

"All the art professors kept asking me when I was going to apply for the BFA, because they thought I was an art student," she said.

She grew up around art: her mother, Connie Dillon, is a photographer and painter who owns a gallery in Billings called Gallery Nine.

After graduating in 2012, Sanders sold feather jewelry at the Saturday markets until her mother passed along a job posting for the ZACC, where Sanders had a solo exhibition as an undergrad.

She applied for a fill-in post, and after someone else left, she became the manager.

"Like all of our jobs here, it just grew and grew and grew," she said.

She's also the volunteer coordinator, teaches the once-monthly glass fusing class, loads and looks after the kilns, and comes up with all the graphic design for the ZACC's myriad brochures, fliers, stickers, etc.

Active in the community

And she's overflowing with community activities. Outside of the ZACC, she has a part-time job as the owner/designer of Ramble Journals  handmade journals from recycled materials that are sold in stores in Missoula, Billings, Bozeman, Helena and Big Timber. Twenty percent of the proceeds go to the Rina B. Moog Scholarship Fund, created in memory of a close friend.

She also is co-facilitator of a Monday meditation group at Open Way Mindfulness Center in Missoula.

"It feels like they're suddenly very present and grateful for everything they're experiencing in that little moment," she said.

By the time Sanders was 15 years old, she'd seen people around her fall into the trap of substance abuse. She decided she's better off to her community if she abstains from drugs and alcohol, and has been straight-edge ever since.

"I'm really grateful that I found a good community here that knows the role that alcohol and substances play in their lives and it's a healthy role," she said.

Sanders is also a member of a women's mahjong group that meets every Monday. The mid-20-something is the second-youngest member  the next in age is in her 60s.

She came across the group at the library more than three years ago, and sat down because she wanted to know more.

"Within an hour, they had me playing, and I just kept coming back every single week," she said.

"They're awesome," she said. The group even traveled to Las Vegas in February to compete in a tournament.

Beyond hiking, inner-tube water polo and more, she says she likes to try a little bit of everything  even taking dance classes, which she says she's not good at to the point of discomfort, which is part of the point.

"I guess I seek out things that make me uncomfortable and try to stick with them long enough to wonder why I'm uncomfortable," she said.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

This week, plans for building an oil pump near Lake Houston sparked concerns about damage to the environment and local drinking water. For a culture that once built urban oil wells in their backyards and churches, Texas has come a long way in terms of separating drill sites from where people live.

Drillingmaps.com offers a view of Texas' oil fields, refineries and power plants. Of the hundreds of oil fields that surround Houston's city limits, two are found very near the energy capital. One in Pearland and the other near Jersey Village.

READ MORE: Oil declines as IEA says surplus will last longer than expected

The Fairbanks and Mykawa oil fields are are no longer operational, but well within Houston's Beltway 8. At first glance, it might look like the pumps were placed too close to the city. In reality, it's the other way around. Sort of.

As the Houston metropolis grew, it swallowed and assimilated small communities that were once independent from the city. Mykawa and its oil field were one of them.

The area was originally founded in 1906 by Shinpei Mykawa, a Japanese naval officer who traveled past Houston on a train and thought the surrounding region would be perfect for rice farming.

A few decades later, an oil field was developed in Mykawa. At the time, a single business and around 100 people populated the town. But hardly anyone noticed the oilfield and it failed to help the town in any substantial way.

READ MORE: 135 oil companies are on edge of bankruptcy. So why is that good news?

A Houston Post article from 1951 explained that Mykawa was gradually losing its individuality and becoming part of Houston. By 1986, only a trailer park and an abandoned railroad station remained.

Fairbanks Oil Field on the other hand, produced 42 million barrels of oil before closing in the 1970s. Nonetheless, the town never grew larger than a few hundred people. Like Mykawa, Fairbanks was eventually annexed by Houston in 1956.

Click through above to see where these oilfields are located in Houston.
A long-haul trucker pleaded guilty in Houston Tuesday to taking lewd photographs of two young boys and distributing them on the Internet.

As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, John Allen Chumley, 42, of Navasota, admitted to producing and possessing illegal images of a youth in Illinois and another in Texas, both of whom had been entrusted to his care by their families.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Texas has been on a slower than usual pace in executing death row inmates this year, but a federal appeals court's ruling this week may put the state back in the business of carrying out death sentences.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled that questions about the drug the state plans to use in executions isn't enough reason to delay five executions.

A state court stopped the execution of three of the five men involved in the case on unrelated grounds, including the case of Robert Jennings, who had been scheduled to die Wednesday night. The federal appeals court decision could mean the executions of Terry Edwards and Ramiro Gonzales will go forward over the next two months as scheduled.

READ MORE: Sentences of Jeffrey Wood, Bobby Moore add to execution controversy

To date, Texas has executed six prisoners in 2016, the slowest pace since 2010, when 10 people were sent to the death chamber. With at least three more executions scheduled before the end of the year, 2016 could mark the first time since 1996 that Texas has executed less than 10 people.

Edwards is awaiting execution on Oct. 19 for the 2002 robbery and shooting deaths of two people at a Dallas restaurant. Gonzales was condemned to death and scheduled for execution on Nov. 2 for the 2001 kidnapping, sexual assault and killing of an 18-year-old woman in Medina County.

In the latest case, five inmates - Jeffrey Wood, Ronaldo Ruiz, Jennings, Edwards and Gonzales - asked a federal court to force the state to re-test the five gram shot of pentobarbital used to induce death and halt their executions until that was done.

READ MORE: Texas' most controversial executions

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes rejected that request last month. The appeals court, led by Judge Patrick Higginbotham, found no grounds to force the state to test the pentobarbital, an anesthetic that in large doses can cause death.

In fact, the appeals court said, the state's interest in carrying out a final judgement in a capital case outweighs an inmate's interest in a painless death. Higginbotham wrote for the court that two of the inmates involved in the suit have been on death row for more than 20 years.

"To these eyes, a system that leaves persons on death row for over two decades more surely taxes the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of undue suffering than does the elusive search for minimum pain for those brief moments of passage across the river," Higginbotham wrote.

READ MORE: Drug testing delays execution for Houston killer

Mike Biles, an Austin-based attorney for the inmates, said the ruling renders the Eighth Amendment pointless.

"Above all else, in carrying out executions, the state should be held to the highest levels of transparency and accountability," Biles said. "It is unfortunate that the courts allow the state to cloak the entire process in secrecy."
Marie D. De Jesus/Houston Chronicle

Denied: How Texas keeps tens of thousands of children out of special education

Texas' arbitrary decision to limit the number of special education students served by school districts has prevented thousands of children from accessing much-needed services, a Houston Chronicle investigation found.
Texas Children's Hospital announced Tuesday that it has acquired the O'Quinn Medical Tower, the Texas Medical Center landmark recognizable for the spires atop the building that resemble a pair of hypodermic needles.

The tower, named after attorney John O'Quinn in recognition of his $25 million gift to the hospital, serves as the professional building for St. Luke's doctors.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The graphic video imagines the shooting death of a young woman during a home invasion.

That much is not in question.

What is in question: Whether the short film by a Second Amendment activist crosses a line by violently portraying the fictional death of a real-life student protester.

Since the four-minute video, "Never Met Her," was posted to YouTube two weeks ago, it has drawn outrage - including from at least one gun-rights group - for its violence and unapologetic targeting of campus-carry opponents.

Warning: Video may be disturbing to some viewers.

The short film's creator, Brett Sanders, is a self-described "Freedom Fighter" who insists the video was a reasonable vehicle through which to present his pro-gun views.

But one student activist, 19-year-old Ana Lopez, says she has been particularly unnerved because the actress in the video bears a strong resemblance to her.

In the video, the actress enters an apartment, sets a large sex toy down on a table, settles on her couch and turns on the television.

On the fictional screen is actual Fox-affiliate news footage from an Aug. 24 rally at the University of Texas at Austin, where members of Students Against Campus Carry protested a new state law allowing guns on campus. They're seen holding sex toys, part of a campaign with a NSFW name.

The young woman's phone rings, and the caller ID shows that it's "Rosie Zander."

"Oh, my God, did you see us on TV today?" the woman asks the caller. "We're going to go viral. We might get to meet Shannon Watts!"

Rosie Zander is the name of a UT student who has been a prominent activist against campus carry. Shannon Watts is the founder of the Moms Demand Action group.

The young woman hangs up after the fictional chat. Outside, a black man is shown approaching her apartment, walking past a "Gun Free UT" sign.

Hearing the commotion, the young woman darts back across her living room to grab the sex toy, then aims it at the intruder as he bursts through the front door.

As he advances, he notices she is armed with a sex toy. He removes a bandanna from across his mouth, calls her a "[expletive] liberal!" - and shoots her in the head.

Blood splatters against the wall, spraying a framed "Moms Demand Action" sign.

Lopez, a UT sophomore and co-founder of Students Against Campus Carry, said she was "disgusted" by the video.

"We activists are used to hateful messages and statements meant to demean our cause," she told The Washington Post. "However, this video is, so far, the worst threat I've seen."

She and others have called the video a "snuff film" that crosses the line by explicitly threatening those who have spoken out against allowing guns on campus.

"At first I thought that it was just a poorly made rebuttal to our protest," Lopez said. "And then I skipped forward and I saw the subject shot in the head with the sex toy fall to the ground next to her. Of course I was disgusted."

She said it was her friends who pointed out that the actress looked a lot like her. Lopez noted that the young woman in the video had a similar hairdo and was wearing a T-shirt like the one Lopez had worn at the August protest.

After the video was released, Lopez discovered a Facebook post from one of Sanders's friends, pointing out Lopez as the "doppelganger" of the actress.

Lopez said she has since filed a report with UT campus police and notified the Austin and Frisco police departments.

She didn't only see the video as a personal attack, she said; it was an open call for violence against all anti-gun activists.

"Everyone knows that this wasn't just a little jab," Lopez said. "This was a huge invitation to attack us and anyone in opposition to campus carry"

She added: "The people who film and distribute these threatening messages toward young, female activists - they're revealing that they're not interested in our safety. They just want to keep us in our place, fearful . . . and they're using guns and violence to do that."

The video was written and directed by Sanders, a 32-year-old Frisco, Texas, resident who gained some notoriety this year for paying a $212 traffic ticket with pennies.

Frisco is a suburb of Dallas, about 225 miles north of Austin. There, Sanders is an IT professional and maintains a website that highlights articles that are anti-government and anti-police. In his online bio, he describes himself as a "notable first and second amendment advocate" and a "voluntaryist" or Libertarian rather than an anarchist.

"I think we should all be left alone," Sanders said. "I really just stand against the initiation of force, the initiation of violence."

The video he made, however, was intended to be violent, he said.

"Yes, it was violent, it was graphic, and I really hope that it took people by surprise," Sanders told The Post. "This is a real, violent threat that we're facing. They have no concept that they could, in fact, be a victim at any given time."

Sanders said he conceived the idea Aug. 28 as a rebuttal to the sex-toy protests. It was filmed the following Tuesday at a friend's apartment in Plano, another suburb of Dallas, then quickly uploaded to YouTube.

Sanders then promoted the video on Twitter, tagging the Moms Demand Action group and posting a wry elegy over the death of the girl depicted in the film: "A moment of silence for this young lady. She was way too young."

"Sadly," he wrote in another tweet, "@MomsDemand lost a good soldier tonight. RIP dildo girl."

"The whole point of the video is to basically eviscerate gun-free zones and the dangers of gun-free zones," Sanders said. "We basically played out their idea. Their idea is to disarm everybody, arm everybody with a sex toy and hope for the best."

Sanders called the idea that he intentionally cast someone who resembled Lopez "absurd."

"I didn't even know of Ana Lopez, never heard of Ana Lopez, didn't even know what she looked like," he said.

The actress, credited as Staci Wilson, is the daughter of a friend who agreed to be in the film, he said. Wilson could not be directly reached for comment, though Sanders forwarded a statement on her behalf.

"My dad pitched the idea of the video to me and it sounded like an interesting way of countering the gun control protest so I agreed," the statement read. "I was surprised to be accused of portraying Ana Lopez, but other than that the fuss was expected. I look forward to playing a role in the sequel."

Sanders was also criticized for having a black actor, Eric July, play the role of armed intruder.

Last week, Sanders told Texas Standard that he did not regret casting July and said that "statistically, African Americans are more prone to create violent crimes. It does play into the stereotype, whether we like it or not."

As Texas Standard noted, FBI crime data actually showed that white people committed 59.4 percent of all violent crimes in 2014; black people committed 37.7 percent of all violent crimes.

Moms Demand Action denounced the video as the product of groups on "the extreme fringe of this debate."

"And for too long, these radical activist groups have been the loudest voices at the statehouse in Austin, pushing through a dangerous agenda of guns everywhere at any time with no questions asked," Emily Keown of Moms Demand Action's Texas chapter wrote in an op-ed for the Austin-American Statesman.

In a blistering statement, one gun-rights group, Students for Concealed Carry, also denounced the video - and in particular, the film's choreographer, Murdoch Pizgatti, who previously helped organize a "fake mass shooting" on the UT-Austin campus.

"Pizgatti is neither a policy wonk nor a serious political activist," Brian Bensimon, Texas state director for Students for Concealed Carry, said in the statement. "To say that he is on the fringe of the gun rights movement would be to give him too much credit. He is a publicity hound who cares about nothing more than seeing his assumed name in print. All parties to the campus carry debate, regardless of position or affiliation, have a duty to stand up to such reprehensible behavior."

Amy B Wang is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post.




Hardin officials have watched millions of dollars in bonding debt default and accumulate after a coal-fired power plant on the outskirts of town stopped paying its taxes.

The city has no obligation to the debt, because repayment depends only on the power plants tax payments. But as Hardin Mayor Jack Lane said at a city council meeting last week, residents are already going through hard times.

And the town is linked to more than one floundering investment.

It reflects on all of us, said city finance director Michelle Dyckman. Because we have pride in Hardin, and to have something like this happen in Hardin again  it just doesnt look good.

Hardin issued revenue bonds worth $12 million in 2006 to build infrastructure supporting the 116-megawatt Hardin Generating Plant on the north side of town, across the interstate. Bicent Holdings, a Delaware company, set up Rocky Mountain Power to build and oversee the facility.

The city planned to pay off the bonds through a tax increment financing district, meaning that as the plant increased the tax base for the area, the city could use that money to make bond payments. As part of the agreement, Rocky Mountain Power was exempt from property taxes for eight years.

The idea was that by issuing bonds to develop the area, Hardin could benefit from the industrial development. While the bond agreement shields the city from direct responsibility for the debt, it also means payments can only be made from tax revenue at the plant.

But that didnt happen. Rocky Mountain Power and its parent company, Bicent, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2012.

The generating plant was worth as much as $268 million in 2009, according to documents from the city of Hardin. When the company emerged from bankruptcy, the generating plants market value plummeted. From an assessment of $128 million in 2013, the plant's 2016 market value is $23.3 million, according to the Montana Department of Revenue.

The value fell so much that even if the company did pay its taxes, it wouldnt have been enough to make the minimum bond payment.

One way or another, the bonds were headed for default.

It was inevitable, Dyckman said. It was going to happen, but it wouldnt have happened as quickly as it has.

Delinquency drags on city

According to Hardin's records, Rocky Mountain Power hasnt paid taxes on the power plant since November 2014. In the city's 2017 budget, which was approved by the city council Sept. 6, Dyckman remarked that the city is expecting $1.3 million in delinquent taxes. At least another $900,000 could be added during the current budget cycle.

Without tax revenue, the city has been unable to facilitate bond payments. The bondholders reserve account has been depleted while trying to keep up with interest. Dyckman said there is $2.3 million in past-due debt service.

Colorado Energy Management, another subsidiary of Bicent, operates the power plant. The company was named as part of the Bicent bankruptcy.

Big Horn County Treasurer Jody Guptill said that Rocky Mountain Powers taxes are paid through Colorado Energy  the company has paid taxes on agricultural land that surrounds the power plant.

When the taxes are paid, basically thats where the checks are written out of  Colorado Energy, Guptill said.

Colorado Energy did not respond to requests for comment. Guptill said she hasnt heard from the company since August 2015, though the plant still operates.

The coal plant companys bankruptcy and subsequent failure to pay taxes was characterized on Sept. 6 by Mayor Lane.

Youre seeing the impact of a war on coal, he said. Its a war on us.

A main issue for Hardin officials is that the city has few tools to remedy the situation. The private bondholders have the power to take action on the property to recoup a portion of the bonds. The trustee handles the bond accounts.

Guptill said if taxes remain unpaid, a process could start next year that leads to a tax deed sale of the plant. Dyckman said the city sits in the middle.

Well do what we need to do, but at this point you arent sure what all your options are, she said. And the timing on things  so much of it is depending on Rocky Mountain Power and when they pay their taxes. And the other part is: What do the bondholders want to do?

Bonded out?

The situation is similar to Hardins relationship with the Two Rivers Detention Facility. The citys economic development authority issued $27 million in bonds to build the 464-bed facility in 2006  the same year the power plant bonds were issued.

Like the power plant, the jail was financed through revenue bonds, and Hardin has no obligation to pay down the debt. But the prison has been empty for eight of its nine years in existence, leaving the city without its only source of repayment funds.

The lack of revenue led to a default on those bond payments as well.

Dyckman said that the long-term effect of these financial ventures is not clear. It could hinder the citys ability to issue bonds in the future.

The current economic development project for the city, through the Two Rivers Authority, is a truck stop gas station project thats being constructed. The authority has been unable to cover its own expenses.

In the meantime, Hardin waits for a resolution on its bonding projects.

Of course, we rely on our bond counsel, Dyckman said. Its just going to be a matter of figuring out whats best for everybody.
Researchers recently published a study that measures the health problems caused by the oil and gas industry. A nonprofit research organization called the Clean Air Task Force found that in the United States, more than 750,000 children suffer from asthma attacks every summer as a result of oil and gas related smog.

As the largest producer of oil in the country, it is no surprise Texas is a major offender. Half of the top 30 U.S. counties for asthma attack risk are in Texas. The state sees 144,496 children suffer from asthma attacks, or nearly 20 percent of all oil and gas related asthma attacks in the nation.
Chronic wasting disease caused a 10 percent annual decline in the white-tailed deer population south of Glenrock, according to University of Wyoming researchers.

Their study, presented in a paper published Aug. 30 in the scientific journal PLOS One, is the first to look at population effects of white-tailed deer herds with a high level of CWD prevalence.

University of Wyoming graduate student Dave Edmunds said the findings are notable because there is no effective management for infected herds. The findings increase the urgency of keeping CWD from spreading.

The take-home is: Prevent CWD from getting into new populations, because once it gets established we really have no way of handling the disease, Edmunds said.

The study said localized extinction among infected herds could occur within 50 years. The disease also affects elk, moose and other kinds of deer.

While CWD is not known to have a negative effect on humans or livestock, Edmunds said white-tailed deer are one of the most popular animals with the public, both for hunting and nature watching.

"We care about population decline because this is the most commonly hunted big game species in North America," Edmunds said. "There is a large segment of the population that want to hunt and just view -- non-consumptive users ... just like to observe white-tailed deer."

The disease has existed in Wyoming and northern Colorado for 50 years but has steadily grown over time and is now spreading to states like Wisconsin, Michigan and New York and even central Canada.

It is undetectable for roughly the first 18 months after an animal is infected. During that time, Edmunds said saliva and feces from infected deer can spread it across the herds habitat.

The landscape becomes radioactive, Edmunds said. Thats what makes it such a nasty and difficult disease to manage.

In the final stage of the disease, deer become emaciated and effectively starve to death. Edmunds said there is no cure and even infected deer cared for in captivity will eventually succumb.

The study examined deer in southeastern Wyoming from 2003-2010. Edmunds said the 10 percent annual population decline was due largely to a high infection rate among female deer who are responsible for increasing herd size.

It doesnt take very many bucks to impregnate all the does, Edmunds said. Females are really what drive population growth.

Female deer in the studied population were infected with CWD at a rate of 42 percent, compared with 29 percent in males.

Edmunds said new hunting regulations, such as restrictions on killing does, might help ensure white-tailed deer populations remain stable. The research found CWD-infected deer are more likely to be killed by hunters even when no visible symptoms were present.

"Hunting is exacerbating the problem," he said.

But a Wyoming Game and Fish official said that statewide the white-tailed deer population was doing fine.

Saying CWD is affecting the white-tailed deer population is probably over-exaggerating, said Scott Edberg, deputy chief of the Wildlife Division.

He said white-tailed deer are thriving in certain parts of the state, such as the Black Hills region.

But Edberg emphasized that for several years the state has had strict regulations of moving live animals and on exporting corpses of hunted animals out of the state -- two main ways CWD is thought to be artificially spread.

We have very strict regulations specifically to address CWD, Edberg said.

Edberg said he had not yet carefully reviewed the new research but that Game and Fish, which helped fund and support the study, would incorporate the results into its decision-making process about hunting regulations.

The study was conducted through the Wyoming Wildlife/Livestock Health Center under the supervision of Todd Cornish, an associate professor at the university-affiliated State Veterinary Lab.
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.
CANNON BALL -- The CEO of Energy Transfer Partners reaffirmed the companys commitment Tuesday to the Dakota Access Pipeline and urged employees to contact their elected representatives about the project.

Kelcy Warren told employees in a memo the company intends to meet with officials in Washington to understand their position after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Justice and Department of Interior announced a temporary halt on construction on corps land north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

We are committed to completing construction and safely operating the Dakota Access Pipeline within the confines of the law, Warren wrote.

The memo released to the media Tuesday does not say whether the company plans to voluntarily halt construction in North Dakota 20 miles east and west of Lake Oahe, as requested by the federal agencies.

In the memo to employees, Warren told employees to continue doing your jobs in a thoughtful and professional manner and to explain to their friends and neighbors the facts about the work they are doing.

He also told employees to contact their elected representatives to tell them how important the pipeline is to their livelihood.

Remind them that the company fully complied with the regulatory process and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a nationwide permit and other essential permits for our work, Warren wrote.

Warren wrote that the company respects the constitutional rights of all assembled in North Dakota to voice their opinions for or against the project. However, threats and attacks on our employees, their families and our contractors as well as the destruction of equipment and encroachment on private property must not be tolerated, he wrote.

Warren wrote that the 1,172-mile pipeline is nearly 60 percent complete and the company has so far spent over $1.6 billion on equipment, materials and workforce. The $3.8 billion pipeline was scheduled to be in service by the end of the year.

The company plans to work closely with local, state and federal officials to ensure the safety and protection of workers, equipment, private land and peaceful protests.

Together we must promote a peaceful discourse and path forward, Warren wrote. We are committed to protecting and respecting the welfare of all workers, the Native American community, local communities where we operate, and the long-term integrity of the land and waters in the region.
The man who was shot by a police officer after reversing a stolen car in his direction pleaded guilty to three felonies and a misdemeanor on Tuesday.

South Central District Judge Bruce Haskell ordered a pre-sentence investigation for 19-year-old Miguel Stubing, who entered guilty pleas to theft of property, fleeing police, reckless endangerment and reckless driving.

In court, Stubing admitted taking the car and fleeing from police. He said he panicked and was "not in the right state of mind" because of methamphetamine use.

According to an affidavit filed in the case, Stubing backed a stolen vehicle toward Bismarck Police Officer Jordan West in a parking lot on South Third Street, before fleeing towards Emmons County on Jan. 23. West, who has since been cleared in the case, fired at the car as it backed up.

Though bleeding from gunshot wounds, Stubing led law enforcement on a high-speed chase through icy roads, Burleigh County State's Attorney Marina Spahr said at the hearing.

"There was a lot of opportunity for very serious injury to occur to Officer West and other law enforcement officers. It was probably just luck it didn't occur, that there weren't other accidents involved," Spahr said

West was cleared of wrongdoing in April, after an investigation into the shooting by the Bureau of Criminal Investigations. McLean County State's Attorney Ladd Erickson, who reviewed the case, wrote in his analysis that West's decision was "appropriate and in self defense."

A sentencing date has not been set.
Labor leaders were not the only ones to air concerns over the Obama administrations move last week to delay construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Gov. Jack Dalrymple on Tuesday called on the White House and federal agencies to provide assistance in maintaining peace and public safety for the duration of protest activities involving the Dakota Access Pipeline. His statement was released after about 50 law enforcement officers responded to a Dakota Access Pipeline worksite located just north of I-94, off Exit 120.

The federal governments announcement on Friday regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline has extended indefinitely the period of time necessary to bring the issue to a resolution, Dalrymple said. With a decision on the pipeline delayed indefinitely, the federal government shares in the responsibility of ensuring that peace and order are maintained.

Twenty-two protesters were arrested and transported to the Morton County jail for processing, according to the Morton County Sheriff's Department. Twenty protesters were charged with criminal trespass, while two others who were bound to construction equipment were charged with disorderly conduct and hindering law enforcement.

The Dakota Access Pipeline company has shown good faith in the legal process by removing their equipment from their worksites east of Highway 6. But rather than respect this, a small element of the protest group has decided to go and find DAPL equipment and sites wherever they are and interrupt their work that the pipeline company has legal right to conduct. This site near Interstate 94 at Exit 120 is over 80 miles from the original protest site, said Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier.

Since the start of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, 60 people have been arrested for protest activities.
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
It started with a tip.

In the fall of 2014, when Oregon officials and former Gov. John Kitzhaber were cheerleading the completion of a multimillion dollar effort to bring solar power to state university campuses, reporter Jeffrey Manning of The Oregonian learned details of the project could also use a little sunlight.

During a coffeehouse meeting, a source in the solar industry urged him to do some digging into the project, which involved around $12 million in tax credits and had been pitched as a job-creator that would bolster the local economy. After he started poking around, Manning recalled in a recent interview, he found something interesting: The jobs in solar manufacturing had been done locallybut behind bars, with prison labor.

That was enough for a hook. But it seemed like there was even more to the story and while Manning focuses on corporate investigations and white collar crime, energy isnt really his beat. He wanted someone with expertise about the states tax credit program, which is the largest of its kind in the country.

Enter fellow Oregonian reporter Ted Sickinger, who covers taxes and budgets and who had called out the tax credit program in print before for questionable practices. The two had never partnered very closely on a story, but they immediately started filing separate open records requests for documents related to the solar project.

Sickinger had in mind one set of records in particular. In order for the project to be eligible for a certain tax credit, he knew, the project would have had to prove it was under construction by a certain date.

Sign up for weekly emails from the United States Project

I knew that was a threshold question for the project and I knew exactly what Id be looking for because Ive looked at these things for a long time, he says. So we requested the documentation, and I went through the file. And all there were were these two receipts demonstrating that they had been under construction, and on their face they looked to be questionable.

One of those questionable documents was an invoice showing that work had begun in time to qualify for the credit but it came from a company that doesnt exist. All of a sudden a story about solar panels being assembled by federal prisoners turned into something even bigger. Sickinger said it took him one afternoon to undercover the smoking gun.

Manning admits to being skeptical at first that that they were really looking at forged records in the files of a sprawling state program. But Ted proved that the one invoice was from a company that didnt exist, he says. And it was fantastic, it was really exciting.

After months of reporting, the pair produced a Feb. 27, 2015 investigation under the headline, Oregon signature solar project built on foundation of false hopes and falsehoods.

This was the nut:

Interviews and an examination of thousands of pages of documents show that state officials wrongly awarded millions in state tax credits, turning a blind eye to phony documents. The project also was dogged by an international trade war, a bitter corporate rivalry and a stunning twist that traded high-paid Oregon jobs for prison labor at 93 cents an hour./p>

(The news wasnt all grim, the paper acknowledged up high: The solar arrays were built, and were generating even more power than expected.)

Fast forward 18 months, and the newspapers investigation has had a clear impact.

The state now has a new governor who, within a week of The Oregonians report, called for an investigation into the project and later asked the legislature to move troubled incentive programs managed by the state Energy Department under different agencies. The CFO of the energy department resigned. The FBI joined a state probe into the university solar project. A group of GOP lawmakers asked the attorney general to investigate state energy tax credits. Leaders in the Oregon House and Senate launched joint oversight committees to explore restructuring the energy department or abolishing it altogether. A full-blown forensic audit of the states tax credit program called the Business Energy Tax Credit, or BETC revealed more than a quarter of its large tax credits seemed improper, violated statutes or rules, or exhibited suspicious activity. Several dozen have been referred to the state justice department.

And, just two weeks ago, the main consultant to the solar project was indicted on forgery charges, accused, The Oregonian reports, of creating a phony invoice from a fictional subcontractor that was pivotal in getting nearly $12 million in tax credits from the Oregon Department of Energy. (The contractors attorney doesnt dispute the invoice was made up, but says his client is innocent, and the invoice was given to his client by someone else involved in the project.)

Days after the announcement of the charges, the newspaper reported the State of Oregon is suing the projects lead consultant in hopes of getting $11.8 million in tax credits back.

All in all, it was a series of big payoffs for a newspaper that, like plenty of others, has much fewer resources and staff to do this kind of watchdog work.

Were not immune to all the financial pressures its a much smaller newsroom than it used to be, Manning says. But we have the right leadership in place that recognizes the value of accountability and enterprise journalism. We spent a lot of time on this story.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Corey Hutchins is CJRs correspondent based in Colorado, where he teaches journalism at Colorado College. A former alt-weekly reporter in South Carolina, he was twice named journalist of the year in the weekly division by the SC Press Association. Hutchins writes about politics and media for the Colorado Independent and worked on the State Integrity Investigation at the Center for Public Integrity; he has contributed to Slate, The Nation, the Washington Post, and others. Follow him on Twitter @coreyhutchins or email him at coreyhutchins@gmail.com.
Drones will soon be taking to the skies to help New York City firefighters battle major fires and emergencies.

The New York Times reported Thursday the Fire Department of New York will deploy a drone to 2-alarm fires or greater in the next few weeks.

The unmanned aircraft will deliver video and infrared images to fire commanders. Two more drones will be added by the end of the year.

That tool for a chief is just night and day from what it was not just 30 years ago when I started, but 15 years ago, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. And moving forward, technology like this is a terrific advantage for us and for fire departments around the country.

The drone is in painted fire engine red, weighs about eight pounds, and costs $85,000. A dozen firefighters will be trained to work with the drones, which take two people to operate.

The FDNY spent nearly two years of research and planning on the project before they were ready to launch their own drones.

Since three-quarters of the city is classified by federal authorities as restricted airspace, the fire department must still get special clearance from Federal Aviation Administration before sending up a drone those areas.

The FAA said in a statement it would move to approve the requests as quickly as possible, particularly where lives may be at risk.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. duped a New York bicycle courier company into paying for a workers compensation plan that threatens to shortchange injured workers and businesses, according to a lawsuit filed Friday.

The suit comes as Berkshires Applied Underwriters business faces scrutiny over its workers compensation policies. Regulators in California, Wisconsin and Vermont have criticized the policies and banned further sales after saying they skirted state approvals. The company says that the contracts were designed to share profits with clients.

In the lawsuit, Breakaway Courier Corp. accused Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire of creating what it called a reverse Ponzi scheme that requires workers compensation customers to cover each others losses. According to the complaint in state court in New York, companies are led to believe their premiums are being paid into protected cells and will eventually be returned to them.

Instead, Berkshire Hathaway illegally siphons off premiums, leaving employers and injured workers without the funds that New York State requires to be available to cover losses, according to the complaint.

Breakaway is seeking to recover the premiums it paid, at least $863,048, as well as other damages.

Berkshire Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett and Chief Financial Officer Marc Hamburg didnt immediately return telephone or e-mail messages for comment on the suit.

Californias insurance commissioner ruled against Berkshire in June over workers compensation policies after determining that the company duped a small business, Shasta Linen Supply, and circumvented a review of rates. Earlier this month, the company agreed to stop selling the policies in dispute in California. The regulator said the Berkshire businesses charged customers rates which hadnt been approved by the regulator.

The case is Breakaway Courier Corp. v. Berkshire Hathaway Inc., 654806/2016, New York State Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan).

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
A judge Wednesday ordered the Washington Attorney Generals Office to give him internal emails that might help explain when state lawyers handling a case about liability for the devastating Oso landslide realized that their expert witnesses were improperly deleting emails.

King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff ordered the office to produce the emails within a week, saying its critical for him to know what they show as he considers punishing the state for allowing the destruction of potential evidence in the case.

Im just trying to figure out when yall knew, Rogoff told the states lawyers.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson has already acknowledged that one of his lawyers, Mark Jobson, knew for the past year and a half that experts hired by the state to determine the cause of the 2014 slide were deleting emails among themselves. But the office insists that its other lawyers were unaware, and that Jobson and the experts sincerely believed the emails did not need to be turned over to the plaintiffs and thus could be deleted.

During a hearing Wednesday, neither state Solicitor General Noah Purcell, who investigated the offices handling of the matter, nor Rene Tomisser, senior counsel in the Attorney Generals Office, could definitively answer the judges questions, and Rogoff insisted on seeing any emails sent among state lawyers or between state lawyers and the experts that might shed light on the issue. The judge said he would review the messages in private rather than immediately turn them over to lawyers for the other side.

Rogoff noted that he was a prosecutor for 22 years before becoming a judge: Youre sitting in a room with your agents, essentially, and they mention the word emails, and they mention the word deletion, and someone isnt jumping up and saying, What?!

Purcell said the state was willing to provide the internal emails.

The landslide wiped out a rural neighborhood 60 miles northeast of Seattle on March 22, 2014, killing 43 people  the deadliest landslide in U.S. history. In lawsuits, victims or their families alleged that the state, Snohomish County or a company that logged above where the hillside collapsed have liability for worsening the damage or failing to warn about the danger; some claims have been dismissed, but some remain, with trial scheduled to begin in about a month.

Attorneys for the families said they were shocked to hear, during depositions this summer, that the experts had routinely deleted emails to each other as they studied the landslide  and that one of the states lawyers knew about it.

In asking the judge to punish the state, the victims lawyers argued that the experts tailored their findings to suit the states case, and that deleting the emails helped them cover their tracks. They asked the judge to hold the state liable for landslide damages, make a finding that the state knew or should have known of the danger the landslide posed or bar the states experts from testifying.

These are very smart people and they dont like the idea of lawyers getting inside their communications and cross-examining them on it, John W. Phillips, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the judge.

The states lawyers rejected that assertion, saying the state spent $3 million to advance scientific knowledge in hopes of preventing further such catastrophes. The state turned over extensive raw data as well as other documents noting the significant scientific uncertainty about the factors contributing to the landslide, they said.

Purcell told the judge the experts didnt believe they were doing anything wrong, because they acknowledged the practice openly during their depositions. The state has hired a private company to see whether the deleted emails can be recovered; about 1,000 have been provided to the plaintiffs lawyers, but its not clear how many more can be recovered.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
State regulators aim to clear the final hurdle today in the approval process for proposed administrative rule changes regarding the oversight of oil and gas in the state.

The new North Dakota Industrial Commission administrative rules would go into effect Oct. 1, if given the green light by lawmakers on the Administrative Rules Committee.

Included in the proposed rules are requirements for dikes to be built around oil tanks at any new facility prior to well completion. Berms around the perimeter of storage and production facilities would also need to be at least 6 inches tall.

The NDIC in June also added an amendment to the rules that would provide flexibility to Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms in granting extensions to operators in the construction of berms around well sites if conditions arise.

Department of Mineral Resources spokeswoman Alison Ritter said its unclear to what extent potential extension requests might be submitted to the department.

Getting sites constructed  in winter can be difficult, said Ritter, adding that worksites would be checked to determine whether a request was valid.

Helms indicated extensions would be granted on a case-by-case basis, including whether contractors doing the construction on the berms were behind in their work. Another would be winter weather.

He also told the commission in June the number of well sites that could be impacted by the new rules totaled about 4,000.

North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness said Monday the council was finalizing its comments and plans on providing them to the committee if discussion is opened on the proposed NDIC rules.

He declined to give specifics on what comments and concerns the NDPC would bring up.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An art nouveau portrait of Holland's longest-reigning queen, a Surrealist fantasy and an image of an Iranian woman who dares to be different are among the latest acquisitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The museum announced a new quarterly round of acquisitions that included works by the midcentury Surrealist painter Andre Masson; the contemporary New York artist Shirin Neshat, a native of Iran; and a large drawing on view in the current exhibition on the emotionally charged works of Kara Walker, who deals with the history of slavery and racism in America.

Heather Lemonedes, the museum's chief curator, praised the bequest of 170 prints from the late Elizabeth Shearer, a member of the museum's Print Club from 1962 until her death in 2014, the club's president in 1979-80 and its long-running archivist.

Lemonedes called Shearer's posthumous gift "a lovely testament to someone who for so many decades was a friend and loyal supporter of the museum."

The Shearer gift includes a 1901 lithographic color portrait of "Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Wilhelmina" of the Netherlands by French artist Paul Berthon.

Portrayed as a young woman in the print, Wilhelmina reigned from 1890 to 1948, and made herself a symbol of the Dutch resistance to the Nazis during World War II through broadcasts from London, according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica website.

The Neshat photograph is a still from a video by the artist that depicts a gender-separated gathering in which an audience "listens to the tale of the adultery of Zoleikha and Youssef from the Qur'an," and "blames a woman for her seductive gaze."

The episode resonates with numerous images in the museum's current exhibition on Mughal painting from India.

The Kara Walker purchased by the museum is entitled "The Republic of New Afrika,'' a name that references that of a black separatist group founded in the southeastern United States in 1968.

The Surrealist painting by Masson is the latest addition to the museum's collection of European painting.

Entitled "Landscape With Snake," it exemplifies the Surrealist technique of "automatic" drawing and painting, in which the artist allows unconscious impulses to emerge during the creative process.

"It's a significant purchase for us," Lemonedes said. "We don't get to buy a lot of modern European paintings; they're expensive and rare."
fonebill.jpg

Verizon has charged Valarie Gerbus, a mother of two, $9,153 for fees and services last month. The company claims Gerbus, of suburban Tampa, used 569 gigabytes of data on her cellphone. She had never exceeded 4 gigabytes in a month. She had been paying $118 a month. She canceled her plan with Verizon and said she refuses to pay the bill. The bill misspelled her first name.

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The $9,100 Verizon cellphone bill staggered and stumped Valarie Gerbus, causing a financial hit that could destroy her credit.

For months, the mother of two from suburban Tampa paid $118 a month for her cellphone package that included 4 gigabytes of data, which she says she never exceeded. That changed last month when Verizon charged her with using an eye-gouging 569 gigabytes for a whopping $8,535.

The company tacked on $600 when she dropped the plan. Gerbus said she refuses to pay the bill, saying she never used that much data. She said she asked the company repeatedly how the bill soared.

She has yet to get an answer.

"I told them that I won't pay the bill,'' Gerbus said. "I can either wait until they take it to a collection agency or when they take it to court. Either way, my credit history will be ruined. I can go bankrupt here.''

Gerbus' last bill from Verizon is a consumer's horror story that stands out, based on its outrageous spike. But across the country, thousands of cellphone users reported soaring data usages and hefty over-limit fees. The complaints began multiplying after The Plain Dealer reported Friday how the company has billed customers for jumps in data fees. Many customers, however, say they have done nothing different as far as their usage.

In interviews last week, Verizon officials insisted their corporate office wasn't aware of any widespread problem. The officials said the company is looking into a few concerns, such as data use on customer accounts in the middle of the night, and some of the more extreme cases of people who have contacted the newspaper.

Like Gerbus, many of the customers were stunned with charges for data that they say they never touched. A grandmother in Rapid City, South Dakota, said she and her family fly through a month's supply of 15 gigabytes in 10 to 12 days at a charge of $300. They struggle for the rest of the month, she said.

"I thought it was just me until I read your story,'' said the woman, who declined to be identified. "Then I realized, 'Hey, there might be something to this.'''

Tom Walker of Lockport, New York, saw his family's data climb, even though he, his wife and daughter were doing nothing differently.

"It got to the point that we were battling in our family,'' Walker said. "We were really asking each other, 'Have you been on Facebook too much? What have you been doing?' We were trying to figure out who was using all this data.''

That's something Gerbus would like to know.

She said she had been with Verizon since February. Gerbus, who is in real estate, said she needed her Samsung Note 5 for work and to keep up with her two children. Gerbus bought the phone when she started her plan with Verizon.

She said she never went over 4 gigs a month. She said she listens to Pandora, but the software and usage for work never took up more than a 0.5 gigabyte of data.

Each month, she paid $118.

That changed in July. She said she was scheduled to go to a wedding that was out of town and feared there would not be Wi-Fi on the trip. She said she often had plenty of unused data, and she didn't think of needing more.

On July 21, Verizon sent her a text, notifying her that she had used nearly all of her 4 gigabytes of data. The text said she could get 4 more gigabytes for $20. Realizing that she had two weeks before the end of the month, Gerbus bought the additional data.

Within an hour of the purchase, she received another text that told her she only had 10 percent left on the data that she had just purchased. The next text message she received said she could change her plan to 8 gigabytes for an additional $20 a month. She said she bought that upgrade to ensure she didn't have any data overages.

In a span of several hours, she estimates that she received 40 to 50 texts saying that she needed to purchase more data. She turned the notification off, believing that there had been a glitch in Verizon's system.

Gerbus said she realizes now that she should have contacted the company at that point, but she didn't, as she feared being placed on hold by a customer service representative.

She later went to work and planned on paying the bill online. When she found her online statement, it said she owed $6,480 for using 490 gigabytes of data. She was shocked.

"I was only expecting to see the $118 bill that I have faithfully paid (for months),'' she said.

A tech support employee for Verizon told her that her phone had hit on Amazon more than 400 times in a span of days, she said. On Aug. 1, she begged a customer service representative to avoid turning her phone off, as she needed it for her job and for her children to reach her. The company said she had used 490 gigabytes of data since July 21.

The next day, the company turned off her phone, claiming her usage had jumped to 569 gigabytes.

"I told them that there was no way that I could have gone from 490 to 560 in a day,'' Gerbus said. "The person said, 'Yes there is.' "

She left the carrier for T-Mobile. For leaving Verizon's contract, she owes a $600 cancellation fee. She said she would gladly pay that.

But she has a lot of questions for the company. The main one is simple: How does a customer go from paying $118 a month for 4 gigabytes of data to a bill that includes 569 gigabytes and will end up costing her $9,153?

She said she has tried to determine where her data went by using an online account analysis. But each time she does, she gets a message: "The activity you are trying to perform is currently unavailable. Please try again later.''

She said she plans to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.

"I understand that it is a big company and it cannot call everyone who appears to be going over his or her usage,'' Gerbus said. "But I had never gone over my amount of 4 gigs. And then to get a bill that high makes you wonder.''

-- Plain Dealer reporter Teresa Dixon Murray contributed to this story.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It may be enough that you love your homegrown tomatoes. But could they be prizewinners? Geauga Fresh Farmers Market in South Russell will help you find out - and let you taste what others grew - in its annual Tomato Tasting contest, 10-11:30 a.m. Saturday Sept. 17 at the market, Bell Street and Chillicothe Road (Ohio 306).

"This has been a good year for tomatoes so I expect a lot of entries in both competitions," said market manager Cheryl Hammon.

Enter in two categories, cherry tomatoes and slicing tomatoes, by bringing a labeled pint of yours to the market by 9:30 a.m. that morning. Include your phone number on the label. Both customers and vendors are eligible to vote.

If you miss that one, consider the Salsa Competition a week later, Sept. 24, at the same times. Hot and mild categories will be judged. Bring a quart of salsa with your name and phone number and drop it off by 9:30 a.m

Now in its fifteenth year, the market tries to attract vendors as local as possible, says Hammon. A list of them can be found on the market's web site, www.geaugafarmersmarket.com.

"All my thirteen farmers are from Geauga County except my mushroom farmer who is from Hiram in Portage County," she said. "Two of them sell meat, free-range eggs and produce and a third sells pork, beef, free-range chicken meat and produce with sweet corn being his biggest produce seller. The rest sell produce with two of them being organic. These are small family farms where most of the work is done by the family members themselves."

They are not always easy to find farmers, she said.

"It is hard work with long days and very little time away from the farm. Plus, the weather here is getting to be more and more of a challenge: Long periods of drought in the spring when they need it and very low temperatures in winter that damages fruit trees and blossoms in the spring.

"More and more grocery stores are selling 'local' food and so competition for sales at a farmers market is tougher than when the local food movement first came along."

The difference she can offer, she says, a chance to communicate directly with the farmers.

"All of the products we sell in the market have to be raised, grown or produced by the person selling it. This way our customers can form a relationship with the farmer and ask questions about their food and how it was produced. We do have a consignment process for items that we do not have in the market but we rarely use it.

"All of our farmers take a class called GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) that teach safe growing methods, proper handling and transportation techniques and record keeping. This provides standards when implemented that increase the safety of food sold at farmers markets."

The outdoor market ends Oct. 15 with a Celebrity Chef Cookoff, but Hammon expects to continue the indoor winter market tradition sometime in October at Lowe's Greenhouse, Florist & Gift Shop in Chagrin Falls.
The Dallas-based company constructing the Dakota Access Pipeline says it will meet with federal officials and continue to press its case in continuing work to complete a nearly $3.8 billion project that has drawn protests over the past month.

Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. CEO Kelcy Warren updated employees on work on the 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline project in an internal memo on Tuesday morning. The memo was shared with media by a company spokeswoman.

Warrens memo comes after the two announcements on Friday afternoon.

The first was a ruling from a U.S. District Court judge which rejected the Standing Rock Sioux Tribes request for an injunction against the project.

Shortly after the decision was announced the U.S. Department of the Interior, Department of the Army and Department of Justice issued a joint statement saying the Army wont allow construction near or under the Missouri River until further review is completed. The agencies also asked Dakota Access, LLC, a partner of Energy Transfer Partners, L.P., to not undertake construction within 20 miles of either side of the river.

The agencies also said more consideration of tribal concerns and input for infrastructure projects needs to be taken into account.

We intend to meet with officials in Washington to understand their position and reiterate our commitment to bring the Dakota Access Pipeline into operation, Warren said.

The pipeline, if completed, would originate in western North Dakota near Stanley and would end near Patoka, Ill. If completed on schedule before the end of the year, the project would transport up to 450,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude with a future maximum capacity of 570,000 barrels per day.

Tribal leaders and groups have been staging protests over the pipeline for more than a month, citing concerns over potential contamination of the Missouri River if the pipeline were to rupture. The cultural sites issue also has loomed large.

Protests have led to dozens of arrests in recent weeks as well as one recent clash between protesters and private security personnel. Tribal officials also told media outlets that several protesters were pepper-sprayed and multiple people bitten by guard dogs which the security personnel had with them at a construction site.

The company's memo is below. Click to read the full pdf.
My old friends Dennis Prager, Bill Bennett and Rush Limbaugh, among many others, seem to have made a transition. It's not enough to vote for Trump. No, even reluctant supporters must now talk themselves into believing that conservative principles require a vote for Trump. Like John C. Calhoun, who discovered that slavery was not only not wrong, it was a positive good, some Republicans are urging that a vote for Trump is a moral imperative. To oppose him is, in Bennett's words, to put vanity and a sense of moral superiority above the interests of the country. Rush Limbaugh, who travels in a private plane, condemns anti-Trump intellectuals at tiny, poorly funded think tanks for (wanting) their paychecks.

To justify support for an emotionally stunted, aspiring authoritarian, Prager et al argue that the country cannot survive four years of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Limbaugh warns that this is a Flight 93 election  meaning we either storm the cockpit and risk death, or surely die.

Bad analogy. The passengers on Flight 93 were pretty sure they were going to die. The only question was whether to go down fighting and possibly disrupt the terrorists' plans, or to die passively. Those passengers ought to remind us that a lot remains right with America, because the voices crying doom are particularly piercing just now.

There is much decay in America. Government, best represented by an IRS that targets Americans for their political activism and an FBI that declines to hold high officials to the same standards as ordinary ones, is corrupt. Government is also sclerotic and headed for insolvency  with the approval of both major-party candidates. The courts are making social policy without even a pretense of constitutionality. Race relations are getting worse. The press is dominated by mindless infotainment. Men are dropping out of the labor force. The internet has unleashed the most feral appetites of the human soul  from child porn to anti-Semitism. Manners are fraying.

So, yes, it may be that we cannot pull out of this dive. Many of these ills are not susceptible to repair by a president. In any case, how can people who until the day before yesterday emphasized the crucial importance of ethics, morality, tradition and honor now argue that Trump is not the antithesis of those virtues?

If you're going to have a cult of personality, at least choose someone worthy. Trump has spent a career in the tabloid zone, and it shows. The amazing thing is that a lifelong teetotaler can sound so drunk. At NBC's Commander in Chief Forum, for example, Trump repeated his favorite barstool bluster that the United States of America should have taken the oil before departing Iraq. Leaving aside for a moment the morality of using the U.S. military to pillage another nation, the how of this formulation is a bit murky, since Trump is adamantly opposed to boots on the ground. We could have left a small force, he airily explained to Matt Lauer. And the Iraqi population would have been fine with that? No danger of an insurrection, to say nothing of sabotage?

Trump again repeated the debunked claim that Mexico is taking all of our jobs or a big percentage of our jobs and preened about causing the resignation of a mid-level Mexican government official as proof of his toughness. A truly great nation needn't lord it over minor Mexicans. He later purred about his cordiality with Vladimir Putin, and imagined how delightful the world would be if we could have a better relationship with Russia, which wants to defeat ISIS as badly as we do. Well, not badly enough actually to fire on them, it seems. Russian jets hit Bashar Assad's opponents square on but left ISIS pretty much unscathed.

Trump claims to have taken an interest in international affairs for many years, but he apparently missed the part when Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton had the same naive hope about Russia. They called it a reset. Trump would decry it as a disaster even as he slides into the exact same rut. Despite his slogan, Trump is quick to slander America. Asked about the attempted coup in Turkey, he sneered that the U.S. lacks the moral authority to criticize other nations. When presented with Putin's record of killing opponents, he was phlegmatic. Our country does plenty of killing also. He's long admired dictators he describes as strong leaders.

Trump's comments on foreign policy come at a time when he's been attempting to impersonate a normal candidate, and some observers have developed blinding amnesia. This Trump is bad enough, but the other one  the violence-inciting, promiscuously dishonest, bankruptcy-declaring, NATO-dissing, tax return-withholding, alt-right empowering, threat-issuing, America-disparaging Trump  cannot remain chained for long. That Trump cannot save America. He might do even more damage than she. So spare us the overwrought Flight 93 analogies.
watch now

The chairman of Hanjin Group transferred 40 billion won ($36 million) to Hanjin Shipping on Tuesday to help unload cargo stranded on the troubled shipper's vessels, a spokesman said, but regulators warned securing further funds could take "considerable time."

The parent of Hanjin Shipping pledged last week to raise 100 billion won to help rescue cargo in the wake of the collapse of the world's seventh-biggest container shipper, including the 40 billion won from Chairman Cho Yang-ho.

About $9 million pledged by Choi Eun-young, a former chairwoman of Hanjin Shipping, has also come in, the shipper said.

Around $14 billion of cargo has been tied up globally as ports, tugboat operators and cargo handling firms worried about not being paid refused to work for Hanjin, which filed for receivership in a Seoul court on August 31.

Shipping submitted early last week to a South Korean court that it could take an estimated 173 billion won ($154.5 million) to unload all stranded cargo, a Seoul Central District Court judge told Reuters.

Korean Air , the top shareholder of Hanjin Shipping, on Saturday approved a plan to lend the shipper 60 billion won, conditional on Hanjin Shipping providing its stake in Los Angeles' Long Beach Terminal as collateral. That deal requires the approval of other shareholders and creditors of the terminal.

It may take "considerable time" for Korean Air to provide the loans for Hanjin Shipping, South Korea's top financial regulator said, according to a regulatory official. "It is being reviewed whether it is possible to secure the funding" from Korean Air, Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong said at a meeting with South Korea's ruling party.

South Korea has said no government or central bank money will be directly injected into firms restructuring in the ailing shipping and shipbuilding industries, though it is helping small-to-medium sized businesses hit by the restructuring.

Risks in Australia In Sydney, the Hanjin California, which docked on Sept. 3, remained held in port following a Federal Court order filed by Glencore Singapore Pte over unpaid fuel bills. Most of the containers on the 182-meter-long vessel have been offloaded, but some destined for other ports were still being held, port authorities said.

Six other Hanjin vessels were heading to Australia and risked being seized by creditors, two sources familiar with the situation said.

Unlike in the United States, Britain, Japan and provisionally Singapore, Hanjin has no protection in Australia against creditors for unpaid bills.

"It's likely someone will put a claim on the assets," said one of the sources, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.



watch now
It's that time again! Jim Cramer rang the lightning round bell, which means he gave his take on caller favorite stocks at rapid speed:



Advanced Micro Devices : "I think this pullback is an opportunity. They had to fix their balance sheet. That's good. I like their business, they're fine. I just think that once they put all that liquidity out there you have to wait a little bit. Don't expect it to bounce right back to $7 or $8 any time quickly."

GW Pharmaceuticals : "We are big fans of it because they have the actual pill of pure marijuana, none of that other stuff. But the problem is now it is up on a takeover spike, and maybe it gets one. Remember, that is a class one felony to do what they are doing in the United States, but they are over there in London. So, I say you know what, sell half. If you're just starting, I don't want you to give back that big gain."

Vector Group : "I've liked Vector Group, it's got a little disparate group of assets, but it yields north of 6 almost 7 percent. I like that. I like the yield, I think the business is fine."

Aratana Therapeutics : "If we are going to do pets, the only one I want is IDEXX ... that's my pet play. Remember, they came up with the humanization of pets."

International Paper : "International Paper has made a big comeback. Why? Because apparently some of the rates for liner board are going higher. It's got a good yield, good worldwide business. I say stick with it."

AbbVie Inc : "I think this is a great long-term position. I don't expect anything big until after the election, but AbbVie is very well run. I'll give you a two-for. I actually like Abbott Laboratories despite all the different news about it. I think it's a good situation."
Untreated mental illness. Easy access to firearms. Alcoholism and drug abuse. Poverty. Social isolation. Trauma. Chronic illness and disability. A culture that encourages individuals to solve their problems alone, without asking for or accepting help.

Those are some of the many convergent factors that add up to Montanas excessive suicide rate, the highest in the nation at nearly 25 per 100,000 people. These same factors have led Missoula County to an even higher suicide rate  nearly 34 suicides per 100,000 people in 2014. Thats nearly three times the national suicide rate.

Missoula County now has the highest suicide rate in a state that has the highest suicide rate in the nation.

The tragedy of suicide is that it is entirely preventable. And Montanas high suicide rate is completely unacceptable.

Much time and effort has been spent identifying the causes of suicide in Montana, and much ink has been spilled calling for greater public awareness and resources to combat the growing crisis.

Its time to take stock of the steps being taken to prevent suicide in our state  and determine what steps must be taken next. This past week, National Suicide Prevention Week, is an apt time to do just that, while renewing public attention and community support for suicide prevention programs at the local and state level.

Suicide has been a major concern in Montana for a long time now. The state has ranked among the top five in the nation for its suicide rate for nearly four decades. In 2014, at least 243 Montanans died by suicide  more than the number of Montanans who died in car crashes that year. The numbers were even worse the following year, when 267 suicides were recorded in Montana.

The vast majority of suicides are completed by men, and in Montana they occur with the most frequency among those between the ages of 55 to 64 years old. A disproportionate number are Native Americans. More than half are carried out with a firearm. Nearly one in four are veterans.

Fortunately, hope is on the horizon. In recent years Montana has finally begun dedicating some much-needed focus to suicide prevention.

The 2015 Legislature, for one, approved the Montana Suicide Awareness and Prevention Training Act, which directs the state Office of Public Instruction to develop resources for schools and parents to identify at-risk youth and connect them to the help they need to get better.

And the state is developing a strategic plan to tackle the alarmingly high rate of suicides among Native American children in Montana.

Meanwhile groups across Montana continue striving to boost the suicide prevention programs available to adults in their communities.

One goal of these efforts is to raise public awareness of the warning signs of suicide, and of the resources available to combat it. Although many different factors can precipitate a suicide attempt, depression is a major one, and in fact, many experts name untreated depression as the No. 1 cause of suicide.

This is why it was encouraging to learn of a new health system recently formed by Providence Health and Services and St. Joseph Health. The new system, which includes more than 50 hospitals in seven states, includes a new institute and foundation dedicated to improving mental health care, with initial funding of $100 million.

While this funding will be disbursed throughout the system, theres a strong case to be made that much of it should go to Montana, which is historically badly underserved when it comes to mental health services. The new institute will award grants to organizations in communities served by its member hospitals  meaning Missoula and Polson, primarily  and local groups working to provide mental health care ought to seize this opportunity.

The close of the annual National Suicide Prevention Week should not mean the end of efforts to push for progress on suicide prevention. Instead, lets use it as another rung on the ladder leading to a lower suicide rate in Missoula and Montana.

 Missoula (Mont.) Missoulian
Looking back, several major sell-offs have happened in the last 8 years since the Great Recession. While a different set of events drove each one, Cramer only thought one was worth selling a majority of holdings.

"I want to explain to you why I feel that we are facing a decline of moderate proportions, one worth riding through if you can stomach it, and nothing more than that. Only the super nimble need to take action," the " Mad Money " host said.

If the Fed does take action, Cramer warned investors not to do anything dramatic. He recommended to protect with a little more cash, but not to dump stocks wholesale.

As Jim Cramer always says, nobody ever made a dime panicking. That motto still applies, even if the Federal Reserve decides to raise rates next week.

That was the major decline that came when many financial institutions and industrials came close to collapsing. Systematic risk existed in that situation, and Cramer blessed some major selling.

But other kinds of sell-offs come, too, like the kind in 2011 that saw a 21 percent decline from peak to trough. A financial collapse overseas was possible amid a sovereign debt crisis. Ultimately, the European Central bank made bold moves and saved the day.

Then, individual crises have come, stemming from events like China and the Brexit vote.

"If you look at the decline that we could possibly get from a surprise rate hike, I would immediately take off the table any systematic risk. That removes exhibit A for certain, we may never see that kind of risk again," Cramer said.

The European debacle of 2011 could have been systematic, but not systematic to the U.S., Cramer said. As for Brexit referendum, Cramer thinks the negative effects have not hit yet. Bigger implications could come, but in the interim, there has been no systematic collapse.

Based on these prior cases, Cramer estimated the Fed could prompt a decline of less than 2,000 points, much like the one that occurred after the December hike.

For an individual stock like Apple , which Cramer anticipates could go down another $5 from its current level, he recommended to stay on hold.

"I simply don't believe it is worth it to try to dart in and out of a stock like Apple, even if you think there would be a rate hike," Cramer said.

So while Cramer approved of raising cash into a hike, he says not to dump wholesale in panic. To sell everything would be wrong, and to take profits would be right.
Democratic Nominee for President of the United States former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton told her Twitter followers she is "feeling fine and getting better" on Monday as she fights off pneumonia.

Like anyone who's ever been home sick from work, I'm just anxious to get back out there. See you on the trail soon. -H

The Democratic presidential nominee's health was called into question after her early exit from Sunday's 9/11 memorial service in New York City. Video taken at the scene showed her looking unsteady and requiring support to enter a van. The campaign said in a statement at the time that Clinton felt "overheated" and went to her daughter Chelsea's Manhattan apartment to rest.

Later that day, Clinton's doctor said she was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday and suffered from dehydration at the memorial service.

Sunday's episode also sparked criticism of the campaign for not disclosing her medical condition earlier. A spokesman for the campaign told MSNBC on Monday that Clinton would release more medical records this week, adding that she suffers from "no other undisclosed condition."

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday morning, and questioned the timing of her diagnosis.
During his first two years in power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was busy spreading the message that India was open for business. Now that his efforts seem to be paying off, his attention has switched to the country's two oldest rivals: China and Pakistan. "Courting investors is increasingly taking a back seat to Modi's effort to balance China and isolate Pakistan, playing to his nationalist base," Eurasia analysts wrote in a note on Saturday.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C) on the second day of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Vientiane on September 7, 2016 YE AUNG THU | AFP | Getty Images

Since assuming office in May 2014, the former Gujarat chief minister has embarked on an international charm offensive to court foreign investors by detailing his plans to eliminate red tape and make the world's second-most populous nation realize its economic potential. While Modi's job is far from over, his reform drive has succeeded in improving sentiment. India attracted the most greenfield foreign direct investment in the world last year, according to intelligence firm Eurasia, while April-June gross domestic product expanded 7. 1 percentthe fastest pace of growth among major economies. These indicators give Modi space to focus on other parts of governance, Eurasia suggested. Modi's decision to skip both the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting in New York and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Venezuela later this month [making him the first Indian leader to miss a NAM summit] are proof of his new foreign policy priorities, Eurasia continued. "Modi's absence in New York signals that he feels less need to personally meet with the business community, a regular focus of past UNGA trips. Similarly, giving NAM a pass demonstrates both that India now enjoys closer than ever ties with the U.S. and regional powers."

Hedging against China, isolating Pakistan

Recent months have seen 65-year old Modi increasingly lash out against Beijing and Islamabad, marking a new chapter in India's strategy towards the two countries. When Modi came to power, he attempted to regenerate momentum in both bilateral relationships but "Modi's bet on a positive transformation of ties inevitably run into the structural problems that beset India's engagement with both the countries," Carnegie India director C. Raja Mohan said in note last month. "These problems come together in Kashmir and Balochistan." India and Pakistan have long fought over the disputed territory of Kashmir and recent developments are further fanning tensions. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $46 billion highway that would run from Kashgar in China to Gwadar in Pakistan, intends to cut across parts of Kashmir as well as Gilgit-Baltistan, another area claimed by both Islamabad and New Delhi. CPEC also connects with the sea in Balochistan, Mohan pointed out. "The prospect of a Chinese military base in Balochistan links India's problems with Beijing in the Himalayas with the challenge of PLA's [China's People's Liberation Army] rising maritime profile in the Indian Ocean. Throw in a fresh bout of turmoil in Srinagar into the mix, you have the explosive cocktail that is blowing up the traditional frameworks of India's engagement with Pakistan and China." Previously, Delhi signaled that it could live with CPEC but that's no longer the case. In August, Swaraj discussed the matter with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and at last week's G-20 summit, Modi warned Chinese President Xi Jinping that both countries had to be sensitive to each other's strategic interests. "In the past, Indian leaders were unwilling to express differences with China in public and hesitant to question in private those policies of Beijing that hurt Delhi. Modi, however, is not willing to pretend all is well with Beijing," Mohan explained.

watch now
Ye Aung Thu | AFP | Getty Images

President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday called for the withdrawal of U.S. special forces troops from a group of islands in the southern Philippines, saying their presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners. Duterte, who was in the spotlight last week over a televised tirade against the United States and President Barack Obama, said the Americans still in Mindanao were high-value targets for the Islamic State-linked Abu Sayyaf militants as counter-insurgency operations intensify. "They have to go," Duterte said in a speech during an oath-taking ceremony for new officials. "I do not want a rift with America. But they have to go." He added: "Americans, they will really kill them, they will try to kidnap them to get ransom."

watch now

The comments by Duterte, a former southern mayor known for his terse words and volatile temperament, add to uncertainty about what impact his rise to the presidency this year will have on one of Washington's most important alliances in Asia. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department, John Kirby, said it was not aware of any official communication by Manila calling for a withdrawal. He said Washington remained committed to the alliance. Another U.S. official said there were only a "handful" of special forces in the Mindanao acting in limited liaison roles. White House spokesman Josh Earnest emphasized shared concerns and interests with the Philippines, before taking a thinly veiled swipe at Duterte, appearing to compare him to Donald Trump, the outspoken Republican candidate in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. "I think it's an indication of how important elections are," Earnest told a regular news briefing."Elections have consequences. Elections do say a lot about what kind of person is going to represent your country on the international stage. "And it's why you are going to prize qualities like decorum and temperament and judgment in casting votes in elections, because you know that person is going to represent you on the international stage. That's certainly something that the Filipino people are well aware of."

watch now
The answer likely won't come immediately in a day with little economic news on the calendar. The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for August is due Tuesday at 6 a.m. ET, after posting 94.6 the prior month, well below the 42-year average of 98.

"You've got a market that's close to fairly valued.  You're just going to see a lot more 1 percent moves in the last four months of the year," said Peter Coleman, head trader at Convergex. He said investors are watching the U.S. presidential election polls, Fed commentary on the timing of the next rate hike and economic data that could affect that.

As volatility has picked up in the last two days, traders are parsing the latest Fedspeak and other factors that could determine whether stocks hold their gains.

The Treasury is also set to hold a 30-year bond auction, and the Treasury budget is scheduled for release at 2 p.m.



The data come ahead of one of the most highly anticipated releases of the week, retail sales on Thursday. No U.S. Federal Reserve speakers are set to speak as policymakers go into blackout period ahead of the Fed's meeting scheduled for next week.

For now, traders will weigh historically dovish Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren's hawkish tilt on Friday against Fed Governor Lael Brainard's caution Monday on tightening too quickly.

Both Fed speakers have historically had a dovish position, favoring lower rates for longer. As a result, Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities, said he would put slightly more weight on Rosengren's change in tone than Brainard's comments.

After Brainard's remarks, the S&P 500 rallied nearly 1.5 percent Monday in its best day since July 8 to close at 2,159, with telecommunications and consumer staples leading all 10 sectors higher. The other defensive and rate-sensitive sector, utilities, dragged all the sectors lower Friday as the S&P fell 2.45 percent in its worst day since June 24, after the surprise U.K. vote to leave the European Union.

"Obviously, investors now wonder if this sell-off is the start of something more sinister. We think not," S&P Global Market Intelligence U.S. Equity Strategist Sam Stovall said in a Monday note. "From a technical perspective, we believe the S&P 500 remains firmly in a bullish bias, and has a good chance of bouncing once we trade as low as 2100."

He pointed out that Friday's stock declines were mostly in sectors with the highest year-to-date price gains up to Thursday's close or paid the most in dividend yields.

The demand for those dividend-paying sectors such as utilities and telecoms has been high as Treasury yields have remained low with accommodative central bank policy. Amid the latest central bank commentary, yields have risen.

On Monday, the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 1.697 percent, its highest since June 24.



But the , most sensitive to market expectations on near-term Fed policy, hit its highest since just August 26 and was near 0.77 percent in late Monday trade.

It's still difficult to get a clear read on growth and implications for the Fed, Hogan noted, as much of the U.S. August data tends to be revised.

"The net-net of all that, I think, the market is in wait-and-see mode, kind of keeping an eye on China, seeing what energy does," he said.

Overnight, Chinese data for August on retail sales, industrial production, fixed asset investment and new loans are due for release.

"If Chinese stocks were to go down a lot on a number that was weaker than expected, that could be a concern," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank. However, he expects global markets to build overnight on the U.S. stock market gains.

That would support further recovery in U.S. stocks Tuesday from Friday's sell-off.

CNBC and Institutional Investor on Tuesday also host Delivering Alpha. The speaker lineup includes U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Kynikos Associates Founder and Managing Partner Jim Chanos and Blackstone Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder Stephen Schwarzman.



No major earnings are expected.


While the bank agreed to pay $185 million in penalties and $5 million to customers , it did not admit or deny wrongdoing in a civil settlement with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Los Angeles City Attorney's office.

Wells Fargo is accused of creating accounts for customers across multiple product lines without telling them.

The penalties imposed by Wells Fargo are a "loud and serious warning" to anyone who may think about gaming a bank's incentive program, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray told CNBC on Monday.

Customers wait in line for an ATM outside of a Wells Fargo bank branch in Los Angeles.

It was the largest penalty the CFPB ever levied against a bank, Cordray said.

"This was outrageous conduct. It was a violation of trust and an abuse of trust. It should not have happened, and I guarantee you that we will be seeing that it does not happen again at any bank," he said in an interview with CNBC's "Closing Bell."

He said that there is no indication that the conduct is happening on any kind of systematic basis at other banks, but urged the institutions to carefully monitor their incentive programs "or they can go off the rails."

"We put industry clearly on notice. We will be looking for these types of problems," said Cordray.

Over a five-year period, 5,300 Wells Fargo employees were fired. But while there may be frustration that in yet another banking scandal no executives have been charged, Cordray noted that this is a civil case. However, he said his agency is willing to share the results of its investigation with authorities if requested.

The bottom line is that several years after the financial crisis, "the banks have not completely cleaned up their act," he said.

"We are going to make sure that these banks raise their standard of conduct to what we expect and what the consumers deserve," he said.

 CNBC's Jeff Cox contributed to this story.


Fantasizing about running your own business and actually running your own business are two vastly different things. Becoming an entrepreneur sounds glamorous, but in practice it requires sacrifice, hard work and dealing with uncertainty. Are you ready? Do you really know what you're getting yourself into?

We talked to entrepreneurs about what to consider before you take the plunge. Here are the questions they recommend asking yourself before you quit your day job to start your own business.

1. Am I doing this for the right reasons?

"It's not cool to do a start-up. It's painful. CEO on your business card is a massive responsibility, not something fun to pass out at a cocktail party," says Sam Rosen, CEO and founder of MakeSpace, a New York City-based storage company that launched in 2013. "And if you're thinking this is a get-rich-quick scheme, know that the average start-up takes 10 to 12 years to see a liquidity event."

Sam Rosen, CEO and founder of MakeSpace CNBC

"Most businesses fail, and yours is unlikely to be the exception, so make sure that the work is itself rewarding and interesting," says Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList, a social network for founders, investors and job seekers. "Also longevity is important, and you're unlikely to sustain something through long and hard times unless you love the process."

2. What stage is my industry at?

"If the industry is really mature, with lots of players, it will be much harder to break in," says Elizabeth Salcedo, CEO and founder of Everpurse, a New York-based fashion technology company that launched in 2012. "Even if your idea is amazing, if you don't have significant funding or insider connections, it will be very difficult to gain traction. However, if your industry is young, with few large players, it will be much easier to make waves and build momentum."

3. Do I have something unique to offer that gives me a significant competitive edge in the marketplace?

"Having a clear competitive edge is of the utmost importance. Be sure to have an honest conversation with yourself and founding team on what that advantage is, and how it grows stronger into the future," says Brian Meece, co-founder of the crowdfunding platform RocketHub. "The market is efficient, and starting a company (especially one in tech or with a winner-take-all dynamic) can be like competing in the Olympics," says Ravikant. "You have to be among the best at what you do, on some objective metrics."

4. What's the worst that can happen if it doesn't work out?

"If you confront the worst possible scenario, you'll probably find out it's not the worst thing in the world, and that the need you're trying to fill in the world is worth the risk," says Tammy Tibbetts, founder and CEO of She's the First, a non-profit organization that provides scholarships to girls around the world. When Tibbetts left her magazine-industry job to fundraise for She's the First, she asked herself: "'What do you really have to lose? Do you really think no one will ever hire you again if this doesn't work out?' The answer was, 'No.' I had a reputation and network to fall back on. So I made the leap!"

Tammy Tibbets, the founder of Shes The First, with the scholar she supported with her fundraising in the 2014 NYC Marathon. Source: Kate Lord

5. Does my passion to solve the problem my start-up would be solving outweigh the uncertainty and instability inherent in launching a company?

"If you don't love what you are about to dedicate your life to and you might want to do something else, then don't do it. You need to be in 100% or else it won't work. Go all in or do something else," says Charles C. Nelson, co-founder of Nelson's Green Brier Distillery in Nashville, Tennessee. "Starting your own business is too difficult to do halfway. I'll take passion over experience any day."



You need to be in 100% or else it won't work. Charles C. Nelson co-founder of Nelson's Green Brier Distillery in Nashville, Tenn.

"You're going to run into a thousand issues," says Aaron Schwartz, founder and CEO of Modify Watches, a San Francisco-based custom watch maker. "Having true passion to solve a problem will get you through many hurdles. 'Change the world' might be a cliche, but you want to make sure you're working towards building a business that at least changes your life for the better."



6. Is this the right time?

"Customer discovery is key," says Delphine Braas, the co-founder of boat rental marketplace Sailo. "It was important for me to understand and speak to the key players in the boating industry. I needed to ask the right questions to come to my conclusion that the timing was, in fact, right. "Having enough data and evidence that our company is going to be successful was crucial in my decision-making process."

7. Do I have a product and customers?

"A business plan these days means nothing," says Rosen. "The costs have come down so much in terms of launching a business that it's almost unforgivable to be seeking to raise capital without having a product in customers' hands that they are using (and in most cases paying for)."

8. How can I bring my current colleagues and industry network along as my champions?

"Assuming you're not going off to launch a competing company, get your colleagues excited about what you're doing, so that they're your champions," says Tibbetts. "When you resign, help your employer find and train your replacement. Leave them in a good place."

9. Who can I turn to when things at work are rocky?

"Starting your own business can be lonely," says Salcedo. "Make sure you have a group of other entrepreneurs who understand what it's like and can give you advice when you're struggling with something new." "This might be a spouse or partner, but bringing work home might be bad for your relationship," says Schwartz. "In that case, do you have business advisers who care about you first, and the business second?"

Aaron Schwartz, founder and CEO of Modify Watches, with his business partner and creative director, Ashil Parag Source: Modify Watches

10. How long can I go without a paycheck and still pay my bills?

"If you can't provide for your basic needs, you will not be able to give your start-up your best self, and that's what it needs to thrive," says Tibbetts. "Make sure you can keep a roof over your head and food on your table. If you can't, continue working on your side hustle while having a more flexible or part-time job." Before deciding to launch Sailo, says Braas, "I considered my financials, including living expenses, rent and health insurance."

Delphine Braas, cofounder of Sailo Source: Sailo

To be safe, adds Schwartz, "whatever you think you need, double it to account for the fact that nothing in a start-up goes to plan!"

11. Do I have the right team?

"People and relationships are the absolute most important part of business," says Nelson. "One person can ruin the whole vibe of a company, especially a small company. Make sure that you are bringing in people that are passionate, believe in what you are doing, work well with you, and are trustworthy."



Brothers Andy Nelson and Charlie Nelson, co-founders of Nelson's Green Brier Distillery Source: Nelson's Green Brier Distillery

Braas also considered what skills she and her three co-founders each brought to the table. "In our case, we had tech, marketing, sales, project management and an overall passion for hustling, which convinced me we were right," she says.

12. What am I willing to sacrifice?

"Know your non-negotiables," says Tibbetts. "For me, sleep, fitness, and time with my best friends and family are the most important things I will never give up, no matter how busy I get."

"I do have to make sacrifices though," she adds. "I don't take Ubers and cabs, I rarely go out for dinners and I bring my lunch to work as often as I can. In the beginning, I didn't take real vacations. (I only just started doing that last year!) To me, those are very small sacrifices compared to the audience I serve  our Scholars. You have to figure out what those are for you."



13. What "pain point" am I really solving in the market?

"This question helps keep you and your team focused," says Meece. "Focus is crucial, especially in the early stages of a start-up. This question also helps you manage 'pivots,' or changes in strategy, by maintaining focus on your core mission."

14. Can I handle an increase in stress, both physically and emotionally?

"Running a start-up or small business is hard. Really, really hard," says Schwartz. "You may have 'given your all' to your last company, but when you're the boss there is a different level of pressure. All of a sudden you become accountable. "And until you build your team and create great systems and processes, progress will only be made when you are working."

Liz Salcedo, founder and CEO of Everpurse Source: Everpurse

"Most likely you'll have to take on many roles and wear many different hats," says Salcedo. "As they say, everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And you'll have to be the one to fix it, even if it's after 5 p.m."

15. Would I look my grandmother in the eye and say, "I think this might be a good investment for you?"

"Making the transition from part-time to full-time is a major step. While I don't recommend taking any money from family, set an extremely high bar before you make the leap," says Schwartz. "Have you built out your full business plan? Tested your idea with customers and tough-love advisers? Found other people (your future cofounders or employees) who are also excited about this problem and will trust you to lead them? "If you can't answer all of those  and then some  you probably wouldn't feel comfortable asking a loved one to invest. Think twice and maybe keep making progress before you take the leap."

16. Will I be happy working on this one idea for years?

"Success never comes easily or overnight, and you'll need to make sure you're passionate enough about your business to stick it out when things get tough," says Salcedo. "Launching a start-up also requires constantly educating people about the great new product or service you're offering, so you need to make sure you're excited enough to talk about your start-up all the time!" "It takes five years minimum to build a basic business and 10 years to get to an 'exit,'" says Ravikant. Be sure you're committed for the long term.

Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList Source: Naval Ravikant

17. How big is the market?

"Most initial approaches to the market are incorrect, and you'll need to pivot. Larger markets give you more room to pivot," says Ravikant. "And it's just as hard to build a small business as it is to build a large one, (there are only so many hours in the week) so you might as well build a large one."

18. Do I have buy-in from people who have successfully built real businesses before?
U.S. marketers will be putting more spending more money on digital advertising than television by the end of 2016, according to a new report by eMarketer.

The market research firm predicts that by the end of this year, U.S. digital ad spending will hit $72.09 billion, about 37 percent of total ad spend. It projected that TV ad spend will come in at $71.29 billion, just 36.4 percent of the budget.

Initially, eMarketer said digital would overtake current leader TV in March 2017. It advanced their prediction to the end of this year because of the growth of mobile and online video advertising.

When it comes to mobile, eMarketer said Google is the current leader, with $14.7 billion in sales by the end of the year or 32 percent of total mobile ad sales. Facebook trails in second place at 22.1 percent or $10.15 billion. The social media network's strong Q2 was thanks mostly to its growth in mobile advertising, but if projections are true, it seems there would still be more room for the company to expand.

However, Facebook is the current leader in the largest category: display or desktop advertising. EMarketer reports that Facebook will account for $11.93 billion of display ad sales this year, or 34.5 percent of the total display ad spend. For comparison, next up Google only makes $4.79 in display ad sales, or 13.8 percent of the market. EMarketer said display advertising will remain the top digital category through 2020.
The head of the state newspaper association says charges filed against a reporter who documented a pipeline protest "at least raises a red flag," though law enforcement says she was targeted because she could be identified from video footage -- not because she is a journalist.

"Its apparent that the protest was on private property, but its regrettable that authorities chose to charge a reporter who was just doing her job," Steve Andrist, executive director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association, said via email about the misdemeanor trespass charge filed against Amy Goodman, a New York-based reporter who documented the use of guard dogs at a Dakota Access Pipeline protest.

"There were a lot of people at the protest site, and only two of them were charged. One was a reporter, and that certainly creates the impression that the authorities were attempting to silence a journalist and prevent her from telling an important story," Andrist wrote after reviewing the complaint against her.

Goodman was charged Thursday in Morton County with one count of trespassing, based on video footage of her at a protest site on private property during Labor Day weekend, according to court documents. A warrant was issued for her arrest.

Goodman reported on a clash between protesters and private security at an active construction site south of Mandan that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said contained historic artifacts. Three guards were reportedly injured, and several protesters said they were pepper-sprayed and bitten by dogs handled by the security personnel. The North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board has since opened an investigation into the use of dogs at the site.

Footage of the protest was featured on "Democracy Now," a TV news show hosted by Goodman. It went viral on social media and may have been used as evidence against her.

"Amy Goodman can be seen on video identifying herself and interviewing protesters about their involvement in the protest," according to a police affidavit filed in the case.

Jack McDonald, attorney for the newspaper association and the Bismarck Tribune, who has worked in media law for 40 years, said he could not recall a reporter facing trespassing charges while covering a story in the state.

"They have been threatened many times with arrest for trespass or interfering with police officers/fire personnel/emergency responders, but no actual arrest," McDonald said via email.

Cody Hall, spokesman for the Red Warrior Camp, also was charged with trespassing in the same incident. He spent the weekend in jail after he was picked up with expired tabs. He pleaded not guilty on Monday afternoon.

Morton County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Donnell Preskey said the two were charged "because those two our investigators were able to identify."

No one was arrested on the day of the incident, since the protesters dispersed when law enforcement arrived, according to Preskey.

She would not say whether law enforcement had identified other individuals who have not been charged. The case remains under investigation.

Goodman declined to be interviewed for this article. According to a statement on her show's website, she is working with lawyers from North Dakota and the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil rights advocacy organization.

"This is clearly a violation of the First Amendment  an attempt to repress this important political movement by silencing media coverage," Baher Azmy, CCR's legal director, said in that statement.

Goodman was arrested at least once before on the job: at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., according to news reports. Goodman sued law enforcement and settled for $100,000.

Lucy Dalglish, dean of the journalism school at the University of Maryland and former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said Goodman's case will revolve around whether she was singled out for charges.

"When it comes to laws of general applicability, like robbing a bank or trespass, journalists do not have a greater right to do it than anyone else," said Dalglish, who once worked for the Grand Forks Herald. "However, if they treated her differently or in a more negative way because she was reporting, then there is a First Amendment issue."

Dalglish said it is fairly common for reporters, and especially photographers, to face trespass charges. However, it is less common for them to face arrest after the fact.

Of Goodman's work potentially being used against her, Dalglish commented: "That's kind of slimy."
Goldman Sachs economists sliced the odds again for a September rate hike, now to 25 percent, less than half of what they expected when Fed officials met at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in late August.

The economists basically blame a foggy message.



"The lack of a signal is meaningful because if action were likely, the committee would normally make an effort to nudge the market toward anticipating a hike," they wrote in a note.



They said there are eight Fed officials who would like to raise rates this month, four of them voters. Another four would prefer to wait, two of those voters. But five central bank officials have been harder to read and where they stand is unclear.



The economists had put 55 percent odds on a September hike after comments from Fed Chair Janet Yellen and Vice Chair Stanley Fischer at Jackson Hole, when both indicated the Fed could raise rates soon.

Within a few days, the economists slashed that forecast to 40 percent from 55 percent, based in part of the lack of clarity from San Francisco Fed President John Williams on the timing of a hike.



They now place odds of a December rate increase at 40 percent, up from 30 percent, with the odds of a hike this year at 65 percent.

Goldman had viewed the disappointing August nonfarm payrolls on Sept. 2 as a close call, but just strong enough for the Fed to raise rates  until the August ISM nonmanufacturing data fell sharply to 51.4, a level last seen in 2010.



The firm's call for a September hike was contrarian with most economists believing the weakish jobs report for August ruled out a rate rise this month.
Chinese airlines are likely to purchase 6,810 planes worth $1.025 trillion in the next 20 years as they expand fleets to cater to robust growth in domestic and overseas tourism, Boeing forecast on Tuesday.

The latest estimate of 6,810 planes is 7.6 percent higher than the 6,330 aircraft predicted last year.

"The continuing expansion of China's middle class, coupled with new visa policies and a wide range of widebody airplanes... gives us every reason to expect a very bright future for China's long-haul market," Randy Tinseth, Boeing Commercial Airplanes' vice president of marketing, said in a statement.

He also said that he expects passenger traffic to grow 6.4 percent in China annually over the next 20 years.

Boeing has stayed bullish on China even as other U.S. companies have expressed concern over the country's slower economic growth. A senior Boeing executive said in August that the plane maker was not seeing any softness in demand in China.
Markets are down again this morning. Most are content to blame it on crude, down about 2 percent earlier on an IEA report that says the world is very adequately supplied with oil, and that demand (particularly from India and China) will not be as strong as anticipated next year.

But I think there's a bigger problem: the central bankers of the world appear to be shifting their positions. Despite the choppy data, a majority of the FOMC appears to be leaning toward a rate hike in September, despite the fact that the fed funds futures are assigning only a 15 percent chance of this happening. It's bigger than that: you not only have the Fed's Dennis Lockhart and Eric Rosengren trying to argue there is a case for raising rates, you have the ECB standing pat on more QE, and don't be shocked if the Bank of Japan's Haruhiko Kuroda turns cautious on expanding QE when he speaks next Tuesday.

So we now have the next eight daysleading up to the Fed meetingwith much higher levels of volatility than you might expect. You can see this in the VIX curve, which has flattened significantly in the last few days. The cash VIX is roughly 17.0, whereas the October futures contract is 17.6, November 18.6. The cash VIX was only 12 on Thursday.

Marko Kolanovic, who runs Derivative and Equity Strategies at JP Morgan, recently estimated that monetary policy since 2009 has accounted for a gain of 21 percent in Low Volatility Equities (consumer staples, utilities, telecom), a 10 percent gain in government bond indexes, and a 7 percent increase in gold.

A 21 percent gain for a Low Volatility strategy is substantial but would certainly not account for all the gains. The Powershares Low Volatility ETF , a basket of low volatility stocks, is up 75 percent since its creation in mid-2011.

Still, it's a substantial part of the gain. If central banks start "normalizing" policy, Kolanovic believes those gains would gradually go away. For example, if the Fed took three years to "normalize" rates at an even tempo, he assumes the average yearly historical gain in equities (about 7 percent) could be erased each of those three years.
Hong Kong cosmetic icon Sa Sa has gone digital to counter mainland Chinese tourists' dwindling interest in shopping, Guy Look, the retailer's chief financial officer, told CNBC's "Squawk Box."



Look said Sa Sa tried to establish relationships with potential customers through social media and e-wallet platforms before they arrived in Hong Kong.

"That reflects very much a changing consumer behavior; they're dictating what we have to do to attract their attention and share of their wallet," he said on Tuesday.

The number of Chinese visitors to Hong Kong grew in July, the first rise in more than a year. Their once legendary spending on consumer goods, however, apprears to have tapered off.

Hong Kong retail sales fell 7.7 percent on-year in July, with jewelry and watch sales down more than 26 percent and department store sales falling nearly 7 percent.

"While the stabilization in mainland Chinese arrivals has been quite clear, the spending is not completely reflected in terms of mainland Chinese spending, because it seems that they're spending less on a per capita basis," Look noted.

"I think basically they are spending more on experiencing during traveling, they're probably spending a bit more on hotel accommodation, spending more on peak trams, enjoying themselves and not just buying things," he added.
As presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump march toward the November election ever closer in opinion polls, a new report finds political uncertainty on Main Street is growing.

New data from the National Federation of Independent Business finds a record 38 percent of small businesses are citing political uncertainty as a reason not to expand  an all-time high for the group's monthly Small Business Optimism Index. This time last year, political uncertainty was at just 20 percent.

Sentiment on Main Street took a slight dip of 0.2 points for the month of August to 94.4, the NFIB found, led by worries over business conditions. The outlook for business in the next six months took the biggest hit, dropping 7 points.

The economy continued to be the most frequently cited reason for not expanding, followed by political uncertainty. For many small businesses, it's about a lack of detail on the campaign trail from Trump and Clinton on their plans to help smaller companies.

"There's a lack of detail in these platforms  even from Secretary Clinton who has put out a fuller small business platform in recent weeks," said Molly Day, vice president of public affairs for the nonpartisan National Small Business Association. "For small businesses, it's all a numbers game, and details matter."

Clinton, for example, recently said she would create a standard deduction for small businesses, but didn't say how a small business would be defined or how large the deduction should be.

Trump has been even more vague, talking of cutting regulations for businesses of all sizes and simplifying the tax code, giving little detail about what a broader small business platform might look like.
European stocks finished lower on Tuesday as sentiment was hit by a sharp fall in the oil price, while investors speculated over when the U.S. Federal Reserve would raise interest rates. After a choppy trading session, the pan-European STOXX 600 finished down 1.03 percent provisionally, having extended losses after U.S. stock indexes fell in early trade.

The U.K.'s FTSE 100 fell 0.53 percent, while the German DAX slipped 0.43 percent. France's CAC fell further, ending 1.19 percent down.

European markets



In recent sessions, traders have been closely following comments by U.S. Federal Reserve officials for clues on the timing of a rate hike in the U.S. Markets will now be on the look out for U.S. retail sales data due out on Thursday which will be the most important data the Fed will see before it meets next week. Goldman Sachs trimmed the odds of the Fed raising interest rates when it meets, noting the absence of a clear indication that the central bank's rate-setting group was set to tighten policy.

Ocado shares tank 14%
Shares of Freeport-McMoRan fell more than 8 percent on Tuesday after the company announced it was selling more assets, a deal that some analysts said was "cheap."

On Monday, Freeport said it will sell some of its oil and gas assets in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico to Anadarko Petroleum for $2 billion in cash consideration. CEO Richard Adkerson said that this deal reflects the company's "commitment to debt reduction" and its shift to focus on its copper business.

In a research report, Deutsche Bank said the transaction is of "low value."
David Ganek, whose hedge fund Level Global shut down in the wake of an insider trading investigation, said his lawsuit against prosecutors is about "transparency" and "accountability."

Level's offices were raided in 2010, and Ganek's co-founder Anthony Chiasson was eventually prosecuted for insider trading before the charges were reversed in 2014. Though Ganek was never charged with any wrongdoing, he says bad publicity from the raid led to the firm's 2011 closure.

He has since sued FBI agents and federal prosecutors, including the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan Preet Bharara, and the case was allowed to move forward earlier this year. Ganek claims the affidavit that led to the raid contained a "serious misrepresentation" about possible insider trading.

"There needs to be transparency here. My objectives for doing this first are about accountability," Ganek said Tuesday at the Delivering Alpha conference sponsored by CNBC and Institutional Investor.

Ganek said he came to work on the day of the 2010 raid to "commotion" and "confusion." He said Level had been "quite transparent" about its business, and it caused him to question prosecutors' objectives.

"It at least leaves me with only the issue of it being political  a pandering to what was going on in the world at that point in time," Ganek said, referencing anti-Wall Street sentiment at the time.



Ganek said he was told suing the government may prove futile but ultimately decided he had a "substantive case."
After struggling to make ends meet since the Great Recession, American households are finally getting a raise.

For the first time since 2007, the median U.S. household saw a healthy bump in income last year  up 5.2 percent to $56,500 from $53,700 in 2014, according to a Census report released Tuesday. Much of that gain came from the drop in the unemployment rate that created more paychecks for American workers.

Those gains helped cut the number of people living in poverty to 53.1 million, extending a decline that has continued since 2009 despite a slow economic recovery. The latest drop is the largest annual percentage point decline since 1999, Census officials said.

Most researchers caution, though, that the official rate doesn't paint a true picture of poverty trends because it doesn't account for non-cash benefits, including food stamps and refundable tax credits.

But the Census data on incomes confirm what other fresher monthly numbers are showing. Millions of workers are getting raises, some bigger than others.

If you're not one of them, there may be an explanation for why you're getting left behind.

In the years just after the financial collapseof 2008 and the mass layoffs of the Great Recession, most people felt lucky to have an income  even if it wasn't growing. Employers quickly recognized that their workers were more concerned about job security than holding on to any hopes for fatter paychecks. So wage growth shrank.


Dakota Access Pipeline workers removed 27 pieces of equipment Tuesday from a site 5 miles southeast of St. Anthony morning without incident.

North Dakota Highway Patrol troopers monitored the site as workers finished the task and at least five private security officials watched.

"We removed damaged equipment in order to get it repaired," said Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for DAPL, who also indicated that nearly 60 percent of the 1,172-mile project is complete.

Removal of the equipment started early in the morning, according to Donnel Preskey, spokeswoman for the Morton County Sheriff's Department. Before noon, all equipment had been moved from the site just east of Highway 6 and County Road 135. En route to the construction site, pairs of law enforcement vehicles monitored Highway 6 every few miles.

"It just makes sense we have law enforcement present for removal of the equipment," said North Dakota Highway Patrol Lt. Tom Iverson.

"The company has a lot of damaged equipment that they need to do something with," he added. "It cannot just be sitting out in the field. It's just going to go to waste if it's equipment that is not going to run properly."

He said he was uncertain what the future use of the equipment would be.

"We don't anticipate any more construction equipment moving around in this area at this time," he said.

The Morton County Sheriff's Department oversaw law enforcement during the process.

I have requested that Dakota Access Pipeline inform the Morton County Sheriffs Department of their plans, said Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier. This request is to ensure that public safety is paramount for all of us  to include DAPL workers, protesters and law enforcement officers. This type of group effort will help ensure DAPL can remove their property in a safe manner.
watch now

Investors and consumers are making more decisions based on ethical considerations and companies will have to change their behavior to catch up with them, an expert warns. In a recent, high-profile example, Norway's $900 billion sovereign wealth fund last week decided to exclude U.S. utilities company Duke Energy from its fund over concerns about environmental damage. Similarly, the Fossil Free movement has had some success in pressuring public and private institutions around the world to divest from fossil fuel companies. In July, the campaign helped to convince the city of Stuttgart in Germany to introduce new guidelines on ethical investing, which will see it divest public money from 75 European companies engaged in coal, oil, gas and fracking.



Customers purchase Anya Hindmarch's 'I'm Not A Plastic Bag' from the Sainsbury's store in Camden on April 25, 2007 in London. Gareth Cattermole | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Investment strategies based on these sorts of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors is one of the biggest trends to hit the financial industry in decades, says Andreas Feiner, founding partner of asset management firm Arabesque, which invests according to strict ESG criteria. "What we see is actually that companies that we exclude from our investment process on average underperform the benchmark," he told CNBC's Squawk Box Europe. According to Feiner, Arabesque is able to outperform its benchmark by excluding these companies, which tend to have higher risk. "We look into what are the best companies in terms of ESG in an industry and we only exclude the worst within an industry," he added. Rather than being a niche investment strategy, ESG investing is attracting more and more attention, Feiner added. "Just yesterday, we had a meeting with a consultant who said the demand for ESG searches on their database has increased six-fold over the last two years," he said.
Entrepreneurship is in vogue, but entrepreneurs aren't always the hoodie-clad Silicon Valley types you might imagine.

Indeed, "entrepreneur" doesn't  and shouldn't  only describe company founders, said Bonin Bough, host of CNBC's "Cleveland Hustles" and the former chief media and e-commerce officer at Mondelez International.

"There are so many amazing thinkers who work inside of existing Fortune 100s, existing Fortune 500s," he said. "Just because they're not out there creating their own business doesn't mean that they're not entrepreneurial."
The market is too fixated on central banks right now and possibly underestimating the political risks, according to Dawn Fitzpatrick, global head of equities, multi-asset and the O'Connor hedge fund business at UBS Asset Management.

"It feels like the markets are very central bank fixated and not paying enough attention to the political angle, with the U.S. elections, with the referendum in Italy," Fitzpatrick said on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" shortly after appearing on a panel at the Delivering Alpha conference sponsored by CNBC and Institutional Investor.

She said she believes these political risks will "drive more of the market volatility going forward."

U.S. equities have whipsawed in recent sessions amid comments from Federal Reserve officials.

Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, said it would be wise to keep rates low despite continuous economic growth. Dennis Lockhart, Atlanta Fed president, said in a separate speech that a "serious discussion" on raising rates is warranted at the central bank's upcoming meeting. Lockhart announced Tuesday that he is stepping down, effective Feb. 28.

U.S. equities jumped Monday amid Brainard's and Lockhart's remarks, with the three major indexes closing more than 1 percent higher. On Monday, the CBOE Volatility Index crossed 20 in early trade, hitting its highest level since June 28. On Friday, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren delivered surprisingly hawkish remarks, sending U.S. stocks lower.

 CNBC's Fred Imbert and Gina Francolla contributed to this report.
Macquarie on Tuesday lowered its rating on Netflix to underperform from neutral, saying the company's subscriber numbers and earnings are likely to disappoint investors. "Macquarie analysts in many regions are skeptical of Netflix's initial launch efforts [in foreign countries], citing price and lack of compelling content as risks," analyst Tim Nollen wrote in a note to clients. "Investor focus will center on sub adds for now, and we believe here Netflix could disappoint in the near term, while it is rapidly spending on content. We would be sellers of NFLX shares for this reason." The sell rating (underperform) is a rarity for a cult stock like Netflix. Just six other analysts have this negative view, while 35 say buy or hold, according to FactSet. Nollen's Netflix valuation estimate is $87, representing 12 percent downside from Monday's close. Macquarie estimates the company's content obligations of $13 billion this year will rise 19 percent annually for the next three years. As a result of higher content costs, Nollen is reducing his Netflix 2017 earnings per share estimate to 74 cents from 85 cents versus the 89 cent Wall Street consensus. Moreover, he is cutting his 2019 Netflix international subscriber estimate to 73 million from 91 million due to slower-than-expected traction. "We expect Netflix to be a long-term success given its scale and aggressive investments  but in the near term we see many local operators having built out streaming services that will limit Netflix's market penetration, and we expect Netflix could struggle to balance sub growth with the high content costs," Nollen wrote.

Netflix app on a mobile phone Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
watch now

Samsung Electronics shares recovered some ground on Tuesday after more than $14 billion was wiped off the value of the company's stock the day before over the recall of its Note 7 phablet.

Shares of the South Korean electronics giant closed 4.23 percent higher at 1,527,000 won. Over the weekend, the company urged Galaxy Note 7 users to switch off and return their devices following reports of batteries in the handsets were catching fire. This sent shares down nearly 7 percent on Monday. Despite the bounce back, shares are still down over 6 percent since Friday. But investors appear to have shrugged off some of the bad news for three reasons.





No brand impact from Note 7 recall

BNP Paribas reiterated its buy rating for Samsung shares on Tuesday, adding that the stock had a 38.6 percent upside from Monday's close with a target price of 2,030,000 won. Analyst Peter Yu said in a note that while the recall's cost is likely to be higher than expected, customers don't appear to be leaving Samsung. "Telcos at least have purchased more Galaxy S7/S7 Edges to replace demand for Note 7s rather than moving to other smartphone vendors. Hence, Samsung has maintained its 3Q16 smartphone shipment guidance despite the expected impact on Note 7 sales," Yu wrote in a note. "So, if Samsung's customers are not leaving Samsung, its business outlook is not as bleak as the share price correction implies, and we think it will bounce back." A note by Morgan Stanley also echoes the sentiment suggesting that Galaxy S7 sell-through remains strong. The analysts at the investment bank also noted that no additional reports of Note 7 fires have been reported since Friday, the battery issues are "rare and not complex", and the Note 7 is selling in China and Hong Kong using a different battery supplier.





$1 billion sale of printer business

Samsung announced Monday it was selling its printer business to HP for $1.05 billion. The move has been seen by analysts as positive for helping the company streamline its business and focus on profitable areas such as smartphones and semiconductors.



Succession plans
China has lashed out at the U.S. after Washington accused Beijing of not doing enough to arrest North Korean's nuclear ambitions, underscoring tensions between the two world powers in the geopolitically sensitive Korean Peninsula.

At the Chinese foreign affairs ministry's regular press conference on Monday, spokesperson Hua Chunying said U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter was being "unnecessarily modest" for thrusting the responsibility of handling Pyongyang solely on China.

"The cause and crux of the Korean nuclear issue rest with the U.S. rather than China," added Hua in an official transcript from the foreign affairs ministry.

"The core of the issue is the conflict between (North Korea) and the U.S. It is the U.S. who should reflect upon how the situation has become what it is today, and search for an effective solution. It is better for the doer to undo what he has done. The U.S. should shoulder its due responsibilities," she said.

Hua was responding to Carter who singled out the East Asian giant at a news conference in Norway as bearing the responsibility for North Korea's recalcitrant nuclear testing.

"It's China's responsibility," he said, according to Reuters. "China has and shares an important responsibility for this development and has an important responsibility to reverse it."

"And so it's important that it (China) uses its location, its history and its influence to further the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," he added.

Meanwhile, North Korea through its state-run news agency KCNA also said U.S. was the "very one" compelling the isolated country to develop nuclear warheads. The U.S.' constant "nuclear threat and blackmail" in the past decades was "an engine which pushed the (North Korea) to reach this point," it said.

On Tuesday, two U.S. B-1 bombers flew over South Korea in a show of solidarity with South Korea while Sung Kim, the U.S. envoy on North Korea, said the world's largest economy remained open to a meaningful dialogue with Pyongyang, Reuters reported.
watch now

South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has fought back against allegations that he had "spied" on politicians in his previous role as taxation commissioner, telling CNBC that his top priority was focusing on rebuilding investor trust in South Africa. "We will be endeavoring to clear the air as soon as possible so we give South Africans and the world confidence that South Africa's institutions, particularly the economic institutions, are still solid and under good leadership and that they will continue to pursue the policies that have given us a good reputation," Gordhan told CNBC Africa Tuesday. Gordhan is currently under close scrutiny amid a police investigation into whether he oversaw a so-called "rogue spy unit" when commissioner of the South African Revenue Service (SARS) from 1999 to 2009, to spy on politicians, including President Jacob Zuma. The finance minister has denied any wrongdoing or any knowledge of unconstitutional acts by the unit. The investigation has also been criticized as tantamount to a political witch hunt after Gordhan's criticism of government expenditure, particularly by top political offices, and corruption.





Ruvan Boshoff/The Times/Gallo Images/Getty Images

Referring to the case on, Gordhan said there was no "legal clarity" and "no substance" to the allegations. He said rumors that he was to be arrested were "mischievous to say the least" and that he was focused on delivering economic reforms.

"In about six weeks' time, we've got to deliver the medium-term budget policy statement on behalf of government and that's where our focus is." Asked why the allegations of wrongdoing dating back to 2009 had surfaced now, Gordhan said it was "a question that all of us can start speculating on." His deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, defended his boss on Tuesday by saying that the investigation was destabilizing the government and creating uncertainty across Africa's most industrialized economy, Reuters reported. "We feel confident there is no basis for the allegation. We are not worried about that," Jonas told 702 Talk Radio, the news agency reported. His comments come at a tricky time for both South Africa's economy and political sphere. Last month, the ruling ANC party suffered its worst local electoral results since the end of Apartheid, the system of racial segregation that ended in the country in the early 1990s. The results heightened concerns that the ANC government will avoid painful reforms and try to win back votes by overspending ahead of a national election in 2019.

watch now
Stocks could be set for a big slide to finish off the year, according to Sven Henrich, better known as the "Northman Trader."

According to Henrich's work, the is trading in a "rising wedge pattern"  in which the market's narrowing range points toward a dramatic move.

"Wedges are very powerful patterns, and when they break, they have a fairly sizable implication," Henrich said Monday on CNBC's "Trading Nation." "The rising wedge demands a resolution in the coming months."

For Henrich, this pattern is likely to resolve to the downside. He points to a series of divergences, including the spread between insider buying and the S&P 500.

In another sign of instability, Henrich points to the FTSE All-World Index's inability to hit a fresh record high.

How could this play out? Given the rising wedge pattern and based on the market's high valuation from historical norms, the chart-minded trader predicts that "we can see a 20 to 25 percent correction into 2017."

"That's actually not a historically outrageous correction," added Henrich, who runs a subscription service and is not a professional money manager. "We just haven't seen it in such a long time that no one's used to it any longer."

So far this year, the S&P 500 is up about 5 percent, but is slipping in Tuesday morning trading.
watch now

Apple 's iPhone 7, scheduled to hit stores in many countries on Friday, has already gotten high marks from reviewers on its state-of-the art camera, faster processing speeds, and noticeable improvements to water resistance, battery life and memory. Indeed, preorders for the new model are four times higher than last year, carrier Sprint said, while T-Mobile said preorders were the highest in history. Still, Apple's new wireless AirPods and headphone-jack-free design is a trade-off at best and "irritating," annoying and bothersome at worst, reviews said. Plus, the jury's still out on a new jet black finish that's praised as beautiful but panned as easy to blemish. Here are some of the highlights: The New York Times Times technology writer Brian X. Chen has hopped on the iPhone 7 train, despite the "irritating" lack of a 3.5- millimeter headphone jack. While it's not perfect, Chen notes that those who have had their old phone for years are in store for a major upgrade with the iPhone 7, especially when it comes to the speed, camera and waterproof exterior. While the new iPhone ships with a Lightning dongle and a pair of Lightning wired earbuds, Chen concludes that wireless earphones  like Apple's new AirPods  are the easiest workaround for the iPhone 7. Still, the AirPods "look odd" and had occasional glitches, like rewinding short sections of audio and crackling interference, Chen wrote. If you're still not convinced, Chen reveals new information about next year's model. Citing two sources at Apple, he said it will have "a full-screen face with the virtual button built directly into the screen." (Apple declined to comment.)

Apple iPhone 7 Mark Neuling | CNBC

The Wall Street Journal

The Journal takes a bold stance, urging consumers to "get over" the missing headphone jack in favor of better low-light photos, longer battery life and water resistance. The practical stuff  like not constantly needing to charge  is probably more precious than a "holographic, teleporting" futuristic feature, the Journal's Geoffrey Fowler writes. But it may still be behind Samsung's 6-month-old models. "I found Apple has fixed some of what's long-ailed the iPhone, and that's reason enough to get over the headphone thing and upgrade. Let me be clear, the iPhone 7 not the most advanced smartphone money can buy. I'd say it's the best smartphone of 2015  that's when Apple should have put it on sale."

Recode Walt Mossberg is impressed  and annoyed and impatient, he writes in Recode's iPhone 7 review. Most impressive to Mossberg is the doubled memory at every price point, and a battery that easily survived 13- to 15-hour days, at least for the iPhone 7 Plus. Mossberg also praises the camera's zoom, which he suspects is a huge deal for the average user. "In fact, this beautiful zooming dual camera is the first feature I've seen that might lure me to a large-screen phone," Mossberg writes. The waterproofing was also a plus for Mossberg, who successfully left an iPhone 7 submerged in a large mixing bowl of water for about 20 minutes  "no rice needed." Still, Mossberg asks, where's the headphone jack? "In this case, I see zero evidence that the 3.5-[millimeter] audio jack is being used less or has hit a wall. It's happily transmitting music, podcasts and phone calls to many millions of people from many millions of devices as you read this sentence. Apple says it needed replacing to make more room for bigger batteries and other components. I also don't see that Apple has come up with a better replacement.The company is clearly trying to move the whole industry towards wireless audio, which has never been great due to patchy Bluetooth connectivity, poor fidelity  especially for music  and limited battery life."

The Verge The iPhone 7 is a statement from Apple about the future of mobile, The Verge's Nilay Patel writes. And some features of that future are incredibly frustrating, such as the move toward wireless headphones that means an "ecosystem lock-in" to Apple. "Competitors like LG and HTC ship much higher quality headphones with their flagship phones, and Apple owns Beats, so it's just really hard to understand why it's still shipping such decidedly mediocre headphones with the iPhone," Patel writes.

The new home button  which is solid, rather than mechanical, and works with "Taptic Engine jolts" when you apply pressure, is controversial among The Verge staff. It's much better than other phones' haptic feedback, Patel writes, but if you're partial to the click of a real button, it will get some getting used to.

"The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are legitimately among the most interesting, opinionated, powerful phones Apple has ever shipped, and the most confident expressions of the company's vision in a long time. iOS 10 is excellent, the cameras are better, and the performance is phenomenal. And the batteries last longer. These are terrific phones. But they are also incomplete.The most interesting feature of the iPhone 7 Plus' new dual camera isn't shipping at launch. Apple's making a big bet on iMessage and Siri apps in iOS 10 but it hasn't paid off yet." WIRED WIRED's David Pierce homes in on the new iPhone's "ludicrously, outrageously fast" processing power, noting that with a quad-core processor, anything less than hard-core gaming or high-res video is going to allow for extraordinary battery life. While Pierce has his gripes about the lack of a headphone jack and home button, he writes that they are a welcome trade for the water-resistance consumers have come to expect from competitors like Samsung. The iPhone 7 may look like the iPhone has for years, but it works better. Differently, too. It's more seamless, more open to third parties, and more connected to the rest of the Apple ecosystem. More than anything, this phone is Apple's acknowledgement that how an iPhone looks is increasingly beside the point. What matters is what an iPhone can do.

watch now
Investors hunting for yield could soon find some breathing room in bonds, as one technician says that Treasury rates could be set to rise.

Bond yields have been on a general downtrend for decades, leaving traders strapped in their search for high-yielding investments. But Rich Ross, technician of Evercore ISI, sees change on the way.

On his short-term chart of the 10-year Treasury note yield, Ross points out there has recently been a breakout from a consolidation pattern formed during the summer. Ross' chart also shows the recent breakout hovering close to the 150-day moving average, which shows the potential for even more upside in bond yields.

"I think there's a case for some short-term upside here, and when we look at the weekly chart, at least, we see the potential for a double bottom at an all-time low," Ross said Monday on CNBC's "Trading Nation."
Most people don't walk nearly 3,000 miles across the United States to prove a point. But most people aren't as dogged as Melvin McCoy. Struggling in the late '80s to convince others of the merits of the load-assisting backpack he had developed, McCoy decided to walk with it from Newport Beach, California, to Cape Henlopen, Delaware, in 1992 to prove it. Today, McCoy is still trying to market his invention  the Multipurpose Uniaxial Litter Enginery, known as the M.U.L.E. McCoy appeared on the latest episode of CNBC's "Adventure Capitalists," a reality show in which entrepreneurs pitch their adventure products in the great outdoors. McCoy, who was seeking an investment of $175,000 for 5 percent equity in his company, demonstrated his backpack to investors Craig Cooper, Dhani Jones, Jeremy Bloom and Susi Mai in Northern California's Hendy Woods State Park. Ultimately, however, they couldn't get past the price and the poor user experience, and he walked away empty-handed.

Melvin McCoy, founder and developer of the M.U.L.E., pitches his wheelable backpack to CNBCs Adventure Capitalists. McCoy developed the product in the '80s after meeting a hiker who struggled to carry her belongings as she grew older. Source: CNBC

Like its namesake, the M.U.L.E was designed to minimize the human effort needed to cart and carry heavy loads. He initially came up with the concept when he was invited on a hike in Oregon. "One of the ladies had hiked all her life, and she simply couldn't hike anymore. I thought, 'Well don't they have something to help you carry loads in the field?'" McCoy recalled. McCoy believed the right device could help not only older people, but also forest firefighters, hikers, hunters, recreational backpackers and veterans returning from abroad. With a wheel that enables the device to glide on the ground, an adjustable harness and a rigid frame to hold its user's belongings, McCoy claims the product can carry double the load of regular backpacks while minimizing the strain on the back. The product currently retails for $999. McCoy has sold only 10. Efforts to raise money and awareness for the product, including various Kickstarter campaigns and a 500-mile walk from Tennessee to Washington, D.C., in 2015 to honor veterans (his brother served in Vietnam), have proved to be futile in gaining sufficient funding and interest in the product.

Guest co-host Susi Mai (face not visible), struggles to get over a tree stump while testing the M.U.L.E in Northern Californias Hendy Woods State Park. Source: CNBC

While McCoy claims the M.U.L.E can work on both even and uneven terrain, that did not appear to be the case when Cooper and Mai tested it in the mountains. Facing steep hills, rocky streams and trails dotted with tree trunks, the two found it cumbersome and unwieldy and had a tougher time hiking than did Jones and Bloom, who were carrying regular backpacks.

"What you do feel is every bump," said Cooper. "Mine is not sitting on my hip," added Mai. At one point on the hike, Mai nearly tipped, unable to maneuver the M.U.L.E.'s wheel over a log on the path. Bloom had to come over and assist. "It actually made my hiking experience worse," Cooper later recollected during the group's negotiation with McCoy. Beyond the poor user experience, the investors took issue with the fact that the M.U.L.E.'s patent expired in 1987 and that the product generally appeared to be stuck in that same decade. "This looks to me like somebody in the '80s would have been like 'wow, revolutionary.' It's just this version is not going to hit the marketplace today where people are looking for modern-looking things," Mai said.

The M.U.L.E is designed with an adjustable harness and a single wheel. It retails for $999. Source: CNBC
watch now

Samsung's had a public relations nightmare with news of fire-prone batteries in the Note 7 model, but one expert told CNBC that the South Korean electronics giant ought to focus on just getting three things right.

1. Forget the Note S7, focus on the upcoming Galaxy S8

The Samsung Galaxy S8, the smartphone maker's next flagship model, is widely expected to be introduced late-February based on historical launch dates of Samsung products. "Maybe [Samsung] is better off highlighting the Galaxy S8, and how to differentiate it from competitors by spending more money on marketing," said Mehdi Hosseini, senior vice president of semiconductors at Susquehanna Financial Group, in a Squawk Box interview. Hosseini also added that Samsung's Note 7 recall will not likely be a fast and quick process.

Adisorn Chabsungnuen | Pacific Press/LightRocket | Getty Images

2. Bolster the company image

News of exploding batteries will always attract headlines, according to Hosseini.

As reports of , investor confidence was hit hard and Samsung's shares slumped nearly 7 percent on Monday. "At this point, [the damage] has more to do with the brand, and they have to spend more to protect the brand image, and maybe the Galaxy S8 is something they can capitalize on," Hosseini said.

3. Hold a press conference
The "Fast Money" traders debated whether the decline in Wells Fargo makes it an attractive investment.

The stock fell 3 percent on Tuesday. The shares have been pressured ever since the bank was fined $185 million for opening more than 2 million fee-generating accounts without authorization to do so.

Trader Brian Kelly said that Wells Fargo isn't a buy at this point.

"You want to be aggressive? You can short it because this is not over," Kelly said. "They're going to have congressional hearings. People are going to get hauled onto TV. It reminds me very much in that sense of what's been happening with biotech where you all of the sudden everybody piles on biotech because prices went up and we didn't like it. Same thing is happening with Wells Fargo."

Trader Guy Adami said that one question investors might raise is whether or not this behavior exists at other banks. He said that if investors are looking to get into a bank stock, U.S. Bancorp is one he likes and thinks is "beyond reproach."
When you find a winning horse, you just ride it all the way to victory right?

Someone should tell that to Donald Trump, who looks like he might be making a key error and choosing the wrong curtain in this latest round of "Presidential Election Let's Make a Deal!"

Behind curtain #1 we have Hillary Clinton's brutal "basketfull of deplorables" comment caught on tape during a fundraiser Friday night where Clinton literally said half of Trump's supporters were racists, sexists,homophobes, etc. The comment seemed eerily reminiscent of the video catching Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comments in 2012 that were deemed so harmful to his ultimately unsuccessful campaign.

Behind curtain #2 we have Clinton and her campaign's deceptive and cagey conduct during and after Clinton's medical episode on Sunday afternoon. Note that the key issue here is not just Clinton's health, but her honesty and transparency, or lack thereof.

Based on Trump's comments during his interview Monday with CNBC's Squawk Box and his big rally in Asheville, North Carolina that night, Trump is going with curtain #1 and looking to make as much as he can out of the "deplorables" comment. First on Squawk Box he took a very circumspect and reserved stance on Clinton's health, and didn't even mention her campaign's many-revised statements and clarifications about their candidate's condition. Then at the Asheville rally, Trump brought on the stage a diverse group of his supporters who all mockingly asked Clinton if they were what she meant by "deplorable."

Simply put, Trump is choosing the wrong curtain. And there are two big reasons why.



It's not that pushing back on Clinton's smearing of his supporters doesn't have some political advantages. But mostly it just fires up Trump's existing base of support, some of whom are now making and selling out t-shirts that proudly say things like "I'm Deplorable!" on them.

But conversely, it also fires up Clinton's supporters.

From New York Times editorial writers to her fans on social media, there are dozens of examples of Clinton backers who clearly agree with the characterization of Trump voters as dangerous hate mongers. And Trump's decision to focus on this basically asks undecided voters to consider just how many of his supporters are bigots, not if there are any bigots at all. Trump should simply drop this push back effort as a main focus of his campaign as soon as possible before it potentially backfires.

Before it's too late, Trump needs to shift to curtain #2 and focus not on Clinton's health, but how her medical episode Sunday provided yet another example of what even prominent liberals consider to be her problems with the truth. When Clinton's trustworthiness and honesty are the focus, things go much better for Trump. That's been true all year.

Trump's initial surge in the polls after he clinched the GOP nomination came when FBI Director James Comey reminded the entire country about Clinton's fuzziness with the truth connected to her private email server scandal. Even though Comey decided not to indict her, his much-watched announcement and detailing of Clinton's questionable behavior put the entire issue and her history of debunked denials connected to the scandal in the spotlight.
"It is very clear that the U.K. government has done no effective contingency planning for Brexit," Ed Parker, Fitch's head of Europe, Middle East and Africa sovereigns, said at a conference on Tuesday.

Fitch Ratings painted a gloomy picture of the U.K.'s economic prospects on Tuesday, warning that the British government was poorly prepared for quitting the European Union (EU).

Fitch downgraded the U.K.'s credit rating from AA+ to AA immediately after the country voted in a referendum in June to quit the EU. The country is on "negative outlook," as Fitch is considering further downgrades in the medium-term. Its next scheduled review date is December 9.



The result of the referendum surprised pundits, with odds seen on a victory for "remain." David Cameron, who had campaigned for remain, resigned as U.K. prime minister following the vote and was replaced by Theresa May.

Parker said the U.K. was highly unlikely to retain full access to the EU free market for goods and services once it quits the bloc, given that May had committed to tougher controls on immigration. Greater control of national sovereignty, particularly regarding which immigrants can work in the country, was a key driver for Britons voting to quit the EU. The EU allows free movement of workers between its countries and the U.K. is a popular destination due to its language and relatively large and thriving economy.

"Theresa May has laid down a pretty strong marker that she is in charge," Parker said at Tuesday's conference.

"That priority  to take back control of borders  makes it very unlikely that people retain full membership of the market  there is very little incentive for the EU to cut the U.K. such a favorable deal," he later added.
In making the accusations Tuesday, the Obama Administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over China's "excessive government support" for the local production of wheat, corn and rice. The administration alleges the excessive subsidies are hurting American farmers.

The complaint comes in a U.S. presidential election year when there's been China bashing by some candidates, including Republican presidential contender Donald Trump . His opponent, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton , also has been vocal on trade issues and the need to keep jobs from going overseas.

The U.S. on Tuesday accused China of having unfair agricultural subsidies for three key crops, adding to growing tensions between the two nations.

"China's excessive market price support for rice, wheat, and corn inflates Chinese prices above market levels, creating artificial government incentives for Chinese farmers to increase production," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a release.

Froman noted that China exceeded its allowable subsidy limits on corn, rice, and wheat by $100 billion in 2015 alone. America's rice, wheat, and corn industries typically average $20 billion per year in export activity, according to government figures.



U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a release that China's policies have "resulted in significant losses to American producers."



"Through tariff cuts and the removal of other trade barriers, China has gone from a $2-billion-a-year market for U.S. agricultural products to a $20-billion-plus market," Vilsack said. "But we could be doing much better, particularly if our grain exports could compete in China on a level playing field."



To level the playing field for U.S. farmers, he urged China "to operate a WTO-consistent trade regime."



U.S. Grains Council President and CEO Tom Sleight issued a statement that said the trade group welcomes the government's "move on this critical issue. We are hopeful that this step and our ongoing work in China can continue to support a long-term, stable and mutually-beneficial trading relationship."

USA Rice President and CEO Betsy Ward said, in a statement, that the enforcement action also sends "a clear signal to other countries with whom we compete and who are not living up to their WTO obligations with regard to rice, such as Viet Nam, Thailand, and India."

Ward added, "Despite years of work by USA Rice and USDA to open the Chinese market, we still have no access for U.S. grown rice."

There's been bipartisan criticism from lawmakers about China's trade policies, and last year the House Agriculture Committee held a series of hearings to review foreign ag subsidies and their impact on the U.S. farm sector.

"I am grateful that the U.S. government has opened a case concerning China's treatment of corn, rice, and wheat," said House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) said in a release. "And, I do believe that this must only be a start because I believe that this is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the predatory practices going on around the world that harm our producers."



Meantime, China has been a big importer of American soybeans this year. U.S. ag exports to China are forecast $3.5 billion higher than fiscal year ending Sept. 30, primarily due to increased soybean, tree nuts, and pork exports.



Overall, the USDA forecasts ag exports to China will reach $21.5 billion in fiscal 2017, or $3.5 billion higher than the fiscal 2016 forecast, edging out Canada as the largest U.S. market.



Since 2009, the Obama Administration has brought 23 enforcement actions at the WTO, according to Froman. And the government's release indicated the U.S. has won every one of these disputes decided thus far.
Thousands of staffers who were fired in recent years after opening unauthorized customer accounts represented under-performing employees struggling to meet goals, Wells Fargo CFO John Shrewsberry said Tuesday.

"These bad practices were not a revenue-generating activity," Shrewsberry said. "It was really more at the lower end of the performance scale where people apparently were making bad choices to hang on to their job."

Speaking at the Barclays 2016 Global Financial Services Conference in New York, Shrewsberry told attendees the bank's plans to eliminate retail banking product sales goals would help it foster a culture of compliance. He spoke days after the bank was $185 million fined by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Treasury Department and the city of Los Angeles.

At the conference Tuesday the bank said its review of millions of accounts showed that in as many as 1.5 million deposit accounts and 565,000 credit card accounts, "we could not rule out the possibility that an account was unauthorized." It said 115,000 of those accounts had incurred a fee that Wells Fargo has since refunded to customers. Wells Fargo reviewed 82 million checking accounts and 11 million credit cards as part of its inquiry into the matter, which covered activity dating to 2011.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told CNBC on Tuesday the U.S. needs to take action, including an overhaul of the "broken corporate tax code," to fix what's driving companies to seek shelter in overseas tax havens.

But during an interview at CNBC/Institutional Investor's Delivering Alpha conference, he acknowledged that the corporate tax overhaul "probably" won't happen during the remaining months of the Obama administration.

The European Commission ruling that Apple owes Ireland $14.6 billion in back taxes is inappropriate, said Lew, who stressed he has conveyed that message to European regulators.



"What I don't think is right is for tax authorities in other jurisdictions to reach into our tax base," he said.

In an editorial in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Lew criticized European Commission plans to "impose retroactive penalties" on U.S. corporations operating in Europe.

The commission's "actions also threaten to erode America's corporate tax base," he wrote. "U.S. companies could claim foreign tax credits against their U.S. tax bill for any tax-related payments to European Union member states."

In trying to reform U.S. corporate taxes to keep American companies from looking overseas, Lew told CNBC: "The principle that's driven our work on tax reform is that it has to be revenue neutral."
The worlds first Delta-shaped silver coin marks the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. The Perth Mint issued the 1-ounce silver coin for Tuvalu.

The Perth Mint has struck the worlds first-ever delta-shaped silver coin, with a topic thats popular this year around the world.

Issued in the name of Tuvalu, the Proof silver dollar marks the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek television series. The 1-ounce pure silver coin recreates the famous Starfleet Delta Shield insignia logo, and has a low mintage limit.

This Perth Mint issue was released Sept. 6, the same day the Royal Canadian Mints gold Delta Star Trek logo coin went on sale.

Connect with Coin World:

Gene Roddenberrys visionary original Star Trek television series debuted in September 1966, and ran for three seasons until 1969. Set in the future, the science fiction program followed the 23rd century adventures of Capt. James Tiberius Kirk and the Constitution-class starship USS Enterprise, a powerful interstellar spacecraft dispatched by the Earth-based Starfleet Command to explore the galaxy.

RELATED: Captain Kirk strikes a coin as part of #StarTrek50 celebration

Who can forget the opening lines of the title sequence (narrated in voice-over by William Shatner himself!):

Space: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

The reverse was engraved by Jennifer McKenna.

The obverse depicts the Ian Rank-Broadley effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, in crowned profile facing right, wearing a tiara and pearl earrings.

The legend QUEEN ELIZABETH II, the date of issue and denomination also appear. The legend 1 OZ 999 SILVER proclaims the weight and purity.

The coin weighs 31.135 grams and measures 60.5 millimeters tall, 39 millimeters wide and 3.5 millimeters thick.

Its mintage limit is 5,000 pieces, retailing for $74.95 each from distributor Talisman Coins.

Quantity discounts are available; buy three or four and the price is $73.95 per coin. The price drops another dollar, to $72.95, for purchases of five to nine coins. Quantities of 10 or more coins cost $71.95 each.

To order, visit the Talisman website.
A former government official of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks from a construction contractor has pleaded guilty to federal charges in North Dakota. Randall Phelan was an elected representative of the governing body of the Three Affiliated Tribes from the end of 2012 to the middle of 2020. Investigators say Phelan used his official position to help the contractors business by awarding contracts, fabricating bids and managing fraudulent invoices. His trial had been scheduled to begin Tuesday. Phelan and two others were originally charged with receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bribery scheme on the oil-rich Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The contractor has pleaded guilty to bribery.
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
GRAND FORKS - The protest and legal battle over an oil pipeline being constructed near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and the subsequent responses from state and federal authorities have drawn varying reactions from candidates for North Dakotas highest offices.

A decision from three federal agencies announced Friday halted the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land, despite a federal judges denial of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribes request for an injunction against the project that same day.

The sudden twist came just one day after North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple activated the states National Guard to support law enforcements response to a large protest over the project.

Fridays developments came about two months before Novembers election. The Grand Forks Herald reached out to candidates in the North Dakota governor and congressional races to discuss the protest and the government response.

Governor

Doug Burgum, the Republican candidate for North Dakota governor, did not return a message left on his cellphone Monday morning. His campaign spokesman, Jahan Wilcox, said Monday was tough to line up an interview.

In a statement provided to the Grand Forks Herald Thursday, Burgum said he had been following the situation closely and was awaiting the federal courts decision, which came Friday.

North Dakota needs to be a state of opportunity and welcoming to energy expansion with a safe, smart approach, his statement added.

Democratic candidate Marvin Nelson, a state representative from Rolla, said the regulatory process that allowed the pipelines construction may need to be revamped.

This whole diffuse hodgepodge of authority creates a situation where I kind of question whether anybody at any point actually has all the information to make an informed decision, he said.

Nelson visited the protest site Sept. 2, which he described as a peaceful village. He argued for better communication.

The state seems to have isolated itself from the protest, Nelson said.

Jeff Zent, a spokesman for Dalrymple, rejected that characterization and said state leaders have kept an open line of communication. He said the Adjutant General of the North Dakota National Guard, Maj. Gen. Alan Dohrmann, Col. Michael Gerhart of the North Dakota Highway Patrol and others have acted as the governors designees.

Weve had almost daily contact with tribal leaders, and the governor has spoken several times with (Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II) directly himself, he said. Our entire focus in all of this and continues to be on public safety, safety of workers, safety of pipeline protesters or opponents, and the general public.

Zent said there is nothing for the governor to negotiate here in terms of the pipeline itself, which he said is an issue between the Army Corps, the pipeline company and the projects opponents.

Our role and our focus has been making sure  everything is done in a manner that isnt a threat to public safety, he said.

Marty Riske, the Libertarian Partys candidate for governor, said his two main concerns related to the protest are property rights and the rule of law, and he criticized the use of dogs by private security at the protest.

Riske added that activating the National Guard wouldnt have been his first response to the protest, and he advocated for negotiation and greater understanding of what each party wants. He said he honors the demonstrators right to protest, calling it a constitutional right, but he asked that they be more precise in communicating their goals.

I would offer the state Capitol grounds as the place to protest to get them off of the private property and move to public property, he said. The main camp is located on Army Corps land, but some protest actions have taken place on private land, according to the Morton County Sheriffs Department.

U.S. Senate

In a statement emailed Friday afternoon by his office, incumbent Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said the Army Corps, the pipeline company and the tribe need to come up with a solution together.

We also need to understand what the administration intends to do and how it plans to arrive at a timely resolution, he said. And finally, as weve said all along, any protests need to be safe, respectful and within the law.

Hoevens opponent, Democrat Eliot Glassheim, argued the pipeline should be moved. He also called for an investigation into the reasoning behind moving the pipeline from a route north of Bismarck to near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Documents show one reason was its potential threat to Bismarcks water supply.

There are some people there who dont want any oil dug up out of the ground ever. Well, Im sorry, Im not with those people, Glassheim said Friday afternoon. Theres going to be a pipeline. It makes sense to have a pipeline.

Glassheim said law enforcement officials have been doing a good job at not responding to any provocations. He added the state of North Dakota should have set up a place for peaceful protests.

If they didnt want cars parked there, then they needed to make some place where people could go to protest, Glassheim said. Because protests are legitimate American activities.

Libertarian candidate Robert Marquette was grateful for a break in the action, which he hopes will allow for a reasoned approach to finding a solution.

I think that every effort should be made to protect the sacred burial grounds  theyre an important part of Native American heritage, he said. If moving it is necessary in order to ensure safety and to preserve the burial grounds, then I think its reasonable to ask for them to move the pipeline.

U.S. House

Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., advocated for keeping the law in mind.

This is a legally permitted pipeline, as of now, Cramer said Friday afternoon before the federal judges ruling and the subsequent statement from the Department of Justice, Department of the Army and the Department of the Interior.

But Cramer said its not so easy to draw a line in the sand on something thats this emotionally charged, even though these facts are real and theres an appropriate means of protest and an appropriate means of appeal. He called for leaders on both sides of the protest to be insistent upon legal, safe, peaceful demonstration and protest, in a statement issued after the Army Corps announced it would not authorize pipeline construction in the Lake Oahe area for now, Cramer accused the Obama administration of changing the rules.

If this was the intent all along, they should have said so before the events of the last several weeks. They could have spared a lot of heartache and cost, he added. It is incumbent upon all parties to move forward peacefully and expeditiously, within the law, to come to a resolution that honors the rights of lawful commerce.

Chase Iron Eyes, a Standing Rock member who is challenging Cramer as a Democrat, said the states response to the protest -- declaring a state of emergency and activating the National Guard -- shows were not going about it the right way. He advocated for more communication between the parties involved.

We should be at least talking among leadership and finding out what each others points and demands are, Iron Eyes said.

Calling the Dakota Access Pipeline a lawfully permitted pipeline, Iron Eyes said the rule of law must be protected.

There is, of course, controversy about how (the pipeline) came to that, he said. I think North Dakota needs to know why the pipeline was moved from north of Bismarck to where the Indians live.

Iron Eyes said the recent confrontation between demonstrators and private security hired by the pipeline company is an example of the situations that we have to avoid, but the protests have been largely peaceful.

Jack Seaman, the Libertarian candidate for House, said officials need to clarify whether the protesters can remain on other peoples land.

I dont have any problem with people lawfully protesting and exercising their rights to free speech, he said. But you have to do it in a lawful manner, and we havent seen that up to this point.

Seaman said it appeared the Obama administrations decision on Friday is another example of federal government overreach. He said he would prefer to see peaceful negotiations and diplomacy between state government officials and members from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe while the Army Corps reviews its decisions.

I dont see Gov. Dalrymple or anybody with his administration engaging the tribe directly, and thats what I would like to see, he said.
Missouri football's Brady Cook 'deserves to be praised' after upset win

Missouri quarterback Brady Cook has taken criticism all season. On Saturday night, he led the Tigers to an upset road win at South Carolina.
A prominent pipeline protest organizer pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor charges on Monday afternoon.

Cody Hall, spokesman for the Red Warrior Camp, is accused of trespassing on private property during protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline on Sept. 3 and Sept. 6. According to an affidavit filed in the case, Hall was identified from photos and video taken at the protests and made available on social media.

The 39-year-old Eagle Butte man was arrested Friday afternoon on a warrant, after he was pulled over on Highway 1806 near Fort Rice for driving a car with expired tabs, according to Morton County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Donnell Preskey. He was held without bail during the weekend and released on bond after his hearing Monday.

Preskey declined to comment on why he was held without bond during the weekend, and the Morton County state's attorney did not return calls Monday.

During his initial court appearance Monday afternoon, Judge Gail Hagerty set bond at $150, which is $350 less than was recommended by Morton County State's Attorney Allen Koppy.

Hall is required to stay in North and South Dakota for the duration of the case and have no contact with Cannonball Ranch, which is near the site of the protests. She did not grant Koppy's request for a no-contact order between Hall and the Dakota Access Pipeline.

"There is nothing in his history that would recommend a danger to the community or a flight risk," said Jackie Stebbins, the Bismarck attorney representing Hall, as she appealed to the judge for a low bond and no no-contact orders.

"As I understand it, Mr. Hall is very peaceful. He is not an antagonist. And I believe he is doing something important to him, to his culture and exercising his First Amendment rights," Stebbins said.

Hall's arrest was the 38th made in connection with the protests, according to the Morton County Sheriff's Department. Several other protesters who were arrested will make their initial appearances this morning.

Hagerty set a trial date for Hall on Dec. 20.
Columbus Arts Festival 2022 Patron Party

Arts backers and community leaders gathered June 10, 2022, for the Columbus Arts Festivals Patron Party, which raised more than $34,000.
Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A. produces and distributes specialty plant nutrients, iodine and its derivatives, lithium and its derivatives, potassium chloride and sulfate, industrial chemicals, and other products and services. The company offers specialty plant nutrients, including potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate, sodium potassium nitrate, specialty blends, and other specialty fertilizers. It also provides iodine and its derivatives for use in medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial applications comprising x-ray contrast media, polarizing films for LCD and LED, antiseptics, biocides and disinfectants, pharmaceutical synthesis, electronics, pigments, and dye components. In addition, the company offers lithium carbonates for various applications that include electrochemical materials for batteries, frits for the ceramic and enamel industries, heat-resistant glass, air conditioning chemicals, continuous casting powder for steel extrusion, primary aluminum smelting process, pharmaceuticals, and lithium derivatives, as well as ingredient in manufacturing of gunpowder. Further, it supplies lithium hydroxide for the lubricating greases industry, as well as cathodes for batteries. Additionally, it offers potassium chloride and potassium sulfate for various crops, including corn, rice, sugar, soybean, and wheat; industrial chemicals, including sodium nitrate, potassium nitrate, potassium chloride, and solar salts; and other fertilizers and blends. The company operates in Chile, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, North America, Asia, and internationally. Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A. was incorporated in 1968 and is headquartered in Santiago, Chile.
John Bursi, a University of Memphis graduate student in the Department of Earth Sciences, conducts research in the "recharge" area of the Memphis Sand aquifer in Fayette County. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

By Tom Charlier of The Commercial Appeal

A special master appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court says Mississippi's $615 million water-rights lawsuit against Memphis and the state of Tennessee could be largely decided through a limited hearing on the issue of whether an aquifer connected to the Memphis Sand is an interstate resource.

In a recent court filing, Eugene E. Siler Jr. called for such a hearing, although a date has not been set.

Siler's memorandum of decision represents the latest action in a legal battle now more than decade old. Mississippi is suing Memphis and Tennessee, alleging that municipal wells operated by Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division have siphoned water from beneath Mississippi across the state line into Tennessee in a process amounting to theft.

The filing underscores Siler's pivotal role in the case. Because the Supreme Court does not hold conventional trials, it often appoints special masters such as him to prepare a record for the court to review, issue findings of fact and make recommendations. The court weighs the recommendations before making its rulings.

Siler's memo came in response to motions by Memphis and Tennessee requesting to have Mississippi's suit dismissed. The defendants claim that the Sparta Sand aquifer, a large underground reservoir of which the Memphis Sand aquifer is a part, is an interstate resource and, as such, must be "equitably apportioned" among the different states before any state can lay claim to part of it.

Although Siler denied the dismissal motion, his language was not supportive of Mississippi's suit. The state's complaint, he wrote, "appears to fail to plausibly allege that the Sparta Sand aquifer or the water in it is not an interstate resource." As a result, he said, "dismissal likely would be warranted" because of the requirement under federal law that the aquifer be apportioned.

Still, Siler said he would not recommend immediate dismissal because the Supreme Court, in setting duties for special masters, has "counseled them to err on the side of over-inclusiveness." The issue to be explored at the hearing  whether or not the aquifer is an interstate resource  is "potentially dispositive," he wrote, meaning it could essentially decide the case.

David Bearman, an attorney representing Memphis, said he was heartened by the memorandum. The filing indicates Siler "appears to agree with the basis of our position," he said.

Bearman said the hearing should provide the city and Tennessee ample opportunity to prove the aquifer is an interstate "I'm confident that we can put on good proof to support our position," he said.

But attorneys for Mississippi contend water in the portion of the Sparta within the state's borders is a "finite, confined intrastate natural resource" that would not be available to Memphis were it not for the intensive pumping from MLGW wells located within three miles of the Mississippi state line.

The suit claims that through the pumping, an estimated 252 billion gallons of water have been "forcibly" taken from Mississippi since 1985. It seeks restitution for that water, which, including interest is worth some $615 million, and a halt to the withdrawals that Mississippi claims have redirected the flow of groundwater. Memphis could get water from alternative sources, such as the Mississippi River, the suit says.

The water battle dates to 2005, when Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood filed suit against Memphis and MLGW in federal court in Oxford, Mississippi, seeking up to $1.3 billion in damages. Three years later, U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson ruled that his court lacked jurisdiction. Tennessee hadn't been named as defendant even though it was a "necessary and indispensable" party, he said, and in a dispute between states, the final arbiter must be the Supreme Court.

Davidson's ruling was upheld on appeal, and in January 2010, the Supreme Court denied Mississippi's motion to overturn the appellate ruling. The court eventually allowed Mississippi to file a new complaint after Tennessee was added as a defendant.

Don Barrett, the Lexington, Mississippi, attorney who is heading the plaintiff's case, said he's pleased with Siler's decision because the hearing will give the state the chance to prove the aquifer water is not an interstate resource.

"That's what we wanted  it's perfect for us," Barrett said.
August 24, 2016 - Co-defendant Lashonda Williams testifies about the killing of Pastor Don Smith, describing a deal for prostitution that ended with Roger Reed killing the pastor. Reed is on trial for killing the pastor in order to steal his car. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)

By Katie Fretland of The Commercial Appeal

A woman who testified that her boyfriend shot Prospect Park Baptist Church pastor Don Smith to death after a transaction for sex was sentenced to 15 years this week on a facilitation charge.

Lashonda Williams, 25, pleaded guilty to facilitation to commit first-degree murder in the shooting of Smith that happened around Halloween night 2014.

Williams, 25, testified that Roger Reed planned to carjack someone to drive back to Greenville, Mississippi, where they are from. She said the victim, a 57-year-old married preacher, drove by them multiple times looking at them in the Hickory Hill area, and then asked what they were trying to do. She said the pastor wanted sex with both of them and said he had $40. According to Williams, they both touched Smith sexually, and then Reed shot him.

Reed denied shooting the pastor and said he did not participate in any sex act with him.

Reed and Williams were located days later in Greenville with the pastor's car.

A man walking a dog found the preacher's body off Lichterman Road in the area of Winchester and Hickory Hill.

Shelby County Criminal Court Judge James Lammey sentenced Reed to life for first-degree murder.
SHARE

By Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal

Memphis police have identified a man shot and killed Sunday in Frayser as Larry Hines Jr.

Hines, 29, was found just before 7:30 p.m. by police in the 1800 block of Whitney. He was pronounced dead on the scene from a gunshot wound.

No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.
By Susan D'costa

KUWAIT, SEP 13, 2016: Saint Therese of the Child Jesus parish in Kuwait began a new chapter on September 1, as it ushered in 123 girls aged seven to fourteen, to form a new ministry reserved exclusively for girls.



Earlier in the year, a number of parents had approached the Parish Priest, Father Blany Pinto, with a request to allow their daughters to join the altar server's ministry.

This was not feasible, since the parish had around 128 boys registered as altar servers and 30 more desiring to join. The proposal was taken up in the Parish Council.

After weeks of discussions, the council members narrowed down on five proposals  exclusive girls Choirs for the Konkani, Hindi, Malayalam (Latin, Syro-Malabar, Syro-Malankara) and English language masses, Daily Recitation of the Rosary before Holy Mass, Decorating the church on festive occasions, Ushering during the children's Mass and other special Eucharistic celebrations and finally assisting the elders in organising the Oratory on Saturdays for the children.

One of the parish council members, Elizabeth D'Souza, who is also the coordinator of the group to lead the Rosary was exuberant. She said, "I was really happy and proud that, together with my group, we brought the girls close to Mother Mary by training them to recite the rosary from the church podium."

The newly formed ministry for the young girls was formally instituted at Holy Mass celebrated by Father Franco Pereira. In his homily, he told the girls to be dedicated in whatever they do and above all to pray.



Father Pereira cited Jesus' miracle of the catch of 153 fish - Gospel of John 21:11 - and on a more humorous note he said that they were a total of 123 girls, which meant that there was still room for 30 more to make the total of 153.

Ninoshka Viegas, who has joined the Decor group, said, "My talent is God's gift to me, what I do with it is my gift back to God. It is my privilege to be chosen as part of the decor ministry."

"It is a great feeling. I feel happy knowing that I can do something small for the Lord in my own simple way," said Tara Matthew after completing her first duty as Usher, the following day during the children's Holy Mass.
The Commercial Appeal files Wild Bill Elliott (right), movie cowboy who will star in the World's Championship Contest Rodeo during the Mid-South Fair and Livestock Show, arrived in Memphis on Sept. 15, 1952. One of his first acts was to present a Western sombrero to Frank Collins (center), rodeo committee chairman, as Tommy Steiner, California rodeo producer looks on.

SHARE

Sept. 13

25 years ago: 1991

NASHVILLE  Memphis State University's proposed new library edged a step closer to reality Thursday when the state Building Commission approved the preliminary architectural design. The proposal presented Thursday to the Building Commission is a four-story, 254,000-square-foot symmetrical design with a central atrium. It would house 1.4 million volumes. The design was prepared by a joint architectural venture between the Pickering Firm Inc. and Jones-Mah-Gaskill-Rhodes Inc. Construction of the $25.3 million library is contingent upon approval and funding by the legislature, possibly next year.

50 years ago: 1966

CAPE KENNEDY  Flawless space hunters, the Gemini 11 pilots set the stage for a bold stroll around the world Tuesday by flashing to the world's quickest rendezvous and linkup with a fleeing satellite. Astronauts Charles "Pete" Conrad and Richard F. Gordon, the future space walker, caught an Agena rocket Monday after a tricky chase that lasted only 80 minutes. They then flicked through a game of tag with the captured rocket, for the first time in the United States space program performing more than one linkup with a satellite during a single flight.

75 years ago: 1941

Washington was rocked yesterday afternoon by disclosure that a second American-operated merchantman had been torpedoed and sent to the bottom in United States protected waters off Greenland.

100 years ago: 1916

Quick action to avert financial disaster in Mississippi counties ravished by the boll weevil was planned yesterday at a conference of Memphis and Mississippi bankers, agriculturists, cotton factors, and cotton buyers in the Business Men's Club Chamber of Commerce.

125 years ago: 1891

On Tuesday evening the Free Kindergarten Association gave a fete rustique at East End Park in order to raise funds for the Kindergarten School to begin its fourth year at the Kindergarten Home, 85 Monroe Street.
September 6, 2016 - The doors were shut at the ITT Technical Institute, located at 7260 Goodlett Farms Parkway in Cordova, on Tuesday. The school announced it's closing all its campuses nationwide. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE

By Jennifer Pignolet of The Commercial Appeal

Two Tennessee state agencies are partnering to assist students displaced by the closure of ITT Technical Institute last week.

The Tennessee Higher Education Commission and the Tennessee Board of Regents will host a series of college outreach fairs for students who were attending ITT Tech when it closed. The Memphis event will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at Southwest Tennessee Community College's Macon Cove campus.

"The events will provide students with information and resources on transferring to new institutions, financial aid options, and other resources for continuing their education in the wake of ITT Technical Institute shuttering its doors," the state said in a release.

Information on additional sessions in other cities can be found at www.tn.gov/thec. Students with questions can also call 615-741-5293.

About 1,900 students attended the five ITT Tech campuses across the state, including about 600 at the Cordova campus.

The for-profit schools closed after Indiana-based parent company ITT Educational Services announced Sept. 6 it was shutting down effective immediately, saying it couldn't survive recent sanctions by the U.S. Department of Education.
This decorative "donor wall" display honors people who have given to Germantown Performing Arts Center and it now hangs near the center's box office. It was supplied by P.O.P. Solutions LLC, a company owned by Germantown Alderman Rocky Janda. It cost about $8,000, said Paul Chandler, GPAC's leader.

SHARE

By Clay Bailey of The Commercial Appeal

We have breaking news from the Outside the Loop, Happening Now, We're Telling You First Newsdesk (cue the clicking wire service machines from the old days)

GERMANTOWN (OTL News Service): Alderman Rocky Janda announced Tuesday he will no longer do business with Germantown based on the controversy surrounding the arrangement. We will update this story throughout the day. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Outside the Loop column.

From business dealings in Germantown to a significant donation earmarked for a First Responders Monument in Bartlett, we will touch on a number of items, issues and news around the suburbs in this version of Outside the Loop.

Theres been quite a bit of attention over the relationship between Alderman Rocky Jandas business and city departments in recent days, but on another Germantown front, the suburb has appointed a replacement for departed school board member Mark Dely.

If you have lived here awhile, youve heard about various alignments regarding a north-south road through Shelby Farms. And the talk is back on the table again.

And, Bartlett City School Superintendent David Stephens has a nice new title to his name.

So, lets get going.

GERMANTOWN

QUESTIONABLE PRACTICES: Collierville reporter Daniel Connolly ventured into Germantown over the past couple of weeks to outline details of Alderman Rocky Janda doing business with several Germantown departments.

Meanwhile, we also pointed out the problems with all this in an editorial this morning.

Some of the records associated with the information about Jandas business arrangements were part of an open records request from citizens Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman and Jon Thompson.

Janda calls Freeman and Thompson the dark side because of their perceived aggravating pressure to see all of the records for a better picture of whats going on.

But, every once in awhile, the dark side shines a light on a problem.

Heres another things  if this was a City Council member whose business was selling goods to Memphis police or other departments, there would be hue and cry from the suburbs about the underhandedness of it all. Critics would be aghast at the wink-and-a-nod dealings. Critical of the business-as-usual string-pulling by an elected official.

This is no different, folks. Except for the geographical spot where the business is taking place.

SIDE NOTE: Oh, and discussions about the matter have emerged on several social media sites  such as Eyes on Germantown and Is My City Corrupt?. Thompson apparently is associated with the latter of the two.

SHELBY FARMS:

CROSSING THE FARM: Reporter Tom Charlier resurrected thoughts of an old traffic plan to help ease congestion around Shelby Farms.

As Charlier noted, this idea in various forms has been discussed for a long, long time. The latest version would finally provide a north-south road cutting through the open spaces of the farm, albeit swinging way west to minimize impact on the area.

But  as has always been the case  the plan is controversial, particularly from an environmental viewpoint.

Anyway, in a perfect scenario, construction could start around 2022.

And, given the time its taken to do the flyover work at the Interstate 40/240 junction, who knows when the Shelby Farms road would be finished.

Even if the start occurs under the best-case timetable.

GERMANTOWN AGAIN

SCHOOL BOARD ADDITION: With little debate and nary a dissenting voice, Betsy Landers was selected to the Germantown Municipal School Board of Education on Monday night.

Landers was one of six finalists reduced from the original 20 applicants to replace Mark Dely, who resigned from the board last month when he took a job in Indiana.

Landers will serve the final two years of Delys term.

In her application, Landers, a 22-year Germantown resident and a president of the National PTA from 2011-2013, said growth is the greatest challenge facing the suburbs relatively new school district.

And with that growth, comes the need to be mindful of our facilities and their maintenance, as well as the need to build or acquire facilities, she wrote. We must always focus on the expansion of academic excellence while maintaining realistic expectations.

During the pre-vote discussion, almost all of the aldermen invoked the names of Landers, Adam Underwood and Trent Fleming as the best of the interviews conducted with finalists last Wednesday.

After discussing the trio favored by the bulk of the board, Landers name was presented as the first nominee. And, the five aldermen unanimously approved Landers, with only a small delay by Vice Mayor Forrest Owens before casting his vote.

The whole process moved smoothly just as if everything was choreographed before the meeting.

Of course, we all know that would never happen.

BARTLETT

SUPERIOR SUPERINTENDENT STEPHENS: David Stephens of the Bartlett City Schools was named Superintendent of the Year for 2017 last weekend by the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents.

Stephens, Bartletts superintendent since the municipal system was formed, emerged from eight winners at regional levels.

The announcement was made in Gatlinburg on Sunday at the organizations annual awards dinner.

And, no, I dont know how he is recognized as the top superintendent in the state for a year that hasnt occurred yet.

But it should mean Stephens needs to make sure hes on his best behavior in 2017 to live up to the title.

BARTLETT NO. 2

TEN GRAND FOR MONUMENT: A local group  the Lawful Sons Motorcycle Club  will donate $10,000 at tonights Bartlett Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting to help the suburbs construction of a first responders monument.

The donation is the result of a fundraiser held by the club in August.

The group of motorcycle enthusiasts is comprise primarily of police officers, firefighters, military personnel and other emergency responders.

Bartlett is raising funds for a First Responders Monument  the result of an ad hoc committee formed in 2015. The monument is planned for an area adjacent to Appling Lake near the Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center.
SHARE

Martha Logsdon

Memphis

Your Sept. 9 story about foreign workers confined for years on fishing boats in horrid conditions and with no way of escape is shocking (Foreign workers confined to Hawaiian boats).

Americans like to denigrate other countries for human rights violations (as we should), but here we have a glaring case of virtual slavery in our own economy, which is legal because some powerful interests dont want to give fishermen normal wages or workplace protections.

This could be fixed immediately by legislation, but given that Congress hasnt even started on the bills to fund government by October, I am pretty sure we cant count on it.

As citizens we need to put pressure on the companies like Wal-Mart and Costco that buy this slave-caught fish.
SHARE

By Chris Cillizza

"Trust us."

That's the message from Hillary Clinton's campaign in the wake of a medical incident Sunday in which the former secretary of state appeared wobbly, at best, as she left a Sept. 11 memorial service early.

Clinton got overheated and dehydrated at the event because she is battling pneumonia, according to her doctor. "Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies," said Clinton's doctor, Lisa Bardack, in a statement.

"On Friday, during a follow-up evaluation of her prolonged cough, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. She was put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule. While at this morning's event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her and she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely."

So Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday. Her campaign said nothing. She almost had to be lifted into her vehicle because she was struggling to walk the few steps to the car Sunday morning. For 90 minutes, no word of her condition was released as she recuperated from her "overheating" at her daughter Chelsea's apartment. (Clinton did not allow any reporters with her during this time.) Then, hours later a statement from her doctor that said she has been sick with pneumonia for at least 48 hours.

That's a lot to swallow. That's, of course, not to say it's not accurate. But, the Clintons' history with transparency (not good) when coupled with their response to this incident (also, not good) plays into one of the ongoing narratives of this presidential race: That you simply can't trust Hillary Clinton to tell you the whole truth.

David Axelrod, a longtime Democratic media consultant and close adviser to President Barack Obama, summed up that sentiment nicely in a tweet Monday morning:

"Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?"

There is a line that runs through all of Clinton's issues  her email server, the Clinton Foundation and now her health  in this race. And it is an obsession with secrecy driven by a paranoia of the media.

Think of how differently the email controversy might have turned out if, in that first news conference addressing the existence of a private email server last spring, Clinton would have simply said "I'm sorry," and told reporters everything she knew about the setup. It's nearly certain that we wouldn't still be talking about it 18 months later.

Why didn't she do that? She's never explained fully. But it's clear she believed the issue to be a nothing-burger and was convinced that any opening she gave the media  "I'm sorry and this is why it happened"  wouldn't solve the problem but only lead to more questions. It's hard to imagine  and, yes, hindsight is 20-20  that the story could have played out much worse for Clinton than it has.

Study what happened Sunday and you see a pattern. Clinton isn't feeling well. She is taken to Chelsea's house to recuperate. Reporters are in the dark about her health status for 90 minutes. (Before you roll your eyes, consider that she is one of two people with a chance to be president in less than two months) We are told she was "overheated" by her staff. Then, hours later it's revealed that, well, she has pneumonia and it was diagnosed several days ago.

Always a lean toward secrecy rather than transparency  amid a bevy of poll numbers that show somewhere between 55 percent and 65 percent of the American public don't believe the words "honest" or "trustworthy" apply to her.

And always an emphasis on the need to simply take Clinton's word for it. Trust her that all of the emails that were deleted permanently from her server were purely personal. Trust her that any appearance of pay-to-play with donors to the Clinton Foundation is purely coincidental. Trust her that everything is A-OK with her health after the incident Sunday.

"I know there's a lot of smoke and there's no fire," Clinton told CNN a few weeks back while answering questions about the foundation's donor practices. That appears to be the Clinton line for every controversy that arises in this campaign: We are taking care of it. Everything is fine. Trust us.

But for a candidate that more than half the country thinks is something short of honest and trustworthy, that answer isn't likely to be good enough  on Clinton's health or any of the other issues that have come up in this campaign for her.

Chris Cillizza writes "The Fix," a politics blog for the Washington Post.
SHARE

By Greg Sargent

Donald Trump and his spinners are outraged  and some reporters are murmuring their disapproval  because Hillary Clinton said this at a fundraiser last night:

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables'. Right?" Clinton said to applause and laughter from the crowd of supporters at an LGBT for Hillary fundraiser where Barbra Streisand performed. "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic  you name it."

Let's stipulate at the outset that this kind of generalization is not defensible. Clinton should not have described "half" of Trump's supporters this way. People have all kinds of reasons for supporting their candidate  party loyalty; reflexive negative partisanship; genuine distaste with the alternatives; meaningful, legitimate support for certain aspects of the candidate's agenda, and not others; and so forth.

A Clinton spokesperson qualified these remarks in a series of tweets, pointing out that Clinton was talking about Trump's rally crowds, and noting that half of them appear to be alt-right types. But even so, Clinton doesn't know what ultimately is motivating "half" of Trump's rally attendees, and she should not claim to.

But if there is one group of people who should take their outrage about Clinton's comments and stuff it in a very dark place, it's Trump and his paid apologists, who unloaded in a series of tweets Saturday morning. Trump's campaign even put out a statement claiming that Clinton "revealed her true contempt for everyday Americans."

Oh, please. Two things can be true at the same time: First, Clinton overgeneralized about what's in the hearts and minds of Trump supporters. Second, her underlying characterization of the general nature of many of Trump's campaign appeals  and her related observation that they really are successfully playing on the baser instincts of an untold number of Trump's supporters  are 100 percent accurate.

Every single reporter and commentator closely following this race knows full well that Trump's campaign is fueled, at least to some degree, by tacit or even overt appeals to bigotry or efforts to encourage a sense among many Trump backers that white identity and white America are under siege. We've all seen the polling data and the reporting. Many Republican voters agree with the highest-profile Trump statements and items on the Trump agenda, the ones that are most prominently intertwined with those appeals and messages:

1) Poll after poll after poll has shown that majorities or pluralities of Republican voters support Trump's proposed temporary ban on Muslims from entering the United States. When CNN and NBC News interviewed Trump supporters at a rally in South Carolina, they found a lot of support for the ban.

Is this "Islamophobia," as Clinton suggests? Well, many leading Republicans and conservatives evidently think so. Paul Ryan denounced Trump's Muslim ban as a "religious test" that is an affront to conservatism, and in so doing, he went out of his way to characterize Muslim-Americans as patriots and defenders of American freedom, which conservatives hailed as an act of great moral courage. Never-Trump conservative twitter widely denounced Trump's attacks on the Khan family as naked bigotry.

2) Poll after poll has shown that majorities of Republican voters support mass deportations. Some polling has shown substantial overlap between Trump backers and support for mass deportations. One poll found that a large majority of GOP voters thought Trump was "basically right" in describing Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug haulers, while perhaps not agreeing with his exact language. And yes, in all of these cases, Democrats who believe these things are equally "deplorable."

Trump himself has knowingly crafted obviously racist appeals as an entree into the consciousness of GOP primary voters. This is why he fashioned himself the world's most famous birther. The New York Times recently reported that before running, Trump "recognized an opportunity" to exploit "discomfort" over the "first black president," which he "harnessed" for "political gain," using it to spark "his connection with the largely white Republican base." Even GOP leaders have described some of Trump's comments as racism: Ryan denounced his drawn out assault on a Mexican-American judge as the "textbook definition of a racist comment."

Trump's campaign CEO is Stephen Bannon, who has described himself as a creator of "the platform for the alt-right," by which he means Breitbart, which one former Breitbart insider described as a "gathering place for white nationalism." White nationalists themselves believe Trump's elevation of Bannon heralds the displacement of the old GOP worldview with their own, and they hear a lot to like in Trump's message. They feel as if Trump has "lifted them up," as Clinton put it. So, yes, Trump's campaign is functioning as a vehicle for mainstreaming fringe sentiments.

The American people know what Trump is doing. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that American voters say by 59-36 that "the way Trump talks appeals to bigotry."

In the end, this flap inevitably leads us back into the endlessly debated question at the heart of Trumpism. Are Trump's appeals resonating because of many voters' own raw bigotry? Or is their susceptibility to bigoted appeals rooted in legitimate economic and cultural grievances? No question, many Trump supporters may be motivated by nothing more than dissatisfaction with our trade and economic policies, or anger at Washington's dysfunction, or reasonable objections to current terrorism or immigration policies. In this context, people are missing the importance of the Clinton remarks that came after the incendiary ones. Clinton also said:

"That other basket of people are people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures. They are just desperate for change. Doesn't really even matter where it comes from."

In other words, Clinton is also saying that many Trump supporters are not motivated by bigotry, i.e., that many people supporting Trump have legitimate anxieties. Trump is trying to prey on those anxieties by scapegoating Muslims and undocumented immigrants, but this might not be why many support him.

Clinton should not have overgeneralized about the other "half" of Trump's supporters. She shouldn't have called all these voters "deplorables." But the underlying argument here  that Trump is running a bigoted campaign that tries to prey on legitimate grievances and bigotry alike by scapegoating minority groups  is inarguable, and the reality it identifies is far worse than Clinton's broad-brush overreach was. If anything, "deplorable" is too mild a word for it.

Greg Sargent writes the Plum Line blog for The Washington Post.
Thank you for joining! Access your Pro+ Content below.

Is Europe a growing datacentre destination?

In this quarters issue of CW Europe, we ask whether European datacentres will benefit from the UKs exit from the EU. As the dust settles on the EU referendum and the new-look US-Europe Privacy Shield data transfer agreement, we look at what it could mean for European datacentre operators. For example, 451 Research issued an advisory note several days after the result of the EU referendum, suggesting operators have slowed or suspended datacentre planning until a clearer idea emerges of how the post-Brexit world will pan out.
We've been talking a lot lately about how Project Fi can save you money, but your Android phone isn't the only place where Google's offerings can make an impact.

You'll almost never see it promoted -- and hardly anyone outside of hardcore tech enthusiasts knows it even exists -- but Google has a free home phone service just waiting to be utilized. And all you need is a simple little box to tap into its power.

If you're under the age of 20 and don't know what "home phone" means, allow me to enlighten you: It's a crazy kind of apparatus that sits in your house and lets you make and receive voice calls. Kind of like what you see people using in absurdly old movies from, like, the early 2000s (ew!).

So why would you want to bother having one in this day and age? Believe it or not, there are plenty of valid reasons. You might want a simple and dedicated "business line" to use from a home office, for instance, or you might want a quick and easy way for your kids and/or reptiles to make calls without tying up your personal cell phone. (You'd be surprised how chatty turtles can get around mating season.)

You might want a reliable way for anyone in your household to call 911 and instantly relay your house's location in an emergency; you might enjoy having a way to make and receive (or, ahem, ignore) calls without eating up your phone's battery or consuming your monthly mobile minute allotment; or you might just prefer the warmer-sounding connection or more comfy-against-your-face quality a non-cellular handset can provide.

Plain and simple, having a home phone can be a nice convenience -- something that makes life just a little bit easier. And if said service is free to use, why the hell not?

Here's what you need to get started:

1. An adapter box from OBi

A company called OBi (the "B" is capitalized but the "i" is lowercase so you know it's cool) makes an unassuming little contraption that makes this all possible. It's something we've covered before, way back in the early 2010s (ew!), but a lot has changed since then -- and a lot of people still ask me about this -- so I thought it'd be worth revisiting with the most up-to-date info.

In a nutshell, an OBi box taps into Google's free Google Voice calling service and makes it work through a regular ol' landline-style home phone -- the kind you can buy for 10 bucks and up from pretty much anywhere that sells electronic-type stuff. You plug the box into an electrical outlet, plug the phone into the box, and bingo-bango: You've got a functioning home phone, sans the monthly bill.

My own personal OBi box, hard at work in my humble home office. Ain't she purty?

The cheapest OBi box, the OBi200, is currently available on Amazon or Newegg for about 50 bucks and should be more than sufficient for most people.

2. An active Google Voice account/phone number

Remember Google Voice? It's that phone number management service Google made a big deal about some years back and then kind of set aside. It still works, though -- and it's the backbone of this home phone setup.

If you already have a Google Voice phone number connected to your Google account, you're all set. If you don't, head to the Google Voice website and set one up. It'll only take a few minutes, and it's completely free to do.

3. A landline-style home phone

Aka that retro pluggy-in-handset thingamabob we were talking about a second ago. Any kind will do -- cordless, corded, corgi-shaped -- so long as it connects to a cable that looks roughly like this at its end:

Wire, wire, on the wall. Whom, oh whom, should I call?

Got it all? Good. Now just plug everything in and follow the instructions on the OBi box to get your Google account connected. Once you're done, the phone will function just like a regular home phone, both for making and receiving calls; if someone didn't know you had the OBi box tucked away in a dusty corner, they'd never realize it wasn't an actual paid landline from the likes of AT&T.

A few final notes and asterisks worth mentioning:

It's entirely possible and actually quite easy to connect multiple Google Voice phone numbers to the same phone with this setup -- if, say, you want to be able to make and receive calls from your own Google Voice number along with a secondary Google Voice number (like one you secured for your offspring to use). The OBi box supports up to four different numbers, in fact; just sign into the OBiTalk Dashboard to mess with your box's configuration and add whatever you want.

Your landline phone has to be physically connected to the OBi box in order to work, but there's a simple way around that restriction: In my house, I have a multihandset cordless phone base hooked up to our OBi. It has several "extension" handsets that work elsewhere in the house, just like they would with a regular landline. Since they're made to work off the main base, they only have to plug into a regular power outlet, and they're good to go. You can find multihandset phones like that at most office stores or electronics retailers; I just did a quick search and found options starting at around $30.

If you also use Google Voice on your Android phone, you can have the same number work with both that mobile device and your new home phone.

...unless you've converted your Google Voice number over to Project Fi, in which case things get slightly complicated. (If all of this sounds like a bunch of gibberish, it probably doesn't apply to you. Just take a swig of the nearest chilled beverage and move on.)

Google's free Google Voice calling service is actually internet-based, as you'd expect -- and it doesn't include 911 calling on its own. If you want your new home phone to be able to call 911 and relay your house's location, you'll need to sign up for a companion E911 calling service. OBi has a partnership with a company called Anveo that lets you do this for $15 a year -- a buck-25 a month -- which won't put much of a dent in your wallet, if that kind of thing is important to you.

Yes, there was a while when this whole shebang was supposed to stop working (excellent memory, Paco!). Since then, OBi made nice with Google and got official support to provide this service. Things could always change at some point in the future, but as of now, there's no indication that the free ride will be ending anytime soon. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

Capisce? Capisce. Happy calling, you home-dwelling humanoid.

Sign up for JR's new weekly newsletter to get this column along with bonus tips, personal recommendations, and other exclusive extras delivered to your inbox.

[Android Intelligence videos at Computerworld]
The U.S. government's plan to end its oversight of the internet's domain name system should move forward as promised, despite last-minute efforts by some Republican lawmakers to derail the process, a coalition of tech companies and trade groups said.

The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) should end its supervision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Oct. 1 as planned, said a letter signed by Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon and more than 20 other companies and trade groups.

Some Republican lawmakers, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, are trying to halt the transition. Cruz, who has scheduled a Wednesday hearing on the transition, has said the proposal will "give away the Internet" to a multinational organization, even though ICANN's authority is limited to managing the domain name system.

If the plan goes through, "countries like Russia, China, and Iran could be able to censor speech on the internet," Cruz said recently. Those countries already censor the internet within their borders, however.

A transition plan approved by the broad internet community must not be delayed, countered Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, one of the trade groups signing the letter.

The transition must move forward to "ensure the continued stability and openness of the Internet, which bears directly on the economic and national security" of the U.S., Black said by email.

The transition plan, required by the NTIA, is in place and will hold ICANN accountable to the global community, the letter said. Internet companies worked with civil society groups, government organizations, and the technical community on the transition plan, the letter noted.

"The Internet is defined by its inclusivity and openness," the letter added. "Those critical characteristics are reflected in the work that ... went into the drafting of the transition proposal."

But the transition is "premature and must be postponed," Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said this week. ICANN still needs some key transparency and process reforms to happen before a transition, he said.

A Hatch-sponsored Senate resolution, passed in February 2015, also calls on the U.S. government and ICANN to take steps to protect the organization "from undue influence or capture by governments, multilateral or intergovernmental organizations, or commercial or noncommercial stakeholders."

Some conservative groups have called on Congress to block the transition, saying the U.S. needs to retain oversight over ICANN to protect internet freedoms. TechFreedom and other groups say if the NTIA ends its oversight contract with ICANN, the agency would violate a congressional appropriations rider barring the agency from moving forward with the plan this year.
Microsoft's upcoming Dynamics 365 cloud software promises a one-stop shop for ERP and CRM, but its modular convenience could come at a considerable cost, with strong incentives to sign up for bundle pricing.

So suggests a blog post published Monday but since taken down by Microsoft partner Encore Business Solutions. The blog post outlined how pricing and licensing will work for the new enterprise software. (A cached version of the post is still online.)

"Microsoft Dynamics 365 represents a re-thinking of how Microsoft approaches the licensing and pricing of its cloud and enterprise software," wrote Trevor Molag, a marketing specialist with the firm. "While Microsoft claims that pricing is simplified for Dynamics 365, any new approach will take some getting used to."

Customers will begin by choosing between two versions of Dynamics 365: one for large enterprises, and one for businesses with fewer than 250 employees. Based on that choice, they'll get to choose from among a set of individual modules.

For the enterprise version, there will be modules for operations, field service, project service, marketing, sales, and customer service, Molag said. For the business edition, there are just three: financials, sales, and marketing.

Depending on what your users need, you can buy access to just one of those modules or several. Companies that need more than one, however, will find it could make a lot of sense to opt for a bundled plan.

Whereas pricing on the individual enterprise modules ranges from $95 to $190 per user per month, for instance, two bundled plans offer pricing of $115 or $210 per user per month, according to Encore. The latter plan includes all the modules; the former excludes only operations.

For smaller businesses, individual modules will be priced at $40 per user per month, while a bundled plan provides full access to all of them for just $10 more per user per month.

Encore says the prices it lists are just estimates, and will ultimately vary based on market, purchase plan, or discounts.

Microsoft, meanwhile, said only this: "We are not sharing specific pricing or licensing details at this time, and arent commenting on speculation."

But if the numbers are close to what Microsoft eventually settles on, they're "definitely on the high side," said Frank Scavo, president of IT consulting firm Strativa, "especially if you are looking for complete ERP functionality, including operations."

In the past, Microsoft has been willing to compete on price with competitors like Salesforce.com, but "the pricing here certainly doesnt make Microsoft look like the low-cost leader," Scavo said via email.

That said, "we dont know what kind of discounting Microsoft will allow partners to offer, and we dont know how deals will be priced for customers under a volume licensing agreement," he added.

Still, one of Dynamics 365's key benefits is that it unbundles functionality, allowing customers to mix and match modules as they wish, Scavo noted. As uncovered so far, however, its pricing is structured in the opposite direction.

"The unbundling is more to allow customers to implement modules in any sequence they wish, while still encouraging them to buy more modules," he said. "I expect that Microsoft will provide more details during its upcoming Ignite conference in Atlanta."
Canada has recalled over 21,900 Galaxy Note7 smartphones after receiving a report of the overheating of the battery of one phone.

The Samsung Note7 smartphone battery has the potential to overheat and burn, posing a potential fire hazard, Health Canada, a Canadian federal government department said Monday.

The problem with the lithium-ion batteries may, however, turn out to be more serious in the U.S. where already reports of over 70 cases have been received by Samsung, according to the Canadian agency. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is charged with protecting the public from the risk of injury or death linked with certain consumer products, said Friday it was working on an official recall with Samsung but there has been no formal announcement yet of the move.

An official recall will make it illegal to sell the phone, lead to government oversight of the replacement program and provide clear guidance to consumers, said Consumer Reports, a consumer advocacy group.

CPSC has advised all users of the Note7 to power down the phones and stop charging or using the device. Samsung, which reported a battery cell issue on Sept. 2, has also advised people to power down their Note7 phones and exchange them.

There have been accidents that reports said could be traced to exploding Note7 devices. The New York Post reported Sunday that a 6-year-old boy in Brooklyn suffered burns after a Galaxy Note7 smartphone blew up in his hands, while he was watching videos.

Samsung, while announcing the problem with the Note7, said there had been 35 reports worldwide as of Sept. 1.

Consumers should immediately power down the recalled Samsung Note7 smartphone and register as soon as possible for the Canadian Product Exchange, Health Canada said in its statement. It said the recalled phones were sold in the country from Aug. 19 to Sept. 1 this year.

Samsung has confirmed working with Health Canada and said the terms of the recall will be announced as soon as they become available. The company could not immediately be reached for confirmation of the over 70 incidents in the U.S. reported by Health Canada.

The company has offered to replace the phones with newer ones, but there is uncertainty in the U.S. as to when users will get a new Galaxy Note7, as Samsung said this part of the exchange program will depend on when the CPSC process will be completed. CPSC is meanwhile looking into whether a replacement Note7 is an acceptable remedy for Samsung and phone carriers to provide to consumers.

Samsung has offered to exchange the Note7 with the Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge smartphones and to replace any Note7 specific accessories, with a refund of the price difference. It also offered loaner phones to those wanting to wait for new Note7 devices.
Apple will ship iOS 10 at 10am PDT today and millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users will want to download and install the update. What follows is a fairly complete guide of what to do.

Why upgrade?

The new release is packed with improvements: A much smarter Siri, better QuickType suggestions, brilliant new image analysis tools, the HomeKit tools we need for a connected home, an all-new iMessages platform designed to transform what we do; improvements in Maps, Apple Pay, Safari and so much more. Take a look at these 11 iOS tips and this list of less well-known iOS 10 features to get an idea. If you use a 3D Touch iPhone then the upgrade looks even more compelling.

Check compatibility

The following devices are compatible with iOS 10:

iPhone 6s,

iPhone 6s Plus,

iPhone 6,

iPhone 6 Plus,

iPhone SE,

iPhone 5s,

iPhone 5c,

iPhone 5,

iPad Pro 12.9 and 9.7,

iPad Air 2,

iPad Air,

iPad 4th gen,

iPad mini 4, mini 3, mini 2

iPod touch 6th gen.

Do you need to upgrade now?

Each year I see the same thing: millions try to upgrade their iOS at once, Apples servers struggle to cope with the demand. Ask yourself if you absolutely need to upgrade immediately and if you dont then wait a day or so, and the process should be much smoother.

Wait for the point update

Each year its the same  once the iOS is in the wild Apple will identify new flaws that havent emerged during extensive beta testing. The company usually manages to fix these problems with a subsequent point upgrade to the iOS. In some cases, and particularly for those running older devices, it may make sense to delay upgrade until the release of that version.

Backup before you begin

Once you decide to upgrade do take a moment to backup your device first, either over the air to iCloud or to your Mac/PC using iTunes. You may also want to backup your device using an external storage solution, if you have one.

Manage storage

If you intend upgrading the software today then please go through the apps and other data stored on your iPhone, deleting apps you dont use, music you dont play and so on. To remove unwanted apps, tap Settings>General>Storage & iCloud usage>Manage Storage. Use this short guide to freeing up storage to help you. Dont worry about deleting apps as you will still have access to them through the App Store, though be sure to preserve any app data you might want to use in future. You may want to create a fresh backup after this task is complete.

Get the passwords

You should make sure you take a note of all your Apple ID, iCloud, Wi-Fi, VPN and application-related passwords (Twitter, for example) before you upgrade. You may need to enter these again once the upgrade completes.

Upgrade iTunes

Even if you intend upgrading wirelessly, do take a moment to upgrade to the latest version of iTunes on your Mac/PC (if you use it).

The latest version of the software will let you upgrade through iTunes, which has been advantageous in previous years. It also lets you backup your device to the computer if you lack iCloud drive space.

Time to upgrade

There are two ways to download and install iOS 10:

Wirelessly: In Settings>General>Software Update you will be able to see if the OS is available in your region. Once it is you will be able to download and install the update here, though you will need to connect the device to power first.

With iTunes: Connect your iOS device to your computer, open up its Summary page in iTunes and click Check for Update.

Both methods will request that you agree new terms and conditions.

Restart

If the update fails to complete or device performance seems sluggish forcing it to restart may help: Press and hold both the sleep/wake button and Home button for at least 10 seconds until you see the Apple logo.

NB: iOS often reindexes its Spotlight search information after a major upgrade  the process can take time and can impact system performance while it takes place, so be patient.

Problems

If you encounter unexpected problems then this guide may help. Alternatively use Apples official support pages here:

Google+? If you use social media and happen to be a Google+ user, why not join AppleHolic's Kool Aid Corner community and join the conversation as we pursue the spirit of the New Model Apple?

Apple TV? If you want to learn how to get the very best out of your Apple TV, please visit my Apple TV website.

Got a story? Drop me a line via Twitter or in comments below and let me know. I'd like it if you chose to follow me on Twitter so I can let you know when fresh items are published here first on Computerworld.
Given some recent headlines, and the emotions the issue tends to stir up, Justine Greening might have expected a grilling even from some on her own side as she took the the dispatch box yesterday afternoon.

The Education Secretary might have taken a little comfort from the surprise news that David Cameron had helped her out by announcing his resignation just in time to distract the media. As it turned out, though, she didnt need a diversion after all.

Yes, the Labour benches were typically scornful of the Governments proposed reforms  but then theyve been scornful of just about every education reform in recent years.

More interesting was the response from Conservative MPs. Its hardly a secret that some strongly oppose the idea of new grammar schools, or other forms of selective schooling, and a few have speculated openly about the prospect of defeating the proposals. Greening could have been walking into an ambush from her own side, but in the event she had a much more gentle reception.

By my count, of the 37 Conservatives who asked questions following her statement, the vast majority were welcoming of the new proposals.

Michael Gove, who laid so much radical groundwork in the Coalition years, praised the clear moral purpose that runs through every word of her statement and urged her to hold her ground against Labour dogmatists.

Several of those MPs whose constituencies already contain grammar schools  such as Conor Burns, Sir Edward Leigh and Victoria Atkins  cited their success and advised the Education Secretary to study their examples.

Others seemed attracted to the radicalism of the ideas put forward in recent days. William Wragg, a comprehensive schoolboy, commended Greening on her bold new departure, while Kwasi Kwarteng hailed the news as a step in the right direction before expressing his frustration at the fact that so many of the objectors to this scheme are themselves the products of selective education.

For all the hype about an open rebellion, only half a dozen MPs seemed willing to voice actively negative opinions of the plans. Anna Soubry declared that there is no desire in my constituency for us to have selection. Alex Shelbrooke and Michelle Donelan both expressed strong concern about stigma being attached to those who did not get into new selective schools. Keith Simpson, a grammar school boy himself, voiced severe reservations, warning that if I had failed the 11-plusI certainly would not be here today. Ben Howlett challenged the Governments premise for the proposals: having conducted research on this issue and asked the Library, I have found no evidence, thus far, to suggest that social mobility is improved as a result of opening up new grammar schools. Most bluntly, Jason McCartney chose to imply that the policy amounted to selection and segregation.

Each of those will trouble the Government, given its small majority  and there may well be others who are yet to show their hands. But really the debate surprised in its tone: of the remaining 31 Tory speakers, the vast majority engaged with the detail of the policy. Might local catchment areas be included, asked Theresa Villers, expressing some anxiety about the practicalities.

Steve Double and Simon Hoare, both from the South West, urged the Secretary of State to ensure rural schools were adequately funded. Oliver Dowden, Claire Perry and Matt Warman wanted more information about the way grammars would fit in with the existing landscape of faith schools, free schools, academies and others.

University Technical Colleges, transport costs, school leadership, STEM subjects and many other topics all came up. Even Nicky Morgan, who openly attacks the policy on Twitter, preferred to ask about practical steps to reach the poorest pupils. And while Ken Clarke objected pretty fundamentally to the plans for faith schools, on grammars he simply cautioned that The devil lies in the detail.

He is right, of course, but I suspect that Greening will be more than happy to discuss the details of how her plans will work as long as people might like. After all, once MPs are discussing the fine detail, that suggests they are buying into the broad sweep of the policy from the outset.

That isnt to say the school reforms are home and dry. A Conservative rebellion could yet derail them, particularly if an issue develops in those devilish details or the opponents get organised, or both. But yesterday passed without any sign of a particularly co-ordinated rebellion on the topic. That in itself is a small victory.
Issue

Delivering high quality vocational education and technical training.

Background

In the grip of grammar school mania, its unsurprising so little attention was paid to the recent NAO report on the Governments apprenticeship scheme. Thats unsurprising but a shame, as apprenticeships are likely to have a greater impact on the public than a few new selective schools.

Apprenticeships and vocational education generally are popular. In the detailed landscape polling I commissioned last year at Policy Exchange, C1 and C2 voters put improving vocational education near the very top of their education policy priorities  behind improving discipline and cutting class sizes, long the twin obsessions of parents.

Their popularity amongst these lower middle class voters makes sense. They are the group that would benefit from better apprenticeships most. Alternatives to 27,000 degrees, which are both high-skill and that offer career growth, such vocational qualifications are highly attractive  particularly when we know that middle class women in particular struggle to find good career prospects.

But that is not what the Government is likely to offer, as the NAOs report suggests. Most apprenticeship growth in this country has been low skill: what is called Level 2. Level 2 courses have poor, even negative, wage returns. The number of real apprenticeships  high skill, like the ones that are the norm in parts of Europe  remain the minority.

Because of the Governments three million target, that is likely to continue. The only way they can achieve such high targets with current funding levels is by prioritising low-skill, low-cost apprenticeships. This helps no one but Ministers trumpeting statistics in Parliament.

Meanwhile, an equally baffling decision to exempt around 98 per cent of employers from the apprenticeship levy means that big companies will hoover up funding and places. As a result young apprentices in areas dominated by small employers  in those areas the Government wants to revitalise  will lose out.

What next

High-level apprenticeships work: there is very strong evidence that they are good for individuals and good for the economy. But to achieve their potential the government needs to do three things.

First, drop the apprenticeship target and replace it with a commitment to high quality, technical apprenticeships with tough standards. Second, ignore the lobbying from the CBI on the apprenticeship levy and expand it to treat employers equally. In countries like Denmark and Germany  with thriving industrial sectors  employers pay in. We need to do the same. Third, treat apprenticeships as a proper alternative to university, with the same funding and support attached.

The truth is, the media dont find apprenticeships terribly interesting. The Government wont get big PR wins if they do this. But a serious industrial strategy, and a real commitment to the lives of the just about managing, demands it.
And then there was one. Today is George Osbornes first in the Commons without the man who has been his political partner almost since both were elected together in 2001. Furthermore, he wakes to the official publication of the Boundary Commissions proposal to abolish his Tatton constituency. Morning, George!

The first is a worse blow than the second. It would be surprising were the former Chancellor, the man who co-ran the Conservatives from 2005 until only a few weeks ago, were not to find another seat  in Cheshire or elsewhere. But the announcement of Camerons departure will have been a further demonstration of the fickleness of the gods.

Until recently, Osborne was Secord Lord of the Treasury, spider at the centre of the web, master of all he surveyed, holder of the nations purse-strings, funder of a score and more of boondoogles to marginal Tory seats, buttered up to and fawned over by Conservative backbenchers. Now? They flee from me that sometime did me seek.

But the former Chancellor is nothing if not a realist. He can work the numbers out as well as anyone. The Conservatives win again in 2020. Theresa May keeps him out of Cabinet. But they narrowly lose to Sadiq Khan in 2025. He wins the consequent Tory leadership election, and is Prime Minister in 2030 at 59  the same age that May is now.

A question that follows is whether he wants to hang around the Commons for the best part of ten years as a backbencher on the off-chance that this may happen  contacts atrophying, skills rusting, coverage fading, reputation as a winner trashed, symbol of a gamble with Britains future that failed: an octopus with lopped tentacles.

He will ask it to himself, and answer that it aint necessary so. A period that has seen a surprise Conservative election victory (to which his own contribution was considerable), the overthrow of the established order that was the referendum result, and the near-wipeout of Scottish Labour at Westminster can see stranger things yet. Anything can happen at backgammon, as Alan Clark used to say.

This leads to an inescapable conclusion. If he is to rise  or, rather, return to office before 2020  May must fall, or at least be weakened to the point where she cannot avoid summoning him back to one of the great offices of state. For he can be sure, given the brutal manner of his sacking, that she will not return him to government unless she has to.

He must, however, mask this truth as best he can. He cannot avoid any political initiative that he undertakes being written up as a challenge to her: thats a Westminster Bubble fact of life. But he can minimise the risk if he thinks through what he does carefully and acts likewise. So how might he proceed?

He will continue to be a voice for the kind of socially liberal, metropolitan-flavoured, economically liberal, internationalist conservatism in which he believes. Thats a given. He will also burnish his reputation as a Chancellor who turned the economy round after a crisis when his opponents said he couldnt. Thats a given, too.

But he clearly needs to do something, or a series of somethings, that are a bit more focused. One option is to set himself up as a champion of the midlands and north, making the devolutionary case for his Northern Powerhouse programme (which the new Government is ungripped by).

However, it might be hard to gain cut-through for such a campaign, given Mays stress on ordinary working people or, as she put it last week, ordinary, working class people. Another would be to appoint himself as an expert on foreign affairs. This ought to work. He has a sophisticated, strategic, Washington-flavoured feel for what different countries mean in the world, what their leaders are up to, and what the implications are for Britain.

Another still would be to combine parts of that first idea with bits of the second. He could become a champion of infrastructure and housing. This would be authentic. He has always smiled on Heathrow expanion and pushed for building more homes. His Hinkley Point nuclear scheme showed that he wasnt frightened to take decisions.

If all this sounds a little mechanical and inhuman  as he has sometimes been accused of being  he could seek ways of humanising it. He could write a book, start a blog  or vlog. Better still, he could get on TV, and bang a drum for the modern world, Britains future, and how infrastucture is linked to both.

He could go to China, and paint a picture-story of why he believes its prospects and Britains are bound together. He could gawp at Shanghai Stock Exchange, ride a bullet train, gesture at the teeming crowds of Chengdu, Zhuzhou, Huainan. He could re-shoulder the backpack he used when he travelled the country as an even younger man.

He could nod and smile along with British exporters who are trying to make their way. He could go to Africa, where China and the West are grappling for money and power. Or spread his net wider still  and wider. He could travel to Texas or Illinois and interview former Presidents. He could wangle a way to sit down with Modi in Delhi.

He could tell the tale of how we must modernise or die. No, start that again. He could say that Britain has always been an exciting, dynamic, cutting-edge country  and that there are great opportunities out there for us in the wide world. He could wrap himself in the future-looking feel that is part of his character. He could blast into space!

He will probably do something smarter than any of these things. But you can never tell. He has had his triumphs and disasters  more of the latter recently than the former, including that reprehensible punishment budget plan. Thats why ConservativeHome argued that he had to leave the Government. If you co-lead one side of the biggest referendum campaign in British history and lose, you have to go  irrespective of the way you co-led it.

The bottom line, however, is surely this. He didnt transform Britains economy as Chancellor. But he did help to turn it round. The growth, the jobs boom, Help to Buy, the corporation tax cuts, the Office of Budget Responsibility, the new minimum wage, the childcare offer, the shift of business rate revenues to local goverment

The 0.7 per cent aid commitment, the end of annuity compulsion, the bank levy, Funding for Lending, High Speed 2, Crossrail, the extension of Small Business rate relief, the Welfare Cap, the  no, enough! You get the point. Like them or loathe them, Osbornes policies ran through the stick of rock that was the Coalition all the way through.

He is a politician of the first rank  or has been. He is creative, inventive, forceful. His faults are well known enough not to require repetition. He cannot come back until Brexit has formally happened. But there is one post not of the very top rank, but of the highest importance, that he could take, were he to return to government in, say, late 2019. Unlike Gordon Brown, he made sure as Chancellor not to lose touch with the armed forces.

The guarantee that Britain would meet the minimum NATO two per cent of GDP requirement took place on his watch at the Treasury. He could not reasonably refuse a summons to the Ministry of Defence. We are not recommending such a course, but it bears thinking about. If he is still a backbencher in early 2020 or so, the best guess is that he will sniff the wind, weigh up his options, and decide whether its worth, as he sees it, standing again.
SUBSCRIBE

Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates straight in your inbox.
 Threat from Terrorist Groups is the 'Most Serious since 9/11 Attacks' | Main | USA Today Image Blurs Reality on Israeli Counterterror Raids 

September 12, 2016

The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun Highlight U.S. Trade Mission to Israel



The Washington Posts Hogan plans trade mission to see Israeli start-ups? (Sept. 8, 2016) provided readers with a look at how Maryland is seeking to learn from the Jewish states culture of business innovation.

The article, by Post reporter Josh Hicks, noted that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan plans to embark on a seven-day trade mission to Israel this month with several members of his cabinet and leaders from the states business, academic and Jewish communities.?

According to The Post, the tripslated to depart on September 19will focus on Israels robust culture and strong presence in the high-tech fields of cybersecurity, technology and the sciences.?

The governor and those accompanying him will visit Tel Aviv, Beersheba and Jerusalem.

The Washington Post was not the only paper to detail Hogans trip. The Baltimore Sun (Hogan plans to lead Israel trade mission this month,? Sept. 8 2016) also covered the story.

Close ties between Maryland and Israel have long existed. More than 20 Israeli companies have offices in Maryland, both papers reported. Additionally, as Hicks pointed out, every governor of the state has visited the country for trade missions for at least the past 25 years.?

As CAMERA has noted (see, for example Israel Aids Californias Water Conservation,? May 8, 2016), Israeli innovations have helped other U.S. states. Israels medical, technological and scientific developments have enabled the Jewish state to punch above its weight. For example, as a May 15, 2016 Washington Post story documented (Cyber-city rises from the desert?), Israel has pioneered cooperation between academia, the government and private companies in the realm of cybersecurity.

Major U.S. news media coverage of Israel is often fixated on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and related issues. In their articles, The Post and The Sun illustrated that Israels story is every bit as much about cooperation and innovation.





Posted by SD at September 12, 2016 03:41 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
The dispossessed: a pressing question of our time

The EU migration crisis is still at the top of the agenda. Various political forces are trying to use this problem for their own benefit, often forgetting that most of the refugees from the Middle East and Africa who arrived in the EU in the last two years did so out of fear for their lives. They traded their modest but stable and predictable lives for chaos, loss of loved ones, poverty of refugee camps, criminality of city outskirts, and ostracism by the EU populace.

In reality, the second decade of the 21st century, which only a quarter century ago was predicted to be socially progressive and technologically creative, saw millions of people displaced from their homelands due to their desire to simply survive physically.

The EU soon saw the arrival of 1,353,000 migrants in 2015. Germany received 539 thousand, Sweden 152 thousand, Hungary 149 thousand, and Italy and Austria 90 thousand apiece, according to Eurostat. Over 3,700 migrants perished on the way to Europe in 2015.

Meanwhile, Germany will not reconsider its migration policies even after the series of terrorist attacks, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkels statement on July 28. She emphasised that Germany will do everything possible to ensure security in a way consistent with humanitarian values.

Moreover, she stated that Germany will continue to adhere to its principles and offer shelter to all who deserve it regardless of whether they come before September or after. There are enough volunteers and helpers to help everyone who wishes to live in peace in Germany.

However, our understanding of freedom and security is being tested. We once again have to find balance among them. Terrorists want us to discard our key beliefs. They want to divide our society, our cooperation, they want to attack our way of life, our openness, and they want to prevent us from meeting others. They are sowing hatred among peoples. We are finally taking measures against them. I have told this to the entire German government and security services, including federal authorities. Merkel added that the FRG will accelerate the deportation of those whose refugee status was denied.

Geneva Convention

In normative terms, Merkel was referring to the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees which states that practically all unlawful migrants arriving in the EU have the right to refugee status. Refugees may not be deported if they are in danger in countries from which they arrived. Moreover, the Convention views any individual who, due to justified concerns of becoming a victim of persecution due to race, faith, citizenship, social group membership, or political beliefs, has found himself outside ones country of citizenship and cant use that countrys protection or does not wish to use that protection due to concern for safety as a refugee.

The treatment of refugees is moreover enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which likewise speaks to the individuals right to seek asylum, cross borders in search of protection from persecution, and seek preservation of individual freedoms and dignity, etc. These lofty ideals are increasingly being challenged by the facts on the ground in the form of the steadily deteriorating situation both in the EU (including Germany) and the EUs politically relevant immediate neighbourhood from which the refugees, thanks to regime change and colour revolution policies supported by the EUs member states, originate.

Since the situation in the Middle East and North Africa is not improving, and will generate new waves of migration which will likewise be beyond the German or EU bureaucracys ability to cope, due to their inability to rethink their approaches to the problem. This will lead to the worsening of migrants welfare, and to further splits within the society.

Given the dire circumstances among the displaced persons, their societal marginalisation and inability or unwillingness to assimilate, humanitarian efforts are failing. Crime and inter-ethnic conflict is on the rise, and terrorists appeals are finding willing recruits among the youth.

Organised crime groups in large German cities are trying to recruit the refugees living in shelters into their ranks. They are mainly interested in young, strong and fit males who are to perform the dirty work, such as the drug trade, robberies and burglaries. According to the German police labour union head Bodo Pfaltzgraff, there are reports that as soon as a new refugee camp is opened, a few days later large black limos arrive there to begin recruitment. Berlin chief prosecutor for organised crime, Sjors Kamstr, explains that the migrants lack of knowledge of German pushes them into the arms of those who speak their native language.

Kidnappings

Moreover, European media are worried by the mass kidnappings of children who arrived in Europe as refugees. Authorities cant account for thousands of children who arrived in the EU. According to Interpol, up to 10,000 adolescents have disappeared without a trace since the crisis began. There is a possibility organised crime groups are deliberately targeting them for exploitation of various types.

EU law enforcement is convinced that human trafficking is a quick-profit multi-billion-dollar business, controlled by over 40,000 members of various criminal syndicates, says the Financial Times. Europol has described a broad spectrum of criminal activities revolving around the migration crisis: document forgeries, bribes, sexual exploitation of children, prostitution and slave labour.

Moreover, organised crime is exploiting migrants in restaurants and underground workshops. In southern Italy, local syndicates are forcing migrants to work in agriculture. The organisers have arrived in the EU from the same countries as the current refugees, and already had residence permits or passports by the time the crisis began. The ongoing migration crisis is not only useful to the crime syndicates, but also criminal bankers, since they are engaged in money laundering associated with trafficking. According to a Europol report, last year criminal groups earned up to US$6 billion on the migration wave that flooded Europe.

Criminal networks

Nine out of 10 migrants arriving in the EU in 2015 used the services far-flung criminal networks, operating along migrant movement routes.

In 2015 alone, approximately 1 million migrants arrived in the EU, and most of them paid between 3,000 and 6,000 Euro. Thus the human traffickers profit is estimated to have reached somewhere in the vicinity of US$5-6 billion.

If this situation is not to get worse, it would require the adoption of a revised approach, namely a unified, well-funded and comprehensive EU-level migration policy, consisting of protecting the rights of migrants, combating organised crime among ethnic groups, screening new arrivals, guaranteeing access to social services and labour markets, etc. Otherwise, the EU is risking a massive social explosion provoked by growing inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflict, and the constant perception of a growing terrorist threat. Unless addressed rapidly, these problems could be sufficient to destroy the already fragile EU common security framework.

The other increasingly plausible alternative is the palestinianisation of the refugees on EUs territory, which would actually represent a mere extension of the no-go zones increasingly in evidence in various major European urban agglomerations.

The original no-go zone, Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are a classic ghetto, a state within a state. Neither the army not police venture there. Formally they are under UN jurisdiction, but they lead to a trapped, self-contained existence with all the seeming attributes of independence: armed forces, ideology, population, and even social policies, with only sovereign territory being absent.

According to the UN, 2/3 of the 400,000 refugees registered in Lebanon live in poverty, with unemployment reaching 70%. Palestinians themselves claim these numbers are even higher, 90% and 80%, respectively.

The sad state of the local Palestinian Diaspora is due to the countrys government policies which are not aimed at assimilating these guests. Palestinians in Lebanon are de-facto prohibited from working; there is a ban list of 67 professions which they may not engage in no matter what. The remainder (mainly consisting of physical labour jobs) are open to the Palestinians, but only with the individual permit of the Ministry of Labour. These permits are all but impossible to obtain.

Palestinians are also forbidden to do many other things. Some camps forbid repairing or building housing. However, since it cant be enforced, army checkpoints around the camps simply stop anyone trying to bring in construction materials.

All Palestinians, without exception, are banned from buying real estate outside the camps. That law was adopted only in 2001, prior to which many managed to acquire an apartment or a plot of land. Recognising that fact, the Lebanese government adopted a law, making it impossible to pass real estate from generation to generation. Once the owner dies, the property reverts to the Lebanese government.

After several Arab-Israeli wars, by the mid-1970s, Lebanon and the UN lost control over all of the 15 camps which then came under control of armed movements which comprised the PLO under Yasser Arafat. The ensuing civil war saw Palestinians take active part in the fighting. In 1982, the PLOs existence outside the UNs control was used by Israel as an excuse to invade and to occupy Beirut. Saving themselves from Israeli forces, the leadership and many thousands of armed PLO fighters left for Tunisia. The unprotected camps fell victim to mass slaughter.

The surviving camps function under a self-government, consisting of collegial structures such as peoples committees. They include the representatives of 12 influential Palestinian parties, the elders, and respected inhabitants of the camps. There is no tax collection. The committees only deal with questions of security, for which a small sum is collected from the camps inhabitants.

While it may seem that, at the moment, nothing of the sort could spring up within the borders of the EU, the presence of practically permanent refugee camps and the growing number of the refugees mean that, unless action is taken soon, the palestinianisation of the EUs refugees will take place by default, given the EUs inability to take concerted action and financial constraints imposed by the European Central Bank and the EU Stability Pact. But the natural consequence will be the lebanisation of the EU, which would spell the end of the European integration project, and of the very idea, for decades if not centuries to come.

Therefore what is left for the EU to do? The most obvious answers are:

The EU must quickly and honestly acknowledge the problems existence and its magnitude, as well as the failure of earlier policies.

It must quickly change its approach toward forming a unified migration policy and reaching out to migrants, ensuring their rights, and combating organised crime groups.

It must implement effective screening of the new arrivals.

Those who are allowed to remain should gain access to social and medical services and the legal labour market.

Migrants ought to be ensured basic living conditions.

Can all that be done? Will it be done in time? Will that be enough? These are the most pressing questions of our time.

South Front
Believe in democracy, dream of justice

We pass on to our readers the following translated version of a speech by deposed Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, given on August 31, after Brazils Senate voted 61 to 20 to remove her from power and replace her as president with the right-wing former Vice President, Michel Temer.

Dilma Rousseff.

The impeachment and removal of Rousseff came after she was suspended from office in May. Though at least 60 percent of the senators who voted for her impeachment are credibly accused of corruption, Rousseff herself was not accused of corruption, but only of carrying out adjustments in the 2015 budget that her enemies claim amount to a crime of responsibility, a legalistic phrase that has to be invoked to impeach and remove a Brazilian president. Rousseff pointed out that what she did was similar to what other presidents have done in the past and was necessary to save vital social programs that have pulled millions of Brazilians out of poverty during her administration and that of her predecessor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

In her defiant speech, Rousseff asks Brazilians to look at the real reasons for her impeachment and removal from power. She points out that the politicians that pushed for her removal have expressed fear that if she remained in power, investigations into their corrupt practices, many revealed by an investigation called Lava Jato or Jet Car Wash, will continue. In other words, her impeachment and removal will allow the real guilty parties to escape justice.

She points out that she was re-elected to the presidency in 2014 with 54 percent of the vote, which was negated by the action of 61 of the 81 members of the Brazilian Senate.

Further, she underlines the reactionary ideology that motivates Mr Temer and his colleagues. While deposing the first woman president in Brazils history, they have installed a cabinet composed exclusively of white men. The policies that Mr Temer is carrying out are aimed at reversing the progressive changes initiated when Lula da Silva first took power in 2003. They sharply cut the health, education, housing, and social welfare budgets; eliminate government agencies that focused on social justice for women, Afro-Brazilians, Indigenous people, youth, LGBT people, pensioners, and the poor; and privilege the interests of Brazilian and transnational big business. Workers and labour unions rights are especially threatened by the new, un-elected regime. This is why Rousseff, her Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores), and their allies refer to what happened as a coup. She makes pointed reference to the similarity to the 1964 military coup, after which she and many others were subjected to vicious repression - including torture in her case.

Rousseff calls for the people of Brazil who have benefited during her and Lulas administrations to resist the coup and fight the gutting of progressive policies. She ends with a poem by Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), predicting that the Brazilian people will overcome present difficulties the way the keel of a ship cuts through the waves.

The left in Brazil is continuing mass demonstrations against the rights power grab and promoting new snap elections  an idea highly popular with the Brazilian people.

Emile Schepers for Peoples World

Speech by Dilma Rousseff upon her removal as President of Brazil

Greetings to ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, senators, federal deputies, party leaders, leaders of social movements, and to the women and men of my country.

Today the federal Senate made a decision that will enter history alongside its great injustices. The senators who voted for impeachment chose to tear up the federal Constitution. They decided to interrupt the mandate of a president who did not commit a crime of responsibility. They condemned an innocent woman and consummated a parliamentary coup.

With the approval of my definitive removal from office, politicians who have desperately sought to escape the arm of the judicial system have seized power, alongside the ones who lost the last four elections. They do not ascend to the government through the direct vote, like Lula and I did in 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014. They have appropriated power through a coup detat.

It is the second coup that I have faced in my life. The first, the military coup [of 1964], supported with the violence of arms, of repression, and of torture, affected me when I was a young activist. The second, the parliamentary coup carried out today by means of a juridical farce, removes me from the office to which I was elected by the people.

It is indisputably an indirect election, in which 61 senators substitute the will expressed by 54.5 million voters. It is a fraud, which we will appeal at every possible level of the judicial system.

It is horrifying that the greatest effort against corruption in our history, made possible by actions developed and laws created since 2003 and deepened under my government, have wound up bringing to power a group of corrupt [politicians who are themselves] under investigation.

The progressive, inclusive, and democratic national agenda that I represent is being interrupted by powerful conservative and reactionary forces, with the support of a biased and venal press. They have seized the institutions of the state in order to place it at the service of radical economic liberalism and social regressiveness.

They have overthrown the first female president of Brazil, with no justification whatsoever.

But the coup was not carried out solely against me and against my party. This was just the beginning. This coup will indiscriminately attack any progressive and democratic political organisation.

This coup is against social movements, against labour, and against those who fight for rights of any kind  for the right to work and the protection of labour laws; the right to a just retirement; the right to housing and to land; the right to education, to health, and to culture; the right of the youth to be the protagonists of their own history; the rights of black people, Indigenous people, the LGBT community, and women; the right to demonstrate without being repressed.

The coup is against the people and against the nation. The coup is misogynist. The coup is homophobic. The coup is racist. It represents the imposition of the culture of intolerance, of prejudice, of violence.

I ask the Brazilian people to hear me. I am speaking to the more than 54 million who voted for me in 2014. I speak to the 110 million who validated direct elections as the way presidents should be chosen.

I speak principally to the Brazilians who, during my time in office, overcame misery, realised the dream of owning their own home, began to receive medical care, got into college, and stopped being invisible in the eyes of the nation, beginning to possess rights which had always been denied them.

The disbelief and the hurt that we feel at moments like this are not what you should allow to counsel you. Dont stop fighting.

Listen well: They think that they have defeated us, but they are wrong. I know that we are all going to fight. There will be against them the firmest, most untiring, and energetic opposition that any government that comes to power by a coup can face.

When President Lula was elected for the first time, in 2003, we came to the government singing together that no one should be afraid to be happy. For more than 13 years, we successfully carried out a project that promoted the greatest social inclusion and reduction in inequality in the history of our country.

The story does not end like this. I am certain that the interruption of this process by the coup is not definitive. We will return. We will return in order to continue on our journey to a Brazil in which the people are sovereign.

I hope that we will know how to come together in defence of causes that are common to all progressives, independent of our party affiliation or political position. I propose that we fight, all together, against this step backwards, against this conservative agenda, against the revocation of our rights, for our national sovereignty, and for the full re-establishment of democracy.

I leave the presidency the way I arrived: without being guilty of any illicit act, without having betrayed any of my commitments, with dignity, and carrying in my chest the same love and admiration for the Brazilian people and the same will to continue fighting for Brazil.

I lived my truth. I gave the best I was capable of. I did not flee from my responsibilities. I felt the pain of human suffering. I was moved by the fight against misery and hunger. I combated inequality.

I fought good battles. Some I lost, many I won. In this moment, I am inspired by Darcy Ribeiro to say, I would not like to be in the place of those who judge themselves victors. History will be implacable against them.

To the women of Brazil, who covered me in flowers and in affection, I ask you to believe that you [still] can. Future generations of Brazilian women will know that the first time a woman became president of the Republic, chauvinism and misogyny showed their ugly faces. We have begun building a one-way path to gender equality. Nothing will make us stop.

At this moment, I will not tell you goodbye. I am certain that I can tell you, See you soon.

In closing, I share with you some beautiful encouragement from the Russian poet Mayakovsky:

We are not happy, its trueBut what reason would we have to be sad?The sea of history is agitatedThreats and wars, we will have to pass through themBreaking them as we doCutting them like the keel of a ship.

A tender embrace for all the Brazilian people, who share with me a belief in democracy and who dream of justice.

Peoples World
Sussex News

Story Saved

You can find this story in My Bookmarks.

Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right.
Art McClung

Art McClung was appointed Moss Point's police chief after serving as the interim chief following the resignation of Keith Davis. (Myya Robinson / gulflive.com)

(Picasa)

MOSS POINT, Miss. -- Time ran out on Tuesday for former Moss Point Chief of Police Art McClung, who had been faced with the option of resigning or being terminated.

The Moss Point Board of Aldermen decided last week to remove McClung from his post as police chief, but provided him with the opportunity to resign. He had until Tuesday to do so.

At the beginning of Tuesday's budget meeting, McClung's resignation letter was read. Had he not submitted a letter of resignation by 5 p.m., the board would have fired him.

McClung's fate was decided by the aldermen in a 5-1 vote after Ward 1 Alderman James C. Smith made the motion to terminate him.

McClung immediately came under fire after the Sun Herald released dash cam footage of him being pulled over by Pascagoula police for allegedly driving 109 mph and showing signs of intoxication. Officers could be heard saying, "he's toast" and McClung was clearly heard on dash cam footage telling officers he'd had "about three vodkas."

At last Tuesday's meeting, McClung was not allowed to speak before the public, but instead was taken into executive session with the aldermen. Afterward, asked if he felt he would retain his job, McClung responded, "you would have to ask the Board of Aldermen."

Ward 4 Alderwoman Shirley Chambers, who cast the lone vote against the firing, said she did not have enough information to vote against McClung and said that other city officials have made mistakes that have been "swept under the rug."

The Mississippi Press reached out to McClung directly on Tuesday, but did not receive a response.
PASCAGOULA, Miss. - After months of discussion, Jackson County's effort to re-evaluate its ambulance service contract is nearing a final decision, with three companies in the running.

The discussion goes back at least as far as April, when some municipal and county officials backed an effort to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a new ambulance service contract. Some complained that the county had failed to exercise adequate oversight of Acadian Ambulance Service, the county's longtime provider, while others said the company was performing well and the county should maintain its established relationship.

Now it appears the county Board of Supervisors will make a decision in October, choosing between Acadian and two competitors who submitted bids in response to the RFP.

Recent developments:

July: The county's revitalized EMS Advisory Board submitted its recommendation to the supervisors, which was to renegotiate with Acadian. District 3 supervisor Ken Taylor disagreed, saying the county's ambulance service had not been subject to competition in 16 years, that some advisory board members had a close association with the Acadian and that there was the possibility of saving "quite a bit of money by competing our services."

District 4 Supervisor Troy Ross concurred with Taylor, citing the benefits of healthy competition and stating that an RFP does not mean the current service provided by Acadian has been poor.

"An RFP is purely a competition," Ross said. "If you are the best game in town and you provide the best service, let's bring the competition on and let's see what Jackson County can get. It's been 16 years and it is time to see who else is out there."

In a 3-2 vote in which District 5 Supervisor Randy Bosarge sided with Taylor and Ross, the board decided it would be in the best interest of the county to go out for an RFP.

August: A total of six providers picked up packets, indicating their interest in bidding to become the next Emergency Medical Services provider to the residents of Jackson County.

September: EMS Advisory Board Chairman George Sholl said this week that out of the six companies that picked up bid packets, three have submitted proposals. They are American Medical Response (AMR), Pafford and the county's current emergency medical services provider, Acadian.

According to Sholl, the advisory board will meet on Thursday morning to discuss the proposals submitted by the two new companies, along with Acadian. Sholl said members of the advisory board have had copies of the submitted proposals for a couple of weeks and that the purpose of Thursday's meeting is to score the proposals and ask any additional questions they may have about the ambulance service providers.

The advisory board will then meet again on Sept. 29 to enter discussions regarding who board members feel is the best suitor for ambulance services in Jackson County. Sholl will then present the advisory board's recommendation to the supervisors, which they will then consider at the first supervisors meeting in October.
-480c4926afb32e75.jpg

The seventh annual Mississippi Songwriters Festival will kickoff in downtown Ocean Springs Thursday evening.

(File photo/Gulflive.com)

OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- Songwriters from a variety of genres will once again flock to downtown Ocean Springs as the annual Mississippi Songwriters Festival gets underway Thursday.

Now in its 7th year, the festival has grown far beyond its initial goal of bringing Nashville-based songwriters to the coast.

Founder George Cumbest noted that from the festival grew the Mississippi Songwriters Alliance and its educational outreach programs, which have provided musical instruction and inspiration to more than 1,000 children.

"It started out as just a festival," Cumbest said, "but we've added all these other components. Our goal of creating a bridge from Nashville to the coast has been reached."

In addition to the alliance and outreach programs, the festival has also resulted in weekly shows at the Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Arts Center.

But this week, all eyes -- and ears -- are on the festival, which features songwriters who have penned hits for the likes of Blake Shelton, Jennifer Lopez, Merle Haggard, Rascal Flats, Kenny Chesney, Jimmy Buffet, Garth Brooks, Lynard Skynard and Carrie Underwood, among others.

Among the headliners for this year's festival is Grammy-nominated songwriter Michael Gavin, who will not only perform during the festival but will also conduct a workshop.

Gavin has written 19 number one hits and 32 others than made the top 10. Among his number one hits are "Waiting For Tonight," recorded by Lopez; "Highway Robbery," recorded by Tanya Tucker; "In A New York Minute," recorded by Ronnie Milsap; "Desperado Love," recorded by Conway Twitty; and "Only One You," recorded by T.G. Sheppard.

The workshop will be conducted in two-parts on Saturday at Gulf Hills Resort in St. Martin, with Gavin conducting the first workshop, which will focus on technique, lyrics, melody and the business aspects of the music industry.

The second workshop will be led by Delta Community College professor Jamey Shannon, who will discuss chord structure, progressions and theory.

The cost to attend is $35 for one session of $60 for both. Those interested can register for the workshop by emailing Cumbest at cumbestmusic@gmail.com.

The festival kicks off Thursday night with the Songs & Stories Radio Show broadcast live from the Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Arts Center. At 9 p.m., Jordyn Mallory will perform at Boots & Spurs.

Performances will be in full swing Friday and Saturday nights, from 6 p.m. to midnight each night. Venues include Boots & Spurs, Tom's Pizzeria, Off The Hook Fish House, Mosaic Tapas Bar, The Julep Room, Murkey Waters BBQ and Salvetti's Italian Restaurant.

Artists scheduled to perform include Tommy Barnes, Travis Meadows, Tony Mullins, Garvin, Hannah Dasher, Brett Anderson, Jake Mitchell, Moose Brown, Wynn Varble, Mule Massey, T-Bone Pruitt, Bret Jones, Karen Reynolds, Sean Gasaway, Derek Norsworthy, Brandon Green, Marianne Allison and Double Dee.

The festival's Youth Showcase is again scheduled for Saturday afternoon at Tom's Pizzeria and a "grand finale" is planned at Mosaic Tapas Bar Sunday afternoon at 2.

Admission to all venues and performances is free. A complete schedule of performances can be found at the festival website.
Channel programs News

Guerilla Marketing Stunt For Dell-EMC Greets HPE Global Partner Conference Attendees

Matt Brown

Share this

The rivalry between technology industry giants Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise spilled out onto the streets of Boston Tuesday morning in the form of a guerrilla marketing assault on behalf of Dell.



In a show of bravado that was equal parts marketing stunt and surrealist street theater outside the Boston Convention Center, the site of this week's HPE Global Partner Conference, people dressed head-to-toe in tight, black outfits waved large white balloons emblazoned with Dell talking points.



Prominently featuring the new Dell-EMC logo, the balloons read, #1 in secure business laptops, #1 in external storage, #1 in cloud infrastructure, and #1 in all-flash storage, among other claims.



[Related: HPE Partner Power: Driving Game-Changing Business Outcomes For Customers]



Mark McKeever, principal at Tempe, Ariz.-based solution provider MicroAge who is attending the HPE conference, told CRN in an email that while the stunt is certainly visible, it's not necessarily a tactic that will have financial impact. "It's not an approach to marketing that I would invest in to win enterprise business or recruit partners. I'd really love to know how they will measure the ROI," McKeever said. "Raining on someone else's parade doesn't really impress or resonate with me."

Dell and HPE are fierce competitors, and the rhetoric soared to a higher temperature last week when Dell completed its landmark $58 billion acquisition of EMC. HPE CEO Meg Whitman criticized the merger as good for Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell, but not necessarily good for his company or its customers and partners.



Whitman, who has overseen an effort to reduce HPE to its most essential units and strengths, said that becoming smaller will make her company more nimble and more prepared to lead in a rapidly changing IT market, while the $47 billion in debt that Dell took on to make the EMC acquisition work would weigh heavily on the company, making it slower and less innovative.



Michael Dell says his company would have the advantage of scale, and its new, larger size would not make it any less nimble. He stressed that Dell, as a privately held firm, would have more freedom to innovate because it isnt beholden to the whims of investors. Dells debt payments, he said, would be less than what its competitors pay in share buybacks and dividends.



In the merger, Dell established two distinct divisions: a Dell-EMC enterprise division and a PC division known simply as Dell. The Round Rock, Texas, company is now a more-than $70 billion global IT behemoth.

Last year, Hewlett-Packard split into two separate companies: HPE, and HP Inc., which sells PCs and printers.



Representatives of Dell and HPE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A volunteer advisory board has recommended that the Bureau of Land Management consider euthanizing all 45,000 unadopted wild horses in holding facilities Photo by Galen Clarke/For The HSUS

3.0K shares







Our nations management of wild horses has been a long-running debacle of poor execution layered over questionable intentions and flagging resolve. Those problems have been compounded by violence toward horses by ranchers and other private resource users. The latest incident involves an attack on a number of wild horses living on a ranch overseen by the philanthropist and wild horse advocate Madeleine Pickens.

Since 1971, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has had the task of managing wild horses, who are now classed, for administrative purposes, into 179 Herd Management Areas in 10 western states. The bureaus primary strategy over the past 20 years has largely consisted of rounding up and removing the animals from our public lands, ostensibly in an effort to protect the range from overgrazing. The original plan was to adopt out horses to private parties  which has been fraught with its own set of problems  but the removals have happened at a volume that not even a spirited adoption program can offset. This has resulted in approximately 45,000 wild horses and burros being maintained in government-financed holding facilities throughout the United States.

Because the captive horse management has cannibalized so much of the funding, the BLM has scarce funds for protecting horses remaining on the range, including fertility control programs that offer the only real hope of humane population management.

Last week, in an attempt to solve this financial crisis  a self-inflicted wound created by serial round-ups  a volunteer body called the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board (the majority of whose members main focus is not, and has never been, the humane treatment of wild horses) made a recommendation that the BLM consider euthanizing all unadopted horses in holding facilities. Thats a prescription for mass slaughter on an almost unimaginable scale and it would perhaps make the United States the biggest horse killing enterprise in the world. While the Advisory Board has no legal authority to mandate action on the agencys part, the agency will consider this recommendation, a sort of Final Solution cooked up by public-lands ranchers and their allies.

2015, the Department of Interiors Office of the Inspector General released a long-awaited investigative report, which found that the BLM had sold thousands of wild horses to a livestock hauler named Tom Davis who subsequently sold these horses to kill buyers. Though they are not being sold directly by the agency, wild horses are still going to slaughter by a variety of circuitous pathways. Sources at the Sugarcreek, Ohio, livestock auction last week documented BLM freeze-branded horses, in very poor condition, being sold to kill buyers.

Our nations wild horses deserve better than this sort of mismanagement and abuse, and an attitude that they are throwaway objects. A sensible program must be grounded on controlling the population on the range through fertility control, obviating the need for dangerous round-ups that betray the national interest in protecting horses, and ending wasteful spending that ultimately solves no problems and just builds a massive captive wild horse program.

This headlong and heedless advisory committee recommendation should be summarily rejected. But its so outrageous and overreaching that it may be just the kick in the pants that Congress and the agency need to overhaul the entire broken and battered program.
Managed services News

Ensono Buys $59M MSP To Better Support Clients' Global Operations

Michael Novinson

Share this

Infrastructure management solution provider Ensono has purchased a 270-person cloud platform provider to bolster its capabilities around VMware, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

The Downers Grove, Ill.-based company said marrying its mainframe and infrastructure capabilities with Attenda's cloud and automation expertise will create a global leader in hybrid IT.

Attenda, based in Staines-upon-Thames, U.K., built a VMware-based public cloud platform all the way back in 2007 and was one of the first managed service providers in the United Kingdom to become AWS certified, according to Mark Fowle, Attenda's co-founder and CEO. Fowle told CRN that Attenda, which recorded sales of $59.3 million in its most recent fiscal year, has developed a proprietary hybrid IT service management platform that incorporates offerings from AWS, Azure and VMware.

[RELATED: Acxiom IT Picks New Name - Ensono - To Underscore Massive Cloud Investment]

"Instead of seeing AWS as a threat, we saw it as a great opportunity and another platform for hyper-scaling opportunities," Fowle said.

Attenda plans to begin rolling out its cloud environment in the United States in the first quarter of 2017, Fowle said, and expects to have it live in all American data centers next year.

Ensono currently derives roughly 60 percent of its $200 million in annual sales from x86 distributed systems and the remaining 40 percent from mainframes, with very little coming from cloud services, according to Ensono CEO Jeff VonDeylen.

VonDeylen told CRN that the acquisition of Attenda accelerates Ensono's cloud roadmap - which was focused around automation and giving consumers the ability to consume cloud services in an agile and flexible way - by 12 to 18 months.

Ensono has been deriving roughly 95 percent of its revenue domestically, VonDeylen said, making it difficult to support multinational clients such as Abbott Laboratories outside of the United States. Thanks to Attenda's overseas capabilities, VonDeylen said, Ensono is now in a position to pitch prospective multinational clients with global support and improved financial strength due to greater scale.

Clients of both Ensono and Attenda rely on the companies primarily to support mission-critical applications and infrastructure such as billing and production systems, VonDeylen said. Most clients of both firms are fairly large enterprises with several hundred million to several billion dollars in annual sales, VonDeylen said, with Ensono clients typically interested in expanding into public or private cloud.

Attenda's key selling point for clients is being able to govern their critical applications around-the-clock, though Fowle said Ensono's unique ability to provide mainframe-type services could also be appealing to current and prospective customers.

Terms of the deal, which closed Monday, were not disclosed. VonDeylen will lead the combined company, while Fowle will join Ensono's board of directors, where he plans to focus on high-level client engagements, a strategy for growing the legacy Attenda footprint in the United States and a strategy for evaluating possible growth opportunities through acquisitions.

In the short-run, the acquired company will be known as 'Attenda, an Ensono company,' though VonDeylen expects to phase out the Attenda name completely by the beginning of 2017.

"In terms of our size, supporting two brands is difficult and expensive," VonDeylen said.

Cost synergies were not a motivating factor in the acquisition, said VonDeylen, who expects to see Ensono accelerate its growth given its new capabilities and larger workforce.

"This isn't about taking out costs," VonDeylen said. "This is about growing the business."

The acquisition comes 14 months after private equity firms Charlesbank Capital Partners and M/C Partners purchased what had been Acxiom IT and nine months later changed its name to Ensono to emphasize its capabilities beyond the mainframe.
Networking News

CRN Exclusive: HPE Takes Direct Aim At Cisco With Arista Software-Defined Partnership, Sales Pact

Steven Burke

Share this

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is turning up the heat on rival Cisco Systems with a strategic software-defined infrastructure partnership and sales pact with network switching innovator Arista Networks.

Antonio Neri, executive vice president and general manager of HPE's Enterprise Group, which has been grabbing share from Cisco with its Aruba wireless networking portfolio, is scheduled to disclose the partnership Tuesday morning before more than 1,000 partners on the first day of HPE's Global Partner Conference.

[Related: CRN Exclusive: Whitman On Her Vision For HPE, Private Equity's Impact, And How Long She Will Stay On Board]

Under the terms of the pact, Arista will be HPE's "preferred networking partner" in data center networking as an infrastructure foundation for HPE's software-defined infrastructure offerings.

HPE, which already has a converged architecture agreement with Arista, is also offering solution providers and customers the ability to buy the Arista network switching products directly from HPE starting Nov. 7.

"Together, HPE and Arista are uniquely positioned to help organizations transition to a software-defined data center through innovations that enable network automation," said HPE Vice President and General Manager of Networking Dominic Wilde in a blog post announcing the deal. "Augmenting our HPE Data Center Infrastructure Group (DCIG) portfolio with Arista networking enables HPE to offer highly differentiated solutions that create impactful business outcomes for our customers."

Wilde said that HPE and Arista "share a common vision" around the need to deliver secure hybrid IT solutions built on industry-leading software-defined infrastructure.

"This partnership will provide our customers with best-of-breed networking solutions that are superior to legacy networking solutions and that are complementary to our HPE DCIG solutions, including HPE compute, storage, virtualization and cloud offerings," wrote Wilde in the blog post.

Adding Arista to the current HPE FlexFabric and Altoline product lines will expand HPE's ability to "address a wider variety of data center networking customer use cases and requirements," added Wilde.

The partnership opens the door for Arista to use HPE's muscle to gain network switching share even as Cisco is in the midst of a long-running, heated patent infringement legal battle aimed at getting Arista to stop selling its products in the U.S.

In June, the International Trade Commission ruled that Arista networking switches infringed on three of the five patents cited in a lawsuit filed by Cisco in December 2014, recommending a ban on selling and importing several Arista products.

Cisco is pushing for the halt of Arista products found with infringing technology while Arista says it has since released new versions with design-arounds to address features the International Trade Commission ruled were infringed upon.

Although Cisco leads the data center networking market, it lost share in 2015, with revenue share declining from 62.1 percent to 60.7 percent and shipment share falling from 46.9 percent to 44.2 percent, according to research firm Gartner.

Arista, meanwhile, continues to be one of the fastest-growing vendors in the data center, with product revenue growth of more than 40 percent in 2015 year over year.

HPE has been on a networking tear since acquiring wireless superstar Aruba Networks last year. HPE's networking business powered by Aruba is up 22 percent in the first nine months of its fiscal year ended July 31 to $2.37 billion compared with $1.94 billion in the same period one year ago.

For Aristas recent second fiscal quarter, which ended June 30, the company reported a 37 percent increase in sales to $269 million. The company currently has more than 3,700 customers.

For Ciscos fourth fiscal quarter ended July 30, its switching business grew 2 percent year over year to $3.79 billion. In its third fiscal quarter, however, Cisco reported a 3 percent year-over-year drop in switching sales to $3.45 billion.

MARK HARANAS contributed to this story.
Networking News

Partners: HPE-Arista Partnership Will Take Share From Cisco

Mark Haranas

Share this

Cisco Systems heated rivalry with Arista Networks just got turned up a notch as Arista and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Tuesday inked a new strategic partnership, a move that HPE and Arista partners say is the final ingredient needed to take significant market share away from the networking giant.

"This really gives us the last bullet in the chamber that we need to go compete for Ciscos business," said Bill Tracy, director of solution architecture at Structured Communications Systems, a Portland, Ore.-based HPE/Aruba solution provider, ranked No. 241 on the 2016 Solution Provider 500 list. "The main goal between the Aruba Networks-HP merger was to compete with Cisco on that campus edge, but Cisco still had an advantage where they could round out the rest of the core switching solution and try to keep customers sticky on that side of the house  but that changes now with Arista-HPE."

Aristas networking technology will be the data center infrastructure foundation for HPEs software-defined infrastructure offerings. Starting Nov. 7, HPE partners will be able to buy Arista network switching products directly from Palo Alto, Calif.-based HPE.

[Related: 12 New HPE-Aruba Offerings That Will Drive Partner Profitability]

Rich Baldwin, chief strategy officer at Nth Generation Computing, a San Diego-based solution provider that is already selling Arista switches, said the partnership is going to accelerate sales gains for Arista.

"This is going to be huge for Arista," he said. "We recognized it as a leading technology last year and hooked up with them. Now that we have HPE behind this, it is really going to accelerate the success."

Baldwin said he expects the deal will double or triple Nth Generation Computing's Arista sales. "These guys at Arista can outdo Cisco," he said. "There is no question about that."

Cisco, San Jose, Calif., declined to comment on the HPE-Arista partnership.

The deal between the two companies was unveiled in front of 1,300 partners attending HPEs Global Partner Conference in Boston Tuesday by Antonio Neri, executive vice president of HPEs Enterprise Group.

In an exclusive interview with CRN, Neri said the Arista partnership is a significant threat that will put significant pressure on Cisco.

[Arista] has gained share for multiple quarters in a row, said Neri. Now together, we are going to accelerate the taking of share in the cloud. Customers need compute and storage with the right fabric.  This is definitely a significant threat for Cisco.

Although Cisco leads the data center networking market, it lost share in 2015, with revenue share declining from 62.1 percent to 60.7 percent and shipment share falling from 46.9 percent to 44.2 percent, according to research firm Gartner.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Arista, meanwhile, continues to be one of the fastest-growing vendors in the data center, with product revenue growth of more than 40 percent in 2015 year over year.

Aristas been a scrappy dog from the beginning; theyre a competitor, said William Buckalew, COO of Comm Solutions, a Malvern, Pa.-based solution provider and HPE partner. With Arista-HPE and Aruba, we have the opportunity to design a competing architecture to Cisco. Thats an opportunity to intrude upon that traditional Cisco space.

Partners said the strategic partnership and sales pact will turn up the heat by rounding out the HPE portfolio, enabling channel partners to go after Ciscos hybrid cloud customers as well as its Unified Computing System.

The technology leapfrog game will come into play with things like HPEs Composable Infrastructure, which puts them another step ahead of where Cisco is, and bundling in Arista allows us to compete end to end in the full stack with Cisco and even with a Dell that has that complete offering to clients, said Structured Communications Systems Tracy. We can do everything under the HPE umbrella and roll in Arista for that high-performance core switching.

Being able to sell Arista alongside HPEs FlexFabric and Altoline product lines also opens the door for larger opportunities that previously went to Cisco, said another Arista partner.

We run into some Cisco customers and one of the reasons they like Cisco is because Cisco has such a large global presence and they probably feel safer from a support standpoint  and so you can now mitigate that objection with the [HPE-Arista] partnership, said Chris Becerra, president and CEO of Terrapin Systems, a San Jose, Calif.-based solution provider and Arista partner. With Arista-HPE, theyre even bigger than Cisco and have more of a global presence and support system in place.

Cisco and Arista are in the midst of a long-running, heated patent infringement legal battle.

In June, the International Trade Commission ruled that Arista networking switches infringed on three of the five patents cited in a lawsuit filed by Cisco in December 2014, recommending a ban on selling and importing several Arista products. Cisco is pushing for the halt of Arista products found with infringing technology while Arista says it has since released new versions with design-arounds to address features the commission ruled were infringed upon.

Reza Zarafshar, president of ACC Premier IT Solutions, a McLean, Va., HPE partner, said he sees the Arista deal as a "game-changer" for HPE.

"I think this is going to have a sizable impact on the market," he said. "This opens the door for us to have an important conversation with customers looking for software-defined solutions. It's a very important addition for HPE."
How many visitors do you expect to access the No More Ransom Portal?

This was the simple question asked prior to this law enforcement (Europols European Cybercrime Centre, Dutch Police) and private industry (Kaspersky Lab, Intel Security) portal going live, which I didnt have a clue how to answer. What do YOU think? How many people do you expect to access a website dedicated to fighting ransomware? If you said 2.6 million visitors in the first 24 hours, then please let me know six numbers you expect to come up in the lottery this weekend (I will spend time until the numbers are drawn to select the interior of my new super yacht). I have been a long-time advocate of public cloud technology, and its benefit of rapid scalability came to the rescue when our visitor numbers blew expected numbers out of the water. To be honest, if we had attempted to host this site internally, my capacity estimates would have resulted in the portal crashing within the first hour of operation. That would have been embarrassing and entirely my fault.

Indeed, my thoughts on the use of cloud computing technology are well documented in various blogs, my work within the Cloud Security Alliance, and the book I recently co-authored. I have often used the phrase, Cloud computing in the future will keep our lights on and water clean. The introduction of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS Marketplace into the No More Ransom Initiative to host the online portal demonstrates that the old myth, One should only use public cloud for noncritical services, needs to be quickly archived into the annals of history.

To ensure such an important site was ready for the large influx of traffic at launch, we had around-the-clock support out of Australia and the U.S. (thank you, Ben Potter and Nathan Case from AWS!), which meant everything was running as it should and we could handle millions of visitors on our first day. This, in my opinion, is the biggest benefit of the cloud. Beyond scalability, and the benefits of outsourcing the management and the security of the portal to a third party, an added benefit was that my team and I could focus our time on developing tools to decrypt ransomware victims systems, conduct technical research, and engage law enforcement to target the infrastructure to make such keys available.

AWS also identified controls to reduce the risk of the site being compromised. With the help of Barracuda, they implemented these controls and regularly test the portal to reduce the likelihood of an issue.

Thank you, AWS and Barracuda, and welcome to the team! This open initiative is intended to provide a noncommercial platform to address a rising issue targeting our digital assets for criminal gain. Were thrilled that we are now able to take the fight to the cloud.

Originally published on Amazon Web Services
H John Voorhees III / Hearst Connecticut Media

The City of Norwalk is hosting a construction trade job fair, to include plumbing and electrician work, on Wednesday, September 14 from 3 to 6 p.m.

The event will be held at the South Norwalk Community Center at 98 S. Main St., and is limited to potential applicants age 18 or over. For additional information, visit www.norwalkct.org or call Norwalk City Hall at 203-854-7703.
BRIDGEPORT - A senior federal prosecutor, who demanded a trial after being ticketed for passing a school bus in Monroe, has instead decided to pay the ticket.

The witnesses had been assembled, the courtroom readied for trial Tuesday morning when Jacabed Rodriguez-Coss quietly went to the clerks office in the Golden Hill Street courthouse and paid her $465 ticket.

She declined comment.

Rodriguez-Coss, an assistant U.S. Attorney and second in command of the states National Security and Major Crimes Unit, had demanded another trial after a state magistrate on June 9 found her guilty of speeding by a school bus while it was picking up students on Monroe Turnpike and fined her $465.

Monroe police have received numerous complaints about cars passing school busses stopped to either pick up or drop off students.

On Nov. 13, 2015, Patrol Officer Brook Larsen was assigned to a traffic detail across from the Safe Harbour Daycare on Monroe Turnpike when she saw a school bus stop in the southbound lane with its lights activated and side stop sign out, according to court documents.

Students began getting into the bus when a 2011 Toyota Sequoia, operated by Rodriguez-Coss, passed the stopped school bus without slowing, the police report states.

Larsen caught up with Rodriguez-Coss and gave her a ticket for illegally passing a school bus.

In addition to the officers report, prosecutors also presented video of the incident during a hearing before the magistrate.

Since that hearing police also got a statement from the bus driver who said she leaned on her horn as Rodriguez-Coss sped by her.

In April, Rodriguez-Coss, who recently prosecuted a U.S. Navy sailor for taking photographs of the inside of a navy submarine, filed a $300,000 federal discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. She declined comment on the lawsuit.

In the suit, Rodriguez-Coss states she was forced to travel to California, Rhode Island and Vermont to prosecute capital cases while male prosecutors did not have to travel. She claims that her three children were impacted by the Sandy Hook tragedy when the Sandy Hook school was relocated near her daughters school requiring her to remain close by to them.

The suit states her supervisors discriminated against her because of her gender and parental status and have since subjected her to a hostile work environment.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

While a Republican lawmaker has called for the state to appeal the recent state court decision on public education reform, the governor said he would stand back and let state Attorney General George Jepsen make his own decision.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Tuesday that while there may be unreasonable aspects of the sweeping ruling, he is not recommending for or against taking the very complex and far-reaching decision to the state Appellate Court.

On the decision that inner-city schools need more funding, Malloy, the former mayor of Stamford whose school reform advocacy has sometimes put him at odds with the teachers union, is in agreement with Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher.

Ive been making the same points for the last five years, Malloy said.

After a decade of litigation and a trial that lasted month, Moukawsher issued a ruling Sept. 7 giving the state six months to radically change funding procedures, teacher assessments and high school graduation requirements.

Im not urging him to appeal, Malloy said during an event in New Haven. Im saying that the attorney general needs to do that which he needs to do. If he feels he needs to bring an appeal to protect your interests thats his decision to make.

Legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle plan to meet later in the week with Jepsen, whose staff is still digesting Moukawshers decision.

Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven on Tuesday suggested that a number of procedural issues are unclear in the decision which declared the public-school system discriminatory to the major cities.

His decision reads more like a legislative agenda or white paper on education policy than a judicial finding, Fasano, a lawyer, wrote in a letter to Jepsen. For a judge to opine on the possible solutions and order the Legislature to undertake sweeping education reform that comports with his own policy analysis is breathtaking in its hubris.

Not only does the court not have jurisdiction over the General Assembly, Fasano said, but neither state government nor the assembly were party to the lawsuit, which pitted a coalition of education activists and school professionals against the governors office. The Legislature must be a full partner in finding remedies that will satisfy the findings and rulings, Fasano said, warning of the potential for a rush to satisfy unreasonable and unjustifiable demands.

The judge essentially repudiated years of politically motivated funding by majority Democrats in the General Assembly that rewarded certain towns while short-changing the cities, he said.

Jaclyn Falkowski, communications director for the attorney general, said Jepsen and his staff are still studying the issues raised by the judge and expect to soon have a strategy for reacting to Moukawsher.

We continue to review the decisions in consultation with our client agencies," Falkowski said in a phone interview.
These real PA creatures could become cryptids if we don't save them
Washington

U.S. Secretary of Education John King kicked off a bus tour Monday that will go through six states and eleven cities and towns, ending in New Orleans on Friday at a charter school that has seen a significant turnaround. (Schedule here .)

In January when I took over the department I, set out as secretary to work on three goals: equity and excellence, lifting up the teaching profession, and access, affordability and completion in higher ed, King said at a press conference at the U.S. Department of Education on Monday, right before the start of the tour. We will revisit each of those three in the places that we visit and also talk about the legacy of the administration, the great work thats been accomplished over the last seven and a half years.

For instance, he said, the bus tour would celebrate record high graduation rates (fact check on the administrations role in making that happen here ) and the increase in African-American and Latino enrollment in college.

Stops include Chattanooga, Tenn., where King will take a look at teacher leadership, and Little Rock, Ark., where he will check out expanded access to learning.

Some of the programs that King will celebrate along the way, such as Race to the Top, are now defunct. And others, such as Investing in Innovation, arent funded in the House budget.

Race to the Top, King said, was part of the stimulus and intended to jump-start the economy. The program that King will be going to see in Louisiana wasnt funded through the stimulus, but through a congressional appropriation that came the year after the stimulus passed. States including Louisiana that came close to winning a share of the original $4 billion Race to the Top money but didnt quite make it, got additional money through that separate appropriation.

Were going to highlight those initial investments that are now producing significant benefits, he said.

And hes hoping Congress will decide to fund i3s successor, the Education Innovation and Research program , since the goal of the program is to help districts and states spend the rest of their money on strategies that get results.

The real virtue of investments like i3 is to build an evidence base around what works, King said. Hopefully that will hope people spend the billions of dollars they get not just from the federal government but from state and local governments. The innovation effort is really an effort about scaling and building success. It would be a shame to retreat from that.

ESSA Connection

King also addressed proposed regulations for school spending under the Every Student Succeeds Act, known as supplement-not-supplant . This has been the toughest part of the new law to regulate on.

King was asked, essentially, if the department saw a way to compromise with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., an ESSA author who, really, really doesnt like the departments most recent pitch on supplement-not-supplant. Alexander says the department is overstepping its authority on the issue and proposing a solution thats unworkable for states and districts.

But it doesnt sound like King is changing his mind on this one. He said it isnt the intent of ESSA that a school serving high needs kids would be getting 20 to 30 percent less than a nearby affluent school. But he said hell be continuing to take feedback.

The theme of the tour is Opportunity Across America. Along the way, students at various stops will decorate the bus, essentially illustrating what that phrase means to them. Akilah Johnson, who represented D.C. in a Google design competition was first up. (You can see the before picture at the top of this post. No after picture yet.)

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
How should states approach the Every Student Succeeds Act? U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., had clear advice for state lawmakers on Monday: Assume you can do as you please, and if the U.S. Department of Education shoots down your ideas without a clear rationale, dont take it lying down.

Alexander, the chairman of the Senate education committee, emphasized that message during a public hearing held by the Kentucky legislatures Interim Joint Committee on Education. The senator, one of the architects of the law, also said that when states put together their ESSA plans and tackle thorny questions, they should consult the new coalition of groups that backed ESSA and helped get it passed, from state leaders and local school boards to the national teachers unions.

But Alexander devoted many of his remarks to playing up states authority under the law and downplaying the Education Departments overall role.

Dont assume you cant do anything, Alexander told the lawmakers.

And in a similar vein, he said that if the Education Department rejects Kentuckys state ESSA plan without a clear rationale, You can take the department to court, and I hope that you do. I hope that you dont have to. Well have a new administration [in 2017].

Heres how the senator dealt with a few other topics:

 As he has before, Alexander said the departments official draft supplemental money rule, which requires federal money to be used in addition to and not in place of state and local dollars, is a bad idea.

Im going to do all I can to oppose it. I hope you will too, he said.

Essentially, Alexander believes the department doesnt have the legal authority to do what it wants to do here.

Remember that Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. has said his departments proposed supplemental-money plan, while not a cure-all for resource inequity in schools, is a big step forward in trying to ensure that poor students receive a greater share of state and local resources. In fact, the department said the proposal would shift up to $2 billion in new state and local money for disadvantaged students.

 While he mostly criticized the role of Washington in education, in response to a question about the proper federal role in K-12, Alexander did highlight the importance of ensuring that certain tests are administered, and that the results are published and broken down by various subgroups. But when it comes to developing and implementing strategies to help low-performing schools, Alexander emphasized where the Education Departments role ends: While youre required to identify the schools [in need of improvement] in order to get the federal money, what you do with the schools is up to you.

Alexander talked with Kentucky lawmakers at about the same time that King departed from Washington on a weeklong bus tour of American schools on Monday.

Image capture of Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., from the Sept. 12, 2016 Kentucky Joint Education Committee hearing.

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
Lord Sugar (pictured) has long disliked Donald Trump

Lord Sugar takes aim at fellow tycoon Donald Trump following Hillary Clintons health scare, tweeting: Trump sends his best wishes to Hillary to get well soon. With the same sincerity as Churchill wishing Hitler a merry Xmas. Sugar has long disliked Trump, who claims that Sugarlumps success on BBC1s The Apprentice is down to him. Pointing out that he fronted the original hit US version of the show, the American billionaire announced: Drop to your knees, Sugar, and say thank you, Mr Trump.

Princess Anne, 66, is annoyed that a chest infection has forced her to cancel all her official duties for at least a week, but she has another reason to be irritated with the enforced rest. Her absence will allow her brother Prince Charles a free run in the royal engagement stakes. Anne won last year with 544 to Charless 527, ending his eight-year run at the top. Its meant to be a bit of friendly sibling rivalry but for the Princess Royal, a ferocious competitor, it is more than that. Anne, who has been to the Falklands, Brazil and Russia this year, will be playing catch-up with her first official duty not until September 20.

Having long enjoyed bending the ear of Downing Streets occupants, healthy eating crusader Jamie Oliver, 41, is affronted to have got the cold shoulder from Theresa May. Im happy to see her at any point but her people have locked down all communications, Jamie complains to the Radio Times. The current Prime Minister holds showbiz types in far less regard than her more star-struck predecessors.

Healthy eating crusader Jamie Oliver, 41, left, is affronted to have got the cold shoulder from Theresa May, right

Actress Sophia Loren, 81, reflects on this famous 1957 photo which shows her glancing disapprovingly at rival sexpot Jayne Mansfields barely concealed bosom at a Beverly Hills party. Speaking during a question and answer session in New York, the Italian beauty claims to have been startled by all that falling out of Mansfields dress. While the picture remains popular to this day, Loren refuses to autograph copies for fans out of respect for Mansfield, who perished in a car crash in 1967.

David Camerons predecessor in Witney was Shaun Woodward, who defected from the Conservatives to Labour in 1999. Despite having won the Oxfordshire seat as a Tory in 1997, Woodward refused to stand down or run in a by-election. This meant the true blue voters of Witney were stuck with a Labour member of parliament until the 2001 general election, when Woodward, 57, scarpered north to the safe seat of St Helens South.
If Sir Philip Green was in charge of Brexit, the EU would pay the UK to leave, writes Richard Littlejohn

How did you vote in the General Election in June? Oh, thats right, we didnt have one. We had a referendum on membership of the European Union.

So why are the political class behaving as if we actually held an election? Weve got a new Prime Minister, new Cabinet, new policies on everything from grammar schools to corporate crime.

The Boys in the Bubble have treated us to extensive profiles of some bloke with a beard from Birmingham, who is said to be running the country these days. Hes called Nick Timothy and hes a special adviser to Mother Theresa. I dont recall voting for him, do you?

What we havent got is any tangible progress on what 17.4 million British people really voted for almost three months ago  our prompt departure from the corrupt, sclerotic, imploding EU. When you put your cross in the box marked Leave, did you think that you were electing a brand new Government dominated by ministers who all backed Remain?

Thought not.

But thats what weve ended up with: a Cabinet in which the majority of members  including the Prime Minister  never wanted to leave in the first place. May I remind you that at a meeting of her own constituency party shortly before the referendum, Mother Theresa was the only person in a room full of 200 people who wanted to stay in the EU.

So did Philip Hammond, now Chancellor of the Exchequer. So did new Home Secretary Amber Rudd. How many people who saw Look Back In Amber spewing schoolgirl bile at Boris Johnson during the televised referendum debate could have imagined that one consequence of voting Leave would be to make her Home Secretary? Precisely.

Be honest, do you trust any of the triumvirate at the top of government to deliver the clean break the majority of the British people voted for? Me, neither. Mother Theresa seems to think she can get away with mouthing Brexit means Brexit while doing absolutely nothing to make it happen.

The Three Brexiteers  David Davis, Boris and Liam Fox  were thrown in the sack together precisely so that they would fight like rats. Then they can be blamed if and when the negotiations with the Eurocrats go pear-shaped.

The Three Brexiteers  David Davis, Boris and Liam Fox  were thrown in the sack together precisely so that they would fight like rats

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister carries on as if shes got a mandate to do whatever she wants, especially with Labour a complete basket case. And top of her list seems to be dragging out Brexit for as long as is humanly possible.

Regular readers will be well aware that Im no fan of May. She spent the referendum campaign hiding behind the sofa and was on the wrong side of history when the result was announced. She was also the Home Secretary who presided over record levels of immigration, both from within the EU and from outside.

Boris was accused of siding with Leave for reasons of pure personal ambition. But you could say exactly the same about Mays decision to go with Remain.

With Call Me Dave and Boy George dead in the water following the Leave vote, she was in pole position to inherit the keys to No 10. Tory MPs, the majority of whom backed Remain, were never going to support a Boris leadership bid.

OK, so when the music stopped maybe there was no alternative. Reluctantly, I would agree that a couple of months of madness while the Tories chose a new leader wasnt an enticing prospect.

And admittedly, some of her new policies are attractive. But all this is displacement activity. The only mandate she has is getting us out of the EU as soon as possible.

In case you have forgotten, the question on the ballot paper said this: Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

Theresa May spent the referendum campaign hiding behind the sofa and was on the wrong side of history when the result was announced

Not much ambiguity there. It didnt contain any caveats, such as: Should we leave, but only if we can negotiate a deal like Norway, which involves paying money to the EU and accepting most of its laws?

It didnt say: Should we leave but stay in the single market and swallow all the rules which go with it, including freedom of movement for everyone in Europe?

Nope, we decided convincingly that we did not wish to remain a member of the EU, with everything that entails. As I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, as soon as the political class started to muddy the waters: Which part of LEAVE dont they understand?

Its bad enough that the anti-democratic Remoaners refuse to accept the result and are demanding a second referendum.

Whats worse is that those charged with getting us out seem to have no sense of urgency and keep magnifying the so-called obstacles  of which the latest Project Fear scare about having to pay a fiver for a visa to visit Europe is the most pathetic. Why are we even discussing it?

Britain voted for Brexit, we didnt vote for Theresa May - If she wants to remain Prime Minister, she would do well to remember that

Take the obsession of the political class with staying in the single market. Of course we want tariff-free trade with Europe. But thats not what the single market means. It also involves accepting the jurisdiction of the European Court, unlimited immigration from the EU, and a whole raft of unnecessary rules and regulations.

Then were told we havent got enough trained negotiators. How many do we need? Why not let Philip Green rehabilitate his reputation by sending him to negotiate with Brussels? If he wants to keep his knighthood, let him earn it.

Give him a week and hed do them up like a hareng fume (thats French for kipper). Theyd end up paying us to leave.

Heres the deal: were off. No ifs, no buts. If EU politicians and industrialists want to do a post-Brexit deal with us, they know where we are. We dont have to grovel. Weve got a winning hand.

Where is it written that we can only leave if we agree to the EUs terms? Nowhere. The Europeans have got more to lose than we have when it comes to trade. We import more from them than they do from us.

Are they really going to turn their backs on one of their biggest export markets just to score a few pathetic political points?

In June, the British people demonstrated their faith in our future as a flourishing independent nation, in control of our own borders and our own destiny.

So what are we waiting for? Churchill used to slap stickers saying Action This Day on memos to his ministers and civil servants.

Mother Theresa should show the same sense of urgency. Invoke Article 50 now and get us out within two years, tops. Stop prevaricating, just do it. The Brexit vote was the most seismic decision this country has taken in half a century.

If the referendum had been a General Election based on existing constituencies and Leave had been a political party, it would have won by a landslide  taking 423 out of the 650 parliamentary seats.

Britain voted for Brexit, we didnt vote for Theresa May. If she wants to remain Prime Minister after the next General Election, she would do well to remember that.

Another bumper edition of Mind How You Go today, as police in England and Wales announce they are going to treat misogyny as a hate crime.

It follows a pilot scheme in Nottingham aimed at arresting men who wolf-whistle at women. After all, its not as if theyve got anything better to do, is it?

Does my bum look big in this?

Actually, yes.

Right, youre nicked.

Meanwhile, the Met has been accused of ignoring extremist views expressed by Muslim officers for fear of being accused of Islamophobia.

Sounds about right.

Former counter-terrorism officer Javaria Saeed, herself a Muslim, said some of the worst sexism and racism came from male Muslim colleagues, but they were allowed to get away with it by their cowardly superiors. Perhaps this could be a job for the new Misogyny Squad.

Elsewhere, the head of West Midlands Plod says that female officers should be allowed to wear burkas on the beat. Leave aside the obvious practical objections. What if every recruit starts insisting on their own special uniform? Will those who define as Jedi Knights be allowed to patrol the streets dressed as Darth Vader?

What about gender fluid and transitioning cops? Will we see them twerking on the beat in hot pants and high heels, like that bloke in the moneysupermarket advert?

Where will it all end? Lady bobbies in burkas, eh? Once again, I dont know whether to file it under Mind How You Go or You Couldnt Make It Up.

Theyve already got safe spaces to protect them from unpopular opinions. Now we learn that university students are being given soft toys and pets to help them cope with the stress of higher education.

Some colleges are even installing special puppy rooms and bouncy castles to relieve revision anxiety.

Call me old-fashioned, but whatever happened to Party Sevens and Class-A drugs?

Heathrow or Gatwick? Why not stop squabbling and build new runways at both of them, otherwise well be back to square one in another five years.

For years, Ive been describing Westminster lobby hacks as the Boys in the Bubble. Now Westminster Bubble has made it into the Oxford dictionary  along with, Im delighted to say, our old friends the Oompa Loompas.

The term Oompa Loompas has made it into the Oxford dictionary (pictured, a still from the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

I cant claim credit for inventing them  unlike Call Me Dave and Two Jags  but they have been regular features of this column.
Its not news that traditional school meal programs for students in poverty dont work as well for busy and hyper-self-conscious teenagers, but new research throws the problem into graphic relief: U.S. teenagers in 10 communities shoplifted, sold drugs, or traded sex to get enough food for themselves and their families.

Some 6.8 million students ages 10 to 17 live in homes without reliable access to enough food, according to two new studies by the Urban Institute. While more schools are providing free meals to all students to reduce the stigma of poverty, researchers found teenagers are still far less likely to know about and participate in food support programs either in or out of school. Moreover, the researchers found even when students were enrolled in food programs like the federal supplemental nutrition assistance program, the benefits often did not fully cover families, and older students often turned over their own meals to younger siblings.

When food runs low at her house, one Chicago teenager told researchers she will try my friends or something ... see if I can get at least like two packs of noodles or something so we can all split it or something. Or I will go without a meal if that is the case, as long as my two young siblings is good, thats all that really matters to me.

Without sufficient food, students skip meals, string together food from family or close friends, and even turn to high-risk behaviors to get enough to eat.

Researchers conducted focus groups with nearly 200 13- to 18-year-olds in 10 communities nationwide, from Chicago, Los Angeles, and the District of Columbia to Eastern Oregon and rural North Carolina. All of the groups included at least some students who had experienced food insecurity in the last year.

Strategies to Avoid Hunger Put Students at Risk

While all of the students said they preferred to get a formal job to make ends meet, the researchers found youth unemployment was higher than the national average of 27 percent in 8 out of 10 of the communities studied, and in most of them child labor laws restricted employment for students under 16.

While prior research estimated only about 4 percent of adolescents have traded sex for money, the researchers found girls in 7 out of 10 communities studied described highly coercive sexual environments in which there was some outright prostitution and stripping for food or money, but also often exploitive relationships: Like if I had sex with you, you have to buy me dinner tonight ... thats how girls deal with the struggle, explained one North Carolina boy in the study. Thats better than taking money, because if they take money, they will be labeled a prostitute.

Boys were less likely to trade sex for food than girls, researchers found, but more likely to steal, either food or small items easily sold for cash. One girl in Champaign, Ill., told researchers she sympathized with one classmate who robbed her: The kid who stole my phone, hed been reported a bunch of times. He had so much pressure on him. That was the easiest way to get the money.

The researchers recommended community and education officials do more to target food supports for teenagers, beyond holistic programs like SNAP. For example, the Urban institute and the nonprofit group Feeding America, which co-authored one of the studies, are piloting a community advisory board of teenagers in a Portland, Ore. neighborhood to work with area food banks and welfare agencies to identify ways to deliver food to teenagers and provide food centers that help them avoid stigma.

Related:
Flouncing off to make money: David Cameron

David Cameron has gone and done a Tony Blair. In other words, he has deserted British politics and flounced off to make money.

By doing so, hes sadly sent out the message to voters that some politicians are only in it for themselves. Hes not even had the decency to remain in Parliament until the next election  as he said he would.

His resignation as an MP surely means that  like Blair  he wants to waste no time before milking the contacts and experience he gained as prime minister.

Camerons decision disregards the fact that his premiership and everything that went with that great office of state was given to him on trust by the British people.

It never belonged to him personally. He has no more right to sell its reputation than to sell No 10 itself.

What a tragedy. If Cameron had any sense of genuine public service, he would have remained in Parliament, continuing to serve his constituents and the country he claims to love.

Its scarcely two months since he announced he was standing down following the Brexit referendum result.

Speaking with all the dignity and poise that were such admirable features of his best moments as PM, he was adamant that he would stand again as MP for his Oxfordshire constituency of Witney at the 2020 General Election.

Many of us applauded him at the time for what appeared to be an honourable  and irrevocable  decision.

But hes gone back on his word and will quit Parliament with immediate effect.

This is a blow to British politics, and will inflict further damage on Camerons already badly damaged reputation.

Crucially, it also marks a most unfortunate evolution in the role of British prime minister.

For hundreds of years, occupancy of 10 Downing Street marked the summit of a politicians ambition. But the experience in Parliament of former PMs was vital, too.

Public service: Sir Winston Churchill stood down as PM in 1955 and refused a peerage because it would have meant leaving his beloved House of Commons

For example, Sir Winston Churchill stood down as PM in 1955 and refused a peerage because it would have meant leaving his beloved House of Commons. He only quit Parliament in 1964, the year before his death.

Harold Wilson resigned as prime minister in 1976, and stood down as an MP seven years later.

His Tory predecessor Alec Douglas-Home remained in the Commons for ten more years after quitting as PM in 1964, and served as a distinguished Foreign Secretary in Edward Heaths government.

For his part, Heath carried on as an MP for a further 27 years after his government was kicked out by voters in 1974.

By remaining in the Commons, these former prime ministers sent out a potent, though unspoken, message: politics is not just about power but also about public service.

Moneybags: Tony Blair

Politicians serve their country not just with the glamour of high office, but also as humble back-benchers or as members of the Opposition.

This is a truth the Camerons and Blairs of this world have crassly circumvented.

Yesterday, Cameron justified his decision by saying that in modern times, it isnt really possible to be a proper backbench MP as a former prime minister.

What weasel words! The examples above show this is self-serving nonsense. The truth is that former prime ministers bring wisdom to Parliament and add to political debate some of the lustre of the highest office.

Now, though, like Moneybags Blair, Cameron hopes to chart an alternative career model that is ruled by self-interest rather than public service.

The danger of such a path is that it treats being the leader of the country as a stepping stone towards making a fortune. A wait in the departure lounge for the global gravy train. And so, having occupied No 10 for few years, a former PM moves on without a backward glance.

Tony Blair is the classic example of this model and the indications are that David Cameron  whose first move after leaving Downing Street was to accept the hospitality of a PR tycoon, staying temporarily at his 16.8 million London townhouse  is following suit.

This kind of behaviour raises a deadly serious issue. If a prime minister has an eye on making a fortune in the future, how can the British people be certain that he or she, while in office, is acting in the national interest rather than out of personal advantage?

For instance, when he was PM, Blair seemed to refuse to countenance any decision which might affront the United States. Since leaving office, he has made millions out of grateful U.S. connections.

He also delighted the Kuwaitis by getting rid of their deadly enemy, Saddam Hussein. Once he left No 10, a multi-million-dollar contract soon came Blairs way from those very Kuwaitis.

During their time in power, Cameron and George Osborne controversially sucked up to the Chinese  inviting them to invest in Britains infrastructure such as a new generation of nuclear power stations.

It will be interesting to see whether rewards from Beijing come their way.

By quitting the Commons to make money in the private sector, Cameron will be able to keep his new paymasters secret. For if he had stayed as an MP, he would have had to declare them on the parliamentary register of interests.

It is especially telling that as PM, Cameron did scant little to toughen up the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), which is meant to supervise private sector appointments of former ministers and civil servants, but which has become a toothless and supine body that approves shabby moves.

Shamefully, Cameron stands to gain from his refusal to tackle ACOBAs failings.

Nothing stands in a former prime ministers way if he chooses to commercially exploit the connections and knowledge he has gleaned from highest public office. Above all, David Camerons withdrawal from politics gives much justification to those critics of his who have always said he doesnt believe in anything, is too smooth and never had any fire in his belly.

When he was told the news yesterday, one of his former Cabinet colleagues said waspishly: Cameron only went into politics so he could be prime minister.

Serious democratic issues apart, there is a fascinating political dimension to David Camerons decision to quit the Commons. In his TV interviews yesterday, he refused to give straight answers to questions about whether he supported Theresa Mays new policy on grammar schools.

It is plain he is disenchanted with the way Mrs May is running the Government.

The fact is she does, indeed, represent a complete break with the values and the ethos of the Blair/Cameron time in office. Whatever her faults, it is patently obvious that she is determined to govern in the interests of the country as a whole and not as leader of a small, self-serving clique.

Inevitably, there is speculation that Cameron will take a peerage once he has quit the Commons  particularly since he was so free at dishing out honours to his staff after his fall in a way that displayed a deeply flawed judgment and diminished British public life.

As much as hed enjoy the status, I believe such a move is highly unlikely because he would be obliged to make public his financial interests.

I hope I am wrong because I have always liked Mr Cameron and believed he is driven by honourable motives.

But my guess is that he is happy to leave public service behind and enter the soulless, secret world of overseas trusts and high finance.

By resigning as an MP, David Cameron  who made a terrible misjudgment during the EU referendum campaign by thinking he could scare people into voting Remain  has made another avoidable mistake.

Not only has he damaged his own reputation, he has damaged Parliament and the image of Britain. What a pity. What a betrayal.
Blogger Natasha Courtenay-Smith shares her tips on how to make your blog stand out and go past the critical six-month mark

Many young people dream of ditching their 9-5 office job and setting up a blog - and one entrepreneur has revealed her tips for making that dream a reality.

Natasha Courtenay-Smith believes young men and women can earn six-figure salaries from their passion, and has advised people on how to get their blog past the critical six-month point.

The author has shared her insider knowledge on how you can turn your hobby into a money-spinning career in her new book, The Million Dollar Blog.

It comes as new research revealed that the top five 'dream' jobs include writing, blogging and vlogging - but few are actually successful in their quest to earn a living writing about what they love.

Natasha explains how you can make your blog stand out from the crowd and how to get past the 'critical first six months' and start monetising your content.

She first insists that budding entrepreneurs must approach blogging as a business, and not pursue it simply because it seems glamorous.

Scroll down for video

Kat Williams, 32, who used to be a producer on a shopping channel, now earns six figures from her wedding blog Rock n Roll Bride

She said: 'Traditionally people had to wait for things to happen: wait to be selected for a job, wait for a promotion.

'People find the idea of blogging so empowering as they can just do it from their own efforts without waiting for someone else.

'It's incredible to think we live in a time when you can basically sit at home and with a good idea, a laptop, some grit and determination turn that into a business. Across the world people are carving out new lives for themselves this way.'

As well as sharing her insider knowledge, Natasha also interviews bloggers who are making six-figure salaries from their hugely successful blogs.

To be successful, Kat says: 'I think you need to have a unique spin on something and you have to be passionate about your topic'

Kat Williams from Reading, who runs the Rock n Roll Bride blog, was working as a producer on a shopping channel before giving it up in 2011 to pursue her new career.

Five years on, her website is one of the most popular wedding blogs in the world.

The 32-year-old started writing the blog while planning her own wedding, but after she got married carried on updating it as she loved it so much.

Kat advised: 'The thing with blogging is theoretically anyone can do it, but to get past the critical first six months when you are getting no one reading it and pushing through, you have to have a unique vision and something different to say.'

Madeleine Shaw, 26, has used her blog to publish two best-selling books and launch a food range in Harrods

Madeleine, who used to work in a cafe said: 'I learned everything on YouTube, from how to write a tweet to how to upload an image onto a website'

Now she has around 350,000 visitors to her blog each month and has an impressive 50,000 Twitter followers, as well as her own print magazine and products.

She explained: 'I think you need to have a unique spin on something and you have to be passionate about your topic.'

Food and lifestyle blogger Madeleine Shaw, 26, has used her eponymous blog to publish two best-selling books and launch a food range in Harrods.

She has 250,000 followers on Instagram and gets more than 300,000 monthly visitors to her website.

Madeleine started her blog after deciding she wanted to pursue a career in nutrition and hoped that the site could be a portal to getting clients

Natasha Courtenay-Smith has revealed tips to help budding bloggers leave their jobs and set up a successful site - like Madeleine Shaw, pictured, who left her cafe job to start a food and lifestyle blog

Madeleine started her blog after deciding she wanted to pursue a career in nutrition and hoped that the site could be a portal to getting clients.

Madeleine, who worked in a cafe in Bondi Beach, Sydney, before setting up her blog, said: 'I learned everything on YouTube, from how to write a tweet to how to upload an image onto a website.

People think my life is drinking mocha lattes and going out for smoothies, but it's incredibly hard work

'I made so many mistakes like uploading wrong images or spelling words wrong.

'But the great thing about being online is that when you make a mistake, you can change it quickly.

'People think my life is drinking mocha lattes and going out for smoothies, but it's incredibly hard work. I'm a strong believer that the more you put in, the more you get out. And remember that everyone starts from nothing.'

Blogger Coco Hamilton says her six-figure income 'evolved from my love of luxury brands and my experience working in Saudi Arabia'

Coco, 32, runs her luxury fashion and lifestyle blog from her Knightsbridge home

Meanwhile, Coco Hamilton, 32, earns a living running Coco&Co Ldn - a luxury fashion and lifestyle blog which she runs from her Knightsbridge home.

'All of it evolved from my love of luxury brands and my experience working in Saudi Arabia,' Coco revealed.

She now has 50,000 social media followers and earns a six-figure salary from her blog, which is put together by her and a team of photographers and stylists.

'I monetised my blog using sponsored posts and affiliate advertising,' she continued.

Coco admits: 'I always had the goal of earning a six-figure salary so I was very focused on my goal from the beginning'

'I always had the goal of earning a six-figure salary so I was very focused on my goal from the beginning.

'I worked back from that number, and worked out exactly what I needed to do. You really need to understand your figures.'

Natasha Courtenay-Smith has revealed her tips to being a successful blogger in her new book, The Million Dollar Blog

Natasha Courtenay-Smith explains blogging is not always easy, but that determination is just as important as experience.

She said: 'What is clear is that no successful blogger of the 50 or so I talked to for the book knew all the answers before they started.

'You learn as you go along, but you can't begin to learn until you start.'
People have laid bare the secrets they've been hiding from their partner in a candid online discussion.

The Reddit users confessed the secrets they've been hiding - and they range from contemptuous to heartbreaking.

The shocking confessions include secret drug addictions and past lives as prostitutes, as well as secrets about their sex lives and jobs.

People have shared the very candid things they haven't told their partners - including secret drug addictions, love affairs and jobs as prostitutes

One user shockingly admitted: 'I only proposed to her because if I didn't she would have killed herself', whilst another revealed an equally disturbing tale, believing that they are the reason his girlfriend's brother killed himself.

The user explained: 'One night we were sleeping and around 3 A.M., her brother called asking to speak with my girlfriend (much like he did all the time  but usually not this late).

'Quick back story, the brother was heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol. Anyways, so he called in a drunken mess asking to speak with her sister (my girlfriend) and I'm usually very calm but for some reason, maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed or whatever it may be. I shouted, "Dude, she's sleeping, she doesn't want to speak with you," and hung up.

'Well, turns out he broke up with the love of his life. Later that night, he threw himself off an overpass onto the freeway and died.

'What sucks is, several months later she said to me, "I wish he had called me. Maybe he would still be alive today."

'So in the end, I never told my GF or anyone that he had called.'

Reddit users have confessed the secrets they've been hiding from their loved ones - and they range from contemptuous to heartbreaking

Other users admitted they have secret lives that their partner seemingly has no idea about.

One man confessed to having a secret heroin addiction, and another revealed that he makes most of the family income from dealing drugs, which his wife is totally clueless about.

Many people admitted they have secret lives that their partner seemingly has no idea about

Writing on the thread, one woman revealed that she worked as a prostitute for years before meeting her Christian partner and another man revealed he had slept with a prostitute whilst working away from his wife.

One user admitted that she is still legally married but can't afford a divorce and doesn't even know how to get in contact with her ex. Another revealed that he had cheated on his girlfriend with the woman she hates most in the world.

Speaking about his girlfriend, another man admitted: 'I love mine, and shes an amazing person, but if my ex were to kiss me right now, it would all be over.'

One man admitted that he's actually not gay but is too afraid to tell his boyfriend. He wrote: 'Im not gay. I love my significant other and would never cheat, but Im very much straight and miss having [heterosexual] sex.'
Advertisement

A mother-of-16 has admitted the idea of having children was not always appealing to her.

Jeni Bonell, from Toowoomba in Queensland's south-east, said she had not wanted to have children when she was a teenager, let alone 16.

'I just had other plans for my life and just wasn't really interested at all in children and not even getting married at that stage,' Ms Bonell, 47, told Daily Mail Australia.

'I just thought... they [children] were small and hard to understand.'

Scroll down for video

Jeni Bonell (third from right), from Queensland's south-east, said she had not wanted to have children when she was a teenager, let alone 16

But her life took a different turn when she met husband Ray who expressed a wish to have a large family after growing up as the first-born of six.

'He managed to talk me into a couple and it was me who went back and asked for a third one,' Ms Bonell said.

'Once I met Ray and we had a boy and girl, having a pigeon pair... it was me who desperately who wanted to have a third one.'

INSIDE THE LIFE OF THE BONNELS Jeni Bonell spends $600 a week on groceries for her family of 16 children plus her husband

She buys 17 three-litre bottles of milk , and 14 boxes of cereal and loaves of bread

Ms Bonell also buys 45 tubs of yoghurt to feed her nine children who do go to school for lunch

She gets four dozen eggs for the family to eat twice a week per meal

The 47-year-old mother walks away with about two trolleys full of groceries a week

Ms Bonell does about six to seven loads of washing a day, which equates to about 30 kilograms a day Advertisement

Today the couple have 16 and are open to the notion of adding to their brood.

The family guzzles 50 litres of milk a week, eats about $600 worth of groceries a week and washes about 30 kilograms of clothes a day.

The couple have Jesse, 26, Brooke, 25, Claire, 23, Natalie, 21, Karl, 19, Samuel, 18, Cameron, 16, Sabrina, 15, Timothy, 13, Brandon, 11, Eve, 10, Nate, nine, Rachel, eight, Eric, six, Damian, five, and Katelyn, two.

'Any number would not be high enough now,' Ms Bonell told Daily Mail Australia.

'Once we had miscarried seven [babies] over the years, once you lose the first one, you appreciate just how much of a blessing children are.

'We threw ourselves into being great parents.'

She and her husband have Jesse, 26, Brooke, 25, Claire, 23, Natalie, 21, Karl, 19, Samuel, 18, Cameron, 16, Sabrina, 15, Timothy, 13, Brandon, 11, Eve, 10, Nate, nine, Rachel, eight, Eric, six, Damian, five, and Katelyn, two

Ms Bonell and her husband, Ray, on their wedding day. They have 16 children together

Pictured is the couple, who live in Toomwooba, today. Mr Bonell is 48 and Ms Bonell is 47

Previously Ms Bonell has also said the daily issues faced by her family of 16 would never stop her having more children after welcoming her youngest into the world on June 26, 2014.

The Bonells face a never-ending pile of laundry, expensive grocery bills, and have no choice but to use a former school bus as their family car.

When asked if she wanted to have more children, Ms Bonell told Today: 'I think it'll be a little while but hopefully yes.

'We're just going to go along and if we are lucky enough to have another one that would be fantastic and if not, we are so grateful for what we have.'

In 2013, Ms Bonell told The Sydney Morning Herald she used a colour code system and rosters to keep up with laundry, which children were sick and even who was getting on the bus when she picked them up from school.

The family guzzles 50 litres of milk a week, eats about $600 worth of groceries a week and washes about 30 kilograms of clothes a day

The Bonells face a never-ending pile of laundry, expensive grocery bills, and have no choice but to use a former school bus as their family car

But the daily chore of laundry no doubt appears to be the worst in the house, with the mother-of-16 sharing snaps of the pile of linen that took her two days to wash as well as her method of disciplining misbehaving children - giving them the duty of folding socks.

Ms Bonell shares her daily life on her Facebook page.

'Mum and dad could not possibly do all of it, so they all have jobs to do and they all help,' the mother-of-16 said of the housework.

Finances are also clearly a struggle for the forever expanding family.

'It's a struggle some days to afford these kids but if you have this many kids and you love them all and take care of them, God provides for a lot of those things,' Mr Bonell, 48, told Today.
Advertisement

She has been named 'most stylish royal' two years in a row.

But Crown Princess Mary has made at least one major fashion faux pas, according to PETA Australia.

On a recent trip to Greenland the Australian-born royal wore a coat featuring seal skin, prompting a backlash from the animal rights group.

Causing controversy: Crown Princess Mary wore a seal skin coat (centre) by the label Great Greenland while touring the country

The coat Mary wore was by the label Great Greenland.

On their Instagram page the label states they have produced: 'Sustainable, high quality fashion and lifestyle products from various types of sealskin since 1977'.

One week ago they shared a photo of Mary wearing their Elise coat from their recent 'seal fur' collection by Jesper Hvring.

Mary sat front row at the Great Greenland and Jesper Hvring catwalk show during Copenhagen Fashion Week in February this year.

On tour: Mary wore the coat while on a three-day of Greenland with The Mary Foundation

On the runway: The coat is part of Great Greenland's 'seal fur' collection by Jesper Hvring

PETA Australias associate director of campaigns Ashley Fruno told Daily Mail Australia it was time the princess shunned fur.

'Despite being made aware of all the cruelties of the fur industry, it still hasn't clicked for Princess Mary that wearing animals makes her look cold-hearted and totally out of touch,' she said.

'The majority of Australian people shun fur, and it's time that the princess gave animals a fair go by going fur-free.'

Hunted: On their website, Great Greenland said they purchase the skins and fur from hunters, who shoot the seals

Fashion meets fur: A model walks the runway wearing a Jesper Hvring design in collaboration with Great Greenland at Copenhagen Fashion Week

On the catwalk: The designs (pictured) used seal fur that came from hunters in Greenland, and are the same label as worn by Princess Mary when she visited the country

On their website, Great Greenland said they purchase the skins and fur from hunters, who shoot the seals.

The label predominately uses ringed seal and harp seal species for their designs.

On the Great Greenland website, designer Jesper Hvring said his 'unique seal fur collection' 'paid great attention to the profound Greenlandic culture and the life of the seal hunters'.

'I am very pleased with the result of the collection, especially the coats that combine seal and wool, which adds a young and modern feel to the design line,' he said.

Picturesque: Also while in Greendland, Crown Princess Mary took some time out to go on a short cruise in Nuuk

Helping others: She visited the country with The Mary Foundation and attended a forum on domestic violence

Charity work: Mary smiled alongside her foundation's mascot Buddy the bear as she visited a daycare centre in Greenland

Mary visited Greenland in early September with her charity, The Mary Foundation.

There she spoke at a domestic violence forum and met with children at a daycare centre.

More recently, the crown princess beamed as she came face-to-face with a circus elephant at a charity event for the Kidney Foundation.

The Australian-born royal attended the Circus Danneborg on Thursday, September 8 as a patron for the Kidney Foundation and was photographed petting elephants that weighed up to four tonnes each.

Look out! Crown Princess Mary come face-to-face with an elephant at a charity event for the Kidney Foundation
As the unofficial pyjama capital of Australia, Peter Alexander have sold a lot of sleepwear in their time.

But the Antipodean brand may have just released their best, most patriotic collection yet.

Dubbed the 'Proud Aussie Collection', the new line features everything, from a Vegemite-themed jumpsuit for women to Tim Tam-emblazoned separates.

There's even a 'Flaming Galah' set of printed boxer shorts for men.

Sleepwear favourite: Peter Alexander have released a new Australian-themed sleepwear collection (pictured)

Iconic: The 'Proud Aussie Collection' features Tim Tam-emblazoned pyjama sets (pictured), as well as a striking red Vegemite jumpsuit

'We are a nation of happy little Vegemites so let's celebrate everything Australian,' Peter Alexander writes of the new collection.

'Join me for a big Aussie slumber party.'

Highlights from the inventive Aussie range include a T-shirt for men with the iconic line: 'You beauty'.

Another pretty tank top sees a koala cuddling a heart, alongside matching bottoms for women.

Patriotic: 'We are a nation of happy little Vegemites so let's celebrate everything Australian,' Peter Alexander writes of the new collection

Top picks: Highlights from the inventive collection include a T-shirt for men with the iconic line: 'You beauty' (left), as well as STRAYA T-shirts (right)

Menswear: There are also items for men on sale, too

Pricey: For anyone hoping to invest in a little Australiana, there is one word of warning - not much of the sleepwear comes cheap

For anyone hoping to invest in a little Australiana, there is one word of warning.

Not many of the pyjamas or sleepwear items come cheap.

The Vegemite jumpsuit retails for AUD $89.95, while the Tim Tam set together comes in at an eye-watering AUD $99.95.

You can, however, get a Vegemite eye mask for just AUD $15.95.

Popular: In spite of the expense, the collection has proven popular on social media, where countless people have taken to Twitter to comment on the line

In spite of the expense, the collection has proven popular on social media, where countless people have taken to Twitter to comment on the line.

'I neeeeeeeed [sic] the Vegemite onesie now,' one person writes.
A grandmother who says she has the biggest breasts in Britain - after spending huge sums on cosmetic surgery - is now aiming for a 22-inch waist.

Sharon Perkins, 50, from Coventry, traded in her 34D breasts for 32MM implants at a cost of 10,000 and now wears a rib-crushing corset for twelve hours a day to ensure her waist stays a trim 24 inches.

The glamorous gran, who models herself on cartoon vixen Jessica Rabbit, now wants a tiny 22-inch waist to go with her gigantic assets in time for her September 2017 wedding.

Scroll down for video

Grandmother Sharon Perkins, 50, has spent 10,000 on Britain's biggest breasts - but says she wants to further enhance her look by aiming for a tiny 22 inch waist

The old Sharon: The 50-year-old says her former look left her feeling depressed 'As I was getting older my breasts were getting softer and droopier'

Ms Perkins plans to marry Carl Hamilton next year and hopes to achieve her dream of a super-trim waist by then

Perkins said of her corset-wearing: 'I can't believe the difference I've seen in three months, I've lost three stone too, the results have been amazing.

'It is hard to move around and get comfortable but it's definitely been more than worth it, when I have my mind set on something I'm determined to make it happen.

The glamour model says that she feels sexier and confident and that partner Carl can't get enough of her enhanced curves.

'Carl can easily wrap his hands around me now to feel his 'best friends,' they definitely catch the public's attention too.'

'I can't wait to marry Carl next year, but I won't get married unless I've reached my goal - a 22 inch waist, so that my body looks the best possible for our big day.

While Sharon's ex-husband spent some of his divorce settlement on a new car Sharon couldn't wait to get new boobs, something she had always dreamt of doing but never had the spare cash for.

After receiving 33,000, Sharon spent 4,500 on her first surgery which took her 34D chest to a 36H.

Within six months Sharon and Carl, who buys and sells antiques, agreed she should go even bigger and after forking out another 5,500, Sharon was left with gigantic 32MM boobs which contain 1,500cc or 2.6 pints of silicone each.

After splitting up with her husband, Ms Perkins (pictured) from Coventry, spent some of the money from her divorce settlement on two boob jobs

The glamorous granny says the surgery has given her a new lease of life

Her new partner, Carl , 50, is delighted with the attention her new additions get and has nicknamed her breasts his 'best friends'

Now she plans to have bigger implants with the goal of having the biggest boob to smallest waist ratio in the world.

Sharon adds: 'When I had my implants I loved how they transformed my body, but now it's just not enough.

'I'd like to double my chest size again and have a 22 inch waist.

'Implants are a walk in the park compared to waist training, I have to be incredibly strict and determined to wear corsets for 12 hours every day.

'I would've had the surgeries years ago but didn't have the money and I don't think my ex-husband would've been happy with the attention they got. Sharon Perkins

'I get asked a lot if my boobs make my back hurt or if they're heavy but I've not had any pain, I guess my body had adapted and got used to them.

After splitting up with her husband, Sharon Perkins, 50, from Coventry, West Midlands, spent some of the money from her divorce settlement on two boob jobs, and the mother-of-three says she feels sexier than ever.

Ms Perkins, a part-time glamour model, said: 'I can't get enough of my new boobs, they've completely transformed my life and they feel and look amazing.

'I love walking down the street now, they get so much attention, I love seeing people's reactions and strangers always stop me to ask questions.

'I used to work as an office administrator, my life was completely boring and I was in a mundane marriage that had just become routine.

Ms Perkins received 33,000 from the divorce settlement, and while her former husband spent some of his money on a new car, she decided to get a breast enlargement

Sharon's gigantic 32MM boobs contain 1,500cc or 2.6 pints of silicone each

Jessica Rabbit is Perkins' inspiration and she's become obsessed with emulating her cartoon curves

'The response I've had from strangers had been great, people often ask me to feel them and I don't mind at all and I always see people staring.

'They feel really soft and natural, while being firm and perky at the same time.'

Sharon, a former office administrator, vows to never go back to her old life which she claims was 'mundane and boring'.

Sharon said: 'I used to live day to day in the same old routine and was one of the crowd.

'As I was getting older my breasts were getting softer and droopier and I longed for perkier, firmer boobs.

'Now I stand out and everything about my life is different and exciting, I have a new lease of life and my new look has done wonders for my sex life.

'I can't wait to get even bigger boobs, I just need to find the surgeon to do it.

Former office administrator Sharon vows to never go back to her old life which she called 'mundane and boring'

Family affair: Perkins says one of her daughters now wants to go under the knife too

'I would recommend implants and waist training to anyone who's unhappy, they've both been worth every penny and ounce of pain.'

'As I was getting older my breasts were getting softer and droopier and I longed for perkier, firmer boobs.

'I would've had the surgeries years ago but didn't have the money and I don't think my ex-husband would've been happy with the attention they got.

'Meeting Carl and starting a new chapter was the best thing I ever did, other than having my new knockers of course which were worth every penny.

Eyes up! Carl, an antiques dealer, loves Sharon's curvier frame and actively encouraged her to seek more surgery

And the boobs came from America: Sharon's breasts had to be shipped over from the US

'As soon as I'd had the surgery I felt amazing, I got such a buzz from them and people in the office joked I was the new Jordan.'

The rest of her money from the divorce settlement has been put into a farmhouse in Bulgaria that Ms Perkins and Mr Hamilton are in the process of renovating.

Her breast size is slightly larger than that of Army wife Debbie Delamar, 36, from Brecon, Pwoys, a previous claimant of the Britain's biggest fake breasts crown, who has endured three procedures to take her from a 30DD to a 30KK.

'I couldn't believe when the surgeon told me he would have to order the implants all the way from America,' said Ms Perkins.

'He explained the UK didn't do implants the size I wanted, but I told him to do whatever it takes, I wanted to be as big as possible.

'Now I want to go even larger it's even harder to find the implants I want but I will persevere until I find them and the surgeon to do it, bigger is definitely better.
A former obese woman has told how after losing almost 20 stone, she was so terrified of gaining weight that she developed an eating disorder.

Thirty-two-year-old Lisa Milburn, who once weighed 29st 7lbs, became obsessed with losing weight after a three-year mission to get slim.

At the height of her illness, the admin worker, from Edinburgh, weighed herself eight times a day.

Lisa at her heaviest weight of 29 stone 7 lbs (left); and during her eating disorder at her lowest weight of 7 stone 10lbs, when she was a size 6 (right)

Lisa, who is currently travelling around Australia, has now made a full recovery and weighs a healthy 11 stone. She says she will never 'take her health for granted' again

After surviving on just 300 calories a day, Lisa dropped to just 7 stone 10 lbs and was diagnosed with atypical anorexia.

Thankfully she has now made a full recovery, and weighs a healthy 11 stone.

Lisa, who stands at 5ft 7in, says: 'It was a scary time of my life. I went from one extreme to the other and took my weight loss too far.

'It became an obsession and I loved seeing the number go down each time I stepped on the scales.

'Now I want to show people that even though weight loss can be amazing, there is the potential for it to become dangerous.'

Lisa at her heaviest. She confessed: 'I was huge and wearing size 32 clothes, but for some reason, it didn't bother me'

Lisa pictured during her weight loss, weighing 22 stone 7 lbs. She began losing weight after signing up to Scottish Slimmers and taking up swimming, but it soon became an 'obsession'

Lisa, who is currently travelling around Australia, had struggled with her size throughout her childhood.

She was obese as a teenager and her weight hit 29 stone 7lbs at the age of 20.

Lisa says: 'Three meals a day wasn't enough for me. I would eat a burger as a snack, followed by a dessert of crisps and chocolate.

'I was huge and wearing size 32 clothes, but for some reason, it didn't bother me.'

It was only when Lisa watched a documentary about an American man who weighed half a tonne, that she became genuinely concerned about her waistline.

She said: 'I was so shocked at his large size and seeing him bed-bound and crippled with health problems made me cringe.

Lisa during her eating disorder, where her weight dropped to just 7 st 10 lbs and she wore a size 6. She would consume 300 calories a day and then burn it off by walking

Lisa at her lowest weight of 7 stone 10 lbs. She recalled how once, having gained 3 lbs, she became 'hysterical'

'It was then I realised I would share a similar fate if I continued eating the way I was. The fear factor set in and I knew I had to lose weight.'

Lisa joined Scottish Slimmers and began eating healthy meals and took up swimming four times a week. Within three years, she had lost 19 stone and weighed just under 11 stone.

Lisa says: 'I felt fantastic, and to give my confidence another boost, I had a breast enlargement, taking me from a 32AA to 32E. I also had a tummy tuck to get rid of my excess skin, and joined the gym.'

In September 2009 she moved to Donaueschingen, Germany, to work as an au pair.

Lisa now. After eight months of recovery, she returned to a healthy weight and now weighs 11 stone and is a size 12

Lisa said: 'Having gone through so much and suffered at both ends with my weight, I haven't let it hold me back'

But her busy job left her unable to regularly exercise, so she began skipping evening meals to compensate. Within a year she had lost another 2 stone.

By January 2011, after returning to the UK, her weight had dropped to 8 stone 7lbs.

Forced to visit her GP by her worried mother, Judith, 55, Lisa was diagnosed with atypical anorexia, meaning she had the tendencies of an anorexic, yet her weight was within a normal range.

Lisa explained: 'The diagnosis didn't faze me at all and I continued restricting my calories.

Lisa is now a healthy size 12 following eight months of recovery. She said: 'I've taken my health for granted twice, but now I'm determined to never let that happen again'

'I didn't see my weight as being low enough for me to have a problem, so I would say all the right things in front of people, but then secretly carried on starving myself.'

Soon after Lisa's periods stopped and she developed osteopenia, a medical condition in which the protein and mineral content of bone tissue is reduced.

Nine months later in October 2011, she was skipping breakfast, snacking on celery for lunch and weighing out 300g of vegetables for dinner.

She was also walking eight miles a day in a bid to burn off the 300 calories she was consuming.

Lisa is pictured at an X Factor audition, before she developed an eating disorder. Initially, she lost 19 stone and weighed just under 11 stone - but she later developed anorexia

Lisa after her initial weight loss. She recalled: 'I felt fantastic, and to give my confidence another boost, I had a breast enlargement, taking me from a 32AA to 32E'

Eventually, Lisa stopped drinking all liquids, including water, after 3pm, and soon her weight had fallen to 7st 10lbs. By Christmas 2012, she was wearing size 6 clothes.

A month later, she became hysterical when she weighed herself and discovered she had gained 3 lbs.

She says: 'I called my mum and just sobbed down the phone to her about how disappointed I was in myself.

'When I'd finished, she told me how ridiculous I sounded. She said if I carried on the way I was going, I would kill myself.'

With the support of her family, Lisa slowly began to increase her calorie intake.

Lisa, who once weighed out her vegetable portions and stopped drinking liquids after 3pm, says she stopped weighing herself in a bid to get better and overcome her anorexia

Lisa shows off her new figure at a wedding after reaching a healthy size 12

She says: 'It was really hard at first but I knew I had to get better. I started eating three meals a day again, and stopped weighing myself completely. I even threw my scales out!'

After eight months of recovery, Lisa returned to a healthy weight. She now weighs 11 stone and is a size 12.

'Having gone through so much and suffered at both ends with my weight, I haven't let it hold me back,' Lisa added.

'I've taken my health for granted twice, but now I'm determined to never let that happen again.'
Two vigilante mothers who set up paedophiles by posing online as underage girls have defended their methods, saying the police don't do enough.

The London-based pair appeared on Good Morning Britain to explain how they set up Internet Interceptors, which sees them arrange meetings with potential sex offenders and then confront them with a video camera.

When host Susanna Reid asked why they didn't leave it to the police, one of the founders said: 'We set the operation up because we didn't feel the police were doing enough.'

One of the founders of Internet Interceptors also told FEMAIL, they set up their organisation because they were concerned about sex offenders not being given long enough sentences, although they did not elaborate further.

She added: 'Since starting, 27 have been arrested and we have had 5 convictions and the other 22 are on bail pending investigation on technical devices.

'Some try to deny what they were doing. It's 50/50. But the thing they all say is they was never really going to have sex.'

Explaining their work to Susannah Reid, one of the mothers said: 'We would put an historical picture of a child in a chat room and wait for these people.'

When asked how she felt about chatting to these people online, one of the mothers added: 'It's really distressing as an adult, I can't imagine how a child would feel being put in that situation.'

The Internet Interceptors use a photo of someone who is now an adult and they leave all suggestions of meeting up to them.

Susanna Reid quizzes the vigilante mums of Internet Interceptors on why they take the law into their hands to ensnare potential sex offenders

'Everything is left to them. The ball's in their court,' one of the mothers explained.

'We wait for them to say certain things and approach us with a meet. Once the meet has been arranged we take over. We know the location. We decide the location.'

'Why do you not then hand it over to the police. Why do you go and film?' Susannah Reid asked.

'Several times we have handed over information to the police and in all fairness there is no follow up,' was the reply.

'The easiest way for us to do this and get these people flagged up to the authorities is for us to go and meet them. We instantly call the police. As soon as we arrive we call the police so we know they're on their way.'

However, a former police officer warned that while he understands their motivation, he believes their work can create further risk.

We urge them to allow the police to do their vital work by not taking law into their own hands.

'I understand exactly why they're doing it and there are too few police to engage in the way we're currently doing effectively,' he said.

'But it represents a risk to them and ongoing operations and a risk to innocent third parties. Everybody understands the frustration.

Watson is awaiting sentence after he pleaded guilty to attempting to sexually communicate with a child between July 14 and August 9, for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification

Earlier this month it was revealed how the mothers had set up a meeting with Nathan Watson, 43, from Bristol who lured his young target with online messages and sent her a photo of his penis before calling her 'baby' when she told him she was 11

'The problem is when you do it by yourself you have no control. So when they're talking to a man and lure him from that house to a meeting place they have no way of carrying out surveillance.

'So if I'm travelling from Birmingham to London and I get off at the wrong stop and go to the wrong park I come expecting to have sex with a child. I meet a child in that park and there's no police presence to deter me. Then you're creating a risk.'

He suggested training being offered to people such as the Internet Interceptors so they can work for the police in an official capacity.

One of the mothers explained how they pose as youngsters on internet chat rooms and wait for sex offenders to make an approach

'I'd like to see it put into practice because I fully agree with everything he's said,' one of the mums replied.

And she said they would continue their work 'for as long as it takes'.

Earlier this month it was revealed how the mothers had set up a meeting with Nathan Watson, 43, from Bristol who lured his young target with online messages and sent her a photo of his penis before calling her 'baby' when she told him she was 11.

But on the day he was meant to meet the 'girl' Watson was spooked and did not show up to the meeting place, prompting the female paedophile hunters to knock on his door and confront him.

A clip filmed by the women shows the moment they approached him where he agrees to go outside to discuss the photos and messages he sent the 'girl'.

The women told Susanna Reid that they planned to continue their work for 'as long as it takes'

After confirming his name he claims he wasn't going to meet the girl because he 'had a feeling it was a bit dodge'.

He goes on to tell the two women he thought the girl he was messaging was 'quite young - 16 or 17'.

But they then appear to show him messages where the decoy tells him she is aged 11 and a reply where he wrote: 'That's ok baby'.

They then go on to accuse him of arranging to meet a 13-year-old in London previously and he replies: 'S***.'

One woman then tells him: 'It's a bit ironic that you live across from a play park'. But he answers 'I'm not a - ' before he stops short.

The woman replies: 'Go on, say the words 'I'm not a paedophile'. Go on make my day.'

Watson repeats 'I'm not, I'm not' before calling himself 'pathetic' when he admits the photos he sent were of his penis.

The mums set up the organisation Internet Interceptors in 2015 after becoming concerned that the police aren't doing enough to capture paedophiles

He then tells them he was planning to do 'charity work' in Calais in the coming days and tries to convince the women he is 'a good person'.

He adds: 'I'm a good person believe it or not. I understand what you're looking at. 'Sometimes I don't realise the age of people of people online. I should be a bit more savvy.'

The footage filmed at the homeless hostel where Watson worked and lived was passed on to the police, who arrested him.
The Swedish royals granted the lifelong wish of a seriously ill girl by inviting her to tour the Royal Palace.

Just days after the christening of Prince Alexander, Princess Madeleine and Queen Silvia of Sweden met with seven-year-old Enna and took her on a very special tour.

The trip was organised by Madeleine's charity, Min Stora Dag (My Special Day), and saw the girl, from Skane, invited to see parts of the palace that the public can't access.

Scroll down for video

Princess Madeleine (centre left) and Queen Silvia of Sweden (centre right) offered a guided tour to 7-year-old Enna, from Skane, who suffers with a serious illness. The little girl was accompanied to the royal palace by her older brother Omar, far left, and her mother Amira

Enna, from Skane, took a tour around the historic Royal Palace thanks to the Min Stora Dag (My Special Day) charity

On her Facebook page, Princess Madeleine wrote: 'Enna is 7 and her dream was to meet the Royal Family at the Palace.

'My mom and I are so blessed to be able to fulfill that dream for her today! So proud of all the work "Min Stora Dag" does. '

The charity strives to help children aged from 4 to 18-years-old and organised for Enna, her mother Amira, and brother Omar to see the historic Princess Sibyllas apartments.

Its mission statement reads: 'All children with serious illnesses in Sweden should be a part of something positive and out of the ordinary that provides power and self-esteem.'

Two princesses! Enna poses for an official photograph with Princess Madeleine, who said she was 'so blessed' to help Enna's dream come true

Step this way m'lady: Enna gets an insider's guide to Princess Sibyllas apartments

Madeleine's note on

It's been an eventful week for the Swedish royals; earlier this week they released official photographs from the christening of their youngest prince.

Prince Alexander, who was born in April, was officially welcomed into the world by his parents, Princess Sofia and Prince Carl Philip, at a ceremony in Drottningholm last week.

In the new images, the family are seen posing proudly with their newest addition, who is fifth in line to the throne.

The young royal looks adorable as he sits on his mother's lap dressed in a gown which is more than 100 years old, while his proud father sits alongside them.

In one image, the couple are joined by Carl Philip's parents, King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden, as well as Sofia's parents, Marie and Erik Hellqvist.

Princess Sofia and Prince Carl Philip are pictured with the young prince and his godparents (back row left to right): Lina Frejd, Victor Magnuson, Crown Princess Victoria, Jan-ake Hansson, and Wendy Larsson

Resplendent in a white lace dress, pearl headband and cream satin heels, Princess Sofia, 31, beamed flanked by her dapper husband, 37-year-old Prince Carl Philip

Swedish royals, politicians and glamorous guests arrived in their droves to celebrate the christening of Prince Alexander last week for a in a ceremony steeped in tradition.

Guests gathered at Drottningholm Palace Church where Prince Alexander, wearing the same christening gown worn by Prince Gustaf Adolf in 1906, arrived carried by his glamorous mother, Princess Sofia, and his father, Carl Philip.

Resplendent in a white lace custom made Ida Sjostedt suit, pearl headband and cream satin heels, Princess Sofia, 31, beamed as she watched her firstborn christened by Archbishop Antje Jackelen, flanked by her dapper husband, 37-year-old Prince Carl Philip.

The Prince, who was appointed kapten in the Swedish Navy and achieved the rank of major in 2014, looked handsome in his full uniform.
A little more than a decade ago, Texas set a performance indicator of 8.5 percent for its special education enrollment.

Ever since then, districts have tried to adhere to that percentage, even when doing so meant denying services to thousands of children, the Houston Chronicle found in a special report .

Children were given Section 504 plans, which provide some accommodations for students with disabilities but do not carry the same level of legal obligations and protections as plans developed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (Section 504 refers to a part of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973). In some cases, reporter Brian Rosenthal found, parents were encouraged to withdraw their children from public school.

The state said that the 8.5 percent benchmark was never a cap on enrollment. The decline in special education enrollment in the state is due to factors such as targeted assistance and early intervention, officials say.

From the article:

By 2000, according to data collected by the federal government, 13.3 percent of kids got some form of specialized education serviceseven if it was just 20 minutes of speech therapy per week. In Texas, 12.1 percent of kids got services that year, the ninth-lowest rate in the nation. Nevertheless, the Texas Education Agency decided the percentage was too high, according to interviews with dozens of former agency employees. ... The concern grew in 2003, when lawmakers cut the TEA's budget by $1.1 billion, forcing it to lay off 15 percent of staffers. The next year, the agency set the target as one part of a new monitoring protocol known as the Performance-Based Monitoring Analysis System, or PBMAS. The instructions were clear: School districts could get a perfect score on that part of the scorecard by giving special education services to fewer than 8.5 percent of students. If they served more, they would lose points. Districts that scored poorly on the PBMAS could be fined, visited by regulators, compelled to complete "Corrective Action Plans" or taken over entirely, the system manual said.

The Chronicles reporting is an excellent on-the-ground, state-based perspective on two issues that Ive covered from a national point of view: the number of minorities represented in special education, and the changing numbers of students enrolled in special education.

Recently, I also noted that nationwide, the number of students in special education is rising, after several years of falling enrollment . My article looked only at national statistics, not state-by-state numbers. But the Chronicle article noted that the state has kept its growth in number of students with autism down, even as national figures show the numbers of students with autism nearly doubling over the last 10 years. (My statistics differ from the Chronicles numbers because I focused on students ages 6 to 21. The Chronicle based its reporting on students ages 3 to 21.)

Rosenthal says that national special education enrollment decrease is driven almost entirely by Texas. Its true that a single large state can have an outsized impact. In my article, I found that New York was responsible a third of the special education enrollment increase between 2013-14 and 2014-15.

Special educators have long been concerned that minority students have been over-enrolled in special education classes, particularly in categories that still carry stigma, such as emotional an intellectual disabilities. Studies by researchers Paul Morgan and George Farkas have said that the problem in special education isnt over enrollment; its that minority students arent getting access to the special education services that they are entitled to . Their research has shown that among children who have the same sorts of academic or behavioral challenges, minority students are less likely to get special education services than white children.

This is a complex issue. In an explainer accompanying the story, Rosenthal, the reporter, said that minority overrepresentation is still a problem for the state , and so the falling numbers of special education enrollment cannot be tied to districts deciding to place fewer black children in special education, for example. The story also states, however, that the 8.5 percent indicator has particularly affected English-language learners, and children who live in big cities in Texas, such as Houston and Dallas. Thats because parents who do not speak English find it hard to navigate the system to get an evaluation for their child, Rosenthal writes. And urban districts have been among the districts most actively lowering their special education enrollments.

The story notes, Overall, Texas has above-average rates of disability risk factors, making it even more surprising that it has the lowest special ed rate in the country.
She's one of the most famous women in the world with a global fashion brand, active social life and four young children to care for.

So what on earth does Victoria Beckham carry in her handbag to ensure she looks good, feels good and stays on top of her hectic schedule?

The 41-year-old has opened her handbag for Vogue magazine - and the contents will surprise you.

Victoria Beckham has emptied the contents of her handbag in a new video - and shows her fans that she carries plenty of make-up, books and crystals

Speaking to the camera, the mother-of-four said: 'I like to carry a lot of things with me because you never know what you might need and I always end up with the kids' stuff as well.'

She then proceeds to show off the items in her designer tote, one of which is a book called My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, which was longlisted for The Man Booker Prize and tells the story between a mother and daughter.

She also carried crystals, which she says she 'really is into'. 'I am a real positive thinker,' she said. 'I believe in creative visualisation, glass is always half full - I have no time for anything negative. And actually, I bought crystals for all of my team, too.'

The fashion designer also shows off her phone, which she says is full of pictures of her family and 'never leaves her side' and her daughter, Harper's, reading books.

'I can't travel without my beauty products,' she says as she displays her moisturiser, hand cream and lipsticks, as well as her daughter Harper's Little Miss books, right

Designer Victoria Beckham appears on the runway at the Victoria Beckham Spring/Summer 2017 fashion show during New York Fashion Week

'I can't travel without my beauty products,' she says as she displays her moisturiser, hand cream and lipsticks.' The working mother also reveals she carries eye drops, which she gets from Japan and make the whites of her eyes 'super, super white'.

'I have so many children that I'm up so much in the night and I do not get enough sleep so I don't go anywhere without these.'

When asked who she would trade bags with for the day, the former popstar says Hilary Clinton because she would love to know what she carries in hers.
Advertisement

Stunning Swedish Princess Sofia was the star of the show last week as royals gathered to see her son Prince Alexander be christened.

But today, she and her husband Prince Carl Philip - recently voted Europe's second hottest royal - were happy to play second fiddle to the King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf.

The pair joined Crown Princess Victoria, her husband Daniel and Princess Madeleine as the monarch opened the first session of parliament.

Scroll down for video

Prince Carl Philip and wife Princess Sofia attend the opening of the new Parliamentary session on Stockholm today

Carl Philip was flanked by his wife Sofia (left) and sister Madeleine (right); both women followed tradition by wearing black and white to the opening of the Swedish parliament

The women of the Swedish royal family followed a tradition that started in 1974 by wearing black and white.

Sofia was chic in a sophisticated 435 black crepe de chine Max Mara dress. She completed her stunning look with a white flower pinned into her up-do.

Victoria donned a chic white blouise with a black waist tie over a black skirt, while Princess Madeleine opted for a 349.55 Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini high necked blouse with a black ribbon around the neck,

The family attended the hour long service at Stockholm Cathedral to mark the Opening of the Parliamentary session.

After the service was over they travelled by horse drawn carriage to Parliament House (Riksdagshuset), where they were greeted by the Speaker of Parliament, Urban Ahlin.

Speaker of the Parliament Urban Ahlin (left) welcomed the Swedish royal family to the Riksdagshuset, from left to right: King Carl Gustaf, Queen Silvia, Crown Princess Victoria, Prince Daniel, Prince Carl Philip, Princess Sofia and Princess Madeleine

Sofia, Carl Philip and Madeleine wave to crowds as they mark the opening of Parliament with a church service followed by a ceremony and speeches in the House itself

Speaker of the Parliament Urban Ahlin shakes Queen Silvia's hand who, like the other women in her family, are wearing just black and white as tradition has dictated for the last 42 years

Sofia looked stunning her belted black Max Mara dress with the white flower pinned into her glossy brunette locks

It is the second time in a less than a week that Carl Philip and Sofia have been the centre of attention after their son Alexander's christening last week

In his speech Carl XVI Gustaf underlined the importance of the European Union and the Riksdag's MPs watched as he addressed them about the EU, Swedish values and the refugee crisis.

'The European Union has come under strain, but we must maintain our belief in cooperation between countries and a union that guarantees peaceful collaboration,' he said, reports local.es.

I hope that all Swedes, both here in Sweden and abroad, stand up for our values. Those are values like a belief in equal worth, equality between the sexes, faith in democratic governance, freedom of religion and freedom of expression.'

Madeleine, Carl Philip and Sofia listen to the hour-long service at Stockholm cathedral before being taken by horse-drawn carriage to the houses of Parliament

MPs were offered the choice of attending the religious service or a secular ceremony ahead of the opening of parliament

The royal family sat together in an ornate, highly decorative booth in Stockholm cathedral at the morning service

Madeleine, Sofia and Carl Philip watched King Carl Gustaf urge Sweden to support the EU in his annual speech

After hailing Sweden's 'rich and multifaceted' heritage he declared the 2016-17 parliamentary session open.

The day started at 11am with a roll-call of MPs, who had a choice between attending a religious service at Stockholms main church or choosing a secular service.

Ministers then made their way to the parliament building for the opening ceremony, with the Royal Family arriving via horse and carriage just before 2pm.
The Victoria's Secret annual fashion show is one of the most highly-anticipated events of the holiday season  and this year the star-studded affair is allegedly headed to Paris.

According to WWD, the lingerie brand's world-famous Angels will reportedly be flying to France's most stylish city for the 2016 show, which is typically held in November ahead of its broadcast in December.

And while Victoria's Secret has a long history of holding its fashion shows in New York, this wouldn't be the brand's first international adventure.

City of Light: The 2016 Victoria's Secret fashion show is reportedly being held in Paris. Lily Aldridge (L) and Adriama Lima (R) are pictured on the runway during last year's show

In recent years, the show has been primarily held at the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan, but in 2014, the brand chose London for it's annual extravaganza.

Victoria's Secret models have also walked the runway in Los Angeles, Miami, and even Cannes in 2000, but if the reports are true, this would be the first time the show was held in the City of Light.

Although details about the show have yet to be released, the event has had past performances from Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, The Weeknd and Ellie Goulding, who joined the 2015 lineup after Rihanna canceled her appearance.

Return visit? French models Cindy Bruna (L) and Constance Jablonski (R) walked in the 2015 show that was held in New York, although it's unclear if they will strut down this year's runway

International: The fashion show has previously been held in London, Los Angeles, Miami, and Cannes, in addition to New York. Gigi Hadid made her Victoria's Secret catwalk debut in 2015

Star-studded: Details about the show have yet to be released, but the event has had past performances from Taylor Swift (L) and Selena Gomez (R)

The news would certainly make French models Cindy Bruna and Constance Jablonski happy.

Both Cindy, 21, and Constance, 25, walked in the 2015 show, although it is unclear if they will be present at this year's event even if it is held in their home country.

And while Victoria's Secret has yet to comment on the alleged new location, it may only be a matter of time before the brand opts to have its show in Paris.

Hint, hint? Just a few weeks ago, Victoria's Secret Angels Lily Aldridge, Martha Hunt, and Alessandra Ambrosio (from left to right) were in Paris filming the brand's holiday campaign

Face of an Angel: Lais Ribeiro also posed for the upcoming holiday ads, which were shot by Transformers director Michael Bay at the Opera in Paris

Stunning travelers: A group of Victoria's Secret models are pictured boarding a plane ahead of the 2014 show in London

Just a few weeks ago, Victoria's Secret Angels Alessandra Ambrosio, Lily Aldridge, Martha Hunt, and Lais Ribeiro were in Paris filming the brand's upcoming holiday campaign that was shot by Transformers director Michael Bay.

The four stunners donned shimmering lingerie and huge white angel wings as they used the front of the Opera in Paris as a catwalk while they strutted their stuff for the sexy ads.

Last November, both Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid made their debuts on the Victoria's Secret catwalk, but its unclear if the supermodels will be featured in this year's show  even though neither of them are strangers to Parisian runways.
A 92-year-old woman has been attending Pride for more than 30 years out of love for her two gay children.

For decades now, images from the New York City Gay Pride parade have featured a familiar face, with a familiar sign held above it reading: 'I adore my lesbian daughters. Keep them safe.'

That woman is Frances Goldin, an outspoken gay rights advocate and mother to Sally, 70, and Reeni, 68, who both came out to their family shortly after New York City's first ever pride parade in 1970.

Out in support: Frances Goldin, pictured in 1994, has been attending the New York City Pride parade for more than 30 years while carrying the same sign

Keep it up! Frances is pictured earlier this year at Pride, dressed in purple and carrying the famous sign

Despite that fact, Frances told BuzzFeed in an interview that she has actually been going to the event 'from the beginning'.

'Its very important to me and Im very grateful that Im able to carry it each year,' she said. 'I am now 92 years old and I hope to keep going for as long as I am able.'

Every year, the former literary agent shows up to the parade, usually dressed in purple and holding the exact same sign.

Made by a city planner friend of Frances', the placard has always said 'I adore my lesbian daughters', but the 'Keep them safe' portion was added in 1993.

Proud mom: Frances' daughters Sally, 70, and Reeni, 68, (pictured) came out as gay shortly after the first New York Pride in 1970

Dedicated: The former literary agent is a vocal advocate for equality and even told reporters back in 1997 that 'difference enriches us all'

One big family: Even if her daughters were not able to attend, Frances, pictured at one of the earlier events, has attended the parade with others, who became her daughters for the day

The back of the sign reads: 'A proud parent of lesbians.'

Over the years, people have taken notice of the woman and her sign, including the Washington Post who interviewed her in 1997. 'Difference enriches us all,' she told them at the time, aged 73.

She would frequently attend the event with her daughters. But, when they were unable to be there, she would take other friends of her girls who would in turn become her daughters for the day.

And it seems she has done her children proud, with Reeni telling the publication that her mother 'believes in equality and fairness and whats right.'

'She really puts her money where her mouth is,' she added. 'She works for it. Thats her life. Thats just who she is.'

Making them proud: One of Frances' daughters told the publication that her mother 'believes in equality and fairness and whats right'

Crafty: The sign was created for Frances by a close city planner friend and reads 'A proud parent of lesbians' on the back

Making a show: Frances, pictured at Pride 2015, has even become a surrogate for members of the community whose parents were less supportive

A real fighter: At 87 years old, Frances also joined the Occupy Wall Street protest in 2011

Not much has changed over the many years of attending the parade, aside from the fact that Frances might need to take a seat on occasion in her advancing years.

Her daughters say that she has even become a surrogate parent for many in the community who weren't lucky enough to have parents of their own who were supportive of their sexuality.

But LGBTQ issues are not the only ones that have seen Frances grabbing a sign and heading to the street. At 87 in 2011, she was a part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
And thawing meat in microwave will make it go hard, says another expert

Don't leave meat and fish to defrost in the fridge, the researcher advises

Thaw food by placing in cold water, says Susanne Ekstedt, from Sweden

If you think the safest way to defrost food is by leaving it in the fridge to slowly thaw, then think again.

In fact, we should be thawing frozen meat and fish by placing them in cold water, according to a Swedish researcher.

It's the quickest - and safest - way to defrost food, according to Susanne Ekstedt, who works for the food and biscience unit of the SP Technial Research Institute of Sweden.

Scroll down for video

The quickest and safest way to defrost food, such as a whole chicken, is by placing it in cold water, says Swedish researcher Susanne Ekstedt

'This is something food scientists have known to be true for a long time now,' Ekstedt told Science Nordic.

'But this knowledge is mostly confined to the food industry. Most people don't seem to be aware of this.'

To thaw frozen meat or fish properly, put it in a freezer bag to keep water out, and then place into a bowl of cold water.

The food will then thaw quickly, as water conducts heat more effectively than air, which hastens the process.

Putting in cold water will prevent bacteria to grow.

The method follows the same principle for freezing food: that it should be done as quickly as possible.

Ekstedt made the discovery after experiments with freezing and then defrosting different foods.

Frozen food, pictured, will thaw quickly in cold water as water conducts heat better than air, which hastens the process

Bjrg Egelandsdal, a professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Norway, supported Ekstedt's recommendation and said there has 'never been any good scientific evidence' behind the advice to thaw food in the fridge.

But what about defrosting in a microwave, a method we've all been guilty of using at some stage?

For microbiologist Per Einar Granum, of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, it's a no-no.

He only advises thawing in the microwave if you plan to use the meat in a stew - otherwise the meat will become too hard.
Wives lying awake at night and staring at the ceiling while their husbands contently snore away in bed next to them is not exactly a new phenomenon.

But scientists now believe that they have discovered the reason why men seem to find it much easier to sleep than their female partners.

After carrying out extensive research, experts have discovered that womens circadian clocks run two hours ahead of their male counterparts.

Scroll down for video

Women's natural body clocks are set differently to men and can make them more exhausted but unable to sleep by the time they go to bed

Because the man of the relationship may play a key role in deciding what time to head to bed, the male partner will often find it easier to fall asleep, researchers suggest.

The consequences for women who are fighting their natural body clock is that they feel exhausted by the time they get into bed and more awake in the morning.

The study, which was carried out by Canadian researchers, involved observing a group of 25 men and women for 72 hours and monitoring their sleeping patterns.

Women who are fighting their natural body clock can be more susceptible to insomnia

The circadian cycle, who controls our sleep-wake pattern, is what allows us to feel tired at night and awake in the morning and is also responsible for the feeling of jet lag.

The research, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was designed to explain why women may be more susceptible to insomnia than their male partners.

They found that women were about 50 per cent more likely to struggle sleeping, the Times reported.

Those who took part in the study were taken into a laboratory where they were alternately kept awake for an hour before being offered the chance to go to sleep.

Their response to alertness levels were monitored to gain an insight into their circadian rhythm, as well as temperature and the sleep hormone, melatonin.
A four-year-old girl who had at least a dozen cancerous tumours had been given just weeks to live - but stunned medics when they vanished.

Pippa Cole, from Preston, was first diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was just one.

But further scans over the course of three years revealed she had seven tumours in her brain and another cluster on her spine.

Doctors told her parents Shell, 35 and Scott, 37, there was nothing more they could do to help her battle the cancer.

They revealed she would only survive for a matter of weeks.

Pippa Cole, from Preston, was first diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was just one. After three years and four operations, doctors revealed there was nothing more they could do to help her beat the cancerous tumours in her spine and brain

Eight months after Pippa's terminal diagnosis, she was given another scan where doctors found her tumours had completely disappeared, to the delight of her parents Shell, 35 (right) and Scott, 37

The couple tried to make their daughter's final weeks as happy as possible.

They brought their wedding forward to allow her to be a flower girl and took her on a family holiday to Disney World.

But eight months after her terminal diagnosis, Pippa had another scan to check her progress.

Doctors were amazed to discover the tumours had completely disappeared.

Experts believe the unsuccessful radiotherapy that Pippa originally underwent in December 2015 had a delayed reaction.

But they are unable to say for certain why her cancer suddenly vanished.

Mrs Cole, who gave up her primary school teaching job to care for her daughter full time, said: 'Being told Pippa was terminal and had just weeks to live was heart breaking, it was the worst possible news.

'After all the surgery and chemotherapy, it seemed incredibly unfair that we were going to lose her.

'Every week we had with her from that moment seemed even more precious. We wanted to make Pippa's last months the happiest of her life.

Experts believe the unsuccessful radiotherapy that Pippa originally underwent in December 2015 had a delayed reaction - but they are unable to say for certain

Mrs Cole added: 'She had always nagged at us to get married so she could be a flower girl and we wanted her to be well enough to enjoy it.

'Our wedding day was more about Pippa than me and Scott but we wouldn't change it for the world.

'Visiting Disneyland in Paris last year and Walt Disney World this year was magical for Pippa.

'She absolutely loved seeing Mickey Mouse and the gang, her face was full of smiles the entire time.'

The couple tried to make their daughter's final weeks as happy as possible. They brought their wedding forward to allow her to be a flower girl and took her on holiday to Disney World

Doctors believe Pippa is a walking miracle. Mrs Cole said: 'We can't believe she has just started school like other children her age'

Mrs Cole said Pippa loved seeing Mickey Mouse and friends when they visited Disney World this year.

The family took as many photos as possible as they never knew if it would be her last one.

She added: 'Every day she woke up alive felt like another blessing as we couldn't waste it by not doing fun things.

'Even though we all thought it was her last few months, we needed to fill it with memories of a life time as she wouldn't be here to grow up with us.'

The family first noticed something was wrong with Pippa in July 2013 when she began vomiting every day for nine days straight.

Pippa was rushed her to hospital after her parents noticed there was blood in her vomit.

She had a CT scan, where doctors found a tumour in her brain, and she was taken by ambulance to Manchester Children's Hospital for further tests.

Pippa underwent surgery to have the tumour removed just days later, and after a year of chemotherapy, she was given the all clear in August 2014.

Doctors revealed Pippa had a tumour in her brain in July 2013 but it wasdoctors found a tumour in her brain, and she was taken by ambulance to Manchester Children's Hospital for further tests. Pippa underwent surgery to have the tumour removed just days later, and after a year of chemotherapy, she was given the all clear in August 2014.

The family prepared Pippa to have extensive chemotherapy after doctors found a further three tumours in her brain and a cluster in her spine

But in January 2015, a routine scan discovered a new tumour, and Pippa had further surgery to remove it.

However, just 48 hours after the operation, scans revealed another tumour had grown in its place.

A month later she had her third bout of surgery, where doctors removed the tumour, but once again tragedy struck.

PIPPA'S TIMELINE July 2013  diagnosed with cancerous brain tumour Her family were told she had a 46 per cent chance of surviving past five years. The first tumour was removed and Pippa started yearlong chemotherapy August 2014  all clear and cancer free January 2015  routine scan found a new small tumour The tumour is removed and the family prepare to go to the US for special therapy. But just 48 hours after the operation, Pippas brain scan showed another tumour had grown. February 2015  back in for third brain surgery Pippa was scanned another 48 hours later and found three more tumours in brain and cluster on spine. December 2015  scan detects new 5cm tumour in brain but others remain stable Pippa has fourth brain operation and is given a definite terminal diagnosis. Doctors reveal she has weeks to live but say radiotherapy could keep her alive for a few months Pippa then starts intensive radiotherapy on her brain and spine. February - May 2016  scans show all tumours are stable but have not shrunk August 2016  scan shows all tumours have vanished Pippa is no longer terminal and is cancer free. Advertisement

Just two days later, doctors discovered she had three more tumours growing in her brain and a cluster in her spine.

The family prepared Pippa to have extensive chemotherapy.

But by the end of last year, a new bigger tumour had appeared alongside the others, which had remained the same size.

Surgeons tried to perform one more surgery, but told her family that she was terminally ill, and had just weeks to live.

Mrs Cole said: 'We spent most of last year going back and forth for surgery and treatment, she had her fourth operation in December but by this point her cancer was so aggressive they were growing daily.

'Her prognosis awful, she had a few weeks without treatment and perhaps a few months if she had radiotherapy.

'We decided to give her a chance at having more time but after 20 rounds of radiotherapy we had to stop, she was only two rounds off completing but it was restricting her breathing.'

By February 2016, doctors were impressed that the tumours had not grown any further.

And by August, scans were showing that the tumours had completely vanished.

Mrs Cole added: 'By July, we felt so lucky she had lived past doctors expectations and her scans in 2016 had been stable.

'Nothing could have prepared us for the news that all Pippa's cancerous tumours had disappeared.

'We are still on cloud nine, it was only a few weeks ago and it still doesn't feel real.

'Pippa will face some problems as she grows because of the radiotherapy on her spine but we cannot believe she has just started school like other children her age.

'Doctors think she's a walking miracle and believe her tumours have been broken down by the radiotherapy she had in December but it just took months for it to work properly.

'It feels incredible to not have the constant worry of time running out with Pippa and we're enjoying every minute of it.'

By February 2016, doctors were impressed that the tumours had not grown any further. And by August, scans showed the tumours had completely vanished. Mrs Cole said: 'Nothing could have prepared us for the news that all Pippa's cancerous tumours had disappeared'
The electrical devices helped 49 smokers a day to stub the habit in 2015

Electronic cigarettes helped an additional 18,000 people quit smoking in just one year, new research suggests.

The devices assisted around 49 smokers a day in England to stub out the habit in 2015, a study has revealed.

Researchers claim there was no evidence to suggest e-cigarettes prompted more people to try and quit the notoriously bad habit - but that the devices did improve success rates.

E-cigarettes aided 18,000 people to give up smoking during 2015 in England - around 49 a day, researchers from University College London discovered

Researchers from University College London (UCL) assessed data from more than 43,000 smokers over a period of nine years starting in 2006.

The data also provided figures on the portion of smokers who had set themselves a quit date.

They noted over the time period studied, as more people used the devices, more people managed to successfully quit smoking.

A 40-year-old smoker who quits permanently can expect to gain nine life years compared with a continuing smoker, researchers claim.

Professor Robert West, from UCL, said: 'England is sometimes singled out as being too positive in its attitude to e-cigarettes.

'These data suggest that our relatively liberal regulation of e-cigarettes is probably justified.'

A 40-year-old smoker who quits permanently can expect to gain nine life years compared with a continuing smoker, experts claim

Alison Cox, director of prevention at Cancer Research UK, added: 'Giving up smoking can be really tough.

'It's important to remember that getting support from Stop Smoking Services is still the most effective way to quit.

'E-cigarettes can play a role in helping people quit and the evidence so far shows e-cigarettes are much safer than tobacco.

'This study shows the positive impact they've had on helping people give up the deadly addiction.'

This study shows the positive impact e-cigarettes have had on helping people give up the deadly addiction. Alison Cox, director of prevention at Cancer Research UK

It is estimated that 2.8 million people in Britain use e-cigarettes, and they are the most popular aid to try to stop smoking in the country.

Doctors maintain the most effective way to quit smoking remains through prescription medication and professional support.

Although fewer people use NHS stop-smoking services than use e-cigarettes - they are three times more likely to quit than going cold turkey on their own.

Tobacco still kills six million people around the world every year, with more than 100,000 of those in the UK.

Despite huge public health efforts to help people quit, the habit remains the number one preventable cause of cancer.
Victim: William Mead (pictured) was just one when he died of sepsis

Ministers have agreed to fund a national campaign to raise awareness of sepsis in a victory for the Daily Mail.

This newspaper revealed earlier this year that children are dying needlessly from the condition and told the story of William Mead, a baby who died of sepsis after an NHS 111 call handler failed to realise how ill he was.

Following our campaign alongside Williams mother Melissa, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday promised a nationwide awareness drive.

Although the signs of sepsis are hard to spot, greater knowledge of some of the symptoms could help people get treatment more quickly, and save lives.

Mr Hunt said: Sepsis is a devastating condition and patients rightly expect the NHS to be able to recognise it and provide the highest quality patient care.

We are committed to a new campaign that will raise awareness of the condition and have worked closely with the UK Sepsis Trust to make sure it will help people spot the signs and get the help they need.

Scroll down for video

Polling by YouGov, published yesterday to coincide with World Sepsis Day, reveals that 45 per cent of Britons do not know what sepsis is and 34 per cent have never heard of it.

The Department of Health is to fund a mass awareness project, led by the UK Sepsis Trust and Public Health England. It will be launched later this year and seek to inform millions of patients and clinicians around the country about the condition.

Posters and leaflets have been drafted, with a checklist telling parents when to call 999. The campaign will focus on the message: Just ask  could it be sepsis?

William's mother Melissa, 29, (pictured with her husband Paul and their son) says everyone should be aware of the dangers of sepsis

William Mead tragically died after medics failed to spot he had signs of sepsis - with a charity saying 14,000 lives a year could be saved if more people were aware of the symptoms

William was just 12 months old when he died of sepsis at his home in Penryn, Cornwall. A damning report obtained by the Mail revealed how there had been 16 failures in his case, with a string of clinicians failing to spot signs he was suffering from the condition, which affects the immune system.

Errors at the troubled NHS 111 helpline  which was not sensitive to signs of the condition  were among a string of appalling blunders that contributed to Williams death in December 2014.

The local out-of-hours service and GPs also failed to spot he had sepsis, which had been caused by an underlying chest infection and pneumonia.

Sepsis affects 150,000 people a year and kills an estimated 44,000, of whom 1,000 are children, like William (pictured with his mother)

Following the revelations, Mr Hunt admitted the Health Services approach to sepsis  the leading cause of avoidable death in the UK  was totally inadequate and agreed to collaborate with the Mead family to plan a new approach to combating the condition and improve the way red flags for the illness are recognised.

The Mail has since revealed a string of tragic cases in which children have died needlessly of sepsis.

Following our campaign alongside Williams mother Melissa, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday promised a nationwide awareness drive

Mrs Mead, 29, said yesterday: This Government funding will get our campaign out of the starting blocks. Sepsis will never be eradicated but we need to make sure that everyone knows about it.

Sepsis affects 150,000 people a year and kills an estimated 44,000, of whom 1,000 are children. It is usually triggered by an infection but escalates rapidly, sparking a vicious immune response in which the body attacks its own vital organs. But despite the severity of the condition, it is very tricky to detect. It can develop rapidly and needs prompt treatment in hospital with antibiotics.

The UK Sepsis Trust estimates a major awareness campaign could save 14,000 lives across the UK every year  38 a day. Chief executive Dr Ron Daniels said he was delighted that the Government has agreed to act.

This far-reaching and comprehensive programme will have an enormous impact on the health of individuals and families across the country, he added.

Sue Morrish, whose son Sam died with sepsis in Devon in 2010, added: When my son Sam died I had never heard of sepsis, and yet the fast-moving and deadly condition took the life of my child in what felt like an instant.
With 1,057 cases of chikungunya reported over the last week, and the first fatality on Monday, the dengue-chikungunya outbreak has reached an alarming scale in Delhi and is now affecting attendance in city schools and offices.

This was reflected in the challans issued on Monday by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi to buildings feared to be breeding grounds for mosquitoes carrying vector-borne diseases.

Schools and hospitals topped the challan list and Usha Ram, associate director, DPS World Schools, told Mail Today: This season is particularly bad. In the last few weeks, we have seen a steady dip in our class attendance as every week a few more students report sick due to virus-related illness.

With 1,057 cases of chikungunya reported over the last week, and the first fatality on Monday, the outbreak has Delhi in its grip and is now affecting attendance in city schools and offices

This is also a period when most schools in the city are gearing-up for internal examinations.

Several school authorities that Mail Today contacted said they were taking strict precautions to deal with the outbreak.

Regular advisory is being issued to the parents to follow required measures, said Ashok Pandey, principal, Ahlcon International School in east Delhi.

This is the peak season and we are taking all possible steps to keep our students safe.

Pandey said on an average, one or two children were reporting sick every week.

Those who are diagnosed with high fever are advised to stay at home so that no more children in the school are infected with the virus.

Ameeta Wattal, principal, Springdales school at Pusa road said all the students who have fallen sick will be given a chance to re-appear for their exams.

A 65-year-old man died of chikungunya on Monday at Sir Ganga Ram hospital in west Delhi, the first reported casualty of the viral disease (file pic)

Chikungunya Chikungunya is an infection with symptoms that include the sudden onset of fever two to four days after exposure. The fever usually lasts two to seven days, while accompanying joint pains typically last weeks or months but sometimes years. The risk of death is a little less than 1 in 1,000; the elderly or those with underlying chronic medical problems are most likely to have severe complications. The best means of prevention for Chikungunya is mosquito control and the avoidance of bites by mosquitoes in areas where the disease is common. Advertisement

The school is taking all precautions to keep the surrounding clean. The fumigation is happening every afternoon and students have been advised to wear full-sleeve shirts and pants so that their body parts are not exposed to the mosquitoes, Wattal said.

Meanwhile, 24 educational institutions were served notices by south and north MCD on Monday for not following required safety measure on their premises.

These included two departments of Indian Institute of technology (IIT), Zakir Hussain College, nursing college, Central schools, municipal schools, Cambridge Public School (Lajpat Nagar) and Notre Dame School.

The caretaker of these properties will have to appear before the magistrate and they can be penalised up to Rs 5,000 and weekly inspections are followed up to ensure that they are maintaining cleanliness and thus preventing the scope for the mosquitoes to breed, said an MCD official.

In all, the MCD listed 86 new sites for being mosquito-breeding spots. The maximum cases have been cited in South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC).

Around eight hospitals and health centres were served challans, including MCD-run Hindu Rao Hospital, Jamia Unani Hos- pital and CRPF Hospital.

A 65-year-old man succumbed to chikungunya on Monday at Sir Ganga Ram hospital in west Delhi, the first reported casualty of the viral disease.

R Pandey, a resident of Ghaziabad was admitted to the hospital on Saturday in a critical state and was admitted to ICU ward.

Pandey who died early on Monday was infected with chikungunya with sepsis.

The viral counts of the patient were high. He was shifted from Yashoda hospital in Ghaziabad to our hospital in an extremely critical state, said a spokesperson of Sir Ganga Ram hospital.

The best means of prevention for Chikungunya is mosquito control and the avoidance of bites by mosquitoes in areas where the disease is common

Delhi government officials said they had prepared a list of sensitive areas in Delhi where high level of breeding was found last year.

The list included many government hospitals like Babu Jagjivan Ram hospital, AIIMS, Safdarjung hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC), Ram Manohar Lohia hospital and National Chest Institute.

All these areas have been identified under the sites which need special care. We are conducting regular awareness programmes and insisting on continuous fumigation in these areas. We are focusing more on preventive measures this year, said Dr SM Raheja, additional director general of health services (ADGHS), Delhi government.

Heavy rainfall during monsoon season has led to an increase in mosquitoes

This year, Delhi and NCR is witnessing more cases of chikungunya as compared to the previous year.

While 1,158 cases of dengue have been reported so far this year, the national capital has reported 1,057 cases of chikungunya in 2016.

Last year, Delhi reported 64 cases of chikungunya.

Cases of dengue have also increased sharply, with 387 cases reported this month, a rise of over 50 per cent, according to a municipal report released on Monday.

A hundred AIIMS doctors fall ill

Mosquitoes have not even spared hospitals this time, with doctors at the premiere government hospital, AIIMS, falling ill en masse.

In fact, the maxing number of dengue and chikungunya cases in New Delhi area has been reported from the AIIMS Campus.

According to sources, more than 100 people, including resident doctors and their families living inside the campus, have fallen prey to chikungunya and dengue in the last few weeks.

More than 100 people, including resident doctors and their families living inside the campus, have fallen prey to chikungunya and dengue

Of these, the highest number of cases has been from I and G Blocks, and from D2 Flats of doctors hostels.

They said that the increasing foot-fall of patients in the emergency department of the hospital is to blame as for doctors catching the infection.

Medical campuses of hospitals like Safdarjung and Lady Harding Medical College (LHMC) have also seemingly become big mosquito-breeding grounds leading to a rise in number of cases.

A senior doctor from LHMC told Mail Today: Four-five doctors in our campus have been diagnosed with Chikungunya and many more are having Dengue symptoms.

"There is a lot of construction work going on at the hospital premises which has been left in middle.

Overall, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has reported a big rise in the number of mosquito- borne diseases in its area this season.

It has already reported 18 cases of chikungunya, 29 cases of dengue and 56 of malaria so far.

In all, 259 challans and 4535 notices have been issued till Monday.

Many cases have surfaced from Babar Road, Tilak Marg, Kali Bari Marg, Netaji Nagar, Sarojini Nagar and Moti Bagh.

NDMC has also issued a challan to the INA Metro Station for several mosquito breeding sites in the vicinity.

NBCC Corporation was also issued a challan for its East Kidwai Nagar building site.

We are trying our best to contain the malaise. We are conducting awareness sessions with embassies, resident commissioners of state houses and police stations.

"We have asked the SHOs to empty their malkhanas where cars and other seized objects are kept and often collect water leading to mosquito breeding, an NDMC official said.

Posh colonies hit hardest by virus outbreak

Some of Delhis poshest localities have been the worst affected by the dengue and chikungunya outbreak as the highest number of cases has been reported from the South zone.

According to data released by the municipal corporation on Monday, of the 1,158 cases of dengue reported in the Capital so far, over 255 patients of the vector-borne diseases are from the South zone.

The north and east zone have reported 105 and 70 cases of dengue respectively.

Mosquitoes don't care if you're rich or poor and some of the capital's affluent areas are the worst hit

The number of patients of chikungunya is also high in these areas, officials said.

Out of the 1,057 cases of chikungunya in the national capital so far, 202 have been reported from the south zone this year.

The north and east zone have reported 148 and 57 cases respectively.

Officials said that this is not the first time that South Delhi has been the worst affected.

Even in 2015, the south zone had reported 776 cases of dengue, while north and east confirmed 499 and 152 cases of the mosquito- borne disease respectively.

Mukesh Yadav, a spokesperson for South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) told Mail Today: There are nearly 1,185 unauthorised colonies in south Delhi which are prone to mosquito breeding. The highest numbers of cases are reported from these areas. We are continuously doing fogging in these areas to ensure there is no mosquito breeding".

Also, due to excessive rainfall, water logging in some areas has become a major issue which we are trying to sort out, Yadav added.

While dengue fever is mostly spread by the Aedes aegypti, chikungunya virus is often spread by the Aedes albopictus.

Doctors say treatment is symptomatic with no specific cure, so if patients use pain medicines indiscriminately there is a risk of them becoming resistant to them.

Symptoms usually last for 27 days, after an incubation period of 410 days.

Residents blamed the authorities for not taking enough preventive measures and delaying fogging drives.
The Kansas Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case that will determine whether a 2014 law stripping the states teachers of tenure protections is constitutional. The Kansas National Education Association is challenging the law on technical grounds, contending that the legislature passed the measure in a manner that evaded proper legislative review by attaching it to an omnibus education appropriations bill, House Bill 2506.

As Education Weeks Andrew Ujifusa reported back in 2014 , the legislature was in a tight spot due to another Kansas Supreme Court case, Gannon v. Kansas. In the waning days of the 2014 legislative session, lawmakers were facing a daunting deadline. If they didnt pass a new funding bill that addressed the school-funding inequalities that the justices found in Gannon, the Supreme Court was threatening to close all of the states schools .

But HB2506 didnt just include an extra $129 million in funding; it also repealed the states nearly 60- year-old due process guarantees for teachers and lowered licensing requirements for science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers, as Stephen Sawchuk reported .

In enacting HB 2506, the Legislature logrolled the Teacher Dismissal Provisions into an appropriations bill, thereby evading the legislative process and debate that would have taken place had those provisions been made to stand on their own in separate legislation, the states teachers union contends in court filings . Indeed, the last-minute insertion of the Teacher Dismissal Provisions into the bill short-circuited the normal legislative processes altogether, precluding any considered debate or deliberation on the provisions.

The KNEA argues that HB 2506 violates the state constitutions one subject rule, which means that legislation may only deal with one main issue. A judge in district court rejected that argument last year and sided with the state.

Proponents of the legislation argue that HB 2506 didnt prohibit individual districts from writing due-process provisions into their collective bargaining agreements. The majority of the states districts, however, have since decided to end teacher due process protections, reports The Wichita Eagle .

Previously, Kansass teachers were granted due-process rights after three years in the classroom. Those rights entitled veteran teachers to a hearing if their district moved to fire them.

The legislature is now also considering repealing tenure protections for teachers at the states community and technical colleges, reports The Topeka Capital-Journal.

In addition to this case, the KNEA is behind several lawsuits across the state contending that the 2014 bills retroactive nature is unconstitutional. Earlier this summer, that line of argument won out in a similarly high-profile suit in North Carolina.

These court battles are part of a larger national fight over whether teacher job-protections laws, as opponents argue, keep inept teachers in the classroom thus hurting students. Tenure opponents suffered a major setback earlier this summer , when a California appeals court reversed a trial court decision in the closely watched Vergara case that found that tenure protections were indeed shielding bad educators from dismissal. The appeals courts decision was recently upheld by the states supreme court.
by her ex for a year

The menace of social media has yet again led to the death of a vulnerable minor.

A 17-year-old girl, studying in class twelve has committed suicide at her residence after her lover shared their intimate pictures on Facebook.

The deceased allegedly felt humiliated, after she found that a few intimate pictures of her with her ex had been shared online.

A 17-year-old girl, studying in class 12 committed suicide at her residence after her lover shared their intimate pictures on Facebook. (Picture for representation only)

The teenager committed suicide at her residence in West Bengal.

The teenager was in a relationship with a 20-year-old boy for over three years.

The relation between the two became strained over family disagreements.

The teenager was reportedly unable to bear the trauma ever since she saw her pictures on Facebook. (Picture for representation only)

The boy had reportedly threatened the minor girl that he will post the pictures if she opened her mouth on the issue.

"My daughters intimate pictures were uploaded on Facebook by that boy who was harassing and threatening her for long, said the deceaseds mother.

The teenager was reportedly unable to bear the trauma ever since she saw her pictures on Facebook on Sunday night.

Following this, she allegedly killed herself to escape the embarrassment.

According to a relative of the girl, the boy had also warned her mother against intervening into the matter.

Chairperson of West Bengal Commission for Women Sunanda Mukherjee, has extended her support to the family. (Picture for representation only)

The mother had apparently called up the police station but she was redirected to the duty official. The Bishnupur police has now initiated an action to track the boy who is absconding.

According to a report in NDTV, Chairperson of West Bengal Commission for Women Sunanda Mukherjee, has extended her support to the family.
The G-20 summit in Hangzhou did not produce any eye-catching results, despite its much lengthier final communique (48 paras) compared to that of the 2014 Brisbane summit (21 paras) and the 2015 Antalya summit (27 paras).

Declarations

The summit was held under the shadow of Chinas economic slowdown, its intemperate rejection of the UNCLOS arbitration ruling on its unlawful conduct in the South China Sea and growing US-China differences, not to mention mounting tensions between China and major G-20 countries such as Japan, Canada, Australia and even India.

The G-20 communique is full of high sounding declarations on all that is needed to promote global growth and equity as a collective endeavor, ignoring the large gap between precept and practice.

PM Modi with Chinese premier Xi Jinping before bilateral meeting in Hangzhou

The determination to foster an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive world economy to usher in a new era of global growth and sustainable development was expressed, even though actual trends do not support this objective.

The G-20 leaders noted weak global growth, the potential volatility in the financial markets, fluctuating commodity prices, sluggish trade and investment, and slow employment growth in some countries.

Challenges to the global economic outlook originating from geopolitical developments, increased refugee flows, terrorism and conflicts were also pin-pointed.

But no concrete solutions to these problems stemming largely from the political, economic and security policies of the dominating powers have been offered.

Chinas frenetic growth that guzzled up resources worldwide has created huge sectoral over-capacities there that, with the countrys growth slowing down, is disrupting commodity markets. File picture of PM Modi with Chinese PM Xi Jinping

The US mismanagement of its financial sector accounts for the persisting financial instability.

Chinas frenetic growth that guzzled up resources worldwide has created huge sectoral over-capacities there that, with the countrys growth slowing down, is disrupting commodity markets.

Regime change policies that continue in Syria, Turkeys destabilising regional ambitions, the Saudi-Iran rivalry that is stoking sectarian conflict, the half-hearted fight against the Islamic State, inconsistent approaches to religious extremism and terrorism by major G-20 states, the renewal of Cold War politics in Europe, Chinas aggressive behaviour in the western Pacific are ironically responsible for the challenges that the G-20 communique identifies.

U.S. President Barack Obama listens to a reporter's question during a press conference after the conclusion of the G-20 Summit in Hangzhou

How will the G-20 collectively transform its economies in a more innovative and sustainable manner?

Advanced economies, in fact, rely on technological innovation to preserve their global economic hegemony as best they can.

Pressure on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues on developing countries is intended in part to preserve the innovative and technological edge of the West over others.

Innovation requires a supportive infrastructure of human capital, quality of education, financial resources, expenditure on R&D, entrepreneurship, market forces and a culture of risk-taking and competition, which can only be created over time with massive effort.

The debate over sustainable development is already decades old, and is riddled with an underlying calculus of market advantage and managing competition.

Globalisation

Attitudes towards globalisation are changing in those very countries that vigorously promoted it for creating an increasingly barrier-free global market for their multinational corporations.

The G-20 leaders committed themselves to build an open economy, reject protectionism, further strengthen the multilateral trading system and so on.

Yet it is the West which is now visibly disenchanted with globalisation because it has favoured investment across countries by multinational corporations in search for cheap labour, easier environmental regulations, availability of high quality human resources for R&D at much lower cost, tax advantages and so on.

Loss of jobs and income inequalities in countries hitherto the standard-bearers of globalisation have caused a backlash.

Donald Tusk (L), president of the European Union (EU), and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, attend a news conference at the G20 media centre during the Group of 20

The G-20 communique speaks of harder work to build an open world economy, reject protectionism, promote global trade and investment, including through further strengthening the multilateral trading system and eradicating poverty as part of the emphasis on inclusiveness.

In fact, as electioneering in the US presidential election and developments in Europe show, protectionist discourse and anti-foreigner sentiment are growing.

Agreements

The US is pushing for regional trade agreements - the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - to outflank the WTO, and through these pacts introduce in international negotiations regulatory, investment protection and IPR issues resisted by the developing countries within the WTO framework.

Bridging the digital divide with affordable broadband access, completion of work on a new IMF quota formula by 2017, scaling up green financing, greater international cooperation against corruption with the surprising caveat of respecting human rights and sovereignty of each country, are mentioned in the G-20 communique.

So is support for the WTO, but with the door open for introducing new issues of liberalisation that are being addressed in regional trade arrangements, a collective response to the excess capacity in steel and other industries, and various steps to combat terrorism, including choking up its finance.

During the G-20 summit the BRICS countries gather separately and highlight their perspective on the global economic agenda.

Their statement at Hangzhou echoed parts of the G-20 communique on innovation, inclusiveness, sustainable growth and the like, but emphasised WTO as the cornerstone of the multilateral trading system with prime focus on development, and expressed concern at rising protectionism.

The statement also called for reviewing IMF quotas, stressed energy security and universal energy access, it welcomed the work of the New Development Bank created under the auspices of the BRICS group and had a formulation on terrorism that emphasised the UNs central role in combating it but omitted any mention of the UN Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism sponsored by India.
Pradeep Chauhan, 35, was travelling with his wife Anjana and two children aged 12 and 10, when attacked by violent hair-dresser wielding an iron rod

A lab technician employed by the Fortis Hospital was repeatedly attacked with an iron rod after his car accidentally bumped into another vehicle in south Delhis Vasant Kunj area on Sunday night.

The victim was taken back to his workplace, Fortis Hospital, with severe head injuries.

Police have arrested the attacker, a resident of Khirki Extension in south Delhi.

According to police, Pradeep Chauhan, 35, was travelling with his wife Anjana and two children aged 12 and 10, near Qutub Minar metro station when his vehicle hit the car ahead of him.

The victims wife Anjana told Mail Today that it was a busy road and traffic was heavy.

The car in front of us stopped abruptly, causing the minor accident. The owner of the car, who was also travelling with his wife and a child, came out of the car and threatened us, she said.

Anjana alleged that her husband offered apologies and an appropriate payment for the damage but the car owner would not listen.

He went back to his car, brought out an iron rod and assaulted my husband several times.

Police have booked one Vineet Kumar, a hair-dresser, under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (picture for representation only)

According to eye-witnesses, even the attackers wife requested him to stop, but he hit Chauhan two-three times in rage.

Anjana also received injuries in the scuffle. A crowd gathered and eventually overpowered the attacker and informed police.

Chauhan was admitted to the nearby Fortis Hospital where his condition is stated to be stable.
Is Dawood Ibrahim, India's foremost underworld don, losing a grip on his crime syndicate?

It is alleged that one of his henchman has reportedly siphoned off at least Rs 45 crore, intended to be deposited in a Canadian bank.

Latest intercepts by central intelligence agencies suggest that the entire D-Company is worried after the event and could possibly target the person responsible.

Is Dawood Ibrahim, India's foremost underworld don, losing a grip on his crime syndicate?

Who is Dawood Ibrahim? Known to his friends and enemies alike as 'Dawood Bhai' or 'Bhai' (which literally means brother, and in the Mumbai underworld lingo means Don), Ibrahim is the leader of the Indian organised crime syndicate D-Company based in Mumbai. Ibrahim is number three on the The World's 10 Most Wanted list and is accused of heading an illegal empire in India. After the 1993 Bombay bombings, which Ibrahim allegedly organised and financed with Tiger Memon, both became India's most wanted men. He is currently on the wanted list of Interpol for cheating, criminal conspiracy and running an organised crime syndicate Advertisement

Dawood Ibrahim, who is being addressed by his syndicate members as Bade Hazrat these days, is annoyed as one of his trusted accomplices, identified only as Khalique, is suspected to have escaped with the money which was raised in the name of the underworld don.

Intelligence sources say that this is one of the rarest events when somebody within the D-Company is suspected to have dared to have misappropriated money raised in Dawoods name.

Intercepts of conversation amongst members of the D-Company by central intelligence agencies suggest that the former had entrusted Khalique and Rais to deposit Rs 45 crore in Canada and Panama.

According to the intercepts, as per Khalique, the black money belonging to unknown white-collared worker in Delhi, was deposited in a Canadian bank.

However, his associate named 'Rais' made some blunder due to which the bank has refused to release it.

At times, banks do deposit money on the insistence of clients, but during the diligence exercise, they demand an explanation of the source of the money.

Until they are convinced that the deposited money is not proceeds of crime, they do not release it.

The latest phone interceptions from the central intelligence agencies suggest that one of Ibrahim's henchman siphoned off a sum of money

Documents accessed by India Today Group show that D-Company members have been engaged in round-tripping (converting black money into white through tax havens) for some white-collared people in India.

The intercepts of the telephonic conversation between D-Companys alleged Pakistan operative Jabir Moti and Khalique while he was in Sharjah, show that a D-Company team had transferred the black money to Panama and Canada in 2012.

The operatives had discussed a figure of 45, out of which 20 belonged to a Bollywood superstar and 5 was to be given to D-Company as commission and the remaining was to be invested in Panama and Canada.

It is not clear whether they are talking about Rs 45 crore or Rs 45 thousand crore.

The money was supposed to be brought back to India as white money.

Some unidentified brokers had been activated by D-Company for this purpose.

Interestingly, during the conversation, Jabir informed Khalique that Rais, who had deposited the money in the banks, informed them that some money had been misappropriated by Khalique in the name of Bade Hazrat.

To this, Khalique replied that he did not misappropriate any money, but it was Rais, who had deposited the money in Panama and Canada, who made some mistake due to which the money was blocked.

And the blocked money could only be retrieved after he receives a debit/credit card statement from his banks.

Documents accessed by India Today Group show that D-Company members have been engaged in round-tripping (converting black money into white through tax havens) for some white-collared workers in India

Khalique (who is of Indian-origin) had sent two of his associates to Canada on November 16, 2015, and they were supposed to reach a place where they would receive debit/credit card statements.

Sources said that Khalique and Rais are blaming each other for the goof-up, and Dawood is not happy with this bickering.

He wants to know what went wrong due to which the money had been blocked.

Sources said that it is suspected Khalique is hiding somewhere in northeast India, and the D-Company is eyeing him for an explanation.

Meanwhile intelligence agencies are also trying to identify the people who had provided black money to the D-Company to convert them into white money.
An angry mob took over the IT capital on Monday leading to violence, arson and looting after the Supreme Court directed Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of water from Cauvery River to Tamil Nadu every day until September 20.

Law and order collapsed completely in south Karnataka, especially Bengaluru, where more than 75 vehicles, including trucks and buses registered in Tamil Nadu, were set on fire.

An unidentified man of around 25 years of age died and two others, identified as Chandramohan Singh (39) and Yogesh (22), were seriously injured when police opened fire at a mob, which tried to set a patrol vehicle on fire in Peenya, Bengaluru.

An angry mob took over the IT capital on Monday leading to violence, arson and looting after the SC directed Karnataka to release water from Cauvery River to Tamil Nadu

In all, more than 200 people were arrested for inciting violence. More than 40 buses belonging to KPN Travels were gutted when miscreants set them ablaze at a private depot.

As the fire spread to nearby houses, people vacated their homes. Police had to fire in the air and use tear gas shells to disperse mobs that had gathered at the depot to target Tamil Nadu-registered vehicles.

Police also caned mobs at Girinagar, Peenya and Guttahalli. The worst affected was Mysuru Road where around 35 trucks were set on fire, destroying goods worth lakhs of rupees.

More than 75 vehicles, including trucks and buses registered in Tamil Nadu, were set on fire

Stock yards owned by Tamil merchants were also set on fire. Mobs set up road blockades in various parts of Bengaluru and burnt effigies of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

Most educational institutions and IT companies had declared a holiday sensing trouble.

Even school buses were not spared. Prohibitory orders will continue till September 14. The Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) withdrew bus services by afternoon leaving thousands of commuters stranded.

An unidentified man of around 25 years of age died, and two others were seriously injured, when police opened fire

Private taxis and autorickshaws also remained off the roads. In Mysuru and Mandya districts, thousands of farmers laid siege to KRS reservoir from where water is being released to Tamil Nadu.

Trucks and private vehicles registered in Tamil Nadu were set on fire.
Indian Army personnel are moving en masse into trouble-torn J&K after another spate of violent protests.

As part of efforts to restore normalcy in the Valley, the Army has moved an entire brigade into South Kashmir under operation 'Calm Down' to clear it of militants and demonstrators.

Protesters have continued to clash with government forces since the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, who had a large social media following and was credited with reviving militancy in Kashmir.

In an effort to restore law and order in the Kashmiri Valley, the Indian Army has moved an entire brigade into South Kashmir as part of what they're calling 'Operation Calm Down'

Who was Burhan Wani? Burhan Muzaffar Wani, popularly known as Burhan Wani, was a commander of the Azad Kashmir-based Hizbul Mujahideen. He was popular among the Kashmiris due to his activity on social media and posted many photos and videos against Indian rule in Kashmir. Born in Dadsara village, Burhan was the son of a Muzaffar Wani, a school principal and Maimoona Muzaffar, who gives Quran lessons in her village. Burhan fled from his home on 16 October 2010 and became a militant at the age of 15. He was killed in an encounter with the Indian security forces on 8 July 2016, which triggered widespread protests in the Kashmir valley. The protests following Burhan Wani death led to killing of more than 70 people while over 7,000 civilians and more than 4,000 security personnel were injured, which was believed to be the worst in the Valley. Burhan is considered a 'martyr' who laid his life for Kashmir's independence. Advertisement

Sources say the redeployment of troops began after Army chief General Dalbir Singh's visit to J&K last.

The Centre has asked the Army to keep vigil at the border to prevent any further infiltration of militants.

Personnel have been instructed to maintain maximum restraint in view of the volatile situation in the Valley.

Army sources told Mail Today: There is deployment of extra troops in South Kashmir border area and hinterland to mark presence. We have identified 10 major areas of concern specifically in South Kashmir and Kupwara in North Kashmir along with Uri.

However, the personnel have been told to stay away from mob-control operations as this may increase the number of fatalities of protesters.

Two youths were reportedly killed in Kashmir on Tuesday while curfew was imposed in all the 10 districts of the Valley.

Over 50 incidents of clashes were reported during the day between angry mobs and security forces in which several protesters and police personnel were injured.

Sources say the Army troops assisted by CRPF and state police are combing areas and clearing roadblocks put by protesters by felling trees, electric poles and placing huge boulders as well as burnt vehicles, to facilitate movement of people.

The move came on the back of intelligence reports saying Kashmiri youth, armed with batons, stones and petrol bombs, were patrolling arterial roads leading to the national highway and preventing people from venturing out of their homes or moving towards the capital, Srinagar.

Authorities are hoping that the apple and walnut seasons will compel farmers and traders to force separatists to return the situation in the Valley to normal.

A Kashmiri throws back a tear gas canister at Indian security personnel during a protest after Eid al-Adha prayers in Srinagar

The apple season starts by mid-September when cultivators start sending the fruit to markets outside while the walnut season will kick off by end of the month.

Both products are credited with carrying the Valleys economy.

The Army has also been asked to carry out area-domination exercises. The counter-insurgency grid has also been reorganised, said sources.

Deployment of the Army has been done near the reception area where the terrorists enter Indian territory and hinterland like Tral, Kokernag, Gurez, Machil and Keran sectors along with border and connecting areas, they said.
A friend and I flew with Thomas Cook to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh last November.

A few days before we arrived, terrorists bombed a plane, killing all 224 people on board.

We were able to fly out, but flights back were cancelled. We feared we would be stranded for days and tried to contact Thomas Cook to find out what was happening, but staff kept telling us the wrong thing.

We spent more than 200 calling them in the UK. Eventually we were told to go to the airport, where Thomas Cook staff would be on duty 24 hours a day.

We were left stranded in Egypt following the terrorist bombing of a passenger jet

But when we arrived, after paying for a taxi, there was no one to help us. Another worker told us to call the firm on a particular date for more details. Fortunately, we didn't listen and kept checking their website.

In the end, our flight was delayed for just 24 hours, but we still ran up 450 costs in extra accommodation, phone bills, food and taxi fares.

Once home, we contacted Thomas Cook to refund these extra costs, but it has refused our request.

H. V., Newcastle.

It's difficult to overstate the chaos in Sharm el-Sheikh last year. Once flights restarted, only a limited number were allowed to depart at any one time.

You were among a backlog of 20,000 tourists waiting to get home.

It's easy to imagine the strain tour operators such as Thomas Cook were under. But the shoddy way you've been treated by them since your return really takes the biscuit.

Usually if a flight is cancelled with only a few days' notice, you can be entitled to compensation of up to 335. But if the reason for the delay is out of the airline's hands  and in this case it was  it doesn't have to pay.

After a terrorist attack, our return flights from Egypt were cancelled and we've been left 450 short by Thomas Cook

Crucially, though, airlines must still cover reasonable food and accommodation costs under an EU law called EC261/2004. You pointed this out repeatedly to Thomas Cook, yet it still claimed it was not required to cover the costs.

After I contacted Thomas Cook, it apologised for its treatment of you and says it will reimburse the full 450.

In its defence, the company says it sent texts and emails to customers stuck in Egypt last November. You're adamant none reached you, so it's just as well you had the presence of mind to check the website regularly.

YOU HAVE YOUR SAY - COMPENSATION FROM TRAVEL FIRMS Every week Money Mail receives hundreds of letters and emails about our stories. Here's what you had to say about our guide to claiming from travel firms if your journey went wrong I've been fighting for months with a ferry company that refuses to give me compensation in cash. It keeps telling me I can only get vouchers. It's ridiculous. I turn 80 next month and don't think I'll be on a ferry again any time soon. N. P., via email I'm still waiting for an airline to refund my original fare and pay compensation for a cancelled flight in June. You have to apply through a link on its website and there is no other way to chase a claim. No address, no phone number, nothing. J. P., Bristol. I feel sorry for travel companies when they have to pay out hundreds of pounds for a three-hour delay. This can be more than the customer had paid for their ticket in the first place. Not all delays are the travel company's fault and sometimes technical errors happen, as with anything technical. People expect way too much. M. D., Doncaster. I claimed with the help of the CAA and the airline just ignored me. My flight was to Kuala Lumpur and delayed by more than 12 hours. I heard nothing from the CAA in over a month so I went to the small claims court online, paid 35 and got an instant reply after the summons was issued. They settled in full: 510 plus 35 court costs. T. S., Sherborne, Dorset. The CAA is still investigating my complaint from April. But even the regulator can't take legal action for you  all it can do is offer advice. L. M., Southampton. If you do get compensation for your flight delay this year, don't complain next summer when the prices of flights shoot up. N. T., Manchester. If there is a problem with French trains, you will get a refund, but only if it is a TGV  if it is a TER train, you won't get anything. My sister-in-law has just found this out for herself. She travelled back to Paris and her train broke down and was three hours late arriving  so she missed her flight and the next one  and had to stay overnight at the airport. S. P., Southport, Merseyside. UK regulators are a waste of space. They are excellent at getting you to submit all your details, but toothless when it comes to getting compensation. You have to wonder what exactly their true function is, apart from information gathering. S. V., Wallasey, Merseyside.

I am writing in utter disbelief at the incompetence, fast developing into pantomime, that I am experiencing with my Post Office credit card.

I made a 149 hotel booking using the card, only to find an unexpected 12.51 charge next to the amount on my statement.

This was a surprise since a direct debit was set up when I opened the account a year ago. Customer services told me the direct debit had lapsed due to non-usage, but agreed to a refund.

I paid the 149 over the phone. But I was contacted by them to be told the payment hadn't gone through. So I made a second payment  only to find two payments on my bank statements for 149, made to Post Office credit cards on April 1 and April 7.

Customer services promised a resolution within five working days. But in July I was told it could take eight weeks.

At the age of 77, I can ill afford to be out of pocket.

C. F., Surrey.

More than two months after you contacted Post Office Money about the mistake, it finally sent a letter resolving the problem.

Direct debits can go dormant after as little as six months to protect customers from having them open indefinitely.

As you say, Post Office refunded the charges, but inexplicably mislaid your first payment and asked for a second.

'I paid 149 using my Post Office credit card and was then charged 12.51 in interest'

Post Office has now found the money, returned it and apologised for the 'poor level of service', offering you 100 as a goodwill gesture.

The eight weeks the Post Office refer to is the amount of time they have to resolve a complaint before you can take your case to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

But those eight weeks start from the time your issue is recorded as a complaint, so any previous to-ing and fro-ing does not count.

When something goes wrong, give the firm one chance to fix it. On your next phone call say you wish your problem to be treated as a formal complaint to trigger the beginning of the eight weeks.

If you don't hear anything, go to the Ombudsman once the eight weeks are up.

Call 0800 0234567 or visit financial-ombudsman.org.uk.

STRAIGHT TO THE POINT I've had a truly awful experience at Pontins holiday park in Camber Sands. We paid 300 for a holiday and were really looking forward to having a break. But when we arrived, the apartment was filthy and my 18-month-old picked up a discarded medicine tablet from the floor. We left in horror. Ive tried to contact Pontins to get my money back and heard nothing. K. M., via email. Pontins Camber Sands manager told me you will be given a full refund for the holiday and apologised profusely for the state of the apartment. I sent an 100 Waitrose gift card to my granddaughter as a wedding present, but it was stolen in the post. I went to my local Waitrose to block it and they confirmed it hadnt been used. I sent the receipt to John Lewis, the owner of Waitrose, to get my money back, but havent heard anything. A. B., Horley, Surrey. The confusion is because you went into a Waitrose branch to register the card as stolen, but sent the receipt to John Lewis. Waitrose is sorry for the mix-up and has sent you a new card. I have 5 in a TSB account I forgot Id opened 15 years ago. Who do I contact to get it? My friend who recently died also had 5 in an old account. Can someone get that back, too? T. S., Boston, Lincs. Give your name, address, previous addresses and account number, if you have it, to your local TSB branch. Or write to TSB Bank Plc, Ariel House, 2138 Coventry Road, Sheldon, Birmingham B26 3JW. The family of your friend or executor of their will can follow this process. Also call Lloyds Bank on 0345 3000 000 as its possible they have the account, since Lloyds and TSB only separated in 2013. Or try the free tracing service mylostaccount.org.uk I have a 10,000 annuity that pays a small amount each month. Is it possible to cash it in for a lump sum? A. C., Sherborne, Dorset. Not yet. New rules are being introduced next April that should allow you to do this, but you cant cash it in until then.

In the week before last Christmas, I visited my Barclays branch to close my cash Isa account. I was told a cheque for 5,500 would be sent to me.

I have still not received it. Two months ago, I wrote to head office asking them to settle this debt. Again I got nothing.

W. A. C., Hampshire.

Barclays posted the cheque to your old address  were you were living when you opened the account in 2009.

This was not your fault. Barclays had your new address, but sent the cheque to the old one.

It has apologised and paid you the money.

The good news is you have received compensation of 8 pc interest for the time it had the funds, far and away more than you'd have earned elsewhere.

They have also paid 250 to apologise for the inconvenience.




Victims of a cruel banking scam on Twitter face losing every penny.

Crooks are posing as bank customer service staff on the social media website to try to dupe customers into visiting a dodgy website or clicking a link so the fraudster can steal their financial details.

Most banks have a dedicated account on Twitter for customers who need instant help.

Risk: Criminals are posing as bank customer service staff on Twitter to try to dupe customers into visiting a dodgy website

Those who have used the service often say it's an efficient way to get a response to basic complaints as the bank must be seen to be acting swiftly in public.

But fraudsters are setting up profiles that look almost identical to these official bank help accounts.

They are then swooping on customers who ask for help from the official accounts and trying to lure them to dangerous websites.

Crooks are posing as customer service staff on Twitter to con users out of their cash

For example, three fake NatWest profiles appeared online last week and the conmen behind them started contacting customers.

The victims were sent a link to a website that looks almost identical to the bank's.

In other cases, fraudsters are using the Twitter scam to trick customers into handing over their bank details or to install dangerous software on their computers.

All the major banks say they've seen instances of fraud like this.

But Money Mail has learnt that customers who go on to lose money having being hit by the scammers are at risk of being denied a refund.

Bank insiders say refunds for fraud would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

If you think you have fallen victim to a banking scam, contact your bank as soon as possible as well as reporting it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040.

a.rouse@dailymail.co.uk




A prototype 'pension dashboard' aimed at allowing people to view their retirement savings in one place will be ready by next March, the Government has announced.

Details of how the dashboard will look and work in practice are scanty, but it is expected to include a state pension forecast, savings updates from at least 11 pension firms that have signed up to work on the project so far, and help to find 'lost' pots.

It is understood the Government is still mulling whether to introduce legislation or regulation to force all providers to participate, and ensure it is a blanket service.

Driving innovation: The Government announced plans to launch a pension dashboard by 2019 in this year's Budget

Firms such as Aviva, Standard Life and Zurich have volunteered to support the venture, under the overall management of industry body the Association of British Insurers.

But the Government might find difficulty encouraging on board those running pension schemes now closed to new members, and potentially looking to wind down operations rather than update systems to make them compatible with an industry-wide dashboard.

Plans to launch a dashboard by 2019 were announced in this year's Budget, and the Treasury unveiled news of the prototype saying: 'The Pensions Dashboard is a platform that lets savers see all their pension pots in one place and will help them to plan for their retirement more effectively.

'On average, a person can have 11 employers over their working life, which means that they could end up with almost a dozen private pensions by the time they retire.

'At the moment there is no way for people to see the value of all of their pensions in one place and research has shown that over a third of people approaching retirement find it difficult to keep track of their pension pots.'

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Simon Kirby, said that technology like mobile phone apps has made day-to-day banking easier than it's ever been and it was time for pensions to catch up.

'Think of a future where you can compare your pension pots with the touch of a button,' he added.

The full list of pension firms helping to build the dashboard prototype is: Aviva, Aon, HSBC, LV=, NEST, Now: Pensions, Peoples Pension, Royal London, Standard Life, Zurich and Willis Towers Watson.

Earlier this year, the Government started testing an online state pension forecasting tool for workers of all ages.

Previously, only people aged 50-plus could find out how much new state pension - the flat-rate version for those retiring from April 2016 onwards - they were in line to receive by applying over the phone or by post.

The Government is expected to include some version of this tool or at least a link to it in the pensions dashboard.

It is also set to link to its free Pension Tracing Service to help people find lost retirement pots. The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that some 400million worth of pensions savings are currently unclaimed.

Savers wanting to use the free service should take care if they do an an online search for it, as many companies using similar names will pop up in the results. These will also offer to look for your pension, but try to charge or flog you other services, and could be fraudulent.

The Mail on Sunday recently published a guide to tracing old, unclaimed pensions.

Tom Selby, senior analyst at financial services firm AJ Bell, said: 'The pensions dashboard is a significant project that could drastically improve consumer engagement in retirement saving, so it is good to see some progress being made.

'The key now is how quickly it can be expanded beyond the initial ABI remit so that it becomes of real use to people. The dashboard must be able to accommodate state pension savings as a starting point, given the fact this is the foundation on which private savings are built.

'Its vital that the Pensions Dashboard is as all-encompassing as possible, and most modern platforms, personal pension providers and auto-enrolment schemes should have no problem linking into the technology once it is built.

'However, closed-book providers operating on outdated back-office technology systems may need to be dragged kicking and screaming to participate - through legislation if necessary.'

Robert Gardner, co-founder of pension investment consultant Redington, said: 'This is a pivotal moment for British savers as the pensions dashboard will allow consumers to access the performance of all of their pension pots in one place  which is essential to successful long-term saving and retirement planning.
Legal authorities are giving a second try in jury selection for the Atlanta man charged with killing his toddler son by leaving him in the back seat of a hot SUV.

It has been complicated to find impartial jurors for the trial of Justin Ross Harris, who prosecutors say was at his desk, sexting with as many as six different women, as his son was dying inside the hot car.

Officials moved the trial to a new courthouse 275 miles from where 22-month-old Cooper died in June 2014.

Yet most potential jurors questioned by the judge said they not only had heard about the case against Harris  who looked fidgety during proceedings  but had also formed opinions about his guilt or innocence.

Legal authorities are giving a second try in jury selection for Justin Ross Harris, the Atlanta man charged with killing his toddler son by leaving him in the back seat of a hot SUV

The jury will decide if Cooper (pictured) died of heatstroke in a closed-up and unbearably hot car because his dad forgot to take him to daycare  or if it was a deliberate and cruel murder

This comes nearly three weeks of efforts to find an impartial jury in Cobb County fell apart in May, with the judge agreeing to move the case because of pretrial publicity.

The 12 jurors will decide if Cooper died of heatstroke in a closed-up and unbearably hot car because his dad forgot to take him to daycare  or if it was a deliberate and cruel murder by design, carefully researched and planned.

Police believe Harris, 35, intentionally left his son in the car to die in the sweltering summer heat while he worked as his web development job at a Home Depot satellite office.

Investigators said Harris had breakfast with his son at a Chick-fil-A restaurant shortly before placing him into a rear-facing child's car seat in the back of his silver Hyundai Tucson SUV, and then driving short distance to his job  two minutes and less than a mile away.

Police said Harris backed his into a parking space about 9:30 a.m. and then walked into the glass and steel office building, leaving his toddler son strapped in his car seat for nearly seven hours with the car's windows rolled up.

The toddler died of hyperthermia, according to the county medical examiner's report.

Weather experts said the outdoor temperature reached 92 degrees on that day. They believe temperatures could have climbed to 120 degrees or more inside the car.

Police believe Harris, 35, (back) intentionally left his son in the car to die in the sweltering summer heat while he worked as his web development job at a Home Depot satellite office

Judge Mary Staley Clark (left) has been struggling to fill jury seats for the trial, as a majority of potentials say they already know too much about the case and can't be impartial

Harris' attorneys insist Cooper's death was an accident. They maintain their client simply forgot to take his son to a company-operated daycare center a mile away before starting his workday.

Defense attorneys say Harris didn't notice that his toddler son was still strapped in his car seat when he stopped briefly at his vehicle several hours later, and placed some light bulbs he had purchased onto his SUV's front seat.

Harris reportedly left his office about 4:16 p.m., police said.

He told cops he was on his way to a movie theater when he realized his son was still in the car.

Investigators said Harris (right) had breakfast with his son at a Chick-fil-A restaurant shortly before placing him into a rear-facing child's car seat in the back of his Hyundai Tucson SUV

Harris' attorneys insist Cooper's death was an accident, maintaining the dad forgot to take his son to a company-operated daycare center a mile away before starting his workday

Witnesses said he screeched to a halt just inside the entrance to an outdoor shopping center, hysterically screaming, 'Oh my God, my son is dead! What have I done?'

Harris hurriedly removed his motionless child from the car and tried to revive him, witnesses told police. The child's lifeless body was rigid and in a sitting position, they said.

Harris, formerly of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has remained in the Cobb County Jail since his son's death in June 2014. His charges include malice murder, felony murder and first-degree cruelty to children.

Despite the grim nature of the alleged murder, it is not a death-penalty case, court officials said.

Harris' ex-wife Leanna (right) was also questioned by police and initially considered a possible accomplice in Cooper's death  but was eventually not charged

Defense attorneys say Harris didn't notice that his toddler son was still strapped in his car seat when he stopped briefly at his vehicle several hours later

Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark reconvened the trial Monday in coastal Glynn County, where about 250 people were summoned to jury duty. Two weeks have been set aside to seat a jury.

'It's not a case where you can pick a jury in one day or two,' Clark said before adjourning for the evening Monday.

Harris, formerly of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has remained in the Cobb County Jail since his son's death in June 2014

The judge began questioning the first group of 36 potential jurors Monday afternoon.

Of those, 27 said they had previously seen news stories or other information about Harris' case.

And 19 panelists, just over half, said they had expressed or formed an opinion about Harris' guilt or innocence.

However, when asked by the judge to stand if they were biased against Harris or did not feel 'perfectly impartial' between prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case, all of the 36 possible jurors remained seated.

Meanwhile, the judge agreed to dismiss 13 people who claimed jury duty would cause them undue hardship  mostly panelists who complained of painful medical conditions or who had booked vacations that conflict with the trial. There were 34 who asked to be excused.

Those who will remain in the pool for possible inclusion on the final jury include a father-to-be who said he expects his child to be born this week, a man whose daughter is getting married this weekend in Virginia, and a doctor who works in the emergency room of a rural hospital that typically has just one physician working every 12-hour shift.
Elementary students in Austin, Texas, may soon get to enjoy 30 minutes of unrestricted recess every day.

Right now, administrators in the Austin Independent School District are just trying to figure out how to make it happen.

Elementary schools in the district are required to provide 135 minutes of physical education or structured physical activity each week, but currently there is no policy on the books regarding recess. So the decision to offer recess was left up to individual schools.

Edmund Oropez is the districts chief officer for teaching and learning. He said that just as its important for adults to have time to relax and socialize during the work day, kids need some unstructured time, too.

That increases productivity, increases intellectual capacity, so were feeling that unrestricted recess will do the same for our children, said Oropez. Were also a district thats social-emotional learning committed, and we believe that this also folds well into educating the whole child.

But to make 30 minutes of daily recess happen, Oropez said, the district has to work on getting buy-in from the staff at the schools. He explained that adding more time for recess might seem counterintuitive to staff members at first.

Some people still believe that kids should be reading all day long or doing math all day long, and thats going to create a more productive child and increase student achievement, said Oropez.

Each elementary school in the district will also have to contend with the logistics of making schedule changes. Some schools have already made the change, and Oropez said their schedules will be provided to other schools as examples.

This proposed schedule change comes as more parents around the country are demanding unstructured playtime for elementary students. A new law in Rhode Island mandates 20 consecutive minutes of recess a day for students in kindergarten through 6th grade. Earlier this year, some parents in Florida tried unsuccessfully to get their state legislature to pass a similar law.

In 2013, amid concerns that schools were cutting time for recess in favor of time for more academic work, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement contending that, safe and well-supervised recess offers cognitive, social, emotional, and physical benefits. And some schools are experimenting with offering multiple recess periods a day in the hopes of improving students academic performance.

Members of the local teachers union, Education Austin, pushed for required time for recess, and last March, the districts health advisory council recommended 30 minutes of unrestricted recess for elementary students. The council also recommended that teachers not be allowed to take away recess as punishment or for academic reasons. A group of principals, teachers, and community members then took a look at these recommendations and decided this was something the district should pursue.

But district leaders still have to figure out how to put this policy in place. Oropez said theyre trying to determine if this issue has to be taken before the school board or if it can be handled administratively.

He said he expects the 30-minute recess mandate to go into effect sometime late this fall.

Photo: Students socialize during recess at Winn Elementary School in Austin, TX. (Credit: Austin Independent School District)
Bill Clinton's office requested favors from the State Department related to Laureate University, a for-profit college in Kuala Lumpur that was paying the former president millions of dollars as a consultant at the time, according to emails obtained by Dailymail.com.

In the emails, Bill Clinton's top aide Doug Band asked the US ambassador to Malaysia to attend a public event for Laureate University as well as a meeting between Bill Clinton, Laureate's CEO Doug Becker and the Malaysian Prime Minister.

Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin was copied on the messages.

Bill Clinton earned nearly $18 million as an adviser and honorary chancellor for the international for-profit college network between 2010 and 2015.

Bill Clinton's office requested favors from the US ambassador to Malaysia related to the for-profit Laureate University in November 2010

Bill Clinton's top aide, Doug Band (left), asked the US ambassador to Malaysia Paul Jones (right) to attend a public event for Laureate University in Kuala Lumpur

Although the former president attended events at Laureate University's overseas campuses, and the college network sometimes had interests before foreign governments, Bill Clinton's spokesman told the Washington Post last week that the former president 'never sought to influence any foreign or US official on Laureate's behalf.'

The emails, which were first obtained by the watchdog group Citizens United through a public records request, could raise new questions about Bill Clinton's high-paying role with Laureate University while his wife was at the State Department - in this case extending invitations to a US ambassador to events with one of his high-paying clients.

The messages show that Abedin made the introduction between Bill Clinton's right-hand-man Band and US Ambassador to Malaysia Paul W Jones on November 5, 2010.

Abedin told Band that the ambassador had 'offered assistance' for Bill Clinton's upcoming trip to Malaysia, where Laureate University had an affiliate college called INTI International University that just months before had been granted 'university status' by the Malaysian government.

'I'm connecting you with our ambassador Paul Jones by email. He has offered assistance, if you need it, from him or the embassy,' wrote Abedin in the email to both Band and Jones.

When asked about Abedins involvement in the requests from Bill Clintons office, State Department spokesman John Kirby said State officials often field outside requests.

A wide range of outside individuals and organizations contact the State Department. Meeting requests, recommendations, and proposals come to the Department through a variety of channels, both formal and informal, said Kirby.

Furthermore, it is standard for former presidents or their staffs to be in contact with State Department officials when traveling abroad, he added.

Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin (right, with Hillary Clinton, in February) was copied on Band's emails to American ambassador Paul Jones

Alluding to her prior discussions with the ambassador, Abedin added: 'Paul, Doug is who I mentioned to you. He's the president's counselor and runs the whole show.'

Band responded the next day, asking Jones to attend a speech Bill Clinton was making at the Laureate University affiliate in late November. Abedin was included on the email.

'Mr. Ambassador thank you for the offer to help,' wrote Band. 'We have a quick stop in kl [Kuala Lumpur] for a speech to laureate school, hope you can join us there.

'The office will sort the details, please send Terry [Krinvic, Bill Clinton's scheduling director] the correct person to coordinate with.'

Jones agreed, saying he was 'pleased to attend the speech and appreciate[d] the opportunity'.

Jones ended up attending Bill Clinton's speech at INTI International University, a Laureate University affiliate, according to video of the event.

Bill Clinton welcomed the ambassador by name at the beginning of his speech, saying he wanted to 'thank the American ambassador Paul Jones for joining me here, and for his service'.

Five days after inviting Jones to attend the speech, Band followed up with an email requesting that Jones be included in a meeting between Bill Clinton, the Prime Minister of Malaysia and Laureate University CEO Doug Becker.

'Terry, please also make arrangements for the ambassador to join the meeting that we are having with the pm. Doug Becker will also join that meeting,' wrote Band, in an email to Jones and Bill Clinton's scheduler Terry Krinvic.

Band asked for Jones to be included in a meeting between Bill Clinton, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and Laureate's CEO Doug Becker

Bill Clinton earned nearly $18million as an adviser and honorary chancellor for the international for-profit college network (Malaysia's location pictured above) between 2010 and 2015

Abedin was also included on the email.

'Thanks Doug. Look forward to it,' responded Jones.

It is unclear if this meeting took place. Band followed up later that day with a note saying 'Thx, I meant to say if we end up seeing the pm'.

Jones indicated that he had already discussed the potential meeting with the Malaysian Prime Minister's office.

'I know the Malaysian side would like a meeting, but I told pm's office that it is best to work directly with your team, which it sounds like they are doing,' wrote Jones.

Abedin, who was still included as a recipient of these emails, broke in at this point to ask: 'Is the chicken pox scare over [in Malaysia]?'

Spokespersons for Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton's campaign, and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Laureate University did not respond to request for comment.

Citizens United said in a statement to the Dailymail.com that the messages 'raise more questions' about the relationship between Bill Clinton's office, the former president's financial interests, and the State Department.
Explorers in Canada have found the wreck of HMS Terror, the second of two British ships lost in the disastrous 1845 Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage.

The Arctic Research Foundation, a private group that sent a vessel to help look for the ship, found it in pristine condition at the bottom of a bay earlier this month.

Sir John Franklin and his 128-member crew in the Terror and HMS Erebus all died after the vessels became stuck in ice during a search for the fabled Arctic passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

A video has emerged of the wreck of the HMS Terror, which has been well preserved in the icy waters off Canada's King William Island. The ship's wheel (left) can be clearly seen despite being covered by barnacles and other sealife

The fate of the ships remained one of the great mysteries in history for almost 170 years until a team found the wreck of the Erebus in September 2014.

HMS Terror was one of the British ships that took part in the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814.

The attack was the inspiration for a poem by Francis Scott Key that eventually became known as the Star-Spangled Banner, the US national anthem.

Adrian Schimnowski, the foundation's operations director, said the mystery of the HMS Terror's location was only solved due to a late-night conversation he had with Sammy Kogvik, an Inuit ranger from the nearby settlement of Gjoa Haven.

Mr Kogvik told Mr Schimnowski seven years ago while snowmobiling across the sea ice of Terror Bay he spotted a large pole sticking up out of the ice, thinking it might be a ship's mast.

The expedition has become part of Canadian folklore, in part because of the crew's appalling fate.

Tales handed down from the aboriginal Inuit people describe cannibalism among the desperate seamen.

Mr Schimnowski told The Guardian: 'We have successfully entered the mess hall, worked our way into a few cabins and found the food storage room with plates and one can on the shelves.

Led the expedition: John Franklin was an experienced British Royal Navy officer and explorer of the Arctic. He led the expedition to search for the fabled Northwest Passage but he and his men perished after he took a wrong turn and ended up surrounded by ice.

'We spotted two wine bottles, tables and empty shelving. Found a desk with open drawers with something in the back corner of the drawer.'

He said: 'This vessel looks like it was buttoned down tight for winter and it sank. Everything was shut. Even the windows are still intact. If you could lift this boat out of the water, and pump the water out, it would probably float.'

HMS Terror was found in 24 meters of water in Terror Bay, on the coast of King William Island, about 40 miles north of where HMS Erebus was discovered.

Both wrecks had been moved considerable distances by the ice over the years.

Ever since the discovery of the New World in 1492 explorers had been seeking ways to travel beyond the continent to reach Asia.

In 1578 Sir Francis Drake sailed into the Pacific Ocean via Cape Horn, but that route was a huge detour for ships seeking to reach the trade routes to China and what were known as the Spice Islands, in modern day Indonesia.

Stranded: In 1837 the HMS Terror became trapped by ice (pictured) while under the command of Admiral George Back. The ship remained stuck for 10 months. Eight years later it returned to the Canadian Arctic and this time it failed to escape the icy clutches of the Northwest Passage

The discovery of Australia and New Zealand in the 18th century and the conquest of India by the British-owned East India Company renewed the need for a quicker marine route to the Pacific.

The Northwest Passage became a holy grail which numerous British and other explorers searched for, beginning with John Cabot's voyage in 1497.

Sir John Franklin, an experienced explorer, volunteered to lead an expedition to find the Northwest Passage and he commanded two state-of-the-art ships which were even fitted with early steam engines.

But the ship ventured too far south and became trapped near King William Island.

Legend has it - backed up by folktales from the Inuit people who lived in nearby Nunavut - the stranded sailors tried to escape by crossing the ice and perished but only after some had resorted to cannibalism.

With no news of the expedition, his wife Lady Franklin urged the Royal Navy to send a rescue mission but they were confident he was still alive and even promoted him to Rear-Admiral five years after he had died.

In 1850 a new expedition, under Robert McClure, was commissioned. It finally found the Northwest Passage and its crew shared a 10,000 reward given to them by Parliament.

But pack ice made the passage not suitable for navigation and it never gained the status its proponents had hoped for.

HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were sent out in the summer of 1845 to find the Northwest Passage but they took a crucial wrong turn and ended up stranded and surrounded by pack ice

No sea crossing was successful until Roald Amundsen of Norway completed his trip in 1903-06.

It was only later, in 1914, that the opening of the Panama Canal enabled ships to pass safely from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa without a huge diversion.

In recent years, thanks to global warming, the passage has become more navigable.

A video of the HMS Terror's bell has emerged and they have also discovered a cannon similar to those on the Erebus and a windlass, used to haul up an anchor.

Canadian Rear-Admiral John Newton said there were no plans to raise the two ships from the seabed.

John Geiger, president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, said the discovery was historically significant for Americans given the role of the HMS Terror in the war of 1812 between Britain and the United States.

HMS Terror was one of the British ships that took part in the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814.

The attack was the inspiration for a poem by Francis Scott Key that eventually became known as the Star-Spangled Banner, the US national anthem.

He said: 'Those bombs could have very well been lobbed from the Terror. It's fundamental to the Star-Spangled Banner and the origins of the anthem of the United States. From a pure historical standpoint what an exciting find.'

Battle of Baltimore: The bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814 was witnessed by Francis Scott Key and led to him penning the words that eventually became the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner

The Canadian government has poured millions of dollars into the search for the two ships, with former Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself taking part in the search.

It was all part of Harper's plan to boost Canadian nationalism and a sense of ownership of the Arctic.

Canada says it owns the Northwest Passage but the US and others say it is international territory.

Historians believe the ships got trapped in thick ice in 1846 off Prince William Island, and Franklin and some other crew members died in the ensuing months.

The survivors apparently abandoned the two ships in April 1848 in a hopeless bid to reach safety overland. Inuit lore tells of 'white men who were starving' as late as the winter of 1850 on the Royal Geographical Society Island near Prince William Island.

For many years afterward, Franklin was celebrated as a Victorian hero.
Archaeologist Dan Sayers has found a hidden island in the middle of the snake and bear-infested swamp which was home to the runaway slaves

Thousands of former slaves and Native Americans lived in the swamps between 1600s and the Civil War

Great Dismal Swamp, in Virginia and North Carolina, was home to America's biggest community of runaway slaves - known as Maroons

Advertisement

Archaeologists have uncovered secrets about America's biggest enclave of runaway slaves who lived in a secretive community deep in the North Carolina swamps.

Between the early 1600s right up until the Civil War, the Great Dismal Swamp became a refuge for thousands of Native Americans fleeing the frontier and runaway African American slaves.

The 2,000 square miles of land, stretching from across southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina, was a snake infested, mosquito-ridden swamp land. The vegetation was so thick it was impossible for horses or even canoes to make it through the undergrowth.

Archaeologists have uncovered secrets about America's biggest enclave of runaway slaves who lived in a secretive community deep in the North Carolina swamps

The hellish conditions would have made life hard for the community of runaway slaves - known as Maroons. Yet it would have been incomparably better to a life of enslavement, working sunrise till sunset in the cotton fields at the end of a master's whip. Here they were free.

There have long been rumors of a secret enclave deep in the swamps, away from white settlers and slave catchers.

But until recently, there has been little physical evidence of its existence.

It is certainly not the type of place that you would make a choice to live in, unless you needed to hide

One of the few first hand reports about life at the settlement came from a man named only as Charlie who had lived in the swamp and later made his way up to Canada where he was interviewed.

He described an isolated society, which resembled a traditional African village, which was so cut off from the outside world that some people would have never seen a white person.

Others described groups of families living in the swamp, surviving on corn, wild hogs and even clearing small areas for planting fields.

Between the early 1600s right up until the Civil War, the Great Dismal Swamp (pictured) became a refuge for thousands of Native Americans fleeing the frontier and runaway African American slaves

Much of the Great Dismal Swamp (pictured) is impenetrable by horse or canoe making it the perfect hideout for runaway slaves

The 2,000 square miles of land, stretching from across southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina, was a snake infested, mosquito-ridden swamp land

But archaeologist Dan Sayers, of American University is unearthing some of the hidden secrets about the almost unknown community as part of a decade-long project.

'In 2004, when I started talking about large, permanent maroon settlements in the Great Dismal Swamp, most scholars thought I was nuts,' Sayers told Smithsonian Magazine.

'They thought in terms of runaways, who might hide in the woods or swamps for a while until they got caught, or who might make it to freedom on the Underground Railroad, with the help of Quakers and abolitionists.'

Sayers, who set up the Great Dismal Swamp Archaeology Field School, began investigating the historic reports about the runaways and began searching for the Maroon settlements.

He found references to the people of the Dismal Swamp in a 1714 report by Alexander Spotswood, the colonial lieutenant governor of Virginia, who described it as a 'No-man's-land,' where 'loose and disorderly people daily flock.'

An 1888 painting titled 'Fugitive Slaves in the Dismal Swamp, Virginia', by David Edward Cronin, depicts the community of the Great Dismal Swamp Maroons

Osman, a Great Dismal Swamp Maroon, by David Hunter Strother, published Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1856

It is believe the people he referred to in this case were poor whites who had also joined the swamp communities as former slaves were not referred to as 'people' at that time.

Virginian aristocrat William Byrd II also wrote about his encounter with the Maroons when he led a survey into the swamp to determine the state border in 1728.

Referring to them as 'mulattoes,' he said it was certain that 'many slaves shelter themselves in this obscure part of the world' as he described being watched from the shadows by many of the runaways.

'These groups are very inspirational,' Sayers said in a University report. 'As details unfold, we are increasingly able to show how people have the ability, as individuals and communities, to take control of their lives, even under oppressive conditions.'

British traveler J.F.D. Smyth, who toured North Carolina during the Revolution, encountered a community of what he described as 'runaway Negroes' who he believed had lived in the swamp communities for decades or even longer, 'subsisting themselves in the swamp upon corn, hogs, and fowls...

'(On higher ground) they have erected habitations, and cleared small fields around them.'

Sayers became fascinated with the secret communities of Maroons and began searching for evidence of settlements around Virginia and North Carolina.

But t he archaeologist says he wasted 'so much time' looking in the hills and high ground before someone finally suggested he tried the swamps.

The real breakthrough came in 2004 when a biologist brought Sayers to a 20 acre island virtually unknown except to a few local hunters in the area.

Archaeologist Daniel Sayers, a professor at American University, displays artifact fragments that have been recovered at a dig site in the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina

Mattie Wong, of Knoxville, Tennessee bags artifacts recovered at a dig site in Great Dismal Swamp, as part of Sayer's team

The archaeologist has been working for a decade to try and piece together the history of the Maroon people

'I'll never forget seeing this place for the first time,' recalls Sayers. 'It was one of the greatest moments of my life. I never dreamed of finding a 20-acre island, and I knew instantly it was livable. Sure enough, you can't put a shovel in the ground anywhere on this island without finding something.'

What began as a 12 week project for Sayer's dissertation, stretched to three eight-month sessions in the swamp. He also spent the next five summers excavating the area with university students.

Since then, he has found a small but fascinating array of tools on the island - most of which were Native American in origin but had been reused and re-purposed by the Maroons.

'In the interior of the swamp, there was only one source of stone,' he says. 'Tools left behind by indigenous Americans. Maroons would find them, modify them, and keep using them until they were worn down into tiny nubs.'

Sayers and his team have found items such as stone arrowheads chipped away to be used as a small knife and Native American pottery reused as to shore up their cabin foundations.

But he says most of the materials used by the Maroons would have come from the swamp itself - which would have swiftly rotted and disappeared and they left the swamp after the Civil War.

So far, the archaeologist says the total of his finds - which also include flakes of clay pipe and gunflint pieces, would be able to fit in a small shoe box. They have been able to date the finds by analyzing soil samples and measure when they were last exposed to sunlight.

A historic sign shows (left) where the workers behind the Washington Ditch set up their headquarters in Dismal Town. Sayer's has published his findings in his book A Desolate Place for Defiant People

The biggest find of the dig has been the discovery of the outlines of seven wooden cabins dating from between 1660 and 1860.

' We know from documents that maroons were living in the swamp then. There's no record of anyone else living there. It is certainly not the type of place that you would make a choice to live in, unless you needed to hide.'

But with only one per cent of the island excavated so far, there is likely to be much more we can learn about the unique group of Maroons.

The Great Dismal Swamp was home to the biggest population of Maroons but there were other communities in swamps near New Orleans and Florida which are also being investigated.

But none of the other communities were as isolated from the outside world as the people of the Dismal Swamp.

The greatest threat to those people came in 1763 when the Washington Ditch - a canal cut through part of the swamp by slaves to transport limber, brought the runaways in close approximation with slave catchers.

But there are also reports that some of the Maroons worked with the timber merchants, cutting down timber and selling it on.

Sayers says there is evidence that the Maroons lived in the swamps through until the Civil War - and the official end of slavery in 1863 - when they appear to have moved out of the area.

The archaeologist, who also published a book on his findings - A Desolate Place for a Defiant People - has shared some of his findings with the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington D.C. which is due to open later this month.

Sayers, who has conducted the most in-depth research into the Maroons in the United States, says they have been overlooked due to racial bias.
The government is expected to name February 11 next year as the date for the plebiscite on same-sex marriage.

Australians will be asked: 'Do you support a change in the law to allow same-sex couples to marry?', Fairfax Media reported on Tuesday.

The Turnbull government is also reportedly leaning towards public funding for the yes and no cases of the debate, with $15 million reportedly being set aside for this.

Scroll down for video

February 11 is set to be the date for the plebiscite on same-sex marriage

The ABC has reported that cabinet has agreed to allocate $7.5 million in public funding each to the yes and no campaigns.

Cabinet considered the date, question and funding on Monday night and its decision is expected to go before the coalition joint party room on Tuesday.

Labor opposes the plebiscite, which is expected to cost at least $160 million, and does not want taxpayers' money spent on the campaigns. The opposition and crossbenchers presented private bills to parliament on Monday to change marriage laws.

Labor MP Graham Perrett expects caucus to reject the plebiscite proposal and said he would personally vote against it. He also predicts there won't be enough support for the plebiscite bill to pass parliament.

Malcolm Turnbull's government is set to provide public funding for campaigns

'All this kowtowing to the extreme right of [Malcolm Turnbull's coalition] will all come to nought and be a total waste,' he told ABC radio. 'It's got a snowflake's chance in hell of getting through the Senate.'

Mr Perrett said many gay and lesbian people he has spoken to fear the hate and bullying that will spill from a potential plebiscite, and would prefer to wait until the next parliament.

The Australian Christian Lobby welcomed the reports of public funding, but said $7.5 million would be on the low side.

'It's been a very one-dimensional debate about the love of two people but there's been very little discussion about the consequences,' managing director Lyle Shelton told ABC radio.

Labor leader Bill Shorten (right) said his party will oppose the plebiscite, which is expected to cost at least $160 million, and does not want taxpayers' money spent on it

The ABC has reported that cabinet has agreed to allocate $7.5 million in public funding each to the yes and no campaigns

He said the money would help level the playing field, claiming the mainstream media is in favour of change. His group would campaign on issues such as gender teaching in schools, including the Safe Schools program.

Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek described the plebiscite as an expensive and harmful delaying tactic.

'It's hard enough being a teenager, it's particularly hard being a teenager who's coming out,' she told ABC radio.

'Being a teenager who's coming out during a national debate about whether there's something wrong with you, something wrong with the fact that you love someone of the same gender, that's a terrible thing.'
ISIS's 'chief propagandist', who played a key role in terror attacks in Paris, Brussels and Istanbul, has been killed in an air strike, the Pentagon has confirmed.

Abu Mohamed al-Adnani died in northern Syria after a US drone fired a Hellfire missile at the car he was traveling in.

Adnani was the main ISIS spokesman, officials have stated, and played a major role in some of the group's most high-profile attacks over the past year, including in Paris, at airports in Brussels and Istanbul, at a cafe in Bangladesh, as well as the downing of a Russian airliner in the Sinai and suicide bombings in Ankara.

Scroll down for video

ISIS propaganda chief Abu Mohamed al-Adnani was killed in an airstrike last month in northern Syria

It is one in a series of successful strikes against ISIL leaders, including those responsible for finances and military planning, that make it harder for the group to operate. Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook

'The strike near Al Bab, Syria, removes from the battlefield ISIL's chief propagandist, recruiter and architect of external terrorist operations,' Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

'It is one in a series of successful strikes against ISIL leaders, including those responsible for finances and military planning, that make it harder for the group to operate.'

The August 30 air strike was conducted by a Predator drone, which fired a Hellfire missile at the car Adnani was traveling in.

An undated picture taken from an online edition of the Islamic State's weekly magazine al-Nabaa, allegedly showing Abu Mohamed Al-Adnani

Cook has previously said Adnani had coordinated the movement of IS fighters, encouraged lone-wolf attacks on civilians and members of the military and actively recruited new IS members.

Soon after the strike against Adnani, Russia said it was responsible for his death, a claim Pentagon officials dismissed as a 'joke.'
The gazebo where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was fatally shot by a white Cleveland police officer is set to be dismantled this week and shipped to a Chicago museum for display.

The structure became a makeshift memorial to Tamir, who was playing with a pellet gun when he was killed on November 22, 2014.

An attorney says Tamir's mother Samaria wanted the gazebo, located in the park at the Cudell Recreation Center, to become a symbol for what happened to him.

Scroll down for video

The gazebo (pictured in December) where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was fatally shot by a white Cleveland police officer is set to be dismantled this week

Tamir's mother Samaria (right) wanted the gazebo to become a symbol for what happened to her son (left)

On Monday, ex-city councilman Jay Westbrook he's been coordinating the deconstruction with officials at Chicago's Stony Island Arts Bank.

He says a museum official will supervise the deconstruction, scheduled to begin on Wednesday.

Two local companies will be handling removal of the structure, which was piled with stuffed animals and flowers after Tamir's death.

Family attorney Subodh Chandra has said Tamir's mother originally wanted the gazebo demolished as seeing it in her neighborhood was too painful.

But she changed her mind as she came to understand its historic importance.

A witness had called 911 reporting a guy with a pistol  but told operators that it was probably fake. Above, Tamir is seen playing with the pellet gun

Tamir was killed by patrol officer Timothy Loehmann within two seconds of a cruiser skidding to a stop near him outside a recreation center where the gazebo is located

The Rice family now hope to elevate the gazebo into a symbol of the civil rights movement, their attorney Bill Joe Mills told CNN.

A misunderstanding was blamed for initial incorrect reports earlier this year that the Smithsonian Institution wanted the gazebo for its black history museum in Washington.

Cleveland City Councilman Matt Zone said that removing the gazebo made sense as the city also planned to demolish and rebuild the neighboring elementary school, which Tamir had attended.

Residents can attend community meeting to help determine how the recreational space will be used once the school is rebuilt, he said.

Zone said a tree and a stone plaque will be placed there in Tamirs memory.

Weve got to move on, Zone told CNN. Were turning the chapter here but were not trying to whitewash anything or walk away from this.

The Rice family now hope to elevate the gazebo into a symbol of the civil rights movement

The structure became a makeshift memorial to Tamir, who was playing with a pellet gun when he was killed. Above, tributes left at the gazebo shortly after his death

Tamir was killed by patrol officer Timothy Loehmann within two seconds of a cruiser skidding to a stop near him outside a recreation center where the gazebo is located.

His death was among those that fueled the national Black Lives Matter movement, along with those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City.

A witness had called 911 reporting a guy with a pistol  but told operators that it was probably fake.

But Lohemann said he thought the gun was real and that the boy seemed older.

In December last year, a grand jury chose not to indict the two responding police officers involved in Tamirs shooting.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has called for the withdrawal of U.S. military from a restive southern island, fearing an American troop presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners.

Duterte, who was in the spotlight last week over his televised tirade against the United States and President Barack Obama, said special forces now training Filipino troops were high-value targets for the Islamic State-linked Abu Sayyaf as counter-insurgency operations intensify.

'These special forces, they have to go,' Duterte said in a speech during an oath-taking ceremony for new officials.

Scroll down for video

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte(pictured) has called for the withdrawal of U.S. military from a restive southern island

Duterte  who last week for calling President Obama a 'son of a bitch'  says a US presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners

'I do not want a rift with America  but they have to go,' the Filipino president added.

'Americans, they will really kill them, they will try to kidnap them to get ransom.'

The comment by Duterte, a former southern mayor known for his terse words and volatile temperament, adds to uncertainty about what impact his rise to the presidency will have on one of Washington's best alliances in Asia.

Duterte wants an independent foreign policy and says close ties with the United States are crucial, but he has frequently accused the former colonial power of hypocrisy when criticized for his deadly drugs war.

The controversial president insisted Monday that he snubbed Obama  and not the other way around  on the eve of their scheduled summit in Laos last week.

Duterte sparked a storm ahead of an Asian gathering by labelling Obama a 'son of a bitch', and prompting the president to cancel planned talks between the two allies.

The pair met briefly later in Laos after Duterte expressed regret.

Duterte said he decided to scrap the meeting in reaction to US criticism of his bloody anti-crime campaign, which has claimed almost 3,000 lives since he took office

The former prosecutor mocked the 'bleeding hearts' who criticized him for his human rights abuses, and reiterated his call for security forces to kill drug suspects and other criminals

But the fiery Filipino leader said Monday that in fact he decided to scrap the meeting in reaction to US criticism of his bloody anti-crime campaign, which has claimed almost 3,000 lives since he took office.

'I purposely did not attend the bilateral talks (with)... the president of the United States,' Duterte said in a speech to police and military personnel.

'I really skipped that one.'

'You cannot just (lecture) a president of a sovereign state. Even Obama. It would be wrong for him to do that. That is why I swore against him.'

The former prosecutor mocked the 'bleeding hearts' who criticized him for his human rights abuses, and reiterated his call for security forces to kill drug suspects and other criminals.

Duterte won presidential elections by a landslide this year after promising that tens of thousands of people would be killed in an unprecedented law-and-order crackdown

Security forces have relentlessly followed Duterte's orders since he took office on June 30

Duterte won presidential elections by a landslide this year 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.

But his actions have sparked a wave of international condemnation, including from the UN chief Ban Ki-moon and the US State Department.

In a brief encounter in Laos, Obama urged the Filipino leader to conduct his crime war 'the right way' and protect human rights, but Duterte dismissed it as being none of America's business.

Earlier Monday, Duterte said he was ordering all US special forces to leave the troubled southern Philippines where they have been advising local troops in battling Muslim extremists, saying the West was at the root of the persistent Muslim insurgency.

The US is the country's main defense ally and former colonial ruler.

Philippine police SWAT personnel take position as they serve a search warrant to a resident in relation to drugs at an informal settler house in Pasig City, suburban Manila on September 5

Duterte has been unapologetic in his war on drugs, telling a news conference on Monday that 'plenty will be killed' in his campaign

Some U.S. special forces have been killed in the southern Philippines since 2002, when Washington deployed soldiers to train and advise local units fighting Abu Sayyaf in Operation Enduring Freedom, part of its global anti-terror strategy.

At the height of that, some 1,200 Americans were in Zamboanga City and on Jolo and Basilan islands, both strongholds of Abu Sayyaf, which is known for its brutality and for earning huge sums of money from hostage-taking.

The U.S. programme was discontinued in the Philippines in 2015 but a small troop presence has remained for logistics and technical support. Washington has shifted much of its security focus in the Philippines towards the South China Sea.
A culture of internet pornography among children as young as eight is helping fuel widespread sexual harassment and violence in schools, MPs warn today.

Primary school children are learning about sex through exposure to hardcore porn, with some even becoming addicts.

A hard-hitting report by the Commons Women and Equalities Committee recommends age appropriate lessons in pornography. Experts giving evidence to the committee suggested this should happen from primary school onwards.

A culture of internet pornography among children as young as eight is helping fuel widespread sexual harassment and violence in schools according to a hard-hitting report by the Commons Women and Equalities Committee which recommends age appropriate lessons in pornography

The overhaul is needed as many girls face regular pestering and cat-calling amid shocking levels of abuse in corridors and classrooms. Some experience inappropriate touching, having skirts lifted and the pulling down of underwear. The first ever parliamentary inquiry into sexual harassment in schools found that staff are under-reporting incidents and often fail to take them seriously.

The Mail has campaigned vigorously for tougher measures to prevent children seeing porn online

It says: The evidence we have gathered paints a concerning picture: the sexual harassment and abuse of girls being accepted as part of daily life; children of primary school age learning about sex and relationships through exposure to hardcore pornography; teachers accepting sexual harassment as being just banter; and parents struggling to know how they can best support their children.

The committees report points out that a culture of internet pornography has become prevalent among young people.

Evidence from those working in schools suggests there may be an increase in sexual violence and sexual harassment, facilitated by technology and social media.

The Mail has campaigned vigorously for tougher measures to prevent children seeing porn online. The link between pornography and sexual violence was a consistent theme among expert witnesses who gave evidence to the committee. Many argued that access to pornography had changed the culture in schools and young peoples perceptions of sex, relationships and consent.

Big Talk Education, which provides sex and relationship education (SRE) to 17,000 children each year in schools across the country, said it had seen an increase in younger pupils exhibiting sexually inappropriate behaviour.

Primary school children are learning about sex through exposure to hardcore porn, with some even becoming addicts

It receives one or two referrals from primary schools a week to help pupils with their problems and noted an increase in referrals of children and young teenagers with porn addictions, including a girl aged only eight.

An experienced secondary school teacher from Birmingham described the impact of pornography on pupils at her school.

She said: I see the transformation of fresh-faced innocent Year 7 girls [ages 11-12] who will try to be heavily sexualised by the time they reach Year 10 [14-15]. I see these beautiful girls not understanding the option to say no.

The MPs report adds: There is evidence of a correlation between childrens regular viewing of pornography and harmful behaviours. The type of pornography many children are exposed to is often more extreme than adults realise. The Government should immediately update its guidance on SRE to include teaching about pornography.

Speaking at the publication of the report yesterday Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism Project, who gave evidence to the committee, said lessons about pornography should be started at primary school level.

This can be done in an age-appropriate way, she added.

A Department for Education spokesman said: Our guidance is clear that young people need to feel that SRE is relevant to them and sensitive to their needs.

CALL TO BLOCK THE ROGUE SITES Porn websites that fail to introduce age verification checks should be prevented from operating in Britain, the NSPCC said yesterday. Ministers have pledged to bring in fines in an attempt to persuade commercial adult porn sites to check whether a user is over 18. But the childrens charity said the rules do not go far enough, because the penalties will simply be shrugged off by companies that breach legislation, particularly those based outside the UK. The NSPCC said internet service providers should be ordered to block access to those sites that do not impose age checks. The Digital Economy Bill, which will bring in age verification, will be debated by MPs today. Peter Wanless, the charitys chief executive, said: A generation of children are in danger of being stripped of their childhoods by stumbling across extreme porn online. Frighteningly, some children are growing up believing they should emulate the behaviour they see in porn. We believe that if a company cant operate within the law they should not be able to do business in the UK. Advertisement
Duterte is known for his harsh anti-drugs stance and favours re-introducing the death penalty

Advertisement

The president of the Philippines has said he 'respects' Indonesia's decision when it comes to the execution of convicted Filipino drug smuggler Mary Jane Veloso.

President Rodrigo Duterte met with Indonesian president Joko Widodo in a bilateral meeting in Jakarta last week.

President Duterte, known as 'The Punisher' for his war on drugs, has ordered for thousands of traffickers to be killed since he came to power, and has spoken in favour of reviving the death penalty to combat drugs in the Philippines.

An alleged drug user is pictured lying lifeless and bloody on the bamboo floor of a shack in Parola Compound in Tondo, a suburb of Manila in the Philippines. The country is cracking down on drug users under the rule of President Rodrigo Duterte, who has a harsh anti-drugs stance

President Duterte, known as 'The Punisher' for his war on drugs, has ordered for thousands of traffickers and users to be killed since he came to power, and has spoken in favour of reviving the death penalty to combat drugs in the Philippines

Police are pictured standing over the lifeless body of a man shot dead in Parola Compound. The country's president Rodrigo Duterte met with Indonesian president Joko Widodo last week, reportedly giving him the 'green light' to execute accused Filipino drug smuggler Mary Jane Veloso

It was reported in the Jakarta Post that Duterte had told Widodo to execute Ms Veloso during the meeting.

However, a statement released by the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs on Monday said President Duterte had not given the so-called 'green light' for Ms Veloso's execution.

Duterte is instead saying he told the Indonesia president he respects the country's judicial process and will accept whatever the final decision is regarding her case.

Mr Duterte reportedly told Mr Widodo in the meeting: 'Follow your own laws, I will not interfere'.

Philippines Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said Ms Veloso's execution has been indefinitely deferred.

Ms Veloso was arrested at Adisucipto Airport in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in April 2010 carrying a suitcase lined with 2.6kg of heroin and was sentenced to death.

Another image shows an alleged drug user lying on a straw mat in Parola Compound surrounded by cigarettes, a gun and other drug paraphernalia. The Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs said President Duterte told President Widodo to 'follow his own laws', when it comes to drug penalties. Indonesia has some of the toughest anti-drugs laws in the world

An alleged drug user is pictured slumped lifeless and covered in blood among dirt and rubble in the compound in Tondo. Tondo is known for being one of the poorest and most underdeveloped areas of the Philippines and many of the city's slums are found in the area

Drugs are a huge problem in the Philippines, with an estimated 3,000 drug-related deaths reported last month alone. There were an estimated four million slum dwellers living in Manila as of 2014, including residents of Parola Compound (pictured)

The mother-of-two was moments away from facing the firing squad in 2015 when she was granted a temporary reprieve, after a woman suspected of recruiting her was arrested in the Philippines.

Legal proceedings against the alleged recruiter are ongoing in the Philippines, while the Indonesian government, which has some of the world's toughest anti-drug laws, say Ms Veloso's death sentence for drugs trafficking still stands.

The debate surrounding Ms Veloso's fate comes as shocking images have emerged of drug users in Parola Compound in Tondo, one of the largest districts in Manila.

President Duterte has said he 'respects' Indonesia's decision when it comes to the execution of convicted Filipino drug smuggler Mary Jane Veloso (pictured). Ms Veloso was arrested at Adisucipto Airport in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in April 2010 carrying a suitcase lined with 2.6kg of heroin and was sentenced to death

The mother-of-two (right) is pictured praying with Pastor spiritual adviser, Bernhard Kieser, in the District Court Bali Nine executions. Ms Veloso was moments away from facing the firing squad in 2015 when she was granted a temporary reprieve, after a woman suspected of recruiting her was arrested in the Philippines

Last year Ms Veloso (pictured) was listed for execution along with Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Legal proceedings against the alleged recruiter are ongoing in the Philippines, while the Indonesian government say Ms Veloso's death sentence for drugs trafficking still stands

The shanty area or informal settler community is home to thousands of people that survive in poor living conditions.

One picture shows the lifeless, bloodied body of a man lying facedown on a bamboo floor, while police are pictured standing over him.

Another image shows a man slumped in a corner on a straw mat, cigarettes, a gun and other drug paraphernalia lying within reach.

A third image shows a bloodied man sitting slumped, with his head hanging backwards among dirt floors and exposed concrete blocks.

President Duterte (left) and President Widodo (right) met for bilateral talks at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta last week and discussed Ms Veloso's fate. Duterte told Widodo he respected the country's laws and would not interfere with his decision

Philippines president Duterte (pictured) is renown for his harsh anti-drugs stance in the country and has ordered for thousands of traffickers to be killed since he came to power in 2016




A Commonwealth Bank manager who was arrested after police found messages from her asking how much 14 grams of cocaine would cost has been accused of being a 'link in the chain' for two drug deals.

Anna LeTran pleaded not guilty to dealing drugs in Brisbane's District Court on Monday after police found WhatsApp messages between her and alleged dealer Sheena Padua discussing the price of four 'eight balls' of cocaine in August 2015.

But the university graduate has argued in court the message exchange, which took place on October 23 the previous year, did not prove a deal had taken place and that the negotiations were left in a 'state of flux', the Courier Mail reported.

Anna LeTran (pictured) pleaded not guilty to dealing drugs in Brisbane's District Court on Monday after police found WhatsApp messages between her and an alleged dealer

The court heard Ms LeTran asked if Ms Pauda could source 14 grams of 'rack', a common term used to refer to cocaine, for around $600.

An eight ball of cocaine, which weighs 3.5 grams, has a street value of between $1,000 - $1,050.

Ms Pauda replied saying she 'can't even get rack for that cheap' before explaining her cocaine had not been cut with another substance - a common practice used by drug dealers to thin out the batch, giving them more to sell.

'LOL how much would you sell it for I will tell her. She needs it for the weekend,' Ms LeTran replied, according to the Courier Mail.

The university graduate has argued in court the message exchange did not prove a deal had taken place and that the negotiations were left in a 'state of flux'

The court heard Ms LeTran asked if Ms Pauda could source 14 grams of 'rack', a common term used to refer to cocaine, for around $600

An eight ball of cocaine, which weighs 3.5 grams, has a street value of between $1,000 - $1,050

Ms LeTran's lawyer, Ben Power, said his client had only made inquiries and argued the prosecution could not prove she supplied the drugs to her 'friend', or that the friend even existed.

Prosecutor Michael Spencer said the bank manager, who worked in the Fortitude Valley and Royal Brisbane branches between 2015 and 2016, had been involved in two separate deals - one on October 23, 2014 and another on April 4, 2015, according to the Courier Mail.

He told the court Ms LeTran was an obvious 'link in the chain' and argued she had been involved in 'acts preparatory to, or in furtherance of, the supply of drugs'.

Ms LeTran's lawyer said his client had only made inquiries and argued the prosecution could not prove she supplied the drugs to her 'friend', or that the friend even existed.

Mr Spencer also suggested Ms LeTran could have finalised the drug deal in person as it was not clear if all messages between the pair (pictured) had been captured in WhatsApp

Mr Spencer also suggested Ms LeTran could have finalised the drug deal in person as it was not clear if all messages between the pair had been captured in WhatsApp.

Daily Mail Australia contacted the Commonwealth Bank for comment but a spokesperson said they were unable to discuss active proceedings.

'Commonwealth Bank is unable to comment on individual employees and as this matter is currently before the court it is not appropriate for us to comment further,' the spokesman said.

The hearing continues before Judge Jones on Tuesday.

UPDATE: Ms LeTran was found guilty of two counts of supplying cocaine and was sentenced to 100 hours of unpaid community service and two years probation. The court ordered that no conviction be recorded for the offences.

Prosecutor Michael Spencer said the bank manager (pictured) had been involved in two separate deals - one on October 23, 2014 and another on April 4, 2015
DUI Statute of Limitations

Welcome to FindLaw's DUI Law series. If you have been charged with a DUI, know someone who has, or just want to know about the law and how to protect your rights during a DUI stop, please come back each week for more information.

If you were pulled over for a DUI, how long can criminal charges hang over your head? If you got arrested for DUI last week, can prosecutors wait until next year to bring charges?

There are time limits on criminal cases, but those limits can vary from state to state and from crime to crime. Here's a look at statutes of limitation for DUI charges.

Statute of Limitations

Criminal statute of limitations laws serve a few purposes. Mainly, the parties want to go to trial with the best available evidence, and witnesses, memories, and physical evidence can fade or be lost over time. In order to have the best evidence at your trial, the government must bring charges within a reasonable amount of time. Statutes of limitation also prevent the government from imprisoning suspects indefinitely or holding criminal charges over a person's head for years or decades.

So how do we decide how long is too long to wait? In the criminal context, limitations laws generally depend on the severity of the crime. For instance, there is normally no statute of limitations on murder, while minor misdemeanors may need to be prosecuted within 30 days.

Limitations of States

The majority of states link their statutes of limitations to the class of crime. North Carolina has no statute of limitations for felonies, and a limit of two years on malicious misdemeanors, while Florida limits most felonies to four years, while misdemeanors must be prosecuted within one or two years. So the statute of limitations on your DUI case may depend on whether it is charged as a misdemeanor or a felony.

In Florida, a DUI is normally a misdemeanor unless it's your third in the past ten years. In North Carolina, your DWI can be a felony if it causes serious injury or death. So while prosecutors may only have a year to bring charges for your DUI if it is a misdemeanor, that time limit could be removed entirely if charged as a felony.

Statutes of limitation vary, and every DUI case is unique. If you've been charged with a DUI you should contact an experienced DUI attorney immediately.

Related Resources:
North Carolina once again became a flashpoint for violence at a Donald Trump rally on Monday night, as a rally-goer grabbed one male protester by the hair and punched a second one in the neck  then slapped the man's female companion  while police led the agitators out.

Monday's raucous speech was marked by multiple protest interruptions and a doctor attending to a woman who succumbed to the heat inside the U.S. Cellular Arena in Asheville.

But it was the punch that most quickly grabbed the attention of police  who let the man stay in the top row of the upper deck while his victims were ejected.

He later got a visit from police, who came back to find him in the crowd. They took his ID so they could file a report, and then returned it to him. It's unclear whether he will be charged with a crime.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS

TROUBLEMAKER: An unidentified man (left) punched an anti-Trump protester (center) during a political rally in Asheville, NC on Monday night

Trump's rally was marred by a punch-throwing supporter whose hand connected with three protesters as police led them out of the U.S. Cellular Arena

But it was the punch that most quickly grabbed the attention of police  who let the man stay in the top row of the upper deck while his victims were ejected

Monday's raucous speech was marked by multiple protest interruptions and a doctor attending to a woman who succumbed to the heat inside the arena

One of the protesters who was tossed from the event had stood above the top row of the arena, pulled up his shirt, rubbed his stomach and nipples, and showed Trump and his audience a pair of middle fingers held high as he danced.

Three others in his group of nine, all seated together, also flipped the bird while officers led them out.

Trump supporters, crowded into the arena, sang 'Na-na-hey-hey-goodbye' and cheered.

A public-address announcement usually precedes Trump rallies, with a voice instructing fans not to harm protesters  and instead to chant 'Trump! Trump! Trump!' until police arrive.

There was no announcement Monday night, as the second such Tarheel State incident unfolded.

Trump began his remarks by lashing out at Hillary Clinton, saying she had waged 'a hate-filled, negative campaign with no policies, no solutions, and no new ideas.'

I BET THEY WON'T REPORT THIS: Trump challenged 'dishonest' journalists to report that protesters were holding their middle fingers high as police ejected

'A FEW PEOPLE OUT OF THOUSANDS: Trump brushed off his detractors on Monday as a fringe group of agitators while a sea of people egged him on

A 78-year-old Fayetteville, North Carolina man was charged with assault in March after sucker-punching a black man who was being kicked out of another Trump rally.

The men and woman involved in Tuesday night's incident  assailant and victims  were all white.

The incident six months ago sparked a nationwide discussion about Trump's backers and their propensity to lash out against the billionaire's detractors  especially those of other races.

Protesters have also been physically harmed during Pennsylvania and Arizona rallies.

Trump supporters, too, have been beaten, punched and kicked, usually outside the rallies. One woman was pelted with eggs as she proudly showed off a Donald Trump t-shirt.

One minute before Monday's clash, as a separate protest drama played out elsewhere in the arena, Trump seemed to enjoy the more mundane conflict.

'Lemme ask you this question,' he said. 'Is there any place in America more fun to be than a Trump rally?'

'It's a few people out of thousands,' he said, complaining that 'the dishonest media' wouldn't likely write that his antagonists left with their middle fingers held high.

'They won't report the gesture. They won't report anything. But the good news is the cameras follow it,' Trump said.

Other more peaceful anti-Trump activists included a man carrying a crude, homemade 'No Trump' sign and parading it in front of TV cameras, and a woman who held a professionally printed 'Women for Hillary' sign and held it up high, yelling, until security asked her to leave.

When a man near her objected, a Secret Service agent erupted.

'You gonna tell me how to do my f***ing job?' he demanded, adding to the tension as the two stared each other down.

'One more word and you're out of here too. You want to leave?'

Trump came off the stage for two minutes when a supporter collapsed and paramedics attended to her.

'It is about 100 degrees in here folks,' Trump said, as he asked an aide to bring water.

'Thank you, darling,' he told the woman after he came back to the microphone.

'And whether it's a supporter or not, we're going to take care of them. ... And it is pretty hot in here, folks.'

SUPPORT: Thousands of screaming fans greeted Trump in Assheville, N.C. on Monday

Earlier in his campaign, Trump was less eager to help his political adversaries stay healthy.

As two men shouting Bernie Sanders's name were led out of a Burlington, Vermont Trump rally in frigid January weather, Trump boomed at his security detail: 'Throw them out into the cold. ... You can keep his coat. tell him we'll send it to him in a couple of weeks.'

Outside the Asheville venue on Monday, a larger group of protesters gathered on a street corner to jeer him as Trump's motorcade zipped past.

A bus full of journalists were treated to the sight of a woman standing under a 'No hate' banner, pointing and yelling, 'F*** you!'

Inside, Trump did nothing to encourage the violence.

His only unforced error came early in his speech when he urged supporters to take advantage of 'early voting, starting on October 20th.'
Six dogs have been killed and a convoy of vehicles was destroyed in a gas explosion at an Outback hunting camp in the Northern Territory.

Twelve hunters from Queensland were lucky to escape with their lives after the blast at their campsite 50km east of Pine Creek.

Police told Daily Mail Australia that it was unclear how the fire started, but said the explosion came after two gas cylinders started venting and burst into flame.

Six dogs have been killed and a convoy of vehicles was destroyed in a gas explosion at an Outback hunting camp in the Northern Territory.

The blaze spread to the rest of the campsite, setting a gazebo alight and causing irreparable damage to a number of cars, trailers and quad bikes.

The hunters were not at the camp at the time of the blaze but six of their dogs were killed in the explosion and fire.

The group left the camp on a fishing trip at 2pm on Sunday and returned about two hours later to find it in ruins.

As well as the damage to their possessions, scrubland surrounding the area had been damaged.

The fire burned out yesterday morning and an investigation into its cause is ongoing. No arrests have been made.

A GoFundMe page set up by a family member of two of the hunters said the group had 'lost everything' in the blaze.

Twelve hunters from Queensland were lucky to escape with their lives after the blast at their campsite 50km east of Pine Creek

Tayla Bishop, who made the fundraising page, wrote: 'This explosion caused the loss of utes, trailers, camping gear & most of all - a man's best friend.

'My father, brother and many other guys have lost everything they have worked so hard for over the years - all for their love of hunting.

'This is a tragic accident with no one to blame. Our hearts ache for all these guys, but we're lucky they're all coming home safely to their families.
Pasek's four-year-old son can be seen in backseat of Ford Explorer

Pasek's four-year-old son can be seen in backseat of Ford Explorer

Acord allegedly tried to drive away, but the officer took his car keys

Acord allegedly tried to drive away, but the officer took his car keys

Officer pulled over Acord after he was seen driving

The man and woman disgracefully pictured passed out in a car after allegedly overdosing on heroin as a toddler sat in the backseat 'almost definitely' would have died, police have said.

If police had not intervened, the parents - identified as 50-year-old Rhonda Pasek, whose toddler was in the car, and 47-year-old James Acord, could have died, East Liverpool service safety director Brian Allen told CNN.

The pair passed out allegedly from an overdose of heroin while a four-year-old boy sat in the backseat of their vehicle.

Scroll down for videos

Rhonda Pasek (left), 50, and 47-year-old James Acord (right), who were disgracefully pictured passed out in a car after allegedly overdosing on heroin as a toddler sat in the backseat 'almost definitely' would have died, police have said

East Liverpool police officer, Kevin Thompson, was patrolling St Clair Avenue at 3.11pm Thursday when he spotted a dark Ford Explorer driving erratically. The officer reached into the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition after realizing the couple were impaired

East Liverpool police officer, Kevin Thompson, was patrolling St Clair Avenue at 3.11pm Thursday when he spotted a dark Ford Explorer with West Virginia plates that was driving erratically.

The car screeched to a stop near a school bus that was dropping off children, according to an arrest report that was also shared on Facebook.

When Thompson approached the vehicle, he noticed that the driver, Acord, appeared intoxicated, with his head bobbing back and forth and his speech almost unintelligible.

Acord told the officer he was driving Pasek to a hospital. She was slumped over in the front passenger seat.

According to police, Acord then made an attempt to drive away, but at that moment the officer reached into the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition.

That is when the officer noticed Pasek's four-year-old in the backseat.

Paramedics who were summoned to the scene administered Narcan - a drug used to counteract the effects of a heroin overdose - to Pasek and Acord, who by that point had passed out as well.

The couple were then taken to East Liverpool City Hospital to be evaluated.

Her young son has been placed in the custody of Columbiana County Children's Services.

Acord, who was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering children, and slowing or stopping in a road for this incident, has a laundry-list of offenses dating back to the early 1990s.

He had been previously been charged with crimes ranging from robbery to drinking in public in Florida, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia and Ohio.

He also has a history with substance abuse and run-ins with the law in West Virginia.

His history includes multiple arrests on DUI charges, most recently in March of this year.

In relation to Thursday's charges, he pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 180 days in jail for each of the first two, according to The Weirton Daily Times.

The last count of impeding traffic was dropped.

Paramedics who were summoned to the scene administered Narcan - a drug used to counteract the effects of a heroin overdose - to Pasek (right) and Acord (left), who by that point had passed out as well

Acord's punishment also includes a three-year license suspension and a $475 fine, WTOV reported.

On Thursday, Pasek was charged with endangering children, public intoxication and not wearing a seatbelt.

She pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $150,000 bond pending her next court appearance scheduled for September 15.

Pasek also has a history of arrests and substance abuse, including a drug possession charge in 2011.

Jailed: Pasek, pictured in this Facebook photo from 2012, has pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $150,000 bond

Court records in Pennsylvania include past charges of public drunkenness and disorderly conduct.

Officials said they decided to publish the photos in an attempt to raise awareness of the heroin epidemic in the state, and also to try and deter people from using drugs while having children in their care.

Addiction to opioids such as heroin, morphine, fentanyl and codeine in the US has reached the proportions of a full-scale epidemic in recent years.
Iain Duncan Smith, pictured, said Brexit must benefit the 'blue collar workers' who feel they have lost out from globalisation

Brexit must benefit the 'blue collar workers' who feel they have lost out from globalisation and mass immigration, Iain Duncan Smith said yesterday.

The former Tory leader said he was determined to shape the outcome of the Brexit deal to benefit the millions of ordinary working people who voted for it in June.

Mr Duncan Smith, who resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary in March over planned disability benefits cuts, said he would be returning to run the think-tank he founded after stepping down as party leader more than a decade ago.

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) had a huge influence on Government welfare policy, including pioneering work on the flagship Universal Credit scheme and persuading ministers to put a new emphasis on the importance of the family.

Mr Duncan Smith, who will remain an MP, said he now wanted the think-tank to focus on drawing up new policies to take advantage of the 'great opportunity' created by leaving the European Union.

'I've fought for social justice my entire political life, most recently in government, and I'm looking forward to continuing that fight from outside government,' he said.

The former Tory leader said he was determined to shape the outcome of the Brexit deal to benefit the millions of ordinary working people who voted for it in June

'After the country's vote to leave the EU, which I campaigned for whole-heartedly, this is a time of great opportunity in Britain. Post-Brexit, we can refashion and enhance Britain's role in the world.

'I want the CSJ to focus on improving the lives of blue collar workers.
The first plastic 5 notes go into circulation in England and Wales today with a warning to shoppers that they may stick together.

It means that customers could end up handing over too much money at the tills.

The polymer fivers, which bear a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill, are 15 per cent smaller than the paper notes they are replacing and are said to last 2.5 times longer.

Because they are plastic, they are difficult to tear and can survive being put through the washing machine and other spills.

Cash revolution: The new fiver boasts of being practically indestructible and can even cope with going through the washing machine

Past: More than 30 countries already use plastic banknotes. Australia was the first to launch them in 1988, followed by countries including New Zealand and Singapore - the UK has its first today

A smaller plastic 10 note featuring novelist Jane Austen will go into circulation next summer and a 20 polymer note, featuring the artist JMW Turner, is due by 2020.

The warning about the notes being hard to separate has been issued by the Bank of England. It said: Brand new polymer notes can sometimes stick together, but this effect is short-lived once in use.

Kam Raju holds some of the first polymer 5 notes issued by the Bank of England after withdrawing money from a cash machine in Birmingham

Adapting bank cash machines, rail ticket machines, self-service tills and other vending machines to cope with them is costing up to 236million, say consultants CMS Payment. Not all machines are ready to take the new notes, which have extra security features, making them harder to counterfeit.

These include a see-through window framing the Queens portrait and Big Ben in gold foil on the front and in silver on the back. To help the blind and vision-impaired distinguish between denominations, new 10 and 20 notes will have tactile features created by a series of raised dots.

The 5 note will be distinguishable by not having raised dots. The denominations will still be different sizes and have a similar colour scheme to existing notes.

More than 30 countries already use plastic banknotes. Australia was the first to launch them in 1988, followed by countries including New Zealand and Singapore.

Scotland has had polymer fivers since March, when 2million were released by the Clydesdale Bank. The Bank of Englands first print-run of 440million of the new 5 notes will see the start of old paper ones, featuring prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, being withdrawn as they are banked by retailers and businesses. They can be used in shops until they cease to be legal tender in May 2017.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney said: Banknotes are repositories of the UKs collective memory, and we will be reminded of Churchills enormous contributions as he once again becomes part of our daily lives as the new fiver flows out into tills and pockets.

Chief Cashier of the Bank of England, Victoria Cleland, inspects the new fiver - which are said to be almost indestructable

'Go on - tear it': Mail reporter tries (and fails) to destroy the new fiver

Victoria Cleland, chief cashier at the Bank of England, thrusts the new 5 note in to my hand. Its bright blue and bears a picture of a grumpy-looking Winston Churchill.

She grins mischievously. Go on, try to tear it, she says.

It doesnt just seem naughty, indeed wasteful, to tear up a bank note in front of the person whose signature appears on every one  it seems rude. And, actually, Im a bit worried it might be treason. But Cleland is daring me, and Im not one to shirk at the challenge.

Hesitantly, I pull at the edge. Nothing happens. It wrinkles a little, but remains stubbornly intact. I pull harder, but its like trying to tear foil wrapping paper. Theres a plasticky, springiness to it.

Clelands grin widens. See, she says, you cant.

Because they are plastic, they are difficult to tear and can survive being put through the washing machine and other spills

The new fiver boasts of being practically indestructible, and can also cope with going through the washing machine. All this is because these notes, which will be dispensed from cash machines today, are made of a polymer, a kind of plastic substance.

Gradually, over the next few months, more than 440m will find their way into the hands of consumers, retailers and banks. And many of them are in the factory Im in today. It seems hard to believe they will be actual currency  they look more like Monopoly money.

This Bank of England print works is in Essex and is surrounded by high-wire fences topped with rolls of barbed wire. As I go inside I have to leave every possession at reception. Im left with little more than a notebook and a pen.

No phones or bags are allowed on the print floor, and you certainly cant take any money in. The 10 note in my purse is locked in a small safety deposit box in reception.

Its almost prison-like inside  a long, dark corridor runs the length of the building, lined with anonymous doors. But through one is a bright, airy hangar where the actual printing of the notes takes place.

Daily Mail journalist Holly Black went to see the new 5 notes being printed - and they will be out on the street for the first time today

The whirr of machinery fills the room with noise, and it smells inky, like a typewriter ribbon.

Some 5m bank notes are printed here every day. The actual number varies on demand  more at Christmas and bank holidays when people typically spend more.

Despite reports of its demise, cash is still very much in demand. Around 2.2m people still only use it for transactions. Eight out of ten transactions at pubs and newsagents are in cash, compared with three in ten at petrol stations.

T HE current notes in circulation are printed, layer by layer, in huge sheets. Paper threaded with silver arrives already printed with the Banks watermark.

Itll be the same for the new polymer notes, but they look distinctly different. You can see the plasticky material peeping out at the edges, which will later be trimmed.

The huge machines move incredibly fast, but the paper floats round them elegantly and seamlessly from one conveyor belt to the next as it is layered with colour, the Queens head, the image of Churchill, security features, writing and the all-important signature of the chief cashier.

It takes around five weeks to make a bank note. But much of that process is spent drying them  theyre hung out for about five days after each part of the process. The sheets are then cut into individual notes in an industrial guillotine.

They are fed, 40 a second, through a machine where they undergo 200 different security tests in a mere moment. The machine compares each note to a golden template and looks at things including the clarity of image, the print quality, borders and security hallmarks such as what it looks like under UV light.

Finally, they come out tightly wrapped in wads, warm like a loaf just out of the oven.

A few minutes later they drift lazily along a conveyor belt in so-called sausages  the name for a wad of 25,000.

They are placed on a trolley and caged in batches of 350,000.

The sausages are tiny, though surprisingly heavy. It takes the average British worker a year to earn that amount.

On a pallet is 1.2m, waiting to be guillotined. I sit on it. Its more than most people will earn in a lifetime. You could buy a row of houses with this. Its a lottery win, a life-changing sum.

Every note holds Clelands signature. Youd think shed be used to seeing so much cash but the 46-year-old is an eternal enthusiast. She skips between the machines, bright-eyed like a schoolgirl. She has worked for the Bank her entire working life but the buzz has not worn off.

The first time I had to sign a bank note, you get an A4 sheet with four boxes and you tick which one you want to use. I used up quite a few sheets of paper getting it right. I wanted one my parents would be proud of, she says.

She still gets excited calls from friends or family when theyre given change in a shop and get a bank note with her signature on it.

She has been signing them since she came into the chief cashiers role in 2014. The new fivers are particularly close to her heart because they are the first she has nurtured from start to finish. They will last around two-and-a-half times longer than the current paper notes.

While they are more expensive to produce and require new machinery, that lifespan means they will be more cost-effective in the long term. That will be welcome news for the Bank of England printing press in Leeds, which is charged with replacing notes which get ripped and torn.

If you have a bank note which has seen better days you are entitled to get it changed for a new one. Last year 21,745 notes were posted to the centre. Almost half of these had been torn, 5,364 had been chewed or eaten (usually by pets), 1,801 washed and 997 fire or flood-damaged.

Sometimes well get one thats been microwaved, says Cleland. People store them in microwaves for safe keeping and then forget to take them out when they cook something. I wouldnt recommend doing it  they catch fire because of the metal in them.

The Bank is also looking into how to make sure the new notes are environmentally friendly.

When paper notes are disposed of they are turned into compost. In Australia, where they already have polymer notes, they turn the old ones into garden furniture. Its something being looked at.

The major benefit of the new design is that they are much harder to counterfeit. The new fiver has been years in the making. Research began in 2010 and a public consultation followed in 2013.

A year after the polymer note first goes in to circulation a paper version will be hard to find. The 10 note will arrive in 2017, adorned with the face of Jane Austen.
Campaigners say one million in UK use drug illegally to deal with illnesses

Experts says cannabis can trigger psychotic episodes and be addictive

Policy reform group also wants companies to be

Cannabis should be legalised for medicinal use in the UK, a major report concludes today

Cannabis should be legalised for medicinal use in the UK, a major report concludes today.

The controversial document, published by a cross-party group of MPs and peers, calls on the Government to allow sick people to grow their own cannabis under licence.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform also wants companies to be allowed to import or grow the drug, and for ministers to strip away legal controls so that it becomes less regulated than many painkillers.

But experts said last night that legalising cannabis would be a dangerous step, warning that the drug can trigger psychotic episodes and be addictive.

Other critics claimed that it was the thin end of the wedge. They said the group behind the report simply wants cannabis to be legalised for recreational use and is using medical arguments as a smokescreen.

But Baroness Meacher, its co-chairman, insisted the continued ban on cannabis is irrational. She claims one million people in the UK are already illegally using cannabis to cope with their illnesses.

Lady Meacher, a cross-bench peer, said: The findings of our inquiry and review of evidence from across the world are clear. Cannabis works as a medicine for a number of medical conditions.

However, Professor Colin Drummond, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: Cannabis carries significant mental health risks for some individuals. Its use increases the risk of developing psychosis, depression and anxiety.

Other experts said previous research has also suggested that cannabis can act as a gateway to other, more serious drugs  an aspect ignored by the report.

It was part-funded by a charity founded by George Soros, the US billionaire who is determined to see cannabis completely legalised around the world.

BILLIONAIRE US BUSINESSMAN PART-FUNDED DRUG REPORT A billionaire US businessman part-funded the controversial report calling for cannabis to be legalised for medical use. George Soros set up the Open Society Foundations. It is one of the funders of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reforms report. Mr Soros, who is worth an estimated 18billion, is considered to have been instrumental in the softening of drugs laws in the US. His aim, according to his auto-biography, is to establish a strictly controlled distribution network of legally-available drugs. Mr Soros, a hedge fund tycoon, helped fund the campaign to legalise medical marijuana in the first US states in the late 1990s. One of his foundations key aims is to change the perception of drug use around the world  treating the problem as a public health rather than a criminal issue. Advertisement

Mr Soros, who has spent 150million since 1994 campaigning for drug legalisation, is largely credited with the change of laws in the US, where 26 states have now legalised medical marijuana. David Raynes, of the National Drug Prevention Alliance, which opposes relaxation of the UKs drug laws, dismissed the report as being without merit.

He added: This report represents anecdotal folk medicine. It is being pushed almost entirely by a few parliamentarians and users who have failed to get legalisation for recreational use any other way.

The group calls for a new system for grow your own cannabis for a limited number of patients. It wants companies to be allowed to grow or import cannabis for medical use, along the lines of a scheme being proposed in Germany. And it wants cannabis for medical use to be downgraded in the legal system from schedule one to schedule four  putting it below barbiturates, painkillers such as tramadol and sedatives such as temazepam.

Baroness Meacher claims one million people in the UK are already illegally using cannabis to cope with their illnesses (file photo)

PANEL LED BY AYATOLLAH OF DOPE: BARONESS MEACHER The committee that made the controversial call for cannabis to be legalised for medical use is headed by campaigners for drug liberalisation. Baroness Meacher, co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform, has been nicknamed the Ayatollah of Dope Decriminalisation by critics. She sparked fury three years ago by calling for the legalisation of cannabis. In a report, she said youngsters should be encouraged to switch from drinking alcohol to taking drugs, insisting some drugs are a good deal safer than tobacco and alcohol. The former social worker spoke out after the group  made up of senior MPs and peers  also called for the possession and use of heroin, ecstasy and crack cocaine to be decriminalised altogether. Meanwhile, her co-chairman, Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, was among a group of celebrities including Sir Richard Branson and actresses Julie Christie and Dame Judi Dench who signed a letter in June 2011 pleading with then Prime Minister David Cameron to decriminalise drug possession, if a review of drugs laws found they had failed. Another senior member of the group was Lib Dem peer Baroness Walmsley, who led a review into drugs in 2001 which called for ecstasy to be downgraded from Class A to Class B. Advertisement

Offences involving cannabis currently come with up to 14 years in prison  a schedule four offence would not involve a jail term at all.

The report stops short of recommending that people smoke cannabis  warning of a possible, yet unproven, risk of lung cancer.

Instead, a spokesman said, users could eat the drug, or vape it using equipment similar to e-cigarette devices. Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, who co-chairs the group, said: Many hundreds of thousands of people in the UK are already taking cannabis for primarily medical reasons.

It is totally unacceptable that they should face the added stress of having to break the law to access their medicine. This a matter of compassion and human rights.

During the seven-month inquiry, the group took evidence from 623 patients, doctors and experts. It also commissioned neurologist Professor Mike Barnes to review 20,000 studies going back to the 1960s.

His report concluded that medical cannabis helps alleviate chronic pain, anxiety and muscle problems, particularly linked to multiple sclerosis and the side effects of chemotherapy. The results are clear, he said. Cannabis has a medical benefit for a wide range of conditions.

AUTHOR DID NOT DECLARE HIS LINKS TO LOBBY GROUP Professor Mike Barnes is linked to a group which wants to see cannabis legalised for recreational use The author of todays report into cannabis is linked to a group which wants to see the drug legalised for recreational use. Neurologist Professor Mike Barnes, clinical director at a chain of private clinics called the Christchurch Group, was paid by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform to write a 169-page review of evidence into the drug. The report, which was co-written by his daughter Dr Jennifer Barnes, a clinical psychologist in Newcastle, is billed as the most extensive review of evidence in the literature in modern times. Yet nowhere in the review does Pro-fessor Barnes declare his links to CLEAR, a campaign group seeking to end the prohibition of cannabis for all users, both recreational and medical. Professor Barnes, is described on the groups website as a member of the CLEAR advisory board. When approached by the Mail, Professor Barnes insisted he does not support general legalisation and said he would resign from the organisation. He said he was asked six weeks ago to advise CLEAR on their campaign to legalise cannabis for medical purposes. He added: I was happy to do so. I was not asked to support their broader campaign on general recreational usage and I do not support general legalisation. Advertisement

But his report concedes that the research he reviewed was far from satisfactory in that it contains many small scale studies as well as case reports and anecdotal evidence but very few good quality trials.

The report is also contradicted by a major review led by Kings College London in 2014, in which academics concluded that smoking cannabis is highly addictive, can cause mental health problems and opens the door to hard drugs.

Two drugs already exist in the UK that are based on cannabis  but each drug can only be used for the conditions for which it was licensed.

Nabilone, a synthetic cannabis-type drug, has been available since 1982 as a hospital treatment for nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy. And in 2010 Sativex became the first medicine based on herbal cannabis for use in the UK. The mouth spray can only be prescribed to treat the loss of muscle control experienced by MS patients.
An alarming jump in the number of British people-trafficking suspects has been flagged up by an international crime-fighting agency.

Despite a clampdown on border controls across Europe since the start of the migrant crisis, theres been a surge in people smuggling operations  including many involving Britons.

This growing band have a constant ability to move migrants across the Continent, according to Europol  the EUs law enforcement agency. It admitted yesterday that it had identified a record 12,000 new people-trafficking suspects so far this year.

Despite a clampdown on border controls across Europe since the start of the migrant crisis, theres been a surge in people smuggling operations (stock image of National Crime Agency, which fights people-trafficking in the UK)

The number of British suspects added to its database was 132, a rise of nearly a third compared to the number in the whole of 2015.

Europol warned smugglers are using new tactics to evade tighter border controls and are increasingly looking to cash in on migrants stranded at border camps such as near the Channel port at Dunkirk.

Border restrictions are creating bottlenecks of migrants and leading to the creation of makeshift camps that have become the preferred locations for smugglers to advertise their services, the alert said.

Smugglers have shown a constant ability to adapt to stricter border controls and use new routes and modi operandi to evade law enforcement attention and maintain their highly profitable business, Europol said. It warned the gangs operating in the camps in Greece, Italy and France, are increasingly offering fraudulent documents to allow them to move forward into the EU.

Europol said the hiding of people in lorries remained the most common method, but that new alternative routes via air, sea and land are increasingly used.

The agency now has around 50,000 suspected people smugglers in its database, with an extra 12,000 suspects added since January. This compares with 6,400 new suspects identified by Europol in 2014 and 10,000 during 2015. Ninety-five per cent of the new suspects were male with an average age of 35.

An alarming jump in the number of British people-trafficking suspects has been flagged up by an international crime-fighting agency (stock image)

SYRIAN REFUGEE HELP WILL COST 1.7BILLION Plans to relocate 20,000 Syrian refugees to the UK will cost taxpayers up to 1.7billion, the National Audit Office warns today. In a worrying report, it says ministers made no estimate of the total bill before announcing a dramatic expansion in the refugee programme last year. Britains aid budget will be raided to fund the estimated 420million cost of dealing with the refugees needs during their first year in the UK. But aid rules mean it cannot be used for subsequent years, leaving the bill to fall on cash-strapped local councils, government departments and the benefits system. Auditors from the NAO calculate that the final bill to the taxpayer could reach more than 1.7billion  equal to 85,000 for every refugee rehoused. Todays report says councils will have to find almost 5,000 homes for the refugees and free up more than 10,600 school places. Without this, it warns, the project will be at risk. The NAO says local councils cited concern about funding for schools and housing as the main barrier to taking part in the scheme. Advertisement

Some 423 of the new suspects were Turkish  three times the number identified last year. Some 364 Syrians were added to the database, a rise of 40 per cent compared to 2015.

Robert Crepinko, the head of Europols European Migrant Smuggling Centre, said they are working to target and dismantle organised crime networks involved in migrant smuggling.

Such support includes the monitoring of the flows of irregular migrants into the EU as well as the activities of criminal networks facilitating their journey, contributing to the overall intelligence picture and helping Member States enhance their response to this unprecedented crisis, he said.

A Europol report earlier this year labelled people-smuggling as the fastest growing criminal market in Europe, estimating gangs netted 6billion euros (5billion) last year.

About one million migrants entered the EU in 2015 of which nine out of ten paid gangs fees of 3,000- 6000 euros each.

German interior minister Thomas de Maziere has warned there are over 500 Islamic militants in the country capable of forming themselves into independent hit squads to commit atrocities.

He said there were at least 520 potential attackers in Germany  a nation on edge since Islamic State-inspired attacks in July in which the attackers were refugees. He said another 360 relevant people were known to police because of their close proximity to potential killers.
JB Hi-Fi will own the brand but each retailer will operate

Electronics retailer JB Hi-Fi have broken into the white goods market with the $870 million acquisition of 101 The Good Guys stores across Australia.

JB Hi-Fi, which operates 170 stores nationally, announced the 'strategic' purchase on Tuesday, explaining it would allow the brand to expand its share in the $4.6 billion home appliance market.

The Good Guys will be fully owned by JB Hi-Fi, however each retailer will operate as independent brands 'with their own consumer propositions and price promises'.

Electronics retailer JB Hi-Fi have broken into the white goods market with the $870 million acquisition of 101 The Good Guys stores across Australia

The Good Guys (pictured) will be fully owned by JB Hi-Fi, however each retailer will operate as independent brands 'with their own consumer propositions and price promises'

JB Hi-Fi predominantly sells electronics goods - like DVDs, televisions, CDs, audio equipment and games - while The Good Guys are known for selling white goods and home appliances.

The takeover will be funded through a $349 million equity increase, along with $500 million raised from new and existing debt facilities, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

JB Hi-Fi chief executive Richard Murray said The Good Guys' operation would complement the electronics retailer's current business model and allow them to move forward into a exciting and profitable new market.

JB Hi-Fi predominantly sells electronics goods - like DVDs, televisions, CDs, audio equipment and games

But The Good Guys are known for selling white goods and home appliances like fridges or washing machines

'The acquisition is a very attractive strategic opportunity for JB Hi-Fi since The Good Guys is a highly complementary business which is aligned with our management philosophy,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Good Guys' CEO, Michael Ford, will retain his position following the acquisition.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys for comment.
The Special Operations Executive (SEO) devised a stink bomb device to confuse the enemy, SEO agents included Violette Szabo (pictured)

Declassified letters in an America archive have revealed a weapon the British secret service devised to undermine the German and Japanese during the Second World War.

Forget Little Boy, the bouncing bomb, or the Doodlebug, the Special Operations Executive (SEO) planned to beat the enemy by squirting them with stink bombs.

SEO, which was replaced by M16, it came up with brass perfume sprayers or little gelatine grenades that would contaminate enemy officers with a 'highly persistent smell suggestive of personal uncleanliness'.

According to The Times a British military intelligence officer sent one of his US counterparts the complete plans for an olfactory weapon known as 'S (stench) liquid'.

The aim was to cause alarm and confusion in enemy bases because od the smell.

On August 4 1943 Wing Commander TR Bird told Stanley Lovell of the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a predecessor to the CIA, discussed how to make the obscene formula.

'Up to the present, our employment of evil-smelling substances has been mainly for the purpose of contaminating individuals clothing,' he wrote. 'Since the air in any ordinary public meeting room is generally free from smell, almost any strange smell which cannot readily be accounted for would arouse suspicion which might easily culminate in fear or even panic.'

Wing Commander TR Bird told Stanley Lovell of the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a predecessor to the CIA, discussed how to make the obscene formula in the brass sprayer

The papers were uncovered in the OSS archives near Washington by Mary Roach, a Californian science writer, during her research for Grunt, her book about science and the American military.
but really a front for the scam

Online banking customers could be victims of a vicious phishing scam that steals their personal information, account and credit card details.

NAB customers have been warned about a sophisticated online attack that uses a deceitful email to steal their login details.

'The emails and linked phishing sites were quite difficult to distinguish from legitimate bank communications,' Cybersecurity firm Proofpoint who discovered the scam said on Tuesday.

NAB customers have been warned about vicious phishing scam that steals their personal information, account and credit card details through a fake email

It's unknown how many NAB customers fell victim to the sophisticated scam

Users received emails with the subject 'Your NAB account requires an additional verification', which tricked them into opening an attachment to verify the login details for a possibly suspended account.

Even though the email appears legitimate there are a few details according to Proofpoint that helped the scam avoid being noticed.

While the letter 'o' in the text looks real, it was actually replaced with a 'circle', to avoid detection by anti-spam filters.

Unsuspecting customers then opened the attachment and clicked on the link which looks like the same URL as the real site and opens a page which appears to be the NAB login page.

However, the HTML doc calls an external JavaScript which changed the text in the address bar.

Then when the user typed in their login details, the sham site took them to another fake page where the scam artists attempted to steal credit card and account information from their unsuspecting targets.

Users received an email which tricked them into opening an attachment to verify the login details for a possibly suspended account

Unsuspecting customers then opened the attachment and clicked on the link which looks like the same URL as the real site and opens a page which appears to be the NAB login page

Then when the user typed in their login details, the sham site took them to another fake page where the scam artists attempted to steal credit card and account information

Proofpoint Australia and New Zealand managing director Tim Bentley told the Herald Sun that they are relentlessly battling against phishing scams that are becoming smarter and more difficult to detect, often evolving quicker than anti-spam and anti-phishing technologies to adapt to.

'Australian companies spend millions of dollars annually training their employees to spot phishing attempts. While this is a sensible precaution, the new breed of attacks like this fake NAB one make it increasingly hard for the recipient to make the right call and hit delete or report,' he said.

A NAB spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that the bank was aware of the phishing emails asking for personal banking information

A NAB spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that the bank was aware of the phishing emails asking for personal banking information and advised customers to delete the email immediately or to forward it to spoof@nab.com.au.

'NAB reminds customers that we will never ask them to verify your account details via a link in an email. We encourage our customers to be aware of suspicious emails and not to click links to suspicious websites.'
Is It Legal to Recruit Your Competition's Best Employees?

There are a couple reasons you want to hire the best possible employees. First, you want the best ideas and the best production. Second, if they're working for you, they're not working for the competition. But what if your competition already got their hands on them? Is poaching a competitor's employees illegal?

For the most part, you're allowed to hire anyone who wants to work for you. But in certain cases, hiring someone who's already working for a competitor can get you in trouble.

The Rules

As we said, poaching employees isn't per se illegal, meaning most states don't have explicit anti-poaching laws. This is especially true for at-will employees or those working without a contract. Because the majority of employees are free to leave their jobs at their own discretion, they can come to work for you, even if they are working for a competitor at the time.

Even if the employee has signed a non-compete agreement, many such agreements and clauses are unenforceable -- courts are generally reluctant to tell people where (and for whom) they can and cannot work. There are, however, some valid non-compete agreements and your freshly-poached employee may be barred from working for you for a period of time or indefinitely.

The Exceptions

If the employee you're going after has an employment contract with your competitor, you need to be even more careful. Under civil law and most state statutes, it is illegal to interfere with business contracts, and that can include employment contracts.

Under state unfair competition laws or specific statutes, employee poaching may actually amount to Tortious interference with business relations can occurs if a company intentionally causes an employee to breach his employment contract, especially if your poaching tactics included wrongful allegations, a blatant disregard for non-compete agreements, or otherwise acting in an illegal manner.

So before you start scanning your competition's roster for superstar recruits, you might want to know whether they are under contract, and what that contract says about skipping out to a competitor. Better yet, get in touch with a local employment law attorney first.

Related Resources:
Parents are furious after a primary school reportedly made all its toilets unisex to cater for transgender pupils.

They fear that younger children could be bullied or even sexually assaulted in the new toilets at Willow Tree Primary School in Northolt, West London.

Children are also scared that older children will stare over the top of the cubicles and take pictures of them using the toilets, parents say.

Parents are furious after at Willow Tree Primary School in Northolt, West London, reportedly made all its toilets unisex to cater for transgender pupils

Lisa Carrano, 35, whose seven-year-old daughter goes to the school (pictured), said parents believe that the school had done it to cater for transgender pupils

Lisa Carrano, 35, whose seven-year-old daughter goes to the school, said parents believe that the school had done it to cater for transgender pupils.

She also told The Mirror: 'Pupils have been saying they are afraid of using the toilets in case older kids peer over the top of the cubicle or take a photo on phones.'

The school did not confirm if they had introduced the new toilet because of transgender students.

But it is now under fire after more than 200 pupils signed a petition yesterday asking them to ban the new unisex toilets.

Parents have been invited to meet the head teacher Sue Stanley, who said that there have been unisex toilets in the school since 2000 and they have caused no problems so far.

The current unisex toilet cubicles also go all the way up to the ceiling, so cannot be peered over, she added.
Promotion on merit? Grade pupils according to their brain power? These were revolutionary concepts. Large parts of the Commons blinked with puzzlement when Education Secretary Justine Greening proposed expanding grammar schools.

If it was original thinking you wanted, the House yesterday was not necessarily the place. Sludgy prejudice predominated.

Open the door on long-caged chimpanzees and they may not immediately seize freedom, having become institutionalised and forgotten the scent of liberty.

Losing it: Angela Rayner talks grammar schools in the House of Commons yesterday

Similarly, socialist orthodoxy has so long held sway in English and Welsh schools that the mere concept of selection paralysed some Tory wets, just as it caused outrage on the Labour benches.

Keith Simpson (Con, Broadland) had severe reservations. Why? Because he had been to a grammar  and it had been too good! Mr Simpson hated to think what he might have done in his life if he had not been to one. Er, so why not embrace such engines of fulfilment?

Honking Fiona Mactaggart (Lab, Slough), product of Cheltenham Ladies College and stupendously rich, spoke up for ordinary working-class people. Savour her la-di-dah tone, peasants.

She argued that there was too much competition for grammar schools. You or I might conclude that grammars were therefore jolly popular, and therefore worth multiplying. The millionaire socialist does not think in such a way.

Tristram Hunt (Lab, Stoke C), pukka enough to have stepped from the pages of a Boden catalogue, railed against the perquisites of the public schools  presumably just like the one he attended.

And Nick Brown (Lab, Newcastle E) averred that the policy would be deeply divisive  the same Nick Brown who was once Tony Blairs Chief Whip and a magnificently Shakespearean plotter against Cabinet colleagues. Division? It is his speciality.

Michael Gove (Con, Surrey Heath) at least gave the Green Paper a fair wind. He cheered the Governments clear moral purpose. Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, NE Somerset) said there was a distinct benefit in the pursuit of intellectual excellence. It takes a Rees-Mogg to say such things.

Tory: Education secretary Justine Greening

His fellow Etonian Kwasi Kwarteng (Con, Spelthorne) said more grammars were a very encouraging step in the right direction. He mocked those ex-grammar pupils who opposed more people enjoying such an education.

Sir Edward Leigh (Con, Gainsborough), not always quick to support his own ministers, said it was perverse to try to stop more children having a top-notch schooling. But Kenneth Clarke (Con, Rushcliffe) was his usual self, drawlingly seditious.

Some sought refuge in convenient tangents. Sir Desmond Swayne (Con, New Forest W) found a convenient quibble about the shortage of good head teachers.

Chloe Smith (Norwich N) had no ideological hang-up but saw this as the beginning of the debate. Was that a euphemism for lets talk this policy to death? Nicky Morgan (Con, Loughborough) was less opposed to the policy than we had been led to expect. She settled for some query about the pace of the reforms.

The shadow secretary of state, Labours Angela Rayner, tried opening with a wisecrack about class war which earned appalled silence from her own benches and groaning mockery from the Tories.

She was quoting an historical remark of David Cameron (Con, Witney) but by the time she explained that, she had lost the House. Ms Rayner is a clunker. She could be Catherine Tate playing one of her gumbies. As for Mr Cameron, he is quitting the Commons, vanishing like a conjurors bunny. Most regrettable.

Behind the Speakers Chair lurked Theresa Mays parliamentary private secretary, George Hollingbery, silkenly sinister in open-collared shirt. He listened carefully to the debate. At roughly the same time, Tory HQ issued a press release about the likely new constituency boundaries.
The NSW government has installed $170 million worth of kick-proof doors

The man can be seen documenting his dangerous behaviour on his phone

The man is seen violently kicking at the door until it gives way and falls out

Bizarre footage has emerged of a teenager recklessly vandalising and sticking his head out of a moving train in Sydneys south.

The video, which aired on Nine News Sydney, shows the unidentified teenager repeatedly and violently kicking at the steel panel of a door, attempting to remove it entirely.

Footage of the teen was captured on the train as it passed between Hurstville and Kogarah stations in New South Wales.

Scroll down for video.

The footage shows the unidentified teenager repeatedly and violently kicking at the steel panel of a door

Seemingly out of control, the teenager momentarily walks away from the door before returning to finish the job.

Eventually the panel gives way and falls from the door, leaving a gaping hole in the train.

The footage then shows the man kneeling down on the ground and poking his head through the hole, all while documenting the dangerous behaviour on his phone.

Footage of the teen was captured on the train as it passed between Hurstville and Kogarah in New South Wales

The NSW government installed $170 million worth of kick-proof Tangara doors in public transportation

NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance told Nine News Sydney the mans behaviour was not only reckless, but also dangerous.

This thoughtless, inept, rush of blood act could have killed someone, Mr Constance said.

Its unacceptable, moronic behaviour.

The mans behaviour will also cost taxpayers hundreds of dollars to fix.

Its unacceptable, moronic behaviour said NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance

Almost 300 sets of train doors were kicked in last year, causing commuter delays and significant tax payer money to fix

The NSW government installed $170 million worth of kick-proof Tangara doors in public transportation to combat the issue.

The move came after Sydney Trains revealed almost 300 sets of train doors were kicked in last year, causing commuter delays and significant tax payer money to fix.

In response to the video, twitter users shared their shock at the CCTV footage and called for tougher penalties.

'We need to give solutions like name them and shame them' The Dolphin Ent said on Twitter

One user called out Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and urged authorities to name them and shame them.

They also suggested strong campaigns targeting the younger population in a bid to prevent further acts of vandalism.

Put them in front of a firing squad, that will save tax payers money, another user said.
The Prime Minister could lose a vote on grammar schools, warn rebel Tories

Tory rebels last night threatened to vote down Theresa Mays grammar school plans amid fears pupils who fail to get in will be stigmatised.

In an ominous show of strength, a string of prominent Conservative MPs challenged Education Secretary Justine Greening over the reforms when she unveiled them in the Commons.

Previous education secretary Nicky Morgan  who nodded in agreement as Labour MPs attacked her successor over the plans yesterday  said the scale of Tory concern meant ministers would have a real challenge getting this through.

Mrs Morgan said she was not convinced allowing a new generation of grammar schools would help the poor, adding: I think it will be difficult to support the proposal as it stands.

Miss Greening said ministers believed selective schools had a vital place in creating a truly meritocratic system, where what matters is a persons talent and their capacity for work.

Under the proposals, existing grammars will be able to expand and open new sites. And other state schools rated as good or outstanding will be allowed to introduce selection for the first time.

However, grammars will be required to do much more to tackle criticism that they have become the preserve of the middle classes.

They will be expected to take more children who qualify for free school meals, as well as pupils from families who are just getting by financially.

Yesterdays package also places new requirements on public schools to do more to help the state sector. And it proposes lifting the restriction that requires new faith schools to get at least half of their pupils from backgrounds other than their preferred religion.

Miss Greening, who is thought to harbour doubts about expanding the grammar system, was cheered by Tory MPs when she rounded on Labour for wanting to level down educational achievement.

Justine Greening (left), current Education Secretary, is thought to have doubts over the grammar school plan; former schools boss Nicky Morgan (right) nodded along to Labour MPs criticising the proposals

But she quickly came under fire from some on her own side. While many Tory MPs back the plans, at least a dozen spoke out against yesterday  suggesting the Governments narrow majority is under threat.

It was even suggested former prime minister David Cameron chose to stand down as an MP as he could not support the plans.

Former Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers said she had anxieties about whether new grammars would benefit local pupils  or be hijacked by pushy parents from elsewhere.

Former chancellor Kenneth Clarke said that although he welcomed the motives behind the policy he would not want to replicate the serious downsides of the old system.

Expressing severe reservations Keith Simpson, Tory MP for Broadland, said: I was at a grammar school 50 years ago and I have often wondered if I had failed the 11-plus where I would be. I certainly wouldnt be here today.

Alec Shelbrooke, Tory MP for Elmet and Rothwell, and Michelle Donelan, Tory MP for Chippenham, said they feared pupils who failed to pass entrance tests would be stigmatised.

Labour also attacked the policy, with education spokesman Angela Rayner saying it amounted to segregation, segregation, segregation.
A pervert has been jailed after breaking into a woman's bedroom, opening a bottle of Champagne and masturbating in front of a petrified woman as she lay in bed.

Sean Gurruwiwi, who is married, 'drank a lot of alcohol' before barging through the front door of the woman's home in Wagaman, Darwin, at 1.20am on January 22.

Gurruwiwi, from Elcho Island in the Northern Territory, went to the woman's kitchen and cracked open a bottle of Champagne he found in the fridge.

Justice Judith Kelly said he then went out to the veranda and took off all of his clothes.

Sean Gurruwiwi has been jailed after breaking into a woman's bedroom, opening a bottle of Champagne and masturbating in front of a petrified woman as she lay in bed. He was sentenced at the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory (pictured)

'When you were naked, you walked back inside the unit and went into the victims bedroom,' the judge said.

'You walked three or four steps into the bedroom until you were less than half a metre away from the victim. '

'You took hold of your penis and began to masturbate. While you were doing this, you were looking at the victim and smiling.'

The woman screamed at Gurruwiwi and told him to 'get the f*** out' before shouting for her partner, who was asleep in another bedroom.

Gurruwiwi said 'no, no' before fleeing the house, the judge said.

He hid behind a tree and then ran down the road after the victim's partner chased after him.

Gurruwiwi stole a bottle of Champagne before taking his clothes off (file picture)

Police were called and Gurruwiwi was still naked when he was arrested.

Justice Kelly told the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory that Gurruwiwi apologised after he had sobered up.

During an interview with police, he said: I think what I did was disgusting. I feel sorry about what happened.'

Gurruwiwi admitted behaving offensively, entering a home at night with intent to steal and stealing a bottle of Champagne.

'What you did is very serious,' Justice Kelly said during sentencing. 'That lady must have been very frightened and disgusted.

'People are entitled to relax in their own homes without worrying about some out of control drunk coming in and upsetting them.

'I ... accept that you are truly sorry for what you did and for scaring that woman. When you sobered up, you were disgusted with yourself.'
The ABC's Q&A dished up an extra juicy debate on Monday night when anti-gay marriage Coalition Senator Bridget McKenzie was put in an awkward position on same sex marriage from her brother on live television.

With most of parliament on board for same-sex marriage the debate on whether Australian's need a compulsory $160m plebiscite, which cabinet passed on to Coalition MPs for voting today, was appropriately raised on Q&A.

The night took an interesting twist when Alastair McKenzie streamed his question to his sister and the nation on the possible impact the emotional affects a vote will have on the GLBTI community and himself.

Coalition Senator McKenzie was questioned on Q&A from her brother on same-sex marriage

Host Tony Jones said after the beamed video from her brother, 'You probably knew, I expect he told you he was sending a video in'.

However, Senator McKenzie neither confirmed or denied she knew the video was incoming and only heightened the tension in the room when she danced around the question.

While reiterating her longstanding stance that she does not support change, Bridget McKenzie felt the beady eyes of the panel members and the crowd when explaining that she thinks taking the vote to the people will allow Australians to express their conscience.

'I think it will only be damaging if all of us as Australians choose to actually not respect each other's views in this particular debates,' she said.

Mr McKenzie asked his sister if a vote will have a damaging impact on the GLBTI community

The cabinet has not confirmed if the plebiscite will be binding for MPs and Ms McKenzie said she will vote with her conscience, which she has previously said will be against same-sex marriage, unless the vote becomes binding in parliament.

'What I think is that there is tension for some MPs, like myself, on both sides of the aisle between our desire to respect the sovereign will of the Australian people, and our conscience in a representative democracy,' she said.

'I'm recognising the tension and one way to address it is by having a binding plebiscite.'

However, Queensland Greens Senator Larissa Waters was forthright in her opinion the plebiscite could be damaging to the LBGTIQ community and questioned why we are being forced into a mandatory vote on same-sex marriage.

New Zealand, USA, the UK, France and Ireland have all already approved same-sex marriage

On Monday Federal cabinet approved a plebiscite on same-sex marriage for February 11, 2017

'We all know the plebiscite will be incredibly damaging for LBGTIQ Australians and your brother feels it will be so for him and we should listen to that perspective,' she said.

'We haven't had a plebiscite in living memory and I don't know why all of a sudden we have to have one on this issue. It is clearly a way to put the issue on the go-slow.'

The Spectator editor Rowan Dean was more damning of the process to formulate a plebiscite and called for the vote to happen immediately.

"Gay men and women of Australia, these people you think who are your friends in the Labor Party and the Greens, they are not your friends  they are playing you like mugs,' he said.

Recent polls suggest that if a same-sex marriage vote is to take place, 'yes' in favour would win

On Monday evening Federal cabinet approved a plebiscite on same-sex marriage with the vote to possibly take place on February 11, 2017.

The proposal will be presented before Coalition MPs on Tuesday.

The question posed to Australians will be, 'Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?', with recent polls suggesting the 'yes' vote will come out on top.

In a controversial move, the ABC reported that $7.5 million in public funding will be allocated to each campaign.
A mother accused of sexually abusing her three and five-year-old daughters claims she was only doing what she was told by her 'violent' ex-partner, who was also the children's father.

The mother had plead not guilty to six counts of indecently dealing with a child and one count of rape despite being the person to bring the abuse to the attention of police.

The mother left the abusive relationship and moved from the Sunshine Coast to Townsville in June 2013.

A mother accused of sexually abusing her young daughters claimed she was in a violent relationship and acted in fear (file image)

The woman appeared before Townsville District Court charged with six counts of indecently dealing with a child and one count of rape

She told police about the abuse her children suffered the following October after she became concerned about the father having unsupervised visits, the Townsville Bulletin reports.

Crown prosecutor Skye Jerome told the Townsville District Court how the mother outlined three occasions where she and the children's father sexually abused their children.

'She (the mother) says she doubts the children would recall any of the acts because she made it as unfamiliar as possible for the children  trying to distance them, no lights on, they were half asleep,' Ms Jerome said.

Ms Jerome said in one of the alleged attacks the mother cupped her daughter's face as the man, the child's father, abused her.

She then pretended to give oral sex to the young child under the direction of her partner, according to a statement she gave police.

The mother was charged at the time she gave her statement to police. The young girls, who will not be giving evidence at the trial, spoke with police.

Prosecutors claim the woman said the abuse would have minimal impact on the children as she made sure it was 'as unfamiliar as possible' (file image)

They did not allege any sexual offending by their mother, according to Ms Jerome.

The court also heard the mother would lure young teenage girls to parties for the purpose of having sex with her then partner.

One of these girls is expected to testify.

The couple were in an open relationship at the time of the alleged offences, they had been together between 2006 and 2013.
More than 160 New Zealand firefighters have performed a powerful and emotional haka in honour of their U.S. colleagues who died attempting to save people trapped in the Twin Towers during the September 11 attacks in New York.

The traditional Maori war dance was performed during the annual Memorial Firefighter Stair Climb, to commemorate the 343 US firefighters who lost their lives 15 years ago.

More than 160 New Zealand firefighters came together to perform the traditional war dance in honour of their fallen colleagues

The haka was also performed in honour of the 56 New Zealand firefighters who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

Steven San Filippo, a New York firefighter and Battalion Chief who was part of the rescue efforts, was a guest of honour at the event which was held at the Sky Tower in Auckland.

Mr Filippo told Stuff the ceremony was a tremendous honour to be commemorating our guys here on the other side of the world.

Steven San Filippo (pictured) said the ceremony was a tremendous honour' bestowed on his fallen colleagues

The haka was also performed in honour of the 56 New Zealand firefighters who have died in the line of duty

Following the powerful and emotive performance, the firefighters donned their full fire gear and climbed the 1,000-step staircase to honour their fallen brothers and sisters.

With special tags bearing the names of the fallen servicemen, some firefighters went back and did the stair climb a second time.

Mr Filippo (pictured) said the ceremony spreads the word of the tremendous effort that the New York City firefighters made on 9/11, 2001

Mr Filippo said the ceremony spreads the word of the tremendous effort that the New York City firefighters made on 9/11, 2001.

They were protecting life and property in the city of New York.

The haka was performed during the annual Memorial Firefighter Stair Climb in Auckland

And you know what? Any department anywhere in the world would have done the same thing.

The US firefighter said he would never forget the men and women who gave their lives to help others in the September 11 terror attacks.
Women in Indonesia are being told to speak up in the bedroom and demand their fair share of orgasms as part of a wider campaign for gender equality.

Firliana Purwanti, a campaigner and author who is widely known as the 'Orgasm Lady', is on a mission to tell women in an overwhelmingly conservative Muslim nation that insisting on more pleasure in the bedroom can help them achieve equality in society in general.

Ms Purwanti's approach is unconventional in a country where open discussion of sex is frowned upon.

Woman soldiers march during a parade in a ceremony commemorating the foundation of the Indonesian Air Force. Virginity tests are widespread for unmarried women seeking to join the military and the police

The 39-year-old is also urging women to stand up against demeaning practices such as virginity tests for women who want to join Indonesia's military or the police force.

She said: 'Your body, your sexual pleasure is your autonomy. The state has nothing to do with it.

'Pleasure is a human right. My ambition is for all women to have orgasms, because that's the ultimate indicator they are empowered.'

Last year Inspector General Moechgiyarto told The Guardian virginity tests were conducted under 'health condition requirements' for female police candidates and were necessary to prevent sex workers entering the police academy.

Ms Purwanti wrote The O Project in 2010, a best-selling book documenting the sexual experiences of 16 Indonesian women.

She interviewed 14 Indonesian women from Aceh to Sulawesi about their orgasms.

Ms Purwanti said: 'My fear was they would be too shy to answer my questions. I was surprised that they were happy to talk.

'Most laughed a lot while discussing their orgasms. Nobody had ever asked them about this, not even their partners. They loved answering my questions because, finally, someone cared about their pleasure.'

She said the ritual of female genital mutilation (FGM) was still practised in some parts of Indonesia and many men equated women who enjoyed sex with promiscuity or low morals.

Your right to orgasm - Ms Purwanti (left) said women needed to speak up in the bedroom and demand the sexual pleasure that women in the West (right) expect and not see sex as a chore

Indonesia's top court is currently hearing a petition from conservative Islamic activists lobbying to outlaw sex outside marriage.

Ms Purwanti - whose day job as a development worker includes tackling natural disasters - said her campaign was to push back against Indonesia's obsession with virginity.

Over half her Facebook followers are male and she says: 'All this while we have been trying to engage men in the women's movement, it's very difficult. But when it comes to sex, they are engaged immediately.'

About 5,000 copies of her book were snapped up by readers soon after the launch and it was translated into English last year.

She has since been invited to share her campaign on different stages, including at the Jakarta version of popular speaker series TED Talks and by a top local cosmetics brand.

Ms Purwanti, who recently got divorced after a nine-year marriage, plans to stand for parliament in the next national election, due in 2019, on a women's rights platform.

Indonesia was ranked 92nd out of 145 countries in the World Economic Forum's 2015 Gender Gap Index, and only 54 percent of women work, compared with 86 percent of men.
New senator Derryn Hinch once posed up for a steamy photoshoot with a topless Playboy Playmate where he fed her grapes in bed.

The private life of the 72-year-old criminal law reform campaigner - who delivered his maiden speech on Tuesday - has long titillated the public.

And Hinch, who is five times married (twice to actress Jacki Weaver) has rarely hesitated in talking about it on the air and in his writings.

But nothing quite speaks to the 'Human Headline's' love of the outrageous quite like his set-up 1979 pictures with glamorous model Allyson Best.

Scroll down for video

Classic pictures: In this 1979 snap shot by celebrity photographer Rennie Ellis, a chortling Derryn Hinch is seen feeding fruit to Playboy Playmate Allyson Best

A nose for news: The future Senator was lovingly caressed by Ms Best in the photo set - but he chose to get stuck into the latest edition of Melbourne's The Age newspaper

The series, shot by celebrity photographer Rennie Ellis, is so well known it is preserved in a collection by the august Victorian State Library.

The pair posed up for the pictures for the now-defunct Australian arm of Playboy magazine.

Manuela Furci, from the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive, said Hinch was friends with the famous photographer, who died in 2003.

'How he talked Derryn into doing it, I don't know,' Ms Furci said.

Hinch this week re-introduced himself politically in the Senate as the oldest person ever to be elected to the Parliament.

'I guess I will be enshrined as a Trivial Pursuit question!' he joked.

And while the newly appointed Senator and former jailbird wasn't available for an interview on Tuesday, he has often spoken about his private life in the past.

On the home front, Hinch is well known for his relationships with Academy Award winning actress Jacki Weaver.

Glamour couple: Hinch and actress wife Jacki Weaver are pictured at a number of his court appearances over the years, left and right

The broadcaster was married to the Animal Kingdom star throughout the late 80s and early 90s.

Once, he even put a full page advertisement in a local newspaper declaring: 'I love Jacki Weaver'.

The pair divorced, remarried and divorced again through the 90s. Weaver had 'ran off with another man'.

In interviews, Hinch has often referred to Weaver as his best friend. She even offered to hand out how-to-vote cards for Hinch at the recent election.

'Our relationship was wonderful... Neither of us believe that it failed,' Hinch told the ABC's Australian Story program.

Recently, the veteran broadcaster was linked to Natasha Chadwick, a former New South Wales police detective.

The veteran broadcaster has most recently been linked to Natasha Chadwick (pictured upon their meeting several years ago)

Ms Chadwick this week posted this picture captioned '#stilltogether #love'

The pair broke up very publicly in early 2015.

But she was by his side in Canberra this week. '#stilltogether #love' she captioned a picture with the anti-paedophile Justice Party representative.

Hinch's first wife was newspaper reporter Lana Wells. He met her shortly after arriving in Australia from New Zealand, wooing her over Japanese food in Kings Cross.

He later married flight attendant Eve Carpenter who greeted him for the first time on a plane saying: 'Thats the worst tie I have ever seen.'

Eve and Chanel: Hinch is pictured left with his second wife Eve Carpenter, a flight attendant, and right with his blonde beauty and fifth wife Chanel Hayton

Hinch was reported to have dubbed Ms Hayton 'Chanel No. 5'

His most recent marriage, his fifth, was to the busty blonde Victorian beauty Chanel Hayton.

After his engagement in 2006, the broadcaster told his 3AW listeners: 'I can't believe I'm doing this again.

'I'm a very, very lucky old fart.'

She was by his side throughout his battle with liver cirrhosis and receipt of an organ donation.

He was rumoured to have dubbed Ms Hayton 'Chanel No. 5'.

The pair split in 2012.
Peeps Factory Workers Strike to Save Pensions

Last week, news broke out of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that factory workers at the Just Born candy company's Peeps factory have gone on strike. The men and women who make the delightfully fluffy, sweet, and soft confections walked out after the company proposed eliminating pensions, reducing wage increases, and increasing employee contributions to health plans.

Union officials for the Peeps' workers are pushing for the union's peeps to be treated fairly, receive reasonable wage increases, and the pension they've been promised. The cuts proposed by management come as the company has been making record sales.

How Sweet It Isn't!

At a time where the fluffy confection is more popular than it has ever been, it seems odd that management would be seeking to reduce worker pay. In 2014, Just Born reported net sales valued at $222 million, ranking number 65 in the 2014 Global Top 100 candy companies.

Factory workers at the Peeps plant know how much people love and rely on their fun creations to celebrate almost every holiday. To their credit, they completed the production of this year's Halloween candies before starting the strike. Although production for the Easter Peeps goes on year round, the strike may have an impact on meeting production goals as Easter is the confectioner's busiest holiday.

The Line Never Stops

While the unionized workers have gone on strike in Bethlehem, non-union employees are still working to create candies for Valentine's Day and Easter. Just Born claims that the union has mischaracterized the company's position, yet the company has not specifically explained just what the union has inaccurately depicted. Amid the profits that are "off the charts" and sales growing by "double digits," it is difficult to understand how a producer of such sweet things that brings joy to so many people would try to take away their workers' pensions.

The workers that make Peeps are paid between $20 to $25 per hour. If the strike is unsuccessful, that amount will effectively be reduced as the workers will now have to look elsewhere for retirement planning as well as have increased health care costs. Workers are asking supporters to take to social media and to boycott the sweet treats until the company changes its plan.

Related Resources:
The south east of Australia is set for a deluge of rain over the next 24 hours, with a month's worth of rain forecast to fall in parts of Victoria tomorrow.

Sydney could be hit by 34mm rain starting from this evening - half the amount that usually falls throughout the whole of September.

Floods were already ravaging parts of New South Wales today, where a man had to be rescued from his car after he drove into floodwaters near Forbes.

A severe weather warning has been issued in Victoria, where a 70mm - a month's worth of rain - could fall this afternoon, with 30mm rainfall forecast for Melbourne.

Despite the rain, the south east's balmy spring will continue with forecast highs of 23C in Sydney tomorrow.

The south east of Australia is set for a deluge of rain over the next 24 hours, with a month's worth of rain forecast to fall in parts of the country tomorrow. Pictured, a satellite image shows clouds gathering over south east Australia

A severe weather warning has been issued in Victoria, where a 70mm - a month's worth of rain - could fall this afternoon, with 30mm rainfall forecast for Melbourne (pictured)

Sydney (clouds over Kingsford Smith Airport pictured) could be hit by 34mm rain starting from this evening - half the amount that usually falls throughout the whole of September

Flood warnings have been issued across New South Wales, with a series of rivers forecast to burst their banks over the next 24 hours.

Towns near the Gwydir, Peel, Macquarie, Upper Bogan and Lachlan rivers could face flooding while minor flooding is expected near the Upper Macintyre, Namoi and Murrumbidgee rivers, according to the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).

There is a 70 per cent chance of rainfall in Sydney this evening, with a 90 per cent chance of up to 30mm of rain in the city tomorrow.

Sydney - where temperatures are still expected to hit 23C tomorrow - usually only sees 68mm of rain throughout the entirety of September.

Some parts of Victoria could see 70mm of rain this afternoon, with between 20mm and 50mm set to fall in Mildura, Horsham, Kyneton, Ballarat, Bendigo and Maryborough. Up to 30mm is due in Melbourne.

'Heavy rain which may lead to flash flooding is possible over parts of the Mallee, Northern Country, Wimmera, North Central, Central and Southwest districts during Tuesday,' the BoM reported.

 Slide me  Rain will sweep across south east Australia, with forecasters predicting flash flooding

Up to 30mm of rainfall is due in Melbourne, where conditions are already wet in the city

Melbourne (pictured) will not be hit as badly by the rain as other parts of Victoria, where a month's worth of rain could fall

'Widespread 24 hours rainfall totals of 20 to 50mm are forecast across parts of western and central Victoria, with isolated higher falls of 60 to 70mm possible. Thunderstorms may also result in heavier falls.'

Forecasters warned flood-hit residents to avoid deep water and keep clear of creeks and storm drains.

There is also a 25 per cent change of rain in Canberra this evening and tomorrow, with lighter showers expected until the weekend, the Canberra Times reported.

The worst of the rain in the south east is expected to be over by the weekend.

Elsewhere, highs of 26C were expected in Brisbane today but there could be showers later in the evening.

The rain will bring cooler temperatures with it, with temperatures dropping as low as 18C through tomorrow and Thursday.

There is a 70 per cent chance of rainfall in Sydney this evening, with a 90 per cent chance of up to 30mm of rain in the city tomorrow

Clouds and fog shroud the city skyline in Melbourne, which could be hit by 30mm of rain today

Elwood Beach, south east of Melbourne, was still picturesque this morning, but that was before the rain started to fall

It will stay relatively dry on the west coast today and tomorrow, with highs of 18C, but temperatures could drop to 6C in Perth on Thursday as showers being to develop.

Adelaide will have showers today and they will continue throughout the week, as will Canberra.

Tasmania will stay dry today, with temperatures of 14C, but this is set to change when showers sweep in on Wednesday night.

Meanwhile, it was 30C in Darwin earlier today, with the heat expected to continue despite possible rain showers tomorrow and Thursday.
areas and breasts during treatment, was visibly aroused and made

An Olympic medalist and another former gymnast claim they were sexually abused by a 'famous team doctor' for USA Gymnastics.

The Olympian, who has been named only as Jane J. D. Doe, filed a lawsuit last year which alleges that Larry G. Nassar sexually abused her for six years - beginning when she was just 12-year-old in 1994.

Her lawyers only identified her as a medal-winning member of the U.S. team that competed at the Sydney Games. That could be any of the six women who were on the team that year, since Team USA won Bronze in the team all-around competition.

The members of that team were Amy Chow, Elise Ray, Jamie Dantzscher, Kristin Maloney, Tasha Schwikert and Dominique Dawes.

Her suit also claims that USA Gymnastics were aware of the abuse but failed to take action because it feared a sex abuse scandal.

A member of the 2000 U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics team has claimed she was sexually abused by team doctor Larry G. Nassar. The team pictured from left to right: Amy Chow, Jamie Dantzscher, Dominique Dawes, Kristen Maloney, Elise Ray and Morgan White

Rachael Denhollander (left) came forward last month to accuse Larry G. Nassar (right) of abuse

'It f elt like a privilege to be seen by him,' she told The Indy Star. 'I trusted him.'

Her lawsuit said Nassar carried out procedures that were 'well outside any recognized and/or accepted technique and were done for the Perpetrator's  own sexual gratification.'

Fellow gymnast Rachael Denhollander came forward last month to accuse Nassar of abuse.

She said he assaulted her five times while she was being treated for back pain at Michigan State University by the doctor, as a teenage athlete in 2000.

Denhollander said she was 'terrified' by Nassar's abuse, NY Daily News reports.

'I was ashamed,' she said. 'I was very embarrassed. And I was very confused, trying to reconcile what was happening with the person he was supposed to be,' she said.

Denhollander said he assaulted her five times while she was being treated for back pain at Michigan State University by the doctor, as a teenage athlete in 2000

'He's this famous team doctor. He's trusted by my friends. He's trusted by these other gymnasts. How could he reach this position in the medical profession? How could he reach this kind of prominence and stature if this is who he is?'

Denhollander said she was just 15 at the time of the abuse which took place while her mother was in the room. But she said the doctor positioned himself in such a way that her mother was unable to see what was going on.

Both women say Nassar fondled their genitals and breasts during treatment.

The unnamed victim said the doctor had made inappropriate comments about oral sex while Denhollander said he'd had an erection during treatment.

The 200 team was awarded bronze in the team all-around in 2010 (above), after China was eventually disqualified. From left to right: Tascha Schwikert, Elise Ray, Kristen Maloney, Dominique Dawes, Jamie Dantzscher and Amy Chow

Lawyers for Nassar told The Indianapolis Star that their client denies any wrongdoing.

Nassar, 53, has been a highly respected doctor in the field for decades and has treated numerous Olympic athletes.

USA Gymnastics President Steve Penny even praised him as being 'instrumental to the success of USA Gymnastics at many levels, both on and off the field of play.

USA Gymnastics said in a statement they had notified law enforcement after it learned about the allegation against Nassar in the summer of 2015.

'We also relieved Dr. Nassar of his duties, and he ceased to be affiliated with USA Gymnastics,' the statement said.

Lawyer for Nassar told The Indianapolis Star that their client denies any wrongdoing

Lawyer for Nassar told The Indianapolis Star that their client denies any wrongdoing

'USA Gymnastics has cooperated fully with the law enforcement agency since we first notified them of the matter, including-at their request  refraining from making further statements or taking any other action that might interfere with the agency's investigation.'

However, a Star investigation found USA Gymnastics failed to report or document sexual abuse allegations for decades.

USA Gymnastics is the national governing body for the sport and is responsible for selecting the Olympic team.

Nassar resigned from the organization last year but continued to work as a faculty member at Michigan State's College of Osteopathic Medicine, and team physician at Twistars Gymnastics Club USA, Michigan State University and Holt High School.

Officials at Michigan State and Twistars said USA Gymnastics did not inform them of the allegations against Nassar who continued to work with young athletes.
Neighbours and schoolmates have spoken out about his '

A university drop out charged with terrorism offences after launching a violent attack on a grandfather in Sydney has been described as an erratic recluse who was not put on a terror watch list after spitting at a politician last year.

Details surrounding the life of accused terrorist Ihsas Khan started to emerge following his dramatic arrest in Minto, a suburb in Sydney's south, on Saturday.

The 22-year-old - who police allege used a hunting knife to stab and slice off Wayne Greenhalgh's fingers during an 'IS inspired' attack - flew under the authorities' radar, despite spitting on ex-Labor MP Laurie Ferguson in a 'premeditated' stunt last year.

Scroll down for video

Ihsas Khan (left as a school student), who was charged with terrorism offences after allegedly stabbing a grandfather (right) in Sydney on Saturday, has been described as an erratic recluse

Mr Ferguson, who formerly represented Werriwa, an electoral division in Sydney's south, said he reported the incident to police after Khan ambushed him on stage at Campbelltown's Islamic Al-Faisal College during Eid celebrations - which mark the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca - last year, the Daily Telegraph reported.

He said the accused terrorist flouted religious protocols that require individuals to remove their shoes when entering a mosque during the attack.

'What gave me particular concern was the seeming degree of premeditation, it was clearly (at) me,' the retired politician told the Daily Telegraph.

Former ALP MP Laurie Ferguson claims Khan ambushed him on stage during Eid celebrations - which mark the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca - last year

Mr Ferguson was spat on while on stage at Campbelltown's Islamic Al-Faisal College (pictured)

Details surrounding the life of accused terrorist started to emerge following his dramatic arrest (pictured) in Minto, a suburb in Sydney's south, on Saturday

Police allege Khan used a hunting knife to stab and slice off victim Wayne Greenhalgh's fingers (pictured) during an 'IS inspired' attack

'There were a number of people on stage and it was directed at me. He left his shoes on, which of course you're not supposed to do in a mosque.'

According to the Daily Telegraph, the incident was not considered a national security risk as he was not violent and his behaviour was not reported to Federal authorities.

But this was not the first time Khan's actions came under scrutiny.

His obscure behaviour dated back to his time as a student at Hurlstone Agricultural High School, in Sydney's south-west, where a teacher said he would often ramble to himself.

At 19, Khan told police he hated Australia for its involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars after he was arrested in 2013 for cutting down Australian flags in his neighbourhood - including one owned by a Vietnam war veteran, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

His obscure behaviour dated back to his time as a student at Hurlstone Agricultural High School (pictured) where a teacher said he would often ramble to himself

The larceny and malicious damage charges against Khan (pictured) were reportedly dropped under the Mental Health Act, on the condition he take psychiatric medication and attend doctors appointments to review his mental state

The larceny and malicious damage charges against him were reportedly dropped under the Mental Health Act, on the condition he take psychiatric medication and attend doctors appointments to review his mental state.

According to reports, he suffered with schizophrenia which worsened following the death of his mother last year and caused him to isolate himself from the local Muslim community at his mosque - Minto's Suburban Islamic Centre.

A man who attended the same place of worship told the Daily Telegraph Khan was 'depressed' and chose to live an 'isolated life', while another said he would often have visitors late at night.

Khan reportedly suffered with schizophrenia which worsened following the death of his mother last year and caused him to isolate himself from the local Muslim community at Minto's Suburban Islamic Centre (pictured)

Local heros (left) said they used a fence paling to fight Khan (right) off before police arrived on the scene

NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn said Mr Khan had no links with the terrorist group ISIS but had been inspired by the extremists.

'We will be alleging before court that this was an act inspired by ISIS, it was a deliberate act, it resulted in a person receiving extremely serious injuries,' Deputy Commissioner Burn said.

Deputy Commissioner Burn said he was seen allegedly acting erratically in the days leading up to the attack and had approached Mr Greenhalgh and his wife only the day before police claim he pulled a knife out and stabbed the 59-year-old.

His neighbours reportedly saw him pacing in white robes recently as he preached verses from the Quran, the ABC reported.

NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn (pictured) said Mr Khan had no links with the terrorist group ISIS but had been inspired by the extremists

Police also allege he tried to stab an arresting officer when he was detained on Saturday

Materials seen inside Mr Khan's vehicle after the attack on Saturday afternoon

'We know that this person has strong extremist beliefs inspired by ISIS, but what made him act yesterday we don't know.'

Khan chose not to appear in Parramatta Bail Court on Sunday and was charged with committing a terrorist act and attempted murder.
The grief-stricken families of unsolved homicide cases have been left reeling once again after police offered a record $1 million reward for the safe return of missing toddler William Tyrrell.

On Monday, authorities announced the highest reward ever offered in NSW for anyone who could lead police to the recovery of the three-year-old boy.

And despite an extensive investigation, detectives found no traces of little William suspected of being abducted from his grandmother's yard two years ago, prompting a staggering monetary reward for any information of his whereabouts.

However, the prized reward has sparked a debate among distraught families who are still searching for answers after their loved ones mysteriously disappeared.

Scroll down for video

Police offered a record $1 million reward for the safe return of missing toddler William Tyrrell

As questions swirl over the latest move, families are calling for reward uniformity for unsolved crimes as they push for NSW to follow through in the lead of other states offering large sums.

Victorian police have posted $1 million rewards from 2014 for every unsolved homicide case, with similar value on offer in South Australia.

But the parents of missing man Matthew Leveson have spoken of their heartbreak after their application to have their son's reward increased to $200,000 was rejected.

'It's like saying: "This person is worth more than this person", and that is how it appears to people and to us. In our case Matthew's life isn't worth as much...,' his mother Faye Leveson told Fairfax Media.

Mrs Leveson and her husband Mark have spent nearly a decade desperately trying to solve the mystery behind their son's disappearance after he was last seen leaving a Sydney nightclub in the early hours of September 23, 2007.

There is a current $100,000 reward offered for any information that could lead to the recovery of Mr Leveson's body.

The Sydney parents of missing man Matthew Leveson (pictured) have spoken out after their application to have their son's reward increase to $200,000 was rejected

Faye Leveson (left) and her husband Mark (right) have spent nearly a decade desperately trying to solve the mystery behind their son's disappearance

Mr Leveson tattooed his forearm to pay tribute to his missing son Matthew with the message: 'Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory that no one can steal'

More than 15 years ago, Kylie Spelde said she felt a glimmer of hope when police announced a $100,000 reward for her sister Janine Vaughan.

Ms Vaughan was 31 years old when she was last seen getting into a car in Bathurst after leaving a nightclub in the early hours of December 7 2001.

Ms Spelde said she felt disheartened when news broke about the reward on offer for little William as she questioned whether her sister's unsolved case was worthless.

'For a split second when I saw that I thought, "Wow, what makes him more important than my sister?", as we are sitting back waiting for answers as well,' she told Fairfax Media.

'If they are going to it for one, why not do it for all?'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Kylie Spelde and the Leveson family for comment.

Janine Vaughan (pictured) was 31 years old when she was last seen getting into a car in Bathurst after leaving a nightclub in the early hours of December 7 2001

William, who would have turned five this year, was last seen wearing his favourite Spiderman suit (pictured)

Deputy Premier Police Minister Troy Grant told Daily Mail Australia in a statement the 'reward was made on the advice of detectives in charge of the case'.

'For two years this family has had to live every day not knowing what has happened to their little boy, not knowing if he is safe and loved and not knowing if they will see him again,' Mr Grant said.

'At the very least, they deserve answers and I am appealing to the person or perhaps people who know what happened to William, to find it in themselves to do the right thing and come forward with the information police need to bring him home.

Mr Grant said the investigation into the disappearance of William is 'unprecedented and unique' - and was hopeful that the boy is still alive.

'Those detectives believe there is still a chance little William is alive and asked for the $1 million reward to help bring him home,' Mr Grant said.
A two-year-old girl who was found dead inside a home may have drowned in a bathtub, it has been claimed.

Police were called to the Miller home, in Sydney's south-west, about midday on Tuesday after a friend reported concerns for the young girl's welfare.

The friend was on the phone to police when she made the grim discovery at the housing commission home on Merino Street, 7 News reported.

A post mortem will need to be carried out to determine the cause of death, however she is believed to have drowned in a bath.

Police are investigating whether the girl had been dead for several days and whether she had been left home alone.

Scroll down for video

The body of a two-year-old girl has been found inside a home in Sydney's south-west

Forensic investigators were seen entering the property shortly after the girl's body was found

The girl's 36-year-old mother is believed to suffer from a mental illness and has been in hospital since she was involved in a car accident at the Blue Mountains on Sunday.

It's not clear whether medical staff was aware she had a child at home.

A concerned friend said she hadn't seen or heard from the mother or girl since the Sunday car accident.

Neighbour Pat Ingram said she hadn't seen the girl since last Wednesday and said a woman had earlier knocked on her door to check if Pat had seen the girl.

'Someone knocked on our door, asked if we had seen the little girl. She said she was concerned for the child's welfare. She asked if I had a ladder,' Ms Ingram told Daily Telegraph.

'I told her if she was really concerned, she should ring the police.'

Officers made the grim discovery upon entering the housing commission home (pictured) on Merino Street, but have not yet determined the cause of death

A NSW Police spokesperson said a crime scene has been established at the home and officers from Green Valley had started investigating the death

The specialist investigators wore full blue suits to ensure they did not compromise evidence inside the crime scene

Robyn Fransisco said the car accident followed a relationship breakdown with her boyfriend.

'A family friend (of the woman's) came over and told my parents she had a car accident up in the mountains,' Ms Fransisco said.

'She didn't seem like the kind of mother who'd leave her daughter alone.'

Police are now searching for the girl's father.

A NSW Police spokesperson said a crime scene has been established at the home and officers from Green Valley had started investigating the death.

A NSW Police spokesperson said a crime scene has been established at the home and officers from Green Valley had started investigating the death.

'A report will be prepared for the coroner and a post mortem will officially determine how the child died,' the spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

A child's trampoline can be seen in the backyard of the state-owned home, which is now cordoned off by police tape.

A child's trampoline can be seen in the backyard of the state-owned home, which is now cordoned off by police tape
Ex-Ohio Gov Ted Strickland put his foot firmly in his mouth Monday when he said Tim Kaine was ready to take Hillary Clinton's place, just a day after her famous collapse.

Strickland was introducing Kaine at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton when he made the gaffe - especially unfortunate at a time when questions are being raised about Clinton's health ahead of the election.

He told the crowd Kaine was 'a wonderfully prepared person to be Vice President, and to be the President if that ever became necessary,' The Columbus Dispatch reported.

Scroll down for video

Gaffe: Ted Strickland told an audience that Democratic VP pick Tim Kaine was 'a wonderfully prepared person to be Vice President, and to be the President if that ever became necessary'

'Chatty': Kaine (pictured at the event in Ohio Monday) told journalists afterward that Clinton was 'chatty and funny' on the phone that day, and full of energy on the campaign trail

His remarks came just 24 hours after Clinton collapsed during a 9/11 memorial event in New York, and her doctor revealed that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia.

But after a 35-minute talk at the school, Kaine told journalists that Clinton was in fine spirits when she talked to him on the phone that day - implying that he wouldn't need to fill presidential shoes any time soon.

'I was struck by how responsive she was to me, but also how chatty and funny she was,' the Virginia senator remarked.

'She has been on the campaign trail for 18 months. Her energy staggers me. I have a hard time keeping up,' he added.

Strickland, who is running for Senate, tried to do emergency repairs after his remarks.

'Secretary Clinton by all reports is a healthy person. A lot of people get pneumonia. Thats not something to be terribly concerned about,' he said.

'There have been efforts for a long time to imply that she is not healthy. I think that is part of her political enemies' attempt to conjure up a rumor that could hurt her politically.

'I dont think theres any evidence she has any serious, chronic health conditions that could make it difficult for her to serve as president.'
Chris Brodman, who survived the Pulse nightclub shooting has reportedly died three months later at a birthday party in Tampa, according to his friends

A man who survived the Pulse nightclub shooting has reportedly died three months later at a birthday party in Tampa, according to his friends.

Chris Brodman's friends told News 6 that Brodman died Sunday morning while visiting Tampa.

They have been posting tributes on social media since Sunday, saying that he passed away while attending a birthday party, News 6 reported.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said that it responded to a home around 1.50am Sunday after receiving reports about an unconscious man.

Authorities have not released any information about the man who died, pending notification of their family.

Brodman's boyfriend posted on Facebook: 'I still can't believe my baby is gone. I can't sleep I can't breathe I don't know how I'm going to go on without him.'

Orlando Torres, who also survived the mass shooting, told News 6 that he was first notified through Brodman's boyfriend that he had passed away.

'It was supposed to be a fun night. They were supposed to go out there and just, you know have a fun night out there in Tampa,' Torres told the station.

Brodman's boyfriend (right) posted on Facebook: 'I still can't believe my baby is gone. I can't sleep I can't breathe I don't know how I'm going to go on without him'

'His boyfriend posted on Facebook as well as my friend posted on Facebook that Chris Brodman had passed away.'

Torres said that Brodman was given a second chance at life, only to have his life cut short three months after the Pulse shooting.

'It's unfortunate this had to happen to someone that is just so sweet and nice and didn't deserve it, like anybody else,' said Torres.

Authorities told News 6 that the unidentified male's body did not show any signs of physical violence.

Nine days after the shooting, Brodman spoke to News 6 and said he barely escaped.

'Last call. We went out to the patio to have a cigarette, and we were out there when the shots started to be fired,' Brodman told the station.

Authorities said that the unidentified male's body did not show any signs of physical violence. Brodman is pictured with his boyfriend

Nine days after the shooting, Brodman spoke to News 6 and said he barely escaped the nightclub (pictured). 'I said, "Run. Just run, run, run." And we all just ran out the bar.' Brodman also got a Pulse tribute tattoo. The shooting was the worst mass shooting in US history

'I said, "Run. Just run, run, run." And we all just ran out the bar.'

Brodman also got a Pulse tribute tattoo.

His boyfriend is also collecting money to cover funeral expenses.

Police said the investigation is ongoing.

Brodman's death comes at a time when a mosque was set on fire.

Authorities in Florida say arson was the reason behind the fire at the lamic Center of Fort Pierce, which was attended by Omar Mateen, the gunman in the deadly Orlando nightclub shooting.

According to authorities, surveillance video captured a person approaching the east side of the building moments before a flash was seen and flames began shooting through the building.
Death on 17 July, 2014 set off protests over deaths of black men at hands of police with slogan 'I can't breathe' which Garner was heard saying

The New York cop who choked unarmed black man Eric Garner to death in 2014 earned a staggering $120,000 last year.

Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo was stripped of his badge and gun and placed on desk duty after putting asthmatic father-of-six Garner in a fatal choke hold and ignoring his repeated pleas that he could not breathe.

That year, Pantaleo's base pay was $76,488 while he actually made $105,061 with overtime - even though he was moved to 'modified duty' after Garner's death in July 2014.

Scroll down for video

Daniel Pantaleo (pictured last year) who choked unarmed black man Eric Garner to death in 2014 earned a staggering $120,000 last year

He has remained on desk duty since then yet in the fiscal year 201 - which ended in July - his base pay jumped to $78,026 while his eventual take home pay was $120,000.

Almost $13,000 of that came from 'unspecified pay' which can include bonuses.

A spokesman for the NYPD said it was not unusual for officers to be required to do overtime.

'At times officers are required to work beyond their scheduled tour of duty, this includes officers on modified assignment,' they said.

But Garner's family were outraged that Pantaleo, 31, was being paid so richly after choking a suspect to death in what should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest for selling cigarettes on the street.

Involvement: Officer Pantaleo, in green, was on plain clothes duty when he and other officers arrested Eric Garner. The 300lbs father of six resisted arrest and Pantaleo used a chokehold

Remembered: Eric Garner with family members. They say they are furious that the cop who killed Garner has received a pay increase after the tragedy

His daughter Erica Garner tweeted: 'This seems like movies. A bad one. No justice, no records, mayor tells me all lives matter. Pantaleo gets a bonus.'

The family have already been pushing for the city's police department to release Pantaleo's disciplinary records.

Famed human rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton said the pay rise was 'a n insult to New Yorkers in general, and particularly those of us who have stood by the Garner family.'

He added that he was concerned not only about the pay, but 'why is he even on the force?'

The NYPD has concluded its investigation into the actions of Pantaleo.

But Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says they will wait for a federal civil rights probe into the incident before proceeding with disciplinary charges which could include Pantaleo being fired.

The Brooklyn US Attorneys office have not yet announced when they expect the investigation to finish.

Pantaleo was stripped of his badge and gun and placed on desk duty after putting asthmatic father-of-six Garner in a fatal choke hold and ignoring his repeated pleas that he could not breathe

Pantaleo's lawyer declined to comment on the salary increase.

NYPD'S SALARY SCALE New officers in the NYPD receive a starting base salary of $41,975 a year although the salary totals $44,744 with the inclusion of holiday pay, uniform allowance and average night-shift differential. Police officers also receive overtime pay on top of their wage. After just six months, they receive an increase in total compensation to $46,288. Cops receive a steady growth in pay and within five years, a base salary is at $56,609 with a total salary of $69,005. During a cop's sixth year on the job, his base salary jumps from $56,609 to $76,488 per year with total compensation at $90,829. Base pay can continue to grow steadily during an officer's time with the NYPD. These payments exclude overtime and bonus payments. Advertisement

The cop was part of a group of five NYPD officers who stopped Garner, a 300 -pound father of six, for selling loose cigarettes in Staten Island on July 17, 2014.

The incident was filmed by a member of the public and shows Pantaleo, 31, holding Garner, 43, by the neck in a chokehold as he says: 'I can't breathe' 11 times before passing out and dying.

The New York City Medical Examiner ruled that Garner's death was a homicide but a jury in Staten Island decided not to indict Pantaleo.

The City of New York has settled the case with Garner's family for $5.9 million, but Pantaleo's fate remains in the balance.

He has been made a national pariah and even some of his neighbors do not want him around.



The Department of Justice Federal investigation is examining whether Garner's civil rights were breached and whether or not Pantaleo's conduct amount to a 'hate crime'.

Only after that is concluded will the NYPD investigation report back its findings.

Involvement: The Rev AL Sharpton, seen with (from left) Gwen Carr, Eric Garner's mother; Erica Garner, Eric Garner's daughter; Eric Garner jnr, Eric Garner's son; Emerald Garner, Eric Garner's daughter and Esaw Garner, Eric Garner's wife.

Their investigators will examine whether Pantaleo was guilty of using excessive force and if the choke hold he used was within the scope of his training.

Pantaleo could be suspended, fired or given a slap on the wrist - or be completely exonerated.

Garner's death sparked national protests and was one of the most high profile incidents where black men were killed by white cops in the past year which have put race relations in America under intense scrutiny.

When pressed on Pantaleo's pay increase, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio declined to comment, saying he did not know enough about how the police department dealt with those on desk duty to give a statement.

His spokesman later addressed a press conference on Monday saying the mayor had spoken to the police commissioner about the pay and 'this situation will be addressed.

Garner's death sparked national protests and was one of the most high profile incidents where black men were killed by white cops in the past year which have put race relations in America under intense scrutiny
The E. coli outbreak that forced a Seattle restaurant to close its doors has now been linked to more illness in three other states.

Health officials first encountered this particular strain of the bacteria, called O157:H7, when five people fell ill after eating at the Matador restaurant in August.

Three of the people were hospitalized  and one of them, a 16-year-old girl, developed a kidney injury called hemolytic uremic syndrome.

Now a disease with similar genetic traces have been detected in two other patients throughout Washington state  neither of whom seemed to have any connection with the Matador restaurant.

The E. coli outbreak that forced Seattle restaurant Matador (pictured) to close its doors has now been linked to more illness in three other states

Health officials say they have found three cases in three other states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of the 10 registered cases, only six appear to be related to the Matador restaurant.

Now health officials are searching for the source of the contamination.

'It's looking more like a potential source, a contaminated product,' epidemiologist Dr. Meagan Kay told the Seattle Times.

Zak Melang, who owns the Matador, said the widespread problem may mean the E. coli problem wasn't exclusive to his restaurant  but rather came from a Evendor.

Now health officials are searching for the source of the E. coli contamination, which has spread to three other states and 10 total people

'It's our reputation on the line,' he told the Times. 'The questions aren't stopping.'

Matador has been cited 10 times since 2010.
The fabricated social media posts 'wellness blogger' Belle Gibson used to trick her followers into believing she had terminal brain cancer have been used as evidence against her in court, as her refusal to appear attracts furore from the judge.

Annabelle Natalie Gibson failed to appear in Melbourne's Federal Court for the fourth time on Tuesday for a hearing with Consumer Affairs Victoria.

The consumer watchdog launched legal action against the disgraced author after she falsely claimed to use 'natural remedies' to cure terminal cancer during the marketing of her Whole Pantry app and book, which made the 24-year-old $578,005.

Consumer Affairs told the court the mother-of-one engaged in 'unconscionable conduct' by claiming she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2009 and given only four months to live before miraculously healed herself naturally after rejecting conventional treatments.

Scroll down for video

A judge has been urged to 'throw the book' at cancer faker Belle Gibson (pictured) as the Federal Court prepares to try her case despite her refusing to show up

The consumer watchdog launched legal action against the disgraced author after she falsely claimed to use 'natural remedies' to cure terminal cancer during the marketing of her Whole Pantry app and book, which made the 24-year-old $578,005

The watchdog also accuses her of engaging in misleading or deceptive commerce by making the unsubstantiated claims on social media to promote her Whole Pantry book and app.

Consumer Affairs' barrister, Catherine Button, noted Gibson publicly stated she had a stroke at work and was subsequently diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour in June 2009.

Gibson told her Facebook and Instagram followers she started receiving oral chemotherapy for her cancer before abandoning conventional medicine.

'I pulled myself out. My doctors freaked out but they couldn't stop me,' Ms Button quoted Gibson as saying.

Gibson then told her large social media following she started 'getting back to basics' and opted for healthy foods and natural therapies which healed her cancer, the court heard.

In July 2013 she posted on The Whole Pantry  Live Healthy Facebook account that she had been healing used only 'natural medicine, gerson therapy and foods' and shamed those who were trying to 'discredit' her healing path.

In July 2013 she posted on The Whole Pantry Facebook account that she had been healing used only 'natural medicine, gerson therapy and foods' and shamed those who were trying to 'discredit' her healing path

Consumer Affairs has alleged Gibson made false and misleading claims and engaged in unconscionable conduct

The 24-year-old admitted she falsely claimed she had terminal brain cancer and cured it with natural remedies - making $578,005 in the process

'It's working for me and I am grateful [sic] to be here sharing this journey with over 70,000 people worldwide,' she wrote.

She went on to claim she was being tested for 'two possible secondary cancers' and bragged that she had 'called it'.

'With an overwhelmed heart, I wanted to let you all know that I am currently being tested for two possible secondary cancers (which are neurological this time),' she posted to her Instagram account.

'Going from having six weeks to live, to celebrating my fourth year with brain cancer, I know now that respecting your own journey and intuitively healing, listening and living as YOUR body, mind and path intended is staple.'

'What surprises me is that anyone close to me, that saw the beginning of my experience with cancer, knew that I always knew this one was coming. I called it,' she wrote.

She went on to claim she was being tested for 'two possible secondary cancers' and bragged that she had 'called it'

'What surprises me is that anyone close to me, that saw the beginning of my experience with cancer, knew that I always knew this one was coming. I called it,' she wrote

The consumer watchdog has accused Gibson of 'unconscionable conduct' while she was promoting her Whole Pantry app and book

The disgraced wellness blogger's The Whole Pantry app, which includes recipes she said claimed healed her cancer, was downloaded more than 115,000 times at $2.99 a pop

BELLE GIBSON'S ILLNESS DOCUMENTED ON SOCIAL MEDIA Ms Gibson has deleted thousands of photos and social media posts which directly reference her multiple cancer diagnoses, but an example of them - seen by Daily Mail Australia - can be found below: Back in July 2013, Ms Gibson posted on The Whole Pantry Facebook page: 'It's unfortunate that there is someone on my Instagram trying to discredit the natural healing path I am on.' She went on to say: 'As always, with everything, this is my journey and I encourage you to do what is best for your body and situation with love and an open mind. 'I have been healing a severe and malignant brain cancer for the past few years with natural medicine, gerson therapy and foods. 'It's working for me and I am grateful to be here sharing this journey with over 70,000 people worldwide. Thank you for being here - xx Belle.' In a reference to her liver cancer, she posted on Instagram under her account @healing_belle, a photo of a pink smoothie enriched with 'extra support'. 'This one is for my rash (thanks, liver cancer), inflammation (thanks flying) and for general immunity.' In another Instagram post she wrote: 'Going from 6 weeks to live, to celebrating my fourth year with brain cancer, I know now that respecting your own journey and intuitively healing, listening and living as YOUR body, mind and path intended is staple.' In July 2014, she broke the news of further illness to her followers through an impassioned post to her personal Instagram page. It read in part: 'With frustration and ache in my heart // my beautiful, gamechanging community, it hurts me to find space tonight to let you all know with love and strength that I've been diagnosed with a third and fourth cancer. 'One is secondary and the other is primary. I have cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus, and liver. I am hurting,' Ms Gibson wrote. About 12 weeks after the initial post she followed up, revealing she was undergoing 'German integrative oncology protocol'. Advertisement

Gibson removed the posts once it was revealed her diagnosis and health empire was a sham.

'Her publisher went out and published her book on the basis of her claims,' Ms Button said on Tuesday.

Penguin paid Gibson's company almost $264,000 for her The Whole Pantry cookbook, according to court documents.

The book was released in October 2014 and withdrawn from sale five months later.

Her app was downloaded more than 115,000 times between between August 2013 and May 2016 at $2.99 a pop.

Ms Button said Gibson claimed she fell pregnant two weeks after being told she couldn't have children because of her cancer.

The barrister also read out excerpts from a transcript of a 60 Minutes interview with Gibson last year during which she admitted she'd never had cancer.

Gibson removed the posts once it was revealed her diagnosis and health empire was a sham

She also failed to honour a promise (pictured) to donate up to $300,000 to charities

Ms Button said Gibson claimed she fell pregnant with her son two weeks after being told she couldn't have children because of her cancer

The barrister also read out excerpts from a transcript of a 60 Minutes interview with Gibson last year during which she admitted she'd never had cancer (pictured)

Barrister Catherine Button told the court on Tuesday there was 'no reasonable bias' and 'no evidence' for Gibson (pictured) to believe she had terminal cancer

This comes as a judge was urged to 'throw the book' at Gibson by Cancer sufferer Ashley, who did not give her last name, as the court prepares to try her case despite her refusing to show up.

Consumer Affairs has alleged Gibson made false and misleading claims and engaged in unconscionable conduct

Gibson already failed to attend three court dates, most recently on July 10 when Justice Debbie Mortimer said there would be 'tough consequences', if she failed to appear.

'This thief needs to be brought to justice  I really hope she doesn't get off scot-free,' she told the Herald Sun.

'She needs to pay for her crimes. Pretending to have cancer and ripping all of those charities off and duping all of those people is disgusting.'

She also failed to honour a promise to donate up to $300,000 to charities.

Gibson failed to attend three court dates, most recently on July 10 when Justice Debbie Mortimer said there would be 'tough consequences', if she failed to appear.

Then when questioned on whether she thought she'd ever face charges, Gibson said: 'No, I don't think I will.'

In footage provided to the court, a Penguin Australia publisher asked if Gibson had a spokesperson who could confirm her extensive charity work, but she said none of them spoke English

Gibson's company Inkerman Road Nominees Pty Ltd (formerly known as Belle Gibson Pty Ltd) is in liquidation owing almost $140,000

Her company Inkerman Road Nominees Pty Ltd (formerly known as Belle Gibson Pty Ltd) is in liquidation owing almost $140,000.

Consumer Affairs Victoria said it would push ahead with the civil case in her absence, aiming to see her severely fined for duping thousands of followers.

Gibson could be fined up to $1.1 million and the watchdog also wants her to apologise with public notices in major newspapers.

Friends of Gibson have reportedly said she is 'hoping [the case] will all go away' if she ignores the court warnings.

The hearing before Justice Debra Mortimer continues.
A toddler has been killed after a fireplace toppled on top of him.

The two-year-old boy, named locally as Malaki Hughes, was crushed at his home in Saltney, Flintshire, close to the border between Wales and England.

North Wales Police and paramedics from both Wales and England were called at around 8.30am yesterday.

But police confirmed that despite the best efforts of medics at Countess of Chester Hospital, the boy later died.

Tragedy: A two-year-old boy, named locally as Malaki Hughes, pictured, was crushed at his home in Saltney, Flintshire, close to the border between Wales and England

Local residents in the small border town have now spoken of their complete devastation and shock at the freak accident.

Donna Smith, founder of charity To Lend A Helping Hand said Malaki's 'heartbreaking' death had brought the community together.

Fundraising: Councillor Shelly Streeter has set up a charity page to raise 1,000 for Malaki's family

Saltney resident Donna, 28, has organised a fundraising night in the toddler's memory with Saltney town councillor Shelly Streeter, who has set up a charity page to raise 1,000 for Malaki's family.

She said: 'This recent tragic event is just horrendous really, and heart-breaking.

'It is such a tragic accident and everyone wanted to help.

'We want to make sure the family is ok and help where we can.

'The whole community has decided to come together.

'Shelly and I have spoken and decided to join forces for the event  everybody just wants to help and this way everyone will be able to help and get involved to hopefully help the family.

'We want to get all the community together  as many people as we can  to raise as much money as possible to help the Hughes family because they are an integral part of our community  everybody knows them and they have suffered a horrible, horrible loss.

'The community really has come together  I have seen countless fundraising pages, and everybody on my Facebook feed is sharing their condolences, pictures and poems.'

Donna said a pre-planned To Lend A Helping Hand fundraiser, due to take place at the Saltney Tavern in Saltney at 6pm on November 12, will now also be in aid of Malaki's family.

Tragedy: A toddler has died in a house in Salisbury Avenue, Saltney, pictured, after being crushed by a falling fireplace

Cllr Shelly Streeter wrote on her fundraising page: 'We have all been devastated by the tragedy of little Malakai's [sic] death.

'This page has been set up to help the family through this very difficult time.

'All proceeds will go to the family.'

Yesterday, she tweeted: 'Terrible tragedy in saltney [sic] today, my heart goes out to the family xxx'.

Claire Taggert, 48, said: 'It is a terrible thing and our heart goes out to the family.

'I saw some commotion but had no idea that this had happened. It's absolutely awful.'

Ciaran Waterman, 18, said: 'It's so sad what's happened. The lad was so young.'

The heartbroken family is being supported by North Wales Police and relatives and the local coroner has been informed.

A Welsh Ambulance spokeswoman said: 'We were called at approximately 8.30am this morning to an address on Salisbury Avenue in Saltney.

'We sent a paramedic in a rapid response car and a BASICS doctor to the scene.

'North West Ambulance Service also sent a resource which later conveyed a child to the Countess of Chester Hospital.'

A North West Ambulance Service spokeswoman added: 'We were called to a private address at 8.31am this morning. We took one patient to the Countess of Chester Hospital.'

North Wales Police also confirmed they attended the address.

A spokesman said: 'North Wales Police were called to an address in Saltney at 8.37am to assist the ambulance service with a medical emergency.'

The town has a population of only 5,000 people and bizarrely the England/Welsh border actually runs through it so Higher Saltney - known locally as just Saltney - is in Chester, Cheshire, while the Welsh sector of the community is known as Saltney Town.

The border runs down the middle of Boundary Lane in Saltney, the only urban street in England and Wales where this happens.

Houses on the west side of the street are in the Flintshire County Council area and in the North Wales Police jurisdiction.

Yet those on the east side are in the Cheshire West and Chester unitary authority area and in the Cheshire Police jurisdiction.
A couple who say they would have aborted their daughter if they had known she had a severe brain defect are suing the medical professionals who allegedly failed to spot it.

Regan Hooker and Wayne Ball's daughter Aria, who is now two, was diagnosed with Aicardi Syndrome months after she was born.

The debilitating condition means Aria may never walk or talk and she also suffers from stunted growth.

Aria's parents, who are from New Zealand but live on the Gold Coast, say they would have terminated the pregnancy if they had known about the brain defect before she was born.

They are now suing sonographer Kim Andrew and radiologist Greg Duncombe, of Queensland Maternal Fetal Medicine in Southport, for $2.5million in damages.

Regan Hooker (pictured with Aria) and Wayne Ball are suing medical professionals who they claim failed to spot that their daughter had a debilitating brain defect

Regan Hooker and Wayne Ball's daughter Aria, who is now two, was diagnosed with Aicardi Syndrome months after she was born

Aria's condition means she may never walk or talk and she also suffers from stunted growth

Ms Hooker, 37, and Mr Ball, 41, say the two medical professionals should have spotted the defect and warned them about it during a 19-week ultrasound in September 2013.

Court documents filed in Brisbane by the parents also claim obstetrician Penelope Isherwood failed to warn them of the condition.

The parents also claim that none of them suggested Ms Ball have a repeat ultrasound after 22 weeks or a foetal MRI at 26 weeks.

They say that they would have aborted Aria if they had known she would be born with the disability, which also leaves her with impaired vision, hearing loss and developmental issues.

Aicardi Syndrome can be detected during pregnancy - as early as a 12-week scan - but Aria was not diagnosed with the condition until she was five months old, despite numerous tests after she was born.

Ms Andrews, Dr Duncombe, Dr Isherwood and Queensland Maternal Fetal Medicine are yet to file a response to the claim in court.

Aria's parents, who are from New Zealand but live on the Gold Coast, say they would have terminated the pregnancy if the brain defect before Aria was born

Aria's condition means she only has use of about 50 per cent of the nerve which connects both sides of her brain

Aria has a hearing impairment, scoliosis of the spine and a throat condition which leaves her 'sounding like an old man when she sleeps'

Because the couple are originally from New Zealand, Aria is also considered a Kiwi and therefore her parents are not entitled to help paying for the girl's treatment.

Mr Ball is an interstate truck driver, leaving Ms Hooker to spend most of her time caring for Aria.

However, she still has to work to help pay the bills - which are not helped by Aria's need for therapy.

'I would love to be able to stay at home and care for Aria but it's just not possible with so many therapies and treatments to pay for,' Ms Hooker wrote on a GoFundMe page.

Aria's condition means she only has use of about 50 per cent of the nerve which connects both sides of her brain.

It has left her with hearing impairment, scoliosis of the spine and a throat condition which leaves her 'sounding like an old man when she sleeps'.

While Aria suffers from a long list of ailments, doctors have told her parents that she was lucky to have escaped any seizures in the first year of her life

Mother and daughter: Mr Ball is an interstate truck driver, leaving Ms Hooker to spend most of her time caring for Aria

Aria's parents could move back to New Zealand for help paying for her treatment but believe living in Australia is better for her immune system

While Aria suffers from a long list of ailments, doctors have told her parents that she was lucky to have escaped any seizures in the first year of her life as most girls suffering from Aicardi can suffer from up to 30 a day.

Her parents could move back to New Zealand and receive financial help from the government there, but believe the good weather in Australia is helping the little girl's immune system.

'Aria has a really low immune system so she would be sick even more than what she is now,' Ms Hooker previously told Daily Mail Australia.

'Where we're from it's winter nine months of the year and on the Gold Coast it's only winter for a few months and shes been sick almost all year this year.
on the Nepean Highway on November 26, 2013

A convicted thief and drug addict has been sentenced to 11 years in prison after she fatally struck a father-of-two with her car as he rode home on his bicycle.

Stephanie Maher, 33, 'had not shown any remorse' over the death of Melbourne man Julian Paul, 54, whose back and neck were broken in the crash and killed him three weeks later.

Maher said she thought it was a stick, or a rock that shattered her windscreen as she was driving on the Nepean Highway on November 26, 2013.

Stephanie Maher, 33, (pictured) has been sentenced to 11 years in prison after she fatally struck a father-of-two with her car

Julian Paul, 54, was riding home on his bicycle when he was struck from behind. His back and neck were broken in the crash

The mother-of-one sobbed in the stand as her sentence was read out.

She must serve at least eight and a half years in jail before she is eligible for parole after a jury found her guilty of culpable driving causing death, failing to stop and failing to render assistance.

Despite the tears, Victorian County Court Judge David Parsons said there was no evidence she had accepted responsibility for the death of Mr Paul, and had not shown any remorse.

'You well knew you had hit a cyclist, you chose to leave the scene and hide your car in an effort to avoid responsibility for your actions,' Judge Parsons said.

'I reject your explanations as to what you did and after the collision as untruthful.'

Judge David Parsons said there was no evidence Maher had accepted responsibility for the death of Mr Paul. The scene of the crash on the Nepean Highway on November 26, 2013

Julian Paul with daughters Madeline and Erin, and wife Janine. He died from his injuries about three weeks after the crash when his life-support was turned off

Numerous witnesses said they saw Maher swerving and driving erratically on the south Melbourne highway.

One saw Mr Paul illuminated by Maher's car headlights before she bumped into the rear of his bike.

Mr Paul, an engineer, died about three weeks after the crash when his life-support was turned off.

The 33-year-old claims she is a good driver, and questioned why other motorists didn't call triple-zero, flash their lights or toot their horns at her.

'There was a persistent desire to shift responsibility,' Judge Parsons said.

'There is, it seems, a significant amount of self-pity ... but I see no real evidence of your accepting responsibility for the death of Mr Paul.'

Maher had been driving with her young son, now five, in the backseat, the Herald Sun reports.

'It's a tragedy for him that you alone must bear responsibility for,' Judge Parson said.

The 33-year-old claims she is a good driver, and questioned why other motorists didn't call triple-zero, flash their lights or toot their horns at her

Victorian County Court heard Maher had numerous prior offences, including assault, driving and theft and drug charges

'The extended term of prison you face will have a disastrous effect on him.'

He recounted Maher's significant criminal history, which includes assault, drug possession and theft offences.

After her nursing registration was suspended, she stole from a number of hospitals to support her drug habit.

On one occasion she took a syringe containing pain-relief medication from a patient recovering from surgery.

'In my opinion your behaviour towards Julian Paul displayed the same moral turpitude as when you committed this crime,' Judge Parsons said.

He described her prospects for rehabilitation as limited and said she was likely to re-offend.

Judge Parsons appeared to choke up as he recalled the emotional victim impact statement delivered by Mr Paul's wife, Janine, who said she felt like she had died, too.
Asylum seekers from war-torn nations including Syria and Iraq and registered as refugees have been heading back to the countries they fled on vacation, an investigation has found.

Migrants confirmed to a newspaper in Germany that they had traveled 'for a short time' back to their home countries, including Syria, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

The information was uncovered in an investigation by German media outlet Die Welt am Sonntag, which spoke to asylum seekers who confirmed they had visited their homeland on holiday.

A German media investigation has uncovered cases where registered asylum seekers are vacationing in the countries they fled

An unnamed spokesperson from the German Federal Employment Office (BA) told the newspaper: 'There are such cases.'

No official numbers are available, however.

Officials are now investigating how often refugees are vacationing in their homeland, having previously said they are fleeing persecution.

Rules in Germany state that asylum seekers who claim social benefits are entitled to leave the country for 21 days a year - but they are not obliged to report where they are traveling.

Officials in Germany are investigating the number of cases where asylum seekers are vacationing in the countries they have fled from

BA said: 'There is no legal ground to demand that information'.

And it said that if it is aware of a refugee visiting the states they left to claim asylum, it is not allowed to pass the information to other departments 'due to data privacy'.

In June, the German Migration and Refugees Office (BAMF) called for such cases to be reported, but said a 'medical case' in a refugee's family can be viewed as an exemption.

A BAMF statement quoted in the German newspaper said: 'In the case, however, when the journey is being conducted for leisure purposes, this may be an indication that the refugee fears no persecution.'

MP Armin Schuster has said the situation 'leaves one speechless'

In cases like this, the agency said, a migrant would be stripped of asylum status.

The newspaper states the situation has been witnessed in Berlin, but alleged that it is happening across the country.

German MP Armin Schuster, a member of the parliamentary committee for the interior, said: 'If true, that leaves one speechless.'

He said cases where asylum seekers return to their home country should be approved by the BAMF.

The revelations come as German chancellor Angela Merkel faces intense criticism over her open doors policy on migration.

Last week Horst Seehofer, leader of the CSU party in Bavaria, which rules in tandem with Merkel's own CDU party, voiced his alarm at the 'domestic political situation' and called for a U-turn.

German chancellor Angela Merkel is facing intense criticism over her open door policy on migration

It is understood that he wants her to limit migration numbers in the country in return for continued CSU support at the general election in the autumn of next year.

Speaking to Parliament on Wednesday, Merkel said that her government has sped up integration measures for migrants with good prospects of staying, increased school funding to help their education, and worked with cities and states to find solutions to local problems.
A five-year-old boy who was viciously attacked by a 'rabid' fruit bat has described the moment the creature 'flew in' and latched on to his leg.

Kobie Hollands was attacked by the bat in front of his father and uncle as they played at a skate park in Evans Head, northern NSW.

The pre-school aged child told the Sunshine Coast Daily he 'got bitten by a bat' and that his uncle tried to 'bash it with a skateboard' to stop the attack.

A young boy has spoken about the moment he was attacked by a rabid fruit bat (file image)

The bat was infected with the Lyssavirus which is closely related to the rabies virus.

When the little boy couldn't shake the bat off his leg his dad Jeff Hollands swooped in to help.

'I reefed it off and held it to the ground as a mate came and grabbed it as I had Kobie in the other hand,' Mr Hollands told the newspaper.

Kobie's uncle Isaac Roxburgh, spoke last month after the initial attack and described how the bat 'came from nowhere' before swooping the people at the park.

The bat swooped a young girl and a pregnant woman before it bit Kobie, the Northern Star reported.

'It latched onto the boy's calf immediately and just started gnawing at his leg,' Mr Roxburgh said.

'His dad acted quickly and grabbed the cap from his head and started pulling it off. It (the bat) was on really tightly. It took two adult males to pull it away.

The bat attacked the boy after swooping a pregnant woman and a young girl at the Evans Head skate park

Kobie, his dad and a family friend all had to be treated for the Lyssavirus  a vaccine had to be flown in from America because of the rarity of the virus here, according to Kobie's parents.

He was bitten on Thursday and the vaccine was at the local hospital by Friday evening.

'Poor Kobie had to have adult-sized needles,' his parents said. The little boy had to have five of the needles in total.

He is physically healthy now but still ducks when he sees birds flying overhead. The family haven't been back to the skate park yet but say they will.
Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that Hillary Clinton's broadening classified email scandal is 'a far bigger scandal than Watergate,' as a trio of witnesses in the case cited their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to talk to Congress about it.

'Hillary Clinton made 13 phones disappear, including with a hammer, so the FBI couldn't see them,' Trump told an audience of supporters in Clive, Iowa. 'She "bleached" her emails after a Congressional subpoena  that's after the subpoena  came!'

'Now the people who destroyed the emails are all pleading the Fifth Amendment in front of Congress today,' Trump fumed.

'Have you seen what's going on in front of Congress? Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment. Horrible. Horrible. And will anything happen? That's going to be the question. We'll find out.'

Three witnesses who refused to testify Tuesday before a House committee investigating Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server Tuesday.

All three asserted their constitutional rights against self-incrimination. One of them, Bryan Pagliano, who oversaw the infamous server, did not appear. Two others refused to answer questions.

Witnesses, from left, Paul Combetta, Platte River Networks, Bill Thornton, Platte River Networks, and Justin Cooper are sworn in on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Bryan Pagliano, who ran Hillary Clinton's server, didn't appear

Pagliano, the former State Department computer specialist tasked with setting up Clinton's server, did not attend the Republican-led hearing, titled, 'Examining Preservation of State Department Records.'

His attorneys said in a letter to the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Pagliano will continue to assert his constitutional right not to testify.

Pagliano spoke previously to the FBI under immunity, telling the bureau there were no successful security breaches of the server. But he said he was aware of many failed login attempts that he described as 'brute force attacks.'

Pagliano also refused to answer questions last year before a House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

'He has never made any statement or taken any action that would constitute a waiver of his constitutional rights and there is no reason for anyone to believe he might suddenly depart from that position,' Pagliano's lawyers wrote in the Sept. 13 letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the Oversight committee chairman.

Chaffetz said there will be consequences for Pagliano's refusal to appear and for 'thumbing his nose at Congress.' He didn't specify what the penalties would be.

The email issue has shadowed Clinton's candidacy for president, and Republicans have been steadfast in focusing on her use of a private server for government business, with several high-profile hearings leading up to the election. Congressional Republicans have cast Clinton as reckless with U.S. national security by insisting on using private communications systems at potentially greater risk of being penetrated by Chinese and Russian hackers.

The name plate for witness Bryan Pagliano, former State Department information advisor. He did not appear at Tuesday's hearing

Paul Combetta, Platte River Networks, asserts his 5th amendment right while testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington Tuesday

Bryan Pagliano, center, a former State Department employee who helped set up and maintain a private email server used by Hillary Rodham Clinton, departs Capitol Hill in 2015. He didn't appear at a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing Tuesday

Brian Pagliano helped set up and operate a private server in Clinton's home

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz lauded former Bill Clinton aide Justin Cooper for testifying. Bryan Pagliano, who spoke to the FBI, refused to testify by invoking his Fifth Amendment rights

But Democrats insist the sole purpose of the hearings is to undermine Clinton's presidential bid.

'I believe this committee is abusing taxpayer dollars and the authority of Congress in an astonishing onslaught of political attacks to damage Secretary Clinton's campaign for president,' said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee's top Democrat.

FBI Director James Comey last week defended the decision to forgo criminal charges against Clinton after a yearlong probe into whether she mishandled classified information that flowed through the private email system located in her Chappaqua, New York, home. Comey told bureau employees in an internal memo that it wasn't a close call.

Two officials from Denver-based Platte River Networks appeared before the committee but invoked their constitutional right not to testify. Bill Thornton and Paul Combetta were excused from the session.

Hillary Clinton pauses while speaking at a rally in Charlotte, N.C.

In June 2013, after Clinton had left office, the server was moved from her home to a data center in northern New Jersey, where it was maintained by the Platte River Networks.

Congressional Republicans last month issued subpoenas to Platte River Networks and two other companies  Datto Inc. and SECNAP Network Security Corp.  after they declined to voluntarily answer questions to determine whether Clinton's private server met government standards for record-keeping and security.

One witness, Justin Cooper, a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton, was the lone witness and answered the committee's questions for nearly two hours. His attorney, Howard Shapiro, sat behind him.

Chaffetz described Cooper as a former employee of President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. He said Cooper purchased the first server used by Hillary Clinton. Cooper also registered the email domain 'clintonemail.com' in 2009, when Clinton's nomination to be secretary of state was being considered by the Senate.

Cooper also told the FBI that he helped Hillary Clinton set up her mobile devices, according to Chaffetz, and 'when she was finished with them he would break them in half or destroy them with a hammer.' Cooper told the committee that he thought that 'was good practice at the time.'

Cooper, who now runs his own consulting firm, told the committee that he did not have a security clearance during the period he performed the IT work for Hillary Clinton. He also said he wasn't an expert in communications security. He told lawmakers that he couldn't say whether any secret information had been purloined by foreign hackers or that U.S. national security had been compromised.
A drunken passenger who forced a US-bound British Airways flight to be diverted after he downed 12 miniature bottles of wine has refused to apologise after arriving back into the UK.

David Marchetti, 24, from Glasgow, tried to sneak back into London Heathrow without attracting any media attention after spending four days in custody in Boston, U.S.

He was detained on the Florida-bound BA2039 flight last week after the plane was forced to divert to Boston airport after he tried to get off the plane in mid-air.

Last night, instead of offering an apology to passengers or crew on board the disrupted flight whose journey he ruined, he got off his flight at Heathrow and went straight outside for a cigarette.

David Marchetti, 24, from Glasgow, tried to sneak back into London Heathrow (pictured) without attracting any media attention after spending four days in custody in Boston, U.S.

The 24-year-old Scotsman was detained on the Florida-bound BA2039 flight last week after the plane was forced to divert to Boston airport after he tried to get off the plane in mid-air

He was pictured dragging his suitcase through the airport while dressed in grey tracksuit bottoms, a hoody and trainers.

Marchetti was held in custody in Boston for four days after being escorted off the plane by U.S. officials.

According to the Daily Record, he had downed 12 miniature bottles of wine after the plane took off from Gatwick last Thursday evening.

Eyewitnesses said he began to wander around the Boeing 777 before asking cabin crew if he could get off the plane. One passenger said he watched the Scot drink steadily for several hours.

He said: 'I was sitting three seats from him and he drank 12 to 14 small bottles of wine and one vodka  all given to him by cabin crew in the first three-and-a-half hours of the flight.

'While the gentleman was totally out of order and a danger to staff and customers around him, BA should shoulder most of the blame.'

Air stewards had to keep him seated and the pilot even went down to speak to him, before deciding to divert the Florida-bound flight to Boston, Massachusetts.

The pilot described his behaviour as 'highly unpredictable'.

Police were waiting for Marchetti when the Boeing 777 landed in Boston.

David Marchetti, 24, from Glasgow, was detained by U.S. officers for interfering with a flight crew after a disturbance on a Florida-bound British Airways flight that departed London Gatwick last night. Pictured: A U.S. officer is seen on the plane after it landed in Boston

Eyewitness Mark Christie took to Facebook to claim the man had been drinking on the plane

Passenger Mark Christie, 30, from Aberdeen, told MailOnline: 'The drunk guy got on the flight and became increasingly more drunk.

'Then he started wandering around and asking if he could get off. I think that was the worry.

'Eventually he needed to be baby-sat by two cabin crew at a time.

'Then the pilot came through to try and calm him down. And he obviously decided it was better to land in Boston.

'Folk were kind of annoyed by the end of it, but more so because of the delay.

'The cabin crew were amazing and so patient.'

He later added on Facebook: 'Slight detour on the way to Orlando. Apparently BA are pretty strict about heavy drinking on their flights. Boston looks lovely from the runway though.'

British garage band Gorgon City were also on the plane when the drama unfolded, as they tried to make their way to Orlando for a gig.

They wrote on Twitter: 'Some drunk t*** assaulted staff on @BritishAirways flight and now in Boston instead of Orlando. Be there soon tho (sic)!'

They later added: 'Quick stop in Boston so someone on the plane can get arrested, now we fly to Orlando to play tonight.'

British garage band Gorgon City were also on the plane when the drama unfolded on Thursday

Air stewards had to keep the man seated and the pilot even went down to speak to him, before deciding to divert the Florida-bound BA2039 flight to Boston, Massachusetts (file picture)

Marchetti was detained at around 4.45pm local time (9.45pm BST), half an hour after the passenger plane made the unscheduled landing at Logan International Airport.

He spent four days in the custody of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service before being put on a plane back to the UK on Sunday evening.

British Airways were forced to fly him home as he had been denied access to the UK while still a customer of theirs.

Marchetti will now have to fly back to the country for a later court appearance.

A U.S. customs spokesman said: 'The Massachusetts State Police have issued a summons to the subject for interfering with a flight crew.

'The summons requires him to return to Massachusetts for a court appearance..'

British Airways confirmed the flight was diverted due to an 'unruly' passenger.

A spokesman added: 'Our customers and crews deserve to enjoy their flights, and not to suffer any form of abuse.

'Disruptive behaviour will not be tolerated, and the appropriate action will always be taken.
Barack Obama hit the campaign trail in support of Hillary Clinton, picking up the slack after she was diagnosed with pneumonia - and hitting Donald Trump for praising Vladimir Putin.

The current U.S. President came out once again Tuesday to support the woman seeking to succeed him.

He spoke up for her at a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - a key battleground for the Democratic hopeful.

Scroll down for video

Obama said on Tuesday that he 'really, really, really wants to elect Hillary Clinton'

The President was welcomed by a crowd of Democrats outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art - the steps of which became famous in the Rocky Balboa films

Obama smiled and waved to the large crowd during the campaign event

'Can I just say I am really into electing Hillary Clinton?' Obama told the crowd.

'This is not me just going through the motions here. I really, really, really want to elect Hillary Clinton.'

He seized on Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Obama cast as an authoritarian strongman who controls the media and crushes dissent.

'I have to do business with Putin, I have to do business with Russia, thats part of foreign policy, but I dont go around saying, "Thats my role model."

'Can you imagine Ronald Reagan idolizing somebody like that?' Obama said, invoking the Republican talisman.

The President's speech comes at a crucial time for Clinton, who is resting after being diagnosed with pneumonia and faces leaving a vacuum behind her on the campaign trail.

It is the third time that Obama has endorsed the former secretary of state, including his speech at the Democratic National Convention.

'Hillary Clinton is steady and she is true,' Obama told the crowd outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art - the steps of which became famous in the Rocky Balboa films.

'I need you to work as hard for Hillary as you did for me,' he said.

Obama, who remains broadly popular among the Democratic base, is viewed as a key asset in pushing die-hard Democrats to the polls.

Clinton has been losing ground in the polls to Donald Trump. A Tuesday poll by NBC News / Survey Monkey found Clinton at 48 per cent, while Trump rose to 44, two points higher than the previous week.

As well as the pneumonia itself, Clinton has also faced a furor surrounding the way her campaign concealed the diagnosis.

Her aides only revealed she was ill after she almost collapsed at a 9/11 memorial service on Sunday - two days after she was originally diagnosed.

Despite Obama's support, his day job has kept him from being a fixture on Clinton's campaign trail.

The President recently returned from 10 days abroad in Asia and will attend a United Nations meeting next week, leaving him just six weeks of full-throttle campaigning for Clinton.

Clinton was forced to leave a 9/11 memorial ceremony on Sunday and headed to her daughter Chelsea's New York apartment. She later emerged all smiles - but hours later her aides finally admitted she had pneumonia

Obama, who remains broadly popular among the Democratic base, told the crowd, 'I need you to work as hard for Hillary as you did for me,'

The President was surrounded by a sea of people taking photos as he took time out of his hectic schedule to support Clinton

He also made the case for his own presidency as he seeks to secure his legacy

Trump's campaign pounced on his appearance with a statement suggesting he was shirking his duties.

'Shouldn't you be at work?' the statement read.

'President Obama would rather campaign for Hillary Clinton than solve major problems facing the country.'

At the rally, Obama also made the case for his own presidency as he seeks to secure his legacy.

He claimed successes on diplomacy, health care, winding down the war in Afghanistan and a reviving economy, which showed new strength Tuesday in a Census report documenting a jump in household incomes in 2015.

'Republicans don't like to hear good news right now but it's important to understand this is a big deal,' Obama said of the new report, later joking: 'Thanks, Obama.'

As well as the way she handled the revelation that she has pneumonia, Clinton has also come under fire for mocking Trump supporters as 'deplorables'.

'To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,' Clinton said on Friday.

'Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.'

But White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama doesn't feel like he needs to help Clinton with damage control.

'I think the president's belief that she'd be an excellent president of the United States is something that you've heard him say many times.

'And I can tell you there's nothing that happened yesterday that has changed that assessment at all,' Earnest said.

After the speech, Obama was due to address donors at a fundraiser for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

About 25 attendees, who contributed $33,400 each, are expected to attend, while he event hosts gave $100,000.

He will then fly to New York City for a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser.
A lot of companies use team-building activities to enhance relationships between co-workers, however one company believed to be in Vietnam seems to have gone one step too far.

Male staff at the unnamed company were told to eat grapes which were hung around the breasts of their female co-workers as quickly as possible, as a video suggested.

The clip, uploaded to Chinese social media, claimed that the activity was aimed to 'improve the friendship between colleagues'.

Is this really team building? The female employees had grapes tied around their necks

Bizarre: The male employees were made to eat the grapes without using their hands

A strange game: The event was allegedly part of a team building exercise

The video was posted to Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter, on September 13 by a user named 'Black Video'.

In the footage, the a few women can be seen wearing grapes around their necks which then hang on their breasts.

The male employees were then given the challenge of eating the grapes without using their hands and just their mouths.

Other employees can be seen watching the event and laughing.

It appears that whoever finished the grapes first would win the competition.

At last, a man wearing a striped shirt became the first one to wolf down all the fruit tied in front of his female partner. The woman can be seen jumping with joy upon their victory.

Confused onlookers: In the video people can be seen crowding around the group

Is this a good idea? The grapes were tied so that they hung right on the woman's breasts

Fun and games! A woman laughs as a male employee tries to eat the grapes without his hands

This isn't the first strange team building exercise like this in China.

In August, a video emerged of female employees being ordered to hold a pen in their mouths before passing it on to their male boss.

Many internet users were outraged by the footage.

Having a snack: This isn't the first time team building exercises such as these have happened

Fruits: A woman has the grapes tied around her chest as the employee makes his attempt
German authorities have opened an office in London as they try to poach British tech firms after Brexit.

City chiefs from Berlin yesterday unveiled a new base in Camden, not far from London's 'Silicon Roundabout', which is home to hundreds of tech firms.

The move is part of a huge effort by European cities to draw start-up firms out of London and onto the Continent in the wake of the British vote on the EU.

The office near Camden Lock was opened by Berlin senator Cornelia Yzer, who has been bullish about Berlin's prospects since the referendum result in June.

Berlin senator Cornelia Yzer opened an office in Camden, north London yesterday

Ms Yzer has been trying to tempt British firms to Berlin since the EU referendum result

She told BBC News: 'It's a pragmatic approach to say those companies who want to relocate or who want to open offices in continental Europe should have a look at the partner city of London and that's Berlin.'

It comes after Germany's FDP party send a much-mocked van around the capital in July with the message: 'Dear start-ups, keep calm and move to Berlin'.

German business development group Berlin Partner has also launched a website in English as part of the push and will open a so-called 'pop-up lab' in London in October to try to woo more companies.

Its director Stefan Franzke previously said he had inquiries from British-based firms in the weeks after the referendum result as they look to head to Europe.

It comes after a German political party sent this van around London in the weeks after the vote

The new office for Berlin authorities is close to the so-called 'Silicon Roundabout' in Old Street

Speaking in July, Mr Franzke said: 'The most concrete inquiries are coming from London fintechs. They are considering a move to Berlin so as not to lose access to the European single market.'

London is fighting back however, with recently-elected mayor Sadiq Khan launching a campaign called 'London is open', designed to boast about the city's merits.

Launching the campaign, he said: 'London is the best city in the world. It is creative, international, entrepreneurial and full of opportunities. We now need to make sure that people across London, and the globe, hear that London is open.'

London firms have also pointed out that regulations and bureaucracy in Berlin mean it is still a less attractive prospect for start-ups than the British capital.
Family members say they have not been in contact with 13 Arakanese from Haigyi Island in Ayeyarwady Region for more than a month, after they were...
Was also entitled 20,000 pay-off when quitting as Prime Minister

Speculation he will follow example of Blair, who made 100m since 2007

David Cameron started his new life outside the House of Commons today by taking his daughter to school.

The former prime minister can look forward to a lucrative career after politics, with a big money memoir deal in the offing and potential business contracts.

His predecessor Tony Blair is reputed to have made an estimated 100million since leaving Downing Street in 2007.

Ex-MP: David Cameron pictured taking his daughter to school in London this morning after announcing his resignation from the Commons

The former Labour PM struck a 4.6million deal for his book, but donated the advance and all royalties to the Royal British Legion.

Friends say Mr Cameron will quickly join the elite speaking circuit where Mr Blair made up to 250,000 a time giving talks.

At 49, Mr Cameron is five years younger than Mr Blair was when he quit as an MP.

He has now given up his backbencher's salary of just under 75,000.

But like all former Prime Ministers, Mr Cameron will get a 'Public Duty Cost Allowance' of up to 115,000 from the taxpayer to fund his office.

Another 11,000 can be claimed to pay pensions for his employees. And the bill for round-the-clock security for the Cameron family will also be met from the public purse.

When he quit as premier, Mr Cameron was entitled to around 20,000 in severance pay - although it is not known whether he claimed the cash.

Mr Cameron will have to wait until he turns 65 to get the still-generous income of around 20,000.

He will also be entitled to an MP's pension - still a gold-plated final salary settlement of around 26,000 a year that most workers can only dream of.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Ian Hudspeth could be in the running to succeed Mr Cameron in his safe Commons seat.

The Oxfordshire county council leader was embroiled in a row with Mr Cameron last year when the then-premier accused him in a letter of making 'unwelcome and counterproductive' cuts to local services.

In a stinging reply, Mr Hudspeth retorted that Mr Cameron had made inaccurate claims about the cuts and pointed to the significant falls in funding from central government.

Mr Hudspeth will face a strong field of competition if he does throw his hat into the ring. Mr Cameron had a 25,000 majority in Witney and has provided a base for big-hitting politicians including Douglas Hurd over the years.

Mr Cameron is still accompanied by armed police officers as he goes about his daily business

Final farewell: David Cameron leaving Downing Street with his wife Samantha and children Alwin, Nancy and Florence, after he resigned as Prime Minister in June

But the lure of earning millions, it seems, has proved a stronger draw. Mr Cameron is likely to take it slowly, having witnessed the public criticism directed at Mr Blair.

Smooth talker: Tony Blair is believed to have made 100million since he left office in 2007, earning up to 250,000 a time giving talks

But his wide network of contacts, experience on the world stage and relative youth mean he will surely not hold back for long. One of his former ministers told the Mail last night: Of course he will get rich  or richer, as he is already independently wealthy. Hell write his memoirs, and this will put his currency up.

He can make a fortune on the speaking circuit, especially in America where they are puzzled by Brexit and will warm to him, as he is very personable. He will also probably collect a handful of directorships worth 50,000 to 100,000 each, and he could start building up a property portfolio like the Blairs.

The Blairs own 38 homes worth around 32million, with Cherie Blair and eldest son Euan presiding over an ever-expanding buy-to-let empire.

Mr Camerons friends insisted he would not follow Mr Blairs lead. One said: Dont expect to see him popping up on the board at Morgan Stanley.

Another said last night: He is going to stay away from the banks  but hes also going to have a life. Hell set out his plans soon enough.

FROM ELECTION HERO TO OBLIVION IN JUST 16 MONTHS May 7, 2015: Cameron becomes the first Tory leader since 1992 to win a Commons majority. May 27: The centrepiece of the Queens Speech is legislation to hold the historic referendum on EU membership. July 8: Camerons government pulls off a political coup after George Osborne announces plans for a national living wage. Sept 13: His political future seems assured after Labour elects Jeremy Corbyn as leader and its poll ratings start to fall. Sept 26: Cameron faces embarrassing allegations in a political biography that he once inserted a part of his anatomy into a dead pig. Nov 10: Cameron fires the starting gun on renegotiation with Brussels. Feb 19: Cameron gets an EU renegotiation deal  but it is derided by critics. Feb 20: He sets the date of the referendum: June 23 Feb 21: London mayor Boris Johnson announces that he will join Michael Gove in backing Leave. London mayor Boris Johnson announces that he will join Michael Gove in backing Leave. Mar 19: Iain Duncan Smith, then work and pensions secretary, quits over benefit cuts and attacks Osborne. April 7: Following days of evasion after his father was named in the Panama Papers, Cameron admits he profited from an offshore trust he set up. April 11: He is accused of an affront to democracy after an official government document, costing 9.3million, was sent to every household outlining the case for Remain. April 15: Official campaign begins with Johnson touring the country in a red bus whose slogan promises to spend EU money on the NHS. May 5: A boost for Cameron after Labour has a disastrous night in local elections. May 13: He is accused by Eurosceptics of being frit for ducking a TV debate with Johnson. June 19: A BBC audience mocks Cameron over his failure to curb immigration from the EU. June 23: EU vote results in a shock defeat for Remain. June 24: Cameron resigns, saying: The will of the British people is an instruction that must be delivered. June 30: Johnson steps down from the leadership contest after being stabbed in the back by Gove. July 13: Theresa May enters Downing Street and sacks Osborne. Johnson becomes new Foreign Secretary. Aug 4: Camerons widely-criticised honours list is published, handing out peerages, knighthoods and CBEs to donors and ex-staff. Sep 9: In a major speech, Mrs May signals a return to school selection in England  a decade after Cameron said the Tories would not support such a move. Sep 12: He resigns as MP for Witney in Oxfordshire sparking a by-election. Advertisement

After reneging on his pledge to serve his constituents yesterday, Mr Cameron is now freed from the burden of having to declare his earnings and donations.

His recent declarations to the Commons register of members interests include a 500 hamper from Fortnum & Mason and fitness sessions with a personal trainer.

The Camerons are currently staying in a 4million house in Chelsea belonging to financier and old friend Dominic Johnson, a freebie worth 2,650 a week. They plan to stay until the end of October, when the tenants at their family home in Notting Hill move out.

They have been pocketing up to 7,000 a month from the lodgers, but are keen to regain the 2million Edwardian four-bedroom home. It has great sentimental value to them, because it was where they were living with their eldest son Ivan, who died suddenly in 2009 aged six.

The family also own a 1.3million stone cottage in Oxfordshire, near Chipping Norton.

Mr Camerons predecessor, Gordon Brown, has taken unpaid roles at the World Economic Forum and as a UN special envoy on global education, plus a paid role that helps fund his charitable foundation.

SamCam plans a lucrative career in fashion after Dave's shock exit from politics

Style icon: SamCam could set up her own fashion label after she was named the world's best-dressed woman

Ever the stylish first lady of British politics, Samantha Cameron is now expected to launch a lucrative career as a fashion designer.

As well as her own label, SamCam could also return as an adviser to the luxury stationers Smythson.

With Mr Camerons political life over, she can devote herself to rekindling her well-paid retail career.

She is said to be planning a clothing line with former aide and stylist Isabel Spearman, who received an OBE in Mr Camerons resignation honours list.

There is also talk of her resuming her career with Smythson, where she worked her way up to become the firms creative director and build a 2.7 per cent stake in the firm before the couple entered Downing Street.

When it was bought out for 15.8million in 2005, she received 437,000 for her shares, and received a second payout in 2009, estimated to be 40,000.

Her salary as creative director was said to be 400,000 in 2010, but when her husband became PM that year, she opted to go part time as creative consultant on a reported 100,000 a year.

Smythsons own tax arrangements have come under scrutiny, with the Mail revealing it was owned by Greenwill SA, a secretive Luxembourg firm that was itself was controlled by the Barracuda Trust in Guernsey.

SamCam, 45, is a Marlborough College schoolfriend of Mr Camerons sister Clare, and she met the man who would become her husband at a party at the Camerons house when she was 16.

If anything, as the elder daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield she may be wealthier than her husband. Mr Cameron once joked: Samantha owns a field in Scunthorpe.

But in fact her father owns property and land estimated at more than 20million, has more than 3,000 acres of arable land, the Grade I-listed stately home Sutton Park, an 18th-century Georgian house north of York, a home in London and a hall near Scunthorpe.

Mrs Camerons career took a back seat while her husband pursued his political dreams, but friends say she has been itching to get back to work, especially now that their youngest daughter, Florence, six, is of school age.

SamCam was named the best-dressed woman in the world by Vanity Fair magazine last year. Her first collection could be out as early as next year.

Her husbands decision to quit politics also means the family will no longer feel the need to justify expensive holidays. This summer, they have holidayed in Ibiza, Portugal, Polzeath in Cornwall and the Scottish island of Jura.
A man who has been convicted five times of masturbating in public as he watched women walk by has lost his battle to be removed from the sex offenders' registry.

Raymond William Blyss's lawyer argued on Monday the Victoria Magistrate's Court shouldn't have placed him on the register because touching himself in public does not harm others, according to The Age.

But Supreme Court Judge Rita Zammit disagreed, telling Mr Blyss that people could be 'psychologically distressed' by seeing a stranger masturbate against their will.

Raymond Blyss, who has been convicted five times of masturbating in public, told the Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday he shouldn't be on the sex offender registry because he's not hurting anyone (stock image)

'Masturbating is a sexual act, and engaging in it in public harms the sexual safety of the community, at the very least,' she said.

Over the past 28 years, Blyss has been convicted of five obscene exposure offences in several small north Victoria towns, including Shepparton and Benalla.

He participated in a sex offenders' program in 2006 but was arrested in April 2011 for staring women in the eye as he masturbated in the front seat of his car with his window down, allowing anyone to easily see him.

Another woman reported him masturbating outside again the following month and in July of that year he pleaded guilty to willfull and obscene exposure, after which he was placed on the register.
A young couple ran up a 147 bill feasting on steak, fine wine and spirits before jumping over a hedge and into the night in a brazen dine-and-dash scam.

Police are hunting for the thieves after they left without paying at the Unruly Pig, in Bromeswell, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, last Friday night.

The suspects, both in their twenties, enjoyed a cold meat platter, chilled soup, T-bone and rump steak and chocolate pudding as well two bottles of Italian white wine, four liqueurs, three cognacs and sparkling water.

Brazen: This is the moment a couple who gorged on steaks, chocolate pudding, wine and spirits jumped a hedge and ran for it

Suspects: Police are hunting for this couple who the owners claim fled without paying - shown here studying the menu

Message: The pub later tweeted that the suspects had been caught on camera and the CCTV was in the hands of the police

But when it came to pay the pair still managed to jump over a hedge and ran away clutching an unfinished bottle of wine.

Bill: The couple had the best the pub had to offer its diners - but fled when it came to paying up

A Suffolk Police spokesman said: 'Police are investigating an incident that took place at a licensed premises in Bromeswell.

'During the evening two people ordered food and drink to the value of approximately 145 and left the premises without making any attempt to pay.

'Following inquires, including reviewing CCTV evidence, Suffolk Police have identified two suspects in relation to this incident and are currently conducting inquiries to locate them.'

The award-winning pub is already at the centre of a different manhunt after six suspected illegal immigrants were seen in its car park after being smuggled into Britain aboard a private yacht.

The pub's CCTV showed four men and two women jumping out of a black range Rover and running for cover in nearby woods on Saturday night.

Pub owner Brendan Padfield said it was the first time they'd been targeted by a dine-and-dash since opening in April last year.

Mr Padfield said the suspects arrived on foot at about 6.15pm and requested a table outside.

They ran off into the pitch black with a bottle of wine three hours later after chalking up a bill of 147.85.

Arrival: The couple are shown here walking through the pub's main bar before their mammoth meal

Choice: They then picked a table closest to the road - obviously so they could make a quick getaway

Scam: Clutching a half-drunk bottle of wine, the pair jumped over a wall and ran for it

Mr Padfield said: 'They were a relatively young couple.

'They walked here from the Wilford Bridge [Melton] direction - across a verge, to appear as if they had come from the car park.

'When they left, they went off in the other direction, towards Rendlesham.

'They wanted to eat outside - and they ate rather eagerly. Uniquely, they stayed outside as others came inside when it became a bit parky.'

Mr Padfield quickly took to Twitter to warn them that they had been nailed on CCTV and the footage had already been handed to police.

He said: 'Their intention was clear. To leave normally, they would have needed to pass the entrance.

'But they hopped over the fence and ran off with a bottle of unfinished wine.

'It seems very improbable that they forgot to pay.'

Suffolk Police said they are investigating the incident and asked anybody with information to call officers on 101, quoting reference 37/54999/16.

The shocking incident came as the Unruly Pig was hailed by the Good Food Guide for the second successive year, with the highest rating in Ipswich, Aldeburgh and Woodbridge.

It also won a Pub & Bar Award for 'Best Suffolk Pub 2016' and a nomination as one of six national finalists in two categories at the Great British Pub Awards - 'Best Food' and 'Best Newcomer'.

Hitting out: Owner Brendan Padfield, left, with manager Kevin Hunter, centre, and head chef Dave Wall, who run the award winning pub

Ploy: The suspects chose to sit outside so they could run away at the end of the meal
Israel has denied claims by the Syrian military that one of its war planes and a drone was shot down following an air strike.

A Syrian army statement claimed to have brought down the aircraft in Quneitra, a province of the capital of Damascus, following a raid last night.

They said it came after 'naked aggression by the Zionist enemy supporting armed terrorist groups in a desperate attempt to raise morale that collapsed after heavy losses incurred in the Quneitra region.'

Israel has denied claims by the Syrian military that one of its war planes and a drone was shot down following an air strike. Pictured is smoke rising following fighting close to Israeli-controlled Golan Heights

However, the Israel Defence Force immediately refuted the statement saying anti-aircraft missiles were fired at one of their planes but they missed their target.

Israeli military spokesman Arye Shalicar said: 'Overnight two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission overnight to target Syrian artillery positions.

'At no point was the safety of Israeli aircraft compromised. Nothing is true about what they claim.'

The claims come after the Israeli military earlier confirmed it had targeted Syrian army positions after stray fire from its war-torn neighbour hit the Israeli-held zone of the Golan Heights on Monday.

An Israeli military spokeswoman told AFP the projectile was most likely not intentional, rather spillover from 'internal fighting in Syria.'

It was the fourth such incident in nine days, and came as a new Syrian ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States came into force yesterday.

The view of the Israeli side of the border with Syria showing smoke rising due to fighting in the village of Jubata, which is controlled by Islamic rebels

The initial 48-hour truce does not apply to areas held by jihadists such as the Islamic State group.

The Israeli army holds the Syrian government accountable for any fire from its territory, regardless of its source. There were similar events in July and earlier this year.

Israel has sought to avoid being drawn into Syria's complex war which is now in its sixth year, but it has attacked Syrian military targets when fire from the conflict spills over.
A Louisiana woman who was miraculously pulled from her sinking car in consuming floodwaters last month has met her rescuer in a tear-jerking encounter.

Hailey Brouillette's car was falling deeper and deeper into murky waters before David Phung jumped off a rescue boat to free her, ripping through the car's convertible roof.

Upon releasing Brouillette the hero then retrieved her drowning dog in a heart-racing few moments that were caught on camera and has since been seen by millions online.

Rescued and rescuer meet a month after Louisiana rain flooded dozens of towns. A state of emergency was declared in 20 of the worst affected parishes

14 people died and thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed by the waters. Estimates say it will take $14 billion to repair the damaged caused

Although she heard David Phung's voice during the rescue, Brouillette never saw her rescuer's face before their reunion yesterday at a home in Denham Springs where she is temporarily staying.

'I know I don't know you, but I love you,' Brouillette, 53, said as she hugged and thanked the man she called her 'angel' and 'savior'.

'It was nothing,' Phung, 27, replied before Brouillete introduced him to Sassy, the poodle mix he also saved.

A Red Cross volunteer who befriended Brouillette at a shelter arranged Monday's meeting. Brouillette lost her trailer home and all of her belongings in the flooding. Phung brought her a load of supplies, including dog food.

'It's just who we are in Louisiana. We help people in times of need,' he said. 'I was put in that place to help her out.'

The August 13 rescue video has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as David Phung and two of his relatives arrive in a boat and urge her to get out of the car.

'I'm trying! I can't!' she replied. 'Oh my God! I'm drowning!'

'I know I don't know you, but I love you,' Brouillette said to Phung who was travelling on a rescue boat with two others when they came across her sinking car in August

'It was nothing.' Phung remains humble despite saving this woman and many others during the floods that consumed a number of towns in the state. Not forgetting her dog Sassy

Phung tried to smash a car window from the boat, then jumped into the water and used his hands to rip open a hole on the top of the car.

Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. She remained submerged for several seconds before Phung finally pulled her out of the water.

'Get my dog!' she immediately shouted.

The poodle appeared to be underwater for at least 20 seconds before Phung took a deep breath, dipped below the surface and emerged with the dog cradled in his arms.

'I got your dog!' he yelled. 'Swim to the boat.'

Phung said he lost count of how many people that he helped save from the floodwaters, but none was more dramatic than Brouillette's.

After ripping through the convertible roof Phung dragged Brouillette out in an act of immense bravery and strength

The woman and her dog surface after being saved. Brouillette said she is yet to see the video of her rescue

'I didn't actually see the tape until two days later because I was working from sun up late into the night, just helping people,' he said. 'I was actually amazed at how calm and collected I was. I guess it was just the adrenaline took over.'

Before getting caught in the floodwaters, Brouillette said she had been released from a hospital that morning after being treated for a kidney ailment. She was on her way to a pharmacy to get prescriptions filled when the car she borrowed from a friend was overcome by the water.

'It still seems like a dream,' she said.

She believes 'divine intervention' also played a part in her survival.

'He saved my life,' she said. 'I don't even know if I'm worth saving. I guess God said, Yeah.'

Although she heard David Phung's voice during the rescue, Brouillette never saw her rescuer's face before their reunion Monday at a Denham Springs home where she is temporarily staying

Brouillette penned a poem on her miraculous rescue. She wrote that divine intervention led to her safe emergence from the waters

Carolyn Perry, a Red Cross volunteer, said she watched the rescue video several times from her home in Kern County, California, before she was deployed to Louisiana.

'I was drawn to it,' she said. 'I just had this strange feeling I'm going to meet this woman.'

Within three days of seeing the video, Perry recognized Brouillette at a Baton Rouge shelter that provided refuge to hundreds of flood victims. Perry said she hugged Brouillette and explained how the rescue had struck a chord with her.

'She was very, very humble, and we just struck up a friendship,' Perry said. 'For the next three days, we had a lot of heart-to-heart talks about life.'

Before Perry returned home to California, Brouillette asked her new friend for help in connecting with the man who had saved her. Perry managed to contact Phung and arranged for him to meet Brouilette and her dog.

At the end of their meeting, Brouillette gave Phung her phone number and embraced him one more time.

'And if I can ever do anything for you, let me know,' she said.
Turkey have formally requested the arrest of the man accused of orchestrating the attempted coup in his home country.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan wants to try American-based Islamist cleric Fethullah Gulen for charges relating to the failed military movement.

Turkey blames members of Gulen's religious movement for the failed coup two months ago, in which rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and fighters jets, bombing parliament and seizing bridges in a bid to take over power.

Scroll down for video

Turkey has made a formal request to the United States for the arrest of US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen (pictured) on charges of orchestrating an attempted military coup on July 15

Accused of staging the coup, Erdogan said: How can you plan for so many civilians to lose their lives  208 civilians dying, 1,500 people lying on the ground trying to block tanks  how can you do that?'

President Erdogan discussed the issue with US President Barack Obama at the G20 summit in China earlier this month.

A senior US administration official said at the time that Obama had explained to Erdogan that the decision would be a legal, not a political one.

NTV said the justice ministry had requested Gulen's arrest for 'ordering and leading the coup attempt'.

The ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the US state of Pennsylvania since 1999, has denied involvement in the coup attempt.

Turkey has sacked or suspended more than 100,000 soldiers, police and civil servants since the failed coup on suspicion of links to Gulen's network.

At least 40,000 have been detained.

The Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said Washington had 'no excuse' for keeping hold of Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who Turkish officials say has built up a network of followers over decades inside the armed forces and civil service to take over Turkey

The Turkish President has said Washington had 'no excuse' for keeping hold of Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who Turkish officials say has built up a network of followers over decades inside the armed forces and civil service to take over Turkey.

Any arrest of Gulen could be a first step towards extradition.

But lawyers say the process could take years.
He wants Britain to set up its own camp to help house Calais migrants

Half of migrants living in the Calais Jungle want to stay in France rather than come to the UK, charities have warned.

The surprise finding undermines efforts by French authorities to dismantle the makeshift camps and attempts to make Britain responsible for the escalating migration crisis.

It deals a blow to a central policy of French presidential candidate Nicholas Sarkozy, who has pledged to renegotiate the Le Touquet agreement that keeps the border in France.

Half of migrants living in the Calais Jungle want to stay in France rather than come to the UK, charities have warned

The treaty allows British border guards to be stationed in Calais to prevent migrants crossing the Channel but the Republican presidential hopeful wants Britain to set up its own camp to deal with Calais migrants.

But French charities have said he and other prominent public figures in France are wrong to suggest the Calais Jungle is only used as a stopover for migrants on their way to Britain.

They say the nature of the Calais Jungle are changing and it is being turned into a slum, with migrants from the Horn of African using it as a home in France.

And French newspaper Le Monde also reported a 'change in the function of the camp which is no longer the antechamber for Great Britain but a waiting place for migrants, the majority of whom want to stay in France'.

The surprise finding is undermines a key policy of French presidential candidate Nicholas Sarkozy (pictured) to renegotiate the Le Touquet agreement that keeps the border in France.

French charities have said he and other prominent public figures in France are wrong to suggest the Calais Jungle is only used as a stopover for migrants on their way to Britain

The Times newspaper interviewed 20 Sudanese migrants living in the camp and just two said they intended to cross the Channel to get to Britain.

Francois Guennoc, deputy chairman of the Calais charity Auberge des Migrants, said three different factors were behind the rising number of migrants arriving in Calais.

It was being used as a stopover for refugees from countries such as Afghanistan who have historical ties to Britain; stricter security had led to fewer crossing the Channel and a crackdown on homelessness in French cities had driven more migrants to the Jungle.

'They get a tent, clothes and one meal a day,' he told The Times.

Estimating the proportion of migrants who were intending to cross into Britain and the number wanting to stay in France, Mr Guennoc said: 'My guess is that the results will show that it's about 50-50.'

French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has vowed to abolish the Jungle, which is home to up to 9,000 migrants.
A blue-coloured Ford XR6 was seized and taken for forensic examination

Her naked body was found washed on the banks of a river a week later

Palmer was last seen in Logan south of Brisbane in October last year

a car over the death of 12-year-old Tiahleigh Palmer

A car has been seized over the death of a Queensland schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer, 12, whose naked body was found washed onto the banks of a river last year.

Palmer was last seen after she was dropped off at Marsden State High School in Logan, south of Brisbane.

A week later a group of fishermen found her naked decomposing body on the banks of the Pimpama River in south-east Queensland on November 5.

Police renewed their appeal for information during the 'relentless' investigation, after a blue-coloured Ford XR6 was seized on Tuesday.

Scroll down for video

Tiahleigh Palmer, 12, was found dead a week after she went missing in October last year

Police seized a blue-coloured Ford XR6 on Tuesday and are asking anyone who saw the vehicle last October to come forward

Police are asking anyone who saw the vehicle on a road near the Pimpama River last October to come forward.

Detective Inspector Mark White ruled out the owner of the vehicle being a suspect.

'As a result of extensive ongoing investigations police have today seized a vehicle of interest which will be forensically examined.' Det Supt White said.

There were at least 20 officers working on the high-profile case on a day-to-day basis.

'There's still a lot of work to be done. Today's development is only one small step in the direction we are going.'

He reiterated there was a $250,000 reward for information leading to the successful prosecution of those responsible, which includes an indemnity but not for the principle offender.

'We have conducted numerous enquiries, different lines of enquires, this (asking if anyone saw the car) is just one those enquiries,' he told reporters.

He said there had been a number of people identified as persons of interest.

A group of fishermen found the 12-year-old's naked decomposing body on the banks of the Pimpama River in south-east Queensland on November 5

Tiahleigh's death resulted in a review earlier this year leading to a change in reforms for children who go missing from out-of-home care, reported Nine news.

Under the existing protocols police took almost a week before they released a missing persons alert.

But all 29 recommendations admitted in a Queensland Family and Child Commission report were implemented.

'The report highlights that more can be done to improve whole-of-government systems and ensure more timely and co-ordinated responses for children missing from out-of-home care,' Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said in July.

Anyone who witnessed the incident or with any information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
A US citizen will spend 20 years behind bars for stabbing a Korean student to death nearly two decades ago, a South Korean appeals court said on Tuesday.

The Seoul High Court upheld a lower court's decision in January that found Arthur Patterson, now 36, guilty of murdering Jo Jung-Pil, who was stabbed multiple times with a knife in a Burger King restaurant toilet in 1997.

The defendant lived 19 years of life that the victim was deprived of but did not show any sign of sincere remorse seeking pardon from the victim and the bereaved family, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted the court as saying.

Prosecutors argued that Patterson, who was 17 years old at the time of the crime, showed a devil-like brutality in stabbing Jo - a stranger to him - to death for no apparent reason.

US citizen Arthur Patterson, accused of murdering a South Korean college student in 1997, is taken away by prison officials at the Seoul High Court (left). He was extradited back to South Korea in 2015 (right)

Jo Jung-Pil, 22, was stabbed multiple times with a knife in a Burger King restaurant toilet

Twenty years in jail is the maximum penalty in South Korea for an offender under the age of 18.

Patterson, the son of a US military contractor, had denied any involvement in the crime which took place in the nightlife district of Itaewon, close to the US military base in Seoul.

He was initially tried in 1997 as an accomplice, while Edward Lee, a Korean-American man who was at the scene, was charged with murder. Both accused the other of killing Jo.

Patterson served 18 months in prison for lesser charges including obstruction of justice, while Lee was sentenced to 20 years in jail for murder.

Arthur Patterson is seen here aged 17 ahead of his original trial in South Korea

Arthur Patterson is pictured here in 2015 arriving at Incheon International airport in South Korea after being extradited from California

In 1998, Patterson was released as part of an amnesty programme, only to find himself a murder suspect again after Lee was acquitted on appeal for lack of evidence.

He fled to the United States a year later after investigators failed to renew his travel ban - a mistake that sparked a storm of criticism.

The murder was made into a hit movie in 2009, reviving public anger over the crime and forcing South Korean prosecutors to reopen the case.

Patterson was formally charged in absentia with Jo's murder in 2011, and was extradited from the United States in September last year to face trial in Seoul.
A billionaire businessman who reported his beauty queen wife missing to police is reportedly suing her - after finding out on social media that she has fled to America.

Italian Gianluca Cervara contacted police after Anna Zaiachkivska - winner of the 2013 Miss Ukraine beauty contest - vanished in July.

The 24-year-old model had married Mr Cervara in a registry office in December, and the couple were planning a formal church wedding this month.

Anna Zaiachkivska with her husband Gianluca Cervara, who is suing her after finding out on social media that she had fled to the USA after he had reported her missing to police

But she seemingly had other plans, disappearing the day after posting: 'My amazing Gianluca Cervara, thank you that I can be your flower and part of the family.'

She had claimed she was going to get some fresh air, Italian newspaper La Repubblica reports.

Mr Cervara reported her disappearance to police after she failed to return to their home in Milan.

Ms Zaiachkivska, who won the Miss Ukraine beauty contest in 2013, disappeared from her home in Milan after saying she was going for some fresh air

Police interest in the case cooled, however, when pictures emerged on Instagram of Ms Zaiachkivska in the USA with another man.

She alleges that she left because her new husband had been violent towards her.

Ms Zaiachkivska told Ukrainian website tochka.net: 'He raised his hands against me.

The model claimed she had been the victim of domestic violence, saying she was fed up of 'living in a golden cage'

'The first time when he did it I ran away to my parents' house in the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk.

'I did not tell them what the matter was. He came to get me, and I gave him a second chance, but during an argument he spat in my face, and I simply could not take it.

'I said I am going to leave him, but I changed my mind again.

Police interest in the case cooled after pictures emerged on Instagram of Ms Zaiachkivska with another man in New York

'I had headaches for a week but Gianluca did not care about it. Finally I decided I needed to make changes as I was fed up of living in a golden cage and I ran away.'

But her husband has hit back.

Mr Cervara told the same website that he is suing his wife for non-compliance of their marriage contract, stating that she had violated their prenup agreement.

He said: 'Judging by her photos she is in New York and is working as a model there.

'She has lots of pretty photos taken in five-star hotels, she is posing with other men. She does not look unhappy at all.

'All I can say is she is not the person she is pretending to be.'

It was reported on Russian glamour site cosmo.ru that Ms Zaiachkivska took 5,000 (6,000 Euros) and his mobile phone from her husband's safe when she left Milan.
This is what happens who you trust tabloids and rich politicians who say you can have your cake and eat it. What they mean is they can have their cake, and you eat it. Today's shit sandwich is for Brits who thought that leaving the European Union, and preventing people coming into the UK, wouldn't mean reciprocal movement controls. As Nigerian Chibundu Onuzo puts it: Welcome to the world of restricted travel, British people!

The proposed scheme wouldn't require Britons to have a visa, but intentions for travelling would need to be clearly stated online and applications could, in theory, be denied. It would, in essence, be a curb on freedom of movement: a freedom I have never fully experienced because of my nationality.

I've always needed a visa to legally travel out of Nigeria to most places in the world. There are other ways to do it. My cousin walked across the Sahara and slipped into Europe via the Mediterranean, but he was later deported.

Every time I fly into Heathrow, I am reminded that a plastic visa card is the only thing stopping my presence in London being a crime. I often see the other travellers who have been ushered to the side, their lives deemed illegal, only that thin square of plastic separating us.  who knows? Maybe filling out forms to travel might make Britain more sympathetic to immigrants. I bet Nigel Farage didn't think of that.
No students were on the bus as it was on its way to pick them up

Police believe he was jaywalking when he was struck at 2.45pm

He was rushed to hospital with serious head and pelvis injuries

He was trapped under bus for 25 minutes as

A man was trapped under a school bus for 25 minutes with serious injuries after he was hit while jaywalking across a busy Sydney street.

He was rushed to hospital with serious head and pelvis injuries after emergency services used airbags and blocks of wood to jack up the bus.

Paramedics crawled under the bus to give the man, believed to be in his 30s, first aid until he could be freed.

A man was trapped under a school bus for 25 minutes with serious injuries after he was hit while jaywalking across a busy Sydney street

They then worked to stabilise him for at least another half an hour until he was taken by ambulance to Westmead Hospital.

The man was struck at about 2.45pm on Tuesday as he tried to cross Parkes Street near the corner of Wentworth Street in Parramatta.

Photos of the scene show the impact shattered the left side of the bus' windscreen.

He was rushed to hospital with serious head and pelvis injuries after emergency services used airbags and blocks of wood to jack up the bus

Paramedics crawled under the bus to give the man, believed to be in his 30s, first aid until he could be freed

The man was struck at about 2.45pm on Tuesday as he tried to cross Parkes Street near the corner of Wentworth Street in Parramatta

The blocks of wood used to jack up the bus

The feet of a rescuer seen as crews worked to free the man for almost half an hour

Inspector Brad Element told 7 News that according to witnesses the victim was jaywalking when he was hit.

'It appears that he was crossing away from the pedestrian crossing at the intersection,' he said.

The 9574 school bus was heading west on its way to pick up students at Parramatta West Public School. No children were on board at the time.

Paramedics worked to stabilise him for at least another half an hour until he was taken by ambulance to Westmead Hospital

The man was in surgery and still in a serious condition

Dozens of firefighters, rescue crews and paramedics attended the scene

The man was eventually rushed to hospital where he was in surgery and still in a serious condition

The man was in surgery and still in a serious condition.

The bus driver was uninjured but treated in hospital for shock and gave mandatory blood and urine samples for drug and alcohol testing.

Police set up a crime scene and were investigating what happened. They have asked witnesses to come forward or call Crime Stoppers.

Photos of the scene show the impact shattered the left side of the bus' windscreen

The bus driver was uninjured but treated in hospital for shock and gave mandatory blood and urine samples for drug and alcohol testing
They entered the country with fake passports created by ISIS' forgers

Police have arrested three refugees at asylum seekers homes in Germany on suspicion of plotting terror attacks for Islamic State.

Officers of the elite GSG9 anti-terror police swooped on two migrant homes in Lower Saxony and in the far north of Germany in SchleSwig-Holstein bordering Denmark.

Three Syrians identified only as Mahir Al-H aged 17, Mohamed A, 26, and Ibrahim M, 18, were taken into custody along with their mobile phones and computers.

Scroll down for video

Police have arrested three refugees (one pictured centre) at asylum seekers homes in Germany on suspicion of plotting terror attacks for Islamic State

The terror suspects (piutured being led to van in centre) arrested in an asylum seekers home in Schleswig-Holstein arrived in Europe with fake passports crafted for them by ISIS forgers and accompanied by two of the Paris attackers

Two of their travelling companions killed themselves with suicide bombs outside the Stade de France stadium in Paris on November 13 last year

View of a house which is being used as accommodation for refugees, pictured in Reinfeld. Three Syrians have been arrested in anti-terrorism raids on Tuesday morning in the German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony

A refugee shelter in Grosshansdorf, where police have reportedly conducted an anti-terror raid

The terror suspects arrested in an asylum seekers home in Schleswig-Holstein arrived in Europe with fake passports crafted for them by ISIS forgers and accompanied by two of the Paris attackers.

They landed in mid November aboard a refugee ship which docked at the Greek island of Leros.

Two of their travelling companions killed themselves with suicide bombs outside the Stade de France stadium in Paris on November 13 last year.

Two more conspirators aboard the vessel were arrested in the Austria city of Graz in December.

'Specific orders or instructions have not yet been determined so far,' said a spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor's Office.

The suspects were placed under intense surveillance for several months, including bugging their phones and tailing their every move in an operation that cost tens of thousands of pounds.

German interior minister Thomas de Maziere said the Isis terror suspects seized on Tuesday were probably a 'sleeper cell' with links to the Paris attackers of last year.

More than 200 police officers, including members of the special unit GSG 9, swooped on the suspects after weeks of covert surveillance.

At a press conference de Maiziere said the Federal Criminal Office - Germany's FBI - had evidence linking them to the Paris killers, including evidence that their false papers were made by the same forgers in the same workshop.

'We waited for the right moment to arrest them,' said de Maziere, confirming they had been 'closely' monitored beforehand.

He also cautioned against thinking all refugees were terrorists.

He also said that investigators had no evidence that a concrete plan for an attack had been formulated by the three suspects

Officers of the elite GSG9 anti-terror police swooped on two migrant homes in Lower Saxony and in the far north of Germany in SchleSwig-Holstein bordering Denmark

Three Syrians identified only as Mahir Al-H aged 17, Mohamed A, 26, and Ibrahim M, 18, were taken into custody along with their mobile phones and computers

A further six apartments were searched and material taken away by police who swarmed over the regions in over 200 vehicles in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Media reports said the men came to Germany disguised as refugees last year and were awaiting orders from jihadist superiors in their homeland about what and when to strike.

A Germany returnee from the Syrian battlefront, who is now serving four years in a German jail for membership of ISIS, told intelligence agents earlier this year that the terror group is keen to pull off a spectacular outrage in Germany similar to the Paris slaughter a year ago.

Mahir Al-H received weapons and explosives training in Raqqa, the capital of the so-called Islamic Caliphate, in September 2015 before being sent west the following month posing as a refugee.

Together with his accomplices he was told to lay low until commands were issued for them to strike.

Internet and mobile phone intercepts are understood to have led to their arrests.

They were seized with considerable amounts of American dollars and their mobile phones had special communications software installed.

They reached Germany via Turkey and Greece.

Only last weekend interior minister Thomas de Maziere warned that there are over 500 Islamic militants in Germany capable of forming themselves into independent 'hit teams' to commit atrocities.

The AfD has seized on the attacks to criticize Chancellor Angela Merkel's migrant policies and beat her party into third place in elections a week ago in her home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

He said there were at least 520 'potential attackers' in Germany - a nation on edge since two Islamic State-inspired attacks in July in which the attackers were both refugees.

He said another 360 'relevant' people were known to police because of their 'close proximity' to potential killers.

His comments lend more credibility to right-wing parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) which has for long argued that Isis fighters mingled with the 1.2 million migrants who came to Germany in the past year.

'The terror threat now stems from foreign hit teams as well as fanatical lone wolves in Germany,' de Maiziere said in an interview with Bild newspaper.

'The hit teams are secretly smuggled into Europe and prepare their actions without being noticed, as we saw with the attacks in Paris and Brussels,' he added.

'But it's even more difficult to uncover the fanatical lone wolves.

'Unfortunately, there is a real and present danger from both threats.'

Authorities say they are doing everything possible to monitor 'the potential terrorists' and pointed out that there have been more investigations and arrests this year.

Despite their efforts de Maziere added: 'The authorities are assuming there are undiscovered lone wolf terrorists out there.'

The AfD has seized on the attacks to criticize Chancellor Angela Merkel's migrant policies and beat her party into third place in elections a week ago in her home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

De Maiziere said Islam did not bear within it the 'seed of terrorism' and appealed to all Muslims to distance themselves from Islamist terrorism, urging people to recognise radicalisation patterns within their communities and intervene.
William Hague has insisted there is no reason to doubt Hillary Clinton's fitness for the White House after footage emerged of her collapsing at a 9/11 memorial.

The Democrat presidential nominee has insisted there are no concerns about her health and she just needs a couple of days to get over a bout of pneumonia.

Republican rival Donald Trump has leapt on the latest health scare to vow to release details of his own health as the White House contest enters the final stretch.

Lord Hague, the former foreign secretary, said he had worked closely with Mrs Clinton when she was Secretary of State and had no doubts about her stamina.

William Hague said the Hillary Clinton he knew as Secretary of State (pictured together at a North Atlantic Council summit in 2012) was a 'living, breathing advertisement for unrelenting stamina'

And he warned playing up fears about her health would only edge 'a man of doubtful stability, experience and temperament' closer to the White House.

Writing in the Telegraph, Lord Hague said: 'While we British can reach summits in Brussels or the Middle East with a short hop, our American equivalents travel relentlessly into a life of permanent jet lag.

'In projecting American power and friendship, Hillary used to get to all those meetings, and visited well over a hundred countries too.'

He added: 'There are people attacking her staying power now who, if asked to undertake one fortnight of how she did that job, would have to be taken straight to hospital.

'The Hillary Clinton I got to know was a living, breathing advertisement for unrelenting stamina.'

Lord Hague said he would not advise Americans how to vote - before adding he was more sympathetic to the Republican tradition - but said: 'Across the world, Americas friends and allies wait anxiously for the verdict of those voters, witnessing the first presidential election since the 1940s in which the commitment of the US to its alliances and its international responsibilities is under serious question.

'Let us hope they decide with such matters in their mind, for while there may be legitimate reasons to vote against the first woman ever to get near to the Oval Office, a lack of stamina or fitness for office should most definitely not be among them.'

Mrs Clinton waved to the press after emerging from her daughter's apartment on Sunday hours after collapsing at the 9/11 memorial in New York

Mrs Clinton has said she kept her pneumonia diagnosis a secret because she didn't 'think it was going to be that big a deal' as she insists she simply suffered a dizzy spell at the 9/11 memorial on Sunday.

She told CNN's Anderson Cooper she is 'feeling so much better' after overheating on Sunday morning at the ceremony in New York City.

Mrs Clinton said she regrets trying to 'power through' her pneumonia rather than take time off to recover, as she has now been forced to withdraw from her planned speech in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

'Obviously I should have gotten some rest sooner,' she told Cooper, after calling in to his show.

'I probably would have been better off if I'd just pulled down my schedule on Friday, but like a lot of people, I just thought I could keep going forward and power through it and obviously that didn't work out so well.'

The candidate says she's now 'feeling fine and getting better' and is anxious to get back out on the trail, as her campaign promised to release more information on her health soon.
A 61-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of a terrorism offence in Kensington, west London.

Scotland Yard said he was detained by officers from the Met's Counter Terrorism Command on yesterday afternoon.

The man was arrested at around 4.10pm on suspicion of 'possessing an article for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism'.

A 61-year-old man has been arrested in Kensington (pictured in file photo) by anti-terror police

The man remains in custody, arrested under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and a search is under way at an address in Kensington.

It comes just days after two brothers suspected of plotting to bring a Paris-style massacre to the streets of Britain were also detained.

The pair, aged 19 and 20, were held in a dawn raid at their West London home after a massive undercover security operation.

They are suspected of trying to get automatic weapons and bomb-making chemicals to stage their own Islamic State-inspired atrocity.

It is understood the latest is arrest is not connected to the previous raid and yesterday's action is part of a separate investigation.

Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said earlier this year that it is now a matter of 'when, not if' a terror attack takes place in the UK.
This is the moment a cargo plane was forced to carry out a belly landing before skidding for almost a mile down the runway of an airport in Indonesia.

Footage captured the Trigana Air Service Boeing 737-300F coming into land at Wamena Airport in the Papua province this morning with smoke billowing from the fuselage.

But as the aircraft touched down, the main landing gear appeared to have failed, causing the plane to land on its belly.

Scroll down for video

Footage captured the moment a Trigana Air Service plane came into land at Wamena Airport despite its landing gear failing

The plane was forced to do a belly landing before it skidded down the runway for almost a mile

Smoke could be seen billowing from the aircraft as it came into land at the airport in Indonesia

The video of the landing then shows the plane careering down the runway unable to brake, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake.

Eventually it came to halt and firefighters were quickly on the scene to douse the aircraft with water and separate pictures showed the landing gear lying on the ground having completely broken off.

Authorities in Indonesia have now closed the airport while they carry out an investigation to probe what caused the belly landing.

It is believed that the aircraft had been carrying cargo including rice and sugar and departed from Sentani Airport in Jayapura en route to Wamena Airport.

The plane had been hired by the state-owned energy company to deliver the supplies to the small towns in the Papua Province.

Firefighters were quickly on the scene to douse the flames and inspect the damage to the cargo plane

Pictures taken after the crash show how one of the engines appeared to have smashed on impact

After the crash, a pilot, co-pilot and a technician were able to escape from the wreckage unscathed.

It is also believed that as well as the landing gear being damaged, the engine and another wheel was broken.

Wamena airport is located in the middle of a mountainous region and planes often have to take-off and land in extremely low cloud cover.

The main landing gear appeared to have broke free from the aircraft, forcing the belly landing

Pilot Matt Dearden, who has seven years of experience flying in Indonesia, says all landings at the airport have to be hand-flown visually as instruments cannot be used.

He told CNN: 'They touched down very hard in a nose high attitude which instantly collapsed both main gear. The left gear was ripped from the airframe as it skidded along the runway.

'It came to a rest a long way from the impact point and skidded just off the right side of the runway, scattering debris as it went.'
Has a gorilla been named Harambe McHarambeface at a Chinese zoo after asking the public what the newborn should be called?

The fate of the new arrival at Jinhua zoo in China's central Zhejiang province was reportedly left in the public's hands, who rushed to the polls to cast their vote.

It was reported a total of 73,345 people voted for Harambe McHarambeface - mimicking the infamous Boaty McBoatface - and with 93% of the vote the gorilla was said to have been given the new name.

The moniker is a reference to the 17-year-old gorilla shot dead at Cincinnati Zoo after a four-year-old boy fell into its enclosure.

But the site - Boston Leader - who broke the story is being questioned by internet users as to the validity of the story.

Cincinnati Zoo shot the original Harambe after he dragged a boy through water when the child fell into its moat

Initially, Heijin was the front-runner with several hundred votes, but once the ballot was shared on social media, new options were added and Harambe McHarambeface stormed into the lead, according the Boston Leader.

They reported a zoo official told local media they had been overwhelmed by the amount of interest shown overseas.

After confirming it will honour the public vote, the official said it would have to offer it an alternative Chinese name, adding: 'It is nearly impossible to render Harambe McHarambeface in the Chinese language, so we hope those who voted will accept that we have decided to give him a different Chinese name.

'We do hope it will attract more foreign visitors in the future,' the Boston Leader reported.

MailOnline has been in contact with Jinhua zoo, but received no response.

And, according to a Chinese news outlet, it might be no surprise.

That's Mag claim that the zoo has not updated its website since 2013, and its social media accounts were last in action in may.

It also said although the zoo exists, it does not have any gorillas listed.

The Boston Leader, which claims to have been bringing you Boston's best news since 1932, only set its website up last week.

It comes after a Philadelphia zoo ruled out naming one of its newborns Harambe after a public vote.

Harambe is a reference to the 17-year-old gorilla shot dead in a Cincinnati zoo after a four-year-old boy fell into its enclosure.

Isiah Dickerson was with his mother Michelle Gregg at Cincinnati Zoo, Ohio, when he somehow made his way through a barrier, into a moat - and was lifted up by Harambe.

Within minutes the 17-year-old 450lb silverback was killed by zookeepers who feared for Isiah's safety.

But the decision has sparked a backlash, with calls for the boy's parents to be prosecuted and animal lovers saying the ape was trying to protect the boy when it was shot.

Harambe was seen on camera standing guard in the corner of the moat and witnesses said the gorilla looked like he was trying to protect the boy from panicked bystanders

Soon after the incident, Michelle Gregg, 32, posted a message on Facebook saying: 'I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers today. What started off as a wonderful day turned into a scary one.

'For those of you that have seen the news or been on social media that was my son that fell in the gorilla exhibit at the zoo. God protected my child until the authorities were able to get to him.

'My son is safe and was able to walk away with a concussion and a few scrapes... no broken bones or internal injuries.

'As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids.

'Accidents happen but I am thankful that the right people were in the right place today.'

The family released a statement on Sunday saying they had taken their boy home from the hospital.

It read: 'We are so thankful to the Lord that our child is safe. He is home and doing just fine.

'We extend our heartfelt thanks for the quick action by the Cincinnati Zoo staff.

'We know that this was a very difficult decision for them, and that they are grieving the loss of their gorilla.

'We hope that you will respect our privacy at this time.'

The family have been subject to death threats.

The zoo, however, is and is also now the subject of a complaint to the United States Department of Agriculture, which regulates safety for animals and visitors.

Outraged animal lovers took to social media declaring the western lowland gorilla's life was unnecessarily taken, as thousands joined the 'Justice for Harambe' movement.

The original Harambe, which was shot dead at Cincinnati Zoo

Earlier this year, Harambe McHarambeface's inspiration Boaty McBoatface hit the headlines after the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) opened the naming of one of its boats to the public.

Boaty McBoatface has officially topped a poll over the name for a new polar research ship as the competition launched by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) closed.

The suggestion received 124,109 votes - more than three times that of its closest contender.

However, the 200 million research vessel's naming rights came at the discretion of science minister Jo Johnson. who opted fore the more pragmatic fifth-most popular choice of RRS Sir David Attenborough.

An artist's impression of the polar research ship which pranksters voted to name Boaty McBoatface

The name was put forward by former BBC radio presenter James Hand, who has since apologised and said the storm it created had 'legs of its own'.

He said that while he stands by Boaty McBoatface as a 'brilliant name' for a boat, he actually voted for RRS David Attenborough to be the new name.

The second most-voted name was the RRS Poppy-Mai - named after a 16-month-old girl whose father 'married' her in an attempt to give her the wedding of her dreams after it was revealed she had incurable cancer.

The RRS Henry Worsley, named after the explorer who died trying to make the first unassisted solo crossing of the Antarctic in January, was the third most popular with more than 15,000 votes.

As the poll closed in May the NERC thanked everyone for their suggestions on its website posting: We are no longer accepting suggestions to name our ship as we have now reached the closing date of April 16.

Weve had an extremely high volume of suggestions and will now review all of the suggested names.

'The final decision will be announced in due course.
An ISIS killer thought to be orchestrating attacks in France has scolded male jihadists for not carrying out enough atrocities after an all-women terror cell was crushed by police.

Officials believe French extremist Rachid Kassim, who has appeared in ISIS beheading videos, is a 'key instigator' directing hundreds of recruits using encrypted messaging apps.

The 29-year-old fanatic, from a town north of Lyon, has emerged as the link among at least four plots to attack France since June - including an all-female gang arrested over a car packed with explosives left close to Notre Dame cathedral.

Scroll down for video

ISIS killer Rachid Kassim, pictured, thought to be orchestrating attacks in France has scolded male jihadists for not carrying out enough atrocities after an all-women terror cell was crushed by police

Officials believe French extremist Rachid Kassim (holding the knife), who has appeared in ISIS beheading videos, is a 'key instigator' directing hundreds of recruits using encrypted messaging apps

After the plot was foiled, he is said to have taken to Telegram to ask his male followers 'What's your excuse?' and 'where are the brothers?' adding that too few men were launching attacks.

According to Le Monde, which did not say how it acquired the message, Kassim wrote: 'You have to understand, if women are taking action it's certainly because too few men will take action,' he wrote, seemingly referring to the youngest in the female cell, a 19-year-old who was identified through her father's abandoned car.

'She had her whole life before her but she left, she left to do something and they stopped her before she could succeed. But I'm talking about her intention. You, what's your excuse?'

The precise role of the extremist, Rachid Kassim, in four plots this year is under investigation, but the officials say he has become a key instigator who directs recruits in encrypted forums on how and where to carry out the ISIS call for European Muslims to strike at home.

Most recently, he was believed to be in contact with a 19-year-old in an unprecedented cell of French women who failed in their attempts to detonate a car bomb and kill police.

The 29-year-old fanatic, from a town north of Lyon, has emerged as the link among at least four plots to attack France since June - including an all-female gang arrested over a car packed with explosives (pictured) left close to Notre Dame cathedral

Video captured the moment a woman was detained after the discovery of a car packed with gas canisters left in central Paris

From the Loire River town of Roanne, Kassim is believed to be in either Syria or Iraq yet figures in multiple French anti-terror investigations.

Kassim's virtual fingerprints were found as early as the June 14 knifing of two police officials at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville, in which the killer left behind not only a video that he had streamed on Facebook Live but a hit list of politicians, journalists and public personalities.

That list is believed to have been drawn up by Kassim ahead of time, one of the officials said.

Attacker Larossi Abballa was shot dead when police stormed the home to rescue the dead couple's three-year-old child.

His video, although removed swiftly from Facebook, reappeared in ISIS propaganda.

Kassim then became the public face of an ISIS claim of responsibility for the July 14 truck attack on Nice that left 86 people dead, appearing in a video in which he threatened France and beheaded a captive in Iraq.

Kassim told French President Francois Hollande in the video: 'You have said that your attack will intensify on us. In turn, our operations against you will be more severe.'

Larossi Abballa knifed two police officials at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville, leaving behind not only a video that he had streamed on Facebook Live but a hit list of politicians, journalists and public personalities. That list is believed to have been drawn up by Kassim ahead of time

A policeman takes off a picture of French policeman Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his partner Jessica Schneider who were killed in Magnanville by Frenchman Larossi Abballa

On July 26, two Frenchmen who came together on the encrypted app Telegram slit the throat of an elderly priest in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, holding nuns and a couple of parishioners hostage until police fatally shot the attackers.

In that case, too, Kassim appeared to have a role, namely in bringing the two - Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean - together.

Again, selfie videos filmed by the men were almost immediately transmitted to ISIS media organisations.

And this past weekend, a 15-year-old boy was arrested at his Paris home to thwart what authorities feared was a planned weekend attack - yet another person under investigation for possible links to Kassim, who was known even before he left to join ISIS for radicalising young people.

'He tried to lure young people,' Abdennour Bentoumi, the head of the mosque in Roanne, told France Television. 'He told them, heaven isn't praying. There's another way.'

Kassim (pictured) is said to have taken to Telegram to ask his male followers 'What's your excuse?' and 'where are the brothers?' adding that too few men were launching attacks

ISIS has claimed responsibility in its official media for both the attack on the church and against the police.

But the group has remained silent in the case of the car loaded with gas cylinders and the subsequent stabbing of two police officers, which the Paris prosecutor said came during a raid to prevent the women from carrying out another planned attack.

One of those women, identified as 23-year-old Sarah H, was engaged first to Abballa and then to Kermiche, according to the prosecutor, Francois Molins.

Her current betrothed, Mr Molins said, is the brother of a man arrested in the Magnanville case, yet another thread in the web linking the cases.

'The act by these young women remote-controlled by individuals who can be found in Syria among the ranks of Daesh demonstrates that this organisation wants to make women into combatants,' said Mr Molins, using another name for ISIS.

Kassim, an amateur rapper, is thought to have been radicalised either over the internet or during a visit to Algeria in 2011. Two of his songs were called 'I'm a terrorist' and 'Rap attack'.

Also known as Ibn Qassim, his is said to have fallen out with his local Muslim community and fled from France along with his wife and three children for Egypt.

He has since regularly appeared in ISIS propaganda videos shot in Syria or Iraq and has been able to urge some 300 contacts to commit attacks on home soil, notably publishing a list of targets and scenarios for how to carry them out.

Earlier this summer, two Frenchmen slit the throat of priest Jacques Hemel (left) in Normandy. In that case Kassim appeared to have a role, namely in bringing the two - Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean (right) - together

Meanwhile, smartphone app Telegram, favoured by the ISIS group thanks to the encrypted messaging it offers, is reportedly proving to be a difficulty for French anti-terror investigators.

The free-to-download instant messenger, which allows people to exchange messages, photos and videos in groups of up to 5,000 people, has attracted some 100 million users since its launch in 2013.

And there are features that make it particularly attractive to jihadists, who can not only rest assured that their private messages are out of the reach of intelligence officials, but can disperse propaganda on YouTube-like public channels.

After ISIS gunmen and suicide bombers massacred 130 people in Paris in November, Telegram blocked dozens of public channels that were being used to spread extremist messages.

But Russian Internet guru Pavel Durov, who founded Telegram with his brother Nikolai, insisted that not even he has the power to intercept users' private chats.

In France, which has suffered a string of further jihadist assaults since the Paris carnage, investigators are still dealing with the fallout from the communications of Kassim, suspected of using Telegram to direct people to carry out attacks.

Kassim then became the public face of an ISIS claim of responsibility for the July 14 truck attack on Nice that left 86 people dead, appearing in a video in which he threatened France and beheaded a captive in Iraq

Unable to get past Telegram's impenetrable encryption, the best intelligence officials can hope for is to sneak into extremist chatrooms by posing as jihadists - but they're bound to attract suspicion unless they talk the talk convincingly.

'Infiltrating is possible, but you have to be a good actor and have a lot of cultural and religious awareness to get away with it,' one investigator said.

So confident is Telegram in its encryption, it has offered up to $300,000 to anyone who manages to crack its system.

The app also has a feature that allows users to set messages to auto-destruct, making it impossible to recover them later for use in investigations.

Even in the realm of public jihadist propaganda on Telegram, it is 'practically impossible to track the millions of messages that are exchanged every hour', one investigator lamented.

THREE WOMEN WERE PART OF 'FEMALE COMMANDO UNIT' A Paris judge has handed preliminary terrorism charges to three women who authorities suspect are part of a female 'commando' unit planning imminent attacks in France on behalf of ISIS. The Paris prosecutor's office said overnight the three women were charged with criminal terrorist association linked to the discovery of an abandoned car full of gas cylinders near Notre Dame Cathedral and with another pending attack. A 23-year-old man, engaged to one of them, was charged with not reporting a pending terrorist crime to authorities. The four were arrested last week. The three women were remanded in custody, the prosecutor's office said. The Paris prosecutor's office said overnight the three women were charged with criminal terrorist association linked to the discovery of an abandoned car full of gas cylinders near Notre Dame Cathedral and with another pending attack The women were detained last week after the discovery of the vehicle near Notre Dame on September 4. Police believe they were planning other attacks including striking a train station in the Paris area or targeting police. The suspects - named as 19-year-old Ines Madani, 23-year-old Sarah Hervouet and 39-year-old Amel Sakaou - were brought before anti-terrorism judges on Monday and charged with involvement in a terrorist conspiracy. The two youngest were also charged with plotting to kill public officials, while Hervouet's boyfriend was charged with failing to report a terrorist offence, a statement said. The women are believed by police to have been spurred by repeated calls by the ISIS for attacks in France. France is on heightened alert after two grisly attacks in July - one in the southern resort of Nice, where a truck driver crushed 86 people to death and another in Normandy, where two men slit the throat of an elderly priest. The country has been repeatedly targeted by Islamic extremists in the last two years, with an assault on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in January 2015 followed by a rampage by gunmen in Paris in November. French policemen take part in a police raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine near Paris after a car packed with gas cylinders was found near Notre Dame cathedral Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Sunday said the terror threat was at a 'maximum' and that the authorities were foiling attacks and smashing jihadist networks 'every day'. As many as 15,000 people were considered by French authorities as radicals who posed a potential threat, he added. Sources close to the investigation said the women had discussed obtaining suicide belts or ramming cars filled with explosives into buildings. One of them was found in possession of a letter professing her allegiance to ISIS, which ordered the carnage in Paris in November that left 130 people dead. A 15-year-old boy arrested in eastern Paris at the weekend was also brought before investigating magistrates on Monday to be charged with conspiring to commit attacks. The youth had written to contacts on Telegram - an encrypted messaging app widely used by jihadists to communicate - of his plans to carry out a knife attack, sources said. The women were arrested after police were alerted to a Peugeot 607 car parked near the Notre Dame cathedral in the middle of one of Paris's busiest tourist spots on September 4. It was found to contain five gas cylinders, three bottles of diesel and a half-smoked cigarette inside. A fourth woman, Ornella Gilligmann, who has been charged with terrorism over the find, told police she and Madani had tried to set the vehicle alight but fled when they saw a man they believed to be a police officer approach. Investigators moved quickly to arrest her suspected accomplices, believing them to be on the cusp of staging an attack. During their arrest in the southern Paris suburb of Essonne, Hervouet stabbed a policeman, injuring him in the shoulder. Madani was shot in the leg after she also charged at an officer with a knife. Both were known to police for their links to Islamist radicals. A police search of one of the women's homes found seven empty glass bottles and pieces of paper that 'could look like paper fuses' but no explosives. Advertisement

French intelligence chief Patrick Calvar described the app in May as 'the main network used by terrorists'.

'We bump into encryption problems on a daily basis, as the means of communication multiply along with the amount of data that we have to gather,' he said, adding that encryption is 'a major question that only international conventions can decide on'.

The use of such apps, which soared after Edward Snowden's revelations of mass US surveillance in 2013, has sparked debate over the balance between internet users' right to privacy and the need for security agencies to protect the public.

Last month the interior ministers of France and Germany urged the European Commission to regulate encrypted messaging apps.

Telegram's makers said after the Paris attacks that they were 'disturbed' it was being used by jihadists, but they are staunchly pro-privacy and have blasted internet giants Facebook and Google for giving data to third parties.

French investigators say they do not even know who within the Berlin-based company they should legally petition for information that could help piecing together a case, such as confirmation that a suspect is the holder of a particular Telegram account.
DJ Neil Fox and his wife have opened up for the first time about the enormous impact the false sex allegations against him had on his family life  and the 'tough chat' they were forced to have with their 13-year-old daughter over the claims.

The former Pop Idol judge, known to millions as Dr Fox, was found not guilty of eight indecent assaults and two sexual assaults dating back to the 1980s following a ten-day trial at a central London court last December.

However, despite being cleared, he has spent much of the last two years desperately fighting the claims after being arrested for the alleged sex offences just minutes after finishing a radio show on Magic FM in 2014.

The 55-year-old father has now branded the allegations a 'witch hunt' against him and said he was 'gobsmacked' to have ever been arrested.

The former Pop Idol judge, known to millions as Dr Fox, appeared on ITV's This Morning with wife Vicky to candidly talk about the impact the sex claims against him had on his family life

Dr Fox (pictured with his wife Vicky today), was found not guilty of eight indecent assaults and two sexual assaults dating back to the 1980s following a ten-day trial in London last December

Speaking on ITV's This Morning alongside his wife Vicky, who has supported him throughout the ordeal, Fox relived the day of his arrest in 2014.

He explained how he had just finished his show on Magic FM and his boss was waiting outside the studio.

He said: 'My boss said the police are downstairs - and immediately I thought it was something to do with the kids or Vicky - but he said they are here to arrest you.'

'I was gobsmacked. They took me down to Charing Cross, slapped me in a cell for an-hourand-a- half while they found a lawyer for me. And you suddenly go through this process The process is very scary and very intimidating.

'I was on bail for three months, then another four. Your life is just in limbo that's what's hard about it. Trying to keep the routine of the kids going to school. Thank god for the kids, they keep you really level.'

I knew there was a witch hunt against DJs. My immediate reaction was he's a DJ, you're going after him Vicky, DJ Neil Fox's wife

Speaking of the arrest, his wife Vicky added: 'Your first concern is 'are my children ok, is my husband ok'. You're panicked.

'I had a houseful of policeman and they've got all your things, photo albums, everything on the floor, searching through the house.

'I knew there was a witch hunt against DJs. My immediate reaction was he's a DJ, you're going after him.'

Detailing how the allegations affected their family life, Fox  who made his name on Capital Radio in the 1980s and 90s - said it was 'really tough and awful' to see the headlines in the media.

DJ Neil Fox and his wife Vicky are pictured outside the ITV This Morning studios in London

He had been accused of sexually abusing schoolgirls and young women over a 26-year period, including allegedly forcibly kissing two girls at roadshow events and molesting a 15-year-old fan in the station's record library.

Two other women claimed Fox sexually assaulted them after he switched to Magic FM, dry-humping one on a sofa in 2007 and kissing another on the neck last year.

He said: 'They were really tough to hear and they are really awful when you see them on the headline of a paper because they splash out the worse bit they possibly could.

'And I know my daughter and my son go to school on public transport and saw these and it's hard for them of course.

'Scarlett was 13 at the time and as her dad, I had to sit down and have an honest chat with her. It was hard but I wanted her to know everything from me and from Vicky so no one at school could say anything that she didn't know was going on.'

Vicky added: 'I think [the children] were good. All I can say to her is just because people say things, it doesn't mean that it's true.'

Fox (pictured on This Morning) had been accused of sexually abusing schoolgirls and young women over a 26-year period, including allegedly forcibly kissing two girls at roadshow events

During the trial at Westminster Magistrates' Court last December, District Judge Howard Riddle said the witnesses told the truth 'as they remember it'  suggesting even he believed the victims.

But he said the most difficult aspect of the case was that many of the allegations were historic and they should be treated with caution. As a result, he said the bench 'could not be sure that in the context it was a criminal offence'.

Judge Riddle said: 'We heardfrom six women. We believed each of the complainants. The question we must ask is whether we are sure of the facts alleged, sure of the context in which they occurred, and sure that they amount to criminal offences.

'While the events were undoubtedly memorable for the complainants, it is appropriate...to approach accounts of what happened in a brief period of time, so long ago, with caution.'

He added: 'It was a strong case and one that needed to be brought to the court for determination.'

Speaking after he was acquitted, Fox said the case had 'once again exposed concerns about how high-profile cases' such as his are investigated by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. His barrister, Jonathan Caplan QC, said the DJ had fallen victim to a police investigation with a 'fixation on celebrities'.

Detailing how the allegations affected their family life, Fox  who made his name on Capital Radio in the 1980s and 90s - said it was 'really tough and awful' to see the papers' headlines

Neil Fox and his wife Vicky are pictured outside the ITV studios in London after the interview

Recalling the moment he was cleared of any wrongdoing, Fox told Holly and Phil on This Morning today: 'December 14 was a good day, I was acquitted. We could try and move on a little bit.

'But it isn't over, your problems are still there. You have to try and go back to some kind of work and move on.'

Fox left Magic FM after being arrested in September 2014 and said he wouldn't go back now he has been cleared because 'it was the right time to leave anyway.'

He added: 'The word 'supportive' may be an understatement. Some organisations handle things well, others handle it bloody awfully. They fell into the latter category.

'But, the problem is, we live in a modern PC world, and a lot of organisations when they get hit with these, they are wondering how they should handle it too. So there's part of me, if I was a boss, thinking 'this is tricky' it's a hard time for everyone concerned.'

Fox was delighted after leaving Westminster Magistrates' Court last year having been cleared

As for his relationship with his wife, Vicky says the pair are 'stronger than ever' following the ordeal.

She said: 'You go through something together. I felt I was being attacked, my family was being attacked. You get this tiger instinct to protect them.

'My family is Neil and my three children and all I wanted to do was to protect my family, so I felt very protective of Neil throughout this and we were fortunate we had lots of amazing support. We knew we'd come through the other side.'

Speaking directly to her husband, she added: 'They didn't need to arrest you, they could have brought you in for questioning. It was rather ridiculous and the things they took from the house - Valentine's card, children's iPads - it wasn't serious big evidence. I don't think they found anything in my house that they used in court.'

When asked if such high profile cases could be done better or handled differently, Fox said: 'If you could change one thing partly the [lack of] anonymity is hard, with social media where everyone wants a say, and if you get arrested like me or anyone else in the public eye, and you wonder how to control it and contain it'

'But if you can try and preserve the anonymity to start with then I think the idea of being innocent until proven guilty will be a lot easier.

'Sadly you do feel when you're in the eye of the storm, that you feel guilty until you can prove your innocence I'm not saying that's the authorities' fault, life moves, laws move, things change, but I definitely think with social media and the way the media is nowadays, this stuff gets thrown out there.'

DJ Neil Fox kissed his wife Vicky as they left court after he was cleared of all charges last year

Speaking on the steps of the central London court after being acquitted, he thanked his family

He suggested that he might write a book about his ordeal, suggesting it could be called 'better, not bitter'.

'I want to move forward as a family. I want to come out of it better, not bitter,' he said.

'This is a bit of my life, it's a portion that finished last December, and we moved forward as a family.'

His sentiment echoed the statement he made outside court following his acquittal last December.

Speaking on the steps of the central London court after being acquitted, he thanked his family and wife Vicky saying: 'I cannot begin to tell you how much I love you and how much I thank you for simply being there and holding my hand through this long and arduous journey.

'It has been tough at times. You have shown me how to look through the good and bad, the happy and the sad, the gain and the pain and find out what makes us grateful and not hateful.'

Magic Radio's owners, Bauer Media, said Fox would not be returning to the station as his contract had expired and the station was 'going in a new direction'.

In a statement, Bauer said: 'From the outset, Bauer Media had a duty of care to Neil, to its staff, listeners and commercial partners. Therefore, in the best interests of all, the decision was taken for Neil to remain off-air to give him the time to deal privately with the allegations.

'At no time did Bauer make any assumptions or pre-judgements on the outcome of the case. During the fifteen months of the investigation Bauer Media maintained regular communication with Neil, his representatives and the police.
Dr Lane claimed 'he couldn't remember who the complainants were'

The crimes allegedly took place while they were being treated at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital between 1978 and 1994

men and one on the boy

Charged with 5 counts of indecent assault on

Dr Ariel Lant, 80, is alleged to have molested three men, all aged 28, and the teenager while they were being treated at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital between 1978 and 1994

An 80-year-old professor of therapeutics has appeared in court accused of historical sexual assaults on patients, including a 14-year-old boy.

Dr Ariel Lant, 80, is alleged to have molested three men, all aged 28, and the teenager while they were being treated at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital between 1978 and 1994.

Dr Lant, who has since retired and lives between Italy and the UK, is charged with five counts of indecent assault on the men and one count on the boy.

He denies the charges.

When he was first told of the allegations he claimed 'he couldn't even remember who they [the complainants] were'.

During the brief hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court, Dr Lant was told not to contact the General Medical Council, who are said to have failed to release key documents during the two-year police investigation.

Edward Aydin, for the prosecution, said: 'Professor Lant is a professor of therapeutics, a medical doctor renowned in his field.

'He worked for many years at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. He is now retired.

'These indecent assaults are historical in nature.

'In terms of all the complainants in this case, they were his patients.'

Since being charged, Dr Lant has been under strict bail conditions.

He must get written consent before applying for travel documents and inform the police of any flight arrangements.

He has also been barred from contacting the complainants or having unsupervised contact with children under 16.

Dr Lant appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court today accused of historical sex crimes

Magistrate Richard Lewis agreed to the bail conditions and released Dr Lant on bail ahead of a preliminary hearing at Southwark Crown Court.

He said: 'We have listened carefully to what was said by the Crown Prosecution Service and by your own counsel and we have decided that we will impose the conditions that were suggested by the CPS.'

Dr Lant, who lives in Mayfair, central London, will next appear in court on October 10.
Video of the moment police rescued her in QLD, 2012, her has emerged

He tied her up, gagged her with her underpants and raped her with wire

Galleghan, now-33, has been sentenced to eight years behind bars

Video of a 17-year-old girl bound with wire and gagged with her own underwear as she was tortured by her ex-boyfriend in a shipping container has emerged.

Nikitah Beadman has recounted the horrific night Robert Galleghan brutally assaulted her at his isolated property in Tallai, south-east Queensland, back in 2012.

Distressing video of the moment officers freed her from wire inside the pitch-black shipping container has emerged on Nine Network's A Current Affair.

Scroll down for video

Nikitah Beadman has recounted the horrific night Robert Galleghan (pictured together) almost killed her at his isolated property in Tallai, south-east Queensland, back in 2012

Ms Beadman had tried to leave Galleghan when he began showing abusive traits, but attended a party at his home to try and keep the peace between them.

But he was instantly aggressive with her, and Ms Beadman said: 'I knew what was going to happen.

'He always said he'd bury me out there.'

Ms Beadman then told Galleghan it was over and he threw her through a wall and smashed her head into a coffee table.

'I actually thought I was dead,' she told A Current Affair.

Their mutual friends who were still at the home attempted to stop the assault, but were chased away with a knife.

It was then Galleghan took Ms Beadman into the shipping container at the back of the property, believing the police would be on their way.

The shipping container at the back of Galleghan's property in Tallai, south-east Queensland, where Ms Beadman was tortured

Galleghan has been jailed for eight years for the 2012 assault and torture of the then 17-year-old

He fixed her to a trolley with wire, wrapped around her neck so tightly it stopped her breathing.

Galleghan gagged her with her own underpants and wired her mouth shut, before wrapping a blue yoga mat around her head so she was completely unable to breathe and raped her with wire.

'Not in a sexual way,' Ms Beadman said.

'In a torture way, so I couldn't have kids.'

He had also repeatedly stomped on her belly.

When police arrived at the property, a convincing Galleghan said he had been assaulted and wanted to go to the station to make a statement.

But on a hunch, the officers refused to leave and eventually spotted the shipping container at the back of the property.

One of the officers approached it, heard a faint cry and forced his way in to discover Ms Beadman in the corner.

The officers removed the yoga mat from her head and began filming for evidence because they did not believe she would make it through.

'It was evil and depraved what I saw,' one of the officers said.

Video of the moment police officers rescued Ms Beadman when she was 17 has emerged

Ms Beadman repeatedly tried to leave the relationship without angering him

She is pictured looking at the shipping container she was tortured in, almost four years after she was horrifically bound to a trolley with wire

Ms Beadman saw the footage for the first time on Tuesday and said it was 'kind of strange'.

'I remember being there, and I remember seeing it from a 3D perspective... something pulled me back,' she said.

Ms Beadman thanked the two police officers who saved her that night in December 2012 in an emotional meeting almost four years on.

The 17-year-old and Galleghan had been dating for three months when he first started showing his abusive side. He was 12 years her senior.

Ms Beadman repeatedly tried to leave the relationship, but Galleghan threatened her and her family.

In an attempt to leave without angering him, the teenager said she needed to live with her mother for a while to be closer to work.

Galleghan then invited her to the party which she left with life-long injuries.

Ms Beadman thanked the two police officers who saved her that night in December, 2012, in an emotional meeting almost four years on

'I actually thought I was dead,' Ms Beadman said in Nine Network's A Current Affair, which aired on Tuesday

During his trial, Judge David Kent said the young woman was in constant pain.

'[It was] protracted violence in a variety of forms of disablement,' he said.

'I shudder to think what would have happened if the police had just left.'

At the time of the incident, Galleghan was on parole for assaulting an officer.

He had also previously attacked a man with a samurai sword.

Galleghan had been on a cocktail of alcohol, Valium and painkillers at the time of the incident.

He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

He will be released in 2021 due to having already served three years in custody.

Ms Beadman took to Facebook last month to celebrate his guilty plea.

'It was a liberating feeling hearing and seeing this man the defendant Robert James Galleghan stand up and plead guilty... It's finally over I now lay at peace... I thank all the people that have supported me through this,' she said.

'Justice has finally been served.'

Ms Beadman repeatedly tried to leave the relationship, but Galleghan (pictured) threatened her and her family

After Galleghan entered his guilty plea, Ms Beadman said justice had finally been served in a Facebook status
Animal-rights group SHARK thought they'd launch their drone on public property in July to get some footage of Harris Feeding Company, a massive and apparently pungent cattle feedlot near Coalinga, California. Each day, local cops got called out every time they tried to film.

It's definitely a little troubling when one cop takes an activist's ID card and walks right over to the feedlot guys. Also a pretty great scene when a geared-out officer from the Fresno County Sheriff's office whips out a phone and starts snapping pics of the drone operators.

But the best part is Steve Hindi's hilarious hyperbolic description of the whole encounter, including condescending comments about cops who seem very cozy with the Harris boys. Seems like Steve's group SHARK would be more aptly named SNARK, amirite?

 California Cops Lose It Over a Drone (YouTube / SHARK)
Theresa May has congratulated Aung Sung Suu Kyi on leading Burma out of military dictatorship and toward democracy.

The Prime Minister met the freedom fighter on the steps of Downing Street today in Ms Suu Kyi's first visit outside Asia since last year's historic elections.

Britain has sent 118million in support to Burma this year and Mrs May said Britain stood ready to 'provide further assistance'.

As she greeted her guest at No 10, Mrs May said there was 'certainly a lot to do' after congratulating the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for helping to lead Burma's transition to a civilian government.

Theresa May met Burma's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi on the steps of No 10 Downing Street before talks with the freedom fighter

Ms Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party swept to victory in 2015 elections, endured years of house arrest and harassment by military rulers

Ms Suu Kyi said she was 'glad to be' at No10 as the pair began discussions expected to focus bilateral relations between the two countries and what the UK can do to help with Burma's reconciliation process as well as its democracy and respect for human rights.

Ms Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party swept to victory in 2015 elections, endured years of house arrest and harassment by military rulers while continuing her non-violent campaign to unseat them and usher in the first civilian government in more than five decades.

Following the talks, a Downing Street spokeswoman said: 'The Prime Minister welcomed Burmese State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi to Downing Street today for bilateral discussions, in Aung San Suu Kyi's first visit outside of Asia since her National League for Democracy party's historic election victory in November 2015.

'The Prime Minister congratulated Aung San Suu Kyi on the progress made so far in Burma's political transition after years of military dictatorship.

'Aung San Suu Kyi thanked the Prime Minister for Britain's friendship and support. The Prime Minister said we stood ready to provide further assistance as Burma continues to develop, including through 118 million in support this year.

'They agreed that to create a society that truly works for all, it would be important to see Burma make further progress in the creation of jobs, in improving access to quality healthcare, and on reforming the education system.

'The Prime Minister raised concerns about human rights abuses in the Burmese military.

'They also briefly discussed Brexit, agreeing on the importance of the UK remaining an outward-facing, engaged country on the world stage.'

Ahead of this morning's meeting, the Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said the meeting 'will be an opportunity to talk about bilateral relations between the two countries'

Mrs May could raise the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Burma, who have suffered institutional discrimination by the authorities and in wider society

Ms Suu Kyi holds the country's specially created post of state counsellor - her two sons' British citizenship prohibiting her from becoming president because of the country's military-era constitution.

David Cameron made an historic visit to Burma as Prime Minister in 2012 as the country slowly emerged from its bloody past.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson held an initial meeting with the Burmese leader yesterday and he also praised Burma's government for making progress in freeing political prisoners.

The Burmese leader yesterday met Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, at Lancaster House

'It's a great pleasure to meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and congratulate her in person on her victory in the November 2015 elections and forming Burma's first civilian government for over 50 years,' Mr Johnson said.

'The Burmese transition to democracy is an historic achievement.

'The courage and sacrifice of the Burmese people, not least of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself, has led to a major shift from military dictatorship to a more civilian, democratic and accountable government.

'The UK is pleased to have played an important role in bringing about Burma's emergence from decades of repression and isolation.
Pictures released today show North Korean leader Kim Jong-un beaming on a visit to a state-run farm

Kim Jong-un has declared himself 'extremely happy' as pictures of him beaming on a farm visit were released - despite floods in North Korea which have left 140,000 people in urgent need of help.

Pictures released today show the despot cheerfully surveying varieties of corn and rice grown on a state-run farm.

He declared he was pleased with work being done at Farm No 1116, which is run by the Korean People's Army, telling the state-controlled news agency, KCNA: 'When I see the achievements on the farm I feel an uplifting of the chest and my mood is meliorated.'

A new variety of corn, which the North Korean leader is calling 'Pyongok No 9', has been developed at the farm.

He praised the 'truly great' farm workers and researchers, stating the crops can withstand drought and natural disasters.

Scroll down for video

The despot was pictured surveying types of corn and rice grown on the farm, which is overseen run by the Korean People's Army

The despot (centre) was seen laughing with officials on his visit to the farm, where a new type of corn has been developed which he said can withstand drought and natural disasters

It is unclear when the pictures were taken, but their release comes after the secretive nation admitted thousands of its citizens have been left homeless by huge floods in the northeast.

KCNA reported that people affected by the heaviest downpour in the region since 1945 are 'suffering from great hardship'.

It said 'tens of thousands' of buildings had been destroyed in the heavy rainfall.

The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says 140,000 people are in 'urgent need of assistance' following huge floods in the northeast of the country

Heavy rains resulting from Typhoon Lionrock triggered flooding in the Musan and Yonsa counties, as well as Hoeryong City in the North Hamgyong province.

The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that so far 133 people have been killed, 395 people are missing, and 140,000 people are in 'urgent need of assistance'.

Chris Staines, who heads a Red Cross delegation in North Korea, described it as a 'a very major and complex disaster'.

The flooding, following huge downpours, has been described as 'a very major and complex disaster'

He said: 'The floods came through with such force, they destroyed everything in their path.'

In Hoeryong City, he stated, there was 'barely a building left unscathed'.

Many areas are entirely cut off as a result of the flooding.
A US and Russia-brokered ceasefire dubbed by Washington as perhaps the 'last chance to save Syria' has entered its first full day amid scepticism over how long it would last.

An initial 48-hour truce came into force at sundown on Monday across Syria except in areas held by jihadists including ISIS militants.

This morning there were reports that it appeared to be holding - despite sporadic and minor violations, according to Syrian opposition activists and monitoring groups.

A US and Russia-brokered ceasefire dubbed by Washington as perhaps the 'last chance to save Syria' has entered its first full day amid scepticism over how long it would last

An initial 48-hour truce came into force at sundown on Monday across Syria except in areas held by jihadists including ISIS militants. A Syrian man is pictured in Damascus yesterday

Rami Abdurrahman from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 'calm is prevailing' in most of the country on Tuesday, although there were minor violations in central Hama province.

Another activist group, the Local Co-ordination Committees, reported some shelling in Aleppo and the southern region of Quneitra, while state media said there were 'breaches' of the truce by rebels in the contested city of Aleppo.

Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the southern province of Daraa, where Syria's crisis began in 2011, said the region was also calm.

Around 20 trucks carrying aid have since crossed into northern Syria from the Turkish border town of Cilvegozu.

Turkey had said it aimed, with the United Nations, to send trucks of food, children's clothes and toys to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo after the truce, which was brokered by the United States and Russia, took effect late on Monday.

AFP correspondents in Syria's devastated second city Aleppo, divided between the rebel-held east and regime-controlled west since mid-2012, said fighting appeared to have stopped as the ceasefire took effect.

Syrians inspect wreckages after a wave of airstrikes in opposition controlled areas in Idlib yesterday

A final rocket was fired from the east into government areas just five minutes before 7pm local time.

US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Washington it was 'far too early to draw conclusions', but noted that reports he received two hours after the truce came into effect suggested 'some reduction' in violence.

'For all the doubts that remain, and there will be challenges in the days to come, this plan has a chance to work,' he said of the deal he agreed on Friday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

'And I urge all the parties to support it because it may be the last chance that one has to save a united Syria,' Kerry said.

On the ground in Syria, residents hoped for the best.

'I was checking the time all day, waiting for it to turn 7pm,' said Khaled al-Muraweh, a 38-year-old shopkeeper in western Aleppo's Furqan district.

'I hope the ceasefire holds so I can see my brother who lives in the opposition-held part of the city.'

In the east, residents celebrated the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

There were reports this morning that the truce appeared to be holding - despite sporadic and minor violations, according to Syrian opposition activists and monitoring groups

'This was the calmest day since I got married a week ago,' said Shadi Saber, 26.

Syria's armed forces announced a seven-day 'freeze' on military operations, but opposition forces have yet to formally sign up to the truce.

The deal's fragility was underscored even before it took effect when President Bashar al-Assad vowed to retake all of Syria from 'terrorists'.

It is the latest in a series of efforts to try to halt Syria's five-year war that has killed more than 290,000 people and displaced half the population.

Under the deal, fighting will halt across areas not held by jihadists and aid deliveries to besieged areas will begin, with government and rebel forces ensuring unimpeded humanitarian access to Aleppo in particular.

The ceasefire will be renewed every 48 hours and, if it holds for a week, Moscow and Washington will begin an unprecedented joint campaign to target jihadist forces.

Senior Russian military official Sergei Rudskoi said the 'cessation of hostilities is being resumed across all the territory of Syria' but that Moscow would 'continue to carry out strikes against terrorist targets'.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura could invite parties to new peace talks 'at the very beginning of October'.

Under the deal, fighting will halt across areas not held by jihadists and aid deliveries to besieged areas will begin, with government and rebel forces ensuring unimpeded humanitarian access to Aleppo in particular

The deal's fragility was underscored even before it took effect when President Bashar al-Assad vowed to retake all of Syria from 'terrorists'

Kerry also said that the only 'realistic and possible solution' to the conflict would be a return to UN-mediated peace talks.

Just before the truce began, the Observatory reported 13 people killed by regime shelling of the rebel town of Douma near Damascus and another 13 killed in unidentified raids in Idlib province.

Bombardment rocked the central town of Talbisseh all day, an activist there said, finally quieting down as the truce came into effect.

'We spent Eid in our bomb shelters and basements today,' said Hassan Abu Nuh of the Muslim holiday.

But Syria's opposition and rebels remain deeply sceptical and have yet to endorse the deal.

Salem al-Muslet, spokesman for the High Negotiations Committee opposition umbrella group, demanded 'guarantees' on which rebel groups would be targeted.

It is the latest in a series of efforts to try to halt Syria's five-year war that has killed more than 290,000 people and displaced half the population

A crucial part of the deal calls for rebels to distance themselves from the jihadist Fateh al-Sham Front - previously known as Al-Nusra Front - before joint US-Russian operations begin.

But Fateh al-Sham cooperates closely with many of Syria's rebels, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham faction which has condemned the Russian-US deal.

The Syrian government and its allies Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement have backed the truce.

But on Monday, Assad made clear that 'the Syrian state is determined to recover every area from the terrorists'.

'The armed forces are continuing their work, relentlessly and without hesitation, regardless of internal or external circumstances,' he said as he toured a former rebel stronghold near Damascus.

Also on Monday the Pentagon confirmed that a US air strike killed ISIS leader and spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani in northern Syria last month.
Tourists can regularly spot birds, fish and even ride camels across Broome's iconic Cable Beach - but one local got more than he bargained for.

Musician Tonchi McIntosh got up close and personal with a huge olive sea snake during an early-morning walk on Tuesday.

In a video posted to social media, Mr McIntosh got very close to the reptile as it waiting for a big enough swell to ride back out to sea at about 5.30am.

A man got up close and personal with a huge olive sea snake during an early-morning walk on Broome's iconic Cable Beach

The scaly predator did not seem to mind a camera being poked in its face, placidly relaxing on the sand looking at home with human presence.

Once a big enough wave came in the snake swam through the shallow water back out into the Indian Ocean.

The snake appeared to be at least two metres long, making it particularly big for the variety that usually grows to only half that size.

In a video posted to social media, Tonchi McIntosh got very close to the reptile as it waiting for a big enough swell to ride back out to sea at about 5.30am

The scaly predator did not seem to mind a camera being poked in its face, placidly relaxing on the sand looking at home with human presence

The snake appeared to be at least two metres long, making it particularly big for the variety that usually grows to only half that size

It was also quite far south of its usual habitat in coral reefs in the tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef and farther north in the Kimberley.

'He must have needed a bit of a break, but he went off as soon as the waves got to him,' Mr McIntosh told WAToday.

He said he had seen other sea snakes along the beach in recent weeks, but the one he stumbled upon that windy morning was by far the biggest.

It was also quite far south of its usual habitat in coral reefs in the tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef and farther north in the Kimberley

Mr McIntosh said he had seen other sea snakes along the beach in recent weeks, but the one he stumbled upon that windy morning was by far the biggest

Olive sea snakes are venomous but their fangs are small and at the back of their mouths

Once a big enough wave came in the snake swam through the shallow water back out into the Indian Ocean

'He was massive, he was a fatty!' he said.

Olive sea snakes are venomous but their fangs are small and at the back of their mouths.

They are also unlikely to attack humans unless provoked, as seen by the several minutes Mr McIntosh was able to spend close to it.

They are unlikely to attack humans unless provoked, as seen by the several minutes Mr McIntosh was able to spend close to it

They spend most of their time underwater but regularly appear on beaches
A 70-year-old man was punched in the eye and had a cup of steaming hot coffee poured over him after a dispute with two topless performers in Times Square.

Daniel Rodriguez was attacked after one of the nude women thought he was filming her while she was on a meal break.

The naked woman - whose modesty was protected only by stars and stripes painted on her chest - ran off after the incident but another performer Tarrah Merill, 18, was arrested at the scene after she got involved, according to the New York Daily News.

Scroll down for video

Semi-naked models, covered in body paint pose for tourists in Times Square in New York. Most are well behaved and follow the guidelines (file photo)

She has been charged with felony assault against a person 65 or older.

Mr Rodriguez, a retired plumber, said the incident on Saturday evening was the result of a huge misunderstanding.

'I was with my girlfriend,' he said. 'I was taking videos of sightseers and the colorful costumed characters. She thought I was taking video of her.'

The performers, known as desnudas - after the Spanish word for naked ladies - spend hours in Times Square seeking to elicit money from tourists.

Topless models, covered in body paint, ask for tips from tourists after they pose for pictures in the popular tourist area (file photo)

However there are are several restrictions on performers, introduced in June.

Performers are only allowed to ask for money in the eight blue-area designated activity zones and it is illegal for them to demand more money than is offered.

In July two Chilean tourists received cuts and bruises after being involved in a dispute with another desnuda in Times Square over the size of their tip.

The woman, covered in body paint, posed for photographs beside the two men, but was unhappy when she only received a $1 tip.

And in March a performer dressed as Spider-Man ended up brawling with a tourist from Virginia after a dispute over money.
A crew member has died and another four have been seriously injured after a lifeboat detached from the world's biggest cruise liner and plummeted 35 feet into the water below.

The Harmony of the Seas was docked in the French port of Marseille when the lifeboat, with five crew members on board, broke free from the vessel and fell during a safety drill.

All five men were rescued and given emergency treatment but one crew member, a 42-year-old man from the Philippines died.

Scroll down for video

The Harmony of the Seas pictured today docked in the port of Marseille in France. One man has died after a lifeboat detached from the cruise liner and plummeted into the water below

The lifeboat had five people on board when it broke free from the vessel and fell from the fifth deck during a safety drill. Pictured is the cruiser liner earlier today

Two of the four injured, who included three other Filipinos and an Indian, are said to be in life-threatening conditions in a nearby hospital.

The shock was so violent that one of the crew members died almost instantly from head injuries, said Marseilles deputy mayor Dominique Vlasto.

A spokesman for the local fire service in Marseille confirmed: ' One person is dead and four are injured, including two whose lives are in danger.

According to local news website 20Minutes.fr, the five men in the lifeboat were members of the ship's navigation crew.

Deputy mayor of the city of Marseille Julien Ruas said that the lifeboat fell around '10 metres' from the cruise liner.

The city's prosecutor Xavier Tarabeux added that a similar drill is carried out every week on the ship, which involves putting a lifeboat into the sea.

The vessel is on an eight day cruise around the Mediterranean having left Rome on September 8 and is currently in Marseille

He added that an investigation has been opened to find out why 'the cable or the fastenings' holding the lifeboat in place gave way.

The vessel is currently on an eight day cruise around the Mediterranean having left Rome on September 8.

It had already stopped in Naples, Barcelona and on the Spanish island of Majorca before arriving in Marseille earlier today.

The ship had been scheduled to set sail for Italy again this evening but the investigation into the lifeboat incident is expected to delay its departure until at least tomorrow.

The 227,000-tonne liner operated by Florida-based Royal Caribbean only just entered service in May.

Royal Caribbean said in a statement: 'We are keeping our colleagues and their families in our thoughts and prayers.

We are sorry to share the sad news that a crew member aboard Harmony of the Seas has died of injuries suffered during a lifeboat drill conducted while docked at the port of Marseilles.

Four other crew members received medical treatment in the same incident.'

Built in the STX boatyard in the French port of Saint-Nazaire, the Oasis-class liner, pictured today, has 16 decks and can carry more than 6,000 passengers and 2,400 crew

At 66 metres (217 feet), the vessel is the widest cruise ship ever built, while its 362-metre length makes it 50 metres longer than the height of the Eiffel Tower.

Built in the STX boatyard in the French port of Saint-Nazaire, the Oasis-class liner has 16 decks and can carry more than 6,000 passengers and 2,400 crew.

It has been dubbed a floating city as it boasts 20 restaurants, 23 swimming pools and almost 2,500 rooms.

Among the other onboard attractions are 'The Ultimate Abyss', a 10-storey slide from the top deck to the main deck which Royal Caribbean bills as the world's biggest ship-mounted waterslide.

A giant climbing wall, a rope slide, mini-golf, surf simulator, floating jacuzzis, casino and 1,400-seat theatre playing Broadway musicals are also on board.

The view from the top deck of the Harmony of the Seas vessel. It has 16 decks and can carry more than 6,000 passengers and 2,400 crew

The cruise liner has been dubbed a floating city as it boasts 20 restaurants, 23 swimming pools and almost 2,500 rooms

RCCL has already ordered another sister ship of the Harmony to join its fleet in 2018.

However, on the Harmony of the Seas inaugural voyage, it was branded a 'floating construction site' that put passengers at risk.

People on board for a trip from Southampton to Rotterdam and a subsequent sailing to Cherbourg complained contractors were still carrying out vital work on board.

Gaping holes were left in floors and walls, the hot water cut out, 90 per cent of children's rides were out of service and sleep was impossible in some rooms as drilling carried on through the night.

They also said the top deck of the vessel was littered with hazards including loose cables, blow torches, open paint tins and power tools.
As millions mourn the loss of Great British Bake Off from the BBC, there are two people who will be no doubt be rather happy with the new Channel 4 deal.

While the BBC licks their wounds after a remarkable coup by Channel 4, the true winners of the public tussle appear to be Richard McKerrow and Anna Beattie, the high-flying couple behind what has become one of the most popular shows in Britain.

The enterprising husband-and-wife duo - whose credits also include the controversial series Benefits Street - first came up with the genius Great British Bake Off format in 2006, years after they met on the cutting room of Grand Designs.

Scroll down for video

Richard McKerrow (left) and Anna Beattie (right), pictured at the Bafta awards in 2012, are the creative brains behind GBBO

The creators (right and fourth from right) are pictured with the presenters and experts including Mel Giedroyc, Paul Hollywood, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry at the 2013 Bafta awards

Lord Alan Sugar led the anger over the move, saying he felt sorry for BBC One after they invested years into making Bake Off popular

But it was another four years before the show - inspired by the typically-British village fetes which Anna so enjoys - was commissioned on the BBC.

Now, six years on, after the show's unprecedented ratings success, the couple are living with their three children in a 3.5m six-bed house in upmarket Clapham, south London, while their company has just secured a new GBBO deal for a reported 25m per year.

The eye-watering sum will see the baking show on television screens across the country for at least another three years, while ensuring 75m in revenue for the company, Love Productions.

And in a sign of how far the company has come, Love Productions last year sold a 70 per cent share to Sky for an undisclosed sum, with the broadcaster praising its 'proven track record of award-winning, ground-breaking programmes.'

Richard, an ex-journalist educated at prestigious Wellington College in Berkshire, began his career as a print journalist for the Nation magazine in New York, where he worked with Christopher Hitchens and interned alongside Ed Miliband.

He later returned to the UK to work on Yorkshire Television's First Tuesday strand before joining C4's education department, working his way to Deputy Commissioning Editor.

The couple live in a 3.5m house in Clapham, south London (pictured), with their three children

Among his roles, he worked on Gordon Ramsay's first TV project, Boiling Point and Nigel Slater's Real Food Show.

It was there, during production of the first episode of Grand Designs, that Richard met his future wife.

'I looked at it and said this is a piece of crap,' McKerrow told the Guardian. 'She said it's not very good at the moment, but it could be brilliant.

'I said, I'm glad it's your problem because I'm handing it over to you.'

The couple later left Channel 4 and went on to set up Love Productions.

The credits include Tower Block of Commons in 2010 - in which four MPs spent eight days and nights on a council estate - and The Baby Borrowers, which saw teenage couples look after babies under the watchful eye of their parents.

Fans of the show are now revolting against the 'greedy' bosses, criticising them for ditching the BBC for a 'a few extra quid'

Perhaps their most notorious production was Benefits Street, a fly-on-the-wall documentary filmed in Turner Street, Birmingham, which critics accused of 'demonising the poor'.

It was between those shows that the couple came up with the idea of GBBO.

Anna, who started out as a runner for the BBC, said she was inspired by the rural baking competition at a village fete and liked the idea that baking represented different areas of Britain.

Even after four years of noone biting at the idea, Anna still had faith in the concept.

'We just kept on with it because we knew it was a good idea,' she said.

'I loved that idea of village fetes and an old-fashioned baking competition with people who only wanted to bake a good cake. It was as simple as that.'

That faith has now transpired into a money-making machine for the couple.

Richard and Anna have already made hundreds of thousands from licensing the show - in conjunction with the BBC - to foreign production companies to make their own versions.

They have also pocketed huge sums from the 196 countries from Brazil to Thailand where the original is shown.

In 2014, thanks in large part to the Bake Off effect, Love Productions' annual revenues grew by a third, to 13 million. Industry insiders suggested their company was valued at around 35 million.

Although Sky secured a 70 per cent stake in the business in July that year for an unknown sum, Richard and Anna still own a 13.59 per cent stake each in the business, meaning they are likely to profit millions from the deal.

But fans of the show are now revolting against the 'greedy' bosses, criticising them for ditching the BBC for a 'a few extra quid'.

The growing backlash has been led with Lord Sugar, who said: 'I feel sorry for the BBC, they invested years in making Bake off popular and the greedy disloyal format owner has sold it to Ch4.'

Richard and Anna have already made hundreds of thousands from licensing the show - in conjunction with the BBC - to foreign production companies to make their own versions

He added: 'There's a fine balance in good business practice. Love productions have made a fatal error taking GBBO away from #BBC for few extra quid.'

Victoria said: 'Greedy greedy greedy Love Productions. No loyalty to the corporation that helped to develop the brand.'

Lisa Vernon said: 'Seems rather greedy wanting 25 million when offer 15 million to keep #GBBO shame on you ruining a British Favourite!'

They have also pocketed huge sums from the 196 countries from Brazil to Thailand where the original is shown

Jamie White said: 'So annoyed that greed and money has overtaken creativity, kindness and just producing an enjoyable programme #bakeoff #LoveProductions'.

Jemma said: 'Don't worry aunty Beeb. You're better off without those greedy losers.'

Love Productions are said to have wanted four times as much as the existing rights deal, apparently demanding around 25m for a three-year contract to the show and its spin-off, Extra Slice.

But, in a thinly-veiled attack on the company, the BBC said in a statement that it only had 'finite resources' and could not meet the financial expectation.

The deal with Channel 4 is said to be worth some 10m than the BBC reportedly offered.

'We made a very strong offer to keep the show but we are a considerable distance apart on the money. The BBC's resources are not infinite,' it said.

Love Productions, however, insisted the move had 'never been about who might write the biggest cheque'.

Insiders at Love Productions say they even rejected an offer from another, unnamed broadcaster and that creators were concerned about the future of the GBBO with the BBC, including the constraints on commercial opportunities.

Love Productions was also behind Benefits Street, which featured White Dee (pictured) and was filmed on Turner Street in Birmingham

According to the Guardian, Sky did not bid for the show, largely because the Bake Off creators were determined to keep it on free-to-air television.

Yesterday, Richard said they had found the 'perfect new home for Bake Off'.

'It's a public service, free-to-air broadcaster for whom Love Productions have produced high quality and highly successful programmes for more than a decade, he said.

'It's tremendously exciting to have found a broadcaster who we know will protect and nurture The Great British Bake Off for many years to come.'

But more than 3,000 people have already signed the online petition called 'Keep The Great British Bake Off on the BBC. Renegotiate the deal for Great British Bake Off to be on an alternative channel - this should not be about the best financial deal.'
home has views of the Harbour Bridge, two swimming pools,

Advertisement

Banking tycoon John Symond has put his Sydney mansion on the market and expects to fetch over $100million- making it the most expensive property to ever go on sale in Australia.

A representative for Symond, 69, confirmed the Point-Piper residence has been listed with Ken Jacobs, of Christie's International, and Bill Malouf, of LJ Hooker Double Bay, Domain reported.

Agents familiar with Sydney waterfront properties predict the ultra-lux home will sell for more than $100million.

Banking tycoon John Symond has put his Sydney mansion (pictured) on the market and expects to fetch over $100million- making it the most expensive property to ever go on sale in Australia

A representative for Symond, 69, (pictured) confirmed the Point-Piper residence has been listed with Ken Jacobs, of Christie's International, and Bill Malouf, of LJ Hooker Double Bay

Symond will finish his full-time role as executive chairman of Aussie Home Loans in mid-2017 and plans to spend more time overseas with his wife Amber McDonald (left)

Tim Allerton from City Public Relations told Domain: 'It is expected to set a new benchmark price for Sydney properties'.

The current housing record in Australia was set last year after James and Erica Packer sold their Vaucluse mansion for a whopping $70million.

Symond will finish his full-time role as executive chairman of Aussie Home Loans in mid-2017 and plans to spend more time overseas with his wife Amber McDonald.

Symond married McDonald, 44, in an ostentatious ceremony at the waterfront mansion in February.

A select smattering of Sydney luminaries made up the the 160 or so guests who scored an invite to the exclusive affair, with hotelier Justin Hemmes and his glamorous partner Kat Fowler among those spotted strolling into the celebration.

Symonds purchased the property as an empty patch of land in 1999 for $10.89million.

A select smattering of Sydney luminaries made up the the 160 or so guests who scored an invite to the Symond/McDonald wedding with hotelier Justin Hemmes (right) and his glamorous partner Kat Fowler (left) among those spotted strolling into the celebration

The entertaining area on the lower level of the home has space for up to 400 people. The property also features two swimming pools, a gym, library and 24 bathrooms

The 2700-square-metre block is the largest waterfront property on Point Piper's prestigious foreshore- with uninterrupted views of the Harbour Bridge.

The entertaining area on the lower level of the home has space for up to 400 people. The property also features two swimming pools, a gym, library and 24 bathrooms.

The new owner's neighbours will include Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Westfield's co-founder Frank Lowy and Channel Seven's commercial director Bruce McWilliam.

Some of Australia's most well-known businessmen and women celebrated John Symond and Amber McDonald's wedding at the property in February
A pet dog has become popular on social media after its owner shaved a chequered pattern into its fur.

Some people suggested that the pattern looks similar to the iconic design used by luxury brand Louis Vuitton.

The canine and its owner are believed to live in Taiwan.

Unusual: A pet dog in Taiwan has sent the internet into a frenzy for its chequered coat

Three pictures of the dog and a video were posted to Taiwanese Facebook group, 'Baoliao Commune'.

They were first uploaded by a user named 'Tsunami Hung Yen' and were then re-shared by the group's editor to its fan page.

The post said that the dog belong to a middle-aged man who runs a breakfast stall.

Part of the post read: 'He should shave his dog like this. [He is] seriously skillful and is a master.'

The post also claimed the dog's coat had not been dyed and its fur remained its original colour.

Facebook users were quick to point out that the dog's new coat resembles a classic pattern used by French brand Louis Vuitton on its luxury products.

One user, named 'He Yijie', wrote under the post: 'Is this dog made by Louis Vuitton?'

While 'Lan Whiney' said: 'This is the LV in the dog's world.'

User 'Chen Mimi' commented: 'What an expensive dog!'

A moderator from 'Baoliao Commune' joked: '[The dog is] a limited edition. Not for sale.'

Look-alikes? People said the pattern looks similar to the iconic design from Louis Vuitton (left)

People have also suggested the fur looked like a chess board, Scottish tartan and floor tiles

Other people praised the owner's trimming skills. One such user, 'Wu Xiaoya', said: 'The owner should open a store to trim fur for pets.'

Besides the Louis Vuitton pattern, people have also suggested that the dog's fur looks like a chess board, Scottish tartan and floor tiles.

However, some users have voiced their concerns.

User 'Li Dayi' commented: 'Have you thought about the dog's feelings? No, you only thought about yourself.'

'He Yiying' posted: 'Would the owner accept it if he were shaved like this?'

Animal rights group PETA told MailOnline that they oppose to the idea of shaving patterns into a dog's fur.

The group's UK director Elisa Allen said: 'Itmay seem harmless, but it says that human vanity has been allowed to reduce an intelligent living being to a plaything and object of fun and folly. '

Ms Allen also said that dogs are often nervous about being groomed and would likely find it uncomfortable to stand still for the time it would take to create a design like this.

She added: 'Not to mention that if this poor dog did flinch or wriggle, he or she could have been painfully gashed by the clippers.'

Different bizarre pet grooming trends have been observed in Asia. Last year, many dog owners in Japan and Taiwan shaved their dogs into cubes.
Lawsuit claimed he then 'unlawfully retaliated' and 'sabotaged her career'

Former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, an alumnus of Ohio University, will be handed back his reported $500,000 donation after sexual harassment claims emerged

The name of former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes has been removed from a newsroom at Ohio University and a $500,000 gift to the school will be returned as a result of the sexual harassment allegations against him.

Fox News last week settled a sexual harassment lawsuit by former news host Gretchen Carlson against cable channel boss Ailes for a reported $20million, and apologized for her treatment on the job.

More than 20 women also reportedly spoke with the lawyers about inappropriate behavior by Ailes, and an unknown number retained legal counsel.

University President Roderick McDavis said in a statement yesterday that, given the allegations against Ailes and the circumstances surrounding his departure from Fox News, the appropriate action is to return his gift to the school and remove his name from the newsroom of the university's television station,WOUB.

Ailes graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he majored in radio and television, with a bachelor's degree in 1962.

He reportedly donated $500,000 to the university in 2007 and more than $200,000 of that sum was used to help renovate the WOUB workspace, a journalism classroom and a computer lab adjacent to the newsroom, the WOUB website says.

Officials announced the name of Roger Ailes would be removed from a newsroom at Ohio University as a result of the sexual harassment allegations against him

By Monday evening the sign had been covered up, pictures from the university's news station WOUB show

McDavis says he consulted with the dean of the university and senior leadership before making his decision. He says he believes that the actions are appropriate and in alignment with the school community's principled beliefs.

The Roger Ailes placard and his name were removed from the wall of the newsroom on Monday night.

Professor Mary Rogus, who teaches in the classroom next to the newsroom, told WOUB if the sign hadn't been removed she doesn't know how she would have 'taught in that space another day'.

A statement on the settlement offered to Carlson gave no details of the payout, but Vanity Fair said Fox would pay the multi-million dollar sum to the journalist and former Miss America.

The statement by 21st Century Fox said, 'We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve.'

Ailes graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, with a bachelor's degree in 1962

The New York Times also reported the $20million figure and said Fox was in settlement talks with other women who had come forward with harassment claims after Carlson's lawsuit.

Ailes has denied the allegations against him. The lawsuit led to his resignation.

In the statement, Carlson said she was 'gratified' with the settlement and added, 'I'm ready to move on to the next chapter of my life in which I will redouble my efforts to empower women in the workplace.'

Ailes, 76, had denied allegations that he had sought to pressure Carlson into a sexual relationship, but the lawsuit led to reports of other women coming forward to support Carlson's allegations of a hostile work environment.

Carlson, a top Fox personality and a confidante of media magnate Rupert Murdoch who helped build Fox into a leader in cable news, had been with the network for more than a decade.

Fox News last week settled a sexual harassment lawsuit by former news host Gretchen Carlson (pictured)

Carlson (seen here with Ailes) was handed a settlement of $20 million, and Fox News apologized for her treatment on the job

According to the lawsuit, Ailes 'unlawfully retaliated against Carlson and sabotaged her career because she refused his sexual advances and complained about severe and pervasive sexual harassment.'

Ailes fired Carlson, the complaint said, on June 23 after 'ostracizing, marginalizing and shunning her' and making it clear that 'these 'problems' would not have existed, and could be solved if she had a sexual relationship with him.'

The lawsuit sparked turmoil at Fox, built by Ailes and Murdoch two decades ago into the leading cable news channel.

Under Ailes, Fox became home to key conservative political commentators, drawing an audience distinct from rivals CNN and MSNBC.

Ailes, a former consultant to Republican presidents as far back as Richard Nixon, has reportedly been an informal adviser to the party's current nominee Donald Trump.

Former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros (pictured) also sued the network, its ousted chairman Roger Ailes and other top executives over sexual harassment claims

Murdoch assumed interim control at Fox News Channel after Ailes stepped down in July.

However, Murdoch's sons had been taking a larger role in operations since the 85-year-old tycoon announced he was gradually easing control of his corporate empire, which includes 21st Century Fox and the global publishing group News Corp.

One of the women who has come forward with claims against Ailes is former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros.

However, Fox News claims she is not a 'victim' but 'an opportunist', in its response to the sexual-harassment lawsuit she filed in August.

In that response, the network is calling for an arbitration which it says is in accordance with her employment agreement.
Carrie Tolstedt is the Wells Fargo executive who presided over a titanic, multi-year fraud through which at least 5,300 of the employees who reported to her opened up fake accounts in Wells' customers' names, racking up fees and fines, trashing the customers' credit ratings, and, incidentally, pulling in record revenues for Tolstedt's department, which Wells' management recognized by giving her a $125M parting gift when she left the company at the end of July, just weeks before the scandal broke.



Wells Fargo has a policy through which bonuses can be clawed back if it's later determined that their beneficiaries participated in illegal or unethical conduct.

Wells Fargo will not invoke that policy in Ms Tolstedt's case, possibly because she has $125M with which to hire lawyers to fight such an action.

In related news, Wells Fargo has announced that it is killing its policy of paying bonuses to employees for meeting sales targets.



As we said in our initial post, it's disturbing that regulators failed to target individuals, particularly for such a crass, systematic, and large scale fraud, and to add insult to injury, demanded a paltry fine. They apparently fell for the excuse that the damage per customer was $25, mere chicken feed. But the cost to them in terms of hassle, and most of all, credit score damage, which is a serious black mark for job-seekers and anyone looking for a mortgage or other loan, means the monetary losses are a poor measure of actual harm. So I hope readers whose Senators are on the banking committee will e-mail or call them and tell them they need to ask the bank regulators why they are punishing bank shareholders rather than the real perps, the executives who tolerated or encouraged this fraud. But it is also telling that this case has elicited so much interest because the victims were clean. Other types of bank fraud, which have typically resulted in far more damage to the victims, such as foreclosure abuses, payday loans, debt collection cons, have stirred proportionally less outrage.because the target was typically a borrower and could be depicted as complicit in his sorry state by the mere fact of taking a loan. In German, the word for debt, schuld, also is the word for sin. Americans similarly harbor a dim view of individual borrowers, even as it becomes almost impossible to attain a bourgeois adult life of getting a college degree, buying a house, and having a car without being in debt. So while we can hope that the Wells abuse will finally break the logjam and lead to punishment of senior executives, even then it's more likely to be an isolated case than a start of a trend.

Wells Fargo Exec Who Oversaw Fake Accounts Received $125 Million Upon Recent Retirement, Praise from CEO; Senate Hearings Next Week [Yves Smith/Naked Capitalism]





(Image: Scarlet/University of Nebraska  Lincoln)
An Australian man accused of molesting at least 11 underage girls in Bali should spend 16 years behind bars, Indonesian prosecutors say.

Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis, 69, from Beechworth north-east of Victoria faced Denpasar District Court for the alleged sexual abused of girls between eight and 17 years at his boarding house in Bali between 2014 and 2015.

Ellis is accused of luring the girls to his home to bath them with the promise of money and gifts, reported Perth Now.

Indonesian prosecutors have requested Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis be sentenced to 16 years in prison for child sex offences

Five of the girls have testified to being sexually abused whereas the rest have spoken about being bathed by Ellis.

Five of the victims testified to being sexually abused and the others told of being bathed by Ellis at his home.

Prosecutor Anak Agung Alit Suastika said on Tuesday that Ellis should be sentenced to 16 years in jail.

'The defendant's acts lowered the dignity of children, damaged Indonesian children's futures, the victims were many, 11 children, and the defendant should protect children,' Ms Suastika submitted.

'We demand the panel of Judges of the Denpasar District Court to examine and declare that the defendant Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis is proven guilty of committing a crime, sexual assault to children repeatedly violating  child protection law of the criminal code.'

A child protection advocate also told the court that a 16 year sentence is not sufficient and should be longer.

Ellis allegedly sexual abused 11 girls between eight and 17 years at his boarding house in Bali between 2014 and 2015

In one instance, prosecutors say Ellis washed three girls at once and then took them to a mall and bought them clothes.

'After that, the defendant took the three girls home to where they were staying and the defendant gave them each 200,000 rupiah (about $A20),' the indictment given to Denpasar District Court stated.

Speaking after earlier proceedings, Ellis's lawyer Benny Hariyono said they did not challenge the indictment as many of the instances had already been confirmed by his client.

Ellis does, however, dispute touching their genitals, Mr Hariyono added.

'Robert never ordered them. He only said that if they wanted to go for a walk, they must take a bath first and after that, they were given a push bike,' the lawyer told reporters outside court.

Last month Ellis, in a letter for the court, said his personality has been mischaracterised and as a man with no previous criminal record he does not desrve to be sentenced to jail.

'He is kind and gentle, righteous and just. Ask anyone who knows him, especially the girls that he's been involved with,' Ellis said in reference to himself in third person.
The British man who grabbed a police officer's gun at a Donald Trump rally has pleaded guilty to federal charges that could see him jailed for two years in the US.

Michael Steven Sandford pleaded guilty to being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and disrupting an official function, which could have carried a 20-year sentence if he was convicted at trial.

'I tried to take a gun from a policeman to shoot someone with, and I'm pleading guilty,' Sandford told the judge at the US District Court in Las Vegas.

Scroll down for video

Michael Steven Sandford, who grabbed a police officer's gun at a Donald Trump rally, has pleaded guilty to federal charges that could see him jailed for two years in the US

Sandford, 20, was arrested on June 18 after grabbing for the gun in a 1.500-seat venue at Treasure Island hotel-casino, Las Vegas. He did not get the gun, and no shots were fired before he was arrested.

Sanford entered his pleas after his mother, Lynne Sandford, and a lawyer arrived from London and met with him in custody last week.

Sentencing guidelines call for 18 to 27 months in prison for the offenses, after credit for time served, accepting responsibility for the crime and avoiding trial, which had been set to start October 3. Under the plea deal, Sandford won't be able to appeal.

Family attorney Saimo Chahal said a psychiatrist she enlisted to review the case determined that Sandford was delusional at the time of the attempted attack.

Sandford also suffers seizures, obsession-compulsion, anxiety and autism spectrum disorders, Chahal said.

He added: 'Michael was not in control at the time of the events and needs help. He is desperate to return to the UK to be near his family as he has no ties with the USA.'

Sandford, 20, was arrested on June 18 after grabbing for the gun in a 1.500-seat venue at Treasure Island hotel-casino, Las Vegas (pictured)

His mother, 42. said: 'I gathered it was a formality, because he did indeed sign the plea agreement whilst I was out there.

'So I was advised it would go to court so that the judge could accept it, but that it would be very rare if he didn't.'

She said her son had been 'pondering' over signing a plea agreement for some time.

'The upshot of it is that there is no certainty. Even though he has signed the plea agreement, which should be the best option, it won't necessarily happen that way,' she added.

'The judge at sentencing can either agree with what is in the plea bargain or he can totally overthrow that and impose a punishment of his own.'

Sandford later told a federal agent that he drove from California to Las Vegas with a plan to kill Trump (pictured)

Court documents say Sandford acknowledged asking the police officer at the event if he could get Trump's autograph then lungin for the officer's 9mm handgun with both hands.

It wasn't clear if Trump recognized a threat before officers escorted Sandford out of the auditorium.

Sandford later told a federal agent that he drove from California to Las Vegas with a plan to kill Trump, and that he rented a 9mm pistol and fired 20 shots at a paper target at a Las Vegas gun range the day before, according to court documents.

Sandford told the agent it was the first time he had ever fired a gun.

He also said he expected he would be killed during the assassination attempt, but that if he wasn't, he would make another attempt on Trump's life at a rally in Phoenix, court documents state.

The plea agreement acknowledges Sandford had been in the US illegally for almost 10 months at the time of his arrest.
Police say a 66-year-old drunk driver stopped to get food from Taco Bell immediately after running down and killing a pedestrian, then told officers he thought he'd hit a cardboard box.

Robert Loranger supposedly used the drive-thru of the fast-food restaurant in Springfield, Massachusetts, minutes after he allegedly killed Harry Fernandez, 51, on Friday night.

Loranger ordered a meal, even though this white Cadillac had a smashed windshield covered in blood, and then drove home.

An hour later, cops arrested him, found crack cocaine in his car and when they told him he had fatally knocked down Fernandez, he asked officers: 'Why wasn't I told this?'

Scroll down for video

Police say 66-year-old Robert Loranger stopped to get food from Taco Bell immediately after running down and killing a pedestrian in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is seen being taken to hospital for tests following his arrest

He was arrested when police tracked him down around an hour after the fatal collision. Police then say his blood-alcohol was over the legal limit

Courtesy WWLP

First responders found Fernandez lying in the middle of the road with critical injuries. He was taken to hospital but died a short time later.

Loranger has pleaded not guilty to vehicular manslaughter. Cops also say they found crack cocaine in his car and when they told him he had fatally knocked down Fernandez, he asked officers: 'Why wasn't I told this?'

Loranger's blood-alcohol level was measured at 0.136 percent, well over the 0.08 percent limit for driving, according to The Republican newspaper.

He told officers the damage to his vehicle had been caused by items falling from a box truck.

Loranger was taken to hospital with injuries he sustained during the crash, WWLP reported.

While he was being treated, he allegedly gave long and rambling answers to officers.

He then fell asleep during the interview, a report suggests.

Loranger pleaded not guilty Monday to motor vehicle homicide while under the influence of alcohol, leaving the scene of a personal injury accident and other charges.

Police say Loranger told officers he thought he struck a cardboard box in Springfield on Friday.

Loranger was arrested after police found hair, blood and body tissue embedded in the windshield of his Cadillac.

Surveillance video shows the car pull into the drive-thru lane of a nearby Taco Bell restaurant shortly after the collision.

First responders found Fernandez lying in the middle of the road with critical injuries. His sneakers and rucksack were nearby (pictured)
A six-year-old boy has been burned after a Samsung phone 'exploded' in his hands.

Kadim, from Brooklyn, New York, was at home with his mother, Marsha Lewis, when the Samsung Galaxy Core he was playing with burst into flames.

'First, the phone caught on fire, then the battery exploded so he threw it on the floor and it was like fireworks in the house,' Lewis told ABC7.

Scroll down for video

Kadim (pictured), a six-year-old boy from Brooklyn, has been burned after a Samsung phone he was playing with exploded in his hands

The young boy was seen with a bandage across the back of his hands where he was burnt by the exploding phone

'I was sitting there watching everything while it happened, we all were nervous.'

Kadim was seen with a bandage across his hand on Monday.

His grandfather, John Lewis, told NBC4 the entire room filled with smoke when the phone exploded.

He also said his young grandson is now terrified to go near or even see a cellphone.

Samsung released a statement saying it had contacted the Lewis family about the incident, and was added the case is being 'looked into'.

Marsha Lewis (pictured), Kadim's mother, said the phone and the battery caught fire in her son's hands

'First, the phone caught on fire, then the battery exploded so he threw it on the floor and it was like fireworks in the house,' Lewis said

The scary incident comes after the tech company warned all users of its Samsung Galaxy Note 7 to stop using the smartphones because of the threat of a battery fire.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission said last week in a statement it was working with Samsung to announce an official recall of the devices as soon as possible.

The agency also said it is working quickly to determine whether a replacement Galaxy Note 7 is an acceptable remedy for Samsung or their phone carriers to provide to consumers.

John Lewis (pictured), Kadim's grandfather, said smoke from the phone filled an entire room in the Brooklyn house

The Samsung Galaxy Core (pictured), which Kadim was using when he was injured, is different to the Galaxy Note 7 that has been recalled by the tech company

'Lithium-ion batteries pack a lot of power into a small package,' it said.

'When these batteries overheat and burst, the results can be serious.

'This is why the U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is urging all consumers who own a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 to power them down and stop charging or using the device.'

Samsung said earlier this month it had stopped selling the Note7, and would replace models consumers had already purchased.

The Federal Aviation Administration also took the extraordinary step of warning passengers not to turn in or charge new-model Samsung smartphones during flights or put in their checked bags.
Police are hunting Andres Rafael Quintana Garcia (pictured) for allegedly stabbing two young relatives, killing a 10-year-old and wounding a 13-year-old boy

Police are on the hunt for a teenager in Maryland who allegedly stabbed two relatives Monday, killing a 10-year-old girl and wounding a 13-year-old boy.

Investigators said the children were at home, without their parents, when an argument with the suspect turned violent, CBS Baltimore reported.

Cops say that 18-year-old Andres Rafael Quintana Garcia pulled a knife and stabbed two family members, ages 10 and 13.

Neighbors heard screaming and doors slamming.

'My first instinct was that it was two kids playing, and then something kept telling me that this sounded more stressful,' neighbor Rhonda Hill told CBS.

Scroll down for video

Cops say 18-year-old Andres Rafael Quintana Garcia pulled a knife and stabbed two family members, ages 10 and 13, at their home in Maryland (pictured)

First responders found the victims about 7:42pm at the home on the 6400 block of Roots Drive in Glen Burnie.

Both victims, who are not identified because they are minors, were treated at the scene and rushed to nearby hospitals.

The 10-year-old girl succumbed to her injuries at Baltimore Washington Medical Center.

The boy, 13, was listed with non-life threatening injuries at Johns Hopkins Pediatric Hospital.

Law-enforcement officials are now hunting Garcia, who is identified as a family member.

'This appears, upon investigation, that this was a family dispute that quickly escalated and unfortunately turned tragic,' said Lt. Ryan Frashure, a police spokesman, to WTOP.

Garcia is charged with murder, assault and reckless endangerment.
Mafia mobsters are following the example of ISIS by growing long beards and creating a 'cult of death', an Italian judge has revealed.

Although gangsters show no interest in converting to Islam, they view ISIS and Taliban terrorists as 'role models', and emulate their disregard for life, according to Naples judge Nicola Quatrano.

He said mobsters and terrorists are both obsessed with death, and said there is an 'existential thread' linking them, after sentencing 43 members of the Camorra crime syndicate.

Italian gangsters are trying to emulate Taliban and ISIS militants, even growing long beards to look like them, a judge in Naples has revealed

And the judge warned that younger gangsters flirt with death to give meaning to their lives, The Telegraph reports.

He said: 'An existential thread links the young men who course through the streets of Naples with guns, and jihadi militants.

'Both groups are obsessed with death. Maybe they are in love with the idea, they are seeking it out, almost as if it is the only way of giving meaning to their lives.'

Italian police investigating a shooting linked to Camorra - a judge has said gangsters are using Islamist terrorist groups as role models

One group is referring to itself as the 'Barbuti' - meaning the bearded ones.

In court documents Mr Quatrano said Camorra gang members are basing their 'role models and modes of behaviour' on Islamic terrorists, and added: 'Some have grown bushy beards in the Taliban style.'

One example was Camorra gangster Emanuele Sibillo, who grew a long beard similar to jihadist fighters.

He died in a shooting last summer at the age of 19.

Citizens standing up to the Camorra in Naples, which Vincenzo Morgese, who works with young offenders in Naples, said 'is a symbol of the fight against the state'

The judge said Sibillo is now regarded as a 'hero' and 'venerated almost like San Gennaro (the patron saint of Naples'.

Vincenzo Morgese, who works with Neapolitan young offenders stated: 'In their imagination, Islamic State represents ferocity and a lack of fear.
Australians could be blocked from buying their favourite brands in a government plan to punish online retailers that don't collect GST.

New tax regulations require overseas businesses with an Australian sales of $75,000 or more to register with the ATO and collect GST on all goods, including those priced under $1,000 that were previously exempt, from July 2017.

An anonymous Treasury Department official told consumer advocacy group Choice that sites that do not comply could be blocked under the Telecommunications Act.

Australians could be blocked from buying their favourite brands in a plan by Scott Morrison's Treasury Department to punish online retailers that don't collect GST

Blocking sites would be a 'last resort' if the retailer refused to follow the law and if efforts to force them using treaty arrangements and international law fail.

A 'loophole' in the Act gives the government the power to block websites that breach Australian law, including for the protection of public revenue.

Big retailers like Amazon were expected to fall in line but Choice feared smaller sites could be caught out because of the cost and effort of compliance.

New tax regulations require overseas businesses with an Australian sales of $75,000 or more to register with the ATO and collect GST on all goods

It gave the examples of niche cosmetics brands like Charlotte Tilbury or Glossier, and non-standard sized clothing brands like Long Tall Sally and Pink Clove.

'If the Federal Government is going to start blocking these websites, it will disadvantage local consumers while providing absolutely no economic benefit to Australia,' Choice spokesman Tom Godfrey said.

'These products are not available in Australian stores. If the websites that supply them are blocked, consumers will lose out.'

A 'loophole' in the Act gives the government the power to block websites that breach Australian law, including for the protection of public revenue

Mr Godfrey said overseas retailers had no obligation to follow Australian tax laws and blocking them could get messy quickly.

He referred to when ASIC tried to block a handful of websites in 2014, and accidentally took down more than 250,000.

The changes were prompted by Australian stores blaming sluggish sales on overseas competitors having an unfair price advantage on goods priced below $1,000.

Big retailers were expected to fall in line but Choice feared smaller sites, like Charlotte Tilbury (website pictured) could be caught out because of the cost and effort of compliance

Treasury claimed the measure would bring in $300 million in GST revenue over the forward estimates period, not accounting for collection expenses.

But Choice argued Treasury had not released any modelling on the impacts of this new system, nor revealed how it would hit consumers.

It pointed to multiple government agency reports recommending no changes to the tax threshold and warning compliance costs would be passed on to the consumer.

Non-standard sized clothing brands like Long Tall Sally and Pink Clove could also be hit

An October 2014 research paper warned: 'A key issue is the administrative cost or burden involved in any additional processing if the low-value threshold were lowered.'

'This could be transferred to consumers through processing fees and charges.'

The Centre for International Economics, also said consumers are likely to face significant detriment in its report on the tax changes.

'Higher priced imports will adversely impact consumers,' it wrote, adding the regulatory burden on overseas retailers may cause them to exit the Australian marketplace, 'thereby further limiting competition and consumer choice'.
Joshua Guzman, left, was shot dead Sunday night or early Monday morning. His father, Raul (right), found out about his son's death when he called the teen's phone on Monday and a cop answered

A Long Island father learned his 15-year-old son had been killed after he called the teen's cellphone and a police detective answered, and the boy's mother learned of his death while she was hospitalized.

Raul Guzman, of Hempstead Village, tells Newsday he called their son, Joshua, on Monday to make sure the high school sophomore was in school.

But a police detective answered the phone and informed Mr Guzman that his son had been fatally shot overnight.

He was found lying in a street gutter. Guzman says Joshua must have gone out while he was asleep. Guzman says he'd told his son not to leave the house and the teen said he wouldn't.

Police continue to hunt for the person or persons responsible.

The boy's mother was being treated for a broken back from a car crash about a week ago.

Mr Guzman says his son must have sneaked out of the house before he was killed. He says he told him not to leave

Above, a makeshift memorial near the scene where the 15-year-old high school sophomore was killed this week

Less than 24 hours later, another young man was shot about a mile away.

Monday evening, around 10:15pm, a 20-year-old man was found suffering a gunshot wound to the forehead.

He is currently in a stable condition at the hospital and police are searching for a suspect in that case as well.

The block where Guzman was shot has been the site of two other shootings in the past few months.
Heartwarming video shows the moment two Chinese pre-schoolers reunited in America after being adopted by families near Dallas, Texas.

Last year, Andy and Sharon Sykes of Plano, Texas adopted a little girl named Hannah from a orphanage in Changsha, China.

While going through the adoption process, the couple received pictures of their growing daughter at the orphanage, and standing next to her in almost every photo was her best friend Dawson.

Scroll down for video

Four-year-old Hannah and three-year-old Dawson reunited at the Dallas-Forth Worth Airport last week after 11 months apart

Hannah and Dawson lived together at the same orphanage in China. Hannah was adopted to a Texas family last year, and a family nearby just finalized their adoption of Dawson

The couple were saddened by the fact that they had to split up the two best friends, so they posted pictures of the little boy on Facebook in hopes of finding him a family nearby in Texas.

That plan worked and just last week, Christopher and Amy Clary of Lewisville brought the newest addition to their family home.

The Sykes met the Clarys at Dallas Fort-Worth International Airport and filmed an adorable video of Hannah, now four, and Dawson, age three, reuniting after 11 months apart.

In the clip, the two buddies embrace and twirl around while Hannah smiles and exclaims in disbelief.

Hannah and Dawson were best friends at their orphanage in Changsha, China. When Hannah's parents flew to China, they decided they would try and find a family nearby to adopt Dawson

Pictured above are Christoper and Amy Clary (left and center left), who adopted Dawson. Sharon (center right) and Christopher Sykes (right) adopted Hannah last year

'They must have hugged 400 times. They kept hugging and getting so giddy that they would fall over,' Mrs Clary told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth.

'That went on for like 20 minutes,' added Mrs Sykes.

Hannah and Dawson had been at the orphanage since they were just months old. Hannah was abandoned because of her cleft lip while Dawson's parents couldn't take care of him because he has a condition that causes fluid in his brain.

The two grew close because they shared the same 'weekend momma,' a foster mother who cared for the children during the weekend.

Hannah and Dawson now live just five minutes apart from each other in north Dallas, Texas. Above, a photo of the two at their former orphanage in Changsha, China

Hannah and Dawson were abandoned by their families when they were just months old. Hannah was abandoned because of her cleft lip while Dawson suffers from a condition that causes fluid on this brain

Hannah and Dawson hold hands at Hannah's birthday party at the orphanage

'They had so little connection, and so little consistency, [but] they had each other for those first formative years,' Mrs Sykes explained.

The Sykes knew about Hannah's little buddy when they were going through the adoption process, since he was with Hannah in almost every picture they received.

It was when they finally visited Hannah in China though that they felt the need to find Dawson a home too. So they posted pictures of Dawson on Facebook in hopes that someone in their community would adopt him.

'When we toured the orphanage and I saw their response to each other, I thought, "Oh my gosh. We can't leave this boy in China,"' Mrs Sykes told Fox 4 Dallas.

The Clarys learned about Dawson while meeting with a mutual friend at Chik-fil-A. The friend showed Mrs Clary the Facebook post and she was immediately ready to adopt.

Hannah poses for a picture with her parents and brothers Cooper (in blue) and Mack (in green) at the airport after arriving in the U.S. last year

Dawson (second right) now has a brother and two sisters to keep him company, in addition to Hannah who lives just five minutes away

Her husband joked that he left for just a few minutes, and returned to find that his wife's mind was already made up.

'I was gone for 45 seconds, maybe it was two minutes, and then [she] said, Were adopting this little boy. I just said okay,"' Mr Clary said.

Both Hannah and Dawson are now part of large families. Dawson has a one-year-old and four-year-old sister and a two-year-old brother, while Hannah has two brothers close in age.
A mother-of-two from Massachusetts has pleaded guilty to raping two twin brothers, including her daughter's 15-year-old boyfriend.

Heather Salines, 40, was sentenced to four years in prison and three years' probation Monday after she entered guilty pleas to two counts of child rape, two counts of child enticement, two counts of dissemination of obscene matter to a minor and one count of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14.

As part of the punishment phase, the Saugus woman was prohibited from having unsupervised contact with children under 16, and upon her release from prison she will be required to register as a sex offender and wear a GPS ankle monitor.

Scroll down for video

Child rapist: Heather Salines, 40 (left and right), appeared in Massachusetts court Monday to plead guilty to child rape charges involving twin brothers

Salines, seen here being cuffed in court, was sentenced to four years in prison for having sex with the teenage siblings in 2014

During the hearing in Essex Superior Court in Salem, Distract Attorney Jonathan Blodgett called Salines' actions towards the two victims 'beyond despicable' and condemned her for taking advantage of her position as a trusted adult and betraying that trust 'in a most vile way,' reported the Boston Herald.

Salines was arrested in March 2014 when officials at Belmonte Middle School in Saugus discovered that her daughter's then-15-year-old boyfriend had been showing nude pictures of the woman to classmates.

The boy told police he had previously had sex with Salines and they had exchanged naked photos.

She was later questioned by authorities and admitted that they had sexual encounters on a number of occasions.

Salines has a son and daughter, and she was married at the time of the incidents. She and her husband have since divorced.

Salines said she had met the boy two months before they became intimate, and he had told her about the personal turmoil he went through after 'he lost his mother at a young age'.

'When I looked at him, he did not act like a 15-year-old... he acted like a grown man,' she said, telling police things 'spiraled out of control' and she 'lost herself.

They first had sex in a car in the parking lot of a Saugus-area park on March 17. Two days later, Salines said the teen booked a room at the local DoubleTree hotel, because there was always the threat that her daughter could walk in on them when they were at the house.

Caught: Above, the middle school in Saugus, Massachusetts where Salines was confronted by police trying to meet one of the boys in 2014

Confession: Salines told police that 'things spiraled out of control' and she 'lost herself' in the torrid affair with one of the teens

Salines was getting ready to accept a plea deal in June 2015 when the victim's twin brother came forward also accusing her of rape.

According to court papers, Salines raped the second boy at her home in February 2014, about a month before the initial alleged incident. Prosecutors said Salines sent the boy explicit pictures of herself.

When she was arrested last year for raping the first brother, prosecutors said the teen was 'vulnerable' because his mother had recently died and he grew to see Salines as a 'mother figure'.

'Betrayed trust': A prosecutor called Salines' actions towards the boys 'beyond despicable' and blasted her for taking advantage of her position as a figure of authority

Salines allegedly accosted the boy, then 14 years old, in a bathroom while he was a guest in her home. Prosecutors said she called him to her bedroom, took off her bra, and began to kiss and fondle him. She then allegedly asked several times to perform oral sex on him.

She later began sending the teen text messages, including a photo in which she posed with his name scrawled on parts of her body.

A month later, officials say Salines moved on to the teens brother, who had just turned 15, and began sending him nude photos, including a selfie with his name written on her body.

The two had oral sex and intercourse on two separate occasions, including once at the DoubleTree hotel, where the victim and Salines took a selfie while lying in bed together, according to a report in the Eagle Tribune. That image would eventually end up in the hands of officials at Belmonte Middle School and lead to the womans arrest.

In a victim impact statement that was read to the court by a prosecutor Monday, the second brother, who had been the on-again, off-again boyfriend of the womans daughter, said he suffered severe depression and had suicidal thoughts as a result of his illicit tryst with Salines, reported the station NECN.

'Feels terrible': Salines' attorney described the plea deal as 'the best possible solution' and said the woman 'feels terrible' about what happened

Relationships with people in my life were ruined and many thought I was in the wrong and treated me like the situation was my fault and I was disgusting, he wrote. I spent a lot of nights crying and thought I was worthless.

There were times I convinced myself I shouldnt be in this world and thought about killing myself. I felt like a train was going through my chest.
The alleged bikie recorded partying with Jarryd Hayne considers the NRL player a 'mate', despite the sportsman saying he'd only just met the other man.

Jarryd Hayne's manager has denied his star client gave $5000 cash to alleged Hell's Angel member Chris Bloomfield while he partied on the Gold Coast last week.

But Bloomfield's lawyer, Adam Magill, said they were 'well-known' to each other before the weekend, according to the Brisbane Times.

Jarryd Hayne (left) pictured in a Snapchat video with alleged bikie Chris Bloomfield (right)

Bloomfield alleged that Hayne gave him $5000 in the snapchat video

Hayne's manager Wayne Beavis said his client didnt know who Bloomfield - a former Gold Coast Titans under-20s player - was.

He said they met a night out after Friday night's loss to the Brisbane Broncos.

The NRL integrity unit is now investigating a SnapChat video of which shows Hayne driving with Bloomfield.

'Haynsey just gave me five grand,' the alleged bikie says, grinning to the camera while holding up a giant wad of cash.

Hayne responds by shrugging his shoulders and saying: 'Cash money fam, cash money. Give me a f ... ing cigarette.'

But Hayne's manager Wayne Beavis has denied the star fullback gave any money to Bloomfield or even knew who he was.

Alleged Hells Angels bikie Chris Bloomfield has posted a video of rugby league player Jarryd Hayne handing him $5,000 in cash while partying on the Gold Coast on Friday

'He was star struck. I've spoken to Jarryd and he said: "It was just beers with the boys",' Beavis told News Corp.

'The money's not his, he would never be walking around with five grand in his pocket.'

However, Mr Magill says the money was Hayne's.

Hayne's manager Wayne Beavis said his star client didn't give alleged bikie Chris Bloomfield $5000 or even know him

Mr Beavis' comments were backed by Titans ambassador Gorden Tallis, who said he believed Hayne had been put in the situation without realising.

'The bloke had the money in his pocket or something like that ... and then basically it just happened,' he told Triple M Brisbane.

'Basically he just rapped a song as every rapper in the world raps around money, women and alcohol.'

The snapchat video was sent to Bloomfield's close friends.

Hayne, who recently signed a two-season multimillion dollar deal with the Titans, is then seen singing in the backseat of a car, which looks like it is being driven by Bloomfield.

'Tear this mother f***ing roof off like two dogs caged,' Hayne yells to the camera.

Bloomfield records him again later on in the night dancing at another home with the caption: 'Hayne plane in full flight.'

The videos were recorded between 10.30pm on Friday and 4am on Saturday.

The Titans and the NRL have confirmed the matter is being investigated.

Bloomfield is on trial for allegedly assaulting a man after he could not pay a drug debt.

He has pleaded not guilty to charges of extortion, stealing and assault occasioning bodily harm while armed.

Bloomfield is seen holding up a large stack of $50 notes to the camera as he said: 'Haynsey just gave me five grand'
Luxembourg has demanded Hungary be kicked out of the EU - for building a 110-mile-long fence to stop migrants crossing the continent.

Foreign minister Jean Asselborn said the Hungarian government had disregarded the 'values of the EU' with its tough approach to migration.

But Hungary hit back describing the tiny country, which is one of the Europe's wealthiest, as a 'tax haven' that has been 'working tirelessly to demolish European security and culture'.

Luxembourg has demanded Hungary be kicked out of the EU - for building a 110-mile-long fence to stop migrants crossing the continent

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban erected the razor-wire fence on its southern border last year after it became part of the route for migrants heading from Greece towards countries such as Germany and Sweden.

According to official figures, Hungary received 174,435 asylum applications last year, the equivalent of 17,699 per million inhabitants.

In contrast, Luxembourg had just 2,360 applications  or 4,194 per million inhabitants.

In a scathing attack, Mr Asselborn said removing Hungary was the only way to 'preserve the cohesion and values of the European Union'.

He told German newspaper Die Welt: 'Anyone who, like Hungary, builds fences against refugees from war or who violates press freedom and judicial independence should be excluded temporarily, or if necessary forever, from the EU.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban (pictured) erected the razor-wire fence on its southern border last year after it became part of the route for migrants heading from Greece towards countries such as Germany and Sweden

'The fence that Hungary is building to keep out refugees is getting longer, higher and more dangerous. Hungary is not far from issuing an order to shoot refugees.'

Mr Asselborn said it would be 'helpful' to amend EU rules so that suspending a member country no longer requires a unanimous vote.

Hungary has been the loudest critics of plans drawn up by European Commission president and former Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker to redistribute asylum-seekers through the continent according to compulsory quotas.

Mr Orban is holding a referendum next month seeking support for rejecting any future EU plan to resettle migrants among member states.

Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto yesterday described Mr Asselborn as 'condescending and uppity', while arguing that his country had defended Europe throughout its history.

'He wants to exclude Hungary from the EU but he has long excluded himself from among the politicians who can be taken seriously,' he said.

Refugees stand behind a fence at the Hungarian border with Serbia near the town of Horgos in September last year

Mr Szijjarto said the referendum would give Hungarians the opportunity to voice their opinion about 'illegal immigrants, Brussels' quota package and the Jean Asselborn-type figures'.

He added that it was strange that a land of 'tax optimisation' was looking to criticise others about shared burdens.

Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka said talk of expelling EU members was 'nonsense'.

German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: 'It is not my personal position to show a European member state the door.'
A group of violent Turkish migrants have filmed themselves 'terrorising a neighbourhood' and bragging about their behaviour online.

The group, from Zaandam in the Netherlands, are said to have been intimidating police officers, jumping on police cars and beating up a bicyclist.

The group's 19-year-old leader Ismail Ilgun was arrested this morning, according to Telegraaf.

In his latest video, Ilgun said: 'Who the f*** are all you racists?

'I am an Erdogan warrior, a Turk who will remain in the Netherlands and who will earn a lot of money by making videos without working for it.'

Even Dutch PM Mark Rutte, 49, felt the need to respond to the local crisis in Zaandam.

'They are the scum of the earth. The police and local authorities are right on it. They should just buzz off,' he said according to Central European News.

On Monday Zaandam city council member, Juliette Rot, was allegedly threatened by the migrant group in front of her house.

She said: 'They jumped out of a car and started to tape and intimidate me. Ilgun blamed me, saying I was stigmatising them.

A group of young migrants have filmed themselves 'terrorising a neighbourhood' and bragging about their behaviour online

The group, from Zaandam in the Netherlands, has allegedly been intimidating police officers, jumping on police cars and beating up a bicyclist

The group's 19-year-old spokesman Ismail Ilgun (left) was arrested this morning

'He stood right in front of me in a very threatening way. From the car they shouted something like "We know where to find you."'

She said her house had been bombarded with eggs and at times they were waiting for her on the pavement.

Some of Rot's colleagues took the side of the migrant group.

Local Socialist Party leader Patrick Zoomermeijer said the youngsters were 'unpolished diamonds'.

The group appeared on a primetime talk show sparking a nationwide debate.

In his latest video, Ilgun said: 'Who the f*** are all you racists? I am an Erdogan warrior, a Turk who will remain in the Netherlands and who will earn a lot of money by making videos without working for it'

The group appeared on a primetime talk show sparking a nationwide debate

Even Dutch PM Mark Rutte, 49, felt the need to respond to the local crisis in Zaandam

They blamed the national media for stigmatising them and told the TV programme they only hung around the streets because the city council did not give them a youth centre.

Cinderella Meijer, who works at a youth centre, explained that the group had been booted out after damaging and stealing from it.

She said: 'This has already been playing out for ten years. They get everything from the city council, everything is done.
Daniel Morcombe's killer Brett Cowan has been allowed to use a different name in prison after being left permanently disfigured after a bucket of boiling water was tipped over his head.

Cowan legalled changed his name to Shaddo N-unyah Hunter in 2013 and has been given approval to use the name in prison, the Courier Mail reports.

Cowan told detectives investigating the Morecombe murder he had chosen Shaddo because it was his dog's name, while N-unyah stood for 'none of your business'.

The convicted paedophile and murderer has been released back to the prison's general population , not the Wolston Correctional Centre's protective wing, despite a price on his head among prisoners.

Scroll down for video

Brett Cowan, Daniel Morcombe's killer, has been thrown back into the general prison population among inmates who want him dead

The attack, allegedly by Adam Paul Davidson last month, came soon after he was moved out of the protective unit.

A Queensland Corrective Services spokesman was unable to comment on individual cases but prisoners born outside Queensland are legally entitled to be addressed under their new identity.

In the past week his name has changed on his prison identification card and within the prison's Integrated Offender Management System, according to the

'It (the name change) could be to take pressure off him. I can't believe the department agreed to change it,' a prison source told the Courier Mail..

Daniel was murdered by the paedophile in 2003 on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland

Cowan was understood to have changed his name in Western Australia, the year before he was convicted of the schoolboy's murder.

The paedophile was released from hospital about a week after fellow prisoner Adam Paul Davidson allegedly left Cowan disfigured by pouring a mop bucket of boiling water over him

Davidson was charged with grevious bodily harm for allegedly pouring a mop bucket of boiling water over Cowan before beating him with it, giving him serious burned to his head, chest and legs.

A former prisoner told the Courier Mail Davidson would be hailed as a hero on the inside because Cowan was so hated inmates had vowed to not let him leave prison alive.

'There's no way he gets out of there alive  every time another bloke gets a chance, they have a crack at him. I hope the public knows that he's not getting an easy ride in there  it is a living hell for him,' he said.

Cowan was allowed to use a different name in the Brisbane maximum security jail's to Shaddo N-unyah Hunter, which he legally change his name to in 2013

He said 'prison rules' forced prisoners to inflict pain on Cowan whenever they got the chance. 'It's kill him or be killed in there  that's how it works,' he said.

'As soon as he was moved out of protection it was on for all money. Whoever it is that knocks him off will be treated like a national hero in there.'

Cowan is serving a life sentence for murdering Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe in 2003.
Drivers and pedestrians were left gobsmacked when a woman decided to take a casual stroll down the street in nothing but a pair of white knickers.

The incident was filmed by amazed by several people who could hardly believe what was going on in the city of Almaty, in southern Kazakhstan.

The young woman, believed to be in her early twenties, can be seen carrying a handbag but seems completely oblivious to the stares of those watching her brisk walk.

Drivers and pedestrians were left gobsmacked when a woman decided to take a casual stroll down the street in nothing but a pair of white knickers

The incident was filmed by amazed by several people who could hardly believe what was going on in the city of Almaty, in southern Kazakhstan

She looks over her shoulder a couple of times, as she is filmed by a passenger in a car, while another woman in uniform is also seen pointing a mobile phone at her.

A motorist can be heard saying 'Oh my God!' and is seen looking back a few times before she finally passes off-camera. She apparently seems unaware that she is being filmed.

The video sparked lively debate online over what made the girl show up in the street that way.

The young woman, believed to be in her early twenties can be seen carrying a handbag but seems completely oblivious to the stares

She looks over her shoulder a couple of times, as she is filmed by a passenger in a car, while another woman in uniform is also seen pointing a mobile phone at he

Aleksandr Koshkaderov said: 'Maybe she lost a bet?', while Andrey Nikolaev speculated 'maybe she did something wrong and somebody threw her out of the house dressed like this?'

Marie Roshe commented: 'I think she is engaged in some kind of psychological training.'
Police have released footage of a man (pictured) they believe is involved in setting a Scottish woman's sleeve alight in New York on Saturday

Police have released footage of a man who is believed to have set fire to a Scottish Muslim woman's sleeve while she was shopping in New York.

The victim, named in media reports as Nemariq Al-Hinai, 35, from Glasgow, was assaulted on Midtown Manhattan's Fifth Avenue at 8.58pm on Saturday night.

She was looking through the windows of designer clothes store Valentino after getting off a tourist bus when she 'felt something warm on her left arm and noticed her blouse was on fire'.

Nemariq patted out the fire and observed a male standing next to her with a lighter in his hand before he fled the scene.

She flagged down a police officer to report the crime but the suspect had already fled down 54th Street, an NYPD spokesman told Daily Mail Online.

NYPD's Hate Crime Task Force is now investigating the incident.

The victim, named in media reports as Nemariq Al-Hinai, 35, from Glasgow, was assaulted on Midtown Manhattan's Fifth Avenue

Nemariq, thought to be a dentist working in Hamilton, South Lanarksire, refused medical attention at the scene.

Police confirmed there had been no arrests but released a video of the prime suspect walking down the street.

It shows a man wearing a black hat, black tank top, black trousers and black shoes checking behind him and walking away from the incident.

Mazhar Khan, a spokesman for the Scottish Muslim Council, condemned the attack.

He said: Any incident like this is something we would wholeheartedly condemn.

The woman, who was visiting the city from Scotland, had been walking along Fifth Avenue and was outside the Valentino store (above) at around 9pm on Saturday when the attack occurred

This is something political leaders in America need to be aware of as there have been a number of incidents similar to this which are very alarming.

It needs to be a safer place to live in for not just Muslims but for all minorities.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman called on people with information about the assault to contact the New York Police Department.

She said: This must have been a very frightening incident.

The Scottish Government condemns all hate crime and hopes anyone with information about this assault contacts the NYPD.

The suspect was seen swinging his arms as he walked down 54th Street in Manhattan

The tourist flagged down a police officer to report the crime but the suspect had already fled

The incident comes less than a week after a woman allegedly attacked two Muslim mothers in Brooklyn.

Emirjeta Zhelili reportedly punched the women in the face and attempted to rip their hijabs from their heads on Thursday.

Ibraham Hooper, a spokesman for the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said he urges police to thoroughly investigate a possible bias motive.

'It's almost impossible to keep up with the number of incidents in recent days and months since the mainstreaming of Islamophobia by people like Donald Trump,' he told Daily Mail Online.

He added that in the past week, the organization has seen numerous complaints of incidents apparently fueled by anti-Muslim sentiment, including an tractor-trailer that crashed into a Maryland mosque.

Anyone with information about Saturday's incident is urged to call CrimeStoppers on 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).
The stunt happened in south-western Russia. Police have arrested one boy

The teens say they did the stunt to gain more social media likes and views

As the flames engulfed the boys they launched into the water below

set themselves on fire and then jumped off a bridge

Hair raising footage from Russia shows a group of teenagers atop a high bridge setting themselves on fire and then jumping into the murky waters below in the name of getting more likes on social media.

The unusual stunt happened in the south-western Russian city of Penza where two videos of the teenagers launching themselves from the bridge were shared online.

The first video starts off by showing a teen being doused in a flammable liquid before a friend puts a lighter to his coat to set the boy alight.

To make sure the boy had to jump into the water he was doused in a flammable liquid so the flames engulfed his body. There was no way to back down, he had to jump

The flames start to spread from the daredevil's coat. He is nearly ready to jump off the high bridge in order to get more social media likes

As the flames quickly engulf the lad he jumps from the bridge and makes a splash as he lands in the water below.

The second video was filmed from the ground and shows two burning daredevils jumping from the same bridge, almost in tandem, much to the delight of their onlooking friends.

The two boys can later be seen swimming in the water seemingly unharmed after they leaped.

One of the thrill seeking youngsters said he jumped to get more likes and views on social media. He didn't mention a desire to gain the adrenaline rush that undoubtedly comes from jumping from a bridge while on fire.

The boy is ablaze and to escape excruciating burns he jumps into the cool water below. Police are investigating the gang of teens over their bridge antics

The boy looks a bit like a comet falling from the sky due to the flame trail he leaves in his wake

'We did it for the likes on social media. We took the idea from a blogger. We made a bet with our friends and jumped off the bridge. We wanted to get a lot of views,' he said.

The police are checking the circumstances of the stunt and have reportedly arrested one of the pair.

A number of Russian youngsters appear to have penchants for fear inducing stunts.

Russian trio Ivan Kuznetsov, 22, Alihan, 20, and Ivan Semenov, 24, used a drone to film themselves scaling the Eiffel Tower in Paris earlier this year without any using any safety equipment despite the windy conditions of the day.

The trio survived the climb up the 985ft structure and impressively managed to scale up and then down the landmark without getting caught by security.

Similar videos have emerged online of Russian youngsters setting themselves on fire and then jumping from a height into the snow below to cool off.
An Austrian cardinal who is one of the favourites to become the next Pope has warned that Europe faces its biggest threat from Islam since the 17th century.

In an astonishing speech the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Vienna, Christoph Schonborn, warned that many Muslims wanted to eradicate Christianity and conquer Europe.

He was speaking at the Holy Name of Mary festival on Sunday which dates back to 1683 when it was first held in gratitude for the victory of the Austrian Habsburg Empire over the Ottoman Turks.

The Local newspaper said the cardinal said: 'Will there be an Islamic conquest of Europe? Many Muslims want that and say: Europe is at the end.'

He asked God to have mercy on Europe and said the continent was 'in danger of forfeiting our Christian heritage'.

In a comment which is bound to be seen as an endorsement of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party Cardinal Schonborn said people were seeing their loss 'not only economically, but above all, in human and religious matters'.

The cardinal is seen as a future Pope who, at the relatively age of 60, has time on his side.

The Argentinian-born Pope Francis was only chosen in 2013 but he will be 80 later this year and may one day decide to follow his predecessor, Pope Benedict, who resigned the post due to ill health, aged 86.

Muslims still make up only 10 percent of the population in Vienna.

Europe has been threatened militarily by Islamic foes twice before.

In the eighth century the Muslim Moors invaded and conquered most of Spain and parts of southern Italy and were only stopped by defeat at the Battle of Tours in France. They were later turfed out of Iberia by the armies of El Cid.

The Battle of Vienna in 1683 was an epic clash of cultures and a major turning point historically as the Muslim Ottoman Turks never seriously tried to advance further into central or western Europe after their defeat by a joint Polish and Austrian army

But in September 1683 an army of 100,000 soldiers from the Ottoman Empire arrived at the gates of Vienna, having already conquered the Balkans and Hungary.

The Austrians, supported by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire, defeated the Ottomans and turned the tide of their advance.

The Austrian Freedom Party held its own event to mark the battle, which involved speeches by Vienna's Vice-Mayor Johann Gudenus and Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, as well as historian Dr Lothar Hobelt.

Relations between Austria and Turkey have cooled recently with Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz reacting to the coup and the mass purge which followed it by saying he wanted to stop any moves to bring Turkey closer to joining the European Union.
Two men have been charged with raping a woman and threatening to torture her if she did not have sex with them.

Alexander Doering and Jeremiah Horsfall-Steinbrenner, both 22, from Frontenac, Missouri, allegedly threatened to 'waterboard' a young woman in their trailer and then recorded the attack on a cell phone, according to the St Louis Post Dispatch.

The woman, who has not been named, went to police about 7:40am on Sunday and claimed the attack took place the night before.

Alexander Doering (left) and Jeremiah Horsfall-Steinbrenner (right) have been charged with raping a woman after threatening to torture her if she did not have sex with them

She told police she had been taken to the trailer 'under false pretenses' and thought she was going to be able to get her laptop repaired.

But, when the woman - who is at least 17 years old - was inside the trailer Doering and Horsfall-Steinbrenner 'showed her handcuffs, a water pitcher and a towel and threatened torture unless she had sex,' according to the newspaper.

The two men also stopped their alleged victim from accessing her cell phone by changing its password and locking her out of the device.

Doering and Horsfall-Steinbrenner are being held on a $200,000 cash bond.

The men from Frontenac, Missouri, allegedly threatened to 'waterboard' a young woman in their trailer on South Forty Drive (pictured) and then recorded the attack on a cell phone
Jesse Madison Holton was charged as an adult with one count of first degree murder

A 17-year-old faces murder charges for shooting dead both his parents after they tried to discipline him for throwing a party in their absence, police said.

Jesse Madison Holton, of Eclectic, Alabama, was charged as an adult with one count of first degree murder for the death of his father Mike Holton, a former mayor of the town who died in their home on Sunday from a gunshot wound to the head.

Jesse will face additional charges after his mother April Holton also suffered a head wound and died in the hospital on Monday, police said.

Investigators arrested Jesse after the evidence did not support his claims that Mike shot his wife before turning the gun on himself.

Mike and April, both 37, returned home on Sunday to find evidence of a marijuana pipe in their home, which had been trashed from a party the night before, Elmore County Sheriff Bill Franklin said.

It is unclear why Mike owned handcuffs, but he restrained his own son and called the sheriff's department around 4pm.

'They obviously were trying to discipline their son, and they had had problems with him in the past,' Franklin said.

Mike said he would sign a juvenile warrant against his son the next day, and the deputy left on another call after collecting some evidence from the party.

About 20 minutes later, Jesse appeared at his neighbor's house saying his parents were fighting.

Jesse's parents, April (left) and Mike (right) were found in their master bedroom with gunshot wounds in their heads on Sunday evening

Mike and April (pictured) returned home on Sunday to find evidence of a marijuana pipe in their home, which had been trashed from a party the night before, authorities said

Mike handcuffed his son, called the sheriff's department, and said he would sign a juvenile warrant against his son the next day (pictured, Jesse and April)

The neighbor called police, and the same deputy returned to the Holtons' home to find Mike dead in the master bedroom, where a 9mm semi-automatic handgun was recovered, Franklin said.

April, who was near death on the bedroom floor, was put on life-support in the hospital where she died on Monday evening.

The physical evidence did not support Jesse's claims that his father committed a murder suicide, Franklin said.

'With the angles of the wounds and the entry and exit points of the wounds, there is just no way Mike Holton could have shot himself,' Franklin told the Montgomery Advertiser.

'April suffered defensive wounds to her hands, where it appeared she threw her hands up as if shield herself.

'The bullet went through one of her fingers and then into her head. So there was no way April could have shot herself either. The 17-year-old's story just didn't add up,' Franklin said.

Jesse (pictured) denied shooting either of his parents, and claimed Mike shot his wife before turning the gun on himself. Physical evidence ruled out the possibility of a murder-suicide

Jesse repeatedly denied shooting either of his parents and told police he was handcuffed in the back.

Franklin said: 'Obviously we feel he slipped out of the handcuffs, or got the key somehow to remove the handcuffs, before he did indeed shoot his mother and father.'

'We asked him if anyone else had been at the house and he said "No,''' said the sheriff.

The youth, a senior at Elmore County High School, told detectives he gets 'easily agitated' if he doesn't have access to marijuana and Adderall, Franklin said, and witnesses told investigators the teen has anger problems.

'We are dealing with young man with a history of emotional trouble,' Franklin told the Montgomery Advertiser.

'He hasn't shown any emotion at all. Most people would be bawling their eyes out if their parents had been killed,' said Franklin.

The couple's two younger children are with relatives, said Franklin.
Police have been left baffled after a human heart was found in a plastic bag in the middle of field in Ohio.

Paramedics parked beside a convenience store in Norwalk spotted the human remains after responding to a call on August 25.

An hour earlier, they said the heart was not there. Cops are now trying to figure out who it belonged to, and how it ended up in the grass.

A human heart was found in a plastic bag in a field next to this convenience store in Norwalk, Ohio. Now police are trying to figure out who it belonged to and how it ended up there

The city's police chief Dave Light said the heart was 'fresh' and wasn't decomposed.

The coroner came and retrieved the heart, put it in a cool box and then took it back to a lab for testing.

Huron County, Ohio, coroner Jeff Harwood told the Norwalk Reflector that when he first encountered the heart 'it was in pretty good condition,' but the organ 'had an odor of decomposition to it.'

He also said no one has contacted his office to claim the heart.

Cleveland 19 obtained a picture of the heart. It appears to have been left in a container similar to a Ziploc bag.

Sergeant Jim Fulton with Norwalk police told the station: 'I talked to the Lucas County Coroner and she seemed to think that it hadn't been in that field very long. It could have possibly been frozen prior to that.'

He added: 'We don't have a body that we're missing a heart from. So I guess it's an unusual occurrence, is what you would say.

'It's what's listed on our report. We hope to be able to classify it as something else and close this out.'

Pigs, chimpanzees and dogs all have hearts similar to humans, but police have said they are confident it belonged to a person.

Paramedics parked beside this convenience store in Norwalk spotted the human remains after responding to a call on August 25. An hour earlier, they said the heart was not there

Jill Del Greco, a spokesman for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, told the Reflector her office is not investigating any cases involving a missing heart.

Every day, around 3,100 people are on the heart transplant waiting list.

However, 2,200 are available every year.

Just under half of patients on the list have been waiting for more than a year.
They were accused of posting anonymous ads online urging men to rape DaLuise, but those charges were dropped by the judge

Prugo also introduced DaLuise to his prison friend Edward Feinstein, 32, and shortly after the three met the men allegedly began stalking her

Soon after he was released from prison he befriended esthetician Dawn DaLuise, who he began developing a reality show with

Prugo and his friends stole approximately $3million worth of goods from the homes of celebrities including Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan

He previously served time behind bars after being convicted as the mastermind of The Bling Ring back in 2010

A member of the infamous Bling Ring who was jailed after stealing millions from the home of Hollywood celebs is likely heading back behind bars for the third time.

Nicholas Prugo, 25, pleaded guilty in a Los Angeles courtroom to a misdemeanor count of stalking Dawn DaLuise, 57, on Monday.

His friend Edward Feinstein, 32, pleaded guilty to the same charge and both will be sentenced next month.

The guilty pleas entered by the two men puts to an end a bizarre ordeal that began when they allegedly began soliciting men online to rape DaLuise, and then reported her to police claiming that she was arranging to kill a business rival who she assumed had been posting the ads on the internet.

Scroll down for video

Legal woes: Nicholas Prugo and Edward Feinsten ( above with victim Dawn DaLuise) pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of stalking in a Los Angeles courtroom on Monday

Troubles: Prugo, who is still on parole, will be sentenced next month after entering his plea (above in court last year)

Prior troubles: Prugo (above in 2010) previously served time behind bars after being convicted as the mastermind of The Bling Ring back in 2010

Prugo first met his victim when he was released from prison after serving half of his two-year sentence for his role as the mastermind behind a string of burglaries at the homes of Hollywood celebrities including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Rachel Bilson and Orlando Bloom.

A 2015 article in Los Angeles Magazine revealed that DaLuise was meeting with Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales for a drink prior to her interview with Prugo when the two met by chance.

It was Sales who first named the group The Bling Ring and whose article about Prugo and his friends would later become the basis for Sofia Coppola's 2013 film.

DaLuise agreed to drive Prugo home after learning they lived near one another and the two soon became friendly and began to work on a reality show in which Prugo would point out security flaws in expensive homes in the area.

The show was to be called High End Heists, and DaLuise even convinced Prugo's parole officer that developing the program could count towards the work requirement which was a condition of his parole.

Soon after this, Prugo introduced DaLuise to Feinstein, who he had met behind bears when the two were serving time in a section of the L.A. Mens Central Jail reserved for gay and transgender inmates.

Feinstein had been arrested for a parole violation after initially being sent to prison for stealing $100,000 from one his employers.

The parole violation he was arrested for came after he was accused of sending 'vile and threatening text messages' to the same woman he had stolen the money from while working at her Los Angeles pet grooming store.

Bad influence: Prugo and Feinstein (above) allegedly posted online ads encouraging men to rape DaLuise

Chance meeting: Prugo (left in mugshot) and Feinstein (right in mughsot) met at the LA County Men's Jail

New leaf: Prugo met DaLuise after his release and said he was turning over a new leaf (above in 2013)

Soon after DaLuise met Feinstein is when the online postings began, as well as flyers the were being distributed near DaLuise's business and the home of her ex-husband which featured her head on the bodies of women involved in sexual acts.

At one point, an online ad was also posted targeting her young daughter who was in the Air Force.

She assumed it was the work of a rival esthetician who had moved next to her business, a suspicion that she claims Feinsten fueled by reporting on the actions of the man - Gabriel Suarez.

DaLuise grew so fed up with men pounding on her door for sex after the posting of these ads, which urged them to break in and rape her, that she texted Feinstein she wanted to kill Suarez and had a man in mind who would do the job.

Feinstein in turn showed police the texts, which DaLuise said were never meant to be serious, and she spent close to a year behind bars before being acquitted of all charges in January of last year.

Prugo was also behind bars for some of this time having been arrested on a parole violation when DaLuise told police, based on information from Feinstein, that he had been using drugs and out of the state on a trip to Las Vegas.

Tough times: DaLuise (left) spent a year in prison after being accused of trying to murder her business rival Gabriel Silva (right)

Celebrity following: DaLuise's practice is no longer after her arrest, despite a celebrity client list that reportedly included Jennifer Aniston and Nicki Minaj (DaLuise above with Gary Busey)

Soon after his release, Prugo was arrested again along with Feinstein on charges of stalking and solicitation of rape.

The judge ruled Monday that there was not enough evidence to make a case on the solicitation of rape charge.

Prugo was just 18 when masterminded a series of burglaries at the homes of Hollywood celebrities.

He and former best friend Rachel Lee netted more than $3 million in jewelry, high-end clothes and art as they robbed the homes of A-list stars along with other friends from high school in 2008 and 2009.

Infamous: Taissa Farmiga, Israel Brouchard (playing a character based on Prugo), Emma Watson, Katie Change and Claire Julien in The Bling Ring

Caught on camera: Actual security footage of the thieves outside a celebrity home

Prugo said after being caught that he had come up with the plan as a way to fund his cocaine habit.

His story was later written about in Sales' 2010 Vanity Fair piece The Suspects Wore Louboutins, which was the basis for her 2013 book The Bling Ring.

Sales also wrote Coppola' screenplay for the movie which starred Emma Watson, Leslie Mann, Taissa Farmiga and Israel Broussard, who played a character based on Prugo.

DaLuise meanwhile is a free woman, but her practice is no longer after her arrest, despite a celebrity client list that reportedly included Jennifer Aniston and Nicki Minaj.
Britain is 'ill-equipped' to defend itself from a Russian nuclear attack should Vladimir Putin declare war, an expert has warned.

According to latest figures, Vladimir Putin could call upon 7,300 nuclear weapons, while Theresa May has just 215 in the UK's arsenal.

Dr Andrew Foxall, director of Russian studies at the Henry Jackson Society, said Britain's defence system, military strategy and training standards would not stand up to the Russian regime.

Britain is 'ill-equipped' to defend itself from a Russian nuclear attack should Vladimir Putin declare war, an expert has warned

'As things stand, the UK is ill-equipped to deal with Russia,' he told the Daily Star.

'There is an urgent need to strengthen not only the UK's defences, but those of NATO members as a whole.

'The alliance simply isn't doing enough to build up the range of capabilities necessary to deter an aggressive and resurgent Russia.'

Dr Foxall said it would be 'foolhardy' to rule out a Russian uprising, and with the UK's focus on the Middle East, The Army would struggle to cope with the Kremlin's force and agreed with the observation that the world is more chaotic and dangerous now than during the Cold War.

'For almost two decades, the UK, with its NATO partners, has focused on counterinsurgency warfare,' he said.

According to latest figures, Vladimir Putin could call upon 7,300 nuclear weapons, while Theresa May has just 215 in the UK's arsenal

'The military has been up against lightly armed insurgent forces, rather than conventional state-on-state warfare.

'This very different form of war has introduced logistics systems, training, exercises, equipment, and priorities quite different from those required to respond to a Russian threat.'

Russia's conflict with Georgia and Ukraine, as well as their robust stance on Syria, has increased its stock as one of the world's most potent fighting forces.

And with Russian jets regularly being intercepted by the RAF in close proximity of UK airspace and warships sailing close to British waters, Putin is primed for war, says the expert.

He said in 2008, a Russian bomber carried out a dummy attack on northern England.
An Indian solicitor, who advised his countrymen on how to cheat the Home Office into letting the UK, could be deported after being jailed for eight years.

Mathew Chellam, 45, made bogus applications for Residence Cards on behalf of illegal immigrants he advised as clients through Mathew Moghan & Co Advocates.

The lawyer submitted false paperwork to the Home Office including fake birth certificates and wage slips from fake cleaning companies.

Chellam also arranged bogus weddings between Indian and French nationals apparently taking place in Ghana.

An Indian solicitor, who advised his countrymen on how to cheat the Home Office into letting the UK, could be deported after being jailed for eight years (file photo)

Ghanaian law recognises customary marriages by proxy - in which the bride and or groom are not even required to attend.

Chellams handwriting was found on a documents in a series of police raids in 2014, including one at the Maamala Restaurant in High Street North in Manor Park, east London.

Two secret offices were found at the rear of the restaurant where immigration records were seized bearing his law firms letter-head.

Also found were forged Ghanaian birth certificates along with genuine French identity documents.

Chellam was found guilty of assisting unlawful immigration to a member state, five counts of providing immigration advice without being qualified and seeking leave to remain by deception following trial earlier this month.

His ex-wife, Victoria Mathew, 39, was convicted of seeking leave to remain by deception after she submitted a bogus Non-EEA Residence Card application including a Ghanaian customary proxy marriage certificate in 2011.

She was due to be sentenced alongside her former husband but failed to answer her bail and a warrant was issued for her arrest.

KFC worker Venkataramana Enugu, 31, and 30-year old Jeykrishnan Murugesan were also convicted of seeking leave to remain by deception after being arrested in connection with the investigation.

Both Indian nationals had submitted applications on the basis of being in relationships with French women along with wage slips purporting to prove they were employed by one of the cleaning companies.

All three applied through Chellam.

Judge Oscar Del Fabbro told Snaresbrook Crown Court: Given the impact these offences have on matters of considerable public interest and concern, namely, the safety and security of national borders and ensuring the implementation of a fair and equitable immigration policy, deterrent sentences must be imposed for those who seek to undermine and play the system through deceit as you have.

The court cannot ignore the considerable public concern at the problem of illegal migration which causes consternation for society at large and also impacts on countless potential migrants who have legitimate aspirations and applications to enter and or remain in the UK as lawful migrants or asylum seekers.

Your criminal conduct strikes at the very heart of migration controls in the UK and the wider EU.

The judge told Chellam: Your activities were based on an exploitation of the relatively informal arrangements of customary marriages and proxy wedding ceremonies in Ghana with a view to abusing the UK Immigration Rules on the pretext of a genuine spousal connection.

You were also instrumental in exploiting the Rules by creating a fiction for a number of your clients that entitled them to remain in the UK as extended family members because of their purportedly enduring and durable relationships with EEA nationals.

Chellam was jailed at Snaresbrook Crown Court (pictured)

He added: Your hand was firmly on the tiller in relation to all these activities.

A serious aggravating feature of these offences of which you have been unanimously convicted is that you were a lawyer at the time - purporting to provide legal services to clients who no doubt were paying handsomely for your corrupt services and on the other hand representing yourself as being professionally retained in relation to those clients in your dealings with the Home Office who were being asked to make important decisions affecting the public at large.

There is little doubt that the conviction of a lawyer represents a very low point for the otherwise honourable professional body - it undermines the very core of what such a profession represents.

It diminishes the important societal role lawyers play in any system of justice and in the eyes of the public at large as the integrity, reputation and reliability which reposes on lawyers is degraded.

Judge Del Fabbro told Enugu: By your actions in relation to these matters you demonstrated no regard or respect for the laws of a country that provided you with considerable benefit - an opportunity to further your education and generous hospitality by allowing you to work and enjoy the benefits of experiencing another culture and lifestyle.

You responded to that by attempting to cheat your way to a future in the UK and the EU is country by submitting false applications.

Chellam, from East Ham, east London, was jailed for eight years. Enugu, of Forest Gate, east London, was jailed for 15 months. Murugesan, from Walthamstow, was jailed for 15 months, ordered to pay a 100 statutory surcharge, and will be deported after serving the term.

Judge Fabbro told Murugesan: 'You were convicted of one count of this indictment of avoiding your removal from the UK or other immigration controls by falsely representing that you were in a genuine relationship with an EEA national.

'The evidence against you was compelling-indeed overwhelming-but you chose to put the prosecution to proof and tried to spin an account which was a veritable web of lies and deceit.

'Your dishonesty was as brazen as it was breath-taking in your deliberate attempt to mislead the jury.

'There can be no doubt that Matthew Chellam and possibly his associates assisted you in packaging this false application.
Advertisement

Poldark fans can live like Captain Ross in this granite farmhouse set in the heart of the Cornish moorland.

The five-bedroom home comes with 1,221 acres of land on Bodmin Moor - where much of the filming for the BBC series took place - and includes the iconic landmark 'Brown Willy'.

The name of the tor comes from the Cornish Bronn Wennili - meaning 'hill of swallows' - and is the highest point in Cornwall at 1,378ft above sea level.

From the top of the hill, Poldark fans will have the perfect vantage point for catching hunk Aidan Turner if he films any more scenes near the distinctive landmark.

Though the farmhouse looks like something out of Poldark, it also has all the mod cons including a wind turbine to generate electricity for the property

The granite farmhouse is set within 1,221 acres of land on Bodmin Moor and the land includes the landmark 'Brown Willy'

The land surrounding the farmhouse is a mixture of rough grazing, woodland, marsh and natural water

The plot of land includes rights for shooting deer, woodcock and snipe, a wind turbine and a natural water source.

Medieval field patterns and remnants of old settlements are also still visible.

The spacious farmhouse is approached by a private road across the moor at the foot of the hill.

It has 3,331sq ft of accommodation with an entrance hall, sitting room, kitchen, five bedrooms, three bathrooms and a large family room.

The picturesque property is flanked by a collection of traditional farm buildings including a piggery, chicken house, shepherd's hut and lambing barn.

It is just four miles from the village of St Breward, a moorland village known for its sweeping views and where shots of Poldark's college, Nampara, were filmed.

The plot of land includes rights for shooting deer, woodcock and snipe, a wind turbine and a natural water source

Estate agent Savills have listed Fernacre on their website with a guide price of 2.8m

Penny Dart from Savills said: 'It's a large estate, 1,221 acres and to get to the farm you have to go across about a mile of moorland, it's a long drive in.

'But when you are there you are really right in the middle of the moors and it's beautiful.

'There's a comfortable five-bedroom granite farmhouse with lovely flagstone floors and a big granite fireplace in the sitting room.

'Around that there's 150-200 acres of improved pasture which shows quite a lot of old field patterns that date back to medieval times. It's amazing to think that people farmed up there that long ago.

'The rest of the land surrounding that is a mixture of rough grazing, woodland, marsh, natural water.

'It's lovely and rural - it's almost like being in Scotland but you're actually in the West Country.'

Poldark lovers have the chance to buy more than 1,000 acres of land in the Cornish Moors where the series was filmed

She added: 'This place is perfect for somebody who wants to get away from it all. The 200 acres around the house is completely private, the rest of the land including Brown Willy has country rights of way access but it's such a long way from anywhere most people will only walk as far as the tor.

'The house itself is quite sheltered in a valley.

'The owners have got their own wind turbine and make their own electricity, which provides all the central heating and the Aga, and the house has its own water supply so it's eco-friendly and pretty much self sufficient.

'They have run it mainly as a sheep farm with some cattle and get some income from a government scheme for running it in an environmentally-friendly way.

'The family have been there for about 50 years and now they are looking to move on.

'It's got some very good shooting for woodcock and snipe so it would be perfect for somebody who enjoys outdoor pursuits and wildlife.
Rachael Natalie Leahy (pictured), of Manatee County, was arrested and charged with solicitation of murder on Thursday

A Florida mother allegedly hired a hitman to have her husband killed after she decided her other idea to have him kidnapped and made a sex slave abroad was unrealistic.

Rachael Natalie Leahy, of Manatee County, was arrested and charged with solicitation of murder on Thursday.

Authorities say the 34-year-old woman agreed to pay an undercover detective $5,000 agreed to kill her 59-year-old ex-husband David Leahy.

She wanted him out of the picture so she could gain custody of their children but Leahy didnt think he needed to die at first, the Miami Herald reports.

Leahy told the undercover detective that he could be kidnapped and taken to another county and made into a sex slave, according to the newspaper.

But after deciding against that course of action, she paid him half the agreed amount, with the rest to follow, and also said she may have another job for him.

Authorities say the 34-year-old woman agreed to pay an undercover detective $5,000 agreed to kill her 59-year-old ex-husband David Leahy (pictured together)

She wanted him out of the picture so she could gain custody of their children. Above, Leahy with her daughters

The Manatee County Sheriffs office began investigating the murder-for-hire plot on August 22 after getting a tip that Leahy wanted her ex dead.

An informant was asked to pass on a telephone number to Leahy, which she called the following day.

A meeting between her and someone she believed to be a hitman was arranged for August 29, a probable cause affidavit said.

That day, Leahy met the undercover detective in the 1200 block of 60th Avenue West in Bradenton.

She told him during that meeting that she knew the sex slave idea was not feasible  but he could decide how to kill her ex-husband but that he must die.

She suggested he died in some kind of an accident or a fire.

The Manatee County Sheriffs office began investigating the murder-for-hire plot on August 22 after getting a tip that Leahy (pictured) wanted her ex dead

Leahy also told the detective that she was the beneficiary of her ex-husbands life insurance policy  which she would use to pay him.

They agreed on a price of $5,000 and she gave him details  her ex-husbands address, place of work, habits, his wifes information and the school that their children went to.

The detective also told Leahy that she was free to change her mind, but she said she was there because she had made up her mind to do this, the affidavit says.

Another meeting was set up for September 1 and the detective instructed Leahy to bring $1,000 in cash as a deposit as well as pictures of her target, a copy of their divorce papers and the details of the life insurance policy.

At that meeting, Leahy provided everything he asked for.

When asked, she said she still hadnt changed her mind but added that she could not imagine the situation would have come to this.

An affidavit says Leahy (above) discussed her plans to leave the country last Friday and that the murder would happen while she was away

She said she wants her kids back and had played nice for too long.

According to Leahys Facebook page, she appears to have two daughters and a son.

It is unclear when her marriage ended, but her ex-husband petitioned for an injunction on behalf of three minors against her in October 2012, the Brandenton Herald reported.

It was dismissed, but he also filed petitions against her for two other domestic violence-related incidents.

Last Thursday, Leahy handed over another $1,500.

She discussed her plans with the detective to leave the country on Friday and that the murder would happen while she was gone.

Upon her return, she would pay him the remaining $2,500.

Depending on the outcome, she said she may need him for another job involving a person who owed her money.
Downing Street has dismissed demands from peers for Parliament to get the final say on triggering Brexit.

A Lords committee has warned it would be 'constitutionally inappropriate' and set a 'disturbing precedent' for Theresa May to invoke Article 50 without votes in both Houses.

But Number 10 made clear the Prime Minister has no intention of seeking approval and the government will decide when the mechanism is deployed.

The Lords Constitution Committee said both Houses of Parliament should vote on whether to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty

The report from the cross-party Lords Constitution Committee came as Brexit Secretary David Davis said it was possible the UK could leave without any trade deal - although he stressed that was not a 'likely' outcome.

The committee argued that Parliament must 'play a central role' in the decision to launch negotiations.

That would either mean passing legislation or approving resolutions tabled in both Commons and Lords.

The committee said MPs and peers should also have a key role in scrutinising the Brexit negotiations - due to take two years - and approving the final deal reached between the UK and the remaining 27 EU states.

It was 'unclear' whether the UK could unilaterally halt Article 50 talks once they have been triggered, if it changed its mind about wanting to leave the EU, warned the committee.

Parliament should therefore act on the assumption that the Article is 'irreversible' and should allow it to be invoked only when it is in the UK's best interests to begin negotiations, said the report.

Committee chairman Lord Lang of Monkton said: 'The referendum result was clear and it is right that the Government are preparing to take Britain out of the EU. However, our constitution is built on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and the decision to act following the referendum should be taken by Parliament.

'Parliament should be asked to approve the decision to trigger Article 50.

'Parliament's assent could be sought by means of legislation or through resolutions tabled in both Houses of Parliament.

'An Act of Parliament would give greater legal certainty and could be used to enshrine the `constitutional requirements' required by Article 50, allowing for the setting of advantageous pre-conditions regarding the exit negotiations to be met before Article 50 could be triggered.

Brexit Secretary David Davis told the Foreign Affairs committee today that it was not 'likely' the UK would leave the EU without any kind of trade deal

'A resolution could be simpler and quicker to secure but might not provide the same watertight legal authority. We consider that either would be a constitutionally acceptable means of securing parliamentary approval for the triggering of Article 50.

'Parliament and the Government will need to work together to ensure that the UK achieves the best possible outcome when it withdraws from the EU.

'It is therefore important that Parliament plays a key role in scrutinising the Brexit negotiations once Article 50 is triggered.

'We all want the negotiations to produce a deal that works for both the UK and the EU, and Parliament must be involved in holding the Government to account in delivering that.'

But Mrs May's official spokeswoman said: 'We take a different view. The Government has set out clearly its position, which is that this is a decision for Government.

'Both Houses of Parliament decided to put the decision about whether or not we remain a member of the EU in the hands of the British people and we now need to get on with delivering that decision.'

And Tory MP Peter Bone told MailOnline parliament had handed the decision on Article 50 over to the British people in the referendum.

'We gave up our right as a parliament to decide that and we gave it to the British people,' he said.

'It would be absurd for the unelected House of Lords to go against the wishes of the British people.'

Meanwhile, the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said the talks should be complete by MEP elections due in May 2019.

He said in a tweet: 'Brexit should be delivered before 2019, when EU politics enters into new cycle and the European Parliament starts new mandate.'

The former PM of Belgium added: 'If UK wants access to the Single Market, it must also accept the free movement of citizens. Our four freedoms are inseparable.'

Mrs May's spokeswoman said Mr Verhofstadt's comment 'doesn't strike me as a particularly illuminating remark'.

She added: 'On the timings of these negotiations, there is no update to our position that we won't trigger Article 50 until the end of the year and then there will need to be a negotiation process that follows.'
Jacob Barajas (pictured), the uncle of a nine-year-old Maryland boy who was fatally beaten over a missing piece of birthday cake, has pleaded guilty to first-degree child abuse

The uncle of a nine-year-old Maryland boy who was fatally beaten over a missing piece of birthday cake has pleaded guilty to first-degree child abuse.

Jacob Barajas, 24, entered the plea Tuesday as jury selection was set to begin for his trial in Hagerstown, Maryland.

He faces up to 15 years at his sentencing, which hasn't been scheduled. The offense carries a maximum penalty of 25 years.

Prosecutors dropped other charges, including second-degree murder.

Jack Garcia, nine, died on July 5, 2015. Court records released last year claimed he had been handcuffed for up to three hours a day for a week before the deadly assault.

The 24-year-old is one of three people charged in relation to the death, including Robert Wilson - Jack's mother's boyfriend - who is serving a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder for beating the young boy after Barajas had handcuffed him to a chair.

The incident was sparked because Jack had taken a slice of birthday cake that belonged to Wilson's daughter, investigators were told at the time.

Jack's mother, Oriana Garcia, is scheduled for trial in February on charges including second-degree murder.

They all lived at the same apartment where the nine-year-old was killed.

An autopsy found the nine-year-old died from head injuries.

Jack Garcia (pictured), nine, died on July 5, 2015. Court records released last year claimed he had been handcuffed for up to three hours a day for a week before the deadly assault

Jack's mother, Oriana Garcia (left), and her boyfriend Robert Wilson (right) were also charged in relation to Jack's death

Barajas, 24, entered his plea Tuesday as jury selection was set to begin for his trial in court (pictured) in Hagerstown, Maryland
She was concerned for her brother's well-being after bizarre behaviour

Khan's sister had begged him to live with her only a week before the attack

In the weeks before he allegedly stabbed grandfather Wayne Greenhalgh in a 'terror attack', Ihsas Khan's sister was concerned about his wellbeing.

The 22-year-old university dropout had been living alone in his mother's Minto, south-west Sydney home, since she died nine months ago.

His married sister was 'deeply worried' about his increasingly erratic and bizarre behaviour - which neighbours had noticed - and a week before his alleged attack, she begged him to live with her, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Alleged terrorist Ihsas Khan's sister was so worried about him before he allegedly carried out an attack she asked him to live with her

Terror accused Ihsas Khan, now 22, pictured as a school student

A security camera image from the afternoon of the attack in Minto, south-west Sydney

She was concerned it wasn't safe for him to be living by himself.

Police allege he attacked Mr Greenhalgh, 59, on Saturday afternoon in an ISIS-inspired stabbing and charged him with committing a terrorist act and attempted murder.

According to friends, his behaviour began to change when his parents split several years ago and his father moved to Melbourne.

A family friend, Abdul Baku, said: 'Everyone was worried for him as he was talking to himself a lot and I saw him outside the mosque walking up and down the street and muttering last week.

'Ihsas was always a bit of a loner but this was different, he was really depressed and wasnt being coherent.'

Neighbours from Minto had noticed similar behaviour.

Mr Greenhalgh (in black) trying to escape the knifeman (in white) who had repeatedly stabbed and slashed him

This is the moment Mr Greenhalgh sought refuge inside a hairdressing salon. He can be seen holding his injured hands aloft

Khan was charged for attempted murder and committing a Terrorist Act in Minto, Sydney. It is alleged he stabbed a 59-year-old man in a park before the victim escaped and ran to a nearby property (pictured)

Ihsas Khan, 22, allegedly stabbed Wayne Greenhalgh (pictured) with a hunting knife in a frenzied attack as he walked through a park in Minto

Mark Anthony said he'd talked to Khan earlier on Saturday, concerned about his behaviour while he'd walked about the area, according to A Current Affair.

'I said "What's up mate, something wrong?".

'He said to me "Nah mate everything all cool" and he kept walking, never stopped, just kept walking.

Wayne Greenhalgh, 59, was the victim of the attack

People had seen people going in and out of Khan's house in the weeks leading up to the attack - weeks during which the accused's behaviour had become increasingly erratic and bizarre.

Another nearby resident, Andrew Houghten said: 'they were dressed in their Islamic wear. What do you say?'.

He considered calling police and discussed it with neighbours, but they thought the fact they were all aware was enough.

Asked if he wished he'd told police earlier, he said: 'I wish I had, course I do'.

George Torres told The Daily Telegraph Khan would 'sit on [a] sign rocking backwards and forwards reading the Koran and chanting' when he was in the neighbourhood.

During the alleged attack, Mr Greenhalgh's fingers were severed, his lung punctured and he received deep lacerations.

He's been recovering in hospital.

Police believed Khan may have been trying to lure police to the scene to attack them. The knife used to allegedly attack the grandfather is pictured on the grass
Dozens of women claim they are victims of a 'charming' fraudster who has fleeced them out of money after meeting on the Tinder dating app.

Brett Joseph, 29, has been previously caught out for claiming to be the heir of the Myer fortune and is again being outed in a massive social media campaign run by his latest victims.

At least 50 women claim the man from Mudgee in central-west NSW has charmed them out of money using a range of different aliases.

Griffith woman Daisy Armstrong claims to be one of his victims, and says they had a six-month relationship after they matched on Tinder in March.

At least 50 women claim Brett Joseph (pictured), 29, has charmed them out of money using a range of different aliases

'My goal is to get this man's face and story all over social media so that other girls don't get caught out, conned and left heartbroken the same way I have been,' she wrote on her public Facebook page to shame Mr Joseph

She said the relationship ended at the start of this month 'as a result of investigations conducted on behalf of my family'.

'My goal is to get this man's face and story all over social media so that other girls don't get caught out, conned and left heartbroken the same way I have been,' she wrote on her public Facebook page to shame Mr Joseph.

'I am not the first girl he has done this to  and if we don't get his face out there then I won't be the last.'

Ms Armstrong said two women have since come forward to say Mr Joseph has been using photographs of her family's property in an attempt to woo them.

Mr Joseph has also apparently claimed Ms Armstrong's father's plane is his, and says he is able to fly it

'I am not the first girl he has done this to  and if we don't get his face out there then I won't be the last,' Ms Armstrong said

He has also apparently claimed Ms Armstrong's father's plane is his, and says he is able to fly it.

'He is extremely good at claiming others hard work and success as his own,' Ms Armstrong wrote.

The family is believed to be working out how much they have allegedly lost.

Ms Armstrong's family friend, former NSW detective inspector Mick Gerondis, has helped the Griffith woman and her family cope with the ordeal.

'I told them to freeze all the accounts and then we worked back from there,' he told Bendigo Advertiser.

Mr Joseph has previously claimed his name was Hunter Bailieu to convince the board of St Vincent's Hospital in inner-Sydney's Darlinghurst he would make a $12 million donation, Mr Gerondis said

Pictured: One of Mr Joseph's apparent dating accounts on social media

'He is a despicable character whose only talent is sponging off women who fall for his stories and trust him,' Mr Gerondis told Daily Telegraph.

Mr Joseph has previously claimed his name was Hunter Bailieu to convince the board of St Vincent's Hospital in inner-Sydney's Darlinghurst he would make a $12 million donation, Mr Gerondis said.

He is also said to have pretended to be connected to the Ingham family or owned successful racehourses.

'Unfortunately he is very good and can be incredibly charming,' Mr Gerondis said.

There is reportedly a police investigation into Mr Joseph.
*M*ake what you will of this. In the modern era of partisan polarization, which can be dated back to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, only the presid...
Hillary Clinton kept information about her pneumonia diagnosis limited to a tight circle of family and friends  who got the clear indication that it was to be kept under wraps.

Clinton herself as acknowledged she minimized the diagnosis, and her communications aides have acknowledged that the situation wasn't handled well.

'I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal,' Clinton told CNN calling into Anderson Cooper's show Monday night when asked why she didn't reveal her diagnosis. 'It's just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you're a busy, active person, you keep moving forward.'

The tight circle of people she did tell 'concluded that she did not want to be challenged over her preference to keep the pneumonia private and continue working,' the New York Times reported.

Scroll down for video

Hillary Clinton quietly told just a tight circle of friends and family she was sick  and those who knew concluded they needed to keep a lid on the information

Two people who were in the know were longtime aide Huma Abedin and counsel Cheryl Mills.

Describing the Sunday incident after the fact, Clinton said she thought she just had a dizzy spell.

'No, I didn't (pass out or lose consciousness),' she said. 'I felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute, but once I got in, once I could sit down, once I could cool off, once I had some water, I immediately started feeling better.'

Instead, after suffering weeks of criticism from Republican Donald Trump about her stamina, Clinton decided to maintain her public schedule and attend a Sept. 11th ceremony on Sunday. She left after about an hour and a half.

Hillary Clinton (left, on Sunday) says she's 'feeling fine and getting better' after overheating on Sunday morning at a 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York City. She will not attend an event in Las Vegas on Wednesday, however, her campaign said Monday evening. Bill Clinton (right) will go in her stead

OUT OF THE LOOP?: Campaign manager Robby Mook wouldn't respond directly when asked if he knew before Hillary Clinton's collapse that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia

IN THE KNOW: Clinton reportedly told longtime aide Huma Abedin of her diagnosis

Bill Clinton told CBS his wife made the 'correct' decision to get off the campaign trail

Campaign manager Robby Mook wouldn't reveal whether he was in the know about Clinton's condition.

'Well, she obviously saw the doctor on Friday and in consultation with her doctors, she decided to power through this,' he told MSNBC Monday. 'She didn't want it to affect anything. And obviously on Sunday when she got overheated it was clear she needed some downtime. So in consultation with her doctor she's taking some downtime,' he said.

Barricades and police block the former first lady and her husband's home from the public. Clinton has not been seen today. She continues to rest up after nearly collapsing on Sunday morning outside a 9/11 memorial service

Pressed again by host Kate Snow whether he would have advised her to take a planned fundraising trip that Clinton cancelled for Monday and Tuesday, Mook replied: 'Let's just say I am happy that she's getting some much needed downtime now. But she's looking forward to getting back out on the trail very soon.'

Snow asked again, saying she was 'reading between the lines' that Clinton's staff didn't know about the diagnosis, prompting Mook to try to change the subject.

'Yeah, but, I want to be fair here. If we're going to be talking about transparency and disclosure, Donald Trump has not released a single piece of serious information about his health,' he said.
A sheriff's deputy told a 14-year-old girl that she would have to wear a 'rag' over her face and be treated like 'scum' and 'property' if she lived in the Middle East.

Washington County Sheriff's Deputy Brian Klostreich arrested a teenage girl on domestic violence charges after she got into a fight with her mother, the Oregonian reported.

The deputy tried to dole out advice, but he was filmed going on a winding rant saying her parents were justified in slapping her in the face and that men should work while a mother's place was in the home.

It remains unclear whether Klostreich will be investigated for his comments, although the girl's neighbor, Darren Hall, faces a criminal investigation for the 'unauthorized recording', the sheriff's office said.

Scroll down for video

Sheriff's deputy Brian Klostreich was caught on camera telling a 14-year-old girl he arrested that she would have to wear a 'rag' over her face if she lived in the Middle East

The Washington County Sheriff's Office in Oregon did not comment on whether Klostreich would face an investigation for his comments

Darren Hall, a neighbor who filmed the encounter now faces a criminal investigation for the 'unauthorized recording', the sheriff's office said

Klostreich initially tried sympathize with the teen but said her parents were justified in slapping her in the face, and that women should stay at home while their husbands work

Hall filmed Klostreich standing in the apartment's doorway after he heard the deputy shouting and cursing at the girl, the Oregonian reported.

The three-minute clip shows the deputy trying to make the case that her life could be worse.

Klostreich could be heard saying: 'You could be in the Middle East somewhere, having to wear a rag over your face, and you're scum.

'You don't have the right to do anything. You're property...and you think you have it bad?' he continued.

'These Muslim women, they're property. That's all they are.... Sometimes they kill them for disrespecting their parents!'

Klostreich initially tried sympathize with the teen, saying: 'You're pissed off, I get it...You're a very beautiful girl, and I bet you're pretty smart in school if you really want to be.'

Washington County Sheriff's Deputy Brian Klostreich (left) tried to give the girl some advice when he responded to a call on Saturday regarding a fight between the teen and her mother

After watching what appears to be a video of a fight between the girl and her mom over makeup, the deputy says: 'If my kid did that to me, I'd pretty much beat the hell out of them.'

He also says: 'If we could afford it in this society, the man should be working and the mom should be home.'

According to the Oregonian, Klostreich also told the teen: 'Beat and slap in the face is completely different. I'm talking about welts and bruises and punching and, you know, starving and chaining you to the ground. That's beat. This is discipline.'

It is unclear whether Klostreich will be investigated or disciplined for his comments

Calls to the Washington County Sheriff's Office were not returned at the time of publication, and authorities would not comment on whether Klostreich was being investigated for what he said, the Oregonian reported.

Instead, the sheriff's spokesperson Bob Ray said Hall faces a criminal investigation for the 'unauthorized' recording of the encounter.

Ray issued a statement saying the teen's mother may press charges against Hall for 'illegally capturing the video and audio of a private conversation within the victim's home and then posting it to a public forum'.

He also stated the public information requested by the local newspaper would not be released because there are 'at least two criminal investigations arising from this incident'.

He elaborated on the criminal investigations, writing: 'One for domestic violence and one for the subsequent unauthorized recording of an in-person conversation without notification and an additional count for unauthorized disclosure of the conversation'.
Indonesian police want to ban gay dating apps because a paedophile ring is using Grindr to pimp boys.

Authorities arrested three men from the criminal gang last week and believe the app found on their iPad had been used to groom teenage boys.

It is the latest in a string of attacks on the gay community by the Indonesian government, with the state recently announcing there was 'no room' in the country for homosexuals in response to criticism from activists.

Indonesian police want to ban gay dating apps because a paedophile ring is using Grindr to pimp boys

Users of Grindr, generally gay men, are able to locate and view photos and brief profiles of other users in their immediate vicinity and arrange to meet them.

Agung Setya, the police's director of economic and special crimes, said police had now found 18 other apps similar to Grindr in use in Indonesia, and are asking the communications ministry to ban them.

He said police 'hope that, with the authority the communications ministry has, it will make the right decision and impose a ban'.

There was no immediate comment from the ministry or from Grindr after the arrests on Friday.

At the height of the backlash against the gay community in February, the government had also demanded that all instant messaging apps remove same-sex emoticons or face a ban.

Indonesia's Constitutional Court is also considering a petition from Islamic activists to make gay sex a crime.
was revealed hours after she was rushed from memorial service after nearly fainting at World Trade Center site

Advertisement

Hillary Clinton remained in her home for a second consecutive day on Tuesday as she recovered from a case of pneumonia that caused her to become dizzy and come close to collapsing over the weekend.

She'll pick up where she left off on Thursday, a spokesman says.

'Thanks very much for your continued patience today as HRC remains home. She has spent the day catching up on reading briefings, making calls, and she watched President Obama's speech in Philadelphia on TV,' traveling press secretary Nick Merrill told reporters. 'We will resume campaign travel on Thursday, more details to come.'

Clinton is scheduled to deliver a speech at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's gala on Thursday in Washington, D.C.

Hillary Clinton (left, on Sunday) will not attend an event in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Bill Clinton (right) will go in her stead. She'll resume campaigning on Thursday her campaign has announced

Hillary Clinton called in to Anderson Cooper Monday night to say she kept her pneumonia diagnosis secret because she didn't 'think it was going to be that big a deal'. She'll remain inside her home again today, however

Merrill said Tuesday morning, 'HRC is feeling better and still plans to remain at home today.'

Clinton tweeted several times on Tuesday as she rested. 'The @NCAA is right to pull tournament games from North Carolina because of the anti-LGBT HB2 law. Discrimination has no place in America,' she said in one message.

Yesterday she called into Anderson Cooper's primetime program and said she kept her pneumonia diagnosis a secret because she didn't 'think it was going to be that big a deal.'

The Democratic presidential candidate told the CNN host she is 'feeling so much better' after overheating on Sunday morning at a 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York City.

Clinton said she regrets trying to 'power through' her pneumonia rather than take time off to recover, as she has now been forced to withdraw from her planned speech in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

'Obviously I should have gotten some rest sooner,' she told Cooper, after calling in to his show. 'I probably would have been better off if I'd just pulled down my schedule on Friday. But like a lot of people, I just thought I could keep going forward and power through it and obviously that didn't work out so well.'

The candidate said earlier in the evening on Twitter that she's now 'feeling fine and getting better' and is anxious to get back out on the trail. Her has campaign promised to release more information on her health soon.

Clinton explained to Cooper that she had felt herself becoming overheated but did not want to leave the commemorative event.

'What happened yesterday was that I just was incredibly committed to being at the memorial, as a senator on 9/11, this is incredibly personal to me, and I could, you know, feel how hot and humid it was.

'I felt overheated. I decided that I did need to leave, and as soon as I got into the air-conditioned van, I cooled off, I got some water and very quickly I felt better. So I felt fine, but I'm now taking my doctor's advice which was given to me on Friday that I ignored to just take some time to get over pneumonia completely.'

Clinton says she didn't faint while getting into the van but felt 'dizzy' and stumbled as she got in. After sitting in the air conditioning and drinking a glass of water she says she 'immediately' began feeling better.

'No, I didn't (pass out or lose consciousness). I felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute, but once I got in, once I could sit down, once I could cool off, once I had some water, I immediately started feeling better,' she stated.

She said she felt well enough to take a detour to visit her daughter Chelsea Clinton and her grandchildren.



When asked why she didn't share her diagnosis earlier, Clinton replied: 'I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal. It's just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you're a busy, active person, you keep moving forward.'

Bill Clinton attested in an interview taped on Monday that his wife is 'doing fine.'

'She was even better last night before she went to sleep. She had a good night's sleep,' he told CBS. 'She's doing fine...A friend of ours called and left a message today, and her husband had just actually been hospitalized for pneumonia. Apparently there is a lot of it going around. And a bunch of her staff had gotten sick.

He said Hillary 'just got dehydrated yesterday.'

Hillary Clinton said Monday that she initially assumed cough she struggled with earlier in the week was just allergies. She had even joked at one event that she must be allergic to Donald Trump.

She said she went to visit her doctor on Friday and was diagnosed with pneumonia.

Clinton famously suffered a concussion in 2012 after she passed out while she was battling another illness and hit her head. But the 68-year-old said she could not recall any other occasion in the past five years where she had become faint or dizzy.

Bill Clinton is taking over for his wife at several upcoming events as she recovers. He will now headline the Hillary Victory Fund events in California today. He will also be campaigning in Nevada on the former secretary of state's behalf on Wednesday, an aide said.

He told CBS News' Charlie Rose on Monday that his wife had suffered the same symptoms in the past when she's become exhausted.

'Rarely, on more than one occasion, over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing's happened to her when she got severely dehydrated, and she's worked like a demon, as you know, as secretary of state, as a senator, and in the years since,' he told the journalist.

'She'd had two and a half hard days before the day when she got dizzy,' he added.

Supporting his wife, he said: 'Today she made a decision which I think was correct to cancel her campaign day to take one more day to rest.'

Clinton said his wife will not spend weeks away from the campaign trail. 'No, not a shot,' he told Rose.

Hillary Clinton said she hopes to 'get this over and done with and get back on the trail as soon as possible.'

'Thanks to everyone who's reached out with well wishes! I'm feeling fine and getting better,' said a tweet marked with an 'H' for Hillary said early Monday evening. She said in a follow-up message, 'Like anyone who's ever been home sick from work, I'm just anxious to get back out there. See you on the trail soon.'

Clinton made her first public comments of the day early Monday evening on Twitter. The 'H' at the end of the tweet stands for Hillary and it means the candidate wrote the message, not her staff

Clinton called off plans to visit the West Coast on Monday and Tuesday after she admitted to having pneumonia. Her campaign indicated tonight that she would sit out a speech on Wednesday in Las Vegas, as well

Press stake out Hillary Clinton's home in Chappaqua, New York, on Monday. Clinton is holed up there with pneumonia

Barricades and police block the former first lady and her husband's home from the public. Clinton has not been seen today. She continues to rest up after nearly collapsing on Sunday morning outside a 9/11 memorial service

Clinton called off plans to visit the West Coast on Monday and Tuesday after she admitted to having pneumonia.

She called into a fundraiser there for her campaign last night. Tuesday afternoon Clinton's spokesman said the Democratic White House candidate would be back on the campaign trail later this week but did not specify when. He promised additional medical information this week, as well, and attested that the candidate is not suffering from a serious, long-term illness.

'There's no other undisclosed condition. The pneumonia is the extent of it,' press secretary Brian Fallon said on MSNBC.

Batting down speculation that Clinton's concussion nearly four years ago and subsequent blood clot were related to the episode on Sunday, Fallon told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that the Democratic presidential candidate's 'doctor has stated that there is nothing here in terms of anything that was caused by what happened in 2012.'

According to a YouGov poll in The Times, less than half of American voters believe Clinton's explanation about her illness.

Out of 1,910 responders, 46 per cent of voters did not believe that Clinton 'overheated' while suffering from a mild form of pneumonia as well as allergies.

Nine percent were uncertain about what to believe and 45 per cent said they thought her campaign was telling the truth.

STAY BACK: A police officer stands guard near Clinton's Chappaqua, New York, home

Clinton's doctor revealed Sunday that the 68-year-old has pneumonia - hours after a video showed her collapsing into the arms of her Secret Service agents after being rushed from the memorial service at the World Trade Center.

Dr. Lisa R Bardack said Sunday evening that Clinton had become overheated and dehydrated at the event in lower Manhattan.

Bardack said Clinton is now 'recovering nicely' at her home in Chappaqua, New York.

Clinton is holed up in her upstate New York home after a bystander recorded her losing her balance, slumping at the knees and being held up by her aides while waiting to get in a minivan Sunday morning.

Her campaign said she 'overheated' during the episode that saw her rushed away from the ceremony at Ground Zero and back to daughter Chelsea's Manhattan apartment.

Her press pool was not informed for 90 minutes of her whereabouts or given an explanation for the abrupt departure. At the time, the temperature was around 80 degrees and the humidity was low.

Clinton was put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule, Bardack said in the statement.

Video has surfaced of Hillary Clinton appearing to stumble as she was led into a van after suffering a 'medical episode' during the 9/11 memorial service on Sunday. Her doctor later revealed that she has been diagnosed with pneumonia

Obama campaign guru David Axelrod came out swinging against Clinton Monday morning for keeping her illness a secret. 'Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?' he tweeted.

Clinton Communications Director Jen Palmieri admitted in a response tweet that 'we could have done better yesterday.' Fallon said, 'I think in retrospect we could have handled it better. In terms of providing more information more quickly...in those 90 minutes we were putting a priority on making sure she was OK.'

Senior campaign hands to Clinton have reportedly been battling upper respiratory infections since the end of August. An aide told People that one senior staffer was taken to the ER after collapsing due to dehydration. Another was put on antibiotics by a doctor at an urgent care facility in Brooklyn, New York, near the campaign's headquarters.

The Democratic candidate may have caught a bug making its way through her staff and developed pneumonia.

Fallon confirmed to Mitchell that he was 'sick for a couple days' and believes he had 'the mild form of it.' He said campaign manager Robby Mook and other senior staffers have also been 'afflicted with some form of something or other for the last few days.'

'That is not to be unexpected on a presidential campaign. People work long hours,' he stated.

The presidential candidate is seen standing on a curb near the World Trade Center when she appeared to lose her balance

Clinton's struggle to stay standing on Sunday added to fears that she's not as healthy as her physician said she was a year and a half ago when she jumped in the presidential race.

She broke out in a coughing fit during a speech in Ohio on Labor Day that she said was brought on by seasonal allergies. Clinton told reporters Tuesday that she upped her antihistamine dosage and would be fine in a few days.

Her spokesman said today, 'She does get allergies this time of year. I do think at an earlier point when she's had some of these moments on the trail where she's had coughing happen, it's been attributable to allergies...this time of year those allergies flare up, and she's taking allergy medication for that.

'It turned out to be the case that she also came down with pneumonia, which was diagnosed on Friday.'

Clinton's national spokesman was unable to say what type of pneumonia she has. He cited his lack of expertise in the medical field and said more information would be released soon.

'If it was up to her, she'd be out there today,' he said of Clinton. 'And the reality is that she's already released more than is appropriate. We're going to go even further, and in the next couple days, to the extent that people have questions even after that additional information is released, we want to answer those, too.'

The concerning footage shows her knees appearing to buckle, causing her to fall towards two of her handlers. They then steady her on the sidewalk

Her aides then rushed to her side and then helped her into the van before she was rushed off to Chelsea's Manhattan home

Clinton emerged from her daughter Chelsea's apartment after she was rushed from the 9/11 memorial service because of a 'medical episode'

Despite the concerning footage, she emerged from the home at 11.45am on Sunday saying she was fine. She is pictured speaking with a little girl in front of her daughter's apartment building

Clinton was seen smiling and waving at customers at a nearby restaurant before getting into a van. She then traveled to her home in Chappaqua, New York, according to her campaign

Dailymail.com had asked Clinton about her health Thursday, pointing to notes released by the FBI as part of the bureau's email investigation that suggested Clinton may have suffered memory loss from the concussion she sustained in 2012.

'Can you clarify what you told the FBI about your concussion?' Dailymail.com asked the candidate, to which Clinton replied curtly, 'Read the reports.' She offered no additional explanation.

The Clinton campaign has been tarred and feathered for taking off from Sunday's evening without the candidate's press pool and keeping reporters - and the public - in the dark for nearly 90 minutes about Clinton's whereabouts.

Campaign manager Robby Mook told MSNBC Monday, 'We released the information as soon as we could when this happened...I wish it had happened quicker than 90 minutes, again we were busy attending to her health, so that's on us. But we look forward to Donald Trump releasing his medical information.

'Let's just make sure everybody is meeting the same bar here,' he added.

Nick Merrill, her traveling press secretary, said Clinton 'overheated' during the ceremony, but quickly recovered when she returned to Chelsea's apartment

The 68-year-old greeted people with a smile as she walked down the street. She recently said she had been suffering from allergy attacks since Labor Day and had upped her antihistamine dosage

Fallon also contended that the campaign was most concerned about whether or not Clinton was OK and blamed that for the information gap.

Yet he said in the same interview that Clinton appeared to be fine as soon as she entered her vehicle.

'I think that as she was getting into the vehicle she got a bit dizzy and she was helped into the vehicle, but immediately upon being seated there she was talking to staff and like I said making calls and running around at her daughter's apartment chasing her grandkids around,' he stated.

Clinton 'was alert the whole time,' he said, and 'making calls to aides from the car.'

'I do think that in those 90 minutes we could have gotten more information out more quickly and that's on the staff, that's on us. We regret that,' he said.

The campaign immediately contacted her physician, the senior aide said, and Bardack came to her home in Chappaqua later in the day.

She told waiting reporters: 'I'm feeling great, it's a beautiful day in New York'

Clinton was taken from the 9/11 memorial site at 9.30am on Sunday, just 90 minutes after arriving to remember the 2,977 people who lost their lives

The Democratic presidential candidate was standing alongside rival Donald Trump and other politicians when she apparently fainted, according to reports

One of Clinton's handlers is seen with his arm across her shoulders. She is seen with her arm resting on his back as she leaves the ceremony

Her campaign team said she 'overheated' during the ceremony. It was around 80 degrees at Ground Zero during the service

Witnesses said her departure from the service was 'unexpected', but they said it was 'clear' that she had a medical episode

Donald Trump said Monday he had 'no idea' what happened when asked about his rival's health after the ceremony and wished her well.

His campaign did not respond to a request for additional comment from Dailymail.com.

The fainting spell could lend proof to conspiracy theories that Trump's allies have pushed and the candidate's claim that Clinton doesn't have the 'stamina' to hold the Oval Office.

Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, that brought the health theories into the mainstream by saying on Fox News Sunday last month that voters should 'go online and put down 'Hillary Clinton's illness.' Take a look at the videos for yourself,' the Republican instructed.

Hillary was joined by politicians, including Bill de Blasio, as mourners remembered the 15th anniversary of the attacks

She suspended her campaign on Sunday as a mark of respect for those who died

Earlier on Sunday, she was seen wearing sunglasses as she arrived in New York

The candidate has had little to say about his rival's health and has instead focused on a gaffe she made on Friday evening at a fundraiser. She said 'half' of his supporters fall into a 'basket of deplorables.' Clinton apologized on Saturday for making a gross generalization, but Trump has refused to let up. He claimed Monday night she 'has not apologized to those she slandered' and has not 'backed down at all.'

'You cannot run for president if you have such contempt in your heart for the American voter,' he said in remarks at a National Guard Association conference.

In December 2012, Clinton fainted and suffered a concussion after contracting a stomach virus. She later developed a blood clot.

She's been taking the anticoagulation drug, Coumadin, ever since.

In 2005, she fainted before a scheduled speech in Buffalo, New York, after suffering a similar stomach virus.

Beyond Giuliani and Trump, Clinton's health came front-and-center when Dr Drew Pinsky said he was 'gravely concerned not just about her health, but her health care'.

'It just seems like she's getting care from somebody that she met in Arkansas when she was a kid, and you've got to wonder. You've got to wonder,' Pinsky had said.

Dr. Drew's HLN show was canceled several days after he made the comments with no explanation from the network, leading to speculation that the negative remarks about Clinton were the cause.
Ms Burn left the siege early and deleted texts sent during the siege

Ms Burn's actions during the Lindt Cafe siege have been criticised

A senior Police Commissioner accused of acting poorly during the Lindt cafe siege is expected to become the boss of the NSW counter-terrorism department.

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Cath Burn (pictured) is expected to receive the top job as the boss of NSW's counter-terrorism unit

Deputy Commissioner Cath Burn reportedly became the popular choice after Commissioner Andrew Scipione recommended Ms Burn to Premier Mike Baird, reported The Daily Telegraph.

This comes after it emerged Ms Burn had clocked off at 10pm and also deleted a text message 11 minutes after police stormed into the Martin Place cafe in Sydney just after 2am on December 2014.

The sought-after position became available after the police hierarchy was restructured following Mr Scipione's announcement he will retire in September 2017.

Upon knowing fellow Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson was applying for the newly opened top job, Ms Burn requested Mr Scipione's support.

Commissioner Andrew Scipione recommended Ms Burn to Premier Mike Baird

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Cath Burn (pictured) said she didn't believe text messages that she deleted after the tragic Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney's city centre needed to be retained

Assistant Commissioners Jeff Loy, Mick Fuller amd Geoff McKechnie are also believed to have applied for the job.

It is believed Police Minister Troy Grant's recommendation for the job has been ignored by both the Premier and Mr Scipion.

'The process is ongoing and the positions have not yet been finalised,' a spokesperson for Mr Scipione said.

As the Cornial inquest into the siege continues, G reens MP David Shoebridge has slammed Ms Burn for deleting text message during and after the inquest without approval.

Lindt Cafe manager Tori Johnson (left) was fatally shot by Monis, who was killed when police stormed the building after a 17-hour stand-off. Katrina Dawson (right) was also killed

Ms Burn has since explained she did not believe the text messages she deleted after the tragic Lindt Cafe siege needed to be kept.

'To my knowledge and my recollection none of the texts I had were texts I thought I needed to keep, that I needed to retain,' Ms Burn said.

Ms Burn said she could only recall two texts during and after the siege, reported Daily Telegraph.

One which was made at 2.44am as she returned to the siege and at 3.28am to Commander Mark Jenkins - both texts have also since been deleted.

Ms Burn also clocked off early, at 10pm, before police were told to enter the cafe just after 2am
A California man risked his life jumping off one of the biggest waterfalls in Hawaii - and almost didn't live to tell the tale.

Shiloh Shahan, 21, from Templeton, was visiting the top of the Wailua Falls on the Hawaiian island of Kauai - which measures at 173-feet above the water - with a friend when he spontaneously decided to jump off.

'I was at a really pivotal point in my life. Everything was changing, and it felt like the right thing to do,' he told the The Tribune newspaper in San Luis Obispo.

Footage taken from the top of the fall shows the reckless jumper at the top of the waterfall before the dangerous jump.

Crazy kid: Shiloh Shahan, 21, from Templeton, California, was visiting Wailua Falls with a friend when he decided he wanted to jump off the top

Video taken of the death-defying plunge show Shahan taking a run-off and then jumping

Wailua Falls on the island of Kauai are 200 feet high - and look even higher in the video

Shahan is seen free-falling before landing in the water with a heavy thud. He was knocked unconscious on impact

Shahan can be seen in the video making a run-off before he plunges off the cliff, falling through the air before a loud thud is heard as he hits the water.

The cameraman focuses on the surface of the water but the man cannot be seen.

The cameraman can be heard shouting: 'Oh he's knocked out!'

After a few moments, you can spot two tourists below swimming toward what appears to be Shahan's limp, floating body.

Shiloh Shahan, 21 (right), from Templeton, was visiting the top of the Wailua Falls on the Hawaiian island of Kauai with a friend when he spontaneously decided to jump off

Shahan said he lost consciousness when he hit the water, and the two tourists saved his life by pulling him ashore.

'I really want to give credit to them for my safety,' Shahan told The Tribune.

'Without them, I probably wouldn't have been able to survive.'

Shahan said he suffered a concussion and tore some chest and back muscles. However he still walked away from the jump on his own, after taking some time recover.

'I was still able to walk around. I was just stiff,' he said.

This is the heart-stopping moment a man was knocked unconscious after jumping off a 173ft high waterfall

Commenting on social media, Shahan said: 'I did get knocked out when I hit the water and completely lost my memory for about five minutes after being pulled out of the water.

'If I had not been pulled out of the water by two people who I respect dearly I could have died.'

According to the Kauai Police Department, it is considered trespassing to get to Wailua Falls.

'If I had not been pulled out of the water by two people who I respect dearly I could have died'

This is not the first time risk-takers have been spotted jumping from waterfalls on video.
Police are investigating and are urging pet owners to keep them inside

The man gave letters to Altona North residents saying their pets

A man is believed to have shot and killed three cats and injured another in a rampage in west Melbourne.

It appears that the gunman dropped off threatening letters to several homes in the Altona North area before the shootings, telling residents their pets would die, according to Seven News.

Veterinarian Dr Nadia Wong said soon after a three-year-old white cat was brought to her after it was shot in the hip with a .22 calibre shotgun.

A man is believed to have shot and killed three cats and injured another (pictured) in a rampage in west Melbourne just days after delivering letters to residents warning them their pets will die

Veterinarian Dr Nadia Wong said it was not long after the letters were handed out that a three-year-old white cat was brought to her with a wound from a .22 calibre shotgun to it's hip (right)

The cat surprisingly survived but has to learn how to walk again, she said.

Although it is unknown why the man is targeting pets, Dr Wong said 'using guns is not the way to (threaten and kill off pets).'

'It creates fear and anger in the community and I hope we don't see this again.'

Another cat died in the same area after being shot twice and a third was killed in nearby Point Cook.

The cat surprisingly survived but has to learn how to walk again (pictured)

Hobson Bay Vet Clinic posted on Facebook that they had also seen a similar case and that veterinarians believe there are three other cases of family cats being targeted.

RSPCA spokesperson Daniel Bode told Seven News the shootings were 'shocking acts of cruelty.'

The shooter could face a $75,000 fine and up to two years in jail if caught.
A woman has been charged with the murder of a two-year-old girl found dead, believed to have drowned in the bath, at her home.

Police are investigating the possibility the little girl had been dead for several days before her body was discovered about midday on Tuesday at the housing commission home on Merino Street in Miller, south-west Sydney.

A 36-year-old woman was arrested in the early hours of Wednesday morning at a medical facility in the Blue Mountains.

The woman was taken to Katoomba Police station and charged with murder.

It had earlier been reported the girl's 36-year-old mother had been hospitalised after she was involved in a car accident in the Blue Mountains on Sunday.

Scroll down for video

The body of a two-year-old girl has been found inside a home in Sydney's south-west

Forensic investigators were seen entering the property shortly after the girl's body was found

The woman was refused bail and will appear in Penrith Local Court on Wednesday.

Police were called to the Miller home, in Sydney's south-west, about midday on Tuesday after a friend reported concerns for the young girl's welfare.

The friend was on the phone to police when she made the grim discovery at the housing commission home on Merino Street, 7 News reported.

A post mortem will need to be carried out to determine the cause of death, however she is believed to have drowned in the bath.

Police are investigating whether the girl had been dead for several days.

Officers made the grim discovery upon entering the housing commission home (pictured) on Merino Street, but have not yet determined the cause of death

The girl's 36-year-old mother is believed to suffer from a mental illness and was hospitalised on Sunday after she was involved in a car accident at the Blue Mountains.

A concerned friend said she hadn't seen or heard from the mother or girl since the Sunday car accident.

Neighbour Pat Ingram said she hadn't seen the girl since last Wednesday and said a woman had earlier knocked on her door to check if Pat had seen the girl.

'Someone knocked on our door, asked if we had seen the little girl. She said she was concerned for the child's welfare. She asked if I had a ladder,' Ms Ingram told Daily Telegraph.

'I told her if she was really concerned, she should ring the police.'

A NSW Police spokesperson said a crime scene has been established at the home and officers from Green Valley had started investigating the death

The specialist investigators wore full blue suits to ensure they did not compromise evidence inside the crime scene

Robyn Fransisco said the car accident followed a relationship breakdown with her boyfriend.

'A family friend (of the woman's) came over and told my parents she had a car accident up in the mountains,' Ms Fransisco said.

'She didn't seem like the kind of mother who'd leave her daughter alone.'

Police are now searching for the girl's father.

A NSW Police spokesperson said a crime scene has been established at the home and officers from Green Valley had started investigating the death.

'A report will be prepared for the coroner and a post mortem will officially determine how the child died,' the spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

A child's trampoline can be seen in the backyard of the state-owned home, which is now cordoned off by police tape.

A child's trampoline can be seen in the backyard of the state-owned home, which is now cordoned off by police tape
He has been remanded in custody until another court hearing is held

He is accused of planning a mass-

A young Muslim man is accused of attempting to buy guns and a suicide vest for an Islamic State-inspired massacre at Buckingham Palace.

Haroon Ali-Syed, 19, was arrested by counter-terrorism officers amid fears he was on the brink of committing an atrocity.

The IT student is also suspected of trying to contact a bombmaker to build a nail bomb, and researching an Elton John concert in Hyde Park which took place on Sunday to mark the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

Haroon Ali-Syed, 19, from Hounslow in west London, pictured in a court sketch, was arrested last week on suspicion of a terror offence

Ali-Syed is said to have researched this Elton John concert in Hyde Park on September 11

He is charged with planning to carry out an attack at a central London landmark, potentially Buckingham Palace or Oxford Street.

It is understood evidence against Ali-Syed was gathered in a joint operation between MI5 and Scotland Yard.

An undercover officer, posing as an extremist, infiltrated his circle and allegedly recorded exchanges of him preparing a terrorist attack.

Ali-Syed is accused of attempting to get hold of an improvised pressure cooker bomb built to instructions published online by Al Qaeda.

He allegedly made applications for loans worth 8,000 to finance his plans.

Yesterday, he appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court charged with preparing an act of terrorism between April 12 and September 9.

Prosecutor Thomas Halpin said Ali-Syed tried to contact someone online 'to make an incendiary explosive device,' asking an intermediary: 'How many people this one bomb can kill or injure?'

He added: 'His internet searches show he is searching busy places in London. Oxford Street, upcoming events in London. He is looking at internet searches. Where are soldiers in the UK, London's top ten most crowded boroughs, Buckingham Palace, Royal Marines Reserve, City of London.'

A teenager is accused of planning to carry out a terror attack at landmarks such as Buckingham Palace

It is believed Oxford Street is among the targets Ali-Syedi is alleged to have planned to hit

District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe remanded Ali-Syed in custody and ordered him to appear at the Old Bailey next Monday.

Ali-Syed is one of three men arrested during dawn raids and searches by unarmed officers in London and the Home Counties last Thursday. No weapons or bomb-making materials were recovered in the operation.

A second man, aged 20, was also held in west London on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act and failing to disclose information regarding an act of terrorism.

A third man, aged 19, who is originally from Mosul, Iraq, was arrested on suspicion of a religiously aggravated offence.

Both men were released on bail. Just three months ago, Met Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe warned it is a case of 'when, not if', the UK will be hit by Islamic State-inspired terrorists.

Ali-Syed appeared during a short hearing at Westminster Magistrates court today

The force is arresting a terrorist suspect every day and recently unveiled elite teams of motorcycle gun cops whose job is to foil a marauding attack.

Born in Ealing, west London, Ali-Syed is one of three brothers. His family has links to Slough, High Wycombe, Southall and Hounslow.
Jihadists fleeing home as Islamic State collapses are the next big terror threat facing Australian cities, experts have warned cabinet.

With the so-called caliphate on its heels, the about 110 Australian fighting in in Iraq and Syria were likely to attempt attacks in the West in the next few months.

Because of the length of the war, they will likely be the 'most experienced, lethally skilled and highly networked group of jihadis to date', making them more dangerous than ever.

Jihadists fleeing home as Islamic State collapses are the next big terror threat facing Australia. Abdullah Elmir (C) is dead but 110 others like him are alive and fighting for ISIS

The report presented to the National Security Committee of Cabinet on Tuesday by influential think tank the Lowy Institute urged the government to refocus it attention back home.

Attacks could be on the scale of the 2002 Bali Bombings that were carried out by terrorists returning to Indonesia from the War in Afghanistan.

Report authors Lydia Khalil and Rodger Shanahan implored Western countries to urgently co-ordinate international border control measures to prevent a flood of terrorists escaping to the West.

'This will require a more co-ordinated international response rather than multiple national approaches,' they wrote.

Jihadi bride Zehra Duman, 21, from Melbourne is still alive and helping recruit more terrorists in Syria

With the so-called caliphate on its heels, the about 110 Australian fighting in in Iraq and Syria were likely to attempt attacks in the West in the next few months

The analysts said foreign fighters were just as ideologically motivated as those who came from Afghanistan and Bosnia and would not stop just because ISIS fell apart.

They said the exodus had already begun, either because Islamic State was struggling to pay its fighters or as part of a calculated strategy by the terrorist group for life after the war.

'The war in Syria and Iraq has created a significant cohort of lethally trained and networked fighters who will infect the arteries of the international system,' they wrote.

Sydney jihadist Mohamed Elomar is known to have been in Iraq and Syria has been photographed holding up severed heads of dead soldiers

Melbourne teen Jake Bilardi was killed in a suicide attack

'There has been a strong correlation between Islamic States territorial losses and military defeats with its international attacks.

'Defectors from Islamic State have claimed that recent losses and the decline in foreign recruits has led to the groups high command rethinking how foreign fighters and potential foreign recruits can best serve the organisation in the future.

'According to one defector, " they are trying to make sleeper cells all over the world and some foreign fighters have already left Islamic State and returned home to carry out this strategy.'

Islamic State is losing the war in the Middles East and as it collapses fighters will start to flee and take the fight home

The report said well-established smuggling paths through the Syrian/Turkish border would be the most likely routes out of the warzone and governments needed to understand their strategies to combat them.

Australia was one of the first countries to introduce specific foreign fighter laws giving law enforcement greater powers to detain and arrest returning terrorists.

At least 60 Australians have died fighting for Islamic State.
A rookie cop who joined his hometowns police department after serving in the Marines was fired because he didnt open fire at a black man who told him: Just shoot me.

Stephen Mader, 25, had responded to a domestic incident on May 6  and found himself in a confrontation with an armed black man on the street in Weirton, West Virginia.

But Mader used what he learned in the Marines and his police academy to assess the situation - and did not shoot Ronald RJ Williams.

I saw then he had a gun, but it was not pointed at me, Mader told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He said it was by Williamss side and pointing to the ground.

Former police officer Stephen Mader (pictured) says he was terminated because he didnt open fire at Ronald Williams (right) who told him: Just shoot me

Mader said he began to use his calm voice urging the 23-year-old, of Pittsburgh, to put the weapon down while standing behind the mans car.

I told him, Put down the gun, and hes like, Just shoot me. And I told him, Im not going to shoot you brother.

Mader said Williams started flicking his wrist to try and get a reaction  but still he didnt shoot.

I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and deescalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop situation.

But before he could, two other Weirton officers arrived on the scene. When Williams walked towards them and brandished his weapon  which was later discovered to be unloaded  one fatally shot him.

An investigation by West Virginia State Police concluded the shooting was justified.

Mader (pictured with his wife) said that Williams never pointed the gun at him and he recognized that it was a suicide-by-cop situation

But the case has been handled questionably by the local police department, according to the Post-Gazette.

The newspaper reports that Williams was not identified for three days after the shooting.

The case was assigned to an investigator who immediately went on a week-long vacation.

Now, Mader has spoken out for the first time to call his termination unjustified.

He said that when he returned to work almost weeks after taking the usual leave after an officer-involved shooting, he was told to meet Weirton Police Chief Rob Alexander.

Chief Alexander told him that he was being placed on administrative leave pending an investigation because he put two other officers in danger.

Mader said: Right then, I said to him: Look, I didnt shoot him because he said, Just shoot me.

Mader joined the Weirton Police Department after four years in the Marines (above) including a tour of Afghanistan

But on June 7, he was handed a notice of termination saying that he had failed to eliminate a threat.

It also mentioned other incidents in which the city deemed Mader behaved inadequately.

One was because neither he nor two other officers with more experience than him (the same two involved in the Williams case) reported an elderly womans death as suspicious after she appeared to have fallen in her home after suffering a stroke.

Another was a complaint from a woman who said Mader cursed at her when she asked why her husband was arrested for disorderly conduct after receiving a parking ticket.

Mader insisted he did nothing wrong in either situation, but was never given an opportunity to clarify what happened.

He also said he was outraged that at a press conference on June 8  after he was fired  Chief Alexander told reporters that all three officers involved were back at work.

He believes the chief said so to give a good impression of the police department and the officers, who are all white, involved in the case in light of the tensions across the country between the black community and police.

Mader said Weirton Police Chief Rob Alexander told him he had put two other officers in danger

The chief also told Williams family that all three officers were back at work, but the reason is not known, the Post-Gazette reports.

But Mader believes the other two officers were justified in shooting Williams, adding: They did not have the information I did.

He added: All they know is [Williams] is waving a gun at them. Its a shame it happened the way it did, but, I dont think they did anything wrong.

Williams family, however, believe the decision to fire Mader shows the nature of the police departments policy.

Not only do they think he should have been shot and killed, but shot and killed more quickly, an attorney for the family told the Post-Gazette.

Mader had grown up in Weirton and was ecstatic to land a job in the police department after four years in the Marines, which included a tour of Afghanistan.

He married his high school sweetheart Kaycie Mader five years ago and the couple have two sons, aged one and four.

Mader was excited for the challenge after getting a job with the police department, which paid just $34,000 in the first year, in July last year.

He is now studying to get a commercial license to drive trucks, but would consider going back to law enforcement if he could.

After his firing, he sought legal help to fight the citys decision  only to be told there was no point because he could be fired for any reason in an at-will state.

They told him he could ask to resign instead of being terminated, but Mader refused to admit wrongdoing.

To resign and admit I did something wrong here would have ate at me. I think Im right in what I did.

His wife agrees, saying she is extremely proud of her husband.
Hillary Clinton has put physical distance between herself and her supporters as she continues to recover from pneumonia, nursing herself from inside her Chappaqua, New York, home.

But large, concrete barriers outside the property and Secret Service officers occupying large black SUVs also block gawkers from getting too close.

Onlookers and media can wander down Clinton's road until they reach the concrete structures. They must not, however, park on the street or set foot on the grass. Otherwise, police officers will come to shoo them away.

Hillary Clinton has put physical distance between herself and her supporters as she continues to recover from pneumonia, nursing herself from inside her Chappaqua, New York, home (pictured). Secret Service in SUVs (also pictured) keeping onlookers from getting too close to her, too

Today someone sent Clinton flowers, it would seem. A flower delivery truck is pictured pulling up to concrete barriers blocking off Clinton's property from the rest of the street.

A flower delivery truck is seen leaving the property this afternoon. Photographers spotted four coming and going

Yesterday Clinton's street was also blocked off by orange barriers - they are no longer there, and the Secret Service has not explained why

The orange barriers that were there yesterday are seen above from the end of Clinton's road. A camera man is also pictured staking out Clinton's home

Plastic orange barriers also blocked off much of the rest of her road during Clinton's first full day inside her home. They had inexplicably disappeared by Tuesday morning.

The Secret Service did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment on the matter Tuesday.

It was similarly unable to say how long the concrete structures had been in place and why they were put there. Those semi-permanent barriers have been there for weeks, however.

The former first lady has received Secret Service protection since husband Bill Clinton held the Oval Office. She was also watched by the Diplomatic Security Service when she was secretary of state and performing official duties.

She would have Secret Service protection now even if she were not married to a former president because she is a major party's nominee for the position. Donald Trump also has Secret Service protection, as does his running mate, Mike Pence, and Clinton's vice presidential pick, Tim Kaine.

Press were camped out on the right side of Clinton's street yesterday in the shade. They had to move to the left side of the street Tuesday after the property owner called the police

A squad car rolls down Clinton's street on Monday afternoon past reporters' stake out position. Clinton has been inside her home since Sunday night and will remain there the rest of today her campaign says

Onlookers and media can wander down Clinton's road until they reach the concrete structures. They must not, however, park on the street or set foot on the grass (as they are pictured doing here). Otherwise, police officers will come to shoo them away

Where are they going? Two SUVS left Clinton's home Tuesday around 12:00. It was unclear who was inside or where they were going

Trump gained a protective detail at the end of last year after he requested one. So did Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson. Bernie Sanders had a taxpayer-funded security detail, as well, at the height of his campaign this year.

Secret Service officers assigned to the Clintons now sit watch in shifts from vehicles parked behind the concrete barriers in front of her home.

Clinton's street - and the press camped out at the end of it - have drawn extra attention this week from passersby who occasionally slow their cars to take stock of the scene, as well as photos.

At least one neighbor of the Clintons repeatedly called the police on journalists who inadvertently stepped onto their property as they camped out at the end of the former secretary of state's road.

Today, at least four times the ill presidential candidate has received flowers, the arrival of flower delivery trucks indicates.

One well-wishing neighbor has placed a sign on a road that connects Clinton and her neighbors to Chappaqua's city center

'Get Better Soon,' the sign says. 'Stronger Together! Hillary!'

Press are also staked out in the parking lot of a Walgreens at the corner of the road that connects Clinton's home to the Chappaqua city center

One well-wishing neighbor has placed a sign on a road that connects Clinton and her neighbors to Chappaqua's city center, where press are also staked out at a Walgreens.

'Get Better Soon,' it says. 'Stronger Together! Hillary!'

Clinton's campaign admitted on Sunday that she contracted pneumonia and was diagnosed two days before by her doctor after the Democratic White House hopeful was filmed stumbling into a vehicle outside a 9/11 memorial ceremony.

She ignored her doctor's advice and kept appointments with her national security advisers and donors on Friday and Saturday.

The 'dizzy' spell, as Clinton is calling it, was brought on by dehydration, her doctor said.

During a call into Anderson Cooper's CNN's program Monday evening Clinton said she kept her illness a secret because she didn't 'think it was going to be that big a deal.'

Clinton could return to the campaign trail - and the media along with her - as early as Thursday, when she's schedule to give a speech in Washington, D.C.

It was, and Clinton was forced to disclose the sickness hours after ditching her press corps and taking her motorcade to daughter Chelsea's home in the middle of what Fox News was reporting as a 'medical episode.'

Later that evening Clinton's campaign came clean about what had happened. A spokesman said Monday that she had no other 'undisclosed' illnesses and promised a release of her medical records soon.

Clinton sat out a West Coast campaign swing this week and sent Bill in her place. He's in California attending fundraisers on her behalf today and will deliver a speech for her in Las Vegas tomorrow.
Anni Rowland, 52, is accused as acting as partner Kevin Hanley's PA as he ran an international drugs smuggling operation

The girlfriend of one of Britain's biggest cocaine barons acted as a PA for his worldwide smuggling network from a sleepy village in the Cotwolds, a court heard.

Kevin Hanley, 53, was jailed last year after admitting smuggling millions of pounds worth of drugs in shipments of watermelons, pomegranates and broccoli through companies set up as a front.

His partner Anni Rowland, 52, denies all knowledge of the business but the prosecution alleged today she took care of his affairs from her home in the picturesque town of Stow-on-the-Wold.

Rowland, the mother of his son, would book flights and accommodation for Hanley, who would often travel with his mistress, glamorous Greek TV presenter Chrysi Minadaki, 45, who has also been jailed for her role in the conspiracy.

Hanley initially got away with the illicit trade by setting up two shell companies - ICC 2009 Ltd and Paris Western - which purported to be importing fruit and veg to act as a front for his illegal drug ring.

But investigators became suspicious when they realised he had not declared a penny of income since his release from prison in 2006 following a 15-year sentence for conspiracy to import cocaine - of which he served five.

His empire was smashed by the National Crime Agency after a massive surveillance operation which included bugging his home in Fulham, west London.

Minadaki would travel with him all over the world to negotiate the drug deals, while Rowland was busily organising his flights and his accommodation.

She would also transfer him large sums of cash for his business dealings, it is said.

Officers raided the Chelsea home of co-conspirator John Fowler, 58, on November 24, 2012, and recovered 2million in cash, around 2.5million worth of top grade cocaine, 100,000 of amphetamines and 61,000 of skunk cannabis.

Fowler, 58, was earlier jailed for 17 years and Minadaki was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Prosecutor Richard Jory QC said the drugs ring involved dozens of people across the world and was well planned and well organised.

Rowland commuted with her son between the Cotswolds town and London, the Old Bailey heard, while Minadaki had a plush flat in Cadogan Square in Westminster.

Mr Jory said: Ms Rowland booked flights and accommodation for Hanley and Fowler around Europe.

Kevin Hanley (left), 53, was jailed last year after admitting smuggling millions of pounds worth of drugs in shipments of watermelons, pomegranates and broccoli. Rowland ran his affairs from home, the prosecution alleged today

She made charges for payment where money became due. She arranged for the transfer of money to Hanley when he needed it, for example when he was travelling abroad.

She occasionally attended meetings with him and was present with him in September 2014 when the prosecution say there was a decision made that was picked up on a secret listening device about drug arrangements and procedural matters.

Her finger prints were found in due course on items, including the 2 million in cash.

There were also writings and notes indicating that she was familiar with cash - perhaps counting the cash and making a note of the quantities stored at Mr Fowlers address.

Her finger prints were found in due course on items, including the 2 million in cash Richard Jory QC

It appears to be, at least at one stage, a safe house for cash and property in this criminal conspiracy.

She had an active role dealing with the money that was stored at that address.

The evidence in this case is not in dispute, what is in dispute is the involvement of this defendant.

Mr Jory told the court Hanley had already been jailed for exactly the same charges facing Rowland.

He said: Mr Hanley came before this court and he plead guilty to the same four counts. He admitted that he was connected in a conspiracy to supply drugs. It proves the crown's assertion that there was a conspiracy.

Mr Jory continued: Was Ms Rowland part of this conspiracy? There was undeniably a conspiracy, ultimately its going to be for you to decide whether she was part of it.

Rowland, from Stow-on-the-Wold, Cheltenham, denies conspiracy to supply cocaine, amphetamines, cannabis and money laundering.
Great British Bake Off fans went into meltdown today after Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc confirmed they would step down as hosts when the show moves to Channel 4.

In a joint statement, the presenting duo said they had 'made no secret' of their desire for the hit baking show to remain on the BBC, adding 'we aren't following the dough'.

The announcement sparked an online storm among Bake Off devotees, with thousands of desperate viewers venting their disappointment with tweets and memes.

Meanwhile more than 8,000 supporters have already signed an online petition called 'Keep The Great British Bake Off on the BBC', calling on producers to renegotiate a deal.

Scroll down for video

Sue Perkins (second from right) and Mel Giedroyc (far right) have confirmed they will step down as hosts of The Great British Bake Off when the show moves to Channel 4

Desperate: The news sent Twitter into meltdown as fans vented their disappointment

Perkins and Giedroyc said today that they had been 'shocked and saddened' to learn GBBO would move from its 'home' to Channel 4 in a 25million move.

Confirming their plans, they said: 'The BBC nurtured the show from its infancy and helped give it its distinctive warmth and charm, growing it from an audience of two million to nearly 15 at its peak.

'We've had the most amazing time on Bake Off, and have loved seeing it rise and rise like a pair of yeasted Latvian baps.

'We're not going with the dough. We wish all the future bakers every success.'

The pair, who have presented GBBO since it first aired in 2010, are the first of the show's stars to reveal their plans following yesterday's announcement.

Judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry, who are the experts on the show, are yet to confirm whether they will move to Channel 4.

Meanwhile more than 8,000 supporters have already signed an online petition called 'Keep The Great British Bake Off on the BBC', calling on producers to renegotiate a deal

Sue Perkins - who presents the show alongside Mel Geidroyc - retweeted a BBC statement which described the hit baking show as 'quintessentially a BBC programme'

Within moments of the confirmation social media feeds were flooded with posts from distraught viewers, with one Twitter user called Emma Jayne asking: 'How am I supposed to live'.

Another called Elizabeth wrote: 'Forget #Brexit Mel and Sue leaving #GBBO is the worst thing to happen this year!!!'

Twitter user Jess Edwards applauded the presenters' decision, writing: 'I didn't think I could love Mel and Sue any more, and then they do that #principles'.

Dozens of fans illustrated their posts with hilarious memes made from show clips.

Devoted fans: Twitter users posted dozens of hilarious tweets about the hosts' decision

A petition has also been launched by those determined to keep the show on the BBC. More than 8,000 people have signed in the last 24 hours.

'WE ARE SHOCKED AND SADDENED': MEL AND SUE'S FULL FAREWELL STATEMENT 'We were very shocked and saddened to learn yesterday evening that Bake Off will be moving from its home. We made no secret of our desire for the show to remain where it was. 'The BBC nurtured the show from its infancy and helped give it its distinctive warmth and charm, growing it from an audience of two million to nearly 15 at its peak. 'Weve had the most amazing time on Bake Off, and have loved seeing it rise and rise like a pair of yeasted Latvian baps. 'Were not going with the dough. We wish all the future bakers every success.' Advertisement

It states: 'Bake Off is a British institution, just like the BBC. It's an immersive escape from commercials and moving it to Channel 4 will lose everything that's special about it.

'We want this programme to remain on the BBC. A full hour, not 45 mins with 15 mins of adverts!

'I'm no baker, but the show makes me feel like I could be. Let's not lose this iconic British institution to commercialism.'

The move is huge blow for the BBC after a string of high profile losses in its scheduling, including The Voice, The Grand National and the three Top Gear presenters, including Jeremy Clarkson.

The BBC issued a thinly-veiled attack on the producers, saying resources were 'not infinite' and the money could not be met.

But some have now suggested that the BBC could have paid more for what is the ultimate jewel in their crown and attracts more than 10m viewers per week.

Fan favourite: Dozens of viewers used shots taken from the show to create their own memes

The move also highlights the ongoing battle the BBC faces to compete with commercial broadcasters while its budget is put under strain.

The statement said: 'Working with Love Productions, we have grown and nurtured the programme over seven series and created the huge hit it is today.

'We made a very strong offer to keep the show but we are a considerable distance apart on the money. The BBC's resources are not infinite.

'GBBO is a quintessentially BBC programme. We hope Love Productions change their mind so that Bake Off can stay ad free on BBC One.'

Support: Other fans applauded the presenters' decision to not follow the show to Channel 4

After the statement was released, some questioned why the BBC had not fought more for the programme.

One wrote: 'So a spokesman claims the BBC has not got infinite resources and has lost #GBBO to Channel 4. Plenty of dosh though for so called star presenters.'

Another wrote: 'Pretty soon it will only be Chris Evans and Jeremy Vine presenting everything in the BBC.'

Love Productions also confirmed they were 'unable to reach agreement on terms to renew the commission of The Great British Bake Off'.

Channel 4 confirmed today that Perkins, Giedroyc, Hollywood and Berry have yet to sign a contract but said they would be 'delighted' if the team wanted to join.

But a source for Love Productions added that if they don't, 'we have great creative minds and will come up with something else'.

Angry Twitter users are already speculating that Ant and Dec or Steve Jones could be hauled in to front the show.

Bookmaker Coral have tipped former Celebrity Masterchef winner Lisa Faulkner as the most likely replacement ahead of former Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain and Channel 4 regulars Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer.
Device picked up traces of THC in drivers who smoked pot within 30 minutes of the test, and within 2-3 hours

As part of field tests, several drivers in California were pulled over for driving erratically and

in pot - in person's breath, and also detect evidence of edible pot products

Law enforcement officials in California for the first time have field-tested a pioneering marijuana breathalyzer, which also has been touted as the first device of its kind to detect edible pot products on drivers' breath.

The announcement was made on Tuesday by Hound Labs Inc, an Oakland-based scientific-device company that was founded in 2014 by Dr Mike Lynn, an emergency room doctor and reserve deputy sheriff with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office.

The company's marijuana detector, dubbed The Hound, promises to give law enforcement immediate measurements for the few hours that tetrahydrocannabinol - the principal ingredient in marijuana - is present in a person's breath.

Disruptive technology: Hound Labs Inc, an Oakland-based scientific-device company, announced Tuesday that law enforcement officials for the first time have field-tested its portable marijuana detector

Until now, police had been forced to rely on blood, urine and saliva tests to detect THC in a driver's system, which Hound Labs described in a press release as 'unhelpful' because these results measure the presence of marijuana for days after the suspect is impaired.

In a phone interview with the Daily Mail Tuesday, Dr Lynn explained that his invention would prevent unfair arrests of people who may have smoked marijuana, or ate a pot brownie, legally the night before, and who were no longer impaired when they were pulled over, but still had traces of THC in their bloodstream.

The fundamental scientific point is THC only stays in breath very very short period of time, Lynn noted. You can correlate actually the levels [of THC] in their breath to driving impairment.

The problem with saliva, or blood, or urine is that THC stays in those body fluids for days and days and days.

HOW DOES THE HOUND WORK? When an officer hands The Hound breathalyzer to a driver, the person blows into a tube in the machine twice, and moments later the detector signals it has enough breath for testing. Then, a chemical analysis isolates and extracts THC molecules from the breath sample and manipulates through a series of chemical reactions. A few minutes later, the result of the test shows up on the screen measuring THC in the breath in parts per million. The resulting measurement value corresponds to the level of THC present in the breath sample at the time of the breath sample collection. Advertisement

Lynn, the CEO of Hound Labs, told US World and News Report he personally helped pull over drivers in the initial field tests of his pot breathalyzer, which were conducted in California. None of the motorists who voluntarily took part in the test were arrested after breathing into the handheld prototype.

Two people admitted to smoking marijuana within the past 30 minutes, and in those cases The Hound detected higher levels of THC than the rest.

Other motorists who took part in the experiment admitted to smoking pot within two to three hours, and the detector picked up on traces of the drug in their breath samples.

All of the test subjects were stopped after they were observed driving erratically. Although no one was arrested or charged, everyone who tested positive for marijuana were asked to find an alternative way to get to their destination.

In a separate test, The Hound also reportedly detected THC in people who had consumed gummy bears and brownies laced with marijuana.

When it comes to foods spiked with pot, it takes a while for a person to feel intoxicated because THC enters the bloodstream after making its way through the digestive system.

In December 2015, after two years of research and development, Hound Labs became the first company to unveil a proprietary scientific method to not only detect THC in breath, but also to measure its concentration in parts per million, which existing drug-detecting devices had been unable to do.

The inspiration really came from having this unusual background where I can see the problems of impaired driving in the hospital, and on the law enforcement side, said Dr Lynn. It was such an important problem to solve. Ultimately, we had to invent our own science.'

With more states passing legislation legalizing marijuana, Hound Labs' device has being touted as a solution to a growing concern about drug-impaired driving.

Twenty-three states in the US so far have allowed access to medical marijuana and four, plus Washington DC, allow recreational use, but cannabis remains prohibited under federal law.

Those states that have legalized marijuana, have set different levels and others have established a zero-level tolerance policy.

Lynn tells Daily Mail that so far the response to The Hound has been overwhelmingly positive, not only from the law enforcement community, which he says has a tremendous pent-up demand for a breathalyzer that can measure THC accurately, but also from activists lobbying for the legalization of marijuana.

Lynn went on to explain that from the point of view of marijuana legalization advocates, his device addresses the fundamental challenge between public safety and fairness.

What comes next for The Hound, according to the company CEO, is multiple rounds of rigorous tests and clinical trials set for next year.

Until now, police had been forced to rely on blood, urine and saliva tests to detect THC in a driver's system, which measure the presence of marijuana for days after the suspect is impaired

Hound Labs plans to make its disruptive technology, developed with the help of scientists at University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco, available to law enforcement agencies around the country.

The Lompoc Police Department in California already has expressed interest in the innovative THC-detecting tool.

The Hound marijuana breathalyzer is exactly the tool that we need to address the existing issue of marijuana-impaired driving on our roads, said Lompoc Police Chief Patrick Walsh.

UNITED STATES OF POT: A LOOKS AT MARIJUANA LAWS As more states enact medical marijuana laws, these new marijuana laws directly conflict with long-enshrined strict prohibitions on driving under the influence of any Schedule 1 drug, which includes cannabis. All states prohibit driving while impaired, whether the substance be prescription drugs, alcohol, cocaine, or marijuana. The difference with drunk driving and drugged driving, is that with alcohol there is a clearly defined .08 blood alcohol limit. In cases involving low alcohol readings or prescription drugs, the prosecuting attorney must prove actual impairment of the driver beyond a reasonable doubt. Impairment can be shown by evidence the driver was weaving, driving over the fog line, erratic driving, or excessive speed. Despite numerous laws that allow medical marijuana, all 50 states and the federal government continue to classify marijuana as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, meaning that: (a) it has a high potential for abuse; (b) has no accepted medical use; and (3) there is no accepted safety standards for using the substance  even under medical supervision. No prescriptions may be written for a Schedule 1 substance. Advertisement

Lynn said he hopes to provide the technology to about six police departments over the next six months to test the detector at the roadside.

Then early next year, the device would be ready for nationwide distribution. Lynn said that potalyzers marketed towards law enforcement will be sold with a price tag between $500-$1,000 each.

Eventually, the company wants to roll out a less expensive consumer version of The Hound as well.
GARY DOBSON

Gary Dobson was one of two men to be convicted of Stephen's murder in 2012

Gary Dobson was one of two men to be convicted of Stephen's murder in 2012 - 19 years after the teenager was stabbed to death in a racially motivated attack.

Dobson was first arrested 15 days after Stephen was chased down and stabbed to death in the street in Eltham, south-east London.

He was one of five white youths, all alleged to be members of the same street gang, who were charged with Stephen's murder, but the charges were then subsequently dropped by the CPS.

When Stephen's parents Doreen and Neville Lawrence launched their own private prosecution in 1994, Dobson was among the three acquitted of murder at the Old Bailey.

On 14 February 1997, on a famous front page, the Daily Mail labelled Dobson, Norris and three other suspects 'murderers'.

The headline read, 'Murderers: The Mail accuses these men of killing. If we are wrong, let them sue us.' Beneath it appeared pictures of Dobson, Norris, Neil and Jamie Acourt, and Luke Knight.

None of the men ever sued for defamation and strong public opinions rose against the accused and the police who handled the case.

In 1999 the McPherson report into the Metropolitan Police's handling of the case found a litany of failures and accused the force of 'institutional racism'.

Dobson worked as a bricklayer and labourer at building sites across London, but at the time of his re-arrest for Stephen's murder he was serving a five-year sentence for drug dealing.

He was finally convicted in 2007, after a cold case review found 'new and substantial evidence' and his original acquittal was quashed in the court of appeal.

He is now serving a minimum of 15 years behind bars.

Two years ago, he split from his partner of 10 years and mother of his two sons, Michelle Lines.

She is said to have left him for a new man but he confirmed the pair had broken up 'amicably'.

'She has since met somebody,' he said on Facebook at the time. 'A fellow who I kind of knew and got on well with. As for names and details they are to remain private. Thank you, Gary.'

DAVID NORRIS

David Norris, the son of a gangster, was also convicted of Stephen's murder in 2012

David Norris, a gangster's son, was the other man to be convicted over Stephen's murder in 2012.

He was named as a suspect within 48 hours of the murder in April 1993 but dodged justice for years.

He was the one member of the gang who wasn't based or near the estate where Stephen was killed, and instead lived with his mother in Chislehurst, south-east London.

Norris was 16 and had left school when Stephen was murdered.

After avoiding justice for years, he was eventually arrested over the murder in September 2010 after an expert review of forensic evidence. Fibres and hairs linked him and Dobson to their victim.

Norris, who has five children from various relationships, is now serving a minimum of 14 years in prison, for what the judge described as a 'terrible and evil crime'.

He has tried to appeal his sentence on several occasions, claiming that the use in evidence of a surveillance video showing him to be racist was unfair. However, his applications for permission to appeal by both men were rejected by a single judge who considered the papers from the case.

JAMIE ACOURT

Brothers Jamie and Neil Acourt are two of the five thugs named as 18-year-old Stephens killers by the Daily Mail in 1997.

Police issued a wanted appeal for Jamie in March over a 4million cannabis smuggling ring. He is suspected of being in a gang that couriered 100kg of the drug between London and Newcastle.

Scotland Yard detained a number of people following a surveillance operation that lasted for two years  but Acourt fled before the arrests.

Suspect Jamie Acourt, pictured in a 1999 TV interview, is believed to be on the run

His brother Neil, 40, and two others admitted being members of the drugs gang at Kingston Crown Court.

Jamie is now thought to be in southern Spain, where he is known to spend a large amount of time.

Since the Lawrence case, he has had only one conviction, when he and Norris stole empty soda siphons from a warehouse in 1999. He was fined 250.

Before going on the run, Acourt lived in a smart terraced home with his partner and two children in Sidcup. Neighbours said he often disappeared for days at a time and drank heavily.

NEIL ACOURT

Neil Acourt, who also goes by the name of Neil Stuart, was 16 when Stephen was murdered and at the time was under suspicion for stabbing a man at a nightclub in Greenwich.

Although the smallest of the gang, Acourt was regarded by murder squad detectives as the leader.

At his family home a few minutes from the murder scene, officers found weapons including a knife, a Gurkha-type dagger and a sword.

Since the Lawrence killing, he has been repeatedly in trouble with the police.

In 2001 he was convicted of possessing an offensive weapon, a baton, which he claimed he needed for protection from revenge attacks.

The next year, he and Norris were each jailed for 18 months for a racist attack on an off-duty black detective.

In February Neil pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply 4million worth of cannabis at Kingston Crown Court.

LUKE KNIGHT

More than any other member of the Lawrence gang, Luke Knight has struggled to cope with his notoriety.

Several years ago he failed to persuade Greenwich Council that he should be rehoused because of intimidation. He claimed to be suffering from psychological problems after threats from anti-racist groups.

The son of a market trader, Knight was born in Southwark, south London, in November 1976. He has spoken publicly about the Lawrence murder twice, in a joint ITV interview with the other suspects in 1998 and at the public inquiry later that year.

But several years ago, he broke his silence to declare: 'I'm an innocent man. I've done nothing wrong. I'm totally innocent  I wasn't even there [at the murder scene].

'I have two little girls now. I have not told them about all of this. One day I will, I'll tell them that I am totally innocent.
But was found guilty and judge said he must serve at least 20 years in jail

He claimed the man she had an affair with, Philip Kilkenny, had killed her

Turkish immigrant Erhan Havaleoglu, 36, stabbed Leighanne Cameron, 29, 10 times in the neck and twice in the back

A former soldier who murdered his estranged life by stabbing her 12 times as their children slept upstairs has been jailed for life.

Erhan Havaleoglu, 35, killed 29-year-old social care worker Leighanne Cameron at their former home in West Lothian.

Their four-year-old daughter and son, aged 18 months, were asleep upstairs at the time of the attack in October 2015.

The High Court in Glasgow had previously heard that the marriage had ended approximately five months earlier.

Although the separation was not amicable Leighanne relied upon Havaleoglu to look after the children so that she could work.

It was just after she arrived home from work that evening that Havaleoglu carried out the brutal and unprovoked assault and knife attack.

Cameron was stabbed 10 times in the neck and twice in the back.

After leaving her dying, Havaleoglu drove to Edinburgh where police believe he ditched the weapon and clothes he was wearing, which were never found.

But a speck of her blood was found on his shoes and on the front door of his flat - which she had never been to.

Scroll down for video

Miss Cameron's (pictured) body was found by her lover Philip Kilkenny (right), who she had been having an affair with for six months before she split with Havaleoglu , the court heard

Her body was found by her lover Philip Kilkenny, who she had been having an affair with for six months before she split with Havaleoglu, the court heard.

Mr Kilkenny, 42, found Leighanne's body lying in a pool of blood and called the police, telling them Havaleoglu had 'told her she'd never get to love another man'.

Havaleoglu was then arrested but denied murdering his wife five months after they split up, instead blaming the killing on Kilkenny.

But a jury saw through his lies and took just under seven hours to find him guilty, by majority, of the 'brutal' murder at the High Court in Paisley.

More than a dozen friends and family of Leighanne were in court to hear the verdict, punching the air and shouting 'yes!' as he was convicted.

Leighanne's father David (left) looked to the heavens and cried as the killer had been brought to justice while in court with her mother Lynette (right)

The former soldier was told today the he must serve at least 20 years in jail after being given a mandatory life term.

Speaking following the sentencing, Nicky Patrick, Procurator Fiscal for Homicide and Major Crime, said: 'This was a terrible and violent crime that has left two children without a mother and family and friends devastated at the loss of a loved one.
With 40 acres of land and a small cottage once described as the 'loneliest farm in Britain', the Holm of Grimbister is the ultimate place to 'get away from it all'.

And those wishing for space and privacy are in luck as the remote Scottish island is now up for sale for just 300,000 - half the price of an average London home.

Don't be put off by the grim name, as the island - off the coast of Orkney - boasts free electricity and its own seal colony.

It also includes a one-bedroom cottage, as well as a mill and a stable.

A remote Scottish island called the Holm of Grimbister (pictured) is up for sale for 300,000

The one-bedroom farm on the island was once described as the 'loneliest farm in Britain'

The current population of the island is three, making it 800 times less densely populated than central London.

Inhabitants of the Holm can reach the mainland by foot, via a seaweed covered causeway, or by car, when the tide is out.

Jamie Watson of Savills estate agents said the property allowed a buyer to 'get away from it all' whilst still being able to access amenities.

He said: 'Attractions include seal colonies and a wonderful array of nature and wildlife.

The property is now on the market for the first time in 20 years for 300,000

Parts of the property, off the coast of Orkney, appear to be slightly run down

'What makes this place special is that the usual drawbacks to island living, such as a lack of mains services, access only by boat or helicopter and then only in good weather [...] simply don't apply at Holm of Grimbister.

'It is only a short trip to Orkney's capital, Kirkwall, which has all the modern conveniences required.'

The island's remoteness was described dramatically in a 1948 magazine article.

'In the Bay of Firth among the Orkney Isles is a speck of an island which is the loneliest farm in Britain,' it stated.

The cottage itself features a conservatory with views across the water on to the mainland, as well as a wood panelled living room

Don't be put off by the grim name, as the island - off the coast of Orkney - boasts free electricity and its own seal colony

The name 'Grimbister' is old Norse for Grim's Farm, and the land on the island is described by Savills estate agents as 'arable'.

The land is currently well fenced into nine separate enclosures.

The island was featured in the 1994 BBC television series 'Island Race' presented by Sandi Toksvig and John McCarthy.

In the show, the two presenters travelled Britain's seas in a 1919 pilot cutter sailing boat, with one of their several stops being on the Holm of Grimbister.

The island also came to press attention in 2007, when it was discovered that a candidate for a seat in the Scottish Parliament was living there.

It also includes a one-bedroom cottage, as well as a mill and a stable

The name 'Grimbister' is old Norse for Grim's Farm, and the land on the island is described by Savills estate agents as 'arable'

The 2001 UK census listed the island as uninhabited, but Mark Graham Jones, who was standing for the Conservative Party in the 2007 elections, listed his address as the Holm of Grimbister.

The cottage itself features a conservatory with views across the water on to the mainland, as well as a wood panelled living room.

It is now on the market for the first time in 20 years for 300,000.

This is less than half the price of an average London home - as the typical value of a property in the capital now stands at 600,076.

Inhabitants of the Holm can reach the mainland by foot, via a seaweed covered causeway, or by car, when the tide is out

The current population of the island is three - but there are also a number of rams

Jamie Watson of Savills estate agents said the property allowed a buyer to 'get away from it all' whilst still being able to access amenities
A shocking investigation has revealed how some hotels do not clean their sheets between guests.

Inside Edition stayed in nine upmarket hotels in New York and allegedly found three hadn't changed or washed their bedding before new customers arrived.

At a Marriott Residence Inn in Manhattan, they sprayed a message using invisible paint, that easily comes off in the laundry, on the bottom sheet of the bed.

The words which can only be seen under a UV light read: 'I slept here.'

Scroll down for video

A shocking investigation has revealed how some hotels do not clean their sheets between guests. Reporters tested whether the sheets used at a Marriott Residnce Inn in Manhattan, New York, with invisible paint

The words stenciled on the bottom of the sheet, that were only visible in UV light read: 'I slept here'. The guests then made the beds look like they had been slept in

The production team checked out, leaving the bed looking as though it was slept in.

Later on they checked into the same room under a different name, and found the message was still on the bottom sheet.

'This is absolutely disgusting,' said Inside Edition's Ann Mercogliano.

They allegedly found the same thing happened at the The Candlewood Inn & Suites in Times Square and La Quinta Inn & Suites near Central Park.

A manager at the Marriott was then called to the room and insisted each room's sheets were changed between guests.

The production team checked out, leaving the bed looking as though it was slept in. Later on they checked into the same room under a different name, and found the message was still on the bottom sheet

However she said there had been a problem and she was looking into it.

The Marriott Corporation apologized and said it takes these issues very seriously.

A spokesman for the owners of The Candlewood Inn, the InterContinental Hotels Group, told DailyMail.com: 'IHG takes great pride in setting stringent quality standards, which we take very seriously.

'Any claim that a hotel is not following the standards falls below our expectations. This incident serves as a reminder to all hotels to enforce this important standard.'

Representatives for La Quinta Inn also told DailyMail.com: 'At La Quinta Inns & Suites, we strive to provide a positive, consistent guest experience at all of our branded hotels.

'This includes providing a clean guestroom for every guest. We have reached out to the management team at this franchised location to understand what happened and have addressed the issue.'

A manager at the Marriott (above) was then called to the room and insisted each room's sheets were changed between guests. The company later apologized for what happened

The investigation allegedly found the same thing happened at the La Quinta Inn & Suites near Central Park
, but attributed the song to John Lennon and Paul 'McCarthy'

The parents of Oscar winner Marisa Tomei have scored a crucial victory in their lawsuit against the son of famed musician John Lennon.

Gary and Addie Tomei are suing Sean Lennon claiming in the six years since he purchased the property next to them, both located on West 13th Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, he has refused to cut down a tree in his front yard whose roots are now destroying the Tomei home, this despite numerous requests from the couple.

A judge has now ordered that Lennon must cut down the tree immediately, after the Tomeis charged that their front stoop and basement were being wrecked its roots.

Judge Debra James also quoted the Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever in her decision, closing out the opinion by writing: 'No one I think is in my tree / I mean it must be high or low.'

She attributed the lyric however to John Lennon and Paul 'McCarthy' rather than McCartney.'

Chopping time: Sean Lennon (above last week) has been ordered to cut down a tree in his yard

Famous neighbors: The tree was causing damage to the home of Gary and Addie Tomei, ehose daughter is Oscar-winning actress Marissa Tomei (right)

Battle goes on: The Tomeis are still seeking $10 million for the damages caused by the tree

Good try: Judge Debra James attributed a Beatles lyric to John Lennon and Paul 'McCarthy' rather than McCartney in her decision

In their February court filing earlier this year, the couple stated that Lennon was 'arrogantly' demanding the Tomeis change the entrance to their house so that he did not have to cut down the ailanthus tree.

The couple's lawyer, Gerald Walters, said in court papers: 'To suggest that [the Tomeis] forever transform their 170-year-old property so that [Lennon] may temporarily enjoy viewing its tree is absurd.'

The couple demanded that the tree be removed - and that Lennon pay them $10million.

The Tomeis also stated in court papers that the tree had 'compromised the basement wall and interior ... (causing) irreparable damage to the structural integrity of the building.'

They also included a photograph that appeared to show the root coming through the floor of the basement.

The couple went on to state that the concrete foundation and front stoop have also been compromised, all 14 doors in the two-family home are unable to close because of the damage to the foundation and the facade of the home could become damaged next if the tree does not go soon.

As for the reason behind the lawsuit, the Tomeis claim they have been trying to get in touch with Lennon for a year to no avail.

Earlier this year, Mr Tomei said: 'He refuses to do anything. Hes owned it for six years and neglected it. I like him personally but hes stubborn and he has a lawyer who is very belligerent,'

Friends: Tomei, Waris Ahluwalia and Lennon at the threeASFOUR show during Spring 2014 Fashion 3eek in NYC

Problem: The damage done by the tree to the stoop and railing can be clearly seen in the photos

More trouble: A rrot appears to be coming through in the basement as well

Even Ms Tomei, who says she is pro-tree, wants the tree gone.

'I hate to see this tree come down, but its destroying my stoop,' said the actress in an interview with the New York Daily News.

'There are cracks everywhere. The masons dont want to make repairs because they say its just going to happen again,' added Mr. Tomei.

'I want him to take the tree down and pay my expenses. Its not cheap. I tried but you cant talk to him. Hes always traveling.'

Lennon's tree surgeon has said that the huge tree could survive another 25 years.

And his architect, Sam Trible, said the removal of the tree would be a 'dramatic measure'.

Lennon's team suggested that the Tomeis could solve the problem by taking a small hand-held grinder to their railings.

But the Tomeis' reaction was to call such a plan 'ludicrous.'

As for the tree, it is an invasive species that was introduced to the United States through China, nicknamed by some as the Tree of Heaven.

It is also known the for the sour odor it produces when cut, grows new roots constantly and moves those roots around to steal from the supply of other plants - or even crack the walls of a basement.

This is not the first time Lennon's home has wrecked havoc on the Tomeis, with a pipe burst happening early last year that forced the duo to move in with their daughter.
Sex and relationship education (SRE) is in need of an overhaul, according to research by the University of Bristol.

The wide-ranging study looked at how young people in 10 countries viewed their school-based SRE. It found schools appear reluctant to acknowledge that sex is a potent and potentially embarrassing topic, and attempt to teach it in the same way as other subjects.

The study, published in the BMJ Open, also found students frequently felt vulnerable in SRE lessons, with young women often risking harassment if they participate, and young men anxious to conceal sexual ignorance.

Dr Pandora Pound, from the School of Social and Community Medicine, led the research. She said: It is clear from our findings that SRE provision in schools frequently fails to meet the needs of young people. Schools seem to have difficulty accepting some young people are sexually active, which leads to SRE that is out of touch with many young peoples lives.

Young people also reported that SRE can be negative, gendered, and heterosexist, and that having it delivered by their own teachers frequently created problems including embarrassment, lack of anonymity and blurred boundaries.

Dr Pound said: Despite SRE being a fundamental element of policies designed to safeguard young people and improve their sexual health, it does not have statutory status. In addition, government guidance in the UK is outdated, and nearly a third of UK schools have poor quality SRE.

There are several steps that need to be taken to address this. SRE should be sex-positive and delivered by specialists who can maintain clear boundaries with students.

In addition, schools need to acknowledge that SRE is a special subject with unique challenges, as well as the fact and range of young peoples sexual activity. Unless they do, young people may disengage from SRE and opportunities for safeguarding and improving their sexual health will be missed.

The research team examined 48 qualitative studies on young peoples views of their school-based SRE from the UK, Ireland, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Iran, Brazil and Sweden. The participants were students aged four to 19 in full-time education, young adults under 19 (not necessarily in full-time education), or adults under 25 if recalling their experiences of school-based SRE.

The study was funded by the NIHR School for Public Health Research.

Paper

What do young people think about their school-based sex and relationship education? A qualitative synthesis of young peoples views and experiences by Pandora Pound, Beki Langford and Rona Campbell in BMJ Open.
A former local mayor has admitted to molesting a four-year-old girl in 2013, and continuing the abuse until earlier this year, prosecutors claim.

Richard Keenan, who was the mayor of Hubbard, Ohio, in 2010 and 2011, appeared in court on Monday after having been charged with eight counts of rape and 12 counts of attempted rape and gross sexual imposition last month.

The self-described 'dedicated' Christian has previously pleaded not guilty to the charges, however prosecutors argue they have proof he has repeatedly admitted to the abuse, the Youngstown Vindicator reports.

Former local mayor Richard Keenan (pictured), admitted to molesting a four-year-old girl in 2013, and continuing the abuse until earlier this year, prosecutors claim

The newspaper claims Keenan, 65, confessed to his wife after she confronted him having 'heard about the assaults from the child'.

It also claims the former mayor confessed to a pastor, a social worker and his brother and sister-in-law, while also discussing the alleged abuse during 'group sessions' at the ValleyCare Trumbull Memorial Hospital psychiatric ward.

Court documents state Keenan went into great detail about at least one of the incidents when speaking to his local pastor, according to the New York Daily News.

Documents say the former mayor claimed the young girl walked in on him while he was using the bathroom, and asked whether she could: 'touch his pee-pee'.

Keenan (pictured), who was the mayor of Hubbard, Ohio, appeared in court on Monday after having been charged with eight counts of rape and 12 counts of attempted rape

Prosecutors says the former mayor confessed to the abuse during group sessions at the ValleyCare Trumbull Memorial Hospital psychiatric ward (pictured)

Keenan, according to the newspaper, then kissed, fondled and performed oral sex on the girl, and let her kiss his genitals, court documents detail.

When he told a social worker during his time in a psychiatric ward about the abuse, he said the little girl 'had come onto him and the child was a willing participant in the sex acts'.

Keenan is free on a $75,000 bond. He is due to return to court next April.
Teacher's lawyer claims Viviani is the victim of an extortion scheme

phone calls, texts and photos, and traveled to New York City together

Teacher indicted: English teacher Marina Viviani, 30, has been charged with raping a 17-year-old student in her classroom

A teacher at an upstate New York school for at-risk youths has been charged with raping a 17-year-old male student in her classroom.

Marina Viviani, 30, of Kingston, was indicted Monday on two felony counts of rape and criminal sexual act, as well as four misdemeanor charges of sex crimes.

The illicit sexual encounters involving oral sex and intercourse between Viviani and the teenager allegedly occurred in November and December of 2014 at the LaSalle School in Albany.

Viviani, who taught English at the school, was removed from the classroom Monday and placed on administrative leave.

Viviani is accused of repeatedly having sex with the male student in a LaSalle classroom before the teen left a residential program at the school, which caters to troubled boys and their families.

Viviani worked as an English teacher at the LaSalle School for troubled youth in Albany

According to prosecutors, after the boy's departure he and Viviani continued calling each other, exchanging text messages and photos, and even traveled to New York City together on one occasion.

The alleged affair between Viviani and the boy came to light when the victims family member found out about it and went to the Poughkeepsie Police Department, which in turn contacted the New York State Justice Centers Vulnerable Persons Central Register.

When a licensed professional, like the defendant who in this case was a teacher, allegedly abuses her position of authority by committing sex crimes in the classroom against an at-risk youth, that abuse cannot be tolerated, said Special Prosecutor Patricia Gunning.

Viviani was arraigned on six criminal counts in Albany County Court Monday and released without bond. She is due back in court September 23, according to The Daily Freeman.

Viviani allegedly took a trip with the 17-year-old vicitm to New York City and snapped this selfie

Viviani's attorney, Michael Pollok, said his client 'adamantly denies' the claims of sexual misconduct. The lawyer also accused the alleged victim and an accomplice of concocting the allegations of rape as part of an extortion scheme and threatening the teacher and her family.
Rupert Murdoch was 'devastated' by the close relationship between ex-wife Wendi Deng and longtime friend Tony Blair, a former employee has claimed.

Chris Mitchell, former editor-in-chief of News Corp-owned The Australian, said the media mogul, 85, had been 'financially and politically generous' to Mr Blair, 63, and was 'hurt by what happened' between the former prime minister and Ms Deng.

Writing in his memoir Making Headlines, Mr Mitchell said Mr Murdoch 'struggled to sleep' after separating from Ms Deng, 47, the mother of his two youngest children.

'Devastated': Rupert Murdoch is said to have been 'hurt by what happened' between his then wife Wendi Deng (right with Murdoch in 2011) and his longtime friend Tony Blair (left in July)

'He rang much more often than he had previously,' Mr Mitchell wrote, according to the Guardian. 'And he was frank about his sleep problems, sore back and the hurt he was feeling about what had happened between Wendi and Tony Blair.

'It was clear that my boss had been devastated by the closeness he found between his wife and his former friend.'

Mr Murdoch filed for divorce from Ms Deng in 2013 after 14 years of marriage.

Mr Blair, who is godfather to one of Mr Murdoch and Ms Deng's daughters, has always denied he had an affair with Ms Deng. Ms Deng has declined to comment.

In an interview with Fortune in 2014, Mr Murdoch alleged that Mr Blair had spent secret weekends with Ms Deng at the Murdoch family's California ranch.

Breakdown: Mr Murdoch filed for divorce from Ms Deng in 2013 after 14 years of marriage

Fourth wife: Mr Murdoch married supermodel Jerry Hall, pictured together, in March this year

The Australian media mogul said he first heard of the alleged affair while he was overseas and immediately flew back to the US to quiz his staff.

He told the magazine: ' Well, you know, everybody was talking about these things and never telling me anything... But then I was told two pretty circumstantial things about the ranch [where Deng had been staying].

'I was in Australia. When I got back, I naturally asked the staff, and it opened up. That's the story. And then, you know, a week later I filed. As soon as I could find a lawyer.'
Some movie goers at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival found the new cannibal film Raw hard to stomach, so much so that paramedics had to be called to the cinema.

Several people who attended the midnight screening of the ultra-graphic body-horror flick were said to have fainted and required medical attention.

Ryan Werner, who is in charge of the movies marketing in Toronto, told The Hollywood Reporter that an ambulance had to be summoned to the scene.

Hard to stomach: A couple of audience members at the Toronto Film Festival were taken away by ambulance after attending the premiere of the cannibal film Raw

Blood and gore: The French-language film follows Justine, a young vegetarian veterinary student who gradually turns to cannibalism after undergoing a grisly hazing ritual at school

Success story: The much talked-about film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it won the FIPRESCI Critics' Prize

The film became too much for a couple patrons, he said.

The French-language genre film, written and directed by first-time filmmaker Julie Ducournau, follows Justine, a young vegetarian veterinary student, played by Garance Marillier, who gradually turns to cannibalism after undergoing a grisly hazing ritual at school involving blood and raw liver.

The much talked-about film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it won the FIPRESCI Critics' Prize.

Speaking to IndieWire just before the Toronto Film Festival premiere of her visceral film, Ducournau said: 'I want to hear this particular audience reacting. I want to see where they will be reacting. I am very curious. Its like being judged by my peers, because myself, I am a huge genre and horror buff.'

People who attended the screening took to Twitter to talk about the medical emergency caused by the stomach-turning film

Intense reaction: The much talked-about film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it won the FIPRESCI Critics' Prize

A star is born: Raw was written and directed by first-time filmmaker Julie Ducournau, pictured left and right on the night of her movie's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival

The French director also, somewhat prophetically, talked about the challenge of keeping 'the audience in the room,' which she said she found 'very interesting.'
George Zimmerman has testified that he was driving to a doctor's appointment when he realized he was being pursued by a man who later pulled up next to him and fired one gunshot at him that missed.

Zimmerman, 32, said Matthew Apperson, 37, chased after him and the two exchanged words before a shot was fired, during a court appearance on Tuesday.

'I heard a bang and my ears started ringing,' Zimmerman told the jury in the Apperson's attempted second-degree murder trial.

George Zimmerman smiled in court as he testified in the case of Matthew Apperson, who is accused of trying to kill the 32-year-old

The trial opened Tuesday in the Seminole County Courthouse.

The incident on May 11, 2015 was not the first encounter between Apperson and Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer who shot dead unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012.

Apperson alleged in September 2014 that Zimmerman threatened him in a road-rage encounter, but did not press charges at the time.

During the later exchange, Zimmerman testified that Apperson asked whether he remembered him and said he didn't press charges earlier 'because I wanted to kill you myself.'

Zimmerman, 32, told a jury in Florida that Matthew Apperson, 37, chased after him and the two exchanged words before a shot was fired

Matthew Apperson (pictured), 37, is charged with second-degree attempted murder for allegedly shooting at Zimmermna in May 2015

Apperson's attorney, Michael Lafayette, said that Zimmerman was the aggressor and brandished a gun in both incidents, but prosecutor Stewart Stone said there was no way Apperson could have seen a gun through the tinted windows of Zimmerman's car.

Zimmerman was scheduled to testify further Tuesday afternoon.

In the Martin case, Zimmerman claimed self-defense and was acquitted of charges in the shooting, a verdict that sparked protests and a national debate about race relations. Martin was black and Zimmerman identifies as Hispanic.

George Zimmerman, left, is escorted by a Seminole County Sheriff deputy Tuesday, Sept.13, 2016 in Orlando
Virginia gun rights activists filed a $12 million defamation lawsuit against Katie Couric and other filmmakers over a documentary they say was edited to misrepresent them.

The director inserted eight seconds of dead air in the film 'Under the Gun' after Couric asked members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) how guns could be kept out of the hands of felons or terrorists without background checks.

An audio recording of the interview revealed the activists responded to the question almost immediately, and Couric herself later conceded the scene, in which the gun activists appeared stumped, was 'misleading'.

Scroll down for video

Gun rights group Virginia Citizens Defense League filed a $12 million defamation lawsuit against executive producer Katie Couric (left) and director Stephanie Soechtig (right) over the documentary 'Under the Gun'

The film, which looked at the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting (pictured, students at the school) was edited to include eight seconds of dead air after Couric asked members of the group how guns could be kept out of the hands of felons and terrorists

An audio recording of the interview revealed the activists responded to the question almost immediately, and Couric herself later conceded the scene was 'misleading' (pictured, a still from the documentary)

The lawsuit was filed in Richmond, Virginia, by the VCDL as a whole, as well as two of its members acting individually alleges the defendants 'knowingly and maliciously manufactured the fictional exchange'.

The VCDL's president Philip Van Cleave said in a statement: 'We were horrified to see how Couric and her team manipulated us and the video footage to make us look like fools who didnt stand up for the Second Amendment.

'We want to set the record straight and hold them accountable for what they've done.'

Couric, who worked as an executive producer, is named as a defendant along with director Stephanie Soechtig, her production company Atlas Films, and Epix, the television network that aired the film.

Epix denied it had any role in the documentary's 'creation or production and should therefore not be a party to this lawsuit,' CNN reported.

The documentary was praised critically, but pro-gun activists complained about its accuracy

The VCDL's president said in a statement: 'We want to set the record straight and hold them accountable for what they've done'

The film looked at the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting where gunman Adam Lanza shot dead his mother before murdering 20 children and six more adults inside the elementary school. Lanza then killed himself.

During the documentary, Couric asked the gun activists: 'If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorist from walking into, say, a licensed gun dealer and purchasing a gun?'

The activists appeared stumped, even though an audio recording uncovered by a blogger in May revealed the men responding almost immediately.

One of the men replied: 'Well, one, if you're not in jail then you should still have your basic rights and you should go buy a gun.'

When pressed on whether someone was a terrorist or a felon, the man replied: 'If you're a felon and you've done your time, you should have your rights.'

Although Soechtig edited the eight-second silence, Couric apologized and said she takes 'responsibility for a decision that misrepresented an exchange' she had with the Virginia Citizens Defense League.

She said she raised her concerns about the pause when she screened an early cut of the film, but was told the 'beat' was added for 'dramatic effect to give the audience a moment to consider the question'.

'When VCDL members recently pointed out that they had in fact immediately answered this question, I went back and reviewed it and agree that those eight seconds do not accurately represent their response.'
An unregistered sex offender and another suspect were arrested Tuesday in connection to the 1973 killings of two girls in California, in a case that went cold for decades until DNA testing linked both men to the case.

Police took into custody Larry Don Patterson, of Oakhurst, Oklahoma, and William Lloyd Harbour, of Olivehurst, California.

The victims  12-year-old Valerie Janice Lane and 13-year-old Doris Karen Derryberry  were reported missing by their mothers on November 12, 1973.

The girls never returned from a trip to a shopping mall in nearby Linda the previous day.

Scroll down for video

Larry Don Patterson (left), of Oklahoma, and William Lloyd Harbour (right), of California, have been arrested on charges related to the 1973 killings of two young girls in California

A few hours later, the Yuba County Sheriff's Office was notified that the bodies of two girls had been found alongside a dirt road and identified them as the missing girls.

Newly tested DNA evidence pointed to both of the 65-year-old men, according the Yuba County Sheriff's Office.

Patterson was arrested in Oklahoma's Creek County, southwest of Tulsa.

He was being held in the local jail on multiple charges involving the deaths, but also was being held as an unregistered sex offender, according to federal officials.

Both men were 22 and living in Olivehurst, where the girls also lived, when the girls were killed.

Authorities said the girls had been driven to a wooded area near Marysville, north of Sacramento, and shot at close range with a shotgun.

Victims Valerie Janice Lane (left), 12, and Doris Karen Derryberry (right), 13, were reported missing by their mothers when they didn't return from a trip to the mall on November 12, 1973

The homicide case remained at active investigation until 1976, when the case went cold following more than 60 interviews but no successful leads, authorities said.

Then in March of 2014, Yuba County investigators reviewed the case for evidence that could be retested with newer technology.

Evidence collected during the original investigation were reviewed and submitted to the California Department of Justice Forensic Labs for analysis.
An apparent slip of the tongue where Bill Clinton said his wife Hillary had 'frequently' experienced fainting episodes like the one that occurred Sunday got left on the cutting room floor when CBS aired its interview with the former president.

Clinton said his wife was 'feeling a lot better' in his interview with 'CBS This Morning' host Charlie Rose. But then the former president revealed she has experienced other fainting episodes 'on more than one occasion' with language that probably wasn't helpful to his wife's effort to reassure the public.

Asked whether there was a more serious illness at work, Clinton responded: 'Well if it is, it's a mystery to me and all of her doctors, because frequently  well not frequently, rarely  but on more than one occasion, over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing happened to her when she got severely dehydrated.'

But in the clip that got broadcast Monday evening, the part about 'frequently  well, not frequently, rarely' got cut out. It did air during a fuller broadcast Tuesday morning.

Bill Clinton said his wife 'frequently  well not frequently, rarely' has experienced fainting episodes when dehydrated. But the apparent flub got cut out of the piece that aired on CBS Evening News

Clinton's initial statement that there were 'frequently' other episodes might have prompted still more questions about Clinton's health, after one former Democratic National Committee Chair has said the party should at least think about updating policies in the event of replacing someone on the ticket.

The Daily Caller noted that the clip aired online but not in the Monday night broadcast.

The only widely known fainting episode occurred in 2012, when Clinton fell and hit her head, suffering a concussion.

The former president spoke about his wife's health on 'CBS This Morning' just days after Clinton nearly collapsed on the way to her vehicle after departing a Sept. 11th service early due to exhaustion and heat. Her campaign later revealed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday.

'The clip in question from former President Clinton's interview with Charlie Rose ran in its entirety on CBS THIS MORNING, CBSNews.com and on CBSN, CBS News' 24/7 digital streaming news service,' CBS said in a statement.

'One clip that ran on CBS Evening News was edited purely for time while on deadline for the live broadcast,' the statement continued.

If Clinton has any other sort of ailment that caused the problem, then 'it's a mystery to me and all of her doctors,' Bill Clinton said.

He pronounced his wife on the mend. 'She looked like a million bucks this morning. I can tell you she's feeling a lot better,' Clinton said.

Bill Clinton committed a flub when he accidentally said his wife had 'frequently' suffered fainting episodes, but the language didn't make it into the CBS Evening News broadcast

Bill Clinton said his wife Hillary is 'feeling a lot better' days after she stumbled leaving a Sept. 11th event in New York

Clinton spoke with CBS host Charlie Rose two days after his wife stumbled at a 9/11 event in New York

He continued: 'She's doing fine. She was even better last night before she went to sleep. She had a good night's sleep. She's doing fine.'

Describing the likely cause of what happened, Clinton told interviewer Charlie Rose, taking care with each word he chose: 'Frequently, not frequently  rarely but on more than one occasion over the last many many years  same sort of thing's happened to her when she's gotten severely dehydrated,' Clinton said.

'And she's worked like a demon as you know  secretary of state and as a senator and the year since,' he added, speaking to Clinton's heavy work load.

Bill said Clinton made the 'correct' decision to 'cancel her campaign date'  she jumped off the trail and skipped a California fundraising swing. He is standing in for his wife at her next rally in Pennsylvania.

Video has surfaced of Hillary Clinton appearing to stumble as she was led into a van after suffering a 'medical episode' during the 9/11 memorial service. Her doctor later revealed that she has been diagnosed with pneumonia

Clinton emerged from her daughter Chelsea's apartment after she was rushed from the 9/11 memorial service because of a 'medical episode'

Clinton was seen smiling and waving at customers at a nearby restaurant before getting into a van. She then traveled to her home in Chappaqua, New York, according to her campaign

But he said there was 'not a shot' she'd bee off the trail for a period of weeks while recovering. 'I'll be lucky to hold her back another day,' Clinton said. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Clinton won't be back out until Thursday.

Clinton said it was 'almost certain' his wife was healthier than Donald Trump, but noted that Trump has yet to release a full medical report on past conditions and health indicators.

'I think her lifestyle and her underlying indicators  means it's almost certain she's in better health than her opponent, but we don't know because he hasn't disclosed,' he said.

Trump has said he'll put out more information soon, likely on the Dr. Oz show. The Clinton camp plans to release more information this week.

Rose also asked Clinton about his own health, expressing some concern.

'Because I've lost weight?' Clinton wanted to know.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has rolled her eyes during her new senator's maiden speech in parliament.

As Malcolm Roberts wrapped up his speech, he paid tribute to Senator Hanson, from Queensland, calling her 'a woman of great courage'.

But Senator Hanson has defended her eye roll, saying she was simply 'embarrassed' by the compliments heaped on her by Senator Roberts.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has rolled her eyes during her new senator's maiden speech in parliament

'No one can show testimony to my belief in the enduring power of human nature more than the great Pauline Hanson,' Senator Roberts said.

'With the indulgence of this chamber and with the senator's permission, I'll refer to her as everyone knows, Pauline.

'Our Pauline, the people's Pauline. She is one of us and we are just like her.

'She's a woman of great courage to whom I owe being able to stand here today.

'Pauline listens to understand and is honest, courageous and persistent.'

Following the speech, Senator Hanson took to her Facebook page to defend her eye roll.

But Senator Hanson has defended her eye roll, saying she was simply 'embarrassed' by the compliments heaped on her by Senator Roberts

'Contrary to... media outlets, I wasn't rolling my eyes out of disrespect to Malcolm's kind words, I was simply embarrassed,' she said adding the hashtag 'rolls eyes'.

'After 20 years of having most people in the public eye slander and take pot shots, I guess I don't take compliments too well.'

Senator Roberts also used his maiden speech to implore Australia to leave the United Nations and lashed out against climate change scaremongering.

The controversial senator also called for a new people's bank, describing the international banking sector as one of the 'greatest threats to our liberty and life as we know it'.

Government had become a 'beast' that only wished to control people's lives and tax people, he said.

Senator Roberts also used his maiden speech to implore Australia to leave the United Nations and lashed out against climate change scaremongering

Greens senators refused to get up and congratulate Senator Roberts as is customary, once he wrapped up his speech on Tuesday night.

Senator Roberts, a vocal climate change denier, said Australians were sick of scaremongering over climate change.

He accused activists of using pictures of 'cute, smiling dolphins' instead of science and said the 'hyperbolic predictions' of economist Ross Garnaut and scientist Tim Flannery had not come to pass.

The Bureau of Meteorology had 'manipulated' the facts, he said, as he vowed to stand firm against 'extremist advocates' in parliament who wanted to deindustrialise the nation.

He likened himself to the Greek philosopher Socrates, asking questions to get to the truth.

'We cannot and do not affect global climate,' he said.

Senator Roberts vowed to overturn climate policies, insisting they were hurting the poor.

Australians were taxed enough, he said.

'The biggest purchase of our life is not our home, it's government,' Senator Roberts added.

'We work Monday to mid-morning Thursday for the government.'

He said Australia must leave the UN, which he described as 'unelected swill' destroying Australia's sovereignty.

He praised Britain for voting to leave the 'socialist monolithic monster' European Union and called for migrants to Australia to be tested on their commitment to Australian values.

Labor senator Murray Watt later took a swipe at One Nation in his own first speech, insisting the shift toward division was out of step with Australian values.

Australians wanted a plan for jobs, not conspiracies, he said.
Bill Clinton acknowledged in a Monday interview that his wife wasn't doing as well in the presidential race as conventional wisdom would suggest she should given his two terms in office and massive popularity with voters.

The former Oval Office occupants cited several factors as he explained his wife's struggle to outrun Donald Trump - the uphill slope she's climbing as she seeks to win a third consecutive term for Democrats in the White House, the 'time we live in,' the 'clamor' of the hourly news cycle.

He also suggested that his wife's gender is working against her. 'You've got to understand, a lot of this is cultural. She's the first woman candidate for a major office,' he told CBS' Charlie Rose.

Scroll down for video

Bill Clinton acknowledged in a Monday interview that his wife wasn't doing as well in the presidential race as conventional wisdom would suggest she should given his two terms in office and massive popularity with voters

Bill Clinton finished the 1996 presidential race more than eight percentage points ahead of Republican Bob Dole. Hillary Clinton is ahead of her opponent, Trump, by fewer than three points in Real Clear Politics' rolling average.

Hillary Clinton says on a near daily basis on the campaign trail that Donald Trump is a 'bigot' who is both 'unfit and unqualified' for president.

She reminds voters of offensive remarks and of her political pedigree, and offers solutions to the problems polling says their most concerned about.

Yet, she's been unable to firmly pull ahead of the Republican businessman.

Her husband told CBS' Rose that when she jointed the race a year and a half ago he told her, 'This is the time when there is a lot of resentment and small wounds. And you're not a demagogue. You just always been the grown up in every room.'

At the same time, he said, the news cycle resets now 'virtually every hour.'

'It's very hard to get votes being the grownup in the room. It's all about images.'

Rose asked the former president why it is that his wife, who has 'an economic agenda' is 'having less appeal to working class Americans than you did.'

'They were your constituency, and she has a program, and Donald Trump is getting more of their vote. Why is that?'

Bill said it was 'cultural' and brought up her gender.

He also said, 'She's trying to get the third term of a party --winning a third term in a row, is difficult.'

'And I will say again, the level of disillusionment with the economic, political and social order all over the world is very high.'

The former Oval Office occupants cited several factors as he explained his wife's struggle to outrun Donald Trump - the uphill slope she's climbing as she seeks to win a third consecutive term for Democrats in the White House, the 'time we live in,' the 'clamor' of the hourly news cycle

Rose said he knows 'how to speak to these people' and asked, 'Why doesn't she?'

'Oh, I think she's done fine where she got a chance to. But, nobody hears most of these,' he said, pointing out that much of the interview so far had been about his wife's health and their family charity.

At another point Rose asked him if he believed that social media was responsible for changes in voters' attitudes over the last 25 years.

'A little bit,' he said. There's also the fact that 'political, economic and social order is discredited all over the world. That crash had a long tail.'

That doesn't explain why voters are turning to Trump, 'who lives high above Manhattan in a luxury penthouse,' Rose said.

Bill said it's because 'he's brilliant at rubbing salt in their wounds.

'He makes them dislike other people and says I'll fix it all and make it the way it used to be.'

Hillary Clinton has tried to make Trump's wealth an election issue with little success. He's a billionaire. She and her husband are millionaires.

She also shied away last week from directly accusing the public and the media of holding her to a double-standard because of her gender. She didn't reject the notion that it exists, however, as reporters tried to coax her into blaming sexism for the level of scrutiny she has received.

The Democratic presidential candidate shrugged her shoulders and said that was a matter for the pundits to opine about.

At the same time, her campaign began a quiet push to frame Trump's claim that she doesn't 'look' presidential through the lens of gender politics.

It complained this week that Trump hasn't released his taxes or detailed health records as Clinton took fire from across the political spectrum for keeping her pneumonia diagnoses a secret.

'I think her lifestyle and her underlying indicators from blood pressure, to amount of exercise, to everything else, means it's almost certain she's in better health than her opponent, but we don't know because he hasn't disclosed,' Bill Clinton said in his interview with Rose for his news programs on CBS and PBS.

Hillary Clinton's campaign has complained this week that Trump hasn't released his taxes or detailed health records as the Democrat took fire from across the political spectrum for keeping her pneumonia diagnoses a secret. She was last seen Sunday at daughter Chelsea's home (pictured)

Rose asked Clinton several times to explain why his wife - a former senator, cabinet official and first lady -is so unpopular with voters and hasn't been able to seal the deal with them.

The political spouse didn't want to answer the question, fearing it would overtake coverage of the Clinton' Foundation's final summit.

He finally said, 'You know what happened. She was popular as first lady. She was a wildly popular senator. She was the most popular and widely trusted figure in national politics when she walked out as the Secretary of State office. She is popular today among people who know her.
Featured Post Standing Rock: Six Years Later -- Militarized Police, Cover-ups and the Fight for Justice "Today we stood strong against this Nazi oil bought police force. They set off LRAD on us, hit us, maced us, arrested our grandmothers,...

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
Tuesday was a very big day for one of the Clinton ladies as Chelsea daughter's Charlotte had her first day of school in New York City.

Charlotte, who will turn two at the end of the month, was seen heading to her Manhattan school in a stroller being pushed by her nanny while her father Marc Mezvinsky was on his phone.

Her mother could not be there for the big day however because she was on the campaign trail for her mother in North Carolina.

Grandma Hillary also missed Charlotte's first day of school as she was recovering from pneumonia at her home in nearby Chappaqua.

Son Aidan meanwhile was presumably home with another nanny while Charlotte was taken to school.

Scroll down for video

Big day: Tuesday was the first day of preschool for Chelsea Clinton's daughter Charlotte in New York City (above in stroller with a nanny and her father Marc Mezvinsky)

In charge: Charlotte's father Marc Mezvinsky and one of the family's nannies took her to school

Online: Mezvinsky spent most of the walk on his phone while the nanny pushed Charlotte in her carriage

Busy lady: Chelsea was unable to go with her daughter, who turns two next month, because she was campaigning for her mom Hillary in North Carolina (above)

After dropping off little Charlotte Marc met up for a friend and enjoyed an hour-and-a-half lunch at a nearby restaurant.

He and his male friend could be seen laughing and in animated discussion as they sat inside the restaurant.

And though Hillary was not there on Tuesday, she did pay the family a surprise visit on Sunday when she went to her daughter's apartment when she fell ill while attending a ceremony in honor of the 9/11 victims held at Ground Zero.

It has been a difficult summer for Mezvinsky, who was forced to shutter one of his hedge funds.

Mezvinsky, 38, and his partners, former Goldman Sachs colleagues Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon, raised $25million from investors to buy up bank stocks and debt from Greece, but lost big after betting on the revival of the struggling nation's economy.

Back at home: The couple's young son Aiden was not with the family for their outing on Tuesday

Growing up: Charlotte is starting school for the first time this year

Daddy duty: Marc has more time on his hands after shuttering one of his hedge funds earlier this year

Tuesdays are for the boys: Mezvinsky (right) then met up with a friend for lunch (left) after dropping off Charlotte

Eaglevale Partners was started in 2011 by Mezvinsky and his partners, with their former boss, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein, one of the first investors.

The flagship fund currently manages $330 million and is down 1 percent this year.

Mezvinsky was long gone from his job at Goldman in October 2013 when his mother-in-law Hillary was paid to give a speech to executives at the company during a technology conference in Arizona.

She was reportedly paid $225,000 for that appearance.

Having some fun: The two enjoyed an animated conversation outside the resturant

Having a lugh|: mezvisnky could be seen laughin g as the two enjoyed an hour-and-a-half lunch

Just for the taste of it: He sipped on some Diet Coke for his meal with his friend

Heading off: Marc and his friend went on their separate ways after the lunch

Shortly after starting Eagleville, Mezvinsky and Chelsea moved into a $10million New York City apartment opposite Madison Square Park.

The four-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot apartment is one of only four residences in the building, which despite the low occupancy rate still has a full-time doorman.

The apartment, whose hallways stretch a full city block, also has two dishwashers, two washer and dryers, dressing rooms with double-sided vanity mirrors, and two massive walk-in closets.

The bedrooms meanwhile face right into Vera Wang's bridal design studio, who designed Cheslea's dress for her wedding day.

Chelsea, 36, has stayed busy this past year campaigning for her mother while also working for the Clinton Foundation.

She took a brief break after giving birth to Aiden in June, but was back at it in July when she introduced her mother at the Democratic National Convention.

Chelsea spent Tuesday with students at Wake Forest.
So, how on Earth did the BBC allow its most popular TV series to be sold to one of its rivals?

The story of the 75million deal is a fascinating one and involves the central role played by TV productions chiefs Richard McKerrow and Anna Beattie, who devised Bake Off after being inspired by the rural baking competition at a village fete.

Despite four years in which they initially failed to sell the idea, ex-BBC runner Miss Beattie kept faith. The couples company, Love Productions, finally sold it to the BBC. It took time to develop from a niche BBC2 programme into a money-making machine.

Scroll down for video

The story of the 75million deal is a fascinating one and involves the central role played by TV productions chiefs Richard McKerrow (left) and Anna Beattie (right)

The couple (far right and fourth right) sold a 70% stake in Love Productions to Sky in 2014

In 2014, as ratings soared, the couple sold a 70 per cent stake in their company to Sky and, Im told, they thought the best way to boost their share of future profits was to sell Bake Off for as much as possible.

Their entree to the huge riches generated by the new deal came with the political debate about the BBCs future and, in particular, the government White Paper earlier this year that called on the Corporation to stop chasing ratings at peak times.

BBC bosses then warned that some popular programmes could be at risk as the BBC had to find savings of 800million a year to help offset the cost of funding free licences for people aged over 75 from 2020.

It is against this context that the BBC started negotiating with Love Productions more than a year ago.

By this spring, it was clear that an impasse had been reached, amid widespread gossip about a possible purchase by ITV.

But how events unfolded stunned the BBCs top brass, who are bitter that Channel 4 has poached a mainstream favourite when its remit says it should be innovative, experimental and distinctive. Yet, of course, despite all Love Productions denials, the deal was ultimately all about the money.

Former BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey was shocked by what has happened. In my day, there were often tough negotiations over programme budgets and budgets for talent but in the end there was an unwritten rule that you did not walk away and take your show somewhere else.

McKerrow was pictured leaving his home in Clapham this morning

Anna Beattie looked downcast as she left the house in South-West London

The couple's home in Clapham is worth 3.5million and they live in it with their three children

It is believed that the Beebs final offer of 15million a year was four times as much as it has been paying for the contract. But that was topped by Channel 4s offer of 25million  or 75million over three years.

That 25million compares with the 16million paid by ITV to steal The Voice from the BBC and it is said to be greater than Channel 4s entire budget for drama (although C4 denies this).

If correct, it means that only Britains Got Talent and The X Factor are more costly than The Great British Bake Off.

Presenters Mel Giedroyc (left) and Sue Perkins (second left) have already announced they will not follow the show to Channel 4 but Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood have made no such announcement

The success of GBBO will now transform the fortunes of McKerrow and Miss Beattie, who met while working on the Channel 4 show Grand Designs. They founded Love Productions in 2004.

McKerrow, who had commissioned the series Embarrassing Bodies when working at C4, had the stated aim to be bolder  maybe brasher  than the rest.

Weve never chased ratings, we chase brilliant ideas, he told an interviewer. You have to push boundaries, and that means you might do something that other people perceive as crossing a line.

A key factor in the negotiations was the way that Channel 4 had handled another of their programmes  one that could not be more different from Bake Off, the notorious Benefits Street, a fly-on-the-wall documentary series which critics accused of demonising the poor and which turned one of the welfare-recipients, White Dee, into a national bogey figure.

Anna Beattie (right) pictured with other Bake Off crew members and Mary Berry and last year's winner Nadiya Hussein

Benefits Street attracted many protests although Channel 4 boss Jay Hunt, a long-time supporter, called it : The sweet spot of public service broadcasting at its best. A perfect Channel 4 show.

Now, that protection and support has been rewarded.

The follow-up, Immigration Street, was cut back to a single film rather than a series. Love felt that it could not guarantee the safety of the crew at one point.

Then came The Great British Bake Off, which was offered to Channel 4 before Danny Cohen, then in charge at BBC3, tipped off Janice Hadlow at BBC2 that it might be an idea for her. Following the huge success of Bake Off, Love has attempted to launch a version of it in America, which was not picked up. It is also trying to develop other shows for American networks.

Miss Beattie is the less dominant figure in the company, but McKerrow called her a television genius in 2014 and said that she was the key reason they were successful.

Former BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey has said this would never have happened in her day

Plain-spoken, sometimes confrontational, McKerrow is a journalist-turned-TV executive who was educated at fee-paying Wellington College and who counts Ed Miliband as a friend.

There have been other tensions between Love Productions and some BBC managers.

There was conflict after viewers complained about product-placement over the prominence in Bake Off given to Smeg fridges. The appliances had been given to Love Productions by the manufacturers in exchange for publicity, an arrangement that breached BBC editorial guidelines. There was also tension over the shows move from BBC2 to BBC1 in 2014. McKerrow said: If it aint broke, dont fix it, so my first instinct was, Why do we have to move to 1? 

However, the gamble paid off in phenomenal style, attracting 15million viewers and winning awards.

Fans of the show have reacted with horror to the news that Sue and Mel won't be returning

It must have rankled that Love were only being paid around 3million a year, based on the original deal struck to show it on BBC2.

Everyone involved realised that there would be trouble when the contract came up for renewal.

Another problem for the BBC was how, as a public service broadcaster, it could best exploit the shows huge commercial spin-off potential.

Veteran TV mogul Alex Graham said he suspected that the deal was not about value for money for licence-payers but about BBC editorial policy making it difficult/impossible to properly monetise the brand.

Admittedly, the series has lucrative spin-off arrangements with firms such as Lakeland and Sainsburys but there is much more commercial potential. Channel 4 should find it easy to get a company to sponsor the show in the way that phone firm Talk Talk pays 10million a year to sponsor The X Factor.

It's widely expected that the production company and Channel 4 will cash in on huge sponsorship deals

We shouldnt forget that Channel Four had to fight off rival bids.

ITV controller Kevin Lygo apparently said that he would kill to bring Bake Off to his network. Indeed, Im told that ITV made a higher offer but was spurned because of Loves close relationship with Channel 4.

The production firm also seems to have been won over by the opportunity to increase the investment in production costs  making extra films about the different baking creations and their history.

Meanwhile, the BBC can take comfort from the fact that its international arm, BBC Worldwide, has the rights to Bake Off until 2028.

It has secured 21 deals for the show to be made in other countries and has the global rights outside of North America.
Cindy Underwood, 39, allegedly put out a lit cigarette in her boyfriend's eye on Monday

A West Virginian woman is behind bars after she allegedly stuck a lit cigarette in her boyfriend's eye during a heated argument.

Cindy Jean Underwood, 39, was arrested on Monday after attacking her boyfriend, Jeremy Hughes, at their St. Albans home, police said.

Underwood and Hughes allegedly began to argue because he came home late that night.

That's when Underwood put out her lit cigarette in Hughes' eye, according to WSAZ.

Police discovered Hughes' injury when they arrived at the scene for a destruction of property complaint, and called an ambulance.

Underwood has been charged with felony malicious wounding after she allegedly attacked her boyfriend, Jeremy Hughes, during an argument in their St Albans, West Virginia home

Authorities said Hughes suffered an eye injury and told them he could not see. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment.

Underwood has been charged with felony malicious wounding, according to the Smoking Gun.

She is being held on $10,000 bail at the South Central Regional Jail in Charleston.
Donald Trump's latest policy proposal, a program to pay for childcare expenses through tax deductions, applies equally to same-sex couples raising children.

The Trump campaign's early outreach to reporters  including a Monday night outline of his Tuesday speech on the subject and a Tuesday morning conference call with reporters  made no mention of the subject.

Neither does an op-ed by his daughter Ivanka that ran Tuesday evening on the website of The Wall Street Journal.

And Trump himself skipped over it during a 20-minute speech introducing the proposal Tuesday night in a suburb of Philadelphia.

But a policy paper distributed two hours before the speech at a suburban Philadelphia community center includes a line acknowledging that gay and lesbian couples would be eligible for the same tax benefits as heterosexuals.

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, unveiled a far-reaching childcare tax credit proposal on Tuesday with a wrinkle  equal treatment of same-sex parents  that could sideline his policy with evangelical conservatives

Ivanka Trump, the GOP nominee's 34-year-old daughter, introduced Trump Tuesday night and had a significant hand in drafting his new childcare tax-credit proposal

'Will same-sex couples receive the benefits?' one item in an official campaign Q&A reads.

'The benefits would be available in the same way that the IRS currently recognizes same-sex couples: if the marriage is recognized under state law, then it is recognized under federal law,' the answer reads.

A landmark Supreme Court decision in 2015 effective legalized the institution of gay marriage in all 50 states, forcing state and local officials to issue marriage licenses to couples without discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

Ivanka Trump's op-ed boasted that '[m]y father is prepared to chart a new course that promotes strong families and celebrates their individual needs.'

Conservative evangelical groups were expected to hail Trump's proposal, which also treats elder-care expenses as deductible, as a plan to support cash-strapped parents trying to raise sons and daughters in two-earner households.

Trump has to thread a needle, appealing to his white, middle-class and largely Christian base while not violating his beliefs or making evangelicals turn against him

There are just 56 days left until the presidential election, a time-crunch that will force Trump and Hillary Clinton to provide great detail in their loosely defined policy positions

But representatives from two such organizations, who requested anonymity in advance of official statements their leadership might make, said they were nervous about the policy's implications.

'It may be something other than what we first thought it was,' one told DailyMail.com.

'Trump talks about a Trojan horse with runaway immigration?' another pondered. 'This could be the same kind of thing with government policy that should be helping parents raise healthy, well-adjusted children.'

Two leaders of prominent Christian conservative groups declined to comment on the record.

Visible faith leaders in the Bible Belt may find it difficult to embrace Trump's proposal since it includes an acknowledgement that federal tax policy should treat same-sex couples the same as those in traditional marriages.

But with Trump as the GOP's standard-bearer, they also may find themselves uneasy about opposing him openly.

A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump himself spoke Tuesday afternoon in Iowa, where more than half of registered Republican voters identify themselves as evangelical Christians, and made no mention of including gay couples in his plan.

He has been standoffish on the campaign stump about his views on gay marriage, sometimes parrying press-conference questions with an assertion that his beliefs are well-known.

The Republican nominee is expected to unveil his proposal Tuesday evening after an introduction from his daughter Ivanka, who has said she had a significant hand in drafting it.
Horrifying footage has caught the moment a three-year-old climbs into a delivery vehicle and crashes into an SUV in China.

The incident occurred when the child had been left unattended in Linquan County, eastern China's Shandong province, reports the People's Daily Online.

The child was unharmed in the incident.

Young driver: As soon as the driver leaves the vehicle, the three year old climbs inside

Accident: The tuktuk lurches forwards and crashes into a parked SUV

In the footage, a delivery tuk tuk appears on the side of the road and comes to a stop.

The driver gets out of the vehicle.

A toddler can be seen sat on the road unattended.

The child then steps into the vehicle and climbs in and starts the vehicle.

The tuk tuk can then be seen lurching forwards and crashes into an SUV.

It can then be seen stepping out of the vehicle.

Running after the vehicle: The driver chases the tuktuk as it begins to move with the boy

That wasn't meant to happen! The tuk tuk smashes into an SUV with the child inside

The three-year-old climbed inside the vehicle after he was left unattended by his family

On 163.com people have been discussing the video saying that the boy is too naughty.

One user wrote: 'This boy responds so quickly! He's talented.'

While another commented: 'The parents are so careless to allow the kid to wander around.'

And one user said: 'Oh such a naughty kid!'
This is the heart-stopping moment an out-of-control car sped into a traffic barrier in China before flipping 360 degrees.

The incident took place on September 7 at a toll booth in Fuzhou City, China's Fujian province, reports the People's Daily Online.

The vehicle was badly damaged but the driver escaped with minor injuries.

Shocking moment: The car hits the barrier at the toll booth and slips, spinning in the air

Bad driving: According to reports, the driver approached the toll booth too fast

In the footage, released by CCTV News, the car speeds towards the toll booth, hitting the barrier.

It then spins 360 degrees in the air landing on the toll booth in the next lane.

Suddenly the door opens and the driver steps outside of the car, taking a look at the damage done.

The vehicle is clearly seriously damaged.

The driver escaped with minor skin trauma.

Police say they ruled out whether the man was drunk or drugged driving.

They advised the driver to slow down in advance of the toll gate.

Horrifying: The vehicle spins flies and does a 360 degree turn after hitting the barrier

Terrible moment: The vehicle then lands on the toll booth area of the next lane
A 28-year-old bridesmaid has died after she was pressured by men at her table to drink heavy liquor.

The woman died at Wenchang City People's Hospital after choking on her own vomit, reports the People's Daily Online.

She had been drinking at a wedding on September 11 when the men on her table asked her to drink Baijiu, a hard liquor which is around 40 to 60 percent alcohol.

Catching up: The woman was filmed at the wedding drinking large glasses of liquor

Collapsed: Things turned bad when she had to be carried out from the wedding

In the footage, the men at the table can be seen smiling and looking at the woman surnamed Yang as she drinks a large glass of the liquor in one.

Another man can be seen beside her drinking the liquor from a glass.

The video then cuts to the woman stumbling on the floor of the wedding venue before being pushed along on a trolley.

Shocking: She was drinking with men at the wedding who had been encouraging her

Upsetting: She collapsed and had to be carried out by the men and taken to hospital

Tragic incident: The woman later died after choking on her own vomit in hospital

The men have to hold her and carry her as she is unable to walk.

They can be seen laughing as they struggle to carry her.

According to doctors at the hospital, the woman was already unconscious and wasn't breathing.

After 40 minutes, she was pronounced dead with the cause of death described as alcohol poisoning leading to vomit blocking the airway.

Police reports say that the woman was a maid of honour during the wedding and drunk a lot of Baijiu that day.
Advertisement

Dozens of outraged tourists have slammed North Korea's only six-star hotel for its 'prison-like' conditions, online.

The Ryanggang Hotel in Pyongyang - which is described by locals as a 'first class' establishment - has received 31 reviews on TripAdvisor, with the majority of tourists giving it a big thumbs down.

But for tourists seeking an alternative luxury accommodation, the capital's other premier hotel, Kim Jong Un's swanky 1,082ft-high Ryugyong Hotel, remains unopened, 29 years after the project began.

Scroll down for video

Un-der fire: The Ryugyong Hotel, a 'six star' effort in North Korea, is making waves for its 'prison-like' conditions with dozens of guests taking to TripAdvisor to slam it

Un-derlit: The Ryanggang Hotel in Pyongyang - which is described by locals as a 'first class' establishment - has received 31 reviews on Trip Advisor, most of which give it the thumbs down

Simon Ryder from Wirral, Merseyside, who booked a room at Ryanggang Hotel in May 2012, wrote: 'The beds are so hard I think the floor was more comfortable... I flushed the toilet and my feet got a wash.'

Another guest from Cape Town, South Africa, echoed Mr Ryder's sentiments, writing: 'Classic Soviet style hotel. Dismal, poorly lit, rock hard beds, miserable food, and intermittent hot water - and these are the good points!'

However, looking on the bright side, the traveller concluded that the hotel stay was all part of the 'North Korean experience'.

David Templeman from Estonia merely described the Ryanggang as 'old and cold'.

Talking about the electrics, he wrote: 'The electric wiring is in a really poor state. Half of power sockets are broken, and there's bare (and possibly live) wires coming out of the floor and just end abruptly.'

Shocking: One guest wasn't impressed with the bathroom or bed at the Ryanggang Hotel in Pyongyang

Dirty, cold and hideous: A visitor said 'western prisons are more welcoming' than the luxury establishment

Un-impressed: There is no word on how much rooms at the Ryanggang Hotel go for and there is no website for the business;

He continued, with a touch of humour: 'But on the plus side, there was a huge flat-screen TV with one channel: the North Korean propaganda channel, where the female narrator tries her best to sound upbeat while clips of Kim Jong Un and some fields and buildings show.'

There is no word on how much rooms at the Ryanggang Hotel go for and there is no website for the business.

Many guests said they booked while being led around the city on a tour.

Overall the Ryanggang emerges with a rating of 2.5 out of five on TripAdvisor, with the majority of reviewers marking it 'average' or 'poor'.

Un-helpful: A photo of the dining area shows dozens of empty tables; it is unclear what view the hotel offers however

A bad night's sleep: Lots of reviews complained about the hard beds; Overall the Ryanggang emerges with a rating of 2.5 out of five, with the majority of reviewers marking it 'average' or 'poor'

Happy meal? Many guests weren't impressed with the food offerings, here appears to be an effort at French Toast, and something undistinguishable

In North Korea it appears that luxury hotels are lacking.

For years, visitors have been anticipating the opening of Kim Jong-un's swanky 1,082ft-high Ryugyong Hotel.

However, the pyramid-like glass and steel building which has apparently cost more than $750millon (565million) to construct, remains unopened.

Work actually began in 1987 under the regime of Kim Jong-uns grandfather, Kim Il-sung, and was meant to open two years later as a calculated snub to neighbouring South Korea.

As Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympics, North Korea would open what would then have been the worlds tallest hotel.

One man said: 'I flushed the toilet and my feet got a wash'; work actually began in 1987 under the regime of Kim Jong-uns grandfather, Kim Il-sung, and was meant to open two years later as a calculated snub to neighbouring South Korea

Un-flattering light: Many photos of the Ryanggang Hotel left by guests paint the picture of a drab, soulless place

The structure of the mighty pyramid was quickly completed, but work came to a shuddering halt in 1992 after the collapse of Pyongyangs benefactor, the Soviet Union.

It was an economic disaster for North Korea and provoked a devastating famine that killed up to 3.5million people.

So what was supposed to have been a towering symbol of the countrys technical mastery instead became an idle landmark which has attracted international ridicule.

An inspection by a European delegation in the Nineties concluded that the shell was irreparable and it should be torn down because of its poor-quality concrete and crooked elevator shafts.

For years, visitors have been anticipating the opening of Kim Jong-un's swanky 1,082ft-high Ryugyong Hotel

Hotel of Doom: However, the pyramid-like glass and steel building which has apparently cost more than $750million to construct, remains unopened

Esquire magazine described it as the worst building in the history of mankind. Others labelled it the Hotel of Doom. The name has stuck.

In 2008, after 16 years of inactivity and to the astonishment of Western observers, work suddenly resumed.

Then in 2011 its concrete was strengthened and its exterior coated in 111million worth of glass, which dazzles when it catches the sun.

Its fortunes were further revived by the deep-pocketed Egyptian Orascom Group which took over as developer in 2008 after reportedly signing a $400 million deal to establish a mobile phone network in North Korea.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will jet off on their second tour of Canada at the end of the month.

But one well-travelled pooch has pipped them to the post, embarking on a North American adventure all of his own.

Samson the Instagram-famous goldendoodle from New York - who boasts more than 129,000 followers - took to the east coast of North America visiting spots including New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Dinner is served: Samson the Instagram-famous goldendoodle from New York - who boasts more than 120,000 followers - took to the east coast of Canada for his vacation this year

Thirsty work! The pooch poses for a snap in Nova Scotia alongside some local ales

Photos shared with his avid fans show him indulging in all kinds of activities, from whale watching to eating lobster.

One sunny shot, shows the canine wearing sunglasses while posing in front of a flight of Nova Scotia craft beers.

Another shows him bounding along a beach at sunset.

It appears Samson's epic vacation also took him to the coast of Maine in the U.S. before he returned home to Brooklyn.

On the green: Samson stops for a spot of golf at the Fox Harb'r Resort in Nova Scotia

Sun-drenched: The pooch soaks in the warm weather at the Cabot Links resort in Nova Scotia

Getting into the swing of things Samson stops for a traditional Canadian Bloody Caesar cocktail while admiring the views

Living the high life: Samson shot to fame this year, after accruing a burgeoning fan base on social media

Unlike Samson, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be visiting the west coast of Canada this autumn, hitting British Columbia and the Yukon territories.

Samson shot to fame this year, after accruing a burgeoning fan base on social media.

When he's not gallivanting across the country, the pet likes to hang out with his other goldendoodle friends, Hudson and Neptune.

The jumping shot! The canine strikes a pose as the sun sets on a beach at Cape Breton Island

Jet-setter: The social media star has travelled all over the place with his loving owners

Scenic: Samson explored all kinds of terrain on his road trip this summer

The pups all also have Snapchat for their fans who want to follow their adventures on different platforms.

Thanks to their massive following, the trio were recently branded 'the Kardashians of goldendoodles' by The Cut.

Goldendoodles are a hypoallergenic breed of dog made up of a cross between a golden retriever and a poodle.

Out in the wilds: Samson snuggles up with his teddy bear as he settles into his tent

A natural: It appears Samson has perfected his camera poses

Samson's epic vacation also took him to the coast of Maine in the U.S. before returning home to Brooklyn

They have proved incredibly popular with dog lovers for their temperament and easy-to-manage coats.

Despite the fact that the three pooches look almost identical, they are in fact not related - though Hudson and Neptune came from the same breeder.

In their popular Instagram posts, the pups can be seen hanging out together in bars, sitting at the dinner table with some wine, or even sporting matching outfits.

Showing their pride: When he's not gallivanting across the country, the pet likes to hang out with his other goldendoodle friends, Hudson and Neptune
Advertisement

When we think of polar bears, we likely think of them camouflaged against a white blanket of snow.

But these startling photographs, captured off the coast of Baffin Island in the Arctic, show the graceful creatures tackling a desert-like landscape with barely any ice in sight.

One poignant shot shows a male polar bear struggling to haul his large body up on to a lump of red rock as the sun beats down.

Startling photographs, captured off the coast of Baffin Island in the Arctic, show a polar bear tackling a desert-like landscape with barely any ice in sight

Out of place: The white bear was easy to spot on the red rock - while it was summer in the Arctic, it was still an unusual scene

Rock climber: The male bear spent some time exploring the rocky outcrop before stopping to nap

Another shows him looking rather solemn as he sits alone on a rocky outcrop.

These were just a few shots taken while I explored the some of the most remote parts of the planet towards the North Pole.

As the expedition - run by One Ocean expeditions - continued, we witnessed other instances of mass ice melt, which left the polar bears exposed.

One afternoon, a mother bear was seen off the bow of the boat with three young cubs trailing behind her.

Cooling off: The adult bear took a dip in the water to keep his cool in the warm weather

Under threat: Nicholas Pilfold, a polar bear expert based at the San Diego Zoo explained how global warming is having a massive impact on wildlife in the Arctic

The great melt: The average Arctic sea ice extent for May 2016 set a new record low since satellite observations began

It looked like the family had a long swim in store, as there wasn't any ice visible for miles.

Nicholas Pilfold, a polar bear expert based at the San Diego Zoo who accompanied us on the voyage, explained how global warming is having a massive impact on wildlife in the Arctic.

He told MailOnline Travel: 'With less sea ice, polar bears are forced to swim even longer distances. Sometimes they end up swimming for days. This can leave adults exhausted with cubs more vulnerable to drowning or hypothermia.'

The average Arctic sea ice extent for May 2016 set a new record low since satellite observations began.

That month's average extent was 680,000 square kilometers (224,000 square miles) below the previous record for the month, set in 2004.

Looking glum: A report released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2014, estimated there are between 22,000 and 31,000 polar bears in the Arctic with their population becoming increasingly vulnerable as their habitat shrinks

Out for the count: In total, 19 polar bears were spotted on the voyage with One Ocean Expeditions, which took place this August - the bear above is seen with a seal carcass

Family matters: One afternoon, a mother bear was seen off the bow of the boat with three young cubs trailing behind her - it looked like the family had a long swim in store, as there wasn't any ice visible for miles

A report released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2014, estimated there are between 22,000 and 31,000 polar bears in the Arctic with their population becoming increasingly vulnerable as their habitat shrinks.

'It's a depressing picture but we really need to start making changes if we want to stop the decline in polar bear numbers. It's up to us to get climate change on the political agenda,' Dr Pilfold concluded.

Temperatures throughout the Arctic expedition, which took place in August, averaged around 8 degrees Celsius - I even got sunburn some of the days.

In total, 19 polar bears were spotted, with all reported to be in a healthy shape.
If you a few too many at the office party, take heart because you may not have been as drunk as you feared.

British research shows that we assess how inebriated we are based on those around us.

And if we are surrounded by sober sorts, we are fooled into feeling more drunk than we really are.

People under the influence may be misjudging their own levels of intoxication as they base their judgement on the drunkenness of others, rather than how much booze they've actually consumed themselves, says the study

HOW THE STUDY WORKED Researchers breathalysed 1,862 participants from different social groups, with an average age of 27 years old. The tests were carried out between 8pm and 3am on Friday and Saturday evenings in four locations with plenty of pubs and bars. Gender and location information were used to divide the individuals into eight reference groups - one group for each gender in each location. Individual breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) levels were then ranked within each reference group. To examine any possible link between the alcohol levels and people's judgement of their own drunkenness, a sub-set of 400 participants answered a series of questions about how they perceived their level of drunkenness and the potential health consequences. Advertisement

So, while you might feel really awkward after knocking back the free drinks at the office do, you may not have embarrassed yourself after all.

Professor Simon Moore, from Cardiff University, said: 'This has very important implications for how we might work to reduce excessive alcohol consumption.

'We could either work to reduce the number of very drunk people in a drinking environment, or we could increase the number of people who are sober. Our theory predicts the latter approach would have greatest impact.'

The study, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, claims to be the first to examine how people judge their own drunkenness and the health consequences of their drinking, whilst intoxicated and in real-world drinking environments.

In previous research, participants were only investigated when sober and in non-drinking environments, with researchers relying on their memory of being drunk.

Also, it was previously unclear whether people compared their own levels of intoxication to how intoxicated others actually were or how intoxicated they believed them to be.

'Researchers have historically worked under the assumption that those who drink most alcohol incorrectly 'imagine' everyone else also drinks to excess,' said Professor Moore.

'It turns out that irrespective of how much someone has drunk, if they observe others who are more drunk than they are, they feel less at risk from drinking more.'

Researchers breathalysed 1,862 participants from different social groups, with an average age of 27 years old.

The tests were carried out between 8pm and 3am on Friday and Saturday evenings in four locations with plenty of pubs and bars.

Gender and location information were used to divide the individuals into eight reference groups - one group for each gender in each location.

This division was based on the assumption that drinkers would compare themselves to others of the same gender in the same location.

Individual breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) levels were then ranked within each reference group.

Researchers breathalysed 1,862 participants from different social groups, with an average age of 27 years old as part of the study

To examine any possible link between the alcohol levels and people's judgement of their own drunkenness, a sub-set of 400 participants answered a series of questions about how they perceived their level of drunkenness and the potential health consequences.

The questions included: 'How drunk are you right now?', 'How extreme has your drinking been tonight?', 'If you drank as much as you have tonight every week how likely is it that you will damage your health / get liver cirrhosis in the next 15 years?'

Participants who had not consumed any alcohol were not included.

On average, people perceived themselves as moderately drunk and moderately at risk, even though their BrAC exceeded standard US and UK drink driving limits (35 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath).

Men on average had higher BrAC levels than women, the study found.

The researchers hope that the findings could help in developing future alcohol reduction strategies.

Writing in the journal BMC Public Health, Professor Moore said: 'Excessive alcohol consumption places drinkers' health at risk.

'Intoxication can lead to risk-taking behaviours such as unsafe sex, driving a motor vehicle while intoxicated, criminal or social misdemeanours of various levels of seriousness and the continuation of drinking until coma and even death.

'Mis-estimations of the degree of personal intoxication may contribute to such behaviours.

'Understanding how people judge their drunkenness is an important first step towards designing environments and honing interventions to reduce excessive drinking and drinking misbehaviour.'
From encouraging your friends to meet at your favourite bar to asking for a pay rise, persuading someone to accept your point of view can be a tricky task.

Now experts have revealed five tricks to always getting your own way.

The ideas come from famous philosophers such as Blaise Pascal and are combined with modern techniques in psychology - and they could be all you need to change someone's mind.

Scroll down for video

From encouraging your friends to meet at your favourite bar or asking your boss for a pay-rise to debating a global scientific issue, persuading someone to accept your point of view can be a difficult task (stock image)

THE BACKFIRE EFFECT It might seem logical that presenting someone with evidence that contradicts their views would make them change their mind. But this is not always the case. This is because of something known as the 'backfire effect' - which means when someone's deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs actually get stronger. The effect has been demonstrated in various psychological experiments. Advertisement

1. TELL SOMEONE THE WAYS THEY ARE RIGHT

In the 17th century, French philosopher Blaise Pascal said the trick to persuading others is simple; the most effective way to change someones mind before disagreeing with them is by pointing out the ways they are right.

Robert Cialdini, psychology professor at Arizona State University told MailOnline this still holds true.

'By initially describing areas of agreement with anothers position, the communicator comes to be seen as a more reasonable and likable individual, thereby increasing his or her persuasiveness,' Professor Cialdini said.

By pointing out the ways in which someone is right, you might enhance your position as a credible interlocutor, Dr Adam Harris, lecturer in experimental psychology at University College London told MailOnline.

This is because of something known as the backfire effect - which means when someone's deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs actually get stronger.

In the 17th century, French philosopher Blaise Pascal (pictured) said the trick to persuading others is simple  the most effective way to change someones mind before disagreeing with them is by pointing out the ways they are right

2. MAKE SOMEONE DISCOVER YOUR POINT OF VIEW THEMSELVES

Pascal also argued people are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

'It is true that people are more convinced by their own thinking than by the persuasive assertions of others,' Professor Cialdini said.

'Socrates pioneered this approach.

'He was famous for persuading others to come into line with his thinking by simply asking them questions.

'It was those answers that created significant change because they came from inside his audience, not from Socrates himself.

But, in modern society, the reality is not always that simple, others have argued.

The idea of persuasion is made more complicated now because most of what we know now is from third-party observation instead of our own experiences. This is because what we believe should be driven by much more than one personal experience

PERSUADING PEOPLE IN MODERN TIMES It is true that disagreeing with someone can lead to backfire effects, such that stating the truth can cause more harm than good, Professor Bradley Love, from UCL told MailOnline. However, I am not sure Pascals idea makes as much sense in modern times. For example, there is no statistical evidence that the MMR vaccination causes autism. Even if someone knows of one case in which an autistic child was given the MMR vaccination, this does not mean one caused the other. This means that it is not a viable solution to persuade someone that MMR and autism are not linked by suggesting part of what they believe is true, Professor Love says. So its misleading to tell someone sure, the vaccine caused autism in the case you mention, but not in most, Professor Love told MailOnline. Advertisement

3. CHOOSE THE RIGHT MESSENGER

'It is true that disagreeing with someone can lead to backfire effects, such that stating the truth can cause more harm than good, Professor Bradley Love, from UCL told MailOnline.

However, I am not sure Pascals idea makes as much sense in modern times.

Instead, Professor Love says you have to choose the right messengers.

Professor Love runs a laboratory at UCL centred around human learning and decision making.

He says the idea of persuasion is made more complicated now because most of what we know now is from third-party observation instead of our own experiences.

This means there are some strategies that could be more likely to persuade those with opposite points of view than others.

For example, choosing the right messenger can be very effective, he said.

A messenger who shares common values with the audience and can share perspective may be effective even if the messenger is not agreeing on a specific point.

For example, maybe a messenger on climate change who is very much against government regulation of industry could persuade climate deniers that the Earth is getting hotter overall.

Such a person could establish common ground and be less threatening to core values without denying facts.

4. TELL A STORY

People can often be more easily persuaded by hearing stories than just facts that prove the story they believe is not true, according to Professor Love.

This means one way to persuade someone to change their minds is by offering an alternative story.

'One thing I find counter-intuitive that works is that when someone spreads misinformation it is better to replace the falsehood with an alternative explanation that to focus on refuting the claim,' Professor Love told MailOnline.

'Basically, the falsehood is a story and rather than ripping that story apart it works better to simply replace the false story with the true one that people can hold onto.'

People can often be more easily persuaded by hearing stories than just facts that prove the story they believe is not true, according to Professor Love. This means one way to persuade someone to change their minds is by offering an alternative story (stock image)

PRE-SUASION IN THE 1500S In 1588, British troops massed against a sea invasion from Spain at Tilbury were deeply concerned that their leader Queen Elizabeth I, as a woman, would not be up to the rigors of battle,' he said. In addressing the men, she dispelled their fears pre-suasively: first acknowledging the concern by admitting a weakness, which established her honesty for whatever she said next, and then following it with a strength that demolished the weakness. "I know," she asserted, "I have the body of a weak and feeble woman. But, I have the heart of a king, and a king of England, too." It is reported that so long and loud were the cheers after this pronouncement that officers had to ride among the men ordering them to restrain themselves so the queen could continue. Source: Professor Robert Cialdini Advertisement

5. TRY SOME 'PRE-SUASION'

Professor Cialdini says there are a few tricks people can do before even starting to persuade someone, that will make them more likely to change their mind.

It is not just what we say or how we say it that counts, he argues, but also what goes on in the moments before we speak.

In his new book, Pre-Suasion, Professor Cialdini explains what people can do in those key seconds that determine the success of an attempt to influence, persuade or win over someone else.

The tricks including reading the person, and recognising when they will be more receptive to your persuasion attempts, for example.

Another way is to admit a weakness, making others believe you are more honest.

Professor Cialdini says thees tricks have been going on for hundreds of years.

'In 1588, British troops massed against a sea invasion from Spain at Tilbury were deeply concerned that their leader Queen Elizabeth I, as a woman, would not be up to the rigors of battle,' he said.
Other experts say chances of finding life will happen in the next 20 years

Also says Earth will eventually die off and life will begin somewhere else

The discovery of Proxima b may soon confirm his suspicions

astronaut Chiao Leroy believes there is life on other planets

As we make strides in space travel, many people appear to be leaning towards the notion that alien life does exist  and one former astronaut in particular says 'there is life all over our universe'.

Having spent 230 days in space, the Nasa veteran Leroy Chiao suggests it is 'arrogant' for humans to think we are the only living beings in the cosmos.

In a recent article, Chiao discusses how the discovery of Proxima b confirms his suspicions about alien life and warns that Earth may not have a bright future.

Scroll down for video

Having spent 230 days in space, the 15 year Nasa veteran Leroy Chiao (pictured) suggests it is arrogant for the human race to think they are the only living beings in the cosmos. Chiao discusses how the discovery of Proxima b confirms his suspicions for alien life and that our own Earth does not have a bright future

WHAT DOES CHIAO BELIEVE? Leroy Chiao, a 15 year veteran of Nasa, believes that the recent discovery of Proxima b confirms his suspicions of alien life - the exoplanet 25 trillion miles away that is deemed a 'second Earth'. Chiao discusses life in a full circle and believes that our Earth will eventually die off and life will begin somewhere else. 'I believe that life is always starting in some parts of the universe at the same time that it is dying out in others,' he writes. Chiao also explains that Mars was much different hundreds of millions of years ago. A thick atmosphere shrouded the surface in order to protect it and potential life from the sun's radiation. Advertisement

'The possibility of alien life has fascinated humans since our own awareness that such a thing could exist,' Chiao writes in the article published in Space.com.

'And with the recent discovery of a possible Earth-like planet around a star in our cosmic backyard, tantalizing new questions are being raised about the possibility of finding life elsewhere in the universe.'

Chiao, who was one of the commanders on the International Space Station, completed four space missions and six spacewalks during his 15 year career with Nasa from 1990 to 2005

The former astronaut had the privilege of flying to space, and believes the discovery of Proxima b may be one-step closer to finding life on other planets.

Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered before, but unlike the others, Proxima b is only four light years, or 25 trillion miles, away.

The planet, dubbed 'a second Earth', is the right distance from its star to host liquid water, which means it has the potential for alien life.

'Measurements indicate that Proxima b is a rocky planet, just slightly larger than Earth, orbiting the star at the right distance to be able to support liquid water on its surface, and thus perhaps life,' he shares.

Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered before, but unlike the others, Proxima b is only four light years, or 25 trillion miles, away. 'Measurements indicate that Proxima b is a rocky planet, just slightly larger than Earth, orbiting the star at the right distance to be able to support liquid water on its surface, and thus perhaps life,' Chiao shares

Although Proxima b has peaked people's interests, it appears to be very different from our own Earth.

'The planet's orbital period is only 11 days, and it does not rotate on its own axis,' according to Chiao.

'Also the radiation environment is estimated to be much harsher than that for Earth.'

'Still, scientists say some kind of life count exist there.'

And even though Proxima b is only four light years away, it would still take humans 80,000 years to reach the planet.

WHAT MAKES PROXIMA B SO UNIQUE Distance: This is the closest Earth-like planet we could ever find. Orbiting our nearest star, the planet is only four light years away. Missions to send spacecraft to the planet to examine for signs of life are already in planning, and could happen within decades. Composition: The planet is rocky and a similar size to Earth. Temperature: It lies in the 'habitable zone' of its star, which means there could be liquid water on its surface - a key ingredient for alien life. The temperature on the surface of the planet could be between -90 and 30 Celsius (-130 and 86 Fahrenheit). Atmosphere: If Proxima b has an atmosphere, the simple ingredients - water, carbon dioxide, and rock - that are needed for the formation of biochemical cycles that we call life, could all be present and interacting on the planet's surface. Advertisement

'I believe that life is always starting in some parts of the universe at the same time that it is dying out in others,' he shares.

'We don't know about each other, simply because the distances are so vast.

'We won't easily find evidence of alien life around another star, especially those that are hundreds of millions of light-years away, or more.'

Just as Chiao is eager to find alien life, he appears to have the same passion when finding a new planet for us to live, as he claims ours could be doomed.

'I believe that at some point, life on Earth will die out, either from natural causes, or from our own doing,' he writes.

'To me, this is a natural progression, just like individual lives on our planet.'

'Unlike many people, including several of my astronaut colleagues, I don't think that technology will save us.'

'Indeed, there are strong arguments that after enabling life to thrive, technology is now hastening our collective demise.'

Due to the Proxima b's differences and distance from Earth, Chiao believes it would be wise to keep exploring in our own 'backyard'  Mars.

Due to the Proxima b's differences and distance from Earth, Chia believes it would be wise to keep exploring in our own 'backyard'  Mars (pictured). 'For me, the discovery of incontrovertible evidence of past or present life on Mars would prove my theory on alien life, without having to send probes to other star systems,' writes Chiao

The red planet is much different now than it was hundreds of millions of years ago.

A thick atmosphere shrouded the surface in order to protect it and potential life from the sun's radiation, explains Chiao.

It was also much warmer and there was a more apparent presence of liquid flowing on the Martian surface.

'For me, the discovery of incontrovertible evidence of past or present life on Mars would prove my theory on alien life, without having to send probes to other star systems,' Chiao shares.

THE TOP 20 PLANETS WE COULD FIND ALIEN LIFE Nasa's Kepler telescope has been busy in the hunt for alien life, finding over 4,000 new planets outside our solar system over the past three years. Last month, a team of astronomers has narrowed down this list to those with the most potential to have liquid water, or even life. They pinpointed 20 out of the 4,000 that are most likely to be like our own, and are starting to look more closely at these candidates. A group led by San Francisco State University physicists searched through the list Kepler had returned to find those most likely to support life like our own. They found 216 Kepler planets are located within the 'habitable zone' - an area around a star in which an orbiting planet's surface could hold liquid water. Of those, they list 20 that are the best candidates to be habitable rocky planets like Earth. These include Kepler-186 f, Kepler-62 f, Kepler-283 c and Kepler-296 f. 'With the recent discovery of a possible Earth-like planet around a star in our cosmic backyard, tantalizing new questions are being raised about the possibility of finding life elsewhere in the universe,' writes Chiao. A team of astronomers have narrowed down a list with the most potential to have liquid water, or even life (pictured are the 20 planets) Advertisement

'The discovery of Proxima b raises renewed interest in this question'.

'My hope is that we will find answers in my lifetime, by continuing to look even closer than 'down the block.' Let's continue to explore Mars, which is in our own 'backyard!'

Chiao is not alone with his suspicions about life on other planets, as scientists met with Congress in 2014 that the components and conditions necessary for life are 'perhaps ubiquitous' in the Milky Way galaxy, reports The International Business Times.

'At least a half-dozen other worlds (besides Earth) that might have life are in our solar system,' Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the California-based Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute told the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space, and Technology at the time.
Researches named the asteroid 'Lairg Asteroid' in honor of the small town

It smashed into Earth 1.2bn years ago and left a 40km wide crater behind

The town of Lairg looks like a peaceful village on the southern shores of Loch Shin in Scotland, but this area was once the site of an 'apocalyptic' asteroid impact.

Researchers believe this is the location where a 3km wide meteorite struck 8km into the Earth's crust 1.2 billion years ago.

Traveling at about 65,000 kilometres per hour, researchers say this object likely struck with 940 million times the energy of the bomb that hit Hiroshima.

The town of Lairg (pictured) looks like a peaceful village on the southern shores of Loch Shin in Scotland, but this area was once the site of an 'apocalyptic' asteroid impact. Researchers believe this is the location where a 3km wide meteorite struck 8km into the Earth's crust 1.2 billion years ago

THE LAIRG ASTEROID Experts announced a 3km wide meteorite struck 8km into Earth's crust some 1.2 billion years ago. It's thought it was traveling at about 65,000 km/per hour, with 940 million times the energy of the bomb that hit Hiroshima. Dr. Michael Simms found rock formations that contained an 'ejecta blanket' After digging further, Dr. Simms found more clues while studying the area that suggested four groups of wedge-shaped ejecta were all pointing inland. If you have got a great big hole dug into the Lewisian Gneiss and then filled with sand and rubble, which is what happens with an impact crater, you are going to get a gravity low, a gravity anomaly, Dr. Simms explained. Advertisement

The massive asteroid has not only been dubbed one of Earths biggest asteroid impacts, but researchers have also named it Lairg Asteroid after the quaint town.

Dr. Michael Simms, curator of paleontology at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, has been working on this project since 2008, reports David Sanderson with The Times.

During the investigation, he found unusual rock formations in the northwest region of Scotland that contained an ejecta blanket that could have only been created by a space impact.

'Ejecta blanket' is a symmetrical apron of particles in the area that surrounds a crater.

This evidence, according to Dr. Simms, suggests that there once a crater in the area that was 40km wide, which ranks among the top 15 of 200 craters that have been identified on Earth.

Since the impact, rock has gradually made its way over what was once a gaping hole in the ground, which eventually allowed 900 residents to call Lairg home.

The massive asteroid has been dubbed one of Earths biggest asteroid impacts, and researchers have also named it Lairg Asteroid after the town, shown in the map above

It is such an ancient time, Dr. Tori Herridge with the Natural History Museum in London told The Times.

The biggest problems are unconformities, gaps in the geological record.

You are not going to be able to see before and afterwards.

But I am sure there was an impact and it would have been quite apocalyptic.

In a matter of seconds it would have changed the landscape.

This evidence, according to Dr. Simms, suggests that there once a crater in the area that was 40km wide following the impact, which ranks among the top 15 of 200 craters that have been identified on Earth. A stock image is pictured

Solving, what Dr. Herridge calls the enigma of the lost meteorite, began when Dr. Simms first shared his findings, which were first believed to be rock formations in the stretch of water known as Minch.

However, Dr. Simms found more clues while studying the area that suggested four groups of wedge-shaped ejecta were all pointing inland.

He then turned to geophysics for further analysis.

Gravitational pull, he explained, has a huge part in the density of rocks.

WHAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS? While there have been many theories for what killed off the dinosaurs - from an asteroid strike to massive volcanic eruptions - recent research suggests it may have been a combination of disasters. The creatures' 160 million year long reign is thought to have been ended by a double-whammy when the shockwave from the meteor impact caused a storm of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes around the world. Much of the planet would also have been blanketed in dust, meaning plant life could have struggled for years, having a widespread impact on the food chain. Researchers recently announced they had found evidence that a string of volcanoes in a region of India known as the Deccan Traps doubled their activity around 50,000 years after the Chicxulub impact. They blanketing the Earth with sulphurous gas and dust. Together, the impact and volcanism caused a dramatic change in climate as the sun's rays were blanketed out in a version of the 'nuclear winter' predicted to follow a global nuclear war. Advertisement

The Lewisian Gnesiss that lays beneath Lairg is a hard rock and has slightly more gravitational pull.

If you have got a great big hole dug into the Lewisian Gneiss and then filled with sand and rubble, which is what happens with an impact crater, you are going to get a gravity low, a gravity anomaly, Dr. Simms explained to The Times.

Now, when researchers combined Lairgs low gravity and the direction of the wedge-shaped ejecta, the results put the village dead center of the impact.

Its extraordinary, Dr. Simms said.
We all know that sinking feeling as you watch your phone slip through your fingers, knowing just what will happen when it hits the ground.

But trying to use your mobile through a screen webbed with cracks could soon be a thing of the past.

British scientists have developed an unbreakable touchscreen for smartphones, potentially saving users thousands of pounds in repairs each year.

British scientists have developed an unbreakable touchscreen for smartphones, potentially saving users thousands of pounds in repairs each year

And at a fifth of the cost of current touchscreens, the new technology  which could be rolled out on mobiles as early as 2018  could send the prices of phones, TVs and tablets tumbling.

Currently electrodes (electrical conductors) in touchscreens are made from indium tin oxide (ITO), a rare and expensive metal.

But indium supplies are running out, leading scientists to hunt for a new material. Physicists at the University of Sussex, working with Oxford-based microelectrics firm M-Solv, were able to create hybrid electrodes from silver nanowires and graphene. Silver nanowire is 1/10,000 the width of a human hair, while graphene is the thinnest material on earth.

They form a transparent material that is highly flexible, making it resistant to cracks and breaks, the journal Nanoscale reports. It also conducts electricity better than ITO. And at around 8 a square metre, silver nanowires and graphene is far cheaper than ITO, which costs 40 per square metre.
Just two weeks after the launch of the highly-anticipated Galaxy Note 7 phone, Samsung was forced to recall 2.5 million devices worldwide.

The drastic move came after several users reported a problem that caused the battery to severely overheat and even explode.

But Samsung has a new plan to prevent the problem happening again.

A software update could prevent the phones from overheating by limiting battery recharges to 60 per cent - the equivalent of getting a downgrade on a top-of-the-line phone.

Scroll down for video

Just two weeks after the launch of the highly-anticipated Galaxy Note 7 phone, Samsung was forced to recall 2.5 million devices after a problem causing the battery to severely overheat and even explode was discovered

WHAT IS THE ISSUE? Samsung found that a battery cell made by one of its two battery suppliers caused the phone to catch fire. The company refused to name the supplier. 'There was a tiny problem in the manufacturing process, so it was very difficult to figure out,' Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung's mobile business told reporters at a news conference. 'It will cost us so much it makes my heart ache. Nevertheless, the reason we made this decision is because what is most important is customer safety.' Advertisement

This morning, the front page of the Seoul Shinmun, a South Korean newspaper, carried a Samsung advertisement announcing the software update for any users of the Note 7 who may be disregarding its recall notice and continuing to use the smartphone.

The advert read: 'It is a measure to put consumer safety first but we apologise for causing inconvenience.'

The update for South Korean users will start September 20th.

It was not clear whether or not the update will be issued overseas.

Yonhap News Agency reported that Samsung is in talks with mobile carriers to deliver the same update to keep battery power at 60 per cent or below at all times.

The firm has recalled 2.5 million handsets in 10 countries, including Australia and the US, will issue a replacement.

For UK customers who have pre-orded Galaxy Note7 devices, Samsung will replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks.

China is not affected by the sales suspension. The company said it used a battery made by another supplier for the Note 7s sold in China.

It estimates the problem affects 24 in a million devices, which is around one for every 42,000 sold.

Samsung is the world's largest smartphone maker, and analysts said the recall may leave a larger impact on its brand than earlier estimated.

Aviation regulators and airlines have deemed the Note 7 a flight hazard and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering an official product recall.

The company has urged consumers to immediately turn off the phones and get them replaced with the new Note 7.

Several people posted images and videos of charred Samsung Galaxy Note 7s online and said their phones had caught on fire. The firm has now pulled the handest from shelves

Samsung is the world's largest smartphone maker, and analysts said the recall may leave a larger impact on its brand than earlier estimated

GALAXY NOTE 7 SPECS 5.7inch curved screen Measures 153.5 x 73.9 x 7.9mm, weighs 169g (5.96 oz) MicroSD card expansion slot that holds up to 256 GB Available in black onyx, silver titanium, gold platinum and blue coral Built with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 Display is a super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen USB-C charger port 64 GB of internal storage, with 4 GB RAM Non-removable Li-Po 3500 3,500 mAh battery Water-resistant phone body and S Pen Advertisement

But implementing such a large-scale recall is a challenge.

Consumers have to visit Samsung service centres or retailers twice - once to get a replacement phone (not a Galaxy Note 7) and have a safety check of their existing Note 7, and a second time to get a new Note 7.

Analysts said the software update appears to be a last-ditch effort to contain the crisis.

Peter Yu, an analyst at BNP Paribas, said Samsung 'has to contain the battery explosions but people are not returning the phones.

'It is taking a desperate measure.'

Keeping the battery level low could reduce the risk of overheating, but would be equivalent to getting a downgrade of a top-of-the-line phone, said Kim Young Woo, an analyst at SK Securities.

Samsung has not responded to requests for comments, and has not said how many battery fires have been reported.
A woman is suing a sex toy firm after discovering that the company was keeping tabs on its customer's intimate data.

The sex toy and its corresponding smartphone app enables users to customise setting to suit their preference.

The class action civil suit was filed against the maker of the We-Vibe smart dildo, Standard Innovation.

There were concerns about the We-Vibe 4 Plus, a vibrator that connects to a smartphone app that, its makers say, allows couples to keep their flame ignited - together or apart

The We-Vibe user, who filed the suit in Illinois, later realised that the app was relaying data back to the company, according to a report in Vocativ.

These included when she used the toy and which vibration settings she used, along with her email address.

'At this time we have not been served and we cannot comment on rumor or speculation,' Standard Innovation told MailOnline in a statement.

'Should we receive additional information, we will review it thoroughly and comment at the appropriate time.

'Theres been no allegation that any of our customers data has been compromised. However, given the intimate nature of our products, the privacy and security of our customers data is of utmost importance to our company. Accordingly, we take concerns about customer privacy and our data practices seriously.

'Over the course of the last few weeks, we have taken steps to further enhance the data security and privacy measures for our product offering.

'As part of this effort, we have engaged external security and privacy experts to conduct a thorough review of our data practices with a view of further strengthening data protection and privacy for our customers.

'We are also committed to better communicating our data practices'.

Last month, experts warned that the new generation of dildos are vulnerable because they are connected to the internet.

They said that hackers could exploit the web connection which links up to an app and allows users to pleasure their partner from anywhere in the world.

Hackers could exploit the web connection which links up to an app and allows your partner to pleasure you from anywhere in the world

Hacking a vibrator raises the prospect of a total stranger being in control during a persons most intimate moment.

Computer security researchers said that such a hack could constitute a sexual assault if it were to take place.

At a conference they revealed that they were concerned about the We-Vibe 4 Plus, a vibrator that connects to a smartphone app that, its makers say, allows couples to keep their flame ignited - together or apart.

The device, which is described as the No.1 couples vibrator, can be used remotely such as during a video call or whilst texting.

At the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas two New Zealand hackers who are known as Goldfisk and Follower, said that they were concerned for the two million people who used devices by the vibrators manufacturer, a US company called Standard Innovation.

According to The Guardian : A lot of people in the past have said its not really a serious issue, but if you come back to the fact that were talking about people, unwanted activation of a vibrator is potentially sexual assault.

Another concern was the data being sent back to Standard Innovation could be stolen.

This includes minute by minute temperature changes on the device from which hackers can work out when it is being used - and when the user is pleasuring themselves.

Some sex toys, like the Lovense Max (pictured) link up to an app which allows remote control and long distance control

Goldfisk said: What are the implications of who theyre going to give that data to.

The We-Vibe 4 Plus costs 104 ($135) and has 10 modes to choose from including pulse, wave, surf, peak and cha-cha-cha.

It also allows users to adjust the intensity.

The device is curved to fit snugly in place inside the woman and is also compact and discrete for easy storage, according to Standard Innovation.

It is compatible with iPhone 4s phones or newer devices, Android phones and either wireless or cellular data connection.

In a statement, Standard Innovation said data that the vibrator sends data back to the company is solely for diagnostic purposes.

The companys president, Frank Ferrari, said: Any changes in the temperature are not significant or noticeable enough to indicate the location of the product.

Data is only collected when the app is in use.
Advertisement

A set of stunning photographs that reveal the natural beauty in science are set to go on show to the public, as part of a major competition.

The 100 incredible images are the shortlisted entries for the Royal Photographic Society's International Images for Science competition and highlight how important photography is for academics.

The five competition winners will be announced tomorrow.

The shots form a dazzling display of the world's best scientific photography from various disciplines and from scientists all over the world.

A set of stunning photographs that reveal the natural beauty in science are set to go on show to the public, as part of a major competition. One highlight is this entry that shows a ladybird covered in drops of rain

THE COMPETITION The competition has been running since 2011 and has proved very successful. This year the society received more than 2,500 entries from students, amateur and professional photographers and medical photographers. The exhibition, supported by technology giant Siemens, will be showcased for five weeks at The Crystal in the Royal Victoria Docks, London from September 14 before going on a UK tour. The five competition winners will be announced tomorrow (14 September). Advertisement

Some of the unusual images include a creepy portrait of a giant house spider, an extreme close-up of a computer chip and a herd of Northern elephant seals resting side by side.

Photography skills play a crucial role in medicine, forensic science, engineering, archaeology, oceanography, natural history and many more areas.

Among the highlights is a striking image of a ladybird covered in raindrops by photographer Mostafa Ghroz.

A colourful photo by Richard Beech shows paint placed on top of a speaker, bouncing along to sound vibrations.

Another by Fabrizio Gomes shows a stunning lightning bolts piercing the sky above an urban cityscape.

One image uses a polarised light to capture a glimpse of the internal workings of a pregnant daphnia water flea

There is also a photo of one of the smallest 3D sculptures ever made, a surfing girl that measures just 150 micrometres tall, taken by Stefan Diller.

The sculpture was made by nano-artist Jonty Hurwitz using a 3D printing technique called multiphoton lithography which tightens polymer resin with infrared light one 3D pixel at a time.

A creepy closeup of the dog roundworm, a parasite that affects canines, is one of this year's entries

This amazing images shows 9-months old male Kurzhaar dog with hyperplastic persistent pupillary membrane (PPM), an eye condition that involves remnants of foetal membrane appearing as strands across the eye

Hoppers Battalion by Gabriella Mueller is one of the many insect-related entries in this year's contest

The giant house spider (Tegenaria gigantea) looks particularly imposing in closeup

'Paint Dancing to Music' shows paint placed on a speaker bouncing along to sound vibrations

A jam-packed scene shows Northern elephant seals cosying up to one another at a breeding colony in California

The profile is a green lacewing is shown in credible detail by photographer Daniel Kariko

This cityscape captures an impressive lightning storm with three purple-hued bolts visible over the buildings

One entry captures the unexpected beauty of a computer chip, when shot in extreme close-up

A perfectly timed snapshot shows two ants carrying larvae with their pincers

A phenmonom known as a lunar halo appears over the Nizhnetulomskaya reservoir in Murmansk, Russia

Crested geckos do not have eyelids, so they use their long tongues to keep their eyeballs moist and clean

This striking image shows a microscopic snapshot of citric acid and perfectly shows how photography can capture the technicolour beauty of the scientific world

One photographer shot a balloon with an airsoft gun and captured it in 66 micro-seconds to show the affect of the pellet on the rubber, with incredible results

A polarized light was used to capture a glimpse of the internal workings of a pregnant daphnia water flea. The tiny planktonic crustacean lives in various bodies of water including freshwater lakes, pond, streams and rivers

Another by Anup Deohar called 'Warrior of the grassland' shows a male fan-throated lizard comically on its hind legs with a stick looking like it is patrolling its territory.

There are also images of a fist punching water, flash floods shaping the walls of a canyon, sawfly larvae springing out on a leaf to make themselves look bigger to predators and a swarm of Pacific sea nettle jellyfish.

Gary Evans, curator of the exhibition, said: 'Science is absolutely everywhere around us and it can be a source of wonder.

'You don't have to know maths, physics, chemistry in detail to look at these stunning photographs and think 'that's really cool'.

This floral photograph shows a false colour x-ray of Hellebore (Helleborus orientalis) flowers and is among the 2,500 entries received by the Royal Photographic Society for this year's competition

This coloursnap snap shows a microscopic image of polyps from a colony of Obelia. The marine dweller is related to jellyfish and coral and is found in oceans around the globe, except for the high-arctic and Antarctic sea

Seasonal flash floods resulting from thunderstorms have shaped the walls of this canyon as the water, containing abrasive sand particles, follows cracks in the sandstone to form an intricately shaped interior

A electron microscope captured this image of the formation of calcium carbonate crystals. The photograph is one of the entries in the Royal Photographic Society's International Images for Science competition which has been running since 2011.

'They stand on their own as beautiful photos but it's amazing to be able to present images that have a science story behind them.

'If people come along to the exhibition and just appreciate them as beautiful pictures that's fine but if they then read the caption and learn just a tiny bit of science then that's a bonus.

'We are very happy that we had even more entries this year and particularly more entries in the 17 and under age group.

'We had a wider range of styles of picture this year too. We have more showing science as an everyday thing.

'Hopefully we can encourage people to look at the world around them through the eyes of science - botany, chemistry, engineering and so on.'

An example of astrophotography, this fantastic celestial shot shows the Andromeda Galaxy, a spiral galaxy that is located approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth and can be spotted in the night sky on a clear night

This beautiful shot shows a family group of gorillas and is in the running for one of the five winning spots which will be announced next Tuesday as part of the annual photography competition

This unusual close-up photograph captures one of the smallest 3D sculptures ever made - a model of a surfing girl, measuring just 150 micrometres tall - just 0.15 of a millimetre

A great shot of a greenbottle fly, which is found mainly in the Southern Hemisphere, blowing a bubble

A swarm Pacific sea nettle jellyfish (Chrysaora Fuscescens) forming a striking underwater snapshot

This composite shows the developmental stages of a cuttlefish at 24, 26 and 30 days and the last image is of a juvenile

This photographer has stuck close to home with an intricate cross section of a human brain

A close-up shot of a birch leaf shows six birch sawfly larvae with distinctive black and yellow markings

This gruesome image was taken using a micro-CT scan of a stonefish (Synanceia verrucosa). The stonefish is shown in yellow and prey inside its stomach is captured in green

This alarming extreme close-up shows plastic pollution in found eyeliner, which appears as tiny blue squares

This coloured electron microscope image shows the detailed structure of a skin wound early in the healing process

A photo of frozen bubble created by mixing washing up liquid with invisible ink looks similar to a crystal ball

This light microscopic image shows vascular bundles, which appear to look like tiny faces, which carry water up the stem of the Papyrus Glyphs, a plant that was used for making the paper in Egyptian scrolls

Ants are shown ingesting sugar solution laced with blue food colouring, which shows through their translucent bodies

A false-coloured photograph of Selaginella leaves, also known as club moss, shows stunning blues and yellows

A super-extreme close-up shows the double compound eyes of male Bibio marci or St. Mark's fly

Droplets of condensation on a spider's web reflecting the flowers that appear behind it

A black and white shot uses high speed flash photography to capture a person's fist plunging into water

A coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of vicia flower shows the flower's rich purple hue

This monochrome image combines technology with nature and shows a heat plume rising from a camping stove

A freeze-frame of a common snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) shows pollen being dispersed from the flower

This mind-boggling image of a fusion reactor appears to be a nod to Dutch artist M.C. Escher, famous for his puzzling artwork Ascending and Descending, showing a never-ending staircase

A male fanthroated lizard, which are known for being highly territorial, fiercely guarding his territory

A long exposure on a bridge draws the eye to the distance, the stars of the Milky Way, and the infinity of space

This graphic shot shows the visceral nature of a woman giving birth by natural caesarian section
It is smaller only to the Hoba meteorite, weighing 66 tonnes in Namibia

Locals in the small Argentinian town of Gancedo were in for a surprise when a massive meteorite was discovered earlier this week.

The meteorite weighs a massive 30 tonnes, and is the second biggest to have ever been found.

The huge rock of space debris will now be re-measured to confirm its size.

Locals in the small Argentinian town of Gancedo were in for a surprise when a massive meteorite was discovered earlier this week. The meteorite weighs a whopping 30 tonnes, and is the second biggest meteorite to have ever been found

CAMPO DEL CIELO 4,000 years ago, a shower of metallic meteorites fell in Campo del Cielo. The shower took place in a region of Argentina located between the provinces of Chaco and Santiago del Estero. The pure iron asteroid weighed an estimated 800 tons and hailed from the Main Asteroid Belt located between Mars and Jupiter. It split into multiple meteorites that branched out over an area of approximately 320 square kilometres. Advertisement

The meteorite was discovered by scientists on September 10.

It was found in the town of Gancedo, 674 miles (1,085km) north of the country's capital, Buenos Aires.

No indication has yet been given of its width or height.

Mario Vesconi, President of the Astronomy Association of Chaco, told Xinhua News Agency: 'While we hoped for weights above what had been registered, we did not expect it to exceed 30 tonnes.'

He added: 'It was in Campo del Cielo, where a shower of metallic meteorites fell around 4,000 years ago.'

The meteor shower took place in a region of Argentina located between the provinces of Chaco and Santiago del Estero.

The meteorite shower from which the Gancedo meteorite originates, took place in a region of Argentina located between the provinces of Chaco and Santiago del Estero, 4,000 years ago

The original space rock weighed an estimated 800 tonnes and hailed from the Main Asteroid Belt located between Mars and Jupiter.

It split into multiple meteorites that branched out over an area of approximately 124 square miles (320 square kilometres).

The Gancedo meteorite is the second biggest in size to the Hoba meteorite, weighing 66 tonnes in Namibia.

A previously discovered meteorite in the El Chaco area weighed 2,884 tonnes, meaning Argentina now has two of the world's largest meteorites.
It is an animal whose closest living relative currently resides in the Caribbean, but the existence of Nesophontes is only known about from fossils.

Now experts have traced the extinct West Indian mammals evolutionary history back to the dawn of mammals, 70 million years ago.

The curious creatures Latin name means island murderer due to its voracious appetite.

Insects and skeletal remains found among ancient owl pellets have enabled scientists to recover the first ancient DNA of Nesophontes.

It is an animal whose closest relative resides in the Caribbean, but Nesophontes is only known about from fossils. Experts traced the extinct West Indian mammals evolutionary history back to the dawn of mammals, 70 million years ago (artist's rendering pictured)

THE LIVING MAMMAL THAT RAN WITH THE DINOSAURS Nesophontes is a deeply distinct sister group to another group of living native Caribbean insectivores - the solenodons. The Hispaniolan solenodon is one of the only mammals in the world that can inject prey with a venomous bite. Its deadly saliva is secreted through a narrow groove in specialised teeth, making it one of the most evolutionary distinct creatures in the world. A study published in May in the journal Mitochondrial DNA, bolsters previous research that used DNA to estimate solenodons diverged from mammals during the Cretaceous Period 76 million years ago. The findings also supported the idea the island was part of a volcanic arc connected to Mexico 75 million years ago that gradually moved eastward  perhaps explaining how the isolated animals came to live there and evolve. Advertisement

The insect-eating animal lived in the Caribbean islands until the 16th century when its thought it was accidentally wiped out after the first Spanish ships arrived bringing with them rats as stowaways.

Nesophontes was just one of the dozens of mammals that went extinct in the Caribbean during recent times, said Professor Ian Barnes, research leader at London's Natural History Museum.

The team used cutting-edge DNA technology to conduct the study, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

A 750-year-old specimen was used to generate many thousands of base pairs of DNA sequence data.

This allowed the researchers to uncover its evolutionary origins and resolve the relationships between its closest relatives - the insectivores - a group including shrews, hedgehogs and moles.

Natural History Museum scientist Dr Selina Brace, said: Once we'd dealt with the tiny size of the bone samples, the highly degraded state of the DNA, and the lack of any similar genomes to compare to, the analysis was a piece of cake.

The creatures Latin name means island murderer due to its voracious appetite. Insects and skeletal remains found among ancient owl pellets have enabled scientists to recover the first ancient DNA of Nesophontes. The Solenodon taxa (pictured) is its the closest living relative

Nesophontes sample used in the investigation, recovered from skeletal remains in owl pellets. Left shows a map of the Carribean and Hispaniola, right, where the sample was recovered, and a skull from the collection locality is pictured above

HOW THE STUDY WORKED Scientists used a 750-year-old specimen to generate many thousands of base pairs of DNA sequence data. This allowed the research team to uncover its evolutionary origins and finally resolve the relationships between its closest relatives, the insectivores, a group including shrews, hedgehogs and moles. Phylogenetic and divergence time scenarios clearly demonstrate that Nesophontes is a deeply distinct sister group to another group of living native Caribbean insectivores, the solenodons. The time of the split between these two correlates with an era when the northern Caribbean was formed of volcanic islands, well before the origins of the islands we see today. Advertisement

They researchers ran various time scenarios to demonstrate Nesophontes is a deeply distinct sister group to another group of living native Caribbean insectivores - the solenodons.

There are two living species of solenodons - venomous, nocturnal, burrowing insect-eating mammals - called the Cuban solenodon and Haitian or Hispaniolan solenodon.

The time of the split between these two groups correlates with an era when the northern Caribbean was formed of volcanic islands, well before the origins of the islands we see today.

The findings will be of considerable interest for evolutionary biologists studying mammalian biogeography, and the significant role that humans may have played in a recent extinction.

Earlier this year, scientists revealed the Hispaniolan solenodon diverged from all other living mammals 78 million years ago, before the dinosaurs became extinct.

They came one step closer to revealing how it got its venomous bite by sequencing the creature's mitochondrial genome.

Its deadly saliva is secreted through a narrow groove in specialised teeth, making it one of the most evolutionary distinct creatures in the world.

There are two living species of solenodons - venomous, nocturnal, burrowing insect-eating mammals - the Cuban and Haitian or Hispaniolan solenodon. The Hispaniolan solenodon is one of the only mammals in the world that can inject prey with a venomous bite
News / Africa

by Thobekile Zhou

President Robert Mugabe has warned Zambian president Edgar Lungu to be wary of organisations that are bent on taking power by violent means.Mugabe was giving an address representing Southern African Development Community leaders at the inauguration of Lungu in Lusaka today.He said, "We say the message, the revolutionary message of freedom, of independence without outside interference should be the message everywhere in Africa now but that message of freedom and independence can only be enhanced if we maintain democracy in our states and democratic states are peaceful states."Democratic states do not entertain nor can they be expected to tolerate organisations which are violent, organisations which want to use violent means to get to power, NO and I am glad that in Zambia all has been peaceful,92 year old" said Mugabe in his unscripted speech.Mugabe is facing countless demonstrations back home from various organisations and political parties.Riot police have used force to squash the protests aimed at to92-year-old.
Exquisite marble statues unearthed in the Middle East provide new insight on the cultural impact of Rome's annexation of Nabatea in 106 AD.

The remains of two second century AD statues of Aphrodite were discovered while researchers excavated what was once an 'urban villa' in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan.

In addition to the Roman-style artifacts, researchers also found mortuary remains which offer even more clues about the daily lives of the ancient Nabateans.

The remains of two second century AD statues of Aphrodite were discovered by North Carolina State researchers (pictured), who were working at an excuvation site in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan

This recent find is part of a large excavation program called The Petra North Ridge Project, which consists of 65 workers, including 20 Jordanian personnel and students, alumni and faculty from North Carolina State and East Carolina University.

'The sculptures likely came from somewhere in the Aegean Sea such as Greece, Turkey or even Italy, and they were brought through trade to Petra,' Parker told Travel+Leisure.

'They used the finest marble. There's only a few quarries in the entire Mediterranean world that could produce marble of this kind.

'The craftsmanship, the style, the skill of the sculptures really comes through.'

Although in pieces, the body of the statues are largely intact and both statue heads and the broken extremities were recovered at the site - the team has plans to restore them.

WHAT DID RESEARCHERS FIND IN THE ANCIENT CITY PETRA? The fragmented statues (pictured) were spotted next to a staircase inside what was once an urban villa in Petra While digging with the The Petra North Ridge Project in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan, a team of researchers from North Carolina State uncovered two marble statues. Believed to be from the second century, these statues resemble the mythological goddess Aphrodite. Although in pieces, the body of the statues are largely intact and both statue heads and the broken extremities were recovered at the site - the team has plans to restore them. Accompany the goddess of love is the god of desire, Cupid, which is connected to the base of one of the statues and was also found to be well-preserved. Researchers also discovered installations for cooking and storage, occupational remains such as pottery and animal bones, an iron sword, ceramic oil lamps and human bones intermixed with personal adornments and jewelry. Advertisement

'Our team found the pieces while excavating domestic structures in Petra's North Ridge area during May and June,' said dig co-director Tom Parker, a professor of history at North Carolina State University.

Although in pieces, the body of the statues are largely intact and both statue heads and the broken extremities were recovered at the site - the team has plans to restore them

'I've been doing field work in the Middle East for 45 years and never had a find of this significance.'

'These are worthy of display at the Louvre Museum or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.'

Accompanying the statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, is the god of desire, Cupid, which is connected to the base of one of the statues and was also found to be well-preserved.

The team was digging what they thought was an ordinary home when they came across something much more.

The house was more like an urban villa, Parker said, equipped with its own sophisticated bath house.

And the fragmented statues were spotted next to a staircase inside the home.

'Even though they weren't exactly what we were looking for, these finds still tell us a lot about the population,' Parker said.

During its peak around the birth of Christ, the Nabatean Empire stretched across the Middle East to include Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Petra was named the capital of the kingdom, which was carved into the face of rose-coloured sand cliffs.

Interestingly, the Arabian group lived as nomadic lifestyle before reigning over the Middle East.

Things drastically changed for the Nabataeans and Petra around AD 106 when Romans peacefully took control of the city and all of the Nabataen people.

WHAT HAPPENED TO PETRA AND ITS PEOPLE? During its peak around the birth of Christ, the Nabatean Empire stretched across the Middle East to include Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Petra was named the capital of the kingdom, which was carved into the face of rose-coloured sand cliffs. Interestingly, the Arabian group lived as nomadic lifestyle before reigning over the Middle East. This recent find is part of a large excavation program called The Petra North Ridge Project that has been working in the ancient city of Petra for three years, hoping to uncover more clues about the ancient city Things drastically changed for the Nabataeans and Petra around AD 106 when Romans peacefully took control of the city and all of the Nabataen people. Petra is located in what is now the southwestern corner of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and it was once a thriving trading center and the capital of the Nabataean empire between 400 B.C. and A.D. 106. For centuries, the city sat empty and hidden form the rest of the world. It wasn't until the early 1800s did a European travel disguise himself in Bedouin costume and infiltrate the mysterious locale. In 1985, the Petra Archaeological Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and in 2007 it was named one of the new seven wonders of the world. Source: National Geographic Advertisement

Today, Roman influence can be seen on the buildings in Petra and archaeologist have found many artifacts that also reveal a mesh of the two cultures.

'The Nabateans were true geniuses in many ways, in part because they were ready and willing to assimilate to and adopt elements of other cultures around them,' Parker said.

'They adopted a lot of Egyptian culture when they were neighbors. When Romans took over, they were open to Roman influence.'

Petra (pictured) was named the capital of the Nabataean Empire, which was carved into the face of rose-coloured sand cliffs

The dig team, which Parker co-directs with bioarchaeologist Megan Perry, professor of anthropology at ECU, found a wealth of other artifacts that shed more light on Nabatean daily life.

Digging one other domestic structure and three rock-cut shaft tombs, the researchers discovered installations for cooking and storage, occupational remains such as pottery and animal bones, an iron sword, ceramic oil lamps and human bones intermixed with personal adornments and jewelry.
Roughly one-fifth of top corporate professionals have extremely high levels of psychopathic traits, according to a new study  about the same rate as seen among prisoners.

Successful psychopaths have become increasingly common in the last decade, and often lack empathy or remorse, having a toxic impact on the employees around them.

Researchers say these findings are much higher than expected, and warn that these individuals may turn to unethical and illegal tactics to get ahead.

Roughly one-fifth of top corporate professionals have extremely high levels of psychopathic traits, according to a new study  about the same rate as seen among prisoners. A scene from American Psycho is pictured

THE 'DARK TRIAD' OF TRAITS Narcissism: Tendencies of attention-seeking, charm, vanity, grandiose yet low self-esteem, and a willingness to manipulate others. Machiavellianism: Coldness, immoral thinking, long-term manipulation, blunt practicality, and hunger for money, success or power. Psychopathy: Antisocial behaviours, thrill-seeking, manipulation and impulsivity. Advertisement

In the new study, the team from Bond University in Australia and the University of San Diego examined the prevalence of psychopathic traits in the business sector.

The findings were presented today at the Australian Psychological Society Congress in Melbourne.

A study of 261 corporate professionals in the supply chain management industry revealed that 21 percent of these individuals have clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits.

This is compared with about one in 100 people from the general population, and one in five people in the prison system found to have these traits.

Other emerging studies have found that individuals with psychopathic traits could make up anywhere from 3 to 21 percent of the corporate worlds top ranking officials.

But according to the researchers, 'successful psychopaths' have become far more common following the 2008 global financial crisis.

Successful psychopaths have become increasingly common in the last decade. Researchers warn that these individuals may turn to unethical and illegal tactics to get ahead. Kevin Spacey is pictured above as Frank Underwood in House of Cards

SUCCESSFUL PSYCHOPATHS Successful psychopathy is a controversial idea - but it's not a new one. In 1941, American psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley was among the first to highlight this paradoxical condition in his book The Mask of Sanity. According to Cleckley, the psychopath is a hybrid creature, donning an engaging veil of normalcy that conceals an emotionally impoverished and profoundly disturbed core. In Cleckley's eyes, psychopaths are charming, self-centered, dishonest, guiltless and callous people who lead aimless lives devoid of deep interpersonal attachments. But Cleckley also alluded to the possibility that some psychopathic individuals are successful interpersonally and occupationally, at least in the short term. In a 1946 article, he wrote that the typical psychopath will have 'often outstripped 20 rival salesmen over a period of six months, or married the most desirable girl in town, or, in a first venture into politics, got himself elected into the state legislature'. Advertisement

The researchers say this study highlights a need for companies to conduct psychological screening processes to identify these traits.

Too often companies look at skills first and then secondly consider personality features, says Nathan Brooks, a forensic psychologist at Bond University.

Really it needs to be firstly about the candidates character and then, if they pass the character test, consider whether they have the right skills.

Successful psychopaths are often insecure yet egocentric, and can be charming and superficial, the researchers point out.

And, they often lack empathy or remorse, and may manipulate the people around them.

According to the researchers, this study highlights a need for companies to conduct psychological screening processes to identify these traits. A stock image is pictured

Typically psychopaths create a lot of chaos and generally tend to play people off against each other, Brooks says.

The researchers say the study has major implications for businesses, as these people may have a toxic effect on other employees and engage in unethical and illegal business practices.

Along with their findings, the researchers have developed a tool to help businesses spot potential successful psychopaths during recruitment.

We hope to implement our screening tool in businesses so that theres an adequate assessment to hopefully identify this problem  to stop people sneaking through into positions in the business that can become very costly, Brooks says.
August has now tied July as the hottest month ever recorded, keeping up an alarming trend that has seen eleven consecutive months of record-breaking temperatures.

Last month was hotter than the previous warmest August, in 2014, by .16C according to Nasa  and its passed the mean temperatures from 1951-1980 by nearly a full degree.

The researchers have created a new visualization to show how dramatically the temperatures have climbed since scientists began tracking this data, revealing a long-term warming trend over the past century.

The Nasa Earth Observatory chart created by Joshua Stevens reveals how temperatures have risen since scientists began keeping records in 1880

CLIMATE CHANGE ALREADY CAUSING DEATHS A new study has revealed the dangers of climate change are already affecting humanity and led to the death of hundreds of people across Europe sixteen years ago. A heatwave in 2003 killed 506 people in Paris and 315 in London, experts have said in a new study. A fifth of those deaths can be blamed on man-made pollution. The study led by University of Oxford scientists said there were 315 heat-related deaths in London as Europe experienced its hottest summer on record, out of which 64 were caused by climate change. The study was the first to calculate the number of premature deaths and it's link to air pollution and warned heatwaves will become more common and more severe in the future. Advertisement

The animated graph reveals the temperature anomalies dating all the way back to 1880, when the global temperature record began.

This past August marks the hottest month in 136 years of observation.

Monthly rankings, which vary by only a few hundredths of a degree, are inherently fragile, says Gavin Schmidt, director at the Nasas Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

We stress that the long-term trends are the most important for understanding the ongoing changes that are affecting our planet.

Seasonal temperatures usually reach their highest in July, the researchers explain, but this year, August was so warm that the two months tied, with last month being .98C warmer than the mean August temperatures from 1951-1980.

The analysis was conducted with data from roughly 6,300 meteorological stations around the world.

August has now tied July as the hottest month ever recorded, keeping up an alarming trend that has seen eleven consecutive months of record-breaking temperatures. The map reveals August temperature anomalies compared to the 1951-1980 mean

According to the researchers, 2016 is set to be a record-breaking year entirely given the January-August trend.

In a tweet, Schmidt says there is more than 99 percent chance that this will be the case.

This comes after it was revealed that July was the hottest month on record, despite the fading of a strong El Nino, which causes global temperatures to rise.

Seasonal temperatures usually reach their highest in July, the researchers explain, but this year, August was so warm that the two months tied, with last month being .98C warmer than the mean August temperatures from 1951-1980

According to the researchers, 2016 is set to be a record-breaking year entirely given the January-August trend, illustrated in the graph. In a tweet, Schmidt says there is more than 99 percent chance that this will be the case

The month was 1.51F (0.84C) warmer than the global average between 1950 and 1980, and they say it was 0.18 degrees warmer than the previous records seen in July 2011 and July 2015.

Nasa declared the first half of 2016 to have been the warmest six months on record, as many parts of the world experienced 'oppressive' levels of heat this summer, according to Nasa's Earth Observatory.

In June and July people living in Siberia, the Middle East and large areas of North America faced extreme heatwaves.

The US's three largest metropolitan areas  New York, Los Angeles and Chicago  all experienced heatwave alerts in July as well.

Nasa has found that the global temperatures were 1.51F (0.84C) warmer than its instrumental record in July 2016 (illustrated). It marks another record breaking month in a trend that has seen temperature records tumble in the past year

California is also in the grips of its worst drought in decades.

Parts of Siberia, where the weather is normally relatively cool, saw temperatures more typically found in the tropics.

Hot weather melted the permafrost in the Yamal Peninsula to reveal an infected carcass of a reindeer, triggering a major outbreak of anthrax.

Kuwait recorded a temperature of 129.2F (54C) on July 21 in what may be the hottest temperature on record in the Eastern Hemisphere if it is confirmed.
The coveted title of best museum in the world on TripAdvisor has gone to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for the second year running.

The museum, which opened in 1870, beat Chicago's Art Institute and St Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace into second and third place in the 2016 Travellers' Choice Awards for Museums.

The iconic institution on Manhattan's Upper East Side has strived to 'connect people to creativity, knowledge and ideas' through art.

The coveted title of best museum in the world on TripAdvisor has gone to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for the second year running

The iconic institution on Manhattan's Upper East Side has strived to 'connect people to creativity, knowledge and ideas' through art

Visitors can view the most extensive display of 17th-century Dutch art in the Western Hemisphere there, with masterpieces by Frans Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer.

The rest of the top ten was made up of the Musee d'Orsay, Paris, the National Museum of Anthropology (Museo Nacional de Antropologia), Mexico City, The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum, New York, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, the British Museum, London, The Acropolis Museum, Athens, and Vasa Museum, Stockholm.

Going by the Travellers' Choice Awards, it's the UK that's the best in Europe for museums.

Seven of Europe's top 25 museums are located in the UK, making the UK home to more winning museums than any other European country.

Chicago's Art Institute (pictured) was ranked second in the TripAdvisor awards

St Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace is the third-best museum in the world, according to TripAdvisor users

TOP 10 TRAVELLERS' CHOICE MUSEUMS IN THE WORLD 1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York 2. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 3. State Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace, St Petersburg, Russia 4. Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France 5. National Museum of Anthropology (Museo Nacional de Antropologia), Mexico City, Mexico 6. The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum, New York, United States 7. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain 8. British Museum, London, United Kingdom 9. The Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece 10. Vasa Museum, Stockholm, Sweden Advertisement

The British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum take fourth and seventh place respectively. The National Gallery, Natural History Museum and Churchill War Rooms come in 13th, 14th and 15th respectively, while York's National Railway Museum bags 20th place and the National Museum of Scotland is named 24th.

A newcomer to the UK top ten this year is York Castle Museum, which takes tenth place in the UK.

Standing on the site of the former York Castle, the York Castle Museum is housed in a former debtors' prison and an adjoining former women's prison and houses a collection that showcases social history in the county of Yorkshire.

The addition of York Castle Museum into the UK top ten makes York the second-best represented city after London, with two winning museums  the other being the National Railway Museum, which is ranked sixth.

Other UK winners this year include Titanic Belfast and Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which take eighth and ninth place in the UK respectively.

The rest of the UK top ten is made up of The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which came second, the National Gallery, London, the Natural History Museum, London, Churchill War Rooms, London, and the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.

'Once again the UK comes out on top with more winning museums than any other European country and the free admission that most of them offer make a visit to one of the UK's top ten museums a great value day out,' commented TripAdvisor spokesperson Hayley Coleman.

The British Museum is ranked eighth in the Travellers' Choice Awards. It boasts some eight million words

BEST MUSEUMS IN BRITAIN AND THE REST OF EUROPE Top 10 Travellers Choice Museums in Europe 1. State Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace, St Petersburg, Russia 2. Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France 3. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid 4. British Museum, London 5. The Acropolis Museum, Athens 6. Vasa Museum, Stockholm, Sweden 7. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 8. Musee du Louvre, Paris, France 9. The Rijksmuseum (National Museum), Amsterdam 10. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Top 10 Travellers Choice Museums in the UK 1. British Museum, London 2. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 3. National Gallery, London 4. Natural History Museum, London 5. Churchill War Rooms, London 6. National Railway Museum, York 7. National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh 8. Titanic Belfast, Belfast 9. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow 10. York Castle Museum, York Advertisement

Award winners were determined using an algorithm that took into account the quantity and quality of reviews and ratings for museums worldwide, gathered over a 12-month period.

Joanna Mackle, Deputy Director, the British Museum, said: 'The British Museum is delighted to be number one in the TripAdvisor Traveller's choice awards in the UK and to appear in the Europe and World lists.

'The Museum's world collection has always been a draw for visitors but it is wonderful that visitors enjoy and rate their visits so highly. TripAdvisor is such an important tool for us to monitor visitor satisfaction and customer service so this user affirmation is particularly welcome.'
People have now vowed to stop flying AA if the steward is reprimanded

AA said it would look into it, although badges are allowed in uniform rules

A woman has caused outrage online after she posted a picture of an American Airlines steward wearing a Black Lives Matter button on the company's Facebook page with the caption 'disgraceful.'

She uploaded the image to the AA Facebook page a few days ago.

The post angered many people, but the response from American Airlines also caused shock among the online community.

A woman has caused outrage online after she posted a picture of an American Airlines steward wearing a Black Lives Matter button on the company's Facebook page with the caption 'disgraceful'

In response to the woman's post, the airline said that it would look into the matter.

A statement on their Facebook page said: 'We appreciate your concerns and have alerted our flight attendant management team who will investigate and ensure all uniform standards are followed.

'In accordance with our community guidelines, we've hidden your post since it includes a photo of an employee.'

A member of the public later posted a picture of AA guidelines on uniforms, which appeared to indicate that the steward hadn't broken any rules.

It states that employees can wear: 'A maximum of two pins that display charitable / philanthropic causes or organizations or personal pins of the employee's choice.'

It led to many social media users reacting in outrage to the ambiguous nature of AA's earlier reply, saying that they should have made it clear that the flyer was in the wrong, not the steward.

American Airlines guidelines say that stewards are allowed to wear badges

One user called X contacted the airline on Twitter to warn that he would not fly with the airline again if they disciplined the steward.

He said: 'Your services allow pins. If you reprimand him, please let me know. I will not use your services again.'

Another user called Sloppy Johnny added: '[The woman] is the problem here, the "New American Airlines" needs to recognize this and ignore racists like her.'

American Airlines have now claimed that the company rules on badges have changed since those guidelines were published.

An American Airlines spokesperson told MailOnline Travel that the button was not a company-sanctioned item

A spokesperson told MailOnline Travel: 'We understand that many people are discussing an image of one of our flight attendants sporting a Black Lives Matter button while in uniform.

'All of us at American Airlines are entitled to our own personal opinions and beliefs and know that there are many causes that our more than 100,000 colleagues support.

'In order to ensure a consistent brand identity as a company, we share guidelines with our colleagues who wear uniforms.

'The button in question in the photo is not a company-sanctioned item, and we have let our flight attendant colleague, who continues to be employed with us, know this so he can remain compliant with our uniform guidelines while continuing to care for our customers.'

It comes just a few months after a female passenger claimed she was kicked off an American Airlines plane because the flight attendant felt threatened of the Black Lives Matter shirt she was wearing.
She's never one to disappoint on the red carpet.

And Lily Aldridge, 30, proved she's always ahead of the fashion pack as she arrived in a very slinky satin ensemble from Hellessy at a New York Charity event on Monday.

A host of celebrities were seen coming together with BGC and the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund to remember the those who were lost on 9/11 by giving back to the Relief Fund and other charities.

Giving back: Lily Aldridge looked lovely in a slinky satin ensemble as she attended the Annual Charity Day event in New York City on Monday

The supermodel showed off a smiling face as showed her support in New York City on Monday, alongside stars such as Pamela Anderson, Louis C.K., and Malin Akerman.

Lily wore a silk camisole and silk track pants, both from Hellessy's Resort 2017 collection, for the star-studded event, accessorizing with a pair of strappy sandals.

She wore her long, brunette tresses pulled back into a ponytail, and kept her make-up natural as she made an effort to give back.

The mother-of-one looked to be enjoying herself as she manned the phones at the event, also smiling as she autographed a Canter Charity Day poster.

In good spirits: The model looked happy to be giving back as she showed off a smile while arriving at Cantor Fitzgerald

Fresh-faced: Lily kept her make-up simple for the special charity event on Monday

Leaving her mark: The brunette beauty flashed a grin while signing her name to a Cantor Charity Day poster

BGC's Charity Day works every September 11th, in conjunction with the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, to remember the 658 friends and colleagues and the 61 Eurobrokers employees who were tragically killed in the 2001 attacks by distributing 100% of their global revenues to the Relief Fund and many other charities around the world.

Lily was joined by Pamela, 49, who stood out in a black and gold dress with a floral print and a bow embellishment along the collar.

She wore her long, blonde tresses in a side part, and styled in big, bold curls while accessorizing with black pumps.

In good company: Lily later attended a Bvlgari press conference, where she was unveiled as the Italian brand's new ambassador. She was joined by International Communication Director at Bulgari Stephane Gerschel (L) and Bulgari President, North America Daniel Paltridge (R)

Side by side: The Victoria's Secret star rubbed shoulders with fellow model Xenia Tchoumi

Say cheese: Bvlgari founder Nicola Bulgari joined Lily for a snap at the press conference on Tuesday

Pretty as a petal! Back at the Annual Charity Day event Pamela Anderson put her best foot forward in a black and gold dress with coordinating black pumps as she arrived on Monday

In good company: The Baywatch star stopped for a photo alongside Howard Lutnick, the Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald

Nice to meet you: The duo looked to be in good spirits as they shook hands at the charity event

The Baywatch star sported a nude lipstick, and could be seen flashing a big grin as she made calls for the star-studded event.

She was also spotted posing alongside Howard Lutnick, the Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Pamela later took her turn on the phone, smiling as she put in her best effort for the charity.

Bold: Pamela wore her long, blonde locks in a side part, and styled in big curls

Focused: The model looked to be hard at work as she manned the phones on Monday

Subtle: Comedian Louis C.K. arrived in a navy blue suit with a soft, white pinstripe

Louis C.K., 49, looked smart as he arrived on Monday in a navy blue suit with a subtle pinstripe.

He also sported a pale blue button down, and finished off the look with shiny, black dress shoes.

He seemed to be in good spirits for the star-studded charity day, and showed off a smile.

Center of attention: Everyone watched as Louis took to the phones on Monday

Going well: Things must have been going well for Louis as he showed off a smile while manning the charity's phone

Serious: The comedian seemed focused as he chatted

Actress Malin Akerman, 38, looked to be having a blast as she donated her time to the event.

She looked stunning in a black and white patterned dress while her blonde locks were pulled up into a topknot.

Robert De Niro seemed to be enjoying himself as well, as he took to the phones on Monday.

Can't hide her smile! Malin Akerman looked thrilled to be helping out on Monday

Suave: Robert De Niro looked nice in a navy blue, collared shirt, worn underneath a coordinating blazer

Happy to be here: The Oscar winner seemed to be in good spirits

The 73-year-old dressed sharply in a navy blue, collared shirt and a coordinating blazer.

Steve Buscemi opted for a dark, striped button down, worn underneath a navy blue suit jacket as he arrived on Monday.

The 58-year-old wore thick, black glasses and showed off a smile while signing the Cantor Charity Day poster.

Mixing it up: Steve Buscemi wore a dark, striped button down along with a well-tailored suit for the charity event

Steve was here! The Boardwalk Empire star also autographed the charity board

Supportive: Tony Danza sported an NYPD T-shirt underneath his suit jacket

Tony Danza showed his support in an NYPD T-shirt as he hit the carpet ahead of the annual charity event.

The 65-year-old coupled the T-shirt with a fitted, black suit and coordinating dress shoes.

AnnaSophia Robb, 22, looked chic in a loose-fitting, cream-colored blouse and brown mini skirt as she answered phones.

Putting her best foot forward: AnnaSophia Robb looked chic in a breezy, cream-colored blouse and brown mini skirt

Monochromatic: Bridget Moynahan wore a sleek, black dress and coordinating, strappy black shoes

Natural beauty: The Blue Bloods actress kept her make-up simple for the event

Bridget Moynahan, 45, went for a monochromatic look in a slinky, sleeveless, black dress.

She wore her long, brunette locks in a side part, and styled in big curls, and kept her make-up simple.

The actress accessorized her look with a pair of strappy, black heels as well as a chunky, gold bracelet.

Effortless: The star sported her long, brunette tresses in a side part, and styled in big curls

Having a laugh! Bridget looked to be in good spirits while manning the phones

Taking the plunge: The actress sported a low-cut, black dress with sheer panels and a wide, black leather belt

Mary-Louise Parker showed off her fashion credentials at the charity event, sporting a plunging black top with a flowing, white skirt with sheer panels.

The form-fitting top highlighted the 52-year-old's trim waist, and she coupled it with a pair of black heels.

She wore her long, brunette tresses in a center part, and styled in soft curls that cascaded past her shoulders.

Chic: Mary-Louise Parker showed off her fashion credentials in a plunging, black top, worn with a flowing, white skirt with sheer panels

Happy to help! The Weeds star flashed a big smile while hitting the phones on Monday

Standout: Edie Falco added a bit of color to the runway as she sported a pretty, blue dress with black embellishments

Edie Falco, 53, opted for a bit more color in her look, as she sported a dark blue dress with chic, black embellishments.

She was spotted showing off a smile as she posed alongside The Sopranos co-star Lorraine Bracco.

The 61-year-old showed off her toned figure in a form-fitting, long-sleeved black dress, worn with black pumps.

Reunited: She was spotted at the New York City charity event with former The Sopranos co-star Lorraine Bracco

Svelte: The Goodfellas star showed off her slim figure in a form-fitting, long-sleeved black dress

Red hot: Gayle King turned heads in a bright red, sleeveless dress which she coupled with playful, patterned heels

Gayle King turned heads in a bright red, sleeveless dress on Monday, which hugged the star's trim figure.

The 61-year-old coupled the eye-catching dress with a pair of yellow, playful patterned shoes.

TV personality Rosie Perez, 52, went for a more laid-back look in a sleeveless, cream-colored sweater, worn with navy blue trousers.

Her turn! The CBS This Morning co-anchor also showed off a smile as she manned the phones

Laid-back: Rosie Perez went a bit more low-key in a sleeveless, cream-colored sweater, worn with navy blue trousers

Dapper: Mad Men alum John Slattery looked suave in a grey suit, worn with a white button down

She kept her accessories simple, and wore her brunette locks in a center part and styled in big curls.

Mad Men alum John Slattery, 54, looked sharp in a grey suit, worn with a white button down.

Meanwhile, Zachary Quinto, 39, went a bit more casual on Monday in a short-sleeved, navy blue collared shirt.

Here to help: Star Trek star Zachary Quinto went a bit more casual in a short-sleeved, navy blue collared shirt

Part of the team: NFL star Peyton Manning looked to be in good spirits as he worked the phones on Monday

Family bonding: And the star's fellow NFL player younger brother Eli Manning also lent a hand, sporting a dark suit and bright red, patterned tie

Peyton Manning, 40, and his brother Eli, 35, both looked suave in dark suits with bright red, patterned ties.

Gerry Cooney, 60, was clearly in good spirits, as the retired boxer posed with a big smile and his fists out as he arrived on Monday.

Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan, 57, put his best foot forward in a blue and white plaid shirt, worn underneath a well-tailored, navy blue blazer.

Put up your dukes! Retired boxer Gerry Cooney was also happy to help

Dressed to impress: Kyle MacLachlin looked suave in a blue and plaid button down, worn with a well-tailored, navy blue blazer

Eye-catching: Brendan Fraser accessorized his laid-back look with a black and white patterned fedora

Actor Brendan Fraser, 47, showed off his persona style in a brown blazer and striped button down, accessorizing his look with a black and white patterned hat.

Model Josephine Skriver, 23, flashed her toned pins as she kicked back while answering calls on Monday.

The Victoria's Secret Angel went for an all-white ensemble, and wore her blonde tresses pulled back into a ponytail.

Putting in the leg work! Model Josephine Skriver kicked back as she answered calls on Monday

Laid-back: Chase Carter looked stylish in a black, leather jacket, which she coordinated wit her black, leather boots

Great minds think alike: The model posed alongside Daniela Lopez, who also sported a breezy, white top

Model Chase Carter, 19, looked stylish in a black, leather jacket, which she wore with a white tank, skintight jeans, and black leather boots.

She was joined on the carpet by fellow model Daniela Lopez, 22, who donned a sheer, white blouse along with skintight trousers, and white pumps.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump also made an appearance, sporting a navy blue suit and bright red tie.

Sheer beauty: Daniela wore a see-through, short-sleeved shirt along with coordinating, white pumps

All eyes on him: Donald Trump also made an appearance at the charity event on Monday

Tennis star: Venus Williams also pitched in and got on the phone
She's in town for New York Fashion Week.

And Bella couldn't have looked more fashionable, as she headed out on Monday.

The 19-year-old stepped out in New York City a torn denim miniskirt that flashed her vertiginous legs and helped frame a hint of midriff.

Stepping out: On Monday, Bella Hadid was spotted enjoying a day out in New York City

That splendid figure: The 19-year-old wore a torn denim miniskirt that bared her knockout legs as well as a bit of midriff

Her hair was pulled severely back and gathered into a high ponytail, which she at one point slung half and half over each shoulder.

The model's white crop top had a neckline that fell low enough to provide a healthy dose of cleavage, as well as to show her brace of necklaces, which included an elaborate choker and an unobtrusive cross.

Gigi Hadid's little sister pulled a small leather jacket over her shoulders for her day out in the city. Aviator sunglasses and a bulky cream-coloured purse accessorised the outfit.

Her white stiletto boots were pocked with rows of holes that provided a bit of ventilation, as onlookers snapped pictures on their phones.

Legacy: The model is the younger sister of her fellow model, Gigi Hadid

Fame runs in the family: Their mother is former Real Housewife Of Beverly Hills Yolanda Hadid

Model family: Bella's younger brother Anwar followed closely behind his sister

The young model has been spreading her wings professionally quite a bit recently.

After she covered the September issue of Vogue Paris alongside Victoria's Secret Angel Taylor Hill, her new cover for the October issue of the Toronto-based Flare magazine debuted today.

Looking good: Yolanda showed off her impressive figure in an all black ensemble

The tantalising picture, which features her posing in a leather jacket and Calvin Klein underwear, was taken by prolific fashion photographer Nino Munoz.

The list of stars whose images he's captured for magazine covers included Chris Rock, Rebel Wilson, Kerry Washington, Diane Kruger and Allison Williams.

Busy sisters: Gigi was also seen out and about in New York City

Cover girl: Hadid recently covered the October issue of the Toronto-based Flare magazine
She's the proud mother of three models taking the fashion industry by storm.

So it's only natural that LA-based Yolanda Hadid is in New York for fashion week to support her hard working offspring.

The 52-year-old was spotted visiting daughter Gigi's apartment on Monday showing off her figure in a black outfit.

The former model had her breast implants removed last year in an effort to beat Lyme disease.

Just popping in: Yolanda Hadid was spotted visiting her daughter Gigi's New York apartment on Monday

Yolanda wore a black sweater that was slightly sheer as well as some long sporty leggings.

She kept it comfy in flip-flops but carried a pair of stylish suede ankle boots.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star appeared to be makeup-free and hid her eyes behind a pair of dark sunglasses.

Looking good! The 52-year-old star wore black sporty leggings and a slightly sheer sweater

Planning to dress it up! Yolanda wore flip-flops but held a pair of stylish suede ankle boots

Mum on the run: Yolanda is in New York to support her three children who are taking the fashion world by storm during New York Fashion Week

The former model made the decision to remove her implants after discovering they had ruptured.

She was told silicone was 'free-floating' around her body and fearing it was exacerbating her symptoms of her condition.

Much of the operation was filmed by Bravo cameras and shown on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Having a catch-up: Her youngest daughter Bella, 19, and son Anwar, 17, were also pictured leaving Gigi's place

'My baby girl!' Later on the TV star got dressed up to watch Bella walk the catwalk for DKNY

'It's a good day': Yolanda appeared to be having a very leisurely start to her week

'These boobies never defined who I am as a woman,' Yolanda told cameras at the time.

I'm not afraid to lose that. I just wanna get on with life, I just want to get well, and I will do whatever it takes to get there,' she said with determination.

Yolanda was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2012 and has been very open about the treatments she's been trying to help beat it.
Cindy Crawford is in Monaco celebrating famed photographer Marco Glaviano's book launch.

And the 50-year-old took to Instagram as she stepped out for a night out in the French Riviera on Monday.

Cindy looked like a gold goddess in a metallic curve-hugging Tom Ford frock.

Gold goddess: Cindy Crawford took to Instagram as she stepped out for a night out in Monaco on Monday

She captioned the shot: 'Getting ready for a night out in Monaco. Thanks @TomFord for the dress.'

The gorgeous gown featured long sleeves and a slim silhouette with a hemline stopping short of her knees to show off the model's lean runway pins.

Her toned legs were further accentuated by a pair of nude strappy stilettos which gave the illusion of elongating her five-foot-nine stature.

The mother-of-two looked glamorous with a smokey-eye and left her voluminous tresses down styled with a slight bend in the ends.

A photographer and his muse: The 50-year-old beauty and famed Italian photographer Marco Glaviano posed in front of one of Marco's most famous shots of Cindy blowing a kiss while celebrating his book launch in Monaco on Monday

Cindy shared another post to social media on Monday from France's Mediterranean coastline.

She looked chic in a white one-shoulder high-waisted jumpsuit as she posed alongside Marco at the Italian photographer's book launch.

The coordinating pair appeared in happy spirits as they embraced for a photo in front of one of Marco's most famous shots of Cindy blowing a kiss.

She captioned the image: 'So happy to be in Monaco with @MarcoGlaviano for his book launch (covering 5 decades of his career)!'

Just last week, Cindy's look-alike daughter, Kaia, 15, received the Breakthrough Model of the Year honor at The Daily Front Row's Fashion Media Awards during New York Fashion Week.

The supermodel and her husband Rande Gerber along with their 17-year-old model son, Presley, were all in the Big Apple to show their support.

The entire Gerber clan even attended the Maybelline party afterwards to celebrate.
He suffered serious injuries in an on-set motorcycle accident back in March.

But Dylan O'Brien looks back to full health in the first picture from his upcoming film American Assassin.

The movie's official Twitter account released the shot showing O'Brien as gun toting CIA black ops recruit Mitch Rapp.

Not backing down: Dylan O'Brien is a gun toting CIA black ops recruit in the upcoming film American Assassin

In the sneak peak, the 25-year-old muscled star is seen standing over a lifeless body with a gun pointed down at him.

Dylan has kept a low profile since the accident while filming The Death Cure, the sequel to The Maze Runner.

While filming an action sequence, he crashed his motorcycle and suffered a concussion as well as a facial fracture and lacerations.

But there was no sign of any lasting damage in the latest picture.

The 25-year-old actor is set to star as CIA agent Mitch Rapp in the film, based on a series of books by Vince Flynn; he is seen last December before his accident

American Assassin is based on the 15-book series by author by Vince Flynn.

Teen Wolf star O'Brien is cast opposite Michael Keaton, who plays Stan Hurley, a veteran of the Cold War.

Sanaa Lathan stars as CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy, who asks the two agents to investigate recent attacks on the military and civilians.

They join forces with a Turkish agent, played by Shiva Negar, as they close in on the investigation.

In the moment: Dylan pictured in The Maze Runner: The Death Cure; which had production delays due to his accident

Mitch and Stan have to put a stop to an agent - played by Taylor Kitsch - who wants to cause a war in the Middle East.

While the film has not release date as of yet, it will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler.
News / National

by Staff reporter

An inexperienced worker at a Chinese brick moulding company allegedly pressed a wrong button written in Chinese, causing his colleague to be ground by a mixing machine.The company, Mazowe Bricks Company (Pvt) Ltd, today appeared in court accused of causing the death of its worker, Greyston Damazio.Cheng Yun appeared before Harare magistrate Mr Noel Mupeiwa on behalf of the company while Benjamin Chamboko, who allegedly pressed the wrong button, is on the run.Cheng is facing a culpable homicide charge.The matter was remanded to September 15.
They were reunited in May after being forced apart for two years while he served prison time.

And Samantha Harris and Luke Hunt are continuing to relish in the joys of being back together.

The pair enjoyed a date at Festival of the Winds, known as Australias largest kite-flying festival, at Bondi Beach on Sunday.

Scroll down for video

Gong strong: Samantha Harris, 26, and Luke Hunt, 30, continue to relish in the joys of being back together as the pair were pictured enjoying a day at Bondi Beach on the weekend

Sporting a blue lace-up top and designer shades, Samantha, 26, looked every inch the glamorous model as she posed alongside her muscular boyfriend Luke, 30, for a happy snap.

'Lovely day in Bondi at the festival of the winds,' she captioned the snap.

The engaged couple have been seemingly inseparable since Luke was released from prison earlier this year, after serving two years of a four year sentence.

In 2014, he was sentenced for dangerous driving causing the death of Kenneth Lay, 78, in a car accident in 2012.

Luke and Samantha were travelling to the gym in Narweena, Northern Sydney at the time when the Commodore they were driving in crashed into Kenneth Lay's Hyundai Lantra.

Happy: The engaged couple have been seemingly inseparable since Luke was released from prison earlier this year, after serving two years of a four year sentence

In addition to his four year sentence, he was disqualified from driving for six-and-a-half years.

At the time, Samantha expressed her devastation.

'I am beyond devastated with what has happened and for the Lay family. It is still so raw, having lost my partner,' she said after the verdict.

The wedding is on: Samantha previously confirmed that she will proceed with wedding plans to Luke

'I need time to process and get used to not having him in my life for now.'

Shortly after his release, Samantha confirmed that their wedding is still on.

'Things are going very slowly, but surely,' she previously told The Daily Telegraph adding that she's thrilled to have Luke home.

'It is great. Life has been really good.'

Multi-talented: Samantha showed off her culinary skills last week, as she prepared a healthy seafood dish for her future husband Luke

The couple were recently rumoured to be scouting potential wedding venues in Byron Bay after Samantha was spotted around town.

She has since denied the reports saying, 'I was just there enjoying Byron.'

Likely in preparation for married life, Samantha has been revealing more of her domestic side in recent months, sharing photos on Instagram of meals that she has cooked for her future husband.

Last week, the Indigenous beauty appeared to be impressed by her own cooking skills as she joked that she could be a contestant on reality TV cooking show MasterChef Australia.

'Tonight's dinner in the Harris/Hunt household - Masterchef here I come,' she wrote alongside an image of salmon with vegetables.

True love: The couple got engaged six years ago and were reunited in June following Luke's jail release




Farrah Abraham is planning on getting a butt lift.

The reality star, 25, met with a plastic surgeon for a derriere consultation last week, which will appear on The Doctors on Tuesday evening.

Farrah, who is a fan of plastic surgery, received a consultation with Dr. Andrew Ordon after being pictured heading into his office in Beverly Hills this week.

Scroll down for videos

More plastic surgery! Farrah Abraham is planning on getting a butt lift; The reality star, 25, met with a plastic surgeon for a derriere consultation last week, which will appear on The Doctors on Tuesday evening

In a clip from the upcoming episode, Farrah asks the doctor: 'I wanted to see what could we do to get my butt where we want it to be.'

Dr. Ordon replied: 'Its all about proportions. And we know that youre a curvy woman. Let me take a look and Ill give you an honest opinion and well talk about what our options are.'

Meanwhile, in another preview clip Dr. Jennifer Berman presses her on parenting after the MTV Teen Mom OG star was vocal about doing her seven-year-old Sophia's make-up.

In a clip from the upcoming episode, Farrah asks the doctor: 'I wanted to see what could we do to get my butt where we want it to be.'

Dr. Ordon replied: 'Its all about proportions. And we know that youre a curvy woman. Let me take a look and Ill give you an honest opinion and well talk about what our options are.'

Let's take a look: The doctor assessed how much they could do with her behind

'At that age I just, you know, its Toddlers and Tiaras, JonBenet Ramsey,' Dr Berman said. 'I mean... it triggers such emotional feelings, at least in me, that we are so concerned about the outside appearances, at such an early age, its really, you know, the messages of that.'

Farrah replied: 'Yeah totally. I dont really think its me being concerned about how I look or how my daughter looks, I think its'

But Berman interrupted her: 'But shes learning it from you! I hate to tell you.'

Looking alright! The TV personality certainly does not look like she needs any augmentation

Wanting a change: The reality tar said she needed a bit more on the backside

What can you do? Farrah sought out a professional for the delicate job

Dr Berman then asked her: 'Do you take accountability for anything?'

Farrah replied, 'Yes.'

Adding: 'Im an amazing parent. And thats what I take accountability for. Oh my goodness!'!

Farrah has been raising Sophia as a single parent after the death of her Derek Underwood in a 2008 car crash when she was eight months pregnant.

Meanwhile, in another preview clip Dr. Jennifer Berman presses her on parenting after the MTV Teen Mom OG star was vocal about doing her seven-year-old Sophia's make-up

Struggle: Farrah has been raising Sophia as a single parent after the death of her Derek Underwood in a 2008 car crash when she was eight months pregnant

So sweet: Farrah and Sophia pictured in this adorable Instagram post

Farrah has had numerous procedures in recent years that have drastically altered her appearance.

The adult film star made a very public appearance on E!'s Botched last year after receiving lip injections which resulted in an allergic reaction.

The Nebraska native was left in the emergency room with a painfully swollen pout and slammed her doctor on social media for her lips - even though it wasn't his fault.

Yet MORE plastic surgery? Farrah, who is a fan of plastic surgery, received a consultation with Dr. Andrew Ordon after being pictured heading into his office in Beverly Hills this week

Busted out! Farrah had a third breast augmentation earlier this year, as she underwent surgery and increased her implant size from a 650CC to a 800CC; she is pictured in May 2016 (L) compared to her more modest look in June 2012 (R)

Before that visit, she had two breast augmentations, rhinoplasty and a chin implant; she also relies heavily on lip fillers, but wanted doctors to offer her a more permanent alternative.

And Farrah had a third breast augmentation earlier this year, as she underwent surgery to increase her implant size from a 650CC to a 800CC.

She allowed cameras in the operating room and claimed the surgery was to fix 'horrible burning and pain issues' although she managed to include a boost in size alongside resolving her issues.

She was rather pleased with the result and told MailOnline: 'I'm thankful to have the best reconstructive breast surgeon in the Beverly Hills area fix the burning and pain issues that were horrible.'
She's one of the darlings of New York Fashion Week.

And Kendall Jenner wowed the crowd again as she stepped out in a chic all white ensemble in New York on Monday.

The 20-year-old model looked stunning in a pair of white high-waisted trousers and a frilly strapless bodice.

Scroll down for video

Stunner: Kendall Jenner wowed the crowd again as she stepped out in a chic all white ensemble in New York City on Monday

She accessorized her outfit with a pair of black stilettos but opted to wear no jewelry.

Kendall showed off her glowing sun-kissed skin and flawless decolletage.

The raven haired beauty swept her locks back into a tight low bun, as she showed off her perfectly applied make-up.

Classy: The 20-year-old model looked stunning in a pair of white high-waisted trousers and a frilly strapless bodice

Hollywood glamour: She opted for some light foundation, a little bit of blusher, dark eyes and a bold red lip

She opted for some light foundation, a little bit of blusher, dark eyes and a bold red lip.

The model looked happy and relaxed as she made her way out for the evening.

Kendall has been one of the main attractions of NYFW and has appeared in several shows for some of the most elite fashion designers in the industry.

She recently graced the cover of Allure's October Beauty Issue where she showed off her natural beauty.

The 'It Girl': Kendall has been one of the main attractions of NYFW and has appeared in several shows for some of the most elite fashion designers in the industry

The KUWTK star wore minimal make-up as she posed in a sheer, red top for the 20th Anniversary issue. It's her second Allure cover with her first being in March 2015.

Kendall also modeled a sunny, yellow dress with a floral print, keyhole cut-out and cinched waist as she posed in a behind-the-scenes video for the magazine.

Speaking with the publication, the reality star gushed that she was 'superawkward' before opting not to discuss her love life.

'I'm so young,' shared the star, who has been linked to Harry Styles, Jordan Clarkson, and most recently A$AP Rocky, noting that whoever she was dating would also be young, too.
He's used to early starts thanks to his role as co-host of Sunrise.

But it seems David 'Kochie' Koch needs to work on his fitness.

The 60-year-old AFL enthusiast lost a plank-off with an 82-year-old woman, who is believed to live in a retirement village, during a challenge on Sunrise on Tuesday.

Scroll down for video

Awkward! David 'Kochie' Koch (L) hilariously lost a plank-off with an 82-year-old woman (R) who is believed to live in a retirement village, with the challenge being shared on Sunrise on Tuesday

The elderly woman - who was clad in tights and a pink Lorna Jane T-shirt - challenged Kochie to go head-to-head with her.

Based in a retirement village in Brisbane where the show's weather forecast was being presented, she went head-to-head with Kochie, who planked in the Sunrise Sydney studios.

During the fitness test, the woman started to recite a line from her book of poems while Kochie complained that planking for the cameras was hard.

Putting their fitness to the test! The woman started to recite a line from her book of poems while Kochie complained producers told him to look at a camera while planking and found it hard

'I've been told to look at camera one, it's a bit friggen' hard doing the bloody plank,' he said, rather strained.

He eventually gave in while the woman was effortlessly still going.

'Well done,' he told her.

She cheekily replied at the end to him, 'Kochie, keep it up' before he jokingly replied: 'That's what Lib keeps saying,' referring to his wife Libby.

Familiar face: The journalist - who is the president of the Port Adelaide Football Club - previously hosted Sunrise with former co-host Mel Doyle

His costar: Kochie is currently the co-host of Sunrise alongside Samantha Armytage (pictured) who is currently overseas as she celebrates her 40th birthday

Kochie currently co-hosts Sunrise alongside Samantha Armytage, who is overseas as she celebrates her 40th birthday.

The blonde is enjoying a trip to Greece and has shared numerous envy-inducing snaps of her holiday to her Instagram page.

Samantha became co-host of Sunrise in 2013, replacing Mel Doyle.
He is adored by many female celebrities in the industry.

So it's no wonder Zac Posen was seen with a whole host of females at his New York Fashion Week show, which took place at Spring Studios on Monday.

Uma Thurman was among the famous females Zac was seen cuddling up to at the illustrious and exclusive bash.

Scroll down for video

Arriving in style! Uma Thurman, 46, headed up the star-studded turnout at Zac Posen's NYFW show at Spring Studios on Monday

Uma looked striking in a black high neck dress as she posed alongside Zac.

The 46-year-old actress wore just a dash of mascara as she showed off her deep blue eyes.

She opted for a slick of brown lipstick as she swept her signature blonde locks away from her face.

Meanwhile the 35-year-old American fashion designer looked suave in a grey suit, complete with a buttoned up white shirt.

Man of the hour: She posed with the designer ahead of the show at Spring Studios

Stylish: The actress looked striking in a black high neck dress with zig-zag designs

Sitting pretty: The talented star wore just a dash of mascara which showed off her deep blue eyes

Gorgeous: She opted for a slick of brown lipstick as she swept her signature blonde locks away from her face

Wrapping up: The blonde beauty carried a statement khaki coat with her in case it got chilly

Dunn deal: Jourdan Dunn may have looked runway ready but she was one of the A-list guests to take a seat on the front row

Goddess: The London-born supermodel looked sensational in a green silk gown with spaghetti straps

Dapper: The 35-year-old American fashion designer looked suave in a grey suit, complete with a buttoned up white shirt as he posed with Kelly Killoren Bensimon

Here come the girls: Kelly was joined in the front row by 28-year-old Coco Rocha

Special night: Kelly, Coco and Crystal Renn smiled and posed for the camera

He also posed with Kelly Bensimon, who turned heads in a black bodysuit underneath a sheer sequined dress.

The 48-year-old looked far younger than her years as she graced the front row alongside Coco Rocha.

The 28-year-old model meanwhile showcased her slender figure in a form-fitting hot pink dress and dark lipstick.

Best seats! Malin Akerman, Carla Gugino, Olivia Culpo and Jourdan Dunn in the front row

Beauties: Actress Malin Akerman (C), actress Carla Gugino, model Olivia Culpo and model Jourdan Dunn (R) attend the Zac Posen fashion show

The man: Zac was the man of the hour as he stood posing for photos

Suave: America's Next Top Model judge Miss J. Alexander looked dapper in his ensemble

Group photo: American actress Debi Mazar and her daughter Giulia posed alongside Zac

Other famous faces in attendance included Malin Akerman, Carla Gugino, Olivia Culpo and Jourdan Dunn.

The models walking the catwalk all wore very striking and different outfits, and one wore a purple flower style dress with a tight bodice and a big skirt.

Another model on the runway wore a cute orange ensemble complete with a pair of chic shorts and a long sleeved blouse.

Lucky guests: June Ambrose was another celebrity sitting on the front row, alongside Malin who looked stunning in her plunging gown

Pretty ladies: Actress Carla Gugino looked lovely in her flirty dress next to Malin

Beautiful: Carla showed off her alabaster skin in her floaty dress

Smizing! Olivia Culpo and Jourdan did their best smize as they posed for the camera

Zac is renowned in the industry and is one of the top designers.

He has worked with the biggest names in the business including Natalie Portman, Beyonce, Mischa Barton, Amanda Seyfried, Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez and Claire Danes.

In 2012 Posen was announced as an official judge for season 11 of Project Runway.

Like mother like daughter: The duo struck the same pose for the evening

Pretty: One model wore a a purple flower style dress with a tight bodice and a big skirt
He has revealed how smitten he is with his much-younger girlfriend Imogen Anthony.

And shock jock Kyle Sandilands, 45, showed off his gentlemanly side when he opened the door of his Rolls-Royce for his partner of more than five years on Sunday.

Imogen, 25, hopped out of luxurious car in a pair of grey thigh-high boots worn over black leggings that were teamed with a Whitesnake rock T-shirt.

Scroll down for video

What a gentleman! Kyle Sandilands, 45, showed off his gentlemanly side when he opened the door of his Rolls-Royce for Imogen Anthony during an outing in LA on Sunday

Imogen did her best to try and blend in with the LA crowd, covering her facial features with a pair of sleek shades while smoking on a cigarette.

Her dyed pink locks were styled out and into a messy tousled look, and this time offered to go for a minimal makeup look.

Ciggie break: Imogen did her best to try and blend in with the LA crowd, covering her facial features with a pair of sleek shades while smoking on a cigarette

Thigh high: Iomgen rocked grey thigh-high boots worn over black leggings that were teamed with a Whitesnake rock T-shirt

She completed her off-duty look with a black choker and a studded handbag, which she slung over one arm.

After her lunch date at the Ivy, Imogen appeared to have done some shopping and sported a blue bag filled with new goodies.

Imogen and Kyle have just returned from from Burning Man.

Pared back... for her: Her dyed pink locks were styled out and into a messy tousled look, and this time offered to go for a minimal makeup look

Cold? At one stage during the outing, the professional poser added a khaki coat to her ensemble

Time for shopping? Imogen appeared to have done some shopping and sported a blue bag filled with new goodies

They joined a handful of celebrities at the event held at Nevadas Black Rock Desert.

The Peta advocate took to Instagram to document her time at the temporary city, which is erected on an annual basis.

In one video uploaded to her social media, Imogen decided to go topless.

She concealed her modesty with her hands placed across her chest, while simply wearing a pair of skimpy black briefs, layered with a shredded skirt.

The aftermath: Imogen and Kyle have just returned from from Burning Man

'TOPS OFF - LIBERTYYYY!! You can walk around nude if you want too, I love it! (sic),' Imogen captioned the snap.

Hours earlier she was dressed in a skimpy black bikini with an elaborate beaded skirt.

The beading detail was also attached to the tiny triangle top, and draped down her trim torso, making noise when the model shook.

Asking boyfriend of five years, radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands, to film her, the model was seen dancing provocatively for the camera, with not much around her except decorated RV's.

Sharing: The Peta advocate took to Instagram to document her time at the temporary city




Winning free money is enough to make anyone's day.

But for one elated Sunrise viewer, an $80,000 cash prize appeared to make her year, judging by her over the top reaction on Tuesday morning.

Co-host David 'Kochie' Koch told Ava Rackley from the Hunter Valley in NSW that she won $80,000 during the show's Cash Cow segment and she became hysterical, at one point yelling out 'I can't breathe!'

Epic: Sunrise co-host David 'Kochie' Koch told Ava Rackley from the Hunter Valley in NSW that she won $80,000 during the show's Cash Cow segment on Tuesday and she became hysterical, at one point yelling out 'I can't breathe!'

The mother-of-three simply had to answer her phone within the first three rings in order to win the money, as part of the morning show's Cash Cow segment and the $80,000 prize left her screaming uncontrollably.

'How would you like to buy a vacuum cleaner,' Kochie joked before Ava realised that she had won.

'Oh my God, I have won! Oh my God! Oh my God!,' Rackley said hysterically.

Winner: The mother-of-three simply had to answer her phone within the first three rings in order to win the money and the $80,000 prize left her screaming uncontrollably

Kochie then went on to confirm her $80,000 cash win, which only heightened her hysteria and at one point, the new business owner appeared to hyperventilate.

'I can't breathe!' she exclaimed.

As Kochie began to ask about her background, Ava interjected with 'Oh my God!'

Thrilled: 'Oh my God, I have won! Oh my God! Oh my God!,' Rackley screamed

She continued with slightly incoherent screaming: 'Kochie I love you ... oh my God!!'

Since 2011, Sunrise's Cash Cow has given away more than $11.5 million.

Sunrise Executive Producer Michael Pell told News Corp on Tuesday that they enjoy giving money away.

'The Cash Cow has become part of the fabric of Sunrise. We love giving money to deserving Aussies. Ava's excitement was infectious,' he said.

Changing lives: Since 2011, Sunrise's Cash Cow has given away more than $11.5 million. Show hosts Sam Armytage and David are pictured here filming
Emma Stone was a ray of sunshine in a yellow sequinned mini dress.

But Ryan Gosling was the toast of Toronto at the premiere of their film, La La Land, in his native country of Canada.

The 35-year-old actor smouldered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival in a dark blue suit, and was mobbed by fans while hitting the red carpet.

Ray of sunshine: Ryan Gosling, 35, posed with his co-star Emma Stone, 27 at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival premiere of La La Land on Monday

The Oscar nominee made his way to the Princess of Wales Theatre on Monday as adoring admirers lined the streets waiting to catch a glimpse of the hunky A-lister.

Ryan was polished to perfection in a midnight blue suit with buttoned-up crisp white dress shirt and black leather dress shoes.

He looked dapper with his blonde mane combed to the side as he sported a bit of scruff.

Emma, 27, oozed radiance in a bright canary yellow mini dress that showcased her slender stems.

Mesmerizing! Ryan made a showstopping arrival at the premiere of his upcoming film

Fan-atical! The hunky A-lister was mobbed by fans while making his way to the Princess of Wales Theatre

Picture perfect! Ryan graciously posed for selfies with fans who were elated with his presence

She cut a ladylike figure in the feminine frock which included detailed sequinned and lace embellishments.

Her fiery red tresses were styled in an old Hollywood glam vibe and the Oscar nominee opted for a bit of black eyeliner for a dramatic effect.

In their upcoming comedic movie-musical, Ryan plays a jazz pianist that falls in love with an aspiring actress in LA, played by Emma.

Star spotting: The Oscar nominee made his way to the premiere as adoring admirers lined the streets waiting to catch a glimpse of him

Penned: The Notebook star paused to sign autographs for the masses

Leggy display: Emma, 27, oozed radiance in a bright canary yellow mini dress that showcased her slender stems

Feminine frock: The Superbad actress cut a ladylike figure in the dress which included detailed sequinned and lace embellishments

Third time's a charm! Emma and Ryan posed together on the red carpet for what is their third film together

La La Land features an all-star lineup including John Legend, J.K. Simmons and Tom Everett Scott, and is set for a U.S. release on December 2.

Emma and Ryan posed together on the red carpet for what is their third film together.

They previously co-starred in 2011's Crazy, Stupid, Love and 2013's Gangster Squad.

'I want to work with Ryan, a lot, if he'll have me,' the Superbad actress confessed in a 2013 interview with Collider.

All-star lineup! Ryan and Emma reunited with their co-star, Academy Award-winning singer John Legend, 37

So good to see you!: Emma gave John, who is acting as executive producer, a big hug

Dapper! The Grammy winner was handsome as usual in a fitted dark suit with polished black dress shoes

Academy A-lister: Oscar-winning actor J.K. Simmons, 61, donned a black suit with matching necktie and dress shoes

'Well, Emma owes me money and the only way I can try to get that back is by doing movies with her,' joked The Nice Guy star.

'She still owes me that money. It was hard for us to be serious together,' Ryan said of filming Crazy, Stupid, Love with Emma.

'We were a couple of knuckleheads. And then, we thought, Oh, this would be fun to work together again, but we had to try to be serious.'

The pair co-starred in the romantic comedy together for which Gosling received a Golden Globe nomination for his role.
It's been a tough year for Roxy Jacenko, whose husband is currently behind bars while she battles breast cancer.

But the 36-year-old proved she still has room for laughter in her life when she sat down for an al fresco lunch at Cafe Peron's in Double Bay on Monday.

The PR maven looked animated as she shared a few rare laughs with her lunch date Francesca Packer and the hunky male owner of the restaurant.

Scroll down for video

Having fun: Roxy Jacenko looked in high spirits as she shared a few laughs with friends while lunching at Cafe Peron's in Double Bay on Monday

Sporting her signature aviator sunglasses, the mother-of-two threw her head back as she made conversation with the pair.

The perpetually-busy PR queen was seen occasionally checking her phone as she sat and enjoyed her break.

Joining Roxy for her outing was Francesca, the 21-year-old niece of billionaire James Packer.

Having a laugh: The 36-year-old looked in high spirits as she chatted to a hunky male owner of the restaurant

Looking good: The PR maven was in a jovial mood

The friends were seen strolling along the streets of the affluent Sydney suburb following their meal.

Roxy showed off her trim pins in a pair of tight black leather pants, which she teamed with a black singlet.

The author added height to her look with a pair of black stilettos.

Francesca meanwhile, opted for a sportsluxe look, sporting a grey jumper from The Upside with black tights and matching Nike trainers.

Working: The busy entrepreneur still made time to check her phone throughout the working lunch

Company: Roxy was joined by billionaire James Packer's niece Francesca for the outing

Stylish: The blonde beauty stunned in a pair of black leather pants and stilettos while Francesca rocked a sportsluxe look in a ripped grey jumper and black tights

Health kick: Roxy opted for a green juice as she sat down for lunch

Roxy began radiation treatment for breast cancer last week, after discovering a lump back in June.

The health scare came just weeks after her husband Oliver Curtis - with whom she shares five-year-old daughter Pixie and two-year-old son Hunter - was sentenced to two years prison for insider trading.

Despite her mounting problems, Roxy has continued to dote on her children and vowed to continue working.

Tough times: Roxy's health battle comes as her husband is serving out a two-year jail sentence for insider trading
Vicki Gunvalson's friends failed to visit her in hospital on Monday's episode of The Real Housewives Of Orange County after she was in a 'near fatal' accident.

The reality star had been airlifted to medical facilities after Tamra Judge crashed their ATV on the Imperial Sand Dunes in Glamis, California.

Heather Dubrow and Kelly Dodd, who were also in the vehicle, claimed to be too shellshocked to help.

No visitors: Vicki Gunvalson was forced to go it alone in hospital on Monday's episode of The Real Housewives Of Orange County following an ATV accident

So they asked Shannon Beador and Meghan King Edmonds, who both refused.

'I don't know why it takes a near death experience to have compassion,' Vicki scoffed to Meghan afterwards.

'I would have died by myself,' said Vicki, 54, who had been left alone in the hospital for many hours.

'Then I thought, well I'm lying here naked and I have no clothes,' added Vicki who had no one to bring her fresh clothes after the paramedics removed the ones she'd been wearing.

Stayed put: Shannon Beador and Meghan King Edmonds got an update on the accident but declined to go to the hospital to help Vicki

Vicki was pumped full of morphine, and sporting a neck brace, but no kind souls visited her bedside.

'I'm not friends with Vicki, she's been nothing but horrible to me,' squawked Shannon, 51.

'You guys should go, you're her friends,' Meghan told Heather and Kelly on the phone.

Serious accident: Tamra Judge was shown being wheeled out of a hospital just hours after the ATV accident

Hard to believe: Kelly Dodd and Heather Dubrow who survived the accident couldn't believe Shannon and Meghan would not go see injured Vicki

He's not going: Jim Edmonds flatly told Meghan that he wasn't about to visit Vicki

Heather texted Meghan saying it was 'uncool' for her not to visit.

'Bulls***,' decided Meghan, 31.

Shannon and Meghan doubted the authenticity of Vicki's injuries.

Took a stand: Meghan told Vicki's friends that they should be the ones visiting her

'It's hard for me to believe that she's hurt when she says she is, because all she has done is lie, lie, lie, lie, lie,' griped Meghan.

'She was in on a cancer scam, I personally can't get past that and she is a liar,' agreed Shannon.

'She got released, they didn't keep her overnight, it can't have been that bad,' continued Shannon who thought it was deplorable that Vicki was sharing photographs of herself strapped to the gurney.

Keen observation: Shannon that it was 'deplorable' that Vicki was sending out pics of herself strapped to the gurney

'Who does that?' she balked.

Tamra, who escaped with bruises and a concussion, was wracked with guilt.

'I feel horrible, I feel responsible for the accident, I could have killed somebody,' lamented the fitness doyenne and born again Christian.

Feeling guilty: Tamra was driving the ATV at the time of the accident and felt guilty about it

Having fun: Shannon and Meghan were enjoying a golf outing with their husbands as Vicki was alone in the hospital

Tamra then complained to Meghan and Shannon.

'I can't believe that not one of you went to see hershe had her clothes cut off of her, she had nobody there, she had to Uber home at one o'clock in the morning,' she cried.

Ending the call with: 'You know what Meghan? Go to hell'.

Went there: Meghan was told by Tamra to go to hell for failing to go see Vicki

Feeling guilty Meghan visited Vicki at home, and began sobbing, calling Tamra 'reckless'.

'I'm so angry with Tamra for being so reckless,' she said.

'How the f*** does she know? She wasn't there,' barked Kelly later.

Pretty reckless: Vicki was eventually visited by Meghan who called Tamra out for being so reckless

Working out: Tamra resumed her preparations for a fitness contest after the accident but was having a tough time

'She's afraid that she's going to look bad so she's brushing it off onto Tamra,' added Kelly.

Tamra was haunted by the accident.

'It's the scariest thing that's ever happened to me,' she mewed.

Not happy: Kelly and Heather were angry with Meghan for blaming Tamra

'I can't stop thinkingwhat if?' she sighed miserably.

Heather then diagnosed herself with post traumatic stress disorder.

'It was so scary,' she complained.

Took it hard: Tamra was taking the accident hard and kept thinking about how her friends could've been killed

Chin up: Eddie assured his wife Tamra that it was a nobody's fault accident

In a sideline plot Meghan announced that she was officially pregnant from IVF and 'depressed'.

'I have battled depression before in my life butnow is the worst I've ever felt,' said the former model, who is marred to former MLB player Jim Edmonds.

'Jimmy's gone a lot, Heather is accusing me of being a bad friend to Vicki, my hormones are going haywire, I'm depressed,' she moaned before apologising profusely for being a bad friend.

The Real Housewives Of Orange County continues next week on Bravo.

Baby bump: Meghan showed her baby bump to Shannon
News / National

by Thobekile Zhou

Dynamos superstition could not save them from defeat on Sunday to Highlanders.Their players reportedly refused to take to the field for a traditional warm up using official entry point.Instead, they chose to use Wings' stand close to the Mpilo End which houses their supporters."Not even refusing to use the official entry into the Barbourfields Stadium turf in a suspected case of superstition could save Dynamos" Chronicle reported."When the Harare giants disembarked from their team bus at the stadium, they refused to go into the field via their dressing room, and instead went through the Wings' stand close to the Mpilo End.Highlanders' players were not distracted by Dynamos' superstitious beliefs as they gave their all and fought for maximum points".The defeat could have ended their title hopes.Even in the unlikely scenario that they win all their remaining seven matches, it is almost impossible for Dynamos to come back from this.A massive 12 points separate them from log leaders FC Platinum, on 47 points, with bitter city rivals Caps United in second place on the league table with 46 points, while Highlanders are third with 41 points.
She's is is arguably Hollywood's leading fiery redhead.

And Amy Adams was looking white hot in a figure-hugging gown as she stole the show at the premiere of Arrival in Canada on Monday.

The Man Of Steel actress even outshone her co-star Jeremy Renner as she walked the Toronto International Film Festival red carpet in her striking scarlet dress.

Scarlet woman: Amy Adams looked fantastic in a figure-hugging dress at the premiere of Arrival in Canada on Monday

The saucy 42-year-old showcased her sizable assets to the maximum in her fabric gown, which boasted a thrillingly plunging neckline.

She added an extra dollop of glamour to her look by wearing an ornate jeweled necklace.

By comparison her beefcake co-star Jeremy Renner was something of the poor relation, even though he cut a dash in a classic black tuxedo and shiny leather shoes.

Earlier in the day the dynamic duo, who previously starred together in American Hustle, were joined by the producers of the film, Arron Ryder, Dan Levine and David Linde, at a press conference plugging the movie.

A truly grand Arrival: She showcased her sizable assets to the maximum in her fabric gown

Turning heads: The saucy starlet was impossible to ignore as she walked the red carpet

What about me? Jeremy Renner did not look impressed as Amy stole his thunder

Directed by Denis Villeneuve and shot in sunny Montreal, Arrival follows Amy's and Jeremy's character after they are recruited by the military to investigate 12 alien spacecrafts that land around the world.

While the Sicario director could not attend the conference due to filming the Blade Runner sequel, his spirit was certainly present.

The Enchanted actress spoke highly of Denis during Monday's conference saying: 'Denis was a joy to work with. Its such a bummer hes not here because he is so much fun and has so much passion and so much love for what he does and you feel it every day when you arrive on set.'

Red carpet thoroughbreds: But Jeremy changed his tune when he got to wrap his arms around the fine filly

Who needs Tom Hiddleston: Perhaps Jeremy can step in now the 007 frontrunner has become an international laughing stock

For the ladies: The Avengers hunk was joined on the red carpet by handsome actor Tzi Ma

She added: 'I always felt so supported. Hes the best.'

Jeremy spoke about his previous films, Prisoners and Enemy, telling reporters: 'He has an accessibility I think in all his movies, especially this one, and I think he attributes that to his relationships with his actors and he trusts the people that are around him.'

Arrival is scheduled to hit theatres on November 11.
Lethal Weapon comes to television this fall with a fresh new take on the 1987 film.

And Jordana Brewster herself appeared inspired by the autumn season as she dazzled in an earth-tone dress for the L.A. red carpet premiere on Monday.

The 36-year-old showed off her toned legs in a colorful dress that complimented her sun-kissed complexion.

Scroll down for video

Falling for her! Jordana Brewster dazzled on the red carpet for the Lethal Weapon television series premiere on Monday wearing a Fall -inspired outfit

The mom of two - who recently welcomed son Rowan via surrogate in June - looked half her age as she posed on the velvet red carpet.

Jordana's long-sleeve, tailored dress was beautifully designed with coral and cinnamon brown patterns, highlighting her enviable figure.

She paired the stylish number with beige sandal heels, multiple rings, pearl earrings and a deep red-colored clutch.

Legs for days! The 36-year-old actress showed off her best assets in the short, tailored dress

Earthy: The mom-of-two wore beautiful colors of coral, cinnamon brown and red on her patterned dress that complimented her skin tone

Flawless: The wife of film producer Andrew Form opted for a smokey eye and a natural lip as she styled her brunette tresses in loose sexy curls

The gang: Lethal Weapon comes to television on September 21st and is based on the film franchise that starred Mel Gibson and Danny Glover

The wife of film producer Andrew Form styled her dark brunette locks in loose sexy curls as she went for a natural make-up look.

She will star in the series as Maureen Cahill, a Los Angeles Police Department hostage negotiator and in-house therapist who helps with traumatized cops.

Jordana joined the rest of the cast at the premiere including Damon Wayans Sr. and Clayne Crawford, ahead of the series debut on September 21.

While all the focus is '100 percent on the television show', executive producer Dan Lin teased during the 2016 Summer TCA Tour that there 'may be a Lethal Weapon 5 in the future', according to Slash; the original franchise featuring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover.

Cool dudes: Damon Wayans Sr. and Clayne Crawford posed together on the carpet

Handsome: The 38-year-old actor rocked a grey suit and tie for his clean-cut look

Top it off: The New Girl actor added a top hat to his polka dotted suit

Fierce: Keesha Sharp and Michelle Mitchenor looked every bit of bold for their red carpet arrivals at their premiere

The busy actress also cares for her two-year-old son, Julian.

She currently wrapped production for Fast 8 alongside Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Vin Diesel, Nathalie Emmanuel and Charlize Theron.

However, it is unclear how big her role will be in the latest of the franchise.

Beauties: Kim Raver, dressed in a chic black dress, and Chandler Kinney in a bright orange feathered dress were also present at the event

Man in charge: Director McG arrived in style in an olive green jacket

Buddies: Damon had his arm around Kevin Rahm as the two were excited for their TV premiere
He's never been shy about voicing his opinions on his eponymous TV talk show.

And Graham Norton did not hold back when discussing Australia's slow progress in legalising same-sex marriage.

During a press launch Down Under for his program's upcoming season he said: 'Australia does seem billy bonkers about it.'

Scroll down for video

Speakin out: Irish comedian Graham Norton criticised Australia's slow progress in legalising same-sex marriage at a recent press launch for the upcoming season of his TV talk show

'Here is a country that is so gay friendly and the pink dollar is huge for you guys, it baffles me that you don't have it yet,' said the Irish TV star.

'Because you would think that Australia would have led the world in something like that because Australia is very good at promoting itself as this young modern democracy,' the 53-year-old continued.

Same-sex marriage has been on the political agenda in Australia for several years now.

'It baffles me': The 53-year-old said he would have expected 'a young modern democracy' like Australia to have 'led the world' in marriage equality laws

At a federal level, in 2008 and 2009, changes were put into place providing equal entitlements in areas such as social security and employment.

But differences still remain between same-sex and heterosexual relationships when it comes to the institution of marriage.

This is also not the first time the Irish comedian has hit out at Australia.

Taking a stance: This is not the first time the personality has slammed Australia. Earlier this year he mocked the country's inclusion in the Eurovision 2016 Song Contest

Acid-tongued: Graham told The Sun newspaper in May, 'I just do not understand why they are in the Eurovision Song Contest. Get rid of Australia'

Graham enraged many Australians earlier this year when he slammed the country's inclusion in the Eurovision 2016 Song Contest.

He told The Sun newspaper: 'I just do not understand why they are in the Eurovision Song Contest. Get rid of Australia'.

Graham has been at the helm of his chat show since 2007, which is known for its diverse range of A-list celebrity guests.
She raised eyebrows last week when she emerged with ghostly white hands after forgetting to apply fake tan thoroughly.

But Bachelor 'villain' Keira Maguire showcased a pale, even complexion as she stepped out in Sydney's exclusive suburb of Double Bay on Tuesday.

The blonde glamazon had a spring in her step as she beamed at onlookers in a form-fitting turtleneck pencil dress and matching leather boots.

Scroll down for video

No fake tan? The Bachelor's Keira Maguire displayed a notably pale complexion as she stepped out in Sydney's exclusive suburb of Double Bay on Tuesday

She completed her trendy look with a fresh and feminine makeup look consisting of natural eye-shadow, mascara, nude lipstick and a generous application of bronze contouring powder.

In her hand swung a large black shopping bag as well as a black pom-pom key chain, leather wallet and mobile phone.

Meanwhile, Daily Mail Australia understands Keira has recently signed with PR queen Roxy Jacenko's talent agency, Ministry Of Talent.

Black on black: The blonde TV star had a spring in her step as she beamed at onlookers in a form-fitting turtleneck pencil dress and matching leather boots

Keira, whose LinkedIn profile describes her as a Product Specialist at CoreLogic RP Data, is also developing a fashion blog.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, she said: 'I'm very creative, the way that I dress is how I express myself.

'It's something that I'm very passionate about, so I am creating and doing a blog.'

Cute pooch! At one stage, she stopped walking to play with a tiny dog on a leash

She has also spoken of her desire to become Australia's next Bachelorette, telling Mamamia she would be well-suited to the role.

'I feel like it's more my thing, at least I can have control,' Keira said, referring to her controversial stint on The Bachelor.

'The poor guys that are on it - could you imagine?' she said, adding: 'I would definitely do it because I'd just f*** s*** up.'

We haven't seen the last of her! Daily Mail Australia understands Keira has recently signed with PR queen Roxy Jacenko's talent agency, Ministry Of Talent
The UK is allegedly set to be plagued with an invasion of giant spiders as mating season begins.

And the This Morning presenters got up close and personal with the creepy crawlies on Tuesday morning when a spider specialist brought some of the eight-legged insects into the ITV studios.

This didn't sit too well with Holly Willoughby, who squealed her way through the segment while her co-host Phillip Schofield appeared fascinated.

Scroll down for video

Eek! This Morning presenters got up close and personal with the creepy crawlies on Tuesday morning

Ferne McCann initially put on a brave face, emerging in a giant spider costume and revealing she was trying to make amends for eating a spider during her stint on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! last year.

The showbiz correspondent came with a peace offering, a box of dead flies to feed the creatures.

'I want to apologise to the spider species in general', Ferne said.

Rising to the challenge: Ferne McCann initially put on a brave face, emerging in a giant spider costume

Getting hands on: The reality star took part in a chat with a spider specialist, offering to hold a garden spider

Terrified: 'It looks like an olive! I wouldn't eat this spider though', the former TOWIE star joked

Her calm demeanour didn't last long and she started hyperventilating and screaming while holding a spider in her hands.

'It looks like an olive! I wouldn't eat this spider though', the former TOWIE star joked.

She wasn't the only one afraid of the insects since Holly was also overcome with terror at the prospect of touching one of the giant insects.

Losing her cool: Holly tried to remain composed during the spider segment, to no avail

Horrifying: Viewers were inundated with snaps of the giant spider

Help! Holly cowered in the corner while Phil took centre stage

Ladylike: Holly looked demure in a chic lace-embellished dress

Backing into a corner as the spider expert explained how to quickly remove the creature from within your house, Holly whimpered and refused to have a close look at it.

Ferne was tasked with recreating one of her nail-biting I'm A Celeb challenges, putting her head in a glass box full of spiders.

But when the cameras cut to the TV personality, Phil and Holly were surprised to see she had chickened out at the last minute.

Terrifying: Ferne was tasked with recreating one of her nail-biting I'm A Celeb challenges, putting her head in a glass box full of spiders

Help! Her calm demeanour didn't last long though and she started hyperventilating and screaming

Backing out: When the cameras cut to the TV personality, Phil and Holly were surprised to see she had chickened out at the last minute

She wailed: 'Guys I keep going to do it. In the jungle I had longer time. I feel like I could. I feel defeated!'

Phil didn't waste any time getting stuck in, rushing over to perform the task in her place.

Grinning as he placed his head in the container, Phil smugly declared, 'There you go, its easy!', as spiders crawled over his face.

Fearless: Phil didn't waste any time getting stuck in, rushing over to perform the hair-raising task in her place

No fear! The TV veteran appeared to show no fear as spiders crawled across his face
They have appeared in two seasons of Ex On The Beach together.

And Jemma Lucy and Stephen Bear appear to have struck up a firm friendship since their departure from the show as they touched down in Dublin on Monday following days of larking around together.

The 28-year-old tattoo model went low-key for her jaunt to the Irish capital - looking worlds away from the extremely saucy selfie she shared a day later - as she opted to shed her knickers for a busty snap.

Scroll down for video

Closer than ever: Jemma Lucy and Stephen Bear appear to have struck up a firm friendship since their departure from the show as they touched down in Dublin on Monday following days of larking around together

Jemma, who soared to fame in last year's third season of the show, looked casual as she ventured through the airport wearing a breezy summer dress.

Looking uncharacteristically demure and girlish, the pretty star sported metallic espadrilles while accessorising with just stacks of bracelets on her wrist.

She clearly opted for maximum comfort as she peeled a salmon pink hoodie over her dress while scraping her ombre tresses into a high bun pulled away from her face.

While her look was low-key she ensured she was back to her extremely racy best as she shed her knickers and posed in just a bra for a super saucy Instagram post.

Ahem, ahem: The 28-year-old tattoo model went low-key for her jaunt to the Irish capital - looking worlds away from the extremely saucy selfie she shared a day later - as she opted to shed her knickers for a busty snap

Happiness is... Jemma, who soared to fame in last year's third season of the show, looked casual as she ventured through the airport wearing a breezy summer dress

Prettier than ever: She clearly opted for maximum comfort as she peeled a salmon pink hoodie over her dress while scraping her ombre tresses into a high bun pulled away from her face

Cute: The happy pair met during their stint on Ex On The Beach

Jemma was in fact promoting a hat designed by her former flame and Ex On The Beach co-star Rogan O'Connor although the headwear was distracted by the fact she was baring all.

With just her skimpy bra and tattoos to protect her modesty she leaned over in the camera to flash her extremely plump pout.

Joining Jemma on her Dublin jaunt was Celebrity Big Brother winner Bear who was rocking a bizarre new blue hairdio - which he later revealed was styled by his holiday mate.

Pals: Joining Jemma on her Dublin jaunt was Celebrity Big Brother winner Bear who was rocking a bizarre new blue hairdio - which he later revealed was styled by his holiday mate

Feeling blue? Taking to Instagram, the reality supremo revealed in a short video that he had dozed off before Jemma took to his hair with a bright blue hair dye, layered over his already sheared locks and slit eyebrows

Bold look: Wearing a crew neck camel coloured jumper and textured jeans, the divisive star also added a splash of colour with a pair bright red trainers

Giggles: The duo appear to have touched down in Dublin for a personal appearance of Bear's as he posted a video showing him standing at the front of a bevvy of admirers

Taking to Instagram, the reality supremo revealed in a short video that he had dozed off before Jemma took to his hair with a bright blue hair dye, layered over his already sheared locks and slit eyebrows.

Wearing a crew neck camel coloured jumper and textured jeans, the divisive star also added a splash of colour with a pair bright red trainers.

The duo appear to have touched down in Dublin for a personal appearance of Bear's as he posted a video showing him standing at the front of a bevvy of admirers.

Before their trip the saucy pair stripped down to their underwear for an impromptu photoshoot, with Bear covering Jemma's mouth with his instantly recognisable skull tattoo.

Stars: Both Bear and Jemma have returned to the show for the all-star fifth season where Bear found love with Lillie Lexie, who he went on to cheat on in the CBB house, while Jemma enjoyed romps with Gary Beadle and a threesome with Ashley Cain

Way back when: Jemma, then using her full-name Jemma Henley, got her first taste of TV on Channel 4's Brat Camp in 2005, when she was shipped off to Utah-based treatment centre Turnabout Ranch due to her disobedience, shoplifting and expulsion from three schools

Saucy! Before their trip the saucy pair stripped down to their underwear for an impromptu photoshoot

A bone to pick... Bear covered Jemma's mouth with his instantly recognisable skull tattoo

Jemma, then using her full-name Jemma Henley, got her first taste of TV on Channel 4's Brat Camp in 2005, when she was shipped off to Utah-based treatment centre Turnabout Ranch due to her disobedience, shoplifting and expulsion from three schools.

She later went on to star of the third series of Ex On The Beach alongside Bear, where she struck up a romance with TOWIE star Kirk Norcross.

Both Bear and Jemma have returned to the show for the all-star fifth season where Bear found love with Lillie Lexie, who he went on to cheat on in the CBB house, while Jemma enjoyed romps with Gary Beadle and a threesome with Ashley Cain.

Fun and games: The duo renamed themselves Ninjas as they lived it up
She's the body confident Bachelor contestant known to share racy Instagram photos with her rumoured girlfriend Tiffany Scanlon.

But according to The Daily Telegraph, Megan Marx has been left devastated over the circulation of naked photos taken without her consent.

After being alerted by the publication about the existence of the images, the blonde reality TV star confessed 'it's quite horrific'.

Scroll down for video

Salty hair, don't care: Former Bachelor contestant Megan Marx, 27, has revealed someone has taken 'creepy' naked photos of her while she was asleep, and they have been circulating throughout Australia

Hanging with her BFF: Megan posted a picture of her and Australian model Tessa Morris sitting topless on the sand, captioning the photo 'We need to get back for more wively camping'

The photos were said to be taken earlier this year while Megan was asleep, and have been circulating throughout Sydney, Melbourne and Western Australia.

The Perth native, 27, who was raised in a strict religious community, confessed she felt distressed and betrayed.

'Creepy': The naked photos of the Perth native were said to be taken earlier this year

Devastated: The Bachelor contestant Megan Marx, 27, was alerted by The Daily Telegraph that naked photos of her were being circulated in several cities

'Obviously, if someone's taken (nude) pictures of you sleeping it's incredibly weird and creepy and inappropriate.

'It just shows that you don't ever fully know anybody, it's quite horrific,' she continued.

While Megan is still deciding whether to take the matter to police, she may know the identity of the person who shared the photos.

Happy being naked: Since leaving The Bachelor, the former reality star has shared several nude photos on her Instagram account

'I have a pretty good idea of who it was, but I've had a couple of ex-boyfriends so I can't confirm'.

It is against the law in Western Australia to take or share a photograph of somebody naked without their permission.

More than friends? The Perth native recently sparked rumours of a romance with fellow The Bachelor contestant Tiffany Scanlon, 29

Close: Megan and Tiffany have shared several racy photos of themselves on Instagram and have refused to confirm or deny they are in a relationship

This follows rumours Megan is dating fellow Bachelor contestant Tiffany, 29, after she refused to deny the pair were in a relationship.

Since leaving The Bachelor, Megan has shared several naked photos of the 'couple' on Instagram, including their now-infamous 'topless spaghetti party'.

Early years: Megan was raised in a strict religious order and married as a virgin aged 18

Are they dating? Megan and Tiffany are known to flaunt their close friendship on social media

She certainly seems to be a free spirit after breaking away from her devoutly religious upbringing several years ago.

The health promotions officer, from Geraldton, was even married aged 18 but the relationship did not last.

On lockdown: Megan's Instagram account is set to private, yet she has more than 45,000 followers
She is currently the face of numerous Australian fashion brands and products.

And she also owns and operates four businesses on the side.

But on Tuesday, Jennifer Hawkins proved she's not ready to slow down as she announced her latest signing with a health food company.

Scroll down for video

Growing her brand: Jennifer Hawkins announced her latest signing with a health food company Freedom Food on Tuesday

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the 32-year-old revealed she joined the Freedom Foods team in a bid to promote healthy living in Australia.

'In one of my first meetings with the team from Freedom Foods, they told me that 95 per cent of Australians do not shop in the health food aisle,' she said.

'I was amazed because I think its important for people to know where to find healthier options, and what brands to trust.'

Model behaviour: The 32-year-old explained she joined the team to help promote healthy living and fresh foods throughout Australia

Representing: Along with her most recent business venture, Jennifer is an ambassador for Mount Franklin and is also the face of the Trinity Point development at Lake Macquarie

While revealing she will be the face of the company's upcoming campaign, Jennifer explained she joined the organisation because of her love for fresh foods and healthy living.

'I am very excited to be working with Freedom Foods; food is such an important part of my life and I have been a fan of their products for a few years now,' she said.

Along with her most recent business venture, Jennifer is an ambassador for Mount Franklin and also the face of the Trinity Point development at Lake Macquarie.

Settled down: For the last seven years, she has also been busy representing Myer as a brand ambassador and model and most recently signed on for another two years

Busy schedule: Jennifer is also the host and judge on Australia's Next Top Model

For the last seven years, she has also been busy representing Myer as a brand ambassador and model and recently signed on for another two years.

Since 2012, Jennifer has also served as the host and judge on Australia's Next Top Model.

She founded Cozi swimwear, JBronze by herself, and Sesion Premium Tequila and J GROUP Projects & Developments with her husband Jake Wall.

Many talents: The blonde beauty also founded JBronze (L) and Cozi swimwear (R)
Renee Zellweger is 47-years-old, but could still pass for a teen.

When visiting Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday, the blonde slipped back in time to perform her high school cheer for the host.

The Bridget Jones's Baby actress flaunted her toned legs in a short black dress as she performed the drill.

Scroll down for video

Still got it! Renee Zellweger showed off her cheerleading moves, as well as her toned legs, when she first arrived to the Jimmy Fallon show

He approves: Fallon clapped as the Hollywood star went for her cheer

Renee revealed that she was sitting in her car recently when her entire 7th grade tryout cheer came into her head.

'The tiger team is the best yet, get ready, get set!' she started chanting before getting Jimmy onto his feet and doing some of the moves.

But doing a cheer for Jimmy was not all the beauty did. She also didn't mind doing a ridiculous stunt.

Embarrassing moment! Zellweger confessed to falling asleep mid-sentence during an interview in London recently

Next up the TV host roped the actress into donning an inflatable suit for a wrestling session.

Renee dressed as a robot while Jimmy sported a Santa Claus ensemble.

She reprises her role of the ever-clumsy yet lovable Bridget Jones in the third installment of the rom-com franchise.

And while chatting to Fallon, Zellweger revealed she's not so different to her on-screen character, prone to inelegant moments and unfortunate mishaps.

'By the look on his face I think he noticed!' the actress laughed when recalling the moment

The actress confessed that she actually fell asleep during a recent interview, totally checking out while talking to a hapless reporter.

'I think I fell asleep in an interview about a month ago in London' she revealed while drawing parallels to Ms. Jones.

Bizarrely, Renee said she managed to drift off mid-sentence - and kept talking.

'I was still talking but I wasn't present,' she recalled. 'When I came to, I was like wow, you're still talking,'

'By the look on his face I think he noticed!' the actress laughed.

Getting silly: The actress was game for a laugh in an inflatable costume for a wrestling session with the host
She has been married onscreen more times than you can count but, now this time is for real, this star is doing things her way.

Amanda Seyfried stepped out for the first time since news broke that she is engaged to Thomas Sadoski after six months of dating.

The 30-year-old and beloved dog Finn, took to the streets of New York for an early morning walk on Tuesday.

Bride-to-be: Amanda Seyfried stepped out for the first time on Tuesday since news broke that she is engaged to Thomas Sadoski after six months of dating

While the world was abuzz over her wedding news, the Mamma Mia! star was treating it like any other day dressing in a low key look featuring Adidas leggings, a loose-fit tee and an oversized zip-up sweater.

Something special that the actress was wearing was her engagement ring.

But unlike other celebrities who flash some serious bling on their wedding fingers, Amanda's is decidedly more understated.

In fact, the ring given to her by her 40-year-old love does not even have a diamond but is instead a simple silver band.

Her first love: The 30-year-old and beloved dog Finn, took to the streets of New York for an early morning walk

Low key: While the world was abuzz over her wedding news, the Mamma Mia! star was treating it like any other day dressing in a low key look featuring Adidas leggings, a loose-fit tee and an oversized zip-up sweater

The actress has made it clear that she does not value the big spectacle or traditions of weddings.

Not like other celebs: The ring given to her by her 40-year-old love does not even have a diamond but is instead a simple silver band

'I got married so many times in my life - onscreen!' she told E! News last year. 'I don't want a white dress! I've worn so many of them.

'The fact is, that kind of stuff is less about the ceremony and more about the commitment. So it's like children. That's where it's at, right? For me. But it's different for everybody.'

And when speaking about her hopes for a family, she added: 'I'd like to have one in the next four or five years. And the second one can happen between 35 and 40. Or I can adopt... It's fine. I definitely want to a couple kids.'

Amanda's rep confirmed to People on Monday that she and Thomas are indeed engaged.

Us Weekly was the first to report the news with a source telling the publication: 'Tommy and Amanda recently got engaged and shared the happy news with family and close friends.'

There's the ring: On September 6, the star flashed the band while out with her pooch

Big news: On Monday it was revealed that the star and Thomas are engaged (pictured in June)

Amanda and 40-year-old Thomas started dating after filming comedy The Last Word, which is due for release later this year.

The pair had previously worked together on an off-Broadway play last year.

While this is a first marriage for the Mean Girls star, The Newsroom star Thomas was previously married to Kimberly Hope.

Friends first: The pair (shown here in May 2015) first met while working on an off-Broadway play together last year, and started dating in March

Calling it quits: Amanda was previously in a two-year relationship with Justin Long before they split in October. They are pictured in October 2013

The ex-couple filed for divorce last summer after eight years of marriage, and announced their break-up in October.

Before dating Thomas, Amanda was in a relationship with Justin Long for two years.

The actress previously dated her Mamma Mia! co-star Dominic Cooper and also counts Josh Hartnett, Ryan Phillippe, Desmond Harrington and Alexander Skarsgard among her exes.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Zanu-PF thugs using 4 twin cabs reportedly terrorized residents of Epworth on a Saturday night.Tajamuka/Sesjikile Campaign posted on Facebook wall that thugs visited homesteads of activists breaking doors and assaulting people."Activists who fell victim to these thugs and were badly injured include Thandiwe Ncube, Ponillia Karuru, Cleopas Kawazha, and Joakim Jingura who are currently receiving medical treatment at a private clinic," Tajamuka stated."Zanu-PF thugs were led by Joseph Kanyenze and Victor Rundare. Tajamuka/Sesjikile rapid respond team comprising Defenders of Peace visited the alleged places of residents of the culprits and could not locate them. We appeal to all progressive citizens in Epworth and Harare to provide details of these leading perpetrators phone numbers, full details of their kids and schools they attend, their parents as well as full details of their immediate families."The pressure group said it is during times like these that citizens should fulfill their responsibility to protect their fellows.
Ever since her split from husband Steve Pollock earlier this year, Mel Greig has spoken candidly about her sexual exploits.

And it was no different last week when she wrote honestly about her experiences with endometriosis, which often makes sex painful.

Endometriosis is a condition that affects a woman's reproductive organs when the tissue that lines the uterus grows outside of it.

Scroll down for video

Candid: Radio personality Mel Greig has opened up about dealing with endometriosis and painful sex in her latest online column for Yahoo Be

In the Yahoo Be article, the 33-year-old radio presenter revealed the 'best' sex positions when suffering from the condition.

'Sexy time can often be quite painful,' she wrote.

'Missionary is the best option and thats not us being lazy... its a medical fact.'

No filter: She explained, 'Sexy time can often be quite painful. So missionary is the best option and thats not us being lazy...its a medical fact'

Mel added: 'BUT if there is a pain free day you can be rest assured that a variety of positions will be possible if the moment arises, we will jump on and ride that horsy home.'

The former 2DayFM star previously admitted to sending a 'boozy' text message to a male friend, asking for him to donate his semen.

'Yep, I just asked my male friend to donate his sperm. I was a few wines in and I was starting to fret about my future,' she revealed in a blog post last month.

Frank: The 33-year-old added, 'BUT if there is a pain free day you can be rest assured that a variety of positions will be possible if the moment arises'

'Soon to be divorced, and a sufferer of endometriosis, my baby making timeline is diminishing quickly.

'So clearly, the smartest thing for me to do was scroll through my phone and pick my own sperm donor,' she added.

However she swiftly retracted the offer the next morning by sending an apology text.

Mel announced on talk show Studio Ten that she had separated from her husband Steve in April this year.
Leonardo DiCaprio is not the first person one would think of when the word selfie is mentioned. That honor goes to Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez.

But on Sunday the 41-year-old Oscar winner was just like every other celebrity out there because he was doing just that: taking a selfie in public.

While watching the US Open at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, New York, the Titanic star took a photo with a young fan, then showed it to her for approval.

Scroll down for video

He likes selfies! Leonardo DiCaprio took a selfie with a young an at the US Open on Sunday in New York

Leonardo DiCaprio attends the men's final at Arthur Ashe Stadium of 2016 US Open in Flushing, New York.

The Wolf Of Wall Street actor the seemed to have fun showing her the shot.

He was seated in the section next to the girl, but seemed to make friends with her fast. It is not known who she was sitting with.

DiCaprio was with Israeli investor Vivi Nevo, who looked dressed for a trip to a NY nightclub in a black shirt and coated skinny jeans with rows of bracelets.

Did you see my last movie? He was seated in the section next to the girl, but seemed to make friends with her fast. It is not known who she was sitting with

Leonardo looked preppier in a newsboy cap, sunglasses, collared shirt and jeans. A gold pendant hung from his neck.

The young girl had on a blue and red summer dress with white sandals. Her hair was nicely pulled back into a braid. She could not have been older than 12.

Not present was Leo's at-the-moment supermodel girlfriend Nina Agdal.

Interesting guy: DiCaprio was with Israeli investor Vivi Nevo, who looked dressed for a trip to a NY nightclub in a black shirt and coated skinny jeans with rows of bracelets

His look: Leonardo looked preppier in a newsboy cap, sunglasses, collared shirt and jeans. A gold pendant hung from his neck

This sighting comes just after the star showed up at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Los Angeles native was at the festival to premiere of his film Before The Flood on Friday. On the carpet he posed with Tim Pastore, Brett Ratner and Fisher Stevens.

'Looking forward to sharing this documentary with everyone as we continue to act on #climatechange together,' he tweeted before the movie was shown.

Before the Flood is a documentary film about climate change directed by Stevens. The film was produced by a collaboration between Stevens, DiCaprio, James Packer, Ratner, Trevor Davidoski, and Jennifer Davisson Killoran. Martin Scorsese is an executive producer.
She complained that attending two film festivals back-to-back left her exhausted.

But on Tuesday Naomi Watts appeared to be back to normal as she glammed down in a house dress and sandals to take her two sons to school in New York City.

Also with the blonde actress was her partner Liev Schreiber.

The fam in NYC: Naomi Watts and partner Liev Schreibler took their sons to school in Manhattan on Tuesday

Happy to be home: The Ring actress appeared to be in great spirits as she smiled at onlookers

The Ring actress appeared to be in great spirits as she smiled at onlookers.

Her comfortable attire was nicely put together. The low-cut black frock matched her leather sandals and her crossbody purse.

The best friend of Nicole Kidman seemed makeup free as she hid her eyes with big sunglasses.

Chic lady: Her comfortable attire was nicely put together. The low-cut black frock matched her leather sandals and her crossbody purse

Easy breezy: The best friend of Nicole Kidman seemed makeup free as she hid her eyes with big sunglasses

She was in charge of the family dog as she held onto his leash and plastic bags.

Her partner of 11 years was a bit more dressed up in a blazer over a dress shirt and jeans. On his shoulder was a computer bag, making him look more Average Joe than Hollywood movie star.

Their two sons - Samuel and Alexander - were casually dressed for school and both carried heavy backpacks.

Mr Relaxed: Her partner of 11 years was a bit more dressed up in a blazer over a dress shirt and jeans. On his shoulder was a computer bag, making him look more Average Joe than Hollywood movie star

The couple looked to be getting along great as they stopped by the premiere of the film The Bleeder at TIFF - the Toronto International Film Festival - on Saturday.

Watts looked toned and tanned in a print dress.

Later she posted a photo where she was crashed out on a sofa. Her caption read: 'Truly wiped after back to back film festival weekends with #thebleeder #noparty nor #frock could tempt me off this couch. #dogtired.'

Dynamic duo: The couple looked to be getting along great as they stopped by the premiere of the film The Bleeder at TIFF - the Toronto International Film Festival - on Saturday
As New York Fashion Week reaches its climax Kimberley Garner was still in the fray at two high-end couture shows on Monday afternoon.

The swimwear designer, 26, opted for two wildly contrasting but no less distinctive ensembles for her latest appearance at the biannual event.

Making an entrance ahead of the acclaimed Nolcha Shows, Kimberley put on a stylish display all of her own in a thigh-skimming floral print minidress.

Scroll down for video

Made in Chelsea, out in New York: Kimberley Garner, 26, opted for two wildly contrasting but no less distinctive ensembles for her latest appearance at New York Fashion Week on Monday afternoon

The breezy semi-sheer outfit gave her an opportunity to show off her enviably toned physique as she sashayed towards a waiting seat.

A matching, nineties themed choker provided a retro flourish, while a clear lack of accessories ensured the ensemble commanded attention.

The former Made In Chelsea star completed her look with a pair of strappy tan coloured heels.

Bold and breezy: Making an entrance ahead of the acclaimed Nolcha Shows, an award winning platform for independent designers, Kimberley put on a stylish display all of her own in a thigh-skimming floral print minidress

Keeping her make-up simple, Kimberley drew attention to her naturally pretty features as she mingled with guests at the award winning event, a platform for independent designers.

With catwalk shows running back to back the willowy blonde later traded her seasonal ensemble for a plunging negligee style top and contrasting white dress trousers ahead of her appearance at the Leanne Marshal fashion show.

The comparatively subdued look was accessorized with two simple neck chains, while a simple black choker provided Kimberley's two outfits with a recurring theme.

Outfit change: With catwalk shows running back to back the willowy blonde later traded her seasonal ensemble for a plunging negligee style top and contrasting white dress trousers ahead of her appearance at the Leanne Marshal fashion show

London based Kimberley has reinvented herself as a designer following a brief stint on Made In Chelsea in 2012.

But he blonde beauty, who dated Spencer Matthews and Richard Dinan during her time on the show, admitted recently that she was unhappy with the way she was edited, and accused producers of persuading her to say certain things.

She explained: 'They definitely edit a lot - I was shocked when I watched it back. They get you to say certain phrases, and suddenly create scenes that happened completely differently to reality.
She's insisting he was only ever 'a good friend.'

And that seems to be the case, as Minka Kelly was spotted out without Wilmer Valderamma on Monday.

The 36-year-old actress appeared to be on her own when she dropped in to an eaterie for lunch in Beverly Hills.

Solo trip?: Minka Kelly dropped in to an eaterie for lunch in Beverly Hills on Monday without her 'good friend' Wilmer Valderrama

The Friday Night Lights star looked chic in an off-the-shoulder gypsy blouse with a deep frill that she tucked into a pair of grey. wide-legged trousers cropped to mid-calf plus black flat sandals.

With her brunette tresses smoothed back into a pony tail, she accessorised with a pair of cat-eye dark glasses and and a small black leather bag.

Minka started the day by donning Under Armour shirt and leggings exercise-wear to walk her terrier mix pooch Fred in a park.

Simply stylish: The 36-year-old looked chic in an off-the-shoulder gypsy blouse with a deep frill that she tucked into a pair of grey. wide-legged trousers plus black flat sandals

Woman's best friend: The only man in Minka's life at the moment is her pooch Fred, who she took for a walk on Monday morning wearing Under Armour exercise wear

She and Wilmer, 36, who were together briefly in 2012, went their separate ways after dating for a month, according to UsWeekly.

The short relationship included a trip to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico over Labor Day weekend in early September.

They became close after Wilmer ended his six-year relationship with pop star Demi Lovato, 24.

Casual customer: Minka was dressed down for lunch at Madeo on Tuesday

But the beauty told Power 106 on Thursday: 'He's a good friend to me. And it's funny - he's not my ex. We are good friends, and we always have been. We're not exes!'

Meanwhile, Wilmer was also spotted out and about in Los Angeles on Saturday, glued to his phone.

The actor is joining season 14 of NCIS in a regular slot this fall, and is prepping for his part.

He's got the blues: Wilmer, 36, was glued to his phone when the actor was spotted out in Los Angeles in a blue and black plaid shirt and jeans on Saturday
At first glance, Brooklyn Beckham looked like any other 17-year-old, skateboarding along the street in casual T-shirt and jeans.

That is, until the teenager topped up his parking meter to ensure his 37,615 Mercedes C-class didn't get a ticket.

The flash motor is just one of several the wealthy teen drives in London and Los Angeles.

Scroll down for video

Just a normal teen? Brooklyn Beckham showed off his skateboarding prowess in London on Tuesday

Last month, he was spotted driving younger brother Romeo in a 35k Jeep which he keeps at the family's California home.

He's also been seen behind the wheel of a white M ercedes-Benz GL 63 AMG, worth a cool 102,350.

On Tuesday, he seemed more interested in indulging his other hobby - skateboarding, enjoying the London sunshine in a Rolling Stone T-shirt and black jeans with what looked like a photographic patch sewn on.

Flash car: Brooklyn ensured his Mercedes C-class didn't get a ticket

Hot wheels: Brooklyn has been spotted indulging his love of skateboarding in recent weeks

Casual mode: Brooklyn looked like any other teenager until he made his way to his car

He wore a burgundy beanie, a brightly coloured backpack and blue trainers for his solo jaunt around the London streets.

The teen has just returned from the Big Apple where he was supporting his mother Victoria at her New York Fashion Week show.

He was spotted on Sunday in a front row seat at the show alongside his parents and Vogue Editor Anna Wintour.

Soaking up the sun: The teen was clearly enjoying the balmy British temperatures

Accessorise: Brooklyn sported a silver bangle around one wrist

Back from California: Brooklyn has been spending much of the summer in Los Angeles

The teen was also spotted enjoying lunch with his parents at the city's trendy restaurant Balthazer.

Backstage at the launch, Victoria told Vogue: 'I really feel I've come into my own this season. This is how I want to dress now. It's looser, much more effortless, more comfortable. I wanted the clothes to look like they'd just been thrown on.'

Brooklyn and his three siblings are very supportive of the former Spice Girl's fashion career.

Photo touch: Brooklyn's jeans featured a what appeared to be a patch sewn onto the front of his trousers

No ticket please: With two multi-millionaire parents, Brooklyn's life is more jet set than an ordinary teenager

Car lover: Brooklyn drives several motors in both the U.S. and UK

He, Romeo, 14, Cruz, 11, and Harper, 5 - sent her a bouquet of flowers along with a touching note to calm any nerves ahead of her New York Fashion Week show on Sunday.

She shared the sweet snap to her 12 million Instagram followers, which read: 'To Mummy, good luck with the show. We love you.

The proud mother gushed over her adoring children with the caption: 'Feeling loved this morning, I love you @davidbeckham @brooklynbeckham X Kisses from NY VB #VBSS17 #NYFW'.

Snap happy: Fans lined the street in order to catch a glimpse of the famous British family on Sunday as they made their way to a celebratory lunch following Victoria's fashion show

Her supporters: Brooklyn, David and Anna Wintour were engrossed in the show as they watched on

Meanwhile, Brooklyn has recently split from girlfriend Chloe Moretz - the pair spending much of the summer together, attending premieres and high-profile events as a couple, as well as gushing over their romance on social media.

The Sun reported that the couple split due to Chloe being 'too clingy' for her famous beau.

A source said: Brooklyn is so young with his whole life ahead of him, he basically just didnt need the aggro.

'He was besotted with her at first, but as time wore on Chloe wanted to become more serious and given he lives on the other side of he Atlantic, it was something he couldnt offer.
While they may say less is more, sometimes more is just, well, more.

Khloe Kadashian showed how layering is done as she flew out of Los Angeles.

The 32-year-old star made a dash into LAX on Tuesday in a stylish ensemble that embraced this season's nude tones perfectly.

All wrapped up: Khloe Kadashian showed how layering is done as she flew out of Los Angeles on Tuesday

Khloe was a how-to-guide for transitioning from summer to fall heading to her flight in a pair of skintight distressed jeans and a figure-flaunting nude bodysuit.

Taking the look from physique focused to stylish, the reality star added a long champagne hued duster jacket which sparkled in the sunlight.

Not done there, the star then threw a long white knit around her waist which flew out behind her along with the duster coat as she walked into the airport.

The star did nit skimp on accessories either, wearing a white panama hat with some light cork pointed pumps and carrying a Chanel Graffiti backpack.

Body talk: Khloe was a how-to-guide for transitioning from summer to fall heading to her flight in a pair of skintight distressed jeans and a figure-flaunting nude bodysuit

Golden girl: Taking the look from physique focused to stylish, the reality star added a long champagne hued duster jacket which sparkled in the sunlight

One more for good measure: Not done there, the star then threw a long white knit around her waist which flew out behind her along with the duster coat as she walked into the airport

Khloe then added some gold bling in the form of giant hoop earrings and a delicate body chain.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star only recently got back into Los Angeles after holidaying in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with new beau Tristan Thompson.

The pair then jested back just in time for Drake and Future's concert in LA where they were filmed sloe dancing and kissing.

Reality TV star Khloe only recently started dating the 25-year-old Cleveland Cavaliers player.
She recently unveiled her new fragrance, Stash, with a very sultry campaign video and Sarah Jessica Parker celebrated the new scent with a party on Tuesday night.

The 51-year-old Sex And The City star's new product hit shelves in the US on August 28 and no she pulled out all the stops sartorially as she hit London's Hotel Cafe Royal.

Wearing a orange brocade dress which came down past her knee, she stood out as she posed for photographers outside the venue.

Scroll down for video

Doing her thing: She recently unveiled her new fragrance, Stash and Sarah Jessica Parker celebrated the new scent with a party at London's Hotel Cafe Royal on Tuesday night

Stunner: The 51-year-old Sex And The City star's new product hit shelves in the US on August 28 and no she pulled out all the stops sartorially as she hit the iconic venue

She teamed her outfit with a contrasting pair of green satin shoes which Carrie Bradshaw would have been proud of.

In her hands, she carried a coveted Chloe patchwork leather handbag which was colourful in design and clashed perfectly with her ensemble.

Wearing her caramel coloured locks down and in loose waves, Sarah added some drama to her look with some heavy eyeliner.

Putting her best foot forward: She teamed her outfit with a contrasting pair of green satin shoes which Carrie Bradshaw would have been proud of

Happy: She recently told The Coveteur that her latest project was a real labour of love and has been in the works since her oldest child, James Wilkie, now 13, was just a toddler

Femail recently reported: The bottle looks like something that would be right at home on a mid-century modern bar cart, and to be honest, the juice smells a bit like something you'd find on a bar, too. Zest cognac, perhaps?

She recently told The Coveteur that her latest project was a real labour of love and has been in the works since her oldest child, James Wilkie, now 13, was just a toddler and her youngest, 7-year-old twins Marion Loretta and Tabitha weren't even born.

She recently told the site that Stash smelled like 'dark wood and body odor'. Adding, 'Its old and sexy, like a sweater from a guy who was on the Eurorail too long or something. Do you know what I mean?'

Femail recently reported: The bottle looks like something that would be right at home on a mid-century modern bar cart, and to be honest, the juice smells a bit like something you'd find on a bar, too. Zest cognac, perhaps?

Her shoes match her dress! SJP cosied up to Ella Eyre at the launch

Star and stripes: The television icon stole a snap with Catherine Mitchell

A colourful pair: Melissa Hemsley made sure to get a snap with her as well

Off you go! SJP was spotted leaving the venue in high spirits

Selling the brand: She posed with a bottle of her signature scent

The official top notes are grapefruit zest, black pepper and sage, met with middle notes of cedarwood atlas, patchouli, ginger lily and pistachio.

The dry notes of olibanum, massoia wood, vetiver and musk are the ones we assume SJP is referring to in her 'body odor' depiction.

Stash is very different from her previous fragrances, SJP NYC and Lovely.

Where do you keep yours? Sarah Jessica 51, in her sexy new campaign video for the scent
They've been fanning out to different chat shows and events to promote their upcoming film, Snowden.

But on Tuesday, Shailene Woodley, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zachary Quinto and Scott Eastwood got together to talk up their biopic on the whistleblower at the SiriusXM Studio in New York.

Shailene was by far the most colourful of the foursome, wearing a yellow mini-dress with a pattern of red and orange roses and a black under skirt with an asymmetric hemline that she teamed with black strappy flat shoes.

Promo pals: From left, Scott Eastwood, Shailene Woodley, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zachary Quinto visited SiriusXM's New York Studio on Tuesday to talk up their biopic, Snowden

The 24-year-old portrays Lindsay Mills, the girlfriend of Edward Snowden, played by Joseph.

He leads the ensemble cast as the computer expert and former CIA employee who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013.

And the 34-year-old actor suited up in grey with a white shirt and black tie as he posed with his co-stars.

Splash of colour: The 24-year-old, who portrays Lindsay Mills, the girlfriend of whistleblower Edward Snowden, wore an eye-catching floral dress with an asymmetric hemline

Revealing frock: The actress flashed her thighs as she chatted about her part

Keeping it simple: Shailene also wore black flats and pulled her brunette locks into a bun

Zachary, 39, plays Glenn Greenwald, the journalist and lawyer who was instrumental in getting the leaks published by British newspaper The Guardian.

He opted for a black jacket and trousers, leaving the top button of his blue shirt unbuttoned.

Scott, who co-stars as NSA agent Trevor James, was the most casually dressed in a black, blue and white plaid shirt.

Busy day: Later on, the Divergent star appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Always time for a cause: Shailene found time to show her support of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, against the Dakota Access Pipeline

Quick change artist: The beauty showed off several different looks throughout the day

The previous day Clint Eastwood's 30-year-old son put in an appearance at The BUILD Series at AOL HQ in New York to discuss the movie.

And the hunky six-footer was spotted flirting with a beautiful young woman he bumped into on the street on the way.

It looked like he managed to sweet talk the brunette, who was dressed in a blue mini-dress over white shorts, into giving him her phone number before he went on his way.

Suiting up: Joseph leads the ensemble cast as the computer expert and former CIA employee who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013

Nice socks: The 34-year-old added a pop of colour to his grey suit with red hosiery

In the spotlight: Zachary, 39, plays Glenn Greenwald, the journalist and lawyer who was instrumental in getting the leaks published by British newspaper The Guardian

Meanwhile, Snowden, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last Friday, goes on release in the US on Friday.

The cast were promoting the movie ahead of its New York City premiere on Tuesday.

And it was a busy day for Shailene, who was also appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

But amid her schedule the star found time to show her support of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, against the Dakota Access Pipeline, as she held up a cardboard sign while leaving her hotel with a friend.

An eye for talent: On Monday, Clint Eastwood's lookalike son flirted with a brunette on his way to talk up Snowden at the BUILD Series at AOL HQ

He's got the moves: It looked like Scott managed to get her phone number before they parted
Actor cancelled the rest of his interviews on French trip following the awkward interview

He's starred in plenty of comedies, but Jonah Hill failed to see the funny side when he found himself the butt of a joke on a French talk show this week.

The actor, appearing on Le Grand Journal Friday, was clearly irate after Ornella Fleury, a gorgeous comedian appearing on the program, took a not-so-subtle dig in his direction.

Fleury, speaking her native French, set up the 32-year-old actor to believe she was turned on by him before lowering the hammer with a punchline that made reference to two of his very famous friends in the states.

Scroll down for video

Uncalled for?: Jonah Hill, 32, was not amused after a local comic appearing on a French talk show made a joke alluding to his lack of sexiness - compared to pals Brad Pitt and Leo DiCaprio

Shocked: Hill, with War Dogs co-star Miles Teller, was clearly taken aback by the remark, flashing a thumbs-up before cutting down his antagonist as a 'local weather girl'

Bad taste?: Ornella Fleury continued to build up the joke about her fantasies of Hill before dropping the rude punchline

She told the Oscar-nominated actor: 'Its when I saw you get sodomized by a three-meter-tall demon in This Is the End that I told myself, "Now thats the man of my dreams!"'

'And you? I hear you get sodomized pretty often,' Hill said.

Undaunted, Fleury continued, 'Anyway, thats why I have a sexual fantasy with you, Jonah.'

As the studio audience chuckled to the lighthearted talk show banter, Fleury added, 'All I said is "sexual fantasy" and you guys laugh. Guess I dont need to finish the joke!'

Oops: Fleury subsequently apologized on another broadcast, claiming she felt like she personally knew Hill through watching his films the past decade

Walk it off: As news broke of the incident Jonah headed out in New York on Tuesday

Four-legged friend: The star puffed away on a cigarette as he took his pooch Carmela for a walk around the neighborhood

And that's about as nice as it got, as tempers flared a bit when Fleury finally delivered her punchline.

'My sexual fantasy would be that wed meet up in a hotel room at night. We would chat, youd make me laugh; youd make me laugh a lot!' she said. 'And then all of a sudden, youd bring your friends [Leonardo] DiCaprio and Brad Pitt ...

'And then youd go away!'

Double play: Hill made good friends with his Moneyball co-star, Brad Pitt

A wolf in sheep's clothing: Hill and The Wolf of Wall Street's Leo Dicaprio have had a well-documented bromance over the years

And then things got awkward.

The Hollywood star held little back in reminding Fleury where they reside on the show biz food chain.

'Im glad I came to this show to get ridiculed by a local weather girl - it's nice,' The Wolf Of Wall Street star said.

Still stuck on it?: A glassy-eyed Hill was back in the states Tuesday, exiting his NYC abode

The bitterness lasted beyond the interview, apparently, as French news outlet BFMTV reported that the Moneyball star went on to cancel the rest of his slated interviews in support of War Dogs for the international junket at the Deauville Festival.

On Monday, Fleury addressed the controversy - and Hill - on camera in a self-deprecating apology in which she admitted that she felt like she could joke around with the comedy actor, having been familiar with him through his movies.

'In fact Jonah, I really had the impression that I knew you, so last Friday I thought I was just messing around with a friend, but the reality is that we are not friends,' she said, according to French news outlet The Local.

'No, the reality is that you two have two Oscar nominations, and I have two videos on my YouTube account. You have made films with Scorese and Tarantino and me, I have made an advert for Spontex,' a company that makes cleaning products.

Everyman: The actor blended in well in the city, sporting a maroon jacket with blue jeans and a blue baseball cap
News / National

by Thobekile Zhou

Midlands State University students will now pay 30cents commuter omnibus fare per trip as registered operators are feeling the pinch from pirate taxes.Normally a trip is 50cents.The route is lucrative when the university is open as it has the highest student population in the country.According to NewsDay, kombi operators have been forced to slash fares for students."These pirate taxis operate illegally, but because they are small, students rush to them because they are quick to fill with passengers," said Tinashe Moyo."Because of that reason, we slashed our fares so that we up the competition against them."
They say if you play with fire, you get burned.

And Paris Jackson recently took that risk.

The 18-year-old star normally keeps a low-profile but is featured in a rare photoshoot for Dull magazine.

That's Dangerous: Paris Jackson posed with a lighter in a rare photoshoot for Dull magazine

In one of the edgy snaps - which were approved by Paris herself - she could be seen posing with an ignited lighter.

The daughter of Michael Jackson held the fire starter up by her face in front of the camera while gazing directly at the flame.

Her short blonde-dyed tresses were feathered as she had natural, complimentary make-up on her face topped off with pink lip.

Closed off: The 18-year-old star also posed behind a wall with a hole in it as she approved the images

In another snap she could be seen posing behind a white wall with a hole in it.

Paris placed her hands in the opening while posing in a green knit sweater.

One of the other pictures was much more zoomed in on her face as she posed with her head slightly tilted away from the camera.

Her short tresses were messy as she sported several rings on her earlobes while shifting her blue eyes toward the camera lense.

Up close and personal: This picture was much more zoomed in on her face as she posed with her head slightly tilted away from the camera

It was a stunning set of photos taken by photographer Tyler Mitchell in New York back in August.

Paris was styled for the pictorial by Danasia Sutton but was not interviewed.

The Dull magazine issue featuring Paris as well as Sarah Snyder and Tyga is set to hit newsstands on 22 September.
Most models diet during Fashion Week.

But it seems Nicole Trunfio has thrown out the rule book and indulged in some Nutella on sourdough for breakfast on Tuesday, sharing a snap of her sweet treat on social media.

And moments later, the brunette beauty was spotted strolling around the Big Apple showing off her incredible figure in a crop top.

Scroll down for video

Model figure: Nicole Trunfio was spotted strolling around in New York on Tuesday during Fashion Week, showing off her model figure in a casual ensemble

The mother-of-one's taut torso was on display as her loose-fitting top, which sashayed from side-to-side as she strolled down the street.

The tank was paired with trendy light denim straight jeans, which sat just below her belly button and were cropped mid-calf.

The eye-catching trousers were adorned with snowflake-like trinkets and pearl-like beads down the front.

'Breakfast of champions': The 30-year-old indulged in some Nutella on toast for breakfast earlier in the day

Abs-olutely fabulous: The mother-of-one's taut torso was on display in her loose-fitting crop top and hip-hugging cropped jeans

Accessories: The fashionista wore a simple black choker, layered with a long gold necklace and also sported gold hoops, completing her look with black and gold cat-eye sunglasses

Completing her eclectic ensemble, the 30-year-old sported fur-lined floral embroidered Gucci loafers.

The fashionista accessoriesed with a simple black choker, layered with a long gold necklace and also sported gold hoops, a gold bangle, along with her engagement and wedding rings.

For the Autumn stroll, Nicole also donned stunning black and gold cat-eye sunglasses.

Chatting away: Nicole kept her hands free by draping her long chain quilted purse across her body - using one to speak on her phone, while the other held tight to her keys

Near miss? Slightly distracted by her conversation, the model mum nearly bumped into a courier on a bicycle as she crossed the street

Nicole kept her hands free by draping her long chain quilted purse across her body - using one to speak on her phone, while the other held tight to her keys.

Slightly distracted by her conversation, the model mum nearly bumped into a courier on a bicycle as she crossed the street.

The Australian-born beauty has been attending a number of shows during New York Fashion Week, especially supporting Australian designers, including Dion Lee and Zimmerman - where she posed alongside fellow Aussie model Shanina Shaik.
He picked the winner nearly three months ago.

And as Richie Strahan, 31, relishes in the joys of a new relationship, The Bachelor star revealed on Wednesday that he and the winner have gone to great lengths to keep their romance under wraps ahead of the show finale.

'It's been one of the hardest things ... I've given her a secret name which is annoying,' he told Kyle and Jackie O.

Scroll down for video

Under wraps: Bachelor star Richie Strahan revealed on Wednesday that he and the winner have gone to great lengths to keep their romance under wraps ahead of the show finale

'Getting up early in the the morning [to see each other], using fake names, getting picked up and going to isolated areas. Your time together goes so quick. Then you're whipped out and back on separate planes.'

The Perth rope access technician also revealed that he has seen her 'three or four times' since filming the finale in Bali and that the relationship has been total bliss.

'We're doing very well, never short of a conversation that's for sure,' he said adding that he 'can't wait' to go public with their romance.

Candid: 'Getting up early in the the morning [to see each other], using fake names, getting picked up and going to isolated areas. Your time together goes so quick. Then you're whipped out and back on separate planes,' he said

When asked whether they have had their first quarrel, Richie said that they're still in the honeymoon phase.

Viewers will learn who the winner is this week.

The three finalists include Sydney makeup artist Olena Khamula, 23, Perth real estate agent Nikki Gogan, 28 and Victoria venue manager Alex Nation, 24.

Who will it be? The three finalists include Sydney makeup artist Olena Khamula, 23

Favourite: Perth real estate agent Nikki Gogan, 28, is a favourite to win

Will it be her? Single mum and Victoria venue manager Alex Nation, 24, is also in the running

''The whole point of my going on this show was to meet someone I can potentially spend the rest of my life with,' Richie told BW magazine.

'My main focus is now my relationship and trying to work at that.'

The Bachelor finale begins 7:30 Wednesday on Channel Ten.

Finale: The Bachelor finale begins 7:30 Wednesday on Channel Ten

Focused on the future: 'My main focus is now my relationship and trying to work at that,' Richie told BW magazine




As every baker worth their pinch of salt knows, there is no point in crying over spilt milk or weeping because your cream has curdled. The deal has been done. The cake of cupidity has been iced and sliced, the scones dusted with powdered bullion. Now, there is no going back.

After this current series, The Great British Bake Off is leaving the cosy embrace of the BBC for the mercantile clutches of Channel 4. Protracted negotiations between the BBC and Love Productions, the company which makes the programme, collapsed following a row over money.

The Corporation reportedly refused to pay 25million a year to keep it, despite the fact that it is now the biggest television show in Britain with more than 13million tuning in to watch amateur baker Nadiya Hussain triumph in last years finale  and more than 11million watching the current series every Wednesday evening.

Scroll down for video

After this current series, The Great British Bake Off is leaving the cosy embrace of the BBC for the mercantile clutches of Channel 4

Perhaps the BBC are simply too bent on dishing out grotesque, million-pound payments to departing executives or cramming millions more into the bank accounts of pampered, overpaid Beeb favourites such as Gary Lineker and Chris Evans to realise just what they have done. Which is to sign the death warrant for the most popular programme on the box.

You might as well spell out the word D.O.O.M.E.D in sultanas across judge Paul Hollywoods soggy bottom and you might as well hang up your apron and cry. For, like a lovely, fluffy duckie being plucked from a tranquil village pond and tossed into the roaring maw of some white water rapids, The Great British Bake Off simply cannot survive the awful journey from the premier channel of our glorious public service broadcaster to the trashy backwaters of a niche commercial station.

Let us not forget that C4 are the guilty party who launched Big Brother on an unsuspecting nation, then brought us programmes such as the explicit Sex Box, the dim-witted reality show Made In Chelsea and the prurient Naked Attraction, a pimple-bottomed nude dating fiesta shown over the summer which was widely  and rightly  regarded as the worst thing ever shown on UK television.

The thing is, from its linen aprons to its jaunty bunting, the Great British Bake Off is the quintessential BBC show. Gentle, well-mannered and irrefutably middle-class, it sits foursquare on that snug, Middle Britain landscape along with the Archers, ice and a slice, galoshes, whoopsadaisy, pork pie picnics, wisteria around the front door and vicars accepting more tea and another biscuit, dont mind if I do.

Like Shangri-La and Brigadoon, this rosy vision of our national lifestyle might not really exist, but perhaps thats why GBBOs nostalgic world of sugared sponge cake and warm custard has proved such a hit and a comfort.

We need to believe in the buttery wistfulness of it all.

You might as well spell out the word D.O.O.M.E.D in sultanas across judge Paul Hollywoods soggy bottom and you might as well hang up your apron and cry

Of course, a huge part of the shows great charm is its gentle pace; that stately weekly waltz through the signature bake, followed by the technical challenge and then into the sugar spun drama of the showstopper round where contestants show off their most ambitious creations.

Well, the constraints of advertising mean that we can wave goodbye to that pleasing structure forever. A cliffhanger will surely be required every ten or fifteen minutes to lead into the ad break, followed by a jolting recap of events when we are back in the tent again. Commercial television dumbs down and flattens the atmosphere, it just cant help itself.

The move must also signal a blizzard of adverts for icing sugar and kitchen gadgets and overpriced cake mixes, not to mention distracting product placement like you wont believe. It will likely make the complaints about the prominence of the Smeg fridges in 2012s series three  the BBC had to apologise after the Smeg logo was shown 37 times in one episode  look like an accidental flash when the cameras panned. The pleasing virtue of mystery flours in unmarked jars will doubtless be gone forever.

Of course, a huge part of the shows great charm is its gentle pace; that stately weekly waltz through the signature bake

In the brash world of ratings chasing commercial television, even the bakers themselves must change. No one will be allowed to be sweet, low key, just a bit batty or troubled by pastry.

In time honoured tradition, they must be turned into screen-grab exaggerations of themselves, pimped-up contestants with sob stories and dying relatives who were briefly revived by their special recipe gingerbread and iced buns.

It means the loss of innocence.

It means turning The Great British Bake Off into the Eggs Factor, a fate from which it will never recover.

A cliffhanger will surely be required every ten or fifteen minutes to lead into the ad break

And what about the hosts? There is no guarantee that judges Mary Berry  who is already looking decidedly sniffy  and Paul Hollywood will follow the show to C4. Perhaps they hate change even more than their fans.

Mary has been doing the same thing since the 1960s, only now with better teeth and a nicer line in flowery blazers. Paul tried to change by launching himself in America, then ruined it all by having an affair with a sexy co-presenter that nearly ended his career  and his marriage.

Last night presenters Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc confirmed they will step down as the shows hosts when it moves to C4, telling fans: Were not going with the dough. Certainly, they are right to fret about what the future holds.

For commercial television is where successful BBC shows and popular BBC personalities go to die.

For commercial television is where successful BBC shows and popular BBC personalities go to die

That transition almost never works, for there is always some inexplicable diminution of talent, some reason they fail to sparkle in the brash new frame.

Last year, BBC Business Affairs editor Robert Peston left the BBC for a glittering new job as political editor and talk show host for ITV. Despite being inflated with hot air like any good souffle, Peston has sunk almost without trace, taking his under-whipped eggs with him.

It is a pattern that has been repeated throughout broadcasting history, when successful shows are poached  and then fried by waning ratings. Remember Trinny and Susannah?

Their fashion show What Not To Wear was a big hit for the BBC, but after five years they defected to ITV in 2006 for a 1.2million initial contract.

As everyone else seems to have made fortunes out of GBBO  including many of the contestants themselves  one can understand why Love Productions wanted to cash in on their golden goose

Yet the pair never repeated their earlier success and were last seen doing online shows and makeover tours in Poland.

Even Morecambe and Wise stumbled when they left their 20million-plus audiences at the BBC for Thames Television in 1978, while it seems unlikely that Jeremy Clarkson and co will emulate their huge BBC Top Gear success on their new show for online broadcaster Amazon.

Yes, the money is tempting, but does oblivion beckon?

As everyone else seems to have made fortunes out of GBBO  including many of the contestants themselves  one can understand why Love Productions wanted to cash in on their golden goose.

After all, with the record-breaking success of the last series, rising figures this year and the slightly extravagant lionisation of winner Nadiya  she now has her own show on the BBC, The Chronicles Of Nadiya  perhaps we are reaching peak cake?

The GBBO confounded all the sceptics and rose to become the best loved family show of the last decade and beyond

The day when the show explodes in its own overheated oven, like an unpricked potato, cannot be far off.

Yet I cant help but feel that Love has made a terrible mistake.

After all, it was the BBC who took a huge chance on the Bake Off, who left it to rise and prove itself after everyone had turned it down and the first series in 2010 was met with disinterest and derision.

Not every broadcaster would have done that and then persisted.

It is easy to forget now those punishing early reviews. The Telegraph called it a budget X Factor for diabetics and moronically patronising, The Guardian decided that once youve seen one person cream butter and sugar together, havent you seen them all?, while the Sun dubbed it The Great British Eff Off.

Charming. Yet the GBBO confounded all the sceptics and rose to become the best loved family show of the last decade and beyond.

Now that is all over. It will never, ever be the same again and it is useless trying to pretend that it will.
Lewis Hamilton has been romantically linked to both Winnie Harlow and Barbara Palvin, but it was his good friend Shanina Shaik he was seen leaving a late night party with on Friday.

The 31-year-old Formula 1 driver and Australian Victoria's Secret Model - who is engaged to DJ Ruckus - were spotted leaving a house party together at 6am, just after Winnie left in an Uber.

Earlier that night, the three had been partying at New York's 1Oak, where Barbara also happened to be.

Scroll down for video

Leading the way: Lewis Hamilton leaves 1Oak night club with good friend Shanina Shaik, despite Winnie Harlow and Barbara Palvin both in attendance

The 22-year-old Hungarian model left the night club at 4am, wearing hotpants, a grey T-shirt and a sad looking face as she jumped in a taxi cab.

Lewis's rep insists he and Barbara are just good friends, having met at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. She was seen trackside supporting Hamilton during the European Grand Prix, Monaco Grand Prix and Hungarian Grand Prix.

On Thursday, Barbara was seen leaving his hotel, but it doesn't seem like they were being too friendly on Friday night at the club as she didn't feature on his Snapchat updates - Winnie, Shanina and Jasmine Sanders did.

Over? Barbara leaves the New York club on her own despite being spotted exiting Lewis's hotel a day earlier

TLC: Winnie pays tribute to the 90s R&B group through her fashion

Winnie, 22, and Lewis have been rumoured to be dating since September 6, when they were spotted getting cosy at New York's Up and Down nightclub.

The Canadian model - who has a prominent form of the skin condition vitiligo - joked about their dating rumours on Instagram a few days later using a picture of the two of them from a Harper's Bazaar party.

'Married & Divorced in a week apparently lol,' she captioned the image.

Pals: Lewis and Shanina's fiance DJ Ruckus are friends

Chic: The Victoria's Secret model wore a bodycon teal dress with strappy sandals

On Friday night, Winnie wore a vintage TLC T-shirt with white hotpants as she waited outside 1Oak for car to take her to the house party where she would join Lewis and Shanina, 25.

Shanina was more dressed up in a body-con teal dress and heels with her bobbed hair tousled into curls.

The model and her fiance DJ Ruckus are good friends with Lewis, and Lewis and Ruckus were last year seen partying together at Tape London with Miguel.

Ruckus was DJing when the Mercedes driver took to the mic and sang one of his songs at the West End night club.

Out of this world! Earlier that night Barbara had grabbed dinner in a printed jumper dress

Leggy lady: The garment grazed her thighs to show off her tanned and toned pins

Making moves: The star seemed in good spirits as she strutted along the street

All about the accessories: Barbara carried a boxy red clutch bag on her outing
They're fast approaching their first anniversary.

And Gigi Hadid, 21, has claimed that her relationship with Zayn Malik, 23, marks the first time the pair have shared similar interests, outside of work, with someone they are dating.

Her comments, which came in the latest edition of ES magazine, will no doubt come as news to her ex Joe Jonas and Zayn's former girlfriend Perrie Edwards.

Scroll down for video

Loved-up: Gigi Hadid, 21, has claimed that her relationship with Zayn Malik, 23, marks the first time the pair have shared similar interests, outside of work, with someone they are dating

Throwing shade? Gigi's comments, which came in the latest edition of ES magazine, will no doubt come as news to her ex Joe Jonas and Zayn's former girlfriend Perrie Edwards

When asked what attracted her most to Zayn, Gigi said: 'I would say his brain. For the first time, we are both in a relationship where we have very similar interests outside of work and that is really important.

'We cook a lot together and do art together and were each others best friends. We both feel we can talk about anything and learn a lot from one another.'

Candid: The full interview appears in this weeks issue of ES Magazine, out Thursday

The model also revealed that her and BFF Taylor Swift share a soft spot for British charm.

She admitted: 'Well I think we both like the British sense of charm. Im also getting super into British foods. Im loving Heinz baked beans in the morning, yeah and Z cooks a lot. He makes a brilliant curry. Butter chicken is his signature dish. Dont worry  hes representing good for the British boys!'

As one of the most in-demand models in the world, it's unsurprising that Gigi has been asked to do nude shoots.

But when it comes to modelling in the buff, she explained it has to be just right.

'I have just been very picky about doing nudes and only doing it when it felt right,' said Gigi.

'I have done it. And there were times when it didnt feel comfortable, and I havent done it for a while. Its always the people that I am working with who remind me that [my body] is part of the image.'

Her relationship with Zayn courts plenty of media attention thanks to their high-profile careers.

Handy in the kitchen: The model also revealed that Zayn can rustle up a mean butter chicken curry

Despite having spent years in the public eye, living in the limelight still comes as a shock to the American beauty.

She said: 'Fame always shocks me. Stuff that you didnt think happens except in movies. I tried for a long time to move away from certain things, like [extra] security, thinking my life would have a sense of normalcy that way. But I realised that Im not really in control of a lot of that stuff. I think what people dont realise is that there is still so much that goes on behind closed doors that people dont know about.'

It's unlikely Gigi will ever be stuck for work in the modelling industry given her profile and stunning looks, but if she wasn't blessed with natural beauty, she said she'd return to school.

The price of fame: Despite having spent years in the public eye, living in the limelight still comes as a shock to the American beauty

She revealed: 'I studied criminal psychology for two years so Id carry on with that. Throughout my life I have had several serious ambitions, or aspirations. I wanted to be everything. I wanted to be an emergency-room doctor, I wanted to be an Olympic volleyball player and an Olympic horseback rider.'

Her busy schedule means she regularly has to be up early and raring to go.

'Im a good morning person,' she said. 'If I get more than five hours sleep, which nowadays is rare. Actually I used to be much more of a morning person at school. Im feeling old now; Im only 21, which cant be a good thing. Showers help me out a lot; you have to commit to the morning.'

The full interview appears in this weeks issue of ES Magazine, out Thursday 15th September 2016.
Fiji opposition leader slams 'dictatorship' after arrest

Fiji is reverting to dictatorship and its democracy is a "farce", an opposition leader in the Pacific nation said Tuesday after he was arrested for taking part in a debate.

Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry was one of six opposition figures arrested and held in custody last weekend for participating in a constitutional discussion forum.

Police said the group, who were all later released, did not have a permit for the meeting and officers were investigating remarks that "could affect the safety and security of all Fijians".

Fiji's most recent military takeover was in 2006 but repressive laws curbing public meetings remain on the books, despite an election in 2014 which saw coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama (pictured) record a landslide win Jewel Samad (AFP/File)

Chaudhry rejected the accusation, describing the arrests as an act of political intimidation in the troubled country, which has experienced four coups since 1987.

"There was absolutely no justification in putting us in a police cell, which was horrid, the conditions there are pretty bad," he told Radio New Zealand.

"This is no way to treat responsible citizens who hold positions in political parties and other organisations, who are not criminals."

Chaudhry, became Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister in 1999 but was ousted in a coup a year later. He was barred from standing in the 2014 election after being convicted on tax charges.

Fiji's most recent military takeover was in 2006 but repressive laws curbing public meetings remain on the books, despite an election in 2014 which saw coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama record a landslide win.

Chaudhry said the limits on public discussion showed Fiji was not a democracy.

"There is no democracy in Fiji, it's a farce for people to say there's democracy here," he said.

"Such things are not allowed in a dictatorship and that's what we have here."

Amnesty international said the arrests were "a brazen crackdown on people for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression".

"Fijians should be free to openly discuss their supreme law and even criticise without fear of reprisals," Amnesty's regional director Rafendi Djamin said.

The European Union, a major aid donor, also expressed concern, urging Fiji to show "full respect for freedom of speech and freedom of assembly".

Bainimarama rejected any criticism, saying the meeting did not have a permit and "police are entirely within their rights" to question those who took part.

It is disappointing that elements of the international community, without any objectivity, have issued statements of concern," he said, accusing critics of double standards.
N. Korea floods 'major, complex disaster': Red Cross

North Korea is experiencing a "major and complex disaster" the Red Cross has warned, after floods killed scores of people and left tens of thousands in need of urgent help.

Rescue workers are struggling to reach stricken communities in the country's far north, where thousands have been left homeless, and the risk of disease is looming.

"From what we saw, it is clear that this is a very major and complex disaster," said Chris Staines, who heads a Red Cross delegation in North Korea and has visited the affected areas.

A local Red Cross representative surveys damage to houses, caused by heavy flooding of the Tumen river along the road from Musan to Yonsa in Hoeryng, North Hamyong province Murat Sahin (UNICEF DPRK/AFP/File)

At least 133 people are known to have died after torrential rains triggered massive floods that tore through villages, devastating entire communities and washing away buildings.

Hundreds more are missing and 140,000 people are in urgent need of food and shelter.

"The floods came through with such force, they destroyed everything in their path," Staines said.

"People were salvaging whatever possessions they could from piles of debris that used to be their homes."

Some 24,000 houses have been totally destroyed and thousands more damaged, with the full extent of the disaster still emerging as rescue workers battle to reach areas that have been totally cut off, the Red Cross said.

"There was barely a building left unscathed," in some villages they visited on the outskirts of Hoeryong City, Staines said.

"People displaced from the floods are now in a very difficult situation and there are real risks of secondary disasters, particularly relating to people's health," Staines added.

At least 100,000 people in Hoeryong City do not have safe drinking water, with up to 600,000 people in the affected area facing disruptions to their water supply, the Red Cross said.

The disaster is set to worsen North Korea's already chronic food shortages, with around 16,000 hectares (40,000 acres) of farmland inundated just weeks before the local maize and rice crops were due to be harvested.

"Their loss is another disaster that will be felt in the coming weeks and months," the Red Cross warned.

The impoverished nation is vulnerable to natural disasters, especially floods, due partly to deforestation and poor infrastructure.

Damage to houses, caused by heavy flooding of the Tumen river along the road from Musan to Yonsa in Hoeryng, North Hamyong province Murat Sahin (UNICEF DPRK/AFP)
African writer's American Dream comes true

Imbolo Mbue's rise to the top of the literary tree is a true fairytale of New York.

The 33-year-old Cameroonian writer, who was born in a house without running water or electricity, became the talk of the town when she got a million-dollar advance for her first novel, "Behold the Dreamers", in 2014.

Two years later the book that Mbue wrote at the kitchen table of her tiny New York apartment -- often while breastfeeding her babies -- is getting the kind of reviews that authors dream of.

Cameroonian novelist Imbolo Mbue became the talk of New York when she got a million-dollar advance for her first novel 'Behold the Dreamers', in 2014 Thomas Samson (AFP/File)

The New York Times called it a "dissection of the American dream that is savage and compassionate in all the right places".

The critical reception on the other side of the Atlantic -- where it was published simultaneously in French -- has been equally warm, with Le Monde hailing "the discovery of a formidable writer".

"I started the book when my first child was a baby," Mbue told AFP, "and I rewrote it while nursing my second.

"I perfected the art of holding them with one hand and writing with the other," she laughed.

"People afterwards said, 'How wonderful for you!' And I said, 'Oh, no it wasn't. Really, you don't understand!'"

Mbue's tale of a migrant from her oceanside hometown of Limbe who lands a job as a chauffeur for a Lehman Brothers executive -- just before the bank's collapse triggered a global financial crisis -- is a bittersweet tale of great expectations slowly shattered.

- Folly of the 1 percent -

Despite the latitude that the subject matter gave her to skewer the people who drove the world into recession, Mbue's immigrant heroes take a surprisingly tender view of the follies of the privileged one percent of US society they serve.

This gives the book what the Washington Post called "a kind of angelic annunciation of hope, which ultimately makes her story even more poignant".

Like her characters Junde Jonga and his wife Neni, Mbue arrived in America at 17 with little more than her wide-eyed innocence and doggedness to declare.

Still Mbue had reason to feel embittered by the crash. The crisis cost her the good job in market research she landed after working herself through a master's degree selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.

With "so many Americans also out of work", she found it hard to get work and started writing.

"I wanted to be a college professor but my husband said only I could tell this story.

"It's funny because he didn't actually read the book until months after it was sold. Then he asked, 'What is it about?'"

Instead of sending her manuscript to any old agent, Mbue went straight to Susan Golomb, who represents Jonathan Franzen, one of America's most admired novelists.

- Age of Trump -

"I spent three years pursuing her," she recalled. "I stalked her basically. She finally read it and I rewrote it and then she rejected me again, before finally saying OK.

"I don't give up easily," she said.

Despite her success, Mbue is under no illusion about the American Dream in the age of Donald Trump.

"The odds are against you in America as an immigrant. I hope people realise this. Washing dishes or working in a cab, you get stuck and exhausted.

"You don't come to America to fail, but you have to have a lot of weapons to succeed.

"I've done some tough jobs," Mbue added, "but writing and raising children are the hardest things I've ever done."

"I am not the sort of person who would chose this path (as a writer). I have that immigrant mentality of wanting stability. I cannot just think of myself."

So despite her new-found fame, Mbue is not leaving her "very small" apartment. "I am superstitious. I had so many good things happen there I don't want to move. I am all cramped in there with screaming children, but I think if I move maybe my mojo will go away."
US bombers in show of force against N. Korea

Two huge US bombers flew over South Korea Tuesday in a show of force against the North as a top US envoy said China must help close loopholes in sanctions following Pyongyang's largest-ever nuclear test.

The supersonic B-1B Lancers reached airspace over the US Osan Air Base at Pyeongtaek, 64 kilometres (40 miles) south of Seoul, at around 10:00 am (0100 GMT).

Each aircraft, which had flown from the US Pacific Command's Andersen Airforce base at Guam, was escorted by US and South Korean fighter jets.

A US B-1B Lancer (C) is escorted by US F-16 fighter jets as it flies over the Osan Air Base in South Korea on September 13, 2016 Jung Yeon-Je (AFP)

"Today's demonstration provides just one example of the full range of military capabilities in the deep resources of this strong alliance to provide and strengthen extended deterrence", said General Vincent Brooks, US-South Korea Combined Forces Command.

"North Korea's nuclear test is a dangerous escalation and poses an unacceptable threat," said the general, adding the US has an "unshakable commitment" to defend allies in the region.

The US "will take necessary steps to do so, including operations like this one today, and the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) battery to the Korean Peninsula," he said.

South Korea in July announced plans to deploy THAAD, a sophisticated US missile defence system, to counter growing nuclear and missile threats from the North.

But China, which believes the system's radar could also be used to track its own defences, objected strongly. The plan has also met resistance from residents of the southern county of Seongju, the planned site.

South Korean opposition parties oppose the THAAD deployment, insisting it could escalate a regional arms race and hurt ties with China.

They also say its usefulness against the North's military threats is doubtful.

- 'Clear warning' -

Tuesday's overflight was "aimed at sending a clear warning to North Korea about its nuclear test, and containing further provocations," South Korea's defence ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun told journalists.

Washington took similar actions after previous atomic tests.

In January, the US flew a B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber over Osan Air Base after North Korea's fourth nuclear blast.

South Korea is home to around 28,500 US troops and numerous bases.

The flight came after the North on Friday carried out what it described as a "nuclear warhead test" and vowed to take further measures to increase its nuclear strike force "in quality and in quantity".

Washington's special representative for North Korea policy, Sung Kim, said in Seoul Tuesday that China must help the international community close loopholes in sanctions against Pyongyang.

The UN Security council is scrambling to come up with new penalties, but five sets of UN sanctions since North Korea first tested a nuclear device in 2006 have failed to deter it.

Beijing has said it opposes the testing, but analysts believe it pulls its punches because it is desperate to avoid anything that would imperil the status quo and alter the balance of power on the Korean peninsula in favour of the US.

China -- Pyongyang's sole ally and largest benefactor -- had a key role to play in showing North Korea the "serious consequences for its unlawful and dangerous actions," Kim said.

"We look forward to working with Beijing, to... try to close any loopholes" in the latest sanctions, Kim told journalists.

B-1B Lancers Gal ROMA, Laurence CHU (AFP)
News / National

by Staff reporter

Zapu leader, Dumiso Dabengwa, has called on all opposition parties to close ranks and rally behind the proposed National Transitional Authority to resolve the current national crisis.In his solidarity message at the People's Democratic Party's (PDP) first anniversary celebrations at White City Stadium on Sunday, Dabengwa said the idea of the NTA needed serious consideration."I think that we should examine initiatives like the National Transitional Authority that has been proposed by the Platform of Concerned Citizens. There are many legal and institutional challenges involved in ensuring a smooth transition from a system that has amassed so much power in the Executive," he said."The [winner-takes-all] mentality, in which the party in control of the State destroys all checks and balances, has to give way to a level playing field in order for this country to achieve the democratic values for which generations of young people sacrificed their lives. This is an example of the issues we shall discuss with the People's Democratic Party and other parties that see the need for co-operation with others to remove the ruling regime and to put in its place a new dispensation committed to the political and economic well-being of all Zimbabweans."Dabengwa said the idea of a national transitional authority was important in the context of political parties working together to change the political culture in the country, where national interest is held above political ambitions of individual parties and individual leaders."This culture of civilised competition comes with willingness to forge co-operative platforms to achieve common objectives. In our case, as Zapu, we have a long-established policy on united fronts, which has made it easier to work with others for agreed purposes. In the country's current political and economic crises, we are committed to working with other parties to remove the disastrous Zanu-PF regime from power. We are equally committed to consolidating the democratic gains that made the 2013 Constitution possible."
Moody's warns on Hong Kong rating after polls

Hong Kong's credit rating could be at risk after the success of a new generation of young anti-China politicians in legislative elections this month, Moody's warned.

The first poll since mass "Umbrella Movement" protests against Beijing two years ago saw the election of five lawmakers backing independence or self-determination to the Legislative Council (LegCo).

But Moody's said the city's Aa1 rating, the agency's second highest, could be in trouble if the increased ranks of opposition politicians slow down policymaking.

Supporters of Nathan Law, one of a new generation of young Hong Kong politicians advocating a break from Beijing, put up flags after his electoral win Isaac Lawrence (AFP/File)

"With these results, filibustering, which has become increasingly common in the past two years, is likely to continue, a credit-negative development that will result in slow and less effective policymaking," it said in a report published Monday.

It also said it expects the political divide to widen in the near future.

"In this environment, political friction is likely to continue and may intensify ahead of the chief executive election in March 2017," it said of the city's leadership election.

Financial secretary John Tsang said Tuesday the ratings agency should be "fair" to the city.

"If they know the situation better, then maybe they will know whether or not it will truly affect the overall economy or the workings of the government," Tsang said.

Moody's in March downgraded the city's outlook from "stable" to "negative", citing increasing political riskiness and closer economic ties with China, which is facing a growth slowdown.

The democratic camp including independence activists gained three seats in the 70-strong LegCo at the September 4 poll. That gives them the 30 members needed to veto key bills, which can only be passed with a two-thirds majority.

However, the overall make-up of the LegCo remains weighted towards Beijing under a system that makes it almost impossible for the democracy camp to take a majority.

Young campaigners have been galvanised by a number of incidents that have pointed to increased Beijing interference.

The most high-profile was the disappearance of five city booksellers known for salacious titles about Beijing politicians. They resurfaced in detention on the mainland.
South Korea clearing up after strongest ever quake

South Korea was clearing up on Tuesday after being struck by its most powerful earthquake since records began.

The 5.4 magnitude quake late Monday sent people scurrying from buildings, unused to the kind of seismic events that regularly shake neighbouring Japan.

Seismologists said the quake was a natural geological phenomenon, and unrelated to the "artificial earthquake" caused last week when North Korea carried out an underground nuclear test.

An elderly woman (R) sits in front of destroyed wall of her house in Gyeongju on Sepber 13, 2016 after a powerful quake hit the southern part of South Korea Yonhap (YONHAP/AFP)

There were no reported deaths, but six people suffered minor injuries after being hit by falling objects, the Ministry of Public Safety and Security reported.

South Korea's lively social media was flooded with images of shattered storefront windows and people fleeing apartments in panic, some with children in their arms.

Some spent the night in shelters or in their cars.

Kakaotalk, the country's largest mobile app, which is used by 40 million people, partially went down, the company said, as users rushed to exchange messages in the aftermath of the quake.

Television footage showed bottles falling from shelves at a store, and long cracks that had developed in a basement parking lot.

Reactors at four nuclear power plants were shut down for safety inspections, and were expected to remain off line for several days, but there were no indications of any damage.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., which operates the country's 24 nuclear plants, it had halted operations at four sites "on the off-chance" they might have suffered damage.

"All our plants were designed to sustain quakes of up to 6.5 magnitude", a company spokesman told AFP.

The US Geological Survey said the country had been hit by two quakes, the first of which had a magnitude of 4.9. It was followed an hour later by the more powerful 5.4 magnitude shake.

Korean seismologists, who put the magnitude of the second quake at 5.8, said it was the most powerful to hit since records began in 1978.
US says Philippines has not asked it to pull forces

The United States said the Philippine government had not officially communicated President Rodrigo Duterte's demand to pull US military advisers out of the rebellion-torn southern Philippines.

Since 2002, up to 600 US advisers have been deployed in the Mindanao region to train troops battling Muslim extremists but their numbers have been scaled down in recent years.

A week after calling US President Barack Obama a "son of a whore", the incendiary leader said Monday US Special Forces in the region "have to go".

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte holds up a photo and cites accounts of US troops who killed Muslims during the US's occupation of the Philippines in the early-1900s, during a speech at the Malacanang palace in Manila on September 12, 2016 Ted Aljibe (AFP)

Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay however attempted to downplay Duterte's comments, saying Tuesday they were "in the context of wanting to save the lives of these Americans who might be exposing themselves to unnecessary risk" from militant attacks.

In Washington, the Pentagon and State Department said they had not been officially contacted by Manila about pulling out the remaining advisers.

Yasay, interviewed by Manila's ABS-CBN network, also confirmed the allies had not discussed Duterte's demand.

He said only around 100 US advisers were left in the south of the country.

The Pentagon in June also deployed warplanes and about 120 personnel in the northern Philippines for short-term training missions aimed at ensuring the allies' access to the disputed South China Sea.

- 'No shift' -

Duterte, 71, has said he is "not a fan" of the United States and on Monday explained his demand by showing pictures of US troops killing Muslims as America took control of its new colony in the early 1900s.

He has said the spat was triggered by State Department criticism of his controversial war on drug crime, which has left about 3,000 people dead since he began his six-year term on June 30.

Obama has said Duterte must conduct his crime war "the right way", protecting human rights.

Yasay stressed that Duterte's new comments did not signal a shift in policy, and that ties with the US remained strong.

The president only wanted to protect Americans from kidnappings and terrorism as they had become "a very good target", Yasay said.

"There is no shift in so far as our policy is concerned with respect to our close friendship with the Americans."

Yasay, who was heading to Washington for talks, added the Duterte administration would honour existing defence agreements including a 2014 accord giving the US military access to at least five Philippine bases, one of them in Mindanao.

Duterte's spokesman Ernesto Abella also said Tuesday the president's pronouncements were not to be taken as policy.

"These were not directives to leave, OK? But this was a context on why we have a conflict (in Mindanao). In other words, he's giving a broad historical, cultural landscape."

However analysts said any drawdown would could come at a time of deteriorating security in Mindanao, with the presence of extremist and splinter rebel groups, some of which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asian security expert at the National War College in the United States, said Duterte's actions towards the US were worrying.

"National security professionals that I am in contact with are agog with the behaviour of a treaty ally," Abuza told AFP.

"It is going to take a lot of work to get this relationship back on track."
China detains 13 in 'rebel' village over protests

Chinese authorities detained 13 residents of the rebel village of Wukan Tuesday, police said, after jailing its chief -- who was elected after leading protests against Communist officials -- on corruption charges.

Wukan, a 13,000-strong fishing village in the southern province of Guangdong, became a symbol of resistance against corruption after a mass uprising over allegedly illegal land grabs propelled it onto global front pages in 2011.

Lin Zulian, who played a key role in those protests, was detained in June, and police said that since then villagers had "continued to fabricate rumours and deploy measures such as threats, insults, force and bribes to instigate, plan and launch illegal mass gatherings".

The centre of Wukan, the village in Guangdong province where an uprising in 2011 drew worldwide attention Peter Parks (AFP/File)

Tuesday's detentions were for "disturbing the public order and public transport order", police said on verified social media account.

After the arrests, villagers clashed with police, with security forces using tear gas and rubber bullets, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

Villagers threw stones at police with riot shields, according to a video posted to the newspaper's website.

Photos published by the newspaper showed bloodied residents, and others wearing motorcycle helmets and holding bricks.

The road into Wukan from Lufeng, a nearby urban centre, was empty on Tuesday afternoon, with about a dozen police officers at a roadblock waving away approaching vehicles.

A Lufeng city official told AFP that the road was closed but would not comment on the situation inside Wukan, and police escorted AFP out of the area.

The 2011 protests in Wukan were initially seen as just another bout of social unrest in China, where tens of thousands of such incidents occur each year.

But when a protest leader died in police custody, residents took their demonstrations further, barricading roads leading into Wukan, and effectively expelling security forces for more than a week.

Communist Party authorities unexpectedly backed down and promised rare concessions, including pledges to investigate the land dispute and allow village polls to be held in an open manner -- a first in Wukan.

Lin, 70, was one of the successful contenders. He was convicted of corruption last week and sentenced to three years in prison after confessing to accepting bribes worth some $590,000 yuan ($90,000), the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Lin Zulian (pictured), who played a key role in those protests, was detained in June, and police said that since then villagers had "continued to fabricate rumours" Mark Ralston (AFP)
Israel hits Syrian army positions after Golan projectile

Israeli aircraft struck Syrian army positions early Tuesday after stray fire from its war-torn neighbour hit the Israeli-held zone of the Golan Heights the previous day, the military said.

The Israeli strike targeted "artillery positions of Syrian Regime in the central Syrian Golan Heights" in response to "a projectile" which on Monday had hit the northern Golan causing no injuries, an army statement said.

A military spokeswoman told AFP Monday's projectile was most likely not intentional, rather spillover from "internal fighting in Syria."

Israeli soldiers take part in target training in the Golan Heights on September 6, 2016 Jalaa Marey (AFP/File)

It was the fourth such incident in nine days, and came as a new Syrian ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States came into force on Monday.

The initial 48-hour truce does not apply to areas held by jihadists such as the Islamic State group.

The Israeli army holds the Syrian government accountable for any fire from its territory, regardless of its source.

There were similar events in July and previously.

Israel has sought to avoid being drawn into Syria's complex war which is now in its sixth year, but it has attacked Syrian military targets when fire from the conflict spills over.
China must help close N. Korea sanctions loopholes: US

China must help the international community close loopholes in sanctions on North Korea after an "unprecedented" series of provocations by Pyongyang this year, a top US envoy said Tuesday.

With two nuclear tests and more than 20 missile launches so far in 2016, the North's leader Kim Jong-Un has hit a new low, said Sung Kim, the US State Department's special representative for North Korea policy.

"North Korea once again has demonstrated blatant and reckless disregard for its commitments and international obligations," Kim said during a two-day visit to Seoul.

With two nuclear tests and more than 20 missile launches so far in 2016, the North's leader Kim Jong-Un has hit a new low, said Sung Kim (pictured), the US State Department's special representative for North Korea policy Kazuhiro Nogi (AFP)

"This is quite unprecedented, even by North Korea standards," he told journalists after meeting with his South Korean counterpart Kim Hong-Kyun.

Following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test in January, the UN Security Council adopted the toughest sanctions regime to date, targeting the North's trade in minerals and tightening banking restrictions.

But since then, Pyongyang has carried out a series of rocket launches, and on Friday detonated its biggest ever nuclear bomb.

The UN Security council is scrambling to come up with new penalties, but five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006 have failed to deter the North.

The international community has also engaged in a flurry of diplomacy in an attempt to persuade China to use its leverage.

China -- Pyongyang's sole ally and largest benefactor -- had a key role to play in showing North Korea the "serious consequences for its unlawful and dangerous actions," Kim said.

Beijing has said it opposes the testing, but analysts believe it pulls its punches because it is desperate to avoid anything that would imperil the status quo and alter the balance of power on the Korean peninsula in favour of the US.

"We look forward to working with Beijing, to... try to close any loopholes" in the latest sanctions, Kim said.

Sanctions will not produce "immediate, instant success," he said, adding it would "require sustained and concerted effort...to really have the kind of effect that we desire".
Verizon out to be more than 'dumb pipe' with Yahoo buy

Verizon is focusing on synergies, not job cuts, with its multi-billion-dollar buy of faded internet star Yahoo, executives said at a TechCrunch Disrupt conference here.

AOL chief Tim Armstrong on Monday said that while there were likely to be "job changes" at Yahoo if the $4.8 billion acquisition closes as expected early next year, the deal was about combining strengths in "a bold strategy for the future."

Armstrong did not lay out details, saying the strategy was still taking shape with input from Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer and her team.

(From L) AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong, Executive Vice President and President of Innovation at Verizon and New Business Marni Walden and moderator Anthony Ha speak onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt, in San Francisco, on September 12, 2016 Steve Jennings (Getty/AFP)

While Verizon executive vice president and president of innovation and new business Marni Walden took part in the on-stage talk with Armstrong, regular Disrupt guest Mayer was noticeably absent.

Verizon bought AOL last year in a deal valued at $4.4 billion, and the Yahoo acquisition is another move in building an online media platform on top of the US telecommunication firm's network.

"We do not want to be a dumb pipe," Walden said, playing off a question by the moderator at TechCrunch, which is owned by AOL.

"We also want to be a platform and a services company; our lead in mobile lets us take advantage of that."

Verizon on Monday ramped up its internet-of-things platform with the acquisition of Silicon Valley-based Sensity Systems, which specializes in LED light systems that connect online.

Financial details were not disclosed.

Armstrong said the Yahoo acquisition is on track, with "enthusiasm on both sides internally."

- 51 possible bidders -

Yahoo went with Verizon after a process involving 51 possible bidders, according to a recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Verizon commands about 35 percent of the US wireless market, according to data at industry tracker Statistica.com.

Armstrong has steered AOL since 2009 -- first when it was part of the Time Warner conglomerate, then as an independent company, and since last year under Verizon.

Both he and Yahoo chief Mayer were early employees at Google.

Armstrong's "Project Everest" strategy reorganized AOL and helped focus on digital media, investing in the Huffington Post and other news sites, while strengthening its ad-tech services.

Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post news site that has become a global phenomenon, announced last month that she was stepping down to launch a nonprofit group focused on health and wellness.

- Show business -

Greek-born Huffington launched her original American website in 2005 and sold it to internet giant AOL in 2011.

She said she would be stepping down as editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, which now operates in 10 languages and has a user base of over 200 million.

Armstrong, who heads the AOL unit that includes the Huffington Post and other news sites, called Arianna Huffington "a visionary who built the Huffington Post into a truly transformative news platform."

Armstrong on Monday sidestepped expanding on whether internal friction played a role in Huffington's departure, describing her as a "world class talent" and telling of a going away party held last week.

"People in the media love the drama," Armstrong said of her departure.

"It's not show friends, it's show business."

Armstrong said he believed combining Verizon's online media offerings will be a winning formular "if we have the high ground."

He also said he thinks of Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and other online titans as partners, not rivals.

"We are not planning on competing with Facebook and Google," Armstrong said of the media platform Verizon is building.

AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong leaves TechCrunch Disrupt at Pier 48 in San Francisco, on September 12, 2016, after an on-stage talk at the tech industry event about parent-company Verizon buying Yahoo Glenn Chapman (AFP)
Thai military courts to still try some 500 civilian cases

Thailand's military courts will still hear some 500 ongoing cases against civilians, a senior junta official said Tuesday, a day after the regime announced an end to the controversial practice.

A 2014 coup ushered in one of the most autocratic Thai governments in a generation with generals expanding the use of military courts to try more than one thousand civilians, especially those critical of their rule or the monarchy.

But in a surprise move ahead of a planned visit to the United Nations in New York next week, army chief turned Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-O-Cha said military courts would be phased out for civilians.

Pictures of students detained after a peaceful anti-coup rally are held by protesters outside the cordoned-off military court in Bangkok where they appeared in 2015 Christophe Archambault (AFP/File)

Rights groups cautiously welcomed the order, which does not cover ongoing cases and offences prior to the announcement.

"The cases that are still under the deliberation of a military court will go ahead because they have already entered court procedure," Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told reporters.

"There are 1,500 cases in the military courts, of which 1,000 cases have already finished and 500 cases remain," he added.

Thailand's military courts tend to have much higher conviction rates and are far harder to appeal.

Some have handed down record jail terms, including a 30-year sentence for a series of Facebook posts by a civilian that were deemed critical of the monarchy.

The new order reflects growing confidence among junta leaders that they have successfully curbed opposition.

"It was about the right time to relax as people are more happy and there is less of a resistance movement," Prayut told reporters on Tuesday, though he rejected any suggestion international pressure had instigated the change.

Watana Muangsook, a politician loyal to the ousted government who has been detained by the military several times for criticising their rule, said the order was little more than window dressing.

"If the NCPO is really sincere they should abolish all orders that violate human rights... such as the military's authorisation to arrest, search and detain people without warrants," he wrote on Facebook, using the official acronym for the junta.

Than Rittiphan, from the student protest group New Democracy, which has nearly a dozen members facing upcoming military trials, told AFP: "We felt that they just do (this) to keep out international pressure. They have no intention in respect of human rights at all."

The International Commission of Jurists, which has monitored military court trials, said the move was a "welcome step" but called for all pending cases to be transferred to civilian courts.

The new policy will not affect Thailand's three southernmost provinces, which have been governed under emergency laws for the past decade as Thai troops struggle to quell a festering Muslim Malay insurgency.

Army officers also still have the power to arrest and temporarily detain civilians nationwide, while Prayut has maintained his right to unilaterally pass any law in the name of national security.

Thai soldiers stand guard outside a military court in 2014 in Bangkok Christophe Archambault (AFP/File)
Syrian army says it shot down Israeli warplane, drone

Syria's military said Tuesday it shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone in response to an attack on Syrian army positions -- a claim denied by Israel.

"Our air defences blocked the attack and shot down the military aircraft in (the southern province of) Quneitra and a drone" in the province of Damascus, said the Syrian army statement carried by state news agency SANA.

It accused Israeli forces of supporting "armed terrorist groups" in the country's south.

An Israeli tank takes part in a military exercise in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights near the border with Syria Menahem Kahana (AFP/File)

The Israeli army said none of its aircraft had been downed overnight on Monday, as claimed by Syria, and it carried out fresh strikes against Syrian artillery positions on Tuesday night.

Both raids were in response to what appeared to be stray fire from fighting in Syria landing on the Israeli-held zone of the Golan Heights.

"At no point was the safety of (Israeli) aircraft compromised. Nothing true about what they claim," military spokesman Arye Shalicar said Tuesday.

He said that two surface-to-air missiles had been launched at Israeli aircraft overnight Monday.

An Israeli military spokeswoman told AFP that Monday's projectile was most likely spillover from "internal fighting in Syria."

It was the fourth such incident in nine days, and came as a new Syrian ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States came into force on Monday.

The initial 48-hour truce does not apply to areas held by jihadists such as the Islamic State group.
Deaths fanning the flames in Indian Kashmir at Eid

One was the poster boy of Indian Kashmir's uprising, the other a seemingly random victim of a surge of violence that shows little sign of ending.

But as Muslims elsewhere in India began celebrating Eid on Tuesday, the families of Burhan Wani and Riyaz Ahmed Shah started their day with a trip to a martyrs' cemetery, united in grief but with vastly different reflections on their losses.

"When Burhan left us, he left for the cause and became the son of the whole of Kashmir, so I constantly thank God it was my son who was sacrificed," said Muzaffar Wani as he spoke calmly of his son's death in a gun battle with soldiers.

Indian Kashmiri protesters clash with Indian government forces during the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha during a curfew in Srinagar on September 13, 2016 Tauseef Mustafa (AFP)

Gulping back tears, Shah's sister Amina tells a very different story; overwhelmed by the thought that her 22-year-old brother's life had been cut short after being shot for no apparent reason on his way home from a shift as a security guard.

"Riyaz never took part in the protests, he never even picked up a stone. He was very responsible, all he ever wanted to do was put food on the table," said Amina at the family's home in the state capital Srinagar.

"We have still not come to terms with what happened, our hearts are restless," added her older sister Shahina, describing her family's Eid that included a trip to Riyaz's grave in a section of the local cemetery reserved for "martyrs".

The usual Eid feast of mutton and chicken would be replaced by dhal and rice.

"We will be praying for all those who have been injured or martyred...the entire Kashmir nation is in mourning."

Around 80 Kashmiris have died in the two months since Wani was killed on the southern edge of the region, making it one of the worst bouts of violence since a full-blown armed rebellion was at its peak in the 1990s.

- Prayers banned -

All efforts to thwart the unrest have failed, and anger towards their rulers shows every sign of escalating in what is India's only Muslim-majority state.

Fearful that large scale congregations could morph into mass protests against Indian rule, authorities have banned prayers at Srinagar's main mosque.

Helicopters and drones buzz over the city, while internet and mobile networks have been cut.

With virtually all shops shuttered for weeks, wrecking what should be one of the busiest times of the year for retailers, few families will be exchanging gifts or enjoying lavish feasts.

While the shutdown was initially imposed by the Indian authorities, retailers closed in response to calls by separatist groups.

In Wani's home town of Tral, normal life has come to a standstill with schools shut and public transport suspended since his killing on July 8.

One of the few hives of activity is the family home where Muzaffar Wani still receives a steady stream of visitors paying their respects to a rebel leader who has arguably become more potent since his passing.

He was the second son to have died at the hands of Indian forces, with his older brother Khaled allegedly tortured to death in April last year after being intercepted on his way back from a clandestine meeting with his brother.

Muzaffar Wani told AFP there would be Eid celebrations but he was heartened that his sons have managed to galvanise the separatists' cause.

"I'm proud of their sacrifices... of course I'm sad as well and try not to talk about it too much in case it weakens my resolve," said Wani, who also began his day by visiting his sons' graves.

Burhan and Khaled account for two of the 45 plots in Tral's martyrs graveyard, all of whom have died in the separatists' cause since independence.

Speaking in front of a poster proclaiming "Burhan, your blood will bring about a revolution", Muzaffar Wani recounted how his then 15-year-old son left home to join the Hizbul Mujahideen, angered by a beating that soldiers dished out to his brother.

- Sneaking home -

Over the next eight years, he would occasionally sneak home at night before rejoining his fellow militants in a group that supports Kashmir becoming part of Pakistan.

Since independence from Britain seven decades ago, India and Pakistan have both claimed sovereignty over the whole of Kashmir which is divided by a defacto border. Two of their three wars have been fought over the Himalayan territory.

In Tral, Pakistani flags fly from rooftops while graffiti denouncing "Indian dogs" or glorifying "our hero Burhan" are ubiquitous.

Some members of the security forces admit that authorities underestimated the impact of killing Wani, a dashing 23-year-old who built up a big following on social media as he posed with an AK-47.

While Wani's killing has fanned the separatist cause, a senior police official acknowledged that Shah's shooting had exacerbated the divide between the security forces and an alienated civilian population.

He died when pellet gunshot fired at close range tore through vital organs.

There was no record of stone-throwing and he was on a scooter, said the officer, speaking anonymously.

"There can be no justification."

Around 80 Kashmiris have died in two months' violence since Burhan Wani, the poster boy of Indian Kashmir's uprising, was killed on the southern edge of the region Sajjad Hussain (AFP/File)

Indian Kashmiri Muslims shout pro-independence slogans at a funeral in the Wadwan area of central Kashmir's Budgam district on the outskirts of Srinagar on September 11, 2016 Tauseef Mustafa (AFP/File)

Amina Shah (left) and Shaheena Shah, sisters of Reyaz Ahmed Shah, mourn the death of their younger brother at their house in Srinagar on the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid, on September 12, 2016 Tauseef Mustafa (AFP)

Kashmiri Muslim, Muzaffar Wani, the father of dead militant Burhan Wani, stands outside his home in Tral on September 12, 2016 Tauseef Mustafa (AFP)
News / National

by Thobekile Zhou

Ailing MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai is due for more cancer treatment in South Africa this week.Tsvangirai early this year revealed that he was suffering from cancer of the colon.He has lost considerable weight.His spokesperson, Luke Tamborinyoka revealed that the former Prime Minister would be undergoing chemotherapy treatment."The president (Tsvangirai), unfortunately, will be receiving treatment at the same time, so he will not be attending."I am not sure though if he will assign someone to represent him," he said.Tsvangirai was set to attend a proposed all-parties consultative meeting to debate the current national crisis and modalities of setting up the national transitional authority organised by the Platform of Concerned Citizens (PCC) in Harare on Thursday.
Zimbabwe police announce new ban on Harare protests

Zimbabwean police have announced a fresh ban on protests in the capital Harare, state media said Tuesday, in another attempt to end demonstrations against veteran ruler President Robert Mugabe.

The order came hours after a coalition of opposition parties said they would stage mass rallies across the country on Saturday to push for reform before elections due in 2018.

Anti-government campaigners vowed to defy the order and also appeal to the courts.

A street vendor flees with his goods as Zimbabwe opposition supporters clash with police in Harare on August 26, 2016 Wilfred Kajese (AFP/File)

"These are the last kicks of a dying regime and we expected no better from them," Douglas Mwozora, spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) opposition party, told AFP.

"They have no respect for the law but we are not going to surrender our constitutional right. We are going back to the courts to challenge this illegal ban."

An earlier protest ban in Harare was overturned by the courts last week, despite Mugabe vowing a crackdown on dissent and blasting judges for "reckless" rulings allowing previous rallies.

In a notice in the state-run Herald newspaper, Harare police chief Newbert Saunyama said a ban would be imposed on the "holding of public demonstrations" for one month starting on Friday.

Hardlife Mudzingwa, spokesman for the pressure group Tajamuka (We are agitated), told AFP: "We will not heed this unconstitutional declaration by the police."

- Growing opposition -

Mugabe's ZANU-PF party won the last general elections in 2013 which were marred by electoral fraud.

Opposition to Mugabe's 36-year reign has grown in recent months with a surge of public demonstrations, triggered by an economic crisis that has left banks short of cash and the government struggling to pay its workers.

Two weeks ago, police detained scores of people including activists and bystanders following violent demonstrations in the capital.

Mugabe, 92, has often used used brutal force to silence his opponents, and at the weekend he warned the protestors they were "playing a dangerous game".

"Let the opposition parties and all those angling for chaos, mayhem and violent demonstrations be warned that our patience has run out," Mugabe said in an address to his party's central committee.

"They are planning to terrorise the rural areas in the mistaken belief that they can intimidate and harass our supporters. Let them be warned. They cannot win that war."

Last week, the government announced plans to slash 25,000 jobs after it revealed that nearly 97 percent of its revenue goes to paying public workers' salaries.

Soldiers and civil servants have regularly been paid late this year, heightening pressure on Mugabe, who came to power in 1980 and has vowed to stand for re-election in 2018.

A one-day strike in July, called by trade unions and Christian pastor Evan Mawarire, shut down offices, schools and some government departments.

Two statues of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe were unveiled at State House, the president's official residence and office in the capital Harare, on September 9, 2016 Jekesai Njikizana (AFP/File)
Tycoon Adelson bets on Macau revival with Paris-themed resort

Billionaire casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson predicted a revival for beleaguered Macau Tuesday as he launched his new Paris-themed mega resort, with the gambling enclave betting its fortunes on mass market tourists.

A corruption crackdown by Chinese President Xi Jinping and an economic slowdown since mid-2014 drove away many mainland high-rollers who had propped up the VIP sector in semi-autonomous Macau -- the only part of China where it is legal to gamble.

The former Portuguese colony has struggled to recover its footing ever since as it comes under pressure from Beijing to diversify away from gambling.

Chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation Sheldon Adelson (C) during a press conference with Robert Goldstein, the corporation's president (L), before the opening of the Sands new mega resort 'The Parisian' in Macau, on September 13, 2016 Anthony Wallace (AFP)

But August saw gaming revenues end a slump that had lasted more than two years, with some analysts putting the rally down to a new raft of resorts trying to entice mass market gamblers and non-gaming tourists.

Adelsons' Sands is hoping to follow the trend with The Parisian, a cavernous casino complex with 3,000 rooms, shopping arcades, restaurants and a water park boasting a "Marie Antoinette" slide.

The opening ceremony Tuesday night saw fireworks set off from the resort's half-size replica of the Eiffel Tower as can-can music played.

Earlier in the day, 83-year-old Adelson voiced hope for Macau.

"We are optimistic that we have hit the bottom," he told reporters.

"Macau still has very good days to come."

But he said the bounceback was likely to be gradual and it remained to be seen how long the recovery would last.

Sands would now turn its attentions to trying to develop casinos in other Asian markets, including Japan and Korea, he added.

The Parisian has more than 400 gaming tables, with around 12 percent of them expected to be for VIPs, but Adelson played down the importance of high rollers.

"Other locations... are trying to pick up the excess (VIP) market that is no longer here," said Adelson.

"The mass market will always be here."

The complex stands next to Sands' other massive casino hotel on Macau's Cotai Strip, The Venetian.

Adelson was confident Sands' concession would be renewed when licences come up for review in 2020 because of its non-gaming emphasis.

He said he would be "disappointed" if The Parisian did not break even within four years.

- Positive growth -

The Parisian is the second launch by Las Vegas stalwarts in weeks, after the $4 billion Wynn Palace -- home to a giant lake, musical fountains and cable cars, as well as gaming tables -- opened in August.

Recent launches by Galaxy and Studio City have also upped the non-casino element.

Some analysts say the new mass market openings were behind August's gaming revenue rise of 1.1 percent to 18.84 billion patacas ($2.36 billion), compared to the same month in 2015.

"We think the remaining few months of the year will show positive year-on-year growth (in gaming revenues) and we are looking for 10 percent growth in 2017," said Aaron Fischer, gaming analyst at brokerage CLSA.

"Most of that growth will come from mass market driven by the expansion in hotel capacity," Fischer added, although he pointed out 50 percent of revenue still came from VIPs.

Ben Lee of Macau-based gaming consultancy Igamix was more sceptical of the mass approach.

Year-on-year comparisons were still "relatively flat" and the VIP segment remained critical for significant growth, he told AFP.

Visitors on opening night made a beeline for the casino area.

"I will have a look at the casino and see if I want to play, but I also want to look at the shops and maybe eat in a restaurant," said nurse Meisy Chan, 23, who lives in Macau.

"I think it's a wonderful place."

Macau overtook Las Vegas as the world's casino capital in terms of revenue after the sector was opened up to foreign competition in 2002.

It still leads its US counterpart despite the downturn.

An actor playing Michael Jackson (C) performs during a preview of "Thriller Live" before a press conference ahead of the opening of the Sands new mega resort 'The Parisian' in Macau, on September 13, 2016 Anthony Wallace (AFP)
China to be first trillion-dollar air market: Boeing

China will become the world's first trillion-dollar aviation market as its expanding middle class takes to the skies in ever greater numbers, US manufacturer Boeing predicted Tuesday.

The world's most populous country is expected to add more than 6,800 new aircraft to its commercial fleet worth $1.03 trillion by 2035, Boeing said in its annual China Current Market Outlook.

Passenger traffic is estimated to increase 6.4 percent annually in China over the next 20 years as the country reforms its economy to rely more on consumption and the service industry to drive growth, said Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

For Boeing, China is expected to add more than 6,800 new aircraft to its commercial fleet worth $1.03 trillion by 2035 Goh Chai-Hin (AFP/File)

"As China transitions to a more consumer-based economy, aviation will play a key role in its economic development," he said.

Chinese carriers have been expanding their fleets and adding new point-to-point services to cater to both leisure and business travel demand from an increasing number of affluent consumers in China and throughout Asia, Boeing said.

"The continuing expansion of China's middle class, coupled with new visa policies and a wide range of widebody airplanes with new technologies, capabilities and efficiencies, gives us every reason to expect a very bright future for China's long-haul market," said Tinseth.

Of the 6,810 new aircraft it will need during the 2016-2035 period, 75 percent will be single-aisle planes with 90-230 seats, Boeing said.

A total of 1,560 widebody aircraft are seen as needed, according to the company.

- Chinese rivals -

China's rapidly growing e-commerce business -- already the largest in the world -- also drives demand for cargo planes, with 180 new freighters and 410 converted freighters forecast to be added over the next two decades.

A quarter of Boeing's deliveries over the last three years were to Chinese airlines, it says.

Boeing, maker of the 737 MAX and 787 Dreamliner, competes with Europe's Airbus for global dominance in the aircraft market.

The US firm says it made more than half of China's commercial jetliners currently in operation, while Airbus says it has an almost 50 percent share.

But both Boeing and Airbus are facing rising competition from Chinese rivals, who are supported by the government as Beijing sees the lucrative, technology-intensive industry as of strategic importance and a symbol of national pride.

In November last year, state-backed Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (COMAC) rolled out the C919, China's first domestically developed narrow-body passenger plane that would compete with Boeing's 737 and Airbus' A320.

Airbus in March started construction on a new facility to deliver wide-body planes in China while Boeing has reportedly submitted to the Chinese government plans for a factory in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

Tinseth said Boeing was "absolutely" vigilant about Chinese competitors.

"With such a large domestic base, there is an opportunity" for a Chinese airplane maker, he told reporters.

"There are areas with COMAC where we're partners, and there are areas where we compete. We will be strong partners and we will be strong competitors," he said.

Boeing said in July it expected a combined 39,600 jets worth $5.9 trillion will be needed globally over the next 20 years.

In September 23, 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Boeing's assembly line in Everett, Washington Mark Ralston (POOL/AFP/File)

European giant, Airbus says it has an almost 50 percent share of the Chinese aviation market Fred Dufour (AFP/File)
Germany arrests three IS suspects with 'links' to Paris attackers

German police Tuesday arrested three men with forged Syrian passports accused of being Islamic State (IS) militants and labelled a possible "sleeper cell" with links to the Paris attackers.

More than 200 police commandos took part in the pre-dawn raids in northern Germany to detain the men, who were suspected of either plotting an attack or awaiting orders to commit one.

The men were identified only as Mahir al-H., 17, Ibrahim M., 18, and Mohamed A., 26, in a statement issued by federal prosecutors.

More than 200 police took part in pre-dawn raids in northern Germany to detain three men accused of being members of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group Julian Stratenschulte (dpa/AFP/File)

They left Syria last October and travelled via Turkey and Greece -- a route used by tens of thousands of refugees and migrants -- and arrived in Germany in mid-November.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the three apparently used the same migrant trafficking network as several of the IS gunmen who killed 130 people in Paris in November last year.

"According to what we know so far, the investigation of the (federal criminal office) BKA points to links to the attackers of Paris from November 2015," de Maiziere told a press conference.

"There is every reason to believe that the same trafficking group used by the Paris attackers also brought the three men who were arrested to Germany," he said, adding that their forged travel documents came from "the same workshop".

He said German police had monitored the men for months and tapped their phones, meaning that at no stage was there a risk of an attack.

- 'Awaiting instructions' -

Prosecutors said in their statement that Mahir al-H. had joined IS in its de facto capital of Raqa, Syria by September 2015 and received some weapons and explosives training.

The following month, all three men had pledged to travel to Europe in talks with an IS fighter who was "in charge of missions and attacks" outside of the Syria-Iraq region where the group has its self-proclaimed caliphate.

In Europe, "the three accused were meant to either execute a mission or await further instructions," the prosecution service said in the statement, adding that no evidence of "concrete orders or instructions" had been found.

The men had received mobile phones and four-figure cash sums in US dollars, as well as the fake passports, from IS, the statement said.

They were detained at three refugee shelters in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein by more than 200 commandos of the federal police, BKA and police forces of several states.

Police also raided several other asylum seeker shelters, Die Welt daily said.

Warrants for their arrest had been issued by a federal judge on September 7, based in part on intelligence provided by Germany's domestic security agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

In July, Germany suffered two bloody attacks claimed by IS, which were carried out by migrants.

German authorities have urged the public not to confuse migrants and "terrorists," but have acknowledged that more jihadists may have entered the country among the around one million asylum seekers who arrived last year.

De Maiziere also said "it would be wrong to place refugees under general suspicion".

"Security forces have repeatedly received tip-offs of individual terrorists or sympathisers among the refugees ... but most of these have turned out not to be true."

The attacks which rocked Paris on November 13, 2015, were the deadliest the country had ever experienced
Taiwan charges three foreigners over $2.6 mn cyberheist

Taiwan has charged three foreigners over a $2.6 million cyberheist that used malware to hack into a major local bank's ATM network, prosecutors said Tuesday, adding that they were seeking 12-year jail terms.

The attack, the first of its kind in Taiwan, targeted the First Commercial Bank's ATM network in July and saw money withdrawn from dozens of machines in three cities.

The suspects had uncovered a security loophole in a server at the bank's London branch office and used it to plant the malware, according to the Taipei District Prosecutors Office.

The attack, the first of its kind in Taiwan, targeted the First Commercial Bank's ATM network in July Patrick Lin (AFP/File)

Police said last month they believed the heist was carried out by an international crime ring.

"This is the first case of a multi-national crime ring hacking into a bank's computer system to plant malware and steal a huge amount of money... which seriously disrupted financial order and caused public panic," the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The three were charged with fraud and offences related to computer security, the statement added.

It said 19 other suspects, including one Australian, one French national and an unknown number of eastern Europeans, had been added to the government's wanted list after they fled Taiwan following the heist.

Surveillance images released by the bank showed masked robbers working in two-man teams targeting 41 ATMs in three cities from July 9-11. Within five to 10 minutes, the thieves were seen walking away with bags full of stolen cash.

Taiwan's police arrested the trio in Taipei and northeastern Yilan county several days after the heist and recovered most of the stolen money.
Syria war death toll now more than 300,000: monitor

More than 300,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since March 2011, a monitor said in a new toll Tuesday, the first full day of an internationally-brokered truce.

More than 86,000 civilians were among the 301,781 people killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The civilian toll includes 15,099 children and 10,018 women, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

A woman visits the grave of a relative in the town of Douma, east of Syria's capital Damascus, in July Sameer Al-Doumy (AFP/File)

Rebel fighters made up 52,359 of those killed.

A total of 59,006 Syrian soldiers have been killed, in addition to 48,048 other pro-government fighters from countries including Iraq, Iran and Lebanon as well as Syria.

Jihadists of the Islamic State group and the onetime Al-Qaeda affiliate now renamed the Fateh al-Sham Front accounted for 52,031 of the dead.

The Observatory said another 3,645 victims could not be identified.

The figure is an increase of nearly 9,000 on the last death toll published by the Observatory in early August.

The United Nations and the major powers have made repeated efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria but all have so far failed.
No Syria aid convoys until safety assured: UN

The UN said Tuesday it had readied help for civilians in Syria's ceasefire but aid convoys would not roll until security was assured.

"We have been mobilising, stockpiling, readying ourselves for this great opportunity to deliver this very urgent aid but we need that peace to be reinstated," UN humanitarian office (OCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters.

A truce brokered by the United States and Russia last week appeared to be holding on its first full day Tuesday.

A truce brokered by the US and Russia appears to be holding on its first full day, but a key test of the deal will be whether warring parties allow relief to reach people in Syria's besieged areas Fadi Dirani (AFP/File)

A key test of the deal will be whether warring parties allow relief to reach people in Syria's besieged areas.

Laerke said the UN was taking time to assess the truce's durability before it deployed aid to hotspots like east Aleppo.

Since the deal was reached on Friday, "there has been a lot of mobilisation, frantic activity to be able to rush in aid... as soon as it is safe to do so, however, up to this moment, no, the convoys have not been rolling," Laerke said.

"We need to enter into an environment where we are not in mortal danger."

The UN got the regime's approval on September 6 to deliver aid to nearly one million people this month, including to the rebel held eastern part of Aleppo, which has been encircled by government forces.

Syria's second city has been a key battleground for weeks.

East Aleppo would initially be supplied with food in trucks coming across the Turkish border if security is guaranteed, OCHA said.

East Aleppo's estimated 250,000 people have not received aid since early July, when regime forces cut off the last supply route.
Debate on China poverty after mother kills her 4 children

The killing of four children by their poverty-stricken mother -- who then committed suicide, followed by her husband -- sparked online outrage and debate in China Tuesday over the gap between rich and poor.

Yang Gailan, 28, used an axe to kill her three daughters, aged six, five and three, and her five-year-old son, police in the northwestern province of Gansu said.

She committed suicide by drinking pesticide, they added in a statement online, and her husband Li Keying poisoned himself two weeks later, after the funerals.

Of the 70 million reported to currently live below the poverty line in China, these people are located primarily in rural areas Peter Parks (AFP/File)

The family had been among the poorest in Agushan village, reports said, but were denied a government low-income allowance by the village committee, which claimed their annual per person income put them above the poverty line benchmark of 2,300 yuan ($343) a year.

Multiple media reports alleged corruption was a factor, saying their benefits had been cancelled because they had not bribed local officials.

"Ours is a brutal, man-eating society," said one poster on China's Twitter-like Weibo Tuesday.

The situation "exactly reflects the painful reality of the extent of Chinas poverty", wrote Xiang Songzuo, chief economist for the Agricultural Bank of China, on his verified social media account.

"On the one hand are the corrupt officials embezzling hundreds of millions at every turn and the rich spending thousands every day, fighting to compare who can spend more, while on the other side are those in such poverty they lose the hope of living."

- 'Don't save me' -

Yang, Li and their four children lived with Yang's grandmother and father in a small, dirt-floored adobe house with three cows and 12 chickens, their most valuable possessions, the China Youth Daily reported.

Yang was still alive and able to speak when her grandmother found her lying in the grass by an empty bottle of pesticide, traces of blood, and the bodies of her children, it said.

"Why didn't you at least leave me Yifan?" her grandmother cried, referring to the eldest girl, her favourite, with whom she shared a bed every night.

Yang was taken to a local hospital and though she did not refuse treatment, she kept repeating "don't save me", according to the China Youth Daily.

China relaxed its strict one-child policy earlier this year to allow families to have two offspring, but even during the decades it was in effect, rural households were allowed two children if their first was a girl.

In many instances, those living in remote rural areas like Agushan without the resources to strictly enforce the law were able to have more.

China's boom has seen it rise to become the world's second-largest economy, but inequality remains stark and the Global Times newspaper, citing the National Bureau of Statistics, said 70 million people currently live below the poverty line, primarily in rural areas.

It quoted Dang Guoying, a rural development expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, saying: "This case shocked urban Chinese people living in developed eastern cities, because most of us cannot imagine that millions of Chinese people still live in poverty."
Qatar emir calls for Gulf-Iran dialogue

Qatar's emir has urged Arab countries of the Gulf and Iran to settle their disputes through "dialogue", in a telephone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, state media reported Tuesday.

Against the backdrop of tensions between Tehran and Riyadh, the official Qatar News Agency said Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani telephoned Rouhani on the occasion of the Eid al-Adha feast, which Muslims began celebrating on Monday.

"The emir stressed that Gulf-Iran relations should be based on good neighbourly relations and mutual respect," reported QNA.

Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani telephoned Iran President Hassan Rouhani against the backdrop of tensions between Tehran and Riyadh Ashraf Shazly (AFP/File)

"Any Gulf-Iran disputes should be settled through negotiations and dialogue," the emir was quoted as saying.

QNA did not say specifically when the call was made.

It comes at a time of increased tensions and a full-scale war of words between opposing regional powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia over the hajj pilgrimage.

Iranians were this year blocked from joining the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites in Saudi Arabia for the first time in almost 30 years.

In response, Tehran called on the Muslim world to "punish" the Saudi government for its handling of the pilgrimage following last year's stampede disaster during the hajj.

In addition, Saudi Arabia's most senior cleric, Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, called Iranians "not Muslims".

And Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blasted the "incompetence" of the Saudi royal family.
South Africa bans anti-gay US pastor

South Africa on Tuesday banned a Holocaust-denying, anti-ga American pastor from entering the country, after an outcry from rights groups over his characterisation of gays as "sodomites" and "paedophiles".

Steven Anderson, who in 2009 infamously prayed for US President Barack Obama's death, had planned a "soul-winning" visit to South Africa at the weekend.

But Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba declared the Christian preacher a "prohibited person" following objections over his "hate speech".

US pastor Steven Anderson's Arizona-based Faithful Word Baptist Church preaches a literal reading of the Bible Sebastien Bozon (AFP/File)

"Steven Anderson and members or associates of his church are prohibited from entering the Republic of South Africa," Gigaba said at a press conference in Cape Town.

"We have a duty to prevent harm and hatred, in all forms, against LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex) as against any other person in a democratic state," the minister said.

Anderson has frequently courted controversy through his Arizona-based Faithful Word Baptist Church, which preaches a literal reading of the Bible.

A Holocaust denier, he prayed for the death of US President Barack Obama in 2009 over his pro-choice stance on abortion, and called the victims of the November 2015 attack on the Bataclan nightclub in Paris "devil worshipers".

After the deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando earlier this year, he said "there's 50 less paedophiles in this world".

And in an interview with a Cape Town radio station earlier Tuesday, Anderson called Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu -- a vocal supporter of the LGBTI community and whose daughter is lesbian -- a "pervert... who goes around in a pink dress".

An online petition against the planned visit to South Africa garnered over 60,000 signatures.

Responding to his ban in a Facebook post, Anderson said, "I feel sorry for people who live in South Africa."

He said a planned visit to neighbouring Botswana, where homosexual acts are illegal, was still scheduled to go ahead.

Americans do not require visas to travel to South Africa, but Gigaba on Tuesday also revoked Anderson's visa exemption status.

"If we find him at any of our ports of entry, we will detain and deport him," said Gigaba.

"We don't want him in this country."

South Africa is one of the few countries in Africa that recognises gay rights and the only one that allows same-sex marriages.
News / National

by Thobekile Zhou

Four suspected poachers poisoned four elephants to death by spiking a water pan with cyanide in the Sinamatella area of the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe early on Sunday.More than 300 elephants were killed through poisoning by poachers in Hwange National Park in 2013.In a statement, the Victoria Falls-based Zimbabwean conservation group Bhejane Trust said a policeman who was part of a team that ambushed the suspects was killed in friendly fire after an accidental firearm discharge during hot pursuit."Four elephants, plus some small birds, were found dead at a waterhole on the Sinamatella park boundary of suspected cyanide poisoning. Acting on a tip-off, Parks (and Wildlife Authority Management) rangers and the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) details to set up an ambush for the suspected ivory dealers involved in the poisoning."The four suspects fled in a vehicle after being challenged. The ambush team of two rangers and two ZRP details gave chase, but very, unfortunately, one detail had an accidental (firearm) discharge which hit the other ZRP detail, who has subsequently died. The suspects obviously got away, but follow-up investigations continue."Bhejane Trust extends it deepest sympathies to the family of the deceased policeman, who died while doing his duty," the group said.The incident came four days after four armed poachers were arrested in a counter-operation by police and game rangers in the Tsholotsho communal lands, southwest of Hwange National Park while tracking two elephants they had wounded in failed poaching attempts earlier.Cyanide poisoning prevents oxygen exchange in the tissues of both humans and animals.The effects of cyanide ingestion are very similar to the effects of suffocation as cyanide stops the cells of the body from being able to use oxygen, which all cells need to survive.The substance is a deadly poison, but depending on the quantity, type, and concentration, it can be removed from the environment.Cyanide is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream and if it is in small quantities, it can be excreted in urine. In large quantities, it inhibits oxygen uptake in the blood and causes suffocation.
Eid day attack injures 4 in Pakistan

A suicide bomber injured four policemen, one critically, outside a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan as the country marked the beginning of the religious festival Eid al-Adha on Tuesday.

The attack took place in Shikarpur in Sindh province, around 470 kilometres (300 miles) north of Karachi and the same district where at least 61 were killed in a suicide attack on another Shiite mosque in 2015.

Officials said two suicide bombers tried to enter the Khanpur Imambargah but were intercepted by police.

Pakistani security officials escort an injured suicide bomber after an attack on a Shiite mosque in Shikarpur on September 13, 2016

"Four of our men are injured of whom one is critical," Umar Tufail, a senior local police officer told AFP.

Tufail added doctors were also trying to save the life of the other suspected bomber, who was injured when the first one blew himself up but failed to detonate himself.

"The attackers came as the worshippers were gathering to offer Eid prayers. Police were able to stop him at the gate outside the mosque," A.D. Khawaja, chief of police for Sindh province said.

Worshippers overpowered the second would-be suicide bomber as the police were reeling from their injuries, he added.

Pakistan has been hit by frequent sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shiite Muslims, who make up around one in five of the population.

The January 2015 attack on the Shiites in Shikarpur, blamed on the Sunni militant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group, led to a wave of nationwide protests.

In another incident Tuesday, a police van was hit by a roadside bomb in Quetta city in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.

"One policeman was killed and five others injured when their van was targeted," local police official Abdul Razaq told AFP.

He said two of the injured were in critical condition.

The incident was confirmed by local administration official Akbar Harifal.
Saudi king rejects mixing hajj with politics

Saudi King Salman said Tuesday the kingdom rejects any attempt to play politics with the hajj, the annual pilgrimage which has added to tensions between Riyadh and Tehran.

For the first time in nearly three decades, Iran's 64,000 pilgrims are not attending the hajj in Saudi Arabia after the two regional rivals failed to agree on security and logistics.

Among its concerns, Riyadh said Tehran had demanded the right to organise demonstrations.

More than 1.8 million Muslims from around the world have been attending the annual hajj pilgrimage in Mecca which officially ends on Thursday Ahmad Gharabli (AFP/File)

"The kingdom categorically rejects that the hajj serves any political purpose," Salman, 80, said in a brief address to international VIPs attending the pilgrimage.

Tehran had accused Riyadh of "blocking the path leading to Allah."

Among the contentious issues was security after last year's hajj stampede which, according to foreign officials, killed roughly 2,300 people.

Iran reported the largest number of victims, at 464.

Just days before this year's hajj, which began on Saturday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei questioned Saudi Arabia's right to manage Islam's holiest sites.

He called the Saudi ruling family "puny Satans" who had politicised the pilgrimage. Khamenei also said Saudi authorities "murdered" the stampede victims.

His claims led to mutual accusations throughout last week.

Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh retaliated by telling a newspaper that Iranians "are not Muslims".

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, of which Saudi Arabia is the most powerful member, accused Iran of "a desperate attempt to politicise" the hajj and said Khamenei's remarks were offensive.

More than 1.8 million faithful from around the world have been attending the annual pilgrimage which officially ends on Thursday.

"Serving the guests of God is an honour for us," Salman told the VIP delegates.

"God almighty orders that hajj be performed by all Muslims without distinction."

Saudi Arabia had said Iranians were still welcome at the hajj if they came from another country. The hajj ministry's spokesman said "a number" who held other passports were in attendance.

He was not more specific.

Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran have no diplomatic relations and are at odds over a number of regional issues including the wars in Syria and Yemen.
Yellow fever 'under control' in Angola, DR Congo: UN

Yellow fever outbreaks in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo are "under control" after a massive vaccination campaign involving millions, the World Health Organisation said Tuesday.

Yellow fever has been raging in Angola since December, with the number of suspected cases surging above 4,000.

"The risk of a major outbreak is now over," the head of WHO's pandemic and epidemics department, Sylvie Briand, told reporters in Geneva.

A public employee carries yellow fever vaccines before a ceremony launching a campaign against yellow fever in the district of Kisenso, Kinshasa, on July 20, 2016 Eduardo Soteras (AFP/File)

The UN health agency had raised alarm over the prospect of a significant outbreak in several countries after the viral haemorrhagic disease began raging in Angola.

Yellow fever subsequently spread into DR Congo, which saw more than 2,600 suspected cases.

Isolated cases were reported in China among people who had travelled to southern Africa.

According to WHO statistics, as of September 9, there have been 121 laboratory confirmed yellow fever deaths in Angola and 16 in DR Congo during the current outbreak.

WHO had been particularly concerned because cases were heavily concentrated in major urban centres like Luanda and the Congolese capital Kinshasa.

In an accelerated campaign, 7.7 million people were vaccinated in Kinshasa in less than two weeks.

Separately, 15 million people were immunised across Angola, more than 65 percent of the country's population.

Angola has not recorded a new yellow fever case since June 23, while the last new case in DR Congo was registered on July 12, Briand said.

She warned that vaccination against yellow fever remains low across Africa and that there is still a risk of a large-scale outbreak in the future.
Turkey hopes Syria ceasefire will be permanent

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said a fragile ceasefire in neighbouring Syria was largely holding and expressed hopes that it would become permanent.

The truce brokered by Russia and the United States aimed at bringing an end to fighting between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces and a wide range of rebels appeared to be holding on its first full day Tuesday.

In televised comments in Istanbul, Erdogan said there were problems in two or three villages, and suggested that if everything went well in the first 48 hours, there would be a chance to sustain the truce.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested that if everything went well in the first 48 hours, there would be a chance to sustain the truce Greg Baker (AFP/File)

"I hope that the ceasefire will be permanent," he added.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu hoped all sides would do their share for the ceasefire to be lasting.

"God willing, it will not be one-sided," he said, quoted by CNN-Turk television.

The initial 48-hour truce entered into force at sundown Monday across Syria, except in areas held by jihadists like the Islamic State group.

Syria's armed forces announced a seven-day "freeze" on military operations, lasting to midnight on Sunday.
Embattled Wells Fargo revises employee pay system

Wells Fargo pledged Tuesday to eliminate product sales goals in retail banking as it faced mounting criticism over its bogus accounts scandal, including from Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

Lew slammed Wells Fargo after it was fined $185 million and charged last week by a federal consumer watchdog with secretly opening accounts without customers' knowledge.

"It's unacceptable behavior and it's the kind of behavior that we need to be able to catch and stop," Lew said at an investor conference hosted by the CNBC network.

Wells Fargo, the world's largest bank by market value, has been under fire since a US federal consumer watchdog accused the bank of illegally boosting sales figures Karen Bleier (AFP/File)

Lew's remarks came as Wells Fargo announced that employees would no longer have product sales goals starting January 1. Regulators with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wells Fargo employees engaged in the chicanery because their compensation was tied to opening up new accounts.

"Our objective has always been and continues to be to meet our customers' financial needs and drive customer satisfaction," said Wells Fargo chief executive John Stumpf.

"We are eliminating product sales goals because we want to make certain our customers have full confidence that our retail bankers are always focused on the best interests of customers."

On September 8, the CFPB denounced Wells Fargo for "widespread" illegal activity tied to its cross selling of credit and bank products to customers. By Wells Fargo's own figures, the bank opened roughly 1.5 million deposit accounts and 565,000 credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers, the CFPB said.

Wells Fargo has apologized and said it fired 5,300 employees tied to the illegal conduct.

The US Senate Banking Committee has scheduled a hearing on Well Fargo for next week at which Stumpf is expected to testify. The hearing is expected to focus at least in part on whether the bank should demand the return of bonuses from top executives.

Wells Fargo is the biggest private mortgage lender in the United States and has been the largest bank by market capitalization. However, shares have been hit by the scandal, leaving its market capitalization slightly below that of JPMorgan Chase Tuesday.

At midday, shares of Wells Fargo were down 3.4 percent at $46.91.

Though the scandal does not involve huge amounts of money, it has tarnished the image of Wells Fargo after it emerged from the subprime housing bust comparatively unscathed. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is the biggest shareholder in the bank with more than nine percent.

Morningstar called the conduct "beyond the pale."

"Unfortunately, it's not surprising that numerous employees took advantage of an incentive system designed to spur cross-selling," Morningstar said. "The financial services sector has seen many similar instances of poorly designed bonus programs, including a wide variety of excesses leading to the subprime crisis."

Lew said the crackdown vindicated the creation of the CFPB under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which was enacted in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
IMF chief Lagarde says 'get-tough' politicians threaten trade

The head of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde on Tuesday said politicians who campaigned on promises of protectionism and economic barriers were a threat to global trade.

"There is a growing risk of politicians seeking office by promising to 'get tough' with foreign trade partners through punitive tariffs or other restrictions on trade," Lagarde said, according to prepared remarks.

Both US presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have announced their opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama administration's signature Pacific trade deal.

Without naming anyone, IMF chief Christine Lagarde described an anti-trade political climate Jim Watson (AFP/File)

Trump has proposed big tariffs on Chinese goods and denounced free trade agreements between the US, Canada and Mexico. British voters this year also chose to secede from the European Union.

In remarks she was due to deliver in an address in Toronto, Lagarde said she was "deeply concerned."

Without naming any candidate, she described an anti-trade political climate, noting that the growth rate for global trade stood at two percent.

Prospects for US ratification of the TPP in 2016 appear slim, with US lawmakers casting doubt that it will receive substantial backing or come to a vote.

"Against this background, recent news about multilateral trade negotiations have been quite discouraging," Lagarde said, adding that trade reforms could regain momentum "if the benefits are properly explained."
Syria warns Turkey Aleppo aid must be coordinated with Damascus, UN

Syria's government on Tuesday warned that all aid going to the divided city of Aleppo, particularly assistance sent by Turkey, must be coordinated with Damascus and the United Nations.

"Commenting on the statement issued by the Turkish regime on its intention to send what it says is humanitarian aid into Aleppo, the Syrian Arab Republic announces its rejection of the entry of any humanitarian aid to Aleppo, particularly from the Turkish regime, without coordination with the Syrian government and the United Nations," the foreign ministry said.

The statement, carried by state media, came nearly a full day into a fragile truce brokered by Russia and the United States that calls for immediate and unhindered humanitarian access throughout Syria.

A source said sealed aid trucks coming from Turkey to Aleppo would be opened inside the city by the Syrian Red Crescent, which would distribute the aid Amer Almohibany (AFP/File)

Over the weekend, Turkey said it was already making preparations to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo, where some 250,000 people in the rebel-held east are under government siege.

But a Syrian source close to the government said the US-Russian deal only allowed the United Nations to send aid into Aleppo.

The source said the sealed trucks would come from Turkey and would be opened inside Aleppo by the Syrian Red Crescent, which would distribute the aid.

Turkey is a key backer of Syria's opposition and has regularly called for President Bashar al-Assad to step down.
Russia says Syrian regime respecting truce, rebel violations

Russia on Tuesday said Syrian regime forces were fully respecting a ceasefire but that rebel fighters had violated it 23 times.

Moscow is one of the main backers of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and has been flying a bombing campaign in support of his forces for the past year.

"Syrian government troops have completely stopped firing, with the exception of areas where Islamic State and Jabhat Al-Nusra fighters are active," senior Russian military officer Viktor Poznikhir said in a televised briefing.

Fighters with the former Al-Nusra Front -- renamed Fateh al-Sham Front after breaking from Al-Qaeda -- drive a tank south of Aleppo on August 6, 2016 as they seized key positions in a major offensive Omar Haj Kadour (AFP/File)

"Unfortunately the same cannot be said for armed units of the moderate opposition controlled by the US. After the start of the cessation of hostilities by this morning 23 instances of firing on residential areas and government positions were registered."

The ceasefire agreement for Syria, hammered out between Moscow and Washington, came into force Monday evening and if it holds, could lead to the two sides coordinating strikes against jihadist targets.

In televised briefings from various locations around war-torn Syria, Russian military observers said that rebel violations had taken place in the provinces around Aleppo, Latakia, Damascus, Hama, Idlib and Daraa.

A Russian military officer said that "new violations" had also occurred around the ravaged city of Aleppo during the day.

As the televised briefing cut to a military monitor by the key Castello Road into Aleppo -- a crucial supply route for humanitarian aid which has been under Syria regime control -- gunfire broke out and the Russian officer dived for cover.

There was no way of independently verifying where the firing was coming from.

The truce deal is meant to see both government forces and rebels pull back from the key route to allow aid to enter rebel-held areas of Aleppo.
UN aid trucks cross into Syria through Turkey: state media

Twenty aid trucks on Tuesday crossed the Turkish border and headed toward the divided Syrian city of Aleppo after a ceasefire went into effect, state media said, although the UN could not confirm the report.

The trucks carrying UN humanitarian supplies crossed into Aleppo province through the Cilvegozu border gate in the southern Turkish province of Hatay, Anadolu news agency said, citing security sources.

Aleppo city lies 60 kilometres (35 miles) from the frontier.

Turkish state media reported 40 aid trucks were expected to cross the border into Syria on Sepetember 13, 2016 and that twenty had already done so Amer Almohibany (AFP/File)

At least 40 trucks are expected to cross the border by the end of the day, Anadolu said.

No confirmation could be immediately obtained from United Nations officials in Turkey.

Turkey has said it was already making preparations to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo, where some 250,000 people in the rebel-held east are under government siege.

A spokesman for the Turkish Red Crescent told AFP the aid group would start sending trucks to Aleppo from Wednesday, in coordination with the UN.

Mustafa Ozbek from Turkey's Humanitarian Aid Foundation (IHH) said the charity had begun dispatching meat to several parts of Syria including the northern city of Idlib, to mark the Muslim feast of Eid Al-Adha.

"Some 400,000 Syrians will benefit from it," he told AFP.

He could not confirm if the aid also reached Aleppo province, a key flashpoint in the brutal war.
Growing number of countries refusing to cooperate on rights: UN

Countries are increasingly refusing to cooperate with the UN on human rights, the world body warned Tuesday, voicing alarm at situations in dozens of states, including Syria, Iran and Venezuela.

"States may shut my office out, but they will not shut us up; neither will they blind us," UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, opening the 32nd session of the UN Human Rights Council.

He decried "an emerging pattern" in which a growing number of states were refusing access to his staff and other UN representatives tasked with investigating allegations of rights violations in their countries.

A woman after a reported barrel bomb attack in Bab al-Nairab, a neighbourhood of Aleppo in Syria, where no UN human rights monitors have been allowed since the conflict began in 2011 Thaer Mohammed (AFP/File)

Zeid voiced alarm at the situation in war-ravaged Syria, where no UN human rights monitors have been allowed in since the deadly conflict erupted in March 2011.

"This is a state led by a medical doctor and yet is believed to have gassed its own people," he said, also decrying attacks on hospitals and civilians neighbourhoods, and the detention of tens of thousands of people in "inhuman conditions".

"Words cannot convey how profoundly I condemn this situation," he said.

Zeid also criticised Venezuela, which for the past two and a half years has refused to even issue a visa to his representative in the region.

"Its comprehensive denial of access to my staff is particularly shocking in the light of our acute concerns regarding allegations of repression of opposition voices and civil society groups," he said.

Among his concerns he listed arbitrary arrests, excessive use of force against peaceful protests, and a dramatic decline in economic and social rights that has sparked widespread hunger.

Iran meanwhile had blocked all access to his staff since 2013, which he said was "particularly regrettable given the reports we continue to receive of fundamental problems with the administration of criminal justice" in the country.

Especially worrying, is the "continued execution of large numbers of people, including juveniles", he said.

Belarus, Eritrea and North Korea have also flatly refused all access by UN rights monitors, while Israel has repeatedly refused to cooperate with probes into the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, he said.

Zeid also slammed the Turkey for not allowing his staff into its restive southeastern region, despite "repeated and serious allegations" of violations including "extrajudicial killings and massive displacement" amid demolition of entire towns and villages.

Zeid stressed that rights investigators would not turn a blind eye to situations simply because they were blocked from investigating them on the ground.

"If access is refused us, we will assume the worst," he said.
News / National

by Andile Tshuma

A ZIMBABWE National Army officer has been arraigned for stabbing his wife after a fight over infidelity. Mehluli Maseko (36), a Corporal at Field Regiment based in Mt Darwin, appeared before Western Commonage magistrate Ms Tancy Dube initially charged with domestic violence. The charge has since been altered to attempted murder owing to his wife's deteriorating condition.Maseko pleaded guilty and was remanded in custody pending a medical report. He allegedly stabbed his 23-year-old wife, Ms Sithobekile Ngwenya, with a kitchen knife. For the State, Mr Mufaro Mageza said: "On September 5 at around 10PM, the complainant got home and the accused started accusing her of infidelity."Maseko allegedly started throwing out Ngwenya's clothes and she attempted to enter the spare bedroom."A misunderstanding erupted and the accused person took a kitchen knife and stabbed her once in the stomach. The complainant tried to block the knife when Maseko intended to stab her for the second time. However, she was stabbed on the right palm," said Mr Mageza.He said Maseko accidentally stabbed himself on the right knee. Mr Mageza said Ms Ngwenya sustained serious injuries and was ferried to hospital in an ambulance. He said a medical report is not yet out as the complainant is still admitted in hospital.Maseko later handed himself over to the police. In a warned and cautioned statement, Ms Ngwenya denied having a lover and said she had been with her husband's sister. "I do not know what he was talking about. I was with aunt ( Maseko's sister), and he did not want to hear that or believe it. I had spent the day with his sister," she said.
Fugitive Snowden urges Obama to pardon him

US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden called on President Barack Obama to pardon him, saying in comments published Tuesday it had been morally "necessary" to shine a light on mass surveillance.

The former intelligence contractor has spent three years in exile in Russia after initiating the largest data leaks in US history, fuelling a firestorm over the issue of mass surveillance.

"If not for these disclosures, if not for these revelations, we would be worse off," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper in a video-link interview from Moscow on Monday.

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has spent three years in exile in Russia after initiating the largest data leaks in US history, fuelling a firestorm over the issue of mass surveillance Mandel Ngan (AFP/File)

"Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing, but that is perhaps why the pardon power exists -- for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things," he said.

The 33-year-old insisted he had widespread support, saying the "public by and large cares more about these issues far more than I anticipated."

Snowden, whose residency permit in Russia runs out next year, explained he was prepared to spend time in jail in the US, adding he was "willing to make a lot of sacrifices for my country".

US anti-establishment director Oliver Stone called for Obama to pardon Snowden while unveiling his espionage thriller biopic about the whistleblower at the Toronto film festival earlier this month.
Egypt to build memorial, compensate Mexican tourists

Egypt will build a memorial for Mexican tourists mistakenly killed in a military strike last year while a travel association will compensate their families and survivors, Mexico's government said Tuesday.

Eight tourists and four Egyptians were killed by security forces on September 13, 2015 when they came under fire during a lunch break in Egypt's vast Western Desert while on their way to the Bahariya oasis.

Survivors have told Mexican diplomats that they came under fire from a plane and helicopters.

Eight tourists and four Egyptians were killed by security forces on September 13, 2015 when they came under fire in Egypt's vast Western Desert Hector Guerrero (AFP/File)

Egypt said the tourists had entered a restricted area and were "mistakenly" killed as security forces chased jihadists.

Mexico's foreign ministry said in a statement that the Egyptian Travel Agents Association has agreed to provide an "economic compensation" to the survivors and families of the dead.

The ministry did not provide a monetary figure but the association said in May that it had paid $140,000 each to the families of three of the victims after they agreed not to press legal proceedings against Egypt.

Ahmed Ibrahim, treasurer of the Egyptian Travel Agents Association, told AFP at the time that the group agreed to compensate them after an investigation found that the travel agency looking after the tourists was responsible for their deaths.

In January, Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu said Egypt's tourism ministry "found that the administrative authorities and the travel agency should have had more clarity on the permit" to visit the desert.
Zika money 'essentially all spent': US doctors

Money to fight the spread of Zika virus in the United States is "essentially all spent," top US doctors said Tuesday, urging Congress to come to agreement on new funding measures.

The United States and its territories have recorded more than 19,600 Zika infections, and Florida is seeing a rise in locally transmitted cases of the virus which is particularly dangerous for pregnant women because it can cause microcephaly, an irreversible deformation of the brain and skull, in infants.

Already, 18 babies have been born with Zika-related birth defects in the United States, said Beth Bell, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.

A mosquito control inspector sprays pesticide to kill mosquitos in August, as part of the US fight to control the Zika virus outbreak in Miami, Florida Joe Raedle (Getty/AFP/File)

However, a $1.1 billion funding bill was rejected last week for the third time by US Senate Democrats, after Republicans inserted language that would end funding for a major abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, leading doctors from the CDC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics warned that critical elements of the public health response and research on vaccines may come to a halt by month's end.

"Funding for Zika research, for prevention and for control efforts -- including mosquito surveillance and control -- is essentially all spent," said Bell.

"Without additional resources from Congress, critical public health work may not be accomplished."

She said lawmakers have provided no funds for health authorities in the next fiscal year, which begins in October.

"There will be severely limited capacity to support mosquito control and surveillance, no funds to conduct multi-year studies needed to protect pregnant women by better understanding the link between Zika disease and birth defects, and no support to states and territories like Florida and Puerto Rico to manage cases of Zika-diagnosed patients and increase lab capacity," Bell warned.

Important work on vaccine research may be suspended or cancelled, and efforts to devise better tests for Zika will also be slowed or stopped altogether, she said.

"Allowing this to happen needlessly puts the American people at risk and will result in more Zika infections and potentially more babies being born with microcephaly and other birth defects."

- Political battle -

Last week, Senate Democrats voted unanimously to stop the legislation from moving forward, opposing measures that would have blocked funding for reproductive health group Planned Parenthood and allowed Confederate flags to fly at military cemeteries.

The vote, which required 60 votes to pass in the Republican-controlled chamber, failed 52 to 46.

Since President Barack Obama made his initial $1.9 billion funding request in February, the CDC has transferred tens of millions of dollars to boost states' ability to respond to the spread of Zika. Other money has been moved from coffers meant to fight Ebola.

Without a new release of funds, the cashflow will end for Florida, which announced eight new non-travel related cases of Zika on Monday, bringing the state's total of local cases to 62 and the overall count in Florida to 771, including 86 pregnant women.

"We will not have any additional funding to help Florida continue to respond to local transmission," said Bell.

Nationwide, the United States and its territories, including Puerto Rico, have reported a total of 1,751 cases of pregnant women showing lab evidence of Zika infection.

Karen Remley, executive director of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents 66,000 pediatricians and pediatric specialists, urged leaders to consider the lifelong impact of Zika on affected babies.

"This is going to be a major public health issue and having adequate funding to care for these children is very, very important," she said.

"It is the most important health issue that will ever occur to the families that have a baby who is born with Zika," she added.

"We need to get the federal government to act together, comprehensively, to be able to support these children, these families and the infrastructure that is needed."
NSA chief 'perplexed' that Twitter won't share key data

The National Security Agency chief said Tuesday he was "perplexed" over Twitter's move to block US intelligence from accessing data which may help thwart violent attack plots.

NSA director Admiral Michael Rogers made the comments at a congressional hearing in response to Senator John McCain's criticism of Twitter for refusing access to a real-time analytics service called Dataminr.

McCain queried Rogers about a Wall Street Journal report in May that Twitter had blocked intelligence agencies from using Dataminr, which uses algorithms and location tools to reveal patterns among tweets.

Twitter has said it allows both government and business to use the data, as long as it is not for "surveillance" purposes Leon Neal (AFP/File)

The veteran senator said the report indicated that Dataminr had alerted its clients minutes before this year's Brussels attacks and at the time the November Paris attacks began to unfold.

"So we have a situation where we have the ability to detect terror attacks... Yet in order to for us to anticipate these attacks we have to have certain information, and Twitter is refusing to allow them to have certain information which literally could prevent attacks?" the senator who heads the Armed Services Committee asked.

Rogers replied: "Yes sir, and at the same time (Twitter is) still willing to provide that information to others for business, for sale, for revenue."

He added, "I'm perplexed by their approach in this particular incident.. Clearly, I wish I had a better understanding, and perhaps there are insights that I am not aware of."

McCain then said of Twitter: "So shame on them."

Twitter has said it allows both government and business to use the data, as long as it is not for "surveillance" purposes. Media reports have said that Twitter, which owns a stake in Dataminr, did not want to appear to be too close to US intelligence.

"Dataminr uses public tweets to sell breaking news alerts to media organizations and government agencies, for non-surveillance purposes," a Twitter spokesman said in a statement.

"Due to privacy concerns, we have not authorized Dataminr or any third party to sell data to a government or intelligence agency for surveillance purposes. This is a longstanding Twitter policy, not a new development."

The dispute involving Twitter is the latest between US tech firms and the government over the degree of cooperation in fighting crime and other violence, in view of privacy concerns.
US challenges $100 bn in China rice, cereal subsidies

US President Barack Obama launched legal action against "unfair" Chinese rice, wheat and corn subsidies at the World Trade Organization on Tuesday, setting up a culturally sensitive multi-billion-dollar trade spat.

The United States alleges that China doled out $100 billion in "market price support" for the grains, above levels agreed at the Geneva-based WTO.

"When other countries flout the rules to try and undercut American workers and farmers, we hold them accountable," Obama said in a statement announcing the action.

The United States alleges that China doled out $100 billion in "market price support" for rice and cereals, above levels agreed at the Geneva-based WTO Noel Celis (AFP/File)

China is the world's largest producer of wheat and rice, holding significant sway over world markets.

Rice, in particular, is a food staple, with important cultural and political significance.

- Political edge -

In announcing the WTO action, US officials said Chinese officials had since 2012 overshot agreed subsidy levels of 8.5 percent above reference prices on the grain commodities.

"These programs distort Chinese prices, undercut American farmers and clearly break the limits China committed to when they joined the WTO," US Trade Representative Michael Froman said in remarks announcing the action.

He was joined by US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who said the US could improve on its annual $20 billion in agriculture exports to China, which accounts for 200,000 US jobs, "if China is willing to operate a WTO-consistent trade regime."

Just six decades ago, Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward -- a drive to industrialize China -- spurred mass famine that killed as many as 45 million people.

Today, China's government has put a premium on agricultural self-sufficiency and safeguarding supply, much to Washington's ire.

It believes that Chinese state aid lowers production costs for the country's farmers, making them more competitive around the world.

Many of the jobs supported by agricultural trade with China are in states like Iowa and Kansas which, because of peculiarities of the US electoral system, have an outsized role in deciding presidential elections.

In a nod to that reality, Obama's statement had a distinctly political edge.

"China's government has set prices for wheat, corn, and rice well above market levels, which has led to unfair government subsidies that are in violation of WTO rules," Obama said.

"These unfairly distorted prices on important crops lead to overproduction in China and disadvantage American farmers who export these same crops around the world."

- 14th WTO case -

The 2016 election race has seen Republican and Democratic presidential candidates take a much more protectionist line on trade.

China has been the target of particularly tough campaign rhetoric.

Republican nominee Donald Trump has skewered China for stealing US trade secrets and called Beijing "the greatest currency manipulators ever."

Obama's administration has made a bet that binding China into international rules, like those at the WTO, will ultimately serve US interests better than sanctions.

But the White House is quick to point out that it will hold Beijing to account.

"This is the 14th WTO case we've launched against China since I took office," Obama said. "And we've won every case that's been decided."

"We're confident the case we're bringing today will be no different," he added.

The action also occurs as the Obama administration battles to save the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-country Pacific-area trade agreement which both Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton have said they oppose and which activists have criticized as undermining member countries' laws and sovereignty.

"As we wait on Congress to act on TPP, China is pushing its alternative to it, a trade agreement that includes 16 countries stretching from India to Japan," Froman, the trade representative, said Tuesday.

Froman said the Chinese version, known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, would exclude the US and would not preserve fair health and safety regulations or prevent unfair competition, cross-border data interception and intellectual property theft.

"It has none of the high standards that TPP has," said Froman.

Senior US lawmakers have cast doubt on the chances of US ratification before Obama leaves office in January.
Somalia lifts controversial ban on Kenyan khat

Somalia on Tuesday agreed to lift a week-old ban on imports of Kenyan khat after a storm of controversy from angry growers of the leafy narcotic in neighbouring Kenya.

The decision was made on the margins of a historic one-day summit in the Somali capital, which was hosting a top-level African gathering for the first time in more than four decades.

Speaking at the close of the summit of the eight-nation IGAD trade bloc, Kenya's foreign minister Amina Mohamed said "the leaders have discussed relations between the two countries and ... the Miraa ban will be lifted as of the 14th September."

Khat is a red-stemmed, green-leafed plant that has a mildly amphetamine-like effect when chewed, like having one too many espressos Tony Karumba (AFP/File)

Khat, which is also known as miraa, is a red-stemmed, green-leafed plant that has a mildly amphetamine-like effect when chewed, like having one too many espressos.

Among Somalis it has long had social, cultural and religious uses but it is also frequently abused.

Early last week, Somalia's government suddenly banned aircraft that were carrying khat from entering Somali airspace.

While it is enjoyed in Somalia, khat is grown in neighbouring Ethiopia and Kenya, both of which have large farming communities relying on its export for their livelihoods.

Contacted by AFP, Somalia's transport minister Ali Ahmed Jama Jangeli had refused to give any reason for the ban and no explanation had been offered by any other government officials.

"This is a big loss to us," Dave Muthuri, chairman of the Kenya Miraa Farmers and Traders Association said last week.

"Farmers are crying because of the loss they are incurring. It caught everyone off-guard," he added.

Khat is banned in the US, Canada and most of Europe -- all places with large diaspora Somali communities.

But no government or authority has ever succeeded in banning it in Somalia, not the military dictatorship, the warlords nor the Islamic extremists.

The one-day summit was the first held there of the IGAD trade bloc since its creation in 1986.
Educate Europe's refugees for rebuilding at home: Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama on Tuesday urged Europe to emphasise education for the hundreds of thousands of refugees that have arrived mainly from the war-torn Middle East as a means of rebuilding their home countries.

"Provide them education, particularly for children," the Tibetan spiritual leader told AFP during a visit to France. "Then... eventually these refugees return (to) their own land and rebuild their own countries."

The 81-year-old Buddhist monk appealed to "the real spirit of the European Union", urging the bloc to "consider the importance of the common interest" in dealing with the refugee crisis.

The Dalai Lama gestures as he delivers a speech during a group hearing at the Palais des Congres, on September 13, 2016 in Paris, during his first visit to France in five years Eric Feferberg (AFP)

More than one million refugees and migrants have entered Europe over the past year, largely fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate lamented the "terrible situations" they fled, saying: "Too much killing! And these innocent children (and) old people, I think, suffered a lot."

The Dalai Lama, who fled to India along with thousands of others after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, said: "We Tibetan refugees... we are all thinking (of a) return to our own country."

Many settled in and around the northern Indian town of Dharamsala where a Tibetan government-in-exile functions that is not recognised by any foreign state.

The Dalai Lama, who is making his first visit to France in five years, will travel to Strasbourg before he leaves on Sunday.

He will not meet with any French leaders during the trip that is focused on inter-faith dialogue, environmental issues and Tibetan culture.
DR Congo warlord on hunger strike at war crimes trial

Congolese former rebel Bosco Ntaganda has gone on hunger strike and is refusing to appear at his international war crimes trial in protest against his detention conditions, judges were told on Tuesday.

Ntaganda has also instructed his defence team to stop acting on his behalf at his trial which opened at the International Criminal Court in The Hague a year ago.

In a long, rambling, written statement seen by AFP, Ntaganda, who was absent from the courtroom, said "there is no possibility that I will see my wife and children again under normal conditions."

Congolese former rebel Bosco Ntaganda has denied 18 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising out of savage ethnic attacks carried out by his rebel Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo in 2002-2003 Michael Kooren (Pool/AFP/File)

"That's why I am ready to die."

Last week, presiding judge Robert Fremr refused to lift visiting restrictions, citing concern he could be trying to interfere with witnesses or intimidate them.

But Fremr insisted "nothing in the restrictions prevents family visits from taking place."

Ntaganda has denied 18 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising out of savage ethnic attacks carried out in the Democratic Republic of Congo by his rebel Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC) in 2002-2003.

In his statement, read in court by his lawyer he said, "When I gave myself up three years ago, I thought I would be able to defend myself. But I know now that is not the case. I know there is no way out, and I no longer have any hope."

The judges rejected a defence request to adjourn the trial until Monday, and said the hearings would resume on Wednesday, ordering his defence team to appear in court to represent him.

The judges also ordered that a medical professional should assess Ntaganda's fitness and that a visit from his family should be arranged expeditiously.

Prosecution lawyer Nicole Samson argued that the "onset of depression seems to have been a fairly speedy one and appears in our submission ... to be a manipulative tactic aimed at halting proceedings and negotiating with the chamber."

Ntaganda was handed over to the ICC after he turned himself into the US embassy in Kigali in 2013.

The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been mired for two decades in ethnically-charged wars, as rebels battle for control of its rich mineral resources.
Italy gives details of planned Libya military hospital

Italy is to build a 50-bed military field hospital to treat injured Libyan government forces in the conflict-wracked north of the country, ministers said Tuesday.

The hospital will be built at Misrata airport and will be protected by a unit of 100 troops.

"We are planning to deploy around 300 people, 65 doctors and nurses, 135 logistics staff and 100 for the protection of the hospital," Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti told a hearing of the parliamentary committee for defence and foreign affairs.

The 50-bed military field hospital will be built at Misrata airport (pictured) and will be protected by a unit of 100 troops Mahmud Turkia (AFP/File)

A C-27 transport plane is to be stationed at the airport in case of a need for emergency evacuations and an Italian warship will provide further security back-up from just off the Libyan coast, Pinotti said.

The minister said the Italian contingent would be operational immediately but gave no timetable for having the hospital up and running. Italy was acting on a request made by Libya's UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) on August 9, she added.

Italy, which has offered to lead a UN-backed peace force into its former colony when conditions on the ground allow, has recently evacuated and treated a number of GNA-loyal fighters who suffered serious injuries during an offensive against Islamic State jihadists in the city of Sirte.

As well as trying to eliminate the IS contingent in Sirte, the GNA is facing a new challenge to its authority from a rival administration based in the east of the country and backed by military strongman General Khalifa Haftar.

Forces operating under Haftar on Monday took control of a key Mediterranean oil port, after seizing two others at the weekend.

The move has raised fears Libya could be on the verge of a new cycle of conflict with analysts saying Haftar is taking advantage of the GNA forces being exhausted by their efforts against IS.

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Haftar's seizure of the oil ports was "negative because it damages the process of stabilising Libya."
Israel ex-president Peres suffers 'major' stroke

Former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres, the last of Israel's founding fathers, suffered a "major" stroke and was breathing with the aid of a respirator in intensive care early Wednesday.

Nationwide concern mounted over the condition of 93-year-old Peres, widely respected as an elder statesman both in Israel and abroad.

Peres suffered "a major stroke today with a component of bleeding," Dr. Yitzhak Kreis told journalists late Tuesday outside the hospital near Tel Aviv where he was being treated.

The last of Israel's founding fathers, Shimon Peres, pictured on November 14, 2015, has held nearly every major office in the country Jack Guez (AFP/File)

He was sedated in the intensive care unit, said Kreis, director of the Sheba Medical Centre at Tel HaShomer in Ramat Gan.

A later statement from Peres's office said he was in serious but stable condition, with doctors having decided not to operate for the time being.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted the head of the hospital's stroke unit as saying "the damage isn't the main issue currently."

"We're working on getting him to a state in which his life won't be in jeopardy," Dr. David Orion said.

Peres's son Chemi told journalists that "we are going to have to take difficult decisions apparently later, but not yet."

"Myself and my family members are going through difficult times, difficult hours," he said.

"I know that my father did not care about anything as much as he cares about people, as much as he cares about Israel, the Jewish people, and the people in Israel," he said.

"And I will take this opportunity on his behalf to send all of you his love."

- Last founding father -

The last of Israel's founding fathers, Peres has held nearly every major office in the country, including prime minister twice and president, a mostly ceremonial post, from 2007 to 2014.

A former hawk turned dove, the highlight of his career came in 1994, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Yitzhak Rabin and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo accords with the Palestinians.

The first of the Oslo accords was signed exactly 23 years ago Tuesday -- September 13, 1993. Rabin was assassinated two years later.

Statements of concern flooded in from the country's politicians and around 40 journalists gathered outside the hospital, Israel's largest, awaiting word on his treatment.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had spoken with the director of the hospital to receive an update, a spokesman said.

"The prime minister conveyed the prayers of the entire nation for a quick recovery," his office said.

Netanyahu said on his twitter account: "Shimon, we all love you".

President Reuven Rivlin said in a statement he was "following with concern the updates from the hospital, and pray together with the entire people for my friend Shimon's recovery."

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog also wished the elder statesman a rapid recovery.

Nickolay Mladenov, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said he was praying for Peres, calling him "a patriarch of peace and progress."

- Daily gymnastics -

In January, Peres was hospitalised twice for heart trouble.

In the first instance, the hospital said he had suffered a "mild cardiac event" and underwent catheterisation to widen an artery.

He was rushed to hospital a second time days later with chest pains and an irregular heartbeat.

Peres has sought to maintain an active schedule despite his age, particularly through events related to his Peres Center for Peace.

When leaving hospital on January 19, Peres said he was keen to get back to work.

"I'm so happy to return to work, that was the whole purpose of this operation," he told reporters.

He met US Vice President Joe Biden during a visit to Israel in March.

He once confided that the secret to his longevity was daily gymnastics, eating little and drinking one or two glasses of good wine.

Having earlier hawkishly rejected any compromise with hostile Arab states, he said he was converted after 1977, when Egyptian president Anwar Sadat made a historic visit to Jerusalem, leading to the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty.

Born in Poland in 1923, Peres emigrated to what was then British mandatory Palestine when he was 11.

He joined the Zionist struggle in the 1940s and while hitchhiking met David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first prime minister.

He became director general of the nascent defence ministry at only 29 years old.

Beyond his accomplishments in the public eye, Peres was also seen as a driving force in the development of Israel's undeclared nuclear programme.

The media gather outside the Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Aviv on September 13, 2016 where Israeli ex-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres is being treated for a stroke Jack Guez (AFP)
News / National

by Staff reporter

President Robert Mugabe has returned home after attending the inauguration of Zambia's sixth president, Edgar Lungu today.In his address, President Lungu pledged to unite the people of Zambia under the motto" 'One Zambia One Nation,' during his five year term.He also promised to visit Dundumwezi constituency and thank the 252 voters who voted for him against 30810 who voted for the opposition.Speaking on behalf of other heads of state and government at the event held at the 60 000 capacity Heroes Stadium in Lusaka, President Mugabe said democratic states do not tolerate organisations which want to get to power through violence."Zambia has demonstrated that coming to power should only come through the ballot box and not by any means," he said.Mugabe added that the people of Zambia are an envy of many countries in the region as their motto: 'One Zambia One Nation,' has taught many countries that peace and investment can only be a reality under such a motto.He said President Lungu's victory is the people's victory, adding that the Zambian elections were free and fair as confirmed by international observers present.Mugabe noted that Zambia and Zimbabwe have always been siamese twins, adding that Zambia's founding president, Dr Kenneth Kaunda housed most liberation movements during their fight for independence from colonial powers.
Myanmar's Suu Kyi talks human rights on historic UK visit

Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday met with British Prime Minister Theresa May during her first visit to London since becoming Myanmar's de facto leader, with the thorny issue of human rights on the agenda.

The two women discussed the challenges faced by Myanmar as it transitions from military rule to democracy during Suu Kyi's first visit outside of Asia since her party's election victory last year.

"They agreed that to create a society that truly works for all, it would be important to see Burma (Myanmar) make further progress in the creation of jobs, in improving access to quality healthcare, and on reforming the education system," said May's Downing Street office.

British Prime Minister Theresa May (R) speaks with Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi inside 10 Downing Street in central London on September 13, 2016 Ben Stansall (POOL/AFP)

London stands "ready to provide further assistance as Burma continues to develop," including through 118 million (138 million euros, $156 million) in support this year, it added.

May also "raised concerns about human rights abuses in the Burmese military," with the nobel laureate, according to a Downing Street summary of the meeting.

Despite winning a landslide in last November's elections, which ended decades of brutal military rule, Suu Kyi is banned by a junta-era constitution from becoming president.

Instead she has taken the role of foreign minister and created a new position for herself as state counsellor. She has also appointed a longtime friend and ally, Htin Kyaw, to be a proxy president.

Suu Kyi met Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday, for talks including on Myanmar's Rakhine region, which is riven by ethnic divisions and is home to the stateless Muslim Rohingya.

Sectarian bloodshed in the western state in 2012 forced more than 100,000 Rohingya into displacement camps.

The Rohingya, a minority in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar, are denied citizenship and face severe restrictions on their movements and access to health care and other basic services.

Johnson welcomed the establishment of the Rakhine Commission to deal with the issue.

"We remain committed to supporting Burma's extraordinary reforms and we welcome a democratic, stable and prosperous Burma that can contribute to stability and security in southeast Asia and beyond," said Johnson.
Protesters who occupied Oregon refuge go on trial

A group of armed protesters who occupied a remote wildlife refuge in Oregon earlier this year, drawing attention to a decades-old conflict over public land use in the United States, went on trial Tuesday.

The seven defendants, including brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, are charged with conspiring to impede federal employees at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge through intimidation or force. Five of the defendants are also charged with possession of a firearm and two with theft of government property.

The 41-day siege that began January 2 at the remote reserve put the spotlight on a long-running dispute over millions of acres of public land in the US West.

This combination photo shows Ammon Bundy(L)and Ryan Bundy, who were arrested after a three-week standoff with police at an Oregon wildlife refuge that exploded into violence Handout (Multnomah County Sheriff/AFP/File)

It was led by the Bundy brothers, whose father Cliven Bundy had been involved in a similar confrontation in 2014 with federal officials over cattle grazing on public land in Nevada.

The takeover in Oregon ended with the dramatic surrender of four holdouts, including one who threatened to commit suicide in a phone call with mediators that was streamed live.

The group's spokesman, LaVoy Finicum, had earlier been shot and killed by police during a traffic stop as he, the Bundys and several others were headed to a community meeting to plead their cause.

The issue of land rights for decades has been a thorny one in western US states where the federal government owns most of the land.

Many conservative politicians and ranchers like the Bundys argue that the land has been mismanaged and should be handed over to states or turned into private property.

The occupation of the refuge in Oregon stemmed from a dispute between local ranchers and federal authorities and escalated into a full-blown crisis that drew international attention.

In all, 26 people have been indicted in relation to the takeover and 11 have struck plea deals with prosecutors. Charges were dropped against one of the defendants earlier this month and the remaining seven are set to go on trial in February.

The trial that got underway on Tuesday in Portland is expected to last until November.
US sees 'disturbing trend' as Iran threatens planes

The United States warned of "disturbing trends" in Iran's behavior Tuesday after Tehran's military threatened to down two US Navy planes over the Strait of Hormuz.

Some in Washington had hoped Iran's regime would show a warmer face to the world after this year's nuclear deal, but a US official admitted this has not been the case.

Asked about Iran's military provocations, its ballistic missile tests and its detention of US citizens, State Department spokesman Mark Toner acknowledged concern.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon has denounced a series of "unsafe and unprofessional" maritime encounters in the Gulf, including one that prompted an American ship to fire warning shots at an Iranian vessel that got too close Anthony R. Martinez (Navy Media Content Services/AFP/File)

"We have seen some disturbing, as you cited, trends," he said, adding of the threat to the planes, "we have seen a succession of these events over the past month or so."

The spokesman insisted that Iran would have been an even greater threat to its region and to the United States if it had not signed the deal to limit its nuclear ambitions.

But he admitted it was possible that Iran had stepped up its provocations in other domains after the controversial agreement won the Islamic republic sanctions relief.

"I can't rule that out," Toner said, when asked if the nuclear deal, rather than taming Iran, had emboldened it to adopt a more aggressive stance.

"Iran, like many countries, has an internal political process that is defined by a lot of different dynamics, so I can't give an assessment on that one way or another."

Earlier, the Pentagon had confirmed the latest in a series of dangerous military encounters between the US Navy and Iranian forces near key oil trade routes in the Gulf.

Two US maritime patrol aircraft were flying separate missions in international airspace on September 10 when Iranian air defense batteries challenged them by radio.

US Naval Forces Central Command spokesman Commander Bill Urban said the Iranians told the pilots they "were flying near Iranian airspace, and if they did not change course immediately that 'we will fire Iranian missile'."

"The US aircraft independently replied, 'This is a coalition aircraft conducting routine operations in international airspace,' and continued their respective missions," he added.

The spokesman said the Iranian warning was "unprofessional" but the US Navy has not deemed the incident "unsafe" because the US planes were outside known Iranian anti-aircraft missile ranges.

- Series of blunders -

In recent weeks, the Pentagon has denounced a series of "unsafe and unprofessional" maritime encounters in the Gulf, including one that prompted an American ship to fire warning shots at an Iranian vessel that got too close.

Navy officials say ships from the US and Iranian navies interacted more than 300 times in 2015 and more than 250 times the first half of this year.

Ten percent of these encounters have been deemed unsafe and unprofessional.

In January, the Iranian navy briefly captured the crews of two US patrol boats that had, through a series of blunders, strayed into Iranian territorial waters.
Israel says Hamas rejects prisoners swap

A senior Israeli official said Tuesday that Hamas has rejected an offer to swap the bodies of two Israeli soldiers for those of 19 Palestinians and almost as many prisoners.

Lior Lotan, who is in charge of prisoners and missing persons, said the exchange was part of two offers turned down by Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip.

Lotan said Israel had been holding since the 2014 Gaza war 18 Palestinians from the enclave as well as the bodies of 19 others and "offered to swap them for the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers".

Two Israeli soldiers, Oron Shaul and Hadar Golding, are believed by the army to have been killed in Gaza during the 2014 war Gali Tibbon (AFP/File)

Hamas had rejected that offer and turned down a proposal to free Israeli civilians held in Gaza in return for the release of dozens of Gazans who Israel arrested for illegally entry from the strip, he said.

Two Israeli soldiers, Oron Shaul and Hadar Golding, are believed by the army to have been killed in Gaza during the 2014 war.

Hamas is thought to be holding their bodies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged this month to recover the body of Shaul.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars between 2008 and 2014.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade for around a decade and its border with Egypt also remains largely closed.
NY police seek man who tried to set Muslim woman ablaze

Police were on the hunt Tuesday for a man who set fire to a veiled British woman's clothing in Manhattan, as the American Muslim community faces growing Islamophobia.

The attack took place late Saturday in front of a luxury boutique on 5th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

The British woman, age 35, said she was walking when she suddenly felt her shirt sleeve on fire.

New York police on the hunt for a a man who set fire to a veiled British woman's clothing in Manhattan, as the American Muslim community faces growing Islamophobia Don Emmert (AFP/File)

Police declined to provide further details on the attack, saying only that they were investigating a potential hate crime. On Monday, the police released images of the incident caught by surveillance cameras and asked the public to help find the suspect.

The New York branch of the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations, which is in touch with the victim and is providing legal help, said it could not confirm whether the suspect was motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment, though his victim was wearing a hijab at the time.

"It's another (piece of) evidence that Muslims are increasingly vulnerable in this hostile political climate," said Zainab Chaudry, a CAIR spokeswoman.

"Even in places like New York City, one of the most diverse in the US, we are seeing a spike in anti-Muslim bigotry."

In August, an imam and his assistant were shot to death on the street near their mosque in the borough of Queens. An investigation into that incident has not yet established that it was Islamophobic.

After that attack, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that additional police officers would be deployed to secure mosques and the Muslim community.
Shimon Peres: Israel's hawk turned Nobel peace laureate

Shimon Peres, in critical condition Wednesday after suffering a stroke, is an Israeli elder statesman, Nobel laureate and two-time prime minister who spearheaded peace efforts with the Palestinians after breaking with his hawkish past.

The 93-year-old, who also served as president, was a towering figure in Israeli politics for decades and is the country's last surviving founding father.

Beyond his accomplishments in the public eye, he is also seen as a driving force in the development of Israel's undeclared nuclear programme.

Former Israeli President Shimon Peres was a towering figure in Israeli politics for decades and is the country's last surviving founding father Etienne Laurent (Pool/AFP/File)

He is particularly lauded abroad, and his lavish 80th birthday party was attended by ex-presidents Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev. Film director Woody Allen sent greetings "from a bad Jew to a very great Jew."

He once confided that the secret to his longevity was daily gymnastics, eating little and drinking one or two glasses of good wine.

The highlight of his career came in 1994, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Yitzhak Rabin and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo accords with the Palestinians.

The 1993 accords were hailed as historic, leading to the creation of the Palestinian Authority and parameters that were supposed to lead to peace in five years.

It was sealed with a symbolic handshake between Rabin and Arafat in Washington. Peres was foreign minister at the time and a driving force behind the agreements.

But more than two decades later, Israeli-Palestinian peace remains elusive and some are ready to bury the idea of a two-state solution.

Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to the Oslo accords in 1995, while the bloody second Palestinian intifada broke out five years later.

As a new round of talks which later collapsed began in 2013, Peres however expressed his optimism.

He said the negotiations had "a clear purpose" to have "a Jewish state by the name of Israel and an Arab state by the name of Palestine not fighting each other but living together in friendship and cooperation".

"There is no alternative to peace. There is no sense to go to war," he said.

"Terror doesn't have a message. Terror cannot bake bread and cannot offer fresh air to breathe. It's costly, it's useless, it doesn't produce anything."

- Hitchhike meeting -

Peres has held nearly every major office in a career spanning five decades.

He was among those instrumental in establishing the state of Israel, alongside its first prime minister David Ben-Gurion and other iconic figures like Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan.

Born in Poland in 1923, Peres emigrated to what was then British mandatory Palestine when he was 11.

He joined the Zionist struggle in the 1940s and while hitchhiking met Ben-Gurion, who would become his mentor.

He was part of the Haganah, the predecessor to the Israeli military, and at only 29 became director general of the nascent defence ministry.

While in that position, he helped plan the 1956 Suez war, in which Israel was allied with France and Britain.

Peres once hawkishly rejected any compromise with hostile Arab states, but said he was converted after 1977, when Egyptian president Anwar Sadat made a historic visit to Jerusalem, leading to the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty.

"I didn't change, I think the situation has changed," Peres told Time magazine in an interview published in February.

"As long as there was a danger to the existence of Israel, I was what you would call a hawk ... The minute I felt the Arabs are open to negotiation, I said that's what we prefer too."

But his embrace of peace efforts extended only so far. He was prime minister in 1996 when more than 100 civilians were killed while sheltering at a UN peacekeepers' base in the Lebanese village of Qana fired upon by Israel.

- Political stumbles -

Despite Peres's reputation as a statesman, he never managed to outright win a national election. Many in Israel opposed to the Oslo accords also blamed him for what they saw as their failure.

A member of parliament since 1959, Peres headed the Labour party from 1977.

He was prime minister between 1984 and 1986, then again from 1995-1996 after Rabin's assassination.

He would also serve as foreign, defence and finance minister.

In 2005 he left Labour to join the new centrist Kadima headed by Ariel Sharon.

The alliance ensured Israel withdrew troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation, although hopes of subsequently reviving the peace process came to nothing.

In 2007, he was elected by parliament to the largely ceremonial post of Israeli president, a crowning triumph in a career whose fortunes appeared dead just two years before, when he lost the leadership of Labour and quit the party.

Before becoming president, he had dedicated much of his time to promoting peace between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab world through his Peres Center for Peace.

He left office as president in 2014, but maintained an active schedule even after suffering heart trouble in January 2016.

He has not lost faith in the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"I think it's the only thing which is possible in order to bring an end to terror, violence and hatred," he said in the Time interview.

Peres, who speaks English and French as well as Hebrew, was married to Sonya, who died in 2011. The couple had three children and numerous grandchildren.

A member of parliament since 1959, Shimon Peres headed Israel's Labour party from 1977 until Yitzhak Rabin took over in 1992

Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (centre) signs the historic Israel-PLO Oslo Accords on Palestinian autonomy in the occupied territories in a ceremony at the White House in Washington, D.C on September 13, 1993 J. David Ake (AFP/File)

Former French president Jacques Chirac (right) welcomes Shimon Peres at the Elysee Palace in Paris on April 18, 2005 Patrick Kovarik (AFP/File)
Hillary Clinton to resume campaigning Thursday

Hillary Clinton will return to the White House campaign trail Thursday after a few days recovering at home from pneumonia, her spokesman said.

"We will resume campaign travel on Thursday, more details to come," said the Democratic nominee's spokesman Nick Merrill in a statement late Tuesday.

Merrill said Clinton spent the day "catching up on reading briefings, making calls," and watching Barack Obama's rousing speech in Philadelphia, in which the president offered unstinting praise of his former secretary of state.
Older people underrepresented in film, new survey finds

NEW YORK (AP)  Older people are significantly underrepresented in movies and often are the butt of ageist jokes, an analysis of top films has found.

The study, being released Tuesday by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, found just 11 percent of some 4,066 speaking characters in the 100 top U.S. films of 2015 were 60 or older. Only 10 roles considered leads or co-leads were held by actors 60 or older at the time of the film's release, the study found.

"We see not just a skewing but an erasure of these really vibrant communities in the United States," said Stacy Smith, the USC professor who led the research.

FILE - In this Aug. 9, 2016 file photo, actress Meryl Streep attends the premiere of "Florence Foster Jenkins" in New York. Older people are significantly underrepresented in movies, an analysis of top films has found. Streep is among just three women out of 10 older actors in lead roles cited in the study. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

The dichotomy was starkest for women: Only 27 percent of older characters in the films were female. Among lead roles, only three of 10 with older actors were women (Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren and Lin Shaye). This is despite the fact that women outlive men and constitute a larger segment of U.S. seniors. The Census Bureau estimates 18.5 percent of the U.S. population is 60 or older.

"Seniors on screen are an endangered species in cinematic storytelling," the authors wrote in the report, which was funded by the insurer Humana Inc. and was to be formally released at an aging forum in New York.

More than half of films with a leading or supporting senior character included dialogue the researchers deemed ageist, everything from, "That senior bus was running late, huh?" to, "You are nothing but a relic from a deleted timeline." Meantime, only about 29 percent of leading or supporting senior characters were shown engaging with computers, cellphones or other types of technology.

Smith said ageism seemed to be given a pass in pop culture: "This is an area that people don't seem to be as concerned," she said.

Though Hollywood's depictions of older adults often amounted to stereotypical caricatures of oddballs or cranks, they also were often portrayed as healthy and professionally active. About 62 percent of older characters were depicted with a job and only about one in 10 were shown with health-related problems. Few were shown using canes, wheelchairs or other mobility aids; and even fewer showed signs of cognitive impairment.

Among older characters who died within their films, some 79 percent were victims of violence, a far cry from the reality of heart and respiratory disease and other common causes of death for older Americans.

___

Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org or https://twitter.com/sedensky
Paging all doctors.

Kirstie Alley is joining the second-season cast of Fox TV's Scream Queens.

The 65-year-old Emmy-award winner is making her return to broadcast television for a major series regular role, playing a 'brilliant and devious' hospital administrator, Fox said Monday.

Scroll down for video

New royalty in town! Kirstie Alley is joining the second-season cast of Fox TV's Scream Queens, Fox announced on Monday; here she's pictured in January

The show's setting is moving from a college campus to an asylum-turned-hospital, called the C.U.R.E Institute, with a dark past that handles bizarre medical cases.

The Cheers vet joins newcomers John Stamos and Taylor Lautner, who play the role of handsome doctors, as well as James Earl.

The show's returning stars include Jamie Lee Curtis, Emma Roberts and Lea Michele.

Kirstie's newest gig was praised in Fox's press release calling her 'one of the great actresses of her generation, proving time and again that she is capable of great depth and range, as well as possessing a comedic timing second to none.'

Big return: This is the 65-year-old actress's return to broadcast television after her 2013 sitcom, Kirstie

'Great actresses of her generation': Fox released a press statement, praising the addition of Kirstie to the cast; pictured here in January

This is the star's first regular appearance since her short-lived 2013 TV Land sitcom, Kirstie.

The mom-of-two also starred in the recent Will Arnett and Mitch Hurwitz comedy, Flaked, ABC's The Middle, and TV Land's Hot in Cleveland.

And this isn't the actress's only new addition in her life as she recently opened up to People Magazine about her 50lbs weight loss in 2014 thanks to a strict diet and workout regime.

Highly-anticipated: The mom-of-two also joins newcomers John Stamos and Taylor Lautner

Flaked: The Emmy-award winner guest starred on Netflix' Flaked

Kirstie told People: 'I think that when you lose weight and keep it off for a little while, which has been a few years for me now, your body starts to remember what it was supposed to look like.'

The Fat Actress alum also spoke about how thrilled she is to be a grandmother.

'Being a grandma is in the top three best things that has ever happened to me,' she said. 'Friends used to show pictures of their grandkids and I'd be like, "Yeah yeah they're cut" or "whatever." Now I'm totally that grandmother.'

The child is Waylon Tripp Parker - the son of her son William. William's father is Alley's ex, the actor Parker Stevenson, 64.

Kirstie can be seen on season 2, which premieres September 20th on Fox.
In transition, Oscar de la Renta presents a team effort

NEW YORK (AP)  All fashion shows are team efforts, but that was truer than usual at Oscar de la Renta's Spring 2017 runway show Monday at New York Fashion Week.

Designer Peter Copping left his post abruptly in July, citing only personal circumstances, after less than two years in the job. It was one of a slew of recent departures of top designers at major labels. Copping had been the designated successor of the legendary de la Renta, who died of cancer just as Copping came aboard in 2014.

The new creative directors, Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia, will make their debut collection in February. And so Monday's show was the work of a 13-member design team at the company. The team ran out in unison, smiling and waving, at the end of the show.

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

As for the show itself, it exhibited the usual polish and finesse one has come to expect at a de la Renta show, with perhaps an added casual vibe: The models all wore flat sandals instead of heels. There were some relaxed caftans, and there was even a canvas safari jacket with wide-legged trousers.

The runway procession began with a summery feel in white and ivory dresses heavy on lacey patterns and florals. Hues deepened as the show progressed, with a number of items in a multi-colored paisley print, including a midriff-baring ensemble of pants and a bandeau-style top.

Things got fancier with a white silk faille gown with champagne threadwork and gold beading  still accompanied with flat sandals. There were some feathered gowns, and a dramatic long black skirt of all feathers. Two cayenne-colored silk dresses toward the end upped the elegance factor, and the show ended with a striking red gown with billowing sleeves in silk taffeta  a favorite fabric of the company's famous late founder.

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Fashion from the Oscar de la Renta Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Monday Sept. 12, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Opinion / Columnist

Nguniphobia - if we can use that term as a composite term for this anti-Zulu, anti-Ndebele fervour we are seeing - is a dangerous enterprise.But it is not because it is against the Nguni that it is dangerous, but that it is against a people! So, Sothophobia, Pediphobia, Xhosaphobia or any other people-centric phobia, would!South Africa and Zimbabwe's independences have fostered anti-Zulu and anti-Ndebele fervours that are hidden to none. And the instigator of those anti-Nguni fervours is, of course, Zimbabwe. Look what we have done to the mighty Ndebele in Zimbabwe, says Zimbabwe's architects to South Africans, you can do the same to the mighty Zulus in South Africa! That that message is State advanced from across Zimbabwe into the region is no coded secret.Salvo after political salvo of constructive clarion cries of: 'Advance, advance!', are beamed from Zimbabwe to excited receptive ears in Zimbabwe and the wider region for non-Zulu and non-Ndebele peoples to prove a political point to the Zulus in South Africa as has been done to the Ndebele in Zimbabwe. Have I wrapped for you politically the anti-Zulu fervour playing out as anti-ANC activism since the ascension of Jacob Zuma to the presidency of the ANC and the Republic of South Africa?Only yesterday, iSilo, Zulu King Zwelithini, was forced to stray into politics and say: "If South Africa thinks that it can stand on its own without the Zulu nation, it is lying to itself. There is no South Africa without us. Please don't provoke us because we'll reach boiling point..." . Said at this level, in this forum, can only mean there are serious political concerns. And this is no idle political talk!But Zimbabwe is an exception (not exceptional). It is the only State in the region in which a State has attacked a people as a people within its borders, not just knowingly, but intentionally. And you don't define yourself in terms of or against an exception!Over many years now, since Zimbabwe's rule, and certainly in the period subsequent to the Gukurahundi genocide, uMthwakazi has seen and heard cobbled exceptionalisms, nuanced differences, and crazy assertivenesses by various individuals purporting to represent groups as they have sought to delineate how NOT Ndebele or how NOT Mthwakazi they are, and how instead, they are this and that, right up to the base level of the village matriarch or patriarch. The political weapons of historical and factual reconstructivism and revisionism have been unleashed with purposeless abandon and rabid anti-Mthwakazi (in Zimbabwe) and anti-Zulu zeal, all because to them the political carcas of a defeated Mthwakazi stinks to High Heaven.I sob!But between the excesses of the Zimbabwe State and the 'fundamentalism' of Mthwakaziness, between the ear-numbing rasp of Zimbabwe's truimphantism and the muted determination of Mthwakazi's 'militant' defenders, sits normalcy, decency, and plainness - normally called people; the normal middle! It is this normal middle that will be there long after Zimbabwe's shrill voice of anti-Mthwakazi tribalism and anti-Shona highjackers of uMthwakazi's restorationism, are silent.The middle, that core, will not follow and will never fall to madman of the fringes represented by this anti-Mthwakazi Zimbabwe and gate-crushers of Mthwakazi's restorationist agenda, who still aim their political guns at other people as people. Nor will this normal middle follow the political disciples of copying and monkeying anything that looks like 'victory' against uMthwakazi by uMthwakazi's collaborators of the Shona political kingdom holding itself out as Zimbabwe. UMthwakazi went to no war against nobody and uMthwakazi has not been defeated in war by anybody!It is therefore deeply disappointing this late in the political day to see Nguniphobia masquerading as anti-Monarchism seeking to hog the political light. Can't some people see the end of the Zimbabwe Project and have the patience to wait, 36 years after a genocide against uMthwakazi?And it is not just because Zimbabwe as a State of the Zimbabwe Project is dying - naturally and figuratively - it is also because Mugabeism and his Zimbabweism have always stood as a villain standard of what not to be as a State, a ruler, and a government. Indeed, an un-standard for everything that must be rejected and despised by all, and for all time.Division of people and peoples along clans, tribes and ethnic lines, therefore, belongs to a dying and dead epoch that elevated political mischief making to governance!So, to seek to rekindle politically poisonous and tribalistic sentiments that are anti-others - via attacks on their revered institutions - through manufactured falsehoods and supercilious rants - is both sad and unfortunate.The Ndebele Monarchy was never and will never be a Nguni monarchy. Nor was the Ndebele State ever a Nguni State, not in origin, not in existence, and not in political operation. And it would not be now!Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's rule in the UK did not make Britain a Scottish State. Nor will Charles and William and Harry's rules of the UK as monarchs turn Britain into a Greek State or enclave!The right to reject the Ndebele monarchy (not personalities; clans) must directly implicate the right of Ndebele restorationists to seek to restore their Kingdom without them being set up for political and other attacks orchestrated through falsehoods, slantage and subterfuge.While there will always be disagreement and contested political viewpoints on many issues and topics, by God, let us not make people and peoples targets!We all simply don't want to go there!That the Ndebele State came into existence via a Nguni is a coincidence of history. It could well have been any ethnic group! That should not be held against the Khumalo Royal House as a political albatross around their necks for eternity. And to conflate the official and institutional positions of individuals within social and political institutions with the person, is not right.The option to reject and exist the Ndebele Kingdom will always be there for those disgusted by it if the Ndebele Kingdom is restored to a national (not subnational) State. So there you have it.For now, we reject it with all the contempt it deserves the idea that submission to a Shona political kingdom masquerading as a Republic makes anyone who thinks they are not Ndebele or Mthwakazi any better subject now than they will be a citizen under the rule of the Ndebele Kingdom.And let it also be said here, that restorationism is not a social enterprise whose work is measured in terms of how many women have received condoms etc, but is a political movement no different from a liberation movement or the republican movement (in Britain), for example. Restorationism is only one of many democratic ideas in action.And those peoples who espouse and support Restorationism must feel free as such a people to openly express their views without feeling that a whole world will be invited to besiege them in their very personhood!And since when has uMthwakazi or the Ndebele been less than the sum of the parts that make her up? Since when?----------------Vuli Moyo
HIV-positive man gets decade for unprotected Craigslist sex

ATLANTA (AP)  A Georgia man will spend the next 10 years in prison for using Craigslist to arrange sexual encounters with at least two different women without revealing he was HIV-positive.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (http://on-ajc.com/2cgBryS ) reports that 24-year-old James Allen Propes was found guilty on two counts of reckless conduct by an HIV-infected person.

The Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office says Judge Tom Davis called Propes "an evil person" during sentencing Friday.

The district attorney in a news release says two victims filed reports about Propes in 2014. Both said they met him on Craigslist, had sex with him and "later found out that he was HIV positive by finding an article online that he had been charged and convicted of a similar transaction in another state."
Alec Baldwin sues Manhattan art dealer over copy

NEW YORK (AP)  Alec Baldwin is suing a Manhattan art dealer, saying she sold him a version of a painting for $190,000 that was not the original.

In court papers filed Monday, the Daily News (http://nydn.us/2c6tATe ) reports Baldwin claims art gallery owner Mary Boone sold him an alternative version of artist Ross Bleckner's "Sea and Mirror" in 2010.

The actor said Boone told him she could get the original painting. Baldwin said he later had the painting examined by experts who told him it wasn't the original painting that Bleckner did in 1996. He's suing for the difference in value of the two paintings and attorney fees.

FILE - In this April 4, 2016 file photo, Alec Baldwin attends the NYU Tisch School of the Arts 50th Anniversary Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York. Baldwin is suing a Manhattan art dealer, saying she sold him a version of a painting for $190,000 that was not the original. In court papers filed Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, the Daily News reports Baldwin claims art gallery owner Mary Boone sold him an alternative version of artist Ross Bleckner's "Sea and Mirror" in 2010. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File)

Boone's attorney, Ted Poretz, denied the charges and said Baldwin was made aware from the start that he was not getting an original.

"Ms. Boone offered him a full refund and took every step to handle this in a professional manner," Poretz said. "Mr. Baldwin's decision to continue this personal attack is not surprising given his history of lashing out against anyone he believes is beneath him."

___
German injured falling nearly 300 feet down Alaska glacier

VALDEZ, Alaska (AP)  A 42-year-man from Germany is being treated at an Anchorage hospital after falling nearly 300 feet down a glacier.

The accident happened Saturday at Worthington Glacier near Valdez (VAL'-deez).

City officials say in a statement the man was hiking the left ridge trail above the glacier when he slid and fell between 250 and 300 feet.

Officials say he suffered multiple injuries, including leg and skull fractures.

He appeared to have been traveling alone when the accident happened. Other hikers heard him scream and called the Valdez Fire Department.

Two physicians in the group stabilized him until the fire department's backcountry search and rescue team arrived. A group of 18 people helped carry him a mile and a half down the rocky side of the glacier. A Coast Guard helicopter flew the unidentified German man about 125 miles west to Anchorage for further care.
Brazilian lawmakers vote to strip ex-speaker of his seat

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)  Brazil's lower house of Congress voted overwhelmingly late Monday to strip the legislative seat of its former speaker amid accusations of corruption and obstruction of justice.

The Chamber of Deputies voted 450 to 10 to remove Eduardo Cunha after hours of debate, adding him to a growing list of politicians and business executives who have been felled by Brazil's sprawling corruption scandals. Nine legislators abstained.

Cunha has been accused by Brazilian prosecutors of receiving millions of dollars in bribes linked to the mammoth corruption scandal at state-run oil giant Petrobras. But the issue before the Chamber of Deputies was only whether he lied about having secret banking accounts in Switzerland.

Brazil's former President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha speaks during the presentation of his defense in the Chamber of Deputies, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. Prosecutors accuse Cunha of corruption and money laundering for his role in negotiating contracts for drill ships and say he received an illegal payment of $5 million. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Cunha, who said the accounts belonged to a trust, was pressured into resigning as speaker after the accounts came to light, but he had refused to give up his post as a lawmaker. He was in his fourth term.

As speaker, Cunha was the main driver behind the impeachment process that led to the Senate trying left-leaning President Dilma Rousseff and removing her from office last month.

Cunha has been a key ally of new President Michel Temer, who had been Rousseff's vice president, but after the vote he accused Temer's administration of joining in the effort to punish him for the removal of Rousseff.

"This was a political process because I kicked off the impeachment proceedings. They wanted a trophy," he said at a news conference.

"The current administration adopted the agenda of removing me from office," he said, adding that he planned to publish a book telling about the behind-the-scenes dealings that led to the impeachment of Rousseff.

With the loss of his congressional seat, Cunha also loses his partial immunity from prosecution. In Brazil, only the country's top court can decide to charge and try federal lawmakers.

Prosecutors have alleged that Cunha is one of those tied to the Petrobras scandal, in which more than $2 billion in bribes was purportedly paid to obtain inflated contracts from the energy company. The case has ensnared some of Brazil's most powerful lawmakers and business executives.

Brazil's former President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha takes a break during the presentation of his defense in the Chamber of Deputies, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. Prosecutors accuse Cunha of corruption and money laundering for his role in negotiating contracts for drill ships and say he received an illegal payment of $5 million. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

A banner that reads in Portuguese "Temer Out!" is placed on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies during the trail of former President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. Brazilian lawmakers are deciding whether a key ally of President Michel Temer should be stripped off his seat amid accusations of corruption and obstruction of justice.(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
The United States on Tuesday sent nuclear-capable supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by U.S. and South Korean jets, were seen by an Associated Press photographer as they flew over Osan Air Base, which is 75 miles from the border with North Korea, the world's most heavily armed.

The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, without landing in South Korea.

U.S. B-1 bomber, center, flies over Osan Air Base with U.S. jets in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Tuesday

The United States has flown nuclear-capable supersonic bombers over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its fifth nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South

Such flyovers are common during higher-than-normal animosity on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war as there has never been a peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the U.S. 'nuclear umbrella' as a deterrent to North Korea. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South.

North Korea is keenly aware of the U.S. presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the U.S. nuclear threat.

It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as proof of U.S. hostility that it claims as the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

'The United States and (South Korea) are taking actions every day to strengthen our alliance and respond to North Korea's continued aggressive behavior,' Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said in a statement.

South Korean shout slogans during a rally denouncing North Korea's latest nuclear test in Seoul, South Korea

North Korea is capable of detonating another nuclear device anytime at one of its unused tunnels at the country's main atomic test site, Seoul official said Monday

A South Korean army's K1 tank moves during an annual exercise in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea

Last week's nuclear test, the North's fifth, was its most powerful test to date.

Pyongyang's claim to have used 'standardized' warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland.

South Korean army soldiers walk by a signboard showing the distance to the North Korean capital Pyongyang and to South's capital Seoul from Imjingang Station near the border village of the Panmunjom in Paju

South Korean army soldiers ride their armored vehicles during an annual exercise in Paju, South Korea

After the test, the North's nuclear weapons institute said it will take unspecified measures to further boost its nuclear capability, which analysts said hinted at a possible sixth nuclear test.

South Korea's Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said Monday that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device at any time at one of its tunnels at its main Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place.

Moon refused to say what specific evidence pointed to another possible nuclear test.

U.S. B-1 bomber, center, flies over Osan Air Base with South Korean Air Forces jet in Pyeongtaek, South Korea

But the South's Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified Seoul government sources, reported Monday that there were signs the North had finished test preparations at one tunnel that has never been used.

Yonhap did not elaborate.
Power outages delay United Airlines flights for 2 hours

NEWARK, N.J. (AP)  Power outages at a United Airlines control tower in New Jersey have delayed flights for about two hours.

The problem at Newark Liberty International Airport affected United flights Monday evening.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says United's control tower at Terminal C suffered a power failure around 5 p.m. The power was restored briefly but failed again. It was restored again around 7 p.m.

Flights have resumed. Chicago-based United Airlines says there are no residual delays.

Passengers have tweeted complaints about being stranded at the airport and idling for hours.

It's unclear what caused the power outages at Newark, where United has a hub.
2 gymnasts allege sex abuse by doctor for USA Gymnastics

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Two gymnasts, including a member of the 2000 U.S. women's Olympic team, say they were sexually abused by a former longtime doctor for USA Gymnastics, court documents and interviews show.

Dr. Larry Nassar, 53, who worked for decades for the gymnastics organization until his dismissal last year, sexually groped and fondled the teenage Olympian under the guise of physical therapy during her elite career, according to a lawsuit filed last week in California.

The Olympian is identified as "Jane Doe" in the lawsuit against Nassar and the USA Gymnastics organization. Her attorneys on Monday identified her only as a medal-winning member of the team that competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The second gymnast, Rachael Denhollander of Louisville, Kentucky, told the Indianapolis Star newspaper that Nassar sexually abused her in 2000 while she underwent treatment for lower back pain at Michigan State University, where Nassar is a faculty member.

Denhollander, who was 15 at the time, told the Star that Nassar became gradually more abusive over the course of five treatments, including massaging her breasts and penetrating her. She said she filed a complaint last month with university police.

Denhollander said her mother was at the therapy sessions, but that Nassar positioned himself in such a way that she couldn't see what was happening.

"I was terrified," Denhollander said. "I was ashamed. I was very embarrassed. And I was very confused, trying to reconcile what was happening with the person he was supposed to be. He's this famous doctor. He's trusted by my friends. He's trusted by these other gymnasts. How could he reach this position in the medical profession, how could he reach this kind of prominence and stature if this is who he is?"

Nassar's attorney, Matthew Borgula, said in an email to The Associated Press that Nassar plans to "vigorously defend himself."

"Dr. Nassar denies any misconduct relating to any gymnast, patient or anyone else," Borgula wrote. "To the extent he provided medical treatment to anyone, that treatment was always done with consent of the patient. He is proud of his 29 years of volunteer service with USA Gymnastics."

The California lawsuit says that USA Gymnastics negligently suppressed, concealed or failed to disclose knowledge that Nassar had engaged in sexual conduct with team members.

"Our client represents the very best America has to offer," John Manly and Vince Finaldi, the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, said in a statement. "She sacrificed her youth and adolescence, spending thousands of hours in rigorous and often painful training to bring glory to our nation as an Olympic athlete. She had an absolute right to trust USA Gymnastics, its coaches and staff. Unfortunately, they have proven time and again that they are more interested in protecting the reputation of their multi-million-dollar enterprise than the child athletes who are entrusted to their care."

The lawsuit does not provide specific instances where USA Gymnastics knowingly withheld information.

USA Gymnastics released a statement Monday night indicating that Nassar was relieved of his position in the summer of 2015 when the organization's President Steve Penny went to authorities when learning of athlete concerns about Nassar.

"USA Gymnastics has cooperated fully with the law enforcement agency since we first notified them of the matter, including  at their request  refraining from making further statements or taking any other action that might interfere with the agency's investigation," the statement read. "We are grateful to the athletes for coming forward to share their concerns when they did."

Nassar has also been temporarily relieved of clinical and patient duties with Michigan State, where he is an associate professor in the sports medicine program, pending the police investigation into the criminal complaint, according to school spokesman Kent Cassella.

University police did not immediately respond to phone and email messages left by The AP.

___
El Salvador judge orders former attorney general freed

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP)  A judge in El Salvador has ordered a former attorney general freed, saying there is not sufficient evidence to detain him on charges that he divulged intercepted telephone conversations while prosecuting a Roman Catholic priest from Spain in 2014.

Judge Marta Rosales on Monday overturned a lower court's order to provisionally detain Luis Martinez. Rosales also ordered a new initial hearing for Martinez.

Martinez was attorney general in 2012-14 and was accused last month of using the calls against the Rev. Antonio Rodriguez, better known as "Father Tony." Rodriguez was convicted of smuggling illicit items into prisons and having a relationship with the country's gangs.
Ohio University removing Ailes' name, returning gift

ATHENS, Ohio (AP)  Officials say the name of Roger Ailes will be removed from a newsroom at Ohio University and a gift to the school will be returned as a result of the sexual harassment allegations against the former Fox News chairman.

University President Roderick McDavis says in a statement Monday that, given the allegations against Ailes and the circumstances surrounding his departure from Fox News, the appropriate action is to return his gift to the school and remove his name from the WOUB newsroom.

McDavis says he consulted with the dean of the university and senior leadership before making his decision. He says he believes that the actions are appropriate and in alignment with the school community's principled beliefs. He says he has directed the process of physically removing Ailes' name to begin.

FILE - In this Feb. 9, 2015, file photo, Roger Ailes attends a special screening of "Kingsman: The Secret Service" in New York. Officials say the name of Roger Ailes will be removed from a newsroom at Ohio University and a gift to the school will be returned as a result of the sexual harassment allegations against the former Fox News chairman. University President Roderick McDavis says in a statement Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, that, given the allegations against Ailes and the circumstances surrounding his departure from Fox News, the appropriate action is to return his gift to the school and remove his name from the WOUB newsroom. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)
Peace activist Stanley Sheinbaum dies at 96 in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Stanley K. Sheinbaum, a former economics professor whose drive for Mideast peace had him mingling with presidents, royalty and movie stars, has died. He was 96.

Sheinbaum died of heart disease on Monday at his home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, said his assistant, Marti Maniates.

Sheinbaum gave up teaching to devote himself to what he called his quest to "create a little peace and justice in this unjust world."

He raised funds to defend Daniel Ellsberg during the military analyst's trial for releasing the Pentagon Papers, a secret study of the Vietnam War.

Never one to shrink from controversy, Sheinbaum met with late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in an unofficial diplomatic mission to bring peace to the Middle East. The meeting propelled him into headlines and sparked protests from Israelis and the American Jewish community.

"For a while, I was the most hated Jew in America ... by other Jews anyway," he said in his 2011 autobiography. But he added, "I didn't waste time agonizing."

Still, he acknowledged, his mission for peace failed.

Sheinbaum "was a tireless advocate whose courageous stances breathed life into monumental change on both the local and global stages," Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement.

"His work will forever inspire everyone who believes in bringing people together to transform our world for the better," he said.

Sheinbaum's causes ranged from reforming the LAPD to urging California universities to divest from their holdings in South Africa during apartheid.

His book, "Stanley K. Sheinbaum: A 20th Century Knight's Quest for Peace, Civil Liberties and Economic Justice," was written with a co-author when he was in his 90s. It contained book jacket testimonials from President Bill Clinton, Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda and Norman Lear, who summed up his friend's legacy by saying: "He's addicted to fairness and justice."

In 1971, hearing that Ellsberg was to be prosecuted, Sheinbaum saw a cause that meshed with his anti-Vietnam War sentiments. He volunteered to organize Ellsberg's legal team and raise money for his defense. He and his wife Betty moved to Los Angeles for the trial and never left. He recruited Hollywood celebrities to hold fundraisers and he signed up two of the most prominent civil liberties lawyers in the country, Leonard Boudin and Leonard Weinglass.

After many months of legal drama, the case was dismissed for governmental misconduct involving a break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and the judge's meetings with members of the Nixon administration.

In the 1980s, Sheinbaum became obsessed with the cause of peace in the Middle East. He managed to arrange a meeting with Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat and the picture of him with his arm around Arafat that appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times set off a firestorm of protest within the Jewish community. He was booed when he spoke at synagogues. But he continued his mission, meeting with Arafat several more times and trying to negotiate peace with Israel.

When Arafat died, he said hope of a peace agreement died with him. His dream of peace had failed.

"My failure is the greatest disappointment I have ever experienced," Sheinbaum said, "and I can only take solace from the knowledge that I really, really tried. I really did."

---
Opinion / Columnist

The suggestion by Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, while presenting his Mid-Term Fiscal Policy last week to reduce the diplomatic missions is prudent. Implementing this idea will go a long way in reducing Government recurrent monthly expenditure significantly.Meanwhile, Zimbabwe is struggling to keep running about 43 embassies scattered all over the world owing to budgetary constraints. It is fundamental that an assessment of the most critical global zones which have direct benefits to the country are maintained, while the rest can be closed and recall all the whole delegation back home. This would certainly go a long way in saving money for funding other critical needy areas, like paying the civil service and other routine government expenses.If the budget can no longer sustain, these missions, national interests served by the diplomatic mission can best be done directly from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from the capital city. Foreign travels can only be done to those countries when it is found necessary to be the only option available to solve any national interest. For instance, the rest of the embassies in the SADC region can be served from Harare.Alternatively, the diplomatic staff can be trimmed to small numbers which is easy to maintain, but good enough to fully represent the state interests. A typical example is that of the Cuban embassy in Harare which is only manned by two Cubans only. They deal with all issues effectively and efficiently, while our embassies are too bloated and burdensome to our national budget. If one tries to quantify the work or business brought by these foreign missions, one will be left wondering whether it is wise to keep them running with no tangible results in return. The logical thing is to keep only' the chicken which lays the golden egg' and discarded the rest.It is an indisputable fact that our visibility on the global landscape is essential, bearing in mind that the concept of diplomatic agents residing in another country dates to the fifteenth century, but the role of diplomats has evolved with the passage of time. Originally, agents were asked to help to work out specific negotiations between countries.Nowadays, their duties include cultivating a relationship between their native country, and the host country; serving as intermediaries by relaying each country's positions to the other; and trying to ensure the best possible treatment for their home countries. In the short run, this indispensable function can be served from home. Then we can always re-open later when our macro political and economic environment improves.A compliant strategy to the Finance Minister's suggests would entail that, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, would be put under strict obligation to maintain relations with other countries and international organisations. The ministry would also spearhead participation in the promotion of cooperation with other countries as well as promote the interests of all Zimbabwean nationals abroad.The Foreign Affairs Ministry can also lead to the collection of information on other countries and international developments for the Government and other interested parties, as well as provide information on Zimbabwean domestic and foreign policies and the Zimbabwe's position on international issues and developments.One thinks that changing ways of doing business on the international fora is the only way out of the economic predicament bedevilling the nation today.------------Sparkleford Masiyambiri
A famous name and 3D printing combine to aid Caribbean coral

KRALENDIJK, Bonaire (AP)  Vast coral reefs surrounding this island are considered by many experts to be the healthiest and best-protected in the Caribbean, and that makes Bonaire an ideal spot to test whether 3D printing technology can help preserve these vital marine habitats around the world.

A partnership that includes the foundation of ocean explorer Fabien Cousteau will be using the rapidly developing layered printing technology to design structures that are virtually identical to the ornate natural coral formations that have long made the southern Caribbean island a top diving destination. They hope their artificial creations will foster natural growth of the reef faster than other methods.

"Essentially we will be able to print rock in quotations," Cousteau said.

This undated screen grab of a video by the Harbour Village Beach Club and released by the Fabian Cousteau Ocean Learning Center, shows fish in the Caribbean Sea near the western shore of Bonaire. Underwater cameras are tracking reefs off Bonaire as part of a project that will include the use of 3D printers to create extremely realistic artificial reef habitat that backers hope will foster natural habitat development in damaged reefs elsewhere in the world. (Fabian Cousteau Ocean Learning Center via AP)

The artificial coral will be made of sandstone and limestone and will be deployed just offshore from the Harbour Village Beach Club, a Bonaire resort that is active in conservation efforts and is a partner with Cousteau's Ocean Learning Center in the project.

Reef-building coral is a tiny polyp-like animal that builds a calcium-carbonate shell around itself and survives in a symbiotic relationship with certain types of algae. Its reefs serve as vital spawning and feeding grounds for numerous marine creatures. It comes in some 1,500 known species, ranging from soft, undulating fans to those with hard skeletons that form reef bases.

The partners will monitor the progress of the artificial structures with underwater cameras already in place, capturing images of the vibrant reefs that are a feature of the Bonaire National Marine Park.

The Bonaire park is already host to experiments in re-growing coral in nurseries and extensive research. The island, about 50 miles north of Venezuela, is one of the bright spots for reefs in the Caribbean, where the iconic reefs have been devastated by the effects of pollution, development and climate change.

"There are many places in the world now where reefs when I was a teenager were a fireworks display of life and now they are basically a desert, overgrown with algae and devoid of animals," said Cousteau, a grandson of renowned oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. "It's a sad statement because about 70 percent of the biodiversity in the ocean depends on coral reefs."

Park spokeswoman Anouschka van de Ven said the park has issued a permit for the cameras but not yet for the 3D-project, which is scheduled to start this fall.

"The technique of 3D printing coral-like structures is very new and therefore similar projects haven't been done on Bonaire," van de Ven said.

The technique has been tried off Bahrain in conjunction with other forms of artificial reef in the Persian Gulf. The 3D printer allows for more natural looking and complex structures than using concrete and traditional molding methods. Cousteau and others hope the technology will lead to more natural formations and greater biodiversity.

"Coral reefs are an essential part of the underwater web of life," he said. "They are the rainforest if you will of water, of life under water, including about 70 percent of species which live and thrive or depend on coral reefs at some point within the life cycle."
Young chocolate entrepreneurs emerge in world's cocoa leader

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP)  The smell of chocolate wafts from the door of an artisanal shop that would not be out of place in Brooklyn. Founder Dana Mroueh takes in the sun while riding her stationary bicycle-turned-cocoa grinder on an ambitious journey that began just four months ago.

She wants to introduce Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa producer, to the taste of processed cocoa beans, in the form of chocolate bars that she says are 100 percent local.

The 27-year-old Mroueh is among an emerging group of chocolate makers who are trying to show this steamy West African country that it can take more control over its cocoa industry, from bean to bar, and win over the local market.

FILE - In this file photo taken Tuesday, May 31, 2011, farmer Alidou Ouedraogo arranges drying cocoa beans as he prepares to cover them for the night, on a cocoa farm outside the village of Fangolo, near Duekoue, Ivory Coast. Ivory Coast has long been known for its raw cocoa production, producing about 35 percent of the world's supply. But less than a third of what it produces is turned into finished products locally. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell,File)

"I think it's criminal for the planters and for the Ivorians who don't know the taste of chocolate," said Mroueh, an Ivorian of Lebanese descent who grew up watching her grandfather, a former pastry shop owner, have a difficult time selling his chocolate. "We need to emphasize the value of the Ivorian territory."

Her MonChoco Chocolate bars are priced for upper-class consumers, with prices of around $5 apiece and experimental flavors including chili and sea salt.

Fellow chocolate maker Axel Emmanuel is aiming at the other end of the market. The 32-year-old says he wants to dispel the myth that chocolate is exclusively for the rich.

"We've decided to officially make the most inexpensive chocolate bar on the African continent," said Emmanuel, who was recognized by the country's president as the 2015 Young Entrepreneur of the Year. His Instant Chocolate bars go for about 30 cents apiece.

Emmanuel sees potential in Ivory Coast's 10 percent economic growth last year, and in a small but growing middle class in many parts of Africa.

As with many of Africa's agricultural resources, the true earnings come from their transformation, he said, and farmers ought to benefit from the growing locally made chocolate market as well.

Ivory Coast has long been known for its raw cocoa production, producing about 35 percent of the world's supply. But less than a third of what it produces is turned into finished products at home.

Now the government is encouraging change. Recently, billboards sponsored by the National Coffee and Cocoa Council sprouted throughout Abidjan, the country's largest city, urging the consumption of Ivorian chocolate.

President Alassane Ouattara has said that by 2020, he hopes the country will process at least half of its raw cocoa.

Chocolate makers say the task can be done with little money and limited space, but some cocoa experts say many farmers don't yet have the skills to transform their raw product. "It's a lot easier to teach farmers good agricultural practices," said Suzanne Ndongo-Seh, director of the World Cocoa Foundation's Cocoa Livelihoods Program.

She warned that chocolate makers will have to work hard to expand their clientele in Africa, especially among more rural populations. Even though 70 percent of the world's cocoa beans originate in places like Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria, chocolate is still considered a luxury.

Some of Ivory Coast's young chocolate makers are pitching the healthy side of their products to win over consumers.

"Our products are raw, not cooked, not roasted to conserve all the benefits of the cocoa bean because it's a product very, very rich in nutrients, to conserve also the antioxidants, minerals, and that's essential," Mroueh said.

Olga Yenou, a former employee for the French chocolate manufacturer Cemoi, called cocoa good for the heart and nervous system. "It's good when used against stress, against fatigue, and it will be a shame to consider cocoa just like a candy," she said.

Her Tafissa company turns local beans into finished products including a cocoa-and-cashew spread and a cocoa powder drink mix. Producing chocolate bars is a future ambition, she said.

In a young market, she believes there's room for more local entrepreneurs.

"We are all actors trying to spread the love of cocoa amongst Ivorians," Yenou said. "I believe the adventure will be long, as we are just getting started."
Ouster of Brazil lawmaker could open political Pandora's box

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)  The ouster of once powerful lawmaker Eduardo Cunha poses a threat to other politicians, potentially including Brazil's new president.

Analysts said Tuesday it could lead to more people becoming ensnared in the corruption scandals roiling Latin America's largest nation.

Cunha no longer enjoys the partial immunity from prosecution that comes with elected office; only the country's highest court can decide to try federal lawmakers. That means the several corruption cases he faces will now go to a lower court judge who is famous for locking up prominent figures.

Brazil's former President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha speaks during the presentation of his defense in the Chamber of Deputies, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. Prosecutors accuse Cunha of corruption and money laundering for his role in negotiating contracts for drill ships and say he received an illegal payment of $5 million. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

"Cunha has lost his Supreme Court cover so he may begin to sing in terms of a plea bargain to get a reduced sentence," said David Fleischer, a political analyst in the capital, Brasilia. "In doing that, he could accuse a lot of people and open up many Pandora's boxes."

Cunha, known for regularly seeking the spotlight, kept a low profile a day after being stripped of his seat on a vote by congressional colleagues over secret bank accounts in Switzerland. His Twitter account, where he often posts passages from the Bible, was dormant, and local media reported he was holed up in his apartment in Brasilia.

Before he was voted out of office late Monday, he proclaimed his innocence and said he was being punished for leading the successful effort to impeach and remove from office President Dilma Rousseff.

His colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies voted 450-10 to remove him from office, a stunning fall for a man who only months ago was seen by many as the most powerful politician in Brazil.

While Cunha's ouster means he is barred from holding office for several years, his next moves could have wide political implications for the country and the government of new President Michel Temer.

Temer, Cunha and other officials and lawmakers have been implicated in the kickback scandal at state oil company Petrobras, which has led to the jailing of many business executives and top politicians in the last two years.

The two men have long been party allies, but Cunha lashed out at Temer's government Monday and accused it of wanting his ouster as a "trophy."

Analysis group Eurasia said Cunha's prominent position means he may have damning information on anyone involved in the Petrobras case.

"Cunha amassed significant clout in congress precisely given his skill in distributing illicit funds to legislators," said the group's latest analysis.

Watchdog groups estimate 60 percent of lawmakers in both chambers of Congress are being investigated for alleged wrongdoing, in many cases for Petrobras-related corruption.

Temer, who was vice president before Rousseff was removed from office last month on charges of illegal budget maneuvers, is already on shaky ground after a bruising impeachment fight that further soured the national mood about politicians. He denies any wrongdoing in the Petrobras case.

He did not comment publicly about Cunha on Tuesday, instead announcing plans to privatize many industries as part of his push to revive Brazil's struggling economy.

Prosecutors accuse Cunha of corruption and money laundering related to his role in negotiating Petrobras contracts for drill ships. They allege he received millions of dollars in bribes.

But the only issue at play in his ouster was whether he lied about having secret Swiss bank accounts reportedly worth the equivalent of $2.5 million. Brazilian investigators say he also has had undeclared accounts in the United States since 1990 totaling more than $20 million.

Cunha, who said the accounts belonged to a trust, was pressured into resigning as speaker in July after they came to light. But, denying any wrongdoing, he had refused to give up his post as a lawmaker.

In a heated Monday night session, several lawmakers tore into the four-term lawmaker.

Clarissa Garotinho of the Party of the Republic called Cunha a "psychopath" for "believing his own lies" and allegedly using his family to hide untoward dealings.

The case against Cunha advanced in part because prosecutors charged his wife, Claudia Cruz, after evidence showed a secret bank account linked to Cunha was in her name.

A banner that reads in Portuguese "Temer Out!" is placed on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies during the trail of former President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. Brazilian lawmakers are deciding whether a key ally of President Michel Temer should be stripped off his seat amid accusations of corruption and obstruction of justice.(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

An inflatable doll with the likeness of former President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha floats in the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. Brazilian lawmakers are deciding whether Cunha, a key ally of President Michel Temer should be stripped off his seat amid accusations of corruption and obstruction of justice.(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
US flies bombers over SKorea in show of force against North

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea (AP)  The United States on Tuesday sent two supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test, and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by U.S. and South Korean jets, were seen by an Associated Press photographer as they flew over Osan Air Base, which is 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border with North Korea, the world's most heavily armed. The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam without landing in South Korea.

Such flyovers are fairly common when animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war because there has never been a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War.

U.S. B-1 bomber, center, flies over Osan Air Base with U.S. jets in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The United States has flown nuclear-capable supersonic bombers over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its fifth nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" as a deterrent to North Korea. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.

The B-1B doesn't currently carry nuclear weapons under a disarmament treaty. U.S. Forces Korea wouldn't comment on the bombers' capabilities, but South Korean military officials and analysts said that they could carry nuclear weapons if reconfigured.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists, wrote in a blog posted Tuesday that the last B-1B was stripped of all nuclear equipment in 2011 and he does not consider them "nuclear capable" in their current configuration.

North Korea is keenly aware of the U.S. presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the U.S. nuclear threat. It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as alleged proof of U.S. hostility that it says is the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

Last week's nuclear test, the North's fifth, was its most powerful to date. Pyongyang's claim to have used "standardized" warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who has regularly visited the North's nuclear facilities, estimates that the North may have enough nuclear fuel for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016 and the ability to add about seven new bombs a year.

"Left unchecked, Pyongyang will likely develop the capability to reach the continental United States with a nuclear tipped missile in a decade or so," Siegfried wrote on the North Korea-focused website 38 North. He said that more troubling was the recent test successes may give Pyongyang a false sense of confidence.

Six-nation diplomatic talks aimed at ridding the North of its bombs have been stalled since the last round of meetings in late 2008. Since then, Pyongyang has ramped up both its ballistic missile and nuclear bomb development, despite an increasing raft of sanctions.

After last week's test, the North's nuclear weapons institute said it would take unspecified measures to further boost its nuclear capability, which analysts said hinted at a possible sixth nuclear test.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Monday that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device at any time at one of its tunnels at its main Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place. Ministry officials refused to say what specific evidence pointed to another possible nuclear test.

Seoul, Washington and their allies have vowed to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.

"The United States and (South Korea) are taking actions every day to strengthen our alliance and respond to North Korea's continued aggressive behavior," Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said in a statement.

Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean policy, met South Korean officials in Seoul on Tuesday and said that Washington is working closely with other nations to work out new, stronger sanctions on North Korea.

Also on Tuesday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye ordered her military to be ready to "finish off" North Korea if it fires a nuclear missile toward South Korea. Following the nuclear test last week, she said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's "mental state is spiraling out of control" and that his government shows "fanatic recklessness."

___

Associated Press writers Foster Klug, Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

U.S. B-1 bomber, center, flies over Osan Air Base with South Korean jets in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The United States has flown nuclear-capable supersonic bombers over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its fifth nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korean shout slogans during a rally denouncing North Korea's latest nuclear test in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. North Korea is capable of detonating another nuclear device anytime at one of its unused tunnels at the country's main atomic test site, Seoul official said Monday, three days after the country carried out its fifth bomb explosion. The letters read "Overthrow Kim Jong Un." (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korean shout slogans during a rally denouncing North Korea's latest nuclear test in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. North Korea is capable of detonating another nuclear device anytime at one of its unused tunnels at the country's main atomic test site, Seoul official said Monday, three days after the country carried out its fifth bomb explosion. The letters read "Overthrow Kim Jong Un and Discard North Korea's nuclear." (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A South Korean army's K1 tank moves during an annual exercise in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016. The U.N. Security Council is strongly condemning North Korea's latest nuclear test and says it will start discussions on "significant measures" against Pyongyang including new sanctions. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean army soldiers walk by a signboard showing the distance to the North Korean capital Pyongyang and to South's capital Seoul from Imjingang Station near the border village of the Panmunjom in Paju, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016. The U.N. Security Council is strongly condemning North Korea's latest nuclear test and says it will start discussions on "significant measures" against Pyongyang including new sanctions. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean army soldiers ride their armored vehicles during an annual exercise in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016. The U.N. Security Council is strongly condemning North Korea's latest nuclear test and says it will start discussions on "significant measures" against Pyongyang including new sanctions. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A military academy and university campus were thrown into lockdown on Tuesday after a student reported hearing 'gunfire' - but it turned out to be the sound of bubble wrap being popped.

A student who lives in an Eastern University apartment building located on the property of the Valley Forge Military Academy and College in Philadelphia heard what she thought were shots fired Monday evening and called 911, academy officials said in a statement.

Police from Radnor and Tredyffrin Townships responded, and the academy, Eastern University and nearby Cabrini University were all placed on lockdown while police searched the area.

Police are seen responding to a 911 call about 'shots being fired' at Valley Forge Military Academy and College

A lockdown was sparked at the suburban Philadelphia military academy on Tuesday

However, they found no weapons or evidence of any weapon being fired at any time, and no one was injured.

'Police report that one student indicated that the sound she heard could have been bubble wrap being popped,' the academy posted on its Facebook page.

The lockdown was lifted about an hour and a half later, and the academy and the two universities resumed normal activities.

Eastern University officials said in a statement posted on Facebook that they're 'thankful this event was not an actual gun related situation.'

They also thanked the campus community for its patience, and said that the student 'took the correct action in calling 911.'

The incident comes after operations at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport were thrown into chaos on August 14 when authorities confused cheers for Usain Bolt's Olympic race with gunshots.

Police from Radnor and Tredyffrin Townships responded to the 911 call

The military academy, Eastern University and nearby Cabrini University were all placed on lockdown while police searched the area

Police found no weapons or evidence of any weapon being fired at any time, and no one was injured at the Valley Forge Military Academy and College (file picture)

Video emerged of the moment armed police stormed through one of the terminals after the unfounded reports of gunfire.

In the shocking clip, uploaded to social media by Barcelona native Albert Salas, a large bang was heard but it was later ruled out as a gunshot.

Passengers hid behind chairs and screamed as heavily-armed police moved through the airport's Terminal 8.
A gun rights activist who has caused controversy by putting up a large sign reading 'Black Rifles Matter' has said race campaigners should be flattered.

Linc Sample, from Boothbay Harbor in Maine, said the sign was about gun rights, not race and was inspired by his opposition to a ban on assault weapons.

'That's really a trigger for me - the assault weapons ban,' said Mr Sample.

Linc Sample (pictured) said he put up the sign to protest at plans to ban assault weapons in the state of Maine and he said it was not meant to be racist in any way

The sign shows a large assault rifle and under the slogan 'Black Rifles Matter' at the top, it reads: 'Yes we have 'em. No you can't take 'em.'

The town's chamber of commerce has been receiving complaints from tourists who think the sign, a play on Black Lives Matter, is in bad taste.

Paul Mayor, a visitor from Connecticut, said: 'People are ignorant. They shouldn't be putting things out like that. It's taking a shot obviously at Black Lives Matter.'

But Mr Sample said imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and the Black Lives Matter movement, which campaigns against police brutality, should be 'flattered' he used the phrase.

Mr Sample wrote on Facebook: 'My initial response was to take it down but my brilliant wife, muse and compass Sarah Sample said I should teach them true equality.

'This sign is on our land, we are permitted for it and pay for it out of our own pockets.'

He denied he was racist and threatened to prosecute anyone who tried to deface the sign.

Someone put a hand-made Black Lives Matter sign up underneath the sign, which was later changed to All Lives Matter. Mr Sample says he is simply exercising his right to free speech

Officials in Boothbay Harbor say Mr Sample is free to erect the sign on his property, exercising his First Amendment rights.

Town Manager Thomas Woodin said some people had cut short their vacations in the area after the sign was put up, adding: 'There isn't much the town can do about it.'

Boothbay Region Chamber of Commerce Director Rick Prose told the Bangor Herald newspaper: 'I think it's racist. It's insensitive and it's certainly not welcoming.'

But tourist and gun enthusiast Jeremy Plasse said: 'They're doing the right thing. Massachusetts has a ban right now, and I think they should lift it.'

Mr Sample said he regularly changed the hand-painted signs outside his property and would replace the Black Rifles Matter sign when he was ready.




Australian Parliament gets bill to set up gay marriage vote

CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Australia's prime minister introduced legislation to Parliament on Wednesday that would allow a public but non-binding vote on gay marriage early next year.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a marriage equality advocate who is the only serving prime minister to attend the Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, introduced the bill on the first anniversary of his ascension to the top government job.

He replaced Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a gay marriage opponent who proposed that the public decide the issue with a popular vote and avoid a bitter debate in Parliament.

FILE - In this May 8, 2016 file photo, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speaks to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia. Australias prime minister introduced legislation to Parliament on Wednesday, Sept. 14, that would allow a public but non-binding vote on gay marriage early next year. Turnbull, a marriage equality advocate who is the only serving prime minister to attend the Sydneys Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, introduced the bill on the first anniversary of his ascension to the top government job. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)

But the Feb. 11 plebiscite  a compulsory vote for all adult Australians  would have no legal weight. Parliament would ultimately decide whether the law would be changed.

Although such a vote appears to be a move toward changing the law, most gay rights activists are against a plebiscite, saying it should be decided in Parliament without the potential divisive public debate.

They fear that government plans to spend 15 million Australian dollars ($11 million) on publicizing the cases for and against marriage equality would give legitimacy to bigoted and homophobic views.

Turnbull said the real reason marriage equality advocates opposed the plebiscite was because they thought enough lawmakers already supported the reform for it to become law.

"They don't want to run the risk of the Australian people giving them the wrong answer," Turnbull told Parliament.

"For our part, we put our faith in the Australian people and we know that their answer, whether it is 'yes' or 'no,' will be the right answer," he said.

The government does not have a majority in the Senate, and two minor parties that support same-sex marriage have said they won't vote for a plebiscite.

The government's only chance of a plebiscite is now the opposition Labor Party.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has argued that a plebiscite would "give the haters a chance to come out from underneath the rock and make life harder for" lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people.

But Shorten, who backs marriage equality, has not ruled out supporting the plebiscite to avoid a stalemate in Parliament over gay marriage that could last until the next election in three years.

Lyle Shelton, managing director of Australian Christian Lobby, a group that lobbies for Christian principles and opposes gay marriage, urged Labor to back the plebiscite.

He said he hoped that millions of Australians could participate in the debate without the fear of being labelled a bigot or a homophobe.

"It was great to hear the prime minister respecting the points of view of all Australians," Shelton said in a statement.

Turnbull opposed the plebiscite before striking a deal with hard-right party powerbrokers to become prime minister.
Clinton sparks interest in 1st woman nominated, in 1872

HOMER, Ohio (AP)  Nearly a century and a half before Hillary Clinton, a fiery activist from Ohio became the first woman nominated for U.S. president.

Victoria Woodhull's varied and colorful life makes her difficult to pigeonhole. The suffragist, medium, businesswoman, stockbroker and newspaper publisher was "Mrs. Satan" to some, a visionary champion of women's and children's rights to others. She rode motorcycles, preached "free love" and followed the guidance of an ancient Greek orator she believed had presented himself to her as a spirit guide.

The Equal Rights Party nominated Woodhull to face incumbent Republican Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 and Democrat Horace Greeley, nearly 50 years before women had the right to vote. At 34, she was a few months shy of the required age, but most historians still view her nomination and run as the first.

In this Aug. 25, 2016 photo, Columbus State Community College professor Judith Dann, a historian and resident of Homer, Ohio, stands next to a cabinet of items about the first woman nominated for U.S. president, Victoria Woodhull, at the Homer Public Library in Homer, Ohio. Nearly a century and a half before Hillary Clinton became the Democratic party's presidential nominee, Woodhull, a fiery activist from Ohio, became the first woman nominated for U.S. president when the fledgling Equal Rights Party picked her to face incumbent Republican President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, decades before women won the right to vote. (AP Photo/Julie Carr Smyth)

Woodhull lost, of course, but by how much is unclear. The number of votes she received in losing to Grant was never officially recorded, and historians surmise many were discarded. Nonetheless, interest in Woodhull's life is on the rise with Clinton's historic candidacy this year as the first female nominee of a major party.

Woodhull is being honored in and around her hometown in Homer, Ohio, with exhibits, lectures and prominent mention in the village's bicentennial parade this Saturday. A documentary, "The Coming Woman," is in production. Visits are up at the only U.S. memorial to Woodhull: a clock tower in nearby Granville where her wooden likeness emerges hourly to organ music.

"What's kind of funny about Hillary Clinton's campaign bringing everyone out is that this is a very contentious campaign, and it was the very same way in 1872," said Judith Dann, a professor of ancient history at Columbus State Community College who has made a project of Woodhull's life since moving to Homer around 2000.

Licking County antiquarian Robbins Hunter conceived the Woodhull memorial in the 1970s, not wanting to see the legacy of a local daughter forgotten. Dann has created a display cabinet for Woodhull at the Homer Public Library and presented at the museum's lecture series, which runs through next month.

Dann said a rivalry with Susan B. Anthony and others in the early suffragist movement may have led to Woodhull's exclusion from history books. Her radical beliefs on women and marriage also caused consternation.

One of 10 children, Woodhull was beaten and starved, possibly abused, by her father as a child. She later blamed the disability of her first child on her first husband's alcoholism and drug addiction. When she preached "free love," Woodhull wasn't talking about sex, but of the institution of marriage, Dann said. She saw the day's legal prohibition against divorce as akin to slavery. Woodhull also favored legalizing prostitution as protection to women.

The family was effectively run out of Homer when Woodhull was a girl, Dann said.

After relocating to New York City, Woodhull, born Victoria California Claflin, and her sister, Tennessee Celeste Claflin, befriended railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. With his help and with money earned helping him communicate with the spirit world, they became the first women to open a Wall Street brokerage house, earning nicknames including "the bewitching brokers."

They also started a newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, to support Victoria's presidential run and to promote edgy ideas like short skirts and vegetarianism. Woodhull was in jail on Election Day 1872, charged with publishing obscenity for an article about a prominent minister's alleged extramarital affair; she was later acquitted on a technicality.

Even before Clinton landed the nomination, the Robbins Hunter Museum had decided her run would be a good opportunity to promote Woodhull. Its exhibit focuses largely on the women's suffrage movement but also features photos, newspaper clippings and books about Woodhull.

Rebecca Dungan, a board member who leads the museum's program committee, said some are fiction books that she won't read because they make her blush.

"They're titles like Notorious Victoria, The Terrible Siren, Mrs. Satan, Outrageous, The Scarlet Sisters, Renegade Queen, Free Lover," she said. Well before the story of a Founding Father became "Hamilton," there was even a Broadway musical, 1980's "Onward Victoria," telling Woodhull's story.

Woodhull's party picked Frederick Douglass, the runaway slave turned abolitionist, as her running mate  though Douglass never acknowledged it.

Despite her campaign fading into history, Dann said, she had a lasting impact.

"Victoria's here," she said. "She left her mark. We just don't know to look for it."

___

Follow Julie Carr Smyth at http://twitter.com/jcarrsmyth

For some of her other recent stories: http://bigstory.ap.org/content/julie-carr-smyth

___

This story has been corrected to show that the Greek orator presented himself as a spirit guide, not a spirit.

This Aug. 25, 2016, photo shows biographies and pulp fiction about America's first female presidential candidate, Victoria Woodhull, and other items in an exhibit about Woodhull at the Robbins Hunter Museum in Granville, Ohio. Nearly a century and a half before Hillary Clinton became the Democratic party's presidential nominee, Victoria Woodhull, a fiery activist from Ohio, became the first woman nominated for U.S. president when the fledgling Equal Rights Party picked her to face incumbent Republican President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, well before women won the right to vote. (AP Photo/Julie Carr Smyth)
Luxembourg foreign minister urges excluding Hungary from EU

BERLIN (AP)  Luxembourg's foreign minister says Hungary should be temporarily or even permanently expelled from the European Union over its approach to refugees and other issues, drawing a sharp rebuke Tuesday from his Hungarian counterpart.

Senior officials in other EU countries distanced themselves from Jean Asselborn's suggestion in Tuesday's edition of German daily Die Welt, which came days before 27 EU leaders meet in Bratislava, Slovakia to discuss the bloc's future without Britain.

Asselborn said the EU can't tolerate fundamental values being violated.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn smiles during talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

"Anyone who, like Hungary, builds fences against refugees from war or who violates press freedom and judicial independence should be excluded temporarily, or if necessary forever, from the EU," Asselborn was quoted as saying. He argued it is the only way to "preserve the cohesion and values of the European Union."

Asselborn said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is "protected by at least one other country," which he didn't identify, and it would be "helpful" for EU rules to be amended so that suspending a member country's membership no longer requires a unanimous vote.

Hungary was among the loudest critics of EU plans to redistribute asylum-seekers in the bloc among its members. Last year, it erected razor-wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia to stem the flow.

Hungary is holding a government-sponsored referendum Oct. 2 seeking support for rejecting any future EU plan to resettle migrants among member states.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Asselborn was "a frivolous figure."

"He wants to exclude Hungary from the EU but he has long excluded himself from among the politicians who can be taken seriously," Szijjarto said in a statement, accusing Asselborn of "working tirelessly to demolish European security and culture."

Szijjarto said the referendum would give Hungarians the opportunity to voice their opinion about "illegal immigrants, Brussels' quota package and the Jean Asselborn-type figures."

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, an ally of Hungary on refugee resettlement, said talk of expelling EU members was "nonsense."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was visiting Latvia, said he understood that some in Europe are "impatient" with Hungary, German news agency dpa reported.
Russia opposition recalls protests before parliamentary vote

MOSCOW (AP)  Russia is preparing to hold a parliamentary election next week. The last time Russia held one was in 2011, when fraud allegations set off a wave of protests in Moscow, among the largest in Russia's post-Soviet history.

The vote, in which no genuine opposition members won parliamentary seats, galvanized opponents of Vladimir Putin and the dominant United Russia party so much that large protests arose sporadically for five months. It was a time of both anger and hope for Kremlin opponents who had come under increasing pressure since Putin became Russian president in 2000.

But the protest movement effectively ended on May 6, 2012, when police in the area of Bolotnaya Square clashed violently with demonstrators who were protesting the inauguration of Putin for a third term as president the next day. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested, many ended up in prison after trials that dragged on for years and Russian lawmakers soon passed new severe penalties for anyone taking part in unauthorized protests.

In this photo taken Friday, July 29, 2016 people stand by an election poster of opposition activist, Maria Baronova, running for parliamentary election in Moscow, Russia. Baronova's activist nature propelled her into the spotlight as a spokeswoman for the protest organizers. Five years later, the trained chemist is taking her activism in a new direction by running for parliament. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

As Russia gets ready for the Sept. 18 parliamentary election, here are vignettes of three people caught up in those tumultuous months.

___

MARIA BARONOVA

Baronova's activist nature propelled her into the spotlight as a spokeswoman for protest organizers. Five years later, the trained chemist is taking her activism in a new direction by running for parliament.

As an independent candidate and one strongly at odds with the establishment, she holds no expectation of winning, but believes it's worth making a stand.

"I want Russia to be a normal European country, that's it," Baronova said in her office in central Moscow where a photo hangs of benefactor Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil tycoon who spent a decade behind bars as Russia's most famous political prisoner. "I want us to have the rule of law, independent courts, good health care  and of course, freedom of speech."

Even if an unexpected victory came to her, she thinks the opposition forces would have little immediate effect on Russia's politics.

"I will not have lots of opportunities to change something in parliament  because even if we have 18, 20 or 30 independent deputies in parliament, there will still be more than 400 deputies from the ruling party, who will push the buttons as Putin says," she said.

Her candidacy hasn't received much support from opposition groupings, she complained, and she said that she's been accused of being a Kremlin stooge for wanting to take part in the political process at all.

The opposition "has always been super-divided: the so-called Russian liberals always have lots of opinions and they are never ready to do a real job," she said.

___

ANNA GASKAROVA

When the judge finally gives his verdict, Anna Gaskarova doesn't cry. Almost imperceptibly, her shoulders slump and a sad smile comes to her lips.

In 2013, her husband Alexei Gaskarov was imprisoned for his participation in the Bolotnaya protests, convicted of attacking police at the rally. Since then, Anna has repeatedly appealed for her husband's early release, saying that the allegations are false and politicized.

"I am so used now to hearing the words 'rejected' and 'leave him in custody' that in fact I no longer expect anything new," she said after the latest court hearing in Tula, 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Moscow. "But I always hope that a miracle is possible and that the judge will unexpectedly do something the others don't do."

Gaskarov will be released at the end of October, but his wife continued her legal pleas even as the light at the end of the tunnel came close.

"It is just not possible to give up and not do everything you can ... to try to free him earlier than to continue suffering and thinking we could have done more," she said.

___

DIANA MACHULLINA

One of the rising younger stars in Moscow's lively arts sphere, painter Diana Machullina was one of the marchers in the ill-fated Bolotnaya protest.

She says she sees the creative process, with its constant demand for change and development, as naturally opposed to the political status quo.

"Contemporary art is opposed to what the government wants, which is to leave things as they are and to protect a status quo which suits them," she said.

But she thinks that many artists have been ground down by the repressive climate that settled in after Bolotnaya, forcing them into self-censorship.

"After Bolotnaya there is definitely censorship and we can't even quantify how far this extends, as many people are censoring themselves so that even before a person tries to do something, he stops himself so we don't even know what could have been forbidden," she said.

"Everything I saw on that day bore out how I feel about those in power. I have always been convinced that power is not good and even changes people who may have come to power with good intentions," she said.

___

Kate de Pury and Jim Heintz contributed to this report.

In this photo taken on Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2016, Anna Gaskarova, journalist and wife of political prisoner Andrei Gaskarov, stands outside the court house in Tula after the unsuccessful appeal for her husband's early release in Tula, Russia. In 2013, her husband Alexei Gaskarov was imprisoned for his participation in the Bolotnaya protests, convicted of attacking police at the rally. Since then, Anna has repeatedly appealed for her husband's early release, saying that the allegations are false and politicized. (AP Photo/Francesca Ebel)

In this photo taken on Monday, Aug. 1, 2016, Anna Gaskarova, journalist and wife of political prisoner Andrei Gaskarov, holds a photo of her husband in Moscow, Russia. In 2013, her husband Alexei Gaskarov was imprisoned for his participation in the Bolotnaya protests, convicted of attacking police at the rally. Since then, Anna has repeatedly appealed for her husband's early release, saying that the allegations are false and politicized. (AP Photo/Francesca Ebel)
Opinion / Columnist

Zimbabwe's 18 opposition parties under the National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) umbrella are planning to hold more street protests this coming Saturday, 17 September 2016. The opposition parties are now using street protests as a substitute for implementing democratic reforms. An ill-advised substitute and a very dangerous one at that!"We are going ahead with or without their blessing or permission. We have the law in our favour and we are not going to negotiate the law with Mr Mugabe," said MDC-T Secretary General, Douglas Mwonzora."This Saturday we are organising 210 demonstrations throughout the country to force the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to accept reforms," said Jacob Ngarivhuma, the leader of Transform Zimbabwe, one of the opposition parties in the NERA grouping."We are going to continue fighting. This is the language they understand."Whilst Mr Mwonzora is right that the opposition parties have a constitutional right to hold peaceful demonstrations we all know, however, that the street protests will NOT be peaceful. The very fact that the regime has already banned the demos means the authorities will be going out, armed to the teeth, determined to stop the demos. Meanwhile the protesters will be going out itching for a fight.So strictly speaking, Mr Ngarivhuma, violent confrontation is the language both the Zanu-PF regime and opposition parties speak and understand. President Mugabe has often boasted of holding "several degrees in violence". For their part, the opposition parties have failed to explain what reforms they wanted implemented in any of the accepted languages be it English, Shona, Ndebele or whatever and are therefore resorting to the language of violent street protests!Since the rigged July 2013 elections, MDC-T has been calling for electoral reforms in which all the country's existing laws are "realigned" to bring them in line with Zimbabwe's 2013 new constitution. Veritas, a local Zimbabwean group of experts on legal matter, has carried out a thorough analysis and concluded that even with the best political will in the world the realignment alone will not be enough to deliver free, fair and credible elections.The trouble is with the new constitution itself, it is too weak and feeble to deliver free and fair elections. This is not surprising given the constitution was a product of the "horse trading" between Zanu-PF and MDC, as Trevor Ncube rightly pointed out.For the country to have free, fair and credible elections we need to implement far reaching structural reforms such allowing parliament to have meaningful oversight on the appointing and firing of ZEC officials to ensure the body's independence, for example.The continued call by opposition leaders for "ZEC to accept reforms" is proof these people really have no clue what the democratic reforms are about, the process of getting the reforms implemented, etc. In 2015 Douglas Mwonzora assured the nation that MDC-T will have forced Zanu-PF "kicking and screaming" to implement all electoral reforms by the end of that year. Yet here we are, nearly two years later, and still not even one meaningful reform has been implemented of course.Meanwhile Zanu-PF has already been implementing its own meaningless reforms and making a big song and dance about it. VP Mnangagwa, who is also the Minister of Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, has already had an amendment bill designed to bring most of the country's laws into line with the new constitution passed into law. As far as know, MDC-T, the only opposition party with MPs and senators, did not submit any counter proposals to the bill. A very familiar story with MDC; the party did not submit not even one democratic reform proposal in parliament throughout the five years of the GNU and yet that was supposed to be their principal task.Ever since parliament passed the law aligning all existing laws to the new constitution the pressure has shifted to MDC-T and their NERA friend to not just ask for electoral reforms but to spell out the chapter and verse of the law and even say word for word they want changed. This is clearly something MDC-T and its NERA friends are not prepared to do and by shifting emphasis from reforms to street protests they are hoping no one will ever ask them about reforms!So instead of fighting for free and fair elections in parliament by submitting alternative amendments to ensure the existing laws are properly aligned to the new constitution or in the Constitutional Court by submitting legal challenge for failure deliver this key individual right to free and meaningful vote; MDC-T want to fight for free and fair elections in the streets!It is all very well for the party leaders like Mwonzora, Tsvangirai and Biti to take the fighting into the street, they will be will be calling on their supporters to fight back, if attached by either Zanu-PF thugs or the Police. The leaders always drive back to their secure homes in the low density suburbs or sometimes even hide for a few weeks in the Netherland Embassy, as Tsvangirai once did, if the situation gets too hot. The ordinary people are not so lucky; it is them who will be fighting the running battles with the Riot Police and who will be visited by Zanu-PF thugs in the dead of night!It is a historic fact that if MDC leaders had not sold-out during the GNU and implemented all the democratic reforms; Zimbabwe would have had free, fair and credible elections in July 2013 and we would be well on our way to rebuilding the nation and not still tuck in this economic and political hell-hole.It is a historic fact too that if any of our opposition leaders had learnt anything from Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders' blundering incompetence during the GNU then none of them would have wasted the nation's time calling for the wishy-washy NERA. They would not be seeking a violent confrontation with Zanu-PF knowing what the regime did in 2008!Zanu-PF is already under a lot of pressure from the worsening economic situation to accept meaningful political change. President Mugabe would have been forced to accept change if he was presented with a well thought-out list of democratic reforms. As long as no meaningful reforms are implemented, no reforms will ever be implemented by street protests, Zanu-PF will have the chance to rig the vote and stay in power.If we want to have free, fair and credible elections then we must implement the democratic reforms. We must not allow ourselves to be misled by those who have failed to implement even one reform even when they had the golden opportunity to do so during the GNU into believing street protests are a substitute to reforms.Street protests are the excuse tyrants look for to exercise their sadistic barbarism and that is why, like war, street protests are when all else have failed! The wave of violent street protests with the prospect of even worse to come in the 2018 elections is the one thing the nation could have avoided with careful planning and focus!--------------Patrick Guramatunhu
French president Hollande gives Romania hope for Schengen

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP)  French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that security checks at Romanian airports can help improve safety for Schengen members, raising hopes that the East European country is closer to joining the passport-free area.

Hollande noted Romania had implemented a system to check passengers flying from Romanian airports.

"It is an important structure for our security. For us it is an essential point in the fight against terrorism, and for this reason, there should be discussions in Brussels to see how Romanian airports can bring a contribution to the Schengen space in their efficiency," he said.

French President Francois Hollande, left, shakes hands with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis during the welcoming ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande has begun a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Romania has been trying to join Schengen for years, but has failed to secure the unanimous agreement required from the 26 members, partly due to concerns about corruption.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis welcomed Hollande's comments, saying he felt Romania was supported by France in its bid to join the Schengen agreement, which stipulates there shouldn't be any passport controls or other border checks between member countries. Since the start of Europe's migrant crisis, however, some Schengen members have temporarily reinstituted border controls.

Speaking before an EU summit in Bratislava about Britain's vote to leave the bloc, Hollande said: "Europe has to be a hope. If it is not a hope, it is no longer Europe."

"We have to renew this hope through the young people of Europe," he said, adding he wants to highlight issues at the summit such as mobility, research, and the possibility of developing and having a job.

Romania and France hope the high-profile visit will also boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies. France has 450 enterprises in Romania and French companies provide 100,000 jobs there, while France is the first choice for Romanian students who choose to study at foreign universities, Hollande said.

Hollande laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier early Tuesday, noting that it was the first state visit by a French president since Jacques Chirac came to Romania in 1997.

Hollande later officially opened the Airbus Romania factory in the town of Ghimbav in central Romania, which will produce H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year or in 2018. It will become fully operational by 2020, manufacturing 15 helicopters a year and creating 350 jobs, company officials said.

Hollande called the 52 million euro ($58 million) investment "a project of European dimensions," and said it would create jobs in France.

The French leader is accompanied by 30 business chiefs.

___

A previous version of this story was corrected to show that Hollande's visit is the first visit by a French president to Romania since Jacques Chirac came to Bucharest in 1997, instead of an earlier visit by Francois Mitterrand in 1991.

A woman carries a vacuum cleaner during the final preparations ahead of the welcoming ceremony for French President Francois Hollande at the Cotroceni presidential Palace in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande has begun a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

French President Francois Hollande, right, reviews a honor guard with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis during a welcome ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande began a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

French President Francois Hollande, right, reviews the honor guard with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis during the welcoming ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande has begun a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

French President Francois Hollande, left, walks with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis during the welcoming ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande has begun a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

French President Francois Hollande, left, walks with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis during the welcoming ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande has begun a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

French President Francois Hollande, left, walks with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis during the welcoming ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande has begun a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

French President Francois Hollande, left, stands with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis during a welcome ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande began a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

French President Francois Hollande, left, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis during the welcoming ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande has begun a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

French President Francois Hollande, left, stands next to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis during a welcome ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande began a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

French President Francois Hollande, left, reviews the honor guard during the welcoming ceremony in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Hollande has begun a one-day state visit to Romania, the first by a French president since Francois Mitterrand came to Romania in 1991, that both sides hope will boost trade and consolidate bilateral relations between the traditional allies and will later inaugurate the Airbus Romania factory in central Romania, which will produce the H215 military and civil helicopters, starting next year. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
As Syria truce holds. al-Qaida affiliate denounces it

BEIRUT (AP)  With much of Syria calm for the past 24 hours, a powerful al-Qaida-linked group sharply criticized the U.S.-Russian-brokered cease-fire, saying Tuesday its real aim was to keep President Bashar Assad in power.

The extremist group was in talks with other rebel factions for a possible merger, a move that could dash Washington and Moscow's hopes of distancing it from the wider insurgency and sabotage the truce.

The denunciation of the deal came as activists and state media said the truce, which took effect at sunset Monday, was holding despite some violations. The Syrian army said it would abide by the cease-fire until midnight Sunday, while maintaining its right to defend itself against any violations.

A Druze family, celebrating the Eid al-Adha holiday, look towards Syria's Quneitra province as they visit an observation point in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

The truce excludes al-Qaida's affiliate, known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, and the more powerful Islamic State group, which are both designated terrorist organizations by the United Nations. The first week will be crucial: During that time, all fighting between Assad's forces and the rebels is to stop, although Assad's forces can continue airstrikes against IS and al-Qaida-linked militants.

If the calm holds for seven days, the U.S. and Russian militaries would then set up a new center to coordinate strikes against IS and the al-Qaida affiliate, previously known as the Nusra Front.

The Jabhat Fatah al-Sham statement came a day after Syria's largest insurgent groups expressed misgivings over the deal for excluding the al-Qaida-linked militants, who have been fighting alongside the rebels against Assad's forces. A truce in February that lasted several weeks also excluded IS and al-Qaida-linked groups.

In its statement, the al-Qaida affiliate accused the U.S.-Russian-brokered deal of "conniving" to divide the insurgents and "target them one by one, while distancing Assad's regime from the battle and preserving" his hold on power.

"The aim of the Russian-American agreement is to defeat Syrian jihad, break its arm and cut its teeth," the group said.

Mostafa Mohamed, the group's director of media relations wrote on his Twitter account: "Let it be known. We don't take orders from hypocritical tyrants. We will continue in this cause, standing in solidarity with our brothers."

Jabhat Fatah al-Sham has been working to improve its image and distance itself from al-Qaida. In July, its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, publicly showed his face for the first time in a video in which he announced the group's name change and said it was cutting ties with the international terror organization.

The group has been in talks for weeks to merge with other insurgent groups so that it can market itself as a Syrian faction  a move that would anger the United States, which has urged Syrian rebels to distance themselves from al-Qaida-linked militants.

One of Syria's most powerful factions, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham's battlefield alliance with other insurgent groups makes it difficult for the United States to target them without the danger of inflicting harm to other opposition groups.

A Jabhat Fatah al-Sham commander in the northern province of Aleppo told The Associated Press the group could announce its merger with the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham group "in the near future." He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak publicly about the talks.

A senior Ahrar al-Sham official also confirmed the talks, adding that such a merger would cover a large number of factions, not just his group.

"The merger will not be bilateral. ... It is a project to unify the factions on the battlefield. If it holds, all factions will melt into one," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are ongoing.

Jabhat Fatah al-Sham is already part of the Fatah Army, a coalition that includes several powerful groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party. The coalition has been behind stunning attacks in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib in recent months that left scores of Syrian government troops as well as allied Iraqi militiamen and members of Lebanon's Hezbollah group dead since the February truce collapsed.

"Separating Nusra Front fighters from mainstream rebels will be very difficult," wrote Frederic C. Hof and Faysal Itani of the Atlantic Council last week. They added that "a major near-term challenge is that neither the Nusra Front nor the Assad regime (nor ISIS, for that matter) is strongly motivated to cooperate with a new cessation of hostilities."

The Syrian cease-fire appeared to be holding Tuesday despite sporadic violations. Aid was expected to begin flowing into besieged rebel-held neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo in the coming days.

The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said no one has been killed or wounded since the truce went into effect. It said more than 300,000 people have been killed since Syria's 5 1/2-year conflict began. The U.N. stopped tracking deaths last year: Its last official count was 250,000 dead in a war it says has displaced half the country's population of 11 million.

Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the southern province of Daraa, where the 2011 uprising against Assad's regime began, said the province was relatively calm apart from four shells falling in rebel-held areas Tuesday afternoon.

In the northern city of Aleppo, which has seen heavy fighting in recent months, opposition activists said rebel-held parts of the city were calm, although many people were still hunkering down in their homes, fearful of going out. Aleppo-based activist Baraa al-Halaby said no aid deliveries, which are also part of the cease-fire deal, had yet entered the contested area.

Syrian state news agency SANA said rebels fired three shells at a government-held neighborhood in Aleppo. It also reported shelling near the Castello road, northwest of the city, and the Ramouseh area in the south  both main arteries leading to Aleppo.

____

Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

An Israeli military vehicle drives during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli soldier covers his face from dust as military tank drives by during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli tank drives during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli soldier walks past tanks during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israel denies its aircraft harmed after raid in Syria

JERUSALEM (AP)  The Israeli military struck artillery positions in Syria on Tuesday after a projectile from that country's civil war hit the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights, but denied a Syrian claim that Syrian forces shot down two Israeli aircraft.

The incident was the fifth case since last week in which fighting in Syria has spilled over into Israel, and the first since a U.S.-Russia brokered truce went into effect at sunset on Monday to try and end the civil war, now in its sixth year.

Israel has largely remained on the sidelines of the fighting, but has carried out reprisals on Syrian positions when errant fire previously landed in Israel.

An Israeli military vehicle drives during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Shortly after the air raid, Syria's armed forces claimed to have shot down an Israeli warplane and an unmanned drone along the frontier.

The Israeli military quickly denied the report, saying that a pair of surface-to-air missiles were fired at its aircraft but missed. "At no point was the safety of IDF (Israel Defense Forces) aircraft compromised," it said.

Israeli warplanes have conducted several raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-controlled Golan. Israel is also widely believed to have carried out airstrikes on arms shipments said to be destined for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a close ally of the Syrian government.

On Tuesday evening the Israeli military said three other "projectiles" fired from Syria hit the Golan Heights in two separate strikes, causing no injuries. It would not elaborate further. A few hours later it said its aircraft retaliated and "targeted artillery positions of the Syrian Regime in the central Syrian Golan Heights."

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and the two countries have technically been in a state of war for decades.

An Israeli tank drives during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli soldier walks past tanks during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

A Druze family, celebrating the Eid al-Adha holiday, look towards Syria's Quneitra province as they visit an observation point in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Israeli soldiers gather next to tanks during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Clinton tries to blunt fallout from not disclosing pneumonia

WASHINGTON (AP)  When Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia late last week, she informed a handful of her closest advisers, but pressed on with a busy campaign schedule and did not inform the public that she was sick. "I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal," she said.

Clinton's first comments about her health condition came in a CNN interview late Monday, a day after a dizzy spell caught on video forced the Democratic nominee to disclose her illness and cancel a West Coast campaign trip.

The incident reinforced Clinton's reputation as a public figure with a predisposition for privacy. While her top campaign aides conceded they were too slow in providing the public with information about Clinton's condition, it was unclear how quickly they themselves had been informed by the candidate.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives to attend a ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial, in New York, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016, on the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

In a move aimed at quieting questions about transparency, Clinton said she would be releasing more medical information this week. Her campaign has sought to turn the matter around on Republican opponent Donald Trump, who has released only a glowing letter from his doctor, though the billionaire real estate mogul says that he, too, plans to make public additional information in the coming days.

Less than two months from Election Day, Clinton's handling of her health incident added to Democrats' growing sense of uncertainty about the presidential race. While Democrats said the matter is unlikely to fundamentally alter the presidential race, Democrats worry the race with Trump is too close for comfort.

"If you look at the way the last couple months have gone, it feels like the race should be further apart," said Greg Haas, an Ohio-based Democratic strategist and former county party chairman.

Aaron Regunberg, a Democratic state representative from Rhode Island, said he was "surprised and concerned" that the race is so tight.

"I still think that we are likely to win, but I think anyone who's not concerned about a bigoted, KKK-endorsed sociopath being this close right now in the polls is not living in reality," Regunberg said of Trump.

Clinton abruptly left a 9/11 anniversary event Sunday in New York and was seen on video stumbling and being held up by aides. After roughly 90 minutes of silence from her campaign, aides said Clinton left because she was overheated. Several hours later, her doctor acknowledged she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.

Clinton spent Monday at her home in Chappaqua, New York, after canceling a fundraising trip in California. It was unclear when she planned to return to the campaign trail.

In a text message to supporters Monday night, Clinton wrote: "Like anyone who's ever been home sick from work, I'm just anxious to get back out there."

Trump showed surprising restraint regarding Clinton's health. He wished her well and did not repeat questions he has previously raised about whether the former secretary of state has the strength and stamina to be president.

He did hammer Clinton for her assertion Friday night that half of his supporters belong in a "basket of deplorables" and are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. Clinton later said she regretted applying that description to "half" of Trump's backers, but stuck by her assertion that the GOP nominee has given a platform to "hateful views and voices."

Speaking in Maryland Monday, Trump said he was shocked to hear Clinton "attack, slander, smear and demean these wonderful, amazing people who are supporting our campaign."

After a staff shake-up in August, Trump has largely abandoned the free-wheeling style of campaigning that energized his supporters but also led to an endless string of controversial comments about women, minorities and others. The Republican nominee's newfound ability to stay on script has coincided with tightening in both national polls and surveys in some key swing states.

"The last few days feed into a sense of uncertainty," said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist. He said Clinton's rough weekend raises the stakes for the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, which "will either finish Trump or, if he does well, it will create a race."

Privately, some Republicans say Trump would likely be losing more convincingly to another Democratic nominee. But Clinton's unpopularity rivals that of her opponent, and she's been unable to do much to change the minds of Americans who believe she is dishonest and secretive.

To be sure, Clinton continues to have numerous advantages over Trump as the race presses into its final weeks.

Polls show Trump struggling mightily with big swaths of the electorate, including women, blacks, Hispanics and young people. His path to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win in November is also narrow  he likely needs to carry Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina  while Clinton has numerous routes. Clinton's campaign is also running a sophisticated voter targeting and turnout operation, led by several people involved in President Barack Obama's winning campaigns, while Trump is banking on the Republican National Committee for his field operations.

Given those built-in advantages and Trump's weaknesses, some Democrats say their biggest fear is complacency  making the tightening of the race not such a bad development.

"It really says to me and other supporters of Hillary that we have to be invested, and we're going to have to get out and work," said Missouri state Rep. Margo McNeil of suburban St. Louis, who was a Clinton delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

___

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

___

AP writers Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, Lisa Lerer in White Plains, New York, and Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report.

___
Islamic community plans to rebuild mosque damaged in blaze

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP)  The Islamic community says it will repair and reopen the arson-damaged Florida mosque that was occasionally attended by Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen.

Hamaad Rahman, assistant imam of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, said the mosque's approximately 100 members are "saddened and scared" by the fire, which was started late Sunday and burned for more than five hours before it was extinguished early Monday. The fire was started on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha.

"Our community is bigger than a building. We are stronger than that," Rahman said Monday. "I feel we will be able to pull together from this, and as time goes by we will be able to rebuild."

In this photo provided by the St. Lucie Sheriff's Office, firefighters work at the scene of a fire at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce on Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, in Fort Pierce, Fla. (St. Lucie Sheriff's Office via AP)

The mosque has been subjected to more threats since June's nightclub shooting than it did in its previous 20 years of existence, Rahman said.

Given the timing of the blaze, investigators believe it may have been a hate crime, St. Lucie County sheriff's spokesman Maj. David Thompson said.

No one was injured. The fire burned a 10-by-10-foot hole in the roof at the back of the mosque's main building and blackened its eaves with soot.

A surveillance video from the mosque showed a man on a Harley-Davidson type motorcycle approaching the building with a bottle of liquid and some papers, then leaving when there was a flash and shaking his hand as though he may have burned it, Thompson said. The first 911 calls were made about 45 minutes later after the fire had spread to the attic. It took about 4 1/2 hours for firefighters to extinguish the blaze. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, he said.

The arsonist "is terrorizing our community because we don't know where he is at and we don't know what he is capable of doing," said Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, Florida spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations who was representing the mosque's leadership.

Mateen opened fire at the Pulse nightclub June 12 in a rampage that left 49 victims dead and 53 wounded before the gunman was killed by police. He professed allegiance to the Islamic State group. His father is among roughly 100 people who attend the mosque.

Ruiz said the mosque and its worshippers have been harassed since the massacre.

"First there were threating voicemails," he said. "Then drivers would splash water on the parishioners leaving on Fridays, and then a member got beat up in the parking lot when he came to the mosque for early morning prayers, and now the mosque has been set on fire."

The FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives joined the investigation into the fire. Sheriff's officials released the video and asked for the public's help in identifying the arsonist.

Michael Parsons, 22, was standing outside his parents' home, directly across the street from the mosque. He said that since the Orlando shooting, "a lot of people have been driving by hollering and yelling expletives at the church or mosque or whatever they call it."

Parsons, a gutter installer with "trust no one" tattooed on his chest, said his mother's cancer doctor attends the mosque.

"America was founded so people can believe what they want to believe and do what they want to do," he said. "These guys flying the American flag on their trucks don't really know what the freedom is they're fighting for."

On July 2, a few weeks after the nightclub massacre, a man was beaten outside the mosque. CAIR said the victim was a Muslim and the attacker hurled slurs. A suspect was arrested. CAIR said that earlier that day, a man in a truck stopped outside the mosque and said, "You Muslims need to get back to your country."

On Monday morning, a pickup truck with a "Don't Tread on Me" bumper sticker rolled past the mosque. The driver revved his engine and raised his index finger in the air as if making the gesture for No. 1.

Investigators speak outside the Fort Pierce Islamic Center Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, after a fire burned the center earlier that morning. Investigators believe an arsonist started the fire after reviewing surveillance video from the center and seeing a man approach the center, then take off just as the fire starts, at the Fort Pierce Islamic Center in Fort Pierce, Fla., after an apparent arsonist started a fire at the back of the center earlier that morning. (Adam Sacasa/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)
Johnson races around US to qualify for presidential debates

DENVER (AP)  Most presidential hopefuls spend their Septembers in places like Ohio and Florida, hoping to win over a handful of swing voters in battleground states. But Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson is crisscrossing the country in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to boost his national poll numbers and qualify for the presidential debates.

Johnson needs to reach an average of 15 percent in five national polls that the Commission on Presidential Debates relies upon to decide who qualifies for the first presidential debate on Sept. 26. But even his campaign manager acknowledges reaching that threshold is "unrealistic."

Johnson currently is just below 9 percent in three of those polls with results available so far. He is campaigning from Maine to Florida to Washington State in hopes of closing the gap. But he may be raising his profile the wrong way.

FILE - In this May 18, 2016 file photo, Libertarian presidential candidate, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson leaves the Utah State Capitol after meeting with with legislators, in Salt Lake City. The day after political heavyweight Mitt Romney name-dropped him on Twitter, the former New Mexico governor seemed to reveal a hole in his foreign-affairs knowledge when he was befuddled by an otherwise routine question about the Syrian city of Aleppo. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

Last week, Johnson became a viral sensation for being stumped by a question on national television about what to do about the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo. His baffled response  "What is Aleppo?"  ricocheted around the internet.

"People get excited at one faux pas," complained Ed Crane, who runs an outside group that supports Johnson and bought $100,000 worth of national television ads to boost the candidate's profile last week. "To me, this overreaction is a sign that people are starting to worry about Gary."

The debates are the best and possibly only chance for the relatively underfunded former New Mexico governor and medical marijuana entrepreneur to become more than a protest vote. Supporters of Johnson and his vice presidential running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, hope that debates would let the ticket broadcast its socially liberal and fiscally conservative message to a far broader audience than the people who attend his rarely covered rallies.

"It would be a huge amount for name recognition and exposure to the ideas," said Chris Rufer, a California tomato-processing magnate who has donated more than $1 million to Johnson and groups supporting him. "It's very important that it happens."

But the poll numbers are daunting. All five polls  by the three major networks, Fox News Channel and CNN  were scheduled to have new results before the debate deadline. In the three that have come out  Fox, CNN and ABC  Johnson registered at 9 percent, 7 percent and 9 percent respectively. That means he'd need to exceed 20 percent in the remaining two to clear the 15 percent mark on average.

Ron Neilson, Johnson's campaign manager, said in an interview that making the debates will be challenging. "The 15 percent is somewhat, I'll say, unrealistic," Neilson said. "It's probably too high."

Because of the widespread voter disgust with the two major-party candidates, Johnson has gotten more attention and support than many other recent third-party challengers, but his resources are still dwarfed by Clinton and Trump. For example, Johnson stirred excitement last month when he announced he had raised $2.9 million in the first two weeks of August. Clinton's campaign said it raised $143 million that month and the Trump team reported a $90 million haul.

Johnson is airing $900,000 in national radio ads and $500,000 in television ads in 10 mostly Western states where his campaign thinks his message best resonates. In contrast, Clinton and her supporters have aired $150 million worth of ads, according to Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group. Trump and his supporters have spent less but have still bought more than $7 million in airtime going forward.

The campaign has been critical of the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates for the 15 percent threshold, and Neilson said the campaign is urging supporters to pressure the commission to relax its criteria.

It's a familiar role for the commission, which was formed in 1987 to organize presidential debates and has often been criticized and sued by third-party candidates who argue it favors the two established political parties. It is chaired by a former Republican National Committee chairman and Bill Clinton's former White House press secretary.

The commission would not comment.

___

Keep track on how much Clinton and Trump are spending on television advertising, and where they're spending it, via AP's interactive ad tracker. http://elections.ap.org/content/ad-spending
3 Syrians believed sent by Islamic State arrested in Germany

BERLIN (AP)  Three Syrian men believed to have been sent to Germany last year by the Islamic State group as a possible "sleeper cell" were arrested in raids on Tuesday, part of efforts to root out extremists sent to Europe amid the migrant influx, authorities said.

The three are accused of coming to Germany in mid-November at the behest of IS "in order either to carry out an assignment they had already received or to keep themselves ready for further instructions," federal prosecutors said. The three are suspected of membership in a foreign terrorist organization.

Their arrests followed raids at refugee homes in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's northernmost state. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the men had been under observation for months, and that "there are no indications of concrete attack plans" at present.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere delivers a statement in Berlin, Tuesday Sept. 13, 2016. Germanys interior minister says three Syrian men believed to have been sent to Germany by the Islamic State group appear to have used the same smugglers and received passports from the same workshop as some of those involved in the Paris attacks. The three men were arrested in northern Germany on Tuesday. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said they had been under observation for months and there were no indications of any concrete plans for an attack. ( Michael Kappeler/dpa via AP)

"This may have been a sleeper cell," he told reporters.

De Maiziere said the suspects appear to have made it to Europe through the same channels as two men who blew themselves up outside France's national stadium in November in the Paris attacks claimed by IS.

"Everything points to the same smuggling organization as with the Paris attackers having brought these three who were arrested to Germany," he said. "And everything points to the travel documents having come from the same workshop."

Prosecutors identified the suspects only as Mahir Al-H., 17, Mohamed A., 26, and Ibrahim M., 18, in keeping with German privacy rules.

The three traveled to Germany via Turkey and Greece, the route used by most migrants to Europe last year. Mahir Al-H. joined IS in Raqqa, Syria, earlier last year and received weapons and explosives training, prosecutors said, before he and the other two suspects in October told an IS official responsible for "operations and attacks outside the IS area" that they would travel to Europe.

The three were provided with passports by IS and were given a "high four-figure sum" of cash in U.S. dollars as well as cellphones with a pre-installed communication program, prosecutors said in a statement.

The Federal Criminal Police Office said that six locations in two German states were searched Tuesday. It said that, as well as the arrests, "extensive material" was seized as evidence.

The office noted that the attacks in Paris and Brussels over the past year showed that IS has used the migrant flow to send people to Europe. It said that it knows of more than 400 tips about people among the migrants who might have a terrorist background, but most turned out to be wrong. However, more than 60 investigations were opened.

In July, two attacks were carried out in Germany by asylum seekers who arrived over the past two years and claimed by IS. Five people were wounded in an ax rampage on a train near Wuerzburg and 15 in a bombing outside a bar in Ansbach. Both of the attackers were killed.

Those attacks and two others unrelated to Islamic extremism in the same weeklong period put the country on edge and stoked tensions over the arrival last year of hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Those tensions have helped the nationalist, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, which won over 20 percent of the vote in a state election in the northeastern region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Sept. 4.

Tuesday's arrests come days ahead of another state election in Berlin. De Maiziere said they "show that security authorities are vigilant and are acting with determination."
The Latest: 20 countries seeking Syria peace may meet in NY

BEIRUT (AP)  The Latest on developments in Syria, where a cease-fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia has come into effect (all times local):

___

3:15 a.m.

Activists in Syrias besieged Aleppo protest against the United Nations for what they say is its failure to lift the siege off their rebel-held area, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Dozens of protesters marched in al-Shaar neighborhood heading toward the Castello road, the area from which aid is expected to be delivered. Hunger better than humiliation, one banner read. X the UN, another read. (Modar Shekho via AP)

The U.N. envoy for Syria says if the cessation of hostilities holds there may be a meeting of the coalition of some 20 countries trying to end the conflict on the sidelines of next week's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York.

Staffan de Mistura said the meeting of the International Syria Support Group  which includes regional and world powers and Syria's neighbors  may be held before a ministerial meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Syria on Sept. 21.

If the coalition meets, the political process needs to be on the horizon and invitations for a new round of political talks could follow, he said.

De Mistura said an announcement is expected late Wednesday or Thursday from the U.S. and Russia on whether the cease-fire is holding.

___

9:30 p.m.

Saudi Arabia has welcomed the U.S. and Russian-brokered truce in Syria and urged the Syrian government and its allies to abide by it.

In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry says it is following the cease-fire with interest and hopes it will help alleviate suffering among the "brotherly Syrian people."

The ministry says it also hopes for the resumption of talks aimed at ensuring a peaceful political transition in accordance with U.N resolutions.

Saudi Arabia, which backs the opposition, says no political transition is possible unless Syrian President Bashar Assad steps down.

The cease-fire has largely held since it went into effect at sunset on Monday, with only sporadic violations reported.

___

9 p.m.

The U.N. envoy for Syria is hailing a "significant drop in violence" over the first 24 hours of a new cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia.

Staffan de Mistura says no U.N. humanitarian aid trucks have yet moved across the Turkish border into Syria. He says U.N. officials are awaiting assurances that drivers of aid trucks will be "unhindered and untouched."

De Mistura says no letters of authorization from Syria's government are needed under the U.S. and Russian arrangement, only a simple "notification" to Damascus about the contents of the trucks that "have not yet moved."

He says aid for rebel-held eastern Aleppo is a top priority. He says a key concern about the overall cease-fire is whether sporadic "incidents" snowball to threaten the deal.

___

8:45 p.m.

Syria's state news agency says a rebel attack on electricity lines feeding the southern region of Quneitra has caused a blackout in the province.

The state news agency says rebels based in the neighboring rural Damascus province carried out the attack Tuesday, just 24 hours after a U.S. and Russian-brokered cease-fire came into effect.

It quotes an electricity company official as saying the attack caused a province-wide blackout.

Insurgent groups, including the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, say they launched an offensive against government troops in rural Quneitra on Tuesday.

__

8:30 p.m.

Dozens of people in Syria's Aleppo are protesting against the United Nations ahead of an expected aid delivery, saying that they want a government siege lifted so they don't have to rely on humanitarian assistance.

The U.N. is expected to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo in the coming hours as part of a U.S. and Russian-brokered cease-fire that took effect on Monday.

But Modar Shekho, a 28-year old nurse, says residents of rebel-held Aleppo don't want food aid, but an end to a government siege of the area, where some 250,000 people still reside.

One banner carried by the protesters on Tuesday reads: "Hunger is better than humiliation."

Shekho says the cease-fire will only serve Syrian President Bashar Assad's government. He says the promised U.N. aid doesn't cover essentials such as fuel or medical supplies.

___

6 p.m.

The Russian military says U.S.-backed rebels have repeatedly violated a cease-fire in Syria, but that the nearly day-old truce has largely held.

Col. Sergei Kopytsyn says in a video call from an area near Aleppo that six people have been killed and another 10 have been wounded in the northern city since the truce went into force at sunset Monday.

Separately, he says two Syrian government troops were killed and another soldier was wounded by opposition shelling of the Castello road, a key route leading to rebel-held parts of Aleppo, on Monday night.

Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznikhir, of the Russian military's General Staff, says there have been 23 cease-fire violations by U.S- backed opposition units since the start of the truce.

___

5:40 p.m.

Turkey's state-run news agency says two Syrians wounded in an attack by Syrian government forces have been rushed to a hospital in Turkey.

Anadolu says the two were wounded Tuesday in the countryside near the rebel-held city of Idlib in the province of the same name, which borders Turkey.

A U.S. and Russia-brokered cease-fire that came into effect on Monday has mostly held, with only sporadic and minor violations reported in different parts of Syria.

The architects of the truce hope it can pave the way for the delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged areas and lead to the resumption of peace talks aimed at ending the 5  year conflict.

___

3:45 p.m.

Al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate has criticized the U.S.-Russia cease-fire deal, saying its aim is to defeat Islamic jihad and weaken insurgents in Syria.

Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, also praised in a statement on Tuesday other insurgent factions in Syria, which have criticized the deal for excluding the al-Qaida affiliate.

The Nusra Front changed its name in July, announcing it cut links with the al-Qaida terror network.

Both the al-Qaida-linked group and its larger rival, the Islamic State group, are not part of the cease-fire deal, which allows Syrian government forces to continue fighting against Jabhat Fatah al-Sham for the first week of the truce.

If calm holds for seven days, the U.S. and Russia would then set up a new cooperation center that would jointly develop strategies to combat Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.

The U.S. urged Syrian rebel factions to distance themselves from the group.

___

3:10 p.m.

A Syrian activist group that tracks the country's civil war says more than 300,000 people have been killed so far in the conflict.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday that the dead include 59,000 government troops and more than 86,000 civilians. The rest include rebels, foreign fighters, Hezbollah militants, defectors from the Syrian army and others.

The Observatory says its records show that since the crisis began in March 2011 and until a truce went into effect on Monday evening, 301,781 people have been killed in Syria.

The group says the real death toll could be 70,000 higher since many insurgent groups don't announce their deaths and because there are other deaths that are not documented.

The latest death toll figure from the U.N., which stopped tracking casualties in 2015, had said that 250,000 have been killed in Syria.

___

2:35 p.m.

The Islamic State group has released a gory video in which its fighters are seen killing 19 people from Syria's eastern province, accusing them of being spies for the West.

In the 12-minute video, the narrator mocks U.S. and Western intelligence agencies for being unable to prevent IS fighters from carrying out attacks in France, Belgium and Germany.

Instead, the IS narrator says, Western intelligence recruited the 19-member spy cell to infiltrate Deir el-Zour province, an IS stronghold.

The video comes as a U.S-Russian brokered cease-fire is starting to take hold in parts of Syria.

___

2:25 p.m.

Turkey's foreign minister is accusing the Syrian government of not abiding by a U.S.-Russia brokered cease-fire.

Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in the coastal city of Antalya on Tuesday the Syrian government broke the cease-fire immediately after it came into effect the previous evening.

Cavusoglu says he hopes all parties will work to make the cease-fire permanent and that efforts "cannot be one-sided."

Turkey's military said earlier in the day that it shelled two targets inside Syria after a mortar round fell inside Turkey, minutes after a cease-fire came into effect. It said the mortar round was fired from Syrian government-controlled territory.

Cavusoglu stressed that Turkey will work to bring peace to Syria, but will also continue fighting the Islamic State group and Syrian Kurdish rebels it sees as a threat.

___

2:15 p.m.

Turkey's state-run news agency says 20 U.N. trucks have left Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid to the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo.

The shipment comes as a cease-fire, brokered by the United States and Russia, is holding across most of the country.

The Anadolu agency says the trucks left around noon Tuesday from the Cilvegozu border gate in the southern province of Hatay. A total of 40 trucks are expected to cross the border by the end of the day.

On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said that "food, clothing and children's toys" were to be delivered by the United Nations as well as the Turkish Red Crescent through corridors opened up by the cease-fire, which went into effect at sunset.

___

1:40 p.m.

The Russian foreign ministry is pushing to make public the text a cease-fire deal for Syria that Russia and the United States agreed to after marathon talks in Geneva last week.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters on Tuesday that Moscow wants the deal, which launched a nationwide cessation of hostilities in Syria, to be made public but that the U.S. opposes such a move.

Lavrov said Moscow "has nothing to hide" and wants the U.N. Security Council to formally approve the Syria truce deal as well.

Syria observer say the cease-fire appears to be holding for now after it came into effect at sunset Monday.

___

1 p.m.

Two former U.N. envoys for Syria say they are hopeful that the Russia-U.S.-brokered cease-fire in the country will stand.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says the agreement appears to be holding, despite some minor skirmishes. Annan was the U.N. first special envoy for Syria, lasting six months before resigning in August 2012 after failing to secure sufficient backing for a peace deal.

His successor, Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, says he is praying the new deal will work. Brahimi told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday that the cease-fire should be seen as a first step, and even if fighting resumes, "the Russians and the Americans will continue to work together."

Brahimi was the U.N. envoy for Syria from 2012 until 2014, when he was succeeded by incumbent Staffan de Mistura.

___

12:45 p.m.

The U.N. humanitarian aid coordinator says it needs to make sure its staff and partners "are not in mortal danger" before starting convoys into parts of Syria under a new cease-fire plan.

OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke says humanitarian aid teams are ready to move into areas such as the troubled northern city of Aleppo. He said the agency needs "peace to be reinstated before we can go in."

Laerke told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that he did not know who would make the final assessment when conditions were safe enough for deliveries to resume.

He says no deliveries had been made since the U.S.-Russia brokered cease-fire went into effect on Monday at sunset. The deal is expected to pave the way for U.N.-led aid convoys to resume.

___

12:20 p.m.

Turkey's military says it has shelled two targets inside Syria after a mortar round struck inside Turkey minutes after a cease-fire came into effect in Syria the previous evening.

Maj. Gen. Ertugrulgazi Ozkurkcu said in a statement on Tuesday that the mortar round was determined to have been fired from Syrian government-controlled territory.

It exploded near the border in Turkey's southern Hatay province shortly after 7:00pm local time Monday.

The statement says Turkish artillery responded with six rounds against two targets, in line with the Turkish military's rules of engagement.

A U.S-Russia-brokered cease-fire appeared to be holding on Tuesday in Syria, despite sporadic and minor violations.

___

10:35 a.m.

The Syrian military says its forces have shot down two Israeli aircraft  a warplane and a drone  near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights.

The report came as a U.S.-Russia-brokered truce appeared to be holding in Syria on Tuesday, after coming into effect the night before.

The Israeli military quickly denied the Syrian claim. It says that "two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission overnight to target Syrian artillery positions" but that the safety of Israeli planes was not compromised.

The Syrian military statement, reported by the state news agency SANA and state TV, says the Israeli plane was shot down during Israeli air raids on Syrian army positions early on Tuesday. A drone was shot down as well nearby.

Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area.

Syria and Israel have been at a state of war for decades. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war

___

10 a.m.

Syrian opposition activists and monitoring groups say the cease-fire in Syria appears to be holding since coming into effect the previous night, despite sporadic and minor violations.

Rami Abdurrahman from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says "calm is prevailing" in most of the country on Tuesday, though there were minor violations in central Hama province.

Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees reported some shelling in Aleppo and the southern region of Quneitra, while state media said there were "breaches" of the truce by rebels in the contested city of Aleppo.

Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the southern province of Daraa  where Syria's crisis began in 2011  says the region was also calm.

The weeklong, U.S.- and Russia-brokered cease-fire started at sunset Monday.

An Israeli military vehicle drives during training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Israel is denying Syrian government claims that its forces shot down a warplane and a drone near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-occupied area. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan salutes people gathered to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in Istanbul, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Erdogan said Monday the country will send food, clothing and children's toys to Aleppo, Syria after a U.S.-Russia brokered ceasefire takes effect. (Murat Cetinmuhurdar, Presidential Press Service, Pool photo via AP)
A quick look at Oregon standoff defendants set for trial

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  Seven people are ready to stand trial in connection with the occupation of a national wildfire refuge in Oregon. Here's a look at the defendants:

___

AMMON BUNDY

FILE--This Jan. 27, 2016, photo provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office shows Jeff Banta. Banta and six others are set to go on trial nine months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon. Government prosecutors are expected to begin opening statements Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, at the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore. (Multnomah County Sheriff via AP, file)

The occupation leader, 41, of Emmett, Idaho, speaks in measured cadences about the U.S. Constitution and how, in his belief, it limits the federal government's ability to own public land. He has a wife and six children, owns a fleet-maintenance business and resides on a property that includes an orchard with 240 apple trees.

___

RYAN BUNDY

Ammon's brother, 43, of Cedar City, Utah, whose facial injuries stemming from being hit by a car as a youth make him easily identifiable. Authorities say he planned an escape from jail and also got into a scuffle with a guard. He and his wife, Angie, have eight children. She maintains a blog that provides an unvarnished look at their family life.

___

DAVID FRY

Known as "The Last Holdout," the 28-year-old from Blanchester, Ohio, surrendered Feb. 11 after a lengthy negotiation that was carried live on a YouTube feed. He talked of UFOs, requested pizza and marijuana, and threatened to kill himself. Defense attorney Per Olson has said a mental health expert will testify that Fry suffers from a personality disorder characterized by paranoia, and it intensifies under stress.

___

JEFF BANTA

The 47-year-old of Yerington, Nevada, was one of the final four occupiers. He arrived at the refuge Jan. 25, a day before the Bundys were arrested and Finicum was killed.

___

SHAWNA COX

The 60-year-old from Kanab, Utah, was in the truck with Arizona rancher Robert "LaVoy" Finicum before he was fatally shot by Oregon State Police. Cox sued the U.S government after her arrest, seeking damages "from the works of the devil in excess of $666,666,666,666.66." A judge allowed Cox to act as her own lawyer but warned her not to question the authority of the court or take other "screwball positions."

___

KENNETH MEDENBACH

The only Oregonian on trial, Medenbach, 63, has been fixated on whether U.S. District Judge Anna Brown took the appropriate oath of office when she was appointed in 1999. He's repeatedly brought it up at pretrial hearings and filed a lawsuit on the issue that was quickly dismissed. He's from the city Crescent.

___

NEIL WAMPLER

A former woodworker, the 69-year-old from Los Osos, California, was convicted in 1977 of second-degree murder in the death of his father. The Tribune of San Luis Obispo reported that he has previously written letters to the newspaper criticizing gun control measures.

FILE--This Jan. 27, 2016, photo provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office shows Ken Medenbach. Medenbach and six others are set to go on trial 9 months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon. Government prosecutors are expected to begin opening statements Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, at the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore. (Multnomah County Sheriff via AP, file)

FILE--This Jan. 27, 2016, photo provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office shows Ammon Bundy. Bundy and his brother, Ryan Bundy, are set to go on trial 9 months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon. Government prosecutors are expected to begin opening statements Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, at the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore. (Multnomah County Sheriff via AP, file)

FILE--This undated photo provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff's office shows David Fry. Fry and six others are set to go on trial 9 months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon. Government prosecutors are expected to begin opening statements Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, at the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore. (Multnomah County Sheriff's Office via AP, file)

FILE - This Jan. 27, 2016, file photo provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, shows Ryan Bundy. Bundy and his brother, Ammon Bundy, are set to go on trial 9 months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon. Government prosecutors are expected to begin opening statements Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, at the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore. (Multnomah County Sheriff via AP, file)

FILE--This Jan. 27, 2016, file photo provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office shows Neil Wampler. Wampler and six others are set to go on trial nine months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon. Government prosecutors are expected to begin opening statements Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, at the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore. (Multnomah County Sheriff via AP, file)
So many pregnant women have taken advantage of Floridas offer of free Zika testing that state laboratories have been unable to keep pace, doctors and patients say, leading to long delays for women anxious to know whether the virus has passed to their fetuses.



The delays began with a well-intentioned and much-applauded offer. On Aug. 3, Gov. Rick Scott announced that the state would provide the costly Zika tests to all pregnant women, a move intended to quell fears and allow low-income or uninsured women to be tested. Babies infected with Zika can be born with microcephaly, a devastating brain malformation, or with eye and ear defects.



Were ramping that up across the entire state, Mr. Scott said at the time.



But hundreds of women in Miami-Dade County, where Zika is spreading, have been waiting weeks for state results on the same kinds of tests that private laboratories are turning around in three to seven days, doctors said. For some women, the delays could complicate already distressing decisions about whether to terminate their pregnancies if they test positive. Florida forbids abortions after 24 weeks.



State health officials declined to say how many tests had been done, provide a reason for the delay or explain how they planned to remedy it. But doctors and researchers attributed some of the delay to a lack of resources, with not enough staff members to analyze the test results.



Acknowledging the delays, Dr. Lillian Rivera, the Florida Health Department administrator for Miami-Dade County, told a panel of Zika experts from the University of Miami last week that the reasons were complicated.



Sometimes, she said, tests are done and have been delivered, and sometimes there are bureaucratic reasons; they are in someones computer or fax machine. The state has contracts for some of the work with two major private laboratories, LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics, she said.



In a small number of Florida cases, the long wait can be traced to a final cumbersome test that must be analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or an approved laboratory to confirm the presence of the virus.



It worries me because I just want to know and I want to make sure the baby is healthy and everything is O.K., said Aileen Perez, 31, a nurse practitioner who is 20 weeks pregnant and has been waiting nearly five weeks for her results. Ms. Perez, though, said she was confident that her results would come back negative because she had been very careful  wearing long sleeves, applying repellent and staying indoors as much as possible.

The latest way is directed at women, because Republicans sure do love kicking women , especially if they are poor. Following Gov. Medicare Fraud's announcement that the state would pay for Zika testing, the thousands of women who availed themselves of this testing find themselves in limbo, still waiting for the results.The great state of Florida makes no exceptions regarding necessary abortions that come too late because of the great state of Florida's incompetence. And knowing the clock is ticking is a cruel torture for someone who hopes to keep a healthy child but the option of abortion for a microcephalic.
Kaine's many attacks fail to get Trump's attention

RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Donald Trump hasn't let many insults slide this campaign season  except when they come from Hillary Clinton's running mate.

The Republican presidential nominee has all but ignored the constant barrage of attacks from Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who has assumed the traditional attack-dog role of a vice presidential candidate with gusto, but little notice.

It could be a sign of a newfound discipline by Trump. Or it could that Kaine's attacks don't rise above the din of the daily news cycle. Or, perhaps, that Trump just doesn't care.

In this Sept. 6, 2016, photo, Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. speaks during a campaign rally in Wilmington, N.C. Donald Trump hasnt let many insults slide this campaign season _ except when they come from Hillary Clintons running mate. The Republican presidential nominee has all but ignored the constant barrage of attacks from Kaine, who has assumed the traditional attack-dog role of a vice presidential candidate with gusto, but little notice.(AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

In recent weeks, Kaine has asserted Trump has a "bizarre fascination" with dictators and Vladimir Putin, said he "choked" during his trip to Mexico and even associated Trump's values with those of the Ku Klux Klan. Criticizing Trump as unfit to be president has become a central theme of Kaine's public remarks as he works to show the Democratic ticket as more qualified to run the country. In an attempt to paint Trump as reckless, Kaine often repeats Clinton's line that Trump is a candidate you can "bait with a Tweet."

But if it's bait Kaine is casting, Trump isn't biting. Trump's only recent retort  via a Tweet  came after a recent Kaine appearance on a morning news show. He didn't even mention Kaine by name.

"Crooked Hillary's V.P. pick said this morning that I was not aware that Russia took over Crimea. A total lie  and taken over during O term!" Trump tweeted, with "O'' referring to President Barack Obama.

Ignoring the barbs of the opposing side's vice presidential candidate is common practice among presidential candidates who don't want to be seen punching below their weight. Presidential hopefuls typically attack only their main opponent, but Trump is an uncommon candidate whose rise is largely marked by his willingness to buck tradition. And Trump has not held back from attacking those he believes have slighted him, whatever their prominence. His many targets have included many other politicians, individual journalists, and celebrities.

In recent weeks Trump has made more of an effort to attack GOP Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and morning TV news host Mika Brzezinski than he has Kaine.

"Just heard that crazy and very dumb (Mika) had a mental breakdown while talking about me," Trump tweeted recently.

Still, Trump has been showing more restraint lately than he has during much of his campaign. When Clinton abruptly left a 9/11 anniversary ceremony Sunday and her campaign revealed that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia, Trump said that he hopes she feels better.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Kaine's counterpart on the Republican ticket, did punch back at Kaine on Saturday for calling the GOP ticket unpatriotic in their praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Well, Tim, when Donald Trump and I said that the small and bullying president of Russia was a strong leader on the world stage, that wasn't an endorsement of Putin," Pence said, going on to say it was an "indictment" of Obama.

But Pence has also largely stayed away from attacking Kaine.

Trump's campaign has paid particular attention lately to Kaine's home state with a heavy TV ad buy. Once viewed as a crucial swing state, Virginia has been increasingly leaning in favor of Clinton this campaign cycle. Kaine is the state's former governor and has a strong following among the state's Democratic base. But his support is not strong enough to make Trump hesitant to attack him.

The Clinton campaign suggests Trump may be keeping mum because his past attempts to criticize Kaine haven't been effective. In late July, Trump wrongly identified Kaine as the governor of New Jersey as he attempted to attack his record. When Clinton first named Kaine her running mate, Trump's campaign labeled him "Corrupt Kaine." The Republican National Committee has also called him "Weathervane Kaine," charging him with flip-flopping. But none of the attacks have been used with regularity or proved to have the same staying power as Trump's nickname for Clinton, "Crooked Hillary."

Asked along the ropeline in Norfolk, Virginia, if he was surprised Trump wasn't responding more to him, Kaine demurred.

"Not really," he said. "I mean, who knows?"

Trump campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller was even more blunt when asked about Trump's Kaine avoidance strategy.

"Who?" he asked.

___

Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.

___

What political news is the world searching for on Google and talking about on Twitter? Find out via AP's Election Buzz interactive. http://elections.ap.org/buzz
Prosecutor: Occupiers being tried for actions, not beliefs

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  The armed occupiers who seized a remote bird sanctuary in Oregon early this year are being tried because their actions intimidated and threatened federal employees, not because they challenged the government's land policies, a prosecutor said Tuesday as a trial began for seven people accused in the standoff.

During his opening statement, Geoffrey Barrow dismissed claims by group leader Ammon Bundy and others that the takeover was a legitimate protest of federal land management. Bundy and his brother Ryan, who's also on trial, are part of a Nevada ranching family embroiled in a long-running dispute over land use.

"Everyone in this great nation has a right to his or her beliefs. We are not prosecuting the defendants because we don't like what they think or said," Barrow told jurors. "We are prosecuting them because of what they did."

Protestors gather outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The trial of The Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others are on trial nine months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon as government prosecutors begin opening statements today in Portland.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)

The occupation drew national attention to the decades-old fight between the federal government and Western states over land policy. After the land was seized, the government left the group alone for weeks until the last few holdouts abandoned the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge after 41 days.

The seven on trial are charged with conspiring to impede Interior Department employees from doing their jobs through intimidation or threats. Five are also charged with possession of a firearm in a federal facility.

Barrow said he will detail how the occupiers were divided into squads and drilled in hand-to-hand combat. He also said one of the participants in the standoff will testify against his former allies.

Marcus Mumford, the defense attorney for Ammon Bundy, said in his opening statement that the occupation had nothing to do with impeding federal employees.

Ammon Bundy "did what he did to demand accountability from the federal government," Mumford said. "He demanded the federal government obey the law  the nerve."

Bundy grew up the son of a rancher, Mumford said, and became a "reluctant activist" on matters involving government overreach and Western lands.

Mumford repeatedly asserted that Bundy was trying to legally take the refuge land by a practice known as adverse possession, which is a way to gain title to land by occupying it for a period of time.

U.S. District Court Judge Anna Brown stepped in to tell jurors that the concept of adverse possession is not being litigated.

Mumford ended his statement by noting that Bundy and his followers never aimed a gun at anyone.

Referencing the fatal shooting by police of occupation spokesman Robert "Lavoy" Finicum, he said only one side of the standoff shot someone. "And it wasn't Mr. Bundy."

Ryan Bundy, who is acting as his own attorney, told the court he came to help another ranching family he felt was being abused by the government.

"I felt we were not there to break the law but to enforce the law," Ryan Bundy said, referring to the U.S. Constitution. "I am very in favor of government, as long as it's done correctly."

Before lunch, the judge rejected his request to hand each juror a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution.

About a dozen protesters showed up outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland. They waved an upside-down American flag and marched around the building during the trial's lunch break.

Opening statements for the remaining defendants  Shawna Cox, David Fry, Jeff Banta, Kenneth Medenbach and Neil Wampler  concluded Tuesday afternoon. All acknowledged they were at the refuge, but not to prevent federal employees from doing their jobs.

Fry's attorney Per Olson said his client drove to Oregon from Ohio with a laptop computer, cellphone and no gun: "He brought tools of speech, not tools of intimidation."

The standoff began as a protest against the imprisonment of two Oregon ranchers convicted of setting fires and quickly grew into demands for the U.S. government to turn public lands over to locals. The issue traces back to the 1970s and the Sagebrush Rebellion, a move by Western states such as Nevada to win more control of vast federal land holdings.

At the refuge near Burns, Oregon, protesters mostly came and went as they pleased. They changed the signs to "Harney County Resource Center" and said they would give the land to local officials to administer. The group held frequent news conferences and said they were doing maintenance and other work as they moved heavy equipment around.

"He believed if he didn't do something dramatic, nobody would ever notice the death of this (rural) culture," attorney Matthew Schindler said of Medenbach.

The occupation roiled the surrounding area, with some locals supporting the movement and others denouncing the occupiers as unwanted outsiders.

Counterprotesters, including environmentalists, traveled to eastern Oregon and urged the federal government to administer public lands for the widest possible uses, for everyone from ranchers to bird watchers.

The nearby Burns Paiute Tribe also criticized the standoff, noting that the refuge contains prehistoric archaeological sites and that tribal members considered it part of their ancestral land.

Oregon officials, including Gov. Kate Brown, grew frustrated at how long it took federal authorities to move against the group. At one point, Brown sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey urging them to end the occupation "as safely and as quickly as possible."

The Bundys were arrested in a Jan. 26 traffic stop that included the fatal shooting of Finicum, an occupation spokesman. Four holdouts stayed at the refuge for another 16 days.

A total of 26 people were charged with conspiracy. Eleven have pleaded guilty, including several from the Bundys' inner circle. Charges were dropped against one. Seven defendants sought and received a delay in their trial, now scheduled for February.

The trial is expected to last until November.

Protestors march outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The trial of The Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others are on trial 9 months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon as government prosecutors begin opening statements today in Portland.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)

A protester carries an upside down American flag as he looks up at the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday in the trial of the Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others who occupied a remote bird sanctuary in Oregon's high desert early this year. The standoff drew national attention to the decades-old fight between the federal government and Western states over land policy. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Protestors gather outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The trial of The Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others are on trial nine months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon as government prosecutors begin opening statements today in Portland.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Protestors march outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The trial of The Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others are on trial 9 months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon as government prosecutors begin opening statements today in Portland.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)

A protester carries an upside down American flag as he looks up at the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday in the trial of the Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others who occupied a remote bird sanctuary in Oregon's high desert early this year. The standoff drew national attention to the decades-old fight between the federal government and Western states over land policy. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Two protestors stand on the corner outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday in the trial of the Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others who occupied a remote bird sanctuary in Oregon's high desert early this year. The standoff drew national attention to the decades-old fight between the federal government and Western states over land policy. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

A protester sits outside the federal courthouse with his horse, Lady Liberty, in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday in the trial of the Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others who occupied a remote bird sanctuary in Oregon's high desert early this year. The standoff drew national attention to the decades-old fight between the federal government and Western states over land policy. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Defendant Ken Medenbach walks to the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday in the trial of Medenbach and six others who occupied a remote bird sanctuary in Oregon's high desert early this year. The standoff drew national attention to the decades-old fight between the federal government and Western states over land policy. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

A protester carries an upside down American flag outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday in the trial of the Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others who occupied a remote bird sanctuary in Oregon's high desert early this year. The standoff drew national attention to the decades-old fight between the federal government and Western states over land policy. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Defendant Ken Medenbach stops to talk on camera before entering the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday in the trial of Medenbach and six others who occupied a remote bird sanctuary in Oregon's high desert early this year. The standoff drew national attention to the decades-old fight between the federal government and Western states over land policy. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

A protestor sits outside the federal courthouse as his horse, Lady Liberty, gets a drink from a fountain in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday in the trial of the Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others who occupied a remote bird sanctuary in Oregon's high desert early this year. The standoff drew national attention to the decades-old fight between the federal government and Western states over land policy. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

A protestor, who would only identify himself as Robert, flies an upside down American flag outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others are on trial 9 months after the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon as government prosecutors begin opening statements Tuesday in Portland.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Louisiana woman saved from flooding meets her rescuer

DENHAM SPRINGS, La. (AP)  Millions of people have seen and shared the video of a good Samaritan jumping off a boat to rescue Hailey Brouillette and her dog from a car sinking into south Louisiana floodwaters last month. Brouillette isn't one of them, but she finally got to meet the man who saved her life.

Although she heard David Phung's voice during the rescue, Brouillette says she never saw her rescuer's face before their reunion Monday at a Denham Springs home where she is temporarily staying.

"I know I don't know you, but I love you," Brouillette, 53, said as she hugged and thanked the man she called her "angel" and "savior."

David Phung, who rescued Hailey Brouillette and her dog Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, reunites with her for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

"It was nothing," Phung, 27, replied before Brouillete introduced him to Sassy, the poodle mix he also saved.

A Red Cross volunteer who befriended Brouillette at a shelter arranged Monday's meeting. Brouillette lost her trailer home and all of her belongings in the flooding. Phung brought her a load of supplies, including dog food.

"It's just who we are in Louisiana. We help people in times of need," he said. "I was put in that place to help her out."

The Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as David Phung and two of his relatives arrive in a boat and urge her to get out of the car.

"I'm trying! I can't!" she replied. "Oh my God! I'm drowning!"

Phung tried to smash a car window from the boat, then jumped into the water and used his hands to rip open a hole on the top of the car. Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. She remained submerged for several seconds before Phung finally pulled her out of the water.

"Get my dog!" she immediately shouted.

The poodle appeared to be underwater for at least 20 seconds before Phung took a deep breath, dipped below the surface and emerged with the dog cradled in his arms.

"I got your dog!" he yelled. "Swim to the boat."

Phung said he lost count of how many people that he helped save from the floodwaters, but none was more dramatic than Brouillette's.

"I didn't actually see the tape until two days later because I was working from sun up late into the night, just helping people," he said. "I was actually amazed at how calm and collected I was. I guess it was just the adrenaline took over."

Before getting caught in the floodwaters, Brouillette said she had been released from a hospital that morning after being treated for a kidney ailment. She was on her way to a pharmacy to get prescriptions filled when the car she said she borrowed from a friend was overcome by the water.

"It still seems like a dream," she said.

She believes "divine intervention" also played a part in her survival.

"He saved my life," she said. "I don't even know if I'm worth saving. I guess God said, 'Yeah.'"

Carolyn Perry, a Red Cross volunteer, said she watched the rescue video several times from her home in Kern County, California, before she was deployed to Louisiana.

"I was drawn to it," she said. "I just had this strange feeling I'm going to meet this woman."

Within three days of seeing the video, Perry recognized Brouillette at a Baton Rouge shelter that provided refuge to hundreds of flood victims. Perry said she hugged Brouillette and explained how the rescue had struck a chord with her.

"She was very, very humble, and we just struck up a friendship," Perry said. "For the next three days, we had a lot of heart-to-heart talks about life."

Before Perry returned home to California, Brouillette asked her new friend for help in connecting with the man who had saved her. Perry contacted an Associated Press reporter, who provided her with a telephone number for Phung. Perry called Phung and arranged for him to meet Brouillette and her dog.

At the end of their meeting, Brouillette gave Phung her phone number and embraced him one more time.

"And if I can ever do anything for you, let me know," she said.

David Phung, who rescued Hailey Brouillette and her dog Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, reunites with her for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of Youtube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

David Phung, who rescued Hailey Brouillette and her dog Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, reunites with her for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

David Phung, who rescued Hailey Brouillette and her dog Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, hugs her as he gives her a box of household supplies, as they reunite for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Hailey Brouillette holds the hand of David Phung, who rescued from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, as they reunited for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Hailey Brouillette's dog Sassy sits on a box of supplies given to her by David Phung who rescued her and Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, after the two reunited for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

David Phung, who rescued Hailey Brouillette and her dog Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, brings her a box of household supplies, as they reunite for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Hailey Brouillette's dog Sassy stands on a box of supplies given to her by David Phung, who rescued her and Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, after the two reunited for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

David Phung, who rescued Hailey Brouillette and her dog Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, reunites with her for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

David Phung, who rescued Hailey Brouillette and her dog Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, reunites with her for the first time in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Hailey Brouillette waits with her dog Sassy before reuniting for the first time with David Phung, who rescued her and Sassy from her sinking car in recent floodwaters, in Denham Springs, La., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. An Aug. 13 rescue video shot by WAFB-TV has millions of YouTube views. It shows floodwaters swallowing Brouillette's red convertible as Phung grabbed Brouillette by her arms as the car disappeared in the murky waters. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Meet Newman: baby born shortly after family rescued in Med

BERLIN (AP)  Just 24 hours after his family was rescued from an overcrowded rubber boat, a baby boy has been born aboard a rescue vessel in the Mediterranean Sea.

Doctors Without Borders, one of the operators of the rescue ship Aquarius, said the boy was born to Nigerian parents in international waters Monday morning. He was named Newman Otas.

Jonquil Nicholl, a midwife with the aid group who delivered the baby, said it was "a very normal birth in dangerously abnormal conditions."

In this photo made available by MSF, Doctors Without Borders on Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, parents Otas, second left, and Faith, right, pose for a photo with one of their sons Rollres, left, and baby Newman Otas, born on board MV Aquarius, on the Mediterranean Sea. The family were rescued from an overcrowded rubber boat 24 hours previously. (MSF via AP)

Parents Otas and Faith and older brothers Victory and Rollres were rescued from a rubber boat trying to cross the Mediterranean from Libya a day previously.

The baby's mother said she was panicking before the rescue that she would go into labor, and had been having contractions for three days.
Long-silent voices speak loudly at Toronto Film Festival

TORONTO (AP)  Living partly in the Ugandan capital of Kampala where she runs a film school, the Indian-born filmmaker Mira Nair is regularly surrounded by lives she rarely sees reflected back by the movies.

"The dignity of everyday life  the beauty of it, the attitude of it  is what I live around," says Nair. "And it is never on screen and it is certainly never associated with Africa. If we see Africa at all, it is always used as a backdrop: a big blob of a continent rather than a specific street or a country or a place."

Nair premiered her upcoming Disney film "Queen of Katwe," about a chess prodigy who rose from the slums of Uganda, at the Toronto International Film Festival over the weekend. But she was far from the only filmmaker at the festival focused on capturing lives and faces that have had to fight for their place on the big screen.

Lupita Nyong'o, Mira Nair and David Oyelowo pose for photos as they arrive for "Queen of Katwe" at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

A rich crop of racially diverse films is poised to disrupt two straight years of overwhelmingly white Academy Awards. But there's a larger groundswell at work.

"The creators have taken it upon themselves to create these stories," says Barry Jenkins, whose coming-of-age tale "Moonlight" has been one of the most acclaimed films of the festival. "The point is all these men and women of color and different sexualities are now saying: 'I'm tired of this. There's no reason I should be voiceless. I'm going to take the incentive to tell these stories.'"

Jenkins' "Moonlight," a lyrical portrait of a gay black kid growing up poor in Miami, like most of the other films due this fall, was conceived long before the Oscar diversity crisis.

The same is true for Nate Parker's "The Birth of a Nation," about Nat Turner's slave rebellion, which was hailed as the antidote Hollywood needed. Yet the film arrived at Toronto overshadowed by a rape case from Parker's past and its prospects are very much in question.

But there are many other films rushing forward, propelled by an urgency to tell stories about people that have seldom felt Hollywood's lens on them.

Theodore Melfi's "Hidden Figures," which is due out in early January but is widely expected to get an awards push, is about a trio of African-American mathematicians whose work was integral to NASA in the early 1960s. The film, crowd-pleasing and comical, was previewed in Toronto. It stars Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson and Janelle Monae, all of whom were visibly moved at an event for the movie.

"People come up to me and they're like, 'Oh, Oscars!' Everybody wants to put on that pressure," said Henson. "I don't accept that pressure. I'll let you all say it. But what I was most concerned about was if (the NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson) would be proud, because she's still alive."

"Loving," directed by Jeff Nichols, stars Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton as Mildred and Richard Loving, whose interracial marriage got them exiled from Virginia and eventually led to the Supreme Court's landmark 1967 ruling Loving v. Virginia. Having already premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, "Loving"  a patiently told tale of steadfast love  is very much on a potential awards trajectory.

But it isn't the only interracial marriage movie at Toronto. David Oyelowo, who also stars in "Queen of Katwe," debuted Amma Asante's "A United Kingdom," in which Oyelowo plays the Botswana royal Seretse Khama. His marriage to Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) sparked outrage both in the U.K. and his African tribe.

"It's very exciting and partly because so many of these films have been made by people of color. That's a shift," said Oyelowo. "A few years ago that had people of color in central roles but they were still being made predominantly by white men."

Oyelowo's lack of a nomination for his performance as Martin Luther King Jr. in 2014's "Selma" was a flashpoint in the backlash against the Oscars. Earlier this year, partly to combat what some called the Academy of Motion Pictures' institutional biases, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs led changes to the group's bylaws intended to diversify the membership.

"The thing I'm encouraged by is we are no longer just talking about diversity, we're doing diversity," said Oyelowo. "I really commend the Academy for the changes that are being instituted. I think we all agree the Academy is not the reason for a lack of diversity or inclusion in film, but it has been in the past another outward show of some of the problems from a representation point of view in the industry."

This year's nominees will, of course, be keenly watched. Will the results be any different?

Antoine Fuqua, who directed Denzel Washington's Oscar-winning performance in "Training Day" says there are more important things to worry about. He premiered his "The Magnificent Seven" as the opening film at Toronto. The film boasts a diverse cast Fuqua intended as an updating of the historically homogenous Western.

"Focus on your work. Don't whine about whether that film didn't work out, or people didn't accept you or nominate you for that movie," said Fuqua. "You should already be on to your next one. You have to go: 'Well, OK, they didn't acknowledge me on that. Maybe it was a color thing. Maybe it wasn't.'"

"The Academy Awards is one night," he added. "But you've got the rest of the year to focus on your work. What are you going to do next?"

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

This image released by A24 Films shows Alex Hibbert, left, and Mahershala Ali in a scene from the film, "Moonlight." The film is a poetic coming-of-age tale told across three chapters about a young gay black kid growing up in a poor, drug-ridden neighborhood of Miami. (David Bornfriend/A24 via AP)

Taraji P. Henson, a cast member in "Hidden Figures," poses at a photo call for the film on day 3 of the Toronto International Film Festival at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016, in Toronto. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

Director Garth Davis, left, and Dev Patel participate in the "Lion" press conference on day 4 of the Toronto International Film Festival at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016, in Toronto. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Qatar loses 3 troops serving with Saudi coalition in Yemen

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  The Gulf nation of Qatar says three of its soldiers have been killed while participating in Saudi-led military operations in Yemen.

It was Qatar's biggest known loss of life in the conflict since its first reported ground deployment there last September.

The Qatari military says the deaths occurred on Monday but did not provide any details. The military statement, carried by the official Qatar News Agency, identified the three killed soldiers as Mohammed Awad Salim, Mohammed Dawood Khayal and Mohammed Nasser Mohammed.

Yemen's conflict pits the internationally recognized government and the Saudi-led military coalition against Shiite Houthi rebels and forces loyal to a former president.
Facebook apologizes for removing 'napalm girl' photo

HELSINKI (AP)  Facebook's chief operating officer has apologized to Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg for deleting a photograph from its pages and conceded that "we don't always get it right."

Sheryl Sandberg said in a letter that Solberg had raised important issues about Facebook's decision last month to remove postings of an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam. The image, taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, won a Pulitzer Prize.

On Friday, following protests in Norway and elsewhere, the tech giant reversed its decision and allowed the photo, known as "Terror of War," to be seen on its pages. Solberg, who said she'd never before had a Facebook post deleted, had reposted the image with a black box covering the girl from the thighs up and other iconic photos of historic events with black boxes covering the protagonists.

FILE - This is a June 8, 1972 file photo of South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places . Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg on Friday Sept. 9, 2016 challenged Facebooks restrictions on nude photos by posting an iconic 1972 image of a naked girl running from an aerial napalm attack in Vietnam. The Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut is at the center of a heated debate about freedom of speech in Norway after Facebook deleted it from a Norwegian authors page last month. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

Sandberg said that Facebook had "global community standards" to adhere to but that it had learned from the mistake.

"Sometimes, though, the global and historical importance of a photo like "Terror of War" outweighs the importance of keeping nudity off Facebook," she said in a letter to Solberg dated Sept. 10. "After hearing from you and other members of our community, we have decided to restore the photo."

Like its Scandinavian neighbors, Norway takes pride in its freedom of speech. It's also a largely secular nation with relaxed attitudes about nudity.

Several members of the Norwegian government followed Solberg's lead and posted the photo on their Facebook pages. One of them, Education Minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen, said it was "an iconic photo, part of our history."

Sandberg described decisions facing Facebook as "difficult."

"We don't always get it right. Even with clear standards, screening millions of posts on a case-by-case basis every week is challenging," she said. "Nonetheless, we intend to do better ... Thank you for helping us get this right."
Tusk says upcoming EU summit will focus on border control

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  European Council President Donald Tusk said Tuesday he wants an upcoming informal EU summit to assure participants that Europe can effectively defend its borders.

Tusk said that the "migration crisis" has exposed "weakness and chaos" in the EU's border security.

He spoke in Warsaw following a meeting with Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo as he was sounding out opinion in EU capitals three days before the informal summit in Slovakia's capital Bratislava. At the summit, prime ministers from the member states, except from the U.K., will discuss the EU's future after Britain leaves.

Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo greets European Council President Donald Tusk prior to talks on EU future after Britain leaves, in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Ahead of EU summit on Friday, Szydlo says EU needs deep, bold reforms. Relations between Szydlo, a conservative, and Tusk, Poland's former centrist prime minister, are tense. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Tusk, a former Polish prime minister who now chairs the meetings of EU leaders, said he was focused on European stability and would like the summit to convince its participants that "Europe is able to effectively control and defend its external borders."

Szydlo's spokesman, Rafal Bochenek, said that during their meeting the prime minister stressed that Poland will be pushing for a green light for deep political and economic reforms. She earlier said the EU might need to change its treaties, the documents regulating the way it functions.

Tusk said he was trying to convince Szydlo that Europe is "something worth being jointly taken care of rather than attacked or questioned."

"Treaty changes in Europe may not necessarily serve Poland," Tusk said. "All such destabilizing moves, revolutionary ideas, can rather be harmful to Poland."

Poland and countries in central and eastern Europe have been insisting on bold reforms, including changes to the EU treaty. They say that the EU is authoritarian toward its member states, leaving no room for their own political decisions, and blame that for Britain's decision to leave in a June referendum.

A major sticking point is that Poland and other countries in the region are refusing to accept set numbers of migrants under an EU plan. These countries insist that the EU's external borders should be strengthened and protected, and that migrants should be helped in refugee camps close to their home countries.

Tusk also visited Hungary on Tuesday, meeting with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who advocated for the adoption of "self-defensive immigration policies." Hungary will hold a government-sponsored referendum on Oct. 2 in support of its opposition to any future EU plans to resettle refugees among the member states.

In a recent interview, Poland's Szydlo said that if the EU is to be "saved," its members "must introduce reforms, be bold and not afraid."

Szydlo's conservative government is at odds with the EU, which says Poland's democracy and rule of law are threatened by the government's push to influence a major court and give police more surveillance power. The government has retorted that EU bodies should focus on bigger EU problems.

The tensions also mar Szydlo's relations with Tusk, as they represent Poland's bitterly opposed political parties. The government accuses Tusk of failing to defend Poland's interests in the EU.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament debated Poland's rule of law ahead of a vote on the matter Wednesday.

___

Raf Casert in Brussels and Pablo Gorondi in Budapest contributed to this report

Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo,right, shake hands with wldEuropean Council President Donald Tusk before talks on EU future after Britain leaves, in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Ahead of EU summit on Friday, Szydlo says EU needs deep, bold reforms. Relations between Szydlo, a conservative, and Tusk, Poland's former centrist prime minister, are tense. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, right, greets European Council President Donald Tusk before talks on EU future after Britain leaves, in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Ahead of EU summit on Friday, Szydlo says EU needs deep, bold reforms. Relations between Szydlo, a conservative, and Tusk, Poland's former centrist prime minister, are tense. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Friendly dolphin delights bathers in northern Germany

BERLIN (AP)  A dolphin is delighting bathers in northern Germany, but authorities are warning people not to get too close.

The mammal appeared in the Kieler Foerde inlet several days ago and has been swimming in and out of the Kiel Canal, a busy waterway that connects the Baltic Sea to the North Sea.

Bathers have been swimming out to touch the dolphin, but police are warning that the animal may feel harassed by this and that swimmers mustn't get in the way of ships using the canal.

In this Sept. 11, 2016 picture people take pictures of a dolphin near Kiel, Germany. The dolphin is delighting bathers in northern Germany, but authorities are warning people not to get too close to the animal. The mammal appeared in Kieler Foerde inlet several days ago and has been swimming in and out of a canal that connects the Baltic Sea to the North Sea. Bathers have been swimming out to touch the dolphin, but police are warning that the animal may feel harassed by this and that swimmers mustnt get in the way of ships using the canal. ( Thomas Eisenkraetzer/dpa via AP)
Syrian refugee musicians sell out shows in Germany

BERLIN (AP)  At the neoclassical Concert House in Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt, busts of German composers Beethoven, Bach and Handel looked on as the 65 musicians took their seats for a sold-out weekend concert.

The Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra settling in to play represents a much more recent chapter in German history, consisting entirely of professional musicians who fled civil war in their homeland to seek refuge in Europe.

Founded in Germany a year ago by Raed Jazbeh, who plays the double bass and acts as the artistic director, it has since performed concerts across the country and soon plans to tour Sweden.

In this Sept. 11, 2016 photo Mohamad Fityan plays the Ney, a traditional Arabic flute, during a concert the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra in the Concert House in Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt. The Orchestra consists entirely of professional musicians who fled civil war in their homeland to seek refuge in Europe. (AP Photo/Jona Kallgren)

All the members of the orchestra are classically trained, and most studied for at least five years at the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus. Their recent concert fused together a mix of classical European music, classical Arab music and Arabic folkloric music. It was organized by KulturLeben Berlin, a non-profit that organizes concerts for people with low incomes in the German capital.

The musicians' hope is that their concerts will give the European audience a reference point to understand Syrian music and culture.

"I feel that it is my responsibility as a musician to present our culture, our music and show that we can be together in peace in Europe," said Mohamad Fityan, who plays the Ney, a type of traditional Arabic flute. "I think the best way to do that is through music."

Fityan, an Aleppo native, fled to Germany in 2015 and was quickly granted asylum. Others settled in other countries around Europe, and when the musicians come together for concerts it is often an emotional reunion.

"I never imagined that I would be here in Europe, playing with a whole orchestra of Syrian musicians  and that we are all living in Europe. I never imagined that," said Rasha Rizk, a soprano soloist who now lives in Paris.

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty entered Europe last year. Syrians were the largest single group.

The musicians tire, however, of seeing the images of their country at war  the reason for their flight to Europe  and other negative portrayals of Syrians and hope that the concerts can help show a glimpse of themselves in normal times.

"This is us," said Ghassan Alaboud, who guest directs the orchestra for the Berlin concerts. "This is Syria and these are the Syrian people."

In this Sept. 11, 2016 photo Rasha Rizk thanks the audience after her soprano performance in a concert of the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra in the Concert House in Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt. The Orchestra consists entirely of professional musicians who fled civil war in their homeland to seek refuge in Europe. (AP Photo/Jona Kallgren)

In this Sept. 11, 2016 photo musicians of the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra perform in the Concert House in Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt. The Orchestra consists entirely of professional musicians who fled civil war in their homeland to seek refuge in Europe. (AP Photo/Jona Kallgren)

In this Sept. 11, 2016 photo Ghassan Alaboud directs the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra in the Concert House in Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt. The Orchestra consists entirely of professional musicians who fled civil war in their homeland to seek refuge in Europe. (AP Photo/Jona Kallgren)

In this Sept. 11, 2016 photo Kinan Azmeh plays the clarinet during a concert by the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra in the Concert House in Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt. The Orchestra consists entirely of professional musicians who fled civil war in their homeland to seek refuge in Europe. (AP Photo/Jona Kallgren)

In this Sept. 11, 2016 photo people watch a concert of the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra in the Concert House in Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt. The Orchestra consists entirely of professional musicians who fled civil war in their homeland to seek refuge in Europe. (AP Photo/Jona Kallgren)
Nearly 400 arrested for looting, vandalism in India's IT hub

NEW DELHI (AP)  Police arrested nearly 400 people for looting and vandalism in India's information technology hub of Bangalore after a curfew was imposed to quell violence set off by a court ruling over a disputed water source, a police officer said Tuesday.

Police gunfire killed one protester and injured another on Monday night after rampaging mobs set fire to dozens of buses, trucks and cars and attacked shops and businesses in Bangalore and other parts of the state.

Top police officer N.S. Megarikh said there has been no major incident after the imposition of curfew in parts of the city on Monday night. Protesters set some trucks on fire in rural areas of the state on Tuesday.

An Indian policeman hits a motorcyclist for defying curfew, a day after angry mobs burnt and vandalized buses from the neighboring Tamil Nadu state, in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Incidents of looting and vandalism eased Tuesday in parts of India's information technology hub of Bangalore after authorities imposed a curfew amid widespread protests overnight over India's top court ordering the southern state of Karnataka to release water from a disputed river to the neighboring state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

The Cauvery River, which originates in Karnataka and flows into Tamil Nadu, has been the source of a bitter water dispute for decades. India's top court last week ordered Karnataka state to release water downriver to Tamil Nadu state.

Karnataka's top elected official Siddaramaiah said on Tuesday he was bound by the court ruling, but there was not enough water to share. Siddaramaiah uses one name.

Thousands of policemen patrolled the streets of Bangalore. All schools, shops and businesses were closed and no public transport, including metro rail, was available to the residents.

Bangalore is home to several top Indian IT and multinational companies such as Infosys Ltd., Wipro Ltd and Samsung Electronics. In May this year, Apple announced it was setting up an app design and development center in the city.

Farmers in India are largely dependent on monsoon rains and rivers to irrigate their crops. But successive poor monsoons have depleted rivers and reservoirs.

A motorist rides past charred remains of a car, a day after it was burnt by an angry mob, in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Incidents of looting and vandalism eased Tuesday in parts of India's information technology hub of Bangalore after authorities imposed a curfew amid widespread protests overnight over India's top court ordering the southern state of Karnataka to release water from a disputed river to the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

A youth is detained by an Indian paramilitary soldier a day after angry mobs burnt and vandalized buses from the neighboring Tamil Nadu state, in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Incidents of looting and vandalism eased Tuesday in parts of India's information technology hub of Bangalore after authorities imposed a curfew amid widespread protests overnight over India's top court ordering the southern state of Karnataka to release water from a disputed river to the neighboring state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

An Indian policeman in plain clothes makes an announcement asking people to stay indoors during curfew in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Incidents of looting and vandalism eased Tuesday in parts of India's information technology hub of Bangalore after authorities imposed a curfew amid widespread protests overnight over India's top court ordering the southern state of Karnataka to release water from a disputed river to the neighboring state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Smoke rises from passenger buses owned by a transport company from Tamil Nadu state, after they were set on fire by a mob in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, India, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Incidents of looting and vandalism eased Tuesday in parts of India's information technology hub of Bangalore after authorities imposed a curfew amid widespread protests overnight over India's top court ordering the southern state of Karnataka to release water from a disputed river to the neighboring state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Charred remains of passenger buses owned by a transport company from the neighboring Tamil Nadu state, are seen through the shattered glass of another bus vandalised by angry mobs in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Incidents of looting and vandalism eased Tuesday in parts of India's information technology hub of Bangalore after authorities imposed a curfew amid widespread protests overnight over India's top court ordering the southern state of Karnataka to release water from a disputed river to the neighboring state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

A television journalist reports amidst the charred remains of passenger buses owned by a transport company from the neighboring Tamil Nadu state, after they were set on fire by a mob in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, India, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Incidents of looting and vandalism eased Tuesday in parts of India's information technology hub of Bangalore after authorities imposed a curfew amid widespread protests overnight over India's top court ordering the southern state of Karnataka to release water from a disputed river to the neighboring state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
Somalia hosts heads of state summit for 1st time in 30 years

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP)  Somalia on Tuesday hosted its first regional summit of African heads of state in 30 years, a source of pride in this Horn of Africa country after decades of chaos and deadly attacks by al-Shabab extremists. On social media, people marveled that their country was trending for something other than explosions.

Security measures were high as Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn arrived, and residents said celebrations of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha had been severely restricted in recent days.

The summit was seen as the latest sign of confidence in a return to normal life in Somalia, which was plunged into decades of conflict in 1991 when warlords overthrew the regime of dictator Siad Barre.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, center left, and Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, center right, walk together during the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) summit at the Peace Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Somalia on Tuesday hosted its first regional summit of African heads of state in 30 years, a source of pride in this Horn of Africa country after decades of chaos and deadly attacks by al-Shabab extremists. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

"Mogadishu was considered one of the most dangerous cities on Earth, but now it regained its image," resident Ismail Abdi said. "It's a dream came true," another resident, Abdullahi Gafow, said.

Even so, the summit "was decided to be held at the last minute," Ethiopia's foreign minister, Tedros Adhanom, told The Associated Press, without giving details. "There were previous plans to abandon it."

Sudan President Omar al-Bashir said he would not attend after being invited, Somalia's Foreign Minister Abdisalam Omer confirmed. Al-Bashir would have been defying a warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court with his presence.

Somalia's government had said leaders also were expected from South Sudan and Djibouti for the summit of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development regional bloc. But a plane carrying Djibouti's president turned back after developing engine problems that prevented it from landing, that country's ambassador to Somalia confirmed.

While the South Sudan crisis was set to be a top issue for discussion, President Salva Kiir did not show up.

"The presence of the heads of state in Somalia is a clear dividend of returning stability in the country. It is an endorsement of Somalia's recovery," the African Union's special representative for Somalia, Francisco Caetano Madeira, said in a statement. The United Nations mission in Somalia called it a "great achievement."

Somalia is now preparing for a presidential election in October, another significant step forward.

But homegrown Islamic extremist group al-Shabab continues to strike at the heart of Somalia's seaside capital, killing scores of people so far this year. In the latest attack, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden truck near the gate of the presidential palace in Mogadishu late last month, killing at least 12 people.

Several of the countries invited to the summit take part in a 22,000-strong African Union force protecting Somalia, though the force faces funding cuts and troop shortages that experts have warned could further destabilize the country.

The summit's communique called on the AU force and Somalia's security forces to "expand their operations, deal with evolving terror threats and immediately recover the remaining areas controlled by al-Shabab."

It also encouraged the "voluntary return of all Somali refugees." Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have spent years in the world's largest refugee camp across the border in Kenya. Kenyatta has said his government will close Dadaab camp this year, leading to fears that some people would be forced to return.

___

Associated Press writer Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and videographer Mohamed Sheikh Nor contributed.

From left, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta, and Djibouti's Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, pose for a group photograph during the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) summit at the Peace Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Somalia on Tuesday hosted its first regional summit of African heads of state in 30 years, a source of pride in this Horn of Africa country after decades of chaos and deadly attacks by al-Shabab extremists. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

From left, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta, Djibouti's Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, and Sudan's Ambassador to Somalia Mohamed Yusuf Osman, pose for a group photograph during the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) summit at the Peace Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Somalia on Tuesday hosted its first regional summit of African heads of state in 30 years, a source of pride in this Horn of Africa country after decades of chaos and deadly attacks by al-Shabab extremists. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)
Ukrainian rebel leader announces unilateral cease-fire

MOSCOW (AP)  Separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday announced a unilateral cease-fire starting at midnight Wednesday, which could be a major step in solving the conflict that has raged for more than two years.

The conflict between Russian-backed separatist rebels and Ukrainian government troops has killed more than 9,500 people since it began in April 2014. Representatives of Ukraine, the separatists and Russia signed a February 2015 Minsk peace deal brokered by France and Germany, but frequent clashes have continued to claim lives and political provisions of the agreement have never been implemented.

Alexander Zakharchenko, rebel leader in Donetsk, made the cease-fire announcement in a recorded statement aired on Russian television on Tuesday, berating Kiev for a "lack of willingness to solve the problem in a peaceful manner."

Zakharchenko said he has ordered rebel troops to cease fire at midnight Wednesday and urged Ukraine to do the same.

Wearing a suit instead of his normal camouflage for the televised statement, the separatist leader said the rebels are "fully committed to the Minsk agreements" and see them as "the only solution."

Igor Plotnitsky, leader of the self-proclaimed part of the Luhansk region, also announced a cease-fire on Tuesday.

It's the first time that that the separatists, who are widely believed to be controlled by Moscow, have come with an idea of a unilateral cease-fire.

At least three government troops have been killed and 15 wounded in fighting in eastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, officials said. One more person was reported missing.

In Donetsk, the rebel mouthpiece Donetsk News Agency said three of its men have been killed.

The announcement comes a few hours after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he expects the parliament to vote soon on constitutional amendments granting more autonomy to Ukrainian provinces, including the rebellious eastern regions.

"Decentralization is a policy that has no alternative," Poroshenko tweeted Tuesday. "I expect the Verkhovna Rada to support the constitutional amendments regarding decentralization."

Ukraine has blamed Russia for not doing enough to get the rebels to relinquish control over parts of the Ukrainian-Russian border while Russia is unhappy that Ukraine still has not adopted the constitutional amendments.

On Wednesday, Poroshenko is set to meet with top diplomats from France and Germany, and also hold separate talks with the foreign ministers of Britain and Poland in what appears to be part of a diplomatic blitz to discuss the conflict settlement.

Before traveling to Kiev, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that after talking with Ukraine and Russia on Monday he believes it is possible "to agree now, and without preconditions, on a durable cease-fire." He added that he and his French counterpart, Jean-Marc Ayrault, "will not let up in reminding the parties to the conflict of their responsibility for a political solution in eastern Ukraine and the implementation of the Minsk agreements, in Kiev and in Moscow."

"Our proposals are on the table, for making the cease-fire permanent and for the political process," Steinmeier said, adding that he will also be speaking to Ukrainian lawmakers to discuss what can be done to get the Minsk process moving. "There needs to be readiness to compromise on all sides, and there needs to be the will to translate what is agreed into action."

Darka Olifer, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian envoy at the talks with the separatists, said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that the representatives at the talks, conducted via a video link on Tuesday, supported the idea of a cease-fire.

___
2nd try at jury selection underway in Georgia hot car death

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  A second attempt at jury selection in the trial of a metro Atlanta man charged with killing his toddler son is underway at a courthouse 275 miles (440 kilometers) from the suburban parking lot where the child died in the back seat of a hot SUV.

Despite the long-distance relocation of the trial, most potential jurors questioned by the judge said they not only had heard about the case against Justin Ross Harris, but had also formed opinions about his guilt or innocence.

Harris, 35, who moved to Georgia in 2012 from Alabama, is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. Nearly three weeks of efforts to find an impartial jury in Cobb County fell apart in May, with the judge agreeing to move the case because of pretrial publicity.

Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark, left, discusses potential jurors with a judge's bailiff Bill Pardue, right, during the first day of jury selection at the Ross Harris trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark reconvened the trial Monday in coastal Glynn County, where about 250 people were summoned to jury duty. Two weeks have been set aside to seat a jury.

"It's not a case where you can pick a jury in one day or two," Staley Clark said before adjourning for the evening Monday.

The judge began questioning the first group of 36 potential jurors Monday afternoon. Of those, 27 said they had previously seen news stories or other information about Harris' case. And 19 panelists, just over half, said they had expressed or formed an opinion about Harris' guilt or innocence.

However, when asked by the judge to stand if they were biased against Harris or did not feel "perfectly impartial" between prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case, all of the 36 possible jurors remained seated.

Meanwhile, the judge agreed to dismiss 13 people who claimed jury duty would cause them undue hardship  mostly panelists who complained of painful medical conditions or who had booked vacations that conflict with the trial. A total of 34 asked to be excused.

Those who will remain in the pool for possible inclusion on the final jury include a father-to-be who said he expects his child to be born this week, a man whose daughter is getting married this weekend in Virginia, and a doctor who works in the emergency room of a rural hospital that typically has just one physician working every 12-hour shift.

The judge granted each of those possible jurors time to attend to affairs away from the courthouse. But they were all ordered to return before a final jury gets seated.

Prosecutors say Harris intentionally left his son to die at a time when Harris was unhappy in his marriage and looking for relationships with other women. Defense attorneys say the death was a tragic accident.

Defense Attorney H. Maddox Kilgore listens to answers from potential jurors during the first day of jury selection at the Ross Harris trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Ross Harris sits next to his attorneys in court during the first day of jury selection at his trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Ross Harris, right, sits next to his attorneys in court during the first day of jury selection at his trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark, left, discusses potential jurors with Defense Attorney H. Maddox Kilgore, right, and Cobb Judicial Circuit Senior Assistant District Attorney Chuck Boring, center, during the first day of jury selection at the Ross Harris trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark, left, discusses potential jurors with Defense Attorney H. Maddox Kilgore, right, and Cobb Judicial Circuit Senior Assistant District Attorney Chuck Boring, center, during the first day of jury selection at the Ross Harris trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark listens to arguments during the first day of jury selection at the Ross Harris trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Defense attorney H. Maddox Kilgore, right, and Cobb Judicial Circuit Senior Assistant District Attorney Chuck Boring, left, talk before the start of the Ross Harris trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Ross Harris sits next to his attorneys in court during the first day of jury selection at his trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Ross Harris walks into court during the first day of jury selection at his trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Ross Harris listens in court during the first day of jury selection at his trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept.12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)

Ross Harris, right, sits in court during the first day of jury selection at his trial in Brunswick, Ga., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. Harris is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The child died in the back seat of a hot SUV. (Stephen B. Morton/The Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP, Pool)
Philippine leader rejects joint patrols, eyes China weapons

MANILA, Philippines (AP)  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Tuesday he won't allow government forces to conduct joint patrols of disputed waters near the South China Sea with foreign powers, apparently scrapping a deal his predecessor reached with the U.S. military earlier this year.

Duterte also said he was considering acquiring defense equipment from Russia and China. The Philippines has traditionally leaned on the U.S., its longtime treaty ally, and other Western allies for its security needs.

The remarks were the latest from a Philippine president who has had an uneasy relationship with the U.S. but also has tried to mend relations with China strained over South China Sea disputes.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte salutes as he reviews the troops during his "Talk with the Airmen" on the anniversary of the 250th Presidential Airlift Wing Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at the Philippine Air Force headquarters in suburban Pasay city, southeast of Manila, Philippines. On Monday, President Duterte, in his first public statement opposing the presence of American troops, said he wants U.S. forces out of his country's south and blamed America for inflaming Muslim insurgencies in the region. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Duterte said he wanted only Philippine territorial waters, up to 12 nautical miles offshore, to be patrolled by Filipino forces, but not other offshore areas that are contested. He added he opposes Filipino forces accompanying foreign powers like the U.S. and China in joint patrols which could entangle the Philippines in hostilities.

"We do not go into a patrol or join any other army from now because I do not want trouble," Duterte said. "I do not want to ride gung-ho style there with China or with America. I just want to patrol our territorial waters."

Like other security pronouncements, Duterte did not provide details, but his rejection for joint patrols apparently goes against such an arrangement announced in April by the U.S. and the Philippine defense chiefs.

While visiting Manila, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter disclosed for the first time in a news conference with then Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin that U.S. ships had carried out sea patrols with the Philippines in the South China Sea, a somewhat rare move.

Carter insisted that the U.S. did not intend to be provocative and was "trying to tamp down tensions here." But Gazmin said he expected that U.S. forces, "with their presence here, will deter uncalled-for actions by the Chinese."

On Monday, Duterte said he wanted U.S. military forces out of the southern Philippines and blamed America for inflaming local Muslim insurgencies, in his first public statement opposing the presence of American troops in a part of the country.

Washington later said it had not received a formal request to remove U.S. military personnel. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Duterte had a tendency to make "colorful comments" and drew a comparison with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

In an apparent aim to prevent potential damage in relations, Philippine officials said Duterte wanted the Americans out of the south for fear of their safety.

"He desires that our American counterparts should be eased from harm's way," the Philippine military said, adding about 100 U.S. military personnel were in the south to provide counterterrorism advice support to Filipino forces.

"We assure our people and allies that Philippine-U.S. defense relations remains rock solid," the military said in a statement. It added that joint combat training and other activities by U.S. and Filipino forces this year and beyond "remain on track."

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, center, smiles as he is presented with a pilot's jacket during his "Talk with the Airmen" on the anniversary of the 250th Presidential Airlift Wing Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at the Philippine Air Force headquarters in suburban Pasay city, southeast of Manila, Philippines. On Monday, President Duterte, in his first public statement opposing the presence of American troops, said he wants U.S. forces out of his country's south and blamed the United States for inflaming Muslim insurgencies in the region. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

A hat falls as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reviews the troops during his "Talk with the Airmen" on the anniversary of the 250th Presidential Airlift Wing Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at the Philippine Air Force headquarters in suburban Pasay city, southeast of Manila, Philippines. On Monday, President Duterte, in his first public statement opposing the presence of American troops, said he wants U.S. forces out of his country's south and blamed America for inflaming Muslim insurgencies in the region. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, center, poses with a fist bump with Defense Chief Delfin Lorenzana, left, and Armed Forces Chief Ricardo Visaya during his "Talk with the Airmen" on the anniversary of the 250th Presidential Airlift Wing, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at the Philippine Air Force headquarters in suburban Pasay city, southeast of Manila, Philippines. On Monday, President Duterte, in his first public statement opposing the presence of American troops, said he wants U.S. forces out of his country's south and blamed the United States for inflaming Muslim insurgencies in the region. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Hundreds of Philippine Air Force personnel join President Rodrigo Duterte in a military style of eating known as "Boodle Fight" during his "Talk with the Airmen" on the anniversary of the 250th Presidential Airlift Wing Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at the Philippine Air Force headquarters in suburban Pasay city, southeast of Manila, Philippines. On Monday, President Duterte, in his first public statement opposing the presence of American troops, said he wants U.S. forces out of his country's south and blamed America for inflaming Muslim insurgencies in the region. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
Dalai Lama urges talks with Islamic State, help for refugees

PARIS (AP)  The Dalai Lama says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for killing.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, speaking Tuesday in Paris, said dialogue "is the only way," but didn't elaborate on how it should take place or with whom. He insisted that Islam should never be conflated with terrorism.

"A genuine practitioner of Islam must respect others' lives," he said, adding that someone who kills in the name of Islam or Buddhism "is no longer a Muslim, or a Buddhist."

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama wears a towel on his head to cool off, during a press conference , in Paris, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The Dalai Lama says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for bloodshed. The spiritual leader is on a six day visit to France. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

He urged European countries to take in refugees, such as those fleeing Syria's war, but said European governments should also work toward ending the war so that the refugees can go home.

The Dalai Lama himself fled Tibet and has lived in India for decades, effectively as a refugee, and is viewed by China as a separatist.

He slammed Chinese censorship as "immoral" but said he's optimistic that China will eventually relax restrictions and open up more.

He is on a weeklong visit to France for conferences on the environment, spirituality, secular ethics and preserving Tibetan language and culture.

While he is no longer involved in politics, the Dalai Lama said he'd be happy to meet French President Francois Hollande. Hollande's office said no such meeting was considered, however.

China has frequently imposed diplomatic and economic punishments on countries whose leaders meet with the Dalai Lama.

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama pauses, during a press conference , in Paris, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The Dalai Lama says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for bloodshed. The spiritual leader is on a six day visit to France. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama gestures during a press conference , in Paris, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The Dalai Lama says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for bloodshed. The spiritual leader is on a six day visit to France. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama pauses, during a press conference , in Paris, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The Dalai Lama says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for bloodshed. The spiritual leader is on a six day visit to France. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama offers a sweet to a person, during a press conference , in Paris, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The Dalai Lama says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for bloodshed. The spiritual leader is on a six day visit to France. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama shakes hands with journalists at the end of a press conference, in Paris, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The Dalai Lama says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for bloodshed. The spiritual leader is on a six day visit to France. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama pauses, during a press conference , in Paris, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The Dalai Lama says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for bloodshed. The spiritual leader is on a six day visit to France. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Qatari emir makes outreach effort to Iran's president

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Qatar's emir has spoken with the Iranian president in an outreach effort that could help ease tensions between Sunni Gulf Arab states and Shiite-majority Iran.

The official Qatar News Agency says Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani offered his greetings Monday to President Hasan Rouhani to mark the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, and discussed issues including terrorism and the "principles of good neighborliness."

Qatar is part of the Saudi-dominated, six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and hosts U.S. troops on a major air base.
Public meeting on Georgia mosque canceled over safety fears

COVINGTON, Ga. (AP)  Citing security concerns, Georgia officials canceled a vote scheduled for Tuesday that would have allowed plans for a new mosque to move forward.

Earlier, Newton County officials had said they planned to vote to lift a ban on building permits for places of worship. The ban was prompted by opposition to a planned mosque and cemetery on 135 acres in the county, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta.

But the meeting was called off because of concerns about crowd control and hostile social media posts, authorities said.

"This decision was not taken without careful deliberation and consideration," the county said in a statement that cited concerns about crowd control and social media postings "evidencing hostilities in the community."

There was no immediate word on whether Tuesday's meeting would be rescheduled. Newton County Commission Chairman Keith Ellis did not immediately return an email or phone messages from The Associated Press left at his commission office and at the county clerk's office.

Governments "cannot allow extremists to bully, harass or scare them into canceling public meetings," the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said after the meeting was called off.

"We strongly condemn the anti-Muslim extremists who have slandered, harassed and threatened Newton County's commissioners over the past week," Georgia chapter Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in the statement.

"These cowardly bigots do not represent the people of Newton County, who are as warm and welcoming as other Georgians," he added.

Unless another special meeting is scheduled, the commission's next chance to vote on ending the moratorium for places of worship will be Sept. 20, the Covington News reported (http://bit.ly/2cUhWZ0 ).

The county's five-week moratorium is set to expire naturally on Sept. 21. CAIR said it expects that will allow the Muslim group to move forward with its plans for the mosque and cemetery.

In August, opponents of the mosque packed a public hearing, with some expressing fears that it would be used to train terrorists. One commissioner told the Rockdale Citizen newspaper that he wondered whether the project would make Newton County "a prime area for the federal government to resettle refugees from the Middle East."

Other Georgia communities, such as the Atlanta suburbs of Lilburn and Kennesaw, have also opposed mosques in recent years.

In Florida, authorities are investigating an arson fire that damaged a mosque in Fort Pierce, where Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen had occasionally worshipped. Investigators believe the Florida blaze, which started late Sunday and burned into Monday morning, might have been a hate crime, St. Lucie County sheriff's spokesman Maj. David Thompson said.
The Latest: Austria, Slovenia in dispute over 9 migrants

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  The Latest on Europe's migration crisis (all times local):

5:40 p.m.

Slovenia's state news agency says nine migrants who crossed into Austria illegally and then were returned to Slovenia have become the focus of a dispute between the two European Union neighbors.

In this photo made available by MSF, Doctors Without Borders on Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, parents Otas, second left, and Faith, right, pose for a photo with one of their sons Rollres, left, and baby Newman Otas, born on board MV Aquarius, on the Mediterranean Sea. The family were rescued from an overcrowded rubber boat 24 hours previously. (MSF via AP)

STA said Tuesday that the group entered Austria on Sunday and were swiftly returned to Slovenia. Slovenian border guards tried to send them back to Austria on Monday, but Austrian authorities declined to take them.

The migrants have now been placed in a Slovenian refugee center near the border. STA says formal proceedings will be launched to return them to Austria.

Tens of thousands migrants and refugees fleeing wars and poverty have crossed the border between Slovenia and Austria before the so-called Balkan route that led from Greece through Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia was shut in March.

___

2:45 p.m.

A Romanian television station is reporting that two migrants, including a 5-year-old boy, have drowned and six are missing after their boat sank last week crossing the River Danube from Bulgaria to Romania.

Romanian television Digi24, reporting from Bulgaria on Tuesday, says the bodies were found in the Bulgarian waters of the Danube after their boat capsized on Thursday. Authorities are searching for six others in the river, which forms part of the border between Bulgaria and Romania.

The station reported that another four migrants were rescued and were taken to the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. The station said the migrants had come from Turkey and were trying to avoid Serbia, where border controls have been tightened up.

The station reported authorities found the body of a 5-year-old boy and a teenager on Sunday.

Border police in the Bulgarian port of Ruse didn't immediately respond to calls from The Associated Press. Romanian border police on the other side of the Danube declined to comment.

___

1:45 p.m.

A group of senior international diplomats has harshly criticized the European Union's deal with Turkey to send back migrants in return for financial aid, calling it a "bad example" to other countries.

The Elders, a global human rights group founded by the late Nelson Mandela, say the agreement between Brussels and Ankara "is morally dubious" and may be illegal under international law.

In a report published Tuesday, they say the deal "sets a troubling precedent" that other countries with bad human rights records may use to demand payment in return for preventing migrants from traveling to Europe.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the group was "raising the alarm" about the agreement and compared it to the way civil liberties had been curtailed around the world after the 9/11 attacks.

___

12:55 p.m.

Hungary's foreign minister rebuked his Luxembourg counterpart, who said that Hungary should be temporarily or even permanently expelled from the European Union over its approach to refugees and other issues.

Peter Szijjarto said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn was "a frivolous figure."

Hungary is holding a government-sponsored referendum Oct. 2 seeking support for rejecting any future EU plan to resettle migrants among member states.

Szijjarto said the referendum would give Hungarians the opportunity to voice their opinion about "illegal immigrants, Brussels' quota package and the Jean Asselborn-type figures."

___

11 a.m.

Just 24 hours after his family was rescued from an overcrowded rubber boat, a baby boy has been born aboard a rescue vessel in the Mediterranean Sea.

Doctors Without Borders, one of the operators of the rescue ship Aquarius, said the boy was born to Nigerian parents in international waters Monday morning. He was named Newman Otas.

Jonquil Nicholl, a midwife with the aid group who delivered the baby, said it was "a very normal birth in dangerously abnormal conditions."

Parents Otas and Faith and older brothers Victory and Rollres were rescued from a rubber boat trying to cross the Mediterranean from Libya a day previously.

The baby's mother said she was panicking before the rescue that she would go into labor, and had been having contractions for three days.

___

9:35 a.m.

Luxembourg's foreign minister says Hungary should be temporarily or even permanently expelled from the European Union over its approach to refugees and other issues.

Jean Asselborn's comments in German daily Die Welt came days before 27 EU leaders meet in Bratislava to discuss the bloc's future. He said the EU can't tolerate fundamental values being violated.

Asselborn was quoted Tuesday as saying: "Anyone who, like Hungary, builds fences against refugees from war or who violates press freedom and judicial independence should be excluded temporarily, or if necessary for ever, from the EU." He argued it's the only way to "preserve the cohesion and values of the European Union."

Hungary is holding a government-sponsored referendum Oct. 2 seeking support for rejecting any future EU plan to resettle migrants among member states.

___

9:30 a.m.

Greece's coast guard says a search and rescue operation is underway for dozens of migrants on board a boat near the Greek island of Samos, after someone on board called emergency services.

The coast guard said a helicopter and vessel from the European border patrol agency Frontex and a coast guard vessel are searching north of Samos for the vessel, which the caller said was carrying about 40 people.

The short but often-dangerous crossing from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands has been the preferred route for more than a million refugees and migrants hoping for better lives in the European Union. But an EU deal with Turkey reached in March and Balkan border closures have severely restricted the flow.

In this photo taken on Saturday Sept. 10, 2016, African refugees and migrants wait aboard a partially punctured rubber boat to be assisted, during a rescue operation on the Mediterranean Sea, about 13 miles North of Sabratha, Libya. (AP Photo/Santi Palacios)

A little girl runs among tents at Ritsona refugee camp which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants, north of Athens, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. The European Union will add 115 million euros ($129 million) in funding to humanitarian organizations in Greece to assist programs for refugees and migrants before the winter, officials said Saturday. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
Pew poll: How the Japanese and Chinese see each other

TOKYO (AP)  Arrogant, violent and to varying degrees, nationalistic. That's how the Japanese and Chinese publics see each other's country, according to a new poll that reflects the geopolitical tensions between the neighboring East Asia powers.

The annual Pew Research Center survey, released Tuesday in Washington, D.C., found that while views of each other have improved slightly in recent years, they remain overwhelmingly negative and worse than a decade ago. A huge surge in Chinese tourists visiting Japan apparently hasn't changed public opinion much.

Some highlights:

FILE - In this Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012, file photo, Chinese demonstrators hold national flags while marching on a street during a protest against Japan in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012. The annual Pew Research Center survey, released Tuesday in Washington, D.C., found that while the views China and Japan have of each other have improved slightly in the past two to three years, they remain overwhelmingly negative and worse than a decade ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

NEGATIVITY

Negative feelings spiked in 2013, after a long-running territorial dispute over some remote, uninhabited islands flared in 2012. They have climbed down since then but remain high.

Japanese with a very unfavorable view of China:

2006: 22 percent

2013: 48 percent

2016: 42 percent

Chinese with a very unfavorable view of Japan:

2006: 29 percent

2013: 74 percent

2016: 53 percent

___

WAR FEARS

Japanese are more worried than Chinese that China's territorial disputes with Japan and other neighboring countries could lead to military conflict. The two nations' coast guard ships regularly assert sovereignty near the Japan-controlled Senkaku islands, which China also claims and calls Diaoyu.

Japanese very concerned about a conflict: 35 percent

Japanese somewhat concerned: 45 percent

Chinese very concerned: 18 percent

Chinese somewhat concerned: 41 percent

___

ARROGANCE

How Japanese see Chinese:

Arrogant: 81 percent

Nationalistic: 76 percent

Violent: 71 percent

How Chinese see Japanese:

Arrogant: 70 percent

Nationalistic: 41 percent

Violent: 74 percent

___

APOLOGIES

Japan has repeatedly expressed remorse for its invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s, but China has questioned the sincerity of the official statements and accused some in Japan of trying to whitewash history.

Japanese who believe Japan has apologized enough:

2006: 40 percent

2016: 53 percent

Chinese who believe Japan hasn't apologized enough:

2006: 81 percent

2016: 77 percent

___

NEIGHBORS

Favorable view of South Korea:

Japan: 27 percent

China: 55 percent

Favorable view of India:

Japan: 54 percent

China: 26 percent

___

METHODOLOGY

The survey of 1,000 Japanese was conducted between April 26 and May 29 using landline telephones and cellphones. The Japan results have a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points. The survey in China was conducted face-to-face with 3,154 people between April 6 and May 8. It has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.

FILE - In this Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016, file photo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping reach out for shake hands before a group photo session for the G20 Summit in Hangzhou in eastern China's Zhejiang province. The annual Pew Research Center survey, released Tuesday in Washington, D.C., found that while the views China and Japan have of each other have improved slightly in the past two to three years, they remain overwhelmingly negative and worse than a decade ago. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

FILE - In this Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012, file photo, Chinese demonstrators hold national flags and banners with the words "Beat down Japan, take back Diaoyu Island" while marching on a street during a protest against Japan in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province. The annual Pew Research Center survey, released Tuesday in Washington, D.C., found that while the views China and Japan have of each other have improved slightly in the past two to three years, they remain overwhelmingly negative and worse than a decade ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)
- T. S. Eliot

Thoughts After Lambeth

"The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide."
Venezuela opposition denounces crackdown ahead of summit

PORLAMAR, Venezuela (AP)  Venezuela's opposition says authorities are cracking down on its members on the Caribbean island of Margarita as thousands of delegates arrive for a summit of the non-aligned movement.

The meeting of the Cold War-era group of 120 nations kicks off Tuesday amid heavy security and heightened tensions after President Nicolas Maduro's opponents vowed to denounce any government abuses to foreign delegates.

The opposition Democratic Unity alliance says police searched the home of an opposition mayor Monday and called in several other people for questioning.

Last week a prominent journalist was arrested after publishing videos of Maduro being confronted by pot-banging protesters during a recent visit.
Italian field hospital in Libya to be operational in 3 weeks

MILAN (AP)  Italy's defense minister says a field hospital requested by the U.N.-backed government in Libya to treat wounded militia soldiers fighting the Islamic State group could be fully operational within three weeks at the Misrata airport.

Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti said the hospital staff will comprise 65 doctors and nurses, 135 support personnel and 100 paratroopers for an around-the-clock protection force. The hospital will have 50 beds, and include a surgical team.

Pinotti said a plane will also be on standby at the airport for evacuation, and a ship will be stationed offshore to offer support as well as additional security.
'DWTS' host: Lochte protesters rushing stage was 'unnerving'

LOS ANGELES (AP)  "Dancing with the Stars" host Tom Bergeron said everyone in the studio was shocked when two men rushed the stage to protest Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte after his performance on the ABC reality competition.

Bergeron described the incident as "really unnerving" on ABC's "Good Morning America" Tuesday.

The two men, wearing anti-Lochte T-shirts, were arrested on suspicion of criminal trespassing, Los Angeles police spokesman Liliana Preciado said.

In this photo provided by ABC, Cheryl Burke, left, and Ryan Lochte, perform on "Dancing with the Stars," competition that begins with the two-hour season premiere live, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, on the ABC Television Network. (Eric McCandless/ABC via AP)

They had rushed the stage while Lochte was getting his scores from judge Carrie Ann Inaba for his debut performance during Monday night's live installment of the celebrity ballroom dance competition. "GMA" aired video that wasn't shown during the live broadcast of one of the men being tackled on stage by security.

"Hey, back off," Inaba said as the altercation was occurring off screen.

When the show returned, host Bergeron explained they were interrupted by "a little incident" and thanked the ABC series' security team "for staying in shape."

The video also showed at least four others in the audience wearing anti-Lochte shirts. They were escorted out while being verbally confronted by dancer Derek Hough.

Police identified the men on stage as Sam Satoodeh, 59, and Barzeen Soroudi, 25. The two were arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing and held on $1,000 bail each. A message at a number for Satoodeh was not immediately returned Tuesday. A number for Soroudi could not be found.

The two men were detained by security until police arrived to take them into custody. Preciado said police did not know what the protestors' motivations or intentions were.

No one was injured or listed as a victim in the incident, officials said.

Lochte told Bergeron that "so many feelings are going through my head right now." The swimmer added that he was "a little hurt, but I came out here. I wanted to do something I'm completely not comfortable with, and I did."

ABC did not immediately return messages seeking comment about the incident.

During the episode, the Olympic medalist performed a foxtrot routine with professional partner Cheryl Burke to "Call Me Irresponsible." They received a combined score from the judges of 24 out of 40.

Lochte and teammates have faced criticism since they were involved in an early-morning drunken encounter during the Olympics last month at a gas station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They later claimed they were threatened and robbed.

United States team officials banned Lochte for 10 months, requiring him to forfeit $100,000 in bonuses and miss the 2017 world championships.
Police: Man shot at as he rammed officers' vehicles charged

ROCKY MOUNT, Va. (AP)  Virginia State Police say a man shot by an officer as he rammed law enforcement officers' vehicles is facing charges.

Police said in a statement late Monday that 37-year-old Gary Turner of Boones Mill has been charged with attempting to elude police and two counts of destruction of property.

Police say a Rocky Mount officer and Franklin County sheriff's deputy tried to stop a pickup truck and driver on Saturday night that matched an alert. But police say Turner tried to flee, ramming their vehicles. Police say the officer fired at the truck, which got away, only to be stopped nearby.

Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller says Turner was shot once. He was charged after his release from a hospital Monday.
UEFA hopeful Van Praag complains nations turned back on him

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  UEFA presidential candidate Michael van Praag says that countries have reneged on promises to back him in Wednesday's election to succeed Michel Platini.

The Dutch federation head has picked up four public endorsements, while rival Aleksander Ceferin says he is supported by more than 30 members from the 55-strong UEFA.

Van Praag says "some people told me from the beginning that they would vote for me and then all of a sudden they turned their back to me. If you call that old school, then I can only say that happened."

England, Belgium, Iceland and the Netherlands will vote for Van Praag.
AP Interview: UN refugee chief says integration is crucial

GENEVA (AP)  Europe should boost its efforts to integrate newcomers from places like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.N. refugee agency chief said Tuesday, calling it "one of the great challenges" of the future.

After more than 1 million people poured into the continent in 2015, High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in an interview that it is time for the European Union to engage in a reasoned debate on the issues of refugees that tore at its core.

"There's a time now to have this rational discussion  beyond the politicization of some of these issues, beyond the manipulation that some irresponsible politicians are carrying out, using this pretext to just get votes," Grandi said Tuesday.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, Italian Filippo Grandi speaks to The Associated Press during an interview at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

"More thinking and more resources" should go into the integration of refugees, he said, because if done properly, it could "counter xenophobic tendencies, violent rejection and propaganda against foreigners" that have accompanied the influx at times.

Grandi spoke to The Associated Press at UNHCR's Geneva headquarters ahead of two summits in New York on refugees and migrants on Sept. 19-20  including one convened by U.S. President Barack Obama  near the start of the U.N. General Assembly ministerial session.

One of the important "deliverables" in New York will be to promote "the notion of acceptance and inclusion," he said.

"We believe the time has come to look at integration programs more systematically, and this is, I think, one of the great challenges of the future," said Grandi, an Italian who previously headed the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and took over at UNHCR in January.

The influx to Europe has slowed, all but drying up through the favored route of last year  via Turkey across the Aegean to Greece  though hundreds of migrants still risk the far deadlier trek between Libya and Italy.

The massive inflows last year prompted a red-hot debate that ripped at the EU's fabric because countries like Germany and Austria were more welcoming, Greece and Italy more burdened, and a number of mostly eastern European countries resistant to take in refugees.

Work remains. Fewer than 4,000 people have been relocated from Greece and Italy out of the 160,000 that their EU partners had agreed to take in at the height of the crisis last year, Grandi said, but the relocation program was "picking up a bit."

Grandi says Europe also needs to handle possible rejections of asylum requests "with efficiency, so that people don't end up in limbo and disappear."

In the first quarter of 2016, the bloc granted asylum to nearly 90 percent of Syrian applicants, to about three-fourths of Eritrean applicants, and 62 percent of Iraqi applicants, according to the EU's statistics agency.

Overall, Grandi said that he hopes the summits will produce "a stronger sense that refugees and migrants are a shared international responsibility." He wants to move beyond a predominantly "humanitarian" response in the past to refugee crises by bringing in "development actors" like the World Bank from the start.

"Traditionally, they have come in after sometimes many years," he said. "Look what happened in Syria: It took five years for the response to the Syrian refugee crisis  the largest today in the world  to really include these development actors.

"Education, for example ... has always come in second place after food and shelter," Grandi said. "There is a growing realization that those are areas that also need to be looked at if we want to address properly this phenomenon."

Grandi also pointed to relatively unsung "major host countries" like Kenya, Pakistan, Iran, Ethiopia, Uganda and Ecuador that today host 85-90 percent of refugees in the world, "and they are not rich countries."

As for the Syria crisis, he alluded to a UNHCR target in March to resettle 10 percent of more than 4.5 million Syrian refugees mainly in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan  or at least 450,000 people  to other countries, but said only about 200,000 had been resettled so far.

"We are very far from that target. So we hope the New York summit will further that discussion," he said.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, Italian Filippo Grandi speaks to The Associated Press during an interview at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Clinton campaign tries to re-focus on Trump University

WASHINGTON (AP)  Facing the toughest stretch of her campaign, Hillary Clinton is trying to deflect attention back onto her rival Donald Trump, with a new push to highlight complaints surrounding his now-defunct Trump University, and allegations of pay-to-play involving Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Clinton's campaign is set to roll out two new online ads Tuesday. The first will feature the billionaire businessman bragging about how, in his business life, he used to give big political contributions with the expectation that he would receive favors down the line from politicians to whom he gave.

"When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me," he is shown saying.

FILE- In this May 23, 2005 file photo, real estate mogul and Reality TV star, now Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump listens at left as Michael Sexton introduces him at a news conference in New York where he announced the establishment of Trump University. Facing the toughest stretch of her campaign, Hillary Clinton is trying to deflect attention back onto her rival Donald Trump, with a new push to highlight complaints surrounding his now-defunct Trump University, and allegations of pay-to-play involving Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

Trump's comments have received new scrutiny in light of revelations that through his foundation, he made a $25,000 donation to Bondi, now a prominent backer. The donation came just days after her office told a newspaper it was considering whether to join a proposed multi-state lawsuit against Trump University and the Trump Institute  businesses that offered real-estate seminars that scores of former students allege were get-rich-quick scams. Her office never wound up joining the suit.

Bondi's spokesman told The Associated Press in June that she had personally solicited the donation from Trump during a 2013 phone call. But Bondi has said the timing was coincidental and Trump has said they did not discuss the suit.

A second web video features a man named Danny Williams, who paid to enroll in Trump University after experiencing a financial setback. Williams dipped into his 401K to pay $50,000 for the classes, but wound up having to short-sell his house to avoid foreclosure.

"Trump University was just catastrophic to our financial situation," he says in the video. "All we ever got from Trump University was lies."

The new push by Clinton comes as she is facing one of the most difficult stretches of her campaign. At a Friday night fundraiser, she said that half of Trump's supporters could fit in a "basket of deplorables." She later said she was wrong to describe half of Trump's supporters that way, but she didn't back down from describing his campaign as largely built on prejudice and paranoia.

And on Sunday, she was captured on amateur video stumbling as she entered a car, exacerbating lingering questions about her health. Her campaign later announced she'd been diagnosed with pneumonia, and is taking it easy over the next few days.

The Trump Foundation was recently forced to pay a $2,500 IRS penalty for incorrectly reporting that the $25,000 was paid not to the pro-Bondi political group, but to a similarly named charity in Kansas that got no Trump money. Charities are barred by law from supporting political activities.
US Supreme Court declines to restore early voting in Ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to restore a week of early voting in swing-state Ohio, a decision denounced by Democrats but praised by the state's Republican elections chief, who noted voters can still begin casting ballots for the presidential election in less than a month.

The court denied a request from the state's Democratic Party to delay the voting change pending appeal.

A lower court decision from last month upheld a law eliminating days in which people could register and vote at the same time, a period known as golden week.

Democrats had claimed the reduction, along with other voting changes, disproportionately burdened black voters and those who lean Democratic. But the state's attorneys argued that scrapping the days helped alleviate administrative burdens for local elections officials while reducing costs and the potential of fraud.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, said the high court ruling makes clear the state's laws are fair and constitutional.

"Ohioans want an efficient and secure election and it is time for these wasteful lawsuits to end," Husted said in a statement.

Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper expressed his disappointment with the court's rejection.

"Ohio Republicans can keep trying to make it harder for people to vote, but we will continue to fight them at every turn," Pepper said in a statement.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled in August that the golden-week cut still allows for "abundant" opportunities to vote within a 29-day early voting window. Prior to the law, Ohioans had a 35-day period.

The Supreme Court denied the Democrats' request to put that decision on hold while they appealed.

Democrats had faced long odds in their request to the high court.

The Supreme Court justices recently divided 4-4 in a move to reinstate North Carolina's voter identification requirement. The split illustrated how closely divided the court is on voting rights.

Tuesday's decision means voters in Ohio can start casting early ballots in the fall presidential election on Oct. 12.

In May, U.S. District Judge Michael Watson had sided with Democrats on their golden-week claim, finding that the reduction violated the Voting Rights Act and voters' equal protection rights.

Watson, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, had said evidence presented in the case reflected that black voters use same-day voter registration and early voting options at higher rates than whites. While the court can't predict how African-Americans will turn out in future elections, he said, "It is reasonable to conclude from this evidence that their right to vote will be modestly burdened" by the law.
Obama to discuss sanctions policy with Myanmar's Suu Kyi

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama will discuss possible further relief of U.S. sanctions on Myanmar when the de facto leader of the nation's new civilian government, Aung San Suu Kyi, visits Wednesday, a White House official said.

The U.S. has rolled back economic sanctions on Myanmar since political reforms began five years ago but still restricts dealings with military-owned companies and dozens of officials and associates of the former ruling junta.

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said Tuesday the administration is considering further moves to encourage more U.S. investment in the country also known as Burma, but he said Obama wants to consult with Suu Kyi.

She spent years under house arrest during when the military was in power. Her National League for Democracy party swept elections last November, and she now controls the civilian government, although a junta-era constitution still bars her from holding the presidency, a position held by a close ally.

Rhodes said U.S. wants to balance concerns about the continuing "outsized" role of the military in politics and the economy with the need to support economic development and show there's a "dividend" from the democratic transition.

"We hear frequently that the ongoing sanctions regime serves as a chill on investment from the United States and in some cases from other international firms, and so we want to make sure that our sanctions are not preventing the type of economic development and investment that we believe can improve the livelihoods of the people of Burma," Rhodes told the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

"In this discussion and in these decisions we want to be guided by consultation with Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD-led government," he said.

Suu Kyi arrives Tuesday in Washington. She will also be meeting with lawmakers, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry. She last visited in 2012 when she was still opposition leader.

U.S. support for the shift from five decades of direct military rule in Myanmar is viewed by the Obama administration as a significant foreign policy achievement. Human rights groups, however, say continuing military abuses in ethnic minority regions and discrimination against Rohingya Muslims are powerful reasons for retaining sanctions.
The Latest: 'DWTS' host: Protesters stage rush 'unnerving'

LOS ANGELES (AP)  The Latest on two men rushing the stage to protest Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte after his performance on "Dancing with the Stars" (all times local):

8:27 a.m.

"Dancing with the Stars" host Tom Bergeron said everyone in the studio was shocked when two men rushed the stage to protest Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte after his performance on the ABC reality competition.

FILE - In this Aug. 9, 2016, file photo, United States' Ryan Lochte prepares before a men's 4x200-meter freestyle heat at the 2016 Summer Olympics, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Lochte says he feels "a little hurt" after being involved in an incident on "Dancing with the Stars" that prompted producers to cut to a commercial. The beleaguered swimmer was apparently rushed by unknown people while receiving his scores from Judge Carrie Ann Inaba on the Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, live installment of the celebrity ballroom dance competition. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, File)

Bergeron described the incident as "really unnerving" on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday.

The men wearing anti-Lochte T-shirts rushed the stage while the swimmer was getting his scores from judge Carrie Ann Inaba.

Los Angeles police spokesman Liliana Preciado says the men were arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing. They were held on $1,000 bail each. A message at a number for Satoodeh was not immediately returned Tuesday. A number for Soroudi could not be found.

"GMA" aired video that wasn't shown during the live broadcast of one of the men being tackled by security.

___

6:53 a.m.

"Dancing with the Stars" host Tom Bergeron says everyone was shocked when two men rushed the stage to protest Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte after his performance on the ABC reality competition.

Bergeron described the incident as "really unnerving" on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday.

The men were wearing anti-Lochte t-shirts when they took the stage Monday night. "GMA" aired video that wasn't shown during the live broadcast of one of the men being tackled on stage by security. The video also shows at least four others in the audience wearing anti-Lochte shirts. They were escorted out while being verbally confronted by dancer Derek Hough.
Science Says Women Prefer Stubble Over Full Beards

Trending News: The Surprising Facial Hair Women Prefer Over Beards

Why Is This Important?

Because you may need to switch up your facial hair game.

Long Story Short

It turns out you shouldnt grow a beard. Nor should you shave your beard. Instead, you should be aiming for somewhere in-between.

Long Story

How terrible is shaving? All those razors. All that irritation. Its the pits. And how godawful are beards? All that upkeep. All that food on your face.

Well, now is the time revolt. Because besides clean-shavenness being a form of oppression delivered directly by The Man, and beardos some sort of grand joke played on us by American Crew, neither is grabbing the ladies, apparently.

Related: The Best Beard Trimmers

Indeed, new research says that packing a bit of stubble, Indiana Jones-style, is the best way to get down with the babes. Its just one of many interesting insights presented by a new study in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

As always, though, the results are not entirely straightforward. For the study, investigators used a computer program that could change how masculine a male face looked. It presented faces at varying stages of facial hair from clean-shaven, light stubble and heavy stubble right through to full beards. Additional differences could be dialled in, in areas such as brow ridge, cheekbones, jawline and other features.

Women were asked to rate the different stimuli for physical attractiveness in general, and for a short-term liaison or a long-term relationship. Masculinised and feminised faces were judged less attractive than unmanipulated faces when all were clean-shaven, but stubble and beards dampened the polarising effects of extreme masculinity and femininity.

Also, the women tended to find beardedness attractive when judging long-term relationships  perhaps as a signal of formidability among males and the potential to provide enhanced fertility and survival. But stubble was judged as the most attractive overall and did better in short-term relationship potential in particular.

The study comes from researchers from the University of Queensland, Charles Sturt University and the University of New South Wales running over 8520 women through the test.

The idea behind the research was to find out how beards affect male attractiveness to females in long term relationships versus short term relationships, researcher Dr Danielle Sulikowski told news.com.au.

Stubble was considered the most attractive  more attractive than beards and more attractive than a clean shaven face  but men with beards were considered more attractive than clean shaven men.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

What about designer stubble?

Disrupt Your Feed

This kind of explains a lot.

Drop This Fact

Some beards have been found to contain the same bacteria found in toilets, though not to a dangerous degree.
Israel launches new spy satellite

JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel launched a new spy satellite on Tuesday to gather intelligence on Iran and other regional adversaries, but later said the new device was not acting in "the expected manner."

"The satellite entered an orbit around the globe, was contacted, and its systems are being analyzed," the Defense Ministry said in a brief statement.

Amnon Harari, director of the ministry's space administration, later said the satellite "isn't acting exactly in the expected manner," and that efforts are underway "to stabilize it," without elaborating.

An Israeli security official said the Ofek 11 is the country's "most sophisticated spy satellite to date." Another official said it can transmit high resolution images in color and relay images from nearly anywhere around the world.
Kentucky governor: Clinton presidency may lead to bloodshed

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Kentucky's Republican governor said blood might be shed if Democrat Hillary Clinton is elected president.

Speaking to the annual Values Voter Summit on Saturday in Washington, Bevin said he was asked if the country could ever recover if Clinton were elected president.

"I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else. The patriots," Bevin said, referencing a quote from Thomas Jefferson. "Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we through our apathy and indifference have given away."

In a statement provided by his office, Bevin clarified he was speaking about the sacrifice required of members of the military, saying "we cannot be complacent about the determination of radical Islamic extremists to destroy our freedoms."

"I would encourage anyone who truly cares about this issue to invest 15 minutes of time and listen to my comments in their entirety," Bevin said. "Any intelligent person will easily understand the message I delivered."

Bevin's comment seemed to echo the violent imagery of some comments made by Republican Donald Trump and some of his supporters. He has not formally endorsed Trump but has been supportive of the GOP nominee.

Last month, Trump said if Clinton is elected and gets to appoint federal judges, "there's nothing you can do, folks." He then added: "Although the Second Amendment people  maybe there is, I don't know."

Trump's campaign later said he was encouraging gun rights supporters to vote against Clinton.

Democrats condemned Bevin's remarks, with one candidate for Congress calling for Bevin's impeachment.

"I believe that his call to shed the blood of fellow Americans is unconstitutional and a violation of his sworn oath to uphold the laws of the commonwealth," Democrat Nancy Jo Kemper said at a news conference just outside Bevin's office in the state capitol. Kemper is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Barr in Kentucky's 6th District.

Republican Party of Kentucky spokesman Tres Watson called Kemper's comments "a desperate act by a desperate candidate."

Greg Stumbo, the Democratic speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives, has already threatened Bevin with impeachment over a voicemail he left for a Democratic lawmaker urging him to switch parties. Stumbo declined to comment on Bevin's most recent comments.

However, any impeachment attempt would be unlikely, as the heavily Republican state Senate would have to vote to convict the governor.

Bevin is in his first term and is not on the ballot in November. But he is campaigning hard to help Republicans win a majority in Kentucky's House of Representatives, the last legislative chamber in the South still controlled by Democrats.

He used his speech on Saturday to encourage Christian voters to not be silent on issues they care about.
Hundreds of students serenade teacher battling cancer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  More than 400 students and faculty from a Tennessee school have left their classrooms to serenade a teacher suffering from an aggressive form of cancer.

Video of the group singing outside Christ Presbyterian Academy teacher Ben Ellis's home last week has been viewed more than 24 million times after country star Tim McGraw shared it on his Facebook page Saturday. The video shows Ellis watching the group from a window and singing along.

The Tennessean newspaper reports the unplanned tribute came after students were told Ellis had decided to discontinue treatment for cancer.

The Nashville school classes were stopped and students were taken by bus to Ellis's home.
In Timberlake concert film, Demme captures a pop spectacle

TORONTO (AP)  Jonathan Demme is still infatuated with the concert film.

The director of "Stop Making Sense," the landmark 1984 Talking Heads concert film, numerous Neil Young documentaries (including "Neil Young: Heart of Gold") and a Robyn Hitchcock capsule ("Storefront Hitchcock"), Demme has long been training his cameras on stages to capture the visceral thrill of music in action.

"I've come to believe, and I kind of felt this when we did 'Stop Making Sense,' that shooting live music is kind of like the purest form of filmmaking," Demme said in an interview. "There's no script to worry about. It's not a documentary, so you don't have to wonder where this story is going and what we can use. It's just: Here come the musicians. Here come the dancers. The curtain goes up. They have at it and we get to respond in the best way possible to what they're doing up there."

Demme was on Tuesday to premiere his latest concert film, "Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids," at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film documents the final Las Vegas concerts in 2015 from Timberlake's two-year "20/20" tour. The film will hit Netflix on Oct. 12.

Though Demme is perhaps most famous for his fiction films ("The Silence of the Lambs," ''Philadelphia," ''Something Wild"), music has long coursed through his movies. His last, 2015's "Ricki and the Flash," starred Meryl Streep as an aging rock star, long-absent from her family.

"I can't play any instrument and I have a hideous voice," Demme says. "But I've discovered that when I shoot music, I actually feel like I've become part of the band and I have something to do with the creation of music, which is a very good feeling for someone who loves music as much as I do."

"Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids" is a far larger pop spectacle than Demme has tackled before. To do so, he shot with many more cameras than he usually does. But many of the identifiable elements of a Demme concert film are there: the close eye for the rapport among performers, the unbroken focus on the stage.

"Not everybody is a great subject for a performance film, obviously. You've got to have that lucky confluence of events where the music just really thrills you. Just: 'I want to capture that and share it with people,'" says Demme. "No, I will never tire of filming music. I love it."

___
The Latest: British man pleads guilty in Trump attack case

LAS VEGAS (AP)  The Latest on criminal charges in a U.S. court against a British man stemming from an incident in which he grabbed a police officer's gun with a plan to shoot Donald Trump in Las Vegas (all times local):

2:05 p.m.

A British man has pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from an incident in which he grabbed a police officer's gun with a plan to shoot Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Las Vegas.

Michael Steven Sandford could face about two years in a U.S. prison and be deported for his pleas Tuesday to being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and disrupting an official function.

The 20-year-old Sandford could have faced up to 20 years in prison if he'd been convicted at trial of both charges.

Court documents say Sandford acknowledged reaching for the gun while Trump was on stage June 18 at a Las Vegas Strip hotel-casino.

Sandford didn't get the gun before he was arrested, and no shots were fired.

The documents say Sandford later told a federal agent that he drove from California to Las Vegas with a plan to kill Trump.

Family attorney Saimo Chahal says Sandford was delusional at the time.

___

9:15 a.m.

A British man could face about two years in a U.S. prison before being deported for trying to grab a police officer's gun to shoot Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a June campaign rally in Las Vegas.

Michael Steven Sandford is due to plead guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Nevada to firearm possession as an illegal immigrant and disrupting an official function charges.

The plea deal avoids trial, which had been set to start Oct. 3.

It was reached after Sandford's mother and a lawyer from London arrived in the U.S. and met with him in custody last week.

Attorney Saimo Chahal says Sandford needs medical care for several health problems, including seizures, obsession compulsion, depression and autism spectrum disorders and delusions.

She says his plea is a bid to get back to the United Kingdom as quickly as possible.

Sandford was 20 when he was arrested June 18.

He could have faced up to 20 years in a U.S. prison if he was convicted.

____

5:05 a.m.

The mother of a man accused of attempting to shoot Donald Trump has told British television he will plead guilty to lesser charges in a U.S. court.

The ITV News report says Lynne Sandford, the mother of Michael Sandford, told the station her son has signed a plea agreement in advance of a Nevada court appearance Tuesday.

She told ITV he had agreed to plead guilty to being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and disrupting government business.

Michael Sandford, 20, was accused after an incident at a Trump rally in June in which he allegedly tried to grab a policeman's gun to attack Trump.
US says it destroyed Islamic State chemical threat in Iraq

WASHINGTON (AP)  American warplanes eliminated a "significant chemical threat" to Iraqi civilians by bombing a complex of buildings near the northern city of Mosul that Islamic State militants had converted from pharmaceutical manufacturing to chemical weapons production, the three-star general in charge of U.S. air operations in the Middle East said Tuesday.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian told reporters at the Pentagon that the target was an Islamic State headquarters also used to produce lethal chemicals, possibly including chlorine and mustard gas. He provided no details on the chemical production.

Harrigian described the airstrike as a large, well-planned operation, which destroyed more than 50 targets at the site with a variety of U.S. warplanes, including Air Force B-52 bombers and Marine Corps F-18D attack planes. Other U.S. officials said later that a total of 12 U.S. planes were used.
Mexico: Egyptian travel agents to pay reparations for deaths

MEXICO CITY (AP)  Mexico's government says the association of Egyptian travel agents will pay an undetermined sum in reparations to the families of eight Mexican tourists killed by security forces last year.

The Foreign Relations Department says the Egyptian government has also agreed to erect a monument to the tourists and the Egyptians killed in the September 2015 attack.

A total of 12 people died when troops hunting militants mistakenly struck the tourists' convoy in Egypt's western desert.

The department said Tuesday the amount of the reparations is still being negotiated.
Israel says Hamas rejected deal to swap 2014 prisoners

JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel says the Islamic militant group Hamas has rejected a proposal to exchange prisoners in return for two Israeli soldiers' remains held since the 2014 Gaza War, which killed over 2,200 Palestinians and 73 Israelis.

Israeli official Lior Lotan told a security conference Tuesday that Hamas is violating the norms of conflict by refusing a swap.

The fate of the soldiers' remains is an emotional issue in Israel, where military service is mandatory. The militant group is also believed to be holding two Israeli citizens.

Hamas had no immediate comment.
WADA says Russian hackers published athletes' medical data

GENEVA (AP)  Confidential medical data of gold medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles, seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams and other female U.S. Olympians was hacked from a World Anti-Doping Agency database and posted online Tuesday.

WADA said the hackers were a "Russian cyber espionage group" called Fancy Bears.

They revealed records of "Therapeutic Use Exemptions" (TUEs), which allow athletes to use otherwise-banned substances because of a verified medical need.

Williams, who won a silver medal in mixed doubles at the Rio Olympics last month, issued a statement via her agent in which she said she was granted TUEs "when serious medical conditions have occurred," and those exemptions were "reviewed by an anonymous, independent group of doctors, and approved for legitimate medical reasons."

Williams revealed in 2011 she had been diagnosed with Sjogren's syndrome, an energy-sapping disease.

"I was disappointed to learn today that my private, medical data has been compromised by hackers and published without my permission," Williams said. "I have followed the rules established under the Tennis Anti-Doping Program in applying for, and being granted, 'therapeutic use exemption.'"

Another athlete named was women's basketball gold medalist Elena Delle Donne, who had thumb surgery on Tuesday and posted a post-op pic on Twitter, along with a statement saying she takes prescribed medication approved by WADA.

In a statement, USA Gymnastics said Biles  who won five medals, four gold, in Rio last month  was approved for an exemption and had not broken any rules.

She wrote on Twitter that she's taken medication to treat ADHD since she was a child.

"Please know I believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport and is very important to me," Biles posted.

WADA previously warned of cyberattacks after investigators it had appointed published reports into Russian state-sponsored doping.

"These criminal acts are greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia," World Anti-Doping Agency director general Olivier Niggli said in a statement.

WADA said it "extended its investigation with the relevant law enforcement authorities."

Last month, hackers obtained a database password for Russian runner Yuliya Stepanova, a whistleblower and key witness for the WADA investigations. She and her husband, a former official with the Russian national anti-doping agency, are now living at an undisclosed location in North America.

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected WADA's statement blaming Russian hackers as unfounded.

"There can be no talk about any official or government involvement, any involvement of Russian agencies in those actions. It's absolutely out of the question," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies. "Such unfounded accusations don't befit any organization, if they aren't backed by substance."

The International Olympic Committee said it "strongly condemns such methods which clearly aim at tarnishing the reputation of clean athletes."

"The IOC can confirm however that the athletes mentioned did not violate any anti-doping rules during the Olympic Games Rio 2016," the Olympic body said.

The top American anti-doping official said it was "unthinkable" to try to smear athletes who followed the rules and did nothing wrong.

"The cyberbullying of innocent athletes being engaged in by these hackers is cowardly and despicable," said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

The name "Fancy Bears" appears to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to a collection of hackers that many security researchers have long associated with Russia.

In a statement posted to its website early Tuesday, the group proclaimed its allegiance to Anonymous, the loose-knit movement of online mischief-makers, and said it hacked WADA to show the world "how Olympic medals are won."

"We will start with the U.S. team which has disgraced its name by tainted victories," the group said, adding that more revelations about other teams were forthcoming.

Internet records suggest Fancy Bears' data dump has been in the works for at least two weeks; their website was registered on Sept. 1 and their Twitter account was created on Sept. 6.

Messages left with the group were not immediately returned. A French name and phone number associated with the site both appeared to be bogus. A mailing address listed by the hackers appeared to point to a florist east of Paris; messages left with the business were not immediately returned.

___
In Florida, Trump faces a Clinton campaign behemoth

MIAMI (AP)  For Donald Trump, the fight for Florida begins and ends with mass appeal: signature rallies and direct social media contact with voters who believe he can "make America great again."

Add some 30 Florida Trump employees to about 80 Republican Party field workers deployed around the state and that pretty much covers the GOP nominee's conventional ground game operation in the largest battleground state.

Then there's Hillary Clinton: 51 offices, with more on the way, and 500 employees combing Florida, and an overall ground game that rivals that of the previous Democratic nominee, President Barack Obama.

FILE - In this Aug. 24, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Tampa, Fla. For Trump, the fight for Florida begins and ends with mass appeal: signature rallies and direct social media contact with voters who believe he can make America great again. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Trump loyalists say they have a deliberate strategy and far-reaching footprint to counter the Clinton behemoth, even if his apparatus doesn't measure up in campaign offices, staff and paid advertising. But the organizational disparity leaves more than a few Republicans scratching their heads. All agree Trump has no path to the required 270 electoral votes without claiming Florida's 29.

"Everyone keeps saying you're not doing this in a traditional way, why?" says Trump adviser Karen Giorno. "Well, we don't have a traditional candidate." She oversaw Trump's Florida operation from the primary season until last week, when she moved to national duties.

Giorno points to thousands of volunteers led by unpaid chairmen in each of Florida's 67 counties. The Republican National Committee says it has 1,000 trained volunteers to go with its employees.

Yet only after Labor Day did the Trump campaign open outposts other than the nominee's state headquarters in Sarasota. Giorno's replacement by Susie Wiles came just two months before Election Day.

Giorno and Wiles say their candidate is in good shape. Either Trump or his running mate Mike Pence will be in the state at least weekly until the election, Giorno said. Between visits, she added, a volunteer network, led by people in each of Florida's 67 counties, will use more conventional methods to build the Trump coalition.

Wiles, in an interview on her first day as the new Florida boss, said judging the campaign by offices and staff "isn't the right measure we should use," because "you don't meet voters sitting in an office."

Prior to her job change, Giorno described a two-track strategy she developed with Trump's blessing.

"Ten thousand people in an arena and thousands of people on social media are just as good as (Democrats) knocking on 10,000 doors  and we're doing that, too," Giorno said. "I don't see how people say we have no ground game just because they don't see something that operates just like they think it should."

Scott Arceneaux, senior strategist for Clinton's Florida campaign, calls that "ridiculous spin" in a state where marginal shifts in a diverse electorate can tilt the statewide result. Obama won Florida by fewer than 3 percentage points in 2008 and less than a percentage point four years later, with turnout exceeding 8.3 million both times. Polls for months have suggested another tight race.

Trump's Orange County chairman, Randy Ross, said Arceneaux discounts people like him.

Ross, whose territory includes Orlando, shepherds other volunteers who run phone banks and knock on doors using voter lists produced by the Republican National Committee's data operation, expanded after Obama's two victories. "We happen to be using things Republicans learned" from Obama, Ross added, "but we are really a movement, just like Mr. Trump calls it."

Brian Ballard, a Trump fundraiser and top lobbyist in the state capital of Tallahassee, said, "Counting campaign offices just doesn't matter these days."

Florida is slightly less white than the national electorate, but still roughly a microcosm. If the electorate largely reflects 2012, Clinton would capitalize on her standing among African-Americans and Hispanics wary of Trump. Even among Cuban-Americans, a population that has historically leaned Republican, Trump appears to be underperforming  a circumstance that would pad Clinton's advantage.

Yet even if Clinton maintains her advantage among minorities, turnout could drop in places like Orlando and south Florida's Broward County, yielding her fewer overall votes. That could give Trump an opening if he's able to goose turnout among whites, particularly in Pensacola, Jacksonville and other GOP strongholds in north Florida.

Even so, said Arceneaux, "This is a 1 percent state, so if we win by 2 percent, that's a landslide."

Facing such a landscape, Giorno conceded Trump is late building his paid campaign infrastructure. But other Florida Republicans point to strong local parties that already were using the national party's data and support, while running their own outreach programs.

Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County GOP, for example, says his party has for several years built relationships within the Haitian-American community. That pocket  numbering in the tens of thousands  shows up as black voters on paper, Barnett notes, "but doesn't have the historical connection with the Democratic Party" that American-born blacks do.

Arceneaux, the Clinton strategist, questions whether the overall Republican effort can identify and mobilize voters beyond those who identify themselves as eager supporters, given fewer employees and Trump's late effort.

He joked: "We like to say that Mr. Trump gives us many avenues to victory."

___

Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP.
20 children safely evacuated from burning school bus

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP)  A school bus driver helped evacuate nearly two dozen children from a bus after the vehicle caught fire.

Prince George's County Fire Department spokesman Mark Brady said in a statement that 20 students from Glen Arden Woods Elementary School were safely evacuated Monday evening without any reports of injuries.

It's not clear what caused the fire in College Park. Brady says it appears to have started near one of the back wheels of the bus before spreading throughout the rest of the vehicle.

Most parents were able to pick up their children from the scene, while the others were taken to safety by a second responding bus.
Israel's Peres hospitalized after stroke

JERUSALEM (AP)  Former Israeli President Shimon Peres suffered a "major stroke" on Tuesday and experienced heavy bleeding in the brain, hospital officials said, as doctors raced to stabilize the 93-year-old Nobel laureate.

Dr. Itzik Kreiss, director of the Sheba Medical Center, told reporters outside the hospital near Tel Aviv that Peres experienced "lots of bleeding" as a result of the stroke. He said he had undergone a battery of tests, and that doctors planned to hold another assessment in a few hours.

Standing alongside Kreiss, Peres' son Chemi said the situation was "not simple," but that the family was trying to stay positive.

FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2015 file photo, former Israeli President Shimon Peres speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Jerusalem. Former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday suffered a stroke and was rushed to a hospital, where he was sedated and placed on a respirator ahead of a brain scan. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty, File)

"My father is very special. I am keeping optimistic. Hoping for the best. But these hours are not easy," he said.

He thanked the Israeli public for offering its support and prayers.

Peres' office issued a statement early Wednesday describing his condition as "serious but stable." It said he remained hospitalized in the intensive care unit.

Earlier, Israeli media reported the bleeding had stopped. Dr. Shlomi Matezsky, one of the doctors treating Peres, told Channel 2 TV that Peres had regained consciousness and was on a respirator.

"He is on a respirator and lightly sedated but is conducting actions, what is called in medical terms 'simple actions' and is not currently unconscious," he said.

He said doctors were meeting to decide how to proceed. "The way things seem now, we don't think surgery in the next few hours would benefit Mr. Peres' condition," he said.

Peres is the elder statesman of Israeli politics and the last surviving link to the country's founding fathers.

Over a seven-decade career, he held virtually every senior political office in Israel, including three terms as prime minister and stints as foreign and finance minister. He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in reaching an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians.

He had remained active since completing his seven-year term as president in 2014, and even uploaded a video to his Facebook account earlier in the day.

In the video , in which Peres encourages the public to buy locally made products, he appears weary but is otherwise alert and coherent. Channel 10 TV said Peres had also delivered an hour-long lecture earlier in the day.

Earlier this year, Peres was twice hospitalized for heart problems but quickly released. His office said Peres received a pacemaker last week.

As president, a largely ceremonial office, he cultivated an image as the country's elder statesman and became one of its most popular public figures.

He also became a fixture at international conferences like the World Economic Forum in Davos. Earlier this month, he participated in the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.

Since leaving the presidency, Peres frequently hosted public events at his peace center, bringing together Arabs and Jews in efforts to promote coexistence.

In a message posted on Facebook, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished Peres a speedy recovery. "Shimon, we love you and the entire nation wishes you get well," he said.

FILE - In this Tuesday, July 15, 2014, file photo, Israel's President Shimon Peres speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, at his residence in Jerusalem. Former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, suffered a stroke and was rushed to a hospital, where he was sedated and placed on a respirator ahead of a brain scan. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty, File)

File - In this Tuesday, July 15, 2014 file photo, Israel's President Shimon Peres poses for a photo during an interview with The Associated Press, at his residence in Jerusalem. A spokeswoman for Peres said the former Israeli president has suffered a stroke and been rushed to a hospital Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The statement said that he was stable and fully conscious. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty, File)
A 14-year-old Pennsylvania boy was charged with barging into a neighbor's house and stabbing a married couple and their teen daughter, killing the husband.

Zachary Hockenberry was charged as an adult and jailed without bail following the attack on Sunday just before 2pm at a home in Kingston Township, near Wilkes-Barre.

Bobbi Jo Sinoracki, 36, was vacuuming when she felt like she was being punched in the back, police said.

Sinoracki turned around, saw Hockenberry who lives next door, holding a knife and realized she had been stabbed, according to court documents.

Scroll down for video

David Sinoracki was killed and his wife Bobbi Jo and their 17-year-old daughter (the family pictured above) suffered injuries after they were stabbed in an attack on Sunday at their Pennsylvania home, police said

Zachary Hockenberry was charged as an adult and jailed without bail following the attack on Sunday just before 2pm at a home (pictured) in Kingston Township, near Wilkes-Barre

Hockenberry then stabbed her husband David Sinoracki, 45, in the chest, police said.

At the time, he was in the next room and had run to her aid, according to a close long-time family friend, Erin Cook.

Hearing her mother's screams, the couple's 17-year-old daughter ran into the living room, tried helping her mother as well and was also stabbed in the chest.

The couple's 14-year-old daughter ran for help at a neighbor's house while their 11-year-old son and his friend locked themselves in an upstairs bedroom until police arrived, according to Cook, who has since started a Gofundme page for the family.

Hockenberry's father wound up in the home and restrained his son in a chair in the living room until police arrived, Luzerne County District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis said on Tuesday.

All three victims were taken to Geisinger Wyoming Valley Hospital where David Sinoracki later died from his injuries.

His wife was admitted with multiple stab wounds but is expected to recover. Their 17-year-old daughter was treated and released.

At this time, it is not known what spurred the attack, according to police.

Bobbi Jo Sinoracki, 36, was vacuuming when she was stabbed in the back several times by Hockenberry, who lives next door, police said. Her husband was stabbed in the chest when he tried to intervene (the couple pictured together)

Hockenberry had no apparent history with the family, Kingston Township Police Chief Michael Moravec said.

'Quite frankly, we're at a loss as to what exactly the motive is going to be, ultimately, with this child,' Moravec said on Tuesday.

Hockenberry is a student in the Dallas School District, and school officials told WNEP both families have other students in the district.

'Any time our students are impacted in a tragedy like this, it impacts us at all levels,' Dallas School District Superintendent Thomas Duffy told the station.

One of the victims being aided by emergency responders. Hockenberry's father wound up in the home and restrained his son in a chair until police arrived, authorities said

Authorities are pictured at the scene following the terrifying ordeal

The district has guidance counselors on hand for students who are in need of assistance, according to Duffy.

David Sinoracki was the main source of income for the family and worked for the Sysco Food Supply Company, according to Cook.

She described him as the 'backbone of the household' and a 'loving and devoted husband and father.'

'He was a man with endless energy and and talents,' she wrote on the Gofundme page.

'When he wasn't working at Sysco Food Supply company he was spending time cooking for his family or doing some kind of project to improve life for his beautiful wife and children.'

Cook has set up the Gofundme page to provide financial support to the family following the loss of David. The fundraising campaign has so far raised $18,825.

Neighbor Matt Ford told The Citizens Voice that David Sinoracki died as a hero trying to save his family.

David Sinoracki was the main source of income for the family and was described as the 'backbone of the household' and a 'loving and devoted husband and father'

Hockenberry has been charged with homicide, aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and burglary in connection to the attack

'He died trying to stop an attacker. That makes him a hero in my book,' Ford said.

'What can you say about a man willing to give his life for his family?'

Hockenberry has been charged with homicide, aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and burglary in connection to the attack.

Frank Nocito, the suspect's lawyer, said he will try to postpone Hockenberry's preliminary hearing, but he otherwise declined to comment.
6 key things to know about Apple's new iOS 10 software

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP)  Your iPhone will look and feel different with the iOS 10 software update.

It will be easier to move around and do more without switching apps, but the changes will take getting used to. The changes are the most dramatic since 2013, when Apple redesigned icons and introduced functions with swipes from various edges. Now, new things happen when you swipe, and you can handle more tasks from the lock screen.

If you aren't prompted for the free update Tuesday, go to "Software Update" under "General" in the settings.

FILE - In this Monday, June 13, 2016, file photo, Craig Federighi, Apple senior vice president of software engineering, speaks about Photos in iOS 10 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. With iOS 10, it will be easier to move around and do more without switching apps, but the changes will take getting used to. And the Photos app has more options for searching and viewing highlights. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar, File)

Once you get it, here are some things to know about using it.

___

NEW GESTURES

Swiping up from the bottom edge still gets you the Control Center with quick access to the flashlight, airplane mode and other frequent functions. But it's now split into multiple screens. Once Control Center is open, swipe to the left to get audio and video controls. Swipe left once more to control lights and other accessories through Apple's HomeKit automation system.

From the lock screen, you used to be able to access the camera by pulling up from the bottom right corner. Now, you swipe left from the right edge.

Swiping down from the top edge still gets you recent notifications, but your widgets and calendars have moved. Now, you get those by swiping right from the left edge. Those widgets join app and news recommendations that were already there.

___

MORE FROM THE LOCK SCREEN

The screen now turns on automatically when you lift your phone. You can do much more from the lock screen, such as viewing a photo from a friend or listening to a voice message.

Tapping the home button with fingerprint ID will unlock the phone, but won't necessarily get you the home screen. It will allow greater access to messages and other notifications from the lock screen, but you need to press the home button again to get to all your apps.

___

COMMUNICATIONS

The Messages app has been redesigned to offer more expression options. After you type your message, hold the blue "up" arrow.

You can give the message a "loud" effect, so that it briefly appears huge to the recipient. "Invisible ink" hides the message until the recipient rubs a finger over it. (It's not meant for security, though, as there's no extra passcode once the phone is unlocked.)

If you're sending a message to an Android phone or an iPhone without iOS 10, the recipient won't see the desired effect, but rather a note such as "sent with Loud Effect."

You can send animated doodles (hit the heart icon) and handwritten notes (turn your screen horizontally), though recipients without compatible phones will see a static image.

Meanwhile, if someone sends you a link, you'll see a preview rather than a link, similar to how it appears on Facebook feeds.

___

APP INTEGRATION

The Messages app now has its own app store to get additional functionality, sometimes for a fee. Just hit the "A'' icon above the keyboard.

As you discuss dinner plans with friends, for instance, you can have OpenTable slide up from the bottom without leaving Messages. Suggest a few places and times so friends you're chatting with can vote. Make a reservation right from Messages.

Maps, meanwhile, adds support for restaurant reservations and ride-hailing services, such as Uber and Lyft. A new tab called "Ride" appears alongside "Drive," ''Walk" and "Transit."

Siri now works with third-party apps for messaging, ride hailing, workouts, photos, internet calling and payments services. Notably missing is compatibility with music apps such as Spotify, a rival to Apple Music.

___

REDESIGNED APPS

The interface for Maps has improved. A prominent button for "Directions" appears once you type in a destination. You can slide the card up for basics such as phone numbers and Yelp reviews. This used to require an extra tap or two.

As you're traveling, you can tap on the bottom strip to find gas stations, restaurants and other businesses along your route. For drivers, there's now an option to avoid tolls, matching Google Maps.

The new Mail interface takes adjustment. The most recent messages are now at the bottom rather than the top. In the past, you chose messages in a thread individually. Now, it's a single stream  so be careful when replying to make sure it's going to the intended recipient.

And if an alarm goes off while you're using the phone, it appears as a notification up top rather than block what you were doing. Swipe the notification away to snooze, or pull down and hit "Stop" to get rid of it.

___

DOZENS OF TINY DISCOVERIES

The Clock app's new Bedtime feature encourages you to go to bed and wake up at the same time each day.

The flashlight on the Control Center lets you adjust brightness if you have an iPhone 6S or 7. Just press hard on the icon. Other models don't have this 3D Touch capability.

And the Photos app has more options for searching and viewing highlights.

___

Online:

AP's iPhone 7 review: http://apne.ws/2cE4Anh

This undated photo provided by Apple shows the Apple iPad Pro and iPhone 7 using the iOS 10 software update. With the iOS 10 software update, it will be easier to move around and do more without switching apps, but the changes will take getting used to. (Apple via AP)

This undated photo provided by Apple shows an iPhone 7 demonstrating the Messages app that has been redesigned to offer more expression options with the iOS 10 software update. In fact, the Messages app now has its own app store to get additional functionality, sometimes for a fee. (Apple via AP)

This undated photo provided by Apple shows an iPhone 7 demonstrating the Messages app, left, that has been redesigned to offer more expression options with the iOS 10 software update. In fact, the Messages app now has its own app store, right, to get additional functionality, sometimes for a fee. (Apple via AP)

FILE - In this Monday, June 13, 2016, file photo, Craig Federighi, Apple senior vice president of software engineering, speaks about the new iOS 10 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. With iOS 10, it will be easier to move around and do more without switching apps, but the changes will take getting used to. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar, File)
Greek foreign ministry condemns vandalism at synagogue

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Greece's foreign ministry and main political parties have strongly condemned the daubing of Nazi symbols on the walls of a Jewish synagogue in northern Greece.

The foreign ministry promised Tuesday that Greek authorities would do their utmost to arrest and punish whoever was responsible for the vandalism in the city of Ioannina.

It said the "barbaric" attack is an affront to Greek society and the memory of Greek victims of fascism, including Jews, during World War II.

Most of Greece's pre-war Jewish population was deported and killed in Nazi death camps by German occupation forces.
The wife of a Mexican drug lord has been arrested after being accused of trying to resurrect his cartel while he is still in jail.

Federal police swooped on Clara Laborin Archuleta, also known as La Senora, after officers said her criminal gang was behind a wave of killings in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

Archuleta is married to Hector Beltran Levya, who was jailed in 2014 for being the leader of the infamous Beltran Leyva cartel.

Scroll down for video

Federal police swooped on Clara Laborin Archuleta, also known as La Senora, pictured, after officers said her criminal gang was behind a wave of killings in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco

Archuleta's name and picture has appeared on dozens of wanted 'narcos banners' across Acapulco in the past year

She was arrested on Monday along with another man who allegedly helped her to restart the cartel's operations in Sonora and Acapulco, which was once unrivalled turf for the gang.

When police detained her, she was found to be carrying two kilos of cocaine as well as firearms.

Archuleta's name and picture has appeared on dozens of wanted 'narcos banners' across Acapulco in the past year.

According to Vice News, the city's murder rate has spiralled recently due to drug cartel turf wars.

Archuleta is married to Hector Beltran Levya, oictured, who was jailed in 2014, for being the leader of the infamous Beltran Leyva cartel

Beltran Layva's cartel was named after him and his two brothers, who became infamous for the bloody turf war they waged with their former ally Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman

A source told the website that Archuleta had been trying to take back control of Acapulco and had been backed by an alliance with the growing Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

However, she reportedly failed to negotiate the takeover and had to be guarded by a squad of Jalisco hitmen.

Her arrest comes two years after her husband was detained by Mexican special forces at a seafood restaurant popular with Americans in San Miguel de Allende.

His cartel was named after him and his two brothers, who became infamous for the bloody turf war they waged with their former ally Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman.

At its peak, the Beltran Leyva cartel dominated drug-trafficking in western Mexico and waged a bloody turf war with Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, pictured

When arrested, the 49-year-old had been living in the nearby city of Queretaro posing as a businessman dealing in art and real estate, the government said.

Beltran Leyva and an associate were carrying military-issue handguns, but he was arrested without a shot being fired.

At its peak, the Beltran Leyva cartel dominated drug-trafficking in western Mexico.
Tennessee police shoot armed man who pointed gun at officer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  Authorities say a Metro Nashville police officer has shot and wounded an armed man.

Metro Nashville police said in a statement that 38-year-old officer Jason Sweeney encountered the man Tuesday morning near a fire station while responding to a report of shots fired. The statement says 42-year-old Kevin Lillard ran to an alcove and pointed a gun at the pursuing officer.

Police say Sweeney fired his gun once in self-defense, hitting Lillard in the mid-section.

Sweeney, who is white, wasn't injured. He was placed on routine administrative leave.

Lillard, who is black, was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he was in stable condition.
Gone are the days when children being out past dark was a parent's worst fear; now they have to worry about smart toys tracking their child's every move.

After a two-year probe, Viacom, Mattel, Hasbro and JumpStart have been ordered to pay $835,000 in fines for tracking and collecting personal data of children online.

All four companies allowed tracking technology on their websites, which violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act that limits marketing to children under 13.

Scroll down for video

Gone are the days when their children being out past dark was a parent's worst fear, now they have to worry about Barbie tracking their child's every move. Viacom, Mattel, Hasbro and JumpStart have been ordered to pay $835,000 in fines for tracking children online

BREAKING THE LAW Viacom, Mattel, Hasbro and JumpStart were found to have tracking technology on popular children websites. Some of the popular websites included Viacom's Nick Jr. and Nickelodeon; Mattel's Barbie, Hot Wheels and American Girl; JumpStart's Neopets; and Hasbro's My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop and Nerf. Not only do they owe $835,000 in fine, but the companies must do regular audits of their websites to make sure no new tracking tools have been introduced. They also have to vet third-party services they plan on working with. Advertisement

'We used to worry about our children wandering into bad neighborhoods, now our children live online,' New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a press conference.

'We have to deal with this the same way we deal with street crime.'

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, limits marketing to children under 13 and requires website operators to retain parental consent before collecting any of the child's personal information.

Now, Viacom must pay $500,000, Mattel $250,000 and JumpStart is set to hand over $85,000.

Hasbro was not fined, as it is a 'safe harbor' program' through the Federal Trade Commission that requires more disclosure of web activity, Schneiderman said.

The firm who has already added a cookies warning sign to their website, said it cooperated with investigators and will closely monitor companies working on its behalf.

'We are rolling out a new, stricter online privacy protection policy for our partners, and enacting new protocols and technology to scan our digital properties for any cookies, widgets or other applications that may violate our policy,' Hasbro spokeswoman Julie Duffy said.

Some of the popular websites included Viacom's Nick Jr. and Nickelodeon; Mattel's Barbie, Hot Wheels and American Girl; JumpStart's Neopets; and Hasbro's My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop and Nerf.

Now, Viacom must pay $500,000, Mattel $250,000 and JumpStart is set to hand over $85,000. Hasbro (pictured) was not fined, as it is a 'safe harbor' program' through the Federal Trade Commission that requires more disclosure of web activity

All of the companies are now required to do regular audits of their websites to make sure no new tracking tools have magically appeared.

The settlements also state that the companies conduct due diligence with all the third-party services prior to working with them.

'Any time we become aware of a question about whether a Mattel-operated website is in full compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act or other laws, we take prompt action to investigate and, if necessary, remedy the situation and look for additional controls to avoid a re-occurrence,' spokesman Alex Clark with Mattel said.

EXPERTS WARN HELLO BARBIE CAN BE HACKED Last year, an expert claimed Mattel's Wi-Fi enabled Barbie can be hacked and the toy could even act like a surveillance device by listening into a family's conversations. Hello Barbie (pictured) last year that has parents wonder if the toy maker is eavesdropping on their children This follows on from the news that a hacker obtained photos of children and chat logs from toymaker VTech, which makes electronic learning devices. The doll connects to the internet via Wi-Fi so it can search responses to questions via software company ToyTalk. It also has a microphone to record a child's speech and respond to them. Because the doll remembers conversations and learns from the data to provide tailored responses, it almost seems like 'she's alive', explained the firm. While this may sound revolutionary, Chicago-based security researcher Matt Jakubowski told NBC that he has discovered the toy is vulnerable to hacking. He hacked the doll's operating system to get access to network names and IDs. Once inside a network, he said it is easy to access account information and stored audio files as well as gain access to the microphone. You can take that information and find out a person's house or business,' he warned. 'It's just a matter of time until we are able to replace their servers with ours and have her say anything we want.' While the doll only listens to a conversation when a button is pressed, and the recording is encrypted, experts are concerned a hacker could override these precautions. Advertisement

Mattel released Hello Barbie last year, which uses voice recognition software and Wi-Fi connection to have a two-way conversation with children as they play and has come under fire for privacy issues.

Speech recognition software is implanted into the doll, which converts audio into text and artificial intelligence software pulls keywords from human responses, reported Newsweek.

All of the companies, including Viacom (pictured) are now required to do audits of their websites to make sure no new tracking appeared. The settlements also state that the companies conduct due diligence with all the third-party services prior to working with them

'They really shouldn't call it Hello Barbie; they should call it Surveillance Barbie,' Susan Linn, founding director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), told Newsweek in March.

The nonprofit launched a 'Hell No Barbie' campaign that month with the hope of shutting down the product.

'Kids talking to Hello Barbie aren't just talking to a doll; they're talking to Mattel...a multinational corporation whose only interest in them is financial.'
Authorities: West Virginia deputy involved in fatal shooting

PRINCETON, W.Va. (AP)  West Virginia State Police say a sheriff's deputy in Mercer County has been involved in a fatal shooting.

State police spokesman Lt. Michael Baylous says 69-year-old Dennis Stanley was fatally shot Saturday along Route 71 in the Montcalm area when a deputy responded to a report of an erratic driver brandishing a gun. He says the investigation is open and declined to release more information.
Authorities: Man broke into Ohio jail for protection

HAMILTON, Ohio (AP)  Police say a 23-year-old man looking for protection ran into an Ohio jail and became trapped in the facility.

Authorities say Chad Saylor breached the Butler County Resolutions facility in Hamilton on Saturday by climbing a pipe and becoming trapped in the rear of the facility. Police say he then called 911, saying people were after him with weapons and trying to kill him and he needed to get to safety.

The breach came days after an inmate walked away from the Butler County Jail and was found a day later.

Saylor had active warrants and was taken into custody. He wasn't seriously injured.
Witnesses refuse to testify in hearing on Clinton's email

WASHINGTON (AP)  Three witnesses ordered to testify Tuesday before a House committee investigating Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server asserted their constitutional rights against self-incrimination and did not appear or refused to answer questions.

Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department computer specialist tasked with setting up Clinton's server, did not attend the Republican-led hearing. His attorneys said in a letter to the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Pagliano will continue to assert his constitutional right not to testify.

Pagliano spoke previously to the FBI under immunity, telling the bureau there were no successful security breaches of the server. But he said he was aware of many failed login attempts that he described as "brute force attacks."

The name plate for witness Bryan Pagliano, former senior adviser, Information Resource Management, State Department, who did not appear, sits on the witness table on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, during a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on 'Examining Preservation of State Department Records.' (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Pagliano also refused to answer questions last year before a House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

"He has never made any statement or taken any action that would constitute a waiver of his constitutional rights and there is no reason for anyone to believe he might suddenly depart from that position," Pagliano's lawyers wrote in the Sept. 13 letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the Oversight committee chairman.

Chaffetz said there will be consequences for Pagliano's refusal to appear and for "thumbing his nose at Congress." He didn't specify what the penalties would be.

The email issue has shadowed Clinton's candidacy for president, and Republicans have been steadfast in focusing on her use of a private server for government business, with several high-profile hearings leading up to the election. Congressional Republicans have cast Clinton as reckless with U.S. national security by insisting on using private communications systems at potentially greater risk of being penetrated by Chinese and Russian hackers.

But Democrats insist the sole purpose of the hearings is to undermine Clinton's presidential bid.

"I believe this committee is abusing taxpayer dollars and the authority of Congress in an astonishing onslaught of political attacks to damage Secretary Clinton's campaign for president," said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee's top Democrat.

FBI Director James Comey last week defended the decision to forgo criminal charges against Clinton after a yearlong probe into whether she mishandled classified information that flowed through the private email system located in her Chappaqua, New York, home. Comey told bureau employees in an internal memo that it wasn't a close call.

Two officials from Denver-based Platte River Networks appeared before the committee but invoked their constitutional right not to testify. Bill Thornton and Paul Combetta were excused from the session. In June 2013, after Clinton had left office, the server was moved from her home to a data center in northern New Jersey, where it was maintained by the Platte River Networks.

Congressional Republicans last month issued subpoenas to Platte River Networks and two other companies  Datto Inc. and SECNAP Network Security Corp.  after they declined to voluntarily answer questions to determine whether Clinton's private server met government standards for record-keeping and security.

One witness, Justin Cooper, a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton, was the lone witness and answered the committee's questions for nearly two hours. His attorney, Howard Shapiro, sat behind him.

Chaffetz described Cooper as a former employee of President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. He said Cooper purchased the first server used by Hillary Clinton. Cooper also registered the email domain "clintonemail.com" in 2009, when Clinton's nomination to be secretary of state was being considered by the Senate.

Cooper also told the FBI that he helped Hillary Clinton set up her mobile devices, according to Chaffetz, and "when she was finished with them he would break them in half or destroy them with a hammer."

All of the content on the old mobile devices was first backed up and transferred to the new devices, Cooper told the committee. He explained the reason for destroying a device was to ensure that no one pulled it from the trash "out of curiosity" and tried to use it.

"I felt that that was good practice at the time," Cooper said.

Cooper, who now runs his own consulting firm, told the committee that he did not have a security clearance during the period he performed the IT work for Hillary Clinton. He also said he wasn't an expert in communications security. He told lawmakers that he couldn't say whether any secret information had been purloined by foreign hackers or that U.S. national security had been compromised.

In response to a question from Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., Cooper said he had not been part of any conversations that involved attorneys discussing the erasing of Clinton's emails.

___

Follow Richard Lardner on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rplardner

Paul Combetta, Platte River Networks, asserts his 5th amendment right while testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on 'Examining Preservation of State Department Records.' (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pauses while speaking at a rally at Johnson C. Smith University, in Charlotte, N.C. House Republicans on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, continue their attacks on former Secretary of State Clinton's emails by calling the tech expert who set up her private server and representatives from the company that maintained the system to testify at a congressional hearing. Bryan Pagliano, a former information resource management adviser at the State Department, is scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
EU chief Tusk: No new centralized powers to deal with crises

BRUSSELS (AP)  The best way to deal with the myriad of crises the EU is facing is for national capitals to broker common solutions instead of giving more powers to centralized EU institutions in Brussels, European Union President Donald Tusk said Tuesday.

In a bleak outlook on the state of the European Union, Tusk said EU institutions like the executive Commission have a simple task: to "support the priorities as agreed among member states, and not impose their own."

This would mean containing the powers of politicians like Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who is seen as the most important EU official along with EU Council President Tusk.

President of the European Council, Donald Tusk listens to Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May inside 10 Downing Street in London, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The two met for a bilateral meeting to discuss Brexit, amid increasing pressure over a lack of detail in the Government's stated strategy. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, pool)

Juncker himself will be giving an official State of the European Union address at the EU parliament early Wednesday, a speech which has been hotly anticipated for weeks, but Tusk already stole some of his thunder.

His comments came in the traditional letter he writes to leaders ahead of a summit, but the missive ahead of Friday's Bratislava meeting of EU leaders, minus Britain's Theresa May, was exceptionally long and deeply wrought compared to the short matter-of-fact messages he usually sends.

The dislike for the EU's centralized powers, like those of Juncker's Commission, was key in the British referendum campaign which resulted in the nation's stunning June 23 decision to leave the EU.

Tusk said it would be "a fatal error" to consider the British exit, or Brexit, a national issue only, but instead painted it as a symptom of unease across the union of 28 nations and half a billion people.

"It is also true that the Brexit vote is a desperate attempt to answer the questions that millions of Europeans ask themselves daily," including those about security, sovereignty, cultural heritage and way of life, Tusk wrote. And he said the answers the member states seek now run counter to the long-held dream of an ever-closer union, and for some, a federalist super state.

In the past, the EU Commission has been essential in pushing through rules and regulations that have set up the EU's famed single market where companies have been able to do business within an increasingly seamless community. But too often, the EU's institutions have been criticized for red tape and interference in too many facets of people's lives.

After a whirlwind tour of capitals over the past days, ahead of the summit in the Slovak capital, Tusk said that "my talks with you clearly show that giving new powers to European institutions is not the desired recipe."

Even though EU leaders have already had a short meeting without Britain, the Bratislava summit is seen as a fundamental opportunity to change tack and re-instill a sense of confidence in the EU as a common bond for more practical cooperation between nations.

Even the location of the summit, away from Brussels, has been seen by some as an indication the appetite for so many things happening in "Brussels" is on the wane.

Tusk is calling for a break with the past.

"Today many people, not only in the UK, think that being part of the European Union stands in the way of stability and security," he wrote. "People in Europe want to know if the political elites are capable of restoring control over events and processes which overwhelm, disorientate, and sometimes terrify them."

In the wake of the migration crisis, Tusk wants the Bratislava summit to center on restoring effective controls of external borders.

He said that all too often, people have heard "politically correct statements that Europe cannot become a fortress, that it must remain open. The lack of rapid action and of a uniform European strategy have weakened citizens' trust."

He also had a message for wayward Britain, warning that as long as it doesn't officially notify it will leave, there should be no backroom negotiations on terms. And he insisted that if the EU stuck together well during the split-up "there will be no room for doubt that it is a good thing to be a member of the union."

Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo,right, shake hands with wldEuropean Council President Donald Tusk before talks on EU future after Britain leaves, in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Ahead of EU summit on Friday, Szydlo says EU needs deep, bold reforms. Relations between Szydlo, a conservative, and Tusk, Poland's former centrist prime minister, are tense. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
2 human rights groups criticize UN over refugees

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The planned outcome document for next week's United Nations summit on refugees falls short of what is needed to deal with the massive crisis, two prominent human rights groups said Tuesday.

In separate statements, Human Rights Watch called the draft of the final document "a missed opportunity," and Amnesty International accused member states of stripping away any proposals of substance.

"The U.N. summit has been sabotaged by states acting in self-interest, leaving millions of refugees in dire situations around the world on the edge of a precipice," said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

Amnesty said the outcome document had been rendered toothless after member states removed a clause asking governments to resettle 10 percent of the world's refugees each year, thus making sure there was no obligation to take in a specific number of people.

Leaders from around the world will meet in New York on Monday to discuss what to do about the world's over 21.3 million refugees  more than any time since World War II.

The next day, U.S. President Barack Obama will host a "Leader's Summit," in hopes of raising money for refugee initiatives.

"Millions of lives hang in the balance," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "This is not just about more money or greater resettlement numbers, but also about shoring up the legal principles for protecting refugees, which are under threat as never before."

Human Rights Watch said it was particularly concerned about the risk to the bedrock foundation of refugee protection: not forcibly returning refugees to places where they would face persecution.
Teen with gun who stood by as 4 slain gets 172-year sentence

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  An 18-year-old suspected gang member has been sentenced to nearly 175 years in prison for his role in a quadruple homicide during a robbery at an Ohio home last year.

Jordyn Wade was accused of helping an accomplice rob five people in Columbus, then standing with his gun drawn while the accomplice shot them. One person survived.

A jury convicted Wade in May, and a judge sentenced him Tuesday to 172  years in prison.

Co-defendant Robert Adams Jr. faces the death penalty if convicted during his trial next year. Wade wasn't eligible for the death penalty because he was a juvenile when the slayings happened.
Tom Ford: Movies are 'the ultimate design project'

TORONTO (AP)  In between premieres of his latest film, "Nocturnal Animals," in Venice and Toronto, fashion designer and filmmaker Tom Ford has launched a fall collection at New York's fashion week and picked up the prestigious Golden Lion award for his film in Venice.

But for Ford, the two realms are kept fastidiously apart. At the film's Toronto debut, he promised the audience there are no Tom Ford products in "Nocturnal Animals," as if such placements would be an appalling collision of worlds, an unholy tainting of his purer cinematic self.

"Nocturnal Animals" confirms both the directing talent evident from Ford's acclaimed debut, "A Single Man," and his strong desire to make filmmaker perhaps his foremost identity. "I would love to do it every three years for the rest of my life," he says in his deep, distinctively precise voice. "I'm very serious about it."

Director Tom Ford arrives on the red carpet for the film 'Nocturnal Animals' during the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

The film, which will be released Nov. 18, stars Amy Adams as a high-end Manhattan gallerist whose vacuous life is interrupted by a manuscript from her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal). Though the tale  a murder thriller set in the rural West  is fictional, it has profound personal meaning to their long-ago relationship.

In an interview shortly after the film's premiere in Toronto, Ford spoke about the schism between his two personas and why, as he said, "moviemaking is the most fun thing I can think of."

AP: What does filmmaking give you that fashion doesn't?

Ford: You will never feel the impact a dress had when whoever walked into a room for the very first time and they just were so breathtaking beautiful. Whereas film, you can capture that and it lasts forever. You can watch an old movie from the '30s and you're right there with them. You're feeling with them. You're crying with them. They're dead. They're all gone. But you're back in that world. And for someone who likes to create, that's the ultimate design project of all time. For me, if everybody ever needed to know who I am or who I was at a certain moment in my life, you can watch "A Single Man." I'm George. That's it.

AP: Does it disappoint you that it's been seven years since your first film?

Ford: It does. I don't even know how that happened. Life goes by. When I had "A Single Man," I just had a men's business. I then opened a women's business. The women's business is treacherous. I opened 100 stores. I launched quite a few different projects. And when I had my son, I said I want to be a very hands-on father. I said I didn't want to make a movie until he was 3 or 4. The day he turned 3, we started shooting.

AP: While the sleek interiors of Adams' character's stylish New York life is surely familiar to you and doesn't differ greatly from those of "A Single Man," the Texas thriller half of the film is a departure.

Ford: Very few people see me in that life. My family's been in Texas for 200 years. If I put on a cowboy hat, I don't look stupid. Instantly, you see the genetics. I didn't grow up wearing suits. That's a world I'm very comfortable in. And I'm torn and split between the two. I'm one of these people who create all this fake, artificial stuff that we all consume. And like Amy's character, I am attracted and repulsed by it. I've had the good fortune to know that it does not bring you happiness. It's a struggle, really, because I am creating it.

AP: I gather that control is an essential ingredient for you.

Ford: Control's my favorite word. It's not an accident my light (from the window) is tipped this way and the light's coming at me and you're backlit. It's actually second nature. I don't even think about it anymore. Maybe the older I get  I just turned 55  we're not in control of anything. We're just not. That doesn't mean I don't keep trying.

AP: Has it been difficult to obtain that in your two films? To have final cut?

Ford: Lipstick pays for that. I have the ability to finance. My first movie, I couldn't get financing for it. I don't think anyone really believed I could make a movie. My friend David Geffen said: "Pay for it. There's no better investment than yourself. Pay for your movie." I can't work if I don't have control. It's not an egotistical thing. It's that I've learned over time that I can't give my best or produce the best product. When I hear a lot of voices, it derails me. It confuses me. I will only ever make a movie if I control the underlying rights.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

US director Tom Ford holds the Silver Lion Grand Jury prize for his movie ' Nocturnal Animals ' during the awards ceremony of the 73rd Venice International Film Festival, in Venice, Italy, Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016. (Claudio Onorati/ANSA via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Jake Gyllenhaal, center, and Michael Shannon, right, in a scene from "Nocturnal Animals," a film written and directed by Tom Ford. (Merrick Morton/Focus Features via AP)
Political risk for all in Trump-Clinton 'deplorables' debate

WASHINGTON (AP)  A war of words over Donald Trump's "deplorables" is intensifying as Republicans and Democrats fight for political points over Hillary Clinton's claim that many of the New York billionaire's supporters are racist, sexist and homophobic.

Trump and his allies across the country insisted Tuesday that the Democratic presidential nominee's comments reflect an out-of-touch elitist who looks down on working-class voters, akin to 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney's assertion that 47 percent of Americans would never vote for him because they were dependent on the government. Democrats  and even some Republicans  warned, however, that this debate could backfire on Trump, drawing new attention to white supremacists and hate groups attracted by his "America first" message.

Indeed, former KKK leader David Duke offered fresh praise for the way that Trump and running mate Mike Pence are handling the controversy. But not all Republicans were pleased.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, in Clive, Iowa. A war of words over Donald Trumps deplorables is intensifying as Republicans and Democrats fight to score political points over Hillary Clintons charge that millions of the New York billionaires supporters are racist, sexist and homophobic. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

"Let's remember that, weird as it may seem, a lot of voters are only just now tuning in, so they may not be aware of the fact that David Duke, various KKK organizations, the alt-right en masse, Vladimir Putin and other foreign authoritarian enemies of America  people who really are deplorable  are supporting Trump," said Liz Mair, a Washington-based Republican operative and a vocal Trump critic.

Speaking to donors in New York City on Friday, Clinton said half of Trump's supporters were in "a basket of deplorables," a crowd she described as racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. Clinton later said she regretted applying that description to "half" of Trump's backers, but stuck by her assertion that the GOP nominee has given a platform to "hateful views and voices."

Trump and his team seized on the comments as his supporters across the country embraced a new rallying cry.

"While my opponent slanders you as deplorable and irredeemable, I call you hardworking American patriots," Trump declared at a Clive, Iowa, rally.

In the crowd, one Trump supporter held a sign that read: "I'm not 'deplorable.' I'm just a hard-working, tax-paying American and proud of it!" Another wore a homemade shirt that read, "I'm with deplorable."

"It sums up what she thinks of American voters: that we're dumb and stupid and can't make decisions for ourselves," said Charles House, 78, of Ankeny, Iowa. "She looks down on us."

The night before at a rally in North Carolina, one Trump supporter's violent outburst complicated his message.

As security escorted out several protesters, a man grabbed one protester around the neck, punched another in the face and slapped at another woman. The incident was captured by assembled television networks.

Indiana Gov. Pence, Trump's vice presidential running mate, refused anew Tuesday to say whether white supremacist Duke was "deplorable." Pence has disavowed Duke, but said he was "not in the name-calling business."

Duke, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat from Louisiana, was pleased with that. "The whole idea that they were trying to make Pence call me names, basically, and he didn't bite on that was a real positive thing for all of us," Duke said on his daily podcast.

Michael Lawrence, Duke's campaign strategist, said Tuesday, "Donald Trump is championing issues that David Duke brought forward decades ago, and we continue to support the Trump campaign."

Democrats have welcomed a debate that shines new light on some of the elements cheering Trump's candidacy.

In November, Clinton will need a strong turnout among President Barack Obama's coalition of minorities, women and millennials. Her campaign argues that Trump will struggle to connect with such voters if he's viewed as fostering white supremacists.

"Bigotry is deplorable and I think she should stand by her guns," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a Clinton ally.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who chaired Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, said the Democratic nominee's comments pale in comparison to Trump's.

"His attacks on women and Muslims and immigrants, I mean literally you'd run out of ink writing them all," McAuliffe said.

A pro-Clinton group, Priorities USA, began airing a new ad this week highlighting some of Trump's more provocative comments, including his aggressive references to protesters, such as, "I'd like to punch him in the face."

The GOP nominee and his campaign said Clinton's comment plays into the idea that she is a sheltered elitist, who sees herself as better than regular people and above the law.

Rob Gleason, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, said it made sense for Trump's campaign to take advantage of the issue, quickly cutting an ad and using it as a rallying cry.

"When somebody gifts you an issue, then you go ahead and run with it," he said. Still, he questioned whether it would have much impact. "I'm not so sure even if anyone understands that," he said.

Republican operative Ryan Williams, a former Romney aide, warned that the Trump approach carries risk.

"Trump would be wise to take advantage of it," Williams said of Clinton's comment, "but he cannot miss an opportunity to criticize people like David Duke who support his candidacy."

"They are deplorable," he added, "but the vast majority of Trump's supporters are not."

___

AP writers Jon Lemire in Clive, Iowa, and Ken Thomas and Julie Bykowicz in Washington contributed to this report.

FILE - In this Sept. 8, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign rally in Charlotte, N.C. A war of words over Donald Trumps deplorables is intensifying as Republicans and Democrats fight to score political points over Hillary Clintons charge that millions of the New York billionaires supporters are racist, sexist and homophobic. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

FILE - In this July 22, 2016 file photo, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke talks to the media at the Louisiana Secretary of State's office in Baton Rouge, La. A war of words over Donald Trumps deplorables is intensifying as Republicans and Democrats fight to score political points over Hillary Clintons charge that millions of the New York billionaires supporters are racist, sexist and homophobic. (AP Photo/Max Becherer, File)
Man pleads guilty in highway shootings near Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  Prosecutors say a man who pleaded guilty to a series of shootings on Kansas City-area highways in 2014 will be sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said in a news release that 30-year-old Mohammed Whitaker pleaded guilty Tuesday to 20 felony charges arising from the shootings.

The random shootings in March and April of 2014 frightened drivers and injured at least two motorists. Shootings were reported in Kansas City; the Missouri suburbs of Lee's Summit and Blue Springs; and the Kansas suburb of Leawood.

FILE - In this April 18, 2014, file photo, Mohammed Whitaker, left, is transported to Jackson County Jail in Kansas City, Mo. Whitaker pleaded guilty Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, to felony charges arising from a series of shootings on Kansas City-area highways in 2014. (Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star via AP, File)

After tips directed officers to Whitaker, they followed him for days before arresting him in April 2014 at his apartment in the Missouri suburb of Grandview.

___
The Latest: Rewards offered in Florida mosque fire

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP)  The Latest on the arson fire at a mosque attended by Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen (all times local):

4:30 p.m.

Rewards totaling $10,000 have been issued for information leading to the arrest of the arsonist who set fire to the Florida mosque that was occasionally attended by Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen.

In this photo provided by the St. Lucie Sheriff's Office, firefighters work at the scene of a fire at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce on Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, in Fort Pierce, Fla. (St. Lucie Sheriff's Office via AP)

St. Lucie County sheriff's spokesman Maj. David Thompson said Tuesday that an arson investigation group has pledged $5,000. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has also pledged $5,000.

The fire at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce was set late Sunday night by a man on a motorcycle.

The fire was started on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha.

___

3 a.m.

The Islamic community says it will repair and reopen the arson-damaged Florida mosque that was occasionally attended by Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen.

Assistant Imam Hamaad Rahman of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce said the mosque's approximately 100 members are "saddened and scared" by the fire. It started late Sunday and burned for over five hours before it was extinguished early Monday. The fire was started on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha.

Rahman said the community is bigger and stronger than a building and the attack will bring it together. He said the mosque has received more threats since June's nightclub shooting than it did in its previous 20 years of existence.

Investigators speak outside the Fort Pierce Islamic Center Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, after a fire burned the center earlier that morning. Investigators believe an arsonist started the fire after reviewing surveillance video from the center and seeing a man approach the center, then take off just as the fire starts, at the Fort Pierce Islamic Center in Fort Pierce, Fla., after an apparent arsonist started a fire at the back of the center earlier that morning. (Adam Sacasa/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)
Obama: Clinton 'steady,' Trump 'not fit in any way' to lead

PHILADELPHIA (AP)  Accusing Republicans of fanning hate, President Barack Obama on Tuesday stepped in to defend a bruised and temporarily benched Hillary Clinton, hoping to reassure Democrats nervous both about their presidential candidate's health and her handling of fresh trouble on her campaign.

Speaking at an outdoor rally in a Democratic stronghold, Obama praised Clinton as the most qualified candidate ever to seek the office and mocked her opponent Donald Trump as "not fit in any way" to lead. He suggested Clinton was again the victim of unfair treatment and a scandal machine that has dogged her throughout her long political career.

"What sets Hillary apart is that through it all she just keeps on going and she doesn't stop caring and she doesn't stop trying and she never stops fighting for us even if we haven't always appreciated it," Obama said. "I understand, we're a young country, we are a restless country. We always like the new shiny thing. I benefited from that when I was a candidate, and we take for granted sometimes what is steady and true. And Hillary Clinton is steady and she is true."

President Barack Obama speaks at campaign event for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, at Eakins Oval in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The remarks were the closest Obama came to mentioning Clinton's rough weekend, during which she disparaged "half" of Trump supporters and then backtracked somewhat on her remarks. She also was forced to abruptly leave an event because of an illness she had not disclosed. Clinton was caught on video struggling to stay on her feet. Her campaign later said she been diagnosed with pneumonia. Clinton canceled campaign events this week to recover, but is due back on the trail Thursday.

Her campaign said she spent Tuesday reading briefing material, making calls and watching Obama's speech on television.

The incident and the campaign's attempt to keep the diagnosis secret revived long-held concerns about Clinton's tendency to hunker down during a crisis, making matters worse.

To an audience of roughly 6,000 supporters in downtown Philadelphia, Obama argued that Clinton has been more transparent in providing health and financial records than her rival, as well as releasing her past tax returns while Trump refuses to release his.

Obama said the Clinton Foundation has "saved countless lives around the world," while Trump used his charity to buy "a six-foot-tall painting of himself," Obama said, referencing a Washington Post investigation of Trump's charity.

"I mean, you know, he had the taste not to go for the 10-foot version," he said.

Obama is seeking to generate momentum  and some passion  for Clinton in a race that has become uncomfortably close for many Democratic supporters. The latest poll by Quinnipiac University found her with a 5 percentage-point edge over Trump in Pennsylvania.

Obama's event at an outdoor plaza in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art was his third for Clinton, including his speech at the Democratic National Convention, also in Philadelphia. The president, who remains broadly popular among the Democratic base, is viewed as a key asset in pushing die-hard Democrats to the polls, especially in battleground state urban centers such as Philadelphia.

Greeted with chants of "thank you!," the president sought to trade on that popularity. He told the crowd that he's enthusiastically behind Clinton  and they should be, too  a sort of acknowledgement of lack of enthusiasm among the ranks about Clinton's bid.

"Look, can I just say I am really into electing Hillary Clinton. Like this not me going through the motions here," he said. "I really, really, really want to elect Hillary Clinton."

Obama also appealed to Trump supporters. He tried to undermine the Republican businessman's claim as a working-class hero. He accused Trump of being unprepared, unserious and "not a facts guy." He seized on Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Obama cast as an authoritarian strongman who controls the media and crushes dissent.

"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan idolizing somebody like that?" Obama said, invoking the Republican icon.

Branding Republicans as promoting "a dark vision," the president said, "They're not offering serious solutions  they're just fanning resentment, and blame, and anger, and hate."

Obama reserved part of his speech to "vent" about the media, arguing news organizations have treated Clinton unfairly and applied what he described as a false equivalence when covering the campaigns' troubles.

"You don't grade the presidency on a curve," he said. "This is serious business."

Trump's campaign met Obama with a statement suggesting he was shirking his duties.

"Shouldn't you be at work?" it read. "President Obama would rather campaign for Hillary Clinton than solve major problems facing the country."

Trump was scheduled to campaign later Tuesday in a Philadelphia suburb. Pennsylvania, which was carried by a Democratic nominee in the past six elections, is viewed as essential for Trump's chances of achieving the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.

Obama built some fundraising into this campaign day. In Philadelphia, he attended a closed fundraiser for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. About 25 attendees, who contributed $33,400 each, were expected to attend. The event hosts gave $100,000.

He then flew to New York City for a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser at the home of hedge-fund founder Jim Chanos.

Obama extended his critique of Trump to his Republican allies in the House. The president said Republicans are so disorganized and fragmented they can't even agree on the "cockamamie legislation" they want to pass.

Obama pointed to a push to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen as an example. The effort is backed by some House conservatives but faces resistance from within the party. Obama on Tuesday called the effort "crazy."

"No wonder people end up being discouraged and dispirited," he said.

__

Associated Press Writer Thomas Beaumont contributed from Philadelphia.

President Barack Obama speaks at campaign event for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, at Eakins Oval, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Syria ceasefire deal rife with legal, liability questions

WASHINGTON (AP)  The deal crafted by the U.S. and Russia to halt the Syrian civil war and focus efforts on rooting out extremists in the country is rife with legal and liability questions that are fueling Pentagon skepticism about military cooperation between the two powers, senior U.S. officials said.

The first hurdle is that Congress has enacted a law prohibiting any military cooperation with Moscow in the wake of Russia's annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine. That means the deal that Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed to last week in Geneva first needs a waiver from a skeptical Defense Secretary Ash Carter to be legal.

Another nagging question revolves around whether America could be held responsible if a Russian airstrike  approved by the U.S. as part of the military cooperation that is at the heart of the deal  kills civilians. Military and defense leaders question whether Russia will be able to force the Syrian government to uphold the ceasefire. And they worry that Moscow's lack of precision targeting could result in civilian casualties, even if Russia is attempting to strike Islamic State militants in Syria.

In this Sept. 9, 2016, photo, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shakes hands at the conclusion of a news conference following their meeting to discuss the crisis in Syria, in Geneva, Switzerland. The deal crafted by the U.S. and Russia to halt the Syrian civil war and focus efforts on rooting out extremists in the country is rife with legal and liability questions that are fueling Pentagon skepticism about military cooperation between the two powers, senior U.S. officials said. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP)

"We conduct military operations with our allies and partners, and Russia is neither," said Evelyn Farkas, former U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. "So, it makes this very fraught with all kinds of risk for us -- military and political."

Neither U.S. nor Russian officials have released the plan, so details are sketchy. But senior U.S. officials said military and intelligence officials and other segments of the administration have serious doubts that Russia will be able to live up to its commitments in the deal, despite Moscow's long-held desire for military cooperation with the U.S.

If it does happen, however, U.S. officials said the cooperation would be a sharply limited and carefully controlled exchange of very basic targeting information that would protect U.S. intelligence gathering and tactics, and involve detailed vetting to ensure that any proposed Russian strikes would hit Islamic State or al-Qaida-linked combatants, not the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Several U.S. officials spoke about the deal on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss it.

The cease-fire took effect at sunset on Monday, with sporadic small violations. It calls for a halt in hostilities between Assad's government forces and rebel groups, and it paves the way for the delivery of humanitarian relief.

It allows Syrian government strikes against al-Qaida-linked militants who fight alongside the rebels. And the U.S.-led coalition can continue attacks on Islamic State militants. The Syrian army has said it would abide by the cease-fire, but will defend against any violations.

If the ceasefire holds for seven days and humanitarian deliveries continue, the U.S. would begin discussions with Russia on the establishment of a joint implementation cell. If the cease-fire is violated, the seven-day time period resets, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

U.S. officials said the cooperation won't begin immediately after the seven days. And, they said it could be shut down quickly if humanitarian aid stops getting through or if the Syrian government violates the ceasefire.

It was the Pentagon's top leaders that insisted on the seven-day waiting period that was made part of the agreement, largely due to the deep skepticism of Russia.

Toner said he had no estimate on how long it would take to set up the coordination center, but said discussions have been going on for several months, so he didn't believe it would "be a matter of weeks."

Officials declined to talk about where the center would be and how it would actually work. And many suggested it was too early to discuss the details of something that may never happen.

But a senior U.S. official said that American intelligence officials have been studying the issue for some time to determine what information could be given to the Russians and how it could be done carefully.

Russia is not part of the U.S.-led coalition targeting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, and the U.S. doesn't have a history of sharing information with Moscow.

U.S. officials expressed concerns that Moscow might continue to target U.S.-allied opposition forces, claiming they are working with the al-Qaida-linked group, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, previously known as the Nusra Front. Rebel forces have intermingled with the Nusra militants, at times making targeting difficult.

They also worry that many of the Russian airstrikes do not involve precision-guided weapons. Moscow has predominantly used so-called dumb bombs in Syria, largely targeting opposition forces and backing Assad's government forces.

Two senior administration officials, however, said the U.S. will bear no responsibility for any strikes made by Russia or deaths that result. And neither country will be able to veto strikes the other wants to conduct. The process involves sharing information not airstrike approvals, they said.

The strikes have triggered frequent complaints of mass civilian casualties. And the U.S. faces the possibility of agreeing on a particular target through the planned coordination center, and then having the Russian strike miss and kill civilians

The U.S. officer in charge of Air Force operations in the Middle East, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, told reporters Tuesday that the intent is to develop a plan that "executes the mission precisely, minimizing risk to the coalition team and civilians on the ground." He added that it would be important to do it in a way that does not undermine "coalition cohesion" and momentum.

The U.S., he said, will not share any classified tactics with Russia.

"Clearly there will be some authorities and legalities that we're going to need to work through to make sure everybody understands what the agreement is," he said when asked whether the U.S. could be considered a co-belligerent in the event that it provides targeting information for a Russian airstrike that results in civilian casualties.

"I'm not going to tell you I trust them," said Harrigian. "We, from our side, have to do some planning and they need to do the right thing. We'll see what happens from there."

___
Virginia family appeals decision on toddler brain death test

RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  The family of a 2-year-old Virginia girl is asking the state's Supreme Court to block a hospital from performing a brain death test on the toddler who choked on a piece of popcorn.

In a petition recently filed with the Virginia Supreme Court, Mirranda Lawson's family ask the justices to overturn a lower court ruling that said the doctors with the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System can perform the apnea test for brain death.

The Richmond Circuit Court ruled against the Lawsons in June but allowed them to pay a $30,000 bond barring the hospital from conducting the test while they appeal to the Supreme Court.
Professors locked out of classrooms over labor dispute

NEW YORK (AP)  Students at the New York City campus of Long Island University say they have begun the school year with classes being taught by replacement teachers of questionable quality after the administration locked out their regular professors as part of a bitter labor dispute.

About 400 full-time and adjunct members of the faculty at the private Brooklyn school were barred from their classrooms and had their email accounts and health insurance cut off just days before classes were scheduled to begin on Sept. 7.

The university, which has about 8,000 students, has remained open, but some students say they have arrived for classes that were taught by replacement teachers who only took attendance or didn't know their subjects.

Students at the Long Island University campus in the Brooklyn borough of New York picket outside the college in support of their instructors, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. About 400 full-time and adjunct members of the faculty at the private Brooklyn school were barred from their classrooms and had their email accounts and health insurance cut off just days before classes were scheduled to begin on Sept. 7. The school held classes with replacement instructors. (AP Photo/Verena Dobnik)

Caroline Ortiz, a sophomore majoring in chemistry, said she commuted one hour from Queens for classes that lasted only 10 minutes, with the instructor leaving after taking attendance.

A biology class last week, she said, "was taught by a pharmacist. I don't think he's in the biology field."

She said the laboratory session scheduled after the class was cancelled because whoever runs science labs is required to have a safety certification.

Some students have been joining locked-out faculty on picket lines. In one demonstration Tuesday, students chanted, "You say lockout, we say walkout!" as they gathered outside the main entrance. Some students were looking to enroll at other colleges, and some professors said they were looking for other jobs.

Long Island University officials said they were acting in the students' best interest.

"Our first priority is and always has been our students." said Gale Haynes, the university's chief operating officer. "We maintain an unwavering commitment to ensure that students continue their studies without interruption and that tuition remains affordable. This has been demonstrated by the University capping annual tuition rate increases at two percent or less from 2014 through 2020, an unprecedented commitment."

The professors, represented by the Long Island University Faculty Federation, have rejected a proposed contract that would cut salaries for new adjunct professors and decrease the number of hours they can teach, university spokeswoman Jennifer Solomon said.

The university is offering existing faculty average raises of about 13 percent over five years.

Another sticking point in negotiations, according to the federation, is that tenured professors at the university's Brooklyn campus are already paid less than its Long Island campus, LIU Post.

Solomon said the differences in salaries between the Brooklyn and Long Island faculty is a result of salary structures requested by the union in previous contracts.

Susan Ziegler, who teaches a visual arts course at the Brooklyn campus, said some of the replacement teachers are administrators from the Long Island campus who have never before taught the courses they were assigned.

Biology professor Carole Griffiths, who has been at the university for 18 years, accused LIU's president, Kimberly Cline, of "trying to break down the unions."

"We wanted to work without a contract while the negotiations were going on, and she said no," she said, adding that the person teaching her class is an administrator with a B.A. in biology, "but that's it."

Nashrin Akter, 19, a nursing major from Bangladesh, said she skipped a Muslim holiday on Monday to attend classes that were not taught by "real teachers."

With tuition at about $35,000 a year, "I'm very disappointed. What I'm seeing is not supposed to happen in America," Akter said.

A group of students protest in support of locked out faculty outside the New York City campus of Long Island University, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. About 400 full-time and adjunct members of the faculty at the private Brooklyn school were barred from their classrooms and had their email accounts and health insurance cut off just days before classes were scheduled to begin on Sept. 7. (AP Photo/Verena Dobnik)

Glen Lawrence, left, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, talks with a student at Long Island University's Brooklyn campus, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 in New York. Hundreds of professors have been locked out of their classrooms because of a labor dispute, forcing students to take classes with replacement teachers rushed into service at the start of the school year. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

A student who preferred not to be identified looks up at a "Welcome" sign hung from the fence at the Long Island University campus in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. Students at the New York City campus say they have begun the school year with classes being taught by replacement teachers of questionable quality after the administration locked out their regular professors as part of a bitter labor dispute. (AP Photo/Verena Dobnik)
The Latest: Dad pained by Missouri son's violent history

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  The Latest on the disappearance of a Missouri woman and the background of a man accused of burning her car that had been found abandoned (all times local):

5 p.m.

The father of a man considered a person of interest in his ex-girlfriend's 2007 disappearance and now charged with burning another missing Missouri woman's car says he's heartbroken by his son's "crappy decisions" and violence toward women.

This Sept. 12, 2016, photo provided by the Benton County Sheriff's Office in Warsaw, Mo., shows Kylr Yust. In court records obtained Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, Yust, who is facing charges in the burning of a vehicle belonging to a 21-year-old Missouri woman who has been missing since last week, was the subject of a protection order nearly a decade ago by his then-girlfriend Kara Kopetsky, who accused him of kidnapping and abuse. Kopetsky disappeared in May 2007 and remains missing. That April 30, 2007, filing alleged Yust kidnapped and restrained the teenager, choked her and threatened to cut her throat during their nine-month relationship. He has not been charged in Kopetsky's disappearance. (Benton County Sheriff's Office via AP)

Ken Yust told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he hasn't had a relationship with 27-year-old Kylr Yust for years, because they often disagreed on matters. He says he "feels for the families" of those hurt by his son.

Kylr Yust was arrested Sunday after Jessica Runions' car was found burned and abandoned in Kansas City. The 21-year-old Runions was last seen Thursday. In Belton, police say Yust is a person of interest in the 2007 disappearance of teenager Kara Kopetsky, who vanished days after seeking a protection order against him.

Yust isn't charged in either disappearance.

Records show that Yust's pregnant then-girlfriend won a protection order against him in 2011 after accusing him of drunkenly choking her. He pleaded guilty and served 120 days in jail.

___

12:30 p.m.

A man considered a person of interest in his ex-girlfriend's 2007 disappearance and now charged with burning another missing Missouri woman's car spent time in jail for assaulting his pregnant then-girlfriend in 2011.

Police and court records show the 18-year-old woman in the 2011 incident won a protection order against Kylr Yust who was accused of drunkenly choking her. He pleaded guilty and served 120 days in jail.

Yust was arrested Sunday after Jessica Runions' car was found burned and abandoned in Kansas City. The 21-year-old Runions was last seen Thursday.

In Belton, police say Yust is a person of interest in the 2007 disappearance of teenager Kara Kopetsky, who vanished days after seeking a protection order against him.

Yust isn't charged in either disappearance. It's unclear whether he has an attorney, and he's jailed in Benton County, 100 miles (160.93 kilometers) southeast of Kansas City.

___

10 a.m.

A man charged with burning a now-missing Missouri woman's car and considered a "person of interest" in his ex-girlfriend's 2007 disappearance was accused of assaulting his pregnant then-girlfriend in 2011.

The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/2ctiMui) says police reports show the 18-year-old woman won a protection order against Kylr Yust after alleging he drunkenly choked her. Yust served 120 days in jail.

Yust was arrested Sunday after 21-year-old Jessica Runions' car was found burned and abandoned in Kansas City. Runions was last seen Thursday, leaving a party.

In nearby Belton, police say Yust is a person of interest in the 2007 disappearance of 17-year-old Kara Kopetsky. She vanished days after filing for a protection order against him.

Yurst hasn't been charged in either disappearance. It's unclear whether he has an attorney.
Family of woman killed by police in Maryland files lawsuit

BALTIMORE (AP)  Attorneys representing the family of a woman fatally shot by police following a standoff she posted on social media filed a wrongful death suit Tuesday.

Baltimore County Police spokeswoman Elise Armacost said the officers shot and killed Korryn Gaines, 23, after she barricaded herself inside her Randallstown apartment with her 5-year-old son and pointed a shotgun at officers attempting to serve an arrest warrant. The warrant was on charges stemming from a March 10 traffic stop that included disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

But lawyers representing Gaines' family tell a different story: They contend that officers fired a shot at Gaines not because they feared for their safety, but because they ran out of patience after a seven-hour standoff. The standoff received widespread attention when Gaines posted video footage on Facebook until police had her account taken down. Police Chief Jim Johnson has said that people who saw the post were encouraging her not to comply with the officers.

A lawsuit filed by attorney J. Wyndal Gordon against the police officer and Baltimore County contends that officers illegally entered Gaines' apartment after persuading the manager of her apartment complex to give them a key despite the fact that nobody answered the door when officers knocked.

The suit also says that Gaines' neighbor, Ramone Coleman, heard Gaines ask to inspect the warrant, but the officers refused. Coleman also said special forces officers "seized" his apartment to use it as an outpost and drilled holes in the living room, bedroom and bathroom walls in order to monitor Gaines' movements with surveillance equipment.

The police department has identified the officer who shot Gaines as Officer First Class Ruby, using only his last name and rank, per departmental policy. Armacost declined to comment on the lawsuit Tuesday.

Ruby was one of two officers who shot and killed 24-year-old Adam Benjamin Rothstein in 2007 after he pointed what turned out to be a pellet gun at the officers. Armacost said officers received a call on Aug. 19 of that year for a suicidal man who had told the 911 dispatcher that he had guns, knives, pepper spray and a Taser. When police confronted Rothstein, he said he would start shooting if he didn't get what he wanted by 3:30 a.m. At the designated time, Rothstein raised a gun and pointed it at the officers, who both fired. Rothstein's weapon turned out to be a BB gun.

According to the suit, Coleman said he heard Gaines offer to surrender shortly after her boyfriend, Kareem Courtney, and their young child left the apartment, and Courtney was arrested.

"Korryn Gaines said to the police, 'if you put your guns down and back up from my apartment, I will come out,'" the suit reads. "However, none of the police backed up from the apartment door." The suit also alleges that the police "did not fear Gaines as they had indulged her for several hours even up to the point where they alleged that she handled her weapon," the suit reads. "Police grew frustrated with Gaines because she would not submit to their authority."

Coleman told the attorneys that he heard a male police officer utter, "I'm sick of this s(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)" before multiple shots were fired.

Gordon, one of the attorneys representing Gaines' estate, said Tuesday at a news conference that Gaines was "assassinated."

"What we've discovered thus far is truly remarkable," he said. "This tragic death of Korryn Gaines certainly did not have to be."

___
KC mayor slams Missouri legislators for gun override attempt

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP)  Kansas City's mayor accused Missouri legislators Tuesday of trying to "double down on stupid" in their push to override Gov. Jay Nixon's veto of a measure that would broadly expand the rights of gun owners.

Sly James made the comments during a phone call with reporters as the Republican-led Legislature prepared to convene a short session Wednesday to consider overriding numerous vetoes by the Democratic governor. With the guns bill and a measure imposing a photo identification requirement for voters among those on the docket, Nixon's status as the most-overridden governor in state history is almost certain to expand after the veto session.

If the guns bill garners the necessary two-thirds vote to withstand the veto, people would be allowed to carry a concealed weapon most places in the state even without a background check or gun safety training. Missouri would join 10 other states with laws that allow concealed weapons to be carried without a permit, according to the National Rifle Association.

FILE - In this May 13, 2016, file photo, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon speaks during a news conference at the conclusion of the legislative session at the Capitol in Jefferson City, Mo. Missouri lawmakers are set to expand Nixon's already historic status as the state's most overridden governor, a record the Democrat earned after years of clashing with a Legislature under virtually unchecked Republican control. Since Nixon took office in 2009, lawmakers have overridden 83 of his vetoes of bills and budget expenditures _ nearly four times the combined total of all other governors' overrides dating back to Missouri's territorial days in the early 1800s. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

Law enforcement groups, including the Missouri Police Chiefs Association and Missouri Fraternal Order of Police, have criticized the measure over safety concerns.

"Rather than looking for solutions to our gun violence problems, our Legislature is poised to double down on stupid and override governor Nixon's veto," James, a Democrat, said in the conference call, which also included local law enforcement officials.

Claims by James, Nixon and other opponents that the legislation would make Missouri less safe are "simply not true," NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said Tuesday.

"Criminals don't abide by gun control laws, so denying law-abiding Missourians their constitutional right to self-protection doesn't keep criminals from committing crimes," she told The Associated Press.

Besides eliminating the permit requirement for concealed weapons, the proposal includes several self-defense provisions  including one that would expand the so-called "castle doctrine" that allows homeowners or renters to use deadly force against intruders. Under the new bill, invited guests such as baby sitters also would be able to use such force if confronted while inside the home they're visiting.

The NRA is running a statewide digital ad encouraging viewers to call their area lawmakers and urge them to override Nixon, who is described as "blocking legislation guaranteeing your right to defend yourself."

Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund launched digital ads in opposition to the bill and has run ads in newspapers and mailers to voters in some Republican senators' districts.

Also closely watched is a vetoed bill that would require voters to show photo identification at the polls, with a few exceptions. The requirements wouldn't take effect unless voters approve a proposed constitutional amendment, which is needed because the Missouri Supreme Court previously struck down similar requirements as unconstitutional.

In a letter explaining his veto, Nixon said the measure would "disproportionately" impact senior citizens, people with disabilities and others who have been lawfully voting but don't have the government-issued photo ID required under the bill.

Whether Nixon's concerns swayed any of the 136 lawmakers who voted in favor of the measure is unclear. There were 46 senators and representatives who voted against it.
Appeals court won't toss charges against NJ Sen. Menendez

PHILADELPHIA (AP)  A federal appeals court refused Tuesday to dismiss corruption charges against U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

An attorney for the indicted Democrat had asked the full 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to review a three-judge panel's ruling allowing the case against him to move forward. But that request was denied the same day that prosecutors filed a motion asking a judge to hold a hearing to set a trial date.

Abbe Lowell had argued the charges should be tossed because of a constitutional clause that protects the actions of sitting lawmakers. But the three-judge panel found the dispute is something that needs to be decided at trial.

FILE - In this Friday, July 1, 2016 file photo, U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez speaks during a news conference talking about Superstorm Sandy relief fund in Hoboken, N.J. A federal appeals court refused Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 to dismiss corruption charges against U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

Lowell has said he'll appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

Lowell had argued before the panel in February that the senator's meetings with government officials were held to discuss policy matters, not to benefit a wealthy friend. Prosecutors allege the friend, Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, plied Menendez with gifts and campaign donations in exchange for political influence.
Cost of Syrian refugee resettlement programme could reach 1.7bn

The total cost of the Government's expanded resettlement programme for Syrian refugees could top 1.7 billion, spending watchdogs estimate.

Ministers committed to take in 20,000 people driven from the war-torn country by 2020 following a public outcry over the fate of those attempting the perilous journey across the Mediterranean.

As well as providing the first estimate of the potential bill for the scheme, the National Audit Office(NAO) warned that a shortage of housing and school places could pose a threat to the chances of meeting the pledge.

The UK Government has committed to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020

Costs associated with the initiative fall to different central government departments and councils taking part, and no official total has been given so far.

The sum is uncertain as it depends in large part on the characteristics of those entering the country, the extent to which refugees need medical treatment or welfare services and the extent to which they can gain employment and become self-sufficient, according to the NAO.

Based on department assumptions, it estimated that the cost to the end of 2019/20 could be up to 1.1 billion, and up to 1.73 billion over the lifetime of the project.

The estimated total sum , which includes potential costs for healthcare, education and welfare, equates to 17,340 per refugee per year on average for their first five years in the UK.

Nearly 5,000 houses or flats, and more than 10,000 childcare and school places will be needed for the initiative, according to the NAO.

Its report said: "The future of the programme could be put at risk by local authorities' lack of suitable accommodation and school places."

As of June 2,659 refugees had been resettled in the UK through the programme - 13% of the target, with those arriving dispersed across 118 local authority areas.

Enough "indicative" pledges have been secured from local authorities to meet the aim.

" It is essential that these pledges materialise into firm offers of support as more refugees will need to be resettled each quarter during the remainder of the programme than have been so far", the NAO said.

The report said the scheme expanded the original programme successfully to resettle 1,000 refugees by Christmas.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: " The programme team achieved a great deal in a short amount of time, resettling much larger numbers of refugees than previous programmes, due in large part to the dedication and goodwill of those involved.

"The characteristics of the refugees arriving in the UK will become clearer over time. With this new information, the programme team must adapt budgets so that no organisation taking part in the programme struggles to participate effectively due to cost pressures."

David Simmonds, of the Local Government Association, said: "We have previously said that we were confident in ensuring that there would be sufficient pledges to support the Government's aim to resettle 20,000 people by 2020 and the Home Office has now confirmed this to be true. The focus must now be on ensuring families are well supported."

A Government spokesman said it is on track to meet the 20,000 commitment.

He added: " We have secured all the local authority pledges required to meet this commitment and the hard work across Government involving the devolved administrations and local authorities will continue until we have turned all of these pledges into places and resettled 20,000 people.

"This is a humanitarian programme and the level of funding enables local authorities to provide vulnerable refugees with a safe environment and the chance to rebuild their lives.
Theresa May to hold talks with Burma's Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi

Prime Minister Theresa May will today meet Burma's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi to discuss how the country's new civilian government can support reconciliation and respect for human rights.

Mrs May will host the Nobel Peace Prize laureate at Downing Street the day after she met Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in London's Lancaster House.

The Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said: "It will be an opportunity to talk about bilateral relations between the two countries, the process that's under way in Burma and what we can do to support reconciliation and democracy and respect for human rights there."

Prime Minister Theresa May speaks with Burma's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi

Ms Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party swept to victory in 2015 elections, endured years of house arrest and harassment by military rulers while continuing her non-violent campaign to unseat them and usher in the first civilian government in more than five decades.

She holds the country's specially created post of state counsellor - her two sons' British citizenship prohibiting her from becoming president because of the country's military-era constitution.

Mrs May could raise the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Burma, who have suffered institutional discrimination by the authorities and in wider society.

The issue was raised by Mr Johnson, who welcomed the establishment of the Rakhine Commission, led by Kofi Annan, to tackle the situation facing the Rohingya community.

Following his meeting with Ms Suu Kyi, the Foreign Secretary also praised Burma's government for making progress in freeing political prisoners.

"It's a great pleasure to meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and congratulate her in person on her victory in the November 2015 elections and forming Burma's first civilian government for over 50 years," Mr Johnson said.

"The Burmese transition to democracy is an historic achievement.

"The courage and sacrifice of the Burmese people, not least of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself, has led to a major shift from military dictatorship to a more civilian, democratic and accountable government.

"The UK is pleased to have played an important role in bringing about Burma's emergence from decades of repression and isolation.
BP workers 'were scared to help the makers of oil spill disaster movie'

Workers for oil giant BP were "scared" to co-operate with the makers of the new Deepwater Horizon disaster movie, the film's director has claimed.

Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell and Kate Hudson star in the film about the 2010 oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico which cost 11 lives and led to the biggest oil spill in US history.

Director Peter Berg said he was committed to filming in south Louisiana, the area of the disaster, but faced a "fairly substantial amount of resistance".

Director Peter Berg said his new film presented BP as a company clearly motivated by profit

He told the Press Association: "BP is such a huge company and the oil industry in general, but BP in particular, has a lot of power in that part of the country.

"We were met by a fairly substantial amount of resistance from people who are all employed by BP who were scared to give us too much co-operation.

"We weren't allowed to film on any rigs. We were denied many of the ships and the helicopters and the personnel we wanted. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that this was a film that BP probably wasn't thrilled was getting made."

The total cost of the disaster to BP stands at around 61.6 billion US dollars (46.9 billion).

Berg said he did not expect the film to have "any big influence on BP's bottom line".

"If BP really looked at what we're doing, I think we're actually good for BP," he said.

"At the end of the day we present BP as a company clearly motivated by profit, which I don't think is unreasonable.

"The reality is that rig was way behind schedule and way over budget. Nobody believes they wanted that rig to blow up, or BP wanted these men to die. They certainly didn't. But they were responsible for having a system of business that was not safe when the pressure started to increase.

"They paid deeply for that. It was tragedy. The oil spill is a tragedy, the loss of human life is a tragedy. I don't think BP was a moustache-curling evil villain."

Wahlberg, who plays Mike Williams, a foreman on the oil rig, said he did not want to "point the finger" of blame for the disaster.

"It's a very difficult and dangerous job for everyone across the board," he told the Press Association.

"I wasn't in the situation with the amount of pressure so I don't really want to point the finger.

He added: "If people continue to figure out smarter and safer ways to tap into these resources, then we'd be better off.

"If they figure the amount they spent on the clean-up and settling lawsuits, I think they could have saved a lot of money by focusing a little more on safety."
MoD: Troops to undergo risk assessment before being given anti-malarial drugs

The Ministry of Defence is revising the way it issues a controversial anti-malarial drug to troops on overseas operations amid fears it is ruining lives.

MPs earlier this year said there was ''strong anecdotal evidence'' that stringent conditions laid down by the manufacturers for issuing Lariam had been ignored by the armed forces.

It has been associated in a minority of users with depression, hallucinations and panic attacks.

The MoD has said it revising its malaria prevention policy

In response to a critical report by the Defence select committee, the MoD has said it is revising malaria prevention policy to direct that all anti-malarial drugs are only supplied after a face-to-face travel health risk assessment is carried out.

Conservative Johnny Mercer, a member of the committee, said the MoD had failed to take the issue "seriously for quite some time".

He told BBC Radio Four's Today programme: "The evidence is very clear. Prescribing a drug outside the parameters clearly laid down by the manufactures is not acceptable."

The former army officer said the drug had been handed out without checking it was suitable.

"It was handed out without doing those risk assessments. Consequently there are a number of people in this country who feel that their lives have been ruined by taking this drug when they shouldn't have been."

While Lariam is not the main anti-malarial drug used by the armed forces, at least 17,368 personnel were prescribed it at least once between the start of April 2007 and the end of March 2015, according to official MoD figures.

The committee said it had received strong anecdotal evidence that a body of current and former service personnel had been adversely affected by its use and that the arrangements for supporting them were ''inadequate''.

While the manufacturer, Roche, had issued ''clear guidance'' that individual risk assessments should be conducted before prescribing the drug, the committee said the MoD appeared to have interpreted this to include ''desk-based'' assessments using medical records rather than face-to-face interviews.

The Defence select committee said the policy review was a "step in the right direction" but said it was "very disappointed" that its calls for Lariam to be designated a ''drug of last resort'' had not been acted on.

It said: "The committee welcomes the undertaking that, for military personnel, all anti-malarial drugs will be prescribed after face-to-face health risk assessments, and that checks will be introduced to ensure that when Lariam is to be prescribed, the patient must be offered an alternative.

"We also welcome the announcement that the MoD has established a single point of contact for present and former personnel who have concerns about their use of Lariam, as the committee requested.

"However, the committee is very disappointed that the MoD has yet to designate Lariam as a 'drug of last resort' as the report recommended.

"This would send out a clear message that the MoD has acknowledged and accepted the high risks associated with the use of Lariam and we urge the MoD to do this without further delay."

Hilary Meredith Solicitors has so far been contacted by over 1,000 former service personnel who were prescribed the drug and suffered side effects including hallucinations, severe depression, seizures, sleep disturbances and anxiety.

Partner Philippa Tuckman said she was "disappointed", saying "as well as apparently refusing to commit to using Lariam only as a drug of last resort, the MoD's response neither acknowledges the lamentable failings of the past nor reassures about the future."

She said: "I am not at all confident that the MoD is going to work with the servicemen and women who have been injured to ensure they receive the help and support they need."

In light of the committee's "very strong criticisms of the unsafe ways in which Lariam has been administered in the past," she said: "We give a qualified welcome to the MoD's commitment that no anti-malarial drugs will be given without an individual face-to-face risk assessment in the future.

"However, we have to be assured that these assessments really will protect individual service men and women from suffering in the future the damage that has already been caused to many of their colleagues."

The specialist armed forces and group actions team at Irwin Mitchell shares similar concerns and has received more than 230 inquires from service personnel affected by mental health issues such as depression, hallucinations and anxiety after taking Lariam.

Kevin Timms, a lawyer leading the cases, said: "We welcome that fact that the MoD is revising its anti-malaria policy and changing the checks it carries out before prescribing Lariam, but the fact is that this is too little, too late for the people who have already suffered adverse side-effects due to Lariam.

"This official response offers no apology or acknowledgement of the MoD's prior failings in prescribing Lariam and we are concerned about whether or not the MoD is taking into account the differences between civilian and military situations.

"In our view they continue to place too strong a reliance on guidance designed for civilians taking Lariam rather than military personnel. Being in the armed forces is unique and soldiers are put into situations that can cause extreme emotions and stress."

But Mr Timms said he is hopeful that the review will allow the MoD to make positive changes to its policy, adding: " For many, the mental health issues suffered have had a significant effect on their lives, so prompt action is required."

While also welcoming the special helpline set up for concerned military personnel to contact the MoD directly, lawyers say it is crucial that the MoD ensures the advice it provides is adequate.
Mel and Sue 'not going with the dough' when Bake Off moves to Channel 4

Presenting duo Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc have said they will not return to host The Great British Bake Off when it moves to Channel 4, adding that they are "not going with the dough".

The pair have fronted the show since it first aired on BBC Two in 2010, alongside judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood.

Perkins and Giedroyc said in a joint statement that they were "shocked and saddened" to learn of the Bake Off's move from the BBC.

Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins will not be staying on The Great British Bake Off

They continued: " We made no secret of our desire for the show to remain where it was.

"The BBC nurtured the show from its infancy and helped give it its distinctive warmth and charm, growing it from an audience of two million to nearly 15 at its peak."

They ended their statement with the wit that has made them a hit on the show, saying: "We've had the most amazing time on Bake Off, and have loved seeing it rise and rise like a pair of yeasted Latvian baps.

"We're not going with the dough. We wish all the future bakers every success."

The presenters have been a formidable team, with their "good cop, bad cop" approach and their many double entendres.

Their innuendo-laced references to things such as soggy bottoms and hot baps, as well as comments such as "You have got two hours to pop Mary's cherry ... ", have been a hit with viewers.

Off screen they have been friends for many years after meeting when they were students at Cambridge University.

On Monday the BBC said it would love to have kept Bake Off, but it had not been able to afford it.

According to BBC News, the corporation is believed to have offered Love Productions, the producers of the popular baking programme, 15 million per year to keep the show.

This amount fell 10 million short of what the corporation would need to retain the show on BBC One, it was reported.

Channel 4 has signed a three-year agreement with Love Productions.

The BBC said it had " made a very strong offer to keep the show but we are a considerable distance apart on the money".

Its statement continued: "The BBC's resources are not infinite. GBBO is a quintessentially BBC programme."

Perkins and Giedroyc presented Channel 4's comedy talk show, Light Lunch, together from 1997-1998.

They went on to host ITV's panel game show, Casting Couch, and also appeared on Channel 4's breakfast TV show RI:SE, which was a replacement for The Big Breakfast.

At the beginning of 2015 they made their return to ITV with a daytime chat show titled Mel A nd Sue.

The channel move will see Bake Off remain on free-to-air television.

The first Bake Off programme set to be broadcast on Channel 4 will be a celebrity version of the show in 2017, in aid of Stand Up To Cancer.

Channel 4 said it was "very proud" to be the new home for the series.

It is not yet known if Berry and Hollywood will stay as judges on the show when it moves to Channel 4.

A spokesman from Love Productions said: "We would like to thank Mel and Sue for bringing their own unique humour to the tent over the past years and we respect their decision not to be part of the Bake Off team on Channel 4."

Former chief executive of Channel 4 Lord Grade has condemned the move of Bake Off from the BBC, saying: "Channel 4 has shot itself very seriously in the foot."

He told BBC Radio 4's World At One: "It's been arguing very strongly for the last year or so against privatisation, putting up an argument that says its remit (is) to cater for tastes and interests not catered for on other channels and being different and innovating.

"(It) has just splashed out, if reports are to be believed, 25 million on a show that really belongs to the BBC.

"I think they have completely undermined their case against privatisation, that's the first thing to say.

"The second thing to say is I think the BBC were quite right not to overpay for this product, it leaves a gap in the schedule and they will invent another one."
Aung San Suu Kyi and May discuss trade and 'touch on' Burma's minorities

Burma's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Theresa May agreed that Britain must remain an outward-facing country in the aftermath of Brexit during a Downing Street meeting.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate had earlier remarked that the Prime Minister must be "extremely busy" in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union, to which Mrs May said there was "certainly a lot to do".

The pair then held a "very friendly" meeting at No 10 in which Brexit was "briefly discussed" alongside Burma's importance to the UK as a trading nation , Downing Street said.

Prime Minister Theresa May welcomes Burma's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi to Downing Street

A spokesman added: "Obviously both countries agree on the importance of the UK remaining an outward-facing, engaged country.

"With Burma having one of the fastest growing economies, its importance to us as a trading nation is clear."

The human rights abuses perpetrated by the Burmese military, such as the oppression of the country's Rohingya Muslims, were also "touched on" during the bilateral talks, the spokesman said.

Ms Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party swept to victory in 2015 elections, endured years of house arrest and harassment by military rulers while continuing her non-violent campaign to unseat them and usher in the first civilian government in more than five decades.

She holds the country's specially-created post of state counsellor - her two sons' British citizenship prohibiting her from becoming president because of the country's military-era constitution.

The Downing Street spokesman said: "It was a very friendly meeting.

"It was her (Ms Suu Kyi's) first visit outside of Asia since the election victory last November.

"The PM congratulated her on the progress that has been made so far on the political transition after the military dictatorship and in return the Prime Minister was thanked for the support and friendship that Britain has shown, continues to show to Burma."
Public services 'could see budgets cut by up to a fifth'

Some public services in Scotland could face budget cuts of almost a fifth over the next four years, according to independent forecasters.

The University of Strathclyde's Fraser of Allander Institute said the Scottish Government could see its overall resource budget fall by as much as 1.6 billion by 2020/21 under the "worst case scenario".

Even under more optimistic scenarios, the Scottish budget is still projected to fall in real terms.

The First Minister made health and childcare commitments.

With major commitments on health and childcare, other areas such as local government could bear the brunt of the shortfall, its report found.

Unprotected budgets could face an average cut of up to 17% over the next four years, with funding for councils slashed by as much as 1 billion by 2020/21, according to the institute.

The report sets out a range of scenarios for Scotland's budget over the next four years, and the options available to the Finance Secretary Derek Mackay ahead of his first budget.

It found that even before the uncertainty caused by Brexit, the Scottish Government's budget was forecast to fall by just over 3% in real terms by 2020/21 as result of the UK Government's ongoing fiscal consolidation.

The Scottish budget has faced "unprecedented cuts" since 2010, the report states, including a 5% cut to the resource budget since 2010/11.

Under a "worst case scenario" for the block grant and revenues from Scotland's new tax powers, the Scottish Government may have to prepare for cuts of up to 6% - or up to 1.6 billion - over the course of the parliamentary term.

Such a cut over the next four years would represent more than the Scottish Government's entire Finance and Economy, Fair Work, Skills and Training, Culture and External Affairs and Rural Affairs, Food and Environment portfolios combined, the report found.

Mr Mackay said the findings backed up Scottish Government calls for an end to UK Government austerity.

The Scottish Conservatives said that with new revenue-raising powers being delivered to Holyrood, "the buck stops" with the SNP administration.

Professor Graeme Roy, director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, said "a tough re-prioritisation" in other areas would be required if the Government is to deliver its pledges on health, childcare and policing.

"As an area of unprotected spend, the grant to local government could be cut by around 1 billion on a like-for-like basis by 2020/21," he said.

He added: "Brexit uncertainty, a weakening UK fiscal position, ongoing UK welfare reform, and a fragile Scottish economy, means that the devolution of powers over tax and social security could not have come at a more challenging time."

Mr Mackay said: "The UK Government's austerity means we are already facing a 10% real terms cut to our budget over the 10 years to 2020 - now the chaos caused by Brexit threatens to make those cuts even harder.

"This report adds to pressure on the UK Government to maintain membership of the single market to support our businesses and to minimise the damage Brexit will do to the economy."

He added: "The Chancellor must stimulate the economy not compound austerity and end the indecision by backing the single market."

Tory finance spokesman Murdo Fraser said: "This report is clear - the buck now stops at Bute House.

"We've had nearly a decade of the SNP promising the world, while blaming Westminster wherever possible.

"New tax powers mean that's no longer an option for the Nationalists.

"If the Scottish Government has sensible policies, Scotland's budget will benefit."

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats said their plans to raise income tax rates would address the funding gap.

Scottish Labour deputy leader Alex Rowley said: "It is simply not good enough for the Nationalists to blame Westminster for this.

"Sweeping new powers are being devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

"Faced with the choice between hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts to schools and vital services or using the power of the Scottish Parliament to invest in the future, Labour would use the powers and invest in our country's future."

Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said: "The Scottish Liberal Democrats want a penny on income tax for a transformative investment in education.
'Sup with Chinese with a long spoon' warns senior Tory over Hinkley project

A senior MP has urged caution over plans to build a new power station with the Chinese government, suggesting "these are people with whom we should sup with a long spoon".

The attack by former defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth came amid fresh scrutiny of the Hinkley Point nuclear project in the Commons.

Labour accused the Government of "dithering" over the 18 billion plan, having delayed a final decision until the end of this month.

Plans for the new Hinkley Point C nuclear power station have been the subject of debate in the Commons (EDF/PA)

But the Prime Minister's stance was backed by Sir Gerald and fellow senior Tory Sir Edward Leigh.

Sir Gerald (Aldershot) told the Commons: "May I say how strongly I support the Prime Minister's decision on this, given that China persists in trying to hack not only stage agencies, but our commercial companies.

"It has put two fingers up to the Arbitration Court in the Hague, which has ruled that their development for military purposes of uninhabited atolls in the South China Sea is unlawful.

"These are people with whom we should sup with a long spoon."

Sir Edward (Gainsborough) added: "The Government is very wise to take a deep breath before committing itself to the massive cost of Hinkley.

"Evidence is mounting all the time in terms of new technology, in particular fusion rather than fission, mini reactors, battery storage.

"I do commend the Government for considering this decision very slowly indeed."

China is due to hold a one-third stake in Hinkley.

But Theresa May announced she was delaying making a final decision on the project soon after becoming Prime Minister, with speculation it was over security concerns.

Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary Greg Clark reaffirmed that the Government would make a decision on Hinkley by the end of the month.

He also said the Government would make clear its reasons for any decision.

But shadow minister Barry Gardiner attacked the delays.

He said: "After putting 25,000 highly skilled jobs at risk, after jeopardising 500 much-needed STEM apprenticeships, after offending the Chinese government and risking 18 billion of investment in the nuclear industry, which is a vital part of our energy, after sending shockwaves through the investment community, who now think the Prime Minister doesn't understand the meaning of final investment decision, does the secretary of state agree with those in the industry who say that the Prime Minister's cautious approach now looks more like dithering?"

However, Mr Clark called Labour's stance "completely inconsistent" and accused them of a "complete absence of an energy strategy" during their 13 years in government.

He added: "We knew that nuclear power stations were going to come to the end of their life, they weren't replaced.
United States Anti-Doping chief condemns cyber-attack as 'cowardly & despicable'

United States Anti-Doping chief Travis T Tygart has condemned as "cowardly and despicable" a cyber-attack in which the personal details of high-profile Olympic athletes were illegally accessed.

Hackers claim to have obtained information relating to the likes of American tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams and four-time 2016 gymnastics gold medallist Simone Biles.

However, Tygart, chief executive officer of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) hit out at what he described as an attempt to "smear" clean athletes.

Russian hackers have been condemned after gaining access to personal records of Olympic athletes

He said: "It's unthinkable that in the Olympic movement hackers would illegally obtain confidential medical information in an attempt to smear athletes to make it look as if they have done something wrong.

"The athletes haven't. In fact in each of the situations, the athlete has done everything right in adhering to the global rules for obtaining permission to use a needed medication.

"The respective international federations through the proper process granted the permission and it was recognised by the the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and USADA.

"The cyber-bullying of innocent athletes being engaged in by these hackers is cowardly and despicable. It is time for the entire international community to stand up and condemn this cyber-attack on clean sport and athletes' rights."

Cyber espionage group Tsar Team (APT28), which is also known as Fancy Bears, is said to have accessed information concerning substances for which athletes have sought and received therapeutic use exemption (TUE).

Venus Williams said she was "disappointed" that her medical data has been "compromised by hackers and published without...permission".

She said in a statement posted on Twitter by WTA Insider: " I have followed the rules established under the Tennis Anti-Doping Program in applying for, and being granted, 'therapeutic use exemptions'.

"The applications for TUEs under the Tennis Anti-Doping Program require a strict process of approval which I have adhered to when serious medical conditions have occurred."

The 36-year-old added she was "one of the strongest supporters of maintaining the highest level of integrity in competitive sport".

Speaking about Biles, Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics, said: "Simone has filed the proper paperwork per USADA and WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) requirements and there is no violation. The International Gymnastics Federation, the United States Olympic Committee and USADA have confirmed this."

Biles added in a short statement on her Twitter page: "I have ADHD and I have taken medicine for it since I was a kid. Please know, I believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport and is very important to me."

WADA revealed on Tuesday that hackers had illegally gained access to its anti-doping administration and management system (ADAMS) database via an IOC-created account for the Rio Games.

Director general Olivier Niggli said: "WADA deeply regrets this situation and is very conscious of the threat that it represents to athletes whose confidential information has been divulged through this criminal act."

Niggli revealed that the agency was contacting those athletes involved, and slammed the breach, which he claimed was designed to undermine the organisation's efforts to stamp out the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

He continued: "We are reaching out to stakeholders, such as the IOC, IFs (international federations) and NADOs (national anti-doping organisations), regarding the specific athletes impacted.

"WADA condemns these ongoing cyber-attacks that are being carried out in an attempt to undermine WADA and the global anti-doping system."

The attacks are understood to have originated in Russia in the wake of the McLaren Report, which uncovered a state-sponsored doping programme and led to some competitors being banned from this summer's Olympic Games and the blanket exclusion of the country's athletes at the ongoing Paralympics.

Niggli said: "WADA has been informed by law enforcement authorities that these attacks are originating out of Russia.

"Let it be known that these criminal acts are greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia further to the outcomes of the agency's independent McLaren investigation report."

The latest incident followed an attack in August during which the personal details of whistle-blower Yuliya Stepanova, a Russian 800m runner, were illegally obtained.

WADA said it was taking the current situation "very seriously" and was carrying out both internal and external security checks as well as working with law enforcement authorities in a bid to protect ADAMS users.

The Fancy Bears hack team claims on its website that it will show how "tainted" Olympic medals have been won.

It says: "We are going to tell you how Olympic medals are won. We hacked World Anti-Doping Agency databases and we were shocked with what we saw.
Crystal Palace defender Pape Souare expected to make full recovery from accident

Crystal Palace defender Pape Souare is expected to make a full recovery after he was seriously injured in a car accident on Sunday, according to the club's chairman Steve Parish.

Parish announced the good news on Tuesday afternoon in a statement that also revealed Souare has undergone surgery on his jaw and thigh, and should be discharged from hospital on Friday.

The Senegal full-back was airlifted to hospital on Sunday after suffering thigh and jaw injuries in an accident on the M4 motorway.

Pape Souare was airlifted to hospital after being involved in a car crash on Sunday

Parish's statement on the club's official website read: "Pape Souare has this morning undergone surgery on both his jaw and thigh.

"Thanks to the fantastic response of the emergency services who cut him from the car and the amazing surgeons, doctors and staff at the Royal London Hospital he is expected to make a full recovery and should be discharged on Friday.

"We would like to make special mention of the London Air Ambulance service who flew Pape directly from the scene to the hospital ensuring that he rapidly had access to the very best medical care.

"The club note that this organisation is a charity and completely funded from donations as such we are making a contribution and would urge everyone to support this invaluable service for the people of London."
Theresa May urged to ditch leopard skin shoes in bid to bring employers to heel

The Prime Minister has been urged to swap her leopard skin shoes for comfortable footwear to support a campaign against women being forced to wear high heels.

The TUC Congress in Brighton approved a campaign to warn bosses and workers of the danger of inappropriate footwear, following the row over a receptionist sent home for refusing to wear high heels.

Over 140,000 people signed a petition supporting Nicola Thorp who objected to being told to wear shoes with a heel.

Frances O'Grady said high heels should be a choice, not a condition of a job

Penny Robinson of the GMB union took off her high heeled shoes to tell delegates that women were expected to wear "totally inappropriate " shoes to work.

She noted that Theresa May had attracted comments about her leopard skin shoes and suggested how the new Prime Minister could support the union campaign.

"She could make a point of wearing pumps, flats or comfortable shoes for Cabinet meetings or when she meets EU leaders," she said.

Katie Collins of the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists said 80% of adults had a foot problem, often caused by work.

Some employers enforced a dress code which included shoes, she said, adding: "Wearing high heels has real long term health implications."
Lawyer ready to visit Saudi Arabia to interview 'imprisoned' daughter

A British lawyer is prepared to travel to Saudi Arabia for a face-to-face meeting with a young woman who claimed she was being imprisoned by her father.

The move has been given the backing of a High Court judge in London in the case of 21-year-old Amina Al-Jeffery, who grew up in Swansea.

Mr Justice Holman said he believed that a visit by Miss Al-Jeffery's solicitor Anne-Marie Hutchinson "is the only way to get to the bottom of this matter".

Amina Al-Jeffery says she has been imprisoned at her father's home Saudi Arabia after she "kissed a guy"

Miss Al-Jeffery, who has dual British and Saudi Arabian nationality, had complained that 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, Saudi academic Mohammed Al-Jeffery, disputed her allegations and said he was trying to protect her.

On August 3 Mr Justice Holman said her father had to "permit and facilitate" his daughter's return to England or Wales by September 11.

She has not returned and a further hearing was held before the judge on Tuesday when he was given an update on the current situation.

He was told that Miss Hutchinson, a partner at London law firm Dawson Cornwell, was prepared to make the trip to Saudi Arabia to talk to Miss Al-Jeffery at a private meeting about her wishes, and to ensure "as best she can that any decisions taken by Amina are informed".

The judge said Miss Hutchinson was concerned, on the basis of all of the material in her possession, that Miss Al-Jeffery's position appeared to be "equivocal", and the solicitor "wishes to make further inquiries".

The judge said there had been a "significant development" in the case on September 12 when Miss Hutchinson and other colleagues at her firm "received an email which comes from what is known to be the email address of Amina".

He added that it "does not follow of course that Amina sent the email". A document was attached described as "Amina's statement" to be submitted to the court.

The document stated that she and her father had been "building our trust", that she wishes to stay in Saudi Arabia to "work on my relationship with my father and get my life back on track", and that she wants to " withdraw my charges and end this case".

Mr Justice Holman said that on the "face of it" the language of the statement sent from her email was "clear and unequivocal".

But the view of her lawyers, taking into account other material, was that her position appeared to them to be "equivocal".

The judge added: "It seems to me in this situation that there is only one efficient, effective and reliable way for all of us, and ultimately myself - this court - to get to the truth of the matter, and that is for Miss Hutchinson to be enabled to have a direct face-to-face meeting with Amina with no-one else present in the room."

The judge said it would be "wrong of this court simply to give up on Amina at this stage and bring these proceedings to an end".

It was hoped that by the time of the next hearing in late October there could be "clarity in this case".

He said he was "immensely grateful" to Miss Hutchinson for her "personal preparedness" to make the journey to Saudi Arabia.
European court rejects trio's claims their July 21 plot convictions were unfair

Claims by three would-be bombers that their convictions over the failed July 21 plot were unfair have been dismissed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Judges found there had been no breach of the rights of Somali nationals Muktar Said Ibrahim, Ramzi Mohammed and Yassin Omar.

However they did conclude there was a violation in respect of another applicant, who was convicted of assisting a fourth suspected would-be bomber, and awarded him more than 13,000 in legal fees.

Ramzi Mohammed was convicted in July 2007 of conspiracy to murder and jailed (Metropolitan Police/PA)

The planned attack came two weeks after 52 people were killed in the 7/7 attacks in central London in 2005.

Ibrahim, Mohammed and Omar were convicted in July 2007 of conspiracy to murder in relation to the July 21 episode and jailed.

They appealed to the ECHR on the basis that they were denied access to lawyers during their initial police questioning, alleging that their subsequent convictions had been unfair because of the admission at trial of the statements they had made during those interviews.

Their claim was thrown out in 2014 but it was later referred to the Strasbourg court's Grand Chamber.

The chamber's judgment, handed down on Tuesday, concluded that at the time of their initial police questioning there had been an urgent need to avert serious adverse consequences for the life and "physical integrity" of the public.

There had therefore been compelling reasons for temporary restrictions on their right to legal advice, it added.

The court did however find there had been a breach in respect of another applicant.

Ismail Abdurahman was convicted in 2008 of assisting a fourth suspected July 21 bomber and failing to disclose information after the attacks.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, which was reduced to eight years on appeal.

Abdurahman was not suspected of detonating a bomb and was interviewed as a witness.

He should have been cautioned and offered legal advice when he began to incriminate himself in interview but this was not done.

Police continued to question him as a witness and took a written statement from him before he was arrested.

The ECHR found the government had failed to demonstrate compelling reasons for restricting Abdurahman's access to legal advice and for failing to inform him of his right to remain silent.

It said the consequence of him not being cautioned at the point when he started to incriminate himself was that he was misled as to his procedural rights.

The court found that there had been a violation of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right to a fair trial.

It concluded that it did not follow from the finding that Abdurahman was wrongly convicted, saying "it is impossible to speculate as to what might have occurred had there been no breach of the Convention".
My golden moments the result of hard work - Hermitage

Georgina Hermitage insists her dominant displays in winning two Paralympic titles are a result of hard work and that her classification cannot be questioned.

Hermitage on Tuesday won her second gold of Rio 2016, adding the T37 400 metres title to the 100m crown she won on day two.

The 27-year-old from Alton, Hampshire, triumphed by almost three seconds, improving her own world record to one minute 00.53 seconds.

Great Britain's Georgina Hermitage has won two gold medals at the Rio Paralympics

Classification is fundamental to Paralympic competition, with athletes grouped by their functional ability related to their impairment. It is also a continuum as no two athletes are the same.

Prior to the Paralympics, Bethany Woodward, who did not qualify for selection for ParalympicsGB, raised questions over classification, suggesting some are intentionally misrepresenting themselves to compete against others with greater impairments.

Woodward is also a T37 athlete, so the link was made to Hermitage, who has cerebral palsy which affects the left side of her body.

"It was tough, but I know what's wrong with me and I've got the medical records to back it up," Hermitage said.

"These people making these unfounded comments about my disability have never asked what's wrong with me - how could they possibly know?

"If anyone ever wants to talk to me about what happened I am an open book. I'll talk to anyone about it, I've got nothing to hide.

"I block that out. I know what I went through and my family know what I went through with all the years of physio."

Strong sporting performances on their own are not indicative of individuals attempting to manipulate the classification system. Athletes are trying to be the best they can be in Paralympic sport, just like in any other sporting sphere.

Sport-specific classification officials can amend an individual athlete's status at a competition and there are numerous examples of individuals being re-classified or de-classified.

Cerebral palsy, or hemiplegia, can be managed and performances can be improved by training.

Hermitage says her lactate threshold - the exercise intensity at which lactic acid starts to accumulate in the bloodstream - is high is through hard work.

Hermitage added: "The reason my lactic threshold is high is because I work my a**e off for it. I just do everything I can.

"I do about three sessions a week that is lactic-based so I can put in that performance.

"I would support any hemiplegic athlete who wants to run a fast 400 to get the long distance in now, because you can do it and my records will go. I want them to go in the years to come."

Hermitage was already the world and European champion over 100m and 400m before travelling to Brazil

She was pregnant during London 2012 and Tilly, her three-year-old daughter, has some requests when Hermitage returns to the UK.

She added: "Everything is for my daughter Tilly. I want her to know that you can do anything if you set your mind to it.

"She asked me if we can bake a cake when I get home and, 'Have you bought me any presents mummy?'
Ellie Robinson follows Ellie Simmonds' lead to Paralympic glory

Now there are two. Ellies Simmonds and Robinson are Paralympic swimming champions.

Simmonds is just 21, but the established star in her third Games; Robinson is 15 and making a name for herself at her first.

Simmonds said: "We're just Ellie, aren't we? Ellie S and Ellie R.

Ellie Robinson, pictured, has followed in the footsteps of Paralympics GB team-mate Ellie Simmonds

"People call me Simmondsio or El."

Robinson added: "Whenever someone shouts 'Ellie' it's like... 'no, it's the other one'."

Both have achondroplasia (dwarfism) - and both have won gold medals in Rio.

After on Monday night winning the SM6 200 metres individual medley title - her fifth Paralympic gold - Simmonds returned in the heats of her favourite event, the 400m freestyle.

She qualified for Tuesday night's final in third place and was unable to claim a third straight title in the event she first won in Beijing aged 13.

"I don't know what happened there. I didn't have anything in me tonight," Simmonds said afterwards.

"It was just one of those days. Last night I won gold and broke the world record.

"I had a late, late night, but normally I can do that."

Ukrainian world record holder Yelyzaveta Mereshko won in a Paralympic record of five minutes 17.01 seconds, with Simmonds third in 5mins 24.87secs. Robinson, who won the S6 50m butterfly on day two, was fourth in 5:27.35.

"It just wasn't there, I gave everything I had, but it wasn't good enough," Simmonds added.

"This will motivate me. I have two events left, I will enjoy them. they will be tough races."

Simmonds was in a happier mood when qualifying for the final earlier on Tuesday alongside Robinson.

The Northampton teenager was seven when Simmonds surged into the public consciousness with a shock 100m freestyle win in the Water Cube in Beijing, before adding another in the 400m freestyle.

"I don't remember it that well," Robinson said.

She does remember meeting Simmonds after beginning to take swimming seriously post-London 2012, when Simmonds won her third and fourth Paralympic titles, aged 17.

"It was my first disability national meet. I think it was at Sheffield," Robinson said.

"When she finished one of her races and I went up to her and was like, 'Oh my God, can I have a photo?' She was like, 'Oh yes, all right'.

"It's weird. I'm just standing next to her, competing in Rio, thinking about that girl that went up to her and was all starstruck."

Robinson is not a young pretender to Simmonds' crown, though, more someone who can join forces.

Simmonds favours the longer-distance events; Robinson is more of a sprinter.

"For me I've still got a few years left in me. I'm only 21," Simmonds said.

"But I believe Ellie can get up there at the top and be a champion, like she did in the 50 fly.

"She can be an all-rounder if she just believes. It's great for the sport and great for S6 that there was the likes of Nyree Lewis (now Kindred), Liz Johnson, then me and now we've got the youngsters like Ellie Robinson."

Simmonds is something of a mentor for Robinson.

"When I was younger, in 2006, Nyree took me under her wing and so it's nice to do that with Ellie," Simmonds added.

"It's worked now with the gold in the fly, with many other races to come and many more years left in her."

Robinson adorned wings on entering the pool deck ahead of her 50m butterfly final. It has been labelled as a 'gangster' entrance, while an image of her in the pose in place of Christ the Redeemer, which overlooks Rio, has been posted online.

She stopped short of saying it would become her trademark - admitting the moment was an accident.

"I was going to wave and put my hands up and just say 'hi' to everyone," she added.

"I forgot I had on a really tight suit, a jumper, a dry robe and a drawstring bag.
Pope's sex abuse panel to help new bishops improve child protection

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Newly appointed Catholic bishops will get training on how to deal with child abuse from a panel of experts, including victims, which Pope Francis set up to root out sexual molestation by clerics.

The move, announced on Monday, is a big step for the panel - made up of clerics and lay people, including women, mostly with little previous Vatican experience - that has struggled to be fully accepted within the Church's power structure.

The decision to draw on the expertise of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors comes after a French monsignor who taught so-called "baby bishops" courses for new Church leaders, caused an uproar by telling them they did not necessarily have to report abuse to civil authorities.

Monsignor Tony Anatrella was later rebuked by the president of the commission, Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, who said bishops had "a moral and ethical responsibility" to do so.

The worldwide sex abuse scandal first came to light in Boston in 2001 when it was revealed that predatory priests were shunted from parish to parish instead of being defrocked and handed over to the police.

Francis has compared the abuse of children by priests to devil worship and vowed a "zero tolerance" approach, setting up the commission in 2014, a year after taking office, to advise him on how to root out sexual abuse within the Church.

But some commission members have complained about the slow pace of change in the Vatican and a British member who went public with his criticisms was put on leave of absence after the panel passed a no-confidence motion in him.

Peter Saunders, head of Britain's National Association for People Abused in Childhood, who was abused by two priests as a child, called for the commission to go beyond its advisory mandate and speak out on specific cases.
U.S. congresswoman urges Labor Dept to probe Chipotle over wage theft allegations

By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO, Sept 12 (Reuters) - A U.S. congresswoman urged the Labor Department on Monday to investigate Chipotle Mexican Grill for possible wage theft, another potential hurdle for the burrito chain as it seeks to rebound from food-safety problems last year.

U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, said the department should probe allegations from about 10,000 current and former Chipotle employees who have joined a federal lawsuit that alleges the company did not properly pay them for hours worked.

Such actions, if true, would contradict federal law, DeLauro said in a letter to the department, "depriving workers of the wages and earnings to which they are legally entitled."

Chipotle said her call for an investigation was "misdirected."

"We have maintained from the outset that this case is without merit and will vigorously defend our employment practices," company spokesman Chris Arnold said.

The Labor Department had no immediate comment.

Chipotle has been working to revive sales growth after outbreaks of E. coli, norovirus and salmonella linked to its restaurants sickened more than 500 people last year and drove away customers.

Last week, activist investor William Ackman disclosed that his hedge fund had purchased a 9.9 percent stake in the company, saying it was undervalued.

The case over unpaid wages began two years ago when Leah Turner, who worked as a manager at a Chipotle restaurant in Colorado, alleged in a lawsuit that the company routinely required hourly paid employees to work "off the clock," according to court records.

The company used timekeeping devices that automatically punched employees off the clock, even if they were still working, the lawsuit said.

Since then, about 10,000 others from across the country have joined the lawsuit seeking to recover unpaid wages, said Andrew Quisenberry, an attorney representing the workers for law firm Bachus & Schanker. The large number of plaintiffs is "significant to us, showing that it's widespread across Chipotle," Quisenberry said.
U.S. regulator sees no evidence of Wells Fargo sales problem at other banks

By Dan Freed

Sept 12 (Reuters) - There is probably no broader problem in the U.S. banking industry over abusive sales practices, despite the penalties imosed on Wells Fargo & Co's recently, the head of a federal consumer protection agency said on Monday.

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), said during an interview on CNBC that he does not see problems similar to those discovered at Wells Fargo occuring "on any kind of systematic basis at any other bank."

The CFPB and two other regulators fined Wells Fargo a total of $185 million last Thursday. The bank paid another $5 million to customers for creating more than two million fake accounts for products like credit and debit cards to meet aggressive sales targets.

The enforcement action caught the attention of U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who on Friday applauded Cordray's agency, censuring Wells Fargo for what she called "outrageous behavior."

On Monday, five lawmakers wrote a letter to U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby calling for an investigation. Credit rating agency, Moody's Investors Service also commented, saying the "embarassing episode" would have a negative impact on Wells Fargo's outstanding debt.

Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees who were involved in sales practices described by the settlement.
'Hotel Rwanda' director revisits historic tragedy in 'The Promise'

By Jeffrey Hodgson

TORONTO, Sept 12 (Reuters) - A new film that addresses the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War One is meant to spur discussion about a historical tragedy that still has the power to stir political tensions, its director says.

"The Promise", the latest from director Terry George, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday evening.

The historical drama stars Oscar Isaac as an Armenian medical student and Christian Bale as an American foreign correspondent who fall in love with the same woman. Their love triangle unfolds as the Ottoman Empire's entry into the war is followed by the killing of Christian Armenians.

The nature and scale of those killings remains contentious.

Earlier this year, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Germany in protest against a parliament resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians a genocide.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments.

"It's a subject that for 100 years ... has been suppressed, and I thought this was a wonderful opportunity to try and enlighten the world and at the same time tell an engrossing story," George said in a red carpet interview ahead of the premiere.

George won the festival's People's Choice Award in 2004 with "Hotel Rwanda", a true story set during the country's 1994 genocide.

George said the filmmakers opted to stay under the radar during production. But now that the movie completed, he said he is ready to address political reaction.

"Let's get it out into the open. That's what this film is about. Let's not hide in the shadows or suppress the information or suppress the history of the event. Let's have a debate about it," he said.

While there will be a focus on the film's politics, George noted that like directors David Lean and Warren Beatty, he set out to tell an "old fashion love story" set in a historic period.

Canadian actress Charlotte Le Bon, who stars an the Armenian artist pursued by both Isaac and Bale, said the events of the film have contemporary relevance given so many people are still fleeing persecution.
Clooney, Cheadle urge action to stop pilfering of South Sudan resources

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - The leaders on both sides of South Sudan's civil war and their families have profited off the conflict, amassing fortunes through links with bankers, arms dealers and oil companies, according to a report released on Monday by actors George Clooney and Don Cheadle.

At a news conference to present the report, they called on the international community to cut off the leaders' financial flows through tougher sanctions.

The report follows a two-year undercover investigation by The Sentry, a group co-founded by Clooney and fellow activist John Prendergast to look into the financing of African conflicts and comes at a time when the United Nations is threatening to impose an arms embargo against South Sudan's government.

The group said a network of international facilitators stretched from arms dealers in Ukraine to construction companies in Turkey, mining firms in Kenya, and Chinese investors involved in joint ventures in gambling and private security sectors in South Sudan.

According to the report, South Sudan's leader President Salva Kiir, his former deputy Riek Machar and military generals have pilfered state coffers, accumulated an array of luxury homes and cars, and enriched themselves and family members through stakes in oil and other business ventures.

Spokesmen for Kiir and Machar both denied the leaders had properties in Kenya or other African countries, as the report alleged.

The report also said South Sudanese army chief Paul Malong, who makes roughly $45,000 a year, has at least two luxurious villas in Uganda in addition to a $2 million mansion in a gated community in Nairobi.

The report said family members of top government officials have stakes in commercial ventures in South Sudan. Local laws forbid constitutional office holders from engaging in business activities outside the government while in office, it said.

The report said Kiir's family had been involved in a series of transitions involving government procurement deals and relationships with a foreign oil company. The group said it had obtained documents showing that Kiir's 12-year-old son held a 25 percent stake in a holding company formed in February 2016.

"The past five years South Sudan's leaders have engaged in ... mass atrocities on its citizens, starvation and rape, all while plundering the state's resources and enriching themselves and their families," Clooney told the conference.

"The simple fact is they are stealing the money to fund their militias who attack and kill one another. It involves arms dealers, international lawyers, international banks, international real estate," he added.

Ateny Wek Ateny, a spokesman for Kiir, told Reuters by phone on Saturday before the release of the report, which was embargoed for release on Monday, that Kiir did not own properties in Nairobi.

"The president doesn't have any property in Nairobi or anywhere," Ateny said. "If there is anyone who says that, he is only accusing the president for no reason. The president does not even have a bank account, so how do these people arrive at all these?"

James Gatdet Dak, spokesman for Machar, also denied that Machar owned property in Nairobi or Addis Ababa.

"It is a lie. Dr. Riek Machar's family does not own a house in Nairobi or in Addis Ababa as alleged," he said, "They are renting a house in Nairobi, while the one in Addis Ababa was a temporary guest house provided to him by the Ethiopian authorities during the peace negotiations."

LOBBYING FOR ACTION

Clooney said the group planned to lobby U.S. President Barack Obama and other senior administration officials to impose sanctions targeted at South Sudan's leaders and to freeze their assets abroad.

The United States has poured $1.5 billion of aid into South Sudan despite widespread concerns over corruption.

Prendergast, a former director of African affairs at the White House National Security Council, said the "fatal flaw" of the international community was it did not pay enough attention to the "core rot" at the foundation of the new government.

South Sudan secured its independence in 2011 but by December 2013 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 fleeing to neighboring states.

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.
Global chocolatiers dwarfed in Indonesia as local champions dictate taste

By Glenys Kirana and Eveline Danubrata

JAKARTA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Multinational chocolatiers have spent almost 20 years trying to crack Indonesia's booming confectionary market, only to build a share that pales in comparison with other emerging economies as long-established local producers fend off foreign incursions.

Nestle SA, Cadbury's owner Mondelez International Inc, Mars Inc and Ferrero SpA together hold just one-tenth of a $1 billion market led by homegrown darlings Delfi Ltd and PT Mayora Indah Tbk. In neighbouring Malaysia, the foursome commands almost 60 percent.

"The market leader is very strong because it was the first to set the taste for chocolate in Indonesia," Nestle Indonesia confectionary business manager Rully Gumilar told Reuters.

"It's like David fighting Goliath," he said. "It's very big and has huge power, while we are small even though we are a multinational."

Such struggle against a local incumbent is not uncommon among global consumer firms in the world's fourth most-populous country - a tropical archipelago with complex distribution channels, run-down infrastructure and a retail sector dominated by family stores that lack air conditioning to keep goods cool.

But the rewards are potentially huge considering consumption accounts for more than half of a steadily expanding economy, while an increasingly affluent middle class promises ample room for growth.

The chocolate confectionary market is likely to jump 42 percent to 19.5 trillion rupiah ($1.49 billion) in the next three years, data from researcher Mintel showed. That compared with 11.7 percent in the United States where, as in other developed markets, growth has slowed over the past five years.

LOCAL COCOA

Nestle entered Indonesia in 1971 and in the 1990s embarked on a major push in chocolate products, expanding to three brands. Mars and Mondelez began selling chocolate in the early 2000s and, with Ferrero, the four's market share reached 10 percent last year - 1.4 percentage point more than a year prior.

But Delfi set the benchmark taste in the 1950s with its SilverQueen chocolate bars and Ceres chocolate sprinkles, which still feature in the firm's broad line-up. Last year, its market share by sales volume reached 52.7 percent from 48.2 percent.

Such local offerings often cost less to make and so are priced lower. For instance, they tend to contain a greater proportion of cocoa powder, which can be two to three times cheaper than cocoa butter, said Ahmad Zaky Amiruddin, secretary general of the Indonesian Cocoa Industry Association.

Mayora said buying cocoa beans and making chocolate locally also keep prices competitive. In contrast, production at foreign rivals may be part of a more complex, multi-market strategy. Nestle, for instance, imports from its regional halal factory in Malaysia, which sources ingredients from countries including the Ivory Coast.

Indonesians are "very price sensitive", preferring to buy the cheapest of similar products, Amiruddin said.

Delfi's Take-it chocolate fingers, for example, retail at a Jakarta mini-market for 5,500 rupiah ($0.42), around 8 percent less than Nestle's KitKat.

Delfi did not respond to requests for comment.

To fight back, Mondelez is strengthening its marketing and focusing on quality, its Indonesia chocolate brand manager Dini Anggraeni told Reuters. Mars declined to comment; Ferrero did not respond to requests for comment.

Nestle's Gumilar said his firm is trying to find a recipe that balances its global quality standards with local preferences - "the holy grail of the chocolate category" - as well as stepping up product launches and marketing.

"We still want to win," he said. "But it'll be step by step." ($1 = 13,097.0000 rupiah)
-COLUMN-Hedge funds temper bullishness on oil: Kemp

By John Kemp

LONDON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Hedge funds tempered their bullishness towards the entire petroleum complex during the first week of September, according to positioning data from regulators and exchanges.

Hedge funds and other money managers cut their combined net long position in the three major Brent and WTI futures and options contracts by 80 million barrels in the week ending Sept. 6 (http://tmsnrt.rs/2clxshx).

The decline was led by a big increase in short positions, which rose by 56 million barrels, especially in the WTI contracts, where short positions increased by 39 million barrels.

There was a more modest reduction in long positions, which fell 23 million barrels, with almost all the long liquidation in Brent, where long positions were down 20 million barrels.

Overall, the hedge funds' net long position in crude has fallen by nearly 100 million barrels over the two most recent weeks, partially reversing a build of 287 million barrels over the three weeks before that (http://tmsnrt.rs/2cyquZ5).

The partial reversal reflects profit taking after Brent prices surged by almost $10 per barrel, more than 23 percent, in the first part of August as some of the previous record short position was covered.

It also seems to reflect fresh short-selling in anticipation that long liquidation would trigger a new round of price falls.

The more cautious hedge fund position on crude was echoed in positions on U.S. gasoline blendstock and heating oil.

Hedge funds cut their net long position in gasoline by 5 million barrels and heating oil by 12 million barrels in the week ending on Sept. 6 (http://tmsnrt.rs/2cyq6K7 and http://tmsnrt.rs/2cyqcBp).

Even after the recent adjustments, hedge fund positions across the entire complex of crude, gasoline and heating oil are still much more bullish than they were at the start of August.

Recent long liquidation and short sales may be just a minor correction after the unprecedented short-covering rally last month ("Oil prices surge as hedge funds reduce short positions", Reuters, Aug. 22).

But with long positions still relatively high and short positions relatively low there is potentially scope for the correction to continue.

Since the start of 2015, hedge funds have accumulated and then liquidated short positions in four distinct cycles that have closely mirrored the fall and then rise of oil prices (http://tmsnrt.rs/2cly8na).
Nicaragua President Ortega holds wide lead in reelection bid: poll

MANAGUA, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has maintained his overwhelming lead ahead of November's presidential race as he seeks re-election, a new poll showed on Monday.

The poll, conducted by M&R Consultants, showed that 65.7 percent of those surveyed planned to vote for Ortega and his leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party, compared with just 4.7 for right-wing opposition candidate Maximino Rodriguez.

Pedro Reyes, a candidate from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI), had 2.2 percent of the vote, the poll found, with more than 25 percent declining to respond.

Ortega, a 70-year-old former guerrilla leader, first ruled the country in the 1980s and returned to power in 2007 after a fracture in Nicaragua's right-wing parties.

After nearly a decade in power, his popularity has remained high due to economic policies and social programs put into place with the support of allies in Venezuela and Cuba.

Ortega's margin of victory in the Nov. 6 race rose nearly three points from a previous survey by M&R Consultants in late July, which showed him with 62.8 percent of the vote, in comparison to 4.7 percent for Rodriguez and 3.9 percent for Reyes.
China says should maintain S.China Sea peace with Vietnam

BEIJING, Sept 13 (Reuters) - China and Vietnam should work together to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea and manage and control disputes, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea, where about $5 trillion worth of seaborne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims in the sea believed to have rich deposits of oil and gas.

Vietnam is in the midst of a quiet military buildup analysts say is designed as a deterrent, to secure its 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone as China grows more assertive in staking its claims in the South China Sea.

A court of arbitration in The Hague in July said China's claims to the waterway were invalid, after a case was brought by the Philippines. Beijing has refused to recognise the ruling.

Vietnam welcomed the ruling, saying it strongly supports peaceful resolution of disputes, while reasserting its own sovereignty claims.

Meeting in Beijing on Monday, Li told Phuc that the South China Sea involved both issues of sovereignty and maritime rights as well as "national feelings", China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

"China and Vietnam should work hard together, scrupulously abide by their high level consensus, maintain maritime stability, manage and control disputes, promote maritime cooperation, continue to accumulate consensus, jointly maintain maritime and regional peace and stability and create conditions for the stable development of bilateral ties," Li said.

The ministry cited Phuc as saying maritime issues should be appropriately handled in a peaceful way on the basis of equality and mutual respect and not allow maritime issues to affect the development of relations.

Earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered Vietnam a credit line of half a billion dollars for defence cooperation, giving a lift to a country rapidly pursing a military deterrent as discord festers in the South China Sea.

The offer comes after a surge of almost 700 percent in Vietnam's defence procurements as of 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think-tank, which tracks the arm trade over five-year periods.
Philippines' foreign minister says to respect, honor commitments with United States

MANILA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The Philippines will continue to honor its treaty obligations with the United States, its foreign minister said on Tuesday, a day after President Rodrigo Duterte called for the withdrawal of U.S. special forces troops from southern Philippines.

"The president has said, even as a priority statement in his inaugural address, that we will respect and continue to honor our treaty obligations and commitments particularly even with the U.S.," Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay told a radio interview on Tuesday.

"His statements now are not intended and should not be taken as a signal that he will take back his previous statements insofar as respecting these agreements are concerned," said Yasay.

On Monday, Duterte said U.S. military presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners.
China Jan-Aug property investment growth quickens to 5.4 pct

By Yawen Chen and Kevin Yao

BEIJING, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Investment growth in China's real estate quickened slightly over January-August, suggesting investors still have confidence in a booming market even as more local governments tightened restrictions on home purchases in a bid to check rapid price rises.

Property investment in January-August rose 5.4 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)figures showed on Tuesday, quickening from an increase of 5.3 percent in January-July, while property sales by floor area grew 25.5 percent, slowing from 26.4 percent.

In August alone, property investment was up 6.2 percent from a year ago, according to Reuters calculations, compared with 1.4 percent in July.

"A property investment rebound means it will continue to contribute positively to gross domestic product this year, albeit probably not as significantly as seen in the first half," said Ma Xiaoping, economist at HSBC.

Real estate investment directly affects about 40 other business sectors in China and is considered to be a crucial driver for the economy.

A robust recovery in home prices and sales, thanks to a flurry of government stimulus measures, gave a stronger-than-expected boost to the world's second largest economy in the first half of the year.

But rapid price gains in some of the biggest cities fanned fears of a bubble and prompted some local governments to tighten home and land purchase requirements, with cities such as Xiamen, Suzhou, Naning and Wuhan being the latest to implement such measures.

"Rises in property prices have initially been contained," NBS spokesperson Sheng Laiyun said at a news conference.

A housing glut continued to take its toll in smaller centres such as rustbelt city Shenyang, which implemented looser buying conditions in an effort to ramp up demand.

"Micro policies at the local level are expected to be implemented to help grow sales in these cities, but a broad policy by the central government to encourage that is unlikely," said HSBC's Ma.

China's central bank has become increasingly concerned at the severity of the country's debt problem, with the high concentration of capital in property identified as a major problem.

"We should take a lot of measures to curb excessive bubbles in the real estate sector, curb the flow of excessive financial resources into the real estate sector," Ma Jun, chief economist at China's central bank, said in a recent interview.

The debt ratio of property developers is now nearly 80 percent and climbing, according to a commentary published in the official Xinhua news agency's Economic Information Daily.

The commentary warned of "irrational increases in leverage" as more home buyers rushed to invest in the overheated real estate market through borrowing. Household loans, which are mainly mortgages, made up over 90 percent of new loans in July, according to official data.

The commentary said volatility in house prices may cause either a deterioration in financial assets or soak up more capital to prop up the leverage that was threatening to undermine economic policy.

New construction starts in August were up 3.3 percent from a year ago, measured by floor area, Reuters calculations showed, slowing from 8.1 percent in July.
U.S. nuclear envoy on N.Korea says swift, strong U.N. response needed

SEOUL, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. special envoy on North Korea, Sung Kim, said on Tuesday the isolated state has demonstrated "blatant and reckless disregard" to its international obligations and the situation requires swift and strong response by the United Nations.

Kim added that the United States remains open to authentic, meaningful dialogue with the North on ending Pyongyang's pursuit of its nuclear programme.
Thai junta will stop prosecuting dissidents in military courts

BANGKOK, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Thailand's military government said on Monday it will prosecute cases concerning national security and royal insult in civilian courts instead of military courts, a change a rights group said was "window dressing" before a U.N. review.

There has been a sharp rise in the number of prosecutions for dissent and royal insult since the military seized power in a 2014 coup with the junta opting to try such cases in military courts.

The military declared when it took over it considered violations of a strict lese-majeste law, which makes it illegal for anyone to "defame, insult or threaten the king, the queen, heir-apparent or regent", a matter of national security.

Those convicted under the law face up to 15 years in prison.

Students and democracy activists have also been prosecuted in military courts for campaigning against military rule under a sedition law.

According to an order signed by junta chief Prayuth Chan-ocha, future cases relating to national security and lese-majeste would be prosecuted in civilian courts because of "an improving situation and cooperation from the public for the past two years".

"All security cases effective September 12 will be dealt with by civilian courts except cases that are currently in progress," Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Kreag-ngam told reporters on Tuesday.

Some 1,500 cases have been tried in military courts since the junta seized power in May 2014. Of those, 1,000 have been completed and some 500 cases are still pending, said Wissanu.

The United States and European Union both downgraded diplomatic ties with Thailand following the 2014 coup. Since then they, as well as the United Nations, have on occasion expressed concern about human rights.

Thailand defends its human rights record saying prosecutions are undertaken according to its laws.

Rights groups say the change was aimed at addressing such concerns and would not make a big difference as civilian courts were known to hand out heavy sentences in cases of royal insult.

"This decision is just window dressing ahead of Thailand's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in front of the U.N. Human Rights Council later this month," said Sunai Phasuk, Thailand researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Thailand defended its human rights record in front of the Human Rights Council in May this year after some member states noted what they saw as a deteriorating rights situation.

Military courts will continue to hear cases in Thailand's three southern provinces bordering Malaysia where a state of emergency is in place, Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan told reporters.

Resistance to central government rule has existed for decades in the far-south provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, but transformed into a violent insurgency in 2004.
US bombers fly over S.Korea in show of force after nuclear test

By James Pearson and Ju-min Park

SEOUL, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Two U.S. B-1 bombers flew over South Korea on Tuesday in a show of force and solidarity with its ally after North Korea's nuclear test last week, while a U.S. envoy called for a swift and strong response to Pyongyang from the United Nations.

Speaking in the South Korean capital on Tuesday, Sung Kim, the U.S. envoy on North Korea, added that the United States remained open to meaningful dialogue with Pyongyang on ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

"Our intention is to secure the strongest possible (U.N. Security Council) resolution that includes new sanctions as quickly as possible," Kim told a news briefing after meeting his South Korean counterpart.

He said the United States would work with China, North Korea's major diplomatic ally, to close loopholes in existing resolutions, which were tightened with Beijing's backing in March.

"China has been very clear that they understand the need for a new U.N. security council resolution in response to the latest North Korean nuclear test," Kim said.

However, China and Russia, which strongly oppose a recent decision by the United States and South Korea to deploy an advanced anti-missile system in the South to counter the North's missile threat, have shown reluctance to back further sanctions.

"Both sides think that North Korea's nuclear test is not beneficial to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula," China's official People's Daily newspaper said on Tuesday following a high-level China-Russia security meeting in Beijing.

"At present, we must work hard to prevent the situation on the peninsula continuing to escalate, and put the issue of the nuclearisation of the peninsula back on the track of dialogue and consultation," it said.

FORCE AND SOLIDARITY

The pair of U.S. supersonic B-1B Lancer strategic bombers took off from their base in Guam and flew with two Japan Air Self Defense Force aircraft before a "hand-off" to South Korean fighters, according to the U.S. military.

The B-1Bs were then escorted by South Korean and U.S. fighter jets in a low-altitude flight over Osan Air Base, which is 77 km (48 miles) from the Demilitarised Zone border with the North and about 40 km (25 miles) from the South's capital Seoul.

"These flights demonstrate the solidarity between South Korea, the United States, and Japan to defend against North Korea's provocative and destabilising actions," said Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command.

North Korea's official KCNA news agency said public anger was "exploding like a volcano" over Washington's dispatch of bombers to South Korea.

"Any sanction, provocation and pressure cannot ruin our status as a nuclear state and evil political and military provocations will only result in a flood of reckless nuclear attacks that will bring a final destruction," KCNA said.

China urged restraint among all parties. "If there is a vicious cycle of tensions continuing to rise and mutual provocations, this is not in anyone's interests," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily briefing.

North Korea's weapons enhancements, including the testing of various types of missiles this year at an unprecedented rate, have alarmed neighbours South Korea and Japan.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye maintained her tough stance against the North.

The two Koreas remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

"I want our government and military to stay fully ready to retaliate, determined to end North Korea's regime once North Korea fires even one missile nuclear-armed missile toward our territory," Park told a cabinet meeting.

A group of lawmakers in South Korea said on Monday the country should have a nuclear force of its own, either by acquiring weapons or asking the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons withdrawn under a 1991 pact for denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

Kim, the U.S. envoy, said there was no need to reintroduce nuclear weapons in South Korea.

North Korea has refused the U.S. demand that it accept denuclearisation as a condition for holding dialogue.

"It's a question of North Korean intentions and commitment. If North Korea is ready to talk to us sincerely, I think we can work with that within the six party process," Kim said.

The six party talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear programme involve the United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea, China, and North Korea but have been stalled since 2008.

South Korea said on Monday the North is ready to conduct an additional nuclear test at any time after setting off its most powerful blast to date on Friday.
Australia's Aboriginal people heading into the next "wicked" land battle

By Paola Totaro

LONDON, Sept 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Nearly a quarter of a century after Australia's Aboriginal people won the legal right to make claims on their 'country', they are fighting a new battle - a complex network of red tape required to manage the lands, a leading lawyer has warned.

Australia's National Native Title Tribunal President, Raelene Webb, said there is still an "alarming level of ignorance" about how indigenous land claims are determined.

Webb, a Queen's Council and expert on Aboriginal land matters, said this, combined with a lack of support for traditional owners once a decision on land is made, risks failing indigenous communities.

She predicts a new wave of litigation and compensation claims to vary or protect land rights granted to Aboriginal communities using the 1993 Native Title Act to ensure claims to land they have occupied for up to 50,000 years are recognised.

"Unless some progress is made in this space, there will be a lot more litigation ... from conflict [which has] at its root cause, management of native title," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

"The post-determination wave of litigation is threatening to be the next wicked problem in native title."

In a lengthy interview, Webb - one of Australia's leading experts in land rights laws - stressed that problems in the system fueled insecurity for not just Aboriginal people but also for businesses and government as well.

She said one of the most concerning misconceptions about native title is that it is an anachronism that locks up land, stops development and will eventually be extinguished once land is handed over for "more productive purposes".

"This is a deeply ingrained western view of property that for land to have any value, it must be productive," said Webb who took up her five-year appointment heading the Tribunal in 2013.

"This is the view that allowed the early settlers to take up the 'waste lands' of Australia and dispossess its indigenous inhabitants who could not properly be regarded as owners of the land over which they roamed," she said.

Webb said the right to negotiate aspects of the Native Title Act has given many indigenous groups their first opportunity to take control of protecting their culture and to be involved in economic activity on their land.

"The fact is that indigenous people need land in order to participate in economic development," she said.

FUTURE CHALLENGES

Aboriginal people comprise about three percent of Australia's population, or about 700,000 citizens, and are affected by vast social, educational and health disparities, including lower life expectancies, higher incidence of chronic diseases, and disproportionately high incarceration rates.

Since the Native Title Act was passed in 1993, just over 300 native title determinations have been made of which 277 were made by consent, or agreement, and about 26 through litigation,

Webb said.

Today, over 31 percent of the continent's land mass is covered by native title. Of this total, 11 percent is subject to exclusive native title determinations while the other 20 percent is deemed 'non-exclusive', meaning that land rights co-exist with other interests, for example with pastoral leases.

Under the law, however, after traditional owners are given title, they must establish corporations, known as Prescribed Bodies Corporate (PBCs), to manage their affairs. So far, 158 such bodies have been created.

But Webb said the long list of land management and cultural heritage obligations required of the PBCs can often be more "complex than governance of a multi-million dollar company beholden only to its shareholders".

Webb believes a lack of training, meager resources and lack of expert support forces PBCs to rely on volunteer labour and pro-bono legal advice to "see them from one AGM to the next".

On the positive side, Webb said she could sense a shift away from the hardline early views in Australia that the indigenous relationship to land is of no economic consequence and that land can only be 'developed' along non-indigenous lines.

But she stressed it was now imperative that Australia builds a more supportive and collaborative approach between PBCs, native title representative bodies, government agencies and businesses involved with native title.
Coking coal bubble to deflate, unlikely to burst: Russell

By Clyde Russell

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Sept 13 (Reuters) - When the price of a commodity rises by 117 percent in a mere 15 weeks, it's generally a sign that something is amiss in the market, and coking coal's recent stellar run is no exception to this rule.

The spot price of Australian premium hard coking coal <_.PHCC-AUSSI> has surged from $83.40 a tonne on May 31 to $180.90 on Sept. 9.

So far this year, the price of the fuel used mainly to make steel has leapt by 131 percent, making it the best performer among significant commodities.

As with any price surge, there are solid reasons for a rally, but the gains have now reached a point where they have entered the realms of silliness.

Before looking at the reasons why coking coal has rallied so strongly, and why the gains will start to reverse, it's worth noting that there are several prices for the fuel.

In addition to the spot price for free-on-board cargoes from Australia, the world's biggest exporter of coking coal, there is an Australian contract price and futures traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange in China.

These haven't shown nearly as sharp rallies, with contract prices having gained about 12 percent this year to trade around $92 a tonne. The contract price is used by most Australian coking coal miners, other than the biggest, the joint venture between BHP Billiton and Japan's Mitsubishi.

Dalian futures are up 28.5 percent from the start of the year, ending on Monday at 794.5 yuan ($118.94) a tonne compared with 618 yuan at the end of last year.

It's likely that the gains in the contract price and the Dalian futures are more reflective than the spot price of the true state of the coking coal market.

So, what is the state of the coking coal market?

Undoubtedly the supply-demand balance is tighter this year than it was in 2015, providing the fundamental basis for a rally.

Import demand is up in China, mainly because of strong steel output and lower domestic production as Beijing tries to cut excess capacity in the overall coal sector.

China's January-August coking coal output was down 2.7 percent, or about 8.6 million tonnes, to 292.38 million tonnes compared to the same period in 2015.

The loss of coking coal tonnes is most likely an unintended side-effect of the moves by the authorities to reduce coal output of mainly thermal grades, used to generate power.

China's imports of coking coal have risen as domestic output has dropped, with inbound shipments in the first seven months of the year totalling 31.5 million tonnes, up 11.8 percent on the same period last year.

However, in volume terms, imports in the January-July period are up only 3.2 million tonnes, in other words, the gain in imports is less than half of the loss of domestic output. The detailed breakdown of August imports will only be available toward the end of the month.

Add in some supply disruptions in Australia and the conditions for a price rally are in place.

TRADING SHORT SQUEEZE

But this doesn't explain why the spot price in Australia has jumped by a massive 117 percent since May 31.

There are several possible contributing factors, but the most likely explanation is some smart trading.

In a tight market it's possible to initiate a sharp rally in prices by buying up available cargoes and forcing the price higher in what is known as a short squeeze.

The gains for a trader come in having existing inventory on hand to sell once the price jumps. The trading house may lose money on the cargoes it buys at elevated prices, but will make significantly more money on selling their existing stocks at the now higher price.

This trading strategy can be extremely profitable but is unlikely to be sustainable in the longer term.

How long it does last depends on how quickly other participants in the market can move to take advantage of the higher prices.

And there are already signs that the other players are moving, with China's coal miners seeking official approval to boost output.

It's possible that some relaxation on production may be approved, as the last thing the authorities in Beijing will want is prices to keep rising to the point where the competitiveness of the steel industry is threatened.

It's also likely that other coking coal producers, such as Mongolia, Canada and the United States will be moving to ramp up output.

It takes some time to boost an existing mine's output, and even more time to restart idled pits, but the point is that within a few months it's likely that more cargoes will be heading to China.

For example, the United States, the world's second-biggest coking coal exporter, hasn't shipped any cargoes to China this year, but with the current price rally and low freight rates, it will be profitable for miners to look at renewing this trade.
Arrests spark clashes at Chinese 'democracy' village: Hong Kong media, residents

By Venus Wu

HONG KONG, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Clashes erupted in a Chinese village known for its grassroots push for democracy after at least 13 people were arrested by the police in pre-dawn raids on Tuesday, according to Hong Kong media and residents.

The raids in Wukan fishing village, in the southeast province of Guangdong, came less than a week after a popular and democratically elected village chief, Lin Zuluan, was sentenced to three years imprisonment on graft and other charges.

One person in touch with relatives in Wukan told Reuters between 300-400 police were involved in the raids, and many villagers were injured.

The person added the village was now in police lockdown, and that internet connections were down.

Videos obtained by Hong Kong's RTHK from villagers show hundreds of police in riot gear confronting at least several dozen villagers marching with Chinese national flags on Tuesday morning.

The Hong Kong government-funded radio station and website reported that the police had used tear gas and rubber bullets in the operation. Photos on social media purporting to be from Wukan showed villagers with wounds that appeared to be from rubber bullets.

The RTHK footage also showed villages throwing rocks at huddled ranks of police equipped with riot shields.

One video obtained by RTHK shows a loud bang and a flash going off near dozens of policemen huddled in formation behind shields.

Reuters cannot independently verify the authenticity of the videos.

The official microblog of Lufeng county police, which oversees Wukan, stated in a post on Tuesday the suspects had been organizing illegal assemblies and used threats to force villagers to join since June 19, a day after Lin was detained.

Since mid June, thousands of people in the village participated in a series of marches to protest Lin's arrest.
Romania - Factors to watch on Sept. 13

Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Tuesday.

HOLLANDE

French President Francois Hollande starts official visit to Romania to discuss strategic partnership.

INFLATION DATA

Romanian consumer prices fell 0.2 percent on the year in August compared with July's 0.8 percent fall, data from the National Statistics Board showed on Monday.

The median forecast of a Reuters poll of analysts showed Romanian consumer prices 0.4 percent down on the year.

DEBT TENDER

Romania sold 235 million lei ($59.31 million) worth of April 2024 treasury bonds on Monday, less than half the planned amount, at an average accepted yield at 2.74 percent, central bank data showed.

CEE MARKETS

Emerging European markets opened mostly lower on Monday, following developed markets lower, even though deflation appears muted and credit-rating decisions were likely to benefit the region's economies.

For the long-term Romanian diary, click on

For emerging markets economic events, click on

For an index of all diaries, click on
China names new Tianjin Communist Party boss amid corruption probe

BEIJING, Sept 13 (Reuters) - China has appointed former Communist Party secretary of Hubei province Li Hongzhong as the new party chief for the strategic port city of Tianjin, days after announcing a corruption investigation into the northeastern city's former mayor.

Dozens of senior officials have been investigated or jailed since President Xi Jinping assumed power almost four years ago, vowing to go after corruption and warning, like others before, the problem threatens the party's grip on power.

The party's graft-busting Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on Saturday that the mayor and acting party chief of Tianjin, 61-year-old Huang Xingguo, was suspected of "serious discipline breaches", a euphemism for corruption.

"Huang Xingguo will no longer act as Tianjin party secretary, has been excused from his positions as municipal deputy party secretary, standing committee member, and mayor, and will be handled according to relevant laws and regulations," Xinhua said. It gave no other details.

Li, 60, has been appointed as Tianjin's party secretary, a post that outranks the mayor, and would no longer hold his positions in Hubei, the official Xinhua news agency said in a short article.

Tianjin is an important port city about an hour from Beijing by car that has ambitions to become a financial hub for northern China. It is one of four conurbations - along with Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing - termed a municipality, giving it the same high status as a province.

In August last year, a series of massive explosions at a chemicals warehouse in Tianjin killed about 170 people, sparking anger nationwide that it had been built so close to residential areas.

Last month, the party announced it was investigating Yin Hailin, a long-time city planning official who became Tianjin's deputy mayor in 2012, also on suspicion of corruption.

Huang's fall from grace appears to have come out of the blue. On Saturday, the official Tianjin Daily covered his visit to a middle school on its front page and praised teachers for their work.

Critics have accused Xi of using the corruption campaign as a cover to root out political rivals, though he has denied this.

Last year, a Chinese court jailed former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang for life for bribery, leaking state secrets and abuse of power.

He was the most senior Chinese official to be ensnared in a graft probe since the party swept to power in 1949.
Philippine military says defence relations with U.S. "rock solid"

MANILA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The Philippine military said defence relations with the United States were "rock solid", a day after President Rodrigo Duterte called for the withdrawal of U.S. special forces in the south of the country.

"The recent pronouncement will affect only a token number of American servicemen who are confined mainly in Zamboanga City," army spokesman Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla said in a statement.

"They provide technical assistance and training to their Filipino counterparts in combating terrorism in the Philippines. We assure our people and allies that Philippine-U.S. defence relations remain rock solid."

Duterte on Monday called for the withdrawal of U.S. special forces from Zamboanga, saying their presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners.
South African economy destabilised by Gordhan row - deputy finmin

JOHANNESBURG, Sept 13 (Reuters) - A police probe into South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is destabilising the government and creating uncertainty across Africa's most industrialised economy, deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas said on Tuesday.

Gordhan declined last month to obey a police summons linked to the inquiry into whether he had used a tax service unit to spy on politicians including President Jacob Zuma. Gordhan said he had done nothing wrong.

"It does destabilise, not only Treasury, it creates uncertainties across the economy," Jonas told 702 Talk Radio.
Israel targets Syrian positions after bomb lands in Golan-army

JERUSALEM, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft attacked targets in Syria on Tuesday, hours after a stray mortar bomb from fighting among factions in Syria struck the Golan Heights, the Israeli military said.

The strike came hours after a nationwide ceasefire in Syria brokered by the United States and Russia went into effect on Monday evening, the second attempt this year by Washington and Moscow to halt the five-year-old civil war.

No casualties from the mortar bomb that hit Israeli-held territory on Monday evening were reported and the military said in a statement "aircraft targeted artillery positions of (the) Syrian regime in the central Syrian Golan Heights".

The area is close to where fighting in the Syrian civil war has been taking place. Israel has responded similarly in the past when there has been an overspill of fire into the territory.

The previous retaliation for errant fire took place on Saturday when Israeli aircraft struck Syrian positions. A military spokeswoman said Tuesday's strike was the fourth retaliation since Sept. 4.
Games-Japan's Nagoya, Aichi resume talks on joint 2026 Asian Games bid

Sept 13 (Reuters) - Representatives of Nagoya city and Aichi Prefecture have visited the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) office in Tokyo and informed the governing body they intend to resume talks regarding a joint bid to host the 2026 Asian Games.

Nagoya's deputy mayor Teruo Shinkai told reporters on Monday that his city would restart "best efforts once again toward a joint bid", Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported.

Discussions between officials from the prefecture and their counterparts from its capital Nagoya stalled last week as the prefecture had not yet come up with detailed estimates to help them identify how costs would be split.

Aichi's prefectural government has since indicated to Nagoya that total costs are estimated to reach roughly 85 billion yen ($834 million).

About 25 billion yen is expected to be covered by sponsorships and other revenue, with the prefecture paying two-thirds of the remainder and Nagoya the rest.

The JOC is scheduled to take a decision on Japan's candidate site for the 2026 Asian Games later on Tuesday.

The Olympic Council of Asia is expected to select the host location at a meeting scheduled for Sept. 25 in Danang, Vietnam.

Japan last hosted the Asian Games in Hiroshima in 1994. The next Games will be held in Indonesia's Jakarta and Palembang from Aug. 18 to Sept. 2, 2018.
Poland - Factors to Watch Sept 13

Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Tuesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 2 hours):

DATA

Polish central bank will release July current account data and August core CPI data at 1200 GMT.

BANKS

The central bank said that the cost of returning excessive amount of money banks charged clients who took Swiss franc denominated mortgages for selling them foreign currency may be two times higher than 3.6-4 billion zlotys ($929.49 million-$1.03 billion) expected earlier, Rzeczpospolita daily said.

GAS LINK

Poland will change the route of the planned Gas Interconnector Poland-Lithuania, which will delay the project, Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported.

****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
After Ebola, ban on pregnant pupils sours return to school in Sierra Leone

By Kieran Guilbert

KAMBIA, Sierra Leone, Sept 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - B eaten at home by her parents and unable to go to school due to the Ebola outbreak which devastated Sierra Leone, 15-year-old Rugiatu Conteh had nowhere to go, and no one she could turn to.

Until she met Abdul, a charming man in his early twenties.

"He was kind and helped me to get by, at first," she said.

"But he changed when he learned I'd got belly (become pregnant). Then he disappeared," Conteh, now 17, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the northern district of Kambia.

Struggling to survive without Abdul, or her parents who had died of Ebola, the pregnant teenager took solace in resuming her education when schools reopened in April last year, after nine months of closure in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.

But her sense of hope was short-lived. Along with thousands of other expectant girls, Conteh was banned from going to school by the government when classes resumed. Many girls missed entrance exams for universities and colleges as a result.

The education ministry said last year allowing the girls to go to school would undermine their ability to do well in class, expose them to ridicule and encourage others to become pregnant.

"We are angry about the ban - it wasn't our fault we had so many problems during Ebola," said Salamatu Bangura, 17, who gave birth to a boy last year. She had slept with an older boy who paid for school supplies and books her family could not afford.

The government and United Nations last year launched alternative classes for pregnant students, which will continue to cater for those who fall foul of the ban as Sierra Leone starts its first full academic year since the Ebola outbreak.

Yet countless girls will suffer stigma and discrimination unless the ban is lifted in the West African nation where only six in 10 girls aged 15 to 24 are literate, compared with three-quarters of boys in that age range, human rights activists say.

"Pregnant girls are being denied key chances to move forward with their lives, and to ensure early pregnancy does not become the event that determines the rest of their lives," said Sabrina Mahtani, a researcher at Amnesty International.

"NOTHING IS FOR NOTHING"

Even before Ebola broke out in late 2013, Sierra Leone had one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world. One in four girls between the ages of 15 and 19 had children or were pregnant, figures from the 2013 government health survey show.

Rape, abusive relationships, and sex in exchange for money were rife in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak, fuelling a spike in teenage pregnancies, several aid agencies said.

Some 18,000 teenage girls became pregnant during the world's worst recorded Ebola outbreak, which killed nearly 4,000 people in Sierra Leone, according to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).

"Poverty and sexual violence fuelled teenage pregnancies, but too many people see it from another perspective," said Wongani Grace Taulo of the U.N's children's agency (UNICEF).

"They say the girls are going out, looking, begging for sex. It is so frustrating that these girls are seen as in the wrong."

Leaning against the wall outside a crowded classroom, with three or four pupils huddled around each desk, Ishata Kaagbo laid the blame for her pregnancy on men from local biker gangs.

"One of the boys would drive me around, give me money for lunch, and look after me," the 15-year-old mother said, who has just returned to school with her classmates Conteh and Bangura.

At the nearby Rokupr Bike Riders Association, dozens of young men, shouting to be heard, traded insults and teased those who had not been "potent enough" to impregnate a local girl.

"A lot of girls don't get enough support from their parents, so we help them, and they do something confidential for us in return," said 18-year-old Bai Turai. "Nothing is for nothing."

Amid the back-and-forth banter, some of the men said they felt forced to abandon the girls when they became pregnant, as they could not afford to look after them and were afraid of being attacked or taken to the police by the girl's relatives.

BACK TO SCHOOL

Pregnant girls and young mothers in Sierra Leone have traditionally been discouraged from going to school, said Yusuf Kamara, a state representative and head of education for Kambia.

"Girls are not meant to expose their pregnancy," Kamara said. "The government's ban is the will of the people."

Yet across lush and leafy Kambia, a mainly Muslim state along Sierra Leone's border with Guinea, many teachers and parents firmly disagree.

"We want our girls to go to school - to have better lives than us," said 62-year-old Soria Bangura, a father of three.

Teacher Alpha Kamara said he and his colleagues "swept the ban under the carpet" by allowing their pregnant students to finish their exams, and giving them tutoring outside of school.

"We couldn't leave so many young people behind," he said.

After the ban, many girls said they were mocked and shunned by their peers, while some were forced to undergo public pregnancy tests, such as having their breasts and stomachs felt by teachers and giving urine samples, Amnesty said.

To combat this, and ensure pregnant girls did not miss a year's schooling, organisations like UNICEF set up after-hours sessions in schools and classes at separate learning centres.

Giggling and exchanging shy smiles, the girls, now back at school, recalled sharing tips and stories about being pregnant. "Most of our babies' fathers ran away," Bangura said. "At least we had each other - we were all going through the same thing."

Some of the girls were frustrated at being forced to repeat the year that they completed in the alternative classes.

"The government want to punish the girls by setting them back a year," Taulo of UNICEF said. "Who knows when the state will stop making a moral example of them and end the ban?"

But nothing could trouble the grin on Conteh's face as she spoke about returning to school, and her hopes for the future.
Czech Republic - Factors To Watch on Sept 13

PRAGUE, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Czech financial markets on Tuesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Czech Republic: GMT + 2 hours) =========================ECONOMIC DATA========================== Real-time economic data releases.................... Summary of economic data and forecasts........... Recently released economic data.................. Previous stories on Czech data............. **For a schedule of corporate and economic events: http://emea1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/Apps/CountryWeb/#/2E/events-overview ==========================NEWS================================== EU FUNDING: European Union countries agreed on Monday to slash funds from next year's EU budget to poor regions of the bloc, mostly in the east, while increasing spending to manage migration flows and spur growth. Story: Related stories: BUDGET: The Czech central state budget deficit may narrow to zero as soon as this year, Finance Minister Andrej Babis was quoted as saying on Monday. Story: Related stories: CEE MARKETS: Emerging European markets opened mostly lower on Monday, following developed markets lower, even though deflation appears muted and credit-rating decisions were likely to benefit the region's economies. Story: Related stories: =============================PRESS DIGEST======================= RENEWABLES: President Milos Zeman called for the end of subsidies for renewable energy at a Tripartite meeting of the government, employers and unions. Industry Minister Jan Mladek said he would support ending the subsidies but that they had been put in place before 2010 and were backed by the state. Hospodarske Noviny, page 3 REGULATOR: The UOHS anti-trust regulator started proceedings against the Transport Ministry for its extension of a no-contest contract extension with road toll operator Kapsch. Hospodarske Noviny, page 3 (Reuters has not verified the stories, nor does it vouch for their accuracy.) For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX For updates on CEE currencies TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets Prague Newsroom: +420 224 190 477 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (Reporting by Prague Newsroom)
Syrian army says it shot down Israeli warplane and a drone - state media

BEIRUT, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The Syrian army said on Tuesday it had shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone in Syria after an Israeli attack on a Syrian army position in southern Syria, state media reported.

SANA news agency said the warplane had attacked an army position at 1 a.m. on Tuesday in the southern Quneitra countryside. It and a drone were then shot down.
Three Qatari soldiers killed in Yemen - state news agency

DUBAI, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Three Qatari members of a Gulf Arab military coalition have been killed during operations in Yemen, state media said, their country's highest single death toll in the 18-month conflict.

The soldiers died on Monday, state news agency QNA said, without giving any information on how or where they lost their lives.

Western-allied Qatar has sent around 1,000 ground troops to Yemen, Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported in September, the country's first reported involvement in the Saudi-backed offensive.

The Arab coalition is fighting to try to restore Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power after Iran-allied Houthi forces advanced on his temporary headquarters in the southern port city of Aden in March last year.
PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - Sept 13

SOFIA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

-- Bulgarian deputy prime minister Rumiana Bachvarova said that the performance of Bulgaria's candidate for Secretary-General of the United Nations, Irina Bokova, has not been convincing so far so that the government can rely on a final positive decision. (Standart, 24 Chasa, Trud, Monitor)

-- Bulgarian environment authorities have imposed a fine of 500,000 levs ($287,141) on the Bulgarian car part plant of French Montupet for polluting the air. The company said it has not been informed officially and has not seen any official document proving the pollution. (Capital daily, Monitor, Standart)
Duterte says Philippines not cutting ties with allies

MANILA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday his country was not cutting ties with its allies, a day after he called for the withdrawal of U.S. special forces.

"We are not going to cut our umbilical cord to countries we are allied with," Duterte said in a speech at a Philippine air force event.

Duterte also said the Philippines does not intend to fight any other country.
Zimbabwe police say to ban protests in capital for a month

HARARE, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Zimbabwean police plan to ban public demonstrations in the capital for a month, according to a public notice issued on Tuesday that opposition lawyers said marked a slide towards a police state.

Political tension is rising in the southern African nation after protests in the last three months against the rule of 92-year-old President Robert Mugabe, who has held power since independence from Britain in 1980.

Angered by a jobless rate above 80 percent and the worst fiscal crunch and cash shortages since the adoption of the U.S. dollar in 2009, many Zimbabweans have taken to social media to organise anti-government activities.

In a notice published in the state-owned Herald newspaper, Harare police commander Newbert Saunyama announced "a proposed temporary prohibition order" for public demonstrations in central Harare from Sept. 16 to Oct. 15.

A High Court judge last week ruled that a previous two-week police ban had not been issued correctly and violated the constitution.

Tendai Biti, a former finance minister and prominent lawyer who challenged the initial ban, said the law the police were using was unconstitutional.

Under security laws, police can ban demonstrations for up to a month if there is justification but can only do so after issuing a notice of their intention, to allow affected parties to make submissions.

"It is quite clear that we are now moving into a police state and it means that lawyers like myself and others we will do everything to fight back," Biti said.
Qatar welcomes Syria ceasefire deal

DUBAI, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Qatar, a leading supporter of Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, welcomed a ceasefire in Syria, saying compliance would hasten a political solution and facilitate humanitarian help.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday the truce, brokered by Russia and the United States and which began at sundown on Monday, was holding across Syria.

QNA said Qatar's foreign ministry, in a statement dated on Saturday, "expressed hope that the implementation of the agreement would contribute to reaching a comprehensive and permanent political settlement to end the Syrian crisis and lift the humanitarian suffering from the Syrian people ... ".

Qatar also urged world powers to ensure Syrian government forces implement the agreement.

Other Gulf Arab states, including regional power and main rebel supporter Saudi Arabia, have yet to comment on the ceasefire agreement.
Philippines guarantees U.S. deal intact as Duterte's salvos test ties

By Enrico Dela Cruz and Manuel Mogato

MANILA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The Philippines moved to shore up relations with the United States on Tuesday with guarantees that a treaty between them would be honoured and security ties were "rock solid", despite President Rodrigo Duterte's railings against Washington.

The firebrand leader launched more verbal salvos on Monday about what he called atrocities under American colonial rule, calling for the pullout of U.S. special forces stationed in the restive south that he said were complicating counter-insurgency operations.

Duterte is hugely popular at home for his brash remarks and take-charge style, but his frequent tirades against Washington, including calling both President Barack Obama and his ambassador to Manila a "son of a bitch", have tested a relationship of strategic importance to both sides.

Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay said Duterte's remarks, including that the southern Philippines "would never have peace" while allied with Washington, were not a signal that a pact between them would be abrogated.

"The president has said ... that we will respect and continue to honour our treaty obligations and commitments," Yasay said in a radio interview.

As his administration scurried to put out fires, Duterte followed up with a guarantee of his own, saying the Philippines would not "cut our umbilical cord" with allies, but would pursue its own path.

"We are not, we could never be, just a small country and to be shouted at or lectured upon," he said in a speech at an air force event.

It was the latest sign of the abrasive former lawyer hinting at taking decisive measures, then later ruling them out, adding to concerns in Washington about his volatility.

Obama last week cancelled a meeting with Duterte after his outburst, saying the mood was not conducive to productive talks.

At an official ceremony on Monday, Duterte said U.S. special forces could become high-value targets for Abu Sayyaf rebels notorious for kidnapping and beheading foreigners.

'ROCK SOLID'

But that, the military said in a statement, would entail the exit of a "token" number of Americans, and broader defence programmes with the United States would remain intact.

"Philippine-U.S. defence relations remain rock solid," armed forces spokesman Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla said.

Duterte had on Monday shown pictures of what he said were victims of colonial-era atrocities against Muslims in Mindanao, repeating assertions that Americans were to blame for the instability that has dogged the region.

Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella described Duterte's presentation as a "backgrounder" for Filipinos that explained his independent foreign policy.

"These actions, these references that he's making, are intended to communicate to one and all that we need to be ready to chart our own course," Abella told reporters.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday emphasised shared concerns and interests with the Philippines, then took a thinly veiled swipe at Duterte, who won a May election by a big margin, appearing to compare him outspoken Repubican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

"Elections do say a lot about what kind of person is going to represent your country on the international stage..." he told reporters.

The United States has only a few troops remaining in Mindanao after the conclusion last year of a programme that once had 1,200 personnel providing technical and logistics support. Washington's security priority has since shifted towards the South China Sea, where the Philippines in among several countries at odds with China.

Ranhilio Aquino, a Catholic priest and dean of the San Beda Graduate School of Law, said Duterte's complaints about Washington were not without cause, but he should think carefully about important alliances.
Hungary should be excluded from EU, Luxembourg For Min tells paper

BERLIN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Hungary should be excluded from the European Union because of its tough anti-migrant policies, including erecting a razor-wire fence, which undermine the EU's values, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn told Germany's Die Welt newspaper on Tuesday.

The unusually strong comments against Viktor Orban's government come days before an EU summit in Bratislava.
EU should expel Hungary for mistreating migrants, Luxembourg minister says

By Madeline Chambers and Marton Dunai

BERLIN/BUDAPEST, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Hungary should be excluded from the European Union for anti-migrant policies that undermine EU values, including erecting a razor-wire fence, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said, provoking a scornful riposte from Budapest.

The unusually strong attack came three days before a crucial summit intended to project the bloc's unity after Britain's shock decision to leave.

"We cannot accept that the basic values of the European Union are being so seriously breached," Asselborn told German daily Die Welt in comments published on Tuesday.

"Anyone, like Hungary, who builds fences against war refugees or breaches press freedom and the independence of the justice system should be temporarily, or if needed forever, excluded from the EU."

The direct call for the exclusion of a fellow EU member state was unprecedented, and underscored the extent of Europe's divisions over sharing responsibility for the more than 1 million migrants and refugees who reached its shores last year.

Asked about the remarks by reporters in Moscow, Asselborn said he had wanted to stress that the EU had to protect its core values, and he was not picking on one country.

"We can resolve the problem of Brexit but we can't resolve the problems of the survival of the EU if we lose the essence of the EU. So what I told the German newspaper is not directed against one nation, it's aimed at better understanding the essence and values of the EU," he said.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said his country had defended Europe throughout its history, and described his Luxembourg colleague as "condescending, uppity, and frustrated."

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has angered many of his EU partners with his tough rhetoric on migrants and by fortifying his borders to keep them out. He is urging the nation to vote in a referendum next month against future EU quotas stipulating how many refugees each country should take.

INHUMAN TREATMENT

The EU could not tolerate such behaviour, and exclusion was "the only possibility to preserve the integrity and values of the European Union," Asselborn told Die Welt. Humans fleeing from war were being treated almost worse than wild animals, he added.

"The fence that Hungary is building to keep out refugees is getting longer, higher and more dangerous. Hungary is not far from issuing an order to shoot refugees," he said.

In response, Szijjarto told state news agency MTI only Hungarians could decide who they were willing to live with, a right that neither Brussels bureaucrats nor the Luxembourg foreign minister could take away.

He said it was strange that Asselborn, who came from the land of "tax optimisation", and another Luxembourger, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, were talking about shared burdens.

"We understand what it means, though: Hungary has to pay the piper after other people make mistakes," he said.
Amid strains, Qatar urges Iran, Gulf Arabs to be good neighbours

DUBAI, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Qatar's Emir called for good neighbourly relations between Gulf Arabs and Iran in a telephone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Qatar media reported, amid fresh strains between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran over the haj pilgrimage.

Tensions have been rising since Gulf Arab allies variously cut or downgraded ties with Iran in January following the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran, itself a response to the Saudi execution of a dissident Shi'ite cleric.

Harsh exchanges in recent days between Saudi Arabia and Iran over Riyadh's running of the haj have further heightened emotions, after the two countries failed to agree on arrangements to allow Iranian pilgrims to take part.

State news agency QNA said Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani telephoned Rouhani to offer greetings for the Muslim Eid al-Adha feast which Muslims began celebrating on Monday.

It said he "asserted that Gulf-Iranian relations must focus on the principles of good neighbourly relations, mutual respect and the need to resolve any Gulf-Iranian differences through dialogue and negotiations".

Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, the kingdom's top religious authority, last week described Iran's leaders as not Muslims, after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticised Saudi Arabia over a crush at the haj last year that killed at least 700 pilgrims.

Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said the mufti's remarks were evidence of bigotry among Saudi leaders and suggested that the kingdom supports terrorism.
S.Korea's biggest earthquake triggers nuclear safety concerns

By Jane Chung

SEOUL, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Two earthquakes that jolted South Korea on Monday night, including the largest ever recorded in the country, prompted concerns about the safety of nuclear plants clustered in the quake-prone southeast.

Korea's Meteorological Agency said the two earthquakes, of magnitude of 5.1 and 5.8, occurred near the city of Gyeongju. They could be felt in the capital Seoul, over 300 km (186 miles) to the northwest.

Fourteen people were injured but there were no reports of serious damage, a Ministry of Public Safety and Security official said.

Nonetheless, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co shut down four nuclear reactors at the Wolsong complex in Gyeongju as a precaution.

South Korea's reactors are designed to withstand a magnitude 6.5 or 7.0 earthquake, according to the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission.

Orders were given to nuclear operators to upgrade old reactors to that standard after the disaster at Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011.

"That will be completed by next year," said Shim Eun-jung, a spokeswoman at the nuclear watchdog.

South Korea's 25 reactors supply about one-third of its electricity and make it the world's fifth-largest user of nuclear power. It plans to add 9 more nuclear plants by 2027, according to the nuclear watchdog.

As in many countries, nuclear power is controversial in South Korea, especially after a 2012 scandal over parts being supplied with fake certificates prompted shutdowns.

Park Jong-kwon, head of an anti-nuclear civic group in South Gyeongsang Province, said no more nuclear reactors should be built in southeastern cities like Ulsan and Gyeongju as they are close to an active fault line.

"Even though nuclear reactors are designed to withstand an earthquake of a magnitude 7.0, if they are hit by 4.5 and 5.8 magnitude earthquakes several times, they can be knocked down by a real 7.0 magnitude earthquake at a single blow," Park said.

About 70 percent of South Korea's nuclear reactors are in the southeast, partly to locate them further away from North Korea, with which the country remains technically at war.

Greenpeace Korea filed a lawsuit against the nuclear watchdog on Monday, before the earthquakes, urging it to scrap a plan to add two more reactors in Ulsan.

Koreans living near the nuclear power plant in Gyeongju city also voiced anxiety.
Germany arrests three Syrians suspected of IS involvement

BERLIN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - German police have arrested three Syrian nationals in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein suspected of being sent to Germany by the militant Islamic State group, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Prosecutors suspect the three men, aged between 17 and 26-years old, were dispatched to Germany in Nov. 2015 "either to carry out a mission that they had been informed about or to wait for further instructions". It was unclear where any attack would have taken place.

"Concrete missions or orders have not so far been found in the course of investigations carried out so far," said federal prosecutors in a statement.
UN rights chief condemns Syria abuses under Assad's rule

GENEVA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein condemned the Syrian government on Tuesday, in a wide-ranging speech cataloguing human rights abuses around the world.

"This is a state led by a medical doctor and yet is believed to have gassed its own people; has attacked hospitals and bombed civilian neighbourhoods with indiscriminate explosive weapons; and maintains tens of thousands of detainees in inhuman conditions," Zeid said.
Israeli aircraft attack Syrian army position, Israel denies any shot down

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Israel said its aircraft attacked a Syrian army position on Tuesday after a stray mortar bomb struck the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, and it denied a Syrian statement that a warplane and drone were shot down.

The air strike was a now-routine Israeli response to the occasional spillover from fighting in a five-year-old civil war, and across Syria a ceasefire was holding at the start of its second day.

Syria's army command said in a statement that Israeli warplanes had attacked an army position at 1 a.m. on Tuesday (2200 GMT, Monday) in the countryside of Quneitra province.

The Israeli military said its aircraft attacked targets in Syria hours after the mortar bomb from fighting among factions in Syria struck the Golan Heights. Israel captured the plateau from Syria in a 1967 war.

The Syrian army said it had shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone after the Israeli attack.

Denying any of its aircraft had been lost, the Israeli military said in a statement: "Overnight two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission to target Syrian artillery positions. At no point was the safety of (Israeli) aircraft compromised."
PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - SEPT 13

MOSCOW, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The following are some stories in Russia's newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

VEDOMOSTI

www.vedomosti.ru

- Russia's pre-election campaign this year is the most low-profile in modern history, the daily says, saying that suggests the authorities want a low turnout on election day, Sept. 18. The elections will decide the new make-up of the 450-member Duma or lower house of parliament.

- A new international airport near Moscow in the town of Zhukovsky hosted its first international flight -- from Belarus -- on Monday and plans to welcome at least 12 million passengers by 2021, the daily says.

- The Energy Ministry has tried to find a guaranteed energy supplier for the North Caucasus republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia for the sixth time. The republics' debts for past energy consumption are so high that there is scant interest from potential bidders, the daily says.

KOMMERSANT

www.kommersant.ru

- Russia has increased its overseas beer exports by 1.6 times in the first six months of the year despite Western sanctions, the daily says. Ukraine was the main consumer, more than tripling its beer imports from Russia, according to customs statistics.

IZVESTIA

www.izvestia.ru

- Russia could use Topol intercontinental ballistic missiles removed from military service to take satellites into orbit, the daily says.

- Russia is to start mass producing dog collar trackers hooked up to satellites similar to the one given to President Vladimir Putin's favourite dog Connie, the daily says.

ROSSIISKAYA GAZETA

www.rg.ru
Russia says leader's death won't destabilise Uzbekistan -RIA

MOSCOW, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The death of Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov will not negatively affect the political and military situation in the country, RIA news agency quoted a senior Russian diplomat as saying on Tuesday.

Karimov, who had ruled Central Asia's most populous nation with an iron hand for 27 years, died of a stroke this month.

Zamir Kabulov, a Russian Foreign Ministry official and presidential envoy on Afghanistan, said extremists are unable to destabilise the situation in Uzbekistan, the news agency reported.
EU-Morocco trade deal annulment should be overturned -adviser

BRUSSELS, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The European Union's top court should set aside a judgment invalidating a farm trade accord between the EU and Morocco, an adviser to the court said on Tuesday, offering a potential resolution to a diplomatic clash between the two.

The General Court of the European Union, the EU's second-highest court, ruled in December that the trade deal was void after a suit filed by the Polisario Front, which wants independence for the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

The court held that the EU had failed to examine whether a deal would affect the exploitation of natural resources in the Moroccan-controlled territory. That ruling prompted Morocco to suspend contact with EU institutions for four weeks and the EU to lodge a legal appeal.

Advocate General Melchior Wathelet said on Tuesday that Western Sahara was not part of Morocco so neither the 2000 EU-Morocco Association Agreement nor the 2012 EU-Morocco Agreement on liberalisation of trade in agricultural and fishery products applied to the territory.

If the trade agreements were declared valid by the European Court of Justice, the EU and Morocco should avoid a repeat of the diplomatic clash at the start of this year.

Opinions by the advocate general are not binding, but EU court judges follow them in the majority of cases.

The EU and Morocco have struck agreements allowing duty-free quotas for agricultural products such as tomatoes and granting access for European vessels to fish in Moroccan waters in return for financial assistance. The two sides also began negotiations in 2013 to form a deeper and broader free trade agreement.

Morocco has controlled most of Western Sahara since 1975 and claims sovereignty over the sparsely populated stretch of desert to its south, which has offshore fishing as well as phosphate and possibly oil reserves.
China police fire rubber bullets as 'democracy' village erupts after arrests

By Venus Wu and James Pomfret

HONG KONG, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Chinese riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in a village once dubbed a symbol of grassroots democracy, residents and Hong Kong media said, less than a week after the elected village chief was jailed for corruption.

Pre-dawn police raids turned to violence after least 13 people were arrested in the fishing village of Wukan in the southern province of Guangdong, residents said.

Human rights activists in Hong Kong, about a four-hour drive to the southwest, believe the crackdown could represent an unprecedented push to silence Wukan, whose villagers received international attention after an 2011 uprising led to authorities granting direct village-wide elections.

While low-level democratic experiments have been tried in villages across China, Wukan's took place in the glare of both domestic and international publicity - and marked a rare moment when Communist Party officials backed down in the face of protest.

Villagers, including old people, pelted police with bricks as they advanced with shields, batons and helmets, with clouds of tear gas wafting down the street, video footage seen by Reuters showed.

The streets were strewn with bricks and used rubber bullet casements and tear gas canisters.

Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video.

One Wukan resident reached by Reuters by mobile phone said riot police hit people with batons, setting off tear gas grenades and firing rubber bullets at villagers, including old people.

He said police had entered the village in their "thousands". Others said between 300 and 400 police were involved in the operation, including house-to-house searches.

"The riot police started attacking and shooting at us," he said. "They are still fighting now. We want them to leave."

Calls for widespread democracy are anathema to party rulers, who have long feared such sentiment in Hong Kong leeching across the border into southern China. Weeks of "umbrella revolution" protests in the former British colony in late 2014 demanding fully free elections presented Beijing with one of its biggest political challenges in decades.

Tuesday's crackdown also follows victories earlier this month by several pro-independence candidates in Hong Kong legislative elections - the first major polls since the 2014 protests.

Amnesty International's Hong Kong-based China researcher, Patrick Poon, said this was the most serious crackdown Wukan had seen since 2011, when villagers ransacked the police station and government offices in protest against land grabs and corruption.

"The government wants to use this crackdown to set an example and warn other neighbouring villages not to stage protests," Poon said.

"They are using so much force, it is quite possible the villagers may not be able to say anything for a while."

The raids came days after a popular and democratically elected village chief, Lin Zuluan, one of the last of the 2011 protest leaders to remain in office, was jailed for three years on graft and other charges.

The sentence outraged many villagers and one said at the time fresh unrest was likely.

"POLICE LOCKDOWN"

Thousands also took to the streets in June to protest the arrest of Lin, who later appeared on television in what villagers believed was a forced confession. Democratic hopes had all but evaporated ahead of Tuesday's violence, with protest leaders either in detention, in exile, facing arrest or quitting their posts.

Another person whose relatives are in Wukan told Reuters the village was now in police lockdown and that internet connection had been severed.

Photos on social media purporting to be from Wukan showed villagers with wounds that appeared to be from rubber bullets.

One video obtained by the Hong Kong government-funded RTHK shows a loud bang and a flash going off near dozens of policemen huddled in formation behind shields.

The official microblog of Lufeng county police, who oversee Wukan, stated in a post on Tuesday the 13 people arrested had been organising illegal assemblies and used threats to force villagers to join since June 19, a day after Lin was detained.

The police microblog said later its operation was supported by the public and order was being restored to Wukan.

It also issued a stern warning to people using social media who they said were spreading false rumours on "the so-called Wukan issue", adding that cyber police were investigating.

Many microblog posts sharing photos of the faceoff in Wukan have since been deleted.

An official from the publicity department of the Shanwei City government, which oversees Wukan, said when asked about the violence: "I'm not very clear. Please ask another department."
WHO says Angola, Congo yellow fever outbreak under control

GENEVA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - A yellow fever outbreak in Angola and Congo has been brought under control by a major vaccination campaign, the head of pandemic and epidemic diseases at the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
UN rights chief condemns Syria abuses under Assad's rule

GENEVA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein condemned the Syrian government on Tuesday, in a wide-ranging speech cataloguing human rights abuses around the world.

In a speech opening a three-week session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Zeid said Syria was one of five countries that routinely refused to cooperate with human rights investigators.

"This is a state led by a medical doctor and yet is believed to have gassed its own people; has attacked hospitals and bombed civilian neighbourhoods with indiscriminate explosive weapons; and maintains tens of thousands of detainees in inhuman conditions," Zeid said.

"Words cannot convey how profoundly I condemn this situation."

The other countries are Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, and Iran, but Israel also had a long record of refusing cooperation in terms of access to occupied Palestinian territory, he added.

Venezuela had comprehensively denied access to Zeid's staff, refusing his regional representative a visa for the past two and a half years, he said.

"States may shut my office out - but they will not shut us up; neither will they blind us. If access is refused us, we will assume the worst, and yet do our utmost to nonetheless report as accurately as we can on serious allegations."

The council, based in Geneva, is made up of 47 countries and aims to protect human rights around the world. It can mandate investigations into suspected abuses.

He cited southeastern Turkey and the Ethiopian regions of Omoria and Amhara, Uzbekistan and both sides of the line of control between India and Pakistan as places that needed immediate investigation, as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the Caucasus.

The situation in Yemen should be subjected to a "comprehensive inquiry by an international independent body", and Bahrain should also pay more attention to human rights, he said.

"The past decade has demonstrated repeatedly and with punishing clarity exactly how disastrous the outcomes can be when a government attempts to smash the voices of its people, instead of serving them," Zeid said in reference to Bahrain.

Zeid, who recently attacked populists politicians such as U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump in a speech in the Hague, took another swipe at the dangers of populism in his speech to the council.
Bulgaria's pine forests threatened by bark beetle

BREZNIK, Bulgaria, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Pine forests planted in Bulgaria to combat soil erosion are falling prey to a beetle that is feeding on trees already weakened by excessively hot weather, dense planting and a lack of proper logging in the years after the fall of communism.

More than 7,000 hectares of pine forest in the Balkan country perished due to bark beetle attacks in August alone - an area three times bigger than in previous years, said Tsenko Tsenov, the director of Bulgaria's forest agency.

The beetle problem concerns pines planted on around 680,000 hectares of land since the 1950s at lower altitudes than they grow naturally to help fight soil erosion. Global warming and inadequate logging have exacerbated the problem by denying the trees their optimal moisture and the space they need.

The damage is greatest in southern and southwestern Bulgaria, where forest officials have adopted logging plans to tackle the pest infestation. About a third of the lower altitude pines in the Rhodope mountains near the Greek border have succumbed to the bark beetle and other diseases, Tsenov said.

The long-term solution lies in allowing the broad-leafed deciduous trees traditionally dominant at such altitudes to flourish once again, said Damyan Damyanov, head of a local forest enterprise, during an inspection at a logging site near the southwestern town of Breznik.
German For Min says on Hungary: We should not push out EU partner

RIGA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday he did not share a view expressed by his Luxembourg counterpart in a newspaper interview that Hungary should be excluded from the European Union because of its tough anti-migrant policies.

"This is not an agreed position in Europe," Steinmeier said at a news conference in Riga. "I can understand, looking at Hungary, that some in Europe are getting impatient... however, it is not my personal approach to show a European member state the door," he added.
Swiss Supreme Court rules bank data can be sent to Dutch

ZURICH, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Switzerland's highest court has ruled a request from the Netherlands for information on Dutch account holders at Swiss banks is valid, overturning a lower court's decision to block the order.

Swiss banks have paid billions of dollars in fines in recent years as global prosecutors, led by the United States, chipped away at the secrecy rules that for decades enabled the world's wealthy to keep their cash in Switzerland, out of sight of the taxman.

Last year, the Netherlands said it had requested information on Dutch account holders at UBS and Credit Suisse , making use of a new bilateral agreement to crack down on tax avoidance.

But in March, the Swiss Federal Administrative Court sided with a Dutch client of UBS fighting the order, ruling the request was not covered by the information-sharing agreement since it did not include names of individuals.

The tax agency appealed, and on Monday Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court ruled the Dutch request did not require the names of clients but just needed enough information to identify account holders.

The court said the purpose of the double taxation agreement is to ensure a broad information exchange between the Netherlands and Switzerland, without encouraging so-called "fishing expeditions".

The decision will be a printed as a guideline for future cases in this area.
Germany arrests 3 Syrians, sees same network as Paris attacks

By Erik Kirschbaum and Madeline Chambers

BERLIN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Three young Syrian men arrested in Germany on Tuesday were Islamic State members brought into the country by the same network that smuggled militants into France to carry out deadly attacks last November, the German government said.

Federal prosecutors said police special forces arrested the three in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on suspicion of being sent by Islamic State "either to carry out a mission that they had been informed about or to wait for further instructions" for an attack.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said they arrived in late 2015, probably with the help of the same network that funnelled IS militants into Paris to carry out shootings and bombings that killed 130 people on Nov. 13 last year.

"Everything points to the fact that the same smuggler organisation behind the Paris attacks also brought the three men to Germany who were arrested," de Maiziere told a news conference. "Indications are that their travel documents all came from the same workshop in that region."

European governments are on high security alert after a series of militant strikes in France, Belgium and Germany, where three attacks this summer were carried out by asylum-seekers and two were claimed by Islamic State.

Around a million migrants arrived in Germany last year, and concern about their presence has grown since the attacks, raising pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel to cap arrivals at 200,000 refugees per year, as her Bavarian allies are demanding. She refuses to set such a limit.

More than 200 police were involved in the operation to arrest the three men, aged 17 to 26. ARD television said they were held after raids at refugee housing in towns north of Hamburg. German authorities searched the flats of the three suspects but did not reveal what they might have found.

BLENDING WITH REFUGEES

De Maiziere noted that two of the Paris attackers last year had registered as refugees. "That suggests that IS was determined to send these kinds of people to blend in with refugees in order to cause uncertainty in Europe and Germany."

He added: "The French connection ... is what makes this case so special. We have to find out if these are individual links or if there is a larger network. It shows IS is not only targeting France or Germany or Italy or Belgium or Britain - but the entire West."

Federal prosecutors said one suspect, Mahir Al-H., joined Islamic State in September 2015. He received weapons and explosives training in Raqqa, the militant group's de facto capital in Syria.

In October, he and the two other suspects, Mohamed A. and Ibrahim M., signed up with an Islamic State official responsible for operations and attacks outside Islamic State territory and travelled to Europe, the prosecutors said.
Iran launches new navy ship as tensions rise with U.S. in Gulf

BEIRUT, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Iran's Revolutionary Guard launched a new 55-metre-long naval ship on Tuesday that is capable of transporting a helicopter and up to 100 men, according to the website of state TV.

The ship's launch in the port city of Bushehr, comes at a time of high tension between Iran and the United States over Gulf waters. U.S. officials says there have been more than 30 close encounters between U.S. and Iranian vessels in the Gulf so far this year, over twice as many as in the same period of 2015.

On Sept. 4, a U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship changed course after an Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast-attack craft came within 91 metres of it in the central Gulf, at least the fourth such incident in less than a month.

"This ship increases the deterrent power of Iran and will have an effect on the calculations of the enemy, particularly America," Revolutionary Guard naval chief Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said at the launch, according to the state TV site.

Fadavi did not say whether the ship was equipped with any weapons capabilities. A photo posted on the state TV site showed a helicopter sitting on the top deck of the ship.

The ship was built in Bushehr by Khatam al Anbia, a huge construction and engineering firm overseen by the Guards, Fadavi said.
About 200 Zika cases recorded in Thailand - ministry

BANGKOK, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Thailand has recorded about 200 cases of Zika since January, the health ministry said on Tuesday, making it a country with one of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in the region.

It was the first time Thailand's health ministry has confirmed the number of Zika cases this year.

The announcement comes a day after health experts called on Thailand to be more transparent in reporting the Zika threat to the public after health officials played down risks from rising infections of the mosquito-borne virus.

Health officials have expressed concern that disclosing information on Zika, which is linked to serious birth defects, would damage Thailand's lucrative tourism industry.

"Since January, we have recorded about 200 cases and over the past three weeks, we have confirmed an average of 20 new cases per week," Ministry of Public Health spokesman Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai told Reuters.

"The number of cases is stable," he said, without giving further details.

Island city-state Singapore reported its first locally infected Zika patient on Aug. 27 and since then, the number of reported infections has soared to more than 300.

Malaysia and the Philippines have also reported cases.

The virus, which is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, has been circulating in Asia for years.

The lineage of the virus circulating in Asia is different to the one in the Americas, researchers say. The level of population immunity to the lineage of Zika in Asia remains unknown, according to the World Health Organization.

Suwannachai urged the public not to panic and reiterated a message aimed at reassuring tourists.

"People shouldn't be scared to visit provinces affected by the Zika virus," Suwannachai said.

Zika infections in pregnant women have been shown to cause microcephaly - a severe birth defect in which the head and brain are undersized - as well as other brain abnormalities.

The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last year in Brazil, which has since confirmed more than 1,800 cases of microcephaly.

Thailand has found no cases of microcephaly linked to Zika and it is monitoring about two dozen pregnant woman and about six who have given birth with no complications, the health ministry said.

In adults, Zika infections have also been linked to a rare neurological syndrome known as Guillain-Barre, as well as other neurological disorders.

The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947.
Dutch see demand for Groningen gas down sharply from 2020

AMSTERDAM, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Demand for gas from Groningen will "fall sharply from 2020" as production at the northern Dutch field is reduced, Economy Minister Henk Kamp said in a letter to parliament released on Tuesday.

The Netherlands has been forced to scale back production by roughly half at Groningen, which once met 10 percent of European Union gas requirements, to 24 billion cubic meters per year due to damage from earthquakes.

Citing a June study by Gasunie, Kamp said a 480 million euros gas conversion facility in Zuidbroek was no longer needed due to falling exports.

The Groningen gas field is operated by NAM, a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil Corp.

Dutch exports of gas have declined already and European countries, notably Germany, had said they would reduce Dutch imports further and seek other sources. The Netherlands had been studying the option of converting gas to meet export requirements.

"The market conversion abroad has started sooner than we anticipated," Kamp wrote. "Germany, France and Belgium will start the switch from low to high-caloric gas in 2020 instead of 2024.
China says interests outweigh differences with Vietnam

BEIJING, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Common interests between China and Vietnam far outweigh differences, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Vietnam's prime minister on Tuesday, calling for their dispute in the South China Sea to be resolved through talks.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea, where about $5 trillion worth of seaborne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims in the sea, believed to have rich deposits of oil and gas.

Vietnam is in the midst of a quiet military buildup analysts say is designed as a deterrent, to secure its 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone, as China grows more assertive in staking its claims in the South China Sea.

A court of arbitration in The Hague in July said China's claims to the waterway were invalid, after a case was brought by the Philippines. Beijing has refused to recognise the ruling.

Vietnam welcomed the ruling, saying it strongly supports peaceful resolution of disputes, while reasserting its own sovereignty claims.

Meeting in Beijing, Xi told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc that "China and Vietnam can manage their differences and promote maritime cooperation through friendly negotiations", the official Xinhua news agency said.

"The common interests between the two countries far outweigh the differences," it paraphrased Xi as saying.

The South China Sea issue should be resolved by bilateral consultations and maritime challenges transformed into opportunities for cooperation, Xi added.

Phuc met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang a day earlier.

Li told Phuc that the South China Sea involved both issues of sovereignty and maritime rights as well as "national feelings", China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

"China and Vietnam should work hard together, scrupulously abide by their high level consensus, maintain maritime stability, manage and control disputes, promote maritime cooperation, continue to accumulate consensus, jointly maintain maritime and regional peace and stability and create conditions for the stable development of bilateral ties," Li said.

The ministry cited Phuc as saying maritime issues should be appropriately handled in a peaceful way on the basis of equality and mutual respect and not allow maritime issues to affect the development of relations.

Earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered Vietnam a credit line of half a billion dollars for defence cooperation.
Bulgaria says sticking to its U.N. candidate for now after talk of change

SOFIA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Bulgaria said on Tuesday it was sticking to its candidate for the top U.N. job, Irina Bokova, for now, after speculation that it was considering switching to backing EU commissioner Kristalina Georgieva.

Prime minister Boiko Borisov said he would think what to do if Bokova did not come first or second in the next round of voting for U.N. Secretary General, due on Sept. 26.

But he did not spell out whether that meant he would consider another candidate, and said he would not let other countries interfere in Bulgaria's decision.

That appeared to be a rebuff to senior diplomats and officials who told journalists over the weekend that Bulgaria was considering Georgieva, a power figure responsible for sorting out the bloc's budget after Britain's vote to leave the EU.

Speculation mounted after Russia's foreign ministry said German Chancellor Angel Merkel had been pushing for a different Bulgarian candidate in the race to lead the international body. Berlin later said it had not interfered in the process.

"We have sought support ... and we will continue to do so until Sept. 26. Everyone should put utmost effort, me included, for Mrs Bokova to be among the first two candidates," Borisov told reporters.

"But there is no way after 26 if she is not first or second, to continue with that topic and then we all we should decide how to proceed," Borisov said.

South Korea's Ban Ki-moon will step down from the top U.N. job at the end of the year and former Portuguese prime minister Antonio Guterres, who also served as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has been the front runner so far.
Scottish killings and Californian satire on shortlist for Man Booker Prize

By Peter Hobson

Sept 13 (Reuters) - Novels on subjects ranging from murder in 19th century Scotland to classical music in revolutionary China were short-listed on Tuesday for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, considered one of the world's most prestigious literary awards.

Three British authors joined two U.S. writers and one Canadian on the shortlist for the 50,000 pound award for fiction, with the winner to be announced on Oct. 25 in London.

The shortlist included "The Sellout" by U.S. author Paul Beatty, a satire on black lives in California, and "Hot Milk" by British writer Deborah Levy, which explores the relationship of a woman and her ill mother in a hot Spanish fishing village.

The other finalists were "His Bloody Project" by British writer Graeme Macrae Burnet, a thriller inspired by a spate of killings in 19th century Scotland; "Eileen" by U.S. author Ottessa Moshfegh, about a disturbed young woman working at a boys' prison;

"All That Man Is" by David Szalay, a British-Canadian writer, which tells the stories of nine men through different stages of life, and "Do Not Say We Have Nothing" by Canadian writer Madeleine Thien, about a young woman's flight from China after the Tiananmen Square protests.

Deborah Levy is the only author to have previously short-listed for "Swimming Home" in 2012.

Nobel Prize laureate J. M. Coetzee's "The Schooldays of Jesus," and "My Name Is Lucy Barton," by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, which were both on the longlist, failed to make it to the final six.

First awarded in 1969, the Booker prize was opened in 2014 to include all fiction written in English and published in Britain. It had been limited to writers from Britain, Ireland, the Commonwealth and Zimbabwe.

Previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, Iris Murdoch and Ian McEwan.

"It was both agonizing and exhilarating to be confronted by the sheer power of the writing," Amanda Foreman, chairman of the judging panel, said in a statement.
Iraqi child drowns when boat sinks in Bulgarian Danube

SOFIA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - A six-year-old Iraqi boy and a young man have drowned and three children and a man are missing after a boat carrying 10 migrants sank in the Bulgarian waters of the Danube River, a police official said on Tuesday.

The bodies of the boy and a 26-year-old man were recovered on Sunday, two days after the police found four migrants who survived from a sunken boat on an island in the northwestern Bulgarian stretch of the Danube river, which borders Romania.

The migrants, who did not have any documents, told police they were a family of 10 people fleeing Iraq and that the metal boat which was carrying them to the Romanian coast on their journey to western Europe had capsized.

"We have been searching the river after the migrants told us that six people that were in the same boat with them have fallen into the Danube waters," Dimitar Chorbadzhiev, director of the regional border police said.

He said police officers are still searching for the three missing children, aged two, four and six as well as one man.
South Africa bans U.S. pastor over anti-gay views

CAPE TOWN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - U.S. pastor Steven Anderson has been banned from visiting South Africa over his anti-gays views, which the country's home affairs minister on Tuesday equated with hate speech.

Anderson, of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, notoriously welcomed the gunning down in June of 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida by saying "there's 50 less paedophiles in this world".

South African gay and lesbian groups collected more than 60,000 signatures opposing his visit this weekend, when he was expected to preach and seek converts to his church.

Citing anti-discrimination laws designed to "prevent and prohibit hate speech", Home Affairs minister Malusi Gigaba told a media briefing he was banning Anderson indefinitely.

South Africa became the first country in Africa to legalise gay marriage in 2006, but homosexuality is still widely frowned upon and same-sex unions are often decried as "un-African".

Gigaba said that in the last 12 months, some 450,000 South Africans had attacked women who dressed and acted like men in public, and 24,000 had beaten men for dressing like women.

Anderson said he felt sorry for South Africans.

"I have been banned from South Africa and the United Kingdom," Anderson wrote on his Facebook page.

"I feel sorry for people who live in South Africa, but thank God we still have a wide open door in Botswana." It was not clear when he was due to visit Botswana.

In South Africa, gangs of men, especially in poorer black townships, have raped lesbians in the belief it will "cure" their sexual orientation.
Croatia conservatives, reformists start talks on new government

ZAGREB, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Croatia's conservative HDZ party will begin talks on Tuesday with its former junior coalition partner on forming a new cabinet after it won the most seats in a snap election, HDZ leader Andrej Plenkovic said.

The HDZ won 61 seats in the 151-parliament in the weekend vote, while the reformist centre-right Most ("Bridge") party came third with 13 seats. An alliance led by the HDZ's arch-rivals the Social Democrats took 54 seats.

"I agreed with Most leader Bozo Petrov to meet at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT) to kick off talks between the two sides," Plenkovic told reporters.

The HDZ and Most sat uneasily together in a previous cabinet that collapsed in June after just five months.. The HDZ has since changed its leader and Plenkovic has said he wants to begin a new phase of cooperation.

An HDZ/Most coalition would need another small party or ethnic minority deputies on board to secure a parliamentary majority, but analysts say it could be stable provided Most accepts the limits of its influence as a junior partner.

Before the election, reformist Most put forward seven initial demands for supporting any cabinet.

These include changes to the financing of political parties, lower taxes for businesses, auditing of the central bank and an Adriatic economic zone -- a proposal that would likely require consultation with Croatia's European Union partners.

"We have understanding for some demands, but some require more detailed talks," Plenkovic said.

He said the HDZ was ready to talk to other potential partners, but that Most seems "a natural partner for forming a new cabinet".

Last year post-election coalition wrangling between the two biggest parties and Most lasted more than two months. Some analysts say that Most's current demands are not relevant to a key challenge awaiting the next cabinet - boosting Croatia's moderate economic recovery.
Somalia hosts first summit of African leaders since war began in 1991

By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Somalia hosted regional African heads of state on Tuesday for a summit that was the first of its kind in the Somali capital since the Horn of Africa nation plunged into conflict in 1991.

Streets were shut down to traffic in Mogadishu, which regularly faces attacks from the Islamist al Shabaab militants, for the one-day meeting of IGAD, a grouping that includes Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Djibouti, Sudan, Uganda and Somalia.

The regional leaders were due to discuss Somalia's upcoming vote for a new parliament and president, as well the situation in South Sudan, where fighting in July has further destabilised the five-year-old nation.

The presidents of Kenya and Djibouti, and the prime minister of Ethiopia, were in Mogadishu for the summit, officials said. Uganda was represented by a minister at the meeting of IGAD, or the Intergovernmental Authority on Development.

"It symbolises the reconstruction of Somalia and Somalia coming back to the (family of) nations," Foreign Minister Abdusalam Omer told Reuters as heads of state flew in. "It signifies that we are defeating international terrorism."

Somalia has hosted visits of individual heads of state. But Omer said this was the first summit gathering for about four decades, since the rule of President Siad Barre, whose toppling in 1991 was followed by two decades of conflict.

Many senior visitors to Mogadishu stay in the airport area, a compound surrounded by high blast walls with barbed wire and patrolled by the African Union AMISOM force. Tuesday's summit was being held just outside the perimeter at a nearby hotel.

"The presence of the heads of state in Somalia is a clear dividend of returning stability in the country," AMISOM said in a statement.

Ordinary Somalis were forced to walk around the capital as traffic was blocked from many streets. Al Shabaab has often used vehicles packed with explosives to launch attacks on sites in Mogadishu, blowing up security posts so fighters can storm in.

Mogadishu still bears the scars of war, with many buildings little more than bombed out shells. But there has been a construction boom in recent years, that has seen new buildings erected, often financed by Somalis returning from abroad.

Al Shabaab, which once ruled most of Somalia, has been waging an insurgency to topple the Western-backed government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who seeks re-election later this year.

Security concerns mean that only a fraction of Somalia's 11 million people will vote in the election, with 14,000 people gathered from the federal states choosing the 275 members of parliament, before the lawmakers then pick the president.

But that is still an improvement on the 135 elders who chose parliament in 2012, and which in turn picked Mohamud.
S.Africa's Zuma says no war between Presidency and Treasury

CAPE TOWN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday that the Presidency was not at war with the Treasury after reports that an elite police unit was investigating Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

Some analysts say Zuma's allies are behind the investigation in a bid to remove Gordhan, but Zuma denied this was the case.
Good Energy may sell solar sites as subsidy cuts bite

By Karolin Schaps

LONDON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Good Energy, which supplies renewable power to British customers and generates some of its own, may sell more of its solar power sites as government subsidy cuts have made owning them less attractive.

The firm, which increased its electricity and gas customer base by 39 percent between June 2015 and June 2016 to 115,250, said the subsidy cuts meant in future it would focus less on solar power generation and shift to onshore wind instead.

"We have some (solar) development sites that we don't necessarily need to own long term. We can sell those sites because what we're interested in is the long-term power," Good Energy Chief Executive Juliet Davenport told Reuters.

The company owns and operates seven solar sites and two wind farms with a combined capacity of 52 megawatts (MW).

Good Energy has previously made money from selling sites, with the most recent transaction, the sale of the Wrotham Heath solar site, generating a net sales profit of around 500,000 pounds ($660,500).

The British government has been reining in spending on renewable energy projects, announcing solar power subsidy cuts late last year.

"With the removal of subsidy support, our medium term generation focus has shifted to wind power," the company said in its half-year results report on Tuesday.

Although wind farm subsidies have also been announced, Davenport said cost cuts were more feasible in wind power and projects had been designed to be economic without subsidy contributions.

Good Energy reported a 72 percent rise in core profit to 6.2 million pounds in the six months to June 30 after a more efficient system to estimate customer demand meant it could optimise its energy buying, Davenport said.

Net debt rose slightly to 50.7 million pounds, and bringing down debt will be one of the company's priorities, she added.

"We're reviewing the overall funding strategy for the company," Davenport said, adding another share offer was one option being considered.

The company raised 3.1 million pounds in June through an oversubscribed share offer made directly to its customers.
Islamic State behind Kenya's Mombasa attack by robed women - website

CAIRO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Islamic State supporters carried out an attack on Kenya's port city of Mombasa in which three robed women tricked their way into a police station, stabbed an officer and set fire to the building, the group's Amaq news agency said on Tuesday.

Militant attacks, mostly claimed by al Shabaab militants from neighbouring Somalia, have increased in recent years in Kenya, which has a large Muslim population concentrated mostly along its Indian Ocean coast.

But police said in May they had arrested militants linked to Islamic State, a group which has seized areas of Iraq and Syria and inspired offshoot groups in the Middle East and Africa.

"The perpetrators of the attack on the Kenyan police in the city of Mombasa were supporters of Islamic State. They executed the operation in response to calls to target crusader states," the agency affiliated to Islamic State reported.

Sunday's attack in Mombasa appeared to be the first claimed by the group on Kenyan soil. In the Mombasa assault, the three women were shot dead. Police said they recovered an unexploded suicide vest from one of the attackers.

When suspected Islamic State militants were detained in May, experts said Kenya's focus on dismantling al Shabaab cells may have allowed sympathisers of Islamic State to slip under the radar.

But they said it was not clear whether such sympathisers had formal links to Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, or were simply offering allegiance.
Italy ready to open hospital in Libya, deploy 300 soldiers and staff

ROME, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Italy is ready to set up a military hospital and deploy medics, soldiers and support staff in Libya at the request of the United Nations-recognised government in Tripoli, Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti said on Tuesday.

A 100-strong "force protection" unit will protect the hospital at the western city of Misrata, which will be staffed by 65 doctors and nurses and 135 support staff.

"We are ready," Pinotti told a parliamentary commission on the situation in Libya, which lies less than 500 km (310 miles) from Sicily in southern Italy.

Libyan forces aligned with the U.N.-backed government have been facing stiff resistance from holdouts at Islamic State's former stronghold of Sirte for months.

Some 400 Libyan soldiers have been killed and about 2,500 injured in the operation to recapture Sirte, and some of the most seriously wounded have been taken for treatment in Italy already, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told the commission.

France, Britain, the United States and Italy have all acknowledged having special military units in Libya, but this would be the first overt troop deployment by a Western nation, albeit for a humanitarian mission.

Gentiloni stressed the humanitarian nature of the mission, saying: "We are sending doctors to Libya with the obvious military protection."

The process started on Aug. 8, when the U.N.-backed government asked Italian premier Matteo Renzi for help building hospitals and caring for the injured, Pinotti said.

Once the project is launched, it would take three weeks for the hospital, complete with 50 beds, to be fully operational, and will work together with the civil hospital at Misrata, Pinotti said, without saying when the operation would start.

Gentiloni and Pinotti said progress had been made in Libya in the past nine months, although the seizure over the weekend of oil ports by forces loyal to eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar damaged efforts to stabilise the country.
From independence to starvation in the world's newest nation, South Sudan

By Tom Gardner

LONDON, Sept 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Tens of thousands of people in conflict-ridden South Sudan are at risk of dying from starvation with many living in swamps and surviving on water lilies following renewed violence, a senior aid worker has warned.

An estimated 4.8 million people from a population of about 11 million are going hungry with about 40,000 people at risk of dying, said Mercy Corps's South Sudan director Deepmala Mahla.

The hunger crisis comes amid continuing instability and violence in the African country that attained independence from Sudan five years ago with renewed fighting hampering relief supplies.

Here are some key facts and figures about the on-going conflict which is nearly three years long despite a formal peace accord last year, and has resulted in as many as 100,000 deaths and the displacement of 2.5 million people.

* South Sudan attained independence on July 9, 2011, after a referendum in which almost 99 percent of voters chose to become the newest country in the world.

* The new country was plagued with difficulties from the outset. South Sudan possesses enormous oil wealth but little else. Roughly half the population was dependent on food aid.

* Tensions with Sudan in the north stymied the country's progress. The Juba and Khartoum governments argued over border demarcation and oil, leading to a brief war in 2012.

* In December 2013 a full-blown civil war broke out as political in-fighting within the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) spilled onto the streets after President Salva Kiir sacked his deputy and long-time rival, Vice-President Riek Machar.

* The ensuing violence was fought broadly between South Sudan's biggest ethnic groups - the Dinka, led by Kiir, and the Nuer, under Machar.

* The conflict took on a regional dimension with Uganda intervening in 2014 on the side of the government in Juba, and Sudan supporting Machar's rebels in the east.

* The U.N. Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015 but has to date not imposed an arms embargo.

* A peace deal signed in August 2015 brought a formal end to the 20-month civil war but fighting in the southern region persisted with over 100,000 displaced.

* But the agreement did enable the return of Machar to Juba and the subsequent formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity in April 2016.

* However in July 2016 fighting flared up in Juba once again, with clashes between forces loyal to Kiir and Machar leaving some 270 dead. A ceasefire was announced four days later, but nearly 103,500 people have fled the capital to Uganda.

* The conflict continues to devastate South Sudanese lives. One in every 5 people in South Sudan have been forced to flee their homes since the conflict began. Nearly 1 in every 3 people were without adequate food in September 2015. Nearly 1 in every 3 schools in South Sudan has been destroyed, damaged, occupied or closed.

* A new report published on Sept. 12 revealed the scale of public corruption, including the private fortunes amassed by politicians in Juba, and suggested the struggle over control of the country's natural resources was a greater driver of conflict than ethnic rivalry.
ECB says incorrect to say that central bank backs lower fiscal target for Greece

By Lefteris Papadimas

ATHENS, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank does not support a lower fiscal target for Greece after 2018, an ECB official said on Tuesday, commenting on remarks made by a Greek central bank official earlier in the day.

Greece has agreed to achieve a primary surplus - which excludes the cost of servicing debt - of 3.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2018. It wants to reduce its bailout target to 2.5 percent in 2019 and 2 percent in 2020.

The Greek official told reporters earlier that "the ECB is 100 percent with us ... but it's up to the Eurogroup to decide".

The ECB official responded: "It is not correct to say that the ECB supports a lower fiscal target for Greece after 2018."

"There first needs to be a discussion among the four institutions and the Eurogroup within the framework of the Eurogroup statement of 24/5," the official said referring to the ECB, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Stability Mechanism.

Under the terms of its third international bailout, Athens needs to achieve a primary surplus of 0.5 percent of GDP in 2017. But it says that retaining high surpluses in the medium and long term is unrealistic, echoing the IMF on this issue.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has also said that a lower target will give help boost growth and give Athens fiscal room allowing it to ease the austerity that has squeezed Greek households for six years.

Greece's European lenders, however, have urged Athens to stick to the terms of the bailout and speed up reforms instead.

"What is important for the ECB now is that Greece delivers on its commitments under the programme," the ECB official said.

Greece's foreign creditors began assessing on Monday the country's progress on reforms prescribed in its international bailout program, a key step before releasing 2.8 billion euro {$3.15 billion) in additional financial aid.

The government had promised to take measures to liberalise its energy market, cut pension spending, speed up privatisations and improve banking governance in exchange for the fresh funds, which will be used to pay off state arrears.
Saudi Arabia welcomes ceasefire agreement in Syria - foreign ministry

DUBAI, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia, a supporter of Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, on Tuesday welcomed a ceasefire in Syria and said it hoped the deal would lead to the resumption of peace talks on the basis of the Geneva 1 accord.

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is following with interest the start of the temporary ceasefire in Syria," Saudi state news agency reported, quoting a foreign ministry official.
Nigeria's Arik Air temporarily suspends operations

ABUJA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Arik Air, Nigeria's largest airline, cancelled all flights on Tuesday in what it called a temporary disruption related to insurance renewal.

While the company initially warned the disruption was likely to continue for the next few days as it awaited approval from national insurance commission NAICOM to renew its insurance with a new company, a spokesman later told Reuters it would resume flights from 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

"All issues have been resolved," spokesman Ola Adebanji said, declining to comment on how it had resolved its insurance problem or why it had changed insurance companies.

Arik, which flies to London, New York and Johannesburg, also has a maintenance contract with Germany's Lufthansa.

"We are fully committed to returning to our normal operations and minimize any unfortunate inconvenience to our passengers," Arik Chief Executive Michael Arumemi-Ikhide said in a statement on Tuesday.

Nigerian airlines and international carriers operating within the country have struggled with a plunge in the local currency, the naira, that has made it difficult to get U.S. dollars to buy jet fuel and also to remain profitable as passengers pay in naira. The nation's first recession in two decades is also squeezing profits.

James Daudu, deputy director at the country's aviation ministry, said that while jet fuel prices are deregulated, and therefore outside government control, the Minister of State for Aviation was working with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to see if "interventions" in the sector were possible.

"It would be a whole sphere of intervention, if possible, from the Central Bank of Nigeria to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources," he said.

Two other local carriers, Aero Contractors and First Nation, recently suspended operations, though the government said both would eventually reopen.
Saudi Arabia welcomes Syria ceasefire, says hopes for more peace talks

DUBAI, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia, one of the main supporters of Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, on Tuesday welcomed a ceasefire in Syria and said it hoped the deal would lead to a resumption of peace talks to end war in the country.

The nationwide truce brokered by the United States and Russia that began on Monday was mostly holding across Syria, and efforts to deliver badly needed aid to besieged areas including the northern city of Aleppo got underway.

Saudi state news agency SPA quoted a foreign ministry official as saying that Riyadh was monitoring how the ceasefire deal reached last week was being implemented.

"It (the kingdom) expressed its welcome for the ceasefire agreement which would ease the humanitarian suffering of the brotherly Syrian people," SPA said, quoting the official.

"The source asserted that it was important for Bashar al-Assad's regime and its allies to adhere to this agreement and that it leads to a resumption of the political process in Syria in accordance with the Geneva 1 communique," it added.

The Geneva 1 communique is a 2012 document setting out guidelines for a path to peace including a transitional governing authority. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said that Assad must leave power either through peace negotiations or by force.

Russia and Iran are both providing military support to Assad against rebels and jihadi fighters. Iran has sent what it said were military "advisers" to help Assad and allowed Russian fighter-bombers to use an Iranian base to launch operations in Syria in August.

Qatar, another Gulf Arab state providing support for rebels fighting to overthrow Assad, earlier said it also welcomed the ceasefire deal, according to a statement dated on Saturday carried by state news agency QNA.

The agency said the ministry "expressed hope that the implementation of the agreement would contribute to reaching a comprehensive and permanent political settlement to end the Syrian crisis and lift the humanitarian suffering from the Syrian people ... ".
Appeals court skeptical of New Hampshire's ballot-selfie ban

By Scott Malone

BOSTON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Three federal appeals court judges showed skepticism on Tuesday on how a 2014 New Hampshire law banning voters from taking selfies with their ballots on election day does not violate the U.S. right to free speech.

The judges repeatedly asked a New Hampshire official to explain how the law could prevent a replay of scandals that rocked many U.S. states in the late 19th century, when politicians paid for votes, in cash or alcohol.

"It's well known that in the late 1800s, buying votes was a huge problem," Stephen LaBonte, the state's associate attorney general, told a three-judge panel of the First Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston.

"What year is it now?" Judge Sandra Lynch shot back. "In the late 1800s there was a huge problem that obviously didn't involve ballot-selfies, which did not exist at the time."

LaBonte explained the state's position that the growing trend of voters taking pictures with their filled-in ballots and posting them on social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, could lead to voters being paid or coerced to change their votes.

"You have no evidence of that. None," Lynch said.

Opponents of the ban contend that it violates the free-speech protections of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. A New Hampshire voter sued in October 2014 after posting online a photo of his ballot, on which he filled in the name of his dog as a sign of displeasure over his choices in the 2014 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate.

The U.S District Court in New Hampshire agreed, pronouncing the law unconstitutional in August 2015. The state appealed the following month, setting the stage for Tuesday's arguments

Opponents of the measure contend ballot-box selfies are a form of political speech familiar to first-time voters, akin to the photos they post of themselves on vacation, at concerts or with friends.

Judge Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson noted that Rhode Island last month legalized the practice, reasoning that it helps to excite young voters.

Attorney Gilles Bissonnette of the American Civil Liberties Union, who spoke on behalf of the plaintiffs, noted that the three plaintiffs who brought the initial lawsuit challenging the law had been investigated for politically motivated posts.
Britain's WPP praises 'significant' reforms in Argentina

By Caroline Stauffer

BUENOS AIRES, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The chief executive of the world's largest advertising company WPP told Reuters that Argentina's new government has made "significant" reforms in a short period of time and his group would like to make more acquisitions and investments in the country.

High-profile British businessman Martin Sorrell also said in an interview on Tuesday the first signs of economic strain can be seen in post-Brexit Britain, even as the group's operations have looked to be recovering in recent weeks.

Sorrell, in Buenos Aires for a government investment forum, said Argentina under pro-market President Mauricio Macri would be "high on the list" of countries Britain should sign a bilateral trade deal with as the South American country strives to avoid isolation.

"The atmospheric changes that Macri has made as well as the physical changes dealing with the debt crisis and such have been very significant in a very short period of time," he said.

There are risks, Sorrell said, including Argentina's historically volatile politics.

"Lots of things can go wrong - there is volatility. Brazil is key," he said, referring to Argentina's main trading partner which like Argentina is now mired in recession.

Companies tend to agree with the policies Macri has implemented since taking office in December, and his government is trying to convince them the changes will stick at this week's Argentina Business & Investment Forum.

WPP, the owner of agencies Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam and JWT, acquired a 20 percent stake in Argentine technology company Globant in 2013 before it went public.

Asked if WPP was considering more acquisitions in Argentina, Sorrell said "We'd like to do more," emphasizing that WPP tends to make small and medium-sized purchases.

Argentina, Latin America's No. 3 economy, accounts for some $500 million of WPP's $20 billion of annual revenue, about the same amount as Brazil and less than Mexico.

Asked if a "post-Brexit recovery" identified by WPP in July continued in August, Sorrell said "I expect it probably has," though he emphasized the longer term outlook was challenging.

Sorrell is a vocal critic of Britain's move to leave the European Union. He praised the Bank of England for helping avoid an economic slowdown but said the first signs of strain are visible due to the potential for a prolonged negotiation and lack of clarity for businesses.
Spain to alter corporate tax rules in bid to avoid EU budget fine

By Sarah White

MADRID, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Spain's caretaker government will introduce changes to corporate tax laws shortly in a bid to increase revenues and ward off EU sanctions for failing to do enough to reduce this year's deficit, acting Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said on Tuesday.

Spain has been under scrutiny from the European Commission after overshooting its 2015 public deficit goal.

After two inconclusive elections, Spain has also failed to form a new government that can fully tackle public financing issues for more than eight months.

It won a reprieve from Brussels in July on a potential fine for not taking effective action on cutting its deficit, but De Guindos warned on Tuesday more sanctions loomed if Spain faltered in its efforts to meet 2016 goals.

He said the acting conservative government would sign a decree in the coming weeks aimed at making companies pay more of their tax bill upfront.

This would earn the government some 6 billion euros ($6.72 billion) by year-end, without which Spain will struggle to meet its deficit goal of 4.6 percent of output even as its economy grows at one of the fastest rates in the euro zone.

"If the Commission considers that the measures are not sufficient, this would once again escalate the excessive deficit procedure and we would be facing fresh sanctions," De Guindos told a parliamentary committee.

The fine would be equivalent to 0.5 percent of national output, or more than 5 billion euros ($5.60 billion), De Guindos said. Spain also risks having some 1.3 billion euros in structural funds frozen by Europe next year, he added.

Spain was recently granted an extra two years by Brussels, until 2018, to bring its deficit below a recommended 3 percent threshold.

Due to the political impasse - a stand-off between parties is edging Spain towards its potential third ballot in a year - ministers will have to present an extended version of the 2016 budget to Brussels by a mid-October deadline instead of a new one for 2017.

This has already prompted De Guindos to warn about next year's budget goal.

Spain's corporate tax revenues have slumped after a reform by the conservative government which, as of this year, meant companies which pay their taxes in instalments did not have to pay a minimum established amount every time, effectively allowing them to delay full payment to the final tranche.
Libya's NOC to 'begin work immediately to restart exports' from seized ports

By Aidan Lewis

TUNIS, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) said on Tuesday it would immediately start working to resume crude exports from ports seized in recent days by forces loyal to eastern commander Khalifa Haftar.

Welcoming pledges from Haftar's Libyan National Army and the pro-Haftar head of Libya's eastern parliament that the ports would be placed under NOC control, NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanalla said he hoped for a "new phase of cooperation", and that production could be raised to 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) from about 290,000 bpd within a month.

Any such plans are likely to face political, legal and technical obstacles. Haftar has so far opposed a United Nations-backed government in Tripoli. The United States and five European powers condemned his move on the oil ports on Monday, saying they would enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution against "illicit" exports outside the authority of that government.

Libya desperately needs to revive oil output and exports to stave off an economic collapse.

Political turmoil, armed conflict and militant attacks have reduced Libya's oil production to a fraction of the 1.6 million bpd it was producing before the North African country's 2011 uprising. Some infrastructure, including at key oil export terminals, has been badly damaged.

Starting on Sunday, pro-Haftar forces took control of the ports of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider, Brega and Zueitina from units of the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), a rival force allied to the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

The move risks provoking armed retaliation from Haftar's rivals and deepening an east-west divide, potentially prolonging the conflict and fragmentation that developed after longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled five years ago.

Many in western Libya, including key backers of the GNA, see Haftar as a new strongman in the making and want him to have no role in the country's future. But he has gained popularity in the east, where he has waged a campaign against Islamists and other opponents for the past two years.

The NOC said on Tuesday it would "begin work immediately to restart exports", and that all exports must conform with the U.N. resolution.

"Our technical teams already started assessing what needs to be done to lift force majeure and restart exports as soon as possible", Sanalla said in a statement.

"I hope this marks the beginning of a new phase of cooperation and coexistence between Libya's factions, as well as an end to the use of the blockade as a political tactic."

CONCILIATORY TONE

The GNA's prime minister, Fayez Seraj, struck a conciliatory tone in a statement late on Tuesday. Without directly addressing the seizure of the oil ports, he said he would not "lead any Libyan group or run a war against any other Libyan group for political or regional or ideological motives", calling for a dialogue among all parties.

The PFG had struck a deal with the GNA in July to resume exports from Ras Lanuf, Es Sider and Zueitina, all of which the PFG had been blockading for years.

Sanalla had spoken out against that deal, accusing PFG commander Ibrahim Jathran of overclaiming for the back payment of salaries and signalling that he might withdraw support from the GNA. But the NOC had offered two cargoes for export from Ras Lanuf for later this month.

The NOC said that if exports resumed from the seized ports, it hoped to raise production to 950,000 bpd by the end of the year.

"However, this is dependent on receiving essential funds from the budget and on the Oil Crescent ports and the closed pipelines in the southwest being opened and kept open," Sanalla said.

The GNA is the result of a U.N.-brokered deal signed in December. It is meant to replace two competing governments that were operating in Tripoli and eastern Libya since 2014.

The GNA has largely displaced the previous government in the capital. But it has failed to win the endorsement of the eastern government and parliament, which appointed Haftar as its top military official last year.

Both the GNA and the international community have struggled to engage with eastern factions.

Briefing the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, U.N. Libya envoy Martin Kobler said the "fragile peace" in the area that is home to the ports had been dealt a "fierce blow" by Haftar's move.

"This development will further hinder oil exports, deprive Libya of its only source of income, and increase the division of the country", he said.

"I have many times sought to engage with General Haftar to encourage him to embrace dialogue. However, my repeated attempts have so far been without success".

Eastern factions previously tried unsuccessfully to export oil independently through a breakaway branch of the NOC in Benghazi.
Making fun of chief minister Akhilesh Yadav at a private bash thrown by Amar Singh has cost UP chief secretary Deepak Singhal dear.

Barely 36 hours after the party in New Delhi on Sunday night, where Akhilesh was conspicuous by his absence, Singhal, a 1982 batch IAS officer, was unceremoniously removed from the top job he had bagged barely two months ago.

Mulayam's younger brother Shivpal Yadav (left) with Akhilesh Yadav (right). Photo credit: PTI

He was immediately replaced by Rahul Bhatnagar, a 1983 batch IAS officer, widely known for his integrity and capability. With a brilliant track record to his credit, Bhatnagar was holding the office of the state's financial commissioner and principal secretary (finance), with the additional charge of sugarcane and sugar industries.

Akhilesh's boot to Singhal has surely given a big boost to his assertive image, which has, of late, become visible after long. The first signs appeared about two months ago when the UP CM defied his father and uncle to give a firm snub to the proposed merger of mafia don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari's Qaumi Ekta Dal (QED) with the Samajwadi Party.

On September 12, he took everyone by surprise by dropping mining minister Gayatari Prasad Prajapati and horticulture minister Raj Kishore Singh, both allegedly embroiled in large scale corruption, from his Cabinet. Akhilesh sacked the two without seeking the nod from his father, who had been blatantly patronising Prajapati even as his activities as mining minister had always been under the cloud.

In less than 24 hours, Akhilesh's axe fell on Singhal. A bigmouth, Singhal often got away with snide remarks about the chief minister, who, until now, had chosen to ignore such utterances.

But the chief minister's loose rope turned him increasingly insolent and he continued with the chatter till it provoked the chief minster into taking stern action against him.

In fact, Singhal's appointment to the top job was widely known to be against the wishes of the chief minister who was prevailed upon by his overbearing father Mulayam Singh Yadav, widely known for his backseat driving ever since he anointed Akhilesh on the hot seat four-and-a-half years ago.

Mulayam's younger brother Shivpal Yadav, former confidant Amar Singh, and the all powerful principal secretary to chief minister Anita Singh, known for her clout with Mulayam, were understood to have strongly lobbied for Singhal. However, keen on avoiding controversies at this juncture when the state is heading for the Assembly polls, Akhilesh wanted to keep Singhal at arm's length not only because of the latter's track record, but also because of the bureaucrat's proximity to his "chacha" Shivpal Yadav.

While Akhilesh did not assign any reason for Singhal's ouster, it was the cumulative effect of several factors that brought upon the bureaucrat's fall from grace. Singhal was stated to have, at times, even bypassed the chief minister in taking certain key decisions at the behest of Mulayam or Shivpal.

More recently, he went ahead and allotted 450 acres of prime land, along the Yamuna Expressway in Greater Noida, at a throwaway price to Baba Ramdev for setting up a giant "Patanjali" unit. Without taking the chief minister into confidence, he accompanied Baba Ramdev for a meeting with Mulayam, who gave an instant go-ahead to the project.

The chief minister was furious when he learnt about a quid pro quo between Ramdev and Singhal, whose kin was rewarded with a multi-billion distributorship of Patanjali products.

Besides, ever since Singhal assumed the office of chief secretary, he is known to have often commented at official meetings on how the state government had failed to do anything over the past four-and-a-half years.

In his obvious bid to run down his predecessors, Singhal had been virtually negating all talk of development that the chief minister has been boasting about as his achievement. And it was on the strength of this "achievement" that Akhilesh hopes to stage a comeback in March 2017 when UP goes to polls.
On September 12, 2016, a presidential order led to the removal of Arunachal Pradesh governor, Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa, from office. It was probably the first instance when an incumbent government sacked its own appointee.

Congress leader Kalikho Pul was sworn in as Arunachal Pradesh CM by Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa. Photo credit: PTI

The first governor to be sacked was Prabhudas Patwari, the then governor of Tamil Nadu. He was removed by the Indira Gandhi government in 1980. Patwari had been sworn in 1977 by the Janata Party government.

Then, in 1981, the Indira Gandhi government went after Rajasthan governor Raghukul Tilak. He too was an appointee of the previous Janata Party government led by Morarji Desai. Tilak approached the high court against the decision, but the court refused to get involved.

Then came VP Singh, who, in 1989, took the monumental decision to secure the resignation of all governors so that the government alone could decide who should stay and who was to leave. Thankfully, the unique initiative could not be pursued as there were intra government differences and more pressing issues that demanded the state's immediate attention.

In 2001, the NDA government, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, removed the then Tamil Nadu governor Justice (Rtd) Fathima Beevi. Incidentally, she was the first woman judge to be promoted to the Supreme Court and the only woman governor of Tamil Nadu. She was, perhaps, a victim to the political rivalry between DMK chief M Karunanidhi and AIADMK supremo Jayalalitha. DMK was a part of the then NDA government while AIADMK ruled the state.

The last time an incumbent government sacked governors appointed by the previous dispensation was in July 2004. PM Dr Manmohan Singh had "advised (read asked)" the then President APJ Abdul Kalam to remove four serving governors - Vishnu Kant Shastri of Uttar Pradesh, Kailashpati Mishra of Gujarat, Babu Parmanand of Haryana and Kidar Nath Sahni of Goa. However, the apex court took a very dim view of the whole matter and passed extremely adverse comments.
Wells Fargo & Company, a diversified financial services company, provides banking, investment, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance products and services in the United States and internationally. It operates through four segments: Consumer Banking and Lending; Commercial Banking; Corporate and Investment Banking; and Wealth and Investment Management. The Consumer Banking and Lending segment offers diversified financial products and services for consumers and small businesses. Its financial products and services include checking and savings accounts, and credit and debit cards, as well as home, auto, personal, and small business lending services. The Commercial Banking segment provides financial solutions to private, family owned, and certain public companies. Its products and services include banking and credit products across various industry sectors and municipalities, secured lending and lease products, and treasury management services. The Corporate and Investment Banking segment offers a suite of capital markets, banking, and financial products and services to corporate, commercial real estate, government, and institutional clients. Its products and services comprise corporate banking, investment banking, treasury management, commercial real estate lending and servicing, equity, and fixed income solutions, as well as sales, trading, and research capabilities services. The Wealth and Investment Management segment provides personalized wealth management, brokerage, financial planning, lending, private banking, and trust and fiduciary products and services to affluent, high-net worth, and ultra-high-net worth clients. It also operates through financial advisors. Wells Fargo & Company was founded in 1852 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Bancolombia S.A. provides banking products and services in Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. The company operates through nine segments: Banking Colombia, Banking Panama, Banking El Salvador, Banking Guatemala, Trust, Investment Banking, Brokerage, International Banking, and All Other. It offers checking and savings accounts, fixed term deposits, and investment products; trade financing, loans funded by domestic development banks, working capital loans, credit cards, personal and vehicle loans, payroll loans, and overdrafts; financial support to real estate developers and mortgages for individuals and companies; factoring; and financial and operating leasing services. The company also provides hedging instruments, including futures, forwards, options, and swaps; and brokerage, investment advisory, and private banking services, including selling and distributing equities, futures, foreign currencies, fixed income securities, mutual funds, and structured products. In addition, it offers cash management services; foreign currency transaction services; life, auto, commercial, and homeowner's insurance products; and online and computer banking services. Further, the company provides project and acquisition finance, debt and equity capital markets, principal investments, M&A, hedging strategies, restructurings, and structured financing; money market accounts, mutual and pension funds, private equity funds, payment and corporate trust, and custody; internet-based trading platform; inter-bank lending and repurchase agreements; managing escrow accounts, and investment and real estate funds; and transportation, securities brokerage, maintenance and remodeling, and outsourcing services. As of December 31, 2021, it operated 1,015 branches; 28,676 banking correspondents; 529 PAMs; 210 kiosks in El Salvador and 187 in Colombia; and 6,094 ATMs. Bancolombia S.A. was incorporated in 1945 and is headquartered in Medellin, Colombia.
Manx Telecom plc provides a range of telecommunications services to consumers, businesses, and the public sector in the Isle of Man and internationally. It operates through five segments: Fixed Line, Broadband and Data; Mobile; Global Solutions; Data Centre; and Other. The Fixed Line, Broadband and Data segment offers fixed line, broadband, and connectivity services to approximately 37,000 homes and 4,000 businesses. It provides ADSL and VDSL, fixed line, and private circuit rental and connection services. The Mobile segment offers pre-paid and post-paid tariffs to various market segments; supports inbound roaming traffic; and sells mobile handsets, laptops, and accessories. It provides mobile calls, SMS, data, and mobile rental services. The Global Solutions segment offers wholesale SMS and voice, international traveler market, machine to machine, and signal mobile services, as well as mobile termination products, such as Chameleon. The Data Centre segment offers co-location, managed hosting, cloud, storage, disaster recovery, and business continuity services to corporate clients through three data centers. The Other segment provides phone book and business directory services; and operates MTTV, an online news channel, as well as manx.net portal. It also sells hardware equipment; and offers managed and interconnection services. The company was formerly known as Trafford Equityco Limited and changed its name to Manx Telecom plc in February 2014. Manx Telecom plc is headquartered in Braddan, the Isle of Man.
The following companies are subsidiares of AON: 6824625 Canada Ltd., 7193599 Canada Inc., A.B. Insurances Limited, ADIS A/S, AIB Services Limited, AIS Affinity Insurance Agency Inc., AIS Insurance Agency Inc., AMXH LLC, ARM International Corp., ARM International Insurance Agency Corp., ARMRISK CORP., AS Holdings Inc., ASPN Insurance Agency LLC, Access Plans USA Inc., Acumen Credit Insurance Brokers Limited, Adm Administradora de Beneficios Ltda., Administradora Aon C.A., Admiseg SA, Admix, Admix - Administracao Consultoria Participacoes e Corretora de Seguros de Vida Ltda., Aeropeople Limited, Affinity Group Insurance Services Limited, Affinity Insurance Services Inc., Affinity Risk Partners (Brokers) Pty Ltd, Agenion N.V./SA, Agility Credit Insurance Brokers Limited, Alexander & Alexander Holding B.V., Alexander Clay, Alexander Insurance Managers (Netherlands Antilles) N.V., Alexander Reinsurance Intermediaries Inc., Allen Insurance Associates Inc., Alliance HealthCard Inc., Alliance HealthCard of Florida Inc., American Insurance Services Corp., American Special Risk Insurance Company, Anviti Insurance Brokers Private Limited, Aon (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon (CR) Insurance Agencies Company Limited, Aon (DIFC) Gulf Limited, Aon (Fiji) Ltd., Aon (Isle of Man) Limited, Aon (Thailand) Limited, Aon 180412 Limited (in liquidation), Aon ANZ Holdings Limited, Aon APAC Holdings B.V., Aon Acore Sarl, Aon Adjudication Services Limited, Aon Affinity Administradora de Beneficios Ltda., Aon Affinity Argentina S.A., Aon Affinity Chile Ltda., Aon Affinity Colombia Ltda. Agencia de Seguros, Aon Affinity Mexico Agente de Seguros y de Fianzas S.A. de C.V., Aon Affinity Mexico S.A. de C.V., Aon Affinity Servicos e Participacoes Ltda., Aon Affinity do Brasil Servicos e Corretora de Seguros Ltda., Aon Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Americas Holdings BV, Aon Angola Corretores de Seguros Limitada, Aon Antillen N.V., Aon Aruba N.V., Aon Assurance Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Australia Group Pty Ltd, Aon Australian Holdco 1 Pty Ltd, Aon Australian Holdco 2 Pty Ltd, Aon Australian Holdco 3 Pty Ltd, Aon Austria GmbH, Aon Bahrain W.L.L., Aon Belgium B.V.B.A., Aon Benefit Solutions Inc., Aon Benfield (Chile) Corredores de Reaseguros Ltda., Aon Benfield Argentina S.A., Aon Benfield Australia Limited, Aon Benfield Brasil Corretora de Resseguros Ltda., Aon Benfield Canada ULC, Aon Benfield China Limited, Aon Benfield Colombia Limitada Corredores de Reaseguros, Aon Benfield Fac Inc., Aon Benfield Global Inc., Aon Benfield Group Limited, Aon Benfield Inc., Aon Benfield Israel Limited, Aon Benfield Italia S.p.A., Aon Benfield Japan Ltd, Aon Benfield Latin America SA, Aon Benfield Limited, Aon Benfield Malaysia Limited, Aon Benfield Mexico Intermediario de Reaseguro SA de CV, Aon Benfield Middle East Limited, Aon Benfield New Zealand Limited, Aon Benfield Panama S.A., Aon Benfield Peru Corredores de Reaseguros SA, Aon Benfield Puerto Rico Inc., Aon Bermuda Holding Company Limited, Aon Bermuda QI Holdings Ltd., Aon Beteiligungsmanagement Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG, Aon Bolivia S.A. Corredores de Seguros, Aon Botswana (Pty) Ltd., Aon Brazil Holdings LLC, Aon Broking Services SA, Aon Broking Technology Limited, Aon CANZ Holdings B.V., Aon CANZ Holdings N.S. ULC, Aon Canada Holdings N.S. ULC, Aon Canada Inc., Aon Canada Intermediaries GP, Aon Captive Services Antilles N.V., Aon Captive Services Aruba N.V., Aon Cash Management B.V., Aon Central and Eastern Europe a.s., Aon Centre for Innovation and Analytics Ltd, Aon Charitable Foundation Pty Ltd, Aon Chile Holdings LLC, Aon Commercial Insurance Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Commercial Services Ireland Limited, Aon Commercial Services and Operations Ireland Limited, Aon Consolidation Group Pty Ltd, Aon Consulting & Insurance Services, Aon Consulting (Chile) Limitada, Aon Consulting (Thailand) Limited, Aon Consulting Bolivia S.R.L., Aon Consulting Ecuador S.A., Aon Consulting Financial Services Limited, Aon Consulting Inc., Aon Consulting Kazakhstan LLP, Aon Consulting Limited, Aon Consulting Private Limited, Aon Consulting Romania SRL, Aon Corporate Services (Isle of Man) Limited, Aon Corporate Services Limited, Aon Corporation, Aon Corporation Australia Limited, Aon Corporation EMEA B.V., Aon Credit International Insurance Broker GmbH, Aon Cyprus Insurance Broker Company Limited, Aon DC Trustee Limited, Aon Danismanlik Hizmetleri AS, Aon Delta Bermuda Ltd., Aon Delta UK Limited, Aon Denmark A/S, Aon Deutschland Beteiligungs GmbH, Aon Direct Group Inc., Aon Edge Insurance Agency Inc., Aon Energy Caribbean Limited, Aon Enterprise Insurance Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Finance Bermuda 1 Ltd., Aon Finance Bermuda 2 Ltd., Aon Finance Canada 1 Corp., Aon Finance Canada 2 Corp., Aon Finance International N.S. ULC, Aon Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Aon Finance N.S. 1 ULC, Aon Finance N.S. 5 ULC, Aon Finance N.S. 8 ULC, Aon Finance US 1 LLC, Aon Finance US 2 LLC, Aon Financial & Insurance Solutions Inc., Aon Finland Oy, Aon France, Aon Global Holdings 1 Limited, Aon Global Holdings 2 Limited, Aon Global Holdings 3 Limited [In strike-off], Aon Global Holdings Limited, Aon Global Operations plc, Aon Global Risk Consulting B.V., Aon Global Risk Consulting Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Aon Global Risk Research Limited, Aon Grana Peru Corredores de Seguros SA, Aon Greece S.A., Aon Groep Nederland B.V., Aon Group (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon Group (Thailand) Limited, Aon Group Holdings International 1 B.V., Aon Group Holdings International 2 B.V., Aon Group Inc., Aon Group International N.V., Aon Group Pty Ltd, Aon Group Venezuela Corretaje de Reaseguros C.A., Aon Hewitt (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon Hewitt (Ireland) Limited, Aon Hewitt (PNG) Ltd., Aon Hewitt (Thailand) Ltd., Aon Hewitt Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Aon Hewitt Consulting Korea Inc., Aon Hewitt Financial Advice Limited, Aon Hewitt GmbH, Aon Hewitt Health Market Insurance Solutions Inc., Aon Hewitt Hong Kong Limited, Aon Hewitt Inc., Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting Inc., Aon Hewitt Investment Management Inc., Aon Hewitt Japan Ltd., Aon Hewitt Limited, Aon Hewitt Ltd., Aon Hewitt Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Aon Hewitt Management Company Limited, Aon Hewitt Middle East Limited, Aon Hewitt Risk & Consulting S.r.l., Aon Hewitt Risk & Financial Management B.V., Aon Hewitt Trust Solutions GmbH, Aon Hewitt US Holdings Limited, Aon Holding Deutschland GmbH, Aon Holdings (Isle of Man) Limited, Aon Holdings Antillen N.V., Aon Holdings Australia Pty Limited, Aon Holdings Austria GmbH, Aon Holdings B.V., Aon Holdings Botswana (Pty) Ltd, Aon Holdings Corretores de Seguros Ltda., Aon Holdings France SNC, Aon Holdings Hong Kong Limited, Aon Holdings International B.V., Aon Holdings Israel Ltd., Aon Holdings Japan Ltd, Aon Holdings Limited, Aon Holdings Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Aon Holdings Mid Europe B.V., Aon Holdings New Zealand, Aon Hong Kong Limited, Aon Hungary Insurance Brokers Risk and Human Consulting LLC, Aon Insurance Agencies (HK) Limited, Aon Insurance Agencies (Macau) Limited, Aon Insurance Brokers (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Aon Insurance Brokers (Pvt) Ltd., Aon Insurance Management Agencies (HK) Limited, Aon Insurance Managers (Antilles) N.V., Aon Insurance Managers (Barbados) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Bermuda) Ltd, Aon Insurance Managers (Cayman) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Dublin) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Guernsey) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Holdings) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Isle of Man) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Liechtenstein) AG, Aon Insurance Managers (Luxembourg) S.A., Aon Insurance Managers (Malta) PCC Limited, Aon Insurance Managers (Puerto Rico) Inc., Aon Insurance Managers (Shannon) Limited, Aon Insurance Managers (USA) Inc., Aon Insurance Managers (USVI) Inc., Aon Insurance Managers Gibraltar Ltd., Aon Insurance Micronesia (Guam) Inc, Aon Insurance Underwriting Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers Philippines Inc., Aon International Cooperatief U.A., Aon International Energy Inc., Aon International Holdings Inc., Aon Investment Holdings Ireland Limited, Aon Israel Insurance Brokerage Ltd., Aon Italia S.r.l., Aon Japan Ltd, Aon Jauch & Hubener Gesellschaft m.b.H., Aon Korea Inc., Aon Latam Holdings N.V., Aon Lead QI B.V., Aon Life Agency of Texas Inc., Aon Life Agente de Seguros S.A. de C.V., Aon Life Insurance Company, Aon MacDonagh Boland Group Ltd, Aon Majan LLC, Aon Management Consulting Taiwan Ltd., Aon Mauritius Holdings, Aon Meeus Assurantien B.V., Aon Mexico Business Support SA de CV, Aon Mexico Holdings LLC, Aon Mexico Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., Aon Middle East Co LLC, Aon Nederland C.V., Aon Netherlands Operations B.V., Aon Neudorf Finance S.a.r.l., Aon New Zealand, Aon New Zealand Group ULC, Aon Norway AS, Aon Overseas Holdings Limited, Aon PHI Acquisition Corporation of California, Aon PMI International Limited, Aon Parizeau Inc., Aon Pension Trustees Limited, Aon Pensions Insurance Brokers GmbH, Aon Polska Services Sp. z o.o., Aon Polska Sp. z o.o., Aon Portugal - Consultores Unipessoal Lda., Aon Portugal - Corretores de Seguros S.A., Aon Premium Finance LLC, Aon Private Risk Management Insurance Agency Inc., Aon Private Risk Management of California Insurance Agency Inc., Aon Product Design & Development Australia Pty Limited, Aon Product Design and Development New Zealand Limited, Aon Product Risk Services Hong Kong Limited, Aon Property Risk Consulting Inc., Aon Qatar LLC, Aon Re (Thailand) Limited, Aon Re Bertoldi - Corretagem de Resseguros S.A., Aon Re Bolivia S.A. Corredores de Reaseguros, Aon Re Canada Holdings SARL, Aon Real Estate B.V., Aon Realty Services Inc., Aon Reed Stenhouse Inc., Aon Retirement Plan Advisors LLC, Aon Retirement Solutions Limited, Aon Risiko & Unternehmensberatungs GmbH, Aon Risk & Asset Management Pty Ltd, Aon Risk Consultants Inc., Aon Risk Insurance Services West Inc., Aon Risk Management (Pty) Ltd, Aon Risk Services (Chile) Corredores de Seguros Limitada, Aon Risk Services (Holdings) of Latin America Inc., Aon Risk Services (Holdings) of the Americas Inc., Aon Risk Services (NI) Limited, Aon Risk Services (PNG) Ltd., Aon Risk Services (Thailand) Limited, Aon Risk Services Argentina S.A., Aon Risk Services Australia Limited, Aon Risk Services Canada Inc., Aon Risk Services Central Inc., Aon Risk Services Colombia SA Corredores de Seguros, Aon Risk Services Companies Inc., Aon Risk Services EMEA B.V., Aon Risk Services Ecuador S.A. Agencia Asesora Productora de Seguros, Aon Risk Services Holdings (Chile ) Ltda., Aon Risk Services Inc. of Florida, Aon Risk Services Inc. of Hawaii, Aon Risk Services Inc. of Maryland, Aon Risk Services Inc. of Washington D.C., Aon Risk Services Northeast Inc., Aon Risk Services South Inc., Aon Risk Services Southwest Inc., Aon Risk Services Venezuela Corretaje de Seguros C.A., Aon Risk Solutions (Cayman) Ltd., Aon Risk Solutions Agente de Seguros y de Fianzas SA de CV, Aon Risk Solutions of Puerto Rico Inc., Aon Riskminder A/S, Aon Romania Broker de Asigurare - Reasigurare SRL, Aon Rus Insurance Brokers LLC, Aon Rus LLC, Aon S.p.A. Insurance & Reinsurance Brokers, Aon Saver Limited, Aon Securities (Hong Kong) Limited, Aon Securities Investment Management Inc., Aon Securities LLC, Aon Securities Limited, Aon Service Corporation, Aon Services (Guernsey) Ltd, Aon Services (Malta) Ltd, Aon Services Group Inc., Aon Services Hong Kong Limited, Aon Services Pty Ltd., Aon Sigorta ve Reasurans Brokerligi ve A.S., Aon Soluciones S.A., Aon Soluciones S.A.C., Aon Southern Europe UK Limited, Aon Sp. z o.o., Aon Special Risk Resources Inc., Aon Superannuation (PNG) Limited, Aon Superannuation Pty Limited, Aon TC Holdings Inc., Aon Taiwan Ltd., Aon Treasury Ireland Limited, Aon Trust Company LLC, Aon Trust Corporation Limited, Aon Trust Services B.V., Aon UK Group Limited, Aon UK Holdings Intermediaries Limited, Aon UK Limited, Aon UK Trustees Limited, Aon US & International Holdings Limited, Aon US Holdings 2 Inc., Aon US Holdings Inc., Aon Ukraine LLC, Aon Underwriting Agencies (HK) Limited, Aon Underwriting Managers (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon Underwriting Managers Inc., Aon Versicherungsberatungs GmbH, Aon Versicherungsmakler Deutschland GmbH, Aon Vietnam Limited, Aon Ward Financial Corporation, Aon-COFCO Insurance Brokers Co. Ltd., Aon/Albert G. Ruben Insurance Services Inc., Asevasa Argentina S.A., Asevasa Caricam S.A., Asevasa Chile Peritaciones e Ingenieria de Riesgos S.A., Asevasa Mexico S.A. de C.V., Asevasa Panama S.A., Asian Reinsurance Underwriters Limited, Asscom Insurance Brokers S.r.l., Association of Rural and Small Town Americans, Associacao Instituto Aon, Assurance Licensing Services Inc., B E P International Corp., B.V. Assurantiekantoor Langeveldt-Schroder, BMS Insurance Agency L.L.C., Bacon & Woodrow Partnerships (Ireland) Limited, Bacon & Woodrow Partnerships Limited, Bain Hogg Group Limited (in liquidation), Baltolink UADBB, Bankassure Insurance Services Limited, Bayfair Insurance Centre Limited, Beaubien Finance Ireland Limited, Beaubien Finance Limited, Beaubien UK Finance Limited, Becketts (Trustees) Limited, Becketts Limited, Beech Hill Pension Trustees Ltd, Bekouw Mendes C.V., Benefit Marketing Solutions L.L.C., Benfield Advisory Inc., Benfield Corredores de Reaseguro Ltda., Benfield Finance (London) LLC, Benfield Group, Benfield Investment Holdings Limited, Benfield Juniperus Holdings Limited, Benfield do Brasil Participacoes Ltda. (dormant), Benton Finance Ireland Limited, Benton Finance Limited, Blanch Americas Inc., Bowes & Company Inc. of New York, CEREP III Secondary Manager LLC, CFSSG Real Estate Partners I LLC, CFSSG Real Estate Partners II LLC, CIF-H GP LLC, Cammack Health LLC, Cananwill Corporation, Cananwill Inc., Cardea Health Solutions Limited, Casablanca Intermediation Company Sarl, Celinvest Amsterdam B.V., Chapka Assurances SAS, Citadel Insurance Managers Inc., CoCubes, CoSec 2000 Limited, Coalition for Benefits Equality and Choice, Cocubes Technologies Private Limited, Coles Hewitt Partnership, Contingency Insurance Brokers Limited, Contractsure Limited, CoverWallet, Coverall S.r.l. Insurance and Reinsurance Underwriting Agency, Credit Insurance Brokers (Reynolds) Limited, Crion N.V., Custom Benefit Programs Inc., Cut-e, Cut-e (UK) Limited, Cut-e Assessment (Hong Kong) Limited, Cut-e Assessment Solutions Europe Limited, Cut-e Australia Pty Limited, Cut-e Consult DMCC, Cut-e Danmark A/S, Cut-e Finland Oy, Cut-e GmbH, Cut-e Ireland Limited, Cut-e Nordic AS, Cut-e Norge AS, Cytelligence, Delany Bacon & Woodrow Partnership, Dempsey Partners, Denney O'Hara (Life & Pensions) Limited, Doveland Services Limited, E. W. Blanch Holdings Limited, E. W. Blanch Investments Limited, E.W. Blanch Capital Risk Solutions Inc., E.W. Blanch International Inc., EW Blanch Limited, Elysium Digital IP Products LLC, Elysium Digital L.L.C., Ennis Knupp Secondary Market Services LLC, Essar Insurance Services Limited, Exploitatiemaatschappij Beukenlaan 68-72 B.V., Farmaseg - Solucoes Assistencia e Servicos Empresariais Ltda., Farmsure Limited [In strike-off], Finaccord Limited, Financial & Professional Risk Solutions Inc., Futurity Group Inc., GTCR/AAM Blocker Corp., Ge.f.it. S.r.l., Gefass S.r.l., Glenrand M I B (Mocambique) Corretores de Seguros Limitada, Global Safe Insurance Brokers S.r.l., Globe Events Management, Gotham Digital Science LLC, Gotham Digital Science Ltd., Grant Liddell Financial Advisor Services Pty Ltd, Grant Park Capital LLC, Groupe-Conseil Aon Inc., Grupo Innovac Sociedad de Correduria de Seguros SA, HIA Insurance Services Pty Ltd., Hall Rhodes Holdings Limited, Hall Rhodes Limited, Hamburger Gesellschaft zur Forderung des Versicherungswesens mbH, Harbourview West Lake Co-Invest (GP) LP, Health Index Advisors LLC, Healthy Paws Pet Insurance, Henderson Corporate Insurance Brokers Limited, Henderson Insurance Brokers Limited, Henderson Insurance Partnership Limited [In strike-off], Henderson Risk Management Limited, Hewitt Amalco 3 ULC, Hewitt Amalco 4 ULC, Hewitt Amalco 5 ULC, Hewitt Associates (a partnership), Hewitt Associates Administradora e Corretora de Seguros Ltda., Hewitt Associates Corp., Hewitt Associates Outsourcing Limited, Hewitt Associates Pty Ltd, Hewitt Associates S.C., Hewitt Associates SAS, Hewitt Associates Servicos de Recursos Humanos Ltda., Hewitt Beneficios Agente de Seguros y de Fianzas S.A. de C.V., Hewitt Holdings Canada Company, Hewitt Insurance Brokerage LLC, Hewitt Insurance Inc., Hewitt International Holdings LLC, Hewitt Management Ltd., Hewitt Risk Management Services Limited, Hewitt Western Management Amalco Inc., Hogg Group Limited, Hogg Robinson North America Inc., Huntington T. Block Insurance Agency Inc., I. Beck Insurance Agency (1994) Ltd., IAO Actuarial Consulting Services Canada Inc., INPOINT INC., IRM/GRC Holding Inc., Impact Forecasting L.L.C., Inspiring Benefits, Inspiring Benefits Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Insuractive Limited [In strike-off], Insurance Broker Aon Kazakhstan LLP, International Risk Management (Americas) Inc., International Risk Management Group Ltd, International Space Brokers Europe Limited, International Space Brokers France, International Space Brokers Inc., International Space Brokers Limited, Inversiones Benfield Chile Ltda., J H Minet Puerto Rico Inc., J. Allan Brown Consultants Inc., JDPT Manager LLC, Jenner Fenton Slade Limited, John Reynolds & Company (Credit Insurance) Limited, John Reynolds & Company (Insurances) Limited, John Reynolds & Company (Life & Pensions) Limited, Johnson Rooney Welch Inc., K & K Insurance Brokers Inc. Canada, K & K Insurance Group Inc., K & K Insurance Group of Florida Inc., K2 Technologies Inc., KVT GP LLC, Kloud S.a.r.l., Krumlin Hall Limited, Lake Erie Real Estate General Partner Limited, Lake Tahoe GP LLC, Lake Tahoe II GP LLC, Lake Tahoe III GP LLC, Lake Tahoe IV GP LLC, Lenzi Paolo Broker di Assicurazioni S.r.l., Lincolnshire Insurance Company PCC Limited, Linx Underwriting Solutions Inc., Lombard Trustee Company Limited, M.A. Shakeel Management Ltd. Amalco, MacDonagh Boland Crotty MacRedmond Ltd, Marinaro Dundas S.A., Marinaro Dundas SA, Mark Kelly Insurance and Financial Services PTY LTD, McLagan (Aon) Limited, McLagan Partners Asia Inc., McLagan Partners Inc., Membership Leasing Trust, Minet Consultancy Services Ltd, Minet Group, Minet Holdings Inc., Minet Inc., Minet Re North America Inc., Modern Survey Inc., Muirfield Underwriters Ltd., NBS Nominees Limited, National Insurance Office Ltd., Nauman Insurance Brokers Limited, Nexus Insurance Brokers Limited, One Underwriting Agency GmbH, One Underwriting B.V., One Underwriting Health B.V., One Underwriting Pty Ltd, Optica Agency A/S, Optimum Risk Solutions Limited, Ovatio Courtage SAS, P.G. Bradley & Co Limited, PGOF Manager 1 LLC, PRORUCK Ruckversicherungs Aktiengesellschaft, PT Aon Benfield Indonesia, PT Aon Hewitt Indonesia, PT Aon Indonesia, PWZ AG, Paragon Strategic Solutions Inc., PathWise Solutions LLC, Penn Square Manager 1 LLC, Penn Square Manager II LLC, Portus Consulting, Portus Consulting, Portus Consulting (Leamington) Limited, Portus Online LLP, Praesidium S.p.A. - Soluzioni Assicurative per il Management, Premier Auto Finance Inc., Private Client Trustees Ltd., Private Equity Partnership Structures I LLC, Probabilitas N.V./SA, Protective Marketing Enterprises Inc., Randolph Finance Unlimited Company, Rasini Vigano Limited, Redwoods Dental Underwriters Inc., Richard Kiddle (Insurance Brokers) Limited, Risk Laboratories LLC, Riskikonsultatsioonide OU, Ronnie Elementary Insurance Agency Ltd, SA Special Situations General Partner LLC, SG IFFOXX Assekuranzmaklergesellschaft mbH, SLE Worldwide Limited, SN Re S.A., Salud Riesgos y Recursos Humanos Consultores Ltda. (former Aon Corporte Advisors Ltda.), SchneiderGolling IFFOXX Assekuranzmakler AG, SchneiderGolling Industrie Assekuranzmaklergesellschaft mbH, Scritch Inc., Shanghai Kayi Information Technology Co. Ltd, Sheppard Netherlands B.V., Specialty Benefits Inc., Sports Insure Limited [In strike-off], Strategic Manager-III LLC, Stroz Friedberg (Asia) Limited, Stroz Friedberg Inc., Stroz Friedberg LLC, Stroz Friedberg Limited, Stroz Friedberg Risk Management Limited, Superannuation Management Nominees Limited, Suresport Limited [In strike-off], Swire Blanch MSTC II SA, Swire Blanch MSTC SA, TTG BRPTP GP LLC, TTG Cayuga Bavaria Intermediate 2 S.a.r.l, TTG Core Plus Investments LLC, TTG German Investments I LLC, TTG Investments II LLC, TTG Irish Investments I LLC, TTG Manager LLC, Tecsefin S.A. en liquidacion, The Aon Ireland Mastertrustee Limited, The Aon MasterTrustee Limited, The John Reynolds Company Limited, The Key West Saxon Group LLC, The Townsend Group Inc, The Townsend Group LLC, Townsend Alpha Manager I LLC, Townsend Alpha Manager II LLC, Townsend Alpha Manager III LLC, Townsend Group Asia Limited, Townsend Group Europe Ltd., Townsend HWL GP Ltd., Townsend Holdings LLC, Townsend Lake Constance GP Limited, Townsend REF GP LLC, Townsend Re Global GP Limited, Townsend SO Manager I LLC, Tyche, UAB One Underwriting, UADBB Aon Baltic, UK Credit Insurance Specialists Limited, UNIT Versicherungsmakler GmbH, US Underwriting Solutions S.r.l., USLP Underwriting Solutions LP, Underwriters Marine Services Inc., Unidelta AG, Unirobe Meeus Groep, UnitedPensions Deutschland AG, Univers Workplace Solutions, VERO Management AG, Ventiv Technology, WT Government Services LLC, WT Technologies LLC, Wannet Speciale Verzekeringen B.V., Wannet Sports Insurance GmbH, Ward Financial Group Inc., Welfare S.r.l, West Lake General Partner LLC, West Lake II GP LLC, Wexford Underwriting Managers Inc., White Rock Insurance (Americas) Ltd., White Rock Insurance (Europe) PCC Limited, White Rock Insurance (Gibraltar) PCC Ltd., White Rock Insurance (Guernsey) ICC Limited, White Rock Insurance (Netherlands) PCC Limited, White Rock Insurance (SAC) Ltd., White Rock Insurance Company PCC Ltd., White Rock Insurance PCC (Isle of Man) Limited, White Rock Services (Bermuda) Ltd., White Rock USA Ltd., Willis Towers Watson, Worldwide Integrated Services Company, Wrapid Specialty Inc., Zalba-Caldu Correduria de Seguros SA, and cut-e USA Inc..

Read More
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, a pharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes generic medicines, specialty medicines, and biopharmaceutical products in North America, Europe, and internationally. The company offers sterile products, hormones, high-potency drugs, and cytotoxic substances in various dosage forms, including tablets, capsules, injectables, inhalants, liquids, transdermal patches, ointments, and creams. It also develops, manufactures, and sells active pharmaceutical ingredients. In addition, it focuses on the central nervous system, pain, respiratory, and oncology areas. Its products in the central nervous system include Copaxone for the treatment of relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis; AJOVY for the preventive treatment of migraine; and AUSTEDO for the treatment of tardive dyskinesia and chorea associated with Huntington disease. The company's products in the respiratory market comprise ProAir, QVAR, ProAir Digihaler, AirDuo Digihaler, and ArmonAir Digihaler, BRALTUS, CINQAIR/CINQAERO, DuoResp Spiromax, and AirDuo RespiClick/ArmonAir RespiClick for the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Its products in the oncology market include Bendeka, Treanda, Granix, Trisenox, Lonquex, and Tevagrastim/Ratiograstim. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited has a collaboration MedinCell for the development and commercialization of multiple long-acting injectable products, a risperidone suspension for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. The company was founded in 1901 and is headquartered in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel.
University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan looked forward to the schools bicentennial celebration during her annual address to the Faculty Senate on Monday.

The universitys bicentennial celebration will span two years. It will start in October 2017, which will mark the 200-year anniversary of the laying of the first cornerstone. It will end in October 2019, which is the 200th anniversary of the universitys founding  overseen by its first rector, Thomas Jefferson.

The future looks especially bright right now because were approaching a momentous period in our universitys history, one that will draw together every member of our community  those of us here in Charlottesville and others across the nation and around the world, Sullivan said during her State of the University address.

Dr. Robert W. Battle, a faculty member of UVas School of Medicine, and Tom F. Farrell II, a former UVa rector and now president of Dominion Resources, will head the bicentennial planning commission.

Sullivan said the bicentennial celebrations will include a look at the role of slavery in the universitys history. So far, the university is planning a restoration of the African-American Cemetery at UVa and a new course on the legacy of slavery.

After Sullivans speech, Battle talked about some of the other topics the commission plans to tackle: the history of race relations at UVa, the role of women on Grounds and the future of education.

Its a time to be very honest about our history, but also to learn from it, he said.

The announcement comes during the same week as the completion of a two-year project to restore the Rotunda.

The project included the replacement of the capitals on the outside of the structure, more instructional space and new audiovisual equipment in the Dome Room.

One of the objectives of the restoration was to make the Rotunda a gathering place for students. The structure, which once housed the universitys library, has become more of a tourist destination than student space in recent years.

With the reopening this fall, the Rotunda is once again serving as a center of student life and learning, Sullivan said.

Sullivan dedicated a portion of her speech to the universitys ongoing hiring push  which is central to the multi-year strategic plan (known as the Cornerstone Plan) that was approved in 2013.

Last year, UVa hired 107 tenure and tenure-track faculty, Sullivan said. The total number hired rises above 200 when non-tenure track faculty are included.

About 40 percent of tenure and tenure-track hires were women, and another 31 percent were underrepresented minorities, making it the most diverse hiring class in UVas history, Sullivan said.

The Strategic Investment Fund came up during a question and answer session after the speech. Sullivan said the fund is an important part of the universitys long-term plan.

Up to this point, the administration has found about $55 million in efficiencies and savings, which helped pay for some of the improvements, she said. The administration is now looking to make major overhauls to technology and research infrastructure, she said.

Weve reached a point where we have bigger investments to make, Sullivan said. The Strategic Investment Fund provides us an ongoing opportunity to invest in projects under the Cornerstone Plan.

The university spent the summer battling allegations  first brought by former Rector Helen E. Dragas  that the $2.3 billion fund amounted to a slush fund. Following an examination of the fund, state auditors said it was not a slush fund and that officials had not managed it unethically.
RICHMOND  Commercial real estate brokerage CBREs mid-South operations, which includes CBRE|Charlottesville, is expanding its building services division to provide more maintenance services to current and prospective clients.

The expansion, which is in the process of being rolled out, brings new leadership changes with the promotions of Jessica Butterworth of CBRE|Richmond to regional director of building services and John Thomas of CBRE|Hampton Roads to regional engineering operations manager.

The business services division provides preventive maintenance; electrical, plumbing, lighting and emergency power services; heating and air services; and general maintenance. It also provides safety programs and training, minor roof repairs and fire/life safety system management.

These services now will be available to properties that are not managed by CBRE. Previously, only properties managed by CBRE in their respective mid-South cities had access to the services of CBRE maintenance technicians.

Typically, commercial real estate firms contract maintenance work for their properties and do not offer such services to properties they dont manage.

In her new role, which became effective Monday, Butterworth oversees about 40 technicians in the mid-South region. She is in charge of general building services practices in Norfolk and Raleigh and Greensboro, North Carolina, overseeing schedules, business development, billing and compliance with federal, state and local codes regarding building maintenance.

As regional engineering operations manager, Thomas oversees 25 mechanics supporting 6.8 million square feet of office and retail space in Hampton Roads. He also oversees technical support and training in Richmond, Charlottesville, Norfolk and Raleigh and Greensboro. And he provides support to technicians in Tennessee, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Georgia.

In 2015, the CBRE|Charlottesville office completed 56 lease transactions encompassing 309,086 square feet totaling $17.7 million, and 19 sales transactions valuing $45 million.

The Daily Progress contributed to this story.
Returning to her old middle school Monday afternoon, Charlottesville High sophomore Jasmine McCray had a brief opportunity to school senior Department of Education officials in engineering  a discipline she said she had no interest in just three years ago.

U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. and several other senior officials were touring Buford Middle Schools engineering design lab on the first day of the departments Back-to-School Bus Tour.

We know were going to need a science, technology, engineering and mathematics workforce of the future  and thats what happening here at Buford Middle School, King said.

I never thought I could do anything of this sort just three years ago, McCray said, speaking about how Buford Principal Eric Johnson encouraged her to participate in an engineering summer academy at the school.

Although shes not completely certain as to what shell study in college, McCray said taking the engineering class in middle school gave her a head start on a quest to, perhaps, becoming a video game designer.

Having already been interested in computers and art, she said the engineering classes have opened a door that, to her surprise, tapped into her creative side while learning new skills such as problem-solving and communication.

That was insane, McCray said Monday evening, following the tour. Just the thought [King] could have gone anywhere and he chose here, and I happen to be part of it, thats amazing.

Its very important because oftentimes students may think of engineering as something thats difficult or only for some kids, King said, explaining the importance of providing younger students nationwide with opportunities to try their hand in advanced disciplines.

what theyre able to do here at Buford is make sure students see engineering as something thats accessible to them, he said. They get to see its fun.

The continuing development of Charlottesville and Albemarles engineering curriculum is being funded by a $3 million Department of Education Investment in Innovation (i3) grant.

Since receiving the grant in 2015, Albemarle, Charlottesville and Fluvanna school officials have been able to continue refining and expanding an engineering curriculum thats been designed in partnership with the University of Virginia, Piedmont Virginia Community College and the Smithsonian Institute.

The goals of the i3 grant program are broad, but essentially are meant to help establish models of best practices to improve student achievement nationwide.

Inside the Buford lab Monday afternoon, McCray and others gave presentations on various projects engineering students take on either in a semester-long academy course or a full-year engineering class that can score students high school credit.

Through those classes, students learn about electromagnetic, circuitry and engineering design to make small motors and devices, such as speakers that function with an ordinary auxiliary input cable that can be used with devices such as a smartphone or iPod.

Brendan Martin, an engineering teacher at Buford, said each project builds upon engineering principles that help students grasp fundamentals and how theyve developed over the course of history.

We try to build the curriculum such that teachers in Iowa who are interested in doing this could understand the progression and have the resources to be able to do it, Martin said.

Teaching more than 100 students, he said the schools facilities offer them access to technology that even a lot of high schools dont have.

Being able to have all these things at our fingertips at such a young age is definitely a great way to start out young kids, especially girls who might now be open to more things like science and engineering, said Charlottesville High School freshman Kaylee Folger.

Ben Yates, an eighth-grader at Buford, said hes relished the chance to use cutting-edge technology such as 3-D printers and laser cutting machines.

My Mom and Dad didnt get to use stuff like this in school, he said, so its really cool to have the opportunity to do this kind of stuff in middle school.
PALMYRA  A Fluvanna man was given the maximum possible sentence of 40 years in prison for slaying his 23-year-old wife one year ago.

Franklin Lee Burruss, 35, pleaded guilty in June to the second-degree murder of his wife, Tayler Lindsey Burruss, whose body was found in a hot tub at the couples Lake Monticello home. Investigators reported that Tayler Burruss had been stabbed 22 times, and suffered various other wounds to her face and body before she drowned in the hot tub.

Just before announcing Franklin Burruss sentence on Monday, Judge Susan Whitlock told the packed courtroom that the slaying was among the most brutal crimes shed seen in her long career.

Burruss was first taken into custody in the early morning hours of Sept. 5, 2015, after arriving at a family members home in Louisa in hysterics, saying hed done something terrible. The family member contacted authorities, telling an officer that hes done killed her and that Burruss required medical attention.

By the time emergency personnel arrived, Burruss had attempted to strangle himself with a cord. En route to the University of Virginia Medical Center, he tried to wrap a seat strap around his neck, and after arriving, he attempted to drink a bottle of iodine, according to authorities.

At the same time that he was being transported, authorities arrived at Burruss Fluvanna home, where they found Tayler Burruss body amidst the scene of a struggle. Officers found defensive wounds on her forearms, an injury to her forehead consistent with blood spatter on a deck railing and two knives that had been broken off at the handle. Smears of blood were found around the home, including on the handle and faucet of a sink inside.

Weeks later, Burruss was facing a first-degree murder charge when a judge denied him bond.

In January, Burruss pleaded not guilty to the charge, resulting in the scheduling of a four-day jury trial set for June. But on the first day of the scheduled trial, Burruss pleaded guilty to a downgraded charge of second-degree murder. In his indictment, the words with premeditation were removed. That said, prosecutor Jeff Haislip was adamant that the indictment be augmented to include the word maliciously.

That adamancy was still in Haislips voice Monday when he described the events that led to Tayler Burruss death. Ten years earlier, Tayler Lindsey Harsch was a 14-year-old girl who met the then-25-year-old Burruss. After dating for some time, Harsch moved in with Burruss and began working various jobs. The two eventually married.

Several friends of the couple have testified that in the weeks before the killing, the couple had been fighting, with Franklin Burruss moving out of and back into their Jefferson Drive home over the course of a few days. Haislip said Monday that Burruss believed his wife was cheating on him, and that on the night he killed her, Burruss found a text on Taylers phone that he believed to be evidence of her infidelity.

The horrible irony of it, Haislip said, was that the text in question actually was sent by a young child whom Tayler Burruss had met earlier that day. That irony is intensified by the fact that Franklin Burruss had previously made plans to engage in sexual activity with another woman on the night he killed his wife, he said.

At some point during the night of Sept. 4 or morning of Sept. 5, the two got into a fight that escalated quickly. Given the grisly nature of Tayler Burruss injuries, Burruss decision to put his badly injured wife into the hot tub and various other factors, Haislip asked Whitlock to impose the maximum possible sentence of 40 years.

Defense attorney Vaughan Jones asked the judge to impose the minimum sentence of 12 years. Jones said he knew Burruss deserved severe punishment, but he pointed to Burruss lack of a criminal or violent history as grounds for a lesser sentence  one hour of terror should not undo all that Burruss had done in his 34 years prior, Jones argued.

Burruss attorney further asserted that while his client had committed a horrendous crime, he had immediately shown remorse for his actions, through his attempts to commit suicide and his decision to plead guilty, thereby sparing Taylers family from a lengthy trial.

Jones added that just as many of Tayler Burruss family members were in attendance at the sentencing, Franklin Burruss friends and family had similarly filled the seats in his support.

In his rebuttal, Haislip was quick to address that comment, saying there are broken hearts throughout this courtroom. He further shot down the notion that Burruss had shown any legitimate remorse in the aftermath of his wifes death, and said Burruss lack of a criminal history or history of violence did little to negate the tragedy hed inflicted on Taylers family and his own.

Just before he was sentenced, Burruss rose and spoke directly to the court, saying he takes responsibility for his actions and apologizing to his wifes family. Burruss thanked Haislip for seeking justice in his wifes murder, apologized to his own family for the pain hed caused them and told Whitlock that he would accept whatever punishment she decided for him. He added that he wished his Fluvanna home had outdoor surveillance cameras, so that everyone in the court could have seen exactly what happened on the night of the slaying.

While many of Tayler Burruss sobbing family members shook their heads in contempt as Burruss apologized to them, he continued on with his written statement, his voice breaking as he told them no one can see or feel the pain inside of me.

Ultimately, Whitlock decried the malicious and brutal nature of the crime and imposed the maximum sentence. Upon the judges announcement, the courtroom exploded in a cacophony of emotions. On one side, Tayler Burruss family cried out in relief; on the other, Franklin Burruss cried out in despair.
AFTON  A study commissioned by two environmental organizations says neither the Atlantic Coast Pipeline nor the Mountain Valley Pipeline needs to be built because existing pipelines can supply the power for Virginia and the Carolinas through 2030.

The proposed 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline path starts in West Virginia and runs through Virginia into eastern North Carolina. The pipelines path includes parts of Nelson and Buckingham counties. The 301-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline is a projected natural gas pipeline running 301 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia.

Both pipelines are under consideration by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline draft environmental impact statement could be finalized by December.

The study disputing new pipeline construction was performed by Massachusetts-based Synapse Energy Economics and was commissioned by the Charlottesville-based Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates. The study was released Monday at a news conference at the Rockfish Valley Community Center in Nelson County.

The report evidence shows these pipelines dont need to go in anyones backyard, said Greg Buppert, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Joe Lovett, executive director of Appalachian Mountain Advocates, says the study shows no need for the new pipelines, and so eminent domain should not be allowed for the benefit of private companies. This would violate the law and the Constitution, Lovett said.

Nelson Supervisor Connie Brennan said the Atlantic Coast Pipeline would bring some tax revenue to her county, but would lower residential property values, cost the county tourism revenue and jettison a hotel project at Wintergreen Resort.

Nancy Sorrells, co-chairwoman of the Augusta County Alliance, said the ACP could harm water supplies and put land and the environment at risk in Augusta County.

Synapse bases its conclusion that the two pipelines do not need to be built on several factors. Those factors include existing pipeline capacity in the region, existing natural gas storage and an expected reversal in the direction of the flow of the Transco pipeline and the anticipated upgrade of a Columbia Gas pipeline.

Synapse said the reversal of the flow of the Transco pipeline would supply natural gas from northern Pennsylvania through Virginia and the Carolinas to Alabama. Columbia Gas WB Xpress project is designed to send 1.3 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas to West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland.

As for existing pipelines in the study region, those belong to Transco, Cove Point, Columbia Gas, Dominion, Southern Natural Gas, South Carolina PL Corporation, East Tennessee Natural Gas, Nora Transmission and Bluefield Gas.

Natural gas storage in the region could only be estimated, because not all owners are required to report storage. The reported storage in the study is a conservative estimate.

The conclusion is that the natural gas supply is sufficient to meet demand from 2017 to 2030. Additional interstate natural gas pipelines, like the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline, are not needed to keep the lights on, homes and businesses heated and industrial facilities in production, Synapse said in concluding natural gas supply exceeds demand.

Dominion Resources, the lead utility in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, disputes much of what was offered in the Synapse study. Company spokesman Aaron Ruby said the report is based on flawed assumptions, incorrect data and a fundamental misunderstanding of our natural gas system in this country.

Ruby said not knowing the exact amount of natural gas in storage is an important omission in the Synapse study.

The reality is that the amount of storage available is nowhere near what is required to meet the massive growth and demand for natural gas that public utilities are seeing over the next 20 years, he said. Ruby said Dominion is the second-largest storage operator in the country, and knows what storage is available.

Ruby also said the existing pipelines in Virginia and North Carolina are not able to meet the growing natural gas needs. In Hampton Roads, the natural gas is in such short supply that service is already being curtailed for large industrial customers during high-demand periods, he said.

Ruby said the ACP is needed in eastern North Carolina to assure that that portion of the state can have natural gas for homes, economic development and electric generation.

Pipelines must be designed to meet peak demands, not average demands, Ruby said. He said that means the pipeline must be built to meet capacity on the hottest summer days and the coldest winter days.
The Albemarle County Fire Department is opening its doors to the public this month for the 2016 Citizen Fire Rescue Academy.

Beginning next week, the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department will host the citizen academy, which is designed to show Albemarle County residents what it takes to be a firefighter. The classes will run from 7 to 9:30 p.m. every Thursday from Sept. 22 to Oct. 22.

Participants will learn about the fire departments administration, budget, operations, training and fire prevention strategies. The classes also will offer hands-on exercises with members from the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department and the Western Albemarle Rescue Squad. Participants will get to try on fire gear, operate hose lines and cut up a vehicle.

To register for the academy, visit acfirerescue.org or call (434) 296-5833.
RICHMOND  Gov. Terry McAuliffes administration urged the states highest court on Monday to reject Republican lawmakers latest attempt to strip the voting rights of thousands of felons who have completed their sentences.

Solicitor General Stuart Raphael said in court documents that McAuliffes new process for restoring felons voting rights fully complies with the Virginia Supreme Courts July decision that said rights must be granted on a case-by-case basis.

Petitioners attack on Gov. McAuliffes new approach seems grounded in policy differences, not the Constitution, Raphael wrote. Petitioners should not be permitted to use this contempt motion as a vehicle to claim that their policy preferences are somehow constitutionally mandated. 

McAuliffe began restoring voting rights again under a new process last month after the court ruled in July that he overstepped his authority with his sweeping executive order that gave back the rights of more than 200,000 felons.

So far, McAuliffe has restored the rights of nearly 20,000 people using the new process, Raphael said. More than 300 people who registered to vote after their rights were restored under McAuliffes first executive order didnt get them back the second time around because there were active warrants out for them or they were awaiting trial for a criminal offense, Raphael said.

Republican lawmakers who successfully challenged the governors previous executive order asked the Virginia Supreme Court last month to hold the Democratic governor in contempt, accusing him of violating the court order. Republicans say theres no practical difference between McAuliffes new process and his previous action struck down by the court.

Raphael rejected the GOPs argument that governors only can restore the rights of those who request it, saying theres no such requirement in the Constitution.

Furthermore, Raphael said that again canceling the voter registrations of felons whose rights have been restored would lead to electoral chaos in the remaining weeks before the general election.

Matt Moran, a spokesman for GOP House Speaker William Howell, said Monday that their attorneys are reviewing the administrations filing.
RICHMOND  The Virginia Citizens Defense League has filed a $12 million defamation lawsuit against journalist Katie Couric and her partners on a documentary film project over what the gun-rights group claims was "manipulated and misleading footage" of its members.

The suit, filed Monday in Richmond's federal court, accuses the filmmakers of using "deceptive editing methods" in their gun-violence documentary "Under the Gun" to make pro-gun activists appear stumped by a question from Couric about background checks being able to stop terrorists and criminals from buying guns. Instead of portraying the VCDL members' immediate answers to Couric's question during the 2015 interview at a Tysons Corner hotel, the suit claims, the question was followed by roughly nine seconds of footage of the interviewees appearing to be at a loss for words.

"The defendants manipulated the footage in service of an agenda: they wanted to establish that there is no basis for opposing universal background checks by fooling viewers into believing that even a panel of pro-Second Amendment advocates could not provide one," the suit says.

The panel spent nearly six minutes responding to Couric's question, the suit says. The footage of the VCDL members sitting silently was recorded after the documentary crew said it needed silence to calibrate recording equipment, according to the suit.

Couric and the company behind the film could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

The plaintiffs in the case are the VCDL as an organization and two individual members, Fauquier County attorney Daniel L. Hawes and Hanover County gun dealer Patricia Webb, who were featured in the documentary. The plaintiffs are being represented by Alexandria-based law firm Clare Locke LLP, which specializes in defamation cases. The firm is also representing University of Virginia associate Nicole Eramo in her lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine over its debunked 2014 article about a purported gang rape on campus.

The plaintiffs claim they were defamed because the film portrays them as "ignorant and unfit in their trades" and suggests the VCDL "failed to deliver on its mission to speak in defense of the Second Amendment."

Along with Couric, an Arlington County native and UVa graduate, the suit names as defendants film director Stephanie Soechtig, production company Atlas Films LLC and Epix, the movie channel that distributed the documentary.

When the editing controversy arose in May, Couric released a statement saying she had asked Soechtig about the segment after screening an early version of the film and "was told that a 'beat' was added for, as she described it, 'dramatic effect.'" Couric also posted a partial transcript of the VCDL members' answers and said she agreed that their response was not represented accurately.

"I regret that those eight seconds were misleading and that I did not raise my initial concerns more vigorously," Couric said.

In an email to VCDL members Monday, VCDL President Philip Van Cleave said the lawsuit is "the only way to hold Couric and her people accountable." The suit will be funded by member contributions, Van Cleave said.
SEPT. 9

TUMC SPAGHETTI DINNER

The women of Trinity United Church will hold a spaghetti dinner Friday, Sept. 9, from 4:30 -- 7 p.m. The menu will include spaghetti, salad, garlic bread, homemade pies and cakes, coffee, iced tea and lemonade. A love offering will be taken for the benefit of United Methodist Women Missions. Take-out will be available. Trinity United Church is located at 143 W. Main Street, across from Taylor Park. For more information, call 672-4335.

CRAIGS BAPTIST SPECIAL SERVICE

Craigs Baptist Church will hold a special service at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9 and Saturday, Sept. 10. A celebratory service will be held Sunday, Sept. 11 as Craigs Baptist Church recognizes its 249th church anniversary. The guest speaker will be Pastor Bobby McClintic. For more information, call 854-5284. Craigs Baptist Church is located at 14123 W. Catharpin Rd., Spotsylvania Courthouse.

SEPT. 10

MITCHELLS PRESBYTERIAN STEAK DINNER

Mitchells Presbyterian Church will host a steak dinner Saturday, Sept. 10 from 5  7 p.m. The cost is $12 for adults and $5 for children 6-12 (five and under eat for free.) Hot dogs will also be available. To reserve a carryout, call 825-1079. All proceeds will go to the churchs building fund. For more information, call 825-8412.

SHILOH BAPTIST PRAISE SERVICE

Willing Workers of the Shiloh Baptist Church, Stanardsville, will have songs of praise and worship Saturday, Sept. 10 at 4 p.m. The Gospel Creators of Central Virginia will render the music. All are welcome to attend. For more information, contact Janet B. Frye at (434) 446-434.

LOCUST GROVE GOSPEL FEST

Locust Grove Baptist Church, Radiant, will celebrate its annual Gospel Fest Saturday, Sept. 10 at 2 p.m. There will be gospel groups, food and fun. Dress down, bring a lawn chair and enjoy the Lord! The pastor is Leonard S. Ray, Jr.

DON REID MEMORIAL SUPPER

Mechanicsville Baptist Church, located at 100200 Louisa Rd. Gordonsville, invites the community to its annual, free, Don Reid Memorial supper Saturday, Sept. 10 at 6 p.m. Everyone is welcome to attend. For more information, call the church office at 832 3269.

SEPT. 11

CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE ANNIVERSARY

Orange Church of the Nazarene will celebrate its 75th anniversary Sunday, Sept. 11. The anniversary celebration will include a picnic Saturday, Sept. 10 in Somerset at 5 p.m. Former pastor the Rev. Tony Martin will be the speaker Sunday, Sept. 11 at the 11 a.m. service. Breakfast will be served at 9 a.m. and a luncheon will follow the 11 a.m. service.

CRAIGS BAPTIST CHURCH 249TH ANNIVERSARY

Craigs Baptist Church will hold a special service Sunday, Sept. 11 at 9:30 a.m. to celebrate its 249th anniversary. The guest speaker will be Pastor Bobby McClintic with special music by Calvarys Mercy. For more information, call 854-5284.

MT. PISGAH, TRUE BLUE, HOMECOMING/REVIVAL

Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church, True Blue, will celebrate its homecoming and revival Sunday, Sept. 11 at 3 p.m. The Rev. David Cunningham of First Baptist Church, Colonial Beach, will be the guest for the week. Services will be held Sunday  Wednesday. The Rev. Cunninghams choir will accompany him Sunday, with different choirs for the following services. All are welcome to attend. Dinner will be served following the morning service. For more information, call 399-1089.

MT. PISGAH, TANNERS, HOMECOMING/REVIVAL

Homecoming and revival services will be held at Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church, Tanners, starting Sunday, Sept. 11. The guest preacher for the 3 p.m. service Sunday will be the Rev. Fred Sales, with music by the Shady Grove Baptist male chorus. Revival services are Monday -- Friday, Sept. 12 -- 16, beginning at 7:45 p.m. The Rev. Arthur Greene, pastor of Swift Ford Baptist Church, is the guest preacher. Various choirs will sing nightly: Church of the Living God (Monday); Chestnut Grove Baptist Church (Tuesday); Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church, Orange (Wednesday); House of God Tabernacle (Thursday) and Swift Ford Baptist (Friday). Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church is located at 217 Mt. Pisgah Church Dr., Tanners. The Rev. Walter E. Bryant is the pastor. For more information, call 672-9065.

PLEASANT GROVE BAPTIST HOMECOMING

Pleasant Grove Baptist Church will hold its homecoming service Sunday, Sept. 11. Sunday school begins at 10 a.m. and the morning service will be held at 11 a.m. Pastor Shirley H. Chapman will deliver the message. Lunch will be held after the morning service. A service of prayer and praise will be held at 2:30 p.m. The afternoon service will be held at 3 p.m. with guest speaker Pastor Donald King, Sr., of Mt. Gilliam New Sit Baptist Church, Louisa. He will be accompanied by his choir. Pleasant Grove Baptist Church is located at 3417 Earlysville Rd., Earlysville. For more information, call (434) 978-1090.

BETHSAIDA UMC HOMECOMING

Bethsaida United Methodist Church will hold its annual homecoming service Sunday, Sept. 11 at 11 a.m. The theme will be Let the Children Come to Me, from the words of Jesus in Matthew 19. Guest speakers will be Jerry Carpenter and George Dasher. There will be special music from the Mt. Zion United Methodist Church choir and other from Dave Davidson and his son Ben. The pastor asks that each person planning to attend bring a box of cereal to the homecoming service. All cereal will be donated to MESAs food pantry. Jennifer McLeod, Executive Director of MESA, will be present at the homecoming to dedicate the boxes of cereal. Bethsaida United Methodist Church is located at 1014 Ridgeview Rd., Brightwood. For directions or more information, call 672-5233.

BEULAH BAPTIST HOMECOMING

Beulah Baptist Church will celebrate its homecoming Sunday, Sept. 11 at 10 a.m. with Pastor Kenneth Pitts delivering the morning message. Dinner will be served following the morning service. At 3 p.m. the guest preacher will be the Rev. Douglas Green of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Culpeper. Beulah Baptist Church is located at 9297 Eggbornsville Rd., Rixeyville. For more information, contact Dr. Kenneth Pitts at 937-5563 or email bbc9297@gmail.com .

CHRIST ANGLICAN SERVICE OF HEALING

Christ Anglican Fellowship will hold a Service of Healing Sunday, Sept. 11 from 5:30  6:30 p.m. The service will be conducted at the Christ Anglican Fellowship Center, located at 153 E. Main St., Orange. For more information, call 672-8331 or visit www.christanglicanfellowship.org. \

DAYSTAR WORSHIP CENTER BIG DAY

Daystar Worship Center, located on N. High St., Gordonsville (beside Gordon Barber Elementary) will host a Big Day Sunday, Sept. 11 beginning at 10:30 a.m. The day will begin with worship service, followed by hotdogs, inflatable bouncy houses, sno cones and creative games! Everyone is invited and encouraged to wear red, white and blue in honor of America!

SEPT. 17

MAIN UNO YOUTH REVIVAL

Main Uno Baptist Church will host a youth revival Saturday, Sept. 17 at 3 p.m. The guest preacher will be Minister Lindsay Baker, associate minister of Chestnut Grove Baptist Church, Esmont. She will be joined by the youth praise dancers and choirs. Join in fellowship and supporting the youth.

SAINT ISIDORE CHURCH YARD SALE

Saint Isidore the Farmer Catholic Church will hold a yard sale Saturday, Sept. 17 from 7 a.m.  1 p.m. Proceeds will benefit local children in need. The church is located on Rt. 15, between the towns of Orange and Gordonsville. For more information, call 672-4933.

MAKING JOYFUL NOICE CONCERT SERIES

The Lake of the Woods Church is pleased to bring back Charles Mincey for its Making Joyful Noise concert series Saturday, Sept. 17 at 7 p.m. Mincey will partner with the talents of pianist Kathy Pelligreen. The show will feature smooth and big band jazz, country rock, gospel and show tunes. A pre-concert dinner will be proved at 6 p.m. by Girl Scout Troup 804 featuring slow-cooked chicken and dressing with baked sweet potatoes and homemade pumpkin pie. A voluntary offering will be collected for the dinner. A cookie concerto reception will follow the performance as well as a meet and greet with Mincey. For more information, call 972-9060.

SEPT. 18

WILDON GROVE HOMECOMING

Wildon Grove Baptist Church will hold its homecoming service Sunday, Sept. 18. The morning service will be at 11:30 a.m. with lunch to follow. The afternoon service will begin at 3 p.m. with guest Minister Penny Hawkins of St. John Baptist Church, Cobham. She will be accompanied by her choir. Wildon Grove Baptist Church is located at 6820 Wildon Grove Rd., Gordonsville. For more information, call (540) 406-2193.

HEBRON LUTHERAN HOMECOMING

Hebron Lutheran Church will hold its homecoming service Sept. 18 at 10 a.m. the speaker will be Pastor Covington. There will be a shared luncheon to follow. For more information, 948-4381.

SEPT. 25

BETHEL UMC HOMECOMING

Bethel United Methodist Church will hold its homecoming service Sunday, Sept. 25 at 11 a.m. The Rev. Henry Aylor will be the guest speaker and special music will be provided by the youth of Oak Grove Mennonite Church. A covered-dish lunch will follow at the pavilion. Everyone is invited.

OCT. 15

HARVEST FESTIVAL/CRAFT SHOW

Craigs Baptist Church will hold a Harvest Festival/Craft Show Oct. 15. Vendors are still needed and may contact 854-5284 for more information. Craigs Baptist Church is located at 14123 W. Catharpin Rd., Spotsylvania Courthouse.

NOTICES

CALL-IN BIBLE STUDY

Beulah Baptist Church, Rixeyville, hosts a free call-in Bible study with Pastor Kenneth Pitts every Wednesday from 7 -- 7:30 p.m., studying the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The call-in number is (302) 202-1118, access code 862090.

FOOTHILLS EXPRESS SHUTTLE SCHEDULE

Beginning Oct. 4, the Foothills Express Shuttle bus will be operating Tuesdays and Thursdays only. There will still be three round trips per dya, but Wednesday service will no longer be available. Please schedule appointments accordingly. For more information, contact (540) 829-5300 or visit www.fams.org.

CHRIST ANGLICAN DISCUSSION SERIES

Christ Anglican Fellowship will host a seven-week discussion series, Objections to Christianity, Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. at the Christ Anglican Fellowship Center, located at 153 E. Main St., Orange. All serious inquirers welcome. For more information, call 672-8331.

COMEDIAN WEBCAST

Orange Church of the Nazarene will host SHEjammygans, a not-so-late night live webcast talk show starring Christian comedian Anita Renfroe. Be ready for an hour of laughs, conversations and fun. This event is held the first and third Tuesdays of each month at 9 p.m. in the church sanctuary. For more information, call 661-0145 or visit SHEjammygans.com.

EXERCISE AND DEVOTION SERIES

Orange Church of the Nazarene will host Sweatin with Jesus every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday morning at 9 a.m. at the Fellowship Hall corner of Nelson and Belleview Street in Orange. Come enjoy a free time of low-impact exercise and devotions. For more information, call 661-0145.

CANCER SUPPORT GROUP

A free cancer support group will be held every Thursday 12:30  2 p.m. starting June 2 for eight weeks, facilitated by Counseling Interventions. Meetings will be held at Orange Presbyterian Church. Child care will be provided. For information or to register, call 672-4240. There is no cost to attend.

CRAIGS BAPTIST PROGRAMS

Craigs Baptist Church, 14123 W. Catharpin Road, holds its Sunday morning worship at 9:30 a.m. and Sunday School at 11 a.m., ladies Bible study every Sunday at 6 p.m., midweek worship every Wednesday at 11 a.m. Craigs is hosting an open gym/Bible study Tuesday nights for teens (ages 12 and up) that will run through the summer months. Contact the church office for information on AWANA, VBS, Centershot or teen open gym night at 854-5284.
While a parent sat upstairs, a group of teenagers partying in the basement of a Fairfax County home in February crowded into a bathroom to crush and snort prescription drugs, a prosecutor said Monday.

David Evers, an 18-year-old senior at Centreville High School who was headed to college, traded a morphine pill to his classmate Alexia Springer, 17, a homecoming princess and varsity runner, for an oxycodone, the prosecutor said.

The drugs were two of a handful Springer ingested that night that would ultimately lead to her death.

Evers pleaded guilty in Fairfax County court Monday to supplying the morphine to Springer, a case that cost one student her life and another his future and highlighted the dangers of teenagers abusing prescription medication.

Virginia Assistant Attorney General Marc J. Birnbaum said in court that Evers had become known as the Boof man at Centreville High School because he had begun distributing prescription drugs to fellow students on a handful of occasions  even apparently as he was accepted to more than one college.

This is not an isolated incident, Birnbaum said of the events that led to Springers death. This is not something that just happened on this one day. This is something that happened throughout the school year.

Birnbaum said Springer, a junior, probably had taken a Xanax before the party on Feb. 29. Prosecutors said about 20 to 30 students from Centreville and other schools attended the party at a Clifton home that was not identified.

Birnbaum said Evers and Springer, along with five or so other partygoers, slipped into the basement bathroom for 20 to 30 minutes to trade the pills and snort the drugs. In court, Birnbaum declined to disclose Everss morphine supplier.

Rona Powell, Springers mother, said in a May interview that her daughter also drank at the party. Powell said her daughter went home after the party. She texted and went online, but never woke up after going to sleep that night.

One of Springers friends, who had spent the night, found her unresponsive the next morning and alerted authorities.

The medical examiner ruled that Springers death was accidental and the result of a combination of alcohol, morphine, Xanax and oxycodone. Springers family declined to comment after Mondays hearing.

She was a really good kid, Powell said in May. This is something I would never have thought would happen to her.

Everss family also declined to comment, but his attorney Christie A. Leary said in court that he had been suicidal and depressed since Springers death.

Before this, he had a wonderful future ahead of him, she said of her client. Those plans have been derailed.

During the hearing, Evers spoke only to answer questions from Circuit Judge Randy I. Bellows.

Leary argued that Evers should remain out on bond before his Dec. 2 sentencing, but Bellows disagreed, saying the defendants misdeeds were catastrophic.

A child died, Bellows said before Evers was handcuffed and led to jail.
Since the 2005-06 school year, Culpeper County Public Schools has gained 1,080 students.

During that 10-year span, the school division also opened two new schools: Eastern View High and Yowell Elementary schools in August 2008.

CCPS Superintendent Tony Brads informed the Culpeper County School Board during Mondays regular meeting that 7,799 or 95.4 percent of students who are enrolled showed up on the first day of school on Aug. 9.

All of the students who are enrolled may not come back because of some decisions or they have moved, explained Brads to the board.

Brads said there were 372 no shows on the first day, but by the 10th day of school, 8,020 students were in attendance.

By the end of August, CCPS welcomed 8,023 and on Sept. 6, the school system had 8,040, just 29 students under the school divisions target.

These numbers are very important for us in terms of our funding, said Brads.

On Monday, CCPS Finance Director Jeff Shomo said the school divisions target enrollment is 8,069.

The state issues funding to public schools based on Average Daily Membership, since daily enrollment fluctuates. For each student, Culpeper County receives about $4,000.

Basically for our budget, its break even right now, said Shomo. And we are enrolling kids every day.

School officials calculate ADM projections to help the state determine its annual funding. ADM is one of the methods school systems use to establish future school facility needs and budget estimates.

Whenever ADM projections are off by the March 31 deadline, the state makes up the difference in its bi-monthly funding either by adding or subtracting from the revenue distributed to schools in April, May and June.

Also during Mondays meeting, the school board approved a bullying proclamation, stating that the Culpeper County School Board along with the Virginia School Boards Association recognizes the month of October, as the VSBA Bullying Prevention Month with the intention that the issue of bullying and its prevention be discussed in Virginia schools and classrooms during that time.

According to CCPS, 20 percent of children in the U.S. are involved in some sort of bullying and an estimated 160,000 (K-12) students miss school every day due to the fear of being bullied.

Bullying can take many forms, including verbal, physical and most recently in cyberspace and can happen in many places on and off school grounds, the proclamation reads. It is important for parents, students, teachers and school administrators to be aware of bullying and to encourage discussion of the problem as a school community.

The school board also dedicated the week of Sept. 11 to 17 as Arts in Education week.

Arts education, comprising of a rich array of discipline including dance, music, theater, media arts, literature, design and visual arts is a core academic subject and an essential element of a complete and balanced education for all students, reads the proclamation dated Sept. 12. Arts education enables students to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills, imagination and creativity, discipline, alternative ways to communicate and express ideas, and cross-cultural understanding, that supports academic success across the curriculum as well as personal growth outside the classroom.

By the numbers

School year enrollment

2004-05 6,438

2005-06 6,894

2006-07 7,106

2007-08 7,161

2008-09 7,215

2009-10 7,434

2010-11 7,503

2011-12 7,612

2012-13 7,732

2013-14 7,881

2014-15 7,820

2015-16 7,974

Sept 2016 8,040

Source: Culpeper County Public Schools

Rhonda Simmons can be reached at rsimmons@starexponent.com or 540/825-6397.
The under-construction Wort Hog Brewing Company in Warrenton is now accepting applications for employment in its downtown taproom scheduled to open later this year.

I believe well be the only craft brewery in Northern Virginia with a full rooftop bar, said partner Cris Bezdek of the 1,500-square-foot elevated patio going in. It is going to be very nice.

Employees needed to staff the facility that will also serve food include experienced bartenders, wait staff, assistant brewers and other positions related to the craft brewing industry. Bezdek said an initial crew of around 14 would be hired and then increased as business did with the warm weather.

Warrenton-based Dominion Construction Group is lead contractor on the project that will transform a one-block section along Beckham Street, near Claires at the Depot, into the brewery and pub.

The project investors, including Matt Lutz and Lou Oliva, are hoping for a mid-December grand opening. Bezdek said the project would happen in phases, in part, to accommodate a current tenant on the block, the assisted living facility at Fauquier Bridges.

Portions of the buildings associated with the project date to the late 1800s, he said, and housed various uses including a foundry, blacksmith, grain storage and an auto dealership, which is where the taproom is now being constructed.

In March, the governor announced a $600,000 low-cost loan for the brewery project that is also receiving financial support from the town of Warrenton, which will reimburse Wort Hog for water and sewer infrastructure improvements to support the on-site beer making.

This is going to help continue to revitalize Old Town Warrenton, Warrenton Mayor Powell Duggan said at the time. We already have great restaurants and shops and this is going to bring more of them.

Bezdek agreed.

We will be bringing a lot of tourism, he said Tuesday. We hope the shops will see a lot more foot traffic once we open.

To apply for a job with Wort Hog, call 540/300-BREW or email info@worthogbreweryllc.com.
The treatment of the Native American people by the United States stands right near the top among the evil that men do, although the African-American will present a strong argument for the top as well.

The dehumanizing of entire nations of people is where the evil begins, fueled by greed. Shamefully, the American people cannot even turn away and claim that this is a dark past because it is an evil still perpetuated on them today.

In order to progress we must look forward, but not without knowing the past as the American government has a long history of domestic terrorism against the people living in North America, all for the sake of profit over people.

Following the Civil War, America turned west to conquer and eliminate the indigenous people. From 1866 to 1868 war was waged against Red Cloud in Wyoming over a trail that was blazed through the territory of the native peoples, destroying natural resources. This trail gave the quickest route from Ft. Laramie to the gold of Montana. The result of war was the Treaty of Laramie negotiated by two nations, doing so as equals.

This treaty created the Great Sioux Reservation, a guarantee of land and rights that included the Black Hills and surrounding areas of the Dakotas, for the Black Hills are both sacred and culturally significant to them. In 1873, the people of this great reservation would come to be known as the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe with an infrastructure and a government of their own.

Trespassing, Gen. Custer and his men discovered gold in the Black Hills in 1874, ushering in a Gold Rush into Lakota Sioux sacred lands.

Breeches of the treaty and encroachment by gold prospectors led to the Great Sioux War in 1876. During the next two years, led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, the Lakota fought to protect their sacred grounds against the greed and lust of Americans.

Infamously, Custer would make his last stand at the Little Big Horn. This culminated with the Treaty of 1877 which took away the Sioux land and its resourcesespecially the goldand set the Sioux up in concentration camps called reservations. One of these was the Wounded Knee reservation where the unarmed Sioux were massacred by the US Army in 1890 after the reservations size had been greatly reduced in 1889.

These remain the boundaries set forth by treaty today.

For gold, this great and proud people had been demoralized and reduced to sub-humans, relying on government handouts for survival. In the 1920s, to permanently end any Lakota claim to the Black Hills, the sacred land was defaced with carved images of white heroes upon Mt. Rushmore, symbolic of the oppression and dehumanization of the natives for profit.

In 1959, the Standing Rock people organized and approved their own Constitution under the auspices of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, FDRs Indian New Deal. But this would not last. Unrest would arise again in the 1970s with protests at Wounded Knee, the FBI siege of the reservation and the controversial arrest, trial, and incarceration of Lakota Civil Rights leader Leonard Peltier.

Its a long history of breech of treaty, murder, incarceration and the dehumanizing of a people for greed and lust. For this, Americans must be ashamed, but the history of these atrocities is still being written.

Today, greed and lust are being used to further steal and oppress the Sioux. American corporations, with the aid of their neo-liberal politicians in both major parties, are attempting to breach treaties to build a pipeline through their land, disrupting water supplies and natural resources while bulldozing sacred burial grounds; another case of the dehumanizing of a people for profit as well as an attack upon the planet.

We should still be ashamed.

Not all politicians are forsaking them. As hundreds from other tribes and concerned people continue to gather to stand with the people of Standing Rock, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka are literally standing with them, encouraging the protesters using an American patriotic tradition.

More so, we the people, should stand with them.

This treatment, such as having attack dogs released on families, is a disgrace to us all and we should take it personally. We must let politicians know that we believe treaties should be honored, that we are not the same as our predecessors. The Dakota Pipeline must not go forward. It is illegal, immoral, and irresponsible. Clearly its time we abandon fossil fuel anyway and move into the future with renewable and sustainable energy.

Unequivocally, The Piedmont Green Party stands firmly with our Native American brothers and sisters at Standing Rock and ask that you stand with us for people over profit. Vote Jill Stein in November. www.piedmontgreens.com.
The treatment of the Native American people by the United States stands right near the top among the evil that men do, although the African-American will present a strong argument for the top as well.

The dehumanizing of entire nations of people is where the evil begins, fueled by greed. Shamefully, the American people cannot even turn away and claim that this is a dark past because it is an evil still perpetuated on them today.

In order to progress, we must look forward, but not without knowing the past, as the American government has a long history of domestic terrorism against the people living in North America, all for the sake of profit over people.

Following the Civil War, America turned west to conquer and eliminate the indigenous people. From 1866 to 1868, war was waged against Red Cloud in Wyoming over a trail that was blazed through the territory of the native peoples, destroying natural resources. This trail offered the quickest route from Fort Laramie to the gold of Montana. The result of war was the Treaty of Laramie negotiated by two nations, doing so as equals.

This treaty created the Great Sioux Reservation, a guarantee of land and rights that included the Black Hills and surrounding areas of the Dakotas, for the Black Hills are both sacred and culturally significant to them. In 1873, the people of this great reservation would come to be known as the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe with an infrastructure and a government of their own.

Trespassing, Gen. Custer and his men discovered gold in the Black Hills in 1874, ushering in a Gold Rush into Lakota Sioux sacred lands.

Breeches of the treaty and encroachment by gold prospectors led to the Great Sioux War in 1876. During the next two years, led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, the Lakota fought to protect their sacred grounds against the greed and lust of Americans.

Infamously, Custer would make his last stand at the Little Big Horn. This culminated with the Treaty of 1877, which took away the Sioux land and its resourcesespecially the goldand set the Sioux up in concentration camps called reservations. One of these was the Wounded Knee reservation where the unarmed Sioux were massacred by the U.S. Army in 1890 after the reservations size had been greatly reduced in 1889.

These remain the boundaries set forth by treaty today.

For gold, this great and proud people had been demoralized and reduced to subhumans, relying on government handouts for survival. In the 1920s, to permanently end any Lakota claim to the Black Hills, the sacred land was defaced with carved images of white heroes upon Mt. Rushmore, symbolic of the oppression and dehumanization of the natives for profit.

In 1959, the Standing Rock people organized and approved their own Constitution under the auspices of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, FDRs Indian New Deal. But this would not last. Unrest would arise again in the 1970s with protests at Wounded Knee, the FBI siege of the reservation and the controversial arrest, trial, and incarceration of Lakota Civil Rights leader Leonard Peltier.

Its a long history of breech of treaty, murder, incarceration and the dehumanizing of a people for greed and lust. For this, Americans must be ashamed, but the history of these atrocities is still being written.

Today, greed and lust are being used to further steal and oppress the Sioux. American corporations, with the aid of their neo-liberal politicians in both major parties, are attempting to breach treaties to build a pipeline through their land, disrupting water supplies and natural resources while bulldozing sacred burial grounds; another case of the dehumanizing of a people for profit as well as an attack upon the planet.

We should still be ashamed.

Not all politicians are forsaking them. As hundreds from other tribes and concerned people continue to gather to stand with the people of Standing Rock, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka are literally standing with them, encouraging the protesters using an American patriotic tradition.

More so, we the people, should stand with them.

This treatment, such as having attack dogs released on families, is a disgrace to us all and we should take it personally. We must let politicians know that we believe treaties should be honored, that we are not the same as our predecessors. The Dakota Pipeline must not go forward. It is illegal, immoral, and irresponsible. Clearly its time we abandon fossil fuel anyway and move into the future with renewable and sustainable energy.

Unequivocally, The Piedmont Green Party stands firmly with our Native American brothers and sisters at Standing Rock and ask that you stand with us for people over profit. Vote Jill Stein in November. www.piedmontgreens.com.
It is a real shame that Mike McClary took his time to once again trash Congressman Brat and Donald Trump and endorse Eileen Bedell as the "perfect" candidate on 9/11, a day to remember the 3,000 Americans who lost their lives at the hands of Islamic terrorists.

He had a chance to reflect on the greatness and resiliency of America and how this world has become tainted by a terrible deviant enemy of human kind, but instead, he opted to ignore it and continue his political motives.
One in 15 babies born in Canada has whats called an orphan disease. And even though there are more than 7,000 such diseases that affect over 300 million people globally, theyre considered rare.



If you look at use of beds in pediatric hospitals, the estimate is one in three kids is there because of a genetic condition, says Dr. Chris McMaster, professor and head of Dalhousies Department of Pharmacology. This high incidence of hospitalization is due to the fact that 95 per cent of orphan diseases have no treatment.



Major pharmaceutical companies generally concentrate on drugs that treat common conditions, so orphan diseases  most of which are genetic  havent been a priority, as their name suggests.



Moving new treatments from the lab to the market



Working with partners such as Halifaxs Agada Biosciences and the Vancouver-based Centre for Drug Research and Development, Dalhousie Medical School researchers are taking new orphan disease treatments from the lab and moving them to market.



Ive seen first-hand how Dr. McMaster and his team have been diligently working to advance their research and build partnerships, said Stephen Hartlen, Dalhousies assistant vice-president of industry relations and executive director of the universitys Industry Liaison and Innovation Office. The dedication and commitment to developing new medicines for patients who are impacted by these orphan diseases is both honourable and commendable.



Through a project announced Tuesday (September 13), $3-million in funding from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency will enable the development of drugs for muscular dystrophy, inherited Parkinsons disease, and a rare childhood blinding disease called familial exudative vitreoretinopathy, or FEVR. Agada Biosciences and Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation also provided project support, making it worth a total of $4.5 million.

Ninety per cent of orphan diseases are life-limiting, and 35 per cent of children born with them dont make it to their fifth birthday, says Dr. McMaster. However, advances in knowledge and technology by clinicians and scientists in Nova Scotia have made it possible to move toward treatments for orphan disease patients, so we can now help these Canadian children in need.

Read more: Eyeing a cure for baby blindness

Canada's research hub for orphan diseases



This investment will enable Dalhousie University to lead work on the frontiers of science, searching for solutions to debilitating illnesses, said Andy Fillmore, member of parliament for Halifax. Children everywhere will be the ultimate beneficiaries of this collaborative work that will help to position Nova Scotia as an orphan diseases research hub.





The zebrafish facility, located in Dalhousies Life Sciences Research Institute, will be key to advancing the drug discovery. Zebrafish share many genes with humans, so theyre excellent models for testing the safety and efficacy of treatments.



This project will help establish the Atlantic region as a centre of excellence in orphan disease drug development, says Dr. McMaster. Well be leveraging the scientific expertise within our Zebrafish Core Facility to conduct drug screenings and to identify future drug development efforts.



The orphan disease drug discovery work will also result in the training of several highly qualified scientists with expertise in getting treatments from the laboratory to the medicine cabinet.



Its a brave new world for genetic conditions, and its a perfect storm for us right now in Halifax, says Dr. McMaster. Were identifying genetic links behind orphan diseases, finding targets for therapeutic intervention, and developing compounds that can be turned into medications. So not only will we have faster, more precise diagnoses, well have more precise, targeted treatments for patients.

Read more: Eyeing a cure for baby blindness



Left-to-right: Dr. Johane Robitaille (Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences), Nick Gentleman (a young patient with FEVR), Dr. Chris McMaster, Dr. David Anderson (dean, Faculty of Medicine) and Stephen Hartlen (Dalhousie assistant vice-president of Industry Liaison and Innovation).


Three outstanding Dal researchers have become members of the Royal Society of Canadas College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.



John Archibald (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology), Jennifer Bain (Fountain School of Performing Arts) and Rudolf Uher (Psychiatry) are part of the 2016 cohort recognized as representatives of the emerging generation of scholarly, scientific and artistic leadership in Canada.



Launched in 2014, the college is Canadas first national system of multidisciplinary recognition for scholars who have demonstrated a high level of achievement at an early stage in their career.

This year's trio joins Dal faculty members Christine Chambers (Medicine and Science), Chike Jeffers (Philosophy) and Krista Kesselring (History) from the 2015 cohort, as well as Roberta Barker (Fountain School of Performing Arts) and Randall Martin (Physics and Atmospheric Science/Chemistry) from the colleges inaugural 2014 cohort.

Translating complex molecular biology into understandable terms



John Archibald has established an internationally recognized research program that lies at the interface of molecular biology, genetics, and microbial evolution.



Dr. Archibald is a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and has been teaching at Dalhousie since 2003. His research is focused on gaining insight into the origin and evolution of nucleus-containing) cells and their organelles using comparative genomics and proteomics.



The RSC describes Dr. Archibald as a leader in comparative genomics, with a growing national and international reputation as a science advocate and heralded his ability to translate complex molecular biology into understandable terms.



It is an honour to be recognized by the Royal Society, says Dr. Archibald. Science outreach is something I am passionate about, and I am thrilled to be inducted this year.



A leader in music theory



The recipient of numerous grants and prizes, Jennifer Bain is internationally recognized as one of her generations leading music theorists.



A faculty member of the Fountain School of Performing Arts, Dr. Bain has been teaching at Dalhousie since 2001. Her research interests are wide-ranging, and include the secular music of 14th-century poet and composer, Guillaume de Machaut, medieval music theory, digital chant research, the 19th- and 20th-century reception of Hildegard of Bingen, as well as issues surrounding the role of women in the production and composition of music.



The RSC announcement heralded Dr. Bain's rigorous and accessible scholarship, which deepens our understanding of medieval music theory while revealing the vital role music plays in articulating

socio-cultural identities, and noted her commitment to digitization and public outreach that has helped to render the glories of medieval musical manuscripts more widely accessible than ever before.



She is a co-investigator on Cantus Ultimus, a project that builds on the digital infrastructure of the Cantus Database to develop tools for the machine-reading of plainchant manuscripts.



Its such an honour to be nominated by my theatre colleague, Roberta Barker, and lovely to be named to the college, says Dr. Bain. Having the opportunity to connect with other scholars at a similar stage of career from other disciplines and universities across Canada will be very stimulating. I hope to bring back that energy to my department and to my students.



Preventing mental illness in youth



Rudolf Uher is a psychiatrist and Canada Research Chair in Early Intervention at Dalhousie University. He is also the principal investigator of Families Overcoming Risks and Building Opportunities for Well-being (FORBOW) and the CDRIN Maritimes Registry.



Dr. Uher wants to reduce the burden of severe mental illness. The RSC notes his development of early interventions to prevent mental illness in youth and exploration of personalized treatments for depression and bipolar disorder.



In 2014, Dr. Uher was the recipient of the Max Hamilton Memorial Award for his innovative research on the treatment of depression.



This is a recognition of the value of what we do with our team and colleagues and a great opportunity to communicate and exchange knowledge with the best minds in Canada across the boundaries of scientific disciplines," says Dr. Uher.

Learn more about the RSCs College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists at its website.


10/29/2022

The second season is over for the Cleveland State Cougar Volleyball as they lost in three sets to number one seed Chattanooga State in round one of the NJCAA Region VII single elimination tournament ... more
Photo credit  Bill Franz

There is no age limitation, restrictions on health, thought or level of experience that can hold someone back from creating. With practice, patience and the right tools, we can develop skills to apply to our own art. Even if you do not wish to physically create your own, appreciating the art of those around you and supporting art in your community are equally important.

Appreciating the arts  the process and the product  is vital to the survival and growth of any creative endeavor and one reason ArtFest was founded. We invited local artist and educator, Leesa Haapapuro, to be our Featured Artist in our inaugural year alongside over 70 other local artists, creative organizations, and performers.

Sunday, September 18th you can meet Leesa and help her on a collaboration project at Community Park in Beavercreek. ArtFest is free to attend from 11 am- 5 pm with free parking at Nutter Park on Factory Road. All ages will enjoy the activities, food trucks and local buys. Proceeds from the event help fund community art projects and lessons provided by Infusion Art Endowment in conjunction with Greene Giving a 501c3.

To dig in, I asked Leesa for her input on how she started in the creative field and what moved her to stay in Dayton.

TG. When did you know that art  or the act of creating  was your calling?

LH. Making art was all I ever wanted to do, my Mom let me draw all over my bedroom walls when I was young. I applied to Interlochen Arts Academy, a boarding school in northern Michigan, and got a scholarship to go there for high school, that decided my future.

TG. Your personal works are made with a spectrum of mediaI appreciate it because of the significance each medium gives to the subject of your work. If you were only able to work with one, which would it be and what would you create?

LH. I guess if I absolutely had to choose, it would be clay, so I could continue my portrait project which I started 10 years ago. Lately I've been sculpting small portraits of my students faces.

TG. With any growing city, the arts play an important role to bring communities together, cultivate culture and to educate the citizens. Dayton has been experiencing this along with the surrounding suburbs. Since your time in Dayton, what is your perspective on this growth in our great city?

LH. The Dayton Visual Arts Center had just formed when I came to Dayton, I decided to stay when I became their first artist in residence (at the gorgeous Biltmore building!) Ive always loved their motto: Art for the community and a community for artists. Jerri Stanard started up K12 Gallery for Young People, and gave me my first teaching job, as well as the feeling that I was able to contribute to the larger community by working with disadvantaged youth. I was encouraged when Culture Works awarded me an individual artist grant, and loved being involved with R.E.A.C.H. Across Dayton, for my first community art project, the Heritage Sculpture Project in Courthouse Square, with Tess Little, Bing Davis and Paula Recko. Those people and organizations continue to inspire me, and the arts continue to play a vital role in this city.

Creative endeavors have a home in Greater Dayton and you can find many resources and experiences at ArtFest to enjoy and appreciate. If you would like to be involved, check out infusion-art.org/artfest for more information.
Students, or potential students who are age 24 or older, or who are a parent, married or a veteran and might be managing multiple roles while attending college are invited to visit Chattanooga State for Non-Traditional Student Day, Tuesday, Sept. 13, from 10 a.m. 2 p.m. in the Omniplex main hallway on the main campus located at 4501 Amnicola Highway. This will be a chance to learn about adult learner services and meet other non-traditional students.

For more information, call the Adult Services Office at 423-697-4483 or visit https://www.chattanoogastate.edu/student-support/services/adult-services.
Suzuki Motorcycles India (SMIPL) has launched a special edition of its new Access 125 scooter. The special-edition scooter comes with exclusive styling elements that make its road presence unique, and it will be available only in one colour: Pearl Mirage White. It gets a maroon-coloured leather seat cover, round chrome mirrors and a brown-coloured floor board. In addition to the styling elements, the scooter also gets a special-edition logo. The prices for the drum brake and disc brake variants are Rs 55,589 and Rs 58,900, respectively (both ex-showroom, Delhi).

The new Suzuki Access 125 Special Edition was launched at a fashion show, where models walked the ramp sporting Jack & Jones clothing, matching the trendy outlook of the Special Edition. For this, the company has formed a strategic business partnership with Jack & Jones, a renowned international clothing brand.

Commenting on the launch, Satoshi Uchida, managing director, SMIPL, said, The Access 125 has been one of our most successful models. We have enhanced the fashion quotient and introduced the Access 125 Special Edition to diversify our presence in the segment and cater to the evolving needs of our customers. The Access 125 Special Edition is an indivisible combination of substance and style which gives it a retro feel and makes it stand out in the crowd.

Besides the new addition of the Special Edition, the Suzuki Access remains unchanged and gets chrome-styled headlamps, analog-digital display and a mobile charging socket as standard equipment. Powering the scooter is a single-cylinder, air-cooled 124cc engine with SEP (Suzuki Eco Performance) technology. Mated to a CVT transmission, the motor makes 8.7PS of maximum power and delivers a peak torque of 10.2Nm.

Talking about the competition, the direct rival of the Suzuki Access 125 is the Honda Activa 125 which comes with a more popular brand name. However, the cost of the Access 125 is slightly less, providing a benefit over the competition.

Source: BikeDekho.com
Net profit for Tata Steel's Indian operations rose 35 per cent from a year earlier to 5.75 billion rupees.

India's Tata Steel Ltd reported on Monday a $477 million consolidated first-quarter net loss as it sold a business in Europe, and said talks continued for a proposed partnership to run its European plants.

Consolidated net loss widened to 31.83 billion rupees ($477 million) for the three months to June 30, from 3.17 billion rupees loss a year earlier, Tata Steel, Britain's largest and Europe's second-biggest steel producer, said in a statement.

The company, which has been hit hard in Europe due to a fall in steel demand, excess capacity and rising imports from China, recorded a loss of 32.96 billion rupees from discontinued operations related to the sale of its long products business in the United Kingdom to Greybull Capital LLP in May.

In July, Tata Steel halted a planned sale of its British Port Talbot plant which has been hit by huge losses and massive pension liabilities. The company said it would instead look for an alliance, and named biggest German steelmaker Thyssenkrupp AG among potential partners.

"We continue to progress the conversations," Tata Steel's Group Executive Director Koushik Chatterjee told a news conference on Monday. He said the company was also consulting all stakeholders on the pension liability issue.

Tata Steel's business in Europe, which accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the company's 24 million-tonnes-a-year steelmaking capacity, reported an operating profit of 8.56 billion rupees, Chatterjee said, citing benefits from a weaker pound and an ongoing restructuring exercise that included job cuts.

Net profit for Tata Steel's Indian operations rose 35 per cent from a year earlier to 5.75 billion rupees, the company said. India has set a floor price to prevent cheap imports from China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, helping local steelmakers.

Ahead of the results, Tata Steel shares closed 5.4 per cent lower in a Mumbai market that fell 1.7 per cent.
E-Commerce companies however denied giving discounts to customers and said it is the vendors are giving such discounts.

New Delhi: The department of economic affairs under the finance ministry has raised concern that it may not be possible to stop online firms from influencing product prices on their platforms.

In March, the government had allowed 100 per cent FDI through automatic route in the marketplace format of e-commerce retailing. However, guidelines stated that e-commerce companies which receive FDI like Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal among many others will not directly or indirectly influence the sale price of goods on their platform. It is only the sellers on these platforms which can give discounts or sale and not the e-commerce companies.

FDI is not permitted in inventory-based model of e-commerce. During the meeting of NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant last week on e-commerce, the department of economic affairs representative raised the point that e-commerce players store goods of vendors in their godowns and hence they may influence the prices of the products by giving discounts and commissions to the buyers.

The department also stated that the present norms create artificial difference between marketplace and inventory-based models. It argued that though the idea is to create a level playing field for mom and pop shops, it may not be possible to ensure its implementation.

The government has set up a committee on e-commerce headed by the NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant to look into all issues, including foreign direct investment norms, pertaining to the e-commerce industry.

Last month, wholesale retailers had complained to DIPP that e-commerce companies operating on marketplace model, were still offering discounts against FDI rules.

However, e-commerce companies told DIPP that they are not giving discounts and it is the vendors whose products are coming on their platform are giving it.

The issue of offering discounts by marketplace online players has for long remain a bone of contention between e- commerce companies and brick and mortar stores.

As FDI is barred in e-commerce retail, firms with foreign investment like Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal had adopted a marketplace model where they do not own the inventory but act as a facilitator between seller and buyer for a fee.

These firms act more as a platform which is used by other small traders to sell their products.
Mumbai: In order to address the future challenges and opportunities, Tata Group is betting big on talent, brand, technology and innovation to build capabilities that it believes would help it to succeed for the next 150 years.

The salt-to-steel-to-software conglomerate plans to create new industries, products and business models besides exploring the possibility of joint projects between group companies. Faced with a global slowdown, the Tata Group, which generates about 70 per cent of its revenue from international markets also plans to make full use of the opportunities available in the domestic market.

In an interview to the in-house magazine, Tata Group chairman Cyrus P. Mistry said the rapid progress in technology has thrown up new opportunities and risk.

If we invest appropriately in R&D and combine that with an understanding of customers, I believe there is a huge possibility for us to create new industries, new products and new business models. On the risks front, if we are not agile I think we will be left behind, he said and added that the group now requires capabilities that will allow it to succeed for the next 150 years.

Last week, the Tata group companies tied up with the worlds leading academic institutions, inclu-ding Harvard University, Yale University, the IIT Madras and the Royal Society, UK to fund R&D opportunities. The group has invested Rs 4,15,000 crore ($79 billion) in capex over the last decade. The groups investment over the last three years alone has been in excess of Rs 1.7 lakh crore ($28 billion).

Mr Mistry, who took over the reins in late 2012 from the legendary Ratan Tata, also spoke about coming to grips with responsibility of chairmanship, multiple challenges facing Tata companies, essentials of technology, innovation and customer centricity, and continuing Tatas commitment to societal causes.

In the area of gender diversity, he said his group want to double the number of women employees across the group and develop at least 1,000 Tata women leaders by 2020.
S&P Global Ratings today said it has revised its outlook on Vedanta Resources to positive from stable while Moody's Investors Service raised the London-listed firm's corporate family rating (CFR) to B1 from B2 with a stable rating outlook.

New Delhi: Rating agencies S&P and Moody's have upgraded Vedanta Resources after Cairn India shareholders cleared the planned merger of the cash-rich oil company with the debt-laden Vedanta Ltd.

S&P Global Ratings today said it has revised its outlook on Vedanta Resources to positive from stable while Moody's Investors Service raised the London-listed firm's corporate family rating (CFR) to B1 from B2 with a stable rating outlook.

S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Mehul Sukkawala said: "We revised the outlook to reflect our expectation that Vedanta Resources operating performance will improve on higher metal prices and the company's continuing ramp-up of its aluminum operations."

The outlook revision also reflects the agency's view that the firm's financial flexibility will improve on better performance and the expected merger of Vedanta Ltd and Cairn India as this will help reduce refinancing risks for Vedanta Resources, he added.

"This will result in a significant jump in free operating cash flow generation at Vedanta Ltd as well as easier access to more than USD 3 billion in cash and cash equivalents at Cairn India even though Vedanta Resources' financial ratios will remain largely unchanged," S&P said.

Moody's Vice-President Kaustubh Chaubal said: "Upgrade of Vedanta's ratings reflects Moody's expectation of the relative improvement in commodity prices and resultant increase in the company's earnings and cash flow, the company's progress in reducing absolute debt levels and the high probability of a successful merger of Vedanta Ltd and Cairn India."

This will improve the group's liquidity and enhanced financial flexibility, which in Moody's view could result in debt reduction, further improving leverage, he added.

The merger that now awaits regulatory and court approvals is expected to be completed by March 2017, Moody's said.

"When successful, it will provide Vedanta Ltd with better access to Cairn India's large cash balances of USD 3.5 billion as of June 2016 and future cash surpluses, as previous access was possible only through the up-streaming of dividends," it added.
Mr Khatkhatay, who runs an online training certificate course for the BSE Training Institute, says most of the students are non-Muslims.

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of Indias proposal to tap Islamic banking to provide banking services to Muslims  who are averse to interest-based model, has raised hope of this system becoming a reality in the not to distant future.

Dr D.K. Batra, professor marketing, IMI, New Delhi, said a large section of Muslims in India did not access banking services on religious grounds due to the element of interest which is prohibited in Islam. So it is interesting that RBI will explore the opportunity to offer interest-free banking in consultation with the government to open Islamic banks, he said.

This requires a law to be passed, and therefore legislative support, since it concerns net interest margin for banks. The Islamic finance has not grown fast enough as the concept faced opposition from political parties, said Dr Batra.

According to Mr M.H. Khatkhatay, director, Tasis, Taqwaa advisor, Sharia Investment Solut-ions, The Islamic banking has been working in nearly 100 countries including China, Sri Lanka, Europe, Indonesia etc. Islamic products exist in India and we are structuring a product for the financial arm of a multinational FMCG company.

Mr Khatkhatay, who runs an online training certificate course for the BSE Training Institute, says most of the students are non-Muslims. According to him, Islamic banking has nothing to do with religion. So non-Muslims, especially the Jains also invest in sharia compliant funds like Tata Ethical Fund, which does not invest in companies that deal in prohibited items. In fact, the Muslims make up just 30 per cent of the total investors in such Sharia compliant funds, Mr Khatkhatay explained.
Mumbai: Kapil Sharma had recently made news for tweeting to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about an official demanding bribe from him for a construction at his office. However, following that, he has now landed in trouble as Oshiwara police has registered an FIR against him for unauthorized constructions at his ninth floor flat in the Goregaon high rise DLH Enclave. The FIR also mentions Irrfan Khan, who also resides in the same building on the fifth floor. Besides the two actors, it also mentions three other flat owners and the builder, Dev Land & Housing.

The case has been registered by a P South ward sub engineer Abhay Jagtap under section 53 (7) of the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning Act (MRTP),1966, which relates to prosecuting flat owners for not complying to notices against unauthorized constructions and could lead to a imprisonment of a period from one month to three years or a fine of Rs. 2000 to Rs. 5000.

In his complaint Jagtap has claimed that Kapil has carried out illegal construction at his flat, police officials stated.

A police complaint was also filed in June against the building for unauthorized constructions and the BMC has reportedly found violations in 15 other flats in the building and has served notices to them already.

The trouble for Kapil does not seem to end, though, as Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena also filed a complaint against him at the Versova police station for keeping mum about being asked to cough money by a BMC official. MNS leader Sandeep Deshpande, who filed the complaint, later wanted it to be converted into an FIR and demanded an investigation into the matter.

MNS general secretary Shalini Thackeray also visited the tehsildar office in Andheri on Monday to lodge an FIR against Kapil for destroying mangroves near his office in the area.

After Kapil's tweet, Maharashtra CM Devndra Fadnavis had asked for the details to look into the matter and BJP MLA Ram Madhav had also lodged a complaint with the cyber cell of the Mumbai police to look into the allegations. The state Congress unit has also targeted the BJP and Shiv Sena, who rule the BMC. However, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam on Monday supported Kapil in the matter and said that the comedian was being targeted. He urged the Governor C Vidyasagar Rao to look into the matter and initiate a probe by the Anti Corruption Bureau or a judicial probe.
Mumbai: Deepika Padukones is making her way to the world of Hollywood with xXx: The Return of Xander Cage opposite Vin Diesel. The Hollywood superstar seems to very impressed with the Indian actress as the duo has posted numerous pictures together and had even come live on Facebook recently to interact with fans. While most of the pictures saw Deepika in black outfits and doing action in some of them, Diesel showcased his well-built physique in most of the pictures.

The couple has now chosen to break the trend and have also donned Indian outfits seemingly for the film.

Fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee recently shared his adorable picture of the couple in ethnic wear, which will definitely be a treat for the fans. Diesel also changed the cover photo of his Facebook profile with this beautiful picture.

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage is reportedly releasing on January 20 next year.
Mumbai: Seldom do movies have the kind of hysteria, that currently encompasses Shah Rukh Khan's Republic Day, 2017 release, 'Raees'.

The first teaser of the film, which had released in July, 2015, still has massive recall value, a good year down the line.

Director Rahul Dholakia, an art-house favourite, who directed the critical cult 'Parzania,' had pulled off the baffling casting coup, by roping in Shah Rukh Khan to play the eponymous grey bootlegger, with another critic's darling, Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the cop on his tail. Pakistani beauty Mahira Khan joining the cast only added to the hype surrounding the film.

Rahul, who was wishing his followers on Eid, decided to tease and add to their revelry by tweeting a dialogue from the film.

We can't help but re-read it multiple times in Shah Rukh Khan's inimitable voice. Can you?!

'Raees' is all set for a gigantic clash with Hrithik Roshan's Sanjay Gupta helmed revenge thriller, 'Kaabil'.
Emergency responders from federal, state and local agencies will join Tennessee Valley Authority personnel in an emergency preparedness graded exercise involving the Sequoyah nuclear plant on Wednesday, Sept. 14.

The exercise is part of an ongoing series of training drills and exercises required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ensure an effective and coordinated response to protect the health and safety of the public in the unlikely event of an emergency at Sequoyah. A similar Sequoyah training drill was conducted on Aug. 17.

The graded exercise on September 14 will involve hundreds of personnel working in multiple locations, including near the plant. Residents may see increased vehicle traffic and may hear on- and off-site sirens briefly activated.

Results of the exercise will be shared at a public meeting on Friday, Sept. 16, at 11 a.m. EDT, in the Tennessee River Room on the first floor of TVAs Missionary Ridge building, located at 1101 Market St., Chattanooga. Those wishing to attend must check in at the security desk in the Missionary Ridge building lobby and should plan on arriving at least 10 minutes prior to the start of the public meeting.
The terrible fall last month which left the Tamil maestro Kamal Haasan with multiple fractures in his leg, also dealt a blow to the shooting of the Hindi-Tamil-Telugu comedy Sabaash Naidu which Kamal Haasan is directing and acting in. The heartening news is that the actor-writer-filmmaker will return in front of and behind the camera much sooner than expected.

Kamal Haasan informed, My leg is actually healing much faster than the doctors expected. I have a limp and it will take some time to go. But I wont let it show in my walk. I will be ready to resume shooting in mid-November.Sabaash Naidu is already 40 per cent complete. And Kamal Haasan hopes to make up for lost time once he resumes shooting. The only hard part is that we are shooting the film in three separate languages. Otherwise it would be easy to make up for the lost time.

Recalling the accident that nearly killed him, Kamal Haasan says, Though this was a terrible accident. Ive had worse. During the shooting of K Balachanders Punnagai Mannan (dubbed as Dance Master in Telugu) the three harnesses by which I was hanging in mid-air all snapped and I fell to the ground with a thud. I thought Balchanderji would get a heart attack since the fall was so steep and everyone thought Id be dead or crippled. Luckily, I got away with just torn ligaments wounds and bruises. Then during a Tamil film Kaligan I did an action scene in a subway. Again, it was a relatively easy sequence. But was by a car on my spine. I landed on top of the car. Then, when it halted, I went under the wheel. I dislocated my jaw, my nose was cracked and I had three fractures. I thought Id never walk again.
Secondhand smoke contains a host of chemicals that can impact health by causing changes to blood flow, blood vessels, blood pressure and heart rhythm. (Photo: Pixabay)

Washington: Parents, take note! Exposing children to second-hand cigarette smoke may put them at risk of lifelong cardiovascular, respiratory and other health issues, according to scientists including one of Indian origin.

"Cigarette smoke exposure is harmful to children's long-term heart health and may shorten life expectancy," said Geetha Raghuveer, Professor at Children's Mercy Hospital and Clinics in the US.

"Parents should consider making their children's environment smoke free," said Raghuveer.

"Children exposed to cigarette smoke may develop early heart disease as adults due to poorly functioning, stiffer blood vessels," she said.

"Some babies who were exposed to cigarette smoke while still in the womb may be at risk for sudden death during infancy," she added.

Besides impacting heart function by causing damage to arteries, exposure to secondhand smoke has been associated with other cardiovascular risk factors like obesity, high cholesterol and insulin resistance.

Children are more likely to become smokers themselves if their parents smoke.

Secondhand smoke contains a host of chemicals that can impact health by causing changes to blood flow, blood vessels, blood pressure and heart rhythm.

Compared with adults, children are especially vulnerable to secondhand smoke exposure in part because they cannot control tobacco use in their surroundings, and they appear to be particularly susceptible physically to the smoke's effects.

Overall, an estimated 24 million non-smoking children and youths are exposed to secondhand smoke in the US, largely because of parents who smoke, researchers said.

"Encouraging adults to quit smoking is a cost-effective and health-enhancing strategy that could benefit both adults and children," she said.

"Raising cigarette taxes to discourage smoking could also decrease childhood exposure," she added.

The study appears in the journal Circulation.
New Delhi: Police have arrested 70-year-old Ganesh Prasad Shukla who had allegedly shot dead his son a few days ago over a fight involving property in Mandawali area of east Delhi.

Ganesh, a retired government employee, was arrested by police near Sanjay Jheel area in Pandav Nagar for allegedly gunning down his 38-year-old son Mahendra Nath Shukla on September 9, said Rishi Pal, DCP (East).

The accused allegedly shot Mahendra in the chest during a fight with him over question of distribution of property between siblings. He also allegedly hit his daughter-in-law during the fight.

During interrogation, the accused told police that there were frequent quarrels in the family over distribution of property between his son Mahendra and his daughter.

He said that he wanted to gift half of his ancestral property to his daughter which was "vehemently opposed" by his son and daughter-in-law.

The single barrel gun used in the murder and an empty cartridge have been recovered at the instance of the accused, the officer said.
Amritsar: A 55-year-old Christian woman was on Sunday night hacked to death by some unidentified men outside her house in Veroke village, Punjab, over the alleged desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib.

The deceased has been identified as Balwinder Kaur, who was mentally retarded at the time of the murder. She had, in 2015, suffered an accidental electrical shock that resulted in her sickness.

According to reports, some men knocked on the door of the woman's house around 12:30 am, dragged her out of the house and repeatedly attacked her with a sickle. They inflicted severe injuries on her body and left her bleeding near her house, said Harkamal Preet Singh Khakh, the senior superintendent of police, Amritsar, rural.

Kaur died four hours after the attack due to excessive bleeding.

The Punjab police said the woman was attacked only below her knee. "The assailants could have stabbed or shot her dead but they inflicted injuries upon her below knee only which has made us to think of several theories," he said. They also suspect the hand of Sikh radical extremists behind her murder.

Last year, Kaur was booked under sections 295A, 505 and 511 of the Indian Penal Code for entering a gurudwara in slippers.
Hyderabad: A 14-year-old boy was allegedly sodomised by his teacher at an educational institute in Chandrayangutta area here, police said on Tuesday.

The accused, identified as Riyaz, allegedly sodomised the boy at an isolated place near a hillock at Bandlaguda about 15 days back, Chandrayangutta police station inspector Y Prakash Reddy said.

"After the boy complained of ill-health, he was shifted to a hospital yesterday where he informed about the incident following which his parents lodged a complaint with police," he said.

Based on the complaint, a case was registered on charge of sodomy under IPC section 377 and relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

A hunt has been launched to nab the accused teacher, who is absconding, police said adding that a probe is on into the matter.
Hyderabad: Stating that the TRS will lead an all-party delegation to the Centre soon to exert pressure on the NDA government to enact necessary Constitutional amendment for implementing 12 per cent reservations, Panchayat Raj minister K.T. Rama Rao on Tuesday slammed the signature campaign taken up by the Congress seeking 12 per cent quota for Muslims in the state. Congress has unveiled a new drama and is shedding crocodile tears for minorities. For six decades, it treated minorities as a vote bank. Sachar Committee report said that the condition of Muslims was worse than that of Dalits. TRS is committed to 12 per cent reservations. It will be implemented at any cost, Mr Rama Rao said.

He said that the TS government will set up Sudhir Committee to go into the issue. Once the Sudhir Committee report is presented, we will set up a BC Commission which is mandatory. Reservations cannot cross 50 per cent. We dont want to repeat the mistake done by the Congress. We will convince Parliament and bring in a Constitutional Amendment to include it in the 9th schedule. We want to ensure that the quota is not struck down by courts as it happened in the past, the minister said.

Mr Rama Rao invited TPCC chief N. Uttam Kumar Reddy to join the all-party delegation to New Delhi. He said AICC president Sonia Gandhi should also exert pressure on the Centre in this regard. Mr Uttam Kumar Reddy had launched the campaign One Million Yes for 12 per cent Muslim Reservations on Monday. Taking a dig at the Congress, Mr Rama Rao said that the party has been rejected by the people in all the recent polls.

Uttam Kumar Reddy and his team were pulled up by his party high command. With nothing else to do, they have now latched on to 12 per cent reservations. They are trying to mislead Muslims, he said. The Congress, Mr Rama Rao said, had promised 5 per cent reservations, but could not implement it. They implemented four per cent reservations. Signature campaign for 12 per cent reservations shows their political bankruptcy, he said.
New Delhi: Cracking the whip on dissidents, AAP on Monday suspended its MLA Devinder Sehrawat from the primary membership of the party after he accused party men in Punjab of "exploiting women" in return for tickets. He is the second legislator to face such an action in less than 10 days.



The action against Sehrawat came after he also made direct attacks on AAP's national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.



The suspension of Bijaswan MLA came after Kejriwal returned to Delhi wrapping up his four-day visit to poll-bound Punjab.



"Sehrawat has been suspended by the disciplinary committee till pending enquiry," AAP's Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey said.



Hitting back, Sehrawat dared the party leadership to expel him. "If you have the courage, severe the ties and expel. With 67 MLAs you could not perform, You dont have it in you- So Get out of the Way....(sic)," he tweeted.



Earlier in the day, he accused Kejriwal of shielding his coterie. "Repeated Reports of Molestation of women and sexual abuse, Ring Master Kejriwal obliging his lecherous coterie & adding more such candidates (sic)," he said on Twitter.



Last week, Sehrawat had written to Kejriwal over alleged exploitation of women by a few party men in Punjab.



In the letter, Sherawat had also criticised party leader Ashutosh who had sought to defend Sandeep Kumar, sacked as a Delhi minister over an "objectionable" CD, and alleged that a "coterie" was damaging AAP.



Following his allegations, AAP leaders Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Pathak also filed a defamation case against Seharwat.



Earlier, AAP's women wing in Punjab had also filed a complaint with the State Women Commission against Sehrawat, alleging he was defaming the women in the state.



The Bijwasan MLA, who had questioned the way Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were sacked from the party, was known to have been unhappy with the organisation ever since.



AAP had last week suspended Sandeep Kumar from its primary membership over an alleged sex scandal.



The party has taken a conscious decision to suspend its lawmakers rather than expelling them as it would mean increasing the opposition seats at the cost of AAP.
New Delhi: With Delhi reporting three chikungunya deaths, BJP on Tuesday slammed Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for "failing" to address the city's public health challenge and demanded his immediate resignation.

Taking on the ruling AAP government in Delhi, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said while the capital was reeling under crisis on account of vector-borne diseases, the chief minister was busy shifting the blame on the Prime Minister and LT Governor over the deaths and was missing from Delhi.

The BJP leader accused Kejriwal of continuing to enjoy all benefits as chief minister while completely ignoring the people's questions on the chikungunya, dengue and malaria crisis in the capital, accusing him and his Ministers of instead campaigning in the country and travelling abroad on public money.

Read: Ask PM: Kejriwal plays blame game as people die of chikungunya, dengue

"It is a very sorry state of affairs that Arvind Kejriwal who is the Chief Minister of Delhi refuses to answer pertinent question regarding the health of the capital of this country.

Delhi is reeling under vector-borne diseases -- chikungunya, dengue and malaria. Kejriwal government is missing in the city.

"If you do not have the capacity to even buy a piece of pen as you are suggesting, why don't you resign. If you say that you have no role as the Chief Minister of Delhi, why the paraphernalia of a chief minister's office, ministers and crores of rupees being spent on MLAs and Chief Minister. The issue is resign," he said.

Patra said when some questions are being put in front of Kejriwal, he not only shuns these questions but he gives out a statement on Twitter saying that "don't question me, question the Prime Minister".

"You are not resigning, but you are not answering the question that though you are saying that you cannot spend 10 rupees but you have spent Rs one crore on samosas and tea.

"You are spending Rs 526 crore for your advertisements. Most of your Ministers are either on foreign destinations or destinations other than Delhi today. Whose money is it that they are spending? You have to answer these pertinent questions," he said.

The BJP leader said he has been elected by the people of Delhi for governance and "you cannot run away, you cannot shun your duty".

Kejriwal earlier tweeted, "CM and ministers left with no power now, even to buy a pen. LG and PM enjoy all powers with respect to Delhi. LG abroad. Question them for Delhi."

Two more chikungunya deaths were on Tuesday reported at a city hospital, taking to three the number of fatalities due to the vector-borne disease in Delhi where the number of cases have mounted to over 1,000 this season.
The heat of the ongoing Cauvery water imbroglio has touched the idols of diplomacy. (Photo: Shajil Kumar/DC)

Bengaluru: Expressing harmony between the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the statue of great poet Sarvajna was installed in Chennai after poet Thiruvalluvar's was unveiled at Ulsoor in Bengaluru in 2009.

But the heat of the ongoing Cauvery water imbroglio has touched these idols of diplomacy. After attempts were made by the fringe elements to damage the Thiruvalluvar statue in Bengaluru, security has been beefed up in the area.

Mr N Ramachandran, president, Kannada-Tamil Harmony and Social Welfare Trust, told Deccan Chronicle, The relationship between an upper riparian state and a lower riparian state which depends on sharing of water has historically remained not so satisfactory. So was the case between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

In 2009, efforts were made by both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments to improve the diplomacy between the states. Statues of these two literary icons were installed in the two states. But some fringe elements are trying to disturb the harmony between Kannadigas and Tamilians which should not be encouraged, he said.

Mr Manu Baligar, president of Kannada Sahitya Parishat, said, Nonviolent protests and a strong legal battle is what is needed now. These statues of literature should not be damaged and adequate security has to be provided for the idols by both states.
An uneasy calm prevailed in Bengaluru on Tuesday after outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery River water with Tamil Nadu. Policemen in plain clothes made announcements asking people to stay indoors during curfew. (Photo: AP)

New Delhi: An additional 700 riot control police personnel have been rushed to Karnataka to tackle the situation arising out of the protests over Cauvery river water sharing.

The Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel have been sent to the violence-prone areas of Karnataka to assist the local administration to ensure peace, official sources said.

With this, a total of 1,700 paramilitary personnel have been deployed in violence-hit areas of Karnataka for maintaining law and order.

An uneasy calm prevailed in Bengaluru on Tuesday after outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery River water with Tamil Nadu, as Karnataka's Siddaramaiah government warned of "stringent" action against vandalism or attempts to disturb peace.

On Monday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh called up Chief Ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and assured them all central assistance in handling the law and order situation in the two states which have been hit by violence over Cauvery dispute.

Speaking on the issue, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah said the state had been facing injustice on the Cauvery issue for a long time.

The inability to implement the September 5 judgement is the reason why yesterdays direction came from the SC. But we have had to deal with the situation arising out of it; we have to implement in the executive what judiciary has directed, Siddaramaiah said. People should not take law in their own hands, he added.
Barber shops are formational places.



As buzzing clippers assault errant hairs, and straight razors mow down overgrown neck stubble with the pleasant rhythm of soothing scraping, if youre paying attention, youll hear tales told thatll adhere to your memory like cigar smoke clings to your shirt. There in your adjustable vinyl chair, the antiseptic-tinged fragrance of Barbicide combined with the wafting scent of talc makes, for whatever reason, a hospitable environment for clever uses of language, affectionate ribbing, and the free exchange of baseless, unconsidered, and on occasion, well thought-out opinions.



Ive even been instructed by the dialogue in fictional barber shops.



A septuagenarian barber named Jayber Crow in Wendell Berrys stirring novel of the same name, depicts one such episode in a rural barber shop heated with a wood-burning stove in Port William, KY.

A man named Troy for whom Mr. Crow holds no esteem begins to spout off in ideologically harsh tones as the gathered congregation of men at leisure discuss the Vietnam war:One Saturday evening, while Troy was waiting his turn in the chair, the subject was started and Troy said  it was about the third thing said  They ought to round up every one of them sons of b$%^&@! * and put them right in front of the danged* communists, and then whoever killed who, it would be all to the good. (*a couple of words were altered or concealed to make it PG-13!)There was a little pause after that. Nobody wanted to try to top it. ...It was hard to do, but I quit cutting hair and looked at Troy. I said, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.Troy jerked his head up and widened his eyes at me. Where did you get that crap?I said, Jesus Christ.And Troy said, Oh.It would have been a great moment in the history of Christianity, except that I did not love Troy.The old man rightly perceives his customers error. The words of the Savior seem to slide perfectly in the missing drawer of young Troys aggressive comprehension. So Jayber wallops the ignorant with a sledge-hammer of theological conviction. His own failure was immediately apparent, for his humility was great.The truest arguments in the world weaponized for conquering our enemies, opponents, or even friends, rather than doing them good, are destined to create unintended effects of bitter defensiveness in the recipient and festering guilt in the argument-aiming warrior...if shes fortunate enough to be introduced to herself as Jayber was in the wake of his clever, place-putting retort to Troy.Greg Thompson, of New City Commons , laments this growing tendency in our times to weaponize our words and even our actions, as if their sole intent was to flatten anything in our way:One of the saddest features of our current cultural setting, which is definitely on grim display during the political season, is our tendency to think of the goal of all of our labors is actually the goal of conquest. To think that were trying to win...to defeat our neighbors in a high-stakes culture warBut our words and ways arent ordinarily used best as steamrollers. They can flatten, to be sure.But for Christians who aim to mimic our Master, our words and ways, even when were brokering his in the world, must be soaked, like raisins in gin, in considered love and tender regard for their beneficiaries. As gin-soaked raisins are meant to alleviate joint pain, so can considerate love-soaked words go a long way to reduce the inflammation and aggravation between folks...and yes, we must think of those with whom we interact and to whom we speak as potential beneficiaries---theyre to receive something of value from us.It would be interesting to know how many opponents of Christianity, or folks who have a set of moral/social commitments that are in disharmony from people of faith, realize that a fundamental tenet of our worldview is that everyone is a beneficiary of the lavish generosity of God despite their moral resume, political convictions, or sexual inventiveness.The Creator lets insufferable people that you or I may not be able to stand (or they us!---and we might be those insufferable people ourselves!) feel the brisk autumn air on refreshing September mornings. He puts breath in the lungs of those who will use his gift of life, breath, and speech to bitterly malign him. He donates Gulf Coast vacations, tasty Champys fried chicken, comforting sweet tea, and exciting technological jobs in the Gig City even to folks who may only mention his name only as a curse when they stub their toe or lose the code theyve been writing.This basic divine dynamic of God making his sun to shine on the evil and the good alike, is one that folks of faith are enjoined to reenact as operative in our lives.Does anyone who differs from us know we believe this? Would they surmise this from our manner of argumentation or our cultural aims? I hope so. But fear not.When there are a plurality of voices and convictions vying for influence over policies, decisions, and accepted morals and mores, its easy to imagine we are in battle where there will be victors and the conquered. After all, enemies are to be defeated, right?Its helpful for me to recall though that another basic Christian conviction is that ALL CHRISTIANS, and by all, I mean, EVERY SINGLE ONE, begin our relationship to Christ as reformed enemies. He doesnt conquer us when enemies, he gives us terms of peace. He doesnt mop the floor with us as rebels, he adopts us into his family.We were against him in principle. We didnt consider a single claim of his on our lives. Or we thought, even if wed never have cheated on our taxes, or spoken harshly to a child, and were frequently inclined to wave folks over from the next lane in bad traffic, that by being good we could keep him off our backs, or perhaps make him owe us something.And some of us were just plain rotten. And may still be---and Lord only knows how much more atrocious wed be without his sweetening influence. Without his action in our lives wed be stinking up the places we work, sit, and dwell even worse.But, we routinely munch on the sweetest comfort food of all...that Christ, who never throws words at wounds, as Joe Novenson might say, has, by a sacrifice for the rotten, accepted us, warts and all, though we were enemies, whether of the frozen tundra of heart sort, or of the visceral, bombastic ilk.All to say the good news we have for the world is no different than what was personally delivered to the front porch of our lives. Its not that Christ will demolish you like a wrecking ball and thats that. Its that even though all of us were once enemies, Christ was wrecked for us so that ANYONE who lays down his arms can become friends of God without fear of reprisal.Weve got nothing to say if it isnt stewed first in a crock pot of tasty victuals for the soul, seasoned with what Graham Greene once coined as the appalling strangeness of the mercy God.And when we distribute that mercy it will look like good being done to possible opponents whether they ever see things as we do or not.Thompson provides a fitting close to guide us in those barber shop moments where we too might conclude were on the verge of creating a great moment in the history of Christianity through our clever, courageous, but love-bereft speech:.... We have to remember that our goal is not cultural conquest; it is to seek the common good.-----

Eric Youngblood is the senior pastor at Rock Creek Fellowship (PCA) on Lookout Mountain. Please feel free to contact him at eric@rockcreekfellowship.org or follow him on Twitter @GEricYoungblood.




BENGALURU: The city was under siege for most part of the day on Monday as mobs went on the rampage after Kannadigas were attacked in Tamil Nadu in retaliation for an attack on an engineering student in Bengaluru on Friday. The police failed to contain the situation though angry mobs continued torching scores of vehicles till late evening.

The police resorted to firing, which led to the death of a 25-year-old man and left two others injured, while curfew was clamped in the jurisdictions of 16 police stations in West and North Bengaluru, to bring the situation under control.

Curfew will be in force in Rajagopalanagar, Kamakshipalya, Vijaynagar, Byatarayanapura, Kengeri, Magadi Road, Rajajinagar, Raja Rajeshwarinagar, K.P. Agrahara, Chandra Layout, Yeshwanathapura, Mahalakshmi Layout, Peenya, RMC Yard, Nandini Layout and Jnanabharathi police station limits. The police believe that the situation will be under control on Tuesday as it is a public holiday.
A vehicle from Tamil Nadu in flames after it was torched by pro-Kannada activists during a protest over Cauvery water row, in Bengaluru. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday expressed pain over the developments in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the Cauvery water dispute and appealed for peace while underlining that violence cannot provide solution to any problem.

He asserted that the dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit and "breaking the law is not a viable alternative".

"Situation that has emerged in Karnataka & Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of issue of distribution of waters of Cauvery River, is distressful. I am personally pained at the developments," he said in a statement.

"Violence cannot provide a solution to any problem. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint and mutual dialogue," he said.

The Prime Minister appealed to the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to display sensitivity. "I appeal to the people of the two States, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities," he said.

The Prime Minister reposed faith in the people that they will keep "national interest" and "nation building above all else and give priority to restraint, harmony, and finding a solution, eschewing violence, destruction and arson."

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Karnataka yesterday as the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu turned violent, escalating tensions between the two states.

As Bangalore witnessed widespread violence bringing it on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late last night

Modi said the violence and arson seen in the last two days is "only causing loss to the poor, and to our nation's property.

"Whenever the country has faced adverse circumstances, the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, just like people across the country have always handled the situation with sensitivity," he noted.

The Supreme Court, modifying its September 5 order, had yesterday asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.

In its September five order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighbouring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September nine.
Bengaluru: What led to the violent protests? Is it the video of an engineering student being thrashed by pro-Kannada activists in Girinagar for his Facebook post or is it the video of a Kannadiga being thrashed in Rameshwaram and the footage from Chennai of a hotel run by a Kannadiga being attacked with petrol bombs and Karnataka registration vehicles being vandalised?

Sources claimed that users of social networking platforms had to be largely blamed for the violence as their posts had a vitiating effect, spreading hate between the two states.

An engineering student of a private college in Banashankari, Santosh, would never have thought that his Facebook post would garner so much attention that he would be beaten up by a group of pro-Kannada activists and made to apologise for his post. He had put up a post ridiculing Kannada actors and actresses for staging a protest on the Cauvery row on Friday. He was beaten up by the activists on Saturday. Kannada activists posted the video of his thrashing on Whatsapp and other social media sites which was picked up by Tamil news channels. The wide coverage given by these channels, claiming that a pro-Tamil student was assaulted by Kannada activists and that the police had failed to register a complaint, apparently led to violence in Rameshwaram and Chennai. The footage of a Kannadiga being thrashed in Rameshwaram where he is asked to repeat in Tamil that Cauvery belongs to Tamil Nadu and the other footage from Chennai of Karnataka vehicles being vandalised parked before Woodlands Hotel, run by a Kannadiga, where a petrol bomb was hurled on Monday too went viral.

Kannada channels started playing up the two sets of footage which were taken note of by pro-Kannada leaders, who sternly warned Tamil Nadu that a large number of Tamilians lived in Karnataka and they could be targeted if attacks continued on Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu.

The message was loud and clear and soon, the activists went on the rampage in Bengaluru, targeting Tamil Nadu registration vehicles, vandalising them and setting them on fire. Out of panic, lorry drivers were seen scratching off the TN part of their number plates and painting KL over it, for their safety.

Violence shook up even Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who shot off a letter to his counterpart J. Jayalalithaa, stating that the incident involving Santosh had been blown out of proportion by media channels in Tamil Nadu and it was likely inciting passions and violence against Kannada-speaking people. He stated that the police had filed a case and investigations were underway. The police maintained that on Monday, they arrested one Venkatesh who assaulted Santosh.

People on way home for Onam, Bakrid, stranded

Thousands of passengers heading home to celebrate Onam and Bakrid were left stranded as the KSRTC pulled back its services in response to the growing violence over the Cauvery dispute on Monday.

Besides those making their way to their homes in various parts of Karnataka from the city for Bakrid, those heading to Kerala for Onam were also hugely inconvenienced as private buses too refused to operate. Said Mr. Kumar Gowda, a private bus operator "All the Kerala bound buses from Bengaluru go via Tamil Nadu. And so we had no choice but to cancel these services due to the ongoing tension. Warning that the situation could continue till September 20, the last date for release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, he said passengers would have to depend either on flights or trains until then.

With trouble over the water dispute escalating the KSRTC withdrew its buses running to Mysuru, Mandya, Chamarajnagar, Chennai and Madurai among other places. Its Kolar and Mysuru divisions also did not operate any schedules to Tamil Nadu , which responded in kind with its TNRTC also dropping its services to various parts of Karnataka.
The move assumes significance as there have been demands from IAS officers and other civil servants of protection to them from the investigating agencies like CBI. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: A protective shield is likely to be given to both serving and retired public servants by making it compulsory for probe agencies like Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take previous approval of the central and state governments concerned before conducting any such enquiry against them.

The move assumes significance as there have been demands from IAS officers and other civil servants of protection to them from the investigating agencies on bonafide decisions taken by them.

They had cited legal cases being faced by former Telecom Secretary Shyamal Ghosh, and former coal secretaries P C Parekh and H C Gupta, for their alleged involvement in second generation (2G) spectrum and coal blocks allocations scams respectively. They are known for for their good reputation but facing investigations, these officers had claimed.

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) may give shield to both the serving and retired public servants, official sources said on Tuesday.

It may make it mandatory for the probe agencies to seek prior approval from the competent authority which may be the appointing authority or administrative department where the officer concerned is working or has worked, they said.

The likely decision of DoPT, which is nodal authority for anti-corruption matters, is based on the recommendations of a select committee of Rajya Sabha that had examined a bill seeking to amend the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.

"No police officer shall conduct any enquiry or investigation into any offence alleged to have been committed by a public servant under this Act, where the alleged offence is relatable to any recommendation made or decision taken by such public servant in discharge of his official functions or duties, without the previous approval," the panel's report said.

The permission will be given by the appropriate governments--Centre and the states--for a serving and retired employee, as per the recent report of the committee on the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bill, 2013.

However, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) while deposing before the committee had objected to this provision.

The CBI opposed the provisions as it may cause unnecessary delay in investigation, it had said.

Public sector undertakings, banks and state governments supported that competent authority should be the sanctioning authority for investigation and prosecution, while, members of civil society have supported the Lokpal or Lokayukta to be the sanctioning authority, the report had said.

Sources said after the government accepts this shield and notify it then it will be mandatory for any probe agency to take prior permission of the competent authority before conducting any investigation against retired and serving public servants--from peon to secretary.

A delegation of IAS officers had recently met Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh and demanded that honest civil servants need to be protected so that they do not shy away from taking administrative decisions.
Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday expressed grave concern over the violence in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu amid the raging Cauvery water sharing issue.

"It is very sad that people of these states grew restive over water. The violent incidents in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are an example of the ill-effects of water crisis," Chandrababu said in a teleconference with officials on 'Water and Progress' in Vijaywada.

The state government has taken up the 'Water and Progress' programme in a big way to ensure that future generations do not face water crisis in Andhra Pradesh.

"If we can overcome water crisis, we can ensure progress not only in agriculture sector but also industrial and other sectors as well. Recharging of borewells, increasing ground water levels, restoring village tanks and effectively managing water resources hold the key to staving off crisis," Naidu said.

Ground water level across the state increased by 1.31 m since May 1 this year, which was equal to 118 tmc ft water.

The state recorded a 13 per cent deficit in rainfall this season, but the current spell of rain in Prakasam, Guntur, Kadapa and Kurnool districts was encouraging, he said.

The chief minister asked officials to involve engineering students in the water conservation measures. Creating a cascade of tanks could be entrusted as project work for the students, he said.

Under the Panta Sanjeevani programme, digging of 73,970 farm ponds has been completed so far while work on 2,69,964 is under progress.

Naidu also directed the officials to step up water auditing in all districts of the state.
New Delhi: Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Tuesday accused Lt Governor Najeeb Jung of "paralysing" the city's health system to deal with vector-borne diseases, at a time when the national capital is grappling with rising cases of chikungunya and dengue which have claimed eight lives this season.

Chikungunya is taking its toll in Delhi, with five deaths due to the vector-borne disease reported in the last two days even as its cases in the city have mounted to over 1,000, triggering blame game among the AAP dispensation, the BJP-ruled three civic bodies and the Centre. The latest death was of a 70-year-old man at AIIMS.

"We had made all the preparations to deal with any outbreak situation four-five months ago, but the Delhi government-appointed Health Secretary was suddenly transferred by the LG.

"And, the new Health Secretary appointed by Jung has been given a 15-day leave at a time when dengue and chikungunya are on the rise. Our health system has been paralysed," Jain told reporters in Delhi.

Slamming all three the BJP-led municipal corporations, the Delhi Health Minister said that civic bodies are responsible for fogging in Delhi to keep mosquitoes away and they have "failed" in their duty.

Alleging that Delhi government officers were not following the instructions, Jain said, "Officers say that Lt Governor will complain against them to the Centre if they follow Delhi government's instructions. LG is terrorising officers and threatening them of sending to jail."

The Minister also blamed media for creating panic among the people about chikungunya and dengue, saying it is "media creation".

"Media has been given the contract (supari) to create panic. Medically, there is no death due to Chikungunya, but media is showing death due to this disease. I want to make it clear that Chikungunya is not fatal. There are 200 deaths in Delhi every day, but nobody asks about it," he told a press conference.

"LG claims that he is the government but where is he, at the time when Delhi is reeling under health crisis," he said.

Asked about the responsibility of an elected government in Delhi when the Centre and LG have all powers, he said that he is doing what he can do as per the rules.

Jain asserted that at present there was no dearth of beds in Delhi government hospitals but said in the wake of sudden spurt in vector-borne diseases, there may be a shortage of beds in near future.

"There is no dearth of beds in government hospitals. There are a total of 40,000 beds in hospitals situated in Delhi and out of this, only 40 per cent of beds are with Delhi government.

"Our hospitals are not refusing to admit patients, but other Centre-run hospitals including AIIMS are not admitting them," he said.

According to the government, there are 262 fever clinics, 106 mohalla clinics and 26 Delhi government hospitals.

Treatment and diagnosis of dengue and chikungunya are available free of cost in all Delhi government Health institutions.

"DHS Control Room has been established and a helpline number 011-22307145 provided for the assistance of general public for guidance and advice on Dengue/Chikungunya fever," he said.
On Monday, 78 vehicles were burnt down in the city, while 19 others were put on fire in other parts of the state. (Photo: Shajil Kumar/ DC)

Bengaluru: Karnataka Home Minister Dr G Parameshwar said on Tuesday that the police are collecting evidence against miscreants who laid siege to Bengaluru on Monday.

He said that the police have arrested 335 people and are going through video footage from TV channels and CCTV to identify more miscreants.

On Monday, 78 vehicles were burnt down in the city, while 19 others were put on fire in other parts of the state. Forty-four vehicles were damaged in the city, while 59 vehicles were stoned in other parts, he said.

The police lathicharged crowds at 13 places, while tear gases were used 16 times. Curfew has been clamped on 16 police station limits and it will be lifted only after situation returns to normal, he said.
AAP said the process to announce all the 40 candidates would be completed by the end of October. (Photo: Representational Image/PTI)

Panaji: Announcing its first list of four candidates for the upcoming Goa Assembly polls, AAP on Tuesday said it would project its chief ministerial nominee only if situation demands.

"The chief ministerial candidate would be projected only if situation demands before the polls. Right now we have not decided whether to announce the CM candidate or not," AAP national executive member, Dinesh Vaghela, told reporters on Tuesday while announcing the names of its nominees.

The Arvind Kejriwal-led party said it would field Walmiki Naik, party's state secretary, from Panaji constituency. Former Goa unit chief of Shiv Sena, Ajitsingh Rane, who recently joined AAP, will contest from Mayem seat.

A businessman Cruz Silva would be in the fray from Velim constituency, while tribal leader Molu Velip will contest from Shiroda constituency.

Responding to queries if the party would name a CM face, he said, "After the announcement of all the 40 candidates, we can think about the issue of CM candidature."

Vaghela said the process to announce all the 40 candidates would be completed by the end of October. AAP has already announced that it will be contesting all the 40 constituencies without joining hands with any other party.

When asked about the controversies surrounding AAP leaders in Delhi, the party leader Oscar Rebello said, "AAP leadership has already thrown them out. Which party does it?"

"We try to make system, party and politics proper. We are not saying we are the best, but we are trying to make the best politics," he commented.
Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday refused to term the recent hooch tragedy in Gopalganj, in which 18 persons died, as "failure of prohibition", saying such incidents have happened in states where there was no ban on liquor.

"Some people started saying prohibition has failed in the wake of hooch tragedy in Gopalganj. But, there has been bigger hooch incidents in Uttar Pradesh and Odisha where there is no ban on alcohol," he said while addressing a workshop of doctors from rural areas on prohibition.

Listing the virtues of the decision to declare Bihar a complete dry state in April last, Kumar said, "Steps taken by the state government (on alcohol ban) cannot be retreated."

The Chief Minister said it was he who had ordered a probe on the basis of circumstantial evidence and media reports into the Gopalganj tragedy last month.

Asserting that the ban on alcohol has given him satisfaction which no other work has provided, Kumar stressed on public awareness alongside strict enforcement of the new liquor law for better results.

On the loss of about Rs 5,000 crore revenue due to the prohibition, he said, "Around Rs 10,000 crore of the people are saved due to the liquor ban, which will be spent on good things and in turn further enhance the state's GDP."

The JD(U) leader said prohibition has wider impact, particularly in rural areas, which could be gauged by visiting such area.

"There has been a marked change in the lives of poor. If you want to see the impact of prohibition, pay a visit to any village and talk to the people there," he said.

Noted eye surgeon Rajvarshan Azad, Sunil Kumar Singh and B P Singh were present at the workshop. Kumar added that the liquor lobby was disturbed due to the prohibition in Bihar as they think successful implementation of alcohol ban will ruin their trade.
India conveyed to the Chinese side that its implementation of NPT principles was second to none. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: Nearly two-and-a-half months after China scuttled India's NSG membership bid, the two countries on Tuesday discussed issues of mutual interest in the area of disarmament and non-proliferation with a focus on India's entry into the 48-member elite nuclear trade grouping.

A Chinese delegation led by Director General of Department of Arms Control Wang Qun visited India for talks with an Indian delegation led by Amandeep Singh Gill, Joint Secretary (Disarmament & International Security) in the Ministry of External Affairs.

"The talk covered issues of mutual interest in the area of disarmament and non-proliferation. As agreed by the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in their meeting on August 13, the two sides focused in particular on an issue of priority for India - membership of the NSG," the Ministry said in a press release. It said the discussions were "candid, pragmatic and substantive".

The two sides also agreed to meet for the next round of talks on a mutually convenient date.

According to sources, India reiterated its "impeccable" track-record in the non-proliferation area and stressed on its requirement for clean energy.

India conveyed to the Chinese side that its implementation of NPT principles was "second to none", sources said.

In the June Plenary of NSG in Seoul, despite strong American support, China stonewalled India's bid to get entry into the group on the grounds that it was a not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Wang, who was the Chief Negotiator for China in the South Korea meet, had told reporters that signing of the NPT "is a must", maintaining that the rule has not been set by China but by the international community.

Wang had also warned "if exceptions are allowed here or there on the question of NPT, the international non- proliferation regime will collapse altogether".
The Mount Canaan Baptist Church will launch a new middle of the week service called Recharge Thursdays, beginning Sept. 22 at 6:30 p.m.



We believe this exciting middle of the week worship experience will allow the people of God to recharge their spiritual battery after exhausting spiritual tanks during the week Senior Pastor Ternae Jordan, Sr. said. After Sunday worship, we can recharge on Thursdays which will allow us to energize, invigorate, renew and revive to continue thriving in our walk with Christ. Pastor Jordan also noted that this is not a mid-week bible study, but rather the Sunday experience on a Thursday.



"Recharge means to bring back to life or re-energize your life; i.e., regain your energy and strength. Life continuously bombards us with draining challenges in the form of hurt, pain, discouragement, and distractions. Recharge Thursdays will allow us to re-energize for the abundant living that Christ desires for us. Recharge Thursdays becomes a power source to enable us to remain strong throughout the week," officials said.



For the inaugural Thursday, Minister Kevin Lemons and Higher Calling Ministries will be the musical guest for praise and worship. "Considered to have one of the most dynamic choirs known as Higher Calling, Lemons brings a uniquely yet powerful sound that captures the energy, flare and spirit in song and performance according to Amazon.com," officials said. The ministry has been nationally-televised with appearances on BET's Bobby Jones Gospel, Gospel Music Channel's The Kitchen Sink, and the Gospel Superfest.



Mount Canaan announces that the services will be a high energy, high impact experience filled with praise, worship, and relevant word through a series of messages that speak to the challenges of everyday living. Recharge Thursdays will begin at 6:30 p.m. and end approximately at 7:45 p.m. so that families will have time to get home and prepare for the next day, officials said.



Recharge Thursdays will be held at the Mount Canaan Baptist Churchs main campus located at 4801 Hwy. 58. The entire community is invited to attend.


New Delhi: India and Russia on Tuesday reviewed the status of bilateral ties, including cooperation in keyareas of defence and security, and also prepared the ground for the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the country next month.

The discussions were a part of the 22nd Session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission (IRIGC-TEC) where External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj led the Indian delegation, while Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, Deputy Chairman, headed the Russian side. Before holding delegation level talks, the two leaders had a restricted meeting, MEA officials said.

They reviewed the work of various working groups and subgroups under the IRIGC-TEC mechanism and discussed about preparations for Putin's visit, External Affairs Ministry said, underlining that India and Russia share a special and privileged strategic partnership.

Putin will be travelling to India in October for BRICS Summit and will also hold a bilateral Summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) provides a framework for review of a broad spectrum of bilateral issues covering trade, economic, scientific, educational and cultural cooperation. The last meeting of the Commission was held in Moscow in October 2015.
Ahmedabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will celebrate his 66th birthday in his home state Gujarat, seeking blessings of his mother and spending time with tribals and 'divyangs' (differently abled persons).

This will be Modi's third visit in recent times to Gujarat, where Assembly elections are scheduled to be held next year.

"After his arrival in Ahmedabad on September 17, he will first go to Gandhinagar to seek blessings of his mother Hiraba and meet other family members," Gujarat BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya said.

Modi's mother lives with his younger brother Pankaj Modi in Gandhinagar. Later, he would go to the tribal district of Dahod to inaugurate an irrigation project and will also address a public rally.

Dahod District Collector Lalit Padaliya said the inauguration ceremony as well as the rally will be held at Limkheda town, around 25 km from the city.

"The Prime Minister will inaugurate the Kadana-Hafeshwar irrigation project, which will provide water to several remote villages of this district. The programme will be held at Limkheda during morning," Padaliya said, adding that later he will address a public meeting.

Later in the afternoon that day, he would go to Navsari where he is scheduled to take part in a function to distribute aides to differently-abled persons.

"In Navsari, PM will distribute various kits and aides to 'divyang' citizens. He will also address a large gathering near Navsari town," Pandya said.

The BJP is likely to facing a challenge in Gujarat in the run up to the polls following the Patel quota agitation and the stir by Dalits after the Una incident.

Last month Modi visited Gujarat twice -- once to condole the death of Sawminarayan saint Pramukhswami Maharaj and the second time to inaugurate an irrigation scheme in Saruashtra region.
New Delhi: Union Health Minister J P Nadda on Tuesday stressed on the need for close coordination between the Centre and states to deal with the outbreak of dengue and chikungunya, which have affected about 40,000 people in the country, even as he said there was no need to panic.

He assured all help to states in fighting the spread of vector-borne diseases and said it should not be an issue for indulging in blame game.

"We will try to fulfil all requirements. Whether it is dengue or chikungunya, we should not panic.

"There is a need to give symptomatic treatment. We are ready to offer all help to state governments. This is not an issue for the Centre and states to indulge in blame game. We should work together," Nadda said.

60 people have died across the country due to dengue. Three people have died in Delhi due to Chikungunya, which otherwise is non-fatal.

However, a senior Health Ministry official said the chikungunya deaths are being probed by its agencies to ascertain the exact reasons.

As per the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), around 27,879 cases of dengue have been reported across the country and 60 people have succumbed to the disease till August 31.

5,000 cases each have been reported from West Bengal, Odisha and Kerala. While West Bengal has reported 5,129 dengue cases and 22 deaths, the disease has affected 5,183 people and claimed nine lives in Odisha.

AIIMS, Delhi, has reported five "suspected" dengue deaths this month. The national capital has recorded nine dengue deaths this year. The number of those diagnosed with the virus in the city has risen to over 1,150.

Around 12,255 cases of chinkungunya have been reported across the country. Karnataka alone has recorded 8,941. Two chikungunya deaths were on Tuesday reported from the national capital, taking the number of fatalities due to the vector-borne disease in the city to three.
Chhote Lal kept roaming with the body of his wife in the ambulance for close to four hours before he was spotted by police. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: A man had to roam around for several hours with his wife's body in an ambulance as his landlord allegedly did not allow to keep it at his rented accommodation in Karkardooma village in east Delhi.

Chhote Lal, who runs a tea shop, had admitted his wife Anju, who was 35, to Hedgewar Hospital two-three days ago after she complained of high fever.

She died in the hospital on Monday, and it was suspected to be a case of "chikungunya", police said on Tuesday.

When the grieving husband took her body to his rented home in Karkardooma, his landlord allegedly didn't allow him to keep it there.

He then tried to keep the body in the lane where his house is situated but some neighbours allegedly objected saying children in the locality could get scared.

However, Babloo, Lal's landlord told police he helped him with money so that he could get an "AC ambulance to keep the body".

He said Chhote Lal stays on the third floor of the house in a single room and the body would have started decaying had it been kept in the cramped space with no ventilation.

He told police that he had given Rs 2,000 to Chhote Lal and got an AC ambulance arranged for him to preserve the body for the night before cremation.

He also tried to take back the body to the hospital where he was allegedly told that they couldn't keep it there.

"With no option left, Chhote Lal then kept roaming with the body of his wife in the ambulance for close to four hours before he was spotted around midnight by the police beat staff near the Cross River Mall who came to know about his plight.

"When he revealed that he wasn't allowed to keep his wife's body at his rented accommodation, the staff called up one Bhanwar Singh, a businessman residing in the area around 12.30 am," said a senior police officer.

"Singh extended help to Chhote Lal and the body was kept at his house overnight. Some policemen and Singh's staff later helped Lal arrange for the last rites of his wife who was cremated in this morning," he said.
New Delhi: India on Tuesday reacted sharply to remarks by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, saying terrorism is the "grossest violation" of human rights and should be so acknowledged by any impartial and objective observer.

It also asserted that the unrest in the Valley has been "aggravated by sustained cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan".

Maintaining that the UNHCHR has received conflicting narratives on the cause for the confrontations in the Valley, External Affairs Ministry said there is no comparison between the situation in the Indian state of J&K and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

"The former has a democratically elected Government, while the latter has seen a Pakistani diplomat arbitrarily appointed as its head. Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is administered by a deep state and has become a hub for the global export of terror," it said reacting to UN High Commissioner on Human Rights' suggestion asking India and Pakistan to grant it "unconditional access" to both sides on the Line of Control to establish an "objective assessment" of the situation in Kashmir.

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein also said Pakistan has already handed over a letter formally inviting a team to the Pakistani side of the line of control, but in tandem with a mission to the Indian side.

In a statement, the MEA said the present situation arose from the death of a self-acknowledged commander of the terrorist organization, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, who was wanted for several terrorist acts.

"It was further aggravated by sustained cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan. Terrorism is the grossest violation of human rights and should be so acknowledged by any impartial and objective observer. The high number of casualties sustained by Indian security forces is a reflection of the tremendous restraint they have displayed in difficult circumstance," it said.

The ministry said the issue of an external mission was considered by the All-Party Conference on August 12, 2016 to discuss the situation in J&K.

"It was unanimously felt that Indian democracy has all that is required to address legitimate grievances.

Accordingly, an all-party delegation visited Srinagar. Despite cross-border terrorist infiltration that saw an encounter only yesterday, the government remains fully engaged in normalizing the situation as soon as possible," it said.

India hopes that the connection between terrorism and violation of human rights would be recognized and deliberated upon in Geneva, the ministry added. The 33rd session of the Human Rights Council got underway in Geneva today.

In his opening statement at the meet, Hussein said, "We had previously received reports, and still continue to do so, claiming the Indian authorities had used force excessively against the civilian population under its administration. We furthermore received conflicting narratives from the two sides as to the cause for the confrontations and the reported large numbers of people killed and wounded.

"I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides."
Srinagar: Two youths were killed on Tuesday while several others were injured as fresh clashes broke out between security forces and stone-pelting protesters in Kashmir where authorities have imposed curfew in all 10 districts.

Soon after Eid prayers ended in Bandipora, a group of protesters started hurling stones at security forces who retaliated by firing tear smoke shells and pellet guns, a police official said.

He said 20-year-old Murtaza Ahmed was hit by a tear smoke shell resulting in his death. Several others were injured in the security forces' action in Bandipora town.

Clashes were also reported from South Kashmir after a youth, Shahid Ahmed, was killed during fresh protests at Bonpora in Shopian district, another police official said.

With these deaths, the toll in the ongoing agitation in Kashmir has risen to 81.

For the first time in many years, authorities imposed curfew in all 10 districts of the Kashmir Valley on Eid even as helicopters and drones have been pressed into service for surveillance.

Restrictions on assembly of large number of people have been imposed in view of the call by separatists for a march to the local offices of the United Nations today, coinciding with the global body's Opening of 71st Session of the UN General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York today.

The Army, which has been asked to be on standby, will step in if there is fresh outbreak of violence in the Valley, which has been witnessing widespread unrest for over two months leading to death of over 75 people so far, official sources said.

Army troops have already been stationed at vantage points in rural areas which have a history of violent protests, they said, adding curfew came in force from midnight.

This is probably for the first time that curfew is in place on the day of Eid festival ever since militancy broke out in the state in 1990.

Helicopters and drones are keeping a bird's eye vigil from the skies. They will give early warning to security forces in case of assembly of people in certain areas, the sources said.

Security forces are out on the streets in adequate strength following apprehension of violence by the separatist elements, who often use women and children as "shields" during protest rallies resulting in civilian casualties.

This is for the first time in 26 years since the onset of militancy that no Eid congregations will be held at the Idgah and Hazratbal shrines here. The sources said that people will, however, be allowed to offer Eid prayers in local mosques.

The government has already ordered shutdown of Internet services of all telecom networks and also mobile telephony except that of the state-run BSNL for the next 72 hours because of the tense law and order situation in the state.

The decision to completely ban Internet services was taken after a review of the prevailing law and order situation in the state on the eve of Eid-ul-Zuha festival, the sources said.

They said Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone and Reliance telecom have been ordered to shut down their services with immediate effect for 72 hours. The BSNL too has been asked to stop its broadband services for Internet.

However, post-paid BSNL connections, which are mainly used by police, army and government officials, have been kept out of the purview of the ban, the sources said.

Mobile telephony was banned immediately after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8 which set off the current spiral of violence in the Valley. It was partially restored on July 27 followed by opening of only broadband Internet.

Opposition National Conference slammed the government for its decision to impose curfew, saying it vindicated the party's claim that the Mehbooba Mufti government had no control over the situation.

"The PDP always loves to compare the situation with 2010 agitation but never ever has there been a curfew on auspicious occasion like Eid before," the National Conference spokesman said.

Authorities have indefinitely suspended all mobile Internet facilities in five districts of Jammu region in order to thwart any rumour mongering.

The authorities have asked various mobile service operators across Jammu region to suspend mobile Internet facilities in Jammu, Samba, Kathua, Udhampur and Reasi district of Jammu province, an official communique issued to mobile service operators read.

The suspension of the mobile Internet services have been put into effect from 4 am today till further orders. The step has been taken to avoid any law and order problem in the region and spread of rumours. The authorities have also issued instructions to mobile phone operators including the state-run BSNL to suspend its landline based broadband services in the five districts of Doda, Kishtwar, Ramban, Rajouri and Poonch of Jammu province.

"In view of the present security scenario in Jammu province, there is every apprehension that anti-national elements can create law and order problem for the police, administration for their vested interest", the communique read.

Meanwhile, the Central Reserve Police Force said three of its personnel have been injured in stone-pelting incidents since yesterday. "3 CRPF personnel injured & 1 CRPF vehicle damaged in 23 incidents of stone pelting involving the force in the Kashmir Valley in past 24 hrs," the force said in a tweet.
Itanagar: Outgoing Arunachal Pradesh Governor J P Rajkhowa on Tuesday asserted that the brief spell of the President's Rule in the state from January 26 to February 19 was not imposed on the Governor's report only.

"The Central rule was imposed only after proper assessment and due application of mind by the President," he said in a message before leaving the state.

Rajkhowa, who had refused to quit after being nudged by the Centre to do so in the wake of the Supreme Court's judgement against him, was dismissed on Monday from the Governor's post.

On the advancement of the Assembly session and the July 13 judgement by a five-member constitutional bench of the

Supreme Court holding that as "un-constitutional" and ordering restoration of the status-quo, the Governor said he would not like to comment.

"I would not like to go into the merit or otherwise of the judgement and order of the Supreme Court, because the High Courts and the highest judiciary have the authority under the Constitution to interpret the constitutional provisions and pass their verdicts," he said.

"It was a great opportunity for me to serve all of you, to the best of my abilities, with honesty, integrity, utmost sincerity, full commitment and dedication with the objective of ushering in good governance," the outgoing Governor said.

Rajkhowa said in his message he was happy that most of the people of the state, particularly the young generation, wanted Arunachal Pradesh to be developed in all fronts in a corruption-free and balanced manner.

"Most of you have realised that without fair, transparent and corruption-free governance, people continue to suffer, economic development takes a back stage and unemployment level goes up, Rajkhowa said.

He and his family were accorded a warm farewell by the well-wishers in the Raj Bhavan.
The Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti has organised a mock session of 'Vidarbha Assembly' on October 3 and 4 at Vasantrao Deshpande Hall in Nagpur. (Photo: kisanbachao.blogspot.com)

Mumbai: An outfit seeking statehood for Vidarbha region on Tuesday criticised the BJP-led governments in Maharashtra and at the Centre for not showing "political will" to resolve the decades-long issue and gave them a deadline of January 1 to meet its demand.

Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti (VRAS) said the "backward region" in eastern Maharashtra can achieve all-around development only when it is granted statehood which will allow it to take decisions independently.

Addressing a press conference in Mumbai, Wamanrao Chatap, a member of the core committee of VRAS, said, "We strongly believe the overall development of Vidarbha is only possible when it is made a separate state."

"Unless elected leaders of Vidarbha get full authority to take decisions on utilising resources of the region and creating new opportunities, issues like farmers suicides can't be resolved.

"We are not against Maharashtra or its leadership but we want freedom of decision-making by focusing only on development of Vidarbha, which is experiencing neglect of more than half a century," said the former MLA.

He said the Samiti has organised a mock session of 'Vidarbha Assembly' on October 3 and 4 at Vasantrao Deshpande Hall in Nagpur. "We will highlight the revenue model of a separate Vidarbha in the mock Assembly, where the Budget for 'Vidarbha State' will be tabled and discussed." History stands testimony to the fact that whenever a state has been formed, its growth in terms of GDP has been far better than the mother state, the VRAS leader maintained.

VRAS has demanded that issue of granting statehood to the region, comprising 11 districts, which is famous for growing oranges and cotton, be resolved by January 1, 2017.

The central and the state government lack "political will" to resolve the issue, the Samiti leader alleged.

"If the governments (at the Centre and in Maharashtra) do not pay serious attention to our demand before January 1, the people from all the walks of life in Vidarbha would come out on the streets and launch an agitation," he said.

Chatap claimed it was very unfortunate Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who belongs to Vidarbha, was "not interested" in giving statehood to the region.

"BJP fought the election on separate Vidarbha issue. It gave a Chief Minister who hails from Vidarbha, but neither BJP nor Fadnavis has shown any interest to resolve the issue. The party is running its government with the support of Shiv Sena, which is vehemently opposing statehood for Vidarbha," he alleged.

The press conference was allegedly briefly disrupted by members of Raj Thackeray-led MNS, which is vehemently opposed to any division of Maharashtra.

Terming MNS' protest as "undemocratic", Chatap said everyone has right to express his or her views."
Jats alleged that previous Congress government and the present BJP government were not working honestly for their demand. (Photo: Representational Image/PTI)

Hisar: All India Jat Aarakshan Sanghrash Samiti on Thursday said they would resume their agitation on commencement of next Parliament session for their demand for reservation for the community in government services in the state as well the centre, AIJASS president Yashpal Malik said on Tuesday.

Malik was addressing a rally in village Mayyar, near Hisar. The rally was organised to mark the death anniversary of Sunil Sheoran who died during the Jat agitation in 2012 in Mayyar village.

During the arson at the time of Jat agitation in February this year 30 people had died and properties worth crores was damaged at many places in Haryana.

Malik alleged that previous Congress government and the present BJP government were not working honestly for their demand.

"Congress as well BJP has betrayed Jats on their demand for reservation," he said.

"If the BJP government continued with its policies against reservation for Jats, they will cease to exist," he said.

"Central and state governments are adopting dual policies on reservation issue and wasting time by hanging the issue in the court," he said.

Inspite of assurance given by central government and BJP President Amit Shah, the matter of Jat reservation is still hanging and resentment is prevailing in the Jat community, he said. He said the community is now planning an all-out battlefor their reservation against the governments.

Speaking on the riots that occurred during last Jat agitation in the state, Malik alleged an MP (referring to Kurukshetra lawmaker Raj Kumar Saini) had hatched the whole plan in which several were killed.

Action should be taken against the responsible MP, he said without naming Saini.

Malik admitted that due to split in the Jat community, the agitation could not get success previously but this time it will be a big agitation. The community has been a victim of politics, he said.

Jat leaders and a number of people of the community from Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan addressed the rally.
New Delhi: Congress on Monday said BJP government has "dumped" Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa, who was removed as Arunachal Pradesh Governor this evening, after his "utility was over" and he did not execute the "insidious agenda" of the ruling party.



"If Supreme Court strictures is the reason for his sacking then the Modi Cabinet is equally culpable. It should also go," Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said here.



In July, the Supreme Court had quashed all decisions Rajkhowa has taken as Governor that had led to imposition of President's rule in of Arunachal Pradesh and later formation of a new government led by the Congress breakaway faction.



The apex court had restored the previous Congress government.



Tewari alleged the BJP government first "misused" the Governor to destablise a democratically elected government in the state and has now "dumped" him "because he was not able to execute the insidious agenda of the BJP the next time".



Rajkhowa had refused to quit even after being nudged by the Centre earlier.



Following his refusal, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had called on President Pranab Mukherjee last week and conveyed to him that Rajkhowa's continuance in the post has become untenable after the Supreme Court's observations against him over the dismissal of the Congress government in the state.



A Rashtrapati Bhavan communique said Rajkhowa "shall cease to hold the office of the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh".



The President has asked Meghalaya Governor V Shanmuganathan to discharge the functions in addition to his own duties, until regular appointment is made, it said.



Rajkhowa, who was appointed the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh on May 12, 2015, was the first gubernatorial appointee of the Modi government.
Once again, Lee University ranks in the top tier of the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges edition. This special edition was released on Tuesday.

Lee ranked high in two categories this year. The category, Best Regional Universities, ranked Lee as #56 out of 105 top tier universities and a total of 140 schools.

Lee was also listed among the A+ Schools for B Students category, which lists colleges and universities alphabetically by region. This ranking included 25 schools from the South. Along with Lee, other universities such as Belmont, Appalachian State, and Samford were mentioned.

U.S. News has been ranking colleges for 32 years and continues to be a closely watched college ranking. The magazine reviewed nearly 1,600 colleges and universities nationwide for the 2017 annual issue.

It ranked Princeton as Americas best university, followed by Harvard, University of Chicago, and Yale.
The Awadh unit of the party cut a 5-kg cake at its Lucknow office on Tuesday instead of sacrificing an actual goat. (Photo: File)

Lucknow: The Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM), affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cut a 'goat cake' on Bakri Eid, instead of sacrificing an actual goat.

According to the Indian Express, the Awadh unit of the party cut a 5-kg cake at its Lucknow office on Tuesday.

Read: BJP calls for national debate on eco-friendly Bakri Eid

The Manch workers have also decided to do away with serving biriyani at home and offer sewaiyan and dahi vada to friends and relatives instead.

The Awadh convener of the Manch, Raees Khan, said that Bakri Eid can also be celebrated by cutting a cake, just like people celebrate birth anniversaries." He said he will try to promote the practice among the wider community if it receives good feedback.

However, the national convener of the Manch, Mohammad Afzal, was not aware about the plans of the Awadh unit.
Bengaluru: A day after being rocked by large-scale violence, the city appeared to limp back to normal on Tuesday with sporadic protests, even as the Karnataka government decided to comply with the Supreme Court's modified order to release 12,000 cusecs of water Tamil Nadu till September 20.

As the Cauvery unrest kept the country's IT capital on the boil, the government warned of dealing with an "iron hand" any violence after an emergency cabinet meeting which took stock of the situation and decided to comply with the Apex Court order passed on Monday.

A 30-year-old man died on Tuesday of multiple injuries he suffered while escaping police lathicharge when he jumped in panic from a three-storey building in Bengaluru on Monday, police said, with the toll in the unrest over Cauvery row rising to two.

One person had died in police firing on Monday.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the victim did not die

due to police action, but due to the injuries he had suffered.

Facing more pressure after the Apex Court's modified order, Siddaramaiah held an emergency cabinet meeting which decided that though it was "most difficult" to follow, the direction could not be disobeyed or rejected as it would be against the Constitution.

"This order is the most difficult to follow. But when we are functioning within the framework of the Constitution, though it is a difficult order, as a constitutionally formed government it is difficult to violate or reject the Supreme Court order. It will be a violation of the Constitution," he told reporters in Bengaluru.

Siddaramaiah said the cabinet, after weighing the pros and cons "constitutionally, legally and politically" and keeping in mind the main Special Leave Petition challenging the Cauvery tribunal's final award coming up on October 18, decided to obey the court order.

He said the first order passed on September 5 itself was difficult and yesterday's was "most difficult" to follow. "But we have accepted the federal set up and that the legislature, executive and judiciary should function in a way complementary to one another," he said

In its September 5 order, the Apex Court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighbouring state, which had triggered

strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September 9.

The chief minister said he would meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention and requesting him to call a meeting of Chief Ministers of both states to resolve the issue.

An immediate appointment had been sought and "probably we will get it tomorrow."

In Bengaluru, under prohibitory orders till Wednesday and where 16 localities remained under curfew, there were palpable signs of normalcy returning, as city police assisted by central forces kept a close vigil.

Siddaramaiah said his government would not plead for changing Supreme Court Judge Justice Uday U Lalit, who is hearing the Cauvery case, on the ground that he was counsel for Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa earlier in his legal career.

"The government will not press for that (demand to change the Supreme Court Judge). We have full confidence in the judiciary," he said.

Justice Lalit, before being elevated to the apex court, had also represented BJP national president Amit Shah and former Karnataka chief minister S M Krishna in different cases.
Rate of conviction in kidnap for marriage cases is very low. Most of the time, after the kidnap, when the victim becomes major, the suspect marries her legally settling the case. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: In July second week this year, a police constable working at the Trimulgherry traffic police station was arrested by Cyberabad East police for allegedly kidnapping and molesting a minor. The cop P. Sai Kumar faced charges of 366-A of IPC (for abduction) and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

But the reality was that the cop had only eloped with his lover not forcefully kidnapped. Because his lover was aged below 18 years old, the police arrested him when they received a complaint from her father, Babu Singh. While Babu Singh was submitting his complaint at the police station, the constable and the girl were getting married at Arya Samaj in Chengicherla on the city outskirts.

Recent data from the National Crime Records Bureau reveals that over 173 children and teenagers were kidnapped by men for marriage in Telangana state last year. Though the number looks alarming, the kidnap and compulsion are nuanced. Similarly, in 18 per cent of the more than 700 rape cases registered in Telangana  where all victims were minors  the offense took place after the kidnap of the victims for marriage.

According to police officials, as per law, all elopement cases are booked under abduction charges in the First Information Report if the girl is aged below 18 years. The offense is categorized kidnap to compel girls for marriage. After the elopement, if the male partner has consensual sex, that is considered rape. In a majority of these cases, the men (suspects) are above 18 years and thus luring a minor girl makes it a serious offense.

As per the law, till a girl turns adult (18 years old), the parents have the right and obligation to protect her. If an elopement takes place and the girl is minor, her consent would be immaterial and the man would be booked for kidnapping. Parents have the right to lodge a complaint against the man and seek action, said a senior police official from Hyderabad.

Legal experts say that if the elopement involves a minor boy and a major woman, the woman can also be booked under the same acts. Last year in August second week, a Madras High Court Bench had directed the Tirunelveli police to book a 23-year- old woman for eloping with a minor boy.

As per the NCRB, the motive behind 27 % of all abductions of children and teenagers reported in Telangana last year was marriage.

Conviction rate low in kidnaps for marriage

Rate of conviction in kidnap for marriage cases is very low. Most of the time, after the kidnap, when the victim becomes major, the suspect marries her legally settling the case. In some cases, victim refuses to cooperate with prosecution since she willingly eloped with the suspect and that makes it difficult for the prosecution. In other cases, parents, who are worried about the future of the victim, settle the case with the suspect.

Meanwhile, rape cases in which consensual sex took place but the girl is minor, have higher rate of conviction compared to the former case. It is because the court and prosecution primarily focus on seduction by the suspect.

According to legal experts, the prosecution argument weakens when the victim refuses to cooperate. If the victim testifies that she willingly went or eloped with the suspect before the trial, it weakens the case. During the trial, if she goes on to state the same the case might end up in the acquittal of the suspect. However, the judgement also depends upon how strong the prosecution argument is. In some cases, conviction can also happen despite victims supporting the suspect in court, said lawyer, Gulam Rabbani.

The lawyers, who handled such cases, say that most cases end in settlement with parents consenting to marriage. The parents of couples usually compromise. They would then get them married once the girl turns 18, said another lawyer.

In one case in Rajendranagar a 20-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl eloped. The police booked a case of kidnap after a complaint from the girls parents. Police arrested the suspect. Meanwhile, the girl turned 18 and she refused to cooperate with the prosecution. Later, the defense filed a petition at a higher court and got the case quashed.
Chennai: The Madras High Court bench here has maintained that victims of crime cannot expect the courts to be rigid regarding negligible deviations in complying with the bail conditions.

Justice P Devadoss gave the opinion recently dismissing a petition filed by a complainant in a woman harassment case challenging the refusal of the lower Courtto cancel the anticipatory bail given to two accused in the case as they failed to appear before the Judicial Magistrate at the scheduled time as per bail conditions.

"Victims of crime may keep an eye on the accused all the time, but they can't expect the courts also to be rigid" the judge said.

The petitioner Jesintha Mary said that the accused Selvaraj and Sebastiammal did not appear before the Judicial Magistrate at Thiruvadanai at 10 am as per the bail condition on November four last year.

Selvaraj and Seastammal submitted that there was delay to appear before the Judicial Magistrate on the particular day as they had to go to the hospital for treatment.

The also submitted that the petitioner had no locus standi to seek the cancellation of the anticipatory bail and so the sessions judge who gave the conditional bail dismissed the plea Jesintha Mary.

However, on the question of locus standi, the judge said the petitioner had every right to seek the cancellation of the bail on the ground of violation of conditions imposed by the Courtas she was the victim of crime.
New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday appealed for peace and calm on the issue of sharing Cauvery River water, saying violence cannot be justified on any ground and asked the governments of the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to take effective measures to ensure protection of the people.

The violence in the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu after the Supreme Court's direction on release of Cauvery waters to Tamil Nadu is quite disturbing, M Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Information and Broadcasting said.

He said such violence can't be justified on any ground and particularly, after the direction of the Supreme Court.

Such violence and destruction of property negates the rule of law and ultimately impacts the life of common man, he said.

One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Karnataka yesterday as the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu turned violent, escalating tensions between the two states.

As Bangalore witnessed widespread violence bringing it on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late last night

Noting that water is no doubt a sensitive and emotive issue and particularly, in times of scarcity, Naidu said it is in the fitness of things that such issues are resolved through discussions among the parties concerned.

"The Cauvery Water issue is sub-judice and the Supreme Court has given a direction after listening to both the States. If still there are any issues, leadership of both the States could discuss the same and come out with a way forward," Naidu said.

He said a large number of people from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu live in the other state and have been making significant contributions to the development of the state of their choice of living.

"They should not be made to feel insecure as it is the Constitutional right of every citizen to live in a place of choice in the country.

"Violence and counter-violence would only further complicate the matters and is not in the interest of any State. Both the State Governments should take effective measures to check the violence immediately," he said.

The Minister 'fervently' appealed to the people of both the states to immediately stop indulging in violence and ensure peace and normalcy. "I also appeal to both the State Governments and leaders of political parties to take necessary effective measures to stop violence and ensure protection of people from the other state," he said.

Naidu also urged the media to exercise restraint in reporting on the incidents happening in both the states. "Highlighting such incidents visually and otherwise might incite further violence. I hope media would play a constructive role in ensuring peace and normalcy in both the States," he said.
BENGALURU: Home Minister Dr G. Parameshwar said on Tuesday that the police are collecting evidence against miscreants who laid siege to the city on Monday. He said that the police have arrested 335 people and are going through video footage from TV channels and CCTV to identify more miscreants.

On Monday, 78 vehicles were burnt down in the city, while 19 others were put on fire in other parts of the state. Forty-four vehicles were damaged in the city, while 59 vehicles were stoned in other parts, he said.

The police lathicharged crowds at 13 places, while tear gases were used 16 times. Curfew has been clamped on 16 police station limits and it will be lifted only after situation returns to normal, he said.

Share images with us: Police to netizens

A day after over 100 vehicles were torched and widespread damage to public property, the city police on Tuesday began tracking down the goons. On Tuesday they urged citizens to share any information in the form of video, pictures or WhatsApp messages to the police so that necessary action can be initiated against them.

The city police on Tuesday took to their official Twitter handle and urged the netizens to share any photo or video of the incidents of Mondays arson and rioting. Further, they also warned youngsters against indulging in any violent protests.

In a tweet on their official twitter handle, the police said, #SituationPeacefulNow :Crowd sourced photos/videos will help in stringent punishment to vandals - share them with us - on 9480801000 .

The situation on Monday had turned volatile after some miscreants took to social media platform and began spreading misleading information in the form of forward WhatsApp and Facebook posts which propelled a hate campaign resulted into unrest, arson and rioting.

The Bengaluru police have stepped up their social media team to connect to lakhs of netizens and urged them not to follow or pay heed to any rumours. They appealed to the masses to follow Bengaluru police posts for updates. The city polices social media team who was seen in action provided minute to minute update on citys development and also informed about the current development.

Abhishek Goyal, Deputy Commissioner of police traffic (East) took to twitter and said, We want to identify & book all miscreants who vandalized public property. You may have recorded the events. Please share it on 9480801000 or use @btppubliceye to upload your videos/photos. Identity of the witnesses will be kept confidential.

BMTC passengers stranded

BMTC's decision to cancel the BMTC services created a lot of problems for lakhs of commuters. Thousands of passengers were stuck in several bus terminus of the city waiting for buses. BMTC restarted skeleton services only by Tuesday afternoon.

According to the BMTC officials, passengers who were not aware of the city shutdown had arrived on night buses and trains expecting BMTC services in the early morning. "But we did not operate buses fearing violence and attack," said a driver. As expected, thousands of passengers were forced to wait till afternoon without food in the Kempegowda bus terminus in Majestic.

Aged passengers bore the brunt of the bus service withdrawal. According to Mr. Muttu Patil, 70 years, a resident of Chikkodi, he arrived in the city to visit Kidwai hospital for consultation. "There are no buses. It is difficult to hire an auto," he said. He said he will wait till BMTC restarts its services.

KSRTC suffered a revenue loss of Rs 2 crore

KSRTC also did not operate any of its inter state as well as intra state services on Tuesday till afternoon. But service was resumed around 12 noon. According to the KSRTC officials, KSRTC suffered a revenue loss of `2 crore due to cancellation of its schedules on Tuesday.

Air passengers stranded

Thousands of passengers were struck at the Kempegowda International Airport of the city on Tuesday due to the bandh. According to the air passengers who arrived to the airport, there were neither cabs nor the Vayuvajra services.

"Taxi and cab service resumed only after 12 noon. We were forced to stay inside the airport," said Mr. Sudheer Kamat, who arrived in the city from Mumbai.

"There were hundreds of passengers. Even though a few cab drivers were ready to ferry, they were demanding minimum Rs 2,000 to Mekhri circle, he said.

According to the several cab drivers, they did not want to risk providing airport service due to the bandh. Bellary road is known as a venue for regular protests. Cabs are an easy target," said a cab driver. But in the evening BMTC restarted its Vayu Vajra services.

Few fuel stations open

Even though the situation was tense on Tuesday across the city, a few fuel stations remained open. As a majority of the fuel stations were shut, long queues were found at these fuel stations. According to the fuel station workers, as most of the petrol and diesel trucks were TN- registered, supply was very low. "But due to the low demand we could supply diesel to all the customers," said a worker.
BENGALURU: A day after violent protests in the northwestern parts, the city witnessed a self-imposed bandh on Tuesday, as shops and business establishments shut fearing further trouble.

Curfew imposed in riot-hit areas paid off as no untoward incidents were reported. The number of deaths due to protests went up to two, with another man succumbing to his injuries at a hospital.

Kumar, a bar bender who was injured on Monday night after accidentally falling from the third floor of a building while trying to escape from the lathicharging policemen in Byadarahalli, died of his injuries at a private hospital on Tuesday afternoon.

Despite curfew being in force in 16 police station limits, some miscreants tried to disturb peace in Laggere and surrounding areas. But the police forces rushed to the spot, lathicharged the protesters and dispersed them on Tuesday morning.

The police top brass made good use of the additional police forces sent by the Centre and deployed them in sensitive areas. Flag marches were also held in sensitive areas to instill confidence among the residents.

The shutdown that had forced Bengalureans to remain indoors as all commercial establishments, malls and cinemas were closed started to ease only by evening. BMTC and KSRTC buses, cabs and autorickshaws started plying from around 5 pm. Namma Metro services resumed a little later.

Protest hijacked by anti-socials: Police

When chaos and anarchy ruled the city on Monday, many fringe groups used this as an opportunity to show their muscle power by indulging in widespread violence and torching of vehicles. Police sources said that the protests went out of the control of the pro-Kannada leaders and anti social elements took over.

Fringe groups will always wait for such opportunities. Though it looks like they do it for identity apparently, the real motives behind such acts are hidden. They were desperately waiting for an opportunity to show that they exist. They also wanted to show that they were powerful, so that their help will be sought to get other things done, an official said.

Many were keen to make most out of such opportunities. All they want is to publicise that when it comes to vandalism they can do anything. They want to project themselves as local leaders and build their own gang, who will be in need of some identity and money. Using them as their tool, those individuals try to emerge as local leaders in their locality. They involve in damaging public and private property during bandhs and protests, as they think they would go unnoticed, the official said.

However, the Mondays violent protest could not have become so violent without the participation of public. No organisation can afford to do something like this and get away. It was clear that thousands of individuals, who were not part of any organisation, also actively indulged in vandalism, the official added.
BENGALURU: At the end of two brain-storming sessions on Tuesday--first with veteran Congress leaders and later with his council of ministers-Chief Minister Siddaramaiah reconciled to the fact that the government had to abide by the Supreme Court order on release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu till September 20 but took pains to work out a formula to ensure adequate drinking water to local residents till June 2017.

And to nip further trouble in the IT hub and other parts of Karnataka, Mr Siddaramaiah warned that anyone attempting to trigger violence would be dealt with an iron fist.

He told the media here the apex court's orders on September 5 and September 12 had forced the state government to take the most difficult decisions so far. However, in a federal system, one could not either violate or reject the directions of the apex court.

"From the beginning, injustice has been meted out to Karnataka with respect to its share of Cauvery water. The first order put the state in difficult situation, while the second one is a direction which cannot be implemented. Our government has decided not to show disrespect to the judiciary. The court will hear the matter again on September 20 and the Special Leave Petition, challenging the final order of the Cauvery water disputes tribunal will come up for hearing on October 16. Keeping the situation in mind, the government will release water till September 20,'' he added.

As for people of Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mandya and other places, who depend on Cauvery water for drinking, they would not be deprived of their share till June, 2017.

Mr Siddaramaiah, however, declined to divulge the details on the storage levels in reservoirs after releasing water to the neighbouring state or how the state government would manage the water crisis in future. He said the state government would release water for one crop in Mandya region as per advice of Irrigation Consultation Committee (ICC).

On the law and order situation, he warned miscreants against taking law into their hands. The government has decided to maintain law and order with iron fist. Stringent action will be taken against anyone taking law into their hands and damaging private or public property,'' he said.

Assuring safety of Bengaluru's citizens and linguistic minorities in the state, he appealed to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa to protect property and lives of Kannada speaking people in Tamil Nadu.

Reiterating his earlier appeal for PM Narendra Modi's intervention in resolving Cauvery row, Mr Siddaramaiah said he had sought an appointment with the Prime Minister.

"I will personally appeal to the Prime Minister to convene a meeting of Chief Ministers of four states. Law and order is not restricted to Karnataka alone,'' he added. Stating that the entire problem was result of lack of a national water policy, Mr Siddaramaiah said he would urge the PM to announce one soon.
A truck from Tamil Nadu burns in Bengaluru on Monday after it was set ablaze by pro-Karnataka activists following Supreme Courts order to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. (Photo: AFP)

Hyderabad: Hyderabad commissioner of police M. Mahender Reddy has asked TV channels to stop airing violent footage of the ongoing clashes in Karnataka, warning prosecution under the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995.

The top cop said that these footages might affect the ongoing Id and Ganesh festival celebrations in Hyder-abad and could incite violence in the city. Sources said that since many residents in Hyderabad were the natives of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, the footage might outrage them.

A large number of people are gathering in various parts of the city to celebrate, so the-se visuals might incite violence and create law and order issues, an official said.

In view of the large congregations of people expected on account of Bakrid and Ganesh festivities in the city, the managements of all the TV channels or cable TV network operators are advised to adhere to the programme code in the interest of maintenance of public order and peace in the city, stated the order issued by the commissioner.

It has been brought to the notice of the police commissioner that visuals having huge potential for inciting mob violence, which relate to the ongoing violence in Bengaluru, are being transmitted on TV networks in Hyderabad. As per the programme code under the Cable TV Networks (Regula-tion) Act, 1995, no program shall be aired on the cable service which is likely to encourage or incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order, said the commissioner. The concerned managements are liable for prosecution for violation of program code under Section 16 of the said Act, the order stated.

Issues cant be settled on road, says Venkaiah

Information and broadcasting minister M. Venkaiah Naidu has appealed to the people Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to protect the life and property of people of either states.

I fervently appeal to the people of both states to cooperate in ensuring peace and normalcy. Issues cannot be decided on streets. It has to be settled across the table or through court. Destruction of property is not correct. Violence and counter violence will only further complicate the matter, he said.

Mr Naidu told the media here that violence would not lead to any solution at all and requested both states to take effective steps to check the violence immediately.

The CMs of both states have gone on record that they are taking all necessary steps. I appeal to state governments and also leaders of various political parties in both states to take necessary measures to stop violence and ensure protection of people from the other state. The worst affected in such violence are the poor, he said. He requested the media to observe rest-raint as continuously showing visuals of violence could aggravate the situation.
Hyderabad: The Indian Medical Association has threatened to take legal action if the government dissolves the Medical Council of India and appoints a Medical Commission. IMA is strongly advocating rejection of the proposed National Medical Commission Bill 2016.

Former secretary of united AP IMA Dr Yadgiri Rao said, The hidden agenda of the government is to have a medical college in every district in the country. Just like how engineering colleges have mushroomed they want medical colleges. But that is not going to solve the problem. Existing doctors are not distributed properly. It is high time a scientific plan is implemented so that doctors practice in rural areas.

The proposed commission is going to have representatives from other walks of life and it is claimed that the ills of corruption and poor doctor-patient ratio will be solved and healthcare improved. Quoting sources in the health ministry, a senior official explained, The decision to dissolve the Medical Council of India is due to the fact that it is a toothless body. In the last 80 years of its existence they have not been able to take action against corrupt doctors or curtail unethical practices. There is no standardisation of procedures or that can be charged. It is completely based on hospitals which is wrong. The fraternity protects and also patronises its people and that is one of the prime reasons why people from other walks of life are required to streamline medical processes and make it affordable to the common man. But doctors are strongly opposing it and state that the bill will merely increase corruption.

IMA president Dr S.S. Agarwal said, The proposed bill is not people friendly. It is also not democratic and eliminates elected members. Nominated members will make a mockery of the democratic process which is being followed. Why should doctors take an exit exam after an MBBS degree? These provisions are uncalled for and it will merely create more problems for doctors."
Renowned concert pianist, Jerico Vasquez, will lead off Bryan Colleges Guest Artist Series presented by the Fine and Performing Arts Department. The concert on Friday, held in Rudd Auditorium, starts at 7:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

This piano recital will be a special treat for lovers of Romantic and Impressionist styles of music, said Dr. Olivia Ellis, assistant professor of Music. The demanding program of Rachmaninoff and Debussy selections will showcase the range and capabilities of the modern piano.

Known for his effortless playing and exceptionally clear and bright technique, Dr. Vasquez has performed as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Philippines. He received his bachelor of music at the University of California at Santa Barbara and earned both his master of music and doctor of musical arts degrees in piano performance from the University of Texas at Houston. Currently, Dr. Vasquez serves as artist-in-residence/associate professor of Music and coordinator of the Keyboard Program at Shorter University.

Dr. Vasquez is a winner of the UCSB Concerto Competition and has received career grants from the Pillsbury Foundation, the Santa Barbara Performing Arts Foundation, and the Leni Fe Bland Foundation. He was also a recipient of Ojai Festivals prestigious Charlotte and Alvin Bronstein Award, Capitol Records Nat King Cole Memorial Award, and the University of California Regents Scholarship. He is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honorary Society.

The evenings program will include Claude Debussys Preludes, Book 1 and Sergei Rachmaninovs Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 36.




Bengaluru: The Cauvery water crisis is one issue which confuses people more than enabling them to perceive it rightly. While lawyers tend to interpret the imbroglio from the legal perspective, administrators look at it differently while political leaders use a different prism to view it. Captain (retd) Raja Rao, a former irrigation secretary of the state, who is pretty well acquainted with the subject, has a different perspective to decode the crisis and some questions that the public generally ask.

Why is there a delay in settling the petition challenging the Cauvery River Water Dispute Tribunals order?

We have passed an amendment to the Inter-State River Dispute Act and now any tribunal hearing the river water dispute has to dispose of the case within three years. Extending the same logic, the Apex Court too should set itself a deadline to hear the river water cases. The final order of the Cauvery dispute tribunal came in 2007 and it is four years since Karnataka filed a SLP in the SC challenging the tribunals final order. This is unfair. Even lawyers representing various states give least priority to the hearing of these cases, so they get delayed.

Why has the tribunals order on setting up Cauvery Management Board and Cauvery water management committee not come into force?

All the states in Cauvery basin fear that they were given a raw deal, so they approached the Supreme Court challenging the final award. Karnataka opposed the setting up of any committee fearing it would take over the reservoirs.

Why is there a Cauvery crisis during a drought?

During an year with normal monsoon, more water flows to Tamil Nadu. When there is a drought, Tamil Nadu approaches the Supreme Court seeking water as per the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunals final award while Karnataka objects. This is because, the tribunal suggested a percentile method to work out distress. The quantum of water is to be released corresponding to the percentage of rain deficit. They do not consider real time data like the area of standing crops including sugar and paddy, drinking water, ground water generation between the water measuring station at Biligundlu at Tamil Nadu border and the Mettur reservoir. Because of this, Karnataka farmers complain of an erroneous method in calculating distress.

Comment on the Supreme Court verdict?

When Tamil Nadu approached the court seeking water, the court should have ideally asked the riparian state to approach the Cauvery advisory committee which would in turn send a technical team to assess the distress. This time, without any data, the Supreme Court ordered release of water which is not correct. They should have ticked of the Centre asking why the latter was not dispensing its duty of monitoring the distress in a scientific manner.

How can Karnataka find a solution within its rights?

As per the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribuna order, it has to release 192 tmcft of water to Tamil Nadu. In the final order, the tribunal has given freedom to all states to go for setting up of hydro-electric projects. Using this analogy, Karnataka can build a dam at Mekedatu to store water. Karnataka can generate electricity and the remaining water can be stored for twin purposes: in a crisis the water can be used for drinking purpose in Bengaluru and if need be, it can be released to Tamil Nadu to meet the requirement stipulated in the Cauvery tribunals final order.
Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has reportedly given the go-ahead for the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to take action against politicians and officials who had connections with slain gangster Nayeem.

Sources said that the Chief Minister discussed the SIT report on Nayeems atrocities, involvement of his henchmen in various crimes including murders, assaults, land-grabbing and settlements besides tacit support of some politicians and officials in these issues, with DGP Anurag Sharma and CMO officials.

The Chief Minister was briefed about the SIT investigation till date, and involvement of some politicians and officials with the renegade Naxal. Action is expected to be taken against some key persons after Ganesh Nimmajanam, a source told this newspaper.

Another source said, The government is still in a dilemma. So far, 80 persons have been arrested in 72 cases and investigation is on by SIT in Hyderabad, Nalgonda, Mahbubnagar, Nizamabad and other districts besides in states like Goa and Chhattisgarh where he allegedly parked money and bought properties.

Names of former-Telugu Desam minister Uma Madhava Reddy and others have apparently cropped up during investigation.

VIPs deny links with Nayeem

The names of deputy chairman of the Legislative Council, Nethi Vidyasagar, TRS MLC Karne Prabhakar, Nakrekal TRS MLA Veeresham, former DGP and BJP leader V. Dinesh Reddy, retired IPS officers D.T. Naik and Tiwari, ex-ASP Shivananda Reddy and several others have apparently cropped up during the investigation. However, they have denied links with the gangster. Officially, SIT has not named anyone so far.

Meanwhile, Opposition and TRS leaders, particularly of Bhongir and Nalgonda district, have been accusing each other of having links with Nayeem. Former DGP V. Dinesh Reddy was the first to deny having ever met Nayeem.

He said he had issued a memo to SIB to nab Nayeem, but indicated that the then political leadership had not given the green signal. Mr Karne Prabhakar, who was furious over media reports, went a step further and lodged a complaint with DGP Anurag Sharma to take action against those circulating his name in the media.

Similarly, Ms Uma Mahadava Reddy was furious over reports of her involvement and blasted rumour mongers. A businessman from Bhongir, G. Nagender, has lodged a complaint with the police stating that Nayeem had demanded Rs 2 crore from him.

When he had switched off his mobile, his neighbour apparently got a call from MLC Vidyasagar asking him to switch on his phone and settle the matter with Nayeem. He narrated the incident to the media and also lodged a complaint with Bhongir police regarding this. He said he had recorded the conversations.
Hyderabad: Telangana state is all set to join the small list of states having their own administrative services to overcome the shortage of IAS officers.

The state government is learnt to have given in-principle nod for setting up Telangana Administrative Services to offer IAS-cadre posts to senior Group-I officers working in state for more than eight years.

With the creation of 17 new districts from Dasara, the government needs to appoint additional collectors and additional joint collectors for each new district. The collector is an IAS officer, but the government is already facing a shortage of 50 IAS officers.

The government is planning to appoint TAS officers as joint collectors in the beginning and promote them as collectors later based on their seniority. To become collectors, they must clear a test to be conducted by UPSC.

This system is prevalent only in few states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Odisha. Though Kerala also launched its own SAS last year, it is yet to become fully operational.

The state government had appointed a committee headed by senior IAS officer M.G. Gopal last year to make suggestions on creation of TAS.

The government has asked TS Group-I Officers Association to study on the SAS being implemented in other states. We visited the states with their own administrative services and submitted a report to the government, recommending creation of the Telangana Administr-ative Service to overcome the shortage of IAS officers in August. These states have appointed Group-I officers as collectors, joint collectors and heads of department. Since new districts are being created in TS, the services of senior Group-I officers as joint collectors and HoDs can be utilised in these smaller districts, said Mr M. Chandrashekar Goud, president, TS Group-I Officers Association.

The committee referred the issue to the Chief Minister who is learnt to have given an in-principle nod. The government is expected to announce administrative service after the creation of new districts.
BENGALURU: The number of deaths due to violent protests in the city rose to two, with a 32-year-old man succumbing to injuries at a hospital. The deceased has been identified as Kumar, a bar bender by profession and a resident of Kempegowda Nagar in Byadarahalli on Magadi Road. He hailed from Kalkere village in Magadi taluk.

During the violent protests on Monday night at Kemegowda Nagar, the police resorted to lathi charge to disperse the mob. Meanwhile, Kumar, who was reportedly returning home, tried to escape from the police and entered a building along with a few other people.

As the police chased them up, Kumar went up to the third floor, from where he accidentally fell. He sustained multiple fractures and injury in the spinal cord. It is said that he remained on the ground for over an hour without medical aid.

His family members alleged that only an hour after the incident, the police shifted him to a hospital. Later, he was shifted to Sri Lakshmi Multi Speciality Hospital in Sunkadakatte, where he succumbed around 1 pm on Tuesday. Following his death, his family members and relatives staged a protest in front of the hospital demanding compensation.

Kumaraswamy, a relative, alleged that the police had killed him and action should be initiated against them. Kumar has a three year old daughter while his wife Manjula is pregnant, he added.

Later, the body was shifted to Victoria, where the post mortem was held. His family members took the body to his native for final rites. The government announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to him while Bengaluru Rural MP D. K. Suresh announced Rs 2 lakh compensation. The family members of Umesh, the 25-year-old man who died in police firing at Hegganahalli on Monday, have lost the sole bread winner of the family.

Cops urge TV channels to exercise restraint

A few hours after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued an advisory on Tuesday noon asking electronic media to report on the ongoing Cauvery crisis only after proper verifications of facts, and exercise caution and restraint in national interest, the Bengaluru city police commissioner N.S. Megharikh on Tuesday night issued another advisory to the media houses warning them not to indulge in airing footage of violent incidents.

The advisory read, Whereas it has come to the notice of the Commissioner of Police Bengaluru City that in the wake of recent incidents related to Cauvery water dispute, certain TV channels have been telecasting provocative and inflammatory news/programmes. Some TV channels have also been airing footage of violent incidents, rioting etc. repeatedly. These could further ignite tensions and reactions and could cause the law and order situation in the city of Bengaluru to deteriorate. It is felt that News, views or comments relating to Cauvery water dispute should be telecast only after proper verification of facts and presented with due caution and restraint in a manner which is in the public interest for maintaining harmony.

The senior police officer called for restraint while covering incidents of violence and rioting, not carry news in such a way that it incites violence, telecast of live or file shots of violence or rioting may be avoided. Reportage may use shots of Cauvery river and security forces and while reporting the incidents, care may be exercised in choice of words.

Man goes missing while returning from Ramanagara

While the city was reeling under protest on Monday, a 46-year-old man, identified as Chandrashekar, went missing from Krishna Smriti Kalyana Mantapa in Ramanagara Town. It is learnt that the family has filed a missing complaint with Bannerghatta police on Tuesday and a separate complaint was registered with Ramanagara police.

Chandrashekhar had sent his family in car from Ramanagar to Bengaluru and told them he would reach by bus. However there was no news of him since Monday afternoon. According to unconfirmed sources, Chandrashekhar was reportedly arrested by the police.

The family is still waiting for his return and have also posted messages on social media about Chandrashekhar on Tuesday. His daughter Rachana, a resident of Bannerghatta Road, told DC, We had come to Ramanagar to attend a wedding and were scheduled to return to the city on Monday. As there was no space in the car, my father opted to come by bus. We left around 2.30 pm on Monday and since then he went incommunicado. After a frantic search we registered missing complaint both in Bannerghatta police station and in Ramanagar Town police station as well.

Good Samaritans help stranded, those in need of food

Good Samaritans in the city pitched in by helping those stranded at bus stands and those facing difficulties in finding food. Mohan Shivanand, a builder by profession, helped about a fifty people at bus stands reach their destination.

For many who got stranded due to bandh, they provided the much needed relief. R.P. Gautam, a native of Kolar, got stuck at Hoskote on Tuesday and was unable to reach his home at Bommanahalli.

He came across a social media post mentioning Mohans contact number. He got in touch with him and within 30 minutes he was picked up and dropped at his house via M.G. Road. Without him, I really dont know what I would have done. Not even my friends showed up, no one helped, except him. I even considered going back to Kolar as I was stranded, he said.

Pratik Saraf got stranded in his room in Whitefield, with no food and water, on Monday. Another Samaritan Rafael Elvin came to him with a freshly cooked meal and enough water for the day.

He brought me a box of methi parathas and two big jars of water. I couldnt believe that people can actually be that selfless. Had it not been for him, I would have to go hungry. he said.

At a time when the city was torn apart by violence and protests, some citizens have taken it upon themselves to provide help to citizens who are facing difficulties due to the unexpected bandh like situation. They are supplying the needy with food, basic groceries and drinking water and helping the stranded commuters reach home.

Since Ive grown up here and also work here, I know a lot of people. I decided to use those contacts and help people in distress because of the bandh, said Sivanand.
Chandigarh: An anti-communal protest by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Haryana not only failed on an embarrassing note, but also resulted in a loss for a party member.

According to a report in Hindustan Times, AAP had planned to tether cows in front of the residences of BJP ministers in Haryana to protest against the ruling partys alleged divisive politics on cow protection in the country.

However, the party failed in the very first attempt when a Rs 25,000 cow tethered outside the house of BJPs Rao Narbir Singh was taken inside by the Haryana ministers staff and transferred to his farmhouse.

The minister later refused to return the cow, which belonged to a party member Rajpal Bhadana, causing further embarrassment to AAP.

We milked the cow on Sunday evening and shifted it to the farmhouse. We are taking good care of the cow. Some person approached us twice on Sunday evening to return the cow but we refused since it was left at the doorsteps of the minister, Singhs personal assistant Laxmi Narayan Yadav said.

Meanwhile, Bhadana has now given up on his efforts to get back the cow and said, The cow belongs to the party and I will not demand it back again.
Hyderabad: The nuclear medicine department at MNJ Cancer Hospital has not been functioning for six months as the survey meter is not working. Every day around 25 cancer patients are sent to Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences for diagnostic purposes as these cant be carried out in the hospital.

Nuclear medicine has proved to be effective in scanning cancers in the lung, breast, liver and renal region. It is also effective in picking up gastro-intestine disorders, neurological deficiencies and heart diseases.

The isotopes are supplied by Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and they are mostly stored in containers. The isotopes are administered through injections or pills and patients are then scanned.

MNJ Cancer Institute, NIMS, Apollo Hospitals, Medwin Hospitals, Image Hospitals, Bibi Hospitals and Care Hospitals are some of the centres where these machines are available for scanning.

While the corporate hospitals charge a lot, under the Aarogyasri scheme of the government, patients are given free diagnosis and treatment in government hospitals.

A senior doctor from MNJ Cancer Hospital said, The department is not functioning fully due to this machine not working. We have asked the government to expedite the process of procurement as without the survey meter the tests cant be conducted. It is also becoming very difficult as well as expensive for patients who have to travel from MNJ Hospital at Red Hills to NIMS in Panjagutta.

At NIMS, patients who are not covered under Aarogyasri have to pay Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500 per test which costs Rs 7,000 to Rs 10,000 in a private set-up. With the government now carrying out the tendering process doctors hope that the process does not get further delayed.
New Delhi: The BJP will hold 200 "Dalit Sammelans" across Uttar Pradesh to woo the community ahead of the next years assembly elections in the state. All dalit MPs and leaders have been asked to fan out and make voters from the electorally significant community aware of the Centre's "pro-poor" measures.

This comes amid growing cases of violence against dalits by cow vigilantes in various states including Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. Protests by dalit groups forced Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July to lash out at cow vigilantes and perpetrators of violence.

BJP chief Amit Shah is also focusing on strengthening booth level management with the slogan-"Mera booth sabse majboot". In all, 1.45 lakh booths in the state, the party chief has appointed booth presidents and set up booth samitis. At least 10 youths have been appointed to man each booth, sources said.

To attract youth, which had rallied behind the BJP during the 2014 Lok sabha polls, the BJP will also be holding youth meets in 91 districts of the state. IT centres have been set up in 92 districts by the party, since much of electoral battle is expected to be on social media, a BJP functionary said.

Sensing that the main rival will be the BSP, the BJP leadership has been focusing on weakening Mayawati's core vote bank of Dalits, and upset her social engineering formula. So far nearly 10 leaders from Mayawati's outfit defected to the saffron side. The list includes key Dalit leader Swami Prasad Maurya and BSP's Brahmin face Brijesh Pathak.

In the 2014 general elections, the BJP got 24% of the Dalit vote nationwide, more than any other party. With cow vigilantes on the rampage and Mayawatis reported resurgence, the situation has become tricky for the party. In UP, though the BSP failed to win a single seat, it got nearly 20% of the vote.

A BJP strategist claimed, "In constituencies where the BSP is doing well, the Yadavs will vote for the BJP." The party's internal survey shows Jats in western UP, who played a key role in BJPs fine show in 2014, could be turning against the party. The Jat Aarakshan Mahasabha has threatened to ask its members to "boycott" the BJP in next years Assembly elections as its demand for a reservations have not yet been met by the Centre.
A 22-year-old British student has invented a mobile fridge that could save millions of lives across the world. Will Broadways Isobar has been designed to keep vaccines at the ideal temperature while in transit in developing countries. And Will doesnt plan to make money from his creation. His focus is to get it to people who need it, which is why he wont be trying to get a patent.

I make things every day for people who have everything, Will, an industrial design and technology graduate from Loughborough University, tells Newsbeat. I wanted to make something for people who have next to nothing. It should be a basic human right, in my opinion, to have a vaccination. I dont think that it should be patented to restrict use, he adds. Wills Isobar has won him the annual James Dyson Award, open to students across the world with a simple brief  design something that solves a problem.

Current methods of transporting vaccines can result in the vaccines freezing before reaching their destination in countries where poverty and conflict are major obstacles. The device maintains a steady two to eight degrees for 30 days. It works by heating ammonia and water to create ammonia vapours, which are then released into its main chamber when cooling is needed. Will was inspired to start work on a portable refrigeration unit in 2012 when he visited Cambodia and parts of Southeast Asia.

These trips sparked an interest. It pushed me. Something needs to be solved for this major issue, he says. Having previously worked at a medical device consultancy, Will has first-hand experience of how large companies monetise life-saving products. Medical products have such a big mark up that its unreasonable for people around the world to purchase these items. If it is the best thing available, then it should be out there saving lives, he says.

It has been estimated that Wills invention could save the lives of 1.5 million people across the world, a number he says is astonishing. Having now finished his degree, his focus is taking the Isobar into production  something he plans to oversee. The product has been designed to transport vaccines, but already Broadway sees potential for other medical uses in the developing world and beyond.

Blood donations, organ transplants  if they get stuck in traffic, you still use cold-packs that really arent adequate for long periods of time, he says. There is also a potential, non-medical use for Isobar which could be monetised in the western world. Its risky but there is potential for commercial cooling. It would be a great thing to take on a five day trip where you have no power, he says. But he insists vaccine delivery is the primary function of his invention. It has been applied to what is hopefully the right avenue for the technology.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Facebook on Friday reversed its decision to remove postings of an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam, after a Norwegian revolt against the tech giant.

Helsinki- Facebook's chief operating officer has apologised to Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg for deleting a photograph from its pages and conceded that "we don't always get it right."

Sheryl Sandberg said in a letter to Solberg that she'd raised important issues about Facebook's decision to remove postings of an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam.

Friday, following protests in Norway the tech giant reversed its decision and allowed the photo "Terror of War" to be seen on its pages.

In a letter dated October 10, Sandberg conceded that historical importance "sometimes ... outweighs the importance of keeping nudity off Facebook," after Solberg had reposted the 1972 image and other iconic photos with black boxes covering parts of the images.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Researchers also found that girls are twice as likely as boys to be online for long periods and heavy social media users are more likely to argue with their parents.

Children who are heavy users of social networking sites such as Facebook may be more unhappy with their appearance and more likely to argue with their parents than non-users, a new UK study has found.

The study by Essex University in the UK, involving 3,500 children aged ten to 15, found that of those who used social media for more than three hours a night, only 53 per cent were content with their appearance, compared with 82 per cent of non-users.

Researchers also found that girls are twice as likely as boys to be online for long periods and heavy social media users are more likely to argue with their parents.

The UK government-backed survey also that found that 17 per cent of heavy social media users are bullied a lot as compared with 11 per cent of light users.

It found that truancy rates or absenteeism was much higher for heavy users - 14 per cent compared to six per cent.

Heavy users were also twice as likely to say that they misbehaved in class, 'The Sun' reported.

Children who defined themselves as heavy social media users were more dissatisfied with relationships.

They were less happy with friends and family, with five per cent saying they did not feel supported by relatives as compared with just one per cent of youngsters who were seldom on social media sites.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
At the heart of GPS lies the schools most important tradition  the honor code. Developed around the belief that a girls honor is her most valuable possession, the honor system provides the guidelines for the community while allowing each student her individual freedom. Every GPS girl bears responsibility for abiding by and upholding the system, creating a foundation of honesty, trust and respect upon which she and her classmates can learn and thrive, said officials.

Each year, the individual grade level classes meet with the head of school to affirm a commitment to the code and to reflect on what it means to attend a school that values honor and integrity. The girls read the Honor Code and sign individual papers that signify their acceptance of the tradition, a reminder of the expectation and responsibility.

Signing the paper is a promise to the school and to yourself, said Dr. Autumn Graves, the schools head at a recent freshman class meeting. But youre in the process of learning, and you need to ask for help if you get yourself in a situation where you are tempted to or actually lie, cheat, or steal. Let us help you navigate these mistakes.

She also told the students that when she meets with alumnae, she hears from them that having attended a school with a strong honor system is one of the most endearing and enduring characteristics that has impacted their lives.

The students turned in the papers to Dr. Graves, shook her hand, and then affixed their signatures to a poster that all students sign and which is displayed at the school. Her handshake, she said, represented the school and facultys promise to continue to provide an environment of integrity and trust.
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has decided to halt television advertisements for the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone in South Korea until the firm can resume new sales of the phone.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has decided to halt television advertisements for the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone in South Korea until the firm can resume new sales of the phone, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on September 13.

The person said ads already paid for would run until the end of their respective contracts but TV advertisements for the phones should end in South Korea sometime this week.

The person, who was not authorized to speak to media on the matter, declined to be identified. A Samsung spokeswoman declined to comment.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
The devices may endanger users out of the 2.5 million Note 7s already sold globally.

Samsung is warning consumers to stop using its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after a spate of battery explosions. It was the latest in a string of lithium-ion battery fires on products ranging from laptops to hoverboards to airliners and a reminder that pushing the technology envelope can sometimes be problematic. Here are some things to know about the recall and why batteries can be a fire hazard.

How do these batteries work and why do they catch fire?

A lithium-ion battery is a kind of rechargeable battery that uses different materials, one holding positive ions -- the cathode -- and the other holding negative ions -- the anode. These ions move one way when charging, and back again when discharging -- being used. These two layers -- or conductors -- are never supposed to touch, so manufacturers insert separators to keep them apart. Unfortunately, the chemical reaction that makes batteries work also creates heat. Overcharging the packs -- or charging them too fast -- can lead to fires.

What is the issue with Samsung's batteries?

We don't know exactly, but Samsung has given some clues. It said parts of the battery that should never touch came together due to a "very rare manufacturing process error". Gadget makers weigh all sorts of factors like performance, cost and safety when rolling out their next-generation technology. And the race to push more battery life into their latest phone or tablet can lead to unexpected results.

"Smartphone makers are trying to squeeze these batteries into a small, thin package," said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute in Tokyo. "Since batteries generate energy through a chemical reaction, it's really hard to reduce the risk (of fire) to zero. "Sometimes convenience comes with a price."

Has this happened before?

Yes. Battery fires have been reported in products including Sony Vaio laptops, last-year's must-have toy the hoverboard, electric bikes and even Boeing's Dreamliner jet. In Samsung's case, faulty batteries caused some handsets to burst into flames during charging. Cases of exploding batteries continued to emerge following the recall announcement, as users claimed a burning device had damaged a hotel room in Australia or set a car on fire in the US.

How extensive is the problem?

Not very. Millions of lithium-ion batteries are produced annually with a tiny fraction of those catching fire or exploding. At the start of this month, Samsung had received reports of about 35 incidents involving the phone's batteries.

"It's not easy to know if Samsung's problem is the same as others...at this point," Yasuda said. "If its battery suppliers sell these same ones to other producers,it could possibly affect them too."

What does this mean for Samsung and other gadget makers that use these batteries?

It will damage Samsung's reputation and likely hurt profits at a time when it is feeling the squeeze from Apple's iPhone and Chinese rivals in the lower-end category. The mobile business accounts for a major share of Samsung's profits. It will also put pressure on gadget makers to figure out how to make battery packs safe for ever-smaller devices.

"We always want batteries to be safe but also to be more efficient," said Guy Marlair, a France-based safety expert.

"The more that we boost the battery's performance, the higher the energy density in a small space and the tougher it is to manage security."

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
The California lawsuit says that USA Gymnastics negligently suppressed, concealed or failed to disclose knowledge that Nassar had engaged in sexual conduct with team members. (Representational Image, Photo: AP)

Los Angeles: Two gymnasts, including a member of the 2000 US women's Olympic team, say they were sexually abused by a former longtime doctor for USA Gymnastics, court documents and interviews show.

Larry Nassar, 53, who worked for decades for the gymnastics organization until his dismissal last year, sexually groped and fondled the teenage Olympian under the guise of physical therapy during her elite career, according to a lawsuit filed last week in California.

The Olympian is identified as "Jane Doe" in the lawsuit against Nassar and the USA Gymnastics organization. Her attorneys on Monday identified her only as a medal-winning member of the team that competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The second gymnast, Rachael Denhollander of Louisville, Kentucky, told the Indianapolis Star newspaper that Nassar sexually abused her in 2000 while she underwent treatment for lower back pain at Michigan State University, where Nassar is a faculty member.

Denhollander, who was 15 at the time, told the Star that Nassar became gradually more abusive over the course of five treatments, including massaging her breasts and penetrating her. She said she filed a complaint last month with university police.

Denhollander said her mother was at the therapy sessions, but that Nassar positioned himself in such a way that she couldn't see what was happening.

"I was terrified," Denhollander said. "I was ashamed. I was very embarrassed. And I was very confused, trying to reconcile what was happening with the person he was supposed to be. He's this famous doctor. He's trusted by my friends.

He's trusted by these other gymnasts. How could he reach this position in the medical profession, how could he reach this kind of prominence and stature if this is who he is?" Nassar's attorney, Matthew Borgula, said in an email to The Associated Press that Nassar plans to "vigorously defend himself."

"Nassar denies any misconduct relating to any gymnast, patient or anyone else," Borgula wrote. "To the extent he provided medical treatment to anyone, that treatment was always done with consent of the patient. He is proud of his 29 years of volunteer service with USA Gymnastics."

The California lawsuit says that USA Gymnastics negligently suppressed, concealed or failed to disclose knowledge that Nassar had engaged in sexual conduct with team members.
Dr. Donald Cline, 77, pleaded not guilty Monday to two felony obstruction of justice charges for misleading authorities who were investigating complaints from two of the now-adult children against him. (Photo: Pixabay)

Indianapolis: A retired Indianapolis fertility doctor said he used his own sperm around 50 times instead of donated sperm that his patients were expecting, impregnating several women decades ago, according to court documents.

Dr. Donald Cline, 77, pleaded not guilty Monday to two felony obstruction of justice charges for misleading authorities who were investigating complaints from two of the now-adult children against him.

Cline is accused of being the biological father of at least eight people, the youngest of which would be about 30. The accusations against him were first reported by WXIN-TV in May.

The 77-year-old from the Indianapolis suburb of Zionsville told six adults who believed they were his children that he had donated his own sperm about 50 times starting in the 1970s, a probable cause affidavit said. He had told his patients they were receiving sperm from medical or dental residents or medical students and that no single donor's sperm was used more than three times.

One of the adult children took a saliva-based DNA test through a private personal genomics company and found that she was related to at least eight other people in its database, the affidavit said. Meanwhile, two others also investigated their ancestry through DNA tests and learned their mothers both were patients of Cline and that they were related to 70 relatives of Cline, it said.

Cline "said he used his own sperm whenever he didn't have a donor sample available," the affidavit said he told them. But when the state began investigating complaints, Cline denied having done so.

"I can emphatically say that at no time did I ever use my own sample for insemination," he said in a letter to the Indiana Attorney General's Office. Cline retired from his practice at Reproductive Endocrinology Associates in Indianapolis in 2009.

Cline's attorney, Tracy Betz, released a statement saying he is not accused of hiding documents, influencing witnesses or otherwise not cooperating with the attorney general's investigation.

Cline was released on his own recognizance.

The most notorious fertility doctor to secretly use his own sperm was Cecil Jacobson, who may have fathered as many as 70 children from 1976 to 1998 in Vienna, Virginia. And in 2009, Dr. Ben. D. Ramaley of Greenwich, Connecticut, quickly settled a 2005 lawsuit for using his own sperm.
The fire was started on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha. (Photo: AP)

Fort Pierce: The Islamic community says it will repair and reopen the arson-damaged Florida mosque that was occasionally attended by Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen.

Assistant Imam Hamaad Rahman of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce said the mosque's approximately 100 members are "saddened and scared" by the fire. It started late on Sunday and burned for over five hours before it was extinguished early Monday. The fire was started on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha.

Rahman said the community is bigger and stronger than a building and the attack will bring it together. He said the mosque has received more threats since June's nightclub shooting than it did in its previous 20 years of existence.
A woman has told the United States police that a man lit her blouse on fire in New York City. (Photo: AP/Representational)

New York: A woman wearing traditional Muslim clothing has told the United States police that a man lit her blouse on fire in New York City.

Police say the 35-year-old tourist told them she felt heat on her arm on Saturday night in midtown Manhattan and noticed her blouse was on fire. She said she patted out the fire and noticed a man standing nearby holding a lighter. The man then walked away, she added.

The New York Police Department hate crimes task force is investigating it as a possible bias crime.

There have been no arrests.

Police say a New York City woman was arrested on Thursday after she assaulted two Muslim women pushing their children in strollers in Brooklyn. Prosecutors have described the attack as a hate crime.
North Korea is keenly aware of the US presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the US nuclear threat. (Photo: File/AFP)

Osan Air Base: The United States on Tuesday sent two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test, and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by US and South Korean jets, were seen by an Associated Press photographer as they flew over Osan Air Base, which is 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border with North Korea, the world's most heavily armed. The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam without landing in South Korea.

Such flyovers are fairly common when animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula,

which is technically in a state of war because there has never been a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the US "nuclear umbrella" as a deterrent to North Korea. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.

The B-1B doesn't currently carry nuclear weapons under a disarmament treaty,

but the United States has yet to convert the B-1s to non-nuclear heavy bombers

using treaty procedures, according to a 2016 report by the US. Congressional

Research Service.

US Forces Korea wouldn't comment on the bombers' capabilities, but South Korean military officials and analysts said that they could carry nuclear weapons if reconfigured.

North Korea is keenly aware of the US presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the US nuclear threat. It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as alleged proof of US hostility that it says is the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

Last week's nuclear test, the North's fifth, was its most powerful to date.

Pyongyang's claim to have used "standardized" warheads in the detonation

makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop

small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the US mainland.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who has regularly visited the North's nuclear facilities, estimates that the North may have enough nuclear fuel for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016 and the ability to add about seven new bombs a year.

"Left unchecked, Pyongyang will likely develop the capability to reach the continental United States with a nuclear tipped missile in a decade or so," Siegfried wrote on the North Korea-focused website 38 North. He said that more troubling was the recent test successes may give Pyongyang a false sense of confidence.

Six-nation diplomatic talks aimed at ridding the North of its bombs have been

stalled since the last round of meetings in late 2008. Since then, Pyongyang

has ramped up both its ballistic missile and nuclear bomb development, despite

an increasing raft of sanctions.

After last week's test, the North's nuclear weapons institute said it would take unspecified measures to further boost its nuclear capability, which analysts said hinted at a possible sixth nuclear test.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Monday that South Korean and US

intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another

atomic device at any time at one of its tunnels at its main Punggye-ri nuclear

test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place. Ministry officials refused to say what specific evidence pointed to another possible nuclear test.

Seoul, Washington and their allies have vowed to apply more pressure and

sanctions after the test, the second this year.

"The United States and (South Korea) are taking actions every day to

strengthen our alliance and respond to North Korea's continued aggressive

behavior," Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of US Forces Korea, said in a statement.

Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean policy, met South

Korean officials in Seoul on Tuesday and said that Washington is working

closely with other nations to work out new, stronger sanctions on North Korea.

Also on Tuesday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye ordered her military

to be ready to "finish off" North Korea if it fires a nuclear missile toward South

Korea. Following the nuclear test last week, she said that North Korean leader

Kim Jong Un's "mental state is spiraling out of control" and that his government

shows "fanatic recklessness."
PM Narendra Modi had said people from Balochistan have thanked him for raising their concerns. (Photo: Twitter)

Washington: The US respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan and does not support independence for Balochistan, a state department official has said.

"The government policy is that we support the territorial integrity of Pakistan and we do not support independence for Balochistan," State Department Spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday.

Kirby was responding to a question on growing clarion calls from both inside and outside Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province on its independence and violation of human rights by the Pakistani security forces there.

"Where does the US stand on Balochistan? Because Indian Prime minister (Narendra Modi) has raised this subject," Kirby was asked.

"The US Government respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan and we do not support independence for Balochistan," he reiterated.

In his address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the occasion of 70th Independence Day, Modi talked about the situation in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Gilgit and Balochistan and said people from there have thanked him for raising their issues.
Manila: President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday called for the withdrawal of US special forces troops from a group of islands in the southern Philippines, saying their presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners.

Duterte, who was in the spotlight last week over a televised tirade against the United States and President Barack Obama, said the Americans still in Mindanao were high-value targets for the Islamic State-linked Abu Sayyaf militants as counter-insurgency operations intensify.

"They have to go," Duterte said in a speech during an oath-taking ceremony for new officials. "I do not want a rift with America. But they have to go."

He added, "Americans, they will really kill them, they will try to kidnap them to get ransom."

The comments by Duterte, a former southern mayor known for his terse words and volatile temperament, add to uncertainty about what impact his rise to the presidency this year will have on one of Washington's most important alliances in Asia.

A spokesman for the US State Department, John Kirby, said it was not aware of any official communication by Manila calling for a withdrawal. He said Washington remained committed to the alliance.

Another US official said there were only a "handful" of special forces in the Mindanao acting in limited liaison roles.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest emphasized shared concerns and interests with the Philippines, before taking a thinly veiled swipe at Duterte, appearing to compare him to Donald Trump, the outspoken Republican candidate in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election.

"I think its an indication of how important elections are," Earnest told a regular news briefing.

Elections have consequences. Elections do say a lot about what kind of person is going to represent your country on the international stage. And its why you are going to prize qualities like decorum and temperament and judgment in casting votes in elections, because you know that person is going to represent you on the international stage. Thats certainly something that the Filipino people are well aware of," Josh Earnest said.

Obama cancelled a planned meeting with Duterte at last week's ASEAN summit after Duterte appeared to call him a "son of a bitch". The two did eventually meet briefly and on Friday Duterte said he told Obama the remark was not directed against him.

Washington deployed special forces soldiers to Mindanao in 2002 to train and advise Philippine units fighting Abu Sayyaf militants in a program that once involved 1,200 Americans.

It was discontinued in 2015 but a small presence has remained for logistics and technical support.

Washington has since shifted much of its security focus in the Philippines toward the South China Sea, where the two countries have shared concerns about China's territorial claims.

As a counter to China, shortly before Duterte came to office, Washington and Manila enacted the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement giving the United States rotational access to five bases in the Philippines.

Commander Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said on Monday that it would "consult closely with our Filipino partners to appropriately tailor our assistance to whatever approach the new administration adopts" on counter-terrorism measures.
Australia is seen as lagging behind a growing number of countries on marriage reform despite strong popular support for marriage equality. (Photo: AP)

Sydney: Australia plans to hold a national vote on February 11 on whether to allow same-sex marriage, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Tuesday, despite critics warning it could unleash homophobia.

Turnbull went to July 2 elections promising every Australian could have their say on gay marriage via a plebiscite.

"Our job is to ensure that the Australian people have the opportunity to express their view and to do so in a manner that is fair and impartial," he told a press conference in Canberra.

Turnbull said he would introduce a bill to parliament this week which he expected would be passed by the lower house. But he admitted it could be blocked by opponents in the Senate, where the government does not hold an outright majority.

"There will be a plebiscite on the 11th of February unless (opposition Labor leader) Bill Shorten decides to block it (in the Senate)," he said.

Labor has not yet said how it will act regarding the referendum, but ahead of the July election Shorten described it as a "taxpayer-funded platform for homophobia".

"In modern Australia, no-one should have to justify their sexuality or their love to anyone else," he said.

Critics have accused the government of delaying reform, with Shorten this week saying that parliament could vote to make marriage equality a reality immediately and without resorting to a plebiscite -- an earlier Labor election promise.

"This is an expensive delaying tactic designed by the conservatives in the Liberal party to prevent marriage equality," Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said Tuesday.

Australia is seen as lagging behind a growing number of countries on marriage reform despite strong popular support for marriage equality.

Same-sex couples can have civil unions or register their relationships in most states across Australia, but the government does not consider them married under national law.

Turnbull is well-known for his support for gay marriage but committed to the plebiscite, costing some Aus$170 million (US$128.2 million). The vote was decided on by his conservative Liberal Party under previous leader Tony Abbott.

Attorney-General George Brandis said the question to be put to people at the vote would be: "Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?"

The vote is non-binding, meaning that even if the plebiscite is passed by a majority of Australians, parliamentarians do not have to pass legislation in support of same-sex marriage.

But Brandis said he would introduce legislation to "give effect to the will of the people" to amend the Marriage Act if the "yes" vote wins, adding that he had "no doubt" parliament would respect the wishes of the people.

"There are many, many of my colleagues... who have said both privately and publicly that they would vote 'no' in the plebiscite but in the event the plebiscite were to carry, they would vote 'yes' on the floor of the parliament," he said.
Author, inventor and inspirational speaker William Kamkwamba shared his vision for overcoming obstacles and the importance of using knowledge and in a visit to McCallie on Friday.

In his talk to the Upper School students, Mr. Kamkwamba told the story of his life in a poor African farming village and how he used education and perseverance to overcome his circumstances and help his family and community.

Mr. Kamkwamba was raised in the nation of Malawi in a small village with no power. When he was 14, he built a windmill using spare parts and scrap  working from plans found in an old library book  to generate electricity that powered four lights and two radios in his family home.

As word of his achievement spread, Mr. Kamkwamba was invited to talk about his invention and reams at TEDGlobal on a fellowship, and he later told his story in the best-selling book book and film "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind." His efforts brought attention to the needs of his hometown, and he has been able to continue to build and improve the power supply in Malawi.

Thanks to the help of those moved by his efforts, Mr. Kamkwamba was able to continue his education, graduating from Dartmouth College in 2014, and he continues his work to inspire others and continue helping his homeland through his Moving Windmills Project.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind was the all-school summer reading book for McCallie this year, making his visit that much more special for boys in the Upper and Middle Schools, said officials.

Mr. Kamkwamba visited with students during lunch and then paid a visit to the Middle School where he discussed his childhood and how his hard work had helped him achieve his dreams and make the world a better place.
Brazilian House Speaker Eduardo Cunha attends a debate on whether or not to impeach the president, at the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia. (Photo: AP)

Rio De Janeiro: The once powerful speaker of Congress' lower house is the latest top politician to fall before the mammoth corruption scandals that have caused widespread anger among Brazilians.

In a 450-10 vote late Monday, the Chamber of Deputies stripped the congressional seat from Eduardo Cunha, who has been accused of corruption and obstruction of justice. Nine legislators abstained.

Although prosecutors allege Cunha received millions of dollars in bribes linked to the mammoth corruption case at state-run oil giant Petrobras, lawmakers considered only the issue of whether he had lied about having secret bank accounts in Switzerland.

Cunha, who said the accounts belonged to a trust, was pressured into resigning as speaker in July after the accounts came to light, but he had refused to give up his post as a lawmaker. He was in his fourth term and was considered one of the most powerful men in Brazil.

As speaker, Cunha was the main driver behind the impeachment process that led to the Senate trying left-leaning President Dilma Rousseff and removing her from office last month for allegedly violating fiscal rules to hide problems with the government's budget.

Cunha has been a key ally of new President Michel Temer, who was Rousseff's vice president, but after the vote he criticized Temer, saying his administration did not stand by him.

He blamed his removal on the impeachment of Rousseff.

"This was a political process because I kicked off the impeachment proceedings. They wanted a trophy," Cunha said at a news conference.

"The current administration adopted the agenda of removing me from office," he said, adding that he planned to publish a book telling about the behind-the-scenes dealings that led to the impeachment of Rousseff.

With the loss of his congressional seat, Cunha also loses a legislator's partial immunity from prosecution. In Brazil, only the country's Supreme Court can decide to charge and try federal lawmakers.

Now the corruption allegations against him will be investigated by a lower court judge seen as harsher than the top court, which was dealing with the cases until now.

Prosecutors accuse Cunha of corruption and money laundering for his role in negotiating Petrobras contracts for drill ships and say he received an illegal payment of $5 million.

Swiss prosecutors say Cunha held secret bank accounts at Julius Baer bank, with media reports putting their value in December at 2.4 million Swiss francs ($2.5 million). Brazilian investigators say Cunha also has had undeclared accounts in the U.S. since 1990 totaling more than $20 million. He denies any wrongdoing.

Against a backdrop of Brazil's worst recession in decades, the Petrobras scandal has ensnared some of the country's most powerful lawmakers and business executives. Prosecutors say a total of more than $2 billion was paid in bribes by companies to obtain inflated contracts from the energy company.

If he had remained speaker, Cunha would have been next in line for the presidency if anything happened to Temer.

He entered politics in the 1990s as a fundraiser for President Fernando Collor de Mello, the first Brazilian leader elected after military rule ended in 1985. Cunha's power began to erode in the middle of last year after a plea bargain deal led to testimony linking him to multimillion-dollar Swiss bank accounts.
London: Britain's former Prime Minister David Cameron resigned his seat in the House of Commons on Monday, less than three months after losing an EU referendum in which he had campaigned to stay in the bloc.

Cameron stepped down as prime minister in June, hours after Britain's dramatic vote to leave the European Union (EU), handing power to his successor Theresa May in July.

"The circumstances of my resignation as prime minister and the realities of modern politics make it very difficult to continue (in parliament)... without the risk of becoming a diversion," Cameron said in a statement.

"I fully support Theresa May and have every confidence that Britain will thrive under her strong leadership," the 49-year-old added.

The former premier was pilloried after the shock referendum defeat.

Critics accused him of recklessness in holding the vote in the first place and mismanaging the Remain campaign in the face of anti-EU populism.

His decision to stage the referendum was seen in Westminster as a bid to placate eurosceptic opponents in the centre-right Conservative Party.

His resignation from parliament is unusually quick -- former prime ministers have typically retained their seats for a number of years after leaving office.

Cameron denied it was linked to May's decision last week to let state-funded schools reintroduce selection by academic ability, a controversial move he opposed during his six years in office.

"This decision has got nothing to do with any one individual issue and that way the timing I promise is coincidental," he told broadcaster ITV in an interview.

"Obviously I have my own views about certain issues. People know that. That's really the point. As a former PM it's very difficult to sit as a backbencher and not be an enormous diversion and distraction from what the government is doing," he said.

May wished Cameron well for the future in a brief statement on Facebook.

"I was proud to serve in David Cameron's government -- and under his leadership we achieved great things," the former interior minister wrote.

'A life outside Westminster'

The suave Eton-educated Cameron has been MP for Witney in the rural county of Oxfordshire, northwest of London, since 2001.

At the time of his resignation as premier, he insisted he was "keen to continue" as a constituency MP and intended to seek re-election at the next general election, due in 2020.

He is not known to have taken on any other roles since stepping down. His media appearances since have been in pictures of him holidaying with his family.

"Obviously I'm going to have to start to build a life outside Westminster," he told ITV.

"I'm only 49 and I hope I can still contribute in terms of public service and contribute to our country," he said.

Cameron's decision was welcomed by allies.

His former finance minister and right hand man George Osborne, who was excluded from the cabinet by May, called it a "sad day" on Twitter.

"I know how difficult this decision has been for him," Osborne said.

Former foreign secretary William Hague added it was the "right decision", writing: "Former Prime Ministers are either accused of doing too little or being a distraction."

Boris Johnson -- the current foreign secretary who played an instrumental role in the Leave campaign -- praised Cameron on Twitter: "Sad to see @David_Cameron standing down:modernising Tory party - delivered sustained economic recovery - incredible record of public service."

Angela Eagle, a senior lawmaker in the main opposition Labour party, told the BBC that Cameron had "put his whole country at risk to settle a debate in his own party" through the EU referendum.

"He has now walked away leaving others to clear up the mess," she added.

The pro-Brexit Daily Mail newspaper reported the resignation as "The Crushing of David Cameron" on its front page, saying his legacy was in ruins.

Despite Cameron's denial he quit in response to May's school reform, The Times said the former prime minister wants the freedom to speak out on the matter.

The Daily Telegraph, popular among Conservative voters, said Cameron quit "to avoid split with May".

Cameron's decision to resign triggers an obscure parliamentary procedure, because lawmakers are technically not able to resign.

He was named as Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead and a by-election to pick his successor will be held.
Geneva/Islamabad: UN High Commissioner on Human Rights on Tuesday asked India and Pakistan to grant it "unconditional access" to both sides on the Line of Control to establish an "objective assessment" of the situation in Kashmir.

In his opening statement at the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, "Two months ago, I requested the agreement of the Governments of India and Pakistan to invite teams from my Office to visit both sides of the Line of Control."

"We had previously received reports, and still continue to do so, claiming the Indian authorities had used force excessively against the civilian population under its administration. We furthermore received conflicting narratives from the two sides as to the cause for the confrontations and the reported large numbers of people killed and wounded.

"I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides."

He said Pakistan has already handed over a letter formally inviting an OHCHR team to the Pakistani side of the line of control, but in tandem with a mission to the Indian side.

"I have yet to receive a formal letter from the Government of India. I therefore request here and publicly, from the two Governments, access that is unconditional to both sides of the line of control," he said.

Meanwhile, in Islamabad Pakistan Foreign Office welcomed Zeid Ra'ad's statement and said, "The visit by the OHCHR team would help to end the culture of impunity which is prevailing for more than 68 years, in violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions."

Foreign Office said Pakistan will give access to any UN team to its controlled region.

"We note the High Commissioner's statement that he awaits a formal letter from India for access to Kashmir. We urge India to respond to this request," the Foreign Office said.
Geneva: Countries are increasingly refusing to cooperate with the UN on human rights, the world body warned Tuesday, voicing alarm at situations in dozens of states, including Syria, Iran and Venezuela.

"States may shut my office out, but they will not shut us up; neither will they blind us," UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, opening the 32nd session of the UN Human Rights Council.

He decried "an emerging pattern" in which a growing number of states were refusing access to his staff and other UN representatives tasked with investigating allegations of rights violations in their countries.

Zeid voiced alarm at the situation in war-ravaged Syria, where no UN human rights monitors have been allowed in since the deadly conflict erupted in March 2011.

"This is a state led by a medical doctor and yet is believed to have gassed its own people," he said, also decrying attacks on hospitals and civilians neighbourhoods, and the detention of tens of thousands of people in "inhuman conditions".

"Words cannot convey how profoundly I condemn this situation," he said.

Zeid also criticised Venezuela, which for the past two and a half years has refused to even issue a visa to his representative in the region.

"Its comprehensive denial of access to my staff is particularly shocking in the light of our acute concerns regarding allegations of repression of opposition voices and civil society groups," he said.

Among his concerns he listed arbitrary arrests, excessive use of force against peaceful protests, and a dramatic decline in economic and social rights that has sparked widespread hunger.

Iran meanwhile had blocked all access to his staff since 2013, which he said was "particularly regrettable given the reports we continue to receive of fundamental problems with the administration of criminal justice" in the country.

Especially worrying, is the "continued execution of large numbers of people, including juveniles", he said.

Belarus, Eritrea and North Korea have also flatly refused all access by UN rights monitors, while Israel has repeatedly refused to cooperate with probes into the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, he said.

Zeid also slammed the Turkey for not allowing his staff into its restive southeastern region, despite "repeated and serious allegations" of violations including "extrajudicial killings and massive displacement" amid demolition of entire towns and villages.

Zeid stressed that rights investigators would not turn a blind eye to situations simply because they were blocked from investigating them on the ground.

"If access is refused us, we will assume the worst," he said.
A parliamentary committee report said sexual bullying had become an expected part of girls everyday lives. (Representational Image)

London: More than half of girls in British schools and colleges have faced sexual harassment, according to a new report on Tuesday that called for sex education to be provided for all children in primary and secondary school.

A parliamentary committee report said sexual bullying had become an expected part of girls everyday lives. The report found evidence that almost a third of 16 to 18-year-olds had experienced unwanted sexual touching at school.

Surely no one who reads or hears these striking statistics today could now deny how serious ... this problem is, Katie Russell of Rape Crisis, a charity which works with survivors of sexual abuse, said.

Young people told the committee that complaints of sexual harassment would often be forgotten, with no action taken.

Maria Miller, the lawmaker who chaired the committee, said the report found teachers often accepted sexual harassment as just banter.

Nearly three quarters of 16-18 year old students said they heard terms such as slut used towards girls on a regular basis.

Miller, from the ruling Conservative party, criticised Britains education department for having no no coherent plan to tackle the problem.

Under the current UK curriculum, sexual health education is compulsory at secondary school but teaching pupils about relationships and sexual consent is not.

A government spokesperson said the department would consider the reports recommendations.

Schools should be safe places and fortunately crime is rare, but no young person should suffer harassment or violence, the spokesperson said.
Nadia was kidnapped by ISIS militants from her home in Kochu village near Iraq's northern town of Sinjar in August 2014 and brought to Mosul. (Photo: YouTube Screengrab)

Berlin: Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman from Iraq, who had endured a three-month nightmare as a sex slave of ISIS militants, has joined hands with Amal Clooney, a human rights lawyer to court for crimes against humanity.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, Nadia became a UN goodwill ambassador for Global Fight against Human Trafficking on September 12, 2016.

She was kidnapped by ISIS militants from her home in Kochu village near Iraq's northern town of Sinjar in August 2014 and brought to Mosul. She was since then kept as a sex slave by the militants who often gangraped her, until she fainted.

After her harrowing escape with the help of a fake religious ID nearly two years ago, Murad has a message for world leaders striving to crush the extremists: IS leaders must stand trial for genocide.

"I was not able to take any more rape and torture," she told the council, so she decided to flee.

Together with Clooney, she aims to represent thousands of ISIS sex slave victims and lead their cases in the International Criminal Court.

Nadia's campaign on sex abuse has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Through her campaign, she wants to highlight the human rights abuses faced by women at the hands of ISIS militants.
As he tries to bury his face with his hands, one of the inmates pulls him up and hits on his head. (Photo: YouTube Screengrab)

London: A prisoner was brutally beaten up and filmed inside a UK prison by his fellow inmates after branding him as a 'rapist'. The entire incident was captured on camera by other prisoners.

The video footage shows the prisoner moaning in agony as he is beaten up and kicked by other inmates.

The victim tries to curl up in a corner while trying to save himself from the attack. As he tries to bury his face with his hands, one of the inmates pulls him up and hits on his head. Meanwhile, other inmates encourage the attacker to be more violent.

Towards the end of the video, an inmate can be heard shouting, 'Shall I break his leg?'.

The place where the video was shot remains a mystery.
The truce brokered by Russia and the United States saw guns fall silent at sundown on Monday, with the next anticipated step being urgent relief deliveries to desperate civilians. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

Aleppo: A Syria ceasefire billed as the "last chance" for peace appeared to be holding on its first full day on Tuesday, with residents across the country reporting a quiet night and anxious for aid.

The truce brokered by Russia and the United States saw guns fall silent at sundown on Monday, with the next anticipated step being urgent relief deliveries to desperate civilians.

In second city Aleppo - a key battleground in recent weeks - AFP correspondents in both the rebel-held east and the government-held west reported the night had passed without air strikes or rocket fire.

Residents remained out on the streets until midnight, taking advantage of the lull in fighting to celebrate the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

AFP correspondents in the government-held capital and its rebel-controlled suburbs reported they too were quiet.

Britain-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the main battlefronts were "completely calm".

US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Washington it was "far too early to draw conclusions" about the success of the ceasefire but urged all sides to seize the opportunity.

"For all the doubts that remain, and there will be challenges in the days to come, this plan has a chance to work," he said of the deal he agreed on Friday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

"I urge all the parties to support it because it may be the last chance that one has to save a united Syria," he added.

In the opposition-held central town of Talbisseh, which came under heavy fire in the run-up to the truce, activist Hassaan Abu Nuh said the regime bombardment had stopped.

"We usually stay up all night with the airplanes, but thank God last night we could all sleep," he told AFP.

In the largely rebel-held north-western province of Idlib, where air strikes killed 13 people yesterday, an activist reported a quiet night too.

"This time, we were able to sleep well. Last night was amazing," Nayef Mustafa told AFP from the town of Salqin. But he voiced skepticism about whether the truce would last.

"People are only expecting it to stay calm for the (Eid) holiday," he said.
An Israeli warplane and a drone in Syria was allegedly shot down by Syria army. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

Jerusalem: The Israeli military struck artillery positions in Syria today after a projectile from that country's civil war hit the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights, but denied a Syrian claim that Syrian forces shot down two Israeli aircraft in the assault.

The incident was the fifth case since last week in which fighting in Syria has spilled over into Israel, and the first since a US-Russian brokered truce went into effect at sunset on Monday to try and end Syria's war, now in its sixth year.

Israel has largely remained on the sidelines of the fighting, but has carried out reprisals on Syrian positions when errant fire previously landed in Israel.

Shortly after the air raid, Syria's armed forces claimed to have shot down an Israeli warplane and an unmanned drone along the frontier between the countries.

The Israeli military quickly denied the report, saying that a pair of surface-to-air missiles were fired at its aircraft but missed.

"At no point was the safety of IDF (Israel Defence Forces) aircraft compromised," it said.

Israeli warplanes have conducted several air raids on Syrian army positions over the past weeks after stray shells hit the Israeli-controlled area.

Israel is also widely believed to have carried out airstrikes on arms shipments said to be destined for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a close ally of the Syrian government.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and the two countries have been at a state of war for decades.
Istanbul: Turkey's state-run news agency says the Justice Ministry has sent the United States its first formal request demanding the arrest of the alleged mastermind of July's abortive coup.

Justice Ministry officials told Anadolu the written request sent to counterparts in Washington alleged the Pennsylvania-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen "gave the orders and commanded" the violent coup that killed over 270 people. Gulen denies any involvement.

Turkish officials have been informally demanding the cleric's arrest and extradition for weeks.

During a meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in August, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, "As per the extradition agreement between the U.S. and Turkey, these types of people should at least be detained, arrested and kept under surveillance. Yet that individual is still directing his terrorist organisation from his whereabouts."
Complete Tennessee, a new education advocacy group focused on increasing postsecondary attainment in Tennessee, officially launched on Tuesday with former Tennessee Board of Regents assistant vice chancellor Dr. Kenyatta Lovett serving as executive director. The organization will work with local communities statewide to identify opportunities and best practices to promote college completion and increase graduation rates.



Dr. Lovett said,

Tennessee has taken bold action to raise the bar on student achievement in public K-12 schools, dramatically raising high school graduation rates to almost ninety percent.

espite this progress, postsecondary achievement has room for serious improvement, with graduation rates near the single digits for some public institutions, and an overall average of less than forty-five percent for all public two and four-year institutions. This means that more than half, and in some cases more than three-quarters, of college students in Tennessee are not achieving their dream of earning a degree or certificate  and that is unacceptable.
Sharif offered Eid prayer along with other family members in the mosque at his Raiwind residence in Lahore. (Photo: AFP)

Lahore: Needling India yet again, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday dedicated Ei-dul Azha to the "supreme sacrifices" of Kashmiris and said Pakistan will continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is not resolved.

"We cannot ignore sacrifices of Kashmiris. They will succeed through their sacrifices. We dedicate this Eid to the supreme sacrifices of Kashmiri people and we will continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is not resolved according to their (Kashmiri people) wishes," the Prime Minister said in his message on the occasion of Eid-ul Azha.

Sharif offered Eid prayer along with other family members in the mosque at his Raiwind residence in Lahore.

He said, "Kashmiri people have sacrificed their third generation in their struggle to get freedom from India." "They are struggling for their right to self-determination and facing Indian atrocities. Their voice cannot be suppressed through force," he said.

President Mamnoon Hussain, in his message on the occasion, said Pakistan must remember "our Kashmiri brothers and sisters affected by terrorism".

"During this hour of need we must support the Kashmiri people. They are facing the worst atrocities to get their right to self-determination. Time is not far away when the

Kashmiri people will get dividend of their supreme struggle.

They will soon celebrate such festivals in free land," the President said.

Meanwhile, Jammat-ud-Dawah chief and Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed led Eid prayers at Gaddafi Stadium and prayed for the "success of Kashmiris fighting against Indian forces."

He urged the Nawaz government to take firm stance on Kashmir and "help them get freedom".

India and Pakistan are engaged in a fierce verbal battle over terrorism and the situation in Kashmir in the aftermath of the unrest in the Valley that broke out on July 8 after Hizbul Commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces.

While India has accused Pakistan of supporting cross border terrorism, Pakistan, on its part, has been trying to internationalise Kashmir, alleging New Delhi of human rights violations.

Sharif had earlier called for investigation into the "atrocities" committed by Indian forces, protection of Kashmiris' fundamental rights, a fair inquiry into the killing

of Wani and implementation of UN resolutions.
The attack took place in Shikarpur in Sindh province, around 470 kilometres (300 miles) north of Karachi and the same district where at least 61 were killed in a suicide attack on another Shiite mosque in 2015. (Representational Image)

Karachi: A suicide bomber injured ten policemen, one critically, outside a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan as the country marked the beginning of the religious festival Eid al-Adha on Tuesday.

The attack took place in Shikarpur in Sindh province, around 470 kilometres (300 miles) north of Karachi and the same district where at least 61 were killed in a suicide attack on another Shiite mosque in 2015.

Officials said two suicide bombers tried to enter the Khanpur Imambargah but were intercepted by police.

"Four of our men are injured of whom one is critical" Umar Tufail, a senior local police officer said.

Tufail added doctors were also trying to save the life of the other suspected bomber, who was injured when the first one blew himself up but failed to detonate himself.

"The attackers came as the worshippers were gathering to offer Eid prayers. Police were able to stop him at the gate outside the mosque," A.D. Khawaja, chief of police for Sindh province said.

Worshippers overpowered the second would-be suicide bomber as the police were reeling from their injuries, he added.

Pakistan has been hit by frequent sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shiite Muslims, who make up around one in five of the population.

The January 2015 attack on the Shiites in Shikarpur, blamed on the Sunni militant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group, led to a wave of nationwide protests.
In more trouble for standup comedian Kapil Sharma, who has kicked up a row through his bribe tweet, Oshiwara Police here today registered an FIR against him for alleged unauthorised construction at his flat in suburban Goregaon.



Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) sub-engineer Abhay Jagtap had lodged a complaint at Oshiwara police station in this regard.



In the complaint, Jagtap had alleged that Sharma, who owns a flat in DLH Enclave on New Link Road in Goregaon, had violated norms and carried out illegal construction in the flat, a senior police official said. Based on the complaint, Sharma was booked under section 53(7) of Maharashtra Regional Town Planning Act (MRTP) 1966, the police official said.



Besides Sharma's flat, the municipal body has found violations in 15 other flats in the building and has already served notices to their owners.



Sharma had kicked up a controversy last week by alleging that he had been asked to pay a bribe of Rs five lakh by an official of BMC which, in turn, claimed that the actor had flouted norms in his Versova office building and his apartment in suburban Goregaon.



Earlier in the day, the Raj Thackeray-led MNS filed a complaint against the artist for keeping mum on his allegation that civic officials had demanded money from him, and violation of building norms by him.



MNS group leader in BMC, Sandeep Deshpande, filed the complaint against Sharma at Versova police station. He demanded that the complaint be turned into an FIR and an investigation be ordered into the matter.



The complaint, filed by Deshpande's lawyer, mentions that since BMC officials are public servants under section 21 of the Indian Penal Code, and if they have demanded bribe, it amounts to an offence under section 39 of CrPC.



Also, it is a duty of a person to lodge a complaint against that public servant with the concerned authority, and if he fails to perform his duties as per section 176, it amounts to an offence, the complaint further said.



"In this case, Sharma did not act as a responsible citizen and failed to live up to his duty. Therefore, I have demanded the police officials to go into the merits of my complaint, convert it into an FIR and call him for further investigation," Deshpande said.



Besides, MNS general secretary Shalini Thackeray today visited the tehsildar office in suburban Andheri along with her supporters and demanded officials concerned to register an FIR against Sharma for allegedly destroying mangroves.



The MNS had also last week reacted sharply to Sharma, seizing on a statement he reportedly made alluding to role of its workers. The opposition Congress had used the issue to target BJP and Shiv Sena, who together control BMC.



However, the Shiv Sena had dared Kapil to name the bribe seeker. BJP MLA Ram Kadam had earlier lodged a complaint with the cyber cell of Mumbai Police and demanded to forward it to the Anti-Corruption Bureau to probe Sharma's allegations.



However, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam today came out in support of Sharma and said the artiste was being "victimised" to divert attention from the issue of graft. He also urged Maharashtra Governor C Vidyasagar Rao to intervene in the matter.



"In an attempt to divert attention from the main issue of bribery, the BJP, Shiv Sena and MNS have accused Mr Sharma of illegal works in his office and threatened him with demolition and other drastic actions. I personally believe the municipal authority has all the right to take action against any illegal structure in Mumbai," Nirupam said.



In the letter, Nirupam also urged the Governor to direct Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to initiate either an inquiry by Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) or a judicial probe into the charges made by the artiste.



On Friday, Kapil had tweeted his anguish and said, "I am paying Rs 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay Rs 5 lakhs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi (sic)."



"Yeh hain aapke achhe din? @narendramodi (are these your good days)," he had sought to know in another tweet, referring to Modi's 2014 poll slogan of "good days are ahead".



Sharma has 63 lakh followers on his Twitter handle and since he tagged the Prime Minister, the tweet generated sharp reactions from all major political parties, with an eye on the forthcoming civic elections.



It also sparked an instant response from Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who requested Sharma to provide the authorities with necessary information to punish the culprit.

Later, in an apparent attempt to cap the controversy from escalating, Sharma said he did not seek to blame any political party.


Needling India yet again, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today dedicated Ei-dul Azha to the "supreme sacrifices" of Kashmiris and said Pakistan will continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is not resolved.





"We cannot ignore sacrifices of Kashmiris. They will succeed through their sacrifices. We dedicate this Eid to the supreme sacrifices of Kashmiri people and we will continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is not resolved according to their (Kashmiri people) wishes," the Prime Minister said in his message on the occasion of Eid-ul Azha.



Sharif offered Eid prayer along with other family members in the mosque at his Raiwind residence here. He said, "Kashmiri people have sacrificed their third generation in their struggle to get freedom from India."



"They are struggling for their right to self- determination and facing Indian atrocities. Their voice cannot be suppressed through force," he said.



President Mamnoon Hussain, in his message on the occasion, said Pakistan must remember "our Kashmiri brothers and sisters affected by terrorism".



"During this hour of need we must support the Kashmiri people. They are facing the worst atrocities to get their right to self-determination. Time is not far away when the Kashmiri people will get dividend of their supreme struggle. They will soon celebrate such festivals in free land," the President said.



Meanwhile, Jammat-ud-Dawah chief and Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed led Eid prayers at Gaddafi Stadium and prayed for the "success of Kashmiris fighting against Indian forces."



He urged the Nawaz government to take firm stance on Kashmir and "help them get freedom". India and Pakistan are engaged in a fierce verbal battle over terrorism and the situation in Kashmir in the aftermath of the unrest in the Valley that broke out on July 8 after Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces.



While India has accused Pakistan of supporting cross border terrorism, Pakistan, on its part, has been trying to internationalise Kashmir, alleging New Delhi of human rights violations.



Sharif had earlier called for investigation into the "atrocities" committed by Indian forces, protection of Kashmiris' fundamental rights, a fair inquiry into the killing of Wani and implementation of UN resolutions.


The Centre today appealed for peace and calm on the issue of sharing Cauvery River water, saying violence cannot be justified on any ground and asked the governments of the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to take effective measures to ensure protection of the people.



The violence in the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu after the Supreme Court's direction on release of Cauvery waters to Tamil Nadu is quite disturbing, M Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Information and Broadcasting said.



He said such violence can't be justified on any ground and particularly, after the direction of the Supreme Court. Such violence and destruction of property negates the rule of law and ultimately impacts the life of common man, he said.



One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Karnataka yesterday as the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu turned violent, escalating tensions between the two states.



As Bangalore witnessed widespread violence bringing it on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late last night



Noting that water is no doubt a sensitive and emotive issue and particularly, in times of scarcity, Naidu said it is in the fitness of things that such issues are resolved through discussions among the parties concerned.



"The Cauvery Water issue is sub-judice and the Supreme Court has given a direction after listening to both the States. If still there are any issues, leadership of both the States could discuss the same and come out with a way forward," Naidu said.



He said a large number of people from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu live in the other state and have been making significant contributions to the development of the state of their choice of living.



"They should not be made to feel insecure as it is the Constitutional right of every citizen to live in a place of choice in the country. "Violence and counter-violence would only further complicate the matters and is not in the interest of any State. Both the State Governments should take effective measures to check the violence immediately," he said.



The Minister 'fervently' appealed to the people of both the states to immediately stop indulging in violence and ensure peace and normalcy.



"I also appeal to both the State Governments and leaders of political parties to take necessary effective measures to stop violence and ensure protection of people from the other state," he said.



Naidu also urged the media to exercise restraint in reporting on the incidents happening in both the states. "Highlighting such incidents visually and otherwise might incite further violence. I hope media would play a constructive role in ensuring peace and normalcy in both the States," he said.


Prime Minister Narendra Modi today expressed pain over the developments in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the Cauvery water dispute and appealed for peace while underlining that violence cannot provide solution to any problem.



He asserted that the dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit and "breaking the law is not a viable alternative". "Situation that has emerged in Karnataka & Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of issue of distribution of waters of Cauvery River, is distressful.I am personally pained at the developments," he said in a statement.



"Violence cannot provide a solution to any problem. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint and mutual dialogue," he said. The Prime Minister appealed to the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to display sensitivity.



"I appeal to the people of the two States, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities," he said. The Prime Minister reposed faith in the people that they will keep "national interest" and "nation building above all else and give priority to restraint, harmony, and finding a solution, eschewing violence, destruction and arson."



One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Karnataka yesterday as the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu turned violent, escalating tensions between the two states.



As Bangalore witnessed widespread violence bringing it on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late last night". Modi said the violence and arson seen in the last two days is "only causing loss to the poor, and to our nation's property.



"Whenever the country has faced adverse circumstances, the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, just like people across the country have always handled the situation with sensitivity," he noted.



The Supreme Court, modifying its September 5 order, had yesterday asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.



In its September five order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighbouring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September nine.
In a big step towards inclusive education for Delhis disabled children, the Arvind Kejriwal government has drawn up plans to give a transport allowance to schools to ferry over 2,100 students to and from their homes.





The initiative to bring more students with disabilities into formal government institutions aims to spend Rs 54.32 lakh during the 2016-17. The scheme is part of the central government-funded Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan on universalisation of elementary education.



An amount of Rs 250 per student per month has been allotted for 10 months in the current academic year. The money will be transferred into the accounts of schools, said an official.



Officials said the scheme would be open to disabled students from classes 1 to 8. The money will be at the disposal of the heads of schools for arranging transport for ferrying them.



The district heads of the Directorate of Education will directly transfer the money to schools run by the Delhi government, municipal corporations, New Delhi Municipal Council and aided schools.



The transport facility will only be available to students with blindness, cerebral palsy, autism, multiple disability and orthopaedic impairment, said an official.

After the intervention of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal it was also agreed that special arrangements needed to be put in place for students with orthopaedic impairment so that they also get the benefit of an escort facility, said an official.



Preliminary surveys conducted by the district deputy directors of education have identified 2,173 students across the city eligible for the scheme.

The west district has the maximum number of such children  416  followed northwest district which has 404 children with special needs. The central district has only 72 children, the least in the city.



If the allotted transport fund turns out to be inadequate, the head of the school would be expected to nominate someone to escort the children, an official said. In such cases, that person will get the allowance.



Since the Union Human Resource Development ministry is expected to audit the accounts for the spending under the centrally-sponsored scheme, the heads of school have also been advised to keep in safe custody all records related to the beneficiaries, said a deputy director in the Education Directorate.


Around 40 contractual workers at the control room of Delhi government's CATS ambulance service went on a four-hour strike on Monday, demanding higher salaries.





Full-time employees of the Centralised Accident and Trauma Services (CATS) were deputed in their places to prevent disruptions.



But according to some workers, some calls may have been missed as 4,000 to 5,000 of them are received in an hour.



Control room workers manage the calls, which are then transferred to paramedics in different CATS ambulances.

The protest was at the Laxmi Nagar base station.

The protesters said the demand to increase salaries had intensified as workers on night shift faced deplorable" sanitation conditions and a water shortage.



The Delhi government had started a CATS app service, call102, in July with ambulances to take patients from home to hospital.



Under this scheme, 84 call centre workers were hired on contract for the control room.

The contractual workers got together at 8 am on Monday for the protest.



Abhishek, one of the workers, said, Our present salary is Rs 11,500. We had demanded our salaries to be raised to at least Rs 18, 000 after seeing the workload.



We work 12-hour shifts. In an hour, the control room receives at 4,000 to 5,000 calls, said Abhishek.



There is shortage of water and the toilets are unusable, he said. There have been complaining about this problem, particularly during the night shift, but no one has tried to solve it. Abhishek claimed that they were told during their training programme that their salary would be increased to Rs 27,000 in the Wipro-backed programme.



The contract for these workers ends soon so they had just this last month to put across their demands strongly, according to Abhishek. Workers want the salaries to be revised when the contracts are renewed.



L S Rana, administrative officer (operation), said, the employees cannot be paid more than what the NICSI (National Informatics Centre Services Inc) allowed. Some workers alleged they were threatened that their contracts will not be renewed if they didnt get back to work. The ambulance services were not disrupted as we had substituted others in their spots, said Rana.
Delhi BJP women workers on Monday presented a memorandum to Delhi Commission for Women chairperson Swati Maliwal against Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia's comments





on the alleged sexual exploitation of AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan's brother-in-law's wife.

Sisodia, while rejecting Khan's resignation letter on Sunday had said that the FIR against him was the familys internal matter.



"How can a complaint of sexual exploitation be a family's internal matter? We want the DCW to take strong note of it and condemn it," said Delhi BJP General Secretary Rekha Gupta.



Aam Aadmi Party's Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan had resigned as the chairman of Delhi Waqf Board on Saturday, after being accused of molestation by his brother-in-law's wife.

An FIR was registered against him with the Jamia Nagar Police Station after the 32-year-old woman alleged that Khan tried to pressurise her into having sexual relations with him. She said that she was also tortured for dowry by her in-laws.



The woman added that her husband, brother-in-law of Khan, used to ask her to get intimate with the MLA.



"We asked the DCW what action they are taking, whether they have spoken to the woman or not. But the DCW chief said that they can only do something if the woman approaches the commission. We did not get any assurance from her," Gupta said.



The delegation of 12 women workers, which met Maliwal, also raised concerns on similar cases against other AAP MLAs. Gupta added that women workers will stage a dharna against AAP MLAs this week at Jantar Mantar



Meanwhile, Delhi BJP Yuva Morcha workers held a demonstration at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation office on Monday to protest against the acceptance of donation by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation from the controversial religious leader Zakir Naik.

Morcha general secretary Sunil Yadav said the acceptance of a hefty donation by the foundation during Congress rule indicated that some favour must have been granted to Zakir Naik, about whom it now stands established that he was running a clandestine operation of funding terror elements apart from indulging in religious conversions.


A 55-year-old woman was killed at her home in northwest Delhi Model Town by three men who left with jewellery worth Rs 5 lakh on Sunday night.





Police arrested them on Monday and recovered the jewellery and Rs 37,000 they took as cash. Two of the accused were known to the woman, said police.



Kusum Guptas body was found on the sofa on Sunday night with blood oozing out of her right ear and tongue sticking out of her mouth.



Sadik, 20, Bunty, 32, and Sunty, 21, were later arrested,. And the entire cash and jewellery recovered, said police.



Sadik initially told police that the other two planned to rob Gupta. Sadik later confessed that he was also part of the plan.



Bunty worked with Gupta in her grocery shop in Model Town for the past 12 to 13 years. Sadik, Buntys cousin, joined a month ago. Bunty and Sunty were neighbours in Cigarretewala Bagh jhuggi.


A woman who ran a business renting out space to couples wanting to spend time with each other was strangled last week by two rivals.



A man and his associate have been arrested for murdering the 65-year-old woman Bimla Tiwary at her house in North East Delhis Mansarovar Park area, police said on Monday.



The duo strangled Tiwary with a plastic wire on September 4 as the woman, who used to work with the victim as her protege, wanted to carve her own business and considered Tiwary as a hurdle in it.



In their investigation, police found that a complaint was filed at Mansarovar Park police station some time back against Tiwary for renting out her space for couples. Following the complaint some people were detained, police said.



In the investigation, when no cognizable offence could be established against her, the case was dropped, said a police officer.

In their murder investigation, police questioned Tiwarys son who confirmed her mothers involvement in the aforementioned business.



He was infact living separately for the last few years due to the embarrassment he had to face because of his mothers activities, said a police

officer.



Based on the call record details of the deceased around 15 people were zeroed in as probable suspects and they were separately interrogated by the police.



During the investigation it was noticed that the mobile phone of a woman was switched off since the day of the murder.



From further analysis and local enquiry, the team raided a location in Khora Colony, Ghaziabad and the woman and her associate Surender were arrested from there.



The arrested woman said to police that she tried to set up her independent business but was scolded by Tiwary.



That is when she decided to eliminate the elderly woman.




Setting an example in communal harmony Muslims at a nondescript village in Uttar Pradesh's Gonda district, about 200 kilometres from here, shifted an 'Idgah' (a ground, where namaz is offered on special occasions) to give place to a Hindu temple.





According to the reports the 'Idgah' at Akbarpur village in the district was adjacent to the 'Brahmasthan' under an old 'peepal' (Ficus Religiosa) tree and the Hindus from the village and nearby areas had been performing religious rituals there for a long time.



With the passage of time, however, the branches of the old tree had expanded and threatened the walls of the 'Idgah'. The locals said that the branches were not cut as it could have caused communal tension.



Members of the two communities, however, decided to discuss the matter so that communal amity remained intact. On Sunday a meeting was held in which senior members of the communities discussed it.



The Muslims offered to shift the 'Idgah' a few metres away so that the branches would not have had to be chopped. The Hindus readily accepted their proposal.

The Muslims have also decided to get a 'pucca' (cemented) platform constructed around the tree. They also offered to construct the road that led to the place of worship, reports said.



The two communities held a 'Pyar Baton' (share love) program at the village to show that any dispute, howsoever complicated it may be, could be resolved through peaceful ways.

The chief of the Idgah Committee Razik Usmani said that members of both the communities expressed their happiness over the decision and pledged to keep communal harmony intact.



The sacrifice of the Muslim community for their Hindu brethren certainly serves as an example in the state, which has witnessed several communal riots in the past four years.
China is concerned over "increasing cost of security" and "potential setbacks" in the development of the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an official daily here today said recognising the risks involved with the project due to a "complex regional environment".





An article in the Global Times said the ambitious project - that passes through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir - is unlikely to have a "plain sailing". It also referred to the reported deployment of 14,503 security guards by Pakistan to protect the 7,036 Chinese nationals working on the corridor.



"China may not want to put too much focus on the region. At the very least, it would be unwise to put all its eggs in one basket," it said highlighting China's disquiet over the project which has also cast a shadow over India-China ties.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised concerns over the project in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 meet in Hangzhou on September 4.



The article, however, made no reference to India regarding the project, which connects China's Xinjiang province to Pakistan's southwestern Gwadar Port in Balochistan with a maze of rail, road and pipelines.



"The CPEC has long been seen as symbolic to Sino-Pakistan economic cooperation. It is unlikely that China will change its supportive attitude on the CPEC in the short term, but the increasing cost of security is becoming a big problem in efficiently pushing forward the projects," the article said.



The daily, which in the past has strongly supported the project, said in the article that it is "unlikely to be plain sailing for China and Pakistan in their attempts to push forward the CPEC due to challenges such as a complex regional environment, and people in the two countries should be prepared for potential setbacks".



The daily is part of the ruling Communist Party of China's official organ - the People's Daily publication group. It also raised questions over Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's comments last month that Pakistan attached priority to the project.



Referring to Sharif's comments, it said "given the difficulty of protecting the personnel that are working in Pakistan, projects under the CPEC may need to be implemented and assessed step-by-step".



"Beijing should consider giving more attention to its economic cooperation" with Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, whose Prime Minster is currently visiting China, to improve ties despite differences over the South China Sea.



China is reportedly concerned after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Vietnam's capital Hanoi this month.



"The CPEC has long been seen as a flagship project in China's Belt and Road initiative, but the initiative's strategic focus may need to shift gradually toward Southeast Asia, where there is a wide infrastructure funding gap but a relatively stable regional environment that will enable China to efficiently push forward ventures under the Belt and Road initiative," it said.



"Hopefully, the two countries (China and Vietnam) will be able to put aside disputes that have arose over the South China Sea and focus on promoting economic development," it said.


Amid mounting criticism over spread of vector-borne diseases in the city, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today sought to pass the buck, saying the Delhi government was "incapable of even buying a pen" as he and his Cabinet colleagues stand "fully stripped of powers."





Kejriwal, who returned from Punjab yesterday, said Lt Governor Najeeb Jung and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be "questioned" over the issue as powers rested with them.



"CM n min left wid no power now, even to buy a pen. LG n PM enjoy all powers wrt Del. LG abroad. Question them for Del, (sic)" he tweeted.



As the city reels under a major health crisis, virtually the entire Delhi Cabinet is missing from action as ministers including Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, Gopal Rai and Imran Hussain are out of station.



While the Chief Minister is scheduled to undergo a throat operation in Bengaluru today, his deputy Sisodia is in Finland to study its education system.



Jain, who holds the Health portfolio, is touring poll-bound Goa, Rai is in Chhattisgarh and Hussain is on Haj pilgrimage. Only Water minister Kapil Mishra is stationed in the national capital.



Three persons have died due to chikungunya in Delhi. While one death was reported yesterday, two more fatalities were recorded today. The Dengue and Malaria toll stand at nine and two respectively.

Sisodia said officials of the Delhi government were busy following the "LG's instructions" of going through the files of the past 18 months and sending these to him.



"Officers do not come to meetings called by ministers. They remain away from their offices throughout the day. If the country has reporters who are not in the 'Modi school of journalism', they should decide who the government is--LG or Chief Minister.



"If they believe LG has all the powers in Delhi then he should be held responsible in these cases. Where did the LG disappear after putting useless and lazy officers at the helm of the Health department in the city," the Deputy CM said in a series of tweets.

The Delhi High Court, in its August 4 verdict, had held that the Lt Governor was the administrative head of the national capital, thus rejecting the AAP government's contention that the Governor was bound to act only on the aid and advice of the CM and his council of ministers.


Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed pain over the attacks in the two states locked in a bitter river water sharing row and appealed for calm while stressing that violence cannot provide solution to any problem. He asserted that the dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit and "breaking the law is not a viable alternative".



As the country's IT capital and other affected districts showed signs of limping back to normalcy, Karnataka government decided to obey the Supreme Court's modified order asking it to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu till September 20 and warned of dealing with violence during protests against it with an "iron hand".



The decision was taken after an emergency Cabinet meeting presided by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was held in Bengaluru to take stock of the Apex Court direction and yesterday's violence over release of water.



Hundreds of security personnel kept a tight vigil even as police said 365 people were arrested in connection with the violence in Karnataka which was blamed on Kannada activists and fringe groups. Police are conducting combing operations in several sensitive areas and dispersing assembled crowds.



Protests over the Cauvery issue continued in some parts of Tamil Nadu for the second day with fringe outfits like Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK) holding agitations outside Kannada establishments in Chennai and in Coimbatore. Inter-state bus movements between the two states were also affected.



The toll in the Cauvery stir related violence rose to two when a 30-year old man, who had allegedly jumped in panic from a three-storey building while trying to escape police lathicharge in Bengaluru,succumbed to multiple injuries today.



"Kumar, about 30 years old, has died. He was brought to our hospital at 9:30 last night in a critical stage. He is said to have jumped from third floor of a building as he was trying to escape from a lathicharge yesterday," Dr Giridhar, Managing Director of Lakshmi Multi-Speciality Hospital, said.



One person was killed and another injured in police firing in the country's IT capital yesterday after sudden eruption of widespread violence, escalating tensions between the two states.



Curfew, imposed late last night, continued to remain in force in 16 police station limits of Bengaluru which is under prohibitory orders till September 14. There were very few vehicles moving on city roads, with schools and colleges and also government offices remaining shut due to Bakrid holiday.



A bus that was half burnt yesterday was torched once again today near New Timber layout and another vehicle was also set on fire near Tigalarapalya. Both had Tamil Nadu registration number plates.



Police lobbed tear gas at Hegganahalli and Pattegarapalaya as protesters tried to burn tyres on the streets, defying curfew.



Sporadic protests have been reported in different parts of the state like Mandya, Chitradurga, Ramanagara and Mysuru.



In Chitradurga, a lorry bearing Tamil Nadu registration number was burnt, while in Ramanagara protesters held demonstrations in front of a farmhouse that reportedly belongs to a daughter of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. Shooting of a Tamil film was stopped by protesters at Jaganmohan palace in Mysuru, police said.



The violence in the Cauvery water dispute claimed its second life today, as an uneasy calm hung over worst-hit Bengaluru amid sporadic protests in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu marked by targeted attacks.
Protests over the Cauvery issue continued in some parts of Tamil Nadu for the second day today, with fringe outfits like Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK) holding agitations outside Kannada establishments here and in Coimbatore.





In Chennai, unidentified men pelted stones at an ATM of Karnataka Bank, damaging the glass panes, police said.



Activists of NMK held protests outside hotels owned by natives of Karnataka in different places in Chennai and around 12 people were arrested when they tried to enter the premises at Mylapore.



At Coimbatore, at least 30 NMK activists, led by its district secretary Wahab, raised slogans against Karnataka and went to Karnataka Association hall in Tatabad, police said.

However, they were stopped near the Association building and arrested.



At Neyveli, police foiled protestors' bid to burn an effigy of Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramiah and detained activists of the Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi.



Police protection continued for Karnataka establishments and buses from that state.

Meanwhile, Coimbatore district Omnibus Owners Association decided not to ply their vehicles to Karnataka for fear of attacks on the vehicles and crew.



It's secretary P Senthilkumar told reporters after a meeting of the association that 12 buses had been severely damaged in the last two days. Considering the prevailing situation, it was decided not to ply buses to Karnataka till normalcy returned in that state, he added.



A traders' body also announced holding a day-long bandh on September 16 against attacks on commercial establishments in Karnataka in the wake of the ongoing Cauvery crisis.



A M Vikramaraja, President,Tamil Nadu Vanigar Sangankalin Peramaippu (Federation of Tamil Nadu Traders' Association) claimed that Tamil traders, lorry and bus operators had incurred Rs 2,000 crore loss in the protest by Kannada groups, targeting commercial establishments,besides torching vehicles.



Commercial establishments owing allegiance to the Federation would down shutters on Friday, he said while appealing for the support of other trade bodies also.



Yesterday, one person was killed and another injured in police firing in Bengaluru after violence erupted there and other parts of Karnataka following Supreme Court's modified order on sharing Cauvery water by the two riparian states.



The Apex Court, modifying its September 5 order, had asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.
If Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has his way with high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, the American billionaire's company SpaceX may test-run its futuristic high speed train, the Hyperloop, in Pune.





Speaking about his recent visit to the American west coast, which is the global hub of hi-tech innovations, Gadkari said he spent quality time with the officials of Tesla, which is also founded by Musk, who is known for his futuristic ideas.



"I just offered them ... they want some road for experimental purpose. I offered them the westerly bypass of Pune connected to the Express Highway. The idea is they can take an experiment between Mumbai and Pune as a pilot project," he said, without naming SpaceX.



He said the Hyperloop, whose idea was first presented in 2013, runs faster than an aircraft at a speed of 1,120 kmph and can cut the distance between his hometown Nagpur and Mumbai in 35 minutes.



Among other things, SpaceX is also working on commercialising space travel.

Speaking about the futuristic concept which is yet to be commercialised, the minister said the Hyperloop "is a tube" which uses air for propulsion.



The company's website says SpaceX is "interested in helping to accelerate development of a functional Hyperloop prototype".



Speaking to reporters later on the sidelines of an infrastructure summit organised by Marathi daily Lokmat, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also confirmed that there indeed have been some discussions between the governments on such a proposal but was quick to add that Maharashtra has asked the company to develop the product first before making test-runs in the state.



Gadkari said the government has invited Tesla to invest in the country as he expressed interest in clean energy like solar and battery storage, areas in which the American company is focused on.



He said he also encouraged Musk to set up a manufacturing base here. Tesla has been offered land free of cost near some ports.


Eid-ul-Azha was celebrated with traditional gaiety and fervour across the country today as Muslims thronged mosques for prayers and exchanged greetings on the holy day.





Hordes of people visited mosques and idgahs in the national capital to offer prayers on Eid this morning kickstarting festivities on the auspicious occasion.

Large number of people attended special prayers at the historic Jama Masjid, Fatehpuri Masjid and other prominent mosques in all parts of the city.



The sacrifice ritual was also performed by the devout at their homes on the occasion of the festival also known as Bakr-Id.



People, specially children, in their festive best visited friends, neighbours and relatives exchanging greetings and gifts, all over the city.



Elaborate security arrangements were in place by Delhi Police for prayers at mosques and old city areas where large number of people visited markets and enjoyed festivities.



Clerics and community leaders delivered sermons on the festive occasion which occurs the day after pilgrims performing Haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia by Muslims worldwide, descend from Mount Arafat.



The festival is celebrated approximately 70 days after the end of the month of Ramzan, which is observed as Eid-ul-Fitr.



Animal sacrifices are also performed as a ritual to commemorate Prophet Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted the nation on Eid, hoping the festival will usher in peace and togetherness.



"Id-ul-Zuha greetings. May this festival enhance the spirit of peace & togetherness in our society," he tweeted.



In trouble-torn Kashmir, curfew and widespread clashes that left two youths dead marred Eid festivities in the Valley which has been witnessing continued protests for last 65 days claiming lives of 78 people.



For the first time, no Eid prayers were offered at the historic Jamia Masjid in Srinagar in nearly two centuries. The last time the grand mosque was closed was in 1821.

Similarly, no Eid prayers were offered at Idgah though authorities allowed partial use of Hazratbal Shrine for prayers.



This is probably for the first time that curfew is in place on the day of Eid festival ever since militancy broke out in the state in 1990.



While curfew was in force in Kashmir valley, Jammu region celebrated Eid-ul-Azha with religious fervour as Muslims flocked to mosques to offer prayers.

Besides offering prayers, people in colourful attire exchanged Eid greetings and pleasantries in all the districts of Jammu province. Hindus and Sikhs also participated in the celebrations, extending greetings to their Muslim brethren on the auspicious occasion.



"Eid is the day when we remember the God and seek his blessings. While we prayed for ourselves, we also prayed for peace in the country, especially the Kashmir valley," said Irfan Khan, a local shopkeeper.
Owing to repeated setbacks to Karnataka in the Supreme Court in connection with the Cauvery water sharing with Tamil Nadu, Mysuru Mayor B L Bhyrappa has decided to resign. The Mayor may submit his resignation on September 16 after returning to the city from a foreign tour.





In his press statement, Bhyrappa said he is in The Hague in the Netherlands, attending the Mayors Conference and he will submit his resignation once he returns to the city on September 16.



Being a citizen of Karnataka and the Mayor of Mysuru, my priority is the welfare of the people. I will support Chief Minister Siddaramaiahs decision taken in the interest of the people over the ongoing issue, the Mayor has stated.



Bhyrappa, who represents Ward 12 in the Mysuru City Corporation, is a two-time corporator and the 18th Mayor of Mysuru.



Bhyrappa had won the election on Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) ticket, but later he joined the JD(S), after KJP was merged with the BJP in 2014. He was elected mayor on November 13, 2015 for a period of one year.


Karnataka Agriculture Price Commission Chairman T N Prakash Kammardi said 5.97 lakh hectares of agricultural land in Karnataka has been converted to non-agricultural purposes in the last one decade.





He was speaking to mediapersons after holding a meeting with the officials from Agriculture, Horticulture Departments and scientists of research centres, here on Tuesday.



Kammardi said the commission had conducted a scientific study on shift in cropping pattern in Karnataka and the solution for improving the cropping pattern. The commission will submit its report to the state government shortly. The study has shown that on an average, 60,000 hectare agricultural land has been converted to non-agricultural purposes every year in the state in the last one decade, he added.



He said the commission has conducted a scientific integrated study on the development in farming sector, area of expansion of crops in all the 30 districts in the last 10 years. The report has recommended a few measures to contain the use of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes.



Kammardi said there has a been a drastic change in the selection of crops in the past one decade. The area under sugarcane crop has increased by 117%, while that of paddy has been decreased by 11%, ragi too has too seen a downward trend by 25%. The area under arecanut and maize has increased by 40% each. The farmers have shown interest in cultivating arecanut, maize and BT cotton in the last one decade, he explained.



Stating that 5,923 hectare agricultural land in Dakshina Kannada district has remained outside the ambit of farming in the last 10 years, he said the area under horticultural crops has been increased by 17,306 hectares. While the area under arecanut has increased by 9,000 hectares and coconut by 2,127 hectare, the plantain cultivation in the district has increased by 11% and cashew cultivation by 17%. However, the mango cultivation in the district has decreased by 12%, he noted.



Kammardi said monsoon was normal in major parts of the country. Hence, the production of pulses may be better As a result, the price of pulses are likely to come own. But the production is likely to be affected by deficit rainfall, he added.



Normally, the price goes up if there is a decline in production and drops if there is a glut in production.



But the possibility of both drop in yield and slash in prices are staring at us since several states in the country are bound to see an increase in production due to good monsoon unlike Karnataka, which is reeling under drought-like conditions.



Agricultural produce from such states is bound to arrive in Karnatakas markets leading to reduction in prices.



Crops that are likely to be affected by reduction in yield as well as slash in price are paddy and various pulses including tur dal and bengal gram. The commission has written to the government suggesting a need for a close watch on the situation and provide minimum support prices to pulses if their prices drop drastically.



The condition will improve, however, if there is an improvement in rainfall in Karnataka. A meeting to discuss on farmers who grow pulses in the state will be held shortly by the state government, he said.



The commission hasalso suggested to the state government to constitute Federation of Pulses Growers Organisation to protect the interest of pulse growers in the state, on the lines of Karnataka Milk Federation.


The Karnataka State Agriculture Price Commission will chalk out a blueprint for the integrated farming system in arecanut in Dakshina Kannada district with a two-day technical workshop in the month of October, said chairperson T N Prakash Kammardi.





He told reporters on Tuesday that the blue print will be ready before the presentation of the state budget. It will have details on required technology and inputs from officials to take up integrated farming system to double the income of the arecanut farmers. The market for the produce, price and value addition will also be given thrust, he explained.



A team of officials and scientists will visit Kerala shortly, to conduct a study on paddy cultivation, mechanisation to overcome the problem of shortage of labourers and incentives given by the state government for the farmers in Kerala. A team of farmers from five districts, under the leadership of Agriculture department joint director Kempe Gowda, had visited Kerala recently and had submitted a report to the state government.



The commissions report to the government on cost of production of arecanut and coconut shows the cost of production of red arecanut as Rs 40,000 per quintal and white arecanut as Rs 30,000 per quintal. The commission has reiterated its demand for the setting up of an arecanut board for the welfare of the growers. It has also brought the issue of arresting the import of arecanut to the notice of the Centre to stabilise the price in the domestic market, said Kammardi. The Minimum Support Price fixed by the Centre for milling copra is Rs 59.50 a kg and while ball copra is RS 62.40 a kg. The MSP for coconut is Rs 16 a kg. A study conducted by the commission, however, showed the production cost of a kg of copra including labour cost to be Rs 89. Hence, the MSP announced by the Centre is insufficient. The state government has submitted a proposal to the Centre to hike the MSP for coconut by quoting the cost of production prepared by the commission, he added.



The commission will release a report predicting the price variation of the agricultural produce and supply projection report to the State government. It will advise the government on taking necessary steps to provide more profit to farmers by creating awareness. The forecasting of the price will help the government tackle the situation on slash of price of agricultural crops effectively. The commission will submit a report on the price variation of 21 crops by October/November, said the chairperson.


Situation was peaceful in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday barring stray incidents in some areas in Chennai. However, bus services between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka remained suspended, causing hardship to commuters.





The police arrested about 50 activists of Naam Tamizhar Katchi who gathered in front of a Udupi restaurant at Chintadripet in Chennai and staged a demonstration. Four youths were arrested when they attempted to throw stones a bus bearing Karnataka registration at Koyambedu bus terminus in the city.



Additional extra security personnel continue to be deployed outside the premises of offices and banks owned by Karnataka. A senior police official told DH that extra security personnel were deployed at 66 branches and ATM centres of Karnataka Bank in the state. About 70 hotels owned by people from Karnataka have also been provided police security. The police said they will take strict action against those who post sensitive videos or pictures related to the Cauvery issue on social media.



As a precautionary measure, the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation cancelled all its services to Karnataka from Chennai and other districts. Even Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation did not operate its services to Tamil Nadu. Due to the cancellation of bus services, many people from Bengaluru and other places in Karnataka were unable to join their families in Tamil Nadu for Bakrid and Onam.



Trucks, lorries and tempos bearing Tamil Nadu registration were stranded on the inter-state border. Fearing violence, most of the drivers had abandoned their vehicles and left the place. Hosur area was the worst affected as a large number of people could not reach their destinations in both the states. Similar situation prevailed in Sathyamangalam area in the border district of Erode.


Outgoing Arunachal Pradesh Governor J P Rajkhowa on Tuesday claimed that he had never recommended imposition of Presidents Rule in the state.





A day after President Pranab Mukherjee sacked him, the controversial governor, before leaving Raj Bhawan, reiterated in his farewell speech, a copy of which is available with DH, that the Presidents Rule imposed in Arunachal Pradesh a few months ago was not based only on his report.



Rajkhowa gave a detailed clarification on the scenario that led to the controversial turn of events and claimed that the President's Rule was imposed in the state on the recommendation of the prime minister and the Union Cabinet chaired by him under Article 356 of the Constitution.



I would like to make it absolutely clear, so that there is no misunderstanding about me being anti-democratic, which some quarters have been alleging. I had never recommended that the President's Rule be imposed in the state of Arunachal Pradesh on January 26, Rajkhowa stated in his speech. The Supreme Court had reinstated the Congress government in the state and called its dismissal illegal and unconstitutional.



Justifying his stand, Rajkhowa said the Supreme Court in many cases in the past had issued instructions to take action against governors, but not in his case.



The Supreme Court had not passed such strictures on the governor or any disparaging remarks on me, he said, adding that the five-judge bench has neither questioned the bonafides of the governor nor questioned his actions on grounds of malafide and has not indicted him of being biased or partial in favour of any political party.



The sacked governor apparently trained his guns at the Centre and said that he would not take any other post in the future.
Seven people, including two children and three women, were charred to death and around 12 others sustained injuries when a bus came in contact with a high tension wire in Etah district of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday.





The incident occurred around 10 am when the state roadways bus was on its way to Delhi from Kanpur. Eye witnesses said that the bus turned into a fireball when the high tension wire fell on it near Malawan, amid heavy rain.



While several passengers managed to jump out of the burning bus, seven people were charred to death, police sources said. Unofficial sources put the death toll at nine. The injured were rushed to the district hospital where the condition of at least two passengers was stated to be critical.
Senior Congress leaders on Tuesday advised Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to give top priority to maintaining law and order in the wake of widespread violence on the Cauvery issue.





The Congress leaders, including Mallikarjuna Kharge, Oscar Fernandes, B K Hari Prasad, Margaret Alva and Veerappa Moily, warned Siddaramaiah that the BJP government at the Centre would try to use the law and order issue to dislodge the partys government in Karnataka.



The state government should rein in those inciting violence on the pretext of the protest, the leaders said at a meeting convened by the chief minister at his official residence Krishna to take their advice on the Cauvery issue.



The Congress government has to be careful in handling the situation. The party has had a bitter experience in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh recently.



The Centre tried to impose Presidents Rule by imposing Article 356 of the Constitution. Steps should be taken to ensure that incidents of violence and widespread arson witnessed on Monday in Bengaluru and other parts of the state do not recur, Kharge, who is Congress leader in Lok Sabha, said.



Sources in the party said the leaders were of the view that efforts should be made to corner the Centre. The state government should mount pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene.



They advised the chief minister to explore the possibility of taking an all-party delegation to Delhi and urge Modi to find an amicable solution to the issue.



Some of the leaders asked the Chief Minister to consult legal experts on likely implications of not releasing Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu as per the Supreme Court order.



Some of them even suggested temporarily stopping release of water. Besides, the Congress leaders suggested seeking a change of the Supreme Court bench on the Cauvery issue on the grounds that one of the judges, Justice Uday Lalith, represented Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa as her lawyer for 12 years.



But the chief minister told them that defying the court order will affect the states interest in the long run. The states main petition challenging the final award of the Cauvery river water sharing disputes is coming up for hearing shortly. Any decision not to release water may adversely impact the states interest as far as the main petition is concerned, Siddaramaiah is learnt to have said.



Earlier, the chief minister explained the steps taken by his government on the Cauvery issue. He also clarified that he has no intention to resign, as speculated by a section of the media.



Later, Kharge told reporters that the Prime Minister should intervene and resolve the issue. Modi should immediately call a meeting of chief ministers of all the riparian states. There have been many instances where prime ministers have intervened in the past, he said.


Barring stray incidents, protests in connection with the Cauvery River water issue were largely peaceful and life in the Cauvery basin districts was limping back to normalcy.





Owing to prohibitory orders in Mandya district and in Mysuru city and the holiday mood of Bakrid, movement of both people and vehicles was sparse.



In Srirangapatna taluk, two Tamil Nadu-registered vehicles  a concrete mixer vehicle that was stationed near Chindegowdanakoppalu village for several days, and an excavator which was parked on Balamuri Road, near Belagola  were torched by protesters.



The vehicles were partially damaged. In Malavalli taluk, a jeep of the sericulture department was torched by miscreants near Halagur. A petty shop on SBM Road in Maddur town was torched by miscreants.



Besides, hundreds of people joined Cauvery Raitha Hitharakshana Samiti president G Madegowda, who has been spearheading a peaceful protest for a week near the Visvesvaraya statue on the Mysuru-Bengaluru highway, violating prohibitory orders. Road blocks and protests were held in parts of Mandya district for short intervals, while bandh was also observed in a few towns and villages.



Two held

Police took two persons into custody for blocking the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway near T M Hosuru Gate and later released them in Srirangapatna taluk.



Meanwhile, MP C S Puttaraju, visited a hotel belonging to a Tamil in Pandavapura town, that was ransacked on Monday, and assured compensation to the owner. He also visited the house of former judge C Shivappa at Pattasomanahalli, that was attacked by miscreants on Monday.



MLA K S Puttannaiah visited the Tamil Colony in Pandavapura town to instil confidence among the people. Miscreants had damaged shops on Monday and had threatened the Tamils of dire consequences.



Holiday in Mandya

Holiday for educational institutions will continue till September 17. However, prohibitory orders have been relaxed in K R Pet and Nagamangala taluks.



KSRTC services resume

KSRTC bus services resumed by afternoon on the Mysuru-Bengaluru highway and also on the Malavalli-Kanakpura route. The services had been suspended for over a week.

In Mysuru, a majority of the shops in parts of the city remained closed while pro-Kannada activists continued their protests. A Tamil film unit that was shooting at the Lalitha Mahal Palace had to pack up as a few pro-Kannada activists stormed the venue. The crew was the shooting a remake of Kannada movie Shivalinga. The activists damaged posters, banners, and flags of the film unit.



The police have filed a case against eight activists, while two of them have been arrested.



Mysuru City Police sent all Tamil Nadu vehicles back on Monday night under security. The police had taken a few vehicles into custody as a precautionary measure after a lorry and an MUV were set on fire on Monday.



No holiday in Mysuru

Deputy Commissioner D Randeep, in a press release, has said, since the situation is largely peaceful in Mysuru district, schools and colleges will open from Wednesday.



In Hassan and Chamarajanagar districts, peaceful protests continued. However, a lorry driver from Karnataka was attacked and his truck set on fire near Andhiyur checkpost of Tamil Nadu on Chamarajanagar border.



Mahesh of Gopishettyuru of Kollegal taluk was returning on Monday night after transporting a load of jowar from Ramapura to Palladam in Tamil Nadu, when his vehicle was intercepted and he was attacked by miscreants.



He, somehow managed to return home with burns. He was rushed to the Taluk Hospital in Kollegal town and discharged later.


The Kannada film fraternity will take a delegation to New Delhi seeking Prime Minister Narendra Modis intervention to resolve the river water disputes plaguing Karnataka.





Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce president Sa Ra Govindu on Tuesday said the film fraternity would try and impress upon Modi to intervene and resolve both the Mahadayi and Cauvery river water disputes.



He said actor Shivarajkumar was also of the same opinion, and that the chamber would soon convene a meeting comprising producers, distributors, exhibitors and artistes to seek their views on the matter. Shivarajkumar was not available for comments.
A Trans Woman Was Found Dead With Her Throat Slit In Garfield Park

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Sep 12, 2016 10:03PM



4500 West Monroe, via Google Street View.

The person who police found dead in Garfield Park Sunday night was a trans woman named T. T., according to the Windy City Times.

Her throat had been slit, and a knife was found near her body, police told reporters. The body was found in the 4500 block of West Monroe Street. Police and an earlier Chicago Tribune report identified her as a man between 25 and 30 years old.

A vigil is being held for T. T. at the corner of Monroe and Kenton Monday evening, according to the Windy City Times. A friend of T. T.'s who organized the vigil told the Windy City Times that she recently got into an altercation with a woman in the neighborhood who threatened to kill her three days before her death.

The Chicago Police Department has a well-documented problem with misgendering trans people who are the victims of crimes or accused of committing crimes, as the Windy City Times described in a 2015 investigation.
He once wielded the gun to terrorise his state, but today he is a fully transformed man, preaching peace in the name of Christ.





Heldison M Sangma, 47, who made the arduous journey from violence to peace, today uses his own life from rebel-turned-reverent to lure the youth in the Garo hills in Meghalaya back to the path of peace.



Last Monday, Heldisons journey from a fighter to the messenger of Christ was complete as he became the first ex-rebel to be ordained a Reverend in the church.

In the early 1990s, Heldison went underground, took arms training and unleashed a reign of terror in the region.



I joined the militant outfit in the hope of serving the Garos who were suppressed, Heldison told DH over phone from the remote Rongjeng in East Garo hills where he preaches in the Baptist church.



Meghalaya saw a spurt in insurgency in the 1990s with the formation of its first militant outfit, the Hynniewtrep Achik Liberation Council (HALC), to protect the interests of the tribes.



The outfit split due to a feud between the Khasi and the Garo tribes. The Achik Matgrik Liberation Army (AMLA) formed by the Garos then received arms training from the NSCN. Serving under the groups then secretary Desang Sangma, Heldison took part in AMLAs activities between 1991 and 94. Arrested by the police in early 1994 and lodged in Williamnagar police station, he escaped prison and rejoined the group. Around that time, I realised violence will not lead to any solution, he said.



When members of the outfit surrendered in October 1995 and the Meghalaya government offered general amnesty to the militants, Heldison was sent to Shillong jail for a six-month rehabilitation programme, where Reverend Tesang G Momin asked him to continue his studies.



Post-rehabilitation, Heldison finished his Pre-University Course (PU) and joined Harding Theological College in Tura , Garo Hillss main town. Ordained as a pastor in 2000, he has been spreading the gospel of peace in the hill region. With insurgency continuing, we as church organisation held talks to bring the youth back to mainstream of the society, he said.



Now, he believes he would play a crucial role in putting the guns to a permanent silence in the region.


Various political parties in Tamil Nadu including the Vijayakanth-led DMDK, the BJP and the Naam Thamizhar Katchi as well as trade bodies on Tuesday announced that they would launch protest demonstrations against attacks on Tamils in Karnataka over the Cauvery issue.





Vijayakanth said that he and his party cadres will be staging a day-long hunger strike in Chennai on Friday condemning the attacks on Tamilians in Karnataka.



BJP state president Tamilisai Soundararajan announced that her party would stage a demonstration at Valluvarkottam here to protest against the violent attacks against Tamil people and their properties in Karnataka.



Naam Thamizhar Katchi announced a massive rally on Wednesday, demanding the Centre to solve the Cauvery issue immediately.



State-wide bandh

A group of traders organisation including Tamil Nadu Vanigar Sangam Perammaippu (TNVSP) announced a state-wide bandh on September 16 demanding Centre's instruction to Karnataka to ensure that attacks on Tamil Nadu vehicles are stopped. TNVSP president A M Vikramraja said traders will down the shutters on September 16.



Tamil Nadu Omni Buses Service Association president Jayan Pandian said private buses will not resume services to Karnataka unless complete protection was given to drivers. Karnataka government should compensate transporters whose vehicles and trucks were damaged or burnt during the violence there", Pandian said. He assured that his organisation members will ensure that all omni buses from Karnataka will be protected in Tamil Nadu.




Eid prayers were not allowed on Tuesday at the Hazratbal shrine, Central Eidgah and the Jamia Masjid, the prominent places in Srinagar, while violence claimed two more lives in the Valley.





However, people were allowed to offer prayers at smaller mosques in Srinagar during Bakrid.



Pro-freedom slogans were raised as hundreds of people expressed their opposition. Authorities strictly enforced curfew and foiled separatists call to march towards UN Military Observers Office group in Srinagar after Eid prayers. Fearing widespread violence, the authorities had imposed curfew in all the 10 districts of the Valley.



Congregational prayers were not allowed at Eidgahs and bigger mosques.



Separatist leaders spearheading the 68-day unrest had asked people to offer Eid prayers at 8.30 am across the Valley and march to the UN office.



Sources said sensitive areas in the Valley had been kept under the surveillance of drones while real-time monitoring was done with high-resolution cameras placed at vantage points.



At least two civilians were killed and more than 100 others were injured in fresh violence on Tuesday. Reports said protests erupted in Bandipora in North Kashmir immediately after Eid prayers. A 20-year-old youth was killed after he was hit by a tear gas shell. The clashes left scores of others injured.



A 19-year-old boy was killed after he was hit by pellets in South Kashmirs Shopian district. With this, the toll in over two-month-old violence touched 80.



Elsewhere, reports said security forces used tear gas shells and pellet guns across Kashmir to quell violence.



During the day-long clashes, more than 100 protesters were injured, mostly in the districts of Anantnag, Kulgaum, Shopian and Pulwama in south Kashmir. Health officials said dozens of injured protesters, mostly with pellet injuries, have been admitted to SMHS and SKIMS in Srinagar. Condition of the two of the injured is stated to be serious.



A policeman died of cardiac arrest in Awantipora in Pulwama district after he was intercepted by a mob, reports said. The policeman was at his hometown to celebrate Eid and was not on official duty.


India on Tuesday defended its decision to reject the request of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to allow him or his representatives to visit Jammu and Kashmir.





New Delhi argued that sustained anti-India terrorism launched from Pakistan had aggravated the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.



Terrorism is the grossest violation of human rights and should be so acknowledged by any impartial and objective observer, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Vikas Swarup said.



New Delhi expressed hope that the UN Human Rights Council should recognise and deliberate upon the connection between terrorism and violation of human rights.



Arguing that Indias democracy had all that was required to address legitimate grievances, New Delhi defended its decision to turn down the request of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al Hussein for unconditional access to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.



Pakistan has launched a campaign against India accusing the Indian Army and security forces of violating human rights of the protesting Kashmiris.



In his remarks at the opening of the 33rd session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday, Zeid said he had requested the governments of India and Pakistan to grant an unconditional access to both sides of the Line of Control, namely the India-administered Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, in order to conduct an independent, impartial and international assessment of the claims made by the two sides as to the cause for the confrontations and the reported large numbers of people killed and wounded.



Zeids remarks on Kashmir came just a day after Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari, a special envoy of Pakistan Prime Minister M Nawaz Sharif, met him in Geneva and briefed him about the atrocities committed in the Valley by security forces of India.



India had in early August rejected Zeids request for unconditional access to Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).



New Delhi also objected to Zeids move to put Jammu and Kashmir and PoK in the same bracket.



As regards the suggestion for a visit of a mission to both sides of the Line of Control, we would underline that there is no comparison between the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, said Swarup.



The MEA spokesperson noted that Jammu and Kashmir had a democratically elected government, while the PoK had seen a Pakistani diplomat arbitrarily appointed as its head.



Hub for terror

The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is part of a pluralistic and secular democracy, where freedoms are guaranteed by an independent judiciary, an active media and a vibrant civil society. In contrast, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is administered by a deep state and has become a hub for the global export of terror, said Swarup.


Water Resources Minister M B Patil met JD(S) leader H D Deve Gowda to seek the latters opinion on the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.





The minister met Gowda at his residence on Monday evening, after the state Cabinet took a decision to release water to the neighbouring state as per the Supreme Court verdict.

Patil told reporters he discussed the legal ramifications of the issue with Gowda, who gave him a few suggestions to overcome the legal imbroglio.



He (Gowda) gave a few suggestions for getting a permanent reprieve. I will apprise the Chief Minister and the legal team about the same, added Patil.Gowda said it was left to the government to take his suggestions or leave it. He said he had given suggestions pertaining to the original suit filed before the Apex court, challenging the verdict given by the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal.



Backing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Gowda said it was easy for his son H D Kumaraswamy and BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa to demand that water should not be released. But the final call should be taken by the government. How is it possible to flout the Supreme Court order? he added.
China on Tuesday made it clear that it would oppose Indias entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), unless the cartel opened its door to Pakistan too.





A meeting between senior diplomats of India and China in New Delhi on Tuesday failed to make any breakthrough on the contentious issue, which emerged as the new irritant in the bilateral relations over the past few months.



The Chinese diplomats conveyed to their Indian counterparts that Beijing would remain firm on its stand that the NSG should adopt a two-step approach to address the issue of admitting new members. They pointed out that China would like the NSG to first explore  through an open and transparent process  and reach an agreement on a non-discriminatory formula to deal with the issue of granting membership to the countries which had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).



Once the formula is adopted by the NSG, the cartel should move to the second stage to take up the country-specific membership issues, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese government on Tuesday.



The Ministry of External Affairs of India in New Delhi stated that the discussions between the senior diplomats had been candid, pragmatic and substantive and the two sides had agreed to meet for the next round on a mutually convenient date in Beijing.



Sources in New Delhi, however, told DH that Chinas position clearly meant that it would not allow India to enter the NSG unless it could ensure that the cartel would also admit Pakistan.



The NSG controls global nuclear commerce.



The guidelines of the 48-nation organisation prohibit its members from entering into nuclear ties with the countries that have not signed the NPT. Neither India, nor Pakistan has signed the NPT.



The NSG, however, granted a waiver to India in 2008.



The waiver paved the way for India entering into a civil nuclear deal with the United States.



India subsequently struck similar agreements with other countries, including France, Australia and Canada.



India submitted its application for membership of the NSG on May 12.

Pakistan did the same on May 19.



China, however, stonewalled the US-led move to admit India into the NSG when the cartel had its annual plenary in Seoul in June. China argued that if the NPT signatory criterion was diluted to admit India into the NSG, it should also open up the door for other non-NPT countries, including Pakistan.



China on Tuesday also conveyed to India that the issue of the non-NPT states participation in the NSG raised new questions for the group under the new circumstances. It said the crux of the question was how to address the gap between the existing policies and practices of the non-NPT states and the existing international non-proliferation rules and norms based on the NPT as the cornerstone.


This Eid-Al-Adha, no animal sacrifice was made at Bisada village in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddh Nagar district, the scene of a brutal lynching of a Muslim man over rumours of cooking beef.





Sources said Muslims at the village offered namaz at the mosque but refrained from making animal sacrifice.



At least five to six goats would be sacrificed each year during Bakrid, a resident said.

We did not want any trouble in the village, said another resident. Sources said Muslims in the village decided well in advance not to sacrifice animals this festival.



No pressure on us. It was our own decision, a Muslim resident said.


Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday said those violating law and order will be dealt with an iron hand.





He made this announcement at a press conference which was preceded by a meeting of the Council of Ministers and a meeting of senior Congress leaders in the city, where he was advised not to give any scope for breach of law and order.



Siddaramaiah said he had issued strict instructions to the police to ensure there was no recurrence of violent incidents which rocked Bengaluru and the Cauvery basin areas on Monday. One person was killed, four civilians and 25 police personnel were injured, while hundreds of vehicles were damaged and burnt, as violence broke out in several places across the state, especially Bengaluru.



The chief minister said no untoward incident had been reported in Bengaluru or any other part of the state after Mondays violence.



The state has remained calm and peaceful. Police have been deployed in sensitive areas in view of a series of festivals  Bakrid, immersion of Ganesha idols and Onam, he said. The government will make sincere efforts to protect its citizens, especially the linguistic minorities, he added.



Promises security

He said the government was committed to protecting the Tamil-speaking population and their properties, and urged the people of the state to remain calm and ensure that the image of Bengaluru as an international city was not tarnished.



Cauvery is an emotive issue and the public anger is understandable. But nobody can take the law into his own hands, he said.



He said 10 more companies of the Central police force had arrived in the state and had been deployed in various places. This is in addition to the 10 companies which arrived on Monday night. Hundreds of security personnel are already keeping a tight vigil in sensitive places across the state, he said.



Answering a query, Siddaramaiah said educational institutions would be reopened and curfew would be lifted once normalcy returned.



The chief minister defended the police action at Hegganahalli in Bengaluru saying it was to stop miscreants who were trying to set a van ablaze with police personnel inside it. He said a compensation of Rs 10 lakh would be provided to the family of Umesh who was killed in the firing. On another youth who died on Tuesday, Siddaramaiah said the victim, Kumar, had not suffered any bullet wound but had fallen from a building during violence. Replying to queries, Home Minister Parameshwara said the police were investigating whether those behind Mondays violence belonged to any political groups.



He said the curfew imposed in 16 police station limits in Bengaluru would be lifted once normalcy was restored.
Samata Sainik Dal (SSD) workers on Tuesday tried to picket the farmhouse of former Tamil Nadu chief minister Karunanidhis daughter S Selvi at Vaderahalli village in Kanakapura taluk. However, the attempt was foiled as the police had provided tight security at the farmhouse.





About 50 SSD workers gathered near the farmhouse around noon. They raised slogans against Tamil Nadu government over the Cauvery water issue. They wanted the district administration to take the farmhouse into its custody.



The protesters also urged the state government to close down Tamil Nadu-based industries in the state and action against those who attacked Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu. They urged the state government to ensure protection of Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu. The police resorted to mild lathicharge disperse the protesters they tried to picket the farmhouse.

Selvi had purchased about 10 acres of land at Vaderahalli. She has constructed the farmhouse about 15 years ago. Karunanidhi and Selvi often visit the farmhouse.


The CPM expressed shock and dismay over reports of violence and arson in Karnataka and some parts of Tamil Nadu.





In a statement on Tuesday, the party Polit Bureau appealed to people of both the states to maintain calm over the Supreme Court decision on the sharing of Cauvery river waters.

The Polit Bureau also called upon the state governments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to ensure the protection of peoples lives and properties.



The dispute over sharing of the Cauvery river waters is a longstanding dispute between the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Such disputes can only be resolved through negotiations and a mutual agreement on how these waters are to be shared, the party said.



Such disputes cannot be resolved by whipping up passions amongst the people of both the states and pitting them against each other, it said.



The party has urged all concerned, the Central government and the state governments, to ensure that the water sharing disputes be resolved through negotiations and mutual agreement.


Can't Make It To Riot Fest? Some Performances Will Be Streaming Online

By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 12, 2016 9:17PM



Glenn Danzig (above) will rejoin The Misfits onstage at Riot Fest this fall, photo via Danzig's Facebook page

Riot Fest is very nearly upon us. The annual festival of punk rock and punk-neighboring music lands this weekend at Douglas Park, Sept. 16 - 18. Three-day passes are sold out, and single-day tickets are almost gone, too. But if you missed the boat or otherwise cant make it to Chicago, you can still immerse in the festivals punk-and-otherwise-alt goods remotely. Riot Fest announced on Monday that portions of the Chicago edition will be available to stream via UphoricTV.

UphoricTV, to address that quizzical look on your face, is a new-ish digital network that caters to festival streaming. (Apologies to Disco Biscuits fans already well familiar.) The broadcast will be free, according to a Riot Fest press release, but viewers will have to subscribe to the YouTube channel here to access the feed.

So far, Riot Fest and UphoricTV are mum about which performances will be streamedalthough youd suspect the heavy-hitter headliners would qualify. Itd be pretty perverse if there were no, say, Morrissey or Flaming Lips or Original Misfits but a ton of n-th-wave emo and metalcore revival. (Not that we dont appreciate that, as well.)

So if thats the case, this could be your only shot to see Evil Elvis Glenn Danzig perform those candy-hooked horror-punk classics with Jerry Only as the Misfitsoutside of grainy Periscopes, of course. That alone may make it worth a peek.
Former Uttar Pradesh minister for mining Gayatri Prajapati, who officially owned properties worth around Rs 1.83 crore, figured in the list of BPL (below poverty line) over a decade ago.





Prajapati, an MLA from Amethi Assembly segment in Congress vice president Rahul Gandhis Lok Sabha constituency, was sacked along with another minister Raj Kishore Singh by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Monday following charges of corruption and land grabbing.



According to the sources in Amethi, Prajapti featured in the BPL list in 2002. In his affidavit filed with the Election Commission during the 2012 Assembly polls, he had declared properties worth Rs 1.83 crore.



Social activists, however, claimed that Prajapati was worth several hundred crores.

In a complaint filed with the state Lokayukta, social activist Nutan Thakur had charged that Prajapati and his family members owned companies and lands worth several hundred crores in Lucknow and Amethi.



Nutan had also charged that Prajapati had been extending patronage to illegal mining mafias in several parts of the state and sought a probe against him. The activist had also said that Prajapati had conspired to implicate her husband and IPS officer Amitabh Thakur in a fake rape case after she moved Lokayukta against the politician.



Another activist from Pratapgarh district had also lodged a complaint against Prajapati with the Lokayukta charging that the sacked minister owned properties worth Rs 300 crores illegally.



A woman from Amethi had charged Prajapati with forcibly grabbing her house.

It was also charged that Prajapatis daughter was a beneficiary of the state governments Kanya Vidya Dhan, under which poor girls were provided financial assistance for studies.



Prajapati was considered to be an influential backward caste leader and had defeated Amita Singh, wife of Congress Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh, who was the scion of Amethi royal family, in the previous Assembly elections.


The Indian Air Forces Jaguar aircraft, a deep strike fighter plane capable of carrying nuclear payload, on Tuesday caught fire minutes before take off at Ambala air base but the pilot got out safely.





Defence sources said the pilot spotted fire during the take-off roll, aborted the take-off and carried out safe exit.



Today (Tuesday) evening at Ambala airfield, a Jaguar aircraft aborted take-off while getting airborne for a routine night flying mission. The pilot carried out safe and quick exit. The aircraft caught fire, an IAF spokesperson said in New Delhi. A court of inquiry has been ordered into the accident.



On Saturday, a MiG-21 trainer aircraft crashed in Rajasthans Barmer district but both the pilots ejected safely.



The MiG-21 T-69 aircraft, which took off from the Uttarlai airforce station in Barmer, crashed near the airbase.



Ambala DC Prabhjot Singh, quoting a senior IAF official, said the incident occurred at around 8pm.
Governance in chikungunya, dengue-hit Delhi seemed to be the biggest casualty as five out of six members of Team Kejriwal were away from the city for most part of Tuesday and Monday.





Lt Governor (L-G) Najeeb Jung was also away in the United States, while two out of the three mayors from the BJP-ruled municipal corporation were also not in the city, even as the death toll in chikungunya cases touched five.



Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who was campaigning in Punjab till Monday evening, reached Bengaluru to undergo a throat operation.



His deputy Manish Sisodia is in Finland for an education programme. Environment Minister Imran Hussain is at present undertaking Haj.



Earlier in the day, Labour Minister Gopal Rai tweeted about his activities in Chhattisgarh. His tweet confirmed that he has been out of Delhi for six days.



Facing criticism for the absence of Team Kejriwal from the city, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government sprung into damage control and Water Minister Kapil Mishra questioned L-Gs foreign visit and absence of the mayors.



I challenge all national media...Find out where is L-G and what is he doing??? Show the world one min video if u can. Can you?? tweeted Mishra, as the AAP government faced heat over missing Cabinet ministers.



Mayors absent

In another counter attack on the BJP-ruled municipal corporation, Mishra

questioned the absence of mayors of south corporation and north corporation, Shyam Sharma and Sanjive Nayyar, respectively.



Sisodia took to Twitter to lay the blame on Jung. After giving the charge of health department to incompetent and complacent officials, where has the L-G sahab disappeared, he tweeted.



To make his presence felt, Mishra even posted pictures of him undertaking anti-mosquito fogging activities in his constituency.



Health Minister Satyendra Jain, who flew into the city around 4pm from Goa, continued a whirlwind inspection of hospitals in Civil Lines and east Delhi till late in the evening.



He also addressed a media briefing in which he lost his cool.



Some TV channels even showed clips of Jain flinging a mobile phone at a journalist. Delhi AAP convenor Dilip Pandey defended Jain by tweeting that the phone was first hurled by the mediaperson towards Jain.



Mishra also hit out at the L-G for granting leaves to officials during a crisis. Shockingly, L-G approves 15 days leave for New Health Secy just to punish people of Delhi, he tweeted.


As chaos ruled the city roads on Monday following riots, hundreds of people took to social media to get help to reach their destination safely and also obtain updates on the situation.





The City Police Twitter handle and Facebook page played a major role in helping stranded people reach their destinations without much hassle. The Twitter handle and Facebook page directed people to take safe routes.



Aniket Kumar, a resident of Indiranagar and a techie who was stranded in Whitefield, said, As soon as we heard the news about riots, our company asked us to return home. I was stuck in traffic at Whitefield and heard people telling that the mob was pelting stones at shops and buses near Domlur. I posted a tweet on City Police Twitter handle asking if it was safe for me to go to Indiranagar. I got a reply along with the directions of a safe route. This came in handy and I reached home safely.

Minute-to-minute updates on the social media platform about the situation in the city helped many people to know the ground reality. Shyam Mohan, a businessman said, We realised that following the social media platform handled by the police would give us factual information. It is better than watching local television news channels.



A senior police officer told DH, Since September 1, from the time the unrest started in the city with bandhs and strikes, @BlrCityPolice Twitter handle has got 62,000 new followers and, 14,000 followers since Monday noon. While the Bengaluru Traffic Police handle had 1.34 lakh followers on Monday noon, it had 1.47 lakh followers on Tuesday. Bengaluru Traffic Police Facebook page had 4.26 lakh followers on Monday and it touched 4.38 lakh on Tuesday. The Bengaluru City Police Facebook page had four lakh followers and it was 4.22 lakh on Tuesday.



The social media platform was used extensively and updates were posted to make public aware of what was happening around them. This helped in controlling rumours to spread.


Bengaluru Urban DC V Shankar has said that schools and colleges will be open and function normally in the city on Wednesday.





Some schools, however, have declared a holiday to prevent inconvenience to students. Bishop Cotton Boys' School and Bishop Cotton Girls School will remain closed as a precautionary measure. Siddaganga Public School in Chandra Layout and Sri Aurobindo Memorial School in Banashankari will also remain closed. All branches of National Public School will remain closed on the occasion of Onam.



Some schools, such as Delhi Public School (DPS) have decided to remain open. Except for DPS (South), which already had a study holiday scheduled, all other branches of the school will function normally.



Meanwhile, Associated Managements of Private Schools In Karnataka (KAMS) has told its member schools declare a holiday in the interest of childrens safety. Why has the government made such a hasty decision? Even before relaxing the curfew, they have declared that tomorrow will be a working day. Can they assure the safety of students? KAMS general secretary Shashi Kumar questioned. He has written an e-mail to the city police commisioner seeking clarification on how the managements can operate schools when Section 144 and curfew have not been lifted.



City Police Commissioner N S Megharik has said that the police will take necessary steps to ensure students safety.


A day after violence rocked many areas of Bengaluru with rioters going on the rampage, an uneasy calm prevailed in the city on Tuesday.





People were hesitant to venture out and streets in residential and business areas wore a deserted look. While a few stray incidents of protests were reported from certain areas, the situation was by and large under control.



Most of the business establishments including shops, malls, supermarkets, showrooms and offices were remained closed fearing mob attacks. A few shops selling basic commodities were open for some time in the morning.



N S Megharikh, City Police Commissioner, who was on city rounds, told DH, The situation is peaceful except for a few stray incidents in some parts. There is no reason for one to press the panic button. The forces are in place and making sure that no untoward incident takes place. Prohibitory order under the Section 144 which were imposed on Monday will continue for three days. Besides, curfew is in force in the jurisdiction of 16 police stations.



Megharikh said people indulging in violence and spreading rumours will be dealt with strictly. We have additional forces on stand by. They were flown in from Delhi and other places and will be used in case of untoward incidents. The forces on the ground are patrolling every street, he added.



The Rapid Action Force (RAF) conducted flag march in areas under curfew. Announcements were made asking people to remain indoors. Meanwhile, tension prevailed for a while at Hegganahalli in west Bengaluru when a group of persons hurled stones at the police and attempted to set fire to a tyre. The police and RAF took control of the situation and detained around 30 people.



A senior police officer said, We have detained several people and it has been found that most of them do not belong to any pro-Kannada organisations. They are all youths, who work as helpers and labourers in various establishments here and are natives of Mandya, Mysuru and other places. We will question them as well as a few people claiming to be members of various organisations who have been taken into custody. A detailed investigation will be carried out to ascertain who instigated the violence.



The state police have set up a helpline at the Director General and Inspector General of Police office here. Anyone from across the country can contact the helpline and obtain information on the current situation in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The helpline numbers are: 1800 4250 100 / 155 365



Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu registered vehicles which were heading to the neighbouring state were stranded near Hosur main road. Around 3 am on Tuesday, the police escorted these vehicles till Hosur in Tamil Nadu, said a senior officer.


A few retired police officers doubted the intention of the government and the police after the way Mondays violence in the city erupted.





The officers observations seem to gain credence considering what a senior officer in the state intelligence told DH: The government wanted the city police to go soft on protesters.



The police were told not to resort to lathi charge and open fire. Hence, the police were mute spectators to the torching of vehicles and stone pelting in some areas.

The attack on Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu was aired at around 3.45 am on Monday.



The reports of hurling petrol bombs at New Woodlands Hotel, a restaurant owned by a person from Karnataka in Chennai, and an attack on five vehicles with Karnataka registration in Rameshwaram became public around 7 am. The city police got alerts only around 11 am after vehicles were torched in the city. This indicates failure of the city police in anticipating repercussions to attacks on Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu, a retired DGP told DH.



There were 40 KSRP platoons, 30 CAR platoons, 2,700 Home Guards, two companies of RAF, two companies of CISF and one company of ITBP, apart from the city police force stationed since September 9. Violence, despite heavy police presence is hard to digest, he said.



City Police Commissioner N S Megharikh told DH: It is not the failure of the city police. The video of an attack on a Kannadiga in Tamil Nadu went viral on social media which triggered the violence. The police had successfully handled the bandh on September 9. The sudden violence due to provocation is totally different from the bandh.



Though there is no clarity on who was behind the violence, intelligence officers have gathered inputs suggesting involvement of leaders of three Kannada organisations indirectly.



A section of garment factory workers and anti-social elements were hired for violence. Some of them were part of the violence during the garment factory workers protest on April 19. Hence, violence broke out in areas where garment factory workers stay. We will submit a report to the government shortly in this regard, the officer said.



The city police had taken 536 persons into preventive custody in view of the bandh on September 9. They were let free later. The involvement of these elements in the violence could not be ruled out, the Intelligence Wing officer said.



The police have detained 350 persons so far. They are analysing electronic material to establish the identity of more miscreants who were on the spot. It may take some time for the police to identify those who led the violence, Megharikh said.


Kumar, a 32-year-old bar-bender, who fell off the thrid floor of a building while trying to escape Mondays police lathi charge, succumbed to his injuries on Tuesday. This is the second death in the city related to the protests over the Cauvery water row.





According to Kumars family, he jumped from the building fearing that the police would charge at him. At 2.30 pm, as news about Kumars death at Sri Lakshmi Multispeciality Hospital near Sunkadakatte, Magadi Road broke out, protests erupted. Family members of Kumar and members of pro-Kannada organisations blamed the police for his death.



The incident took place when Kumar was on his way home (at Byadarahalli in Ramanagaram district) after work. As the mob began running when the police resorted to lathi charge, Kumar headed to the third floor, from where he fell to his death. Kumars wife Manjula was inconsolable. Kumar is a native of Magadi taluk . He is survived by a four-year-old daughter and wife, who is pregnant with their second child.



Family members refused to take his body for cremation till the government agreed to pay the same compensation as that given to Umesh, another victim of Mondays violence. After the government promised Rs 10 lakh, the family took the body to Victoria Hospital for post mortem at 6.30 pm.



However, a senior police officer claimed that Kumar slipped to his death and the police were not responsible for it. Doctors at the hospital said he died of multiple fractures. He was brought in a critical condition. There were fractures to the facial bones, shoulders and thigh bone, said Dr M L Giridhar, MD of the hospital.



Chandramohan Singh, who had sustained bullet injuries in the thigh, was operated upon last night. His condition is stable, doctors said.



Rajesh J, another injured, was also operated upon at ESIC Hospital, Rajajinagar, and his condition is said to be stable. Rajeshs sister said that he was not part of the mob and was only an onlooker. The family has sought compensation .



The body of Umesh who died due to bullet injuries on Monday was taken to his native Kunigal. His body was shifted from Victoria Hospital, following post mortem.


The Viral Campaign To Help A Local Paleta Vendor Has Officially Gone Global

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 13, 2016 5:59PM



Fidencio Sanchez / Courtesy of GoFundMe

Fidencio Sanchez is a modest, soft-spoken 89-year-old paleta vendor. Hes been selling popsicles from a pushcart for over two decades in Little Village, the same area that friends say he attends church every Saturday, at Little Village Hispanic Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Thanks to a supernaturally viral GoFundMe campaign, Sanchez is also now an international cause celebre.

Chances are you know his storyand maybe have already given to the fund. Little Village native Joel Cervantes Macias set up the page on Friday to collect donations for Sanchez after he met the elderly paletero. Sanchez had recently returned to work, pushing his cart up and down 26th Street, to help deal with bills after the death of his only daughter. Macias felt moved, purposefully overpaid $50 for 20 paletas, and created the fundraiser. Let's all pitch in and help make life a little easier and brighten (his and his wifes) day, he wrote. As of Tuesday afternoon, some 12,000-plus people have done just that; and the campaign continues to trend.

Relief for Fidencio the paleta man has netted over $270,000 in a little over three daysobliterating an initial goal of $3000. The page supernovaed on Facebook, getting tens of thousands of shares on Facebook within days. Locally, Gozamos, DNAinfo and the Tribune wrote stories. But now Fidencio fever has gone global.

Ive only been with the company a few months, but this is right up there in terms of overall numbers, Bart Jackson, Regional Communications Manager of GoFundMe, told Chicagoist. According statistics provided by Jackson, donations have come from 52 countries (!) so far. The largest-dollar amount was a $2,000 pledge.

"It's heartwarming to see so many folks rally around Fidencio and donate to the campaign," Jackson added.

Macias himself concurred, saying that hes had people reach out from all across the world. The response from Germany has been particularly overwhelming he said. Ive spoken to people who have given from Greece, Belgium, Germany, Israel, Macias told Chicagoist. Interview requests are coming in from Turkey and Singapore.

That shouldnt surprise given that Sanchezs story has now reached international media outlets, too. The Daily Mail took notice on Sunday, as did BBC News on Monday. A scrum of reporters was on hand for Sanchezs first day of work since the campaign caught fire (yes, hes still putting in some hours and making you feel incredibly ashamed of your work ethic.)

Still, Macias is quick to deflect attention away from himself and back to the cause. There will always be a bond, forever, he said, adding that Macias has grown closer also with Sanchezs grandkids as they work out the best way to invest the money. They really want to do the right thing."

Macias initially planned to give Sanchez the money yesterday, but said he will probably keep the fund open through the weekend, depending on interest. If the last few days have been a gauge, that seems highly likely.
It Cost Over $400K To Fix Grant Park After Lollapalooza

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 13, 2016 8:11PM



Lollapalooza 2016, Day One / Photo: Annie Lesser

It looks like ticket prices arent the only sticker shocks associated with Lollapalooza.

The costs to repair Grant Park following the epic summer music festival totaled $453,000 this year, according to the Chicago Park District. That represents a significant increase over last years costs, $236,000almost half this years figure. The highest restoration cost in recent years was 2011, when a torrential thunderstorm deluged the park on Day Three and resulted in $1 million in damage.

Some increase in cost was to be expected. The festival, which took place in late July, expanded from its usual three days to four and attracted a record 400,000 festivalgoers. And rain fell on Grant Park during festival prep and the first couple of days of Lolla, acknowledged C3 Presents, the festival organizers who also foot the annual bill, in the Tribune.

Still, thats quite a cost jump for one extra day and some rain.

Bob ONeill, president of Grant Park Conservancy, said that Hutchinson Field, on the southeast end of the park, collected significant water and required extra attention; and the rain wreaked some havoc on the grass-seeding process. "The restoration is weather-dependent," O'Neill told Chicagoist via email. "We need rain to water the sod and grass seed but if it is really wet and muddy, which it was, then it is more work to condition the soil and prepare it to be seeded and sodded." He added that the park looks "much better" after having undergone the extensive repairs.

C3 Presents plans to maintain the festivals new four-day length for next year, too. So depending on how the weather plays out, they could be in for similarly high costs the next time around.

Chicago Parks District did not immediately reply to requests for comment. This post will be updated as necessary.
Sushant Singh Rajput On Break Up With Ankita Lokhande - "I Am Living With It And In It Every Day!"
UChicago Ranks 3rd, Northwestern 12th In New Ranking Of Top Colleges

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 13, 2016 7:09PM



University of Chicago / Facebook

The University of Chicago and Northwestern University may not agree philsophically on things like safe spaces and trigger warnings, but they share at least one important commonality: both local schools are exceptionally highly ranked.

According to the 2017 Best Colleges rankings by U.S. News & World Report, University of Chicago is third best national university. It tied with one other schools for the position, Yale University. (UChicago ranked fourth in last years rankings.) It was the only Chicago-based university to make the top ten. Northwestern narrowly missed the cut, retaining its 12th position, which it shares with California Institute of Technology. The full national rankings are below.

1) Princeton University (NJ)

2) Harvard University (MA)

3) University of Chicago (IL) (tie)

3) Yale University (CT) (tie)

5) Columbia University (NY) (tie)

5) Stanford University (CA) (tie)

7) Massachusetts Institute of Technology

8) Duke University (NC) (tie)

8) University of Pennsylvania (tie)

10) Johns Hopkins University (MD)

The ratings take into account a host of criteria, including graduation rates, admissions-test scores and institutional rankings, among others. The methodology can be read here.

In addition to considering factors like location and cost, families should pay close attention to graduation and retention rates, Brian Kelly, editor and CCO of U.S. News, said in a press release. These are important indicators of how well a school supports its students both academically and financially. Getting into a good school means nothing if you cannot graduate."

As for other local universities, Loyola landed at 99th, IIT was ranked No. 103, DePaul was No. 124 and UIC came in at No. 152.
Sanofi has joined forces with the owner of Google to embark on a joint venture called Onduo, which will focus on improving lives of people with type 2 diabetes by offering products and services that reduce the issues associated with the condition, and by providing more insight into the disease.

Last year, Googles company structure underwent a huge rearrangement; a parent company called Alphabet was formed, which now owns Google, and the many different projects that Google used to work on have been converted into individual companies.

One of these companies, Verily Life Sciences, is a health focussed institution which has been working on products such as contact lenses that can measure blood glucose levels, and a spoon that can counteract hand tremors and help people with diseases like Parkinsons Disease to eat.

The joint venture that Verily is entering into with Sanofi, Onduo, will initially focus on the type 2 diabetes community, specifically on developing solutions that could help people make better decisions about their day to day health, ranging from improved medication management to improved habits and goals, according to Sanofi and Verily.

The company will leverage Verilys (formerly Google Life Sciences) experience in miniaturized electronics, analytics, and consumer software development, and Sanofis clinical expertise and experience in bringing innovative treatments to people living with diabetes.

Onduo is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and will be led by CEO Joshua Riff, who said that there are two main goals that Onduo want to focus on. One, can we give [people with type 2 diabetes] tools to remove the friction in their lives. Number two, can we give them better insight.
The government should not trigger Article 50 without consent from Parliament as it would be constitutionally inappropriate, according to the House of Lords Constitution Committee in a report.

Bypassing Parliament would set a disturbing precedent for the government if it acted on the Brexit result from the European Union referendum in June, without explicit consent from Britains legislative body, the report said.

The upper chamber said Parliament should play a central role in the decision to trigger Article 50 - the two year formal negotiation process of Brexit from the Lisbon Treaty - and have a key role in scrutinising talks with the EU and the final deal.

The report said: In our representative democracy, it is constitutionally appropriate that parliament should take the decision to act following the referendum. This means that parliament should play a central role in the decision to trigger the Article 50 process, in the subsequent negotiation process, and in approving or otherwise the final terms under which the UK leaves the EU.

It would be constitutionally inappropriate, not to mention setting a disturbing precedent, for the executive to act on an advisory referendum without explicit parliamentary approval  particularly one with such significant long-term consequences. The government should not trigger article 50 without consulting parliament.

Article 50 says,any member state may decide to withdraw from the union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements", but it is ambiguous about what the constructional requirements actually are.

Lord Lang of Monkton, the committee chair, said parliamentary assent could be sought by legislation or through resolutions in both Houses of Parliament.

He said: An Act of Parliament would give greater legal certainty and could be used to enshrine the constitutional requirements required by Article 50, allowing for the setting of advantageous pre-conditions regarding the exit negotiations to be met before Article 50 could be triggered.

A resolution could be simpler and quicker to secure but might not provide the same watertight legal authority. We consider that either would be a constitutionally acceptable means of securing parliamentary approval for the triggering of Article 50.

The report said it was unclear whether once it is triggered, if it could be reversed by Britain, so the government should activate the clause "only when it is in the UK's best interests to begin the formal two-year negotiation process".

In October, the government is facing a legal challenge over whether it and the Prime Minister can use its executive powers to invoke Article 50.

Theresa May said she would not trigger Article 50 this year, but she is facing pressure from the pro-Brexit contingent of her party to activate the clause early in 2017, before general elections are held in France and Germany in the spring and summer.
You are here: Home

A number of Chinese films are premiering at this year's ongoing Toronto International Film Festival.

Fan Bingbing is seen here in a promotional photo of the film "I Am Not Madame Bovary," directed by Chinese director Feng Xiaogang. The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8th, 2016. [Photo: Bjweekly.com]

Famed Chinese director Feng Xiaogang has brought his much-anticipated black comedy "I Am Not Madame Bovary" to Toronto.

Starring Chinese superstar actress Fan Bingbing, the film tells the story of a cafe owner spending a decade fighting for her legal rights after being swindled by her ex-husband.

Some 1,700 tickets to the movie's world premier in Toronto were sold out in a day, with audience members giving it the thumbs-up after the showing.

Additionally, "Soul on a String," a mystical epic about a killer on the run, has also made its world premier in Toronto.

Combining two novels from writer Tashi Dawa, the film by director Zhang Yang provides a beautiful showcase of the local culture in western China's Tibet.

Two other films, "Birth of the Dragon" and "Old Stone," are also set to meet audiences in Toronto later in the week.

US-China-Canada collaboration Birth of the Dragon is based on the legendary life of Bruce Lee, while Old Stone, a joint effort by China and Canada, is about a cab driver's nightmare after he takes an injured man to the hospital.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has announced plans for his Blue Origin company to design and build a giant orbital rocket, which will be able to transport people and satellites into space.

Named after 1960s astronaut John Glenn, the New Glenn aims to make its first journey at the end of the decade, and spark a rivalry with another entrepreneur - SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk.

Blue Origin has been largely a secretive operation from Bezos, who has previously admitted to being a fan of the idea of space travel, but kept news about the development of the rocket to a minimum.

However, in a detailed announcement on Monday, Bezos said that the New Glenn is "designed to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into space."

Bezos' ambition is clear, as he revealed that in the long-term his objective is to allow humans to live and work in space.

"Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step," Mr. Bezos said. "It wont be the last of course."

In an additional Twitter posting, the Amazon CEO posted a graphic comparing his new rocket plans to those already in existence:

Elon Musk's SpaceX company had looked to be the driving force of the new space exploration companies, but now faces difficulties after an explosion of one of its Falcon 9 rockets at Cape Canaveral, Florida, earlier this month.
European stocks tracked losses on Wall Street, despite dovish comments from a key Fed official overnight, although weakness in energy futures were a clear drag.

The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index fell 1.03% or 3.51 points to 338.72, Frances CAC 40 surrendered 1.19% and Germanys DAX skidded 0.43% lower.

Stocks in the US ended higher on Monday on the back of a dovish speech by Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard, who said at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that although economic progress is being made, it would be wise for the Fed to keep monetary policy loose.

In addition, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari told CNBC that policy makers should take their time to when it comes to making a decision on rates.

Goldman Sachs cut its odds of US rate hike next week to 25% from 40% and lifted its odds that the next increase will come at the December meeting to 40% from 30% following a series of mixed comments from Federal Reserve officials that culminated in Brainards speech.

Together, the changes lower Goldmans cumulative odds of at least one increase this year to 65% from 70%.

Policymakers expressed a wide range of views, but a common element was the lack of a clear signal that the FOMC is prepared to raise rates as soon as next weeks meeting. If action were likely, we would normally see an effort to raise market expectations, such that a rate increase did not startle markets. Thus, the lack of a signal is meaningful, and lowers the probability of an increase, the bank said.

Oil prices retreated after the International Energy Agency downgraded its forecast for global oil demand for 2016 and 2017 and said rebalancing the oil market would take longer than previously thought.

By the closing bell, West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures were down 2.5% to $45.18 a barrel while Brent crude was off 1.92% at $47.41.

In macroeconomic news, investors digested a survey from the ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim that showed German economic sentiment held steady in September.

The index of investors and analysts' expectations came in at 0.5, in line with the previous month but falling short of analysts expectations for an improvement to 2.5.

The current expectations index, meanwhile, declined to 55.1 in September from 57.6 in August, missing expectations for a reading of 56.0.

On the corporate front, Swiss global private markets investment management company Partners Group rallied following well-received interim results.

On the downside, UK online grocer Ocado was under the cosh after it reported a jump in quarterly retail sales but cautioned over margin pressure.
European stocks edged higher in early trade, recovering from the previous sessions losses and taking their cue from a positive close on Wall Street following dovish comments by Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard.

At 0840 BST, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index and Frances CAC 40 were up 0.4%, while Germanys DAX was 0.5% higher.

At the same time, oil prices retreated. West Texas Intermediate was down 1.7% to $45.52 a barrel while Brent crude was off 1.4% at $47.64.

Stocks in the US ended higher on Monday on the back of a dovish speech by Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard, who said at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that although economic progress is being made, it would be wise for the Fed to keep monetary policy loose.

In addition, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari told CNBC that policy makers should take their time to when it comes to making a decision on rates.

Andy McLevey, head of dealing at stockbroker Interactive Investor, said: European markets have opened tentatively higher in early trading aided by the recovery on Wall Street and in Asia overnight as Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard maintained a dovish stance on any potential rate rise providing welcome relief to markets.

With a number of dissenting voices however the future is still unclear and it remains to be seen if investors have the desire to push markets higher amid the backdrop of political and economic uncertainty. With the volatility of late set to continue this may throw up trading opportunities at stock level for the shrewd investor.

On the corporate front, Swiss global private markets investment management company Partners Group rallied following well-received interim results.

On the downside, UK online grocer Ocado was under the cosh after it reported a jump in quarterly retail sales but cautioned over margin pressure.

Still to come on the economic calendar, the Germany ZEW survey is at 1000 BST.
Amec Foster Wheeler said on Tuesday that Enterprise Products has filed a lawsuit in the Harris County Court, Texas alleging that it is responsible for cost overruns and delays on Enterprise's propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit in Mont Belvieu.

The contract we signed with Enterprise allocated risk on timing and cost to them and this legal process appears to be an attempt to avoid the terms they signed up to in 2013. We consider these proceedings to be misconceived and we intend to vigorously defend these claims," Amec said.

The FTSE 250 oilfield services company had signed a contract with Enterprise back in July 2013, covering engineering, procurement and construction activities. The principal terms were for payment of hourly rates and costs on a reimbursable basis with an estimate for the date of completion. For the avoidance of doubt, this was not a fixed-price contract, Amec said.

Amec said it has taken a provision of 33m on this project against disallowed costs and warranties as part of the adjustment to fair values of Foster Wheeler AG's assets and liabilities post acquisition.

At 1412 BST, the shares were down 2.2% to 541.50p.
Santander , Royal Bank of Scotland and its two subsidiaries Natwest and Ulster Bank have all weighed in behind Google's new contactless payment system, four months after the app's launch.

Android Pay allows its users to register a card and make purchases much easier through their smartphone.

The announcements by the banks is welcome news for Google, as previous scepticism from certain groups held up its development for customers.

Following on from rival ApplePay, the service acts like a contactless card but using only a smartphone app or it can be embedded into internet browsers such as Google Chrome.

Barclays and TSB are amongst those banks who have still not signed up to the Android Pay system.

However, many other banks have been partnered with Google since the launch of the system in May. HSBC, Halifax and Bank of Scotland have all been operating with the technology since then.
A number of high profile politicians and over 50 MPs could lose their seats after the 2020 general election in a revision of the British electoral map.

The review was started by former Prime Minister David Cameron in order to reduce the cost of parliament by trimming the number of MPs to 600 from 650 and make parliamentary seats more proportional as current constituencies range from 21,000 and 110,000 people.

The review, which will not be introduced until 2018 after a draft proposal, would see each constituency have between 71,000 to 78,500 people.

If former Chancellor George Osborne is to stand in the next election he would have to find a new constituency as he could be one of the 50 MPs to have their constituency abolished.

The changes would abolish leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyns Islington North constituency, and split it in two, Finsbury and Finsbury Park and Stoke Newington.

Reportedly the shake-up on parliamentary constituency boundaries could impact the Labour party the most, as Corbyn said he would use the review to purge MPs who do not support him.

Labour stands to lose 23 seats affecting Yvette Cooper and Tristram Hunt and leadership challenger Owen Smith.

Foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who re-joined Parliament in 2015, also stands to lose his Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat.

England would lose 33 seats from 533 to 501, but will gain one when the Isle of Wight is split in two.

Wales will see the biggest change in constituency boundaries as it will lose 11 seats going from 40 to 29.

Scotland will lose six seats, from 59 to 53 seats and Northern Ireland will lose one from 18 to 17.
Escher Group posted a rise in interim profit for the six months to the end of June.

Pre-tax profit was up 43% to $1.81m, on revenue of $12.34m, up 4% from the same period a year ago.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation were up 25% to $3.35m.

Escher said the main driver behind the increase in revenue and profitability was the transition to maintenance and support of two major customers in North America and Malaysia. It said these were key developments and large contributors to the group being able to transition towards having more predictable revenue streams.

The company added that this focus on recurring revenues is likely to be reflected in moderated growth expectations, but with much greater predictability.

The group, which provides point-of-service software for use in the postal, retail and financial industries, said recurring revenue streams now account for 47% of total revenues versus 37% in the first half of 2015.

Chief executive Liam Church said: "Our core postal business has continued to perform strongly, driven by increased recurring maintenance and support revenues as a result of last year's deployment of our software solutions in Malaysia and North America. The contract win with Vietnam Post demonstrates the continuing demand and relevance in the postal market for our highly efficient and secure Riposte platform.

Given the quality of our pipeline and contracted revenue, we remain confident about the prospects for H2 2016."

At 1440 BST, the shares were down 4.3% to 177p.
Shore capital , an independent investment group specialising in capital markets, principal finance and asset management, reported an increase in revenues across its operations in the first half despite the shock from the Brexit vote.

Executive chairman Howard Shore said: "In a first half overshadowed by uncertainty preceding Britain's referendum on membership of the EU, it is pleasing to see the progress in our Capital Markets and Asset Management divisions, demonstrating the growth opportunity when market conditions improve.

The groups total revenue, excluding licence sales, rose by 7.8% to 18m, however profit before tax fell to 2.4m compared to 9.5m in the previous year.

The firms capital markets division saw revenues rise 4.9% to 13.1m, generating profit before tax of 3m and a net margin of 23%.

The division advised on four initial public offerings (IPOs) and five secondary fundraisings. The second largest IPO fundraising of the first half was the main market listing of Motorpoint Group which raised 100m.

The firms asset management divisions revenues rose 7.2% to 5.2m, generating profit before tax of 1.3m and a net margin of 25%.

The companys won a variety of clients during the period including Dairy Crest, Chesnara, Stride Gaming and Earthport.

Accoridng to management, Puma Investments achieved the largest limited life venture capital trust (VCT) fundraising of the tax year yet again. Significant inflows to its Private Client Investment offerings also continued.

The companys German residential fund Brandenburg Realty made its second acquisition in May 2016 increasing their commercial and residential portfolio to 32m.

"Given our independent status we believe we have the flexibility to take advantage of the opportunities that Brexit will create. We hope that Brexit will provide an opportunity to remove some of the regulations that impede the UK's ability to compete with the rest of the world," said Shore.

Earnings per share fell to 6.5p from 20.8p in 2015. The share price fell 2% to 245p at 1138 BST on Tuesday.
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.
Bottom line: How did the Buckeyes grade vs. Penn State?

Grading Ryan Day and the rest of the Buckeyes after Ohio State's win over Penn State.
Samsung shares plunged Monday after the South Korean electronics giant urged global consumers to stop using its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone due to a spate of exploding batteries that raised alarm around the world.

Stepping up its warnings, the world's largest smartphone maker on Sunday told Note 7 users worldwide to immediately turn the device off.

Samsung Electronics on September 2 had announced a recall of its oversized "phablet" after faulty batteries caused some handsets to burst into flames during charging.

Since then, airlines and air safety agencies around the world have warned passengers against using them on flights. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission Friday urged Note 7 owners to stop using the device.

Shares in the firm -- South Korea's largest by value -- dropped 7 percent to close at 1.46 million won (US$1,318) on the Seoul stock market -- the lowest in two months.

It was the biggest daily drop in the firm's share price so far this year and shaved about 15 trillion won off the firm's total value.

"The whole situation over Samsung is becoming more serious and complicated as more state authorities around the world are advising nationals to stop using the Note 7," said Hwang Min-Sung, an analyst at Samsung Securities.

The fallout from the recall -- which involves 2.5 million handsets sold so far in 10 countries -- may slash the firm's profit later this year by more than one trillion won, he warned.

The recall -- the first involving Samsung's flagship smartphone -- dealt a major blow to the firm's reputation at a time when it faces a growing challenge in all market segments.

Samsung, increasingly squeezed by Apple's iPhone in the high-end market and Chinese rivals in the low-end segment, launched the Note 7 earlier than expected -- ahead of the September 7 launch of the iPhone 7.

The mobile business accounts for a major share of profits for Samsung, which also produces home appliances and memory chips.

Turn off the phone

Koh Dong-Jin, the head of Samsung's mobile business, said earlier the fault rate for the Note 7 amounted to 24 handsets per million and it would take about two weeks to prepare replacements.

"We are asking users to power down their Galaxy Note 7s and exchange them as soon as possible," Koh said in a statement late Saturday, adding the firm was "collaborating with national regulatory bodies" around the world.

He advised consumers to use replacement phones which would be loaned by the firm until a new Note 7 equipped with fault-free batteries are provided.

"We encourage...Note 7 customers to contact their place of purchase or call the designated call centre locally as soon as possible," said the statement.

A new Note 7 device with a new battery would be provided to South Korean consumers beginning September 19.

Growing concern over the device prompted air carriers and aviation authorities in countries including the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and India to ban the use of the Note 7 on board.

But cases of exploding batteries continued to emerge following the recall announcement, as users claimed a burning device had damaged a hotel room in Australia or set a car in the US on fire.

In a widely-reported case last week, a Florida man allegedly saw his car catch fire after he had left a Note 7 charging inside it, with images on social media showing a Jeep engulfed in flames.

Samsung said it was aware of the two incidents, with local authorities investigating the case in the US.

Samsung currently uses batteries made by a number of different companies including its sister Samsung SDI.

The firm refused to identify the supplier of the faulty battery but said sales in China, where it uses a different supplier, would be unaffected. Sales in China started on September 1.
You are here: Home

More than 3,400 suspects have been seized in a police campaign to crack down on online crime.

The Ministry of Public Security on Monday said that since May, the campaign had deleted 122,000 pieces of illegal online information, closed 23,000 accounts and punished 4,207 websites.

The campaign also smashed more than 300 criminal rings, it added.

In one case, police in Chongqing detained nine people suspected of online fraud that involved over 20 million yuan (3 million U.S. dollars), the statement said.

Additionally, nine websites involved in illegal gun sales, citizen privacy, drugs, bankcard fraud and pornography were ordered to rectify their violations. Another four websites were also warned to rectify for spreading software containing viruses.
You are here: Home

A man who was allegedly behind a Shanghai airport explosion three months ago has been arrested, local procurators said on Monday.

The warrant of the arrest of Zhou Xingbai was issued by the people's procuratorate of Shanghai's Pudong District.

Zhou, 29, allegedly threw a homemade explosive device in a beer bottle at a check-in counter in Terminal 2 at Shanghai Pudong International Airport at around 2 p.m. on June 12, injuring three passengers.

Zhou cut his own throat with a knife at the airport, but was taken to the hospital for medical treatment, according to police.

Hailing from Tongren City in southwest China's Guizhou Province, he became a migrant worker in 2006 after finishing middle school.

According to police, he has been addicted to online gambling since 2014, leading him to squander his savings and take on heavy debt.

Zhou wrote on his WeChat account that he owed many people money, and was going to do something "very crazy" that would cost his life.

Police said they found explosives used to make firecrackers in Zhou's house.
Subscriber content preview

As hotels and high-rise buildings come to Old Town Chinatown, Chinese residents worry their history will fade away.



By CASEY PARKS

The Oregonian/OregonLive

PORTLAND  For Raymond Wong, the metal banners are the last straw.

Already, the city contributed to Old Town Chinatown's decline, Wong said, by allowing homeless shelters and social services agencies to congregate there. Then there were the parking meters and the end of fareless square.





. . .
Subscriber content preview

J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co. has become one of the nation's largest wholesale nurseries and has one of the leading tree introduction programs.



By JANAE SARGENT

Capital Press

SALEM, Ore.  J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co. celebrates its 70th anniversary this year  and the 50th anniversary of its introduction of the Redpoint Maple tree.

The 2,500-acre wholesale nursery in Boring, Oregon, sells more than 500 varieties of trees and has become one of the nation's largest wholesale nurseries and has one of the leading tree introduction programs, reported the Capital Press.





. . .
South Korea is considering purchasing 20 additional radar-evading F-35A fighters to enhance its air combat capabilities, military officials said on Monday.

The idea comes in the wake of a nuclear test by North Korea last week.

These fifth-generation jets, which are hard to detect, operate in airspace not accessible by non-stealth planes.

"As North Korea appears to have enhanced its nuclear and missile capabilities in recent years, we are mending our existing wartime strike programs against the North," a military official told Yonhap News Agency.

North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests this year after detonating three other devices since 2006. It has also test-fired missiles, including submarine-launched and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

In 2013, South Korea paid $7.06 billion for 40 F-35A fighters for delivery between 2018 and 2021. At that time, it had the option of buying 20 additional warplanes depending on the security situation.

Lockheed Martin makes three forms of the F-35 Lightning II. The F-35A is the air force version, which according to its website, "combines advanced low observable stealth technology with fighter speed and agility, fully fused sensor information, network-enabled operations and advanced sustainment". The F-35B is a short take-off and vertical landing variant for marines and the F-35C is an aircraft carrier-based one.

Last month, Lockheed Martin was awarded a $7 million contract for multispectral database for the planes.

On Monday, the conservative Korea Freedom Federation called for the placement of tactical nuclear weapons in the country. All US naval and land-based tactical nuclear weapons were withdrawn from Korea in 1991.


India drags US to WTO over renewable energy subsidies

India has moved the World Trade Organisation seeking consultations with the United States under the dispute settlement system regarding alleged domestic content requirements and subsidies provided by eight US states, including Washington, California, Montana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware and Minnesota, in the renewable energy sector.

India has complained to the WTO about the illegal subsidies and domestic content requirements that these US states use to prop up their renewables sector, even as the US has won a similar case against India, the WTO said in a statement on Monday.

The request for consultations formally initiates a dispute in the WTO. Consultations give the parties an opportunity to discuss the matter and to find a satisfactory solution without proceeding further with litigation. After 60 days, if consultations have failed to resolve the dispute, the complainant may request adjudication by a panel.

The WTO statement did not give details of the complaint and there was no immediate comment from India's trade ministry. But India has voiced concerns in the past about US support for its solar power industry.

The race to build national solar capacity and grab a chunk of a new global market has become a major new cause of trade friction between big trading powers. India lost a case at the WTO earlier this year after the United States complained about New Delhi's national solar programme.

India has appealed that ruling and the new dispute will prove Washington's double standards in trade.

In 2013, India had filed questions at the WTO about suspected subsidies in solar programmes in four US states - Delaware, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Connecticut - as well as local content requirements in Michigan and California's renewable energy programmes.
Relay for Life Donegal already have their first team registered for 2017.

The Donegal fundraiser for the Irish Cancer Society held a thank-you night on Monday for all who took part in this years event and presented a cheque for 62,681 to Dr Robert OConnor, head of research for the Irish Cancer Society.

There were also a number of presentations to teams, volunteers and other supporters, including special presentations to Mags Coyle, who is stepping down from the Donegal relay committee; Margaret McAteer, musical director of the Survivors Choir; Caitriona Kelly Gillespie for her work with the Candle of Hope, Luminaria ceremony; and the Kicking Cancer Team, which has taken part in every Relay for Life Donegal since it began.

It was a tremendous night and everybody was very supportive, Robert OConnor, chairperson of Relay for Life Donegal said.

He said the Donegal event already has its first team registered for next year: A team from the United States called Team Relay Nation, travels to Relay for Life events all over the United States and Canada and have chosen the Donegal event as their first outside North America.

They are doing their fundraising in America to bring to us here in Donegal, he said.

The fifth Relay for Life Donegal was held in June of this year at the Letterkenny Institute of Technology.

Above, Relay For Life Donegal Treasurer, Drew Corry, with committee and team members presenting the cheque for 62,681 to Robert O'Connor, head of research for the Irish Cancer Society. Photo Clive Wasson
October is National Bullying Prevention month. We have all heard the phrase bullying, but what does it actually mean? Bullying is defined as unwanted aggressive behavior; observed or perceived power imbalance; repetition of behaviors or high likelihood of repetition.

Bullying is unfortunately a reality for far too many in our communities both young and old. Much like any other form of violence, bullying is not isolated to any particular age group, gender or demography. Just about everyone of us can look back in our lives and recall a time where either we were personally bullied or witnessed one of our friends or schoolmates being bullied. Its hard to believe that with all of the advancements and awareness, this type of behavior still exists, but it does and with the advent of social media, it had actually gotten much worse. This is because unlike in the past, the bully not only impacts your life on the playground or classroom; they now are able to follow you into your personal life due to the constant presence of social media.

There is good news in that we have learned a great deal about what creates these bullies and how to neutralize their ability to isolate and intimidate. The key is for those in authority to respond to reports of bullying immediately to show without question that bullying will not be acceptable. That message needs to follow to our homes with the messages we send our children not only by what we say but by our own actions in how we treat fellow adults. Bullying is without question a learned behavior. It is learned on the playground, in the classroom and follows through to the workplace and social interactions as adults. We need to send a strong message to our own children, a message of empathy and compassion not of ridicule and rumor.

Who are at risk of bullying the most? Typically those who are bullied have one or more of the following risks:

Are perceived as different from their peers, such as being overweight or underweight, wearing glasses or different clothing, being new to a school, or being unable to afford what kids consider cool

Are perceived as weak or unable to defend themselves

Are depressed, anxious, or have low self esteem

Are less popular than others and have few friends

Do not get along well with others, seen as annoying or provoking, or antagonize others for attention

However, even if a child has these risk factors, it doesnt mean that they will be bullied. The important lesson is that we as adults set the tone for how the next generation will interact with each other. Chances are if we show acceptance of others, our children will show acceptance of others. If we engage in demeaning others or spreading rumors, our children will follow suit. So often we as adults underestimate the influence, we have not only on our own children but even those who dont know us but witness our behavior.

While school or workplace policies are an important component, the only way to truly decrease bullying is by denying the bully their victim. We do this by raising strong, confident, resilient children, and speaking out and supporting those who find themselves on the receiving end of this type of behavior. We are all teachers in life lessons and we teach by our actions. Lets all be aware of what we teach.
judi online hadir sebagai solusi praktis saat ingin memasang taruhan dengan mudah dan fleksibel. Berbagai tipe game bermunculan dan sportsbook terutama taruhan bola masih mendominasi. Anda cukup berkunjung ke situs judi bola lalu siap memainkan gambling kapan saja. Judi seperti ini membutuhkan akun dan deposit. Akun menjadi bukti bahwa anda adalah member. Situs tersebut hanya memberikan akses kepada member yang valid. Sebelum lanjut bermain, segera ikuti prosedur daftar dan lakukan apa yang dibutuhkan. Deposit di situs judi menggunakan beberapa cara. Yang sering dipakai adalah transfer bank sebab lebih praktis dan mudah. Ada juga deposit dengan e-money yang sedang tren serta sering dipakai kalangan muda. Uang yang masuk dianggap sebagai saldo lalu dipakai membeli kupon judi bola online.

Fitur Situs Judi Bola

Fitur judi berguna agar aktivitas dapat dilaksanakan tanpa kendala. Di judi online seperti sportsbook, mayoritas fitur tidak berbeda jauh dengan gambling lain seperti live casino. Akan tetapi, objek dan acuan berbeda sehingga harus menyesuaikan beberapa situasi. Cek daftar berikut untuk mengetahui penjelasan lebih lanjut.

1. Akses dan server

Akses situs judi membutuhkan server 24 jam yang terus online tanpa henti. Anda dapat bermain kapan saja sehingga lebih fleksibel. Bandingkan saat masih bermain secara konvensional. Dari semua sistem judi yang tersedia, taruhan bola memang cocok dengan sistem online sebab sesi judi bukan melawan member lain seperti poker.

2. Deposit

Seperti yang disebutkan sebelumnya, deposit merupakan cara member mengisi saldo. Uang tersebut dipakai secara otomatis. Transaksi memakai cara non tunai yang dijamin oleh pihak situs judi. Selain deposit, ada juga withdraw yaitu menarik dana dari akun. Jika memenuhi syarat, proses ini dapat dilakukan. Sistem transaksi akan terus muncul yang baru terutama metode e-money. Untuk menjamin keamanan, pihak pengelola hanya memilih yang telah berlisensi resmi.

3. Customer service

Saat anda bingung cara deposit, customer service akan memberikan solusi. Mereka dapat dihubungi 24 jam kapan saja. Pihak pengelola ingin memberikan layanan terbaik sehigga keberadaan cs sangat penting.

Daftar Jenis Judi Bola Online



Secara umum, cara main judi ini adalah anda membuat prediksi lalu memasang. Misalnya, dua tim akan menghasilkan lebih dari dua gol. Opsi klasik yaitu prediksi apakah pertandingan berakhir dengan imbang, menang, atau kalah. Jenis taruhan yang tersedia di situs judi bola dapat disimak pada daftar berikut.

1. Tebak hasil

Bagi yang baru bermain di situs judi bola, mulai dari pilihan yang mudah dan sudah familiar. Contohnya adalah tebak hasil atau three ways. Seperti yang disebutkan sebelumnya, opsi ini akan memberikan pilihan menang, imbang, dan kalah. Ini merupakan taruhan klasik yang diterapkan sejak lama. Nama lainnya adalah three ways karena terdiri dari tiga opsi. Selain itu, ada juga double chance yaitu memilih dua dari tiga opsi tersebut. Selanjutnya, pilihan taruhan yang juga berkaitan adalah draw no bet terdiri dari yes dan no. Bettor akan menang saat tim yang dipilih menang. Akan tetapi, uang taruhan segera dikembalikan karena hasilnya seri.

2. Halftime/fulltime

Ada juga pilihan lain disebut halftime/fulltime. Anda menebak hasil di masing-masing babak. Misalnya, seri di babak pertama dan menang di babak akhir. Pilihan ini terdiri dari beberapa kombinasi karena menggabungkan dua sesi. Cara bermain judi ini tidak sebatas tebak hasil karena pihak pengelola juga menambahkan over under, double chance, dan lainnya. Satu kategori dapat diperluas dan berlaku secara online.

3. Over under

Jenis taruhan bola yang terkenal dari situs judi bola over/under. Cara memakainya adalah anda menentukan berapa maksimal atau minimal gol. Misalnya, member memilih over 1.5 yaitu gol harus lebih dari 1.5 atau minimal 2. Hal sebaliknya berlaku saat menentukan under 1.5 dimana maksimal gol adalah 1.5. Fitur over under termasuk yang mudah dimengerti karena pilihannya juga sangat jelas. Anda akan menemukan opsi terendah yaitu 0.5 dan tertinggi 5.5 bahkan hingga 6.0.

4. Both team to score

Anda menebak dua tim akan memasukkan gol. Untuk memasang prediksi ini, pilihannya adalah both teams to score. Jika pilih yes, anda menang saat keduanya mampu menciptakan gol. Tentu saja, pilihan no berarti salah satu tim tidak mencetak gol.

5. Clean sheet

Saat cek situs judi bola, ada pilihan disebut sebagai clean sheet yaitu hasil pertandingan tanpa gol bagi satu atau dua tim. Opsi ini juga berkembang dengan pilihan clean sheet di babak pertama dan kedua.

6. Handicap

Situs judi bola juga menambahkan pilihan yang cukup populer yaitu handicap. Istilah ini terkait memberikan kekurangan atau keunggulan sehingga awal pertandingan tampak tidak imbang. Hal ini terjadi karena salah satu tim dianggap sangat kuat atau lemah.

Minimal Deposit 50.000 IDR Metode Deposit Transfer Bank, Gopay, OVO, Pulsa Game favorit SBOBET, Casino, Slot, Poker, Tangkas Provider terpercaya SBOBET, Maxbet, Nexus, IDN Poker, Joker123

Bonus Judi Online di Situs Multibet88



Setelah mengetahui opsi judi dan fitur yang tersedia di situs tersebut, bagian berikutnya adalah membahas bonus yang diterima. Anda dan para member berhak mendapatkannya karena mampu memenuhi syarat tertentu.

1. Bonus rollingan

Situs judi bola memberikan bonus rollingan. Sistem ini berdasarkan total taruhan dan berlaku di semua game. Sekian persen dari taruhan akan dikembalikan lagi kepada member. Bonus seperti ini mempunyai beberapa syarat yang sangat penting. Pada umumnya, member wajib mencapai batas minimal tertentu. Situs judi kadang membuat bonus rollingan berlaku umum yaitu tidak terikat game dan taruhan. Member akan tetap menerimanya meskipun bermain pada judi lain. Perlu anda ketahui, sportsbook bukan hanya sepakbola sehingga opsi bonus semakin besar.

2. Event

Situs judi bola sering mengadakan event serta memberikan promo. Misalnya, event tebak juara saat kompetisi atau turnamen sedang berlangsung. Ada juga mix parlay yaitu tawaran memasang kupon judi terdiri dari beberapa pilihan. Event akan selalu ada apalagi di periode tertentu dimana para bettor sedang memiliki waktu luang. Selain event berdasarkan kompetisi, pihak situs judi juga membuat acara seperti akhir tahun, mingguan, liburan, dan sebagainya.

3. Jackpot

Jackpot juga sering dibagikan di situs judi bola. Member harus membeli kupon dan menunggu undian. Hadiah besar siap diterima jika beruntung menang. Program ini kadang diperluas ke game lain.

4. Referral

Referral adalah bonus karena member mengajak orang lain bergabung. Semakin banyak yang ikut serta di situs judi maka peluang komisi juga meningkat. Sistem ini memakai kode khusus sebagai identifikasi. Cara memperoleh referral tidak ada batasan. Member berhak memakai cara apa saja misalnya share ke social media, website, dan video streaming. Bonus berlaku selama judi online tetap beroperasi.

Situs judi bola menyediakan bonus dan promo untuk menarik banyak member. Mereka berhak menerima lebih apalagi yang sering bermain dan loyal. Jadi, anda segera terus meningkatkan transaksi dan menangkan banyak bonus besar.

Keunggulan Yang Identik Dengan Agen Judi Bola Bagus

Dari aspek mana saja tidak akan ditemukan hal yang kurang atau mengecewakan dari agen judi bola online bagus. Agen judi online terbagus selalu memiliki cara mereka sendiri untuk memberikan yang terbaik bagi membernya. Kepercayaan yang pemain berikan dengan cara mendaftar kesana akan dibalas dengan sepadan melalui berbagai keunggulan yang hanya akan anda dapatkan jika bermain gambling bola online dari agen taruhan bola terbagus ini. Detailnya akan dibahas disini jadi simak sampai akhir bila anda ingin tahu lebih banyak.

Fasilitas Utama Agen Judi Bola Terbagus

Agen judi bola online terbagus diakui dan mendapatkan banyak kepercayaan dari pemain pasti karena ada alasan yang jelas. Harus ada hal logis yang menjadi kriyteria dari agen taruhan bola ini menjadi yang terbagus diantara agen taruhan bola yang lainnya. Jumlah pemain agen taruhan bola ini juga semakin besar dari tahun ke tahun membuktikan jika kualitas dari agen judi online ini memang fakta bukaan hanya sekesar janji saja untuk menarik banyak pemain gambling bola online.

Detail fasilitas unggulan yang dimiliki oleh agen judi bola terbagus adalah sebagai berikut ini:

1. Jam operasional dan layanan bandar yang akan dibuka selama 24 jam, setiap hari tanpa cuti selama satu tahun penuh.

2. Bisa menghubungi custumer service melalui layanan livechat, whatsapp dan email selama 24 jam juga.

3. Custumer service adalah asisten pribadi yang akan membantu mengatasi kendala yang dialami pemain kapan saja. Custumer service memang sudah sangat terlatih dan profesional sehingga mampu merespon dengan sangat cepat.

4. Ada banyak permainan hgambling bola yang bisa dimainkan disini dari mix parlay, handicap, ix2, outright, kick off, odd/oven dan under/over dengan nilai taruhan yang paling rendah adalah 1000 rupiah saja.

5. Bonus yang akan didapatkan pemain yang sudah bermain di agen judi online ini ada bonus anggota baru, referal, depo harian, pinjaman online, bonus liga lokal, cashback dan toko kode promo.

Permainan gambling bola yang ada di agen judi bola terbagus ini memakai semua pertandingan yang ada di bursa bola besar dan terpercaya seperti Agen Sbobet sampai ubobet. Permainan gambling yang anda mainkan disini juga termasuk permainan yang fair karena memakai teknologi live streaming dan sistem manual multiplayer yang tidak memberikan kesempatan pemain maupun bandar untuk melakukan kecurangan.

Setiap transaksi yang ada di agen judi bola terbagus ini juga telah menggunakan aturan baru yang membuat pemain tidak harus menghabiskan banyak waktu untuk melakukan transaksi. Midsalnya saja untuk melakukan pendaftaran ke agen judi online ini yang sekarang bisa dilakukan hanya dengan memberikan data personal asli yang masih berlaku ke custumer service dan cs yang akan melakukan pendaftaran id pemain untuk anda. Ketentuan baru ini yang akan membuat pendaftaran tidak lagu butuh waktu yang lama.

Deposit Yang 1000% Aman Dan Mudah

Agen judi bola terbagus juga berani menjamin setiap transaksi keuangan yang dilakukan disini akan berjalan dengan lancar dan 100% aman. Misalnya seperti deposit yang menggunakan aturan pemain harus transfer ke nomor rekening yang didapatkan langsung dari Custumer service dan memakai nomor rekening yang masuk ke server. Aturan itu berlaku untuk berjaga-jaga bila ada masalah yang terjadi bandar akan mudah melakukan pelacakan dan mengatasi kendala dengan mudah.

Deposit yang ada di agen taruhan bola online ini bisa dibayar mulai dari 10.000 saja. Deposit juga bisa memberikan bonus depo harian 5 ribu. Proses deposit yang harus dilakukan pemain akan melalkui proses berikut ini:

Langkah yang pertama pemain harus sudah memiliki id pemain disini. Setelah melakukan pendaftaran baru login ke web agen taruhan bola online terpercaya ini. Setelah itu harus ada komunikasi yang dilakukan dengan custumer service untuk meminta nomor rekening bandar yang masih aktif.

Langkah yang kedua, setelah dapat nomor rekening bandar aktif di agen judi bola terbagus ini langsung datang ke ATM. Transfer sejumlah dana ke nomor rekening bandar yang masih aktif tadi (harus pakai nomor rekening yang anda pakai untuk mendaftar). Jangan transfer uang dalam jumlah yang dilebihkan karena tetap yang akan masuk tetap sesuai dengan yang anda masukkan ke dalam formulir deposit nantinya.

Langkah yang ketiga, kembali login dengan menggunakan id pemain yang anda miliki. Lanjutkan dengan livechat bersama custumer service untuk menunjukkan bukti transfer yang telah anda lakukan. setelah pengecekan yang dilakukan oleh custumer service selesai anda bisa melanjutkan ke tahap yang berikutnya.

Langkah yang keempat, anda bisa memilih menu deposit dan klik pilihan deposit dengan uang asli. Nanti akan muncul form deposit yang harus anda lengkapi dengan data ini:

1. User ID

2. Password

3. Bank yang dipakai

4. Nomor rekening bandar

5. Nomor rekening pemain

6. Jumlah deposit yang dibayar

Submit setelah melakukan pengecekkan dan tidak ada yang salah dari data dan proses deposit online yang anda lakukan dengan uang asli di agen judi bola terbagus ini.

Transaksi Withdraw Tanpa Potongan

Agen judi bola terbagus juga akan mempermudah pemainnya untuk melakukan tarik dana atau dikenal sebagai transaksi withdraw. Saat pemainb ingin mengatur jumlah saldo yang ada di akun mereka, saat akan cuti atau bahkan saat ingin berhenti bermain judi bisa langsung melakukan transaksi withdraw kapan saja dengan lancar dan tentu saja selalu aman.

Transaksi withdraw di agen taruhan bolka online ini bisa dilakukan dengan proses sebagai berikut ini:

1. Login dengan pakai user id dan password.

2. Hubungi custumer service dan berikan user id yang anda miliki, minta custumer service untuk mengecek sisa saldo yang anda miliki.

3. Klik menu withdraw yang ada di agen taruhan bola terbagus ini, isi dengan user ID, password, bank, uang yang ditarik dan nomor rekening yang anda miliki.

4. Tunggu konfirmasi, saat ada konfirmasi yang masuk ke email langsung cek rekening anda untuk memastikan uang yang tadi anda tarik sudah masuk.

Meskipun pemain bermain dengan menggunakan pulsa, saat melakukan withdraw akan tetap cair dalam bentuk uang asli. Selain itu bandar juga tidak akan memotong dana yang anda tarik untuk biaya admin jadi uang yang ditarik akan tetap utuh. Pemain yang melakukan deposit ini harus menyisakan saldo 10.000.

Agen judi bola terbagus memang selalu memiliki banyak keunggulan yang membuat banyak pemain betah bermain disini. Dari fasilitas yang lengkap dan layanan keuangan yang aman serta mudah akan membuat pemain tidak memiliki keraguan untuk bermain derngan jumlah bet yang besar. Jadi anda juga harus mulai bergabung dengan agen taruhan bola online ini supaya bisa sukses sama dengan pemain yang telah lebih dulu daftar ke agen judi online ini.
A consumer chooses oil made from non-genetically modified sunflower seeds in a supermarket in Beijing on Tuesday. [China Daily]

Law experts in China expect the government to impose severe penalties on those who grow and sell illegal genetically-modified (GM) foods.

This issue has provoked immense public concern over the country's food security, after cases of illegality were detected in Liaoning and Xinjiang in the first half of this year.

So far, China has only allowed two agricultural products -- cotton and papaw -- to be genetically modified for commercial use, while banning work on any other GM foods outside labs and research centers.

Professor Xiong Yongming, of the Law School of Nanchang University, said, existing administrative laws and regulations, mostly in the form of government circulars, dominating the guidelines on GM foods production and are too general and ineffective.

China started to issue administrative regulations on genetic engineering in 1993, followed by a number of provisions and administrative measures covering the safety of GM foods from both home and abroad.

Although those guidelines acknowledge and underscore the possible damage GM foods can cause to the environment, public health, natural resources and ecological system, they are powerless to severely punish the violators because there are no stringent laws targeting the abuse of genetic technology.

It is possible that GM foods may endanger people's health through slow and gradual processes, but the ramifications are hard to gauge especially when weighing their impending threats to public security, Xiong explained, adding that the attempt to have criminal law dealing with illegal GM foods needs careful deliberation before being put into practice.

However, despite there being insufficient evidence suggesting the insecurity of GM foods, the expansion of such products penetrating the process from seedling to trading may challenge market order, said Liu Changqiu, researcher from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

It is better to create a new legal provision to control genetic technology, a practice initiated by several European countries, such as, Finland, which has criminal laws covering GM foods, Liu said.

However, Professor Huang Mingru, from the Law School of Xiangtan University, argued that the criminal laws could end up with too many provisions due to having to be amended every time whenever a new problem emerges.

To stop illegal GM foods spreading under present condition, the legal experts suggested that perpetrators should be charged with violating business operational laws -- a provisional countermeasure that could increase the costs of illegal GM production.
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.
Good Morning Louth telephone service featured on last week's Keeping Ireland Alive documentary series on RTE 1 televison and showed one of the volunteers Mona making calls to older people throughout the county.

Good Morning Louth is a volunteer led service and has just recently opened an outreach office based in Ardee

The service gives older people who are living alone or spend a lot of time alone, receive a phone call for a chat anywhere from once a morning to once a week, depending on what theyd like.

The service runs from 9am  1pm and is based in Seatown, Dundalk it is funded by the HSE and is co-ordinated by Netwell Casala at DkIT.

It is a fantastic service thats been running for over five years and is going from strength to strength, said Anne Murphy, Good Morning Louth Co-Ordinator.

We are making on average 500 calls per week, thats chatting to over 260 people some of whom may not talk to anybody else that day.

I believe its a very progressive service funded by the HSE with amazing volunteers at the heart of it, and thats what makes it work.

We were delighted that our service was showcased on the RTE1 documentary Keeping Ireland Alive as its a huge endorsement for the work we all do for older people in the community, she added.

If you know of an older person, who may like a call, or who would like to become a volunteer for Good Morning Louth, please contact Anne on 042-9330103.

There are 53 volunteers at the Good Morning Louth centre at Seatown Dundalk.

And now an outreach office is operating from Ferdia House, Moorehall Lodge Retirement Village in Ardee.
A major water conservation project by Irish Water will connect 786 homes and properties in Dundalk to a new water main.

The new water main will connect schools and businesses in the town including Louth County Hospital, Dundalk Grammar School and the Brewery Business Park.

Other businesses benefiting from the project include cafes, pharmacies, bars and restaurants along Clanbrassil Street.

The project will upgrade 3.5 per cent of the overall water network in Dundalk which results in a population equivalent of 1,295 based on a Dundalk population of 37,000.

The Dundalk rehabilitation works is part of the 3.4 million Louth Water Conservation Project undertaken by Irish Water with Louth County Council.

At a meeting last week of Dundalk Municipal District Committee councillors were told that this project will secure the supply for residents and the business community in Dundalk which is needed to support the continued economic development in the area.

The work will be carried out at The Crescent, Ardee Road, Bridge Street - Clanbrassil Street, Legion Avenue - McSweeney Street, Marian Park, Mount Avenue, Malachys Villas - Brook Lane, Newry Road, Brook Street - Ardee Terrace, Old Muirhevna, Dublin Road, Barrack Street, Peter Street, and Point Road.

Mr Ryan Hanley told councillors that the contract for the work was signed in May and it will take 18 months.

Most of the pipes that will be replaced are cast iron pipes which are fifty to eighty years old.

The new plastic pipes and air valves will prevent leaks and improve water quality.

The new service pipework will be installed as far as the customers boundary.

A liaison officer has been appointed and there will be full communication and interaction with property owners before work starts.

Letters will be sent to households and businesses in advance of works explaining the works and seeking consent.

There will be follow-up visits to households where consent has not been returned.

Work will be carried out from Monday to Friday - 8am to 6pm.

No work will be allowed in the town centre in December.

Mr Hanley told councillors that every effort will be made to avoid unplanned interruptions to water supplies while the work is being carried out and the project team is also aware of the need to minimise impacts on business and traffic flows.

Cllr Conor Keelan asked if the work with coincide with the upgrading of Clanbrassil Street.

It was explained that for contractual reasons the Irish Water programme would have to go separately, otherwise 2.4m in EU funding could be in jeopardy.

Cllr Maria Doyle stressed the importance of properly replacing footpaths and pointed out the difficulties that some areas might pose because of narrow street ways, areas such as St Malachy's Villas. But she welcomed the upgrade.

Mr Hanley explained that all footpaths will be restored and there will be traffic management in place for all works.

He said water savings are not the only issue involved. Louth loses 38 per cent of its water through leaks which is below the national average, but the project is also about improving the quality of the water in Dundalk.
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.
By expanding its on-demand food delivery service into Perth, Deliveroo has created new opportunities for growth in the other Australian capitals where it operates, according to country manager, Levi Aron.

Founded in 2013 by William Shu and Greg Orlowski, the London-based company hit its 100th city milestone, last Tuesday, when it launched in Perth. Deliveroos expansion into its fourth Australian capital was marked with the rollout of the companys revamped logo, look and rider equipment globally.

Aron spoke to Dynamic Business about the strategic value of expanding Deliveroo into Perth and the companys growth strategy for Australia, moving forward.

Why was Perth selected as the fourth Australian marker?

We launched in Sydney and Melbourne, last November, and expanded into Brisbane in April. It was important to firmly establish ourselves in these cities initially to ensure we could localise Deliveroos offering. That meant building strong teams, partnering with the right businesses and making sure the business was sustainable. There are a couple of reasons why we launched in Perth, this month, ahead of launching in another capital like, say, Adelaide.

Firstly, while there have been issues in the local economy since the mining boom, theres a great foodie culture in Perth and a supply of great restaurants. It doesnt have the population size of Melbourne or Sydney, but per capita were expecting to see strong growth in Perth, especially with the type of restaurants weve targeted.

Secondly, the fact that Perth is two hours behind Sydney and Melbourne provided us with an opportunity. We provide support for our restaurants, riders and customers in our existing markets from our Melbourne office. Our customer service team had been working until 11pm but now, to cater for the time difference in Perth, we have people finishing at 12, 1 or 1.30 in the morning. We know that many of our restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne are open late at nights, so by moving into Perth, that has enabled us to commence doing late night deliveries in these cities.

What is Deliveroos approach to competition in Perth?

As with Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, were predominantly working with premium and gourmet food restaurants that locals recognise but havent delivered previously. Its about creating a network of restaurants that consumers recognise, want and associate with Deliveroo.

The restaurants we partner with, we work with them on packaging as well as digital and offline marketing to help them break into the delivery space. We also provide them with account support. This is how weve built a strong network in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and its our approach in Perth.

Beyond Perth, what are the plans for Australia?

Were bedding down the cities we currently service but also looking to expand our coverage in Australia and make our existing network more accessible. Well be launching in more cities on the coming months and we recently expanded into alcohol delivery.

With RooBox, were introducing key partners into areas where there is a limited restaurant supply but great potential and establishing a network of kitchens dedicated to delivery. Were doing this by working with council and taking out leases on properties or introducing containerised kitchens. This initiative is addressing a big challenge for restaurants, which is expanding their brand into new areas  the cost of fitting out a new establishment alone can reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Were introducing partners into new areas for periods of six to twelve months and covering the setup costs. We view it as R&D for the partners we bring on board. Its a way for them to test a new area without realising, months down the line, they dont have much traction. Were covering that risk for them. The hope is that six or twelve months on, the restaurants will secure their own premises and take over from there, and we will move into new areas.

Food is the area we play in and well be sticking with it because its a wide category. Were not going to deliver iPads or work for Australia Post  just food. By revamping our colours and logo, we are able to incorporate this into services and products we rollout in the coming months and years.
Reviving the spirit of De Gasperi: working together for an effective and inclusive Union

Speech by Mario Draghi, President of the ECB,at the presentation ceremony of the De Gasperi award,Trento, 13 September 2016

I have many reasons to be grateful and honoured by your decision to award me the Premio De Gasperi today. His character and his experience provide us with an inspiring message, loud and confident: In Europe we go forward together in freedom.

This message is rooted in the 20th century history of our continent.

The raison detre of any government is to provide security for its citizens, both physically and economically. And in democratic societies, that means providing safety and security by preserving individual liberties and individual rights, by promoting social fairness and equal opportunities.

The statesmen who, after World War Two, looked back over the preceding half-century could reach only one conclusion: that the governments which emerged from nationalist and populist movements, and which were carried into power by a mixture of charisma and lies, completely failed to offer their citizens security, fairness and freedom. They had betrayed the very reason for their existence.

In outlining the future shape of international relations, De Gasperi and his contemporaries concluded that only cooperation between European governments within a common organisation could ensure the joint security of their citizens.

They saw that implanting democracy in the nations of Europe would not be enough. Europe also needed democracy among nations. They understood that building barriers between countries would make them more vulnerable and less secure, not least due to their geographical proximity; and that withdrawing behind ones borders would make governments less effective.

De Gasperis vision of how this joint process should be shaped was articulated in various speeches he gave in those years.

Common challenges should be addressed via supranational instead of intergovernmental strategies. Speaking to the assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1954, De Gasperi noted that from 1919 to 1939, some seventy international treaties were concluded  and all became mere pieces of paper when it came to their implementation because of the lack of joint control of common resources.[1] And the experience of politicians was validated by distinguished economists, such as Ragnar Nurkse, who showed how those treaties ended up fostering protectionism.[2]

Integration above all had to meet the immediate needs of the people. As De Gasperi observed, We must begin by pooling only what is strictly essential to the achievement of our immediate aims, and do this by means of flexible formulae which can be gradually and progressively applied.[3]

And joint action had to be focused on areas where, evidently, individual action by governments was not sufficient: joint control over the raw materials of war, in particular coal and steel, was one of the first examples.

In this way, the founders of the European project were able to pair effectiveness with legitimacy, since the process was legitimised by both popular consensus and the support of governments. It was focused on areas where the action of European institutions and the benefits for the people were directly and visibly related. And joint action did not limit the authority of governments, but rather buttressed it, and thus found their backing.

But it was not only the disastrous experience of the past that motivated De Gasperi and his contemporaries. It was also the immediate successes which were made possible by the initial decisions of the post-war period.

The achievements of working together

The establishment of peace  the crowning achievement of the European project  immediately produced growth and laid the foundation for prosperity. Set against this was the devastation wrought by the two world wars. Real GDP per capita fell by 14% during World War One and by 22% during World War Two, wiping out many of the gains that had been made during the preceding years.

Economic integration built on peace in turn produced significant improvements in living standards. Since 1960 cumulative growth in real GDP per capita has been 33% higher in the EU15 than in the US. Incomes in poorer European countries have also converged towards those enjoyed by richer ones.

And EU citizens have gained the right to live, work and trade throughout the Union  and to benefit from equal protection, wherever they are, provided by European courts of law. Indeed, the process of coming together in a single market, one of the greatest achievements of the European project, was never solely about increasing market integration and efficiency. It was above all a choice of values of a free, open society  a choice made by the people of the European Union.

The European project has firmly established political freedoms, too. From the outset the promotion of free democracy has been at its heart. As a guarantor of democratic principles, the EU has acted as a point of reference for countries eager to escape dictatorships or totalitarianism, such as Greece, Portugal and Spain or those of central and eastern Europe. The Copenhagen criteria and the Charter of Fundamental Rights ensure that all EU countries respect a set of well-defined political principles enshrined in national and European law.

There is no doubt that these freedoms have contributed immensely to the well-being of Europe. And it is because of these freedoms that many migrants and refugees are looking for a better future in the European Union today.

In short, European integration has provided its citizens with physical and economic security  perhaps for longer than ever in the history of Europe  while also spreading and instilling the values of an open society. The founders who began this process, and we who have carried it on, have demonstrated to the world that freedom and security are not mutually exclusive. By consolidating democracy we have secured peace.

New challenges for Europe

The more recent years of the European project have been characterised, however, by growing dissatisfaction. This was expressed perhaps most clearly in the referendum on 23 June, when the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.

For some EU countries, these years have entailed the most serious economic crisis since the war, with unemployment, especially among the young, reaching unprecedented levels and welfare states constrained by low growth and stretched public finances. It has been a time when, in an ageing continent, uncertainty has grown about the sustainability of our pensions systems. And a time when large-scale migration has called into question established ways of life and long-accepted social contracts, and stirred up feelings of insecurity and defensiveness.

The disaffection certainly has other causes, too. The end of the Soviet Union and of the nuclear threat it posed has diverted attention from the notion of safety in numbers. The shifting balance of power among the largest nations; ongoing urgent geopolitical tensions, wars and terrorism; climate change and the effects of continual, inexorable technological progress  all of these factors have, in a short period of time, interacted with the economic consequences of globalisation and intensified feelings of insecurity, especially in a world that was inattentive to how the extraordinary benefits of that globalisation were being distributed.

Indeed, while in emerging economies globalisation has liberated hundreds of millions of people from crushing poverty, in advanced economies the real incomes of those in the lower half of distribution have remained at the same level as a few decades ago. It is not surprising then that many have felt left behind. Anxiety is growing.

The policy responses to this have at times been reminiscent of the interwar period: isolationism, protectionism, nationalism. And this also happened in previous eras. At the end of the first phase of globalisation, in the early 20th century, several countries, including those with a tradition of immigration, such as Australia or the United States, introduced restrictions on immigrants, in reaction to fears among workers that new entrants who were willing to accept lower pay would take away their jobs.

But while such policy responses can be justifiably rejected, it must not prevent us from reviewing how the mode of European integration itself has also contributed to disaffection. Here again, De Gasperis own prescient words help us understand what has happened:

"If we restrict ourselves to creating shared institutions, without a higher political will invigorated by a central body in which the wills of nations come together (...) we risk the possibility that compared with the various national strengths, this European venture may seem cold and lifeless  it could even at times appear a superfluous and even oppressive extravagance".[4]

The structure of the European Union is solid and its fundamental values remain its base. But the integration process needs to be guided towards outcomes that are more efficient and more directly aimed at the people, their needs and their fears  and less focused on institution-building. European institutions are not accepted per se by the people, but only as necessary instruments to provide those outcomes.

Yet on other occasions it has been institutional incompleteness that has prevented authorities from being able to handle the challenges arising from external shocks. Consider the Schengen Agreement. It largely abolished Europes internal borders, but it did not envisage a strengthening of the continents external borders. So when the migration crisis erupted, it was seen as a destabilising loss of security.

The response of both the European Union and the Member States to these needs and fears has so far been insufficient. Surveys show that, together with a drop in support for economic integration, trust in both the European Union and even more so the Member States has fallen.[5]

This does not apply only to Europe. The data show that in the US, too, peoples trust has declined in almost all institutions, including the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.[6] The fact that this is a worldwide phenomenon cannot however exonerate us Europeans, because we are the only group of people in the world to have built a supranational polity in the certainty that it was indispensable to provide security where individual countries could not.

Is Europe still the answer?

So the question is simple, but fundamental: is working together still the best way to solve the new challenges which we face?

For various reasons the answer is an unequivocal yes. If those challenges are continent-wide, acting exclusively at national level is not enough. And if they are global, collaboration between the Member States gives Europe a strong voice.

The recent climate change negotiations serve as an example. This global issue can only be addressed through internationally coordinated policies. And the critical mass of Europe speaking with one voice has produced results well beyond the reach of individual countries. Only the pressure exerted by European countries forming a common front was able to make the Paris climate conference a success. And only the EUs existence allowed that common front to be built.

In a world where technology is diminishing physical barriers, Europe is exerting influence in other ways too. Its ability, with its market of 500 million consumers, to impose global recognition of property rights, or respect for privacy rights on the internet, is obviously stronger that any of its members could hope for alone.

National sovereignty remains in many respects the fundamental element of each country's government. But for challenges that transcend national borders, the only way to preserve sovereignty  that is, to make the voice of citizens heard in a global context  is for us Europeans to share sovereignty within the European Union, which has served as a multiplier of our national strength.

And where responses can only be provided at the supranational level, we should adopt the same approach that allowed De Gasperi and his contemporaries to secure legitimacy for their actions: we should focus on those actions that deliver tangible and immediately recognisable results.

There are two kinds.

The first kind of action is to complete those initiatives that are already under way, because stopping half-way is the most dangerous option. We would partially disempower national states without creating  at Union level  the capacity to provide at least as much security to the people.

The process of opening borders requires common institutions to safeguard freedom and fairness among its members. A free and single market is not anarchy: it requires that all its members are subject to the same laws and rules; and that they all have recourse to the same courts where those laws can be applied uniformly. This is why a true single market is a political construct. And if those institutions do not exist or do not function properly, borders will ultimately be restored to provide the security that people demand.

Thus to protect the single market in all its forms  and the commitment to an open society which it represents  it has to be completed.

What is different from the past, however, is that today we must devote more attention to the redistributive aspects of integration, and especially to those people who have paid the highest price. I do not think there will be significant progress in terms of opening up markets and competition if Europe does not listen to the demands of those left behind by a society built on the pursuit of wealth and power; if Europe, as well as being a catalyst for integration and an arbiter of its rules, does not also moderate its outcomes.

That moderating role is today assigned to nation states, yet in many cases they are lacking the strength to fulfil it fully. It is a task that has not yet been defined at the EU level. But a greater role for the EU would satisfy the characteristics that De Gasperi identified: buttressing the activities of governments and therefore legitimising European action. Recent discussions about tax fairness and a European unemployment insurance fund, about professional retraining funds and other projects with the same idealistic goals, all go in this direction.

But because Europe should only act where the national governments are unable to act alone, the response must still come first and foremost from the national level. We need policies that unleash growth, reduce unemployment and empower individuals, while offering essential protections for the most vulnerable.

For the second kind of action, if and when we initiate new common projects in Europe, they should adhere to the same criteria that brought success 70 years ago: they must be based on a consensus that action is truly necessary; the projects should complement the actions of governments; they should be clearly linked to peoples immediate concerns; they should unequivocally concern matters of European or global significance.

If these criteria are applied, there are many areas in which Europe does not need to get involved. But there are also important areas where it clearly needs to, and where European initiatives are not just legitimate, but even essential. Today this notably includes the fields of migration, security and defence.

Both types of action are essential because unresolved internal divisions, for instance concerning the completion of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), are likely to distract us from addressing the new geopolitical, economic and environmental challenges. This is a real danger in Europe today  and it is one we cannot afford. We need to find the strength and wisdom to resolve our differences and go forward together.

To do that we need to rediscover the spirit that led a small number of great leaders, in much more difficult conditions than we face today, to overcome mutual suspicion and succeed jointly instead of failing separately.

So to conclude, let me quote again Alcide De Gasperi, whose words resonate as much today as they did in 1952:

"Economic cooperation is, of course, a matter of compromise between the natural desire for independence of each participant and overriding political aspirations. If European economic cooperation were dependent upon the compromises put forward by the various administrations concerned, we should probably be led into weaknesses and inconsistencies. So it is the political aspiration for unity which must prevail. We must be guided above all by the overriding realisation that it is essential to build a united Europe in order to ensure for ourselves peace, progress, and social justice".[7]
Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak recently said removing the headphone jack in the next version of the iPhone is going to tick off a lot of people. Its been rumored for months that Apple would be scrapping the 3.5 mm headphone jack in the iPhone 7 its expected to unveil next week.

Such a move, Wozniak said in an interview, could upset users who have invested in listening technology that uses the headphone jack.

Ditching the headphone jack could be the prelude to another rumored new product: Bluetooth earbuds based on a very-low-powered radio chip developed exclusively by Apple.

Wozniak prefers listening to music over wired headphones, he told The Australian Financial Review, because audio through Bluetooth wireless technology, which is used by most wireless headsets, sounds flat.

However, if Bluetooth could be improved to produce better sound, hed use wireless headphones, he said.

Such technology already exists, maintained Jeff Orr, senior practice director for mobile devices at ABI Research.

There is the ability in Bluetooth to deliver a very high-quality audio experience, he told TechNewsWorld. It depends on how much a company is willing to invest in it to deliver something an audiophile would appreciate.

Jackless Options

Without the headphone jack, the only headset option would be wireless, unless Apple introduces alternatives. One solution could be headphones that plug into Apples proprietary Lightning Connector, which is used primarily to charge the iPhone.

However, its rumored that Apple is changing that connector, too. The new connector would dock to the iPhone magnetically, similar to Apples laptop computer connectors.

Another alternative would be to offer a dongle that would plug into the Lightning Connector and add a 3.5 mm jack to the iPhone.

Apple used the adaptor approach before, when it went from using a 30-pin connector on its iOS devices to the present Lightning Connector.

Such an adaptor likely would be inelegant, maintained Kevin Krewell, a principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Apple does not make elegant dongles, he told TechNewsWorld.

The dongles are designed to be as inelegant as possible to convince people not to use them for an extended period of time and to move on to whats new, Krewell added.

Inelegant or not, Wozniak would use an adaptor with an iPhone so he could listen to music through his wired earphones with custom ear implants, he told the AFR.

Strong Foundation

Although the demise of the headphone jack has not been confirmed, the rumor appears to be very well established, as rumors go.

Its been a solid rumor for an extended period of time, so I believe it will be true, Krewell said.

There are still doubters, though.

I wouldnt be surprised if Apple floated the idea a year ago to get people talking about it and see how people would react to this type of change, ABIs Orr noted.

If Apple does scrap the standard headphone jack, it wont be the first company to do so. Lenovo removed the jack in its flagship Moto Z line of phones introduced earlier this year.

If youre going to remove the headphone jack, youd better have a compelling advantage for consumers, said Ian Fogg, senior director of the mobile and telecoms team at IHS Markit.

Lenovos pitch is that by eliminating the headphone jack it can create a thinner device to which optional modules can be attached. The problem is that the modules would add thickness to the phone.

That makes Lenovos proposition for dropping the headphone jack quite weak, Fogg told TechNewsWorld.

Backlash or Back Pat?

Although Apple has made bold moves to mothball legacy technology in the past, losing the headphone jack is different from going from a 30-pin to Lightning Connector.

The headphone jack is not just a port used by smartphones. Its used on many devices  laptops, TV sets, home stereos, radios. Its very, very ubiquitous, Fogg said.

It isnt like a change in the product line where people can get over the change fairly quickly. There are so many other devices where people use a headphone socket, it will take them many years to switch to something newer, he suggested. That makes it a tricky area for Apple to innovate in.

Will eliminating the headphone jack tick off customers, as Wozniak predicted?

There is certainly the risk that Apple will alienate some part of its audience if it removes the audio port from the iPhone, said Orr.

However, if the past is any predictor of the future, Apple should be able to keep its fans in line.

Apples customer base has never abandoned it when its made major infrastructure transitions in the past, observed Tirias Krewell. Theres always grumbling initially, but people eventually fall in line.
 Flash

Former British Prime Minister David Cameron has resigned as a Conservative Member of Parliament two months after he quit as prime minister in the wake of the June Brexit referendum.

British Prime Minister David Cameron prepares to address a press conference at the end of an extraordinary two-day EU summit at the European Council in Brussels, Belgium, Feb.19, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Cameron told BBC in an interview that he was standing down because he does not want things he says on the backbenches to be "distraction."

He said that he thought about the decision long and hard and it isn't really possible to be a proper backbench MP as a former prime minister.

Cameron stepped down as the MP for the British constituency of Witney. The 49-year-old has earlier said he would continue as an MP until the next general election.

The politician, who had represented Witney since 2001, became Conservative leader in 2005 and served as prime minister for six years from 2010.
Despite initially denying that there was anything wrong when the Daldykan River in Russia turned bright red virtually overnight, on Tuesday, Norilsk Nickel, the worlds largest nickel manufacturer, has admitted responsibility. But for the Siberian city of Norilsk, its just another sad chapter in its history.

Nickel manufacturing in Norilsk generates millions of tons of air pollution. Gelio / LiveJournal

The city of 175,000, which was founded in 1935 as a slave labor camp, was named one of the worlds most polluted places on Earth by the Blacksmith Institute. WikiTravel advises potential visitors that a substantial stay could jeopardize your health.

Norilsk owes its unfortunate accolade and its economy to some of the largest deposits of nickel on Earth. Mining began in the 1930s, and by 1953 was producing 35 percent of the Soviet Unions total nickel output, 12 percent of its copper, 30 percent of its cobalt and 90 percent of its platinum group metals. Today, it produces 20 percent of the worlds nickel and 50 percent of its palladium.

Norilsk Nickels 1942 Plant, named for the year it began operations, produced about 120,000 metric tons (132,000 U.S. tons) a year. The plant was decommissioned on Aug. 26.

The company, headquartered in Moscow, which recently rebranded itself as Nornickel, issued a statement Monday attributing the Daldykan River event to abnormally heavy rains in the region that caused a dam containing tailings to overflow.

Short-term river color staining with iron salts presents no hazards for people and river fauna, the statement declares.

Others are not so sure. Greenpeace Russia spokesman Alexei Kiselyov told Agency France-Presse (AFP), You cant just say that its no big deal. He noted that the remote area made any investigation more difficult and that the company controls access to the area. The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has opened an investigation.

Indigenous people in the area accuse the company of weak safety standards. They are concerned about the effects of the spill downstream, where they fish in another river.

The now-shuttered plant was responsible for more than 4 million tons of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic, selenium and zinc released into the atmosphere every year. The effects of decades of pollution are stark. Vegetation cant grow within a 20-mile radius. Acid rain covers an area the size of Germany. Heavy metal pollution is so great that the soil itself can be mined.

Life expectancy is 10 years less than in other regions of Russia, the risk of cancer is two times higher and respiratory diseases are widespread, reports the Daily Mail. The citys polluted air may be responsible for 37 percent of child deaths and 21.6 percent of adult mortality.

Norilsk Nickel has a history of environmental problems, including a 2014 discharge of 145,000 pounds of nickel and other contaminants into the Kokemaki River in Finland. Finnish officials detected cobalt, copper, lead and cadmium. Mussels in the Kokemaki River died, and the chief executive officer of the Harjavalta Norilsk Nickel plant admitted that they were probably due to the companys actions.

For its part, the company insists that environmental responsibility is a priority, with a strategic plan in place since 2005.

In its 2015 annual report, Norilsk Nickel states, The company has also put in place an integrated environmental reporting system embracing all of the groups operations and monitoring the achievement of environmental objectives. It says that wastewater charges have been consistently reduced and 99 percent of the companys wastes are classified as non-hazardous.

Norilsk Nickel also says that the shutdown of the 1942 Plant will remove 600 sources of air pollutants and cites the action as part of its environmental program. But more than seven decades of pollution and toxic waste have taken a toll on the environment and health of the Siberian community, which wont easily be restored.
Scotland, already

a renewable energy powerhouse, has launched the first and largest free stream tidal power project in the world.

MeyGen

The

MeyGen tidal stream project, operated by Edinburgh-based tidal developer Atlantis Resources Limited, aims to deliver 398 megawatts of energyharnessed purely from water currentsto the grid.

The goal of the project is to help develop Scotlands marine renewables industry, creating jobs and investment, the Scottish government said. The project is expected to generate around 275 million (about $360 million) for the countrys economy.

Tidal stream generators work similarly to wind turbines, but instead of air currents they draw energy from waves. This form of hydropower has incredible promise as a form of carbon-free energy, but progress has been slower than expected. It wasnt until 2014 that the MeyGen project became the worlds first large-scale tidal project of its type to successfully reach a funding agreement.

Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon visited Nigg Energy Park in the Scottish Highlands on Monday to help unveil the arrays first turbine. The Scottish government has provided 23 million (about $30 million) to fund the first phase of the MeyGen tidal farm.

#SRMARINE16 Our CEO delivered a speech this morning to open the SR conference. What an amazing time for tidal! pic.twitter.com/ld7uzq2V0l  SIMEC Atlantis Energy (@simecatlantis) September 13, 2016

I am incredibly proud of Scotlands role in leading the way in tackling climate change and investment in marine renewables is a hugely important part of this, Sturgeon said. MeyGen is set to invigorate the marine renewables industry in Scotland and provide vital jobs for a skilled workforce, retaining valuable offshore expertise here in Scotland that would otherwise be lost overseas. Highly skilled operation and maintenance jobs will also need to be carried out locally, providing strong local employment opportunity for rural areas.

According to Maritime Journal, four 1.5 megawatt turbines, weighing nearly 200 tons each, make up Phase 1a of the project. The turbines will stand 15 meters tall and with blades 18 meters in diameter. The turbines will be installed on their foundation structures at Nigg before its eventual deployment to the MeyGen site in Pentland Firth, a strait in the north of Scotland known for its vast and untapped quantities of tidal, wind and wave power.

Former Energy Secretary Ed Davey said in a 2014 statement that wave and tidal power have the potential to provide more than 20 percent of the UKs electricity needs, and MeyGen could pave the way for future projects in the Pentland Firth.

Atlantis said that it is on track to deliver power to the grid from MeyGen Phase 1a later this yeara landmark event for the global marine power industry. Once construction of the full array is complete, the MeyGen tidal farm will consist of 269 turbines and generate enough energy to power 175,000 homes in the United Kingdom.

Today marks an historic milestone not just for Atlantis and our project partners, but for the entire global tidal power industry, Atlantis Resources CEO Tim Cornelius said. It gives me enormous pride to have reached this juncture after 10 years of tireless work, preparation and planning by everyone associated with this project. This is the day the tidal power industry announced itself as the most exciting new asset class of renewable, sustainable generation in the UKs future energy mix. This is an industry that is creating jobs and Scotland is the undisputed world leader of this high growth sector.

Following the Brexit, a cloud of uncertainty has remained over the UKs climate policy. Scotland has its own climate goals, but the rest of the UK does not.

During Sturgeons visit to the Nigg Energy Park this week, the first minister called on the UK government to end uncertainty around subsidies for wave and tidal stream projects which is putting the marine sector at risk, the Scottish government said.

There is no doubt that the eyes of the world are on this project which is why the Scottish governments investment is so crucially important, Sturgeon said. But it is absolutely vital that the UK government honors its earlier commitment to provide a ring-fenced allocation for marine energy in its renewables support scheme. They must tackle the current uncertainty that exists before they cause irreparable damage to the long-term prospects for the sector.

According to UPI, The British government last year announced plans to end public subsidies for some parts of the renewable energy sector, defending the move as a way to keep consumer bills low.
Whether youre seeking out a trusted solar company or best sustainable brands, many people are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Carbon offset programs provide a real opportunity to be part of the climate change solution. In 2021, there are a number of impactful carbon offset programs to choose from. The question is, which one allows you to make the biggest difference? Our review will provide an overview of carbon offset programs and recommend the best ones to help reduce and counterbalance your greenhouse gas emissions.

Our Picks for the Best Carbon Offset Programs

Each product featured here has been independently selected by the writer. You can learn more about our review methodology here. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn commission.

Best for E-Commerce  Shopify

 Shopify Best Online Calculator  NativeEnergy

 NativeEnergy Best for Travel and Tourism  Sustainable Travel International

 Sustainable Travel International Most Transparent  myclimate

 myclimate Easiest to Use  TerraPass

 TerraPass Best for Certified Projects  Clear

 Clear Best for Air Travel  atmosfair

 atmosfair Best for Businesses  3Degrees

What is a Carbon Offset Program?

What is a carbon offset program?

Every day, you engage in activities that leave behind an environmental footprint. You add to the worlds carbon dioxide pollution every time you drive your car, purchase goods from a major manufacturer, and so forth.

When you purchase a membership in a carbon offset program, also offered as carbon credits, you invest in clean energy and carbon reduction efforts elsewhere in the world. The goal is basically for this environmental activity to offset your own carbon footprint. The ultimate objective is to become as close to carbon neutral as possible.

Both individuals and corporations can invest in carbon offset programs. While there are a number of options to choose from, many of them involve investment in eco-friendly initiatives in developing countries. Others help to offset the travel, shipping, or production that are part of other industries. The idea is to create an infrastructure that will allow these companies to work towards sustainability and emissions reductions well into the future, while effectively canceling out their carbon emissions in the meantime.

Historically, carbon offset programs have been fairly simple. For example, in some programs, your investment essentially goes to planting trees in reforestation efforts. More advanced carbon offset programs, however, allow you to help fund the development of important sustainability technologies, like efficient cookstoves in developing countries or methane capture at landfills.

How We Chose the Best Programs

Mischa Keijser / Getty Images

There are concerns among some activists that carbon offset programs allow certain countries or industries to pay to appear eco-friendly while avoiding actual efforts to reduce the amount of of carbon they produce. When used properly, however, carbon offsets can be a legitimate tool to help encourage sustainable development and reduce the use of fossil fuels.

We vetted a number of climate offset programs to find options making the biggest impact in our world. A number of factors have gone into our choices.

First, we looked for carbon offset programs that came with the endorsement of prestigious environmental stewardship groups. These organizations thoroughly vet all carbon offset projects for transparency, impact, and additionality. The carbon offset programs on our list are endorsed by prominent third-party organizations, including:

Additionally, we have been intentional about choosing programs that represent many different types of projects. And, we have considered factors such as the presence of easy-to-use online calculators; the convenience of making a transaction; and the total number of options that each carbon offset program presents.

The 8 Best Carbon Offset Programs

While Shopify is not a carbon offset program, they do provide a platform to help more merchants and buyers offset the carbon emissions of their e-commerce deliveries. For merchants and businesses, they developed an app called Offset that allows them to opt in and offset all of their deliveries. For customers, there is the Shop app, and for every order purchased using Shop Pay, Shopify will offset all of the emissions from the delivery. All Shopify carbon offsets are purchased from Pachama, a company that seeks to use technology and A.I. to help drive carbon capture and protect global forests. Shopify notes that offsets are not a perfect solutionbut theyre a necessary tool. We appreciate that they are making it easier for more and more people to use this necessary tool to reduce carbon emissions with every purchase.

You can visit the Shopify site to learn more about their carbon offsets strategy.

NativeEnergy does a lot of pioneering work to reduce carbon emissions, promote biodiversity in ecosystems, and invest in regenerative agriculture across the world. We like them because they make it easy to get involved, either as an individual or as a corporation, via an intuitive online carbon calculator and a range of investment options. Well also note that they have been around for more than 20 years, and in that time have taken on some high-level corporate partners, including Ben & Jerrys.

Learn more about NativeEnergy by checking out their website.

This organization made our list because their underlying premise makes so much sense: One of the best ways to support sustainability developments in ecologically vulnerable areas is to invest in their travel and tourism industries in local communities. Sustainable Travel International works with premier destinations, helping them develop their tourist trades while also enacting important environmental protections.

At their website, you can find a ton of information about the work Sustainable Travel International has done to minimize pollution and reduce carbon emissions. And of course, you can purchase carbon offsets to help subsidize their work.

Theres a lot to appreciate about myclimate, but above all, we love this organization because of how easy they make it to purchase carbon offsets. When you go to their website, you will immediately see their carbon offset calculator, which will allow you to input information about recent travel (including flights and cruises), household activities, and more. Using this data, myclimate will provide you with an estimate of your total carbon footprint and show you some ways to invest in meaningful offsets.

If you truly want to offset your day-to-day carbon footprint in a calculated and precise way, head to myclimate and get going.

TerraPass is one of the leading names in carbon offsets, and its not hard to see why. When you visit their website, you will find ways to get involved as an individual, as a small or mid-sized business, and even as a large enterprise. Not only do they provide a great carbon calculator, but they also have a lot of valuable information about embracing sustainability, both within your household and your business. Your investment with TerraPass can help fund energy efficiency through wind power, sustainable farming, and a range of other environmental projects.

You can explore some of the options by checking out the TerraPass website.

Clear is extremely well-regarded. Since 2005, this organization has developed a reputation for only supporting the highest quality projects, including sustainability measures that attain such standards as Certified Emission Reduction (CER) certification and Gold Standard VERs. This is actually the only organization where you can be sure that all carbon offsets are certified by the Quality Assurance Standard for Carbon Offsetting. Additional reasons to choose Clear include ultra-precise carbon offset calculators, fair and affordable pricing, and a range of opportunities for both individuals and businesses.

You can visit the Clear website to learn more about purchasing carbon offsets from them.

atmosfair is a non-profit organization based in Germany. The organizations stated goals are to offset carbon emissions, promote sustainable travel, and ultimately play a role in long-term energy transitions across the planet. They currently have projects in more than a dozen countries, and they rely entirely on carbon offsets purchased by individuals and by companies.

Their big emphasis is on offsetting the environmental impact of air travel, so if thats something that youre passionate about, wed recommend taking a look at the atmosfair website.

Finally, were really enthusiastic about all the good work being done by 3Degrees. This organization works with corporations across the world, helping them implement renewable energy sources, decarbonize their transportation, and more. Of course, they also have some options for you to support their work by purchasing carbon offsets. You can find out a lot more about what they do by visiting their website; they have a lot of detailed information about their different projects, including case studies.

Visit the 3Degrees site to find out more.

How to Find a Carbon Offset Program

Nick Brundle Photography / Getty Images

Clearly, there are plenty of ways to support green initiatives, and to counterbalance some of your own carbon emissions. As you seek to find the best carbon offset program for you, the primary factor to keep in mind is transparency. You want to make sure that the dollars youre donating actually go to high-quality projects that make a real-world difference in the amount of carbon produced each year.
(Photo: Pastor Steven Anderson's Facebook page)U.S. Pastor Steven Anderson campaigns.

South Africa has barred controversial U.S. pastor Steven Anderson from visiting the county after civil society groups campaigned against homophobic remarks he had made.

Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba made the announcement Sept. 13 in Cape Town on the pastor who denigrated Archbishop Desmond Tutu as "a pervert in a pink dress."

Gigaba said, "Mr. Steven Anderson and members and/or associates of his church are prohibited from entering the Republic of South Africa."

Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Njongonkulu Ndungane was quick to welcome the decision by the government to decline permission for Anderson's to visit South Africa.

Ndungane had made a call a week earlier for a visa to be denied to the openly homophobic American pastor, who attacked his predecessor Tutu for his stance on homosexuality.

"People who openly attack people on the basis of their sexuality' such as Pastor Anderson' should not be given a platform in South Africa to stir up antagonism towards LGBT people.

"I welcome the very firm stance that Home Affairs has taken on this matter'" he said.

Before the ban the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa said it regrets that Anderson's "hatred for LGBTs may be spread here."

The head of the alliance Moss Ntlha in a statement said it condemned Anderson's "gay hating attitude." He said, "The constitution lays the basis on which South Africa's many cultures agreed to live together. White-black, religious and secular, LGBT and straight, rich and poor, we all stand as one rainbow nation.

"As South Africans we accept that people with LGBT orientations have rights to dignity and freedom, as indeed all other South Africans."

Anderson had planned to visit South Africa, but ANA news agency reported that "owing to his homophobic views" there had been uncertainty over his planned visit."

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION PETITION

The South African Human Rights Commission petitioned the government to ban Anderson from entering the country.

LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) groups also secured a 60,000 signature petitions asking the Department of Home Affairs to deny him entry into the country.

The home affairs department had initially said that it would be attaching "serious conditions" to Anderson's visit.

Anderson, was scheduled to preach in Johannesburg on September 18.

His church is based in the state of Arizona and he describes itself as an "old-fashioned, independent, fundamental, King James Bible only, soul-winning Baptist church," the BBC reported.

The pastor made headlines after he reportedly told congregants at his Arizona-based Faithful Word Baptist Church that there are were less pedophiles in this world after the June 12 terror attack at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida that left 49 people dead.

"The good news is that there's 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles," Anderson said in a video published on YouTube.

Last week Anderson claimed that if the department wanted to bar him from visiting South Africa they would have done so already.

He also released a scathing nine-minute YouTube video on Sept. 13 where he labelled South African minister Gigaba as "a joke", "wicked" and "politically backwards."

He said he would go to neighboring Botswana instead of South Africa.

"I feel sorry for people who live in South Africa, but thank God we still have a wide open door in Botswana. Stand by for reports of MULTITUDES saved in Botswana, where religious freedom still exists," he said on the Faithful Word Baptist Church Facebook page.
 Flash

Fifteen years into its "war on terror" launched after the deadly 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government on Sunday touted its progress on securing the U.S. homeland against terrorist-directed attacks while acknowledging that the threat posed by violent extremists was far from receding.

The students placed aound 3,000 flags in the ground in tribute to the nearly 3,000 victims lost in the attacks almost 15 years ago. [Photo/Xinhua]

"We've dealt devastating blows to al-Qaeda. We've delivered justice to Osama bin Laden. We've strengthened our homeland security. We've prevented attacks. We've saved lives," said U.S. President Barack Obama at a ceremony here honoring those who died in the 2001 attacks.

However, Obama noted that the threat the international community was facing today "has evolved."

"(Now) terrorists often attempt attacks on a smaller, but still deadly, scale. Hateful ideologies urge people in their own country to commit unspeakable violence," said Obama.

During his interview with CNN, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson echoed Obama's warning and said that terrorist-inspired attacks, or lone-wolf attacks, was posing an increasingly serious threat to U.S. homeland security.

"We're safer when it comes to the 9/11-style attack," said Johnson. "But we've got this new environment and new threat which makes it harder."

In an intelligence brief released on Friday, The Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy pointed out that "only one of the goals stated in the aftermath of the (9/11) attacks has been realized: the U.S. has prevented another 9/11 scale attack."

"The other goals- denying terrorists sanctuaries, destroying al-Qaeda, countering violent extremism- have not been reached; all are worse now than before 9/11," said The Soufan Group.

There was indeed progress during the 15-year U.S. military campaign, climaxing with the death of bin Laden before the tenth anniversary of 9/11. At that time, Americans were thrilled with a feeling that the terrorists were finally on the run.

The hope for now has been dashed.

From West and North Africa to South Asia, extremist groups have been lining up to declare allegiance to either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS), once an al-Qaeda franchised group founded after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Moreover, hailing from at least 86 countries as of December, 2015, between 27,000 and 31,000 people had travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the IS and other violent extremist groups, according to data provided by The Soufan Group.

In its initial report entitled Foreign Fighter in Syria, which was released in June 2014, The Soufan Group identified about 12,000 foreign fighters from 81 countries.

Meanwhile, according to Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, over the last decade, there have been on average more than 10,000 terrorist attacks per year, causing an average of over 15,000 deaths per year.

The resurgence of terrorism should by no means puzzling to any. While the goal of the war launched by the United States was supposedly to eliminate terrorism, the fear and hatred those foreign "meddlers" had stirred up in the Middle East has created a breeding ground for extremist ideology.

As the latest villain on its black list, the IS originated not in Iran or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the so-called "axis of evil" branded by Washington, but in Iraq, a state "freed" and "democratized" by the United States itself.

It is also thought-provoking that the IS militants drew much of their fighting experience from the West-involved war in Syria, where the Western bloc supported rebels in their efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Despite the far-reaching and devastating fallout of the Iraqi War, the U.S. authority did not necessarily learn from the lesson that military intervention could worsen the security situation.

Nothing could serve as a better example than the free fall of Libya into chaos after the multinational military intervention under the auspices of then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee.

Calling Clinton the "chief architect" of the botched U.S. Libya policy, Republican lawmaker Peter Roskam revealed last October at a high-profile hearing on the 2012 Benghazi attack that Clinton insisted on the U.S. involvement in Libya despite grim warning and opposition from senior U.S. diplomats.

"(Stephen Mull, then executive secretary of the State Department) said this, 'In the case of our diplomatic history, when we've provided material or tactical military support to people seeking to drive their leaders from power, no matter how just their cause, it's tended to produce net negatives for our interests over the long term in those countries,'" quoted Roskam from communications from Clinton's private server.

"They (U.S. senior diplomats) were pushing back, but you overcame those objections," said Roskam, adding that Vice President Joe Biden, then Defense chief Robert Gates as well as the National Security Council also opposed military actions in Libya.

Unfortunately, Washington paid little attention to exploring the root causes of terrorism, and it would be a never ending war on terror if Washington fails to eliminate the root causes of its headache.
Alfaros central argument is that the College Board often skipped an important part of the test design: review by an external panel at two key points in the process. Alfaro says that sometimes items werent reviewed by the external panel until they were already assembled into final test forms.

The new plan for the district, which includes Las Vegas, calls for principals to handle about 80 percent of their school funds, hire and fire staff, and create a school plan with a committee of teachers, parents, and community members. Principals will have the option of purchasing services from the districts central office.

The proposal, though praised by many as the best opportunity in years to change how the district does business, has been criticized for a lack of details, concerns about equity, and questions about whether it would deepen inequalities between poor and wealthy schools. A final vote on the plan was expected late last week.
Why cant Johnny read? Or, assuming he can, why isnt Johnny closing the achievement gap?

Its politically fashionable to blame his tenure-protected teacher. But might it have more to do with the pathologically disruptive classmate who, given infinite second chances by detached policymakers and feckless administrators, never gets removed from Johnnys classroom?

Thanks, in part, to an increasingly popular behavior-management approach known as restorative justice, soft discipline is on the rise in public schools at the same time that education reformers are demanding higher standards and teacher accountability.

Restorative justice emphasizes correction and counseling over punishment, and seeks to replace strict zero-tolerance discipline policies with collaborative opportunities for restitution. Its primary goal is to keep students in school rather than suspending or expelling them.

Detractors argue that these programs are long on coddling but lacking in consequences, and that they make it a priority to warehouse students whove repeatedly demonstrated they cant be educated in a conventional classroom setting. Were not talking here about the kid who forgot his pencil.

So while many districts proudly point to a reduction in student-removal numbers, critics point out that fewer suspensions dont mean fewer infractions.

The concept of restorative justice has merit. Indeed, Ive been practicing elements of it throughout my 27-year teaching career. When students in my classroom do something disruptive, I chastise the behavior and give them the opportunity to backtrack and apologize. Fix it, I say. Make it right. Almost without exception, they do. Justice restored.

Alas, in a profession where ideologically motivated reforms abound, restorative justice in many districts has recklessly morphed into de facto no student removal policies that are every bit as flawed as the inflexible zero-tolerance policies they were designed to replace.

Just how many times should the student who spews obscenities be sent back to class with no reprisals?"

The process by which this happens is all too familiar to teachers.

Far removed from the pedagogical trenches, federal and state education departments craft behavior-management guidelines designed to vastly reduce suspensions and expulsions, and keep even the most dangerous and defiant students in the least-restrictive educational environment possible.

Then, at the district level, administrators oversee policy specifics based on their idealistic vision of how they wish schools could function, as well as a tendency to blame most classroom misbehavior on teachers who arent sufficiently engaging students. Factor in the costs associated with alternative placement and the fact that many states make graduation rates the primary instrument for administrative evaluations, and even the most dangerous and defiant students arent going anywhere.

But administrators and other insulated experts arent the ones doing the heavy lifting in the now more dysfunctional classroom they helped create. Ultimately, teachersand only teachersare left to raise the academic bar while education policymakers lower or, in some cases, virtually eliminate discipline standards.

Wow, thats some powerful union those teachers have.

It should be mentioned that restorative justice is a reaction in part to statistics that indicate higher suspension and expulsion figures for minority students. The elephant in the classroom is race, and a phenomenon generally referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline. Students removed from schools do have a higher likelihood of ending up in the juvenile and adult criminal-justice system.

However, while all educators must be mindful of biases and pushing out kids considered at risk, it bears emphasizing that the biggest victims of warehousing miscreants are the large numbers of nondisruptive, genuinely teachable students who tend to come from the same home environments as their poorly behaved classmates.

Teachers, especially in high-poverty areas, are some of the most tolerant, patient, social-justice-oriented humanitarians in any profession. But just how many times should the student who spews obscenities be sent back to class with no reprisals? Just how much instructional time has to be sacrificed to hold yet another assembly on why yet another schoolwide brawl occurred?

Education reformers often argue that you cant have great schools without great teachers. Thats probably true. But, given the numerous factorsespecially related to disciplineover which teachers have minimal control, is it possible to have great teachers and still have failing schools?
As I plunge into another year as a middle school language arts teacher, it feels necessary to take a moment for some deep reflection.

First of all, way to go! I remember heading into my first year not only wondering how my 21-year-old self was possibly going to have a real academic impact on 120 8th graders, but also debating if being a teacher was truly the right career path for me. Seven years later, the moments of joy, pride, and fun that teaching brings to my life tell me that I have made the right choice, but upon some deeper reflection, I have recently noticed something else. One of the real reasons I now find my career so fulfilling is because of something so embedded in my everyday practice that I had never taken the time to really notice before. I am so lucky and so empowered to have grown up in the teaching profession during the course of the Web 2.0 era .

Even though I have always collaborated with my colleagues, with the shift to interactive online technology in education, collaboration has become not only seamless, but a welcome necessity. My professional-learning community has strengthened so much since my district became a Google district; everything we create is shared and drafted together, live, through Google Apps for Education . We work together through hard-hitting conversations on data and assessment development, all because we can create and analyze everything together, at the same time. I can crunch data in a Google sheet in a split second so that we can collaborate on appropriate intervention and enrichment planning in the same setting. Additionally, our learning-management system allows other teachers to have access to my assignments and student work, to give feedback to both my students and me in an interdisciplinary manner. Without a doubt, my positive experiences with collaboration in my profession are a result of some of the best tools that Web 2.0 has to offer, making planning and teaching more efficient and effective.

Can You Hear Me Now?

One of the no-brainers for why its been great to grow up as a teacher in the Web 2.0 era is drastically improved communication. I have certainly learned how to up my email game with parents these days; I now email a weekly update to all of my students parents with a link to a Google calendar, giving them access to all of the assignments and resources their students are currently working on. I have received so much gratitude from parents for this method, largely because of the transparency offered to them on what we are working on in school, and what is expected of their child.

Technology providers continue to up the ante for communication on many apps and websites that we frequent in class. Whooos Reading offers student and parent accounts, allowing parents to monitor how often their child is updating their reading log page, and it even lets parents give feedback on their childs responses to reflection questions. Sites like this make communication so much more seamless with parents, as they do not have to worry about getting their child to share their private login information. Finally, the Remind app has served as a communication life-saver when I have forgotten a last-minute reminder in class, or I want students and parents to know that I have updated or changed an assignment. I can use the app on my laptop or phone to directly communicate with parents and students in the form of a text messageall without relinquishing the privacy of my own phone number. Communicating with parents and students has come so far from the occasional phone call home.

Over the past several years, I have heard and learned a lot about the importance and value of giving students timely and meaningful feedback . These days, with nearly every web tool coming fully equipped with a commenting feature, I have zero excuses for not providing my students with effective feedback at a swift pace. My job is made much more efficient when I can help a student with a writing skill in Google Docs comments, auto-grade a Google Forms assessment using Flubaroo and email results to students, or respond to discussion board topics on Canvas with feedback and links to additional resources. The days of laboring over grading essays as my sole means of student feedback are certainly over!

The Pace of Change

As an educator, one of my favorite ways the web has impacted my professional development is by always encouraging me to innovate my practice. As technology changes, I find that I rarely use many of the same programs and websites from year to yearand I like that! I am always on the lookout for systems that can help me improve my teaching. Reflecting on my classroom digital timeline (utilizing Moodle , then Schoology , then Google Classroom , and now finally, Canvas), I must say that I am proud of myself for trying out new technology as it becomes available. This pride is yet another encouraging factor that keeps me loving my job and looking forward to how it continues to change under Web 2.0.

Please understand this raving about online tools doesnt mean I never get overwhelmed by them. When I attend a tech-heavy professional development session, I still leave with my head in a cloud and experience the same amount of panic all of us feel when something new is put on our plates. What I have learned about the benefits of embracing these tools is that I just need to always be on the hunt for technology that will make me a more effective and more efficient teacher. Doing technology just for a check-mark on my summative evaluation is not going to achieve anything substantial.

I must admit that I truly owe a great amount of my job satisfaction to Web 2.0s contributions to the teaching field. I cant wait to see what is going to be available next to improve my work as an educator.
You are here: Home

 Flash

The death toll from the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes against a village in Yemen's capital Sanaa rose to 30, including two children, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator (UNHC) in Yemen said in a statement on Monday.

Yemeni children inspect a charred vehicle on September 9, 2016 after two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) went off inside a car in the capital Sanaa. [Photo/Xinhua]

Furthermore, 17 others were injured, according to Jamie McGoldrick's statement.

On Saturday, the Saudi-led coalition warplanes bombed a water-drilling well site in the village of Bait Sa'dan in the district of Arhab, 50 km north of Sanaa, killing at least 10 civilians and wounding many others.

The fighter jets then continued its aerial assault as village residents rushed to the scene, killing and wounding many more.

Several mudbrick-constructed high-rise buildings beside the targeted water well site were also damaged, according to witnesses.

This is the latest in a series of airstrikes against civilians in Yemen, triggering widespread criticism against the Saudi-led military coalition.

On Thursday, the coalition warplanes killed nine civilians from three families, including four children, in Yemen's northern province of Amran, 60 km north of Sanaa.

"I remain deeply disturbed by the unrelenting attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure throughout Yemen by all parties, which are further destroying Yemen's social fabric and increasing humanitarian needs, particularly for medical attention at a time when the health sector is collapsing," McGoldrick said.

McGoldrick called on all parties involved to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law, to recommit to the April 10 Cessation of Hostilities and to "support the initiatives of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen."

The military Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been targeting Shiite Houthi armed groups and allied troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh since 2015, after they exiled the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The coalition intervened with air military campaigns aiming to prevent rebels from controlling the country and to restore the government.

The UN-sponsored peace talks between Yemeni rival factions collapsed last month.

However, UN Envoy Ismail Ould Chiekh Ahmed said this week that Yemeni parties agreed to resume negotiations to end the war.

The United Nations said at least 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in airstrikes and battles since 2015, and about three million civilians have been displaced.
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
Dylan O'Brien is back in action, this time as American Assassin's ruthless Mitch Rapp.

A counter-terrorism operative under the auspices of the CIA, Rapp hails from Vince Flynn's acclaimed political thrillers. Marred by the loss of his high school sweetheart following the Lockerbie bombing and scooped up by the Agency following his graduation from Syracuse, Rapp will move to the big screen as another world war looms.

Teen Wolf's O'Brien snagged the role during the spring, and European filming began earlier this month. American Assassin marks the actor's first time in front of the camera since his The Maze Runner: The Death Cure accident back in March, and new photos indicate that everything is copacetic.

First Look: Dylan O'Brien as Mitch Rapp in American Assassin A photo posted by American Assassin (@vinceflynnfilm) on Sep 12, 2016 at 1:22pm PDT

In the film, Rapp is a "CIA black ops recruit under the instruction of Cold War veteran Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton)," according to Deadline. "The pair then is enlisted by CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) to investigate a wave of apparently random attacks on military and civilian targets. Together they discover a pattern in the violence that leads them to a joint mission with a lethal Turkish agent (Shiva Negar) to stop a mysterious operative (Taylor Kitsch) intent on starting a world war in the Middle East."

There is currently no release date for American Assassin. O'Brien will return to work on Teen Wolf in October and resume filming for The Death Cure in February.

Follow Vanessa Frith on Twitter and Tumblr.
Echo Polska Properties N.V. (EPP), a leading Warsaw-based real estate investment fund debuted on the main board of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) today under the abbreviated name PolskProp and JSE share code of EPP. Hadley Dean, EPPs Poland based CEO was present to blow the traditional kudu horn to commemorate the company's entry on the JSE.

EPP is a publicly traded real estate investment fund with a current portfolio that includes six office and ten retail projects with gross lettable area (GLA) exceeding 424,216 sqm. EPP owns and manages real estate developments, with a focus on major cities in Poland, the largest economy in Central Europe. Poland boasts a large, stable and liquid real estate market that has become increasingly attractive to foreign investors over the last few years.

The companys shares began the morning session on the JSE trading at R24. The company had placed approximately 71.5 million of its shares with invited investors at an issue price of EUR 1.45 per private placement share and the placement has allowed EPP to successfully raise an aggregate amount of EUR 100,000,000.

The success of the private placement demonstrates investors confidence in our growth strategy. We are very happy by the strong interest shown in EPP and serves as an endorsement of the unique investment opportunity we believe Poland represents. Proceeds from the capital raise will be utilised to accelerate and fund acquisitions, says Hadley Dean, CEO.

EPPs issued shares are currently traded on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and its listing on the JSE constitutes a dual primary listing and will be a foreign inward listing.

EPPs listing on the LuxSE and the JSE will provide the company with significantly improved access to expansionary capital and provide existing and future shareholders with an opportunity to invest in a highly-attractive Polish economy.

EPP has the scale, scope and capital to be a cash-generating platform of well-performing office, retail, and industrial assets that will deliver consistently high returns to shareholders. This is an exciting day for EPP and the outstanding team of professionals who have made this a reality, Dean said.

Already the largest listed Polish yielding property company, EPPs goal is to become the dominant retail landlord in Poland while targeting sustainable double digit annual growth in dividends per share in the short and medium term through a combination of organic and acquisitive growth.

The company is banking on growth opportunities that are already built into the EPP portfolio including, filling of vacancies in newly developed properties; 22,000 sqm of retail extensions to two of the companys existing retail centres that are currently underway; a 25% stake in ten assets subject to a right of first offer (ROFO) and a 70% stake in an 110 000 sqm retail development in Warsaw.

EPPs high quality portfolio of commercial properties offer attractive and secure yields with a diverse range of primarily blue-chip global clients the primary tenants. With the portfolio located in one of the most dynamic and fastest growing economies in Europe, experienced management and well reputed strategic partners, EPP represents a compelling investment, according to Dean.

EPP will remain focused on acquiring further high quality, well located office assets with strong international and domestic tenants in major Polish cities.

EPP will also closely monitor the logistics and fulfilment centre sectors, which are in many respects derivatives of the dynamically growing retail sector, Dean added.

The company anticipates further growth in the warehouse sector, in part given the increasingly close relationship between retail and logistics arising from e-commerce.

We will also look to trade assets where appropriate to ensure our portfolio remains balanced and competitive in the long term, while maintaining a weighted average unexpired lease term in excess of four years, concludes Dean

EPP is a jointly owned by Polands largest developer Echo Investment S.A. and South Africas Redefine Properties (JSE: RDF), which holds a strategic 49.9% investment.
To reach me for collaborations, sponsorships, and event invitations, I am contactable at

the-ice-angel@hotmail.com


Younited Italia, Nicola Manzari e il nuovo Coo, Luca Faccini e Head of Growth e Domenico Petraroli e General Counsel
WASHINGTON, DC - Sept. 13, 2016 - It's been known that the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae secretes small molecules called siderophores that enable it to acquire iron from a host and fuel its spread. Now, Michigan researchers have found that these molecules play additional roles in helping the organism invade. Their report is published this week in mBio, an online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

In mice infected with K. pneumoniae, the investigators found, siderophores caused the animals to turn on proteins that increase inflammation and activated a master protein called HIF-1 alpha that paved the way for bacteria to spread from the lungs to the spleen. HIF-1 alpha controls the ability of substances to pass through blood vessels and is involved in the immune response.

"We've known for a long time that siderophores are critical for bacteria to cause infection, because they steal iron from the host to grow," said senior study author Michael Bachman, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of clinical pathology and associate director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "This study sheds some light on the consequences of that. When the bacterium steals this iron, what's likely happening is the host cells are becoming stressed and are inducing inflammation and cell signaling pathways that actually worsen the infection by allowing the bacteria to escape from the lungs to the spleen."

K. pneumoniae can cause a wide range of infections, including pneumonia, bacteremia, wound or surgical site infections and urinary tract infections. Klebsiella are estimated to be the third most common cause of hospital-acquired infections in the United States, Bachman said. The bacterium is rapidly becoming resistant to all known antibiotics, therefore becoming more difficult to treat. Resistant forms are considered an urgent threat to public health by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the study, Bachman and colleagues infected mice with either a strain of K. pneumoniae that makes three siderophores called enterobactin (Ent), salmochelin (Sal) and yersiniabactin (Ybt), or a mutant form of the bacterium that could not produce siderophores. Mice infected with the siderophore-producing strain had about 100 times the number of bacteria in their lungs as those infected with the mutant bacterium; they also had more bacteria invading from the lung to the spleen and they activated proteins involved in inflammation.

"We had assumed that siderophores simply helped the bacteria grow more, triggering more inflammation and spread," Bachman said. "Now we know siderophores can trigger these effects directly."

Additional laboratory experiments in mice revealed that all three siderophores were required for the most bacterial dissemination to the spleen; that siderophores secreted by K. pneumoniae stabilized HIF-1 alpha; and that HIF-1 alpha in the cells lining the lungs is required for the bacteria to spread to the spleen. Mice that produced HIF-1 alpha and were infected with K. pneumoniae had more bacterial invasion to the spleen than mice that did not produce HIF-1 alpha and were similarly infected.

"These results indicate that bacterial siderophores directly alter the host response to pneumonia in addition to providing iron for bacterial growth," Bachman said. "Therapies that disrupt production of siderophores could provide a two-pronged attack against K. pneumoniae infection by preventing bacterial growth and preventing bacterial dissemination to the blood."

###

The study was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Canada Discovery Grant.

mBio is an open access online journal published by the American Society for Microbiology to make microbiology research broadly accessible. The focus of the journal is on rapid publication of cutting-edge research spanning the entire spectrum of microbiology and related fields. It can be found online at http://mbio.asm.org.

The American Society for Microbiology is the largest single life science society, composed of over 48,000 scientists and health professionals. ASM's mission is to promote and advance the microbial sciences.

ASM advances the microbial sciences through conferences, publications, certifications and educational opportunities. It enhances laboratory capacity around the globe through training and resources. It provides a network for scientists in academia, industry and clinical settings. Additionally, ASM promotes a deeper understanding of the microbial sciences to diverse audiences.
Implementing an analytic tool that allocates clinical care costs and quality measures to individual patient encounters was associated with significant improvements in value of care for 3 designated outcomes -- total joint replacement, laboratory testing among medical inpatients, and sepsis management, according to a study appearing in the September 13 issue of JAMA.

Fee-for-service payment models reward care volume over value. Under fee-for-service models, health care costs are increasing at a rate of 5.3 percent annually, accounted for 17.7 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product in 2014, and are projected to increase to 19.6 percent of the gross domestic product by 2024. Value-based payment models and alternative payment models incentivize the provision of efficient, high-quality, patient-centered care through financial penalties and rewards. Under alternative payment models, clinicians will theoretically deliver higher-quality care that results in better outcomes, fewer complications, and reduced health care spending. To implement alternative payment models effectively, physicians must understand actual care costs (not charges) and outcomes achieved for individual patients with defined clinical conditions--the level at which they can most directly influence change.

Vivian S. Lee, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and colleagues measured quality and outcomes relative to cost from 2012 to 2016 at University of Utah Health Care. Clinical improvement projects included total hip and knee joint replacement, hospitalist (physicians who practice in the inpatient setting) laboratory utilization, and management of sepsis. Physicians were given access to a tool with information about outcomes, costs (not charges), and variation and partnered with process improvement experts.

From July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015, there were 1.7 million total patient visits, including 34,000 inpatient discharges. For total joint replacement, a composite quality index was 54 percent at baseline (n = 233 encounters) and 80 percent 1 year into the implementation (n = 188 encounters). Compared with the baseline year, average direct costs were 7 percent lower in the implementation year and 11 percent lower in the post-implementation year.

The initiative to reduce hospitalist laboratory testing was associated with 11 percent lower costs, with no significant change in length of stay and a lower 30-day readmission rate. A sepsis intervention was associated with reduced average times to anti-infective administration following fulfillment of systemic inflammatory response syndrome criteria in patients with infection (7.8 hours to 3.6 hours).

"Implementation of a multifaceted value-driven outcomes tool to identify high variability in costs and outcomes in a large single health care system was associated with reduced costs and improved quality for 3 selected clinical projects. There may be benefit for individual physicians to understand actual care costs (not charges) and outcomes achieved for individual patients with defined clinical conditions," the authors write.

###

(doi:10.1001/jama.2016.12226; the study is available pre-embargo to the media at the For the Media website)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.

Note: A podcast interview with Vivian S. Lee, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., and Michael E. Porter, Ph.D., is available at the For the Media website.

Editorial: From Volume to Value in Health Care

Michael E. Porter, Ph.D., of Harvard Business School, Boston, and Thomas H. Lee, M.D., M.Sc., of Press Ganey, Wakefield, Mass., comment on the findings of this study in an accompanying editorial.

"The study by Lee and colleagues in this issue of JAMA is an impressive and important step forward, not just for the University of Utah Health Care system but for the rest of U.S. health care and other health care systems around the world that are focused on value. The findings offer proof of concept that improving value by patient condition can lead to lower costs and better quality--at the same time. There is much to be done and the road is long, but the report by Lee and colleagues points out how the path begins."

(doi:10.1001/jama.2016.11698; the editorial is available pre-embargo to the media at the For the Media website)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Among patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement, younger age, male sex, history of diabetes mellitus, and moderate to severe residual aortic regurgitation were significantly associated with an increased risk of infective endocarditis, and patients who developed endocarditis had high rates of in-hospital mortality and 2-year mortality, according to a study appearing in the September 13 issue of JAMA.

Infective endocarditis (an infection caused by bacteria that enter the bloodstream and settle in the heart valve or heart lining) following surgical valve replacement occurs in 1 percent to 6 percent of patients and is associated with a high risk of illness and death. Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has emerged as a therapeutic option for patients with aortic stenosis (narrowing) who are considered to be at high or prohibitive surgical risk. Limited data exist on clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients who had infective endocarditis after undergoing TAVR.

Josep Rodes-Cabau, M.D., of Quebec Heart and Lung Institute, Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada and colleagues analyzed data from the Infectious Endocarditis after TAVR International Registry, which included patients with definite infective endocarditis after TAVR from 47 centers from Europe, North America, and South America between June 2005 and October 2015. A total of 250 cases of infective endocarditis occurred in 20,006 patients after TAVR (incidence, 1.1 percent per person-year; median age, 80 years; 64 percent men). Median time from TAVR to infective endocarditis was 5.3 months.

The characteristics associated with higher risk of progressing to infective endocarditis after TAVR was younger age (78.9 years vs 81.8 years), male sex (62 percent vs 50 percent), diabetes mellitus (42 percent vs 30 percent), and moderate to severe aortic regurgitation (22 percent vs 15 percent). Health care-associated infective endocarditis was present in 53 percent of patients. Enterococci species and Staphylococcus aureus were the most frequently isolated microorganisms (25 percent and 23 percent, respectively). The in-hospital mortality rate was 36 percent, and surgery was performed in 15 percent of patients during the infective endocarditis episode. In-hospital mortality was associated with heart failure and acute kidney injury. The 2-year mortality rate was 67 percent.

"The rate of infective endocarditis after TAVR observed in the present study is similar to that reported for surgical prosthetic valve endocarditis, therefore, supports the lack of reduction in the rate of prosthetic valve infective endocarditis after TAVR despite less invasive nature of TAVR compared with surgical valve replacement. This study confirms the high rate of morbidity and mortality of infective endocarditis after TAVR and provides novel information about the timing, causative organisms, and predictive factors of infective endocarditis in this particular population. This information may help the clinicians identify patients at higher risk and aid in implementing appropriate preventive measures," the authors write.

###

(doi:10.1001/jama.2016.12347; the study is available pre-embargo to the media at the For the Media website)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
In a study appearing in the September 13 issue of JAMA, Jouke T. Annema, M.D., Ph.D., of the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, and colleagues examined five-year survival after endosonography vs mediastinoscopy for mediastinal nodal staging of lung cancer.

Accurate mediastinal nodal staging is crucial in the management of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) because it directs therapy and has prognostic value. The Assessment of Surgical Staging vs Endosonographic Ultrasound in Lung Cancer (ASTER) trial compared mediastinoscopy (surgical staging) with an endosonographic staging strategy (which combined the use of endobronchial and transesophageal ultrasound followed by mediastinoscopy if negative). The endosonographic strategy was significantly more sensitive for diagnosing mediastinal nodal metastases than surgical staging (94 percent endosonographic strategy vs 79 percent surgical strategy). If mediastinal staging is improved, more patients should receive optimal treatment and might survive longer.

This analysis evaluated survival in ASTER. Of 241 patients with potentially resectable NSCLC, 123 were randomized to endosonographic staging and 118 to surgical staging in 4 tertiary referral centers. Survival data were obtained through patient records, death registers, or contact with general practitioners. Survival data at 5 years were obtained for 237 of 241 patients. The prevalence of mediastinal nodal metastases was 54 percent in the endosonographic strategy group and 44 percent in the surgical strategy group. Survival at 5 years was 35 percent for the endosonographic strategy vs 35 percent for the surgical strategy. The estimated median survival was 31 months for the endosonographic strategy vs 33 months for the surgical strategy.

"Why did improved mediastinal staging not lead to improved survival? Missing data occurred in less than 2 percent and therefore are an unlikely source of bias. However, ASTER was powered to detect a difference in diagnostic sensitivity, not survival, as reflected by the wide confidence intervals. If a survival difference between the strategies exists, it is likely to be small and a larger sample size may be needed to detect it. However, randomized trials to detect a survival difference based on staging strategy are not likely to be conducted as the endosonographic strategy is now advised in clinical guidelines," the authors write.

###

(doi:10.1001/jama.2016.10349; the study is available pre-embargo to the media at the For the Media website)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Written by ACM

*Strasbourg/Angelo Marcopolo/- EU Parliament's Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Committee, chaired by Experienced ChristianDemocrat/EPP MEP Elmar Brok (Comp. several Brok's Statements to "Eurofora"'s co-Founder during more than 20 Years, f.ex. : http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/euandrussiaparliamentsforeignaffairschairsoneueurasiaukraine.html + http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/brokonusareportaboutnsa.html, etc) , was the First to hear, this Evening in Strasbourg, an initial assessment of Recentt Developments, after Last Week's Visit to Turkey by EU Commissioners Mogherini (also EU Council's High Representative on Foreign Policy) and Hahn (competent for Enlargement and Neighborhoud), as wel as the current State of Play on Ankara's persisting Blackmail still exerted on the EU, (despite the blatantly InCompatible Massive Violations of Human Rights, Democracy and Rule of Law under the Pretext of a Strange, 5 Hours "long" Coup Attempt this Summer), which Abuses of Threats linked to the UnPrecedented 2015-2016 Massive 1,5 Million Asylum Seekers/Irregular Migrants' Influx through Turkey, via EU (+Shengen) Member Greece, in order to Attempt to Impose a Highly Controversial and notoriously UnPopular "VISA-Free" status for 80 Millions of Turks, that would enable them to Enter inside EU up to, at least, 6 Months each Year :



- Replying to MEPs' Questions, Hahn, inter alia, clearly Declared, indeed, Tonight that, (Contrary to Opposite Claims by both Turkish President Erdogan and Forein Minister Cavusoglu, arguying that there would be an "October" 2016 Time Deadline), in Fact, "there is NO DATE Attached" for such a Massive "Visa Liberalisation", (i.e. the Biggest ever considered by the EU, throughout all its History, since, f.ex., Brussels hasn't yet accepted any kind of such Visa Free regime not even for Culturaly, Historicaly and GeoPoliticaly "European", and Economicaly as well as Scientificaly/Technologicaly Developed Russian People, etc).



=> "It Depends on When Turkey Delivers", the EU Commissioner in charge for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy stressed, indirectly but surely Pointing at the 72 Standard EU Conditions for any such move, including, in particular, also Dissident Journalists' Right to Speak out, even Critically, (according to ECHR's well Established Case Law), without being quasi-Systematically accused, Prosecuted and/or Jailed in the notoriously dangerous Turkish Prisons, on a so-called "Anti-Terrorism" Pretext by the AKP regime, (as well as the Independency of Judges, which has been notoriously trampled underfoot in Turkey, particularly with Massive Dismissals and/or Prosecutions of many Thousands of Turkish Judges, this Summer 2016, etc).



- And, naturaly, "I canNot Speculate on that", Concluded Hahn on this "Hot-Potato" point.



- In particular, he Noted MEPs' "Serious Concerns", in regard of Turkey, (as they were repeatedly Expressed, also at EU Parliament's latest 3 Plenary Sessions in Strasbourg, both during May, June and July 2016, (Comp., among others also, f.ex., even CoE Assembly's Resolution asking to "Review" the Controversial EU - Turkey Deal : http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/coeasksreviewofeuturkeydealsyriankurdsofferalternative.html).



+ In Addition, after the more Recent Dramatic Developments inside Turkey, during this Summer 2016, it still remains to be seen, "to What Extend a State of Emerrgency can be Used as a Cover-up for Other Actions", he went on to observe, (i.e., obviously, for an Unprecedented Massive Oppression of many Tens of Thousands of Dissidents, (througout Not Only the Army, but Also the Judges, Civil Servants, Universitarians, Journalists and their Family, and even Private Businessemen, etc).



- Indeed, as a matter of General Principle, "EU has a Clear Methodology" and "Benchmarks", (including, f.ex., its Established "72 Conditions") about any eventual "Visa Liberalisation", Commissioner Hahn remindsd, pointing also to the still Pending cases of Ukraine, Georgia, and other Lands, (including Armenia, with which EU has Not even Started yet relevant Negotiations !), which, on the Contrary, have, already, even reportedly "Met" all those EU's Benchmarks, but withOut having received, until now, an apparently deserved "Right Signal" by EU Council and/or EU Parliament, still dragging their feet amidst also some unclear "Institutional" Problems, as he said. So that it would, obviously, be a Scandalous Blunder, with various Negative Political Consequences, if Turkey got what is still, in real practice, Not yet Given even to several Culturaly, Historicaly and Geographicaly European Countries, which have reportedly respected at least the main EU's Rules...



Here, EU's Neighborhood Policy Commissioner, made a Surprising Reference to the PanEuropean CoE, the 47-Member States strong, Strasbourg HeadQuartered Organisation for Human Rights, Democracy and Rule of Law, by Suggesting that "Now, the CoE can also be Used", in order "to Look on that Issue", (i.e. whether and when Turkey might fullfil the above-mentioned EU's Legal Conditions : Comp. Supra). Indeed, "we (EU) may Rely upon the (Legal) Expertise of the CoE", he speculated.



Perhaps, at least a little bit, following also New EU Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker's famous Report on EU - CoE Cooperation inside the overall European Institutional Architecture, in response to an Official Demand expressed by 47 Heads of State/Government at the 2005 PanEuropean Summit of the CoE in Warsaw, Poland, in which he had, mainly, Concluded that EU could use CoE's Legal Experience particularly on Human Rights' issues, (Comp. "Eurofora" Co-Founder's NewsReports from Warsaw, then, and from CoE's Strasbourg HQ afterwards, including a Reply to our Questions at a Press Conference given by Junker himself, as Published, then, at "TCWeekly"+).



- "But, the EU would Not Delegate" its own powers "to the CoE", (particularly in so "Hot" matters, notoriously Upsetting a Majority of EU Citizens, who are quite Critical, according to various Polls=), and, at any case, concerning the Final "Polirtical Assessment", we, inside "the EU Must Take our Responsibilities", Commissioner Hahn acknowledged.



+ Moreover, at least in this so notoriously particular case, it might appear, eventualy, Inappropriate, if not even Dangerous, for Turkey to (Exceptionaly) find, thus, a way to act Both as ... "Judge and Party" on its own Case, considering the Fact that (as a notorious, Exceptional Remnant of the "Cold War" Period of the Past, since the 1949 - 1952 era), Ankara, curiously, still remains the Only Asiatic CoE's Member State, mainly Located Out of Europe. But, neverttheless, Turkley has there a Veto-brandishing Permanent Representative inside the influential CoE's Committee of Ministers, a lot of Ankara-appointed CoE Secretariat's staff, and even a Recently Expanded Team of Turkish MEPs Voting in CoE's PanEuropean Parliamentary Assembly.. (In fact, Juncker Report's above-mentioned Suggestion pointed particularly at an "Independent", and real Pan-"European" CoE's Commissioner for Human Rights, initialy due to become a sort of CoE's "Voice of Conscience", acting from Strasbourg on the Basis, exclusively, of ECHR Judges' well-Established Case-Law)...



++ But a more Controversial assumption, curiously adopted ToNight by Hahn on a closely Related Issue, while speaking at EU Parliament's FAC (Comp. Supra), was the Claim that the UnPopular EU - Turkey Deal on Mass Migration, (notoriously Imposed by Ankara, during a Shady Sunday, at an Exceptionaly "Emergency-Blocked" Brussels affected by Islamic Extremists' Deadly Terrorism, upon an EU held "Hostage" of still on-going, then, Threats from an Unprecedented "Tsunami" of Massive Irregular Migration, only Partly Claiming "Asylum", and Including even several islamistic Terrorists, as Deadly Attacks against innocent Civilian People in France, etc., Revealed Afterwards), would still be "Implemented", also by Ankara's side :



- Indeed, something pushed Hahn to Astonishingly Back ToNight a Claim that "Since that (Controversial EU - Turkey) Agreement Entered into Force, on April (2016), we have a Drastic Reduction in Numbers" of Mass Irregular Migrants' Trespassing accross EU's External Borders through Turkey, as he Cuiriously said, obviously Totally Ignoring all the Facts (from OPfficial UNHCR and/or IMO Data) and crystal-clear Analysis already made, at First, by a Pioneer "Eurofora"'s Publication, as Early as from the Beginning of May 2016, (See : http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/unpopulareuvisafreefor80millionsturksuseless.html), Later Partly recuperated by various Other Articles, and Partly Officialy Acknowledged even by EU Council's proper Documents which had Introduced at the Latest EU Heads of State/Government's Summit, last June 2016 in Brussels, (Comp. various "Eurofora"s NewsReports from that BRX Event, f.ex. : ...), and, Finally, briefly but almost entirely Endorsed, in substance, even by mainstream German Newspaper "Die Welt", in a landmark Article Published Recently, which clearly Supported "Eurofora"s main Idea and Findings, (See : http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/weltadoptseuroforaviewonuselesseuturkeymigrantsdealafternewthreat.html), that, in Fact, it's already from mid-February 2016 that, Suddenly, a very Sharp Reduction of the Mass Migration Numbers Arriving in Europe through Turkey had really Began, Triggered by Western Balkan and "Visegrad" Group European Countries' Decisions to Start seriously Monitoring their Borders :



Since then (i.e. Mid-February), the famous "Western Balkans' Route" was clearly pronounced as having been "Closed", (including even by EU Council Presiident Donald Tusk himself), so that most Potential Mass "Asylum Seekers" and/or other Irregular Migrants rushing from Turkey into Europe until that moment, Suddenly Started to Sharply Fall Down in Numbers, becoming almost negligeable, Compared to the Previous Situation, already long BEFORE that Controversial and UnPopular EU - Turkey "Blackmail" Deal entered into force, (only Partly, and as Late as between the End of March and the Beginning of April 2016). How can all these, unquestionably Well-Documented Facts, already Published a Long Time ago, in English Language, at the World-Wide Web, (and Visited by Thousands of Independent Readers), clearly Based on Official UNHCR and/or IMO Data (Comp. Supra), still be so Blatantly "Ignored" by some obscure Bureaucrats who, apparently, push Hahn and a few others to stubbornly and Bliindly maintain so Blatantl, Grossly False Claims (Comp. Supra) affecting EU Citizens Lives and all Europe ?



A Contrario, even Now, when Turkey notoriously Attempted to Recently Re-Start "Blackmailing" the EU, even Explicitly, (See f.ex., relevant Threats ny Turkish President Erdogan, and Foreign Minister Cavusoglou, to practicaly Unleash a 2nd "Tsunami" of Irregualr Migrants/Mass Asylum Seekers, if the EU didn't Give a "VISA-Free" Status to 80 Millions Turks before "October" 2016), while also Beginning anew to Send (mainly through notorious Turkish Smugglers, as even several American Investigative Journalists found themselves at the Turkish Coasts Facing nearby Greek Islands, etc) More and More Irregular Migrants again towards EU (+Shengen) Member Greece, through the Aegean Sea, nevertheless, Ankara apparently Found it Now much more Harder, Difficult, or even almost Impossible to really Motivate a lot of potential Migrants, obviously Since they Knew, quite well, that (Contrary to a Pre-February 2016 Past), that Famous "Western Balkans' Route" had been, meanwhile, Closed, by FYROM, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, etc)...



=> So, it's, apparently, Now much More towards the .. Eastern Balkans, (i.e. via Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, towards Hungary, etc), that a reportedly (slowly but steadily) Growing Influx of Massive Asylum Seekers/Irrefular Migrants through Turkey has Recently Started to Advance. To the Point that; Now it's the Bulgarian Government (and Not the current Greek one) which has just been Obliged to Ask for an Urgent EU's practical Help in order to SafeGuard its Borders vis a vis Turkey, which are also EU's External Borders. A Move which has just Inspired even EU Council's President Tusk to Officialy launch a Formal Appeal Urging al EU Heads of State/Government, at the Eve of their forthcoming Gathering in the Bratislava EU informal Summit of 27 EU Countries , this Friday in Slovakia, (current Holder of EU Council's rotating Presidency for the Period of July - December 2016), to Promptly Act to SafeGuard, ipso facto, Both Bulgaria's National Borders, which are also EU's External Borders, facing Turkey.



That's another, yet, New Fact, which, obviously, does Not Fit at all with that Controversial Claim, Based on False Assumptions, that Turkey would, reportedly, be right in the process of "Implementing" the above-Mentioned, UnPopular EU - Turkey bid, (Comp. Supra)...



Particularly when, on the Contrary, EU has already Honored its "Blackmail"-imposed Promisse to "ReLocate Refugees from Turkey" also in a Regular Way, resulting, for the Time being, with an Organized Transfert by the EU of More than "1.000 People from Turkey to Europe", as pointed out EU Parliament's Rapporteur on Turkey's controversial and unpopular EU bid, Socialist MEP Kati Piri from the Netherlands.



In such Circumstances, it obviously, looks quite Akward, and even More Difficult to Explain, why the EU should be Spending, in the Next Few Years, more than ...the Double of those "3 Billions " that "EU has to make Available for Turkey", according to that Controversial and UnPopular "Blackmail"-Driven EU-Turkey Deal, as Hahn reminded ToNight.



- Indeed, from those First "3 Billions " in full Grants destinated for Turkey, EU has already "EarMarked some 2,2 Billions  for Programs and Projects" for various Ankara's activities related to Massive Immigration/Asylum Seekers "waves", mainly from Syria, while about "700 Millions  have been Specified for such concrete Projects, and 180 Millions  Already Paid" in Turkey, the EU Commissioner told EU Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.



- But, the Main Question Raised Now, is Not Only that, Naturaly, at least, "We (i.e. : the EU) Must Know How these Funds are Going to be Used", as Hahn Warned, pointing to the Fact that "it's Important" to Ensure that they go, f.ex., on "Education, Food, Health Care", and/or "Language Classes", etc., (while it's, however, k,own that, at least 50% of the current Mass Asylum Seekers/Irrefular Migrants who are already crossing through Turkish Territories, (particularly those comming from Syria and/or Iraq), More than "50% Want to Return Back, the Soonest possible", as he observed.



- Even in Wider terms, indeed, "We (EU) Need a Reliable Analysis on What is Really Going-on in Turkey", and "Do More to Guess What Turkey Really Expects from the EU", as another MEP observed.

- At any case, Hahn revealed that EU intends to "See (how) the State of Play" will evolve, "on November" 2016, as he said.





However, in Fact, Today, apparently, the Most Crucial Point about the overall potentialm of nowadays Mass Migration Crisis is Elsewhere :



- Indeed, as the Experienced, Long-Time President of EU Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, German ChristianDemocrat/EPP MEP Elmar Brok, according to certain Estimations, there might be, Today, at least "some 100.000 Refugees to Prevent from Attempting to Travel from Libya to Italy", perhaps "with the involvement of some Egyptian Harbours", he pointed out, among other MEPs' queries on various aspects of that Topical North African issue, concerning particularly Libya.



Commissioner Hahn's main Reply "on Libya", as he nicknamed an obviously much Wider, in fact, Problem, was to observe that, indeed, "Refugees' Numbers have Not Decreased" from that area, (where Recently Italy had to rescue a lot of Mass Migrants at the Mediterranean Sea), while, still, " is Missing in Libya a Reliable Partner", as long as the Post-Benghazi 2012 Political and Security Crisis continues, even if, aleady, some relevant "EU Funds are Available".



But, the Main Thrust of that "Libya"/African Mass Migrats' Issue, is in Fact, that we "Need to get to the Roots of the Problem" : "If Economic and Social Problems Continue and Aggravate, we (EU) are Giong to See Migration Problems (from Africa) Grow", Hahn Warned. That's why, he found Timely Important to Refer, here, to EU Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker's famous Investment Plan possible "Extension", mutatis-mutandis, in a way which might Involve also the Southern Shore of the Mediterreanean. That's, indeed, one among the possible Topical Points that Observers are currently Speculating about the eventual Contents of the Forthcoming Juncker's "State of the Union" Speech and Debate with MEPs at EU Parliament's Plenary in Strasbourg, later this week, on Wednesday Morning-Noon., September 15.



=> In that case, IF only in order to try to settle the thorny Turkey - Mass Migrants' Problem alone, might, eventualy, Need More than + 6 Billions  (in full Grants) up to 2018, (as Ankara has notoriously asked), then, How Much more Money would it all Cost, if EU did the Same concerning all the African mega-Continent ?....



Really, wouldn't it be More Efficient to, at least Consider as an Indispensable Addition to EU's available Tools, (Both vis a vsi Africa, as well as vis a vis Turkey, etc), also what could be nick-Named as "the Spanish Model", which has apparently Worked quite Efficiently until now, despite the existence of even a Territorial Link between Africa and Europe there, around the Strategic Rock of Gibraltar ?



(Comp., f.ex., among many others, also at : http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/spanishmfaonmoroccodealonmigrants.html).

(../..)





***





("DraftNews", as already send to "Eurofora" Subscribers/Donors, earlier. A more accurate, full Final Version, might be published asap).





***


Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte express gratitude to China for helping construct a drug rehabilitation center in Manila as the country strengthens its campaign on drugs.

"China offered to build the rehab. I think they have already started in Fort Magsaysay. They are bringing the materials there already. Only China will help us in our campaign against illegal drugs," Duterte told the Filipino community in Indonesia.

According to Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella, China has pledge to help the Philippines in its combat against illegal drugs and the construction of the rehabilitation center has just started this month at Fort Magsaysay.

Duterte said that one of the rehab facilities that China has promised to build in the coming months is in Nueva Ecija.

"I would like to thank China for being so generous to us. Thank you so much," Duterte said.

Fort Magsaysay is the biggest military camp in the Philippines with 35,000 hectares and is one of the training grounds of the Philippine Army.

Abella said that the initial phase of the construction started on September 1.

"The initial groundwork (on the rehab center) has begun," Abella told reporters.

Earlier, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana ordered the opening of all military camps nationwide for the construction of drug rehab centers as directed by the president during his first State of the Nation Address (SONA).

Among the military camps that would house drug rehab centers are the Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, Camp Macario Peralta in Jamindan, Capiz, Camp Kibaritan in Bukidnon, and Camp Tomas Capinpin in Tanay, Rizal.
The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.
Parisrose said: So if I bought a new iPhone here, if I took it to another country would FaceTime still not work? Click to expand...

If you buy directly from Etisalat it will not be on your phone, I have had it appear when I am in other countries, but not always.If you buy it from other shops ask them if it is on the phone, I use one now from a shop and it's on my phone (as well as my iPad and Mac).


Living in a safe and reputable country could make life easier for an expat and now they can research which locations are top notch with the release of the latest list of the worlds most trustworthy nations.Top of the list from the Reputation Institute is Sweden, which has knocked Canada into second place, with Switzerland in third, followed by Australia, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands making up the top 10.The 2016 report the largest annual survey of country reputations of its kind, shows that traditional, objective measures, such as size and economic output have little bearing on the general public's emotional connection to a nation.Being welcoming, safe and beautiful are the top three drivers of a country's reputation, and nations with a strong reputation are better positioned to welcome more tourists, increase exports, improve diplomacy and attract foreign investment, knowledge and talent, said Nicolas Trad, executive partner at the Reputation Institute.The scores and rankings are based on more than 58,000 ratings collected in the first quarter of 2016. They measure consumer perceptions of whether the country has an advanced economy, an appealing environment and an effective government.While few of the world's largest and most powerful countries earn strong reputations, scores closely align with rankings of other measurements, such as happiness, peace and government integrity.While Canada, for example, leads in terms of being an appealing environment, it lags behind others with its perception as business destination.Canada leads the world in external perceptions as a great place to study or visit, the research shows we can improve the perception of the nation as a business destination and desirable investment environment, explained Daniel Tisch, president of Argyle Public Relationships, a leading Canadian expert in reputation management.With a long term programme to build a better business brand, backed by tangible policy change and delivery of positive business experiences, Canada can regain its status as the world's most reputable nation, he pointed out.Consumers who perceive a country as having a strong reputation report being more likely to visit it or to recommend living in, working in, investing in, studying in or buying products from, that country, he added.Sweden claimed the top spot after two consecutive years in third place, Ireland moved into the top 10, while Belgium dropped out of the top 10. However, this year no countries were rated as excellent as identified by a Pulse score of 80 or higher.Since 2015, France has seen the biggest improvement in reputation, up 4.9 points and Russia also saw a significant reputation boost of 4.7 points, but it still rates as poor with a Pulse score of 39.82 at 65 on the list, ahead of only Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq.Turkey saw the largest drop in reputation, down seven points to 42.73 and 58th place overall.
Jason Bergeron was an opponent of Chippewa Countys wheel tax while running for office in April. On Monday night, the supervisor led the effort to keep the tax.

We do not have a long-term sustainable tax to replace the wheel tax right now, he said in coming on a plan.

He added: I want to end it, but I want to end it with something, not an idea, I want to end it with a plan.

The board voted 9-6 in favor of keeping the tax until January 2020. The $10 per vehicle annual registration fee would end sooner if the countys winter maintenance fund reaches a balance of $550,000.

Voting to dump the tax were Supervisors Tom Thornton, Matt Hartman, Larry Willkom, Kari Ives, Leigh Darrow and Annette Hunt.

The meeting Monday came about after eight of the 15 board members demanded it in a petition Aug. 9.

Supervisor Steve Gerrish, one of those who signed the petition, on Monday said no tax is perfect, but taxes are needed for services. There are other issues the county could be addressing, he said.

We have a meth problem. What are we doing about that?

But Thornton said the presentation made to the board Monday was nearly the same as given to the county Highway Committee And they want another six months? They want to drag this into 2017, Thornton said. We have $16 million in undesignated funds in this county. And we need a wheel tax?

Supervisor Dean Gullickson said it would not be responsible for the county to end the tax without having something to replace it.

Were close to paying off the current debt but we do need a cushion, said Supervisor Glen Sikorski, chairman of the county Highway Committee.

It was meant as a temporary fix to the budget shortfall. he said, adding it figures to be 84 cents per vehicle per month per vehicle.

After severe winters in 2013 and 2014, the winter fund had a $1.2 million deficit.

County Administrator Frank Pascarella gave alternatives to the tax, including increasing the property tax levy.

There is an unused levy of $772,897, before hitting the tax levy limit set by the state. This is probably we consider to be a short-term solution, and could wind up with a fluctuating equalized value.

Once the levy is increased, rarely if ever do you ever see the levy decrease in county government, he said, adding somewhere down the road cuts would be needed.

Its basically a one to two times solution, he said.

The half-cent county sales tax could also be used. But in 2016, 96 percent of the sales tax are used for fixed costs. Next year, Pascarella said about 88 percent of those sales tax dollars are for those fixed costs.

The board was told sustainable options include decreasing highway construction, decreasing service or push off replacing aging highway department equipment. Other options include keeping the wheel tax on until Dec. 31, 2018, or hold a binding referendum to exceed the countys tax levy limit by $525,000 a year.

During the public comment portion of the meeting, former Supervisor and Highway Committee Chairman Henry Shakal spoke in favor of the tax, saying it may not be fair in that it is not levied on all vehicles, but is needed.

He said the state has borrowed money to do road construction, and that is leading to less state funding.

A Bloomer resident, Steve Hilger, said the county should have handled the deficit in another way. Theres no need to take a tax and put it on a bunch of elderly people.

He asked: What is this? Is it irresponsibility? Is it we need more Peterbilt trucks?

The wheel tax itself has been around in Wisconsin since 1967, and counties have been able to use it since 1969.

The USA TODAY Network-Wisconsin reports 13 of the 16 municipalities with a wheel tax added it in the last two years.

All 15 supervisors attended Mondays session. Another board meeting is at 6 p.m. Tuesday in room 302 of the courthouse at 711 N. Bridge St., Chippewa Falls.
Comedian Brian Regan had a great standup bit back in the day:

I heard that the government will pay certain farmers to not grow corn. Wow. Wheres my check?

Sadly, U.S. agriculture policy really is that misguided  and far less funny.

Every few years, Congress passes a farm bill packed with pork, special-interest handouts and increased federal spending, not to mention agricultural subsidies: taxpayer dollars to financially aid agricultural producers of certain goods.

Why do agricultural producers need these massive subsidies to manage risk? Other businesses with major risks do just fine without such government intervention.

First off, its worth noting that most agricultural production comes from large producers. Based on the last Census of Agriculture, just 4 percent of farms accounted for 67 percent of all agricultural sales. Its not surprising then that the vast majority of agricultural subsidies go to large business operations  not exactly starving homesteaders.

In the 1940s, agricultural subsidies acted as a type of social welfare because of the deep poverty of farmers. Thats far from the situation today. Farm households have greater median income than nonfarm households and 10 times the median wealth of all U.S. households. As for the demise of family farms? Thats a bit overstated, when 99 percent of farms are family farms, and the total number of farms has remained consistent, at about 2.1 million over the past 25-30 years.

Second, these subsidies bring with them a lot of unintended consequences. Farmers are often incentivized to farm the subsidies themselves, by growing crops where they can maximize their subsidies instead of meeting the demands of the market. Subsidies also discourage innovation, distort prices and crowd out solutions that could be available to farmers. It may surprise Americans that their government essentially dictates the price of sugar, raising it artificially by limiting the amount of sugar that is sold.

But even that doesnt cover how absurd agricultural subsidies have become. Theyre no longer just a safety net: Farmers can have a bumper crop and receive federal crop insurance indemnities. A major new program protects against shallow losses, which means farmers are shielded from shallow (or minor) dips in the amount of money they had expected. Much of these dips would be attributed to ordinary business risk in any other industry.

But farmers are no less capable than other businesses in managing their risk. They already utilize many private risk-management tools: use of off-farm income, diversification of their crops and business, hedging, and insurance (federal crop insurance is just one way of managing risk, and it is only one type of insurance that farmers buy). Theres a growing consensus that this price and revenue protection is not only bad economics for agriculture, but bad for the adaptability of the industry as a whole. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has noted:

A new Heritage Foundation report recommends moving away from subsidies, but not all at once. The battle here is against federal intervention, not farmers who have been forced to rely on it. To help smooth the transition, deep yield losses for farmers would still be covered. The federal crop insurance program would be strengthened by properly focusing the program back on what it was supposed to cover: disasters and yield losses.

In other words, the taxpayer-funded safety net for agriculture would become just a safety net, as it should be, not a wholesale insulation from normal market forces. A healthy, subsidy-free agriculture sector will be more adaptable and resistant to disaster than one which has never had to compete in an open marketplace.

As for the millions of American taxpayers currently burdened with the risk of this industry, Ill steal from an English writer long ago: For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn?

For all our sakes, I hope not.
Tuesday, September 13, 2016

For licensees who get caught, the result is likely to be an emergency suspension order. The New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) suspended the license of Barley Legal Inc., doing business as Bootleggers at 200 Broadway in Troy, New York. The suspension was ordered by Members of the SLA, Chairman Vincent Bradley and Commissioner Kevin Kim at a special meeting of the Full Board. During a suspension, no alcohol can be served or consumed on the premises

Following complaints of underage drinking at Bootleggers, on Thursday, December 3rd investigators from the SLA, the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and the Troy Police Department (TPD) conducted a compliance inspection at the premises. SLA undercover investigators entered the premises shortly before 11:00 p.m., and after determining a large percentage of the approximately 225 patrons appeared to be underage and purchasing alcohol, called in the multi-agency team consisting of the SLA, DMV, and TPD.

The investigation found that 175 patrons were under the age of 21. On December 8, 2015, the SLA charged the owner with 54 violations, including 53 sales to minors and 36 direct sales observed by SLA investigators and 17 sworn statements obtained from underage patrons. Additionally the owner was charged with paying employees off the books. DMV investigators confiscated 91 counterfeit licenses and arrested 93 individuals for allegedly possessing fraudulent identification documents or presenting another persons drivers license. In addition, two bartenders were arrested by the Troy Police Department for unlawfully dealing with a minor.

The SLA repeatedly warns liquor license holders that Cracking down on underage sales is a priority for the State Liquor Authority. Bar owners that deliberately break the law should understand they are putting their license and their livelihood in jeopardy.

The State Administrative Procedure Act authorizes a State agency to summarily suspend a license when the agency finds that public health, safety, or welfare requires emergency action. When the SLA summarily suspends a license, it also serves a Notice of Pleading alleging one or more disciplinary violations. In invoking a summary suspension, the SLA has deemed the violation to be sufficiently serious upon initial review to warrant an immediate suspension.

The SLAs decision to summarily suspend a license is not a final determination on the merits of the case. The licensee is entitled to an expedited hearing before an administrative law judge. An order of summary suspension remains in effect until such time as it is modified by the SLA or a reviewing Court.

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
SALEM, Ohio  Legislation introduced in Nebraska this year has gained a lot of attention from farmers and equipment dealers across the county and stirred up a lot of questions on intellectual property rights and ownership.

The Right to Repair Act, or LB 1072, was introduced into Nebraska Legislature Jan. 20, but was unsuccessful in gaining any traction. State Sen. Ken Haar, who introduced the bill, has exceeded his term limits and will not be heading up the bill in 2017, but a similar bill is expected to surface in the coming year.

The act would essentially require equipment dealers to surrender access to software protected by copyright laws and allow equipment owners to make their own repairs and modifications as they see fit. Movement of this kind in Nebraska and other states has triggered a lot of questions about what farmers can and cannot do with their equipment.

Q. Can I still work on my tractor?

A. There has been a gross misconception that farmers do not own their own tractors and cannot perform even the simplest of repairs  like oil changes, tire changes, etc., explained Nick Tindall, senior director for the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. You own your own equipment and you have the right to work on your equipment, said Tindall. There are, however, restrictions to tampering or tinkering with the software on newer machines.

Q. What is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)?

A. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects the creators of the software, making it illegal to circumvent (or hack into) the software in order to redistribute or recreate that software. Exemptions can be granted.

An exemption for agriculture equipment was granted that allowed for certain repairs that may be known as more tinkering, said Jordan Dux, director of national affairs with Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation. This exemption granted individual farmers the right to circumvent software on their own equipment in order to make necessary repairs, providing the repair or modification does not violate safety laws or regulations put in place by government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency.

These modifications or repairs can only be done by the owner to his own equipment. A farmer cannot take his machine into an independent repair shop for these services, nor can he service another farmers machine to make these modifications or repairs, explained Dux. However, exemptions only last three years before they have to be renewed.

This particular exemption is up for renewal in October of this year, he said. The Right to Repair Act wants to make this exemption permanent. Folks dont want to reapply for them all the time, said Dux.

Q. Are diagnostic equipment and repair manuals available to me?

A. A component of the Nebraska Right to Repair Act is requesting that operating manuals and diagnostic equipment be made available to farmers. According to many proponents for the Right to Repair Act, only dealerships have access to the equipment necessary to diagnose software malfunctions.

But, according to Tindall, There is a whole wealth of service information out there to make it easier for farmers to work on their own equipment. Equipment buyers and third party members have access to service and operation manuals, service bulletins, product guides and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) best practices, guidelines and safety.

What isnt available is technical information such as proprietary information and EPA information in the software, said Natalie Higgins, vice president of government relations and general counsel at Equipment Dealers Association.

Q. Is the safety/liability concern just a smokescreen?

A. Consumers are prohibited by law from altering their equipment in a way that circumvents federal safety and emissions standards. Unauthorized repairs void warranties and could lead to civil or criminal penalties, said both Tindall and Higgins. Weve heard (proponents of the act) say oh, youre just making this safety issue up. Its not really a concern, said Higgins. Not only is there a potential for the individual to hurt himself, but a potential to hurt others, she said.

A common misconception to liability law is, the owner assumes all responsibility, but it is not clear that that is the case, said Higgins. This idea that (equipment dealers) are absolved of liability because of modifications beyond specs is a myth, said Tindall.

Q. Will having a Right to Repair Act create competition?

A. Proponents of the act feel dealers (like John Deere and Case IH) have a monopoly in the equipment industry, but historically that is not the case, explained Dux. According to Dux, Nebraska Farm Bureau members raised concerns over the economic health of local dealers, saying in the recent economy, tractor sales are down, making repairs a key source of income. Would taking away those repairs hurt dealers even further?

This would actually put dealers at an unfair advantage, said Higgins. Dealers invest time, money and resources into training and education for their employees so they can run this software. Dealers would actually be competing with average Joes that want to cut corners, if this legislation was passed, she said.

Q. How would working on my own equipment affect resale value?

A. If a farmer is going to look for a piece of used equipment and they look into a piece that has been modified, they run the risk of purchasing a piece of equipment modified by an inexperienced technician, Higgins said. Farmers also run the risk of purchasing a piece of equipment neither the farmer nor dealer knew had been modified. What does that do to the equipment buying world? she said.

Q. Should farmers be allowed to tinker with their own equipment?

A. Its kind of a double-edged sword, said Conrad Amstutz, store manager at Sterling Farm Equipment in Wooster, Ohio. As a farmer myself, I would like to fix my own equipment. But, if Im not schooled in the software, I shouldnt be in there working on that anyway. I could really screw that computer up, he said.

As a licensed dealer of Case IH equipment, Amstutz said their technicians have the training and licensing to work on the software. As far as complexity goes, we offer one-on-one training with operators to help them understand the software they need to use on their operation, he said. Im all for letting them have software if they know what they are doing. They would also be a lot more efficient if they know their way around it, said Amstutz.

Dux said the Nebraska Farm Bureau remains neutral on the current act, adding there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered. I think there is a larger debate that is happening about intellectual property rights in general. Farmers are just kind of in the middle of that, as everything gets more computerized, he said.

The Equipment Dealers Association has scheduled a free webinar for members to discuss components of the Right to Repair Act and address questions and concerns. Register here or email info@equipmentdealer.org for more information.
Midwest spinach production explained in detail

Learn how spinach performs in the Midwest and seasonal considerations in a new publication from ISU.
North West farmers put farming on hold for a morning so they could talk to shoppers about great British food.

In support of Red Tractor Week (12-18 September), the farmers spoke to consumers outside the Asda Trafford Park Supercentre in Manchester.

Farmers from the livestock, dairy, potato and pig meat sectors stood by a brand new red Massey Ferguson tractor handing out leaflets, stickers and trolley keyrings to raise awareness of the Red Tractor logo as shoppers entered the supermarket on Monday 12 September.

Although support for backing British farming was extremely high from the people of Manchester, awareness of the Red Tractor logo was scarily low.

Bill Mellor, who farms at Higher Farm in Stockport, said the day was "extremely successful" in terms of talking about farming and food, but "worrying" how few people recognise the Red Tractor logo.

Dairy farmer Ray Brown found the lack of awareness of Red Tractor 'scary'

"I had a walk around the supermarket and was disappointed by the fresh meat aisle which was selling a lot of New Zealand lamb of varying cuts at a time when there is a lot of British lamb about."

"The same could be said for beef. There was a lot of Irish beef being sold alongside British product and in some cases as part of the same discount offer.

"More farmers should take time out of their busy days to promote our Red Tractor logo to shoppers as they enter supermarkets.

"I think it would be an eye opening experience because in the real world consumer recognition of the logo is nowhere near the level wed hope it to be.

NFU Cheshire County Adviser Helen Wainwright promotes the Red Tractor logo to shoppers in Manchester

"There is a great deal of work still to be done," Mr Mellor concluded.

Encouraging shoppers to buy British

Half-day events like the one in Manchester are taking place at supermarkets across the UK all this week to encourage shoppers to look out for and purchase products with the Red Tractor logo to ensure the very best in traceability, environmental protection, food safety and hygiene and animal welfare standards.

NFU Deputy President Minette Batters said farmers and growers are "extremely proud" of the work they do and the high quality food they produce.

"Red Tractor Week offers a great opportunity for farmers and growers to talk to the public and promote great British food and farming. We have a great story to tell," Miss Batters said.

"The food and farming sector provides jobs to some 3.9 million people and combined contributes to the economy a massive 108 billion.

"The Red Tractor Assurance scheme means that shoppers can trace their food from farm to fork.

"The Red Tractor logo is a world leading standard for quality, food safety, traceability, animal welfare and a cared for environment.

"I am delighted that the NFU is working together with Assured Food Standards to promote the Red Tractor."

Ladies in Pigs representative Jane Nicholson of Lodge Farm in Lytham, said it became "obvious" that people "dont really spend too much time thinking about what they are eating or buying."

"The shoppers I spoke to like the Red Tractor logo and its values but I did spend a lot of time explaining its not a logo exclusive to meat products," Miss Nicholson said.

Farmers at the event included: Beef and sheep farmer Bill Mellor of Higher Farm in Stockport, pig producer Jane Nicholson of Lodge Farm in Lytham, potato farmer Colin Bradley of Stanley Villa Farm in Preston, dairy farmer Ray Brown of The Orchard Farm in Holmes Chapel and Philip Smallwood of Greenheyes Farm in Middlewich.
Most oilseed rape growers have opted for earlier sowing this season, in an effort to get crops up and away ahead of Flea Beetle damage.

Warm soils has certainly helped with germination, but the bright hot weather has now increased insect activity.

Timely spray applications can help to get seedlings safely established, with some useful tips to get the best possible results, reported Syngenta Field Technical Manager, Max Newbert.

Pyrethroid applications when Flea Beetle or Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle feeding is seen to be hitting seedlings remains the key first step for growers, he advised.

But with pyrethroid resistance a recognised issue for some growers, it means Hallmark Zeon should always be used at the full approved rate. Application at the full rate will also give the highest level of repellency action to minimise damage.

Research at Syngenta Jealotts Hill in Berkshire has demonstrated the repellency activity of Hallmark Zeon can halve the number of Flea Beetles attacking treated seedlings for more than 24 hours after application, compared to untreated.

Garry Chambers

Protection of plants through to the second true leaf emerging has been identified as having a significant impact on overall survival rates.

Growers and agronomists should be looking to differentiate Flea Beetle and Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle attacks, added Max.

Flea Beetle feeding results in the severe shot holing damage; they are more difficult to control, requiring Hallmark Zeon rates of 75 ml/ha, he advised.

Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle also cause the initial damage at establishment, along with the potential severe effects of larvae feeding in the spring, from eggs laid in the soil now; the approved Hallmark Zeon rate for CSFB control is 50 ml/ha.

John Haynes

Max warned that cloddy seedbeds, often created in dry conditions, provided ample opportunity for adult beetles to hide, especially if consolidation had been difficult following stubble incorporation.

Application with angled Defy 3D Nozzles, alternated to face forward and backward along the boom, could deliver far more effective spray coverage all around clods and seedling plants, he advised.

In the Flea Beetle hotspot of Essex, John Haynes, farm manager for MJ & SC Collins, based at Kingstons Farm, Harlow, has gone to greater lengths to create a firm, fine seedbed this season - and sown earlier, in the first week of August.

But even then crop have been emerging with visible Flea Beetle shot holing on the cotyledons, requiring repeated early treatment to try and prevent further damage.

We have introduced hybrids for autumn vigour, and also given it a bit more nitrogen in the seedbed, to keep it growing strongly from the early sowing, advised John.

But conditions have been extremely difficult this season, with significant areas lost to slug damage and set to be resown with barley, he added.

Furthermore, last year in particular plants suffered severely from effects of Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle larvae feeding damage in the spring, so we have to remain focussed on controlling egg laying adults now.

The farms sprayer operator, Garry Chambers, advocated application at a water volume of 175 l/ha using 04 Defy 3D nozzles when targeting Flea Beetle, which he believes gives the optimum combination of effective coverage and sufficient concentration to deliver an effective hit.

Applications of Hallmark Zeon are always maintained at full rate.

Garry also pointed out that spraying at no more than 14 km/hr helped assure even coverage, even though the smoother seedbeds and sprayer capability would allow him to go faster.

Night-Night beetles

New Syngenta application trials this autumn will be looking at maximising Flea Beetle control from Hallmark Zeon treatments - including nozzle selection, water volume and even the option of spraying at night, when entomologists highlight Flea Beetle are more active.

Syngenta Field Technical Manager, Max Newbert, added: With the formulation of Hallmark Zeon you get over 7800 times more active capsules per ml of product, compared to some other lambda-cyhalothrin products; that significantly increases the chance of hitting beetles with sufficient active.

Furthermore, we know the UV protection built-in to the Hallmark Zeon formulation can make it more effective in warm, bright early autumn conditions, when Flea Beetle

are most active on newly establishing OSR. New research is also being investigated on its repellency activity, which could further help to keep beetles off treated crops for longer and allow them to grow away.

Top Tips for Flea Beetle control

-Fields close to last years OSR are at highest risk

-Cloddy or loose seedbeds more susceptible

-Treat at the first signs of damage

-Use Defy 3D Nozzles for coverage

-Always use full dose rate applications

-Spray at 100  200 l/ha water volume
Over 50 farm and rural professionals from across Cornwall gathered last Thursday evening at Nansmerrow Farm, Tresillian for the inaugural PKF Francis Clark Farm Professionals Farm Walk.

The event opened with Brian Harvey, Head of Agriculture at PKF Francis Clark, welcoming guests and emphasising the importance of farm professionals across Cornwall working together to ensure that the farming community continued to be well served.

Brian then gave a brief synopsis of the challenges that the industry has faced in recent years and the continued importance of cash management.

He then went on to highlight some of the forthcoming changes that may arise out of the Brexit vote and the effect this will have in Government legislation.

Farm walk

Brian explained the potential implications to the agricultural sector of the Government initiative Making Tax Digital which will form part of HMRCs plan to transform the current tax return process which, potentially, may have significant ramifications on small rural businesses.

The farm walk was led by Paul George whose passion for the industry and particularly his cows, was evident throughout the evening.

Paul showed the group around his impressive herd of high-yielding Holstein cattle, whilst giving an insight into his methods and decision making, with the aim of providing the best opportunity for his cows to reach their genetic potential.

In addition, Pauls attention to detail and his willingness to work closely with his team of trusted advisors, including his Vet, Agronomist, Accountant and Consultant, was a common theme throughout the tour.

As a progressive farmer, Paul had been open to ideas put to him, some of which worked well  such as the three times a day milking; others, however, had been less successful, like his trial of growing crops under plastic.

Despite having won the Cornwall Farm Business Awards, Paul was happy to confess that his system wasnt the perfect model for the industry, as every farm and every farmer were different, with some preferring once a day milking and others investing in robotic milking systems.

However, their common goal is for a fair price for their milk.

Jonny Alford, Head of County Farms at Cornwall Council said: It was an excellent evening organised by PKF Francis Clark; the George family clearly are very, very good dairy farmers and their attention to detail was apparent at every stage.

Will Sherring, Agricultural Manager at PKF Francis Clark, who had been instrumental in organising the event added: I am delighted with the turnout and the overall success of the evening. Paul has done us proud and the challenge now will be to try and top it next year!
A ground-breaking study has revealed that cover cropping can increase crop yields, boost soil health and bring about a range of environmental benefits.

In the study of 13 Kelloggs farmers by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), farmers who used cover crops saw yield responses up by 25 per cent and a 50 per cent reduction in nitrogen leeching.

In more than 90 per cent of farms the number of worms increased which increased which are essential for healthy, functioning soils.

Interestingly more than three quarters of Kellogg's Origins famers farms that used cover crops reached their worm target  compared to half for those that didnt.

Cover cropping is the plants covering the soil on farmland between the harvest and sowing the next set of crops  it helps to prevent soil erosion, improve soil structure, increase organic matter and suppress weeds and pests.

The results of the study have been condensed into a Cover Crop Cook Book, which gives guidance on agronomy to farmers and offers a range of practical approaches to cover cropping.

The book has been shared with 3,000 farmers and experts throughout the UK in the hope theyll take up cover cropping and share their knowledge to develop best practice.

'Sustainability of farmers crops'

Ann Noble, Kelloggs sustainability manager, said: "This study arose from engagement with our Kelloggs Origins farmers.

"At Kelloggs, we want to ensure the sustainability of our farmers crops with better quality grains and healthy soils.

"One of the key areas were looking at is the use of cover crops, which is not only a great way of improving soil structure and supporting biodiversity but also  according to this ground breaking study  yield a business benefit too.

"When the research for the report began, we were aware of the potential benefits of cover cropping, but there wasnt a great deal of fieldwork  until now."

'Resources are scarcer'

Ron Stobart, NIABs head of Farming Systems Research, said: "If you travelled 100 years back in time, most farmers would have known about cover cropping, but for so long now the answer has come in a bag, with artificial fertilisers.

"Now resources are scarcer, and companies like Kelloggs are leading the way in integrating the best sustainable practices with modern commercial production.

"Theres a great deal of interest among the farming community in managing soil resources, and with this study weve brought some science on what was a bit of a grey area to get some answers on the benefits of cover cropping.

"Its given Kelloggs growers confidence, achieved great buy-in, and were happy to share that knowledge in the Cover Crop Cook Book."
A new survey across 6 European countries has collected the perceptions and attitudes towards the use of veterinary medicines for the treatment and prevention of diseases in farm animals.

The results, collected by the International Federation for Animal Health Europe, show that EU citizens are concerned about the use of veterinary medicines and their impact on human health.

Their level of knowledge on the topic, however, is in general limited.

Findings indicate that it is important to increase awareness about the benefits of veterinary medicines, their responsible use as well as how safe they are.

Awareness about the benefits of veterinary medicine in terms of animal welfare is in general very low with over 60% responding that they dont know or dont think that veterinary medicines have a positive impact on the welfare of farm animals.

59% of respondents go on to say that farm animals have the same right to receive medicines as people.

Although not directly comparable, the latest European Commissions Eurobarometer on animal welfare shows that more than three quarters of citizens agreed that farm animals should be better protected.

It is quite significant to note that good health is not necessarily the first thing people think about when considering an animals welfare needs.

Food safety

With regard to food safety, the knowledge gap increases with nearly three quarters of those surveyed (72%) responding that they dont know or dont think that medicines given to farm animals helps to make food safer.

As only healthy animals are allowed to be introduced into the food chain, it is clear that more detailed information on safe food production is needed.

Commenting on the findings, IFAH-Europe Secretary General Roxane Feller said: "The animal health industry invests huge resources in developing, testing and manufacturing safe, effective and quality veterinary medicines.

"Europe has one of the worlds most stringent licensing systems for controlling veterinary medicines.

"66% of respondents dont feel well informed however about the use of veterinary medicine in general and over 50% are unaware that medicines for use in animals meet the same safety standards as medicines for people."

IFAH-Europe President Wijnand de Bruijn added: "It is clear that we need to communicate better and improve awareness through fact-based informative campaigns outlining why animal medicines are needed and how healthy animals positively impact society as a whole."
A man has died after an accident on a farm in the Dungannon area of Co Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

The Police said they received a report of the "sudden death" of the man at Rhone Road at about 14:00 BST on Sunday.

It is believed the accident involved a piece of farm machinery.

The Health and Safety Executive NI has confirmed that they are investigating the incident.

The HSENI said their thoughts are with the man's family at this most difficult time.

Sinn Fein MLA Linda Dillon said: This death on a farm in the Dungannon area will have shocked the local area and the wider farming community.

"Any death on a farm is one too many. I send my sympathies to the family and friends of this man at this difficult time."

Tom Elliott, Ulster Unionist MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, said: "Whilst the full details are not yet known, I understand that the young man was in his thirties and was planning to get married sometime in the near future.

"I extend my sympathies to the grieving family at this dreadfully sad time."
Meadow Foods, the UKs largest independent dairy, has announced that it will be increasing its milk price by +1.15ppl from 1st October, taking their standard A litre milk price to 21.15ppl.

In addition to this A litre price increase, Meadow Foods has announced that its B price for September will be ahead of the 25ppl forecast and will in fact be 26ppl.

Meadow Foods also estimate that the B price for October will be 'no lower than 27ppl.'

Simon Chantler, Executive Chairman at Meadow Foods, comments: We are delighted to announce for the fourth consecutive month that Meadow Foods is increasing its A litre price.

"These increases continue to move our price forward, but we realise that more work has to be done.

"We hope the current positivity within the market continues, and we will make every effort to return any improvements as quickly as possible to our producers."

Last month, Meadow Foods also announced that they had written to farmers to reassure them that the company would not be penalizing them for any under supply during these challenging times.

Meadow Foods is the UKs largest independently owned dairy group and leading supplier of milk based dairy ingredients to the food industry.

Meadow Foods currently handles more than 500 million litres of milk each year direct from over 550 farmer suppliers from across the North of England, Midlands and North & West Wales.

The company, founded in 1992, operates from factories in Chester, Peterborough and Holme-on-Spalding Moor and now employs more than 275 people.
Mobile operators should be under a legal obligation to deliver universal mobile coverage for the whole of rural Britain, the Country Land and Business Association have said.

The call comes as MPs gather to debate the Digital Economy Bill in the House of Commons today.

The Bill sets out provisions for a new legal right to superfast broadband for all home and business premises by 2020.

It does not include a similar commitment to universal coverage for mobile across the whole of the UK.

The Bill does contain major legal concessions to mobile companies which will result in a 1 billion saving for the mobile industry.

Proposed law is 'extremely weak'

CLA President Ross Murray said mobile devices are a "vital part" of modern life.

"The access they provide to voice and data services can transform the opportunities for people who live and work across our countryside," Mr Murray said.

"That potential continues to be stifled because of poor and inconsistent coverage.

"The promise of this Bill is to improve coverage now and in the future, but it is flawed.

"Ministers have decided to give major multinational telecommunications companies the legal power to force farmers and other landowners to accommodate their equipment on their property without having to pay market rents.

"A decision that effectively grants mobile companies cost savings that amount to more than a billion pounds.

Mr Murray said the proposed law is "extremely weak" in terms of what it obliges the mobile industry to deliver.

He continued: "We are calling on MPs to enact obligations that guarantee that the benefits this law will provide to mobile operators will be fully transferred to consumers, especially those living, working and visiting our rural areas.

"A universal coverage target for mobile, complementary to the commitment for universal superfast broadband already contained in this Bill, is the best way to achieve this."
The British Veterinary Association (BVA) President, Sean Wensley, has praised Scotland on its leadership in many areas of animal welfare.

The BVA President also called on the government, farmers and vets to ensure hard won ground was not lost, during his speech at BVAs annual Scottish Dinner on Tuesday 13 September.

Addressing almost 100 guests at the Scottish Parliament, the BVA President said Scotland has "led the way" on tackling many animal welfare problems.

At the start of Mr Wensleys speech he highlighted the Scottish Governments intention to introduce a Bill to ban the use of wild animals in travelling circuses, which BVA called for in its manifesto that launched ahead of May's national election.

Highlighting Scotland's ongoing efforts to protect animal health and control animal disease, he said: "Close Government, farmer and vet links must continue to progress the excellent work that has been done so far into the now-notifiable disease Porcine Epidemic Diarrhoea (PED); towards eliminating mange from pig herds; and on the eradication scheme for BVD.

"We'd like to see the Government capitalise on this momentum and support farmers and vets in the development of control measures for Johne's disease and Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis amongst others."

Anniversary of the Animal Health and Welfare Act

Mr Wensley emphasised that 2016 is a pivotal year for animal welfare, partly due to the anniversary of the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006:

"As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the Act, Scottish Government must stick to Schedule and conduct a review to ensure it is effective in protecting the welfare of Scotland's animals."

He also called on the Scottish Government to ensure hard won ground on animal welfare was not lost on both national and international issues.

Commenting on the outcome of the UK's EU Referendum earlier this year, Mr Wensley emphasised: "A key objective post-Brexit must be that the UK does not slip in its world leading outlook and outputs on animal welfare."

The BVA President ended his speech by highlighting the veterinary profession's unique opportunity and responsibility to advocate animals' best interests in spite of the unique challenges that vets in parts of Scotland face.

"Recruitment and retention to rural, mixed practices in areas of Scotland is a major challenge, which results in a small number of vets  shouldering that enormous burden.

"Vets, however remote, are crucial links in the chain of guardianship and gatekeeping that safeguards human and animal health and protects animal welfare."
"I don't like working for sheep, I like sheep working for me, so I probably run a bit light (on stocking rates) so I don't have to feed them, they feed themselves on green grass - 80 per cent of sheep is what goes down their throats," he said.
Manassas, VA (20110)

Today

Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will become overcast in the afternoon. High 63F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies early will become partly cloudy late. Low around 45F. Winds light and variable.
What was it like to be an Oath Keeper? John Zimmerman can tell you

John Zimmerman said he was active with the Oath Keepers from September to November 2020, then left after a falling out with founder Stewart Rhodes.
Both anti-corruption law and competition law aim to create a level playing field and are complementary to each other in support of this aim. Its interesting, then, to see how society reacts so differently to breaches in these fields, even though both are indispensable in reaching social welfare.

Corrupt behavior will raise more reaction than a breach of competition law. Often, reaction to corruption will be a moral one while competition law breaches are regarded as an issue to enforce fines and move on. The lack of moral reaction may be resulting from the indirect, less visible, less immediate nature of the effects of anti-competitive behavior on consumers.

Here are the reasons we think the societal reaction to breaches in these two fields differs:

Corruption and anti-competitive behavior have different consequences. Competition law aims to maintain social welfare through economic efficiency and enable the consumers to access wide range of products at lower prices and with higher quality. The consequences of competition law breaches are economic and are usually evaluated under administrative law.

On the contrary, consequences of corrupt behavior are more various. Besides the economic consequences, corrupt behavior may lead to governance, democracy, poverty and inequality consequences.

Social and political consequences of competition law breaches are less visible to the end consumer and the damage is less likely to be calculable compared to the effects of corruption.

As corruption is subject to criminal enforcement while anti-competitive behavior is generally subject to administrative enforcement, leading to differing moral perceptions. As mentioned above, in many jurisdictions competition law violations are mainly evaluated under the realm of administrative law and rarely criminal law.

Corruption crimes, on the other hand, are almost always dealt with under criminal law. Most corruption crimes are sanctioned by imprisonment. This carries with it a strong moral message.

In the competition law realm, only a few countries legal systems allow for imprisonment. We believe being dealt with under administrative law and criminal law is one of the factors that set the tone for societal perceptions.

The impact of corruption is dramatic, while the impact of anti-competitive behavior may not be directly visible to the individuals. Every day, individuals anywhere might encounter corruption when being stopped by police or when obtaining licenses to operate a legitimate business.

The impact of anti-competitive behavior is less distinguishable, even the largest consequences might occur at the macro level and are usually intangible to individuals. Difficulties in quantifying the damages arising from anti-competitive behavior aside, litigating claims by the end consumer is also difficult since the damage is usually indistinguishable in every-day life.

Although the purpose of both anti-corruption law and competition law is the creation of a level playing field, society cheers the efforts against corruption but is generally apathetic to the efforts against competition law offenses.

We believe this is due to the dramatic, sharp and wide ranging effects of corruption, as well as its criminal nature, while the consequences of competition law are less visible, more confined to the economic sphere and dealt with under administrative law sphere.

Our full article is available here.

____

Gonenc Gurkaynak is the Managing Partner of ELIG, Attorneys-at-Law, based in Istanbul, Turkey. Hes a member of the New York Bar, the Brussels Bar, the Istanbul Bar, and the Law Society of England & Wales. He holds an LLM from Harvard Law School and an LLB from Ankara University School of Law. He can be contacted at [email protected]

C. Olgu Kama is a Partner at ELIG handling white-collar criminal cases, corporate compliance, anti-corruption, and commercial law. She holds LLM degrees from Fordham Law School and Galatasaray University and an LLB from Istanbul Bilgi University School of Law. She can be contacted at [email protected]

Burcu Ergun is an Associate at ELIG.

The authors thank Ceren Ozkanl, a Senior Associate at ELIG, for her contributions to this post.
Prince William and Duchess Catherine will be joined by their two children on their upcoming tour of Canada.

Prince William, Duchess Catherine, Prince George and Princess Charlotte

Prince George, three, and 16-month-old Princess Charlotte will accompany their mother and father to the North American country later this month, and the royal couple are said to be "looking forward" to introducing their kids to the country.

A Kensington Palace spokesperson confirmed: "I am very pleased to confirm that they will bring their children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, with them to Canada.

"They have received so many wonderful messages from Canadians since the birth of their children and look forward to having the chance to introduce their young family to the country."

William and Catherine, who are both 34, will take in more than 30 engagements over their one-week tour, which will see them visit Vancouver and also smaller places such as Bella Bella, which is home to fewer than 2,000 people.

The family's tour will begin in Victoria on September 24, where they will be greeted at the airport before heading to Government House, where they will be based throughout the tour.

The pair will officially open their tour at British Columbia's Parliament Buildings by paying respects at Victoria's Cenotaph and will unveil a new plaque paying tribute to the veterans of Canada's involvement in the Afghanistan conflict.

During the tour, they will also visit the Immigration Services Society of British Columbia and attend an event celebrating young leaders in Canadian arts, music, sport, charity, business, and film.

Kensington Palace added: "Their Royal Highnesses are pleased to have this opportunity to meet with people of their generation who they might have the chance to get to meet again over the years."
Chicago tells the story of "Murder, greed, corruption, exploitation, adultery and treachery. All those things we hold near and dear to our hearts". And so starts the show.

Chicago

Having only watched the movie, I was keen to see where it all began with the theatre production. The show is based on the 1926 play of the same name, by reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins and the criminals she reported on.

The set is very simple, the costumes are minimal and with the band right there on the stage there is nowhere to hide in this production. It relied heavily on the raw talent of the actors and musicians and it delivered in all aspects. The choreography was spot on, the voices were powerful, what props they had were used economically, the songs were catchy- everything was well executed. I also have to mention the lighting as this played a significant part in the all over clean and crisp look of the stage and crew.

My favourite character by far has to be Jessie Wallace as Matron 'Mama' Morton. Although her stage time was less than that of Velma Kelly, Roxie Hart and Billy Flynn's, she used the time she had in front of the audience wisely. She belted out the iconic lines of 'When you're good to mama' like she owned the stage. It was a pleasure to hear her sing as I have only seen in her EastEnders, so it made a change to see another side to her talents.

Sophie Carmen Jones was the epitome of sexy in her role as the adored yet unsympathetic Velma Kelly. She tackled the physically challenging scenes with confidence and poise- she made it look easy- when we all know it's not!

Hayley Tamaddon had the audience laughing with her natural comedic charm as the fame hungry Roxie Hart- she was the perfect dose of comic relief in what can be a very dark production at times.

My word can John Partridge hold a tune- he really put everything into his solo pieces and the audience took a sharp intake of breath when he performed the last note of 'Razzle Dazzle' which he managed to hold for a unearthly amount of time.

Neil Ditt had everyone feeling suitably sorry for him as Rosie's husband Amos in his rendition of 'Mister Cellophane' and most tragically of all he didn't get his exit music.

The most memorable scene by far had to be the 'Cell Block Tango'- I couldn't wait to see it and thankfully, I didn't have to wait long as it is the third song in the production. With nothing but a spotlight and a chair- each of the sassy women revealed their murderous ways and it was nothing short of spectacular.

The whole production was slick, sexy and sassy. The monochrome costumes and set gave it a very modern, minimalist feel, which left space for the actors to shine under the spotlight. And they did- every single one of them.

Chicago is certainly one I'm glad to have ticked off the list. It is the second longest-running show in Broadway history, after Phantom and in my opinion, is a once in a lifetime must see.

by Lucy Moore for www.femalefirst.co.uk

find me on and follow me on
It is a rare surprise with sequels when the third time's a charm. Forget lazy filmmaking; with the back story and characters well established, and the right people in place to bring the film to life, the third film in the franchise can sometimes be the best of the bunch.

BrOTHERHOOD

To celebrate the release of BrOTHERHOOD, the third and final episode of Noel Clarke's iconic 'hood series, we take a look at the greatest threequels of all time.

BrOTHERHOOD follows Sam (Noel Clarke) as he realizes his new world also comes with new problems and new challenges. Sam knows that to thrive he must face his issues head on, and knows he will require old friends to help him survive new dangers. Starring Noel Clarke, Jason Maza, Arnold Oceng and Stormzy, BrOTHERHOOD comes to cinemas August 29.

Die Hard With A Vengeance

Fan favourite John McClane (Bruce Willis) returned in Die Hard With A Vengence when he is called upon to play a game of 'Simon Says' with a terrorist. Bringing an unsuspecting taxi driver (Samuel L Jackson) along for the ride as he races across New York to solve the frustrating puzzles, the action heats up when a bomb goes off at the Federal Reserve Building.

Mission: Impossible III

Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) was called back in action in JJ Abrams' Mission: Impossible III to confront an international weapons dealer with no remorse and no conscience. When it becomes apparent that the IMF may have double agents, the super spy assembles a team he can trust to discover the truth.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is once again brought out of hiding in the Oscar-winning Bourne Ultimatum when a reporter begins to look into the mysterious Operation Blackbriar. Stirring up new memories about his past, Bourne is drawn back into CIA activities as the agency themselves try their best to destroy their greatest weapon once and for all.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The final installment of the classic 'Dollars' trilogy is viewed as one of the greatest film of all time.

After a chance meet sees Blondie (Clint Eastwood) and Tuco (Eli Wallach) separately learning the details for the location of a stash of gold, they realise that they need to keep each other alive in order to find it. Followed closely by outlaw Angel Eyes, the uneasy alliance must keep their enemies close as they seek their fortune.

Brotherhood

Year on from the events in Adulthood, Sam Peel (Noel Clarke) has grown up, is in a stable relationship with his lawyer girlfriend Kayla (Shanika Warren-Markland), and is raising their child together seeking a peaceful existence far away from the Sam's dark background. But having made a lot of enemies through the years who still hold a grudge against him, it's just a matter of time before Sam's past comes back to haunt him. Wanting nothing to do with this lifestyle anymore, but with his family threatened, Sam knows that it's time to put an end to this ongoing conflict once and for all.

by Matt Shine for www.femalefirst.co.uk

find me on and follow me on
Prince George and Princess Charlotte look set to attend a children's party for military families in Canada.

Prince William and Prince George

The pair will accompany their mother and father, Prince William and Duchess Catherine, on their tour of the North American country later this month, and while it hasn't been confirmed when the youngsters will make a public appearance, the event at Government House in Victoria on September 29 is a possibility.

A Kensington Palace spokesperson told the Daily Express newspaper: "This is a great opportunity for them to introduce their children to a major realm before things like schools make it difficult later on."

George, three, and 16-month-old Charlotte will be based in Government House along with their parents throughout the week-long tour so should they attend the kids party they won't have long to travel.

The youngsters are expected to have at least one public "play date" during the excursion.

The tour will mark the first time Charlotte has been on a worldwide royal visit with her parents.

George did so in 2014 when he accompanied William and Catherine, who are both 34, to New Zealand and Australia.

The prince attended a children's Government House event in Wellington, New Zealand, so he would be no stranger to such an activity in Canada, where his parents visited in 2011.

William and Catherine's tour will begin on September 24 in Victoria and see them visit Vancouver and Bella Bella among other destinations.
John Barrowman has revealed that he's all for returning to his role as Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who, following his success in the show and his lead spinoff Torchwood.

John Barrowman in Arrow / Credit: The CW

Despite becoming a household name across the world through this role, Torchwood came to an end in 2011 and Barrowman moved on to other projects, including Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow on The CW.

It's now been discovered by The Radio Times however that Barrowman has a 'special deal' in place, which would allow him to return to Doctor Who if given the opportunity, along with completing his current projects.

Asked if he could return, Barrowman explained: "The answer is always absolutely. It's a show and genre that changed my life. I love it dearly and if I'm asked I would do it at the drop of a hat. And also my producers here in the US for the show I'm on at the moment, Arrow, they've said, 'If that did happen, we'd let you do it'. I would love to do it, and I do know that there's a huge fanbase."

Though Captain Jack was a relatively minor character in Doctor Who, he quickly became a firm fan favourite and went on to appear in comic books, novels, webcasts and radio shows.

Doctor Who will make its return - with or without Barrowman - on BBC One and BBC America later this year for its Christmas special, before its 10th season debuts in 2017.

by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk

find me on and follow me on
Doctor Who's Mark Gatiss was reduced to tears when he read the script for the forthcoming Christmas special.

Mark Gatiss

The 49-year-old screenwriter - who played Professor Lazarus and Gantok in 2007 and 2011 respectively in the sci-fi series - has admitted he's seen the running order of the festive episode, penned by his friend Steven Moffat, and couldn't stop the tears streaming down his face.

He explained: "I think the Christmas special... which is the only one this year...I think is one of Steve's best ever scripts, absolutely beautiful. It made me cry."

The mastermind behind 'Sherlock' has also read the scripts for the first three episodes of the next series, which will hit screens next year, but had to refrain from ingesting anymore as he didn't want to spoil the whole thing for himself.

Speaking at a Victoria and Albert Museum members' talk in London last night (12.09.16), he said: "I've read three scripts. I've seen a little bit. Just because of the new companion and things. But I don't want to see it, because it spoils it! I am such a fan, I just want to watch it."

And Mark speaks from experience as he knew all about Peter Capaldi's debut scenes as the Time Lord in 2013.

He said: "Peter Capaldi's first season, the second half of that I knew nothing about. And it was such a joy to watch the next time trailer and just be totally surprised.

"So I mean, I have to, to some extent, but I try and see as little as possible, because I don't wanna spoil it."
Pizza joint engages in social media spat over Christian music & Bible verses 13 September, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

PRESTONBURG, Ky. (Christian Examiner)  The owner of a pizza joint in rural Kentucky coal country believes in serving up the gospel message along with his pies, and he'll continue to do so in spite of several complaints from atheists.

Last week, B.J. Blackburn took to social media to explain why the restaurant plays Christian music over its speakers and places Bible verses on its receipts. Not everyone is appreciative, he wrote.

"We, here at Giovanni's of Prestonsburg are unapologetically a Christ-based business that runs and operates with Christian values and principles. We wholeheartedly believe that we have been blessed the way that we have because of the goodness of God. We understand that this is not the view of every customer and/or business owner and we are not trying to push this view on anybody," Blackburn wrote.

He also wrote that though his Christian views were not those of the Giovanni's franchise, the business "will continue to honor God in our business and in our lives" as an independently-owned restaurant.

Since the posting on social media Sept. 8, it has been shared more than 4,000 times, and only 3,300 people live in the town.

We, here at Giovanni's of Prestonsburg are unapologetically a Christ-based business that runs and operates with Christian values and principles. We wholeheartedly believe that we have been blessed the way that we have because of the goodness of God. We understand that this is not the view of every customer and/or business owner and we are not trying to push this view on anybody.

Most of the responses have been positive, but not all.

One man commented that the pizza parlor's owners believed in "fairy tales." Another woman, who lives in neighboring Pikeville, wrote that the owner's comment about the Christian faith was a "stupid thing to post."

"I don't like your pizza, but if I did I would be calling corporate to complain. It I want religion, I will go to church. At a pizza place I want pizza only," she wrote.

Giovanni's apologized for the fact that she didn't like the pizza and offered to treat her to another. She then wrote that she would return for the free pizza. She also received a fair amount of criticism from other patrons.

Another self-confessed atheist wrote, however, that he had eaten at the restaurant many times and never been bothered by the music or the messages on the receipt.

"As an atheist, I respect your beliefs and as a pizza fan, I enjoy your food," he wrote. "Keep your faith and keep making delicious pizza. I look forward to eating there again soon."

Blackburn took ownership of Giovanni's in Prestonburg in March. Asked on the Facebook page if the restaurant still sold beer, he said the shop "cut that out" as soon as he purchased it.
Aloo paratha

Ingredients:

4 medium potatoes, boiled and mashed

2 green chillies, chopped

 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder,

 tsp garam masala powder

 tbsp onion, finely chopped and slightly browned

3 tsp coriander leaves, chopped

Salt as required

Oil as required for roasting parathas

2 cups dough (set it for at least 30 minutes)

Method:

1. Take mashed potatoes in a bowl and add green chillies, garam masala powder, Kashmiri powder, salt, onions and coriander leaves. Mix well and check seasoning.

2. Make medium balls from the dough and flatten it. Now place the stuffing in the centre, leaving some space around the circumference. Now take the edges, make pleats, join them at the centre and flatten each ball of dough. Flatten it gently. Roast parathas on a hot griddle till crisp and soft on both sides. Serve hot.
Faye Rogan has lived in Turkey for the last fifteen years, initially working in an international school in Ankara and now leading a more relaxed life in Dalyan. She immerses herself in Turkish culture and enjoys an authentic life in a traditional village. Living the dream in this little piece of paradise.

Seeing the Truth

Seeing the Truth is her debut novel.

What is the book about?

While on holiday in Marmaris, Kaye Knowles, meets Vedat Erdem, a Kurdish cotton farmer from the south east of Turkey. Their holiday romance soon becomes an all-consuming love affair.

Blinded by love, Kaye struggles with the language barrier, cultural differences and family objections as life takes her on an emotional rollercoaster of joy, heartbreak, hope and disappointment.

As she explores the delights of Turkey, her world comes crashing down when she finds out that their relationship is built on a foundation of lies and deceit.

About the author

Faye Rogan, originally from Buxton, Derbyshire, in the picturesque Peak District of England, is now an expat living in Dalyan. She has lived in Turkey for the last fifteen years, initially working at Bilkent Laboratory & International School in Ankara until she had to give up her position as the Elementary School Principal due to ill health.

She speaks fluent Turkish and immerses herself in Turkish culture, enjoying an authentic life in a traditional village. She feels lucky to be living the dream in this little piece of paradise.

It was her love for a Turkish man which led her to write her debut novel Seeing the Truth. While the novel is a work of fiction, it is based on her own experiences of a challenging relationship where the differing cultures, language barrier and religion were a constant struggle.

A keen reader of all types of fiction, she had never come across a romance novel that explored the stereotypical relationships between British women and Turkish men. Through her own experience and needing a winter project to keep her occupied in a very quiet, out of season Dalyan, Seeing the Truth was born.

Where can you buy a copy of the book?

Directly from Fayes Facebook page (30TL plus p&p). If you would like a signed or personalised copy, send me a private message. Or buy it on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle version

Some of the 5* reviews on Amazon

I loved this book and couldnt put it down. The best book Ive read in a while.

Gripping, funny and tantalising.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book  literally read it in one day as I couldnt put it down.

Beautifully written and very descriptive.

Perfect combination of holiday read and an insight into Kurdish and Turkish culture.

Enough personal detail to make a great holiday read; enough history and culture to broaden the mind.

A roller coaster ride with lots of humour.

The descriptions of the Turkish landscapes are so well written, the book inspires me to see more of the country.

Find Faye on Twitter and Facebook
Major apparel brands and manufacturers were among those who attended a session from Apparel Training and Design Centre (ATDC) in Chandigarh. The session focused on the wide range of apparel workshops and trainings that have been conducted earlier by ATDC and take suggestions on adapting them to requirements of the North India garment industry.The main purpose was to understand the requirements of this area, so that workshops and trainings may be customised to benefit apparel manufacturing hubs in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.

Major apparel brands and manufacturers were among those who attended a session from Apparel Training and Design Centre (ATDC) in Chandigarh. The session focused on the wide range of apparel workshops and trainings that have been conducted earlier by ATDC and take suggestions on adapting them to requirements of the North India garment industry.#

Representatives of Gini & Jony, Eveline International, Active Clothing, Northern India Institute of Fashion Technology, Inter National Institute of Fashion Designing, Home Science College, etc participated in the interactive session.Conducting such workshops helps us to understand the needs and the hurdles faced by the apparel sector. Through such training by experienced trainers, we are able to create professionals who will accelerate the growth of the apparel sector, Roopali Shukla, advisor, ATDC-TOT Academies said. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Despite the Hanjin Shipping bankruptcy, the National Retail Federation (NRF) expects import cargo volume at US major retail container ports to be at near peak levels in September, even as retailers work to cope with the situation. Hanjin the world's seventh largest container shipper filed for bankruptcy a few days back, disrupting cargo movement.NRF, the world's largest retail trade body has written to the US secretary of commerce and the Federal Maritime Commission chairman, urging them to intervene with the South Korean government, ports and others to prevent disruption.

Despite the Hanjin Shipping bankruptcy, the National Retail Federation (NRF) expects import cargo volume at US major retail container ports to be at near peak levels in September, even as retailers work to cope with the situation. Hanjin the world's seventh largest container shipper filed for bankruptcy a few days back, disrupting cargo movement.#

Hanjin should not significantly affect volume for the month since alternative arrangements to unload those containers or shift cargo elsewhere should be dealt with by the time the numbers are tallied, NRF vice president for supply chain and customs policy Jonathan Gold said.But millions of dollars worth of merchandise is in limbo at the moment, and retailers are working hard to make sure it ends up on store shelves in time for the holidays, Gold added. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Shanghai Yin Science & Technology Company (Yin Group) is working on an ambitious plan to build the first ever 'smart factory' in Chinese garment industry. The smart factory would come up on 50,000 sq m area in China's Qingdao city. It will have integrated hardware and software and will use efficient processes to deliver values to end customer.

The Shanghai Yin Science & Technology Company (Yin Group) is working on an ambitious plan to build the first ever 'smart factory' in Chinese garment industry. The smart factory would come up on 50,000 sq m area in China's Qingdao city. It will have integrated hardware and software and will use efficient processes to deliver values to end customer.#

Yin Group is currently working on a project to build smart factory on 50,000 sq m area in Qingdao city in China, the Group's technical director Jinliang Xia told Fibre2Fashion.

The Shanghai Yin Science & Technology Company (Yin Group) is working on an ambitious plan to build the first ever 'smart factory' in Chinese garment industry. The smart factory would come up on 50,000 sq m area in China's Qingdao city. It will have integrated hardware and software and will use efficient processes to deliver values to end customer.#

In a smart factory, two elementshardware and softwareneed to be integrated. Yin Group is already in hardware, now we need to integrate software. We have already tied up with SAP and more alliances with software companies are expected soon, said Xia.

The Shanghai Yin Science & Technology Company (Yin Group) is working on an ambitious plan to build the first ever 'smart factory' in Chinese garment industry. The smart factory would come up on 50,000 sq m area in China's Qingdao city. It will have integrated hardware and software and will use efficient processes to deliver values to end customer.#

Seamless process integration, control system from manufacturing to warehouse and beyond are basic parametres for an effective and efficient smart factory.

The Shanghai Yin Science & Technology Company (Yin Group) is working on an ambitious plan to build the first ever 'smart factory' in Chinese garment industry. The smart factory would come up on 50,000 sq m area in China's Qingdao city. It will have integrated hardware and software and will use efficient processes to deliver values to end customer.#

Outstanding growth of e-commerce will put pressure on manufacturers to build smart technology and efficient processes to deliver values to end customer, he said.

The Shanghai Yin Science & Technology Company (Yin Group) is working on an ambitious plan to build the first ever 'smart factory' in Chinese garment industry. The smart factory would come up on 50,000 sq m area in China's Qingdao city. It will have integrated hardware and software and will use efficient processes to deliver values to end customer.#

Founded in 2006, Yin Group is the number one digital equipment solutions provider for pre-sewing, sewing, and post-sewing clothing technology. The company is one of the few Chinese companies that have intellectual property rights of CNC cutting machines.

The Shanghai Yin Science & Technology Company (Yin Group) is working on an ambitious plan to build the first ever 'smart factory' in Chinese garment industry. The smart factory would come up on 50,000 sq m area in China's Qingdao city. It will have integrated hardware and software and will use efficient processes to deliver values to end customer.#

Currently, Yin Group has dozens of offices throughout China and also overseas subsidiaries in Japan and Germany. Its products have been exported to Japan, India, Brazil, the US, Germany, the UK and other countries.

The Shanghai Yin Science & Technology Company (Yin Group) is working on an ambitious plan to build the first ever 'smart factory' in Chinese garment industry. The smart factory would come up on 50,000 sq m area in China's Qingdao city. It will have integrated hardware and software and will use efficient processes to deliver values to end customer.#

The company has manufacturing units in Shanghai and in Jiangsu province. As an industry leader in CNC cutting equipment, Yin Group actively promotes the fusion of industrialisation and information, and promotes technological innovation and popularisation of automatic cutting technology. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  China
Colorjet, the largest Indian manufacturer of wide format digital printers, is launching two future ready digital printers in Hall 11, Stall D62 at the upcoming Media Expo, to be held from September 29 in New Delhi. The company will launch its latest printer model, 'Softjet Plus', a 2.5 as well as 3.2 metre soft signage printer and 'Polo Turbo - High Speed'.

Colorjet, the largest Indian manufacturer of wide format digital printers, is launching two future ready digital printers in Hall 11, Stall D62 at the upcoming Media Expo, to be held from September 29 in New Delhi. The company will launch its latest printer model, 'Softjet Plus', a 2.5 as well as 3.2 metre soft signage printer and 'Polo Turbo - High Speed'.#

The launch of the Softjet Plus signals the company's extension of its product line towards the soft signage. The Softjet Plus uses environmental friendly aqueous based inks, and can easily print on polyester based fabrics which can be recycled.

Colorjet, the largest Indian manufacturer of wide format digital printers, is launching two future ready digital printers in Hall 11, Stall D62 at the upcoming Media Expo, to be held from September 29 in New Delhi. The company will launch its latest printer model, 'Softjet Plus', a 2.5 as well as 3.2 metre soft signage printer and 'Polo Turbo - High Speed'.#

Softjet Plus is the perfect solution to print directly on fabrics for soft signage business and optimised for replacement of PVC based media and even the most amazing applications like mesmerising backlit displays. Flexible displays can also be printed by this machine.

Colorjet, the largest Indian manufacturer of wide format digital printers, is launching two future ready digital printers in Hall 11, Stall D62 at the upcoming Media Expo, to be held from September 29 in New Delhi. The company will launch its latest printer model, 'Softjet Plus', a 2.5 as well as 3.2 metre soft signage printer and 'Polo Turbo - High Speed'.#

We are launching the Softjet Plus to expand our product line and also to enable the entry of entrepreneurs in soft signage business at a lower investment, Colorjet brand manager, Smarth Bansal said.

Colorjet, the largest Indian manufacturer of wide format digital printers, is launching two future ready digital printers in Hall 11, Stall D62 at the upcoming Media Expo, to be held from September 29 in New Delhi. The company will launch its latest printer model, 'Softjet Plus', a 2.5 as well as 3.2 metre soft signage printer and 'Polo Turbo - High Speed'.#

The machine will prove to be attractive for producers of soft signage like flags, banners, hoardings, demo tents, vibrant backlits, etc, since nowadays a lot of fabric is being used for events like weddings decorations, banquets, etc, he added.

Colorjet, the largest Indian manufacturer of wide format digital printers, is launching two future ready digital printers in Hall 11, Stall D62 at the upcoming Media Expo, to be held from September 29 in New Delhi. The company will launch its latest printer model, 'Softjet Plus', a 2.5 as well as 3.2 metre soft signage printer and 'Polo Turbo - High Speed'.#

Colorjet is also launching the Polo Turbo, a high speed industrial grade solvent printer, built on a heavy duty structure. Its independent drive technology drives each nozzle independently to achieve high production speeds of up to 2,800 sq. feet per hour, while also delivering high quality output, reliability and offering low running costs.

Colorjet, the largest Indian manufacturer of wide format digital printers, is launching two future ready digital printers in Hall 11, Stall D62 at the upcoming Media Expo, to be held from September 29 in New Delhi. The company will launch its latest printer model, 'Softjet Plus', a 2.5 as well as 3.2 metre soft signage printer and 'Polo Turbo - High Speed'.#

The Polo Turbo is a 8 head 4-colour printer with printing resolution of 1,440 dpi and can print on medias of width up to 3,300 mm, with a maximum thickness of 3.00 mm and can print on SAV, PVC banner, backlit film, window film and solvent based fabrics.

Colorjet, the largest Indian manufacturer of wide format digital printers, is launching two future ready digital printers in Hall 11, Stall D62 at the upcoming Media Expo, to be held from September 29 in New Delhi. The company will launch its latest printer model, 'Softjet Plus', a 2.5 as well as 3.2 metre soft signage printer and 'Polo Turbo - High Speed'.#

Additionally, the company is also showing the latest and upgraded version of solvent printer Neptune, which has been loaded with new features to make it more efficient and productive. The Neptune has an installed base of 1,500 printers, the highest among solvent printers in India. (RKS)

Colorjet, the largest Indian manufacturer of wide format digital printers, is launching two future ready digital printers in Hall 11, Stall D62 at the upcoming Media Expo, to be held from September 29 in New Delhi. The company will launch its latest printer model, 'Softjet Plus', a 2.5 as well as 3.2 metre soft signage printer and 'Polo Turbo - High Speed'.#

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Indian textile exporters are set to get greater market access in China and South Korea, as the Union Cabinet has approved the exchange of tariff concessions, on Margin of Preference basis, under the fourth round of negotiations under the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) and related amendments. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Laos are also members of APTA.

The APTA (formerly the Bangkok Agreement) is an initiative under the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) for trade expansion through exchange of tariff concessions among developing country members of the Asia-Pacific region.

Many of the sectors where we benefit are of critical value to us. Particularly, China and Korea have offered textiles, chemicals, pharma, heavy engineering machine tools, gems and jewelery, iron and steel, agri and marine products for us, commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters after the Cabinet nod.

Indian textile exporters are set to get greater market access in China and South Korea, as the Union Cabinet has approved the exchange of tariff concessions, on Margin of Preference basis, under the fourth round of negotiations under the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) and related amendments. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Laos are also members of APTA.#

On its part, India will give market access to the other members in sectors like railway locomotives, rolling stock, nuclear plants, fissile material, aircraft and spacecraft. These are the items which are procured only by government agencies in India, she added.

However, no product will come into the country at zero duty as APTA is a preferential trade agreement. The duty will be around 7 per cent, she said.

The latest decision of the Union Cabinet would be implemented after it is ratified during the fourth session of the ministerial council of APTA, which is due in January 2017.

Since APTA is a preferential trade agreement, the basket of items as well as extent of tariff concessions are enlarged during the trade negotiating rounds which are launched from time to time. Till date, three rounds of trade negotiations have taken place.

Up to the third round, India has offered tariff preferences on 570 tariff lines at an average Margin of Preference (MoP) of 23.9 per cent and an additional 48 tariff lines to LDC members at an average MoP of 39.7 per cent at the 6-digit HS level. The third round, with respect to all participating states, cumulatively covered concessions on 4,270 products with MOP of 27.2 per cent, an official statement said.

The Cabinet also gave its approval to amend the preamble of APTA to effect accession of Mongolia as the 7th APTA Participating State. Other amendments to incorporate the Sectoral Rule of Origin to the Agreement were also approved. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/12/16 -- Aton Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: AAN) ("Aton" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on its exploration activities in Egypt, and planned work for the remainder of 2016 and into 2017. The Company's sole focus will be the Abu Marawat Concession ("Abu Marawat" or the "Concession"), and its flagship Hamama Project ("Hamama"), where Aton has drilled a total of 96 diamond drill holes in 9,704 metres. On August 28, the Company completed its 2016 diamond drill program at Hamama, where it drilled a total of 37 holes in 3,428 metres. To date, Aton has released the results from the first six holes and will continue to release the remaining holes as assays are received and the results consolidated, including the preparation of cross- and long-sections.

The main purpose of the drilling and technical work to date was to:

-- Expand the area and depth of mineralization; -- In-fill drilling of known mineralized areas at Hamama West, one of three zones that comprise Hamama, and the enriched gold-oxide cap; -- Provide samples for metallurgical test work.

The results of the first six holes demonstrate the continuance of mineralisation at Hamama West, including drill hole AHA-068, which returned 60.80 metres at 1.20 g/t AuEq (see press release dated September 6, 2016). The first six holes were drilled on two sections and the section comprised of holes AHA-66, AHA-68, and AHA-72 showed strong continuation of grade and mineralisation to a depth of over 250 meters.

2016 - 2017 Work Program

Given the success of the work completed to date at Abu Marawat, located 400km north of Centamin's Sukari gold mine, this Concession will remain the focus of the Company's activities and on-going expenditures. Aton has identified a 40km gold trend at Abu Marawat, anchored by Hamama in the west, where the Company returned 43.5 m of 2.61 g/t Au (see press release dated November 2, 2015), and the Abu Marawat gold project in the east, which hosts an inferred resource of 397,000 ounces AuEq (2.9 Mt grading 1.75 g/t Au, 29.3 g/t Ag, 0.77% Cu and 1.15% Zn) (see the independent technical report titled "Technical Report on the Abu Marawat Concession (Concession or Project), Egypt" dated April, 2012 by Wayne W. Valliant, P.Geo., and Bernard Salmon, ing. of Roscoe Postle Associates Inc., available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the Company's website at www.atonresources.com). In addition to Hamama and the Abu Marawat gold project, the 40km long gold trend contains 10 gold exploration targets, including two former gold mines (see figure 1). Work planned for the remainder 2016 and into 2017 includes:

-- Remote sensing and spectral imaging survey that will cover the 40km long gold trend; -- Ground magnetic, ground EM and downhole EM geophysical surveys to identify massive sulphide targets at Hamama, which will be the focus of the next drilling campaign; -- Aton is working with Cube Consulting to produce a NI 43-101 initial resource at Hamama West; -- Drill testing massive sulphide targets at Hamama.

At over 738 sq. km in size, Aton believes that Abu Marawat is an emerging mining district. The Company has provided notice to the Egyptian Minerals Resources Authority that it is relinquishing the Fatiri Concession so that it can unlock the district-scale potential of Abu Marawat.

Mark Campbell, President and CEO, had this to say: "After thoroughly reviewing the opportunities at both Abu Marawat and Fatiri, it was clear that Abu Marawat must be the clear focus of our activities as it presents shareholders with the best chances for near term exploration success and added value. We continue to be impressed by the consistency and continuity of drilling results from Hamama and believe that we can continue to increase mineralization along strike and to depth. The Abu Marawat gold project, with its inferred resource and identifiable drilling targets to increase this resource, also represents a fantastic opportunity. Both Hamama and Abu Marawat offer the Company significant potential on their own, and when they are coupled with the ten other gold targets, which include two historic mines, over the 40km gold trend, the potential for a mining district emerges. Focusing on Abu Marawat delivers the best possible value to our shareholders and will help us achieve our goal of making a significant new discovery."

To view Figure 1, 40km Gold Trend at Abu Marawat Concession, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1069082Figure1.jpg.

About Aton Resources Inc.:

Aton Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: AAN) is in the business of exploring for and developing potentially economic gold deposits in the Central Eastern Desert of Egypt in the Arabian Nubian Shield ("ANS"). The Company's 100%-owned concession, Abu Marawat, covers 738 km2 of ground. Evidence of gold and copper mining in the concessions dates the many surface workings to pre-historic (Bronze Age) and Old Kingdom (Pharaonic), through Ptolemaic, Roman, Early Arab times and into the European Era of the early to mid-20th Century. Within the Abu Marawat concession, the Company holds two historic gold mines; Sir Bakis and Semna. In addition to showing signs of ancient mining, these mines were also controlled by British companies, who abandoned the mines in the early 1950s due to political changes. One of the Company's gold mines, Sir Bakis, is located 12 kilometers east-northeast of Hamama. Historic development and extraction was along the 375 meters of the currently identified 1,300 meter-long, steeply dipping, gold-bearing quartz vein. There is evidence of ancient mining from ancient workings to the remains of a Roman mill and outpost 7km North of Hamama.

Much of the gold-vein mineralization in the ANS is of the orogenic, quartz-carbonate-type and is associated with major north-northwest and northeast trending shear-zones. Centamin's Sukari gold mine is located 400 km to the south of Abu Marawat, in the same mountain belt.

The Proterozoic-aged Pan-African greenstone belt of the ANS underlies the Abu Marawat Concession. The ANS also underlies the Red Sea and large parts of Saudi Arabia, The Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Significant VMS deposits in the ANS include Barrick and Ma'aden 50:50% JV of Jabal Sayid in Saudi Arabia; Nevsun, Bisha Main and Harena in Eritrea; La Mancha's Hassai and Hadal Awatib in the Sudan and Sunridge, Emba Derho, Debarwa and Adi Nefas in Eritrea. The Company's Hamama gold-rich VMS shares key geological similarities with these major VMS deposits.

Similar geological settings to the ANS include the greenstone belts of the Yilgarn of Western Australia, the Birimian of West Africa and the Abitibi in Quebec, Canada. The ANS is most similar in age to the Birimian.

The Company's land package, located 350-400 km southeast of Cairo, includes excellent infrastructure; Hamama has direct access to two four-lane highways, a zero-gradient railway bed that runs through Abu Marawat concession to a Red Sea port, multiple high-voltage (capacity 220kV) power lines that cross between the two concessions, a water pipeline and nearby major cities: Qena, on the Nile River, 70 km to the west, and Port of Safaga, on the Red Sea, 50 km to the east. The city of Luxor, ancient Thebes, is a two-hour drive from Hamama and has an international airport.

Qualifying Person:

The technical information contained in this News Release was prepared by Roderick Cavaney BSc, MSc (hons), MSc (Mining & Exploration Geology), AusIMM (f), SEG, GSA, SME, Exploration Manager for Aton Resources Inc. Mr. Cavaney is a qualified person (QP) under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

For more information on Aton Resources Inc., visit us at www.atonresources.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Some of the statements contained in this release are forward-looking statements. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions; by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results in each case could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. 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.

Contacts:

Aton Resources Inc.

Mark Campbell

President and Chief Executive Officer

+1 (936) 689-2589

mcampbell@atonresources.com



Aton Resources Inc.

Blaine Monaghan

Vice President, Investor Relations

+1 (604) 376-2922

ir@atonresources.com

www.atonresources.com




SHANGHAI and LONDON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Shanghai Newsummit Biopharma and HandInScan - an innovative infection control technology company - signed an agreement today to introduce the HandInScan technology in China through validating with leading hospitals and key opinion leaders. The signing took place at the Wenzhou Biomedical Innovation Center Healthcare Forum held during the week of the China G20 Summit in the presence of Mr. Dai Tao, Deputy Director of the Development Center for Medical Science & Technology of the National Health & Family Planning Commission, and Mr. Zhang Geng, Mayor of Wenzhou.



(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160210/331945LOGO )



The HandInScan Technology is the only quality-assured system focusing on hand disinfection quality control that can objectively determine hand hygiene effectiveness. The system is designed to teach and verify if protocols are followed properly.

Infectious diseases are a significant threat to patients worldwide including China and have a burden on healthcare spending. Among them healthcare associated infections affect 2-3% of the patients which can be significantly reduced with proper hand washing compliance and technique following the WHO guidelines. HandInScan brings that much needed hand hygiene education and control to an everyday practice integrating with the hospital's quality control system.

Dr. Jun Ren, CEO of Shanghai Newsummit Biopharma, said "We are proud to form an alliance with HandinScan, since their technology can deliver an effective solution to healthcare organisations. The technology is now utilized in over 20 countries worldwide, and healthcare organizations implementing the HandInScan technology are seeing the effect of patient safety and provider benefits that the system can deliver. We believe the healthcare system in China and Chinese patients can also benefit from this innovation."

Peter Rona, CEO of HandinScan added: "We believe that Newsummit is the right organization to bring healthcare related innovation into China. This partnership is an important milestone in our commercial strategy. We look forward to working with Newsummit in bringing the benefits of the systems to Chinese hospitals."

About HandInScan

HandInScan Kft. is a health-tech company focusing on the unmet and critical need of reducing healthcare-associated infections.

About Newsummit

Newsummit Biopharma is one of China's most prominent healthcare resource integrators, providing a full range of market entry/regulatory services to international and domestic companies, with unrivaled access to top clinical KOLs nationwide.
HONG KONG, Sept 13, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - Bolina Holding Co., LTD (the "Company" and together with its subsidiaries, the "Group", stock code: 1190.HK) held national retail fairs in 3 cities since 27 August, jointly with its brand ambassador, Christine Fan who signed on souvenirs for the fans in the events. The events were held respectively on 27 August 2016 in Suzhou, on 10 September 2016 in Tianjin and on 11 September 2016 in Taiyuan. These fairs have gained wide popularity among consumers, aroused overwhelmingly positive responses, and made strong contribution to the sales of Bolina products and the competitiveness of Bolina brand. Christine Fan also attended the Distributors' Conference for Southern Jiangsu Province.In 2016, Christine Fan continuous to be Bolina's brand ambassador, which helps to enhance Bolina's brand image and increase its influences in the industry. The retail fair series started in Suzhou on 27 August, and followed by Tianjin on 10 September and Taiyuan on 11 September. These activities attracted a great number of consumers. The celebrity effect of Christine Fan, along with 8 promotional activities organised by Bolina, e.g. new products sales, special offers, 1 RMB instant purchases, 1 RMB redemptions, lucky draws, celebrity's surprises. The high quality and cost-effectiveness of Bolina products have brought the brand large sales and great reputation. Many consumers attended the fair and many products we sold at the events which set a high record for the Company.In recent years, Bolina has made cheerful performance in Chinese regional markets such as Northern, Central, Eastern , Northwestern and Southwestern China, and also remained stable growth in overseas market, having a leading position in both domestic sales and export sales volume. With the support of Christine Fan, the Distributors' Conference in the Southern Jiangsu Province has proved to be a significant success. During the conference, the Group launched new serial products based on the local market preference, which not only offered more high quality choices for distributors, but also infused industry innovation. The event enjoyed a full attendance, and the orders placed that day hit the record. This conference will lay a foundation for Bolina to enter new regions all over the nation, and lead the regional markets, as well to remain growth and competiveness in the industry.As the first Chinese sanitary ware company listed on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, the Group, in cooperation with its brand ambassador, Christine Fan, has upgraded its brand image, entered into a new era of strong marketing, improved brand influence, gained good reputation, increased market shares and earned positive comments from consumers and suppliers. Looking forward, the Group aims to develop its sales in the entire country and carry out diversified interactive marketing campaigns in order to provide more exquisite, enjoyable, green and clean sanitary experience for the clients and consumers all over the country. In the future, the Group will stick to the quality-oriented development strategy and endeavour to design and launch new products for the consumers.About Bolina Holding Co., Ltd (Stock Code: 1190.HK)Bolina Holding Co., Ltd is the first listed company in China's ceramic sanitary industry, Bolina was awarded as the Chinese Famous Brand, Top Ten Popular Brand in Sanitary Industry and Outstanding Enterprises, etc. The principal activities of the Group include the design, development, production, marketing and distribution of sanitary ware branded products and accessories marketed under the Group's own brand in the PRC and under third parties' brands on an ODM and OEM basis to the Group's international customers.Media Contacts:Angel YeungJovian Communications LtdTel: +852 2581 0168Fax: +852 2854 2012Email: bolina@joviancomm.comSource: Bolina Holding Co., Ltd.Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Mitsubishi Corporation Telephone: +81 3 3210 2171 Facsimile: +81 3 5252 7705

TOKYO, Sept 13, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO) have set up a new elevator plant in India at MELCO subsidiary Mitsubishi Elevator India Private Limited (IMEC). The new plant will start manufacturing elevators for the Indian market on September 15, 2016 and will mainly produce the "NEXIEZ-LITE" model, which is a key component of IMEC's strategy of targeting low- and mid-rise buildings in India.With demand reaching 48,000 units for newly constructed buildings in 2015, India is now the world's second largest market for new escalators and elevators, following China, and demand is expected to see continued growth.MC's elevator business in India dates back to 1995, when it started to support a local sales agent. In 2012, MC and MELCO established an elevator distribution joint venture company in order to strengthen its business base for sales, installation and maintenance.The start of manufacturing will not only enable IMEC to achieve competitiveness in pricing and delivery lead time, but will also contribute to strengthening IMEC's business capability to supply more market oriented products and after-sales services based on a streamlined structure for production, sales, installment and maintenance.IMEC is also planning to construct a 41-meter high elevator test tower and a field training center for installment and maintenance in an effort to enhance the capacity of engineers, all with the aim of improving the quality and reliability of MELCO's products and services and further boosting customer satisfaction.As its escalator and elevator market continues to grow, India stands to be positioned as one of the world's most important markets in this business. Through the construction of this new plant and additional shares acquired in IMEC in March of this year, MC will continue to strengthen its business foundations as a strong competitor in the escalator and elevator business in India.India is one of the most important escalator and elevator highest markets worldwide in terms of growth potential and, through this new initiative, MC and MELCO aim to further enhance their business base in India with a target to achieve 5,000 units per year in sales by FY2020.About Mitsubishi CorporationMitsubishi Corporation (MC; TSE: 8058) is a global integrated business enterprise that develops and operates businesses across virtually every industry including industrial finance, energy, metals, machinery, chemicals, foods, and environmental business. MC's current activities are expanding far beyond its traditional trading operations as its diverse business ranges from natural resources development to investment in retail business, infrastructure, financial products and manufacturing of industrial goods. With over 200 bases of operations in approximately 80 countries worldwide and a network of over 500 group companies, MC employs a multinational workforce of nearly 60,000 people. For more information, please visit www.mitsubishicorp.com.Source: Mitsubishi CorporationContact:Copyright 2016 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
- Wins order for steam turbine and generator for eco-friendly geothermal power project -

Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO:6502) has won a major order to supply a flash steam turbine system and generator (STG) for Unit 2 of the Kizildere III Geothermal Power Plant in Turkey. Zorlu Energy, an independent power producer and member of Turkey's Zorlu Energy Group, will construct the plant in Kizildere, in the Aydin province of West Anatolia, Turkey. Toshiba will deliver the generation equipment in July 2017. Support for this major low-emission project will allow Toshiba to expand its green footprint in Turkey and support Turkey in deploying low-carbon power solutions.

Energy consumption in Turkey is growing fast, driven by population growth and economic development, and both the government and the private sector are promoting projects to increase capacity. Toshiba concluded a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Zorlu Energy Group in January this year, covering construction of geothermal, thermal and hydro power plants. Toshiba and Zorlu Energy Group have successfully worked together on past projects, and will continue to cooperate in developing Turkey's power sector under the scope of the MOU.

Kizildere III Geothermal Power Plant Unit 2 is a 70,000 kW, high-efficiency triple flash combined-cycle geothermal power plant. It will integrate two systems: an approximately 50,700 kW flash steam generation system driven by steam under high pressure; plus an approximately 19,300 kW binary cycle power generation system that uses flash turbine exhaust steam to vaporize a working fluid with a lower boiling point and use it to drive a turbine.

Toshiba delivered a flash power generation system for the Zorlu Energy Group's Alasehir Geothermal Power Plant in 2014, its first in Turkey. Following smooth progress in installation work and proving tests, the plant started commercial operation ahead of schedule, in September last year. Following on from this, Toshiba received a further order for a flash power generation system for Kizildere III Geothermal Power Plant Unit 1 Geothermal Power Plant in 2015, and the company is now manufacturing the STG. Toshiba's performance to date had been highly evaluated by Zorlu Energy Group, resulting in this third order to supply a flash steam turbine and generator for this project. Toshiba has now won three of Turkey's last four contracts for geothermal plants, and this order will increase the company's share in Turkey's market for geothermal flash STGs to 48%.

Commenting on the contract, Mr. Takao Konishi, Vice President of the Thermal Hydro Power Systems Services Division in Toshiba's Energy Systems Solutions Company said, "Geothermal power is an attractive solution in promoting environmentally friendly, low-emission power generation, and we are pleased to build on earlier projects and extend our green footprint in Turkey. This new order is a testimony to customer trust in the reliability and performance of our cost-competitive products. Toshiba will continue to promote high-efficiency STGs for geothermal plants in Turkey, East Africa, South America and other promising markets, where electricity demand is expected to increase in the future."

Toshiba is strongly focused on expanding its geothermal STG business, promoting a strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with US-based Ormat Technologies, Inc., a maker of binary systems, and is also utilizing a range of assistance measures, including financing by the Japanese government under its "quality infrastructure export" policy. Toshiba aims to expand the scope of its business beyond manufacturing to include operation and maintenance of geothermal power plants.

Project Outline Power Plant Kizildere III Geothermal Power Plant Unit 2 Site location Kizildere, Aydin Province, Turkey Plant operator Zorlu Energy Scope of supply 50,700 kW Flash Steam Turbine and Generator Scheduled installation July 2017 (provisional) Scheduled operation December 2017 (provisional)

About Toshiba

Toshiba Corporation, a Fortune Global 500 company, channels world-class capabilities in advanced electronic and electrical product and systems into three focus business fields: Energy that sustains everyday life, that is cleaner and safer; Infrastructure that sustains quality of life; and Storage that sustains the advanced information society. Guided by the principles of The Basic Commitment of the Toshiba Group, "Committed to People, Committed to the Future", Toshiba promotes global operations and is contributing to the realization of a world where generations to come can live better lives.

Founded in Tokyo in 1875, today's Toshiba is at the heart of a global network of 551 consolidated companies employing 188,000 people worldwide, with annual sales surpassing 5.6 trillion yen (US$50 billion) (as of March 31, 2016).

To find out more about Toshiba, visit www.toshiba.co.jp/index.htm

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006565/en/

Contacts:

Press Contact:

Toshiba Corporation

Motohiro Ajioka and Yuu Takase, +81-3-3457-2100

PR IR Division

media.relations@toshiba.co.jp
Getinge Group has appointed Reinhard Mayer as new CFO and Magnus Lundback as new Executive Vice President Human Resources Sustainability. Reinhard most recently served as President Supply Chain and was the CFO of the Medical Systems business area between 2002 and 2015. Reinhard succeeds Pernille Fabricius who will leave the Group. Magnus Lundback returns to Getinge after three years as Senior Vice President at Gunnebo AB and succeeds Andreas Quist.

Regulatory News:

"I am very pleased that Reinhard has accepted the role of CFO of the Group, and I am also proud to welcome Magnus Lundback back to Getinge. Both have comprehensive experience of the Group and in-depth expertise in their respective fields. In their new positions, both Reinhard and Magnus will help create stability in the company, which feels particularly reassuring given the changes the organization has undergone over the past year", says Joacim Lindoff, Acting President and CEO of Getinge. "I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Pernille Fabricius and Andreas Quist for their contributions and dedicated work during their time with the Group", concludes Joacim Lindoff.

Reinhard Mayer has extensive experience in finance after serving as the CFO of Getinge's former Medical Systems business area for more than 13 years. Reinhard most recently worked as President Supply Chain and is a member of the Getinge Executive Team. Reinhard joined Maquet in 1997, which was acquired by Getinge in 2000. Reinhard has been part of the journey to develop Getinge into a global medical device company with leading global positions, and his broad expertise will be instrumental to Getinge in the years ahead. Reinhard previously worked as a Director of Finance and Administration for the German software company Lexware GmbH Co. KG and as Cost Accountant and Cost Analyst at Dow Chemical Inc, a US multinational chemical technology company.

Magnus Lundback returns to Getinge after having served as Senior Vice President HR Sustainability at Gunnebo AB since 2013. Magnus was Executive Vice President HR Sustainability at Getinge Group between 2008 and 2012, and a member of the Getinge Executive Team. Magnus is highly familiar with Getinge Group and its operations and will be an invaluable asset on the journey of change that Getinge is currently undergoing. Magnus has previously held various senior positions at Volvo Cars, such as Vice President HR of the research and development operations. He holds a PhD in Strategy and Organization and is specialized in the area of corporate culture development and performance management.

Reinhard Mayer takes up his new position as of today, September 13, and Magnus Lundback will take office during Q1, 2017. They will both be members of the Getinge Executive Team and report to the President and CEO of Getinge.

Getinge Group is a leading global provider of innovative solutions for operating rooms, intensive-care units, hospital wards, sterilization departments, elderly care and for life science companies and institutions. Getinge's unique customer offering mirrors the hospital's organization and value chain, and the solutions are used before, during and after the patients' hospital stay. Based on first-hand experience and close partnerships, Getinge provides innovative healthcare solutions that improve every-day life for people, today and tomorrow.

This information is information that Getinge AB is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, at 08:00 CET on September 13, 2016.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006577/en/

Contacts:

Getinge Group

Kornelia Rasmussen, +46 10 335 5810

Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications Brand Management

kornelia.rasmussen@getinge.com
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Japanese yen retreated from early highs against the other major currencies in the late Asian session on Tuesday. The yen fell to 114.62 against the euro and 104.97 against the Swiss franc, from early 6-day high of 113.93 and 104.34, respectively. The yen dropped to 136.08 against the pound, from an early high of 135.17. Against the U.S. dollar, the yen slipped to 102.04 from an early 5-day high of 101.42. Against the Australian, the New Zealand and the Canadian dollars, the yen edged down to 76.95, 74.89 and 78.17 from early highs of 76.58, 74.49 and 77.76, respectively. If the yen extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 118.00 against the euro, 107.00 against the franc, 140.00 against the pound, 105.00 against the greenback, 79.00 against the aussie, 77.00 against the kiwi and 81.00 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Regulatory News:

Veolia (Paris: VIE) has just signed a 30 year contract with Hertfordshire County Council worth 1 billion reinforcing its partnership with this county north of London. This project will recover energy from residual waste.

The energy recovery facility proposed by Veolia will make a major contribution towards meeting ambitious targets for waste management at the national level. It will generate up to 33.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity from the 350,000 tonnes of potential residual 'black bin' waste (that cannot be reused, recycled or composted) each year.

This represents a significant investment by Veolia in Hertfordshire and more widely in the United Kingdom. Centered on the development of an efficient facility, this sustainable approach is the best solution to Hertfordshire's waste challenge and will create more than 300 jobs during construction and 40 permanent jobs once the facility is operational.

Estelle Brachlianoff, Senior Executive Vice President Veolia UK and Ireland: "Our partnership with Hertfordshire County Council has been strengthened following this new contract that will result in a significant investment in waste treatment infrastructure. This solution will not only maximise landfill diversion, but also represents a source of low carbon energy which will power 69,000 homes per year."

Subject to planning permission, the construction work of the energy recovery facility will start in 2017, and will be operational in 2020.

Veolia groupis the global leader in optimised resource management. With over 174 000 employees worldwide, the Group designs and provides water, waste and energy management solutions that contribute to the sustainable development of communities and industries. Through its three complementary business activities, Veolia helps to develop access to resources, preserve available resources, and to replenish them.

In 2015, the Veolia group supplied 100 million people with drinking water and 63 million people with wastewater service, produced 63 million megawatt hours of energy and converted 42.9 million metric tons of waste into new materials and energy. Veolia Environnement (listed on Paris Euronext: VIE) recorded consolidated revenue of 25 billion in 2015. www.veolia.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912006580/en/

Contacts:

Veolia

Group Press Relations

Laurent Obadia Sandrine Guendoul

Stephane Galfre Marie Bouvet

Tel.: + 33 (0) 1 71 75 19 27

stephane.galfre@veolia.com


LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Hilton Food Group Plc (HFG.L) reported that its profit after taxation for the 28 weeks to 17 July 2016 was 13.4 million pounds, up 29.9% from last year's 10.3 million pounds, reflecting higher operating profit and the lower effective rate of taxation. Basic earnings per share in the first 28 weeks of 2016, at 16.9 pence, were 28.0% above last year's level.



Profit before income tax grew to 16.67 million pounds from 13.16 million pounds in the prior year.



Operating profit for the first 28 weeks of 2016 was 25.7% higher at 17.3 million pounds and 21.3% higher on a constant currency basis driven by organic European volume growth, the roll out of the new Melbourne facility, lower start-up costs and the successful start of Hilton's UK meat trading business.



Hilton's underlying trading performance remained strong, despite competitive retail grocery markets and uncertain macroeconomic conditions. Volumes increased by 4.5%, reflecting the investment bedding-in phase with Tesco in the UK, encouraging growth in Irish business and further progress in Holland and Central Europe.



Turnover increased by 9.1% to 631.9 million pounds from 579.2 million pounds last year and by 5.3% on a constant currency basis.



The Directors will declare an interim dividend of 4.6 pence per share, amounting to 3.4 million pounds (compared with an interim dividend of 4.1 pence per share in 2015) to be paid on 2 December 2016, to shareholders on the register at close of business on 4 November 2016.



The Group expects results for the full year to be in line with the Board's expectations.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
LONDON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Specialist technical fluid power products supplier, FLOWTECH FLUIDPOWER PLC, (AiM Symbol: FLO) releases its 2016 Half-Year Report:

HY2016 HY2015 FY2015 FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS 30.6.16 30.6.15 31.12.15 GROWTH UNAUDITED UNAUDITED AUDITED % REVENUE: -Flowtechnology GBP18.093m GBP17.488m GBP33.168m +3% -Power Motion Control (PMC) GBP8.268m GBP3.935m GBP11.680m +110% -Process GBP1.026m - - - GROUP TOTAL REVENUE GBP27.387m GBP21.423m GBP44.848m +28% GROSS PROFIT GBP9.551m GBP7.203m GBP15.345m +33% UNDERLYING OPERATING PROFIT GBP4.059m GBP3.404m GBP6.868m +19% OPERATING PROFIT GBP3.290m GBP3.012m GBP5.491m +9% HALF-YEAR DIVIDEND 1.84p 1.75p +5% EARNINGS PER SHARE (basic) 5.91p 5.62p +5% NET DEBT GBP14.1m GBP7.5m GBP9.0m

OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS SOLID FIRST HALF PERFORMANCE IN CHALLENGING MARKET CONDITIONS STRONG MOMENTUM WITHIN THE RECENTLY ESTABLISHED PMC AND PROCESS DIVISIONS GROSS MARGINS REMAIN RESILIENT ACROSS ALL DIVISIONS ACQUISITION STRATEGY DELIVERING EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITIES TO ACQUIRE NICHE BUSINESSES WITH SPECIALIST SECTOR FOCUS: - THREE COMPLETED IN 2016 AND SIX SINCE BECOMING A PLC - ALL INTEGRATIONS ON TARGET - CONFIDENT OF FURTHER PROGRESS BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR EXPANDED CUSTOMER PROFILE INTO NEW END USER MARKETS including: - AGRICULTURE, RAILWAY, ENVIRONMENTAL, WATER, PHARMACEUTICAL STRONG FOCUS ON INVESTING IN GROUP RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE NET DEBT COMFORTABLY WITHIN AVAILABLE FACILITIES AND COVENANTS

"Flowtech remains confident in its ability to execute its proven strategy to develop in its technically specialised sectors in the UK and internationally. The Company is recognised as a skilled and resilient business operating in a fragmented fluid power distribution market. In addition to organic sales growth there remains a number of opportunities to further enhance Flowtech's multi-channel approach through; its investment in people and increased sales resource, the ongoing development of Exclusive Brand and OEM product offering, as well as through earnings enhancing acquisitions."SEAN FENNON, CEO FLOWTECH FLUIDPOWER PLC

To read the full news release in full please visit http://www.flowtechfluidpower.com

About Flowtech Fluidpower plc Flowtech Fluidpower plc, founded as Flowtech in 1983, is the UK's leading specialist supplier of technical fluid power products. The Group has three divisions: Flowtechnology, Power Motion Control and Process. All three of the Group's divisions have overlapping product sets, allowing procurement synergies to be maximised. The Flowtechnology division focuses on supplying distributors and resellers of industrial MRO (maintenance, repair and operation) products, primarily serving urgent orders rather than bulk offerings. It is formed from Flowtechnology UK, Flowtechnology Benelux and Indequip. It offers an unrivalled range of Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and Exclusive Brand products to over 3,400 distributors and resellers. Its catalogues are recognised as the definitive source for fluid power products, containing approximately 106,000 individual product lines and are distributed to more than 85,000 industrial Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul end users (MRO). The Power Motion Control division specialises in the design, assembly and supply of engineering components and hydraulic systems and is further enhanced by a service and repair function. The division is formed from Primary Fluid Power, Nelson Hydraulics and TSL Fluidpower. The Process division focuses on the supply of industrial components to the process sectors. This is the newest division in the Group, formed by the acquisition of Hydravalve in March 2016. The Group's main distribution centre is in Skelmersdale, Lancashire with further distribution centres in the Netherlands and China. The Power Motion Control Division (PMC) has operations in Merseyside, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Yorkshire; Process operates from the West Midlands. In total the business employs 324 people. The Group has a clear view of its growth objectives - to create a specialist fluid power organisation that remains focused on its core competencies whilst servicing the varied industrial and manufacturing sectors through its delivery of 'class-leading' service and support. Our long term growth model is based on both organic growth, coupled with complementary acquisitions in a very fragmented marketplace.
LUTON, UNITED KINGDOM -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Editors note: There are two images accompanying this press release.

Corel announces its latest CorelDRAW Graphics Suite cashback promotion. Purchase CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 from your preferred Corel authorised reseller and receive EUR100 cashback. The promotion runs from September 1st, 2016 through to December 31st, 2016.

"CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 gives you everything you need to create amazing graphics, eye-catching web designs, show-stopping photos and much more," said Jo Levens, Global Director of Marketing, Corel. "Already great value, with this special promotion, there's never been a better time to get creative with this comprehensive graphics package."

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 enables users to create professional designs faster with a simplified workflow and unprecedented power and control. With advanced support for Windows 10, multi-monitor viewing and 4K displays, the suite lets first-time users, graphics pros, small business owners, and design enthusiasts deliver professional results with speed and confidence. Discover the power of high-caliber and intuitive tools like the new Corel Font Manager, Healing Clone tool, and customizable workspace to create logos, brochures, web graphics, social media ads or any original project.

How to Claim Your Cashback.

Simply purchase CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 (either download or box, full version only) from your preferred Corel authorised reseller by December 31st, 2016, then submit your claim form to receive EUR100 cash back!*

1. Visit www.coreldraw.com/cashback to complete and submit the claim form no later than January 14th, 2017. Include your proof of purchase of your CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8.

2. You will receive confirmation of receipt of the application form via e-mail within 10 days and payment will be made via international wire transfer within a further 28 days.

Countries Included in the Offer: Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and UK.

* Only one application form per person for a single product will be accepted. Each person is only eligible for one cashback payment. In the UK, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Turkey and Poland, the equivalent currency payment will be made, based on local exchange rates against the Euro on the date of payment. For full terms and conditions, please visit www.coreldraw.com/cashback.

About Corel Graphic Design Software

Whether you're an occasional graphics user, creative professional or technical illustrator, Corel Graphic Design Software helps you make a major impact with your artwork. The Corel Graphic Design product family includes the renowned CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, a complete graphic design solution, CorelDRAW Technical Suite for technical communication, and CorelCAD, affordable and powerful CAD design software.

Boasting some of the industry's best-known brands, Corel's product lines also include Corel Painter, Corel PaintShop Pro, Corel PDF Fusion, Corel VideoStudio and Corel WordPerfect Office. For more information about Corel Graphic Design Software, please visit www.coreldraw.com.

 2016 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved. Corel, the Corel logo, the Corel Balloon logo, CorelDRAW, CorelCAD, Painter, PaintShop, PDF Fusion, VideoStudio and WordPerfect are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation and/or its subsidiaries in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. Patents: http://www.corel.com/patent

To view the images accompanying this press release, click on the following links:

http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Corel913a.jpg

http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Corel913b.jpg

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3054978

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3054984



Media Contact

Jessica Gould

Corel PR

jessica.gould@corel.com

www.corel.com




ST. GALLEN, Switzerland, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

ForaCare Suisse AG today announced that its Italian distributor, Meter Ltd., will present its free telehealth platform that includes ForaCare health monitoring devices as critical components on 13 and 14 September in the ForaCare booth at the European Association for the Study of Obesity.

Representatives from Meter will demonstrate the Diabtel.net platform, a free tool that provides a comprehensive way for both diabetes medical professionals and patients to interact simply and easily.

"ForaCare is proud to feature our partner's important platform and its centralized use of our health monitoring offerings in our booth at EASD," said Ty-Minh Tan, CEO of ForaCare Suisse AG. "The diabetes medical experts and patient educators who attend EASD will learn about this free platform and ways they can easily integrate telehealth into their programs."

Diabtel.net is a free telemonitoring system that provides a platform for self-monitoring tools and features ForaCare's blood glucose, blood pressure, body temperature and body weight measurement devices as well as uses ForaCare's Gateway data transmission tool.The telemonitoring system allows for health monitoring of important health parameters for patients at home or on the go via ForaCare's iFORA apps for smart phones and other mobile devices.

Meter will demonstrate the three simple steps for remote monitoring, including: 1) patients share their data via their devices with the Diabtel.net platform; 2) Diabtel.net monitors the patient's health parameters and 3) when there is a health need, sends alert messages to the patient's doctor who evaluates the data to determine the best course of action for each patient.

"Meter is pleased to demonstrate our platform with ForaCare to diabetes experts from around the world," said Nicola Frigione, marketing manager for Meter.

Meter's platform and ForaCare's technology has been central in a research study, the ARSAN project, that began in April 2015 and includes 120 insulin-treated patients who are monitored with four measurements per day. The ARSAN study is aimed at demonstrating the value of remote monitoring services for the management of chronic diseases such as congestive heart failure, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. To learn more, visit this link: https://www.ehtel.eu/references-files/jointdigitalhealthcaresymposium/d1-4b-enable-improved-self-management-and-care/United4Health%20Telehealth%20in%20Practice%20-%20Care%20Delivery%20Models%20from%2014%20Regions%20in%20Europe.pdf

All ForaCare monitoring devices are validated as highly accurate in the industry and provide superior quality directly to consumers.FORA Blood Glucose Monitors are validated according to ISO 15197 requirements at an internationally renowned diabetes institute in Ulm, Germany.

ForaCare provides FDA cleared and CE marked innovative health monitoring devices that provide simple connection to the FORA system. For more information, please visit http://www.foracare.ch/

About ForaCare Suisse AG: http://www.foracare.ch/

Contact:

Elena Birrer""

+41-71-220-1001
MANCHESTER, England, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Purple, the intelligent spaces company, and Cisco, the largest networking company in the world, today announce the launch of their Better Together Campaign.

Better Together allows Cisco partners that are signed up for solution led selling, and who also sell Purple, to automatically benefit from an additional 4% discount stacked on top of other discounts, including hunting and teaming.

The campaign targets the UK and Spain, but the offering and discounts are available across EMEA. All the partner has to do is to be signed up with Cisco for SLS with Purple.

Purple's cloud software solution runs over the top of any Cisco wireless solution. Purple enables a space to become 'intelligent', by using data collected to better inform both the venue owner and the customer. The joined up solution enables partners to open up the conversation with customers to be more about digital transformation as a whole. Purple's solution answers real business problems - for example, it enables venue owners to communicate with people in their space in an intelligent, mobile way, generating a return on investment and even creating operational efficiencies.

From a channel perspective, Comstor have been an active part of the group and will be involved in pushing the 'Better Together Campaign', resulting in a mix of targeted marketing campaigns and partner promotions.

Gordon Thomson, MD, Data Centre, Collaboration and Networking Technologies, EMEAR, says: "At Cisco we place huge importance on identifying the right ecosystem partners to team up with, in order to provide our customers with the best possible technology to supercharge their Cisco digital network architecture. Purple's analytics and marketing solution has proved an excellent overlay to any Cisco or Cisco Meraki wireless foundation, extremely popular with customers because it generates real business outcomes. We're excited to be launching the campaign and look forward to seeing more customers come on board with Cisco and Purple."

Kerry Wright, Director of Alliances at Purple says: "The Better Together Campaign is a real milestone in our relationship. We also believe the campaign will appeal to new channel partners, who can benefit from the 4% discount, many of whom are already keen to explore the possibilities offered by this new campaign and are already on board with plans to support it."

How do Cisco partners get involved?

Contact the sales team on +44-333-101-4120 or at sales@purple.ai .
PARIS and YOKOHAMA, Japan, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Alliance reaches h istoric EV milestone in August with 100 , 000 EV s sold in one year

Nissan LE AF remains world ' s most popular electric vehicle with more than 2 3 0 , 000 units sold

Renault delivers its 100 , 000 th EV to a customer in Norway

Alliance's EV offering continues to improve with extended range of batteries and more innovations

The Renault-Nissan Alliance, the world's leader in zero-emissions mobility, has sold its 350,000th electric vehicle since December 2010, when the Nissan LEAF went on sale.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140130/666713-a )



The Alliance achieved the historic milestone in August, while also setting an industry record of 100,000 EVs sold in a single year.

The Alliance today accounts for half of the EVs sold worldwide. The Nissan LEAF remains the industry's best-selling EV ever, with more than 230,000 units sold globally. Renault is the best-performing EV brand in Europe.

"This historic milestone confirms our customers' recognition of the benefits of Renault and Nissan electric vehicles," Alliance Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn said. "Our commitment to contribute toward a zero-emissions world by bringing to the market a full range of affordable EVs makes Renault-Nissan the indisputable leader in EV technology."

Historic milestones for Nissan and Renault

The Renault-Nissan Alliance is the only global car group with a wide range of zero-emission vehicles for personal and business use. In addition to the LEAF, Nissan also sells the e-NV200, a light commercial vehicle sold mainly in Europe and Japan since 2014. Along with the ZOE, Renault also sells the Renault Kangoo Z.E van, the SM3 Z.E. sedan and the Twizy, a two-seat, urban commuter vehicle.

To date, Nissan has sold more than 250,000 EVs in 48 markets globally. The Nissan LEAF has driven more than 2.7 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles), helping prevent an estimated 455,249,190 tons of CO 2 from entering the atmosphere(1). The United States, Japan and Europe accounted for 90 percent of LEAF sales, with the U.S. leading the way with about 97,000 sales, followed by Japan (68,000) and Europe (61,000).

Renault reached the 100,000 EV milestone worldwide since its first model, the Kangoo Z.E., went on sale in October 2011. The milestone was marked with a ceremony in Norway, where a customer took delivery of a Renault ZOE. ZOE is the best-selling EV in Europe, and, with sales increasing 32 percent during this first six months of this year, Renault is the best-performing EV brand in Europe: One of four electric vehicles on European roads are Renault.

Driving range increase and technology innovations

The Alliance keeps improving the range and features of its EV fleet, pushing the boundaries of what is possible with zero-emissions technology to meet customer expectations and needs.

Nissan launched the updated Nissan LEAF with 250 kilometers of range(2) in the United States and Japan in late 2015, and in Europe earlier this year.

Renault last year improved the ZOE's range by 30 kilometers with 10 percent faster charging times. Renault's engineers improved the motor's efficiency by optimizing its electronic management system.

The Alliance continues to innovate by combining its EV expertise with the research and development of other advanced technologies. In January, the Alliance announced plans to launch more than 10 vehicles with autonomous drive technology by 2020. The technology will be installed on mainstream, mass-market cars at affordable prices, confirming the Alliance's commitment to achieve its twin goals of zero-emissions and zero-fatalities.

ABOUT THE RENAULT-NISSAN ALLIANCE

The Renault-Nissan Alliance is a strategic partnership between Paris-based Renault and Yokohama, Japan-based Nissan, which together sell one in 10 cars worldwide. The companies, which have been strategic partners since 1999, sold 8.5 million cars in nearly 200 countries in 2015. The Alliance also operates strategic collaborations with other automakers, including Germany's Daimler, China's Dongfeng, and Japan's Mitsubishi Motors. The Alliance has a majority stake in the joint venture that owns Russia's top automaker, AVTOVAZ.

blog.alliance-renault-nissan.com

http://www.media.renault.com

http://www.nissan-newsroom.com

(1) Total figures based on Nissan's Global Data Center (GDC) as of August 2016. The distance and the amount of CO2 are only collected from those Nissan LEAF EVs registered in the telematics system],[ which account for approximately 53% of total global sales (average projection.

(2) New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) value.

Contacts:



Aline Henry

Renault-Nissan Alliance

+33(0)6-03-09-54-97

aline.henry@renault-nissan.com



Celine Farissier

Renault SAS

+33(0)6-35-14-22-75

Celine.farissier@renault.com



Akihiro Nakanishi

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd

+81(0)45-523-5549

akihiro-nakanishi@mail.nissan.co.jp


For Immediate Release

13 September 2016

DORIEMUS PLC

("Doriemus" or the "Company")

Nutech reports 282 million barrels of Oil in Place per square mile for Brockham-1 well in the UK's Weald Basin



London-quoted Doriemus PLC (ISDX: DOR) is pleased to announce that US-based Nutech Ltd ("Nutech"), one of the world's leading companies in petrophysical analysis and reservoir intelligence, has independently assessed the Brockham-1 well. Drilled by BP in 1987 under UK Production License PL 235, this Weald Basin well sits approximately 6 miles north west of Gatwick Airport, with an estimated total oil in place ("OIP") of 281.7 million barrels of oil ("MMBO") per sector or per square mile inclusive of all reservoirs within the well.

The Executive Summary of the Nutech Report ("Nutech Report") on the Brockham-1 well is appended to this news release, and the complete Nutech Report can be seen on the Company's website.

In comparison, Nutech's previous reported OIP assessment of the the nearby Horse Hill-1 well ("HH-1"), located approximately 4.5 miles from the Brockham play, reported a total of 158 MMBO OIP per square mile last year. This excluded the previously reported Upper Portland Sandstone oil discovery previously announced on 9 April 2015. The flow testing of the HH-1 well, as announce on 21 March 2016, reported a total aggregate stable dry oil flow rate of 1,688 barrels of oil per day from two of the three Kimmeridge Limestones and the Portland Sandstone. The pay zones successfully flow tested at HH-1 in February and March this year are similar to those seen in the Brockham-1 well.

Doriemus is a partner in the planned Brockham sidetrack and will take advice from Nutech in order to provide input and suggestions to the operator.

David Lenigas, Executive Chairman of Doriemus Plc, commented:

"The great advantage of the Brockham oil field is that it is already a producing oil field and any new production should be able to be put on line relatively quickly. This Nutech work for Doriemus has highlighted that the conventional Portland Sandstones and the Kimmeridge Limestones that were oil productive at the Horse Hill -1 well near Gatwick Airport are indeed evident at the nearby Brockham Oil Field. Doriemus looks forward to participating in the next phase of developing the oil potential of Brockham with the proposed drill of the next side track well designed to penetrate the Portland and the entire Kimmeridge sections of the well."

Bill Boykin, NUTECH Energy's EVP Business Development, commented:

"From the initial NUTECH petrophysical and reservoir analysis, we are excited about the potential of the Brockham oil field. It is early in the assessment with limited data, but we are looking forward to updating the reports as additional information comes in from log/core data from new drills and additional production data from completions."

Interest in Horse Hill: Doriemus owns a 10% direct interest in the Brockham Oil Field ("Brockham") which is held under UK Production Licence PL 235. Angus Energy Weald Basin no.3 Limited own 55% of of Brockham and are the operators with Terrain Energy Limited owning 20%, Brockham Capital Limited owning 10% and Alba Minerals Plc owning 5%.

Cautionary Statement: The above estimated OIP hydrocarbon volumes should not be construed as recoverable resources or reserves and also should not be construed in any way to reflect potential producibility of hydrocarbons from the formations evaluated. The Company would expect to report estimated recoverable resources following a successful completion of the Brockham-4 sidetrack planned to later this year, in order to comply with the standards of the Society of Petroleum Engineers' 2007 Petroleum Resources Management System.

Qualified Person's Statement: Bill Boykin, NUTECH Energy's EVP Business Development, who has over 30 years in of relevant experience in the oil industry, has approved the information contained in the announcement. Mr. Boykin is a member of numerous oil and gas societies, and past officer in local Engineering, Geological and SPWLA chapters.

The directors of the Company accept responsibility for the contents of this announcement.

For further information please contact:

Doriemus Plc:

www.doriemus.com

David Lenigas (Executive Chairman) +44 (0) 20 74400640

Hamish Harris (Non-Executive Director)

Peterhouse Corporate Finance Limited +44 (0) 20 7469 0930

Guy Miller

Fungai Ndore

Square 1 Consulting (Public Relations) +44 (0) 20 7929 5599

David Bick



Nutech Executive Report Summary (dated: 12 September 2016):

Results and Recommendations:

Doriemus Plc has engaged Nutech Ltd ("Nutech"), to aid in its independent assessment and development potential of the Brockham oilfield in UK onshore Production License PL 235, Weald Basin. Doriemus has acquired the rights to the adjacent Horse Hill-1 well ("HH-1") and Collendean Farm-1 well ("CF-1") analysis (Doriemus is a stakeholder in the Horse Hill license) to assist with the assessment of the nearby Brockham-1 well and launched an initial study on Brockham-1 to better understand the potential in this play.

Included in the analysis by Nutech is a cross section of the three wells, CF-1, HH-1, and Brockham-1 to understand the geological variations across the Basin where the wells lay. It is seen that there are some geologic variations across the 4.5 miles in between the HH-1 and Brockham-1 within the Portland zone, but the overall stratigraphy remains prevalent. It is also observed that the Brockham-1 formations lay slightly deeper in the Portland zone, and close in the Kimmeridge formations relative to HH-1.

It is imperative to realize the limitations on the analysis in the bulk of the Kimmeridge zone where only sonic porosity logs were available. The lack of high quality data reduces the confidence level of the quantitative results. To overcome this, offset logs in junction with a robust process driven methodology yield reliable qualitative results.

Petrophysical results in the Brockham-1 well yield an oil in place ("OIP") estimate of 281.67 million barrels of oil ("MMBO") per square mile, primarily from the Portland Sandstone, and the argillaceous Limestones and mudstones of the Kimmeridge, and the mudstones of the Oxford and Lias sections.

The total OIP in the conventional Sandstones and Limestones of the Portland and Kimmeridge totals 101.7 MMBO per square mile, in comparison to 68.5 MMBO per square mile analyzed in the HH-1 well. The breakdown of each formation is listed below.

Brockham-1 Portland Sandstone contains 76.8 MMBo per square mile over a gross interval of 409 feet, with average porosity of 17% and permeability of 162 milliDarcy ("mD"). Similarly, the HH-1 Portland Sandstone Group of 314 feet contains an average porosity of 17% and permeability of 152.4 mD. The HH-1 well was perforated over an interval of 103 feet and naturally flowed to surface 323 barrels of oil per day ("bopd") of 35-37 API oil at a stabilized dry oil rate for an 8.5 hour period from the Portland Sandstone on well test in 2016.

The Upper Kimmeridge Micrite has been estimated to contain 11 MMBO per square mile over an 85 foot interval, with an average porosity of 7.7% and tight matrix permeability of 0.02 mD. This is similar to the HH-1 well an average porosity of 6.1% and tight matrix permeability of 0.005 mD. HH-1's OIP for the upper Micrite was 6.96 MMBO per square mile over an interval of 105 feet. The HH-1 well was perforated over an interval of 88 feet and naturally flowed to surface 901 bopd of 40 API oil at a stabilized dry oil rate for a 4 hour period from the Upper Kimmeridge Micrite on well test in 2016.

The Middle Kimmeridge Micrite contains an estimated 8.8 MMBO per square mile over an interval 67 feet with an average porosity of 7.7% and permeability of 0.024 mD. This is similar to the HH-1 well an average porosity of 7.6% and permeability of 0.107 mD. HH-1's OIP for the upper Micrite was 17.1 MMBO per square mile over an interval of 135 feet. The HH-1 well was perforated over an interval of 80 feet and naturally flowed to surface 464 bopd of 40 API oil at a stabilized dry oil rate for a 7.5 hour period from the Middle Kimmeridge Micrite on well test in 2016.

The Lower Kimmeridge Micrite has an estimated 4.3 MMBO per square mile over an interval 29 feet with an average porosity of 8.4% and permeability of 0.032 mD. The HH-1 well did not flow test this zone.

Fracture analysis, coupled with information from the HH-1 well and CF-1 well offset well information indicate that the Kimmeridge Limestones (Micrites) show potential of natural fracturing and are potential candidates for flow testing when drilling and completing the Brockham-4 sidetrack.

Table 1 shows the calculated total OIP values for the Brockham well's conventional Sandstone and Limestone. It is recommended that conventional flow testing be undertaken within the Upper Portland Sandstone and the three Kimmeridge Micrite units to better understand the producibility of each zone when drilling the proposed sidetrack on the Brockham-4 well.

Table 1: Brockham-1 - NULOOK/NULIST OIP Summary Table:

SECTION DEPTH FT DEPTH FT GROSS FT PAY FT OIP TOP BASE MD MD MMBO/Sq. Mile Portland Group 2053 2462 409 39 76.8 Kimmeridge 2462 3753 1291 204 106.4 Top Corallian 3753 3950 197 1 8.3 Oxford 3753 5466 415 30 16.6 Oolite 4676 5403 113 2 17.6 Lias 5403 7130 1475 67 54.6 Other 1.4 TOTAL 3787 341 281.7 TOT TOT CUM

Cautionary Statement: The above estimated OIP hydrocarbon volumes should not be construed as recoverable resources or reserves and also should not be construed in any way to reflect potential producibility of hydrocarbons from the formations evaluated. The Company would expect to report estimated recoverable resources following a successful completion of the Brockham-4 sidetrack planned to later this year, in order to comply with the standards of the Society of Petroleum Engineers' 2007 Petroleum Resources Management System.

Glossary:
SUNNYVALE, California, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Arrow Will Distribute Eragon 820 System-on-Modules (SoMs) and Development Kits from eInfochips Inc., to be Used for 4K/Ultra HD Camera Designs with Multiple Imagining Sensors for Advanced Graphics and Visual Capabilities

eInfochips Inc. and Arrow Electronics today announced they will initiate the promotion and distribution of eInfochips' Eragon 820 SoMs and Development kits, based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon' 820 processor, a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131029/648699 )

Eragon 820 will enable embedded and industrial customers with 4K/Ultra HD video capability for products and applications in areas such as Virtual reality, Surveillance, Robotics, Machine Intelligence, and Medical imaging .

Eragon 820 is available now for orders. Eragon 820 SoM is priced at $259 per unit and the Development kit at $590 per unit. Custom pricing options are also available for large order quantities.

Order Eragon 820: System-on-Module | Development Kit

Eragon 820 will power intelligent video solutions that can capture Ultra High Definition videos with sensors to enhance the image quality and audio clarity. The Snapdragon 820 processor helps achieve superior image quality by allowing up to 4 Imaging sensors to be connected via MIPI-CSI interfaces, taking advantage of the Qualcomm Spectra' ISP for pre and post processing, and Qualcomm Adreno' 530 GPU for additional image processing.

"eInfochips has extensive experience in developing embedded systems, wireless cameras, and video solutions for organizations in Surveillance, Broadcasting, Retail, Aerospace, Military, Consumer electronics, Transport, Medical devices and Industrial automation," said Parag Mehta, Chief Business Development Officer at eInfochips. "We are seeing a huge interest for Snapdragon 820 and have started working with a few early-adopters for custom hardware and software development by providing end-to-end product engineering services."

Click here to get a detailed a detailed specification on Eragon 820. eInfochips also undertakes custom design solutions for its clients.

About eInfochips

eInfochips has more than 20 years of experience in designing end-to-end systems with design centers supporting customers locally in North America, Europe and Asia.

eInfochips is a global product innovation partner, recognized for technology leadership by Gartner, Frost & Sullivan, NASSCOM and Zinnov. The 1500+ engineers at eInfochips have contributed to over 500 product designs for top global companies, with more than 10 million units deployed around the world.

Visit us at http://www.einfochips.com, or stay connected on LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, Twitter and YouTube.

To request information, contact marketing@einfochips.com

Qualcomm, Snapdragon, and Adreno are trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated, registered in the United States and other countries. Qualcomm Spectra is a trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated.

Qualcomm Snapdragon, Qualcomm Adreno, and Qualcomm Spectra are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Media Contact:

Sooryanarayanan Balasubramanian

(+1) 408-496-1882

(+91) 79-2656-3705

marketing@einfochips.com



http://www.einfochips.com
MONTREAL, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Caprion Biosciences announced today that the company has acquired the assets of the immune monitoring laboratory of ImmuneHealth, ASBL. Located in Gosselies, Belgium, the ImmuneHealth laboratory will provide a fully operational immune monitoring laboratory infrastructure with well-established expertise, quality processes and industry services track record, which Caprion will leverage to expand its immune monitoring offering and strengthen its business partnerships and research collaborations throughout Europe. The ImmuneHealth lab also possesses complementary expertise and assays for cellular and humoral immunity that will help support Caprion's efforts to further diversify its services offering in the areas of infectious diseases and vaccine development.

As a leading global provider of specialized immunology and proteomics analytical laboratory services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, Caprion is positioned for continued growth particularly in the rapidly expanding R&D services for immune oncology therapies, precision medicine biomarkers and biologics drugs. Caprion has achieved strong growth in recent years based on rapidly expanding client demand for the high quality differentiated services of its ImmuneCarta platform for monitoring immune response of patients in clinical development of drugs that involve the immune system, as well as for its ProteoCarta' proteomics platform for the identification and quantification of proteins for biomarker discovery and validation, and for quality control in the manufacturing processes of biological drugs.

This announcement marks Caprion's first acquisition since it was recapitalized in July with GHO Capital. With favourable trends in immuno-oncology and proteomics, Caprion will continue to expand its capabilities on a global scale. Martin LeBlanc, President and CEO of Caprion stated: "This European expansion is a core part of Caprion's strategy to strengthen our competitive positioning and expand our service offering to better support our pharma and biotech clients as part of their global and European clinical trial initiatives. The opportunity to partner with the outstanding operation and team of the ImmuneHealth lab also provides us with an immediate access to an exciting new network of business partners as well as a vibrant research environment for building scientific collaborations in Belgium and Europe".

Dominique Demonte, Chairman of ImmuneHealth said: "Caprion's expertise and vision will support the deployment of the services developed at ImmuneHealth on a broader scale and will create a natural bridge between Canada and Wallonia to promote strong business partnerships. This acquisition is therefore very good news for ImmuneHealth clients and for the development of our region".

With its two locations in North America and Europe, 120 employees including 70 PhD and/or MSc degrees, Caprion is now well-positioned to support the global clinical immune monitoring needs of its biopharma partners. Caprion will continue to operate from its headquarters in Montreal (Canada) as well as from its new location in Belgium under the leadership of Caprion's current management team.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

About Caprion Biosciences, Inc.

Caprion Biosciences is the leading provider of proteomics and immune monitoring services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Its immune monitoring business unit, ImmuneCarta, offers proprietary multiparametric flow cytometry services for functional analyses of innate and adaptive immune responses. Caprion's proteomics business unit, ProteoCarta', offers proprietary gel-free, label-free mass spectrometry (MS) for comprehensive, quantitative and robust comparative measurement of proteins across large sets of biological samples for the discovery and validation of protein biomarkers. Caprion also leverages ProteoCarta and ImmuneCarta to develop its own in-vitro diagnostic products targeting cancer, metabolic and infectious diseases. Caprion has been providing large-scale proteomics and immune monitoring services to over 50 major pharmaceutical and biotech clients for more than 15 years. For more information, please visit http://www.caprion.com.

About ImmuneHealth

ImmuneHealth was founded in 2007 by the Universite Libre de Bruxelles as a CRO offering human biospecimen procurement as well as immuno-monitoring testing for clinical trials in the fields of vaccines, immunotherapies, cell therapies and diagnostics. Over the years, the Gosselies-based CRO has built its recognition for its cellular and humoral immunity analytical services provided to biotech and pharma clients. Through its clinical unit, operating in compliance with clinical regulatory and ethical guidelines, ImmuneHealth has also established a strong clinical network supplying its partners with human biological samples through a prospective approach with access to a large panel of healthy donors and clinically characterized patients. Through the announced transaction, ImmuneHealth transfers its immune-monitoring laboratory to Caprion and retains the activities of its clinical unit. For more information, please visit http://www.immunehealth.eu.

About GHO Capital

Global Healthcare Opportunities, or GHO Capital Partners LLP, was founded in 2014 as a specialist healthcare investment adviser based in London. Its vision is to apply global capabilities and perspectives to build a world-class healthcare specialist private equity firm by recognising and seizing the highly attractive and underpenetrated European market opportunity. The firm has a powerful combination of transaction, investment and industry skills which sets it apart from traditional private equity firms. For further information, please visit http://www.ghocapital.com.

Patrick Tremblay, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Development, Caprion Biosciences, ptremblay@caprion.com, +1-514-513-1998
LONDON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Eight Roads, the global investment firm, has appointed John Patrick (JP) Moorhead as Chief Operating Officer. JP joins Eight Roads from Virgin Group where he was Group CFO.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406906 )



JP began his career at Goldman Sachs in M&A and Capital Markets Advisory. In 2005, JP joined Virgin working in portfolio management before taking on the role of Virgin Group CFO in 2011. Among other responsibilities JP supported the management of Virgin's extensive global portfolio including as a Board Director of Virgin Australia, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Care and Virgin Rail.

Cyrus Jilla, CEO at Eight Roads commented: "We're delighted to welcome JP to Eight Roads. His career to date and extensive board experience will be invaluable given both the breadth and reach of our existing investments, and our ambition to develop into new areas of interest."

JP Moorhead added: "Working with Cyrus and team to further develop the Eight Roads business is a unique opportunity that I am greatly looking forward to."

About Eight Roads

Eight Roads is the proprietary investment arm of FIL, Fidelity International Limited, active in ventures, principal investments and real estate. Building on Fidelity's almost 50-year history of private investing, Eight Roads partners with founders, co-investors and management to build business, whether ventures or more developed companies. Eight Roads teams in Asia and Europe work alongside funds around the world, providing substantial global scale, expertise and market reach.

http://www.eightroads.com
Natuzzi S.p.A. (NYSE:NTZ) ("Natuzzi" or "the Company") will disclose H1 2016 financial results on Friday September 23th, 2016 after the market closes.

The Company will host a conference call on Monday September 26th, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time (4.00 p.m. Italian time, or 3.00 p.m. UK time) to discuss financial results.

The dial-in phone numbers for the live conference call are 1-888-466-4462 (toll-free) for persons calling from the U.S. or Canada, 1-719-325-2354 for those calling from other countries.

A live web cast of the conference call will be available on line at http://www.natuzzi.com/ under the "Investor Relations" section.

A replay of the call will be available shortly after the end of the conference call starting from September 26th, 2016 (from 1:00 pm US Eastern time), to October 26th, 2016. To access the replay of the conference call, interested persons need to dial 1-877-870-5176 (toll-free) for calls from U.S. and Canada, and 1-858-384-5517 for calls from other countries. The access code for the replay is: 9072622.

About Natuzzi S.p.A.

Founded in 1959 by Pasquale Natuzzi, Natuzzi S.p.A. designs, manufactures and sells a broad collection of couches, armchairs, home furniture and home accessories. With consolidated revenues of 488.5 million in 2015, Natuzzi is Italy's largest furniture house and the player with the greatest global reach in its sector, with eight manufacturing plants, twelve commercial offices and more than 1,100 points of sale worldwide. Ethics and social responsibility, innovation, industrial know-how and integrated management of its value chain represent the points of strength that have made the Natuzzi Group a market leader and established Natuzzi as the most recognized furniture brand in the world among consumers of luxury goods. Natuzzi S.p.A. has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since May 1993. The Company is ISO 9001 and 14001 certified.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005813/en/

Contacts:

NATUZZI INVESTOR RELATIONS

Francesca Cocco; tel. +39.080.8820.493

fcocco@natuzzi.com

or

NATUZZI CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

Vito Basile (Press Office); tel. +39.080.8820.676

vbasile@natuzzi.com
Intelsat S.A. (NYSE: I), operator of the world's first Globalized Network, powered by its leading satellite backbone, announced that Saudi Telecommunication Company (STC) has extended its relationship with Intelsat to use the company's satellite solutions to support operations for the largest oil gas producer in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Under a multi-year agreement, STC, the largest telecom operator in Saudi Arabia, will use connectivity provided by Intelsat 10-02, located at 1 West, to provide satellite services to the oil gas sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In 2016, STC and Intelsat continue to expand their relationship to support the growth of the VSAT sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The telecom operator uses multiple satellites in Intelsat's Globalized Network to provide high-quality broadband networking for corporate customers in the banking, government and oil gas sectors operating throughout the Middle East and Asia.

"The operations of oil gas companies are important to Saudi Arabia and the global economy, and reliable broadband communications are a vital part of the sector's daily operations," said Walid Al Wabel, General Manager, Operations Management, STC. "Intelsat has been a valuable partner in our support of major oil gas clients, delivering the satellite connectivity that ensures broadband services are always available. With Intelsat's continued support, STC has the best available satellite infrastructure integrated into our network, allowing us to deliver the highest quality services to our enterprise customers regardless of location."

"Demand for VSAT connectivity in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East remains strong, demonstrating that satellite is the best option for delivering reliable communications services to large enterprises with hundreds of locations spread across vast and sometimes remote areas," said Shahrokh Khanzadeh-Amiri, Intelsat's Director of Sales, Middle East and North Africa. "Intelsat's continuous efforts to improve its technology make sure end users can take advantage of the latest VSAT applications available. By selecting Intelsat again, STC validates our commitment to finding the best possible solution to support current and future requirements. This network exemplifies the enduring role that Intelsat and its customers play in connecting people and businesses in the Middle East and around the globe."

Supporting Resources:

Intelsat Broadband Services: http://www.intelsat.com/solutions/data-telecoms/

About Intelsat

Intelsat S.A. (NYSE: I) operates the world's first Globalized Network, delivering high-quality, cost-effective video and broadband services anywhere in the world. Intelsat's Globalized Network combines the world's largest satellite backbone with terrestrial infrastructure, managed services and an open, interoperable architecture to enable customers to drive revenue and reach through a new generation of network services. Thousands of organizations serving billions of people worldwide rely on Intelsat to provide ubiquitous broadband connectivity, multi-format video broadcasting, secure satellite communications and seamless mobility services. The end result is an entirely new world, one that allows us to envision the impossible, connect without boundaries and transform the ways in which we live. For more information, visit www.intelsat.com.

About STC

With their headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Telecom Group is the largest in the Middle East and North Africa based on its market value as it generated over 50,836,000,000 billion riyals (13,556,000,000 dollars) in realizable revenue in 2015 and 9,334,000,000 billion riyals (2,489,000,000 dollars) as net income.

STC was established in 1998 and currently counts about 100,000,000 customers worldwide and to which they provide high-technology knowledge-based innovative solutions. It focuses on providing services to customers through a fiber-optic network that spans 137,000 kilometers across Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

In Saudi Arabia (the group's main operation site) STC operates the largest modern mobile network in the Middle East as it covers more than 99% of the country's populated areas in addition to providing 4G mobile broadband to more than 85% of the population across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Besides its main operation in Saudi Arabia, which it owns 100% of, STC's investments include 100% ownership in Viva Bahrain, 51.8% shares in Viva Kuwait along with a management contract, 35% shares in Oger Telecom Limited in UAE and which controls Turk Telecom, Avea in Turkey, Cell-C in South Africa, 25% shares in Binariang GSM Holding in Malaysia which controls both Maxis in Malaysia and Aircel in India. In addition to the above-mentioned, STC has investments in information technology, content, distribution, contact centers and real estate, all of which support its telecom operations across the Middle East.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005824/en/

Contacts:

Intelsat Contact

Michele Loguidice, +1 703-559-7372

Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications

michele.loguidice@intelsat.com

or

STC Contact

Yasser Abdel Aziz Al-Ghaslan

Director of Media and Communications

yalghaslan@stc.com.sa
MONTREAL, CANADA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- (NYSE: CAE)(TSX: CAE) - CAE today announced that it has won defence contracts valued at more than C$120 million to provide a range of training services and simulation product upgrades for global military customers.

Some of the key contracts include the United States Air Force exercising a contract option for CAE USA to provide MQ-1 Predator/MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) aircrew training services; the United States Navy exercising contract options on the MH-60 Tech Refresh and Procurement of Simulators program; and the Austrian Armed Forces awarding a contract to upgrade their CAE GESI command and staff training system.

"Our large installed base of existing training devices and simulation systems provide ongoing upgrade and update opportunities along with long-term service and support business," said Gene Colabatistto, CAE's Group President, Defence & Security. "We are pleased to continue our support of the United States Air Force as their training partner on the MQ-1 Predator/MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft, which is the world's largest RPA training program."

U.S. Air Force MQ-1 Predator/MQ-9 Reaper

The United States Air Force (USAF) has awarded CAE USA a contract for option year three on the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft aircrew training services and courseware development program. CAE USA works closely with active-duty USAF personnel to provide classroom, simulator and live flying instruction for more than 1,500 pilots and sensor operators who train annually at Holloman AFB, New Mexico; Creech AFB, Nevada; March Air Reserve Base, California; and Hancock Air National Guard Base, New York.

United States Navy

The United States Navy has exercised additional contract options as part of the MH-60R/S Tech Refresh and Procurement of Simulators (TRPS) program. Under the MH-60 TPRS program, CAE USA is performing major updates and upgrades to the U.S. Navy's suite of MH-60S Sierra and MH-60R Romeo training systems, including tactical operational flight trainers and weapons tactics trainers.

Austrian Armed Forces

CAE was awarded an upgrade contract to provide the latest generation CAE GESI command and staff training system to the Austrian Armed Forces, which has been using its existing CAE GESI constructive simulation system for more than two decades. The latest generation CAE GESI software will be provided to the Austrian Armed Forces in phases over the next year to update and enhance the command and staff training provided to military and civil commanders. Enhancements to the latest version of the CAE GESI software include an easy-to-use exercise editor, comprehensive after-action-review capability, and interoperability with a range of command and control (C2) systems.

About CAE

CAE's Defence & Security business unit focuses on helping prepare our customers to develop and maintain the highest levels of mission readiness. We are a world-class training systems integrator offering a comprehensive portfolio of training centres, training services and simulation products across the air, land, sea and public safety market segments. We serve our global defence and security customers through regional operations in Canada; the United States/Latin America; Europe/Middle East/Africa; and Asia/Pacific, all of which leverage the full breadth of CAE's capabilities, technologies and solutions.

CAE is a global leader in training for the civil aviation, defence and security, and healthcare markets. Backed by a 70-year record of industry firsts, we continue to help define global training standards with our innovative virtual-to-live training solutions to make flying safer, maintain defence force readiness and enhance patient safety. We have the broadest global presence in the industry, with 8,000 employees, 160 sites and training locations in over 35 countries. Each year, we train more than 120,000 civil and defence crewmembers and thousands of healthcare professionals worldwide. www.cae.com

Follow us on Twitter @CAE_Inc and @CAE_Defence

Contacts:

CAE contacts:

Helene V. Gagnon, Vice President,

Public Affairs and Global Communications

514-340-5536

helene.v.gagnon@cae.com



Trade media:

Chris Stellwag, Director,

Marketing Communications - Defence and Security

813-887-1242

chris.stellwag@cae.com



Investor relations:

Andrew Arnovitz, Vice President,

Strategy and Investor Relations

514-734-5760

andrew.arnovitz@cae.com




RENO, NEVADA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- NuLegacy Gold Corporation (TSX VENTURE: NUG)(OTCQX: NULGF) is pleased to report that the assay results from hole AV-02 confirm the Avocado IP/Resistivity anomaly hosts a Carlin-type gold deposit. This is the second Carlin-type gold deposit (Iceberg being the first) discovered within NuLegacy's 100% owned 38 sq. mile Cortez-trend property (the Red Hill project) in Nevada.

Hole AV-02, located 1,750 meters north-west of the Iceberg gold deposit, has discovered a massive bloom of gold grading 0.26 g/t over 199.7 meters (655 feet) including 24 and 35 meter intervals of 0.5-gram material, and 10 and 13 meter intervals of better than 1.0-gram material (details in table below). The gold mineralization is continuous from a depth of 415 meters to the bottom of the hole at 615 meters (200 m interval). Plan map link - http://nulegacygold.com/i/pdf/ppt/2016-09-06/2016-09-NUGPPT-page-30.pdf

"We are very encouraged by the results from Hole AV-02", says Dr. Roger Steininger NuLegacy's CGO, "This is the second Carlin-type gold system we have confirmed on the property. It is at the same depth as Barrick Gold's multi-million ounce Goldrush deposit just 9 km to the northwest and on trend with the Avocado and Iceberg deposits(ii). Compilation and reinterpretation of all available data is underway and additional IP geophysical lines are being surveyed to vector the next drilling for higher grade gold mineralization".

AV-02 is 120 meters north of AV-01 (reported 10/28/2014) which returned three anomalous (less than 0.1 g/t) gold intervals of 12, 20 and 35 meters encountered at 253, 331 and 419 meters respectively. These anomalous intervals are within the same black carbonaceous pyritic limestone material that hosts much of the gold mineralization in the deeper parts of Nevada's major Carlin-type gold deposits. The suite of anomalous trace elements present in the material in AV-01 (typical of large Carlin-type gold systems) indicated that higher grade gold mineralization should occur in the vicinity.

AV-02's higher grades and very thick gold-bearing horizon of 200+ meters together with the same classic trace elements suite indicates the possibility of much higher grade gold mineralization within the 2.5 km long and 1 km wide Avocado geophysical anomaly.

A complete review of all geophysical and geochemical data is underway to determine the exact locations of the next drill holes. Assays for exploration hole AV-03 are expected shortly; drilling to expand the Iceberg deposit continues.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Avocado - 2016 assay details ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hole From To Length Grade ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- number (m) (m) (m) (ft.) (g/t) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- AV-02 414.6 614.3 199.7 655 0.26 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- including 419.2 443.6 24.4 80 0.55 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- within which 422.9 432.9 10.7 35 1.01 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- including 579.3 614.4 35.1 115 0.50 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- within which 591.5 605.2 13.7 45 1.03 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

About NuLegacy: NuLegacy Gold Corporation is a Nevada based exploration company focused on expanding its Carlin-style near-surface Iceberg oxide gold deposit with an established exploration target of 90-110 million tonnes of 0.9 to 1.1 grams of gold per tonne(i), and exploring for additional gold deposits on its 38 sq. mile (98 sq. km) Red Hill property located in the Cortez gold trend of Nevada.

The Iceberg gold deposit has similar geology to that of Barrick Gold's multi-million-ounce Pipeline deposit the discovery of which is credited to NuLegacy's Chief Geoscience Officer, Dr. Roger Steininger. The Iceberg is located on trend and adjacenti(i) to three of Barrick Gold's multi-million ounce Carlin-type gold deposits (the Pipeline, Cortez Hills and Goldrush deposits) that are amongst Barrick's lowest cost and politically safest gold assets(iii).

(i) These figures are conceptual in nature and derived from a compilation of 149 historic and 34 NuLegacy drill holes in and around the Iceberg deposit. To date, there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource.

(ii) The similarity and close proximity of these deposits in the Cortez Trend is not necessarily indicative of the gold mineralization in the Iceberg deposit.

(iii) As extracted from Barrick's Q4-2013 and Q1-2014 reports.

On Behalf Of NuLegacy Gold Corporation

James E Anderson, Chief Executive Officer

Sampling Methodology, Chain of Custody, Quality Control and Quality Assurance: Reverse circulation drilling was conducted by AK Drilling of Butte, Montana under the supervision of Thomas Roman, Exploration Manager, and Dr. Roger Steininger, CGO (CPG 7417) and the chain of custody from the project to the sample preparation facility was continuously monitored. The samples were analyzed by American Assay Labs of Sparks, NV and sufficient commercially prepared standards, blanks, and duplicates were inserted to assure quality analytical results. Data verification of the analytical results included a statistical analysis of the duplicates, standards and blanks that must pass certain parameters for acceptance to ensure accurate and verifiable results. The reported gold intervals may or may not represent true thicknesses and/or widths as there is insufficient data at this time with respect to the shape of mineralization to calculate its true orientation.

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 news release.

This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Readers are cautioned that these forward looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. There are no known resources or reserves in the Iceberg and Avocado deposits and the proposed exploration programs are exploratory searches for commercial bodies of ore. In addition, the presence of gold deposits on properties adjacent or in close proximity to the Iceberg and Avocado deposits is not necessarily indicative of the gold mineralization on the Iceberg and Avocado deposits. All of the forward-looking statements made in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements and those in our continuous disclosure filings available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com including our annual management's discussion and analysis dated July 28, 2016 for the year ended March 31, 2016. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances save as required under applicable securities legislation.

Contacts:

NuLegacy Gold Corporation

604-639-3640



NuLegacy Gold Corporation

James Anderson

CEO

james@nuggold.com



NuLegacy Gold Corporation

Albert Matter

Chairman

albert@nuggold.com



NuLegacy Gold Corporation

Roger Steininger

CGO

roger@nuggold.com



NuLegacy Gold Corporation

Frank Lagiglia

ICM

frank@nuggold.com

www.nulegacygold.com




LONDON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Leading Analyst Firm Report Highlights Lumeon's Care Pathway Manager for Improving Outcomes and Lowering Costs

Lumeon, a digital health company delivering innovative Care Pathway Management (CPM) solutions, has been featured in Ovum's "On the Radar" report, a series of research notes about vendors bringing innovative ideas, products, or business models to their markets. Lumeon was recognised for delivering a simple out-of-the-box approach to designing and implementing care pathways, resulting in better measurable patient outcomes with reduced costs.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406910LOGO )



In its report, Ovum notes that healthcare providers must improve patient pathways if they are to deliver better outcomes for patients at less cost. Lumeon's Care Pathway Manager integrates clinical and administrative systems, and gives providers the ability to design and automate their own pathway rules, so that each patient is automatically progressed through their personal care journey based on their individual data.

Additional highlights in Ovum's Report include:

Care Pathway Manager is an open, cloud-based solution that supports the use of real-time data to construct optimal pathways for patients, providers, and payers.

The platform provides a set of standard business and clinical reports to enable quick start-up for common pathways across providers.

Lumeon has created a new Marketplace targeting providers, payers, and partners in healthcare delivery and providing a marketplace to buy and sell pathway templates.

"Use of integrated care pathways (ICPs) is set to increase as providers look to reduce the overall cost of providing services while utilising resources. Currently, the majority of pathways are traditionally created using a combination of electronic patient records (EPRs), online portals, emails, and paper. Providers will have to make technological decisions to support the wider adoption of care pathways if they and patients are to realize the full benefits," said Chris Pennell, Practice Leader, Ovum. "Lumeon paves the way for the transition to a cloud-based tool set that pulls together existing patient and administration data to support the speedy delivery of ICPs and optimise pathways depending on the availability of resources."

Robbie Hughes, CEO of Lumeon, said, "It's an honour to be recognised by Ovum as we continue to lead the market in delivering Care Pathway Management solutions and launch our Marketplace. The healthcare industry has never been under greater pressure to deliver measurable care for less cost, and care pathways offer providers an opportunity to overcome those challenges. By implementing a CPM approach to healthcare, providers can deliver care that is measurable, predictable and controlled."

Download and read the "On the Radar" Report by visiting: http://bit.ly/2c1iufE.

About Lumeon

Lumeon is a digital health company that has defined the market for Care Pathway Management (CPM). From scheduling and revenue management to clinical reporting and aftercare, by looking across the end-to end care pathway, Lumeon addresses the system, and not just the symptom, behind healthcare transformation. Lumeon's customers number among Europe's fastest growing and most innovative healthcare providers including BUPA, Nuffield Health, Alliance Medical, HCA and Optegra. It is headquartered in London employing over 90 people. For more information about Lumeon please visit http://www.lumeon.com.

Lumeon Press Contact:

Michele Moore, PR Manager

+44-7507-246-961

Michele.Moore@Lumeon.com


TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Americas Silver Corporation (TSX: USA)(OTCQX: USAPF) ("Americas Silver" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has received approval from its Board of Directors, to begin construction on its 100% owned, San Rafael zinc-lead-silver project within the Cosala district of Sinaloa, Mexico.

The San Rafael Project (the "Project") is expected to deliver average annual production of 1.0 million ounces of silver, 50 million pounds of zinc and 20 million pounds of lead over a 6 year initial mine life at negative AISC based on current reserves and have a pre-tax IRR of greater than 80% using current silver, zinc and lead prices. The Project is a brownfield development that will utilize certain existing infrastructure at the Cosala Operations and is expected to have an initial capital cost of approximately $20 million using current exchange rates. The Company targets commercial production in Q3 2017 following stockpiling of development ore starting in Q2 2017. The Project is permitted for development, road access has already been completed and portal construction has begun. Please see the Company's website at www.americassilvercorp.com for photos updating the Project's progress.

The Company currently has the necessary financial resources to fully fund the Project, and is using existing cash to commence construction, but is actively evaluating a number of low cost, non-dilutive financing proposals.

"We are very excited to start full construction on our brownfield San Rafael Project," said Americas Silver President & CEO Darren Blasutti. "Once commercial production is achieved in the third quarter of 2017, it will provide a step change in terms of both reducing cash costs and creating significant free cash flow for the Company. We expect that the mine life will extend well beyond the initial estimate of 6 years with resource conversion through underground exploration drilling and the increase to metal prices since the prefeasibility study was published in April."

Prefeasibility Study (1)

-- The San Rafael property hosts a zinc-lead-silver deposit and is located approximately 8km north of the Company's Los Braceros process plant. Preliminary evaluation work completed in 2012 considered exploitation of a larger deposit by open pit with a relatively small underground mine component. -- A prefeasibility study was initiated on the San Rafael Project by new management in H1-2015 and published on April 30, 2016. The study considers a stand-alone underground operation at San Rafael focused on the Main Zone with processing at the existing Los Braceros facility to produce separate zinc and lead concentrates. The resources have been estimated by Mine Development Associates of Reno, Nevada. Following a ten-month development period, the existing Los Braceros processing plant will begin producing zinc and lead concentrates. The project is expected to produce approximately 1.0 million ounces of silver, 50 million pounds of zinc and 20 million pounds of lead over the initial 6 year mine life. As a result of the Project's by-product credits, the silver AISC will be negative.

Further Updates and Optimization

-- Since the publication of the prefeasibility study the Project's initial capital has been reduced from $22-25 million to $20 million. The prefeasibility study considered San Rafael as a stand-alone project, ignoring contributions from the existing operations. The decrease in capital is a result of current operations in Cosala offsetting the projects initial working capital until San Rafael start-up and the devaluation of the Mexican peso used in the prefeasibility study. -- On-going optimization of the Project is expected to enhance the Project's economics by further reducing initial capital expenditures and future operating costs by: -- maximizing existing mill capacity through changes in operating practices, -- using existing but reconditioned equipment brought over from Nuestra Senora in place of new equipment purchases, and -- applying productivity improvements which were not included in the prefeasibility study but have since been demonstrated at the Nuestra Senora mine. -- Since publishing of the prefeasibility study in H1-2016, metal prices have increased significantly. Current prices allow the Project to extend its mine life by lowering the cut-off grade and converting additional resources. -- Improved future access from the San Rafael underground infrastructure will allow more for efficient exploration in the immediate area. The initial focus of this work will be to extend the existing San Rafael resource as well as to delineate and expand the silver-rich Zone 120. The expected resource conversion and extended mine life have not been factored into the IRR calculation.

Potential U.S. Exchange Listing

Americas Silver is considering listing its common shares on the NYSE "MKT" (a U.S. securities exchange) to increase trading volume and liquidity. The potential benefits of a U.S. exchange listing may also include access to a significantly deeper pool of new capital, greater international recognition and increased retail interest. The Company has started the initial listing process but a final decision to proceed with a listing on a U.S. exchange has not been made and the Company may elect not to proceed with such a listing.

A U.S. listing is expected, among other things, to require the Company to undertake a share consolidation in order to enable the Company to satisfy certain U.S. exchange minimum listing requirements. Such share consolidation would be subject to shareholder approval, with specific particulars to be included in a management information circular to be mailed to shareholders in advance of the shareholder meeting. Further updates will follow in due course as more information is gathered and the Company reaches a definitive decision on whether to proceed with such a listing.

Americas Silver to present at Precious Metals Summit & Denver Gold Forum

The Precious Metals Summit will be held September 14-16, 2016, at the Park Hyatt in Beaver Creek, Colorado. President & CEO, Darren Blasutti will be presenting at 10:10am on Wednesday, September 14, 2016. The Denver Gold Show will be held September 18-21, 2016, at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Mr. Blasutti will be presenting at 9:00am on Wednesday, September 21, 2016.

Mr. Blasutti will provide a Company update during the live presentation period at both shows and participate in one-on-one meetings with registered conference investors. A copy of the investor presentation is available on the Company's website at www.americassilvercorp.com

About Americas Silver

Americas Silver Corporation is a mining company focused on growth in precious metals from its existing asset base and execution of targeted accretive acquisitions. The Company owns and operates the Cosala Operations in Sinaloa, Mexico and the Galena Mine Complex in Idaho, USA.

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information:

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, the Company's expectations intentions, plans, assumptions and beliefs with respect to, among other things, the Cosala Operations, the Project and Galena Complex. Often, but not always, forward-looking information can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "goal", "plan", "intend", "estimate", "may", "assume" and "will" or similar words suggesting future outcomes, or other expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions, intentions, or statements about future events or performance. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of the Company as of the date such information is provided and is 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 or implied by such forward looking information. This includes the ability to develop and operate the Cosala and Galena properties, risks associated with the mining industry such as economic factors (including future commodity prices, currency fluctuations and energy prices), failure of plant, equipment, processes and transportation services to operate as anticipated, environmental risks, government regulation, actual results of current exploration activities, possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates, permitting timelines, capital expenditures, reclamation activities, social and political developments and other risks of the mining industry. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such information. By its nature, forward-looking information involves numerous assumptions, inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, forecasts, and projections of various future events will not occur. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or other such factors which affect this information, except as required by law.

(1) The San Rafael Project prefeasibility study is available on the Company's website at www.americassilvercorp.com and at www.sedar.com. A summary is available in the Company's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2015.

Contacts:

Americas Silver Corporation

Darren Blasutti

President and CEO

416-848-9503




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Nighthawk Gold Corp. ("Nighthawk" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: NHK) is pleased to announce initial results from its ongoing 2016 drill program on its Indin Lake Gold Property in the Northwest Territories ("NWT") (Figure 1 / Table 1). In July 2016, the Company launched a 10,000 metre program (see July 5, 2016 news release) to advance delineation of the recently discovered high-grade gold mineralization at Zone 1.5 and to resume exploration for additional higher-grade domains, with the objective of expanding our current resource. Two drills are actively testing priority targets at both the Colomac and Goldcrest deposits. Results from 5 drillholes at Colomac Zone 1.5 are presented below.

"We are extremely encouraged with our drilling at Colomac's Zone 1.5. We have not only proven that distinct higher grade domains clearly exist at Colomac, but that they can be sizable bodies of relatively predictable geometry and great continuity. Subsequent holes will further refine our understanding and help target new opportunities as we continue to advance this multi-million ounce(i), underexplored deposit," said Dr. Michael Byron, President and CEO. "It's also important to note that we are still in the early stages of exploration at Colomac, and that even after completion of this summer's drilling, we will have drilled less than 25,000 metres on the deposit since its acquisition. Our summer drill program will be completed by late September followed by a winter 2017 drill program in mid-February, leading to a possible resource update by mid 2017," commented Dr. Michael Byron.

Highlights: Colomac - Zone 1.5 (uncut gold assays reported):

-- Hole C16-03 intersected 52.07 metres (40 metres true width) of 7.72 g/t gold, including 25.47 metres of 14.25 g/t gold, and including 12.35 metres of 9.58 g/t gold; -- Hole C16-01 intersected 31.45 metres (25 metres true width) of 4.14 g/t gold, including 13.75 metres of 6.52 g/t gold; -- Hole C16-01B intersected 39.60 metres (32 metres true width) of 2.38 g/t gold, including 6.65 metres of 4.76 g/t gold, and including 2.75 metres of 10.09 g/t gold; -- Drilling continues to reinforce the growth potential of high-grade Zone 1.5 laterally and to depth by building upon Nighthawk's 2014 and 2015 drill results where hole C14-06 (initial discovery hole) intersected 52.50 metres of 7.78 g/t gold, including 21.00 metres of 16.73 g/t gold (see December 3, 2014 news release), and C15-14B returned 32.95 metres of 4.19 g/t gold, including 12.33 metres of 7.77 g/t gold (Figure 2 / see October 26, 2015 news release); -- Zone 1.5 is now in excess of 100 metres along strike, traced to a vertical depth of over 200 metres and remains open.

Results announced today are from five holes laid out to better define Zone 1.5 dimensions and to test for continuity along strike and to depth. Drillholes C16-01 and 01B were collared 25 metres south of C15-05 and 05B (Figure 1), two holes drilled in 2015 as step-outs from the initial 2014 discovery hole C14-06. Both holes intersected significant mineralization over widths typical of Zone 1.5 mineralization indicating that the zone extends southward as C16-01 returned 4.14 g/t gold over 31.45 metres, and C16-01B 39.60 metres of 2.38 g/t gold (Figure 3).

Holes C16-02 and 02B were step-out holes 25 metres south of C16-01 and 01B. Although mineralization was intersected by both holes, it was weaker and over narrower widths, suggesting the high-grade portion of Zone 1.5 was not intersected, and that the southern boundary of this north plunging mineralized shoot may lie between the sections drilled by C16-01 and C16-02.

Hole C16-03 was drilled 75 metres north of C16-01 on the same section as C15-06 (Figure 1), a 2015 hole that extended the zone northward by intersecting 31.20 metres of 3.89 g/t gold, including 22.50 metres of 5.03 g/t gold, and including 5.75 metres of 10.43 g/t gold (see October 26, 2015 news release). C16-03 was laid out to test the upward projection of mineralization cut by C15-06. At 100 metres vertical depth and 65 metres above the C15-06 intersection, C16-03 intersected 52.07 metres of 7.72 g/t gold, including 25.47 metres of 14.25 g/t gold, and including 12.35 metres of 9.58 g/t gold (Figure 4). As one of the best holes ever reported at Colomac, C16-03 also illustrates the zone's strong internal continuity as high-grade mineralization has now been traced to over 200 metres vertical depth on this section.

Table 1. Colomac Drill Results (uncut) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Core Length Hole ID From (m) To (m) (m)(i) Au gpt ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- C16-01 113.00 116.70 3.70 2.71 141.15 172.60 31.45 4.14 including 142.35 156.10 13.75 6.52 including 142.35 146.75 4.40 10.29 including 142.35 145.00 2.65 14.05 including 149.75 156.10 6.35 6.52 including 153.25 156.10 2.85 8.61 including 159.75 160.50 0.75 10.45 including 166.55 173.35 6.80 3.91 including 168.55 172.60 4.05 5.92 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- C16-01B 158.85 198.45 39.60 2.38 including 170.00 181.05 11.05 3.22 including 170.00 177.90 7.90 3.63 including 171.82 175.65 3.83 4.59 including 187.50 194.15 6.65 4.76 including 187.50 190.25 2.75 10.09 including 196.40 198.45 2.05 3.77 228.15 233.50 5.35 1.32 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- C16-02 150.00 163.10 13.10 1.49 including 155.45 160.00 4.55 2.21 including 157.60 160.00 2.40 3.22 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- C16-02B 162.50 163.25 0.75 2.06 191.65 199.10 7.45 1.05 including 191.65 194.70 3.05 2.16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- C16-03 142.93 195.00 52.07 7.72 including 142.93 168.40 25.47 14.25 including 142.93 150.75 7.82 30.92 including 145.00 146.50 1.50 147.09 including 146.00 146.50 0.50 418.00 including 156.05 168.40 12.35 9.58 including 165.45 168.40 2.95 33.51 including 165.45 165.95 0.50 184.50 including 182.50 184.50 2.00 9.21 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (i) Lengths are reported as core lengths. True widths vary depending on drillhole dip; most holes are laid out to intersect the sill close to perpendicular therefore true widths are approximately 80% of core lengths

On July 5, 2016, drilling commenced with two drills focused on high-grade zone delineation, exploration for new higher grade domains, and resource expansion. By the end of this program Nighthawk will have drilled approximately 10,000 metres, of which 1,133 metres have now been reported. Results for the remainder will be released once assay results are received and compiled.

Figure 1. Zone 1.5 Drillhole Locations: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/9093a.jpg

Figure 2. Colomac Longitudinal Section Showing Near Surface Resource and Exploration Potential: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/9093b.jpg

Figure 3. Drillhole Section C16-01 & 01B: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/9093c.jpg

Figure 4. Drillhole Section C16-03: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/9093d.jpg

Technical Information

Nighthawk has implemented a quality-control program to comply with best practices in the sampling and analysis of drill core. Drill core samples were transported in security-sealed bags for analyses at ALS Chemex Assay Laboratory in Vancouver, BC ("ALS Chemex"). ALS Chemex is an ISO 9001:2000 certified laboratory. Pulp and metallics assaying for gold was conducted on the entire pulverized sample.

As part of its QA/QC program, Nighthawk inserts external gold standards (low to high grade) and blanks every 20 samples in addition to the standards, blanks, and pulp duplicates inserted by ALS Chemex.

Results from drillhole C16-01 and C16-03 were not top-cut given the pervasive nature of the high grade sections; however, once incorporated into an updated resource block model, samples will be capped in accordance with the resource estimate.

About Nighthawk(i)

Nighthawk is a Canadian-based exploration company focused on acquiring and developing gold mineral properties in the Northwest Territories. Including the mineral claims and leases of the Colomac Gold Project, Nighthawk's Indin Lake Gold Property comprises a total land package of 222,203 acres in the Indin Lake Greenstone Belt, located approximately 200 kilometres north of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories and includes an Inferred Mineral Resource estimate, prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"), of 39.815 million tonnes with an average grade of 1.64 g/t gold for 2.101 million ounces gold using a cut-off grade of 0.6 g/t gold. Nighthawk also holds a 100% interest in the property known as the Superior Project, which covers 39,015 acres approximately 85 kilometres north of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

The technical aspects of this press release have been reviewed by Dr. Michael J. Byron, Ph.D., P.Geo., President & Chief Executive Officer of Nighthawk, who is the "Qualified Person" as defined by NI 43-101 for this project.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the timing of future drilling, the expansion of the mineralization, and the remediation of historic reclamation sites. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of Nighthawk, including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, volatility of commodity prices, risks associated with the uncertainty of exploration results and estimates, currency fluctuations, dependency upon regulatory approvals, the uncertainty of obtaining additional financing and exploration risk. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. This press release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States.

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:

Dr. Michael J. Byron

President and Chief Executive Officer

Nighthawk Gold Corp.

(647) 260-1247

mbyron@nighthawkgold.com




CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Lone Pine Resources Canada Ltd. ("Lone Pine") and Arsenal Energy Inc. ("Arsenal") (TSX: AEI)(OTCQX: AEYIF) are pleased to report the completion of their previously-announced business combination to form Prairie Provident Resources Inc. ("Prairie Provident").

The combination was effected pursuant to a plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (Alberta), which was approved by the affected securityholders of each company at meetings held on September 8, 2016, and by the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta on September 9, 2016.

The combination resulted in Prairie Provident becoming the parent company of Lone Pine and Arsenal, with a fully-diluted share count of approximately 100,000,000 shares of which approximately 77% was issued or is issuable to former Lone Pine stakeholders and approximately 23% was issued to former Arsenal shareholders. The exchange ratios at which Prairie Provident shares were issued in substitution for Lone Pine and Arsenal shares was 0.5544092 per Lone Pine common share, 0.8117105 per Lone Pine preferred share and 1.1417218 per Arsenal share.

The combination of Lone Pine and Arsenal's complementary assets creates an oil-weighted, growth oriented oil and gas company positioned to generate value with a strong balance sheet, attractive drilling prospects and significant financial and operational flexibility with the following key attributes:

-- Light and medium oil-weighted asset base focused on three core areas in Alberta (Evi, Princess and Wheatland), which offer meaningful growth potential through lower risk development drilling opportunities, a proven water flood program and future consolidation prospects; -- Production base of approximately 4,000 boe/d comprised of approximately 71% oil and liquids and 29% natural gas; -- Proved plus probable reserves of 18,489(1) Mboe as at December 31, 2015; -- Combined land base of approximately 765,600 net acres (pro forma as at June 30, 2016), with over 170 unrisked internally identified drilling locations that remain economic and are expected to generate compelling returns at current commodity prices; -- A senior secured credit facility of $55 million backed by Alberta Treasury Branches and Societe Generale, to support ongoing development and continued growth through a robust capital program; -- A strong balance sheet that is expected to position Prairie Provident to efficiently develop its inventory of capital projects as well as pursue accretive new opportunities; -- A robust three-year hedge book that the Company believes will provide meaningful protection against commodity price volatility and underpins funds from operations; and -- Operatorship of over 90% of its production and average working interests greater than 90%, in its core areas of Evi, Princess and Wheatland in Alberta.

Prairie Provident will be led by Tim Granger as President and Chief Executive Officer, who served in the same position with Lone Pine. He is joined by Lone Pine executives Mimi Lai, Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer, and Robert (Bob) Guy, Vice President, Operations; and by former Arsenal executives Tony van Winkoop, who joins Prairie Provident as Vice President, Exploration after having previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Arsenal, and Gjoa Taylor, as Vice President, Land. The Board of Directors of Prairie Provident will be chaired by prior Lone Pine chair, Patrick R. McDonald, who will be joined by former Lone Pine directors David M. Fitzpatrick, Terence (Tad) B. Flynn, Ajay Sabherwal, Robert B. Wonnacott, and Tim Granger; and former Arsenal director Derek Petrie.

Prairie Provident is also pleased to announce that the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX") has conditionally approved the listing of its common shares on TSX under the symbol "PPR". Listing is subject to Prairie Provident fulfilling all the requirements of TSX on or before December 7, 2016. Prairie Provident currently anticipates that, subject to it completing certain filings with TSX in the interim; its shares will be posted for trading on TSX on or about September 16, 2016. It is anticipated that the Arsenal shares will be delisted from the TSX within 2-3 business days following the date hereof.

Further details regarding Prairie Provident and the combination of Lone Pine and Arsenal are set out in the joint information circular of Lone Pine and Arsenal dated August 5, 2016, which is available under Arsenal's profile on the SEDAR website and on Lone Pine's website at www.lonepineresources.com.

Arsenal shareholders whose Arsenal shares are held by a broker, agent or other intermediary should contact their broker or agent in respect of the exchange of their Arsenal shares for Prairie Provident shares pursuant to the arrangement. Registered Arsenal shareholders who have not already done so should submit their certificates representing Arsenal shares to Alliance Trust Company, the depositary pursuant to the arrangement, together with a letter of transmittal in accordance with the instructions set out therein in order to receive the Prairie Provident shares that they are entitled to pursuant to the arrangement. Letters of transmittal were previously sent to Arsenal shareholders and additional copies may be obtained by contacting Alliance Trust Company by telephone at 1-877-537-6111 or by email to inquiries@alliancetrust.ca. Certificates formerly representing Arsenal shares now represent only the right to receive Prairie Provident shares to which the holders thereof are entitled pursuant to the arrangement.

About Prairie Provident:

Prairie Provident is a Calgary-based company engaged in the exploration and development of oil and natural gas properties in Alberta. The Company's strategy is to grow organically in combination with accretive acquisitions of conventional oil prospects, which can be efficiently developed. Prairie Provident's operations are primarily focused at Wheatland and Princess in Southern Alberta targeting the Lithic Glauc formation, along with an early stage waterflood project at Evi in the Peace River Arch. Prairie Provident protects its balance sheet through an active hedging program and manages risk by allocating capital to opportunities offering maximum shareholder returns.

Endnotes:

1. Based on the respective reserves evaluation reports of Lone Pine and Arsenal, prepared by Sproule Associates Ltd. ("Sproule") for Lone Pine and by Deloitte LLP for Arsenal, evaluating the reserves data of each company as of December 31, 2015 in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument 51-101 Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities. The estimated pro forma reserves data of Prairie Provident at December 31, 2015 has been calculated by (i) applying Sproule's forecast price deck as of January 1, 2016 to Arsenal's existing evaluation, (ii) deducting from Arsenal's estimated reserves data at December 31, 2015 the portion thereof attributable to the Desan, US properties, and additional Canadian properties sold by Arsenal in 2016, and (iii) adding Lone Pine's estimated reserves data at December 31, 2015 (from the Sproule report, without adjustment) to Arsenal's estimated reserves data at December 31, 2015 (from the Deloitte LLP report, adjusted as described). Except as specifically described in clause (i) and clause (ii), the estimated pro forma reserves data of Prairie Provident at December 31, 2015 set forth herein does not take into account any changes occurring in 2016.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This news release contains forward-looking statements. More particularly, this news release contains forward-looking statements concerning the listing of the Prairie Provident common shares on TSX, the delisting of the Arsenal shares from the TSX, information and statements concerning anticipated benefits of the combination, and anticipated timing thereof.

The forward-looking statements contained in this document are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by Arsenal and Lone Pine. Although Arsenal and Lone Pine believe that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because Arsenal and Lone Pine cannot give any assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward- looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks.

The forward-looking statements contained in this document are made as of the date hereof and Arsenal and Lone Pine undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws.

Contacts:

Prairie Provident Resources Inc.

Tim Granger

President and Chief Executive Officer

(403) 292-8110

tsgranger@lonepineresources.com

www.lonepineresources.com




EQS Group AG was honoured with the Grand ARC Award in the category "Interactive Annual Report International" by the 2016 ARC Awards International. The award honours EQS Groups's excellence in implementing the design of its Munich partner hw.design for the interactive annual report of the BMW Group.

The ARC Awards are bestowed annually by the US-based MerComm Inc. in honour of excellence in annual reports. EQS was already honoured in mid-August for four reports in their respective industries: Hannover Reinsurance, BMW Group, HMS Group and China Telecom. The report for BMW Group received the special cross-industry "Grand ARC Award," prominently recognising its excellence in international, interactive report.

"We're very proud that our work on this technically challenging project was honoured with the highest distinction. A Grand ARC Award is very special recognition for the entire project team," says Christian Pfleger, COO of EQS Group.

EQS Group has developed digital business and sustainability reports for companies both at home and across the globe for over 15 years, making it a pioneer in Digital Investor Relations. User friendliness and a winning presentation are always EQS's first priority when designing company reports. As such, the BMW Group's report, with its high-resolution photos and elaborately designed videos and numerous effects, represents the "technologies of the future."

"We at BMW Group are very pleased to receive the Grand ARC Award in our anniversary year. Because BMW has the same high, exacting standards in our digital reporting as we have for our automobiles and services, EQS Group, with its cutting-edge solutions, is the right partner for implementing our interactive annual report. With its animated functionality and interaction, the digital report we've created together offers BMW readers real value," says Christian Finkenzeller of the BMW Group.

Interactive Annual Report of BMW Group: http://go.eqs.com/bmw15

About EQS Group

The EQS Group is a leading international technology provider for Digital Investor Relations. More than 8,000 companies worldwide trust EQS's products and services to securely, efficiently, and simultaneously fulfil complex national and international information obligations to the global investment community.

The COCKPIT, a Software as a Service (Saas), digitally maps the work processes of IR managers, communicates with the company website and distributes company releases via one of the most important Financial Newswires. With further products like websites, IR tools and online company reports EQS Group is a digital single source provider.

EQS Group was founded in Munich, Germany in 2000 and has developed from a start-up to an international group with offices in the world's key financial markets. The group furthermore holds the majority interest in ARIVA.DE AG and employs about 300 professionals.

www.eqs.com

Additional features:

Picture: http://newsfeed2.eqs.com/equitystory/501223.html Subtitle: Honoured with Grand ARC Award: Interactive Annual Report of BMW Group

Language: English Company: EQS Group AG

Karlstr. 47

80333 Munich

Germany Phone: +49(0)89 210298-0 Fax: +49(0)89 210298-49 E-mail: info@eqs.com Internet: www.eqs.com ISIN: DE0005494165 WKN: 549416 Listed: Regulated Unofficial Market in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Munich (m:access), Stuttgart, Tradegate Exchange; Open Market (Entry Standard) in Frankfurt

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005884/en/

Contacts:

EQS Group

Alexander Mrohs

T: +49 (0)40 767 93 56-420

E: alexander.mrohs@eqs.com
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - Erasing early gains, the Japanese yen slipped against its most major counterparts in European trading on Tuesday. The yen weakened to 102.30 against the greenback, 105.11 against Swiss franc and 114.89 against the euro, off its early 5-day high of 101.42, 6-day highs of 104.34 and 113.93, respectively. The yen reversed from its early highs of 74.41 against the kiwi, 76.45 against the aussie and 77.69 against the loonie, easing back to 74.97, 77.01 and 78.14, respectively. The yen is seen finding support around 103.00 against the greenback, 106.00 against the franc, 116.00 against the euro, 76.00 against the kiwi, 78.00 against the aussie and 79.00 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
13 September 2016

International Ferro Metals Limited

("IFL" or the "Company")

Resignation of director

IFL announces that Chris Jordaan, Non-Executive Director of the Company, has resigned from the board on 12September2016. Mr Jordaan served as Chief Executive Officer from 1August2011 to 31May2016, when he stepped down to become a Non-Executive Director. From 1June2016 he was employed solely by the Company's South African subsidiary, International Ferro Metals (SA) (Pty) Limited ("IFMSA") on a limited duration contract, to oversee the operations of IFMSA and to assist with the implementation of the business rescue plan.

On 23 August 2016 IFL announced that all the conditions to the sale of the business and assets of IFMSA had been fulfilled, and therefore, the services of Mr Jordaan are no longer required.

The remaining transactions, for which conditions are in the process of being fulfilled, are:

the sale of IFMSA's mining right and beneficiation plant; and

the sale of IFMSA's claims against Sky Chrome and IFL's sale of Sky Chrome's equity.

The outstanding conditions include obtaining regulatory approvals, specifically ministerial approval for the transfer of mining rights, and consents of other parties to certain material contracts.

Tony Grey, Chairman, said: "the Board would like to thank Chris Jordaan for his contribution as CEO for the past five years, during which time the Company experienced exceptionally difficult market conditions, and to wish him well for the future."

Further announcements in relation to the Business Rescue process will be released in due course.

- ENDS-

For further information please visit www.ifml.com or contact:

International Ferro Metals Limited

Jannie Muller, Finance Director +27 82785 1364

Wayne Kernaghan, Company Secretary +61 407 233153

About International Ferro Metals:

International Ferro Metals produces ferrochrome, the essential ingredient in stainless steel, from its integrated chromite mine and ferrochrome processing operations in South Africa. International Ferro Metals is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol IFL.

Forward Looking Statements

This announcement contains certain forward looking statements which by nature, contain risk and uncertainty because they relate to future events and depend on circumstances that occur in the future. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results or developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward looking statements.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - November 03, 2016) - Sarama Resources Ltd. ("Sarama" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: SWA) is pleased to announce positive results from an aircore ("AC"), reverse-circulation ("RC") and diamond drilling campaign at the South Hounde Project (the "Project") in south-western Burkina Faso.

The work was designed to test both new targets and extensions to known mineral resources and forms part of an ongoing, multi-faceted exploration program aimed at increasing the Project's 2.1Moz gold 1,2 mineral resource to support mine development.

Highlights

High-grade strike and depth extensions to the mineral resource at a vertical depth of 370m in the central part of the MM Prospect with drilling corroborating previous high-grade intersections.

Intersections down-dip of higher-grade shoots demonstrate continuity and extension of the mineralised system to a 400m vertical depth in the southern part of the MM Prospect.

High-grade intersections encountered in drilling designed to investigate strike and depth extensions to an oblique mineralised lode at the MC Prospect.

High-grade oblique mineralisation confirmed at the Phantom East Prospect, highlighting potential in this lightly explored area.

Oxide mineralisation outside of known mineral resources intersected at the Phantom and MC Prospects in scout programs targeting anomalous geophysical zones.

Highlighted downhole intersections include (see Appendices A-D for full details):

DDH086 13.7m @ 5.67 g/t Au from 429m MM Prospect (central area extension) DDH044 4.4m @ 4.54 g/t Au from 413m MM Prospect (central area extension) FRC879RE1 7.6m @ 2.95 g/t Au from 471.3m MM Prospect (southern area extension) included in 13.7m @ 1.62 g/t Au from 470.8m FRC1042 16m @ 3.04 g/t Au from 80m MC Prospect (oblique mineralisation extension) FRC1044A 14m @ 2.37 g/t Au from 82m MC Prospect (oblique mineralisation extension) FRC1051 9m @ 3.39 g/t Au from 16m MC Prospect (east-west trend linkage) 5m @ 5.25 g/t Au from 45m FRC1056 4m @ 7.81 g/t Au from 85m Phantom East Prospect (oblique mineralisation) 7m @ 4.54 g/t Au from 104m FRC1050 10m @ 1.95 g/t Au from 2m MC Prospect (isolated geophysical anomaly) see Appendices A-D for full details

USD$3.5M (CAD$4.7M) exploration program, funded by Acacia Mining plc, is budgeted for 2017 including geochemical and geophysical surveys and drill programs.

MM and Obi Prospects

Extensional and Infill Drilling

An 11-hole, 2,300m diamond drill program was undertaken to test for extensions to the mineral resource in several areas of the MM Prospect. In general, the program targeted areas in fresh rock that were down-dip and adjacent to high-grade modelled shoots supported by strong drill intersections. Small portions of the drilling also tested for strike extensions to the mineral resources in oxide material.

The primary focus of the program was in the deepest part of the mineral resource at the central area of the MM Prospect where mineralisation grading up to 14.5g/t Au over mineable widths was previously intersected (refer Sarama news release August 12, 2012). This part of the mineralised system is open and presents an opportunity to define further high-grade material.

The new drilling in this area stepped out approximately 100m along strike to the north and also investigated the potential for footwall repetitions of the high-grade lodes (refer Figures 1 & 2). In general, the drilling returned moderately broad, higher-grade intersections confirming the mineralization model and demonstrating the potential to increase the strike of drill defined mineralisation in the area. Of note is the intersection of 13.7m @ 5.67g/t Au in DDH086 at a vertical depth of approximately 370m, which is hosted in sericite-albite-altered sedimentary rock, rather than the more prevalent porphyry host, and sits in the footwall of the main mineralized porphyry lodes of the system.

Full results are listed in Appendix A with highlighted downhole intersections including:

13.7m @ 5.67g/t Au from 429m in DDH086;

4.4m @ 4.54g/t Au from 413m in DDH044; and

4.0m @ 2.75g/t Au from 445m in DDH004.

The intersection in DDH086 may represent a high-grade mineralized oblique fault structure and requires further drill definition. Brecciation was also noted in the zone of higher grade mineralisation in DDH044, further illustrating the possibility of structural features influencing grade distribution. The strength of these results and their reinforcement of previous high-grade intersections further highlights this zone as a compelling exploration target.

Drill testing for down-dip extensions to the mineral resource in the southern part of the MM Prospect was also successful in confirming the continuity of porphyry-hosted mineralisation over broad widths. Higher-grade zones are present within the overall broad porphyry intersections, suggesting continuation of the mineralised system past the 400m vertical depth drilled in this area. Further work on the controls of the higher-grade shoots will be used to inform future targeting strategy in this area. Highlighted intersections from this portion of the drilling include:

13.7m @ 1.62g/t Au from 470.8m, including 6.7m @ 2.95g/t Au from 471.3m; and

6.1m @ 1.61g/t Au from 487.5m, including 3.5m @ 2.51g/t Au from 490m in FRC879RE1.

Ancillary Drilling

A 5-hole program, comprising 300m of diamond and 400m of RC drilling was undertaken at the MM and Obi Prospects in selected areas where recent geophysical surveys indicated potential for additional mineralisation and/or alternative interpretations in areas of known geological complexity.

The results of the program largely support existing interpretations and grade estimation of the mineral resource, and the new data will be incorporated in future mineral resource updates. Full results are listed in Appendix A.

MC Prospect

Extensional and Infill Drilling - High-Grade Oblique Lode

Follow-up drilling to investigate strike and depth extensions was conducted on a high-grade, oblique mineralised lode located in the central area of the MC Prospect (refer Figures 1, 3 & 4). The lode is part of the mineral resource and was defined by previous drilling campaigns to be striking at approximately 070, which is oblique to the main north-north-east ("NNE") striking porphyry-hosted lodes that transect this lode. The limited strike length of the lode and strength of previous drill intersections indicated potential to extend the mineral resource to the south-west and north-east. Ground based geophysical surveys, including north-south oriented gradient array and sectional induced polarisation ("IP") surveys were commissioned to assist in drill targeting.

The 11-hole program consisting of 800m diamond and 900m RC drilling tested for strike extensions of approximately 70m in each direction as well as extension to a vertical depth of approximately 220m.

Full results of the program are included in Appendix B, with highlighted intersections of:

16m @ 3.04g/t Au from 80m in FRC1042;

14m @ 2.37g/t from 82m in FRC1044A; and

7m @ 1.70g/t Au from 82m in FRC1043.

The results indicate modest potential for the oblique lode to be extended to the south-west in the upper zone, however shallow drilling to the north-east did not intersect mineralisation of significance. Deeper drilling suggests potential to extend the lode in both directions of strike as well as at depth based on the continuity demonstrated by the deeper intersections in DDH077 (refer Figure 4).

Further assessment of the structural geology will be undertaken in this complex area to reinforce targeting strategies prior to additional drilling. The close proximity of the multiple NNE trending lodes and the oblique target lode presents challenges in drill planning and several results included in Appendix B represent shallow angle intersections of NNE trending mineralisation and are considered secondary to the purpose of the program.

Extensional and Infill Drilling -- Other Areas

A separate program of modest size targeting minor extensions to, and infill of, the mineral resource in various areas of the MC Prospect was also undertaken. The results of this 6-hole program (consisting of 600m of diamond and 400m of RC drilling) generally confirmed the existing mineral resource interpretation. Full results are included in Appendix B.

Of note are the multiple intersections in DDH068, including an interval of porphyry-hosted mineralisation at a vertical depth of 340m. While of moderate tenor, this isolated intersection demonstrates continuity in the down-dip direction and indicates that the mineralised system remains open along strike and down-dip. As observed in other areas of the mineralised system, high-grade shoots situated outside of the limited drill area present an opportunity for extensional exploration.

Additional Targets -- Cross Structures

A 4-hole, 400m RC drill program targeted oblique mineralisation potentially located in a 300m wide zone separating tracts of NNE-trending mineralisation at the MC Prospect. The drilling was broadly spaced and designed to follow-up on previous reconnaissance drilling supported by recent geophysical surveys. Results from the program are encouraging with several high-grade oxide intersections being returned including:

9m @ 3.39g/t Au from 16m; and

5m @ 5.25g/t Au from 45m in FRC1051 (refer Figure 3).

Full results are included in Appendix B. Further drilling is required to interpret the orientation and extent of mineralisation in the area.

Phantom Group of Prospects

Phantom East Prospect

A 6-hole, 700m RC drill program was undertaken at the Phantom East Prospect to follow-up higher-grade intersections returned from AC programs in Q1 2016. The area accounts for a small portion of the current mineral resource and is geologically complex with mineralisation possibly being associated with structural features interpreted to strike obliquely (070) to the main NNE trend. The drilling was designed to confirm existing high-grade intersections and test for strike extensions to the south-west.

The drilling confirmed the tenor of previous drilling and supports the interpretation of several closely spaced, high-grade lodes which are narrow and steeply-dipping. The strike of the mineralisation is inferred to be oblique to the main mineralised trend and largely situated between the historical east-west drill lines. Drilling to the immediate south-west did not intersect significant mineralisation however this may be due to the steep dip of the lodes and divergence of strike relative to the drill lines.

The presence of oblique mineralisation in this lightly-tested area highlights the potential for additions of near-surface high-grade mineralisation to the mineral resource base. Further drilling is required to re-test for strike extensions in this direction in between existing drill lines (Refer Figures 5 & 6).

Full results are listed in Appendix C with encouraging downhole intersections including:

5m @ 3.45g/t Au from 85m in FRC1038;

4m @ 7.81g/t Au from 85m; and

7m @ 4.54g/t Au from 104m in FRC1056.

Note: FRC1056 and FRC1038 were drilled at a shallow angles (

Phantom and Phantom West Prospects

A small 5-hole AC program was conducted at the Phantom and Phantom West Prospects to infill and test for extensions to the mineral resource. Full results are listed in Appendix C.

Isolated Geophysical Targets

A 13-hole program comprising 600m of RC and 2,100m of diamond drilling was undertaken at the MC, MM and Phantom Prospects to test geophysical targets generated from a recent geophysical survey.

The gradient array and pole-dipole IP surveys were undertaken using north-south oriented grid lines which were orthogonal to previous surveys conducted in these areas. The re-orientation was specifically incorporated to enhance imagery of geophysical anomalous zones that were potentially striking sub-parallel to the previous grid.

Several anomalous zones were identified in the re-oriented survey and are interpreted as potential mineralised bodies containing sulphide mineralisation. Many of these anomalies are shallow in depth and are interpreted to dip steeply to the north, which is aligned with other areas of the mineralised system where oblique mineralisation has been defined by drilling.

The drilling successfully intersected sulphide mineralisation at targeted depths, however gold tenors were modest. The results will be used to further develop understanding of the structural architecture of the mineralised system and to calibrate geophysical data with geological observations.

Several encouraging intersections were returned, largely in oxide material and present an opportunity to delineate additional oxide mineralisation to add to the mineral resource base. Full results are included in Appendix D, with a highlighted intersection of 10m @ 1.95g/t Au from 2m in FRC1050.

Sarama's President and CEO, Andrew Dinning, commented:

"Historically, the principal focus had been to extend the near surface mineral resources but the recent shift to improve our understanding of the fabric and vertical extent of the system has delivered encouraging results.

The deeper, high-grade intersections we are seeing at the MM Prospect further illustrate the potential of the system and flags more options for development including underground mining. Drill testing is very limited, but what has been done shows that we have continuity and economically significant grades at depth.

We firmly believe that the South Hounde Project has the potential to be an open pit and underground mining complex. The Project will play a key role in the development of the southern part of the Hounde Belt where Sarama has significant interests across three projects collectively hosting sizeable gold mineral resources."

Figure 1 - Drill Plan Showing Location of New Drilling

Figure 2 - Oblique View of Deep Drilling at MM Prospect (central) Showing Potential for Strike and Depth Extensions to Mineral Resource

Figure 3 - Detail Plan of MC Prospect Showing Oblique Mineralisation Targeted by New Drilling and Highlighted Intersections

Figure 4 - Oblique View of Deep Drilling at MC Prospect Showing Limited Drill Coverage and Potential for Strike and Depth Extensions to Mineral Resource

Figure 5 - Detail Plan of Phantom East Prospect Showing Oblique Mineralisation Targeted by New Drilling and Highlighted Intersections

Figure 6 - Oblique Section (along Azimuth of FRC1056) at Phantom East Prospect Showing Oblique Mineralisation Targeted by New Drilling and Highlighted Intersections

ABOUT SARAMA RESOURCES LTD

Sarama Resources Ltd (TSX VENTURE: SWA) is a West African focused gold explorer with substantial landholdings in Burkina Faso.

Sarama's flagship properties are situated within the Company's South Hounde Project area in south-west Burkina Faso. Located within the prolific Hounde greenstone belt, Sarama's exploration programs have built on significant early success to deliver an inferred mineral resource estimate of 2.1 Moz gold 1,2 . Acacia Mining plc is earning up to a 70% interest in the South Hounde Project by satisfying certain conditions, including funding earn-in expenditures of up to US$14 million, over a 4-year earn-in period and may acquire an additional 5% interest, for an aggregate 75% interest in the Project, upon declaration of a minimum mineral reserve of 1.6 million ounces of gold. Sarama is focused on consolidating under-explored landholdings in Burkina Faso and other established mining jurisdictions.

Sarama holds a 31% participating interest in the Karankasso Project Joint Venture ("JV") which is situated adjacent to the Company's South Hounde Project in Burkina Faso and is a JV between Sarama and Savary Gold Corp. ("Savary"). Savary is the operator of the JV and in October 2015, declared a maiden inferred mineral resource estimate of 671,000 ounces of contained gold 3,4 at the Karankasso Project JV.

Incorporated in 2010, the Company's Board and management team have a proven track record in Africa and a strong history in the discovery and development of large-scale gold deposits. Sarama is well positioned to build on its current success with a sound exploration strategy across its property portfolio.

43.0 Mt @ 1.5 g/t Au (reported above cut-off grades ranging 0.3-2.2 g/t Au, reflecting the mining methods and processing flowsheets assumed to assess the likelihood of the inferred mineral resources having reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction) The effective date of the Company's inferred mineral resource estimate is February 4, 2016. For further information regarding the mineral resource estimate please refer to the technical report titled "NI 43-101 Independent Technical Report South Hounde Project Update, Bougouriba and Ioba Provinces, Burkina Faso", dated March 31, 2016. The technical report is available under Sarama Resources Ltd.'s profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. 9.2 Mt @ 2.3 g/t Au (at a 0.5 g/t Au cut-off) The effective date of the Karankasso Project JV mineral resource estimate is October 7, 2015. For further information regarding the mineral resource estimate please refer to the technical report titled "Technical Report and Resource Estimate on the Karankasso Project, Burkina Faso", dated October 7, 2015. The technical report is available under Savary Gold Corp's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Sarama has not independently verified Savary's mineral resource estimate and takes no responsibility for its accuracy.

CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Information in this news release that is not a statement of historical fact constitutes forward-looking information. Such forward-looking information includes statements regarding the Company's plans for drilling and geochemical and geophysical surveys at the South Hounde Project, the Earn-In Agreement with Acacia, including the amounts that may be spent on exploration and interests in the South Hounde Project that may be earned by Acacia upon making certain expenditures and estimating a minimum reserve, the potential to expand the present oxide component of the Company's existing estimated mineral resources, and future exploration plans. Actual results, performance or achievements of the Company may vary from the results suggested by such forward-looking statements due to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Such factors include, among others, that the business of exploration for gold and other precious minerals involves a high degree of risk and is highly speculative in nature; Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves, they do not have demonstrated economic viability, and there is no certainty that they can be upgraded to Mineral Reserves through continued exploration; few properties that are explored are ultimately developed into producing mines; geological factors; the actual results of current and future exploration; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be evaluated, as well as those factors disclosed in the Company's publicly filed documents. There can be no assurance that any mineralisation that is discovered will be proven to be economic, or that future required regulatory licensing or approvals will be obtained. However, the Company believes that the assumptions and expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things, Acacia's continued funding of exploration activities, the Company's ability to carry on its exploration activities, the sufficiency of funding, the timely receipt of required approvals, the price of gold and other precious metals, that the Company will not be affected by adverse political events, the ability of the Company to operate in a safe, efficient and effective manner and the ability of the Company to obtain further financing as and when required and on reasonable terms. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Sarama does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except as required by applicable laws.

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.

NOTES -- DRILLING

Drilling results are quoted as downhole intersections. True widths of mineralisation are estimated to be approximately 70% to 80% of reported downhole intersection lengths, except as otherwise noted. The orientation of some of the mineralised units is not yet well understood.

The reported composites for the drilling were determined using a cut-off grade of 0.30g/t Au to select significant and anomalous intersections, with a maximum of 2m internal dilution being incorporated into the composite where appropriate. No top-cuts were applied to assay grades. Isolated mineralised intersections less than 2m in length have not been reported.

Gold assays for the drilling were undertaken by the ALS Minerals, SGS SA and Bigs Global laboratories in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and SGS SA laboratory in Bamako, Mali. Assays are determined by fire assay methods using a 50 gram charge, lead collection and an AAS finish with lower detection limits of 0.01g/t Au (ALS) and 0.005g/t Au (Bigs Global).

The drilling was generally designed using a range of azimuths, according to program aims and mineralization orientation, dipping at -50-55 and were of variable length. Holes were spaced at 25-50m intervals along drill lines. All AC and RC holes were sampled at regular 1m downhole intervals. All diamond holes were sampled according to geological intervals but were generally <1m.

Intersection oxidation state classification is based on visual logging of the drillholes.

Sarama undertakes geological sampling and assays in accordance with its quality assurance/quality control program which includes the use of certified reference materials for AC, RC and diamond drilling as well as field duplicates in the case of AC and RC drilling.

For further information regarding the Company's QAQC protocols please refer to the technical report titled "NI 43-101 Independent Technical Report, South Hounde Project Update, Bougouriba and Ioba Provinces, Burkina Faso", dated March 31, 2016. The technical report is available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

QUALIFIED PERSONS' STATEMENT

Scientific or technical information in this news release that relates to the Company's exploration activities in Burkina Faso is based on information compiled or approved by Guy Scherrer. Guy Scherrer is an employee of Sarama Resources Ltd and is a member in good standing of the Ordre des Geologues du Quebec and has sufficient experience which is relevant to the commodity, style of mineralisation under consideration and activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101. Guy Scherrer consents to the inclusion in this report of the information, in the form and context in which it appears.

Scientific or technical information in this news release that relates to the preparation of the Company's mineral resource estimate is based on information compiled or approved by Adrian Shepherd. Adrian Shepherd is an employee of Cube Consulting Pty Ltd and is considered to be independent of Sarama Resources Ltd. Adrian Shepherd is a Chartered Professional Member in good standing of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and has sufficient experience which is relevant to the commodity, style of mineralisation under consideration and activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101. Adrian Shepherd consents to the inclusion in this news release of the information, in the form and context in which it appears.

Scientific or technical information in this news release that relates to the preparation of the Karankasso Project's mineral resource estimate is based on information compiled or approved by Eugene Puritch and Antoine Yassa. Eugene Puritch and Antoine Yassa are employees of P&E Mining Consultants Inc. and are considered to be independent of Savary Gold Corp. and Sarama Resources Ltd. Antoine Yassa is a member in good standing of the Ordre des Geologues du Quebec and Eugene Puritch is a member in good standing of Professional Engineers Ontario. Eugene Puritch and Antoine Yassa have sufficient experience which is relevant to the commodity, style of mineralisation under consideration and activity which they are undertaking to qualify as a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101. Eugene Puritch and Antoine Yassa consent to the inclusion in this news release of the information, in the form and context in which it appears. Sarama has not independently verified Savary's mineral resource estimate and takes no responsibility for its accuracy.

APPENDIX A - MM PROSPECT DRILLING

APPENDIX B - MC PROSPECT

APPENDIX C - PHANTOM GROUP OF PROSPECTS

APPENDIX D - ISOLATED GEOPHYSICAL TARGETS

Andrew Dinning or Paul Schmiede

e: info@saramaresources.com

t: +61 (0) 8 9363 7600
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil prices zig-zagged lower Wednesday ahead of U.S. inventories data that may show oil stockpiles have further dwindled. The American Petroleum Institute will release its weekly crude oil inventory report this afternoon. The API report will be followed by the Energy Information Administration's weekly data tomorrow morning. Early today, OPEC reported record production in September, as members gird for upcoming supply cuts in the wake of a deal with Russia to trim supplies. Nov. WTI oil settled at $50.18/bbl on Nymex, down 61 cents, or 1.2%. The minutes of the most recent FOMC meeting confirmed disputes within the Federal Reserve regarding the timing of interest rate hikes. Three dissenters were worried about credibility and likelihood of faster pace of interest rate hikes in future if no move made. 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.
Wood Group begins detailed engineering of Leviathan

HOUSTON, March 2, 2017 - Wood Group recently completed the seven-month front-end engineering design (FEED) for Noble Energy's Leviathan Field Development Project in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and has started the detailed engineering for the platform - including the topsides and jacket. The FEED and detail design has a total contract value of approximately $95 million.

The estimated 30,000 ton fixed platform is being initially designed to process 1.2 Bcf/d of gas, expandable to 2.1Bcf/d to accommodate future production. The platform will be installed in 86 meters water depth.

The Leviathan project adds to Wood Group's portfolio of projects executed for Noble Energy. Wood Group previously designed the Tamar platform topsides; the Tamar onshore compression plant which receives natural gas from the Mari-B and Tamar fields in the Mediterranean Sea; and the topsides and jacket for the Alen production platform, offshore Equatorial Guinea.

Robin Watson, chief executive of Wood Group, said: "Wood Group's global engineering experience in delivering large-scale offshore gas production facilities and proven ability to deliver safe, cost-effective and efficient solutions will help Noble Energy and its partners meet the high standards, cost requirements and delivery schedule of the Leviathan field development. We are proud to be a valued partner in this major project."

-ends-

Notes to editors:

Wood Group is an international energy services company with around $5bn sales and operating in more than 40 countries. The Group designs, modifies, constructs and operates industrial facilities mainly for the oil & gas sector, right across the asset life-cycle. We enhance this with a wide range of specialist technical solutions including our world leading subsea, automation and integrity solutions. Our real differentiators are our range of services, the quality of our delivery, the passion of our people, our culture and values. We are extending the scale and scope of our core services into adjacent industries. Visit Wood Group at www.woodgroup.com and connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

For further information contact:

Wood Group Press Office

Email: press.office@woodgroup.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/10/16 -- Khan Resources Inc. ("Khan" or the "Company") (CSE: KRI) is pleased to announce that the shareholders of Khan have approved the special resolution for the voluntary liquidation and dissolution of Khan. The special resolution was approved by 99.95% of the shares voted in person or represented by proxy at the special meeting.

Pursuant to the winding up, Khan will make an initial distribution of CDN$0.85 per share by way of a return of capital, to be paid November 29, 2016 to shareholders of record at November 22, 2016. The shares will trade ex-distribution on November 18, 2016.

Any further distribution of cash will be made in one or more instalments following receipt of funds pursuant to the liquidation of the remaining assets of Khan and the winding up of its remaining subsidiary, and the satisfaction of all liabilities, including expenses of the winding up, on a distribution date to be determined pursuant to the plan of liquidation and dissolution. As previously disclosed, Khan anticipates that any further distributions of cash as part of the winding up would aggregate between CDN$0.01 and $0.08.

Full details of the winding up and certain other matters are set out in the management information circular of Khan dated October 5, 2016. A copy of the circular and other meeting materials can be found on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Forward-Looking Statements and Information

Certain information in this press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws including, among others, statements relating to Khan's objectives, beliefs, plans, estimates and intentions, and similar statements concerning anticipated future events, results, circumstances, performance or expectations that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by words such as "may", "will", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe", "should", "plans" or "continue" or similar expressions suggesting future outcomes or events. Such forward-looking statements reflect Khan's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of presenting information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future, and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. These statements are not guarantees of future results and are based on Khan's estimates and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Those risks and uncertainties include, among other things, risks related to the availability of cash for distributions in connection with the winding up. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based upon what management believes are reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The forward-looking statements are made only as of the date on which such statements are or were made and Khan assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances, except as required by applicable law.

Contacts:

Khan Resources Inc.

Grant Edey

Chairman & CEO

416.360.3405

gedey@rogers.com



Khan Resources Inc.

Marilyn Barton

Manager, Administration

416.360.3405

mbarton@khanresources.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/26/16 -- The Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, will host an event in Vancouver on Monday with representatives from a variety of sectors as part of the consultations on Canadian content in a digital world.

Representatives from the media are invited to take pictures at the beginning of the event. A media availability will follow Minister's Joly's remarks.

Please note that all details are subject to change. All times are local.

The details are as follows:

DATE: Monday, September 26, 2016 TIME: Opening remarks from Minister Joly at 1:00 p.m. Artistic performance and B-roll at 1:10 p.m. Media availability outside the room at 1:45 p.m. PLACE: Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre Exhibition Room 181 Roundhouse Mews Vancouver, British Columbia

Stay Connected

Follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Flickr, DigiCancon

Contacts:

Pierre-Olivier Herbert

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage

819-997-7788



Media Relations

Canadian Heritage

819-994-9101

1-866-569-6155

pch.media-media.pch@canada.ca




MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 12/01/16 -- Midland Exploration Inc. ("Midland") (TSX VENTURE: MD) is pleased to announce the start of a new drilling program on the Patris gold property, wholly owned by Midland and currently under option by Teck Resources Limited ("Teck") (see press release dated September 17 2013 for agreement terms). This project comprises 260 claims covering a surface area of about 108 square kilometres in La Pause and Clericy townships and is located only 30 kilometres northeast of the city of Rouyn-Noranda and less than 10 kilometres northwest of the prolific Doyon/Westwood-Bousquet-LaRonde gold mining camp.

This new drilling campaign will comprise three to five short drill holes, including two contingency holes, for a total of approximately 800-1,400 metres. Following an induced polarization survey totalling 15 line kilometres and a magnetic survey of 36 line kilometres, both completed in the fall of 2015, several anomalies (magnetic lows) were selected for drill testing along the strike extensions from drill hole PAT-15-05. This hole intersected a wide alteration zone with pyrite, chalcopyrite, galena, and molybdenite within syenite and ultramafic rocks which are strongly altered to fuchsite, quartz and carbonates. This alteration zone was intersected over a drill interval of approximately 100 metres and locally yielded anomalous copper, molybdenum, silver, and lead values of up to 82.6 g/t Ag, 0.10 g/t Au, 0.22% Cu and 1.0% Pb over 1.0 metre.

The Patris property offers excellent gold potential as it covers the Manneville Fault over more than 8 kilometres of strike length and the La Pause Fault over more than 10 kilometres of strike length, both recognized as subsidiary faults to the famous Destor-Porcupine Fault Zone. The geological setting of the Patris property, where clastic metasedimentary and ultramafic rocks are juxtaposed along a faulted contact and intruded by a porphyry dyke swarm, is similar to the Malartic mining camp and the South Barnat ore deposit on the Canadian Malartic property held in JV by Agnico Eagle Mines and Yamana Gold inc.

About Midland

Midland targets the excellent mineral potential of Quebec to make the discovery of new world-class deposits of gold, platinum group elements, base metals and rare earth elements. Midland is proud to count on reputable partners such as Teck Resources Limited, Agnico Eagle Mines Limited, SOQUEM INC., Osisko Exploration James Bay Inc., Japan Oil and Gas and Metals National Corporation and Abcourt Mines Inc. Midland prefers to work in partnership and intends to quickly conclude additional agreements in regard to newly acquired properties. Management is currently reviewing other opportunities and projects to build up the Company portfolio and generate shareholder value.

This press release was prepared by Mario Masson, VP Exploration for Midland, certified geologist and Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially from targeted results. Such risks and uncertainties include those described in Midland's periodic reports including the annual report or in the filings made by Midland from time to time with securities regulatory authorities.

Contacts:

Gino Roger, President and Chief Executive Officer

450 420-5977

450 420-5978 (FAX)

info@midlandexploration.com

www.midlandexploration.com




DENVER, CO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- American Cannabis Company, Inc. (OTCQB: AMMJ) (the "Company"), a full-service business-to-business consulting solutions provider, product manufacturer and seller of ancillary products to the cannabis industry, today announced third quarter sales to date for SoHum Living Soils (SoHum) of over fifty-three thousand dollars ($53,000) to multiple customers.

SoHum is a proprietary "just add water" growing medium that contains 100% natural ingredients and provides the plant a full buffet of macro/micro nutrients to achieve genetic optimization of the Cannabis plant. Not only does SoHum optimize the plant's potential, it eliminates the need for complex feeding schedules and the associated risks of operator error. Our SoHum product overview may be viewed at goo.gl/Vr0pqs.

Corey Hollister, president and CEO, American Cannabis Company, commented: "SoHum Living Soils is an innovative solution for the regulated cannabis markets. The product reduces cost and risk while improving quality and consistency, providing a truly meaningful value proposition for customers. SoHum is the basis for ACC's Geoponics methodology, 'the art and science of agriculture in soil'. The goal of our methodology is to establish profitable and ethical cultivation methods in the regulated Cannabis markets that support our mission of '...redefining society's relationship with Cannabis through responsible stewardship.'"

About American Cannabis Company, Inc.

American Cannabis Company, Inc. offers end-to-end solutions to existing and aspiring participants in the cannabis industry. We utilize our industry expertise to provide business planning and market assessment services, assist state licensing procurement, create business infrastructure and implement operational best practices. American Cannabis Company also developed and owns a portfolio of branded products including: The patented Satchel, SoHum Living Soils, The Cultivation Cube and The High Density Cultivation System. In addition, we design and provide other industry specific custom product solutions. The building and development of our brands and product suite is based on our Geoponics Philosophy, "the art and science of agriculture in soil."

For more information, please visit:

www.americancannabisconsulting.com

www.americancannabiscompanyinc.com

www.sohumsoils.com

www.dabwerks.com

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" which are not purely historical and may include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements include, among other things, the development, costs and results of new business opportunities and words such as "anticipate", "seek", intend", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "project", "plan", or similar phrases may be deemed "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the inherent uncertainties associated with new projects, the future U.S. and global economies, the impact of competition, and the Company's reliance on existing regulations regarding the use and development of cannabis-based drugs. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that any beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that any such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate. Investors should consult all of the information set forth herein and should also refer to the risk factors disclosure outlined in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other periodic reports filed from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For more information, please visit www.sec.gov.

Contact:

Terry Buffalo

Chief Operating Officer

IR@americancannabisconsulting.com

303-974-4771




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Kirkland Lake Gold Inc. ("Kirkland Lake Gold" or the "Company") (TSX: KGI), an intermediate gold producer with operations in Ontario, Canada, today announces that effective September 15, 2016, the trading symbol on the Toronto Stock Exchange for Kirkland Lake Gold will change from "KGI" to "KLG". As well, the Company is pleased to announce the appointment of Meri Verli, Senior Vice President, Finance and Treasurer (effective September 14, 2016), Pierre Rocque, Vice President Mining Engineering (effective September 26, 2016), and Ray Yip, as Vice President Business Intelligence Systems (effective September 3, 2016).

In addition, the Company announces that Mr. Chris Stewart, the Vice President of Operations is no longer with the Company. The Company thanks Mr. Stewart for his efforts and wishes him continued success.

Anthony (Tony) Makuch, President and CEO of the Company, commented: "We are very pleased to be gaining the wealth of experience and expertise that Meri, Pierre, and Ray bring to their respective roles Kirkland Lake Gold. They have all worked extensively in the mining sector, and are very familiar with gold mining in northern Ontario, which will add depth to our existing management team. In addition, throughout their distinguished careers, they have gained an appreciation for the importance of economic returns, which is an overriding focus of both the Company's board and management team.

"As well, we have re-branded the Company and are announcing a ticker symbol change which is more reflective of our corporate identity. Our new brand illustrates the ongoing evolution of the Company and incorporates the new ticker symbol "KLG". Kirkland Lake Gold's commitment is to be a responsible, growing, low cost and profitable gold company in order to maximize shareholder returns. Our new logo is a visual representation of this commitment. Currently, the Company has a market capitalization of approximately $1.4 billion and at the end of August had cash and cash equivalents of $184 million, illustrating our ability to generate cash and remain profitable."

The trading symbol for Kirkland Lake Gold will change from "KGI" to "KLG", effective at the opening of trading on Thursday, September 15, 2016. The change in the Corporation's trading symbol was also announced by the Toronto Stock Exchange by way of a Bulletin dated September 13, 2016.

The two issues of convertible debentures will continue to trade under the symbols KGI.DB and KGI.DB.A on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

No action is required to be taken by current shareholders in connection with the change. There is no change in the Company's name, no change in its CUSIP number, and no change has been made to the Company's share capital.

Management Appointment

Ms. Verli is a Chartered Professional Accountant with over 9 years of financial management experience in the mining sector and 18 years of overall industry experience. Ms. Verli started her career with KPMG in the audit and consulting practice and ended her tenure as Senior Manager of the firm's audit practice. Ms. Verli was most recently the Vice President Finance with Lake Shore Gold Corp., providing senior financial planning and analysis support, treasury responsibilities and managing the internal controls. She played a key role in building the accounting department as the Company transitioned from a junior exploration company to a commercial producer. Ms. Verli holds a Bachelors of Economy, a Bachelors of Geology and a PhD in Economic Sciences.

Mr. Rocque is a mining engineer with over 25 years of experience. He has worked at many gold mines in Canada, including as Vice President Engineering for St Andrew Goldfields, Director Technical Services at Lake Shore Gold, Chief Engineer at the Red Lake, QR and Macassa mines, Rock Mechanics Engineer at Hemlo's Golden Giant Mine and various mining engineering roles at Hoyle Pond and Agnico-Eagle's Joutel mines. Mr Rocque also worked as Manager Mine Improvement Projects and Chief Engineer-Geotechnical at WMC (now BHP Billiton) Olympic Dam mine in Australia. Most recently, Mr. Rocque was the Global Practice Director - Mining at Hatch. Mr Rocque graduated from l'Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal with a Bachelor degree in Mining Engineering and from Queen's University at Kingston with a Master's degree in Mining Engineering.

Raymond Yip is a computer engineer with over 15 years of experience in the IT industry, with 10 years in the mining sector. Most recently, he served as Director, Information Systems for Lake Shore Gold Corp. since 2011. Prior to that, Mr. Yip provided IT consulting services to various mining companies including QuadraFNX, DMC Mining and Torex Gold. Having held progressively senior positions at a major Canadian telecommunications company, Mr. Yip has diverse IT experience across various industries including financial, healthcare and automotive. Mr. Yip holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree from Queen's University.

About the Company

Kirkland Lake Gold Inc. is a Canadian focused, intermediate gold producer with assets in the historic Kirkland Lake gold camp, and east of the Timmins gold camp along the Porcupine-Destor Fault Zone, both in northeastern Ontario. The Company is currently targeting annual gold production of between 270,000 to 290,000 ounces from its cornerstone asset, the Macassa Mine Complex and the Holt Mine Complex which includes the Holt, Holloway and Taylor mines.

The Company is committed to building a sustainable mining company that is recognized as a safe and responsible gold producer with quality assets in safe mining jurisdictions.

The Toronto Stock Exchange has neither reviewed nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This Press Release contains statements which constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company with respect to the future business activities and operating performance of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "should", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are based on the opinions, assumptions and estimates of management considered reasonable at the date the statements are made such as, without limitation, opinion, assumptions and estimates of management regarding the Company's business. Such opinions, assumptions and estimates, are inherently subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other known and unknown factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. These factors include those risk factors discussed or referred to in the Company's annual Management's Discussion and Analysis and Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2015, and the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the interim period ended June 30, 2016, filed with the securities regulatory authorities in certain provinces of Canada and available at www.sedar.com.

Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although the Company has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements except as otherwise required by applicable law.

Contacts:

Kirkland Lake Gold Inc.

Toll Free: 1-866-384-2924



Anthony (Tony) Makuch

Chief Executive Officer

+1 416-840-7884

tmakuch@klgold.com



Suzette N Ramcharan, CPIR

Director of Investor Relations

Direct: +1 647-361-0200

Mobile: +1 647-284-5315

sramcharan@klgold.com

www.klgold.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Advantage Lithium Corp. (the "Company" or "Advantage Lithium") (TSX VENTURE: AAL) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. David Sidoo as Chief Executive Officer of the Company. Mr. Sidoo is an award-winning senior executive with a strong track record of taking companies from start-up to successful sale. He raised over $150M for his two previous public companies and was the founding shareholder of American Oil & Gas Inc., which sold to Hess Corporation for over US$630 million in an all-stock transaction.

Outside of his professional life, Mr. Sidoo has been recognized at the highest levels for his work with local communities. He received the Order of British Columbia in July, 2016 and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and the NRI Award in 2012. Previously, the Vancouver Sun voted him one of the top 100 South Asians making a difference in BC and he also sits on the Board of Governors of the University of British Columbia.

Mr. Dev Randhawa has resigned as interim CEO and the Board thanks him for his diligent efforts during the early stages of the company.

Dev Randhawa, Director of Advantage Lithium, commented: "The progress that Advantage Lithium has made in such a short time, raising funds and securing high-quality assets, speaks volumes for Mr. Sidoo's capabilities. He has put together a strong team, and he has the vision and skills to continue building this company into a serious player in the lithium sector."

David Sidoo, President and CEO of Advantage Lithium, said: "I'm delighted to be taking on the role of CEO as such a key time. The lithium sector continues to expand and there exist exciting opportunities for the right company. With our experienced team and strong assets, I'm confident we will continue to increase shareholder value through a strategy of drilling and further acquisitions."

The company further announces that it has filed its application to list and be called to trade on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. This will help broaden the Company's exposure in Europe where European, and especially German investors, are showing a renewed interest in resource based companies. The proposed listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange will provide these investors with better capital market access. In addition, the Company has engaged Future Money Trends LLC to provide certain financial publishing and digital marketing services.

Further information about the company can be found at www.advantagelithium.com.

About Advantage Lithium Corp.

Advantage Lithium Corp. is a resource company specializing in the strategic acquisition, exploration and development of lithium properties and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Common Shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "AAL". The company is earning an interest from Nevada Sunrise Gold Corp., in a portfolio of five lithium brine projects in the Clayton and Lida Valley regions of Nevada, USA, together with certificated water rights in the Clayton Valley. In addition, the company has entered into an LOI agreement to earn interest from Radius Gold Inc. in four lithium brine projects in the states of Chihuahua and Coahuila, Northwest Mexico.

ADVANTAGE LITHIUM CORP.

Nick DeMare, Corporate Secretary

Cautionary Statement:

Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of Canadian legislation. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur", "be achieved" or "has the potential to". Forward looking statements contained in this press release may include statements regarding the future operating or financial performance of Advantage Lithium which involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may not prove to be accurate. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. Among those factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are the following: market conditions and other risk factors listed from time to time in our reports filed with Canadian securities regulators on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and the Company and Advantage Lithium disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation.

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:

Advantage Lithium Corp.

Nick DeMare

Corporate Secretary

604.685.9316

604.683.1585 (FAX)

info@advantagelithium.com

www.advantagelithium.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- San Marco Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: SMN) ("San Marco" or the "Company") announces the staking of the first three new concessions in Sonora State, Mexico, to protect target areas generated as part of the GlobeTrotters Resource Group Inc. ("GlobeTrotters") / San Marco partnership (the "GSM Partnership", see the San Marco News Release of May 5th 2016 for further details).

Three separate mineral concessions totalling 25,967 hectares have been staked to protect new target areas with favourable characteristics based on remote sensing, known favourable geology and regional structural framework permissiveness for economic mineralization as defined by GSM Partnership parameters. All three concessions are presently undergoing initial field evaluations by San Marco geologists. It is worth noting that several smaller internal concessions within the staked areas could result in the reported concession size being slightly reduced. Details on each concession area are as follows:

La Caridad Este (9040 hectares appl.) covers a large hydrothermal alteration zone occurring along a major east-west trending structural lineament which also appears to intersect the 1.5 billion tonne La Caridad open-pit porphyry Cu-Mo deposit operated by Groupo Mexico located 27 kilometres to the west. A first pass assessment of the property has outlined a large hydrothermal alteration zone associated with a highly altered porphyritic andesite. Initial field investigations indicate the presence of an argillic altered and oxidized lithocap with indications of Cu-oxide mineralization. Lithocaps commonly overlie fully preserved porphyry systems so these preliminary results are encouraging, but more work is required to evaluate the full potential of this large property. The next stage of field work will include geological mapping, stream sediment and rock chip sampling, as well as PIMA spectral analysis of alteration minerals.

Aqua Zarca (4309 hectares appl.) located in northern Sonora, and is underlain by Cretaceous clastic and volcanic rocks. Regional field studies by the SGM (Servicio Geologico Mexicano) have shown highly anomalous gold values from stream sediment sampling in watercourses draining the property area. Reconnaissance field work has outlined an Fe-oxide filled crackle breccia within locally silicified, argillic altered sandstones. Preliminary results look encouraging but more work is required to evaluate the potential of this property to host a mineralized epithermal Au-Ag system.

La Pitahaya (12,618 hectares appl.) located in northeastern Sonora, was staked to cover a large GSM Partnership derived hydrothermal alteration target associated with Cretaceous volcanic rocks overlying Proterozoic gneisses and Cretaceous limestone, all cut by younger suite of intrusive rocks. The presence of hydrothermally altered volcanic rocks in close proximity to a major fault-controlled uplifted block of basement gneisses in a continental arc geological setting is considered an excellent geological environment for the emplacement of porphyry and related epithermal systems.

The Company has also staked four new concessions that were made available under the Mexican government's "Libertad" system. The Libertad system is a lottery that allows competing parties to make multiple applications, each with a separate fee, for a given concession area. Government authorities then perform a draw to randomly choose the winning application for a given area. San Marco will disclose the details of any concessions it gains through this process once it has been notified of the results of the lotteries. In parallel to field evaluation of newly staked concessions and Libertad opportunities, discussions are ongoing with concession owners where high priority targets are currently situated on previously staked ground.

San Marco's CEO, Bob Willis stated; "We're extremely pleased with the early results of the GSM Partnership's targeting efforts. As we hoped, application of these techniques generated numerous new targets throughout the states of Sonora, allowing us to quickly focus on the highest potential areas. Interestingly, some of these areas appear to be lightly explored or even unexplored, though some lie in close proximity to well-known major deposits. Early results have increased our confidence that this method will allow us to rapidly prioritize new projects with cost effective reconnaissance techniques.

"This process should result in the application for a large number of concessions in coming months. Most of these won't meet our strict guidelines for advancement after cursory field examinations. This is an expected outcome. San Marco fully expects the process will result in a large but manageable set of concessions with high potential targets available for advancement by San Marco or partner companies. Management views this as an excellent way to maximize shareholder value and is pleased with the rapid progress to date. We will update shareholders regularly as new target areas are added and results of initial fieldwork are obtained. Work on existing projects outside the GSM Partnership also continues and will be reported on in the near future."

About San Marco

San Marco Resources Inc. is a Canadian mineral exploration company with a portfolio of promising projects in mining-friendly Mexico, including the Chunibas & Mariana Projects in Sonora State.

San Marco actively pursues a strategic project generation program focused on high-calibre, low acquisition cost opportunities in the North-western Mexico. The Company has a committed management team with extensive experience in Mexico and a proven track record of building shareholder value.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Robert Willis, P. Eng.

President & CEO

National Instrument 43-101 Disclosure

The technical information contained in this document has been verified, and this news release has been approved, by San Marco's CEO, Robert D. Willis, P. Eng. a "Qualified Person" as defined in National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects of the Canadian Securities Administrators.

Forward Looking Information

Information set forth in this document may include forward-looking statements. While these statements reflect management's current plans, projections and intents, by their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond the control of San Marco Resources Inc. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements. San Marco's actual results, programs, activities and financial position could differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these forward-looking statements.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

San Marco Resources Inc.

Nancy Curry

info@sanmarcocorp.com




BERWYN, PA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Archer, a technology and services innovator for the investment management industry, today announced that Salient, a diversified asset management firm and leading provider of alternative and real asset investment strategies, has selected Archer to service its consolidated book of retail SMA portfolios.

"Having all of our SMA portfolios on a single system with real-time access to portfolio and trade information will help reduce both cost and risk," said Rob Naka, Salient's chief operating officer. "This platform provides a strong foundation and scalability as Salient continues to grow."

Salient completed its purchase of Forward Management, LLC ("Forward") in June 2015, including its separately managed accounts. By converting to Archer from its legacy software, Salient's multiple portfolio management teams will benefit from a cloud-based solution -- synchronizing operations regardless of geographic location.

Archer began providing technology for Forward's separately managed accounts in 2007. The firm deepened its relationship with Archer by adding full outsourcing services in 2013, helping Forward align their costs with their growth. Following the Forward acquisition, Salient recognized Archer's ability to unify their operations across multiple investment management groups handling multiple asset classes. The advantages of web-delivered technology along with outsourced services' predictable costs both enable the firm's growth and improve margins.

"I am personally thrilled to see a firm like Salient recognize how Archer's total solution can empower their growth trajectory while improving their bottom line," said Bryan Dori, Archer CEO. "The strong partnership we have developed is a testament to how Archer goes beyond merely providing a service, and helps find the best solution to enable growth."

The Archer technology platform supports investment management operations with end-to-end integration of proprietary order life cycle management, monitoring and reporting tools including performance measurement, and workflow management such as document storage and staging. Archer's operations solution allows for the selective outsourcing of investment management support for institutional, private wealth, and retail accounts.

About Archer

Archer is a technology and services innovator for the investment management industry including institutional, private wealth and retail managers. Archer provides a fully integrated, secure cloud-based platform that simplifies the investment management process across channels allowing management firms to scale rapidly. Growth is supported with always up-to-date and accessible technology -- nothing to install, maintain on servers, or to slow down a manager's core business. Archer also uniquely offers selective operations outsourcing, providing managers the ability to control costs, gain flexibility and speed time to market. Selective outsourcing allows firms to choose services that fit their needs, so they can focus on delivering results.

For more information, visit archerims.com.

About Salient

Epsilon Theory newsletter and blog. Learn more about Salient at www.salientpartners.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. Salient was founded in 2002 and has offices in Houston, San Francisco, New York and Newport Beach.

Press Inquiries:

Mary Cosmides

Braithwaite Communications

mary@gobraithwaite.com



Archer Contact:

Jon Anderson

Archer

janderson@archerims.com



Salient Media Contact:

Catherine P. Jones

Polisi Jones Communications

cjones@polisijones.com

917-330-8934




LONDON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Ultra Electronics is in a replenishment phase, investing in new technologies to embed in programmes that should return the company to growth from FY17. In the current year the spending environment remains flat, but FX and M&A contributions will bolster performance, enabling the company to deliver EPS in excess of 2011's record level. Our fair value of 2,037p indicates decent upside for the shares should improve order intake and continuing investment deliver expected growth.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130417/608168 )



Our estimated fair value for Ultra currently stands at 2,037p, a simple average of our FY17 peer-based sum-of-the-parts and our capped DCF valuation. If Ultra continues to grow EPS in 2017 beyond the range of the last five years, and global defence spending does indeed start to accelerate as western world budgets increase, we feel a moderate rerating is plausible.

Click here to view the full report.

All reports published by Edison are available to download free of charge from its website http://www.edisoninvestmentresearch.com.

About Edison: Edison is an international equity research firm with a team of over 110 analysts, investment and roadshow professionals and works with both large and smaller capitalised companies, blue chip institutional investors, wealth managers, private equity and corporate finance houses to support their capital markets activity. Edison provides services to more than 420 retained corporate and investor clients from offices in London, New York, Frankfurt, Sydney and Wellington. Edison is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Edison is not an adviser or broker-dealer and does not provide investment advice. Edison's reports are not solicitations to buy or sell any securities.

Contact details: Learn more at http://www.edisongroup.com and connect with Edison on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/edison-investment-research

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Edison_Inv_Res

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/edisonitv

Google+: https://plus.google.com/105425025202328783163/posts

For more information please contact:

Andy Chambers, Edison Investment Research, +44(0)20-3681-2525

Roger Johnston, Edison Investment Research, +44(0)20-3077-5722, industrials@edisongroup.com
Only 1 in 3 companies forecast need for Chief Digital Officer in next 2 years"Ideal Chief Digital Officer is equal parts technology leader and marketer," Says IIC PartnersNEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Organisations across the globe report they do not have a Chief Digital Officer to manage digital transformation or digital strategy. According to a survey of 501 global business leaders conducted by IIC Partners Executive Search Worldwide, 3 out of 4 survey respondents (76 percent) said they did not have a Chief Digital Officer in place to own their digital transformation strategy.80 percent of senior executives stated that they believe investment in digital transformation within their organisation is very or extremely important to future success. In contrast, however, only a third of survey respondents said they plan to hire a Chief Digital Officer within the next two years.Companies that do not have a Chief Digital Officer said the CEO, CIO and CMO roles serve as the primary leadership figures responsible for managing the vision and implementation of digital transformation, alongside their other responsibilities.Ruth Curran, Managing Partner of MERC Partners based in Dublin and Global Chair of IIC Partners Executive Search worldwide commented: "Senior executives recognize the importance of investing in digital transformation for future success. However, as technology evolves and digital continues to disrupt business units and industries, a CEO who has primary oversight for this mandate will diminish their capacity to effectively manage the rest of the organisation and lead their teams.""Management of digital transformation is best directed by a devoted leader who can competently own and execute a comprehensive strategy."The survey found that respondents were divided when asked which functional background best qualified an executive to fill the role of Chief Digital Officer. 45 percent of executives surveyed said the ideal Chief Digital Officer should have experience within the Technology or IT function, while 43 percent said he or she should have a Marketing or Sales background.IIC Partners Executive Director, Christine Hayward, commented on this divided perception: "The schism we are seeing in the ideal functional background of a Chief Digital Officer speaks to the hybrid nature of the role. He or she should possess an innate understanding of technology accompanied by a firm knowledge of employing digital transformation and strategy to support organisational growth. This cross-functional skillset will drive continued innovation and programs across the enterprise from a central visionary perspective," Ms. Hayward said.The survey also revealed the key responsibilities executives expect a Chief Digital Officer to manage, including:-- Ensuring digital assets work across business units -- Articulating the strategic vision to other leadership teams -- Championing increased value through use of digital transformation"The qualities sought after in a Chief Digital Officer are rooted in the softer skills of management," said Curran. "A successful CDO must exercise and exhibit persuasive leadership tactics to garner the buy-in and support of other senior leaders across the organisation. Companies are not only looking for a candidate to identify valuable opportunities for digital transformation to work for the business, but lead through influence and instill confidence from other key stakeholders critical to its success."View the full IIC Partners report: The Rise of Digital LeadershipAbout the Global Digital Transformation SurveyOver 500 senior-level executives completed an online survey during a six-week period in 2016.-- 70 percent of respondents were at the C-suite or Managing Director level. -- 250 respondents were from EMEA, 134 were from the Americas and 76 were from Asia-Pacific. -- Survey responses came from 43 different countries. -- 38 percent were from publicly held organisations, 41 percent were from privately-held firms, 8 percent were from family-owned businesses, 7 percent came from not-for-profit organisations, and 6 percent were from other types of business models.About IIC PartnersIIC Partners (www.iicpartners.com) is one of the top 10 executive search organisations in the world. The network of "Independent International Consultants" is made up of 43 independently owned and managed executive search firms representing 52 offices in 34 countries, all considered to be leaders in the geographic and industry markets they serve. Questions or comments can be directed to Thaddeus Andres, Senior Marketing & Communications Manager attandres@iicpartners.com.IIC Partners offers solutions in addition to executive search for digital talent advisory and leadership needs. IIC Partners' global capabilities include organisational assessment, talent mapping and board consulting services to strengthen and elevate a client's digital transformation strategy. For more information on our Technology, Digital Media and Telecommunications Practice contact Christine Hayward, Executive Director of IIC Partners, on chayward@iicpartners.com.
Embargoed 13 September 00.01

- Road to Resilience Report: energy sector needs to manage growing threats of extreme weather, energy-water-food nexus and cyber-attacks

- 23rd World Energy Congress in less than a month will see world energy leaders seek viable solutions

Emerging physical, financial and virtual risks pose an ever-greater threat to the security and supply of energy. The transformation of markets and business models, driven by climate-change policy commitments, are putting unprecedented strain on the energy sector at a critical time, finds a new World Energy Council report. It contends that energy systems must be smarter, not just stronger, to withstand diverse emerging risks and be more resilient.

The findings come just a month prior to the 23rd World Energy Congress in Istanbul where high-level discussions exploring these energy resilience issues will be led by Satoru Katsuno, President and Chairman of Chubu Electric Power Company, and Juerg Trueb Managing Director, Environmental and Commodity Markets, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions. They will look at the risks to the industry and, crucially, what policy solutions are needed to adjust to the 'new normal'.

The Road to Resilience: Financing resilient energy infrastructure, launched at the IEFA Toronto Global Forum on 13 September, focuses on three critical emerging risks - extreme weather events (https://www.worldenergy.org/publications/2015/the-road-to-resilience-managing-and-financing-extreme-weather-risk/), energy-water-food nexus (https://www.worldenergy.org/publications/2016/the-road-to-resilience-managing-the-risks-of-the-energy-water-food-nexus/) and cyber threats. It provides an overview of the Road to Resilience series developed in collaboration with project partners Swiss Re Corporate Solutions (http://www.swissre.com/corporate_solutions/) and Marsh & McLennan Companies (http://www.mmc.com/), and finds:

Energy is the second-most water intensive industry after agriculture, with 98% of power supply dependent on the availability of water

Extreme weather events have increased by a factor four over the past thirty years. Frequent and severe weather events can affect energy infrastructure across the value chain, and often lead to higher demand

The sophistication and frequency of cyber-attacks is growing, and continues to keep energy leaders in Europe and North America awake at night. By 2018, the oil and gas industries could be spending US$1.87 billion each year on cyber security

These threats impact both the physical structures and the capital returns that are needed to advance energy systems to a more sustainable future. Therefore, successfully managing these risks has become crucial for energy leaders globally, bringing the need for resilience to the fore.

Christoph Frei, Secretary General, World Energy Council, said: "With accelerating energy systems integration, resilience is no longer just about returning single assets to full operation after a disruptive event. When interdependent parts of a system are blacked out, the system as a whole is at risk of being deadlocked.

"The different risks to resilience have very distinct meaning and priorities in different regions. Yet the imperative to cope with these risks is a powerful catalyst for innovation with transformative global impact: innovation in technology, system design and management, cross-country and -value chain cooperation, the required policies and, last but not least, financing concepts. Securing the future investments to expand and transform the sector is the critical challenge ahead."

Jeroen van der Veer, Executive Chair, Road to Resilience, and former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, said: "For the financial sector, our resilience work highlights both risks and opportunities. Missing out on deep understanding of the shifting resilience landscape will expose short-sighted investors, while a variety of financing mechanisms are available and under development to better cope with emerging risks."

Over the two years the series of reports examined the evolution of these risks and their impact on energy infrastructure, and identified measures required to increase resilience of, and improve the financing conditions for, investments in energy infrastructure that is able to cope with these new challenges.

Key recommendations within The Road to Resilience: Financing resilient energy infrastructure includes:

Smarter design of energy systems: energy systems must be smarter, not just stronger, to withstand diverse emerging risks and be more resilient.

Encourage diversity within the energy sector and related industries: diversity increases flexibility and helps to avoid and mitigate the implications of potential threats.

Increased private finance infrastructure: resilience is vital in attracting a more diverse group of investors, including institutional investors, to the energy sector

Improved regulation and market guidance: policymakers must develop clear, transparent, predictable legal frameworks to ensure resilience and stimulate finance.

A frontier session on day two of the 23rd World Energy Congress, The Road to Resilience: Managing and mitigating extreme weather risk will be held on 10 October.

END

The publication will be available to download for all after the embargo date using the following link: https://www.worldenergy.org/publications/2016/the-road-to-resilience-financing-resilient-energy-infrastructure/

Media can get an exclusive preview of the Executive summary of the report and its infographic using the following links not to be publicly shared before embargo is lifted:

https://www.worldenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/The-road-to-resilience_Financing-resilient-energy-infrastructure_Report.pdf

A link to our accompanying video can be found here: https://wdrv.it/38b3c8abb

The Road to Resilience series features three reports available on www.worldenergy.org/publications :

Managing and financing extreme weather risks

Managing the risks of the energy water-food nexus

Managing cyber risks

Notes to Editors:

World Energy Council

The World Energy Council is the principal impartial network of energy leaders and practitioners promoting an affordable, stable and environmentally sensitive energy system for the greatest benefit of all. Formed in 1923, the Council is the UN-accredited global energy body, representing the entire energy spectrum, with over 3,000 member organisations in over 90 countries, drawn from governments, private and state corporations, academia, NGOs and energy stakeholders. We inform global, regional and national energy strategies by hosting high-level events including the World Energy Congress and publishing authoritative studies, and work through our extensive member network to facilitate the world's energy policy dialogue. Find out more www.worldenergy.org and follow @WECouncil

World Energy Congress

The World Energy Congress is the World Energy Council's global flagship triennial event that enables dialogue among Ministers, CEOs and industry experts on critical developments in the energy sector. Running since 1924, the 23rd World Energy Congress will be held in Istanbul, Turkey from 9-13 October 2016 with the theme "Embracing New Frontiers".

For more information on the World Energy Congress and speakers, click here: http://www.wec2016istanbul.org.tr/

Media registration closes on 30th September 2016. To register as a media delegate visit: https://secure.eventmagix.com/2016_wec_media/

For enquiries about media registration contact: mediaregistration@wec2016istanbul.org.tr

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005955/en/

Contacts:

World Energy Council

Lucy Chakaodza

chakaodza@worldenergy.org

Tel: (+44) 203 214 0616; (+44) 207 734 5996

or

For more information about the 2016 World Energy Congress contact:

Grayling

Roisin Miller

worldenergycongress@grayling.com

(+44) 203 861 3952
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: CEM) ("Constantine" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the start of road construction and provide an update on work programs at the Palmer VMS Project, Alaska ("Palmer" or "Project"). Information on the Company's gold assets is also provided.

Exploration Access Road and Permit Approvals

Construction on a road that will provide access to the deposit area has commenced following a Record of Decision received August 18 from the Bureau of Land Management ("BLM"). An Environmental Assessment completed by BLM resulted in a finding of no significant impacts, with Constantine authorized to conduct expanded exploration activities of up to 40 acres.

Garfield MacVeigh, President and CEO states, "A road to the mineral resource at Palmer is a major advancement for the Project. It improves our ability to conduct ongoing exploration, environmental and geotechnical work, reduces dependency on helicopter, and enhances the safety of our employees. It also highlights the excellent location and access of the Project, which is 40 miles by paved highway and logging road to the deep sea port town of Haines. Permit approvals are the culmination of a rigorous environmental review process. We thank the many community members who offered their support and assistance and acknowledge the thoroughness and professionalism of the regulatory agencies involved in our permitting process."

2016 Work Program Update

- The 2016 summer drill program is now complete. Drilling included four reconnaissance exploration holes (1465 m) and three geotechnical holes (502 m) for a combined total of 1967 meters, with assays now received for three of the four exploration holes. See news release dated July 6, 2016 for details on the target areas. - Highlights include a 20.5 meter thick zone of chert and semi-massive pyrite intersected at the CAP prospect. The intersection, which is anomalous in silver and other pathfinder elements, is geologically significant. At the South Wall and RW zones, located 2500 meters to the northeast, chert grades laterally into high-grade massive sulphide, and similar zoning is predicted at CAP. The thickness of the chert horizon at CAP, which occurs at the contact between overlying argillite and altered footwall volcanics, suggests good potential for a well- developed massive sulphide system within the immediate area. The limited 2016 drilling provides an important vector to the potential massive sulphide component of the CAP prospect for follow-up drilling. - Analysis by a recognized, independent structural geologist has provided new insight into the direction and sense of displacement of fault structures identified in the 2015 down-dip resource drilling that intersect and offset the lowermost portion of the South Wall zone. The work included review of the fault and adjacent rocks in drill core and on surface, and has produced new drill targets to test for extensions of the deposit. - Mapping and rock and soil sampling programs were completed at several areas throughout the Property with the objective of advancing prospects to the drill stage. Results of this work will be summarized following receipt of assays, all of which remain outstanding at this time. - Significant new environmental and geotechnical data was collected over the course of the summer exploration program. This includes hydrogeology, water quality, aquatic resources, wildlife, rock geochemistry, rock and soil geotechnical engineering, and natural hazard assessments. These studies support the ongoing evaluation of the inferred mineral resource.

A more comprehensive summary of exploration results will be provided pending receipt of assay data for all drill holes and surface samples.

About the Palmer Project

Palmer is a resource expansion stage, high-grade volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) project, with an Inferred Mineral Resource of 8.1 million tonnes grading 1.41% copper, 5.25% zinc, 0.32 g/t gold and 31.7 g/t silver(i). The Project is being advanced in partnership with Dowa, who can earn 49% in the project by making aggregate expenditures of US $22 million over four years (about US$19 million spent to date). The project is located in a very accessible part of coastal Southeast Alaska, 60 kilometers by road from the year-round deep sea port of Haines. Mineralization at Palmer occurs within the same belt of rocks that is host to the Greens Creek mine, one of the world's richest VMS deposits. There are at least 25 separate base metal and/or barite occurrences and prospects on the Palmer property, indicating the potential for discovery of multiple deposits.

Strategic Review of Constantine Gold Assets

Constantine controls several high quality gold projects in the Timmins camp, Ontario and Yukon which were systematically acquired and advanced over a 7 year period prior to the recent resurgence of gold. The Company is actively considering various strategic alternatives to realize the value of these assets for our shareholders. The assets include:

(1) 100% owned Timmins area Munro-Croesus Project (16.7 square kilometres) - a past-producing mine property that yielded some of the highest grade gold ever mined in Ontario. The project covers a 6.5 km extent of the prospective Munro Break that hosts the robust Canamax gold prospect and a 6.5 kilometre target area along the Pipestone fault where management has identified numerous gold bearing structures which are largely undrilled but, where tested, shows good potential for discovery of new "Croesus-type" gold mineralization. One of these structures that hosts the high-grade Croesus Mine has only been tested in the immediate mine area and the 1 kilometre southwest extension of the vein corridor remains untested. The project also includes strategically located claims adjacent and on trend with Tahoe Resource's Fenn-Gib gold deposit with a NI 43-101 resource containing 1.35 million ounces indicated and 0.75 million ounces inferred. The Munro-Croesus land holdings represent a rare opportunity to control an extensive, high potential project in the prolific Timmins gold camp area.

(2) the large (68 square kilometre) Golden Mile property in the Timmins gold camp, 9 kilometres northeast of Goldcorp's multimillion ounce Hoyle Pond Mine, and

(3) a 50/50 Joint Venture formed in 2010 with Carlin Gold Corporation exploring a greater than 600 sq. km land position in a new Carlin-type gold district in Yukon.

About the Company

Constantine is a mineral exploration company led by a proven technical team with a focus on premier North American mining environments. Management is committed to providing shareholder value through discovery, meaningful community engagement, environmental stewardship, and responsible mineral exploration and development activities that support local jobs and businesses.

Please visit the Company's website (www.constantinemetals.com) for more detailed company and project information.

On Behalf of Constantine Metal Resources Ltd.

Garfield MacVeigh, President

(i) 8.125 million tonne inferred resource grading 1.41% copper, 5.25% zinc, 0.32 g/t gold and 31.7 g/t silver. See the Company's news release date May 11, 2015 and available on www.sedar.com. Resource estimate utilizes an NSR cut-off of US$75/t with assumed metal prices of US$1200/oz for gold, US$18/oz for silver, US$2.75/lb for copper, and US$1.00/lb for zinc. Estimated metal recoveries are 89.6% for copper, 84.9% for zinc, 75% for gold (61.5% to the Cu concentrate and 13.5% to the Zn concentrate) and 89.7% for silver (73.7% to the Cu concentrate and 16% to the Zn concentrate) as determined from metallurgical locked cycle flotation tests. An "Inferred Mineral Resource is that part of a Mineral Resource for which quantity and grade or quality can be estimated on the basis of geological evidence and limited sampling and reasonably assumed, but not verified, geological and grade continuity. Confidence in the estimate is insufficient to allow the meaningful application of technical and economic parameters or to enable an evaluation of economic viability worthy of public disclosure.

Darwin Green, VP Exploration for Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. and a qualified person as defined by Canadian National Instrument 43-101 has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this release.

Notes:

Forward-looking statements: This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively "forward-looking statements")." Forward-looking statements include predictions, projections and forecasts and are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "forecast", "expect", "potential", "project", "target", "schedule", budget" and "intend" and statements that an event or result "may", "will", "should", "could" or "might" occur or be achieved and other similar expressions and includes the negatives thereof. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding the expected. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements are based on a number of material factors and assumptions. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Company's expectations include actual exploration results, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, results of future resource estimates, future metal prices, availability of capital and financing on acceptable terms, general economic, market or business conditions, uninsured risks, regulatory changes, defects in title, availability of personnel, materials and equipment on a timely basis, accidents or equipment breakdowns, delays in receiving government approvals, unanticipated environmental impacts on operations and costs to remedy same, and other exploration or other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause such actions, events or results to differ materially from those anticipated. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and accordingly readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on 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.

Contacts:

Constantine Metal Resources Ltd.

Garfield MacVeigh

President

604-629-2348



Constantine Metal Resources Ltd.

Darwin Green

VP Exploration

604-629-2348

info@constantinemetals.com

www.constantinemetals.com




WARSAW (dpa-AFX) - Poland's core consumer price index, which excludes food and energy prices, declined at a stable pace in August, data from the National Bank of Poland showed Tuesday. The net CPI decreased 0.4 percent year-on-year in August, same as in July. The fall was in line with economists' expectations. In June, prices fell 0.2 percent. On a month-on-month basis, the net CPI dropped 0.1 percent in August after remaining unchanged in July. Economists had forecast a 0.1 percent slump. Overall CPI declined 0.8 percent annually in August after a 0.9 percent drop in July. 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.
Marion named Senior Technology Evangelist; will drive product awareness and help customers derive maximum value

SAN RAMON, California, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- GreyHeller, a global leader in mobile and security technology and Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today announced the appointment of Jim Marion as Senior Technology Evangelist. Jim will have worldwide responsibility for driving awareness of GreyHeller's products - PeopleMobile and ERP Firewall. Jim will also work with GreyHeller customers to help them derive maximum value from their use of the company's technology.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160126/325915LOGO

Jim has authored several books on Oracle's PeopleSoft, including: PeopleSoft Data Management and Upgrade Handbook; PeopleSoft PeopleTools Tips and Techniques; PeopleSoft PeopleTools Mobile Application Development.

Available on Amazon.com, these books have been read by thousands of PeopleSoft customers. Jim is also a prolific blogger. His blog, Jim's PeopleSoft Journal, generates more thank 65,000 pageviews in July and is recognized as a leading source of PeopleSoft tips and techniques.

"Over the past eight years, Jim has established himself as a ERP expert, author and public speaker. We are pleased to welcome Jim to GreyHeller where he will offer us, our customers and the market his significant ERP expertise," said Chris Heller, CTO and Co-Founder of GreyHeller. "I've known Jim for more than 15 years. His knowledge and experience will contribute mightily to the ERP industry."

Jim brings more than 15 years of PeopleTools experience with a focus on mobile, user experience, and PeopleTools development best practices. As a former PeopleSoft customer, he was responsible for designing, building, and maintaining application customizations and modifications. In his role at Oracle, Jim used PeopleTools to create unique and compelling user experiences.

"I am excited to be a part of an organization that will challenge me to find innovative, non-invasive ways to secure and improve the Oracle's PeopleSoft user experience," Jim said. "GreyHeller's PeopleMobile, PeopleUX and ERP Firewall products allow customers to manipulate the user experience without changing delivered pages. This is critical to rapid patching and upgrades in our continuous release era."

Please join Jim at his upcoming webinars.

About GreyHeller

GreyHeller provides Mobile and Security software solutions for Oracle's PeopleSoft customers, including 6 of the top 50 global companies and 7 of the top universities. PeopleMobile mobilizes and transforms every PeopleSoft page across every PeopleSoft system - Campus Solutions, HCM, FSCM, CRM, ELM, Interaction Hub. ERP Firewall protects PeopleSoft sensitive data from malicious and inadvertent breach with powerful Data Masking, Two-Factor Authentication, Location-Based Security, Delegate and VIP Access Control, Logging and Analysis.

About Oracle PartnerNetwork

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) is Oracle's partner program that provides partners with a differentiated advantage to develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle's products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle's growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to be recognized and rewarded for their investment in Oracle Cloud. Partners engaging with Oracle will be able to differentiate their Oracle Cloud expertise and success with customers through the OPN Cloud program - an innovative program that complements existing OPN program levels with tiers of recognition and progressive benefits for partners working with Oracle Cloud. To find out more visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.




DUBLIN, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of Wintergreen Research, Inc's new report "CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear And Explosive) Detection Device Markets: Market Strategies and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2016-2022" to their offering.

The worldwide market for CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear And Explosives) at $2.2 billion in 2015 is anticipated to reach $ 9.8 billion by 2022

Market growth is driven by the vulnerability of civilian populations to the whim of terrorist attacks. CBRNE represents a cohesive response to a scattered threat. As such, there are many different detection devices that need to be available in any one place to address safety issues.



Worldwide CBRNE markets are poised to achieve significant growth with the use of detectors that are implemented as platforms, many of them handheld, used to help implement precision detection of intent to do harm to civilian populations or military personnel.



Chemical warfare agents (CWAs), toxic industrial chemicals (TICs), toxic industrial materials (TIMs), hazmat agents are problems in civilized society when terrorists target civilian populations as has happened recently in Boston, Paris, Asia, Syria, London, and Belgium. The risks associated with terrorist use of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) warfare are tremendous.



Growing use of CBRNE detection devices to try to protect civilians is encouraging, because it gives a sense of being able to protect people, whereas previously everyone has felt terribly vulnerable. Watchfulness in the context of terrorist threats is encouraging because the terrorist behavior is concerning.



Expanding threats require more first responder CBRNE detection devices and more vigilance from the first responders as they learn to use the devices. CBRNE detection teams and hazmat response are provided by first responders to help protect civilian populations.



Advanced handheld analytical technology permits first responders to be capable of proactive performance in a hot zone. Handheld devices allow for faster detection, response and continuous monitoring of both conventional and unconventional threats helping to ensure public safety and response team protection.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction

1.1. Threat Detection: Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive

1.2. CBRNe Detection Creates Market Dynamics

1.2.1. Stand-Off Detection

1.2.2. High Visibility Events (HVE)

1.3. Helytex Radiogardase

1.4. Building Vulnerability



2. CBRNE Market Shares and Forecasts

2.1. CBRNE Advanced Handheld and Desktop Analytical Technology

2.2. CBRNE Market Shares

2.3. CBRNE Market 2016-2022022 - Market Forecasts

2.4. Chemical Threat Analysis

2.5. Biological Threat Analysis

2.6. Radiological

2.7. Nuclear

2.8. Explosive Device

2.9. CBRNE Detection Device End Users: Military, Homeland Security, First Responder, Local Police & Fire Departments, and Commercial & Logistics

2.10. CBRNE Standoff Detection Systems

2.11. Human Protective Materials

2.12. CBRNE Prices

2.13. CBRNE Regional Segment Analysis



3. CBRNE Product Description



Bruker CBRNE Products

FLIR Systems CBRNE Detection

Thermo Fisher Measuring Radiation

Chemring Detection Systems

Emergent BioSolution

Smiths Detection

Proengin

Agilent Micro GC

RKI Sample Draw With PID & Super Toxics

Daylight Solutions

BioFire Diagnostics

BBI White Powder Bio-threat Detection IMASS Device

Airsense Analytics

MKS AIRGARDPlus CWA/TIC Ambient Air Analyzer

Battelle SiteGuard Security Robot

Passport Systems SmartScan 3D

Allen Vanguard

Endeavor Robotics 510 Packbot

Northrop Grumman

QinetQ TALON

KNDS / Nexter / KMW

908 Devices M

Cobalt Light Resolve Product for Detection of Explosives, Narcotics, And Hazardous Materials

Block Engineering Quantum Cascade Laser Products

General Electric Entry Scan

InVision Technologies

Kromek

Gasmet DX4000 FTIR Gas Analyzer

Pony Industry Cargo & Vehicle Inspection

Research International Bio-Threat ASAP II for Postal Processing Applications

20160/20 Bioresponse BioCheck Powder Screening Test Kit

Luminex 100/200 Detection Systems

Mirion Technologies RDS 30 Radiation Survey Meter

Berkeley Nucleonics

PHDS Co. Measurement Services

Companies Mentioned



20/20 GeneSystems / 20/20

3M

908 Devices

908 Devices Applied Science & Chemistry

ATI

Agilent Technologies

Air Techniques International

AirBoss of America Corporation

Airbus Defense & Space

Airsense Analytics

Allen-Vanguard

Argon Electronics Ltd.

Avon Protection

B&W Tek

BBI Detection

Batelle

Berkeley Nucleonics

Bertin Technologies

BioQuell

BioResponse

Block MEMS LLC

Blucher

Bracco Diagnostics / RSDecon

Bruker Detection

CBRNE Command

CRISTANINI S.p.A.

CUBRC

Canadian Technology Systems

Canberra

Cegelec

Cepheid

Chemring Group PLC

Cobalt Light Systems

DHS Systems International Ltd

Daylight Solutions

Decon7 Systems

Defense Collaboration Services / DCS

Defentect Group Inc

Diagnostic Assay

Drager Evita XL

Dragerwerk AG & Co KGaA

DuPont / Genencor

Dugway Proving Ground

Edgewood Chemical Biologican Center

Elbit

Emergent BioSolution

Endeavor Robotics

Environics

Eurolite CBRN

FLIR Systems

Federal Resources

First Line Technology

Futuretech / Karcher Futuretech

GE Sensors: Measurement & Control Solutions

GasMet

GenPrime

GmbH

Homeland DefSec

ICOR Technology Robots

ITL Solutions

Illumina

Indra

Inficon

Intelagard

Johnson Controls / Tyco

KD Analytical

Kestrel Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) SW

Kestrel Corporation Optical and Sensor Innovations

Kromek Group plc

Karcher Futuretech GmbH

Lakeland Industries

Ludlum Measurements

Luminex

MKS

Meridian Medical Technologies

Mirion Technologies

Morphix Technologies

Nexter Group

Nexter Group / NBC Sys

Nexter Robotics

Nor E First Response

Northrop Grumman

OSI Systems

OWR

Omega Technical Services

Owlstone Inc.

PHDS Co

Passport Systems

Paul Boye Technologies

Pony Industry

PositiveID Corporation / E-N-G Mobile Systems

Proengin

QinetiQ

RKI

Riken Keiki

Roche CBRNE Molecular

Roche Diagnostics

SERB Laboratories

STERIS

Smiths / Morpho System

Smiths Detection

Smiths Group / Smiths Detection

Spectrex Inc.

Telerob

Thales Group

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thorlabs

Thorlabs / Maxion Technologies

W. B. Johnson Instruments

bioMerieux

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/n85fcr/cbrne_chemical



Related Topics: Nuclear Power, Airport Security , Biodefense



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
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - September 13, 2016) - Cava Resources Inc. (TSXV: CVA.V) ("Cava") announces that it has expanded its land position by staking additional ground contiguous to its Casa Berardi North Property and its Casa Berardi Cancor Extension Property.

The Company staked an additional 34 cells comprising approximately 1700 hectares adjacent and contiguous to the Casa Berardi North Property to cover favourable geology where numerous drill holes intersected significant Au values in past exploration programs.

In addition, Cava staked another 30 cells comprising approximately 1500 hectares adjacent and contiguous to the Casa Berardi Cancor Extension Property. These cells were staked to cover prospective geology with airborne EM anomalies and strike extensions of mineralization on adjacent Cancor/Iamgold/Vale claims which contain significant gold and base metal values.

Cava intends to carry out up to 4,000 metres of drilling later in the year on these properties as outlined in the press release dated August 16, 2016. In prior years, Cava and its joint venture partner have spent in excess of $1.8 million in exploration on these properties including airborne geophysical survey work, line cutting and 24 drill holes for approximately 4,200 metres.

The Casa Berardi Properties consist of two non contiguous claim groups (the Casa Berardi North and the Casa Berardi Cancor Extension Property) that are located in the Casa Berardi area of northwestern Quebec. The North property is located approximately 10 kms southeast from the Casa Berardi mine which has produced in excess of 1.9 million ounces of gold since it commenced production in 1988.

The properties are located in the Harricana-Turgeon Greenstone Belt in the northwest corner of the Abitibi Subprovince in the province of Quebec. This greenstone belt hosts the Matagami, Selbaie, Joutel and Casa Berardi mining camps in Quebec and the Detour Lake Mine in Ontario.

Gold mineralization on the Casa Berardi North Property was discovered in 1994 over a 600 metre strike length along a major regional fault structure called the "Lac Janelle Fault". Historic drill results included 6.10 gpt gold over 1.5 metres and 2.39 gpt gold over 1.8 metres in hole 94-12.

In 2012, a five hole 727.9 metre diamond drill program was carried out by Cava. The drill program resulted in the discovery of a new gold bearing zone (Conductor 1410 Zone) located 250 metres east and along strike of the historic drilling. Assay results included 5.00 gpt gold over 1.4 metres and 6.11 gpt gold over 1.5 metres in hole CAS-12-05.

The proposed diamond drill program currently being contemplated by Cava will continue to explore the area in and around the historic gold trend, the newly discovered Conductor 1410 Zone, as well as evaluate other airborne conductors identified along the Lac Janelle Fault including an area located 2500 metres to the east of the Conductor 1410 Zone where a single historic drill hole reportedly intersected 2.55 gpt gold over 1.0 metre.

The Casa Berardi Cancor Extension Property is located approximately 15 kilometres to the southwest of the Casa Berardi North claim group and adjoins the Gemini (Cancor Resources Inc, IAMGOLD Corporation) and Turgeon Properties (Cancor Resources Inc, IAMGOLD Corporation, and Vale).

Other Projects

The Company also continues to examine other mineral property prospects both in and outside North America which may represent an opportunity for Cava to acquire an interest in and participate in the development of a significant mineral resource.

Qualified Persons

Exploration programs on Cava's Quebec Projects are carried out under the supervision of Mr. Mitch Lavery P. Geo.(QC). Mr. Lavery is a qualified person as defined by the National Instrument 43-101.

For further information contact:

R. Brian Murray

John V. Hickey President, 416-985-7810 CFO, 416-903-6649

The TSXV has not reviewed this news release and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. The TSXV has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release.

All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential mineralization and reserves, exploration results, and future plans and objectives of the Company, are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations are exploration risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The Donald Trump Campaign announced that James Woolsey has joined the team as a Senior Advisor. The former Director of Central Intelligence Agency headed it from 1993 to 1995, during the presidency of Bill Clinton. His crossing of party lines to advise the Republican nominee is seen as a setback for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. In a statement issued Monday through the Trump Campaign, Woolsey said Clinton demonstrated a complete lack of understanding and an inability to lead the agency she headed in such a way as to maintain its mission and security. According to the former American spymaster, she also lacks the ability to lead her senior managers while complying with and maintaining the basic protocols designed to protect the US government's sensitive and classified information. 'Trump's commitment to reversing the harmful defense budget cuts signed into law by the current administration, while acknowledging the need for debt reduction, is an essential step toward reinstating the United States' primacy in the conventional and digital battlespace,' he added. He has called himself a 'Scoop Jackson, Joe Lieberman' Democrat. Woolsey has been known primarily as a neoconservative Democrat-hawkish on foreign policy issues but liberal on economic and social issues. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Metallis Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: MTS) (the "Company") is pleased to announce the completion of an airborne survey on the Company's 10,600 hectare Kirkham Property located within the "Golden Triangle" of northern British Columbia.

The Company contracted Geotech Ltd., ("Geotech") to conduct a VTEM/magnetic/radiometric survey over the portion of the Kirkham Property (6000ha) that was not surveyed in 2013. The VTEM component of the survey is useful for delineating conductors (veins, massive sulphide lenses etc.) down to approx. 400m below surface. VTEM also generates an apparent resistivity constituent, which assists with lithological and alteration mapping. Magnetics are useful for delineating structures and intrusions which are associated with porphyry copper-gold deposits of the Stikine Arch. Radiometrics may show potassic alteration which is associated with some mineralized occurrences. Results of the current survey will be released after technical analysis is complete.

The Company's 2013 survey defined several large, coincident magnetic and resistivity anomalies that are characteristic of the porphyry gold/copper deposits in the Golden Triangle. Two of these have a strong potassium anomaly. Also, the 2013 survey delineated a linear, very strong coincident resistivity and magnetic anomaly that is outboard from the mineralized Hawlison Porphyry. This feature is similar to the Snip Mine, located 30 kilometers to the northwest. Metallis plans to prioritize all of the geophysical and geochemical anomalies before carrying out ground work and proposed drill program in 2017.

The Kirkham Property is located about 65 km north of Stewart, 20 km southwest of Barrick's Gold Corp's past-producing Eskay Creek Mine and about 40 km from Pretium Resources' Brucejack deposit. The Kirkham Property borders Colorado Resources to the west and the south.

Mr. Fiore Aliperti, President of Metallis states, "The 2016 season has seen a massive ramp up in exploration dollars being put into the ground in the Golden Triangle by our peers, namely Colorado and Seabridge. This increase in spending, coupled with the major merger & acquisitions announcements from the area, reflect the confidence returning to the market in general but, more importantly, the opportunity the region offers the juniors. Metallis Resources is excited to be centrally located amongst all the activity. This survey is the next systematic step in our plan to move the Kirkham property towards a drill program by strategically and responsibly evaluating the right targets for our next phase."

Qualified Person

Technical aspects of this news release have been reviewed and approved by David Dupre P.Geo. designated as a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101.

On behalf of the Board of Directors:

Fiore Aliperti, Chief Executive Officer, President 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. The TSX-V Stock Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release.

Contacts:

Metallis Resources Inc.

604-688-5077

info@metallisresources.com

www.metallisresources.com




TYSONS CORNER, VA--(Marketwired - September 13, 2016) - NeoSystems Corp, a leading provider of managed services (Accounting, HR, Contract Management, IT), Hosting, and Strategic Systems Integration Consulting Services, is pleased to announce that they will be presenting a panel of leading GovCon executives as well as hosting the keynote luncheon of the one-day Federal Publications' seminar "Cybersecurity Summit for Government Contractors 2016." The summit will be held on Thursday, September 15, 2016 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Tyson's Corner, Virginia.

NeoSystems is proud to have Malcolm Harkins, Cylance Corporation's Global Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), present the luncheon keynote which will provide critical information on the past, current and future cyber security threat. Mr. Harkins is the former Chief Security and Privacy Officer (CSPO) at Intel Corporation and author of "Managing Risk and Information Security: Protect to Enable." He was also a contributing author to "Introduction to IT Privacy," published in 2014 by the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

NeoSystems' Vice President of Client Services, Rich Wilkinson, will moderate the 11:00 a.m. panel discussion, "Implementation: The New FAR and DFARS Cyber Requirements for Government Contractor Primes and Subs." Panelists include:

Steve Britt, Partner, Director of Corporate and Technology Law, Berenzweig Leonard LLP

Terry Raney, PHD, Senior Vice President and Division Group Manager, Acquisition Support Group, CACI International and President of the National Contracts Management Association

Kim Rupert, Senior VP Contracts, SAIC, President-Elect, National Contracts Management Association

Rob Wilson, Chief Technology Officer, NeoSystems Corp

The new FAR and DFAR requirements for Cyber Security have long been anticipated and this session closely examines new rules and the impact on every government contractor and subcontractor under the new Cybersecurity Information Sharing Action Act of 2015 (CISA). CISA 2015's new requirements are expected to have a dramatic effect on the way government contractors operate in our highly connected and cyber-vulnerable world.

Panelists will discuss the specific FARS/DFARS elements, including business impact, requirements and timelines for implementing the new rules. Practical suggestions on preparing for compliance, including what to look for in a cloud solution provider, will also be discussed. This session is aimed at the organizational leader and provides a forum to discuss the strategic business risks and changes required for compliance. For technical professionals not already familiar, this session will provide a great overview and specific references.

Register Today - Space is Limited

There are limited seats available for the Cyber Security Summit. If you are interested in participating, please register at http://www.fedpubseminars.com/Training/Cybersecurity-Summit-for-Government-Contractors or call 1.888.494.3696.

NeoSystems' Clients Receive a 50% Discount-USE CODE: 50FPSSPONSOR

A 50% discount is available by referencing promo code 50FPSSPONSOR at the online checkout or phone registration.

Meet Your Continuing Education Credit Requirements: CPE, CLP, CLE, NCMA

Cyber summit participants are eligible for NCMA, CLP, CPE and CLE credits. Certificates of Completion are provided to all seminar participants who attend Federal Publications Seminars courses following the event.

About NeoSystems Corporation

NeoSystems Corp., based in Tysons Corner, Virginia, delivers integrated strategic back office services and solutions to enable, run, and secure commercial entities, government contractors, and nonprofit organizations. Today, NeoSystems supports 700 companies and over 50,000 employees with its outsourced services and NeoSystems' experts have implemented hundreds of fully integrated financial and business management systems. Utilizing best of breed technology and leveraging in-depth expertise in Accounting & Finance, IT, HR, Contract Management and Hosting (SOC1/SOC2/NIST/DFARS/ITAR), our team enables companies to improve vital operations, reduce their overhead costs and become compliant with complex requirements. NeoSystems is partnered with the world's leading software companies, including NetSuite, Deltek, Ultimate Software, IBM, and others to provide best-in-class solutions. NeoSystems is Deltek's first and only Platinum Partner. For the seventh consecutive year, NeoSystems has been named one of America's fastest growing private companies by Inc. Magazine. For more information, visit http://www.NeoSystemsCorp.com.

About Cylance Inc.

Cylance is the only company to offer a preventive cybersecurity solution that stops advanced threats and malware at the most vulnerable point: the endpoint. Applying a revolutionary artificial intelligence approach, the Cylance endpoint security solution, CylancePROTECT, analyzes the DNA of code prior to its execution on the endpoint to find and prevent threats others can't, while using a fraction of the system resources associated with endpoint antivirus and detect and respond solutions that are deployed in enterprises today. For more information visit: www.cylance.com.

About Federal Publications Seminars

Federal Publications Seminars is a leading provider of practical, high-quality courses and materials for government contract professionals. With more than 50 years' experience in the field, we offer hundreds of public seminars -- plus the cost effective option of on-site courses -- that are tailored specifically to your government contracting needs. We also have an extensive library of on demand programs that give you access to robust, practical content on government contracting, online and on your time, and books covering a variety of government contracting topics.

Federal Publications Seminars instructors are nationally recognized specialists in the government contracting industry. They are not only experts in their subject areas, but are proven educators -- able to communicate the material in terms you can effectively relate to your individual operations.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/9/13/11G113925/Images/Neo-Photo-Cylance-MalcolmHarkins-fd1bc77e40e1be349af7793c7c58c3d4.jpg

Agency contact:

Nancy Rose Senich

1-202-262-6996 cell/txt.

nancy@rose4results.com

neosystems@rose4results.com
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 13, 2016) - Minaurum Gold Inc. (TSXV: MGG) ("Minaurum") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an option agreement to earn a 100% interest in the La Quintera Silver Project ("Quintera") in the historic Alamos District in Sonora, Mexico from a private Mexican vendor. Quintera encompasses a number of wide, high-grade epithermal veins with significant historical production. The project has seen little modern exploration and has never been drilled.

Quintera covers 4,698 hectares and is located 8km west of Alamos, 45km northwest of Pan American's Alamo Dorado silver mine, and 15km south of Cobre Del Mayo's Piedras Verdes copper mine. Quintera hosts excellent infrastructure and is fully permitted from exploration through to production.

The Quintera Project, which includes the Promontorio, La Quintera, La Aduana, and Minas Nuevas mines, is estimated to have produced more than 120 Moz of silver from about 1680 to the early 1900s. Vein widths average 4m but locally range up to 20m. The primary target vein has a strike length of 3.5km and the entire vein system measures more than 7 km long. Historical records of selective mining indicate grades of over 2,000 g/t Ag were recovered using a cut-off grade of 1,000 g/t Ag.

Director of Minaurum, Dr. Peter Megaw, stated "The Quintera vein swarm produced the majority of the silver mined in the historic Alamos Silver Camp and has somehow eluded systematic exploration for over 100 years. We look forward to having the first crack at applying modern epithermal vein exploration concepts to this system."

The last known production in the district occurred between 1948-1957 in which an American Company processed historical dumps at a rate of 300tpd. In 2012, the Servicio Geologico Mexicano ("SGM") took a total of 105 samples over 3 waste piles and 4 tailings ponds at the La Quintera and the Promontorio mines. Based on the results, the SGM estimated that the Promontorio Waste Dump hosted 157,728 tonnes grading 169g/t Ag, 0.69g/t Au, 1.61% Pb, 0.77% Cu and 3.12% Zn. SGM also estimated that the Quintera dump hosted 66,712 tonnes grading 173g/t Ag, 0.57% Pb and 0.84% Zn. Neither of these estimates is NI43-101 compliant.

At Quintera, low-sulphidation epithermal quartz veins are exposed in several surface cuts, pits, and underground workings. Veins occupy north-northeast-striking, steeply dipping, structurally controlled mineralized zones. Exploration work done since 2010 included the identification of 44 historic mine workings and the collection of 334 rock samples of which 97 assayed 100-1,380 g/t Ag and 106 returned values 30 - 100 g/t Ag. Thirteen samples assayed more than 1 g/t gold, the highest gold grade returned was 4.1 g/t Au.

Option Schedule to Earn a 100% interest in the Quintera District (all amounts in CDN$)

MILESTONE CASH SHARES WORK

EXPENDITURES NOTES Upon Signing

1,500,000



1st Anniversary $25,000 750,000 $500,000

2nd Anniversary $25,000 750,000 $500,000

3rd Anniversary $50,000 1,000,000 $500,000

4th Anniversary $50,000 1,000,000 $500,000

5th Anniversary $50,000 1,000,000 $500,000

6th Anniversary $400,000

$500,000 Cash Payment Payable in cash or shares at Discretion of MGG Total: $600,000 6,000,000 $3,000,000



In addition to the above schedule, there is a $2,000,000 payment due upon commercial production and the property vendor retains a 2% NSR (0.5% of which can be purchased for $1,000,000).

The acquisition of the Quintera Silver District adds another highly-prospective project to Minaurum's property portfolio. Over the last year, Minaurum has pursued the addition of high-quality projects that offer significant optionality in three key operating areas in Mexico. These regions include; the Guerrero Gold Belt, the Oaxaca-Chiapas Region and Southern Sonora State. Minaurum continues to pursue advanced stage assets in these regions while continuing exploration work in the Guerrero Gold Belt and drill permitting at Santa Marta.

Stephen R. Maynard, Vice President Exploration of Minaurum and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed the technical data in this release. However, the technical data has not been verified due to its historical nature.

Minaurum Gold is a regional explorer focusing on the exploration and development of high-grade gold and silver projects in Mexico. For more information, please visit our website at www.minaurum.com and our YouTube Minaurum Video Channel.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Darrell A. Rader"

Darrell A. Rader

President and CEO

For more information, please contact:

Sunny Pannu - Investor Relations Manager

(778) 330 0994 or via email at pannu@minaurum.com

The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

2300 - 1177 West Hastings Street

Vancouver, BC V6E 2K3



Telephone 778 330-0994

www.minaurum.com

info@minaurum.com



Certain disclosure in this release constitute forward-looking information. In making the forward-looking statements in this release, Minaurum has applied certain factors and assumptions that are based on Minaurum' s current beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Minaurum. Although Minaurum considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect, and the forward-looking statements in this release are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Minaurum does not intend, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
At this years 2016 IPCPR Trade Show, Duran Cigars unveiled three new blends, including two of them as the companys first Connecticut Shade offerings. In addition the company announced it will be handling distribution for a brand known as Meirelles y Acevedo.

Azan Blue Connecticut

Azan was the brand that started it all for Duran Cigars. It had been almost three years since a new brand was added to Azan. This year the company added Azan Connecticut Blue. This is a new Connecticut Shade offering by Duran Cigars.

While most companies source Ecuadorian Connecticut Shade wrappers, the unique thing with Duran Cigars is that they are growing their own wrapper. The wrapper comes from Duran Cigar owner Roberto Pelayo Durans Fincas Azan plantation in Ecuador. The remainder of the blend is all Nicaraguan and the cigar is available in three sizes.

Nicatabaco Factory Blend No. 5

Durans Nicatabaco Factory Blend series now has a second blend with the Nicatabaco Factory Blend No. 5. Named for Duran Cigars factory in Esteli, Nicaragua, the Nicatabaco Factory Blend is a value-priced bundle offering. The new Factory Blend No. 5 is also an Ecuadorian Connecticut Shade offering. Like Azan Blue Connecticut, the wrapper for Factory Blend No. 5 comes from the Duran plantation in Ecuador.

Nicatabaco Factory Blend No. 5 also features a Nicaraguan binder and filler and is available in five sizes.

Neya F8 Texas Tactical Lancero

The Neya F8 Texas Tactical Lancero is an all new blend. It is based on the Neya F8 blend but instead of using an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper, it uses an Ecuadorian Corojo Maduro wrapper  also sourced from Durans Ecuadorian plantation. The cigar is available in one size  a 7 x 40 lancero.

Distributing Meirelles y Acevedo

Meirelles y Acevedo is a new brand out of the midwest owned by Luciano Meirelles and Brian Acevedo. The companys current offering, the self-titled Meirelles y Acevedo is made at Durans Nicatabaco factory. Now Duran Cigars will also be handling distribution stateside.

The Meirelles y Acevedo offering is a 6 x 54 Toro featuring an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper over Nicaraguan binder and filler.

Photo Credits: Cigar Coop
FOOTHILL RANCH, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) today announced the addition of a new secure fax solution to its popular CX-E Unified Communications (UC) platform. For highly-regulated industries with many data management security policies and regulations, fax communication is a mission-critical tool. Combine that with an increasingly mobile workforce, and the growing adoption of both cloud infrastructure and Fax over IP (FoIP), and it's clear that a new type of fax service is needed. AVST has identified XMediusFAX as that solution. The combination of CX-E and XMediusFAX delivers one of the most secure, reliable and scalable enterprise-class unified messaging solutions available on the market.

For companies with legacy equipment looking to migrate to FoIP, XMediusFAX provides industry-leading FoIP-based capabilities. "XMedius was the first company to develop and market a FoIP solution, and we are excited to expand our footprint of solutions through our partnership with AVST -- a true global innovator in the UC space," said Jean Champagne, President and Chief Executive Officer at XMedius. "We share a common vision with AVST, where mobility, cloud, security and IP technology are communications drivers for businesses of all sizes."

For any business with a highly mobile workforce, XMediusFAX provides CX-E with a powerful mobile fax service that features an iPhone, iPad and Android app that enables users to fax directly from their smartphone or tablet -- no phone line or computer required. This mobile functionality enables quick and easy faxing from anywhere, at any time -- with the assurance that all sensitive and confidential data is transmitted securely.

AVST will initially offer the following XMediusFAX On-Premise versions:

XMediusFAX Express for small businesses that require desktop, email and hardcopy faxing; ideal for satisfying compliance requirements;

XMediusFAX Enterprise for medium to large enterprises requiring cost-effective business process integrations, advanced application integrations, and advanced monitoring and reporting tools; and

XMediusFAX SP for organizations that require the XMediusFAX Enterprise capabilities in a high availability and disaster recovery configuration.

"Our goal is to continually introduce technology that enhances the mobile experience and makes our customers more connected and accessible," said Hardy Myers, AVST's President & CEO. "The partnership with XMedius fits that model perfectly with an enhanced mobile fax solution that is complementary to our other enterprise-class cloud- and premise-based UC offerings."

With the growing adoption of cloud-based UC, there is an increasing demand for cloud-enabled fax solutions. XMediusFAX Cloud is built with the same features and functionality of its premise-based counterpart, delivering enterprise-class fax capabilities from the cloud. AVST will add XMediusFAX Cloud to its CX-E Cloud offerings in Q4 2016.

XMediusFAX On-Premise solutions are now available through AVST's established reseller channels. For more information, visit www.avst.com.

About AVST

With more than 30 years of continuous innovation, Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a trusted developer of software-based enterprise-class Unified Communications (UC) solutions.

Our mission is to design, deliver and support communications solutions that transform the productivity of individual workers, teams and enterprises while leveraging the value of their existing and evolving IT infrastructure.

Thousands of businesses worldwide rely on AVST to meet their "mission-critical" communications requirements, align their business with key trends and, with the world-class interoperability and flexibility of AVST's UC solutions, provide a bridge to their digital future.

Headquartered in Orange County, California, AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Washington, Victoria B.C., Canada and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices throughout the United States. AVST's UC solutions are sold and supported worldwide by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. To learn more about AVST, our products and partners, please visit www.avst.com or you can follow us at Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Media Contact:

Stephanie Olsen

Lages & Associates

(949) 453-8080

Email Contact




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The Pentagon has confirmed that senior Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani was killed in a U.S. airstrike Aug. 30. In a statement Monday, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said the strike near Al Bab, Syria, removes from the battlefield ISIL's chief propagandist, recruiter and architect of external terrorist operations. Cook said that it is one in a series of successful strikes against ISIL leaders, including those responsible for finances and military planning, that make it harder for the group to operate. 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.
KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Ivanhoe Mines' (TSX: IVN) Executive Chairman Robert Friedland and Chief Executive Officer Lars-Eric Johansson announced today that ongoing upgrading work financed by the company at the Mwadingusha hydropower plant has begun supplying an initial 11 megawatts (MW) of power to the national grid in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The upgrading - part of a program planned to eventually overhaul and boost output from a total of three hydropower plants - is being conducted by Ivanhoe Mines and its joint-venture partner, Zijin Mining Group, in conjunction with the DRC's state-owned power company, La Societe Nationale d'Electricite (SNEL).

At Mwadingusha, electricity now is being produced by the No. 1 turbine generator, the first of six installed at the dam's power plant that are being upgraded and modernized. It is the first step in a program based on an initial 2011 memorandum of understanding, and subsequent 2014 agreement, between Ivanhoe and SNEL.

The Mwadingusha plant originally was commissioned in 1930. Completion of the full upgrading and modernization of Mwadingusha's five other generating units that now is underway is expected to restore Mwadingusha to its installed output capacity of approximately 71 MW of power for the national grid. The upgrading work is being undertaken by a partnership between SNEL and Ivanhoe Mines Energy DRC, a subsidiary of Kamoa Holding Limited.

A ceremony last week marking the resumption of output from the first generator was attended by prominent officials, including the Governor of Haut-Katanga Province, Jean-Claude Kazembe Musonda; Haut-Katanga's Minister of Mines, Professor Willy Kitobo Samsoni; and members of the senior managements of SNEL and Ivanhoe Mines.

Mr. Friedland said a dependable power supply is essential to planned production at Kamoa.

"This first installation of modern power generating equipment at Mwadingusha is an important milestone in helping to secure long-term, sustainable and clean electricity for the Congolese people and for the development of our major, new copper mine at Kamoa.

"Mining and the supply of reliable energy are inseparable and we are committed to implementing energy-efficiency measures and supporting cost-effective ways of generating clean energy. Hydropower, with the virtues of being clean and renewable, is among the best energy solutions for our industry living with the realities of climate change," Mr. Friedland added.

Governor Musonda said Mwadingusha will help to address the DRC's electricity-supply deficit.

"Today, thanks to the private-public partnership supported by the DRC government, Ivanhoe Mines and SNEL have added additional megawatts to the national electricity grid. I urge SNEL to make sure that these additional megawatts are distributed in an appropriate manner to the targeted end users."

Minister Samsoni also complimented Ivanhoe, suggesting its initiative could be a model for other businesses.

"The provincial government will continue to support Ivanhoe Mines in the work it is doing with SNEL to successfully implement all the other projects it has in the DRC. Ivanhoe must be supported in its effort and used as an example for other companies to join in partnering with SNEL to solve the existing electricity problem in the DRC."

The DRC Minister of Hydraulic Resources and Energy, Matadi Manga Gamanda, said that Ivanhoe Mines can count on the support of the Ministry to continue to address the deficit in electricity in the DRC.

"We are very pleased with the private-public partnership between SNEL and Ivanhoe Mines. The electricity sector here has been privatized and it opens the door for other investors and companies to produce, transport and sell electricity in the DRC."

Photo 1. Jean-Claude Kazembe Musonda, Governor of Haut-Katanga Province, cuts the ceremonial ribbon for the inauguration of the first generating unit at the Mwadingusha hydropower plant: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/IVN-photo1.jpg.

Photo 2. Minister of Hydraulic Resources and Energy, Matadi Manga Gamanda, (centre) and Vice-Minister of Hydraulic Resources and Energy, Maguy Rwakabuba Ribagiza (right), with Louis Watum, Managing Director, Ivanhoe DRC Operations (left): http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/IVN-photo2.jpg.

Photo 3. Mwadingusha's newly commissioned power-generating turbine No. 1: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/IVN-photo3.jpg.

Photo 4. Reconditioned crane and new alternator at Mwadingusha: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/IVN-photo4.jpg.

Mwadingusha dam

Mwadingusha is the first of three hydropower plants that Ivanhoe and Zijin plan to upgrade to secure a supply of clean, sustainable electricity for the Kamoa and Kakula copper discoveries in DRC's Lualaba province.

Upgrading of the other two existing hydroelectric power plants - Koni and Nzilo 1 - is expected to begin once upgrading work at Mwadingusha is completed.

The Mwadingusha and Koni plants are in cascade, with Koni directly downstream from Mwadingusha on the Lufira River at the mouth of Lake Tshangalele, north of Likasi and approximately 250 kilometres northeast of Kamoa. The Nzilo 1 plant, commissioned in 1952, is on the Lualaba River, downstream of Nzilo Lake and north of the city of Kolwezi, approximately 40 kilometres from the Kamoa mine development site.

The three plants, once fully reconditioned, could produce a combined 200 MW of long-term, electricity for the grid, which is expected to be more than sufficient to launch copper production at Kamoa.

Photo 5. Mwadingusha dam: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/IVN-photo5.jpg.

Photo 6. Mwadingusha hydropower plant and sub-station: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/IVN-photo6.jpg.

Construction and commissioning of a 120-kV power line to connect Kamoa to the national grid now completed

Construction of a 20-kilometre-long, 120-kV transmission line to supply construction power to the Kamoa site from the Kolwezi-Kisenge line, where it crosses the northern boundary of the Kamoa mining licence (see Figure 1), was completed in late August. In addition, a local company is constructing eight kilometres of 11-kV overhead power lines, cabling reticulation and five mini-substations for distributing 11-kV of electricity to the Kamoa mine development declines at Kansoko Sud, camps, offices and de-watering boreholes.

Power from the national grid is expected to be available to the Kamoa site in October 2016 after the final testing and commissioning of the 120-kV and 11-kV overhead powerlines and electrical substations at Kamoa.

Figure 1. Kamoa Project map shows the planned initial mining area at Kansoko Sud, the adjacent Kakula exploration area and existing and planned powerlines: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/IVN-Figure1-913.pdf.

Photo 7. 120-kV power line connecting Kamoa to the national electrical grid: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/IVN-photo7.jpg.

Kamoa Copper Project summary

The Kamoa Copper Project is a very large, high-grade, stratiform copper deposit with adjacent prospective exploration areas within the Central African Copperbelt, approximately 25 kilometres west of the town of Kolwezi and about 270 kilometres west of Lubumbashi. The Kamoa mining licence covers approximately 400 square kilometres.

Kamoa is the world's largest, undeveloped, high-grade copper deposit. Kamoa's Indicated Mineral Resources presently total 752 million tonnes grading 2.67% copper and containing 44.3 billion pounds of copper at a 1% copper cut-off grade and minimum thickness of three metres. In addition to the Indicated Resources, the updated estimate included Inferred Mineral Resources of 185 million tonnes grading 2.08% copper and containing 8.5 billion pounds of copper, also at a 1.0% copper cut-off grade and a minimum thickness of three metres.

Ivanhoe expects to have an initial independent Mineral Resource estimate prepared for the new, high-grade Kakula discovery at the Kamoa Project around the end of September 2016.

In 2015, Ivanhoe sold a 49.5% share interest in Kamoa Holding Limited, the company that presently owns 95% of the Kamoa Project on an indirect basis, to Zijin Mining for an aggregate cash consideration of US$412 million. In addition, Ivanhoe sold a 1% share interest in Kamoa Holding to privately-owned Crystal River Global Limited for US$8.32 million, which Crystal River will pay through a non-interest-bearing, 10-year promissory note.

The DRC government holds a 5%, non-dilutable interest in the Kamoa Project, which was transferred to the government in 2012 in accordance with the DRC Mining Code. Ivanhoe has offered to transfer an additional 15% interest to the DRC government on terms to be negotiated. Mr. Johansson said constructive and cordial negotiations between Ivanhoe Mines, Zijin Mining and senior DRC government officials are continuing on this matter.

Qualified Person

The scientific and technical information in this release has been reviewed and approved by Stephen Torr, P.Geo., Ivanhoe Mines' Vice President, Project Geology and Evaluation, and a Qualified Person under the terms of National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Torr has verified the technical data disclosed in this news release.

About Ivanhoe Mines

Ivanhoe Mines is advancing its three principal projects in Sub-Saharan Africa: Mine development at the Platreef platinum-palladium-gold-nickel-copper discovery on the Northern Limb of South Africa's Bushveld Complex; mine development and exploration at the Kamoa Copper Project - which includes the remarkable Kakula high-grade copper discovery - on the Central African Copperbelt in the DRC; and upgrading and exploration at the historic, high-grade Kipushi zinc-copper-lead-germanium mine, also on the DRC's Copperbelt. For details, visit www.ivanhoemines.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Statements in this release that are forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in the company's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this document, the words such as "could," "plan," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "potential," "should" and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information.

Statements in this release that constitute forward-looking statements or information include, but are not limited to statements regarding: (1) the expectation that when fully upgraded Mwadingusha will have an installed capacity of approximately 71 MW; (2) the expectation that Mwadingusha will be the first of three hydroelectric power plants to secure a supply of electricity for Kamoa; (3) the expectation that upgrading of the Koni and Nzilo 1 plants will begin once upgrading work at Mwadingusha is completed; (4) the expectation that the three plants, once fully reconditioned, will be able to generate an estimated 200 MW of power; (5) the expectation that the initial supply of electric power from the national grid will be available to Kamoa in October 2016; (6) the expectation to have an initial independent Mineral Resource estimate for the Kakula discovery around the end of September 2016; (7) the expectation that a power purchase agreement between Kamoa Copper and SNEL will be finalized in the near future; and (8) the timing and terms of transfer of an additional 15% interest in the Kamoa Project to the DRC government.

Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information. Such statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "expect", "believe", "plan", "anticipate", "estimate", "scheduled", "forecast", "predict" and other similar terminology, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. These statements reflect the company's current expectations regarding future events, performance and results and speak only as of the date of this release.

All such forward-looking information and statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by Ivanhoe Mines' management in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believe are appropriate in the circumstances. These statements, however, are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information or statements including, but not limited to, unexpected changes in laws, rules or regulations, or their enforcement by applicable authorities; the failure of parties to contracts to perform as agreed; social or labour unrest; changes in commodity prices; unexpected failure or inadequacy of infrastructure, or delays in the development of infrastructure, and the failure of exploration programs or other studies to deliver anticipated results or results that would justify and support continued studies, development or operations. Other important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements also include those described under the heading "Risk Factors" in the company's most recently filed MD&A as well as in the most recent Annual Information Form filed by Ivanhoe Mines. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. The factors and assumptions used to develop the forward-looking information and statements, and the risks that could cause the actual results to differ materially are set forth in the "Risk Factors" section and elsewhere in the company's most recent Management's Discussion and Analysis report and Annual Information Form, available at www.sedar.com.

This news release also contains references to estimates of Mineral Resources. The estimation of Mineral Resources is inherently uncertain and involves subjective judgments about many relevant factors. Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The accuracy of any such estimates is a function of the quantity and quality of available data, and of the assumptions made and judgments used in engineering and geological interpretation, which may prove to be unreliable and depend, to a certain extent, upon the analysis of drilling results and statistical inferences that may ultimately prove to be inaccurate. Mineral Resource estimates may have to be re-estimated based on, among other things: (i) fluctuations in copper; (ii) results of drilling; (iii) results of metallurgical testing and other studies; (iv) changes to proposed mining operations, including dilution; (v) the evaluation of mine plans subsequent to the date of any estimates; and (vi) the possible failure to receive required permits, approvals and licences.

Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the company believes are reasonable assumptions, the company cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Subject to applicable securities laws, the company does not assume any obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this news release.

Contacts:

Ivanhoe Mines - Investors:

Bill Trenaman

+1.604.331.9834



Ivanhoe Mines - Media

North America:

Bob Williamson

+1.604.512.4856



South Africa:

Jeremy Michaels

+27.11.088.4348

www.ivanhoemines.com




DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 --Global Equity International, Inc. (OTCQB: GEQU) and its fully owned subsidiaries, Global Equity Partners Plc. and GEP Equity Holdings Ltd., a global business consultancy firm with offices in Dubai and the United Kingdom that consults to a diverse number of companies around the world, are pleased to announce that GEP Equity Holdings Limited and Billbarter Hungaria Zrt. (Billbarter Group - www.billbartergroup.com) have formally entered into a Joint Venture agreement for an initial three year term.

Enzo Taddei, CFO of Global Equity International Inc., said: "We are extremely happy and excited to have agreed and executed this Joint Venture agreement with such a reputable and internationally recognized Company such as the Billbarter Group. In the recent past, we have jointly worked on certain client mandates such as Majestic Wealth Limited that culminated in a signed term sheet for US$301,500,000; this collaboration was, in my opinion, the proving ground to ultimately enter into this Joint Venture agreement with the Billbarter Group. The fact that the Billbarter Group has a presence in so many countries around the globe will, by default, give Global Equity International massive exposure to allow us to exponentially grow our network of introducers, funding sources and ultimately, our client base. This Joint Venture is, without a doubt, a 'win-win' situation for both Global Equity International and the Billbarter Group."

Thomas Stonewell, International Relations Director of Billbarter Hungaria Zrt., said: "After a very successful meeting with Global Equity's management team in Budapest last week, the idea of creating a Joint Venture was discussed in depth; we are excited that we have managed to agree and execute this Joint Venture in record time. As a result of this, certain elements of both Companies' business models will become much stronger. With this new venture we are able to work together on a more formal basis, contributing our varied wealth of knowledge and experience. We, the Billbarter Group, have many clients who are interested in listing their shares on a Public Stock Exchange and GEP has many existing and potential clients who are looking to fund property related and asset backed projects; hence the cross pollination of our networks can only make both companies much stronger in the long run. I am really looking forward to the future and to our successful collaboration."

About Billbarter Hungaria Zrt. (Billbarter Group)

The Billbarter Group currently consults with over 25,000 companies around the globe and has circa 8 Billion Euros of projects under management and in their portfolio. The Billbarter Group offers a wide range of services, such as commercial mortgages, factoring, asset finance, corporate finance, property development finance, management buy-outs, refinancing and business acquisition funding but specializes in assisting with funding property related and assets backed transactions offering clients more than a decade of experience in international property intermediation. The Company has a seasoned management team and has a presence in 13 countries in Europe, 2 countries in the Americas and a further 7 countries between Asia and Australia.

About Global Equity International Inc. and subsidiaries

Global Equity International Inc., through its wholly-owned subsidiaries Global Equity Partners Plc. and GEP Equity Holdings Ltd., advises worldwide business leaders with their most critical decisions and opportunities pertaining to growth, capital needs, structure and the development of a global presence. With offices in Dubai and London, Global Equity has developed significant relationships in the US, UK, Central Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia to assist clients in realizing their full value and potential by bringing them to external capital and resources that place an emphasis on collaborative thinking. Furthermore, because Global Equity has offices in key financial centers of the world, they are able to introduce their clients to a unique opportunity of listing their shares on any one of the many Public Stock Exchanges worldwide.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements related to anticipated revenues, expenses, earnings, operating cash flows, the outlook for markets and the demand for products. Forward-looking statements are no guarantees of future performance and are inherently subject to uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Such statements are based upon, among other things, assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management, including management's own knowledge and assessment of the Company's industry and competition. The Company refers interested persons to its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and its other SEC filings for a description of additional uncertainties and factors, which may affect forward-looking statements. The company assumes no duty to update its forward-looking statements.

Mr. Enzo Taddei

CFO & director

Global Equity International Inc.

Tel. (USA): + (1) 321 200 0142

Email: enzo@gepartnersplc.com

Web: www.gepartnersplc.com



Mr. Thomas Stonewell

International Relations Director

Billbarter Hungaria Zrt. (Billbarter Group)

Tel. (Hungary): + (36) 96 550 240

Tel. (UK): + (44) 207 193 8128

E-mail: thomas.stonewell@billbarter.com

Web: www.billbartergroup.com/




WALTHAM, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- GET Group North America, a provider of high-assurance security solutions that enhance Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) operations, today announced that it has entered into an exclusive reseller agreement with Speed Identity, a leading global provider of solutions for biometric security, to offer biometric live capture solutions to the North American market.

Biometric identification technology uses physiological characteristics for identity authentication and verification. As a leading systems integrator, GET Group NA is partnering with Speed Identity to provide a biometric capture solution featuring live enrollment capabilities so that all captured biometric data is collected at one time, ensuring data is securely tied to the applicant. This reduces enrollment time to just a few minutes; secures the process from application input to immediate ID document production output; and enables compliance with the highest standards and regulations for biometric data. Virtually all high-end security documents used for travel, airports, government agencies, nuclear plants, and other facilities and organizations where security is vital, are increasingly moving toward the use of biometrics for identity screening.

"At GET Group North America, we pride ourselves on offering the best and most cutting-edge ICAM technologies from around the world and, as such, are pleased to have Speed Identity's biometric capture solution as part of our robust identity management technology portfolio," said Alex Kambanis, Managing Director for GET Group NA. "Biometric systems are considered to be the most efficient method in the world when it comes to access controls, identification and authentication, and applications for e-passports and identity cards, and help combat identity fraud.

"Through this partnership, our solution will now be readily accessible to a customer base in the North American market, who will also get the benefit of GET Group North America's advanced personalization capabilities and the expertise of its seasoned North American presence," said Bjorn Allden, CEO at Speed Identity.

About GET Group NA

GET Group North America is an experienced provider of high-assurance security solutions that enhance Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) operations. As a leading-edge systems integrator, GET Group NA and its partners design, manufacture, and implement secure ID solutions that enable government agencies, motor vehicle departments, municipalities and law enforcement organizations to implement the latest in identity management technologies. From photo ID cards to driver's licenses to passports, GET Group NA delivers advanced personalization capabilities that prevent identification fraud and accommodate diversified customer needs.

GET Group NA has over 20 years of experience in identity management and is certified under CMMI Level 3 and ISO 27001. To learn more, visit www.getgroupna.com.

About Speed Identity

Speed Identity is a leading global provider of high performance solutions for biometric data capture and enrollment; meeting and exceeding industry regulations and standards including ICAO 9303, ISO/IEC 19794-4/5 and FBI / MITRE. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Speed Identity works with governments and organizations worldwide to help create a safer place for tomorrow's global people.

Speed Identity pioneered live biometric enrollment in the early 2000. To date the company has successfully delivered thousands of systems in more than 120 countries worldwide to government departments and agencies

To learn more, visit www.speed-identity.com

PR Contact

Jordan Bouclin

SVM Public Relations & Marketing Communications

Email Contact

(401) 490-9700




ALBANY, New York, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

TheLatin America home healthcare marketis fragmented in nature with stiff price competition among leading players, states a new research study by Transparency Market Research. Prominent companies, including Philips Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer AG, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., and Abbott Laboratories collectively accounted for more than 80% of the Latin America home healthcare market in 2013. Key players in the market are making constant efforts to expand and enhance their product portfolio and establish a strong presence through mergers and acquisitions.

According to the study, the Latin America market opportunity in home healthcare is projected to reach a value of US$17.55 bn by the end of 2020. On the basis of devices types, the medical supplies segment is expected to retain the leading position in the Latin America home healthcare market, reaching a value of US$3.92 bn by the end of 2020. The rising incidence of malnutrition and premature births and growing preference for home enteral therapeutics are key factors that are projected to bolster the medical supplies segment in the near future.

Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with free PDF Brochure:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=3020

Technological Advancements to Bolster Home Healthcare Market in Brazil

The demand for home healthcare services is very high, especially in Brazil and Mexico. Among the key geographical segments, Brazil is estimated to lead the Latin America home healthcare market and account for a 35% share by the end of 2020. "The high growth of this region likely due to the rising number of disabled geriatric population and technological advancements in home healthcare devices," says a TMR analyst.

By service, the unskilled home healthcare services segment is projected to lead the market, reaching a value of US$2.69 bn by the end of 2020. The rising adoption of personalized care devices is one of the primary factors augmenting the growth of this segment in the Latin America home healthcare market.

Changing Demographics to Actuate Growth of Home Healthcare Market in Latin America

The Latin America home healthcare market is anticipated to witness noteworthy growth in the next few years, owing to the rising adoption rate of home healthcare services and devices and growing prevalence of chronic diseases in this region. The emergence of new and innovative devices is expected to contribute extensively towards the growth of the home healthcare market in Latin America.

Furthermore, the changing demographics in Latin America are encouraging high acceptance of medical devices and homecare services, thereby augmenting the growth of the home healthcare market in Latin America. Technological developments and emergence of innovative healthcare services are further expected to bolster the growth of the market in the near future, states a TMR analyst.

View exclusive Latin America Strategic Business report:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/latin-america-home-healthcare-market.html

Economic Instability to Curb Growth of Latin America Home Healthcare Market

An increasing number of patients are preferring self-diagnosis in Latin America, thus making use of home healthcare devices. As a result, the risk of incorrect use of home healthcare devices is rising, leading to fatal health disorders. This is expected to curtail the growth of the overall market in the coming years. In addition, the economic disparity and immature and complex regulatory environment are projected to hamper the growth of the Latin America home healthcare market in the near future.

Nonetheless, leading players in the market are currently focusing on the underdeveloped regions in Latin America, such as Venezuela, Colombia, and Chile. The untapped opportunities in these countries are expected to drive the market in the next few years.

This information is based on the findings of a research report published by Transparency Market Research, titled "Latin America Home Healthcare Market - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2020."

Browse Latin America Home Healthcare Industry Press Release:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/latin-america-home-healthcare-market.htm

The Latin America home healthcare market has been segmented as below:

Device Types

Diagnostics and Monitoring Home Devices Blood Glucose Monitors Blood Pressure Monitors Heart Rate Monitors Temperature Monitors Sleep Apnea Monitors Coagulation Monitors Pregnancy Test Kits Pulse Oximeters Pedometers



Therapeutics Home Healthcare Devices Insulin Delivery Devices Nebulizers Ventilator and CPAP Devices IV Equipments Dialysis Equipment



Home Mobility Assist Devices Wheelchairs Cranes and Crutches Other Home Mobility Assist Devices



Medical Supplies

Services

Rehabilitation Services

Telehealth and Telemedicine Services

Infusion Therapy Services

Respiratory Therapy Services

Unskilled Home Healthcare Services

Geography

Brazil

Mexico

Argentina

Colombia

Others

Browse Other Latest Research Reports:

Global Home Healthcare Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/home-healthcare-market.html

Home Healthcare Software - Product & Service Market:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/home-healthcare-software-product-service-market.html

Canada Home Healthcare Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/canada-home-healthcare-market.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: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com



Website: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Blog: http://www.tmrblog.com/


Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Stem Cells Market Research and Analysis, 2014-2020" report to their offering.

Global stem cell market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 23% for the forecasted period of 2015-2020. Stem cell research is also being used to study genetic disorders, birth defects and other growth factors.

Stem cell banks are being established which store stem cells and umbilical cord blood containing stem cells. These are used for treating the individual in future. Stem cell banking is gaining popularity amongst modern day parents who opt to store their new-born's cells to prevent any future ailments. Stem cell are being used to treat and diagnose cancer. Stem cell are great part of understanding and treating cancer; especially in children.

Stem cell is being funded by governments, NGO's and private firms considering the great potential it has in changing the shape of healthcare. New gene editing technologies such as CRISPR are also going to boost the stem cell research and market could witness influx of a number of products.

Regionally, North America and Europe make up for 70% of the total market. North American and European companies are well funded and well equipped. More number of start-ups are emerging. These companies are also attracting a lot of investment. Asia Pacific market is expected to grow at a healthy growth rate for the forecasted period of 2015-2020. A significant amount of research is going on in countries such as India, China, Japan and Israel.

Companies Mentioned:

Allosource

Anterogen

Apceth

Bioheart

Cell Cure Neurosciences

Gamida Cell

Medipost

Mesoblast

Neostem

Neuralstem

Nuvasive

Ocata Therapeutics

Orthofix

Osiris Therapeutics

Pharmicell

Pluristem Therapeutics

Reliance Life Sciences

Reneuron

Rti Surgical

Stempeutics

Key Topics Covered:

1 Report Summary

2 Market Overview and Insights

3 Market Determinant

4 Parent Market Analysis

5 Market Segmentation

6 Competitive Landscape

7 Regional Analysis

8 Company Profiles

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/qpx48j/global_stem_cells

Related Topics: Stem Cells

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913006125/en/

Contacts:

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


NEW BUFFALO, MI -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians' Four Winds Casinos are pleased to announce it will host Masters of Illusion on their "Believe the Impossible" tour at Four Winds New Buffalo's Silver Creek Event Center on Saturday, December 17 at 8 p.m. Hotel and dinner packages are available for the night of the performance. Tickets can be purchased beginning on Friday, September 16 at 11 a.m. Eastern exclusively through the Ticketmaster Web site, www.ticketmaster.com, or by calling (800)745-3000. Ticket prices for the event are $35 plus applicable fees.

Hotel and dinner packages include the Hard Rock and Copper Rock options. The Hard Rock option is available for $410 and includes two tickets to the performance, a one night hotel stay on Saturday, December 17, and a $50 gift card to Hard Rock Cafe Four Winds. The Copper Rock option is available for $510 and includes two tickets, a one night hotel stay on Saturday, December 17, and a $150 gift card to Copper Rock Steakhouse. All hotel and dinner packages must be purchased through Ticketmaster.

The cast of Masters of Illusion was recently brought together again to perform live in front of a worldwide television audience on the CW series "Masters of Illusion," which aired in the summer of 2016. Only the best, most unique, amusing, astounding and amazing performers have been chosen to perform in Masters of Illusion. It is a huge stage phenomenon born from the multi-award winning television series and from the World Magic Awards, which is recognized as the International Academy Awards of Magic. Since the live tour premiered, it has played 192 shows in 108 different venues, 29 states, 6 countries and 3 continents. More information on Masters of Illusion is available at www.mastersofillusionlive.com.

Reservations and Information

To make a hotel reservation at Four Winds New Buffalo or for more information on Four Winds New Buffalo, Four Winds Hartford, or Four Winds Dowagiac, please call (866)-4WINDS1, (866)494-6371 or visit www.fourwindscasino.com. Additionally, be sure to like Four Winds on Facebook at www.facebook.com/fourwindscasino and follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/fourwindscasino.

Media Contacts:



Joshua Taustein

Dresner Corporate Services

(312)780-7219

jtaustein@dresnerco.com



David Gutierrez

Dresner Corporate Services

(312)780-7204

dgutierrez@dresnerco.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Global Copper Group Inc. ("Global Copper") (TSX VENTURE: ICU) is pleased to announce that it has agreed to acquire an additional 3 mineral claims (for total of 9 units) located contiguous to the 8 patented mining claims the Company announced the acquisition of on September 6, 2016. The property is located 5 km east of Cobalt, Ontario and covers approximately 360 acres (144 ha).

The claims will be acquired from Timber Wolf Gold Corp. ("Timber Wolf"), of Cobalt, Ontario for an in consideration of the sum of CDN$25,000 (of which CDN$10,000 is payable on signing of a formal agreement), and 500,000 fully paid and non-assessable shares to be issued and allotted five days following the date the terms of acquisition are accepted for filing by the TSX Venture Exchange. The balance of CDN$15,000 is payable 30 days thereafter.

Timber Wolf is a private corporation 100% beneficially owned and controlled by Michael Johnson, Randy Lawson and Pat Laferriere of Cobalt, Ontario.

In order to finance the development of the group of claims, the Company has agreed to make a non-brokered private placement of up to 10,000,000 units. Of the units to be placed, 3,000,000 will be flow-through units consisting of one share and one-half share purchase warrant. The flow-through units will be placed at $0.07 per unit. One full warrant will be exercisable to purchase one additional non flow-through share at a price of $0.12 for a period of 18 months following the date of closing of the private placement.

The remainder of the offering is a non flow-through offering of up to 7,000,000 units which will be placed at a price of $0.06 per unit. A unit consists of one share and one-half share purchase warrant with one warrant also being exercisable for a period of 18 months at a price of $0.12 to purchase one additional share.

Finder's fees acceptable to the TSX Venture Exchange will be payable in connection with a portion of the Offering.

The terms of the private placement are subject to prior TSX Venture Exchange approval.

The Proteus Property

The property is located in the Cobalt silver camp, which has a long history of silver production, with associated cobalt. The property is underlain by a sequence of Archean volcanics, unconformably overlain by Huronian Cobalt sediments. These formations have been intruded by the Proterozoic-age Nipissing diabase sill. Faulting, on both a regional and local scale, has been identified on the property in both surface mapping and in drill cores. Polymetallic veining, and especially pink/white carbonate veins have also been identified. Thus all the necessary geological components of accepted mineralization models for Ag-Co have been identified on the property.

The property has been explored for silver since the early 1900's. Fifty-five diamond drill holes were completed in three campaigns in 1985-1986, for a total of 31,855 ft (9 709 m). This drilling identified numerous pink and white carbonate veins, with associated significant Ag values as well as the presence of cobalt arsenide minerals. The best value from drill core was 23.34 oz Ag/T over 0.5 ft (800 g Ag/t over 0.15m) in a carbonate vein. Geophysical surveys (IP and Resistivity) were completed in 2011 which has better refined drill targets for future exploration.

Chris M. Healey, P.Geo. a Director of Global Copper Group is the Qualified Person responsible for the technical content of this release and consents to its dissemination.

About Global Copper Group Inc.

Global Copper Group Inc. is a publicly traded Canadian exploration company listed on the TSX-Venture Exchange (TSX VENTURE: ICU) focused on mineral exploration and development. The company plans to acquire, de-risk and advance assets in mining friendly jurisdictions prior to seeking joint venture partnerships.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Dr. Andreas Rompel, President and CEO

Global Copper Group Inc.

www.globalcoppergroup.com

We seek safe harbor.

The company's profile may also be viewed on www.sedar.com.

The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.

Forward-Looking Information

The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this News Release. WARNING: The Company relies on litigation protection for 'forward looking" statements. Actual results could differ materially from those described in the news release as a result of numerous factors, some of which are outside the control of the Company. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act') or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

Contacts:

Global Copper Group Inc.

Daniel Caamano, VP Corporate Communications, or

Judy A. McCall, Corporate Secretary

604.620.7737

www.globalcoppergroup.com




ROSEMONT, IL -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- The ASSEMBLY Show has always been the event where manufacturing engineers and managers go to learn about the latest assembly technology. This year's show, being held October 25-27 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL, is no exception. The following is just a sampling of the breakthrough technologies that will be on display at the show.

New Fastener Plays Key Role in Ford F-150, Chevy Corvette

At first glance, the Ford F-150 and the Chevrolet Corvette would appear to have nothing in common, beyond the fact that they're both gas-powered vehicles. After all, you wouldn't tow a bass boat with a Corvette any more than you would zip a 5,000-pound pickup around a test track.

However, the same small component plays a key role in the design and manufacture of both vehicles: the friction-drilling screw. That's because the bodies of both vehicles are largely made from aluminum, which helped reduce their weight significantly. For example, the 2015 F-150 is 700 pounds lighter than its predecessor.

Faced with the need to join aluminum to aluminum and aluminum to steel, GM and Ford have been forced to find alternatives to the tried-and-true spot welding technology they had been using for decades to join all-steel assemblies. Friction-drilling screws are one such alternative.

These revolutionary new fasteners create very strong joints, but they can't be installed with just any screwdriver. Sophisticated new screwdriving equipment is needed -- and it will be on display at Weber Screwdriving Systems (Booth 805).

Weber isn't the only supplier of screwdriving technology at the show, either. More than 15 suppliers will be showing off the latest pneumatic, electric and cordless screwdrivers and nutrunners, for manual, semiautomatic and fully automatic application.

Collaborative Robots Work Side-by-Side with People

Collaborative robots are the hottest segment of the robotics industry. Many engineers are intrigued by the potential of these next-generation robots, which are equipped with state-of-the-art sensor technology that allows the machines to operate side-by-side with people. These revolutionary robots do not need to be placed behind protective barriers.

For example, workers at Ford's assembly plant in in Cologne, Germany, are working hand-in-hand with collaborative robots to fit shock absorbers to cars. The 3-foot-tall collaborative robots interact with operators at two workstations on an assembly line that builds the Fiesta subcompact. Rather than manipulate a heavy shock absorber and installation tool, assemblers use the robot to lift and automatically position the shock absorber into the wheel arch, before pushing a button to complete installation.

The latest collaborative robots will be on display at The ASSEMBLY Show, including the YuMi from ABB Robotics (Booth 139); the CR-35iA from FANUC America Corp. (Booth 131) and the AURA from Comau LLC (Booth 145).

Of course, there will be plenty of "traditional" robotic technology on display, as well. Indeed, The ASSEMBLY Show will host some 11 suppliers of robotic technology for applications ranging from high-speed assembly of small parts to dispensing liquid gasket material.

New Technology Helps Motorists Keep Cool

To help prevent global warming and reduce ozone depletion, carmakers are switching the refrigerant used in automotive air-conditioning systems, from a chemical known as R-134a to a new, more environmentally friendly chemical, R-1234yf. In addition, air-conditioning systems are becoming much more "buttoned up" -- even the tiniest refrigerant leaks can no longer be tolerated.

To meet these two challenges, carmakers need new technologies to check automotive assemblies for leaks. One such technology is the new Ecotec E3000 multi-gas leak detector from Inficon, which will be on display in Booth 245 at The ASSEMBLY Show. The device is used on the end of an assembly line to check a various parts of a vehicle for leaks, including the air-conditioning system and the fuel system.

Of course, automotive air-conditioning systems aren't the only products that cannot be allowed to leak. Lots of products get checked for leaks, including household appliances, medical devices, light bulbs, and electrical distribution equipment. Manufacturers of all these products and more will find plenty of help at The ASSEMBLY Show, which hosts no less than nine suppliers of the latest technology for leak testing.

High-Speed Automation Helps Asthma Patients Breathe Easier

According to the latest statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than 25 million Americans -- 8 percent of the population -- have asthma. The disease, which restricts breathing, is commonly treated with an inhaled medication.

As a result, hundreds of millions of inhalers are produced annually in the United States. These devices must be assembled carefully, consistently and hygienically. The only way to meet the requirements for both volume and precision is through high-speed automated assembly systems, like those on display at The ASSEMBLY Show. Some 19 systems integrators will be exhibiting at the show.

One of those integrators, Mikron Automation (Booth 2018), will be showing the innovative G05 linear assembly cell. This standardized, modular platform uses a cam drive for all primary motions, which guarantees synchronization between the individual assembly stations and the pallet indexing system. Fixtured pallets enter the cell and are advanced and indexed in steps of 60, 120, 160, or 240 millimeters, depending upon the model. Each assembly step is followed by a systematic check to ensure continuous and consistent quality. Multiple cells can be linked together, and all components are designed for speeds up to 100 cycles per minute.

Everything Assembly

These are but a mere sampling of the state-of-the-art technologies that will be on display at The ASSEMBLY Show. Whether manufacturers are welding, bonding or fastening their parts, whether they're assembling their products manually or automatically, there will be plenty of vendors to choose from at The ASSEMBLY Show.

The ASSEMBLY Show 2016 will be held Tuesday, October 25 - Thursday, October 27 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. The Show is sponsored by ASSEMBLY (www.assemblymag.com), a monthly trade magazine read by 56,000 engineers and managers responsible for manufacturing and designing cars, computers, catheters, coffee makers, etc. ASSEMBLY covers the processes, technologies and strategies for joining discrete parts into finished products. The event is produced by BNP Media (www.bnpmedia.com), one of the country's leading business-to-business media companies serving professionals across 50+ industries. For more information, visit www.theassemblyshow.com.

For Further Information, Contact:

Amy Riemer

Media Relations Representative

978-475-4441 (office) or 978-502-4895 (cell)

Email Contact




POWAY, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Portland, Ore.-headquartered Harsch Investment Properties, a privately held real estate investment, development and management company, has made another acquisition in the San Diego area with the purchase of South County's Class-A Scenic View Business Park. The industrial campus in Poway includes 147,848 square feet across eight multi-tenant buildings. Scenic View Business Park is 98 percent occupied, featuring seven manufacturing buildings and a distribution building. Over the past 10 years, Poway has traditionally been one of the strongest submarkets in San Diego County due to its diverse base of defense, manufacturing and small businesses.

"We've been looking for additional opportunities to acquire business parks in the Poway market, and Scenic View has been at the top of our list," said Jordan Schnitzer, president of Harsch Investment Properties. "This acquisition will bring our portfolio on the I-15 corridor to over 1.2 million square feet and provide our tenants with the opportunity to expand and grow within the portfolio."

The 12.8-acre Scenic View Business Park is conveniently positioned within the central San Diego market along Stowe Drive and Kirkham Court, just a few miles east of I-15 and on the northern edge of the Scripps Poway Parkway. The site is located within the master-planned Poway Business Park development, home to more than 500 businesses that include industrial, office and retail operations.

"We acquired our first industrial park in Poway 15 years ago and have been very impressed with the business community and the intelligent growth that has occurred in both the residential and commercial sectors," said Bill Rodewald, senior vice president and regional manager, San Diego.

Scenic View Business Park can accommodate multiple uses and maximum leasing flexibility, such as for manufacturing, showrooms, distribution and offices in a variety of suite sizes. It features ample parking and truck storage, dock and ground-level loading, and an on-site deli.

Bryce Aberg of Cushman & Wakefield National Industrial Advisory Group served as the listing broker for Scenic View Business Park.

About Harsch Investment Properties

Harsch Investment Properties is a privately held real estate company that acquires, manages and develops properties for its own portfolio. Founded in 1950, the company owns and operates 23 million square feet of office, multi-tenant industrial, multi-family and retail properties in six western states. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Harsch has regional offices in San Diego, Seattle, Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and Las Vegas. More information can be found by going to http://www.harsch.com.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3055074



CONTACT:

Susanne Orton

Harsch Investment Properties

503.973.0298

susanneo@harsch.com




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.
SACRAMENTO, CA--(Marketwired - September 13, 2016) - California's Big Oil disrupting climate-change policies have been extended to 2030, and the state now leads the nation in low carbon fuel retail volumes with more than 14 million gallons of E85 Flex Fuel sold in 2015. This increase was led by Propel Fuels, the top retailer of low carbon fuels in the state. Propel's branded network of stations has created a new consumer category in the multi-billion dollar retail fuel industry, redefining customer loyalty and breaking the stronghold of big oil brands.

In a recently published consumer study, Propel reveals groundbreaking research into the everyday people adopting low carbon fuels in California. Published by Propel's Silicon Valley Workshop, Low Carbon Fuels in California: Motivators and Barriers to Use illustrates the surprising demographics of this user base, including millennials, the company's fastest growth segment. In addition to a growing, young customer base:

Low-carbon fuel users are highly diverse, representing the socioeconomic demographics of California with strong Latino, African-American and Asian demographic groups.

Consumers are extremely loyal to low-carbon fuels, choosing Propel branded fuels 90% of the time.

Because low-carbon fuels are more affordable than petroleum to mainstream populations and can run in a variety of vehicles, middle- and lower-income families, as well as young people, can afford these cleaner energy options.

"Our research shows that low carbon fuels provide great value and appeal to a wide range of Californians, which is why Propel locations have the highest low carbon fuel volumes in the country, and well over double the volumes of other retailers in California," said Rob Elam, CEO of Propel Fuels.

Propel only retails low carbon fuels and has overcome the typical barriers impeding public access to alternatives. The company's unique business model offers established gas stations a new revenue stream by seamlessly adding the fuels with no cost to the station owner. Propel drives low carbon fuel volumes six-times the national average through unparalleled innovation in customer experience, outreach and education; connecting mobile, social and location activities. Propel's customer base prioritizes better value, higher performance and healthier communities while exhibiting loyalty rates matching that of America's strongest brands, including Starbucks and Trader Joe's.

In addition to value and performance, Flex Fuel E85 provides significant climate-change benefit, as a gallon of Propel's California produced ethanol has 60% less greenhouse gas emissions than a gallon of California produced gasoline, according to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). And while Electric Vehicles get most of the attention, low carbon liquid fuels are responsible for 85% of the greenhouse gas reductions achieved by the California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) during the program's first five years. Low carbon fuels also significantly reduce air toxins including NOx and particulate matter (PM), improving air quality in local communities.

"It is critical that California's carbon reduction policies are equitable, and not just benefitting the top five percent wealthiest Californians," continued Elam. "Political durability of these programs only comes with broad based benefits. Low carbon liquid fuels are working for mainstream Californians today."

14.77 million gallons of E85 were sold in California in 2015, with Propel selling 9.3 million of those gallons -- 63% of the market, according to recently released CARB data. Previously, ethanol production leaders Minnesota and Iowa led the nation; according to revenue records these states sold 13.1 million gallons each in 2015.

The study Low Carbon Fuels in California: Motivators and Barriers to Use explores customer motivations when choosing low carbon fuels, revealing the key consumer benefits and barriers to Flex Fuel E85. Designed in coordination with independent research firm LUX insights, Propel's study is the most comprehensive survey ever of the state's low carbon fuel customers and was conducted at the pump while customers filled up. More than 970 surveys were completed at 11 Propel locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Fresno, Inland Empire and San Diego. The full white paper, including specific details on survey findings is available at: PropelWorkshop.com

About Propel

Propel was founded in 2004 with a mission to connect people to better fuels. With 34 Flex Fuel and 32 Diesel HPR locations across California, Propel provides new fuel choices that are higher in performance, deliver better value and create healthier communities. Propel also provides commercial and bulk availability for business and government fleets. Propel is ranked among 2015's top 10 private companies in Silicon Valley and is recognized by Inc. Magazine's "Inc. 500". More information is available at propelfuels.com and by following Propel at facebook.com/propelfuels and on Twitter at @PropelFuels.

Locations and real time pricing can be found on Propel's mobile app in the Android and Apple app stores.

Apple iOS: itunes.apple.com/us/app/propel-station-locator-e85/id912207853?mt=8

Android: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.propelfuels.stnlctr

Editor's Note:

Video testimonials from Propel customers are included in a new video "A day at Propel", reflecting the diverse ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of the company's customers.

More information, screen shots, B-Roll video and photography for download and use is available at: propelfuels.com/media_kit.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/9/13/11G113911/Images/Propel_LowCarbonFuel_User-b11d0c7520d1b1098a68bf8db2f7d2c0.jpg

Embedded Video Available: https://youtu.be/TIYRZR5Ha18

Media Contact

Jaime Quick

ChangeUp for Propel Fuels

206-229-5183 (mobile)

jq@changeupadvisors.com
MANILA, PHILIPPINES -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Mindoro Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: MIO)(FRANKFURT:WKN 906167) ("Mindoro" or the "Company") announced that its shareholders have approved all resolutions brought before them at the Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") held on September 12, 2016 with the number of shares voted in person and by proxy at the Meeting was 130,213,801 representing 43.78% of the 297,437,399 common shares issued and outstanding by the Company.

The director nominees listed in the Company's 2016 management information circular filed on SEDAR, with the number of directors fixed at 4 as approved by 98.97% of the shareholders present or represented by proxy during the Meeting, were elected as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Name of Nominee Votes for Percentage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Federico Zarate, Jr. 123,528,269 94.87% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Geocel D. Olanday 123,528,269 94.87% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Arturo P. Delos Santos 123,528,269 94.87% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fabian B. Reyes 123,528,269 94.87% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

MNP LLP was appointed as auditor for the ensuing year (129,127,301 shares in favor - 99.17%) while the Stock Option Plan received the approval of the majority of the voted shares (124,531,269 shares in favor - 95.64%).

About Mindoro

Mindoro is a Tier 2 issuer trading on the TSX Venture Exchange (MIO) and Frankfurt Stock Exchange (WKN 906167). Mindoro has a direct and beneficial 40% interest in the Agata Mining Joint Venture and direct and beneficial 75% interest in the Agata Processing Joint Venture with an option to acquire an additional 25% interest in the Agata Processing Joint Venture. Mindoro also holds 75% interest in the Pan de Azucar Sulphur-Copper-Gold Project, Iloilo City. TVIRD has the option to earn up to 60% interest in the Agata Processing and Pan de Azucar projects by meeting the earn-in requirements outlined in the June 24, 2013 press release, which include producing a definitive feasibility study for a nickel processing facility. As of October 16, 2015, a PMRC compliant DFS was completed by Agata Processing Inc., which would result in TVIRD earning a total of 60% interest in API shares. Mindoro also holds 75% interest and an option to acquire additional 25% interest in the Tapian San Francisco Copper-Gold Project, Mindanao.

Reader Advisory

Certain information set out in this News Release constitutes forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intent", "could", "might", "should", "believe", "scheduled", "to be", "will be" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this News Release are based upon the opinions and expectations of management of the Company as at the effective date of such statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that those expectations will prove to have been correct. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties (known and unknown) that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those anticipated or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, such things as inherent risks associated with the exploration and development of mining properties, ultimate recoverability of mineral reserves, timing, results and costs of exploration and development activities, availability of financial resources or third-party financing, new laws (domestic or foreign), changes in administrative practices, changes in exploration plans or budgets, and availability of equipment and personnel.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance upon the forward-looking statements contained in this News Release and such forward-looking statements should not be interpreted or regarded as guarantees of future outcomes. Forward-looking information respecting cash flows anticipated from future production of high-iron/low nickel DSO at the Agata Mining Project, is based upon high-iron/low nickel DSO prices in effect as at the date of this News Release, management's forecasts of trends in prices of high-iron/low nickel DSO, current mining rates of high-iron/low-nickel DSO from the Agata Mining Project, estimates of the size of the high-iron/low nickel DSO reserves at Agata Mining Project, the current development plan for Agata Mining Project, AMVI's current budget and overall strategy for Agata Mining Project, which plans, budget and strategy are all subject to change. Forward-looking information respecting the anticipated timing of future shipments of high-iron/low nickel DSO from the Agata Mining Project, is based upon current mining rates of high-iron/low nickel DSO from the Agata Mining Project, the terms of the third party offtake agreement for the purchase of high-iron/low nickel DSO produced at the Agata Mining Project, estimates of the size of the high-iron/low nickel DSO reserves at the Agata Mining Project, the current development plan for the Agata Mining Project, AMVI's current budget and overall strategy for the Agata Mining Project, which plans, budget and strategy are all subject to change. The forward-looking statements of the Company contained in this News Release are expressly qualified, in their entirety, by this cautionary statement. Various risks to which the Company is exposed in the conduct of its business (including mining activities) are described in detail in the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2015, which was filed on SEDAR on April 29, 2016 and is available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Subject to applicable securities laws, the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly revise the forward-looking statements included in this News Release to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Contacts:

Mary Anne B. Antazo

Interim CEO

Phone: +63 917.322.6975

Email: mbantazo@mrlnickel.com



Jeannette V. Gutierrez

CFO

Phone: +632 728.8491 loc 441

Email: jvgutierrez@mrlnickel.com




Regulatory news:

Elior Group (Paris:ELIOR):

Areas, the global concession catering brand of Elior Group, has just gained a foothold in Denmark by winning a concession catering contract for Copenhagen Airport. This contract confirms Areas' expansion strategy in Northern Europe. As of March 2017, Areas will be offering the 26 million or so travelers passing through Copenhagen Airport every year catering solutions at a point of sale owned by the Danish brand, RETREAT.

Operating in conjunction with RETREAT, a brand that enjoys tremendous success in Denmark, Areas has been able to fulfil the expectations of Copenhagen Airport which is reputed for the quality of its shopping areas and was elected the World's Best Airport for its catering offer1

In line with current trends, this Danish catering format offers fresh bio health-food products, as well as gluten-free, vegan and vegetarian food. The RETREAT point of sale is located in the reserved zone of Terminal 3.

Alexandre de Palmas, CEO of Areas in France and in Northern Europe, stated, "This first foothold in Denmark serves to underpin Areas' expansion strategy, announced in early 2016. This penetration into the Northern European market underscores our ability to identify the innovative concepts that attract major international airports

Leader in the travel catering sector in France and Spain, Areas operates in 13 countries in Europe, the US and Latin America. By winning this contract for Copenhagen Airport, a prestigious gateway to Northern Europe, Areas has underlined its ability to expand and strengthen its position as international leader in concession catering.

About Elior Group

Founded in 1991, Elior Group has grown into one of the world's leading operators in the catering and support services industry, and is now a benchmark player in the business industry, education, healthcare, and travel markets.

In FY 2014-2015, it generated 5,674 million in revenue through 18,600 restaurants and points of sale in 13 countries. Our 108,000 employees serve 4 million customers on a daily basis, taking genuine care of each and every one by providing personalized catering and service solutions to ensure an innovative customer experience.

We place particular importance on corporate social responsibility and have been a member of the United Nations Global Compact since 2004. The professional excellence of our teams, as well as their unwavering commitment to quality and innovation and to providing best-in-class service is embodied in our corporate motto: "Time savored".

For further information: http://www.eliorgroup.com Elior Group on Twitter: @Elior_Group / @Elior_France / @elioruk

About Areas

Areas is one of the global leaders in the travel catering and retail industry, generating 1.679 billion in revenue in 2015. A global brand of Elior Group, Areas welcomes 330 million customers each year in 2,200 restaurants and points of sale in 12 countries, throughout Europe as well as in the USA, Mexico and Chile.

As the caterer of choice in the travel and leisure markets, focusing on quality for 45 years, Areas is present in transportation hubs large and small across the world (airports, train stations, motorway service plazas), as well as in exhibition centers and leisure parks.

Building upon a culture of operational excellence, Areas draws on its in-depth understanding of travelers' needs and the most extensive range of catering concepts on the market to offer the perfect blend of ingredients for each of its 900,000 daily customers to savor.

For further information: http://www.areas.com Areas on Twitter @Areas / @Areas_FR / @Areas_ES

1 The Airport Food Beverage Conference Awards 2014 2016

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913006136/en/

Contacts:

Elior Group

Press contacts

Anne-Isabelle Gros, +33 (0) 1 71 06 70 58

anne-isabelle.gros@eliorgroup.com

or

Anne-Laure Sanguinetti, +33 (0) 1 71 06 70 57

anne-laure.sanguinetti@eliorgroup.com

or

Investors contact

Marie de Scorbiac, +33 (0) 1 70 06 70 13

marie.descorbiac@eliorgroup.com
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited and The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited take no responsibility for the contents of this announcement, make no representation as to its accuracy or completeness and expressly disclaim any liability whatsoever for any loss howsoever arising from or in reliance upon the whole or any part of the contents of this announcement.

ZHEJIANG EXPRESSWAY CO. LTD.

(A joint stock limited company incorporated in the People's Republic of China with limited liability)

(Stock code: 0576)

CONTINUING CONNECTED TRANSACTIONS

INFORMATION SYSTEM REDEVELOPMENT AGREEMENTS

INFORMATION SYSTEM REDEVELOPMENT AGREEMENTS

On 23 May 2016, the Company organised a public tender in respect of the provision of the Information System Redevelopment Services to the Target Expressways, namely the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, the Shangsan Expressway, Jinhua section, Ningbo-Jinhua Expressway and the Hanghui Expressway. Zhejiang IT Engineering Co succeeded in the tender and was awarded a contract to provide the Services.

On 13 September 2016, the Company and the relevant subsidiaries of the Company entered into the Information System Redevelopment Agreements with Zhejiang IT Engineering Co, pursuant to which Zhejiang IT Engineering Co agreed to provide the Information System Redevelopment Services to the Target Expressways for a period of 12 months ending 12 September 2017. Under the Listing Rules, the Information System Redevelopment Agreements shall be aggregated as if they were one transaction.

LISTING RULES IMPLICATIONS

As at the date of this announcement, Communications Group holds approximately 67% of the issued share capital of the Company. By virtue of this shareholding interest, Communications Group is a controlling shareholder of the Company. Therefore, Zhejiang IT Engineering Co, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Communications Group, is a connected person of the Company and as a result, the transactions under the Information System Redevelopment Agreements constitute connected transactions for the Company under Chapter 14A of the Listing Rules.

As the applicable percentage ratios in respect of the transactions contemplated under the Information System Redevelopment Agreements, on an aggregated basis, are more than 0.1% but less than 5%, the Information System Redevelopment Agreements are subject to the reporting, announcement and annual review requirements but exempt from the independent Shareholders' approval requirement under Chapter 14A of the Listing Rules.

THE INFORMATION SYSTEM REDEVELOPMENT AGREEMENTS

Principal terms of the Information System Redevelopment Agreements are set out below:

Date: 13 September 2016 Parties: (1) the Company and the relevant subsidiaries of the Company (namely Shangsan Co, Jiaxing Co, Jinhua Co and Hanghui Co); and (2) Zhejiang IT Engineering Co Subject matter: Zhejiang IT Engineering Co agreed to provide the Information System Redevelopment Services, which include the sourcing and installation of automatic ticketing machines, ETC licence plate identification system, ETC display boards, surveillance cameras, composite card readers, printing machines, digital video recorders, routers, switches and handheld scanners in respect of the Target Expressways. Service fee and basis of the fee: the aggregate service fee payable by the Group to Zhejiang IT Engineering Co under the Information System Redevelopment Agreements shall be RMB30,984,318.61 (the "Service Fee"). The Service Fee was determined as a result of a public tender (the "Public Tender") of the Information System Redevelopment Services for the Target Expressways, where Zhejiang IT Engineering Co has succeeded in its bid pursuant to the terms of the Public Tender. On 23 May 2016, a tender notice in respect of the Public Tender was published on the website of Communications Group and www.chinabidding.com. cn. Eleven entities expressed their interest and each of them made the relevant payment to the Company to obtain the tender documents for the Public Tender. After their internal consideration, four entities (three of which being independent suppliers) eventually submitted their tender to the Company. Tender evaluation was conducted by a committee consisting of five experts in this industry. The committee evaluated the following factors before deciding to recommend to accept the tender submitted by Zhejiang IT Engineering Co: (1) the working plan proposed by the tenderers and their technical capability; (2) the standard of safety management of the tenderers and their capability of handling emergency events; (3) the quality of work and ability to deliver work on a timely manner; (4) the experience of the tenderers in similar projects; and (5) the reputation of the tenderers. To ensure that the terms offered by Zhejiang IT Engineering Co are fair, reasonable and no less favourable than those provided by the independent third parties to the Group, the Company has compared the price offered by each of the tenderers for the Information System Redevelopment Services and the price offered by each of the independent suppliers is higher than that offered by Zhejiang IT Engineering Co. After taking into account the above evaluation criteria, the management of the Company has decided to accept the committee's recommendation and award a contract for the Information System Redevelopment Services to Zhejiang IT Engineering Co. Terms of payment: The Service Fee shall be payable by the Group to Zhejiang IT Engineering Co as follows: (i) 30% of the Service Fee to be payable on or before 27 September 2016; (ii) 60% of the Service Fee to be payable upon completion of the relevant Information System Redevelopment Services; (iii) 5% of the Service Fee to be payable on or before the expiration of 12 months after completion of the relevant Information System Redevelopment Services; and (iv) 5% of the Service Fee to be payable on or before the expiration of 24 months after completion of the relevant Information System Redevelopment Services.

Cap for the Information System Redevelopment Agreements

For the purpose of complying with Chapter 14A of the Listing Rules, the Company has set a cap in respect of the aggregate fees payable by the Group to Zhejiang IT Engineering Co for the Information System Redevelopment Services during the term of the Information System Redevelopment Agreements, which shall not exceed RMB30,984,318.61, being the Service Fee.

The above cap was determined after taking into account the total service fees payable to Zhejiang IT Engineering Co in respect of the Information System Redevelopment Services under the Information System Redevelopment Agreements.

REASONS FOR AND BENEFITS OF THE TRANSACTION

The redevelopment of the information system used by the Group is essential to the efficient operation of its expressways. The Company considered the use of the Public Tender to obtain quotations from independent third parties as an effective means to reducing the costs of redeveloping the Group's information system. In addition, the Company considered that Zhejiang IT Engineering Co has the relevant qualifications and expertise to provide the Information System Redevelopment Services to the Company. Given that Zhejiang IT Engineering Co has offered the lowest service fees and better service terms (including the quality of the products to be supplied, quality control standard and after sale services) amongst other independent third parties, the Company has awarded the contract for the Information System Redevelopment Services to Zhejiang IT Engineering Co.

Given the above, the Directors (including the independent non-executive Directors) are of the view that the terms of the Information System Redevelopment Agreements are on normal commercial terms, in the ordinary and usual course of business of the Company and are fair and reasonable and in the interests of the Company and the Shareholders as a whole.

LISTING RULES IMPLICATIONS



As at the date of this announcement, Communications Group holds approximately 67% of the issued share capital of the Company. By virtue of this shareholding interest, Communications Group is a controlling shareholder of the Company. Therefore, Zhejiang IT Engineering Co, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Communications Group, is a connected person of the Company and as a result, the transactions under the Information System Redevelopment Agreements constitute connected transactions for the Company under Chapter 14A of the Listing Rules.

As the applicable percentage ratios in respect of the transactions contemplated under the Information System Redevelopment Agreements, on an aggregated basis, are more than 0.1% but less than 5%, the Information System Redevelopment Agreements are subject to the reporting, announcement and annual review requirements but exempt from the independent Shareholders' approval requirement under Chapter 14A of the Listing Rules.

Each of Mr. Zhan Xiaozhang, Mr. Wang Dongjie, Mr. Dai Benmeng and Mr. Zhou Jianping holds certain senior position in Communications Group, so they have abstained from voting on the board resolution with respect to the approval of the Information System Redevelopment Agreements. Save for Mr. Zhan Xiaozhang, Mr. Wang Dongjie, Mr. Dai Benmeng and Mr. Zhou Jianping, none of the Directors has any material interest in the Information System Redevelopment Agreements or is required to abstain from voting on the relevant Board resolutions to approve the same.

INFORMATION ON THE PARTIES

The Company is a joint stock company established under the laws of the PRC with limited liability on 1 March 1997, the H Shares of which are listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange. It is principally engaged in investing in, developing and operating high-grade roads in the PRC. The Group also carries on certain other businesses such as operation of gas stations, restaurants and shops in service areas, advertising at expressway interchanges and external road maintenance, as well as securities related business

Zhejiang IT Engineering Co is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Communications Group which is incorporated under the laws of the PRC. Zhejiang IT Engineering Co is principally engaged in research and development, manufacturing and sales of intelligent transportation and information technology products, road tolling, communication and surveillance systems, provision of technical advisory services for electrical and mechanical systems of tunnels, professional maintenance services and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services.

DEFINITIONS

In this announcement, unless the context specifies otherwise, the following defined expressions have the following meanings:

"Board" the board of Directors "Communications Group" Zhejiang Communications Investment Group Co., Ltd., a wholly State-owned enterprise established in the PRC, and the controlling shareholder of the Company "Company" Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd, a joint stock limited company incorporated in the PRC with limited liability "connected person" has the meaning ascribed to it under the Listing Rules "controlling shareholder" has the meaning ascribed to it under the Listing Rules "Director(s)" the directors of the Company "Group" the Company and its subsidiaries "H Shares" overseas listed foreign shares in the share capital of the Company with a nominal value of RMB1 per share, which are listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange "Hanghui Co" Zhejiang Hanghui Expressway Co., Ltd., a 88.674% owned subsidiary of the Company "Hong Kong" the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC "Information System Redevelopment Agreements" A number of agreements entered into between the Company and the relevant subsidiaries of the Company on one hand and Zhejiang IT Engineering Co on the other hand dated 13 September 2016 in respect of the provision of the Information System Redevelopment Services by Zhejiang IT Engineering Co "Information System Redevelopment Services information system redevelopment services including the sourcing and installation of automatic ticketing machines, ETC licence plate identification system, ETC display boards, surveillance cameras, composite card readers, printing machines, digital video recorders, routers, switches and handheld scanners "Jiaxing Co" Zhejiang Jiaxing Expressway Co., Ltd., a 99.9995% owned subsidiary of the Company "Jinhua Co" Zhejiang Jinhua Yongjin Expressway Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company "Listing Rules" Rules Governing the Listing of Securities on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited "percentage ratio" has the meaning ascribed to it under Rule 14.04(9) of the Listing Rules "PRC" the People's Republic of China (for the purpose of this announcement, excludes Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) "RMB" Renminbi, the lawful currency of the PRC "Shangsan Co" Zhejiang Shangsan Expressway Co., Ltd. a 73.625% owned subsidiary of the Company "Shareholder(s)" holder(s) of the share(s) of the Company "Stock Exchange" The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited "subsidiary(ies)" has the meaning ascribed to it under the Listing Rules "Target Expressways" Jinhua section, Ningbo-Jinhua Expressway, the Hanghui Expressway, Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway and the Shangsan Expressway "Zhejiang IT Engineering Co" Zhejiang Expressway Information Technology Engineering Co., Ltd. a wholly-owned subsidiary of Communications Group



On behalf of the Board

ZHEJIANG EXPRESSWAY CO., LTD.

ZHAN Xiaozhang

Chairman

Hangzhou, PRC, 13 September 2016

As of the date of this announcement, the executive directors of the Company are: Mr. ZHAN Xiaozhang, Mr. CHENG Tao and Ms. LUO Jianhu; the non-executive directors of the Company are: Mr. WANG Dongjie, Mr. DAI Benmeng and Mr. ZHOU Jianping; and the independent non-executive directors of the Company are: Mr. ZHOU Jun, Mr. PEI Ker-Wei and Ms. LEE Wai Tsang Rosa
SEATTLE, WA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Today, PayScale, Inc., the leader in modern compensation, will kick off a two-day thought leadership event called Compference 16 in Seattle, Washington. More than 250 executives and HR practitioners will gather at the event to discuss modern approaches and technologies for transforming compensation into a strategic lever for growing their business. Representing a variety of industries, PayScale customers will discuss industry trends in compensation and demonstrate how analytics, machine learning and cloud software allowed them to move compensation beyond the spreadsheet and modernize their business practices.

"Attracting and retaining the right talent in our competitive industry is central to our strategy, as the success of our business is directly dependent on the caliber of our people and their level of engagement," said Justin Gagnon, CEO of Bay Area food technology company, Choicelunch. "We're joining other PayScale customers at Compference to share our story and to learn more about using pay strategies for building deeper, more trusting relationships with our employees. Taking good care of our people ensures they'll take good care of our customers, which is the key to building a strong, healthy and sustainable business."

The Compference sessions designed to help companies modernize their compensation practices include:

Breakouts on industry trends and hot jobs: Discussion on the impact of compensation in specific industries including healthcare, non-profit, high-tech and manufacturing/supply chain

Customer 'compensation makeover' presentations: The diverse set of PayScale customers include Associated Bank Corp., Futaba, BambooHR, Sungevity, HPM Building Supply, Frontline Education, Choicelunch, Chewse, Associa and Baylor University

Discussions on current issues: Attendees will learn about compliance with the new Fair Labor Standards Act and how to address gender pay equity through a conversation with executives from Apptio, Moss Adams LLP and author Ruchika Tulshyan

Two keynote addresses: PayScale CEO Mike Metzger will discuss 'The Modern Compensation Manifesto' and NPR science correspondent and author of 'The Hidden Brain,' Shankar Vedantam, will discuss social science research and unintended biases in the workplace

A roadmap for the future: PayScale Chief Product Officer, Dave Smith, will showcase PayScale's vision for fair, transparent and modern compensation management

"We are thrilled to provide this forum for our customers to share their experiences and we look forward to hearing their stories about using modern compensation strategies to increase performance, productivity and revenue," said Tim Low, Senior Vice President of Marketing at PayScale. "Compference is another step forward in PayScale's vision to help companies engage their employees with fair, transparent and modern solutions and market-based pay practices."

For more information about Compference, please visit https://payscale.swoogo.com/compference or follow Compference16 on twitter.

About PayScale:

PayScale powers compensation solutions in the cloud to provide immediate visibility into the right pay for any position. Creator of the world's largest database of rich salary profiles, PayScale offers modern compensation software and real-time, data driven insights for employees and employers alike. More than 5,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies use PayScale Benchmark, PayScale Insight and MarketPay. These companies include Dish Network, Getty Images, Skullcandy, Bloomberg BNA and Time Warner. For more information, please visit: www.payscale.com or follow PayScale on Twitter: http://twitter.com/payscale

Press Contact:



Phyllis McNeice

Email: phyllis@fireflycmns.com

Tel: 206-954-1481




IRVINE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Wienerschnitzel, the world's largest hot dog chain, is celebrating its "sort of German" roots with the return of Grilled Bratwurst! Through the end of October, fans can enjoy this authentic grilled sausage topped with mustard and kraut or mustard and grilled onions. To enhance the German favorite even more, Wienerschnitzel has introduced a brand new soft and chewy pretzel bun to complement the savory flavor of these delicious grilled brats.

"We know our fans love any reason to celebrate, and there is no bigger party in the world than Oktoberfest," said Doug Koegeboehn, Wienerschnitzel's Chief Marketing Officer. "Wienerschnitzel is home to America's favorite hot dogs, so you better believe our grilled brats are ridiculously delicious. We're looking forward to having some fun and celebrating this historic holiday because nothing says Oktoberfest more than bratwurst... especially in our new pretzel bun."

Guests can add a taste of Oktoberfest to any Wienerschnitzel hot dog item with the option to substitute a grilled bratwurst. Additionally, fans can upgrade any hot dog with the new pretzel bun for an additional charge.

Click here to view the Oktoberfest commercial. For more information and to find your nearest Wienerschnitzel, visit www.wienerschnitzel.com/locations.

About Wienerschnitzel

Founded by John Galardi in 1961 with a single hot dog stand in Wilmington, California, Wienerschnitzel (www.wienerschnitzel.com) is a bona fide pioneer of the limited-service food industry. Today, Wienerschnitzel is the world's largest hot dog franchise and home of America's favorite Chili Dog. Based in Irvine, California, the parent company, Galardi Group, franchises restaurants throughout the U.S., including Wienerschnitzel, Hamburger Stand, and Tastee Freez. An iconic American brand with a devoted following for over 50 years, Wienerschnitzel is poised for exponential growth, both domestically and internationally. With a refreshed marketing focus, Wienerschnitzel has received tremendous media attention and accolades including Franchise Times' "20 to Watch" and voted Best Fast Food in Southern California by the readers of Los Angeles Daily News for five years and running. In 2016, Wienerschnitzel was ranked #146 in the coveted Entrepreneur Magazine Franchise 500. Additionally, the company recently introduced a unique next generation store design featuring a smaller footprint and a lower cost of entry; while the simple menu allows for easy execution and lower food costs. As a family owned and operated company, Wienerschnitzel is in a unique position to always put its franchise partners first and is actively recruiting passionate franchise candidates to grow with the brand during this very exciting time. For more information on owning a Wienerschnitzel, visit franchising.wienerschnitzel.com or contact Ted Milburn - Director, Franchise Development at franchising@wienerschnitzel.com.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3055397



Wienerschnitzel Media Contact

Aileen Donovan

Powerhouse Public Relations

949-261-2216

aileen@powrhousepr.com




Regulatory News:

ABIVAX (Paris:ABVX) (Euronext Paris: FR0012333284 ABVX), an innovative biotechnology company targeting the immune system to eliminate viral disease reported that it has completed the second key milestone of the Strategic Industrial Innovation Project CaReNa.

Started in 2013, this collaborative project led by ABIVAX with the participation of CNRS and Theradiag intends to develop new therapeutic and diagnostic solutions targeting the protein-RNA interactions with HIV/AIDS as the primary indication. The total cost of the project is 18.2 M, of which 13.6 M will be born by ABIVAX. The project benefits from the help of Bpifrance in form of refundable loans and subsidies totaling 7.3 M, of which 5.2 M are used in ABIVAX operations. So far, the Company has received 3.4 M and 1.8 M are still to come before the end of 2018.

The completion of this second key milestone of CaReNa is the consequence of the progress achieved in the development of the Company's flagship project, ABX464, a clinical stage therapeutic candidate that may become a key part of a functional cure for HIV/AIDS.

ABIVAX discovered ABX464 using its unique and proprietary antiviral technological platform (set up in collaboration with the CNRS and the Curie Institute) dedicated to generating small anti-viral molecules with a novel mode of action. The platform is based on biological screening systems, built on a thorough understanding of the processes involved in viral RNA splicing inside human host cells that can reveal the ability of ABIVAX's proprietary chemical compounds to inhibit protein-RNA interactions.

ABX464 is a novel, first-in-class small molecule with unique properties and mode of action. It has not only been demonstrated to inhibit viral replication in vitro and in vivo, but also to induce a long-lasting reduction of HIV viral load after treatment interruption in animal models. As a result, scientists believe this molecule may be the first of a new class of anti-retroviral drugs, which may lead to a functional cure for HIV patients.

ABX464 is currently in mid-stage clinical testing and could be approved for use in patients as early as 2020. In 2014, two Phase I studies conducted on healthy subjects demonstrated that the product was well tolerated at the anticipated therapeutic doses. In 2015, a phase IIa study in 80 patients infected with HIV provided initial evidence of the activity of ABX464 in humans. Data from this placebo-controlled dose-escalation study, presented in February 2016 during CROI (Conference on Retrovirus and Opportunistic Infections) in Boston MA and in July 2016 during the 21st AIDS Conference in Durban-South Africa, demonstrated the safety and efficacy of ABX464 monotherapy in the treatment of naive patients infected with HIV. A reduction in the viral load of at least 0.5 log (more than 68% reduction) was observed in 1 patient out of 6 in the 75 mg group, 2 patients out of 6 in the 100 mg group and 4 patients out of 6 in the 150 mg group. There was no significant variation in the viral load in the 6 patients who received a placebo in these groups. The undesirable effects noted were those typically observed in the context of antiviral treatments.

In order to demonstrate the long-lasting effect in HIV patients, a second Phase IIa study has been initiated in Spain, France and Belgium. Known as ABX464-004, this study is designed to demonstrate the long-term effect of ABX464 on the viral load that had previously been observed during preclinical trials. The study plans to recruit 28 patients suffering from HIV, whose infection is well controlled by "boosted" Darunavir, one of the reference anti-retroviral treatments for AIDS. ABX464 is being administered to 21 of these patients in addition to their regular anti-retroviral treatment (ART). The 7 remaining patients receive a placebo, in addition to their ART. After 28 days, all treatments are stopped, and the study then measures the time to reappearance of the virus in the blood of the patients. The main efficacy criterion of the study is the time to viral load rebound. This rebound has been studied and shown to come from the "HIV reservoir", or pockets of virus hidden in areas of the body that are not affected by the current combinations of ART. The preliminary results of the study will become available before the end of 2016.

"The validation of the completion of the second critical milestone of CaReNa by Bpifrance represents important recognition of the advances achieved in the development of our drug candidate ABX464 and provides additional non-dilutive funding to progress towards future milestones," said Prof. Hartmut Ehrlich, M.D., CEO of ABIVAX. We are grateful to Bpifrance, which has been supporting the project from the very beginning and continues to bring us critical resources for this development program and the expansion of our anti-viral technology platform"

ABIVAX is an innovative biotechnology company focused on targeting the immune system to eliminate viral disease. ABIVAX leverages three technology platforms for drug discovery: an antiviral, an adjuvant, and a hyper-immune platform. ABX464, its most advanced compound, is currently in Phase II clinical trials and is a first-in-class oral small antiviral molecule which blocks HIV replication through a unique mechanism of action. In addition, ABIVAX is advancing multiple preclinical candidates against additional viral targets (i.e. Chikungunya, Ebola, Dengue) as well as an adjuvant (immune enhancer), and several of these compounds are planned to enter clinical development within the next 12 to 18 months. A recently updated corporate presentation, which includes a timeline for the company's anticipated news flow, is available at www.abivax.com.

Follow us on Twitter @ABIVAX

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913006351/en/

Contacts:

ABIVAX

Financial Direction

Alain Chevallier, +33 1 53 83 08 41

Alain.chevallier@abivax.com

or

Citigate Dewe Rogerson

Antoine Denry/Alexandre Dechaux, +33 1 53 32 84 75

abivax@citigate.fr

or

LifeSci Advisors

Chris Maggos, +41 79 367 6254

chris@lifesciadvisors.com

or

Press Relations

ALIZE RP

Caroline Carmagnol/Margaux Pronost

+33 6 64 18 99 59 +33 1 44 54 36 65

abivax@alizerp.com
PUNE, India, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market research report"Software-Defined Security Marketby Component (Solution and Services), Enforcement Point (Virtual Machines, Network Security Gateway), Deployment Mode (Cloud and On-Premise), End User (Enterprise, Telecom/Cloud Service Provider) - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, market to grow from USD 1.59 Billion in 2016 to USD 6.76 Billion by 2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 33.6%.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 95 market data Tables and 54 Figures spread through 158 Pages and in-depth TOC on"Software-Defined Security Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/software-defined-security-market-146062541.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

The Software-Defined Security Market is growing rapidly because of the need for policy-driven, scalable, and programmable security architecture, need for faster response and increased security, and upsurge in cloud adoption.

"Control automation & orchestration solution to grow at the highest CAGR"

The report segments the global market on the basis of solutions that includes security software, control automation & orchestration solution, security compliance & policy management, and performance management & reporting. Control automation & orchestration solution is expected to witness the highest growth rate. Automation and orchestration allows for the provisioning and automated configuration of all of the individual resources that collectively comprise Software-Defined Security.

"Support & maintenance service to grow at the highest CAGR"

The report segments the services into support & maintenance, training & education, integration & testing, and consulting services. Among these, support & maintenance services are expected to witness the highest CAGR. Automation and orchestration allows for the provisioning and automated configuration of all of the individual resources that collectively comprise Software-Defined Security. Support and maintenance services are critical service offering in this market, which includes assistance provided during installation and maintenance activities. These services are basically provided for data and software/solution maintenance.

"Cloud service providers to experience the highest CAGR"

Among end users, cloud service providers will lead the Software-Defined Security Market with a wide range of organizations adopting these solutions in all regions. Software-Defined Security provides a iexible and centralized security solution by abstracting the security mechanisms from the hardware layer to a software layer. Such separation provides a scalable distributed security solution, which virtualizes the security functions but remains manageable as a single logical system.

"North America to be the largest revenue generator"

The report has been segmented by region into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Latin America. North America is expected to continue being the largest revenue generator region for Software-Defined Security vendors for the next five years, followed by Europe. Whereas, MEA is expected to be the fastest-growing region in the Software-Defined Security Market during the forecast period. The market growth in developing regions can be attributed to the enhancements in technology.

Ask for Sample Pages @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsample.asp?id=146062541

Major vendors that offer Software-Defined Security solutions are Check Point Technologies (Israel), Cisco Systems (California), Intel Corporation (California), VMware, Inc. (California), Symantec Corporation (California), EMC Corporation (Massachusetts), Fortinet, Inc. (California), Juniper Networks (California), and Palo Alto Networks (California). These vendors have adopted different types of organic and inorganic growth strategies such as new product launches, partnerships & collaborations, and mergers & acquisitions to expand their offerings in the Software-Defined Security market.

Browse Related Reports:

Software-Defined Storage Market by Component [Platforms/Solutions (Software-Defined Server, Data Security & Compliance, Controller, Data Management, and Hypervisor), Services], Usage, Organization Size, Application Area - Global Forecast to 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/software-defined-storage-sds-networking-sdsn-market-1067.html

Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) Market by Solution (SDN, SDS, SDC, and Application), Services (Consulting, Integration and Deployment, and Managed Services), Data Center Type, Verticals, and Regions - Global Forecast to 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/software-defined-data-center-sddc-market-1025.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 INC.

701 Pike Street

Suite 2175, Seattle,

WA 98101, United States

Tel: 1-888-600-6441

Email:sales@marketsandmarkets.com



Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/telecom-it

Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets
NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- C-Suite Network, the world's most trusted network of c-suite leaders, announced today that Alive Inside has been selected as the Charity Spotlight at the C-Suite Network Conference in New York City. The documentary, that won the Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, highlights the healing power of music and its ability to uncover the deepest parts of our humanity.

The stirring documentary follows numerous visionaries in healthcare, including social worker Dan Cogen, founder of the non-profit organization Music & Memory, as he fights against a broken healthcare system to demonstrate music's ability to combat memory loss and restore a sense of self to those who suffer from it. Filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett will be at the conference to introduce the film to over 400 c-suite executives that will be in attendance.

"I'm excited to have Alive Inside featured as the charity spotlight during our conference. Music has played a pivotal role in my family's life and I want our guests to learn about this incredibly powerful film," said Chairman Jeffrey Hayzlett. "It's an honor to have filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett introduce the film to all of our c-suite executives and raising awareness about the healing power of music."

The conference connects attendees with industry experts, who share their wealth of experience and knowledge through in-depth interviews and panel discussions. C-Suite Radio's Adam Johnson and MSNBC's JJ Ramberg will host the program.

To learn more about the conference, click here.

The C-Suite Network is currently matching your donations. To donate, visit: http://www.aliveinside.org/c-suite.

About C-Suite Network

C-Suite Network is the world's most trusted network of C-Suite leaders, with a focus on providing growth, development and networking opportunities for business executives with titles of vice president and above.

C-Suite Network Membership brings leaders together through a private online community for executives. C-Suite Network also offers invitation-only conferences held three times per year, custom-tailored content on the C-Suite Network blog, C-Suite TV, C-Suite Radio, C-Suite Book Club, and educational programs from C-Suite Academy. Learn more at www.c-suitenetwork.com, or connect on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Media Contact:



Keira Rodriguez

Senior Media Strategist

TallGrass Public Relations

914-830-3241

Email Contact




DUBLIN, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Worldwide Hybrid Cloud Computing Market - Solutions (Application Architecture, Network Integration, Management Systems), Service Model (Iaas, PaaS, SaaS), Verticals, By Regions - Drivers, Opportunities, Trends, and Forecasts, 2016-2022" report to their offering.

The main objective of this study is to understand the world hybrid cloud market. The focus is on different hybrid cloud services and applications available in the market with a keen focus on Application Architecture, Network Integration and Management Systems. The report explains in detail about the industry structure of the hybrid cloud penetration across the various industry sectors, the total market size of the world hybrid cloud industry and its segments.

One of the important aspects of the report is the future outlook, which gives a fair idea of how the industry is going to perform in the coming years. In addition, the report also discusses the key players in the market, how hybrid cloud technology supports organisations to shift data and applications from private to the public cloud to reduce the web traffic.

The world hybrid cloud market estimate in 2016 is $41.15 billion and the estimated market for 2022 is $241.13 billion, driven by all segments of the industry. The high growth is mainly from Manufacturing and Telecommunication & IT industries. The Software as a Service (SaaS) sector is expected to grow at a fast pace in the next five years with the expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34.1% by 2022.

Companies Mentioned:

Amazon Web Services, Inc.

AT&T, Inc.

Atlantic.Net

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Citrix Systems Inc.

Computer Sciences Corporation

Dell Inc.

EMC Corporation

Equinix, Inc.

Green House Data

International Business Machines Corporation

Microsoft Corporation

Oracle Corporation

Rackspace Hosting, Inc.

RightScale, Inc.

Velostrata

Report Structure:

1 Industry Outlook

2 Report Outline

3 Market Snapshot

4 Market Outlook

5 Market Characteristics

6 Trends and Roadmap

7 Solutions: Market Size and Analysis

8 Service Model: Market Size and Analysis

9 Verticals: Market Size and Analysis

10 Regions: Market Size and Analysis

11 Competitive Landscape

12 Global Generalist

13 Companies to Watch for

14 End-User Views

15 What Our Peers Are Estimating

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/knzr65/worldwide_hybrid

Related Topics: Cloud Computing and Storage

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
DUBLIN, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "US Micro Irrigation Market Outlook to 2020 - Growing Water Scarcity and High Efficiency of Drip Irrigation to Stimulate Growth" report to their offering.

The micro irrigation industry in the US grew rapidly during 2010-2015 owing to superior efficiency of the systems in water usage and crop yields, easy implementation of fertigation and chemigation, lesser labor requirements and minimized fertilizer / nutrient loss. Several beneficial attributes of micro irrigation systems coupled with water scarcity and drought situations in many states are likely to catalyze the growth of the micro irrigation industry in the near future.

US micro irrigation market poses a lucrative opportunity for new energy efficient equipments since the market is at its growing stages at the moment. Presently, about 65% of the total irrigated land in the US has employed micro irrigation systems for the purpose of cultivating crops. Moreover, only about 55.0 million acres of all US cropland and pastureland were irrigated as of 2015. Hence, growing water and food scarcity presents huge potential for the micro irrigation industry to expand and proper in the near future. The industry was quite concentrated with a bunch of players comprising for a major bulk of the overall market. Lindsay, Valmont, Netafim, The Toro Company and Jain Irrigation were the prominent companies developing and marketing micro irrigation system as of 2015.

Appropriate business model selection is amongst the major decision that a business has to make before starting its operations. A company must have a good network of dealer to cater to the demand across the country. Since, sprinkler and drip irrigation systems are individually more suited for a particular segment of crops, companies must make an effort in brand building by judiciously marketing and promoting the right irrigation system for cultivating a particular type of crop. This would help them build their brand in particular segments which would be highly beneficial for the companies in the longer run.

Companies Mentioned:

EPC Industries

Jain Irrigation Inc.

Lindsay Corporation

Nelson Irrigation

Netafim

Rain Bird Corporation

Reinke

The Toro Company

T-L Irrigation

Valmont Industries

Report Structure:

1. Executive Summary

2. Value Chain of the US Micro Irrigation Market

3. US Micro Irrigation Market Introduction and Size, 2010-2015

4. US Micro Irrigation Market Segmentation

5. US Sprinkler Irrigation Market Introduction and Size, 2010-2015

6. US Sprinkler Irrigation Market Segmentation

7. US Drip Irrigation Market Introduction and Size

8. US Drip Irrigation Market Segmentation

9. Cost of Installing Micro Irrigation System in the US

10. Porter Five Forces Analysis of the US Micro Irrigation Market

11. Issues & Challenges in the US Micro Irrigation Market

12. Trade Scenario in the US Micro Irrigation Market

13. Government Roles and Policies in the US Micro Irrigation Market

14. Company Profiles

15. Market Share of Major Companies in the US Micro Irrigation Market

16. US Micro Irrigation Market Future Outlook and Projections, 2016-2020

17. Analyst Recommendations

18. Macro Economic Factors Affecting the US Micro Irrigation Market

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/63lbz8/us_micro

Related Topics: Agriculture, Water, Agricultural Machinery and Equipment

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
Technavio has announced the top six leading vendors in their recentglobal aluminum powders, pastes, and flakes market 2016-2020report. This research report also lists five other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period.

Competitive vendor landscape

According to the report, the market for aluminum powders, pastes, and flakes market is moderately fragmented with a handful of global players. The top six companies accounted for almost half of the global market share in 2015. However, with the increase in the number of new players, the market share for these top vendors is dropping and is being shared by the new players.

"Significant regional differences attribute to the varying rate of growth and development of the aluminum powders, pastes, and flakes market in different regions. APAC with a CAGR of over 5% is the fastest and the largest market globally. It has a large customer base, with the key vendors accounting for a major share of the market. In contrast to APAC, other regions such as Europe and North America have moderate customer bases," says Ajay Adikhari a lead metals and minerals analyst from Technavio.

Request a sample report: http://www.technavio.com/request-a-sample?report=53446

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Technaviochemicals and materialsresearch analysts identify the following key vendors:

Alcoa

Alcoa engineers and provides innovative lightweight metals such as aluminum, titanium, and nickel. Its products are used in automobiles, aircraft, packaging, building and construction, commercial transportation, oil and gas, defense, consumer electronics, and industrial applications.

Alcoa established its presence in the aluminum powders, pastes, and flakes sector with offerings such as alumina, investment castings, fastening systems, architectural aluminum systems, aluminum powder, primary aluminum, aluminum flat rolled products, aluminum wheels, and other extruded aluminum and forged products.

AMG Alpoco UK

AMG Alpoco UK manufactures specialty products for aluminum, welding, super alloy, steel, hard-facing, and glass industries. The company produces other products that include chromium metal, ferroniobium, aluminum powders, ferrotitanium, nickel niobium, and cerium oxide-based glass polishing powders. It also manufactures air and inert gas atomized aluminum powders, centrifugally spun or disintegrated aluminum needles and granules, and aluminum alloy powders.

The aluminum powders are used in the paint, chemical, pigment, specialty alloys, brazing and welding, powder metallurgy, aluminothermic, and propulsion industries. The company glass, polishing compounds are manufactured under the brand names Regipol, Polimax, and Decol.

ECKA Granules

ECKA manufactures metal alloys and powders for various industries, such as information technology, automotive, electrical engineering, and chemical and medical engineering.

ECKA Granules is one of the world's largest manufacturers of aluminum metal powders. Its products are marketed through brands such as ECKA, ECKA ALUMIX, Micro Tronic, Alulight, HOYT, ECKA LACOMET, and ECKA BROMIX. The company is engaged primarily in the manufacture of alloys and metal powder. Its product portfolio includes pellets, granules ingots, and powders of aluminum, tin, magnesium, lead, zinc, silicon, and copper.

MEPCO

MEPCO is a manufacturer of non-ferrous metal powder and paste worldwide. The company is introducing specialty products for plastics, powder coatings, and automotive coating with silica encapsulated and resin-coated pigments. The company has an ISO 9001 certification, and it sells its products in 40 countries. The subsidiaries of the company are MPMP, NALCO, MSP, and ALCO.

MEPCO in the aluminum powders, pastes, and flakes sector includes products categories such as aluminum, bismuth, calcium, silicide, cobalt, copper, silver, tin, tungsten, zinc, gold bronze, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon.

RUSAL

RUSAL manufactures and sells aluminum and related products. Its products include primary aluminum, aluminum alloys, bauxite and alumina, high-purity aluminum, aluminum coarse and fine powders, foil and packaging, silicon, corundum, gallium, and wire rods.

RUSAL in the aluminum powders, pastes, and flakes sector offers coarse, fine powders, and grains for the chemical, energy, metals and mining, and construction industries. They also offer powders for military equipment applications.

Toyal Group

Toyal group produces advanced aluminum pigments and other effect pigments for different industrial applications, such as automotive coatings, plastics, industrial coatings, special effect plastic coatings, inks, and cosmetics.

Toyal Group in the aluminum powders, pastes, and flakes sector offers a full range of aluminum pastes, flakes, pigments, and powders for the use in the automotive and industrial application. It is also a supplier of spherical aluminum powders for the solid rocket motor industry.

Other prominent vendors:

Ampal

The company produces aluminum powder for various industries, including automotive, precision instruments and household appliances.

Bahrain Atomizer

Bahrain Atomizer provides aluminum for various applications, including electrical, construction, and transport.

ECKART

The company is a manufacturer of metallic and pearlescent pigments. It serves various industries, including paints and coatings, graphic arts, plastics, and lightweight concrete.

Silberline

Silberline offers aluminum pigments for various industries, including automotive, paints, plastics, and industrial coatings.

Valimet

The company produces spherical atomized metal powders for commercial, military, and custom applications.

Browse Related Reports:

Global Aluminum Composite Panels Market 2016-2020

Global Aluminum Extrusion Market 2016-2020

Global Aluminum Casting Market 2016-2020

Do you need a report on a market in a specific geographical cluster or country but can't find what you're looking for? Don't worry, Technavio also takes client requests. Please contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and our analysts will be happy to create a customized report just for you.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005131/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Crosswinds Holdings Inc. ("Crosswinds" or the "Company") (TSX: CWI) is pleased to announce that it has formed Crosswinds Re, a new specialty Cayman reinsurance company. Crosswinds Re has been issued a license from the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority ("CIMA") to operate as a Class B(iii) reinsurer.

Crosswinds Re will act as a specialty reinsurer as part of Crosswinds' integrated insurance, reinsurance and asset management structure with an initial focus on the Florida property and casualty market.

Crosswinds Re has been formed with an initial USD$200,000 regulatory capital contribution made by Crosswinds through a newly established fund structure, Crosswinds Private Equity Partners (C.I.), L.P. (the "Fund"). Crosswinds is the sole initial limited partner of the Fund. The Fund's general partner, Crosswinds Private Equity Partners (C.I.), G.P., is wholly-owned by Crosswinds. Crosswinds' intends to use the Fund to raise additional capital for Crosswinds Re to execute its business plan.

Crosswinds is also pleased to announce that Paul Markey will serve as an independent director on the Board of Directors of Crosswinds Re. Mr. Markey is the retired Chairman of Aon's Bermuda based insurance and reinsurance broking operation, Aon (Bermuda) Ltd and the holding company Aon Group (Bermuda) Ltd. Paul has spent 21 years in Bermuda, joining Aon's Bermuda operations in 1994 with a mandate to implement a reinsurance broking strategy in Bermuda following the emergence of the Bermuda property catastrophe market in 1992 and 1993. Mr. Markey worked for Aon for over 25 years, previously having been EVP in their New York City reinsurance broking operations. Prior to joining Aon in 1989 Mr. Markey spent 10 years with Gen Re in both the U.S. and London. Mr. Markey started his career with a Lloyds syndicate in the 1970's.

Crosswinds Holdings Inc.

Crosswinds is a publicly traded private equity firm and asset manager targeting strategic and opportunistic investments in the financial services sector with a particular focus on the insurance industry.

Contacts:

Colin King

1-800-439-5136

info@crosswindsinc.com

www.crosswindsinc.com




MCLEAN, VA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- Freddie Mac (OTCQB: FMCC) today priced a $515 million Structured Agency Credit Risk (STACR) debt notes offering, its sixth one this year. Through STACR, Freddie Mac transfers a significant portion of its mortgage credit risk on certain groups of loans to private investors.

Pricing for STACR Series 2016-HQA3:

M-1 class was one-month LIBOR plus a spread of 80 basis points.

M-2 class was one month LIBOR plus a spread of 135 basis points.

M-3 class was one month LIBOR plus a spread of 385 basis points.

B class was one month LIBOR plus a spread of 900 basis points.





BofA Merrill Lynch and Goldman, Sachs & Co. will serve as co-lead managers and joint bookrunners.

With the STACR 2016-HQA3 offering of loans with LTVs ranging from 80 to 95 percent, Freddie Mac holds the senior loss risk in the capital structure and a portion of the risk in the Class M-1, M-2 and M-3 tranches, and the first loss Class B tranche.

STACR 2016-HQA3 has a reference pool of single-family mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of more than $15.7 billion. The reference pool consists of a subset of 30-year fixed-rate single-family mortgages acquired by Freddie Mac.

Freddie Mac has led the market in introducing new credit risk-sharing initiatives with STACR, Agency Credit Insurance Structure (ACIS) and Whole Loan Securities (WLS(SM)), and was the first agency to market these types of credit risk transfer transactions. The company has since grown its investor base to more than 200 unique investors, including insurers and reinsurers. Since 2013, the company has transferred a significant portion of credit risk on nearly $530 billion of UPB on single-family mortgages. Additional information about the company's single-family risk sharing offerings is available at http://www.freddiemac.com/creditriskofferings/. Freddie Mac also has a STACR issuance calendar to help investors plan their allocations.

This announcement is not an offer to sell any Freddie Mac securities. Offers for any given security are made only through applicable offering circulars and related supplements, which incorporate Freddie Mac's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on February 18, 2016; all other reports Freddie Mac filed with the SEC pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act) since December 31, 2015, excluding any information "furnished" to the SEC on Form 8-K; and all documents that Freddie Mac files with the SEC pursuant to Sections 13(a), 13(c) or 14 of the Exchange Act, excluding any information furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K.

Freddie Mac's press releases sometimes contain forward-looking statements. A description of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in these and other forward-looking statements can be found in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, and its reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K, filed with the SEC and available on the Investor Relations page of the company's Web site at www.FreddieMac.com/investors and the SEC's Web site at www.sec.gov.

Freddie Mac was established by Congress in 1970 to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the nation's residential mortgage markets. Freddie Mac supports communities across the nation by providing mortgage capital to lenders. Today Freddie Mac is making home possible for approximately one in four home borrowers and is one of the largest sources of financing for multifamily housing. Additional information is available at FreddieMac.com, Twitter @FreddieMac and Freddie Mac's blog FreddieMac.com/blog.
BOULDER, CO--(Marketwired - September 13, 2016) - MBio Diagnostics, Inc., a company leading a new era in rapid, on-the-spot clinical diagnostics and sample testing, today announced a product development collaboration with Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Researchers at Cincinnati Children's, led by Hector Wong, MD, director, Division of Critical Care Medicine, have been investigating biomarker panels that provide prognostic and predictive patient stratification, particularly in the context of septic shock. MBio will collaborate with Dr. Wong to develop a multi-marker panel to risk stratify patients with septic shock in a clinically relevant time frame.

"I am particularly excited about the MBio technology because of its ability to deliver multiple results in near real-time with the ease-of-use required for implementation in critical care settings," said Dr. Wong. "The MBio Array System has the potential to be a unique and important new tool for immune system and host response monitoring." Cincinnati Children's is providing institutional funding through their Innovation Fund for this product development partnership. MBio Diagnostics will work with Dr. Wong to adapt the existing panel of tests to the MBio platform.

Prognostic and predictive patient stratification are fundamental elements of precision medicine, which seeks to target patient populations in which a drug or intervention is more likely to be effective. Prognostic enrichment strategies select patients with a greater likelihood of having a disease-related event. Predictive enrichment strategies select patients who are more likely to respond to an intervention or drug, based on a biological or physiologic mechanism. Enrichment strategies are particularly effective when selecting patients for treatment trials in highly heterogeneous syndromes, such as septic shock. By using prognostic and predictive strategies in trial design, therapies for critically ill patients can be optimized more quickly. Ultimately this approach will provide precision guidance to therapy in the clinic. In the context of critical care, these precision medicine techniques would ideally be carried out in real-time.

The MBio Array System utilizes MBio's proprietary LightDeck  technology, which enables simple, multiplex testing in a compact system. This portable, easy-to-use multiplex reader can be placed into a wide variety of clinical situations, including directly placed in the intensive care unit (ICU). According to MBio CEO Chris Myatt, application partnerships are an important aspect of MBio's business strategy. "The biomarker panel developed by Dr. Wong and delivered in real time is the first step towards precision medicine at the point of care," said Dr. Myatt. "Adapting high-value content, such as derived from Dr. Wong's outstanding investigations of pediatric sepsis patients, provides unique solutions to very challenging healthcare problems."

About MBio Diagnostics

MBio Diagnostics is leading a new era in rapid, on-the-spot clinical diagnostics and sample testing. Our portable MBio Array System and disposable cartridges enable low-cost, rapid answers in 1 to 20 minutes. MBio aims to be the platform of choice for leading providers and users of clinical and analytical testing services in all market segments including: medical, veterinary, environmental, food, agricultural and military. www.mbiodx.com

About Cincinnati Children's

Cincinnati Children's, a non-profit, pediatric, academic medical center established in 1883, is internationally recognized for improving child health and transforming delivery of care through fully integrated, globally recognized research, education and innovation. It is one of the top three recipients of pediatric research grants from the National Institutes of Health, ranked third in the nation among all Honor Roll hospitals in U.S. News and World Report's Best Children's Hospitals, and a research and teaching affiliate of the University of Cincinnati's College of Medicine. Its patient population includes the eight-county primary service area covering parts of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. A destination for children with complex medical conditions, it also served patients from all 50 states and nearly 70 countries during the past year. Additional information can be found at www.cincinnatichildrens.org. Connect on the Cincinnati Children's blog, via Facebook and on Twitter.

Contacts



Company:

Chris Myatt

MBio Diagnostics, Inc.

Phone: 303-952-2815

Email: Email contact





Media:

Karen Sharma

MacDougall Biomedical Communications

Phone: 781-235-3060

Email: Email contact





Cincinnati Children's:

Mike Pistone

Phone: 513-803-8020

Email: Email contact


SAN FRANCISCO, CA and LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM and HONG KONG, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/13/16 -- MOVE Guides, helping HR teams move their employees around the world -- for any reason, any policy and any location, today announced that it was recognized as Relocation Management Company of the Year in APAC at the 2016 Expatriate Management & Mobility Awards (EMMAs).

Held during the Forum for Expatriate Management (FEM) APAC Summit in Singapore on Thursday, September 8, 2016, the EMMAs celebrate success, best practices and outstanding contribution to global mobility. MOVE Guides was named winner of the Relocation Management Company of the Year category for demonstrating a high level of knowledge and understanding, coordinating the appropriate vendors across various locations and responding to the needs of its clients and assignees.

In particular, MOVE Guides was highlighted for its innovative use of technology, which will pave the way for the future of relocation companies. The company was also noted for being a disruptor of the industry, creating a dynamic technology platform that brings together all the pieces of an international relocation.

"MOVE Guides was founded to challenge the status quo of the talent mobility market, providing a comprehensive, single-platform approach to managing every stage and each detail of an employee relocation," said Brynne Herbert, MOVE Guides CEO. "We are thrilled that the judges of the EMMAs have recognized the strength of our solution -- the Talent Mobility Cloud -- as well as our dedication to customer service and support to facilitate the relocation process for businesses and, most importantly, their mobile employees."

Since its founding in 2011, MOVE Guides has introduced several innovations to the mobility market. These include instant and configurable cost estimates, which enable businesses to project employee relocation and assignment costs based on company policies, taxation, compensation, foreign exchange, cost of living and more than 25 different types of services, including immigration, shipping and temporary accommodation. MOVE Guides also delivers a single mobility view for easy collaboration among internal stakeholders, employees and external vendors. The result is a streamlined, compliant approach to relocation, while ensuring employee satisfaction throughout.

Additional information about the 2016 EMMAs can be accessed at: http://apac.forum-expat-management.com/awards.

About MOVE Guides

MOVE Guides helps HR teams move their employees around the world for any reason, any policy and any location. MOVE Guides partners with leading multinational companies to deliver a full global mobility program across 200 countries with their Talent Mobility Cloud platform, concierge-level support for employees and a global supply chain of partners.

MOVE Guides has offices in the Americas, EMEA and APAC, and is backed by New Enterprise Associates and Notion Capital. For more information, go to: http://www.moveguides.com and follow MOVE Guides on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
MANAMA, BAHRAIN -- (Marketwired) -- 10/13/16 -- Authentic Mexican cuisine has officially arrived in Bahrain, and it goes by the name of Cantina Kahlo. Situated within The Ritz-Carlton, Bahrain and due to celebrate its grand opening on October 18, 2016, Cantina Kahlo artfully blends 5-star service with Mexican culinary authenticity for a dining experience like nothing else in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The gastronomic journey begins with the location. Positioned adjacent to the legendary Trader Vic's, Cantina Kahlo welcomes diners with an equally glamorous atmosphere inspired by the bold art and colors of Mexico. The restaurant then opens onto an alfresco terrace nestled in a lush garden. From here, guests can gaze over the turquoise waters of the private beach of The Ritz-Carlton, Bahrain.

Such a setting demands an extraordinary menu, which is precisely what Chef Cesar Daniel de Leon Torres delivers. Working with a fully dedicated team of chefs from Mexico, Chef Torres has composed a menu of dishes and flavors authentic to Mexico and unique among restaurants in Bahrain. Selections include artisanal tacos, ceviche, guacamole as well as favorites like "sopes" and mouth-watering "flautas", besides other delicacies ranging from pulled chicken and roasted pineapple sour cream to field mushrooms and beef tongue.

In a nod to authenticity, Chef Torres, who joins the team in Bahrain after honing his skills in the most renowned Mexican restaurants in Miami, works primarily with ingredients imported directly from Mexico. Additionally, guests can pair their meal with one of Cantina Kahlo's meticulously curated Mexican beers or cocktails, and the famous Mexican Cola, "Jarritos".

Commenting on the grand opening of Cantina Kahlo, Mr. Christian Zandonella, General Manager of The Ritz-Carlton, Bahrain said, "We welcome our guests to our newest restaurant, Cantina Kahlo, which is a true piece of art on both the culinary front and with regard to its exciting interior decor that so effortlessly captures the essence of Mexico. Every single piece of art here has a story, and we look forward to sharing that story with our guests on their journey through Mexico's culinary traditions". Providing a soundtrack to that journey is the Mariachi performers who will arrive from Mexico to serenade guests during the restaurant's grand opening week.

As the newest addition to this luxury resort in Bahrain, Cantina Kahlo promises to gratify the palates of both gastronomes and those who simply appreciate a delicious meal. The resort's legendary 5-star service means guests will have every need anticipated, while each dish's flavors enable them to travel vicariously to one of the world's great culinary destinations.

To further the commitment of bringing authentic Mexican cuisine and entertainment to the hotel, the Kahlo Club, an outdoor lounge adjacent to Cantina Kahlo, will open in November 2016. The lounge, which will be situated in the luscious garden lagoon, will serve a light menu to act as an extension of the new dining concept presented at Cantina Kahlo.

Those who wish to carry more than the memories home with them may also opt to try one of the restaurant's upcoming Mexican cooking classes. From cocktails to guacamole, each course will reveal the trade secrets necessary to prepare a dish or drink with all the passion and flavor of a native.

Of course, to eat like a native, you simply need a hearty appetite, a flair for adventure, and a table at Cantina Kahlo.

About The Ritz-Carlton, Bahrain

Situated along the north coast of Bahrain at the edge of Manama Bay, The Ritz-Carlton, Bahrain welcomes guests with an enchanting blend of luxury and seclusion. Visitors will discover a paradise endowed with a private beach, a picturesque lagoon and both outdoor and indoor swimming pools. Yet the natural splendor is enhanced by the amenities of this Bahrain beach resort. Guests can unwind in spacious villas, suites and guest rooms where marble bathrooms and plush bedding promise restorative peace. Ten restaurants and lounges gratify every craving, while a world-class spa can erase daily stresses. Visitors are invited to discover an array of marine-based activities, from kayaking to snorkeling; play a round of golf on the 18-hole course at the Royal Golf Club; or explore Bahrain's fascinating mix of ancient and strikingly modern attractions. In addition, the resort's more than 3,500 square meters of event space promises the perfect venue for any meeting or special occasion.

About The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C., of Chevy Chase, MD., currently operates more than 90 hotels in over 30 countries and territories. More than 40 hotel and residential projects are under development around the globe. For more information or reservations, visit the company web site at www.ritzcarlton.com, for the latest company updates, visit news.ritzcarlton.com and to join the live conversation, use RCMemories. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Marriott International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAR).

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3067291



Contact:

Ghizlane Rahali

Associate Director of Public Relations

Email Contact



The Ritz-Carlton, Bahrain

Bldg. 112, Rd. 40, Block 428

Al Seef District

Manama, Bahrain

9 73 175 80000




The makers of Tiger Zinda Hai, the sequel of the 2012 film Ek Tha Tiger, have released the poster for the film and it confirms what fans have been waiting to hear.

The film will be bringing back Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan together after a long break. Earlier reports had suggested that the Baar Baar Dekho actress may not be seen in the film and would be replaced by a Hollywood actress. However the makers have now confirmed the cast for the film.

Yash Raj Films, the producers, gave out all the details of the film on Twitter.

The film will see Ali Abbas Zafar directing Salman Khan once again after Sultan. While the poster reveals that the film will have a Christmas 2017 release, trade analyst Tarun Adarsh has given out more details saying that the film will release on 22 December 2017.

Mark the PRECISE date: #TigerZindaHai releases on 22 Dec 2017. #Christmas 2017. Salman as Tiger and Katrina as Zoya. Sequel to #EkThaTiger.  taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) September 13, 2016

The 2012 film directed by Kabir Khan narrated the love story of an Indian RAW agent and a Pakistani ISI spy.

The film went on to become the highest grossing film of that year leaving behind even Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Jab Tak Hain Jaan.
The Cauvery issue flared up on Monday after the Supreme Court directed the Karnataka government to release 12000 cusecs to Tamil Nadu till 20 September, modifying its earlier order that said 15000 cusecs were to be released.

The city burnt as protesters set vehicles on fire; trucks and buses from Tamil Nadu were pelted with stones near Bengaluru.

As the issue gathered momentum, so did social media chatter on the issue. Various users called out not only for peace but also there were many who expressed concerns about living in Bengaluru and the city's relationship with Chennai.

The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation had suspended all bus services to Tamil Nadu and metro rail services in the city were temporarily suspended in Bengaluru. Every week a significant number of people travel between Bengaluru and Chennai. Many such travellers used social media to share their travel woes.

Was planning to do Chennai Bangalore tonight. Now planning to go opposite direction and reach Sri Lanka instead.  Murali (@the_brahminator) September 12, 2016

However, in light of the violent protests, many residents from Bengaluru and Chennai voiced their views and offered help through Twitter and other social media platforms.

A few users expressed their frustration with the current state of affairs and lamented over the violence that took place in the city. Violence in the city during the protests made many citizens wonder about their safety in the state.

I had a thought of working in Bangalore. After this incident I won't.. I'm Tamil. I don't have safety in Karnataka. #CauveryIssue  komesh (@komesh4) September 13, 2016

This is not the #Bangalore I knew. Certainly not the one I want to go back to. #BangaloreRiots #CauveryIssue #CauveryProtests  Reeneta (@Glamshutter) September 12, 2016

@nayanikaaa I moved back to Chennai 2 years back remember my friends fleeing Bangalore , hiding their TN registered cars such was the anger!  SuperStar Raj (@rajsan2016) September 9, 2016

Despite this, there was a general feeling of nostalgia for the great relationship that the two cities have shared in the part. Several users quoted examples from the recent Chennai floods, when hundreds of Bengalureans came together to send across help for the Chennai citizens.

Be the great Bangalore that let it's heart out to Chennai during floods..not the one that's currently getting projected! #CauveryIssue  Savitha (@savitha_ts) September 12, 2016

While a curfew has been imposed across 16 areas in the city, users took to social media earlier on Tuesday to spread the word about the BMTC (Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation) services that have been resumed.

I hope @Uber services in Bengaluru have not been suspended over #CauveryProtests. We need you!  DrDeebanR (@DeebanR) September 13, 2016

Meanwhile, a couple of users reported about disturbance in an area in the city, while the Bangalore City Police has announced that the situation is under control in most areas.

Protests continue in Hegganahalli in Bangalore despite curfew, Police use teargas shells to disperse mobs #CauveryProtests  Rajesh Shenoy (@ranjalrajesh) September 13, 2016

#CauveryProtests situation peaceful, no fresh incident reported, forces on high alert, skeletal bus service resumes  #POLICE - Lokesh H M (@HMLokesh) September 13, 2016

After many vechicles were torched, users wrote about how perhaps setting things on fire was not the best way one could drive the point across about a dispute on water sharing in times of water shortage.

Fighting over #CauveryWater makes U to rethink as to,Has #India achieved its freedom or it's still aspiring to be achieve?#CauveryProtests  Ashoke Pandit (@ashokepandit) September 12, 2016

Only in India could you have monsoon flooding cities and villages while two states tussle and burn over sharing river waters #Cauvery  Madhavan Narayanan (@madversity) September 6, 2016
Eid al-Adha was celebrated across India, except in Kashmir and Bengaluru. Both wore a deserted look following protests, stone-pelting, burning of vehicles and curfew. The usual festivities that mark the eve of Eid were missing in lieu of the curfew imposed in both the states. This is the first time in 26 years, since the onset of militancy, that no Eid congregations will be held at the Idgah and Hazratbal shrines in Kashmir. Even as the state reeled under the curfew, three protesters were reportedly killed in firing.

Bengaluru woke up to a similar scene, as on Monday protesters rallied against the Supreme Court's directive on the Cauvery and by the end of the day, the city police had to impose Section 144 in Bengaluru.

However, for the rest of India, Eid was celebrated with much fanfare. In Uttar Pradesh, however, the Akhilesh Yadav government made elaborate security arrangements. No incidents were reported though. An official told IANS that additional forces were deployed in Agra, Firozabad, Moradabad, Bijnor, Kanpur and Lucknow districts. In Lucknow alone, mostly in the old city, over 2,000 policemen were deployed for the festival and they would be supervised by 25 senior police officials.

Kashmir

The Valley woke up to a subdued Eid in view of the ongoing shutdown sponsored by separatists. Unrest in Kashmir has become a way of life since 8 July after the Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces in an encounter. Though the separatists have been relaxing the strike in the evening hours of most of the days, groups of youth have been fanning out in different markets and forcing shutdown during the relaxation period in the past, PTI reported.

For the first time in many years, authorities today imposed curfew in all 10 districts of the Kashmir Valley on Eid even as helicopters and drones have been pressed into service for surveillance. Restrictions on assembly of large number of people have been imposed in view of the call by separatists for a march to the local offices of the United Nations on Tuesday, coinciding with the global body's Opening of 71st Session of the UN General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday.

Three youths were killed in clashes between mobs and security forces in the Kashmir Valley, police said. A 24-year-old identified as Shahid Ahmed was killed in Shopian district when a mob attacked security forces after Eid prayers. Jallaluddin, 45, died of a heart attack during a clash with police in Awantipora town of Pulwama district.

Police said a tear smoke shell fired at the protesters abruptly dropped into the mosque where Jallaluddin died. Earlier, 25-year-old Murtaza was killed in clashes in Bandipora district.

The Army, which has been asked to be on standby, will step in if there is fresh outbreak of violence in the Valley, which has been witnessing widespread unrest for over two months leading to death of over 75 people so far, official sources said. Army troops have already been stationed at vantage points in rural areas which have a history of violent protests, they said, adding curfew came in force from midnight.

Since 1990s, when militancy first emerged in a big way in the state, this is the first time that curfew was imposed in Kashmir. Security forces are out on the streets in adequate strength following apprehension of violence by the separatist elements, who often use women and children as "shields" during protest rallies resulting in civilian casualties.

The government has already ordered shutdown of Internet services of all telecom networks and also mobile telephony except that of the state-run BSNL for the next 72 hours because of the tense law and order situation in the state.

Political parties, especially the main opposition National Conference, slammed the government for its decision to impose curfew, saying it vindicated the party's claim that the Mehbooba Mufti government had no control over the situation. "The PDP always loves to compare the situation with 2010 agitation but never ever has there been a curfew on auspicious occasion like Eid before," the National Conference spokesman told PTI.

The decision to completely ban Internet services was taken after a review of the prevailing law and order situation in the state on the eve of Eid al-Adha festival, sources said. They said Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone and Reliance Telecom have been ordered to shut down their services with immediate effect for 72 hours. The BSNL too has been asked to stop its broadband services for Internet.

However, post-paid BSNL connections, which are mainly used by police, army and government officials, have been kept out of the purview of the ban, the sources said. Mobile telephony was banned immediately after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on 8 July which set off the current spiral of violence in the Valley. It was partially restored on 27 July followed by opening of only broadband Internet.

While a fair number of private vehicles were plying on some roads, especially the city centre Lal Chowk and adjoining areas, shops and business establishments remained closed during day time due to the strike called by separatists. The massive footfall of customers at bakeries, sweets shops and garment stores, a usual sight on the festival eve, remained missing with all these outlets closed.

One of the famous confectionery-cum-bakery on the upmarket Residency Road  Modern Sweets  stuck a poster outside its store reading: 'No bakery available on Eid'. Shakti Sweets, which is right next to Modern Sweets, also had its shutters down, PTI reported.

However, sale of sacrificial animals is going on at many places in the city. "Our sale is around 10 percent of what it used to be on the eve of Eid-ul Azha. I do not think there is any chance of it picking up with less than 24 hours left for the festivities," Altaf Ahmad, a livestock dealer told PTI. The separatist groups have urged people to observe Eid with austerity.

Bengaluru

An uneasy calm prevailed in Bengaluru, where one person was killed in police firing on Monday night and curfew is in force in 16 sensitive localities after angry protests turned violent in southern Karnataka over releasing more Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu. Widespread violence erupted in Bengaluru and some other parts of Karnataka, while sporadic trouble was witnessed in Tamil Nadu following Supreme Court's modified order on sharing Cauvery water by the two riparian states.

Police opened fire when a mob tried to attack a patrol vehicle at Hegganahalli in Rajagopal Nagar police limits as violence flared up in Bengaluru city with rampaging mobs setting fire to buses and trucks with Tamil Nadu registration plates. "Two were brought with bullet injuries. One with bullet injury near the heart has died. The other is being operated for injury on right thigh," Dr Giridhar, Managing Director of Lakshmi Multi-Speciality Hospital, where they were taken told PTI on Monday night.

"We have, however, relaxed curfew in many areas for Muslims to offer prayers on Eid at mosques and in open grounds," a police official told IANS. Though schools, colleges, government and private offices and banks have holiday for Eid fest, several IT firms and back offices, which are working, advised their employees to work from homes in view of the simmering tension across the city.

Shops, markets, malls, hotels, eateries and commercial establishments are observing an undeclared shutdown across the city due to fear of being attacked by protesters. Buses, taxis and three-wheeler autorickshaws are also off the roads, while metro rail service were suspended till late on Monday.

Hundreds of passengers at railway stations in Bengaluru and at the airport on the outskirts had a tough time in reaching their home or workplaces in the absence of taxis, autos and buses. A Rapid Action Force (RAF) platoon staged a flag-march in the city's north-west suburb to instil confidence in the people that the situation is under control.

Soon after the apex court gave its amended order, directing Karnataka to release 12000 cusecs of water daily to Tamil Nadu till September 20, violence and arson flared up in Bengaluru, with rampaging mobs setting afire at least 30 vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu number plates. As violence broke out sending a wave of panic across Bengaluru, the city was brought under prohibitory orders till 14 September.

Incidents of arson came even as police said they have made elaborate security arrangements with 15,000 policemen being deployed, bolstered by Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve Police, RAF, Quick Reaction Teams, special forces, Central Industrial Security Force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force.

In view of the deteriorating situation, the Centre rushed 10 companies (about 1,000 personnel) of the special anti-riot paramilitary force RAF to Karnataka. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh also called up Chief Ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu tonight and assured them all central assistance in handling the law and order situation.

After Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah spoke to Singh, an official statement issued in Bengaluru described the situation as "fully under control". The Union home minister responded "positively" to the request for additional central forces, it said. Describing the violence in Karnataka as alarming, Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa wrote to Siddaramaiah, seeking protection for Tamil speaking people and their property, hours after he had made a similar plea to her.

With inputs from agencies
The emergence of suicide prevention as a public health challenge requiring urgent national action has been painfully slow globally. The urgency has been slower in middle- and low-income countries where "ailments of the body" have been prioritised over "afflictions of the mind" given the shoestring health budgets on which these countries operate and the general stigma attached to psychiatric illnesses. This has come at huge costs.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 75 percent of suicides happen in low- and middle-income countries. Globally, every 40 seconds someone dies by suicide; it is one of the three major causes of death in the economically-productive age groups between 15 and 44 years and it is the second leading cause of death among the young population between 15 and 29 years. About 8,00,000 people commit suicide every year globally and this is likely an understated figure because of the unreliability of statistics coming from many countries. The World Suicide Prevention Day, that is observed on 10 September every year, is only a recent phenomenon.

There is poor availability of data on suicide and suicide attempts given the fact that committing suicide is a criminal act in many countries  only 60 WHO member states have good quality data that can be used to estimate suicide rates. Suicide is estimated to contribute about 2.4 percent of the global burden of diseases by 2020. However, only 28 countries in the world have targeted national suicide prevention plans.

Global and Indian mental health

India is one of the top 10 countries in the world in crude suicide rates, according to the WHO database. South Korea with a crude suicide rate of 36.8 per 1,00,000 population tops the list followed by Guyana (34.8), Lithuania (33.5), Sri Lanka (29.2), Suriname (28.3), Kazakhstan (24.2), Russia (22.3) and Japan (23.1). As per 2012 data compiled by the WHO, India had a suicide rate of 20.9 for both sexes, an age-standardised suicide rate of both sexes at 21.1, age-standardised suicide rate of 16.4 for females and age-standardised suicide rate of 25.8 for males per 1,00,000 population.

Though the Indian crude suicide rate is around the average for some other countries, but given the large population size, about one-third of all the suicide deaths in the world are in India.

The importance, or the lack of it, of mental health in India's national health priorities is more than apparent in skimming through the following WHO statistics: There are 0.3 psychiatrist, 0.07 psychologist, 0.07 social worker, 0.12 nurse for servicing a population of 1,00,000 people. Moreover, there are only 2.1 hospital beds/admissions for 1,00,000 population.

This adds up to a huge burden of mental disorders  2,443 disability-adjusted life years per 1,00,000 population.

Most countries, including India need to increase resources  human and financial  for mental healthcare. This is clearly a commitment within WHOs Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020, adopted by all health ministers, Dr Shekhar Saxena, director of the department of mental health and substance abuse at the WHO told Firstpost.

Globally, about one in 10 have mental disorder but only one percent of the global health workforce is working in the field. On an average, there is less than one mental health worker per 10,000 people. However, this average falls precipitously for low- and middle-income countries to less than one mental health worker for 1,00,000 population whereas the rate rises up to one per 2,000 people in high-income countries, according to the WHO's Mental Health Atlas 2014 report.

There is a median of five mental health beds for 1,00,000 population in low and middle-income countries and 50 for high-income countries.

Even within the general silence that pervades issues around mental health, the most neglected type of mental health promotion programmes, according to the UN, are the ones dealing with maternal health promotion and violence prevention towards women and children.

For India, suicide, depression and alcohol dependence (one of the highest in the world) are all matters of concern for the UN's health agency.

Indian legislation

The Mental Health Bill that was passed by the Rajya Sabha in August this year seeks to replace the Mental Health Act, 1987. The Bill guarantees every person the right to access mental healthcare and treatment from the government, it decriminalises suicide, upholds the right of every person to specify how she would like to be treated in case of a mental health event, requires insurance companies to provide for insurance of mentally ill persons, among other features.

Though experts and activists have applauded the Bill calling it a step in the right direction, there remain many gaps in the text.

There are very useful aspects to the Bill  the decriminalisation of suicide, the tenor and the narrative of the language of the Bill, the acknowledgement of the rights of the individual  these are all pertinent points, said Dr Alok Sarin, a leading Indian psychiatrist based in Delhi and a mental health activist.

But major challenges will remain at the level of implementation.

The mental health review commissions will require new mental health oversight and regulatory systems which will include the executive, service providers, the judiciary and civil society to participate. This will require both infrastructural and funding support. Lacking this, many provisions of the Bill may be rendered rather ineffective, Sarin added.

The Bill does not peg an expenditure estimate to implementing the provisions under the Bill and also does not specify if the financial load will be shared by the Centre and the states. Many cash-strapped states will find it difficult to meet the requirements under the new legislation, if passed by the Lok Sabha, unless the Centre pitches in.

It also does not specify penalties for non-compliance with provisions.

The access to care is clearly not something that can be argued with. The whole question, however, is whether legal recourse is the best way. Along with legal recourse, other interventions are needed and this is something that has perhaps not been adequately debated," Sarin argued.

The advanced directives are another area that are a complex, societal intervention, that we have taken an ideological position on, but perhaps we haven't debated this enough, he said highlighting some of the weaknesses but adding that the Bill is very well-intentioned".

Additionally, psychotherapists complain that the Bill doesn't recognise the importance of their work as well as the work of community workers and traditional healers though it does recognise other streams of medicines like unani, siddha, homoepathy and ayurveda.

Psychotherapy is a deep understanding of life  it is very nuanced, layered. One of the problems of the Bill is that it doesn't recognise the work of psychotherapists. In some dimensions the Bill is progressive, yet it continues to stress on a medical model of human suffering and hence reduces emotional and psychic distress to a biomedical illness, said Dr. Honey Oberoi, professor of psychology at Ambedkar University in Delhi.

It (the Bill) gives primacy to the body, which it must; however, the roots of mental breakdown lie as much in social and psychic reasons. There is no conception of a person as having a life history, relational conflicts or his or her psyche being impacted by social inequalities and oppressive circumstances such as caste, poverty etc.," she added.

Different people will need different kind of care and the fact is that counsellors, community health workers, traditional healers are also colleagues, she said adding that in India the mind, body and soul have never been divorced from each other. 

India needs to develop a strategy for training human resources for mental healthcare. There should be a large role for non-medically trained professionals and even lay counsellors but with adequate training.

Like in many other countries, mental health is stigmatised and neglected in India. However, many evidence based strategies exist for decreasing stigma and providing services for persons with mental disorders, WHO said.

A large proportion of mental disorders can be looked after by non-specialist healthcare providers. The National Mental Health Programme in India has some very effective strategies and these need to be implemented on a wider scale and more effectively, Saxena said.

The devil certainly lies in the detail given the magnitude of the problem, the stigmatisation of mental afflictions, the funding requirements and the imperative of servicing people in the nook and cranny of districts in India.

The question remains: Has the discussion been enough, and how much is ever going to be both enough and necessary, Sarin said.
Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa, who had refused to step down from his post as Arunachal Pradesh governor after being asked by the Centre to resign on medical grounds, was removed from his post by President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday.

Meghalaya governor V Shanmuganathan has been given additional charge of the state, a Rashtrapati Bhavan communique said.

"The president has directed that JP Rajkhowa shall cease to hold the office of the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh and has appointed V Shanmuganathan, Governor of Meghalaya, to discharge the functions of the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, in addition to his own duties, until regular arrangements for the office of the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh are made," said the communique, reported IANS.

Rajkhowa, a former IAS officer of Assam cadre, was appointed Governor of the Arunachal Pradesh on 12 May, 2015 during the rule of the National Democratic Alliance government.

In September, Rajkhowa was asked to step down by the Centre on "health grounds." Rajkhowa had then said that he was fully fit to carry out his duties and refused to give his resignation saying that he would so only when the President orders him to. Following his refusal, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had called on the President and conveyed to him that Rajkhowa's continuance in the post has become untenable after the Supreme Court's observations against him over the dismissal of the Congress government in the state.

According to The Indian Express, Singh told the President that the "the Centre has lost confidence in Rajkhowa."

Rajkhowa, a former Chief Secretary of Assam, had sparked off a row by his decision to move the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly session from 14 January, 2016 to 16 December, 2015 to conduct the floor test of the then Nabam Tuki government.

The Congress government had resisted holding the session on the Assembly premises and it was later held in a community hall and was attended by rebel Congress MLAs, besides two Independents and BJP MLAs.

In July this year, the Supreme Court had directed restoration of the status quo ante as it existed on 15 December, 2015, bringing back the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh.

The court quashed Rajkhowa's decision to advance the Assembly session by a month and said the Governor "cannot interfere in the activities of the Assembly".

The court also quashed the President's Rule imposed in the state and all the decisions taken by Rajkhowa, leading to imposition and formation of a new government led by a breakaway faction of the Congress.

After Rajkhowa's removal, Congress lashed out at the BJP government and said they "dumped" Rajkhowa, after using him and when did not execute the "insidious agenda" of the ruling party.

"If Supreme Court strictures are the reason for his sacking then the Modi Cabinet is equally culpable. It should also go," Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said, according to PTI.

Tewari alleged the BJP government first "misused" the Governor to destablise a democratically elected government in the state and has now "dumped" him "because he was not able to execute the insidious agenda of the BJP the next time".

Firstpost's Kangkan Acharyya wrote that Rajkhowa, was known as good administrator, an honest civil servant and a writer of repute, but stands disgraced today.

He writes: "Rajkhowa is not only seen as responsible for violating constitutional norms but also for damaging the fabric of mutual trust between the people of Assam and those of Arunachal Pradesh."

With inputs from agencies
Send me to hell or cut my tongue.

I will still talk Kannada through my nose.

These are not lines written by a fire-breathing Kannada bigot, and certainly not by the Kannadiga equivalent of an Islamic State suicide bomber.

These words are translated from a poem written by popular Kannada poet GP Rajaratnam. And he had Tamil roots: His ancestors had migrated to Karnataka a century earlier. Although Rajaratnam died in 1979, his literature for children continues to be avidly read in Karnataka and his works are a matter of immense pride to the state.

Those who are branding Tamils in Bengaluru today as anti-Kannadiga and venting their silly anger on Tamil-owned business establishments and vehicles must know this.

They must also know that the man who had helped Rajaratnam become a poet was another legendary Kannada writer. He was known by the nickname of Masti Kannadada Aasti. That loosely means: Masti is Kannadas pride. He was Masti Venkatesha Iyengar, the 1983 Jnanpith Award winner who was born into a Tamil family in Karnatakas Kolar district. His 123 Kannada books took modern Kannada literature to a new level. The award instituted in his name, the Masti Venkatesha Iyengar award, after his death in 1986, is much-coveted by modern Kannada writers.

Dont forget RK Narayan. He had packed his bags in what was then Madras and migrated to the then Mysore. Many believe that the name of the fictional town Malgudi that figures in many of Narayans works comes from the first and the last letters of Malleswaram and Basavanagudi, two areas of Bengaluru.

And Malleswaram and Basavanagudi were extensions of Bengaluru that came up at the initiative of a Palghat Iyer. He was Seshadri Iyer, the dewan of Mysore between 1883 and 1901, whose initiatives made many Kannadiga leaders hail him as the maker of modern Bengaluru. Without him, Bengaluru wouldnt have had many of its famous landmarks including the famous Glass House in Lalbagh. A part of the city known as Seshadripuram, where I once lived, was named after him.

The list of Tamils who have made Karnataka in general and the states capital in particular proud is endless.

What did Karnataka contribute to Tamil Nadu? Plenty. It gave that state J Jayalalithaa, who was born into a Tamil family at Melukote in Karnatakas Mandya district  the heart of the states Cauvery basinand who studied in Bengaluru. Karnataka also gave Rajinikath to the Tamils.

And Karnataka had once supplied at least part of the electricity for the construction of Tamil Nadus Mettur Dam, where the state is storing the Cauvery water being released now.

The fringe groups unleashing the hate campaigns must be told that Tamils and Kannadigas have been part of each others development and culture for a long time: thousand years to be precise. Beginning with the first major wave of Tamil migration to Bangalore in year 1004, when king Rajendra Chola captured Bangalore, the Kannadiga-Tamil bond continues.

Both the states must end this nonsense. And end it at once.

And it will continue forever despite goons in Tamil Nadu attacking Kannadigas and their counterparts in Karnataka venting their ridiculous fury on Tamils.

At least 20 percent of Bengalurus 84.26 lakh population are Tamils, who are the citys second largest linguistic group after Kannadigas. Those custodians of Kannadiga rights who are attacking Tamils are in effect attacking nearly a quarter of Bengaluru. Its just as preposterous as a man cutting off his own nose in a mad fit of fury.

Besides, the hapless owners of the shops, which are being raided, have nothing to do with the Cauvery water war. Those on this mindless rampage must know that Karnataka is releasing Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu on an order from the Supreme Court. The marauders must also know that their actions amount to defiance of the Supreme Court. The violence in both the states does not amount to bravery. Its called cowardice.

As the court said on Monday: Citizens cannot become a law unto themselves. Once the Supreme Court orders something, it is the obligation of the Executive and citizens to obey.

As chief ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, both Siddaramaiah and Jayalalithaa are guilty of having failed to nip the violence in the bud. Karnataka, in particular, showed a lackadaisical approach in dealing with the situation, which could have been prevented with smart policing in anticipation of just this ugly situation.

Both the chief ministers are clearly guilty of a much bigger crime. They have miserably failed  by omission or commission  in telling their respective people the truth about the Cauvery river, about the realities of the extent of the deficiency in rainfall, about what it meant precisely in terms of the water available and finally about the need to share the deficit.

Siddaramaiahs failure lies in not effectively communicating to the farmers in the Cauvery basin that some water must go to Tamil Nadu. On her part, Jayalalithaa has failed by choosing not to tell her farmers that they simply cannot expect as much water as they need right now because there simply isnt enough in the river.

The proportion of sharing the deficient waters is what the Supreme Court is looking into. And its also a question the Cauvery Supervisory Committee, a body headed by Central governments water resources secretary and made up of officials of the warring states, is trying to answer.

Mondays modified order of the Supreme Court, reducing the quantum of release from 15,000 cusecs to 12,000 till 20 September effectively means Karnataka is parting with more water, in the interim. Thats because although the state will release less water, its for a longer period, and this falls short of the expectations of both the states. The court will hear the case again on 20 September. But that in no way means its all darkness at the end of the tunnel for both the states.

And it by no means justifies the senseless violence, which is already prompting questions like: Are Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, India and Pakistan? Or are they Israel and Palestine?

In the rest of India, the Cauvery dispute is turning both Tamil Nadu (doing exceedingly well on many economic parameters) and Karnataka (Indias IT showcase) into one big, combined laughingstock. Outside India, this will only present the inevitable and exaggerated picture of a divided India.

Both the states must end this nonsense. And end it at once.

Author tweets @sprasadindia
Trainee journalists from Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media, Bangalore were providing us with live updates from the city which has suffered sporadic violence over the past 24 hours. Bengaluru has been burning post the modified order of the Supreme Court directing Karnataka government to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu.

As the country's IT capital and other affected districts showed signs of limping back to normalcy, Karnataka government decided to obey the Supreme Court's modified order asking it to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu till 20 September and warned of dealing with violence during protests against it with an "iron hand".

The decision was taken after an emergency Cabinet meeting presided by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was held in Bengaluru to take stock of the Apex Court direction and Monday's violence over the release of water.

Video content inputs from Neha Bhan and Smrithi Suri

With inputs from PTI
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it is the turn of BJP president Amit Shah, to suffer an embarrassment in Kerala.

Shah is being ridiculed on Twitter for extending Vaman Jayanti wishes to Malayalis on the eve of Onam. And the hashtag that is trending is #PoMoneShaji - a stark reminder of #PoMoneModi that trended just before the Kerala state elections after Modi compared Kerala to Somalia.

The hashtag is a take off from a hit one-liner by Malayalam super star Mohanalal, "nee po mone Dinesha", in the super hit movie 'Narasimham'. "Nee po mone Dinesha" means 'get lost Dinesha, my son'.

Shah's tweet wishing Vaman Jayanti is to be seen in the context of the RSS attempt to Vaishnavaise Onam, a harvest festival in Kerala that celebrates the return of Asura king Mahabali. Legend has it that Mahabali's rule was the golden age in Kerala, when everybody was equal and there was no falsehood or cheating. The Devas in the heaven got jealous and sought the help of Vishnu to thwart Bali. Vishnu in the avatar of Vaman, a dwarf, sought three feet of land from Mahabali. The generous king is said to have obliged while Vaman grew in size and in two steps measured heaven and earth. Mahabali offered his own head for the third measure. Vaman pushed Bali into the Patal, the netherworld, but not without giving him permission visit the state once yearly. His visit is celebrated as Onam in Kerala. However, the RSS is of the opinion that Onam was originally celebrated as Vaman Jayanti. In the Onam special issue of RSS mouthpiece Kesari Weekly, an article by Unnikrishnan Namboorthiri has claimed that Vamana didnt send Mahabali to hell. On the contrary, the ruler was honourably rehabilitated to a place which is more comfortable than heaven. (Translation by Scroll.) The overturning of the legend is an attempt at Brahmanising the Onam festival. It is only the Brahmins in the state who worship Vaman during Onam. A vast majority of Hindus in the state see Onam as a festival closely linked to the harvest. And for Dalits, Bali is a hero, a symbol of equality. However, the RSS's attempt to Brahmanise Onam seems to have fallen flat with Keralites mostly rejecting the idea lock, stock and barrel. It also has to be seen in the context of the BJP's attempt to gain a foot hold in the social and political space in Kerala and also the recent spate of Dalit uprising in Gujarat and elsewhere that has put the party in a tight spot. If anything, overturning the myth will only antagonise the Dalits in Kerala. Here are a few tweets rejecting Shah's wishes:

#pomoneshaji ,Our Dravidian King #Mahabali was black ,But had a heart of gold unlike the Aryan #vamana who was fair skinned & full of #jumla  Ajith Jacob (@AjithJPanicker) September 13, 2016

Your agenda will not work in my state.. Another trending getlost #PoMoneShaji  ABDULLAH S (@Abdullah868) September 13, 2016

#pomoneshaji your divide and rule policy won't work in Kerala. Actually it's not working anywhere... Aiyyo 2019!  Sangita Nambiar (@Sanginamby) September 13, 2016

Hey Sanghis, This is not Gujarath.. Your rice will not boil here.. Mind it.!!

THIS IS KERALA !!#PoMoneShaji   (@drishtadyumnan) September 13, 2016

Isnt there a RSS man who has the spine to correct @AmitShah as he insults #Onam and Malayali. Any one with self respect to say #PoMoneShaji  Raju P. Nair (@RajuPNair) September 13, 2016

Malayalis celebrating vamana jayanti would be like Chileans celebrating US independence day for destroying democracy in Chile. #PoMoneShaji  kiduva (@kiduva) September 13, 2016
After the sleaze CD scandal of Delhis former Social Welfare and Women and Child Development Minister Sandeep Kumar, another Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator  Amanatullah Khan from Okhla  recently found himself embroiled in a sexual harassment case. With these sex scandal allegations coming to light, is the charge of another AAP legislator that "sex and money" were solicited by party leaders during ticket distribution in Punjab, turning out to be prophetic?

Does Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal have answers to the series of allegations on sex, bribery and scams levelled by his own MLA, Colonel Devinder Sehrawat representing Bijwasan in south Delhi, through letters against his own party colleagues?

One time favourite-turned-rebel, Sehrawat, while speaking to Firstpost says that AAP that promised a clean, transparent and an alternative politics to the voters of Delhi has severely failed in its mission and more skeletons are likely to tumble out of the AAP closet in the days to come.

On what basis did you level such serious charges of soliciting sex and money against your party leaders in Punjab?

After receiving complaints from some of our volunteers in Punjab, I travelled to its various districts for a month. I was told by the people and many party volunteers that our party leaders demanded sex and money during distribution of tickets to candidates for 2017 Assembly election in the state.

The allegations are all over  widespread; but the party leadership has brushed it aside. Several zonal heads of AAP in Punjab have withdrawn. Women have complained about it to the state womens commission. There are evidences showing bribe was sought for giving a ticket. When the expelled convener of Punjab AAP, Sucha Singh Chhotepur brought it to the notice of party leadership, he was sacked.

In your letter to Kejriwal, you have also named a couple of leaders from Delhi. How true is it?

I have strong evidences against the party leaders who I have named in my letter to the CM, but I wont reveal it right now due to confidential reasons. But, itll come up sometime soon. While, one of our planks during the formation of AAP was womens safety and security, but now its lost. The recent incidents have tarnished the partys image and exposed the double standard it practices. The party leadership is trying to save some of its members involved in wrongdoing. This was unacceptable to me and therefore I wrote to the CM.

In another letter to the Delhi CM, you have mentioned Delhi Dialogue Commission (renamed as Delhi Dialogue and Development Commission) as white elephant. Why so?

The Delhi Dialogue Commission (DDC) was set up as an ambitious body similar to the Planning Commission, but it has turned into a white elephant and is involved in all kinds of scams. The role of this commission in the shuttle bus service project has been quite dubious. The vice-chairman of DDC, Ashish Khetan, despite not being an elected representative signed the Cabinet note, which is unconstitutional and flouted rules and regulations to push the shuttle bus service project. The Motor Vehicle Act was compromised to provide benefits to a private company.

In fact, the DDC has turned into an extra-constitutional and an unaccountable power centre meant for brokering and liaison. The message is clear that the DDC is a single window for underhand dealings. It can be aptly described as Delhi Dalaal Commission.

Why is this happening in a party that was formed on the plank of fighting corruption and to provide a clean government to the people of Delhi?

Instead of carrying forward the massive mandate it got for the welfare of the state, the AAP leadership has become arrogant and lost its basic character. Abuse of power is evident everywhere. Even before contesting an election in Punjab, the party has already got into controversies in the state and there are fissures within the party. The action is contrary to what AAP had claimed, and things are falling apart. After visiting the rural part of my constituency and talking to farmers, I have found people are quite concerned by the recent developments. The AAP has turned into a big joke and using every trick to hoodwink. Even the appointment of 21 MLAs as Parliamentary Secretaries was illegal. A few of CMs advisors are ill-informed and giving him wrong advice. If the 21 legislators finally lose their membership, itll have a negative impact on Punjab election. Well be wiped out.

What made you speak against your party leadership all of a sudden, given the fact that you were never known as a rebel?

As an elected representative, I have certain obligations towards my voters. I have always done my duty as an AAP MLA and never sided with any other party or individual. But, now I can see how the Delhi voters have been betrayed. I have done my duty by putting it in black and white before the CM. Now its left on the party, the government and non-government agencies to take appropriate decision. I have done it in larger public interest.

Your one-year report card shows that you have undertaken various works in your constituency. Despite this, why has your party gone against you?

Its an obvious reaction, as I have taken skeletons out of AAP closet. Instead of replying to my questions, they are all out in tarnishing my image and that of my family. Arvind Kejriwal is virtually a dictator and hes ignoring wrongdoings by his own people. This is giving tacit support to these people and they are growing bold.

But, your father has reportedly called you mentally ill

There is a family dispute and Im in the process of solving it. Even, the Congress candidate who had contested against me, has come out in my support and said my fathers statement was incorrect.
The poll bugle for Uttar Pradesh has been sounded. All the major political parties in the fray  Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party  have started campaigning with full gusto.

There is the usual heat and dust and animated rhetoric which is principal to any elections. But any national party worth its salt in India knows the importance of Uttar Pradesh. As the old political saying goes, the road to Raisina Hill takes a detour via Lucknow. Hence, it becomes crucially important for the parties to pick, choose and expound on the issues that will resonate the most with the voters.

The outcome of Uttar Pradesh elections has a significant share in the performance of the government at the Centre. UP, which has the highest percentage of Muslim population, is a massive deal for parties who often use religion as pawn during elections. A win in UP would basically propel the victorious party's fate in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

At a time when communal sensitivities are stoked often just for political gains (and UP being a hotbed for such activities) Ayodhya and Ram Janmabhoomi are emerging as crucial poll tools for many parties. Political pundits have asserted that while Kairana and Mathura will be vital for a win in the state, bringing up Ayodhya could also affect the dynamics hugely in the state.

Ayodhya remains a sensitive issue for many and by raking it up parties might end up losing either core Muslim or Hindu votes in the state.

The disputed site, now ringed with guard towers and troops, is in Uttar Pradesh, the setting of elections early next year could make or break Modi's chances of gaining control of Rajya Sabha.

An upper hand in Upper House would help the Prime Minister push through his economic reform agenda, which firebrands within his religious base do not always agree with.

Let's analyse how Ayodhya, as an issue, is back on the menu for parties and how each party might gain or lose from it.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

Ayodhya and creation of a Ram temple at the Ram janmabhoomi has been the party's plan since BJP took shape as a political party in 1980. And as campaigning has started to gain dust in the state, UP BJP leaders think that the time is apt for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to build the famed Ram Temple.

"For how long will Ram Lalla be covered with tarpaulin ?" Vinay Katiyar, founder-president of Bajrang Dal and a pro-temple voice told senior editor of News 18 Bhupendra Chaubey. Even though the issue remains sub-judice in Supreme Court, BJP leaders think the central leadership should at least let the people know that a temple construction is in the offing.

"Time is right for the construction of Ram temple. A mosque should also be constructed simultaneously. Both sides are ready, a little bit of initiative from the government will ensure that both temple and mosque are constructed", CP Thakur, BJP's Rajya Sabha MP, told India Today.

To soothe frayed nerves, Thakur added, a mosque should be constructed as well.

In fact, a few senior party leaders from Uttar Pradesh feel that taking a hardliner stand on issues like Ayodhya, can take BJP a long way  a higher percentage of votes just like Narendra Modi garnered during 2014 Lok Sabha Elections.

Ayodhya is becoming a defining test of Modi's ability to navigate a tension central to his administration: appeasing Hindu nationalist activists who corral votes for the ruling BJP while preventing them from derailing his pro-business growth agenda.

Modi's success or failure will go a long way to defining his legacy. The BJP's ideological fountainhead the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), lobbied for a Rajya Sabha seat this April for Subramanian Swamy. Less than two weeks later, Swamy informed Parliament that he had a point of order to raise. Amid cries of disbelief, Swamy rose from his seat and voiced frustration that the nation's attorney general had not done more to get a court verdict on the temple in Ayodhya.

There are many  in and out of Ayodhya  who speak of Modi as a "man of destiny with the power to bring major change after decades of mostly secular rule." Speaking to Tom Lasseter of Reuters, a spokesman for the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) Sharad Sharma said, "Now, under Modi's leadership, we feel that this is the right time."

Even though the prime minister's tagline  development remains the top priority  is toed in by most of the party members, it is not clear if that will satisfy Modi's doctrinal base in the run up to the state ballot.

Congress

The party vice-president Rahul Gandhi made headlines when the Congress announced that the party second-in-command will visit Ayodhya. The visit to Ayodhya was part of Rahul's Kisan Yatra.

Rahul became the first member of the Gandhi family, since his father Rajiv Gandhi, to visit the temple town since the Babri Masjid's demolition in 1992. Earlier this month, Rahul began the fifth day of his Kisan Yatra by offering prayers at Hanuman Garhi temple in Ayodhya.

As this report in The New Indian Express says, this was Congress' playing the 'soft-Hindutva' pitch in a state which is already polarised on communal lines.

Poll pundits have predicted a bleak result for Congress in Uttar Pradesh (based on their past performances). However, they also asserted that Congress' aim may not be to win UP but with an eye on 2019 polls, the party aims at denting BJP's chances.

Congress has been traditionally wooing Brahmins but with the emergence of BJP and BSP, the chunk shifted. This time, however, Brahmin vote was expected to be divided between the BJP and BSP with BJP getting the biggest share. However, Congress has made it a point to single-handedly pursue its core votebank.

Rahul visiting to Hanuman Garhi had a significance, the party said, as father Rajiv in 1990 during his Sadbhavna Yatra had skipped the Hanuman temple. Rahul, thus, plans to start from where his father left Ayodhya 26 years ago, the party leader said. However, Rahul also skipped a visit to the Ram Temple. Visiting the temple could've ruined the main agenda behind Congress' Kisan Yatra and turned it into a Muslim-Hindu issue. Congress would not want to antagonise the Muslims, who form at least 18 percent of the state's population.

Writing for Firstpost, Ambikanand Sahay says: "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."

Congress believes, and vehemently so, that if they get the Brahmin votes, the Muslims will revisit them. "It's 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, told Sahay, adding that "lets try to replicate it under Sheila Dixit this time. And why not?"

With inputs from agencies
Its not unusual for Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to explode on Twitter. Monday evening he did that again.

At the receiving end of his social media equivalent of a nuke attack was veteran journalist Shekhar Gupta, and, to some extent Rahul Kanwal of India Today TV.

"You want to do politics, do so openly. Earlier you were a wheeler-dealer for the Congress, now youre doing that on Modis behalf. People like you have spoiled journalism," screamed Kejriwal.

Gupta had committed the cardinal sin of pointing out an inconvenient truth to Kejriwal. He tweeted earlier Monday morning reacting to a news item on the first death due to chikungunya in Delhi. "1st malaria death in 5 yrs, 1st chikungunya death now while Delhi govt safely out conquering Punjab, Goa & Gujarat."

Kejriwal took time to join issue with Gupta, perhaps because he was busy with campaigning in Punjab, but when he did join issue he did not go for the jugular. He chose to go below the belt instead:

Shekhar Gupta has never been a fan of either the Anna Hazare movement or the Arvind Kejriwals style of politics. The Indian Express, of which he was the editor-in-chief, consistently disapproved of the movement as anarchist. Just recently, in a debate on NDTV 24x7 on the confrontation between the Delhi government and the Centre, Shekhar put down the Kejriwal government in a manner that it would make the latter squirm. "Now let me say something the Aam Aadmi Party will hate to hear," he said, "the fact is, Delhi has started missing Sheila Dikshit."

Apparently, Kejriwal more than squirmed. But the manner and vehemence of the personal attack, without substance and without any factual basis, may have stunned even those who are now quite used to his Kejriwals over-the-top responses to critics. His junior colleagues in the party were more measured in their rebuttal of Shekhar Gupta than the chief minister.

Ankit Lal, the partys IT and social media head, relied on a fact to counter Gupta. He said that the chikungunya patient was from Ghaziabad who died in Delhi.

Another party member, Kapil Mishra, too, relied on logical combat, pointing out to the culpability of the municipal corporations of Delhi.

But Kejriwal himself was in no mood for niceties. He followed up his insult to Shekhar Gupta with another lowly dig, daring Gupta to say a few words about his "master" (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) who has "set out on a journey to conquer the world".

Later, on Tuesday, he was unsparing of Rahul Kanwal of India Today TV, too, suggesting that the latter was also on the BJP's take for questioning the presence of AAP ministers all over but Delhi. Once again, the tactic is simple: undermine the integrity of the journalists asking questions as stooges of AAP's opponents.

Without standing in unsolicited defence of Shekhar Guptas existent or non-existent political leanings -- or Rahul Kanwal's benign rebuke of the AAP -- it is right to ask if a chief minister should be allowed to get away with such unfounded, intemperate and insulting damnation of journalists who raise legitimate questions about his government.

However the facts stack up for or against the Kejriwal government in its handling of the current crisis of vector-borne diseases in Delhi, theres one fact that Kejriwal has not cared to pay heed to. To call Shekhar Gupta a friend of the present administration is being extremely miserly with facts. A few weeks ago the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of National Administration, Mussoorie, hosted internationally acclaimed political scientist Francis Fukuyama for a five-day session on "private sector and public policy". Gupta joined the gathering after the session and interacted with the delegates, all top IAS officers, over dinner. Gupta apparently was scathing of the Modi administration and its style of governance. One of the participants later asked me: Why is Shekhar Gupta so bitter about Prime Minister?

You cant expect Kejriwal to know what Gupta says away from public glare. But, being quite the social media czar that he is, Kejriwal should know that Gupta is constantly trolled by right-wingers for his writings and tweets directed against the Modi government.

But thats beside the point. The concern Gupta raised had nothing to do with his like for one dispensation or his dislike for another, all of whom are transient. Mahatma Gandhi never made a fetish of consistency. History is hardly a linear project is always consistent with the past. Hence in the profession of journalism, too, consistency can hardly be a virtue or the only virtue. A critical comment of a journalist may not be consistent with his past writing. But that has never been held against journalists  who are supposed to chronicle the facts as they come  as Kejriwal is repeatedly seeking to do.

Perhaps nobody in Indian politics has contributed to the lumpenisation of politics more than Kejriwal. He called the Prime Minister a psychopath and got away with it. He called Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley as corrupt and was not held accountable for his indiscretions. He is constantly at war with institutions that come in the way of his own anarchic politics. For instance, he called the lieutenant governor of Delhi an employee of the Union home ministry.

Contrast his current bellicosity with the timid image of man coming out of the North Block office of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee complaining how he was harangued and intimidated by the minister during the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare. Then he looked like a harried common man whose daily life is under stress due to the anti-people approach of those in power. In less than two years, the common man has transformed into street-bully, and seamlessly, too.

But there is something more than a mere megalomaniac streak in Kejriwals politics. Like North Koreans dictator Kim Jong-un, who is a unique and lethal blend of megalomania, authoritarianism and absolute sense of infallibility  and is hell bent on nuking the United States out of existence  Kejriwal, too, seems to have taken it upon himself to identify, label and destroy the "corrupt" with scant regard for the law. In that self-assigned role of the protector of Indias morality, he will stop at nothing. Calling a journalist a "broker" is small change. He will take the discourse to such gutter levels that it will be impossible to communicate with him in civilised language.

Interestingly enough, many political stalwarts have taken on the media in the past. BSP supremo Kanshi Ram, for instance, was extremely critical of the media as an institution. Yet he never made it a personal issue with individual journalists. The love-hate relationship between politicians and journalists has often helped to enrich not debase the democratic debate. But Kejriwals reactions are so personal and vituperative that he drags the discourse to the lowest levels.
Is it possible for Tamil Nadu to declare war on Karnataka?

An armed confrontation between two Indian states, that too over water, may be unimaginable for many. But, on Quora, you would actually find people discussing the prospects of a war between the two rival states.

Laughable it may sound, but it is a pointer to the venomous rivalry that exists between the two border states. The ongoing violence in Bengaluru over the Cauvery water dispute is just a reflection of the strained relations between the two states.

Chauvinists on either side of the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border are always on a short fuse. Such is the nature of the Kannadiga-Tamil rivalry that violence can erupt even after a minor spark, sometimes even without it.

In 2000, when Kannadiga superstar Rajkumar was kidnapped by Veerappan, violence broke out in Karnataka simply because the brigand happened to be a Tamil. For almost 75 days, while the actor remained in Veerappan's custody, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu remained on the edge, with sporadic violence threatening peace in both states.

Considering the volatile nature of relations between the two states, the emotive issue of sharing of Cauvery waters was expected to trigger violence in the two states. Kannadigas are averse to sharing water from the Cauvery basin with their neighbouring states. So, the Supreme Court order directing the Siddaramaiah government to release 15,000 cusecs water (later revised to 12,000 cusecs) to Tamil Nadu was meant to create ripples in the two states.

The dispute over sharing of Cauvery water dates back to the 19th century. Several governments, court orders and arbitration panels have failed to resolve the row, primarily because the Kannadigas do not believe in the lower riparian rights of downstream states, especially during the low-monsoon years.

As this article in The Wire argues, Karnataka has historical reasons to be upset about the quantum of water to be shared with neighbouring states. Girish Nikam writes that the Cholas built reservoirs and check dams in Tamil Nadu in the 10th century, while the rulers of Mysore built Krishna Raja Sagara, the first major reservoir, in 1934.

Karnataka's politics, where no party can afford to be seen compromising the riparian rights of Kannadigas, further contributed to the problem. At an all-party meeting in Karnataka to discuss the SC order on water sharing, even the BJP leaders argued that the order not be implemented. On cue, CM Siddaramaiah dispatched a missive to the Prime Minister, seeking the Centre's intervention and arguing that Tamil Nadu has enough water this season to address its needs.

To this dangerous mix, the media and Twitterati have added more poison by spreading rumours, videos and inflammatory messages. Television channels in both the states, reports say, are playing up incidents of attacks on Kannadigas and Tamils, leading to retaliatory violence.

According to The Indian Express, the fire was reignited on Monday by TV channels playing the regional card. Some television channels, on Monday, showed images of the Kannadiga-owned New Woodlands Hotel in Chennai being attacked with petrol bombs. The reports suggested that it was in retaliation to the attacks on Tamils. Images of a Kannadiga being beaten up by Tamil activists and buses being vandalised were also shown, the report added.

"We will also show them, a statement made by Vatal Nagaraj, a veteran leader who exhorts Kannada chauvinism, only indicates "retaliatory incidents in Karnataka," The Indian Express reported.

Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are on the brink of another cycle of violence inspired by chauvinism, myopic politics and an irresponsible media, both conventional and social. Only by restraining all of them would this war between the two rivals would come to an end.
Within a few days of CPI(M) ideologue Prakash Karat declaring that the Narendra Modi government is authoritarian but not fascist, the JNU student organisations affiliated to Left parties are celebrating their victory over the ABVP in union elections as crushing defeat of fascist forces.

In between  after Karats opinion piece in The Indian Express and before the JNUSU election results  Kanhaiya Kumar dared Karat at a speech in Kolkata: "There is a certain veteran CPM leader who is also a former student of the JNU. He said that the Modi government was authoritarian and not fascist. To him I want to say that comrade, if you dont want to fight anymore, please retire and go to New York. We will fight our battle."

The timing of Karats position chiding the Left and liberal opinion for calling the Modi government fascist, sweeping win of the Left in JNUSU elections and Kanhaiyas audacious fulminations against Karat may be a coincidence; the deep schism among the Left over the nature of the BJP government is not. It exposes the confusion and the crisis facing the Left parties.

The crises and the weaknesses of the Left have many shades of ironies, which either they dont want to see or they ignore for avowed ideological purity.

Communist parties for a very long time have got used to patting themselves on the back for their sterling performance of affiliated student outfits in the JNU even as their performances in the national and state-level elections have been steadily declining.

While their base and influence have been shrinking among workers, peasants and middle classes  the ideological relevance holds in a small, post-graduate university. Its a small island of their bastions in the heart of Delhi that reminds them of their ideological relevance amid steady decline elsewhere. Thats the irony.

At a time when they should been closing ranks within the party and working to unitedly face a right-wing authoritarian or a communal fascist government, the CPI(M) is quibbling over the nature of the Modi government.

Its quibbling that cost the CPI(M) as much as the post of the Prime Minister, which was offered to Jyoti Basu in 1996 at the head of United Front government. Basu was inclined but the CPI(M) hardline apparatchiks vetoed the proposal. Later, Basu himself described the moment as historical blunder.

The current differences in the party over the nature of the BJP and the Congress too might lead to another historical blunder in the future. For the moment, it exposes the sharp divisions in the CPI(M) between the general secretary Sitaram Yechury and former general secretary Prakash Karat.

When communist apparatchiks differ and debate, the common people, who are supposed to form the support base of the party, get confused and confounded. In simple terms, their differences relate to whether or not the CPI(M) should align with the Congress to fight and defeat the BJP.

Yechury is a pragmatist. He favours close electoral cooperation with the Congress to challenge the BJP. He views the Modi government espousing fascist tendencies and argues that the BJP-RSS are working to establish a fascist Hindu Rashtra' in India. He has used the analogy of Germany of 1930s to warn that just as Adolf Hitler used aggressive nationalism to establish fascism, the Modi government was using nationalism to turn the country into a fascist religious state.

Yechurys line of argument opens the door for forming a front with the Congress. Karats disavowal of Yechurys contention completely shuts the door on cooperation with the Congress.

Karat, as a purist ideologue, has determined that the Modi government is showing authoritarian tendencies but it doesnt have traits of classical fascism as it developed in Europe. He views both the BJP and the Congress as representatives of identical social and economic interests. Therefore, Karat doesnt advocate proximity with the Congress to challenge the BJP.

Karats openly anti-Yechury stand is well timed too. One, its Karats way of hitting back at Yechurys decision that led to the CPI(M) and the Congress contesting the West Bengal assembly elections together. Two, its an attempt to preempt Yechury from taking initiative to form a front with the Congress and Samajwadi Party against the BJP in UP and later at the national level. He is also warning Yechury against aligning closely with the Congress in Parliament. Karat favours uniting the non-BJP and the non-Congress parties on one platform.

While the CPI(M) is riven with internal divisions, in the JNUSU, the Left student organisations came together to defeat the BJPs efforts to strengthen its influence on the campus. The JNUSU victory is erroneously viewed by large sections of the Left and liberal voices as a major success.

Its erroneous because over the years, the communists have lost the political space in the country they occupied. The united CPI was the second largest party in the Lok Sabha from the first general elections in 1952 till the third general elections in 1962. In the current Lok Sabha, the CPI(M) with nine members is ranked ninth from the top, the CPI has one member.

The Left parties, their supporters and sympathizers seem to take great pride in having larger than life presence in JNU. When they dominate the debate in the JNU and in auditoriums of Delhi, they fancy they can fight the battle to protect the interests of the powerless and dispossessed. That they can fight the battle to stop Modi government from pursuing authoritarian or fascist policies.

In a country which has the worlds highest number of poor, highest number of children with malnutrition, one of the worst drop-out rates in schools, Yechury and Karats party has been debating the character of the State and political parties for 70 years and has come to no conclusion.

Thats the irony of the Left.
Canberra: To approve the legislation of same sex marriage, the cabinet of the Australian government agreed to call for a referendum on 11 February, even without the support of the Labor party opposition.

The cabinet under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull approved the referendum on Tuesday, EFE news reported.

The proposal for the referendum will be submitted to the ruling coalition MPs, but those who are in favour of the legislation consider that financing the campaigns with public money will be counterproductive.

The referendum also depends on the approval of the necessary legislation by the Labour opposition in Parliament.

The Labor opposition advocates that same sex marriage should be directly legalised without a plebiscite as it could encourage homophobia.

"A 'no' campaign would be an emotional torment for gay teenagers and if one child commits suicide over the plebiscite, then that one is too many," Labor party opposition leader Bill Shorten said.

Australia, where several states allow civil union, was criticised by several organisations for being slow in legalisation of marriages between same sex couples.

In December 2013, Australia's High Court annulled a law allowing same sex marriages on the grounds that it contravened the country's marriage laws.

Similar legislative proposals have also failed in the states of Tasmania and in New South Wales.
Washington: US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is currently living in Russia on political asylum, would be offered due process of law, but he should first return to the country and face charges, the White House has said.

Snowden, 33, the former intelligence contractor with the US National Security Agency (NSA) would be offered due process of law on return, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on Monday, adding that President Barack Obama continues to believe that he has done harm to the national security interest of the US.

"The first is that Mr Snowden has been charged with serious crimes and it is the policy of the administration that Mr Snowden should return to the US and face those charges. He, of course, will be afforded due process and there are mechanisms in our criminal justice system to ensure that he is treated fairly and consistent with the law. That is what the President believes."

"With regard to the impact that he has had on the broader debate, the fact is the manner in which Mr Snowden chose to disclose this information damaged the US, harmed our national security, and put the American people at greater risk," Earnest said.

"There are mechanisms that Mr Snowden could have availed himself of, if he had concerns about information that he had access to, to communicate this information more responsibly and address some of the policy concerns that he purports to have."

"But the impact of his actions, because of the way he chose to disclose this information, did harm our national security. The President said that on a number of occasions, and his assessment of that situation has not changed," Earnest said.

Refusing to entertain questions on presidential pardon of Snowden, Earnest said he is not going to get into the President's thinking about anybody being considered for a pardon.

"Obviously there is a process that people can go through in requesting a pardon. But right now, Mr Snowden has not been convicted of crimes with regard to this particular situation, but he is charged with various crimes."

"It is the view of the administration and certainly the view of the President that he should return to the US and face those charges, even as he enjoys the protection of due process and other rights that are afforded to American citizens who are charged with serious crimes," Earnest added.

Snowden, charged by the US with espionage and theft of government property after leaking sensitive documents to the media about NSA's internet and phone surveillance, has been living in exile in Russia since June 2013.
Beijing: Five Indians have been arrested by Chinese immigration officials at an airport in Yunnan province for allegedly smuggling about 18 kg of cannabis from India.

The five accused who had kept cannabis in food packets and laptop bags were held at Kunming airport after they came from Kolkata on 7 September, officials said.

The drug packets were discovered by the scanners at the airport.

Their arrests have been notified to Indian officials and they have been granted counsellor access on 21 September, the officials said.

Currently, seven Indians are held in prisons at Guangxi and Guangzhou on drug smuggling charges.

Drug smuggling in China is treated as a serious offence and in some cases the crime attracts death penalty or long prison terms.

In July, a Colombian model was sentenced to 15 years in jail for drug smuggling in China.
Beef, the meat of the cow, has been the subject of political and religious controversies in India for several centuries.

It acquires special significance on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, the three-day feast of sacrifice being marked in India this year from 13 September. Generally speaking, Muslims in Arab and African countries do not sacrifice cows on this occasion. However, it appears that Islamic clerics of India introduced the practice of sacrificing cows for varying reasons: One, it is less expensive to purchase and sacrifice cows; and two, it created an Islamic challenge to the Hindu religious practice of revering cows.

On 12 September 12, journalist Tavleen Singh tweeted:

Most Indian Muslims do not eat beef. It is never used in biryani.  Tavleen Singh (@tavleen_singh) September 12, 2016

Her observation is probably because she interacts with rich Muslims who avoid eating beef. However, assuming that a majority of roughly 180 million Muslims do not eat beef, her tweet still means that 90 million Muslims eat beef. Since Muslims are required to sacrifice an animal on Eid al-Adha to commemorate Prophet Abraham's offer to sacrifice his son, cows are available at a cheaper cost than other animals.

There is another reason. Unlike small animals, like goats, that count as one sacrifice on Eid al-Adha, big animals like cows and camels are counted as seven sacrifices and costs are shared by seven persons. Since camels are not easily available, cows are preferred by poor Muslims. But it is incorrect to say that beef is not used in biryani.

Equally, it is true that Hindus, both of lower and upper castes, in many parts of India do eat beef. Nevertheless, Hindu religious sensibilities involving cows have led to riots and controversies, the last major one being the murder of Akhlaq Ahmad by an enraged mob at Dadri, near Delhi. Over the past year, gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes) have beaten up people engaged in transporting cows and beef. One of the reasons beef has become a political issue is also because the cow vigilantes form the support base of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

On 6 August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi berated the gau rakshaks saying, "I get so angry at those who are into the gau rakshak business. A gau bhakt (cow devotee) is different, gau seva (cow protection) is different. I have seen that some people are into criminal activity all night and wear the garb of gau rakshaks in the day." However, the beef controversies are not going to disappear. This is because a bulk of Indians have revered cows for centuries and will continue to do so.

It was due to such religious sentiments that Emperor Akbar (reigned from 1556 to 1605 CE), perhaps the first Indian ruler to introduce religious neutrality in the state policy, banned the sacrifice of cows. However, Emperor Akbar was severely criticised by Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, the greatest Islamic scholar of his era. Sirhindi, who is described as Mujaddid Alif Sani (the Reviver of the Second Millennium), asked the emperor as to why Muslims couldn't eat beef under a Muslim government.

In September 2015, Pakistani Marxists launched an Urdu magazine called Fikr-e-Nau (New Thinking) under the editorship of Shadab Murtaza and Tahir Murtaza. The magazine carried an essay  'The politics and economics of cow slaughter' by Sartaj Khan  that explored the issue of cow slaughter and argued that in the lands comprising Pakistan today, cow slaughter was brought by Islamist organisations arriving there from India after 1947.

Khan observed: "From the Islamic teachings, it comes to the fore that the sacrifice was given of a sheep (by Prophet Abraham in lieu of his son as ordered by Allah). Cow is not born in Arab countries. Therefore, sheep, goat and camel remained the favourite animals for sacrifice." He added: "Historically, the sacrifice of cows in the Hindu-majority areas of the (Indian) Subcontinent used to be carried out in cities which were centres of Muslim kings, elites and militaries. However, many Muslim kings outlawed the sacrifice of cows due to political reasons. The Mughal king Akbar is well known among them."

The author noted: "In the regions that comprise Pakistan today, there too only goats, sheep and bhains (the black buffalo) were generally used for sacrifice (on Eid al-Adha). However, in India, cow has been the favourite animal of Muslims for sacrifice. The background to this has been the Hindu-Muslim dispute."

Noting that the cow was not traditionally sacrificed in large numbers in Pakistan, Khan points out that it was only post-Partition that immigrants and their Islamic organisations such as Jamaat-e-Islami that brought along this idea. Significantly, the author identified that present-day religious organisations and jihadi groups like Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the new version of Lashkar-e-Taiba, have strengthened the practice of cow slaughter.

...it appears that both Hindus and Muslims break laws either to protect or to sacrifice cows. This class of Indian citizens thinks of itself above the law and must be dealt with strictly.

He argued that in the Indus and Pashtun regions where Rigveda was authored, even today instead of beef, the meat of sheep, goat and bhains is favourite. Similarly, in the areas of Mardan, Swabi, Buner, Swat, Dir, Charsadda and Nowshera, bhains is the most popular animal of sacrifice whereas in the Tribal Areas, the sacrifice of sheep and goats is common. Generally, a big majority of the Balochs too sacrifices animals on these lines, he noted.

However, the author concludes that considering the cow is more aesthetically pleasing than the bhains ("it looks more beautiful, smart and attractive"), for collective sacrifices, cows and goats are preferred. In purely neutral terms, animal sacrifice can be opposed only by vegetarians. Given the popular reverence in India of cow as the mother, conflicts will recur on this issue.

There are three points to bear in mind:

One, in matters of dispute, the Indian Constitution must prevail. As per the Constitution, some states such as Bihar, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and others have outlawed the practice of sacrificing cows. Residents of those states must obey the law in those states. A number of states such as the BJP-ruled Goa and those in the North East have not outlawed cow slaughter. In such states, Indian citizens are free to eat beef.

Two, the Darul Uloom Deoband has issued a fatwa (Islamic decree) advising Muslims not to sacrifice cows and respect Hindu beliefs. Indian Muslims must follow this advice.

Three, it appears that both Hindus and Muslims break laws either to protect or to sacrifice cows. This class of Indian citizens thinks of itself above the law and must be dealt with strictly.

Former BBC journalist Tufail Ahmad is a contributing editor at Firstpost, and executive director of the Open Source Institute, New Delhi. He tweets @tufailelif
New York: A 36-year-old Muslim woman, who was wearing a traditional Islamic attire, was attacked here and her clothing was set on fire in a troubling incident that occurred just a day before the US marked the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The woman, who has not been identified, was walking in the city's Fifth avenue, which houses top luxury brands, Saturday night when an unidentified person set her blouse on fire using a lighter.

The New York chapter of the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) condemned the attack, which is the latest in a series of attacks on Muslims in the state and nationwide in recent days and months.

CAIR-NY also urged New York's mayor to add resources for the investigation of hate crimes.

The victim felt the heat on her arm, realising her blouse had been set on fire. "She saw (the suspect) pull a lighter away and walk away," a source said in the New York Daily News.

The victim put out the flames on the sleeve of her blouse and was not hurt in the attack. The suspect, who reportedly did not say anything during the attack, remains at large.

The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is trying to determine a motive for the attack.

"We are clearly seeing a spike in attacks on individual Muslims and Islamic institutions in New York and around the country, which should be of concern to all Americans," said CAIR-NY Executive Director Afaf Nasher.

"It is time for the mayor and the NYPD to put forward the necessary resources to investigate and prevent these attacks on the Muslim community."

Last week, CAIR's New York chapter had welcomed a hate crime charge for an attack on two Muslim women pushing babies in strollers during which the alleged attacker punched and kicked the victims and tried to pull off their hijabs.

Earlier this month, 60-year-old Nazma Khanam, a native of Bangladesh, was stabbed to death near her house in Queens.

Khanam was also wearing Islamic attire at the time of the stabbing.

CAIR said it has noted a spike in anti-Muslim discrimination and hate crimes in recent months, which the civil rights groups attributes at least in part to Islamophobic rhetoric used by various public figures.
The shrinking value of the currencies of most developing economies is driving up food and fuel prices in ways that could deepen the food crises that many already face,... Read More
One of the tricky parts about finding high-yielding dividend stocks is that many have high yields because there are concerns that the company won't be able to maintain its payout. Companies that do have this combination of high yield and payout sustainability aren't that common, but there are some out there. Three companies that fit the bill that you should look into are Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (BIP 0.97%), StoneMor Partners (STON), and Suburban Propane Partners (SPH 0.48%). Here's why these three fit the bill of a stock you don't have to look after all the time.

Strong dividend through diversification

Many companies that are structured as master limited partnerships are much like one-trick ponies. They all do something rather well, but they mostly only operate in one or two industries. What sets Brookfield Infrastructure Partners apart is the diversity that its portfolio has to offer. The company's business operates in toll-booth model businesses like electric distribution lines, oil and gas pipelines, rail lines, and -- go figure -- toll roads themselves. Brookfield's assets are also geographically diverse as it owns assets and properties in 15 countries spanning five continents. This helps to prevent the company from becoming too reliant on the economic growth of a single company.

Some of the other things that make Brookfield seem like a promising investment is its capital allocation strategy. Infrastructure investments are capital intensive and many companies in this industry make the mistake of taking on too much debt and expecting to "grow into the balance sheet" as some executives have put it. Brookfield, on the other hand, maintains a policy where it pays out about 60%-70% of funds available for distribution, and uses the rest to pay for new projects. These are the kinds of moves that will make Brookfield's payout much more sustainable over the long term. So you can have confidence that its 4.95% yield is on pretty solid footing.

Investing in one of life's certainties

StoneMor Partners is truly a unique company with quite possibly one of the most consistent business models: funeral and end-of-life services. The fact of the matter is, our lives are finite, and a company will need to help guide a family through end-of-life services. That is where StoneMor Partners comes in. It is one of the nation's largest funeral services companies in the U.S. This kind of consistent demand service means that StoneMor is able to churn out relatively regular cash flows that produce a distribution yield today of 10.6%.

The past couple of quarters have been a struggle for the company as it has found its sales force wanting and there has been a high turnover rate. But the company is looking to address this as it hires and trains new staff. Despite these headwinds, it has enough cash on hand from prior quarters to make up for the modest shortfall this past quarter. This may end up being something worth watching in the coming quarters, but StoneMor's management has shown over the years to be prudent with its payout to shareholders and the ramp-up of its new sales hires should help to bring the company back to better results.

I'll admit right off the bat that StoneMor Partners isn't a high-growth stock, but no investor should expect it to be with a 10.6% yield. Slow and steady growth accentuated by some modest acquisitions to consolidate the fragmented end-of-life care industry is StoneMor's path forward, and patient investors should be able to reap a decent return from its dividend alone.

What more could you want from a 10% yielding stock?

Suburban Propane Partners is an easily overlooked company. For one, technically, it's in a commodity industry, as a supplier and distributor of propane to residential, commercial, and industrial customers. However, because it is a supplier and distributor, much of its revenue and earnings is more predicated on the total volume moved rather than the price of the commodity itself. This helps the company produce pretty consistent cash flows that allows management to pay out a very generous yield of 10.8%.

One thing to keep in mind about Suburban is that since so much of its business is distributing propane, which is used for home heating, much of the company's results will be predicated on the weather in the winter months. This past winter was especially warm in Suburban's core markets, so results were a little less robust than in prior years. Sill, even during a down year, the company's cash flow was still in relatively decent shape. Perhaps another year of record warm temperatures might spoil Suburbans payout, but we'll need to see if this past winter was just a fluke.

Like StoneMor Partners, investing in Suburban Propane Partners isn't for share price appreciation or massive dividend growth. Propane distribution is a pretty saturated market and today Suburban mostly grows through acquisition. That being said, a yield of 10.8% doesn't need huge share price appreciation to generate decent returns. For investors looking for a stable dividend with a high yield, Suburban Propane Partners is worth a look.
In the global game of importing weapons, America and Russia -- once the world's two superpowers -- take a back seat. Instead, the world's top importers are China, India, and Saudi Arabia. That's according to a recent report out of SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which found that from 2010 to 2014, these three countries accounted for 25% of all arms imports around the globe.

Let me repeat that: There are 195 countries in the world today; just three of them accounted for $1 out of every $4 spent on weapons imports. And what's even more amazing: The world's top arms importer spent three times as much money on weapons imports as either No. 2 or No. 3.

Don't keep us in suspense! Who is it?

India: That's the world's No. 1 arms importer, according to SIPRI's data, for the period 2010-2014. And this arms importer accounted -- all by its lonesome -- for 15% of all weapons imports worldwide during those five years, versus 5% for each of China and Saudi Arabia.

Now, the data fluctuates a bit from year to year. In 2015, for example, SIPRI's data show that Saudi Arabia briefly edged out India in weapons purchases, spending $3.2 billion on imports to India's $3.1 billion in that single year. Similarly, in 2013, the United Arab Emirates briefly pushed Saudi Arabia out of the top three importers when the UAE's spending surged to $2.2 billion (the Saudis spent $1.7 billion that year).

But the long-term trend shows that India has been, is now, and probably will continue to be the world's biggest arms importer. So far this century, India has spent a combined $41.2 billion on weapons imports, averaging $2.7 billion a year. For comparison, China has averaged $2.2 billion in annual weapons imports since 2000, and Saudi Arabia less than $1 billion (although its spending has picked up dramatically in the past five years).

What does it mean to investors?

As the world's biggest arms importer, India is a hugely important market for U.S. defense contractors. In recent years, aerospace and defense giants Boeing (BA 2.92%) and Lockheed Martin (LMT 2.74%) have both booked billions of dollars in sales to the country -- for C-130 and C-17 military transport planes, for example.

And it's not just India. In fact, the entire Southeast Asian arms market offers a huge (and rare) opportunity for sales growth to U.S. defense contractors. As Bloomberg Businessweek recently put it, "last year contractors' sales to foreign customers jumped 10 percent, while U.S. revenue declined 2.4 percent." As a result, overall, the five biggest defense contractors in the U.S. now get 24% of their revenues from buyers outside the U.S. -- from India, to be sure, but also from Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, and other nations in the region, looking to beef up their militaries to deal with an aggressive China.

So what does all of this mean to investors? If you're considering an investment in a defense contractor, it's more important than ever today to know which companies are doing the best job of selling into the Southeast Asian market. Learn more about that here.
On a black day for U.S. stocks in general, Duke Energy (DUK 3.25%) stock fared worse than most. As stocks all around it tumbled an average of 2.5% Friday, Duke dropped 3.5% -- and it could get worse.

As reported on Norway's The Local news site, Norway's sovereign wealth fund announced last week that it has added Duke Energy stock to a "blacklist" of stocks it will no longer invest in.

Formerly known as the "Government Petroleum Fund," Norway built up this fund from profits earned selling off the company's oil production, and uses the fund to purchase investments around the world, as a means of diversifying its economy. At the beginning of this year, Norway's fund owned $304 million worth of Duke Energy stock, and a further $162 million worth of bonds of both the parent company and its subsidiaries.

"Big" news

Before you shrug off this news -- or ask "what's Norway got to do with me?" -- consider:

Norway's sovereign wealth fund is big -- bigger than China's, and bigger than Saudi Arabia's. Depending on how you count it, Norway's fund controls nearly $1 trillion in assets. (The exact value depends on the Krone-to-Dollar exchange rate. Currently, Norway's fund is valued at $890 billion. Two years ago, it would have been worth $1.2 trillion).

Any way you count it, the fund is much bigger than Duke Energy itself, whose market cap is less than $54 billion.

A history of activism

Norway runs its fund "according to strict ethical guidelines, with a focus on sustainable economic, environmental, and social development." In years past, these guidelines have persuaded the fund to divest itself of dozens of investments that didn't pass ethical muster.

In 2005, for example, the fund divested firms such as Boeing (BA 2.92%), Raytheon, and General Dynamics for their roles in production of cluster bombs. 2010 saw Philip Morris (PM 3.34%) and Altria (MO 1.96%) booted for tobacco ties. In 2014, Alpha Natural Resources, Peabody, and Arch Coal were swept into the coal ash heap as well -- a well-timed decision, as Alpha declared bankruptcy a year later, followed in quick succession by both Peabody and Arch.

Now, Norway has put Duke Energy stock in its crosshairs. Referring to multiple instances of environmental disasters tied to "ash ponds" maintained by Duke's coal-burning power plants, Norway argues that "for many years [Duke and its subsidiaries] have ... repeatedly discharged environmentally harmful substances." Despite multiple court rulings ordering Duke to clean up its mess, Norway accuses Duke of dragging its feet, saying the company won't fully repair the environmental damage it has inflicted for "another 10-15 years."

What it means to investors

Counting both investments in Duke stock, and in Duke's bonds, Norway's fund owns roughly 0.5% of Duke Energy's entire enterprise value. Selling out of these investments could dampen the prospects for the stock growing in value. The Local notes, too, that Norway's actions "are also closely watched and copied by other investors around the world." Thus, selling by Norway's fund could spark similar sales by other investors -- especially in the near term.

Longer-term however, investors can take some comfort in the fact that even the disapproval of a large sovereign wealth fund like Norway's doesn't necessary strike a death knell for an affected stock. Notable exceptions of Arch, Peabody, and Alpha Natural notwithstanding, history is also replete with examples of companies that incurred Norway's wrath, but went on to prosper regardless.

For example, since being blackballed by Norway in 2005, Boeing's stock has doubled in price. Philip Morris International is up two times in value as well, since Norway barred it for investment in 2014, while Altria stock has tripled.

While there's no guarantee Duke Energy stock will fare similarly well after being "blessed" with a blacklisting by Norway, neither do you need to assume the stock is now forever cursed.
This blog covers software patent news and issues with a particular focus on wireless, mobile devices (smartphones, tablet computers, connected cars) as well as select antitrust matters surrounding those devices.
Most of us are at least cursorily familiar with Rosetta Stone. As the pioneering interactive, software-based language learning solution, Rosetta Stone helped to popularize e-learning for consumers and online training for businesses. Today, the company has unveiled Rosetta Stone Catalyst, a new training-based tool designed to foster business communication across 24 languages. Although this isn't Rosetta's first foray into enterprise e-learning, the company hopes Rosetta Stone Catalyst will provide a streamlined and more granular approach to language learning.

Rosetta Stone Catalyst is a self-paced language-learning software solution that combines business-focused and casual activities to provide users with multiple, language-based use cases. For example, do you need to train Erica, your Vice President of Sales, in Japanese to help her entertain executives who will be traveling in from Tokyo? Catalyst is designed to instruct Erica on how to use common social phrases that you might hear at an authentic sake bar.

Conversely, if Erica needs to deliver a business-saving presentation, Rosetta Stone Catalyst will train her to use professional Japanese phrases similar to what you'd hear in a boardroom. You can also tailor your solution to focus on things such as vertical-specific terms, sales and support-focused language and tone, and language that would be used at specific, work-related locations (e.g., on a factory floor or in an emergency room).

Unlike Rosetta's previous enterprise and consumer language learning products (which were sold as separate tools broken down by skill level and English versus non-English learning), Rosetta Stone Catalyst will instead serve as one cohesive product that spans experience levels. Rosetta Stone Catalyst will come in three different tiers: one for e-learners only, one for e-learners who will also be able to take group tutoring sessions, and one for e-learners who will have access to one-on-one tutoring sessions. Like most other enterprise software products, Rosetta Stone Catalyst will be priced and sold according to tier and the number of seats you purchase (although 10 seats is the minimum).

Rosetta Russian

Executives will likely enjoy the robust reporting of Catalyst, which enables training managers to oversee the progress (or lack thereof) of each individual's learning path. Managers will be able to specifically zero in on how far each employee is within his or her specific training program, how often the learner is using the software, and how proficient the learner is at speaking the new language. More importantly, managers will have granular oversight over how well an employee is performing at specific tasks.

Unlike previous iterations of Rosetta Stone (which measured success in a larger scope), Rosetta Stone Catalyst will allow administrators to focus on how well someone is performing in a very specific subset of a learning program. For example, instead of finding out that Jim has reached the intermediate level of Spanish, managers can use the report to determine that Jim is on the beginner level, that he struggled with vocabulary, but that he did really well with his pronunciation.

"Many organizations and specifically global companies don't necessarily find one solution with all of the unique and diverse needs that their entire organization has," said Ms. Sheerin Vesin, Senior Manager of Enterprise Marketing at Rosetta Stone. "What we've created is a single tool that will help companies do business on a global scale."

Rosetta Pronunciation

As organizations move into new markets, Vesin said Catalyst can serve as the company's primary tool to ensure that its employees can communicate effectivelywhether they're new learners who train on the software or whether the company is testing an employee's proficiency.

Rosetta Stone Catalyst is a new addition to Rosetta's roster but the company won't be phasing out its former tools. Anyone who is on a Foundations, Advantage, or Advantage for Business product is welcome to continue to use their legacy solution. Additionally, if new or current clients want to implement or add the legacy tools to their existing suite, Rosetta Stone will work with them on a case-by-case basis, Vesin said.

Rosetta Stone Catalyst is currently available on Android and iOS devices. All of the apps offer online and offline modes. Beta testing for the solution began in December of last year, with 16 global customers and 1,535 learners in 55 countries. Citi Corp. and Experian were among the first companies to test Rosetta Stone Catalyst.

Rosetta Russian Doll

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
Image source: Getty Images.

Market uncertainty is climbing ahead of November's elections, and that could provide investors with an opportunity to scoop up bargains on top dividend-paying stocks. Historically, dividend-paying stocks have outperformed non-dividend-paying stocks, and while there's no guarantee of that happening again, the extra pop provided by dividends may take some of the sting out of any drop-off in share prices. With that in mind, here arethree companies that I think are worth buying if markets tumble.

Changing times

International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM) is transforming itself into a cloud, analytics, engagement, and security giant from a stodgy PC and networking Goliath, and so far, the transition seems to be payingoff.

IBM's shares are significantly outpacing the S&P 500 this year, in part because sales tied to its transition are climbing. Currently, "strategic imperatives" revenue is clocking in at an annualized $30.7 billion, with cloud revenue running at $11.6 billion annually as the company exited its second quarter. Since Gartner estimates the market for cloud services could reach $204 billion this year, up 16.5% from last year, IBM doesn't appear to be anywhere near maxing out its opportunity in that market.

Investors who buy Big Blue will need to remember that its legacy business is still weighing down its top- and bottom-line growth, and that has industry watchers predicting earnings per share (EPS) will slide this year to $13.51 from $14.92 in 2015. However, a maturing of its transformation should rekindle bottom-line growth, and that has industry watchers targeting EPS to bounce back to $14.11 next year.

If these predictions pan out, IBM should continue to have plenty of dividend friendly cash flow available to support its current 3.5% yield and to boost future dividend payouts. IBM upped its dividend payment by 7.7% in April, and its dividend has increased in 21 consecutive years, so it's likely IBM will maintain its dividend-friendly status with investors. That makes it worth buying from the bargain bin.

Image source: Pfizer, Inc.

A big opportunity ahead

Pfizer, Inc.'s (NYSE: PFE) top and bottom lines could climb significantly in the coming years as management leverages a bulletproof balance sheet to roll out new cancer drugs and acquire up-and-coming competitors.

The company has already put its financial weight to work with a series of acquisitions that offer upside.

Last year, it spent $17 billion on Hospira so that it could leap to the forefront in developing biosimilars that will compete against top-selling biologic drugs that are losing patent protection. Pfizer estimates that $100 billion in brand-name biologics sales will be up for grabs in the coming five to 10 years, and that the market for biosimilars could jump from a rounding-error level today to $20 billion over the next five years.

Pfizer also forked out more than $5 billion earlier this year to buy Anacor so that it could get its hands on Anacor's new eczema and psoriasis cream, crisaborole, and it's spending about $14 billion soon to roll up Medivation, the maker of the multibillion-dollar prostate cancer drug Xtandi.

Given that Pfizer still has tens of billions in cash on its books, there's little reason to think that management won't be looking for more acquisition opportunities, especially if the markets head lower.

The company's internal research and development is also yielding some important wins, including the anticoagulant Eliquis and cancer drug Ibrance.Pfizer shares Eliquis sales with co-developer Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Pfizer's alliance revenue, which includes Eliquis sales, increased 21%, to $376 million, in Q2. Sales of Ibrance, which treats breast cancer, soared to $514 million in Q2 from $140 million a year ago.

Overall, Pfizer's guiding for sales of at least $51 billion and EPS of at least $2.38 this year, up from $49 billion and $2.20 last year, respectively, and its M&A and R&D efforts make me think its sales and profit are heading even higher. If that turns out to be correct, then buying Pfizer when its shares are yielding a healthy 3.5% may be smart.

Image source: ExxonMobil Corporation.

Drilling for deals

ExxonMobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM) is an energy giant that makes its money by discovering and refining oil and gas, and because it boasts one of the industry's healthiest balance sheets, it ranks as my top pick for dividend-hungry investors looking to buy energy stocks.

Oil and natural gas prices have nose-dived in the past year because of surging global production and tepid global economic growth, butExxonMobil's refining and chemicals operations have offset a lot of the drop in commodity prices, and as a result, the company still reported $1.8 billion in earnings in Q1 and $1.7 billion in earnings in Q2.

Admittedly, the first- and second-quarter sales trends put it on track to earn far less than the $16.2 billion it made last year, butoil and natural gas prices won't be low forever, and cost cuts now could offer plenty of profit-friendly leverage when prices do find their footing.

In the meantime, ExxonMobil still has the financial firepower to acquire top-tier assets from struggling peers and keep its dividend flowing to investors.Over the last 33 years, ExxonMobil has increased its dividend by an average 6.4% per year. Given shares can be bought at a discount to where they were in 2014, there's a lot to like about buying this stock on sale, including its 3.45% dividend yield.

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.

Todd Campbellhas no position in any stocks mentioned.Todd owns E.B. Capital Markets, LLC. E.B. Capital's clients may have positions in the companies mentioned.Like this article? Follow him onTwitter where he goes by the handle@ebcapitalto see more articles like this.The Motley Fool owns shares of ExxonMobil. 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.
Ready to invest in an oil stock? Here are three timely ideas from our experts. Image source: Getty Images.

The oil industry continues to struggle, with oil prices still down nearly 60% from 2014's peak. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater -- there are a lot of great companies operating in the sector that remain worthy investments. With that in mind, we asked some of our top contributors to offer up timely ideas that investors should consider. If you're looking for an oil stock to buy right now, one of their picks might be exactly what your portfolio needs.

Making a big find

Dan Caplinger: During crude oil's plunge in 2015, most energy companies fell almost in lockstep, and that made many investors erroneously think that all energy companies are the same. But there are still winners and losers in the exploration and production game, and Apache (NYSE: APA) proved that recently when it made a huge discovery that should have long-term ramifications for the producer well into the future.

Apache said that its Alpine High acreage, located in a remote area in West Texas, had proven out to be what it understatedly termed "a significant new resource play." After having spent years buying up acreage in the area, performing extensive research into the geology and geophysical aspects of the land, and looking for ways to optimize the development of the tract, Apache said that it now estimates 3 billion barrels of oil in place on the tract, as well as 75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Moreover, in addition to those finds in relatively deep rock formations, Apache believes that even more oil could be present in shallower layers.

Shares have already climbed on the news, but the economics point to a dramatic boom for Apache even without considering the potential impact of future oil price increases. By bucking the trend and investing in its own assets, Apache scored a major win and should see benefits for years to come.

Underestimating stable growth

Tyler Crowe: One company that continues to look like a solid investment in the oil and gas industry is Magellan Midstream Partners (NYSE: MMP). Magellan is unlike many other pipeline and logistic companies in this industry, because a vast majority of its network is dedicated to moving refined petroleum product rather than raw products such as crude oil and natural gas. Refined products such as gasoline and diesel typically have more consistent demand and are less subject to the ups and downs in volumes you might see with other products. To add to that advantage, the revenue Magellan receives from these pipelines comes mostly -- about 80% -- from fixed fees, so this ensures a pretty consistent cash flow quarter in and quarter out to pay its shareholders a handsome distribution.

One thing that investors seem to be discounting about Magellan's future is that it has a couple of major projects in the wings that will significantly improve results in the coming years. Today, it has more than $600 million in new projects that are slated to come on line by the end of 2016, and it has just started on its big project, a multiphase development of a marine storage and export terminal in the Houston ship channel that is expected to cost about $1 billion. These major projects are expected to lead to sizable distribution growth over the next couple of years, and that doesn't include the upside potential of an acquisition that Magellan has said it's exploring.

These things all suggest that there is quite a bit of growth for Magellan in the coming years, but the market hasn't exactly been kind to this stock over the past couple of years. So this may be the time to jump into Magellan, while its stock has a distribution yield of 4.6%.

High-quality company to buy on a dip

Jason Hall: As of this writing,Phillips 66(NYSE: PSX) shares are down about 17% from their late 2015 peak. And not completely undeservedly so, since the company has seen its profits get squeezed in recent quarters, as falling crude oil prices put a pinch on the crack spread the company had been getting on its refined products.

But it'snota company in decline or in trouble, and just as with Magellan Midstream, Phillips 66 has a lot of growth potential ahead of it. The company has several major petrochemical, export, and oil and gas infrastructure projects on track to start contributing big profits in 2017 and beyond.

Furthermore, the recent decline in Phillips 66 shares has pushed its effective dividend yield over 3%, and management is committed to increasing the dividend along with earnings growth in years ahead. Add a strong share buyback program into the mix, and Phillips 66 is a high-quality oil stock, well worth buying at these prices and holding for the long term.

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.

Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. Jason Hall owns shares of Phillips 66. Tyler Crowe owns shares of Magellan Midstream Partners. The Motley Fool recommends Magellan Midstream Partners. 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.
Democrat Hillary Clinton's bout of pneumonia, kept secret until she nearly collapsed on Sunday, has raised an element of uncertainty about her health going into the final weeks of presidential campaigning and risks feeding a narrative from rival Donald Trump about her stamina.

The Clinton campaign was forced to admit on Sunday that the 68-year-old Democratic presidential nominee had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday after she complained of allergies and was seen coughing repeatedly in recent days.

The pneumonia disclosure was made public hours after her campaign said she had become "overheated" to explain why, knees buckling and unsteady, she was rushed from a ceremony marking the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York.

Democratic donor and fundraiser Bill Bartmann later fielded calls from about half a dozen Democrats worried about how the episode would look. The callers, he said, decided to wait and see how everything plays out.

For Democrats, the incident also brought up some familiar concerns about Clinton's penchant for secrecy during an ongoing debate about her use of a private email server while serving as President Barack Obama's secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

"You've got Donald Trump promoting health conspiracy theories to begin with, so any time something even lends an air of credence to that conspiracy, it needs to be debunked right away," Democratic strategist Bud Jackson said.

The issue also put pressure on both Clinton and Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to reassure American voters about their health given the rigors of the presidential campaign, in which the food is often unhealthy, sleep is elusive and the packed schedule and extensive travel is stressful.

"The short term turbulence will be more about the handling of this than the substance, though I'm sure both candidates will be pressed for greater disclosure of health records," said David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama.

Late on Sunday, her campaign canceled Clinton's trip to California scheduled for Monday morning.

The health problem was the latest blow for Clinton at a time when Trump has erased most of her lead in national opinion polls and is competitive again in many battleground states where the Nov. 8 election is likely to be decided.

Her dismissal of half of Trump's supporters as a "basket of deplorables" of racist, homophobic people on Friday triggered a firestorm of criticism and prompted her to roll back the comment.

During the Republican primary campaign Trump dispatched rival Jeb Bush by deriding him as a "low energy" candidate. His efforts to raise questions about Clinton's stamina mirror that strategy.

'IT WILL BE USED, ABSOLUTELY'

Trump aides did not immediately respond to questions about whether Trump would seek to use the Clinton health incident to his advantage. Trump, normally voluble on Twitter, stayed silent on the issue on Sunday.

"I expect they will milk it like crazy," Republican strategist Art Hackney said of the Trump campaign. "He certainly has already indicated that she doesn't have the stamina, so I think it will be used, absolutely."

Trump is expected to discuss his own health regimen in an interview to air on Thursday with celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Trump, a 70-year-old New York businessman, has made no secret of his affinity for fast food, sometimes sharing photos of himself on his campaign jet or at Trump Tower enjoying fried chicken, hamburgers and a taco bowl.

He has made less information available about his health than Clinton has. Last December, he released a statement from his doctor, Harold Bornstein, that described him in excellent health with "extraordinary" strength and stamina.

The statement did not mention what medicine Trump might be on or other details typically included in such disclosures and was dramatically different from the hundreds of pages of medical records released by Republican nominee John McCain in 2008 to reassure Americans about his bouts of skin cancer.

"If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency," Bornstein wrote. The Manhattan physician said in August he wrote the letter in five minutes as a Trump limo waited to pick it up.

Clinton released a two-page letter outlining her medical condition in July 2015 that sought to reassure Americans about her health after she fell and suffered a concussion at home in 2012 near the end of her tenure at the State Department.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior associate at the UPMC Center for Health Security in Pittsburgh who is not treating Clinton, said recovery from pneumonia can vary from about a week to longer, depending on the severity.

"Some patients have very little difficulties with activities of daily living and are only mildly hampered by it while others may require hospitalization and have to reduce their activities," he said, adding that pneumonia was the 8th leading cause of death in the United States.

Clinton's campaign is likely to be pressed on why she did not make her pneumonia diagnosis public until late Sunday afternoon despite receiving it two days earlier.

"I think it's exceedingly important that Hillary Clinton be transparent about what's going on," said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. "If she gets a report of pneumonia on Friday, they should try to tell the public in real time. The danger for a candidate is if they seem to be hiding their health history."

(Additional reporting by Amanda Becker in Chappaqua, New York, Luciana Lopez in New York and Emily Stephenson, Richard Cowan and Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Caren Bohan, Peter Cooney and Michael Perry)
Opening arguments are set to begin on Tuesday in the trial of former American International Group Inc chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg over accounting fraud at the insurance giant some 16 years ago.

Greenberg, 91, is facing civil charges of orchestrating a $500 million transaction to conceal the insurer's financial difficulties from shareholders. He is expected to testify during the trial.

The case, filed by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2005 and which also names former AIG chief financial officer Howard Smith as a defendant, did not go to trial for more than a decade, thanks to legal wrangling that twice made its way to the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has said he continued to pursue the case to show "no one, no matter how rich or powerful can evade responsibility for misconduct."

David Boies, Greenberg's lawyer, plans to argue the lawsuit was politically motivated.

"This case was brought by Eliot Spitzer expressly because he was angry at Hank Greenberg," Boies said in an interview on Monday. He plans to enter evidence that Spitzer was irate about statements Greenberg made about the attorney general's overly aggressive approach towards alleged corporate misconduct.

Greenberg and Smith tried for years to have the case thrown out as having no merit, but the Court of Appeals said there was enough evidence to proceed to trial.

Greenberg nearly settled the case in 2008 with a $100 million gift to charity, Boies said, but the market crashed that September along with the value of Greenberg's AIG stock holdings.

Damages are no longer on the table after Greenberg, Smith and other executives separately reached a $115 million settlement with AIG shareholders, but the Court of Appeals ruled in June that Schneiderman could seek to recoup millions in bonuses paid to the defendants during the time the alleged fraud took place.

Justice Charles Ramos of New York state court in Manhattan will decide the non-jury case, which may run into early next year with breaks between trial dates. Some 20 to 25 witnesses are expected to testify, according to Boies.

Greenberg led AIG for four decades before he was ousted in 2005. The following year, AIG paid $1.64 billion to settle federal and state probes into its business practices.

The case is People v Greenberg et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County No. 401720-2005.

(Reporting By Karen Freifeld; Editing by Anthony Lin)
Image source: Restoration Hardware.

Restoration Hardware(NYSE: RH) was at one time a stock market darling. The high-end home-furnishings retailer more than tripled from its 2012 IPO to its peak last year above $105. However, since then, things have unraveled for the stock after a series of unforced errors and macroeconomic effects pushed the stock down nearly 70% from its all-time high.

Now, after beating earnings estimates for the first time in three quarters last week, the stock may be on the mend, solving some of the issues that plagued it earlier.

A year to forget

The retailer's troubles began on Nov. 13 last year, the day of the Paris attacks. TheS&P 500lost more than 1% that day, prompting a 6.5% drop in Restoration Hardware shares. The retailer, with its select clientele, is sensitive to tourist spending, as well as to foreign currency exchanges and other factors that could be affected by terrorism.

The stock slipped again on its December earnings report, as revenue growth slowed to 10% and the stock slipped 14% over the span of a week. At this point, Restoration Hardware had been a dependable growth stock and had just turned its 23rd consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth.However, investors seemed to believe the deceleration boded poorly for the year ahead.

In early 2016, the stock continued to slump, falling along with the broader market as shares fell 35% until it gave preliminary guidance on Feb. 24, which sent the stock down 26% in one session as investors' prior fears seemed to be confirmed.

While sales continue to grow at a steady pace, earnings were flat and well below guidance as the company said that market conditions had changed significantly.CEO Gary Friedman cited three problems in the quarter. First, shipping delays caused RH Modern orders to be unfulfilled, meaning revenue grew more slowly than orders. He also noted issues in markets affected by currency and energy prices, as sales in Canada, Texas, and Miami were particularly slow. Finally, he also believed there was a pullback in spending from the high-end customer in part because of the stock market correction at the time.

By then, much of the damage to the stock had already been done, as it traded near $40 for the next few months. In May, the stock fell further following a management shake-up and plummeted in June on another disappointing earnings report. Management cited the same excuses, including energy and currency fluctuation, a slowdown in the luxury consumer market, and shipping delays. Shortly after, the stock touched an all-time low at $24.75, but it has regained more than 40% since then.

Where the company stands today

During the course of the stock's plunge, the company implemented a number of significant changes. It introduced RH Modern, an entirely new line of furnishings that the company says combines "a fresh and compelling minimalist aesthetic with the comfort and quality that define the RH brand." It also transitioned from a promotional model to a membership one with the introduction of the Grey Card, which provides a 25% discount on all RH merchandise for a $100 annual fee.

Much of Restoration Hardware's recent problems may be attributed to transitions in its sales model and the rollout of RH Modern, especially the shipping issues, which seem to have passed. The strong dollar and drop in oil prices have also complicated the transition.

In its most recent quarter, results topped expectations, sending the stock up as much as 13%, as the company was able to ship products earlier than anticipated, pulling revenue from the third quarter into the second.It's now attributing a reduction of $0.90-$1.00 in EPS for the full year because of this year's temporary costs and sees full-year EPS of $1.60-$1.80.

CEO Gary Friedman has touted the response to RH Modern and to the Grey Card, and he has demonstrated his retail wizardry before saving Restoration Hardware by casting it as a high-end brand.

The transition is still a work in progress, but if the company pulls it off, the stock could double or triple, as Friedman has set a long-term goal of $4 billion to $5 billion in revenue, double from where it is today. Nearly 40% of the stock is sold short, but that also provides an opportunity for bullish investors, as the stock could easily pop in a short squeeze.

Restoration Hardware's success isn't guaranteed, but for risk-seeking investors the potential reward is well worth the risk.

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.

Jeremy Bowman has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Restoration Hardware. 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.
Mel Gibson is in the midst of a career rehabilitation right now thanks to his critically acclaimed work as director of war epic "Hacksaw Ridge"  but its safe to say Brad Pitt wont be rushing out to see it.

Pitt delivered a swift put-down of Gibsons talents as a filmmaker in a recent interview with the New York Times Style Magazine.

In the interview, Pitt mentions that hed like to make a film about Pontius Pilate  but hes quick to specify that the film wont be for the 'Passion' crowd.

Hes referencing "The Passion of the Christ," Gibsons controversial but hugely successful 2004 telling of the last 12 hours of Jesus life. The interviewer responds in kind, saying that watching The Passion of the Christ drove him out of church, to which Pitt laughs.

I felt like I was just watching an L. Ron Hubbard propaganda film, he says, referring to the Scientology leader and science fiction writer.

Pitt does reserve some praise for Gibson, however: He says the 60-year-old actor and filmmaker, whose other directorial efforts include "Braveheart" and "The Man Without a Face," depicts violence on screen extremely well and that his 2006 epic "Apocalypto" is a great film.

Gibson himself hasnt been shy about speaking his mind about the current state of the film industry while on the publicity trail for "Hacksaw Ridge."

Speaking about "Hacksaw Ridges" relatively modest budget  around $40 million  Gibson said he couldnt understand how blockbusters could cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. A budget of more than $200 million, he said, didnt seem worth the investment.

I look at them and scratch my head. Im really baffled by it. I think theres a lot of waste, but maybe if I did one of those things with the green screens Id find out different, he said. It seems to me that you could do it for less  Youre spending outrageous amounts of money, $180 million or more, I dont know how you make it back after the tax man gets you, and after you give half to the exhibitors. What did they spend on 'Batman v Superman' that theyre admitting to? he asked.

And its a piece of s--t. Im not interested in the stuff. Do you know what the difference between real superheroes and comic book superheroes is? Real superheroes didnt wear spandex. So I dont know. Spandex must cost a lot.

This article originally appeared on News.com.au.
Two men were arrested Monday night for rushing the stage during Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochtes debut performance on Dancing with the Stars with partner Cheryl Burke.

Los Angeles police spokesman Officer Mike Lopez said 48-year-old Sam Sododeh and 40-year-old Barzeen Soroudi were detained by security on the set until officers arrived to take them into custody.

Lopez added that no one was injured in the incident.

Lochte said afterward that he was a little hurt after the security scare. A witness told Fox News that Lochte and Burke were on stage receiving their scores from Judge Carrie Ann Inaba during a live installment of the show, when two men with anti-Lochte T-shirts rushed the stage.

Host Tom Bergeron said the show was interrupted by what was characterized as a little incident and thanked the ABC series security team. However, the witness said it was a bit more intense than that.

I've never been so scared in my life, the witness said. Two men were yelling, Lochte, you suck! And ran toward Ryan and his dance partner, Cheryl Burke.

The two men were handcuffed and removed from the audience as well two women who were sitting behind the men in the audience. The women were also wearing shirts that had Lochtes name with a line through it, the witness added.

Lochte told Bergeron that "so many feelings are going through my head right now  a little hurt, but I came out here. I wanted to do something I'm completely not comfortable with, and I did."

Derek Hough told Fox News that the incident marred the usual carefree atmosphere of the show and admitted he even got a little emotional.

I dropped a couple of F bombs. DWTS is my home," he said.

Hough added that Lochte and Burke left early, only doing a few TV interviews.

Theyre shaken."

Longtime dancing professional Sharna Burgess wasnt happy with the way things went down.

"There's no place for this in the ballroom, she said.

During the episode, the Olympic medalist performed a foxtrot routine with professional partner Cheryl Burke to "Call Me Irresponsible." They received a combined score from the judges of 24 out of 40.

Lochte and teammates were involved in an early-morning drunken encounter during the Olympics last month at a gas station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They later claimed they were threatened and robbed. United States team officials banned Lochte for 10 months, requiring him to forfeit $100,000 in bonuses and miss the 2017 world championships.

Fox News Carole Glines and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
"The Willis Family" star Toby Willis appeared in court Monday after being charged with child rape this past Friday.

Willis did not have an attorney, a Muhlenberg County, Kentucky circuit court spokesperson told FOX411.

According to the circuit court clerk's office, Willis did not oppose extradition. This means that the state of Tennessee has 60 days to bring him back to their state to face charges. Willis will be given an opportunity to enter a plea when he is formally charged in Tennessee.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation charged Willis with one count of child rape after an investigation revealed a sexual encounter he allegedly had with a child in 2002.

"TBI Agents arrested the 46-year-old in Greenville, Kentucky, where he travelled in an effort to avoid law enforcement, and charged him with one count of Rape of a Child," the press release said. "The investigation into Willis remains active and ongoing."

"The Willis Family" premiered last year on TLC and follows Willis, his wife Brenda and their 12 children whose names all start with the letter "J." The family of entertainers first became known when they reached the quarterfinals on season 9 of "America's Got Talent" in 2014.

Before their TLC show, they had a reality show on GAC called "The Willis Clan."

"TLC did not renew The Willis Family and new episodes have not aired since April 2016. We are shocked to hear this news," the network told FOX411.
A small outbreak of chicken pox was traced back to a single school bus in Michigan, and highlights the importance giving kids the chicken pox vaccine, according to a new report.

Health officials in rural Muskegon County, Michigan, were alerted to a suspected case of the chicken pox in an 8-year-old last December after the child was sent home from school, according to the report of the outbreak from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published Sept. 8.

Shortly afterward, three more kids came down with the illness, the researchers wrote. The link among the cases appeared to be the school bus that all four children rode to and from school each day, according to the report. The kids didn't interact socially in school or have classes or lunch together, the researchers noted.

Chicken pox outbreaks are rare, because most children are now vaccinated against the virus. At the school in the report, 95 percent of the students were fully vaccinated, meaning they had received both doses of the vaccine, as recommended, the researchers said. Another 3 percent of students at the school had received one shot, the researchers noted.

No other cases of chicken pox were diagnosed in the school for the rest of the year, according to the report.

The health officials investigating the outbreak revealed that the first child to get sick had not been vaccinated, and that the child's four siblings (also unvaccinated) had all also recently been kept home from school because of a rash that looked like chicken pox.

Among the three children who likely caught the virus on the school bus, one had been fully vaccinated, according to the report. Full vaccination is between 88 and 98 percent effective at preventing chicken pox, according to the CDC.

The other two children, who were siblings, had not been vaccinated, the investigators wrote. Those children later spread chicken pox to their 17-month-old sibling, according to the report.

Chicken pox is caused by the varicella zoster virus. The same virus also causes shingles in adults. In this case, a shingles infection turned out to be the source of the chicken pox infection: The first child's parent had a shingles infection several weeks before the children developed chicken pox, according to the report.

Before the chicken pox vaccine was developed, the virus spread easily from kid to kid, especially in schools. However, now that most kids are vaccinated against the virus, it may be increasingly likely that kids, particularly those who are unvaccinated, will get the virus from adults who have shingles, rather than from other kids, the researchers wrote.

The researchers mentioned only one previous report, which occurred in China, of chicken pox spreading on a school bus. Because school buses put kids in close proximity to each other, however, doctors and public health officials investigating similar outbreaks might want to consider these vehicles as a possible risk factor, the report said.

Originally published on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have promised to disclose more details about their health soon, but its not clear what records they will or wont release. There are no guidelines for disclosures when it comes to a candidates health, and as this race has shown so far, the campaigns can say what they want when they want.

STAT turned to physicians and scholars who have studied presidential health to ask what they would look for in the records to better assess the candidates health.

Heres what they said:

What are the basics?

Both Clinton, 68, and Trump, 70, have already released some details about the medications they take and other vital information about their overall health. A two-page letter from Clintons physician offered more details than the one-page letter from Trumps doctor, including cholesterol levels and heart rate.

Doctors say basic data points such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate  particularly if taken consistently over years  can provide a rough assessment of someones health. You might want to go so far as [body mass index], but thats a very touchy subject, said Dr. Michael Coates, a family medicine doctor at Wake Forest.

All these measurements change with time, and its not as though doctors look for a candidates blood pressure to hit an ideal mark. But the information can be used to rule out or at least minimize the risk factors for certain conditions. Were asking for a snapshot of your current status and a look in the past, said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University. You would like to know, for example, that a patients blood pressure was within a range.

Any additional information about medications could also be telling  not only about diagnoses but also about a persons risk of experiencing side effects.

Do they have any chronic medical conditions?

Trumps doctor said he has had no significant medical problems over the past four decades. Clintons physician says she has hypothyroidism and seasonal allergies, but no other known medical issues or cardiovascular disease.

Information about any chronic medical conditions  and how theyre being treated  would raise important questions about how the candidates might fare in the White House.

How well are those chronic medical illnesses controlled? Should we expect flares of those chronic medical illnesses during their administration? said Dr. Leonard Feldman, an internist and pediatrician at Johns Hopkins.

What immunizations have they gotten?

Neither candidate has said anything about immunizations.

We tend to think of vaccines that infants and teens need to get, but some immunizations are specifically recommended for older people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people 60 and older should get a shingles vaccine, and those 65 and older should get two kinds of pneumococcal vaccines. Schaffner said the pneumococcal vaccine was especially relevant in this case because the bacteria that the immunization protects against can cause pneumonia. Pneumonia is forcing Clinton to take a few days off the campaign trail, although the cause of her case isnt clear.

And then theres the annual flu shot, which some doctors say candidates should be getting as a way of encouraging other people to get them.

How diligent theyve been in getting those flu shots could give you a sense of their judgment, whether theyre actually interested in maintaining their health and whether we have to worry about them getting sick in office from the flu, Feldman said.

What preventive tests are they getting?

Clintons doctor says that her routine health maintenance is up to date and has included a normal colonoscopy, gynecological exam, mammogram, and breast ultrasound. And her cancer screenings? All negative.

Trumps doctor, meanwhile, disclosed the results (very low) of a test that measures the blood level of a protein thats often elevated in men with prostate cancer. The PSA test, as its called, was designed to screen for prostate cancer three decades ago but has begun to fall out of favor in some camps. There was no word on any colonoscopies or other cancer screenings.

Its worth watching what the candidates say about getting the recommended screenings and tests for people their age. Theyre recommended for a reason, Feldman said.

Its also possible Clinton or Trump have received additional screenings or tests, like whole-body CAT scans or cardiac stress tests. VIPs like presidential candidates often undergo those kinds of procedures even when they are not recommended for the general population, Feldman said.

Could past medical history shine a light on future risks?

Clinton has had blood clots and takes a blood thinner regularly, while Trump takes daily aspirin and a low dose of a cholesterol medication, according to their doctors letters. Experts said that having certain health conditions or risk factors isnt a disqualifier for any candidate, but that they would want to see that any problems are being addressed.

Those are the kinds of things that can happen to people when you put on a little mileage over the years, Schaffner said. Both of the leading candidates are over 65 years of age. It wasnt so long ago that once you reached your 65th birthday, thats the time you retired  it wasnt the time you took one of the most strenuous positions you could think of.

Candidates who have had certain cancers or heart attacks or strokes in the past could be at higher risk for health problems during their presidencies, which is why doctors say aspects of medical histories are relevant to voters.

Whether Trump has ever been treated for a medical problem that his doctor doesnt characterize as significant  such as hypertension or something thats turned up in a colonoscopy, if hes ever had one  could help predict his likelihood of poor health in office.

In Clintons case, information about whether shes ever had a breast biopsy could offer context about her likelihood of developing breast cancer in office. And those blood clots that have prompted speculation? More specifics about the reassuring follow-up testing she got in 2013, as her doctor put it, might help put conspiracy theories to rest.

How much does all of this actually matter?

Without question, experts say the public should be aware of any health condition or risk factor that has a significant possibility of affecting a candidates ability to fulfill his or her duty while in office. But just how much do we need to know?

To some who study this issue, only the critical details. Were in an area where information is easily twisted and distorted both on purpose and accidentally  some of it is quite complicated, said Robert Streiffer, an associate professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The standard should be pretty narrow in terms of what kind of things are required for a candidate to disclose.

Streiffer and his colleagues wrote in a paper published in 2006 in the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy that candidates are morally required to waive their right to medical privacy concerning a very specific set of medical conditions. But underlying their argument was the idea that even presidential candidates have a right to medical privacy.

Streiffer told STAT that the notion of opening complete medical histories up to the public is problematic. It could, for instance, prevent a state representative who has aspirations of running for higher office from going to the doctor for an important medical issue that might not even be relevant to his or her fitness for public office.

We have and value our right to medical privacy  many of these things are personal and private, he said.

A particularly thorny area where this can play out is mental illness. Perhaps candidates shouldnt have to disclose their past counseling sessions, but experts say that hospitalizations for mental illness and conditions that could have an effect on the persons cognitive ability in office should be made public.

In their 2006 paper, Streiffer and his colleagues wrote that such conditions could include depression. In some cases, depression could be severe enough to undermine ones ability to adequately perform the core responsibilities of a position like the presidency, they wrote, adding that the notoriously stressful environment of the West Wing could easily trigger a recurrence of depression.

But todays voters might expect complete disclosure; as Schaffner said, This is an era of transparency. Now, the instinct might be to question what someone is hiding if he or she releases only the fewest of details.

Thats why it might be worth including surgeries or hospitalizations from even decades prior, Coates said. You dont want to be secretive about things, he said, because then people speculate.
next Image 1 of 2

prev Image 2 of 2

A golden retriever service-dog-in-training was stolen from a facility in northwest Georgia, and now her owners are seeking help from the public to locate her.

Fox 5 Atlanta reported that 3-month-old Dorie had been training at Milton-based Canine Assistants, a nonprofit school for service dogs, and that she was taken from the facilitys kennel sometime between the evening of Sept. 3 and the early morning of Sept. 4.

This is the first time in 25 years we have ever had a puppy stolen from our farm, Canine Assistants founder and executive director Jennifer Arnold told the news website. And considering the facts, we can only assume the person(s) involved knew our system and they had a clear intention to take Dorie along with her service vest.

Arnold and hear team conducted an internal investigation and found that none of the groups 280 volunteers had Dorie in their possession, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

Milton Police are helping search for Dorie, and as of Sept. 12, the puppys parents were offering a $3,500 reward for information on her whereabouts. The news station did not disclose the owners names.

Canine Assistants has reportedly tightened its security measures since the theft.
Inside the brightly lit storefront in Brooklyn, N.Y., business was brisk as employees combed, washed and blow-dried little heads.

Do I have a lot of lice? a boy asks the woman combing his hair slathered in Pantene conditioner.

Its the busiest time of the year for companies like Lice Busters, a family-run business Dalya Harel started in her kitchen in 1989. She now has eight locations in New York, Florida and Israel. The Brooklyn salon, opened in April, has big boxes of lollipops and Twizzlers. Cartoons playing on a TV screen are interrupted by the constant ring of the phone and chatter of schoolchildren. A lice check at a local private school one day last week had brought a steady stream of business.

Some six million to 12 million infestations of head lice occur each year in the U.S. in children ages 3 to 11 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite experts assurances that head lice pose no health concern, the insects are a regular source of angst for schools and families, who may spend as much as hundreds of dollars to get rid of them.

Lice have become increasingly resistant to widely used over-the-counter shampoos such as Nix or Rid, which contain permethrin or pyrethrins. While such products are still recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups as the first line of treatment, some doctors and parents are turning to new topical treatments, which are generally available by prescription. Also getting a boost are combing salons, some of which have expanded into multistate chains.

The process of combing out is the only way to get rid of all the lice and nits, says Deborah Capone, who calls in Lice Busters employees when there is a lice outbreak at the three preschools she runs in Brooklyn.

The salons typically use a technique known as wet combing. Hair is doused in some sort of lubricantoften Pantene conditionerand employees use a specially designed comb to remove the lice and nits. The conditioner loosens the pests and makes them easier to spot. The process can take more than an hour as hair is combed multiple times from different angles.

Click for more from The Wall Street Journal.
At 1-year-old Daniel Jacksons annual checkup, doctors discovered he had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Now 12, the Georgia boy is preparing to swim an open-water relay to fundraise for cancer research.

Jackson doesnt remember the chemotherapy or the time Santa had to come find him in the hospital, but the two scars for his chemotherapy ports serve as his reminder, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

When he was 5 years old, Jackson beat cancer.

"The day they took his port out, he was a little over 5 years old, his mother, Ilsa Jackson, told Fox 5 Atlanta. And he came home and said, Daddy, Daddy, my cancer is gone. They took it out. So, to him, that port signified cancer. The port being gone signified, I'm done with it."

That year, Jackson started swimming, and now hes old enough to participate in Swim Across America Atlanta. The open-water swim relay is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 17, and money raised will go to the AFLAC Cancer Center of Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta.

Jackson will swim a half-mile across Lake Lanier in a relay team with his big brothers.

"It makes me just think about just how lucky I am to still be alive, he told Fox 5. I hope I feel amazing and just proud to be doing that."
Breathing secondhand smoke during childhood can lead to long-term breathing and health problems and a shorter life expectancy, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association.

Even though the harms of exposing kids to cigarette smoke are well known - asthma and lung infections among them - many children still breathe this smoke at home or in public places or while riding in cars or buses, noted Dr. Geetha Raghuver, lead author of the statement.

"Minority children and those from poor backgrounds are exposed more often," Raghuver said by email.

"Cigarette smoking is very addicting and a stress reliever; this along with easy access is likely the reason that it is still prevalent," she added.

Overall, an estimated 24 million nonsmoking children and youths are exposed to secondhand smoke in the U.S., largely because of parents who smoke.

That translates to four in 10 school-aged children and one in three adolescents, Raghuver and colleagues note in the statement published in the journal Circulation.

In 2012, researchers found a nicotine byproduct called cotinine in blood samples from nearly 41 percent of U.S. children ages 3 to 11, and in 34 percent of kids ages 12 to 19 - despite declines over recent decades in both adult smoking rates and the proportions of young children and adolescents living with smokers.

Poor and non-white kids were disproportionately affected.

Those blood tests found 68 percent of low-income children and 43 percent of minority youth were exposed to secondhand smoke. While Hispanic children were slightly more likely to be exposed than white kids, the problem was most pronounced among black children.

"It is a socio-economic and a health care associated disparity issue," said Dr. Avni Joshi, a pediatrics researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota who wasn't involved in the statement.

"Parents do not understand or are oblivious to the gravity of second and third hand smoke exposure and possible effects," Joshi added by email. "This may be related to their level of education, access to health care and role modeling in the community."

Children are more likely to become smokers themselves if their parents smoke.

Besides impacting heart function by causing damage to arteries, exposure to secondhand smoke has been associated with other cardiovascular risk factors including obesity, high cholesterol, and insulin resistance - which is linked to diabetes.

While doctors have warned parents about the dangers of secondhand smoke for years, recent research has helped explain why this can be dangerous for kids, the statement authors note.

Chemicals in secondhand smoke can cause changes to blood flow, blood vessels, blood pressure and heart rhythm.

Children are especially vulnerable to secondhand smoke exposure in part because they cannot control tobacco use in their surroundings, and they appear to be particularly susceptible physically to the smoke's effects.

But the effects of secondhand smoke may be difficult for parents to see while children are young, said Dr. Annie Lintzenich Andrews, a pediatrics researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina who wasn't involved in the statement.

"Avoidance of secondhand smoke exposure might not be on the top of many parents' list of priorities due to so many competing daily stressors like getting kids to school, paying the bills, supplying nutritious meals," Andrews said by email.

"Also, there are often not immediate, tangible negative consequences to secondhand smoke exposure in children making it difficult for parents to appreciate the risks it poses to their children," Andrews added.
At 14 years old, a typical American girl might be thinking about school, hanging out with friends, and going on dates, but an Appleton, Wisconsin teenager is focused on something very different. Jerika Bolen wants to die.

Jerika was born with a rare incurable disease called spinal muscular atrophy type 2. She has almost no control of her muscles and requires a wheelchair to get around. She's undergone 30 surgeries so far, she said she's in pain every single day and doesn't want to continue to live that way.

The girl's mother, Jennifer Bolen, supports her daughter's decision.

"I said, 'Jerika I love you that much that I will not let you suffer if it's that bad,'" Jennifer told WLUK-TV.

Jerika wants to go into hospice care, turn off the device that helps her breathe and let her life slip away.

In July, friends and family threw a prom-like party for the teen called "Jerika's Last Dance."

"It makes my heart explode! It's so crazy that people want to come for little old me!" Jerika told WLUK-TV.

Her story has gained attention and evoked strong emotions nationwide, with supporters saying that the girl has a right to decide what to do with her own life, and while others are outraged that a child would be making such a heartbreaking choice.

"She's only 14 and we know that the brain is not fully matured," Carrie Ann Lucas, founder and executive director of the Colorado-based Disabled Parents Rights, told Fox News. The group is asking Wisconsin's Department of Children and Families to intervene in the girl's case.

"There's a reason why we don't let 14-year-olds join the military, there's a reason why we don't let 14-year-olds vote. We don't let 14-year-olds make their own medical decisions" Lucas, 44, added.

Lucas, who has a form of multiple sclerosis and is reliant on a ventilator, doesn't believe the disease Jerika suffers from is imminently fatal. She also believes Jerika may be in pain because she isn't getting the medical care she needs. If a doctor can help ease the pain, Lucas thinks Jerika might have a better quality of life.

Lucas said she also fears Jerika's decision to end her life might have been formed from the negative way disabled people are portrayed on TV or in movies.

"We very often see our lives devalued not being dignified and really that we're in many ways better off dead than disabled," she said.

Wisconsin law is murky on how to handle Jerika Bolen's situation.

As a minor, Jerika is legally considered to be "incompetent" by the state. Her mother's support might make a difference, however. According to a Wisconsin court ruling on the 2014 case of Disability Rights vs. University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinic, "in the absence of a persistent vegetative state, the right of a parent to withhold life sustaining treatment from a child does not exist."

According to Wisconsin attorney Kristen Scheuerman told Fox News, "In the absence of any litigation, it's a moral question with legal implications because if a mom or someone else acts there could be potentially legal consequences to those choices."

Many of those who live near Jerika's hometown of Appleton are defending her right to choose how to handle her life.

"She's in a body that's nearly paralyzed and painful all the time," Alton Olson, who was hired as the DJ for "Jerika's Last Dance" told Fox News. "Think about how you would feel."

Initially Jerika said she wanted to enter hospice by the end of the summer. Since the prom in July, Jerika and her mother have mostly remained silent and behind closed doors, avoiding the media attention.

Jerika's last public comments have left her friends and supporters with a heavy heart.

"In your life you need to like yourselfbecause for a while, probably up until I decided (to end her life) I didn't like myself, Jerika told WLUK-TV. but then I realized this is the end and you've got to make it the best."
next Image 1 of 2

prev Image 2 of 2

That Conquers eyes were bigger than his stomach nearly cost him his life. Luckily, the 1-year-old goldfishs owner was willing to shell out big bucks to save him.

The Courier Mail reported that after Conquer swallowed a pebble about .4 inches long, the rock got stuck across the side of his mouth and he began choking. His owner, Emma Marsh, of Queensland, Australia, rushed him to the vet, where she paid about $375 for doctors to sedate the fish and remove the pebble. Marsh reportedly paid about $9 for Conquer, who is about 2 inches long and weighs .03 pounds.

[Conquer] was making excessive mouth movements trying to dislodge it, Marsh, 21, told the news website. If we did nothing, he would have starved to death.

Veterinarians dripped anesthetic into Conquers water until he fell asleep, tilted the fishs mouth slightly out of the water, and placed forceps into his mouth to dislodge the pebble. The emergency consultation cost $65, while the anesthetic and overnight hospital stay cost $300, The Courier Mail reported.

Conquer is reportedly now on the mend.
The idea is a bit disarming, but cockroach milk may be one of the most super of all superfoods. Dont worry; you wont be seeing cockroach milk in stores anytime soon, and if it is ever actually for sale, the word cockroach will be left out.

In July 2016, a group of stem cell biologists and chemists published a paper that got enormous media attention, due to the strange topic. The paper, published in the International Union of Crystallography (IUCrJ), concerned a novel discovery made by a team of 11 scientists spanning from Iowa to India, who investigated the nutritional concentration of cockroach milk. They found that it exceeded the food value of buffalo milk, the international standard for the most nutritious milk, by three times.

Cockroaches are among natures most persistent buffalcreatures. There are over 4,500 species of cockroaches worldwide. They have evolved over an estimated 320 million years and are exceptional survivors in the global ecology. Nutrition plays a role in this. And thats where cockroach milk comes in.

There isnt much cockroach milk in the world thats because only one species of cockroach, Diploptera punctata, or the Pacific beetle cockroach, produces milk. This is known as viviparity, in which developing offspring who hatch from eggs are fed milk by the mother. This milk aggregates in a brood sac within the uterus of the cockroach, and forms crystals which feed the young. It was University of Iowa biologist Barbara Stay who discovered that the milk turns into crystals in the guts of developing embryos. These crystals are exceptionally concentrated in nutrients.

Due to the small size of a cockroach brood sac, and the even smaller quantity of milk stored therein, it is no easy task teasing out some milk. The cockroaches must be sacrificed, and the milk extracted from the body cavity with care. Tasked with this approach, the researchers involved in the study analyzed the milk, and found a complete food, rich in proteins, fats and sugars, along with a number of peptides, which are parts of proteins and can impart significant health advantages. The discovered that cockroach milk is three times as nutritionally rich as buffalo milk, and four times as concentrated as cows milk. And thats a big deal.

The nutritional density of cockroach milk almost certainly is why the Pacific beetle cockroach achieves sexual reproductive maturity in less than half the time of other species.

There will be no effort to mass-produce cockroaches and create mini milking machines. No small-fingered people will be enlisted to tease out the tiny bit of milk in a cockroach. Instead, these researchers plan to engineer yeast using the gene sequence of the milk crystals, basically manufacturing this superfood from scratch. So perhaps someday, some engineered supermilk will appear on store shelves, as a result of this research.

The story doesnt quite end there. When I was scheduled to record a Health Talk with Dr. Manny Alvarez about cockroach milk, I wanted to do something different from what everybody else has done with this story. So I contacted a couple of the researchers from the study, and asked for some cockroach milk. I was quite surprised by their very enthusiastic response. They flew into action, contacting each other and copying me, from Iowa to Brussels to India, with several researchers suggesting that others might have some of the milk in a fridge. They seemed pretty excited about it all.

The day before I headed to New York to record our Health Talk segment, two FedEx packages arrived, one from Belgium and one from North Carolina, each containing a tiny vial of 100 percent real cockroach milk. It was an amazing bit of timing.



The next day, after Dr. Manny and I discussed on camera the relative merits of cockroach milk, we did something consistent with our ten years of eating strange foods, from fried puffer-fish sperm to brain ravioli, to partially developed duck embryo in an egg, feathers and all.

We drank cockroach milk on our segment, which you can see in the video related to this article. It was a first ever, the drinking of cockroach milk on TV. And while we are not likely to receive major public acclaim or good citizen citations for this, it felt good to have a first. In the world of bizarre foods, we have set a new high bar. Others will certainly find this act hard to follow.
Every now and again secular progressives rip off their mask and tell conservatives what they really think of them. At an LGBT fundraiser last Friday in New York, Hillary Clinton one-upped President Obama, who said of conservatives during the 2008 presidential campaign: "And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." That came to be known as the "bitter clingers" speech.

Hillary Clinton said: "You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables." She then said that some of these people were "irredeemable." After strong pushback, presumably from some of the "deplorables," Hillary Clinton partially walked back her remarks. She said she had been "...grossly generalistic and that's never a good idea. I regret saying half -- that was wrong."

How many, then? One-quarter? One-third? Ten percent? And how does she arrive at such a figure?

This is the contempt in which it seems the left holds traditional Americans. Anything they say "no" to is to be labeled racist, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic and nativist. To the left, anyone who does not share "modern" ideas is to be condemned, even called unAmerican and deplorable.

Clinton's remarks remind me of what Washington Post writer Michael Weisskopf wrote about evangelical Christians in the early '90s. Weisskopf said they were "mostly poor, uneducated and easy to command." That produced a torrent of critical letters and phone calls to the newspaper, prompting Ombudsman Joanne Byrd to explain the reasoning behind Weisskopf's statement was that most journalists don't know any of "these people."

The two comments prompted scores of evangelicals to send their resumes to the newspaper, showing degrees, even doctorates in various fields.

In a statement released by the Republican National Committee in response to Clinton's remarks, Chairman Reince Priebus said, "Insulting everyday Americans to a group of wealthy donors shows whose priorities Clinton really has in mind and exposes the hypocrisy of a candidate whose stated desire to unite the country is clearly all for show." Priebus went on to accuse Clinton of "condescension and "disrespect" to her fellow citizens.

Half of them anyway.

Name-calling on both sides prevents us from hearing what solutions to America's manifold domestic and foreign challenges the candidates propose. Perhaps the upcoming debates will help focus their and our minds.

Bad language in politics is nothing new. The 1800 presidential race between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who are now held in high regard as statesmen, was the beginning of what we now call negative campaigning.

In addition to the often scurrilous things they said about each other, Adams and Jefferson had surrogates who attempted to outdo them.

As Rick Ungar wrote in 2012 for Forbes magazine, the president of Yale University, a John Adams supporter, suggested that if Thomas Jefferson were to become president, "We would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution."

A Connecticut newspaper, notes Ungar, warned that the election of Jefferson would create a nation where "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced."

Not to be outdone, James Callender, "an influential journalist of the time ... wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a 'repulsive pedant' and 'gross hypocrite' who 'behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.'"

Deplorable, but redeemed in the minds and hearts of their countrymen; I'm doubtful the same will be said of the current presidential candidates 200 years from now.
Hillary Clinton defended herself Monday over her campaign's delay in announcing her pneumonia diagnosis, saying she's "already met a high standard of transparency" while looking forward to returning to the campaign trail.

The Democratic presidential nominee told CNN in a phone interview she did feel dizzy and lost her balance while attending a 9/11 commemoration ceremony in New York, but now is "feeling so much better."

"I was supposed to rest five days, that's what they told me on Friday, and I didn't follow that very wise advice," Clinton said.

She told CNN her campaign didn't make her diagnosis on Friday public because "I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal"

"I thought that I could just keep going forward and power through it, and obviously that didn't work out so well," she said.

When asked about her husband's comments in an interview with Charlie Rose to be aired on CBS and PBS that she occasionally has become dehydrated and gone through similar medical episodes in the past, Clinton said it is "something that has occurred a few times over the course of my life."

"What happened yesterday was that I just was incredibly committed to being at the memorial, as a senator on 9/11, this is incredibly personal to me," she told CNN.

"I could feel how hot and humid it was. I felt overheated. I decided that I did need to leave, and as soon as I got into the air conditioned van, I cooled off, I got some water, and very quickly, I felt better," she said.

She added that now she is taking her doctor's advice "to just take some time to get over pneumonia completely."

As she is taking time off, Bill Clinton will host fundraisers and at least one campaign event while his wife recovers.

The former president will headline two fundraising events Tuesday in Los Angeles and a campaign event Wednesday in Las Vegas, Fox News learned Monday.

Hillary Clinton did call into a fundraiser event Monday night in San Francisco after she took to social media earlier in the day to give an update on her health.

Thanks to everyone whos reached out with well wishes!, Clinton tweeted Monday afternoon. Im feeling fine and getting better.

The incident Sunday -- in which Clinton appeared unsteady and needing assistance from aides -- has resulted in her and Republican rival Donald Trump each planning to release more personal health information.

The 70-year-old Trump said Monday that candidate health is now an issue in the White House race.

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said on MSNBC that the campaign will release more information in the next couple days.

Trump told Fox News Fox & Friends earlier Monday morning that hell be releasing very, very specific details from a recent physical.

I think theyre going to be good. I feel great, he said. Fox News has learned Trump plans to release those details during his appearance Thursday on The Dr. Oz Show.

As for Clintons health, Trump said: Somethings going on, but I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail.

Clinton, 68, is resting at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Her doctor revealed she had been diagnosed Friday with pneumonia, after the episode at the 9/11 memorial, in which Clinton was also seen stumbling on her way to her van when leaving.

Clintons doctor also said she had become overheated and dehydrated at Sundays ceremony, but is recovering nicely.

The incident fueled questions about Clintons health. Trump on Monday brushed aside any speculation that Clinton might be replaced as the Democratic nominee, but said of the candidates health: I think its an issue.

Trump, meanwhile, continued to criticize Clinton for saying -- before her health episode -- that half of his supporters fall into a basket of deplorables. Clinton has expressed regret for the remarks, but Trump said, I think this is the biggest mistake of the political season.

Even before Mondays comments, Trump already had said both candidates should release detailed medical records.

Clintons campaign earlier released a July 2015 letter from Dr. Lisa Bardack describing Clinton as a healthy 67-year-old female whose current medical conditions include hypothyroidism and seasonal pollen allergies. The letter noted her elbow fracture in 2009 and concussion in 2012. Bardack detailed how Clinton had to undergo anticoagulation therapy to dissolve a clot, and experienced double vision for a period of time, after the concussion.

But the campaign has not released detailed records beyond that.

Former President Obama adviser David Axelrod rapped Clinton Monday on her "penchant for privacy."

Fox News Jennifer Griffin and John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The British national who attempted to steal a police officers gun in an effort to kill Donald Trump at a Las Vegas rally this past June pleaded guilty Tuesday to two charges tied to the incident.

Michael Steven Sandford, 20, entered the pleas to being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and disrupting an official function.

"I tried to take a gun from a policeman to shoot someone with, and I'm pleading guilty," Sandford told the judge.

Sandford, who was in the U.S. illegally after overstaying his visa, could have faced up to 20 years in a U.S. prison if he had been convicted at trial of both charges.

However, sentencing guidelines call for 18 to 27 months in prison for the offenses after credit for time served, accepting responsibility for the crime and avoiding trial, which had been set to start Oct. 3. Under the plea deal, Sandford won't be able to appeal.

Sentencing is set for Dec. 13.

Sandford, 20, was arrested June 18 after grabbing for the gun in a 1.500-seat venue at Treasure Island hotel-casino. Sandford didn't get the gun, and no shots were fired before he was arrested.

Sanford entered his pleas after his mother, Lynne Sandford, and a lawyer arrived from London and met with him in custody last week.

Family attorney Saimo Chahal said a psychiatrist she enlisted to review the case determined that Sandford was delusional at the time of the attempted attack. Sandford also suffers seizures, obsession-compulsion, anxiety and autism spectrum disorders, Chahal said.

"Michael was not in control at the time of the events and needs help," the attorney said in an email to The Associated Press before the plea in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas. "He is desperate to return to the U.K. to be near his family as he has no ties with the U.S.A."

Court documents say Sandford acknowledged asking the police officer at the event if he could get Trump's autograph then grabbing with both hands for the officer's 9mm handgun.

It wasn't clear if Trump recognized a threat before officers escorted Sandford out of the auditorium.

Sandford later told a federal agent that he drove from California to Las Vegas with a plan to kill Trump, and that he rented a 9mm pistol and fired 20 shots at a paper target at a Las Vegas gun range the day before Trump's appearance, according to court documents.

Sandford told the agent it was the first time he had ever fired a gun.

He also said he expected he would be killed during the assassination attempt, but that if he wasn't, he would make another attempt on Trump's life at a rally in Phoenix, court documents state.

The plea agreement acknowledges Sandford had been in the U.S. illegally for almost 10 months at the time of his arrest.

As a result of his plea, "It is almost certain that he will be permanently removed ... and will not be able to return to the United States at any time in the future," the document said.

Fox News' Matt Dean and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Florida congressional candidate apologized Tuesday for eyebrow-raising remarks to supporters that Hillary Clinton is under no illusions that you want to have sex with her, or that she's going to seduce you."

Democrat Joe Garcias candid comments were caught on camera by a so-called political tracker, The Miami Herald reported. Garcia was speaking at a Key West Democratic campaign office opening on Saturday.

I apologize for my poorly worded comment about Secretary Clinton, Garcia said in a Tuesday statement. My comments were intended to speak to Secretary Clintons relentless focus on getting the job done, despite the unjust gender stereotypes and biases women in public life are frequently subjected to. Hillary Clinton is the most competent and qualified presidential candidate in the history of this country, man or woman and I'm with her, because I'm confident she will be one of our countrys most effective leaders.

With Garcia in the stretch run of a tight race to win back his old congressional seat from vulnerable incumbent Rep. Carlos Curbelo, Florida Republicans pounced on the "sexist" remarks.

"It's shameful and disgusting that Joe Garcia would describe Hillary Clinton's qualifications to serve as president in terms of whether or not he would have sexual relations with her," National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Katie Martin said in a statement.

The Herald reported that the video was recorded upside down and shows Garcia standing in a hallway talking to a few other men before addressing the crowd. At one point, Garcia said Clintons potential presidency would be the most consequential presidency that weve seen since Lyndon Johnson.

Lyndon Johnson wasn't a particularly charming man, wasn't a particularly nice man: He would ask you nice, and then when you didn't do it, he made you do it, Garcia said. And Hillary is under no illusions that you want to have sex with her, or that she's going to seduce you, or out-think you.

Garcia later said: I dont want to be offensive to women. What Im talking about is exactly that: Its getting it done.

Asked why he would talk about supporters having sex with Clinton, Garcia at first defended his comments in a statement to The Herald.

"I believe Secretary Clinton is the most competent and qualified presidential candidate in the history of this country, man or woman," he said. "My comments speak to Secretary Clinton's focus on getting things done, and not on the gender stereotypes and biases women in public life are frequently subjected to. I fully support Hillary Clinton for president, and I'm confident she will be one of our country's most effective presidents."

Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
House conservatives revived a long-shot effort Tuesday to oust IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, formally introducing an impeachment resolution expected to see a vote by the end of the week.

Rep. John Fleming, R-La., a sponsor of the drive, offered the measure under special procedures that put the House on track to vote Thursday on the effort.

Conservatives say Koskinen hampered Congress' effort to investigate the IRS for tough assessments of Tea Party groups that sought tax exemptions several years ago. Koskinen denies that.

For years the IRS has abused its power to target people based on their political views. Commissioner John Koskinen not only did nothing about it, but continued the trend of deception by deliberately keeping Congress and the American people in the dark, Fleming said in a statement Tuesday. To date no one has been held accountable and no one will unless we move forward with a resolution to require a vote on his impeachment.

But GOP leaders are cool to the impeachment push, which stands little chance of succeeding. Some Republicans argue that an impeachment vote two months before elections risked irritating voters, while others said Koskinen deserved a full House Judiciary Committee probe before embarking on the seldom-used impeachment process.

There is a possibility that the House could move to stall the resolution outright, or refer it to committee. Even if the House sends it to the Senate, which will be difficult, Democrats there have enough votes to prevent Republicans from removing Koskinen from office.

Fleming warned Tuesday that any motion to table or refer to a committee is meant to kill the impeachment and should be viewed as a vote against impeachment by that member.

Standing on the House floor, Fleming read the resolution that cited the offense of "high crimes and misdemeanors." The move is certain to draw attention to Fleming, who is one of 24 candidates running for the Senate in his home state.

Republicans plan to hold a closed-door meeting Thursday to discuss strategy on the divisive issue.

The effort flows from the IRS' 2013 admission that for several years, it had targeted Tea Party groups seeking tax exemptions for rigorous examinations. Many Republicans have felt the IRS' actions were politically motivated, though investigators have never found evidence of that.

Koskinen did not join the IRS until the end of that year. But House Republicans accuse him of thwarting their investigation of the agency's actions by not providing all emails subpoenaed by Congress, lying about the IRS's destruction of emails and making little effort to recover the lost documents.

Koskinen and his Democratic allies say he did nothing wrong and provided Congress with all the information he had and knew about. They note that the IRS' inspector general concluded that agency employees accidentally erased IRS tapes with backup documents, and that the inspector general and Justice Department found no evidence that the IRS acted against tea party groups for political reasons.

"The impeachment resolution is riddled with factual errors and omissions and is based on flawed characterizations of law and events," background papers released by Koskinen's personal lawyers said.

The impeachment effort is being engineered by the conservative House Freedom Caucus, of which Fleming is among about 40 members. The resolution is sponsored by Fleming and Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., who will be leaving Congress after recently losing the GOP primary for his seat.

House GOP leaders have taken no active role in the impeachment drive and have noted that Republicans are divided.

"It's stupid," Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., also in a tight re-election battle, said Monday. "It's a purely political show vote. There are other ways to admonish officials we believe have lied to us."

The House needs only a simple majority vote to impeach a federal official, the equivalent of an indictment. The Senate then holds a trial and needs a two-thirds majority to find the official guilty and remove him or her from office.

Even if the issue reaches the Senate, Democrats and the two independents who back them hold 46 of its 100 seats and would be certain to block a guilty verdict.

Fox News Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
RISING CITY  Dillon Krueger understands the sacrifices soldiers make while serving overseas.

He spent three years away from the United States, including a year in Afghanistan, after enlisting in the Army.

So it wasnt hard for Jeff Martens to convince the Columbus High graduate to get on board with his plan to honor veterans and active military members through a mural at his Rising City storage units.

Dillon is a person who you give an idea to and he knows how to make it happen, said Martens, a Bellwood resident who comes from a military family. His brother and father are both veterans, as are some of his close friends, cousins and uncles.

I felt it was a way to honor them, he said.

Martens told Krueger he wanted a patriotic design for the mural, then let the 25-year-old artist go to work.

The result is a 12-by-10-feet image of one soldier carrying another with an American flag flying in the background and the phrase: All gave some, some gave all.

Theres really not a whole lot of paintings or murals from Afghanistan, so thats what I wanted to go with, said Krueger, who added patches from his former unit to the design.

The mural, a tribute to those serving in the ongoing fight against terrorism and all other veterans, took about 2 1/2 months to complete. Krueger didnt finish the project until last week, but hes already receiving positive feedback.

The Columbus resident said motorists passing through Rising City along Highway 92 would pull off the road to check out the painting, locals often honked in support as they drove by and military veterans have stopped to talk with him.

That was a great feeling, he said. Thats really why I wanted to use the design I did.

Krueger has created other murals for Miceks Shangri-la, Regs 7 Mile Steakhouse, where he works as a bartender, and American Legion Hartman Post 84, but this was the first project that required him to paint outside.

That added some challenges and weather delays, but the final product will reach a whole new audience. Several layers of oil paint and two cans of clear coat will ensure the mural remains a symbol of sacrifice and patriotism for years to come.

It will easily outlive my lifetime, thats for sure, Krueger said.

Martens couldnt be happier with the end result.

I think he did a wonderful job, Martens said. Weve gotten a lot of compliments on it.

But Krueger doesnt have much time to sit back and admire his work. The local artist is in the process of designing a mural for the old grocery store building in Genoa he hopes to begin painting next spring.

That piece, which will cover an entire side of the building, also has a military theme.

That will be a huge one, said Krueger, who is working with the Genoa American Legion on the project.

He also has smaller side projects in the works and plans to launch a website for his Krueger Art business this month.

Then theres the growing family.

Krueger and his longtime girlfriend Allie have a 1-year-old son Liam and are expecting their second child in late October.

He has two years left on his GI Bill and wants to enroll at the University of Nebraska at Omaha to pursue a bachelors degree in fine arts in the near future.

Until then, hell continue leaving his mark across the Columbus area.

Im kind of already doing what I want to be doing, Krueger said.
American fishermen are deeply fearful that the Obama White House could cut them off as early as this week from major fishing areas of the U.S. continental shelf on both coasts, further restricting one of the most highly regulated fishing industries in the world.

At stake are millions of dollars in fishing revenue and hundreds of jobs -- and in some parts of the country, the survival of an embattled way of life that has persisted for centuries but is facing environmentalist pressures unlike anything before -- and without the chance for hearings and legislative back-and-forth that U.S. laws normally require.

This totally affects us, but we dont know whats going on, one fishing boat owner, who asked to remain anonymous, told Fox News. We are just out of the loop. No one even wants to say what effect it will have.

They are throwing all fishermen under the bus, along with their supporting industries declared Marty Scanlon, a fishing boat owner and member of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries advisory panel on highly migratory fish species in the Atlantic. Theyve done everything they can to put us out of business.

What the fishermen fear most is the kind of unilateral action by the White House that they have already seen elsewhere. As part of their ongoing environmental ambitions, the Obama administrations Council on Environmental Quality, and the president himself, are aggressively interested in creating preservation zones that would ban fishing and other activities within large portions of the 200-mile U.S. exclusive economic zone of maritime influence, and just as interested in getting other nations to do so, in their own as well as international waters.

That aim, supported by many important environmental groups, is cited as urgently required for protection against diminishing biodiversity, overfishing and damage to coral and unique underwater geological features -- not to mention the fact that with only a few months remaining in his term, the president sees such sweeping gestures as part of his legacy of achievements, and as the boat owner put it, the window is narrowing for the administration to act.

As one result, pressure from lobbying campaigns both for and against new declarations of such no-go zones both along the U.S. northeastern Atlantic coast and the coast of California have been mounting.

So has, apparently, behind-the-scenes maneuvering to get influential Democratic legislators to support such new preservation areas publicly -- a tough call, since the affected fishermen are also constituents. So far, many of the Democrats are keeping a low profile.

One exception has been U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut -- whose state does not loom as a major fishing center -- who earlier this month vocally nominated an area he called the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts for preservation status.

Blumenthal was backed by some 40 environmental groups -- but not by many of his neighboring Democratic Senate colleagues. Fox News emails to a number of Democratic Senate offices regarding the issue went unacknowledged prior to this storys publication.

A more specific trigger for the nervousness in fishing communities is the upcoming September 15 start of a two-day, State Department -- sponsored Our Ocean conference, which has among other ambitions the extension of marine preserves across greater areas of the worlds oceans.

More than 35 foreign ministers of various countries are expected to attend, and according to a State Department official, build on previous meetings that garnered international pledges of nearly $4 billion for ocean conservation activities globally, and also pledged to safeguard nearly 6 million square kilometers -- 2.3 million square miles -- of ocean in Marine Protected Areas -- essentially, natural parks for marine life.

As the fishermen are well aware, two years ago President Obama dramatically kick-started the first-ever Our Ocean session by expanding the Remote Islands Marine National Monument by about 600 percent. He created a 140,000 square mile marine protected area northwest of the Hawaiian islands in which all commercial fishing and deep sea mining was banned.

Last month, Obama upped the ante once more. He expanded the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument , a protected area west and north of his native state, to the edges of the U.S. 200-mile exclusive economic zone. The latest move created a 582,578 square mile preserve that is about double the size of Texas and West Virginia combined -- and roughly a quarter of all the protected waters that the State Department claims its Our Ocean conference process has so far achieved.

According to Kitty Simonds, executive director of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council -- a joint federal, state and private sector agency set up under U.S. law to prevent overfishing and manage fisheries stocks in that region -- someone sent us an embargoed press release about the latest expansion a day before the announcement was made public.

Simonds, whose agency had previously called for a public, transparent, deliberative, documented and science-based process in advance of the proposed monument expansion, called it unbelievable that the government is kicking U.S. fishermen out of U.S. waters when the fishery is healthy. Simonds and a coalition of local supporters are willing to live with the expanded preserve so long as it still allowed fishing under the supervision of the existing management authorities.

Otherwise, she says, the restriction would force U.S. fishing vessels -- about 145 of them -- into international waters to make their catches, where they would compete against fleets from China, South Korea and Indonesia, among others, that have lower fishing standards. The move would also, she charged, increase fish imports -- currently about 92 percent of consumption -- rather than lower demand for seafood.

The fishermen point out that in terms of many larger food fish, such as tuna, the preserve areas are meaningless. The bigger fish roam oceans worldwide, and the long-line equipment used to catch them does not damage coral reefs or the fragile ocean bottom.

The monument designation also over-rode a 40-year-old, federally legislated process of managing fish stocks in all U.S. waters by means of fishery management councils like the Western Pacific agency. Eight councils were established around the country to manage fishing resources under legislation now known as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act after its congressional sponsors.

The councils are hardly passive when it comes to conservation issues, and have prohibited a variety of restrictive fishing practices, as well as placing monitors on board fishing vessels to make sure catch rules are enforced.

Nonetheless, they did not speak to the kind of sweeping, surface-to-sea-bottom environmental protections, including for coral formations and deep sea habitats, that the marine preserve supporters, including President Obama had sought -- even though opponents argue that fisheries management councils have even taken such issues as coral protection into consideration.

Just as in the administrations 2014 action, the recent Pacific expansion announcement preceded an international meeting, this time with Pacific island leaders alongside the world congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), one of the worlds most prestigious environmental organizations.

Obama attended the Honolulu session and told his audience at the start of the IUCN meeting that Teddy Roosevelt gets the credit for starting the National Parks system, but when you include a big chunk of the Pacific Ocean, we now have actually done more acreage than any other president.

What worries the fishermen is Obamas Big Stick -- the American Antiquities Act of 1906, a statute signed into law by Teddy Roosevelt that allows the president by decree to set aside historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest.

George W. Bush first used the act to set aside Pacific marine preserves related to World War II. But Barack Obama has used it at sea to create much more vast environmental sanctuaries, an approach widely advocated at home and internationally by major non-profit organizations like the Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Resources Defense Council.

The point of the upcoming Our Ocean meeting is to push those oceanic priorities even further, not only in terms of marine preservation areas but in expansive measures to combat illegal fishing, clean up pollution -- including masses of ocean debris -- and create further partnerships, both public and private, to carry on the effort.

CLICK HERE FOR THE MEETING WEBSITE

As the conference website declares: The world has agreed [via the United Nations-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals] to a target of conserving at least 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, including through effectively managed protected areas, by 2020. Through the Our Ocean conferences, we seek to help achieve and even surpass this goal.

About specific additional maritime preserves, however, a State Department official queried by Fox News on the issue remained closed-mouthed.

Many nations will be making announcements at the conference related to MPAs, he said. I do not have specific information about those at this time.

The hush-hush also covers the past. An interactive map on the Our Ocean conference website promises to show the impact of prior commitments, on the worlds oceans, but revealed nothing at the time this story was published.

George Russell is Editor-at-Large of Fox News. He is reachable on Twitter at @GeorgeRussell and on Facebook at Facebook.com/George.Russell
When it comes to giraffes, can you spot the difference? A new study reveals there's more to the animals' species diversity than once suspected.

The study researchers collected and analyzed DNA from skin samples representing 190 giraffes from across Africa, the first such analysis to include data from all nine formerly accepted subspecies.

The results showed that what was long thought to be one giraffe species is in fact four species. [All in the Family: Giraffes Are 4 Species (Photos)]

The 18th-century naturalist Carolus Linnaeus provided the first scientific description of a giraffe in "Systema Naturae" in 1758, using a Nubian giraffe  one of the now-defunct subspecies  as a model. However, Linnaeus had never actually seen a living giraffe, and described it based on reports that were 200 years old, according to the authors of the new study.

Over time, more giraffe subspecies were identified. The nine recognized subspecies were described between 1758 and 1911, and inhabited 12 African countries, including South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Subspecies designation was based on differences such as the shapes of the ossicones  the animals' knobby "horns"  along with variation in patterns on the giraffes' coats and differences in where they lived. But these distinctions were unreliable, the study authors wrote. Giraffes haven't been studied as closely as other large African mammals such as lions, elephants and gorillas, the researchers explained in a statement, and much about the long-necked animals remains unknown.

Giraffe's genetic complexity in particular has been "underestimated," the scientists said in the study, and greater attention was required to define giraffes' relationships and diversity.

A tall order

The researchers spent five years assembling and testing genetic material from giraffes ranging across Africa. When the dust settled, four species were standing tall: the southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa), northern giraffe (G. camelopardalis), reticulated giraffe (G. reticulata) and Masai giraffe (G. tippelskirchi).

The nine subspecies were absorbed into these four newly defined species, with the Nubian giraffe  the first representative, from more than 300 years ago  now identified as a subspecies of northern giraffe.

Recognizing four distinct giraffe species should be a game changer for conservation plans, the researchers said in the study.

Fewer than 100,000 giraffes remain in the wild, down from an estimated 150,000 that roamed the savannas 30 years ago. And because the species don't interbreed, population numbers for all African giraffes won't accurately represent whether each group is doing well. Using this new information about giraffe genetics, governments and biologists can create more focused efforts to ensure that all four species will be neck and neck in their race toward future success, the scientists said.

The findings were published online in the journal Current Biology.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday a massive new reusable rocket family in development for his private spaceflight company Blue Origin. The rocket, called New Glenn, will be used to launch satellites and people into space, according to Bezos.

In a newsletter from Blue Origin, Bezos unveiled an artist's concept of two- and three-stage versions of the New Glenn rocket. Both will stand taller than SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy, and the three-stage approaches the stature of NASA's Saturn V that boosted humans to the moon.

The New Glenn rockets are named for the first American to orbit Earth, John Glenn, and the design draws on what Blue Origin has learned from its reusable booster, New Shepard. That rocket has successfully launched into suborbital space and landed four times from West Texas since November 2015. New Shepard's next test, announced Sept. 8, will be an in-flight abort test to eject the rocket's crew capsule. (New Shepard is named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space.) [Blue Origin's Private Spaceships in Photos]

New Glenn is a step forward in bulkiness and range, and its three-stage version will be able to fly missions beyond low-Earth orbit, Bezos said.

"New Glenn is 23 feet in diameter and lifts off with 3.85 million pounds of thrust from seven BE-4 engines," Bezos wrote in the statement. "Burning liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen, these are the same BE-4 engines that will power United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket.

"The two-stage New Glenn is 270 feet tall, and its second stage is powered by a single, vacuum-optimized BE-4 engine," he added. "The three-stage New Glenn is 313 feet tall. A single, vacuum-optimized BE-3 engine, burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, powers its third stage. The booster and the second stage are identical in both variants."

While New Shepard launches from Texas, New Glenn will launch from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, which hosted launches of Atlas rockets from 1962 to 2005. Blue Origin just broke ground on a 750,000-square-foot rocket-manufacturing facility nearby for New Glenn. Bezos said that the new rocket should launch for the first time within the decade.

"Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step," Bezos said. "Up next on our drawing board: New Armstrong," Bezos teased, referencing Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon. "But thats a story for the future."
The U.S. government is coming under fire from animal rights activists amid concerns that almost 45,000 wild horses could be euthanized in an attempt to control their numbers.

Last week the Bureau of Land Managements National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board recommended that the Bureau euthanize or sell without limitation excess unadoptable horses and burros in the BLMs off-range corrals and pastures.

An unadoptable horse or burro is typically at least 5 years old, making them less attractive for purchase or adoption. The bureau has more than 44,000 horses and more than 1,000 burros in off-range pastures and corrals.

The recommendation prompted an angry response from The Humane Society of the United States. The decision of the BLM advisory board to recommend the destruction of the 45,000 wild horses currently in holding facilities is a complete abdication of responsibility for their care, said Humane Society Senior Vice President of Programs & Innovations Holly Hazard, in a statement.

Under the terms of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the BLM manages, protects and controls wild horses and burros. The law authorizes the agency to move wild horses and burros off ranges to sustain the health of public lands. In addition to the off-range animals, the bureau estimates that more than 67,000 wild horses and burros are roaming on BLM-managed rangelands in 10 Western states.

With virtually no natural predators, wild horse and burro herd sizes can double about every four years, which means that thousands of the animals are removed from the range each year to control herd sizes and protect the land. The BLM has its own off-range holding corrals in states such as Nevada and California, as well as contracts with private ranches in locations such as Kansas and Oklahoma.

The Bureau has not yet made a formal response to the boards recommendation, although, in a statement, it said that it will continue to care and seek good homes for animals that have been removed from the range. What this means is that we will continue with our current policy, which is not to sell or send wild horses or burros to slaughter, it said.

A BLM spokesman told FoxNews.com that the animals are protected. These are public lands and the horses are a symbol of the history of the Old West, he said. Since 1971, the BLM has adopted out more than 235,000 wild horses and burros, according to the spokesman. We screen buyers and we screen adopters, he added.

The agency also noted that the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board is an independent panel comprised of members of the public.

The bureau spent $49 million caring for off-range animals during its fiscal year 2015, which accounted for two-thirds of its wild horse and burro budget.

However, the Humane Society has slammed the agencys efforts. Over the past 20 years, the BLM has maintained round-up and removal as a primary management strategy for wild horse and burro populations on Americas western rangelands  an effort which has led to a financially unsustainable Wild Horse and Burro Program, it said, in its statement. By focusing massive efforts on removing horses and burros from the range, without treating those horses remaining on the range with any form of fertility control to limit population growth, holding facilities throughout the United States have become overburdened.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is suffering the same fate as countless hoverboards  there are reports that some phones have been bursting into flames, prompting Samsung is issue a recall and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to strongly discourage passengers from carrying the device on planes, news sources report.

Why is this smartphone such a fire hazard? The answer has to do with its lithium-ion battery, a common power source that isn't just used in cellphones but also in computers, power tools and toys. [9 Odd Ways Your Tech Device May Injure You]

Lithium, the third element on the period table, is a silver-white metal that can catch fire when exposed to oxygen or water, Lloyd Gordon, the chief electrical safety officer at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, told Live Science last year.

But in 1991, Sony Corp. commercialized a way to safely use the ions, mainly by keeping the lithium ions in a suspension or chemical so that it isn't pure lithium, Gordon said.

Well-made electronics have safety measures built into their lithium-ion batteries, but faulty ones with poorly made electric circuitry can meet with fiery ends, he said.

For instance, faulty batteries can be overcharged. Well-made batteries will stop charging automatically once they're full, but that's not always the case for faulty batteries, Gordon told Live Science. If left plugged in for too long, the lithium ions can collect in one spot and be deposited as metallic lithium within the battery, he said. Also, heat from the overcharging can cause oxygen bubbles within the gel, which are highly reactive with metallic lithium.

Likewise, defective lithium-ion batteries can also be over-discharged, meaning they don't shut off when the power is too low, which can also lead to fires, Gordon said.

It's unclear exactly what's causing the problem in some Galaxy Note 7 devices, but one user showcased the result on YouTube after he removed the phone from its official Samsung charger.

As of Sept. 1, Samsung is aware of 35 cases globally of lithium-ion battery malfunction, the company said in a statement.

"In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue," the company said in the statement. The company said it would temporarily halt sales of the device, and that it would replace current Galaxy Note7 smartphones with newer, safer models in the coming weeks, Samsung added.

In the meantime, the FAA took action, saying that it "strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage," according to a statement.

In response to the FAA advisory, Samsung is expediting new shipments of the smartphone this week, Reuters reported on Sept. 9.

Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
At last, Donald Trump has an address on Pennsylvania Avenue. Whether he gets another will be determined in eight weeks.

The Trump International Hotel held its soft opening Monday, welcoming the public inside to give employees an opportunity to work with guests and to iron out any kinks before its grand opening at the end of October-- just before the presidential election.

Even with canceled celebrity chef contracts, the loss of a financial partner and at least one ongoing lawsuit, many view the property as a positive development for the nations capital. Trump International Hotel is just one of a handful of luxury hotel properties in the D.C. area  a portfolio that includes the likes of The Four Seasons, The St. Regis, The Mandarin Oriental, The Park Hyatt, and The Ritz-Carlton.

But the Trump International is unique. Its housed in a historic federal building, which may interest tourists who cant afford it-- or just choose not to stay there.

The demand is there, said Elliott Ferguson, president and CEO of Destination DC, which manages and markets Washington as a convention and tourism destination. What people are looking for is quality of the stay, type of the experience. They are looking for a high-end luxury experience.

The hotel, at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave.  just blocks from the White House  is located in Washingtons historic Old Post Office building. Its the second tallest building in the nations capital (the Washington Monument is No. 1), and it has a prominent place along the inaugural parade route.

Built in 1899, the nine-story Romanesque Revival structure fills an entire city block on the north side of the Federal Triangle along Pennsylvania Avenue, which links the Capitol and the White House. Covered in granite over an iron and steel superstructure, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

On Monday, visitors gathered in the main lobby lounge, where navy, teal, light blue and gold seating arrangements created a living room-like setting. Crystal chandeliers hung alongside the buildings original industrial internal structure. Carpeting covered part of the marble floor. Guests occupied every seat at the bar, which has four television screens above it.

Asked how Trumps presidential campaign has affected the new hotel, its managing director said it hasnt.

Our single focus remains on managing one of the finest luxury hotels in the world, Mickael Damelincourt said via email. The Trump Hotels brand is completely separate from the campaign.

But others feel differently. By midday Monday, some protesters had begun gathering in front of the hotel. There are protests in Washington on a daily basis, a spokeswoman from Mayor Muriel Bowsers office said. Theres always a cause going on. Theres always someone who wants their voice to be heard.

Despite some negative attention, the hotel is already attracting a range of guests and visitors.

We are the only luxury hotel with such a prime location along the parade route, Damelincourt wrote. As one of the busiest times of the year in D.C., we expect it to be a very exciting time on property with a wide range of guests. Many business executives from corporations from around the globe will be visiting. Weve had significant interest for the 6,300 sq. ft. Trump Townhouse as well as the 4,000 sq. ft. Presidential Suite.

During the rest of the year, he expects the clientele to range from executives to leisure travelers to corporate groups and large wedding parties.

Interest in staying in Washington has been strong this year. Through July, hotel occupancy in the citys central business district was at 80.3 percent, according to STR, Inc., which tracks hotel data. The occupancy rate for the country was just over 66 percent.

And it figures to be close to 100 percent on Inauguration Day. Like all the other hotels on Pennsylvania Avenue, we will be sold out on Jan. 20, said Damelincourt, who has been with Trump Hotels for 10 years. This is the place the entire world will look at that day, as were centrally located along the parade route.

The five-star property should be a perfect viewing location for guests willing to spend upwards of $900 per night  not to mention $500,000 for the Trump townhouse package. He said the Trump International Hotel is positioned as a five-star property, competing at the luxury end of the D.C. market with the Four Seasons, the Mandarin Oriental, the St. Regis and just a handful of others.

A rate comparison using hotel web sites for a three-night stay from Oct 28 to Oct. 31 showed an average rate of $565 per night for the save and stay package at the Four Seasons in Georgetown; $558.33 per night for a Premier King room at The Jefferson and $509 per night for a Premier Room at the Trump International.

"It's hard to compete with Ritz-Carlton [rooms at the Ritz start around $580], but Trump is a five-star brand," said Anne Scully, president of McCabe World Travel. "It's an extraordinary hotel for Washington, D.C.

Paula Twidale, executive vice president of Collette Vacations says travelers and agents select hotels based on personal preferences, including location, style, design, amenities and perceived value. The Trump International has a level of luxury that is apparent throughout all of the hotel properties.

Its not only close to the Capitol, but you get into an opulence, pampering. Its like The Four Seasons on steroids, said Twidale.

Tourism executives select hotels for their tour packages based on what fits their brand. Collette Vacations, for example, uses three-and-a-half- and four-star properties for their vacation products. We look collectively and holistically as to what meets our brand standard, said Twidale. The Trump International isnt the right fit for their vacations because its a five-star property, she said.

But people who dont stay at the Trump may still want to visit it and reminsicence about its former days as the U.S. Post Office Department Headquarters (and the city's main post office), tour its on-property museum and to go to the top of the Clock Tower, where theyll see sweeping views of D.C. and hear the ringing of the Bells of Congress.

Though the area has not been known for activities after hours, Ferguson said he expects more activity on Pennsylvania Avenue with the opening of the hotel, which has a restaurant and a spa.

The National Park Service conducts free daily tours of the hotels Museum Gallery Walkway, which includes dioramas, imagery and videos depicting the history of early Washington. After the tour, a Park Service ranger escorts guests to a glass-enclosed elevator that takes them to the 270-foot-high observation deck of the Clock Tower. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Labor Day through Memorial Day, and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the summer.

Whether Trump or Hillary Clinton gets to welcome the public to another address just a few blocks away wont be known until November. But no matter how the election turns out, starting next month, the Trump International Hotel and the White House should have a place on any Washington tourists must-see list.
For the first time in its brief-but-bountiful history, Silicon Valley is pumping the brakes. In response to an increasingly conservative investment climate, major startups such as Evernote, Jawbone, Hootsuite and Snapchat are cutting staff.

That may work for powerhouse tech startups, but what about entrepreneurs? When funds run thin, can you afford to chop the one and only staff developer or the account managers? With a limited budget and a small team, the best solution may be to limit production costs. But how?

Entrepreneurs cant be like Apple, which leverages volume discounts to offer pixel-perfect screens and stainless steel hardware at low costs. And they dont want to be like streaming service Grooveshark, which launched in 2006, the same year Spotify was developed. It didnt pay for licenses from rights holders and was forced to reactively juggle legal battles while Spotify soared.

Related: Never Let a Downturn Crush You

The key is to be proactive. Find ways to lower production costs before your budget feels the pinch. This not only keeps more cash in the bank, but it also makes you a threat to more established companies. Electronics company Xiaomi usurped Samsung as Chinas best-selling smartphone company by proactively negotiating with its suppliers.

Produce like a pro.

Done right, a watchful eye on production leads to a better product at lower prices, improved financial security and the ultimate competitive edge. Four steps are key to proactively managing production:

1. Let price point dictate production.

While it seems logical to choose a product first, the production method second and the price point third, thats not actually the best course of action. Instead, estimate the products market price -- what you can realistically sell it for -- and work backwards.

Lets say youre a smartwatch manufacturer. Youve done your homework and seen similar products selling for $250 each. Youll need to tailor production to keep costs lower than estimated revenues. So, while you might really dig that leather armband for your smartwatch, the budget might dictate that you choose plastic instead. Just be sure to consider all types of costs, including development, prototypes, certifications and manufacturing.

2. Default to outsourcing.

In-house production, while the obvious route, isnt always the most cost-effective one. Its important for entrepreneurs think about outsourcing instead of focusing too much on what they want to produce internally. Many people attribute this very strategy to Skypes success.

When the video communication startup launched, it outsourced development to an Estonian team that did such a great job that 44 percent of the Luxembourgian companys staff is now based in Estonia. Microsoft must have approved, considering it bought the company for $8.5 billion. No matter your business, theres no reason to consider it a one-stop shop.

Related: 5 Tips for Outsourcing Product Development

3. Experiment with the unexpected.

People have come to expect gadgets to look and feel a certain way, which tends to stunt imagination. But the most successful products break the mold.

When Swiss-based energy company Alevo received $1 billion to develop its innovative energy storage system, it certainly didnt look to store-bought AAs. Instead, it turned shipping containers into large batteries, enabling energy producers to store grid energy that was previously wasted.

Its easier said than done, of course, but look past conventional materials and production methods. The most innovative paths are those that havent been trod before.

4. Befriend local suppliers.

Establish close relationships with regional manufacturers understanding of your goals and willing to innovate with you. It may cost more than working with a run-of-the-mill plant in China, but -- as thousands of entrepreneurs can attest -- it beats supply chain disruption.

Local manufacturer relationships enable co-creation efforts, and they save money and headaches when problems arise. Dotcom Distribution saw the perks of staying local after it began doing business with a local shoe company. A hiccup due to poor planning could have corrupted the partnership, but the two were able to stand under the same roof and work through it.

Related: The Pros and Cons of Manufacturing in China

It pays to outsource. Just dont chase low costs at the detriment of a close-to-home supply chain and crazy-enough-to-succeed production experiments. The next time investor funding slows, your product wont suffer. And your staff wont have to either.
With large companies, like Google and Facebook, taking wellness programs to extremes - and spending a large chunk of money in the process -- it can be difficult to understand how the costs balance out for smaller businesses. With just a little digging, though, its clear that employee wellness is a sound investment for even the smallest of businesses.

At a small business, employee wellness brings about a unique set of benefits. Yes, you could still see a positive ROI, which is a great perk to wellness in any business. You might also notice improved productivity, easier talent acquisition and retention and an increase in brand recognition.

Perhaps youve heard about all these great wellness benefits. Maybe youre thinking of starting a wellness program where you work. Or you might even be revamping a program youve already implemented. Regardless, there are a few things you should know before diving into a wellness strategy.

1. Theres no right way.

There really isnt a formal definition of "wellness program." Your wellness program can include anything from providing health education materials to bringing preventive services into the workplace. There are a wide variety of things you can work into your program, and its completely dependent upon your corporate culture and goals.

Many people get caught up in the idea that employee wellness needs to include crazy and expensive wellness perks. Thats simply not true. Your program can be as robust or as simple as you need it to be. Dont get caught trying to find rules, requirements or the right way to do wellness. None of those things exist.

2. Inclusivity is important.

One common misconception about employee wellness is that it excludes people with existing health conditions. Many people worry that wellness only works for people who are already relatively healthy. If thats the case in any wellness program, its not being done right.

You cant force employees to participate in your wellness program, but you do need to make it accessible to every employee at your company. If disabilities or health conditions are a concern, plan for that and make adaptations to your wellness activities as needed.

3. Adaptability is mandatory.

Like many corporate strategies, a wellness program isnt something you can plan and then forget about. It needs to be a living, breathing strategy that changes as your company changes. Be flexible.

Ultimately, employee wellness should mesh seamlessly with your corporate culture. In a startup or small business, that culture can change as you try to settle into your industry, and develop your corporate identity. Let your wellness program be adjusted according to your culture.

Related: Why Your Workplace Wellness Program Is Unhealthy

4. Its actually working.

Theres no reason to be skeptical about whether employee wellness is worth your effort. It is. And theres plenty of research to show it. In fact, according to a survey by Kaiser/HRET, 59 percent of employers reported their programs actually improved employee health. Similarly, wellness activities have been associated with an eight percent increase in productivity.

The best way to tell if wellness is working at your company is to be sure you build you program with evaluation in mind. Obviously youll have measures to track your direct ROI - just as you would with any new business investment. You can also track things like biometric health results, productivity and employee satisfaction year-over-year (YoY) to determine the longer term impacts your program is having.

Related: Are Wellness Programs Right for Your Company?

5. Youre not alone.

A majority of companies have begun to think about employee wellness as a business strategy. While the percentage of smaller businesses that have actually begun implementing wellness programs remains fairly low, few small business owners dispute the idea that a wellness program would be good for their bottom line.

Increasingly positive attitudes toward employee wellness suggest a coming surge of wellness program implementation. Staying ahead of that surge can help give your business an edge and one added benefit. Being an early adopter of employee wellness allows you to differentiate your business from others in your corporate space in regards to both public image and recruitment of talented employees.

Related: How to Cope When the Mandatory Workplace Health Program Is Driving You Crazy

Starting a wellness program is a great way for a small business to invest in both its workforce and its bottom line. Getting started with employee wellness can seem overwhelming or confusing, especially when it comes to scaling down the large, expensive wellness programs that are often thrust into the public eye.

If youre considering wellness where you work, or trying to get a program started, youve made an excellent first step. Keep gathering information and building a program that works for you, your employees and your company.
A central Alabama teenager was jailed on a murder charge after an apparent dispute over a house party and drugs led to the shooting deaths of his parents, authorities said Tuesday.

Jesse Holton, 17, was charged as an adult in the slaying of his father, former Eclectic mayor Mike Holton, said Elmore County Sheriff Bill Franklin. Authorities also plan to charge the teen in the death of his mother, April Holton, Franklin said in an interview.

Both husband and wife were 37.

Court records were not available to show whether Holton, who has two younger siblings, has a lawyer. But Franklin said the youth denied shooting either person.

"He just said, 'I didn't do it, I didn't do it,'" Franklin said.

The parents were away and returned home to find their house in disarray after a party that apparently included drugs, Franklin said. The father called the sheriff's department Sunday afternoon, and an officer arrived at the house to find that the father had handcuffed the son.

"They obviously were trying to discipline their son, and they had had problems with him in the past," Franklin said.

The deputy talked with the family and collected evidence from the party remnants that included a pipe used to smoke marijuana, Franklin said. The father told the deputy he planned to sign a juvenile warrant the next morning against the teen.

The deputy left on another call, but a neighbor called about 30 minutes later to say the teen showed up claiming his parents were fighting, Franklin said. A deputy went back to the house and found Mike Holton dead of a gunshot wound to the head and the woman near death, also from a head wound; she died at a hospital Monday evening.

The youth's description of what  that the man shot the woman during an argument and then turned the gun on himself  didn't match physical evidence, Franklin said. A forensics examination determined the man's wound wasn't self-inflicted, he said, and preliminary investigation showed the woman's wound wasn't, either.

"We asked him if anyone else had been at the house and he said 'No,'" said the sheriff.

The youth, a senior at Elmore County High School, told detectives he gets "easily agitated" if he doesn't have access to marijuana and Adderall, Franklin said, and witnesses told investigators the teen has anger problems.

"He hasn't shown any emotion at all. Most people would be bawling their eyes out if their parents had been killed," said Franklin.

The couple's two younger children are with relatives, said Franklin.


A Maine towns tourism sector has come under fire after some visitors have been complaining about a large, hand-painted sign on a private lawn that reads Black Rifles Matter.

Linc Sample, the signs creator, told NECN on Monday that his work in Boothbay Harbor is about gun rights, not race. He was inspired to post the sign after reading an ad in the local paper that supported a ban on assault weapons.

A lawn sign in Maine reading, "Black Rifles Matter," is offending some tourists. https://t.co/Ao1i7cpgNn  necn (@NECN) September 12, 2016

"That's really a trigger for me  the assault weapons ban," Sample told NECN.

Sample said he used Black Rifles Matter  a plan on Black Lives Matter  to make an impact. He said if anything, the Black Lives Matter movement should be flattered he used the phrase.

Boothbay Region Chamber of Commerce Director Rick Prose said that theyve received a few complaints from visitors.

"Some of these people have cut their vacation short and left early," Town Manager Thomas Woodin said.

Boothbay Harbor officials said Sample has the proper permitting and is exercising his First Amendment rights, despite some calling for the signs removal.

"People are ignorant. They shouldn't be putting things out like that," Paul Mayor, who was visiting Maine from Connecticut, told the station. "It's taking a shot obviously at Black Lives Matter."

Another tourist, Jeremy Plasse believes that the town is doing the right thing by leaving the sign up.

"Massachusetts has a ban right now, and I think they should lift it, he added.

Sample said he usually changes the sign and will soon replace the Black Rifles Matter sign that has drawn some scrutiny.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
As September ticks by, we count down to a number of big fall events for the Columbus area.

The news from Taste of Columbus this week is the committees announcement of this years raffle item.

The committee thanks McChristy Jewelers for providing a 14-karat two-tone scallop half circle diamond necklace. This beautiful piece has more than three-quarters carat total weight and is valued at $3,745. You can see a picture of the necklace on our website at www.thecolumbuspage.com/events. Raffle tickets can be purchased from committee members, from CPS Foundation Board members or at the chamber for $10. You can buy three for $25 if youre looking for a deal. And its important to note, you dont have to be present to win so this is a nice way to support the event if you cant join us Oct. 9.

Speaking of joining us, tickets can now be reserved for the premier fall event in our community. Taste of Columbus will be at Ramada-Columbus to mark Columbus Day weekend. You can reserve $35 individual tickets or $350 reserved tables on that same website above, or by calling us at the chamber office.

We will enjoy outstanding food at Taste of Columbus from that list of leading Columbus food vendors that we announced last week. The crowd will sample some wonderful beverages as well, from these vendors: Eagle Distributing, James Arthur Vineyards, Johnson Brothers, Mac's Creek Vineyard, Miletta Vista Winery, Prairie Creek Vineyard, Premier Midwest Beverage, Republic National Distributing and Sterling Distributing Company. The chamber and CPS Foundation are really grateful they all come to Columbus to participate in our event.

Remember, you can also see the updated list of Royal Auction items on the Taste of Columbus page on our website. We know this helps people organize groups of friends who may want to bid on some of the fantastic items on the auction. You can find it on our site by clicking on the Events button.

Continuing on the fall calendar, the Columbus Area Chamber will host the Nebraska Chamber Fall Legislative Forum on Sept. 28 at 7 a.m. at the chamber office. State chamber staff will lead discussion on the upcoming legislative session.

The forum is an annual opportunity for our members to share concerns and issues with the state chamber, the premier business lobbying organization in the state. Reservations for the breakfast and forum can be made now at the chamber office.

Also on the agenda these days is planning for the annual Columbus Area Business Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Nov. 22. That evening we hand out our annual awards and right now the chamber is accepting nominations for the Ovation (outstanding businesswoman), Archway (outstanding businessman) and Charles Farnham Volunteer awards that will be given that evening.

Nomination forms can be picked up at the chamber and all submissions need to be returned in less than a month.

Fall is a fun season for us and hopefully you can participate in some of these events over the next couple months. Dont ever hesitate to call our office with questions about any of them.
This past May, Israeli startup Sirin Labs launched Solarin, a smartphone unlike any other. With tech thats years ahead of the commercial market, the Android-based gadget promises military-grade privacy protections. But with a $16,000 price tag, is the phone too advanced for even the elite smartphone market?

Adam Smith, the so-called father of economics, would likely say so. He argued that specialization drives productivity, but only to a limit he referred to as the  extent of the market. Today, there is little need for this smartphone. The highly expensive, overspecialized labor required to develop it is wasted on a comparatively underdeveloped market.

Too many external insecurities exist for Solarin to make sense. What happens to the product if a key developer leaves or a niche supplier busts? Can Solarin even communicate securely with phones that dont have state-of-the-art privacy protections? And what about data uploaded to third-party clouds?

Related: 5 Steps You Can Use to Find Your Niche

The market, Sirin may learn, is bounded by specialization deadlock, or the inability to adopt specialization that far outdoes what already exists. Think about a brain surgeon transported hundreds of years back in time. Without other necessary specializations -- anesthetists, nurses, sterilization and MRI technology -- even the simplest surgery would be a disaster.

In this way, specialization deadlock limits innovation to smaller steps. Updates and improvements to existing products are the currency of innovation, while giant leaps -- entirely new concepts, markets and years-ahead technologies -- are rare and failure-prone.

Specialization is the startups tightrope, and it must be walked during both production and distribution. When building a product, entrepreneurs must find suppliers with the right skills to outdo established counterparts. Then, when selling a product, they need to communicate the specialized products value to its market.

Is your startup overspecialized?

A startup inching toward specialization deadlock isnt always easy to spot, but three indicators are relatively reliable -- an extremely limited niche, reliance on only a couple of customers or suppliers and exorbitant time spent training new hires. If your business meets any of these criteria, it may be time to acknowledge and combat specialization deadlock.

Related: Why a Jack-of-All-Trades Is Just the Masterful Talent a Startup Needs

Breaking free from specialization deadlock is difficult but not impossible. As explained in  The Problem of Production, the key to successful innovation is to employ overly specialized skills, like those of the brain surgeon, alongside other complementary skills, like those of nurses and anesthetists. Thus, the firm as a whole will be compatible with the market, even though each specific specialization within the firm may not be.

Look to Infibeams Buildabazaar. With more than 50,000 live stores, the Indian ecommerce giant creates necessary context for otherwise overspecialized entrepreneurs. By hosting an enormous, interwoven ecosystem of suppliers and consumers, Buildabazaar helps super-specialized entrepreneurs -- selling products from super-niche rural Gir cow ghee to Saudi Arabian mobile service app Jawwy -- find their footholds.

Unlock the deadlock.

Overspecialization is expensive and risky. Supply lines run dry, production costs skyrocket, a key employee quits, and customers scratch their heads at an ahead-of-its-time product. Put together, its easy to see how overspecialization thwarts promising ventures.

To prevent specialization deadlock, take stock of your startup. These steps can prevent you from being boxed in by an unripe market:

1. Leave Monopoly to the game table.

OrigAudios founder learned the hard way that it doesnt pay to put all your eggs in one basket. When its sole supplier of video displays shipped broken products from China, it was out hundreds of dollars -- a painful lesson for a young startup.

If your product relies on a lone suppliers success, then you may be too specialized. Avoid markets or products that pigeonhole you into a single supplier. Having multiple suppliers competing for your business keeps prices low, quality high and -- most important -- keeps your specialized product in production.

2. Never outsource the chef.

A restaurant might outsource HR, procurement, and even cleaning functions, but never the cook. Similarly, many startups utilize third-party accountants, external customer service reps and more. Skype even outsourced development to a team in Estonia.

Outsourcing provides flexibility and allows you to shop around for a great partner, but be sure you dont outsource your secret sauce. Sirin Labs built its state-of-the-art secure software in-house. Specialized marketing agencies, too, keep core competencies close to the chest. Outsourcing is a great way to improve efficiency, but you should be the one doing what you do best.

Related: 5 Tips for Outsourcing Product Development

3. Specialize as the startup grows.

Specialization, over time, creates a system of accountability and responsibility within your company. Ideally, everyone does the tasks he or she is best at, which allows a specialized product to flourish on the greater market.

Dont, however, jump the gun and overspecialize employees immediately. When Birchbox began in 2008, its eight employees were expected to be jacks-of-all-trades, working together toward the companys ongoing success. But as Birchbox grew, its team members have specialized to prevent burnout.

Thats how it should be. In the beginning, everyone needs a working knowledge of everyone elses responsibilities, and cooperation keeps the startup afloat. Then, as the company grows, give employees increasingly specialized roles so they can do what they do best: Let the neurosurgeon break free from general practice, but be sure you have dedicated surgical staff, radiologists and nurses.

Innovation is much like medicine. Scorpion and snake venoms can be deadly, but in the right dose, they can cure cancer. Innovation, too, must be metered carefully. As Adam Smith knew, too much can make your startup sick; only at the proper dose can innovation create market miracles.
A man has been accused of repeatedly removing police memorial flags from a Massachusetts overpass.

The Cape Cod Times reports David Hickman was arraigned Monday on charges of larceny, vandalizing property and related crimes.

Police say Hickman was arrested Sunday while attempting to remove the most recent display at the West Barnstable overpass on Route 6. Police say Hickman took down the flags on three previous occasions.

Police say Hickman told them he was a volunteer with the state Department of Transportation and removed the flags because he thought they violated regulations about displays on overpasses.

The department doesn't have a policy on overpass displays. A department spokeswoman won't say whether Hickman is a volunteer.

Hickman has been released on personal recognizance. It's unclear whether he has a lawyer.
A man who pleaded guilty to a series of shootings on Kansas City-area highways in 2014 has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker says in a news release that 30-year-old Mohammed Whitaker pleaded guilty Tuesday to 20 felony charges arising from the shootings.

The random shootings in March and April of 2014 frightened drivers and injured at least two motorists. Shootings were reported in Kansas City; the Missouri suburbs of Lee's Summit and Blue Springs; and the Kansas suburb of Leawood.

After tips directed officers to Whitaker, they followed him for days before arresting him in April 2014 at his apartment in the Missouri suburb of Grandview.
A North Carolina cop who had been named Officer of the Year died Monday morning from wounds suffered during a Saturday shooting, and investigators continued to hunt the man accused of gunning him down.

Shelby officer Tim Brackeen, 38, was shot in the chest around 12:20 a.m. on Saturday as he was searching for 23-year-old Irving Lucien Fenner, who had failed to show up to an August court date for misdemeanor charges of carrying a concealed weapon and marijuana possession, The Charlotte Observer reported. Authorities have since charged Fenner with attempted murder in Brackeens shooting. Charges were likely to be upgraded after Brackeens death.

Gov. Pat McCrory's office announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to Fenner's arrest.

The doctor said his brain shows no activity, etc.," Brackeen's mom, Phyllis Mitchell Brackeen, wrote in a Saturday post on Facebook. "If he pulls thru this, it will only be because God steps in and does the impossible."

Brackeen, a 12-year department veteran, was wearing a bulletproof vest when he was shot, officials said. He had served as a K9 officer and was married with one daughter. Brackeen was named Officer of the Year in 2012.

"He is such a good guy and so thoughtful. He is everything you'd want in a police officer, Shelby Mayor Stan Anthony told The Shelby Star. It's so hard to see something like this happen to him."

The State Bureau of Investigation is assisting local police with their investigation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Authorities in New York rescued about 35 passengers from a disabled boat in the Hudson River on Monday.

Palisades Interstate Parkway police responded to the vessel, identified as the Clearwater, at around 6 p.m. that was stalled near the New York state line. No one was injured, according to NBC New York.

According to NJ.com, the Clearwater is a nonprofit craft operated in Beacon, N.Y. It hosts sailing trips along the Hudson River to promote environment awareness.

Its unclear what caused the boat to become disabled.
Mai Boliang "gets" disruption. The Chinese tycoon has mastered the ability to stay one step ahead of the competition despite today's turbulent and global bit economy.

Related: How to Disrupt an Industry in Three Steps

Mai is the CEO of CIMC, one of the worlds largest container businesses. And, in his high-energy way, Mai regularly tells anyone within earshot about his companys most important motto: We learn, we improve and we disrupt! He makes sure that CIMC is constantly reinventing itself, in an effort to maintain a widened economic moat.

Much of CIMCs success has had to do with its ability to predict and promptly react to business megatrends. CIMC seems to always be the first one on the block to recognize incoming global shockwaves and launch innovations to leverage specific disruptions.

Employees also seem to like being led by Mai, knowing that industry surprises will likely evade them, freeing them up mentally and emotionally to focus on the most critical work. In today's age of disruption, Mai's change before you have to approach is a better path to take than the change because you have to alternative.

The message? Global organizations of all shapes and sizes can significantly benefit by being proactive disrupters and avoiding playing victim in the digital economy. The following two powerful strategies can help.

1. Place buoys in your competitive ocean.

There are only two weeks a year when the waves at Mavericks, a surfing location in Northern California, are large enough to attract big-wave surfers from around the world.

In peak season, waves at Mavericks can average between 25 and 80 feet. These waves are known as the thickest waves in the world. They are dark in color, versus the aqua blue seen in other places. This makes them extra deadly if you crash and burn.

So, how do the worlds best big-wave surfers, all of whom live in different places around the world and benefit economically from sponsorships associated with surfing at Mavericks, know when the big ones are breaking? They listen intently to wave forecasts coming from special radios they carry with them wherever they go.

These forecasts originate from specially placed buoys out in the Pacific Ocean that send information to meteorologists regarding the size of the swells approaching the area. When the swells reach a specific size, meteorologists send a "Mavericks Alert" message to the big-wave surfer community. It is not uncommon for surfers from around the world to be already in their wet suits, positioned on their long boards and paddling toward a Maverick swell one mile offshore within 48 hours. For them, its time to disrupt.

Related: Disruption Is More Than the Buzzword It's Become

So, does your organization have buoys in place (metaphorically speaking), too, to make sure you are rarely surprised when global shockwaves begin pounding on your doorstep?

Market champions are rarely stunned by incoming business-related, Mavericks-size shockwaves. They are voracious readers and have a sense of the inevitable approaching. These reinvention champions understand the implications of the approaching shockwave and begin formulating their strategy for leveraging it.

An example of an organizational buoy might be the team you form that's comprised of leaders and employees to conduct environmental scans for your organization. This is a way to keep your finger on the pulse of customer needs, competitors' movements and industry trends.

Another buoy might entail conducting benchmarking exercises on firms outside your industry that are best in class in a competency you are seeking to master. Leap-frogging competition cannot happen by simply using intra-industry best practices.

2. Master reinvention agility.

Judo is the only martial art form that is defensive in its attack. The premise of judo is to use the force of the attacker to your advantage.

Judo originated in 1880, when its founder, Kano Jigoro, was motivated to stop the bullying going on at a local school. He knew jujitsu, but wanted something more effective that allowed a smaller force to defeat a larger force. Judo was the result.

Central to Kanos vision for judo was the principle of seiryoku zenyo, translated as maximum efficiency, minimum effort. One powerful principle states: Resisting a more powerful opponent will result in your defeat, whilst adjusting to and evading your opponents attack will cause him to lose his balance; his power will be reduced; and you will defeat him. This makes it possible for weaker opponents to beat significantly stronger ones.

Similarly, todays global organizations can address incoming shockwaves as judokas, or judo practitioners, by leveraging the force of the incoming change in a way that actually strengthens their position in the end. We call this approach reinvention agility.

Reinvention-agile leaders are both willing and able to seek out, humbly accept, diligently explore and quickly adapt to incoming global shockwaves within their industry and market. Willingness in this context refers to the general attitude and degree to which change is embraced. Capability refers to the skill-set and tool-set strength of the organization confronting the need for quantum change.

Reinventive-agile leaders embrace change as an ongoing cost of doing business. They approach new industries, new technologies, new restrictions and other disruptions with a glass-half-full mind-set. They are always looking for opportunities to take their game to the next level when shockwaves come at them.

Make your choice.

There is no question that having a mind-set like Mai Boliang of "lets disrupt, rather than be disrupted" makes an entrepreneur feel more in control of his or her future and ability to leverage external global shockwaves in a beneficial way.

Related: How Purple, Uber and Airbnb Are Disrupting and Redefining Old Industries

Todays global leaders and organization would be wise to disrupt rather than be disrupted, and avoid playing the global game of business as a victim of circumstance.

Whats your choice?
The University of Richmond has suspended one of its fraternities after two members sent an email to about 100 students that "contained grossly offensive language," the school said Monday.

While the university did not release the content of the email written by two members of the Kappa Alpha fraternity chapter, the school newspaper did.

"Today is the day boys," the email begins, according to The Collegian, which published the message on its website.

"Lodge season has finally arrived. We just wanted to send out a reminder that our theme for the night is amerIKA," read the email, which was sent out at 12:55 p.m. on Friday. "Roll through in your best red, white and blue (or be naked for all I care, just make sure your ass makes it out tonight).

"This is gonna be one for the books," it continues. "Both [redacted] and I have the night off so we're looking forward to watching that lodge virginity be gobbled up for ya'll. See you boys tonight."

The email concludes with another disturbing message: "Tonights the type of night that makes fathers afraid to send their daughters away to school."

In a statement sent to FoxNews.com, the university said the email "contained grossly offensive language" and "suggestions of behavior inconsistent with our policies concerning Greek life and with the caring nature of our campus community."

As a result, the school said it has suspended all chapter operations, activities and events while it conducts a thorough investigation.

"We have also contacted the national Kappa Alpha Headquarters, which promptly suspended the chapter while it conducts its own membership review and investigation," the statement said.

The email and news of the fraternity's suspension come days after two female students claimed they were raped on campus -- and that university officials did nothing to help them.

In a series of essays published by the Huffington Post, one student, identified as Cecilia Carreras, said the school protected her alleged attacker after she reported being raped in the summer of 2015 by a student athlete.

"We have a problem at Richmond," she wrote last week. "A problem that is made worse by an administration that justifies reported rapes and judges the survivor's credibility on a harsher scale than the accused's."

Carreras went on to claim that a male dean at the school told her he "thought it was reasonable for (her attacker) to penetrate you for a few more minutes if he was going to finish."

The school, meanwhile, claimed Carreras' depiction of events was not truthful, saying that "assertions of fact are inaccurate and do not reflect the manner in which reports of sexual misconduct have been investigated and adjudicated at the university."
Federal prosecutors have filed a complaint against a North Carolina man accused of killing his 6-year-old daughter whose body was found on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose said in a statement that a complaint charging 36-year-old Set Willis Pickering of Asheville with murder in the death of his daughter, Lila Pickering, was filed Tuesday.

A medical examiner says the girl died from a stab wound to her chest Friday.

Court documents show Pickering and his estranged wife had been in a custody battle over the girl.

Pickering is to appear in U.S. District Court once he is transferred from state custody. State authorities also have charged him with first-degree murder.

He is being held in the Buncombe County jail. It was not clear if he has an attorney.
The Wells Fargo executive who oversaw a unit that created almost 2 million unauthorized customer accounts is set to retire from the company with a nearly $125 million payday, and reports say the bank isnt likely to cut the strings on her golden parachute as she walks out the door.

Carrie Tolstedt, 56, announced her retirement in July, effective at the end of the year, and is set to receive $124.6 million via stock, options and restricted shares accrued during her 27 years at Wells Fargo, Fortune reported Monday. Tolstedt headed the infamous community banking unit where employees created unauthorized deposit accounts and credit accounts in an effort to meet sales goals. The dummy accounts charged individual customers up to $50 in fines for a service they never requested, The New York Daily News reported.

"There are two possibilities: Customer abuse was part of business model, in which lots of high-ranking people need to go to prison," Bart Naylor, a financial policy advocate for Public Citizen, told The Washington Post. "Or the bank is too big to manage, and folks high up dont even know that laws are being broken a few levels down."

Its unclear when Tolstedt became aware of the scam and she was not named in any Consumer Financial Protection Bureau paperwork. The fallout from the scandal resulted in the firing of 5,300 employees and a massive $185 million fine levied by various regulators.

Those issues should have been caught sooner and dealt with more forcefully, Mike Mayo, an analyst at CLSA Ltd., wrote Monday in a client note obtained by Bloomberg.

But Tolstedt not only escaped getting axed, she was praised for her tenure at the company. In a July statement about her retirement, CEO John Stumpf hailed Tolstedt as a standard-bearer of our culture and a champion for our customers, The New York Post reported. Her decision to retire was personal, a Wells Fargo spokesperson said.

Had Tolstedt been fired instead of allowed to retire, Wells Fargo could have recouped at least $45 million of the jackpot shes set to receive, Fortune reported.

While Wells Fargo could still technically try to clawback some of Tolstedts payday to offset the costs of its fines, Fortune reported the bank was unlikely to do so. Wells Fargo declined to comment on the possibility of a clawback.

This appears to be exactly the situation that clawback provisions were created for, Better Markets president Dennis Kelleher told Fortune. If they dont apply here, when will they apply?

Tolstedt, who was often on Fortunes list of the Most Powerful Women, had a $1.7 million salary at Wells Fargo.
Chinese police fired rubber bullets at villagers and arrested 13 people Tuesday in an overnight crackdown to suppress demonstrations in a southern fishing village that became internationally known five years ago for protesting land seizures.

Police stormed into the village of Wukan in the southern province of Guangdong and arrested leaders of ongoing demonstrations in their homes. Videos posted on social media show one person with blood on his arm and chest, and another being treated for an apparent bullet wound on his hand.

Another video shows a line of black police vans streaming into the village, a hamlet of about 13,000 people on the South China Sea near Hong Kong.

Wukan carries symbolic importance due to the success of 2011 protests that broke out over land seizures and corruption. Villagers were able to expel government officials and police, and barricaded the village. The siege was resolved only after the provincial secretary of China's ruling Communist Party agreed to allow a local election.

The winner of that election was Lin Zuluan, a former protest leader. Lin was planning to lead a new round of protests this year over more land grabs. Instead, authorities detained him and then charged him with taking bribes.

Lin's supporters say he was wrongfully charged and have staged more than 80 straight days of rallies since he was detained. Those protests continued after his sentence was announced Thursday despite official state warnings to disperse.

An official statement issued Tuesday said 13 villagers in Wukan were arrested, allegedly for inciting a mob and spreading rumors.

The statement levies several allegations at "a small number of lawless persons," including disturbing school, preventing fishermen from working and hampering shopkeepers. It says officials tried to "educate and persuade" protest leaders, but that guidance was evidently disregarded.

"In order to safeguard the interests of the masses and restore the normal order of production and local people's lives, local police decided to take action and apprehended them," the statement said.

Chinese law requires official permission be granted for all protests, a condition that is almost never met. Large-scale protests are usually met with action intended to quell dissent. In recent decades, China has allowed a small number of elections for positions below the township level, though national and provincial party officials continue to be selected internally.

State news media reported Lin was accused of taking bribes totaling 593,000 yuan (about $89,000) to "influence livelihood and economic projects" in Wukan, and he gave a televised statement admitting to the allegations.

The Chinese government often broadcasts purported confessions of people accused of corruption in an apparent attempt to win public support, but instead are condemned by human rights groups as a sham. A former attorney of Lin's told The Associated Press last week that Lin likely made the confession to protect his family.

___

Associated Press writer Gerry Shih and researcher Henry Hou contributed to this report.
COLUMBUS  Last week's trip to Washington, D.C., wasn't the first trip to the nation's capital for Lakeview High School science teacher Nicole Miller.

But it was certainly a memorable experience for Miller, who first visited the East Coast during a school trip as a freshman.

I had a better appreciation to see those landmarks as an adult than I did as a 15-year-old girl, said Miller, one of 213 educators recently honored with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.

She flew to Washington, D.C., for the awards ceremony, which included a dinner where Miller met math and science teachers from across the country.

I got to meet people from most of the other states and there were people from as far away as Guam and the Mariana Islands, said Miller. We had some really good positive conversations about what they were doing in their school and how our schools were similar and different.

The official awards ceremony was Thursday at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall.

The National Science Foundation provided a $10,000 financial award to each recipient, who were called to the stage to receive their recognition.

It was really neat to see teachers getting that recognition. And meeting that many other teachers that believe so strongly in the importance of math and science was really inspiring, said Miller. I work with some really neat people at Lakeview, but it was neat to see there are people from all over who value math and science education.

Miller and her husband decided to take advantage of the trip by staying the weekend to do some sightseeing.

They also happened to be in the capital on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and saw organizations marking the day with community service events.

Overall, Miller said the trip inspired her and invigorated her commitment to education.

They talked a lot at the meetings about the importance of taking our leadership back to our home states and to know that this is beginning of the great things we can do, Miller said. So I came back with a heightened sense of responsibility to not just be a good teacher, but a leader in education.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said Monday he wanted U.S. Special Forces out of his countrys south and blamed America for inflaming Muslim insurgencies in the region, in his first public statement opposing the presence of U.S. troops.

Washington said it had not received a formal request to remove U.S. military personnel. White House spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated that Duterte had tendency to make colorful comments and drew a comparison with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

When asked if he were trying to draw a cautionary tale for the American people, Earnest said, "I guess some people could draw that analogy."

Dutertes relationship with the U.S. has been a bit rocky since he became president in June. Duterte has been openly critical of American security policies aimed to chart a foreign policy that would not depend on America, his countrys treaty ally.

The U.S. military deployed troops to train, advise and provide intelligence and weapons to Filipino troops battling Al Qaeda-linked militant group Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines in 2002, but when most of them pulled out last year, the U.S. kept a few military advisers.

Duterte hasnt specified on how he plans to pursue his wishes.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Monday that the U.S. was aware of Dutertes comments, but was not aware of any official communication by the Philippine government to that that effect and to seek that result. Kirby reiterated U.S. commitments to its ally.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the US earmarked $79 million in military aid for Manila. The country is also set to receive $42 million from a White House initiative to build its maritime capacity.

In opposing the U.S. military presence in the southern Mindanao region, Duterte cited the killing of Muslims during a U.S. pacification campaign in the early 1900s, which he said was at the root of the long restiveness of minority Muslims in the largely Catholic nation's south.

"For as long as we stay with America, we will never have peace in that land," Duterte said in a speech to newly appointed government officials.

He showed photos of what he described as Muslim Filipinos, including children and women, who were slain by U.S. forces in the early 1900s and dumped in a pit in Bud Daho, a mountainous region in southern Sulu province. American soldiers stood around the mass grave.

"The special forces, they have to go. They have to go in Mindanao, there are many whites there, they have to go," he said, adding that he was reorienting the country's foreign policy. "I do not want a rift with America, but they have to go."

Last week at the ASEAN meetings, Duterte sparked controversy with his comments about President Barack Obama. He used the phrase "son of a bitch" in warning that he wouldn't accept lectures from Obama on human rights, which led to Obama canceling the meeting.

Despite the remark, the two leaders later shook hands and had a brief chat in a holding room where Duterte reportedly said his words were not directed at Obama.

Duterte, however, has continued to press his criticism of the American president.

In another speech late Monday, Duterte said for the first time that he deliberately skipped a meeting between Southeast Asian leaders and Obama at the summit in Laos out of principle. His spokesman said at the time that Duterte did not attend the meeting because of a migraine.

American colonial forces killed many Muslims in the southern Philippines more than a century ago "because you were here as imperialists, you wanted to colonize my country and because you had a hard time pacifying the Moro people," Duterte said in the speech.

While criticizing U.S. policies, Duterte has taken steps to repair relations with China, which were strained under his predecessor over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Christians driven from their ancestral homelands and persecuted by Islamist terrorists are pressing for an autonomous region of their own if the dust of Middle East violence ever settles.

Representatives of Iraq's Christian and Yazidi communities, as well as members of other religious minorities, convened in Washington last weekend and put forward a plan to carve out a sovereign state in the Nineveh Plain. Their plan has the backing of several lawmakers, including Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., who introduced a congressional resolution supporting the idea last week.

Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities have been slaughtered and driven from their homes by ISILs horrific genocide, Fortenberry told advocacy groups at In Defense of Christians' national convention last week.

The plan is a response to declarations by Congress and the State Department last March that ISIS was responsible for genocide against Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in the region. A safe zone that could evolve into a sovereign state could allow them to remain safe from the black-clad jihadist army, say backers.

One next step must be the re-securitization and revitalization of the Nineveh Plain, allowing the repatriation of those who had to flee," said Fortenberry. "This resolution, which follows on the government of Iraqs own initiative to create a province in the Nineveh Plain region, seeks to restore the ancestral homeland of so many suffering communities.

The Nineveh Plain region, also known as the Plain of Mosul, has been the ancestral homeland of Assyrian-Chaldean-Syriac Christians, Yazidis and other minorities -- all of whom were under attack from ISIS once the terror group started to take hold and control the region in 2014.

The Christian population in Iraq alone has plummeted from 1.5 million in 2003 to current estimates of 275,000 and could be gone for good within five years if no action is taken, according to a November 2015 report from international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. The dwindling numbers are due to genocide, refugees fleeing to other countries, internal displacement and others who either hide or disavow their faith.

It has been estimated that a dozen Christian families flee Iraq each day. Christians who have managed to escape ISIS have fled to places like Europe and Lebanon, while members of the faith also are under increasing pressure in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations.

Many of those who have been displaced want to return to their homeland, and see the Nineveh Plain as the cradle of their faith.

Establishment of the Nineveh Plain Province is part of a larger strategy of decentralization that is aimed at stabilizing the Republic of Iraq by devolving power to local communities, Robert Nicholson, executive director of the Philos Project, which worked with Fortenberry and other members of Congress to draft the resolution, told FoxNews.com. We believe that the instability of Iraq has been caused largely by a central government that is too powerful, and local ethnic and religious blocs that feel cut out of the political process."

Nicholson points out that they are calling for the creation of a new province within the framework of the Iraqi Constitution and not a new and independent state.

The Iraqi Constitution contains explicit protections for minorities and for creating new provinces, he said. In January 2014, the Iraqi Cabinet of Ministers decided to create a new province on the Nineveh Plain, in addition to three other provinces, but the advent of ISIS put those plans on hold. We are simply calling for Iraq to resume that process once ISIS is rolled back, and we want to pledge as much US support as possible.

Support from Washington could give the plan an important push, as well as lay the groundwork for help establishing security for the region if the new state is developed.

Establishment can only take place once ISIS is defeated, advocates concede.

Everything depends on defeating ISIS, Nicholson said to FoxNews.com. Realistically, the full liberation of the Nineveh Plain could take several more months. But the Iraqi government has the constitutional power to act as soon as it is able.

My hope is that the basic outline of the new province will be in place by the first quarter of 2017.
Honduras' judiciary says a small-town mayor has made an initial appearance before a judge in San Pedro Sula on murder and illicit association charges.

In a Tuesday statement, the country's judiciary says El Negrito Mayor Delvin Salgado Fuentes is among five people arrested in connection with two killings in 2013 and 2014. It adds that Salgado was the "material author" of the slayings.

The statement says Salgado has been linked to two criminal bands, including a group that killed suspected criminals in El Negrito. Honduras is plagued with intense gang violence.

One of its victims was a police officer who ordered that the group disarm. Salgado allegedly intervened so that their weapons were returned. Days later, the police officer was ambushed and killed.
Iran threatened to shoot down two US Navy surveillance aircraft flying close to Iranian territory in the Persian Gulf over the weekend, the latest in a series of recent provocations between Iran and the US military in the region, three US defense officials with knowledge of the incident told Fox News.

On Sept. 10, a Navy P-8 Poseidon with a crew of nine and an EP-3 Eries with a crew of roughly 24, were flying a reconnaissance mission 13 miles off the coast of Iran, through the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman, according to officials who call the boundary Irans black line.

Irans territorial waterslike all nations--extend 12 miles into the sea, according to international maritime law.

At some point during the flight, the Iranian military warned the two aircraft to change course or risk getting shot down.

The US military planes ignored the warning and continued flying in international airspace, although close to Iranian territory, the officials told Fox.

We wanted to test the Iranian reaction, one US official told Fox News when asked why the US jets were flying close to Iran.

Its one thing to tell someone to get off your lawn, but we werent on their lawn, the official continued. Anytime you threaten to shoot someone down, its not considered professional.

The official said the Iranian behavior was characterized as unprofessional. Another official said the incident was not considered unsafe because there were no Iranian missile launchers in the area, according to the latest intelligence reports.

The latest incident between the US military and Iran is just the latest in a series of confrontations in region.

Last month, Iranian fast-boats harassed US Navy warships in the Persian Gulf on at least five occasions. One incident resulting in three warning shots being fired from a US Navy coastal patrol craft, when an Iranian vessel ignored repeated radio calls to change course. On another occasion, an Iranian boat stopped 100 yards in front of a US Navy ship forcing it to take evasive maneuvers.

Over the weekend, a senior Iranian military commander dismissed claims that his vessels had harassed US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf saying his nation acted in accordance with internationally recognized maritime law.

"Iranian boats continue to act based on defined standards and are well aware of the international laws and regulations, so the claims are not only untrue, but stem from their fear of the power of Iran's soldiers," said Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, according to state news agency IRNA and reported by AFP.

Dangerous interactions at sea between Iran and the US Navy have doubled in the first half of 2016 compared to the same time last year, Fox News first reported last month.

On Aug. 30, the head of US forces in the Middle East was asked to explain Irans perceived aggressiveness.

This is principally the regime leadership trying to exert their influence and authority in the region. And they are trying to do it in provocative ways, said Gen. Joe Votel, commander of US Central Command at a Pentagon press briefing.

In July, days after the one-year anniversary of the nuclear agreement, Iran attempted at least their fourth ballistic missile test in violation of a UN Security Council resolution tied to the nuclear agreement.

In January, Iran took 10 US Navy sailors captive after their two patrol boats traveled into Iranian waters before releasing them 16 hours later.

In December, an Iranian missile boat fired several unguided rockets close to a US Navy aircraft carrier transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Cousins Subs Helps Nonprofits Enrich Local Communities

Grant Funds Improve Youth Education and Wellness Programs in Southeastern Wisconsin;

September 13, 2016 // Franchising.com // MILWAUKEE  The Cousins Subs Make It Better Foundation has awarded nearly $4,000 in grants to three southeastern Wisconsin nonprofits - IndependenceFirst, Childrens Community Center and Know Thyself.

A $1,000 grant was awarded to IndependenceFirst for its Youth Leadership Program, which is designed to help ease the transition from adolescence to post-secondary education and employment for young individuals with disabilities. This grant will allow IndependenceFirst to continue to improve upon independent living, leadership and social skills and career mentoring for those with various disabilities.

We are very excited and proud to be chosen as a recipient of the Cousins Subs Make It Better Foundation grant, said Kathy Altman, independent living services program director at IndependenceFirst. This grant will allow us to continue to help young people with disabilities develop the skills they need to live independently and set goals.

Childrens Community Center (CCC) in Menomonee Falls, Wis., received a $1,373 grant to purchase new equipment for its therapy room. This space is used by private speech, physical and occupational therapists, as well as the local school districts to provide further assistance to children with special needs. By revamping the therapy room, CCC will have the opportunity to better help children with special needs reach their developmental goals.

The Make It Better Foundation grant means a great deal to the families and staff of CCC, said Dana Bilello, staff coordinator of Childrens Community Center. This money will be used to help all of our children reach their full potential whether it is physical, occupational or speech related.

Know Thyself in Port Washington, Wis. was awarded a $1,500 grant for the expansion of its Life Skills Curriculum, which addresses the social and emotional needs of disadvantaged, urban middle and high school students. This program will teach children how to positively cope with stress and anxiety. By creating a learning environment free of worry and distraction, students can focus on what's important in order to succeed.

The Cousins Subs Make It Better Foundation grant will give us the precise support we need to enter into a contract for services at a new school this fall, increasing our number of sites from 11 to 12, said Laura Vuchetich, executive director for Know Thyself. Since about 90% of the students at our sites are economically disadvantaged and Milwaukee public schools are so financially strained, we strive to provide our services free of charge. This grant will allow us to continue to do that and still meet the needs of the students.

Each grant is funded through the Cousins Subs Make It Better Foundation, a nonprofit charitable organization established in 2013. The Make It Better Foundation aims to improve the general welfare and quality of life in the communities Cousins Subs serves and addresses three areas of interest that are vital to any community: health and wellness, hunger and youth education.

Cousins Subs has been giving back to the communities we call home since 1972, said Justin McCoy, director on Cousins Subs Make It Better Foundation board. Were proud to assist these three nonprofit organizations on their quest to make it better for those who need our support most in the areas of youth education and wellness.

Interested nonprofit and community organizations can visit www.cousinssubs.com/foundation to find out more information on eligibility and how to apply.

About Cousins Subs

Wisconsin-based Cousins Subs, a family-owned, fast casual sub shop established in 1972 by Bill Specht and his cousin, is driven by the mission to Believe in Better  both in the quality of food it serves and in the communities it supports. Cousins Subs and its franchisees operate more than 100 sub sandwich shops throughout Wisconsin and Arizona, providing guests with quality deli fresh and made to order grilled subs using only the freshest ingredients on its signature bread baked daily. For more information, visit www.cousinssubs.com. You can also find Cousins Subs on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

SOURCE Cousins Subs

Media Contact:

Carolyn Guenther

carolyn.guenther@cousinssubs.com

D: 262.250.2802

M: 262.253.7700

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
Canine Pancreatitis Signs Symptoms Causes & Home Care Prevention Report Released

The Pet Blogger, a popular source for leading pet caregiving, happiness and training advice, news and product evaluations or heartwarming stories ideal for fellow passionate pet owners has released a new report on canine pancreatitis and the warning signs dog owners should be aware of.

--

The prominent The Pet Blogger announced the release of a new report identifying and discussing the symptoms of canine pancreatitis, to help dog owners be aware and easily identify the warning signs and the importance of early treatment to cure it completely and avoid any further health complications.

More information is available at http://thepetblogger.com.

The Pet Blogger is a highly popular blog created by a family of pet lovers to provide a leading destination where fellow pet lovers looking to learn more about pet health and happiness or connect with other pet lovers can find original, accurate and useful articles, news, product evaluations, heartwarming stories or training and caregiving tips focusing primarily on cats and dogs but also tortoises, birds or other pets.

The popular blog announced the release of a new report entitled "7 Signs Your Dog May Be Suffering From Canine Pancreatitis", to raise awareness about the growing incidence of canine pancreatitis and the potential health consequences associated with the condition as well as help dog owners identify the warning signs and the importance of early intervention to ensure the dog's present and future wellbeing.

The newly released report discusses in detail the most obvious signs and symptoms dog owners should be aware of and looking for with canine pancreatitis, from lack of appetite or vomiting to depression or a bloated, swollen or sore abdomen to an unusual hunched posture caused by the abdominal pain they're experiencing, and more, supported by valuable information on the most typical causes and which breeds, ages and genders are more frequently affected.

Access to the full "7 Signs Your Dog May Be Suffering From Canine Pancreatitis" report and its broad range of valuable information, advice and tips for dog owners can be consulted on the website link provided above along with additional advice on dog or cat health and caregiving, nutrition, training or toys and tips on pet tortoises or birds, and more.

The founders of The Pet Blogger explain that "Canine pancreatitis occurs due to pancreatic inflammation and it has become increasingly common in recent years, causing concern among dog owners. Although pancreatitis is a serious disease which when left untreated is incredibly painful and can lead to many other health problems, with early intervention it can often be cured completely. It's therefore very important to know the warning signs so we can act quickly."

They add that "We started The Pet Blogger to provide a variety of resources, from articles, tips, product discoveries and reviews or heartwarming stories for other pet parents and families like ours who live for their animals and enjoy reading about pets, learning about their health or what makes them happy and connecting with other pet lovers."

For more information, please visit http://www.thepetblogger.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Claire Nelson

Organization: The Pet Blogger

Address: 668 North Coast Hwy #1184 Laguna Beach CA 92651 USA

Phone: (949) 342-6558

Release ID: 132302

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)
New Zealand Based Bike Website Launched

Okere Trading has launched a website which deals with all things bicycle. A recent review covers the topic of spinning bikes.

--

Okere Trading LTD and Ian Rasmussen are pleased to announce the release of a review covering the topic of the top three spinning bikes. The website contains bicycle buying tips, Bike news and bike reviews. The comprehensive coverage of bike topics makes the website the preferred place to go in order to reach all about bikes, reviews, and buying tips. The 1980s saw the invention of training bikes and they have continued to gain in popularity.

According to Ian Rasmussen, "I began my website and blog to share my enthusiasm with biking. The Online Bikes Shop was established in 2014 with the goal to provide practical and actionable advice to our readers. Whatever your skill set or riding experience, our reviews and buying tips will always be easy to follow. Many bike sites are too technical and hard to understand. Our site is useful but readable."

As part of the information available to the readers, a review of spin bikes was published recently. A spin bike is an indoor bicycle which allowers riders to work out in a stationary position with no need to go outside. It offers a much more intense workout in comparison to the types of training bikes which are available in the market. The bikes have gained the endorsement of fitness and health professionals. Because the flywheel keeps spinning after the user stops riding, it is easy to be injured. This is why a spin bike is recommended only for a more advanced user.

The review which picked the top spin bikes looked by features such as adjustment of seat and handlebars. The level of resistance was also a key feature which was reviewed. The top three bikes which are ideal for home use are the Sunny Health & Fitness Pro Indoor Spinning Bike; Bladez Fusion Fitness GS Indoor Bike and Sole Fitness SB700 Spinning Bike.

For more information, please visit http://onlinebikesshop.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Ian Rasmussen

Organization: Okere Trading LTD

Address: Suite 2 1163 Eruera Street Rotorua New Zealand

Phone: 0064 - 7 - 213 1130

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/new-zealand-based-bike-website-launched/132268

Release ID: 132268

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)
Florida Urogynecology Expert, Dr. Christopher Walker Receives Castle Connolly Top Doctor Award For Third Year In A Row

The Top Doctors listed by Castle Connolly Medical are nominated by their peers out of of thousands of American doctors each year. For the third consecutive year, Dr. Chris Walker has been selected as a Top Doctor of Urogynecology.

--

For the third consecutive year Dr. Chris Walker has been selected as a Castle Connolly Top Doctor. Urogyn Specialist of Florida has been providing outstanding service and pioneering the field of Urogynecology while continuously racking up award after award under the direction of developing legend, Dr. Walker. The mission of Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. is to help consumers find the best in healthcare. The Top Doctors who are listed were nominated by their peers in an extensive survey process of thousands of American doctors each year. An award-winning robotic surgeon, Dr. Christopher Walker is double-board certified in Urogynecology and OB/GYN as well as a member of the International Society of Cosmetic Gynecology and the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgeons.

He is a national trainer and proctor, teaching other physicians surgical techniques that include the latest in for urogynecology and cosmetic gynecology procedures.

Dr. Walker completed Medical School at University of the West Indies Faculty of Medical Sciences, Jamaica where he attained a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. His residency was completed at University of Kansas Medical Center, Residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Four years ago, he was part of the first group to sit for the new Urogynecology board certification, Pelvic Reconstructive Surgery, making him double-board certified.

He has been ranked among the top physicians in the nation based on both peer and patient reviews. Dr. Walker is one of the few doctors nationally who has advocated for victim's of mesh, acting as an expert witness and successfully removing vaginal mesh to help restore a woman's quality of life.

Dr. Walker operates Urogyn Specialist of Florida has 6 convenient locations, specializes in treating matters that range from simple to complex female health concerns; from typical gynecology issues (heaving bleeding, fibroids, IC, etc.) to more complicated female urology concerns (bladder/fecal incontinence and prolapse), Urogyn Specialists of Florida is the go-to gynecology practice for women.

Urogyn Specialists of Florida is the largest practice that offers its gynecology, urogynecology, cosmetic gynecology and sexual wellness treatment options in a AAAA State-Board Certified Surgical facility. With the launch of their new Cosmetic Gynecology and Sexual Wellness division, women don't have to visit multiple doctors or worry about going to the hospital. It's all under one roof. For more information on Dr. Walker or his team, please call 407-3330-GYN (496)

For more information, please visit http://besturogyn.com

Contact Info:

Name: Press Director

Organization: UroGyn Specialists of Florida - Orlando

Address: 801 N. Orange Ave, Orlando, Florida

Phone: 407-3330-GYN (496)

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKk1i2_js44

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/florida-urogynecology-expert-dr-christopher-walker-receives-castle-connolly-top-doctor-award-for-third-year-in-a-row/131890

Release ID: 131890

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)
9/11 Health And Compensation Reauthorization Act Statute Of Limitation Increased

Parker Waichman announces that those who were sickened as a result of the September 11th terrorist attacks in Manhattan may now have extended legal rights for related illnesses.

--

Parker Waichman LLP, a national law firm that has spent many years fighting to ensure that individuals injured during and following the 9/11 terrorist attacks are never forgotten, notes that ?the Victims Compensation Fund (VCF) just issued guidance, as the nation remembers the 15th anniversary of the attacks, regarding statutes of limitation (SOL).

The firm has long advocated that the VCF should not deny benefits to claimants on appeal based on SOLs. Now, the VCF has agreed to review the SOLs on older cases using either the certification date issued by the World Trade Center Health Program, a state workers' compensation board or by a government employer, such as the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), New York Police Department (NYPD), or the New York City Employee Retirement System (NYCERS), for purposes of awarding a disability pension concerning illnesses attributed to exposure during and following the 9/11 attacks. The firm notes that, currently, while the change does not cover all individuals with a true "discovery rule" the change does capture more than 90 percent of the clients.

"The firm is thrilled with the change. Parker Waichman has long fought for this and has taken on many SOL cases that other law firms would not consider," said Keith Gitman, Managing Attorney at Parker Waichman LLP.

The change means that, if an individual received a prior cancer diagnosis and was not certified until this year, that person's SOL becomes effective with certification. What's more is that a new certified injury reopens the SOLs for all old certifications. In other words, if an individual lost an SOL for one disease, but are certified for another, both diseases are now "live."

Individuals must register with the VCF by the appropriate deadline based on injury, disease, or disorder, which may be found on the VCF website. This enables those impacted to "preserve your right to file a claim with the VCF in the future, but not beyond December 18, 2020," notes the VCF.

The original Zadroga Act passed just prior to year-end 2010. While the 2010 Act was not everything that Ground Zero residents, workers, and other survivors had hoped for, the passage was seen as a victory and was believed to be the start of more measures to permanently extend benefits. Sadly, Congress allowed one of the two programs to expire in late 2015; specifically, the program that provides medical treatment to survivors: The World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program. The program was running on cash reserves until benefits ended entirely, while the second program--the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF)--was scheduled to expire in October 2016 if Congress did not take action. With, at that time, more than 33,000 sick responders dependent on the program for medical treatment, another 70,000 being monitored, and sick current and former residents and workers living in every state and in 433 of the 435 Congressional districts, immediate action was needed.

The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act is named after a deceased New York Police Department (NYPD) detective who worked at Ground Zero. In the years following the attacks, researchers determined that the thick plume of dust and debris that followed the collapse of the World Trade Center towers contained a toxic mix of compounds including asbestos, lead, pulverized cement, jet fuel, and other chemicals, according to Parker Waichman. Many area residents and workers were exposed to these toxins and have since been diagnosed with various illnesses, including asthma, obstructive pulmonary disease, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and over 50 types of cancer. Tragically, many have succumbed to their illnesses in the years since the attacks. In fact, by year-end 2015, at least 4,166 cancer diagnoses have been linked to exposure to the toxic cloud that hovered over Manhattan; the number of cases is expected to increase.

Parker Waichman emphasizes the importance of the VCF and the WTC Health Program, which were both created and reauthorized by the Zadroga Act in 2015, and is proud to have fought alongside Ground Zero residents, workers, first responders, and other survivors and advocates, to help ensure passage of Zadroga Act amendments. The firm vows to continue its efforts to safeguard all those who were exposed by Ground Zero's toxic cloud and ensure that all of the deserved Zadroga Act compensation is received. To determine eligibility for compensation under the Act, especially with the new SOL changes, or for assistance with a claim, please visit the Parker Waichman's website or call 1-800-LAW-INFO (1-800-529-4636).

For more information, please visit http://www.yourlawyer.com/long-island

Contact Info:

Name: Parker Waichman

Organization: Parker Waichman LLP

Address: 6 Harbor Park Drive Port Washington, NY 11050

Phone: 516-466-6500

Release ID: 132368

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
The Goddard School Introduces Two New Educational Advisory Board Members

Newest EAB Members Drs. Seeta Pai and Jennifer Jipson share back-to-school tips for parents.

--

The Goddard School, the premier preschool focused on learning through play for children from six weeks to six years old, is adding two new members to its esteemed Educational Advisory Board (EAB); Drs. Seeta Pai and Jennifer Jipson. The Goddard School's EAB is a knowledgeable group of educators, researchers and experts from a range of early childhood fields including early learning and curriculum development, technology integration, brain development, parent engagement and health and nutrition.

For many years, the EAB has helped The Goddard School to move research into action to maintain the best in industry curriculm as the science of learning grows and evolves. To achieve this goal, the EAB provides crucial feedback on new programs and services; suggesting improvements to the industry leader's proprietary F.L.EX. Learning Program and supporting original research and publications. The Goddard School looks forward to Drs. Jipson and Pai incorporating their cutting edge research into Goddard Schools all across the country.

A thought leader in the kids' educational media and international child development fields, Dr. Pai brings her expertise in cultural sensitivity and diversity as well as the influence of media and technology to early childhood education. Holding her doctorate degree in Human Development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and prior Vice President of Research at Common Sense Media, Pai hopes to enhance The Goddard School's research and strategy by acting as a translator of the most up-to-date media studies and methodologies as well as providing insights on child diversity and identity.

Regarding back to school, "This is a time to be willing, as a parent, to embrace all methods of learning," said Dr. Seeta Pai, new EAB member. "Relax and think about learning as a lifelong enterprise, not something that children do within the four walls of their classroom. Embrace and follow your child's passion and encourage them to ask questions."

Dr. Jipson, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Child Development at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, brings experience and knowledge to early childhood education within the domains of science, health and technology. Referencing her studies of how children learn and develop as they engage in everyday routines, Dr. Jipson hopes to shed more light on ways children learn through informal settings and help a larger audience understand child development as a field.

Dr. Jipson believes that establishing a routine is key for back-to-school time. "Get your child's mind and body prepared for the big shift - whether it be moving bedtime back to an earlier time, making meal times more regular or establishing weekday schedules for homework, TV, baths, etc. Start early and ease children in," she says.

"At The Goddard School, the EAB ensures a high-quality education program to prepare children for social and academic success in the 21st century," said Joe Schumacher, CEO of Goddard Systems, Inc. "We're extremely fortunate to have Drs. Jipson and Pai joining our team of educators, researchers and experts and we're confident that they'll be a valuable asset to furthering our unique play-based curriculum."

For more information on The Goddard School and their Educational Advisory Board, please visit www.goddardschool.com.

# # #

About The Goddard School

Learning for fun. Learning for life. For nearly 30 years, The Goddard School has used the most current, academically endorsed methods to ensure that children from six weeks to six years old have fun while learning the skills they need for long-term success in school and in life. Talented teachers collaborate with parents to nurture children into respectful, confident and joyful learners. The Goddard School's AdvancED- and Middle States-accredited F.L.EX. Learning Program (Fun Learning Experience) reaches more than 50,000 students in more than 450 Goddard Schools in 36 states. The Goddard School's comprehensive play-based curriculum, developed with early childhood education experts, provides the best childhood preparation for social and academic success. To learn more about The Goddard School, please visit www.goddardschool.com.

For more information, please visit http://www.goddardschool.com

Contact Info:

Name: Brandy Shuman

Organization: The Goddard School



Source: http://marketersmedia.com/the-goddard-school-introduces-two-new-educational-advisory-board-members/132294

Release ID: 132294

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)
Kre8 Media Outdoor Advertising Reports on the Importance of Digital Marketing

Outdoor advertising ensures the desired message is delivered in a timely manner and allows for a better return on a company's investment, announces Kre8OutdoorAdvertising.com.

--

According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, 5,891,151 convention delegates visited the city last year, with 42,312,216 visitors to this gaming mecca overall for the same time period. Companies looking to boost brand awareness find the popularity of this city to be of benefit to them, as billboards las vegas allow them to reach a large number of these visitors quickly and easily. When creating Las Vegas convention advertising, however, companies need to ensure they are getting their message across in a way that resonates with the viewer, and this is where Kre8 Media Outdoor Advertising becomes of great help.

"The first step in the process we use involves listening to the customer, as we must know what they want the viewer to take from the digital advertising Las Vegas before solutions can be developed that meet these needs. One problem many companies encounter is they must work with different providers for different marketing tasks, thus there is no consistency across all marketing mediums. We offer a range of solutions, including a variety of billboard options, street teams and bus shelters, to ensure this is never an issue. We serve as a resource company that allows clients to speak with one voice at all times," Christine Kiely, spokesperson for Kre8 Media Outdoor Advertising explains.

Marketers continue to increase the share of their marketing budget to allow for more digital marketing. In fact, 28 percent have now reduced the amount of money they spend on promotions to devote more to digital marketing, and this illustrates the shift from conventional marketing methods to more modern ones. Furthermore, experts believe digital marketing in 2016 will account for 35 percent of overall marketing funds.

"Companies need to make the most of their marketing budget, yet this is where many run into problems. They work with a company that focuses on businesses of a specific size, never taking into account the unique characteristics of each client. We listen to what a client is trying to achieve with their marketing campaign and develop solutions that fit within their budget. It doesn't matter how big or how small this budget is, as there are ways to overcome any advertising obstacle, if one is willing to look for them. Our team is committed to doing exactly this," Kiely continues.

Outdoor advertising benefits a company in numerous ways. When mobile billboards are employed, for example, they can be moved to where the target audience is gathering. Human behavior can never be fully predicted, thus the option for relocating is needed to ensure the message is being delivered in a timely manner.

"This is only one example of the many benefits of outdoor advertising, and there are numerous others. Call us today, and we will be happy to explain how we can be of assistance to you. With our help, you can make the most of every dollar you spend when it comes to marketing," Kiely states.

About Kre8 Media Outdoor Advertising:

Built with a passion for enhancing the Las Vegas outdoor advertising standards, KRE8 Media started in 2012 with two enterprising and experienced business/outdoor professionals who are committed to results and service. Today, the company employs more than 150 team members, all of whom are hardworking, dedicated and loyal, including 30 dedicated office personnel devoted to client relations.

For more information, please visit http://kre8outdooradvertising.com

Contact Info:

Name: Christine Kiely

Organization: Kre8 Media Outdoor Advertising

Phone: (702) 777-2111

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/kre8-media-outdoor-advertising-reports-on-the-importance-of-digital-marketing/132391

Release ID: 132391

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)
Bangladesh Ticketing Platform Ticketshala to Launch at End of September

Successful beta period is now concluding, as founders of all-in-one online ticketing service prepare for much-anticipated launch, Ticketshala reports

--

With the beta version of the site holding up beautifully and receiving rave reviews from testers, Ticketshala plans to launch officially at the end of September or early part of October. Created to provide Bangladesh with its first secure, all-in-one digital ticketing platform, Ticketshala will offer users the best available deals on hotels, events, movie theaters, theme parks, sporting events, tours, flights, and transportation throughout the country. With discounts of up to 50% on many items, home delivery of tickets, a secure payment system, and other appealing features, Ticketshala has already attracted a significant amount of attention from the general public. The upcoming public launch will be of great interest to many residents of and visitors to Bangladesh, providing for the very first time a truly comprehensive ticketing service that can be accessed from Internet-connected digital devices of all kinds.

"Our beta is now winding down, and we'd like to thank our dedicated testers for helping to make the service even more robust and powerful," said Ticketshala Vice President of Market Development, Kish Parvez, "This is a truly exciting time for us as we prepare to open up the service to all, a moment we have been looking forward to since we first got the idea over five years ago. We think Ticketshala is going to change the lives of a great many people in this wonderful country for the better, and we're very proud of what we've put together. The time has come for online ticketing to become the norm in Bangladesh, just like the rest of the developed world, and Ticketshala is ready to help make that happen. After all, Bangladesh is one of the top 11 emerging markets in the world according to the recent Goldman Sachs market and country report"

With an estimated 165 million residents, Bangladesh is the eight most populous country in the world at the present time. As with other countries of a similar level of economic development, the spread of Internet access has been somewhat slower than in some parts of the world, but gathering momentum means that digital connectivity is something more and more people can take for granted as an everyday matter.

As a result, Bangladesh is now ripe for a digital service like Ticketshala that will deliver concrete, life-improving benefits. Initially conceived in 2011 when an uncle of the founders was stranded away from home because of the inability to buy a steamer ticket, Ticketshala was created to provide an all-in-one online ticketing platform for people everywhere in Bangladesh to make use of.

Built on a secure, rigorously vetted software platform that combines state-of-the-art performance with flexibility and accessibility, Ticketshala has been tested and refined extensively through a now-concluding beta period. With the official launch of the service at the end of September, people throughout Bangladesh will be able to save time and enjoy far greater convenience as they see to all of their ticketing and booking needs from any connected digital device. In the meantime, all are invited to visit the company's website, where they can learn more About Ticketshala and what it has to offer.

About Ticketshala:

From hotels and flights to tour, movie, and sporting event tickets, Ticketshala is Bangladesh's secure, all-in-one digital ticketing platform.

For more information, please visit https://www.ticketshala.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Mazharul Islam (Tuhin) / Shahruk Khan (Anik)

Organization: Ticketshala

Phone: +8801769021586 / +8801630331484

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/bangladesh-ticketing-platform-ticketshala-to-launch-at-end-of-september/132429

Release ID: 132429

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)
Suspense Thriller Mystery Adventure E-book Novel A Silver Medallion Launched

James R Callan has announced the launch of a new thriller novel in paperback and ebook format. Called A Silver Medallion, it is a suspenseful mystery that focuses on female protagonist Crystal's attempt to save child hostages.

--

A new suspense thriller ebook has been launched by Winnsboro author James R Callan called A Silver Medallion. It's the second book in the A Crystal Moore suspense series, in which a bright, adventurous Crystal Moore comes face to face with slavery in Dallas, Texas. Described by New York Times bestselling author Bobbie Smith as a gripping, action packed adventure, it is available on Kindle and in paperback format.

More information can be found on the Amazon listing page at: http://amzn.to/1WxoEaF.

James R Callan is the experienced author of a wide range of books, encompassing fiction and non fiction. He presents workshops in the US and in Mexico on various aspects of the writing craft, and his writing guides include How to Write Great Dialog, and Character: The Heartbeat of the Novel. A Silver Medallion is his latest novel and has already won a mystery/thriller award.

Before becoming a published author, James Callan earned a degree in English and entered a PhD program in mathematics. Following that, he worked a range of jobs including as a research center prominent in the search for oil and gas. Now, as a writer, he is active in several organizations, including the Northeast Texas Writers' Organization and the Ozarks Writers League.

His latest paperback and ebook mystery novel features a dramatic hostage situation and rescue attempt. The female protagonist, Crystal, meets a woman who is being blackmailed by someone looking to exploit the fact that her children are on their own in Mexico. Crustal realizes that in order to help the woman, she's going to have to go to Mexico herself and rescue the girls first. But in doing so, she falls into a ruthless world where killers want her dead.

The James Callan thriller book has received glowing reviews on Amazon for its suspenseful action and for the way it captures the imagination. Full details of the story are available on the Amazon listing, where interested parties can also look inside the book and download a free sample to try.

For more information, please visit http://jamesrcallan.com

Contact Info:

Name: James Callan

Organization: James Callan Author

Phone: 903-365-7498

Release ID: 132415

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)
Premium pH Test Strips Released by Just Fitter on Amazon.com

Just Fitter, a leading manufacturer of health and fitness products, has just announced the Amazon launch of their new Premium pH Test Strips product. This high-quality product will help users track and monitor the pH level of their body using their saliva or urine.

--

More information is available at http://amazon.com/justfitter

Just Fitter is pleased to announce their latest product release of their Premium pH Test Strips is now available at Amazon.com. Sold in bottles containing a value packed one hundred and twenty five strips, this product can be used to accurately track and monitor the level of acidity or alkalinity in the human body. Just Fitter is a seasoned manufacturer of multiple health and fitness accessories that have already performed very well at Amazon.com. Their just launched Premium pH strips are now selling successfully for a discounted rate of only $10.97.

Maintaining a balanced level of pH is one of the key requirements for a healthy body. Just like any substance, the acidity or alkalinity of the human body is also measured in terms of pH. This scale runs approximately from 4.5 to 9, with 7 being the neutral pH. A pH of less than seven indicates an acidic state, and anything more than 7 represents alkalinity. Experts suggest that an acidic condition of the human body is favorable for the growth of disease causing yeast, bacteria, viruses, fungus, mold, and other harmful microorganisms. An acidic pH of the body causes reduction in the rate of oxygenation at the cellular level, leading to several diseases.

Staying fit and healthy requires the human body to maintain an alkaline pH level. Just Fitter has carried out rigorous testing of their Premium pH Test Strips to ensure accurate results in 15 seconds. These strips come in sealed bottles, offering a shelf life of two years. The product has been manufactured using an FDA approved manufacturer, with a high quality composition to that of some leading national brands. Just Fitter is currently offering a 90 day 100% money back guarantee to all Amazon buyers of the product. Visit the Just Fitter Amazon store http://amazon.com/justfitter to find out more.

Highlighting the superior qualities of the product, the founder of Just Fitter Michael Ford stated, "Our entire team has worked hard for months to manufacturer and deliver a premium quality product. These pH strips will help you measure your body pH accurately and conveniently in the comfort of your own home without spending a fortune."

For more information, please visit http://www.justfitter.com

Contact Info:

Name: Michael Ford

Organization: Just Fitter



Release ID: 132413

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)
Automotive Mobile Solutions Announces that Roy OBrien Ford in Saint Clair Shores, Michigan Wins LeadsBeacon Mobile Wallet Platform Prize at Industry Summit in Las Vegas

Automotive Mobile Solutions announced that Joseph A. Opolski, on behalf of Roy OBrien Ford, Saint Clair Shores, Michigan, was the winner of its Mobile Wallet Platform free for a year prize at the Industry Summit Conference in Las Vegas. This will give the dealership free use of the ground-breaking new LeadsBeacon Mobile Platform, from which it can use all new Mobile Wallet technologies, to roll out mobile focused couponing, loyalty programs, punch cards and digital business cards, and then use push notifications and geo-fenced targeting to promote vehicle sales and service offerings.

September 13, 2016 (FPRC) -- HADDONFIELD, NEW JERSEY - Automotive Mobile Solutions (AMS), the mobile marketing company that pioneered two-way texting for car dealers with its TextChat platform, and has now introduced its ground breaking LeadsBeacon Mobile Wallet (Apple & Android) platform for the automotive industry, announced that Joseph A. Opolski II at Roy OBrien Ford, Inc. was the winner of its Mobile Wallet Platform free for a year prize at the Industry Summit Conference in Las Vegas.



Mr. Opolski, Business Manager of Roy OBrien Ford, in Saint Clair Shores, Michigan, attended the presentation on Mobile Wallet and proximity marketing given by John F. Possumato, the Founder & CEO of AMS, where the prize winner was chosen and announced.



We really enjoyed the entire Industry Summit, and the presentation on geo-fencing and proximity marketing, through Mobile Wallet and apps, and winning the prize of use of the Mobile Wallet platform for a year, was the icing on the cake, said Opolski, We cant wait to get started utilizing all of the Mobile Wallet customer facing features, like couponing, loyalty punch cards, and especially Mobile Wallet Digital Business Cards.



Automotive Dealers who are utilizing Apple Wallet and Android Wallet capabilities are on the cutting edge of Mobile Wallet technologies, on par with some of the major national retailers on the scene today, such as Starbucks, Best Buy and Target, said Possumato. We look very forward to working with Joe and the team of Roy OBrien Ford to use our unique automotive industry focused LeadsBeacon Mobile Wallet platform to enhance both new customer acquisition and customer retention, the dramatic benefit and leverage provided through mobile focused initiatives for both sales and service, are both substantial and sustainable, says Possumato.



The industry trends are clear and dramatic, Possumato adds, soon, if you are not reaching your customer through a mobile first and focused strategy and sales initiatives, with tools like TCPA compliant texting, and now, Mobile Wallet with proximity marketing capabilities, including geo-targeted text, coupons, flash sales etc., you wont really be reaching many consumers at all. Really, how many email blast notifications does a car dealer today have to send out to get few responses? The proof is in the numbers.



About Automotive Mobile Solutions LLC:

Automotive Mobile Solutions LLC is the leading mobile marketing serving the automotive industry vertical. Its groundbreaking Sales TextChat platform and Mobile Wallet LeadsBeacon (LeadsBeacon.com) platform, are forging a new, cost effective path for car dealers in using proximity marketing to both attract new prospects and retain current customers. No other company in automotive industry provides such comprehensive services, focused on SMS and Mobile Wallet technologies.



Contact:

Elena Ciccotelli, Director of Operations

Automotive Mobile Solutions LLC

856 577 2763

www.leadsbeacon.com

###











Send an email to Elena Ciccotelli of r

8564953138

Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Take It Home LLC to be Presenter at the Wharton Club of New Jerseys Entrepreneur Showcase and Pitch Event (Tue 21st Feb 17)

John F. Possumato to Speak at Digital Dealer Workshops on Utilizing Proximity Marketing and Beacons (Tue 11th Oct 16)

John F Possumato of Automotive Mobile Solutions to Speak at Industry Summit on LeadsBeacon Mobile Wallet Platform and Proximity Marketing and Will Sponsor Platform Prize (Fri 26th Aug 16)
VPBank Racks Up Two International Banker Banking Awards

VPBank Is the Winner of Two Prestigious International Banker Awards: Best Commercial Bank of the Year Vietnam 2016 and Best SME Bank of the Year Vietnam 2016

--

International Banker recently held its annual Banking Awards to acknowledge the top Asian and Australasian banking institutions and individuals. VPBank received awards in two categories: Best Commercial Bank of the Year Vietnam 2016 and Best SME Bank of the Year Vietnam 2016.

International Banker offers a global view of banking and finance. Each year through the Banking Awards, it recognises the leading banking institutions and individuals that have set the bar for industry excellence. The 2016 Banking Awards acknowledge the organisations and individuals within the banking and financial industries in Asia and Australasia that drive global economic commerce, create capital and opportunities for economic growth within their regions, set the benchmarks for technological advancement and customer service, while maintaining high levels of regulatory compliance and corporate governance. The standout institutions working within retail, commercial, investment and private banking are recognized with these awards. In addition, special awards are given to outstanding CEOs in each region.

Honoured with double awards to acknowledge and celebrate its innovation and leadership in the areas of commercial and SME banking in Vietnam, VPBank has achieved a prominent position on the 2016 International Banker Asia and Australasian Banking Awards list.

Vietnam Prosperity Bank is one of the first established joint stock commercial banks in Vietnam, having been in business for 23 years. And it has only been from 2010 onwards that VPBank has implemented its ambitious, full-scale plan to become a banking industry leader in Vietnam. The results being generated by VPBank must seem like just rewards for the effort and investment that the bank has put in--especially since 2010, when it adopted a new name and wholly new brand identity. In terms of achievable goals, it is aiming, by 2017, to become one of the five leading joint-stock commercial banks as well as one of the top three retail joint-stock commercial banks in Vietnam. Given the spectacular growth that the bank has managed in recent times, as well as the positive outlook for Vietnam's banking industry in general, there is little evidence to suggest that VPBank won't easily surpass all of the steep performance thresholds that it has set for itself.

Its spectacular results have truly cemented VPBank's position as one of Vietnam's top commercial banks. In 2015 the bank's net worth swelled by 49 percent over 2014. Profitability also skyrocketed last year, with return on equity rising significantly and profit before tax nearly doubling. VPBank has maintained strong double-digit growth on its commercial banking business over the last few years. This year has seen a surge in the number of customers acquired by the bank, while deposit and lending balances of this segment achieved astronomical growth. One area on which the Bank has placed particular focus recently has been operational efficiency. It has principally done this by further cementing close partnerships with other VPBank units, and in doing so has streamlined credit-processing procedures and payment processes, as well as minimising the turnaround time in specific cross-divisional operations.

On the SME banking front, VPBank managed to sizeably grow profitability thanks to rapid loan-portfolio and deposit growth, and the maintenance of a high standard of credit quality with a low nonperforming-loan ratio. The strict management of operating expenses has also been particularly effective. New, innovative products have been introduced into VPBank's offering, with the bank being one of the few among its peers to expand its unsecured business instalment-loan product into the micro-SME segment--an area that is considered to be underserved in the country at present. Other capital-financing products within the SME business have also enjoyed healthy growth in recent times, including business-finance loans secured by real estate and credit-program loans secured by other assets. The bank additionally introduced a business line, Household Banking, that aims to target the mass-market, self-employed sector within Vietnam, known as household customers. VPBank appears to be blazing a trail to provide banking solutions for this customer segment. Innovatively designed products and solutions have been developed that specifically support the country's household and family businesses across a wide range of lending scenarios. The division's brand, CommCredit, provides catered services that serve every stage of the customer's lifecycle and development. The bank makes extra efforts, moreover, to ensure that repayment is simple, allowing customers more time to focus on their businesses.

For further information, please visit: http://internationalbanker.com/banking/vietnam-prosperity-bank-banking-industry-leader-making/

About International Banker: International Banker is the flagship brand of Finance Publishing. Finance Publishing is one of the world's leading sources of authoritative analysis on finance, international banking and world affairs. It delivers information with excellence through a wide range of accessible formats, from websites, newsletters and magazines, to conferences.

For more information, please visit http://internationalbanker.com

Contact Info:

Name: Phillip Mann

Email: phillip.mann@internationalbanker.com

Organization: Finance Publishing

Phone: +44 (0) 20 7887 2533

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/vpbank-racks-up-two-international-banker-banking-awards/132061

Release ID: 132061

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)
JavaScript is disabled on your browser.

CORDIS website requires JavaScript enabled in order to work properly. Please enable JavaScript.
Thermalabs Reveals Why its Tanning Products are the Best Rated Globally

Thermalabs has announced some of the secrets behind the immense success of its cosmetics products.

--

Thermalabs - http://www.thermalabs.com - a leading player in the global cosmetics industry, has revealed some of the key secrets behind the success of their brand. The company has so far supplied the market with at least 24 products, the most of which are quality tanning lotions and accessories. Both critics and fanatics have debated the incredible rise of Thermalabs from a little-known to a global brand.

Thermalabs started out some three years ago as an organization that championed safer and healthier skincare practices. The company later managed to gather the capital needed to start an actual factory in Israel. Within a couple of months, the company had launched its first product ever - the original self tanner. This was a premium tanning lotion that designed from exclusive ingredients such as Aloe Vera, Green Tea, and Olive Oil. The product was an instant hit, selling over a thousand units barely 24 hours after it was launched on global e-commerce marketplace Amazon.com. Thermalabs was able to ride on this success wave to properly pitch its upcoming releases. A number of the company's introductory products have been perennial bestsellers on Amazon.com and other online marketplaces.

In addition to the original self tanner, some of the company's other most successful products include Glow2Go and Ultimitt. These are the company's second and third products, respectively. Glow2Go is a pack of 20 tanning wipes that initially sold at double the count but half the price of the competition. Like its predecessor, the product was a major hit. It managed to win various Amazon.com accolades within the first few weeks, even being listed as a 'hot new release'. Thermalabs Ultimitt was launched a few months after the company introduced Glow2Go. This was an applicator accessory designed to eliminate the problems of existing tanning mitts. It helped the company's customers effectively apply tanners, lotion, and other skincare products. It was designed to be bigger and better than existing mitts in the market. For this reason, the product was also very successful. To date, it has remained at the top of Amazon's global bestselling chart in its category.

In recent times, the company has also launched a number of highly successful products. These include the Protectan sunscreen lotion, the Instant pop up beach tent, the Shea Body Butter, and much more. A lot of critics and company fanatics have been debating the reasons why Thermalabs products perform unusually well in the market.

The company's coordinator for marketing, Mr. Alex Howard, said, "Thermalabs has been in the cosmetics industry for three years now. During this time, we have accomplished quite a lot. In addition to furnishing the market with at least 24 different products, we have also contributed to nonprofitable causes and worked in many ways to promote safer skincare practices. Without dilly-dallying, I'd say that the secrets behind Thermalabs products in the market is our focus on natural and organic ingredients. Our emphasis on product quality and consumer safety has made us the company we are today!"

For more information, please visit http://www.thermalabs.com/home

Contact Info:

Name: Jennifer Parker

Organization: Thermalabs

Address: 450 West 58th Street New York, NY 10019

Phone: (877) 266-6257

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_toClMZ_0M

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/thermalabs-reveals-why-its-tanning-products-are-the-best-rated-globally/132179

Release ID: 132179

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)
Best 10 Website Hosting Announces Top Web Hosting Companies In India

Best 10 Website Hosting offers reviews and rankings for the top hosting firms available to businesses in India. The site compares the top companies by features, pricing models and user ratings.

--

Best 10 Website Hosting is pleased to announce the release of its selection of the top web hosting companies. The elements that are reviewed and compared include features, pricing models and user ratings. The hosting comparison will help end users to choose the right web hosting firm based on their specific needs. There are dozens, even hundreds, of web hosting firms that claim to be one of the top companies which provide hosting for Web users.

Speaking for the organization, Vickie Rodrigues explains, "It can be very difficult to find the best web hosts for your specific need. We at BestTop10WebsiteHosting.com have done the hard work to review the top companies that provide hosting services. We make finding the right company to do web hosting much less complicated. "

The information on the ranking website is available to compare the web hosting features is presented in a concise manner so that the user can spend a few minutes reviewing the features before paying a fee to set up a hosting contract.

The website provides the current information consisting of four companies. These named firms are then linked to the company website so that users can find out even more information about the hosting firm. The comparison table presented on the Best Top 10 website is a condensed version of the available information. A numerical score provides a quick view of the overall ranking of a specific company. The current rankings are iPage, with a ranking of 10; BlueHost, ranking of 9.7; E-Host.com - 9.5 and Inmotion Business Hosting ranked at 7.8.

A check of the customer reviews is included in the company ranking. The review scores are based on a 5-Star system. IPage, for example has a 5-star rating from the customers who have used the product in the past. The blog which is associated with the website has information such as twelve factors which make up the qualities of a good hosting firm.

For more information, please visit http://www.BestTop10WebsiteHosting.com

Contact Info:

Name: Vickie Rodrigues

Organization: Vickie Rodrigues

Address: #287, 2nd Loop Road, Frazer Town, Bangalore, India

Phone: +91-8867483156

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/best-10-website-hosting-announces-top-web-hosting-companies-in-india/132493

Release ID: 132493

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)
Royal Sea Online Sale 25% discount to celebrate Eczema & Anti itch cream launch

Royal Sea is celebrating the launch of Eczema & Anti itch cream online by Online Sale 25% discount. Further information can be found at http://www.royalsea-us.com and http://www.royalsea-us.com/product/eczema-anti-itch-cream/.

--

In a unique change of pace, Ecommerce store "Royal Sea", will be celebrating the launch of its Eczema treatment cream by Online Sale 25% discount. It's reported the event will take place on tuesday 15th september.

In a space where most competitors simply advertise on facebook and fail to cause much of a stir, Royal Sea has opted to be a little more unique with it's Eczema & Anti itch cream launch.

Moshe Nechushtan , Co-Founder at Royal Sea, says: "We wanted to be unique with our Eczema treatment cream launch because wanted to reach out to people that suffering from Eczema and itchy skin.

It should be really worthwhile hoping it to give a solution for people that suffering from Eczema and itchy skin. It should go great unless the whole internet crashes down on launch day!

Royal Sea has always thrived on the idea of standing out and making a commotion. It's all part of the fun and it's going to natural active ingredients., which it's better than businesses who choose to do things the 'regular' way. This launch celebration is just one of the many ways Royal Sea achieves that goal.

When asked about Eczema & Anti itch cream, Moshe Nechushtan said: "We think it's going to be a real hit because dead sea mineral ".

Eczema & Anti itch cream is set to launch tuesday 15th september. To find out more, it's possible to visit http://www.royalsea-us.com/product/eczema-anti-itc...

Natural Eczema & Anti itch Cream: For people who have had difficulty treating eczema, itchy skin, skin infections, atopic dermatitis (skin atopy), keratosis pilaris, and skin fungus or have tried other treatments Eczema cream is a natural alternative light therapy relief. Contains Dead Sea's unique composition of natural minerals! Among 26 essential Dead Sea minerals, 12 are unique and don't exist in any other ocean in the world. Some are known to have unique qualities, for instance giving a feeling of relaxation, nourishing the skin, activating the blood systems etc.

For further information about Royal Sea, all this can be discovered at http://www.royalsea-us.com

About the Product

? 100% Natural blend of Dead Sea minerals and unique essential oils including 10 Powerful ingredients that works against ECZEMA: Geranium, bergamot, lavender, eucalyptus, honey, propolis, Dead Sea Minerlas

? Proven ECZEMA TREATMENT- Helped thousands of users around the globe. Easily absorbed, Gets deep into your skin, healing damaged tissue and gives moisture to your skin. for hand, face, ear, foot, scalp, eye, etc.

? Powerful Anti Itch Cream - Can be used in any ages, baby , kids and adults. Safe for all skin types through unique and proven cream formulation against eczema rash, skin infections, atopic dermatitis (skin atopy), keratosis pilaris and skin fungus.

? Free from steroids, Free from paraben, hypoallergenic and not tested on animals.? Buy With Confidence - 60 days money back guarantee. We at Royal Sea believe that if you have purchased our product and used it regularly without it helping, you shouldn't pay for it and we will give you a full money refund.

For more information, please visit http://www.royalsea-us.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Moshe Nechushtan

Email: info@royal-sea.com

Organization: royal sea

Address: Kehilat lodge 18, Tel aviv, Israel

Phone: +97236430333

Release ID: 132125

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
Free Freightnet Membership

List your company in the Freightnet directory. It's Free, it's Easy and your company can be displayed in front of potential freight buyers within 24 hours.
European Wealth has purchased asset manager Cimco Partners Management for 750,000, in the latest move to expand the wealth management firm.

Gibralter-based Cimco, which currently has $22m (16.5m) of assets under management, runs two funds, the G20 Absolute Return fund and the G20 Property fund.

A third fund, run by Cimco fund managers, will be added to European Wealths in-house range, and is expected to offer an investment style which is not currently offered within the groups portfolio.

The fresh fund will broaden the range of equity investment styles available ahead of the launch of an institutional equity service, which is planned for later this year.

Lead investment director of Cimco, Michael Mechas, will also be joining European Wealth following the acquisition and will continue to manage the absolute return fund.

He will join European Wealths investment committee and work with the executive team to identify opportunities for buying international businesses.

This news comes despite European Wealth continually failing to make pre-tax profits, but its group chief executive John Morton was confident there would be an improvement by the end of this year.

Last month, the firm announced it was planning to revise its charging structure to better align the pricing with a level of service that is appropriate for clients.

Mr Morton said he expects the acquisition to strengthen European Wealths position as a broad based and established wealth manager.

He added: I look forward to Michael joining the investment team and supporting the growth of the company.

European Wealth will pay an initial consideration of 500,000 for Cimco, and will then issue 909,091 shares at a price of 55p.

A deferred consideration of up to 250,000 will be payable about 12 months after the acquisition is complete through the issue of further shares.

katherine.denham@ft.com
Sanlam chief executive Jonathan Polin has said his company needs to grow its adviser numbers pretty significantly, saying he will focus on this next year.

Mr Polin, who joined the company at the end of last year, has been spending the past few months looking into how he can turn Sanlam into a significant player in the UK.

Having restructured the company into one brand he said Sanlam would be launching a new proposition next month.

Mr Polin said: We are putting much better functionality into the client portal that will be finalised next year and bringing out new products which will be delivered next year.

One of the biggest improvements has been getting people to see it as one company and part of the process now will be articulating that to the external market. The majority of the market is going to be looked after by large vertically integrated businesses owned by large institutions. Jonathan Polin

If you believe, like I do, that the business is best focused throug the lens of holistic financial advice then we need to grow our adviser business and we need to grow it pretty significantly in percentage terms.

We also need to be careful that we get the right quality. I want a long-term sustainable business.

Mr Polin said advisers were becoming increasingly open to joining vertically integrated businesses such as Sanlam.

He said: I believe that independence has always been a non-issue for clients and becoming more of a non-issue for advisers.

St Jamess Place continues to grow, Old Mutual Wealth and Intrinsic are growing pretty heavily and Standard Life is growing 1825. That is showing you that vertical integration cannot be bad because there are a lot of advisers moving that way.

There is absolutely a place there for independent boutiques but the majority of the market is going to be looked after by large vertically integrated businesses owned by large institutions.

Mr Polin added that he didnt think the South African-owned company would be affected by the UKs vote to leave the European Union, though he said he personally regretted the decision to opt for Brexit.

He said: We see some of the wider ramifications as an opportunity. Some of our competitors may want to sit things out while they get a view of where it is going but we can be more nimble.

In July Mr Polin joined the board of alternatives platform CoInvestor, which was launched last year.
Solvency II and other regulatory changes have put so much cost pressure on insurers that better solutions are needed to help them survive and continue to provide competitive products.

This is the finding of the latest Swiss Re Sigma report, which found the fast-paced development and implementation of new regulation has created a situation where insurers are finding it tough to compete and grow market share.

This could lead to restrictions on what insurers can offer to the end policyholder, or lead to increase premia on product lines, unless solutions can be brought in to help lighten the load.

According to the 39-page Sigma report: Strategic Reinsurance and Insurance: The Increasing Trend of Customised Solutions, the world of reinsurance - which underwrites insurers as a means of risk management - needs to change with the times.

New regulatory capital standards could put some mutual firms at a competitive disadvantage compared to highly diversified insurers

The report said: The impact of new capital rules, including Solvency II for European insurers, are significant.

It claimed the high costs of meeting the new Solvency II rules - which came into force in January this year - could be mitigated by reinsurers coming up with better, more customised risk metrics to provide more tailored underwriting for insurance firms.

This would help, the report said, to mitigate the potential costs of regulatory change.

The report also claimed the UKs mutual insurers - some of whom have been operating for more than 100 years in the UK - would be better served by bespoke reinsurance, which would help them to remain competitive and able to withstand regulatory change.

According to the report: Mutuals face limitations in their ability to access capital. Many mutuals have a focused client base and a less diversified portfolio.

New regulatory capital standards could put some mutual firms at a competitive disadvantage compared to highly diversified insurers.

Reinsurance can provide mutuals with increased financial flexibility to cope with unexpected losses, grow their business and compete with other types of insurers.

Without better, customised reinsurance solutions, and clearer and better communications, many insurers will not be able to show the flexibility and competition needed to provide consumers with the appropriate cover, the report concluded.

A lack of flexibility and competition would not do anything to fill the so-called protection gap, which Swiss Res 2015 annual protection report revealed was nearing 200bn in the UK for disability protection alone.

According to the 2015 statistics, just short of 1.7m individual financial protection policies were sold in this country  an increase of 0.9 per cent on the year before.
Income investors seem to have a huge bias towards growth at the moment.

Value and growth are often viewed as two sides of the same coin. If your portfolio is 50 per cent in value-oriented investments, it is fair to suggest the other 50 per cent is in growth  or, as they tend to have it in the US, momentum  stocks.

If you are 30 per cent in value, then the chances are you are 70 per cent in growth.

If you ask them nicely, the analysts at Morningstar can break down portfolios by investment style and so we asked them to do just that for funds in the UK Income category.

We then made the reasonable assumption that, if a fund has more than 50 per cent in value-oriented stocks, it has a value focus and, if it has more than 50 per cent in growth stocks, it has a growth focus.

Value pretty much embodies everything investors currently find problematic  commodities, banks, volatility and so on Nick Kirrage

The funds that make up Morningstars UK Income sector boast a chunky 87bn in assets under management.

We disaggregated this figure into the percentage value run by each investment house and then ranked everything according to the degree to which they are focused towards value or growth.

The resulting chart (below) paints an arresting picture.

As you can see, 87 per cent of all 87bn of funds under management in the UK Income sector have a greater than 50 per cent bias to growth, which of course means just 13 per cent have any sort of tilt towards value.

Prominent in the former camp is the vertical line towards the right of the chart, which represents the 18bn one investment house has across its stable of growth-oriented income portfolios.

Towards the left of the chart, the great majority of the 5bn or so of assets with a 60 per cent or higher tilt towards value are also run by a single investment house.

We presume its identity goes without saying and so will instead concentrate on what this chart is saying  most obviously that, as things stand, almost nobody wants to touch value.

That is because value pretty much embodies everything investors currently find problematic  commodities, banks, volatility and so on.

Source: Schroders, Morningstar Direct. 31 May 2016

In contrast, growth is a much easier decision for investors  at least at first glance  and there is certainly no denying a lot of the funds that make up the right-hand side of our chart can point to excellent 10-year track records.

Yet we know markets are cyclical over time. We know businesses and sectors  whether they have been doing well or poorly  revert to the mean over time. And we know that  again, over time  value has a long, long history of outperforming growth.
Former Japan premier accuses Abe of a lie on Fukushima safety

Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi blasted current premier Shinzo Abes stance that the situation at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant is under control.

Article by The Associated Press

Its a lie, an impassioned Koizumi, 74, told reporters in Tokyo on Wednesday. They keep saying its going to be under control, but still its not effective. I really want to know how you can tell a lie like that.

A spokesman for Abes office didnt immediately respond to a phone call and email requesting comment.

More than five years after the meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, the operator  Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc.  continues to struggle to contain the radiation-contaminated water that inundates the plant. TEPCO is using a frozen ice wall to stop water from entering the wrecked facility, but still about 300 metric tons of water flows into the reactor building daily, mixing with melted fuel and becoming tainted, according to the companys website.

Company spokesman Tatsuhiro Yamagishi said by email that a process to bolster the ice wall is beginning to have an effect, adding that the company believes no underground water is flowing into the sea without being treated. All radioactive materials are under measurable limits, he said.

Koizumi was speaking at an event to publicize his campaign to raise money to help U.S. servicemen who say they contracted radiation sickness while working on the cleanup after the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and meltdown.

The former prime minister backed the use of nuclear power during his years in office from 2001-2006, but now says he regrets that he had been ignorant about its risks and is campaigning for its abolition.

When I was prime minister, I believed what they told me. I believed it was a cheap, safe and clean form of energy, Koizumi said. Im now ashamed of myself for believing those lies for so long.

Koizumi also blasted Japans Nuclear Regulation Authority, saying that its chief, Shunichi Tanaka, gave permission to restart the Sendai reactor in the southern Japanese island of Kyushu despite having reservations about its safety.

The authority wasnt immediately available to comment outside of business hours.

Local courts and governments have been one of the biggest roadblocks to restarting more reactors, crimping Abes goal of deriving as much as 22 percent of the nations energy needs from nuclear by 2030.

The Otsu District Court earlier this year made a surprise decision that restricted Kansai Electric Power Co. from operating two reactors in western Japan only weeks after theyd been turned back on.

On March 10, the eve of the fifth anniversary of the disaster, Abe said that Japan cant do without nuclear power.

Just three of the nations 42 operable reactors are currently online. Kyushu Electric Power Co.s Sendai No. 1 and 2 reactors, which restarted last year, are facing opposition from the regions new governor, who has twice formally demanded that they be temporarily shut for inspection.

There is no perfect source for electricity, Dale Klein, an adviser to Tepco and a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in an interview in Tokyo last week. If there were a perfect source, we wouldnt be having our energy debates. Wind has its problems, solar has its problems, coal has its problems. But at the end of the day, we need electricity. And I think nuclear is an environmentally viable way to produce electricity.

Koizumi contested claims by Abes administration that the nuclear watchdog is imposing the worlds most stringent safety standards in the earthquake-prone nation. If you compare the Japanese regulations to those in America, you realize how much looser the Japanese regulations are, he said.

Abe knows the arguments on both sides, but he still believes the arguments for nuclear power generation, Koizumi added.

Read more at: denverpost.com

value="Enter your email address here..." style=" border-radius: 2px; font: 14px/100% Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; padding: .2em 2em .2em;" onfocus="if(this.value == 'Enter your email address here...') { this.value = ''; }" onblur="if(this.value == '') { this.value = 'Enter your email address here...'; }" /> style="display: inline-block; outline: none; cursor: pointer; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; font: 14px/100% Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; padding: .2em 1em .3em; text-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.3); -webkit-border-radius: .2em; -moz-border-radius: .2em; border-radius: .2em; -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,.2); -moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,.2); box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,.2);" >

Submit a correction >>
Story Highlights 30% worry about having benefits reduced

20% worry about pay cut, 19% about being laid off

Worker worries have eased since 2014 after spiking in 2009

PRINCETON, N.J. -- More U.S. workers say they worry about having their benefits reduced (30%) than worry about having their wages cut (20%), being laid off (19%), having their hours cut back (17%), or their company moving their jobs overseas (8%). Benefits cuts consistently have been the top worry since Gallup first asked the question in 1997. U.S. workers' worries about these possibilities generally have eased since 2014 after rising sharply following the financial crisis and staying elevated during the ensuing period of high unemployment.

The data are based on Gallup's annual Work and Education poll, conducted each August. U.S. workers' concern about having their benefits cut spiked to 46% in 2009 and did not show sustained recovery until falling to 34% in 2014. The 30% who worry about benefits reductions today is essentially back to where it was before the September 2008 financial crisis.

Workers' concerns about having their wages cut or their hours reduced remain at least slightly higher than they were at any point before the 2007-2009 recession. While the 19% worried about being laid off is also higher than just before the financial crisis (15%), it is similar to what Gallup measured in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Relatively few American workers worry about their company moving jobs overseas -- the one concern that did not dramatically increase after the financial crisis.

Nearly Half of Government, Union Workers Fear Benefits Cuts

Government workers and unionized workers are significantly more likely than nongovernment and nonunion workers to worry about having their benefits reduced. According to combined data from the 2014-2016 Work and Education surveys, 46% of government workers and 45% of union workers say they worry their benefits will be reduced. That compares with 32% of those employed by a private company and 31% of nonunion workers.

Government workers, many of whom are also unionized, often have more generous benefits packages than private sector workers, and thus more to lose if their employers cut benefits. Previous Gallup research showed government workers and, to a lesser extent, union workers are more satisfied with their retirement, health insurance and vacation benefits than nongovernment and nonunion workers, respectively.

Gallup consistently has found a gap between union and nonunion workers' concerns about having their benefits cut, perhaps because each new round of collective bargaining brings the possibility of reduced benefits.

By contrast, government and private sector workers had similar levels of worry about benefits reductions before the financial crisis. Both groups grew more concerned from 2009 to 2013 about losing their benefits, but the increase was sharper among government workers. Government workers may have grown more concerned because government spending drew greater scrutiny as many state governments struggled to balance their budgets and the federal debt became a more salient political issue in those years. Now, private sector employee worries about benefits cuts are essentially back to where they were before the financial crisis, while government workers' worries remain significantly higher than before.

Percentage of Government vs. Private Sector Workers Worried About Having Their Benefits Reduced 2005-2008 2009-2013 2014-2016 % % % Government workers 33 56 46 Private sector workers 30 41 32 Aggregated data from Gallup annual Work and Education polls

The combined 2014-2016 data also reveal that concerns about job setbacks vary for different types of workers.

Part-time workers (36%) are twice as likely as full-time workers (17%) to say they worry their hours will be cut back. In fact, a reduction in hours is part-time workers' top worry, surpassing benefits cuts (30%), being laid off (27%), and having their pay cut (23%).

Professionals or executives (12%) are far less likely than blue-collar workers (26%) and white-collar workers who are not professionals or executives (22%) to worry about having their hours cut. Most professional and executive workers report they are paid a salary while most blue-collar (and nonprofessional/executive white-collar) workers say they are paid by the hour.

Blue-collar workers are also most likely among employee groups to worry about their company moving jobs overseas, although the 14% who worry is still small on an absolute basis. In comparison, 5% of professional workers and 7% of nonprofessional white-collar workers worry that their company will move jobs overseas.

Aside from these differences, the various employee groups express generally similar worry about the other job setbacks tested in the survey.

Implications

It is clear the financial crisis and periods of high unemployment caused an increasing number of U.S. workers to feel insecure in their jobs, including worrying about their pay, benefits and whether they would keep their jobs at all. Those fears remained elevated for several years after the recession before finally showing some signs of receding in the last three years. Americans' various job worries are not all back to prerecession levels, but those that haven't already recovered are getting closer to that mark.

A lasting effect of the recession appears to be heightened worry about benefits cuts among public sector employees. Some state and local governments have struggled to balance their budgets and have been forced to re-examine whether they can pay promised levels of retirement and health benefits for current and past employees. As a result, some governments have proposed benefits cuts as a way to close budget shortfalls, which persist in some states and localities even as the economy has improved in recent years.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Aug. 3-7, 2016, with a random sample of 521 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, who are employed full or part time. For results based on the total sample of workers, the margin of sampling error is 6 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.
'Steven Universe' Season 4 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Cartoon Network Rescheduled Episodes? Onion's Gang Set For Episode 7?

The titles for the upcoming "Steven Universe" Season 4 episodes have recently been released in Cartoon Network's web page. One particular episode dubbed as "Onion's Gang" will focus on the secret friends Onion has in the show. However, rumors suggest that the TV network plans to rearrange the episodes in the future weeks.

Shuffled Episodes of 'Steven Universe' Season 4?

The "Gem Harvest" episode is supposedly the title of the "Steven Universe" Season 4 Episode 6. However, Cartoon Network replaced it with the "Last One Out of Beach City" episode. On the other hand, the episode dubbed, "Onion's Gang, took the places the "Last One Out of Beach City" and "Tiger Philanthropist" episodes.



Meanwhile,it has been previously reported that the story of Pearl is going to be the main focus in the upcoming "Steven Universe" Epiosde 6. However, that is not the case anymore. Based on the teaser, Amethyst and Greg are supposed to go on a rock concert.This particular scene is expected to be shown in the "Gem Harvest" episode.

Onion's Secret Friends Revealed in 'Steven Universe'

In other news, the viewers of the show can finally meet Onions' secret friends in the "Onion's Gang" episode of the upcoming "Steven Universe" Season 4. The Bitbag reports that the character's friends are monsters that were shown in the "Nightmare Hospital" episode of Season 2. The news outlet further speculates that Onion will also reveal the gem mutants that the character has been keeping in his basement all this time.

As of now, no official news has been reported whether Cartoon Network will rearrange the schedules for "Steven Universe" Season 4 or not. It is not yet confirmed also if the "Gem Harvest" and "Tiger Philanthropist" episodes will be released. The TV network is also expected to post the schedules for these episodes next week on their website.

This episode shuffling will bring confusionsamong the "Steven Universe" Season 4 viewers. Meanwhile, Episode 7, which is titled "Onion's Gang," will air on Sept. 15 on Cartoon Network. For more news and update on "Steven Universe" Season 4, stay tuned to GamenGuide!
Star Wars Rebels Season 3 Spoilers, Latest News & Update: Ezra, Sabine More Romantic Relationship? More Possible Plots Revealed

"Star Wars Rebels" Season 3 will not just be all about war between the Rebels and the Empire. Some spoiler news are speculating that there could be more of Ezra and Sabine's romantic relationship.

Screen Rant has reported that Ezra and Sabine are expected to confront their new adversary in the person of Grand Admiral Thrawn "Star Wars Rebels" Season 3. He will be a force to reckon with. His strategies, tactics and even cultural influences will be a new threat to the duo.

In season 2, we saw Ezra escaped from Sith Lord Darth Vader. Using the dark side of the Force, he was able to unlock the Sith holocron. He became strong and was able to establish a secret camp in Atollon, while Sabine is all set with her weapons. With the greatest mission in attacking the Empire, will Ezra and Sabine find time for a more romantic relationship in "Star Wars Rebels" Season 3?

We know that Ezra was attracted to Sabine when he first laid eyes on her beauty, although she ignored this because it seems awkward at that moment. But in the course of all their adventures, we saw Sabine growing to be protective over Ezra on "Gathering Forces" episode on "Star Wars Rebels."

The trust between Ezra and Sabine is undoubtedly strong. Sabine was willing to let Ezra take lead in her mission to find Kanan, while he was all too willing not to tell Hera about the stolen TIE fighter. In "Star Wars Rebels" Season 3, the duo will be fighting side by side with the new characters. Their trust and concern for each other will definitely be put to test. Will they be able to put their romantic relationship first before their mission?

Stay tuned to GameNGuide for more spoiler news on "Star Wars Rebels" Season 3.
'Harry Potter' Latest News & Updates: Daniel Radcliffe Admits He Won't Mind Having Someone Else Play The Boy Who Lived

It has been five years since Daniel Radcliffe last played The Boy Who Lived in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2" in 2011. However, the actor shared that he is still open to taking on the titular role again. On the other hand, Radcliffe said that he does not mind if someone else would play Harry Potter.

After author J.K. Rowling featured the new book "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," there were rumors that Warner Bros. would create a film for it. Talks started circulating whether Daniel Radcliffe would return to play Harry Potter again. The British actor has been busy working on other projects since the last Harry Potter film, but has a special spot for the character anytime.

The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Radcliffe was at the Deauville Film Festival to accept the Rising Star award.He said that he will never close the opportunity of playing Harry Potter again, adding how it would be stupid not to. However he feels happy and secure enough to let another play it. Radcliffe continued that in the meantime, it is not even a concern because he is still too young to play the character. Even after a decade, he explained that he would still feel strange about returning to the role.

ScreenRant noted that according to Radcliffe, there is a part of him that believes how it might be better to leave his last performance untouched. There is that risk of either making the Harry Potter series better or worse. He made a comparison between the effects of the "Star Wars" sequels to the original trilogy. He is partly afraid of ruining the good impressions that the Harry Potter films have given fans in the past several years.

The Harry Potter star also talked about other related actors like Jamie Parker and Eddie Redmayne. Radcliffe said that he thinks Parker could play the role in "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," although he has not seen the play yet. He also commended Oscar winner Redmayne, who stars in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." More updates and details on Harry Potter are expected soon.
'Thor: Ragnarok' Release Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Jeff Goldblum Teases Possible Connection Between Grandmaster And Cate Blanchett's Hela? [POSSIBLE PLOT DETAILS]

Fans are slowly learning more about "Thor: Ragnarok". More details about the new characters are being revealed as the Marvel Cinematic Universe flick continues filming. But is it possible that the two major villains in the third "Thor" movie have some sort of connection? Jeff Goldblum has just teased that his character the Grandmaster might have an interaction with Cate Blanchett's Hela in the film.

There have been speculations that Cate Blanchett's baddie will be one of the main reasons why Chris Hemsworth's Thor would end up having to leave Asgard in search of his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) in the MCU film. The character is expected to team up with Loki (Tom Hiddleston) to send the Odinson into a new planet where the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is the most powerful gladiator. However, rumors have surfaced that Hela might have a connection with Jeff Goldblum's Grandmaster in "Thor: Ragnarok" after the actor shared an interesting photo on Instagram.

A photo posted by Jeff Goldblum (@jeffgoldblum) on Sep 9, 2016 at 11:58am PDT

The image shows Jeff Goldblum reading "The Mighty Thor #374", which some assume is just a random comic book issue that the "Independence Day: Resurgence" actor chose as research material. However, Comic Book Movie reports that it is possible that Goldblum is reading up on Hela, who plays a major role in the issue. Will the Grandmaster be working with Cate Blanchett's villain to defeat Chris Hemsworth in "Thor: Ragnarok"?

In "Thor: Ragnarok", Jeff Goldblum's character is rumored to be the one in charge with the gladiator matches in the Hulk's new planet. There are speculations that Hela and Loki may have chosen to send Thor there so he can be killed by the Hulk. However, their plans might backfire as the two former Avengers work together to escape and go back to Earth.

"Thor: Ragnarok" is directed by Taika Waititi and also stars Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie. The film is scheduled for release on November 2017.
MacBook Pro 2016 Release Date, Latest Rumors, News & Update: Brace For A Big Refresh  Tim Cook

With the iPhone 7/7 Plus and Apple Watch 2 now out in the open, attention shifts to the MacBook Pro 2016 believed to be coming in the Fall. At least that is what the grapevine understands.

With the uncertainty, some presumed buyers have come out in the open to get down to the real score involving the MacBook Pro 2016. As Mac Rumors points out, it has already been 479 days since the last MacBook Pro refresh and a new one is obviously due.

The thing is that some have been contemplating on the possibility of Apple not keen on releasing a new model, something that CEO Tim Cook addressed. In the reported private email from an anonymous user, Cook was quoted of reiterating his commitment and love to the Mac line, something that should douse jabs that the MacBook Pro may not be in the Apple itinerary.

There was initial belief that Apple would at least mention something about the MacBook Pro last Sept. 7, the day when the iPhone 7/7 Plus was born. Some even assumed that the MacBook Pro 2016 would debut alongside the latest flagship, something that seemed to make no sense. Game & Guide weighed in on that dish here.

Refreshed MacBook Pro 2016 Imminently coming

With Cooks response, there is no question that a lot of MacBook Pro 2016 fans in the waiting are now given a new sense of hope. And once again, the wait for a Fall release is in the air.

Up once again are the alleged features the MacBook Pro 2016 could come with. That includes a lighter and thinner mold, one armed with USB Type-C, and equipped with Touch ID.

The question though remains  Will it come with a Skylake or Kaby Lake processor? The logical choice is the latter one but delivery date is in question as mentioned in a previous post. For now, the answer to that is up in the air. With the given time frame, most are hoping that the more powerful Kaby Laker processors will make it Just In Time.
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 News & Update: Global Recall, Batteries Overheatin; Samsung Takes The Toll, Consumers Fumes With Anger?

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has been recalled due to many reports of incidents that the device battery is overheating. Last Saturday night, an accident occurred while a 6-year-old boy from Brooklyn was watching a video on the device and suddenly it exploded in his hands. The explosion caused health issues for the boy.

Recent news from the New York Post relayed that the Lewis family called 911. They rushed the boy into the hospital. Thankfully, the aftermath was not severe. Nevertheless, the incident caused trauma to the boy. The mere presence of any device even though it is not a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is sparking fear in him.

Currently Samsung was already keeping in touch with boy's grandmother Linda Lewis. However, she did not provide any further comments regarding the incident. Meanwhile, the company acknowledged the incident concerning Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and is now fixing the issues.

They also issued a statement that recalls Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from the mobile market. The recalled device will be replaced by the company. Airline passengers were also given a warning not to turn on the device during the take-offs for their safety.

As per USA Today, due to the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 damage reports, the company's shares dropped down up to 7 percent in just one week and lost $14.3 billion in the market. A similar incident occurred in St. Petersburg. The explosion occurred when one of the passenger charged his phone and it literally burst into flames.
Wentworth Season 5 Spoilers, News & Update: Fans Calls For Bea Smiths Return, Who Else Wont Return?

"Wentworth" season 5 will continue to air despite Bea Smith's death much to fans' disappointment. Executive Producer Jo Porter already confirmed that Danielle McCormack's character is definitely dead but this did not stop fans from calling for Bea's return.

More Characters To Die In S5?

GamenGuide previously confirmed that Danielle Cormack will be leaving "Wentworth" season 5. As a result, a discussion ensued on who could possibly replace the spotlight left by Smith next season. Fans narrowed the choices to Joan "The Freak" Ferguson and Karen "Kaz" Proctor. Turns out, most fans would prefer Ferguson to take center stage next season. However, fans fear that Smith isn't the only one who will not return for "Wentworth" season 5.

With Bea's death, many fans are wondering if this could hint a possible exit of more characters, CSN reported. "Wentworth" season 5 plot details and casts remain unconfirmed at this point and fans are just left to speculate. Kate Jenkinson (Allie) fuelled the speculations that other characters may also be in jeopardy. "We've all been given a trajectory of what our character is going to do but along the way anything can happen," she said. "We read those scripts really not knowing what's going to happen."

BAE and me discussing seahorses #mydeer #ballieAntics #curlsNgirls #thanksmelbourne @katejenko - Thank you for having us to frolic @licknewzealand A video posted by DANIELLE CORMACKTM (@_daniellecormack_) on Sep 3, 2016 at 7:41pm PDT

Fans Call For Danielle Cormack To Reprise Role As Bea Smith

While executive producer Jo Porter admitted it was difficult to kill off Bea Smith, she confirmed that the character won't return for "Wentworth" season 5. However, this did not stop fans from asking the creators to let Smith live. Recent Instagram post by Danielle Cormack with Kate Jenkinson sparked speculations of her return. Fans interpreted the snaps as a sign that Cormack will return for "Wentworth" season 5.

Porter pointed out that with Smith's exit from "Wentworth" season 5, new characters take center stage next season. Who do you think will be the main focus of "Wentworth" season 5? Are you still hoping for Bea Smith's return? Sound off in the comment box below!
On Tuesday, Oregon State University will hold a grand opening at its growing Cascades campus in Bend to mark the completion of the new Tykeson Hall.

It's another important milestone for OSU, as it builds a four-year university in central Oregon. It's important as well for that region, which has battled for decades to have a four-year institution.

The growth of the Bend campus also is important for the mid-valley, but perhaps for less obvious reasons.

The Cascades campus has become increasingly important to OSU not just in its own right, but as part of the university's overall strategy to manage enrollment, in particular at its Corvallis campus.

You might recall the reaction in Corvallis back in 2009, when OSU President Ed Ray outlined what would be necessary for OSU to become one of the nation's top 15 land-grant universities. One of the attributes that went along with that goal, Ray said, was that OSU would have an enrollment of between 30,000 and 35,000 students.

At the time, enrollment at OSU was just under 22,000, although it had boomed an astonishing 8 percent from the year before.

The rate of enrollment increase on the Corvallis campus has cooled off since then. Total enrollment last fall was 30,592, with 24,466 students on the Corvallis campus. The university's campuses in Bend and Newport, along with its online classes, made up the difference.

OSU thinks it still has room for growth in Corvallis, but is projecting essentially flat enrollment on its home campus this fall. (A proviso: These enrollment numbers are notoriously hard to predict, even through the first few weeks of school.)

OSU officials say they plan to cap enrollment at the Corvallis campus at 28,000, but now think that mark might not be reached until 2030 or so. But by that time, the hope is that the Cascades campus has 3,000 to 5,000 students (it had about 1,000 last fall). The school's Newport campus could have 500 students by that time, OSU officials say, and the hope is that the university's online offerings will attract somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 students  students who show up in Corvallis only to cram into Reser Stadium for graduation.

If those predictions pan out, it could lead to an OSU with more than 40,000 students, but with only about 70 percent of the student body in Corvallis. It's an interesting notion to ponder. And it's also worth noting, as an aside, that there is a big difference between housing 24,000 OSU students in the mid-valley and housing 28,000.

It's also worth wondering to what extent the state will be willing and able to properly fund what amounts to another four-year public university. OSU-Cascades is essentially becoming Oregon's eighth four-year university.

Although legislators have embraced the Bend campus, they also face tighter budgets, which include increasing bills from the state's Public Employees Retirement System.

Steve Clark, the university's vice president for university relations and marketing, says the idea isn't just to have another university fighting for a piece of decreasing state funding.

"The worst thing would be that the budget would be divided by eight" instead of seven universities, Clark said last week. "You cannot cut the pie by one more slice. You cannot expect that OSU can fund (Cascades) by itself."

That's particularly true, he said, because the relatively new Cascades is not yet able to tap into a deep philanthropic base, the way that older schools like OSU and the University of Oregon can in launching successful billion-dollar fundraising campaigns.

If Cascades is able to grow and prosper, that donor base will deepen over time.

But it won't happen if the new campus doesn't get the resources it needs to grow during these critical early years. As Cascades gets ready for its grand opening, that's the big question mark hanging over the festivities. (mm)
Feb. 23, 1937  Sept. 8, 2016

Denis Brian Jarvis died peacefully at home with family present after a courageous journey with cancer for four years. As his way typically, he retained control as much as possible by using Oregon Death with Dignity.

He was born in Yorkshire, United Kingdom. He attended Riley High School where he was Head Boy in his final year. He gained a state scholarship that enabled him to pursue a physics degree at Birmingham University. He achieved a First Class Honors degree which is the highest level. Looking back he realizes how lucky he was to benefit from the socialist political climate. The state scholarship paid all tuition costs and provided maintenance during term time. Hence he was financially independent from age 18.

He married Janet Elizabeth Hayward in 1958. They raised a family of four, with twins Stephen and Wendy, followed by Kathryn and then Helen. The family has expanded to include five wonderful grandchildren  Ben, Natasha, Anna, Zoe and Miriam. These are the cause of great hope to their proud grandpa.

All 35 years of his working life Denis was employed by Philips electronics, where he worked in research and development and became a CAD manager.

He was an engineer at heart and could turn his hand to most practical tasks from building his first radiogram to designing and helping to build a home for his and his wifes retirement in 1993.

From his childrens cry of Daddy Mend when a toy broke, to later helping older people learn how to use their Mac computers, he was always a Mr. Fix It.

In retirement he was involved with his neighborhood's water system and he was president of their water district for 15 years, which meant he had to find a solution for any problems that occurred.

He was very active in the Academy for Lifelong Learning from its second term until recently. He was on the curriculum committee and for seven years was leader of the facilities committee. He and his wife delivered Meals on Wheels for more than 10 years.

He is survived by his wife, children and grandchildren, who will miss him greatly.

A celebration-of-life gathering will be at 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 15, in Dennis Hall, 114 S.W. Eighth St., Corvallis, attached to the First Presbyterian Church.

In lieu of flowers donations may be given to Benton Hospice Service (www.bentonhospice.org/donate) or First Presbyterian Church, Corvallis.

Special thanks to Keith of Benton Hospice for his thoughtful care and also to Compassion and Choice for their sensitive guidance.

Please share your thoughts and memories for the family at www.demossdurdan.com.
Arabic-origin businesses : Better image for Aennchenplatz

Bad Godesberg City Marketing met with business owners of Arabic origin to plan initiatives for image-building. White roses are to be handed out this Sunday.

Teilen

Teilen Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Tweeten

Tweeten Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Drucken

After the brawl at Aennchenplatz in August and subsequent raid on businesses in Villichgasse in which a shisha bar, two real estate offices and a supermarket were shut down, the state parliament has now been drawn into the fray. Representative from Bonn, Joachim Stamp (FDP), has sent a series of questions to the North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) state government: Were those arrested already known to police? Do the suspects belong to organized bands or have ties to the criminal scene? He is waiting for answers to those and other questions.

In the meantime, the City Marketing Association and its chair Jurgen Bruder are working together with businesses run by those of Arabic descent to improve the image of the Aracadia Passage. At a dinner in Restaurant Damaskus, they discussed what could be done immediately to improve the situation as well as long-term initiatives.

One outcome will be quickly realized next weekend when Bad Godesberg city merchants hold their Stadtfest (City fest). The Arabic businesspeople have decided to participate and will hand out white roses to Bad Godesberg residents at the corner of Villichgasse and Aennchenplatz beginning at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 18. To counter the talk of two worlds, referring to a parallel society, participants will wear red T-shirts with Ein Godesberg (One Godesberg) on one side and Gemeinsam stark (Together strong) on the other side.

As well, there was discussion about handing out gift certificates for the shisha bar. People always associate shisha bars with being problematic, said the manager of the Aracadia Passage shisha bar. With the idea of gift certificates, he thought they could invite Bad Godesberg residents in to try it out and convince them otherwise.

Long-term plans for improving the image of Arcadia Passage include a family fest, flea market and an Open Door day in the Passage, organized by City Marketing. No problem - said Bruder, if the businesses join the City Marketing Association. At the dinner at least, there was a resounding ja to this suggestion.

The owner of the mens clothing shop, Insider, said it was about erasing fears and showing a sign of friendship. He was the one who had the idea to hand out the white roses and said he realizes residents regard the area with skepticism, something that he wants to change. As the owner of the Arcadia Passage, he does not want to see the ghettoization of the area.
Police search : Man accused of harassing 47-year-old woman

Konigswinter Police are looking for a man who allegedly took a woman against her will into a Konigswinter forest, demanding sexual relations.

Teilen

Teilen Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Tweeten

Tweeten Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Drucken

Bonn police are asking for help in locating the man in the photo. He is accused of taking a 47-year-old woman against her will to a wooded area near Konigswinter, shortly after having met her in a Chat. The incident happened on July 12 at around 2:50 a.m.

Current status of police investigations reports that he told the woman she must engage in sexual activities with him, otherwise he would force her. The woman, who was not from the area, managed to get out of the vehicle and run away.

Since police have not been able to identify the man in their investigations, they now have a court order which allows them to publish a photo of the alleged offender. If anyone knows this man or can help with his identity, they are asked to contact police at (0228) 1 50.
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.
Exclusive: Lenovo Z2 Plus to launch in India Around September 20 News oi -Prajith

Back in May 2016, Lenovo introduced its online sub-brand Zuk in the Indian market with first device being, the Z1 - at a competitive price of Rs. 13,499.

See Also: 3 Important Rumors and Facts Reliance Jio 4G Customers Need to Know

The device created quite a buzz in the market and now the company is planning to launch another Zuk smartphone in India, as soon as this month.

Yes, as per exclusive information shared by Anuj Sharma, Head, Lenovo Mobiles, the China-based smartphone maker is planning to launch Lenovo Zuk Z2 in India around September 20th, as Lenovo Z2 Plus.

In a conversation with GIZBOT.com, Mr. Sharma, divulged that Lenovo Z2 Plus will be priced in India around Rs. 20,000. It will be available for purchase online and will come in two variants including 3GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage and 4GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage.

A few days ago Lenovo took it to its official Twitter page to tease about the launch of its upcoming phone, the Lenovo Z2 Plus in the country.

Basically, Lenovo Z2 Plus will be the Indian variant of Zuk Z2 Plus which got launched in China in the first half of this year. Here are some striking features in the handset which could interest you. Take a look at it below.

Lenovo has worked hard on the design of Z2 Plus As opposed to the all-metal body on the company's earlier model, the Lenovo Z2 Plus will now feature a fibre glass body which will be 45% lighter and 25% stronger. This composition of fibre and glass will allow for efficient thermal management and better signal reception. Yes, it has been redesigned for India Keeping Indian consumers in mind, the company has made few changes to the smartphone in comparison to the Chinese variant. The Z2 Plus will now come with Google Now as the default launcher and will have on screen keys for navigation. It will support VoLTE out of the box. Long screenshot, Carrier Aggregation, and 3G Fallback are few changes among other. Here comes a Smart fingerprint sensor The fingerprint sensor in the Z2 Plus will implement a self-learning algorithm which enables it to keep learning constantly thereby allowing it to maintain high accuracy (99.7%). It learns and adjusts to even the slightest of change in the fingerprint (which may cause due to skin peel, wound, or skin growth). New U-Touch 2.0 Apart from unlocking your phone, the fingerprint sensor on the Z2 Plus can perform various other functions. For instance, a single touch will function as back, long touch to quickly open notification centre, double press to open app switcher, swipe left or right to open recent apps, single press to go back to home screen, and long press to open Google Now. Quick toggle notification panel The redesigned UI on the Z2 Plus will now allow you to open quick toggles from the bottom as shown in the above picture.

Best Mobiles in India
'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.
White House Rejects Calls To Pardon Snowden For Leaking State Secrets

September 13, 2016

The White House has rejected a call by the director of a new film on former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden for President Barack Obama to pardon him for leaking state secrets.

Despite Snowden's lionization in a film by director Oliver Stone, Obama continues to believe that Snowden, who is living in exile in Russia, should return to the United States to face charges for leaking classified information, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on September 12.

Stone's film will appear in theaters on September 16. It portrays Snowden as more of a patriot than a traitor for exposing the National Security Agency's extensive, unauthorized surveillance program.

"Obama could pardon him, and we hope so," Stone said on September 10.

"He would like to come home," said actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who portrays Snowden in the film and visited with him in Russia. "He really was doing what he did out of a sincere love for his country."

But Earnest said Snowden's leaks "damaged the United States" and put Americans at risk.

Earnest said Snowden will be "treated fairly" if he returns to the United States, where he faces up to 30 years in prison.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/white- house-rejects-call-pardon-snowden- leaking-state-secrets/27983194.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






Bulgaria, US commence joint air policing

By Staff Sgt. Joe W. McFadden, 52nd Fighter Wing Public Affairs / Published September 12, 2016

GRAF IGNATIEVO, Bulgaria (AFNS) -- The U.S. and Bulgarian air forces are conducting a joint NATO air policing mission in Bulgaria Sept. 9-16, which enables on-demand response capabilities that serve to mitigate and deter violations and infringements on Bulgarian sovereign airspace.

Working alongside the Bulgarian Air Force are four F-15C Eagles from the California and Massachusetts Air National Guards, along with approximately 75 Airmen from the 194th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron.

"It's quite an honor to be the first-ever U.S. or NATO participant here in Bulgaria for this mission," said Lt. Col. Matthew Ohman, a 194th EFS F-15C pilot. "It's awesome just to be able to work with the people here who have gone out of their way to really facilitate our being here."

The Bulgarian Parliament approved joint national air policing in February 2016. The U.S. Air Force has regularly supported NATO allies to defend their airspace in line with security commitments to NATO. The 194th EFS previously conducted joint air policing in Iceland in March 2016, which marked the first of its kind under the concurrent Operation Atlantic Resolve mission.

The 194th EFS aircraft forward deployed to Graf Ignatievo from Campia Turzii, Romania, where the squadron serves as a theater security package deployment to Europe as a part of OAR.

The squadron represents a total force endeavor, comprised of ANG and Air Force Reserve Airmen from the 144th Fighter Wing at Fresno Air National Guard Base, California, and the 104th Fighter Wing at Barnes ANGB, Massachusetts, alongside active-duty Airmen in support roles from the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany.

"This is something that we do naturally back in Fresno at the 144th (Fighter Wing)," said Lt. Col. Cesar Gonzalez, a 194th EFS aircraft maintenance commander. "Our Guardsmen protect, and we're on alert protecting the homefront and the western front. What a great opportunity to do the same for  Europe."

Gonzalez also said both the joint air policing and the theater security package deployment will allow 194th EFS Airmen to remain current on their training with their active-duty counterparts while assisting a NATO ally with policing the integrity of its borders.

"It's important that we are standing side by side with our NATO allies," he said. "We are committed to the security of Europe and helping Bulgaria and countries who ask for our help."

The 194th EFS has carried out bilateral flight operations to bolster interoperability among NATO allies and partner nations like the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Iceland since their deployment began in March 2016.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






PAR program issues EMD request for proposal

Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs / Published September 12, 2016

WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- On Sep. 12 the Air Force officially requested a proposal from Boeing to complete detailed design, modification, test and fielding of two aircraft that will provide presidential worldwide airlift support starting in the 2024 timeframe. A third production representative aircraft is still under consideration for future procurement.

The request acts upon the authorization received from Frank Kendall, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, continuing a deliberate step-by-step approach to reduce program and cost risk. By releasing the RFP now, Boeing will be able to apply the results of the ongoing risk reduction activities to the proposal for the contract modification, which will be the preponderance of the acquisition program.

"This is a significant step forward for this program, which emphasizes cost control and risk reduction, in balance with system performance, to meet the requirements of the presidential mission," said Col. Amy McCain, the Presidential Aircraft Recapitalization program manager. "We are committed to providing the (Executive) Office of the President of the United States with safe, reliable air transportation that provides high levels of security and communication capability."

To help ensure an affordable program, Boeing will modify the Federal Aviation Administration-certified commercial Boeing 747-8 aircraft to meet presidential operational requirements. The modifications to the 747-8 will include electrical power upgrades, a mission communication system, a medical facility, executive interior, a self-defense system, and autonomous ground operations capabilities.

"The results of our ongoing risk reduction efforts are providing data that we can use to make sound decisions regarding the requirements and design trade-offs. These requirements decisions will then be applied to Boeing's EMD proposal," McCain said. "We are focused on driving out costs where we can, to ensure this program is affordable."

The PAR program will replace the VC-25A in the 2024 timeframe through a highly tailored acquisition program. Parts obsolescence and diminishing sources for VC-25A replacement parts are driving increased costs and increasing out of service times for heavy maintenance to maintain FAA airworthiness standards. That time has already grown to well over a year per heavy maintenance cycle, significantly limiting availability for presidential support. The PAR program requirements are documented in the capability development document, which was approved in November 2014. The acquisition strategy to replace Air Force One was approved by USD(AT&L) on Sept. 4, 2015.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Boxer ARG Returns to San Diego

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS160912-25

Release Date: 9/12/2016 3:00:00 PM

By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Matthew N. Jackson, USS Boxer (LHD 4) Public Affairs

SAN DIEGO (NNS) -- Sailors and Marines of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group returned to their homeport of San Diego, Sept. 12, following a seven-month deployment to U.S. 7th Fleet, 5th Fleet and 3rd Fleet areas of operation.

"The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit team excelled throughout this 213-day deployment while operating in three Navy fleets spanning two-thirds of the globe," said Commander, Amphibious Squadron 1 Capt. Patrick V. Foege. "The ARG/MEU conducted 19 exercises and seven operations with coalition and partner nations across the Indo-Asia Pacific, Southwest Asia, and the Horn of Africa. From promoting regional stability and free use of the seas in 7th Fleet to striking ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) targets while in 5th Fleet, the ARG/MEU accomplished all mission objectives while strengthening our relationships with 15 different countries from South Korea to Jordan."

Boxer ARG is made up of amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4), amphibious transport dock USS New Orleans (LPD 18), and amphibious dock landing ship USS Harpers Ferry (LSD 49). During deployment, they operated with embarked forces of the 13th MEU, the "Wild Cards" of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 23, Detachment 1, as well as detachments from Assault Craft Unit (ACU) 1 and ACU 5. Additional detachments include Fleet Surgical Team 3 and Tactical Air Control Squadron 11.

The 13th MEU is comprised of Ground Combat Element, Battalion Landing Team 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment; Air Combat Element, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 166 (Reinforced) and Logistics Combat Element, Combat Logistics Battalion 13.

"My proudest moment, along with the exercises and operations we have done, has been the experiences the Marines and Sailors have had engaging around the world," said Col. Anthony Henderson, commanding officer of the 13th MEU. "These are unique experiences that I hope each man and woman will recognize as such and as they continue to serve, encourage and motivate future generations."

Additionally, Boxer ARG and 13th MEU took part in numerous exercises, including Exercise Ssang Yong, all while strengthening the interoperability and working relationships between the services and partner nations.

"The Marines were eager to step up and help defend Boxer, which is our home here, and so they stepped in and supported the defense of the ship with their aircraft and with their Marines, and really helped augment the 'blue side' defending the ship as we transited -- whether it was through 7th Fleet or through 5th Fleet," said Capt. Mike Ruth, commanding officer of Boxer. "We really came together as a team, so we don't really call it blue and green anymore; we just call it team, and we're one team out here."

Cryptologic Technician (Collection) 1st Class Scott Moore said he appreciates the sacrifices made by friends and family members who helped support the crew members of Boxer ARG.

"I'm nervous, anxious, and excited at the same time," said Moore, a married father of three. "I've changed and they've changed; seven months is a long time. I'm proud as a husband and father they have made it through deployment. I'm most proud of my wife for maintaining the crazy schedule of school, sports, shopping, cleaning, church and the non-stop schedule for our three sons. She's an angel to have the type of patience and determination that she has for our children."

Throughout deployment, Boxer ARG transited nearly 150,000 nautical miles, flew 3,000 sorties, conducted 10,500 safe aircraft launches and recoveries, and logged more than 4,200 flight hours. Amphibious craft completed more than 8,000 passenger transfers and moved more than 39.5 million pounds of combat power during more than 100 ship-to-shore movements. Boxer ARG also purchased more than $4.6 million of supplies and food stores, receiving more than 8,400 pallets during 57 replenishments-at-sea. More than 10,000 patients received medical care -- including nearly 100 medical evacuations, crew members received more than 6,000 haircuts, and supported the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation fund by purchasing more than 200,000 energy drinks.

Additionally, the ships conducted 13 different port visits, providing Sailors and Marines with an opportunity to broaden cultural knowledge and strengthen interoperability with partner nation forces. Sailors volunteered at 21 community service events, including six Project Handclasp donation deliveries, and doubled 2015's contribution record of $24,234 to the Navy and Marine Corps Relief Society by donating $50,302 for 2016.

Sailors and Marines also had the opportunity to interact with counterparts through military exchanges with the Republic of Korea navy and marine corps, and sailors from the Republic of Singapore armed forces and the Royal Malaysian navy.

While deployed, the Boxer ARG/13th MEU team served in the U.S. 3rd, 5th, and 7th Fleet Areas of Operation, providing maritime security operations, crisis response capability, theater security cooperation and forward naval presence.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






China, Vietnam Vow to 'Maintain Peace, Stability' in South China Sea

By Trung Nguyen September 12, 2016

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc officially started his high-profile visit with Chinese officials in Beijing Monday, amid simmering tension over the territorially-contested South China Sea issue.

The first official visit to China by a Vietnamese premier in six years, Phuc's trip came at the invitation of Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang. Vietnamese and Chinese media are reporting that Phuc and Li jointly pledged to "manage maritime differences" and "maintain peace and stability" at a Monday news conference that followed wide-ranging talks at the Great Hall of the People.

Phuc's visit coincides with the launch of annual Sino-Russian naval drills, which, according to Chinese military officials, will include simulated "seizure and control" of contested islands and shoals. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said the training exercises aren't "against any third party."

State Department spokesman John Kirby addressed the Chinese-Russian wargames Monday, saying the U.S. doesn't perceive them as a threat.

"The only thing we are mindful of is that the exercise should be in accordance with international law, not raising tensions," he said.

Duong Danh Dy, a former senior Vietnamese diplomat who once worked as general consul in Guangzhou, says the invite extended to Phuc "clearly shows that China wants to ease tensions."

"Vietnam's capacity is growing, so it cannot be ignored in the disputes over the South China Sea," he said, adding that Vietnam "is not an important factor" in Beijing-Moscow relations.

Trust-building

Some view Phuc's visit as part of Vietnam's trust-building efforts with its northern neighbor  the most populous country in the world  part of a comprehensive diplomatic campaign to gather support from the international community.

In a keynote speech during his visit to Singapore last month, Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang warned that any countries that engage in armed conflict over the resource rich waterway will be destined to lose more than they would gain from combat. He did not mention any country by name.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Xuan Cuong, head of the Institute of Chinese Studies, says the two nations are facing both opportunities and challenges.

"The two sides still have differences over the South China Sea issue," he said. "The visit is a chance for them to find solutions and strengthen mutual trust."

But Dy, the former diplomat, says it may be a long time before the two nations find common ground amid conflicting claims of maritime sovereignty.

"Building trust will never happen," he said. "They only make [an] effort to prevent wars from breaking out. That's it."

The news portal of the Vietnamese government quoted Phuc as saying that he would engage with Chinese officials on exchanging measures to stabilize relations between the two countries.

During talks, both premiers witnessed the signing of agreements on trade, production capacity, infrastructure, education and tourism.

Phuc is on his first official visit to China since assuming office in April.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Vietnamese Service.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Coalition Strikes Hit ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Sept. 13, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 15 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Abu Kamal, a strike destroyed 10 ISIL oil tanker trucks.

-- Near Al Shadaddi, seven strikes engaged seven ISIL tactical units and destroyed a vehicle bomb, three vehicles and a command and control node.

-- Near Raqqah, five strikes engaged two ISIL weapons caches and destroyed 11 supply routes.

-- Near Dayz Ar Awr, a strike destroyed three ISIL oil tanker trucks.

-- Near Mara, a strike destroyed an ISIL mortar system and a mortar cache.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, fighter and ground attack aircraft conducted nine strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Baghdadi, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle.

-- Near Albu Hayat, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ammo caches and two buildings.

-- Near Mosul, three strikes destroyed three ISIL headquarters buildings.

-- Near Qayyarah, two strikes destroyed four ISIL headquarters buildings, a vehicle and a vehicle bomb.

-- Near Ramadi, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a fighting position, a building and a heavy machine gun.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position and a tunnel entrance.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat it poses to Iraq, Syria, the region and the wider international community. The destruction of targets in Syria and Iraq further limits ISIL's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iran concludes 'historic' border pact with Oman

Iran Press TV

Tue Sep 13, 2016 9:56AM

Iran says it had concluded a "historic" accord with Oman that demarcates the Islamic Republic's maritime border with the fellow Persian Gulf littoral state.

Abbas Araqchi, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, announced the agreement on Tuesday.

The important step, he said, was taken during a trip by Omani Interior Minister Hamoud Bin Faisal al-Busaidi to Tehran last week, when he met with Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the two exchanged the required documents.

Besides outlining Iran's longest maritime border in the Sea of Oman, the agreement justly apportioned potential hydrocarbon resources between the two countries, Araqchi said.

Border issues always turn out to be contentious ones even among allies and would require intervention by an international party, he said, adding, however, that, "Iran and the royal government of Oman successfully completed complex and tough technical and legal negotiations on the determination of their maritime border in the light of their very close relations and based on the principles of good will and good neighborliness."

He said the conclusion of the deal between Iran and Oman came at the same time that some regional and other countries attempt to tarnish the Islamic Republic's international image and damage its relations with its neighbors.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Philippine president urges withdrawal of US special forces

Iran Press TV

Tue Sep 13, 2016 7:37AM

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has urged the United States to withdraw its special forces troops from a group of southern islands about a week after a diplomatic row between the two sides.

"They have to go," Duterte said in a speech during an oath-taking ceremony for new officials on Monday. "I do not want a rift with America, but they have to go. It will just get more tense."

Duterte further said the presence of the US troops in Mindanao could complicate Manila's operations against the Daesh-linked Abu Sayyaf militant group, notorious for different terror attacks in the country, including killing Westerners.

"Americans, they (militants) will really kill them, they will try to kidnap them to get ransom," the president said.

The US dispatched some 1,200 special forces to Mindanao in 2002 for what it called training and advising Philippine military units fighting local militants.

The program was discontinued in 2015, but a number of US soldiers remain there.

Abu Sayyaf, quite well-known for its kidnappings, beheadings and deadly bombings, was founded in 1991 in Basilan, a southern island, with a pledge to wage a war against the government.

The Takfiri group, now a Daesh affiliate, lost major commanders at the beginning of its fight and was gradually split into factions with a few hundred militants. The militant outfit continues to survive on ransom and extortion.

US: No official demand

However, the US State Department said no official communication took place between the two governments on the issue.

The Pentagon's spokesman Commander Gary Ross said on Monday, "We will continue to consult closely with our Filipino partners to appropriately tailor our assistance to whatever approach the new Administration adopts."

Duterte's latest call comes more than a week after US President Barack Obama canceled a planned meeting with Duterte after the Philippine leader insulted him with vulgar and undiplomatic language.

However, the two met days later, with the Filipino president saying on September 9 that the insult was not directed against his US counterpart.

On Tuesday, Filipino Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay confirmed in an interview with Manila's ABS-CBN network that the partners had not discussed the withdrawal demand.

However, he said his country's relations with the US will remain unchanged, attributing Duterte's statement to his commitment to save lives of the Americans in the restive region.

"There is no shift in so far as our policy is concerned with respect to our close friendship with the Americans," Yasay said while heading to Washington for talks.

He also stressed that Duterte's government would honor the current defense agreements, including the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement signed between Washington and Manila in 2014 that give the US rotational access to at least five bases in the Philippines, one of them in Mindanao.

Yasay's remarks contradicted earlier clarification by Duterte's spokesman Ernesto Abella, who said the call "reflects (Duterte's) new direction towards coursing an independent foreign policy."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US Partially Lifts Afghanistan Helicopter Maintenance Sanctions Against Russia

Sputnik News

12:05 13.09.2016(updated 12:21 13.09.2016)

US has partially lifted sanctions against cooperation on helicopter maintenance in Afghanistan, the Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan said Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United States has partially lifted sanctions against cooperation with Afghanistan on helicopter maintenance with Russia's Rosoboronexport state defense exporter, the Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan said Tuesday.

"Nothing prevented them from lifting sanctions against Rosoboronexprt relating to the delivery and maintenance of our helicopters to Afghanistan. They painted themselves into a corner and had to lift parts of the sanctions," Zamir Kabulov said at a press conference organized by the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.

Kabulov, who directs the Russian Foreign Ministry's Second Asian Department, pointed out that Washington's reversal relates to helicopter supply part deliveries.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Somalia Hosts Regional Summit for First Time in 40 Years

By Mohamed Olad Hassan September 13, 2016

East African heads of state met in Mogadishu on Tuesday, marking the first time war-torn Somalia has hosted an international summit in more than 40 years.

Security was extra tight was for the one-day meeting to prevent attacks by Islamist militant group al-Shabab. Authorities put the city on virtual lockdown, with both vehicles and pedestrians blocked from using the major streets of the Somali capital.

Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud hailed the meeting as proof the country is bouncing back from a quarter-century of anarchy.

"This summit is a clear sign and evidence that the international community and the regional leaders have realized the real progress Somalia is making on the security, the peace building and good governance," he said.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said the progress is a success for regional states and the world.

"We see the progress made and it is a success for all of us in the region and the world in general," he said. "We must support Somalia in its journey to full stability."

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ethiopian Prime Minister Haliemariam Desalegn, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni attended the summit of the regional bloc IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) along with high-level officials from Sudan and South Sudan.

Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh was expected to attend but his plane turned back mid-flight due to what Djibouti's ambassador to Somalia described as "technical challenges."

In a communique, IGAD leaders said they hope Somalia conducts free and fair elections on schedule this year. It condemned recent attacks by al-Shabab and called on the African Union force in Somalia, AMISOM, to "immediately" recover areas still controlled by the al-Qaida-linked militants.

The leaders said they heard a report on the situation in South Sudan but took no action regarding the troubled country.

Somalia and Kenya announced several agreements after their presidents met on the sidelines of the summit, including the resumption of flights from Nairobi bringing in khat, a mild narcotic that is widely consumed in Somalia. The Somali government blocked the flights early this month ahead of the summit for what it said were national security reasons.

Mogadishu last hosted a major international summit in 1974, when leaders of the Organization of African Unity met there.

Somali Foreign Minister Abdisalam Omer Hadliye said Tuesday's meeting was a historic event for Somalia.

"It is the first time Mogadishu or Somalia in general hosts such a high-level summit for more than [40] years. We see it as a historic signal and message to the world saying, 'Somalia is coming back,'" Hadliye said.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Shenyang Y-30 medium transport

In addition to the Y-20 jet transport, Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) of Aviation Industry Corp of China is working on a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft, the Y-30. The transport Y-30 has a takeoff weight of 80 tons and a planned load of 30 tons. The type has apparently grown during the studies, since Avic has previously mentioned plans for a transport aircraft of about 60 tons gross weight. It will be Chinas mainstream carrier aircraft. The Y-30 would compatible with newer generation wheeled vehicles, which are larger and heavier than their predecessors. The Type 09 vehicles, slated to become the backbone of China's land forces, would use the Y-30 and not have to rely on the heavier Xian Y-20.

In the late 1990s China first announced a replacement for the Y-8 - the planned aircraft was known as the Y-8X. Over time this new aircraft gradually evolved into what is now known as the Y-9 from Shaanxi. But the Y-9 is an improved Y-8, rather than a clean sheet design. The Y-9 is comparable to the Lockheed Martin C-130J-30, while the Y-30 would be somewhat below the Airbus A-400M.

A model of the Y-30 was on show in the AVIC pavilion Nov. 11-16, 2014 at the 10th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, known as Airshow China, in Zhuhai, Guangdong province. The model of the four-engine aircraft appears to correspond with the 60-metric-ton (130,000 lb.) airlifter that the manufacturer had previously mentioned as a project, although the powerplants that were probably available to the aircraft should be adequate for a gross weight of more than 80 tons. The aircraft featured a high-wing, body-mounted main landing gear with two tandem wheels on each side, a T-tail and six-bladed propellers. No designation is given, except the classification of medium transport. During the show, the Chinese companies reported the launch of the project to build a transport aircraft with four propellers Y-30, which was not known before. The body diameter is greater than that of Chinas current airlifters in this category, the Y-8 (a locally built version of the Antonov An-12) and the Y-9 (a heavily modernized Y-8). The Y-8 and Y-9 are products of Shaanxi Aircraft, part of large-airplane specialist Avic Aircraft. If China developed this device, capable of carrying up to 20 tons of payload, it will develop an attractive export product.

The Y-30 is a step forward compared to aircraft Y-8C and Y-9 with the PRC currently has. The new device operating range is very important, and it will be equipped with new engines, more modern and fuel efficient. In this aircraft will be equipped with a hold more spacious and comfortable, capable of carrying several types of equipment. If heavy type aircraft Il-76 and Y-20 will interest only the rich countries, the Y-30 will be exported to markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The Y-30 aircraft had four powerful turboprop engines and wider cargo compartment. The Y-30 is a 80-100 ton transport plane, with a payload of between 30-40 tons. With wider lower manufacturing cost due to the use of composite materials, the aircraft would replace the Y-8, Chinese version of the Russian An-12 after it is inducted in service. The developments demonstrated the Chinese military paying special attention to the mobility of the PLA through the development of simpler and cheaper large transport aircraft that can also be stored at smaller airports.

Observers expected the Y-30 to introduce improved take-off and landing capabilities, but it may be several years before the aircraft becomes a reality. The airlifter would go into service in the 2020s if the factory working on the project, Shaanxi Aircraft, was given a go-ahead as expected. As of 2014 the program was at the stage of concept design, and full-scale development could begin in about two years. A first flight could take place in 2020.

Many conceptual designs were under consideration, some with turbofan propulsion. A turboprop engine option is the WJ-16. This new engine, the status of which was unknown in the West as of 2014, was supposed to generate 3,782 kw (5,072 hp). This would give the Y-30 a much lower power-to-weight ratio than that of the C-130J Hercules. If the Avic aircraft were powered by the WJ-16 and had the same power-to-weight ratio as the C-130J, then its gross weight would be about 88 tons. Another new engine, the 5,000-kw [(6,700-7,560 hp] WJ-10, could be used, giving a much higher power-to-weight ratio, akin to that of the A400M.

If jet propulsion was chosen, there would be two engines, with the aircraft comparable in configuration to the KC-390. No potential turbofan was initially identified, but a likely candidate was the WS-20, under development for the four-engine Y-20 transport. The jet option may not be promising, as the WS-20 in its current form was not a particularly advanced engine.

The maximum speed of the Y-30 would be 600-700 kph (370-440 mph). That range of values reflected the uncertainty over propulsion, but did not include jet or WJ-10 options, which would produce a faster speed. The aircraft would be able to fly 6,000-7,000 km with an unstated payload.





NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Meager Opposition Gains Don't Satisfy Belarus's Opposition -- Or Erase Vote Doubts

September 12, 2016

by Ron Synovitz

For the first time in 20 years, official election results in Belarus show that candidates who are not allies of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka have won seats in parliament -- two seats out of 110, to be exact.

But independent analysts and election observers warn the results don't mean that Belarus has suddenly cleaned up its notoriously corrupt electoral system or that the beleaguered opposition's fortunes have dramatically improved.

They say the tally for the September 11 parliamentary vote was as fraught with fraud as ever.

This time, critics allege, Lukashenka has allowed two candidates with opposition sympathies to be proclaimed winners because of pressure from the West.

"The appointment of two independent deputies signals Belarusian authorities are ready for some sort of transformation, but they want to control this transformation and limit it very strictly," Andrey Dynko, editor in chief of the independent Our Field newspaper and website, told RFE/RL. "Simultaneously, these appointments are also snubbing the nose of the West and those in the opposition who wanted to mastermind the creation of some moderate opposition."

Lukashenka, he argued, "wants to show that he wants to select who will be the moderate opposition in his country."

On September 12, international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) cited the weekend Belarus elections as "efficiently organized" but still beset by "systemic shortcomings." They criticized the country's "constitutional and legal framework" as insufficient to meet international standards, in addition to media bias and a lack of "fundamental freedoms."

None of the country's elections has been deemed democratic since referendums in the mid-1990s that ushered in a new constitution and consolidated Lukashenka's power, marginalizing the president's political opponents in the process.

'Concession' To Critics

The editor in chief of the Minsk-based analytical website Our Opinion, Valeriea Kosyugova, noted that Lukashenka has been under pressure to open up elections to the political opposition in order to improve diplomatic and economic ties with the European Union and the United States.

Kosyugova agreed that allowing a single opposition candidate and one independent candidate to win parliamentary seats was a concession to its international critics.

One of those candidates, Hanna Kanapatskaya from the opposition United Civil Party, was declared the winner in Minsk's 97th electoral district.

Her main rival was one of the best-known opposition candidates who did not opt to boycott the ballot: Tatsyana Karatkevich of the Tell The Truth movement, who had run against Lukashenka for president in October 2015.

An independent candidate from the town of Stouptsy, Alena Anisim, was also declared the winner in a race against the principal of a local, state-run elementary school.

Anisim is the deputy head of a nongovernmental group called the Belarusian Language Society, which promotes Belarusian culture and the use of the Belarusian language, which is frequently sidelined in favor of Russian.

'Appointed' To Parliament

Mikalay Statkevich, a prominent Belarusian opposition figure who was imprisoned for 5 1/2 years for organizing mass demonstrations after his unsuccessful 2010 presidential bid against Lukashenka, says both Kanapatskaya and Anisim were "appointed" to parliament by Lukashenka.

"Let's be honest," Statkevich told RFE/RL on September 12. "Lukashenka appointed these women because he thinks they are less dangerous" to his government and his political agenda than other opposition candidates.

Reporters at Dynko's Our Field documented evidence purportedly showing election officials altering the official turnout and early vote count in Kanapatskaya's race against Karatkevich.

Still, Dynko said, any favoritism shown by election officials for Kanapatskaya and Anisim would not be the fault of those candidates.

Despite the motive for any favoritism they may have been shown by election officials, Dynka said he sees the emergence of moderate opposition deputies in parliament as a positive development.

He said Kanapatskaya and Anisim are "real, opposition, and not some fake opposition as we've had in Belarus," in Russia, and in other former Soviet republics since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He told RFE/RL that their ability to voice the opinions and agenda of the political opposition could expose new ideas to new audiences in Belarus.

And while the pair is unlikely to change the political landscape by proposing political reforms that would be passed by other lawmakers, he said he expects Lukashenka's allies will join with them to consolidate a Belarusian national identity and to promote Belarusian national sovereignty.

OSCE election monitors in Minsk concluded that, just like previous elections in Belarus over the past 20 years, the September 11 ballot was "still marred by a significant number of procedural irregularities and a lack of transparency" linked to "early voting and counting and tabulation procedures."

It said that despite the declared victories of one independent and one opposition candidate, Belarus has "yet to take steps towards democratic elections."

'No Way Free And Fair'

Kent Harstedt, the vice president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the head of the OSCE's observer mission in Minsk, told RFE/RL on September 12 that Belarus's elections "were in no way free and fair" and that "there were so many violations that they did not meet international standards."

In fact, Belarus has not held a vote that was assessed by international monitors as free or democratic since the early 1990s.

Authorities there routinely punish dissent and tightly control media -- leading to Western sanctions against Minsk for human rights abuses and severed diplomatic ties.

But relations between Minsk and the West have improved since Lukashenka hosted international peace talks on Ukraine's conflict and announced the release of political prisoners in 2015.

In February, the European Union ended five years of sanctions against Belarus as part of a push to encourage democratic change through engagement rather than isolation.

Washington has also relaxed some of its restrictions as it tries to counter what it sees as a newly aggressive Russia.

Belarus has also implemented some economic reforms in a bid to get loans from international lenders -- including a $3 billion loan it is seeking from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The economic crisis in Russia linked to falling oil prices and sanctions over Moscow's role in Ukraine's conflict has also hurt Belarus.

With 40 percent of Belarusian exports going to Russia, the Belarusian economy shrank by 3.9 percent in 2015.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Belarusian Service

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/belarus- elections--opposition-deputies- anisim-kanapatskaya/27982463.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






Belarus' Parliamentary Election More Open, but Still Marred by 'Irregularities'

By Svetlana Cunningham September 12, 2016

Voters in Belarus went to the polls Sunday in a legislative election marred by the kind of irregularities that have characterized previous ballots in the former Soviet state.

Still, two female opposition leaders managed to win seats in the parliament's lower house.

In Sunday's election, 484 candidates, most of them current government officials, competed for the lower parliamentary house's 110 seats.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which independently monitored the vote, said Monday that while the vote was "efficiently organized, and there were visible efforts to address some long-standing issues," a number of "systemic shortcomings" were apparent.

Belarus' "legal framework restricts political rights and fundamental freedoms and was interpreted in an overly restrictive manner," the OSCE said. "Media coverage did not enable voters to make an informed choice and, despite an overall increase in the number of candidates, including a significant number from the opposition, the campaign lacked visibility."

Despite some "positive efforts" by the Belarusian authorities, it said, "early voting and counting and tabulation procedures were still marred by a significant number of procedural irregularities and a lack of transparency."

According to observers of Sunday's vote in Belarus, election monitors were kicked out of voting sites, voter turnout numbers were inflated, and prisoners, as well as patients in mental hospitals, voted in large numbers.

Opposition victories

In spite of the irregularities, two opposition candidates won seats in the parliament's lower house  Anna Kanopatskaya of the United Civil Party and independent candidate Alena Anisim. They were the first opposition members to win parliamentary seats in 20 years.

Despite the authorities' widely touted liberalization of the election process, Belarus' latest legislative contest proceeded much like previous ones: Most independent candidates were blocked from participating, and prison inmates as well as patients in mental health institutions were able to vote by means of absentee ballots.

Suspicious numbers

As in previous elections, the authorities also encouraged early voting  thereby allowing it to conceal a large number of voters from the scrutiny of the public and independent observers, say critics. According to polls, 30 percent or more of the country's voters cast their ballots early.

Students gave accounts via social media about being forced to vote early under the threat of being evicted from their dorm rooms or expelled from college. Human rights activists reported that prisoners voted in large numbers under the control of the authorities.

City Hospital No. 10 in Belarus' capital Minsk reported a 100 percent voter turnout, meaning that all of its 605 patients  including people in intensive care, those in a coma and those under anesthesia  voted.

Among those who voted Sunday was Belarus' authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who was first elected to lead the country in 1994.

After a decade in power, Lukashenko held a referendum in 2004 eliminating presidential term limits  a move that was condemned by the United States and the European Union.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US Envoy: Washington Flexible on North Korean Nuclear Talks

By Brian Padden September 13, 2016

In South Korea Tuesday two American B-1 bombers flew in from Guam as a show of force, while on the ground U.S. and South Korean diplomats met to coordinate strategies to respond to North Korea's fifth nuclear test, conducted Friday.

The U.S. long-range bombers conducted a low-altitude flight over Osan Air Base in South Korea, which is 77 kilometers from the Demilitarized Zone border with the North.

The B-1 deployment was scheduled to arrive Monday but was delayed due to bad weather in Guam.

Sanctions

It appears that the long term reaction by the U.S. and its allies to North Korea's fifth nuclear test last Friday is going to be economic in nature.

At a press conference in Seoul U.S. Special Representative for North Korean policy, Sung Kim, and South Korea's Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, Kim Hong-kyun stressed their countries' joint commitment to impose even greater economic pain on the Kim Jong Un government.

"South Korea and the U.S. decided to have strong sanctions and pressure measures at maximum level, and strengthen measures against North Korea including the U.N. Security Council measure, independent sanctions and pressure at global level," said the South Korean envoy Kim Hong-kyun.

North Korea reacted defiantly to the United Nations sanctions imposed in March for its fourth nuclear test. In the last six months Pyongyang has accelerated its weapons development efforts, conducted 20 missiles tests and last week detonated an unprecedented second nuclear test in one year.

Despite the sanctions' failure in the short term to change Pyongyang's behavior, the U.S. envoy said they have been effective in curbing North Korea's access to foreign currency to support its weapons program.

"I think it's important to remember that pressure and sanctions need time. It requires sustained concerted effort, systematic effort to really have the kind of effect we desire," said Sung Kim.

China

On Monday the U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said coordinated economic sanctions had been shown to work but added China's participation was very important.

North Korea is economically dependent on China for trade and assistance.

Both China and Russia supported the U.N. sanctions imposed in March but both seem reluctant to back increased punitive measures this time.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Monday and afterwards urged all relevant parties to remain calm and exercise restraint.

There are also indications that both Beijing and Moscow may push for unconditional international talks to offer Pyongyang incentives to give up its nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and its allies have insisted that North Korea first take steps to halt its nuclear development activities before entering into new talks.

The U.S. envoy said Washington has repeatedly expressed a wiliness and flexibility to engage in dialogue but Pyongyang is not interested.

"If the North Koreans are ready talk to us sincerely about denuclearization I think we can work with that," said Kim Sung.

In 2005 during six party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, Pyongyang agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic aid, security guarantees and improved diplomatic ties.

But Pyongyang failed to live up to its commitment and conducted repeated nuclear tests in the years that followed. The U.N. has responded by imposing increasing rounds of sanctions on North Korea.

The envoys emphasized that China and Russia both have condemned North Korea's nuclear activities.

Sung Kim said China in particular understands the need for a new Security Council resolution in response to the latest nuclear test.

The American and South Korean envoys also said there is no need to either deploy U.S. tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula or for South Korea to develop its own nuclear program to deter the North Korean nuclear threat.

"Our government will maintain and strengthen its strong deterrence capability against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats through the strong defense posture of ROK (Republic of Korea) and the U.S., and extended deterrence," said Kim Hong-kyun.

The U.S. is committed to defend its allies South Korea and Japan in East Asia against a nuclear attack by another country.

Youmi Kim contributed to this report.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






India, China Hold Talks on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation

Sputnik News

19:43 13.09.2016

India and China held a fresh round of arms control consultations in New Delhi. The talks covered issues of mutual interest in the area of disarmament and non-proliferation.

A Chinese delegation led by Wang Qun, Director General of the Arms Control Department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, held talks with an Indian delegation led by Amandeep Singh Gill, Joint Secretary (Disarmament and International Security) in the Ministry of External Affairs. The two sides exchanged views on common concerns in this field.

As agreed by the External Affairs Minister and the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in their meeting last month, the two sides focused in particular on an issue of priority for India  membership of the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG).

China shared with India the recent developments regarding the question of non-NPT state's participation in the Nuclear Supplier Group since it is an issue of major concern to India. China listened to and had inputs from India on India's bid for NSG membership and indicated that it will bring such views and inputs back to the Group for its considerations.

The two sides recognized that the question of the non-NPT state's participation is in essence a multilateral issue, and can only be subjected to multilateral solution by the Group.

China wishes to see early commencement of an open and transparent inter-governmental process to undertake, in accordance with the mandate adopted by the NSG at its Seoul Plenary meeting, a comprehensive and through study on the issue of the non-NPT state's participation in the NSG in various aspects, a statement from the Chinese Embassy said on Tuesday.

India and China also discussed issues related to cyber security and the work of the Conference on Disarmament.

The discussions were candid, pragmatic and substantive. The two sides expressed the wish to intensify their exchanges on the relevant issues. India and China also agreed to hold the next round of consultations in China in due course, to be decided through diplomatic channels.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






'China may build Iran's 4th nuclear plant'

Iran Press TV

Tue Sep 13, 2016 9:56AM

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran says European and Chinese companies are interested in the country's nuclear power generation plans.

Ali Akbar Salehi has told Kyodo News that Chinese companies had visited a new site for the construction of Iran's fourth nuclear power plant on the Gulf of Oman and offered financial support.

"Iran's fourth power plant that we are going to build will be located in the Makran region of southern Iran. Chinese have already visited that region for site selection, but we have not come yet to a final agreement," the news agency on Monday quoted him as saying.

Iran plans to build 20 nuclear power plants to produce 20,000 megawatts of electricity as the country is seeking to reduce its reliance on oil and gas. On Saturday, the country began constructing two new facilities with Russian help.

Salehi said some European countries, which he did not name, have started initial talks with Iran about participation in the projects but no agreements have been reached yet.

The Islamic Republic is also ready to consider any proposal from Japan along with "lucrative commercial support" but the issue has not been raised by either side, he said.

"Of course if we receive any suggestion or any proposal from Japan that would sound very interesting to us, we would certainly be ready to enter negotiation in that domain," Salehi said, according to Kyodo.

"Japan is a very cautious country so we have to wait until things evolve. So we are not in a hurry. Whenever the Japanese are ready, we are ready," he added.

Iran already runs its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, which joined the nationwide grid in 2012 with a 1,000-megawatt capacity.

Russian state-owned company Rosatom started the construction of Bushehr-2 on Saturday in a plan worth $10 billion. The 10-year project will include two power plants each with a capacity to generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

The project is part of a deal signed with Russia in 2014 to build eight new nuclear power plants in the Islamic Republic.

When these two units become operational, 11 million barrels of oil will be saved per year and emission of seven million tonnes of greenhouse gas will be avoided," project manager Mahmoud Jafari told the ground-breaking ceremony.

Iran has been pushing to join the international nuclear market since reaching a nuclear accord with the West and other countries last year.

The agreement led to Iran's sale of 32 tonnes of heavy water to the United States, with negotiations underway for similar contracts with Germany, France and Russia.

Salehi said Iran is also ready to sell part of its heavy water stockpiles to Japan, Kyodo reported.

The two countries have already been exchanging experts to increase the level of security and safety at Iran's nuclear facilities.

Salehi said Japan has expressed interest in setting up a "center of excellence" in Iran on safety issues along the European Union.

"So there may be a trilateral cooperation between Iran, the EU and Japan in this matter," he said.

According to the Iranian official, there is still scope for Iran and Japan to expand their cooperation, specifically the training of Iranian experts in the so-called "3S's"  namely safeguards, safety and security  a topic that the European Union is also interested in.

"Everything is going well in this domain," he said.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iraq: The Islamic State Group's Forgotten War

September 12, 2016

by David Patrikarakos

With all eyes recently focusing on Islamic State in Syria, developments in Iraq are proving equally, if not more, instructive in illuminating the extremist group's changing fortunes and -- critically -- its changing strategy in response to them. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL.

Another week, another cease-fire in Syria. Following a U.S and Russia-brokered deal, a "cessation of hostilities" between Bashar al-Assad's forces and opposition groups was set to go into force on September 12. This, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, would allow for cooperation to defeat the extremist group Islamic State (IS) and other jihadist groups.

The cease-fire deal, timed for the start of Eid al-Adha, comes in the wake of an intense round of fighting over the divided city of Aleppo. Optimists hope that it will at least enable aid to be brought into the beleaguered city. No one seems to think it will last for any serious length of time.

But while all eyes have focused on IS in Syria, developments in Iraq are proving equally, if not more instructive, in illuminating the group's changing fortunes and -- critically -- its changing strategy in response to them.

Iraq has been consistently central to IS's pursuit of its ideological goals. It was only when it captured the country's third-largest city, Mosul, in the summer of 2014, that its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi felt finally able to declare the accomplishment of the group's long-stated objective: the establishment of an Islamic caliphate that stretched across Syria and Iraq -- demolishing the colonial-era Sykes-Picot border between the two countries in the process.

Back in 2014, IS controlled an area larger than Great Britain. Two years on, things look very different indeed. As the Iraqi government and Kurdish forces --as well as Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim militias -- have fought back, IS has lost about half the territory it held at its peak, including control of vital oil fields. According to Reuters, by the end of July IS had lost access to three of the five Iraqi oil fields it once controlled. The article further reports that IS used to be able to sell at least 50 tanker truckloads of oil a day from the Qayara and Najma oil fields, south of Mosul. In the face of Baghdad's fight to restore control, this has dropped to around five small tankers. That analysis was written before Turkey's ground forces crossed into northern Syria on August 24 and captured 770 square kilometers of territory in just two weeks.

Financially weakened and under siege, IS now faces the imminent threat of losing Mosul to the Iraqi military, which, along with Raqqa in Syria, is one of the twin symbols of its claimed caliphate. Government forces and militia scored a big victory over IS when they recaptured the Qayyara air base just 65 kilometers south of Mosul this summer. According to commanders, a "big push" against the city could come as soon as late next month.

Vicious Sectarianism

But all is not as well as it might seem in the fight against IS. Part of the reason for the growth of IS in Iraq was the vicious sectarianism of former Shi'ite Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which pushed many persecuted Sunnis, reluctantly, into the arms of IS. This is a problem that remains. As Rashad Ali, a resident senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, observes: "A major problem in defeating IS is that the Hashd al-Shabi [an umbrella group of around 40, mainly Shi'ite, militias] play a leading role in the fight against it, and have, upon defeating IS forces, committed atrocities against local Sunni communities in towns and cities they have 'liberated' from IS. These are not just problematic in themselves, but have also led to a greater level of grievance against Baghdad and pushed the population toward supporting more Sunni resistance and terror groups in the region."

Put simply: the forces battling IS often act as both its enemies and its recruiters -- continuing at a military level the persecution of Sunnis that Maliki conducted at the political level.

The second point of interest is IS's changing strategy in response to its increasing military defeats. As Ali observes: "Even the CIA have commented IS's military defeats actually create a larger likelihood of terror attacks both in the region and outside as fighters disperse and the organization seeks to continue to try to project power."

Islamic State 2.0

In essence, as it suffers more defeats Islamic State is changing its tactics accordingly; as it loses at home in Iraq, it has tried to "win" abroad in Europe. The IS attacks in Paris, Nice, and Brussels over the past year are a testament to a group that may be in the process of morphing essentially from a statelet with its own standing army into, once again, a more traditional terrorist group that employs guerrilla and insurgent-style activities on the battlefield, and urban terror attacks in the cities of the West.

Syria and Iraq have always been distinct arenas for IS. The strategic vacuum the civil war created in Syria meant that it was able to both take territory but also create a symbiotic relationship with Assad's regime -- one that lent each justification and legitimacy. For Assad: the presence of IS allowed him to claim he was fighting jihadists. For IS, Assad's Iran-backed slaughter of Sunnis enabled the group to present itself, as Ali notes, as the only real and effective alternative.

In Iraq, while the group has fed off of Baghdad's persecution (and slaughter) of Sunnis in a way similar to that in Syria, the military tactics of IS have always relied on defeating largely unmotivated, and often frightened, Iraqi military forces in strongly Sunni areas of the country. Unlike in Syria, they have not allowed themselves to become too attached to any city or town; often abandoning areas rather than risk losing too many of their core fighters -- using more traditional terror tactics like IEDs to cause as much damage to incoming coalition or Iraqi troops as possible. In Iraq, it has always been more of a terror group than the army it is in Syria.

This makes it likely that this year could see Baghdad make further gains on the ground. But Baghdad is not fighting an opposing army there and the response will likely be an intensification of the trend of more insurgent attacks rather than outright battles, while those in Europe must brace themselves for yet more terror atrocities.

In Iraq we may be witnessing the emergence of IS 2.0. No matter the reversals it faces, as the recently killed IS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, declared: "The battle of wills remains.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/islamic-state- iraq-forgotten-war/27982511.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






Pakistan To Conduct First War Games With Russia This Year

September 13, 2016

by RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal

Pakistan and Russia will hold their first-ever joint military exercises later this year, signalling what may be an emerging realignment in South Asia amid cooling relations between Islamabad and Washington.

Senior Pakistani officials told The Express Tribune that around 200 military personnel from the two sides would take part in the war games.

Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakariya confirmed to RFE/RL that the drills are a part of a broader warming of ties with Russia.

"Both countries are coming closer in several areas," he said. "You see that Russia has got the North-South gas pipeline contract recently. It is worth $2 billion, and not a small contract. So all these things are signifying that relations between the two countries are rapidly [growing]."

The warming between Moscow and Islamabad is occurring at the same time U.S. ties with Pakistan's biggest rival, India, have been growing. The United States recently signed a major defense and economic agreement with India and in a visit to New Delhi last month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry used the occasion to point some sharp criticism at Pakistan.

"Many changes are coming in the region. New partnerships are emerging and Pakistan is very carefully monitoring this," Zakariya said. "For this reason, we recalibrate our foreign policy whenever changes come and those changes affect us."

The growing ties with Russia are an outgrowth of the changes in the region and Pakistan's desire to develop closer ties with its neighbors, he said.

Not only is Islamabad seeking greater defense and economic cooperation with Moscow, but "Russia is also attaching much importance to Pakistan," he said, as evidenced by Russia's sponsorship of Pakistan to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an Asian economic group.

At the same time, Zakariya denied that Islamabad's increased cooperation with Russia amounts to retaliation for the closer ties the United States is developing with India.

It's not a "zero-sum game," he said. "Pakistan-U.S. relations are broad based. These are very old ties. Besides, we have a very extensive defense relationship" and "much cooperation in counterterrorism" with the United States.

With reporting by Express-Tribune

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/pakistan- conduct-first-war-games-russia-this-year- regional-realignment/27983197.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






Russia, China Join Forces to Ensure Freedom of Navigation in South China Sea

Sputnik News

16:01 13.09.2016(updated 16:09 13.09.2016)

The "Naval Interaction 2016" naval exercises by Russia and China in the South China Sea are intended to protect the balance of power in the region amid growing activity from the US, experts told Russian business newspaper Vzglyad.

Russia and China launched eight days of joint naval exercises, called "Naval Interaction 2016," in the South China Sea on Monday.

The exercise will involve two submarines, 13 surface ships, 20 aircraft and helicopters, more than 250 marines as well as 12 armored personnel carriers and amphibious armored vehicles from the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the Russian Navy's Pacific Fleet.

Dmitriy Mosyakov, head of the Center for South-East Asia, Australia and Oceania at the Russian Institute of Oriental Studies, told Vzglyad that neighboring countries like Taiwan, The Philippines and Vietnam are unlikely to perceive the drills as a threat, given the US attempts to increase its naval presence in the region.

"They understand very well in all these countries that the real reason for Russian-Chinese drills is the growing activity of the US navy in this region. For example, the number of US submarines there has increased a lot recently," Mosyakov said, adding that the drills were planned long in advance and none of the neighboring nations have sought to link them to territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.

Former Commander of Russia's Pacific Fleet Igor Khmelnov said that while the Philippines, which recently won its case against China regarding the South China Sea in The Hague tribunal, has been considered a staunch ally of Washington, recent announcements from Manila appear to reflect the changing balance of power in Asia.

"The Chinese sailors are very well-prepared. From the point of view of joint exercises and countering the potential enemy, these are serious exercises and a serious effort," Khmelnov said.

In July the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in favor of the Philippines in its territorial dispute with China over the South China Sea. Manila brought the case to the court in 2013, with backing from the US.

However, China has refused to recognize the court's jurisdiction over the dispute, and has instead called for bilateral negotiations among the parties to the dispute.

On Monday Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte demanded that US special forces leave the south of the country, where they have been fighting Islamic insurgents.

"The statement reflects [Mr Duterte's] new direction towards coursing an independent foreign policy," explained the President's spokesman Ernesto Abella.

As well as China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Brunei also make overlapping claims to the South China Sea, a highly contested region which includes the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands, and through which nearly $5 trillion in international trade passes annually.

Konstantin Sivkov, a doctor of military scientists and Captain of the 1st rank, told Vzglyad that while Russia does not interfere in a regional dispute, its participation in the Naval Interaction 2016 drills is intended to demonstrate Russia's support of its partner.

"At the moment China is the only country which needs Russian technology and raw materials and at the same time has the capacity to support Russia. The main thing is, that China is a real match for the US," Sivkov said.

Russia's ship group in Naval Interaction 2016 consists of major anti-submarine warfare ships Admiral Tributs and Admiral Vinogradov, the major landing ship Peresvet, the sea tug Alatau and the Pechenga tanker.

'Ships of the Pacific Fleet arrived in China to take part in the drills,' Russia's Ministry of Defense reported.

From September 12-19, the navies will conduct search and rescue and defense operations such as defending anchored ships and releasing a captured vessel. They will also practice rocket and artillery strikes on naval targets. In the final stage of the exercises, Russian and Chinese armed forces will carry out a joint landing on a hypothetically captured island, using naval and air force paratroopers.

Russian navy vice-admiral Alexander Fedotenkov said that the joint drills, which first took place in the Yellow Sea in 2012, are intended to help the two countries collaborate in defense.

"Our co-operation is not directed against anybody, it is directed at the defense of our mutual interests, securing cooperation in all areas of the world ocean. It's very good when two big, powerful countries cooperate. It guarantees peace not only in the regions where our countries are located, but also practically across the whole world."

"This is cooperation in fighting pirates and ensuring freedom of navigation. It is an organization of teamwork, which has above all peaceful aims," Fedotenkov said, RIA Novosti reported.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Syria condemns fresh Israel attack on Quneitra

Iran Press TV

Tue Sep 13, 2016 5:23PM

Syria has denounced the Israeli regime's fresh airstrike on the southwestern Quneitra province, situated in the Golan Heights, calling on the United Nations to take measures against the Tel Aviv regime over its support for terrorists operating inside the Arab country.

The Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry issued the call in two letters sent to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and head of UN Security Council (UNSC), Ramlan Bin Ibrahim, on Tuesday, SANA news agency reported.

The Syrian ministry described the Israeli aggression as "a desperate attempt to boost the deteriorating morale of the terrorist organizations after the losses inflicted upon them by the Syrian army in Quneitra countryside and across Syria."

It further noted that the Israeli aerial assault came within the framework of an alliance between Tel Aviv and terrorists, particularly Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, al-Qaeda's Syrian branch formerly known as al-Nusra Front.

Syria urges the UNSC and the UN chief to take all procedures, stipulated in the UN Charter, to punish Israel for its offenses and force it to halt its aggression and immediately suspend its backing for terrorists, the ministry added.

It also went on to say that the UNSC member states should not ignore the serious threat posed by the Israel-Jabhat Fateh al-Sham alliance.

Early on Tuesday, the Israeli military said its aircraft targeted what it described as "artillery positions" of the Syrian government in the Golan Heights.It further claimed that the attack came in response to "a projectile" which on Monday had hit the northern Golan. It was the fifth such attack in just over a week.

Syria says Israel and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri militant groups active in the Middle Eastern state. Moreover, the Syrian army has repeatedly seized huge quantities of Israeli-made weapons and advanced military equipment from the foreign-backed militants inside Syria.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War and later occupied it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. Over the past few months, the Takfiri militants have suffered major setbacks as the Syrian army has managed to liberate several areas.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US-led strikes should target Fateh al-Sham terrorists: Russia

Iran Press TV

Tue Sep 13, 2016 12:57PM

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has criticized the US-led coalition's refusal to conduct air raids in Syria on positions held by the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terrorist group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, calling on Washington to reverse its course.

On Tuesday, Lavrov called on the coalition forces to consider the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham as a terror outfit, saying, "I have a very demanding task now - not to let this list (of terrorist organizations) be reduced."

"I have no reason not to trust [US Secretary of State] John Kerry, but what we see on the ground (in Syria) is that the coalition is very reluctant to strike the positions of the Nusra Front," he added.

Since September 2014, the US, along with some of its allies, has been carrying out aerial assaults against what are said to be the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Lavrov said Moscow wants a recent Russia-US agreement on cessation of hostilities in Syria to be published in full, adding that Moscow "has nothing to hide" and seeks the United Nations Security Council's formal approval of the Syria truce deal as well.

The US-Russia brokered ceasefire went into effect on Monday at sunset. The deal's initial aims include allowing humanitarian access and joint Moscow-Washington attacks against militant groups, which are not covered by the agreement, including Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

The truce is the second attempt this year by Washington and Moscow to halt the war in Syria which started in March 2011.

'No disagreement between Iran, Russia on Syria truce'

In a relevant development on Tuesday, RIA news agency quoted Russia's Foreign Ministry as saying that there are no differences between Moscow and Tehran over the latest Syria ceasefire agreement.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov is expected to hold a meeting with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari in Moscow later on Tuesday.

The meeting will focus on the latest developments in Syria, especially the truce, as well as issues of mutual interest. The two officials will also exchange views on important regional issues.

Russia monitoring truce on Aleppo road: Reports

Additionally on Tuesday, Russian media reported that the country's military has deployed a "mobile observation post" to monitor the ceasefire on the key Castello Road in Syria.

Castello is the only path into the militant-held eastern areas of the embattled northwestern city of Aleppo. The road has been controlled by Syrian government forces.

Russian media reports also said that military observers had also been deployed to the western Syrian city of Hama.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Syrian Army Command Confirms Shooting Down Israeli Aircraft Over Quneitra Region

Sputnik News

11:20 13.09.2016(updated 12:17 13.09.2016)

Syrian air defense troops shot down an Israeli warplane and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over the southwestern province of Quneitra, the Syrian army command said in a statement Tuesday.

"Our air defenses opened fire and shot down the [Israeli] combat aircraft and UAV west of the Sasa settlement," the command said.

Israeli aircraft carried out an attack at 1 a.m. local time on the positions of the Syrian army in Quneitra, General Samir Suleiman, head of the Syrian Arab Army information department, told Sputnik.

"Syrian air defense forces responded and shot down a F-16 fighter jet in the southwest of Quneitra, and an Israeli drone over the Damascus' suburb of Sa'sa," he said.

The general added that the Israeli air forces have attacked Syrian army positions in support of armed terrorist groups who suffered big losses during their last battle with government troops.

"The enemies give logistical and moral support to the terrorist groups, they opened Israeli hospitals and medical centers for the injured terrorists after the Syrian army carried out operations against militants in Quneitra," Suleiman told Sputnik. "Terrorists constantly receive military support from the Israeli armed forces via artillery fire and air attacks on Syrian army positions."

Earlier in the day the Syrian Armed Forces said in remarks published by state media that an Israeli warplane and an unmanned aerial vehicle were downed in the southwest Quneitra province in response to cross-border strikes. Israeli media reported that it was the fourth such strike in two weeks.

Israeli aviation, however, did not incur losses during an overnight operation in Syria despite being attacked by surface-to-air missiles, an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) official said on Tuesday.

"Tonight two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after our aircraft attacked Syrian artillery positions. At none of the stages of the incident was the safety of the Israeli Air Force's aircraft threatened," Maj. Arye Shalicar told RIA Novosti.

The Israel Air Force (IAF) attacked Syrian artillery positions in the Golan Heights in the early hours of Tuesday after the latest episode cross-border shelling that began over the weekend, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.

Israel occupied a part of the Golan Heights during the 1967 war and has been administering it alongside other territories in the West Bank for almost half a century.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Eid Cease-fire in Syria Brings Widespread Calm but Some Fighting Continues

By Steve Herman September 13, 2016

A cease-fire in Syria entered its first full day Tuesday with reports of widespread calm and a few instances of violence.

The halt in fighting went into effect after sundown Monday. Hours later, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared it "may be the last chance" to preserve the country fractured by five years of civil war.

He said it is premature to make a determination on the U.S. and Russian brokered cease-fire's effectiveness.

The agreement was announced early Saturday in Geneva by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. It is supported by a number of other nations, including Iran, which is a backer of the Syrian government, and Turkey, which wants the removal of President Bashar al-Assad from power in Damascus.

Making an appeal from the State Department podium for all parties to observe the cessation of hostilities, Kerry predicted there will be challenges in the immediate days ahead for the cease-fire to hold, and clearing the way for significant humanitarian access to some of the hardest-hit areas to resume.

Seven days of relative calm under the agreement would lead to U.S.-Russian coordinated air strikes against Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front (which now calls itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), considered to be a branch of al-Qaida.

The agreement "makes no provision whatsoever for the U.S. and Russia to approve strikes by the Syrian regime, and this is not something we could ever envision doing," said State Department spokesman John Kirby. "A primary purpose of this agreement, from our perspective, is to prevent the Syrian regime air force from flying or striking in any areas in which the opposition or Nusra are present."

Kerry characterized the situation in Syria as the most complex conflict he has confronted in his decades of his service as a U.S. senator and America's top diplomat, because "there are a bunch of wars going on" there.

Both the White House and the State Department on Monday characterized the agreement as one that places a lot of pressure on Russia, a longtime supporter of the Syrian president, to deliver.

Humanitarian Aid to Begin

Russia's foreign ministry on Monday said humanitarian aid to Aleppo via the northern road of Castello was to start immediately.

The Syrian army command announced on state television that the truce was applied nationwide from 7 pm local time Monday (coinciding with the start of Eid al-Adha, a major Muslim holiday), but that it reserves the right to respond decisively to any violations of the cease-fire by armed groups.

"The Syrian state is determined to recover every area from the terrorists," President Assad said in an interview aired by state media.

While some key insurgent leaders have criticized the agreement and expressed skepticism that it can succeed, they apparently are accepting it in hopes it eventually can lead to political talks to remove the defiant president.

Targeting Nusra

Some rebel groups in Syria are concerned about the targeting of Nusra, which they see as an ally in defending insurgent held districts from a protracted Syrian government offensive in eastern Aleppo.

"The armed opposition in Syria now faces what is perhaps its biggest and most momentous decision since they chose to take up arms against the Assad regime in 2011," says Charles Lister, an analyst at the Middle East Institute and author of the book "The Syrian Jihad."

Lister adds that mainstream opposition forces "are extensively marbled or coupled" with Nusra forces on some of the front lines, from Deraa in the south to Damascus and throughout the northwest of the country.

The years of convict have left hundreds of thousands of people dead in Syria and created about 12 million refugees, one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

VOA's Jamie Dettmer contributed reporting to this story.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Tensions Flare Between Turkey, Kurds Over Syria's Manbij

By Dorian Jones September 13, 2016

Tensions are on the rise between Turkey and the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia, centering on the fate of the Syrian city of Manbij. Ankara is demanding the YPG withdraw from Manbij and allow Free Syrian Army forces to take control, a call that has so far been rejected.

Turkish military forces entered Syria last month, backing elements of the Free Syrian Army. The Turkish incursion is targeting both the Islamic State and the YPG. Ankara accuses the Kurdish militia of being terrorists linked to the outlawed PKK Kurdish rebel group and of seeking to carve out an independent state on Turkey's border.

Last month's capture of Manbij by YPG forces operating within the coalition of the Syrian Democratic Forces set alarm bells ringing in Ankara.

Strategic, political value

"It [Manbij] has strategic value, but it also has political value in terms of what Kurds may gain or may lose, because it's located very strategically in terms of being able to connect the Kurdish enclaves or cantons as they call them, that have emerged there but have gaps between them," said Semih Idiz, a political columnist for the Al-Monitor website.

In the course of fighting the Islamic State, the YPG has taken control of large swathes of territory along Turkey's border, linking up a series of Kurdish enclaves. Only the Afrin enclave, some 100 kilometers west of Manbij, remains to be linked with the others.

Ankara's concern over the capture of Manbij is also driven by domestic considerations.

"It comes as a response to kind of celebratory mood and messages from the Kurdish movement in Turkey when Manbij was captured," said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen.

The YPG's successes are being closely followed by members of Turkey's own large restive Kurdish minority, many of whom have strong family, clan and political ties with Syrian Kurds.

Turkey's political leaders have repeatedly called on the YPG to withdraw all its forces from Manbij and retreat back to the eastern side of the Euphrates River, warning any forces that remain will be targeted. Free Syrian Army elements backed by the Turkish military are only a few kilometers away from Manbij and have declared their intentions to take the city.

"It's going to be a fierce battle in Manbij," warned Ertugral Kurkcu, a senior parliamentary deputy with the HDP, Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party. "They (the YPG) are very much concerned if they leave it will be very difficult to come back in the near future. And the second issue is more important: it is their homeland, so why should they leave? And they are the major force who fought IS."

Dilemma for Washington

It is not only the Kurds in Manbij who oppose the Free Syrian Army (FSA) taking the city. Christian and Arab elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces that hold the city have also voiced opposition. The prospect of such a clash is a nightmare scenario for Washington, which would have allies on both sides of the fight, said former diplomat Selcen.

"For [the] U.S. there is a conflict if [the] CIA-backed FSA (Free Syrian Army) forces get into open military confrontation with the Pentagon-covered YPG forces," he said, noting that the U.S. is focused on the fight against Islamic State. "And the most efficient element today in the fight against ISIL are the Kurds," said he, using an alternate acronym for Islamic State militants.

Washington has repeatedly told its allies to stay focused on the war against the jihadists. But the Turkish military continues to send more reinforcements into Syria, ahead of what many predict could be a major offensive. Analysts suggest the strategic Syrian town of al-Bab, which is under IS control, could also be the target of such an offensive.

But even if Ankara does not move against Manbij, the Turkish military build-up in Syria is likely to serve as a powerful deterrent to further Kurdish territorial gains.

"It's... a kind of public communication to show that they [Ankara] are vigilant and they are watching over them," said Kadir Gursel, a political columnist for Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper. "It's to keep Kurds boxed [in]."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Turkey asks US to detain Gulen for 'ordering' July coup

Iran Press TV

Tue Sep 13, 2016 9:46AM

The Turkish government has sent an official request to the United States demanding the arrest of Pennsylvania-based opposition figure Fethullah Gulen on charges of "ordering" the failed July 15 coup d'etat in Turkey.

The Turkish Justice Ministry sent the request to the US last week and called for the provisional arrest of Gueln, Turkish broadcaster NTV reported on Tuesday.

The ministry had formally requested Gulen's extradition in June by sending four separate files to the US State Department, the Department of the Interior, and the Justice Department.

The Turkish government has also previously sent alleged evidence of the cleric's involvement in the coup to the US.

Gulen has repeatedly denied the allegation, and had even issued a statement hours into the coup condemning the putsch.

Washington has so far refused to extradite the Turkish cleric, saying it needs "genuine evidence that withstands the standard of scrutiny."

At least 246 people were killed and more than 2,100 others sustained injuries when an army faction, using helicopters and tanks, clashed with government troops and people on the streets of Ankara and Istanbul in an attempt to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 15.

Last month Erdogan reiterated his request for Gulen's extradition and warned that the White House must make a choice between Turkey and the cleric.

He also discussed the issue with President Barack Obama earlier this month at the G20 summit in China, where Obama said any decision to be made about Gulen would have to be a legal, not a political, one, according to a senior US administration official.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US Unlikely to 'Speed Up' Gulen's Extradition to Turkey

By Cecily Hilleary September 13, 2016

Turkey has formally requested that the U.S. government extradite Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen from the state of Pennsylvania where he has lived in self-imposed exile for 17 years. Ankara has accused Gulen and his followers  known as the Hizmet movement  of orchestrating a failed July 15 coup attempt that left more than 270 dead and thousands wounded. Gulen denies any role in the coup attempt.

Analysts say that if Turkey wants to prosecute Gulen, extradition is the only legal option. But the process involves far more than simply arresting an individual and loading him onto a plane. It could, in fact, take years.

Washington and Ankara cemented the Treaty on Extradition and Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters in 1980, agreeing to "surrender to each other" individuals who have committed crimes punishable by at least a year in prison. In straightforward language, it sets out a series of conditions under which extradition may be approved or denied, and lays out the terms of the legal process involved.

The extradition process is lengthy and complex, involving multiple federal and local legal authorities. In the first step, the State Department (DOS) reviews the extradition request to ensure that it complies with the treaty, and then refers the request to the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), which will determine whether Turkey has provided enough legal evidence to make a criminal case against Gulen.

In August, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had shipped seven dozen boxes of evidence demonstrating how Gulen and his followers have, over the past 20 years, worked to incriminate their political enemies and undermine the Turkish government.

Justice lawyers are now sorting through those files, a process that could take many months, to make sure the evidence meets requirements of both the treaty and U.S. law. If satisfied that the evidence meets both treaty and U.S. law, they will forward the matter to the office of the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, who would seek an arrest warrant through a U.S. judge in the same district.

If the judge agrees to issue a warrant, law enforcement officers would arrest Gulen and bring him before the judge. If the judge believes Turkey has presented its case, he would issue an extradition order for the Secretary of State to consider. While Gulen would not be able to appeal the decision, his lawyers would have a means to challenge it.

The State Department would have final say in the matter. Sticking points would include concerns, for example, over whether Turkey would treat Gulen humanely or give him a fair trial. The U.S. would examine Turkey's rights record on torture, for example, and has the right to set conditions for Gulen's surrender.

If the secretary of state decides to extradite, the DOS would communicate with Ankara to determine the date, time and place for Gulen's handover.

Turkey is pushing for quick extradition, suggesting that U.S.-Turkish relations are at stake. But the burden of proof rests squarely on Ankara, and if it cannot sufficiently prove its accusations against Gulen, the extradition request will be refused.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Ukraine Rebel Leader Announces Unilateral Truce

By VOA News September 13, 2016

The separatist leader in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region has announced a unilateral cease-fire starting at midnight on Wednesday.

In a recorded statement aired on Russian television Tuesday, Alexander Zakharchenko said he had ordered rebel troops to cease fire and urged Ukraine to do the same. He accused Kyiv of a "lack of willingness to solve the problem in a peaceful manner."

The rebel leader's statement came as a cease-fire that went into effect on September 1 appeared to unravel. The Ukrainian military said Tuesday that three of its servicemen were killed and 15 wounded in the past 24 hours in fighting with the Russia-backed separatists, the first major casualties since the September 1 cease-fire came into force.

The warring sides had agreed to the truce during a meeting in the Belarusian capital Minsk on August 24.

Wearing a suit instead of his normal camouflage uniform, Zakharchenko said the rebels are "fully committed to the Minsk agreements" and see them as "the only solution" to end the hostilities. His statement came a few hours after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he expected the country's parliament to vote soon on constitutional amendments granting autonomy to eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko's office said Tuesday that he will meet with the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Poland and Britain on Wednesday to "discuss restoration of full operation" of talks between Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

It also said the four foreign ministers would "coordinate measures to exert pressure on Russia aimed at ensuring the fulfillment of the security component of the Minsk agreement by the Russian side," with "special attention" paid to "the advancement in the liberation of Ukrainian hostages in Donbas and Ukrainian political prisoners illegally detained in Russia."

The Minsk Protocol, signed in the Belarusian capital in September 2014 by representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the separatists, calls on Ukraine to decentralize power and adopt laws providing for self-governance in areas in eastern Ukraine currently controlled by the separatists.

Ukraine has accused Russia of not doing enough to influence rebels to relinquish control over parts of the Ukrainian-Russian border. Russia, for its part, has accused Ukraine of not adopting the constitutional amendments Moscow says it was obligated to introduce granting autonomy to parts of eastern Ukraine.

The conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government troops has claimed more than 9,500 people lives since it erupted in April 2014.

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.
Berry Hill Industrial Park development is moving forward, according to an update given to the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority on Monday.

Brian Bradner, of Dewberry, said the grading of a 133-acre parcel in the 3,500-acre industrial park has been approved by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and construction documents will be completed in about 30 days. Those will be submitted to both Pittsylvania County and the DEQ for approval of the included storm water management plan.

Though there are currently no prospects for the site  which fronts on Berry Hill Road  RIFA and Dewberry have been seeking state and federal government approval for grading approvals for several years as a means to attract businesses to the industrial park.

Bradner also pointed out the property where Southern Power is interested in building a $250 million power plant and where a potential tenant currently code-named Project Lignum would locate if that plan comes to fruition.

There is positive momentum happening, Bradner told RIFA members.

In other action, the Kyocera SGS Tech Hub got the green light from RIFA to construct its new building on property across from the Institute for Advanced Learning and Researchs Charles R. Hawkins Building.

RIFA approved a proposal to donate 10 acres to the Danville Industrial Development Authority for the project, with stipulations that the land would revert to RIFA if Kyocera SGS fails to meet conditions of its performance agreement. The IDA will track the various conditions of the agreement.

The RIFA board also agreed to pay $43,696 for renovating space Kyocera SGS will use for offices and classrooms until the new building is completed  a formality since the work has been completed and came in at slightly under the estimated cost of $45,000.
DENVER, Sept. 12, 2016 - Thompson Creek Metals Company Inc. (TSX: TCM) (OTCQX: TCPTF) ("Thompson Creek" or the "Company") today announced that the Company will hold a special meeting of shareholders on Tuesday, October 18, 2016, to consider and vote on a special resolution in connection with a previously announced plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) involving the acquisition by Centerra Gold Inc. of all of the outstanding common shares of Thompson Creek (the "Arrangement"). The special meeting will be held at 10:00 a.m. local time at the Company's offices at 26 W. Dry Creek Circle, Second Floor, Littleton, Colorado. Only Thompson Creek shareholders of record as of the close of business on September 12, 2016 will be entitled to notice of and to vote at the special meeting or at any adjournment or postponement thereof.Subject to approval by Thompson Creek shareholders, the satisfaction or waiver of the applicable conditions to completion of the Arrangement, and the final order by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the Arrangement is expected to close on or about October 20, 2016.The Company has filed a definitive proxy statement and management information circular on EDGAR at www.sec.gov and SEDAR at www.sedar.com and expects to mail proxy materials on or about September 19, 2016. Please see the definitive proxy statement and management information circular for important information regarding the Arrangement and the special meeting of shareholders. Thompson Creek Metals Company Inc. is a North American mining company. The Company's principal operating property is its 100%-owned Mount Milligan Mine, an open-pit copper and gold mine and concentrator in British Columbia. The Company's molybdenum assets consist of its 100%-owned Thompson Creek Mine, an open-pit molybdenum mine and concentrator in Idaho, its 75% joint venture interest in the Endako Mine, an open-pit molybdenum mine, concentrator and roaster in British Columbia, and its Langeloth Metallurgical Facility in Pennsylvania. The Company's development projects are the Berg and IKE properties, both copper, molybdenum and silver exploration properties located in British Columbia. The Company's principal executive office is located in Denver, Colorado. More information is available at www.thompsoncreekmetals.com.Certain statements in this release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and applicable Canadian securities legislation, and are intended to be covered by the safe harbors provided by these regulations. All statements other than statements of historical fact set forth or incorporated herein by reference are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements may, in some cases, be identified by the use of terms such as "believe," "project," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "strategy," "future," "opportunity," "plan," "may," "should," "will," "would," "will be," "will continue," "will likely result," and similar expressions. Our forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements with respect to: the timing of the special meeting, the timing of the mailing, the satisfaction or waiver of conditions for the Arrangement, receipt of the final order, and completion of the Arrangement, including the expected closing date of the Arrangement. Where we express an expectation or belief as to future events or results, such expectation or belief is expressed in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis. However, our forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from future results expressed, projected or implied by those forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results and events to differ from those described in such forward-looking statements can be found in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other documents filed on EDGAR at www.sec.gov and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although we have attempted to identify those material factors that could cause actual results or events to differ from those described in such forward-looking statements, there may be other factors, currently unknown to us or deemed immaterial at the present time that could cause results or events to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Many of these factors are beyond our ability to control or predict. Given these uncertainties, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.SOURCE Thompson Creek Metals Company Inc. Pamela Solly, Director, Investor Relations and Corporate ResponsibilityTel: (303) 762-3526psolly@tcrk.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Sep 13, 2016) - Advantage Lithium Corp. (the "Company" or "Advantage Lithium") (TSX VENTURE:AAL) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. David Sidoo as Chief Executive Officer of the Company. Mr. Sidoo is an award-winning senior executive with a strong track record of taking companies from start-up to successful sale. He raised over $150M for his two previous public companies and was the founding shareholder of American Oil & Gas Inc., which sold to Hess Corp. for over US$630 million in an all-stock transaction.

Outside of his professional life, Mr. Sidoo has been recognized at the highest levels for his work with local communities. He received the Order of British Columbia in July, 2016 and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and the NRI Award in 2012. Previously, the Vancouver Sun voted him one of the top 100 South Asians making a difference in BC and he also sits on the Board of Governors of the University of British Columbia.

Mr. Dev Randhawa has resigned as interim CEO and the Board thanks him for his diligent efforts during the early stages of the company.

Dev Randhawa, Director of Advantage Lithium, commented: "The progress that Advantage Lithium has made in such a short time, raising funds and securing high-quality assets, speaks volumes for Mr. Sidoo's capabilities. He has put together a strong team, and he has the vision and skills to continue building this company into a serious player in the lithium sector."

David Sidoo, President and CEO of Advantage Lithium, said: "I'm delighted to be taking on the role of CEO as such a key time. The lithium sector continues to expand and there exist exciting opportunities for the right company. With our experienced team and strong assets, I'm confident we will continue to increase shareholder value through a strategy of drilling and further acquisitions."

The company further announces that it has filed its application to list and be called to trade on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. This will help broaden the Company's exposure in Europe where European, and especially German investors, are showing a renewed interest in resource based companies. The proposed listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange will provide these investors with better capital market access. In addition, the Company has engaged Future Money Trends LLC to provide certain financial publishing and digital marketing services.

Further information about the company can be found at www.advantagelithium.com.

About Advantage Lithium Corp.

Advantage Lithium Corp. is a resource company specializing in the strategic acquisition, exploration and development of lithium properties and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Common Shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "AAL". The company is earning an interest from Nevada Sunrise Gold Corp., in a portfolio of five lithium brine projects in the Clayton and Lida Valley regions of Nevada, USA, together with certificated water rights in the Clayton Valley. In addition, the company has entered into an LOI agreement to earn interest from Radius Gold Inc. in four lithium brine projects in the states of Chihuahua and Coahuila, Northwest Mexico.

ADVANTAGE LITHIUM CORP.

Nick DeMare, Corporate Secretary

Cautionary Statement:

Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of Canadian legislation. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur", "be achieved" or "has the potential to". Forward looking statements contained in this press release may include statements regarding the future operating or financial performance of Advantage Lithium which involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may not prove to be accurate. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. Among those factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are the following: market conditions and other risk factors listed from time to time in our reports filed with Canadian securities regulators on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and the Company and Advantage Lithium disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation.

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.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - September 13, 2016) - Northisle Copper and Gold Inc. ("Northisle" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: NCX) is pleased to report that the initial drill hole (RD 16-01) from its recently completed resource verification diamond drill program on the Red Dog deposit was successful in verifying results from a nearby historical drill-hole. Red Dog is located eight kilometres northwest of the Hushamu Deposit within Northisle's 100% owned North Island Project on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Results for the remaining three verification holes will be released as they become available.

Highlights

Hole RD 16-10 intersected 0.31% copper and 0.47 gpt gold over a core length of 198.5 metres, verifying the data recorded from the adjacent historic drill hole.

As previously reported in the Company's news releases of June 28th and August 18th, 2016 the primary objective of the four-hole drill program was to confirm the historical Red Dog resource, which if successful would allow Red Dog to be included in the Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) that is currently underway for the Hushamu deposit.

Jack McClintock, P. Eng, President of Northisle commented, "We are very encouraged by the close comparison between the first drill hole and the historical hole drilled nearby. This is an important step towards verifying the resource and being able to include Red Dog in the PEA as a potential source of higher-grade feed during the initial start-up period for Hushamu."

Drill Results

Hole From (m) To (m) Width (m) Copper (%) Gold (gpt) RD-16-01 1.5 200 198.5 0.31 0.47

Reported widths are drilled widths. True widths have not been determined.

Drill-hole RD 16-01 was a vertical hole collared six metres from historical drill-hole DDH 90-03 drilled by Moraga Resources Ltd. Hole 90-03 assayed 0.36% copper and 0.61gpt over a similar interval length of 198 metres. A difference between the assays in the two holes was a six metre section of leached core present in RD 16-01, but not present in DDH 90-03.

Given the inherent variability of mineralization in breccia-type zones, the difference in grades between the holes are within that expected in such mineralization. Duplicate samples from RD 16-01, where the half of the core for sampling was split into two equal quarters, sample variation up to 7% between the two sample halves provides an indication of the normal variability of the mineralization.

Drill-hole results from the verification drilling will be announced as assay results including those of QA/QC are received. It is anticipated the results from the second hole, RD 16-02, will be released next week.

Analytical Techniques

Analysis of core samples was carried out at BVL Minerals' (formerly ACME Analytical) Vancouver facility. Gold analysis is by fire assay methods with atomic absorption finish. Analysis for copper and other metals is by a four acid digestion with ICP finish. Quality Assurance and Control (QA/QC) included insertion of standards and blanks in to the sample stream and duplicate samples on quartered core.

The North Island Copper-Gold Project

The Hushamu Resource

The North Island Copper-Gold Project is situated approximately 15-40 kilometres southwest of Port Hardy and contains the Hushamu Deposit and five other partially explored copper-gold porphyry occurrences. The Company has a current resource estimate of the Hushamu Deposit which has been filed on Sedar. The project is 100% owned by Northisle.

Resource Grade Contained Metal Tonnes

(x1000) Copper

% Gold

g/t Mo

% Re

ppm Cu Eq

% Copper

B lb Gold

M oz Mo

M lb Re

Kg x 1000 Indicated 304,000 0.21 0.29 .010 0.55 0.45 1.4 2.8 65.7 167.4 Inferred 205,600 0.18 0.26 .008 0.38 0.39 0.8 1.7 34.9 78.1

** Copper equivalent calculated using US$2.50/lb Cu, US$1100/oz Au and US$14.00/lb Mo and is not adjusted for mining and metallurgical recoveries as these remain uncertain. The formula used is as follows: CuEQ = (Cu% x 22.0462 x 2.50) + (Au g/t x 1100.00/ 31.1035) + (Mo% x 22.0462 x 14.00). Rhenium values have not been used in the cutoff grade or Cu Equivalent calculations

Red Dog Property

The Red Dog Property is located 8km northwest of the Hushamu Deposit and hosts a historical mineral resource of 20 million tonnes grading 0.30% copper, 0.5gpt gold and 0.012% molybdenum. The reader is cautioned that a qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as current resources and Northisle is not treating the historical estimate as current mineral resources.

John McClintock, P. Eng is the Qualified Person responsible for the technical content of this release.

For more information on Northisle and the Hushamu Deposit please visit the Company's website at www.northisle.ca.

On behalf of Northisle Copper and Gold Inc.

"John McClintock"

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 news release.

This news release contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based upon the reasonable beliefs of Northisle and its management as of the date of this news release; however, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and are based upon factors that may change and assumptions that may prove, with the passage of time, to be incorrect as a result of exploration and other risk factors associated with mineral exploration and development that are beyond the control of Northisle. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed upon such statements. If factors materially change or assumptions are materially incorrect, the actual results, performance or achievements of Northisle may be materially different from any future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Northisle does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.
VANCOUVER, Sept. 13, 2016 /CNW/ - Mawson Resources Limited ("Mawson") or (the "Company") (TSX:MAW) (Frankfurt:MXR) (PINKSHEETS: MWSNF) announces a hand-portable diamond drill rig has been mobilized to the Boardwalk prospect along the Palokas trend, at the 100% owned Rompas-Rajapalot project in Northern Finland.

Key Points:

Hand-portable diamond drilling to 100m depth will resume this week at the Boardwalk prospect, located 550 metres south of the main Palokas prospect; Boardwalk is an untested surface outcrop and boulder field, with 15 samples >0.1 g/t gold averaging 15.3 g/t gold, ranging from 0.18 g/t gold to 221 g/t gold, with a median of 1.0 g/t gold. A geophysical magnetic high is directly coincident with the auriferous mineralization at Boardwalk; and Boardwalk is interpreted to be hosted within the same host unit as the Palokas mineralization.

A 225 base-of-till ("BOT") drill hole program has now been completed at the Raja prospect, located one kilometre east of Palokas.

Mr Hudson, President & CEO states, "We look forward to this first program diamond drill program at the Boardwalk prospect on the Palokas trend and the news flow which will follow. Significant advances in the geological understanding of the Rompas-Rajapalot project have been achieved since we completed our last diamond drill program early this year. Structural, stratigraphic and fluid-rock similarities have been identified across a range of mineralization styles, allowing recognition of more than 65 kilometres strike of gold-prospective host stratigraphy of Paleoproterozoic age, with multiple targets remaining to be tested."

Hand portable diamond drilling with a Winkie rig will commence this week at the Boardwalk prospect, located 550 metres south of the Palokas main prospect. An initial program of 10 holes for 1,000 metres are planned to test near surface gold mineralization over the coming months. This summer, Mawson's geologists have discovered, many large, angular and clustered gold mineralized boulders at the Boardwalk prospect (Figure 1). These are interpreted to be proximal to their source and contain a similar chlorite-magnetite-sulphide alteration style to the main Palokas prospect. This maiden drill program at the Boardwalk prospect will target a magnetic anomaly interpreted to be the source of these boulders, fifteen of which assay >0.1 g/t gold and range from 0.18 g/t gold to 221 g/t gold, and average 15.3g/t gold with a median of 1.0 g/t gold.

In other news, drilling of two hundred and twenty-five bottom of till (BOT) holes at Raja has now been completed (Figure 1). The prospect lies one kilometre east of Palokas. Drilling was undertaken on a 150 metre grid, with infill holes at closer spacing planned after geochemical assays have been returned in the coming weeks. The aim of the BOT program is to delineate geochemically anomalous undercover targets for follow-up diamond drilling.

Infill ground magnetic and gradient IP geophysical surveys are also planned for autumn. From December, when frozen ground conditions allow for permitted access, the winter program will commence with seven hundred BOT drill holes planned to systematically test the larger Palokas and North Rompas areas, as well as 10,000 metres of diamond drilling with larger drill rigs. This drill program is subject to final permitting.

Technical and Environmental Background

The qualified person for Mawson's Finnish projects, Mr Michael Hudson, President & CEO for Mawson and Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining Metallurgy has reviewed and verified the contents of this release.

About Mawson Resources Limited (TSX:MAW, FRANKFURT:MXR, PINKSHEETS:MWSNF)

Mawson Resources Ltd. is an exploration and development company. Mawson has distinguished itself as a leading Nordic Arctic exploration company with a focus on the flagship Rompas and Rajapalot gold projects in Finland.

On behalf of the Board,

"Michael Hudson"

Michael Hudson, President & CEO

Forward-Looking Statement

This news release contains forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). All statements herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Although Mawson believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: aim, believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate, and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. Mawson cautions investors that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, capital and other costs varying significantly from estimates, timing and the successful completion of the Company's proposed drill programs, changes in world metal markets, changes in equity markets, planned drill programs and results varying from expectations, delays in obtaining results, equipment failure, unexpected geological conditions, local community relations, dealings with non-governmental organizations, delays in operations due to permit grants, environmental and safety risks, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" in Mawson's most recent Annual Information Form filed on www.sedar.com. 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, Mawson disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise.

SOURCE Mawson Resources Ltd.
Governmental Approval Permits Full Drilling Program, Permanent Camp Construction, Laboratories and Pilot Pond Construction and Operation Significant Work and Mobilization Efforts have Already Commenced

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Sept. 13, 2016) -

NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE US OR THROUGH US NEWSWIRE SERVICES

Neo Lithium Corp. ("Neo Lithium" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:NLC) is pleased to announce that it has received approval of its environmental report and work program for its Tres Quebradas ("3Q") project from the mining and environmental authorities of the Province of Catamarca (the "Approval"). This is a key milestone for the Company as it allows Neo Lithium to quickly move into the exploration phase.

Process studies including analytical work, evaporation studies, solvent extraction and phase equilibrium studies on the 3Q lithium brine have been proceeding to define the process flow sheet of the 3Q project, including optimal pond sizes and basic engineering design of a pilot plant. Studies are being completed by the University of Antofagasta and University of Concepcion, Chile, renowned research centres for brine processing, as well as several consulting groups.

As an important preliminary step in obtaining the Approval, on August 30, 2016, the Company held a public hearing in the town of Fiambala concerning the 3Q Project. There was strong support from the local community, mirroring the support from local authorities.

The Approval enables the Company to build and operate pilot evaporation ponds as well as necessary laboratories, permanent and semi-permanent camps, complete its 2016-2017 drill program, and additional exploration and development work at the 3Q project. In accordance with Argentinian laws, the Approval is required to be updated every two years.

With the Approval now in hand, the Company has mobilized construction crews and technical staff. The road and drill contractors have been selected and road winterisation has commenced. The camp has already been built off-site and will be shipped to the 3Q project as soon as the road work is completed. The Company expects that the road and camp will be operational by the end of October. Drilling of the salar is expected to commence once the road and camp are in place.

"I would like to express our utmost gratitude to the mining and environmental authorities of the Province of Catamarca for fast-tracking the environmental permit and their professionalism during the process, which marks an important milestone as we quickly embark on the exploration of our 3Q project. At the forefront of our leading technical team's mission is to develop the 3Q Project with the highest of industry standards," stated Waldo Perez, Chief Executive Officer.

Please review the Company's website for pictures and updates on the construction of the road and camp.

About Neo Lithium Corp.

Neo Lithium Corp. is quickly becoming the most prominent new name in lithium brine exploration by virtue of its quality team and project. Already well capitalized, Neo is rapidly advancing its newly discovered 3Q project - a unique high-grade lithium brine reservoir and salar complex in the Lithium Triangle.

The 3Q project is located in the Province of Catamarca, the largest lithium producer in Argentina. The project covers approximately 30,000 hectares and the salar complex within this area is approximately 160 km2. Recent exploration results indicate a high grade lithium target in the northern portion of the salar complex extending for approximately 14x3 km with the combined lowest magnesium and sulphate impurities in the industry. Low impurities are a key factor in traditional low cost evaporation techniques for final lithium production. Hot springs on the property with elevated lithium content are part of the recharge system of the salar complex. The technical team that recently discovered this unique salar complex is one of the most experienced in the modern era in lithium salars, having discovered and lead the technical work, including resource definition and full feasibility study that established the Cauchari lithium salar as the third largest lithium brine resource in the world.

Additional information regarding Neo Lithium Corp., its business activities is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com under the Company's profile.

Waldo Perez, Ph.D, P.Geo., the CEO and President of Neo Lithium Corp. is the Qualified Person who approved the scientific and technical disclosure in the news release.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.

Forward-Looking Statements - Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements.
No. 2 Angelo State overcomes offensive woes to shut out Simon Fraser

No. 2 Angelo State University rode its defense in a 24-0 shutout against Simon Fraser on Saturday night.
Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Readers may send him email at doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com.

SHARE

As the presidential campaign moves into its final stretch, about 7 percent of voters (depending on which poll you read) say they're still undecided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump  more than enough to swing the election either way.

After all the noise and drama of the last few months, what are these people waiting for?

They don't much like either of the candidates. They're struggling to decide which is the lesser of two evils. And they're not finding it an easy choice.

That's the lesson that bubbled up from a recent discussion with swing voters in Wisconsin conducted by pollster Peter D. Hart.

Hart convened a dozen swing voters, people who have voted for both Democrats and Republicans, in a Milwaukee suburb a few weeks ago. The pollster conducts these "focus groups" regularly as part of a project for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Four of the 12 said they leaned toward Trump. Four said they leaned toward Clinton. Four said they were completely undecided. Almost all said they were still open to persuasion by both candidates.

All said they'd been disappointed by the campaign; they said they wanted to hear about issues, not "mudslinging." But when asked what more they wanted to learn about each candidate, their questions were mostly about character: What are they like behind closed doors? Can we trust them with life-or-death decisions?

Both candidates have serious flaws, said Sheri LaValley, a 51-year-old compliance analyst who voted for President Obama.

"Hillary with her emails, I just don't trust her. Trump, the way he acts. Every day you turn on the TV, and I just shake my head," she said.

She said she was leaning toward Trump  with a condition: "I think he would be an awesome candidate if he could get his personality under control."

Several said they found the prospect of Trump as commander in chief worrisome. "He's just such a wild cannon," said Barbara Kass, 62, a retired airline employee who is completely undecided.

"I'd like to see Trump 2.0," said David Locher, 34, a supervisor for the Milwaukee rapid transit system, also undecided. "If Trump doesn't show something more coherent  I probably could go for Hillary, just for fear of things becoming a mess worldwide."

Asked to describe the Republican nominee as a member of their family, the most popular title was "crazy uncle," and, in one case, "drunk uncle."

Clinton has a different problem  but one that appears just as serious.

Although most of the swing voters gave the Democratic nominee her high marks for experience and competence, they also described her as chilly, distant, untrustworthy and dishonest.

"She's a smart woman with a lot of experience but  you can't trust her," said Beth Gramling, 50, a payroll analyst.

What did she mean by trust? "Integrity," she said. "I don't think she has that. And it's a shame."

Nevertheless, Gramling said, she was leaning toward Clinton.

Asked to describe the Democratic nominee as a member of their family, the most frequent choice was "stepmother"  a loveless relationship.

When Hart asked how the voters would finally make up their minds, he was met with mostly blank looks. "It's going to have to be the debates," said Locher.

What can Trump do to win their votes? "Tone it down," said Schneider. Trump's been getting that advice from his aides, but it's not clear he's taking it.

What can Clinton do? "Take down the mask and show she's human," said Gramling.

It's obviously not easy to rebuild trust amid the noise of a campaign, but these voters said they were willing to give the candidate another chance if she makes an effort to be "more transparent" (their words) and to connect with ordinary people.

"A lot of voters know they do not want Donald Trump as president, but they need to know that they can live with Hillary Clinton for the next four years," Hart wrote in a summary of the session for reporters. "The hurdle they face is to find reassurance that they can trust her and that she will identify with them and their day-to-day challenges."

As the polls narrow, there's still room for Trump to win  and room, as well, for Clinton to lose.

Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Contact him at doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com
SHARE

The following editorial appeared in the Sept. 2 Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Texas is taking mental health care seriously.

Last month, Kevin Banks took a seat in front of the Texas House of Representatives Mental Health Select Committee. He was one of almost 30 witnesses, all there to give personal testimony about how mental illness has affected their lives.

Banks told the representatives about his struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder, the frustrations with insurance coverage for his treatment and his belief in a better system. In a shaky voice, the recent University of Houston graduate said, "I missed out on some important milestones in my life  years that I would very much like to have back."

He is one of the luckier ones. He even said it himself, talking about his recent achievement of a bachelor's degree, aspirations for grad school and his supportive family.

But he finished with his testimony with a plea. "Campaign for people like me," he said. "Maybe above all, pray for us."

The Mental Health Select committee has been meeting since the beginning of the year, taking on the Herculean task of bettering Texas mental health care.

Organizations have lined up to suggest improvements and underline concerns while the committee listened, asked questions and will ultimately make recommendations for the legislative session that begins in January.

In each meeting, the committee has focused on one area of mental health reform. So far, the members have listened to experts weigh in on adolescent mental health, crisis intervention, access to care, the criminal justice system, health insurance coverage, veterans, homelessness and other topics.

The last meeting, on Aug. 17, was the first time they heard public testimony. That from Banks was just one brave story.

The committee members, led by Rep. Four Price, R-Amarillo, not only have listened to organizations and individuals who sat in front of them, but also asked insightful questions.

Price and the committee started these meetings with a baseline and determined to go from there. He originally wanted to hold up to four additional meetings. So far, there have been seven, with one more possibly this month

"What I am really struck by is the level of interest out there in the work this committee is going to do and a real desire to see the Legislature tackle this issue in a meaningful way," Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, said during the first meeting back in February.

They wanted to make sure Texans understand this committee is meant to lead to some change for the better in the frustrating mental health care system.

Eight months later, the committee has been doing enough trench work to convert even the staunchest skeptic. Mental health reform might actually happen because of this diligent committee.

"The reality is, I don't know everything about this. I want to learn, too. Because things change," Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, said in one meeting. "I'm ready to work."

That work can improve lives.
LOWEST



Massachusetts

Rate of uninsured: 2.8 percent

Vermont

Rate of uninsured: 3.8 percent

Hawaii

Rate of uninsured: 4 percent

Minnesota

Rate of uninsured: 4.5 percent

Iowa

Rate of uninsured: 5 percent

HIGHEST

Florida

Rate of uninsured: 13.3 percent

Oklahoma

Rate of uninsured: 13.9 percent

Georgia

Rate of uninsured: 13.9 percent

Alaska

Rate of uninsured: 14.9 percent

Texas

Rate of uninsured: 17.1 percent

2016 has been a chaotic and unpredictable year for President Obama's signature health reform law. Most of the major health insurers announced they were leaving the individual marketplace, some premiums are being hiked by 10 percent or more, and a majority of the co-ops created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are closing their doors.But one thing remains certain: The number of uninsured Americans continues to drop.On Tuesday, a new U.S. Census Bureau report found that only 9.1 percent of Americans in 2015 lacked health insurance -- down from 10.4 percent in 2014 and 13.4percent in 2013, the year before the ACA marketplaces opened.For a number of reasons -- the biggest being whether a state adopted one of the ACA's biggest provisions and agreed to make more people eligible for Medicaid -- the uninsured rate in states ranges from 2.8 percent to 17.1 percent. The five states with the lowest uninsured rate all chose to expand Medicaid, while just one of the five states with the highest uninsured rate took the federal funding to do so.Here are the states with the lowest and highest uninsured rates.No surprise here. The state's landmark legislation that provides near-universal health care became a roadmap for the Affordable Care Act.While the state leads the nation in rates of insured, there are some troubling spots on the horizon: Health-care costs have been rising fast in the state, which can be attributed to a mix of soaring drug prices, more expensive health-care services and implementation of the ACA.Like Massachusetts, Vermont boasted higher-than-average insured rates before the Affordable Care Act was penned. There are many reasons for this, including a generous Medicaid program, low unemployment and proactive prevention programs. Prior to the ACA, the state had a law that didn't allow insurance companies to discriminate based on a person's medical history.The state planned for years to implement a single-payer system, which would have been the first in the country. But state lawmakers suddenly lost their enthusiasm for it once they realized how much taxes would need to increase for both businesses and residents.Hawaii has been one of the success stories of Medicaid expansion. The state was one of the first to immediately agree to it, and the expansion covered about half of the states previously uninsured population.The state also has a strict employer coverage law, passed in 1976, that requires employers to provide insurance to all employees working more than 20 hours a week. The ACA, by contrast, only requires employers to offer health care to employees who work more than 30 hours a week.Lawmakers in Minnesota point to a couple of different reasons that the state has a lower-than-average uninsured rate: The state immediately expanded Medicaid, and MinnesotaCare -- the states Medicaid program -- is a relatively robust program, offering the working poor a more generous subsidy than most states.Iowas uninsured population was lower than average before the Affordable Care Act was enacted: around 9 percent in 2010. The state expanded Medicaid in 2013 and as a result, covered about half of the uninsured population in 2014.Florida is in a unique position.Like Texas, a large immigrant population likely contributes to its high uninsured population. But the state also has one of the highest rates of uninsured children -- hovering at 9 percent. That can be attributed to a strict Medicaid program. Unlike most states, Florida requires families earning between 133 to 200 percent of the federal poverty line to pay a premium, and rates went up last year.The state Senate approved a plan to expand Medicaid last year, but Republican Gov. Rick Scott rejected the measure.GOP Gov. Mary Fallin was among the class of governors who immediately declined Medicaid expansion, and she hasnt revisited the issue since. A Senate bill that would more or less expand Medicaid -- called the Medicaid Rebalancing Act of 2020 -- died earlier this year.If Georgians want to bring down the rate of uninsured, theyll have to find a way other than Medicaid expansion. Republican Gov. Nathan Deal has made it clear that option is off the table. In fact, theres a state policy in place that forbids state employees from even publicly advocating for Medicaid expansion.The state also has a pretty limited Medicaid program for children, likely contributing to the high number of uninsured. It only covers parents who are 40 percent above the federal poverty line. Even in states that also chose not to expand Medicaid, parents are eligible, on average, if they're47 percent above the poverty line.Alaskas uninsured rate will likely be the one to watch in the coming years. Last summer, newly-elected independent Gov. Bill Walker adopted Medicaid expansion. It went into effect last September, meaning the effect of expanded Medicaid won't be seen until next year's census release of uninsured rates.Texas blows the other states out of the water when it comes to the population of uninsured -- its a full four percentages higher than Alaska, the second-highest uninsured state.There are several reasons for this: The state has a large immigrant population, a limited Medicaid program and a lower-than-average rate of employer-sponsored health coverage.And yes, Medicaid expansion would likely drive down the number of uninsured, but that proposition is unlikely. Republican Rick Perry, the former governor, immediately declined to expand Medicaid, and his GOP successor, Greg Abbott, has also refused.
It isnt news that in rural parts of the country, people have a harder time accessing good health care. But new evidence suggests opposition to a key part of the 2010 health overhaul could be adding to the gap.The finding comes from a study published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs, which analyzes how the states decisions on implementing the federal health laws expansion of Medicaid, a federal-state insurance program for low-income people, may be influencing rural hospitals financial stability. Nineteen states opted not to join the expansion.Rural hospitals have long argued they were hurt by the lack of Medicaid expansion, which leaves many of their patients without insurance coverage and strains the hospitals ability to better serve the public. The study suggests they have a point.Specifically, the researchers, from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, found that rural hospitals saw an improved chance of turning a profit if they were in a state that expanded Medicaid  while in city-based hospitals, there was no improvement to overall profitability. Across the board, hospitals earned more if they were in a state where more people had coverage and saw declines in the level of uncompensated care they gave.To put it another way: All hospitals generally fared better under the larger Medicaid program, but theres more at stake for rural hospitals when the state expands coverage.The study looked at how expanding Medicaid affected hospital revenue, how many Medicaid patients they discharged, levels of uncompensated care the hospitals provided and how well the institutions did financially overall. It compared those effects in rural versus urban areas, across more than 14,000 annual cost reports from hospitals between January 2011 and December 2014, or a year after eligible states could have expanded their Medicaid programs.In states expanding Medicaid, rural hospitals saw a greater increase in Medicaid revenue than urban hospitals did. City-based facilities save a higher percentage than rural hospitals with the reduction in uncompensated care, though that change did not translate into improved operating margins for urban hospitals, the study notes.How much these differences matter, though, remains up in the air.There is a disparity in the impact of Medicaid expansion, and probably the [law] overall, said Brystana Kaufman, a doctoral candidate at the universitys department of health policy and management and the studys first author. There needs to be more exploration into why were seeing this.One likely factor: Rural hospitals serve more low-income people  who werent eligible for insurance before, but who got covered after the health law took effect. And rural hospitals are historically more likely to operate at a loss than are urban ones. So the chance to see increased revenue is greater than in a city-based hospital.That said, these are preliminary figures, looking at barely a years worth of evidence when it comes to the Medicaid expansion. But the effect merits further scrutiny, experts said.Its important because hospital finances matter for consumers, too. In rural communities, hospitals are often among the largest employers, and the main source of health care. Financial duress can affect what kind of services the facility offers.If youre [a hospital] in a state that did expand Medicaid, obviously youre going to be experiencing lower amounts of uninsured. Your bad debts and charity care have gone down, said Brock Slabach, senior vice president at the National Rural Health Association. He was not involved in the study, although he is familiar with the research teams work. Has [that expense] gone to nothing? No. But it has helped.Thats especially true for rural hospitals, Kaufman said, because they have narrower profit margins than do urban ones. Any squeeze on the budget is going to be more influential and may limit a hospitals offerings or quality.Hospitals are still really trying to anticipate and assess the shakeout from all the changes that are happening, said Kristin Reiter, an associate professor at UNC-Chapel Hills Department of Health Policy and Management and another study author.Meanwhile, rural hospitals are already facing financial strains, Slabach said. More than 70 have shut down since 2010. Still more are at risk of closure. Many endangered hospitals are in non-expansion states.How Medicaid affects rural and urban hospitals could influence other debates, the study authors said. For instance, the health law also is expected to cut so-called disproportionate health spending payments  cash infusions that support hospitals that treat low-income people, often in rural areas.Those cuts havent taken effect yet, but the researchers suggest, the paper could make a case for indefinitely postponing them.The hospitals rely on that funding to address uncompensated care, Kaufman said. In rural states that declined the expansion, uncompensated medical treatment poses a significant financial hurdle for hospitals.But others cautioned against drawing hard conclusions yet. Its unclear how meaningful the rural-urban difference will be, especially over time, said Doug Staiger, a professor of economics at Dartmouth who has researched rural health access but was not involved with this study.Id be really cautious interpreting, he said.Plus, Slabach added, researchers must examine how the findings actually affect consumers.And, its possible the effects seen here arent just thanks to Medicaid, said George Mark Holmes, an associate professor at UNC and director of the universitys North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Program. Expansion states may have taken other steps meant to help hospitals and consumers. If so, its worth figuring out what those are.Medicaid expansion is not a random event. Thats very important to consider here, said Holmes, another author of the study. These are states that have decided to do it. There could be other elements at play.
After a spate of legal troubles in recent years related to his personal injury law practice in Houston  lawsuits resulting in multiple costly settlements, criminal convictions and the suspension of his law license  state Rep. Ron Reynolds has filed for bankruptcy.Court records show the embattled Missouri City Democrat owes creditors more than $1.3 million, including $700,000 to former clients who were awarded money after suing Reynolds for keeping their portion of legal settlements.In May, for instance, a Harris County judge awarded Nancy Calloway $504,000 in damages after she sued Reynolds for malpractice, claiming he improperly kept some of the settlement money owed to her in a case involving her daughters traffic death. Reynolds bankruptcy filing details that Reynolds is indebted to Calloway for $450,000.Hes on the hook for another $450,000 to medical providers and imaging centers, more than $3,000 in unpaid tolls and $15,000 owed to the Texas Ethics Commission. Reynolds is behind in filing his campaign finance reports to the ethics commission. Records show he hasnt filed since before the March 1 primary election.Reynolds did not immediately return a request for comment.His bankruptcy, first reported by KTRK TV in Houston, shows the Chapter 7  Liquidation filing dates back to early August. According to the Bankruptcy Code, Chapter 7 is for people who have trouble paying debts and want their debts discharged. Some debts, including most fines, penalties, forfeitures, and criminal restitution obligations, will not be absolved.Despite a November 2015 conviction on five counts of illegal solicitation of legal clients and years of fighting similar cases in court, Reynolds garnered the most votes in a four-way Democratic primary on March 1 and beat Angelique Bartholomew in the May runoff, 53 percent to 47 percent. He faces Republican Ken Bryant, a former Fort Bend ISD trustee, in the November general election.
Description

GIS - 13 September, 2016 : A two-day capacity development workshop aimed at broadening the understanding of the Mauritian parliamentary staff as regards the Sweden-funded SADC Parliamentary Forum Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Governance (SRHR) programme is being held on 12 and 13 September 2016 at Le Victoria Hotel in Pointe aux Piments.

Some 20 staff of Parliament from the Clerks office, Hansard Unit, Library, and Administration are participating. The objectives are to strengthen the capacity of staff of parliament to systematically monitor parliamentary systems, identify bottlenecks and recommend innovative approaches that will seek to effectively implement the Project. The ultimate aim is to develop a framework that may translate regional parliamentary knowledge into country level action; and to map out key actions for reporting and analysis on the Project Indicators.

Mauritius is one of the six Southern African Development Community countries participating in the four-year project on SRHR from 2014 to 2018, funded by the Embassy of Sweden. The other participating countries include Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Seychelles, and Tanzania.

The workshop comprises interactive presentations, group work and use of case studies from other implementing countries on the SRHR Project. Several themes are on the agenda namely Overview of the SADC Parliamentary Forum, programmes and operational framework; Introduction to the SRHR Project; Overview of the Mauritius Parliament and departments; and SRHR and HIV/AID challenges facing Mauritius.

The SRHR Project

The SADC Parliamentary Forum (SADC PF) was created as a platform for dialogue on issues of regional interest and concern. SRHR has been recognised as a fundamental aspect of human health development in the SADC region as it provides individuals the opportunity to make choices regarding their sexuality and reproductive health rights despite their age, gender or HIV status.

The 19th SADC PF Plenary Assembly Session held in Lilongwe, Malawi 2007, adopted a resolution on the role of parliaments in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. The Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy for the SADC region was finalised in November 2008.

The four-year SRHR 2014-2018 Project seeks to contribute to capacity development of parliamentarians, especially women Members of Parliament. In this context, a two-day orientation training workshop for Members of the national Assembly was held on 29 and 30 October 2016. The objective is to facilitate these members to promote, intervene and advocate for relevant policy to be supportive of human rights and sexual and reproductive rights.

By attaining this objective, the SRHR Project expects to contribute positively to the provision of equitable universal access to SRHR and HIV/AIDS services. These include improved health and respect for human rights of all, especially women and girls, in the SADC region.
A Stronger Pennsylvania'

Paying at the Pump

Search for New Revenue

(TNS) -- Money from increased fees and gas taxes that drivers have been paying since 2013 on the promise to fix Pennsylvania's crumbling roads and bridges is increasingly being diverted to support the state police, budget figures show.Many government officials, legislators and construction industry members said the practice needs to stop, especially as the nation's highest gas tax  ushered in by the 2013 transportation funding overhaul known as Act 89  generates billions in new revenue for roads.Pennsylvania's unfunded transportation needs outweigh expected 12-year revenue by about $6 billion, and that number will only grow if state police continue to receive money that would otherwise be spent on maintenance and infrastructure projects, PennDOT Secretary Leslie S. Richards said.What's at stake is the actual promise of delivering on Act 89, which obviously is huge, she said.But a better way to properly fund infrastructure improvements and public safety services eludes policymakers.The 2016-17 fiscal code lawmakers passed and Gov. Tom Wolf signed seeks to reduce the state police's allotment from the Motor License Fund over several budget cycles.But lawmakers and state officials have yet to come up with an alternative funding source for the nation's 10th-largest police agency. The agency covers more than 36,000 square miles, including nearly 1,300 municipalities that rely solely on state police for law enforcement coverage, and another 400 that rely on it part time.Working together we can come up with a solution, Wolf spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan said. What that solution is, I don't know at this time.Pennsylvania's $6.5 billion Motor License Fund captures gasoline taxes, vehicle registration and licensing fees and other revenue. It gets the new revenue generated by Act 89's taxes and fee increases  a funding stream expected to total at least $2.3 billion annually for transportation infrastructure projects by fiscal year 2017-18.During Act 89's creation and passage, state officials touted the measure as a way to provide safer bridges and roads, smoother pavement and stable public transit services.Related construction projects are expected to generate tens of thousands of jobs as the state builds a stronger Pennsylvania both now and in the future, then-Gov. Tom Corbett said in a 2014 news release.Safety on public highways is an allowable Motor License Fund expense, according to the state constitution. The fiscal year 2016-17 budget diverts about $802 million in Motor License money to state police, about 67 percent of the agency's $1.2-billion budget. About $257 million comes from the general fund.The Motor License Fund allocation to state police totaled about $750 million in the 2015-16 budget and about $583 million in the 2012-13 budget before Act 89, according to PennDOT.PennDOT sustains a construction program that ranges between $2.4 billion and $2.5 billion annually. Act 89 funding allowed the state to award 607 construction contracts in 2015, with 750 contract awards expected in 2016, officials said. Without Act 89, PennDOT's construction budget would total about $1.5 billion annually.Depending on gas prices, John Oakes spends between $20,000 and $30,000 per year on fuel for his Bethel Park business called All Pro Plumbing. He called the state police funding arrangement a terrible structure.(State police) should have their own program to inject money into their system, whether it's from citations or whatever, he said. Some money from state police citations goes into the Motor License Fund, but not directly to the agency.Oakes, 34, said he always tries to keep five trucks fueled up and ready to respond to work. That requires spending a lot of money at the pump. And, like every driver, a portion of what he pays goes into the Motor License Fund.Pennsylvania drivers pay the nation's highest gas tax rate  70 cents per gallon as of July, nearly 20 cents more than the national average, according to the American Petroleum Institute.The state's average per-gallon cost also ranks among the highest in the country, said Patrick DeHann, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com . The figure this week was about $2.31 per gallon compared with $2.20 per gallon nationwide.DeHann attributed the relatively high prices to Act 89.Motorists are certainly bearing the brunt of 100 percent of the increase that was passed on, he said. That's kept Pennsylvania's gas prices well above the national average, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.Oakes lives on state-owned Clifton Road, which he said could benefit from some of the gas tax revenue he's helped generate. Still, he offered few complaints about the taxes he pays at the pump, given this summer's overall low gas prices compared to years past. At the end of the day, he's worried most about that bottom line.Wait until it goes back to $4 per gallon, he said. Then I'll have a reason to complain.Diverting money from the Motor License Fund to state police isn't new. Historically, Motor License funding has made up nearly two-thirds of the state police budget. Firms getting part of Pennsylvania's $2.5 billion highway budget questioned whether that proportion matches the agency's highway safety efforts.We do not believe that 65 percent of state police resources are devoted to patrolling highways, although no one knows definitively what that proportion might be, Pennsylvania Highway Information Association President James Van Buren said in written testimony for a legislative committee hearing in February.State police referred an interview request for this story to the governor's office.The agency's commissioner, Col. Tyree Blocker, said during a legislative hearing that, The overwhelming majority of state police efforts are dedicated to patrolling our highways and keeping them safe.Sheridan said the state police funding problem boils down to a common issue with Pennsylvania's finances. Revenue doesn't cover the services residents expect from the state, the result of years of budgets built on smoke and mirrors.We're trying to fix those problems, he said. It's obviously been a very slow haul, and we've made progress.Wolf in July signed a $1.3 billion revenue bill intended to provide enough funding to balance the $31.5 billion 2016-17 budget.The revenue bill imposes higher taxes on cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and digital downloads for videos, books and music that boost the general fund. Other revenue is expected to come from prior legislative action to boost wine and liquor sales through expanded hours and locations. The so-called liquor modernization bill brings in the most new revenue of any measure in the package with $149 million in 2016-17, a House analysis showed.The budget caps the Motor License funding diversion to state police at $802 million, and the separate fiscal code outlines a plan to roll the total back by 4 percent over 10 years until it reaches a $500 million cap.Several state groups and committees continue to explore highway patrol costs and other possible state police revenue sources to make up for the proposed rollback.We obviously understand that there is an issue, but at the same time our position is we're not willing to cut funds just for the purpose of cutting funds without an offsetting solution, Senate Transportation Committee Executive Director Nolan Ritchie said.Possible solutions including increasing taxes, capturing a $5 registration fee increase that counties can impose on drivers as part of Act 89, and making municipalities without law enforcement agencies pay for state police coverage.Ultimately, it's up to lawmakers to find a solution.Richards said she expects meaningful discussions will start when they return to Harrisburg in the fall.I don't know where the Legislature will be leaning when they discuss it, but the one thing that both sides of the aisle have definitely agreed on is that they need to solve this gap in state police funding, she said.
SAN FRANCISCO  With the Obama administration coming to a close this January, the question circulating in the tech community isnt so much about next IT projects, but whether his innovation initiatives  and the government tech movement as a whole  will live on.At TechCrunch Disrupt on Sept. 12, U.S. CTO Megan Smith expressed her opinion, answering the query with an emphatic. The former Google exec was joined by her Deputy CTO Alex Macgillivray, formerly a policy analyst at Twitter, to give a glimpse into the White Houses current digital work  and to ease fears of this nature. And those fears aren't necessarily unfounded, as some have whispered concerns that 18F U.S. Digital Service (USDS) and the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) may be closed by an incoming administration attempting to rebrand its IT policies and practices.Smith said that no matter the party or president voted into the White House, going backward and ending such programs was a highly unlikely option, especially when considering the high demand to enhance the nations digital footprint.This is an idea whose time has come, it is the beginning of digital government, and its only going to accelerate, Smith said. Im confident that whatever happens, it will continue.Her confident statements were not based on a specific piece of policy or any commitment from one of the presidential candidates  though Hillary Clinton has incorporated Obama's digital service teams into her IT policy  but instead, Smith said her optimism stemmed from the observation that the federal government had no choice but to invest in digital innovation if it wanted to keep pace with the rest of the world.The political partisanship, Smith said, takes a backseat to the hand-to-mouth demands of citizen services. Examples of this work by 18F, the roughly 200-person digital service team that helps agencies build and buy IT services, include projects to improve the application process for the U.S. immigration system, its platform to help prospective college students find the right schools, and revamps to agency websites like the Federal Election Commission to make politicians more accountable for political fundraising.As for consulting group USDS and PIF, a one-year federal innovation program, they have equally as helpful; both of these groups have been credited with rescuing the mired health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov in 2014, and serving as go-to guides to improve procurement and the unwieldy and often costly array of government services.The White House has done its best to inoculate each of these three groups and protect them against any kind of administrative upheaval by weaving them into the General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Service.Smith and Macgillivray said the real hurdle facing government isnt about having a place to put innovators from Silicon Valley and the private sector, but actually hiring that kind of top-quality talent on a regular basis. Technologists, designers and policy analysts often come to the programs for limited terms, rotating in and out of agencies through one- to two-year engagements. The goal is to harness this level of ingenuity on an ongoing basis.How do we get our tech community to do a tour of duty? Smith asked, urging the events crowd of technologists to apply for one of these groups' roughly two-year contracts.Similarly, the two echoed the presidents call for collaboration issued in March when he visited the tech and industry conference South by Southwest. Macgillivray emphasized that whether it's an issue of privacy and encryption, making law enforcement data more transparent, or bridging the digital divide, that there will be a host of national challenges remaining. To solve these, he said the federal government will need the support and input from the private sector, nonprofits, academics and citizens to uncover the right solutions.Its in these hard problems where we will have to dive in together, Macgillivray said.The two did not indicate where they might be headed after the president's final term. Macgillivray said he was too focused on the current projects, and Smith said that whatever she did, it would have to involve something that impacted people's lives in a meaningful way. Both said that they were trying to hold themselves to the present as much as possible.Smith related the experience to an Olympic relay race. "We have the baton," she said, "so were running as fast as we can."
(TNS)  PROVIDENCE, R.I.  After years of hiccups and delays, the state's biggest-ever IT project goes live on Tuesday at an estimated cost to state and federal taxpayers of $364 million so far, that may swell to $487.4 million by 2018 if the Raimondo administration gets the additional money it is seeking.Known as UHIP, the "Unified Health Infrastructure Project" was launched four years ago by then-Gov. Lincoln Chafee's administration to take advantage of federal money available for a new enrollment-and-tracking system for Obamacare enrollees.Then it grew  and grew  to more than triple the initial $110-million cost estimate.In its current incarnation as a replacement for a hodgepodge of decades-old state computer systems, the new system will encompass a wide array of public-assistance programs, from health coverage to subsidized childcare, cash assistance and the food stamp program now known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).If all goes well here, the Raimondo administration anticipates the new eligibility system will make "it easier and more convenient for Rhode Islanders to apply for and track their benefits," make it more likely the state will be able to detect  and stop  waste and fraud, and save enough money to enable the state to recoup its entire UHIP investment "within the next two to three years."Needless to say, Rhode Island hopes to avoid this recent headline in Kentucky's Courier-Journal: "New Ky benefits system disrupting aid for many.""People seeking help must wait hours or days, repeatedly calling a state helpline only to get a recorded message that advises them to try later and then hangs up. ... Others visit overcrowded state benefit offices where they must wait for hours  sometimes the entire day  to get help," the Kentucky newspaper reported in March.Asked about the chances that Rhode Island will have similar problems, Office of Health & Human Services spokeswoman Sophie O'Connell said: "The approach we have taken to the design, development, testing and implementation of this new system is unique to Rhode Island and the people we serve. Kentucky used a different approach on all of these things."We have dedicated considerable time and resources to making this transition as smooth as possible, but we know that we will encounter some issues in the immediate days, weeks and months after the launch," added Department of Administration Director Michael DiBiase in a recent statement."We have a team in place to quickly identify, prioritize and fix any issues that arise," he said.The Raimondo administration has not responded to requests last week for the results of the test-runs, payments to vendors and other documentation sought by The Journal. The cost estimate so far is $80 million in state dollars and nearly $285 million in federal funds, though the Raimondo administration has confirmed a bid to spend an additional $124 million to address planned and unplanned project needs. (The reason is not yet fully clear, though spokesman Mike Raia described the latest money request as "aspirational.")- But Rhode Island's years-long rollout has already had its share of bumps.In an FY 2015 budget-year document, Christine Ferguson, then-head of the ObamaCare program known as HealthSource RI, alerted Chafee to problems with Phase I: "To date, a significant portion of HSRIs non-technology resources (more than 50 percent) has been invested in working around defects and accommodating a lack of functionality in the UHIP system."In June, at one in a series of occasional lunches with reporters, Governor Raimondo expressed frustration about the latest delay, after the launch date was postponed, at the reported suggestion of the federal government, by 60 days."We haven't hit the milestones that we want to hit," she said.When asked the specific reasons for this latest delay, O'Connell, the OHHS spokeswoman, said the federal government "worked closely with the State during the development and testing of the new eligibility system and recommended that we conduct even more rigorous testing and an expanded pilot."What to expect when the new public-benefits system goes live?"We have thoroughly tested the system to identify and address as many issues as possible before go-live. However, we cannot predict every scenario, considering the very complex medical and service needs of the clients we serve. With the launch of any new technology system this large and complex  in both the public and private sector  there will be issues that surface in the immediate days, weeks and months after the launch."This is normal and we have teams in place to quickly to resolve issues, minimize any inconvenience to our clients, and ensure people get the services they need."The upside?Those seeking public benefits will be able to apply and "manage their account information online, 24/7, instead of having to come in person to a [Department of Human Services] field office," O'Connell said.
(TNS) -- RICHMOND  The state's move away from a single massive IT contractor to a bunch of smaller deals is shaping up like a messy divorce, with lots of lawyers and arguments over money.Virginia's IT arm, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, has accused lead contractor Northrop Grumman five times this year of breach of contract. There's a nearly $10 million gap, and counting, between payments Northrop Grumman feels it's owed and what the state has been willing to pay.Told all this Monday morning, legislators on a key oversight committee repeatedly asked VITA officials whether they have enough legal fire power cued up for a fight that seems destined for court.The state's contract with Northrop Grumman is more than 10 years old, and this is far from the first time agency officials have complained about the company's IT services. But now, with the state set on overhauling Virginia's IT strategy, and Northrop Grumman saying publicly that VITA's plan is a flawed one with dangers for the taxpayer, state officials say the company's service is slipping."(It was) an awkward courtship," Del. John O'Bannon, R-Henrico, said of the contract Monday. "A short honeymoon, a rocky marriage, and now we're heading to an ugly divorce."VITA sent Northrop Grumman a breach of contract notice in May, accusing the company of failing to save emails tied to an ongoing court case. Last month it sent four more breach letters for separate problems."Considered together ... this group of letters shows that Northrop Grumman's performance ... is very troubled in many areas," VITA head Nelson Moe wrote in a cover letter included with the August batch of correspondence.The company's deadline to respond comes later this month, according to Moe, the state's chief information officer.Metrics quoted in a Monday report to the General Assembly 's audit and investigatory arm showed a significant increase in IT outages over the last two years, including eight outages that stopped work for at least one state agency in 2016. There's also a dispute over about $9.7 million in payments tied to cost increases that Northrop Grumman says flowed from subcontractor changes and increased the company's costs.In an emailed statement Monday, Northrop Grumman spokesman Randy Belote said the company "continues to successfully perform to the terms of the VITA contract." He said the arrangement has produced 13 industry and national awards over the last three years and that Northrop Grumman's latest "service level agreement achievement score" was 99.28 percent.Belote also said the company will "continue to work to support the Commonwealth in the disentanglement process," but he re-iterated that "the Commonwealth's current transition path creates undue risk and increased costs" and "poses significant risks to the quality and security of services provided to the citizens of the Commonwealth."Northrop Grumman has been saying this for months, and it declined to bid on any of the smaller IT contracts the state plans to ink in the two years as it seeks a more agile way to provide computers, email and other technology services to state departments. The Northrop Grumman deal runs into 2019, a disconcertingly long period of time for officials who see the relationship deteriorating.In January, Moe sent Northrop Grumman a letter that acknowledged the company was hitting a majority of agreed upon service levels, but he also complained of outages and a "perception of Northrop Grumman recalcitrance." Moe began his JLARC presentation Monday by reading an opening statement written in consultation with the Attorney General's Office.During and after his presentation, Republican legislators on JLARC's oversight committee asked repeatedly whether VITA needs to hire outside attorneys with the expertise called for in for this case. As a group, the legislature's GOP majority has often taken a different tack: Criticizing Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring for spending millions on outside counsel.Long-time lobbyists, who remember when the state inked the Northrop Grumman deal a decade ago, wondered Monday whether the state's legal fees in this dispute might eventually cost more than the payments Northrop Grumman demands, and several legislators said they hope the matter can be handled through mediation.Other legislators noted that they've largely heard just one side of the story in this dispute: The state's.Del. David Albo, an attorney by trade, said "all the cases sound like winners" the first time a potential client lays out their case."Northrop Grumman could very well have some good points," said Albo, R-Springfield.
At the Los Angeles Digital Government Summit last month, Los Angeles County Probation Department CIO Benny Chacko was among the panelists offering advice for attendees who have their eye on landing a CIO job someday. His suggestion was to spend time honing skills outside of pure technology, like negotiation and presentation skills, for example.As an agency-level CIO, knowledge of the agency's various business needs is just as important as a command of the latest technologies. At the Probation Department, Chacko's job requires knowledge of law enforcement, social services and health services. Here, Chacko talked toabout his agency's unique data challenges, and the potential he sees for data analytics to impact service delivery.
Those who are great at what they do get there by copying those who came before them, sharing ideas with contemporaries, or  even better  just stealing them. The Council of Global City CIOs, announced by its member cities on Sept. 12, is the latest embodiment of that principle.The tech leaders of Chicago; New York City; the Hague, Netherlands; Dubai; Boston; Seattle; and Washington, D.C., are the founding participants of the group, which was created to build a body of resources and share it with city leaders of the world.Three initial areas of focus outlined by the group include the development of a model for creating a smart city, a plan for connecting everyone with broadband access, and to serve as a platform for open-source code sharing. To share code, the group teamed with GitHub, which created a repository that will allow city CIOs to contribute and consume source code for civic software. For the rest, the group's participants will meet in two weeks to establish the details, explained San Francisco CIO Miguel Gamino."We found that, around the world, we're all faced with very similar challenges," Gamino told. "This concept of creating a smarter city is a global one, and in some cases there are other parts of the world where they're doing certain things better than we are and vice versa. And I think there's a lot to be shared globally around common objectives, and different levels of accomplishment and priority in these different areas, so when you add them all up it's just a better collective sum."The Council, which will be co-led by Gamino and Washington, D.C., Chief Technology Officer Archana Vemulapalli, enables a formal process for information sharing and partnership that encourages participation, Gamino explained, and then referenced Los Angeles' upcoming launch of a business portal that was created using code supplied by San Francisco's own business portal.Gamino also noted that the group itself has existed in an informal fashion since 2014 when he partnered with Barcelona's tech leadership. But now, the scope of this Council of Global City CIOs (the world) and the support from its founders (who are among the nation's most innovative public CIOs) create a more stable community than those ad hoc agreements and relationships that typically accrue in this space.The group will share challenges and solutions, but that will be but a marginal component of what they do, Gamino said, because there are already groups that do that. This group will be all about sharing things  frameworks, principles, policies and code  that city leaders can use to make things happen."I would really like the organization tasked with work," he said. " On the smart city front, I'd like to see some cities come together and agree on a set frameworks and terms and standards that can deliver something tangible to help other cities, members or not, give them some guardrails to help direct them toward that smarter city path."The official announcement from Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee emphasized the importance of the world working together and harnessing the immense power of technology to improve city life."Just think about how much opportunity is left to be leveraged," the two wrote. "According to a recent estimate of big data, every day we create more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data  so much that 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in just the last two years. Frankly, there is now and will continue to be more data being produced than we have ideas about how it can and should be used by cities to improve lives."And the group is looking for new members around the world, Gamino said, so if someone wants to get involved, all they have to do is contact the group and start helping."This is a matter of organizing around a focused set of people around the world that I think have maybe the biggest opportunity to impact the world in the short term," Gamino said, "because at the end of the day, people might be citizens of a country, but they're residents of a community, of a city, and so people who work at that level have the opportunity to deliver solutions to the heart of the constituency."
BOSTON  The state of Massachusetts is putting renewed energy into its IT operations and pushing to meet the public's demand for easier access to government.During the Massachusetts Digital Government Summit Sept.12, MassIT Executive Director Mark Nunnelly discussed Gov. Charlie Bakers vision for the states technological infrastructure and where changes must be made to better serve the constituency.Nunnelly said the states strategy cannot simply rely on throwing technology at sluggish business operations, but rather an effort needs to be made to better understand the fundamental business processes and how they can be changed for the better."That means trying to figure out what we are doing first, making it more simple and then bringing technology to bear to allow us to get after it, he said. I think before we can begin to capture the potential of becoming more tech-enabled, we have to do that."Among the states key priorities moving forward is putting a new digital face to Mass.gov . He said that in order to get current, the portal is in need of a substantial overhaul."I think most of our content and most of the look and feel was probably established in the late '90s or early 2000s," Nunnelly said, offering support for a new face for Massachusetts' digital interface with constituents that focuses on optimizing citizen-government interactions.On the security front, the CIO recognized that the growing threat landscape requires a more focused and organized approach to managing state systems. As it stands, disparate networks and the decentralized structure of agencies need to be reconciled to create a more optimal balance between security and access. He called the current model the antithesis of security."We live in a world where the bad guys are getting faster and more well-financed by the day, and at the same time we are the stewards of some fairly important and significant information," said Nunnelly. "Making sure we remain good stewards of that information while at the same time making sure that we allow that information to be accessed once it needs to be by our constituents are really important and big competing priorities."As with many states across the country, Massachusetts is also looking to make strides in technology procurement. Nunnelly said that during his tenure in his current role, frustrations have been voiced around the states existing methods. He hopes the transformation process will result in broader and more efficient access to innovation, while at the same time, maintaining variety in the vendors used by the state.Despite the support of leadership and the involvement of the various agencies, Nunnelly said he has encountered a fair amount of skepticism because of unsuccessful past efforts. This time around, he said, the transformation is more of a must than a choice."We have to do this. If we dont get a new digital face and a digital efficiency to how we interact with our constituents, we just cant keep up with their demands, he said. We need to spend less time figuring out how we officially communicate with each other and more time figuring out how we have effective communications on the really big ways that our constituents interact with us."Nunnelly said the state needs to be comfortable leveraging other peoples technology first and doing fewer things, but doing them better."When all is said and done, the MassIT executive director said cost savings will likely follow the efficiencies, but service to the citizens is paramount.While clearly we are on the search to make ourselves more efficient, the governor is really, really committed and understands that ultimately when we are done, this is not about whether you are spending less year on year," he said. "This is about whether or not we are serving our constituents better with more useful digital tools.
(TNS) -- Many Baltimore residents may not have heard of Texas philanthropists Laura and John Arnold until it came to light last month that they had bankrolled a secret aerial surveillance program by police.But the Arnolds' support of the pilot operation is not the first criminal justice technology they've tried to get off the ground in Maryland.The Laura and John Arnold Foundation has spent more than $1 million to develop a Public Safety Assessment tool that judges in three states and several cities are using to reduce the number of people sitting in jail because they cannot pay bail, especially for nonviolent offenses.During the 2014 Maryland General Assembly session, the foundation's representatives worked with Maryland lawmakers to introduce legislation to adopt the technology for the state's judges.The legislation was supported by Attorney General Brian E. Frosh, Maryland Public Defender Paul B. DeWolfe and prosecutors, including Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger. The technology provides an algorithm that tells judges which defendants are at greater risk of committing crimes if released, and which would likely not re-offend and would show up for trial.Other types of risk assessment technologies have been criticized for harboring racial bias.Laura Arnold said in an interview that their foundation's tool does not take race, gender and other similar metrics into consideration."The public safety assessment tool is rooted in looking at who is in the jails and why are they there. What societal values are driving us from keeping a person for up to a year in jail because that person can't pay when that alleged crime is a nonviolent crime?" Arnold said. "That really led us to ask what do we know."Pilot tests of the assessment tool  and the surveillance technology  are intended to produce data that public officials can study and determine whether the programs are worth funding for the long term.The Arnolds paid $360,000 for the aerial surveillance in Baltimore, where police have acknowledged using a bank of cameras aboard a privately operated Cessna airplane flying thousands of feet above the city."Our approach is to create alternatives that may be better than the status quo," Laura Arnold said. "We often don't have the data to understand what leads to the best outcomes."Ultimately, the legislation failed and Maryland did not adopt the foundation's tool. Some counties have their own risk assessment tool, DeWolfe said in an email."But the Arnold Foundation tool is not being used anywhere as far as I know," he said.
The FIA and rival teams want to stop a rule loophole that explains some of the superiority of Mercedes' 2016 car.

That is the claim of Germany's specialist Auto Motor und Sport, claiming the silver-clad team not only has the best engine in F1 but also the best chassis.

The report said the Mercedes has an hydraulic roll and height control system - similar to the earlier 'Fric' concept that was banned - that cleverly uses the 'step' in the top of the chassis to mimic active suspension.

For aesthetic reasons, this 'step' was allowed to be covered by a so-called 'vanity panel' after 2012, but it also gave Mercedes a place to house the system outside of the carbon tube.

Correspondent Michael Schmidt said: "The other teams now recognise the trick and put it on the agenda for the technical meeting on the Tuesday after Monza."

He added that the FIA would like to ban it shortly, but that would require the agreement of all the teams - including Mercedes - to change the 2017 regulations.

(GMM)
Activists in more than half the states in the nation marched and rallied Monday, calling on elected officials to view public policies through a moral lens that focuses on the poor, workers, the sick and other disenfranchised people.

The rallies held Monday were part of the Higher Ground Moral Day of Action, led by the Rev. William Barber. Barber is the architect of the Moral Monday protests that begin in April 2013 in North Carolina to fight the conservative politics of a Republican governor and legislature.

The rallies, scheduled in 30 state capitals and Washington, D.C., attracted crowds ranging from about 300 people in Raleigh to about 50 in Austin, Texas. People marched around state Capitol buildings, rallied and delivered petitions to governors and other elected leaders and candidates.

Today we declare ... a call to higher ground, said Barber, who took a spot in the national limelight when he spoke this year at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. And we move from the lowlands of hatred and racism and meanness and the politics of just you can defeat and who you can disparage to higher ground.

The activists asked elected officials and candidates to sign a Higher Ground Moral Declaration to support issues that include voting rights, economic justice, workers rights, health care and the rights of LGBTQ people. In North Carolina, they said they were unable to reach Gov. Pat McCrory.

Miriam Thompson, 79, of Chapel Hill, sat on a bench with friends before the rally started, saying she has supported Barber since his early marches that began in 2007.

With her Rosie the Riveter tattoo displayed prominently on her upper right arm, she described herself as a long-time union supporter who supports the fight for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and its moral message to give the workers and their labor the kind of respect they deserve and the ability to raise their families in dignity.

Rallies in other states attracted crowds of varying sizes with most people talking about the fight for $15.

About 200 people rallied on the steps of the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg before some brought their issues to the governors office while others marched around the outside of the building.

In addition to the minimum wage increase, they also advocated for action on climate change and greater use of clean energy, prison reform and union rights.

Yusef Jones of Paoli, a paralegal, called the group a coalition of the marginalized.

In April, California became the first state to adopt a $15 minimum wage so the rally in Sacramento focused on expanding union rights, improving working conditions and combating racism.

Its not fair that its only here in California, Osler Flores, a 19-year-old fast-food worker from Huntington Park near Los Angeles, said of the minimum wage increase. It should be spread across the nation.

In Nashville, Tenn., the rally coincided with the first day of a three-day specially called session of the Legislature.

Kristina Jones, a home health care worker in Memphis, said she works for $9 an hour part time. She said she loves her work but is not making enough to get by.

I have a son who is 2 years old, she said. There are times when I have to decide whether to pay my car note or my light bill. I dont want to be rich. I just want to live comfortably.
State Sen. Rob Teplitz, along with members of the military, veterans groups and friends and loved ones of local veteran Lou De Lancey gathered at Veterans Memorial Park in Newport Monday to honor his life and service and unveil a memorial highway sign in his name.

Teplitz authored Senate Bill 868 to name a section of Pennsylvania Route 849 in Newport the United States Navy Petty Officer 1st Class A. Louis De Lancey Memorial Highway. Language from his bill was inserted into another bill in order to expedite the naming of this highway and was signed into law last spring.

A Newport native, De Lancey joined the Navy in 1954 and served aboard the USS Midway and the USS Hanson during the Korean War era. While aboard the USS Midway, Petty Officer De Lancey assisted in the evacuation of more than 18,000 civilians and 15,000 of Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalist troops to Formosa, now known as Taiwan, as they fled from the Communist Peoples Liberation Army troops advancing on the Dachen (Tachen) Islands.

In recognition for his service, the Navy awarded Petty Officer De Lancey the China Service Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, and the National Defense Service Medal.

Lou De Lancey was a well-known and respected Perry County resident who courageously served our country and saved many lives, said Teplitz (D-Dauphin/Perry). This highway sign serves as a lasting tribute to De Lanceys community, our commonwealth, and this great nation.

The ceremony was held as a special event of Teplitzs Veterans Advisory Committee.

De Lancey was a life member and post commander of William H. Saylor VFW No. 34 and Newport American Legion Post 177, commander of the Perry Council VFW, co-founder and president of the Perry County Sailors Association and a member of the USS Midway Veterans Association and the Navy Club of the USA. He was inducted into the Chapel of the Four Chaplains Legion of Honor in 2003 for his work with the Korean War Veterans Recognition Ceremony.

In addition to his military service, De Lancey was a member of the Loyal Order of Moose Lodge No. 925, and Plumbers and Pipefitters Local Union 520.

De Lancey died on Feb. 23, 2014, at age 77.
Dr. Steve Landau recently returned from a week in Baton Rouge, La., working with AMURT and AMURTEL (Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team and Ladies Section).

Landau, president of AMURT USA, and other volunteers helped those whose homes were damaged by flooding. They ripped out drywall, removed heavy, waterlogged furniture and mattresses and performed other necessary tasks.

Landau and others operated under the guidance and shelter of the Jordan United Methodist Church, led by Pastor Fredrick Sweetwyne

AMURT continues to need volunteers and funds to pay for their transportation and food.

For information, contact Landau at (919) 868-4729 or visit www.amurt.net.
What we learned from the Commander-in-Chief exercise the other night is: (a) neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump is fastidious about facts, (b) Matt Lauer is a nice guy but not up to presidential politics, and  voters expecting better in the real debate Sept. 26 should not hold their breaths.

Trump told us his plan for defeating ISIS is to get new generals to run the military and give them 30 days to come up with a plan for defeating ISIS. Clearly Trump doesnt understand how the military operates. What he does know is that he can say just about anything in a public forum or debate and get away with it.

Clinton told us she will never put American boots on the ground in Iraq or other Mideast hotspots. Apparently she has overlooked the fact that we currently have some 5,000 troops in Iraq and thousands more in the region.

Lauer told us that Lester Hope (sic) will moderate the first actual debate and For Matt Lauer (sic), Im Matt Lauer.

All sides tore into Lauer, whose performance probably wasnt as bad as Twitter suggested. The biggest beef was that he didnt challenge Trump for claiming  as he always does  that he was totally opposed to the war in Iraq.

Clinton supporters felt that Lauer dwelled too long on the email scandal, and denied Clinton proper time to expand on world and military affairs.

Its an almost impossible task. As Chris Wallace, who will moderate the final debate on Fox, correctly said: I do not believe it is my job to be a truth squad.

Yes, outright misstatements should be challenged  and Lauer did some of that  but the format doesnt allow for a secondary debate about shades of truth. Moreover, Trump and Clinton have both proved that they are prepared to stand firmly behind their own versions of the facts, the truth be damned.

Diehard supporters of both candidates, apparently, couldnt care less.

So the table is set for the Sept. 26 debate, likely to be one of the most heavily watched shows in television history. Alas, the meal will be all sizzle and little steak.

Lester Holt is similar to Lauer in style and demeanor. Hes no pit bull, which is precisely why both political parties were able to accept him as a moderator.

Among the many difficulties are that the core issues  say, the economy, terrorism and perhaps either healthcare or climate change  are not the hot topics for either candidate.

Viewers expect Trump to be asked about immigration, his failed businesses and his total lack of experience. They expect Clinton to answer questions about emails, her health and the Clinton Foundation.

Moreover, both Trump and Clinton have chewed their oratory pablum so fully that nothing fazes them. Trump will remain surprisingly cool, as he was with Lauer; Clinton will be distinctly un-shrill and overly wordy, as we observed the other night.

Holt will be diplomatic, which is to say he should make it a point not to read Twitter for 48 hours following the debate.

What we have are candidates who will say anything, voters who dont seem to care, and moderators who would find it easier to herd cats.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate. He can be reached at www.CandidCamera.com.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

STAMFORD  A new contest is seeking women entrepreneurs from southwestern Connecticut who want to accelerate their businesses growth with the help of a ride-sharing powerhouse.

The Westport-based business accelerator The Refinery, Uber and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation have launched a nationwide pitch competition, Fueling the Growth, for technology-focused and women-led companies that are ready to scale. The competition will award a total of $120,000 in grants.

Women-led startups received less than 2.7 percent of venture capital in 2011-2013, so a competition like this helps connect women entrepreneurs and investors in a dynamic, fun and innovative way, Janis Collins, co-founder of The Refinery, said in a statement. But this competition is about more than prize money. Its about giving the founders valuable access to investors and input on their businesses.

Participants will ride Oct. 26 for 10 to 15 minutes in an Uber car, where they will pitch their businesses to an investor. Stamford, New Haven, Providence, R.I., Baltimore, Kansas City, Mo., and Washington, D.C., will host the Uber rides, with at least 27 set to take part in each city.

We are hoping to establish Fueling the Growth as an annual event, and in keeping with Steve Cases Rise of the Rest (initiative), we selected cities that are emerging startup ecosystems, Collins said. Because it is our first year, we limited it to emerging ecosystems where we had investors available to ride in Uber cars to hear pitches. Our goal is to expand the reach every year.

Approximately 20 semifinalists will be invited to present Nov. 16 at the Stamford Innovation Center. A pitch-off featuring that group will determine the final 10.

We will rank the top 10 after the pitches and will allocate the grant dollars to the top companies, Collins said.

To be eligible for the competition, companies must have at least one woman in a leadership role, show proven scalability with product market fit and use technology in their business model.

Uber officials said that they were pleased to team with The Refinery and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to support women entrepreneurs.

Fueling the Growth will do more than give life-changing grants, said Matt Powers, Uber Connecticuts general manager. Starting with the very first pitch that will happen in an Uber, this program will provide female entrepreneurs with invaluable investor feedback, and propel women-led startups to the forefront of innovation.

Entrepreneurs must apply online by Oct. 20 to participate in the competition. If entrepreneurs are not able to ride on that date, they can apply online by Oct. 28 to be considered to present at the final pitch event on Nov. 16.

Full guidelines are available on The Refinerys website, www.therefineryct.com.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The Greater Danbury Irish Festival returns to Ives Concert Park this weekend with its usual mix of live music, food, crafts and dancing.

Opening Friday, Sept. 16, and running through Sunday, Sept. 18, this annual celebration is fun for all ages. Theres so many attractions its impossible to list everything, but a detailed schedule is on the festivals website.

The Traveling Danburys kick off the music on the Main Stage Friday at 6:45 p.m., followed by Aussie Celtic-punk band, Go Set. Saturdays music starts with Steve OTree and Friends, who hit the stage at noon, followed by a lengthy lineup, including Celtic Cross Pipes and Drums, as well as the Mighty Ploughboy Nation. Sundays music begins at 1 p.m. with uilleann piper Matt Connolly, and continues from there.

Students from several Irish dance schools will perform throughout the festival. Theres a Cultural Tent, too, where a Ceili dance will be held Saturday night; you can take a lesson and join the fun. The Cultural Tent is also where visitors can learn about everything from Irish blessings to genealogy, and where a national speaker will talk about Women of the Rising  the 1916 fight for an Irish republic and a fairer society.

Kids can enjoy such activities as face painting, sand crafts and jewelry making. Vendors will offer everything from childrens toys to Irish clothing (from Donegal Importers) and folk-art jewelry, among other items.

Then, of course, theres the food. Forget Lucky Charms. Among the vendors will be Auroras Gypsy Cafe, Moes Wood-Fired Pizza, Green Grunion and Meat the Press, not to mention Ralph the Ice Cream Man. Theres beer, wine and more, plus a Hospitality Tent offering homemade goods, such as Irish soda bread and scones.

Ives Concert Park, 43 Lake Ave. Ext., Danbury. Friday, Sept. 16, through Sunday, Sept. 18. Friday 5-10 p.m. Saturday 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. $5 Friday night, $2 with student ID. $12 Saturday or wear green for $2 off. $12 Sunday. Free daily for kids under 12. $25 for three-day weekend pass. 203-417-3311, 203-739-0010, FestivalCommitee@danburyirishfestival.org, danburyirishfestival.org
GREENWICH  A scientist for the towns environmental consultant said she would send her child to Western Middle School despite the fact her firm recommended the schools grounds be remediated due to the presence of lead and other contaminants.

The probabilities that are presented in the risk assessment show very, very low additional risk to (people using) this property, said Emily Strake, Langans senior project chemist/risk assessor. I can say that risk is a sort of a perception thing and what I might consider acceptable, others might be more fearful of. Would I send my own children to school there? Yes, absolutely without reservation.

These risks are well within EPA acceptable risk range and are nowhere near what EPA considers a low risk range, she said.

Still, her firm, Langan Inc., has recommended that the town excavate and replace soil in the schools fields. Tests taken this summer found elevated levels of lead, arsenic, PCBs and semi-volatile organic compounds.

Strake said they made the recommendation to clean up the grounds based on a contamination threshold far below the line at which the government requires remediation.

Children are the most sensitive receptors to the health effects of lead, Strake said. The calculation model I used assumed children incur exposure to lead in their homes and then incur additional exposure when they travel to other areas like schools, playgrounds, day care, elsewhere.

Under that model, Strake said Langan recommended the town remediate any soil where lead was found at a concentration of 606 milligrams per kilogram of soil. The state requires remediation for lead contamination at a concentration of 6,000 mg/kg. Lead was found in the Western fields at a concentration ranging from 7.74 to 1,640 mg/kg.

Langan also recommended replacing soil in which PCBs were found. The state environmental hazard level for PCBs is 15 mg/kg. The consultant found concentrations as high as 5.03 mg/kg at Western.

Langan recommended not to take out soil elsewhere despite the presence of other contaminants including arsenic.

Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment and I deal with it probably at the majority of my sites, Strake said.

Arsenic findings at Western ranged from 2.35 to 13.4 mg/kg. The state hazard level for arsenic is 150 mg/kg. The more conservative residential exposure level, which does not require reporting to the state or remediation, is 10 mg/kg.

In fact the residential standard for arsenic in Connecticut is background standard, Strake said. That means its not risk based. Its based on how much arsenic is expected at any given place at any given time. What we found at the site in some areas exceeded that 10, some only marginally, and one that exceeded it significantly but the statistics tell us thats the outlier.

To be conservative in the health risk assessment, Strake included that outlier but said overall it is consistent with the background standard that people frequently encounter. She said the risk associated with the arsenic is considered well within acceptable levels by Langan.

The state Department of Public Health is currently reviewing the Langan report. Once a plan is formally approved by the state, Langan can bring it to the Board of Education for a vote.

We dont know what direction, specifically, (the state is) going to take because its going to be up to them what is safe, said Langan Senior Vice President Jamie Barr. We provide the science for them to make those decisions. We cant say whether a standard is acceptable. The state says that.

Everyones kind of in it together, Barr said. Were all discussing it together because risk is many fingers. Theres many components to it. Its not just the science and it will all be discussed in tandem with (the Department of Health). We dont intend to do this alone.

Maura Downes, director of communications for the state Department of Health, said there was no timeframe for when Langans recommendations would be fully evaluated but she expected it to be sooner rather than later.

When we are finished with our review we will reach out to the town through the Board of Education and health department and they will take it from there, Downes said.

Full reports from Langan are available online at http://bit.ly/2cjF41M.

kborsuk@scni.com
Beef, chicken, shrimp, and vegetable dumplings. Photo: Jemma Hinkly/ New York Magazine

Is the East Village ready for farm-to-table soup dumplings, the specialty of this bare-bones storefront? The phrase is owner and culinary-school grad Yuan Lis way of telegraphing the locavore provenance of some of the meat and vegetable fillings gracing the insides of the xiao long bao, jiaozi, and steamed buns that make up his 11-item menu.

Lis real secret weapon, though, is his mom, Qihui Guan, a mathematics professor and amateur cook turned professional dumpling-maker. When she emigrated to the United States 15 years ago and couldnt find work in her chosen field, Guans hobby became her profession, leading to a position at soup-dumpling dynasty Joes Shanghai. And while drunken typically refers to Chinese dishes made with ingredients steeped in Shaoxing rice wine, in this case, the term alludes to the juiciness of the dumplings  a trait likely to be most apparent in the XL XLB, a jumbo version that Li serves with a straw.

At bottom, the XL XLB, a monster soup dumpling thats served with a straw to help extract the broth. Photo: Jemma Hinkly/ New York Magazine

Chef Qihui Guan tending to her steamer baskets. Photo: Jemma Hinkly/ New York Magazine

137 First Ave., nr. St. Marks Pl.; 212-982-8882

*This article appears in the September 19, 2016, issue of New York Magazine.
Its possible this man is not actually a genius. Photo-Illustration: Photo: Bill McCay/WireImage

Foodie-ism has finally come full circle. When human frosted-tip Guy Fieri first arrived on Americas TV screens a decade ago, people who actually care about good food fittingly saw him for what he is: a joke. In 2011, Anthony Bourdain said, I look at Guy Fieri and I just think, Jesus, Im glad thats not me. Others offered similar opinions over the years. And in 2012, Times critic Pete Wells delivered the worlds most famous Fieri burn, a 1,000-word takedown of his truly mediocre Times Square Restaurant, Guys American Kitchen & Bar. It was the restaurant slam read round the world  no doubt the darkest day on record for the residents of Flavor Town, and a magnificent blow to any claims Fieri may have had to culinary credibility. Lately, though, a strange new phenomenon has taken hold among otherwise right-minded Americans: a fresh embrace of Fieri and his original show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.



These are not tepid endorsements. The stories have headlines like Guy Fieri Is the Hero We Need (Playboy, 2015), The Unrecognizable Genius of Guy Fieri (Esquire, September 2016), or The Accidental American Genius of Guy Fieri (The New Yorker  the actual New Yorker!  2016). Esquire proclaims that he takes every plate piled high with burgers and fries as seriously as you might an entry in the Bocuse dOr. Fieri, according to First We Feast, cracks the code to lifes biggest conundrums.



Fieri is not, these stories argue, the sentient garbage disposal you thought he was. No, hes a brilliant, populist savant who, all along, has been celebrating the kind of food Americans should be eating. The meals that real Americans eat. Per Playboy, Fieris contribution to preserving and publicizing Americas culinary culture is a side of the story that doesnt get shared very often. A story in David Changs Lucky Peach agrees. The show highlight[s] inclusivity without being about inclusivity  Hes not asking about the political story of hummus; hes discovering the personal story behind a specific hummus.

Call it the Guy Fieri Reclamation Project. But its time to put a stop to this kind of thinking. The entrepreneurs Fieri spotlights, for the most part, do deserve to be celebrated. And they benefit from being on his show, which, yes, serves a certain purpose. But is Guy Fieri really the man for the job? Does it make him a genius?

Indeed, tastes have changed, for the better. Food snobbery is out, good food presented without folksy pretension is in. Enjoy a burrito with a side of taco salad. Hell, go drink a pina colada at a fancy bar and enjoy yourself while you do it. This is a better way to eat and live, and on the surface it seems that this is exactly the kind of approach to food that Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives  Triple D, to its legions of fans  celebrates. The mom-and-pop establishments that get featured do tend to specialize in affordable cooking thats free of a chefs ego and mainly serves to make customers happy.

Guy Fieri is a man who helped open a restaurant called Tex Wasabis that specializes in rock-n-roll sushi-bbq, and once debuted a menu of kraft kocktails. Guy Fieri put his name on a Times Square restaurant that sells dishes like Motley Que Ribs for $25 and Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders for $13.50. He currently hosts a Supermarket Sweep Food Network rip-off. Guy Fieri contributed recipes to a Smash Mouth cookbook, has had endorsement deals with T.G.I. Fridays and Miller Lite, and shilled Hot Fudge Brownie K-cups for Keurig, as well as $140 meat packs for Costco. Guy Fieri insists on pronouncing his name Fee-Eddy even though his given name is Guy Ferry. This is not a man of the people, here to save America from its own pretentiousness. This is a man who adopted a cartoonish look and even worse catchphrases and kept rolling with it until he could afford a fleet of bright-yellow luxury automobiles.

Celebrating Fieris essential Fieri-ness is the problem. It leads to vapid catchphrases. It encourages national restaurant chains like Taco Bell and Burger King to follow their basest instincts and release Chimeras like fried-chicken taco shells, Whopper burritos, and  God help us  something called Cheetos Chicken Fries.

Triple D is a relaxing, satisfying show, the kind of thing thats fine to have on in the background while you do something else. But it isnt good because of Guy Fieri; its good in spite of him. Fieri is a flaming-skull decal brought to life, and he built a business empire on the very premise that hes a human punch line, but you could argue that the talented people on Triple D would actually be better served by a person who takes the enterprise a little more seriously.
Funnel cake all the time. Photo: Craig Kohlruss/MCT via Getty Images

Walmarts transition into your one-stop shop for blocked arteries continues, and frozen-food-aisle fried Twinkies will merely serve as the gateway drug: A Texas State Fairthemed restaurant could soon occupy a year-round spot inside your neighborhood Supercenter. State Fair Treats, as its called, will feature a 45-item menu celebrating the treats families enjoy every year when they make an annual pilgrimage to the fair  unhealthy things fried in oil, in other words. At least it beats other themes the company recently backed (specifically, the one where customers were asked to never forget $3.33 Coke products arranged to look like the Twin Towers).



The first eatery opens this month in Dallas (home to the fairgrounds), but the Morning News reports owner Isaac Russo, whose food often wins at each years Big Tex Choice Awards, is already thinking much bigger: There are many, many McDonalds that are going to be transitioning out of Walmart stores, he tells the paper. Were going to be looking at every opportunity as they transition out to jump in. He already predicts 15 locations within the year. Walmart refused to confirm anything, but a rep did warn the News that the vast majority of its 4,600-plus U.S. stores theoretically have space to accommodate a State Fair Treats.



Obviously, the real winner here is Russo. Hes on track to go from a man with a popular fair stand to a millionaire restaurateur with locations spread throughout the nations Walmarts. What will be on that giant menu of his is anyones guess (it should be noted that Russo is the force behind cookie fries and deep-fried Pop-Tarts), although if he made it a collaborative effort by all Texas fair concessionaires, he could throw in fried Jell-O, fried butter, fried Coke, fried meatloaf, fried Thanksgiving dinner, chicken-fried lobster, and even funnel cake ale to cut through all the oil.
The Lenovo Phab2 Pro was announced back in June at Lenovo Tech World in Silicon Valley and is the worlds first phone with Googles Project Tango to soon become commercially available. You can check out our hands-on from back in June.

AusDroid reports that the Project Tango smartphone will not be coming to Australia at all. As far as where it will be coming first, Lenovo says that the Phab2 Pro will arrive in Asia next month to whichever countries Lenovos phones are normally sold.

The Lenovo Phab2 Pro was supposed to become available in the US online in August, and in Best Buy stores this month. However, AusDroids report coincides with Lenovos minor change to the US landing page for the Phab2 Pro. The page used to say Coming This Summer but has since been changed to reflect a new timeframe. Now the page says Coming This Fall.

Just last month, a Lenovo blog post hinted that the device would be available in stores this holiday season.

The Lenovo Phab2 Pro uses advanced sensors that are able to detect the phones location in 3 dimensions. Possible applications for the technology arent limited to exploring a museum, previewing new furniture in your home, taking accurate measurements in 3D, or even navigating the New York Subway system tunnels, perhaps? Imagine if it could tell you exactly where to go and which platform to take the train from.

The Lenovo Phab2 Pro will cost $499 in the US and and feature a huge QHD 6.4 inch display, 16MP camera, 64GB/4GB of memory, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 CPU and backed by a 4,050mAh power cell.

Thanks for the tip Aquaphoenix!

Source 1 | Source 2 | Source 3 | Via
Samsung's Galaxy Note7 recall program is well under way, but not all devices are under threat of catching fire. The company has put up a special website where Galaxy Note7 owners can check if their device is compromised.

To do so, you have to punch in the phone's IMEI into Samsung's website. To check your IMEI, you can simply look at the phone's retail box or go to Apps > Settings > About device > Status > IMEI information.

Meanwhile, the number of faulty Galaxy Note7 units continues to pile on. Over 70 phones have overheated in the US alone.

Follow the source link below to check if your Note7 is safe to use.

Source
These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales.
Union Cabinet approves MoU between India and Kenya in the field of National Housing Policy Development and Management

Published: September 13, 2016

The Union Cabinet has given its approval for the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and Kenya on cooperation in the field of National Housing Policy Development and Management (NHPDM).

The MoU was signed between both countries in July 2016 at Nairobi during the visit of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to 5 African nations.

Under the MoU

Both sides will collaborate on all matters relating to human settlements and housing through various strategies including training of personnel, exchange visits,exhibitions, conferences and workshops.

The cooperation between both nations will focus on upscaling slum prevention and upgradation initiatives based on experience and implementation process of each country.

They will collaborate on development and sharing of information on real estate and housing data base including market trends, investment opportunities and best practices.

It will encourage technical cooperation between both countries in facilitating access to affordable housing from locally available building materials.

It will also encourage technical cooperation between both countries in development of Government and Public employee facilitated housing.

This would be useful to explore ways of a delivery model towards Government employees housing scheme by private sector players.

Month: Current Affairs - September, 2016

Topics: Cabinet Decisions  Housing Sector  India-Kenya  National

Latest E-Books




Haiti - Elections : The black American actor Danny Glover endorses Maryse Narcisse





Maryse Narcisse, the presidential candidate under the banner of "Fanmi Lavalas" party announced that a private fundraising event was held Sunday evening at the Shelburne Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The purpose of the private event was to not only fundraise but also draw a crowd of both political and celebrity VIPs for major campaign support. Among the 328 attendees were key figures, such as actor, director and political activist Danny Glover; Glover not only attended as a key speaker for the evening but also released a video endorsement for the candidate.







"I have the opportunity to come to New York on many occasions. I have this specific opportunity to come on this occasion and do something that's very important. There is an election on October 9th in Haiti and it is an important election for the Haitian people because they have the opportunity to elect their president" declared Danny Glover "I want to say that I am here as a Haitian at heart to say that I am in full support of her and so excited for the opportunity that the Haitian people have to have a president who cares, who fights, who will change the world and change their world. Thank you very much, Dr. Narcisse."



"As we move towards victory in Haiti, Mr. Glover's support comes at an opportune time as he has been involved in many issues regarding democracy, including those surrounding Africa, Haiti and Caribbean political affairs," declared Leslie Voltaire, Dr. Narcisse's Presidential Campaign Director and Senior Adviser, adding "serving as UNICEF Ambassador, he plays a critical role in raising awareness on the issues of disease, poverty [...]"



SL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2016/09/13 | Source

Added episodes 10 and 11 captures for the Korean drama "The Second Last Love" (2016)

Advertisement

Directed by Choi Yeong-hoon

Written by Choi Yoon-jung, Lee Hee-myeong

Network : SBS

With Kim Hee-ae, Ji Jin-hee, Kwak Si-yang, Kim Seul-gi, Jung Soo-young, Lee Soo-min,...

20 episodes - Sat, Sun 21:55

Synopsis

A remake of the Japanese drama "The Second Last Love" about a single woman in her 40s who feels unstable about life after her retirement.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2016/07/30

More
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
Published on 2016/09/13 | Source

Added episodes 5 and 6 captures for the Korean drama "The Gentlemen of Wolgyesu Tailor Shop" (2016)

Advertisement

Directed by Hwang In-hyeok

Written by Koo Hyeon-sook

Network : KBS

With Lee Dong-gun, Jo Yoon-hee, Shin Goo, Kim Young-ae, Oh Hyun-kyung, Cha In-pyo,...

Sat, Sun 19:55

Synopsis

"Suited Gentlemen In Yanggye-dong" is based on a traditional tailor's with history. The drama depicts the tears, friendship, success and romance of four men.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2016/08/27

More
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.

05:30, 30 OCT 2022
       : -       , '  ,     '
After 27 years of faithful service, Farmington High Schools Marie Gibbs will stop the copy machines and turn off the lights in her tiny office for the last time today when she officially retires from the district.

At the age of 93, Gibbs has been running the copy center for the high school longer than many of the schools present teachers have been working, but she will be the first to tell you she has enjoyed working for the district and helping the schools teachers whenever she can.

I enjoy being here. The teachers are just so wonderful, Gibbs said. But they dont have a lot of time (to make copies), so I have never felt so appreciated at a job in my life.

Over the course of the Gibbs' career at the high school, technology has literally evolved right in front of her. When Gibbs started, the district was using mimeograph machines where she would make copies manually.

Although she has been part of the establishment at the school for more than a quarter of a century, what many dont realize is she had another career before she joined the Knights staff. For 32 years, Gibbs worked for the Missouri Natural Gas Company.

I had been working for Missouri Natural Gas Company in Park Hills and got asked to come to Farmington for just two weeks, but I stayed for 32 years, Gibbs said. I will miss (the high school), but it will be a good miss. I will enjoy not hurrying around in the morning to get to school.

After Gibbs retires, she plans to keep active helping out where she can - especially the Farmington OAKS Senior Center.

I am going to spend quite a lot of time at the senior center, Gibbs said. They are always needing some help, and its a good place to meet and visit with people or take some classes.
Could genetically modified mosquitoes save Hawaiis endangered birds?

by Michael Specter, The New Yorker, September 9, 2016 (excerpt)

Mosquitoes, which carry avian malaria, are a principal reason that just forty-two of more than a hundred species of native Hawaiian birds remain. Most of them are endangered.

There were no mosquitoes on the Hawaiian islands until early in the nineteenth century, when they arrived on whaling ships. That meant that native birds had no exposure to the diseases that mosquitoes carry, and therefore no immunity. One way to protect the birds from malaria has been to kill mosquitoes with chemicals. But [p]oison that can kill mosquitoes frequently also kills the plants and animals that surround them.

Science may offer a solution, however. There are now genetic technologies that, at least in theory, are environmentally benign, but could wipe out the mosquitoes that have decimated the birds of Hawaiiand those that endanger human health as well. That has many conservation ecologists tremendously excited

Any sentence that includes both the words genetic and modify causes controversyoften even before the facts are discussed. Many in Hawaii are particularly sensitive to what they see as the abuses of biotechnology. Critics argue that altering genes to save birds could cause extinctions and other unknown effects, and yet this technology may present the first genuine opportunity to protect these vanishing species.

Read full article: Could genetically modified mosquitoes save Hawaiis endangered birds?

NPQ: Gates Foundation Redoubles Its Commitment to Stop Mosquito-Borne Disease
Doctor supply grew but statewide shortage is still apparent

by Tina Shelton, UH News, September 12, 2016

The doctor shortage in Hawaii eased a bit in the past year, as 97 new physicians received licenses to practice. Thats compared to the year before, when the number of newly licensed doctors was only four.

The latest figures are from the Hawaii Physician Workforce Assessment, released today. The survey, by the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine ( JABSOM ), looks at newly issued physician licenses, as well as the numbers of doctors retiring every year.

A fee on doctors licenses, which are issued every two years, funds the survey. The UH medical schools Kelley Withy has spearheaded the effort to quantify and address the ongoing doctor shortage.

The physician workforce numbers are looking a little better, said Withy, director of the John A. Burns School of Medicine Area Health Education Center. We gained 97 physicians net in the last year, which is better than the prior year when we gained four physicians, net. We did lose 45 to retirement but we gained enough to make up for that. So its looking better but we still have a shortage of 500 physicians overall.

Efforts to encourage healthcare workers include:

Maintaining a jobs website advertising openings at hospitals, clinics and in practices in Hawaii

Conducting numerous teen health camps statewide every year where elementary, middle school and high school students get hands-on practice in patient care, mentored by medical, nursing and dental hygiene students

Establishing a speakers bureau to get health workers out to community groups and schools to talk about the rewards and challenges of health careers

Establishing a loan repayment program for early career health providers to repay their student loans if they commit to practice in rural/underserved areas

Increasing the size of classes at JABSOM and in the MD specialty training programs, including fellowships, that new doctors must complete, which are overseen by the medical school in partnership with major hospitals in Hawaii

The medical school and Hawaii State Department of Health also sponsored the annual Hawaii Health Workforce Summit to advance efforts to cope with the expected flood of physician retirements to come in the years ahead while also meeting the needs of the states growing elder population.

For more, read the JABSOM story.
Two city boards will hold meetings tonight.

The Park Hills City Council will meet tonight at 6 p.m. for a regular session in the municipal court chambers at city hall, located at 9 Bennett St.

Up first on the agenda are a series of three public hearings for gathering citizen input.

The first concerns a request for a special use permit for the construction of a storage facility and an addition to an existing storage facility. The second hearing is in regard to an amendment to the municipal code regarding a minor subdivision and lot consideration. The third hearing concerns an amendment to Chapter 400 of the Table of Permissible Use.

All Park Hills residents are welcome to attend the hearings and listen and/or give their input.

Also on the agenda, City Administrator Matt Whitwell will give reports on the citys Parks and Recreation, Public Works and Utilities departments.

In unfinished business, council members will vote on a bill that would amend a chapter of the municipal code affecting city council meetings.

In new business, council members will discuss and consider budget-related matters.

The meeting is open to the public.

The Leadington Board of Aldermen meets in regular session tonight at 6 p.m. at the municipal building, located at 12 Weir St.

According to the tentative agenda, the board will consider a number of new business items that include: a request by Dr. Harding; Charter Communications; Taylor Engineering design; street department purchase request; fire department furnace; McKinney rezone request; computer; awning; supply list; cemetery trees; Christmas tree; police department training; Flat River Road; and the AT&T bill.

The board will also consider passing an amendment of ordinance 326 dealing with nuisances.

The city also announced it will hold a bid opening prior to the regular meeting at 5 p.m. to open engineering bids.
Three killed in Thailand ethanol plant blast

Three workers were killed in an explosion at an ethanol factory in Khon Kaen, eastern Thailand, on September 12. The explosion, at a Thai Ethanol Power facility, was triggered by sparks from a welding torch being used to fix the lid of a ruptured bio-gas tank inside the factory, according to an initial police investigation.

Stock image

Police found two dead bodies on the factory floor near the bio-gas tank, which was connected to the wastewater treatment tank to get gas for the electricity-generating system. Another body was found on top of the 18-metre-high bio-gas tank.



According to The Nation, production manager Theerawat Saekuay said the company had hired a contractor to repair the 8,000-litre wastewater treatment system. He said the damage was limited to one tank and that factory executives would meet to discuss the incident.


a recent study conducted by the University of Texas, young managers ascribing to bring change within an organisation were unable to build trust and command respect from older subordinates.



As reported by Science Daily, Dr Orlando Richard, associate professor of organisations, strategy and international management, described it as status incongruence. This occurs when a subordinate is older or has more education, work experience, and/or organisational tenure than the supervisor, he explained.



Leaders with the goal of change rely heavily on creating an environment where managers are expected to inspire employees to share in the leaders vision, said the report. But what happens when your boss is less experienced or younger than you? You are less likely to respond to their leadership style. It also affects the level of commitment you have to the organisation because you feel you are more qualified than they are, he explained.



An employees level of comfort and trust with a manager is closely tied with their productivity, performance, and commitment to the company, said Richard.



HR should therefore ensure that the right leader is in place. Putting the wrong person in charge could create resentment among employees and cause more problems down the road. No one wants to work for someone who they feel doesnt have the credentials, he added.



Richard and his co-researchers also studied what effects gender and change-heavy leadership would have on an employees commitment.



The study, conducted in Turkey and the US, found that older employees in Turkey were less inclined to believe in a younger, male leader. In the US, this proved the same for women.



Women in management have to especially have the credential in order to demand respect. If they do, and they display transformational leadership, theyll experience more commitment from their employees, they concluded.
Most employees in all age brackets did not have a preferred day to work on the weekend

Most employees would work more hours on a Saturday if offered, regardless of age

Most employees aged 30 years and younger would work more hours on a Sunday if offered

The most common reason for preferring to work on Saturday over Sunday was study commitments (for those aged 16-17) and spending time with family (for all other age brackets)

The most common reason for preferring work on Sundays over Saturdays was sporting commitments (for those aged 15 or less), wanting to socialise with friends on Saturdays (for those aged 16 to 24) and spending time with family on Saturdays (for those older than 25)

However, the SDA  the union for retail, fast food, warehousing, hair & beauty, and modelling  said that this evidence was not adequate.



The Ai Group has not articulated a cogent basis for why age and employment status may provide a proxy for classification levels. The SDA submits that, in the context of the survey, neither age nor employment status are a reasonable or reliable proxy for the classification level of employees, they said in a statement to the FWC.



On this basis, the Commission delayed the decision until further evidence could be examined.



Stephen Smith from the Ai Group told HC that the association remained hopeful that the Full Bench would support the alignment of Sunday penalty rates with existing Saturday rates for fast food workers  especially in light of the evidence presented.



A large proportion of the employees in the fast food industry are young people with study commitments, and they are not available to work during normal business hours. Many employees in the industry prefer to work on weekends, including Sundays, he said.




Banjoist Bob Carlin Beckons Five-String Fans to Jones House

Banjo player, Bob Carlin, has been interested in the banjo for a long time, particularly the old southern styles of playing. In the 1970s, he starting making trips from his homes in New York and Philadelphia to North Carolina to play with and learn from legendary banjo players like Fred Cockerham, Tommy Jarrell, and Kyle Creed. In the 1980s, he moved to North Carolina to make it his home permanently.

Carlin has spent the last several decades documenting, researching, writing about, learning, teaching, producing recordings of, publishing books about, and performing various southern banjo playing styles, with particular focuses on the players from North Carolina.

I always liked North Carolina Carlin says, And it was my goal to live in the south.

Today, Carlin is one of the most well-known clawhammer banjo players. He has played banjo on and produced numerous Grammy-Award nominated CDs and helped lead the field of instructional materials for old-time banjo styles. Frets magazine awarded him the winner of their readers poll three times, and he is highly sought after as a teacher at folk music and banjo camps across the country.

Many people have heard Carlin for his work with the late John Hartford, including on the soundtrack for Oh Brother! Where Art Thou? Carlin played banjo and produced the John Hartford String Band recordings for six years, until Hartfords death in 2001. He continues to lead and perform with the John Hartford String Band, which presents a tribute to Hartford.

Carlin has continued his performing and teaching, and has also spent a great deal of time researching the banjo and instrument history for articles and books. He published a history of the Regal Musical Instruments company in 2011, Joel Walker Sweeney and minstrel banjo in 2007, and North Carolina Piedmont String Bands in 2004.

His latest book is called Banjo An Illustrated History featuring pictures and essays on the early development of the banjo through modern manufactured and handmade instruments. The book profiles banjo players, builders, and manufacturing companies, including 100 milestone instruments with specific stories and detailed photographs.

Bob Carlin is one of the most knowledgeable people about the history of the banjo, Jones House concert organizer Mark Freed says. And Bob is a great player, so he is able to demonstrate exactly what he is talking about.

My shows have elements of banjo history with period replica instruments, Carlin adds.

Carlin will be performing at the Jones House on Tuesday September 20 , starting at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for the concert are $20 per person. The venue can seat 40 people, and due to the limited seating, advanced reservations are recommended. But, all open seats will be available at the door, which opens at 7:00 p.m. on the night of the concert.

4:30 , and banjo players interested in attending should contact Mark Freed at the Jones House ( Carlin will also be giving an afternoon workshop for intermediate clawhammer banjo players. The workshop will begin at, and banjo players interested in attending should contact Mark Freed at the Jones House ( [email protected] or 828.268.6282 ).

For more information about the Indoor Concert Series at the Jones House, including a complete schedule of performances, please visit www.joneshouse.org or call 828.268.6280

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Reddit

Pocket


A special performance of Celt-alachian Music geared towards children but thoroughly enjoyable for all ages! Local band Thistle Dew delights in sharing the musical heritage of our area with the next generation. After the Concert, stay for a performance by Avery JAM (Junior Appalachian Musicians). This event is free to the public as a gift from the Greater Banner Elk Heritage Foundation, though donations are greatly appreciated and minimum $5 suggested donations receive free Museum admission. This event is co-sponsored by the Banner Elk Book Exchange.

ARHS to Offer Three Community Health Talk Events This Fall

Boone, NC (September 12, 2016)  This fall, Appalachian Regional Healthcare System is offering three community Health Talk events that are each free and open to the public.

Wednesday, September 21

Watch your Back: Caring for your Spine

Dr. James Califf

6:30 pm

Paul H. Broyhill Wellness Center Classroom

232 Boone Heights Drive, Boone, NC 28607

Wednesday, October 5

Elements of Well Woman Care

Lois Iiams, FNP

6:30 pm

Watauga Medical Center Auditorium

336 Deerfield Road, Boone, NC 28607

Saturday, November 12

Living with Diabetes

Dr. Richard Smith

10 am

Paul H. Broyhill Wellness Center

232 Boone Heights Drive, Boone, NC 28607

Space is limited. Please email [email protected] to reserve your seat.

To learn more about the Health Talk series or Appalachian Regional Healthcare System, visit https://apprhs.org/healthtalk.

School Bus Driver Training Offered Sept. 29-30, Oct. 3

School bus driver training will be offered September 29-30 and October 3 at the Watauga County Agricultural Conference Center. The classes are free and run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. each day.

Before attending the class, anyone who is not a current Watauga County Schools employee must have a recommendation from the principal or assistant principal at the school where they want to be hired.

We encourage everyone who is interested in being a school bus driver to obtain the required recommendation and attend these classes, said WCS Transportation Director Jeff Lyons. Completing this class is essential for persons who want to be employed as a driver.

The school bus driver training class must be completed to obtain the license (CDL) required to drive a school bus in North Carolina. The starting pay for school bus drivers in Watauga County is currently $13.52 per hour.

Each students driving record is screened through the NC Division of Motor Vehicles the first day of class. In addition to the driving record check, a criminal background check is conducted of all prospective school system employees before they start work.

Each student should bring their drivers license, social security card, a pen or pencil, and a highlighter to the first meeting. For directions or additional information, please contact Jeff Lyons at 828 264-6391.

The school system operates 41 buses that travel more than 2,700 miles per day as they carry 1,800 students to and from school.

Weaving Class at the Western Watauga Senior Center

New Beginning Weaving Class starting Friday, Sept. 16th 9am to 12 noon at the Western Watauga Community/Senior Center! Students will make placemats, rugs, scarves, etc. on floor looms and table looms. Instruction will be given by our talented volunteers from the Watauga Fiber Guild. Those 60+ no charge, under 60 it is $3.00 a class. Class is limited to 5 students at a time, so call to reserve your space! (There may be a minimal materials cost)Call 828-297-5195.

Writing Trauma: A Workshop for Veterans and Their Families

Facilitated by author and 2016-17 Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing Bruce Weigl

Sponsored by the Appalachian Veterans Arts and Humanities Collective

On Wednesday, September 28, 2016, Vietnam veteran Bruce Weigl will facilitate a workshop, Writing Trauma, for veterans and family members of veterans, from 4:00-7:00 p.m., in Parkway Ballroom, on the 4th floor of Plemmons Student Union, at Appalachian State University.

Writing about personal trauma is a difficult thing to do, but almost thirty years of experience working with veterans of several wars has taught me that it is also a powerful tool that can be restorative and even life-saving. To accomplish this, and introduce you to this idea, well all participate in an exercise designed to put you in the position to take charge of your traumatic memories so that they no longer have control over you. Well also focus on making the writing of these traumas a literary and artistic problem rather than an emotional problem.  Bruce Weigl

The writing workshop is intended for veterans and family members of veterans, both on campus and in the greater community, the state, and the region. There is no charge for the event, and reservations are not needed. Light refreshments will be served.

Parking is free on campus after 5 p.m. in the Library Parking Deck on College Street (from King Street, turn down College Street at the First Baptist Church). To reach the Student Union, cross College Street and follow the walkway between the chiller plant and the University Bookstore, passing the Post Office and entering the Student Union on the second floor. For further parking information or a map, please see http://parking.appstate.edu.

For more information about Bruce Weigl and the Appalachian Veterans Arts & Humanities Collective, visit http://diversity.appstate.edu/events/id/353.
People think Washington is broken. They should meet Anna Eshoo and Jeff Fortenberry.

That was pretty much the unanimous consensus at the Solidarity Dinner hosted by In Defense of Christians in the heart of it all -- across the street from Congress.

Now, I have to confess that I was totally dreading going to Washington, D.C. for this dinner. I've spent many days of my life there, including on Capitol Hill. But I had avoided it much of the summer, and during a post-Labor Day heat wave, I had a lingering cough from too much travel elsewhere and was tempted to avoid the swamp.

And then there was the block it was on. Maybe one of the more hyper-partisan blocks in the union, you might think. And sometimes you'd be right. The Republican National Committee is there, and the dinner, although attended by Dems and GOPers alike, was at the Capitol Hill Club, also known as the National Republican Club. I work at the original #NeverTrump conservative magazine. It's not a block I hang around a lot on these days.

But there are terrorists who are trying to eradicate Christians from the Middle East, and the least I could do is show up to support the people actually trying to get Americans to do something about it.

I got to know Rep. Fortenberry, R-Nebraska, because we would often find ourselves at the same weekday Mass back when I was spending much more time in the nation's capital. It was a joy to run into him, because it reminded me that Washington could still draw people who feel a call to civic service, not just a lust for power.

It turned out that if you were down on national politics, this dinner was exactly the place to be.

Rep. Eshoo, D-California, spoke about how her faith spurred her to work to defend Christians targeted by the so-called Islamic State for elimination. Fortenberry was moved to tears during her tribute to his life of Christian witness, saying that "the ages" would call him "blessed." The sheer depth of Eshoo and Fortenberry's across-the-aisle friendship, based in a commitment to truth, liberty and the common good -- was inspiring.

Eshoo gushed with great affection about her late father and how proud he was to be a member of Knights of Columbus and how he'd be upping his contributions because of the work the group, also being honored at the dinner, is doing now to help Christians being targeted for genocide. Carl Anderson, the leader of the KOC, shared concrete strategies for Congress and the next administration, whoever leads it. In the mess of debates about aiding refugees from places like Mosul and Aleppo, we must prioritize the Christians, he said. Not to exclude anyone from help and welcome, but because Christians have been specifically targeted, along with other religious minorities, because of who they are.

He urged Congress to act and the presidential candidates to commit to two simple things, consistent with our national commitment to religious liberty and human rights. "First," he said, "promote the international affirmation of (Middle Eastern religious minorities') human rights in keeping with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both as individuals and as distinct societies within their national framework." And second: "Help preserve their ancient communities, which should be considered part of the cultural heritage of all humanity, including by direct government funding for those communities who were targeted for genocide."

After being presented with an incense holder from a church that was burned in Aleppo, Anderson said that Christian survivors of ISIS slaughter "offer the example of complete, selfless commitment."

This kind of commitment can even happen on Capitol Hill. If you're distressed about politics, work on renewal. And if Eshoo and Fortenberry and the Knights are any indication, renewal starts with affirming solidarity with the suffering and insisting that the world remember their dignity and stand up for it and them in the face of evil.
I want to dispute these claims with six facts, he declares in his personal blog .

Prime Minister Juha Sipila (Centre) has disputed claims made by opposition parties that the income tax concessions designed to offset the effects of the so-called competitiveness pact  an agreement between labour market organisations on measures to reduce the unit labour costs of businesses  primarily benefit high-income earners.

The agreement ironed out by labour market organisations on the deductibility of certain contributions, he points out, would have necessitated that the initial tax concessions of 95 million euros be targeted at high-income earners  contrary to the objectives of the competitiveness pact.

The taxation of low and middle-income earners would not have decreased but would have even increased for some earners, he says. The Government has targeted its tax concessions at low and middle-income earners for this very reason.

Sipila reminds that the vast majority of the tax concessions  420 million out of a total of 515 million euros  were designed to reduce the tax burden of different income groups equally.

The taxation of middle-income earners will decrease by some 0.6 percentage points. The taxation of pensioners will similarly decrease by some 135 million euros. A separate appropriation of 30 million euros has been set aside to lower the contributions and taxation of the lowest income groups, says Sipila.

How to achieve this is still under consideration.

He adds that in addition to the decisions made at the budget session at the turn of the month, the standard tax credit for earned income was raised at the beginning of the year to reduce the tax burden of low and middle-income earners by some 450 million euros.

Low and middle-income earners are therefore the main beneficiaries of the roughly one billion euro worth of tax concessions introduced by the Government, concludes Sipila.

The Government, he reminds, has also invested approximately 170 million euros in promoting entrepreneurship by introducing deductions for business owners and facilitating the successions of family businesses.

Sipila also points out that opposition parties demanded last autumn that tax concessions be introduced to offset the effects of the competitiveness pact. Some trade unions even threatened to withdraw from the pact unless greater tax concessions were introduced by the Government. There is a flagrant conflict between what was demanded in advance and after the fact. But that is the way it tends to be, he writes.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Heikki Saukkomaa  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
County schools rank 4th in state

Henderson County public schools ranked fourth out of 115 public school districts in North Carolina in a measure of how many of its students demonstrated proficiency in grade-level subjects last school year.



The school systems overall proficiency composite of 70.5 percent in 2015-16 means that 70.5 percent of K-12 students demonstrated proficiency in grade-level subjects. The county school system also ranked third in the state for its 71 percent proficiency composite in all subjects for grades K-8.

The districts 70.5 percent proficiency composite beat the state average of 58.3 percent by 12.2 percentage points, and its 71 percent proficiency composite for all subjects in grades K-8 was 12.8 percentage points higher than the state average of 58.2 percent.

By individual grade level, 5th grade and 8th grade scores ranked 2nd in the state in all subjects, with a proficiency percentage of 75 percent and 72.6 percent, respectively. The districts 5th grade proficiency percentage for all subjects was 12.6 percentage points higher than the state average of 62.4, and the 8th Grade percentage was far above the state average of 57.3 percent by 15.3 percentage points.

The districts Eighth Grade reading scores were also at the top of the charts, ranking 2nd statewide at 69.6 percent  just 1.3 percentage points behind the Chapel-Hill Carrboro Schools, which ranked 1st in the state. Henderson County schools math proficiency in Grade 5 ranked 3rd in North Carolina, at 74.8 percent, while science proficiency in Grades 5 and 8 ranked 4th, at 84.6 percent.

We are so very proud of the hard work and continued excellence demonstrated by our students and our staff, Superintendent Bo Caldwell said in a statement. Today, we celebrate the achievement of our students, the commitment of our teachers, and the support of our parents and families.

Caldwell thanked Dr. Kathy Revis and other central office personnel and the principals and teachers for their work.

We celebrated, Caldwell said. We pat each other in the back and guess what we did the next day? We got four more people (school systems) in front of us.
Put Edneyville ahead of HHS, School Board says

Members of the Hendersonville High School Alumni Association on Monday night exhorted the Henderson County School Board to assert its authority to guide the future of HHS and stand by the plan it originally sent to the Board of Commissioners last spring.



Taking their case directly to the School Board for the first time since the Board of Commissioners rejected a School Board recommendation to renovate the historic core classroom building, the graduates and other supporters of Stillwell building renovation said its up to the School Board, not the commissioners, to guide school facility design.

The Board of Commisioners can only decide if they will appropriate the cost and if they will fund your proposal, said HHS Alumni Association President Bill Orr. The Board of Commissioners have no authority to dictate what you may or may not do with the facilities under your management. They also may not dictate to you what your priorities are. We humbly request that you assert your responsibility and take back your authority, which has been usurped by the Henderson County Board of Commissioners.

Despite the strong views of the HHS graduates, School Board members said they were a long way from being able to recommend how the historic core building would be incorporated into a construction. They said they had too many questions. And a majority of the School Board members said they favored freezing HHS discussion for now and making an Edneyville Elementary School replacement the higher priority for construction. Twice before, the School Board members said, they had sent up a priority list showing the new career academy and a new Edneyville Elementary as No. 1 and 2 on the facilities list.

Our first prior is Edneyville Elementary School, Amy Holt said. Thats always been a priority. (The letter should say) we simply arent going to move on the HHS until we start building Edneyville Elementary. That school is unsafe. We put that on the top of our list and its being ignored.

"We've got to get it right," board member Rick Wood said of the HHS plan, "and if takes a little longer, we hope it will be there a long long time and we'd be a part of getting it right and not wishing we had done something else."

County Manager Steve Wyatt sent a letter on Aug. 26 to schools Superintendent Bo Caldwell laying out a framework to bring the Stillwell building into the overall construction plan. That followed a letter from Board of Commissioners Chair Tommy Thompson, on Aug. 17. School Board members said they had questions about how much money county commissioners were willing to commit to the Stillwell building.

"If we're going to use the Stillwell building I want it to be an integral part of Hendersonville High School," said School Board member Mary Louise Corn. "I want us to send them a letter what we are willing to do."

The Stillwell building advocates brought something of a ringer, through Chris Stepp, a Hendersonville attorney and HHS graduate. Stepp read a letter from HHS graduate Bob Orr, whose mother was in the first HHS class to graduate at the Stillwell building. A lawyer for 40 years, Orr, HHS class of 1964, served for eight years on the North Carolina Court of Appeals and 10 years on the state Supreme Court.

State law, Orr said, gives clear authority to School Boards to control and direct school construction projects. County commissioners are required to provide funding for new construction and renovationa ultimately selected and prioritized by the local school board, said Orr, who also has represented the N.C. School Boards Association, the state Board of Education and the superintendent of public instruction. "But it is the local board that has the sole responsbility to select plans, prioritze the timing of projects and move forward with the construction and renovation of those projects."

Carey OCain, the retired construction project bidder and manager, presented his proposed construction plan, the same one the Board of Commissioners saw during a lengthy discussion of the HHS construction plan last month.

Its a synthesis of the Clark Nexsen plan and the Alumni Association plan, he said. His plan, he said, is safer, costs less, preserves the Stillwell building for continued use as classrooms, accommodates future enrollment growth, includes 180 parking spaces and includes two gyms.

Its in the budget guidelines, OCain added. Probably one of the most important aspects is that it requires no temporary trailer classrooms. None.




Agarwals repay community many times over

Rakesh and Dolly Agarwal recently donated $50,000 to the Pardee Comprehensive Cancer Center.

To understand the charitable spirit of Rakesh and Dolly Agarwal, you have to go back 31 years to their arrival in Hendersonville from India with nothing but $20 and a desire to pursue the American dream.

One of the biggest things we have personally felt is the generosity of the citizens of this country, Rakesh said in an interview recently at his Rug & Home furniture and home decor store at Exit 33 off I-26. We have felt tremendous generosity. We didnt have anything. We just came with $20. We rented a place (on Patton Street in Hyman Heights)  $320 was our rent  so that I could walk to work. I could walk to Spinning Wheel Rugs.

Bereft of everything they needed to live, the young couple was soon showered with acts of kindness.

We were living there and we had no furniture, we had no TV, Rakesh said. We didnt have anything at all.

The landlady knew we were fresh off the boat, new immigrants to the country. She got us all the pots and pans from her church, Main Street Baptist Church. A lot of people at Spinning Wheel Rugs, they gave us towels and bed sheets.

One of our very good friends at Spinning Wheel Rugs who I just met the month before, they give us their patio furniture so we could use that as our living room furniture. We collected enough money to buy a second-hand TV for $45.

Life was beautiful. We had everything. We felt very blessed. Wed never seen this level of generosity back where we came from. That time itself, we had in mind we wanted to do something for this community, whenever we had money, whenever we can.



Donated to hospice, Playhouse

The Agarwal s have shared the profits from their three Rug & Homes stores with worthy nonprofit agencies in Henderson County.

Once they could afford to donate, the first opportunity came when they were first exposed to hospice care at Four Seasons Compassion for Life.

When the couple bought a home in Windsor Hills, they made fast friends with a couple who had moved here from New York.

Our next-door neighbor, she came in and welcomed us with open arms, hugged Dolly and me, he said. We had been here maybe two years at that point. And they pretty much took care of our daughter (Aanchal). She learned swimming, she learned bicycle, the arts, piano. They became literally our family. They were everything to us.

When Bob became ill and was placed in hospice care, Rakesh and Dolly visited frequently at the Elizabeth House.

We found the hospice workers to be so caring and giving, he said. We had never seen anything like this. That time, me and Dolly, we decided we want to do something for hospice. This was going to be our No. 1 priority.

In 2006, they agreed to donate $100,000. We went into the recession but we didnt miss a payment, Rakesh said. We gave our $100,000 over the next five years.

Around 2010, when a friend who was associated with the Flat Rock Playhouse told them that the theater was in dire financial straits, Rakesh and Dolly stepped up again, donating $80,000 over four years.

Being from Hendersonville, we felt we are native, Rakesh says. Anybody asks us, Where is our home? This is home.

But the couple knew first hand, too, about desperate needs in impoverished parts of India. They created Vision Express, which has treated hundreds of Indians for cataracts and expanded to perform gallbladder and kidney stone procedures.

We have treated probably close to 12,000 people and probably at least close to 3,000 have been given cataract surgery under this program, he says. We like to try to give at least something back home in India and something here in Hendersonville.



Pardee Cancer Center

That brought them to more recent times, when they heard about Pardee Hospitals new Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The daughter of their friends, who is 5, is undergoing cancer treatment in Charleston, S.C. The whole family is completely unrooted, he said. In this case she needed a place in Charleston to stay. Four and a half months she has to stay there. The family found an unfurnished house. I did the entire house at no charge. Just keep the furniture, he told the family. Other families can use it after you.

The cancer that had attacked 5-year-old Sarahs body presented the next opportunity to give to a cause that had touched Rakesh and Dolly.

When a banker friend approached them, they were receptive. What a wonder it would be, they thought, if the Sarahs of the world could be treated close to home.

So when this came up, we said we will do it, Rakesh said. Wed like to help. We decided to donate $50,000.

Cancer is so devastating, just even the word cancer is totally (devastating) not only for the individual but for the entire family and on top of that if you put a one-hour ride for treatment, to have to go and stay in Greenville to undergo this treatment.

The opening of the cancer center is now just weeks away. But dont look for any big recognition of Dolly and Rakesh Agarwal . They never ask for naming rights or plaques.

We want to move on, Rakesh says. No strings attached. Do our things and look for something else to help and get behind it. Weve been very blessed. God has blessed us with everything.
Here's your presidential election coverage in a nutshell:

Last week Donald Trump delivered his big immigration speech in Phoenix, uttering this inflammatory claim: "Hillary Clinton has pledged amnesty in her first 100 days, and her plan will provide Obamacare, Social Security and Medicare for illegal immigrants, breaking the federal budget."

Suffice it to say that every word was categorically false. Clinton hasn't proposed "amnesty." Undocumented aliens aren't eligible for Social Security, Medicare or Obamacare. Period.

Trump's statement is not merely a falsehood, but an inflammatory, hurtful one -- convincing low-information voters that their tax money is being misused.

Something closer to the opposite is true. Many undocumented workers pay taxes without getting benefits.

Nobody said boo. The big news was that Trump did a decent job reading the speech from a teleprompter. (A practice he once scorned, but never mind.) He also looked "presidential" standing tall next to Mexico's dapper little chief executive -- a visual worth the trip to Mexico City.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press posted the following to its Twitter feed: "BREAKING: AP analysis: More than half those who met Clinton as cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation."

That too is breathtakingly false. As James Fallows pointed out in The Atlantic, "the AP came up with its claim that 'more than half' the people Hillary Clinton met while Secretary were donors, only by deciding not to count the overwhelming majority of people she met." Specifically, the AP ignored the literally thousands of U.S. and foreign government figures Clinton dealt with during her four-year term.

Looked at another way, Clinton met with 54 of the Foundation's more than 7,000 donors (all publicly posted on its website). And who were they? The one the AP found most concerning was one Muhummad Yunus -- neglecting to mention (as Washington Monthly did) that the Bangladeshi economist "won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010."

A philanthropist himself, Yunus has been a personal friend of Hillary Clinton's since the 1980s.

Another visitor the AP found notable was Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain, that Persian Gulf ally's head of state. Reporters generated the appearance of scandal by trusting a shrill press release from Judicial Watch -- a secretly funded foundation that exists purely to file lawsuits and make bizarre allegations against the Clintons.

But no, the prince never remitted a reported $32 million in what Trump called a "pay to play" donation to the Clinton Foundation. He'd actually announced a scholarship fund benefitting students in his own country at a 2005 meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative -- four years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state.

Any reporter who thinks the State Department should have stiffed the guy understands nothing about international affairs.

Another shady Clinton visitor was acclaimed author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

"Unfortunately," blogger Joe Conason notes with impressive understatement, "many Washington reporters seem eager to repeat any accusation brandished against the Clintons, even from a dubious source, without rudimentary checking."

But then what would an un-scandal be without The New York Times, the fons et origo of bogus Clinton narratives? Reporter Eric Lichtblau went to town on Clinton Foundation aide Doug Band's request for a special diplomatic passport to enter North Korea.

Short version: He didn't get one.

Longer explanation: Band wanted to accompany the Big Cheese to the world's craziest communist regime to negotiate the release of two wrongfully imprisoned American journalists. A mission Bill Clinton accomplished in 2009 to near-universal acclaim.

And this is suspicious how? Well, it raised "new questions about whether people tied to the Clinton Foundation received special access at the department." And in the peculiar optics of Washington journalism, questions invariably generate "shadows."

Indeed, an enterprising search by Talking Points Memo found 20 Times-generated shadows looming over Hillary's campaign since last May -- shades cast by everything from Bill Clinton's presidency to Anthony Weiner's penis. "Questions" and "shadows," of course, are journalistic shorthand for "we can't prove anything, but we don't like her."

Indeed, to anybody capable of close reading and critical thinking -- which excludes too many voters and most TV talking-heads -- Washington Monthly's Paul Glastris gets it right: "Stories on the Clinton Foundation over the last two weeks fit the same basic pattern: The facts dug up by the investigation disprove the apparent thesis of the investigation ... In virtually every case we know of, it's clear that Hillary and her staff behaved appropriately."

Politically, however, that's not how it plays on TV, where allegations often morph into verdicts with no intervening stages of proof. For a combination of reasons, Hillary has never dealt well with challenges to her integrity, although you'd think she'd be getting used to it.

Like Al Gore's in 2000, her campaign appears flatfooted, its pushback ineffectual and unheard.

They'd better wise up. And soon.
Notorious criminals, like Graham Dwyer, Brian Rattigan, Joe O'Reilly and Wayne Dundon will be entitled to free prison clothing

Prison bosses are to spend more than 500,000 of taxpayers' money to buy thousands of underpants, dressing gowns, tracksuits and other prison clothes for criminals.

The Herald can reveal that prison chiefs have agreed to spend 548,000 of taxpayers' cash on a contract to supply the country's 4,212 prisoners with clothing for the next three years.

The deal means some of the country's most violent criminals will be kitted out in briefs, socks, pyjamas and dressing gowns - all on the taxpayers' tab.

Criminals such as Graham Dwyer, who is locked up in Midlands Prison for the brutal murder of Elaine O'Hara, can rest assured they will have a clean supply of underwear.

Proposal

Earlier this year the Irish Prison Service (IPS) invited businesses across the country to submit a proposal if they were interested in supplying prisoner clothing.

Although most of the country's inmates are not required to wear prison clothing, the prison service sought a number of items.

Over the next three years thousands of Y-front briefs and socks will be shipped to prisons around the country to ensure the country's criminals are clean, fresh and not stinking up cells.

Prisoners such as the infamous Dundon brothers (Wayne, John and Dessie), gang boss Brian Rattigan, wife killer Joe O'Reilly, notorious hitman Gary Campion, schoolgirl killer Ronnie Dunbar and the notorious Gerald Barry, who murdered Swiss student Manuela Riedo, can expect to receive green polo shirts and white vests. The fitness fanatics among the criminal population will also be catered for - with runners and tracksuits expected to come on stream over the next three years. After an intense and sweaty workout, prisoners will be delighted to slip into a pair of the pyjamas which are being ordered.

If they're seeking extra comfort whilst behind bars for their crimes, one of the 180 dressing gowns ordered should do the trick.

The massive order will cater for prisoners in all shapes and sizes, with briefs coming in a range of size small, all the way up to 3XL.

To ensure that prisoners are not feeling left out, the new supply of clothing will be spread out across our prisons.

Inmates in Mountjoy, Cloverhill, Portlaoise and Limerick prison can expect to see the clothing department stocked with new clothes.

The Dochas Centre, Arbour Hill and Shelton Abbey have also been chosen to receive new clothing.

The IPS told the Herald the contract was awarded for "required clothing".

Competition

"The contract has been awarded for three years therefore the IPS will go back to the market at the end of 2018," a spokesperson said.

Documents obtained also show there was stiff competition for the underpants deal - with three companies bidding to win the contract.

Bidders were also reminded that should they be successful in getting the contract, their workers maybe have to undergo "routine garda and prison service security clearance procedures" before being allowed into prisons.

A prison service spokesman said that prisoners are allowed to wear their own clothing subject to a number of conditions regarding "cleanliness, warmth and health".

"However, most prisoners are provided with prison issue clothing on committal and wear such clothing until such time as the Governor has granted permission for wearing own clothing," the spokesman added.
A new 2m fund to reduce waiting lists for children suffering from curvature of the spine is not enough to address the ongoing crisis in orthopaedic care, the Scoliosis Advocacy Network has claimed.

Health Minister Simon Harris yesterday announced the fund has been secured to treat 39 adolescent patients at Tallaght Hospital and up to 20 children elsewhere on the waiting list for surgery for scoliosis.

The fund is included in 7m that has been set aside as part of a targeted programme to reduce the 18-month waiting list for around 600 orthopaedic procedures at various hospitals nationwide.

They include the Cappagh National Orthopaedic Hospital in Finglas, Dublin's Beaumont and Tallaght hospitals and regional hospitals in Galway, Waterford and Tullamore.

But Claire Cahill, co-founder of the Scoliosis Advocacy Network in Kilkenny, said the fund is only a stop-gap measure that will not address the ongoing crisis in orthopaedic care.

"We do see this as a crisis intervention," Ms Cahill (36) told the Herald.

Her seven-year-old son Darragh was diagnosed with infantile scoliosis at the age of two. He has been on a waiting list for surgery since August 2015 following two unsuccessful medical interventions to correct the curvature of his spine that is now affecting his lung function and growth.

Despite being promised surgery to insert growing rods into his spine in April, he is still waiting for a date.

"He was guaranteed a date this summer. We were ready to go but I heard nothing. Then on July 28, we were told he wouldn't get any surgery this year," she said.

Paralysis

She blamed the dearth of orthopaedic surgeons and ongoing closures of operating theatres at the Crumlin Children's Hospital means most children with scoliosis are waiting for between 12 and 15 months for surgery.

Yet each day they wait, their condition gets worse which increases the cost and risk of serious complications including paralysis, she said.

"The wait times are unacceptable. While I do feel the 2m will help some children, they're not recognising there is a crisis," Ms Cahill added.
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
BRISTOL, Va.  A new school superintendent will likely emerge from a list of five finalists chosen Monday by the Bristol Virginia School Board.

The board is scheduled to begin interviews later this month after narrowing the pool of 26 candidates during a closed meeting Monday afternoon. Board members met for 90 minutes with officials of the Virginia School Boards Association, which has managed the search process  and then pared down the field.

Weve got some very strong candidates that can move us forward, board Chairman Randy Alvis said after the meeting. You never know what will happen in the interview process, but I think well have someone who will be a good fit for us, given the criteria from our public hearing and the input from the public. I think there are some candidates who meet most of those criteria. Im upbeat we have someone in that pool who will be our next superintendent of schools.

The selection will replace former Superintendent Rex Gearheart, who died in late May.

Of the original field of 26, eight are current or former superintendents, two are assistant superintendents, four hold central office administration positions and 10 are principals, according to information provided by the VSBA. The original field included 20 men and six women. Eleven hailed from Virginia, three from Tennessee, two from North Carolina and one apiece from eight other states, the District of Columbia and the Bahamas.

We went over the list of applicants who applied for the position and let them know which ones met most if not all of their stated qualifications they were looking for in their next superintendent, association Executive Director Gina Patterson said. From this point on, it is up to the board to decide who to interview, to set up a first round, possibly a second round and even a third round, start contract negotiations and then announce their selection to the public.

Alvis said each board member created a top 10 list and then compared those lists Monday with suggestions from the association  which were similar and all five finalists appeared on every list.

Also Monday, the board formally announced an interview period of Sept. 19 through Oct. 4 to try and complete the process.

They have a 15-day window by law to do interviews for superintendent and, if they are not done within that 15-day period, they will have to announce another 15-day period, Patterson said.

Despite having a high poverty rate among its population, the Bristol position is considered a good one, Patterson said.

Bristol has done some unique things with the last two superintendents; very unique and out-of-the box type things  especially given the demographics of the city. And still the test scores look good so the state is looking at some of the things theyve done because its been so innovative, Patterson said. Its a very, very desirable system so they dont have an issue attracting good quality applicants.
Kerrville, TX (78028)

Today

Sunny along with a few clouds. High 76F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will become overcast later during the night. Low 48F. Winds light and variable.
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/
The ministry of information and broadcastings advisory to media to exercise restraint in their coverage of violence over Cauvery water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu has once again brought to the fore the issue of social responsibility of the fourth estate.

There is a fine line between accuracy and balance and in times of crisis  such as the one being witnessed in the two states  the distinction can get blurred, particularly given the environment of cut-throat competition in the media to get the story out first. In certain situations, what is accurate may not be balanced.

The government is worried that certain TV channels have been telecasting provocative and inflammatory news and programmes.

Some TV channels have also been airing footage of violent incidents, rioting etc. repeatedly. This could further ignite tensions and reactions and cause the law and order situation in both the affected states to deteriorate, the one-page advisory issued on Tuesday read.

This is not the first time that the government has issued such an advisory. During the 26/11 terror attack, the government did intervene to stop live telecast. It allowed deferred live telecast after the second day of commando operation. This was because the terrorists were getting instructions from their handlers in Pakistan based on the live TV footage. The operation to flush out terrorists who had attacked Pathankot Air Force Base was also not telecast live.

There have been allegations against the media, in particular against local newspapers during the 2002 post-Godhra Gujarat riots about the manner in which they reported the violence.

According to Press Council of Indias Norms of Journalistic Conduct, journalists are supposed to use their pen with circumspection and restraint.

The role of media in such situations (Gujarat Carnage/Crisis) is to be peacemakers and not abettors, to be troubleshooters and not troublemakers, says the PCI.

One may or may not agree with the PCIs description of journalists as peacemakers but certainly they cant be troublemakers.

However, no one can take away a journalists right to chronicle events as they become history. Its part of their right to freedom of speech and expression  a fundamental right recognized under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. But its equally true that this right is subject to several reasonable restrictions, including sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State and incitement to an offence, under Article 19(2).

The governments advisory also suggests what kind of shots may or may not be used in TV news coverage of the Cauvery water dispute and reminds the channels of their obligations under the Programme Code, the Advertising Code, the Cable TV Network (Regulation) Act, 1995 and the relevant rules. This is a veiled threat.

Governments have mostly eschewed from guiding the media in their coverage of social unrest, leaving it to the Supreme Court to intervene.

Commenting on media coverage of violence by the Gujjar community for grant of Scheduled Tribe status, the Supreme Court had in 2009 emphasized the need for media responsibility. Advocating self regulation, the court said any restrictions on the media should follow the least invasive approach. It said the right way would be to strike the correct balance between free speech and the independence of the media.

India does not follow the Libertarian Theory that allows unrestrained media freedom. What is followed here is the Social Responsibility Theory that allows media freedom without any censorship but expects them to take care of social responsibility and follow a set of professional code of conduct or self regulation.

Media can ignore their social responsibility only at the risk of eroding their credibility and/or inviting government interference, which is undesirable to say the least.
When Nepals Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda arrives in New Delhi on Thursday, it will represent a remarkable turn in his own complex relations with the government of India. It will also mark a stunning turn in Indias own relationship with Nepal, after a drastic dip in 2015-16, and re-establish Delhis centrality in Nepal affairs.

But the limitations of the visit are important to bear in mind. It will only go so far in helping resolve Nepals most pressing fundamental domestic challenge  of constitutional reform and constitution implementation. It is on that question that the success and failure of Prachandas own term, and the future of Nepal-India ties, rests.

Fighting Indian expansionism

To understand the swings in Prachandas relationship with India, we need to go back to his entry into politics, socialisation and the context of the times.

A young man who joined one of the shades of Nepals radical communist movement in the 70s, Prachanda grew up in the years when Nepali nationalism was equated with resistance to India  this was encouraged by the monarchy as a way to bolster its own legitimacy. Delhis moves in Sikkim were seen with fear and dread in Kathmandu and as proof of Indian expansionism. In communist literature, Nepal was theorised as a semi-colony of India  eyeing Nepals raw materials and natural resources, and treating it as little more than a captive market. The Indian state was perceived to be backing the democratic Nepali Congress, the key rival of the communists and domestic class enemies. Prachanda read Maoist and Marxist texts, translated in Nepali from Hindi. His judgment of Indian state as the principal enemy of the Nepali masses was framed in this milieu, not any direct engagement. He had not met a single senior Indian diplomat through the 70s, 80s, and even 90s.

In 1996, when the obituary of communism had been written after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nepals Maoists - led by Prachanda - decided to pick the gun.

Through the decade-long insurgency, he pulled off a balancing act - of living for 8 of the 10 years underground in various Indian cities while threatening to fight a bunker war with India, and eventually seeking Indian facilitation in initiating a peace process. At different points, depending on the circumstances of the war back home, he either stepped up rhetoric against India or sought to engage with it.

The turning point came in 2002 when the Nepali conflict had become triangular  between the king, the Maoists, and the parliamentary forces. The Royal Nepal Army had launched an offensive against the Maoists. And Prachanda recognised that eventually, there would have to be a political solution to the crisis. Through the JNU academic, SD Muni, Prachanda sent a letter to the then NSA, Brajesh Mishra, explaining the rationale for the Maoist rebellion and committing that Maoists would not hurt Delhis interests. Indian intelligence agencies now stepped up their engagement with Nepali Maoists, even as officially India continued to call them terrorists and arm the Royal Nepal Army to fight the rebels.

Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal waves towards the media after he was elected Nepal's 24th prime minister in 26 years, in Kathmandu. (Reuters Photo)

Nudged by his thoughtful deputy Baburam Bhattarai, Prachanda slowly concluded that winning and retaining state power was not possible through armed rebellion and that he needed to work with India and Nepals moderate parliamentary forces. The monarch acted unwisely in 2005, trampled on democracy, and antagonised India. Delhi was now open to bringing Maoists into the political system. A political pact was signed in India between Maoists and parliamentary forces. Prachanda was grateful to Delhi for helping him gain legitimacy. India was happy with its successful peacemaking initiative and concluded the Maoists had turned a new leaf.

In power, the rift

As the elected PM in 2008, Prachanda got off on the wrong track from the Indian point of view. For one, he made China his first foreign outing  and said this marked krambhangata, departure from norm. India was not happy but let it pass, and welcomed him soon after. But the tensions escalated when Prachanda opened other fronts. A party document declared India and its brokers enemies; he sought to replace Indian priests with Nepali priests at the Pashupati Nath Temple.

And most importantly, he took on the Nepal army and dismissed its chief. India saw the NA as an extension of its own security architecture, a key ally, and was concerned that Maoists wanted to change the character of the army and capture state power to establish a one-party regime. Delhi mobilised the rest of Nepals political class against Prachandas move.

The PM had to resign. The army chief stayed. India helped form a new non-Maoist government.

Prachanda then decided that nationalism would be his calling card  and he sought to make Indian role in domestic Nepali politics the centrepiece of a campaign. The street agitation petered out. Delhi also pulled out all stops to keep him in the opposition. While Prachanda himself could not become the PM, he managed to break the anti-Maoist coalition when he supported another leader, Jhalanath Khanal of the CPN-UML, as PM.

Eventually, India and Maoists recognised that they had to do business with each other and there was a rapprochement of sorts.

The Maoist leader listened to Indian advice and pushed the nomination of the chief justice as the head of an elected government in early 2013. But when the Maoists lost the elections, Prachanda developed deep doubts about Indian intentions and began feeling he had been trapped.

He also, at this stage, sensed that if the constitution had emerged from the first Constituent Assembly  when the Maoists were in a majority  he would have benefited. He began to see an Indian conspiracy in the dissolution of the CA in 2012, which had led to the elections. But Indian officials insisted that Prachanda was wrong, that Delhi had, in fact, enabled an agreement between differing sides on the constitution, but it broke down because of deep internal differences. Prachanda, however, told me, Delhi could have done more to help us promulgate the constitution from the first CA. The two sides were talking to each other, but the suspicion persisted.

The constitutional divide

The memory of CA 1, and the manner it ended was to shape Prachandas attitudes towards the second Constituent Assembly. He led an opposition alliance of Madhesi and hill ethnic forces and demanded identity-based federalism, with two plains-only provinces in Nepals Tarai and inclusion and representation guarantees for the marginalised.

The ruling parties, Nepali Congress and UML, had close to a two-thirds majority between them  enough to force the constitution through. India supported a constitution based on consensus. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during a visit to Kathmandu in November 2014, categorically said that the constitution is a foundational document, it can be amended with a two-thirds majority, but should be drafted on the basis of consensus. This was music to the ears of both Maoists and Madhesis.

And that is when the Great Nepal Earthquake of April 2015 struck.

Prachanda suddenly switched sides, and allied with NC and UML  and dropped the agenda of federalism and inclusion. The Madhesi forces were now left isolated. There have been many theories about this shift. Prachanda himself claims he did so because he did not want the second CA to suffer the same fate as the first one  this would end up criminalising the entire Maoist movement since they would have failed to meet their political objective of drafting a constitution.

Upendra Yadav, a leading ethnic Madhesi protest leader, speaks in Parliament in Kathmandu, Nepal. (AP File Photo)

Based on his assessment of why CA-1 ended, Prachanda also felt that India would not allow the constitutional project to succeed. Indian officials reject this contention outright  and claim that all they wanted was an inclusive consensual constitution. An angry Indian official says, We invested in Nepals peace process. Why would we not want the country to have a constitution? Instead, Delhis reading was that Prachanda allowed his core ethnic and caste identity to prevail over his ideological commitment to the subaltern. Others believe that Prachanda was motivated by a desire to return to power  by signing on to a constitution on terms set by the ruling elite, he would be able to get a share of state power.

This discord between India and Maoists was most visible when foreign secretary S Jaishankar visited Kathmandu as PM Modis special envoy.

In his meeting with Prachanda, Jaishankar reminded him of the positive Indian role in accommodating the Maoists into the political system. He urged him to pause the constitutional process, and bring dissenting Madhesis on board, as a constitution promulgated with a curfew imposed, the army deployed, protesters being killed would create instability. Instability, in turn, would have an impact across the border. That is why it was in Indias interest that Nepal accommodates political grievances. Prachanda, in turn, told the FS that he had come too late since the constitution had already been finalised and was about to be declared.

Three weeks later, despite Delhis advice, Prachanda went ahead and supported the majoritarian chauvinist leader, KP Oli, as prime minister. Responding to the border blockade imposed by the Madhesis and backed by India, Prachanda said he would rather travel on a bicycle than bow to foreign diktats. Delhi was furious.

India-Maoist relations had hit rock-bottom.

The rapprochement

India was unhappy with the Maoist U-turn on the constitution. But it saw KP Oli, who had driven the constitution process, as the main obstacle. After a sustained political movement in the plains, pressure by India, and recognition that the guarantees provided to the Madhesis in the interim constitution had to be restored, Oli agreed to amend the constitution. But he did not go all the way and many issues, particularly related to federal demarcation, remained contested. He also used the discord with India to invite a greater Chinese role in Nepali politics.

Delhi wanted Oli out. And to achieve this aim, it re-engaged closely with Prachanda. The Maoist leader was restless. His party colleagues felt that an alliance with UML would weaken the Maoists further. Prachanda could also sense an opportunity to become the prime minister himself, and lead a process of national reconciliation. The opposition NC was willing to play ball. India encouraged all sides and Prachanda returned to Baluwatar, the PMs official residence in Kathmandu in early August.

Prachandas forthcoming visit to Delhi can only be understood in this backdrop  of deep discord followed by friendship, of suspicion followed by collaboration, of a sense of betrayal followed by renewed partnership between the two sides.

For the Narendra Modi government, the visit and the feel good sentiment is an answer to domestic critics who have claimed that the current government has lost Nepal. It is also a vindication of its own principled position that Nepals constitutional project needed wider acceptance  the fact that almost all of Nepals major political forces, except Olis UML, now agree that the constitution needs to be amended is a moral victory for Delhi. The visit is also an opportunity for India to steer Nepal back to its more traditional pro-India foreign policy orientation. The Chinese engagement has grown, and it has become even more important for India to have a friendly regime in Kathmandu.

For Prachanda, the visit is an opportunity to show to his domestic constituency that he has international legitimacy and acceptance. While he has to be careful not to be seen as tilting too close to India, since Oli and company may paint it as having sold Nepals interests, Prachanda wants to show back home that under him, relations with India have been brought back on track. The Maoist chairman wants to also use the visit to deepen his political relationships with Indian establishment, make admissions of past errors and seek reassurance that Delhi would support him.

But the main challenge for the Nepali PM is back home. He had hoped to register a constitutional amendment to accommodate Madhesi concerns before coming. But this looks unlikely now, given deep differences on the nature of the amendment.

Getting a consensus between the ruling parties and Madhesi forces on the amendment is the first step. Getting it through the parliament, in the face of UML opposition, is the second step. And once the constitution is reformed, implementing it and holding elections three elections - local, provincial and national - by January 2018 is necessary. If this does not happen, the power-sharing arrangement between NC and Maoists may collapse.

More importantly, Nepal may head towards another constitutional crisis, which will inevitably drag India in. And that is why Nepals fundamental challenge is getting its domestic act together.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Supreme Courts judgment in the Singur case is a victory for the rule of law, and the constitutionally-protected rights of citizens. In quashing the illegal acquisition of land by the West Bengal government and mandating its return, the SC has signalled a departure from its hitherto deferential review of public purpose and the procedure for forcible land acquisition.

In 2006, the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) forcibly acquired nearly 1,000 acres of land in Singur for Tata Motors Nano car project. Such forcible acquisitions were permissible under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, for a public purpose and upon payment of compensation, provided the procedure prescribed under the Act was followed. By a 1984 amendment to the 1894 Act, land could be acquired on behalf of a company, provided a different procedure prescribed in Part VII of the Act was followed.

Read: SC scraps Singur land deal for Nano plant, asks Bengal govt to take possession

The Singur land losers were using the land for cultivation and agro-processing industries. Though they objected to the acquisitions, the government ignored them. The land losers challenged the acquisition before the high court. While their appeals were pending, the WBIDC took possession of the land, compensated those who were willing and displaced the unwilling. This led to protests.

Justices V Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra disagreed on whether the acquisition for Tata Motors was done for a public purpose under Part II of the Act, or for a company under Part VII of the Act. But they agreed that whichever procedure was applicable, the government did not follow it. The court judges found no application of mind in the acquisition process, labelling the collectors enquiry into the land losers objections a farce and an eyewash.

Read: Grocers extending credit to Singur farmers once more

The Singur case is not atypical. A study by the Centre for Policy Research of all land acquisition cases decided by the SC between 1950 and 2015 found that almost 40% of the cases involved a challenge to the validity of the procedure whereby land was acquired. In almost four out of 10 of the challenged cases, both the high court and the SC invalidated the acquisition for non-compliance with the existing procedures.

However, what makes the Singur judgment distinctive is that in the past, the SC has rarely questioned the governments declaration of public purpose, except to note that the acquisition must support the general as opposed to individual interest. Indeed, in the data set of 1,369 cases, the SC invalidated the governments finding of public purpose in only 13 cases.

Read: Restoration of Singur land will take a long time, say experts

In a departure from existing precedent, Justice Gowda held that where there was no scheme of industrial development fulfilling public need, nor was the cost of acquisition serviced by public revenue, acquisition of land by the government on behalf of a company did not satisfy the requirement of public purpose under the 1894 Act. Justice Mishra disagreed with this finding on law and facts.

Read: Agriculture or industry? Singur farmers divided

Since Singur and in part because of it, the 1894 Act was repealed and replaced by the Land Acquisition Act, 2013. The 2013 Act mandates that any acquisition of land involving a company must have prior consent of 80% of the affected families as a prerequisite for acquisition.

Attempts by the Centre to amend this provision through ordinance failed last year. But several state legislatures have amended the 2013 Act to circumvent this provision. In this context, and especially for pending cases under the 1894 Act, Justice Gowda at least, has indicated that the Supreme Court will no longer defer, but strictly scrutinise whether any governmental acquisition of land for a company is indeed for a public purpose.

Namita Wahi is Fellow, Centre for Policy Research. The views expressed are personal.
Manish Pushkale, the acclaimed painter from Bhopal, after showcasing his works across India, has now mesmerised the French art lovers through his paintings.

Pushkales paintings, inaugurated at the Museum of Guethary in Biarritz town of France on Saturday, received rave reviews.

A book on Pushkales art Manish Pushkale  The Painter of Light was released by Dr Mohan Kumar, Indian ambassador in France on September 12. Eminent writers, critics and artists like Ashok Vajpeyi, Syed Haidar Raza, Zak Dupin, Jerome Nutor have contributed to the book.

One thing which is common in India and France is the love and dedication for arts. Though France is a known place to me, still every time, it is altogether a different experience. I feel responsible because when you represent your country, it is a serious affair. Our country is so wide and plural and so is France. My tryst with art in France is 15 years old. Its like a second home to me, said Manish while talking to HT on phone from Biarritz.

The inaugural day of the exhibition featured a special delegation comprising the mayors of Paris, Avinyo, Madrid, Venice, Vienna and Brussels.

The French society respects any countrys artistic and aesthetical capacities. There are so many important people here, and when they discuss about Indian arts, they do it like experts. I feel proud being a representative of my country here, Pushkale said.

Born in Bhopal in 1973, Manish Pushkale is a trained geologist. He studied art at the Art College in Bhopal and acquired his Masters degree. Most of Manishs works are abstract, which he has displayed at several eminent art galleries across the world.

The exhibition The painter of light will be on till October 29 in the same gallery in Biarritz.
Chief ministers of three BJP-ruled states and a senior BJP leader held a closed door meeting here on Monday to discuss Garib Kalyan (welfare of poor) agenda that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants all states ruled by his party to follow.

The agenda is expected to set common goals to pursue by the BJP-ruled states in a time-bound manner to ensure benefits of government schemes reach the last man in the society in accordance with the vision of Pt Deendayal Upadhyay, the patriarch of the BJP.

Madhya Pradeshs Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Maharashtras Devendra Fadnavis, Jharkhands Raghubar Das and BJP national vice-president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe took part in the meeting.

With my counterparts from Maharashtra & Jharkhand, we will work out effective strategy to ensure benefits of schemes reach the poor maximum, Chouhan tweeted after the meeting that went on for about two hours.

He said they discussed various aspects of the agenda to bring uniformity in pro-poor schemes in different states. There should be arrangements of bread, clothes, house, study and medicine for every poor. No poor should go hungry. The poor should get jobs. They should be self-reliant and not dependent on others.

Under dynamic leadership of PM Shri @narendramodi Central Govt. has launched a number of schemes to transform lives of poor & common man It is joint responsibility of Central & State Govt. we build a pro-poor welfare state in true sense to bring smiles on everyones face, he wrote in another tweet.

Chouhan said, After through discussions, PM will be presented the final draft.

He didnt lose the opportunity to attack the Congress, saying the Congress had raised Garibi hatao (eradicate poverty) slogan but it remained merely a slogan.

The idea to form a committee of chief ministers was mooted by Modi during his first meeting as the prime minister with chief ministers of the BJP-ruled in Delhi on August 27.

Modi, who was the chief minister of Gujarat before taking charge as prime minister, wants the BJP-ruled states to be a role model in implementing poor oriented schemes of the central government.

The committee of chief ministers was formed to study suggestions meant for uplifting the living standard of the poor. It will submit a report to BJP president Amit Shah.

The move assumes significance in view of criticism of the central government by the Opposition that it was a government of the rich. Also, the party is desperately trying to reach out to the SC/ST and OBC communities ahead of the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.
For all his fans ruing the fact that they could not treat themselves to a Bhai movie on Tuesday, Salman Khan had a surprise in store for them all this while: The first poster for Tiger Zinda Hai was released on Eid-ul-Adha.

The film is sequel to the hit 2012 romantic action film, Ek Tha Tiger. Ali Abbas Zafar, who replaces Kabir Khan as the director, shared the poster on Twitter on Tuesday. Check it out:

The poster is rather simple with the word Tiger spread through it. The gritty, muddy theme reminds very much of Tiger and Zoyas (played by Katrina Kaif, who will reprise her role in the sequel) adventures in Turkey in the original.

The little that we see of Salman in the poster, however, seems to be a still from the Ek Tha Tiger itself considering he is wearing the same shirt and keffiyeh.

Salman Khan in a still from Ek Tha Tiger. (Twitter)

So, thats a disappointment. We wish the makers hadnt rushed to release the poster so soon and maybe shot a scene or two that couldve shown something new to the fans.

Meanwhile, Kabir Khan knows about the sequel and has given his blessings to Ali for the same, according to a DNA report.

In an interview to After Hrs before the release of Sultan, Ali had said, I cant make a Kabir Khan film and Kabir Khan cant make my film. Every script that I have written has been shared with Kabir and every script that Kabir has made, is shared with me. And we have conversations about it. Yash Raj Films are eyeing Salmans favourite release slot - Eid 2018.

Salman Khan is also shooting for Tubelight with Chinese actor Zhu Zhu. Its scheduled release date is Eid 2017.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
With movies like Taare Zameen Par (2007), Stanley Ka Dabba (2011) and Hawaa Hawaai (2014) to his credit  writer-director Amole Gupte (left) is known for giving a fresh lease of life to childrens films in the Hindi film industry. The 54-year-old is now ready to direct a new kids action-adventure project, titled Sniff.

I dont make childrens films. I make films with children in them. The protagonist is a child, but the movie is also meant to be consumed by adults. In Bollywood, movies with child-centric angles often lose their sheen. Something needs to be done about that. We need to reinvent the genre, says Amole.

Talking about the issues that plague the genre, the director rues, We lack funding. Film-makers in Bollywood just want to follow the trend [of making commercial movies], rather than setting the trend themselves. Amole gives the example of producers who vehemently back the launches of their children  by becoming bullish and investing every paisa in their kids kitty. Childrens cinema should also be supported in the same manner, he feels. Nasir Hussain (late producer) went all out to launch Aamir Khan, for example. But nobody wants to do that for childrens films, he adds.

But Amole hasnt lost hope. Its not that we are not attempting things in this space. I feel Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) was a childrens film, since the protagonist, Harshaali Malhotra, was a little girl. Even Ra.One (2011) was like that. But, to make any film these days, a star is needed. You have to swim with the sharks, and hope that you  a dolphin  are spotted, he says.

Follow the author on @literarystew

Follow @htshowbiz for more updates

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chopped a bra scene from a recent film starring Katrina Kaif and Sidharth Malhotra, retained a boxer scene in another film that released on the same day and has given a clean chit to a song from an upcoming movie that features 25 kisses. Owing to their seemingly confused guidelines, the board, commonly known as censor, has attracted the industrys ire on several occasions.

While director of the film Nitya Mehra said, Theres no scene in the film with Katrina wearing a bra so it cant be cut. It is a clean film. It has got a UA certificate. The debate remains even if there is one, whats the big deal.

Read: CBFC vs Baar Baar Dekho: Bigg Boss Priya Malik goes braless in support

Besides stars from the industry who dont approve of these ruthless cuts, Ashoke Pandit, member of CBFC isnt happy with the decision either. Sadly, despite being in the Board, I have been fighting this entire battle. I feel people in the examining committee need to take a wise call, as times have changed. There is no limit of showing things and its not written in any law or act that you can censor scenes, he says.

Stating that morality is extremely subjective and personal, actor Pooja Bedi, who recreated the famous Marilyn Monroe up skirt step back in 1992 film Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, feels, Rather than stupidly chop scenes, Censor Board can certify it for an appropriate audience and let adults and parents decide for themselves what is okay for them and their families to watch.

The contraction comes when censor board chops some and keeps some and leaves the stars and audience confused. For instance, various other scenes and songs in the film were given a go ahead that showed Katrina donning outfits that are as good as a bra.

Because wearing a visible #bra would be indecent. #FreeTheNipple A photo posted by Priya Malik (@priyasometimes) on Aug 29, 2016 at 12:37pm PDT

Ex Bigg Boss contestant Priya Malik who showed her support for Free The Nipple Movement with a picture on Instagram feels that the Censor Board needs to re-evaluate its job description. Theyre a certification board and not the watchdogs of moral police. If there were any scenes in bra, why remove it? Is it not common sense or knowledge that women wear bras? When we wear it, it`s a problem and when we dont wear it, it is also a problem. The real problem here is that people dont understand that our bodies are our business. We need to normalise and not sexualize inner wear, she says.

Director Homi Adajania of Cocktail and Finding Fanny fame says, Were in dire need to evolve. Censor Board needs to add more defined categories of certification so let viewers make an informed choice. Right now, it is a total violation of freedom for the Board to dictate what the public can and cannot see.

Read: Remove shots of bra and Savita Bhabhi: CBFC tells makers of Baar Baar Dekhho

Bollywoods most iconic film, DDLJ, had a scene showing the bra and nothing was blurred even back then in 1995.

This is not the first time a Bollywood film (apt for family viewing) has a bra scene. Back in 1995, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge showed SRK awkwardly picking up a bra that accidentally fell out from Kajols suitcase. Dum Laga Ke Haisha showcased newlywed Bhumi Pednekar shopping for bras and lingerie. Kangana Ranaut starrer Queen also had a scene showing Lisa Haydon removing her bra from underneath her top before heading out for a party, though it was later blurred for the Television premier of the film.

Award winning actor Kangana Ranaut even said in a TV interview, My bra is not a danger to the society, so why blur it?

Indian supermodel Ujjwala Raut adds to it, If a movie scene has been shot aesthetically and looks classy, then people need to grow up and take a chill. (Also) sex sells, which is what will make the men go watch the movie but unfortunately we in India like to live in denial.

Actor Katrina Kaifs dance moves in Kala Chasma song have become the hottest talk of the town.

Read: Baar Baar Dekho doesnt have any scene with Katrina Kaif in a bra: Nitya Mehra

Not satisfied with the Boards current ideologies, Pandit retorts, We all need to understand a film is not made for one persons personal viewing or as per their choice, taste and thought process. If you are not too modern or dont watch your kids to watch a particular thing, you have no right to stop other people from watching it too.

In a day and age where audience are evolving with their taste in what they want to see in films, maybe Censor Board would soon mend its ways and come to terms with what sells on screen.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
After delivering a critically acclaimed film Airlift earlier this year, Nimrat Kaur is yet to sign her next Bollywood project. The actress, who was busy shooting for Wayward Pines in Vancouver for most of the year, says she is back and getting into the groove of things here.

Nimrat says she was caught up with her personal as well as professional life, but she is not complaining. Well, I have been up to a lot in the last year, it is really been a whirlwind. January was when Airlift released, and it was like one thing after the other and before you knew it, it was all over and then my sister was getting married so that was like a month of festivities and madness, and during my sisters wedding came up a job that required me to spend almost half a year in Vancouver, said Nimrat in an email interview.

Noticed for her work in Indian film The Lunchbox, Nimrat landed a role as a Pakistani ISI agent in American show Homeland, and then bagged a role in TV series Wayward Pines. She was shooting for the Manoj Night Shyamalans TV series -- aired in India on Star World Premiere HD.

The actor, who became part of the launch of Audi A4 here along with former India skipper Ravi Shastri, and Joe King, Head, Audi India, on Friday night, also shared that the year was a bundle of unpredictable surprises for her.

She said, I was filming Wayward Pines there for Fox Network. So, I have literally just come back and I am just about kind of getting into the groove of things here. So ya, its really been... probably the most unpredictable, incredible year that I could have had so far.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who has extended his support for the Global Citizen movement in India, says it was a bit disturbing for him to be part of the campaign with young stars like Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, and Farhan Akhtar.

The movement was formally announced on Monday with Indian celebrities joining their forces for the campaign. Though Amitabh was disturbed after sharing the stage with young stars, he shared that it was a rewarding experience.

The 73-year-old expressed his views about the movement on his official blog.

He posted, The future the present the carrying forward and the thrust of will to move this campaign forward centered around the youth and the young...which I might add was a bit disturbing for the aged olman, trying to hold his own amongst a stronghold of the young! But it was a rewarding experience and we shall be working toward its building and expanse.

(L To R) Actor Farhan Akhtar, Raj Nayak, CEO, Colors, actor Kareena Kapoor, Hugh Evans, CEO, Global Citizen, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, actors Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Poonam Mahajan, and Shiv Khemka, Chairman, The Global Education And Leadership Foundation during the press conference to launch Global Citizen Festival of India in Mumbai on Sept. 12, 2016. (IANS Photo)

He added, Expanse? They talked about efforts that should be made for the future 15 years to come...which kind of excluded me from it altogether...15 years and if it is willed I should be well into what, 90 years...that is a tall order...90...it shall not happen this far.

The inaugural Global Citizen Festival India will be headlined by Coldplay, Jay Z, Aamir, Ranveer Singh, Katrina Kaif, A.R. Rahman, Farhan, Shraddha Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Arijit Singh, Dia Mirza, Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Monali Thakur.

Several major artists and international guests will be announced at different stages of the campaign.

The Paa star added, Global citizenry beckons...the nature of the intent and its inception brings many of us on a common platform to work and ope to succeed in ridding poverty form India by 2030.

On the film front, the actor is awaiting release of Shoojit Sarkars Pink.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Noted writers such as JM Coetzee and Elizabeth Strout were bypassed as judges of the 2016 Man Booker Prize for Fiction announced a shortlist of six on Tuesday that included four British writers, but again, no Indian writer made the cut this year.

The winner of the 50,000 pound prize will be announced here on October 25.

The 2016 shortlist of six novels is: Paul Beatty (US; The Sellout), Deborah Levy (UK; Hot Milk), Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK; His Bloody Project), Ottessa Moshfegh (US; Eileen), David Szalay (Canada-UK; All That Man Is), and Madeleine Thien (Canada; Do Not Say we Have Nothing).

The books cover a diverse range of subjects, from murder in 19th century Scotland to classical music in Revolutionary China.

British writer Deborah Levy was nominated for the second time, this time for her book, Hot Milk. She was also on the 2012 shortlist for Swimming Home.

Chair of judges Amanda Foreman said: The Man Booker Prize subjects novels to a level of scrutiny that few books can survive. In re-reading our incredibly diverse and challenging longlist, it was both agonizing and exhilarating to be confronted by the sheer power of the writing.

As a group we were excited by the willingness of so many authors to take risks with language and form. The final six reflect the centrality of the novel in modern culture  in its ability to champion the unconventional, to explore the unfamiliar, and to tackle difficult subjects.

The shortlisted authors each receive 2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner will receive a further 50,000 and can expect international recognition.

First awarded in 1969, the Man Booker Prize is recognised as the leading prize for high quality literary fiction written in English. Its list of winners includes many of the giants of the last four decades, from Salman Rushdie to Hilary Mantel, Iris Murdoch to Ian McEwan.

This is the third year that the prize has been open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the UK. Previously, the prize was open only to authors from the UK & Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe.

We are delighted to announce our #ManBooker2016 shortlist! Read more here: https://t.co/7ca9stFiW4 pic.twitter.com/v45SXF6WdU  Man Booker Prize (@ManBookerPrize) September 13, 2016

Deborah Levys Hot Milk is a story of an intense relationship between a sickly mother and her daughter set in a small Spanish fishing village which the jury said in a statement examines female rage and sexuality.

First-time author Ottessa Moshfegh, a Boston-born 35-year-old, was selected for Eileen, a portrait of an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between caring for her alcoholic father in a squalid house and her job as a secretary at a boys prison.

Congrats Ottessa Moshfegh @JonathanCape on #ManBooker2016 shortlist success with Eileen pic.twitter.com/3SC2Aq7Q0T  Man Booker Prize (@ManBookerPrize) September 13, 2016

Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnets His Bloody Project thriller paints a painfully realistic picture of poverty in the tiny crofting community of Culduie in the Scottish Highlands, the jury said.

The three other books shortlisted are David Szalays All That Man Is, a portrait of masculinity, Madeleine Thiens Do Not Say We Have Nothing about classical music in revolutionary China and Paul Beattys The Sellout, a satire on US urban life.

Congrats David Szalay @JonathanCape on making #ManBooker2016 shortlist with All That Man Is pic.twitter.com/SRVlmkF89m  Man Booker Prize (@ManBookerPrize) September 13, 2016

The Foyles bookshop chain said in a statement that the shortlist was excitingly wide-open, with Deborah Levy the only well-known author left.

Several Indian authors, including Anita Desai, her daughter Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Aravind Adiga and Indra Sinha have been shortlisted for the Booker in the past.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more.
The South Korean government, long a bastion of support for the countrys big conglomerates, is sticking to its hard-line stance on Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd, whose collapse is roiling global supply chains.

Since the worlds seventh-largest container carrier filed for court receivership in late August, the government has sought to limit the impact on the export-dependent economy and Hanjin customers but is otherwise leaving the company to fend for itself.

It now is entirely up to the court, a government official closely linked to the matter told Reuters, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

South Korea has said no government or central bank money will be directly injected into firms undergoing restructuring in the ailing shipping and shipbuilding industries.

Instead, it has extended aid to small-to-medium sized businesses jolted by the restructuring process, dishing out cheap loans and providing funds to maintain shipbuilding jobs and retrain workers in hard-hit regions of the country.

The government has also taken measures such arranging for rival shipper Hyundai Merchant Marine and smaller carriers to deploy ships to routes that were served by Hanjin.

In recent months, Korea Development Bank discussed arranging a merger between Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM), itself under creditor-led debt restructuring. That effort ended when Hanjin sought court receivership after lead creditor Korea Development Bank halted support, Hanjin Shipping executive Kim Hyun-seok said last week.

KDB, which is also HMMs lead creditor, would be willing to back HMMs acquisition of Hanjin assets if it makes business sense and depending on the outcome of the receivership process, a KDB official told Reuters.

Although we are considering ways to absorb Hanjin Shippings market share, HMM is currently primarily focused on supporting cargo owners to minimize their difficulties, a spokeswoman for HMM said.

The tougher government line with Hanjin marks a departure. Last year, KDB and the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) pledged 4.2 trillion won ($3.8 billion) in loans and equity to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd, the worlds largest shipbuilder.

That drew criticism after Daewoo Shipbuilding, which received a bailout some 15 years ago, shocked investors with a first-half operating loss of about 3 trillion won.

Kong Dong-rak, general manager at Korea Asset Investment Securities, said the governments decision was based on the cost of reviving Hanjin, given the high charter fees Hanjin is paying to shipowners and the industrys bleak near-term prospects.

Hanjin had debt of 6.1 trillion won at the end of June.

The government decided it was time to cut them off because they knew they were sinking, Kong said.

Playing hardball with Hanjin, with just 1,428 employees in South Korea, is easier to do politically than with Daewoo Shipbuilding, which employs 38,000. Lazy thinking that the government will have no choice but to help shippers if they run into problems has ended up hurting trading companies, President Park Geun-hye said at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

We will not sit silently by as corporate managements who do not aggressively try to recover their businesses and wait for the government to solve everything, she said.

A Hanjin Shipping spokeswoman declined comment. Financial regulators blamed the carrier for a lack of information.

We tried to set up countermeasures for logistics issues which will arise from Hanjin Shippings court receivership, but we were unavoidably limited as Hanjin Shipping did not respond to any requests from creditors for information about cargo owners and sailing plans, FSC chairman Yim Jong-yong told a parliament hearing last week.

South Koreas trade ministry has been helping cargo owners and exporters, but not Hanjin itself, an official there said.

All additional help that goes to Hanjin should be limited to supporting the offloading of cargoes. No more, said an official directly involved in discussions with creditors.
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics were accused of agreeing not to poach each others US employees, according to a US civil lawsuit filed last week, in what has become a familiar allegation in Silicon Valley.

The proposed class action, filed in a Northern California federal court by a former LG sales manager, accuses Samsung and LG of antitrust violations and driving down employee wages. The case is similar to one against Apple Inc, Google and other tech companies which settled last year for $415 million.

An LG spokesman said no such agreement has ever existed and the accusation was without merit. Samsung declined to comment.

The plaintiff, A. Frost, says in the lawsuit that a recruiter contacted Frost via LinkedIn in 2013, seeking to fill a position with Samsung.

According to the lawsuit, the recruiter then informed Frost the same day: I made a mistake! Im not supposed to poach LG for Samsung!!! Sorry! The two companies have an agreement that they wont steal each others employees.

It is implausible that such a deal in the United States could have been reached without the consent of each companys corporate parent in South Korea, says the lawsuit, which does not state a specific damages amount.

Joseph Saveri, an attorney for Frost who had also filed the previous cases against Apple and Google, said the no-poaching agreements are inherently anticompetitive.

There is nothing more fundamental than the ability to get fairly paid for ones worth and talents, he said.
Indias top women bankers, SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, ICICI head Chanda Kochhar and Axis Bank CEO Shikha Sharma, are among the 50 most powerful women based outside the US, according to a list by Fortune which is topped by Banco Santanders boss Ana Botin.

Bhattacharya, 60 is ranked second on the list, while Kochhar comes in on the fifth spot and Sharma on the 19th position in the Fortunes 50 Most Powerful Women International list, which has ranked the women based outside the US.

Botin, Group Executive Chairman of Banco Santander, Eurozones largest bank by market value, repeats as No. 1, in a time of economic and political volatility for all. The 2016 list spans 19 countries.

Bhattacharyas profile has risen during her three-year tenure atop Indias largest bank, Fortune said.

SBI Chairperson Bhattacharya, who was widely speculated to succeed Raghuram Rajan as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has continued her high-profile battle with the banks bad loans, while courting overseas partners to invest in the stressed assets.

In May, she also orchestrated SBIs merger with six other groups, a plan that, once complete, will result in one of largest lenders in Asia.

Though her term leading the bank is set to expire in October, most expect the government will extend her time so she can see the efforts through, Fortune said.

ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO Kochhar, 54, is regarded even by rival bankers as a visionary, Fortune said.

After seven years at the helm of Indias largest private sector lender, with consolidated assets of USD 139 billion, she has overhauled the nations consumer retail business.

Though bad loans took a toll on income growth this year, Kochhar has engaged turnaround experts to help ditch those distressed assets, Fortune said, highlighting her efforts to boost the banks digital growth and enable female employees to work from home for a year.

Sharma, 57, has grown Axis from an underrepresented bank to the nations fastest growing private sector lender, with revenue up 15 per cent to USD 7.9 billion in 2015 and nearly 3000 branches across 1,800 cities and towns, Fortune said.

First quarter profit this year was hurt by a spike in bad loans, but Sharma deserves accolades for publicising a watch list she created to monitor four per cent of the banks potentially-troubled assets, it said.

Last week, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi was ranked second and was the only woman of Indian-origin in Fortunes list of the 50 most powerful women in the US, a compilation topped by General Motors CEO Mary Barra.

The international power list also includes Singapore Telecommunications Group CEO Chua Sock Koong on the 4th spot, Walgreens Boots Alliance Co-COO Ornella Barra (10), chairwoman and co-founder of Chinese real estate developer Longfor Wu Yajun (26), CEO and President, GE China, General Electric Rachel Duan (35), Huawei Technologies Chairman Sun Yafang (38), President, International Markets, MasterCard Ann Cairns (44) and Coca-Cola Amatil Group Managing Director Alison Watkins (47).
It is already six months into the current financial year, but the much-awaited Rs 40,000-crore National Infrastructure Investment Fund (NIIF) is yet to start operations.

According to top government officials, the complex structure of the fund is the main reason for the delay.

However, while speaking to HT, economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das said the delay was unavoidable as the fund had to be restructured, following investor concerns over putting money in a general investment fund. We came to know of this only after holding a few meetings with various possible investorsso we had to restructure the fund and that took time. But a lot of work has been done and now it is ready to take off.

Jayant Sinha, minister of state for aviation, who earlier MoS finance, had said that the fund would be operational by the end of 2015-2016. The fund is now likely to be operational by the end of this year.

Incorporated under the Companies Act 2013, NIIF, which is Indias first sovereign wealth fund, has been facing varied problems since its inception. Private investors and sovereign funds have raised several concerns about the functioning of the fund. In fact, following investor concerns over putting in money into stalled projects in the initial years, the government excluded stressed projects out of the funds ambit, at least for the first few years.

Also, initially, investors have refused to put money in a general fund, and wanted to invest in dedicated sub funds for specific projects. The government holds 49% in NIIF, while private investors hold the rest.

While the government will invest Rs 20,000 crore in the fund, the remaining amount will come from private investors, including foreign sovereign wealth funds, pensions funds and multilateral agencies. The money will be put into commercially viable and stalled projects.

Jayant Sinha, minister of state for aviation, who earlier was earlier MoS finance, had said that the fund would be operational by the end of 2015-2016.

There were also concerns about intervention by the triple Cs said an official in the government, who did not wish to be identified, while referring to probes by the CBI, CAG and CVC. The government keeping its stake below 49% will ensure that theres no undue interference said another source.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley recently said that India needs at least $1 trillion investment in infrastructure to expand the economy. The PPP (public-private partnership) momentum has reduced drastically and the increased thrust on public expenditure is insufficient for the vast investment needs. Therefore, structures like NIIF are critical for mobilising private capital, said Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman of Feedback Infra.
Six months on, there is no end in sight for authorities struggling to bring liquor baron Vijay Mallya to book after the industrialist fled to London in March, invoking suitable laws and crimping Indias efforts to bring him back.

The latest is an admission by the home ministry, which has reportedly said that a treaty with the UK  the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty signed in 1995  cannot facilitate the arrest of Mallya, a demand raised by the Enforcement Directorate and a 17-member lenders consortium. Mallya and his company Kingfisher Airlines had defaulted on around Rs 7,000 crore worth of loans and disregarded court summons to appear in cases related to the loan defaults.

The home ministry has not said anything to us as of now. But we are in the process of approaching the ministry. There are a lot of processes that need to tied up before we approach them, one ED official said.

The directorate, which probes irregularities related to foreign exchange violations, is working to file a prosecution case against Mallya and get a trial against him in the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) Special Court. We are seeking evidence against him, asking foreign jurisdictions, including the UK and other places not everything is in our hands, said the official quoted above.

The agency is also in process of a third attachment of assets of Mallya, which are largely in the form of equity shares worth over Rs 1,000 crore.

For banks, who have so far failed to recover anything even after putting on auction a sprawling office complex and trademarks of Kingfisher Airlines, the process has been fraught with non-cooperation. Bankers are still waiting for access to the promoter and in enforcing conversion of loan to equity and the follow-through process of change of debt into equity, said one person familiar with the development. Enforcement decisions are not strong enough and the promoter (Mallya) needs to co-operate. The lenders need to take control with the help of legal authorities.

Efforts by the lenders consortium led by State Bank of India to recover dues have so far yielded around Rs 1,200 crore since the first default in November last year.

The consortium has failed to even get suitors to multiple auctions of the Kingfisher House and Kingfisher Airlines brands, including logos, trademarks and his personal luxurious aircraft.

Banks have been fighting more than 20 legal disputes with 500 hearings in various courts and legal agencies, including the Supreme Court of India and the Central Bureau of Investigation.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) served a notice to Dev Land Housing (DLH) Private Limited, the developer on the radar for violations in a building in Goregaon which houses actor Kapil Sharma, in June for alleged alterations in an 11-storey tower in JVPD, Andheri.

Film-maker and social activist Ashoke Pandit, along with the residents of Leena Residency on Gulmohar Road, Andheri, had complained that the builder had encroached upon the 11th floor terrace, which was meant to be for the societys use, based on which the notice was issued under section 53 of the Mumbai Regional Town Planning Act (MRTP).

The society underwent redevelopment in 2013 and the DLH handed over flats to residents in 2015. The builder has encroached upon the basement by creating a room for help and toilets. A huge neon signboard has been put atop the building without the societys permission. The developer made alterations on the 10th and 11th floors, in complete contravention of the plan, said a resident, requesting anonymity.

In the notice, a copy of which is with HT, the K/West ward (includes Andheri) has asked the developer to restore the premises according to the approved plans in one month or face prosecution.

Pandit, who has also written to municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta said the BMC has not acted on the notice since June. It is shocking that the building got an occupation certificate (OC), despite the violations. There should be strict action against officials involved in giving the OC. People who bought homes based on the OC will face the trouble now, Pandit said.

Parag Masurkar, assistant commissioner of the K/West ward, said he will comment on the matter after looking into the case. Vijay Thakkar, chairman of the DLH group asked HT to call back twice, but failed to comment.

DLH is currently under the scanner for its building in Goregaon, where Sharma and Irrfan Khan own flats. The BMC served a notice to the developer for MRTP violations at the 18-storey DLH Enclave. Sharma and Khan were also issued notices for violations. The Mumbai police on Monday registered an FIR against Sharma for violations in his ninth floor flat.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Weve seen this movie before  this very scene, featuring this very cast of characters, mouthing more or less the very same lines. On February 11, speaking from a rostrum in Munich, American secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov announced the imminent cessation of hostilities in Syria. In a weeks time, they said, all combatants in that wretched land would stop shooting each other, and allow food and other humanitarian aid to reach Syrians long besieged by the fighting.

If the ceasefire had held, there would have been no reason for Kerry and Lavrov to reprise their Munich performance last Friday, this time in Geneva. Again, the two men held out the promise of an end to the Syrian civil war, now halfway into its sixth year, and nearly halfway to claiming a million lives.

For the sake of the millions of Syrians bloodied and bereaved by the war, and the many more who have been forced to flee their homes, risking death on the journey and hostility at its end, we must force ourselves at least to hope that Kerry and Lavrov have got it right this time.

Read | Syria ceasefire takes effect with Assad emboldened, opposition wary

Alas, recent history allows no optimism. The ceasefire announced in Munich failed because it was based on calculations far removed from the ground realities: 2,600 km removed, to be precise, the distance, as a jetliner flies, from the Bavarian capital to Damascus. And, let me save you the trouble of looking this up: Geneva is 300 km farther away.

On the ground in Syria, where the cost of the failure of the previous Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire pact is measured in blood and bodies, there is widespread scepticism, a sentiment that has succeeded where all other mediation has failed, in uniting the many anti-regime rebel groups.

Read | Syria ceasefire: Who are the forces involved?

They are right to be pessimistic, because the deal is short on specifics, and long on loopholes. Russia and the forces of the dictator Bashar al-Assad may continue to attack anybody they deem to be terrorists affiliated to al-Qaeda or the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). Since Assad routinely brands ALL his opponents terrorists, this gives him licence to continue pounding helpless civilians. If he doesnt stop dropping bombs, theres no reason for the rebels to silence their guns.

Another reason to be sceptical is that the deal was announced by the wrong people. Kerry and Lavrov may represent powerful nations, but in the context of Syria they are not the primary actors. Far more important players were not seen or heard in Geneva: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and only slightly less important, Turkey.

Read | US response to 9/11 expanded terror threat: France president Hollande

For Tehran and Riyadh, Syria is the battleground of their deep-felt sectarian enmity, currently playing out in several theatres of conflict, including Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iran wants Syrias Sunni majority to remain subjugated by Assad, who is at least nominally Shia. The Saudis cannot abide by the thought of a Shia hegemony along the Iran-Iraq-Syria axis.

Neither has any interest in an end to the fighting until its surrogates have stamped the others into complete submission. The regimes in both countries have vast resources they can throw into the conflict, and no compunctions about shedding the blood of their proxies in pursuit of regional dominance. (Whereas Saudi Arabia coaxes from the sidelines, Iran goes a step farther, sending some of its own men  some in uniform, others notionally civilian volunteers  to fight on Assads side.)

Read | Chemical gas attacks in Syria: The civil war is far from over

Turkey ought to care more about the plight of the Syrians, not least because millions of them are refugees on its soil, leading to great economic strain as well as growing social and religious destabilisation. But the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has until recently used the Syrian war to try and settle old scores with Turkeys restive Kurdish minority. Judging by his rhetoric and his actions, its hard to see Erdogan playing a constructive role in a Syrian peace process.

And all this, before we even get to the principal protagonists in Syria: Assad, the moderate rebels, and the terrorists. Nothing weve seen in recent months suggests any of them has reached the point of exhaustion  of resources, or of resolve  required for any serious peace negotiations to commence. It doesnt help that at least one party, the ISIS, is made up of people who are enthusiastic about death, their own almost as much of that of their enemies.

Read | Siege of Aleppo: The Islamic State will benefit from this mayhem

As I said at the start, weve seen this movie before. Sequels, especially when they feature the same actors and script, rarely improve on the original. It behoves the world to keep our collective fingers crossed, but to also be clear-eyed about the likeliest outcome: A brief pause, followed by a resumption of hostilities, just as in the previous movie.

For peace to become even a possibility in Syria, it is essential that the next ceasefire sequel features a larger cast of actors  and at a location exactly 0 km from Damascus.

(Bobby Ghosh is editor-in-chief of Hindustan Times. He has spent over two decades covering international affairs, including long stints as correspondent and editor in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the US. He tweets as @ghoshworld)

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
NEW DELHI: An angry motorist assaulted a 35-year-old man with an iron rod in front of his wife and two children after a minor accident on South Delhis MG Road last week, police said on Monday.

A scuffle over a late night car crash on Friday quickly took an ugly turn with one of the drivers allegedly thrashing the other with an iron rod.

Minutes later, dental technician Pradeep Chauhan was admitted to a hospital with head injuries. Alleged attacker, Vineet Kumar, a hairstylist, was arrested on non-bailable charges.

Chauhan, a resident of south east Delhis Sangam Vihar, was allegedly driving home with his family. When he reached Andheria More near Qutub Minar, he bumped into a car that reportedly stopped abruptly.

I applied brakes, but ended up hitting his car. Both our cars were damaged. Mine was damaged in the front while his was damaged at back, he said.

Chauhan said he saw Kumar getting an iron rod from his car. My wife told him we will pay for the damages, but he was violent. My wife and kids (aged 12 years and 10 years) apologized, but he refused to listen.

His wife tried stopping him from hurting me, but he did not listen. He hit me on my head at least 4-5 times because of which I fainted,he told police.

He even threatened my kids. My wife also received one blow with his iron rod. I had fallen unconscious by that time.

Residents at the spot caught Kumar and handed him to the police. Police registered a case of attempt to commit culpable homicide and criminal intimidation against him.

Kumar filed a separate complaint alleging that Chauhan was drunk at time of the incident.Police said that was not true. Additional deputy commissioner of police (south) Nupur Prasad said, The accident took place when the signal turned red and one car stopped while the other could not.
BENGALURU/CHENNAI: A man was killed and another wounded in police firing in Indias IT capital Bengaluru on Monday as the Cauvery water-sharing dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu turned violent.

The violence started after the Supreme Court turned down Karnatakas plea to temporarily stop the release of Cauvery river water to neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

Police fired when a mob tried to attack a patrol car at Hegganahalli in Bengaluru city, where mobs burnt vehicles and vandalized shops, while protesters in Tamil Nadu retaliated by targeting Kannadiga people and businesses in their state.

Rioters set ablaze at least 30 buses bearing Tamil Nadu licence plates at a depot in Bengaluru while trucks were attacked in Mandya, Mysuru, Chitradurga and Dharwad districts. More than 200 people were arrested so far.

As television footage showed flames leaping from burnt-out vehicles in Bengaluru, fears of the violence-hit IT hub losing international business began to arise.

Bengaluru is home to top Indian IT companies such as Infosys Ltd, Wipro Ltd and Mphasis as well as offices of several multinational companies like Samsung Electronics.

Police clamped prohibitory orders in the evening, barring the assembly of four or more persons, while private and office cars remained off the roads in the city. Authorities shut down schools and the metro network was temporarily suspended.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh rang up the chief ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and assured them central assistance.

The Centre rushed 10 companies or about 1,000 personnel of the special anti-riot paramilitary force, RAF, to Karnataka. If the need arises, contingents will be deployed in Tamil Nadu too.

Chief ministers S Siddaramaiah of Karnataka and Tamil Nadus J Jayalalithaa wrote to each other, appealing for protection to people from their states caught in the crossfire.

Hotels and properties belonging to Tamils in Karnataka are being attacked and damaged. This is an alarming situation and is causing considerable anxiety, Jayalalithaa said.

On the streets, passion ran high as Kannadiga groups targeted Tamil speakers. Even journalist were not spared as India Today deputy editor Rohini Swamy and video journalist Madhu Y were allegedly assaulted when they reporting the violence. Crowds of people shouting slogans against the court order and Tamil Nadu marched along major roads in Bengaluru, Mysuru and Mandya. They forced shopkeepers to down shutters.

Hundreds of policemen fanned across the Tamil-majority areas in Bengaluru, but struggled to contain the protests.

The Cauvery, which originates in Karnataka and flows into Tamil Nadu, has been the source of a bitter dispute as farmers in both states depend on the river to irrigate their crops. A British-era treaty governs water sharing between the two states but Karnataka says the award is unfair and demands a tripling of its share.

(with inputs from agencies)
NEW DELHI: Day after he was booked for allegedly trying to demolish a rear wall of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), AAP MLA Somnath Bharti said on Monday that the wall has to go.

Come what may, the Berlin wall will have to go, said the MLA who represents Malviya Nagar constituency.

It is public property and a roadblock to convenience of thousands of residents of Gautam Nagar and Masjid Moth, Bharti said.

Bharti and his over 300 supporters were accused of trying to break the wall with a bulldozer on September 9. An FIR was registered after a complaint from the chief security officer of AIIMS. On Sunday, he and his supporters were charged with rioting, damaging public property and misbehaving with security guards at the institute.

People have joined hands against it. I am just leading them, the legislator said.

Over the last two years, we have explored all options to sort out the issue. It is a matter of record that AIIMS management did not turn up at any of the meetings attended by PWD, SDMC and police officials to discuss the problem. We will take the issue to its logical end, he said.

Wherever common man will be troubled I will go. D allegation that residents dismantled the wall is a blatant lie. I will fight in court (sic), Bharti tweeted soon after he allegedly led a group of Gautam Nagar residents to demolish the wall on September 9.

The Malviya Nagar MLA, who is also a founding member of AAP, is not new to controversy. Bharti first made headlines during his tenure as law minister in 2014 when he allegedly raided a house in Khirki Extension in south Delhi at midnight to expose a drug and sex cartel.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
GHAZIABAD: A 13-month-old boy was rescued 30 hours after he was kidnapped from his house at Nauraspur in Tronica City area of Ghaziabad, and handed over to a Delhi businessman who had two daughters and was desperate to have a son.

The police quickly cracked the case and revealed that the child, Yash, was sold to a resident of Shakarpur in Delhi for Rs 3 lakh. Several middlemen were involved in the case, police said.

The boy was rescued during early on Monday and five accused arrested. Police said that Paras Jain, who allegedly bought Yash from Patparganj-based nurse Anita Vij, wanted a son as he had two daughters aged 13 and 11. Jain operates a bakery in Delhi. His wife Archana is absconding.

Paras and his wife came in touch with Anita three-four months back and she promised that she will get them a boy if there is one available. Anita later got in touch with a Ghaziabad-based couple for the job. The couple roped in their acquaintances Rahul and his friend Sunil to abduct the child. The couple handed over the abducted child to Anita on the night of September 10. She called up Jain and handed over the child in return of `3 lakh, said Rakesh Kumar Pandey, superintendent of police (rural).

Anita, 45, said that she worked as a nurse with a private nursing home around 10 years back. She is unmarried and the Ghaziabad couple Chandvir and Poonam is also childless.

Our teams picked up the accused and recovered the boy safely. The five accused were produced before court on Monday. We will soon take them on remand and interrogate whether more children were sold away to others in a similar manner, Pandey added.

Five of those arrested include, Paras Jain, 41, Anita Vij, 45, Chandvir Singh, 38, and wife Poonam, 35, and Rahul, 22,  the man who abducted the child along with his friend Sunil. Police said that Sunil, 21, is absconding.

The officials said after Anita allegedly received `3 lakh from Jain, she paid Rs 75,000 to Chandvir and Poonam. They kept from Rs 30,000 and paid the rest to Rahul and Sunil.

After the boy was abducted, the police got a tip-off from local residents that the boy was last seen with Rahul and Sunil. Rahul and Chandvir knew each other as they hail from Phugana in Muzaffar Nagar. Sunil on the other hand, visits Nausarpur to meet his brother-in-law, who is a neighbour of the boys parents.

After the police teams nabbed Rahul from Muzaffar Nagar on September 11, he revealed the plot. Several teams raided the Gagan Vihar residence of Chandvir and Poonam and nabbed them too. The couple helped police trace Anita late on the night of September 11. She called up Jain along with the child to Patparganj from where police picked up Paras Jain and recovered the child around 2am on Monday.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
NEW DELHI: The Delhi government has proposed to hike by Rs 10 crore the allocation to each MLA under the local area development (LAD) funds scheme for the current financial year.

Currently, a legislator gets Rs 4 crore to carry out development works in his constituency.

According to Delhi government officials, Rs 280 crore meant for MLA-LAD funds has been already disbursed. It proposes to give out an additional Rs 700 crore.

If the proposal is implemented, it will be the highest hike in the local area funds for legislators in the country.

In 2011, the Sheila Dikshit government had increased MLA funds from Rs 2 crore to Rs 4 crore.

Of Rs 4 crore fund, Rs 1 crore is allocated for executing works for Delhi Jal Board (DJB)every year as per the rule, said a government official.

Sources said deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia has asked urban development department to prepare a cabinet note, which will be presented to the cabinet for a formal approval. It will then be sent to the Centres nod.

Officials said the additional funds will be used for works especially in rural and unauthorised colonies.

The proposal for additional allocation of funds has been sent to the Lieutenant Governor. Once the cabinet okays it, the proposal will be tabled in the Delhi Assembly where the AAP has an overwhelming majority with 67 MLAs.

The official said that the decision was taken in view of the fact that three municipal corporations have virtually failed to carry out development due to lack of funds.

Additional funds will be utilised to improve civic amenities in the 272 municipal wards, said an official.

Funds will be spent on redevelopment of streetlights, parks, pavements, and roads in colonies, said the official.

Referring to the letter from the deputy CMs office dated August 31, the official said that the upper limit for the funds will remain Rs 4 crore per annum. It is not necessary that the additional Rs 10 crore will be granted in the next financial year, the official said.
NEW DELHI: The national capital region reported its first chikungunya death on Monday a few hours after Delhis civic authorities confirmed 497 chikungunya and 387 dengue cases over the past week.

A 65-year-old resident of Ghaziabad in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh was brought in a critical condition to the Capitals Sir Ganga Ram hospital and he died early Monday of sepsis, or blood infection, caused by chikungunya.

The mosquito-borne viral disease causes fever and debilitating joint pain and swelling but rarely kills.

Chikungunya cases have been the highest ever in Delhi this year, and most clinics are full of people with fever, body ache and joint pain, said Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, clinical director and director, internal medicine, Max Healthcare.

In healthy people, it can be managed at home but causes complications in people over 65 and those with existing disorders such as poorly-controlled diabetes and heart disease, Budhiraja said.

Delhi now has 1,057 chikungunya and 1,158 dengue cases confirmed by municipal corporations, which are accused of under-reporting infections that reflect their failure to control mosquito breeding during the monsoon season.

Three of Delhis 45 government hospitals have reported more chikunguya cases than the civic bodies, which update the data every Monday.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences confirmed more than 900 chikungunya cases, Safdarjung hospital 531, and Lok Nayak hospital 281 cases.

Delhi is reeling under an onslaught of viral, bacterial and parasitic infections, most of which begin with fever, headache and body pains, confining a person to bed for a week.

This year, the dengue virus serotype 3 causing the outbreak in Delhi causes mild disease and rarely leads to hospitalisations, said Dr KK Agarwal, national president-elect, Indian Medical Association.

Chikungunya was a debilitating disease but the threat to life was low, he said. Patients need hospitalisation only if the infection involves vision or the brain with symptoms of drowsiness, hallucinations and delirium, or infections that can lead to multi-organ involvement and septic shock, which can cause death, he said.

But, patients still cant get beds in both government and private hospitals. The Delhi government has allowed hospitals and nursing homes to add 10-20% more beds till October 31 to treat fever and dengue patients.

With 1,105 hospitals and nursing homes and 48,096 beds, Delhi tops India in health infrastructure. Its hospital beds-population ratio of 2.7 per 1,000 persons is the best in the country.

The city is not short of beds, it has three times the number of hospital beds as the national average, but many people are unnecessarily hospitalised. The fact is that 90% patients with dengue and chikungunya admitted in hospitals can be managed at home, said Dr Agarwal.

Dengue and chikungunya cases go up during and just after the rainy season that normal lasts from June to September because Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that spreads both infections, breeds in fresh rainwater.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
MUMBAI: Concerned that students continue to stoop under the weight of heavy school bags, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Monday asked affiliated schools to enforce additional measures to lighten students burden.

Following the footsteps of the Maharashtra government  which enforced a new school bag policy last year limiting the weight of the bag to 10% the weight of the child  CBSE in April issued an advisory that affiliated schools, too, must make bags lighter. The board has suggested ways in which schools, teachers and parents can achieve this, based on feedback.

One of the major suggestions is that schools should ask students to stick to the timetable and make them aware about the effects of fatigue caused owing to heavy bags on their daily performance in class. Young children whose spine is at a crucial stage of growth are most susceptible to back, muscle, shoulder pain and in extreme cases the distortion of spinal cord the impact may well be irreversible, read the circular issued by KK Choudhary, director, academic, research and training.

Among a slew of suggestions such as random checks, parental supervision while students pack bags and pairing students to share textbooks, the board stated that Class 1 and Class 2 should not be assigned homework or carry school bags and light weight textbooks should be prescribed.

Education officials in Mumbai observed that CBSE and ICSE school bags are heavier than the Maharashtra state board because they have multiple textbooks for each subject. Students cannot rely only on the NCERT books in higher classes, reference books are needed to solve questionnaires because they are asked questions from different books in the exam, said Kalpana Kumar, principal, St Josephs School, Panvel. Recognising that this practice increases the weight of the bag, CBSE suggested, Schools should not prescribe too many additional and supplementary textbooks that are at times voluminous, costly and designed in a pedagogically unsound manner.

It asked schools to set aside a few hours in the timetable for students to complete their homework and assignments, but schools called it an impractical move.

We cannot afford to make separate provisions for homework completion for each subject during school hours, said Ganesh Parmeswaran, principal, Bal Bharti Public School, Navi Mumbai, adding that measures taken by schools to reduce the weight of the bags are not working.

Many schools tried to rejig their timetable and allot double periods. We even gave parents freedom to take any step they want to lighten the bags, but it hasnt helped much. Often teachers insist on bringing more books or tuition books are stowed away in the bag and this increases weight, said Parameswaran.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
NEW DELHI: A day after a 55-year-old woman was killed and her house robbed in northwest Delhis Model Town, three men, including her former employee, were arrested in the case.

Bunty (32), who planned to kill Kusum Gupta, reportedly did odd jobs for her for 12 years. He recently quit the job. Shunty (21) and Sadiq (20) are Buntys relatives, said police.

Police were informed about the murder on Sunday after Kusums son, Piyush, spotted her dead on a sofa when he returned home after a business trip to Chennai. There was a plastic rope around Kusums neck and the house was ransacked.

Police suspected it was the work of someone known to the Guptas. They questioned all the staff at Piyushs shop. None of the employees was verified by the police.

The statement of Sadiq, who worked at Piyushs shop, was contradictoryHe said Bunty, who knew she kept cash and jewellery at home, planned to kill her and flee with the loot. He had roped in Sadik for the job, said deputy commissioner of police (northwest) Vijay Singh.

Sadiq, who came to Delhi a month ago and lived with Bunty, told police that Bunty also roped in Shunty. Bunty knew that Guptas son would be travelling to Chennai for work and that she would be alone at home. Since Kusum knew Bunty, it was easy for him to enter the house, a police officer said.

The moment Kusum opened the door they pushed her to the ground and strangled her with the rope. They took the nose pin and earrings she was wearing, leaving a deep cut on her ears and nose. They stole cash and jewellery and fled, said Singh.

Bunty and Shunty were arrested at Model Town. Jewellery worth Rs 5 lakh, Rs 37,700 cash and equipment to break into a house were seized from them.
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.
GHAZIABAD: The 13-month-old abducted boy, Yash, passed several hands before he reached his purchaser in Delhi.

The police said the Delhi woman, Anita Vij, was a common link between Paras Jain and the Ghaziabad couple who transported the abducted boy to her hours after his abduction.

Police said kidnappers Rahul and Sunil picked up the boy and walked through construction sites near Nauraspur and reached the main Loni Road from where they boarded an auto to the Loni-Delhi border.

After reaching a roundabout near the border, they called up Chandvir Singh and his wife Poonam  the couple  who arrived in a cab. Singh is employed with a cab aggregator.

All the persons drove towards Tulsi Niketan in Ghaziabad where Rahul and Sunil got down.

The couple told Rahul and Sunil to wait till they returned with the money. Both waited for more than two hours at the spot. Meanwhile, the couple drove in the cab to Patparganj where they handed over the child to Anita. She called up Jain who arrived with the money and took the child, said Rakesh Kumar Pandey, SP (rural).

Jain said he came in contact with Anita after his cousin told him that she can help them get a baby boy. Anita denied the charges and said the Ghaziabad couple pressed her to take Yash and never told her he was abducted.

Once Jain got the boy, he arranged for a party on Sunday night at his house and invited relatives. The boy was given new clothes and the family clicked pictures. Jain has told us his family wanted a new name for the boy. Their happiness was short lived as police teams reached Anitas residence late Sunday night, Pandey added.

After allegedly paid Rs 3 lakh, the Ghaziabad couple returned to Tulsi Niketan where they kept Rs 30,000 of the Rs 75,000 allegedly paid to them by Anita. Rahul and Sunil fled thereafter.
NEW DELHI: Its official. No hospital or laboratory in Delhi can charge more than Rs 1,500 for the confirmatory RT-PCR ( Reverse Transcryptase  Polymerase Chain Reaction) test for chikungunya.

Two weeks after the health minister made the announcement capping the price for the test, the government issued a notification on Monday. In the interim, the hospitals and private diagnostic laboratories were charging patients Rs 2,500  Rs 4,000.

In the same period, 625 cases of chikungunya were recorded in the capital.

The RT-PCR test, which usually costs between at private laboratories, is more sensitive and can detect chikungunya almost immediately after the onset of fever. The less expensive antigen tests takes four to six days.

The price of chikungunya serology IGM test was also capped at Rs 600 by the government. It usually costs between Rs 800 to Rs 1,000 at private labs.

The notification to cap the price of the antigen test was issued immediately to all the private hospitals, nursing homes and laboratories immediately, a Delhi government official said,

But, the notification for capping of RT-PCR price was sent out today, the official said, not giving any particular reason for the delay.

The municipal corporations of Delhi on Monday reported a total of 1,057 cases of chikungunya in Delhi and NCR.

Doctors in the city, however, suspect that the actual number of cases is higher as many people do not get the test done.

The fever subsides in four or five days. Once people start feeling better, they do not come back for antibody test, a doctor from a Delhi government hospital said, on condition of anonymity.

And, they do not get the PCR confirmatory test done, especially in private hospitals, because of the high cost, the doctor said.

In preparation for dengue, the government last month had capped the prices of NS1-Ag and MAC ELISA test for dengue at Rs 600 and test for platelet count at Rs 50.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
NEW DELHI: A 27-year-old BPO employee was found dead in a pool of blood at his friends apartment in Dwarka Sector 16 on Sunday night.

Police said Saurabh Ghai, an Uttam Nagar resident, was found naked. His friend Amit Puri, a former BPO employee, told police that Ghai died when he fell from the balcony of his third-floor flat.

He allegedly rushed down to check on his friend. Police said Puri wasnt fully dressed. Police suspect both men were both drunk.

The two reportedly met each other for the first time at the flat after they became friends on Facebook 20 days ago. Police said the two had been chatting with each other since then.

Police are questioning Puri to establish the sequence of events that led to Ghais death.

Deependra Pathak, joint commissioner of police (southwestern range), told HT that Ghais body was sent to a government hospital for autopsy. No case was registered till Monday night.

We are waiting for Ghais autopsy report to ascertain the exact cause of his death. Prima facie we dont suspect any foul play. All possible angles in the matter will be examined, Pathak said.

A senior police officer said Amit Puri lived alone in the flat. Ghai lived with his family in Uttam Nagar and worked at a BPO in Gurgaon.
GURGAON: More than two weeks after the Mewat gang rape, one of the victims has levelled a fresh allegation that the attackers who were arrested were part of a cow vigilante group.

Police, however, said they had no evidence nor a statement from the victim to support the charge. The 22-year-old victim, who lodged the police complaint in the case on August 25, said the attackers told her that the family was being punished for consuming cow meat.

They (attackers) asked us if we would sacrifice and eat cow meat during Bakri Eid. When we said no, they said we were being punished for consuming cow meat, the woman said.

She appeared before a TV channel making this fresh allegation. A couple was murdered and a minor girl and her cousin were gang-raped by a group of eight to 10 men on the intervening night of August 24-25 in Dingerheri village.

On August 29, police nabbed four accused, Sandeep, Amarjeet, Karamjeet and Rahul Kumar. The fresh allegation has taken the victims relatives by surprise.

I was not aware about the cow meat allegation. They did not mention this to us before, said a cousin of the victim. The victim, however, said she told the police about it but was not taken seriously.

Haryana director general of police (DGP), Dr KP Singh said police had no evidence in support of the claim.

During an official visit to Mewat on Sunday, Singh said the victims did not share any such detail with the police. Singh said there was no mention about the fresh allegation in any of the statements recorded in presence of the magistrate or in front of the police. The victims did not mention any cow vigilante angle in the complaint, he said.

On September 8, the Haryana government agreed to transfer the probe into the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
NEW DELHI: The mobile clinics run by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) are working well beyond their capacity as cases of viral infections in Delhi have risen suddenly in the past few weeks.

The municipal body had launched 12 vans on September 5, three each for four of its zones. Each van, a makeshift arrangement in a Maruti eight-seater van, carries a General Duties Medical Officer (doctor) and a pharmacist. These clinics offer free treatment and medicine for dengue and chikungunya.

Doctors working in mobile clinics say that over 90% of the patients they examine complain of excessive pain and fever. The vans work between 9 am and 12:30 pm . They carry machines to check blood pressure, sugar and cartons of medicines such as common fever tablets, anti-allergics, cough syrups and pain relief ointments.

We cant do checks for dengue or chikungunya. But, we refer the patient to the hospital based on his symptoms, said a doctor deputed in a van in Ali Nagar, an illegal settlement on the outskirts of south Delhi.

Ali Nagar does not have a government hospital or clinics and the area is notorious for quacks. In the two-and-half hour that the van is stationed there, 209 patients are examined by the doctor.

According to World Health Organization not more than twenty patients should be examined by a doctor in a day. But the condition is very bad in areas like this which does not have health facilities, said the doctor at the mobile clinic.

A medical officer at the SDMC hospital in Lajpat Nagar, from where the van travels to Ali Nagar, said, I suspect that of the over 200 cases that were examined today, more than 50 had symptoms of chikungunya. However, they need not be admitted to the hospital, he said.

Residents, however, say the mobile clinics are damage control by the SDMC.

Ali Nagar resident Joginder, 32, said, More than two hundred people here have body pain or viral fever. Despite mosquito breeding in the area, the corporation did not do fogging to prevent it.

Residents said earlier when the vans visited the area, there were hardly any queues. But now, not all those who queue-up get to meet the doctor.

It is 12:30 pm. We will have to leave. Even if we stay here till evening, people would keep pouring in, said the driver of the van.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
GHAZIABAD: A 25-year-old man and his grandmother were allegedly shot dead by their neighbours at Bheem Nagar area in Vijay Nagar near NH-24 on Monday evening after they raised objections over the neighbours occupying their space by tethering cattle.

The incident took place around 6pm when Prem Wati, 60, objected to her neighbour Kishan Singh tethering his cattle outside her house.

Singh got agitated over it and shot both Prem Wati and her grandson Ravinder with a firearm. The accused fled the spot and our teams are searching for him. There has been longstanding dispute over the right of way and also over some drain where the accused persons family dumped garbage. This was also objected to by the victim family, a police officer said.

Prem Wati and Ravinder succumbed to their bullet injuries on they way to the hospital.

Relatives of the victims said Ravinder studied at a science and management college in Ghaziabad.

The families have had a long dispute. Our relatives objected whenever the accused tied up the cattle in front of their house. They had told the neighbours to remove the cattle as they obstructed parking space. When I was reaching near the house, I saw the man shooting at the them, sister-in-law of Ravinders mother said.

After the incident, hundreds of residents of Bheem Nagar and nearby localities blocked the highway and demanded immediate arrest of the accused who fled their house after the incident. The two families are allegedly from different castes.

We are yet to get a complaint from the victim family as they are with residents who have blocked the NH-24 highway near Vijay Nagar. Both victims sustained gunshots and are dead. Our officials are trying to convince local residents that strict action will be taken and they should move out of the highway. The neighbour who opened fire is Kishan Singh. We are awaiting a complaint, KS Emmanuel, senior superintendent of police, Ghaziabad, said.

We have diverted the traffic at five to six locations in order to avoid blockade on the highway. However, some traffic near the protest site is still held up. We are trying to get it cleared soon, he said.
NEW DELHI: Only 74 out of 338 waterless urinals built under the jurisdiction of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation are functional despite a Rs 6.38 crore been invested on their repair and maintenance.

Deputy chairman of the standing committee Rajesh Bhatia, who raised the issue in a meeting of the corporation , asked how can the corporation spend so much money and yet only one-fifth of the urinals are functional.

These urinals were built by a private company during the Commonwealth Games in 2010 and it was supposed to look after its maintenance. In return, they were allowed to put their advertisements there.

The company did not maintain them properly. There were court cases and it was later decided that the corporation will maintain them, said Bhatia.

In 2015, the corporation spent Rs 6.38 crore on its maintenance and decided to provide a water connection. However, only 74 of these urinals could be provided with water connection.

The corporation purchased just two jetting machines for so many toilets and the remaining money was spent on construction work and purchase of acid and other cleaning materials, he said.

Several new toilet blocks could have been built in the same amount. Where has all the money gone? he added.

Standing committee chairman Pravesh Wahi said that now a total of 46 jetting machines will be purchased by the corporation for the maintenance of these toilets.

It was decided in the meeting that these new toilets will be once again transferred to private contractors for their maintenance and the corporation will earn revenue from their advertising rights.

We are hopeful that the private company will now be able to handle them easily as they will be converted into water urinals, an official said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
NEW DELHI: Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia has asked Delhis education department to relax rules and give admission to a Pakistani immigrant who has been struggling to secure school admission due to lack of required documents.

16-year-old Madhu came to India came to India with her mother, siblings, uncle and cousins two years ago, from Pakistans Punjab province.

Authorities at the co-ed senior secondary school in Sanjay Colony refused to enroll her in the ninth standard, as she did not have the documents required to complete formalities.

The girl then wrote to Kejriwal asking him to intervene. She also wrote to the deputy CM, requesting him to facilitate her admission on humanitarian grounds.

Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj took note of the reports of Madhus struggle to secure admission and raised the issue with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Approving the request, Sisodia said in his letter: Due to peculiar circumstances, the girl is not in possession of any school leaving certificate or date of birth certificate. She wants to study and on humanitarian grounds it is my considered opinion that we need to walk extra mile to accommodate her.

To accommodate Madhus request, the government can consider relaxing whatever rules and regulations, if they come in way of her joining our school, he added.

Accordingly, admission to Madhu may immediately be provided at any of our government schools located in Sanjay Colony, Bhati Mines, Fatehpur Beri, New Delhi. She would also be given necessary books and uniform and we may facilitate whatever is required for the girl to study in our school, the letter stated.
NEW DELHI: Rowing through the opaque waters of the Yamuna with pungent smell of chemicals and waste hanging in the air, coupled with the sight of garbage piles and people defecating on the banks is likely to become a reality for Delhiites.

The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) moved a petition at the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday seeking permission to start water taxis in a portion of the polluted river.

The proposal mentioned the development of five boat-like structures, which would be anchored by cables across a portion of the river. These boats will be less than 20,000 sqm in size, the plea said.

Manoj Mishra from the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan, however, said that there is no merit in such projects till the Yamuna is back to being a river.

Yamuna will not become Thames overnight. What we see now is only a dead water body, which is as good as a collection of toxic waste. Where will they implement the project? said Mishra.

He said that starting boating activities will only be a white elephant project. Such activities are generally proposed at the end of complete restoration of the river and after that also the government should conduct an environment impact assessment before giving a nod to such a project, he said.

No one would want to bear the odour and boat rides here, and even if they do, it will be a major health hazard. The infrastructure will go waste. The implementation of the project will also obstruct the restoration of the river, he said.

The petition has, however, called the project an environment friendly initiative. It said that five floating terminals will be set up which will be removable, and the effect on the flood plan will be insignificant.

Approach roads to the terminals will also be made from kuchcha material. The tribunal had earlier prohibited any construction activity in the demarcated floodplain of the Yamuna.

It is in pursuance of this order of the tribunal that the applicant is seeking the indulgence and permission of NGT for the development of an environment friendly and complimentary water transportation in the Delhi stretch of Yamuna, the petition read.

Delhis water minister Kapil Mishra said that in a meeting with the IWAI last week, the upstream of Wazirabad was identified as a clean portion of the river, where the project can be implemented.

If we get a nod from the NGT then we will go ahead with the project. The portion of the river is fairly clean and such a project can be started then. We will ensure that all the guidelines are followed, he said.

This year, from the samples picked up from seven points between ITO and the Najafgarh Drain, the dissolved oxygen (DO) content was between 0.24 parts per million and 0.32 parts per million. DO levels in healthy water are above four. Below a DO of two, aquatic life begins to get affected.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A Delhi hospital reported two chikungunya patient deaths on Tuesday, taking the toll to three in the national capital region this year, the biggest outbreak of the mosquito-borne viral disease in the city.

All three deaths were of men between the ages of 61 and 65 years of multi-organ failure within 24 hours of being admitted to Delhis Sir Ganga Ram Hospital with severe complications.

Among those who died was Delhi-resident Uday Shankar Prasad, 61. The other two, Ashok Chauhan, 62, was from Aligarh and Ramendra Pandey, 65, who died on Monday morning, was from Ghaziabad.

Since two of the men who died were not Delhi residents, their death will be added to their respective states tally and not be counted as a Delhi death.

Chikungunya can cause complications in older people and those with existing conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension etc, leading to sepsis and multi-organ failure, said Dr SP Byotra, head of the department of medicine at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

Chikungunya is a viral disease spread to humans by infected mosquitoes. It causes fever and severe joint pain that can last for days to weeks but rarely kills. Other symptoms include muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash.

Delhi authorities also reported 1,057 cases of the viral disease this year with hospitals overflowing with patients complaining of fever and joint pains.

Another 1,158 cases of the mosquito-borne Dengue have been reported from the national capital region with four fatalities.

In healthy people, it can be managed at home but causes complications in people over 65 and those with existing disorders such as poorly-controlled diabetes and heart disease.

Delhi is reeling under an onslaught of viral, bacterial and parasitic infections, most of which begin with fever, headache and body pains, confining a person to bed for a week.

Across India, 12,000 cases of chikungunya and 27,000 cases of dengue have been reported this year with Odisha, West Bengal and Kerala among the worst affected.

Dengue and chikungunya cases go up during and just after the rainy season that normal lasts from June to September because Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that spreads both infections, breeds in fresh rainwater.

Read | Chikungunya cases increase in Noida, Ghaziabad

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
As chikungunya continues to scare the capital with three deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the Delhi government has said there is no cause for panic.

The government issued a statement on Tuesday, saying the health institutions were fully prepared to deal with the situation. The assurance comes at a time when the number of chikungunya and dengue cases is spiralling and the government is managing without the chief minister, health minister and the principal health secretary.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is in Bengaluru for his throat surgery and health minister Satyendar Jain has gone to Goa for party work. Principal health secretary Chandraker Bharti is also on leave till September 16.

Department of Health has already dedicated an additional 1000 beds for fever patients in three major hospitals - Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, Janakpuri Super Speciality Hospital and Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital. The government has established fever clinics in its 26 hospitals, 262 government dispensaries and 106 Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics to cater to fever patients, said the statement.

Read: 2 more die of chikungunya in Delhi, three deaths in 24 hours

A helpline number has been started (011-22307145) to provide assistance and advice on dengue and chikungunya fever. The treatment and lab diagnosis of dengue and chikungunya is free in government hospitals.

A total of 1,057 chikungunya cases and 1,158 dengue cases have been reported in Delhi this season though the municipal corporations have been accused of underreporting the cases. Many hospitals across the city are handling more patients than they can accommodate.

The government on Tuesday said the first instalment of funds had already been allocated to the three municipal corporations even though they did not ask for it.

Further, the Nursing Home Division has allowed all private hospitals/nursing homes to increase the bed strength up to 20% of their approved bed strength on a temporary basis for three months. The hospitals have been told that they cannot levy more than 50% of the lowest economic category tariff on additional beds.

The government has put a ceiling price for dengue/chikungunya test at Rs 600. The real time test for chikungunya is fixed at Rs 1500, and for platelets at Rs 50. The over-the-counter sale of NSAID drugs, which include diclofenac, ibuprofen and aspirin, has also been restricted.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A fire broke out in central Delhis Gaffar market on Tuesday night.

Fifteen fire tenders were rushed to the spot to douse the flames. The fire could not be controlled till 12.30 am on Wednesday, said Delhi Fire Services officials. There were no casualties till last reports came in.

A fire department official said few locals informed the police control room around 11pm. Nine fire tenders were initially rushed to the spot. But the fire had covered a major portion of the building as rooms were stacked with plastic and electronic goods.

Six more fire tenders were sent to bring the blaze under control at the earliest. Around 30 firemen were pressed into action, said the officer.

The reason behind the fire could not be ascertained. However, police suspect the possibility of a short circuit.
Funds allocated for the Swachh Bharat Mission are lying unutilised by the three municipal corporations in the city, a a study said. This, despite the fact that chikungunya and dengue have crippled the national capital.

The Delhi Citizens Handbook 2016 prepared by the Centre for Civil Society, a think tank, says that of the three civic bodies, the North corporation failed to spend even a single penny of the Rs 46.28 crore allocated to it by the Centre under the scheme for the financial year 2015-16.

In the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), only 0.25 % (Rs 7.93 lakhs) of the Rs 31.63 crores received, have been put to use. Currently, the entire corpus of these funds is lying unutilised, the report stated.

Shailendra Singh, chairman of the standing committee of SDMC, said: We have a detailed plan to spend the budget. However, it is too early a stage to be able to explain the expenditure, as the works are in process. It is only after tenders are called and floated that it will show under funds utilised.

Pravesh Wahi, standing committee chairman (north corporation), said, The corporation is reeling under a financial crisis. As per the rules, in order to claim the mission fund, the corporation will have to first spend 65% on the project out of its own corpus, after which it will receive 35% of the remaining amount allocated for the project.

At present, it is not possible for us to spend this amount. However, this does not mean that we are not looking after cleanliness. We our spending our funds on maintaining urinals and other routine activities.

Delhi will get a total amount of Rs 360.01 crore during the course of the mission period (October 2014-19), of which it has already received Rs 139.60 crore.

The report said the mission is being poorly implemented in the city, and targets for construction of toilets and solid waste management are grossly unmet.

Also, since the beginning of the mission, no household toilets have been constructed as against a target of 30,107 by March 2016, it said.

The central government launched the mission with the aim of creating an open defecation-free nation by 2019, with Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) entrusted with its implementation.
A death row convict in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case has moved the Delhi High Court challenging his conviction and the sentence awarded to him by the trial court.

Amit Shukla, who along with accused Ravi Kapoor was handed the death penalty, has approached the high court, saying the trial court awarded him the capital punishment by wrongly holding that the case falls in the category of rarest of rare.

The trial court on July 14 held Kapoor, Shukla and Baljeet Malik guilty on various counts, including the murder of 28-year-old IT executive Jigisha seven years ago.

Read more: Shopping spree with Jigisha Ghoshs debit card nailed killers

The court, while sentencing Kapoor and Shukla to death on August 22, said the girl was killed in a cold-blooded, inhuman and cruel manner and brutally mauled to death.

The third offender Baljeet Malik was given reprieve from the gallows for his good conduct in jail.

Malik has already challenged his conviction and sentence of life imprisonment by the trial court.

While seeking setting aside of his conviction and order on sentence, Shukla said the trial court has committed error by awarding death penalty simply on the basis of biased jail/probation report about his client.

It has also not been noticed that for the similar offence one of the convict has been sentenced for life imprisonment, the appeal, which would come up for hearing on September 15, said.

Meanwhile, the trial court, which has awarded death to two of the accused has sent the case file to the Delhi High Court for confirmation of the capital punishment. It is mandatory for a trial court to refer a death penalty case to a high court for confirmation of sentence, within 30 days of the pronouncement of the verdict.

28-year-old Ghosh left her office in Noida but did not return home, though the office cab dropped her outside her apartment block. Ghosh was an operations manager with Hewitt Associate Pvt Ltd.

The three men robbed her of her gold jewellery, two mobile phones, and debit and credit cards. Her body was found near Surajkund in Haryana, about 20km from her Vasant Vihar home.

Read: Images of her lifeless body still haunt us, say Jigishas parents
A year after the murder of a Muslim man over allegations of slaughtering a cow on Bakr-Eid, the community celebrated the festival without any sacrifice.

The residents offered prayers at a local mosque and shared sweets to mark Bakr-Eid on Tuesday. Their Hindu neighbours wished them and the village remained peaceful under the watch of policemen.

On September 28 last year, three days after Bakr-Eid, a mob of locals had attacked Mohammad Ikhlaq and his younger son Danish over allegations of slaughtering a cow and storing the meat for consumption.

Ikhlaq had succumbed to his injuries while Danish had survived with a fractured skull. Eighteen local residents, including three juveniles, were nabbed over charges of murder and assault.

After nearly a year of the incident, the village remains calm under the shadow of the lynching incident.

Offering animal sacrifice is not a tradition in this village as people are not financially sound. We celebrated the festival in a peaceful way and our Hindu neighbours also wished us on the occasion. There is no rift between the two communities and we are living in harmony together, said Ikram Khan, a local resident.

Read: Bisada prepares for Eid a year after Ikhlaqs death

Head woman of Bisada, Kaushalya Devi, said, It is the duty of the Hindus of the village to ensure a grand and peaceful celebration on Bakra Eid. We will not let our Muslim brothers feel scared or unsafe.

The families of the accused persons, who are lodged in jail, however, didnt participate in the celebrations and refused to comment on the issue.

The police personnel were deployed to maintain peace in the village and sleuths from the local intelligence unit kept a watch over the locality.

The festival was celebrated peacefully. Our teams were on the vigil throughout the day to avoid any untoward incident. The village is calm and there is no need to deploy heavy force, said Anurag Singh, deputy superintendent of police, Dadri.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
How can I check for mosquito breeding, if residents dont allow me into their houses, ask the corporations domestic breeding checkers (DBC).

Inder Singh (41), a breeding checker, stands outside a bungalow in L-Block of south Delhis Lajpat Nagar. Despite repeated requests and, later, threats to allow him to check the house, he is turned away.

The bungalows caretaker throws myriad excuses at him.

In over 60% of the houses we visit, people dont let us in. We are turned away as if we are salesmen, says Singh.

He is a part of the 10-member DBC team that HT followed on Monday and Tuesday. They have to check 29,000 houses in Lajpat Nagars ward 155.

On the first day, only five out of 40 houses allowed the inspectors in. On the second day, though the residents allowed the inspectors to fog their place, they turned hostile when officials started looking around for mosquito breeding.

In all, 102 households were inspected. Challans were issued to the five that had mosquito larva breeding. Empty containers, air conditioning vents, refrigerator trays and Feng Shui plants were the most common breeding spots.

In every case, residents blamed the authorities for carelessness and even sabotage.

Read more: 2 more die of chikungunya in Delhi, three deaths in 24 hours

A pregnant woman with two children screamed at the workers for planting the mosquito larva in her house to get money from her. The DBCs found over a dozen larvae in a bucket in her bathroom. They challaned her and the fine amount was to be decided by a magistrate.

A challan for a maximum fine of `500 is issued to defaulters, which is forwarded to the local magistrate. The fine has remained the same since the Delhi Municipal Act was formed in 1970. MCD officials say they have been trying to get it increased to `2,000 since 2010.

Breeding checkers say women dont allow them to enter, fearing for their own safety. It is difficult to argue with them, says a checker. I do not want to go to check for breeding and instead get charged with a criminal offence, says Singh.

He says residents also beat up breeding checkers for challaning them. They threaten us and often name political connections. If mosquitoes breed and cause dengue or chikungunya, then these very people will blame us for not doing our job, he said.

In some gated communities in Dwarka, inspectors are not allowed to enter because they dont have permission.

The corporations issued identity cards for field workers. But that hasnt helped either. Most of the private colonies here (in Dwarka) have a restricted entry for visitors. Even when our staff goes for inspection, they are stopped saying that the resident welfare associations (RWA) need to give permission. Even when they show them their ID cards they are not allowed, said a health inspector in the area.

In Singapore, inspection teams have the power to break into a house, if locked or inaccessible, during peak season to check breeding. Here inspectors are not even allowed to check a house without the owners permission. It amounts to trespassing, said north corporation hospital administration director, Dr DK Seth.

The city requires at least 15,000 DBCs to inspect the houses every week. The current strength, however, is 3,500.
A 38-year-old man spent five hours on the streets with the body of his wife  who had apparently died due to chikungunya  on Monday night after being denied permission by his landlord to enter his room. He was also turned away by the hospital that did not give any discharge papers.

The incident was reported from east Delhis Anand Vihar area.

Eyewitnesses said the man, Chotelal, kept shuttling his wifes body between Hegdewar Hospital, his home in Karkardooma village and his tea stall near Cross River shopping mall.

The man, sources said, didnt have enough money to preserve his wifes body in an air-conditioned ambulance or perform her last rites.

No one came to the aid of Chotelal, till a constable of the Anand Vihar police station spotted the ambulance that had carried the body and questioned its driver.

Read: Man forced to cycle 20 km with corpse for last rites in MP

The constable informed his station house officer, who arranged a space at the village pradhans house to preserve the body for the night with ice.

On Tuesday afternoon, the man finally cremated his wifes body with the help of the police and the village pradhan Bhanwar Singh.

Police said Chotelals wife, 35-year-old Anju, died around 9pm on Monday at Hedgewar Hospital. Chotelal claimed that his wife died due to chikungunya.

The hospital authorities, however, did not provide him a doctors prescription note or the death certificate, he alleged.

Chotelal alleged that after his wifes death, the hospital staff asked him to take his wifes body home on his own. They did not give me any documents, he said.

Clueless about what to do next, Chotelal stood outside the emergency ward with Anjus body on a stretcher.

He was then approached by a private ambulance driver who agreed to ferry the body back for `200.

Around 11 pm, Chotelal arrived outside his rented home with Anjus body and requested his landlord, Bablu, to help him carry the body to their third floor room.

Bablu not only refused to carry the body, he did not allow Chotelal into the building.

Read: Tribal man waits for 15 hours at Indores MY Hospital with wifes body

Bablu, however, gave Chotelal `2,000 and asked him to go to the hospital and come back with the papers required for the cremation.

I never stopped him (Chotelal) from carrying his wifes body to his room. I just told him to go back to the hospital and bring back proper paperwork for the cremation before entering the building, Bablu later claimed.

Chotelal then went back to the hospital in the ambulance but was refused entry by the guards. He then requested the driver to drop him back near his tea stall, where some of his friends lived.

It was there that the constable, Vikram, spotted the ambulance.

Contacted, Suchil Kumar, medical superintendent of Dr Hedgewar Arogya Sansthan, said he did not wish to comment on the matter.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) slammed chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday for failing to address Delhis public health challenge and demanded his resignation in the wake of five chikungunya deaths in the national capital.

Taking on the AAP government, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said at a time when Delhi was reeling due to the spread of vector-borne diseases, CM Kejriwal was busy blaming the Prime Minister and lieutenant governor over the deaths.

Four more chikungunya deaths were reported on Tuesday at a city hospital, taking to five the number of fatalities due to the vector-borne disease in Delhi where the number of cases have mounted to over 1,000 this season.

Patra accused Kejriwal of continuing to enjoy all benefits as chief minister while completely ignoring peoples questions on the chikungunya, dengue and malaria crisis, accusing him and his ministers of campaigning in the country and travelling abroad on public money.

It is a very sorry state of affairs that Arvind Kejriwal who is the chief minister of Delhi refuses to answer pertinent question regarding the health of the capital of this country. Delhi is reeling under vector-borne diseases -- chikungunya, dengue and malaria. Kejriwal government is missing....

If you do not have the capacity to even buy a piece of pen a you are suggesting, why dont you resign. If you say that you have no role as the chief minister of Delhi, why the paraphernalia of a chief ministers office, ministers and crores of rupees being spent on MLAs and chief minister. The issue is resign, he said.

Patra said when some questions are being put in front of Kejriwal, he not only shuns these questions but he gives out a statement on Twitter, saying that dont question me, question the Prime Minister.

You are not resigning, but you are not answering the question that though you are saying that you cannot spent Rs 10 but you have spent Rs one crore on samosas and tea.

You are spending Rs 526 crore for your advertisements. Most of your ministers are either on foreign destinations or destinations other than Delhi today. Whose money is it that they are spending? You have to answer these pertinent questions, he said.

The BJP leader said he has been elected by the people of Delhi for governance and you cannot run away, you cannot shun your duty.

Kejriwal earlier tweeted: CM and ministers left with no power now, even to buy a pen. LG and PM enjoy all powers with respect to delhi. LG abroad. Question them for Delhi.

Govt blames media

Faced with accusations of being negligent, Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain said: This is media-created panic. Please dont spread panic. Prove it medically (death due to Chikungunya). Medically Chikungunya can never b cause of anyones death.
In India, sometimes politicians get away with just about anything. Here is a fine example: After two days of raging violence in Karnataka that led to large scale destruction of expensive public property, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah came out on Tuesday to make an appeal for peace. However, his appeal did not sound convincing because he added that the Supreme Court order on sharing of Cauvery water with Tamil Nadu (12,000 cusecs water to Tamil Nadu per day till September 20) was an unfair decision and that it would be difficult to carry out the order. Bengaluru has been placed under curfew after deadly violence erupted over the long-running dispute. Around 15,000 police officers were deployed on the largely deserted streets of the countrys IT capital to enforce a curfew, after rampaging, stone-pelting mobs set buses and cars ablaze.

Read: SC modifies Cauvery order, Karnataka to give 12,000 cusecs water a day to TN

Instead of this petty and emotional we are the aggrieved party remark, Mr Siddaramaiahs message should have been to the point: People must accept the highest courts order with grace, not indulge in violence and his government will help the people in whatever way it can to fix any water shortage in the state.

Read: Cauvery cocktail: River dispute exposes Karnataka, Tamil Nadu faultlines

The Karnataka CMs half-hearted appeal for peace also cannot cover one more critical failure of the state government: Why did it allow things go out of hand when it was known that Cauvery waters is an emotive issue and any decision on sharing the water during lean monsoon years can lead to trouble?

Read: PM Modi distressed by violence over Cauvery row, wants legal solution

The 124-year-old Cauvery water dispute is among the rare water disputes that have not been resolved because it is linked to inadequate rain. In fact, until 1991, the dispute did not lead to violent protests. The two state governments would talk to each other and decide on the quantum of water to be released. But everything changed after 1991 thanks to chauvinistic politicians on both sides, who used identity politics to further their political ambitions.

Read: SC order on Cauvery issue tough to carry out, but well do it: Karnataka CM

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit. Along with a legal solution, there has to be several other concurrent efforts for a long-term resolution. First, political parties have to desist from playing chauvinistic identity politics; second, there has to be dialogue among stakeholders like the Cauvery Family dialogue, which was functional from 2002-03 till about 2012, to understand their requirements; third, the cropping pattern both in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu has to move towards less water-intensive crops; and finally, better water management in the river basin
Shes half-Indian by birth, and way more Indian by choice  Miss Japan 2016 Priyanka Yoshikawa speaks Bengali, has lived in India, listens to Hindi songs, and is a fan of Bollywood films. Basically, she loves everything about India as much as she loves Japan.

Born to a Bengali father and Japanese mother, the 22-year-old was subject to racial slur, and called haafu (having one non-Japanese parent). Talk about pressure and she shuns it by saying not a problem and is only thankful for the support she has received worldwide.

Japan is such a beautiful country with wonderful people and history. I am grateful to be crownd for Miss world Japan 2016. Thank you!!  PriyankaYoshikawa (@Miss_priyanka20) September 7, 2016

I did not feel the pressure of being mixed and representing. What I faced was more of support and best wishes. I am very thankful, I have received great support from my country Japan and from India and other countries as well. I feel very grateful. I am grateful that I am representing my country. I am looking forward to going to Washington DC to represent Japan at the Miss World Crown in November, says Yoshikawa, who has a house in Kolkata.

I was born and raised in Tokyo. I have lived in India for a year when I was nine years old. My mother tongue is Japanese. I speak English and Bengali, too. Even my mom speaks Bengali. So, we all speak the same languages, she says.

Miss Japan 2016 Priyanka Yoshikawa has her paternal roots in India. She has a house in Kolkata, and spent a year in India as a child. She also speaks Bengali, and so does her Japanese mother. (Miss World Japan)

Yoshikawa often searches for Indian music online. I listen to Hindi songs on YouTube and I love Bollywood movies  they are very entertaining and are getting so big around the world, she says.

Any favourite actors? Oh yes, Varun Dhawan! Im (also) a big fan of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra; they are very strong in how they represent themselves. Theyre a role model for me, says Yoshikawa, whod love to star in an Indian film. Bollywood is a big industry... It has the best actors in the world. Ill be honoured, she says.

READ:Half-Indian Priyanka Yoshikawa crowned Miss Japan, but not everyones impressed

The young girl says she undertook the challenge of a beauty pageant so she could do charity. Ive always wanted to help children. I have lived in India for one year and I saw a lot of differences between the countries (India and Japan). I couldnt just not see what I am seeing. That was always the reason that I have always wanted to do something. The slogan for Miss World, Beauty with a purpose, is perfect. Its the right way of moving into action, says Yoshikawa.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
For the last three weeks, life for the Yadav family revolves around commuting between the hospital and their residence.

They are one of the many families that have been severely affected by the outbreak of mosquito-borne infections over the last two months leading to a spurt in chikungunya and dengue cases in hospitals across the city.

Arun Yadav (49), a resident of Sector 22, was the first person in the family to contract chikungunya on August 31. Soon, his two children Bhavya (16) and Bhumik (11) were also diagnosed with the infection.

My kids and I are visiting the hospital daily as a precautionary measure to get an update of our platelet counts and medication. Otherwise, we have been on complete bed rest and do not leave home unless necessary, Arun said.

Such has been the outbreak this season that hospitals are having queues of patients with symptoms of dengue and chikungunya in their OPDs.

Private hospitals are reporting over 200 suspected cases of chikungunya and 100 cases of dengue daily. The blood samples of over 90 suspected patients of the infections are also being tested daily at the civil hospital.

During a spot visit 10 days ago, a 20-year-old patient was seeking treatment at Fortis Memorial Research Institute. He was suffering from high fever for the last four days, with body rash and joint pains. The queue of patients waiting before him stretched on. Soon, to accommodate him and others, the hospital staff had to transfer patients to the emergency ward for treatment.

Since then, the hospital has made it a practice to place extra beds in the emergency ward for patients exhibiting symptoms of mosquito-borne infections.

Seeing the surge, last week, the district health department had to issue an order to all hospitals making it mandatory to accommodate extra beds for patients suffering from dengue or chikungunya. Yet, people complained that due to the sudden influx of patients in private hospitals, the staff is unable to provide beds and they are forced to take injections while sitting.

My wife was given injections and other medicines while sitting in the OPD section in a private hospital of Gurgaon. I cannot blame the hospital as there are so many patients with high fever coming in daily, said Naresh Dahiya, a city resident.

At Medanta-the Medicity, 50 cases of patients with symptoms similar to chikungunya and 30 patients with dengue are flooding the outpatient department (OPD) every day. Of these, more than 20 complained of severe aches and have been admitted.

The city has reported 51 cases of dengue this season. Unlike Dengue, chikungunya is not a notifiable disease. It is not mandatory for doctors and hospitals to immediately report every case of chikungunya to the health department and, hence, there are no exact figures of the disease. Hospitals can take time to compile the data and can send it over to the health department every week or send the combined figures at the end of the month.

However, private hospitals are reporting a five-year high in the number of chikungunya cases. Unofficial estimates place the number of confirmed cases above 300.
Anupam Kher met Oscar winner Robert De Niro during his visit here and the Bollywood veteran says meeting the Hollywood star is always inspirational.

Kher has worked with De Niro, 73, in filmmaker David O Russells Silver Linings Playbook (2012).

The 61-year-old actor shared the picture of himself on Twitter along with De Niro, saying his meets with the Taxi Driver star always make him happy.

Meeting legendary actor #RobertDeNiro in New York is always a highlight of my trip. Inspirational and Joyous. #JaiHo, he wrote.

Meeting legendary actor #RobertDeNiro in New York is always a highlight of my trip. Inspirational & Joyous.:) #JaiHo pic.twitter.com/BYeJ0oWGN4  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) September 13, 2016

Kher will now head to Canada for the gala premiere of his forthcoming Hollywood film, The Headhunters Calling, at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

In another post he also unveiled his first look from The Headhunters Calling, which also stars Gerard Butler, Alison Brie and Willem Dafoe.

Happy to know that all tickets for the Gala Premiere of #TheHeadhuntersCalling at #TIFF16 are SOLD OUT. #MyFirstLook, he tweeted.

Happy to know that all tickets for the Gala Premiere of #TheHeadhuntersCalling at #TIFF16 r SOLD OUT. #MyFirstLook  pic.twitter.com/i2gifGOK3I  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) September 12, 2016

In the photo, he is seen wearing a dark blue turban and the doctors coat with stethoscope around his neck.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
The leaders on both sides of South Sudans civil war and their families have profited off the conflict, amassing fortunes through links with bankers, arms dealers and oil companies, according to a report released on Monday by actors George Clooney and Don Cheadle.

At a news conference to present the report, they called on the international community to cut off the leaders financial flows through tougher sanctions.

The report follows a two-year undercover investigation by The Sentry, a group co-founded by Clooney and fellow activist John Prendergast to look into the financing of African conflicts and comes at a time when the United Nations is threatening to impose an arms embargo against South Sudans government.

Actor George Clooney answers questions during a press conference about corruption in South Sudan at National Press Club. (AFP)

The group said a network of international facilitators stretched from arms dealers in Ukraine to construction companies in Turkey, mining firms in Kenya, and Chinese investors involved in joint ventures in gambling and private security sectors in South Sudan.

According to the report, South Sudans leader President Salva Kiir, his former deputy Riek Machar and military generals have pilfered state coffers, accumulated an array of luxury homes and cars, and enriched themselves and family members through stakes in oil and other business ventures.

Spokesmen for Kiir and Machar both denied the leaders had properties in Kenya or other African countries, as the report alleged.

Actor and The Sentry co-founder George Clooney appears on a panel with The Sentry investigators to discuss their work on the role of national corruption in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in South Sudan during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington. (REUTERS)

The report also said South Sudanese army chief Paul Malong, who makes roughly $45,000 a year, has at least two luxurious villas in Uganda in addition to a $2 million mansion in a gated community in Nairobi.

The report said family members of top government officials have stakes in commercial ventures in South Sudan. Local laws forbid constitutional office holders from engaging in business activities outside the government while in office, it said.

The report said Kiirs family had been involved in a series of transitions involving government procurement deals and relationships with a foreign oil company. The group said it had obtained documents showing that Kiirs 12-year-old son held a 25 percent stake in a holding company formed in February 2016.

The past five years South Sudans leaders have engaged in ... mass atrocities on its citizens, starvation and rape, all while plundering the states resources and enriching themselves and their families, Clooney told the conference.

The simple fact is they are stealing the money to fund their militias who attack and kill one another. It involves arms dealers, international lawyers, international banks, international real estate, he added.

Ateny Wek Ateny, a spokesman for Kiir, told Reuters by phone on Saturday before the release of the report, which was embargoed for release on Monday, that Kiir did not own properties in Nairobi.

Actors George Clooney (L-R) and Don Cheadle and The Sentry Co-founder John Prendergast discuss The Sentry's investigation of the role of national corruption in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in South Sudan. (REUTERS)

The president doesnt have any property in Nairobi or anywhere, Ateny said. If there is anyone who says that, he is only accusing the president for no reason. The president does not even have a bank account, so how do these people arrive at all these?

James Gatdet Dak, spokesman for Machar, also denied that Machar owned property in Nairobi or Addis Ababa.

It is a lie. Dr. Riek Machars family does not own a house in Nairobi or in Addis Ababa as alleged, he said, They are renting a house in Nairobi, while the one in Addis Ababa was a temporary guest house provided to him by the Ethiopian authorities during the peace negotiations.

Clooney said the group planned to lobby US President Barack Obama and other senior administration officials to impose sanctions targeted at South Sudans leaders and to freeze their assets abroad.

The United States has poured $1.5 billion of aid into South Sudan despite widespread concerns over corruption.

Prendergast, a former director of African affairs at the White House National Security Council, said the fatal flaw of the international community was it did not pay enough attention to the core rot at the foundation of the new government.

South Sudan secured its independence in 2011 but by December 2013 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 fleeing to neighbouring states.

World powers and regional states have struggled to find leverage over South Sudans warring factions despite U.S. and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions.

The U.N. Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015, then in July blacklisted six generals, three from each side, by subjecting them to an asset freeze and travel ban.
Twenty-seven Congress MLAs refused to heed Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badals appeal after spending Monday night inside the assembly, sleeping on the floor and seats of the House, where they lost a trust vote against the government.

The Congress MLAs refused to leave the assembly building on Monday evening when the House was adjourned, demanding a fresh debate on the no-confidence motion against the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance.

They keep switching off our lights and air-conditioners. We have no food and water for long hours. But we are fighting for Punjab and will not let the government browbeat us, leader of opposition Charanjit Singh Channi said.

As the night dragged on, assembly staff left the premises around 1am and television visuals showed legislators fanning themselves in the darkness and engaged in conversation with dim light from mobile phones.

Protesting MLAs inside Pb assembly don slogan aprons. Sit in now on for 17 hours @htTweets @HTPunjab @RajaBrar_INC pic.twitter.com/Wkx5jhsPvK  Chitleen K Sethi (@ChitleenKSethi) September 13, 2016

The sit-in is part of a strategy to garner public attention on the last assembly session before state polls next year. Wednesday is the last day of the session with Tuesday being a holiday for Eid.

Most of the senior MLAs left on Monday evening after the session with the exception of Sunil Jakhar, as the strategy was planned by the partys young brigade. But there are differences in the Congress over continuing the sit-in. Some of the senior MLAs tried to join the protest in the morning. Congress has 42 legislators in the assembly.

Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh sent the legislators food packets from KFC at night. The party office in the assembly premises arranged food from an eatery later in the night. Amarinder is expected to meet the protesting MLAs today as a mark of solidarity.

Assembly secretary Shashi Mishra said the air-conditioners were switched off as they were maintained by Chandigarh staff, who left the premises after the session. She herself left at 1.15 am but some other staff stayed on, except women members.

The Congress strategy to picket the assembly unfolded after it lost the no-confidence motion. The hour-long debate saw Congress storming to the well of the House against Akali MLAs Iqbal Singh Jhunda and Gurpartap Singh Wadala who were presiding in absence of the speaker, wearing a proud to be an Akali badge.

It was totally undemocratic on part of the Speaker not to allow the discussion on anarchy, lawlessness and serious issues the state is facing under the SAD-BJP rule Amarinder said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Union health minister JP Nadda on Tuesday stressed on the need for close coordination between the Centre and states to deal with the outbreak of chikungunya and dengue, which have affected about 40,000 people in the country, but he said there was no need to panic.

He assured all help to states in fighting the spread of vector-borne diseases and said it should not be an issue for indulging in blame game.

We will try to fulfil all requirements. Whether it is dengue or chikungunya, we should not panic. There is a need to give symptomatic treatment. There is a need to take a lot of liquid.

We are ready to offer all help to state governments. This is not an issue for the Centre and states to indulge in blame game. We should work together, Nadda said.

60 people have died across the country due to dengue. Four people have died in Delhi due to Chikungunya.

However, a senior health ministry official said the chikungunya deaths are being probed by its agencies to ascertain the exact reasons.

Nadda said that his ministry had held a meeting with Delhi health minister and various municipal agencies, and directed them to follow all protocols while various other issues like providing guidelines, arrangement of beds, training of doctors have been provided.

He said the ministry has also put a cap on rates charged by various testing facilities for the diseases while all technical support has been provided to the states to deal with the situation.

As per the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), around 27,879 cases of dengue have been reported across the country and 60 people have succumbed to the disease till August 31.

5,000 cases each have been reported from West Bengal, Odisha and Kerala. While West Bengal has reported 5,129 dengue cases and 22 deaths, the disease has affected 5,183 people and claimed nine lives in Odisha.

AIIMS, Delhi, has reported five suspected dengue deaths this month. The national capital has recorded nine dengue deaths this year. The number of those diagnosed with the virus in the city has risen to over 1,150.

Around 12,255 cases of chinkungunya have been reported across the country. Karnataka alone has recorded 8,941.

Two chikungunya deaths were reported from the national capital on Tuesday, taking the number of fatalities due to the vector-borne disease in the city to four while the number of cases have mounted to over 1,000 this season.

Meanwhile, a senior Health ministry official said that at this moment, there is an outbreak situation with regard to chikunguniya.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis famous slogan of acche din had originally been coined by his predecessor Manmohan Singh but has now become the millstone around the NDA governments neck, Union minister Nitin Gadkari said on Tuesday.

Acche din maanne se hota hai (Good days depends on ones belief). It was at an NRI meet in Delhi that Manmohan Singh had said that Acche din ayenge (good days will come).

When asked when acche din will come, Singh had replied, in the future. Modiji said the same thing somewhere and it has now become the millstone around our neck, Gadkari said at an event in Mumbai.

Modi had extensively used the acche din slogan during the last Lok Sabha elections.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday removed chief secretary Deepak Singhal barely two months after he took charge and appointed principal secretary (finance) Rahul Bhatnagar to the top post of state bureaucracy.

Singhal has been removed and put on wait list. Principal Secretary (Finance) Rahul Bhatnagar has been made new Chief Secretary, an official spokesman said in Lucknow.

Singhal had been appointed new chief secretary on July 6, 2016. The post of chief secretary had fallen vacant after extended term of the then chief secretary Alok Ranjan ended on June 30, 2016.

Though no reason was given behind the development, Samajwadi Party insiders said the chief minister was perhaps not happy with him as he had attended a dinner hosted by SP Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh in Delhi which Akhilesh gave a miss.

SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and some other top party leaders were peresent at the dinner. Party insiders said Akhilesh was not very happy with Singhal, considered close to the chief ministers uncle and senior cabinet minister Shivpal Yadav.

Differences of opinion between Akhilesh and Shivpal have been reported on several occasions in the past, including on the choice of official to be appointed as the states chief secretary after Alok Ranjans term ended, and the postponement of Qaumi Ekta Dals merger with SP.

Singhal was earlier principal secretary (irrigation), a department held by Shivpal.

Bhatnagar, on the other hand, is considered to be in good books of the chief minister and is known for steering the state government clear of any controversy despite pressures on financial front.

Bhatnagar said his priority would be bring about perceptible improvement in the law and order situation in the state. He would also work for expeditious implementation of the development projects and find a solution to the peoples problems.

Deepak Singhals removal came hours after principal secretary (mining) Gurdeep Singh was transferred to food and civil supplies department replacing Sudhir Garg, who was made principal secretary (mining). The CBI is probing allegations of corruption in the mining department on the direction of the Allahabad high court.

In an image-refurbishing exercise ahead of Assembly elections, Akhilesh had on Monday sacked two ministers -- mining minister Gayatri Prajapati and panchayti raj minister Rajkishore Singh -- facing corruption charges.

The Opposition, however, dubbed their sacking as a poll-oriented eyewash.

(With inputs from PTI)

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Indias IT capital Bengaluru woke up to a tense morning on Tuesday with curfew and shoot-at-sight orders imposed in several parts of the city after violence erupted across Karnataka over a decades-long Cauvery water-sharing dispute with Tamil Nadu.

Authorities reported no overnight violence after one man was killed and another injured as rioters set at least 30 buses ablaze and vandalised shops. Metro and bus services are likely to suspended for the second straight day on Tuesday.

But fear continued to spread through video footage of flames leaping out of charred vehicles and threats of attacks on Tamil people in Bengaluru circulating over WhatsApp, forcing local police to issue advisories.

Videos of attacks on Kannada-speaking people in various parts of Tamil Nadu triggered violent protests in Bengaluru, Mysuru and Mandya, said Karnataka home minister G Parameshawara. He appealed to the people not to believe in WhatsApp messages.

#CauveryProtests kindly do not pay heed to false or misleading viral rumors, validate with @BlrCityPolice https://t.co/TNI7RuYy79  Secretary (DM) (@SEOC_Karnataka) September 13, 2016

More than 15,000 security personnel patrolled sensitive areas in Bengaluru and will be out in full force on Tuesday, but the brunt of the violence was felt by Mysore and Mandya were scores of buses and trucks with Tamil Nadu registration plates were torched.

Karnataka chief minister S Sidhharamaiah called an emergency cabinet meeting at 11 a.m. to discuss the situation. Before that, at around 9 am, he has convened an all-party meeting.

Hundreds of commuters travelling between the states were stranded on highways as bus services were suspended on Monday and road travel declared unsafe. In Karnataka, men were checking vehicles for Tamil-speaking persons and attacking them, television reports said.

The violence erupted on Monday afternoon after the Supreme Court turned down Karnatakas request to temporarily stop the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

#CauveryProtests : 15,000 thousand police men and officers have been deployed all over the city !  BengaluruCityPolice (@BlrCityPolice) September 13, 2016

Anger against Tamil Nadu continued to simmer across Karnataka with the fear of tit-for-tat attacks on Kannadigas in the neighbouring state loomed large.

Hundreds of people shouted slogans against the perceived injustice meted out against Karnataka and threatened to escalate protests if the release of Cauvery water wasnt stopped. Karnataka has demanded more central forces.

The demonstrations began after the Supreme Court ordered Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu every day till September 20.

It rapped the state government for citing public unrest as a ground for seeking a modification of its earlier September 5 order to release 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu per day for 10 days. Karnataka indicated it will appeal against the order.

Citizens cannot become a law unto themselves. Once the Supreme Court orders something, it is the obligation of the Executive (government) and citizens to obey, said a bench of justice Dipak Misra and justice UU Lalit.

The bench -- which heard the petition on a holiday -- reduced the daily quantum of Cauvery water to be released by Karnataka but increased the duration of the order.

At the heart of the dispute is the 765-kilometre long river that originates in Karnataka and flows through Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala. A British-era treaty governs water sharing between the two states but Karnataka says the award is unfair and demands a tripling of its share.

Tamil Nadu believes that it needs the water to sustain extensive farming and insists that Karnataka honour its commitment to providing sufficient water.

After Independence, the dispute has dragged on for decades with even a tribunal ruling failing to gather consensus.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
After 25 years, the Cauvery water dispute has managed to once again open the fault lines between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu: two states that are otherwise closely integrated with each other socially, culturally and economically.

For those who felt that the 1991 anti-Tamil riots in Karnataka was history and would not repeat in todays globally-metamorphosed Bengaluru, the targeting of Tamil Nadu-related businesses and transport in the city and other parts of the state is nightmare revisited. Kannadiga-centric violence in parts of Tamil Nadu and Chennai too has added to the sense of apprehension among the linguistic minorities in both states.

The 124-year-old Cauvery water dispute is among the rare water disputes that have never been satisfactorily resolved. The principal reason for this is that there is no dispute in distribution during adequate rain. The irony is that during a bountiful monsoon, a sizeable quantum of the river water ends up in the Bay of Bengal as the two states do not have the capacity to hold the river water.

The dispute only crops up when the monsoon fails, as it has happened this year. So the resolution of the Cauvery water disputes tribunal takes the form of distress-sharing. And, by definition any form of distress-sharing is always contentious at best and violent at worst. Because one wants to hold on to what is available while the other wants to extract the maximum. This is the nub of the Cauvery dispute.

What this essentially means is that the dispute can only be resolved by a high level of political statesmanship which includes generosity, understanding and a spirit of give-and-take on both sides. Sadly, if there is one element lacking in both states it is this urgently needed ability to defuse the crisis arising out of a shortage.

Until 1991, the dispute hardly touched the streets. The chief ministers of the two states would talk to each other and decide on the quantum of release and that would be that. Everything changed in 1991 during the chief ministership of S Bangarappa when the dispute turned into a Kannada-Tamil issue. Chauvinistic politicians on both sides used the opportunity to spread discord. Mainstream parties were unable to rein in the fringe elements while some even argued that they may have used these disturbances to further their political ends.

But 1991 managed to leave a lasting legacy: turning the Cauvery into a time bomb waiting to explode whenever the river runs short of water.

That the Cauvery dispute has the ability to turn an otherwise closely-integrated and historical Kannada-Tamil relationship into one of rivalry clearly indicates that the faultlines between the two remain. On one level, large sections of both live in each others state, work, marry and are enmeshed culturally. It is not uncommon for families to have both Tamil and Kannadiga-origin members. Movie stars from one state have made their mark in the other. In fact, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa is from Mysore while superstar Rajinikanth, originally Marathi-speaking, is technically a Kannadiga having studied and worked in Bengaluru during his formative years. The examples are limitless.

On the other hand, there is also a section in Karnataka which resents what it sees as Tamil domination. In pre-independent India, the British brought in scores of Tamils from the Madras presidency and also housed Tamil soldiers in its cantonment in Bengaluru. So, historically Bengaluru is home to a large population of Tamils and, as it happens between communities, between the Kannadigas and Tamils there was rivalry, cooperation, prejudice, admiration, friendship and enmity all mixed in one complicated cocktail. Interestingly, physically, sartorially and behaviourally and in every other way including food habits it is next to impossible to differentiate between a Tamil and Kannadiga until either speaks their mother tongue.

Thousands of Tamil workers too over the years have settled in Bengaluru and in other parts of Karnataka engaged in construction labour and in varied industries. In 1991, following the riots, many fled to Tamil Nadu. It took months for the construction sector and other industries to return to normal as the workers trickled back once the violence had ended.

If what one is seeing is the dark side of that relationship, last year during the Chennai floods the very same relationship made Bengalureans including scores of Kannadigas the first ones to set up helplines, rush to the flood-hit city to help their brethren in distress--displaying a heart-warming positive side for the whole world to see.

The issue then is whether the street-level violence is going to make any difference to the Cauvery dispute resolution as laid out by the tribunal or the Supreme Court. The answer is a simple no. For, the interstate water disputes act of 1956 is one of the most potent in Indian law. None can prevent its implementation. If a state government prevents an order from being carried out, it can be dismissed without much ado. If people surround the reservoirs and physically try to prevent the water from being released, under the act, the military can be called in to implement the release.

In such a scenario, it is necessary for senior mainstream politicians and farmers from both sides to come together and figure out ways and means of resolving the dispute and permanently keeping it out of reach of fringe elements in both states.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Bangalore.)
The Hyderabad Police on Tuesday issued an advisory to all cable TV channels/cable TV network operators over protests in Bangaluru and said no program shall be transmitted in the cable service which is likely to incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order.

The advisory stated that the managements of all TV channels are requested/advised to adhere to program code in interest of maintenance of public order/peace in Hyderabad.

It has been brought to the notice of the authorised officer under The Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act 1995, that visuals having huge potential for inciting mob violence which relate to the ongoing violence in Bangalore City are being transmitted/retransmitted through the cable TV networks in Hyderabad City, the advisory said.

The Hyderabad Police advisory also said that the concerned managements are liable for prosecution for violation of program code under section 16 of the said act.

The concerned channels violating the program code are liable to be prohibited from transmission in public interest under section 19 of the said act. In view of the large congregations of people expected on account of ongoing Bakrid and Ganesh festivities in Hyderabad City, the managements of all the TV channels/cable TV network operators are requested/advised to adhere to program code in the interest of maintenance of public order and peace in Hyderabad City, the advisory added.

This communication is issued by commissioner of police, Hyderabad City as authorized officer.
Many Indian and foreign technology companies based in Bengaluru, including e-commerce major Flipkart and software giant Infosys, told their employees to stay home on Tuesday as the city remained tense in the aftermath of widespread violence the previous day.

The incidents of rioting and arson across Karnataka, which reportedly caused losses amounting to nearly Rs 25,000 crore (according to trade body ASSOCHAM), were spurred by a Supreme Court decision on a water dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Police arrested as many as 365 people in this connection on Tuesday, clamping a curfew across the city to prevent further incidents of the kind. A protester was killed and another injured in police firing the previous night as rampaging mobs set fire to dozens of vehicles and business establishments across the state capital.

None of this sat well with the multinationals, who  quite understandably  believe that any kind of violence is detrimental to business. E-commerce major Flipkart announced that it has halted operations in the city for the day because safety of employees is paramount. A decision on its future course of action was to be taken on Tuesday night. Many IT companies also undertook similar measures to prevent its workers from being harmed in the violence.

Read| Troubled waters over Cauvery but Karnataka, TN have history of sharing

Rajya Sabha MP and entrepreneur Rajeev Chandrasekar claimed the episode had taken the sheen off Bengalurus reputation as a global business hub. More than the destruction, its the psyche of the citys working population that has been scarred. It will have long-term implications for Bengaluru, he said.

Though Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani declined comment, his former colleague Mohan Das Pai made no bones regarding his views on the matter. All this vandalism has destroyed the image of Bengaluru as a peaceful city, he said, adding that the administration had allowed the matter to get out of hand by delaying action.

ASSOCHAM also expressed fears that the widespread damage to vital urban infrastructure and interruption of transportation facilities could dent Bengalurus image as the Silicon Valley of India.

However, Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw struck an optimistic note  stating that Bengaluru can move on if the government manages to alleviate the situation soon. This seems to be an emotional problem stemming from the heat of the moment. The government must tackle it swiftly, she said.

The riots have come as a wake-up call to the Karnataka government, which knows how much would be lost if the numerous outsiders who call Bengaluru their home decide to give up on the city. For now, the firms in the city are simply playing it safe.

Today, most companies are shut. But as Eid is not a holiday, our higher-ups have told us to work from home, said a senior executive with an IT major.

Read| Cauvery cocktail: River dispute exposes Karnataka, Tamil Nadu faultlines

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Centre has asked television channels to use shots of Cauvery river and security forces and avoid live telecast or file shots of violence in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka hit by rioting over a water-sharing order.

The information and broadcasting ministry on Tuesday also asked broadcasters to verify facts before going ahead with a telecast on the Cauvery dispute that has left two people dead and shut down the countrys IT hub of Bengaluru.

Certain TV channels have been telecasting provocative and inflammatory news and programmes These could further ignite tensions and could cause the law and order situation in both the affected states to deteriorate, the advisory said.

Telecast of live or file shots of violence or rioting may be avoided. Reportage may use shots of Cauvery river and security forces.

Riots broke out after the Supreme Court on Monday ordered Karnataka to divert some water from Cauvery to Tamil Nadu.

Social media posts and local television channels playing the visuals of violence on loop could feed public anger, information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu said, urging the media to play a constructive role in ensuring peace.

It is not unusual for the government to issue such advisories but it has, so far, not come out with one for Kashmir where 80 people have died in street protests that continue for the third month.

TV channels have to comply with a code that prohibits transmission of content likely to disturb peace.

NK Singh, general secretary of the broadcast editors association, said the guidelines were not mandatory but broadcasters adhere to them in public interest.

If the advisory is in consonance with democratic and media freedom and comes at a time when public tranquility is disturbed, broadcasters adhere to it, he said.

These guidelines were also issued after the 26/11 Mumbai attack during which terrorists were alerted about the presence of security forces by their handlers in Pakistan, who were watching the proceedings live on TV.

In 2015, the ministry issued show-cause notices to ABP News, NDTV 247 and Aaj Tak for their coverage of the Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memons hanging. The channels were accused of breaching regulations laid down in the cable TV networks act.

A similar notice was issued to Hindi news channel NDTV India early this year. The government said its coverage of the Pathankot airbase terror attack violated the ban on live coverage of anti-terrorist operations.
The Centre has urged the Supreme Court to ban a 500-year-old temple ritual in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu where Dalits roll over food leftover by Brahmins to apparently cure skin diseases, solve marriage problems and infertility.

The social justice ministry called the practice inhuman and superstitious and said it affects human dignity and harms the health of those practising it.

But defendants of the practice say the ritual doesnt discriminate on the basis of caste and that it is voluntary.

In Karnataka, the ritual is followed during the three-day annual celebrations at Kukke Subrahmanya in the South Canara district in November-December.

In Tamil Nadu, the custom is seen every April as part of the annual Aradhana festival of the Nerur Sadasiva Bharmendrai Temple in Karur district.

The Union ministry says the ritual cannot be shielded under the right to freedom of religion under the Constitution.

These rituals may be voluntary but since human dignity and health of concerned persons is affected and are against constitutional value of justice, equality and human dignity, they ought not to be defended under Article 25 of the Constitution of India which relates to right to freedom of religion, an affidavit by the Centre reads.

In 2011, the Karnataka high court had modified the practice, saying the ceremony will be open to all and food offered to the deity will be placed on plantain leaves outside the temple. A willing devotee  irrespective of caste or religion  can roll over the leaf, the court had held.

The Karnataka government has told the SC that temple authority wasnt connected with the ritual that was practised outside the shrine. It said even Brahmins roll over banana leaves containing leftover food and that only devotees perform the ritual, the state administration said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A policeman injured in a militant attack on security forces on Independence Day in Kashmir succumbed to his injuries while undergoing treatment at AIIMS in Delhi on Tuesday, police said.

Constable Rous Ahmed was injured in the attack in Srinagars Nowhatta area in which a CRPF officer and two militants were also killed.
Claiming that carcasses of cattle that are not being cleared by authorities in Gujarat are stinking because of rotting, the Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch intensified its ongoing protest against the Una flogging incident by mailing thousands of postcards to actor Amitabh Bachchan under their new campaign called Badbu Gujarat Ki (Stench of Gujarat) on Tuesday.

It is a counter-campaign to the tourism departments Khushboo Gujarat Ki (Scent of Gujarat) initiative, promoted as brand ambassador, by actor Amitabh Bachchan. Under the Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch led by Jignesh Mevani, Dalits kick-started the campaign from Kalol near Ahmedabad. The postcard addressed to Bachchans Mumbai residence in Juhu read in Hindi: On Modis insistence you experienced Khushboo Gujarat Ki. Now we have stopped disposing dead cattle, so now spend a few days in Gujarat and feel Badbu Gujarat Ki.

They also plan to send invites to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the same. The campaign will be continued from various parts of Gujarat, said Mevani.

In a reaction to the thrashing of four men from Una by self-styled cow protectors, the Dalits in Saurashtra region in July had thrown dead cows at the doorsteps of public offices, announcing that its your mother, you take care. Thousands of Dalits pledged to not to pick up dead cows.

An image of the postcard sent to Amitabh Bachchan by Dalit protesters. (HT Photo)

The protest first gathered momentum after BSP chief Mayawati raised the flogging and other atrocities against Dalits in Gujarat in the parliament on July 18. Subsequent visits by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to Una further intensified the debate.

Through the postcard campaign we have been trying to underline the fact that Narendra Modi had marketed a false image of Gujarat to the world. Here the Dalits voice has been suppressed and subjected to the atrocities, said Mevani.

When asked to list the sites in cities, villages or towns from where cases of rotting carcasses are being reported, the group was unclear. They are rotting at many places. We will give you the list, said a member of the Dalit Adhikar Manch.
Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa, removed as governor of Arunachal Pradesh on Monday, said that he did not recommend Presidents Rule (PR) for the frontier state on January 26.

He also pointed out the Supreme Court did not question his action or label him as biased while reinstating the Congress government ousted by the imposition of PR.

But, he claimed, the people of Arunachal Pradesh had welcome PR and wished it to stay.

In a parting note on Tuesday, Rajkhowa said he would not like to pass any comment on the circumstances leading to imposition of Presidents Rule and its lifting on February 19.

I would like to make it absolutely clear so that there is no misunderstanding about me being anti-democratic, which some quarters have been alleging. I had never recommended that PR should be imposed in Arunachal Pradesh on Republic Day, he said.

PR, Rajkhowa clarified, is not imposed on the governors report only. It is done by the President only after proper assessment and due application of mind on recommendation of the Prime Minister and the Union cabinet chaired by him.

I would not like to go into the merit or otherwise of the (July 13) judgement and order of the Supreme Court (reinstatement of Congress government)... But, in the present case, the SC has not passed such strictures on the governor or any disparaging remarks on him... has not questioned his actions on grounds of mala fide and has not indicted him of being biased or partial in favour of any political party, Rajkhowa said.

As such, he did not consider challenging the SCs order, as he had done against an earlier order of Gauhati high court whose judge passed many damaging, disparaging and highly unwarranted remarks on me as a governor.

Appealing to the people of Arunachal Pradesh to take necessary vigilance measures for keeping public life clean, Rajkhowa said he would be taking back fond memories of a magnificent state.

Meanwhile, Meghalaya governor V Shanmuganathan reached Arunachal Pradesh capital Itanagar on Tuesday afternoon. He is scheduled to be sworn in on Wednesday as the states 20th governor.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis apologised to a wheelchair-bound government doctor Alaknanda Vaidya on Twitter for the inconvenience caused to her after she was allegedly posted to Baramati by the government despite being physically challenged.

Fadnavis said the needful will be done after an online petition against Vaidyas posting was signed by more than 85,000 people.

Fadnavis said he has received the request from Vaidya, who lives in Pune, through her online petition and assured her that director, health services will be in touch with her. Needful for your transfer will be done by tomorrow. Pls inform which officer did not consider your request. Apologies for inconvenience (sic), the chief minister tweeted.

Got your request, Dr Alaknanda Vaidya from https://t.co/CZhaFMQeFo



Director,Health Services will be in touch with you.

(1/2)  Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) September 13, 2016

Needful for your transfer will be done by tomorrw.Pls inform which officer did not consider your request.

Apologies for inconvenience.

(2/2)  Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) September 13, 2016

In her petition, Vaidya, a mother of a 11-year-old girl, said she was made to travel 100 kilometres despite being 90% disabled. Vaidya said she is completely dependent on an assistant for help in her day to day chores, from going to bed or getting the wheelchair.

According to government rules, a physically challenged person is not supposed to be posted further than 10kms from their home. Sign my petition and ask the Maharashtra Chief Minister to step in and help me get posted in my hometown, Pune, Vaidya said in her petition.

The petition says Vaidya was left paralysed waist below in an accident six years ago. She then applied for job at government health department and was selected for the job. But she has now been posted at Baramati, some 100 kilometres from Pune.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
For the first time in many years, authorities imposed curfew in all 10 districts of the Kashmir Valley on Eid on Tuesday, with helicopters and drones being pressed into service for surveillance.

Restrictions on the assembly of large groups of people have been imposed in view of a call by separatists for a march to the local offices of the United Nations, coinciding with the global bodys opening of 71st session of the UN General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York.

The army, which has been asked to be on standby, will step in if there is fresh outbreak of violence in the Valley, which has been witnessing widespread unrest for over two months leading to death of over 75 people so far, official sources said.

Army troops have already been stationed at vantage points in rural areas which have a history of violent protests, they said, adding curfew came in force from midnight.

This is probably for the first time that curfew is in place on the day of Eid-ul-Zuha ever since militancy broke out in the state in 1990.

A man in a balaclava jumps over burning debris during a protest in Kashmir on Monday. (REUTERS)

Helicopters and drones are keeping a birds eye vigil from the skies. They will give early warning to security forces in case of assembly of people in certain areas, the sources said.

Security forces are out on the streets in adequate strength following apprehension of violence by the separatist elements, who often use women and children as shields during protest rallies resulting in civilian casualties.

This is for the first time in 26 years since the onset of militancy that no Eid congregations will be held at the Idgah and Hazratbal shrines here.

The sources said that people will, however, be allowed to offer Eid prayers in local mosques.

The government has already ordered shutdown of internet services of all telecom networks and also mobile telephony except that of the state-run BSNL for the next 72 hours because of the tense law and order situation in the state.
The Aam Aadmi Party announced its first list of candidates for the Goa assembly elections on Tuesday, ahead of rivals BJP and Congress. The first list includes a former Shiv Sena spokesperson who is also a trade union leader in Goa.

The political affairs committee -- AAPs decision making body -- cleared four names on Monday night for the 40-member assembly elections to which are expected in March 2017.

The Goa state unit has been asked to shortlist candidates for the rest of the seats and put them up before the PAC, a member of the top body said. The party expects to announce all its candidates in the state by October end.

AAP state secretary Valmiki Naik will contest from the Panjim seat while former Shiv Sena leader Ajitsingh Rane will contest from Maem in North Goa. The committee also cleared the name of former Abelim sarpanch (village chief) Cruz Silva from the Velim seat.

Molu Velip, a former aide of BJP state minister Mahadev Naik, was announced as the candidate from Shiroda constituency in South Goa.

Both Silva and Rane joined the AAP a month ago -- Silva in April and Rane, who also heads the Goa Trade Unions Congress, last month. The AAP moved into election mode in Goa with its national convener Arvind Kejriwals visit to the state late in July. Last week, Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia and healthy minister Satyender Jain toured Goa, holding public meetings and publicising the Delhi government's governance model.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
For three years, Srikrushna Rajhansiya worked 14-hour days making bricks. He hardly ate and barely slept. But no amount of labour was enough to earn his freedom.

It all started with a loan.

We left our village because we were practically starving, he recalled, sitting outside his hut in Surgul village in Odisha. We thought hard work would earn us enough to live with dignity.

The reality was a form of slavery known as debt bondage, which campaigners say ensnares tens of thousands of labourers each year who are trafficked to brick kilns to feed countrys booming construction industry.

Disregard for labour laws, impunity for unscrupulous agents and brick kiln owners and few alternatives for workers from poor rural regions all made it difficult to break the cycle of exploitation, rights groups say.

Rajhansiyas story is typical.

Rescued bonded labourer Srikrushna Rajhansiya recalls his days in bondage outside his home in Sargul village in Odisha. (REUTERS)

He took a loan of 18,000 rupees from a local labour agent to arrange for his wife, son and daughter to accompany him to work at a brick kiln in Andhra Pradesh.

Their hopes of paying back the debt and earning money to take home soon evaporated.

The first thing they took from us was our phone, he said. They also had security round the clock at the facility to make sure we didnt escape. We were accompanied even to the market.

At night, all the boys were taken to the brick kiln owners house, he added. He would bring them back in the morning. How could anyone leave their child behind and escape?

Verbal abuse was constant. Any workers who complained or were too sick to work had chilli powder rubbed in their eyes.

Labourers had been promised 250 rupees for every 1,000 bricks they made - but they received just 100 rupees.

We still dont know how the accounts were kept, Rajhansiya said. Every week we were paid a small amount for buying essentials and groceries. The rest we were promised at the end of our work. They said we would run away if all our wages were given on time.

It was only when a new batch of workers from Odisha arrived that escape seemed possible. They had the number of a new hotline for migrant workers started by the labour department, and a contraband phone.

Rescue was quick. Police raided the kiln, loaded workers onto a truck and drove them to safety. After receiving a release certificate, they were put on a train back home.

But escape didnt come with freedom.

Im still not free of the 18,000 rupees loan I took, Rajhansiya said. My son is still working in a brick kiln and my wife may also have to go in a few months. We need to feed ourselves and there seems to be no other option.

Rukmani Rajhansiya, rescued from debt bondage from a brick kiln in 2012, is seen at her home in Sargul village. (REUTERS)

Inherited debt

No official figures exist on the number of people employed to cut, shape and bake clay-fired bricks, mostly by hand, in Indias tens of thousands of brick kilns.

According to a 2015 paper by the Centre for Science and Environment, at least 10 million people work in kilns, many located on the edge of towns and cities, making them easily accessible for urban builders.

According to government data, 282,000 bonded labourers have been freed in 18 states across 172 districts since 1978.

In Odishas Balangir district alone, 2,488 workers have been rescued since 2011.

A recent labour ministry statement said there was no correct estimation of the extent of bondage but local authorities say they get calls every week on a helpline.

A year or so back, we rescued 1,200 people being illegally taken to work near Khariar road (in Balangir), Ashish Kumar Singh, a police officer, said.

We sent them back to their villages. Two days later, they were missing again. All of them had been taken by a different agent, through a different route.

Many Indians are duped into offering themselves for work as security against a loan they have taken or a debt inherited from a relative.

A survey of bonded labourers rescued from brick kilns, rice mills and agriculture in Tamil Nadu found 61% of respondents had been enslaved for one to 10 years, and 21 percent for up to 20 years.

The report by Chennai-based Loyola College and rights group International Justice Mission found that more than two-thirds of respondents had taken loans of at least 5,000 rupees for a family wedding, hospital expense or just to buy food.

Many had inherited debts from parents and generational bondage was cited as the main reason for getting into the cycle of slavery.

By law, when a worker is rescued, all the debts should be written off, said Gladston Xavier, head of the Department of Social Work of Loyola College. On the ground, both are failing those rescued, forcing many back to bondage.

In the survey, 46% of rescued workers, most of them unskilled, still had debts and worked as day labourers.

Trilochan Bagh is one example.

He has vivid memories of the brick kiln he worked in. He remembers the night he carried his sick brother on his shoulder and walked out of the kiln looking for a hospital.

He was sick, had a fever and the owner was only interested in how many bricks we had made, Bagh said. I had to do something.

The 40-year-old and his wife recall every time abuse was hurled at them in the kiln. They remember the long hours they toiled before they were rescued in 2013.

But Bagh is preparing to go back again.

This time only I will go, not my family, he said. Its the second year of drought and I have a daughter to marry. There is no way out. Once you take a loan you cannot just walk away.
Tension prevailed at a mosque in a village in Himachal Pradesh on Tuesday after a group clash during Eid festivities, police said.

The clash occurred at a mosque at Misarwala, located some 25km from Nahan town in Sirmaur district, when one group objected to the Eid prayers being conducted by a particular priest, a police official said.

The official said the other group was insisting that the priest shortlisted by it should conduct the prayers. This led to the clash among the two groups.

Four people were injured and a few vehicles parked near the mosque were damaged by the protesters, he added.

At the time of incident, over 3,000 people had gathered in the mosque.

The security in the area has been heightened and no arrest has been made yet.
India and Russia reviewed the status of bilateral ties on, including cooperation in key areas of defence and security, and also prepared the ground for the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the country next month.

The discussions were a part of the 22nd session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission (IRIGC-TEC) where external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj led the Indian delegation, while Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, deputy chairman, headed the Russian side.

Before holding delegation level talks, the two leaders had a restricted meeting, MEA officials said.

They reviewed the work of various working groups and subgroups under the IRIGC-TEC mechanism and discussed about preparations for Putins visit, external affairs ministry said, underlining that India and Russia share a special and privileged strategic partnership.

Putin will be travelling to India in October for BRICS Summit and will also hold a bilateral summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) provides a framework for review of a broad spectrum of bilateral issues covering trade, economic, scientific, educational and cultural cooperation.

The last meeting of the commission was held in Moscow in October 2015.
It was business as usual on Tuesday morning at Chennais New Woodlands Hotel that was attacked by members of a pro-Tamil group over the ongoing Cauvery dispute that has stoked violence across Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

The attackers threw what eyewitnesses described as petrol bombs through the windows of an ice cream parlour, and left a note in Tamil warning of further incidents if Tamilians living in Karnataka continue to be assaulted.

Breakfast at the hotel, which is part of the Karnataka-based Udupi group, was marked by hushed conversations about the Cauvery issue, which has plagued the two states for decades, as well as the tit for tat attacks that occurred on Monday.

Diners and residents of the hotel calmly tucked into their ghee roast dosas and filter coffees as if nothing untoward had happened, while servers stood at attention awaiting orders.

The only difference in the usual routine of the well-known hotel was the extra security guard at the door and the police checkpoint stationed outside its main entrance.

It is clear that no one expects a repeat of the attack, with one waiter dismissing a cleaning staffs concerns with a nonchalant reply reminiscent of Rajinikanths latest film, Kabali: Bayema? Chance illai. (Am I afraid? Not a chance.)

If we could solve the Cauvery issue without fighting that would be wonderful of course, a server at the hotel said when asked about the attack. But afraid? No, nothing like that. This is usually what happens when it comes to the Cauvery dispute, but nothing will happen.

But across the state, the official mood is tense with a large number of police checkpoints across the city to prevent any further attacks. Tamil Nadu director general of police TK Rajendran deployed armed police units and quick response teams across the state border with Karnataka and interstate buses were halted temporarily.

The ice cream parlour that was attacked on Monday. (Aditya Iyer/HT Photo)

More than 2,500 policemen were deployed to areas of high sensitivity, including Kannadiga owned businesses and localities, according to Chennai commissioner of police S George.

Though the protests in Tamil Nadu have been largely peaceful, in Karnataka there have been several instances of violence by groups not affiliated with farmers organisations or other official groups. More than 30 private buses owned by a private contractor in Tamil Nadu were set alight in Bengaluru on Monday night.

There have been no reported incidents of violence on Tuesday in the state.

Several men have been arrested in connection with the attack on the New Woodlands Hotel in which no one was harmed. In Ramanathapuram district, 8 men belonging to three pro-Tamil outfits were arrested for vandalising five vehicles bearing Karnataka registration plates.

While the violence in Tamil Nadu has been minimal as compared to Karnataka, experts fear that local political parties may try and capitalise on the Cauvery crisis for political favour, especially with the upcoming local body elections later this year.

The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), a caste-based outfit with a strong presence in the border districts of Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri, has already issued a statement, with former Union minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss calling the SC verdict a victory for Tamil Nadu and petitioning Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah to protect Tamils living in the state.

Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa had on Monday assured her Karnataka counterpart that police would be deployed to ensure the safety of Kannadigas living in Chennai, as well as stating her concern over the serious condition in Karnataka with several instances of mob violence targeting Tamil speaking persons and their properties.

The protests by Tamil groups are in response to the dissent by farmers and pro-Kannada outfits in several parts of Karnataka after the Supreme Court ordered Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu every day until September 20.
Police said on Tuesday that they will question Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Mohammad Shahabuddin in connection with two absconding suspects in Hindustan journalist Rajdeo Ranjans murder in May.

Photos of the two suspects in Shahabuddins company emerged in the media after the former Siwan MPs release from Bhagalpur jail in Bihar last Saturday.

Ranjan, a journalist with Hindi daily Hindustan, was shot dead near the Siwan railway station. Sources say Ranjan had written against local politicians on several occasions, evoking death threats from many quarters.

Siwan is the stronghold of Shahabuddin, who faces nearly 40 criminal cases, including those of abduction and murder. Shahabuddin had been in jail for a decade -- before being granted bail by the Patna high court.

We have taken notice of photographs of suspect Mohammad Kaif and Mohammad Javed appearing in newspapers and video footage in the carcade of Shahabuddin from Bhagalpur to Siwan and hectic search is on for them, Siwan superintendent of police Saurav Kumar Sah said.

Javed and Kaif, alias Bunty, are wanted in connection with hatching a conspiracy against Ranjan, and the two remained at large before being seen in Shahabuddins carcade.

Read| Crackers, slogans, cavalcade: Shahabuddins unruly homecoming under lens

The Siwan SP said a notice will be served to Shahabuddin and he will be questioned about the two suspects.

Meanwhile, Asha Ranjan, the wife of the slain journalist, said she was living in fear.

I have come to know that he (Bunty) was there. He was also seen in the picture. What else would it require to convince the police about the nexus that led to killing of my husband, she asked.

I am already living in fright and now there will be constant trepidation. I fear for my children more.

(With agency inputs)

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Karnataka grudgingly accepted on Tuesday the Supreme Courts order to share Cauvery water with Tamil Nadu even as ripples of violent protests in Bengaluru shut down top Indian and foreign companies in the state capital known as the countrys Silicon Valley.

This order is the most difficult to follow. But when we are functioning within the framework of the Constitutionas a constitutionally formed government it is difficult to violate or reject the Supreme Court order. It will be a violation of the Constitution, Karnataka chief minister S Siddaramaiah said at a press conference.

He insisted that injustice has been done to his state over the century-old dispute by the top court order that sparked mob attacks on Tamil-speaking people, businesses run by people from the neighbouring state and torching of vehicles registered in Tamil Nadu.

Companies such as Flipkart, Amazon and Infosys were said to have shut business for a day as employees could not reach office. Some others asked employees to work from home.

At least two people were killed, one of them succumbing to his injuries, on Tuesday in the violence, forcing the government to clamp curfew and issue shoot-at-sight orders in the capital. Retaliatory violence also erupted in Tamil Nadu.

The latest flare-up occurred after the top court asked Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of water to the neighbouring state till September 20. Karnataka, where farmers are facing water shortage due to a deficient monsoon, stores the rivers water at the reservoir on the Krishna Raja Sagara Dam in Srirangapatna near Mandya.

Read: Cauvery dispute: Airlines waive off flight cancellation charges from Bengaluru

People search for valuables after a goods truck from Tamil Nadu was set on fire by protesters, at Nice Road in Bengaluru on Tuesday. (PTI)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke on the issue, saying the violence was distressful and urged restraint in the city.

Situation that has emerged in Karnataka & Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of issue of distribution of waters of Cauvery River, is distressful (sic), Modi tweeted. This dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit. Breaking the law is not a viable alternative.

Though there was no major violence on Tuesday, the Centre asked television channels to avoid telecasting provocative and inflammatory news and programmes that could further ignite tensions.

The embattled chief minister said he has sought Modis intervention on the issue that has sparked largescale violence in capital Bengaluru where mobs targeted Tamil-speaking people, torched vehicles and attacked businesses.

Clearly, injustice has been meted out to Karnataka. Still, the people have to accept the court verdict and fight the issue legally, the chief minister said.

He said the state we will file a review petition on the order of the apex court which will hear another case on the issue on October 18.

The state government also said those indulging in violence will be dealt with iron-hands, he said and appealed to the people to maintain peace and tranquility in the state and protect all citizens living here.

Around 15,000 police officers were deployed on the largely deserted streets of the countrys IT capital to enforce the curfew. The Centre also rushed 700 Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel to the city.

Read: Use shots of Cauvery, avoid live telecast of violence: Govt tells TV channels

Read: Cauvery cocktail: River dispute exposes Karnataka, Tamil Nadu fault lines

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
An army of caterpillars has ravaged thousands of hectares of standing paddy crops in Assam, weeks after the state was struck by floods.

The rice swarming caterpillars or armyworms (Spodoptera mauritia), prevalent in most parts of India and South Asia, is considered one of the most dangerous pests. Paddy crops attacked by them look like fields grazed by cattle.

In the past three days, standing crop in 17,418 hectares spread over 10 districts in upper and lower Assam have been destroyed by the armyworms. Golaghat is the worst affected with 6,671 hectares.

This is the biggest such attack the state has faced and we are worried. The problem has taken epidemic proportions, state agriculture minister Atul Bora told journalists on Monday.

Locally known as shur puk, the worms usually affect areas where large-scale flooding has taken place recently. The last time such a major attack of armyworms took place was in 1967, but the damage wasnt as widespread.

This years floods have damaged standing crop worth Rs 193 crore in over 200,000 hectares.

The minister stressed instructions have been issued to procure pesticides required to destroy the worms. He assured results would show in 24 hours.

Crop damage is also happening in the agriculture ministers own constituency, but the government is yet to take any concrete measures, peasant leader and activist Akhil Gogoi said.

Farmers across the state have resorted to lighting prayer lamps and conducting religious rituals in their fields with the hope of saving their crops.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Indian Army commandos stormed the mini-secretariat building in Poonch and killed a militant on Tuesday, bringing an end to the three-day encounter in the border town of militancy-hit Jammu and Kashmir.

The commandos of elite 9 Para also recovered two bodies, which were spotted by drones on Monday, from the three-storied, under-construction building.

This afternoon security forces blasted a wall using a powerful IED and then used stairs to enter third floor from where they started their cleansing operation, a police official said.

He said the militant killed was hiding on the second floor. The building has more than 80 rooms, over 20 toilets and eight underground water and septic tanks. Authorities feared that there could be booby traps in the building.

Security forces recovered four AK-47 assault rifles, 16 magazines, four under-barrel grenade launchers and four pistols from the building.

With killing of this ultra, a total of four terrorists were eliminated in the three-day long operation. All the three floors of the building have been sanitized and the operation has been called off. However, searches will continue, Johny Williams, inspector general in-charge of the Rajouri-Poonch range, said.

In fact, this ultra, who was eliminated today, was injured and he had been opening intermittent fire. Since we did not want to lose any of our men and to ensure zero casualties on our side, we tried to wear out the remaining ultras, whose exact numbers were not known.

Rajinder Kumar, a policeman, died on Sunday and seven people, including a Para commando, three policemen, two soldiers and a civilian, were injured in the attack by the militants.

The encounter, which began in Poonch town on Sunday morning, has been the longest-ever in the border township. The last such attack was in 2003, when deputy superintendent of police Manjit Singh was killed by militants.

On Sunday, militants fired at a police patrol near the armys 93 Brigade headquarters at around 7am. The attack led to the death of Kumar.

The army, which used drones to keep an eye on the militants and sent in commandos for the final assault, after the militants split into two groups.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that riots in Bengaluru over sharing River Cauverys water were distressful and the issue must be resolved peacefully between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Protestors, angry about a Supreme Court decision calling on Karnataka to divert some of the water from the River Cauvery to neighbouring Tamil Nadu, torched vehicles and pelted stones at people on Monday.

One person was killed in police firing as security forces took to the streets to quell the violence in Bangalore on Monday.

Situation that has emerged in Karnataka & Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of issue of distribution of waters of Cauvery River, is distressful, Modi said on Twitter. This dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit. Breaking the law is not a viable alternative.

I appeal to the people of the two States, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities: PM @narendramodi  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu said the violence cant be justified on any ground. It negates the rule of law and ultimately impacts the life of the common man, he said.

As Bengaluru witnessed widespread violence bringing it on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late on Monday.

The Cauvery water issue is sub-judice and the Supreme Court has given a direction after listening to both the States. If still there are any issues, leadership of both the states could discuss the same and come out with a way forward, Naidu said.

Violence and counter-violence would only further complicate the matters and is not in the interest of any State. Both the state governments should take effective measures to check the violence immediately, he said.

Indias IT capital Bengaluru woke up to a tense morning on Tuesday with curfew and shoot-at-sight orders imposed in several parts of the city after violence erupted across Karnataka over the decades-long Cauvery water-sharing dispute with Tamil Nadu.

Authorities reported no overnight violence after one man was killed and another injured as rioters set at least 30 buses ablaze and vandalised shops. Metro and bus services are likely to suspended for the second straight day on Tuesday.

But fear continued to spread through video footage of flames leaping out of charred vehicles and threats of attacks on Tamil people in Bengaluru circulating over WhatsApp, forcing local police to issue advisories.

Videos of attacks on Kannada-speaking people in various parts of Tamil Nadu triggered violent protests in Bengaluru, Mysuru and Mandya, said Karnataka home minister G Parameshawara. He appealed to the people not to believe in WhatsApp messages.

More than 15,000 security personnel patrolled sensitive areas in Bengaluru and will be out in full force on Tuesday, but the brunt of the violence was felt by Mysore and Mandya were scores of buses and trucks with Tamil Nadu registration plates were torched.

Karnataka chief minister S Sidhharamaiah called an emergency cabinet meeting at 11am to discuss the situation. Before that, at around 9am, he has convened an all-party meeting.
A convict jailed for life in former prime minister Rajiv Gandhis assassination, A.G. Perarivalan, on Tuesday was attacked by a fellow inmate in the Vellore prison, said a top district official.

Perarivalan was attacked with a log by a fellow convict. He suffered a minor wound on his forehead and medical attention was immediately provided. The wound was closed with some stitches, S A Raman, Vellore District Collector told IANS over phone.

Perarivalan was attacked by Rajesh Khanna. The two were housed in the same cell till recently.

According to Raman, what provoked Rajesh to attack Perarivalan was not clear and an inquiry will be held.

Political party Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) founder S Ramadoss condemning the attack, said Khanna was earlier housed in the same cell with Perarivalan and was recently shifted to a different cell.

Ramadoss said the the prison authorities version, that Khanna felt that Perarivalan was behind his cell change and attacked him, was not convincing.

The PMK leader said there were no answers as to how Rajesh got hold of the log to attack Perarivalan and why his cell was changed.

Perarivalan and six other convicts have been in prison since 1991, the year a woman Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew up Gandhi at an election rally near Chennai.
Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said on Tuesday it was difficult to implement an order by the Supreme Court over Cauvery water sharing with Tamil Nadu, urging people to refrain from violent protests after the ruling.

Bengaluru has been placed under curfew after deadly violence erupted over the long-running dispute. Around 15,000 police officers were deployed on the largely deserted streets of the countrys IT capital to enforce a curfew, after rampaging, stone-pelting mobs set buses and cars ablaze. Police gunfire killed one protester and injured another on Monday night.

Another person died on Tuesday of injuries he suffered while escaping police lathi-charge on Monday, as sporadic protests were reported in Bengaluru, where an uneasy calm prevailed. The toll in the violence rose to two with a 30-year old man, who had jumped in panic from a three-storey building while trying to escape police lathicharge, succumbed to multiple injuries on Tuesday afternoon.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the violence distressful and urged restraint in the city.

As per the order, we have released water for six days. The order is hard to follow but we will still follow it, Siddaramaiah said. People should not take law in their own hands; not cause damage to public property, he added.

A curfew was imposed in 15 areas of the city for the next three days to maintain peace and prevent untoward incidents during the Muslim holiday of Eid, Bengaluru police commissioner NS Megharikh said earlier

Around 200 protesters have been arrested on rioting on other charges in a bid to quell the violence, which has forced shops, offices and schools to close.

This dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit. Breaking the law is not a viable alternative, Modi said in a series of Tweets.

The violence and arson seen in the last two days is only causing loss to the poor, and to our nations property.

The Siddaramaiah-led government has warned of stringent action against vandalism or attempts to disturb peace.

We have been facing injustice over the issue for a long time, the Karnataka CM told a news conference. Whoever lost his or her life in police firing will get Rs 10 lakh compensation.

One person was killed on Monday in police firing as they took to the streets to quell the violence.

Situation that has emerged in Karnataka & Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of issue of distribution of waters of Cauvery River, is distressful, Modi said on Twitter. This dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit. Breaking the law is not a viable alternative.

Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu said the violence cant be justified on any ground. It negates the rule of law and ultimately impacts the life of the common man, he said.

Bengaluru woke up to a tense morning on Tuesday with curfew and shoot-at-sight orders imposed in several parts of the city after the violence erupted.

Authorities reported no overnight violence after one man was killed and another injured as rioters set at least 30 buses ablaze and vandalised shops. Metro and bus services are likely to suspended for the second straight day on Tuesday.

But fear continued to spread through video footage of flames leaping out of charred vehicles and threats of attacks on Tamil people in Bengaluru circulating over WhatsApp, forcing local police to issue advisories.

Videos of attacks on Kannada-speaking people in various parts of Tamil Nadu triggered violent protests in Bengaluru, Mysuru and Mandya, said Karnataka home minister G Parameshawara. He appealed to the people not to believe in WhatsApp messages.
Needling India again, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif dedicated Eid-ul Azha on Tuesday to the supreme sacrifices of Kashmiris and said their voices cannot be suppressed through force.

We cannot ignore sacrifices of Kashmiris. They will succeed through their sacrifices. We dedicate this Eid to the supreme sacrifices of Kashmiri people and we will continue doing so till the Kashmir issue is not resolved according to their (Kashmiri people) wishes, Sharif said in his message on the occasion of Eid-ul Azha.

Sharif offered Eid prayer along with other family members in the mosque at his Raiwind residence.

He said, Kashmiri people have sacrificed their third generation in their struggle to get freedom from India.

They are struggling for their right to self- determination and facing Indian atrocities. Their voice cannot be suppressed through force, he said.

President Mamnoon Hussain, in his message on the occasion, said Pakistan must remember our Kashmiri brothers and sisters affected by terrorism.

During this hour of need we must support the Kashmiri people. They are facing the worst atrocities to get their right to self-determination. Time is not far away when the Kashmiri people will get dividend of their supreme struggle. They will soon celebrate such festivals in free land, he said.

Meanwhile, Jammat-ud-Dawah chief and Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed led Eid prayers at Gaddafi Stadium and prayed for the success of Kashmiris fighting against Indian forces.

He urged the Sharif government to take a firm stance on Kashmir and help them get freedom.

Sharif had last month nominated 22 parliamentarians as special envoys to be dispatched to world capitals to highlight the Kashmir issue.

He had earlier asked the international community to investigate into the atrocities committed by Indian forces and an inquiry into the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani.

Sharifs remarks came against the backdrop of escalating war of words between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the continuing unrest in the Kashmir valley that broke out on July 8 after Wani was killed by security forces.
The Karnataka government on Tuesday warned of strict action against vandalism after after a man was killed in Bengaluru in police firing to control violent protests against sharing Cauvery river water with Tamil Nadu.

There is pain among Kannadigas that Karnataka has been facing repeated injustice over Cauvery river water sharing issue, said Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in a video message appealing for peace.

We are emotional on the issue of land, water and language, but we should not forget that humanity and human relationship within us is above all this, he said.

Calling attack on Kannadigas and their properties in Tamil Nadu condemnable, he said: At this time of difficulty we should not allow anger to take over.

People of both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu should cooperate in maintaining law and order in both states. I would also warn strict action against any one indulging in any kind of vandalism or disturbing peace, he said.

Thousands of police and paramilitary officers were deployed on the largely deserted streets of the IT city, after stone-pelting mobs went on the rampage on Monday setting buses and cars ablaze.

Police have arrested some 200 protesters in the city in a bid to quell the violence, which has forced shops, businesses and schools to close.

The violence erupted over a Supreme Court order for Karnataka to release water from a river to ease a shortage in Tamil Nadu until later this month.
Indian-origin engineer Naveen Rabelli drove for 10,000km on a solar-powered auto-rickshaw from India to London to create awareness of alternative mobility solutions for passenger vehicles in Asian and European countries using renewable energy.

The auto, also known as tuk-tuk in some parts of the world, had set off from Bengaluru in February.

Rabelli, 35, arrived at Dover ferry crossing in the UK on Monday, five days later than expected because he was robbed during a toilet break last week as he approached the ferry crossing from France.

The diesel-powered autorickshaw cost him $1,500 to buy, on which he spent an additional $11,500 to get it ready for the zero-emission adventure, entitled Tejas.

The purpose of this journey is to create awareness of alternative mobility solutions for passenger vehicles in Asian and European countries using renewable energy -- mix of solar and electricity, explains Rabelli, who refused to let the robbery in France get him down.

My passport and wallet were stolen when I parked to go to the toilet at a fast food restaurant at Sarcelles, about 45km west of Paris.

I reported it to the police, where there were some language issues but after a few hours they found an officer who could speak English.

They were very helpful and sorry when they heard that I was about to finish my trip, he said.

India-born Rabelli, who now holds an Australian passport, was able to acquire an emergency travel document and complete his journey.

He plans to drive up to Buckingham Palace in London this week and also attend the Low Carbon Vehicle Event 2016 in Millbrook, Bedfordshire, on Tuesday and Thursday.

The aim was to highlight an entirely Indian solution to the world and show the benefits of using a prototype that is reliable, feasible and affordable, said Rabelli.

The specially-modified autorickshaw, which is equipped with a bed, food cupboard and solar-powered cooker, was shipped from India to Bandar Abbas in Iran from where he kickstarted the overland mission to drive through Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Austria, Switzerland, Germany and France before arriving in the UK.

His website offers people the chance to track his journey and donate to his cause of promoting green transport.
The violence over a decades-long Cauvery water-sharing dispute across Karnataka and in some parts of Tamil Nadu has threatened the peace in the states which both Tamilians and Kannadigas call home and have lived in for hundreds of years.

Its not just the 765-kilometre long river that originates in Karnataka and flows through Tamil Nadu, the two southern states also share slices of history, people and culture.

Indian History in Pictures, which tweets from the handle @indianhistorypics, posted pictures of people who were born in Tamil Nadu but spent their entire lives in Karnataka, the state with which it is engaged in a bitter battle over the waters of Cauvery. It also mentioned Tamilians who were born in Karnataka and made it their home.

Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, who wrote to her counterpart in Karnataka S Siddharamaiah appealing for protection to people from her states caught in the crossfire is one such well-known personality. She was born in Karnatakas Mandya district.

CV Raman, the winner of Nobel Prize for physics in 1930, was born in Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu but lived in Bengaluru. Bengaluru is littered with roads and areas named after the physicist who worked in the field of light scattering.

Famous cartoonist RK Laxman was born in Mysuru in a Tamil-speaking family. And his brother writer RK Narayan was born in Chennai but lived in Mysuru all through his life. Readers find traces of Mysuru in his best-known works set in the fictional town of Malgudi.

Writer R.K.Narayan ( Malgudi Days ) Was Born In Madras ,Tamil Nadu But Lived In Mysore , Karnataka #Peace #cauvery pic.twitter.com/iQfIawmC3x  indianhistorypics (@IndiaHistorypic) September 12, 2016

K Seshadri Iyer, who is known as the maker of modern Bengaluru, was born in a Tamil Brahmin family and similarly the famous Kannada writer Masti Venkatesha Iyengar was also a Tamilian. A winner of the Jnanpith Award, he was popularly referred to as Maasti Kannadada Aasti or Maasti is Kannadas treasure.

Tamil superstar Rajinikanth was born in Bengaluru in 1950 and Kannadas veteran actor Dr Rajkumar was born in Tamil Nadus Gajanur.

Read | One dead in police firing as Karnataka burns over Cauvery water dispute
In 2008, when Kalyani Das (45), a homemaker from Singur, went to local shops to buy goods on credit, she was often shown the door.

The reason: She was from a family whose land, the sole source of income for many, was acquired by the state government for the Nano plant in Singur. Boards were put up by various shops urging buyers not to expect credit.

But, after the recent Supreme Court verdict which ended the stalemate over nearly 1,000 acres, there are perceptible changes in the area. For one, grocers and shopkeepers are once again extending credit to the families of farmers.

Read: Nano trouble over, Durga rides back to Singur

On August 31, after the countrys apex court gave a verdict in our favour, the entire situation has changed. Now, there is no problem if we buy items from our Beraberi Bazar on credit, Das told HT. The impression is, land will shortly be back in possession of the families, never mind if it is in a readily cultivable state or not.

In the rural and semi-urban areas of the state, almost every family has a monthly arrangement with the local retailers from groceries to medicine shops. The seller maintains a list of the monthly purchases, and at the end of the month, the buyer pays to square up the account. Credit, in short, is the lifeline of the local economy.

Das has 10 cottahs of land and her husband is physically challenged. Now the family plans to resume farming after the land is restored to them. For the past 10 years, it was a hand-to-mouth existence for the family which dependent on meagre government compensation.

Read: SC scraps Singur land deal for Nano plant, asks Bengal govt to take possession

Das was not alone. Many like her had to endure hardships.

Can you believe that even the local medicine shop owners refused to give us any life-saving drug? Then the CPI(M) and the administration spread a reign of terror in the area on people like us who opposed the acquisition, said Mahadeb Das, a leader of Singur Krishi Jami Raksha Committee and a resident of Beraberi village.

File picture of an agitation in Singur demanding the return of land. The change in the ground realities of Singur came after numerous agitations like this one. (HT Photo)

Though there was a change in the situation from 2011 after Trinamool Congress came to power, many of us did not even have the money to buy daily necessities. It is only after the Supreme Court verdict that shopkeepers are giving us credit, said Mahadeb Das, a leader of Singur Krishi Jami Raksha Committee and a resident of Beraberi area.

A visit to the Beraberi Bazar, the only market in the area, is revealing. At least 4,000 to 5,000 people are dependent on it. Please dont ask for credit signs have mostly vanished.

The state government acquired 997.11 acres for the Tata Motors project and in protest against this decision the entire Singur people launched a movement.

I was a student at that time and with others I, too, took part in that movement. My residence is adjacent to Beraberi Bazar and I still can remember how the people were refused by shopkeepers. But the situation has changed, said Avishek Ghosh, an activist of Trinamools student wing and a resident of Beraberi.

Read: Singur verdict may be a setback for ongoing industries in Bengal, fear industrialists and bureaucrats

While most shop owners decided to keep mum, Bholanath Ghosh, who sells towels in Beraberi Bazar for about 14 years, admitted that giving credit had stopped after the land went under the control of the state government and then leased out to Tata Motors.

The only source of income of these people was their land and when it was snatched away, shop owners started thinking that these people will not be able to repay them. Accordingly, they decided to stop giving credit, Ghosh said.

Trinamool district leaders agreed.

Certainly there was such a situation in the area but those days are gone. It is Mamata Banerjee who was with them from the very beginning. She is trying her best to ensure the welfare of the people of Singur. People want to see her leading from Delhi, said Tapan Dasgupta, the state agriculture-marketing minister and Hooghly Trinamool president.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Is it possible to have a delicious, mood-lifting meal in Delhi without paying a bomb? Is there more to the citys culinary smorgasbord than what you regularly find in Khan Market, Connaught Place and the Hauz Khas Village?

We, at HT city, went on an Indiana Jones style trip around the capital city with just Rs 500 in our pocket to hunt for places where you can gorge on delicious and authentic food, and enjoy generous proportions. From Kerela Hotel in the buzzing INA Market to the charming Appetite German Bakery hidden in the neony lanes of Paharganj, here are places you must try out for lip-smackingly gorgeous food under Rs 500. Its time you gave that long pending treat to your friend.

Tibetan Delight

This colourful and tangy American Chop Suey is a must try at this restaurant. (PHOTOS: SHIVAM SAXENA/HT)

Your culinary journey of the city is incomplete without gorging on authentic Tibetan cuisine. Tee Dee restaurant in the colourful Majnu Ka Tila is the place if you have Tibetan food on your mind. Established in 1960, this Tibetan eatery is frequented by people from various walks of life  students, families and local Tibetans. This restaurants menu is a total delight for non-vegetarians but at the same time, it does not leave vegetarians starved for choice. We also loved the bright, welcoming ambience of this eatery, complete with Tibetan artefacts. The waiters here are courteous, and they politely hand you a notepad to list up your order. The chef too is super sweet and willing to customise dishes according to your preference. Dont forget to wash down your meal with chilled fruit beer.

What we had

1) Veg Thupka = Rs 180

2) American Chop Suey = Rs 120

Total = Rs 300

Also try

1) Kung Pao Chicken = Rs 180

2) Tingmo = Rs 20

3) Shabhley = Rs 140

Read: Dramatic presentation doesnt mean great food: Uniqueness matters

A yummy mishmash

For all those pancake aficionado, this is place to gorge into delicious nutella pancakes. (PHOTOS: SHIVAM SAXENA/HT)

Located in the neony lanes of Paharganj is a hidden gem  Appetite German Bakery, which is perfect to banish your morning blues. With its laidback, homely vibe, its the hangout zone for foreign tourists, who love to sit on the rooftop gazing at the city. With chef Neeraj Ojha at the helm, the eatery has been serving delicious food over the last 10 years to tourists and food lovers in the city.

What we had

1) Pancakes = Rs 190

2) Yak Cheese Salad = Rs 180

Total = Rs 370

Also Try

1) Peanut Chicken = Rs 290

2) Spinach and Mushroom Spaghetti = Rs 190

3) Enchilada De Polo = Rs 260

Add some spice in life

Kerala Hotel is famous for serving authentic spicy food and incredibly cheap prices, with prawns biryani being the standout dish. (PHOTOS: SHIVAM SAXENA/HT)

If you are a fish lover, head to Kerala Hotel in the heart of INA Market. This eatery that opened some 18 years ago is a hit among local Keralites and foodies alike. From a variety of spicy fish, meat and chicken dishes to prawns and crabs, this place will not disappoint a non-vegetarian. Youll always notice a long queue of foodies waiting for a table here, but the food is always worth the wait. Youll come back with an ear-to-ear grin.

What we had

1) Prawns Biryani = Rs 250

2) Fish Curry = Rs 80

Total = Rs 330

Also try

1) Crab Curry = Rs 200

2) Fish Surma = Rs 200

3) Mutton Stew = Rs 200

Read:Trending: Cocktails spruced with flowers that are too pretty to drink

Of kebabs and chai

The meat served at this eatery is tender, juicy and as soft as a marshmallow. (PHOTOS: SHIVAM SAXENA/HT)

There are very few eateries in the city where you can get authentic Afghani food and experience Afghani culture. But Balkh Delhi Restaurant in Saket is one place where you can quietly sip soothing black tea and indulge in delicious kebabs and qormas, take a trip through the lanes of Kabul as you listen to the stories told by Afghanis who have made this restaurant their second home. The meat served here is so tender, juicy and cooked to perfection. Pair your meal with oversized Afghan rotis.

What we had

1) Mutton Kebab = Rs 180

2) Chicken+ Afghani Roti = Rs 180

Total = Rs 360

Also try

1) Egg Karayhi = Rs 180

2) Dupiaza = Rs 200

3) Kabli Uzbaki = Rs 180

Rustic Kashmiri

This eatery uses Kashmiri spices such as cardamom, ginger, cinnamon with fennel powder to perfection. (PHOTOS: SHIVAM SAXENA/HT)

If you love Kashmiri cuisine with a rustic twist, Kashmiri Wazwan in Bazar Matia Mahal, Jama Masjid is one place you cannot afford to miss. Run by young wazas from the valley, its the hangout zone of Kashmiri traders who visit Delhi for work. This cozy little restaurant serves the juiciest rista and gushtaba, the crispiest tabak maaz. If you dont mind its nondescript interiors, this joint guarantees a delicious meal. The service is super fast and the waiters are polite, who will never forget to get you a second helping of rice. We loved the authentic flavours of the dishes, and the liberal proportions. Wash off the meal with piping hot kahwa.

What we had

1) Rista = Rs 240

2) Rice = Rs 50

Total = Rs 290

Also try

1) Rogan Josh = Rs 240

2) Tabak Maaz = Rs 100

3) Mirch Korma = Rs 300

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
To keep Ganesh immersion festivities free from any untoward incidents, the Mumbai police, who fear a terror attack similar to the one during Bastille Day celebrations in France, are verifying the backgrounds of truck and tempo drivers across the city.

We have alerted all local police stations and have instructed them to carry out a check on all possible truck and tempo drivers, especially those driving bigger vehicles, to ensure there is no terror attack like the one in France that left 84 dead in July this year, said a senior ATS officer, on condition of anonymity.

Two weeks ago, before the Ganpati festival began, the police stations were told to meet all Ganpati mandals in their jurisdictions and to get details of truck and tempo drivers hired during idol immersion, said a senior police officer. We have instructed mandals that the driver should be known to them and to ensure they arent while driving, said the officer.

Officers have maintained a logbook containing details of the drivers transporting the idols to various immersion points. Apart from these records, mandals have also been instructed to ensure the vehicles prominently display on the front details of the drivers, the route it will take and other necessary information. After verifying these details, the local beat chowkie officer will give clearance to vehicles allowed to ply on immersion routes, said a senior officer.

Officers of the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) and the crime branch have alerted their informants in the vicinity and are keeping a close watch on crowded areas. After obtaining details of the driver, we have done backgrounds checks, including call records and have also checked their social media identities to understand the drivers nature, said police sources.
Rattled with the momentum gained by the silent Maratha protest rallies, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday went into a huddle with his senior ministers and BJP leaders and gave an open invite to organisers to hold talks with his government on the issue.

The meeting held at Fadnavis official residence Varsha in Malbar Hill saw deliberations on how best to tackle the young protestors and control their simmering discontent that could threaten the partys performance in the upcoming local self government elections dubbed as mini assembly polls. The election season in the state starts in October 2016 and ends in March 2017. As many as 26 Zilla Parishads, 297 Panchayat Samitis and 9 big civic corporations including Mumbai will go to polls in this time, giving a referendum on the Fadnavis government. The BJP cannot afford to have a majority of the states populance unhappy and protesting.

The protest marches have been organised with great discipline and maturity and even though people have joined them in large numbers, they have been peaceful. The Chief Minister thanked organisers for this. These protest rallies reflect anger of several decades and the government taken a serious note of this anger and discontent. We are open to initiating dialogue on several levels to address these issues, said a statement issued from Fadnavis office.

Sources told HT that the party is wary of the protests reflecting badly on the government or going out of hand on the lines of the Patel agitation in Gujarat. There is also a sentiment that the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) could be fanning this movement even if the organisers have distanced themselves from any political party.

As a part of the deliberations, it was decided that BJPs Maratha leaders will reach out to the community to explain its willingness to consider their demands including reservation for the community in government jobs and education. The party is also looking at deflecting the anger on their predecessors, the Congress-NCP.

This outrage is against those who came to power in the past in the name of the community, but did nothing for the majority, leaving them backward. The CM is working towards meeting the communitys demand for reservation, said Sambhaji Patil Nilangekar, state labour minister and a young Maratha leader from Marathwada , who was present at the meeting.

The silent protest marches of Marathas started in the aftermath of a brutal rape and murder of a minor 17-year-old girl of the community in Kopardi, in Ahmednagar. Organised by young Maratha youth under the banner of Maratha Kranti Morcha, the protestors have so far eschewed any political backing. The protesters have made three demands including reservation for the community, gallows for the rapists and review of the Atrocity Act.

The protests threaten to polarise the state on the lines of caste with a potential face-off between Marathas and the Dalits. The last time the state was divided on similar lines was when the Marathwada University was renamed as Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar University in 1994.

Dalit leaders final call

In a move to ensure that the ongoing Maratha protests dont spur similar rallies by Dalits, Bharipa Bhaujan Mahasangh (BBM) leader and grandson of Dr B R Ambedkar, Prakash Ambedkar on Tuesday cautioned the community to not undertake similar protests. The Maratha protest organisers have demanded a withdrawal of the Atrocity Act that they claim has been misused to harass people. It is a demand that is unlikely to get any support from the Dalits. With the accused in the Kopardi rape case three Dalit men, any such protests could lead to possible caste tension and violence in the state.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Versova beach, one of the dirtiest in the city, has never looked so clean. On Sunday, after residents and municipal workers picked up 24,000 kg of garbage left after Ganesh immersions during the weekend, the sand was so clean that residents of the area could see that water was clearer.

The volunteers sent nearly eight truckloads of idol parts and plastic to the dumping grounds on Sunday, leaving one stretch of the beach between Sagar-kutir and the southern end spic and span. They are now bracing up for the trash that will be left after the last and big day of immersion  on Thursday.

Read: One-and-a-half-day immersion: 8 truckloads of idol parts collected from Versova

Members of Versova Residents Volunteers (VRV) completed their 48th consecutive Sunday. They have so far sent 2,848 tonnes of trash from the beach to the dumping grounds. Fifty volunteers and with 30 municipal workers were part of the beach clean-up this weekend.

An August 2016 picture shows the Versova beach strewn with garbage and people volunteering in a clean-up drive. (HT Photo)

After months of hard work, we managed to make the beach trash-free, said Afroz Shah, founder, VRV. We segregated the group into two parts  one that picks up idol parts and the other collects plastic and other pieces of trash. After the clean-up, we could actually see that water had become clearer closer to the shoreline, he said.

Shah added that while the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) workers were only focusing on idol parts while residents were more worried about removing plaster of Paris (PoP) debris from the shoreline. Most idols are made of PoP which takes months to disintegrate in the water.

Next weekend, members of Maharashtra Maritime Board will join VRV and the BMC on the occasion of International Coastal Cleanup day.

Students clean-up Dadar beach after idol immersions

Students of ITM Karghars Eco Club carried out beach clean-up at Chaitya bhoomi, Dadar Chowpatty, on Monday morning. More than 40 students cleaned a 800-metre stretch of the beach

A large amount of garlands, broken glasses, coconuts, plastic bags and waste food lay on the beach. Out of which, most of the waste food will be feed to stray animals while others will be recycled, said Bhavik Sachdev, President of ITMs Eco Club.

1,68,161 immersions so far

*September 6 (one-and-a-half day of immersions): 68,353 idols

*September 9 (fifth immersion day): 31,088 idols

*September 10 (Gauri visarjan day): 49,757 idols

*September 11 (seventh day of immersion):18,963 idols

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A 13-month-old boy was rescued 30 hours after he was kidnapped from his house at Nauraspur in Tronica City area of Ghaziabad, and handed over to a Delhi businessman who had two daughters and was desperate to have a son.

The police quickly cracked the case and revealed that the child, Yash, was sold to a resident of Shakarpur in Delhi for Rs 3 lakh. Several middlemen were involved in the case, police said.

The boy was rescued during early hours on Monday and five accused arrested. Police said that Paras Jain, who allegedly bought Yash from Patparganj-based nurse Anita Vij, wanted a son as he had two daughters aged 13 and 11. Jain operates a bakery in Delhi. His wife Archana is absconding.

Paras and his wife came in touch with Anita three-four months back and she promised that she will get them a boy if there is one available. Anita later got in touch with a Ghaziabad-based couple for the job. The couple roped in their acquaintances Rahul and his friend Sunil to abduct the child. The couple handed over the abducted child to Anita on the night of September 10. She called up Jain and handed over the child in return of Rs 3 lakh, said Rakesh Kumar Pandey, superintendent of police (rural).

Anita, 45, said that she worked as a nurse with a private nursing home around 10 years back. She is unmarried and the Ghaziabad couple Chandvir and Poonam is also childless.

Our teams picked up the accused and recovered the boy safely. The five accused were produced before court on Monday. We will soon take them on remand and interrogate whether more children were sold away to others in a similar manner, Pandey added.

Five of those arrested include, Paras Jain, 41, Anita Vij, 45, Chandvir Singh, 38, and wife Poonam, 35, and Rahul, 22,  the man who abducted the child along with his friend Sunil. Police said that Sunil, 21, is absconding.

The officials said after Anita allegedly received Rs 3 lakh from Jain, she paid Rs 75,000 to Chandvir and Poonam. The couple kept Rs 30,000 and paid the rest to Rahul and Sunil.

After the boy was kidnapped, the police got a tip-off from local residents that the boy was last seen with Rahul and Sunil. Rahul and Chandvir knew each other as they hail from Phugana in Muzaffarnagar. Sunil on the other hand, visits Nausarpur to meet his brother-in-law, who is a neighbour of the boys parents.

After the police teams nabbed Rahul from Muzaffarnagar on September 11, he revealed the plot. Several teams raided the Gagan Vihar residence of Chandvir and Poonam and nabbed them too. The couple helped police trace Anita late on the night of September 11. She called up Jain along with the child to Patparganj from where police picked up Paras Jain and recovered the child around 2am on Monday.

Read more: Delhi businessman threw party after getting kidnapped Ghaziabad boy

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The unprecedented sit-in and sleepover protest by Congress MLAs inside the Punjab assembly hall entered its second night on Tuesday as several efforts, including a visit by chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, failed to convince them to end their dharna, which had started at 6pm on Monday after their no-confidence motion was declared defeated by the speaker.

Twenty-one legislators  half the Congress strength, and all men  were still inside the House till the filing of the report at 9pm, set to sleep in the well of the House, while the ruling SAD-BJP combine readied to move a breach-of-privilege motion against them on Wednesday, the concluding day of this governments last session before the elections due early next year.

In pics: Cong dharna inside Punjab assembly, with overnight stay

The Congress, too, planned for the Wednesday showdown inside, with sources telling HT that they will not allow any business to be taken up until the speaker resumes discussion on the trust motion. Rules say another such motion cannot be moved in the same session.

The speakers office, on its part, called in additional police personnel for security inside the House on Wednesday.

Sealed complex

Though 27 legislators had started the agitation, some had left on Monday night and a few in the morning. Most were not allowed to return after the Vidhan Sabha complex was cordoned off up to 500 metres after 9.30am.

Though majority of the MLAs said they were not able to take a bath and had no change of clothes, supporters of some were seen carrying food and medicines inside. The MLAs continued to release pictures, videos and statements to the media as also posting these on social media. This included a selfie by Gidderbaha MLA and Youth Congress national president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring that showed him and three other MLAs brushing their teeth!

Outside, at least eight MLAs, including former CM Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Lal Singh and Brahm Mohindra who had left on Monday night, held a protest at the high court chowk where they burnt the CMs effigy. Terming the whole affair a constitutional crisis, Bhattal sought Punjab governor VP Singh Badnores intervention. Lal Singh said he spoke to the speaker in the morning to end the stalemate, but in vain

Badal the elder

CM Badal (seated, right) meeting the MLAs inside the assembly hall in the afternoon. (Photo: CMO)

The CM office sprung into action at noon after which Badal went in for a meeting at 1.10pm that lasted around 20 minutes; but the MLAs told him they wont leave until speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal agrees to resume the debate on the no-confidence motion. Badal expressed helplessness, saying that is the speakers prerogative, and urged them to meet Atwal on Wednesday. Atwal was away in Ludhiana for a medical procedure at a private hospital on Tuesday.

CMO officials said Badal decided to meet the protesting MLAs as an elder. Congress leaders protesting outside had left by the time Badal reached. The CMO later emailed pictures of Badal facing the MLAs with folded hands. I am deeply pained by the sequence of events and I appeal to you with folded hands, both in my personal capacity and as Leader of the House, to end the sit-in, his statement read. He said he would have come even earlier but for delay in entry permission from the speaker.

Gimmick

But leader of opposition Charanjit Singh Channi termed Badals visit a gimmick. About Monday nights ordeal, he said, They keep switching off our lights and air-conditioners. We had no food and water for long hours. But we are fighting for Punjab and will not let the government browbeat us.

Senior Congress MLA Sunil Jakhar, who remained inside, said over the phone that the government is not serious about peoples issues, and thats why its running away from a serious debate.

In the evening, assembly officials too tried to negotiate a resolution with the MLAs, who were divided for a while over the offer, even as Warring and Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa eventually stayed steadfast against any talks. But the dharna group continued to ask the speakers office to switch on the AC. At this, assembly secretary Shashi Lakhanpal Mishra stuck to her helpless stance, saying thats a decision of the Chandigarh administration.

For some comfort, Ludhiana MLA Bharat Bhushan Ashus supporters carried a dry-cleaned kurta-pyjama. For diabetes-patient Sangat Singh Gilzian, a man brought an insulin kit, while for Raja Warring a briefcase containing clothes and other things was sent in. Exotic fruits, water, cold drinks, juices, home-cooked food went in at regular intervals, and the assembly staff had deputed a person at the barricades to collect these.

Leaderspeak

I am pained at the inconvenience you (Cong MLAs) have gone through. I request you to protest in the right way and appeal with folded hands to join the assembly proceedings on Wednesday. - Parkash Singh Badal, chief minister

Badal is only shedding crocodile tears. Had he been sincere, he as leader of the House should have allowed Congress MLAs to speak on the no-confidence motion. - Capt Amarinder Singh, Punjab Congress chief

Day-and-night match: Timeline

5.30 am: First, of the 27 MLAs inside, 4 women leave House in morning, only Aruna Chaudhary re-enters and later leaves; later, some other MLAs too leave to go home to freshen up

9.30 am: Assembly secretariat order sealing of complex; perimeter up to 500 metres cordoned off; MP Ambika Soni arrives with breakfast but refused entry

11-noon: Cong MLAs who left assembly on Monday night or Tuesday morning are refused entry; sit on dharna on roadside; 2 managed to re-enter earlier after altercation with security staff; those protesting outside burn effigy of CM and leave to meet governor, but never reach there

1.10 pm: CM Badal meets protesting MLAs for 20 mins

2 pm: Protesting MLAs manage to switch on lights inside hall; ACs not functional

4-6 pm: Message sent by assembly secretariat for meeting for resolution; its rejected by MLAs eventually

10.30-11 pm: Dinner arrives, MLAs settle in for the night with pillows and sheets
Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal returned after an unsuccessful meeting with 27 Congress MLAs sitting in protest at the Punjab Assembly on Tuesday afternoon.

Must read | Protest or publicity stunt? Congress MLAs night out in Punjab assembly

Badal visited the House, which is closed for Eid, to meet the MLAs who spent the night in the assembly, demanding that the debate on the no-trust vote against the SAD-BJP government moved by party legislature party leader Charanjit Singh Channi on Monday be resumed.

The meeting of the protesting MLAs with the chief minister lasted 15 minutes. The protesting MLAs told Badal that they will not leave the assembly till Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal agrees to resuming the debae. Badal expressed helplessness in the matter, saying it was the Speakers prerogative to decide on these matters.

Badal urged the Congress MLAs to meet the Speaker on Thursday.

Of the 42 Congress legislators in Punjab, nearly 30 MLAs, including four women, decided to stay put in the assembly in Chandigarh on Monday night; (and right) party leaders Sukhjinder Randhawa, Amrinder Singh Raja Warring, Charanjit Singh Channi and Navtej Bajwa on the floor of the House. ht photos (HT Photos)

Sources in the CMO said the chief minister decided to meet the protesting MLAs as an elder member of the House to try and resolve the issue.

Atwal, who is undergoing a medical procedure in a Ludhiana hospital, is not expected to come to the assembly and the stalemate is likely to continue till the assembly sessions last day begins on Wednesday morning. He is firm that the no-trust motion was put to vote on Monday evening and defeated.

The Congress leaders and supporters who were protesting outside the assembly left by the time Badal reached.

The Congress legislators spent Monday night inside the assembly, sleeping on the floor and seats of the House, as part of an unprecedented protest against the state government after losing the no-confidence motion.

Security personnel at the Punjab Vidhan Sabha gate on Tuesday. (Ravi Kumar/HT Photo)
Residents are not happy with the new system of door-to-door collection of garbage under the solid waste management project, which was recently inaugurated by deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal.

The project aims at collecting garbage from houses for processing, treating and producing bio-gas or electricity in the plant.

The residents feel that it is has an inconsistent style of working and the garbage collection vans operated by a Mumbaibased private company are not regular.

The garbage collection is the first phase of the project that was first mooted in 2007.

Ardhana Verma Singh, a school teacher and resident of New Amritsar said, The biggest problem, I am facing is of disposal of garbage. These vans are not regular. And, when we ask them the reason, they blame us. In the absence of these garbage pickers, people prefer to dispose of the waste in open spaces, but I avoid to do so. As a result, the garbage continues to be stored in my house for days together.

Amit Davessar, a resident of Majitha Road, also complained about the same and said, It is a good step. But, picking of garbage is not regular. If implemented properly, I am hopeful that it can make the city garbage-free. The need is to make the garbage collection smooth and regular.

Gagandeep Singh, a resident, said, The need is that the city should be clean and green, but now the garbage collection vans are not coming on time and are not regular, which is bothering the residents.

Before this system of collection, private vendors used to come and collect garbage from houses of the people.

MC commissioner Sonali Giri said, The problem in the previous system was that vendors used to collect the garbage and dumped it in vacant plots. But, now it is not the case.

Regarding the issue of regularity, first, there is a lot of garbage to be collected and it takes a lot of time. However, we are planning to have an in-command system, where we would be able to check the movement of these vans soon. They are only for the convenience of the people, she added.
In a dramatic turn of events, frustrated passengers launched a fierce attack on protesters who blocked the movement of trains for over four hours at the Ludhiana railway station on Monday. The blockade began at around 11 in the morning and trains started running again at 3pm.

Kin of the four youths who drowned in the Sutlej on Sunday swarmed the station where they blocked three trains, pelting stones at police, passengers and trains. Two cops suffered injuries in the attack.

However, in reaction to the stone-pelting, police started chasing protesters away with lathis while passengers resisted by fighting back.

The scene in the rest of the city was similar where protesters blocked traffic for six hours demanding that the divers be booked for murder for denying help to the families of victims unless they were paid Rs 15,000.

Protesters gathered at Jagraon Bridge. (HT Photo)

Protesters overpowered by cops, passengers

Though protesters stayed the course hurling stones at cops and commuters, they were overpowered once passengers joined the fight.

Earlier, passengers had a harrowing time and were left stranded as protesters blocked tracks and stopped three trains. Helpless passengers were spotted crowding waiting rooms and platforms.

A passenger, Mahaveer, who was travelling to Delhi with his family, said, My children have nothing to eat and we have been sitting inside the train for over three hours in this scorching heat. The law and order situation is out of hand here. We do not see such blockades abroad.

Another passenger, Sauvik Das, said, Our family was to catch a flight from Delhi to Kolkata at 6pm but after being held up for four hours here, I dont think we will make it in time for the flight. Why should the common man suffer so? I am shocked to see cops playing mute spectators to the entire mess.

Passengers take alternate route

As tempers ran high and patience ran out, some passengers were spotted alighting from trains with their luggage and walking towards the stations exit. They hired auto rickshaws to go to the bus stand.

Enquiry window chock-a-block

Distressed passengers were seen thronging the enquiry window enquiring about the status of trains, asking when they will resume services.

Cops were negligent: kin of deceased

The protesters claimed to be associated with Jeengar Samaj Rajasthan and were mostly residents of Islamganj and Prem Nagar areas. All the four youths who drowned in the river on Sunday belonged to these areas. Protesters alleged that the youngsters died due to the negligence on part of cops who were on duty.

A protester, Rakesh Solanki, said, We want police to take strict action against the cops on duty at the Sutlej river where the youngsters drowned. We also demand compensation and government job for the kin.
Can someone occupying the chair of the speaker wear a proud to be Akali badge? The Congress seemed right in objecting to the impropriety when Akali MLA Iqbal Singh Jhunda came to occupy the speakers chair during a no-confidence motion moved by it on Monday. But the Congress soon lost the plot.

The debate was started at 5pm by leader of opposition Charanjit Singh Channi. But within no time, Congress MLA Gurkirat Singh Kotli objected to Jhundas wearing the badge  flaunted by all Akalis on diktat of SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal. When Jhunda said, I will be neutral, you dont have to worry about the badge, Congress MLAs stormed to the well of the House shouting slogans.

Must read | Protest or publicity stunt? Congress MLAs night out in Punjab assembly

Indian Youth Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and Congress MLA Tarlochan Singh Soondh tried to breach the security wall created by the assembly watch and ward staff by pushing them. Amid the unruly scenes, the speaker returned to the chair and told the House he had gone to use the washroom.

Elated at their victory, the Congress MLAs came back to their benches clapping and Channi began his speech by saying, those who are supposed to protect are looting the state. He then went on to use words which were expunged by the speaker. But the provocation was enough for Akali firebrand MLA Virsa Singh Valtoha to dub Congress as corrupt and drop a former CMs name. At this, Channi and Sukhjinder Randhawa erupted and Balbir Sidhu called Valtoha a terrorist.

Then on, it was a test of lung power as both sides resorted to shouting slogans of shame, shame and thumping of desks.

The ruling benches demanded Channi to take back his words. But he refused saying he had quoted lines out of Sikh holy book Guru Granth Sahib. The speaker then asked Channi to continue his speech.

But as soon as he resumed his speech, another Akali MLA Gurpratap Singh Wadala was on the speakers chair with his proud to be Akali badge. The House was disrupted again by Congress MLAs, but Wadala too refused to remove the badge saying: Tomorrow, you will also ask me to remove my blue turban (the Akali colour). Even the Congress seemed a divided house, as Warring and Channi disagreed over the latters not being able to continue as three other speakers, including Warring, Sukhjinder Randhawa and Sunil Jakhar, too, had their speeches lined up. This time when Atwal returned to his chair, he said: The opposition does not seem serious about debating the motion and put it to vote.

Pargat joins Bains brothers in protest against govt in House

The motion was defeated and the Akalis left their benches smiling. The Congress MLAs threw paper planes and booklets from their desks at the speakers chair.

But the show did not end here. As the security wall of the assembly staff stood guarding an empty speakers chair, the Congress held a mock session with Warring and Navtej Cheema occupying the chairs of Sukhbir and CM Parkash Singh Badal in the assembly. The party MLAs later stayed put at the floor of the House till the filing of the report.

The party, which had listed a host of issues from mafia-raj, law and order, farm crisis to unemployment, let the Akalis hijack it literally by a badge.

Cong used flippant excuse of badge: CM

In a statement later, CM Prakash Singh Badal said the Congress used a flippant excuse of party badges to run away from a debate.

Is a party badge the most important issue of the people of Punjab? It showed no interest in discussing their own motion of no confidence against the government. It seems the Congress was surprised by our readiness and confidence to face the motion and was not prepared for a discussion on it, Badal said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Five days after he was booked for allegedly attempting to rape a 15-year-old Dalit girl, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Hardeep Singh was arrested by the police in Dhindsa village of Moonak subdivision in Punjabs Sangrur district on Tuesday. Hardeep, a photographer by vocation, is circle in-charge of the party, leading its activities in Lehragaga and neighbouring areas.

Senior superintendent of police (SSP) Pritpal Singh Thind said, On a tip-off, Hardeep was arrested from Dhindsa village at 8.45 am. During interrogation he said he is an active leader of the AAP and has close relations with AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and senior leader Sanjay Singh.

The alleged rape attempt took place on September 9, when the 15-year-old, Class-9 student and her younger sister had gone to Hardeeps shop to get photographed. She told the police in her statement that while her sister was waiting outside the darkroom of the studio, Hardeep locked the room from inside and tried to rape her. When she screamed, her sister unsuccessfully tried to open the door, it is reported. Later, the victims sister shouted after which people nearby gathered and the their father also arrived on the scene. While they tried to break open the door, Hardeep himself opened the door and pushed people away to escape, the complaint says.

But Hardeep has claimed has been framed under a political conspiracy. All I said to her was to keep her shoulders in the correct position for the photograph, but she has alleged that I tried to rape her. The girls are my relatives. I cannot even imagine doing such an inhuman act, he has said.

On why he escaped, he said he was scared that if the girl called the cops they would beat him up brutally. The girl registered the case when the sarpanch of the village asked her to, because he wanted to frame me. I will cooperate with the police and be proven innocent, he has added.

Also read | Kejriwals Punjab outing: Big bungalow, rich host, aam aadmi leaders in SUVs

He has been charged under sections 376/511 (attempt to rape), 354B (using criminal force to woman with intent to disrobe) and 342 (wrongful confinement) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and also under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act.
The Akali-BJP government on Monday made an amendment in an existing law for parole to prisoners, which was passed in the Punjab assembly amidst opposition by the Congress, accusing that the Badal regime wanted to use criminals in Punjab elections through this amendment.

The amendment includes addition of two sub-clauses to the existing law for parole that could now be given to a prisoner for renovation or construction of house and for agriculture and allied services.

They (SAD and BJP) want the criminals out to win the elections. Why this bill is relevant now when the elections are round the corner? leader of opposition Charanjit Singh Channi stated, after Punjab jails minister Ajit Singh Kohar proposed the Punjab Good Conduct Prisoners (temporary release) Amendment Bill, 2016.

Must read | Protest or publicity stunt? Congress MLAs night out in Punjab assembly

The amendment to THE Punjab Good Conduct Prisoners (temporary release) Act, 1962, was passed by a voice vote amidst uproar over the bill by the opposition Congress MLAs for half an hour. There is no provision or the clause in the bill on who would be deciding the good conduct of the prisoner to be released, Channi said.

Senior Congress MLA Sunil Jakhar took a dig at deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, who is also the home minister, saying the criminals were operating from behind the bars. He said the deputy chief ministers officer on special duty and a Youth Akali Dal leader had been recorded to have visited the accused killer of a Dalit lodged in the Fazilka jail.

They actually want the release of such kind of criminals, Jakhar said in the presence of Sukhbir who did not o react the oppositions assertions.

Mock session? Akalis hijack no-confidence motion with badge

Every kind of mafia is in Punjab today, said Congress Ajit Inder Singh Mofar, as his party colleague Balbir Sidhu pitched in to point out a murder in Kurali recently by criminals out on parole. Mofar had a spat with Virsa Singh Valtoha of the SAD after he raised a question on providing parole to the prisoners booked under the NDPS Act.

2 more bills for senior vice-chairmen

The treasury benches also proposed an amendment to the Punjab Agricultural Produce (2nd Amendment) Bill, 2016, and The PEPSU Townships Development Board (Amendment) Bill, 2016, that were passed through voice vote. These two bills pertained to an amendment to appoint senior vice-chairperson in the two public sector institutions Punjab Mandi Board and The Pepsu Townships Development Board.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Four days after a Class 8 student allegedly jumped off the top floor of the building of DAV Public School, Pakhowal Road, his kin, classmates, DAV pass-outs and Students Organisation of India members protested at the Mini Secretariat on Monday.

Must read | Why did Atharva jump? Parents, school authorities keep mum

The 13-year-olds uncle SP Gupta, said, We want justice and we have written to the ADC (general) Rishi Pal Singh and demanded that the guilty be put behind bars.

He claimed that his nephew Atharva Gupta had attempted suicide after he was beaten up by four teachers, of which one was a woman.

He is on ventilator and has not yet gained consciousness. Atharva is a brilliant student and scored above 90% in Class 7.

SP Gupta, Atharvas uncle, claimed that his nephew had attempted suicide after he was beaten up by four teachers, of which one was a woman. (HT Photo)

A Class 8 student, requesting anonymity, said, We were locked inside our classroom when this happened on Thursday. After about half an hour, our teacher entered the class and said an investigation team was in the school. Another teacher said a student from Class 8 had suffered minor injuries after he slipped from the stairs. But after recess, we learnt that our own teachers had beaten up Atharva. We are beaten up for small things like not having a pass for drinking water.

Another Class 12 student, who did not wish to be named, said, This is not the first case teachers have thrashed tudents without a reason. The students tortured physically and mentally and whenever a student complains to the principal, no action is taken against the teacher. If a boy and girl are seen together in school, then the school authorities behave like we have committed a crime. This orthodox mindset has to change.

Parents to protest outside school tomorrow

Some parents visited DAV Public School, Pakhowal Road, to inquire over the matter on Monday. A parent, requesting anonymity, said, When I asked teachers, they questioned us why we were bothered about Atharva? She further said, The school authorities were not ready to answer any of our questions. This is not how you treat a child and the staff should have called the parents. Six months ago, all the teachers wrote to the principal promising not to administer corporal punishment. This has happened despite that. We will not let the school open on Wednesday and will demand strict action against the culprits.

Student speak

This is not the first case teachers have thrashed tudents without a reason. The students tortured physically and mentally and whenever a student complains to the principal, no action is taken against the teacher. If a boy and girl are seen together, school authorities behave like we have committed a crime. This orthodox mindset has to change, a Class 12 student said.
Actor Mahesh Babu, who is busy shooting for AR Murugadoss directed yet-untitled Tamil-Telugu bilingual project, will play an intelligence officer in the film.

Its not a regular cops role. He plays an intelligence officer and contrary to reports, he wont get to don the khaki. Its going to be a very stylish film and it will portray Mahesh in a very different avatar, said a source from the films unit.

Also starring Rakul Preet Singh and SJ Suryah, the project is currently being shot in EVP world here. The project, which is being shot as a bonafide bilingual, marks the first time collaboration of Mahesh and Murugadoss.

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton came close to a race-changing moment with her illness over the weekend, one that will be remembered years from now.

There are several competitors for the moment Trump lost the race though  the time he jerked his arms around pathetically to mock a physically challenged reporter.

Or if he were to win, how about his news conference with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, when Americans first saw how Trump will look on stage with a world leader? Even his worst critics in the Republican party were impressed.

Most US presidential elections leave behind moments that make it to book jackets, get traded over beer or are passed on from one generation to another around the fireplace.

On their own, they dont determine the outcome, which is really the product of multiple factors, but do tend to lock the candidates place in history, without mercy.

As this years race makes its way into its final stretch with the three presidential debates coming up, here are some stand-out moments from recent elections:

Michael Dukakis in the tank (1988)

Running against vice-president George H W Bush, a celebrated war hero, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, the Democrat, felt under pressure to burnish his own credentials.

Dukakis was in the army too, but having served in peacetime he had nothing to match Bush. Besides, he was seen as weak on defence, a common charge against Democrats.

So, he took a ride in an Abrams main battle tank, as a photo op. Images of a diminutive Dukakis in a goofy helmet had completely the opposite effect and so damaged him that the outing is still cited as a lesson for campaigns in what to not do.

Dukakis lost, giving Bush his first term.

Watch | Dukakis in a tank

Mitt Romney trashed 47% of America (2012)

President Barack Obamas 2012 challenger, Mitt Romney, was grievously wounded by a surreptitious recording of his remarks to donors in which he ran down almost half the country. Literally.

He could be heard saying 47% of Americans dont pay taxes, are dependent on the government, believe they are victims and believe the government must care for them. And, he had added, they will vote for Obama no matter what.

With that, Romney, a wealthy businessman already seen disconnected from average Americans, handed the Obama campaign fodder for multiple attack ads making that case.

Romney lost an election many believed was his for the asking.

Watch | Mitt Romney trashing 47% of America

George H W Bush looks at his watch (1992)

Running for a second term, George H W Bush seemed impatient debating his challengers Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and Ross Perot, a businessman who ran as an independent.

As Bush rose from his stool  it was a town-hall style debate  he stole a long look at his wristwatch, and seemed distracted as a member of the audience asked him a question.

Bush didnt get it, said he had misheard the question, and had to be prompted by the moderator to straighten out his answer. Even that didnt work, and he asked the questioner to try again.

Bush lost to Clinton, who went on to serve two terms.

Watch | George H W Bush looks at his watch

Ronald Reagan, the zinger-in-chief (1980 and 1984)

Ronald Reagan, the two-term Republican president, was a master of zingers, one-liners that embarrass or neutralise the target, deploying them to devastating effect time and again. They are so many, this should be about moments, not a moment.

Running for his first term in 1980, he blocked incumbent president Jimmy Carters attacks during a presidential debate with the now famous, There you go again

And, running for his second term in 1984, he destroyed Democratic challenger Walter Mondale, who was much younger, on the question of age, with a classic: I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponents youth and inexperience.

Reagan, needless to remind readers, won both elections.

Watch | Reagan with the there you go again line

Barack Obama in Berlin (2008)

Thats when the world elected a US president for the first time, or at least pretended to, giving in to the inevitable, falling behind a charismatic first term senator from Illinois, Chicago.

Watch | Obama making his speech in Berlin
China is concerned over increasing cost of security and potential setbacks in the development of the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a state-run daily said on Tuesday, acknowledging that the ambitious project would not be a plain sailing for the two countries.

An article in the Global Times said the project - that passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir - faced risks due to a complex regional environment. It also referred to the reported deployment of 14,503 security guards by Pakistan to protect the 7,036 Chinese nationals working on the corridor.

China may not want to put too much focus on the region. At the very least, it would be unwise to put all its eggs in one basket, it said highlighting Chinas disquiet over the project which has also cast a shadow over India-China ties.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised concerns over the project in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 meet in Hangzhou on September 4.

The article, however, made no reference to India regarding the project, which connects Chinas Xinjiang province to Pakistans southwestern Gwadar Port in Balochistan with a maze of rail, road and pipelines.

The CPEC has long been seen as symbolic to Sino-Pakistan economic cooperation. It is unlikely that China will change its supportive attitude on the CPEC in the short term, but the increasing cost of security is becoming a big problem in efficiently pushing forward the projects, the article said.

The daily, which in the past has strongly supported the project, said in the article that it is unlikely to be plain sailing for China and Pakistan in their attempts to push forward the CPEC due to challenges such as a complex regional environment, and people in the two countries should be prepared for potential setbacks.

The daily is part of the ruling Communist Party of Chinas official organ - the Peoples Daily publication group. It also raised questions over Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs comments last month that Pakistan attached priority to the project.

Referring to Sharifs comments, it said given the difficulty of protecting the personnel that are working in Pakistan, projects under the CPEC may need to be implemented and assessed step-by-step.

Beijing should consider giving more attention to its economic cooperation with Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, whose Prime Minster is currently visiting China, to improve ties despite differences over the South China Sea.

China is reportedly concerned after Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Vietnams capital Hanoi this month.

The CPEC has long been seen as a flagship project in Chinas Belt and Road initiative, but the initiatives strategic focus may need to shift gradually toward Southeast Asia, where there is a wide infrastructure funding gap but a relatively stable regional environment that will enable China to efficiently push forward ventures under the Belt and Road initiative, it said.

Hopefully, the two countries (China and Vietnam) will be able to put aside disputes that have arose over the South China Sea and focus on promoting economic development, it said.
David Camerons announcement on Monday to stand down as MP reminded many of Enoch Powells line that all political careers end in failure, but in New Delhi and Britain, he will be remembered as the prime minister who took relations with India to a new level.

Cameron is not yet 50 and has his reasons to quit, but now joins the bench of former prime ministers: John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown - each going their own ways after relinquishing office and politics.

There is always the lucrative US lecture circuit or taking on an international role, but Cameron hasnt made his plans known yet.

If Blair is remembered as the man who took Britain to war in Iraq, Camerons legacy will be of holding a referendum he did not really need to hold, and then failing to convince the British people to stay in the European Union. It is called falling on your own political sword.

But from the Indian perspective, there were not a few regrets when he quit as the prime minister in the wake of the June 23 Brexit vote. His enthusiasm for India and the Indian community was apparent from the time he was elected Conservative leader in 2005.

From the perception that Conservative was the nasty party (Theresa Mays famous 2002 words), Cameron wooed the Indian community, appearing at events such as large gatherings addressed by Morari Bapu, or visiting temples with tika on his forehead and gurdwaras with head covered.

Seeking to wean away traditionally Labour-supporting Indian voters, Cameron met with some success in the 2010 and 2015 elections. Soon after taking over as prime minister in 2010, he pushed for a new special relationship with India, and appointed Priti Patel as the 'Indian diaspora champion'.

A focus on India was often mentioned by previous Labour governments led by Blair and Brown, but it was Cameron who took relations to a new level, which included lifting in 2013 a decade-long boycott of Gujarat under Narendra Modi after the 2002 riots.

Cameron visited India three times since 2010 and pulled out all stops to make Prime Minister Modis November 2015 visit to London a success. During his first visit to India, he delighted New Delhi by warning that Pakistan could not look both ways on the issue of terrorism.

Cameron launched the initiative to install a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in parliament square before the May 2015 elections, and often extended Britains support to Indias potential membership of the UN security council and the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Seeking to revive a weak economy, Camerons focus was trade with India, which did increase but nowhere near the target of doubling it. Critics say that for all his India focus, he did not move on key demands such as extradition of individuals wanted in India or providing high-end technology to New Delhi.

By 2016, Cameron had clearly become popular with a large section of the Indian community.

Soon after he resigned as prime minister in June, leaders of the Hindu Forum of Britain, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, National Hindu Students Forum and the National Council of Hindu Temples wrote him a letter, hailing his tenure and suggesting that he had been the most Hindu-friendly prime minister in Britain.

(We) have no hesitation in expressing how effectively you connected with our ethics, principles and our ethos of working hardIt is unquestionable that during your period of office, you have established probably the best relationship that the Hindu community and the Conservative party have had to date, the letter said.

Amid charges that Cameron adhered to a selective view of the Indian community that privileged the Hindu community to the exclusion of Indian Muslims or Indian Christians, he was also criticised for being allegedly influenced by the Hindu-Sikh lobby on the issue of outlawing caste-based discrimination in British law.

For one who remarked before the May 2015 elections 'Abki bar, Cameron sarkar', and 'Achche din aaney wale hai', the political end clearly came earlier than expected, more so when he once committed himself to stay on until the 2020 elections.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Police are likely to go in for a death sentence plea in the charge sheet on the case of five Indians arrested on charges of smuggling drugs into China, it was learnt on Tuesday.

The five were flying in to Kunming in southwest China from Kolkata, a two-hour flight, and were arrested in two separate cases in the last two weeks at the airport.

They were carrying about 24 kg of hashish, extracted from the cannabis plant widely available in India, into China.

All five have denied knowledge about the drugs that they were found to be carrying hidden in packets of signature Indian snacks and new laptop bags.

Two were arrested on August 24 and the rest on September 6 at a time when security across airports in China were heightened for the G20 Summit in Hangzhou on September 4-5.

They were on their way to the city of Shenzhen, a business hub close to Hong Kong.

The five men, residents of Kidderpore in Kolkata, were identified as Sheikh Ahmad Ali (46), Akrar Khan (33), Feroz Khan (31), Sheikh Ismail (24) and Maqsud Alam (24).

Ismail, it was learnt, is a student Syama Prasad College in Kolkata.

As per law, Indian diplomats in China will be able to meet the five only after September 21 and till then the five will not be allowed to get in touch with their families.

The criminal law in China charts the punishment for drug-related offences in terms of possession but if the quantity seized indicates the intent to sell  or someone is caught selling  the sentences are much stricter.

It is a very serious offense. According to the law, any deals related to the sales of marijuana over 1 kg could attract a punishment of a jail-term of 15 years, Shanghai-based lawyer, Wang Chune told the Hindustan Times.

But the quantity involved in this case makes the five suspects vulnerable to harsher punishment, she said.

Concerning this case, 25 kg is a huge quantity and could be life sentence or even death sentence for them. It is very serious, Wang said.

Senior Beijing-based criminal lawyer Zhang Liwen, who handles drug-related cases, agreed.

The punishment is likely to be 15 years imprisonment, life sentences or death penalty  death sentence is possible, Zhang said.

The suspects were themselves tested for drugs but the results were negative. But that will be of little help to them.

Whether these suspects took drugs or not will have no influence on their sentencing and judgment, Zhang said.

Zhang added that Chinese law doesnt discriminate between Chinese nationals and foreigners and the same laws will apply to the five Indians.

There are precedents of China executing foreign nationals caught trafficking drugs.

In 2009, British national was put in front of the firing squad for smuggling 4 kg of heroin into China. The penalty was carried out despite clemency pleas by the British government.

At least six Japanese nationals have been executed since 2010 on drug-related charges with a 60-year-old man being sent to the gallows last year.

Beijing has also executed five nationals from the Philippines since 2011.

The lawyers said China unlike some other countries doesnt differentiate between hard and soft drugs. The law here has only categorised the drugs in terms of their effect.

Chinese criminal law has designated opium, heroin, marijuana, cocaine and a number of other items as controlled substances, divided into two separate headings of anesthetic drugs and psychotropic drugs. There are 118 anesthetic substances and 119 psychotropic substances under government control, and the unauthorised possession or use of any of them is a criminal offense, said a report by the state-run Global Times newspaper.

Last year, the Supreme Peoples Court (SPC) issued a circular emphasising that death penalty should be used to punish drug crime.

According to official news agency, Xinhua, it said that in cases involving drug lords, professional drug dealers or re-offenders, if the crimes were serious enough, capital punishment should be handed down.

Death sentences may also be used to punish drug smuggling, organized transnational drug crime and armed or violent drug crime.
The Iranian military threatened to shoot down two US Navy planes flying over the Strait of Hormuz, a defence official told AFP on Tuesday, the latest in a string of encounters with Tehran.

Two maritime patrol aircraft were flying separate missions in a similar area in international air space earlier this month when they received three radio calls from Iranian air defence.

They were threatening to shoot at us, to shoot us down, or fire missiles at us, the defence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement.

According to Fox News, which first reported the encounter, the US planes ignored the warning and continued on their mission.

One unnamed defence officials told the news network that the US military had wanted to test the Iranians reactions.

The defence official AFP spoke to said the incident was unprofessional but was not deemed unsafe because the US planes were outside the bounds of known Iranian anti-aircraft missile ranges.

The Pentagon has in recent weeks denounced a series of unsafe and unprofessional maritime encounters in the Gulf, including one that prompted an American ship to fire warning shots at an Iranian vessel that got too close.

Navy officials say ships from the US and Iranian navies interacted more than 300 times in 2015 and more than 250 times the first half of this year, with 10% of those encounters deemed unsafe and unprofessional.

In January, the Iranian navy briefly captured the crews of two US patrol boats that had, through a series of blunders, strayed into Iranian territorial waters.

The 10 American sailors were released within 24 hours.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai on Monday urged world leaders gathered for the first-ever UN summit on refugees to not waste time with a pageantry of sympathy and act to guarantee schooling for refugee children.

The United Nations is hosting on September 19 the first summit on refugees and migrants, which will be followed the next day by a pledging conference for new offers of aid to refugees hosted by President Barack Obama.

Malala, who become the youngest-ever Nobel recipient for championing the rights of girls to education, urged leaders to reject short-term solutions to the refugee crisis now affecting 21.3 million people, including nearly four million children.

Every refugee child should have access to 12 years of schooling, she urged.

Refugee girls are wondering how long they can stay out of school before theyre forced into early marriages or child labor. Theyre hoping for more than survival, Malala said in a statement.

 Why do world leaders waste our time with this pageant of sympathy while they are unwilling to do the one thing that will change the future for millions of children? she asked.

A report by the Malala Fund and Cambridge University showed that nearly two-thirds of the 3.7 million refugee children and teenagers worldwide were out of school.

For every 10 refugee teenage boy in secondary school in 2015, there were the equivalent of just seven girls.

The report called on governments to provide $2.9 billion by September 2019 to a new fund to support education for out-of-school refugee children.
More than half of girls in British schools and colleges have faced sexual harassment, according to a new report on Tuesday that called for sex education to be provided for all children in primary and secondary school.

A parliamentary committee report said sexual bullying had become an expected part of girls everyday lives. The report found evidence that almost a third of 16 to 18-year-olds had experienced unwanted sexual touching at school.

Surely no one who reads or hears these striking statistics today could now deny how serious ... this problem is, Katie Russell of Rape Crisis, a charity which works with survivors of sexual abuse, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Young people told the committee that complaints of sexual harassment would often be forgotten, with no action taken.

Maria Miller, the lawmaker who chaired the committee, said the report found teachers often accepted sexual harassment as just banter.

Nearly three quarters of 16-18 year old students said they heard terms such as slut used towards girls on a regular basis.

Miller, from the ruling Conservative party, criticised Britains education department for having no no coherent plan to tackle the problem.

Under the current UK curriculum, sexual health education is compulsory at secondary school but teaching pupils about relationships and sexual consent is not.

A government spokesperson said the department would consider the reports recommendations.

Schools should be safe places and fortunately crime is rare, but no young person should suffer harassment or violence, the spokesperson said.
A Muslim woman in traditional Islamic attire was attacked and her blouse set on fire in New York on Saturday, a day before America marked the 15th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The unidentified 36-year-old woman was walking past Fifth Avenue, which houses top luxury brands, at night when an unidentified person set her blouse on fire using a lighter. She saw (a suspect) pull a lighter away and walk away, the New York Daily News quoted a source as saying.

The woman put out the flames on the sleeve of her blouse and was unhurt. The suspect, who reportedly did not say anything during the attack, remains at large.

The New York chapter of the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) condemned the attack, which is the latest in a series of attacks on Muslims in the state and nationwide in recent days and months.

The Council On American-Islamic Relations New York (CAIR-NY) chapter urged New Yorks mayor to add resources for the investigation of hate crimes.

The New York Police Departments (NYPD) Hate Crimes Task Force is trying to determine a motive for the attack.

We are clearly seeing a spike in attacks on individual Muslims and Islamic institutions in New York and around the country, which should be of concern to all Americans, said CAIR-NY Executive Director Afaf Nasher. It is time for the mayor and the NYPD to put forward the necessary resources to investigate and prevent these attacks on the Muslim community.

Last week, CAIRs New York chapter had welcomed a hate crime charge for an attack on two Muslim women pushing babies in strollers during which the alleged attacker punched and kicked the victims and tried to pull off their hijabs.

Earlier this month, 60-year-old Nazma Khanam, who was from Bangladesh, was stabbed to death near her house in Queens.

Khanam was also wearing Islamic attire at the time of the stabbing. CAIR said it has noted a spike in anti-Muslim discrimination and hate crimes in recent months, which the civil rights groups attributes at least in part to Islamophobic rhetoric used by various public figures.
Former and current US presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama join the campaign trail Tuesday for Hillary Clinton, standing in for the Democratic White House hopeful while she recovers from pneumonia.

Clinton is set to return to the fray on Friday after several days of rest when she attends a Black Womens Agenda symposium Friday in Washington, with less than eight weeks to go before the election, the campaign announced.

With Republican rival Donald Trump in striking distance in national polls and some battleground states, Clinton has suffered perhaps the worst week of her 15-month quest to become Americas first female president.

On Friday, she sparked a firestorm when she called half of Trumps supporters as deplorables and then her campaign failed to be transparent when she fell ill at the weekend.

Clinton, 68, sought to draw a line under the health scare rocking her campaign.

I just didnt think it was going to be that big a deal, Clinton told CNN late Monday when asked why she kept her Friday pneumonia diagnosis under wraps until Sunday, when she fell ill at a 9/11 memorial event at Ground Zero in New York.

Its just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and youre a busy, active person, you keep moving forward.

She has expressed a desire to swiftly rejoin the race and said she will resume campaigning within the next couple of days.

In the meantime, her husband Bill takes over for her in California, attending a fundraiser in Los Angeles while his wife rests at their home in Chappaqua, New York per her doctors orders.

He also will campaign for her Wednesday in Las Vegas.

She gets a further boost when Obama hits the campaign trail for her in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

We take responsibility

Facing intensifying scrutiny about her health, the Democrat will also release more medical records, as her team acknowledged it stumbled when it failed to alert the press and public about Clintons condition in a timely way over the weekend.

Discussing the event itself, Clinton explained: I felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute.

The incident -- captured on amateur video -- gave Trump, 70, a new opening to question the former secretary of states fitness for the nations highest office as the race intensifies.

Trump and his team have wished Clinton a rapid recovery. But his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway directed stinging criticism at Clinton Tuesday.

I think she had a terrible week. She certainly had a terrible weekend. Not because shes sick, Conway told CNN. Were glad she said shes feeling better.

She stressed instead that transparency and trustworthiness are her two pillar problems, and that Clinton suffered the worst 48 hours of her campaign.

Clinton admitted: If we werent fast enough, you know, Ive talked to my staff. We, you know, take responsibility for that.

But she quickly insisted she has been far more transparent than Trump.

The information is out there. You cant say the same thing about Donald Trump, she said, adding that Americans deserve to know what hes up to and what he is hiding.

Trump has promised to release medical records as early as this week, once test results are back.

Catastrophic insult

Meanwhile, his running mate Mike Pence, the Indiana governor and a former congressman, met with House Republicans on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and said he and Trump were grateful for the support from GOP lawmakers.

But he also turned to Clintons Friday remark that half of Trumps supporters were in a so-called basket of deplorables because they were racist, misogynistic and xenophobic.

This was a catastrophic insult to the American people, Pence told reporters as he again demanded Clinton retract those offensive statements and apologize.

Clinton has expressed regret for saying half but also said she would not back down from calling out racist rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Pence also rejected accusations that Trumps campaign was courting white supremacists including former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who has endorsed Trump.

Donald Trump and I have denounced David Duke repeatedly, Pence said. We have said that we do not want his support, and we do not want the support of people who think like him.

The brash billionaires campaign has courted controversy from the start, and sporadic clashes have erupted at his rallies between supporters and anti-Trump protesters.

An altercation erupted Monday night at a Trump rally in Asheville, North Carolina, where video shows a Trump supporter, his fists raised, yelling at and pushing a protester before slapping his face.
President Pranab Mukherjee is likely to visit Nepal in the first week of November, in the first such trip in 28 years.

The Indian presidents visit will take place most likely on November 3, said Prakash Sharan Mahat, Nepals foreign affairs minister said on Tuesday. Nepal has already extended an invitation, he said.

Mahat, who returned after a three-day official visit to India, said some specific projects will be discussed during Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachandas upcoming visit to India, including those related to energy and power.

PM Prachanda will seek Indias  welcome of Nepals constitution. India has only noted the promulgation of the new constitution last September.

During the one-on-one talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Prachanda will seek Indias support and goodwill on the new constitution in order to address the demands of agitating Madeshi parties, a close aide to Prachanda told Hindustan Times.
Senior Indian-origin Labour MP Virendra Sharma, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and former chancellor George Osborne are among parliamentarians to be hit by plans to create new constituencies through redrawing of boundaries so that Britain elects 600 MPs instead of the current 650 in the 2020 elections.

The changes seeking to redraw the political map, announced on Tuesday, sent ripples across the political establishment, since they will force many sitting MPs to seek election in other constituencies or vie with others to be nominated.

Several constituencies are to be abolished to create equal-sized seats and cut costs.

The changes are estimated to most adversely hit the Labour party, which called them undemocratic and an alleged attempt to rig the 2020 elections. Conservative Priti Patel will also have to look elsewhere after her constituency of Witham in Essex was proposed to be axed.

Sharma, whose constituency of Ealing Southall is to split three ways, told Hindustan Times: We would be doing a grave injustice to the people if we allow the Tories to blatantly gerrymander unopposed. The Conservative party has completely ignored the traditions and unique identities of each constituency by allowing them to be subsumed for its own benefit.

By pressing ahead with proposals despite two million people having been left out of the review, the Tories have revealed the truth about their plan to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600: it is designed for their own political advantage rather than do what is in the best interests of the country, he added.

The Boundary Commission is due to make its final recommendations to the Theresa May government September 2018. They will then be subject to debate and changes, and if accepted, will be used in the general 2020 election.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Syrian ceasefire appeared to be holding on Tuesday despite sporadic and minor violations of the US and Russian brokered truce, which is aimed at paving the way for the delivery of humanitarian aid and the revival of peace talks.

The deal, hammered out by US secretary of state John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov last week, officially came into effect at sunset on Monday. The Syrian army said it would abide by the cease-fire until midnight Sunday, while maintaining its right to defend itself against any violations.

Syrias largest insurgent groups have expressed misgivings about the deal, which allows for strikes against al-Qaeda-linked militants who fight alongside the rebels. Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, an al-Qaeda-linked group previously known as the Nusra Front, has denounced the agreement.

The deal marks the second attempt this year to try reduce violence in war-torn Syria, where the 5  year conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced half the countrys population of 11 million. A truce in late February collapsed weeks later.

The first week of the truce will be crucial. During that time, all fighting between Syrian President Bashar Assads forces and the rebels is to stop. However, Assads forces can continue airstrikes against the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda-linked militants.

If the calm holds for seven days, the US and Russian militaries would then set up a new center to coordinate strikes against IS and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.

Under the truce, Assads forces are no longer supposed to bomb Syrias opposition. The Syrian air force has been dropping barrel bombs on civilian areas under the pretext of targeting militants.

For the moment, calm is prevailing in all areas, said Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the southern province of Daraa  where the 2011 uprising began.

In the northern city of Aleppo, which has seen heavy fighting in recent months, opposition activists said rebel-held parts of the city were calm on Tuesday morning but that many people were still hunkering down in their homes, fearful of going out. Aleppo-based activist Baraa al-Halaby said no aid deliveries, which are also part of the cease-fire deal, have yet entered the contested area.

Syrian state news agency SANA said rebels fired three shells at a government-held neighborhood in Aleppo. It also reported shelling near the Castello road, northwest of the city, and the Ramouseh area in the south  both main arteries leading to Aleppo.

Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said there were minor violations in central Hama province. Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, reported shelling in Aleppo and the southern region of Quneitra.

Al-Manar TV, run by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, said Syrian troops struck a Nusra Front tank with a missile in Quneitra, without providing further details. Hezbollah is fighting alongside Assads forces.

The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said no one has been killed or wounded since the truce went into effect.

Turkeys state-run news agency said 20 UN trucks have left Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo. The Anadolu agency said the trucks left around noon, with a total of 40 trucks expected to cross the border by the end of the day.

The deals architects hope the ceasefire will pave the way for an extended period of restraint that can serve as the foundation for peace talks. As the cease-fire came into effect, Kerry urged Syrian rebels to distance themselves from al-Qaida-linked militants.

Russia is pushing to make public the text of the cease-fire deal, but Lavrov told reporters on Tuesday that the US opposes such a move.

Lavrov said Moscow has nothing to hide and wants the UN Security Council to formally approve the Syria truce deal as well.

The Observatory meanwhile said more than 300,000 people have been killed since the conflict began in 2011. It said on Tuesday that the dead include 59,000 government troops and more than 86,000 civilians. The rest include rebels, foreign fighters, Hezbollah militants, defectors from the Syrian army and others.

The Observatory says its records show that 301,781 people have been killed in Syria from March 2011 until the truce went into effect.

The group says the real death toll could be 70,000 higher since many insurgent groups dont announce their deaths and because there are other deaths that are not documented.

The UN stopped tracking deaths in the Syria conflict last year. Its last official count was 250,000 dead.

In other developments, the Syrian military said Tuesday that it had shot down two Israeli aircraft  a warplane and a drone  near the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. The Israeli military quickly denied the claim.

The Israeli military said two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the mission overnight to target Syrian artillery positions but that the safety of Israeli planes was not compromised.

It was the fifth case since last week in which fighting in Syria spilled over into Israel, and the first since the truce started. Israel has largely remained on the sidelines of the fighting in Syria, but has carried out reprisals on Syrian positions when errant fire previously landed in Israel.
A roadside bomb killed two police officers in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Tuesday, and another three were wounded as they foiled a suicide attack on a Shia mosque elsewhere in the country, police said.

The bomb struck a police patrol as it was dropping off officers for an evening shift, said Abdul Jan Afridi, Quettas police chief. The blast wounded another five police officers as well as three civilians, he added.

Earlier on Tuesday, police prevented two suicide bombers from striking a Shia mosque in the southern city of Shikarpur, police chief Bahardin Kerio said.

He said the first bomber set off his explosives when guards stopped him for a search, wounding three police and leaving one of them in critical condition. A second attacker was shot and wounded before he could detonate his suicide belt, and later arrested.

According to Kerio, the attacker who was arrested said the two came from Baluchistan, the western Pakistani province of which Quetta is the capital. Ethnic Baluch separatist groups have claimed attacks on security forces in past, and the region has also seen attacks carried out by Islamic extremists.

No group has claimed responsibility for Tuesdays attacks, which took place during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. Last year, a suicide attacker struck a Shia mosque in Shikarpur, killing 59 people. Sunni extremists view Shia Muslims as apostates deserving of death.
Britain raised the desperate situation of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar during meetings on Monday and Tuesday with visiting state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

On her first visit to Britain after the November 2015 elections, Suu Kyi met Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Prime Minister Theresa May.

The prime ministers official spokeswoman said the meeting was an opportunity to talk about bilateral relations, the process thats under way in Burma and what we can do to support reconciliation and democracy and respect for human rights there.

Britain continues to use the nomenclature of Burma instead of Myanmar, which was adopted during the preceding military rule.

Johnson said after meeting Suu Kyi: The Burmese transition to democracy is a historic achievement. The courage and sacrifice of the Burmese people, not least of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself, has led to a major shift from military dictatorship to a more civilian, democratic and accountable government.

Official sources said the two leaders also discussed the Panglong Peace Conference and plans for the peace process. Several human rights groups have appealed to Suu Kyi to help resolve the plight of Rohingya Muslims, who allegedly face persecution in Myanmar.

The foreign secretary welcomed early progress in freeing political prisoners as well as the establishment of the Rakhine Commission, led by Kofi Annan, which is an important step in beginning to tackle the desperate situation of the Rohingya community there, they added.

Johnson said: The UK is pleased to have played an important role in bringing about Burmas emergence from decades of repression and isolation. We remain committed to supporting Burmas extraordinary reforms and we welcome a democratic, stable and prosperous Burma that can contribute to stability and security in South East Asia and beyond.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The United States on Tuesday sent two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by U.S. and South Korean jets, were seen by an Associated Press photographer as they flew over Osan Air Base, which is 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border with North Korea, the worlds most heavily armed. The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, without landing in South Korea.

Such flyovers are common when always high animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war as there has never been a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella as a deterrent to North Korea. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.

North Korea is keenly aware of the U.S. presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the U.S. nuclear threat. It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as alleged proof of U.S. hostility that it claims as the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

Last weeks nuclear test, the Norths fifth, was its most powerful to date. Pyongyangs claim to have used standardized warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who has regularly visited the Norths nuclear facilities, estimates the North may have enough nuclear fuel for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016 and the ability to add about seven new bombs a year.

Left unchecked, Pyongyang will likely develop the capability to reach the continental United States with a nuclear tipped missile in a decade or so, Siegfried wrote on the North Korea-focused website 38 North. He said that more troubling was the recent test successes may give Pyongyang a false sense of confidence.

International diplomatic efforts to rid the North of its bombs have been stalled since the last round of meetings in late 2008. Since then, Pyongyang has ramped up both its ballistic missile and nuclear bomb development, despite an increasing raft of sanctions.

After the test, the Norths nuclear weapons institute said it will take unspecified measures to further boost its nuclear capability, which analysts said hinted at a possible sixth nuclear test.

South Koreas Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said Monday that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device at any time at one of its tunnels at its main Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place.

Moon refused to say what specific evidence pointed to another possible nuclear test. But the Souths Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified Seoul government sources, reported Monday that there were signs the North had finished test preparations at one tunnel that has never been used. Yonhap did not elaborate.

Seoul, Washington and their allies have vowed to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.

The United States and (South Korea) are taking actions every day to strengthen our alliance and respond to North Koreas continued aggressive behavior, Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said in a statement.
The United States respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan and does not support independence for Balochistan, a state department official has said.

The government policy is that we support the territorial integrity of Pakistan and we do not support independence for Balochistan, US state department spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

Read: Modi crossed red line by talking about Balochistan, says Pakistan

Kirby was responding to a question on growing clarion calls from both inside and outside Pakistans southwestern Balochistan province on its independence and violation of human rights by the Pakistani security forces.

Where does the US stand on Balochistan? Because Indian Prime minister (Narendra Modi) has raised this subject, Kirby was asked.

Read: India can do a lot, Modi will be remembered: Balochistan leader in self-exile

The US Government respects the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan and we do not support independence for Balochistan, he reiterated.

In his address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the occasion of 70th Independence Day, Modi talked about the situation in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Gilgit and Balochistan and said people from there have thanked him for raising their issues.
Three women accused of being part of an Islamic State group cell that was planning imminent attacks in France will remain in custody after a judge confirmed preliminary charges of terrorism, Paris prosecutors said Tuesday.

The three women were charged with criminal terrorist association linked to the discovery of an abandoned car filled with gas cylinders near Notre Dame Cathedral, and to another pending attack, the prosecutors office said.

The women identified as Ines M, 19, Sarah H, 23, and Amel S, 39, were arrested last Thursday southeast of Paris in a police operation during which two of them were accused of attacking police officers with knives. Ines M and Sarah H were also charged with attempted terrorist murders of public officers and Amel S with being an accomplice to those attempts, the office said.

In the same case, a 23-year-old man, identified as Mohamed Lamine A, was charged with not reporting a pending terrorist crime to authorities. Mohamed Lamine A, who was engaged to Sarah H, was arrested on the same day northwest of Paris.

Separately, a 15-year-old male teenager, arrested in Paris two days later, was charged with criminal terrorist association. Officials alleged that the boy planned to carry out a knife attack in a public place last weekend.

All five remain in custody, the prosecutors office said.

Last week, a woman identified as Ornella G, 29, was the first to be charged with terrorism and placed in custody in the gas cylinder case. She was arrested in southern France and the Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins, has said her DNA was found in the car left near Notre Dame. She is suspected of being part of the same female cell, authorities said.

Before the recent alleged attack plots, intelligence services had been watching Ornella G and Ines M for security reasons and for their suspected wishes to go to Syria, Molins said. Inside Ines purse, investigators found a handwritten pledge of allegiance to IS group leaders, telling French people Im attacking you in your lands to mark your minds and terrorize you, he said.

Sarah H was known to intelligence agents as someone particularly linked to jihadi circles and her boyfriend Mohamed Lamine A was considered by authorities as particularly radicalized, Molins said.

Sarah H was previously engaged to a man who murdered a police couple in June in Magnanville, outside Paris, and to a priest killer in a Normandy church in July, Molins said. Both men were killed by police responding to the attacks.

France has been in a state of emergency since attacks in Paris killed 130 people 10 months ago. Since then, 86 people were killed in July when a truck plowed into a crowd of revelers in the Riviera city of Nice on the Bastille Day.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that every day attacks are foiled and that nearly 15,000 people in France are being tracked because they are suspected of being in the process of radicalization.
TORONTO: In a curious coincidence, two films from Australia premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival have taken on an Indian character or placed them at the centre.

Lion, which stars Dev Patel, has garnered the sort of critical acclaim that echoed his breakout 2008 movie, Slumdog Millionaire.

He stars as Saroo Brierley, adopted as a child by an Australian couple in Tasmania, who uses Google Earth to find his way back to his birth mother in Khandwa.

Unlike Slumdog Millionaire, Lion isnt full of frenetic action but is deeply emotive and the lead role is the most introspective that Patel has played yet, according to the actor.

While Lion is based on Brierleys memoir, the second film, Joe Cinques Consolation, is based on another Australian best-seller of the same name, published in 2004.

The film chronicles a 1997 case in the Australian capital of Canberra, in which a law school student Anu Singh murdered her boyfriend Joe Cinque by subjecting him to a drug overdose.

This film is a psychological crime drama that captures the bizarre case in which some friends of Anu Singh were aware she originally contemplated suicide, then a murdersuicide, and finally, killing Cinque.

The films director Sotiris Dounoukos said his intent was to portray how people through their inaction, consciously or not, contributed to the death of Joe. This became a bigger story than just two people. It became a story about the nature of community and what we owe to each other as a collective.

Singh ultimately went through a prison sentence of just about six years, as the court took her diminished responsibility into account. She now lives in Sydney and has objected to not being consulted for the film.

Dounoukos said his material was adapted mainly from Helen Garners book about the case.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
DIYARBAKIR: uspected Kurdish militants detonated a car bomb near local government offices in Turkeys south-eastern city of Van on Monday, wounding scores of people, a day after two dozen mayors from Kurdish-run municipalities were stripped of their office. The blast hit some 200 metres from the Van provincial governors office, security sources said, ripping through the citys central district and setting buildings and cars aflame. Governor Ibrahim Tasyapan said 50 people had been wounded, including four police officers and four Iranian citizens thought to have been visiting during the Eid holiday. Security sources said they suspected the PKK was behind the bombing.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
BEIJING: Five Indians, including a college student, have been arrested in south-western Kunming city for allegedly trying to smuggle 27 kg of hashish into China, a charge that could lead to severe punishment.

The suspects  residents of Kidderpore area of Kolkata  were caught at Kunming airport in two separate cases in the past two weeks. In the first case, the drugs were allegedly hidden in packets of branded bhujia (a crispy snack) popular in India, and in the second seizure, the hashish was sliced into thin layers and allegedly hidden inside the foams in new laptop bags.

The men have denied any wrongdoing and claimed they were unaware of the drugs.

Smuggling drugs is a serious offence in China. Last year, Chinas Supreme Peoples Court (SPC) said serious drug crimes merit the death penalty.

Chinese customs officers arrested two men from Kolkata on August 26 and seized nine kilograms of the drug from them.

The officials conducted a search when their newly upgraded scanning machine showed small, black tightly wound packets inside the zipped bags of bhujia.

On closer inspection, the officials found hashish hidden inside around 60 packets of the popular snack.

The second seizure was made on September 6, when the three other men were arrested.

Officials became suspicious when they saw the trio carrying three bulky bags with new laptop bags inside them.

A scan of the laptop bags  around 80 in number - revealed the hashish though the contraband was cleverly wrapped in carbon paper. The malleable drug had been flattened and sliced into thin layers that were placed inside the layers of foam used in new bags.

The five suspects, aged between 22 and 46, were on their way to Shenzhen. One of the suspects is a student of Syama Prasad College in Kolkata. At least one of the suspects has been to China several times.

It is suspected the ring might have smuggled drugs into China earlier.
LONDON: Former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who resigned in the wake of the June 23 Brexit vote and played a crucial role in enlisting new support from Britains Indian community for the Conservative party, announced his decision to step down as a member of parliament.

Cameron was the prime minister when Britain decided to lift its boycott of Narendra Modis government in Gujarat, imposed after the 2002 riots. He pushed for a special relationship with India and established a rapport with Modi during the latters visit in November 2015.

The MP from Whitney, Oxfordshire said he did not want to remain in the House of Commons and be a distraction to the Theresa May government, whose views on key issues may be different from those of Cameron.

Obviously Im going to have my own views about different issues. People would know that and thats really the point. As a former prime minister it is very difficult, I think, to sit as a backbencher and not be an enormous diversion and distraction from what the government is doing, he said.
WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton has been under treatment for pneumonia, her doctor said on Sunday after the Democratic nominee abruptly left a 9/11 memorial service in New York, raising questions about her health and its effect on her campaign.

As she recovers at home in Chappaqua, New York, missing campaign events planned for this week on the West Coast, the campaigns of both Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump are under pressure to disclose more about the health of their nominees, beyond what they have so far.

Asked if the health of a candidate was an issue, Trump said in a television interview on Monday, I think its an issue. In fact  this last week I took a physical and . when the numbers come in Ill be releasing very, very specific numbers.

And he was surprisingly restrained in his remarks about Clintons illness, saying, I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail, and well be seeing her at the debate.

Both nominees released letters from their respective doctors in 2015 that said they were in excellent health. But neither was detailed enough  Clinton was a little longer, two pages to Trumps four paragraphs. Questions have continued to be raised specially because of their age  Clinton is 68 and Trump 70.

Clinton seemed shaky on her feet as she left the 9/11 memorial service and was hoisted into the van before being driven off to her daughter Chelsea Clintons apartment nearby. The campaign at first said she had felt overheated.

Her doctor later said in a statement, Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies. On Friday, during follow-up evaluation of her prolonged cough, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. She was put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule. While at this mornings event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her and she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely.

Leaving her daughters apartment earlier, before being examined by her doctor, Clinton had posed for pictures and said, Im feeling great.

But that was not going to be enough to stop questions being raised about her health. Hillary Clintons health just became a real issue in the presidential campaign, ran a headline in The Washington Post, a news publication Trump has frequently accused of being unfair to him.

According to a letter from her doctor released in January 2015 that had said Clinton was in excellent health, the nominees current medical condition (then) include hypothyroidism and seasons pollen allergies.

Trump released his doctors letter in December 2015, which came under scrutiny recently for its bombastic tone. But he has promised to release more details, which is likely to put Clinton under pressure to reciprocate.
SEOUL: North Korea is ready to conduct another nuclear test at any time, South Koreas defence ministry said on Monday, just days after Pyongyang sparked worldwide condemnation with its fifth and most powerful test.

An additional test could be conducted in a tunnel that branches off from the second tunnel or in the third tunnel, where preparations have been completed, ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun told reporters.

The spokesperson declined to elaborate, citing intelligence matters, but said the Souths military is on full combat-readiness to respond to further nuclear tests, ballistic missile launches or land provocation by the North.

Citing an unidentified government official, South Koreas Yonhap news agency reported earlier on Monday that Pyongyang had completed preparations for another nuclear test in its previously unused third tunnel at the Punggye-ri site in the northeast.

The North conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006 in the first tunnel and the last four tests in the second tunnel, according to Seouls defence ministry.

In a statement hailing the success of its test on Friday, the North vowed to take further measures to increase its nuclear strike force in quality and in quantity.
BEIRUT: A nationwide ceasefire in Syria brokered by the United States and Russia came into effect at 7pm (1600 GMT) on Monday, the second attempt this year by Washington and Moscow to halt the five-yearlong civil war.

The Syrian Army said a seven-day regime of calm would be applied across Syria, and it reserved the right to respond using all forms of firepower to any violation by armed groups.

Rebel groups fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad have yet to publicly declare whether they will respect the ceasefire, but rebel sources have indicated they will.

Russia is a major backer of Assad, while the United States supports some of the rebel groups fighting to topple him, as does Turkey, which has stated its support for the agreement.

The agreements initial aims include allowing humanitarian access and joint US-Russian targeting of jihadist groups, which are not covered by the agreement. These include Islamic State and al Qaedas former Syria branch, known as the Nusra Front until it changed its name and cut ties to al-Qaeda in July.

In a gesture loaded with symbolism, state television showed Assad visiting Daraya, a Damascus suburb long held by rebels but recaptured last month after fighters there surrendered in the face of a crushing siege. The Syrian leader performed Muslim holiday prayers alongside other officials in a bare hall in a Daraya mosque.

The Syrian state is determined to recover every area from the terrorists, Assad said in an interview broadcast by state media, flanked by his delegation at an otherwise deserted road junction.

He made no mention of the ceasefire agreement, but said the army would continue its work without hesitation, regardless of any internal or external circumstances.

The ceasefire faces big challenges, including how to separate nationalist rebels from the jihadists.

The rebels say the deal benefits Assad, who appears stronger than at any point since the early days of the war, with military support from Russia and Iran.

The capture of Daraya, a few kilometres from Damascus, followed years of siege and bombardment and has helped the government secure important areas to the southwest of the capital near an air base.
PARIS: A 15-year-old boy was arrested in Paris on suspicion of preparing imminent violent action, two judicial sources said, the second alleged plot with links to Islamic State discovered in France this week.

Last Sunday, a car loaded with gas cylinders was found near Notre Dame cathedral, leading to the discovery of a plot to attack a Paris railway station under the direction of IS. Seven people, including four women, were arrested.

The arrests were made as Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that the country faced a threat from 15,000 home-grown radicals.

The teenager had been under house arrest since April for suspected links to Islamic extremists.

The police suspect him of plotting in response to calls from Syria to attack France, one of the sources said.

Investigators are looking into calls made by a French member of the IS group, Rachid Kassim, for supporters of the group to strike French targets.

The source said the 15-yearold had been in touch with Kassim using the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

Kassim has regularly appeared in IS propaganda videos calling for attacks on French targets.

He has been linked to at least one of the two teen jihadists who executed an elderly priest in a Normandy church in July.

Appearing on French television on Sunday, Prime Minister Valls said around 15,000 people were known to police in France as having been radicalised, up from a previous estimate of 10,000.

He said around 700 jihadists from France were fighting in Syria and Iraq.

President Francois Hollande said Americas response to the 9/11 attacks augmented rather than defeated the jihadist threat, with the consequences of the Iraq war now being felt in terror-scarred France.

The response that the American administration gave to these attacks... far from eradicating the threat, expanded it over a wider area. Namely to Iraq, he wrote on Facebook.
Mr. History:

Regardless of the length of the Allied forces front lines during World War I, why didnt the Allies simply travel around the front-lines to then attack the Germans from the rear? Years ago, a veteran told me because the distances were too great. Does that make any sense, due to the immense losses of men being mowed down by machine gun fire?

My thanks,

David Ing

???

Dear Mr. Ing,

By 1915 both sides on the Western Front, having failed to make a decisive breakthrough at the onset, had established trench lines or strong points with overlapping fields of fire behind acres of barbed wire, and with backup trenches behind them, stretching from the coast of Flanders to Switzerland. There simply was no place open to a flanking attack. A British amphibious landing in Flanders risked not only well-prepared German coastal defenses, but potential attack from a still-intact and powerful German High Seas Fleet. Nevertheless, in 1917 the British actually were planning an amphibious invasion behind German Lines on the Belgian coast, in concert with a land offensive. In the end, however, only the land offensive was ever carried out. It was officially called the Third Battle of Ypres but is better remembered as Passchendaeleand a British disaster.

Besides the legalities involved in invading it, Switzerland was severely mountainous and defended by an army of its own that wasand remains to this dayquite ready and willing to fight anyone who violates its neutrality. The next three years, therefore, would be spent striving for a decisive break through existing defenses, until the final German collapse between July and November 1918.

Sincerely,

Jon Guttman

Research Director

World History

www.historynet.com

More Questions at Ask Mr. History

Dont miss the next Ask Mr. History question! To receive notification whenever any new item is published on HistoryNet, just scroll down the column on the right and sign up for our RSS feed.
More than two years later, investigating teams continue to be clueless about the fate of the ill-fated flight MH370. While debris and pieces of wreckage have been found across the Indian Ocean, a sense of uncertainty is in the air.

When the Boeing 777 plane went missing in March 2014, Malaysia and China have hooked up with Australia in the search mission.

Canberra's transportation bureau has outlined a 120,000-square kilometer sea floor to find possible pieces of information. So far, the teams have scaled around 110,000 of the area. The mission is on track to finish by December.

In the course of the investigation, bits of debris have been sighted by amateur searchers and civilians in South Africa and Mozambique. An engine part and an interior piece have also been found.

A flaperon has also turned up in Reunion Island where investigators have said with certainty that it was a part of MH370. The latest wreckage to be discovered is the one retrieved by Blaine Gibson from three locals in the eastern coast of Madagascar.

According to reports, the piece resembles some of the paneling used in the plane's avionics bay which is situated behind the cockpit under the main cabin floor. The texture of this debris has provided an insight into what possibly happened to the missing flight.

Gibson has told Channel 7 Perth that the top layer of paint has been scorched black which could point out that a fire may have caused the crash.

The investigation has been further shrouded in mystery as conspiracy theories surfaced. The media, at one point, announces that the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, purposely plunged the plane into the sea due to depression or in order to accomplish a suicide mission. Even personal information about Shah's recent acquaintance prior to the crash has been leaked out. Fatimah Pardi, a mother of two and a fellow volunteer during the Malaysian elections, has been exchanging WhatsApp message with the pilot although the former said that there was no affair to speak about.

The process of the search has remained unchanged. The towfish, or vehicles equipped with side scan sonar or synthetic aperture sonar and multibeam echo sounders search large swathes of the ocean floor.

The sonar data are fed directly to sea-borne search vessels which review and analyze the information about the missing aircraft. An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is also used to search areas where the geology is difficult. Sonar contacts of interest are further investigated through a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV).

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was suffering from pneumonia since Friday, September 9, her doctor Dr. Lisa Bardack said. The Democratic Party nominee abruptly left a 9/11 ceremony in New York City, with video footage showing Secret Service agents assisting her into a van.

"Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies. On Friday, during follow-up evaluation of her prolonged cough, she was diagnosed with pneumonia," said Dr. Bardack in a statement, who added that the former State Secretary has been "recovering nicely" and rehydrated.

Clinton's campaign team, however, made it clear that they're set to cancel their two-day campaign leg in California. The ex-New York State Senator was scheduled to speak before campaign fundraisers on a speech about the economy, the BBC reported.

Dr. Bardack advised Clinton to take some time off the campaign to fully recover from pneumonia. "She was put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule," the doctor's statement further elaborated.

Clinton addressed her supporters in a Facebook post, saying that she's "feeling fine and getting better."

Arriving at the 9/11 ceremony in the wake of her comments against Republican Party supporters, Clinton has since apologized on Saturday for calling them "deplorable." She, however, continued to criticize her Republican rival Donald Trump, saying that she'll continue fighting "bigotry and racist rhetoric."

Trump, for his part, took some time off from his fiery stance against Clinton by wishing her well, the Huffington Post reported. He also maintained that he doesn't take pleasure in the Democratic candidate's illness, amid questions on her physical fitness raised by the Republican camp early on in the campaign.

Attesting Clinton was "in excellent health and fit to serve as president of the United States" in a statement last month, Dr. Bardack cited the ex-senator's full recovery from her 2012 blood clot surgery. Such was in response to Trump's accusations that she "lacks the mental and physical stamina" to become President.
Tesla Motors Inc. recently confirmed that the company will implement a major update on the autopilot software used in most of its automobiles within two weeks to further boost vehicle safety.

A report from WSJ shared that Tesla's Chief Executive Elon Musk outlined the revision and hinted that this will heavily depend on the use of more radar signals to assist Tesla vehicles on roadways and provide added safety features to keep the drivers engaged at high speeds.

The same report unveiled that the software updates will be implemented within two weeks and Tesla will deliver these to automobiles over the air. It was found out that the updates will affect all of the Tesla vehicles that were built from October 2014 to the present.

According to automobile experts and observers, Tesla decided to update its vehicle's autopilot software since this came under scrutiny right after Tesla driver Joshua Brown was killed in a crash in Florida last May. Tesla has probably taken this event seriously since it was the first known death that involves the use of the autopilot system.

In addition to that, a Fortune report revealed that a lot of Tesla customers have been complaining that the Autopilot of their vehicles did not function well and even caused accidents. Although Tesla denied most of the claims made, many car experts believe that the company's update plans were probably caused by these issues. It also likely aimed at dealing with the regulators' plan of conducting an investigation on Tesla's autopilot system.

As of the present, it was confirmed through an AutoGuide report that Tesla has upgraded its autopilot software to version 8.0. The said report revealed that a number of major changes to the autopilot and the most significant of these is the increased use of radar.

In a statement posted on the company's website, Tesla was quoted "After careful consideration, we now believe it can be used as a primary control sensor without requiring the camera to confirm visual image recognition."

Due to the said statement, owners of autopilot-equipped Tesla cars can expect that their vehicle will soon be using more radar along with other systems like the "fleet learning," a feature that allows every Tesla car to upload mapping information directly to the carmaker's database so the other cars in the fleet will have access to such.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Public masturbation is no longer considered a crime in Italy, according to the country's highest court. As controversial as the decision may seem, it boils down to a change in the country's criminal code, which makes the act illegal only if the presence of minors upon its commission is established.

The decision stems from the case of a 69-year old man from Catania - identified only as Pietro L., who was caught masturbating in full view of students at the University of Catania, CNN reported. The man was charged with indecency, despite arguing that he did the act under conditions of "reduced visibility."

After trial, the man was found guilty of committing the act in May 2015, sentencing him to three months in prison and a fine amounting to 3,420 (estimated $3,600). The man went on to appeal the case, though the appellate court in Catania eventually upheld his sentence.

The man's lawyer pressed on to question the severity of his penalty before Italy's Supreme Court - La Corte di Cassazione. The court eventually ruled in favor of the man, arguing that a revised criminal law introduced last year has effectively decriminalized public masturbation in front of women.

However, the decision was met with one important exception: changes in the law state that in cases where minors are present, those caught doing the act may face prison time for up to four-and-a-half years. The court thus ruled in favor of the man, reverting the case to the trial court to set proper administrative fines.

The ruling's controversial nature was obviously met with vocal opposition. Opposition MP Elvira Savino condemned the decision, saying, "To save from the prison cells people who commit obscene acts in front of women is really unjustifiable...The government's law is an invitation to every maniac to molest women."

The act is still considered illegal in several parts of the world, with a prison sentence typically awaiting those who will be caught.
Many discussions held amongst the people of the scientific community had the prime focus on UFOs in the year 2016. Rumors are now doing the rounds that the American military intelligence might be looking after UK's UFO-hunting team, which is located in the remote area of Soho Square, London.

Back in 2008, the secretive Ministry of Defence (MoD) of UK was axed, but recent reports published by The Express suggest something else. The news outlet suggests that the axed ministry is now being run by the US military intelligence and it is speculated that the office of 20th Century Fox, a leading science fiction producer is being used.

Reports suggest that the operations are majorly being conducted by the US citizens and the funding is also being done by America. But, it must be mentioned that some Britons are also a part of the UFO-hunting team, who are guiding to examine and analyze the existing real-life X-files.

All UFO, as well as intergalactic activities, are speculated to be monitored from 7 Soho Square. It is also said that US officials from Washington regularly visit to check on the progress as well as to check out other important observations.

A military source recently revealed in an interview that Pentagon also wanted to incorporate a similar MoD but later it was decided that Soho Square, London is the right place and the unit was moved to London. And it is since then that Americans have been a part of the team.

Another official stated that the report about the shift of the unit to London was also published mistakenly in the MoD's magazine. But, it was not noticed by many. Reportedly, though Pentagon commands the team, the unit still reports to MoD.

Apart from X-files, the unit also concentrates on investigating about secret UFO as well as the militarization of space under the project name "Project Condign." Under the Freedom of Information laws, investigation details were also released in the year 2005.

Researchers suggest that during the project, some observations made were a result of atmospheric plasma that had appeared due to military applications like the use of advanced laser weapons. Now, this must have caught the attention of the US military intelligence and hence their interference in the axed project.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Authorities in Germany have arrested three Syrian nationals in a series of raids conducted in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein under accusations that they're working for Islamic State (ISIS) rebels in the country.

Federal prosecutors said that the three suspects, aged 17, 18, and 26, were sent to Germany in November last year to "wait for further instructions" on missions they've been asked to carry out. As of now, details on where said attacks are purported to take place remain unclear.

A statement coming from the Federal Prosecutor's office said that "concrete missions or orders have not so far been found in the course of investigations carried out so far." Investigations are currently ongoing, as police have been able to confiscate "extensive material" from the suspects, the BBC reported.

Investigators suspect the three men of having volunteered to do the mission for ISIS, with the 17-year old having received weapons and explosives training from the militants. The suspects were arrested as German police raided refugee shelters in Schleswig-Holstein on Tuesday.

The arrests were made in light of attacks conducted by ISIS agents this summer, which took place in the states of Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg in the span of one week last July. Around 10 people were killed and numerous others were injured in gunshots, bombings, and machete stabbings.
A federal judge in Canada currently faces the possibility of removal after being found asking an accuser in a 2014 rape case: "Why couldn't you just keep your knees together?"

Federal Court Justice Robin Camp, 64, apologized for his conduct of questioning a 19-year old rape victim. The Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) is currently deliberating his possible sacking in a week-long hearing. The case in question was heard when Camp was still a provincial court judge.

Camp managed to gain a seat in the Canadian Federal Court last year despite his highly-unbecoming remarks. The victim, whose rape on a bathroom sink during a house party even earned an acquittal from the judge for her rapist, was told that she should've "skew[ed] her pelvis" to prevent penetration.

More remarks added greater weight to Camp's sexist approach to deciding the case, saying "Young women want to have sex, particularly if they're drunk." He was consistent in his attitude towards the accuser, to which he said, "Some sex and pain sometimes go together...that's not necessarily a bad thing."

The rapist's acquittal in 2014 allowed Camp to let out vile parting words: "I want you to tell your friends, your male friends, that they have to be far more gentle with women. They have to be far more patient. And they have to be very careful. To protect themselves, they have to be very careful."

With the case having been completely overturned on appeal and set for a re-trial in November, Camp's attitude has come under scrutiny by the CJC, which said that the judge "engaged in stereotypical or biased thinking in relation to a sexual assault complainant."

The South African-born Camp, who moved to Canada in 1998, said that his "non-existent" of Canadian criminal law led him to make those dreadful remarks, noting that his practice has mainly focused on contracts and bankruptcy cases. The judge has since apologized after undergoing sensitivity training.

A Notice of Response from the CJC reads: "[Camp] has undergone counseling and training with [a] Superior Court Justice...with a psychologist... and with an expert on the law of sexual assault...with a view to interrogating his beliefs and improving his understanding of the law, the social context of sexual violence and the psychological impact of sexual assault."
After 10 years of travelling through space to reach its destination and two years of providing back data to the scientists on Earth, Rosetta space probe's journey has finally reached an end.

According to Tech Times, Rosetta's course will be changed to help it land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the space probe's mission. For two years, it has observed and sent back valuable data. Now, the comet will be Rosetta's final destination until its power runs out.

"It is transforming our understanding of the way the solar system was put together," European Space Agency senior adviser Mark McCaughrean told The Guardian. They are only beginning to analyze the data that Rosetta has sent them but the significance of it is undeniable.

Rosetta space probe was a project that cost ESA $995 million to build and launch. The purpose was to understand how the Earth is as it is now. The theory was that the planet was too hot to have water but comets like Comet 67P may have landed and bombarded Earth and let its ice, dust, and other parts melt and create water.

Though the scientists studying the data sent back by Rosetta have concluded that the water did not come from the likes of Comet 67P, it doesn't make the information any less relevant. With luck and further research, scientists hope to reach a more conclusive data on how the solar system came to be.

The end of Rosetta is set on Sept. 30 and it is expected to sustain damage upon landing on Comet 67P. There, the space probe will continue to gather and send back data up close. The descent will be as slow as possible to enable Rosetta to take pictures and geographical information on the comet.

"That will be the end of Rosetta. It will be an emotional moment," said McCaughrean.

Though it will be an emotional farewell from the ESA team who put the project together, the data Rosetta gave will not go to waste and is expected to be filled to the brim with interesting information.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
GOP nominee Hillary Clinton is one of the hardest working women running for the presidential seat in the U.S. nowadays. However, Mrs. Clinton is still human after all.

Following Hillary Clinton's attendance at the 15th year anniversary of the 9/11 attack, footage of the presidential candidate went viral after onlookers at the memorial caught wind of her losing her balance. She was helped by few of her aides as she went on to the rest of her commitments for that day, according to The New York Times.

Hillary Clinton had already been feeling a little under the weather a few days prior. She had decidedly kept the information even from her own family and significant individuals.

It was revealed soon afterwards that a diagnosis of pneumonia had left her on a weakened state, and stressed that it wasn't a huge concern as it could be used as a political misdirect towards her continued rise in popularity among voters.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton even advised concerned public and support groups that there was nothing more to know about his wife's health state, in a recent ABC News interview. He added that Hillary is in better health than Donald Trump, her foremost opponent in the presidential race.

Mr. Clinton also gave a soft reminder to his wife regarding the complexities surrounding the entire campaign. He said to take on that big gamble of winning the upcoming election as her own person.

In a related Globe and Mail post, Democratic Party leader Jay Jacobs defended the notion on Hillary Clinton withholding her pneumonia saying, "Usually you would think that the truth sets you free, but in the experiences that Hillary Clinton has lived through, that's not necessarily accurate".

Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, also commented on the health scare issue. Mook said that Mrs. Clinton didn't wished for her illness to stop her from moving forward.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A UFO spotted on the moon's surface is attributed to an "alien base". This is among the most obvious base found on an extremely prominent crater, Tycho, on our own Moon.

UFO hunter Mark Sawalha explained that NASA images of the moon have revealed an antenna on the roof of the alien foundation.

He now attributes the antenna as located on a base under the ground. It probably uses minerals on the surface.

"If this is an abandoned alien base, the Streetcap1 may have just found the perfect location for the next NASA mission," says UFO expert Scott C Waring. "Imagine an entire base of structures 5-7 miles across. It would be a crime not to utilise such a useful waypoint in space that could save humanity from extinction."

Meanwhile, there are two pertinent points that Sawalha came up with. Firstly, that NASA knew about the alien base, but never made it open to the public. Secondly, that NASA has sent no further manned missions to the moon following the Apollo missions---because they knew about the aliens.

The unidentified object on the moon looked like a spike on craters, and was first shot in three prominent images by the 1967 Orbiter. They were sent to the agency, so other conspiracy theorists and alien enthusiasts said that the tower on the crater looked "spike-like and shiny".

Such structures have been laid so that the aliens' huge spaceships could be docked, said the UFO hunter.

However, another theory believes that the alien base has been abandoned, and is no longer inhabited. This could even support NASA with research findings of space.

And then, of course, there are the opponents who claim that the object on the crater is just one more crater. Nigel Watson, author of UFO investigations Manual, said that the "spike-like object protruding from the crater" may have been due to shadows from a hill with steep banks.

YouTube/secureteam10

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Long-time peace activist Jon McCourt of Northern Ireland will speak at Hope on Thursday, Sept. 15, at 11 a.m. in the Fried-Hemenway Auditorium of the Martha Miller Center for Global Communication, discussing struggle, loss, division, polarization, hope and healing, and sharing personal moments and reflections.

The campus community is invited. Admission is free.

McCourt has been a community peace activist and a member of the Peace and Reconciliation Group in the City of Derry, Northern Ireland for more than 30 years. He has also traveled to and worked with those involved in conflicts in other areas of the world, including Bosnia, the Middle East, Ukraine and conflict torn countries in Africa, and he is en route to Bogota, Colombia, to assist in the FARC Peace Agreement.

He has met with Hope students in Belfast on the Celtic May Term for the past four years. While on campus, he will also be meeting with classes.

McCourt went on the first Civil Rights March in Derry as a young man in October 1968. He was actively engaged in almost every aspect of the conflict that arose as the result of that march. He took part in the Battle of the Bogside, when the police laid siege to the Catholic/Nationalist of Derry for three days. He saw the first soldiers arrive on the streets of Derry in August 1969, and witnessed the murder of friends and neighbors on Bloody Sunday when 14 people died at the hands of the British Armys 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment.

From 1978 he has worked at building bridges between the two major communities in Derry, encouraging and engaging in cross community activities that have assisted in rebuilding contact, trust and cooperation across the city. Through the 1980s he continued with this work while at the same time working with representatives of the major protagonists to the conflict, to limit the impact of the conflict on local communities. He played a major part in the development of the Community Awareness Training Programme used by the British Army which contributed to the reduction of soldiers on the streets, through a process of de-escalation and disengagement locally. With others he founded and established the first Victim Support Service in Northern Ireland in 1986.

His story was one of several, in which he plays his own part,that became the first Theatre of Witness ground-breaking production We Carried your Secrets (theatreofwitness.org). For more than 20 years he has facilitated the study visits from The U.S and elsewhere, giving students an insight into the impact of the Northern Ireland Conflict.

The Martha Miller Center for Global Communication is located at 257 Columbia Ave., at the corner of Columbia Avenue and 10th Street.
2017 is around the corner and it is officially time to stop giving lip service to being 'mobile friendly' and optimise. Not only does today's traveller expect your site to be mobile friendly, but not being easily discoverable or bookable on mobile will lose you money.

People start their research on mobile

According to Tnooz, about three quarters of American travellers will be exploring options for trips online by 2017, Google research determined that in the first quarter of 2016 around 40% of US travel site visits came from mobile devices, and 70% of travellers who own a smartphone have used it to do travel research.

The research stage of the travel buying journey that takes place on mobile is a perfect time to get your potential guests attention. Google research found that 72% of travellers that own smartphones look for the most relevant and useful information, not for a specific brand, and 67% of travellers are more inclined to book with whatever travel brand provides the most useful information.

Hotels especially should be taking advantage of the research phase, as 82% of travellers haven't chosen which hotel they will stay at when they first start planning their trips.

People book on mobile

In addition to doing research about their trips, an increasing number of travellers will go so far as to book on a mobile device as well. According to visual.ly, 65% of hotel reservations made on the same day as check-in were done on a smartphone, and Google research from 2014 estimated that back then 14% of leisure travellers and 28% of business travellers booked on a smartphone. Hotels.com says that as many as 42% of travellers world-wide have booked a hotel via their mobile devices.

People decide on mobile

Even among travellers that don't make their final bookings on a mobile device, the information that they find with their smartphones and tablets is instrumental in their booking decisions. While they are planning and booking trips, 94% of leisure travellers switch between their different devices, and 46% of travellers say that they make their booking decision while they are using a mobile device, and then switch to a desktop device to actually make the booking.

The online travel agents (OTAs) are already at it

According to a Phocuswrite study, more than 40% of money spent on OTA websites in the US in 2017 will come from mobile devices, and OTAs already claim almost two thirds of online bookings.

Google likes mobile

As of an update to their ranking algorithms in April 2015, Google now penalises sites that are not mobile friendly (and Google has even started a project encouraging developers to build accelerated mobile pages).

Smartphones facilitate spontaneous decisions

Hotels.com found that 50% of travellers say that their smartphones have led to them being more spontaneous on holiday, so by making sure your site is mobile friendly, you have the chance to attract guests to your establishment on the spur of the moment.

Additionally, 47% of travellers use their smartphones to find places to eat, things to do and interesting places to visit while they are at their destinations. Google also found that a third of smartphone users actually switched brands because one other than the one they were planning on using provided more useful information.

So, how do you go about making your website mobile friendly 

Consider mobile-first design

"Mobile-first" has become quite the buzzword in the website-building industry. Because of the increasing numbers of people using mobile devices to browse the web rather than desktop and laptop computers, many designers and developers have decided that building websites primarily for desktop viewing is counterintuitive.

Mobile-first design works on the principle that the site should be perfect on a mobile device, and when viewed on a desktop computer it can have a bit more space to spread itself out, and get some nifty features added on.

Be aware of the speed

Often mobile devices have slower connections than desktop computers and laptops, and their processing speed are slower. While you should always be conscious of your site's loading speed, you really need to make sure that the mobile version is very light. Google research found that more than half of all travellers will simply go to another site if yours doesn't load fast enough.

Thankfully, Google has some great tips on how to make sure your site is quick, and you can find out how your site performs in terms of speed on both desktop and mobile with their PageSpeed Insights tool.

Be aware of changing trends

The best practices for designing and building sites for use on mobile devices is evolving unbelievably fast. Make sure that whoever is in charge of your website constantly has their finger on the pulse. A dated website implies a dated hotel, even if that isn't the case.

Making booking on mobile easy

This should go without saying, but making it easy for your users to navigate your site, find the information they want and need, and book via their mobile devices is crucial to winning direct bookings.

Google discovered that 54  69 percent of travellers don't book via mobile devices because of usability issues (like buttons that are too small to tap on a touchscreen), only 23% of leisure travellers are sure that they are finding the same information on their mobile phones that they could on a desktop, 50% of travellers move to their desktop devices to double-check that they are finding the best hotel rate, and 45% of travellers will go to another site if it takes them too many steps to find the information they want.

Make sure that the most useful information, like your location, your prices and directions are easy to find via mobile devices, and assure visitors booking via their mobile devices that you are offering the best rates and that they can cancel their bookings if they change their minds.

Just do it

Having said all that, even a basic mobile website is better than none. Just make sure that your website works on mobile devices. It doesn't have to be the sleekest design in the world, but 80% of mobile users will leave if your site is not mobile optimised (according to Google).

GuestRevu helps hoteliers worldwide to listen to, learn and earn from their guests by enabling them to leverage the power of guest intelligence to build lasting loyalty and drive revenue. GuestRevu's mission is to give hoteliers tools they can use every day to develop a guest-centric culture in their hotels, enhance guest experience, optimise operations, and ultimately, to drive revenue using online surveys and reputation management. With their headquarters in the UK, GuestRevu is a TripAdvisor Platinum Review Collection Partner. For more information please visit www.guestrevu.com

View source
Earlier this year, I had the immense privilege of visiting Ithaca, NY, to be a guest lecturer at the prestigious Cornell School of Hotel Administration. I was invited by Dr. Rohit Verma, a professor and the Dean for External Relations at Cornell College of Business. He is also the Executive Director of the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures. My objective was to speak to his class of future hospitality leaders about the impact of mobile technology on service quality.

The Cornell Experience

The Cornell University Campus, even in the dead of winter, is a simply beautiful place. With so many great cafes and shops, Ithaca is such a charming city. The campus itself is home to the Statler Hotel, which is a teaching hotel operated by the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. If you travel frequently, you start to notice the little things that make or break a good hotel stay.

Needless to say, the Statler Hotel is one of the best hotels I have ever stayed at. The smallest of details  from accessible bedside iPhone chargers and plugs, to the guest check-in process  are meticulously planned and executed. If you are a hotelier and would like to visit a property to see how things should be done, it is worth a trip to the Statler Hotel for the latest and greatest in hotel technology and guest service.

On campus, my day was hectic. I was greeted by Rohit shortly upon arrival, had a lovely lunch in the hotel's teaching restaurant at the Statler Hotel, and was escorted to my first ever opportunity to teach a class. Though I had never taught or facilitated a formal class before, let alone at an Ivy-league university, the class and teaching staff were welcoming and made me feel at home.

About the Class

I was invited to facilitate the Quality Systems and Processes class. The students were a mix of young men and women, mostly Millennials. This Gen Xer had his work cut out for him! I kicked it off with some mini SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) brainstorming. I divided the class into four groups, and, holding my mobile phone in my hand, asked them to discuss in their groups the following two questions:

What opportunities exist for mobile devices to improve overall service quality? What are the potential drawbacks of such devices when it comes to the delivery of quality service?

As I walked around the room, the discussion was energizing. The room was occupied by a generation that lived on their mobile devices, but their education in service quality clearly had an impact on how they viewed the subject at hand. When adequate time had passed, each team elected a member to come up and present their findings. Here are the results:

How Mobile Devices Can Improve Overall Service Quality

Data Collection

Using mobile technology to collect information from guests was a major opportunity in the eyes of the students. The class felt that mobile messaging offered the ability to analyze guest requests and conversations over a period of time  a great tool for identifying trends to improve overall service.

Personalizing the Experience

The ability to identify the individual needs of a guest and anticipate them in the future was seen as a great opportunity. As an example, one student cited her ability to communicate with a hotel she stays at frequently about their yoga classes. That the hotel now knows this information about her, she said, means there is an opportunity to personalize future experiences around yoga to build a more meaningful connection. This was seen as something that helped tailor the relationship between the brand and guest, driving loyalty.

Profiling and Guest Preferences

Mobile messaging enables hotels to develop a profile of each guest in order to anticipate their needs. Referring back to the yoga scenario, the class felt that knowing this information allows the hotel to proactively provide a service for the guest upon their return  such as placing a yoga mat in the room for the guest's use during their stay.

Business Travel Convenience

The class felt that mobile technology can make life more convenient for business travelers in particular. In their view, mobile technology can make a multitude of items easier for this sub-set of travelers  including the receipt of hotel invoices, easy routing of guest folios to expense applications, and more. The class saw the convenience of messaging and other mobile applications as a significant opportunity for the industry to encourage repeat visits among business travelers.

Mobile is a great way for hotels to target Millennials, according to the class. They agreed that the ability to quickly request an item from a mobile device and have it added to their bill is a major opportunity hoteliers should embrace. Not only does it equate to a higher degree of guest satisfaction, it is also a way for hotels to generate more revenue. The class felt that the option to easily purchase an item or service using their mobile device would lead to more on-site requests and purchases.

Drawbacks of Mobile Regarding Service Quality

Potential to Create a Less Personalized Guest Experience

The class felt that mobile devices could result in fewer face-to-face experiences with hotel staff  a real problem for the traditional service model. They felt that having every guest ask for things anonymously could be too sterile, especially in a high-touch environment such as a luxury property.

To overcome this, the class agreed that technology should not replace the traditional service model, but instead serve as the launch pad for a conversation between the guest and the service professional. One student noted that, while it may be easy to order a bottle of wine with a phone, the real difference is the ability for the hotel's sommelier to share some notes and attributes of the various wines with the guest. In this way, mobile technology can be used to not just fulfill the request, but also open the door to further conversation.

Keeping Up with Guest Demands via Mobile Devices

The class noted that the amount of inbound enquiries from guests using their mobile devices could be taxing, especially in bigger hotels with a larger volume of guests making many requests during their stay.

To overcome this, they felt that mobile technology must automate certain requests and that strong processes need to be in place in the back end to ensure swift response times to guests requests. Technology, however, shouldn't replace the human element of the guest experience when it involves fulfilling special or unique requests.

Over-Automating the Guest Experience

New technology designed to auto-respond to a guest's requests was a major concern for the class. They felt that the ability for technology to automatically respond to a guest's requests without human intervention using mobile messaging or related technology carries many risks. They also noted that unreliable, mistake-prone technology has the potential to cause immense damage to the hotel brand.

To overcome this, they felt that auto-responses and other technology designed to replace hotel staff needs to be further perfected. Furthermore, any mobile technology that doesn't enable escalations to ensure that a guest's request is fulfilled in a timely manner could be problematic. After all, technology is only useful if it makes the experience better for the guest.

Multi-Channel Communication and Coordination

This concern focused on how a hotel would manage guest requests coming from multiple sources  for example, when a guest asks for something by speaking to a staff member at the front desk, then sends a text message in the elevator requesting something else. The students felt it is important to have a complete and continuous view of the guest during their stay and, moreover, that all team members can be connected and see these requests. A solution without such a feature runs the risk of losing guest requests.

The class agreed that having a centralized place where all requests can be seen by multiple staff members is essential to any mobile-based service tool.

Rants and Responses

The biggest challenge, according to the class, is managing upset guests who bypass direct engagement with the hotel and turn instead to social media. The students noted that two very different conversations exist when a guest is genuinely upset versus when they have a minor issue. The first tends to be anger-driven, and more often than not, the guest just wants to be heard; the second, meanwhile, is about receiving something or being compensated for an inconvenience. Both scenarios, however, have been amplified in recent years with the popularity of social media.

The students believed that the main difference between managing a guest on site versus online is the audience the guest chooses to address. When a guest has an issue and wants to be heard, they are more abusive toward the brand on social than they are when communicating directly with the hotel. They believed the main reason for this is that on social, there is an expectation that anger will attract the hotel's attention. But when guests call or speak to a manager on site, their behavior is much more subdued  even pleasant  as they want something and feel courtesy will benefit them.

Overall, the class felt that mobile technology has an equally positive and negative impact on service quality. Now that virtually everyone has access to an audience on social media with their phones, voicing a concern publicly is much easier today than it was 10 years ago. However, mobile devices also offer the ability for a hotel to communicate directly with guests in real time, potentially resolving guest issues before they are aired on social media. The students believed that because hotels have embraced social, they also need to embrace mobile guest engagement and the ability for a guest to voice their concerns directly to the hotel with the same degree of ease. When hotels fail to do this, they miss out on the opportunity to listen to their guests and have a dialogue with them to resolve issues  an important element in delivering a quality experience.

Loop, by Benbria Corporation, is a mobile messaging and engagement solution that helps brands

to enhance the customer experience. Leveraging the customer's preferred choice of communications  texting, web chat, native app, email and kiosk  Loop allows customers to communicate directly with a brand to make requests, resolve issues and share their experience before, during and after their visit. Closing the loop through on-the-spot staff action helps brands to improve customer satisfaction, save at-risk customers, increase revenue and drive long-term loyalty. For more information, visit www.benbria.com
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
In this role Bijaoui will oversee the Companys rapid expansion across the region, introducing additional brands to established markets and building on the 73 countries where Wyndham Hotel Group hotels can already be found.

Wyndham Hotel Group, the worlds largest hotel company with nearly 8,000 hotels across a portfolio of 16 iconic brands, today announced the appointment of Philippe Bijaoui to the role of Chief Development Officer for Europe, Middle East, Eurasia and Africa (EMEA). In this role Bijaoui will oversee the Companys rapid expansion across the region, introducing additional brands to established markets and building on the 73 countries where Wyndham Hotel Group hotels can already be found.



Bijaoui has more than 20 years of hotel real estate and development experience in markets across EMEA and most recently served as Vice President Development Europe for InterContinental Hotel Group, where he defined and implemented the development strategy for the region. He has also previously held senior development roles with Rezidor, Club Med, HVS International, City Hotels S.A. and Groupe Immobiliere Hoteliere. Bijaoui has a Master of Business Administration with a focus on hotel and catering management from I.M.H.I. Cornell, and speaks multiple European languages.



All around the world a rapidly growing middle class is discovering the excitement of international travel. Wyndham Hotel Groups development strategy is bold but simple  we work with local partners to bring quality accommodation to a diverse number of locations, so that, no matter where adventure leads, our guests can find the hotel brands they know and love, said Daniel Ruff, President and Managing Director EMEA for Wyndham Hotel Group. Philippe has a stellar reputation in the EMEA development community, and I am confident he is the best person to lead our aggressive expansion plans for the region.



I am very much looking forward to accelerating Wyndham Hotel Groups growth in EMEA. Destinations across the region are in need of an international standard of hotel accommodation for growing inbound and domestic visitor numbers, and Wyndham Hotel Group has only begun to tap the potential in these markets, said Bijaoui. In addition, the breadth of brands ranging from economy to luxury, as well as the power of being part of Wyndham Hotel Group and Wyndham Worldwide, gives us tremendous opportunity to introduce new innovative products in markets where certain segments may be currently under represented.



This year Wyndham Hotel Group has reached important development milestones in EMEA, including introducing the Super 8 brand to Europe, opening the 50th hotel in Turkey, expanding into Greece with the Wyndham Grand Athens and announcing new hotels in emergent destinations such as Oman, Iraq and Ethiopia.
We havent seen a Toronto Raptors inspired Air Jordan sneaker since the Raptors 7s dropped in 2012, but Jordan Brand has plans to change that this weekend.

According to reports, this Raptors Air Jordan 5 will be making its debut this Saturday, but the kicks will be of the grade school variety meaning theyll only be available up to a size 9.5.

The new Raptors inspired Air Jordan is built just like the one that preceded it, featuring a blacked out upper with purple and crimson accents. Its nothing crazy but it should be enough to have all the Toronto sneakerheads eager for the release.

Speaking of the release- the Raptors Air Jordan 5 is officially slated to hit retailers on September 17th.

Raptors Air Jordan 5
We Cut Corners release their third, full length LP The Cadence of Others on Friday, November 4 as a 12 vinyl, CD and digital release on The Delphi Label.

John Duignan and Conall OBreachain have carved out a unique place in the Irish music scene with their eclectic mix of songs, from angular pop and garage rock to wistful indie-folk, always coupled with their unique lyrical deftness.

The self-produced album was recorded in a church in the Dublin suburbs and was mastered by Josh Bonati (Sufjan Stevens, Mac DeMarco, Tallest Man On Earth). The album features contributions from Villagers Conor OBrien on bass, members of Booka Brass and the Fratres String Quintet. The album will be available to pre-order from www.delphilabel.com

The band will play four live dates to celebrate the album release. They will play Spirit Store, Dundalk, November 5; Cyprus Avenue, Cork (11); Roisin Dubh, Galway (18); and Button Factory, Dublin (19). Tickets are available now from venues and from www.ticketmaster.ie
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 1 of 2 Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Show More Show Less



Police are searching for a man who has burglarized a middle school in east Houston about eight times, including a heist on Independence Day.

One of the burglaries occurred about 1 a.m. July 4 at the school in the 5900 block of Market, according to the Houston Independent School District police.
Mickey Leland's wanderlust led him across the globe, often to sub-saharan Africa to see countries like Sudan, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Instead of returning to Houston jubilant from seeing the world, he came back emotionally drained, family and friends said. His heart grew heavier navigating grocery stores' mountainous piles of produce, aisles of food and shelves stocked with medicine.

Children half the world away were starving. Many failed to survive a simple case of diarrhea, as some 8 million people were at risk of starvation in Ethiopia in 1984. He watched one girl from Sudan die in front of him that year.

Feeding the hungry became George Thomas "Mickey" Leland's life's work. The schmoozing pharmacy graduate-turned-civil rights protester who won election to the Texas Legislature, then Congress, lived with a drive to improve conditions for his fellow man before time ran out.

"He was someone who felt he had to squeeze as much life and activity and action as he possibly could into a short time," recalled his widow, Alison, who gave birth to his twin sons five months after his death. "In retrospect, it was as if he had a sense that his time was limited and he wanted to be sure that he could do the things that he was determined, set out to do. That he could really make an impact, that he could make a difference."

Leland and 15 others were delivering supplies to Ethiopia when their plane crashed into a mountainside there in 1989. He was 44.

More Information Timeline Nov. 27, 1944 George Thomas "Mickey" Leland born in Lubbock. 1963 Graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston. 1966-69 Attended Texas Southern University, where he was active in the civil rights movement. 1972 Elected to the Texas Legislature. 1978 Elected to the 18th Congressional District. 1984 Worked with Reps. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., and Tony Hall, D-Ohio, to establish the House Select Committee on Hunger. Aug. 7, 1989 Died in plane crash delivering supplies in Ethiopia. Jan. 14, 1990 Leland's twin sons, Austin Mickey and Cameron George, Leland are born. See More Collapse

"I am as much of a citizen of this world as I am of this country," he said a few months before his death, responding to critics who said he should focus on hunger here before focusing abroad. "To hell with those people who are critical of what I am able to do to help save people's lives. I don't mean to sound hokey, but I grew up on the Christian ethic, which says we are supposed to help the least of our brothers."

Leland is remembered as one of Congress' most prominent black legislators and its conscience on world hunger. He served there 10 years.

Leland spent five of those years urging Congress to establish the House Select Committee on Hunger and then became its chairman.

He persuaded President Ronald Reagan to spend $800 million to feed the hungry in Ethiopia and other nations in crisis and took on myriad other battles, including developing a friendly relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, which helped him win the release of American political prisoners there; pushing for generic prescriptions and universal health care; fighting minority and gender discrimination in the telecommunication industry; and devising a way to send black teenagers to Israel for the summer to learn more about the world. The Leland Kibbutzim internship sent its 36th class there this summer.

"Some people measure success by the percentage of initiatives that they throw out there and they pass. Mickey measured success by how many ideas you would pursue, always a very ambitious agenda," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat, Leland's former chief of staff and roommate.

Her husband often was bursting with ideas, said Alison Leland, now a political science professor at the University of Houston.

"He was smart and funny and unorganized and impulsive and passionate and creative and filled with ideas. Many of them were good ones, maybe not all of them."

Born in 1944 in Lubbock, he and his brother grew up in Houston's Fifth Ward, watching his mother work her way through school as a short-order cook to become a teacher. He studied pharmacy at Texas Southern University, stayed to teach and helped open free rudimentary health clinics in areas where people lacked access to health care.

"He was always frustrated by, even in Houston, the oil capital of the world, our infant mortality rate was higher than many Third World countries," said Keith Wade, senior adviser to Mayor Sylvester Turner and Leland's former district director in the Legislature. "It was not that the health care wasn't here, it was that it was not available to all segments of the community."

He heeded the influence of Roman Catholic principles and black writers, like Malcolm X, fashioning himself a Marxist and a revolutionary. He protested police brutality on the streets of Houston as the organizer and leader of the Black Citizens Action Teams, known as the "Black Cats." It was at one such demonstration that he was arrested, sparking a realization that he could effect change better from inside than out.

Voters elected him to the 88th District of the Texas Legislature in 1972, sending to Austin a 28-year-old with an Afro, platform shoes and an African dashiki on his first day. He would wear the eye-catching outfits "on days he wanted to make a point" to the conservative Texas Legislature, said Ellis, who interned in the Senate at the time.

It was during his six years in the Legislature that he made his first visit to Africa, a three-week trip that turned into a three-month mission to better understand the continent. The trip planted the seed for Leland's belief in a worldwide kinship that blossomed into his advocacy to fight hunger across the globe.

He later ran for Congress, winning Houston's 18th District seat in 1978, when Barbara Jordan retired. He hung up his dashikis and switched to Giorgio Armani suits to take on the roll of a statesman, but he kept the swagger and the passion. He argued in Spanish on the House floor for maintaining bilingual clauses in the Voting Rights Act, stepped into leadership as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus for two years and served on the Democratic National Committee's Black Caucus from 1981 to 1985.

He was on his sixth tour of refugee camps along the Ethiopia-Sudan border in five years when his plane went down. The fatal trip was his second venture that year.

A federal building in downtown Houston is named for him, as is Terminal D at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy for Young Men in the Fifth Ward and the Mickey Leland Environmental Internship Program with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Ellis, the state senator, named his son, Leland, after his friend.

Extensive archives of his papers, notes and photos now live on at the Texas Southern University Mickey Leland Center for Environment Justice and Sustainability at the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs where Patriccus Fortiori, an archives specialist there, says researchers and the public are beginning to get a greater sense of the depth of his work.

"At a time where politicians were moving comparatively at the speed of sound, Mickey was moving at the speed of light," Fortiori said.
A former comic book store employee pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to receipt and possession of child pornography as part of a plea deal with prosecutors that helped him avoid facing additional charges.

In addition, the government agreed to drop a third charge against Jacob Riley Garner, 22, who had worked as assistant manager at a comics and gaming store in The Woodlands.

The case was brought as a result of Operation Pacifier, an FBI sting unprecedented in scope in which agents took over the server of a dark website that peddled sexually explicit images and videos of children.

The FBI seized the server for the illegal website, Playpen, and kept it running for weeks in early 2015, while agents hacked into the system and identified thousands of distinct visitors. They ultimately filed charges against more than 135 users trying to access the site from within the United States.

Some defendants have opted to challenge the FBI takeover as a violation of the 4th Amendment, alleging the search warrant - pursuing anyone and anything they found on the server - was too broad.

Defense attorneys in district courts around the country have been sharing legal briefs and submitting one another's arguments in Operation Pacifier cases in their local jurisdictions.

Locally, a former MD Anderson pediatrician tried to walk back a guilty plea to three child pornography charges stemming from the Operation Pacifier sting, alleging the FBI agents had overreached. On Aug. 30, a federal judge in Galveston rejected that request and Dennis P.M. Hughes' sentencing is now pending.

Garner was arrested several months after Hughes' high-profile arrest and indicted in March on charges of receiving, accessing and possessing child pornography on Playpen on Feb. 22, 2015. An agent said in a sworn statement the investigation had uncovered 2,500 images and videos of children under the age of 12 being subjected to violence and bondage, including some children known to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Garner's attorney, Joshua Lake, said his client is aware of the legal challenges to the FBI sting but said Garner opted to plead guilty nonetheless.

He remains in federal custody pending sentencing Dec. 5. He has no prior felony convictions.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt explained that as part of Garner's plea deal, the assistant U.S. Attorney on the case agreed not to pursue charges against Garner on allegations he produced child pornography featuring digital content of a minor.
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.
imaru construction firm was ordered to pay $50,000 in fines and reparations yesterday after pleading guilty to one charge under the Health and Safety in Employment Act.The company, Rickie Shore Building Limited, came under scrutiny after an employee fell almost three metres onto a concrete floor, knocking himself unconscious and sustaining fractures.The worker  who continues to suffer fatigue and headaches as a result of his injury  had been using steel sheets as a platform while installing a flooring system on the second floor but the sheets moved while he was drilling.A subsequent WorkSafe investigation found that Rickie Shore Building had failed to complete adequate planning and hazard assessment in relation to the victims work, which would have included assessing whether the sheets made a safe work platform and making sure that the sheets were installed in line with the manufacturers instructions.Investigators also discovered that the employee was unfamiliar with the process, had received no training on how to install the floor and was not under any supervision.Rickie Shore Building should have ensured that the fitting of the flooring system was being done correctly and appropriate controls were in place to prevent a fall from height, such as providing a safe working platform, said Marcus Nalter, WorkSafes construction programme manager.People working in high risk industries such as construction should be able to trust that the employer has their workers safety at the front of their mind, he continued. In this instance, Rickie Shore Buildings inattention to safety has resulted in injury and ongoing health impacts for the victim.Ultimately, the company was fined $34,000 and ordered to pay reparations of $16,000 by Timaru District Court.
Airbnb is stepping up its public relations efforts as cities like Vancouver continue to grapple with a shortage of rental units.

Last week, the online rental service released a video that showed numerous Vancouverites touting Airbnb as a way for them to afford day-to-day life in a notoriously expensive city.

Advertisement

One host, Heather, talked about how Airbnb helped her raise extra money for her children, who are currently studying in university.

The service has also helped her as she goes to school herself, she said.

Airbnb notes that 60 per cent of hosts use revenue from their properties to pay their mortgages or rents.

"People across Vancouver depend on Airbnb to help make extra money," it adds.

"When Airbnb guests stay in Vancouver's neighbourhoods they spend more at local businesses."

Advertisement

But it comes at a time when residents are having increasing trouble finding a place to live.

The city's rental vacancy rate currently sits at 0.5 per cent, "and that was only rivalled in the 1970s," housing advocate and UBC researcher Iain Marjoribanks told CTV News.

A healthy vacancy rate generally ranges from three to five per cent, The Globe and Mail reported in July.

Other advocates have said affordable rents are scarce because landlords are hoping to pull in more cash, while old buildings are being demolished to make way for condominiums.

The latest stats around rents suggest the cost is only growing around Vancouver.

The cost to rent a one-bedroom apartment in October 2015 was $1,079 per month, up from $1,038 the year prior, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Advertisement

In the city proper, it cost $1,175, compared to $1,124 in 2014.

The issue is even more pronounced when you look at the cost to rent a two-bedroom unit. It cost $1,643 to rent in the City of Vancouver, up from $1,571 in the previous year.

Rents were most expensive in the West End/Stanley Park area, where they went for $1,951 per month.

The rental crisis has been blamed, in part, on the proliferation of Airbnb's short-term rentals, which have more than tripled since 2013 to hit about 6,400 last year, The Globe and Mail reported.

The City of Vancouver is readying a report on Airbnb that will look at how short-term rentals are affecting the rental market, and how it should regulate the service, The Vancouver Sun reported.

It's expected to come to council in the fall.

But Vancouver's not the only city where Airbnb has ratcheted up the PR.

The rental service has also stepped up its marketing in Toronto, putting out a news release last week showing that the city has 8,600 active hosts in the city.

Advertisement

It also touted its contributions to Ontario's economy, such as that a host can earn $3,900 from their listing every year.

But Toronto, too, is grappling with the effects of short-term rentals. Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam led an effort to have staff report on how Airbnb can be regulated, The Toronto Star reported.

She cited issues such as noise, using homes as "event spaces" and that Airbnb rentals were being used for crime, such as human trafficking.

A report on Airbnb is expected next month.

Follow The Huffington Post B.C. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Also on HuffPost:
No good trip is complete without an iconic meal along the way.

Whether it's the humblest of skewers from the streets of Shanghai or the richest foie gras at a Parisian bistro  food and travel go hand-in-hand.

Travelling across Canada is no other exception. Just ask "Like A Tourist" host Dan Rodo.

"When I came to the East Coast, there were two things I was told to try: fish & chips and scallops," Rodo says.

Advertisement

And if you're going to start somewhere, you might as well pull up a seat at a place with some history, like John's Lunch.

Co-owner Fotis Fatouros has been manning the fryer since 1969, serving up strips of clam, scallops and haddock.

Forty-seven years later, Fatouros is still making things from scratch.

For more on the East Coast institution, check out the video above. For more of Canada's cool spots waiting to be discovered, check out more "Like A Tourist" episodes below.

Also on HuffPost
In a recent interview with Marie Claire, Kate Hudson says she is just fine being an "OK mom."

"I don't try to sugarcoat things. I'll say, 'I'm doing the best I can,'" says the single mom of two boys. "I like cooking, I like presenting. I like it to be an experience and [my kids] help me with it, but if they want something after that, I'll be like, 'Look, I'm placing a meal out for you like a king. I can't do everything. I'm going to have to be the OK mom.'"

Advertisement

Kate Hudson with sons Ryder Robinson and Bingham Hawn Bellamy attend the premiere of 'Kung Fu Panda 3' on January 16, 2016, in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Todd Williamson/Getty Images)

Hudson's oldest son Ryder, 12, while Bingham is five, and she's determined to protect them the best she can from the downsides of having a famous mom. So discussing her dating life is off limits.

"The reason I don't talk about anything like that is because I have kids," Hudson told the magazine. "People ask that question as if, 'Oh yeah, it's really healthy to publicly talk about who I am or am not dating when I've got a tween.' [Ryder] can read, and he can hear. I'm not going to indulge in that kind of thing until there's someone in my life who I am introducing to my kids."

Excited to announce our October cover star, Kate Hudson! Read more here: https://t.co/BCtp3p8RGu#KateforMCpic.twitter.com/dhYNih3964  Marie Claire (@marieclaire) September 12, 2016

Advertisement





The actress adds she does her best to have a healthy relationship with the boys' dads: Chris Robinson and Matthew Bellamy. Hudson says that's all about being a grown up.

"I think everybody wants to point fingers. If you are a person who takes responsibility for yourself and your part in it, you have a much better chance of maintaining a nice relationship. It also means that you grow up."

Read the full interview in Marie Claire.

This isn't the first time Hudson has been candid about her kids. Back in February, she told Stephen Colbert: "'Lets start with the fact that I, literally five seconds ago, was on FaceTime with [Ryder's] teacher, going like, 'He did what? He did?'"

"He's a great kid, I love him so much. They're your kids and you love them and then you can't stand them sometimes  it's just the truth."

Beach boys  A photo posted by Kate Hudson (@katehudson) on Sep 11, 2016 at 11:35am PDT

Advertisement





The 37-year-old also admits she could never be a stay at home mom in an essay she wrote for InStyle.

Some days I feel like I should win best mom of the day award, and some days I find myself doing strange things that dont have any real purpose, in faraway corners in my house, and I realize I am literally and deliberately hiding from my children Even as I write this, I am travelling for a week away from my children to promote my book, Pretty Happy, and Im so happy to have some time to myself and excited to have this experience.

But that separation comes with a price: Theres this tight, pulling sensation that never goes away that it comes at the cost of missing a week of my childrens lives, and it aches.

Summer snuggle  #BingBong A photo posted by Kate Hudson (@katehudson) on Jul 21, 2016 at 7:38am PDT





Also on HuffPost
OTTAWA  Canadian charities are sounding the alarm after Conservative party leadership candidate Tony Clement said he wants to monitor the activities of all charities to ensure that they are not contributing to radicalization or terrorism.

On Monday in Ottawa, Clement unveiled what he called his 10-point national security plan to make Canada safer.

Advertisement

He pledged to imprison potential terrorists for as long as they remain security risks if they cant be monitored round the clock, and he called for a public most wanted list.

This terrorist threat is growing, and those who have been radicalized or are radicalizing others need to be taken off the streets, he said in announcing the first policy plank of his leadership campaign.

Beyond the headlines, however, the former cabinet minister in prime minister Stephen Harpers government also promised to:

Advertisement

Establish an independent government agency to oversee and monitor the activities of all charities in order to ensure they do not contribute to terrorism or radicalization and are following Canadian law.

Those involved in charities say Clements words are reminiscent of the Harper governments crackdown on groups with which it disagreed philosophically.

Clement says it is necessary to track all charities activities. It is important to have this monitoring. It is good, best practice to demand of charities the information to assess whether they are involved in terrorism activity or supporting radicalization, he said.

"Obviously, it is very concerning to me that this is going on. It should concern all Canadians."

Citing a 2015 Senate report, Clement said he discovered that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) had revoked eight charities status because of links to terrorism and one, the Islamic Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN), had been designated a terrorist entity for funding Hamas.

Obviously, it is very concerning to me that this is going on. It should concern all Canadians, he said.

Advertisement

Clement noted the concerns of Dick Fadden, Harpers former national security adviser and former Canadian Security Intelligence Service director, about the foreign financing of Canadian religious and quasi-religious institutions.

Wealthy individuals in the Middle East are sending money through non-governmental organizations and charities, Haras Rafiq, the managing director of the Quilliam Foundation, a think tank dedicated to fighting extremism, had told senators last year.

Clement offered few details about what his more stringent monitoring would look like. He would task security personnel and the Canada Revenue Agency to come up with a plan for his first cabinet meeting, he said.

The implementation of my 10-point plan will result in more effective investigations, and prosecutions, [getting] more supporters, financiers and promoters of terrorism off of our streets, and [having] fewer recruits leaving Canada to spread terror abroad, he told reporters.

Would Canadian charities have to report more transactions, much like the requirements that the Conservatives panned C-373 forced upon unions?

Advertisement

I think that would be a little bit over the top, Clement responded. Canadian charities already provide the CRA certain information about foreign donations and additional details on contributions above $10,000.

Later, he told HuffPost that he planned to establish a body similar to the Charity Commission for England and Wales. Rafiq, in his testimony, had called that organization toothless.

Tim McSorley, co-ordinator of Voices-Voix Coalition, a group that defends the rights of charities to advocate, called Clements language concerning.

[It] is reminiscent of when Joe Oliver, as natural resources minister, claimed that we needed to be concerned about foreign-funded, radical environmentalist groups, he told HuffPost.

Advertisement

The result of that was a $13 million fund to investigate political activities [through] audits, primarily targeting progressive organizations, and whose most tangible result has been hundreds of thousands of dollars in charities' funds going to administrative and legal costs rather than to their important work.

Groups such as the Environmental Defence, Equiterre, Kitchener-Waterloo Field Naturalists, as well as Oxfam and Canada Without Poverty, which seemingly raised concerns at CRA by trying to prevent poverty, all found themselves under review.

Charities in Canada are already subject to routine and rigorous scrutiny, McSorley said. Active charities must all submit annual filings that include financial reports and a list of any partner organizations outside Canada to which a charity provided funds, all of which appear publicly on the CRA's website, he said.

Canadian charities that transfer funds to other organizations for international projects must also ensure that those organizations work adheres to the same guidelines for charitable activities that they themselves must follow. He also added that charities are already required to itemize any activities that are considered to fall outside the boundaries of their charitable work.

Advertisement

Tony Clement, instead of finding ways to support the good work of charities in this country, is instead creating fictional concerns that is more likely to cause people to withhold donations than do anything to protect Canadian lives.

Charities are already regulated and must not engage in illegal activity. This kind of wording and direction suggests a significant link without clear evidence.

Jennifer Henry, the executive director of Kairos Canada, told HuffPost there are approximately 85,000 registered charities in Canada that contribute an average of 8.1 per cent of total Canadian GDP. The sector as a whole makes Canada better and contributes to a better world, she said. Charities are already regulated and must not engage in illegal activity. This kind of wording and direction suggests a significant link without clear evidence.

In 2009, after decades of receiving funding for its projects, Kairos Canada was abruptly informed that the Conservatives had vetoed its funding proposals. Then immigration minister Jason Kenney indirectly suggested Kairos had engaged in anti-Semitic activities, an accusation the charity denies.

Charity law needs modernizing, she said. But in the direction of strengthening contributions to public policy, not further expensive layers of regulation.

Advertisement

Clearer legislation needed: charities

Many groups, such as Kairos Canada and Voices-Voix Coalition, are calling for clearer modern legislation that would allow charities to advocate and engage in policy dialogue.

Reforms in Britain, McSorley said, helped address concerns of where the funds were going internationally, but their main focus related to domestic issues.

So instead of proposing new rules that are redundant with laws and regulations that already exist, we would hope that Mr. Clement would want to work with charities to modernize rules and regulations so they can better deliver programs and services that help Canadians and people abroad.

Also on HuffPost
President Duterte, left, and President Widodo, right.

President Rodrigo Duterte did not give the go signal for the execution of Filipina drug convict Mary Jane Veloso, as reported by the Indonesian media









"Regarding the supposed statements coming from Indonesia, the President just informed us that his actual statement and conversation with President Widodo went like this, he said regarding Mary Jane Veloso, he said 'follow your own laws, I will not interfere,'" Abella said.





Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay also denied reports that President Duterte had given the go-signal for the execution.





In a statement issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Yasay said Duterte only told Indonesian President Joko Widodo that "he respects their judicial processes and will accept whatever the final decision they will arrive at regarding her case."





Citing a report by Antara news agency in Serang, Banten, the Jakarta Post on Monday reported that Duterte had given Widodo the "go-ahead" to proceed with Veloso's execution.





Veloso, who remains on death row for drug smuggling, was temporarily spared the firing squad in April last year. After his attendance in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Laos last week, Duterte flew to Jakarta for a working visit to meet with Widodo and raise Veloso's case.





Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay then claimed that Veloso's execution was deferred because it was not an "urgent issue."







Duterte denies support for Indonesia execution

Mary Jane Veloso in April 2016

The Philippines has denied president Rodrigo Duterte has given his blessing to the execution of a Filipino on death row in Indonesia for drug trafficking.





A Philippines cabinet minister has denied claims President Rodrigo Duterte gave the go-ahead for Indonesia to execute a Filipino woman who is on death row for drug trafficking.





The clarification came after Indonesia President Joko Widodo said Duterte had told him to proceed with the execution of Mary Jane Veloso.





Veloso was given an 11th-hour reprieve when she was due to be executed in April 2015 alongside Australian Bali Nine members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran after Philippine authorities requested her testimony in an ongoing legal case in her home country.





But Emmanuel Pinol, Philippines' agriculture secretary, said there was an understanding the execution had been postponed indefinitely.





"The president never agreed to execute Mary Jane," Pinol said.





"What he said was that we respect your law, we will not interfere with your judicial process but we will ask for clemency."





In a statement posted on the Indonesian cabinet secretary's website, Widodo said he had discussed the suspended execution with Duterte during his visit to Indonesia last week.





"President Duterte said at the time to go ahead with the execution," Widodo said after conducting Eid prayers in Serang, Banten province.





He said he told Duterte that Veloso had been caught carrying 2.6 kilograms of heroin when she was arrested at Yogyakarta's airport in April 2010, before being sentenced to death in October the same year.





When he arrived from his visit from Indonesia, Duterte did not give details on the discussion about Veloso's case, saying what was talked about was not for public consumption.





Both Widodo and Duterte are currently waging a war on drugs in their respective countries.





Under Widodo, who took office in 2014, Indonesia has executed 18 people convicted for drug trafficking.





In the Philippines, 1,011 suspected drug users and dealers have been killed in police operations between July 1 and September 4, according to police statistics.





Police also recorded 1,391 deaths during the same period which are still being investigated.

Indonesia says Duterte has given it permission to execute Mary Jane Veloso

Death-row isolation cells on Nusakambangan island, Indonesia

Jakarta claims President Rodrigo Duterte sanctioned execution of Filipina, who supporters say was duped into smuggling heroin





Indonesia has said the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte , has given his blessing for the execution of a Filipino death row inmate, Mary Jane Veloso.





President Duterte  said: Please go ahead if you want to execute her, the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, said on Monday





The report left many in the Philippines in shock, as saving Veloso  a domestic worker on death row who many believe was duped into smuggling heroin  has become a national cause.





Ernesto Abella, a spokesman for Duterte, strongly denied that the president had given the go-ahead during a meeting in Jakarta on Friday. There was no endorsement, Abella said. He simply said: Follow your own laws, I will not interfere.





Veloso was arrested in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2010 while carrying a suitcase containing 2.2kg of heroin. Her supporters say poverty made her susceptible to people traffickers, who promised her a job as a maid in Malaysia but instead made her an unwitting drug mule.





The previous Philippine government made it a priority to try to delay and eventually overturn Velosos death sentence. Her case has drawn international criticism of capital punishment in Indonesia

It said: We demand an immediate explanation from President Duterte and [Foreign] Secretary[Perfecto] Yasay, both duty-bound to defend the rights of Filipinos overseas, especially drug trafficking victims like Mary Jane.





Duterte, a former prosecutor, said last week that he would ask Jokowi  as the Indonesian president is known  to call off Velosos execution, but that ultimately he would respect Indonesias laws. If my pleadings will fall on deaf ears, I am ready to accept it  for the simple reason I do not doubt the judicial system of Indonesia, he said.





So, I might just accept the system and plead for mercy. But if President Widodo will deny it, still I would be grateful that she has been treated very well, he added.





Jokowi delayed Velosos execution date in April 2015 with a temporary reprieve hours before she was due to be killed.





Her reprieve came after Maria Kristina Sergio, a woman accused of recruiting Veloso, handed herself in to police in Manila. The former Philippine president, Benigno Aquino, made an appeal to Jokowi on the basis that Veloso would be needed as a witness in the case against Sergio





President Rodrigo Duterte, Mary Jane Veloso

Indonesia shot dead eight people in April 2015, including two Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who had fought a years-long campaign for clemency and were part of the Bali Nine heroin-smuggling ring. Four Nigerians, a Brazilian and an Indonesian were also killed.





Veloso has also won sympathy in Indonesia, which, like the Philippines, has a large foreign worker diaspora. She says she fled Dubai after an attempted rape.





Duterte took office in June after winning elections on a promise to kill tens of thousands of criminals. He has vowed to press on with his campaign despite growing international criticism.





Jokowi is waging his own war against drugs and has ordered the execution of 18 convicted smugglers, including 15 foreigners, since taking office in October 2014.





Indonesias anti-drugs chief this month voiced support for implementing a bloody crackdown on traffickers similar to that in the Philippines, saying he believed such a campaign would safeguard our beloved country.



 | 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: news.asiaone.com, September 12, 2016Source: AAP, September 12, 2016Velosos lawyer, Edre Olalia, told the Guardian that Velosos family and legal team were waiting for indubitable A1 confirmation either way, and that no comment would be made until official information had been received from both the Philippine and Indonesian governments.Migrante International, a group that promotes the rights of overseas Filipino workers, said it and the Veloso family were in shock over the news from Jakarta.Source: The Guardian , September 12, 2016
HALIFAX  Conservative MPs greeted the news that Peter MacKay wont run for the Tory leadership with sadness and understanding Monday, but also with optimism that the partys race is now wide open.

Many Tory MPs learned of MacKays decision as their plane touched down in Halifax, where the national party is holding two days of a summer caucus meeting.

Advertisement

Im sure there are going to be many Conservatives across Canada who are going to be very disappointed, but I think most people would understand his reason for not running, Ontario MP Gord Brown told The Huffington Post Canada at the Delta Hotel as current MPs and former Tory candidates checked in.

New Quebec MP Pierre Paul-Hus called it sad because MacKay is so well regarded by so many in the party.

Polls showed he was someone people were waiting for, but at the same time, I understand, Paul-Hus said. He has a family life and two very young children, so probably in his case, it is the fact that family life was too difficult to manage.

Advertisement

MacKay issued a statement Monday saying he decided against running because his family is his No. 1 priority.

He has a family life and two very young children, so probably in his case, it is the fact that family life was too difficult to manage.

While the opportunity is exciting and the reward compelling, MacKay wrote, I feel it would be asking too much of them to jump back into politics right now and the heat of a leadership campaign, with all it entails.

B.C. MP Dan Albas learned the news from HuffPost and quickly praised MacKay as one of the architects of the modern Conservative party.

He has done a lot for Canadian politics and, in particular, conservative politics in this country, Albas said. He noted MacKays continued respect within the military for his time as defence minister, and the Victims Bill of Rights that he got passed as justice minister.

Advertisement

MacKays absence now makes the race wide open, Albas said. Having some new people come in with new ideas is not a bad thing.

Ill just remind people that when I first read that Stephen Harper was going to contest for the leadership, a lot of people didnt know who he was.

The great thing about Canada, the B.C. MP added, is that anyone can run and be prime minister.

I think we should keep that in mind. It shouldnt just be the Peter MacKays of the world and household names. People can make a name for themselves.

Ontario MP Larry Miller, whod heard the news in the cab on the way to the hotel, said he wasnt totally surprised. I know he was wrestling with it. But after 18 years in politics, Miller said, the decision is understandable.

Advertisement

No big names running: Ontario MP

Now that a big name isnt running, Miller added, more candidates are likely to run and help rejuvenate the Tories. Its better for the party. I think its needed at this time.

New Ontario MP Karen Vacchio was also unconcerned by MacKays absence from the contest.

Its too bad, but I look at some of the other people who I think might be putting their names forward and Im really excited, she said, pointing the finger at Erin OToole, a popular Ontario MP who ran for the interim leadership last fall.

OToole praised MacKay and said he was pleased that the former leader of the Progressive Conservatives, who led the merger with the Canadian Alliance to reunite the right, would still be present and commenting on policy  especially in Atlantic Canada, where the Tories were shut out during the last election.

I know its a huge decision for him. Hes older than me but has children younger than me, so I know 100 per cent the challenge that parents, men and women in public life, face, and I totally respect his decision.

Advertisement

OToole said he hoped to suss out support among the caucus and to talk to MacKay about apotential bid now that he is no longer in the race. A ton has changed. Thats why you never say never in politics.

Ontario MP Dean Allison said he would have loved to have seen MacKay run and most definitely would have backed him, but now hes looking at Ontario MP Lisa Raitt.

Shes a smart, smart woman, she has lots to offer, and I think she would be great. She has East Coast roots  and shes from Ontario as well!

Raitt didnt want to talk about her own ambitions but wished Mackay well. These decisions take a lot of time. He took a lot of time and he made the decision that is best for him. Who are we to judge what is best or not best for the individual?

Advertisement

She told HuffPost she has her familys blessing, but she wants to spend the next few days talking to her colleagues and gauging her support. I made my decision personally, but I still need to talk to folks.

Declared candidate Tony Clement also wished MacKay well and said he would continue to be very influential in Conservative policy debates.

"I had a lot of experience; Peter had a lot of experience. We were both party stalwarts."

Clement, also an Ontario MP and former cabinet minister, acknowledged that Mondays turn of events offered him a new opportunity to court would-be MacKay supporters.

I had a lot of experience; Peter had a lot of experience. We were both party stalwarts. Ive been involved in the party for decades; Peter has been involved for decades, Clement said, noting their likely appeal. I think it gives me that opportunity to restate my case to a few people who were on the fence, and Im looking forward to doing that.

There are currently five registered candidates vying for the Tory leadership: Clement, Quebec MP Maxime Bernier, Ontario MP Kellie Leitch, Calgary MP Deepak Obhrai and Ontario MP Michael Chong.

Advertisement

Several others, such as Saskatchewan MPs Brad Trost and Andrew Scheer, have let it be known that they intend to run but have not formally registered.

Also on HuffPost
British Columbia now lays claim to two of Canada's priciest cities to rent in.

And a third B.C. city is shooting up the rankings.

Victoria, B.C.'s provincial capital, has joined Vancouver and Toronto in the top three most expensive cities to rent, reclaiming a spot it held three months ago, said a report by rental website Padmapper released Tuesday.

Advertisement

The cost to rent a one-bedroom unit in Victoria is $1,080 this month, an increase of 0.9 per cent, while renting a two-bedroom apartment costs $1,340, a fall of 3.6 per cent.

That puts it one spot above Calgary, where it costs $1,060 to rent a one-bedroom place, down 1.9 per cent from last month, and $1,260 to rent a two-bedroom unit, dropping 2.3 per cent.

The trend comes as Victoria sees feverish real estate activity, with six straight months of sales records, according to the Times-Colonist.

Advertisement

The benchmark price of a Victoria home now sits at $746,000, up from $603,200 a year ago, the newspaper said.

In August, Victoria saw 883 properties sold through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), up 19.2 per cent from the same month last year.

The region is seeing the "lowest number of listings available for sale in an August that we have seen in the last 20 years," real estate board president Mike Nugent said.

Vancouver, unsurprisingly, ranks as the most expensive city to rent across Canada, with monthly rents for one-bedroom units going for $1,750, while two-bedroom units go for $2,680.

Advertisement

The cost to rent a one-bedroom apartment has jumped by 2.9 per cent this month, while the monthly rent for a two-bed has dropped by 1.5 per cent.

It topped Toronto, which was in second place with one-bedroom units going for $1,310 per month, and two-bedroom apartments going for $1,340 per month.

Meanwhile, the Interior B.C. community of Kelowna, which is almost 400 kilometres from Vancouver, hopped up the rankings in September, going from 11th to eighth place.

It costs $980 to rent a one-bedroom unit there, up one per cent from August. Renting a two-bedroom unit, meanwhile, costs $1,460, up 2.8 per cent from the previous month.

Advertisement

There, too, housing costs are hitting new records, with an average single-family home in Kelowna's Okanagan region going for $600,000 for the first time ever, The Globe and Mail reported.

"We are at peak levels of activity and average pricing," Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board president Anthony Bastiaanssen told the newspaper.

He said the trend is happening as Lower Mainland buyers have doubled. Buyers from Alberta have dropped at approximately the same rate.

Here are Padmapper's top 10 most expensive cities to rent in for September:

Follow The Huffington Post B.C. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Also on HuffPost

Airbnb's 16 Neighbourhoods to Visit in 2016 See Gallery
We're proud to present the highly influential (and legendary!) artist Jean-Paul Goude, photographer and illustrator for the #KENZOxHM campaign. Read more at hm.com/magazine! #HMMagazine

A video posted by H&M (@hm) on Sep 12, 2016 at 3:00am PDT
The federal immigration minister suggests a Conservative leadership contender's talk about screening newcomers for "anti-Canadian values" is about little more than raising her own profile.

John McCallum was asked Tuesday about a Mainstreet Research poll for Postmedia that shows Kellie Leitch's name recognition and approval rating have both risen among Tory supporters since she sparked the controversial debate.

Advertisement

McCallum had no issues with trying to rain on Leitch's parade.

Tory leadership contender Kellie Leitch and Immigration Minister John McCallum. (Photo: The Canadian Press)

"All I would say is I suspect she went up from a very low level," McCallum said when asked if he was surprised Leitch's stock appears to be rising.

"I don't think she was really significantly in the race until she made these statements and then that put her on the map," he said.

Advertisement

The minister also cautioned against drawing broader conclusions about Canadians based on Leitch's apparent spike.

"Notwithstanding this flurry, if you look at polls in general, you see that Canadians are extraordinarily welcoming to immigrants and to refugees, far more so than other countries," he said.

"I don't think we should read too much into this one episode."

'Desperate move'

McCallum was also asked about Leitch's controversial proposal when he appeared on CTV's "Question Period" Sunday.

The minister said he agreed with Conservative leadership candidate Michael Chong's assessment that it represents "dog-whistle" politics. An ex-advisor to former prime minister Stephen Harper also called it "Orwellian."

"I think it's a desperate move for her to grab on to something that gives her a chance of winning the leadership," he said.

Advertisement

McCallum also commended interim Tory leader Rona Ambrose from taking the unusual step of "dumping" on the policy. Ambrose has since backed off critiquing Leitch's proposal, saying it will be up to party members to pass judgment.

Rempel: It's up to Leitch to answer for proposal

That was much the same position Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel took Tuesday when pressed by reporters at her party's summer caucus meeting in Halifax.

The Alberta MP said she didn't fully understand Leitch's position and said it was up to her colleague to flush it out.

But Rempel added she feels firmly that Canada is built on immigration and on welcoming newcomers.

"The question of whether or not Canada needs immigration is not up for debate in my mind," she said.

Leitch says response has been positive

Leitch, meanwhile, told The Huffington Post Canada that people have been "responding in droves" and in much different way than has been depicted in the media. She said her inbox has hundreds if not thousands of emails about how such a debate is good for Canada.

"We've been chatting with Canadians across the country and this is an issue that is extremely important to them," she said. "They want to talk about Canadian values, what makes us so strong as a country."

Advertisement

Leitch said that equality, hard work, tolerance, and generosity are all values that Canadians hold dear.

"I'm looking forward to that debate with my caucus mates," Leitch said. "I'm looking forward to the debates."

With files from Althia Raj

Also on HuffPost
Marieke Vervoort is a true hero.

The 37-year-old Belgian athlete, who lives with a degenerative muscle condition that makes it difficult for her to eat and sleep, is competing in the 2016 Rio Paralympics, where she's already won the silver medal for the T52 400m race. The T52 category is for athletes who have limited or no mobility below their waists and who have impaired motor skills in their arms and hands.

But what the media is talking about isn't her win  it's her openness on her decision to die by euthanasia, which she got approval for in her native Belgium in 2008.

Advertisement

Belgium's Marieke Vervoort reacts on the podium after receiving the silver medal for the women's 400 m (T52) of the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games on September 10, 2016. (YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)

But contrary to reports, Vervoort isn't choosing to end her life as soon as the Rio Paralympics ends. "Totally out of the question," she told reporters at a media conference on the weekend.

Although she confirmed that this would be her last Paralympics, Vervoort says she won't choose to die by euthanasia "yet."

Advertisement

"Its very hard to live with so many pain and suffering and this unsureness," she told reporters. "I am still alive and still going to enjoy every little, little moment of my life.

She continued: I hope that other countries, like Brazil, can talk about it, that it is not taboo anymore. Like me, I signed my papers in 2008. Look now, we are in 2016 and I won yesterday a silver medal. Its really a wonder. So, I am really happy."

But knowing that she has the option to die by euthanasia has allowed her to have the ability to control her future, and compete at a high level, she said. "When I didnt have those papers, I would have committed suicide."

Vervoort also wants to educate people about euthanasia and assisted suicide, which remain illegal in most of the world, aside from a handful of countries. Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, and Luxembourg, while assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Canada, and in the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, Vermont, Montana, and California.

Advertisement

It is really difficult to get those papers, Vervoort said. You have to see different doctors for them to see that you have a progressive disease or a mental disease. You need three different signatures from doctors and to talk with a psychiatrist to see if it is really what you want.

The athlete was just 15 years old when she was diagnosed with a rare progressive muscle condition that resulted in paraplegia.

According to The Guardian, she will have to get further approval from doctors if she decides she can't bear the pain any longer.

"I have a progressive disease," she said. "Every year, it is worse. Every time, I give things away. If you see me years ago, I could draw beautiful art. Now it is impossible. I see 20 per cent. Whats the next thing coming? I am really scared."
HALIFAX  Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose warned the Tory caucus Tuesday not to let their upcoming leadership contest divide the party.

"I know we all understand the importance of speaking with one united voice. We are all realists here," Ambrose said in a speech to about 115 MPs and senators gathered in Halifax for a summer caucus meeting.

Advertisement

"We know that drama drives ratings, that those outside of our party will do everything they can to separate us into separate camps. Friends, our party has been there before, a long, long time ago, and we have no intention of going back there."

Interim leader Rona Ambrose addresses the national Conservative summer caucus retreat in Halifax on Sept. 13, 2016. (Photo: Andrew Vaughan/CP)

In recent days, the Conservatives have been embroiled in a debate over "Canadian values" after Ontario MP and leadership candidate Kellie Leitch said would-be immigrants should be screened for "anti-Canadian values." She has since explained that she believes newcomers should be surveyed to see if they believe in same-sex marriage and the equality of women.

Advertisement

Several Conservatives MPs gathered in Halifax privately told The Huffington Post that they think Leitch is "crazy" and that she and her campaign manager, Nick Kouvalis, are hurting the party's future chances by trying to carve out space in an increasingly crowded field of leadership candidates. Publicly, some leadership candidates  in particular, Ontario MP Michael Chong and Alberta MP Deepak Obhrai  have panned her views.

On Tuesday, Chong called Leitchs plans a dangerous game that is unworkable and nonsense.

Michael Chong announces he will run for Conservative Party leader May 16, 2016. (Photo: CP)

Are we going to say to Old Order Mennonites who are immigrating here from South America and Mexico, and Jehovahs Witnesses  that they are not allowed to immigrate to Canada because they dont believe in voting? Are we going to say to other immigrants that they are not allowed to immigrate to Canada because they dont believe in gay marriage?

It is perfectly fine to talk about immigration in positive terms, about how to fix the immigration system, Chong said, or how to strengthen security screening. But if you frame the debate in negative terms and play to peoples dark fears about immigration, that is not constructive and that is not responsible leadership.

He suggested that if Leitch won the leadership, the Conservatives would suffer the same fate as the Parti Quebecois in Quebec did after bringing in in a contentious and anti-immigrant values charter. They would lose the next election.

Advertisement

But if you frame the debate in negative terms and play to peoples dark fears about immigration, that is not constructive and that is not responsible leadership.

Obhrai, who had accused Leitch of promoting a negative image of immigration, said he still disagrees 100 per cent with her policy. He also disagrees with Ontario MP and leadership candidate Tony Clements policy  and the previous Conservative governments legislation  of stripping dual citizens convicted of terrorism of their Canadian citizenship. He disagrees but he wont attack the candidates personally, he said.

I just say I disagree with the policy. It is their point of you, which you respect, but you disagree, he said.

Thats their view, its not the Conservative partys view, he stressed.

After having gone through four leadership contests, Obhrai said he knows how divisive races can be.

Deepak Obhrai rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Wednesday September 21, 2011. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

Advertisement

Friendships break, he said.

Its very important that we remain as a team, because once the leadership race is over, we are back out as a team.

Ambroses plea for unity was an acknowledgment of a major debate that blew up after Leitchs survey and fundraising note and an attempt to prevent a re-emergence of fault lines present during the last election, some MPs confidentially said. Several Conservatives, especially in the Greater Toronto Area and in ridings with large immigrant populations, were livid at the Tories electoral strategy and public stands.

Ambroses job is to hold the boat together, Obhrai said. If you have a fractured boat, the target over there [winning the next election] will not be achieved.

Its very important that we remain as a team, because once the leadership race is over, we are back out as a team.

Some MPs seemed to want to move on from Leitchs anti-Canadian values issue Tuesday and starve the story of any oxygen that could keep it alive.

Advertisement

Calgary MP Michelle Rempel told reporters they could check out her tweets if they wanted to know how she felt about the topic. Any policies directed towards immigrants should recognize that immigrants built this country. Rempel, the partys immigration critic, said she didnt really understand what Leitchs policy was and suggested that reporters talk to the candidate directly.

Leitch said Canadians were responding in droves to her proposal. Very different than the media  how the media has depicted this, she said.

Canadians want to talk about Canadian values, such as equality of opportunity, hard work, generosity, and tolerance, she said. Im getting hundreds, if not thousands, of emails about how this is good for the country.

It is not divisive. We are there for debates, and our people they understand that.

Im looking forward to the debates, she added.

Quebec MP and leadership candidate Maxime Bernier insisted that the anti-Canadian values discussion wasnt dividing the party.

It is not divisive, he repeated. We are there for debates, and our people they understand that.

He compared Leitchs controversial policy to his own on ending supply management in the dairy industry  something that he noted also went against current Conservative party policy.

Advertisement

[Our people], they want a debate over ideas, and she has an idea and a proposals, and others, we have other points of view, he said.

Questioning immigrants on their Canadian values isnt the right solution, Bernier added, arguing that but putting more resources into security screening and integrating immigrants by giving them better job opportunities is. A polite discussion could be had, he suggested.

I dont want everyone to say the same thing on every subject.

Tuesday, the leadership contest continued to consume most of the corridor chatter at the caucus meeting.

Conservative MP Andrew Scheer speaks in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in May. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP)

Advertisement

Saskatchewan MP Andrew Scheer, the former speaker of the House of Commons, resigned from his role as opposition house leader, saying his exploratory talks for a potential leadership bid were going well and he wanted to investigate the opportunity further. A source close to him said Scheer is days away from announcing he was joining the race.

Another Saskatchewan MP, Brad Trost, said he too would resign as critic for Canada-U.S. relations and formally launch his bid.

Trost said he plans to win by asking members to consider him as their second, third or even fourth choice on their preferential ballot.

With a nine-person race, he said there is no way any candidate is going to get 50 per cent plus one of vote on the first ballot. So I think there is a lot of motivation to be kind to your friends who are running, because if they drop off the ballot, youre going to want them and their support, he said.

At least 12 MPs are running or thinking of running, and the slate of candidates may expand after one of the partys favourites, former cabinet minister Peter MacKay, announced Monday that he will not be making a bid.

Advertisement

Tories to focus on economy

Inside the meeting room, the interim party leader told her team the caucus will focus on economic matters when the Commons returns to work next week.

"Above all, our job is to be the voice of the taxpayer and the voice of ordinary working people. In this, I know that we are a united force," she said.

The Liberals, she said, are already taking the support they received during the last election for granted. She also accused them of having "betrayed" the middle class they had promised to support. She noted how the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency is now represented by a Toronto-area minister and how the Grits had led the country from a balanced budget to a $30 billion deficit.

"While hundreds of thousands of families across the country are struggling, what is [Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau's biggest priority?," she asked her team.

"Vacation! Selfies!," caucus members yelled out.

'Liberals are back all right, they are back in the red'

"That is not what I was going to say," she said, with a smile. The Liberals had unleashed uncontrollable spending with no end in sight and were consumed with finding new ways to spend the public's money and raise their taxes.

Advertisement

"The Liberals are back all right, they are back in the red."

Ambrose promised to hold the Liberals to account respectfully and to be open to "good ideas" from all sides.

"But in the face of an arrogant government, one that is sees no problem with record spending on pet projects, we will come out swinging," she said, to loud applause.

The Tories will focus on the economy, call for low taxes and meaningful measures that help Canadians get back to work and get better jobs, she said. "We need to stand up for all job creators. A job is a job, whether it is fashionable or not," she said, perhaps a reference to Trudeau's recent listing on Vanity Fair's international best dressed list.

'Where did Angry Tom go?'

Ambrose also threw some jabs at NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, who has been criticized by some New Democrats as being missing in action.

"Where did Angry Tom go?" she asked. "Come to think of it, Ottawa is kind of a socialist heaven these days. New spending, tax hikes to pay for it all, no wonder Tom Mulcair isn't angry anymore. He's just too happy to do his job."

Advertisement

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
If there are two stars in Hollywood who are constantly declaring their crazy, stupid, love for each other, it's Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.

They did it in 2011...

Advertisement

And again in 2013...

Look, Ryan can't keep his eyes off her!

Their friendship is adorable. We love it. It melts our hearts and makes us believe in magic (or something). So when we heard the "Gangster Squad" pair were bring their special bond (and new film) to the Toronto International Film Festival, we were exxcccciiiitttteeed.

Starring in their third movie together, Gosling and Stone hit the "La La Land" red carpet on Monday and looked oh-so-cute doing so.

Advertisement

Beaming in a soft yellow Chanel mini-dress equipped with T-shirt sleeves and adorned in floral details, Stone elegantly showed off her ankle-strap heels and diamond rings as she stood next to the charming Canadian. Pushing back her signature red locks with a simple cream-coloured headband, the 27-year-old Academy Award-nominated actress wore an edgy beauty look which consisted of a dark lined eye, bold brow and nude lip.

As for Gosling, the 35-year-old kept things simple with a navy suit which was covered in tiny polka dot details. He wore a sharp, white collared shirt underneath.

And you can bet the pair were gushing about each other all night long on the red carpet. Ryan even said he likes working with Emma because he "think she's secretly Canadian" (a.k.a. she's "wildly apologetic for no reason at all").

Advertisement

This is really cute when #ryangosling and #emmastone were asked what they like about working with each other. @lalaland @enews #tiff @tiff_net A video posted by marcmalkin (@marcmalkin) on Sep 12, 2016 at 5:58pm PDT

Good ol' Emma, eh?!

"Well, you know we've made two films together, now three. And so it's great to work with people you know," Gosling said of working with Stone in an interview with E! News. "It just makes working together  I think it brings the best out of you because you know one another and you're able to you know, help each other in way that you can't if you're with strangers."

As for Stone, she kept things short and sweet saying Gosling was "great."

"He's a fantastic actor, and it's just so much fun to work with him. It's kind of all there is to it, really! It's no more exciting than that  or less exciting than that!"

Umm, BFF goals? We think so.

Advertisement

For more glamourous moments from TIFF 2016, check out the slideshow below!

TIFF 2016 Photos See Gallery
A six-year-old Brooklyn boy was treated for second-degree burns after a Samsung phone blew up in his hands on Saturday.

The boy named Kadim was playing with his grandmother's Samsung Galaxy Core Prime when the phone flared, setting off an alarm inside their home, CBS 2 reported.

Advertisement

"The cops came, the fire truck came," his grandfather John Lewis told the station.

Kadim's injuries were not serious. He was treated at Downstate Medical Center and was back at school on Monday.

But now he's too scared to play with smartphones all together, his grandmother Linda Lewis told The New York Post.

The phone model was not one of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 phones, which are being recalled after 35 devices exploded or overheated due to a battery issue.

Advertisement

It's been serious enough that Transport Canada has warned air passengers to avoid packing them in their checked luggage, and to keep them off during flights.

Samsung plans to ship new phones with working batteries, The Wall Street Journal said.

(Watch the video embedded above.)

CORRECTION: This story incorrectly stated that the phone was a Samsung Galaxy Note 7. It was, in fact, a Samsung Core Prime.

Also on HuffPost
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (left) and President Joko Widodo.

The fate of Philippine death row drug convict Mary Jane Veloso hung in the balance as Indonesia and the Philippines gave conflicting statements regarding her possible execution





Although the first visit of the gaffe-prone Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to Indonesia last week proceeded smoothly, the bilateral ties between the two nations have been put to the test following a remark by President Joko Jokowi Widodo saying that his counterpart had given the go-ahead for Velosos execution, a statement that was not only met by rebuttal from Manila, but also sparked criticism at home.





Veloso was spared execution in April last year after a woman came forward in her home country to admit that she had duped Veloso into smuggling drugs to Indonesia.





The Philippine authorities have since asked for her to testify as a witness in the ongoing trial of her alleged trafficker. Veloso was excluded from the list of convicts in a further round of executions in July.





Jokowi was quoted by Antara in Serang, Banten, on Monday as saying: President Duterte, at that time [during the bilateral meeting], said [Indonesia could] press ahead if [she is] indeed to be executed. Jokowi further said that Attorney General M. Prasetyo would follow up with the legal process to execute Veloso.





Jokowi has been widely criticized, at home and abroad, for launching a tough campaign of executing death row drug convicts. But Duterte has sparked an even greater international uproar for his much tougher stance on drug abusers and dealers.





Under his watch, extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers and abusers have taken place on a wide scale. Various media outlets have reported that more than 2,000 suspected drug abusers and dealers have been killed since Duterte launched a war on drugs after he was sworn into office on June 30.





Manila was quick to deny Jokowis claim. Philippine Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay Jr. said Duterte did not give the go-ahead for Velosos execution, but simply told the Indonesian President that he respects their judicial process and will accept whatever the final decision they arrive at regarding her case. Velosos execution, Yasay added, had been indefinitely postponed.





Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said Duterte only told Jokowi to follow your own laws and that I will not interfere, as reported by a number of media outlets in the Philippines.





Before Mondays controversy, which became a trending topic on social media both in Indonesia and the Philippines, Duterte was tight-lipped regarding Velosos fate, raising questions as to whether he would press ahead with his plan to plead with Jokowi for mercy for Veloso. Before making his trips to Jakarta and the ASEAN summit in Laos, Duterte had said he would respect Jokowis decision and Indonesias judicial system if his counterpart rejected his pleading.





Upon returning to the Philippines over the weekend, Duterte told local media that he could not divulge the details of his talks with Jokowi before speaking to the Veloso family.





Earlier, he told reporters in Jakarta immediately after the meeting with Jokowi that details from his conversation with the Indonesian President were not for public consumption.





Anis Hidayah from the NGO Migrant Care called on both Jokowi and Duterte to show compassion toward migrant workers in both countries, warning that they were prone to becoming victims of drug

cartels.





Mary Jane is only one of many cases of female migrant workers facing the death penalty for crimes they did not commit, she said. There is also Merry Utami, Anis said, referring to an Indonesian woman who was spared execution last month.





Jokowi would also face difficulties in seeking to protect the lives of Indonesian migrant workers overseas if he ignored the rights of Veloso, warned Anis.

 | 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: The Jakarta Post , Ina Parlina and Margareth S. Aritonang, September 13, 2016
In January and February of 2015, after I lost a federal byelection, I refused to get out of bed. I rarely showered, washed my hair, brushed my teeth or left the house.

In January and February of 2016 things were different. I had a job. I was the Member of Parliament for Whitby and parliamentary secretary to the prime minister for heaven's sakes. I had to get out of bed, have a shower, wash my hair and get out of the house (let alone get out of the bed).

Advertisement

It was very overwhelming. So overwhelming, in fact, that one day in late February I abruptly left a meeting I was having with my caucus colleagues, had a brief stay in an Ottawa emergency room, then left on a train, en route to Whitby.

I spent the entire train ride sobbing uncontrollably. I had makeup streaming down my face and had to use my dress to wipe my nose. I was what one would call a "hot mess!"

I had been diagnosed with depression in mid-2015, but this was different. I was spiralling out of control and I did not know what to do. I sat on the train thinking, "Will anybody help me? Does anybody see how much pain I am in?"

Advertisement

By the time I got home, I felt at a total loss. Like my life was slipping away.

A couple of phone calls later (and here I thank Don Stuss for being my "phone a friend"), I was in Sunnybrook hospital, under the alias of Lisa May, sitting for six hours beside a man who needed more help than I did, and a woman who needed more help than he did.

When I finally saw a doctor -- who clearly knew that I needed to be an in-patient -- there were no beds. Alas, the paradox of being a mental-health patient in our health-care system.

I felt like I could not get out of a deep dark hole. No matter how hard I tried, the hole either got deeper or wider, there was no getting out

The weeks and months that followed were precipitated by a series of erratic behaviours, usually involving nasty emails to colleagues, constant fights with my husband (not to mention a couple of calls to a divorce lawyer), limited time spent at social gatherings and a see-saw of medications.

Medications for mood, motivation and to help me with sleeping. Some made me gain weight, others made me nauseous, and others simply did not work.

Advertisement

My life had turned into a never-ending episode of WTFville. All I could think of was "Why now?" Why is this happening to me now? Why is my life falling apart now?

I should be on top of the world. I have a great job, husband, children and supports. Why is this happening to me? I felt like I could not get out of a deep dark hole. No matter how hard I tried, the hole either got deeper or wider, there was no getting out. I would be stuck in there forever.

And then a miracle happened... yeah right! Not exactly. No miracles. No quick fixes. However, one day, l could not get out of bed and criticized myself for being lazy. Then, when I finally thought, OK, now I can get out of bed, I was so exhausted by the self-stigmatization that I just returned to bed.

That day I remembered thinking "Celina, it's OK" -- it's OK to rest for a little while. It's OK to have bad days. It's OK to not be able to tackle everything. Celina. Honey. It's OK!

Advertisement

I smiled that day. For the first time in a long time, I felt like my depression did not own me, but that it was a part of me, and that too was OK.

Owning my depression is my therapy. Talking about it, in my opinion, gives others permission to talk about mental health as well.

Don't get me wrong, I still battled with medication and meditation and yoga and exercise and everything else they tell you to do that is supposed to make your mental health better! I battle every day, but this two word message to myself, was a reminder of my humanity, my vulnerability... and my strength.

I believe in the power of storytelling and owning your story. Owning my depression is my therapy. Talking about it, in my opinion, gives others permission to talk about mental health as well. Not everybody is able to be vulnerable and express themselves, but I am, and so, I do!

Owning your mental illness is like a gift that gives you permission to rest for a little while. It is a gift that allows you to take time to breathe. And yes, I am well aware that I will read some comments below that I do not like, as I am sure some of you reading this blog will face situations that you do not like.

Advertisement

Life is not always going to be easy. Storms will come through, and it may appear that the world is going to end. However, I want you to know, for certain, that the world will continue to spin, and that everything will be OK.

Love and hugs, Celina

Frame Of Mind is a new series inspired by The Maddie Project that focuses on teens and mental health. The series aims to raise awareness and spark a conversation by speaking directly to teens who are going through a tough time, as well as their families, teachers and community leaders. We want to ensure that teens who are struggling with mental illness get the help, support and compassion they need. If you would like to contribute a blog to this series, please email cablogteam@huffingtonpost.com

Related on HuffPost:

Frame of Mind: Youth Mental Health Issues And Suicide In Canada See Gallery

Advertisement
A degree in Canada costs $66,000, on average. Many students, parents and taxpayers are questioning the value of this investment this fall as two million students head off to Canadian universities and colleges. Is it worth it?

Focusing on formal education alone as the path to a fulfilling career and life is not only wrong, it's the root of the problem. The standalone value of the classroom has long been oversold by the system, by policymakers, by society and often by parents. When almost two-thirds of Canadian adults have a post-secondary education, that education is no longer a differentiator -- it's a commodity.

Advertisement

In spite of being university professors, we argue that whatever makes a young adult unique and interesting isn't something they learned in a textbook. The most important decisions made during these formative years have little to do with a classroom.

As former marketing professionals, we are struck by the parallel between the formative years of young adults and product design. Delivering a valuable product is rarely about a single feature (such as a degree), rather, it's about the "whole product." This whole product analogy can help young adults to view their development differently.

Consider the iPhone and the BlackBerry. The success of the iPhone is more than just its physical hardware (which is frequently matched by cheaper brands) or the sleek exterior (which you have to cover with a case if you don't want the screen to crack). The iPhone includes the iOS software, iTunes and Apple Music, the App Store, and the million-plus apps that customize your smartphone experience.

The iPhone also includes the Apple Store experience, its service and the prestige of the brand. The whole product is everything a consumer needs and expects to get when they buy the iPhone, plus the promise of everything it could become. This is where BlackBerry failed; they never recognized the value of delivering the whole product until it was too late.

Advertisement

Today, a degree or diploma is as about as unique and valuable as a smartphone with no apps. The hardware by itself, like a classroom education, is not a whole product. The knowledge students acquire in that political science, marketing or carpentry course is critical to their whole product, but the sooner they realize that it's not the whole product, the more prepared they will be when they graduate.

Young adults are wise to view their skills, attributes and experience through the lens of a product designer developing a whole product that goes beyond courses and grades. As a start, they need to ask themselves the same questions every product designer asks:

1.What whole product will you launch into the world?

2.Who is your target customer (your future employer)?

3.How many customers have you met to better understand their needs?

4.How will you be valuable to your customers?

5.How will you be different from others?

6.What evidence do you have that you actually possess the skills required?

7.How will you spend the next few years designing and building this product?

When students reflect on these questions, they start to think about the concept of "education" very differently. They come to see that their whole product -- what makes them unique and valuable -- involves skills developed not only in a classroom, but through volunteering, sports, clubs, work-terms, part-time jobs. They also recognize the risk of overvaluing the classroom and start to rebalance the time and money they invest in different dimensions of their life.

Advertisement

Asking whether college or university alone is a good investment is missing the point. Education plays a role, but it's not the education system's responsibility to develop a whole product. It's the product designer's -- the student's -- responsibility. So young adults need to take control and approach life like a product designer. They need to invest their time and money into the areas that will make them a compelling whole product. They need to recognize the value of life beyond their grades.

If they don't, they will risk ending up as valued as a BlackBerry is today.

David J. Finch is an Associate Professor at Mount Royal University. Ray DePaul is the Director of Mount Royal University's Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (and a former product manager at BlackBerry who now owns at iPhone). They are co-authors of the book Designing YOU - Life Beyond Your Grades.
By John Sinclair

The G20 Summit, the first chaired by a developing country, China, confirmed its super-star status, but was it necessary for them to overlook the red carpet for President Obama? The final group photo has been taken, but without the traditional display of host country national dress, just dull western business suits.

Leaders pose for pictures during the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China September 4, 2016. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Advertisement

No wonder they did not get around to discussing the middle-class anger at globalization seen in many developed countries, most strikingly in current US presidential politics. The photo exposes several other serious flaws: 16 add-ons for a supposed cosy discussion between 20 world leaders. There is also a serious issue with gender balance. But to re-assure Ottawa readers, it is only G20 photo-op etiquette that has newcomers like PM Trudeau placed near the back.

What did this huge event achieve? The formal answer lies in the communique, but this is nine pages and 7000 words long. Remind yourself that this was written by a drafting committee of sherpas, senior diplomatic bureaucrats, over several months of 'tough' negotiations. You will be also forgiven for thinking it reads remarkably like previous communiques: promises but limited results. The Leaders were essentially bystanders in endorsing the text. The core G20 message was that trade must be used to boost economies, hardly an earth-shattering insight from a meeting of global leaders, surrounded by finance and trade ministers.

Much of the real activity was what the diplomacy 'business' calls 'bilaterals', a sort of diplomatic speed-dating. There were inconclusive side-discussions between Russia and the US on Syria [a deal was later finalized in Geneva]. Canada was reportedly busy lobbying individual European leaders (why so many European leaders at the G20?) to try to rescue a rather shaky CETA. UK PM Terese May was busy trying to explain what ' Brexit ' might mean for already stagnating global trade as well as insecure EU citizens living in the UK.

China intended this summit be a break from the past, a substance discussion on global issues, with a focus on oft-neglected international development. This would indeed have been very timely, energizing support for Agenda 2030 and a big plus for China's leadership. However, it never seemed to happen.

Advertisement

There was just one moment of bold leadership. In a meeting full of recycled promises on managing the global economy, the Chinese President Xi and a departing U.S. President Obama jointly announced their ratification of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Sadly, nobody rose to join them. With no carbon tax consensus with the provinces, Canada was certainly not ready.

So what opportunities were missed? A key one is that for all the talk of inclusiveness, the G20 is an elitist club, blending the top western countries, a tired G7 and a new elite of developing countries essentially represented by the BRICS. The numbers were rounded up to 20 by adding a few favourites from the OECD, some other middle-income developing countries (MICs) and the two EU Commission seats.

When the talk is supposedly about tackling global issues, most obviously the UN's Agenda 2030, there should be a meaningful if modest G20 representation of the bottom billion suffering extreme poverty, logically from the least developed (LDCs) and fragile (g7+) countries. Yes, a few poorer countries are occasionally invited as guests to watch the spectacle and share the coffee breaks. But this is all tokenism.

A suggestion: ease out a couple of Europeans and replace them with one permanent full member selected from/by the LDCs and g7+. That country might change every five years, as might some of the Europeans and senior officials from multilateral organizations. They would certainly add a new dynamic to G20 discussion on refugees or tax evasion by multinational enterprises. Global development cooperation might even replace banking regulation as the top topic!

Another suggestion: that the annual G20 summit revert to being just a meeting of Leaders. A complementary parallel process would be created for all those finance ministers and central bankers to work on global financial issues without the clutter of bored presidents. When/if there is another global crisis or a key decision that they cannot resolve alone, they will delegate a small team to present the issues to the Leaders' summit. Or an enlarged Summit could be called to tackle another global crisis.

Advertisement

The newly liberated Leaders would no longer need to sneak off in an extended coffee break to discuss key political issues like the conflict in Syria or climate change or North Korean nuclear weapons. Global security and international development would become standard agenda items. Of course such issues if urgent would still be subjects for the UN Security Council. However, if systemic and longer-term, a properly inclusive G20 could play an important role.

All very complicated, but certainly more inclusive than a current process that has often yielded unrealistic, repetitive communiques. Could such institutional change could be something to explore in an extended coffee break at the 2017 G20 Summit with Germany as chair? The chairs of the g7+ and UN LDC caucus would be invited.

John Sinclair was a development practitioner with the former CIDA and World Bank. He is a member of the McLeod Group and was a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa and Associate of the former North-South Institute.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CCIC or its members.
By Bernabe Yameogo

Twenty-year-old Taty is a trans woman living in El Salvador and working in the sex trade. Fear of discrimination and harassment keep her from visiting clinics and hospitals, meaning that she is at high risk of contracting HIV, but doesn't seek care.

The Global Fund, a partnership comprised of governments, NGOs like Plan International Canada, the private sector, and the general public, is working to end the HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis epidemics by 2030. It's true that we've made great strides to combat these epidemics in recent years, but make no mistake, this is an ambitious goal. In order to #EndItForGood, we must use creative approaches and innovative partnerships to ensure that support reaches all people -- especially the most vulnerable, like Taty.

Advertisement

Identifying vulnerable populations

What does it mean to reach vulnerable populations? How do we locate them, let alone create programs that will help them to access health care? National statistics tell us that among El Salvador's general population, an estimated 0.5 per cent of people have HIV, consistent with other countries in the region. However, El Salvador's vulnerable populations experience disproportionate rates of infection, namely female sex workers (4.5 per cent) , men who have sex with men (13 per cent) , and transgender women (16 per cent).

It is sadly not uncommon for transgender women to experience abuse and harassment from health-care professionals in El Salvador.

These vulnerable populations are all at greater risk of contracting HIV because they experience increased stigma, and are often overlooked altogether. Female sex workers face dual obstacles to HIV prevention. They are often discriminated against, and face difficulty convincing clients to use protection. Sex workers often go unseen by the health-care system, both because of stigma, and because their work hours do not align with clinic hours, effectively making services inaccessible.

Men who have sex with men are similarly discriminated against when they try to access health services, but they may also struggle with the issue of self-identification. Men who have sex with men but do not identify as gay may not recognize their increased risk of infection, and may not seek out protection or testing.

Advertisement

The highest prevalence of new HIV cases is among transgender women, who are most likely to experience discrimination that will block them from accessing health services. It is sadly not uncommon for transgender women to experience abuse and harassment from health-care professionals in El Salvador. To make matters worse, transgender women often struggle to secure employment, and are more likely to pursue sex work as a way to make ends meet -- a particularly precarious situation when combined with a lack of access to health services.

An Innovative approach

With the support of the Global Fund and El Salvador's Ministry of Health, Plan International has created an innovative program that provides prevention services and early HIV-care and support services to El Salvador's most vulnerable populations. It uses mobile education units (or Unidades Moviles Educativas, in native Spanish) to bring testing and other services to the people who need them. Minivan-based mobile units are staffed with professionals, including laboratory clinicians, counselors, educators and a driver. They increase awareness of HIV and provide access to condoms and lubricants, rapid HIV testing, pre- and post-test counseling, as well as referrals to health centres and HIV-care clinics.

Much more than a simple HIV testing and condom distribution service, this program helps people to access their fundamental human right to health and dignity.

These mobile units are able to serve people who otherwise would not receive care. They identify routes where vulnerable populations are more likely to be, including bars, brothels, country borders and commercial centres. Visits are often planned outside of traditional business hours to accommodate sex workers' schedules. Perhaps most importantly, each mobile unit employs at least two educators from one of the target populations, meaning that sex workers, men who have sex with men, and transgender women are providing support to members of their own communities. This allows the mobile unit to build credibility among the people it serves, and to provide testing and support that marginalized community members can trust without fear of discrimination.

Advertisement

A step in the right direction

Since launching in 2014, this program has provided prevention tools, testing and referrals to over 20,000 vulnerable people in El Salvador. Much more than a simple HIV testing and condom distribution service, this program helps people to access their fundamental human right to health and dignity. This program has made a difference in the lives of thousands, including Taty. She likes this program because "mobile unit educators walk through the block (area of sex work) and it's easier for us to get tested and to find out if we are infected [with HIV] or not."

Let's End it. For Good.

In my decades of experience in global development, I've seen great strides in HIV/AIDS prevention. But in order to continue to make progress, we must prioritize creative programs like the Unidades Moviles Educativas . A one-size-fits-all approach to prevention is not the solution to ending the HIV epidemic. However, through innovation, creativity, and continued partnership with the Global Fund, we can help all people to access their human rights to health, and can end the HIV/AIDS epidemic for good by 2030.

Bernabe Yameogo is Director of Global Fund Programs at Plan International Canada, where he oversees the development and implementation of programs that work to contribute to ending the tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS epidemics.

This blog is part of the blog series: AIDS, TB and Malaria: It's High Time for Us to End It. For Good by the Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development (ICAD) in recognition of The Global Fund's Fifth Replenishment. The blog series runs from August 29 to October 3, 2016 and features a selection of blogs written by our member and partner organizations. Contributors share their broad range of perspectives and insight on the work of The Global Fund and the opportunity that this moment presents us one year following the inauguration of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CCIC or its members.

Advertisement

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Sam Edwards via Getty Images Frustrated woman using laptop

While "cyberviolence" has been a hot topic for the past few years, recent months have put a spotlight on the misogynistic and racist sexual violence and harassment enacted online. More than two-thirds of Canadians who report cyber crimes to the police are women, according to Statistics Canada.

We spoke with Anne Theriault and Julie S. Lalonde to learn more about media reporting on online sexual violence.

Advertisement

Anne Theriault is a Toronto-based writer and blogger who manages The Belle Jar.

Julie S. Lalonde is an Ottawa-based social justice advocate who works with various women's organizations on the issues of sexual violence prevention, community accountability and bystander intervention. You can follow her rants about the patriarchy, Canadian politics and classic cars @JulieSLalonde.

Interviewer: What are the challenges you have seen in mainstream media reporting on sexual violence, including online sexual harassment and violence?

Julie: "The media is the number one education [source] on sexual violence. Even though I am a public educator, I don't have the same reach or credibility. When the media reports with what they call an 'unbiased point of view,' they insidiously teach that sexual assault [against women and] girls is inflated, that innocent men are being prosecuted, and that women claim sexual violence to get back at and get money out of men."

Anne: "The media... uses language that minimizes sexual assault and rape. There was a story about an assailant giving 'unwanted kisses,' [not] 'he was assaulting women.' Don't make it sound like he was being romantic. The language we use needs to change. We need to centre survivors rather than centre the accused."

Advertisement

Interviewer: How have seen feminists online creating consent culture?

Julie: "Feminists have taken over Twitter about rapes that have been reported and [started hashtags like] #SolidarityisforWhiteWomen and #AmINext. [Twitter] is a major tool of the Men's Rights Advocates backlash. No one that creates a hashtag is naive about the consequences of doing so. So it's powerful for people to do that.

"We tweeted at news sources to say 'Actually, he was sexually assaulting young women, that's the way it should be framed.' In some cases, the media changed the headline as a result."

Anne: "The proliferation of trigger warnings contributes to consent culture. Something that seems small and trivial to someone, for others really lets them get a sense of what they are about to read."

Interviewer: Often survivors are portrayed as white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied women. How can the media avoid minimizing stories about sexual violence against survivors that don't fit this narrative?

Anne: "Something that's been pervasive is infantilizing white women and making young women of color seem like adults who can consent to sex, when they are actually teenagers. When the media talks about young women of colour, especially young black girls, they make it sound like they're adults and able to consent. [We need to] increase reporting on assaults against women of colour and trans women and splash that over the media... Where's the galvanizing moment for trans women of colour? Why don't we care? People are not reporting it on their front page."

Advertisement

Julie: "To solve that problem, it's about who is in your production meeting. I've been to those meetings, and they are very white and 'dudely'... If you are doing a story about Indigenous women, who is leading it? Who's on the production side to frame it?"

Interviewer: Statistics show most survivors do not report. Why is it important to have diverse representations of survivorship in media reporting?

Anne: "The risk women run by reporting, even anonymously, is so high -- socially, economically and emotionally. We need to challenge the idea that a good survivor reports and a bad survivor doesn't. Instead of criticizing survivors for whether or not they report, let's look at our system that only convicts a tiny percentage of reports."

Julie: "Media [always ask] 'do you know survivors that want to talk to us?' Survivors should have a voice if they want, but I am cautious of the way media loves the first-person survivor story, how dangerous and exploitative it can be. Survivors don't have much ownership over their story. I've had that conversation with journalists; the motivation is 'I want gory details,' 'I want a picture of a crying woman.'"

Anne: "The media wants to talk to one type of survivor. They might talk to someone and scrap the story if it's not sellable. It's traumatic to survivors to hear, 'I don't know if that's going to get viewers, sorry.'"

Advertisement

"There are many reasons why women don't report, and it doesn't make those women at fault if the rapist does it again. That is such a disgusting and pervasive idea... It's not a survivor's job to make sure her rapist is brought to justice."

Interviewer: There has been a swell in media coverage of rape culture in recent months. What conversations are you glad to see happening, and what do we still need to address?

Anne: "I would love to see sites with [sexual assault] reports protect the people speaking out, watch the comments [section] for threats, and keep an eye on their Twitter. A lot of sites throw on an article and walk away; meanwhile, the person the article is about, or the writer, is left to deal with horrible threats."

Julie: "There's no need for a comments section 90 per cent of the time... It's such a simple solution. The fact that it's not being done tells you they don't care."

Anne: "Something I wish would never happen again in the media is when they invite someone to 'have a discussion' and invite someone with the opposite viewpoint to be a 'Devil's advocate.' When I hear 'there are both sides of the story,' [I think,] it's going to be me and a rapist? Cool, I am debating a rapist, so we can expose 'both sides' of the story."

Advertisement

This blog is part of a series of interviews femifesto is publishing on media reporting and sexual violence in diverse communities across Canada.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST:
Anthony Asael/Art in All of Us via Getty Images

By Monica Geingos, First Lady of the Republic of Namibia

In many parts of Africa, there are women who have no way of negotiating the choice, or use, of contraceptives with a partner. There are women in relationships who have no option of refusing sex, nor the power to require use of a condom. While HIV infections among the general population of eastern and southern Africa have been plummeting, it has resurfaced and started to grow among adolescent girls and young women.

Advertisement

It is clear that sufficient effort has been placed in effective strategies to reduce the raging HIV epidemic of a decade ago but not enough effort has been placed in combatting the problematic attitudes which deny women control over their own bodies.

The heavy burden of patriarchy is the biggest driver of this epidemic. Oppression of women and appropriation of their sexual reproduction processes by men has meant that as we press forward with efforts to end HIV as an epidemic, adolescent girls and young women in their reproductive age have been left way behind.

As a continent, Africa has come a long way, with remarkable economic growth and remarkable progress against diseases. We however still have a long way in ensuring that adolescent girls and young women are part of this progress.

The numbers are stark. There are now about 380,000 new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women a year. That means more than 7,000 young women and girls are getting infected with HIV every week. Southern Africa, where I come from, is the epicenter of this epidemic.

Advertisement

We must do more for our young women and girls. We are not going to win this new battle with old approaches and attitudes. We have to be innovative. First, we have to invest vigorously in education for girls. Evidence shows that keeping girls in school not only raises a girl's standard of living and empowers her to be more independent, it also improves prevention from getting HIV. A study conducted in Botswana last year showed that every additional year of schooling among young people was associated with an eight percent reduction in the risk of HIV infection.

Education also helps our girls confront patriarchy and related vices, which continue to impact negatively on young girls and women. As a woman who grew up in southern Africa, as a mother of an adolescent girl and a young woman, and as a First Lady, I am excited to work with the Global Fund partnership, which is working hard to end this epidemic among adolescent girls and young women.

The Global Fund is investing strongly in improving the health of women and girls, by advancing gender equality and supporting programs that can build resilience and independence among young women and girls. The Global Fund's plan to contribute to keeping adolescent girls and young women in school and HIV-free is encouraging. The approach has the potential to create a critical mass of healthy, educated and financially independent women who get married later and have children, if they want to, and when they want to.

To achieve this goal, among others, the Global Fund is holding a replenishment conference on September 16-17, in Montreal, Canada. To be hosted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the meeting will seek to raise US$13 billion for the Global Fund's next three-year cycle of funding. In addition to saving millions of lives and averting hundreds of millions of new infections, that investment will lay the groundwork for potential economic gains of up to US$290 billion in the years ahead.

With sufficient domestic and international investments in health and other social programs that affect women's health, we can move ahead in laying a foundation for transformation of the lives of Africa's women and girls.

Advertisement

As an active member of the Organisation of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS, I hope to rally women and men in my country and in the region, around standing up for young women and girls. I invite other women and men in Africa to take up this challenge with us. Our countries will benefit more when we can establish strong programmes for women and girls. Educated and empowered women will raise children who have the power to seize opportunities, prevent diseases and live successfully.

Monica Geingos is an entrepreneur, lawyer, and First Lady of the Republic of Namibia since 2015.

This blog is part of the blog series: AIDS, TB and Malaria: It's High Time for Us to End It. For Good by the Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development (ICAD) in recognition of The Global Fund's Fifth Replenishment. The blog series runs from August 29 to October 3, 2016 and features a selection of blogs written by our member and partner organizations. Contributors share their broad range of perspectives and insight on the work of The Global Fund and the opportunity that this moment presents us one year following the inauguration of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog series are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of ICAD.
Lucas Oleniuk via Getty Images TORONTO, ON - MARCH 26: Premier Kathleen Wynne responds to breach of trust allegations made by Tim Hudak at Queen's Park Thursday evening. March 26, 2014. (Lucas Oleniuk/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

The Ontario Liberals should never have added the provincial portion of the HST to hydro bills in 2010, and a temporary rebate to bring down hydro bills is not the answer for today, either.

Instead of continuing to manage our electric grid and economy based on the political fortunes of the corrupt Ontario Liberal Party, it is time for the government to get real about doing the right thing for a change.

Advertisement

When then-Minister of Energy and Infrastructure George Smitherman defended the Green Energy Act at the legislative committee reviewing the bill, on April 8, 2009, he said:

He was completely and totally wrong.

The Ontario Liberals decided to make matters worse when they chose to add the provincial portion of the HST to hydro bills -- something the province did not feel it was appropriate to charge when we had PST. They defended this while exempting the provincial portion of HST from your morning Tim Hortons in an effort to quell unrest.

In 2010, the Liberals decided to help buy the next two elections by offering a 10 per cent Ontario Clean Energy Benefit rebate for five years at a cost of another $1.1 billion dollars per year.

Advertisement

Two elections later and a majority in hand, Kathleen Wynne's Liberals let that rebate expire as planned.

Wynne is less popular than McGuinty was when he quit in disgrace during the notorious gas plant scandal. Yet she's chosen to try to change the channel by throwing all business before the Ontario Legislature out the door, and invited the Lieutenant Governor to deliver a Throne Speech that had about as much substance as you would expect from a plan hatched less than a week before being delivered.

Finally, the premier has realized that hydro rates are driving voters away in the stronghold ridings she needs to hang on to if she is to stay in power, and that it's time that something is done about it.

Instead of doing the right thing and doing what Dwight Duncan should have done in 2010 -- remove the provincial portion of the HST from hydro bills -- the government is offering another temporary rebate.

Ontarians have to stop letting their government play them like fools.

If Ontarians want the government to truly clean up their green energy follies, it is time for Ontario voters to become Energy Voters and demand the provincial portion of the HST be permanently removed from hydro bills in this province, once and for all.

Advertisement

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST:
Fly_dragonfly via Getty Images Two young people together planning trip to Europe. Top view. empty white space in notebook where you can place your text or advertisement. Romantic travel

I just got back from a splendid 14-day European vacation with my family. We were on a 10-day cruise in the Mediterranean and spent four days on land in Barcelona and Rome.

I prepared for this trip months before, but not in the way I should have. With the recent bombings and terrorist activity in the countries I was about to visit, it seemed we couldn't go a month without an attack in Europe making headlines in Canada. This put me and my husband on high tourist safety alert.

Advertisement

As a result, we didn't do any online research the way we should have; like looking up the best beaches to visit in Nice or Antibes, or how to get into Gaudi's famed temple the Sagrada Familia (which we didn't get into by the way because we didn't buy a ticket online!) Instead, we became paranoid, neurotic, newbie travellers prepping for a trip. We researched ad nauseam how not to get pickpocketed, areas to avoid and how not to get ripped off in taxis.

Oh, it gets better. One week before our trip, I took out our wills. This is the first time I even looked at our will when we drafted them almost 15 years ago. I called our lawyer and told him we were changing executor status. Then called my mom to tell her where the wills would be placed; in a manila envelope, clearly marked, on our bedroom commode so she can easily find it. I left the phone number to our executors and lawyer so she would know exactly who to call in case we didn't make it back home.

My mom and I talked at length the day before our trip. Oddly, she wasn't wishing me a wonderful trip, but rather cautioning me of dangers abroad and how to stay out of trouble. We said goodbye on the phone as if it was the last time we would ever speak again.

All that research was a complete waste of time.

Next, my husband and I went on a shopping excursion to a number of luggage stores looking to buy concealed money pouches. Yup, we painstakingly tried on about 10 different variations of money belts and wallets. I felt like I was strapping on a system under my shirt to smuggle in hashish. We found smooth lined satchels that could easily fit gold bouillon without bulging from our belly. Clearly, a few euros and an American Express card would have no problem squeezing in nicely. I had the strangest urge to watch the movie Midnight Express when I got home. Strange?

Advertisement

Our last bit of insightful and totally useless preparation for our European extravaganza was conducting thorough YouTube searches on how professional swindlers in Europe scam tourists and their ingenious methods of pickpocketing. We spent two consecutive evenings watching videos of grainy footage of women with babies as props, taking wallets in crowded subways. We even allowed our 15-year-old daughter watch the videos so she could be prepared and she doesn't even own a wallet! And now she is frightened for life. Sorry darling. We made mental notes on what to watch out for and vowed never to take public transit abroad.

Well, what can I say. All that research was a complete waste of time. Absolutely nothing went wrong on our trip. No one swindled us, held us hostage, pickpocketed us nor did we find ourselves in a threatening situation. And I don't think we used those ridiculous money wallets once on our trip.

What we saw, felt and experienced in Europe was nothing short of sublime beauty, exceptional service and hospitality from hotels and restaurants, and a friendly welcome from all the locals in every city we visited. Our family walked in dark alleyways, took public transit, hailed down cabs late at night and I even left my purse dangling from my chair in an outdoor cafe. Shocking! There were no signs of any threats and we felt safe, secure and most of all, welcomed.

Sure we saw armed military guards clutching onto machine guns in subways, patrolling crowded tourist attractions and even perched outside cathedrals and basilicas, but their presence felt like a protective blanket. It was a good thing to see. We visited every major tourist attraction in Cannes, Rome and Nice, and not once did we fear impending doom. We created our own anxiety for nothing.

I researched our trip to Europe in all the wrong ways. I allowed splashy headlines and online fear mongers influence my planning and decision making. We should have better informed ourselves, rather than have made choices based on 'worst case' scenarios.

Advertisement

Planning a vacation to Europe soon? Take it from me, look up things to do and where to eat, not what to fear. You'll have a better time. Trust me.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook
Manuel Gutjahr via Getty Images

"Big things have small beginnings."

A prescient quote from a great film (Lawrence of Arabia, in case you were wondering) that evokes so much of what #BeCrueltyFree Canada has been fighting for so hard over these past three years. And as the campaign to end cosmetic animal testing and trade nears a pivotal threshold, we are reaching out to Canadians to join us in a #DayofAction on September 13 to remind decision-makers in Ottawa exactly what's at stake for countless animals.

#BeCrueltyFree Canada, run by Humane Society International/Canada and Animal Alliance of Canada, is part of the largest campaign in the world to end animal testing for cosmetics. Sadly, cosmetic animal testing remains legal in approximately 80 per cent of countries worldwide, Canada included. Shocking, isn't it?

Advertisement

Rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, hamsters and rats are made to suffer in archaic chemical poisoning tests all in the name of beauty. Common tests include chemicals dripped into their eyes; skin irritation tests, and oral toxicity tests where mega-doses are force-fed into an animal's stomach to observe signs of poisoning.

To add insult to injury, all of these tests are wholly unnecessary thanks to long-established ingredients with histories of safe use and an ever-growing array of modern, validated non-animal alternative test methods. Add to that the fact that animal testing for cosmetics is unreliable with well-known scientific weaknesses, and the decision of whether or not to ban the practice seems like a no-brainer.

But we're not there yet. Currently The Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act (S-214) is in the Senate for final examination in the fall before moving on to the House of Commons, where it will go through a similar process. This is a critical stage in the campaign, and your support is more important than ever. And so we're calling on all Canadians to join us this Tuesday, September 13, for a #DayofAction to end cruel cosmetics animal testing and help make Canada the next country to #BeCrueltyFree!

There are many ways to support and help get the word out:

Join the more than 100,000 Canadians who have signed our petition at becrueltyfree.ca calling for Members of Parliament to get behind the Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act;

Follow us on Twitter (@HSI_Canada), as well as our end animal testing Facebook page;

Share our posts on September 13 -- look for the hashtags #BeCrueltyFree and #DayofAction;

Read and share our blog posts, which will be posted on social media;

Follow our celebrity supporters on Twitter who are also supporting the campaign : Bif Naked: @BifNaked / Lauren Toyota: @LaurenToyota / Phoebe Dykstra: @PhoebeDykstra).

Check out our corporate partners leading the way in cruelty-free beauty products!

This campaign started small, but thanks to people who care, it's grown into a movement that cannot be ignored. A whopping 81 per cent of Canadians support a national ban on animal testing of cosmetics and their ingredients, while new testing methods such as 3D skin models are ensuring that these animals will never have to suffer again in the name of shampoo or lipstick. It's a big issue whose time has come -- on September 13, let's speak with one voice; let's speak for those who cannot speak, and show the world that Canada can #BeCrueltyFree.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Around the world, nearly 50 million children have been uprooted -- 28 million of them driven from their homes by conflicts not of their making, and millions more migrating in the hope of finding a better, safer life.

Often traumatized by the conflicts and violence they are fleeing, they face further dangers along the way, including the risk of drowning on sea crossings, malnourishment and dehydration, trafficking, kidnapping, and rape. In countries they travel through and at their destinations, they often face xenophobia and discrimination.

Meet five children who have been caught in circumstances beyond their control and who are paying the price for wars not of their making.

Advertisement

1. Nyayjaw, 8, South Sudan

In South Sudan, Nyayjaw, 8, kisses her baby sister, Nyagua, whom she just met for the first time after being reunited with her mother. For two years, the family was separated by conflict. Nyayjaw and her brother Chuol, 4, had been living with their elderly grandfather in the Bor Protection of Civilians site. "I will never allow us to be apart again," said their mother Nyaruon after their tearful reunion in Akobo, their hometown. Then came the added joy, the introduction of the children to their newborn baby sister, Nyagua, whom they had never met before.

2. Elias Jameel Abdullah Mohammed Moqbil Alhakimi, 14, Yemen

Elias Jameel Abdullah Mohammed Moqbil Alhakimi, lives in Yemen at the Tharawan Camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the outskirts of Sana'a. "I want peace and safety and school. We need hospitals, the good food and the good water. I just want everything to become like before," he said. By August 11, 2016, more than 2.8 million IDPs had fled their homes in Yemen due to ongoing conflict.

Advertisement

3) Lato, 2, Libya

Addis walks hand-in-hand with his 30-month-old son, Lato, in the yard at the Alguaiha detention centre in the coastal town of Garabulli, Libya. The detention facility houses illegal migrants apprehended while attempting the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. Foreigners without legal immigration status in the country can be arrested and can spend up to 12 months in a detention centre, where conditions are poor at best, with inadequate medical care, insufficient relief items, and without proper ventilation and sanitation.

Addis, from Eritrea, is now a single parent. He and his wife decided to leave their homeland right after Lato was born. The family spent two years in Sudan, where Addis worked as a driver. His wife died during the journey by truck between Sudan and Libya. He buried her under the sand with the help of another man making the crossing. "Now I am here in this detention centre because, as we were only 200 kilometres from Tripoli, the police caught us at a check point. My dream is still to join my brother in Tripoli and offer a better life to my son."

4) Zenabou, 7, Niger

Zenabou, 7, has lived at a site for displaced civilians in Diffa, Niger for eight months. Her father said, "We fled our village after Boko Haram attacked. Some of our family were killed; my parents were injured. We were farmers there growing corn and beans plus we had a small stall. It's difficult to make a living here...Now I sometimes have work unloading cargo from trucks that arrive at the main station, I earn about 400 francs per day (less than one dollar). When we have news that the situation has stabilized back home, we will return, but for now, we will stay here."

Advertisement

5) Shaimae Drazeni, 15, Syria

Shaimae Drazeni, 15, from Syria, prepares to pass through a transit center in Europe. "I am here as a Syrian refugee and going to Germany to put an end to the agony and the pain. To put an end to the oppression, the humiliation in which we lived. Enough...enough pain, enough oppression. There is no more joy in our hearts...Everything is gone; our country is gone; everything dear to us is going. My hope is to just go back to my country. My hope is go back to Syria; to live in our home. I hope that things will go back to normal, that the joy will find its way back to our family; that our loved ones will return and that our relatives will go back to where they were before; to go back to our schools. This is my only hope."

To read UNICEF's groundbreaking new report, Uprooted: The growing crisis for refugee and migrant children, click here.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Pope Francis

LINCOLN, NE  Dan Parsons, former special assistant to the Nebraska Attorney General, and communications director for Retain a Just Nebraska, the ballot committee advocating against bringing back the death penalty, said today the pro-death penalty campaign is distorting the Catholic Church's position.





Bob Evnen, co-founder of Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, told an audience at Northeast Community College in Norfolk earlier this year, that the Catholic Church is not opposed to the death penalty.





In a story aired statewide today on Nebraska Public Radio, as part of a NET News project Classroom Conversations: Nebraskas Death Penalty Vote, Evnen had the following exchange with Parsons:





Parsons noted the Catholic church is against the death penalty (and) you rarely see Catholic bishops take a strong stand on a moral issue like this other than maybe abortion.





Evnen disagreed with Parsons assessment. I don't think that the Catholic church is opposed to the death penalty.





Evnen noted what while he, like Parsons, is not Catholic either, he has read of archbishops declaring the death penalty is fundamental to the observance of the sixth commandment, which is thou shalt not murder.





Parsons noted that all three Nebraska Bishops have signed a statement encouraging support for ending the death penalty in Nebraska as well as the last three Popes.





The Catholic bishops of Nebraska invite all people of goodwill to join them in their continued opposition to the death penalty.





Justice requires punishment, but it does not require that those who have committed serious crimes be put to death. The death penalty does not provide rehabilitation to convicted criminals. There is no clear evidence that executions deter crime. Racial minorities and the poor are disproportionately sentenced to death, often as a consequence of racial bias or inadequate defense due to an inability to pay for better representation. Other means are available to punish criminals and to protect society that are more respectful of human life.





For the Catholic community, this issue  like all life issues  involves more than public policy. It involves our faith and the central principle that human life is sacred. Reflection on the God-given dignity of every human person should guide all our decisions about life, including refraining from the use of the death penalty. This is the message Nebraskas three bishops will take to the states 375,000 Catholics in the coming year to encourage support for upholding the prohibition of the death penalty.





Most Rev. George J. Lucas, Archbishop of Omaha

Most Rev. James D. Conley, Bishop of Lincoln

Most Rev. Joseph G. Hanefeldt, Bishop Grand Island





Earlier this year, Pope Francis reiterated his commitment to ending the death penalty.





"The commandment You shall not kill, has absolute value and applies to both the innocent and the guilty.





Pope Francis noted that while historically the Catholic Church allowed for the death penalty in extreme cases when it was necessary to protect society, the teaching has been evolving since St. John Paul II. With modern prisons and law enforcement, the last three Pontiffs have supported efforts to end the death penalty.





Appealing to the importance of Christian grace and redemption, Pope Francis stated,





In effect, modern societies have the possibility to efficiently repress crime without taking away definitely the possibility to redeem oneself from those who committed.





The Popes view is in sync with statements the Nebraska Catholic Bishops have made about Nebraskas death penalty. Last spring, before the Unicameral voted overwhelmingly to end Nebraska's death penalty, the Nebraska Bishops issued a statement that read in part:





The death penalty is not necessary in Nebraska. The purposes of a criminal justice system are rehabilitation, deterrence, public safety, and the restoration of justice. The death penalty does not provide rehabilitation to convicted criminals. There is no clear evidence that executions deter crime. Public safety can be assured through other means. And justice requires punishment, but it does not require that those who have committed capital crimes be put to death.





Source: Retain a Just Nebraska, September 12, 2016. Retain a Just Nebraska is a public education campaign to urge the retention of LB 268, the Nebraska Legislatures vote to end the death penalty. Supporters include fiscal conservatives, law enforcement officials, faith leaders, murder victims families, and Nebraskans from all walks of life. It is a statewide coalition conducting public education on the smart alternative of life in prison without parole, which protects society without the many problems of our death penalty system.

 | 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!
The five things you need to know about David Cameron on Tuesday, September 13, 2016

1) DO, DO, DO, TA-TA DA DA

In the end, nothing in his political life became him like the leaving it. After the Shakespearean drama of his rapid fall from grace, David Camerons announcement of his resignation from Parliament yesterday was utterly, unquestionably Cameroonian.

Advertisement

The former Prime Minister summoned a TV camera and journalist for one final photo-opp, in front of St Marys Church in Witney, to break the news to the nation. Keen to get across the optics of his love of his constituency, he told the ITV crew (a final poke in the eye for the BBC) what a sad day it was. Just moments earlier, he had phoned Theresa May to inform her of his decision.

His words, as well as the carefully-managed clip, were straight out of the Cameron playbook. He talked about this country that I love so much and declared its the right thing to do (several YouTube videos have pieced together his DoTheRightThing verbal tic). All that was missing was the final, abrupt turn on his heel that often accompanied his pooled TV clips.

But yet again, the man who made party re-branding and media image a key part of his Tory leadership and premiership faced accusations that he really wasnt giving us the whole picture. The former PR chief who arrived on the political scene in a blaze of husky-hugging attention - only to later dismiss the environment as green crap - had his sincerity doubted once more. If he loved his country so much, why was he abandoning his constituents? If it was the right thing to do, why had he waited until now?

Cameron was typically polished and fluent with his answers, but his critics felt they were typically empty too. Many years ago, one of his Tory colleagues told me: Dave believes in one thing and one thing only: becoming Prime Minister. His allies say thats too harsh and his band of loyalists could yet prove they really do believe in some core moderniser beliefs (like not returning to grammar schools).

Advertisement

However, it was Camerons infamous hum, caught on mic in Downing Street the day he announced Theresa May would succeed him, that perhaps sums up the divisions that will endure over his legacy. That do, do, do was seen by friends as an endearing Winnie-the-Pooh like moment. Others saw it as final proof of a reckless nonchalance about the state hed left the country in.

2) A BLIGHTER, NOT A QUITTER

Brits dont quit. That was Camerons catchphrase during an EU referendum campaign that ended in such spectacular failure. Yet here he was, er, quitting.

In one LOL moment (thats laugh-out-loud, not lots of love, as he once thought he was texting Rebekah Brooks), he actually told ITVs Chris Ship: I'm sure I will be remembered for keeping that pledge to hold a referendum when many people thought that promise would never be kept. No Dave, youll be remembered for - as Ken Clarke put it - accidentally pulling the UK out of the European Union.

And throughout the campaign, Cameron had no real answer when asked why, if Brexit was such an existential danger to Britain - with threats of recession ruining all his work on the economy and even serried rows of white headstones in new war cemeteries - hed called a referendum in the first place.

In reality, Cameron is smart enough to know that few politicians get to write their own political obituary. Yet he may look back ruefully at his 2013 Bloomberg speech when, with UKIP snapping at his heels, he finally caved to pressure from his backbenches to pledge an EU referendum. UKIP ended the 2015 general election with one seat but a much, much bigger prize.

Advertisement

The former PMs announcement yesterday also had the ignominy of sounding like one, final, broken promise. At his final PMQs, before all that applause, he told MPs: I will watch these exchanges from the back benches. Technically, he kept his promise: he watched just once, to see Theresa May debate Trident (though became distracted and was spotted tapping into his smartphone).

When asked by his local radio station if hed stand again in 2020, he replied: That is very much my intention. On his final foreign trip to a Nato summit in Poland, Cameron told reporters it was his intention to continue serving.

It may well be that he had indeed intended to stay on a bit longer, not least because the ex-PM made such a fuss over getting a big new Commons office this summer, booting out some unhappy Welsh Nat MPs to make room for his large suite of rooms. But, as with Brexit itself, hed not really prepared properly for his sudden Leadsom-inspired departure.

Word is that it was on holiday that he finally realised it was better to go quickly. His 50th birthday looms large too, due on October 9, and deeper thoughts of what next were stirred by the party arrangements.

3) CRAMMER SCHOOL BOY

Camerons friends point out that he got some big calls right: opting to go in to Coalition was a masterstroke that killed off the Lib Dems while allowing him to inject Tory stability to the economy. Winning the general election in 2015, even against a weak opponent like Ed Miliband, gave the Conservatives their first outright majority for 23 years - and a springboard for an even bigger one in 2020.

Advertisement

At times, he made being PM look easy. Cameron was often across his brief at PMQs, and statesmanlike for big events like Bloody Sunday and Hillsborough. Yet he couldnt shake of the tag of being an essay crisis Prime Minister, a politician fixed on tactics rather than strategy. As a boy, hed crammed for his O-levels and A-levels and it worked, and at Oxford he pulled off a first to the surprise of some who felt hed left it too late.

The EU referendum, unleashing as it did long pent-up forces of discontent in northern Britain, was a case in point. In a typical flash of arrogance/confidence/self-delusion (delete, according to your view), Cameron told fellow EU leaders at a summit dinner last December: Ill win this, Im a winner.

Boriss face the morning after the EU result made Brexit look like a column that had gone wrong. Cameron too faces the criticism that for all his talk of public service, his career was all one big PPE game theory tutorial gone wrong.

Now, Cameron says he doesn't want to be a 'distraction' from the new PM. He's right of course that (as David Miliband realised) every word and vote and gesture will be interpreted as a comment on his successor. His downbeat summary of the new grammars kinda proved that point yesterday. Still, some MPs scent him only hastily realising what he should have realised the day Leadsom imploded.

BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR..

Watch Cameron's farewell clip in full

4) HEIR TO BLAIR?

Unlike Cameron, Tony Blair had ample chance to plan his own departure and I remember he even sorted a legacy tour of the nation before his handover to Gordon Brown. But like his predecessor, Cameron surrounded himself with a tight-knit band of followers and was accused of cronyism.

Advertisement

A recent YouGov poll found that Cameron was the most popular prime minister since Margaret Thatcher. His good or great prime minister rating was 32% compared to Blairs 20%. Yet Cameron has trashed his own brand in the last few months, sorting payoffs and gongs for his staff in another crammers rush before leaving office. Bumper pay rises and his resignation honours list contrasted starkly with the mantras about austerity Britain cutting the cost of politics.

On that final flight to Nato - his only trip on his new plane (the Blair Force One that Blair never had) - he was asked if he would "do a Blair and make some money". He ducked the question, saying only that such decisions would "come a bit later".

But although he probably wont be as obvious as Blair, Cameron may follow John Majors lead in making money from a book, speech-making and a lucrative post on a company board. Outside Parliament - and its expected he will only take a knighthood, not a peerage - Cameron will be free of declaring any details publicly.

Samantha Cameron will of course have played a big part in Dave's decision making, keen as she was to give their children a life outside the 'gilded cage' of No10. There's talk she may want to launch her own fashion label business.

When asked by ITV about his political plans, he said nothing had been sorted but he did want to continue campaigning. Just as Blair has sports, the Middle East and inter-faith issues on his agenda, and Gordon Brown is UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Cameron could pick one or two key policy areas. International aid, having embedded the UKs commitment to 0.7% GDP on development, could be a theme. Gay rights and the voluntary sector are other possible themes.

Advertisement

5) D-EXIT

it would be a delicious irony for many Brexiteers if arch Eurosceptic MEP Dan Hannan, having made himself redundant, was plucked as Camerons successor. Hannan has wowed the local association in the past.

The Times today chucks another name into the frame: Ian Hudspeth, the Oxfordshire County Council leader who once attacked Cameron for Government cuts to local services. Ruth Davidson has ruled herself out and so too has Osbornes former aide Rupert Harrison (though hes one to watch in 2020). After Douglas Hurd, Shaun Woodward and Cameron, Witney likes to pick a rising star.

The date for the by-election has not yet been set, but Labour could use the opportunity to hold its own delayed by-election in Batley and Spen on the same day. The Labour selection for the Yorkshire seat vacated after the death of Jo Cox will be handled by the NEC and, like all by-elections wont feature an all-women shortlist, though women will be strongly encouraged to apply.

The NEC agreed a timetable yesterday and applications have to be in by this Friday. The overnight boundary changes raise the possibility of a comeback for Ed Balls. His old seat of Morley would be merged with Batley in 2018 to make a safe Labour constituency. If he won Batley and Spen, under party rules he would automatically be entitled to run for the new seat too.

Balls is distracted by Strictly right now, but you never know. The former Chancellor may lick his lips at the symmetry of a return to the Commons - just as his old foe D-exits after Brexit.

Advertisement

If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox.
It seems a strange decision for any country, let alone all, to sign up to a global commitment they know they will never reach. End Hunger? Eradicate poverty? Are these lofty goals really possible? In the next 15 years? Exactly how will countries get every boy and girl to complete primary and secondary education by 2030 when 263 million are out of school and international aid for education is on the decline?

Why indeed did countries willingly sign up to such ambitious commitments in the new global development agenda? And why does civil society applaud the new agenda, while knowing rationally and in their heart of hearts that it will likely never be achieved?

First, let's lay down a few facts. Taking education as a case study, how far off track are we?

The latest Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, Education for people and planet, shows that, if current trends continue, the world won't achieve universal primary and secondary education until 2084 - fifty four years after the 2030 deadline written into the Sustainable Development Goals.

Advertisement

Supporters might say that the commitment to this target will surely bring new energy and greater speed in progress, but will that faster speed really be able to catch up on 54 years by the deadline in 2030? Even if the richest countries in the world went at the fastest rate of progress they'd ever managed in the past, the Report shows that one in ten of them wouldn't achieve universal secondary completion by 2030. And that's before even talking about the enormous challenges facing sub-Saharan Africa, which is projected to achieve universal secondary only by 2099.

Why then did countries adopt this implausible education agenda, you might ask? What on earth is the point of willingly signing up so that civil society can disseminate dire annual reports holding countries accountable for their commitments?

In fact, although global aspirations of universalizing any service may seem far-fetched, they matter for setting a clear vision. The GEM report shows that, among multiple other benefits, if the poorest had the same education levels as the richest, it would reduce the disparity between those in working poverty and those not by 40%. It is also possible that calling for anything less than a universal agenda would have been giving away carte blanche to ignore the acute needs of the most marginalized.

It is relevant here to look at the way commitments to past global goals have effectively 'bent' the curve upwards and helped facilitate new rates of progress. In the five years after the goal of universal primary education was set in 2000, for example, numbers of out-of-school children dropped by 30 million, compared to a drop of fewer than three million in five years running up to today. Yes, it may seem daunting for the five countries in sub-Saharan Africa still likely to be less than half way to achieving universal primary completion in 2030. But it is feasible that the new agenda will contribute to never-before seen change.

Advertisement

Surely no one will really complain if, although we shoot for the stars, we end up landing on the moon. Here we should refer back to the last fifteen years during which only one in three countries achieved their global education goals, yet fighting to do so saw 50 million more children access schools for the first time. Hardly something to regret.

In short, not achieving each education target in its entirety shouldn't be passed off as failure. The new GEM Report shows that even modest progress in education over the next fifteen years would have huge consequences for many other areas of development. If education progress stalled, taking with it improvements in community preparedness, deaths due to natural disasters would increase by 20% per decade.

Meanwhile, if we somehow managed to universalize secondary education by 2030, we would lift 60 million more people out of poverty. Just educating women to lower secondary level in sub-Saharan Africa would prevent 3.5 million child deaths between 2050-60. If that's not motivating, I'm not sure what is.

But these breakthroughs require a break with business as usual. Collectively we need to ramp up progress on a scale never seen before if we're to have any chance of achieving them. And that will require innovation, new partnerships and new ways of working.

One obvious new approach to take is to work across sectors, bringing people seeking solutions to health, education and gender issues around a table to identify known solutions to shared concerns. It is no coincidence that the same people not accessing schools, also face hurdles gaining access to health services, clean water and modern energy. That ministries focusing on those issues should be working together goes without saying; the challenge now is for them to develop and implement integrated plans in practice.

Advertisement

Similarly, we can't expect that we're going to save our planet for tomorrow by pinning all our hopes on children only enrolling in school now. We have to think about learning as something that carries on through our life: companies need to take responsibility for training their staff in environmental practices; communities need to work with schools and create platforms for discussion about how environmental problems and stubborn inequalities can be fixed. Only by focusing on youth and adults can we make inroads towards the sustainable futures we need.

Lastly, new ways of finding and securing funds need to be prioritized. Tax evasion, by corporations and the wealthy, significantly reduces funds for education and should be stamped out. Increasing and making better use of domestic resources are critical, and require greater capacity at national and local levels. And the international community of donors must break with tradition and allocate aid according to real need.
Getty

Alan Mak with staff at Dream 3D, a 3D printer business in Havant

Around 250 years ago Britain led the First Industrial Revolution as engines and factories powered by coal and steam changed the world's economic landscape. Britain's manufactured goods were exported around the world, fuelling the nation's economic growth at home and establishing our reputation as innovators abroad.

Advertisement

Last Thursday afternoon, amidst news of Brexit and grammar schools, the Government made a bold commitment that will secure Britain's economic future for the century ahead. Jesse Norman, the Business Minister, committed Britain to being at the "forefront" of the new Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the unprecedented, fusion of digital, physical and biological technologies, which is being catalysed by artificial intelligence (AI), mass-automation and hyper-connectivity.

Technological breakthroughs that have yielded new products, from advanced robots to driverless cars and 3D printers, have already captured the public's imagination. The Minister predicted that technologies such as these will lead to "dramatic transformations in the landscape of our industry and commerce" so we must act now to ensure that our political, business, and economic structures adapt to the 4IR, from funding regional 4IR technology hubs and continuing to invest in apprenticeships to delivering 5G internet. By adopting a pro-enterprise, free-market approach, Britain can lead this Fourth Industrial Revolution as we led the First, and government has a key role to play.

From Alexander Graham Bell to Tim Berners-Lee, we have always been home to innovators, and in a rapidly-changing world, we must continue backing our start-ups and the entrepreneurs behind them. It is soon expected that 50 billion things will be connected to the internet, with everything from smart meters to fridges hooked to the web. Graphene, a super-lightweight and flexible metal 200 times stronger than steel, is becoming more prevalent; drone technology, autonomous vehicles, such as "driverless cars"; 3D printing; and biotechnology are growing in ubiquity. Britain must be at the centre of these changes.

The huge upsides from the Fourth Industrial Revolution are not just eye-catching gadgets, but substantial strategic, benefits for our economy too, including increased productivity, lower prices, greater consumer choice, and new jobs. That's why mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution must be at the heart of the government's new Industrial Strategy: we must create the right environment for it to flourish in Britain.

Advertisement

These are all points I made in my speech last Thursday, when I led the first ever House of Commons debate on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. I called this debate, with cross-party support, because we must be ready to take advantage of the changes. MPs from all parties spoke of the superb examples of 4IR technology already in place, but rightly, they warned, that to be unprepared risked future growth and jobs.

That said, we would be building on already-strong foundations: the government has done much to promote enterprise, including delivering the G20's lowest corporation tax rate, attracting the world's talent through the Entrepreneur and Exceptional Talent Visa schemes, and backing innovation hubs such as TechCity and Canary Wharf's fintech-focused Level 39. The Catapult network of regional innovation centres has been a great success. These physical centres allow the very best UK businesses, scientists and engineers work side by side on late-stage research and development projects, transforming high potential ideas into new products and services to generate economic growth.

Growing automation may threaten some low-skilled jobs - factories in the future might only need a constant supply of raw materials and energy to produce goods - as well as some white collar ones, so continued investment in education and training is needed to nurture a flexible and skilled workforce. And where roads, bridges and viaducts facilitated the Victorians' industrial growth spurt, digital infrastructure such as universal broadband and 5G internet are tomorrow's equivalents.

The countries best able to adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be those with nimble free-market economies, low taxes, and a competitive regulatory environment that encourages entrepreneurialism and protects innovation. As a new Industrial Strategy is developed, I welcome the government's continued commitment on pro-enterprise policies that encourage investment in emerging technologies. Allowing test flights for Amazon drone deliveries and test runs of Google's driverless cars are all welcome steps.

In the coming months, I'll be setting out a more detailed set of policy proposals in a pamphlet for the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs, backed by the free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs. This will outline how the Government can continue its support for our 4IR businesses.

Advertisement

Throughout history, Britain has adopted a pro-innovation approach to technological development. From farming mechanisation and domestic labour saving devices to the City's Big Bang, we did not allow fears about the future to stunt our economic and social progress. We soon realised the folly of requiring drivers of early cars to be preceded by a man carrying a red flag. We must adopt the same, forward-thinking approach when it comes to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

As a new revolution accelerates, we can be confident that if we follow the lessons of history and have the support of government, Britain has the entrepreneurial spirit and talent to master the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the same way we mastered the first.
Today I awoke in my adopted country of Italy to discover the bizarre news that masturbating in public here is officially legal. Yes. legal. Who knew?

Apparently, Italy's Supreme Court has just upheld the appeal of a 69 year old (69. But of course...) known only as Pietro L - who revealed his Italian salami to a group of students in Catania, Sicily, and duly proceeded to choke the Pope.

Upon reading about this landmark ruling, I was struck by the age-old philosophical question, "Will I still be greasing my pipe at pensionable age?"

Advertisement

It's a disturbing yet strangely life-affirming thought.

Even more alarming however, is the possibility that having heard this news, a certain 79 year old former politician may now be considering a comeback, given his homeland's laissez-faire attitude to cuffing the carrot. Silvio Berlusconi may be a fossil, but he must surely be relishing the idea of getting back on the circuit and playing the skin flute in front of an adoring audience of swooning showgirls. Now that legal repercussions are out the window, The Don of Bunga Bunga is surely already brandishing his pleasure pump in preparation for a grandiose public celebration of wrist aerobics.

Before today, I'd always considered milking the lizard as something of a private act. Like most men, I'm a big fan of pounding off, but the notion of wrestling the dragon in public puzzles me.

But I wonder if the freedom given to spangling the serpent extends to actually blowing one's wad? There are laws here against urinating in public, but not, it now appears, against spilling seed. This surprises me, not least because of endemic problems with public waste. The thought of now seeing the usual street litter pockmarked with groin gravy seems a particularly gruesome one.

That said, this ruling does open up a plethora of opportunities. I can, for instance, now legally organise a serious protest against the lack of public services in Palermo by organising a mass public jerk-off. An odd prospect perhaps, but what better way to draw media attention to the need for change?

Advertisement

It would be truly Ghandi-esque, as thousands of Palermitans - both men and women - drop their pants to fight social injustice with love not hate.

"Goo not Guns", that's our motto.

I already have well-documented issues with the bus service here. I can now picture the scene as me and my fellow protesters fight the good fight, men with trouser snakes aloft, ladies frantically polishing the pearl, as we chant the slogan "We can come, why can't buses?"

Perhaps our hero Pietro L. could also join us and orchestrate the countdown to a communal explosion of muscle milk and female face paint.
When you think of Great Britain, what immediately comes to mind? The Queen, the BBC and baking of course! Now these three Britishisms are going through a messy divorce. The BBC are being forced away from popular baking show The Great British Bake Off, and The Queen will also be jumping ship to Channel 4 (well Mary Berry is practically The Queen).

The news that the BBC has lost the broadcasting rights to the Great British Bake Off is the worst news I have heard in months. How can a show that is enjoyed by over ten million people per week be taken away from the channel and format that gave birth to it? Is it because the BBC were being unreasonable, or is it simply corporate greed? I suspect it is the former and it will be the viewers who will lose out as a result.

Love Productions are the people behind the GBBO, as well as other shows including Benefits Street and the Great British Sewing Bee. Apparently the reason why Love Productions ceased partnership with the BBC is because they want to 'develop the brand further'. If that means the development of a rubbish mobile app or viewer competitions - I am not interested! Or maybe Love Productions want to ditch Mel & Sue and replace them with Davina McCall and Jon Snow? Why fiddle with a format that clearly works?

Advertisement

So what is next for the show that saw the rise of stars including Nadiya Hussain and Norman Calder? Well nothing exciting as far as I can see. Channel 4 has been announced as the show's new home on a three year contract. But Channel 4 has adverts and I for one avoid the channel at all costs because of this hindrance. What could possibly be worse than Paul Hollywood taking a bite out of a contestant's fairy cake only to be left in suspense by a misplaced advert? I can just imagine it now:

Mel: On your marks... Sue: Get set... In unison: Ad break!!

The fact that Love Productions have already announced Channel 4 to be the replacement broadcaster shows how committed the production company were to the BBC. Just three hours after negotiations with the corporation, the announcement came through that Channel 4 had gained the broadcasting rights. Of course Love Productions are already very cosy with Channel 4 having made controversial programmes for them in the past including Benefits Street. I dread to think what Channel 4 will do to the show that is (was) loved by millions. I will have nightmares tonight about '8 out of 10 Cats Do Bake Off' and Gordon Ramsey being revealed as a new judge.

The move also spells disaster for the BBC. With the series being sold to Channel 4 for a reported 25 million per series, it is money the broadcaster just can't afford. Additionally, it is the BBC who have made the show into what it is today - a huge success. A large amount of licence fee money was invested in developing and nurturing the show, yet the format has now been poached by a rival. The BBC can't just become a breeding ground for new television shows - it needs to create them and keep the rights. Buying the broadcasting rights for the Great British Bake Off is a huge gamble in itself for Channel 4, especially with how little time it took for them to negotiate a deal. It is likely that ITV were also in talks with Love Productions, however, they would not buy the series until the on screen talent was signed up. If Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood and Mel & Sue don't come on board with the new C4 show; it could be a terrible waste of money in one of TV's biggest gambles.

Advertisement
Climate change can often seem a gloomy and frightening subject. But in the last year, there have been some rays of light and hope. In December, the world's nations agreed in Paris what I hope history will see as the turning point in the fight to save humanity from climate catastrophe - an agreement to try to limit global warming to just 1.5 degrees.

In just the last week, more good news: the world's biggest polluters China and the USA have shown bold leadership by ratifying this Agreement. Here in the UK there's no excuse for Prime Minister Theresa May to fail to do the same, and then for all sectors of society to get on with delivering it. Every sector with influence needs to show that they 'get' that climate change is urgent, and the most urgent and difficult challenges humanity faces.

To this end, British universities have a clear leadership role in in steering a path away from climate disaster. We already have many of the world's leading climate scientists, and our universities are well placed - with their cross-sectoral focus - to provide the multi-disciplinary co-operation needed to address the simultaneous economic, social and environmental challenges posed by the rapidly escalating climate crisis.

Advertisement

UK universities can lead the way. But are they, and are they doing enough?

Since Paris, Friends of the Earth wrote to 59 UK academic institutions, asking them how they were changing their plans to reflect the Paris Agreement's new 1.5 degree goal. We publish the results of that survey today.

Please do read our report and I urge you to engage your local university in taking greater steps to tackle climate change. Here are the 5 stand-out conclusions from our survey:

Universities are doing well

There is a deeply impressive kaleidoscope of different activity at all levels of UK universities - from ground-breaking research on physical climate science, the psychology of motivation and renewable technologies, to cutting emissions on campuses, education programmes and novel ways to communicate climate change to the public. Climate change is becoming a central and critical part of many universities' core business.

1.5 degrees is not yet embedded

The Paris Agreement is still new, and although some universities have reacted fast, and changed research programmes to reflect the new need to find ways to meet the 1.5 goal, this is by no means universal. We hope that the big international conference on 1.5 degrees in Oxford on the 20th-22nd September will be lead to concrete and strengthened research and advocacy on 1.5 degrees right across the UK university sector.

Advertisement

Some glaring gaps and inconsistencies

Although the responses we received were rightly proud of their achievements, as revealing were the issues not mentioned. A good number of universities have very strong climate change departments, but also have departments whose research leads to more fossil fuel exploration. This is in direct conflict with the Paris goals, which can only be met if the vast majority of proven oil, coal and gas reserves stay in the ground, let alone drilling for new reserves. Similarly almost no reply mentioned whether universities' financial holdings were in fossil fuel companies, or sponsorship received from corporations who are resisting shareholder pressure to act on climate. Universities need a "transition pathway" away from fossil-fuel research.

Communicating a strong, positive vision

We feel that universities can showcase and join-up their actions on climate change better. At root, this is about recognising that a central role for universities has always been about transforming society for the better. Tackling climate change will involve societal transformation at a colossal scale: universities can champion this change with a clear vision of how they are leading the way in effecting this change. This is also in universities' self-interest: institutions who are stuck in the past, or reliant on companies whose actions put young people's future at risk, or whose actions on climate are wildly inconsistent, will lose out - for the best and most talented researchers and students will over-time stay away. In contrast, a strong, visionary strategy will increasingly attract people.

An overarching strategy needed

Although every university is clearly doing many things very well, all have gaps, and some actions could be seen to be stuck in silos, not part of an overarching strategy. We consulted with academics, students and people connected with universities to ask what would be the crucial elements in any comprehensive University climate strategy. Here are 10 - our report sets these out in more detail. We welcome feedback on these ideas

1.Promote a strong, positive vision of how the world can meet the Paris goals

2.Focus emission reduction research on how to meet the Paris 1.5 degree goal

3.Move away from research leading to extracting more fossil fuels

4.Implement a climate change education programme for all students, also available to staff and residents and businesses in the city

Advertisement

5.Be part of a global network of Universities committed to meeting the Paris climate goals

6.Deliver a timetable plan to go zero-carbon across all operations

7.Divest from all funds from companies involved in fossil fuel extraction by 2020

8.Ensure only companies with a 1.5 degree-compatible business strategy can attend careers-fairs

9.Implement a strategy to cope with the climate impacts which can no longer be avoided

10.Embed responsibility for delivery of this strategy with the University Senior Leadership Team

In conclusion, climate change is more urgent than ever, but Paris has given us all hope that societies will rise to its challenge, and UK universities are ahead of most sectors in UK society. Now is the time for all UK universities to build on their strong work and adopt an even more comprehensive climate strategy.
Many of us are searching for a simple solution to help us work more effectively so that we have more time to do the things we love.

I want to share one trick that you can play on yourself to keep yourself feeling calm and focused. It's simple, it's natural, and all you need is the right beat.

1. Take your resting heart rate

Take your pulse and count the number of beats in one minute. Providing you've been resting for five minutes beforehand this will be a good indicator of your resting heart rate.

Advertisement

Heart rate depends on several factors such as your age, overall healthiness and what you're doing. For example, the rate will be higher when exercising or lower when sleeping. But it also varies depending on how you're feeling. If you're feeling calm and relaxed your heart rate will be much closer to your resting heart rate than if you're feeling stressed, anxious or panicked.

2. Think about how you want to feel

Are you feeling stressed about how much you have to do? If so, feeling calmer can help you focus on the tasks ahead of you and work through each of them without feeling overwhelmed.

Or are you feeling tired and lethargic? Does even looking at your to do list feel like a lot of effort? If this is the case, feeling more alert may give you the motivation you need to just. start. working!

3. Find a rhythm

Humans don't just perceive rhythms; we react to them on a very basic level. Two people walking next to each other will often fall into step without noticing. But rhythms don't just change our behaviour, they can also change how we feel.

Advertisement

The human heartbeat is arguably the most natural and ubiquitous biological rhythm and it's unsurprising that it can be so influential.

At doppel, we research the cutting edge of psychophysiology - the way in which your mind and body affect one-another.

Building on the idea of entrainment, we wanted to see what would happen on people's mood and focus when we give them a new heartbeat that they can literally wear on their sleeves. If we can entrain to a rhythm we can hear, we wondered whether you could entrain to a rhythm you could feel.

We decided to test this theory out. We designed a wristband which creates a rhythmic pulse that you feel on the inside of your wrist as a heartbeat-like vibration and we asked Dr Manos Tsakiris, Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway University London to test it.

Advertisement

Participants completed a controlled psychological experiment that requires sustained-attention and fast response. Those wearing the wristband that was delivering 100-120bpm on their wrist showed improved performance than those who were wearing the wristband switched off. This shows that participants who felt the heartbeat-like vibration were more alert and focused.

So by allowing your brain to feel a new heartbeat , you can change how calm or focused you feel, meaning you can get the job done and spend more time doing things you enjoy.
In less than a week, in the space of just a few days, PM Theresa May has told off not one, but two of her cabinet ministers. David Davis, the so-called 'Minister for Brexit' and Liam Fox, the Minister for International Trade. What is happening at the top of government?

The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union claimed that continued "membership of the single market (was) very improbable" to what the 10 Downing Street's spokeswoman commented that David Davis was only "setting out his view" rather than government policy.

As for the Secretary of State for International Trade, he called "British business too fat and lazy". Again, Downing Street said Liam Fox was clearly "expressing private views".

Advertisement

"Not government policy". "Private views".

In the meantime, Chancellor Philip Hammond (who was a Remainer) talked freely about exemptions from curbs to free movement of people for 'highly skilled' workers. This time, no comments from Downing Street.

One can imagine three possible reasons for the odd situation of cabinet ministers being put back in their place in such a short period of time:

1. The hijack.

By speaking out, the Brexiteers in government are trying to hijack Theresa May's government policies on Brexit, forcing the way for a quick and hardcore Brexit (whether they feel under the pressure of Eurosceptic backbenchers, or not). Some Leave politicians and supporters have indeed started to feel frustrated at the idea that the government is taking very long to decide on the policies for Brexit.

2. Genuine assumption.

The Brexiteers in government brought their ideas to the table when the cabinet met and genuinely assumed Theresa May agreed with them and would want to apply these as policies to make Brexit a success. Thing is, she either didn't actually like their ideas, or thought it was still too early to throw them in the public eye, or simply wants to keep control of what she thinks Brexit should look like and doesn't want anyone else to steal her thunder (she's the PM after all!). Anyway, they ended up being told off by proxy.

Advertisement

3. Control-freak PM.

Theresa May has a hidden master plan for Brexit: Let the Brexiteers talk about what they think Brexit must be and share their ideas in public, in the press, in conferences and as loud as possible, then undermine them afterwards by claiming that they are not talking on behalf of the government but merely expressing their views. By undermining them and ridiculing their efforts at defining a hardcore Brexit, Theresa May reminds everyone that she is the Prime Minister and that she only will eventually decide what Brexit means. Thus, the Brexit ministers will be seen as incompetent by the British public and an easy target to blame if everything goes wrong when trying to negotiate Britain's exit from the European Union.

Will Boris Johnson be the next Brexiteer to risk the wrath of his boss? Or will he and his fellow ministers all adopt a lower profile from now on to mend their ways before any formal action is taken by Theresa May? The Foreign Secretary actually pledged on Sunday to defy Theresa May by backing the "hard Brexit" campaign of Change Britain through a message he recorded to support the pressure that has been put on the Prime Minister in the last few days by Brexiteers, in which he said: "Brexit means Brexit and that means delivering on their instructions and restoring UK control over our laws, borders, money and trade."

Whichever way and whatever the reasons for the very public tensions in government, "Brexit means Brexit" still. And yet, nobody knows what Brexit means.
Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire

The Government has said over the last 24 hours that the purpose of the Constituency Boundary Review is to 'promote fairness and restore integrity to our electoral system'. Labour agrees and that is exactly why this boundary review must not go ahead in its current form.

The proposals published today by the commission are based on an electoral register with a two million gaping hole. By using the electoral register as of 1 December 2015 the review will discount the two million people who signed up to have their voices heard in the run-up to the EU referendum, therefore leaving them out of the constituency calculations.

Advertisement

The numbers left out of this review are really staggering. For instance, over 700,000 people under the age of 25 applied to register to vote online in the month prior to the EU referendum - all of them will be left out of this review. In London a staggering 6% of the total electorate have been left out. In some London boroughs nearly 20% of the electorate have been missed out of this count.

Given the huge drive by Tory politicians to get people to sign up during the EU referendum it would be an unforgivable snub to these people to now exclude them from the Commission's calculation. It's just not fair.

Nor is it fair to cut the number of elected MPs from 650 to 600 at a time when the unelected House of Lords is growing faster than ever, to over 800, and a time when we're losing other elected representatives in the form of 73 MEPs.

The Tories justified reducing the number of MPs based on reducing the 'cost of politics', but that is a red herring we mustn't accept. Reducing the number of elected MPs by 50 was supposed to save 12million per year, but the reality is that any savings have already been offset by the 260 extra unelected Peers David Cameron and the Tories have appointed to the Lords at a whopping cost of around 34million per annum.

Advertisement

It's not just Labour concerned about this boundary review. The Chair of the Procedures Committee, the Tory MP Charles Walker, has called it 'perverse' saying it risks "bringing this country's democratic settlement into disrepute". The Lib Dem peer, Lord Rennard, has called on the Government to mimic their speedy action to extend the EU voting registration deadline, and act speedily to ensure that the two million are included in this review.

Labour supports the principle of equalising the number of electors in each constituency but the reality of this review is it is unfair, undemocratic and designed to give the Tories a political advantage rather than do what is in the best interests of the country.

Theresa May will be tinkering on the edge of Parliamentary defeats in many votes to come in the near future - with cross party consensus against this unfair review, she should be very worried about this one.
Air pollution in Britain is a pervasive killer, but it is also intangible and invisible. You can rarely see it, you can't always smell it, and it is unlikely you will ever hear it. It is even less likely, apparently, that you will have heard about it if you happen to be a Conservative Party minister.

Environment Minister, Therese Coffey, and Minister for Exiting the European, Robin Walker, were recently subjected to scrutiny from the Common's Environmental Audit Committee where they faced questioning on air pollution. Asked no less than seven times whether the UK would maintain EU air quality laws following Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, Ministers both refused to make such a commitment.

Air pollution is responsible for at least 50,000 preventable deaths in the UK every year. It bears repeating that these deaths are entirely preventable. Poor air quality is also linked to respiratory difficulties, heart disease, and even, most recently, Alzheimer's; conditions that can seriously blight people's quality of life. Everyone is at risk, but children are particularly vulnerable, and if their developing lungs are affected the damage is permanent and life-limiting.

Advertisement

It is a public health emergency estimated to cost the UK 20bn a year. But it is not a uniquely British problem. In fact, air pollution has no respect for national borders. Air enjoys the freedom of movement regardless of Britain's status within, or outside of, the EU. The measures taken to control toxic pollutants in France and Spain directly affect the quality of the air we breathe in Britain, and vice-versa. Air pollution is a truly cross-border issue. One which requires truly cross-border solutions.

In fact, the British government has openly admitted that its efforts to improve the quality of the air that we breathe have been entirely driven by cross-border EU laws. Laws which have been carefully drafted in cooperation and collaboration with our closest European neighbours. The totemic legislation is the 2008 clean air directive.

The directive set legally-binding limits on toxic air pollution in towns and cities across Britain. However, the European Union's influence on UK air quality dates back to the 1970s, with the clean air directive just the latest in a series of air quality laws that have helped tackle air pollution in Britain.

The image of Britain as a 'dirty man of Europe', cast out by the continent, might seem farcical to those lucky enough to be too young to remember the 1970s when the UK was causing 'acid rain' that was destroying Scandinavian forests and lakes. But, for those of us with memories of a little more vintage, it is a useful reminder of just how far we have come by working together with our neighbours. Current European air quality laws are responsible for helping prevent 80,000 deaths a year across Europe.

Advertisement

Together we can and must do more. Environment ministers from across the European Union are currently discussing proposals for a new National Emission Ceilings Directive that will reduce air pollution at its source. The proposed law would set strict emissions limits for four deadly air pollutants, including nitrogen oxides, non-methane volatile organic compounds, sulphur dioxide, and ammonia.

At the same time, in the UK, the Conservative government is consistently turning a blind eye to the air pollution crisis, despite its promises to be the 'greenest government ever'. In fact, the government has already been successfully challenged in the Supreme Court by environmental lawyers, and vocal air quality champions, ClientEarth, over its failure to take action to ensure that British towns and cities don't breach the air pollution limits enshrined in EU law.

Earlier this year, ClientEarth were again granted permission to haul the government before the courts to challenge its repeated failure to publish plans to meet the limits, as required by the initial legal challenge. Dozens of UK cities are not forecast to meet the limits until a long time after 2020. Assuming, in that time, that air pollution in the UK doesn't worsen the government is prepared to turn a blind eye to another 200,000 avoidable deaths.

More than that, UK ministers have also been the most fervent lobbyists against tightening EU air pollution limits. The UK government is refusing to take the action necessary to prevent the avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Britons.

Perhaps most telling, however, is that one of the men tasked with negotiating the UK's exit from the EU, Boris Johnson, has been accused of holding back a critical air pollution report during his time as London Mayor. The report, now leaked, reveals that it is the poorest and most vulnerable in our towns and cities that are exposed to the highest levels of deadly air pollution.

Advertisement

Johnson was also famously accused by the Clean Air in London campaign in 2012 of 'public health fraud on an industrial scale' for spraying dust suppressants in front of air quality monitors along the Olympic Route Network.

Therefore, when concerned members of the public asked me, during the referendum campaign: "Why wouldn't we just uphold the laws we have now, even if we leave the European Union?' I couldn't answer with certainty, but had to trust the evidence available and explain to undecided voters that it was my sincere belief that the air we all breathe would become more noxious should we vote to end our collaborative relationship with the European Union.

Unfortunately, for the health and prosperity of British citizens, Therese Coffey and Robin Walker, under scrutiny in parliament, appear to have confirmed my worst fears. It was a truly concerning response from Ministers.

In a separate development, the government has responded this week to the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report on air quality in the UK. And, to add to the uncertainty surrounding the UK's air quality policies, in its response, the government has decided to praise the very EU pollution limits it is failing - and outright refusing - to meet, has fervently lobbied against, and to which it is now refusing to commit. It remains the case that the only thing certain about Brexit is uncertainty.

"People will die," was the cautionary and frank response offered by ClientEarth chief executive of James Thornton when asked what would happen if Britain failed to retain the air quality laws it helped create. For improving the quality of the air we all breathe, the importance of European Union air quality laws cannot be overstated.

Advertisement
Nwolfe35 said: As I pointed out in my response the DOI says the purpose of government is to guarantee our rights. Government does not give us our rights.



But if the Federal Government was not intended to interact with the citizens then how on earth are they going to guarantee our rights? The Constitution (according to "states rights" conservatives) prohibits the Federal Government from interfering with free speech. Great but what happens if I live in Virginia and VA makes a law prohibiting criticism of state lawmakers? According to the states righters there is nothing in the Constitution protecting me since it only applies to the Federal Government. The states are free to do what they want.



As a Libertarian I believe individual rights should trump state power in almost all cases. The individual states should protect those rights but we need a greater power to reign in the states when they get out of line.



The problem now is that the Feds are using that power to usurp the power of the states in areas where no individual rights are threatened. Click to expand...

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

But if the unlawful acts done by the magistrate be maintained (by the power he has got), and the remedy which is due by law, be by the same power obstructed; yet the right of resisting, even in such manifest acts of tyranny, will not suddenly, or on slight occasions, disturb the government

It is a known fact in human nature that its affections are commonly weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of the object. Upon the same principle that a man is more attached to his family than to his neighborhood, to his neighborhood than to the community at large, the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments than towards the government of the Union; unless the force of that principle should be destroyed by a much better administration of the latter.

I wish the committee to remember that the Constitution under examination is framed upon truly republican principles; and that, as it is expressly designed to provide for the common protection and the general welfare of the United States, it must be utterly repugnant to this Constitution to subvert the state governments, or oppress the people.

THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution.





No State shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases. Fifthly, That in article 1st, section 10, between clauses 1 and 2, be inserted this clause, to wit:

Fourthly. That in article 1st, section 9, between clauses 3 and 4, be inserted these clauses, to wit: The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.

Had the framers of these amendments intended them to be limitations on the powers of the state governments, they would have imitated the framers of the original constitution, and have expressed that intention. Had congress engaged in the extraordinary occupation of improving the constitutions of the several states, by affording the people additional protection from the exercise of power by their own governments, in matters which concerned themselves alone, they would have declared this purpose in plain and intelligible language.



In compliance with a sentiment thus generally expressed, to quiet fears thus extensively entertained, amendments were proposed by the required majority in Congress and adopted by the States. These amendments contain no expression indicating an intention to apply them to the State governments. This court cannot so apply them.

Mr. Justice Catron delivered the opinion of the court.



The ordinances complained of, must violate the Constitution or laws of the United States, or some authority exercised under them; if they do not, we have no power by the 25th section of the Judiciary Act to interfere. The Constitution makes no provision for protecting the citizens of the respective states in their religious liberties; this is left to the state constitutions and laws: nor is there any inhibition imposed by the Constitution of the United States in this respect on the states.



The Declaration of Independence does not state nor does it elude that the governments purpose is to guarantee our rights. The passage from the Declaration of Independence you quoted is devoid of the rest of the paragraph that explains the purpose of removing the government closest to the people, which was the local and the state governments. The concept of the U.S. federal government having any omnipresent power over any of the states was not a concept that was neither imaginable nor would have been tolerated. This is the rest of the relevant passage:Regarding the non-factual concept of the federal government having power over the states was summed up in the last passage of the same paragraph:Jefferson got this concept from the same place that he got the Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness phrase: John Lockes Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapter III, which is limited to local governments and is the actual Lockean libertarianism that this country was founded upon:Both Jefferson and Lockes premises aligned with the prevailing thoughts of the Philadelphia convention regarding the states being the most proximate to the people. Hamilton, who was the closest advocate of a strong national government, summed this concept up in Federalist No. 17:Hamilton also moved away from his position that the states should have virtually no power at the Philadelphia convention after being shut down by the delegates to this sentiment at the Virginia ratifying convention:The Founders did not intend for the Bill of Rights to apply to states, and there is no documentation that the Bill of Rights was meant to apply to the states. The entire catalog of historical evidence gives the opposite conclusion. The Bill of Rights were debated from May 27, 1789 through September 25, 1789 in Congress, then sent to the states and was debated until December 15, 1791 when Virginia ratified the Bill of Rights. There was not one discussion regarding the Bill of Rights being applied to the states in the seven months or two-hundred and ten days of debate.is the first line in the Bill of Rights: Congress shall make no law No states, but the federal government.is Madisons proposed second draft of the Bill of Rights of applying it to the states, which was soundly rejected:is the Bill of Rights not being under the purview of Article Vs amendment power by Madisons inclusion of the Bill of Rights into the body of the Constitutions Article I in his first draft:is John Marshalls opinion in Barron v Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243 (1833). Marshall was a delegate at the Philadelphia ratifying convention:is the ruling in Permoli v. Municipality No. 1 of the City of New Orleans 44 U.S. 589 (1845):is the attempts by Congress to apply the Bill of Rights to the states seven times between 1870 and 1889 with a Sixteenth Amendment.is the Supreme Court rulings from the 1870s through the end of the century regarding the Second Amendment and the Fifth Amendment being shot down as applying to the states.is that this concept did not exist until it was created by a twentieth century Supreme Court.
net

Britain has struck a new special relationship with the military rulers of Egypt which is as deep as it is worrying. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the British invasion of Egypt - known in polite circles as the 'Suez crisis' - Britons should reflect on their government's relationship with this key Middle Eastern country.

Since the military coup of July 2013 that overthrew President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected government, Egypt under General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has once again become a nasty, repressive regime. Torture, deaths in detention, forced disappearances, restrictions on civil society, the imprisonment of journalists and restrictions on freedom of expression, are now all common. Up to 40,000 Egyptians have been arrested by the regime since July 2013, mainly for involvement in demonstrations or opposition political activities. Some 1,000 people were killed during violence in July and August 2013 when the new regime conducted clearing operations to remove Muslim Brotherhood protesters from sit-ins in Cairo.

Advertisement

Yet for Britain, this all represents a new opportunity. Last month Prime Minister Theresa May spoke with el-Sisi and 'discussed a new chapter in bilateral relations between the UK and Egypt', according to the government press release. This is no under-statement since it follows a series of extraordinary meetings and extreme British apologias for the nature of the Egyptian regime.

In August 2015, when Defence Secretary Michael Fallon paid one of several recent visits to Egypt, the government stated that 'during his visit Mr Fallon discussed Britain's support for security and for economic progress and democracy in Egypt, as a vital element of restoring stability in the region'. These words are code and surely well-understood on both sides: what was meant was that 'Mr Fallon discussed Britain's support for the pro-Western regime ('security') and for British commercial interests ('economic progress') and authoritarianism ('democracy') as a vital element of maintaining repression ('stability') in the region'.

The following month, September 2015, Fallon entertained the head of Egypt's military, General Mahmoud Hegazy, in London, while the government reported that 'with growing instability in the region it more important than ever that the UK cements the already strong ties with Egypt'.

In November last year, relations deepened still further. El-Sisi was allowed by the government to visit Britain while then Prime Minister David Cameron said he was 'delighted to welcome president Sisi to Downing Street' and that Egypt was a 'vital partner for us' for economic and security ties. El-Sisi for his part noted that the UK was a 'friendly country'. Cameron gave vague mention of the 'need for political progress in Egypt' but otherwise didn't upset his visitor by any comments on just what was happening back home.

Advertisement

The day following the meeting between the two leaders, Michael Fallon met el-Sisi to discuss military cooperation while then Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond signed a memorandum of understanding with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry. This will 'launch a new stage in our British-Egyptian partnership for stability and reform' involving 'a regular strategic dialogue'. The government says that 'the UK enjoys a strong security partnership with Egypt' and holds regular discussions with the Egyptian military. Arms continue to flow the regime: in 2015 the UK approved 84m worth of military equipment to Egypt, including guns and ammunition. Britain is also forming a 'small military operations team' in Egypt to improve combatting Islamic State in Libya.

The primary reason for British backing of el-Sisi is that the regime's repressive rule is creating good conditions for furthering British investment. Britain has long been the largest investor in Egypt, with deals worth over $5 billion, but 'we are hungry for more', British ambassador John Casson has said. In July 2016, a UK trade envoy to Egypt, the MP Jeffrey Donaldson, and the head of UK Export Finance, Louis Taylor, visited Cairo to discuss expanding trade and investment ties. Donaldson said that 'the past few months have seen many enquiries from British companies wishing to do business in Egypt and their interest highlights the significant opportunities that are available across a range of Egyptian commercial sectors'. Louis Taylor pointed out that his organisation, which is the UK's export credit agency, had finance available for projects in Egypt worth 'hundreds of millions' - in other words, the British taxpayer will subsidise British companies investing under the el-Sisi regime.

This visit followed a trade delegation to Egypt headed by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in March 2015, accompanied by big investors such as BP, Vodafone, Barclays and BG Group. The visit heralded the major prize for the British - the signing of a massive $12 billion investment deal by BP for an oil and gas project in the West Nile Delta offshore Egypt. The agreement is the single largest investment deal in Egypt's history. At the same time, Hammond 'met President el-Sisi to discuss a range of issues, including regional security and the global coalition's fight against ISIL'.

The Morsi government and the Muslim Brotherhood represented a serious obstacle to this oil and gas deal. The BP-led consortium had been haggling over the terms for the West Nile project for years and was seeking direct ownership over the resources and accrual of 100 per cent of the profits. The Morsi government had thrown a spanner in the works, with some leading figures objecting to BP's demands. Indeed, by mid-2013, just weeks before the coup, the Morsi government was engaged in talks with BP demanding far better terms. El-Sisi's seizure of power changed all that. The new deal under the military regime now offers BP exceedingly generous terms and, most importantly, has moved Egypt away from a long-used production-sharing model in which companies and countries typically split profit 20:80, to a tax royalty scheme that essentially privatises Egypt's gas sector and hands control and oversight of natural resources to private companies.

Advertisement

These deals have been signed while Whitehall has been fully aware that repression in Egypt has increased every year since el-Sisi seized power. In 2013, 'the human rights situation in Egypt deteriorated', the Foreign Office said in April 2014. In 2014, it noted that 'the human rights situation in Egypt remained poor and deteriorated in some areas, particularly with regards to freedom of expression and association'. More recently, the Foreign Office's Human Rights Report for 2016 notes that 'in 2015, reports of torture, police brutality and forced disappearances increased' and that 'restrictions on freedom of expression also increased'.

Despite this knowledge, in August 2015, Michael Fallon offered a stunning apologia for repression by writing in an Egyptian newspaper that 'Egyptians have rejected both extremism and authoritarianism'. Meanwhile, our man in Cairo, Britain's ambassador John Casson, has apparently convinced himself that Egyptians 'are building a more stable, more prosperous and more democratic country'. Casson was even quoted in the Egyptian media in June 2015 of approving of Egypt's 'tough security measures'. Whitehall does not support repressive regimes despite their being repressive but precisely because they are repressive and promote a pro-Western foreign policy and provide an attractive investment climate.

Britain has sometimes gone through the motions on protesting at Egypt's lack of human rights under el-Sisi, such as by 'expressing concern' at the Egyptian Court's passing of 183 death sentences in 2014. Nothing, however, has been allowed to upset military and commercial relations. Witness the Foreign Office's embarrassing analysis of el-Sisi's seizure of power. It notes that el-Sisi was 'elected' to power in May 2014 with 96 per cent of the vote (a proportion that would have impressed Stalin), which 'in some respects... fell short of compliance with the principles set out in... international standards for democratic elections'. Indeed.
At the beginning of September, more than 9,000 experts descended on the Hawaii Convention Center on the Pacific island of Oahu for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s 6th World Conservation Congress. The triennial 10-day Congress is the largest global forum focussed specifically on addressing the challenges facing nature and wildlife.

Arguably best known for its assessments of the status of species for its 'Red List' database, the IUCN is the world's largest and most diverse environmental network. Its 1,300 members include governments, government agencies, non-governmental organisations and private sector companies. With input from some 16,000 scientists and other experts from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines, the Union is universally acknowledged as the global authority on the state of nature.

Themed 'Planet at the Crossroads', the meeting in Hawaii took place against a backdrop of ever-increasing pressure on the natural world. The catastrophic destruction and degradation of nature, unprecedented species declines, and the associated negative impacts on human livelihoods and security are constantly in the news. The IUCN's 'Red List' classifies one in five of all animal species and over half of all plant species that it has assessed as 'threatened with extinction', with many other species classified as 'near threatened'.

Advertisement

It was no coincidence that just days before the Congress opened, US President Barack Obama announced the expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea marine national monument, which at more than twice the size of Texas is now the largest marine protected area in the world.

The Congress provided a forum for discussion of a large number of issues including climate change mitigation, protected area management, freshwater and marine system management, species protection, conservation economics, and wildlife trade and trafficking..

The protection and promotion of human interests and the value of natural resources to human well-being also featured heavily, with a big emphasis on respecting indigenous knowledge and protecting indigenous rights, particularly pertinent given the Congress's location. The high-level output from the Congress, in the shape of the 'Hawai'i Commitments', reflected these broad aspirations.

But the World Conservation Congress isn't just a forum for the exchange of information and ideas between nature conservation interests and a means of articulating high-brow nature protection values. It also has a significant political focus, principally through the development of motions aimed at expressing the global conservation community's collective opinion on a range of issues. In all, IUCN members were asked to consider and vote on 105 motions relating to nature protection and wildlife conservation, and a further six affecting to the governance of the Union.

Advertisement

While IUCN motions have no legal status, they can be hugely influential, perhaps particularly this year with other binding international meetings just over the horizon, including the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) later in September, and the International Whaling Commission's 66th meeting in Slovenia in October. Motions calling for greater protection for pangolin species from international trade, actions to avoid the extinction of Mexico's Vaquita porpoise, improved conservation of Amur tigers and leopards, silky and thresher sharks and mobular rays, the establishment of a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary, and expressing concerns about whaling under special permits, could be particularly significant; in some of these cases, the IUCN has urged or encouraged governments to take specific action at CITES, IWT and other forums.

Other motions were clearly if indirectly critical of the actions (or lack thereof) of certain governments. The motion to protect bats from culling programmes comes as the government of Mauritius plans a second year of culls of endangered fruit bats, ostensibly to protect fruit crops. Calls to ban the use of the veterinary medicine Diclofenac in livestock, which is highly toxic to vultures and has resulted in the devastation of many vulture populations, were aimed at governments that are dragging their feet on this vital issue. The motion calling for the termination of captive-bred lion hunting was clearly directed at the South African government in the face of increasing global public concern over so-called 'canned hunting'.

The motion that resulted in the most heated debate at the Congress called for the IUCN to support and encourage the closure of domestic markets for elephant ivory. Elephant populations across Africa are being devastated by poaching to supply ivory into global markets; census data released at the Congress outlined 30% declines in savannah elephants over just 7 years, with forest elephants faring even worse. There is increasing recognition that elephant populations cannot thrive in the face of any trade in ivory, and markets have closed or are being closed in many countries, including the United States, China, Hong Kong and France. But a small number of countries, including Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Japan, supported by some pro-trade and hunting organisations, continue to insist on maintaining a domestic ivory trade, which made for some prolonged and heated debate at the Congress. In the end the motion passed, but not before some government delegates had allegedly threatened to withdraw from the Union.

Ultimately, the IUCN cannot force governments to take action; it can only 'urge' and 'encourage'. The real test of the international community's resolve will come at legally binding international forums such as CITES and the IWC, and through the individual and collective actions of governments, supported by the wider conservation community.
I always travel with my husband and our two children, both eight years old, and with so many wonderful places to go in the UK and fantastic things to see everywhere, we're not going to run out of travel destinations in this country any time soon.

Our most recent trip was to Torquay in Devon - what a lovely town, and the area in around it is, with very good reason, also known as The English Riviera.

In the centre of Torquay, you can immerse yourself in a town centre of shops, cafes, restaurants and a beautiful marina. On the outskirts of town there is an abundance of lovely beaches and super attractions not to miss. Here are seven super places to go in Torquay.

Advertisement

Torquay Harbour and Marina

Image credit: Mette Poynton.

As you step on to the pedestrian footbridge - the Millennium Bridge - you will understand why the marina is one of Torquay's tourist hotspots for boat trips and watersports... it's breathtaking! Torquay Harbour is protected by two stunning piers, Princess Pier and Haldon Pier. At the Princess Pier you can enjoy an afternoon lunch while you relax on the seaside seating. Additionally, Beacon Quay (on the harbour-side) is laced with retail outlets and chandlers that are quite eclectic. If you are in the mood for more hustle and bustle, the inner harbour has a lot of super cafes, pubs, and restaurants.

Cockington Village

Image credit: Mette Poynton.

Now, some towns may claim they are "the most picturesque town", take it from me, Cockington is the real deal. Just a couple of miles from the centre of Torquay, this unbelievably charming village invites you to take a step back in history with its 16th century cottages, rural vistas, old watermill, and walking/hiking trails ready for exploring.

Advertisement

After walking the narrow lanes or scenic trails, you WILL get hungry, so take rest and have lunch at the pub or indulge in a sweet cream tea in one of the tea rooms, all of which have amazing views of the village. And you like arts and crafts, Cockington Court is a hub for modern homemade creations.

Babbacombe Model Village

If you love comedy and every miniature like we do, Babbacombe Model Village is the perfect attraction for you--it is even a tad bit famous, having appeared on TV several times! You are transported to a world full of thousands of miniature buildings, people, vehicles, and the village is sprinkled with scenes of English humour. The model village is open until evening when little, tiny lights showcase England's past, present and future in a beautiful miniature way.

Kents Cavern

Image credit: Mette Poynton.

Okay, if you do nothing else in Torquay, you have to visit Kents Cavern, it's amazing and has a huge variety of activities, you can even get married in the cave! Of course we didn't do that (Mr P was not game on a cheeky 'cave marriage renewal'!), but we did enjoy the cafe, the shop, the displays and take the hour-long tour of the cave, a tour that was an incredible experience, for us and for the kids, and made even better by David, super knowledgeable and super funny cave tour-guide.

Oddicombe Beach Torquay

What's a seaside getaway without hitting the beach? Soaking up rays is one of my favourite things to do anywhere, and Oddicombe Beach in Torquay is a super place for it. We found a spot on the sandy beach, which is backed by cliffs, and took full advantage of activities available, paddling for the kids and watersports for the brave (okay, we didn't really do that, but we did watch others do it and it looked like excellent fun). There are beach huts available for rent, a plentiful beach shop just in case you forgot your bathing suit, and a delicious cafe to satisfy hungry bellies after fun in the sun!

Advertisement

Living Coasts

So, I am a huge fan of animals, I love visiting zoos and aquariums, and Living Coasts on the harbour in Torquay, was lovely. This place is home to hundreds of mammals, birds and marine life, educational programs and conservation lessons really drive home the importance of animals in our world and eco systems, so we left having learnt a lot too. Living Coasts is great place to appreciate and love these animals for what they are and how they enhance our planet.

Agatha Christie at Torquay Museum

Hickory Dickory Dock--this is just one of Agatha Christie's books that is featured in the Agatha Christie Gallery at the Torquay Museum. We felt like we were inside Poirot's (Agatha's famous detective character.. but you knew that, of course!) study and lounge as we stepped inside the exhibit. We saw Agatha Christie's books lining the walls and her life story from a small little girl to talented woman was ever so present. Her works were truly entertaining for her readers, whether you're a fan of Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple or some of her lesser known works, you'll love getting to know the woman behind the characters like we did.. and if you look closely, you will find the beautiful walking stick that actor David Suchet carried as he portrayed Poirot.
I was nervous as I sat down to watch the first episode of Richard Macer's two part BBC2 documentary Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue, shown last Thursday at 9pm (the second part is on this Thursday at the same time). It sounded so promising. To mark the centenary year of this world famous fashion bible, Macer filmed the UK Vogue office and its staff for nine months. This was the first time in the publication's history that such behind the scenes access had been granted. As a long-time Vogue reader and a magazine junkie who has forged a career out of reading and writing about them, I was intrigued to see what the programme would reveal but also concerned about the approach that Macer might take. Alas my fears were justified.

The title provided the first clue. Absolutely Fashion is wordplay on Absolutely Fabulous, the BBC comedy series and recent movie that sends up the fashion world by picking out its most ridiculous elements and exaggerating them further. Surely Macer could not be suggesting that the world of Vogue is as silly and ludicrous as the imaginary realm of Eddie and Patsy?

The inclusion of an interview with the fictional Eddie and Patsy in the second episode indicates that he may actually think so. Furthermore, Macer does not appear to take his subject seriously.

Advertisement

Throughout the first programme, he assumes a tone which conveys at best feigned naivety or at worst lack of research. For example, when given the rare opportunity to speak to Kate Moss, he came out with the banal 'How many Vogue covers have you been on?' - a question easily answered by Google.

Macer's apparent attitude reflects a broader lack of respect for cultural forms associated with women. Both fashion and magazines fall under this umbrella, and Macer emphasizes femininity both directly and indirectly. He observes that the usual workplace gender ratio is inverted at Vogue, with only a small number of men in the office - and they are shown as peripheral figures, leaning over desks not sat at them. Moreover, he presents viewers with a stereotypically feminine concern for the personal. Much of the programme's focus is on Alexandra Shulman, the magazine's editor, but rather than hearing about her success during her twenty-five year reign at Vogue's helm, we get an interview with her mother.

In concentrating on Shulman, Macer draws on a common fashion industry stereotype, that of the icy and aloof editor, as epitomized by Miranda Priestly in Laura Weisberger's 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada (played by Meryl Streep in the film adaptation). Lingering shots that solicit nervous laughter from the staff, images of Shulman alone in her office and awkward silences in editorial meetings all depict her as a Priestly type figure. Regardless of whether this is the case or not, by sticking to this focus on company politics, Macer rehashes well-trodden territory rather than discussing the wider power dynamics that were ripe for analysis. It was left to Twitter commentators to note the lack of ethnic and racial diversity among office staff; their homogeneous class background likewise went unmentioned.

Advertisement
AFP via Getty Images

On this day, 13 September 2016, thousands of patriots finally get what they've been waiting for - the Bank Of England has paid tribute to Winston Churchill by putting his iconic portrait on the 5 note.

And why not? He's the man who won us the Second World War. He took a stand against fascism by bringing down Nazi Germany. He pioneered a lot of social reforms. He committed his life to public service.

Advertisement

Well, here's the thing. Even with such an incredible achievement under his belt, he's still not worthy of immortalisation on our currency. The fact his face is emblazoned on our money is an insult to Britain, and this ongoing iconisation of him as an ideal prime minister is, quite frankly, disgusting.

Sure, Churchill won a war, but that's not what the only thing he should be remembered for

I'm not just saying this to be controversial. Here's a good few reasons we should condemn Churchill's memory to the history books and leave it there.

1. He was in favour of genocide and seemed a little bit racist

Yeah, in 1937 he basically said he doesn't think the murder of countless Native Americans or Australian aboriginals was a bad thing because "a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

Advertisement

This was said in a statement to the Peel Commission on Palestine. He used it as an argument in favour of increased Jewish migration into the area because Arabs weren't good enough to grow food there. By his logic, white Jews were better off living on the land because they could farm better.

This attitude towards other races, although commonplace at the time, is deplorable.

2. He let at least three million people in India die of starvation to stockpile food for Europeans to eat when the war was over

India was still under British rule in 1943, and while Churchill focused on the war effort many people in Bengal were starving.

According to 'Churchill's Secret War', the prime minister ignored the famine and laid down orders for 170,000 tons of Australian wheat to pass through India so it could be stockpiled to feed Europeans after the war ended. In addition to this, India was forced to export rice to fuel the war rather than feeding its own people.

Advertisement

Madhusree Muskerjee, the author of 'Churchill's Secret War', also quotes him as saying: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

It's also reported that he partially blamed the Indian people for their own starvation, because they "breed like rabbits."

In his private diaries, even Churchill's own Secretary of State for India said he was unable to "see much difference between Churchill's outlook and Hitler's."

3. His actions as an MP would be really, really bad nowadays

According to Martin Gilbert's biography of him, Churchill accepted 5,000 from two oil companies to represent them when they applied to the government about a merger in 1923.

Parliamentary ethics may have been thought of differently in those days, but it's still not something we should be looking up to.

Advertisement

4. He openly called for the sterilisation of people with mental illnesses

As Home Secretary, Churchill not only suggested barring people with learning disabilities and mental illnesses from getting married, he also called for them to be sterilised and said "mental defectives" should be put in concentration camps.

In a time when we knew very little about mental disorders, this could seem quite normal - except his reasoning was even more abhorrent. He suggested doing all these deplorable things because "the multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race."

5. He *might* have committed some war crimes

During the Second World War, bombing of cities was fairly commonplace on both sides, but the RAF's attacks on Nazi-held cities have been condemned due to the high numbers of civilian casualties, something we rarely think about on the other side.

We know a lot about how plucky Brits survived the Blitz, but we were also bombing cities in Europe where many civilians were also struggling to survive.

According to historian Richard Overy, Churchill was the one who pioneered the idea of strategically bombing cities when previously it had been ethically off limits.

Advertisement

Some historians, such as Jorg Friedrich and Gunter Grass, have even dubbed some of Churchill's bombing campaigns as "war crimes," and claim certain bombings were carried out on small towns that barely held any strategic importance.

According to Friedrich, 635,000 civilians - 75,000 of them children - were killed by Britain's bombing campaign during World War II.

When looking at these things from a different perspective, everyone's favourite bulldog-like British prime minister seems a bit less of a hero and a bit more of a ruthless warmonger.
Clodagh Kilcoyne / Reuters

The SNP have been near invincible in recent years. Riding on a wave of popular nationalism their broad tent politics has attracted both left and right under their tartan umbrella. But is the honeymoon over? Opinion polls are not producing their magic 60% target for a Yes vote. They have lost their majority in the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish economy, reliant on oil and the financial sector, is looking far from rosy. Are we just seeing a blip in their unstoppable march to independence or are we starting to see the demise of this formidable political force?

Many see the SNP as putting forward a radical left wing message, when in fact their message is aimed at Tories as much as Labour voters. Scotland has been as much a traditional Tory heartland as a Labour one. The Tories were the dominant political force between the 1930's to the 1950's being the largest party in Scotland in four out of the seven general elections held during this period. Even at the height of Thatcherism, in 1983, the Tories still held 21 seats in Scotland. The majority of the six seats the SNP held on to at Westminster elections since 1997 (bar 2001 when they held five), had been previously Conservatives strongholds. However, this all changed in 2015 when Labour, like the Conservatives in 1997, imploded.

Advertisement

One of the main reasons the SNP froze Council Tax from 2007 was because they wanted to court the Tory vote. This has been an extremely popular measure in Scotland, yet it has inflicted a massive amount of austerity upon local councils, with the council tax freeze leading to Scottish local authorities facing 14.8billion of debt, and having to make frontline cuts.

Since seizing power in Holyrood in 2007 the SNP have tried to avoid raising taxes, even though, with the introduction of the 2012 Scotland Act they have the ability to set the rate of Income Tax. In the 1999 Election they campaigned against the 1p Income tax brought in by the Labour Party in Westminster, partly due to the effect it would have upon their Conservative base. The SNP are now proposing freezing income tax for high earners; with these tax proposals the SNP continue to court Scottish Tory voters who have bought into the empty space patriotism of the SNP.

Before the 2016 Scottish Parliament election Nicola Surgeon asserted there would be "a sharp intake of breath" if the conservatives came in second and this would be due to "the spectacular collapse we've seen of Labour's vote across all parts of Scotland". There is no doubt that this electoral result further highlighted the Labour Party's collapse, however on the Regional List and in terms of constituency seats the Conservatives made substantial gains from SNP such as the seat they won in Edinburgh Central. Now the SNP have a formidable opponent in Ruth Davidson, who pushed Labour into third place, it will be harder for the SNP to win a vote on Independence.

Advertisement

Further to the SNP woes is the question of Europe. If the UK does lose the EU passport then this would disproportionately hit Scotland. ONS data shows that Scotland accounts for 6.9% of the total finance and insurance sector Gross Value added (GVA), the third highest contribution in the U.K. Further to this even if Scotland were to leave the .UK. and try to become a member state of the European Union, Spain and Belgium assert that they would veto any bid by Scotland to join as an independent country.
"We walked 10 days through Macedonia. We had very little food or water because we'd left in a hurry. What we had we shared with each other. We tried to give the children more. Going over the mountains was really hard. Our feet blistered and bled. Each step was agony. Our children were crying with hunger and cold. It rained and kept raining. We drank the rain water off the leaves...Many of us fell down in the mountains. We were covered in scratches, our feet were cut up and I have a huge bruise on my leg from a fall. I had to carry my children. They were terrified. I was scared for them but also because I could feel my scar from the caesarean ripping. It was so

painful."

The words of Nadia. a Yazidi from Iraq.She fled her country whilst pregnant and accompanied by her young sons, having witnessed extremists commit unbelievable atrocities. When she reached Athens she was given a Caesarian, but her baby was dead. He was taken away and buried in a mass grave.

On 19 and 20 September world leaders will gather at the UN for two major summits on the global refugee and migration crisis - a UN General Assembly plenary co- chaired by Jordan and Ireland, and a Summit on the Global Refugee Crisis convened by President Obama.

Advertisement

Ahead of the event, Women for Refugee Women and Care International UK are holding a 'Listen to the Women' event, to help ensure that the UK government plays a positive part in these summits.

Tomorrow (13th September), activists will be joined by cross-party MPs to hear testimonies of women like Nadia, read by actors including Juliet Stephenson and Anne-Marie Duff.

The message will be clear: women face specific challenges in the global refugee crisis.

Women who cross borders to seek safety share the same challenges that men do, but they may also have specific vulnerabilities. These include sexual and gender-based violence. It is a fact that many refugee women are fleeing sexualised or gender-based violence, including rape as persecution, forced marriage, forced prostitution. In addition, many of them experience sexual violence at the hands of traffickers or others during their journeys.

Women and girls who are migrating also face high risks to reproductive health. There is often no suitable provision for pregnant women and new mothers in refugee camps and border crossings.

Advertisement

And women who are caring for young children while they are displaced face an emotional and physical toll that is often unrecognised. As well as trying to keep going themselves, they are trying to protect their children from the worst effects of what they are going through.

The UK can and should do more to ensure that women are safe. At the moment, we are taking in many fewer refugees than other European countries. Without becoming overwhelmed, the UK could do more to contribute to humane solutions for at least more of the women and children caught up in refugee crisis.

The UK government could also do more to support the needs of refugee women in developing countries where most refugees are living. This should include increased funding to women-led organisations and ensuring that humanitarian aid is linked to commitments on meeting women's needs.

In addition, our government needs to work with other governments to ensure that there are safe, legal routes to settlement for vulnerable refugee women. A focus on deterrence ignores the root causes of displacement and puts women and girls at greater risk.

And finally, in the UK women who have crossed borders to seek safety should be given dignity and a chance to rebuild their lives. This includes timely and fair decisions on asylum applications; an end to detention in the notorious Yarl's Wood detention centre (described last year by HM Inspectorate of Prisons as 'a place of national concern'); and an end to destitution and homelessness as women pass through the asylum process.

Advertisement
"In 2012 the government announced a commitment of 1.5million for suicide research. This figure is less than the estimated cost of one single suicide in the UK.

"To put this in context, there were more than 6,000 suicides in 2014, so suicide is now costing us in the region of 10billion a year. The 1.5million spend on research was not unwelcome, of course, and many important initiatives were identified. But not a penny was spent asking the question 'why men?'.

"The assumption is that it's all too easy to understand the gender bias in suicide. Remember those lazy truisms?

"Men drink more, visit the doctor less, and take more fatal methods. And yet the female suicide rate has halved since the early 1980s. The problem doesn't then appear to simply biological. We have to go beyond these surface indicators and ask what is really going on."
Georgie and I have been best friends for over five years, during which we have shed tears over a number of abominable relationships, and have laughed in disbelief at some shocking dating disasters. Let's just say, our milkshake brings all the twats to the yard.

Some say your friends know you better than you know yourself; they will offer words of encouragement when they spot fetch happening, and they will be the ones to warn you against falling into a fuckboy's 'mirror pic' lined web. We decided to test this theory.

Advertisement

For two weeks, we took over each other's Tinder accounts, taking charge of biographies, pictures and dating arrangements, to see if we could help each other meet our matches.

TRISTEN ON GEORGIE:

Despite the urge to change Georgie's bio to something witty but slightly derogatory, such as 'I am the good thing that small packages come in,' I refrained. After all, this was serious research we were conducting; so instead, I went on to describe her as 'an all-round 10 that enjoys setting fire to stuff' - she scrubs up well and she's a performer - so it's entirely true.

The first guy I matched her with was a brunette, well-muscled architect named Adam. "You remind me of someone," he said, "who?" "My next girlfriend" - I was ashamed by my misjudgement. Not today Satan, I thought.

Advertisement

After sifting through a week's worth of cheesy chat up lines, I picked a French bartender named Laurent, a fit fireman named Evan and a model-esque musician named Si; the best of a challenging bunch.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT...

WHO: Laurent, 30, Bartender

Georgie: Laurent whatsapped me the day before our date and after a bit of old fashioned stalking, I discovered that looks wise, he was literally my dream man. Even in conversation, he seemed genuinely interested in me, which nowadays is such a rarity. Tristen had done well. Or so I thought...

An hour before our date, he cancelled, saying he had to do an inventory at work. We rescheduled for the following day, but once again, he cancelled less than an hour before we were due to meet; his sister needed him. On the third day, a record 20 minutes before, he cancelled stating that he had checked his train ticket and had to go back to France early the following morning.

I'm not a stalker (promise) but I found myself dancing at the bar that Flakey Frenchie, as I now dubbed him, worked at a few days later and decided to ask every member of staff about him. Turns out he doesn't work there at all, his brother does!

Advertisement

Laurent was either lying about his job, or his brother was the one I was talking to. Either way, I never heard from him (or his brother) again.

WHO: Evan, 27, Fireman

Georgie: I met Evan in a bar in Victoria Station and he was clearly paralytic when he arrived. After a while, I said that I was going to the loo, to which Evan responded 'don't escape' whilst laughing in an alarmingly creepy manner. I laughed unconvincingly in response, and of course proceeded to leg it!

Hours later, Evan texted me saying that all his mates had left him, and that the trains were fucked. He had no mates, and the trains were not fucked, he had just missed them all.

I received an apologetic message from him the next day, saying we should try again and do something more civilised - I decided to decline. He may be a fit fireman, but it's safe to say I won't be sliding down his pole anytime soon...

Advertisement

WHO: Si, 32, Musician

Georgie: I met Si at a bar in central London and was initially blown away by his chiselled features and amazing dress sense, but as soon as he spoke, I knew he wasn't the one.

After a slow start where Si appeared to take life far too seriously, he finally started to loosen up and we even shared a cheeky snog on the way home! (Wine was involved). We messaged constantly afterwards and arranged a second date for the following week. Everything seemed to be going well.

A few days before date two, I bumped into him and some friends at a bar whilst out with Tristen. We were acting really coupley and everyone had a great night but the next morning, I received a text message which said, "sorry, I'm not into you anymore, mainly because I don't deal with girls in porn, and your best mate's looks didn't match how much of a c*nt she was."

I have no idea why he had suddenly decided that I work in porn industry, or why he hated Tristen so much - but something clearly took the jam out of his donut. And they say women are crazy...

GEORGIE ON TRISTEN:

I decided to keep Tristen's bio relatively the same - she had already done a great job of making herself sound like she keeps frogs in her pockets and owns 10+ cats.

Advertisement

Despite the colourful biography, the matches came flooding in. One particular gentleman called Jayden was determined to get her address, and had a slightly disturbing obsession with feet. As a good friend, I declined his weird advances.

Instead, I decided to set Tristen up with an attractive data analyst called Mark, a quirky marketing executive called James, and hot northerner (a professional one), called Leon.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT...

WHO: Mark, 28, Data Analyst

Tristen: I met Mark at a nice pub in South London; he immediately gave me a hug and asked me what I wanted to drink. At the bar, Mark flashed a smile and said "you look like your pictures, so this round is on me" - I laughed, but he just stared at me blankly. *Cue painfully long, awkward silence*

As the drinks flowed, Mark's stories became more and more elaborate; he bragged about being friends with Good Charlotte (why?) and about his supermodel ex-girlfriend who doesn't like her photo taken, which is why there are no photos of them together. After a while, I text Georgie who thankfully made a rescue call.

Advertisement

On the way out, Mark asked if I'd like to see him again, I gave a nonchalant 'maybe', to which he replied "next time I'm gonna get you so fucked up you'll be in hospital" - romance ladies and gentlemen, is not dead.

WHO: James, 34, Marketing Executive

Tristen: From our initial correspondence, James seemed like your average Londoner, talking about the weekend and his love of music, a mutual interest. He seemed nice, or so I thought.

As soon as James was let loose on my full name and number, something changed. I received frantic messages on Facebook telling me that he had messaged me on Whatsapp; I then received messages on Whatsapp telling me he had messaged me on Facebook. He then discovered my Instagram. It was a full on assault on my communicative platforms, and there was only so long before he discovered my Twitter.

Fearing this may be another Mark situation, I postponed our date, but in true yoof style, this led to a barrage of prank calls at various times of the night, coupled with a succession of "ha" and "lol" message requests on Facebook.

It became apparent very quickly, that James might not be my knight in shining armour, but rather a dickhead in tinfoil.

Advertisement

WHO: Leon, 29, Sales Executive

Tristen: Leon was a 6ft, brunette, fashion sales executive from Manchester; he was really easy to talk to and had a great sense of humour. We arranged to meet at a pub in central London, but the day before our date, he completely disappeared.

Several weeks later after deleting his number and assuming him a write-off, I received a message out of the blue from Leon saying, "I can explain."

Intrigued, and wondering whether this was some kind of catfish situation, I messaged back. We arranged a date for two days later, but an hour before we were due to meet, Leon messaged saying "I think I'm just going to have one tonight, I'm feeling a bit ropey, I'm not bailing on you though, promise!" "Sure!" I said.

Knowing exactly what this meant, I continued working for a bit, only to receive a second message just half an hour later saying his work had 'dropped something' on him last minute and he had to cancel. A car? A vat of volcanic ash? A large segment of Table Mountain? Whatever it was, I never heard from him again.

Advertisement

CONCLUSION: After weeks of swiping and setting up dates with not even one success story, we've come to the conclusion that it's almost impossible to secure date on Tinder that doesn't leave you rocking backwards and forwards in your shower tray - even with your best friend's help.
The digital age is upon us; however, the spate of recent high-profile IT failures has indicated a systemic weakness around the world.

Across the globe, retail banking, in particular, has been susceptible to consumer frustration. Innovative technologies which promise enhanced online banking and seamless mobile payments are disrupted by systems that have gone down due to bad software. The Post Office and the official voter registration page for the EU Referendum also recently experienced widespread downtime.

To make matters worse, modern technological advancements have resulted in more complex security threats. Innovative cyber-criminals are ready to pounce on faulty code, and businesses need to ensure they employ software applications that are fully secure and robust.

Advertisement

Globally, the now-infamous Bangladesh Bank SWIFT hack has highlighted the importance for organisations to clean-up their act when it comes to IT performance. Startups, who have a clean tech slate, have an advantage over legacy businesses with old, creaky systems and clunky front-ends.

The risks are magnified by many businesses being unable to detect major software flaws that fail to be discovered by traditional testing methods. Organisations require an in-depth analysis to help detect the most dangerous structural flaws in their systems. With 50% of security problems occurring in the software design and architecture phases of development, this is vital to ensure up-to-scratch performance.

Software: The Founding Pillar of the Digital World

As modern customers demand state-of-the-art experience and applications, digital upon digital layers add up. Software is the founding, structural pillar.

Industry leaders in banking, retail, manufacturing and health are forced to become technology companies in their own right. These are new challenges to incumbent players who have not fully modernised their business. Organisations, regardless of industry, must embrace technology or become irrelevant.

Advertisement

Increased digitalisation brings a greater risk of system failures. Organisations still running legacy systems try to migrate over to a more agile environment because as industries digitise, it is now a question of 'do or die'.

The Global IT Outage Problem

Recent large-scale outages at Delta Airlines and BT mean IT failures are a hot topic. The IT Process Institute states resolution time per system outage is around 200 minutes, and a typical large IT organisation will see as many as 20,000 software related incidents per year. When critical competitive factors are on the line - customer experience, brand reputation and financial penalties - it is amazing to see the lacklustre attitudes some businesses take towards software quality.

Here are the main challenges businesses must address to adapt in the digital age:

Complexity

There is a tendency to make the simple complex. Through our own analysis into the software performance of the Financial Sector, we found Brits run far less modularised software than their European and US counterparts. The longer the code the greater exposure to glitches. Complex code takes twice as long to determine the root cause when a glitch or outage happens.

Outsourcing

UK businesses are more likely to outsource software coding and maintenance, often to countries such as India. Whilst outsourcing has many benefits, it can often result in a loss of control. Software applications come back into the organisation with different levels of quality control. One person's idea of excellent code could be different to another's. Regular measurement of outsourced applications sets a performance benchmark.

Legacy Tech

As businesses try to adapt to meet modern consumer expectations, they are often building new software on legacy systems. This is particularly poignant for traditional banks and insurance businesses, some even running applications on systems more than thirty years old. British coders are using mainstream and 'old school' technologies to support such applications, with a higher blend of COBOL, and a lower blend of modern methodologies like DevOps and Agile. Following the recent Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) ruling, older banks should be addressing their legacy systems sooner rather than later.

Advertisement

Lack of 'Business' Synergy

As traditional business organisations merge into technology outfits, these organisations need to be more strategic about their software landscape. IT and business teams need to buddy up to fully leverage the technology currently available. Software must be designed to meet long-term business needs, despite cost pressures demanding greater functionality and performance for less. Businesses need to know - can IT budgets be cut without impacting performance and customer satisfaction?

'Techies' to the Rescue

Whether you're dealing with old, incumbent technology or creating new applications from scratch, developers should employ a three-pronged strategy to create secure, structurally sound software.

Developers and outsourcers must be motivated to write clear, simple and healthy code. There are many effective and affordable solutions on the market today that facilitate strong communication, project management and development tools. Regular quality checks must be done in near-real-time as code is being written.

Once all parts of an application are integrated (UX, logic, data management, etc.), a complete analysis must be performed to check if all components are rock solid and are interacting with each other correctly. More than 90% of severe software glitches are rooted in architectural problems, so conducting a thorough analysis is paramount. Good bricks do not necessarily make a good building if they are not laid properly.

It takes coordination between the front and back office to be successful in digitalisation. The back office must have sound structure, and the front office must support customer-facing applications (like those on mobile devices) that are secure, flexible and easy to change. These parameters must be regularly measured so they can be improved.

Advertisement

The challenges are ongoing, but there is an opportunity for organisations to secure a competitive advantage over their rivals by addressing software structural quality issues and building more reliable and secure technologies that translate into better customer experience.

Poor software quality, if unaddressed, will continue to let UK businesses down in the digitally enabled world. It all starts with building the right foundations.
FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIA
ntmaddox via Getty Images

Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement attracted fresh criticism this week after chaining themselves to the runway at London City Airport. Specifically, in attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the protest, critics raised the fact that all the protesters were white. Now, let's be clear. Black Lives Matter protests against the unequal value of black versus white lives. In recent years this inequality has been witnessed most clearly in the shamefully high number of black people killed by police officers in the United States. Obviously, this glaring proof of the racism that still exists within our society is enough to cause outrage among anybody with black, white or any other colour skin as long as they have a brain and a decent bone in their body. Why, then, is it questionable that white people should protest in support of Black Lives Matter? In the kind of society I want to live in, concern for black lives is not only something that concerns black people. And in fact, the white protestors at London City airport on Tuesday show that to an extent, that is already the kind of society that we do live in. But going beyond this, protest movements are about spreading an important message. This being the case, what matters is not the colour of a protestor's skin, but their sincerity and belief in the cause they promote.

Advertisement

I happen to know one of the protestors who was arrested on Tuesday for chaining herself to the runway. She does happen to be white. She does happen to be middle-class. She also happens to be one of the kindest and most sincere people I have had the privilege of coming across. I don't for a second doubt the earnestness that drove her to take action. On the contrary, I am led to doubt the sincerity and political inclinations of those who question why white people would be present at a protest about the value of black lives. Could it be that these critics find it so questionable because they can't imagine themselves standing in solidarity and support with such a cause?

Black Lives Matter has met with plenty of criticism in the three years it has been active and at every turn its opponents try to delegitimize it in any way possible. One of the ways this has been done is to construe BLM as a black terrorist organisation that is at odds with white society. It's easy to see then why white support for the movement makes its opponents uncomfortable. It undercuts their narrative and makes their arguments impossible to sustain. At the end of the day what Black Lives Matter is trying to achieve is not difficult to grasp. In fact it is painfully simple. That is why the movement makes so many people uncomfortable. It forces people to confront the fact that the society we live in and want to be proud of falls horrifically short of one very important and very simple tenet. White society, having left behind slavery and colonialism, would like to think that it has also overcome that ugliest element of our past: racism. Black Lives Matter is potent because it tells us that, in fact, we still have a long way to go. But how can people imagine that we will overcome anything if we exclude people from engaging with the change that they want to see and help bring about? Political change happens by gaining as much support as possible for an important issue. This cuts across racial categories. The more support the Black Lives Matter movement can amass, the more hope there is of bringing about meaningful change.
My British partner, Andargachew "Andy" Tsege, has spent over two years on Ethiopia's death row for daring to speak out against one of Africa's most brutal dictatorships.

Last week I went to the High Court in London with our three children for a hearing about how the Foreign Office has handled Andy's case. The court said it could not force the British government to do more to help Andy. "I am sad because I thought this judge would help us bring back my dad," our nine-year-old daughter told me afterwards.

Advertisement

Every British passport says Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State promises to ensure that the bearer should receive "such assistance and protection as may be necessary." In other words, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, has a duty to help British citizens like Andy when they are in peril abroad.

We went to court because in two years the Foreign Office has not even called for Andy's release, something it has done in many similar cases. When Boris became Foreign Secretary, I hoped he would help Andy. After all, as Mayor of London, he wrote to me saying, "I am truly saddened to hear of Mr Tsege's situation..... with no foreign policy remit, any other intervention is beyond my powers as Mayor of London...I very much hope Mr Tsege safely returns to the UK in the near future."

Now that Boris has the power to help, I was sickened to see his lawyers tell the court they were "comfortable" that Andy is not being ill-treated. How can they say this when British Embassy staff only visit Andy with a guard in the room? Andy would be forced to say he is the victim of torture in front of his torturers.

Boris should listen to the UN, whose Special Rapporteur on Torture said in February that "Ethiopia, by subjecting Mr. Tsege to torture, ill-treatment, prolonged solitary confinement and incommunicado detention, by denying him access to adequate medical care and legal process, and by sentencing him to death without due process for a non-violent crime, has violated his right to be free from torture." Or the US State Department, which in its 2015 report on Ethiopia, found that "security officials tortured and otherwise abused detainees."

Advertisement

Instead, Boris's barristers argued that there has been no "grave breach of international law, particularly in the context of human rights". I think Andy's case involves lots of violations and abuses. He was kidnapped off a plane in the Middle East and bundled into Ethiopia, where he was constantly shackled for the first fortnight and held in a secret prison for months. He now sits in a cell facing execution for his peaceful political opposition to a repressive Ethiopian regime, after a trial where he was not invited to be present.

The Foreign Office claims that doing more for Andy "would have consequences for [our] relationship with Ethiopia..." So Boris is more worried about offending a totalitarian state than repatriating a British citizen to his family. This is appeasement. When did those who represent Britain become so cowardly?
Elodie Rodriguez, Account Manager, Kinetic Aviator

It is hard to imagine Londons Piccadilly Circus or New Yorks Times Square without its iconic screens. Both have become globally recognisable tourist hotspots thanks to their use of eye-catching DOOH and their sheer size. What if this iconic phenomenon was achieved on a similar level in some of the worlds largest airports?

New Yorks Times Square has an estimated footfall of 1.05million a week, Piccadilly Circus 2million a week. Compare that to Heathrows 1.46million a week and its clear to see the opportunities. The numbers for airports are attractive, not least for advertisers trying to increase their general brand awareness via impact and mass audience reach.

But lets go back to basics: why should you use OOH advertising? On average, people are spending 25% (Gov, 2015) more time outdoors than they did 25 years ago. OOH offers the public a dynamic form of media. It delivers effective marketing messages to a broadcast audience which consumers find hard to ignore.

Advertisement

The industry is worth over $38bn (Roux, 2015) and this will only grow as media owners increase their data collection and analysis capabilities, allowing advertising clients to better understand their consumers needs, tailoring their ads to these preferences and increasing their ROI.

Bluetooth beacons on advertising structures, facial recognition and Wi-Fi all give firms access to data, including individuals online browsing behaviour and shopping history (Tan, 2016), technology that airports are already using and reaping the benefits of.

But why are airport passengers such a good audience to capture?

Think back to some of your trips to the airport, the time you spent there, how you were feeling and what you were doing. Think about all the different areas you went through to get to your final destination.

Airports are fantastic places to reach out to a large, often upmarket target audience. They offer significant dwell time for brands to engage with, with passengers spending an average of 70-80min in the departure lounges. This excludes the other important dwell time spent at other points of their journey: travelling to and from the airport, waiting in departures and arrivals areas, going through check-in, security, browsing in the retail and leisure zones, relaxing in the business and first class lounges, waiting at the boarding gates. Every single point of the journey is an opportunity to engage with the consumer.

Advertisement

Airports also create an optimum consumer mind-set with a captive, relaxed and happy audience. They are seeking stimulation and are often more receptive to it, which  with a mostly affluent audience, consisting of both business and leisure passengers with a willingness to spend  means big opportunities for brands.

No wonder luxury shopping names like Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermes; and high-street favourites like Cath Kidston, Ted Baker and Accessorize have all set camp in the departure areas of high traffic airports like Heathrow T5, recently voted Worlds Best Airport for Shopping. High-end dining names like Caviar House and Fortnum & Mason Champagne Bar; and restaurant chains like Wagamama, Nandos and Wetherspoons are also reaping the benefits. In fact, Wetherspoons at Gatwick is the highest-grossing branch in the UK. Similarly, Dixons at the same airport is the retailers top site in terms of consumer spend.

But what does the future hold for advertising in airports? Airports worldwide are investing in expansion and redevelopment of their facilities. London City Airport, well-known for its high concentration of business passengers, has invested 344m to expand its existing infrastructure and handle a 39.5% increase in passengers. Dubai has invested nearly $8bn in an expansion project due to end 2020. Gatwick Airport is increasing its connection between the UK and existing and emerging global markets resulting in a 1bn investment. Shanghais recent expansion targeted further increase in capacity from 9.6m to 40m passengers in 2015.

On-going and future airport developments will attract more passengers in numbers and more affluent travellers in terms of willingness to spend. For advertisers, this means more opportunities to showcase their products, more opportunities to reach-out to larger audiences and ultimately more ROI.
Companies are having to do a difficult balancing act with their sustainability plans. On one hand, they must focus on environmental goals such as improving the efficiency of their water use and reduce their waste and emissions. On the other, they must engage with a growing set of social pressures that undermine their license to operate: unequal access to water and land, food insecurity, and youth unemployment surrounding them in the developing countries in which they operate.

The challenge with this is that business leaders tend to be more comfortable with the environmental goals, which require technical, engineering and managerial acumen, than the social pressures, which call for more complex political engagement. However technology alone cannot solve the problem of social inequality, which is increasingly testing the credibility of even the most sophisticated corporate sustainability plans.

Pivotal to these issues are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the new universal framework that captures the scope of these issues, providing a vision for positive change. Much has been made of the role that business should play in advancing the SDGs, as most of the issues advocated by the SDGs - from decent work to taxation or pollution - are directly material to business operations and growth. However, only a small handful of companies have so far managed to develop credible and meaningful approaches that don't feel superficial or tokenistic.

Advertisement

Business diplomacy for sustainable development

In the absence of clear signals from national governments on which SDGs the private sector should focus on in their country, companies have to hone their 'business diplomacy' skills for sustainable development. This idea recognizes that business will have to work with local actors on real solutions that improve the social and environmental conditions where they operate. For companies, it means seeing the SDGs as a 'materiality framework'; identifying the local development challenges that pose material risks to their business and becoming proactive agents of change.

For example, food and agriculture companies sourcing commodities from countries like Indonesia or Paraguay, are unequivocally exposed to illegal deforestation and land tenure conflicts in their supply chains. This is a product of weak local governance; and it undermines credibility when companies commit publicly to 'zero-deforestation' or 'zero land-grabbing' targets for their value chains. The only way companies can overcome these risks is by partnering with governments to strengthen land tenure and forest governance in countries that are vital to their operations.

Only a very small number of multinationals have taken the bold step of managing land tenure risks by helping communities secure their land titles. However this is the right strategic choice for companies making long-term investments in regions where social inequality and poor governance undermine sustainable land-use.

Similarly, in much of the African continent, high unemployment rates are pushing governments to impose high 'local content' requirements on companies in export-oriented sectors like extractives. This means companies must hire a majority of local people - a demand businesses see as a risk to projects and a short sighted way to promote jobs in the country. Helping governments to create employment on a greater scale, for example by supporting SME development and using their procurement channels to support local enterprises, must be a priority for these companies. They must aim to rally, individually and collectively, around the SDGs on decent work and implement partnerships with governments that visibly strengthen local economies.

Advertisement

Assimilating local priorities

Social inequality and poor governance are real obstacles to the growth of organisations in emerging markets. Adopting a 'business diplomacy' position means involving corporate functions beyond sustainability, for example including strategists and government affairs departments to maximize the role of corporate lobbying as a force for positive change.

Strengthening decision-making through 'business diplomacy' goes way beyond a linear problem/solution approach. It requires companies to develop a holistic view of interdependent development factors that are shaping their local reality. It requires public-private partnerships to consider how to build the capacity of governments to address inequality.


Photo: Letters from Tanzania students to Jerusalem students.

It's September 1 and I am now beginning my seventh year of teaching English at a Jerusalem high school. As I greet my new students on the first day of school, I take the time to think back to when I was a high school student in Maine and how my education there left its unique mark on my future in Israel.

When you graduate high school, full of dreams and ambitions, you never know how or when you may once again cross paths with one of your classmates. I graduated Calais High School (CHS) in 2004 and moved to Israel, making a career as an English teacher and journalist. I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to work together on a meaningful English project, as I did last year, with another fellow Mainer and Calais High graduate.

Learning English can be challenging for teenagers and I am always on the lookout for interesting projects to get my students more inspired to learn the language. When a friend of mine, Kirstin Underwood, who was a year ahead of me at CHS, joined the Peace Corps together with her husband, Paul, another CHS graduate, and moved to Tanzania, my teacher's light bulb lit up. Through Facebook, I saw that Kirstin was teaching at a school in a rural village in the East African country.

Advertisement

I got in touch with Kirstin via Facebook and asked her what she thought about the following idea.

How would she like to do a letter exchange between my 10th grade students in Jerusalem and her students in Tanzania? I have always believed that as educators, part of our responsibility is to open the eyes of our students to different parts of the world and get to know other cultures and countries. To have my students learn about a new country, while practicing their English, and maybe even make some new friends in the process, would be an amazing opportunity for everyone involved.

But before I got too carried away, I had to wait for Kirstin's answer.

It took a while. As Kirstin informed me, Internet access is not easy to come by in rural Tanzania, but when she finally was able to connect, she responded with a huge yes, excited to have her students learn about Israel. We decided that in addition to writing letters, we would have our students draw, so that those who had a more difficult time writing in English, could express themselves creatively.

Kirstin had 32 students, ages 13-15 in her remote village school located in the green highlands of Tanzania, and I had 25 students, ages 15-16 in the bustling, historical capital of Israel, sometimes called the city of stone.

Two months later, a brown package postmarked from the commercial port city, Dar es Saalam, located on Tanzania's Indian Ocean coast, arrived to my Jerusalem address. I was just as excited as my students to open the package.

Advertisement

The students gathered around my table in class, and we went over the contents together. Kirstin had written an introductory letter, explaining the language that her students spoke was Swahili and that some of her students found it difficult to express themselves in English. Kirstin herself had learned to speak Swahili fluently and used the language to communicate with her students.

"My name is Nelson," one letter read. "I am 13-years-old. I live in Njombe, Tanzania. I like to play ball, to ride a bike, and to read books. Many people who live here are farmers." Below the handwritten letter, was a colorful drawing of a boy wearing traditional Tanzanian clothing, as well as a cow and a water jar used to collect rainwater.

Another letter was from a girl named Esther who wrote about the southern highlands where she lived. She included a drawing of a girl dancing with the green and blue, black-striped flag of Tanzania in the background.

My students were excited. "This is so cool! What a great project," exclaimed one of my students, Hadas, which to the ears of any teacher is praise akin to winning an Oscar.

This was followed by a chorus of students asking if we could travel to Tanzania to meet their new friends. Or as one student, Nir, suggested, maybe they could simply become friends on Facebook instead. "The kids don't have Facebook accounts, let alone computers in their homes. And there's very limited Internet access in their area of Tanzania," I explained to them.

Advertisement

It was hard for Nir and some of the other students to imagine that there were places in the world where teens did not have Facebook, Instagram or other online social networking platforms, and that their only means of communicating with the outside was through the old-fashioned postal service, via written letters.

We decided that the best thing we could do was to take photos of ourselves holding the letters and drawings from Tanzania, and soon after Kirstin photographed her class doing the same. We then e-mailed the photos to each other as we discovered that Tanzania's mail service can take some time, (our package from Jerusalem arrived to Tanzania three months after it was sent), and downloaded and printed the photos out for our classes. The kids on both continents loved seeing the images of one another holding their letters.

The pen pal project gave my students the chance to not only practice their English, but to also learn about areas in our world where teenagers live without technology. Thanks to two teachers who believe in sharing experiences and building friendships across the globe, learning about two different countries became a much more personal experience for our students.

"My kids loved the chance to connect with your students," Kirstin later wrote to me. "They couldn't believe that people from so far away were writing to them."

My students couldn't either.
This piece was first published in the Newark Star Ledger on September 19, 2001. It is as relevant today as it was then, only eight days after the henious attacks on the World Trade Centers. I was prescient in noting what was to come. Sadly now the fallout of the attacks on American soil have extended to my father's homeland, Iraq, to the French Riviera, and beyond.

"To take blind vengeance on Muslims or Arabs is another kind of evil that we, as Americans, have been fighting for decades," I wrote then. Racism and bigotry with their concomitant acts of violence go unabated. And the voices that protest the abuse of Islam by Muslims continue to be underreported.

Here is the full, original text. Tell me what you've seen change ... and what you've seen stay the same.

Advertisement

I sat on the left side of the NJ Transit train escaping New York City that Tuesday. Like so many of us, I needed to see the smoking towers with my own eyes to shake the disbelief from my senses.

Commuters, ordinarily strangers to one another, talked all the way home. The man next to me and I shared our astonishment and sorrow, wondering what the horrible events might portend. He asked why I had gone to New York that morning, and I said that, ironically, I was producing a television documentary aimed at helping Americans understand Islam better. He shook his head grimly and said, "This is going to help."

I asked why he thought everyone was pointing blame at Muslims at a time like this.

"Racism," was his simple and precise response. I trembled involuntarily.

You can't tell I am Muslim just by looking at me. I do not cover my hair. My eye-brows are waxed back to dark, defined dramatic lines that don't shout "I'm an Arab!" Not any more.

Gone are the painful days of a schoolgirl called "terrorist." No one asks about the camels in my yard anymore, or about the bomb in my backpack. My friend's parents can't forbid me to play with them because now I'm grown up. Not that I ever was a threat. I was just a kid who happened to have a different background, trying to peacefully share the same American playground as everyone else.

Advertisement

I grew up in Queens, and there, as anywhere in the metropolitan area, people of Arab, South Asian or homegrown Muslim roots learned to steel themselves against prejudice.

Until last Tuesday I'd forgotten how much armor I'd been wearing in emotional self-defense. What started in school evolved into decades of explaining oppressed people's frustration in Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iran. I'd get the evil eye when I suggested that maybe people in other counties might not see our government as the same "good guy" we may consider it to be.

But Sept. 11 shattered my shields and silenced my historical clarifications. Nothing explains this. Nothing justifies this outrageous attack. We are all horrified beyond expression at the evil we have witnessed. The assault is on upright people everywhere: Muslims, Christians, Jews, people of other faiths and people of no faith.

I join Muslims all over the world recoiling in disgust that anyone could remotely associate this brutality with Islam. With Arab-Americans I weep for the children of Lebanon and Palestine and Iraq who have already suffered extreme deprivation and stand now to suffer even more. I weep for the young Americans who will be taunted and ostracized, as I once was, for crimes they would never commit.

Americans. all of us, are stunned by this act of violence.

Yes, it's imperative to find the guilty parties, try them, convict them and punish them. But it's also imperative that we do not blame the innocent and curse a whole community unfairly. The world is home to 1.5 billion Muslims -- an estimated 7 million in this country. The overwhelming majority are good, decent people.

Advertisement

Islam is a faith based on peaceful submission to the will of God. Muslims are commanded to respect the faiths of others. We are instructed to do what is good and avoid what is evil. Chapter 35, verse 10 of the Quran says: "If any do seek for glory and power, to God belongs all glory and power. To him mount up all words of purity. It is He who exalts each deed of righteousness. Those that lay plots of evil, for them is a penalty terrible; and the plotting of such will be void of result."

Islam allows no excuse for the killing of innocent people.

So why are some Americans reacting so forcefully against Muslims? To take blind vengeance on Muslims or Arabs is another kind of evil that we, as Americans, have been fighting for decades. That evil is bigotry, so starkly stated by my fellow commuter in the shadow of the smoke last Tuesday.

Bigotry and racism won't help: not locally, not globally.

It will take years, perhaps generations, for all the emotional and political dust to settle from the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon. For Muslims the pain and politics are multilayered. We have not only suffered the loss of loved ones but also are suddenly suspect -- guilty by association. Numerous acts of violence against Muslim businesses have been reported around the country. Mobs have menaced mosques; women in traditional Islamic dress have been beaten. Many shudder with the knowledge that their homelands may soon come under attack.

I am heartened by what I've seen in many New Jersey towns: calls for solidarity among all our diverse communities and measured military response. The guideposts for action are in our great Constitution and the prayerful words of "America, the Beautiful": "Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law."

What your Muslim and Arab neighbors, your doctors, your students and classmates, coffee-shop owners and gas station attendants need now is to be embraced, not rejected. We are not the "them" or the "they" that did it. We are part of "us." We stand with other Americans. Together we can build a more stable and understanding tomorrow.

Advertisement
Ihab, 30 (R), a Syrian migrant from Deir al-Zor, cries as he and his familly are welcomed by his relatives upon their arrival at the railway station in Lubeck, Germany September 18, 2015. Picture taken September 18, 2015. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Over the weekend, the major German newspaper Die Welt reported that refugees are going "on vacation" in the countries they've fled from, such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, citing information from Berlin labor agencies.

There was an immediate outcry on social networks. If they can go on vacation in their homelands, they have no right to be living in Germany, many people said. If their countries are peaceful enough to vacation in, what are they doing here? For those who harbor hostility towards refugees, this report was a good excuse for an uproar.

Advertisement

I'm a Syrian refugee, and I want to say something very clearly: Of course we go to Syria for vacation!

But it's a very different type of "vacation."

Yes, we visit relatives and we drive to sunny spots and to places we've always enjoyed -- but it's still hardly a relaxing or restorative trip to a beach resort!

We don't splash around in the water for a bit then fly back to Germany replenished, with bags full of gifts and candy.

As soon as they -- in this case "they" refers to acquaintances of mine -- step on Syrian soil, they're at serious risk.

Advertisement

As a young man, I would not make a short trip to Syria.

And that wouldn't even be possible. I would be able to enter relatively easily, but I may never be able to leave again.

It's mostly elderly people who travel to Syria. These are parents who want to see their kids again -- those who couldn't escape and who are now fighting in the frontlines. These parents worry about their kids' lives every single day, and they take chance to see their kids one more time.

After everything we've been through, are we supposed to skip out on seeing our relatives?

Why would you expect people to refrain from visiting their families? Germans fly halfway across the world to have a little fun, but we're expected to feel ashamed when, after losing everything, we want to see our families. And why are journalists choosing to refer to these trips as "vacations"?

If we visit friends and family in a war zone, it's because we feel some kind of responsibility towards them.

After everything we've been through, are we supposed to skip out on seeing our relatives? Are we supposed to stop visiting our beloved home?

Advertisement

We've lost so much already.

All we want is to try to support our relatives. We bring them little trinkets, and show them that we haven't forgotten them. We were fortunate enough to escape and find safety -- our loved ones were not.

For the elderly, too, it's not easy to travel to Syria. They risk being arrested at the border and assaulted if they can't pay the corrupt policemen a sufficient bribe.

There's always the risk of not being able to return to Germany.

Sure, there are people who travel to Syria with the goal to make money. Some of them work as human traffickers and profit from bringing others back to Germany with them. But that's a minority.

People like them hurt all other refugees -- including me.

Why should a trip to a war zone be considered a relaxing vacation? Anyone who believes that trivializes the horror and the crimes in Syria, where there's a war going on, not a spring break party.
By Dr. Folake Olayinka

Years ago as a young doctor in Nigeria, I was drawn to a baby's weak cry while I did my ward rounds that evening. After delivery at home, the mother had been rushed with her baby to the hospital.

The baby was not nursing and the cord was quite foul smelling with some sort of local mixture applied to it. The baby had contracted a deadly tetanus infection and was having muscle spasms and could not suck. The mother had not received the tetanus vaccine while pregnant and the delivery was not hygienic. Vaccinating pregnant women with tetanus toxoid allows her to pass on the protective antibodies to the child, which protects the child within the first few months of life.

Progress in public health sometimes feels slow, but the recent announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) that India had eliminated maternal and neonatal tetanus is cause for celebration.

Advertisement

This major public health achievement can be attributed to India's focused approach on making maternal and newborn care accessible to all, according to Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia Region. The occurrence of neonatal tetanus is a triple failure: of vaccination services, antenatal care, and obstetric care. Yet India has shown by its elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus that prevention, even in poorly served areas, is possible.

Until just a few decades ago India accounted for 150,000 to 200,000 tetanus cases in newborns annually, more than anywhere else in the world. Such tetanus cases are now reduced to less than one case per 1,000 live births in all its 675 districts. The entire South-East Asia Region has now achieved elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus, becoming the second region, after Europe, to achieve the feat.

Attending quality prenatal care services at least four times during pregnancy has been found to be a critical part of ensuring both mother and baby are healthy. Part of this care should include immunization and discussion of hygienic birth practices for prevention of tetanus in mothers and their newborns. During these visits, antenatal care providers also deliver a range of services to the pregnant woman and her family, such as counselling, health education, micronutrient supplementation, screening and treatment of hypertension to prevent eclampsia, HIV testing and medications to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in cases of maternal HIV-positivity, and prevention of malaria.

Tetanus is caused by a bacterium which grows in the absence of oxygen, for example in dirty wounds or in the umbilical cord if it is not cut and kept clean. Neonatal tetanus is a deadly disease, often causing muscular spasms and death within days due to respiratory failure.

Advertisement

In the 1980s more than one million people died each year from tetanus, with about three-quarters of them infants in the first month of life, when as many as 80% of infections result in death. That number of deaths globally has been reduced by over 90% and maternal and neonatal tetanus has been eliminated from all but 19 countries. The vaccine to prevent maternal and neonatal tetanus was introduced in 103 countries by the end of 2015 and an estimated 83% of newborns were protected against tetanus through timely maternal immunization. Obviously access to safe and clean delivery with appropriate cord care are also important in preventing infections including tetanus in newborns. Neonatal tetanus can also be prevented by immunizing women of child bearing age with tetanus toxoid containing vaccines outside of pregnancy and is key for elimination.

Despite this huge success, the percentage of women with at least four prenatal care visits was only 64% in 2014 and 58% in 2015, according to UNICEF. Fewer than half of women in the poorest households are likely to receive antenatal care in Africa and Asia. With such low ANC attendance and poor access to care in many places, the goal of maternal vaccinations and positive pregnancy outcomes remains elusive for many.

In a rural community in Liberia earlier this year, I met a pregnant woman who had walked for two hours for prenatal care. She had come with a lively group of women all chattering and all pregnant. They knew the importance of prenatal care and came together from their distant community for the service. Since the health facility had only one trained midwife, they patiently waited and ended up spending almost the whole day there. What an irony -a very different experience in most developed countries where women do not have to walk two hours to attend antenatal care, neither is tetanus a disease that is seen anymore, yet the joy of motherhood experienced when the baby is healthy is the same. Large expansions in antenatal care coverage are still needed to provide the strong platforms to achieve and sustain maternal vaccinations and antenatal care to all pregnant women.

With the help of many interventions, that tiny baby with tetanus I treated so long ago survived. But many are not so lucky. Providing care for the mother during pregnancy has huge implications not just for her health but also for the child she carries and her community. Many health problems in pregnant women can be prevented, detected and treated during antenatal care by trained health workers. India is a good example of how to do just that.
A Mexican migrant talks to a family member through the border fence between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, United States, after a bi-national Mass in support of migrants in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, February 15, 2016. According to the organizers of the event, the Mass was organized to bring together dozens of families of Mexican migrants living in the U.S. and who, based on their immigration status, will not be able to join their families in Mexico when Pope Francis celebrates Mass in Ciudad Juarez on February 17. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

Is Trump an Aberration? Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Liberal Americans like to think of Donald Trump as an aberration and believe that his idea of building a great wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent immigrants from entering the country goes against American values. After all, as Hillary Clinton says, We are a nation of immigrants. In certain ways, in terms of the grim history of this country, they couldnt be more wrong.

Donald Trump may differ from other contemporary politicians in so openly stating his antipathy to immigrants of a certain sort. (Hes actually urged the opening of the country to more European immigrants.) Democrats like Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton sound so much less hateful and so much more tolerant. But the policies Trump is advocating, including that well-publicized wall and mass deportations, are really nothing new. They are the very policies initiated by Bill Clinton in the 1990s and -- from border militarization to mass deportations -- enthusiastically promoted by Barack Obama. The president is, in fact, responsible for raising such deportations to levels previously unknown in American history.

Advertisement

And were you to take a long look back into that very history, you would find that Trumps open appeal to white fears of a future non-white majority, and his support of immigration policies aimed at racial whitening, are really nothing new either. The policies hes promoting are, in an eerie way, a logical continuation of centuries of policymaking that sought to create a country of white people.

The first step in that process was to deport the indigenous population starting in the 1600s. Later, deportation policies started to focus on Mexicans -- seen by many whites as practically indistinguishable from Indians. Except, white settlers found, Mexicans were more willing to work as wage laborers. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Mexicans have been treated as disposable workers. As Europeans were invited to immigrate here permanently and become citizens, Mexican workers were invited into the country to work -- but not to become citizens.

The particular legal rationales have changed over time, but the system has been surprisingly durable. Prior to the 1960s, deportation was based openly on discrimination against Mexicans on the basis of their supposed race or nationality. It was only with the civil rights advances of the 1960s that such discrimination became untenable -- and new immigration restrictions created a fresh legal rationale for treating Mexican workers as deportable. Having redefined them as illegal or undocumented, nativists could now clamor for deportation without seeming openly racist.

Creating a Country for White People

A closer look at American history makes the notion that we are a nation of immigrants instantly darker than its proponents imagine. As a start, what could the very idea of a nation of immigrants mean in a land that was already home to a large native population when European immigrants started to colonize it? From its first moments, American history has, in fact, been a history of deportation. The initial deportees from the British colonies and the American nation were, of course, Native Americans, removed from their villages, farms, and hunting grounds through legalized and extra-legal force everywhere that white immigrants wanted to settle.

Advertisement

The deportations that began in the 1600s continued at least until the end of the nineteenth century. In other words, to celebrate the countrys immigrant origins also means celebrating the settler colonialism and native displacement that made the United States that nation of immigrants -- and this has important implications for immigrants today, many of whom are indigenous people from Mexico and Central America.

Conflicts between immigrants and Natives were central to the colonial histories of both North and South America, and to the American Revolution. In the Proclamation of 1763, the British attempted to mitigate such conflicts by banning colonist (that is, immigrant) encroachment on native lands west of the Appalachian Divide. The British Crown even restricted immigration itself in another fruitless attempt to balance native and settler interests. These prohibitions were among the major grievances that led to the American Revolution.

Among the list of injuries and usurpations carried out by the King that were denounced in the Declaration of Independence, there was the fact that he had endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. In addition, he had, it claimed, excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Along with its commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that document couldnt have been clearer that the new country would also be committed to a settler colonial project of populating the land with white immigrants and getting rid of the natives. Put another way, deportation was written into the American DNA from the get-go and, put in election 2016 terms, the new country was, from the beginning, designed as an explicitly racist project to populate the land with white people. Perhaps this is what Donald Trump means with his now iconic slogan Make America Great Again!

Legislating Citizenship

Nor did this commitment to white supremacy through immigration change during the initial century of U.S. history. The first Naturalization Act of 1790 encouraged white immigration by basing citizenship on race and offering it liberally to immigrants -- defined as white Europeans -- who were in this way made the privileged constituency of a new nation that had a slave system at its heart. (Although southern and eastern Europeans would face social prejudice in the United States, immigration and citizenship law always placed them in the white category.)

Advertisement

It was not until 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution created the right to citizenship by birth, making it possible for the first time for non-whites to become citizens. But when Congress passed that amendment, it had in mind only some non-whites: previously enslaved Africans and their descendants. Heres the crucial line in which Congress made sure of that: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. Since Native Americans were not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, they were excluded from citizenship by birth.

The new racial boundaries of citizenship were further clarified in 1870 when Congress amended the Naturalization Act by officially allowing, for the first time, some non-citizens of color to obtain citizenship: it extended naturalization rights to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent. On paper, this looked like a move away from white supremacy. In the context of the United States at that moment, however, it was something else. It ensured that Native Americans, already excluded from citizenship by birth, would also be barred from obtaining citizenship through naturalization. As for those theoretical aliens of African nativity who might be entering the country and seeking citizenship through naturalization, there were virtually none. In the aftermath of hundreds of years of enslavement and forced transport, it would be many decades before any Africans could imagine the United States as a land of opportunity or a place to make a better life.

And the new Naturalization Act just as explicitly excluded lots of people who were in fact migrating to the United States in significant numbers in the 1870s. If you were European, you were, of course, still quite welcome to become a citizen. However, if you were, for example, Mexican or Chinese, while you were still welcome to come and work, you werent an immigrant, since you couldnt become a citizen. Hence, the United States continued to be a nation of immigrants -- but only of a specific sort.

Legislating Immigration

Citizenship by birth, however, opened a Pandoras box. Anybody physically present in the country (except Native Americans) could obtain citizenship for his or her children by virtue of birth. Chinese adults might be prohibited from naturalizing, but their children would be both racially ineligible to citizenship" and citizens by birth -- a logical impossibility.

Advertisement

Once citizenship by birth had been established, Congress moved to preserve the white racial character of the country by restricting the entry of non-whites -- first with the Page Act of 1875, prohibiting Chinese women from entering the country, then with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. That ban was, in turn, gradually expanded until, in 1917, the Asiatic Barred Zone was put in place. It would span significant parts of the globe, from Afghanistan to the islands of the Pacific, and encompass about half of the worlds population. Its purpose was to ensure that, all Asians being aliens ineligible to citizenship, none of them would enter the U.S., and so their racially ineligible children would never be born here and obtain citizenship by birth.

Students of immigration history generally learn about the 1921 and 1924 quotas that, for the first time, placed restrictions on European immigration. Indeed, for about four decades in the mid-twentieth century, the United States ranked Europeans by their racial desirability and offered differential quotas to reduce the numbers of those less desired (southern and eastern Europeans in particular) entering the country.

But while all these restrictions were being implemented, Congress did absolutely nothing to try to stop Mexican migration. Mexican labor was desperately needed for the railroads, mines, construction, and farming that followed in the wake of white settler colonialism and the displacement of Native Americans in the West. In fact, after Chinese immigration was banned, Mexican workers became even more necessary. And Mexicans had an advantage over the Chinese: they were easier to deport across the long southern border. Many, in fact, preferred to maintain their homes in Mexico and engage in short-term migration to seasonal, temporary jobs. So Mexicans were welcomed -- just not as immigrants or potential citizens. Rather, they were seen as eminently deportable, temporary workers.

In this way, a revolving door of recruitment and deportation came to define Mexican migration to the United States. At some points this system was formalized into bracero or guest-worker programs, as happened between 1917 and 1922, and again from 1942 to 1964. And nativists could sometimes mobilize anti-Mexican sentiment of a Trumpian sort to justify mass deportations -- like those in the 1930s and again in 1954 -- that would only reinforce the inherent and public tenuousness of the Mexican presence in the United States.

The Nation of Immigrants Today

The formal bracero program was phased out after 1964, but the pattern of recruitment and deportation of Mexican workers has continued to this day. The supposedly liberal, immigrant-friendly President Obama actually implemented quotas that have pushed the Department of Homeland Security to oversee hundreds of thousands of deportations yearly. Most of those deported are Mexican -- not exactly surprisingly, since the legal apparatus was designed for just that purpose. The only thing thats new is the stated rationale: now they have been assigned a status -- undocumented -- that justifies their deportation.

Advertisement

Events in the 1960s, including the ending of the bracero program and the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965, made changes that began to treat all countries, including Mexico, the same way. Instead of large numbers of guest-worker visas, Mexico would receive a small number of immigrant visas. But Mexicos migrant history and its reality were completely different from those of other countries. Given how dependent both countries had become on Mexicans migrating north to work, the stream of workers heading north continued despite changes in the law. The only difference: now this was illegal.

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized millions of Mexicans already in the country without legal status and also began the trend towards the militarization and control of the border. Paradoxically enough, this only increased the undocumented population, because those who made it across that border were increasingly afraid to leave for fear they wouldnt make it back the next year.

Meanwhile, civil wars in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s, and subsequent neoliberal reforms and violence, as well as the impact similar neoliberal reforms and the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, had on Mexicos economy in those same decades led to significant increases in authorized and unauthorized immigration. As a result, there was a significant increase in the U.S. Latino population -- as citizens, legal permanent residents, temporary legal residents, and unauthorized residents. But the longstanding national sentiment that Donald Trump is now mobilizing, the belief that somehow Mexicans are alien to the nature of the United States, continues, as does a sub rosa desire for a whiter America.

Something else of interest happened to Mexican and Central American migration during these years. As in the United States, indigenous people in these countries have tended to be the poorest, most marginalized, most exploited sectors of the population. As a result, the violence and the socio-economic changes of the 1980s and 1990s disproportionately afflicted them, which meant ever more indigenous people from those countries entering the migrant stream.

By 2010, 174,494 people chose Mexican American Indian as their tribal affiliation on the U.S. census, making them the fourth largest group of Native Americans, after the Navajo, the Cherokee, and the Choctaw. Its not clear from the census data how many of these were recent immigrants rather than long-term residents, and how many were undocumented. But as the website ThinkMexican commented, It directly challenges Manifest Destiny, the white supremacist narrative used to justify Western expansion, and the genocide of Native Peoples. The message is clear: This land is still Native. And another message is clear too: the United States is still deporting native people.

Advertisement
As the new ceasefire agreed between Russia and the United States is coming into effect, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can finally relax in the knowledge that he has won the Civil War. Sure, there is still a lot of fighting left to be done, but the result is a foregone conclusion.

The reason for this can be gleaned from the detail of the Kerry-Lavrov deal. In principle, the deal stipulates that Russia and their Syrian clients in the Damascus government, along with Assad's Iranian allies cease hostilities against American clients in the fighting, and in return, those American clients stop their own offences against regime targets. Then, both the United States and Russia move on to bombing ISIS and al-Nusra targets.

So far, so good. The only problem is the definition of "al-Nusra targets". ISIS have done a reasonably good job of distinguishing themselves on the battlefield by effectively fighting against everyone else. But the al-Nusra group has been much more porous. They have formed numerous alliances, of various durations, with most anti-regime groups. They would have had collaborations of convenience with virtually all rebel groups. And many rebel fighters would have moved in and out of different groups, and would have, at some point, had some kind of involvement with al-Nusra.

Advertisement

In effect, Russia got a deal whereby they can go and bomb virtually all opposition to Assad, and can haggle with the US on a case-by-case basis on groups about which the US cares about particularly strongly. For its part, the US walked into this deal with open eyes. Their strategic calculus has changed. They no longer care about Assad. The Obama administration has long realised that they lack the desire, and really even the popular backing, to ramp up their involvement in Syria sufficiently to influence the outcome of the Civil War. So now they want to wash their hands of Syria, and limit their exposure - while maintaining their priority of bombing ISIS into the dust.

The short of it is that the US no longer cares very much about any of the assets it has in the rebel camp and has conceded to the Russian position that the Damascus regime should prevail, and the sooner the better. It may deem it tactically wise to protect some of their clients, but by and large, the rebels have been abandoned by their biggest backer, and can expect to be hammered into submission whenever any association can be drawn between them and al-Nusra - which will be often.

Just how well this will turn out now remains to be seen. There is still no reason to suppose that a victorious Assad would be gracious in victory, given how little regard he has shown towards his civilian population so far. We can expect that many of the regions where he suspects opposition to his regime to re-ignite will be cleansed. So Aleppo will continue to be laid to waste. And the refugees will continue to pour over the border for a while longer. While those who have already made it to Europe who had hoped to one day go back to their country may find that is no longer an option available in their futures.

Perhaps Alawites and Christians and other religious minorities will be able to go back to some kind of Baathist co-existence, but Sunni suspicion and hostility towards the regime will remain. And the regime's suspicion and hostility towards the country's Sunni population will also continue. Perhaps this kind of division can be contained and managed, in the same way that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been successfully contained and managed, with only occasional flares of violence. But there will never again be a sense that the state of Syria has any kind of legitimate basis, or that there is more keeping it together than just force: Alawite, Russian and Iranian. There will never again be any hope that the state of Syria can ensure justice for all its people.

Advertisement

This article was first posted in Al Arabiya
Co-authored with Morton Schapiro

Show of hands: you work side-by-side with people who are much poorer or wealthier than you -- and you share your living space with someone from a religion, race, nation or sexual orientation other than your own.

We suspect few adults have their hands in the air. The vast majority of Americans live and work primarily with people much like themselves.

The clearest exception to this demographic homogeneity occurs in academe. It wasn't long ago that students at our nation's colleges and universities were predominately white, male and from affluent families. Today, only 44% of college students are men, and 52% are white. Fully 39% of undergraduates come from families with incomes low enough to qualify for Pell Grants. Especially notable, the most selective schools -- those with applicant pools large enough to fill their classes many times over -- have transformed their student bodies, going from among the least diverse to among the most.

Advertisement

In light of all that, no one should be surprised that student unrest has rocked campus after campus over the past year. What began at the University of Missouri quickly spread across the country. Whether public or private, large or small, urban or rural, few were immune.

Were diversity and inclusion easy, other sectors of society might have already succeeded at it. Apartment buildings and suburban enclaves, corporate work teams and boardrooms, the U.S. House and Senate -- all would be appreciably more diverse.

The young adults moving onto college campuses over the coming weeks arrive from communities and K-12 systems that are largely segregated by race and by income; they may graduate into jobs and neighborhoods that remain so as well. But while on campus, a daughter of a hedge fund parent may share a room with the daughter of a migrant worker; a straight Republican may room with a gay Bernie Sanders supporter. Everyone is here, and everyone lives together, if not in perfect harmony. Still, for four precious years they share classrooms, bathrooms and, for most, an abiding affection for their future alma mater.

They are part of an ambitious experiment in diverse populations living together. Unlike experiments in medicine or engineering, however, there is little empirical research to guide anyone and no controlling for conditions. On the contrary, the participants have no interest in being controlled or viewed as subjects.

Advertisement

If this academic year is anything like the last, some students will proclaim loudly what a terrible job college administrations are doing to create an inclusive community and will demand change. Others will work with one another and with faculty and administrators to advance diversity and facilitate better mutual understanding. Some will do both. Still others will quietly decline to participate by self-segregating or even dropping out.

As college presidents ourselves, of course it is our preference that students collaborate with faculty and administrators rather than occupy offices, shut themselves off from fellow students with whom they disagree, or leave school. But we recognize and accept that these students are coming of age in a time of political, social and economic turbulence unseen in a generation. This year's presidential election rhetoric only makes things more volatile.

We have less patience with pundits and politicians who opine from gated communities and segregated offices about campus incidents that, for all their notoriety, are utterly unrepresentative of the main points of tension on campuses. For every student who complained about inauthentic ethnic food in the cafeteria, to cite one well-publicized example, exponentially more Asian and Asian American students endured insults and snubs based on jealousy, stereotypes or outright hatred. Likewise, for every example of students demanding safe places or trigger warnings so as to avoid material they consider offensive or upsetting, innumerable LGBT students and students of color found themselves in situations where they were affronted or physically threatened.

Social experiments often fail, as any baby boomer who joined a commune in the 1960s can attest. But the efforts currently underway on college campuses to enact the American ideals of opportunity, diversity and unity are noble, and the participants deserve respect for trying to achieve them.

The surprise isn't that there's friction on campus these days, but how well this unique experiment actually works.

Advertisement

Barry Glassner is president and a professor of sociology at Lewis & Clark College. Morton Schapiro is president and a professor of economics at Northwestern University.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Asheville, North Carolina, U.S., September 12, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Hillary Clinton made a deplorable basket case this weekend. That is, she made the case that "half" of the supporters of Donald Trump belong in a "basket of deplorables." It just sounds funnier to say it the first way, that's all.

Kidding aside, though, while the language Clinton used is being criticized, the point she was making was worth a little political risk. She walked part of her comment back almost immediately, saying she was wrong to use the word "half" -- but not wrong to call some Trump supporters "deplorables." Which means she's definitely trying to accomplish some political goal by saying such a provocative thing. Indeed, she's used the basket metaphor more than once (she only said "half" once).

Advertisement

This is a risky tactic, to state the obvious. Clinton's language breaks two cardinal rules for politicians, in fact, which exist because the risk is so plain to see. First, there are two types of politicians in the world: those who split people into two groups, and those who don't. This is a snarky way of saying: "Don't use 'two types of people' metaphors on the campaign trail." It is simplistic to do so, first and foremost, but it also shows a certain "us and them" divisiveness that turns off many voters. Especially paired with a word like "irredeemable," which is rather pessimistic (another thing voters don't usually respond well to).

The second cardinal rule of politics Clinton is breaking by wandering down this particular path is: "Don't talk about your opponent's supporters, because it usually doesn't help you at all." There are two other prime examples of this which many have been pointing out this weekend, and which are worth quoting in full. The first came from Mitt Romney:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.... These are people who pay no income tax... my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

The second was uttered by Barack Obama on the 2008 campaign trail:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Both showed elitist disdain for a large portion of the country's voters. Obama overcame this comment and went on to win. Romney did not. Interestingly enough, Obama's quote could now be updated with "...and they also fell through the Obama administration." Even Obama didn't have any magic wand to wave to make the problem of disappearing manufacturing jobs go away, in other words. The other interesting thing about his quote is that Obama was describing people who are now most likely Trump voters. If you take out the "cling to guns or religion" part of that last sentence, it's a perfect description of Trump's entire campaign, in fact.

Even so, Hillary Clinton is risking a backlash by not only talking about her opponent's supporters, but by also dividing them into two "baskets" -- redeemable and irredeemable. The initial outcry from the right over her statements has been kind of laughable, since (after all) Donald Trump rose to power by "not being PC" and "telling it like it is." Clinton just did that, and now they're shaking at the knees? Please.

At heart, Clinton is entirely correct. Some of Donald Trump's supporters are deplorable. Clinton noun-ized their status into a new political term (that is also causing some merriment online): "The Deplorables." She apologized for saying "half" -- a mistake she won't make again -- but whatever the actual fraction, Trump has indeed energized the alt-right and anti-immigrant communities throughout the entire election cycle. Far from denouncing their support, Trump hired the head of Breitbart (an alt-right site) to run his campaign. Clinton has every right to call him out on this.

Whether doing so is a good political tactic still remains to be seen. Clinton's comment is part of her larger campaign strategy, which is to make Trump an absolutely unacceptable choice to the largest possible number of voters. Part of this means confronting reasonable and moderate Republican voters with the ugliness of a large part of the Republican base. Xenophobia isn't exactly a new thing, in other words -- Republicans have long used "dog whistle" language to court such voters, in fact. Trump is just doing so right out in the open, that's the only real difference. But a portion of the Republican electorate has, up until now, convinced itself that there simply aren't any bigots within their own party, and that their conservative policies are the real answer to all the racial problems which still exist. That's what they have believed for a long time, and Clinton is rubbing their face in the fact that a portion of the Republican base actually does believe some pretty odious things. This has been most shocking to the Establishment Republicans and the conservative punditocracy, two groups known for staying mostly within their Beltway and New York City circles and not getting out to flyover country much at all. These folks' attitudes, pre-Trump, might be summed up as: "Well, I've certainly never met any bigoted Republicans in the cocktail parties I go to!"

The problem is, there's a world outside this cocktail party circuit. And remember -- these were all the people who assured themselves over and over again that Donald Trump could not possibly win their party's nomination. It was unthinkable to them, right up until it actually happened.

What Clinton risks by talking about base Trump voters, however, is creating a backlash among the very voters she's supposed to be courting. She's trying to appeal to "redeemable" Trump supporters, but even using such language is rather off-putting. Clinton is an outsider to the Republican Party (obviously), and it's never pleasant to have an outsider point out shortcomings of an insular group. Change, if it is going to happen, must take place from within. The "redeemable Republicans" already know Trump is unacceptable. Most of them are pretty horrified by what Trump has exposed within their own party. But hearing it from the opposition doesn't help them in their struggle with the new reality.

Clinton is trying to convince moderate voters who have usually voted Republican that it is not just Trump, but the entire Republican Party that is now irredeemable. So far, this hasn't moved the needle all that much. Pollsters are surprised that there may be a lot more split-ticket voters this year than we've seen in a long time. Ticket-splitting was supposed to be a thing of the past, when voters would vote a straight party ticket but then choose the other party's presidential candidate at the top. If Hillary Clinton wins the White House, her coattails might not even be long enough to flip the Senate to Democratic control. This is what some polls are now saying, although there are enough close races that neither party is currently confident they'll hold the Senate next year.

There is another option for moderate Republicans this time around, too. They can vote a straight Republican ticket and then vote for Gary Johnson instead of Trump. A lot of people are now saying that's exactly what they intend to do on Election Day, although whether they do so or not remains to be seen. In most elections, third-party support crumbles by Election Day, and most of these voters wind up voting for one of the two major party's candidates. This year may be different, but nobody really knows.

Long-term, the problem Clinton identified with her basket metaphor is a big headache for Republicans. The same cocktail party crowd is now assuring themselves that "Trumpism" is a one-time thing, and will disappear immediately after the election, when the Republican Party returns to being mainstream and not so driven by conspiracy theories. I seriously doubt this is going to happen, personally. I think the Trump followers are going to be a pretty major faction within the Republican ranks long after the 2016 votes have been counted.

Advertisement

What Donald Trump has proven is that stoking the fears of Republican base voters works. Will other Republicans in the future reject this strategy? It's hard to see them doing so, or at least it is hard to see all of them doing so. And as Trump proved, it only takes one such candidate catching fire to wipe out all of the other GOP candidates in the race. That's a powerful argument for someone slightly less controversial (and with a tad more self-control) to follow the same path Trump took to the nomination.

Clinton is saying in no uncertain terms: "This is your Republican Party. Deal with it. Own it." By doing so, she hopes to entice Republican voters who can't stand Trump to vote for her instead. Clinton had to be the one to point it out because prominent Republicans are too scared to do so, for the most part. It's pretty hard for a politician to denounce a large group of their own voters, after all, because that leads to "getting primaried" and losing your job. Republicans have already had to deal with the Tea Party within their own ranks, and they will likely be dealing with the Trump-loving segment of their party's base for a long time to come as well.

Clinton broke two political rules of thumb with her basket analogy. Setting herself up as the arbiter of who is and who is not redeemable isn't exactly going to endear her to many Republican voters (even the redeemable ones). But she pretty much had to break the other rule of thumb to make her case. There are strains within the Republican Party that many Republicans inside the Beltway have long denied even existed. They have risen to the surface in this election more prominently than any time in the past few decades. They're pretty hard to ignore, in fact. The conventional "attack your opponent not his supporters" tactic is impossible to use when pointing out what the Republican Party itself has become in this election. Donald Trump certainly didn't create them -- they were around long before he decided to run (as Obama previously pointed out, immediately after the "guns and religion" phrase he used). Republican politicians are terrified of confronting bigotry in their own base, because then that very same base will refuse to re-elect them. Most of the Republicans who have denounced Trump's appeal to bigots are already out of politics (a whole lot of "former officeholders," in other words). The ones that are still in office are going to have to deal with the basket of deplorables within their ranks in one way or another. All Clinton did was point this out. And no matter whether Clinton pays a political price or reaps a political benefit, that basket is still going to exist after the election is over.

Chris Weigant blogs at:
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter -- it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. --Mark Twain

The house has become a hot spot for programs and events, and Mark Twain might marvel at the tens of thousands of visitors from all corners of the globe who tour the 11,500 square foot home each year. Although tours and programs have been the mainstay of this popular destination (located next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe's home) there is even more happening these days, and it's all about the writing.

Advertisement

Over the past handful of years, writing has been making a quiet comeback at the house. It started out modestly enough -- a writing class here, a school program there -- and in a few short years has embraced a daunting mantle, an homage of sorts to America's most beloved writer.

There is also an annual retreat for writers. The 5th Annual Writers Weekend features Lesley M.M. Blume and Ocean Vuong. Timed perfectly for writers to soak up New England's fall foliage, inspiration and camaraderie will be the order of the day. (There is even a special opportunity for participants to write in Mark Twain's actual library.)

Did someone mention Mark Twain's library? For writers who understand the power of place, this opportunity is open to a handful of writers four times a year. This is not a class or workshop, just quiet time in a unique setting where writer and muse make magic.

Advertisement



Mark Twain's Library

Classes and workshops are offered throughout the year, and more and more teachers are requesting writing workshops to complement field trips.

There is even an annual contest for adult and young writers to win cash prizes. The Royal Nonesuch Humor-writing Contest does not expect participants to write in the style of Mark Twain, just to make the judges laugh. In its third year, the contest is open to a national audience.

Finally, the Greater Hartford Arts Council entrusts its "Neighborhood Studios: Write to the Point!" internship program to the oversight of Twain House staff. Each summer, 18 or so high school students experience a six-week paid internship learning all about the "right word" and the impact it can have in their lives. Writer Julia Pistell, former staffer and founder of writing programs at the house, guides the young authors each summer.

Writing is work. Initiating and sustaining writing programs in the shadow of "the Lincoln of our literature," as Twain was dubbed by William Dean Howells, is also work. Daunting work. Humbling work. But it is meaningful work, and Mark Twain would likely approve.

Advertisement
One peculiar consequence of the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump is that the mainstream television media has been invaded by marauding truth-free barbarians that have compromised its integrity. They are otherwise known as Trump's surrogates.

In normal times, the mainstream television media pursues excellence by seeking to adhere to well-established journalistic standards, such as the code of ethics promulgated by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Advertisement

A central tenet of journalistic standards is that reporting must strive to be accurate and truthful. Presenting the truth is crucial not only to the integrity of news journalism, but also to the proper functioning of nothing less than our entire democratic society itself.

Indeed, the role of the press is so critical to our government that the press has been characterized as the "fourth estate." This signifies that, even though the press is not a formal branch of our government, it is nonetheless so important that the press is regarded as an essential component to the proper operation of government.

The reason the press is so critical to society is because the press provides transparency to citizens by discovering and disclosing the real truth about what elected officials are doing.

During an election campaign, the role of the press is particularly important. The press performs a form of vetting on behalf of the voters to bring to light the truth about the candidates so the voters can make an informed decision at the ballot box.

Advertisement

For television journalists, a critical component in presenting the truth is the quality of their on-air guests and commentators. Normally, the television programs would vet their guests to ensure a high level of personal integrity and honesty. The Trump candidacy, however, has thrown a flying monkey wrench into the works.

The Trump campaign has dispatched representatives or surrogates to appear on television programs to speak on behalf of Trump. The television programs effectively have no choice but to allow these Trump representatives to appear. Otherwise, the programs would be accused of being unfairly biased against Trump by refusing to air Trump's representatives.

But this presents an ethical dilemma for the television programs because these on-air Trump representatives are entirely unmoored from the truth. They have no compunction whatsoever about appearing on-air and disseminating egregious distortions, misdirections, and flat-out false information.

This is partially due to the fact that Trump himself peddles false information, so his representatives must then defend Trump's false statements. And there are quite a lot of them. One analysis determined that Trump's statements are false or mostly false a whopping 78 percent of the time.

Normally, if a guest traffics in false information, that guest would not be welcomed back. But here, the programs have no choice. These guests are the official representatives of the Republican presidential candidate, so the programs must allow these guests to reappear repeatedly.

Advertisement

This places the programs in a very difficult ethical situation. In order to safeguard their own reputations and to uphold the journalistic standard of accuracy, these programs cannot just sit by idly and allow their own regular guests to disseminate false information. But at the same time, these programs were not designed to be rigorous fact-checkers in real time of their very own guests. It is plain to see that these programs, and their hosts, are struggling with this predicament.

One example is the CNN prime-time program, "Anderson Cooper 360." The format of the program features segments with panels of guests that often include Trump representatives or supporters, such as Jeffrey Lord, Kayleigh McEnany, Scottie Nell Hughes, and Corey Lewandowski.

The host of the program, Anderson Cooper, appears keenly aware of the importance of striving to uphold journalistic integrity, and he deserves plaudits for performing yeoman's work in attempting to counterbalance the onslaught of specious information. But the burden is too great for one man alone to bear.

The army of Trump surrogates seems to be everywhere. It consists mostly of a B-list cast of characters, like Katrina Pierson, Omarosa Manigault, and Mark Burns, likely because A-list Republican figures decline to participate for fear of tarnishing their own reputations. But nonetheless some nationally known Republicans have joined the circus, such as Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and Ben Carson.

The various television programs have resorted to several methods to attempt to address the problem of false information being disseminated through their shows. One method is to simultaneously include guests who offer opposing or balancing viewpoints to appear along with the Trump representatives. Normally, this is effective. But in the realm of Trump, it falls short.

Advertisement

One reason it falls short is due to the sheer volume of false information and the extent to which much of it is so outlandishly false. Another reason is because these balancing guests are just not professional fact-checkers. And they are also not experts at detecting the dark art of deception and debunking it all in real-time. This is simply too much to ask of them.

Another method that some programs have employed is to display a banner along the bottom of the screen that corrects in real time the misinformation being spoken by the guest on-screen. This is quite extraordinary. CNN ran a banner displaying: "Trump: I Never Said Japan Should Have Nukes (He Did)," and another displaying: "Trump's Son: Father Apologized to Khans (He Hasn't)." MSNBC ran a banner displaying: "Trump Says He Watched (Nonexistent) Video of Iran Receiving Cash." And the NBC Nightly News displayed the headline: "Trump Falsely Claims Obama Founded ISIS."

While these banners are excellent when they are employed, they are insufficient because there is too much false information being disseminated to be corrected by banners.

Another method is for a show's staff members to attempt to fact-check a statement immediately after it is spoken on-air, and then report the correction to the show's host through the earpiece. So occasionally a host will refer back to a statement previously made by a guest, announce that the show had fact-checked the statement, and then provide the correction.

Rachel Maddow recently took matters a step further. When she realized that the Trump representative, Kellyanne Conway, had apparently lied on Maddow's show, Maddow took to the airwaves on a subsequent program and flatly called-out Conway for lying to Maddow's face. Wow.

Advertisement

Like the banners, these on-air corrections are great, but they just cannot keep up with the volume of inaccurate information.

So the Trump representatives are able to get away with putting forth plenty of false information and distortions that remain unchallenged.

Another little ethical problem facing these programs is the danger of the false equivalency. When Trump representatives who have no regard for journalistic standards continue to appear on mainstream programs repeatedly, and when they appear right alongside highly reputable guests who are there to counterbalance the false information, the overall effect is to elevate the Trump representatives to an equivalent status of the reputable guests. It suddenly bestows upon the Trump representatives a level of legitimacy that they do not otherwise deserve.

The false information presented by the Trump representatives is also elevated to a status higher than it deserves as it appears to be the equivalent of the true information presented by the reputable guests, and thus the false information suddenly appears to be legitimate.

The end result of all of this is that the mainstream television programs suffer an erosion of their journalistic integrity.

Advertisement

The truth-free barbarity of the Fox News Channel has infiltrated the mainstream media.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, speaks with U.S. President Barack Obama in Hangzhou in eastern China's Zhejiang province, Monday, Sept. 5, 2016. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Maybe after five years of awful turmoil, tens of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees and vast destruction of cities, giving into Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad is not the worst option for Obama at this point.

He just doesn't want to let anyone know it. If Assad and so-called moderate rebels ever get to peace talks, Assad will be in a strong position to survive.

Advertisement

To me, it was bizarre to hear the Obama Administration spin on its war making deal with Putin in Syria, the latest in a series of efforts to get some sort of a ceasefire. The agreement is mostly about the U.S. joining Russia to help crush threats to Moscow's client, Assad. Obama insists that Assad must leave power.

The deal announced the other day by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is confusing, but here are the essentials:

Assad government forces and the rebels are supposed to begin a ceasefire starting as of yesterday. In particular, Assad's air force is supposed to stop dropping bombs that have mainly harmed civilians and let aid flow into besieged districts of Aleppo, Syria's largest city.

The Russians, whose air force has been crucial in keeping rebels at bay, and the U.S., whose aerial attacks have been aimed exclusively at the Islamic State, can keep bombing away beginning in less than a week. That's a ceasefire?

Advertisement

The two countries will join their air forces to bomb not only the Islamic State but also the group formerly called Jabhat al-Nusrat, now renamed Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham. Ex-Nusra has been an affiliate of al-Qaeda- and also happens to have been the most effective anti-Assad fighting force--far more effective than US-backed groups. For the past five years, the US ignored Nusra's advances and atrocities.

In short, instead of Russia lining up with the US in some sort of anti-terror campaign, Obama has joined Putin in helping out Assad, with the anti-terror thing just part of the deal.

Certainly, ex-Nusra is a brutal and unsavory group, guilty of tormenting civilians with its cruel version of Islam, its summary executions and repression of all under its rule. Its existence was also a public relations problem for Obama: some of Washington's self-styled 'moderate' rebel allies were and are closely intertwined with Nusra (and hence al-Qaeda) on the battlefield.

Kerry warned groups supported by the US (and a bunch of others not supported by Washington) to drop any attachment with ex-Nusra. He said that, "If groups within the legitimate opposition want to retain their legitimacy, they need to distance themselves every way possible," from Nusra and the Islamic State.

If they don't they get bombed, too.

Kerry seemed slightly bewildered by how this new partnership is supposed to work. At one point, he said that Assad could bomb ex-Nusra and the Islamic State so long as the strikes "are agreed upon with Russia and the United States."

Advertisement

Whoops. That suggested the US was indirectly coordinating with Assad, so Kerry's spokesman said his boss was "incorrect" and that Assad is not allowed to bomb anyone.

Kerry seemed sensitive to suggestions the President was caving into the Russians. "Going after Nusra is not a concession to anybody; it is profoundly in the interest of the United States to target al-Qaeda," he said when the deal was announced last weekend.

But of course, it is a concession, otherwise the U.S. would have bombed Nusra much earlier. Anyway, Assad and Putin consider the entire anti-Assad rebellion the work of terrorists, so it's uncertain they will distinguish much among the insurgents whether they are "marbled" together with ex-Nusra or not. For Obama, it's easier to defend fighting an Qaeda-linked group than to acknowledge that such a move helps Assad.

It's been a good summer for Putin and his protege Assad generally. He picked up help for Assad from Turkey, which is interested in bombing the heck out U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters who had eaten up territory in northern Syria. Heretofore, the Turks had been vehemently anti-Assad to the point of backing the Islamic State, but now seem more centered on killing Kurdish, who they fear would set up an independent country.

By the way, the Kurds were the U.S.'s most robust anti-Assad ally in Syria and eventually were supposed to help kick the Islamic State out of its provisional capital in the town of Raqqa.

Advertisement

In sum, Obama, who predicted that Putin had entered a quagmire in Syria, has now joined Putin in the muck--on Putin's terms. By the way, the deal made no mentioned of Iran and its client Lebanese militia Hezbollah, both of which are fighting alongside Assad and are effectively in alliance with Russia.
The approaching UN General Assembly summit on refugees and migrants promises to bring attention to humane and coordinated approaches to addressing the needs of the millions of displaced individuals around the world. But even before the current conflict in Syria resulted in more than a million Syrians fleeing to Lebanon, the small country was already home to nearly 600,000 refugees from other Middle Eastern countries. Fortunately, some Lebanese have seen refugees not through the lens of being a problem, but as being assets to the economy, culture and to helping reduce conflict in Lebanon.

Ahlouna, a nonprofit organization in the town of Saida, an hour's drive from Beirut, has worked with marginalized communities in Lebanon since 1997, providing job training, education, humanitarian aid, financial assistance, psychosocial support and more. Currently, its major operation is a bakery that solely employs refugee women from many corners of the Middle East. Five days a week, the women expertly hand-make catered cakes, candies and more.

I recently had the privilege of visiting this bakery. None of the 45 women are professional bakers, but far from seeing this as a disadvantage, Ahlouna director Rashid Hamdou is delighted that his is not a typically trained staff. He likes their fresh approach to their work and is pleased they have learned a trade for which they are steadily compensated. "We are proud our products are made by unskilled women with no professional training or education. Many of them are illiterate and they're supporting their families," he says, adding that now that the women are known, and respected for their skills, they are considered part of the local community. And having had the privilege to sample their goods, I can attest that the bakery items are delicious, fresh and top quality!

Advertisement

When it opened its doors in 2005, the business was in a unit the size of an apartment. It could fit only 10 people, and it had just one chocolate-making machine. But as demand soared, Ahlouna and Global Communities, with whom it partnered, saw the opportunity to create jobs within the community. A generous Ahlouna board member donated land (a limited and expensive commodity in Lebanon) and Global Communities helped build a new facility. This helped Ahlouna fulfill its mission: to empower poor refugee women in Lebanon by providing them with options to earn, and ways to engage with their communities. And as the business expanded, so did its revenue. Solid support from women-owned businesses in the area helped too. The focus has been and remains on opening up doors for women. Ahlouna does not focus on nationality; it improves the lives of poor women by training and employing them for the long haul.

Many people have been with them since they opened their doors in 2005. First, the bakers earn salaries that are higher than average market rates, along with health insurance. This is very unusual in Lebanon, especially for women. Also, the entire board works closely with the employees, for no pay. They constantly look for ways to cut costs, such as holding fundraisers at private homes so that all the proceeds are invested back into their nonprofit business. Also, all their products meet exacting industry standards -- high-quality, hand-made goods keep customers coming back for more.

Providing training and jobs to bakers was the initial component of Ahlouna, but it has added several projects to help strengthen the community. Health care at home, job training and placement, business management, food assistance, psychosocial support, school subsidies, home visits to the elderly, caring for children with special needs, sanitation and hygiene education. They work with nearly 2,000 families on an ongoing basis, so they know their needs and have the connections to get them the help they need. But they know that especially in a crisis as dire as this one, needs will evolve and situations will change. For this reason, Ahlouna conducts quarterly needs assessments to ensure they are providing continuous and helpful support. Their aim -- and they succeed -- is to provide support for people in their communities and to provide services for whole families. It is essential to help communities that are accommodating an influx of newcomers as the war next door in Syria drags on.

Advertisement

Global Communities' contribution to Ahlouna took place in 2008, and the catering business continues to expand today. I was proud to see that our partnership had produced a sustainable, local solution to the needs of women refugees in Lebanon, and to see it complementing our current work with Syrian refugees and their host communities in Lebanon with support from United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Hamtou tells us that although anti-American sentiment in Saida is widespread, the business has helped break down barriers and open eyes. "We are really proud to say we work with the USA; we say it bluntly and clearly. They came, believed in us and our value and they help us."
Since the Justice Department announced in mid-August that it will phase out its use of private facilities for Bureau of Prisons (BOP) prisoners, the stocks of the country's two largest private prison companies have plummeted.

Together, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group lost more than $2.2 billion in value in a matter of weeks.

But the companies already have a plan--in fact, they've been following it for years.

As mass incarceration has become a national issue, CCA and GEO Group have seen the writing on the wall. For over a decade, they've been "diversifying" beyond operating jails and prisons and into other parts of the U.S. criminal justice system. They've taken the same business model that produces more violence and recidivism in private prisons and applied it to GPS ankle monitoring, prison health care, and residential reentry centers ("halfway houses").

Advertisement

Together, GEO Group and CCA have spent $2.2 billion since 2005 acquiring other, smaller companies, expanding their control of the criminal justice system.

The best example might be GEO Group's 2011 purchase of BI Incorporated, the country's the largest provider of GPS ankle monitoring services. The company saw the $415 million purchase as a "key acquisition," not least because ankle monitoring is a lucrative business. In 49 states and D.C., the cost of an ankle monitor--as high as $40 a day--can be passed along to the person ordered to wear it. When people fall behind in their payments, they can be charged additional late fees. Ultimately, those who fail to pay can be sent back to prison or jail.

The money doesn't end there. Both companies rely on loans from Wall Street banks to purchase other companies. When GEO Group bought BI Incorporated, for example, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, SunTrust, and Merrill Lynch helped finance the deal.

Clearly, private prison companies are finding new ways to profit from mass incarceration. As Caroline Isaacs, the Arizona program director for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), says, CCA and GEO Group aren't in the business of ending mass incarceration, they're "simply rebranding" it.

Advertisement
Until recently, I didn't know much about autism or, for that matter, about other intellectual and developmental disabilities, or IDDs.

Most of what I thought I knew about autism, for example, came from watching the classic Oscars-winning film Rain Man almost 30 years ago, when autism was a relatively new word to many people.

In the heartrending movie, I was fascinated, even charmed, by "autistic savant" Raymond Babbit, brilliantly played by Dustin Hoffman.

Advertisement

I was amazed at Raymond's extraordinary mathematical prowess, his phenomenal memory and was pleasantly surprised at and perhaps lulled into a false sense of solace, even hope, by Raymond's high-functioning abilities.

Until recently, I didn't know that, at most, only an estimated 10% of individuals with autism show unusual mental abilities.

I also didn't know that most doctors consider autism a lifelong developmental disorder, although there are reported cases of children who have recovered.

Finally, I was blissfully unaware of the unfathomable emotional and steep financial toll parents and families of such children suffer -- sometimes lifelong.

Advertisement

No, I didn't know very much at all about Asperger Syndrome, other Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and Down syndrome or about so many other severe intellectual developmental delays and physical disabilities afflicting children and adults.

That is until I met Cho Law, a licensed Child Care Administrator, who not only seemed to know quite a bit about such disabilities and disorders, but who obviously had a very personal and passionate stake in this subject.



That is until, at Law's invitation, I visited Hope House of Austin (Texas) north of the capital, at the outskirts of the small town of Liberty Hill, where Law is Program Administrator.

That is until I met a dozen or so adult "residents" at the "House" surrounded by some very special caregivers.

That is until another dozen or so children captured my heart and brought tears to my eyes one Sunday afternoon at the "House."

To be precise, Hope House, a complex of modest, well-kept buildings peacefully tucked away on five tree-covered acres, has 29 "residents": 15 adults and 14 children.

Advertisement





Entrance to Hope House

To be even more exact, when I visited, Hope House had 28 residents.

You see, Tom, now 42 and blind and deaf and a resident of Hope House for 42 years -- minus two weeks -- was in the hospital in town at the time for medical treatment.

Tom was brought to Hope House by helicopter at the tender age of two weeks, in a shoebox. The same shoe box his parents had placed the newborn baby in when they decided they could not or would not take care of him.

Fortunately, Rose McGarrigle, a World War II German emigrant and mother of five, accepted Tom, who was later diagnosed as suffering from Streeter's Dysplasia, with open arms.

Rose had just founded what would become Hope House, a place where children -- and, later, adults -- with mental and physical disabilities could find a safe, secure and, most of all, loving home.

That "loving home" was first Rose's garage, then her own home where she gave room and board to several children -- mixed with her own children -- then a "fixer-upper" donated by a kind neighbor. Finally, when the number of children just outgrew all available space, "Hope House" in Liberty Hill was born.

Advertisement

Just like Tom, several of the now-adults have been at Hope House almost their entire life.

Take Sam, sitting quietly against the wall, but obviously at peace and interested in the activity around him. Sam is now 46. He arrived at Hope House when he was six months old.

Sam with Hope House Executive Director David Gould.

I visited with Phillip, who was helping to make soap bars to be sold later at a local market. Phillip arrived at Hope House when he was in his early 20s. Phillip is now 56 years old.





Phillip with staff at Hope House

Such crafts activities, "working," are essential pillars of the care and attention Hope House residents receive, in addition to tending to plant beds, participating in outings, games and other stimulating activities -- even a Christmas "5K" event.

Hope House Program Director Cho Law with Hope House resident Will in the "Jingle Bell 5K" during the 2015 Liberty Hill Christmas Festival

When I first visited Hope House, I did not get to see the children. Considering their disabilities and health conditions, I was surprised to hear that they were all at school.

Advertisement

Hope House children, ages 5 to 21, attend school at local Liberty Hill Independent School District schools equipped with special education curricula.

But the folks at Hope House do not forget the children while they are in school. I watched two dedicated ladies, Consuela and Susie, prepare well-balanced lunches in Hope House's ample, yet cozy kitchen (below) -- lunches that would shortly be taken to "their kids" in school.



Accompanied by Cho Law, I visited the children on a Sunday afternoon: boys and girls of all ages, all races and ethnic backgrounds, all afflicted with some disability, all displaying various levels of functionality -- but all beautiful.

There was Brittany, a 14-year old girl, sitting on her bed in one of the charming, cheerfully painted Hope House bedrooms, sporting her protective headgear. Brittany is non-verbal but wise enough to tug at Law's sleeve asking for a piece of candy.





One of Hope House's cheerful children's bedrooms

One little boy was curled up in his bed, resting, while other children were engaged in activities, closely watched by devoted caregivers. I was told he loves playing with keys. Another young boy was fascinated by my neck chain and insisted on touching it. Other children had similar specific interests.

Advertisement

Soon their attention was diverted and excitement rose as the caretakers announced it was time to go and play outside.

The parents of one young boy at Hope House visit him regularly and feel blessed that there is a place such as Hope House that can give their son the specialized care they could not provide for along with the affection that supplements their own love for Will.

Please watch the video below, where Hope House Executive Director David Gould explains what Hope House is all about and the parents of young Will talk about one of the most excruciating decision some families have to make.

Will is one of the more fortunate children. Many children -- and adults -- at Hope House have not seen their parents or loved ones ever again since they arrived at the House.

Advertisement

Some were placed at Hope House as toddlers by parents and family members who could no longer -- financially, emotionally or medically -- take care of them in the manner their disabilities require.

Others have been removed from their homes by the State because of negligence, abuse or neglect and placed at Hope House.

No matter what age, whether five or 50, no matter how or why they arrived at Hope House, to the staff they are all "their kids"

They are all Cho Law's kids, the Hope House Program Director with 35 years experience in the field who has been at Hope House for two years.



They are all Ginger Hernandez' kids, many left in her care when the founder, Rose McGarrigle, asked her to take care of "her kids" just before she passed away in 2003. Hernandez continued to do just that as Director of Hope House for another five years and, in retirement, continues to support Hope House as Medical Liaison.

Advertisement

They are all the "kids" of a wonderful couple, David and Tina Gould, Directors at Hope House, themselves the parents of two kids who have selflessly dedicated themselves to, in David's own words, "give people with disabilities the attention, praise and love they deserve."

They are all the "kids" of Consuela and Susie and of all the wonderful staff at Hope House.

And, I must say, after just a couple of visits to Hope House, they are becoming "my kids," too.

As mentioned before, the financial costs of taking care of these special needs children are steep.

Estimates vary widely, depending on what is and is not included in the costs.

One study pegs the total lifetime cost supporting an individual with an ASD at between "an astonishing $1.4 million" and $2.4 million, "if there is also an intellectual disability."

Another study estimates the average lifetime cost to be $4.1 million, including direct medical care, educational and other care and lost economic productivity -- the latter accounting for 60% of the total cost.

Whichever way one slices it, the costs are staggering.

Hope House is one of a very few private, community based, non-profit organizations in Texas serving as a residential facility and "Forever Home" to children and adults with severe to profound intellectual developmental delays and physical disabilities.

It receives 80 percent of its funding from state and federal sources and relies on charitable donations to meet the other 20% of its needs.

Advertisement

You, too, can make Hope House residents "your children" by making a donation to Hope House or "Casa Esperanza."

Moreover, Hope House is always looking for volunteers in the Greater Austin area.

Hope House:

Want to help build picnic tables? Have a song in your heart or cookies from your kitchen to share? Want to help coordinate a big event? We are thrilled to talk with you about your special talents or those of your group, and how you can provide a meaningful gift to our special population. Come see us, and let us create an unforgettable experience together.



The staff at Hope House promises volunteers that "the experience will be deeply rewarding and will generate a profound sense of gratitude."

When, on my third visit, these two lovely little girls -- sisters -- ran up to me and hugged me, and others recognized me, some with smiles on their faces, I knew for sure that the Hope House "promise" above is an understatement.

Please visit Hope House at www.hopehouseaustin.org and make Hope House residents "your kids," too.

~~~

Lead photo: Hope House resident with staff.

All photos by author or with permission from Hope House



CODA:

The author is not a medical expert and apologizes for any inaccuracies in terminology or in the description of clinical aspects of the disorders and disabilities discussed.

Advertisement
The first time I went to Long Beach thirty years ago, the only thing I know about the city was that it was the home of the Queen Mary. But since then, I discovered two museums there and they became the main reason for my trips to Long Beach.

The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) celebrates its twentieth anniversary with the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of its permanent collection. When the museum opened in 1996, it was the brainchild of Dr. Robert Gumbiner (1923-2009) - a physician as well as an art collector and philanthropist, who acquired what once was a roller skating ring and transformed it into the museum galleries.

Through his numerous visits to Mexico, Central and South America, Dr. Gumbiner became enamored with modern and contemporary Latin American art. But initially, he was drawn to figurative works. The large drawing of a voluptuous female nude with a mirror by Fernando Botero is a perfect example of Dr. Gumbiner's early collecting.

Advertisement

But since then, the museum collection not only grew in size, but became much more diverse in terms of style and medium. Seeing the black-and-white photograph (Osvaldo Salas, 1960) of Ernest Hemingway chatting with Fidel Castro, one becomes aware of how much the scope of the museum's collection has widened.

The sculptural drawing by Francisco Morales, executed using graphite on a shifting wood panel, is a perfect example of the sense of adventure that now defines the Museum of Latin American Art. MOLAA's recent accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums comes as a well-deserved affirmation in celebration of its twentieth anniversary.

The Long Beach Museum of Art, which has been around since the '50s, has a new and particularly diverse exhibition, "Vitality and Verve: In the Third Dimension" showcasing works by up-and-coming street artists, muralists, and other contemporary artists "placing an emphasis on their unique sculptural and installation practices". Upon entering the room-sized mixed media installation by Aaron de la Cruz, one finds themselves happily lost in the colorful vortex of sculptures and wall paintings.

In another gallery, a large-scale installation by Craig Barker (Channel 3 only, 2016) brings together wood panel paintings, light boxes, chairs, televisions... you name it. The exuberant spirit of this work reminded me of the burst of energy I usually get from a shot of vodka.

Advertisement

And speaking of getting drunk and being particularly happy --that was my impression of the darkened gallery with Aaron Li-Hill's photographic images on the walls reflected in pools of water on the floor. Take a look at the image of this installation and decide for yourself if it's the end of the world as we know it -- or the possibility of a new beginning.

To learn about Edward's Fine Art of Art Collecting Classes, please visit his website. You can also read The New York Times article about his classes here, or an Artillery Magazine article about Edward and his classes here.

___________


We invite you to share this photo on Facebook as your profile picture.

When asked about the significance of 9/11 in a recent USA Today article, social studies teacher Kenneth Roeten observed that no other event in American history has had more of an impact on how everyday Americans live their life. He concluded that it is our duty as Americans to never stop teaching the shock, horror, sadness, and utter disbelief of that day.

As Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other friends of Omaha's Tri-Faith Initiative, we gathered on the afternoon of 9/11 in solidarity with all who suffered injury or loss of life on that horrific day. Only, for us, September 11th was not just a day of mourning but day of celebration. For, it was on 9/11 fifteen years ago that a living prophet in our midst, Rabbi Aryeh Azriel, and forty members of his congregation stood outside a nearby Islamic mosque to protect it from those who were making inappropriate connections between terrorism and Islamic faith.

This simple act of courage and neighborliness - indeed righteousness - gave birth to Omaha's Tri-Faith Initiative.

Advertisement

The common denominator that we share here is our love for God, our neighbor, and God's Earth, and our refusal to bow down to the tyranny of fear that threatens to envelop the world in warfare and other violence.

If the world is to survive into the next century, we must put away our weapons of mass destruction and take up the tools of mass construction.

The creation of this 37-acre Tri-Faith campus is the result of hundreds of thousands of hours of prayer and hard work by a multitude of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, representing a wide variety of denominations, communions, and theological orientations.

In this respect, those who gathered for prayer, song, and reflection, representing three ancient faiths, provided a view of the world's FUTURE, not merely its past. For it is on this Tri-Faith campus that friendship has blossomed into a humble act of mass construction: a place where Jews, Christians, and Muslims are intentionally co-locating to learn what it means to live in love and peace with those who have traditionally been at odds with one another.

Advertisement



Photo of children prayers for peace into a tri-color weaving, symbolizing both the prayers and the country in which a Tri-Faith Initiative is made possible.



While Omaha's Tri-Faith Initiative may be America's only multi-faith campus of its kind, we are certainly not the only interfaith initiative that traces its origins to 9/11.

I therefore make a modest proposal to all who have ears to hear it: Share the photo attached with this article - and the article itself - with your friends and all who could use a bit of GOOD news this week. Consider changing your profile picture on Facebook, for instance, and sharing the article there. And consider giving $1 to the Tri-Faith Initiative to help us build the final building on the Tri-Faith Campus: our Welcome Center where the world may come and experience the same inspiration we experience every day.



Photo shows the future home of Countryside Community Church on the far left, the American Muslim Institute's mosque on far right and thefuture Welcome Center in the middle. This photo was taken on the grounds of Temple Israel's already completed synagogue.

In the future, let us turn September 11th into a day in which we prayerfully remember those whose lives have been lost due to religious violence, and a day where we celebrate the many ways the world is coming back together through courageous acts of hospitality and good will, friendship and love.

Advertisement
Jerry McIntosh is issuing invitations this month to a special dinner: the kind meant to change lives.

The Albany missionary is president of Willamette International, a nonprofit, faith-based group with a number of service projects overseas, especially in Africa.

Its latest effort is the creation of an orphanage in Sierra Leone, Grace Village, for children who lost their families to the Ebola crisis there. McIntosh is holding a sponsorship banquet this month to raise both money and awareness for children in Sierra Leone.

The event will be at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 23, at Jefferson Baptist Church, 15002 Highway 99E, Jefferson.

Music will be provided by the band Southern Crossing, which includes mid-valley residents James Dufour, Kelly Dufour, Mike Lahr, Gary Rowles and Les Sprinkel. Dessert will be "Jerry's Famous Apple Pie," a longtime favorite among those who know the McIntosh family.

Admission is free, although donations will be accepted to defray the cost of the event. Reservations are requested by Sept. 18 via a phone call to 541-905-0618.

The orphans in the area of Sierra Leone already have a church in which to meet, McIntosh said. They lack residential housing and a good toilet facility, both of which Willamette International is working to build.

McIntosh's daughter, West Albany graduate Emily Sheriff, is a nurse practitioner at Grace Village, and McIntosh himself is a frequent missionary there.

In name, orphans in Sierra Leone are taken in by a family member. But in desperate poverty, the newcomer feels the effect the most, he said. Boys are often sent out to beg, girls to prostitution. They have no advocates, and  frequently  no hope for change.

With the help of sponsors who take on a child for $45 per month, Willamette International is trying to provide food, clothing and education for orphans of Sierra Leone, McIntosh said.

However, he added, the idea is not simply to be a life raft.

"Our interest is to provide a level of education and character under biblical principals that would enable these kids to be leaders in their country," he said. "Our desire is to raise a generations of doctors, lawyers and teachers for Sierra Leone."

For more information on Willamette International projects or information on how to sponsor an orphan, see the group's website at http://wislnewton.com/. More information about Grace Village can be found on its Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/GraceVillageSierraLeone/.
In celebration of my new book, #BourbonRebirth, I'm revealing the brands that brought bourbon back in a three part series. Today, we take for granted bourbon's greatness, even complaining about the lack of supply. But this wasn't always the case.

In the early 1980s, bourbon was left for dead, losing market share to white spirits. But passion, great whiskey and innovative marketing returned bourbon to its rightful place in the consumer's bar--far in front of vodka. These are the brands that brought bourbon back.

Note: Bourbon historian Michael R. Veach consulted on the selections. My criteria: What brands made the biggest impact since 1980? This post originally appeared on FredMinnick.com.

Advertisement

15. Hudson Baby Bourbon

While Hudson Baby Bourbon may not out taste the bourbons on this list, the New York bourbon did something extremely important for the American whiskey narrative--it gave national attention to the fact bourbon could be made outside of Kentucky. Although it certainly was not the first non-Kentucky bourbon distiller since Prohibition, its proximity to the New York Times gave them a sounding board from 2006 to 2009, which led to additional media in general bourbon stories and the 2010 William Grant partnership. This attention helped other craft distillers pursue their bourbon dreams, offering proof to bankers and investors that bourbon didn't need to come from Kentucky.

14. Bulleit Bourbon

Since 2000, no bourbon has done more for the craft cocktail scene than Bulleit Bourbon, with founder Tom Bulleit and his daughter, Hollis, winning on-premise wells of major bars in San Francisco, New York and Chicago. As a bartender once told me, even the easy-to-grip Bulleit packaging was conducive to the back bar. The Bulleits worked with the Diageo Masters of Whisky to make it one of the fastest-growing brands of the past decade, which is amazing considering Bulleit has been sourced whiskey since its beginning in 1987. But a $115-million distillery is currently being built. With the right leadership, Bulleit could one day become the top-selling bourbon.

13. Elijah Craig



When Heaven Hill Brands released Elijah Craig in 1986, an optimistic Max Shapira said the $10-$15 12-year-old bourbon would appeal to the Cognac market, making it one of the first bourbons challenging the mindset that bourbon was the value drink. It didn't hurt that they named the bourbon after the alleged "Father of Bourbon," which gave them instant credibility. But what really mattered was the whiskey, which absolutely appealed to a connoisseur market, appearing in country clubs and Manhattan bars. In 1994, Heaven Hill released the Elijah Craig 18-year-old single barrel for a whopping $22. The one two punch of Elijah Craig 12-year-old small batch and Elijah Craig 18-year-old single barrel became the greatest bang-for-your-buck duo of the past century. Oh, the good old days.

Advertisement

12. Jack Daniel's



Yes, Jack Daniel's, the Tennessee whiskey, which is not labeled bourbon. How could it be on this list? Simple. They drove the market, and everywhere Jack Daniel's went, bourbon followed. If Jack Daniel's did not drive American whiskey interest in the 1980s and 1990s, I don't know if bourbon makes its comeback. (Is Jack Daniel's bourbon? Read page 11 in Bourbon Curious.)
Citadels of science like MIT and the American Geophysical Union are eschewing opportunities to stand up against climate change denial by turning a blind eye to evidence. It is a discredit to science and a disservice to society.



Image Credit: The Natural History Museum

Walking on stage to receive my PhD at MIT this June, I felt both proud and disappointed: bittersweet emotions toward a place that taught me so much science yet nothing about how to stand up for it.

As a young scientist researching renewable energy since high school, and as a young person scared for my generation's future, it has been painful for me to watch an intellectual powerhouse like MIT fail to lead against climate change. Worst of all has been MIT's refusal to confront outright attacks on basic climate science.

Advertisement

The Institute's own climate advisory committee, on which I sat, unanimously told MIT to address the disinformation spewed by the fossil fuel industry. 3,500 MIT members petitioned the president to make it happen. Faculty, students, scientists, and environmentalists wrote letters, alumni withheld donations, Cambridge City Council even passed a resolution.

Yet when the administration finally unveiled its climate plan, it didn't just reject the recommendation of its own committee, it completely ignored us. The word "disinformation" appeared once in 18 pages, right before the administration refused to divest from the fossil fuel companies responsible, and committed instead to "bringing them closer." For 126 days we students sat-in outside our president's office in protest, but MIT refused to budge.

Things are just as bad at the American Geophysical Union, the world's largest association of Earth scientists. In April, AGU's board rejected calls from 200 of its members to drop ExxonMobil as one of its sponsors. (I helped organize the campaign, and joined the AGU early this summer after beginning a postdoc modeling energy systems for climate mitigation.)

Exxon is a company that has spent decades perfecting the art of climate science disinformation. Decades orchestrating, funding, and perpetuating campaigns designed to confuse the public, sabotage science, and slander scientists, many of whom are AGU members. In other words, Exxon is climate science's Most Wanted. And America's union of geoscientists just voted to keep taking its petty change.

Advertisement

AGU's decision is an implicit sanction, however unintentional, for Exxon to attack science and scientists. It is a failure to protect the integrity of science - and scientists themselves - against those who undermine our very raison d'etre: truth and knowledge.

And significantly, it is a flat-out violation of AGU's own sponsorship policy, which says: "AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science."

To this day, Exxon funds the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose official position is that "Global Climate Change is Inevitable...the debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions." [$1.7 million+ since 1998; $75,000 in 2015. An Exxon Manager sits on ALEC's corporate board.]

To this day, Exxon funds climate-denying Congress members like Sen Jim Inhofe, who says global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and who Exxon supported in 2015 even as he refuted record-high temperatures by producing a snowball on the Senate floor. [$3.5 million+ to 208 members since 1999; $724,500 to 100 members in 2013-14; 2015-16 data not yet public.]

Advertisement

And so the evidence goes on, as we documented in a report to AGU's board.

Incredibly, AGU's explanation-free answer to all of this was that "It is not possible for us to determine unequivocally whether ExxonMobil is participating in misinformation about science currently."

"You have been fooled," responded two Congressmen to AGU. Atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel went further, calling AGU's decision "a mockery of its own bylaw." But it's even worse than that: it is a mockery of the evidence-based reasoning that defines us as scientists. Like MIT, it is a sad example of a scientific organization confronted by climate denial, yet overrun by status quo bias and setup to fail. And it is a huge missed opportunity.

Because as trusted voices in our society, institutions like MIT and the AGU wield megaphones to public and political opinion and, through leadership, immense capacities to effect change. In 2006, when Great Britain's Royal Society reprimanded Exxon for its climate disinformation campaigns, it forced the oil giant to publicly address, however feebly, its wrongdoings. And that was one letter from one institution.
Artillery, the national contemporary art magazine with a focus on Los Angeles, is celebrating their Ten Year Anniversary in the Fall of 2016.

In celebration, editor Tulsa Kinney asked her writers for a series of Ten Best lists. Would I? I could write a novel about each of these locations.

In the Conversation below, add your stories of LA Art Hot Spots. We'll make it a long list of 100!

Ten Classic Los Angeles Historic Fine Art Hot Spots

Yee Mee Loo

Chinatown

Dark, exotic and mysterious, this temple dive bar was the touchstone for all Angeleno art legends. Destroyed by an earthquake. Today, the original iconic matchbooks are a prized collector's item.

Lost to history.

Advertisement

Barney's Beanery

WeHo

Located conveniently up the street from the Ferus Gallery, this populist watering hole inspired sculptor Edward Kienholz to create his masterpiece The Beanery in 1965.

Open.

Cocola

Downtown

Founded by Angus Chamberlain and completed by chef Tara Thomas of TRAXX, this art bar and restaurant was the scene of many wild nights and creative hijinks for the downtown artist.

In our hearts.



Hal's Bar and Grill

Venice

Hal's has long been a cheerleader for the LA arts. Legend has it that their now-historic art collection grew from trading food and grog for local art.

Open.

Gorky's

Downtown

Back when the sleek Traction Arts District was once an industrial wasteland, this Soviet-styled cafeteria fed local artists 24 hours a day.

Gone, a fevered and glorious nightmare.

Advertisement

Smog Cutter

East Hollywood

Artists with day jobs as Hollywood scenic painters and author Charles Bukowski approved of and drank in this divey dive bar.

Still Standing.

Ivy at the Shore

Santa Monica

A boiite for the wealthy Westside collector, the Ivy at the Shore features an extremely efficient vodka gimlet and Ed Ruscha's classic painting "Brave Men Run In My Family."

Open.

Al's Bar

Downtown

On the ground floor of the American Hotel, which was famous for easy drug availability and every other bad behavior, this fine art and punk rock bar has inspired documentaries and countless art exhibits.

Forever in our hearts.

West Beach Cafe

Venice

A chic Los Angeles legend, the West Beach is where one might sidle up to the bar and chat with art world superstars like sculptor John McCracken. I know I did.

Reincarnated, open.

The Mandrake

Across from Blum and Poe

This neo-Millennial haven was established at the dawn of the Culver City arts land grab. This bar has been wholeheartedly approved by every local MFA program.

Open.

Advertisement

This list is included in my new book, Blood And Paint: Essays on Art in Los Angeles. Within these 34 pieces, there are some very good tales of art in Los Angeles. Click Here to find it on Amazon.
Before entering the glamorous world of mainstream journalism, I used to be a freelance content marketer. To those of you who are not familiar with the occupation, it's pretty simple. My job was to create content for websites and blogs and help market them to the targeted audience. I created web pages, wrote blog posts and designed graphic media for clients all over. Then, I helped them publicize that work online through the use of various publications, news outlets and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. All the work I did was anonymous, meaning I wouldn't be expecting a byline for all the good work I did. Instead, I was paid in cash. Of course, given the choice, I would take both the byline and the cash, but such was the job. And it wasn't perfect. It paid my bills, but thinking back, I realize that I primarily did it for the accomplishment. Being able to look at nice-looking corporate websites and online magazines and knowing within that despite never being officially credited, I made some contribution to their success. Alas, my fondness for my previous profession didn't last too long.

One of the conceived advantages of being a content marketer, since you don't receive proper credit for your work, you expect the monetary compensation to be more substantial. You would be surprised. It's not easy to get noticed by the right sort of clients, especially when you can't officially associate yourself with a reputed publication. As a result, most of the clients I would be called by in the beginning were ignorant webmasters, too busy to be bothered to write their own content, too poor to be able to hire full-time editors and writers to do it for them. They were mostly businesses, static web pages advertising products and services. And then there were some blogs that existed merely as secondary additions to the primary website that advertised some sort of corporate undertaking. Most of the websites were really small. Not surprisingly, the first job I ever got offered and ended up refusing, was for a mere $2/100 words. I was told that the payment was "quite decent." As you can tell, business wasn't great when I started out.

Advertisement

Starting out as a content strategist can be a daunting task at the beginning. Building up your own brand in a world of anonymity and competition can be dreary and exhausting at times.

There are a number of reasons behind that. Surprisingly enough, the fact that I was completely new to the profession wasn't even in the top ten. The real reason was much more complicated. It was the lack of unity amongst content marketers who never bothered to establish a proper acceptable payscale and enforce it amongst clients. There were some among us who wrote decently and charged a $150/500 words. And then there were those who worked way harder and delivered way better but still brought home a mere $10/100 words. I wouldn't call it bigotry, but there was some sort of pseudo-racial discrimination at play here. Generally speaking, people looked down on writers who came from non-English speaking countries, probably because the general idea was that they didn't know the language well enough. That conception didn't change even if the said "non-native"came with a PhD in English Language. People from Europe, Australia or the UK were automatically granted a higher position, even if they were just freshmen working their way through college. It eventually reached a point were clients would just "ask" these non-native writers to do their work for them, without any payment at all. Instead, the client would simply "recommend" this writer to others. To our utmost horror, some people were so helpless that they agreed. And I am talking about 2010. If you don't believe me, check out some of the job listings on Freelancer.com's Writing section and you will see what I mean. Maybe it didn't start out as racism, but that's what it soon grew up to become. It was unfair to the point of cynicism, and it bugged me.

Advertisement

You must be thinking, "But you are an American, aren't you?" Yes, but that didn't mean that this bigotry didn't end up affecting me. You see, after a moment, many clients realized that it was mostly foolish to hire a Western content marketer for $20/100 words when they could get the same quality of content by exploiting the hell out of a non-native at just $2/100 words. The situation was cross for us marketers, and some people decided to take advantage of it. My price was more than fair from my perspectives, but my clients didn't agree. It was either accept a lesser pay or be ousted out of the profession altogether. But I didn't lose my patience, yet.

I started out cherrypicking from the better ones amongst the poorly paid jobs I was offered at the start. At this point, I just wanted to build up a nice resume more than anything else, I would make money later. I decided that it was more profitable to partner with an established content marketer first and work for them instead of seeking clients on my own. The work flowed more steady that way. Unfortunately, that also meant that the pay was even lesser. My earnings ranged from $10/100 words in the beginning. I didn't lose hope. At least I could show off my work to future clients in the form of a portfolio.

And then came the Non-Disclosure agreements. This meant that not only did we receive no credits or bylines, we were now legally obligated to never disclose the fact that we worked on a particular project with a client at some point. All the better paid projects came with an attached NDA. Thankfully, I found home with a few large content marketing platforms by that time, and they gave me a decent salary without any of the NDA business. The problem? Since we had about 3 or 4 writers working on the same project, none of us got to claim the work as our own in a portfolio, rather, it belonged to the organization we worked for. No portfolio obviously meant a more difficult market seeking out new clients on my own.

In the cutthroat world of being a freelance copywriter, the only real way to survive competing with millions of faceless opponents is to create a brand of your own.

I struggled like this for about a year. Thankfully, with an occasional gem every now and then, I managed to build up a decent enough portfolio and launched my own website to seek out clients. I paid a huge amount of money to Google Adwords to advertise my services to potential clients. It wasn't very rewarding at first, but then it picked up. Now I had all sorts of high profile clients coming my way. A $500 project for creating a website that was about 3 pages long. Writing blog posts of just 200 words for about $50 per article. It seemed like my career had turned a corner. It was far from it. Since most of the clients were one-timers, and the content was to be delivered and accepted first before payment was made, some of them denied the moral obligation to pay at all after work was done. I lost hundreds of dollars this way. I worked days to finish up a complete project only to have a client run away on me with all my work. The less shady ones would at least come up with a pathetic excuse to pay less because they were "unsatisfied with the service". It was the internet after all, no way for me to pursue the client legally and seek justice. Of course, I enforced a strict code and asked for 50% of the payment before work was done once I had enough authority, but that didn't save me from getting robbed off the remaining 50%. Not all clients were bad, there probably were many more good days than there were bad days, but I soon decided that the bad days were just not worth it.

Advertisement

Imagine this: You are a competent writer who can write about almost anything under the sun and make it look like you actually know your stuff. You spend hours perfecting each project by creating quality content that people will enjoy reading. You spend even more time trying to publicize the heck out of it through every social media platform and publication you have access to. Then, after all this, you end up either exploited or cheated, let alone being appreciated with a bonus for your good work. Meanwhile, web designers made $$$ creating templates that look like this. It was just offensive. How long before you grew tired of such a pathetic work environment? I know I did, and it didn't take long.

As a marketer, I always knew that it was a better option to build a brand of your own, creating quality content for a reliable publication on a particular niche and becoming an authority in it. I was good at writing news, even better at op-eds. I remember growing tired of it all one day and sending an email to our very own Liz Heron, Executive Editor of the Huffington Post, with a pitch I had been working on for days. To my surprise, it was accepted. Despite all the rumors of how hard it was to become a writer for a quality publication, I was invited to contribute for a well-established news outlet and redefine myself as a freelance journalist. It was an opportunity that I would never turn down. That's how I began writing for the Huffington Post, but that's a story for another time.
By Barbara Diggs, InternationalLiving.com

The French healthcare system, legendary for its excellence, is about to become much more accessible and affordable to expats.



Sunflowers and Hay Bales in Dordogne Aquitaine, France

This is because in January this year, France instituted a new universal system of healthcare, called the Protection Universelle Maladie (PUMA). This system grants an automatic and continuous right to healthcare to those who legally reside in France in a "stable and regular" manner.

This means that, if you've lived in France for three consecutive months and are a permanent legal resident (that is, you live in France at least 183 days a year), you're eligible to apply for public healthcare coverage.

Advertisement

This is big news. France's high-quality, affordable, and widely accessible healthcare system led the World Health Organization to rank it #1 out of 191 countries for best overall healthcare in the only such rankings ever completed, back in 2000.

France has offered universal healthcare since 2000. But many expats looking to retire abroad weren't eligible to apply for coverage until they had legally resided in France for anywhere from one to five years. In the interim, they had to obtain private health insurance, which can be a lot more expensive.



Colorful Street in Pierrefeu-du-Var in Provence, France

To make matters more complicated, many retirees who were granted access to public healthcare under the previous plan had to visit the local healthcare bureau (known as Caisse Primaire d'Assurance Maladie or CPAM) every single year, with an armful of documents to reaffirm their income, residence status, and other factors. If not, they'd risk losing coverage.

But with the new law, this heavy administrative burden is lifted and continuous coverage for all is assured.

Low Costs, Great Care

Most retired participants in the French healthcare system pay around 8% of their net income (based on the previous two years' tax returns) above a minimum income threshold set by the government.

Advertisement

The 2016 minimum threshold for a single person is 9,611 (around $10,713). That means if you had a net income of 30,000 ($33,441 ) in 2015 and 2014, your net income over the threshold would be calculated as 20,389 ($22,728). Your healthcare payments for the year would then total 8% of 20,389 ($22,728): that is, 1,631 ($1,818). That comes to 135.92 ($151.50) a month.

These payments entitle you to a 70% reimbursement of the government-fixed fees (tariff conventionne) for doctor, dentist, and specialist visits, 80% off fixed hospital costs, and as much as 100% off the cost of medications. Government-fixed fees are standard rates set by French social security.



Rooftops of Saint-Emilion in Gironde Aquitaine, France

For example, doctors working within the government system have a tariff conventionne of 23 ($26). That's right: An ordinary doctor's visit in France costs just 23 ($26). And 70% of that will be reimbursed.

Private doctors and hospitals always have higher rates: A private doctor may charge anywhere from 45 ($50) to 120 ($134), depending on your location. Yet the government system still only entitles you to be reimbursed for 70% of the fixed rate. To cover the shortfall, almost everyone takes out "top-up" insurance through a private company called a mutuelle. Mutuelle prices typically run 25 ($28) to 100 ($111) a month, depending on the seller and the extent of the coverage you want.

Between the PUMA coverage and the mutuelle, you generally have very few out-of-pocket costs. But there are some. Doctor visits have a mandated 1 ($1.11) out-of-pocket cost.

Another plus: The cost of medical treatment in the French system is substantially less than in the U.S. So even if you do have out-of-pocket medical costs, they won't break the bank.

Advertisement

I've lived here for 15 years and I'm still pleasantly shocked by the low price of medical services. Just recently, my son injured his finger at school. We went to the emergency room, met with a doctor, had x-rays done, met with the doctor again, got my son's sprained finger taped, and were headed back home within a few hours. The bill? Just 29 (about $32) ...which wasn't even asked for at the hospital--I got the bill weeks later.

How to Access France's Public Healthcare

Applying for French healthcare is time-consuming but straightforward. The key is to have documentation that proves your legal residence status and intention to live in France for at least 183 days a year.

You'll need to collect all the relevant documents and submit a completed application to your local CPAM office. Among the items you'll need are your passport; visa; birth certificate; deed, lease or rent receipts; and proof of income. One of the most important documents is your French utility bill, which both proves that you live in France and demonstrates a long-term commitment to reside in the country.

France being France, you'll likely encounter bureaucracy and snags. But many North Americans seem to be having a fairly easy time switching over.

This article comes to us courtesy of InternationalLiving.com, the world's leading authority on how to live, work, invest, travel, and retire better overseas.

Advertisement

Medical Tourism Abroad See Gallery

Earlier on Huff/Post50:
For art historian, educator and curator Allison Thompson, the arts in general and the visual arts in particular, play an important role in society. "It is through art," Thompson maintains, "that we have a chance to think through and articulate what a society is aspiring to. Art comes together to make meaning, and is a forum to envision what is possible."

Although she is so passionate about the role of art in society, and has made major interventions in the visual art landscape of her island-home of Barbados and the larger Caribbean, Thompson did not start out wanting to be an art historian. In fact, becoming a serious scholar and educator of Caribbean art seemed to happen by chance.

Allison Thompson was born and grew up in Canada. As an undergraduate student she had her heart set on becoming a lawyer until she ended up taking an elective in art history. Says Thompson, "I could not believe someone could get credit for this!" Thompson would go on to earn both a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in Art History before moving to the island of Barbados. For her master's thesis, Thompson examined the Women's Art Association of Canada, detailing how a group of women with philanthropic interest were more forward thinking, and took more risks on artists than the art establishment of the country did.

Advertisement

This early research on women in the visual arts would put Thompson in good stead when she moved to Barbados in 1986. "How I ended up in Barbados," she told me, "was that I married a Barbadian that I met at college. He had to go home and work for four years as part of his obligations, and so I came to the island with him." She has pretty much been on the island ever since, except to get her doctorate in the United States on a Fulbright scholarship.

In Barbados, Thompson started working at the Barbados Community College, eventually rising to divisional head and senior lecturer in the Fine Arts Division of the College. Though she started out at the college teaching a course on French Impressionism and Italian art, that course soon gave way to more courses on Caribbean, Latin American and African diasporic art. And it was here that her master's thesis would prove quite useful because much of the early pioneering nationalist work on Barbadian art was done by women.

As she explains, "Beginning in the 1940s there was a growing awareness of something uniquely Caribbean and Barbadian that could be realized in the visual arts. Individuals in Barbados started organizing exhibitions of local artists and started holding classes. Typically, it was white women doing this kind of work, because those were the women with the time and the resources to dedicate to this type of activity. These women included the likes of Golde White, who was born in Barbados but lived and painted in Guyana for a number of years while her husband worked there before returning home in 1943. Other women who played a prominent role in the early development of the visual arts on the island included Eileen Hamilton and Kathleen Hawkins. What is so interesting about these women," Thompson continued, "is that they did not become mothers and so it was perhaps easier for them to transgress established social boundaries in becoming visual artists on the island."

Advertisement

Even so, there was a social divide within the visual arts scene on the island with race lying just below the surface of this early pioneer work. "In the early art scene", Thompson explains, "several black artists talked about feeling unwelcomed in the developing visual arts movement on the island."

Despite this, in the heady days of the 1940s through to independence, nationalism was propelling many of the artists in Barbados and the larger Caribbean and there was a feeling of optimism in the air. "From the 1940s onwards, artists played an active role in nation-building and institutions such as the Barbados Art Council was formed. By the 1960s and 1970s, a number of expats came to settle on the island and galleries were soon being established. The 1980s saw increased institutional support for artists in the formation of the National Cultural Foundation."

Yet, for all the progress that has been made in the visual arts, there is still one area which has been lagging, and that is the formation of a national art gallery on the island. For thirteen years Allison Thompson worked with Alissandra Cummins on a National Art Gallery Committee which was conceptualized to address "... the problem [of] scarcity of documentation, critical writing, writers and avenues for writing about art in the Caribbean ... For the National Art Gallery Committee therefore, a crucial objective has been to reach and recruit wider audiences for the visual arts and implement developmental objectives which will be of benefit to the widest community of visual artists in Barbados."

As Thompson further explained, "There is a lot of interesting work that has happened and continues to happen in Barbados, but there is no place to cull together all of these activities. There are acquisitions that should be made. The National Gallery, envisioned as regional in scope, and not confined to one particular space, was visualized as a platform to help the arts in the country develop."

Interestingly enough, Thompson maintains, the lagging ability to form a national gallery in Barbados is indicative of the predicament the Caribbean finds itself in today. For Thompson, "The 50s and 60s and even the 70s were a more dynamic time in the Caribbean as a whole. There was a lot more integration of the Caribbean then, and artists regularly moved around the islands sharing ideas. We are presently getting ready to celebrate the 50th independence of Barbadian independence and so there has been a lot of looking back to see how far the nation has come since independence. In the 1960s for example we had an art publication that literally was the size of the New York Times! Where did all of this enthusiasm go? The Caribbean seems less integrated now than it was then."

Advertisement

Still, Thompson takes great satisfaction in the work that she has done and continues to do at the Barbados Community College. "Working with young people is not fixed but rather is an exciting, dynamic process that is ever changing and challenging. At the Barbados Community College we have really great faculty and over the years there have been more and more graduates whose projects are increasingly ambitious. The artist Sheena Rose is a great example of the students we have graduated."

Another point of pride is that several years ago the College implemented a program, now government supported, where 18-25 art students travel abroad every two years to look at visual arts outside of the island. In addition, the college is bringing more international artists to the island. The British-based artist Sonia Boyce was one such artist invited to work on the island, and students (one of whom was Sheena Rose) interned with Boyce. "That is such a wonderful opportunity for our students!" Thompson effused. "To be able to work with a professional artist! In this way students learn - this could be me. It is the most profound thing. Another of our graduates, Versia Harris, is now teaching at the college and students see, through the work of Versia and other graduates who return, what it means to have a platform, to have a voice."

So, what advice would Allison Thompson offer to someone who wants to wear the multiple hats of educator, curator and sometimes art practitioner as she does? "For all the rational decisions that you can make in your life, if you can pursue your passion and work in an area you know to be important, that is a blessing." She pauses before continuing, "Do not wait for an opportunity to find you, but rather make the opportunity for yourself. I would say to a young person coming up, whether they want to be an artist, educator, curator or some combination thereof, that your job is to challenge people's conception and perception of what it is that they think they are looking at when they look at works of art."
In my last post, I discussed the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and why they matter. In this post, I want to focus more on how the agenda applies to the USA.

The idea for a Sustainable Development Agenda grew from the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development that took place in Rio de Janeiro back in June 2012. Here, a Political Outcome Document was developed that contained "clear and practical measures for implementing sustainable development". The first four items in the document are summarized below and these give a sense of what is covered in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that were eventually developed: 0

1.A renewed commitment to sustainable development.

2.Eradicating poverty.

3.Pursing sustainable development agendas at all levels and across many dimensions -e.g., economic, social and environmental.

Advertisement

4.Essential requirements of sustainable development. In addition to eradicating poverty, other issues are raised including: raising basic standards of living; promoting sustainable patterns of consumption and production; promoting sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth; creating greater opportunities for all; reducing inequalities, fostering equitable social development and inclusion; and promoting integrated and sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems that supports economic, social and human development while facilitating ecosystem conservation, regeneration and restoration and resilience in the face of new and emerging challenges.

Why should the USA take notice?



When eradicating poverty sits front and center, it is easy to dismiss the goals as being irrelevant to a high income economy such as the USA. Unfortunately, with more than 46 million Americans living in poverty in the USA. So poverty isn't just a problem facing low income economies

Many other issues on the Sustainable Development agenda confront the USA on a daily basis. In a recent issue of the Los Angeles Times, for example, two stories caught my attention and both relate to items on the sustainable development agenda. The first noted the rise in violence in the City of San Bernardino. A caption underneath a photo reads: "Few economic opportunities and a lack of services are cited as factors for the city's violence."

A second story documented actions some have taken to undermine Obamacare. The Los Angeles Times reported: "Among other things, they blocked expansion of Medicaid coverage for the poor, erected barriers to enrolment and refused to move health plans into the Obamacare marketplaces, a key step to brining in healthier consumers. Those decisions left the marketplaces in many red states with poorer, sicker customers than they otherwise might have had."

Advertisement

How does the USA fare across SDG measures?

The UN developed a method to measure how well economies achieve the SDGs. Overall, the USA sits in the bottom half of the OECD with an overall score of 72.7%, which means it achieves 72.7% of the Sustainable Development Goals. The USA is ranked 25th in the world. Sweden comes in at #1 with a score of 84.5%.

Areas in which the USA scores in the "red" zone include poverty, obesity, the proportion of women holding seats in national parliament, the proportion of renewable energy in final energy consumption, the proportion of youth (15-24) not in employment, education or training, the GNI and Palma ratios (as measures of income inequality), non recycled municipal solid waste, CO2 emissions from energy, the Ocean Health index for biodiversity, the proportion of fish stocks over exploited or collapsed, annual change to forest areas, homicides, prison population, and official development assistance as a percentage of GNI.

There are many areas in which the USA did well. In particular, with SDGs 6 and 9, and to a lesser degree SDGs 3, 4 and 11. SDG 6 measures access to good water and sanitation, whereas SDG 9 considers the existence of a quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure (which includes Internet and Broadband access), along with measures of innovation, which include R&D expenditure, R&D workers per capita, and patent applications. SDG 3 measures health and well-being and includes measures such as infant mortality, life expectancy, the number of physicians per capita, the number of infants who are vaccinated, and the number of smokers. SDG4 measures access to quality education and SDG 11 measures access to safe and affordable housing.

The role of the USA on the international stage

In addition to identifying what goes on within the USA, the USA does play an important role on the world stage. The USA gave $31.08 billion in foreign aid in 2015. This made the USA the largest donor in the world. As an aside, the USA spent 0.17% of its Gross National Income on foreign aid, placing it 22nd in the world, which is why it was reported above as a "red" item above.

In addition, the areas in which the USA has strength - in particular SDG 9 which relates to infrastructure and innovation - are areas in which USA based organizations can (and do) provide expertise to other economies. As a consequence, we are starting to see the definition of aid expand beyond humanitarian and military aid to aid that enables economies to be more effective - much of which relies on technology and innovation.



The USA should care about functioning societies

Advertisement

Peter Drucker first wrote about a functioning society in The Future of Industrial Man (1942). Since then, a collection of his works was published in a book called A Functioning Society: Community, Society, and Polity in the Twentieth Century (2011). I recently re-read A Functioning Society and believe Drucker's work underscores the Sustainable Development Agenda. For example, Drucker's central thesis is that: "No society can function as a society, unless it gives the individual member social status and function, and unless the decisive social power is legitimate."

The rising violence in San Bernardino can be attributed to a malfunctioning society in that the its residents lack social status and function. The same can be said of much of the conflict and instability in the world today. Poverty, inequity, injustice, or a lack of social inclusion explains much of it.

The USA, sits alongside 192 other economies who agreed to abide by the Sustainable Development Agenda. While the agreement is not legally binding, economies committed because we all strive to live in a functioning society.
On Christmas Eve 2015, Shanteria sent me a private message on Facebook that she had a senior pit bull named Bubba and the new management company was giving her a few days to re-home him. Shanteria pleaded with me to take him in telling me that he is a nice dog, an inside dog, and had just turned ten. She had him since a puppy and loved him. I was hooked, line and sinker, and we remained friends. This is the story of a dog with a big head and big heart and how discimination could have ended their relationshiop.

When Shanteria turned 15, her dad asked her to take a drive with him after school. Being a daddy's girl, she happily obliged and didn't ask any questions. Her dad drove to Petsmart and she figured he was buying fish food. Outside was a man with puppies. Shanteria asked her dad, "Oh please, daddy...Please may I pet the pupplies? Pleaaaasse??" Her dad told her that they didn't come for puppies, but allowed her to pet them. There was a white puppy, some brown ones and a black puppy. Loving on all of them because she loved animals, her dad asked her which one she would choose if she was given the opportunity to have one and she held the white puppy and told her dad that she would want this small white one. Her dad laughed and wished Shanteria a happy birthday, and told her that this would be her dog. The little white dog was about two months old and she named him Bubba. Being that her dad's birthday was the day after Shanteria's, Bubba really was a birthday gift for both of them.

Advertisement

They immediately purchased food for the puppy and all of his necessities and Shanteria remembers not being able to contain her hapiness. She could not wait to show him off to her brother, grandmother and friends. Shanteria's dad had grown up with dogs all of his life and often shared the dogs' photos with his daughter. She developed the same crazy love and admiration for dogs as her dad, and was proud knowing that she too now belonged to the Crazy Dog Lover Club as her dad did.

Shanteria's father was always sickly and had suffered with kidney failure since the age of 21, and so his physician agreed that Bubba was good for him. Bubba's playfulness and antics kept Shanteria and her family laughing, but mostly Bubba followed her dad around and became his constant companion when he wasn't sleeping near Shanteria. Almost three years later to the date, Shanteria's dad passed away suddenly. Shanteria was devastated and heart broken, but it was Bubba that she worried about. Bubba would sit in the window for hours waiting for dad to come home. He would leave the window seat only to lay in her dads room. He stopped coming to find Shanteria and she knew that he was mourning deeply. In her mind, Shanteria knew that she and Bubba only had one another and she vowed to protect and care for him and help him through his mourning phase so that she could watch him play once again. It took him some time, being as sensitive as he is. This was almost seven years ago and Shanteria kept her word and went against all odds to keep Bubba, her best friend, safe.

Shanteria is not the typical young woman. She doesn't take selfies or shop for herself usually. She only takes photographs of her best friend, Bubba, and he delights in the healthy treats and toys she buys him. Shanteria has worked hard to care for him as though a child of her own and she probably doesn't realize the level of commitment that she has shown this loyal companion of hers. She doesn't know if she loves him so much because he's all she has, or if it's because he and her dad loved eachother so. When Shanteria describes her father and Bubba's relationship, Shanteria says that there is no way she could ever let Bubba down. She said, "My dad loved animals and didn't play when it came to them! He would have loved you, Jo!" Her eyes literally shine and twinkle when her dad or Bubba come up...it makes me feel as though I'm hardly a caretaker of dogs, comparing myself to her.

Advertisement

On Christmas Day 2015 the property management company informed Shanteria that Bubba had to go. The reason? Bubba looked like a pit bull type dog and their insurance policy would not cover him. They didn't care that he was an older dog. They didn't care that he is friendly and well behaved and loved...She had a few days to move him and so my relationship with Shanteria, and Bubba, began. Running Stubby's Heroes means that we are very busy with these types of cases and so we have experts on our team that will review a lease or contract in their cars, during the holidays, or on vacation. Not all of our committed volunteers even have big head dogs, but they understand the love of family and the importance of responding to issues quickly as they are often matters of life and death. Shanteria drew me in so I asked Amanda, one of our Directors, to take on Shanteria's case. Unfortunately, the lease was valid and they were prepared to take Shanteria to court if need be. After counseling her, Shanteria decided to move Bubba while she looked for a place and was so concerned about this safety that on her birthday, a week after receiving the bad news, she drove with her best friend to Mississippi, to her grandmothers home. Shanteria called me on the drive there and she didn't know that I held my hand over my cell while she filled me in, so that she wouldn't hear me sobbing. She sent me a photo of Bubba standing up next to her while she sat in the drivers' seat; his mouth wide open and tongue hanging loosely like a happy dog just going on a car ride with his mama. Little did he know that he would be left.

Bubba had a large, open property to enjoy and life was good with her grandmother until she was honest with Shanteria that he was just too strong for her to manage and she was afraid he would knock her over. She hated to tell Shanteria, but she needed her to pick up Bubba. So on March 29th, Shanteria again took the drive from Georgia to Mississippi to pick up her best friend. Bubba was beside himself and happy to see his mama, but again, he didn't realize that he would not be staying with Shanteria. Shanteria was still looking for apartments but kept hitting dead ends because no one would rent to her because of him. Shanteria worked just to make enough to save for his boarding so on April 1st Bubba went to boarding.

The boarding facility was wonderful. They cared for him and Shanteria visited 5-6 times weekly to walk him and spend time with him, but Bubba still suffered. He started to lose weight and couldn't keep it on. He cried when Shanteria left, so much so that she considered not visiting him. She called me once very upset asking me if it was my dog would I give my dog up....I told her the truth - you have a pit bull type dog. There are hundreds of thousands of them in shelters right now looking for homes. Rescues don't have enough foster homes and there isn't enough money to help and save all of these dogs. Your dog is one dog in the equation. Let's keep looking for an apartment for you two...I think that something will come up. You love him and he loves you....I know something will come up.

Advertisement

Shanteria kept being told that there wasn't an issue with having a dog, but once she reached the property, suddenly "pit bulls" weren't allowed. In mid August, Shanteria went to see Bubba and the boarding facility owner and kennel employee pulled her to the side to tell her how concerned they were for him. He had stopped eating. He no longer got up to greet anyone. His tail didn't wag. He wouldn't play and he lay motionless for hours. It brought Shanteria back several years to when her father passed away and she said, "Jo...I lost my daddy all over again seeing Bubba like that. There was no way I was going to lose Bubba. Two weeks later I got the apartment. God is good!" On August 13th, Bubba came home.

I cried often for these two best friends, and I don't think she knew it. I don't think that she realizes how strong she was, and how lucky and blessed she was, as many caretakers find themselves in the same situation and don't have the ability to make the choices that she made. One of the top reasons that pets are surrendered to animal control is due to housing issues. This includes homelessness and the fact that pets are suddenly no longer allowed in their homes when either a new landlord comes in, or a new property management company comes in with a new insurance policy. This doesn't just impact those that rent, but those that own as an HOA (Home Owners Association) could determine that certain breeds are not allowed. Often, caretakers have no idea about insurance discrimination being the culprit, and don't know where to start when they find themselves facing this terrible issue. Many a person have cried leaving their beloved pet behind at their local shelter, or trying to re-home them on social media, in an effort to save their lives.

The identification of restricted or banned dogs is ridiculously inaccurate as "visual identification" is the method used. In other words, if the body type resembles what a pit bull type dog should be, and pit bull type dogs are restricted, then the dog is not allowed on the property. Dr. Victoria Voith, Ph.D., DVM, DACVB is a pioneer and expert in the fields of applied animal and veterinary medical behavior. In a transcribed interview available on www.nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com, she said this:

NCRC: How has inaccurate breed identification led to poor policy making?

Dr. Voith: There are several problems with Breed specific legislation and housing regulations and

restrictions on dog ownership. One is the information that people think it was based on is probably not

accurate. There were studies done 20, 30 years ago based on newspaper reports as to what the

predominant breeds were in attacks by dogs or bites by dogs, yet there was no way to corroborate

whether or not those were actually the breeds. And we now know that most people can't visually

identify very accurately or even agree among themselves what breed a mixed breed dog is.

So, all of the legislations and laws based on old information in the literature may not be reliable or valid.

Advertisement

NCRC: Can you predict a dog's behavior based on its breed?

Dr. Voith: You can't definitively predict a dog's behavior based on a breed identification by DNA. There's just way too much variability among dogs. Anybody who's had more than one child or who has ever had a litter of dogs knows there's tremendous individual variation in siblings. So, even if it's [been breed identified correctly], you can't predict what it's behavior is going to be.

One really needs to look at the individual dog and base legislation and regulations on dangerous dogsand by some kind of criteria, not on breed.

I, myself, very recently found myself looking for rentals as I am in the middle of a break up and divorce. BREED RESTRICTIONS BREED RESTRICTIONS BREED RESTRICTIONS BREED RESTRICTIONS kept coming up over and over. I'd find a home with a fence, but there were restrictions. I'd find a house that would allow large dogs, but again - breed restrictions. In the end, I will buy a home to keep my dogs safe, but so many people do not have the bandwidth to purchase homes or move. Less judgment for these people, and more action to keep ourselves informed will ultimately be the only solution to end Canine Breed Insurance Discrimination. Bubba was one of the lucky ones, but there are millions of dogs being put down annually for a myriad reasons, housing being one of them. This will not end until enough people question Canine Breed Insurance Discrimination and contact their state Insurance Commissioners to find out what their stand is on the issue. Insurance Commissioners are elected and therefore what their constituents want should matter. Ultimately, the insurance companies fear dog bites and to keep costs down, they will not write policies for dogs like Bubba and my Lyla the Chow, and Polly the Pit, Honey the Bull dog/Pit and Gemmie the Mountain Curr/Pit. They don't know Bubba, or Lyla, Polly, Honey or Gem, but they don't need to know these dogs. Money is ultimately the driving force and lives are at stake. Bubba will turn 11 this November and he's home, but so many are laying on cement floors right now because of discrimination and fear and misinformation. We need to do better by them.
Black and white photo looking down center isle of Rockafeller Cathedral at University of Chicago.

My alma mater the University of Chicago has managed to get what it's always wanted: attention from the national press. Unfortunately, it did so by sending a completely unnecessary letter to incoming students announcing the school's opposition to trigger warnings and safe spaces, concepts the letter doesn't seem to understand at all. So let me wade into this muck in the hope of achieving some clarity. As the University of Chicago taught me, it's best to begin by defining one's terms.

Just as sexual harassment is a form of expression which is nonetheless regulated to make it possible for women to function in the workplace, various kinds of campus behavior are forms of expression which may nonetheless be regulated to make it possible for non-majority students to function in academe. Surely there are ludicrous examples of demands for trigger warnings and safe spaces, just as there are egregious examples of on-campus hostility and discrimination (e.g. men parading outside a women's dorm yelling "No means yes! Yes means anal!"). The issue in either case is the boundary between free expression and expression designed to intimidate or silence. No one can deny that a burning cross is an example of expression but as its purpose is to terrorize, it's considered to be on the wrong side of that boundary. So, in Europe, is Holocaust denial, though it's tolerated on American college campuses (while assertions that the earth is flat, say, would not be).

Advertisement

Thus people who take seriously the possibility that a person calling black women "water buffaloes" intends to demean and silence them are simply engaging in the type of critical thinking to which universities are supposed to be dedicated as well as the complementary analysis of what is necessary to protect an environment of civil discourse.

I'm a passionate advocate of the educational experience I had at the U of C, and nonetheless I think the letter to incoming students could more succinctly have been rendered as "F**k you if you imagine anything you think will be of interest or concern to us; you must have mistaken us for someplace that cares. And if you don't like it take your female and black and brown and queer sensibilities elsewhere." And I am revolted that my alma mater decided its reputation was best spent on that kind of dog-whistle right-wing nonsense.

You don't want to use trigger warnings? Don't. But there's no need to denounce them unless your real purpose is to let people (especially, perhaps, donors) know that you're indifferent to any concerns about mistreatment based on identity, and that any complaints about such mistreatment will be met with dismissiveness and derision because how dare any of these 21st Century concerns impinge on the 19th Century approach to which we've apparently dedicated our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor?

Advertisement

When I spoke up at the law school, I was thanked for expressing "what the women think." When a classmate objected to the teaching of Plato's Symposium as though it didn't refer to gay love, he was told that the University didn't "cater to special interests." When students and faculty spoke out for diversifying the curriculum beyond the dead white "mods and greats" beloved of the British university system, the response (from Saul Bellow, no less) was "where is the Proust of the Papuans?" though the whole point of his query was to ridicule the idea of our finding out.

There was nothing "micro" about these aggressions; they were perfectly visible examples of the majority's desire to humiliate and stifle the minorities. And the University's admissions policies in those days (though not now, happily) were carefully designed to make sure that black and brown and even female people were in the tiniest minorities possible.

So the U of C has a long history of behaving as if modernity were a personal insult, and this letter to first-years is as much in keeping with that tradition as any boob's expressed desire to make America great (meaning white) again.

I've heard there are donors to other schools who've withdrawn their support when their alma maters have acknowledged their role in slavery or in any way made a reckoning with the imperfections of the past. So just to balance things out, I'm withdrawing my support of an institution which seems to glory in denying there ever were any such imperfections or that any discrimination or hostility continues to exist today. The U of C exercised its privilege of flipping the bird to its incoming students and I'm exercising my privilege to flip the bird to the U of C.
presidential candidate barack...

Back in '08, when people said Barack Obama was "the one," I didn't realize they meant that he would be "the one" and only person standing alone in blocking the path to justice for the 9/11 victims' families.

Mr. Obama, please get out of our way and let us have some justice and peace 15 years after the brutal murder of our 3,000 loved ones.

Advertisement

JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, S.2040) is a well-thought out, powerful piece of anti-terrorism legislation. It does exactly what it says--it brings all those who fund terrorism to justice.

In a time where groups like ISIS are stomping around the globe decapitating people, ramming busses into crowds, and blowing up nightclubs, everyone (except Barack Obama) agrees that we need to stop terrorism in its tracks. One effective way to stop terrorists is to attack them at the root of their enterprise: their terrorist funding.

Without funds, terrorists can't run and maintain websites or training camps. Without funding, terrorists can't rent trucks, buy bomb-making materials, acquire assault rifles, or board airplanes to fly across borders. Without funding, terrorists can't produce viral videos, create false documents, or recruit lone wolves. Without funding, terrorists are stopped dead in their tracks.

It goes without saying that the largest benefactor of terrorist groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the incubator for global jihad. Saudis build madrassahs where fiery Imams like Anwar Awlaki preach hate, print and distribute school books that teach violence against infidels, and pay large sums of protection money to terrorists like Osama Bin Laden.

Advertisement

Notably, the Saudi role in radical jihad does not stop at underwriting terrorism--it carries into logistical support of individual attacks, as well. This logistical role is how the Saudis are linked to the 9/11 attacks.

Contrary to what President Obama says about the 28 pages (28 pages that Obama admitted to never reading), there is plenty of "there" found in the 28 pages--and it's called EVIDENCE of the Saudi financial and logistical support of the 9/11 hijackers who were embedded inside the United States. See end note below for this specific evidence.

Shockingly, the facts and evidence found in the 28 pages were not fully investigated because at the time (2002-2004), according to Vice President Cheney, we were a nation at war and we could not divert our vital resources into investigating the Saudi role in the 9/11 attacks.

As Vice President Dick Cheney said, "An investigation must not interfere with the ongoing efforts to prevent the next attack, because without a doubt a very real threat of another perhaps more devastating attack still exists. The people and agencies responsible for helping us learn about and defeat such an attack are the very ones most likely to be distracted from their critical duties."

In addition to being a nation at war and and unable to spare vital investigatory resources, the 9/11 Commission was also hamstrung by its extremely limited initial budget of $3 million and its extremely short 18-month time frame. Moreover due to publishing restraints and page limits, the 9/11 Commission was unable to include all information and evidence in its Final Report. Needless to say, the 9/11 Commission's investigation into the Saudis was neither robust, nor complete.

Advertisement

Several 9/11 Commissioners--Democrat and Republican--have confirmed this fact by going on the record stating that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not adequately investigated by the 9/11 Commission. Moreover, Commissioners Kerrey and Lehman said, "The 9/11 Commission did not exonerate Saudi Arabia of culpability for the events of 11th September 2001 or the financing of al Qaeda.

Even still, President Obama persists in protecting the Saudis and saying that the 9/11 Commission exonerated the Saudis. Yet, even given its drastic time, budget, and investigatory limits, the 9/11 Commission was able to conclude that, "Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding...charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al Qaeda. Al Qaeda found fertile fund-raising ground in Saudi Arabia, where extreme religious views are common and charitable giving was both essential to the culture and subject to very limited oversight."

Perhaps, if President Obama took the time to read the 28 pages, he would understand the wisdom and need for JASTA. The President might also better comprehend why 100 percent of Congress has voted in support of JASTA.

JASTA has achieved what President Obama could not--a truly pure, bi-partisan work-product that serves the best interests of American citizens. JASTA shows that Americans can work together to keep us safer from terrorism. In an era, where all agree that you are either with us or you are with the terrorists, it is interesting to see where President Obama currently stands--alone, and against the will of the American people.

President Obama says that he is opposed to JASTA because it will open up the United States to lawsuits that would cost billions.

Advertisement

What President Obama doesn't mention is that foreign nations and individuals can already sue the United States via statutes like ATA (Anti-Terrorism Act, 18 U.S.C. s. 2333) and ATS (Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. s. 1350). The ATS has been in existence since 1789 and ATA since the 90's. Neither has cost us billions. Neither has opened the floodgates of litigation. Neither has endangered our soldiers nor impeded our ability to carry out drone strikes, troop movements, or torture.

The real reason President Obama opposes JASTA is because it will hold the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia accountable for their role in the 9/11 attacks. And for good reason (found in 80,000 documents in Florida and 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry of Congress), the Saudis are worried about being held accountable in a court of law for their misdeeds.

Saudi Royals aren't exactly accustomed to having to answer questions, face evidence, or be held responsible for their acts--that's why President Obama called them free-loaders last spring. President Obama certainly wasn't worried about offending Saudi Royals then, nor when he paid $4 billion and cut his Iran deal last summer.

Of course, what's most bothersome and depressing about President Obama's bowing to this second terrorist regime, is that it runs so completely counter to what this man said he was all about back in 2008.

He promised to restore our faith in government. He promised transparency, rule of law, and accountability. He promised to limit the extent to which lobbyists could affect government. And to the 9/11 families specifically, he promised justice.

Advertisement

President Obama now chooses to protect a foreign regime that fuels hatred and terrorism rather than to protect the rights of American victims. Plain and simple, Obama's choice is shameful.

Every member of Congress must recognize that President Obama's two arguments against JASTA are specious. Congress must stand strong in its unanimous passage of JASTA and its protection of American victims of terrorist attacks by overriding President Obama's veto because it is not just the right thing to do--it is the American thing to do.

Congress, the 9/11 families' and JASTA's message is clear: If you fund terrorists that kill Americans you will be held responsible. We, all of us who support JASTA, represent the UNITED States of America and we protect our own, Mr. President--not the Saudis and the terrorists who kill us.

ENDNOTE: directly from the 28 pages:

"Al Bayoumi provided substantial assistance to hijackers Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000."

"Al Bayoumi had extensive contact with SAUDI Government establishments in the United States and received financial support from a SAUDI company affiliated with the SAUDI Ministry of Defense."

Advertisement

"The documentary evidence that al Bayoumi provided assistance to al Hazmi and al Mihdhar is solid."

"The FBI discovered that al Bayoumi had far more extensive ties to the SAUDI Government than previously realized."

"Bassnan has many ties to the SAUDI Government."

"Bassnan reportedly received funding and possibly a fake passport from SAUDI Government officials."

"Bassnan and his wife have received financial support from the SAUDI Ambassador to the United States and his wife."

"Bassnan also has other ties to the SAUDI Government."

"Bassnan's wife received a monthly stipend from Princess Haifa."

"These checks were payable to Bassnan's wife and were drawn on the Riggs Bank account of Prince Bandar's wife."

"Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the amount of $15,000."

"Bassnan's wife also received at least one check directly from Bandar."

"Bassnan is an extremist and supporter of Usama Bin Ladin."

"Bassnan spoke of Bin Ladin as if he were a god."

"Bassnan also knew Bin Ladin's family in SAUDI Arabia and speaks on his mobile phone with members of the family who are living in the United States."

"The Ibn Tamiyah Mosque in Culver City is a site of extremist-related activity."

"An FBI agent said he believed that SAUDI Government money was being laundered through the Ibn Tamiyah Mosque."

Advertisement

"There are also indications of SAUDI Government support for terrorist activity through charitable organizations."

"CIA, Treasury, and FBI officials have all expressed their concern about the al-Haramain Foundation's ties to both the SAUDI Government and terrorist activity."

"The al Haramain Foundation has clear ties to the SAUDI Government and intelligence reporting suggests it is providing financial and logistical support to al Qaeda."

"The FBI has located correspondence between al Bayoumi and the al Haramain Islamic Foundation."

"The subject of Phoenix and Portland FBI counterterrorism investigations, also has close ties to a member of the SAUDI royal family."

"Although his name was on the State Department watchlist, BLANK was apparently able to circumvent the Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service because he was traveling with the SAUDI prince."

Advertisement

"The FBI expressed their concern that BLANK and others were using their status as SAUDI Arabian Airlines employees as a cover to enable them to transport weapons in and out of the United States."

"In testimony and interviews, a number of FBI agents and CIA officers complained to the Joint Inquiry about a lack of SAUDI cooperation in terrorism investigations both before and after the September 11 attacks."

"The SAUDIS have been useless and obstructionist for years."

"The SAUDIS will only act when it is in their self-interest."

"When a high level officer was asked how the September 11 attacks might have been prevented, he cited greater SAUDI cooperation, pointing to an example from the summer of 2001 when the U.S. government requested SAUDI assistance, with no success."

"According to the former Chief of Alec Station, it was clear from about 1996 that the SAUDI Government would not cooperate with the United States on matters relating to Usama Bin Ladin."

"The SAUDIS had stopped providing background information or other assistance on Bin Ladin because Bin Ladin had too much information about official SAUDI dealings with Islamic extremists in the 1980s for Riyadh to deliver him into U.S. hands."

Advertisement
This is the first year the National Specialty Australian Shepherd Club of America has held its national competition in Albany, but it may not be the last.

The competition, now in its 46th year, moves around the United States. It was in Tennessee in 2015 and has Texas on deck for 2017.

But people competing in the various divisions at the Linn County Fair & Expo Center this week said they like Albany's facility enough to suggest it again.

The Willamette Australian Shepherd Club is hosting the event. Regi Bryant, who chairs this year's conformation division, said it made sense to pick Albany this year because her mother, ASCA Nationals Chairperson and Senior Breeder Conformation Judge Ronda Silveira, lives in Scio.

"They figured it would be a great facility for hosting all the events we're doing," she said.

The choice got a thumbs-up from Michael McGuire, a handler from El Dorado Hills, California, who took 7-month-old Maize through the Conformation competition.

"I show professionally, so I'm up here for AKC sessions all the time. It's a great facility," he said.

About 600 dog owners with 1,200 dogs were expected this week at the event. Competitors come from all over the United States and as far away as Argentina, Australia and New Zealand.

Competitions continue through Saturday at the fairgrounds and at nearby Timber-Linn Memorial Park. Admission and parking are both free and the public is welcome to watch all events.

Bryant has done all of them over time: obedience, agility, rally (sort of a combination of obedience and agility), stock (herding competitions with sheep or cows), freestyle and conformation. Her favorite remains conformation, however, which checks to see that a dog conforms to the ideal standards for its breed.

"To do any of the others, the dog should be structurally sound," she explained.

For Naomi Snapp of Eugene, however, it's agility, every time. The longtime agility teacher had two dogs qualified for the finals in this week's competition, Jim Beam and Yankee, and was looking forward to speeding both through the tunnels and teeter-totters of the agility course.

"I really enjoy how the courses are different each time, so you have to think of strategy," she said. "And every run is great."
Mural on public street in Kairouan, Tunisia

The scene is sadly familiar. A hot, sweltering courtroom packed with anxious and sometimes crying family members. Court officers yelling to tell the audience to turn off their phones, sit down, and stay silent. Clerks and prosecutors shuffling through huge stacks of files and papers. A robed judge walks in. All rise and then sit back down.

Then, two dozen men are marched out of a back door - confused, worried, scanning the crowd to see if there is a family member present...or perhaps an attorney.

Most of the accused individuals won't have a lawyer to stand up and argue on their behalf. And the reason is simple: they simply cannot afford one.

Advertisement

Without the money to pay for an attorney, the accused person frantically tries to plead his case and explain his innocence before a judge without anyone by their side. The judge will typically announce his or her verdict or judgment after a two-minute back-and-forth with the accused. Sentences are pronounced: time served, community service, two months in jail, or one year in prison and massive fines for a minuscule amount of marijuana. People snatched out of their communities. Lives upended. Families devastated.

The scene could play out almost anywhere in the world, including the United States, where commitments to indigent defense, 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, remain unfulfilled across towns and cities nationwide.

I happened to be in Tunisia, working on behalf of the International Legal Foundation (ILF), an organization providing direct criminal defense services to the poor. The Tunisian ILF lawyers come to court with a commitment to client-centered advocacy that reflects international legal standards and the bold direction of post-revolution Tunisia and its new progressive constitution.

Local political protest in Central Tunis May 2016

To address some of the problems within their justice system, Tunisia, consistent with its ongoing wave of democratic reforms, recently passed and has begun implementing a strong early access law which grants suspects the right to counsel at police stations, prior to formal detention and charging decisions. Early access to counsel can have dramatic impacts on case and life outcomes for clients, and benefits for society-at-large, including a reduction in pre-trial detention, accountability and transparency of law enforcement, and greater courtroom efficiency.

Advertisement

Tunisia went through a popular revolution in 2011, launching the Arab Spring, with dramatic changes to their political, social, and legal structures. Yet in Tunisia, as in many post-conflict nations, full rule of law remains aspirational at best. Legal advocacy for the vulnerable, in particular, is absolutely critical to protecting human rights and accessing justice. Effective legal aid and public defense for the indigent and marginalized can have broad impact on social stability and inclusive development.

The timing of legal aid is also of critical importance. Simply stated, the earlier the access, the greater the impact. Late access significantly diminishes the effectiveness of public defense. Most of ILF clients in Tunisia, for example, have been in custody for days or even weeks before they are appointed a lawyer. Many are signing confessions, submitting to drug testing, and being brought back and forth to court appearances without ever speaking to an attorney or being fully made aware of the charges against them. This too is often a universal experience, including even here in the United States, where advocates have long been fighting for the assignment of counsel at arraignments and bail hearings - providing at least minimal teeth to the spirit behind the Miranda warnings.

The presence of attorneys at an early stage will have potentially profound impact on the rule of law and advancing justice in Tunisia, including:

Eliminating false confessions and incidents of abuse such as arbitrary or illegal detentions, and even torture

Creating space for interventions to divert cases based on substance abuse or mental health concerns

Fostering a specialized focus on protecting juveniles, women, and other marginalized groups from abuses spurred by incarceration

Allowing counsel to challenge the routine use of improper and shoddy medical and drug testing

Reducing the population of overcrowded and dangerous jail facilities, where criminal gang and terrorist recruiting is rampant

There are, of course, significant open questions including how the law will be systemically implemented and promoted across the country, particularly for the poor, and what the legal remedy will be for the violation of these rights. But early access to lawyers at police stations is the type of legal reform that can and should be replicated everywhere, from post-conflict countries to jurisdictions here in the United States.

Advertisement

Bab el Bhar of Tunis

Advocates across the world have long argued the import of early access to counsel, and laws such as those in Tunisia demonstrate that the push is finally bearing fruit. But as lawyers and advocates, we must keep pushing our legal systems, no matter the context or location, to be more accountable, more accessible, and more fair - particularly for those whose rights are often trampled on by systems because of poverty or other marginalized statuses.
NBC NEWS - ELECTION COVERAGE -- Commander-In-Chief Forum -- Pictured: (l-r) Presidential Candidate Donald Trump and Matt Lauer on Wednesday, September 7, 2016 on the Intrepid in New York, NY -- (Photo by: Heidi Gutman/NBC News/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Last week's Commander in Chief forum drew much attention because moderator Matt Lauer spent so much time discussing Hillary Clinton's email while not pushing Donald Trump to provide policy specifics, support his claims about how weak the U.S. military has become or even to tell the truth about his position on Iraq. The Commander in Chief forum was clearly not quite the Lincoln-Douglas debates, but lost in the analysis of how Lauer moderated and the craven nature of Trump's views of Russian President Vladimir Putin is that the forum was further evidence of how we Americans are still unable to discuss foreign policy.

One obvious demonstration of this was that in the sixty minute forum, there was no mention of what is probably the biggest challenge to American national security and our future-climate change. Similarly, there was almost no discussion of China; nor were the candidates even asked to present a general strategy for combating global Jihadist terror.

Advertisement

One of the few substantive issues that was discussed was the health care and other support for America's veterans. Given that the U.S. is now in its second decade of what increasingly looks like permanent war, how we treat out veterans is extremely important. It is not, however, a foreign policy question. It is a domestic policy question and one that is best understood as part of a discussion of what other kind of support we offer to Americans in need. Additionally, veterans affairs touch on a whole range of other domestic issues, not least of which are jobs, the prison-industrial complex and education. Making veterans affairs a large part of a foreign policy debate, helped preclude a meaningful discussion of foreign policy while also not allowing for a fuller discussion of how to help our veterans.

The forum also demonstrated that the discourse about foreign policy is still driven by scandals, today's headlines and the endless rehashing of who took what position in 2002 and 2003 during the run-up to the Gulf War. While these are sometimes important issues, yet another barrage of the same questions, and the same answers, about Hillary Clinton's email, or what the candidates thought about the Iraq War in 2003 is something less than a holistic and valuable discussion of foreign policy. Instead of discussing a strategy for combating Jihadist terror, the candidates were each asked a question or two about the Iran deal and their early support for the Iraq deal. Trump was probed, a little, about his relationship with Putin, but neither candidate was asked to flesh out their vision of the U.S. role in an increasingly multi-lateral world. Trump rabbited on, with no evidence whatsoever, about the weak state of the American military, but neither candidate was asked whether huge military budgets and a global network of military bases, for example, serves the interests of the American people.

Advertisement

A core question facing the next American President, and indeed the American people, is what the U.S. role in the world should be. This question should be particularly salient in this election because the candidates, at least at first glance, seem to be on different sides of this issue. Clinton is a product of, and in fact a creator of, the bipartisan interventionist, or internationalist if you prefer, foreign policy consensus. It is this consensus that leads politicians from both parties to confidently assert, unburdened by any rigorous analysis or clear evidence, that the world is safer, or better off, when a strong America leads. These kinds of platitudes have enjoyed support across much of the political spectrum for decades and have provided the rationale for most American foreign policy successes and failures during these years.

Donald Trump, regardless of what he thought of the war in Iraq in 2002-3, does not seem to believe share this view, except of course when he does. Trump has argued for a U.S. role in the world that, in words that have very unfortunate historical echoes, put "America First." Trump clearly seems content to led Russian President Vladimir Putin have sway over Ukraine, Georgia and much of the former Soviet Union. The GOP nominee has also called for both a stronger military and less U.S. involvement in the rest of the world. He seems to want lots of bombing, but little of the other aspects of American presence around the world.
Now more than ever, there is widespread momentum for criminal justice reform. At the federal level, this month the Department of Justice announced its plan to phase out its use of private prisons. We are also seeing shifts at the local level in how jurisdictions are responding to crime. For example, in Washington, D.C., Council Member Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5) led the way for the passage of the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results Act of 2016, which takes a holistic approach to addressing an uptick in homicides in the nation's Capital. And during its next session, Congress will again consider a bipartisan sentencing reform bill.

While there is still lots of work to do to reform our justice systems, I am cautiously optimistic by the way the conversation has changed on these issues and some of the changes we are seeing in policy. But, I also know that with the largest prison population in the world, including a disproportionate number of people of color locked up in adult and juvenile prisons across the country, America needs significant and bold reforms to reduce the imprisonment of more than 2 million people across the country and create a system that treats people fairly, regardless of race or ethnicity.

While the nation struggles with how to address one of the greatest public policy issues in its history, a JPI report takes a new look at the issue of mass incarceration and how America responds to violent crime. The report, Defining Violence: Reducing Incarceration by Rethinking America's Approach to Violence, notes that while there is currently more support than ever for criminal justice reform, the U.S. will not be able to meaningfully lower its incarceration rate without changing how the justice system treats people charged with and convicted of violent crimes.

Advertisement

Debates in state legislatures and Congress around criminal justice reform are often mired down over what constitutes a violent crime and how the justice system treats violent crimes. The reality is, significant reductions in our prison and jail populations cannot happen until we rethink our approach to violent offenses. Even with all of the momentum around criminal justice reform, the latest surveys show only a one percent reduction in the national prison population, and a slight increase in jail populations.

In some places, justice reform bills have been rejected if there is a hint that someone convicted of a violent crime might benefit. The conversations on the federal and state levels, as well as recent policy reforms, have focused on reducing the incarceration of people convicted of nonviolent offenses. Yet just under half the people in prison have been convicted of a violent crime, and meaningful justice reform must include rethinking how laws, policies, and practices treat these offenses if the nation is to see sustained reductions in incarceration.

Coming at a time when there has been very little change in national prison and jail populations, Defining Violence points to bright spots that show growing public appetite for a different approach to violent crime. Many of the laws enacted that have led to high incarceration rates followed spikes in crime. But just recently when D.C. communities were responding to growing concerns around crime, D.C. Councilmember and Chair of the Council's Judiciary Committee, Kenyan McDuffie, introduced and secured passage of the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results Act of 2016, which adopts a public health approach to crime prevention, and does not increase justice system involvement. The bill passed the D.C. Council unanimously.

McDuffie's NEAR Act is a step in the right direction for rethinking how we approach violence in the criminal justice system. We need to be moving towards policies backed by the evidence on what works best for sentencing, corrections, and criminal justice reform. We also need to think about how the way our systems treat violence in context with larger social policy discussions. McDuffie's use of a public health approach makes the right investment in protecting our communities against violence and crime.

Advertisement

Along with an increasing reliance on public health approaches to violence prevention, there are other bright spots around efforts to reduce the incarceration of people convicted of violent crimes. These include, significant reductions in juvenile confinement for violent crimes; reforms spurred on by the Supreme Court around juvenile life without parole that are allowing people convicted of violent crimes long ago to finally have a chance to be released; broader reforms being offered to parole that make decisions less reliant on the offense; and law changes that are chipping away at long prison sentences for violent crimes, including mandatory minimums.
Opinion by Reboot Illinois' Madeleine Doubek

Why should we care about what happens in contested state legislative races all over the state this year? Each really is about the battle for control between GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan. You knew that, but perhaps you didn't realize we all will lose no matter who wins.

Every election cycle, there typically are a couple dozen hotly contested state legislative races, even after one political party or the other gets done rigging maps in their favor. Each party in both chambers has seats they can swipe from the other side. It's in those races, traditionally, where most of the money is raised and spent.

This year is no different. But where it has changed, is that Republicans now are energized because of GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner. Rauner changes the political landscape in Illinois with his determination to shake up Springfield and his bottomless checking account. After years and years of failure, Republicans have their best shot in decades at winning the nuclear arms race that is funding and winning campaigns.

Advertisement

Scott Kennedy, the terrific analyst and former Democratic party and government operative who now works in the private sector, keeps track of reams of data on state races at his website, Illinois Election Data.

At the end of June, Kennedy estimated $128 million already had been spent or collected for on state elections. In an email, he told me he thinks it's reasonable to expect $150 million will be spent on primary and general election state races.

Kennedy also ranked which districts are most mathematically winnable for each party in each chamber based on 2014 election results.

In several contested races, Rauner and the GOP have been hard at work running against Madigan, who is one of the most negatively viewed politicians around. Rauner is trying to tie him like a noose around the necks of Democrats and squeeze the knot. Madigan and the Democrats have been doing the same to Rauner with reporters for months. Soon, they'll start spending gobs of money, too, aiming to make every contested Republican look as extreme, heartless and cruel as Madigan claims Rauner and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump are.

Advertisement

So what? Let's not forget our physics lessons: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Rauner shook up Springfield all right. Now, instead of one dictator, we now have two.

Rauner and Madigan control how much money goes into the key races like never before.

That's the action. The reaction? In a state that had very little bold independence, we will have far less of it.

Consider a few top races:

The GOP is targeting state Sen. Gary Forby, a downstate Democrat, for defeat. Forby has collected more than448,000 from the state party or leadership committees (really Madigan). That figure is 46% of his975,000 total. His opponent, Republican Dale Fowler, has collected more than237,000 from his party or leadership, a figure that's almost 78 percent of his305,000 total.

The Democrats are after GOP state Sen. Sue Rezin, who raised nearly586,000. Of that,286,000, or 49 percent, came from the GOP. Her challenger, Democrat Christine Benson, has raised171,000, with142,000 from top Democrats. That amounts to 83 percent.

In the House, one of the top races that looks best for Republicans is the downstate race between Democratic state Rep. John Bradley and Republican David Severin. Bradley has raised more than986,000. Only74,000 has come from the party so far, or 7.5 percent of the total. Severin, though, has raised304,000 and a whopping 90 percent, or more than274,000, has come from Rauner and the GOP.

Advertisement

The top House race that looks mathematically best for Democrats to pick up is the northwest side district of Republican state Rep. Michael McAuliffe. He's being challenged by Democrat Merry Marwig. McAuliffe has raised1.3 million. More than1 million came from Rauner's party, or 84 percent. Marwig has raised nearly157,000, with about104,000 coming from the Democrats for nearly 67 percent.

How can we constituents fight to be heard when the politicians all owe their jobs to Madigan and Rauner?

One more note:

Political scientist/commentator extraordinaire Paul Green probably would laugh at what I just wrote and tell me, "Doubek, that's the way party politics is supposed to work." Green, who died suddenly Saturday, helped me and countless others learn the ropes and filled our columns with lively quotes for decades.

On the last night of the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego, I was running for a bus back to the delegation hotel when I caught up with Green, who offered me a wild ride. Literally. Green's wife, Sharon, drove a car all over San Diego trying to find shortcuts and avoid convention backups to get us to some adult beverages ASAP. The entire time, the Greens had me grinning from the back seat with their repartee as the three of us told political tales. Ever since then, every time he saw me, he'd loudly refer to our "threesome," and say, "Doubek, remember, we'll always have San Diego!"

I'm so grateful we did. There will never be another man as quick-witted and generous as Paul Green. I can't believe you're gone, Paul.

Advertisement
Need a good reason to extend your healthy summer eating habits into fall? These fresh seafood dishes are just the inspiration you need. Whether you prefer a simply prepared whole fish that allows its freshness to shine or a dish with saucy complements, one thing's for sure, a deliciously prepared seafood plate is one of our favorite meals year-round.

Buoy would you be silly not to try these 15 dishes:

Photo provided by Empellon Cocina.

One of many inventive taco dishes at Empellon Cocina, the Fried Maine Smelts (a small fish commonly found in the Atlantic Ocean) are prepared with jalapeno relish and lime mayonnaise.

Photo provided by Fundamental LA.

Emphasizing seasonal ingredients and forward-thinking, the Shrimp 'A La Plancha' at Fundamental LA is a menu must, made with stewed okra, fried polenta and a sunny egg.

Advertisement

Photo provided by Waypoint.

Before digging into the seafood-focused pasta, pizza and large format roasts, check out the shrimp appetizer delivered with fish pepper cocktail sauce and nori (edible seaweed) aioli, as well as the fresh raw bar selections.

Photo provided by Mission Taqueria.

A light and refreshing ceviche, the Coctele de Mariscos is prepared with grilled shrimp, calamari, clams and citrus.

Photo provided by Casa Luca.

Great for sharing at the table, the whole branzino at Casa Luca is classically Italian, prepared with slow roasted tomatoes, red peppers and Taggiasche olives (a deep red olive grown in Ponente, the western part of Liguria, Italy).

Photo provided by The Bywater.

A New Orleans-inspired dish, the Snapper Courtbouillon at The Bywater in Los Gatos, just south of San Francisco, celebrates where Michelin-starred chef David Kinch first learned to cook. A French poaching stock, the courtbouillon is a roux-based fish stew made with Creole tomato sauce.

Advertisement

Photo provided by Mirai Sushi.

Offering daily fresh fish combinations from the sushi bar, Mirai Sushi has locations in both Gold Coast and Wicker Park and offers many varieties of tuna, salmon, white fish, shrimp, eel and fish roe sashimi.

Photo provided by ITV.

From Top Chef Winner Nick Elmi, ITV serves up French-inspired New American small plates, like this cured fluke with daikon radish, preserved citrus, buttermilk and pine nuts.

Photo provided by The Stocking Frame.

The Stocking Frame prepares a whole wild caught sea bream -- a mild, white fish -- in a wood oven with herbs and piri piri sauce. Of Portuguese origin and commonly used as a seasoning or marinade in African countries, piri piri sauce is made from crushed chillies, citrus peel, onion, bay leaves, paprika, basil and other spices.

Photo by Morgan Ione Yeager. Photo provided by SRV.

If you want to satisfy your seafood craving with a heartier dish, the Spaghetti alla Busara at SRV, made with shrimp, garlic and spicy tomato sauce, is calling your name.

Photo provided by Ela.

Ela offers dynamic four- and six-course tasting menus, which typically include at least one creative take on crudo or tartare. Currently, the restaurant is dishing out a can't-miss Arctic Char Crudo with kohlrabi (a relative of cabbage), mustard seeds and piquillo pepper ponzu (a thin, sweet chili pepper sauce).

Advertisement

Photo provided by Empellon Taqueria.

Among many standout tacos at Empellon Taqueria, the fish tempura is decorated with cabbage and lime mayonnaise, making for a fresh, crunchy delight.

Photo provided by Fiola Mare.

Sprinkled with ginger and chives, the lobster ravioli at Fiola Mare is not only beautiful on the eyes -- yes, we've seen it make waves on Instagram -- but on the palate, too.

Photo provided by Vee Vee.

Fish is a staple on Vee Vee's seasonally changing menu, including seared scallops with zucchini puree, corn, green beans, cherry tomatoes, new potatoes, fennel and sorrel pistou (a Provencal cold sauce that's somewhat similar to pesto, although it lacks pine nuts, and is made from cloves of garlic, sorrel and olive oil).

Photo provided by Obica.

Obica, a mozzarella bar focused on fresh pizza and pastas, also delivers excellent seafood including ahi tuna tartare, fire-grilled calamari, wild Italian sea bass and red snapper.

Advertisement
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks to reporters after holding a "National Security Working Session" with national security advisors in New York, U.S. September 9, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By covering up her pneumonia for more than two days and by making Romney-like statements that half of Trumps voters are "deplorable," Hillary Clinton is committing serious unforced errors that almost make one wonder if this life-long politician ever passed Politics 101.

I rarely agree with Wall Street Journal editorials, but this one has the ring of truth:

As Mrs. Clinton's support has eroded in the polls, Democrats are figuring out that they may have nominated the only candidate who could lose to Donald Trump.



A Trump victory would be a disaster for the country and the world. But Hillary seems to be doing the best she can to lose an election that's hers to win.

Clinton's handling of her pneumonia is an example of characteristic Clintononian missteps. Speaking to reporters after a meeting of security advisors late last week, it was clear to anyone watching that she wasn't feeling well. She was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday.

The smart thing to do would have been to put out a press release with the diagnosis and prognosis, say she was taking antibiotics, and she would be reducing her schedule for a few days to rest and recover. Millions of Americans contract pneumonia each year and recover quickly and completely, so it wouldn't have been a big deal.

Instead, with typical Clintonian secrecy, the campaign tried to cover up the obvious, until she nearly collapsed on Sunday morning at a 9/11 memorial, the video of her near-collapse sped across the internet, and it then took the Clinton campaign seven more hours to announce she has pneumonia.

Advertisement

Suddenly a relatively minor health problem turned into a major news story, with the media asking what other undisclosed health problems Clinton might have that could potentially interfere with her presidency.

The campaign's handling of Hillary's health problems violated a basic tenet of Politics 101: It's not the incident but the cover-up that causes the political problems. (When she was young, Hillary was a lawyer for the Congressional Committee investigating Watergate -- Did she learn nothing from the experience?)

Then Hillary violated another tenet of Politics 101: You don't criticize the voters. You criticize your opponent.

Speaking Friday to donors at a fundraiser headlined by Barbara Streisand, Hillary commented:

You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorable.' Right?. The racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.

Pundits can debate whether there's any truth to the statement, as Charles Blow did in defending the substance of the statement on The New York Times Op-Ed page, writing that "What Clinton said was impolitic but not incorrect."

Advertisement

But that doesn't diminish the fact that, by criticizing Trump's voters instead of candidate Trump, Hillary's statement was an elementary political blunder. It was almost the equivalent of Mitt Romney's infamous 2012 statement to his donors that 47 percent of the voters were free-loaders who don't pay taxes and want to mooch off the government. The 47 percent statement was a major cause of Romney's defeat.

The Wall Street Journal editorial recalls a 1988 Saturday Night Live skit in which Jon Lovitz -- playing Michael Dukakis -- comments on a silly statement by Dana Carvey -- playing George H.W. Bush -- that "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy." The Wall Street Journal continues:

"More than a few Democrats are beginning to wonder if Hillary could soon be saying that about Donald Trump, of all people...Democrats have convinced themselves that Mr. Trump is such a threat to the republic that they...don't want to admit that they've nominated the epitome of the self-dealing status quo that disdains their fellow Americans."

Given the danger of a Trump Presidency, it's more than troubling that Hillary could be so politically inept. She's a professional politician who's been campaigning for over 35 years, for Bill as Arkansas Governor and President, and for herself as New York Senator, during a year-long campaign for the Democratic nomination, and now in the general election.

Could Hillary really be this politically clueless? Could she turn out to be about the only Democrat who could lose to Donald Trump?

Advertisement

I wish Hillary Clinton no harm. But part of me can't help hoping that her recent illness is serious enough that she has to withdraw from the Presidential race and the Democratic National Committee has to pick a different nominee. I assume it would be Tim Kaine, which I could live with if it means increasing the chances of beating the quasi-fascist Donald Trump (although a better choice would be Bernie Sanders, who consistently out-performed Hillary against Trump in most polls.)


Photo: A feminist father with his daughters at SlutWalk NYC, part of a worldwide grassroots movement challenging rape culture. Credit: Charlotte Cooper / Flickr

At some point during the fight for gender equality, the word feminist became synonymous with man-hating. 'Feminism' easily conjured images of hairy arm-pitted lesbians, insistent that women are the superior sex and men should sit down and shut up.

But it's 2016 and that's not what feminism looks like.

Feminists look like women in business suits who work on Wall Street, or stay-at-home moms rocking yoga pants while pushing the stroller to the park. They're black, Latina, Asian and white. They're celebrities. Sometimes, they're even men...

Advertisement

Yes, feminists are men too. This might be obvious to some, but there are others who would disagree.

There are some feminists that believe feminism is only for women. It's our battle to fight and we need women-only spaces in order to feel safe and express ideas and concerns with others who share our experience of oppression, and who move through the world in a similar way.

I completely agree with this and advocate for it, but I also think that excluding men from feminism entirely is not helpful or progressive.

One recent example I've come across that demonstrates the alienating of men from gender equality issues, is hearing my female peers say things like "boys are stupid," or "all men are dirty and messy." My boyfriend and some of my male friends have told me that hearing this type of language (especially if it happens consistently) can make them feel excluded.

My boyfriend is a feminist in that he firmly believes men and women should be treated as equals, but he's told me that experiencing this type of exclusion makes him not want to take an active role in the fight for feminism.

Advertisement

When he first told me this, I got upset. I felt like he was overreacting. "Oh, you feel excluded because someone called you stupid or messy? Try making 30 percent less at your job than a man in the same role. Try being seen as a sex object every day of your life, or worrying that you'll be physically assaulted on the street," I thought. He's a straight, white man who's had a lot of the privileges that straight white men have in our society. He can deal with a few women making slightly negative comments about his gender.

But after thinking about it more, I realized this is about something bigger. While these comments aren't on par with the type of harassment women have faced for centuries, they're also not helpful or necessary in the fight towards equality. My boyfriend's anger at these comments is really about the larger issue of excluding men from feminism.

Let me also point out that I don't think this is about the issue of sexisim towards men. YouTuber Riley J. Dennis, who frequently vlogs about gender equality and LGBT issues, summed up this idea very nicely in one of her videos, and I agree with her thinking. She says "Sexism is the institutionalized discrimination against a particular gender (or genders). Because it has to be institutionalized -- that is, built into our societal systems -- you can only really be sexist against women and other gender minorities."

So while I'm not saying that calling boys stupid is an example of sexism, I do think it's problematic because it reinforces the gender binary. It puts boys and men into a box, making the assumption that they all subscribe to the same set of ideals or way of life.

The number one goal of feminism is to make sure that women are being treated as equals in society because we are the ones that have been, and continue to be, marginalized and discriminated against, specifically for our gender. But I believe that feminism is also about redefining masculinity. Just as I believe in intersectional feminism, I believe that men must be included in feminism too.

Advertisement

I listen to Dan Savage's podcast, Savage Lovecast, every week, and one of the many pieces of advice he's given that really resonates with me is that we need to change the way we're raising young boys. In the fight for gender equality, much of the focus has been on changing the way we raise girls. From a young age, we need to teach girls to be strong and independent. We must make sure they know they can do anything boys can do.

We also need to implant the idea of feminism in boys at a young age. Boys must know how to respect girls and women and what consent means. Just as importantly, they need to know that it's okay to cry; that they too can be anything they want when they grow up, even jobs traditionally thought of as feminine, like a stay-at-home parent, a teacher, or a nurse.

As queer activist and educator Jonathan Reed said in this Ravishly piece in reference to raising feminist sons,

You think the offhand comment about that female politician went unnoticed? You think your son doesn't hear the subtext when you criticize the outfit of the girl next door? Seriously? Wake up, dad. Every word you say is either perpetuating misogynistic, patriarchal beliefs -- or challenging them. You better choose them carefully, because your son is listening.

We need to teach our boys to be feminists and we need to continue encouraging that value in men by including them in the conversation. Feminism is about treating women as equals and letting us escape the gender binary, but it's also about helping men escape the gender binary society put them in too. It's okay for men to talk about their feelings and be vulnerable. Men don't always have to be the breadwinner and family provider. They don't have to fight other men, or hit women, to prove their masculinity.

Advertisement

Straight white men will always have straight white privilege in our society. But I want those men to use their straight white male privilege to help us, and to help themselves too. As Ariel Chesler, son of famous feminist Phyllis Chesler, pointed out in this article, a patriarchal worldview is ultimately limiting and damaging to everyone. Chesler said,

Good people of all sexes should be motivated to end gender inequality because patriarchal rules limit everyone's ability to be their whole selves. We should all challenge painful and limiting notions of gender and gender inequity not because we are riding to the rescue of others. We should do it because we all want freedom of expression and self-determination for ourselves -- none of us should have to be in pain for trying to squeeze into a socially constructed box.

We need men to help us with this fight because we need everyone fighting for this cause from all sides. Feminism benefits women as well as ALL people.
EDITOR'S NOTE: At a time when Americans are being encouraged to shun those whose beliefs or backgrounds are different than our own, and a wave of racial and ethnic hatred is poisoning our national discourse, it is uplifting to consider a man who risked his life and all he had to save others who were neither kin nor countrymen. Some 75 years ago, a Chinese diplomat named Feng-shan Ho silently used his pen to save hundreds of thousands from the Holocaust.

Defying orders, he granted visas to Austrian Jews under Nazi's noses

By CLAYTON HASWELL

Host, OurPaths,com

As a boy growing up in Hunan Province in Mainland China, Feng-shan Ho studied Chinese calligraphy and admired the work of philosopher and master calligrapher Yu Youren.

Years later, his own signature, elegant brush strokes in the pages of foreign passports, became the most sought after Chinese calligraphy in Austrian history due to their magical powers: they saved the lives of some 3,000 Austrian Jews.

Advertisement



Children loaded into trains for transport from Vienna. Austrian National Library photo

And though he was honored as "Righteous Among Nations," by a Holocaust remembrance organization, he died with the taint of a trumped up allegation of petty theft hanging over him. His heroism remained a secret, even from his children, until near the end of his life. He died 19 years ago this week, on Sept. 28, 1997, in San Francisco.

Feng-Shan Ho was a hardworking student who earned degrees from several Chinese universities before enrolling at the University of Munich in 1932 to study political economics.

He received his doctorate in 1932 and three years later landed a job at with the foreign service of the Republic of China, He was posted to Turkey almost immediately. He was appointed consul general in Vienna in 1937, the year before Nazi Germany annexed Austria.



At work as Austrian Consul General.

After Kristallnacht, the night on which Nazi thugs smashed the shops and windows of Jews across Germany, life for Austria's 180,000 Jews became unbearably dangerous and difficult. The only country willing to accept Jews at the time was the Dominican Republic, which offered to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees.

Advertisement

Defying orders from his superior in Berlin, Feng-shan Ho began issuing exit visas to Shanghai. The exact number of life-saving visas he granted remains unclear. Records show, however, that he issued 1906 visas in his first six months as consul general, and he continued issuing visas for two more years before being recalled.

A conservative estimate is that he saved some 3,000 Jews from concentration camps and death, or three times the number saved by Oskar Schindler. Despite working under the watchful eyes of the Gestapo, some Holocaust experts put the number he saved as high as 10,000.

A visa was not needed to enter Shanghai at the time. But without a valid visa to another country, Jews were not allowed to leave Austria.



Jewish refugees in Shanghai. Times of Israel photo

After the Communist takeover of China in 1949, Feng-shan Ho moved with the Chinese Nationalists to the government in Taipei, serving as ambassador to Egypt, Mexico, Bolivia and Colombia. He retired in 1973 and moved to San Francisco, where he wrote his memoirs, "My Forty Years as a Diplomat."

But his trials had not ended. Shortly after retiring, he was notified by the Taipei government that his pension was revoked, citing unacceptable expenses under his regime totaling $300.

Advertisement

Although he vigorously denied misusing government funds, his reputation was besmirched and he was never cleared of the charges. There was widespread recognition that the false claims were a political vendetta.

An SS officer guards Viennese Jews headed for deportation, 1941.



He died in 1997 in San Francisco at the age of 96, leaving behind a son who is an expert in microbiology and infectious diseases, and a devoted daughter. The Chinese consulate in San Francisco, representing Mainland China, sent a wreath to his memorial service. The Nationalists, for whom he had worked his entire life, made no mention of his passing.

Only after his death did his efforts become widely known as Jewish beneficiaries began giving testimony to the the Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem. In 2001, the organization presented him with its "Righteous Among Nations Award, which has been given to only nine others.

In 2015, the Taiwanese government that once censured him sent a letter of commendation to his family.

Children Monto and Manli receiving honors, 2015. Jerusalem Post photo

Advertisement

Jerusalem Holocaust Center honors Feng-shan Ho in 2015. You Tube video / AP.


As Michigan students head back to school, Michigan families need to take a minute to contact two state senators, to thank one for looking out for their kids, and to urge the other one to start to do so right away.

The topic is skilled trades, a world of work that was supposed to die during the Great Recession and never come back. Evidently, someone forgot to tell that to the plumbers, pipe fitters, and other skilled tradesmen, whose annual salaries average $41000 a year--and these fields have openings they can't fill now.

Getting information about these opportunities to young people has been a bit of challenge, and that's where Senator Ken Horn comes in. Rules governing the skilled trades have been added here and there for the last thirty years, creating a patchwork of state law that made skilled trade regulations confusing, and sometimes contradictory. By introducing the Skilled Trades Regulation Act, Senator Horn has taken a well-meaning mix of skilled trade regulations and made them as easy to understand as reading the newspaper.

Advertisement

In introducing the Act to the public, Senator Horn said "Creation of the Skilled Trades Regulation Act will update and revise the relevant laws into one universal code that would ensure they meet the highest standards for enforcement and efficiency."

This is excellent news for everyone in Michigan, especially students who like to work with their hands. The Skilled Trades Regulation Act is one legislative effort that will help students understand the strength and viability of many important career paths in the skilled trades, and most of them are attainable with two years or less of training after high school. When it comes to creating options after high school for students, Senator Horn's innovative thinking is leading the way, as this bill has already had one round of Senate hearings.

The same cannot be said for another bill that would do even more to help students shape their futures after high school. House Bill 4552 makes sure Michigan students and families are working with school counselors that have the latest information on career and college opportunities in Michigan. Many of Michigan's school counselors report they receive little training in college advising, and even less in the skilled trades. By including this training in their existing requirement for professional development, House Bill 4552 would help counselors understand the latest trends in career and college opportunities, information that's been shown to be needed by students as early as age 10.

This bill passed the House by a wide margin, and with bipartisan support, in January. Since then, it has languished in the Senate Education Committee, even though the bill has received the support of business leaders, law enforcement officers, counselors, and retired military officers. Members of the Senate leadership have indicted the bill will easily pass the Senate floor, but it has yet to even be scheduled for hearings by the Senate Education Committee, which has not met to discuss any issue in the last six weeks of legislative session.

Advertisement
Tupac Shakur in a scene from the film 'Gridlock'd', 1997. (Photo by Gramercy Pictures/Getty Images)

Unless you're one of the conspiracy theorists who thinks he's alive and well in Cuba, as of September 13, 2016, Tupac Shakur has been dead for 20 years.

Twenty years. Two decades. Wow, that is a long time. A long enough time to fade into the background, to be forgotten -- which, in the case of Tupac's music, may be the case.

Advertisement

The rapper Lil Uzi Vert, one of the more popular new artists these days, is 22 years old, and he recently said he "honestly couldn't name five songs from Tupac and Biggie."

In July, the rapper Rich Homie Quan, who is 26 years old, could not recite The Notorious B.I.G.'s lyrics during a ceremonial performance at VH1's Hip-Hop Honors show.

Although Quan apologized ("I assure you that I never intended to disrespect Biggie Smalls," he wrote in an Instagram post following the flub), his mistake may signal a larger trend.

Advertisement

Last November, Billboard published a list called: "The 10 Best Rappers of All Time." While the Notorious B.I.G. came in at #1, and the rest of the list was rounded out by the likes of Jay-Z, Eminem, Lauryn Hill and Andre 3000, among others, one rapper was curiously left off :Tupac.

"This is so disrespectful," Snoop Dogg wrote on Instagram, after seeing the list. "Whoever did this list need a swift kick in the ass."

Why Tupac -- the subject of the biopic All Eyez On Me, due in theaters nationwide November 11 -- gets left off of a list like that is anyone's guess, but it could be argued 'Pac's immense fame and legacy, no doubt fueled by the question marks still surrounding his death, have overshadowed his music.

Biggie, in some regards, still benefits from being an east coast product; DJ's in New York, at least the older ones, haven't stopped playing his records (neither Lil Uzi Vert or Rich Homie Quan, to their credit, are from New York). And he doesn't have an expansive catalog either -- there are only so many Biggie songs you can play.

Advertisement

But Tupac's catalog is enormous. And perhaps because so much of his material was released posthumously, he's been left in a sort of rap no-mans-land. You're either really into Tupac, or you're not into Tupac at all. Tupac is an island unto himself.

Even today, provided someone isn't schooling you on his greatest hits, the only songs you will hear from Tupac in casual settings are: "Changes," (on the radio), and "How Do U Want It" (at a party). Occasionally you will hear "Dear Mama" or "Keep Your Head Up" somewhere.

This isn't enough to have anyone really know Tupac's music. And sure, music culture, especially these days, isn't just built by the radio and what's playing at parties -- things can be culturally relevant even when they're not easily measured and observed. Some things, you have to know, to know.

Like "Hail Mary." Everyone knows that.

But inasmuch as one knows, they know that 20 years after his death, Tupac the idea is much much much bigger than Tupac the musician, which is tragically sad, because his music features some of the most raw, most honest, most compelling songwriting in the history of all recorded music, let alone hip-hop. It's something that, especially in these times, needs to be heard.

Oh well. As Tupac himself once said... that's just the way it is.
The state finally got around to ordering an investigation of the Department of Energy's troubled business energy tax credit program, and the report, released last week, confirms what most people suspected: The program is a mess.

How much of a mess? You can read for yourself: The online version of this editorial features a PDF version of the third-party report, conducted by Marsh Minick, a Portland-based financial crime consulting service.

But here are some of the highlights:

 The report said there were "concerns" with about $347 million in tax credits issued by the department; that works out to be about a third of the program. The business energy tax credit (BETC) program, by the way, cost Oregon taxpayers about roughly $1 billion, all part of the government's efforts to kick-start energy-saving projects to stimulate the economy and create jobs. As the audit dryly notes: "In these pursuits, speculation and estimations about the BETC revenue impacts on Oregon's State General Fund were drastically underestimated." By 3,511 percent.

 Speaking of underestimated, the current director of the Department of Energy, Michael Kaplan, suggested last week that the $347 million amount in the auditors' report likely was low.

 The auditors found no direct evidence of fraud in the program, but did find "circumstantial evidence of suspicious behavior" in 79 business energy credits. It referred those instances to the Department of Justice, which last week said it was acting on them.

 The audit suggested that the Department of Energy was over its head almost from the beginning. The department, is "an energy agency, not a financial agency, and lacked functional roles reasonably needed to mitigate the BETC risks," the auditors wrote. And because state bureaucrats understood that the program was a priority for Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Gov. John Kitzhaber, it quickly took on the status of a political hot potato in Salem.

Although the numbers cited in the report may have caused some eyebrows to rise, surely no one who has been watching the program for the last few years could have been surprised by its overall findings. Yet it took six years of what The Oregonian newspaper called "rolling scandals" in the program until any state official ordered an independent investigation. (The current secretary of state, Jeanne Atkins, ordered the audit; Atkins was appointed to the position by Gov. Kate Brown when Brown became governor after Kitzhaber's resignation. Atkins said from the start that she was not interested in running for election to the position.)

Kaplan, the head of the Energy Department, said last week that one possible response to the audit would be to let the agency's current tax credits end when they reach their sunset dates.

Well, yes. But legislators are kicking around other ideas, including the possibility of shutting down the Department of Energy completely.

Legislators and other state officials would also be well-served to read between the lines of the audit, which makes it clear that the Department of Energy didn't have the expertise to handle such a complex program: The program staff, the audit found, "lacked formal training, employee turnover caused a loss of institutional knowledge, there had been cultural clashes between employees, the work volume and sometimes the complexity overwhelmed staffs' abilities, and there was missing quality and compliance oversight."

Other than that, it all ran just great.

We need to clean up this mess. And we need to take the lessons from the audit and make sure we learn them going forward. After all, the cost of these lessons has been a cool billion. (mm)
If you think that success in business today fleeting, you're right. Unlike previous eras, disruption happens faster and from completely unexpected sources. Don't believe me, though: Nearly nine in ten Fortune 500 firms from 1955 are extinct--a trend that shows no signs of abating. (If anything, it's intensifying.)

Simon: Many companies are justifiably fearful of disruption. In your book, though, you advocate embracing it. Why?

Advertisement

Sheahan: Fear it or embrace it, disruption is happening. Fear tends to drive protectionist behaviors, which only slow your ability to leverage and capitalize on change. Of course, fear makes sense: organizations are designed to scale and drive efficiently by suppressing and eliminating variability. Even companies that want to respond to disruption find it challenging. Many organizations suffer from the gravity of success: leaders are taught to defend a market position, not explore new frontiers; the more success, the more there is to lose by innovating. Even more is at risk by going out on the edge and actually becoming the force of disruption. Most organizations are more comfortable playing defense than offense.

Simon: Can't some organizations expand their capacity to do both?

Sheahan: Yes. In Matter, we define this position as the Edge of Disruption -- the intersection of existing business models and the unknown future. It's where opportunities emerge that aren't anchored in an overly defensive or an overly offensive (and unnecessarily risky) position. They apply the right amount of risk while leveraging their core capability and reputation. The Edge is a difficult place to find, but once you get there, you thrive, as we saw with the companies we profiled. At the end of the day, when the inevitable future meets the expired past, the future wins six days a week and twice on a Sunday. These organizations were able to take control of the future.

Simon: While we're on the subject, what is "positive disruption" and why is it important?

We analyzed several organizations in Matter that represent "positive" disruption -- although it might not have appeared "positive" at the time. Angela Ahrendts, the CEO of Burberry, recognized their own online platform was the primary competitive force she faced in the retail market: Burberry customers could buy the same product for 25 percent less online. Ahrendts reversed a fundamental retail assumption -- that you should take the offline experience and replicate it online. Instead she said, "Walking into a Burberry store needs to feel like walking into our website." The London flagship store blended technology--the cloud, CRM, analytics, social media--with the physical environment, and used technology to treat customers as single individual entities rather than large demographic cohorts, tracking their buying history and online behavior. It showed that luxury goods are not just about the experience, but also the customization of that experience.

Advertisement

Simon: Got an example?

Sheahan: Standard Plumbing, a small family business in Utah, is another case study representing positive disruption. They found themselves disrupted head-on by Amazon, which had entered the director/consumer and director/contractor business with Amazon Supply. While most industry players declared Amazon the devil for undercutting their prices and dominating the market, Standard Plumbing asked Amazon how they could help. Turns out, Amazon had a significant challenge when it came to large bulky items with low inventory turnover, and were seeking a partner. Standard Plumbing now serves Amazon's entire North American marketplace in the plumbing equipment division.
You can hardly open a news website today without being bombarded by news covering Fintech & InvesTech topics, but why has this new trend within the industry become such a big deal? New technology disrupting industries is not unheard of, as the past two decades have been characterized by rapid technological innovation which has led to dramatically altered industry structures. Nowadays that technological wave has focused its attention on the financial services & investing segments, aiming to enhance the distribution and functionality of financial products & services available to clients, while simultaneously placing more power in the hands of investors and challenging bloated financial institutions to re-think their business models. Why is this a good thing?



Re-Thinking Industry Dynamics

If you look at other disruptive tech companies, such as Airbnb and Uber, they both arose out of a desire to fix a perceived problem within their respective industries. Airbnb saw an opportunity to provide people with a cheaper alternative to hotels, effectively eliminating the middle-man and allowing people to connect with each other to organize accommodations. Similarly, Uber arose out of discontempt with traditional taxi services and high-fares; once again using technology to empower consumers to connect with each other to arrange rideshares, again eliminating the middle-man. InvesTech is no different. Companies within this new, disruptive, sector are motivated to improve the quality of resources available to retail investors; empowering them through the implementation of new technological solutions.

Advertisement

Where does the need for InvesTech originate?

Large financial institutions, brokerages and investor resource providers have monopolized the financial services industry in the past, offering their relatively inflexible traditional services to retail investors in the same manner as has been done for decades. Nearing the end of the first decade of the 21st century, especially after 2008, it became clear that these large institutions prioritized profits over service-quality; which explained the surprising lack of investment in technological infrastructure by these companies to serve their enormous client bases. Therefore, as the second tech-boom took off in 2013 and the focus once again returned to disruptive technology. This time it was the financial sector which was targeted, after years of bloated inefficiency and information asymmetry. Start-ups clamoured to improve the current state of the financial services/investing segment, and the movement really began to pick-up momentum in 2014 and 2015. Globally, fast and agile InvesTech Start-ups began to disrupt the well-entrenched status-quo, which has been enjoyed by the bloated traditional financial service providers for many years.

How are new InvesTech companies beneficial to Investors?

For the longest time, the world of personal investing was daunting, characterized by confusing trading platforms and complex systems provided by large financial service providers as a 'one size fits all' solution for both retail and commercial clients. Similarly, before the age of InvesTech and information democratization, institutional investors were able to source and acquire powerful technology, which provided them with an unfair advantage over individual investors. Large financial institutions raced to purchase the fastest and most-efficient technology, monopolizing the benefits and 'allowing' individual investors to access it, provided they utilized their services. InvesTech is now changing the entire industry dynamic, so that an increasing amount of technological power is being put directly in the hands of consumers. No longer do investors have to deal directly with large financial institutions in order to access trading platforms, relevant and timely financial information, and charting software. New InvesTech firms are being established everyday to serve retail investors directly, which, for the first time ever, is putting substantial pressure on the bloated financial service providers to update their offerings, and to provide better investing solutions to their clients.

Advertisement

There are two core areas where InvesTech firms are causing the most disruption:

1. Financial News & Information

Perhaps some of the most noticeable contributions to the InvesTech realm have been in the form of Financial News & Information technology and services. Financial markets have become increasingly volatile since the advent of online information communication, as investors realize that corporate news releases have the potential to drive substantial share price movements based on investor behavioural traits. Recognizing this, InvesTech firms have popped up within the past two years, dedicated to bridging the technology gap between individual investors and the perpetual stream of financial news. Beyond just providing this information, some InvesTech firms are taking steps to provide integrated platforms for investors, allowing them to customize which information they receive, resulting in a portfolio-tailored stream of relevant news items.

CityFALCON is perhaps one of the most direct examples of an InvesTech start-up looking to democratize access to financial information. The proprietary news aggregation platform effectively allows investors to tailor a news feed, which is customized to their investment portfolio or watchlist, and then receive news articles and excerpts from thousands of news sources across the web, filtered and ranked based on relevance. Investors now have the ability to trade more effectively based on corporate information, and maintain up-to-date with the status of the entities within their portfolios.

2. Trading Platforms and Investing Solutions

Before the InvesTech movement began to take-off, individual investors had two primary options when seeking to invest. First, they could approach a large bank/financial institution and open a trading account, receiving advice from a licensed broker in exchange for substantial commission fees. Second, they could take advantage of a discount brokerage like Questrade, where the fee per trade is much lower, however there are very few resources available to make the investing process less daunting. Within the past two years, however, InvesTech entrepreneurs realized that in a lot of cases, individual investors simply want a platform similar to a discount brokerage, with low fees, paired with an easy-to-understand investing platform.

A Canadian company, WealthSimple, is an excellent case study that depicts the success and growth of the InvesTech movement in this segment. WealthSimple is essentially a discount brokerage that breaks down the investing process into an 'investor questionnaire,' which analyzes each investors individual goals, and recommends a simple, diversified portfolio based on the results. This easy to use platform reduces the stigma around investing, and provides beginner investors with the confidence needed to invest without the assistance of a paid broker.

Advertisement

3. Social Trading and Investing

Investing has become an increasingly interactive activity, with traders and investors constantly seeking new ideas and strategies from friends, business partners, and respected equity analysts. Many mediums previously existed, such as investor forums, which allowed for communication between investors across the globe. However, these mediums were fragmented - it has never been possible to execute on the same platform that the idea was originated, discussed and concluded. The old-school public forums are exactly that, very public. As the 21st century progressed, the social media movement took off; and business sectors across the globe sought to integrate it into their core offerings. InvesTech is now moving in this direction as well, with new firms being established to bridge the gap between investing/trading, and social interaction.

Pelican Exchange is a new trading platform established in London, which is dedicated to achieving this mission of integrating account interaction with investing - Pelican has created a network for traders. Their platform allows for seamless trading, paired with a secure social media platform in which ideas, strategies, and tips and live trades can be shared with the users own contacts. This new system integrates the communicative aspect of investing directly into a powerful trading platform, representing a turn-key solution for the next generation of tech-savvy investors. The biggest hurdle for any trader is to find a reliable source of good trading ideas - and Pelican believes it does exactly that. Pelican is looking to bring to the retail trader what the institutional trader has had in the form of Bloomberg for years.
Former UN climate change negotiator Christiana Figueres has credited the teachings of Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh for giving her the strength to play a leading role in last year's gruelling international climate talks.

Figueres was praised for her ability to bring warring factions together with warmth and calm, and for the pivotal role she played in securing agreement to limit global warming to below 2oC.

Buddhist meditation -- and its recent secular incarnation in mindfulness -- is clinically proven to help build resilience to cope with life's stresses. It's inspirational to know that it played a part in ensuring December's historic deal in Paris.

Advertisement

But Buddhists may also be on to something else very important for those of us interested sustainable living: we may have been using the wrong part of brain to crack the sustainability challenge.

I spent a month earlier in the summer as a guest at the San Francisco Zen Center - a monastery in the heart of the city.

I have had a long interest in Buddhist meditation, having sat a number of intense Vipassana meditation courses. I also have an academic background in neuroscience, so have followed the increasingly strong evidence for how meditation changes the structure of our brains and so how we perceive the world and behave in it.

I was staying at the Zen Center as part of a trade. It is buying land to build 200 or so 'Zen-inspired Senior Living' units at the brilliant SOMO Village under development in Sonoma State, California.

Advertisement

SOMO Village's developers have created a visionary sustainability plan for the community, using Bioregional's One Planet Living framework. This is a set of ten intuitive and interrelated sustainability principles, from 'zero carbon energy' to 'health and happiness'.

For the Zen Center to be eligible to buy land in SOMO village, it must also create a response to the challenge of One Planet Living.

So, I traded food and accommodation to carry out a sustainability assessment of the Center's current operations in San Francisco and beyond. In this way, they could see how far they might need to stretch, and in what direction, to meet the requirements of becoming a true 'One Planet Community'.

What I learned was not what I expected.

The Zen Center's sustainability performance was exemplary

First, the Zen Center performed better against the One Planet Principles than any other organization I have ever come across. Its commitment to happiness, health and community was exemplary. This was allied to a commitment to local, organic, vegetarian food, renewable energy, water conservation and care for nature.

Of course not everything is perfect, but the Buddhist tradition of compassion for all beings - not just humans - seems to help their exceptional aspiration and performance.

Advertisement

Second, I got to understand quite clearly the Buddhist belief, particularly expressed in the Zen tradition, that the intellect is only one way of perceiving the world. I had read the mind-bending 'Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' as a school boy and it had haunted me ever since. But I managed to put that ghost to rest.

Thinking is a small and murky window through which to view the world

During my time at the Zen Center I grew to realise that thinking engages only one part of our brain - and that thinking is very small and murky window through which to view and experience the world - exactly what Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was communicating.

Thinking is the brain function we value most in our culture, yet we know that most of our decisions and behaviors are not rational. Using intellectual arguments can only very indirectly change our behavior.

Is there another way of experiencing and working with the world? Buddhists would say there is.

This involves developing the parts of the brain which experience the world without intellectualising it, judging it or dividing it. It is that experience of the world which sees us as part of space and time rather than as separate from it. It is an experience from which ego starts diminishing and compassion starts growing.

This is not airy fairy. It is actually closer to reality than we can ever get by thinking about it.

Through meditating we can start to perceive that we are not separate from the world

This is critically important for all of us. If, through meditating we start to perceive that we are part of the world, not separate to it, it makes it much harder for us to behave destructively towards other parts of it. The idea of harming other people, trees or the air would be, as some Buddhist teachers have described it, 'like my right hand chopping off my left hand'.

Advertisement

Our intellectualizing about environmental issues and hoping to change society and human behavior by providing information has been essential. But continuing to lead with information is doomed to fail. Decisions we make should not of course be opposed to what we think intellectually -- but meditating helps us change what and how we think.
Imagine you are living in Nazi Germany. Who are we? How do you and your friends answer this question?

One answer an inconveniently large number of people - perhaps even a majority of citizens - give is "We are Germans, the master race destined to rule the world."

Even worse, a popular answer is "True Germans are Aryans. Jews are not Aryans or genuine Germans. Jews are a threat to the Reich and must be eliminated."

Advertisement

The Third Reich is instructive because so many ordinary people - who showed no sign of being exceptional or evil when living under the Weimar Republic, a mainly pleasant social-democratic state - came to believe one or both of these answers. It might have been you, and it might have been me. Nazi Germany was riddled with evil, and it was hard to escape it.

So we can be devils, but we can also be angels. Witness the senior army officers, intellectuals, and ordinary folk who plotted to kill Hitler, or who saved a few or thousands of Jews from the camps. These heroes and heroines risked a grisly death out of human decency, at a time when most everyone else passed by on the other side. Would that have been you? If you were German at the time, I rather doubt it. I don't think it would have been me. The numbers speak for themselves. There was no popular resistance to Hitler, in one of the (hitherto) most civilized countries on the planet.

If there is one plain sociological and psychological fact it is that when authority is totally in place, most of us obey it. Another evident fact is the remarkable range of behaviour we can exhibit, both in the same society, and even within the life of a single person. We can be good or bad or middling depending on whom we mix with, and on the standards of the organizations in which we live and breathe and have our being.

Another thing to consider is the unique nature of humanity itself. Other creatures cannot transcend their environment. They play their allotted roles but never change the world. On the other hand, we can act upon the world, and transform our existence, both individually and collectively. Up to around 1800, the lot of nearly everyone on Earth was to suffer malnutrition, chronic pain from one disease or another, and untimely death. Now we have largely conquered starvation and large tracts of diseases. We have a standard of living that is qualitatively different, almost infinitely higher.

Advertisement

"Man is distinguished from other animals by his imaginative gifts," said the great anthropologist Jacob Bronowski. Man "makes plans, inventions, new discoveries, by putting different talents together ..."

It is unfashionable to talk so well of humankind today, or to hold that our story is one of The Ascent of Man, the title of Bronowski's marvellous 1972 book and BBC television series. Yet it is a fact. Yes, we may end up destroying the planet, but we alone give meaning to it. We alone have advanced science, the arts, and civilization. We alone have free will and ethical qualities, and the possibility of improving ourselves, separately and together. As the eighteenth century French philosopher Denis Diderot wrote:

"If we banish man, the thinking and contemplating being, from the face of the earth, this moving and sublime spectacle of nature will be nothing more than a sad and mute scene. The universe will cease to speak; silence and night will seize it ... It is the presence of man which makes the existence of beings meaningful."

None of us are consistently angels, devils, or plain animals. The truth is different. We all have magical qualities which are mysterious, miraculous, and sometimes terrifying.

This is true socially and politically. It is true physically. It is true intellectually. And it is true in business.

Advertisement

Where Does Human Magic Come From?

Our magical quality is true, above all, in our minds. We have a physical dimension commensurate with that of other mammals, but in addition we alone of mammals have a magical dimension. It could be said that we have a spiritual dimension, but that is not quite right. Hitler had a magical dimension, but few would call it spiritual. He created a totally new and all-powerful one-party state, he conquered unemployment - not so hard perhaps when using slave labour - and he vastly expanded German power and territory. He also of course created destruction and evil on a remarkable, Continental scale - a negative achievement to be sure, but one of stunning proportions. He did it all through his self-belief and through some amazing powers enabling him to reach his goals for more than a decade.

Very few of us use more than a smidgeon of our magical powers, but if a poorly educated clown such as Hitler could do it - as perhaps another clown is in the process of doing it today - then I think we all could do it, if we truly believed in ourselves and our ideas, however flawed and quarter-baked.

This is a longer story than I can enter into in this post, but I am convinced that the way to exert magical power is through the interplay of our subconscious and conscious minds. The magic lies in imagination and using every piece of our experience and insight to achieve our goals, about which we must care passionately. These are qualities of the subconscious, but defining the goals is the preserve of the conscious mind, which must feed the subconscious with the goals and the certainty of attaining them.

Deploying this interplay of conscious and subconscious mind is something which I think the most notable people in history had - without realizing it. Think of Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Plato, Julius Caesar, Paul of Tarsus, the second century evangelist Marcion, Muhammad, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, Copernicus, Luther, Shakespeare, Newton, Descartes, Napoleon, Lincoln, Marx, Darwin, Einstein, Bohr, Henry Ford, Lenin, Stalin, Keynes, Churchill, Hayek, Mao Zedong, Mandela, Jobs, and perhaps above all, Jesus of Nazareth. They all had a form of magic which enabled them to achieve totally incredible impact.

I will write about the interaction of the conscious and subconscious minds in a future blog. For now, though, so what?

Advertisement

Action Implications
Though it may not seem like much, this week I turn 24 years old. I don't claim to be old in any sense of the word, but I do mourn the passage of time. There is something dangerously real about the revolution around the sun, something that should be remembered and returned to every time we reach a milestone: time is the fire in which we all burn (to borrow from the poet Delmore Schwartz).

We aren't guaranteed tomorrow or today, and though that may seem like a depressing image on the occasion of my birth an old friend reminded me of something. I was lamenting my impending birthday on Twitter when my friend remarked, "With each passing year, the need to live gets more important. Don't bother with a clock, keep building a legacy."

More than that I'm starting to hold fast to the theological reality that God doesn't bother with a clock either. As I was sitting in a rather interesting lecture on time and space in the context of Christian theology, my professor suggested that liturgy is our best hope for the understanding of time. That is to say, through our actions in the liturgical year, we are living out the actions of time and space in ways that only Christians can. We reach back from Advent and forward to the eschaton. We reach back from passion forward to resurrection. We work in time to explain a God beyond time and the constraints of time.

Advertisement

So the next time you're sitting in worship, marvel at the beauty of time. Marvel at the beauty of breath and life, too often we take these things for granted. Aging faithfully isn't about revolutions around the sun, but instead aging in the knowledge of God's never-failing presence and love.
Tupac was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas after a Mike Tyson fight twenty years ago. Through police incompetence, witness' refusal to talk, and the gangster code of silence the homicide is no closer to being solved today then it was in 1996. Last January, filmmaker Mike Dorsey, released Murder Rap, a controversial documentary that uncovered new evidence and put forth a new theory in Tupac's death. Murder Rap clearly points the finger at Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, making the allegation that he was responsible for Tupac's demise, as part of the East Coast/West Coast rap beef that was all the rage in 1995, dominating the news and headlines. Gangsta rap was front and center when hip-hop lost two of its beloved in a matter of months. On the anniversary of Tupac's death I talked to Dorsey about his film, Tupac's legacy, and when, if ever, the rapper's murder will be solved.

Your film came out at the beginning of the year and now it's the 20th anniversary of Tupac's murder. What light do you think your film has shown on the case?

Murder Rap: Inside the Biggie and Tupac Murders is the world's first look at the official investigations into Tupac's murder. Most people don't realize that this case was worked by multiple teams of detectives spanning nearly 15 years. The case files took up over 90 binders. Up until Murder Rap, the public had only been shown bits and pieces of outdated case files that had leaked out, and then fans were left to speculate based on that sliver of information. That's resulted in a lot of wild conspiracy theories. Murder Rap puts all of that to rest.

Advertisement

Both Tupac and Biggie's killers are named. A federalized task force was started in 2006, originally tasked with solving the 1997 murder of Biggie Smalls in Los Angeles. That three year investigation led them into the Tupac murder case when they determined that the two murders were connected. Backed by federal resources and a team with experience working gang and drug cases in South Central LA, they were able to secure a taped confession to Tupac's murder. There is no longer any doubt about who pulled the trigger that tragic night in Vegas.

Has anyone in law enforcement contacted you about your film and possible theories or evidence? Has there been any action or movement on Tupac's case? Why or why not?

I've talked to a few other detectives who were connected to this case at various points throughout the past 20 years. I can say that there seems to be near unanimous support among people who've worked this case the longest regarding who pulled the trigger. There are other details surrounding the case that people may disagree on, but it's tough for any reasonable person to deny who the shooter was. We've also been contacted by people who were close to Tupac, and people who were from the same streets as his alleged killer, and they've corroborated what Murder Rap shows.

It seems like the streets of Compton always knew who Tupac's killer was. There are several reasons that there will never be any new movement on the case. The shooter and the majority of the people who were with him that night are dead. And there's a difference between knowing who did something, and being able to get a conviction for it in court. Detective Greg Kading, the head of the task force investigation that Murder Rap is about, wrote the book Murder Rap so that at least Tupac's fans, friends and family can know what happened, even if justice isn't possible.

What about Puff Daddy's camp. Any word from them or did they answer the allegations or threaten to sue you or anything?

We haven't been threatened by anybody. Some people have been asked about it, but they've shrugged it off.

Advertisement

Why do you think Tupac has become such a lasting icon?

I think he was the Renaissance Man of 90s rap. He was an actor. He was a rapper. He was a poet. He had the foundation to be a political leader. He was a charismatic speaker. It was more than just having talent for doing one thing. And when you combine that with the fact that his life was cut short at such a young age, you get the formula for a cultural icon. Like James Dean dying after only having major rolls in three movies, it's as much about how much unrealized potential was lost when he died.
A migrant from Eritrea is helped after jumping into the water from a crowded wooden boat during a rescue operation in the Mediterranean sea, about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, Monday, Aug. 29, 2016. Thousands of migrants and refugees were rescued Monday morning from more than 20 boats by members of Proactiva Open Arms NGO before transferring them to the Italian cost guards and others NGO vessels operating in the zone.(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

The ongoing refugee drama has been a sharp reminder to Europe that it cannot insulate itself from the troubles of its wider neighborhood. Fortunately, the international community has already established guidelines and protocols under United Nations auspices that determine how nations manage refugee crises.

The UN's 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol constitute the main framework for international protection of people fleeing from persecution, and provide the basis for the work of the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration. The cornerstone of it is the duty of non-refoulement, a key principle of international law, which forbids the rendering of a true victim of persecution to his or her persecutor. As they balance legitimate national-security concerns with human rights, democratic governments that slammed shut their borders should be reminded of the principle of non-refoulement, deeply embedded in international law.

Advertisement

Fresh thinking is desperately needed as we sadly witness the plight of these refugees. Furthermore, we need to make the refugee convention and further protection embodied in regional agreements effective and applicable in practice.

One smart way to begin would be to establish a new compact between the countries where refugees seek asylum in Europe, North America and Asia on the one side and the border-war-zones countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan or Kenya on the other.

An opportunity to make vital changes is fast approaching. In mid-September in New York, the UN Refugee Summit aims at exploring fresh avenues for international protection and offers a chance to lay down the foundations of such a compact. A precondition for the achievement of this noble goal is to urge world leaders to take a significantly more far-sighted approach toward refugee management with the UN. The complexity of the problem is evident and it requires a multi-stakeholder approach as well as leadership.

Migration again, including the refugee phenomenon, is a consequence of war atrocities, poverty, socio-economic malformations worldwide, and natural catastrophes, as well as global warming.

Advertisement

From the point of view of history, there is no nation on Earth that could morally and politically justify ignorance as an answer to the refugee problem.

President Obama embraced this approach as a basis for searching common solutions. He is aware of the socio-economic aspect of the problem.Therefore, insisting on the necessity of a coalition of donors is the only right approach after all.

There are four guiding principles to keep in mind as we move toward this important UN Summit:

Multilateralism: more UN-led management of the problem. Global challenges that affect millions of citizens and nations must be examined collectively, inclusively and jointly. The large influx of migrants does not represent a single isolated issue that can be easily dealt with, but rather demands greater efforts. The United Nations -- the global multilateral organization established to do just this -- can provide a more robust platform for addressing the migrant crisis. All nations together -- alongside international organizations, NGOs, the media, governments and private business -- must participate in addressing and offering support to refugees and the host nations.

Place an emphasis on humanitarianism: prioritize saving lives. The value of human life must be the priority when addressing or attempting to resolve the migration crisis. Inhumane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers is morally unacceptable and we must more vigorously defend this position. We cannot propagate peace and security if we are unwilling to aid children being chased from their homes as a result of violent conflict. It is paradoxical to be proclaiming democracy while creating hurdles to those who seek a better life and stability.

Establish a concept of partnership or responsibility-sharing. Partnership represents the key element when we discuss the concept of sharing responsibility. Nations cooperating together, joined by common values and concerns, create far better harmony and effectiveness when dealing with high-stake crises.

Advertisement

The World Bank, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, The OECD and other similar institutions should work jointly and offer concepts or projects that will be based on a cost-benefit analysis. In contrast to the emotional and xenophobic cries in some parts of the world, which only raise tensions and postpone the solution of this global problem.

Focus on regulatory procedures and employment. When addressing the influx of migrants on such a large scale, multilateral mechanisms must be solidified and implemented accordingly. Having global standards and well-structured procedures (such as screening and registering) is essential for attaining fair and equal treatment of migrants and refugees.

From a financial standpoint, the forces that drive economic growth in the developed industrial countries are first and foremost viewed in terms of productivity and expansion of a new labor force. Nevertheless, factors such as quality education, innovation and technological development still remain indispensable values that set employable standards. A factually based grasp of how migration and economic factors are related is essential. What are the labor-market costs and benefits? And most importantly, how will the shifts in the national labor markets influence the overall economic state of the highly industrialized nations?

As a former president of the UN General Assembly and a former Foreign Minister of Macedonia, where our economy and social fabric were intensely challenged during this crisis, I was saddened to find such a lack of solidarity and common commitment during this time. I know we can do better.

The history of mankind is a tale of migration. Joining forces on all sides of the issue will provide us with better, longer lasting solutions.

Advertisement

Dr. Srgjan Kerim is a candidate for UN Secretary General.


Sue Jean Kim and Tim Kang in Aubergine

Photo: Joan Marcus

A well-heeled former yuppie (Jessica Love) steps downstage, at the start of Playwrights Horizons' Aubergine, with an extended monologue about family, illness and pastrami. Halfway through the speech, playwright Julia Cho has already grabbed us. Though she suddenly switches to what appears to be an altogether different type of play, about a Korean-American chef and his father, Cho keeps us thoroughly engaged. Aubergine is a provocative, emotionally-effective comedy-drama centered around death, family and gastronomy, and totally delectable.

The action starts--as in so many other plays nowadays--in a hospital room. Ray (Tim Kang) is an expert chef; he watches as his father (Stephen Park) suffers, unwilling to accept that the man is dying of cirrhosis. Ray not-so-willingly agrees to take his father home, setting up hospice care in the dining room. (The play takes place in the suburbs of a large American city.) Lucien (Michael Potts) is a caring nurse, a refugee with a lilting Caribbean accent. He guides Ray as they prepare Father for death.

Cornelia (Sue Jean Kim), a waitress at Ray's restaurant, enters awkwardly. Ray had abruptly and unexplainedly stopped seeing her. Now he wants--or rather needs--her to call his father's brother, back in Korea; Uncle (Joseph Steven Yang) doesn't speak English, and Ray doesn't speak Korean. When the uncle arrives, Cornelia serves as translator. In the process, we learn about the characters--the play is punctuated by monologues by each of them--and ultimately they break through their several walls to understand each other. This Cho does in a most satisfying manner, winding up her story with a heartfelt tug followed by a crowd-pleasing coda which winningly ties up loose ends.

Advertisement



Stephen Park and Tim Kang in Aubergine

Photo: Joan Marcus

In the world of Cho's play, everyone seems to have father problems; Ray's father, for one, responds to his son's ranking as a world-class chef by refusing to eat his cooking while pointedly opting for "ten-cents-a-pack" instant ramen. Ray and Cornelia both carry parental resentment--wrapped up in food--although they come to realize that what they saw as criticism might well have been old-country sacrifice. Food is a major theme of the play; "aubergine" is another name for eggplant. ("Call them aubergines," explains Lucien, "then they taste better.") Part of the discussion also centers on turtle soup, although we can attest that no turtles are harmed in the performance of the play.

The cast is universally strong. Mr. Kang seems to be a newcomer; he only lists one regional credit aside from the original Berkeley Rep production of Aubergine. His Ray is properly complex; like "a little kid who takes out all the toys and then changes his mind and doesn't clean up and goes," as Cornelia complains. Ms. Kim gives a refreshing performance as the more worldly Korean-American--her hair tinged in pink--who helps Ray break through the walls as he faces his father's death.

Yang, the other cast holdover from this spring's production at Berkeley, is also very good, offering a fully-rounded performance delivered solely in Korean. (His parting scene, as he returns to Korea, is likely to bring a sob.) Park plays most of the show lying comatose onstage, while Ms. Love scores well in her three scenes, including that opening monologue. Michael Potts, with a lilting accent which obscures the fact that this is the same actor who convulsed audiences with "Hasa Diga Eebowai" in The Book of Mormon, provides a calming influence as he prepares the parent (and the son) for death.



Michael Potts and Tim Kang in Aubergine

Photo: Joan Marcus
I teach millennials for a living, though I encounter relatively few black ones because at my institution and many others they are casualties of a preference for tokenism over critical mass. Black millennials are also casualties of a higher unemployment rate than their white counterparts; of greater police harassment; and of a lower life expectancy, to name just a few of their travails. To this dispiriting list, one might also add that, in the current election, they risk falling casualty to ahistoricism.

"He's a racist, and she is a liar, so really what's the difference in choosing both or choosing neither?" posited one young, black potential non-voter in the crucial swing state of Ohio, referring to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Another black millennial observed of Clinton, "She was part of the whole problem that started sending blacks to jail."

My students teach me a great deal, both through what they get right and what they get wrong, so I would never dismiss assessments like the foregoing. In fact, for purposes of argument, I'm willing to accept their validity, as well as the validity of the argument that the political establishment has failed young blacks and that the discourse in this election and beyond can no longer be about merely "settling on a candidate who is better than the alternative."

Advertisement

All these things may well be true, but so, too, is the observation passed down from generations of historians that "one of the most valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen." Change does not happen by making the decision not to vote. To be sure, social progress occurs outside of the voting booth, but failing to vote has never, ever itself been a vehicle for such social progress.

Quite the opposite. In 1902, Jackson W. Giles, a black man residing in Montgomery County, Alabama, attempted to register to vote but was refused on grounds of his race. Giles brought suit on behalf of himself and more than 5000 other blacks residing in his county. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting, had been enacted 30 years prior to Giles's attempt to register. The Supreme Court denied Giles's request for relief, and it would not be until 95 years after ratification of the 15th Amendment, through persistent litigation, and ultimately by action of Congress, that African Americans writ large would have unimpeded access to the ballot.

This history is not an attempt at guilt tripping anyone; rather it offers insights with which to evaluate the utility of sitting out this or any other election. First, the fact that African Americans waged a sustained campaign over the course of more than 100 years to gain access to the ballot--and that whites attempted over the same period to deny blacks the ballot--suggests that devaluing the efficacy of participating in elections may be a mistake. It could be that our ancestors simply misperceived the importance of voting, but given that many risked life and limb to gain this right, their view of the value of the vote cannot be lightly dismissed.

Second, the movement for the black franchise took place during decades when candidates of all political stripes were far less responsive to black concerns--indeed, they were mostly not responsive at all--than, say, a Hillary Clinton or a Donald Trump. Nevertheless, there was no credible current of thought among African-American leaders that not seeking or not exercising the right to vote was a plausible strategy for change. Presidential elections are a choice between candidates, but more than that, they are often skirmishes in a larger struggle for progress. Conservatives learned this long ago, and their patience paid off with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the accompanying conversion of the U.S. Supreme Court into what until very recently was a bulwark against civil rights. The long view, not a transient assessment of two candidates, is probably the better way to look at this election.

Advertisement

Third, when universal black suffrage came to fruition with the aid of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, black voters exercised the franchise in an America that was overwhelmingly white and would remain so for the foreseeable future. Since the 1980s, however, the white share of the electorate has decreased by 2 percentage points every presidential election. In other words, the efficacy of the votes of people of color is increasing with time because there are more like-minded voters with whom to create a winning coalition. Because the Electoral College renders presidential elections a state-by-state battle, the efficacy of young blacks voting is even greater in states with already heavy concentrations of blacks, like Florida and Georgia. Why stay at home now when demographics have just begun to favor you?

Fourth, any assessment of the utility of voting for African Americans, both young and old, must take account of the fact that whites as a group have had the franchise for more than a century longer than blacks. Like accumulated wealth, accumulating political capital is a multigenerational process. It is doubtful that not voting this election will speed that process.

In recently striking down a key protection of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed that "history did not end in 1965." Neither did voting discrimination by whites. Driven by access to demographic data that can be churned using technology, Republicans have sought to "rig" the current election by passing stringent voter ID laws that courts have found to intentionally discriminate against black voters; attempting to shorten early voting periods--also found by a federal court to be intentional discrimination against black voters; eliminating "straight ticket" voting, a move struck by a court because of its disparate impact on blacks; and imposing a proof of citizenship requirement in order to register to vote.

Advertisement

Indeed, the Republican Party's strategy for winning this year's presidential contest depends as much on a depressed black voter turnout as it does on an uptick in the turnout of white working-class voters. In other words, not voting is voting.
One might assume that a sizable majority of federal career employees who have reached the GS-14 and GS-15 levels would aspire to move up to the next and highest rung of government--to become members of the Senior Executive Service.

But a recent poll found only about half of these employees across the government expressed interest in advancing to the SES or to senior level non-executive professional and technical jobs. This is troubling when you consider the critical role that the career executives play in implementing policies and programs, and the fact that two-thirds of current executive corps will be eligible to retire in the next five years.

My nonprofit, the Partnership for Public Service, and McKinsey & Company recently examined the state of the SES. And we found four areas where increased focus could lead to improvements, potentially making the leadership corps a more attractive option and helping to better recruit and retain highly qualified applicants.

Advertisement
It is but an early step in a long legal journey, but the Linn County officials who are suing the state over the management of state forest trust land had to be pleased with Linn County Circuit Judge Daniel Murphy's ruling this week.

And a closer reading of Murphy's detailed ruling on a volley of motions filed by lawyers strongly suggests that the judge intends to focus on the issues that rest at the heart of the case  and to not get distracted by incidental matters.

Remember, though, that Murphy's courtroom, where the case could go to trial as early as this year, is just the first stop on a lengthy tour of Oregon courts. And we're already seeing signs that the case is drawing wide interest throughout Oregon, as it should  it's an important case.

At issue is Linn County's $1.4 billion suit against the Oregon Department of Forestry over how the state has managed lands that were conveyed to it by a number of Oregon counties over the decades.

The lawsuit argues the state told the counties that the lands would be managed for "greatest permanent value." At the time, the suit argues, that was assumed to mean the lands would be managed to maximize a sustainable timber harvest, and funds from the harvest would flow to the counties.

Over the years, though, the state has expanded the definition of "greatest permanent value" so that it includes factors in addition to timber harvesting  items such as habitat and watershed protection and recreation, for example. As a result, timber harvests have fallen, and so have payments to the counties. The lawsuit argues, in essence, that this amounts to a breach of contract between the state and the counties.

The suit also asks the judge to certify the existence of a class  in this case, all the affected counties and the dozens of other affected jurisdictions in those counties.

Despite objections from state lawyers that the class would be too unwieldy, Murphy concluded that the requirements for a class-action suit apply, but added that it is premature to certify the class. If the suit survives the summary judgment phase, the judge wrote, then certification would be appropriate.

Murphy also swept aside a variety of motions from the state asking for the case to be dismissed.

The state's attorneys raised the issue of how Linn County has allowed private entities to fund the early phases of the litigation. But Murphy said that "has no bearing on the legal issues or facts before the court."

The judge's ruling honed in on what likely will become the critical issue going forward: "The existence of a contract is clear," he wrote. But a determination of the exact terms of that contract is another matter.

And that's an issue for trial, during which both sides can present evidence.

Linn County argues that the phrase "greatest permanent value" includes the concept of maximizing revenues. In his ruling, Murphy wrote: "Did it? That is a fair question for the trier of fact. It is an evidentiary question."

In other words, the judge wants the lawyers to argue their case and present evidence in trial  and he wants to do it with unusual speed for a civil case. We thought the judge was being overly optimistic when he said he wanted to take this case to trial thus year, but the judge's speed at getting these early motions off the table suggests that he's still focused on doing exactly that. (mm)
Native Americans march to the site of a sacred burial ground that was disturbed by bulldozers building the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), near the encampment where hundreds of people have gathered to join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's protest of the oil pipeline slated to cross the nearby Missouri River, September 4, 2016 near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. Protestors were attacked by dogs and sprayed with an eye and respiratory irritant yesterday when they arrived at the site to protest after learning of the bulldozing work. / AFP / ROBYN BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

The scene was eerily reminiscent of Selma and Birmingham.

Snarling, trained attack dogs ripping into the flesh of peaceful protesters, drawing blood. Only this time, instead of police batons being used to club people over the head, private security forces sprayed mace into people's eyes. This time, instead of African Americans being beaten in the Deep South, Native Americans were being assaulted in the Upper Midwest.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. Click on this Democracy Now! VIDEO LINK to see for yourself the sickening scene that played out near Cannon Ball, North Dakota over the Labor Day weekend, where eyewitnesses reported a pregnant woman attacked, a small child bitten and 30 people pepper sprayed. Others were punched and tackled. The unprovoked attack came on the 153rd anniversary of the Whitestone massacre, when the U.S. Army killed more than 300 members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Advertisement

Just as the conscience of America was jolted awake by the shocking images of peaceful civil rights defenders being violently set upon in the '60s, so is it being aroused today by the horrifying sight of peaceful native rights defenders being brutalized.

Thousands of water protectors, representing hundreds of Indigenous tribes from across the U.S. and Canada, have gathered at the Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota to stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in what tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II calls a "prayerful and peaceful" standoff against the Dakota Access pipeline. The fracked oil pipeline -- which would run from North Dakota to Illinois and snake through treaty lands and under the Missouri River -- threatens to worsen the climate emergency and contaminate the drinking water supply of millions of people.

Appallingly, construction of the pipeline was approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the objections of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of the Interior and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. In a March 11 letter to the Army Corps, the EPA warned: "Crossings of the Missouri River have the potential to affect the primary source of drinking water for much of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Tribal nations."

The Labor Day weekend altercation was sparked by the pipeline company's unconscionable demolition of sacred Indigenous burial and cultural sites. In a statement to the media, Chairman Archambault described the bulldozing as "devastating," saying:

Advertisement

These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings there cannot be replaced. In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground.

Imagine this being done to the graves of white people. I can't.

Try to feel the heart-rending words of Standing Rock Sioux tribal historian and genealogist LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, whose great-great-grandmother miraculously survived the 1863 Whitestone massacre, and who co-founded the Sacred Stone Camp to resist the Dakota Access pipeline:

I don't understand why we are expendable in America. I keep telling people, we do our best. We have always been here. This is our land. Why should we fight to live on our own land? Why should we have to do that over and over again? We start our lives. We do our best to live. Why? I would never hurt anybody. I have always done my best to do good things in my community. Why can't they just let us live? We love this land. And half of the time I feel bad, because they make us feel bad for loving this land.

Why, indeed? In August, Archambault appealed to President Obama (who personally visited the Standing Rock tribal community in 2014), saying "if there's any way he can intervene and move this pipeline off our treaty lands, I'm asking him."

Well, there is a way. The president can revoke the permits for the project. In fact, he has been urged to do just that by more than 30 national organizations. So far, he has refused to take this step, but last Friday, bowing to tribal pressure, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Army and the Department of the Interior jointly declared a pause in construction on some federally controlled lands, which includes the Missouri River crossing.

Advertisement

This is huge, but don't be deceived into thinking Obama has stopped the Dakota Access pipeline. He only paused it temporarily, providing convenient political cover for presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who has been conspicuously silent on the issue. On her campaign's website, Clinton promises to "stand for Tribal sovereignty and in support of Tribal resources and sacred sites." So why is she not speaking out against the pipeline? If her words are to mean anything at all, she must stand now with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, or find herself again standing on the wrong side of history.

In stark contrast to Obama and Clinton, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made an unprecedented effort to engage tribal communities during his historic presidential campaign, and is demonstrating real political leadership by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our Native brothers and sisters in their time of need. He has been unequivocal in his support for native rights:

Regardless of the court's decision, the Dakota Access pipeline must be stopped. As a nation, our job is to break our addiction to fossil fuels, not increase our dependence on oil. I join with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the many tribal nations fighting this dangerous pipeline.

President Obama and Secretary Clinton need to heed the words of Yakama Nation Tribal Chairman JoDe Goudy, who declared:

Together, we express to the U.S. government that now, more than ever, is the time to fulfill the trust obligations laid out within the treaties and historical interactions with the Native peoples of this land. Until such things come to pass, the spirit and voice of all peoples shall unite with Standing Rock. One voice, one heart, and one spirit to speak for those things that cannot speak for themselves.

Such nobility of spirit -- in the face of violent corporate provocations and our government's dark history of atrocities against Native Peoples -- is awe-inspiring. Yet here we are centuries later, and not only has there been no serious attempt to right the wrongs of the past, but the suffering of Native Americans continues.

Stopping the Dakota Access pipeline will not heal Mother Earth, or the deep wounds and intergenerational trauma inflicted on such a proud and noble people, but it could mark a turning point towards making peace with the planet, and begin a long overdue national conversation on truth, reconciliation and treaty rights.

Just as the civil rights movement once forged a more just nation, so does the native rights movement now promise to do the same. This, of course, will require a national reckoning on honoring the treaties, something I believe most Americans would welcome. I also believe most Americans know injustice when they see it and stand -- in their hearts -- with Standing Rock.
By Kate Moran

The world has a problem: "too many young people." A March 2016 article by Somini Sengupta in the New York Times makes a valid point in claiming that "it's the youth...that [stand] to put greater pressure on the global economy, sow political unrest, spur mass migration and have profound consequences for everything from marriage to Internet access to the growth of cities." Today, the number of global youth--those between 10 and 24 years old--surpasses 1.8 billion individuals, about 24% of the world's total population. The majority of this number--89 percent--live in the developing world, where educational and labor market infrastructures are in poor or deteriorating condition, ill-equipped to deal with what appears to be a sustained youth bulge.

It was such a youth bulge that in recent years has led to the upending of entrenched political regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and both peaceful and staggeringly violent uprisings in other countries across the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, from Morocco to Syria and Yemen. And while much discussion has focused on the downsides of such a bulge--mass unemployment and increasing radicalization as a result of socioeconomic disenfranchisement, to name a couple--far less emphasis has been placed on the ways in which the skills and passions of this 1.8 billion-strong community could be harnessed for positive change.

As it currently exists, the development and humanitarian assistance field does not afford a great deal of opportunities for those whom many organizations dismiss as "unqualified" youth--those who do not have access to the very best schools, the best training, and the requisite professional experiences needed to compete. Because even the most basic, entry-level jobs in international development require a high school or university diploma, formal roles for youth of lesser educational opportunity are almost entirely missing. In this way, development as a vocation, one that requires specialized degrees and higher education, reinforces the notion that it is reserved for a select few--a country's most elite and privileged.

Advertisement

In such a context, youth are almost exclusively talked about in the context of beneficiaries--engaged and empowered through development programming--but not necessarily incorporated into the program design process itself. Youth roles in development--particularly for youth in the developing world--are limited; they are rarely given true agency or helped to build the capacity to direct the very programs from which they might best benefit, thus being limited to hashtag and social media activism. That there are no readily available statistics or metrics by which youth are incorporated into program design processes is in itself an indication that a more intentional focus needs to be placed on the issue of their inclusion. Increasingly over the last decade, a great deal of research--such as that undertaken by ChildFund Australia--has centered on the need for such focus; international agencies like USAID have even self-identified youth marginalization in design and development as an issue, leading to attempts at counteracting it.

Yet despite socioeconomic, political, and cultural barriers to their participation in international development writ large, youth are demonstrating their capacity to shake up the development establishment; they are particularly active in the realm of humanitarian assistance, where youth-led initiatives have been working to confront the myriad challenges associated with the Syrian refugee crisis. And while traditionally the development field has been filled with a standard fare of Western-educated professionals with years--if not decades--of field experience, international and local bodies are increasingly recognizing the need to incorporate youth into their programming. Unlike in years past, youth are now being sought after not just as targeted beneficiaries, but as designers, developers, implementers, and innovators.

Advertisement

Participants in the World Humanitarian Summit's Youth Consultation, held in 2015 in Doha, Qatar, produced the "Doha Youth Declaration on Reshaping Humanitarian Aid." This Declaration, among other points, emphasized that youth, "as part of affected populations, are best placed to know the needs of their local communities and thus are often first responders in humanitarian crises. It is imperative that all response strategy needs assessment, planning, and delivery specifically and deliberately include young people as official actors." That is, instead of viewing youth as merely social media activists or low-level humanitarians incapable of affecting real or substantive change, sustainable development practitioners and institutions would best benefit from the full and unlimited use of youths' skills, social capital, and unique community buy-in to better engage and implement programming.

To be sure, the development sector has made progress on this issue. In 2012, USAID published a comprehensive report, which identified "mainstreaming youth through planning and design" as a policy priority. Still, "youth" often remains a buzzword without any real substance behind it, with youth themselves demanding a more authentic role in international development program design. Inclusive processes to address the absence of youth in programming are now standard features of almost every initiative, but gaps remain. A study commissioned by Y Care International and the UK's Department for International Development reveals that youth are still frequently relegated to the margins of program design and implementation. They might be asked to participate in a focus group or workshop--the "needs assessment" phase of an initiative--but they remain absent from field offices and humanitarian missions, where the research they helped inform is translated into a tangible service rendered.

If we are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, it will take more than lip service to youth empowerment. It will necessitate sustained, genuine engagement of and support for youth-led initiatives, including and especially those within the communities affected by the very challenges those in the development field seek to address. We will have to substantiate our intentions not just with words, but also with dollars--recalibrating our understanding of development as a field and reshaping our perceptions of youth roles.

Advertisement
Buhler stopped the run but often got beat deep as Ark City wins 32-13

local
Pandora Signs Direct Deals With UMG, Sony, 30 Indies Paving Way For New Music Service  WMG Last Holdout

UPDATED: Early Tuesday morning Pandora announced most, but not all, of the deals it needs to launch an on demand subscription music service. With robust $5 and $10 tiers likely and unique features created to help artists reach their fans, Pandora is poised to offer a real alternative to Spotify and Apple Music.

________________________________________

Pandora has signed new direct licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Sony, Merlin, The Orchard and 30 other independent distributors and labels, the company announced Tuesday morning. The agreements are for the U.S. only.

The deals bring the music streamer much closer to its goal of launching a paid on demand streaming music service designed to compete directly with Spotify and Apple Music. The newly signed music companies join ASCAP, BMI and 2,700 publishers who also recently signed deals with Pandora.

This was a truly collaborative attempt to find a solution that would support artists while profitably growing our respective businesses, said Tim Westergren, founder and CEO of Pandora. And that is exactly what we achieved. Working together, we can reshape the digital music market and grow a great business that provides tremendous value to the music industry for decades to come.

The one major hold out is the third largest major music group, Warner, who has often been the last jump aboard new deals in the past.

UPDATE: Sources tell Hypebot that Pandora hopes to launch their more robust $5 tier later this week and the full $10 service in the next 60  90 days.

Share on:
With the push towards insurtech there has been a key theme floating around  if you dont jump on the technological bandwagon then chances are someone will beat you to the punch. The name Google has been one of those floated around as a potential new player in the insurance arena  and one that, on name value alone, would likely eat up a significant volume of business. So much so, in fact, that in a recent Capgemini report, more than 40% of insurers described the company as a potential rival and threat.Now, Google has revealed its intentions for the insurance market  and, thankfully for insurers, its not about to become a direct player.Speaking to Reuters, Nick Leeder, Google France CEO, outlined that the company wants to establish partnerships with insurance companies and certain parts of its business  including Nest, which makes smoke detectors and smart thermostats. He explained how it has already established relationships with insurers such as Allianz and AXA  but that the company isnt looking to get involved in the market directly.With some of the things we have done around Nest, we have been working with insurers in France like AXA and Allianz to develop bundles of products which blend technology and hardware with insurance, he told the newswire.Were clearer about the role that we can play and what we can add, and we are looking for partners.While Leeder made it clear that a direct insurance offering is not in the works, he did say that nothing could be completely ruled out.We are not a company that uses the word never much, so its difficult to rule things in or out. I think there are things that we are good at and things we are not good at, he explained.Google has already made a relatively unsuccessful venture into insurance having recently closed its price comparison website Google Compare.We found it didnt work as well as wed like, Leeder explained.
On Thursday, farm groups decried a recently published Heritage Foundation report that called for the abolition of common subsidies while nonprofits Environmental Working and the Union of Concerned Scientists have praised parts of the report, if not all.The report proposed that all commodity programs in Title I of the farm bill should be eliminated save for two: the Permanent Disaster Assistance Programs and the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program. It also heavily suggested that farmers can handle most of the risk themselves or use private risk-management systems that they have purchased.This means getting rid of programs such as the Agricultural Risk Coverage Program (a shallow loss program), the Price Loss Coverage program, the sugar program, and the dairy program, the report posited.The report questions maintaining the federal crop insurance program as it is, but highlighted that it can serve as a general taxpayer-funded safety net by dropping the subsidiesas long as the program is focused towards protecting against deep yield losses and disasters instead of revenue-based policies.We see every farm bill cycle, groups with little connection to actual agriculture, like the Heritage Foundation, coming off the sidelines to attack farm programs that provide critically needed assistance for family farmers and ranchers, argued Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. Many producers rely on those programs to continue farming through these tough economic times.Despite the reports assertions, facts show that producers are not doing so well financially. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farm income has declined more than 40 percent since 2013, and farm jobs decreased by nearly 15 percent from 2001 to 2013, Johnson told Agweek.The Heritage Foundation has once again proposed leaving farmers and ranchers without a viable safety net, commented American Farm Bureau Federation executive director of public policy Dale Moore.The latest report from the Heritage Foundation is out of touch with the realities of the current farm economy, the intent of Congress, and the views of the American public, explained National Crop Insurance Services president Tom Zacharias. Our farmers and ranchers are facing a 56% drop in net farm income that no one predicted along with managing volatile swings in weather patterns and unfair practices and rising subsidies from foreign governments.Environmental Working Group and the Union of Concerned Scientists have offered praise for the report, reasoning that the opinions of the right (which call for the reduction of government spending) and the views of the left (which maintain that the farm bills spending should focus less on commodity and crop insurance programs and more on things like conservation, organic agriculture, aid to small farmers and farmers markets, etc.) can meet on the same page with the reports findings.Todays report confirms how our so-called far safety net has strayed from its original purpose  to help farmers weather the ups and agriculture, not to guarantee a level income that is well above the income of the average American household, said Environmental Working Group vice president Scott Faber.We absolutely must continue to support farmers, particularly when they need it most, but that support shouldnt come at the cost of incentivizing certain crops and practices over others, exacerbating land access issues, or disproportionately supporting the largest and wealthiest farm businesses, shared Union of Concerned Scientists representative Mike Lavender.
Page Content



Montreal and NDjamena, 13 September 2016  At the invitation of the Government of Chad, the President of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu, was in NDjamena, Chad, last week to visit with the Republics President and Head of State H.E. Mr. Idriss Deby Itno, who is also presently serving as the Chairman of the African Union.

Presidents Aliu and Itno, who were joined by the Honourable Minister of Chad for Aeronautical Development and National Meteorology, Mrs. Haoua Acyl Ahmat Aghabach, the Representative of Cameroon on the ICAO Council, Mr. Zoa Englebert Etundi, and ICAOs Regional Director for Western and Central Africa, Mr. Mam Sait Jallow, discussed at length the importance of aviation for socio-economic development in African countries, and particularly for landlocked ones such as Chad which are faced with many concerns due to under-developed land-based transportation.

ICAO has been grateful for the long-standing cooperation it has enjoyed with the Republic of Chad, and most especially for its Governments strong support for the aviation sector and continuous compliance with ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices for global civil aviation, President Aliu acknowledged. He then elaborated on ICAOs continuing mission under its No Country Left Behind initiative and stressed that human resources development remains a key air transport challenge for African States.

President Aliu also encouraged Chad to identify aviation as a priority sector within its national development strategy, and to provide appropriate infrastructure investment and support to facilitate enhanced air transport connectivity in coordination with other transport modes.

ICAOs AFI Plan (aviation safety and efficiency), AFI SECFAL Plan (aviation security and facilitation), and our Human Resources Development Fund for Africa, should all be looked to for comprehensive coordination and other support on all of these objectives, he noted.

With respect to Africas more continent-wide challenges, President Aliu positively acknowledged the on-going collaboration between ICAO and the African Union Commission for the development of aviation airport and air navigation infrastructure. The two leaders also deliberated on the terrorist threat affecting Chad and some of its neighbours in the Lake Chad Basin, the implications for aviation, and ICAOs related assessment missions in local States which had culminated in the development of a technical assistance programme.

The Council President reiterated the need to support the sector by strengthening the autonomy of the national Civil Aviation Authority and to ensure attainment of regional aviation targets for safety and security. Dr. Aliu reassured the Government of ICAOs commitment and availability to assist Chad and other States in the region, and sought the support of President Itno in this regard.

President Itno acknowledged the great potential for aviation in Chad and reaffirmed his Governments commitment to address the situation with urgency. With respect to the African Union, he pointed out that, with the support of ICAO, aviation issues are now being given increasing attention. It was agreed that a concrete roadmap be developed with the assistance of the ICAO Regional Office for Western and Central Africa.

The Council President also met with the Director General and senior staff of Chads Cvil Aviation Authority (CAA), and visited with senior executives of two locally-based Regional Safety Oversight Organizations (RSOOs)  the Autorites Africaines et Malagache de lAviation Civile (AAMAC) and the Agence de Supervision et de Securite Aerienne en Afrique Centrale (ASSA-AC).

While pointing out that the RSOO role is to complement, and not compete with local authorities, President Aliu encouraged Chad, as the host State for both organizations, to make effective use of their presence. He also highlighted the planned global RSOO meeting being jointly organized in Africa for 2017 by ICAO and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

Resources for Editors

ICAO's No Country Left Behind initiative

ICAO's Western and Central African (WACAF) Office

Contacts



Anthony Philbin

Chief, Communications

aphilbin@icao.int

+1 (514) 954-8220

+1 (438) 402-8886 (mobile)

Twitter: @ICAO



William Raillant-Clark

Communications Officer

wraillantclark@icao.int

+1 514-954-6705

+1 514 409-0705

Twitter: @wraillantclark
Page Content



ICAOs Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu addressed the Sixty-Fifth Special Meeting of Directors General of Civil Aviation of the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) in Bratislava on 31 August 2016. She highlighted Europes importance within international civil aviation with particular regard to its leadership and challenges in the areas of air navigation, safety, security and facilitation, air transport and the environment.

Dr. Liu underscored the pertinence of the cooperation between ICAO and its regional partners in the technical assistance field, the outcomes of the cooperation between ICAOs EUR/NAT Regional Office and the Member States within its purview, and the key role that Global Aviation Development Partnerships play in this regard. Gratitude for the voluntary contributions and personnel seconded by European Member States was also expressed.

She also outlined the salient aspects of the upcoming ICAO 39th Session of the Assembly and the ICAO 2017  2019 work programmes. The global market-based measure (MBM) to mitigate carbon emissions from international civil aviation and the ICAO Business Plan and Regular Budget, together with its Key Priorities, were of particular note.

While in Slovakia, Dr. Liu also undertook a courtesy meeting with Mr. Arpad Ersek, Slovakias Minister of Transport, Construction and Regional Development of Slovakia Republic, at which air transports contributions to sustainable development were discussed, and she met Mr. Frank Brenner, Director General of EUROCONTROL, which offered the Secretary General an opportunity to discuss cooperation between the two organizations.


Case-Mate Sheer Glam Band in Champagne

The Apple Watch is arguably the ultimate lifestyle accessory. Its highly personalized as you can customize the watch face to fit your style, and you can dress it up or down with an assortment of bands to complement your outfit.

If youre looking to shake up your #OOTDs, try switching Apple Watch bands. Its guaranteed to change your look and get you a lot more compliments. Following are some on-trend pieces to add to your collection.

Semi-transparent elastomer

When youre in the mood for something chill or laidback but still like a little sparkle, opt for a flexible elastomer band with shiny flecks. Its casual enough for everyday use, but makes it easy to add a little elegance to any look.

Case-Mate Turnlock Band in Shocking Pink

Bangle-style

For days when you cant be bothered by locks and clasps, there are bangle-styled bands that you can just slip on and off your wrist. Keep it fashionable by picking one in an interesting design like a chain link and opt for a pop of color to take your outfit from drab to fab!

Case-Mate Signature Leather Band in Black, Alligator Band in Brown,

Double Wrap Leather Band in Black, and Edged Leather Band in Brown & Blue

Leather

Leather is a good investment since the material itself lasts a long time. Leather makes any watch stylish enough to stand changes in trends and its a timeless look that goes with almost all outfits. It is especially suited for formal settings, when you need to look polished or business-like. For your Apple Watch, you can go for the classic leather band, or spice it up with different textures, styles, and colors.

Case-Mate Linked Band in Black

Stainless steel links

The linked bracelet is another must-have in every collection. Its easily adjustable by adding or removing links and the classic design exudes style and sophistication.

Actress Chienna Filomeno (@chiefilomeno) wears her Apple Watch with the Case-Mate Brilliance Band in Silver, available at Power Mac Center.

Day-to-Night

Take your Apple Watch anywhere from brunch to board meeting to party in the club with this one-of-a-kind genuine crystal and leather Brilliance band. It is actress Chienna Filomenos current favorite as it matches her personality and completes her OOTDs. If youre looking to make a fashion statement, this is enough to do the trick. Wear it wherever the night takes you.

Case-Mate Apple Watch bands are available at Power Mac Center stores nationwide.

Premium accessories brand Case-Mate was born in 2006 out of the simple desire to craft accessories ingrained with individuality, purpose, quality, and style. It is for people who know who they are yet crave for something more, something extraordinary. Case-Mate Apple Watch bands made an appearance at the recently concluded 20th Philippine Fashion Week. More information may be obtained from Power Mac Centers 26 branches or at www.powermaccenter.com.

Back to top
NVMe: New Era of Lighting-Fast Data Transmission

Solid State Drive (SSD) is now becoming more common and will rapidly replace the traditional mechanical Hard Disk Drive (HDD) in the near future. However, the supposed high performing SSD are hitting a significant performance wall due to the fact that majority of the SSD available on the market still uses SATA interface and AHCI controller interface standard that was created back then to handles the much slower traditional HDD.

While there are quite a number of high-end SSD that are designed to take the advantage of high speed the PCI Express (PCIe) interface, the use of ACHI controller interface specification on the controller design is still not suffice to take full advantage of the PCI Express interface. Manufacturers are now looking into NVMe controller interface specification to fully eliminate the existing bottleneck that limit the true potential of SSD.

What is NVMe?

NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Express, is a standardized high performance host controller interface for PCIe SSDs that will ultimately deliver plug-and-play functionality for PCIe-connected SSDs on all platform.

The first NVMe prototype was seen back in 2007, where a NVMHCI working group led by Intel was formed that year to perform for research and development on the Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface which aims to remove the bandwidth limitations of SATA and shedding the AHCI communication protocol. As the group finalized PCI Express as the standardized connection interface, version 1.0 of the specification was released on 2011, followed by version 1.2 update on 2014.

Advantages of NVMe: Low Latency

When an AHCI controller executes a command, an un-cacheable register read consumes 2000 CPU cycles and there are 4 un-cacheable register reads per command. This translates into 8000 CPU cycles, or roughly 2.5 s of latency per command. NVMe on the other hand, will not experience such delay as it will directly communicate with the CPU, thus, skipping all the unnecessary communication that causes delay.

Advantages of NVMe: High Performance

Low latency isn't the only advantage you'll get from NVMe, as it also offers a much higher IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second). NVMe is capable of supporting up to 64K I/O queues, with each I/O queue supporting up to 64K commands, taking the full advantage of NAND Flash's parallel read and write. AHCI on the other hand, support only single I/O queue with up to 32 commands per queue, which leads to a much slower performance compared to NVMe.

NVMe - The Mainstream Storage Interface Standard

With Intel 9 / 100 series chipset now supports NVMe and Operating System such as Windows 8.1 Windows Server 2012 R2 or later that comes with built-in NVMe driver, SSD manufacturers are seen releasing consumer grade NVMe SSD products starting from last year as well as during Computex Taipei back in the month of June. In August, Plextor set to announce the availability of its consumer grade M8Pe series NVMe SSD.

NVMe are bound to become the future standard of mainstream storage interface, as well as the advancement of NAND flash technology and it's slowly manifests in various form of interfaces i.e M.2, PCIe, U.2,etc. As Market research institution predicted the possibilities of NVMe to replace AHCI as the new standard for mainstream SSD in 2017, and this marks the coming era of NVMe SSD.

Back to top
Annual Meetings Badges Available Beginning Monday, October 3, 2016

The Registration Office is open for badge pickup daily from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., from Monday, October 3  Sunday, October 9.

Attendance to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group Annual Meetings is by invitation only. All participants must be accredited before the Meetings. To facilitate accreditation and registration, the participants are divided into different categories, described below. Please determine your registration category and submit your registration request accordingly.

Please note that an onsite Registration Desk operates for issuance of participant badges to those who are already accredited. Facilities for onsite accreditation are very limited and onsite accreditation is not guaranteed. Please plan your attendance at the Annual Meetings events in advance.

Participants are strongly encouraged to register as soon as possible to avoid delays.

Delegates

Delegates are governmental officials of the member countries of the IMF and the Bank. Delegates are registered through the IMF and World Bank Group Offices of Executive Directors. If you have any questions about Delegate registration, please forward your inquiries to meetingsregistration@imf.org.

Observers

Observers are the representatives of the international, regional and economic organizations that were pre-approved and invited by the IMF and the World Bank Group. If you have any questions about Observer registration, please forward your inquiry to observerregistration@worldbank.org.

Civil Society Representatives

As in previous years, the IMF and World Bank Group Civil Society teams will host a Civil Society Policy Forum (CSPF) ahead of the official 2016 Annual Meetings October 7-9. The CSPF is a program of events to promote policy dialogue between Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), the IMF and the World Bank Group, their peers, and government delegations on a wide range of topics. It will be held between October 4 and October 7, 2016. The schedule of sessions will be available by September 6, 2016. All CSO representatives interested in participating in the CSPF must obtain individual accreditation. This accreditation will also provide access to all the open events of the 2016 Annual Meetings. The online registration system to accept applications for civil society registration is now open and will close on September 16, 2016. The registration process could take up to three weeks and no new registration requests will be accepted after this deadline, so CSO representatives are encouraged to apply early. CSOs include non-governmental organizations, community groups, labor unions, indigenous peoples' movements, faith-based organizations, professional associations, foundations, think tanks, charitable organizations, and other not-for-profit organizations. Representatives from the private sector, academia or governmental bodies must apply for accreditation through the Guests or other relevant registration category. If you have any questions about the Annual Meetings and/or are interested in organizing a dialogue session within the Civil Society Policy Forum, please send an email to ngoliaison@imf.org (IMF) or civilsociety@worldbank.org (World Bank). CSO Registration Request > View the Full CSPF Schedule >>

Press

Press Registration Requirements Members of the press with valid credentials are invited to attend the Meetings. The online registration system to accept applications for press registration is now open and will close on October 8, 2016. All working press must have Annual Meetings credentials to attend the meetings. Requests for media accreditation will be denied if applicants cannot establish they are professional journalists. This applies to all freelancers, including photographers and bloggers. To be accredited, you must present one of the following: Valid press credentials issued by national governments or authorities;



OR



Clear evidence that you are on assignment from a specific news organization or publication. A valid assignment letter from that news organization, or publication, is required. Photographic agencies must provide clear evidence from a client news organization or publication.



If such credentials are not held, or are in question, it will be at the discretion of the IMF and the World Bank Group to determine whether access to the Annual Meetings is granted. Enquiries should be sent to: media@imf.org. Press Registration Request >

Guests
Press Registration Requirement

All working press must have Annual Meetings credentials to attend the meetings. Requests for media accreditation will be denied if applicants cannot establish they are professional journalists. This applies to all freelancers, including photographers and bloggers. To be accredited: Journalists in the Washington area must have press credentials issued by either the White House, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the House and Senate Press Gallery, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the USIA Foreign Press Center.





must have press credentials issued by either the White House, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the House and Senate Press Gallery, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the USIA Foreign Press Center. Journalists based outside Washington must have: Valid press credentials issued by national or local authorities;



OR



Clear evidence that you are on assignment from a specific news organization or publication. A valid assignment letter from that news organization, or publication, is required. Photographic agencies must provide clear evidence from a client news organization or publication.



Submissions should be sent to:

Press Registration

email: press@imf.org

must have: If such credentials are not held, or are in question, it will be at the discretion of the IMF and the World Bank Group to determine whether access to the Annual Meetings is granted.

Online Press Registration

Journalists who meet the requirements above should register online. Registration for press credentials will close on Saturday, October 8, 2016. The IMF or the World Bank Group will not be responsible for journalists' travel costs and/or other expenses. Press Registration Request >

Visa Requirements

Journalists traveling from overseas to cover the Annual Meetings, who are not citizens or permanent residents of the United States, are reminded that they will need to display a valid I visa to immigration officials at their port of entry into the U.S. Before departure, participants are requested to obtain entry visas for the United States from the U.S. diplomatic or consular missions in their countries. The lack of a valid visa may cause authorities to deny boarding at the port of embarkation, as well as delays in clearance with immigration authorities upon arrival at the port of entry into the United States. Participants should be aware that changes are being made to U.S. immigration procedures for certain countries, including some which are currently under the Visa Waiver Program. It is strongly recommended that all participants check with their nearest U.S. diplomatic or consular mission, or here, for the procedures which will be in effect at the time of the Annual Meetings. If visas are required, applications should be made as early as possible to allow sufficient time for processing.

Press Credentials Pick-Up

Journalists who have been approved for accreditation can pick up credentials starting at 8:00 a.m. on Monday, October 3, 2016, at the Press Registration Desk, located 1850 I Street, NW, Washington, DC. You are required to present press credentials and photo identification. The Annual Meetings press credentials grant access to the Press Room, press conferences and briefings in IMF Headquarters. At all times, members of the press must be escorted by IMF or World Bank Group staff within office areas of the IMF and the World Bank Group buildings. Representatives of Civil Society Organizations should visit Information for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) for details on CSO accreditation.

Press Room Arrangements

The Press Room is located in the IMF HQ2 building, at the corner of 19th St and Pennsylvania Avenue, and will open at 8:00 a.m. on Monday, October 3, and close at 5 p.m. on Sunday, October 9, 2016. Technicians for financial news wires and other accredited news organizations may arrange for advanced access to the IMF Headquarters press room through special arrangements with the IMF's Media Relations Division (media@imf.org). The press room has limited space, and operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Each desk will be equipped with power outlets. The Press Room provides wireless (Wi-Fi) access for personal laptops. For further information regarding telecommunications arrangements within the IMF, please contact Antony Kamunde, tel: 202-623-6731 email: akamunde@imf.org Computers are not provided to journalists. However, a limited number of internet kiosks will be available in the Press Room. The Internet kiosks allow easy access to the IMF website and the World Bank Group website. The websites will have links to a joint Annual Meetings' site containing the schedule of press events, as well as transcripts, news releases, and other information as it becomes available.

ISDN / Broadband

The press room does not have ISDN lines in place. Journalists who require an ISDN line can order one directly through Verizon. Please email Potomac.media@verizon.com or call Eileen Ferraro 973-649-1314.

Interview Requests

IMF and World Bank Group media relations divisions handle requests for interviews with IMF and World Bank Group officials during the Meetings. However, the press officers do not service interview requests for official delegations to the Meetings. Those requests must be made directly to the delegations or through the Executive Directors representing their constituency.

Photo Opportunities for TV and Still Photos

There will be photo opportunities at the start of ministerial committee meetings (e.g. International Monetary and Financial Committee and Development Committee), which may be pooled depending on demand. Photojournalists are requested to assemble 15 minutes prior to the event at the IMF/World Bank Group Press Desk.

Availability of Still Photos and Video Clips

A selection of still photos in high resolution will be available after each event on the Meetings website and on www.flickr.com/photos/imfphoto and http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank. Download and use of images are free of charge, but must be credited to the listed photographer and organization when published online or in print. In addition, broadcast quality video clips of selected press conferences will be available for downloading on http://mediacenter.imf.org/ and on www.un.org/unifeed. This service is free of charge. For World Bank Group events, broadcast quality clips will be available for download at www.un.org/unifeed and on our World Bank Group FTP Server. For inquiries contact Mehreen Sheikh at the World Bank Group on 202-458-7336 - msheikh1@worldbankgroup.org

Television Transmission, LiveUs and Facilities

To inquire about the video and audio transmission arrangements from IMF Headquarters, please contact Bruno Silvestre at the IMF at bsilvestre@imf.org. Please note that LiveUs cannot be used within the IMF buildings.

Satellite Trucks

Broadcasters who would like to do live interviews may park their trucks on the street. Please contact Sgt. Kenny Bryson at the MPD (Metropolitan Police Department, contact number 202-727-4383) for information regarding the exact location for parking the trucks.

Press Conferences

A tentative schedule of the press conferences will be available. All press briefings are transcribed and posted on the external websites of the IMF and World Bank Group as soon as possible. Most briefings will also be webcast live. Only press are allowed entry into press conferences/briefings.

IMF Press Center

The IMF Press Center offers advance access to embargoed IMF information. It is a password-protected site for working journalists only. Already Registered? Login Not Registered Yet? Register today!

World Bank Group Online Media Briefing Center

The Media Briefing Center offers advance access to embargoed information of the World Bank Group. It is a password-protected site for working journalists only. Already Registered? Login Not Registered Yet? Register today!

Contact Information
Imperial Valley News Center

White House Announces New Resources at Second Annual Summit on Next Generation High Schools

Washington, DC - Today the White House is bringing together leadership teams from six states and more than 20 school districts to commit to redesigning their high schools  efforts estimated to reach more than 600,000 students. This second annual White House Summit on Next Generation High Schools builds on progress made during the first summit held in November 2015, which generated $375 million in private and public sector commitments to rethink the high school experience.

President Obama announced his Next Generation High School proposal in his 2013 State of the Union address to redesign the high school experience so that it is rigorous and more engaging and relevant to todays students. Todays Next Generation High Schools are better engaging students by providing stronger connections to the educational needs and interests of individual students; opening new opportunities to personalize and tailor academic content and wrap-around student supports; challenging students with rigorous courses, including in new economy subjects such as computer science; using innovative approaches and strategies to restructure the scope and time spent learning; and employing innovative educational technologies, project-based learning, and competency-based progressions to engage and empower learners. Ultimately, the strategies reflected in Americas Next Generation High Schools will equip todays youth with the strong content knowledge, collaboration opportunities, and critical skills needed to meet the demands of an innovation economy, while preparing them to embark upon a lifetime of learning.

The commitments states, school districts and the private sector are making at the Summit to Next Generation High Schools underscore growing momentum from across the country. In addition to these efforts, the U.S. Department of Education is announcing new resources to help communities that want to create Next Generation High Schools.

Key New Federal Resources to Advance Next Generation High Schools

The White House and the U.S. Department of Education are announcing federal resources that will help more states and districts create and scale Next Generation High Schools in their communities. These resources include:

Progress Update on Commitments to Scale Next Generation High Schools: Building on the progress of the first annual White House Summit on Next Generation High Schools last November, the White House is releasing a progress report detailing key metrics of success from the commitments that were made at the first Summit.

Issue Brief - Results from National Survey on High School Strategies Designed to Help At-Risk Students Graduate  Early Warning Systems: The U.S. Department of Education is releasing the first of 13 briefs that provide descriptive information on the prevalence and characteristics of strategies designed to help at-risk students graduate from high school. The Departments first brief on Early Warning Systems is being released today, with other briefs coming out this fall.

Using Evidence to Create Next Generation High Schools: The U.S. Department of Education is releasing a new resource that highlights six evidence-based strategies to improve Americas high schools for the next generation The six general evidence-based strategies in this document can be used to create Next Generation High Schools that improve important student outcomes, such as high school completion and readiness for college and careers.

Next Generation High Schools - Guide to Federal Resources: Later this fall, the U.S. Department of Education will release a guide for states and districts to available funding streams that may be leveraged to promote the development, enhancement, and continuity of Next Generation High Schools. The guide will provide state and local stakeholders with innovative examples of how to utilize their existing funds or new funding streams to promote Next Generation High Schools.

Actions by States to Redesign the High School Experience

Education leaders from six states will join the Summit to underscore their commitment to advancing Next Generation High Schools, share best practices and announce new progress towards increasing student access to redesigned high schools. Their commitments include:

The New Hampshire Department of Education, in conjunction with the Buck Institute, is announcing a professional learning community as part of ongoing efforts to support the states lowest performing schools. The community will provide embedded professional development, leadership, and technical assistance to schools engaged in implementing project-based learning and is estimated to reach 22,292 students.

The Ohio Department of Education is committing to rethink high schools according to many of the Next Generation principles and to focus on helping students successfully transition from high school to college and career. Combined, initiatives that are being undertaken could impact over 100,000 students across the state.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) is committed to expanding scalable opportunities throughout the state that promote and incorporate the principles of Next Generation High Schools. The combined impact of their efforts has the potential to benefit more than 300,000 students across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The Rhode Island Department of Education is undertaking efforts to create Next Generation High Schools that better prepare their students for postsecondary success by increasing access to rigorous coursework, dual enrollment and innovative school models. This fall, three P-TECH high schools will open in Rhode Island and Rhode Island plans to open two P-TECH high schools in the fall 2017. These five schools will serve more than 1,400 students when fully enrolled.

The Virginia State Board of Education is reforming graduation requirements to change the structure and operation of high schools to encourage high schools to be more rigorous and more innovative in how they educate students. Those requirements will go into effect with the entering freshmen class of 2018 -- impacting about 100,000 students.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (WDPI) and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) will work together to scale innovative practices in active learning that promote postsecondary and career readiness, specifically focusing their efforts in three to five of the lowest performing high schools in MPS.

Continued Private Sector Commitment to Next Generation High Schools

Building on the commitments made during the last summit, additional resources are also being announced by non-profit and private sector organizations to continue to support Next Generation High Schools, including:
Governor Brown and Attorney General Harris Honor Eight Public Safety Officials with Medal of Valor Awards

Sacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. joined Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today to present the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor to eight public safety officials from the California Highway Patrol, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, San Bernardino Police Department, San Diego Fire-Rescue Department and the Redlands Police Department, who went above and beyond the call of duty.

The men we are honoring today exemplify something beyond the ordinary, beyond duty, said Governor Brown at today's ceremony. That is to see something that somebody else needs and to respond, even at the risk of your own life.

The Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor Act of 2003 gives the Governor the authority to award a Medal of Valor to public safety officers who are cited by the Attorney General for extraordinary valor above and beyond the call of duty. The Attorney Generals Office receives nominations from public safety agencies. These nominations are reviewed by the Medal of Valor Review Board, which makes a recommendation to the Attorney General.

These heroes demonstrated unparalleled valor and courage, risking their own safety and well-being, in incredibly difficult and dangerous circumstances, said Attorney General Harris. Their bravery embodies the spirit of public service and exemplifies the best of these noble professions.

The following individuals were awarded the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor today:

California Highway Patrol Officer Brett Peters

On February 21, 2015, Officer Peters responded to a call of a stalled vehicle blocking a lane on westbound Interstate 580 to westbound Interstate 980, directly over State Route 24 in the City of Oakland. Unbeknownst to Officer Peters, the adult male driver had been experiencing paranoia and schizophrenia thoughts. The driver exited his vehicle as Officer Peters exited his patrol unit. The subject stepped toward the concrete railing and began to climb over it, in an attempt to jump and commit suicide. Officer Peters recognized the danger, and without hesitation, quickly ran toward the subject. He grabbed the subject and a violent struggle ensued as the subject attempted to break free from Officer Peters' grasp.

It appeared that the subject was going over the railing, taking Officer Peters with him. Officer Peters released the subject and deployed his Electronic Control Device, resulting in the subject stepping back. The subject again stepped toward the railing and climbed over it as Officer Peters grabbed hold of his left wrist and clothing. While Officer Peters held the subject tightly, he dropped to the ground to maintain leverage and control of the subject. Officer Peters was on one side of the railing, while the subjects entire body dangled midair over traffic traveling on State Route 24.

Governor Brown and Attorney General Harris with California Highway Patrol Officer Brett Peters.

Officers from the California Highway Patrol (Oakland Area), Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff's Office arrived on scene to assist Officer Peters. They pulled the still combative subject back over the railing and he was safely placed in custody and taken by ambulance to a mental health facility. The subjects life was saved as a result of Officer Peters act of heroism in which he risked his own personal safety. Officer Peters held the subject for over two minutes, to the point of exhaustion and muscle fatigue, before the subject was moved to a safe location. For extraordinary bravery, heroism and courage in the face of imminent and personal life-threatening peril, Officer Peters actions were above and beyond the call of duty, and exemplify the highest standards of a California public safety officer.

San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Firefighter Alexander Wallbrett

On June 24, 2015, the unarmed crew of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department was providing medical treatment to a sick and intoxicated male patient at a downtown trolley station. A bystander, who refused orders to back away from the patient, began swinging a knife at firefighters Ben Vernon and Alex Wallbrett. The suspect, a 34-year old male, stabbed Firefighter Vernon twice in the torso. Without hesitation and regard for his own safety, Firefighter Wallbrett jumped a metal fence and rushed to Firefighter Vernons aid, placing himself between his partner and the knife wielding suspect.

Governor Brown and Attorney General Harris with San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Firefighter Alexander Wallbrett.

As Firefighter Wallbrett wrestled with the attacker, preventing further injury to his partner, he was stabbed three times, including a stab wound close to his spine. The suspect was eventually subdued by other fire department personnel and officers from the Metropolitan Transit System. Firefighter Vernon suffered a broken rib and collapsed lung. Both Firefighter Vernon and Firefighter Wallbrett have made full recoveries and returned to duty. The suspect was convicted of multiple felony charges and sentenced to 23 years, 8 months in prison. For extraordinary bravery, heroism and courage in the face of imminent and personal life-threatening peril, Firefighter Wallbretts actions were above and beyond the call of duty, and exemplify the highest standards of a California public safety officer.

Redlands Police Department Officer Joseph Aguilar; San Bernardino Police Department Officer Nicholas Koahou; San Bernardino Police Department Officer Brian Olvera; San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Corporal Rafael Ixco; San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Deputy Bruce Southworth and San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Corporal Chad Johnson

On December 2, 2015, gunfire erupted at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino in which the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health was holding a holiday banquet. A county employee and his wife killed 14 people and wounded 21 others before fleeing in a rented black SUV. Hundreds of law enforcement officers from local, state and federal agencies were involved in the immediate response.

The outstanding investigative work of the San Bernardino Police Department led to the identification of the suspects and their residence. At 3:20 p.m., police spotted the SUV near a home in Redlands. Redlands police officers followed the SUV and after a brief pursuit the vehicle stopped. The two suspects began firing assault rifles at the officers stopped behind their vehicle. The ensuing exchange of gunfire lasted more than five minutes. San Bernardino Police Department Officer Koahou saw that a deputy was pinned down and in need of rescue. Officer Koahou neutralized one of the suspects who exited the SUV. The second suspect, still inside the SUV, focused attention on the pinned down deputy. As Officer Koahou moved towards the deputy, he was shot in his left leg and fell. Officer Koahou continued to return fire at the remaining suspect.

Left to right: San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Corporal Rafael Ixco; San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Deputy Bruce Southworth; San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Corporal Chad Johnson; San Bernardino Police Department Officer Brian Olvera; Attorney General Harris; Governor Brown; San Bernardino Police Department Officer Nicholas Koahou; Redlands Police Department Officer Joseph Aguilar.

Law enforcement personnel quickly devised a plan to use a patrol vehicle as a moving cover to rescue Officer Koahou and the pinned down deputy. San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Corporal Chad Johnson drove a patrol vehicle, with San Bernardino Police Department Officer Brian Olvera, Redlands Police Department Officer Joseph Aguilar and San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Deputy Bruce Southworth on foot, taking cover behind the vehicle. San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Corporal Rafael Ixco drove another vehicle and followed Johnsons vehicle to create additional cover.

As both vehicles and the officers on foot moved forward, the remaining suspect inside the SUV shot at them, with Officers Olvera and Aguilar and Deputy Southworth returning fire. Officer Koahou and the pinned down deputy were successfully removed by the team and taken to a safe area. Both suspects were killed at the scene. Inside the suspects vehicle, two handguns, 200 rounds of handgun ammunition and 1400 rounds of assault rifle ammunition were found. Officer Koahou was transported to a local hospital where he received medical treatment for the gunshot wound to his leg.

For extraordinary bravery, heroism and courage in the face of imminent and personal life-threatening peril, Redlands Police Officer Aguilar, San Bernardino Police Officers Koahou and Olvera, San Bernardino County Sheriffs Corporals Ixco and Johnson and Deputy Southworths actions were above and beyond the call of duty, and exemplify the highest standards of a California public safety officer.

Photo Credit: Dionne Grubbs, California Department of Justice. For high resolution copies of these photos,
Special Advisor for International Disability Rights Judith Heumann To Travel to the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Washington, DC - Special Advisor for International Disability Rights Judy Heumann will travel to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 13-16 to speak at the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) summit and participate in events to promote the rights of people with disabilities.

Ms. Heumann participated in a roundtable discussion hosted by the IPC and U.S. Paralympics in Washington, DC in March, on employment opportunities for people with a disability. Ms. Heumann previously visited Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia in 2015 to attend activities celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, visited the new Brazilian Paralympic Center in Sao Paulo, and met with organizations that facilitate the integration of people with disabilities.

Judith Heumann is an internationally recognized leader in the disability community and a lifelong civil rights advocate for disadvantaged people. She previously served as the Director for the Department on Disability Services for the District of Columbia, as the World Bank's first Adviser on Disability and Development and as the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the Department of Education. Prior to beginning her work at the national level, Ms. Heumann worked for two decades at the local level with disability rights organizations.
3rd U.S.-Republic of Korea ICT Policy Forum

Washington, DC - The following is the text of a joint press statement issued by the United States of America and the Republic of Korea at the conclusion of the 3rd United States-Republic of Korea Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Policy Forum.

Ambassador Daniel A. Sepulveda, U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, U.S. Department of State, and Vice Minister Choi Jae-You, Republic of Korea Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) led the third United States-Republic of Korea ICT Policy Forum in Washington, D.C., on September 8 and 9, 2016, focused on innovation and growth in the digital economy. Other U.S. and South Korean government and industry representatives also participated in the forum.

During the two-day forum, government, industry, and non-governmental organization representatives reached a broad consensus on issues such as promoting U.S.-Republic of Korea ICT policy coordination on topics that are critical to further advancing the two countries digital economies and pursuing measures that reduce impediments to and encourage the growth of the ICT industry.

The two sides affirmed their support for policy and regulatory environments that promote innovation, trade, investment, and growth in the digital economy. They emphasized the importance of meaningful industry input and consultation while developing policies and regulations, with clear processes for engaging stakeholders that are fair, transparent, and predictable. The participants emphasized the importance of enhancing privacy protections and enabling cross border data flows by implementing and promoting applicable frameworks for privacy and data protection, such as through the APEC Cross Border Privacy Rules system, endorsed by APEC leaders in 2011. The participants also reaffirmed that the free flow of information is essential for the development of the digital economy.

The United States and the Republic of Korea reaffirmed their joint support of an inclusive, open, and transparent system of Internet governance and continued support for the multi-stakeholder approach. Government officials from the two sides discussed objectives and shared information on their respective activities related to upcoming international meetings and organizations such as the International Telecommunication Union World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Committee on Digital Economy Policy, and multilateral development banks.

The United States and the Republic of Korea exchanged information on ICT industry trends and national policies including initiatives focused on machine learning and artificial intelligence and plan to continue discussions on potential cooperation. They exchanged views on making spectrum available for future mobile technologies, such as 5G. They reaffirmed their mutual commitment to unlocking the potential of additional spectrum bands, thereby creating respective regulatory environments in which emerging next-generation technologies could take hold and deliver benefits to consumers, businesses, and the global economy. The Republic of Korea noted its plans to establish a 5G trial network at the Pyeongchang Olympic Games in 2018.

The two sides shared information on the status of smart city projects in both countries and highlighted the successful collaboration between National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and MSIP on research for Smart City and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies through the Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) program and the IoT-Enabled Smart City Framework public working group. They reiterated support for the development of international standards that are voluntary, industry led, and market-driven. In addition, they confirmed their intention to share progress of policy implementation regarding cloud computing, sharing successful cases of cloud deployment in the public sector, continuing expert exchanges and joint R&D projects for the creation of a global market.

U.S. and South Korean officials discussed potential cooperation to expand Internet connectivity through the Global Connect Initiative aimed at connecting an additional 1.5 billion people by 2020. The Republic of Korea expressed its support for the initiative and described its programs which could contribute to this shared goal.

Alongside the Forum and following discussions in the U.S.-Republic of Korea Joint Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and MSIP signed a Terms of Reference to establish an Intelligent Convergence Cyber Security Systems Working Group (IC2S2 WG), which is intended to serve as a catalyst for fostering cooperation in basic research on information assurance and cyber-security of crucial importance to both the Republic of Korea and the United States. Specifically MSIP and AFOSR plan to cooperatively fund joint proposals from teams of U.S. and South Korean university scientists.

The 3rd U.S.-Republic of Korea ICT Policy Forum was hosted by the U.S. Department of State. The U.S. delegation included officials representing the U.S. Department of State, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and leading U.S. ICT businesses. The Republic of Korea delegation included officials representing the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP), Korea Communications Commission (KCC), National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), Korea Internet Security Agency (KISA), Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI), Institute for ICT Promotion (IITP) and leading Korean ICT businesses. The United States and the Republic of Korea plan to hold the 4th U.S.-Republic of Korea ICT Policy Forum in Seoul.
Parliamentary Elections in Belarus

Washington, DC - The United States welcomes the peaceful conduct of the September 11 parliamentary elections in Belarus. We recognize some improvements in the electoral process, and we note that alternative voices will be represented in parliament for the first time in 12 years. Still, the elections fell short of Belarus international obligations and commitments to free and fair elections, as detailed in the joint statement by OSCE/ODIHR, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and Council of Europe election observation missions.

The statement noted the authorities willingness to register more opposition candidates than in past elections. However, it also highlighted continued serious problems including: lack of transparency in the counting and tabulation of votes; the non-pluralistic composition of election commissions; a media environment that did not allow voters to make informed decisions; and a lack of reform to Belarus restrictive legal framework governing elections. We continue to encourage the Government of Belarus to undertake serious reform of its election law and processes in line with OSCE/ODIHR and Council of Europe Venice Commission recommendations.

Strengthening Belarus democracy will reinforce Belarusian sovereignty and independence, which the United States unequivocally and firmly supports, and will pave the way to improved bilateral ties.
Joint Statement on Libya by the Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States

Washington, DC - The Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States condemn this weekend's attacks on Zueitina, Ras Lanuf, Es Sider, and Brega oil terminals in Libya. We call on all parties to undertake an immediate ceasefire and to refrain from any further hostilities. We also call on all forces to avoid any action that could damage Libya's energy infrastructure or further disrupt its exports. Libya's oil belongs to the Libyan people. The Presidency Council (PC) is the sole steward of these resources.

The PC and other Government of National Accord (GNA) institutions have an obligation to ensure oil revenues are used to provide essential services for the Libyan people. Oil infrastructure, production, and export must remain under the exclusive control of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) acting under the GNAs authority. We call for all military forces that have moved into the oil crescent to withdraw immediately, without preconditions.

The Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States reaffirm their full support for the GNA as Libya's sole executive authority. Libyan forces should unite in fighting Daesh and other UN-designated terrorist groups. Violence against fellow Libyans undermines Libyas stability and encourages division. Political agreements, not conflicts, must determine Libyas future. Creating a unified, capable national security force under GNA authority is Libya's best hope for protecting its resources for the benefit of all its people. We urge peaceful cooperation among Libya's armed forces and immediate efforts to unify into one professional military force. All Libyan forces have a responsibility to serve the entire nation, and to act on behalf of all Libyans. We welcome efforts by partners to encourage all forces to avoid further clashes.

We reiterate our intent to enforce UNSCR 2259, including measures concerning illicit oil exports, activities which could damage the integrity and unity of Libyan State financial institutions and the NOC, and individuals and entities engaging in or providing support for acts that threaten the unity, peace, stability or security of Libya.
Pakistan Fans are Rooting for India's Win Against South Africa in T20 World Cup With Memes
Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Roald Dahl will always be remembered for his witty, beautifully written childrens books, the author having created some of our most beloved fictional characters.

The language he used to describe the vivid worlds of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda was incredibly unique, the author playing with sounds and bending linguistic principles to create new words.

To honour what would have been Dahls 100th birthday, the Oxford English Dictionary has added numerous new words and phrases made famous by Dahl - including Oompa Lumpa' and witching hour - to their latest edition, available now. Many previously added words have also been revised in association with Dahl, including Frightsome and Gremlin.

Michael Proffitt, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, said: The inclusion in OED of a number of words coined by or associated with Roald Dahl reflects both his influence as an author and his vivid and distinctive style.

For many children Roald Dahls work is not only one of their first experiences of reading, but also their earliest exposure to the creative power of language.

In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Willy Wonka from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' Willy Wonka (pictured being played by Gene Wilder in 1967) is a bizarre and slightly unsettling man but who can say no to that delicious chocolate? Getty In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters The Oompa Loompas from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' Despite the characters' questionable evolution from being African pygmies in early editions of the novel, the Oompa Loompas were so fantastical they captured the imagination of generations. The first film's version of the characters are still a popular fancy dress theme. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Veruca Salt from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' The girl who "wants it now" is so incredibly vile she ended up in the rubbish after being judged a bad nut by Willy Wonka's squirrels. An American alternative rock band even took her name. YouTube In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters The Twits from 'The Twits' Mr and Mrs Twit are horrible, hideous and hateful, coating trees with glue to catch birds to at. But the Roly-Poly Bird and Muggle-Wumps teach them a lesson in the end. Quentin Blake/House of Illustration In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters James from 'James and the Giant Peach' James is beaten and starved by his cruel aunts after his parents are eaten by an escaped rhino but eventually gets to go on an adventure with the friends he has always waited for on his magic peach, ending up on the top of the Empire State Building. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Matilda from 'Matilda' Every little girl who read 'Matilda' wondered what it would be like to be the main character. Apart from th abusive family, the telekinesis must be endless fun. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Miss Trunchbull from 'Matilda' Miss Trunchbull, played by Pam Ferris in the 1996 film, is the aunt and headmistress of every child's worst nightmares. Just think of poor Bruce Bogtrotter and that cake. YouTube In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters The Big Friendly Giant from 'The BFG' A 24-foot-tall BFG works giving out good dreams to children and saves them all from people-eating giants. Shame about the snozzcumbers. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters The Grand High Witch from 'The Witches' The Grand High Witch, seen here in the film, must be one of Dahl's most terrifying creations. Turning children into slugs and squishing them, she wanted to destroy them all, she had no hair or toes and claws for hands. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Mr Fox from 'Fantastic Mr Fox' Mr Fox outsmarts those silly farmers, feeding his family by killing their chickens and avoiding starvation. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters George from 'George's Marvellous Medicine' Some people would say that swapping your gran's medicine with poison isn't ok but that isn't the point here. YouTube In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Grandma from 'George's Marvellous Medicine' Grandma was quite a character until she vanished: 'She was selfish grumpy old woman. She had pale brown teeth and a small pucker-up mouth like a dog's bottom.' YouTube

Here are six of the newly added words (via Quartz).

Dahlesque

Implying something resembles or has the characteristics of Dahls work, typically characterised by eccentric plots, villainous or loathsome adult characters, and gruesome or black humour.

Golden Ticket

While Dahl wasnt the first to put the words golden and ticket together, his story about the young boy Charlie and his escapades in Willy Wonkas Chocolate Factory (the phrase dates back to 1801). The OEDs definition is: Ticket; one that grants the holder a valuable or exclusive prize, experience, opportunity, etc.

Human bean

A mispronunciation of human being used by the Big Friendly Giant in The BFG. However, the first use of the human bean dates back to British satirical magazine Punch, who used the phrase in 1842.

Oompa Loompa

Another entry originating from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Oompa Loompas were Willy Wonkas workers who became associated with being orange and wearing dungarees thanks to Gene Wilders 1971 film adaptation.

Scrumdiddlyumptious

Originally found in The American Thesaurus of Slang in 1942, scrumdiddlyumptious became a household word following the release of The BFG.

Witching hour

Shakespeare first used witching time in Hamlet, yet it was Dahl who used witching hour in The BFG to signify a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.
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 }}

Legendary rapper Tupac Shakur, known as 2Pac, died in a Nevada hospital 20-years ago having been wounded in a drive-by shooting.

The incident took place on the 13 September 1996, with many of the details about the attack - which took place on Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Las Vegas - remaining a mystery.

Tupacs legacy on the rap and hip-hop world remains prevalent today, particularly when it comes to Comptons own Kendrick Lamar whose To Pimp A Butterfly finished with words from Tupac.

Last year, Lamar paid tribute to Tupac in a moving open letter which can be read below.

I was eight years old when I first saw you. I couldnt describe how I felt at that moment. So many different emotions. Full of excitement. Full of joy and eagerness. 20 yrs later I understand exactly what that feeling was. Inspired.

The people that you touched on that small intersection changed lives forever. I told myself I wanted to be a voice for man one day. Whoever I knew was speaking out loud for you to listen.

Thank you. K.L.

Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked Show all 4 1 /4 Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked 4th: Overly Dedicated (technically a mixtape, but the breakthrough one) - Tracks like 'Michael Jordan' and 'Alien Girl' felt a bit stock and Kendrick had yet to really find his voice and musical style, but you could see the potential there on this debut. P&P is still a banger, the use of samples is so effective in 'Opposites Attract' and on songs like 'Average Joe' he cut his teeth on recounting stories from his gangbanging days with a critical eye. "I don't do black music, I don't do white music, I do everyday life music." - prophetic. Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked 3rd: Section.80 - Kendrick's storytelling really came into its own with this record, telling the stories of beaten girlfriends and prostitutes solicited by corrupt police. Bangers were plentiful ('A.D.H.D', 'Ronald Reagan Era', 'The Spiteful Chant'...) and K-Dot's interest in jazz started to blossom in songs like 'Rigamortus' and the incredible 'Ab-Souls Outro'. "I'm not on the outside looking in / I'm not on the inside looking out / I'm in the dead fuckin' centre, looking around" Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked 2nd: To Pimp a Butterfly - The fact that this is one of the best albums of our generation and yet only Kendrick's second best album (imo) speaks volumes. An unbelievably well-orchestrated odyssey of a record that came as such a fresh and different proposition when we were all busy bumping dancefloor-orientated Drake tracks. 'Alright' became anthemic for the movement against police brutality, and 'u' gave us one of the most tearjerkingly personal insights into the human psyche ever committed to record. Masterful instrumentation pinned down by an intricate flow. I immediately wanted to hear it on vinyl and I don't even buy vinyl. Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked 1st: good kid, m.A.A.d city - You could very legitimately argue that TPAB is Kendrick's finest album to date, but to me, GKMC is just absolute magic. It is such a cohesive record from start to finish, transporting you from wherever you are listening to the streets of Compton, a real 'day in the life'. I'm as rapt listening to 'The Art of Peer Pressure' as a child is to a ghost story, and 'Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst' manages to completely enthrall for all of its 12 minutes. 'Backseat Freestyle', 'Money Trees', 'Swimming Pools' and 'm.A.A.d City' were all people were waiting for to come on at house parties that year, the pitch-shifting verse in the latter being a huge highlight for me. TPAB's politics was overt, but I like how subtly it was embedded in this record.

Lamars last album was originally not titled To Pimp A Butterfly, instead being given a name that could be abbreviated to TuPAC: Tu Pimp A Caterpillar.
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 union meeting has been called to decide whether or not junior doctors will be continuing with their planned industrial action.

The council of the British Medical Association (BMA) will meet to come to a conclusion on whether or not the three week-long strikes planned for this year will go ahead, according to the Telegraph.

The first strike was suspended after warnings from health services they could not cope with such little notice but more are planned from now until Christmas.

A BMA insider told the Telegraph that the strikes could lead to people dying and need to be called off.

We have to find a way out of this, even if we take all night. If we pursue strikes on this scale it will end up killing people. There is no way that we should be contemplating action like this about a dispute on terms and conditions, the insider said.

The BMAs council agreed to four week-long strikes after a tight vote between the 27 voting members.

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

After the first strike was called off, a Department of Health spokesperson said: "If the BMA were really serious about patient safety, they would immediately cancel their remaining plans for industrial action which, as the General Medical Council says, will only cause patients to suffer.
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 }}

Linking terrorist attacks to mental health problems risks stigmatising people who are ill and could dissuade some from seeking help, psychiatrists have warned.

While some lone wolf terrorists are mentally ill, their conditions did not explain their motives, they added.

Writing in The BMJ journal, the three experts also criticised the Governments Prevent counter-terrorism strategy, saying there were concerns that health professionals were being asked to act as agents of the state.

They said mentally ill people can develop delusional beliefs that include political or religious content.

Citing the case of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in July 2011, they said it could sometimes be difficult to distinguish between this and over-valued ideas common in political or religious ideology.

A psychiatric diagnosis where appropriate is important, but it does not explain motivation  diagnosis will interact with prevailing social and cultural concerns, they wrote.

We are too ready to invoke terrorism as the cause of most sudden and unprovoked acts of individual or group violence, and simultaneously to propose mental illnesses as the explanation behind such complex behaviours.

Not only does this unfairly stigmatise the many millions with mental health problems, perhaps deterring people from seeking help, but it can also stand in the way of the careful analysis that must be undertaken in each case before coming to judgment.

The psychiatrists, Professor Kamaldeep Bhui, of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Dr Adrian James, a registrar at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and Professor Simon Wessely of Kings College London, added that no single diagnosis was associated with lone actor terrorism.

In cases where such terrorists have been found to be mentally ill, their diagnoses have included: antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders, schizophrenia, delusional disorder and autism spectrum disorder.

The paper said the Governments Prevent strategy, which includes measures designed to stop vulnerable people from being recruited by terrorist groups, meant health professionals were now obliged to show due regard to preventing people from being drawn into terrorism.

Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Show all 9 1 /9 Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Policemen outside Rouen's cathedral during the funeral of Jacques Hamel, the priest who was killed in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy on 26 July during a hostage-taking claimed by Islamic State group Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two jihadists, both 19, slit Hamel's throat while he was celebrating mass in an attack that shocked France as well as the Catholic Church Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Muslims place flowers and hold a minute of silence in front of the church if Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, western France, where French priest Jacques Hamel was killed on 26 July Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two people hold each other by the new makeshift memorial in Nice, in tribute to the victims of the deadly Bastille Day attack at the Promenade des Anglais Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the truck attack that killed 84 people in Nice on France's national holiday. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, smashed a 19-tonne truck into a packed crowd of people in the Riviera city celebrating Bastille Day Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police work at a site where a Syrian migrant set off an explosive device in Ansbach, southern Germany, on 25 July, killing himself and wounding a dozen others Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed himself and wounded a dozen others in the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had intended to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket Friebe/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police officers walk along train tracks in Wuerzburg southern Germany on 19 July, a day after a man attacked train passengers with an axe. German authorities said they had found a hand-painted IS flag among the belongings of the man, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, who seriously injured four members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong in his rampage Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis German police killed a teenage assailant after he attacked passengers on a train in Wuerzburg, southerg Germany with an axe and a knife on 18 July, seriously wounding three people Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images

This has alarmed many practitioners, who are dismayed at their expected participation in state security and point to the paucity of published evidence for the effectiveness of the programme, the psychiatrists said.

There are also concerns that doctors will be drawn into state interventions that may breach acceptable ethical standards of practice.

Concerns about extremist ideas that could result in actual violence are difficult to quantify, but health professionals, including psychiatrists, are asked to follow their organisational guidance on confidentiality and multi-agency risk assessment and management.

They also wrote that careful media reporting may be required to reduce copycat episodes, especially among those with depressive or pessimistic outlooks.
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 }}

Global design and consultancy firm Arcadis released a report on the most sustainable cities in the world.

Arcadis said it ranks 100 global cities across three sectors of sustainability  "People, planet and profit."

Nestled within the report, entitled "Sustainable Cities Index 2016: Putting people at the heart of city sustainability" is a "profit sub-index" which ranks all the cities in the world in order of wealth and economic sustainability.

It basically examines a city's performance from a business perspective, combining measures that are indicators that can be "broadly be thought of as capturing economic health:"

Transport infrastructure (rail, air and trac congestion)

Ease of doing business

Tourism

GDP per capita

The citys importance in global economic networks

Connectivity in terms of mobile and broadband access

Employment rates

Naturally, cities that are considered major global financial centres ranked highly, as they tend to be most prosperous and have a highly-developed living infrastructure.

The more business is done in these key cities, the more money that flows through that area.

The group said "the profit sub-index is related to cities wealth, as the economic development indicator is the citys gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (essentially, average economic output)."

Take a look at the top 19 cities:

19. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  The Asian city is one of the world's key hubs for Islamic finance and has one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

The Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur (Getty)

18. Seoul, South Korea  The city ranks number one in another key Arcadis sub-index (social sustainability) which shows that Seoul has the lowest levels of income inequality or crime in the world.

17. Copenhagen, Denmark  The Danish city ranks highly across all of Arcadis' indexes, not just this one for economic wealth.

16. Amsterdam, the Netherlands  Arcadis says that "Amsterdam exhibits one of the best balances in the Index across the three pillars of sustainability," and this has translated into economic wealth.

(iStock (iStock)

15. Macau, Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China  It is unsurprising that the city, which is one of the world's gambling capitals and has only a population of around 600,000, made the list for the wealthiest cities.

14. Vienna, Austria  The Austrian city has a thriving tourism sector and some of the best transport infrastructures in Europe.

13. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates  The rich capital of the UAE ranks highly for economic prosperity but low for environmental sustainability.

12. San Francisco, US  The city is a huge tourist destination as well as the home for some of the richest tech workers in the world. However, while San Francisco turns over a huge profit and is a great place to do business, it also has some of the worst levels of income inequality in Arcadis' rankings.

(iStock (iStock)

11. Munich, Germany  It is unsurprising that the capital and largest city of the German state of Bavaria made the list, as some of the country's largest companies are headquartered there.

10. Stockholm, Sweden  Not only is the city the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden, Arcadis says it is one of the leading cities for environmental sustainability.

9. Paris, France  Paris is renowned for an enviable work-life balance despite being an economic powerhouse for the country.

8. New York, US  Arcadis says "New Yorks dynamic culture and environment continues to attract and sustain millions of residents, while serving as an international hub for commerce and politics." However, it warns that the city needs to urgently upgrade its deteriorating transport infrastructure to accommodate the number of people migrating to the city.

New York City might be one of the world's most popular destinations but you can still bag a bargain break (Shutterstock)

7. Prague, Czech Republic Prague's GDP per capita is more than double that of the entire country. It is also one of the richest regions in the EU.

6. Edinburgh, UK  The Scottish city has one of Europe's most prestigious universities and also acts as one of Britain's key financial centres, housing the Royal Bank of Scotland's headquarters.

5. Zurich, Switzerland  Arcadis says the Swiss city "has a strong reputation as a liveable, contemporary city known for its strong focus on environmentalism as well as world-renowned financial institutions."

4. Dubai, United Arab Emirates  The incredibly wealthy city is a financial hub for the UAE but Arcadis says that "Dubai scores lowest in the planet sub-index largely due to energy consumption, pollution and the lack of available green space."

Artificial intelligence: Dubai's Burj Al Arab hotel (EPA)

3. London, UK  The economic powerhouse keeps Britain's capital near the top of the charts but Arcadis says that the Mayor of London has to "persuade global businesses that Londons infrastructure priorities have not changed" post-Brexit vote and the city has to address "the large differential between its people and profit rankings demonstrates."

2. Hong Kong  Arcadis notes that Hong Kong has "world-class infrastructure, vibrant economy, and a well-educated talent pool," which makes it an amazing place to do business at ease. On top of that, Arcadis notes that "despite being located in a typhoon zone, Hong Kong is a world leader in mitigating the associated risks and rarely suffers significant disruption."

1. Singapore  The island nation is the wealthiest city in the world but Arcadis warns that it "also faces an aging population and a need for greater investment in social infrastructure."

Read more:

 This chart is easy to interpret: It says we're screwed

 How Uber became the world's most valuable startup

 These 4 things could trigger the next crisis in Europe

Read the original article on Business Insider UK.  2016. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter.
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 }}

British employers are less optimistic about adding jobs following the UKs vote to leave the EU, a survey has found.

The recruitment agency Manpower said the EU referendum result has failed to dampen companies immediate recruitment plans but jobs could become scarce in the future as the UK job market is skating on ice.

Employers in six out of nine sectors, including construction, financial services and utilities, have reported a fall in job optimism, according to a survey of 2,102 bosses.

The survey, conducted in the weeks following the EU referendum, asked whether companies plan to hire additional workers or cut the size of their workforce in the next three months.

Mark Cahill, managing director at ManpowerGroup UK, said the future of freedom of movement across the EU is of particular concern.

After the initial shock of Brexit, were entering a new phase of prolonged economic uncertainty. As UK businesses are reliant on European talent to help fill the skills gap, we urge the government to prioritise maintaining the free movement of people across the EU during its negotiations, he said.

Many finance operations in the City of London depend on the EU banking passport and the fall in hiring intentions could reflect pessimism over the future of this agreement. Weve already seen Londons competitors like Paris and Frankfurt making overtures to the Citys big finance firms, he added.

The UK claimant count unexpectedly declined in July, according to ONS figures, suggesting the British labour market held up reasonably well in the wake of the Brexit vote.

But economists warned the data may not reflect the full extent of any post-Brexit fall in hiring.

Julys data were never likely to show a sharp deterioration, because the data were collated just three weeks after the vote and employment laws prevent firms from making workers immediately redundant said Samuel Tombs of Pantheon.

Manpowers survey follows a similar report by HR body CIPD and employment agency Adecco which found that the percentage of employers expecting to increase staff levels over the next three months dropped from 40 per cent before the Brexit vote to 36 per cent in July.

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

While many businesses are treating the immediate post-Brexit period as business as usual, and hiring intentions overall still remain positive, there are signs that some organisations, particularly in the private sector, are preparing to batten down the hatches, said Ian Brinkley, CIPD acting chief economist.

Companies ranging from British Airways owner International Consolidated Airlines Group to real-estate broker Foxtons Group have issued profit warnings since the referendum.

On Monday, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has slashed its forecast for economic growth amid predictions the UK faces a sharp slowdown following Brexit.

The BCC warned mounting political and economic uncertainty is likely to hit investment at the same time as consumer spending being stifled, combining to put a brake on investment.
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 }}

New York Police say a Muslim woman whose traditional clothing was set alight in a suspected hate crime was a Scottish tourist visiting Manhattan.

The attack happened on Fifth Avenue as she returned to her hotel from sightseeing, said a police source.

She felt something warm on her arm and saw a man with a cigarette lighter, according to the police complaint, but was able to pat down the flame and suffered no injury.

She was visiting from Scotland but we cannot say more than that, said a police officer, adding that the case had been passed to the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force.

One local report identified the woman as a dentist from Glasgow.

The attack took place on Saturday and no-one has been arrested. Police have footage of the incident and have appealed to the public for help.

It comes as race relations and the treatment of religious minorities are under intense scrutiny during a torrid period of election campaigning.

Social justice activists fear the rise of Donald Trump is the symptom - or cause - of a less tolerant society.

The latest attack comes soon after a Brooklyn woman allegedly beat two Muslim women as they walked with pushchairs.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations described the incident as part of an alarming pattern of attacks on Muslims and Islamic sites in recent months.

We are clearly seeing a spike in attacks on individual Muslims and Islamic institutions in New York and around the country, which should be of concern to all Americans, said Afaf Nasher, director of the groups New York chapter, in a statement posted on Facebook.

It is time for the mayor and the NYPD to put forward the necessary resources to investigate and prevent these attacks on the Muslim community.
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 }}

Edward Snowden has made his feelings known about Theresa May, describing the British Prime Minister as a sort of Darth Vader in the United Kingdom.

The exiled NSA whistleblower compared Ms May to one of film's most notorious film villains over her Investigatory Powers Bill currently undergoing legislative scrutiny.

In its earlier form, the bill proposed by the then Home Secretary would see records of internet browsing activity, correspondence and mobile phone messaging services stored by internet and phone providers for 12 months. It was blocked by the Liberal Democrats.

(Getty) (Getty Images)

The Human Rights Committee has said the bill dubbed the Snoopers Charter is still a significant step forward in its newest form, but privacy concerns surrounding the bulk gathering of data are still a major issue.

The bill will mean police and intelligence bodies will be able to access metadata of those living in the UK without a warrant. Snowden has been a vocal critic of the legislation which he says legitimises mass surveillance, warning the public: Your web records are not like an itemised phone bill, they're like a list of every book you've ever opened.

Most controversial Nobel Peace Prize nominees Show all 5 1 /5 Most controversial Nobel Peace Prize nominees Most controversial Nobel Peace Prize nominees Edward Snowden 2014: The National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has been nominated by two Norwegian MPs for the Nobel Peace Prize, meaning the US contractor currently claiming asylum in Russia could be awarded the same prize accepted by President Barak Obama in 2009 Most controversial Nobel Peace Prize nominees Vladimir Putin 2013: The Russian President Vladimir Putin was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize because the former KGB agent actively promotes settlement of all conflicts arising on the planet, according to the advocacy group that nominated him, at least Most controversial Nobel Peace Prize nominees Barack Obama 2009: US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples, shortly before launching military airstrikes in Libya. The irony was not lost on Mr Obama it seemed, who during a press conference joked: "[Energy Secretary Steven] Chu's the right guy to do this, he's got a Nobel Prize in physics - he actually deserved his Nobel Prize" Most controversial Nobel Peace Prize nominees Henry Kissinger 1973: Henry Kissinger was awarded the prize for his work on the Paris Peace Accords jointly with Le Duc Tho, who turned the Prize down. The American humourist Tom Lehrer later quipped that Kissingers award represented the death of satire Most controversial Nobel Peace Prize nominees Josef Stalin 1945: Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was nominated for his efforts to end World War II. Fellow nominee Vladimir Putin recently said there was no difference between him and Oliver Cromwell, when asked whether he would erect a statue of Stalin in Moscow

Snowden, who has lived in Moscow for the three years since he leaked thousands of classified documents about mass surveillance of citizens and fled the US, told the Guardian her surveillance bill is an egregious violation of human rights, that goes far further than any law proposed in the western world.

Snowden is now setting out the reasons why he believes he should be pardoned by President Obama before his presidency draws to a close. Already an unlikely prospect, it becomes increasingly improbable should Mr Obama be succeeded by Hillary Clinton and almost incomprehensible if his fate is left in the hands of Donald Trump.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and other human rights groups are due to launch a campaign urging the Obama administration to grant Snowdens pardon on Wednesday.
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 }}

North West, the daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, might be three but she has already developed a keen interest in all things fashion related and was recently spotted wearing a Louis Vuitton handbag reported to be worth 750.

The 35-year-old reality TV personality, model and businesswoman tweeted about her daughter's love of fashion on Saturday, explaining that North West picks out the fabrics for her own outfits.

We make all of her clothes so she picks the fabrics at fabric stores! Kardashian-West said.

Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Show all 11 1 /11 Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments 'Selfish' The Queen of selfies actually released a book of selfies in 2015. Yes, appropriately titled Selfish the book provided a timeline from her very first selfie and filled out 352 pages. Getty Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Nude selfie row Kim divided the internet in March 2016 when she posted a nude photo of herself on social media. She addressed the controversy in open essay for International Womens Day and criticised the slut-shaming and body-shaming shed received. Kim Kardashian/Twitter Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments FDA warning Kim was accused of burying a correctional advertisement post on her Instagram in September 2015. After endorsing a morning sickness drug on Instagram previously she received a warning letter from the FDA for not including all the possible side-effects. She posted the correctional ad but in amidst numerous selfies from the MTV VMAs. Kim Kardashian/Instagram Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments 'Vampire facelift' On an episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians, Kim treated herself to a vampire facial which involves being given a facial of your own blood. She vowed never to get a facelift after having the beauty treatment. @kimkardashian Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Covering Vogue Kim and husband Kanye West were chosen by Anna Wintour to grace the cover of Vogue magazine back in 2014. The high-fashion magazine faced a lot of backlash for its choice. Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Released an awful song A woman of many skills, Kim turned her attention to music in 2011 releasing the single Jam (Turn It Up). Despite the help of producer-extraordinaire The Dream, she was called the worst singer in the reality TV universe. Kim later called the song the biggest regret of her life. Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Photo with Amber Rose After her husband Kanye West became embroiled in a Twitter spat with Rose and the father of her child, Wiz Khalifa, Kim shocked the internet by sharing a selfie with Rose. Instagram/Kim Kardashian Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Twitter takedown The usually politie-on-social media Kim took aim at Bette Midler, Chloe Grace Moretz and Piers Morgan for criticising her nude selfie. Twitter Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Brands Indian food digusting Kim apologised after she branded Indian food disgusting on the show. In NO way was this intended as an insult to the Indian people or their culture, she clarified. FilmMagic Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Breaking the internet In 2014 Kim appeared on the cover of Paper magazine baring her naked famous rear. The headline Break the internet seemed appropriate given the huge attention the cover received. Kim Kardashian West's most controversial moments Eating placenta Kim advocates eating the placenta, claiming she had the placenta of both her daughter North and son Saint turned into tablets in an apparent bid to reduce her chances of experiencing post-natal depression.

The critic retorted: These are the kinds of things why people hate you.

But Kardashian-West made sure to explain why she chose to invest in her daughter's fondness for fashion: Because she has a passion [for] fashion and we've given her the tools [to] explore that? Spending time [with] dad at work isn't bad either.

Her friend and model, Chrissy Teigen, chipped in, joking: Babies can't play with tools, you MONSTER!

Recommended Read more Why Kim Kardashian does not hide her psoriasis

Kardashian-West has spoken out about North West's interest in clothes in past. When North West was just 16 months old, she told Elle magazine: She loves fashion. North doesnt really like pink. Like, shes very neutral. She doesnt like prints. She hasnt liked it for her whole life".

Kardashian-West prides herself on shutting down critics on social media and gave a tutorial on the best way to do so on her app last month.

Just do whatever makes you feel good. Like, if you feel like talking sh*t to someone, go for it, she said. I personally take the high road most of the time. Like, I just dont care. So I always think, will I be affected by this tomorrow? Will I be affected by it in a week? Will I be affected in a month? And in a year? And usually the answer is no.
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 hundred years may have passed since Roald Dahl was born, but it remains impossible to imagine a literary world without characters he created such as Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG.

Yet despite him being widely acknowledged as one of the worlds best storytellers, few will use the landmark date to highlight the darker, less child-friendly, side of the novelist.

Dahl appeared to publicly express contempt for Jews on more than one occasion - a fact even some of his biggest fans may not be aware of.

This may have something to do with the fact his more dubious views were omitted from many of his obituaries and there is something of a historical amnesia about his more controversial opinions.

 Roald Dahl's best quotes

In the direct aftermath of his death in 1990, Abe Foxman, the head of the former Anti-Defamation League, an organisation which works to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, criticised The New York Times for failing to touch upon his bigoted views.

Praise for Mr Dahl as a writer must not obscure the fact that he was also a bigot, Foxman said in a letter penned to the editor.

In 1982, he said the Israeli invasion of Lebanon marked the moment when we all started hating the Israelis.

Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, he asked: Must Israel, like Germany, be brought to her knees before she learns how to behave in this world?

In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Willy Wonka from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' Willy Wonka (pictured being played by Gene Wilder in 1967) is a bizarre and slightly unsettling man but who can say no to that delicious chocolate? Getty In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters The Oompa Loompas from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' Despite the characters' questionable evolution from being African pygmies in early editions of the novel, the Oompa Loompas were so fantastical they captured the imagination of generations. The first film's version of the characters are still a popular fancy dress theme. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Veruca Salt from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' The girl who "wants it now" is so incredibly vile she ended up in the rubbish after being judged a bad nut by Willy Wonka's squirrels. An American alternative rock band even took her name. YouTube In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters The Twits from 'The Twits' Mr and Mrs Twit are horrible, hideous and hateful, coating trees with glue to catch birds to at. But the Roly-Poly Bird and Muggle-Wumps teach them a lesson in the end. Quentin Blake/House of Illustration In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters James from 'James and the Giant Peach' James is beaten and starved by his cruel aunts after his parents are eaten by an escaped rhino but eventually gets to go on an adventure with the friends he has always waited for on his magic peach, ending up on the top of the Empire State Building. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Matilda from 'Matilda' Every little girl who read 'Matilda' wondered what it would be like to be the main character. Apart from th abusive family, the telekinesis must be endless fun. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Miss Trunchbull from 'Matilda' Miss Trunchbull, played by Pam Ferris in the 1996 film, is the aunt and headmistress of every child's worst nightmares. Just think of poor Bruce Bogtrotter and that cake. YouTube In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters The Big Friendly Giant from 'The BFG' A 24-foot-tall BFG works giving out good dreams to children and saves them all from people-eating giants. Shame about the snozzcumbers. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters The Grand High Witch from 'The Witches' The Grand High Witch, seen here in the film, must be one of Dahl's most terrifying creations. Turning children into slugs and squishing them, she wanted to destroy them all, she had no hair or toes and claws for hands. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Mr Fox from 'Fantastic Mr Fox' Mr Fox outsmarts those silly farmers, feeding his family by killing their chickens and avoiding starvation. In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters George from 'George's Marvellous Medicine' Some people would say that swapping your gran's medicine with poison isn't ok but that isn't the point here. YouTube In pictures: Roald Dahl's most enduring characters Grandma from 'George's Marvellous Medicine' Grandma was quite a character until she vanished: 'She was selfish grumpy old woman. She had pale brown teeth and a small pucker-up mouth like a dog's bottom.' YouTube

His remarks triggered anger, with some accusing him of antisemitism.

Nevertheless, his subsequent interview with the New Statesman only exacerbated matters.

Dahl said: There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews.

"I mean, there's always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.

I mean, if you and I were in a line moving towards what we knew were gas chambers, I'd rather have a go at taking one of the guards with me; but they [the Jews] were always submissive, he also said.

A later interview with The Independent in 1990, eight months before his death, did little to salvage the situation.

I'm certainly anti-Israel and I've become antisemitic inasmuch as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism, he said.

Despite directing The BFG, which came out in 2016, Stephen Spielberg is another person who, until recently, remained wholly unaware of Dahls controversial views.

I wasn't aware of any of Ronald Dahl's personal stories, the Jewish filmmaker told a press conference during this years Cannes Film Festival when asked about his knowledge of the late author's views. I was focused on this story he wrote.

Nevertheless, Spielberg did not agree that Dahl was an antisemite and said the authors remarks may have been prompted by the desire to say things which got a reaction.
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 }}

Shimon Peres, the former president of Israel, has suffered a stroke, his office has said.

The 93-year-old was rushed to hospital and is currently in a stable condition at the Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Hashomer, where he is receiving medical treatment, the BBC reported.

Mr Peres has been hospitalised twice this year for heart problems and underwent successful minor surgery.

During a career that has spanned seven decades, Mr Peres has held almost every senior position in Israeli politics.

The veteran politician served twice as prime minister and was also president from 2007 to 2014.

Mr Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his part in the Oslo peace deal. The prize was shared with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, who was assassinated in 1995.

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

Current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, took to Facebook to wish Mr Peres a speedy recovery.

Shimon we love you and all your people wishes you get well, he wrote.
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 }}

Vitally needed aid supplies are being stopped from entering the Syrian city of Aleppo by the Assad government despite the terms of the new ceasefire, the Syrian Foreign Ministry has said.

Opening two corridors into the city to allow humanitarian assistance to reach East Aleppos approximately 300,000 besieged inhabitants was a major part of the ceasefire deal agreed with Russia and the US in Geneva last week.

An aid convoy of 30 trucks carrying food, childrens clothes and toys left neighbouring Turkey on Tuesday, Reuters and Turkish media reported.

Syria, angered by Turkeys ongoing military operations against Isis in the north of the country, said that aid from Turkish sources is particularly unwelcome.

Commenting on the Turkish regimes statements highlighting its intention to send materials disguised as humanitarian aid to Aleppo city, the Syrian Arab Republic announces its rejection to allow such materials to enter no matter who provides them without co-ordination with the Syrian government and the UN, the Foreign Ministry said.

Turkey has hampered peace efforts by providing money and arms to rebel groups since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011, they added.

Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them Show all 13 1 /13 Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office

Speaking to reporters in Washington DC on Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that the ceasefire talks had included very specific arrangements with the United Nations to enable the passage of aid to Aleppo.

Aid into Aleppo has been drying up in the last month as Syrian government forces have drawn closer, the United Nations said, and the city is dangerously close to running out of fuel.

The truce between government forces, backed by Russia, and the official Syrian opposition, supported by the US, came into effect on Monday at sundown. While skirmishes have been reported across the country, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights says that no civilians have died since the uneasy peace began.

A previous US and Russian-brokered ceasefire negotiated in February broke down in a matter of weeks.

The long term-prognosis for peace in Syria, which has suffered five years of multi-sided civil war, is still unclear. In an Eid al-Adha address on Monday Assad vowed to retake the entire country from rebel factions.
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 nurse who survived Ebola may not be charged over claims she acted dishonestly.

A misconduct hearing is under way to examine claims that a nurse who survived Ebola allowed an incorrect temperature to be taken as she returned to the UK from Africa.

Pauline Cafferkey, 40, was infected with the virus while working in Sierra Leone in December 2014.

Recommended Read more Ebola nurse investigated over concealed temperature claims

The nurse, from Cambuslang near Glasgow, was accused of allowing a lower temperature to be recorded during checks on her return to Heathrow from the West African country.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) examined the allegations during a two-day hearing and has said Ms Cafferkey's judgement may have been impaired due to her illness and has no dishonesty case to answer, according to the BBC. The misconduct hearing's panel has not formally decided whether to drop the dishonesty allegation or not.

Ms Cafferkey travelled to Sierra Leone at the height of the Ebola crisis to work with the sick.

She returned to London and then travelled on to Scotland before being diagnosed, and spent almost a month being treated in an isolation unit at London's Royal Free Hospital.

The volunteer recovered, but was readmitted to hospital on two separate occasions after suffering complications linked to the disease, and at one stage fell critically ill.

The hearing in Edinburgh was due to be held in public, but Ms Cafferkey's lawyer asked for it to take place in private to protect her client.

The NMC has decided to hear the charges against Ms Cafferkey as well as an agreed statement of facts.

It will be decided later on Tuesday on whether the full hearing should be held in private.

The NMC has the power to strike workers off the professional register.
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 British Government has been ordered to pay a convicted terrorist more than 13,000 because his human rights were violated during police interviews over a plot to attack London.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that 16,000 (13,600) of Ismail Abdurahmans legal costs must be paid at the culmination of a seven-year court battle.

He hid one of the failed bombers who attempted to launch a second round of atrocities on 21 July 2005 for three days, during a nationwide manhunt that left an innocent man dead.

A panel of 17 judges sitting in the ECHRs Grand Chamber found his rights to a fair trial and right to legal assistance had been breached by the Metropolitan Police, who initially questioned Abdurahman as a witness and failed to follow necessary procedure when he became a suspect.

A backpack used to carry explosives made from hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour is shown on the seat of a Northern Line tube train on 21 July 2005 (Metropolitan Police via Getty Images)

The Government [has not] demonstrated compelling reasons for restricting his access to legal advice and failing to inform him of his right to remain silent, a judgement released on Tuesday said.

It was significant that there was no basis in domestic law for the police to choose not to caution Mr Abdurahman at the point at which he had started to incriminate himself.

The ECHR cut Abdurahmans award from the 36,000 his lawyers requested and did not conclude he had been wrongly convicted following the terror plot.

The verdict was agreed by 11 votes to six after lengthy consideration by judges from countries including Britain, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Macedonia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan.

Abdurahman was jailed for eight years for giving shelter to Hussein Osman  one of five extremists who attempted to bomb the London transport network on 21 July 2005.

Just a fortnight after the 7/7 attacks, they made crude devices using hydrogen peroxide and shrapnel that failed to explode when the detonators were activated.

In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings Show all 26 1 /26 In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Security staff and workers from Hyde Park observe a minutes silence at the 7/7 memorial in Hyde Park In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary People pause for a minutes silence at Kings Cross Underground station in London, as Britain remembers the July 7 attacks amid a welter of warnings about the enduring and changing threat from terrorism a decade on In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Members of staff working within the grounds observe a minutes silence to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the July 7 terrorist attacks at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Police officers within the grounds observe a minutes silence to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the July 7 terrorist attacks at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Representatives from 7 Company, Coldstream Guards and HQ London District join the national act of remembrance for the 7th July bombings 10th year anniversary beside the Ministry of Defence Main Building in central London and led by Rabbi Major Reuben Livingstone In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary People observe a nationwide minute's silence on the 10 year anniversary of the 7/7 London attacks which killed 52 people, facing in the direction of a plaque and flowers laid at the location of where a suicide bomber blew themselves up during the morning rush hour on a bus in Tavistock Square In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary George Psaradakis (centre), the driver of the number 30 bus which was blown up in Tavistock Square, looks at floral tributes left close to the scene of the bombings in London In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary People stop to observe a minute's silence at Aldgate underground station, in memory of the victims of the July 7 bombings In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Flowers left by the July 7 memorial plaque at Aldgate Station, London, which names those who were killed in the bombings at the station In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Members of various religious groups pray during a service in St Paul's Cathedral, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the London Bombings in London In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Poppy petals fall from the roof during a service in St Paul's Cathedral, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the London Bombings in London PA In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary A police officer looks at flowers left at Kings Cross Underground station in London In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Flowers left by the July 7 memorial plaque at Aldgate Station In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Boris Johnson and David Cameron place wreathes at the July 7 memorial in Hyde Park, London In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary David Cameron and Boris Johnson take part in a wreath laying ceremony in London's Hyde Park, in memory of the 52 victims of the 7/7 London attacks In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary David Cameron and Boris Johnson during a ceremony at the memorial to the victims of the July 7, 2005 London bombings, in Hyde Park In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary From left: Paul Crowther, Chief Constable, British Transport Police, Adrian Leppard, Commissioner City of London Police, and Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, carry wreathes at the July 7 memorial in Hyde Park In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary People look at flowers left in Tavistock Square In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary 7/7 survivor Gill Hicks (centre) arrives with flowers at Russell Square tube station In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary People embrace outside Edgware Road tube station, as Britain remembers the July 7 attacks In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary A lady carrying flowers leaves Russell Square tube station In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Faith leaders promote religious unity in central London, as Britain prepares to mark 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings in which 52 people were killed In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary Gill Hicks, (L) a survivor of the 7/7 London terror attacks, embraces police constable Andrew Maxwell outside Kings Cross Station in London, during an event to launch a walk by faith leaders promoting religious unity ahead of the anniversary of the attacks In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary A memorial dedicated to the 52 people that were killed during the 7/7 terror attacks in London is pictured in London's Hyde Park In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary The July 7 memorial in Hyde Park In pictures: The 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings 7/7 bombings anniversary A memorial dedicated to the 52 people that were killed during the 7/7 terror attacks in London is cleaned in London's Hyde Park

They then fled Shepherds Bush, Warren Street and Oval Tube stations, as well as a bus in Shoreditch, while a fifth bomber dumped his device without attempting to blow it up.

Hussain, who has since been jailed for life, hid with Abdurahman for three days after the attempted atrocities, sparking a manhunt that resulted in the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes when armed police mistook him for the fugitive.

Even after a lawyer informed him of his right to challenge the prosecutions use of a statement he made without legal advice, Abdurahman did not retract it and used it as the basis of his defence at trial.

But the ECHR found the outcome may have been irretrievably prejudiced by the decision not to caution him and to restrict his access to legal advice.

The Court said that great weight had to be attached to the nature of the offences in Mr Abdurahmans case, a spokesperson added.

It emphasised that the threat posed by terrorism could only be neutralised by the effective investigation, prosecution and punishment of all those involved in terrorism.

In the same hearing, the Grand Chamber threw out appeals by three other men convicted over the terror plot.

Ramzi Mohammed, Muktar Said Ibrahim and Yassin Omar (from the left) (PA)

Muktar Ibrahim, Ramzi Mohammed and Yassin Omar  who were all jailed for life for conspiracy to murder  had launched several claims that their human rights were breached.

Making its final ruling over the case lodged in October 2008, the ECHR ruled by 15 votes to two that Scotland Yard detectives had not violated Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

All three men were arrested in the wake of the failed bombings and questioned in urgent safety interviews without legal advice to establish whether there was any remaining risk to the British public.

The ECHR found that the extreme circumstances created an urgent need to avert serious adverse consequences for the life and physical integrity of the public, namely further suicide attacks which trumped their right to legal advice.

Ibrahim, Mohammed and Omar initially denied any knowledge of the events of 21 July but later admitted involvement, while claiming the bombs had been a hoax and were never intended to explode.

But the ECHR said there was overwhelming evidence the devices were intended to maximise injuries, as well as of the convicts extremist views and advance planning.

 Bus driver recalls 7/7

The judge at the men's original trial, Mr Justice Fulford, described the plot as a viable attempt at mass murder, adding: If the detonators had been slightly more powerful or the hydrogen peroxide slightly more concentrated, then each bomb would have exploded.

He said the failed 21 July attacks were inspired by al-Qaeda and were connected with the bombings that killed 52 people in London two weeks earlier.

The ECHRs judgements will now be sent to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to supervise their execution.

The court, which is separate from the EUs European Court of Justice, sits in Strasbourg to hear cases concerning the 47 signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.

A Home Office spokesperson said: The British courts found that these individuals planned to bring terror to the streets of London just two weeks after 52 people were killed in the July 7 bombings. Had their plot been successful, it would have had devastating consequences.

We are pleased that the Grand Chamber has agreed with the British courts and has rejected the appeal of the three bombers. They remain behind bars where they belong.

But we are disappointed with the Grand Chambers decision in relation to Ismail Abdurahman, who was convicted of helping one of the bombers to evade capture. Although this does not overturn his conviction for this serious offence, we will now carefully consider the implications of the judgment for our procedures in this type of case.
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 }}

Confusion over punctuation led to a potentially vital piece of evidence in the Stephen Lawrence murder case being overlooked for 21 years, a senior investigator has revealed.

Chris Le Pere, the man now leading a fresh investigation into the 1993 killing, said the error led to a bag strap that may have been used as a home-made weapon being wrongly recorded as discovered almost 100 yards away from where Stephen was targeted by racist thugs.

In fact, said Mr Le Pere, the strap was really found just five yards (4.6m) from the bloodstains marking the spot in Eltham, south east London, where 18-year-old Stephen was subjected to an unprovoked attack by up to six youths on April 22 1993.

Mr Le Pere said the error happened because in 1993 someone compiling a formal statement misread the punctuation of notes made at the murder scene.

This led to them mistakenly thinking the strap had been found at the same place as the next clue mentioned in the notes, moving it, in the minds of two decades worth of detectives, about 100 metres away from its correct location at the heart of the murder scene.

Police have now offered a reward of up to 20,000 for details leading to the prosecution of anyone involved in the murder and used a televised reconstruction of the attack to issue a public appeal for information about the strap.

I believe this had been left at the scene by the suspects, said Mr Le Pere, speaking hours before the reconstruction was broadcast on the BBCs Crimewatch.

Police are appealing for information about this bag strap, found at the Stephen Lawrence murder scene (Met Police)

Mr Le Pere added that his belief the strap formed part of a home-made weapon was based on the fact that in 1993 a hefty claw hammer head with a strap attached to it, presumably so it could be swung at people, was found at the home of David Norris, one of the original suspects.

He explained that the bag strap did not have tyre marks on it, suggesting it had been lying in the road for only a short time before being discovered by the original investigators, and added: It has been through a degree of violence. It has a bent buckle and has also been ripped.

The discovery of the importance of the bag strap is the latest twist in a murder investigation that has been dogged by controversy for decades.

The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence Show all 7 1 /7 The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-1-REUT.jpg Neville Lawrence addressing the media last week Reuters The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-2-PA.jpg The now iconic family handout photo of Stephen PA The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-3-BBC.jpg Doreen Lawrence on Panorama last week BBC The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-4-GETTY.jpg Doreen Lawrence speaking to the press outside the Old Bailey last week Getty Images The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-5-ALDEN.jpg Tributes lay at the site of the murder in Eltham, south east London Jason Alden The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-6-ANDREW.jpg Neville and Doreen Lawrence, pictured here in 1997, never gave up the fight to bring the killers of their son Buurman Andrew The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-7-BBC.jpg Stephen Lawrence was buried in rural Jamaica, near his great-grandmother, because his mother Doreen worried that a grave in Britain could be desecrated BBC

Sir William Macphersons inquiry into the failure of the original investigation concluded that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist, leading to a wave of soul-searching and attempts by the force to fundamentally change the way it approached race issues.

There have also been claims that the original murder inquiry was hampered by police corruption, which led last year to the National Crime Agency launching an investigation under the direction of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Mr Le Pere, however, stressed he believed the error over the bag straps location was an honest mistake instead of misconduct.

It has now been established that the strap was found 16 yards from the pavement and just five yards from Stephen's bloodstains (Met Police)

He said that in 1993 a senior crime scene examiner had visited the murder spot and noted the correct location of the strap  in the road, at the junction of Dickson Road and Well Hall Road, 16 yards (14.6m) from the pavement, roughly in line with Stephens own bag, which was seven yards (6.4m) from the pavement, and his blood, which was found 11 yards (10m) from the kerb.

But, said Mr Le Pere, when the time came for writing formal statements, the crime scene examiner was abroad on another investigation and unavailable.

Although the examiner subsequently signed the paperwork, said Mr Le Pere Someone else  I dont know who  wrote up the statements. The scenes examiners would have read [their statements] but they wouldnt have had their original notes to refer to.

Whoever did write the formal statement, said Mr Le Pere, misread the original, on-the-spot notes made by the crime scene examiner.

The punctuation has not been read correctly, said Mr Le Pere. He [the crime scene examiner] correctly described the strap as being at the mouth of Dickson Road. The next exhibit was found outside 290 Well Hall Road  80 to 90 metres [87 to 90 yards] away  and they [whoever wrote the statement] have joined these two exhibits together thinking they were both outside number 290.

Mr Le Pere said he discovered the mistake in 2014 after reading the original crime scene notes. After realising its potential significance he and his police team took 70 samples of the 66cm-long, 1.7cm-wide black leather bag strap for DNA tests using highly sophisticated techniques that werent available to investigators in 1993.

These established that the bag had at one stage owned by a woman, leading to the theory that the strap was either unwittingly given to one of the attackers or taken from a stolen bag.

Since January Mr Le Peres team have conducted DNA tests on friends and relatives of the suspects in the original investigation, and on the seven women who had their bags stolen in Greenwich  the borough containing Eltham  in the seven days preceding the murder.

Mr Le Pere said more than 110 people were spoken to in connection with the strap. Two were not tested for medical reasons, 50 individuals volunteered samples, 12 did not respond to the police and 46 declined to undergo a DNA test.

Mr Le Pere said there was no legal obligation for people to volunteer a DNA sample, and there had been an awful lot of negative responses among associates and relatives of the key suspects.

Requesting information about the original owner of the bag, he stressed that they would be questioned as a witness, not as a potential suspect. There is no evidence to suggest a woman was involved in the murder of Stephen Lawrence, he said.

 Stephen Lawrence's father makes plea following new DNA evidence

Stephen, a talented A-level student with ambitions to become an architect, suffered two deep stab wounds during the attack and was declared dead in hospital.

Neil and Jamie Acourt, David Norris, Gary Dobson and Luke Knight were arrested in connection with the murder in 1993, but only Neil Acourt and Luke Knight were charged with murder.

The case was dropped the same year due to questions over the reliability of witness evidence; a subsequent private prosecution by the Lawrence family also failed.

But in 2012, after the Government dropped the so-called double jeopardy rule, Norris and Dobson were convicted of the murder and sentenced to minimum terms of 15 years and two months and 14 years and three months.

The following year the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said he had no plans to close the investigation and warned those who had joined Norris and Dobson in the attack on Stephen: We are after you.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the incident room on 020 8785 8310 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
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 new programme from Googles tech wing is using the tech giants most obvious strength to debunk Isis propaganda by serving aspiring fighters targeted ads and videos which undermine extremist ideology.

Jigsaw, which was known as Google Ideas up until earlier this year, created the programme dubbed the 'Redirect Method' in collaboration with London start-up Moonshot CVE and Beirut-based Quantum Communications.

It works by using Googles search algorithms - so if a would-be recruit typed in keywords people seeking Isis content usually look for, they will be served adverts and YouTube video playlists in Arabic and English which look pro-Isis on the surface, but are actually links subtly refuting the group's propaganda.

Some of the videos are surreptitiously filmed footage from inside the caliphate, for example, showing long lines outside food shops in Raqqa, Isis defacto capital, or interviews with young people with their faces obscured about what its like being forced to live under the militants' rule. Other videos feature interviews with defectors, or imams who point out Isiss teachings are not in line with Islam.

The eight-week pilot programme collected metadata from 320,000 individuals and tracked when they used 1,700 different keywords. Altogether, the targeted people watched more than 500,000 minutes of the anti-Isis videos.

In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Show all 11 1 /11 In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Women and children celebrating after being freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A man cuts the beard of a civilian who was freed from Isis by the SDF in Manbij on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Women carry newborn babies while running after being freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A woman freed from Isis hugs an SDF fighter in Manbij on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A woman adding her veil to a pile of niqabs burning in Manbij, Syria, after being freed from Isis on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Children celebrating on top of a lorry after being freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A man and child freed from Isis by the SDF in Manbij on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A woman carrying her children walks towards SDF fighters after being freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A woman and child freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij An SDF fighter kisses a crying man who was freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Hundreds of civilians freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters

Jigsaws head of research and development, Yasmin Green, said that the click-through rate for the disguised anti-Isis ads was 70 per cent higher than other advertisements which appeared for the same keyword searches. Googles average click-through rate for ads is between 1.5 per cent and three percent of users.

While it will be hard to effectively measure impact from the Redirect Method, its a innovative new step, considering every time tech firms find and delete propaganda accounts and content, more pop up.

The software can be used to target any kind of online radicalisation: indeed, the next roll-out, focussed on users in North America, will be designed for violent right-wing extremists.

The Redirect Method wont track individuals searching for the Isis keywords, and isnt designed to act as a law enforcement tool (although Google already complies with many government requests for user data).

These are people making decisions based on partial, bad information, Green told Wired. We can affect the problem of foreign fighters joining the Islamic State by arming individuals with more and better information.
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 Harley Street dentist who was wrongly accused of his wifes murder was a victim of domestic violence, an inquest has heard.

Stephen Nicoll, 54, was arrested after his wife, Helen, was found dead at their house in Great Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire in June last year.

Ms Nicoll was found to have died of asphyxiation in a post-mortem examination and Mr Nicoll was arrested and released on police bail.

Following what he described as the worst days of his life, the charges against Mr Nicoll were dropped after police concluded Ms Nicoll had killed herself.

Cambridgeshire Coroners Court heard on Monday that she had been physically and emotionally abusive towards her husband and children.

Ms Nicoll, who was also a dentist, had pushed her children to succeed, especially in music, and had previously been investigated by police over an alleged assault on her eldest daughter, Georgia.

But the court heard her behaviour had become increasingly erratic when a patient of 20 years began trying to sue her in February 2015, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Giving evidence, Mr Nicoll said she had first expressed suicidal thoughts after the complaint was first logged and was prescribed anti-depressants after developing depression and anxiety.

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

She also became increasingly paranoid and accused her husband of having an affair.

Mr Nicoll said the complaint was the single thing that caused her to go into depression, caused her to start drinking heavily and that is what led to her taking her life

If that complaint had not been made we would not be sitting here today.

On the night of Ms Nicolls death, Mr Nicoll said he went to meet Georgia to hand her the keys to the familys flat in London.

Recommended Read more 7 charts which show the UK is failing domestic violence victims

When he returned home at around 11:30pm, he said she had been drinking heavily and accused him of talking to Georgia about him.

He said the attack continued as they went to bed and he was hit with her elbow and kicked in the face.

He claimed she then smashed her head on the bedside table because she was trying to cover her tracks because she saw she had given him a black eye.

Ms Nicoll then sent images of her head to their children and said this is what your father did to me, he said.

During the night he said he heard her get up and turn on some classical music on the radio and when he came downstairs in the morning he found her dead.

DCI Jerry Waite, who led the investigation, said despite the bruise he released Mr Nicoll without charge as he found no inconsistencies in his account.

Assistant coroner Simon Milbun recorded a narrative verdict and said the evidence of her intent...remains unclear.

Anyone wishing to seek information and/ or support can call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 or visit www.samaritans.org.
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 richest one per cent of the UK population now owns more than 20 times the total wealth of the poorest fifth, making the country one of the most unequal in the developed world, according to analysis by Oxfam.

The figures suggest that around 634,000 Britons are worth 20 times as much as the poorest 13 million and the charity urged Theresa May to take action to close the gap between the haves and the have nots.

Oxfam's report suggested that the massive inequality in British society contributed to the vote to leave the European Union and called for sweeping reforms to big business.

The report said: The UK is one of the most unequal developed countries in the world. Three decades of high-level inequality have had a profound impact, leading many people to believe that they have little stake in society and to feel locked out of politics and economic opportunity.

Whatever your views on Brexit, the referendum brought divisions within our country to a head, with many people expressing distrust and disconnection with political processes and voting for change in the hope that it would improve their economic position.

The Oxfam report used data from Credit Suisse which showed the richest 10 per cent of the UK population own over half of the country's total wealth (54 per cent) with the top one per cent owning nearly a quarter (23 per cent), whilst the poorest 20 per cent share just 0.8 per cent of the country's wealth between them.

 Fear and Loathing in Great Britain

The paper welcomed the prime minister's recognition of the need to shake-up corporate culture and suggested a four-point action plan for her to adopt.

The measures included delivering on Ms May's pledge to give a greater voice to workers through greater representation on company boards.

Recommended Read more Scottish income inequality surges as rich get richer

Under the plans firms would be given incentives to improve the skills of their workforce - particularly in sectors which employ large numbers of women such as retail, childcare and social care - while the welfare system would be redesigned to encourage claimants to undergo training and education in an effort to increase their wages.

The third element of the plan would see pay ratios adopted to curb excess salaries at the top and tackle low wages at the bottom. Under the proposals, firms should aim to meet a 20:1 ratio so the most highly-paid person at the firm can earn no more than 20 times the salary of the lowest-paid worker.

Finally, Oxfam called for action to tackle corporate tax avoidance and end UK-linked tax havens.

Rachael Orr, head of Oxfam's UK Programme, said: Inequality is a massive barrier to tackling poverty and has created an economy that clearly isn't working for everyone. The UK is one of the richest countries in the world, but it's a nation divided into the haves and have-nots.

Whilst executive pay soars, one in five people live below the poverty line and struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table.

Stressing the need for corporate reform she said: Oxfam welcomes the fact Theresa May is embracing this agenda. Addressing the practices of unscrupulous business needs to be a central part of the government's plans to even up the economy.

That means closing wage gaps, incentivising investment in companies' staff and making sure they pay their fair share of taxes.

A government spokeswoman said: Work is the best route out of poverty and since 2010 we've made real progress: 2.7 million more people in our country have a job, we've given a pay rise to a million of the lowest paid with the National Living Wage - and we've overhauled the welfare system so it pays to work rather than claim benefits.

Take the power back: Art and social inequality Show all 5 1 /5 Take the power back: Art and social inequality Take the power back: Art and social inequality 172463.bin British Museum Take the power back: Art and social inequality 172464.bin Take the power back: Art and social inequality 172465.bin Leeds Museums and Galleries (City Art Gallery) U.K / The Bridgeman Art Library Take the power back: Art and social inequality 172466.bin The British Library Take the power back: Art and social inequality 172467.bin Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre

But there is still much more to do, not just for those on the margins of society, but for families up and down the country who are just getting by.

With Theresa May as prime minister, we will do what is needed to keep our economy strong and build a country that works for all of us, not just the privileged few.
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 }}

Teachers are allowing girls to suffer sexual harassment and violence in school by dismissing it as just banter, MPs warn today.

An alarming report by a Commons committee condemns what it calls the shocking scale of the problem, with pupils routinely touched sexually and called slut or slag.

The investigation found that 59 per cent of girls and women aged between 13 and 21 had faced some form of sexual harassment at school or college within a 12-month period.

Most worryingly, schools are accused of failing to report incidents, or take them seriously  so that sexual harassment and even violent behaviour is too often accepted as the norm.

Maria Miller, the Conservative chair of the Commons Women and Equalities Committee, said: Our inquiry has revealed a concerning picture. We have heard girls talk about sexual bullying and abuse as an expected part of their everyday life  with teachers accepting sexual harassment as just banter and parents struggling to know how they can best support their children.

It is difficult to explain why any school would allow girls to be subjected to sexual harassment and violent behaviour that has been outlawed in the adult workplace.

Ms Miller warned the failure to crack down was fuelling the lad culture, adding: The evidence shows it is undermining the confidence of young women.

The report says:

29 per cent of 16 to 18-year-old girls say they have experienced unwanted sexual touching at school;

71 per cent of 16 to 18-year-old boys and girls say they hear terms such as slut or slag used towards girls at schools on a regular basis;

girls are suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, self-harm, drug use and depression and anxiety as a result  and skipping classes;

there is an alarming inconsistency in how schools deal with sexual harassment and violence  with a lack of guidance and support for teachers;

neither schools watchdog Ofsted nor the Department for Education has a coherent plan to tackle this issue and to monitor the scale of the problem;

and "widespread access to pornography  often more extreme than adults realise  is increasing the number of incidents.

A panel of Girl Guides, which gave evidence to the inquiry, said: As young women, many of us are still in school and experience or witness sexual harassment, from groping to cat calling on a daily basis.

Its humiliating and frightening and affects what we wear, where we go, our body image and our confidence to speak out in class.

Yet its often dismissed as banter or a compliment and we are told we are overreacting or being over sensitive. It needs to stop.

The report urged the Government to give schools clear national guidance and require Ofsted to assess how well they are recording, monitoring, preventing and responding to incidents of harassment and violence.

Schools must collect and publish data on reports of sexual harassment and violence  while the police should record the incidents it investigates.

And the Government was also advised to make sex and relationship education compulsory in all primary and secondary schools, instead of allowing independent academies to opt out if they wish.

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

Kevin Courtney, the National Union of Teachers' general secretary, said: "Government education policies hinder schools' ability to tackle sexual harassment and sexual bullying effectively by leaving no time for pastoral care or personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) within the curriculum or school day.

"Support and guidance from the Department for Education about how to best mitigate the effects of sexual harassment and sexual violence is urgently required."

The NSPCC spokesman said the problem had been "swept under the carpet" for years.

A spokesman for the charity said: "We know through calls to Childline that sexual harassment, and even abuse, in schools is something that many pupils up and down the country suffer on a daily basis but for years it's been swept under the carpet.

"We welcome the inquiry and its recommendations but now want to see action taken and robust measures put in place.

"We hope the Government will focus on measures that prevent abuse as well as prioritising the reporting of it. Otherwise it becomes a case of trying to close the stable door once the horse has bolted."

A Government spokesperson said sexual assault was an offence and "must always be reported to the police".

"Schools should be safe places and fortunately crime is rare but no young person should suffer harassment or violence," the spokesperson said.

"We trust teachers to promote a culture of tolerance in the classroom and to take swift action to deal with this sort of behaviour.

"This is backed up by mandatory sex and relationship education in all maintained secondary schools. We will consider the recommendations of this report carefully.

QUOTES FROM THE REPORT

I guess the thing that people would say they see the most, and we see as well, is slapping of bums and flicking [lifting up] of skirts. That is a common thing that people see in schools <p>Student</p>

The thing is that [boys] dont see it as harassment. They just see it as being with their friends, having fun, calling girls sluts  stuff like that. So whereas the girl may feel upset or less confident, they see it as, Im just having fun with my friends if I slap a girls bum  So if a teacher says, What are you doing? and tells them to stop, they are just like, Im just playing around <p>Girl</p>

It took the school eight days to permanently exclude the boys. The head teacher had to jump through hoops to achieve it. Our daughter was never interviewed by a social worker. Instead, the head teacher had to do the initial interview, with us, her parents conducting a more detailed interview <p>Parent of a six-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted</p>

In the Year 7 and 8 playground I hear constant sexual language, particularly from the boys. I have witnessed boys being very rough with girls. The girls seem resigned to this treatment and when I have spoken to them about it they say none of the teachers listen. If I challenge the boys they seem to feel it is acceptable and just banter <p>Lunchtime supervisor</p>

I was in a school where a teacher told me they had recently had a rape case involving a 14-year old male perpetrator. One of the teachers had asked him why didnt you stop when she was crying?, and he had replied: Because its normal for girls to cry during sex <p>Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project</p>
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 }}

Tuesday was the hottest September day in over a century  with a temperature of 34.4C recorded in Kent.

The high was reached on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Met office, making it the warmest day of the year so far.

It meant parts of the UK were hotter than forecasts for Mexico City, Los Angeles and Madrid.

In London, temperatures on some Tube trains were reported to have hit 35C - five degrees warmer than the limit after which it is illegal to transport cattle under EU regulations.

The last time it was so hot in September was in 1911.

A north-south divide was widely expected, with thunderstorms hitting the North while the South basks in hot summery sunshine.

Health warnings were issued in southern parts, but yellow warnings of rain are now in place for northern England and south-east Scotland.

The Met Office said: "A very warm and humid air mass is in place across much of the UK, with conditions marginal for thunderstorm development this afternoon as temperatures rise.

"Northern England and southeast Scotland are currently judged the most likely area to see scattered thundery downpours, but even here many places will have no more than light rain.

Britain basks in sunshine as heatwave hits UK Show all 6 1 /6 Britain basks in sunshine as heatwave hits UK Britain basks in sunshine as heatwave hits UK Rex Britain basks in sunshine as heatwave hits UK Rex Britain basks in sunshine as heatwave hits UK Rex Britain basks in sunshine as heatwave hits UK Rex Britain basks in sunshine as heatwave hits UK Rex Britain basks in sunshine as heatwave hits UK Rex

"However, where storms do form, there is a lot of moisture and energy available, with the risk of more than 30mm of rain in around an hour, large hail and frequent lightning."

The yellow warnings are valid from 2pm to 11pm.

Joe Mulligan, head of first aid education at the British Red Cross, said: "Most heat disorders occur because someone has been over-exposed to heat or has over-exercised for his or her age and physical condition.

"Simple steps such as avoiding exposure to the hottest time of the day, drinking plenty of fluids and even simply wearing a hat on hot days can all make a real difference."
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 }}

You may wonder what it has to do with you if two or three electoral wards move from one constituency to another at the other end of the country.

The answer is that it matters quite a lot.

The electoral map of Britain is like the image on a TV screen, formed of a million little pixels. If you change a few, the tone of the picture changes. Change some more, you get a whole new image.

Here are five reasons why the Boundary Commissions proposals published today could mean you see changes in whats happening around you:

1. It could change your MP

Whether you like - or even know - your MP does not change the hard fact that they speak for you and make decisions on your behalf in Parliament.

If your MP spoke out for military action in Syria, constitutionally speaking they did so on your behalf. If they voted against tax credit cuts, they helped to kill them using constitutional power drawn from representing you.

When the Boundary Commission alters a constituency, they add or take away areas that vote a particular way. A seat that currently is safe for the Tories, for example, may suddenly have Lib Dem voting wards thrust into it, altering its balance and making it more likely to return a Lib Dem MP at the next election.

So if you like your MP, or like what they stand for, you should take note of whether changes published today affect them.

2. It will change the kind of people with whom you're represented

The idea behind the Commissions proposals is to create seats with an equal number of registered voters. Backers say having an unequal number, means votes in one area count for more than another.

But critics argue that looking only at registered voters  more likely to be older, middle class, more affluent and employed  does not give an accurate reflection of an area.

The dilemma is demonstrated with the example of an urban seat, neighbouring a county-rural one. A traditional urban seat has a population that is poorer, more reliant on state support, with more complex social problems and more likely to vote Labour.

The rural seat next door could be more affluent, have higher levels of employment, a higher rate of home-ownership and be more likely to vote Tory.

While both seats have an equal-sized population, the urban one may have fewer registered voters. So to equalise the two, wards from the rural seat, which has many registered voters, are moved to the urban seat.

It may mean the urban seat which was a Labour stronghold, now becomes a Tory constituency, despite having the same number of Labour voters that it had before the changes. That means it will have different representation in Parliament.

3. It could leave the Tories in government for longer

The Conservatives say the reforms are also needed to cut the cost of politics and Parliament.

But opposition parties claim a by-product of the changes, which will see an overall cut in the number of MPs from 650 to 600, will be to give the Conservatives an electoral advantage.

No-one knows yet exactly what the impact will be, but estimates from Labour suggest it could mean the party loses 23 MPs, while the Tories lose 17.

If you support the Tories, you might think thats a plus. If you have campaigned against policies, like welfare cuts or tuition fees for example, then reducing the size of the parliamentary opposition to the Conservatives mean those policies are more likely to remain in force.

4. If you're not registered to vote, you didn't have a say before. Now you really won't count

Registering to vote is essential if you want your voice to be heard. Some Labour MPs claim that under the current system, there are seats their party holds with a low number of registered voters, but large unregistered populations that benefit from state-help and still need representing.

That situation was allowed to pass, but with the requirement that each constituency is redrawn with a set number of registered voters, that large unregistered population would be written out of the script, Labour says.

If you are not registered, you can no longer rely on other peoples votes to maintain or ditch your MP.

5. Even if you registered to vote in the last seven months, you still don't count

Around two million people have done the right thing and registered to vote in the last seven months. But because the Boundary Commission is using data from December 2015, if you are one of those people, you still will not be counted in the way the boundaries are redrawn.

In Lewisham, a Labour dominated area of London, the number of registered voters has increased by almost a fifth since December. But all those extra voters will not get equal representation in Parliament under the new system, with registered voters in a seat where there has been no change since Christmas.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Theresa May could strike a deal to both keep the UK in the Single Market and control immigration if her party would let her, Nick Clegg has claimed.

The former deputy prime minister said he was convinced the rest of the EU would accept some form of "emergency brake" on migrants if Britain agreed to "play by the rules" of that market.

But, he said, pro-Brexit Tory MPs were more obsessed by restoring sovereignty than they were about immigration  which left the prime minister in an impossible position.

Mr Clegg said: She is sitting on a ticking time bomb which will, at the very least, paralyse this Government when it comes to making these vital choices about Brexit.

Speaking to Westminster journalists, the ex-Liberal Democrat leader also predicted a bust-up would see Trade Secretary Liam Fox quit the Cabinet in the next 18 months, to side with fellow Brexit hardliners on the backbenches.

Dr Fox would realise he doesnt have a job as the mirage of free-trade deals with non-EU countries evaporated  with even Australia only offering informal consultations twice a year.

And Mr Clegg suggested a Government of national unity would be needed in five years time  after the Conservative party was broken on the rocks of this Brexit negotiation.

Highlighting the further impact of a likely economic slump, he said: There might be quite a lot of people out there saying please put the country first.

We have seen stuff happen, over the past few months - in a day, in an hour, in a week - that people had, portentously, predicted would never happen.

 Nick Clegg on election defeat: 'The first thing I do is reach for a cigarette'

On Brexit, Mr Clegg dismissed the consensus that the rows in Government centred on trying to stay in the Single Market, while controlling freedom of movement across the EU.

Instead, it was between the Tory belief in open markets, while they say, in the next breath, we must return control to parliament and parliament must be completely sovereign.

If, he argued, the dispute was over immigration, then it would be perfectly possible with a bit of ingenuity, with a bit of diplomatic footwork, with political goodwill across Europe, to paper over that tension.

EU members would agree some style of emergency brake on migration and in return, the UK would seek to play by the rules of the Single Market.

 Theresa May questioned on single market

However, he said Brexit Tories wanted full sovereignty, which was impossible while staying in the Single Market. Mr Clegg said: Those two things are mutually incompatible  it is impossible to resolve. You cannot paper over that tension.

Therefore, while Mrs May appeared to be in an impregnable position  with Labour in disarray - the major fireworks would be in the Tory party over the next few years.

Mr Clegg also said the Article 50 process would only cover Britains exit from the EU, with suggestions that our future trading arrangements could be decided in that two-year period a total pipe dream.
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The Government should not trigger Article 50 to leave the EU without first consulting Parliament, an eminent committee of peers has said.

The House of Lords Constitution Committee said it would be constitutionally inappropriate and set a disturbing precedent for the Government to plough ahead with a major change without explicit parliamentary approval.

The report puts Parliament on a collision course with Theresa May, who signalled in August that she would not give MPs or peers a vote on the issue. Downing Street said at the time that there was no legal obligation for a vote, though Parliament would have its say in a debate.

The reaction by the peers against the perception that Parliament is being sidelined comes after the Secretary of State for Leaving the European Union said yesterday that some details of negotiations would be kept confidential from Parliament.

Clearly there is a need for Parliament to be informed without giving away our negotiating position. I may not be able to tell you everything, even in private hearings, David Davis had told the House of Lords EU select committee.

 Donald Tusk asks Theresa May to start Brexit process 'as soon as possible'

I can entirely see accountability after the event, thats very clear. In advance, I dont think its possible for parliamentarians to micro-manage the process and wouldnt give us an optimum outcome for the country.

Commenting today on the Constitution Committees report Lord Lang of Monkton, who chairs the group, said assent could be sought either by passing legislation or tabling a simple resolution.

Theresa May has refused to give Parliament a vote on Article 50 (PA)

The referendum result was clear and it is right that the Government are preparing to take Britain out of the EU. However, our constitution is built on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and the decision to act following the referendum should be taken by Parliament, he said.

Parliament should be asked to approve the decision to trigger Article 50  a decision which will start the formal process of the UK leaving the EU and set a deadline for the UKs exit.

Parliaments assent could be sought by means of legislation or through resolutions tabled in both Houses of Parliament. An Act of Parliament would give greater legal certainty and could be used to enshrine the constitutional requirements required by Article 50, allowing for the setting of advantageous pre-conditions regarding the exit negotiations to be met before Article 50 could be triggered.

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

A resolution could be simpler and quicker to secure but might not provide the same watertight legal authority. We consider that either would be a constitutionally acceptable means of securing parliamentary approval for the triggering of Article 50.

Parliament and the Government will need to work together to ensure that the UK achieves the best possible outcome when it withdraws from the EU. It is therefore important that Parliament plays a key role in scrutinising the Brexit negotiations once Article 50 is triggered.

We all want the negotiations to produce a deal that works for both the UK and the EU, and Parliament must be involved in holding the Government to account in delivering that.

At the beginning of August, Conservative peer Baroness Wheatcroft said the Lords could derail or delay the process of leaving the European Union. She suggested there was a majority in the House of Lords for remaining in the EU.

A spokesperson for the Department for Exiting the European Union said: The Government's position is very clear. This is a prerogative power, and therefore one that should be exercised by the Government.

Parliament voted by a majority of six to one to give the British people the decision on our membership of the EU in a referendum.

As the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU made clear to Parliament this week, the triggering of Article 50 is the beginning of the process of exit and we expect Parliament to be fully consulted and engaged throughout.
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The Government has refused to rule out cutting or removing some workers rights when Britain leaves the European Union.

The EU currently ensures UK workers have the right to annual leave, daily rest breaks, the right to equal treatment for agency workers after 12 weeks service, and protection against unfair dismissal upon a transfer of undertakings, according to research by the House of Commons Library.

Business minister Margot James was asked by Labour MP Melanie Onn on Tuesday whether she could guarantee that all employment protections currently enjoyed by British workers will be maintained post-Brexit.

The minister however declined to give a direct answer to the question, instead stating: Employment protections are an absolute priority for this Government.

Senior members of Theresa Mays Cabinet have long advocated weakening employment protections. Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, in 2012 described some workplace rights as unsustainable, while Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary, said during the EU referendum campaign that there would be benefits to slashing the burden of EU employment legislation.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has also said that the Government should scrap the EU social chapter.

In 2012 a Government-commissioned report into employment law, the Beecroft Report, proposed giving employers the right to fire any employee without giving a reason. It was however blocked by Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable, who was at the time in Coalition.

Former shadow business minister Chuka Umunna has previously written to Ms May to ask her to guarantee employment rights will not be changed.

Speaking after the House of Commons exchange on Tuesday, Ms Onn, who asked the question, said: I am really worried that the Government are not offering assurances to workers in Britain that their rights wont be watered down or removed after we leave the European Union.

In government the Conservatives have continuously undermined workers rights, and its clear that several members of Theresa Mays cabinet see Brexit as an opportunity to scrap protections which they have always been opposed to.

People in Britain voted to leave the EU, but I dont believe they did so because they wanted more insecure contracts, or a less safe workplace.

Ms Onn, a former trade union organiser, has proposed a private members bill called the Workers Rights (Maintenance of EU Standards) Bill which would enshrine existing EU rights into British law.

The row over employment rights comes as the House of Commons Constitution Committee urges the Government to give Parliament a vote on Brexit. Theresa May says the trigger of Article 50 to start the negotiation process is in fact a prerogative power and does not require parliamentary approval.
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 hardline plan to curb immigration after Brexit put forward by the think tank Migration Watch will be studied by the Home Secretary, the group has been told.

The scheme  under which only highly-skilled workers with well-paid job offers would be allowed into Britain  would aim to slash EU immigration by as much as four fifths.

That cap would be raised if necessary to plug skill gaps identified by the Migration Advisory Council, meaning it would be decided by Government  not business.

Recommended Read more Net migration busts through Government targets

Migration Watch believes this could cut net migration by 100,000, because 80 per cent of those who came to the UK to work in the last ten years were low-skilled.

However, imposing work permits on EU citizens would breach EU free movement rules and almost certainly eject Britain from Europe's single market for goods and services.

Nevertheless, at the weekend Home Secretary Amber Rudd confirmed she was considering work permits, after the idea of an Australian-style points-based system was rejected.

Ms Rudd is expected to be briefed on the plan by Lord Green, Migration Watch's chairman, next week. Whitehall sources told The Sun newspaper that Theresa May was keen on it.

Lord Green told The Sun that the Government risked getting bogged down in a quagmire if it tried to make immigration concessions for an EU trade deal.

He said: The UK's service sector will obviously be affected by the loss of an endless supply of cheap labour from Europe.

However, the present work force will be here for several years yet so employers will have time to adjust, perhaps by increasing wages and conditions for British workers.

Significantly, Migration Watch had some success in influencing Ms May's immigration policies when she was Home Secretary.

Its blueprint would offer free movement for EU tourists, students, pensioners and other self-sufficient people as long as that was reciprocated.

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

A further deep cut to immigration would then be achieved by a much tougher regime against non-EU students who fail to leave at the end of their studies.

Net immigration currently stands at a near-record 327,000 a year. Ms Rudd has accepted the target to reduce that to tens of thousands  but warned it would take time.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The UNs highest authority on human rights has hit out at the Syrian government for refusing to let observers monitor the countrys civil war.

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights opened the 33rd sitting of the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday by naming and shaming countries that he said had refused to open themselves up to international scrutiny.

His greatest criticism was reserved for Bashar Al-Assads Syrian government, who had said had tried to evade independent scrutiny despite repeatedly filing allegations about other parties in the civil war.

Syria, despite repeated requests, has granted no access to OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights) or to the Commission of Inquiry since the crisis began in 2011, the commissioner said in his opening speech.

This is a state led by a medical doctor and yet is believed to have gassed its own people; has attacked hospitals and bombed civilian neighbourhoods with indiscriminate explosive weapons; and maintains tens of thousands of detainees in inhuman conditions.

Words cannot convey how profoundly I condemn this situation. The Government, which is responsible for some of the gravest violations on record in the history of this Council, has regularly sent notes verbales to my Office reporting abuses by armed groups. But it offers no possibility whatsoever for independent scrutiny.

Bashar al-Assad pictured in January 2012 (Picture: Getty)

Other countries singled out by the Commissioner included Venezuela, which Mr Al Hussein said had denied visas for UN teams, Turkey, which he said had blocked access to the Kurdish south east, and Israel, which has a long record of refusing to cooperate with mandates for the UN to access the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Bahrain was criticised for harassment and arrests of human rights defenders and political activists, while the Philippiness new president Rodrigo Duterte was rapped for his new war on drugs that has seen thousands of people summarily shot on sight without any judicial process.

In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Show all 9 1 /9 In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish tanks driving to the Syrian-Turkish border town of Jarabulus yesterday AFP/Getty In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish-backed gather on the outskirts of Jarabulus, Syria, ahead of an offensive on 24 August 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish army tanks make their way towards the Syrian border town of Jarabulus, Syria August 24, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish soldiers return from Syria to Turkey with tanks after a military operation at the Syrian border as part of their offensive against the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Syria, Karkamis district of Gaziantep, Turkey, 25 August 2016 EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish army tanks and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition forces move toward the Syrian border as pictured from Karkamis, Turkey, AP In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish tanks on their way to the Turkish-Syria border during an operation against Isis on 24 August 2016 EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Syrian opposition fighters being transported during preparations to enter Jarabulus in Karkamis, Turkey, on 24 August 2016. EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria An air strike hitting Isis-controlled territory near Jarabulus, near the Turkish border, on 24 August 2016. EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria A Turkish army tank and an armoured vehicle stationed near the border with Syria. Turkish media reports say Turkish artillery has launched new strikes at Isis targets across the border AP

The United States was criticised for "evasive tactics" on the pleged closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, while North Korea was accused of refusing to engage on the specifics of a visit despite ostensibly extending an invitation.

Countries that were praised for providing access to the UN include the Republic of Congo and Yemen, despite allegations of serious violations in both.

Britain, the US and their allies have reached an ambiguous relationship with Mr Assads government in recent months. The UK came close to bombing Mr Assads ground forces in 2013  refraining only after the Government lost a parliamentary vote.

Britain is now bombing Isis, which is fighting against Mr Assad, but is not actively supporting Syrian government forces  nor bombing them. Former Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond previously repeatedly stated that Mr Assad had to leave office for a peaceful solution to the conflict. However, the new Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, has previously called for the UK to work with the Syrian regime.

A joint investigation by The Independent and Campaign Against the Arms Trade published earlier this month found that in 2010 Britain had sold arms to 39 of the 51 countries ranked as not free on the Freedom House Freedom in the World Report, and 22 of the 30 countries on the UK Governments own human rights watch list.

A full two-thirds of UK weapons over this period were sold to Middle Eastern countries.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The bloody collapse of Libya  which triggered a refugee crisis and aided the rise of Isis  is blamed today on David Camerons blunders when he intervened to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi.

A damning report by MPs condemns the 2011 military campaign for lacking both accurate intelligence and a coherent strategy for the aftermath of removing the dictator.

The disastrous results were political and economic collapse, tribal warfare, the refugee crisis, widespread human rights abuses and the rise of Islamic State (IS) in North Africa, fuelled by weapons abandoned by the Gaddafi regime.

 What will David Cameron do next?

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee concludes: Through his decision-making in the National Security Council, former prime minister David Cameron was ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.

The scathing verdict comes just one day after Mr Camerons sudden announcement that he will leave Westminster immediately, breaking an earlier pledge to stay on as a backbencher.

In the report, MPs say:

* They saw no evidence that the UK Government carried out a proper analysis of the nature of the rebellion in Libya.

* There was no defined strategic objective  which meant a limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into a policy of regime change by military means.

* There was no attempt to pause military action when Benghazi was secured and seek a deal to protect civilians and reform Libya, with the UK instead focused exclusively on military intervention.

* Mr Cameron should have used Tony Blairs contacts and influence to try to secure Gaddafis exit and a negotiated solution.

* Many Libyans had taken part in the Iraq insurgency and fought with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, which meant the rise of militant extremist groups should not have been the preserve of hindsight.

* There was insufficient action taken to secure weapons abandoned by the Gaddafi regime, which contributed to the turmoil and increased terrorism across the region.

* Mr Cameron should have been required to issue a formal ministerial direction to intervene, noting the Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Richards, dissociated himself from that decision in evidence to the inquiry.

* France led the campaign, noting: UK policy followed decision-taking in France.

Just six months after sending in the RAF and the Navy, in alliance with France  after the regime threatened to attack the rebel-held city of Benghazi  a triumphant Mr Cameron was mobbed by cheering Libyans on a visit with French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The two leaders pledged support for the future, proclaiming: Your friends in Britain and France will stand with you as you build your country and build your democracy for the future.

But the promise proved empty as Libya collapsed into a power vacuum, allowing Isis to seize control of part of the country and people-smugglers to send migrants towards Europe in rickety boats.

Barack Obama has called Libya the worst mistake of his presidency, apparently criticising Mr Cameron personally for the UKs role in allowing the country to become a s*** show.

In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Isis fighters parade through in Sirte in 2015 In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Islamic State (IS) group jihadists on the outskirts of Libya's western city of Sirte AFP/Getty In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte A photo of a billboard in Sirte, Libya, listing seven rules for women's clothing, saying they must be loose-fitting and undecorated HRW/social media In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Isis militants process down a street in the coastal city of Sirte in Libya this week; the group has heralded Libya as its strategic gateway to attack Europe AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte An Isis lecture on Sharia at the Ouagadougou complex in Sirte, Libya, in 2016. HRW/social media In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte A sign reading "The city of Sirte, under the shadow of Sharia" as smoke rises in the background while forces aligned with Libya's new unity government advance on the eastern and southern outskirts of the Islamic State stronghold of Sirte on 9 June. Reuters In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Fighters loyal to Libya's GNA prepare to launch attacks against Isis as they continue their resistance on the outskirts of the western city of Sirte Getty In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government are seen during clashes with jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) on the western outskirts of Sirte on June 2, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government fire during clashes with Isis around 14 miles west of Sirte on June 2, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Libya

Crispin Blunt, the Committees Conservative chairman, said: The UK's actions in Libya were part of an ill-conceived intervention, the results of which are still playing out today. Other political options were available. Political engagement might have delivered civilian protection, regime change and reform at a lesser cost to the UK and Libya.

The international community must now get behind the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord to prevent the country descending into all-out civil war, Mr Blunt added.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman said: The decision to intervene was an international one, called for by the Arab League and authorised by the United Nations Security Council. Muammar Gaddafi was unpredictable, and he had the means and motivation to carry out his threats. His actions could not be ignored, and required decisive and collective international action. Throughout the campaign we stayed within the United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

After four decades of Gaddafi misrule, Libya undoubtedly faces huge challenges. The UK will continue to play a leading role within the international community to support the internationally recognised Libyan Government of National Accord.

We have allocated 10million this year to help the new Government to restore stability, rebuild the economy, defeat Daesh [Isis] and tackle the criminal gangs that threaten the security of Libyans and exploit illegal migrants. HMS Enterprise and HMS Diamond are both currently deployed to support the EU naval operation to tackle illegal migration, people smuggling and arms trafficking.
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 }}

Outsourcing giant Serco are happy to lose 145m on its contract to provide housing for asylum seekers, rather than risk jeopardising their other contracts with the Government, its CEO said.

Rupert Soames, grandson of Sir Winston Churchill and brother of MP Sir Nicholas Soames, faced questions from MPs over accusations of providing housing to asylum seekers in the UK that was not fit for habitation.

But Mr Soames said his company was losing more than 100 on every asylum seeker for whom they provided housing, a number running into the tens of thousands.

Recommended Read more Government urged to help 400 Calais migrant children

We procure asylum seekers for 350 a month, and we provide for them for 450 a month, Mr Soames said.

Our starting point is not the cost. It is whether it meets Home Office standards. Within those standards we seek to get the best value we can.

Were not going to make money on this contract. Its going to lose 145m over its life and we will pay that. We feel very passionately about looking after asylum seekers well.

Mr Soames, who was wearing a Serco embossed shirt for the occasion, said his company had underbid on the contract in the first place, which was then increased in scale as the number of asylum seekers coming into the UK had risen so rapidy, including 41 per cent last year.

One of the things that is galling [about this criticism], is that we have said will spend the money, we are looking after over stayers about our own expense, looking after people where Home Office funding has been cut off. We have been looking after a double amputee in Scotland for two years. Its quite galling to be implied that were rapacious, money grabbing, the standard is horrific, slum accommodation, and so on. This contract at an operational level is working very well.

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

Mr Soames was brought in to the company last year, after a series of scandals, notably the claim that it had overcharged the government for the electronic tagging of prisoners, knocked it out of the FTSE 100 and cost its previous chief executive his job.

It also emerged that staff at a prison it operated in New Zealand were running fight clubs. Losses have stabilised since Mr Somess appointment, and it has since signed contracts to run the Caledonian Sleeper train service from London to the Highlands.

In 2014 it emerged that asylum seekers were being housed in Glasgow in what were described as slum conditions. It was estimated by a second housing provider, Compass, that there are only forty areas in the UK where accommodation can be found that is cheap enough to house asylum seekers within the budgets set by the home office.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The Conservatives have been accused of trying to rig the UKs electoral system after a Tory-commissioned review threatened to strip an estimated 23 seats from Labour.

Jeremy Corbyns party branded the proposals unfair, undemocratic and unacceptable, while campaigners claimed they were based on flawed data and would skew democracy.

The Labour Leaders own North London seat is set to be axed, while leading moderates such as Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna faced changes that could leave them vulnerable to de-selection.

But doubt has been cast over whether the plans will ever come into force, after they also put a higher-than-expected number of Tory seats at risk.

Theresa Mays MPs were said to be shocked by potential Conservative losses which could rise to 17  the exact number of her Commons majority.

Among prominent party figures at risk are ex-chancellor George Osborne and top cabinet Brexit backers David Davis and Priti Patel.

David Cameron tasked the Boundary Commission to reduce the number of MPs and equalise the registered voters in every remaining constituency.

Ministers claim the drop from 650 to 600 MPs will save taxpayers 66m over five years. But it is the political, not the financial impact, causing waves.

The changes are likely to hit Labour hardest, with more seats abolished or merged in strongholds like London, Wales, the North-East and North-West than in Tory-dominated shires. The figures for how the parties will fare under the new boundaries come from estimates by the Labour party.

Mr Corbyn said he was unhappy about the changes, which will now be consulted on, but "very confident" about the future. Despite the abolition of his seat, it is unlikely he would not be selected in the new Finsbury Park & Stoke Newington constituency largely formed from his current North Islington base.

But Shadow health secretary Diane Abbott, a leading Corbyn-backer, could be pitched into a selection battle with Blairite MP Meg Hillier in North London as another new seat contained large parts of their existing patches.

Big Labour names like Streatham MP Mr Umunna, Normanton MP Yvette Cooper and Stoke Central MP Tristram Hunt, all appeared to be facing a big enough change in their seats to mean they may have to undergo a selection battle. That could mean large numbers of new Corbyn-backing members having a say in their futures.

Labour shadow minister Jon Ashworth said the plans are unfair, undemocratic and unacceptable".

He added: These changes are not about fairness to voters, they are about what is best for the Tory Party and they must not go ahead.

The Commission must rethink and ensure that no elector loses out.

Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics Show all 8 1 /8 Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics Smith told the Hollywood Reporter: As I look at the political landscape, I think that there might be a future out there for me. They might need me out there." Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics Kanye West At the 2015 VMAs Kanye said: "I have decided in 2020 to run for president" before dropping the mic and leaving the stage. Getty Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics Lindsay Lohan Lohan announced on Instagram she may run for President in 2020, citing Queen Elizabeth, Barack Obama and Kanye West as her inspirations. John Phillips/Getty Images Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics Angelina Jolie The actress told ITV news she would enter politics if she felt she could 'really make a difference' STR/AFP/Getty Images Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics Ben Affleck Jennifer Garner told Allure magazine she wouldn't be surprised if Affleck went into politics but right now 'he feels he can do more good for people politically from outside the system'. The comments were made in 2013, before the couple separated. Getty Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics Alec Baldwin Baldwin told Piers Morgan in 2012 he would like to enter politics but "what I would run for and when it would be [is] something I'd have to give a lot of thought." Jemal Countess/Getty Images for DGA Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson The former WWE star told Moviefone in 2012 that one day he will 'impact the world through politics' Getty Celebrities who have hinted at entering politics George Clooney One celebrity who has ruled out ever entering politics is Clooney. He addressed rumours he was running for office during a press conference where he said: 'I just think it's hell' and questioned 'who would ever want to live like that?' Getty

Both the Greens and Ukip faced potentially losing their only MP under the changes. The Liberal Democrats claimed they may retain all those they currently held.

But while Labour losses were expected, not many MPs foresaw the impact on Tory seats. Boris Johnsons Uxbridge and South Ruislip patch will be substantially redrawn, but the Foreign Secretary appears well-placed to secure the Conservative nomination for the seat taking its place.

Brexit Secretary David Davis is not as lucky, with his Haltemprice & Howden constituency in East Yorkshire cut in two, while International Development Secretary Priti Patel  another prominent Brexiteer  also faced big changes.

Conservative chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin said the party would follow a policy of "no colleague left behind" to minimise the disruption to sitting MPs.

He added: Boundaries should be drawn up in an impartial and independent way so I welcome the Boundary Commissions proposals to implement Parliaments instruction to ensure equally-sized constituencies. Without these reforms, MPs could end up representing constituencies based on data that is over 20 years old."

One Conservative source told The Independent that MPs at risk of being dumped would be offered sweetener jobs outside Parliament to ensure a smooth transition.

But a Tory backbencher said: Colleagues are shocked, there are a number of outcomes not expected.

There are a number of people unhappy now, who were not unhappy the last time changes were suggested. Frankly, Im not convinced this is ever going to happen.

Another noted that the Maidenhead seat of Mrs May remains as it is, while Chancellor Philip Hammond's Runnymede and Weybridge is also largely unchanged.

The Electoral Reform Society slammed the changes, pointing out that they were based on numbers of registered voters from December 2015, despite some two million having registered since then. Many of the new voters have signed up in Labour held areas.

Chief Executive Katie Ghose claimed that if up-to-date figures had been used some areas would need an extra MP to adequately represent them. She also argued that the seats should be based on the actual population in an area rather than registered voters.

She said: Areas with the lowest levels of registration are often those that already have the least voice in politics.

Young people, some ethnic minority groups and those in the private rented sector are all less likely to register to vote than others. That makes many of them effectively cut out of the new political map.
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 }}

According to local media, Ziad Hassan Qenawy cried when he entered the courtroom. I want to keep playing!, he begged, as his father carried him on his shoulder to the dock. After the verdict, Qenawy told his lawyer I want chocolate, and a Pepsi! His lawyer bought sweets for him from a nearby supermarket.

Qenawy is three years old. Last month, a Cairo court sentenced him to four years and three months in prison for theft and resisting the authorities. His lawyer appealed the conviction, and the case continues. In a recent court appearance, Qenawy entered the courtroom asleep on his lawyers shoulder.

Even by the recent standards of Egypts judiciary  this is the second time a toddler has stood trial in Cairo this year, though three-year-old Ahmed Mansour Qorani was fortunate enough to have his life sentence overturned in February  such a turn of events would be absurd enough, but 2016 was, by presidential decree, to be the Year of Egypts Youth.

In January, President Sisi promised a renewed focus on education and employment, as well as dialogue between his administration and the countrys restive younger generations. After nine months of this year, its not clear what Sisis promise has delivered. Instead, the futures of young Egyptians are being swallowed up by stifling, paranoid military rule.

Endemic corruption has wrecked an education system which now languishes 139th out of 140 countries for the quality of its secondary education, according to The World Economic Forums Global Competitiveness Report for 2015-16. Youth unemployment continues to run at more than 40 per cent. Theatres and libraries across Cairo face closure, or are already torn down, as the arts are suppressed in a bid to curtail dissent.

Waiting to be arrested

Yassin Mohamed is unremarkable among his generation. 21 years old, formerly a student, he has spent the last four years in and out of jail for his part in demonstrations, first against the presidency of Mohammed Morsi and then against military rule. In a video posted to Facebook last month, he described his life in the Year of Youth: I was released by presidential pardon seven months ago, only to learn that I have been charged in another case. I have been on the run ever since.

Egyptian security forces chase a student who was protesting after the cancellation of exams, in front of the Ministry of Education (Mohamed Metaab)

I sit every day in my room in my prison uniform, he says, waiting to be arrested. I cant live in Egypt, and I cant leave, the video continues. Should I spend the rest of my life running? Or should I spend it in prison?

Although Mohameds videos went viral across Egyptian social media, as an activist he was not a household name. A feature of 2016 has been the renewed effort to detain prominent activists around whose names and stories young Egyptians rally. One of those was 22-year-old Sanaa Seif, scion of a famous family of campaigners and rights lawyers. Also freed by presidential decree in late 2015, she was returned to jail within six months, convicted of insulting the judiciary.

Protests

Among those iconic figures, the leaders of the venerable April 6 Youth Movement are now the old guard. Formed in 2008, April 6 was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 2011 and outlawed in 2014. Its leaders were the core of what Amnesty once called Generation Protest  now Generation Jail.

Until this year, Zizo Abdo, 33, a rally organiser and sloganeer for April 6 since 2008, was one of the last free members of that generation and a hero to Egypts young activists. He was arrested on 15 April, following protests against Sisis gift to Saudi Arabia of the strategically important Red Sea islands Tiran and Sanafir. They questioned me for 12 hours. As I left, a policeman called after me, Zizo! Ill bring you back soon!

A week later, Abdo met his friend, rights lawyer Malek Adly, for coffee. At the time of writing, that meeting was Abdos last action as a free man.

Arrested students after the protest in front of the Ministry of Education in June (Yasmin Eliwa)

From his cell, Abdo remembers the moment, leaving the cafe, when four private cars surrounded us. Men in civilian clothes circled us, pointing guns at us. They attacked us, started beating us. I was pistol-whipped across the back of the head, and pushed inside one of the vehicles. They blindfolded me, and the car began to move.

Now, Abdo appears before a judge every15 days to renew his pre-trial detention. Last month, a judge asked him, why are you still here? There is nothing to connect you to any of these crimes. Nevertheless, Abdo was returned to prison, to a cell he calls the Refrigerator. His friends blame the state security service, the SSI, for intervening in the legal process.

Malek Adly previously described the role of the courts under the military government as to ensure citizens oppression... and to make this injustice look like robust legal procedure. After two months in solitary confinement, during which time, according to his wife, prison authorities refused him a bed, Adly was released on bail in late August.

Corruption

A new generation of protesters, secondary school students, came to prominence during Junes summer exam period, emboldened by the Ministry of Educations embarrassing game of cat and mouse with an online persona known only as Chao Ming.

Operating through social media, Chao Ming caused the cancellation or postponement of a string of Egypts final secondary school exams, which ran throughout June, by leaking test scripts and answers before or during the exams.

Whoever is behind the Chao Ming identity, they are driven by frustration at corruption and cronyism within Egypts education system. Chao Ming has publically called Egypts education system absurd, and is demanding improved pay for teachers and a sweeping overhaul of the national curriculum: until I see improvement in the education system, the leaks will continue.

Predictably, the first response of the military administration was a wave of arrests, of students and ministry officials. That was in early June  but the leaks have continued. I feel sorry for the people they have arrested, read a somewhat cryptic Facebook post, but Ive said it before: you cant arrest me. I dont live in Egypt. Chao Ming is an idea, and ideas never die.

Frustrated by the governments inability to secure its own exam system, hundreds of students protested outside the Ministry of Education in July. Security services dispersed the gathering with tear gas and rubber bullets. As of August, Chao Ming is inviting students across the country to make contact via Facebook for preview copies of the forthcoming supplementary exams.

One organisation filling the gaps in Egypts broken education system is the Al-Karama Libraries Initiative. Through five free libraries, located in some of Cairos poorest suburbs, Al-Karama offers books, internet access, educational resources and exhibitions, guided by the principle that a well-informed and educated person has the ability to understand and defend his rights, and to help develop his community.

The initiatives flagship Khatwa Library, opened in the suburb of Dar al Salam in 2012, holds training sessions in creative writing and photography, and has sponsored both art exhibitions and publications by local youths. It should come as no surprise, then, that in the Year of Youth, the regimes moves against a prominent human rights activist, Gamal Eid, could cause the closure of Khatwa, and the initiatives other four libraries.

In 2011, the Roland Berger Foundation named Eid, head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), the winner of their Human Dignity Award. The award comes with prize money of EUR330,000  money which was used to launch and maintain the Al-Karama Initiative.

Earlier this year, Egypts judiciary reopened 2011s notorious civil society case, which accuses a number of human rights NGOs within the country of illegally receiving foreign funding. The prize money with which Eid opened five free-to-use libraries across Cairo is now the focus of the public prosecutor, and should the seizure of Eids assets be confirmed by a Cairo court later this month, the Al-Karama libraries face closure.

Cultural Damage

The people have lost faith in the governments promise, laments Ali Quandil, an actor and comedian who campaigns for the reopening of theatres and cultural centres across Egypt. They dont think the government will deliver. With a smile, Quandil adds: But Im still waiting.

The promise in question was the gift of the abandoned Fardaws Theatre in central Cairo. Its an old building, abandoned for years. I told them I could have it operational in 24 hours, and officials promised me I could get started in a week  that was two years ago. They said the President himself signed my application! Then I never heard from them again.

Diplomatically, Quandil suggests that the government seem to be unaware of the value of theatre, or its importance to young people, but this mothballing is the regimes attempt to stifle dissent, regardless of the lasting cultural damage it entails.

We have plenty of groups willing to perform, but they dont have a stage, he says. We have an audience, but again, there are no shows anymore. What performances do remain are strictly vetted for partisan content. The demolition in June of one of Cairos most iconic theatres, El-Salam, is testament to a collapse in performing arts across the capital, and the country.

While libraries face closure and famous theatres lie abandoned, awaiting demolition, Sisi has ordered the construction of twelve new prisons since coming to power in 2014. For now, at least, the military administration is happier making gifts to foreign powers than to its own citizens.

In April, Sisi met with members of Egypts National Council for Women to discuss plans for the Year of Egyptian Women in 2017. The following month, prominent female activist Mozn Hassan was banned from leaving the country amidst investigations by the state into Nazra, the womens rights organisation she heads. If the Year of Youth is any kind of blueprint, Egypts women should brace themselves for a challenging time ahead.

@bobtrafford

@mays_ram




Last night we looked at the "rabid" support Senor Trumpanzee is getting in some of the desperate parts of Kentucky, including in Perry County, which has the lowest life expectancy of any county in the U.S. "When you ain't got nothin'," in the words of Kris Kristofferson "you ain't got nothin' to lose." How could these people be so stupid, is not the appropriate response, at least not for many of them. Especially when the highest ranking official in the state, Governor Matt Bevin is stirring people up towards bloodshed if his man Trumpanzee loses in November. You can watch Bevin in the video above at the Values Voter Summit GOP HateFest in DC last week. As Peter Montgomery explained at RightWingWatch.org, "numerous speakers at last weekends Values Voter Summit suggested that the American republic might not survive a Hillary Clinton presidency. During the Obama administration it has become almost routine to hear far-right leaders talk about the possibility of armed revolution against the federal government. But it was still jarring to hear a sitting governor suggest that America might only survive the election of Hillary Clinton through bloodshed."





But Bevin, a deranged teabagger and notorious hate-monger took it to a new level for a sitting governor, actually inciting violence and murder if Trumpanzee loses, as seems likely.

Bevin recounted a story from his college days about how he confronted a professor who he said mocked Christianity, the way liberals always do: They try to silence us. They try to get us to shut our mouths. They try to embarrass us. Dont be embarrassed. We were not redeemed to have a spirit of timidity. He urged young people, Be bold. Theres enough Neville Chamberlains in the world. Be a Winston ChurchillThere are quite enough sheep already. Be a shepherd.



American freedom, Bevin said, was purchased at an extraordinary price, saying that one and a half million Americans have given their lives in uniform. America is worth fighting for. America is worth fighting for, ideologically.



I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we dont have to do it physically, said Bevin. But that may in fact be the case. He explained that it might take the shedding of the blood of tyrants and patriots for America to survive a Hillary Clinton presidency.

When the Civil War broke out, Abraham Lincoln asked Kentucky's governor, pro-slave lunatic Beriah Magoffin to supply troops to help put down the rebellion. Magoffin responded that he would "send not a man nor a dollar for the wicked purpose of subduing my sister Southern states." Kentucky officially declared neutrality in the conflict but in the next elections pro-union forces elected veto-proof majorities in the legislature and 9 out of 10 congressmen. Eventually Magoffin resigned in disgrace and the South invaded Kentucky and were repulsed with much blood spilled. Do you think Bevin sees himself as a latter day Magoffin? Read his own words:





Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview and they said, Do you think its possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think its possible that well be able to survive? That we would ever be able to recover as a nation? And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. But I will tell you this: I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something, that we through our apathy and our indifference have given away.

Does anyone doubt Trump is a spark for divisiveness and even dissolution? Could Hillary have had Bevin's attitude in mind when she talked about the deplorables last week?








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 American Civil Liberties and Amnesty International, two of the largest human rights organizations in the US, are calling on President Barack Obama to pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Both organizations, along with the Human Rights Campaign and a host of others, are planning to announce the Pardon Snowden campaign on Wednesday coinciding with the release of Oliver Stones biopic.

"I think Oliver will do more for Snowden in two hours than his lawyers have been able to do in three years," Ben Wizner, Mr Snowden's lawyer and director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told Motherboard at the films premiere last week.

At Wednesday's press conference, Mr Snowden will speak via video link from Moscow where he's been confined since the leak.

While Mr Obama has commuted the sentences of more prisoners than any other president, hes only granted 70 presidential pardons since his time in office, according to Department of Justice statistics.

Unless the government is willing to consider charging him with something appropriate, there's not going to be a trial if we have anything to say about it. That doesn't mean there couldn't be some other kind of agreement, Wizner told the outlet. We think the proper response to Edward Snowden shouldn't be what the punishment should be, it should be how to thank him. And until that's the case, he is living safely where he is.
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 man thought to have stolen a big rig filled with what appeared to be hazardous materials led police on a three-hour pursuit along the freeways of Southern California before surrendering quietly at a truck stop on Tuesday afternoon.

The driver of the rig noticed it had been stolen from outside his hotel in Barstow, California at around 6am. The authorities were alerted and the vehicle tracked using a GPS device in its trailer. At around 10.30am a California Highway Patrol officer spotted the truck, whose driver refused to pull over and sped onto a freeway with several CHP cruisers giving chase.

At one point the pursuit was being watched by some 120,000 people via Facebook Live. A logo on the side of the rig indicated that it belonged to a hazardous waste management company, Advanced Chemical Transport, but officials said the materials inside were neither flammable, explosive, acidic, biologic nor radioactive.

The truck passed through San Bernardino and Riverside counties, and by 1.30pm it was reportedly on California Highway 62 close to Joshua Tree National Park. The drivers identity has not been disclosed, but he reportedly spoke with officers by phone, telling them he didnt want to go back to jail.

Eventually, the man pulled into a truck stop and gave himself up.
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 found a two-year-old boy driving a battery-operated toy car down the street in South Carolina in the early hours of the morning.

The woman notified the police, who contacted social services and took the child to the sheriffs office.

Three hours later, small tire tracks led authorities to his parents house, who said they had put him to bed the previous evening at 9pm.

Recommended Read more Man hits neighbour with baseball bat to stop him killing his daughter

The surprised parents said their son must have got up while they were sleeping, unlocked the door and driven away in his diaper and jogging trousers.

Major Allen Dailey of the Sumter County Sheriffs office told Fox News that this kind of incident had happened before in the neighbourhood, but luckily the children had never been hurt.

He warned parents to lock their doors at night, and keep the lock or chain out of the childs reach.

If a small child like that gets out like that it could get hit by a car, or an animal or a dog could attack them and of course we dont want that, he said.

We want our children to be safe.

The parents will not face criminal charges after their adventurous two-year-old left the house without their permission.

Officials said they had never responded to any prior incident at that address, and continue to investigate the incident.


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 teacher has been accused of having sex with a female student two decades after the alleged incidents were reported to have happened.

Kimberly Siracuse, 48, pleaded not guilty to three counts of sexual battery relating to incidents which were said to have occurred between May and June 1997.

Siracuse, a social studies teacher at Ashland High School in Oregon, was arrested while having dinner at the nearby Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant.

Her attorney, James Mayer, criticised the desire to make it a very public event when there was absolutely no flight risk.

Police confirmed an investigation into Siracuses conduct had been ongoing for several months - she was placed on leave from Ashland High in March this year.

In court Mr Mayer argued officers could have sent out a summons and that the public arrest seemed to be a bit unnecessary, before reminding the judge Siracuse had no history of criminal activity.

Siracuse broke down in tears before the start of her hearing according to the Mansfield News Journal, and was ordered to have no contact with students at Ashland High or any school staff.

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 March Ashland police confirmed they were in the process of investigating Siracuse for engaging in conduct unbecoming to the teaching profession and she was removed from her teaching role, following a complaint from a member of the local community.

She continues to work from home and is paid by the school, while a long-term substitute handles her classes.

Judge Ronald Forsthoefel set a date for the trial of March 14 2017, and said Siracuse must pay $15,000 if she wishes to leave county jail.
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 retired fertility doctor in Indianapolis is facing charges after lying to authorities about using his own sperm to inseminate patients without their knowledge, court documents allege.

Donald L Cline, 77, appeared at Marion Superior Court on Monday and is facing two felony counts of obstruction of justice after he allegedly told investigators that he never used his own sperm on patients, The Indianapolis Star reports.

According to the probable cause affidavit, Mr Cline told six adults that he had donated his own sperm nearly 50 times since the 1970s. Donations were made with live sperm in the 70s and 80s rather than frozen samples, making the case against Mr Cline somewhat unclear.

Sean Tipton, a spokesman for The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, told The New York Post that the association did not have any guidelines regarding doctors using their own sperm during the time period.

Mr Cline previously told his patients that the sperm was from medical residents or students, but they didnt believe his story.

One of the adults who believe they are Mr Clines children took a saliva-based DNA test and found that she was related to at least eight other people in the private company's database. Two others learned their mothers were patients of Mr Cline and found that they were related to 70 of his relatives.

"I can emphatically say that at no time did I ever use my own sample for insemination," Mr Cline wrote in his legal response to the siblings complaints. He also accused them of slander and libel.

Mr Cline pleaded not guilty at Mondays hearing and is expected back in court on October 17.
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 Canadian judge has apologised for asking a victim in a sexual assault trial why she did not keep her knees together.

Federal court judge Robin Camp - who faces losing his job over his comments - testified at a rare disciplinary hearing before a five-member committee.

Complaints were made to the committee of Mr Camp's handling of a sexual assault trial in 2014.

A 19-year-old homeless woman said she was raped over a bathroom sink at a house party.

Mr Camp asked at the time why the woman did not skew her pelvis to avoid forced penetration. He said: Why couldnt you just keep your knees together? CNN reported.

Speaking before the committee, Mr Camp said: "My concept of what I did wrong has grown."

"I'm very sorry that, on reflection and rereading what I said, that I intimidated her using facetious words."

He admitted he was biased but claimed had taken steps to reform.

"I can't guarantee that I'm not prejudiced in other areas... I have learned to be constantly vigilant against it," he said.

He added: "I recognize that I'd made a number of vulnerable people miserable. I was very unhappy with myself. The person I most want to apologize for is the complainant."

At another point during the trial he said: "Some sex and pain sometimes go together...that's not necessarily a bad thing."

On the subject of sex in general he said, "Young wom[e]n want to have sex, particularly if they're drunk."

Recommended Read more Bill Cosby declared blind as judge sets June 2017 trial date

According to court transcripts, Mr Camp questioned the womans morals and suggested her attempts to fight off her alleged attacker were feeble. He incorrectly referred to the woman throughout the trial as the accused.

Mr Camp ultimately acquitted the defendant, but his ruling was overturned on appeal and will be retried in November.

Speaking at Mr Camp's hearing, the woman said: He made me hate myself and he made me feel like I should have done something ... that I was some kind of slut, Canadian Press reported.

She added: He made comments asking me why didnt I close my legs or my ankles together... What did he expect me to say to something like that?

I hate myself that I let that happen and I let that judge speak to me that way.

The council considering Mr Camps role said the judge "engaged in stereotypical or biased thinking in relation to a sexual assault complainant."

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

Mr Camps daughter, Lauren, wrote a letter of support for her father in which she revealed she too had been the victim of a sexual assault.

In the letter she condemned her fathers words as disgraceful and said that she found his remarks painful.

But she said he had gained empathy and understanding since making the remarks and urged the committee to allow him to keep his job.

Testifying at the hearing, Mr Camp said at the time he was not familiar with Canadian criminal law. He had spent two decades practising law in South Africa previously.

The review committee will make recommendations to the full judicial council, who will decide if Mr Camp remains in his role as a federal judge.
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 local mayor in Honduras has been arrested on suspicion of directing a number of assassins to murder rivals and having connections to organised crime.

Delvin Salgado, from the town of El Negrito in the north of the country, was detained at gunpoint as Honduran police continue to tackle corruption and links to organised crime among mayors and politicians.

Prosecutors said Mr Salgado had been detained for assassination and illicit affiliation, including the hiring of hitmen, and accused him of being involved in two murders in 2013 and 2014.

The arrest of Mr Salgado was one of over 100 raids carried out by police across the country on the same day as a number of suspected drugs traffickers, arms dealers and human traffickers were taken into custody.

At least 35 of the country's mayors and deputy mayors have been investigated for illegal activity and corruption since the police crackdown began last year.

At the same time, over 300 senior police officials have been fired and over 10,000 investigated for suspected links to a range of crimes.

The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world Show all 20 1 /20 The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 1. North Korea The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 1=. Somalia The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 3. Sudan Ashley Hamer The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world Afghanistan Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 5. South Sudan The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 6. Iraq Reuters The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 7. Turkmenistan Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 8. Uzbekistan Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 9. Libya Getty The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 10. Eritrea Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 11. Yemen Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 12. Venezuela AFP/Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 13. Haiti Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 14. Guinea-Bissau Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 15. Angola Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 16. Syria Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 17. Burundi Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 18. Zimbabwe Getty The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 19. Myanmar Getty Images The 20 'most corrupt' countries in the world 20. Cambodia Getty Images

I swear on my mother and father who just passed away, that I have nothing to do with this, Mr Salgado said outside his home in El Negrito on the morning of his arrest, according to local reports.

In January, Hondurass President Juan Orlando Hernandez unveiled a new international anti-corruption body to deal with criminal networks within the countrys judicial systems.

The Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras was established after a report detailed how organised crimes infiltration of weak and corrupt state institutions had helped make Honduras one of the most violent countries in the region.

Honduras is said to have one of the highest murder rates in the world, with 60 killings per 100,000 inhabitants every year.
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 photograph has gone viral of a 12-year-old boy standing up to a protest march by thousands of anti-LGBT protesters.

The boy made his stand in the middle of the empty street in front of the 11,000 people marching on Saturday in Celaya in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

The protesters were voicing their opposition to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's plan to legalise same-sex marriage across the country.

Journalist Manuel Rodriguez, who took the image, later spoke to the boy to find out why he took such bold action.

According to Regeneracion, the boy said: "I have an uncle that is gay, and I dont like people hating him."

The photograph has been compared with the 'Tank man' image of a young Chinese student standing in front of a line of tanks in Tiannanmen Square in 1989.

Currently, same-sex marriage is legal in the capital Mexico City and nine of the 31 Mexican states.

Despite the protests led by the likes of Frente Nacional por la Familia (National Front for the Family), President Nieto has continued to back same-sex marriage.
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 }}

Barack Obama is set to veto a bill that would allow the survivors and victims of 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabia.

In his daily briefing to reporters, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said: "It's not hard to imagine other countries using this law as an excuse to haul US diplomats or US service members or even US companies into courts all around the world.

"I do anticipate the president would veto this legislation when it is presented to him."

On Friday, the House of Representatives approved a bill passed by the Senate in May which would allow the families of the nearly 3,000 people who died in the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Pennsylvania on 11 September 2001 to sue for damages.

Fifteen of the 19 men who hijacked four planes and flew them into targets in New York and Washington in 2001 were Saudi citizens, though Riyadh has always denied having any role in the attacks.

 9/11 remembered 15 years on

Families of the victims have filed various lawsuits directed at members of the Saudi royal family and charities associated with them, accusing them of allegedly supporting terrorism.

But these moves have been blocked by a 1976 law which gives foreign nations immunity from lawsuits in US courts.

In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush was visiting Emma E Brooker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida as news of the attack on the World Trade Center broke In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 The president and his staff, including Press Secretary Ari Fleischer (L) were then brought to a holding room at the school, where he prepared to address the nation In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush was then rushed onto Air Force One and was flown to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He watched television coverage of the attacks from his office on the plane In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush talks on the telephone at the General Dougherty Conference Center at Barksdale Air Force Base In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush is seen with his senior adviser Karl Rove at Barksdale Air Force Base In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 The president with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card at Barksdale Air Force Base. Before leaving the base, the president held a press conference at which he said, Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 The president was consoled by Lt Col Cindy Wright of the White House Military Office aboard Air Force One. After leaving Louisiana, the president was flown to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska before he headed back to Washington In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush arrived at the White House Presidential Emergency Operations Center around 7 pm. Here he is shown with his wife, First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 At 8:30 pm, the president addressed the nation from the White House. In his speech, he set the tone for the wars to come in Afghanistan and Iraq In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 Ive directed the full resources for our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice, the president said. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 The presidents speech on the teleprompter In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 Immediately following the speech, the president had a national security meeting with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and others

The bill is designed to create an exception if foreign countries are found at least partially responsible for terror attacks which kill American citizens within the US.

Under the US Constitution, Mr Obama has 10 days to veto the bill or it automatically becomes law but congressional aides claim the measure has enough support, two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House, for them to override the Presidential veto for the first time since Mr Obama came to power in January 2009.

But Mr Obama could also use what is called a pocket veto - where he sits on a bill under the Congressional session ends - as lawmakers are due to leave Washington this week in order to prepare for the national elections on 8 November.
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 }}

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin has said American conservatives may have to resort to physical violence to protect their values from liberalism, should Hillary Clinton emerge victorious from the November presidential election.

I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we dont have to do it physically, Mr Bevin, a Republican, told an audience of social conservatives at the Values Voter Summit in Washington DC on Saturday. But that may, in fact, be the case.

Recommended Read more Donald Trump woos evangelicals at Washington summit

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence also spoke at the weekend summit, and their appearances overshadowed Mr Bevins, whose provocative remarks only started to gain attention after being more widely shared this week.

In his speech, he harked back to a quote by Thomas Jefferson, the third US President, who wrote in 1787 that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Mr Bevin said: Somebody asked me yesterday Do you think its possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think its possible that well be able to survive, that wed ever be able to recover as a nation? And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ.

I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood of who? The tyrants, to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren.

Mr Bevin, who succeeded a two-term Democratic Governor last year after standing on a Tea Party-style platform, is not the first Republican to suggest a violent response to a Clinton presidency.

Last month Mr Trump suggested that a Supreme Court containing judges nominated by Ms Clinton might abolish the Constitutions Second Amendment, which enshrines the right to bear arms. If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks, Mr Trump said. Although, the Second Amendment people. Maybe there is. I dont know.

On Monday Mr Bevin released a statement claiming his comments had been misconstrued and were, in fact, a reference to Americans serving in the military. We have thousands of men and women in uniform fighting for us overseas and they need our full backing, he said. We cannot be complacent about the determination of radical Islamic extremists to destroy our freedoms. Nor can we allow apathy and indifference to allow our culture to crumble from within.
When Tom DeLay directed the Texas legislature to radically gerrymander up the the Lone Star State's congressional districts , one of the key objectives was to take away the very progressive voice of Travis County, primarily Austin. In 2012 Travis County went for Obama over Romney 231,540 (60%) to 139,503 (36%) and for Democratic Senate candidate Paul Sandler over Ted Cruz 224,070 (59%) to 133,354 (35%). DeLay had the county divided between 5 districts, completely diluting all the Democrats in the county by spreading them out far and wide.





The 21st district starts in the heart of downtown Austin and includes Guadalupe Street south of Martin Luther King Blvd. The borders at one point are Lavaca Street and West 10th street, right up to the state Capitol, the Dell Medical School and UT campus. San Jacinto Blvd., Trinity Street, Brazos Street all cut through that part of TX-21, although the district spreads out, awkwardly to the west into Fredericksburg, Kerrville, Bandera and down into Bexar County and San Antonio's northeast corner as well as the tony Republican suburbs just north of the city, from Oleos Park, through Alamo Heights to Terrell Hills and then down into Fort Sam Houston. The areas around the renowned Brooke Army Medical Center-- like the neighborhoods around U.T., Austin, are filled with educated professionals, PhDs and scientists. How ironic then that this district is saddled with one of Congress' fiercest anti-science nitwits, Lamar Smith, who consistently makes a fool of himself as chair of the House Science Committee, where he presides over a gaggle of imbecile science deniers like like Bill Posey (R-FL), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Brian Babin (R-TX), Randy Weber (R-TX), Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), Ralph Abraham (R-LA) and Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Steve Knight (R-CA), Gary Palmer (R-AL) and Bruce Westerman (R-AR), GOP Leadership's little joke on America. Zika virus danger? "Keep your windows closed and get a can of RAID; we're going on vacation for the summer." Asteroids? Sell 'em off to mining corporations. Climate Change? Next topic!





Yesterday Caitlin MacNeal, writing for TPM, held crazy old Lamar up for ridicule once again-- this time for his persistence as ExxonMobil's favorite Climate Change denier . While you read her report, keep in mind that so far this cycle the ExxonMobil PAC has handed out $1,435,710 to members of Congress, much of it to the crooked conservatives on Smith's Science Committee and Fred Upton's Energy Committee. The Oil and Gas sector has handed out $22,930,482 in bribes this cycle, $20,097,676 to Republicans and $2,766,246 to corrupt conservative Democrats. No surprises among the top 10 crooks for 2016:









Ole Lamar took in $82,250 in legalistic bribes this year so far. Since 1990, the Oil and Gas companies have ponied up a cool $684,947 for his climate change-denying career. Now, back to MacNeal's report:

Following a months-long standoff between the House Science Committee and state attorneys general conducting an investigation into Exxon over climate change denialism, Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) has called a hearing to affirm his right to subpoena the state officials overseeing criminal investigations.



Smith, a noted climate change denier , has made repeated demands that the attorneys general and several environmental groups turn over their communications about Exxon, accusing them of embarking on an "unprecedented effort against those who have questioned the causes, magnitude, or best ways to address climate change." The attorneys general, as well as the activist groups, have refused to comply with the committee's requests, setting up a battle over subpoena power.



In a June statement, the committee's ranking member, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), said that Smith's demands were "not about legitimate oversight," but that the committee was "harassing" attorneys general investigating Exxon.



While Smith has previously conducted investigations into the executive branch and scientists funded by Congress, now the chairman has issued subpoenas to two state attorneys general conducting a criminal investigation. He made a wide-ranging request for communications the states had with each other, environmental groups, and the federal government about an "investigation or potential prosecution of companies, nonprofit organizations, scientists, or other individuals related to the issue of climate change."



Several state attorneys general have been investigating whether Exxon Mobil lied to investors about climate change and how it could impact the company, specifically looking at whether the companys statements to investors failed to include the companys scientific research.



In their refusals to comply with Smith's demands, the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York have argued that the subpoenas are unprecedented, outside Congress' purview, and an infringement on states' rights. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey's chief legal counsel, Richard Johnston, called the subpoena "an unconstitutional and unwarranted interference with a legitimate ongoing state investigation."



Johnson, the committee's ranking member, also called the subpoena's "unlawful."



...Smith is holding a hearing on Wednesday to affirm his ability to subpoena state attorneys general. The committee will hear from legal experts in the hearing titled, "Affirming Congress Constitutional Oversight Responsibilities: Subpoena Authority and Recourse for Failure to Comply with Lawfully Issued Subpoenas."



This is just Smith's latest battle as chairman of the House Science Committee.



Since the beginning of his chairmanship, and particularly since the beginning of this Congress, Smith has embarked on several crusades regarding climate change. He has scrutinized the Obama administration's proposed regulations of coal-fired power plants and pushed to cut NASA's earth sciences budget.



And most prominently, Smith last year went after a climate study conducted by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He accused the scientists at NOAA of altering "data to get the results they needed to advance this administrations extreme climate change agenda." The committee's investigation into NOAA culminated with subpoenas demanding scientists' internal communications about the study, as NOAA repeatedly refused to hand over documents.

A traditional bipartisan committee, Smith has turned the House Science Committee into a horror house of crackpot right-wing dogma that spotlights Congress' ideological polarization-- and it's willingness to sell out to commercial interests shoveling bribes into members' coffers.





Now let's look back at Smith's district again. It looks pretty Republican. McCain beat Obama 56-42% in 2008 and Romney did even better in 2012. In fact, in 2012 Smith won 9 of the 10 counties in the district, only Travis going for Democrat Candace Duval, who spent a mere $56,932 to Smith's $1,705,681. Travis and Bexar counties between them have more voters than the rest of the district combined and in 2012 the suburbs in those two counties around Austin and, more so, San Antonio, gave Smith the bulk of his votes. He beat Duval 64-34% in Bexar. Thanks in part to the repulsion moderate suburban voters feel towards Trump and in part because of Smith's own anti-science jihad, the suburban voters in Bexar and Travis counties are turning away from the GOP. The Democrat who won the TX-21 primary was progressive Berniecrat Tom Wakely and-- in spite of the DCCC blindness to his race-- he intends to win and Blue America is doing what we can to help him. Remember a few weeks ago when we talked about the new Partic phone banking system ? Blue America deployed that to Texas already. Today Tom took some time off from working with his volunteers and phone bankers to talk with us about what Smith has been up to on behalf of his campaign donors who find investigations into Climate Change too inconvenient.





So now Lamar Smith and his band of merry thugs are getting ready to investigate whether he has the power to investigate state-level investigations. Sounds like a "great" use of taxpayers' dollars. And lucky for them theyve hand picked their own legal experts to testify in these hearings to give them a guilt-free pass in this insane abuse of power. There must be a greater push back in the House to leave federal matters to the federal government and state matters to the state governments. Its amazing watching Republicans tear apart the 10th Amendment, the one amendment that is supposedly their basis for everything they do. This is the quintessential kind of abuse and fraud that the right is always bemoaning.



While Ive sounded off on Lamars heinous abuse of power many times over the course of this campaign, we need to discuss the abuse of the rules and order in the House. The idea that the chair of nearly every committee can issue a subpoena without consulting the ranking member is extremely worrisome. Even more concerning is the idea that the science committee can now hold their depositions in complete privacy. Restoring transparency to these proceedings and investigations is paramount to our progress. We cant let House Republicans run amok all in the name of obstruction and denial.



I stand in solidarity with the attorneys general and climate organizations in their fight against Smith. They have my unwavering support as someone who actually understands the limits of our Constitution. The wonderful thing about democracy is theres a solution to his injustices this November. We should not reward Lamar Smith with another term. When Im elected my constituents, and for that matter all citizens of our country, can count on me to follow order and adhere to the will of the people. Smith should understand that as a public servant, its the very least we can do.

Like I said, in the context of Trumpanzee, more and more Texans are eyeing the idea of replacing Smith with Tom Wakely. The DCCC has continued to starve him of cash or help of any kind since he beat a more conservative Democrat in the primary. Please consider kicking in what you can to his campaign by tapping on the thermometer above. Meanwhile, if you haven't seen Keith Olbermann's debut episode of his new series The Closer, do yourself a favor and watch this:
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 }}

At least one person has died and another has been wounded in riots over water in India.

Protesters set fire to cars and buses and pelted people with stones in the Indian city of Bangalore in Karnataka state, senior police officer L. Chandrashekar said.

The unrest was over an Indian Supreme Court decision to force the state to release 12,000 cubic feet of water per second per day from its dams on the Cauvery river to the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu until 20 September.

The decision has led to outrage among people in the technology hub - dubbed the country's answer to Silicon Valley - as the state said it does not have enough water for farmers to irrigate their land as it is.

Riot police were deployed and all public gatherings have been banned in a bid to combat the unrest. Around 400 people have been arrested.

Young men crammed into mini-buses and rickshaws were seen shouting slogans and waving the red and yellow flag of Karnataka state. They pulled several Tamil Nadu-registered trucks and motorcycles to the side of the road and pelted them with stones.

The disorder has severely disrupted travel between the two states.

In one incident in the Banashankari area of southern Bangalore, three reportedly drunken men climbed onto a school bus and demanded to know which state the 15 children onboard belonged to.

Pro-Karnatake shout slogans and burn an effigy of Tamil Nadu's chief minister J Jayalalithaa in Bangalore (AFP/Getty Images)

The bus driver was able to diffuse the tension by saying they all supported Karnataka in the water dispute, the BBC reported.

The dispute dates back to the 19th century during the British Raj when the Madras presidency (Tamil Nadu) and the province of Mysore (Karnataka) argued over the river which originates in Karnataka and flows through Tamil Nadu before ending in the Bay of Bengal.

There have been outbreaks of violence before and an interim court order provoked violent attacks on the Tamil ethnic minority in Karnataka which left more than 18 people dead in 1991.

But the argument has reached crisis point in recent months as India faces yet another drought caused by late monsoons.

Recommended Read more Farmer suicides soar in India as deadly heatwave hits 51C

Karnataka argued in court that it needed the water to irrigate the land as 42 per cent of its tanks were already dry.

When the Supreme Court asked Karnataka to relent on 2 September it offered to release 10,000 cubic feet of water per second every day for five days but on 5 September the court ruled it must go up to 15,000 per second every day for 10 days.

This decision was later revised to 12,000 per second.

The lack of water across several west Indian states such as Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat has been blamed for a spike in farmer suicides as the temperature rises.

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

Hundreds have died from starvation as crops wither in the fields.

In May, a farmer near the city of Latur in Marathwada where water is brought in by train said: It's an extremely bad situation.

There's absolutely no water. The water dried up in January.

Several dozen buses and cars have been destroyed in the violence following the Supreme Court decision (AFP/Getty Images)

On 20 May, the country recorded its highest ever temperature with the mercury reaching 51C (123.8F) in the city of Phalodi in Rajasthan.

Climate change is thought to be partly responsible for the delayed onset of Monsoon season with the added effect of the El Nino weather pattern which causes extreme hot and cold weather and occurs naturally every two to seven years.

Late last year, at least 269 people were killed by flooding in the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

Additional reporting by Reuters
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A Harmony of the Seas crew member has died and four others have been injured after a lifeboat fell off the worlds biggest cruise ship.

The record-breaking ship, which is operated by Royal Caribbean, is docked in the French port of Marseille.

One person is dead and four are injured, including two whose lives are in danger," a spokesman for the fire service told the AFP news agency.

Five crew were onboard the lifeboat taking part in a safety drill when it "became detached" from the ship.

A spokesperson for Royal Caribbean said in a statement: "We are sorry to share the sad news that a crew member aboard Harmony of the Seas has died of injuries suffered during a lifeboat drill conducted while docked at the port of Marseille, France.

"Four other crew members received medical treatment in the same incident. We are keeping our colleagues and their families in our thoughts and prayers."

The liner only had its maiden voyage on 29 May.

 See inside the Harmony of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship

Built by shipbuilders STX France, it is the widest ever cruise ship at a maximum of 66m across and is 50m longer than the Eiffel Tower at 362m.

Using its 16 decks, it can carry more than 6,700 passengers and 2,300 crew.

The Independent has contacted STX France for comment.
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 }}

Hungary should be excluded from the European Union because of its tough stance on refugees, Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has said.

Budapest's policies constitute a "massive violation" of the EU's fundamental values, he said.

"We cannot accept that the basic values of the European Union are being so seriously breached," Mr Asselborn told Germany's Die Welt newspaper.

He added: "Anyone, like Hungary, who builds fences against war refugees or breaches press freedom and the independence of the justice system should be temporarily, or if needed forever, excluded from the EU."

The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey Show all 8 1 /8 The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey Basheer Basheer, a 3-year-old Syrian boy, lying on his father leg, lives with his family in a rent-free house as part of NRC's shelter programme in the village of Bair-Ras, in Irbid governorate, northern Jordan. Photo 11 October 2015 NRC/Hussein Amri The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey Hisham Mustafa has fled from Aleppo, and is currently at Idomeni in Greece. Here he is playing with his nephew Hisham, 3 NRC/Tiril Skarstein The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey Ahmaydi Bouchra Little Ahmaydi, 3, and her family of eight fled from fighting in Mali to the Goudebo camp in Burkina Faso in 2013. Neither of her two older sisters went to school in Mali. The whole family lives in a tent that is approx. 7m x 6m. The family bed is stored outside to make space inside the shelter during day time. In the evenings, they carry the bed back in. NRC/Ingrid Prestetun The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey Farah Farah, 4, lives with her family in Irbid in a rent-free apartment. She stays home with her mother as her four sisters and three brothers leave for the day to their various schools. Photo 11t October 2015 NRC/Hussein Amri The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey Batane Yacouba Batane Yacouba, 4, lives with his two older sisters and his mother in the Goudebo camp in Burkina Faso. A Tuareg family, they were forced to flee Mali fearing for their lives. Their father is dead NRC/Ingrid Prestetun The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey Hassan Syrian boy Redor, 12, plays with Hassan, 3, after arriving at the port in Chios, Greece NRC/Tiril Skarstein The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey Fatin Fatin, 4, and her family fled Syria to Irbid, northern Jordan. Her father has issued a birth certificate for her, in order for her to have access to health centres. NRC/Hussein Amri The other Alan Kurdis: Refugee children who survived the journey Born a refugee Alice Digama (24) sits on the tent floor with her two-week-old baby. Her son is one of many children born a refugee. Alice was heavily pregnant when she escaped South Sudan and crossed the border into Uganda, after her husband left her for another wife NRC/Sofi Lundin

Viktor Orban's government has angered many EU countries with its tough rhetoric on refugees, which he described as a "poison", and by building a razor wire along the country's southern border to block the so-called Balkan route.

He has also urged Hungarians to vote in a referendum next month against future EU quotas stipulating how many refugees each country should take.

The EU could not tolerate such behaviour, and exclusion was "the only possibility to preserve the integrity and values of the European Union," Mr Asselborn said, adding it would be helpful to change the rules to allow a county to be suspended without unanimous agreement.

Mr Asselborn's comments come days before 27 EU leaders meet in Bratislava to discuss the bloc's future.

He said humans fleeing from war were being treated almost worse than wild animals.

 Aylan Kurdi Anniversary: EU states failing in their obligations to refugees

"The fence that Hungary is building to keep out refugees is getting longer, higher and more dangerous," he said. "Hungary is not far from issuing an order to shoot refugees."

In response, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called Mr Asselborn "a frivolous figure".

"He wants to exclude Hungary from the EU but he has long excluded himself from among the politicians who can be taken seriously," Mr Szijjarto said in a statement, accusing Mr Asselborn of "working tirelessly to demolish European security and culture".

Mr Szijjarto said the referendum would give Hungarians the opportunity to voice their opinion about "illegal immigrants, Brussels' quota package and the Jean Asselborn-type figures".

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 }}

German police have arrested three Syrian men suspected of being deployed by Isis to carry out new terror attacks in Europe.

Prosecutors said the three suspects were dispatched to Germany last year either to carry out a mission that they had been informed about or to wait for further instructions.

They were named as Mahir al-H, 17, Ibrahim M, 18, and Mohamed A, 18, with their surnames redacted according to German privacy laws.

Concrete missions or orders have not yet been found in the course of investigations carried out so far, a spokesperson for the federal prosecutor said.

Thomas de Maiziere, the German interior minister, said the men could be part of a sleeper cell linked to the terrorists who carried out the Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November.

Everything points to the same smuggling organisation as with the Paris attackers having brought these three who were arrested to Germany, he added.

And everything points to the travel documents having come from the same workshop.

The arrests were made during a series of dawn raids involving 200 officers, with police searching refugee centres in Grohansdorf, Ahrensburg and Reinfeld in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Show all 9 1 /9 Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Policemen outside Rouen's cathedral during the funeral of Jacques Hamel, the priest who was killed in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy on 26 July during a hostage-taking claimed by Islamic State group Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two jihadists, both 19, slit Hamel's throat while he was celebrating mass in an attack that shocked France as well as the Catholic Church Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Muslims place flowers and hold a minute of silence in front of the church if Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, western France, where French priest Jacques Hamel was killed on 26 July Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two people hold each other by the new makeshift memorial in Nice, in tribute to the victims of the deadly Bastille Day attack at the Promenade des Anglais Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the truck attack that killed 84 people in Nice on France's national holiday. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, smashed a 19-tonne truck into a packed crowd of people in the Riviera city celebrating Bastille Day Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police work at a site where a Syrian migrant set off an explosive device in Ansbach, southern Germany, on 25 July, killing himself and wounding a dozen others Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed himself and wounded a dozen others in the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had intended to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket Friebe/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police officers walk along train tracks in Wuerzburg southern Germany on 19 July, a day after a man attacked train passengers with an axe. German authorities said they had found a hand-painted IS flag among the belongings of the man, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, who seriously injured four members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong in his rampage Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis German police killed a teenage assailant after he attacked passengers on a train in Wuerzburg, southerg Germany with an axe and a knife on 18 July, seriously wounding three people Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images

Investigators said the 17-year-old suspect had been trained to use guns and handle explosives in Isis de-facto capital of Raqqa before crossing into Europe on the refugee route from Turkey to Greece.

The trio, carrying false passports, left Syria in October 2015  around the same time as at least two of the Paris suicide bombers who crossed to the island of Leros.

They reached Germany in November and have received four-figure payments in US dollars from Isis, as well as mobile phones with pre-installed communication apps.

More than a million refugees and asylum seekers arrived in Germany last year, when Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the border to all Syrians fleeing the countrys civil war.

Germany has been targeted in a spate of recent attacks, including three carried out by asylum seekers, of which two were claimed by Isis.

 Timeline: Germany rocked by week of deadly violence

Several terror suspects posing as Syrian refugees have been arrested in German counter-terror operations so far this year, although no convictions have been announced.

Harry Sarfo, a former Isis recruit, told The Independent he was approached by commanders looking for militants to carry out attacks in the UK and Germany while living in Raqqa last year.

He said he declined and later fled the group, but there are fears it has continued to exploit the refugee route to send back trained jihadists.

Europol estimates that up to 5,000 Europeans may have undergone training at terror camps abroad and the agencys director has warned the continent faces its biggest terror threat in more than a decade from returning fighters.

Germanys Federal Criminal Police Office has received 400 tip-offs over migrants alleged to have extremist links but found only 60 with sufficient evidence to begin investigations.
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 Catholic Church has confirmed it plans to hold a worldwide day of prayer for victims of sexual abuse, as it continues to make efforts to protect vulnerable children.

Pope Francis announced the proposal following a meeting of the panel he set up to tackle child abuse within the Church and help survivors of past attacks. The Church will also establish an educational website with information and advice.

According to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, the day of prayer was suggested by an abuse survivor and could be one part of the healing process for survivors and the community of believers, as well as an important way of consciousness raising in the Church.

A spokesperson for the commission said the proposals had been discussed by clerics from around the world with Australian, South African and Filipino bishops already organising when to hold the prayer day.

In addition, the panel announced that newly-appointed bishops will get comprehensive training on how to deal effectively with the root causes of child abuse.

A series of educational talks and workshops are to be held at various countries around the world during late 2016 and 2017, with local church leaders and survivors in attendance.

The panel was established in 2014, but critics say it has done little to refer alleged paedophile priests to the police and focussed too heavily on education over action.

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 February 2016 the commission was hit by the sudden departure of British anti-abuse campaigner Peter Saunders from the Vatican, who accused the panel of doing nothing to erase the culture of cover-ups within the Church authority.

In June, Pope Francis announced that clerics can now be dismissed from office if they are shown to neglect their duty of care towards vulnerable children and adults, in addition to creating a legal framework which allows for abusers to be tried in the Vatican.

Earlier this year, the pope was widely criticised for rejecting the opportunity to meet with the victims of former priest and serial abuser Marcial Maciel during a week-long visit to Mexico.

Pope Francis has previously called for paedophile priests to be handed severe punishments for their crimes, while making the bishops who cover up for them accountable through a new tribunal system.
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 }}

Turkey has made its first formal request to the US demanding the arrest of an exiled cleric it accuses of orchestrating a failed military coup.

The justice ministry told state media a written request had been sent to counterparts in Washington alleging that Fethullah Gulen gave the orders and commanded the attempt to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sparking violence that left an estimated 300 people dead.

The Turkish government blames supporters of Gulens Hizmet movement for the turmoil in July, which saw rogue soldiers commandeer tanks and fighters jets, bombing parliament and seizing bridges before being crushed by loyalist troops.

The attempted coup has been followed by a wave of crackdowns and purges seeing thousands of soldiers, public officials, teachers and journalists arrested or suspended from their posts, sparking international alarm.

Turkey has made several calls for the US to extradite Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, and made its latest request on Tuesday.

American officials have so far refused, citing a lack of evidence, while Gulen and his supporters have denied any involvement.

Mr Erdogan discussed the issue with Barack Obama at the G20 summit in China earlier this month, with a US official saying the President considered the issue a legal, not a political one.

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

During a meeting with Vice-President Joe Biden, Mr Erdogan said the refusal to arrest Gulen was a violation of an extradition agreement between the two countries.

These types of people should at least be detained, arrested and kept under surveillance, he said. Yet that individual is still directing his terrorist organisation from his whereabouts.

Gulen was an ally of the Turkish President until 2013, when a feud started over a corruption scandal also blamed on the Hizmet movement.

Gulen has repeatedly denied allegations of plots to unseat Mr Erdogans government.

Additional reporting by agencies
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The UK will not have full access to the EU single market if they don't allow the free movement of people, the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

In an interview with Ireland's Newstalk radio station, Mr Kenny said the European Union would not give into Britain's Brexit demands.

Mr Kenny said: "Let me tell you that around the European Council table, that is an issue that will not be given in on."

He said the British government did not seem to have a clear idea on what form Brexit would take, saying: "They don't have a definite horizon as to where they want to be."

Mr Kenny said European leaders have "very directly addressed" the issue of Brexit.

The UK's Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, David Davis, has said he is pressing for an "unique" deal with the EU.

 Donald Tusk asks Theresa May to start Brexit process 'as soon as possible'

Mr Davis, who campaigned for Vote Leave before the referendum, said the government plans to restore the country's sovereignty, reduce immigration by controlling its borders and boost trade with the single market after Brexit.
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 ceasefire in Syria is holding with no one reported killed in fighting anywhere in Syria during the first 15 hours of the truce. Most groups have said they will abide by its terms, though in many cases they are doing so reluctantly. Several armed opposition movements say they have been unfairly treated and see the accord as strengthening the Syrian government.

Convoys of food and urgently needed supplies will be sent to Aleppo and sixteen other besieged areas in the course of the week, if the ceasefire holds. We are trying to get Aleppo out of the way first, said Marwa Awad, spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Damascus. She said there were some 20 trucks from the UN waiting to cross the Turkish-Syrian border to be followed by 20 more carrying relief supplies, the food portion of which includes sunflower oil, rice, wheat and sugar.

There are estimated to be between 250,000 and 275,000 people in rebel held East Aleppo, who are not yet starving  because the UN had pre-positioned supplies and the city has only recently been fully encircled  but are otherwise in need. WFP hopes to resupply all the besieged enclaves which it has only been able to reach intermittently over past months in the coming days.

Given the scale of recent violence, the breaches of the ceasefire so far have been minor. The Syrian state news agency SANA said rebels fired three shells at the government-held neighbourhood of Mallah in Aleppo. It also reported shelling near two important roads to the city, both much fought over in recent months: the Castello road in the northwest of the city and the Ramouseh Road in the south. Rami Abdurrahman from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were minor truce violations in central Hama province.

The armed opposition have the biggest motive for seeing the US-Russian agreement fail because it offers them little and envisages a joint US-Russian campaign against Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the former affiliate of al-Qaeda that has renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. The latter is by far the most effective fighting force of the opposition. An observer in Damascus said that without Nusra the other non-Isis rebel groups would amount to very little militarily. More moderate armed opposition are supposed to separate themselves from Nusra under the agreement, but this is easier said than done and Nusra is likely to move its units around quickly to avoid attack from the air.

It is much too early to predict the outcome of the ceasefire and other sections of the US-Russian agreement, which took ten months to negotiate. Much will also depend on the attitude of regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey who have armed, financed and given safe passage to the armed opposition in the past. The policy of Turkey, who has stood as a sanctuary and base area for the rebels since 2011, will be crucial and may have changed because Ankara is giving priority to its war against the Kurds rather than overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad.

Iran and Hezbollah of Lebanon have agreed to the accord but are wary of the US and Russian taking control of the agenda in Syria to the detriment of Iran and the Shia axis in general.

In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Show all 9 1 /9 In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish tanks driving to the Syrian-Turkish border town of Jarabulus yesterday AFP/Getty In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish-backed gather on the outskirts of Jarabulus, Syria, ahead of an offensive on 24 August 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish army tanks make their way towards the Syrian border town of Jarabulus, Syria August 24, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish soldiers return from Syria to Turkey with tanks after a military operation at the Syrian border as part of their offensive against the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Syria, Karkamis district of Gaziantep, Turkey, 25 August 2016 EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish army tanks and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition forces move toward the Syrian border as pictured from Karkamis, Turkey, AP In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish tanks on their way to the Turkish-Syria border during an operation against Isis on 24 August 2016 EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Syrian opposition fighters being transported during preparations to enter Jarabulus in Karkamis, Turkey, on 24 August 2016. EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria An air strike hitting Isis-controlled territory near Jarabulus, near the Turkish border, on 24 August 2016. EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria A Turkish army tank and an armoured vehicle stationed near the border with Syria. Turkish media reports say Turkish artillery has launched new strikes at Isis targets across the border AP

The US wish to influence their proxies inside Syria to abide by the agreement. Many senior US officials have expressed doubts about military cooperation with Russia and, in addition, the country is less than two months from a Presidential election.

The ceasefire however does not mean that all Syria is at peace since violence continues in Isis held areas. Isis has released a bloodthirsty video clip in which its fighters are seen killing 19 people from Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria who were accused of being spies. In the 12-minute video, the narrator derides US and Western intelligence agencies for their inability to prevent Isis fighters carrying out attacks in France, Belgium and Germany. In response, the Isis narrator claims Western intelligence recruited the 19-member spy cell to infiltrate Deir ez-Zor province. Isis will be bracing itself for a US and Russian onslaught from the air and the Syrian Army might use units freed up by ceasefire to attack Isis positions.
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 new US and Russian backed ceasefire across Syria officially began at 7pm on Monday, but both opposition fighters and pro-government media have said that violations have already taken place.

Residents and media activists in besieged East Aleppo reported that Syrian government helicopters bombed at least one neighbourhood at approximately 8pm, an hour after hostilities were supposed to cease.

In Quneitra in the south of the country, state media said four Syrian army solidiers had died in a rebel group attack.

The fragile ceasefire is supposed to reduce violence over the next week, before new US and Russian airstrikes begin on extremist groups such as Isis and al-Qaeda allied militants. Negotiators have not publicly stated which geographical areas will be targeted, raising concerns among both the official Syrian opposition and Kurdish militias.

Long term hopes for peace in the five-year conflict were further complicated by an Eid address from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, just hours before hostilities were due to cease, in which he vowed to retake the entire country from rebel hands.

US Secretary of State John Kerry also caused confusion on Monday evening by saying that the US could be in a position where it approves Syrian government airstrikes against al-Qaeda affiliates. The State Department has since walked back his comments.

 Syrias civil war: More than 100 killed in air raids.

Speaking to reporters in Washington DC, Kerry also said that some breaches of the agreement could be expected.

Sure, this is less than perfect, he said, addressing crticism that the deal is flawed. But flawed compared to what? Compared to nothing?

This catastrophe developed step by step, folks, and it can only be reversed step by step, he said. This is the best thing we could think of.

The last US and Russian brokered ceasefire came into effect in February, but broke down in a matter of weeks.

Fighting did not wind down before before the ceasefire came into effect: approximately 100 civilians are thought to have been killed over the weekend in fierce fighting mostly around the rebel-held city of Idlib.

On Tuesday, Syrian media claimed the army had shot down both an Israeli fighter jet and drone in the Golan Heights, the disputed border area between the two countries. Israel denies it has lost any aircraft.
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 }}

Israel has denied the Syrian government's claim to have shot down an Israeli fighter jet and drone at the start of a fragile seven-day truce in the country's civil war.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) immediately refuted the report, saying a Syrian anti-aircraft battery had shot at its aircraft but missed their target.

"Early this morning, two missiles were launched from Syria after the IAF targeted Syrian artillery positions," a spokesperson said. "IDF aircraft were not harmed."

Smoke rising from the village of Jubata, Quneitra province, during fighting between Syrian government forces and rebels on 11 September (EPA)

The Israeli Air Force said Syrian troops used surface-to-air missiles in the attempt but that it at no point compromised pilot safety.

Bashar al-Assad's defence ministry previously issued a conflicting statement on Tuesday morning saying a fighter jet and drone were downed in Quneitra Governorate at 1am local time.

Officials claimed they were responding to naked aggression [by the] Zionist enemy, supporting armed terrorist groups in a desperate attempt to raise morale that collapsed after heavy losses incurred in the Quneitra region.

Quneitra borders Israel, Jordan and Lebanon and includes the disputed Golan Heights, which are partly occupied by Israel after being fought over in successive wars.

Much of the region was seized by rebels in 2014 after battles with the Syrian Arab Army and remains split between government and opposition control amid continued fighting.

Tuesday's dispute came hours after Israel announced its fighter jets had struck artillery positions manned by Syrian regime troops after a mortar landed in the occupied Golan Heights.

The incident was the fifth since last week in which fighting in Syria has spilled over into Israeli-occupied territory, and the first since a fragile truce brokered by the US and Russia came into effect.

 Syria army battles rebels in Golan Heights

The ceasefire came into force at sunset on Monday but Isis and the formerly al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra group were excluded, while other rebel factions have refused to commit.

Despite his forces being part of the truce, President Assad vowed to take back the country from "terrorists" - a term used to describe all opposition groups.

Israel has largely remained on the sidelines of the fighting along its border, but has carried out reprisals on Syrian positions when errant fire has previously landed in Israel.

The IDF is also widely believed to have carried out airstrikes on arms shipments destined for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a close ally of Assad.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six Day War of 1967, before Syrian forces led an unsuccessful counter-offensive in 1973, and Israel effectively annexed the vast majority of the occupied territory in 1981.

The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) was set up to monitor a ceasefire established in the region but fighting between the Syrian regime and rebels has frequently spilled over into the demilitarised area since 2012, sparking Israeli air strikes in Syrian territory.
'Our message is that whatever you buy offline you can buy it online.'

Vietnam Lazada, part of Singaporean e-commerce startup Lazada Group which sells everything from rice cookers to smartphones and operates mainly in Southeast Asia, has signed deals with 40 Vietnamese retailers including major consumer electronics chains Cho Lon, Tran Anh and Home Center, as well as global cookware manufacturer Lock&Lock and local jewelery maker PNJ.

Lazada plans to cater for local consumers through the deals, while Vietnamese retailers can make use of the Lazada brand name to expand their customer bases.

Lazada has expanded rapidly in Southeast Asia, home to some 600 million people, since it was founded in 2012.

The e-commerce platform has increased its focus on the Vietnamese market where consumers spent more than $4 billion shopping over the internet last year.

It is a part of Lazadas development strategy to join forces with Vietnamese retailers, said CEO Alexandre Dardy.

"Our message is that whatever you buy offline you can buy it online," said the chief executive officer, adding that Lazada is working to build consumer confidence in online shopping and the platform.

Internet and smartphone usage have been rising rapidly in Vietnam in recent years, meaning more people are beginning to shop over the internet.

Kid Plaza, a giant supplier of baby products, said its monthly revenues have trebled for the past three months since it sealed the deal with Lazada. The retailer highlighted that the agreement has helped it gain access to one of the largest platforms in the Southeast Asia region with a large and growing consumer base.

Lazada has set a goal of claiming at least 25 percent of Vietnams online shopping market.

Vietnam, with a population of 93 million, just three years ago was ranked as the smallest e-commerce market in the region in terms of sales. Now online retail is gaining momentum with 49 million internet users increasingly turning to online shopping.

The country projects 30 percent of the population will buy goods and services directly over the internet in 2020, with each shopper spending an average of $350 per year.

In an attempt to boost e-commerce, the Southeast Asian country is trying to convince 50 percent of urban residents to convert to non-cash payments such as debit and credit cards.

Vietnam expects revenue from online retail to hit $10 billion by 2020, accounting for 5 percent of the total nationwide revenue from sales of goods and services.

Related news:

> Vietnam's M&As to hit a record high of $6bln in 2016

> Vietnam swaps cash for plastic in online payment plan

> Vietnam ranks in top 30 fastest growing retail markets
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 }}

New openings in the Ethiopian Highlands are rare. When it comes to the Simien Mountains National Park, one of the richest wildlife areas in the country, visitors could previously stay either in the nearby town of Debark or, if keen to be inside the parks borders, the decade-old Simien Lodge. Limalimo Lodge, the second to be opened inside the National Park, offers something stylishly new.

Built on an escarpment within the recently expanded park boundaries, close to the village of Limalimo, the lodge has been a long time coming. Originally scheduled to open in September 2015, building work was still going on during my visit in May; the soft opening should (fingers crossed) become an official full opening once its all finished this month.

Limalimos a smart boutique lodge, with only 12 rooms. Theres a deliberate earthiness about the place; the boxy cabins spread out across the wooded hillside and the main hilltop lodge are all made from rammed earth (soil collected from the site and compacted together), eucalyptus wood and thatch. The bar and restaurant had yet to be completed when I stayed, but both are now ready and Im sure will make cosy areas in which to relax post wildlife-spotting. The star of the show, though, is the terrace, which looks out onto a view of mountains, valleys, forests and rock formations.

The restaurant is now complete

The Simiens have a deserved reputation for wildlife, home to, among others, gelada monkeys, who occasionally come wandering through the lodges grounds in the mornings and gather out on the escarpment most evenings before descending to their beds in the cliffs. You might see a lammergeier (known locally as bone-breakers because they take bones from carcasses and smash them against rocks to get at the marrow inside) circling over the hillsides, or, at night, perhaps youll hear the grunts of a roaming leopard.

Gelada monkeys

Clearly, there are good intentions here at the lodge. Opened by a small team of local Ethiopian guides and one of their wives, a British woman, the lodge was built almost entirely using a local workforce, many coming from the village of Limalimo, a half-hour walk down the hill. And the majority of staff, from chefs and waitresses to the on-site handyman, again come from Limalimo and the surrounding area. Its providing much needed employment opportunities in the area and makes the lodge feel part of the local community.

Location

The escarpment-top location has an exceptional view of the national park. Its quite something to wake up and eat breakfast on the terrace at the start of the day. The the more basic Simien Lodge  the parks only other option  is deeper inside, however; accessing the key wildlife areas from Limalimo involves a 40-minute drive out of the park and back in again through the main gate.

The dramatic Simien Mountains

As well as checking out the hordes of habituated geladas and other wildlife, including the endemic walia ibex, klipspringers, bushbucks, birds of prey and, if youre lucky, the endangered Ethiopian wolf, its also worth spending an afternoon hiking down to Limalimo to get an idea of daily life in the village. The lodge arranges guided community visits, which include spending time in the home of one of the villagers for freshly ground coffee, chunky wheat bread (dabo), barley and possibly a home-brewed beer (tela), as well as checking out the local church and taking in a fine view of the valley.

Comfort

Like the salt in the salt hotels of Bolivia, the rammed earth makes a novel, attractive natural material, which dominates the rooms, along with concrete floors in bathrooms. Rooms have been kept simple; they were a little sparse and could use some Ethiopian art or crafts to bring a bit of colour and life. It felt quite dingy in the evenings, too; some additional lamps would be helpful. It can be chilly up in the mountains, too; theres talk of installing heating, which would benefit the rooms.

A room with a view

Beds are incredibly comfortable and warm, and theres also a window seat and lounging area. Big sunset-facing windows along the front look out onto the forest, though, a little disappointingly, the views dont really make the most of the Simien Mountain scenery thats out at the front of the lodge.

The staff have been given good training; service is friendly and thoughtful. Meals, especially dinner, are on the simple side, though its good to see the countrys national dish injera (a spongy pancake served with different sauces) make a showing, along with surprisingly tasty Rift Valley wine.

Essentials

Limalimo Lodge, Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia (00 251 93 168 8062; limalimolodge.com). Doubles from US$300 (224) per night, full board.

cazenove+loyd (020 7384 2332; cazloyd.com) offers five nights full board at Limalimo Lodge, including flights, guides and transfers, from 3,515 per person.

Ethiopian Airlines (0800 016 3559; ethiopianairlines.com) flies from Heathrow to Addis Ababa from 505 return in economy and 2,065 in business class.

Rooms: ***

Value: ***

Service: ****

Wi-fi: in the pipeline, though there is currently no internet connection

Access: no wheelchair-accessible rooms
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 }}

Dont be surprised that Love Productions took The Great British Bake Off elsewhere  the way the BBC works nowadays, it was inevitable.

Is it too snobby to admit that I preferred the first couple of series of the show? You know, the ones with the original format, where the Bake Off tent moved to various locations around the country and each episode included a little baking history lesson covering the origins of, say, the Eccles cake or Bath bun. Or is that just the thirtysomething equivalent of telling you I liked that band before they went completely mainstream and I rather prefer their earlier work? Well, I did, and I do.

And now, with the disappointing news that, from next year, The Great British Bake Off will move from the BBC to Channel 4, therell be much less of it too.

Already shrunk to an innuendo-laden two minute occasional segment, once the adverts begin to impinge the local culinary history will be done away with altogether. Say goodbye also to the sleepy church-fete atmosphere inside the grand marquee, as the tension between the contestants is ramped up, the challenges made more puerile, and the lurid personal backstories become the dominant theme of the show. What happened to our quaint, sedate afternoon on a deckchair with a slice of lemon drizzle and a flask of Earl Grey?

Recommended Read more The reason ITV did not bid for The Great British Bake Off

Im speculating, of course, but not so wildly. The loss of Bake Off is bad news for the BBC; its a sign of its failures, and an indication of its diminishing significance as a creative player in British broadcasting. No wonder Bake Offs legion of crumb-strewn armchair fans feel bruised.

In the court of public opinion, this slip-up matters far more than any Government bun-fight over the future of the corporation and its well-paid flunkies. Viewers feel upset that the most watched television show of 2015 will move off the state broadcaster to a commercial entity, even if  apart from having to sit through the adverts (which are also, it must be noted, a good opportunity put the kettle on)  they cant quite put their finger on why.

The BBC hit upon that when a statement from an official spokesperson, lamenting the decision of Love Productions to chase the money, claimed Bake Off was a quintessentially BBC programme. In translation: it is the sort of unexpected televisual success that only state investment, unencumbered by the requirement to chase audience and sponsorships, can breed.

 Are these the best Great British Bake Off innuendos ever?

The first series, buried away on BBC2, was panned by TV critics. Later a hit with British housewives, master baker and judge Paul Hollywood was described by Iain Hollingshead of the Telegraph as sinister without being interesting and warned prospective viewers they risked boring themselves to death. Never mind: the viewers followed, and the so did the switch to prime time, and to BBC1. A hit  and an exportable format, too. What a shame that the BBC never really owned it in the first place.

I dont know whether Love Productions cast around widely for a backer in 2009-10, when the programme was first devised, but that it ended up with the BBC is no surprise. On paper, it doesnt work at all. Who wants to watch 12 people crouching on the floor of a carpeted tent staring into an oven door or wafting a baking tray over a wire rack of hot scones? Oh, but we do. We do!

The BBC is acting as a hothouse for broadcasting potential; it has become a sort of finishing school for good ideas. But, by shrinking its own content teams and farming out the job of development and production to small production houses like Love, the BBC has lost control of its own destiny. When it backs a runner, it is predestined to lose it (rumours suggest the BBCs bid was 10m short of keeping Bake Off as its own).

The BBC has been struggling to survive and excel on its income for some time. I would, it must be said, be happy to pay a higher television licence in order to preserve the quality and breadth of the BBC, but polling reminds me that I am in the minority  only 41 per cent of Britons support the licence fee system in the first place, and an equal number oppose it altogether. There is no appetite among the public to stump up more, so the corporation has been getting around the problem by cutting. And this  the painful loss of the best British TV success in recent years to a commercial rival  is what death by a thousand cuts looks like. Cut a little bit everywhere, and everything (and everyone) suffers.

This may also prove a watershed moment for how the BBC manages its relatively meagre finances. The BBC's resources are not infinite, said a spokesperson. They are not  but they could be better spent. As a regular consumer of some of the more niche BBC offerings  BBC 6 Music is a daily soundtrack in my household, and there are rich pickings to be found in the documentaries archive hidden down the back of the iPlayer  Ive previously proved aggressively resistant to the argument that sweeping changes must be made to the Beebs output; to what it does, where and how. Now Im willing to concede I may have been wrong.

Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Show all 12 1 /12 Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Rav The 28-year-old could be a comforting presence in the Bake Off tent. With his job supporting students at City University London and his experience of volunteering for charities such as Victim Support, Rav may be the first one to lend a hand to a fellow contestant in need of a shoulder to cry on. Rav lives in Kent with his parents and enjoys using unusual ingredients, taking inspiration from far eastern cuisine and vegan baking. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Benjamina The 23-year-old teaching assistant, who lives in south London, recently gained a first in economics and is known as a straight-A student. She could be her own strongest critic as she is not happy when things do not turn out right. Her other critic is her twin sister, who gives her feedback on her creations. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Val Like Jane, former primary school headteacher Val has a long history of baking. The 66-year-old took over the family baking aged 15 and says she can make the classics with her eyes closed. Now semi-retired, she works two days a week so will find plenty of time to practice her bakes. Originally from Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, but now living near Yeovil, Somerset, she could bring a more unusual touch to the Bake Off tent as she likes to do aerobics in her kitchen while waiting for her jams to boil. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Kate The farmer's daughter from Norfolk could gain an edge by bringing in seasonal fruits and produce gathered from her parents' farm. The 37-year-old mother-of-two has said she thrives on nurturing others and working as a nurse, so she could be a comforting figure in the tent. Sugar craft is her particular strength. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Andrew Originally from Northern Ireland, Andrew lives with friends in Derby and works as an aerospace engineer for Rolls-Royce, designing jet engines. His scientific background could lead to some very precise and beautiful bakes, with creations including a baguette Concorde. The 25-year-old will likely make use of the secret recipes passed down by his mother and grandmother. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Lee The oldest contestant in this year's competition, 67-year-old Lee has gone through many changes in his life - starting his career as a builder before changing direction in the 1980s and studying theology. He has worked as a pastor for the past 30 years and lives in Bolton, and will have the support of his two children and four grandchildren. He first caught the baking bug in 1984 while recovering from a back injury picked up playing cricket. He enjoys traditional flavours such as hazelnut, vanilla and chocolate. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Louise The 46-year-old's piping and icing skills are sure to be spot-on as she loves to decorate her cakes with elaborate designs. Originally from Merthyr Tydfil, she now works as a hairdresser in Cardiff and has developed her love of baking over the last 10 years. She is sure to have the stamina for long days in the tent as she loves mountain walks and has completed a four-day trek in the Andes. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Michael Bake Off viewers are sure to see the influence of Michael's Cypriot heritage in his baking, as he loves to make Greek pastries with his grandmother. The 20-year-old, from London, is studying politics and economics in Durham, where he handles sharing a kitchen with four friends by baking late at night or in the early hours. He may shine in the Showstopper round as he enjoys making "big grand cakes" and combining unusual flavours. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Selasi Long hours working as a client service associate in a financial institution may leave Selasi with little time to practice, but the 30-year-old has impressed his colleagues with the cupcakes he makes for charity bake sales. Originally from Ghana, he moved to the UK 15 years ago and now lives in London. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Jane With a grandfather who owned a bakery and a father who loved to cook, 61-year-old Jane will draw on a long family history of creating breads and cakes. The garden designer, from Beckenham, south-east London, likes to start early, getting her bread in the oven at 5am most mornings. Expect a strong showing in the technical challenges as she knows her classic cakes, biscuits and pastries. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Tom The 26-year-old grew up in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, but now works in London as a project engagement manager for The Royal Society of Arts. Having lost 30kg, he enjoys his bakes but believes in eating them in moderation. Tom makes his own cheese and salami from scratch, so judge Mary Berry is unlikely to scold him for cutting corners. PA Who is in the Great British Bake Off 2016 tent? Candice The 31-year-old was inspired to bake by her grandmother and hopes to follow in her footsteps - aiming to be "even half the lady she was". She grew up in the pubs her parents ran and now lives in Bedfordshire, working in pastoral care and PE teaching at a secondary school. PA

Does my beloved 6 Music need to broadcast through the night? Im not so sure. I certainly dont need to read lifestyle features on the BBCs website; there are many free alternatives that offer the same service.The furore over the closure of the online recipe hub proves that every part of the BBCs diverse output will have its vocal supporter base. But put it in these terms: if it means that the BBC can no longer afford its most popular show  with an audience of 15 million, a cross section of the British public  maybe these niche areas are simply not worth it?

There is one glimmer of hope for Bake Off fans reluctant to switch channels. In the state its in, what the BBC needs is advocates among its stars  and in comedy duo Mel and Sue it may have found them. The BBC just confirmed that the pair will step down as co-hosts of the show when it moves to Channel 4. One expects that a wedge of extra cash per episode would have been coming their way had they stayed, so it is admirable that the two appear to have stood up for the shows founding ideals as a non-commercial, advertising-free format.

Good for them, but the show is still lost  not just to the BBC but, with the loss of its core talent, to the nation, too.
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 }}

Leaving aside accusations of party bias, it's sensible to even out major numerical disparities between parliamentary constituencies. But slavish adherence to plus or minus 5 per cent of an average size does seem rather inflexible. Not only could the creation of geographically large constituencies make some unworkable, but losing coterminosity with local authority boundaries for the sake of numerical evenness will create extra workload for MPs. A good example where I live is the creation of a constituency that combines south Shropshire with north Herefordshire. It makes no sense.

Patrick Cosgrove

Chapel Lawn, Shropshire

Lest we forget

Will Gore is completely on the wrong tack in suggesting that we should not commemorate September 11. That day should always be remembered, if only as a turning point in the battle against terrorism. Other days in our history, such as Trafalgar Day and the Battle of Britain, are commemorated because they too were turning points in our history.

David Sidgwick

Peterborough

Who is responsible for Syrias repair?

In all the criticism of Barack Obama for allowing Vladimir Putin to emerge the victor from the Syrian disaster, I respectfully ask who will fund Syria's Marshall Plan? This is Russia's area of not only influence but of responsibility. They have kept the kettle on the boil. I would not be surprised that this point may well have influenced Russias willingness to cooperate. It should certainly be Natos stance for the future. We have no direct or indirect accountability for that failed state. It did not fail because of those seeking reform.

Rodney Lunn

Addingham

Brexit does not mean Brexit

I hope Liam Fox realises that his world will never be the same again. After his remarks about our so called non-exporters, he is going to have to keep his nose to the grindstone. No more fat-cat junkets away from the office for him or he will be all over the tabloids.

Was Theresa May wise or mad to select the three Brexit compadres for top jobs? Did she bring them in because they were the brightest stars and most competent to deal with this huge unravelling exercise, about which they preached so noisily? Or was it just the simple plan to give them enough rope to hang themselves, enabling her to move them on because they were an embarrassment. It is starting to look a lot like the latter.

She can then bring in a real team of hardworking negotiators with staying power to handle this massive complex puzzle. We can then look forward not to Brexit, but to a slowly evolving new relationship with an EU that will be greatly changed from the one we now know.

Alastair Duncan

Winchester

Mental health services are in crisis

Whether there is recognition of a crisis in mental health problems among young people or not, the level of the service to assist is simply not there (Mental health care is a lottery, The Independent, 13 September). Personal experience last year showed that to get into the system takes weeks in the first place. Once in, sessions with are limited to no more than three or four (but its important to state how brilliant they were). In effect, this is a triage service, to find you out and move you on.

But where to? If these entry services are under the stress and pressure of numbers, the specialists above them are swamped. Waiting lists are months to years long. The whole process is painfully slow and the service under intolerable strain. And through this, the young person you are trying to support continues to suffer. Something is terribly wrong here, I think.

John Sinclair

Pocklington, East Riding

Would anyone object to a 1 per cent increase in VAT to be ring-fenced for the NHS? Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Robert Smith

Euxton, Lancashire

Its time to permit the use of medical cannabis

Leaders in almost every professional field believe our politicians should follow the dictates of their own conscience and allow the use of cannabis in medical situations. Natural cannabis is more effective and less risky than prescribed medicines for many patients, particularly those with bone cancer, neuropathic pain, MS and Crohns disease. Such mercy and common sense is already shown in the likes of the Benelux, Germany, Spain, Italy, Israel and South America as well as our kith and kin in Canada and Australia. Even in the US, tormented by Richard Nixons misguided war on drugs, 25 states have cannabis on prescription for medical use. Its clearly an idea whose time has come.

Rev Dr John Cameron

St Andrews

Faith schools are more troubling than grammars

Much is being written about grammar schools, but the dangers of another proposal are already being forgotten  namely, faith schools having 100 per cent of their pupils of the one faith. Such schools are likely to develop and harden religious differences: pupils will become imbued with Islam as the only true faith, or the Jews as the chosen people, or the Pope as infallible; many will be taught the evils of homosexuality and contraception, the rejection of evolutionary theory, and even that honour killings and fatwahs are morally demanded. Focus will often be on the Torah or the Bible or the Koran  and maybe on speaking Arabic or Hebrew rather than English. Yet Justine Greening and Theresa May tell us that 100 per cent faith schools will increase religious tolerance. Pray, do please tell us how  and how, for that matter, they will improve young peoples understanding of the world and of each other.

Peter Cave

London W1

Petite fail

Steve Hendrix's article on Lieutenant Heather Lucky Penney, the F16 fighter pilot, contains this immortal line: Penney, now a Major but still a petite blonde with a Colgate grin, is no longer a combat flier. Did she do her make-up in the rear-view mirror, hang her handbag on the choke as she pootled about the skies? Come off it. This is The Independent in the 21st century, not the Daily Mail in the 1950s.

Miles Tubb

Edinburgh
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The Turkish novelist Ahmet Altan has been detained by his countrys Government. How many more journalists and writers will be taken away to rot in a crowded cell? From Turkey to Egypt, the imprisonment of creative and intellectuals has reached unprecedented levels.

Orhan Pamuk, JM Coetzee, Elena Ferrante and other prominent writers have already penned a letter to The Guardian to express their firm dissent. The background to this letter is the coup attempt on 15 July 2016  It is understandable that the government would have imposed a temporary state of emergency. However, the failed coup should not be a pretext for a McCarthy-style witch-hunt, stated the acclaimed authors, who, taken together, have sold tens of millions of copies of their works.

These writers have huge international readerships, with their words translated into tens of languages. Their timely reaction is precisely what has been lacking in the handling of diplomatic and cultural events such as these up until now. We are seeing the direct engagement of our finest minds in addressing brutality on our behalf. We pay for their work, and they speak for us; a personal relationship between writer and reader of the type we used to see regularly until the end of the 1970s.

And now we have the added bonus of social media. Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus used essays, novels, newspapers and universities classes to voice their dissent, todays intellectuals have all that plus their readers who can propagate their message for them.

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

Its becoming increasingly difficult for Western leaders to engage with countries like Turkey and Egypt where internal dissenters face jail or even torture. Our representatives do not act to prevent this. Cases like Altans number in the thousands.

Here is just one other: that of my fellow countryman Giulio Regeni, who had just embarked upon a career as a young reporter for the national daily Il Manifesto when he met his death. Regeni was a Cambridge University PhD researcher doing field work in Cairo. On January 25 he was taken in a street near his home.

A few days later Regeni was found dead at a spaghetti junction just outside the capital. An autopsy found that he had been tortured. To this day  and despite pressure from the Italian Government and investigators  the truth of what happened to him remains obscured.

Italy had to intervene: Regeni was an Italian national, and every government would do that for one of their own citizens. Yet, the Cambridge researcher was also a UK resident and worked for one of Britains finest institutions, but British authorities have played very little role in seeking justice.

There are, of course, implications fo9r intervention: oil and gas, a civil war underway in the region, the spread of Isis in Syria and Libya. Diplomacy is paramount, but we need our European statesmen to collaborate to fight imprisonment and torture  and this simply isnt happening.

 Video shows aftermath of Turkey car bomb attack in Cizre

So with our leaders failing us, we need great international minds to act. They have a clear vision and an audience of tens of millions of people. As the French Arabist and novelist Mathias Enard recently told the German newspaper Der Spiegel, we mustnt lose the East. The East is the twin of our West, but the political discourse doesnt want us to see that, Enard said.

So it is time for our intellectuals to grab the limelight, and they can only do it with our help.
THE typical US dairy herd is now at 900 cows as expansion continues in the sector across the Continent.

Delegates at the ASA's annual conference heard that cow numbers continue to increase which, combined with increasing production per cow, is set to drive milk output to another record high over the coming 12 months.

While the USDA predicts that milk prices will increase slightly over the coming months, a more significant forecast is that dairy exports are expected to jump by a massive 44pc over the next 10 years.

With current exports equivalent to Ireland's entire milk output, this represents a significant development for one of the world's biggest milk producers.

"Looking at the linear progression of milk output per cow, it is set to rise from an average of 11,000kg to over 12,000kg over the next 10 years," said USDA chief economist, Dr Robert Johansson.

It mirrors the relentless increase in mean herd size that has increased tenfold in the last 20 years.

"Consolidation of herds is continuing with 'cow islands' developing around the country where there is more land and less regulatory restrictions.

"This has resulted in a general drift of cows into midwestern states away from urbanising areas," said Dr Johansson.

Continued growth in milk output is likely to be partially driven by grain prices that are also predicted to remain low over the coming years by the USDA.

"Record yields of wheat are set to create an unprecedented carry-over of stocks, preventing prices increasing much over 121/t over the coming 12 months," said the economist.
A 'hard' Brexit will make holding onto our existing British market and border access impossible, according to economist Colm McCarthy.

"The idea that existing border controls with Britain will continue when there are so many [immigrants] wanting access to that country is wishful thinking," he told delegates at the ASA conference in Kilkenny last Friday.

"The trading patterns that currently exist in the EU are the most logical ones, so the reason that we sell so much of our food into Britain is because it returns the best margins. So holding onto our existing food markets is just not going to happen," he said.

He added that many Irish commentators had underestimated the impact of Brexit.

"Germany, France and Britain are the big three in EU terms. If you asked me which one of those I'd least like to leave, it would be Britain, because the British have an interest in ensuring that Ireland doesn't get a bad deal. But it will not be the British negotiating on our behalf in Europe. It will be the Commission, and we know that neither France nor Germany care too much about how we fare. Just look at what Trichet did to us with the ECB."

His comments came during a panel discussion on Brexit, where Agra Europe's editor Chris Horseman depicted a similarly downbeat scenario post Brexit.

"Supports for British farmers will probably be lower because the idealogical stance of the UK has always been against subsidies for agriculture. There will probably be some redistribution of subsidies away from larger farmers now that the UK has a chance to write the rules to suit itself."

He added that it was looking increasingly unlikely that Britain would opt to remain in the EU's Single Market given the implications it would have on it's immigration policy.

"If the UK doesn't want free movement of people, then it won't be allowed have free trade with EU. Instead it is likely to be something halfway between the relationships between the EU and Norway and Canada."

This would have serious implications for Irish trade with Britain.

"It will mean the disintegration of the UK-Irish free-trade zone, and a very likely reintroduction of border controls," he said.

While IFA president Joe Healy acknowledged that Brexit was a serious negative for Ireland, he emphasised the importance of farm leaders having a presence at the negotiating table to secure the best possible deal.

Panellists also flagged the possibility of a new power-axis consisting of France, Germany and Poland. Mr Horseman noted that bigger budget contributions would be required from EU member states to make up for the shortfall from Britain's exit.

But the agricultural policy analyst added that the absence of Britain's free-market views could help convince EU policy makers to strengthen agricultural supports further.

"We shouldn't underestimate the impact of the current farm income crisis, which has shaken confidence within European farming circles," he said.
Used cars now cost more as Vietnam hikes taxes

The government tries to curb imports of second-hand automobiles to encourage the use of new, energy-efficient vehicles.

Older is not always cheaper.

Under a new decree, traders will have to pay an extra US$1,500-$2,000 worth of taxes to bring an old car under nine seats into Vietnam.

The move aims to prevent tax losses and encourage traders to switch to new vehicles that consume less fuel.

New cars imported to Vietnam are subject to import tax, special consumption tax and value-added tax. Apart from the same taxes, old products also have to carry a fixed duty.

The newly published decree has raised this fixed duty on under-nine-seat car with small engines of less than 1,000cc from $3,500 to $5,000, and that on cars with large engines from $8,000 to $10,000. The rates for other ranges have been kept unchanged.

These high taxes have pushed up prices of old cars, with some now surpassing new cars, said a car trader.

He said a 2015 Toyota model usually cost $20,000 if its new and $18,000 if its old. But with more taxes slapped on it, the old car can now be $3,000 more expensive than the new one.

Le Anh Duc from Ho Chi Minh Citys Binh Thanh District said he plans to buy a second-hand car, but the new tax rates are making him think twice.

Official data showed that the country imported some 71,000 cars after the first eight months of this year, down 23,000 units from the same period last year.

On July 1, the special consumption tax imposed on cars was hiked to up to 150 percent as the government moved to restrict the number of luxurious automobiles on the streets.

Related news:

> Tax hike drives Vietnamese consumers away from luxury cars

> Car imports still face red light after Vietnam refuses to budge on legislation
Dublin City Council has given the go-ahead for the 20m redevelopment of a Dublin hotel immortalised in James Joyce's 'Ulysses'.

Monteco Holdings, a firm co-owned by AirAsia boss and Queens Park Rangers (QPR) owner Tony Fernandes, inset, plans to demolish and redevelop the Ormond Hotel.

The council granted planning permission in spite of opposition from the Save Joycean Dublin Committee and local residents.

A spokesperson for Monteco Holdings said yesterday that it was pleased with the decision. "Our revised scheme has taken extensive steps to address objections raised to the previous application including reducing the numbers of bedrooms from 170 to 121 and lowering the height of the building from six to five storeys," he said.

"Whilst the current buildings contain none of the physical structures referred to in Ulysses' famous Sirens episode, the plan proposes that the original outline of numbers 8 and 9 Ormond Quay Upper, that is the original location of the Ormond Hotel and the setting for Ulysses, be marked out using text from the book embedded into the floor and courtyard with bronze plaques or lettering."

He said that "the new hotel will help address the urgent lack of hotel accommodation in Dublin's city centre and make a significant contribution to the rejuvenation of a site that has been vacant for over 10 years".

The investment will create 250 construction jobs and 80 jobs in the hotel upon completion.

The firm hopes to commence construction in 2017 with a view to opening the hotel by the end of 2018.
Nama has made a fresh complaint to the public standards watchdog about its former advisor Frank Cushnahan, a central figure in the Project Eagle controversy.

The move came in the wake of a television programme last week which broadcast a recording of Mr Cushnahan allegedly receiving Stg40,000 in a bag from a Nama debtor.

The agency had already contacted gardai and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) last week alleging that the recording may be evidence of a breach of ethics and anti-corruption laws.

But it raised a further corruption complaint with the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) yesterday.

It is the second complaint by Nama to SIPO about its former Northern Ireland advisory board member in six months.

The agency previously complained that Mr Cushnahan never declared his directorship of a company with loans in Nama.

The businessman, who was appointed a Nama advisor on the recommendation of the North's former finance minister, Sammy Wilson, claims that he was not a director of the firm at the time.

The former Belfast Harbour Commissioners chairman and director of the Office of the First Minister had been working as a business consultant. However, yesterday he filed papers with Companies House, dissolving his consultancy business.

He has declined to comment on the BBC 'Spotlight' revelations, citing an ongoing NCA investigation into Project Eagle.

But he has previously denied any wrongdoing in relation to Project Eagle.

Read more: Q&A: How we got to the cusp of a State inquiry into the Project Eagle sale

The NCA inquiry was launched following the discovery of Stg7m linked to the sale of the loans portfolio in an Isle of Man bank account.

In another recording that was broadcast by the BBC last February, Mr Cushnahan was heard telling two men that he was meant to receive the money for facilitating the Project Eagle deal.

Calls for a Government inquiry into the deal have intensified over the past week, fuelled by the latest recordings and separate revelations that a Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG) report has found Nama could have got hundreds of millions of euro more for the loans portfolio.

Once valued at 5.7bn, the portfolio of loans linked to 850 mainly Northern Irish properties was sold to US vulture fund Cerberus for 1.6bn in April 2014.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said for the first time yesterday that he "wouldn't be opposed" to a Government inquiry into the handling of Project Eagle.

However, Finance Minister Michael Noonan insisted that this could only happen after the C&AG report has first been examined by the Dail Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

Mr Noonan said the Cabinet would consider the report tomorrow and it was intended that it would be published.

Speaking at the Fine Gael party pre-Dail think-in in Newbridge, he said: "C&AG reports always go to PAC, and PAC has a legitimate role now to hold hearings on it. And they will do that. I understand that Deputy Sean Fleming, as chairman, will do that."

Mr Noonan said he was not ruling out an inquiry after the PAC had dealt with the auditor's report. "But let's see what comes out of it," he added.

The Finance Minister said he believed Nama would rebut claims that it lost money and could have got further large sums by better handling of the sale. He believed Nama would contest those criticisms on various levels, including before any PAC hearings.

Nama is due to appear before the PAC on September 29 and has also been called before the Oireachtas Finance Committee.
The five-star Merrion Hotel in Dublin enjoyed a record 2015 with revenues and occupancy at their highest levels.

New accounts show that pre-tax profits increased by 63pc to 2.35m in the 12 months to the end of December last.

The Merrion Hotel is the hotel of choice for superstar musician Bruce Springsteen and a host of Hollywood A-listers, including Matt Damon, when they arrive into Dublin.

New accounts filed by Hotel Merrion Ltd with the Companies Office show that revenues at the firm increased from 17.6m to 19.6m.

The multi-award winning hotel comprises 123 rooms and 19 suites and is situated across the road from Government Buildings in the heart of the city.

According to the directors' report, "the hotel had a good year with revenues, room rates and occupancy being at their highest levels reflecting a strong performance by the Dublin market".

The directors added that "the near term outlook remains strong and we believe we can maintain revenues and profitability".

Online advertised room rates at the hotel yesterday ranged from 295 for a 'Standard Queen' room to 3,200 per night for the Penthouse Suite.

The firm last year paid a dividend of 102,422 to its shareholders compared to a dividend payout of 96,083 in 2014.

Numbers employed by the hotel - which houses Ireland's only two-Michelin star restaurant, Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud - last year increased from 281 to 286. Staff costs rose from 7.2m to 7.88m.

The profit last year takes account of non-cash depreciation costs of 591,756. Accumulated profits at the hotel firm last year increased from 3.05m to 4.89m.

The firm recorded a post tax profit of 1.94m after paying corporation tax of 411,469.

The Northern Ireland-based Hasting group owns a share of the Merrion Hotel through its 50pc shareholding in Landmark Investment Co Ltd.

The remaining 50pc of the ownership in the Merrion is owned by businessmen and ESB chairman Lochlann Quinn and billionaire Martin Naughton.

Mr Naughton owns appliance firm Glen Dimplex.
After five years of fruitless talks on a European financial-transaction tax, frustrated policy makers, including Germany's Wolfgang Schaeuble, are talking up the prospect of a global levy that would make sure banks pay their fair share.

If the plan sounds familiar, that's because European Union leaders tried to sell it to their partners in the Group of 20 nations in 2011 and got shot down. Since then, Mr Schaeuble and others have spent countless hours debating first a tax for the whole EU, then a scaled-down levy in 10 countries led by Germany and France.

Mr Schaeuble returned to the idea of a global tax at a meeting of G-20 finance chiefs in July, acknowledging that efforts to hammer out a compromise in Europe were "hitting a wall". With no breakthrough in sight, he spoke hopefully on Septemebr 10 of enlisting the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to push the issue forward.

"This may help us in Europe to resolve the dilemma of a good idea failing just because it won't work unless our neighbours are doing the same thing," Mr Schaeuble told reporters in Bratislava after the tax was discussed by finance ministers. "In the end this requires global regulation."

An EU-wide levy was proposed in September 2011, as a "first tangible step for taxing such transactions at the global level," according to the European Commission. Ireland, along with the UK, is opposed to the move. The EU plan for a bloc-wide tax was abandoned by mid-2012 but 11 member states opted to move ahead with the idea. That group has since reduced to 10, and if it falls below nine the plan for a formal shared policy under EU enhanced co-operation rules would have to be scrapped. (Bloomberg)
HUGE numbers of people who have a mortgage with a vulture fund are in arrears.

New figures from the Central Bank show that almost four out of 10 of those whose home loan is owned by a vulture fund are two years or more behind on their mortgage repayments.

Close to 46,000 residential mortgages are owned by what the Central Bank calls non-bank entities.

Most of these are held regulated credit firms.

But 30pc are owned by what the Central Bank refers to as unregulated loan owners, or vulture funds.

New figures show that 38pc of the mortgages held by vulture funds are two years or more in arrears.

This means that around 5,200 mortgages owned by vulture funds are more than two years in arrears, putting these people at high risk of losing their homes.

This comes with 19pc of mortgage accounts that in arrears of two years or more at retail credit firms.

A retail credit firm is allowed to issue loans, but unlike a bank it is not allowed to take deposits.

Overall, the numbers behind on their payments continues to fall.

But one in nine residential mortgages are in arrears across all banks and other lenders.

This works out at 82,000 mortgage accounts that were in some form of arrears at the end of June this year, the Central Bank said.

This was down almost 4,000 compared with the first three months of the year.

It was the 12th quarter in row the overall number of mortgages in arrears fell.

Almost 35,000 mortgage accounts are more than two years in arrears, a figure that is little changed from the previous quarter.

Close to 15,000 buy-to-let mortgages are more than two years behind on repayments.
Samsung Electronics heir apparent Lee Jae Yong has been nominated to the board, teeing him up for a bigger role as South Korea's largest company struggles with a widening recall of its Note 7 smartphone.

Lee, better known as Jay Y, has been helping run Samsung since his father suffered a heart attack in 2014.

Now the scion will have to show if he has the mettle to help steer the company through its deepest crisis in years.

Regulators, airlines and Samsung have warned customers to stop using Note 7 phones, plagued by reports that the batteries catch fire while charging. Samsung has lost $22bn (19.5bn) in market value over two days - suggesting damage to the brand could go well beyond early estimates of $1bn for the phone's recall. Samsung released the Note 7 in late August to get a jump on Apple's new iPhone 7, due in stores later this month.

That advantage has now disappeared.

Jay Y's board nomination "is a signal that Samsung needs strong leadership in the midst of risk and uncertainty", said Park Ju Gun, president of corporate watchdog CEOSCORE in Seoul.

"By showing the markets that he's assuming responsibility, Lee Jae Yong may be seeking to take a step forward in the succession."

Jay Y (48) will become more involved in strategic decision-making, including mergers and acquisitions, the Suwon, South Korea-based company said in a statement yesterday.

Now co-vice chairman, he's expected to be formally elevated to the nine-person board after a shareholder vote in October.

Jay Y has moved through a series of jobs since joining Samsung full time in 2001 and shouldered more responsibility after his father Lee Kun Hee was hospitalised in 2014. Jay Y is considered more globally minded than Lee senior. Samsung's so-called Crown Prince speaks Korean, English and Japanese and has been credited with cutting partnerships with Apple and Google.

Working with the late Apple ceo Steve Jobs, Jay Y agreed to build a new factory making the flash chips Apple wanted instead of the hard-disk drives used in early versions of the iPod.

Although the two companies later clashed in court over intellectual property, the Korean attended Mr Jobs's memorial service. South Korean heirs typically don't succeed a living parent. In the meantime, investors will be watching how Jay Y handles the Note 7 recall. (Bloomberg)
The high volume of cases and the slow pace of repossessions through the courts here are a challenge to efforts to resolve problem debt, according to a cross-country comparison of problem loans.

It shows Irish banks continue to have some of the highest levels of problem debts in the euro area, despite more than 124bn of debts being taken into Nama or disposed of by lenders since the crash.

A European Central Bank (ECB) working group, led by the Central Bank of Ireland deputy governor Sharon Donnery, launched a public consultation aimed at speeding up Eurozone banks' resolution of problem loans yesterday.

Nine years after the start of the great crash, European lenders continue to hold dangerously high levels of non-performing loans - around 1.1 trillion - including soured business, property debts and mortgages and consumer credit in arrears.

There is as yet no common approach to tackling high levels of arrears.

The ECB published its guidance for banks dealing with non-performing loans (NPLs) yesterday as part of a wider consultation process aimed at mapping out common practice across member states.

That includes timetables to reduce arrears over two and three-year periods, best practice in terms of staffing arrears resolution units and the kinds of IT capacity needed to work through loan books.

Under the ECB plan all lenders will have targets to cut bad loans.

However, the banks will set their own targets which will be non-binding.

Analysts said that risks could allow the current drift to continue.

"This guidance gives banks a green light to manage NPLs internally, so this perpetuates the impasse," said Gennaro Pucci, chief investment officer at PVE Capital, a fund that has been buying Italian bad loans. However, failure to reach targets may lead to "supervisory measures" by the ECB, such as higher capital requirements, the regulator said.

"If there were significant gaps, then obviously we would be discussing with the bank how they would move close toward compliance with the guidance, particularly the time frame over which that was going to happen," said Sharon Donnery.

The consultation runs until November 15, including public hearings on November 7.

Irish banks already have hard targets for dealing with mortgage arrears as well as timetables to work through problem SME loans. The bulk of their large property lending was shifted to Nama.

However, Ireland remains a blackspot for problem debt. There was more than 50bn of bad loans on the books of Irish lenders at the end of 2015. A "stocktake" by the ECB shows almost a fifth of Irish bank loans were in trouble, compared at an average of 7pc in the Eurozone, at the end of 2015.

That ratio rises to 47pc in Greece.
OPEC raised its forecast of oil supplies from non-member countries in 2017 as new fields come online and US shale drillers prove more resilient than expected to low prices, pointing to a larger surplus in the market next year.

Demand for crude oil from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OECD) will average 32.48 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2017, OPEC said in a monthly report yesterday. That is down 530,000 bpd from the previous forecast.

The prospect of a larger surplus than expected adds to the challenge of OPEC and non-members such as Russia, who are making a renewed attempt to restrain supplies.

Oil LCOc1 is trading at $47 a barrel, half its level of mid-2014, as a supply glut that OPEC hoped cheap oil would banish sticks around. OPEC revised up its 2016 and 2017 non-OPEC supply forecasts, citing factors including the start up of Kazakhstan's Kashagan oilfield and a lower-than-expected decline in US shale output, and said the immediate outlook was for more production.

"It is expected that there will be higher non-OPEC production in the second half of 2016 compared to the first half," OPEC said in the report.

OPEC expects non-OPEC supply to rise by 200,000 bpd in 2017, versus a previously forecast 150,000 bpd decline. The revision is mostly due to Kashagan, OPEC said, as the long-delayed giant field finally starts up. On top of that, the forecast for this year was revised up by 180,000 bpd. OPEC kept output near a multi-year high in August. (Reuters)
The Man Booker shortlist, one of the most prestigious literary honours in the world, has been announced.

British writers Deborah Levy and Graeme Macrae Burnet have been shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize.

Levy is in the running for Hot Milk, which examines "female rage and sexuality" and the "monstrous nature of motherhood."

Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet is shortlisted for His Bloody Project, a crime story and memoir exploring the life of a 19th century crofter.

Debut novelist Ottessa Moshfegh, a US writer, has also made this year's list for Eileen.

The shortlist also features US author Paul Beatty, Canadian-British writer David Szalay and Canadian Madeleine Thien.

2016 Man Booker Shortlist

Paul Beatty (US) The Sellout

Deborah Levy (UK) Hot Milk

Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) His Bloody Project

Ottessa Moshfegh (US) Eileen

David Szalay (Canada-UK) All That Man Is

Madeleine Thien (Canada) Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Scottish author Macrae Burnet is now favourite to land this year's prize for what is only his second novel.

His Bloody Project has odds of 5-2, displacing former long-term favourite Levy (3-1) into second spot, according to Ladbrokes.

His Bloody Project was put into print by independent publisher Contraband, a tiny Glasgow-based publisher run by just two people.

The author recounts the murders, in 1869, of three people in a remote crofting community and the subsequent trial of 17-year-old Roderick Macrae, one of the writer's ancestors.

The book features the teenager's memoir, along with court transcripts, medical reports, police statements and newspaper articles.

Video of the Day

Levy is the only previously-shortlisted author, for Swimming Home in 2012.

Chairwoman of the judges Dr Amanda Foreman said: "The Man Booker Prize subjects novels to a level of scrutiny that few books can survive.

"In re-reading our incredibly diverse and challenging longlist, it was both agonising and exhilarating to be confronted by the sheer power of the writing.

"As a group we were excited by the willingness of so many authors to take risks with language and form.

"The final six reflect the centrality of the novel in modern culture - in its ability to champion the unconventional, to explore the unfamiliar, and to tackle difficult subjects."

The 2016 winner will be announced on October 25 in London's Guildhall, at a ceremony broadcast by the BBC.

This is the third year that the prize has been open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the UK.

Previously, it was open only to authors from the UK and Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe.

Judges said that all the shortlisted authors played with language and form and tackled unfamiliar and challenging subjects, covering subjects from murder in 19th century Scotland to classical music in Revolutionary China.
The sky's the limit when it comes to the country's rapidly expanding aviation market.

Vietstar Airlines, a military-run aviation company, is waiting for the governments approval to provide passenger and cargo transport services, according to the country's aviation authorities.

The Ho Chi Minh City-based airline is set to become the fourth carrier in Vietnam, one of the fastest-growing airline markets in Asia-Pacific.

Vietstar will focus on domestic routes between northern and southern Vietnam, as well as routes to northeast and southeast Asian countries, the Vietnam News Agency quoted the airlines director general, Pham Trinh Phuong, as saying.

The six-year-old carrier, which currently has a fleet of five passenger planes and two cargo aircraft, including Boeing 737s and Airbus 320s, is expected to carry 500,000 passengers and transport 32,000 tons of freight during its first year of operation.

The Vietnams Aviation Administration said in a report submitted to the Transport Ministry that Vietstar Airlines meets all the requirements to become Vietnams fourth airline following national flagship Vietnam Airlines, budget carrier VietJet and low-cost airline Jetstar Pacific.

Vietnamese transport authorities require an airline to have at least VND700 billion ($30 million) in capital, according to a government regulation issued in 2013.

Vietstar Airlines was set up in 2010 by the Ministry of Defense. As of the end of last year, it was a VND650 billion ($28 million) joint venture between the Aircraft Repairing Company A41, the Vietnam Air Force, Vietstar Airways and Tin Thanh Express Company.

Industry experts said the fledging private airline will face difficulties competing in a market currently dominated by state-owned Vietnam Airlines and budget carrier VietJet.

VietJet has captured a 40 percent share of the domestic market, and will likely surpass flagship carrier Vietnam Airlines in 2016 as the countrys largest domestic carrier, said the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.

Vietnams airline industry is growing at speed to meet the rising demand of the domestic market, where air passenger traffic is forecast to reach 32.4 million people per year by 2020.

Official statistics show that the number of passengers on domestic flights increased 1.5 times to 20.7 million in 2015 from 14 million in 2010, and budget airlines are rapidly increasing their market share with annual growth of 15-20 percent.

Related News:

>Vietnam to upgrade overstretched airport in Ho Chi Minh City

>Vietnam looks to expedite work on giant airport project

>Vietnam's budget airlines soar past passenger trains
Is there anything more terrifying than cooking for a big group of people?

Elaine Crowley has won over Operation Transformation audiences with her honesty, even admitting to viewers that she gained weight due to "loneliness".

The Midday presenter (39) is competing in the weight-loss series alongside fellow celebs Gerald Kean, Karl Spain, Brenda Donohue and Katherine Lynch.

She's accepted the challenges presented to her with a brave face and determination but on Wednesday night's episode the 39-year-old will do something she's never done before... cook for 10 people.

Elaine returns to her home village of New Twopothouse in County Cork to visit Baltydaniel National School - where her late father was the principal - to see their healthy eating programme.

While at home, the presenter cooks one of the Operation Transformation recipes for her family.

Now cooking for one is stressful enough if you're not confident in the kitchen but you only have yourself to worry about if anything goes wrong. Cooking for 10 people, however, has the potential to be a disaster.

It's even worse if the people you're preparing a meal for are your family. Why? Because they're not worried about offending you and will slate any poor attempts... even Elaine's mother is worried she'll poison her.

Read More

While she's happy with the progress she's making, the TV star admitted agreeing to do the show was no easy decision.

"I got the phone call to come on and I was thinking, 'What? I'm not doing this' and then I worried so much about the decision that I ate myself almost two stone heavier," she recently told the Herald.
Heroic mother-of-two Caitriona Lucas, who tragically died during a search and recovery mission, was remembered for her devotion and selfless dedication to others.

The librarian, who had worked as a volunteer with the Doolin coast guard for over 10 years, died after she was thrown into the rough water alongside two of her Kilkee colleagues when their boat capsized.

Originally from Ballyvaughan in north Clare, Caitriona joined the Doolin coast guard in January 2006 and took part in countless rescue missions alongside her husband Bernard Lucas over the past decade and filmed many others. The couple, who lived in nearby Liscannor, had also been involved in the Search and Rescue Dogs Association (SARDA), helping to train dogs to assist in search and rescue operations.

Ms Lucas served as the organisation's national secretary from 2011 to 2014.

Friends of the couple told of their shock at the tragedy, with one local in Liscannor saying: "They did so much for others. Caitriona was always putting other first, through her work with the coast guard and with the dogs. It's just such a loss."

Caitriona had worked as a librarian for Clare County Council for 16 years in Lisdoonvarna.

Work colleagues in the council were said to be grief-stricken at her loss yesterday. She was remembered by friends for her good humour and as a woman who was always available to help others.

"She was such a dedicated member of the Doolin coast guard team, she was at the heart of it all.

"It's hard to believe this is happening," said one friend.

Another remembered her for her for her love of keeping fit, trekking, the outdoors and travelling.

"Everyone is just in absolute shock. I can't believe she's gone like this," added another.
A parish priest has described his church's 'Park & Pray' scheme as a positive for the local area.

Fr Fergus OConnor, from Our Lady Queen of Peace on Merrion Road in Dublin, said the church brought in a management company to charge for parking in the carpark.

They decided to introduce the new move when the car park began filling up with people who werent going to church.

Now, anyone can use the carpark for up to 45 minutes, but the 'honour system' means you have to pay for any time longer.

The parish priests predecessor said they previously had an incident where a funeral could not use the car park because it was full.

Fr Fergus OConnor told Independent.ie; I wanted to make it available to people who couldnt pay and I didnt want people to have to take a chance not paying and feel anxious.

The scheme gives people 45 minutes of free parking to allow them to say a prayer, light a candle or go to mass.

If the management company catches someone past 45 minutes who are not paying they can be clamped.

Its an honour system, we dont check if people are using the church or not  we wanted to make sure it was available to everyone so that you dont have to pay to pray.
ALAN BRADLEY, jailed for conspiring to steal from a security van transporting almost 1million in cash, will apply to the High Court for bail next week while he awaits the outcome of a legal challenge against his continued imprisonment.

Bradley (42) of Churchfields, Kentstown, Co Meath, with his brother Wayne, pleaded guilty in the Circuit Criminal Court to conspiring to steal cash from Chubb Ireland in November 2007 at Tesco, Celbridge, Co Kildare.

Micheal P. OHiggins, SC, counsel for Bradley, told Mr Justice Anthony Barr in the High Court today that the Minister for Justice had twice refused Bradley remission he claims he has earned on his sentence.

Mr OHiggins, who appeared with barrister Karl Monahan, said that on the basis of a one-third remission his client should have been released from Portlaoise Prison towards the end of June last.

Bradleys solicitor Niamh Kelly of Michael Staines and Co told the court in an affidavit that if granted one-quarter remission her client would be entitled to his freedom this coming December.

Mr OHiggins said Mr Bradley was seeking a judicial review of the Ministers refusal granting remission and would be asking the court for an order quashing that refusal. He would also be applying for bail for Mr Bradley.

Judge Barr said he was satisfied Mr Bradley had an arguable case and would put the matter in for an early hearing as there was a real risk he could be in prison when he ought not to be.

Mr OHiggins said Mr Bradley had been sentenced in April 2012 to nine years, dating from February 14, 2012, with the final two years suspended. This had subsequently been reduced on appeal to eight years with 18 months suspended.

He said Mr Bradley had applied to the Minister for enhanced remission but had twice been refused. Mr Bradley had engaged in crime awareness, anger management and peace education programmes to help facilitate an early release.

In his second application to the Minister, which had been turned down, he had pointed out that he now had the skill set to start his own business on release in personal training and event management which, he believed, made him less likely to reoffend and better able to integrate into the community.

Ms Kelly, in her affidavit, said she believed the Minister was in breach of her duty to give reasons in respect of her decision of August 10 last not to grant remission.
This is the moment an environmental engineer assaulted a solicitor with an umbrella after they bumped into each other on a rainy evening in Dublin.

David Christie (53) brought a private prosecution at Dublin District Court alleging he was assaulted by Frank Lunny (73), of Stewarts Hall, Parnell Street, Dublin 1, at Capel Street, on July 27 last year.

Lunny, who is a director of the management company of Mr Christies office building, was convicted and fined 100 and also ordered to pay prosecution costs.

Our exclusive footage shows the moment the two men collided on a rainy and windy evening while both men were walking with their umbrellas up.

Mr Christie said he was the victim of a cowardly assault which has left him feeling absolutely paranoid on the street when I see or hear someone behind me.

He said he felt an unmerciful bang to his right leg from behind and that he was struck twice to his head with an umbrella by Mr Lunny. He told the court that they did not make contact with each other beforehand.

Expand Close Frank Lunny was spared a sentence for the umbrella attack / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Frank Lunny was spared a sentence for the umbrella attack

Mr Lunny denied assaulting him. He claimed that his leg had been hurt after he and the complainant passed each other and he went after the solicitor to demand an apology. He told the court he just swished Mr Christies umbrella with his own.

Judge John ONeill viewed CCTV footage and said he was satisfied there was an earlier incident and Lunny took offence and reacted badly. He also said that all Mr Christies evidence had not been corroborated.

Judge ONeill said the footage showed two parties passing and Mr Lunny coming after Mr Christie. He said the footpaths on Capel Street are narrow but that did not give Lunny the right to run after Mr Christie and strike him.

The court heard that there had been High Court proceedings previously involving both men in connection with Mr Christies offices.

The solicitor told the court he walked to Capel Street to his office car park and was carrying a rucksack of heavy files over his right shoulder and he had an umbrella in his right hand.

He said that during the incident Lunny had called him a f**king bastard. He agreed that he thought he was hit with such force the umbrella broke. He said that he had a large bump on the back of his head.
A mother who allegedly received a wrong diagnosis of an ectopic pregnancy yesterday told a disciplinary hearing of her distressing experience.

It is claimed that mother-of-three Laura Esmonde was wrongly diagnosed by a consultant obstetric and gynaecologist working at South Tipperary General Hospital when she presented on January 6, 2013.

The consultant, whose name has been anonymised for the inquiry, was referred to as Dr A throughout proceedings yesterday, which took place at the Medical Council's headquarters.

Ms Esmonde (38), from just outside Tipperary town, attended the A&E department at South Tipperary General Hospital with a swollen leg.

A number of years previously, she had suffered from a clot in her lung. A routine urine test revealed that she was pregnant, which she had not known.

"It was a lot to take in, but I was happy to be pregnant," Ms Esmonde told the inquiry.

The following day, an ultrasound of her leg showed she had a clot. Ms Esmonde also asked for an ultrasound of her pelvis, because she wanted to see the baby and her husband was due into the hospital shortly.

The stenographer said she couldn't see anything and called in a consultant radiologist.

He also performed a scan and Ms Esmonde said he told her there was a possibility that she had an ectopic pregnancy.

On January 8, Dr A performed a transvaginal scan, and, according to Ms Esmonde, told her she had "an ectopic pregnancy of unknown location". Dr A advised that she take methotrexate, which is used to stop cells from growing and to treat ectopic pregnancies.

On January 8, 2013, Ms Esmonde took her first dose of methotrexate. She was discharged on January 12. On January 17, she was readmitted to the hospital for a second dose of methotrexate, which she took the following day. No further ultrasound was conducted before this dose, she said, even though her husband requested one.

Clot

On January 26, Ms Esmond was transferred to Cork University Hospital for the treatment of the clot in her leg - but a scan that day indicated her pregnancy was not ectopic. A further scan showed an intrauterine gestational sac, but the pregnancy was no longer viable.

"I was very upset. It was the eeriest of things. It was very distressing," Ms Esmond said.

On January 29, a consultant came in to discuss the possibility of holding off on a DNC procedure.

"For one split second, I thought maybe everything was going to be okay but I thought about the two doses of methotrexate and the damage that had been done to the baby," said Ms Esmonde. "I was so angry."

She was successfully treated for the clot and discharged from Cork University hospital. She then returned on February 2, suffering from abdominal cramping and bleeding.

A nurse did a scan and an internal exam and the pregnancy came out in the nurse's hand.

Ms Esmonde later made a complaint about Dr A to the Medical Council.

Legal counsel for Dr A, Simon Mills, said that Dr A, when he performed the scan on January 8, claims he said she had "a pregnancy of an unknown location that is most likely ectopic".

Mr Mills argued that four separate ultrasounds were conducted and none of them showed a pregnancy in her womb. He said he would be calling Fergal Malone, master of the Rotunda, as a witness.

Dr A faces the allegation of poor professional performance, based on eight allegations relating to his alleged diagnosis of an ectopic pregnancy.

What is an ectopic pregnancy?

An ectopic pregnancy happens when the fertilised egg implants itself outside the womb, usually in one of the fallopian tubes.

If an egg gets stuck in a tube it won't develop into a baby.

It is a potentially life-threatening complication for the pregnant woman.

Symptoms can develop between the fourth and 12th week of pregnancy.

They include pain and vaginal bleeding. Diagnosis is usually confirmed with a transvaginal ultrasound scan or blood test.

The scan should show whether the fertilised egg has become implanted in a fallopian tube, although occasionally it is difficult to spot.

Blood tests to measure the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin may also be carried out twice, 48 hours apart. This can be a help if the scan is not clear.

An ectopic pregnancy must be ended through surgery or medication.
A FORMER property developer, who faked his own kidnapping, could be jailed for contempt of a court order directing him to provide full details of his assets.

Caoimhin McGeever, otherwise known as Kevin McGeever was alleged in the High Court today to have failed to provide a truthful and accurate statement of means in response to efforts by businessman James Byrne to recover a judgment of 1.18m obtained against him.

McGeever, who, the court was told, "swindled" Byrne out of his money, has opposed the application.

Mr Byrne obtained judgment against McGeever and his company over a failed deal regarding the purchase of several apartments in Dubai which had been sold to Byrne by McGeever's company, KMM Intel Properties.

As part of Byrne's attempts to recover the monies McGeever, with an address at Clontarf, Dublin 3, had earlier been cross-examined before the Master of the High Court about his affairs as set out in his sworn statement.

It is claimed McGeever did not set out his property interests in the statement as he is required to do. These included an alleged interest in the mansion called "Nirvana" in Craughwell, Co Galway.

McGeever claims Nirvana is owned by a Belize-registered company called Universal Assets Ltd and is held in trust for his two daughters Shanelle and Renee. It is also alleged McGeever perjured himself in his sworn statement.

Byrne claims his efforts to recover the monies have been seriously impaired by McGeever's alleged failure to provide a full and frank statement of affairs.

An application seeking McGeever's committal to prison came before Mr Justice Donald Binchy in July when the Judge adjourned the proceedings so certain steps could be taken on Mr McGeever's behalf.

The matter was in for a review before Mr Justice Anthony Barr today (Tuesday). Barrister Gary McCarthy SC, counsel for Mr Byrne, told Judge Barr his client was "swindled out of his life savings by Mr McGeever.

Mr McCarthy said Mr McGeever could not be trusted and he had done nothing since the matter was before Judge Binchy. Information and documentation concerning the deed of trust in relation to Nirvana had been sought but had not been provided.

Counsel said Mr McGeever pleaded guilty before Galway Circuit Court last April and had received a two years suspended sentence for wasting garda time.

He had claimed he was kidnapped by creditors who held him for eight months before he turned up on a roadside and was picked up by a passing motorist.

Seamas O Tuathail , SC, counsel for Mr McGeever, objected to the use of the word swindled. He said their case was that it was an investment that had gone wrong. Certain steps had been taken on Mr McGeever's behalf including attempts to secure the information concerning Nirvana.

Mr OTuathail said steps were also being taken in respect of the will of Siobhan O'Callaghan, the late partner of Mr McGeever. She had died in 2013 leaving him three properties in Dublin. That will was the subject of other proceedings before the High Court, the court heard.

Mr Justice Barr adjourned the matter to a date in early October before Mr Justice Binchy. The judge said he accepted that certain steps had been carried out on Mr McGeever's behalf and he directed that a further sworn statement updating the court should be provided by the October date.
Motorists currently pay between 2.10 and 3.10 to use the M50. (Stock photo)

Motorists face being hit with higher tolls on the M50 and Dublin Port Tunnel after the European Court of Justice ruled that VAT should be applied to the bills.

An opinion from the Advocate General says that VAT at 23pc must be applied to tolls on all publicly owned motorways.

While VAT is currently paid by motorists on these roads, sources said toll prices were "artificially low" and were likely to be increased in light of the ruling.

In 2008, the National Roads Authority - now Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) - took over the M50. It said it had received confirmation from the Revenue Commissioners that VAT was not applicable on any tolled roads it operated, which also includes the Dublin Port Tunnel. In May 2010, following a separate ruling in the European Court of Justice which found that VAT should be applied by public bodies, TII was directed to apply VAT on the M50 and Port Tunnel by Revenue.

Read more: Drivers warned of traffic disruption as eFlow to withdraw toll tags on motorways across the country

The State did not increase the tolls to reflect the VAT, but instead decided to include it in the existing rates. The Revenue's decision was appealed by TII, and the appeal was sent to Europe for clarification.

Helpful

Motorists currently pay between 2.10 and 3.10 to use the M50. The Port Tunnel costs between 3 and 10. Last year, TII remitted 17m in VAT. Sources said if the court upholds the opinion, higher tolls might be introduced on both roads. The State could increase the roads maintenance budget to avoid any impact on motorists.

TII said the opinion was "not helpful", and it awaited the full ruling.
Those convicted of possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin face the death penalty in Vietnam. Photo by VnExpress/File photo

The ring was busted two years ago.

A court in the central province of Nghe An on Monday sentenced two people to death and another to life in prison for trafficking seven kilograms of heroin from Laos to Vietnam.

Nguyen Quoc Khanh, 56, and Cu Minh Tuan, 31, have received the death sentences while Ha Ba Hua, 27, will be imprisoned for life.

Another accomplice Nguyen Thi Luat, 21, got 20 years.

The court heard that Khanh had a deal with some people in Laos in June 2014 to buy drugs and bring them into Vietnam.

He then hired Hua to accompany three Laotians to transport seven kilograms of heroin and 300 grams of methamphetamine into the country.

Tuan was caught in August 2014 while carrying the heroin to northern Vietnam for sale.

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 death sentences handed down regularly, drug running continues in border areas.

Related news:

>Vietnamese-Australian woman caught with 11 lbs of heroin at Vietnam airport
An environmental engineer has been spared a jail sentence for assaulting a solicitor with an umbrella after they bumped into each other on a rainy evening in Dublin.

David Christie (53) brought a private prosecution at Dublin District Court alleging he was assaulted by Frank Lunny (73), of Stewarts Hall, Parnell Street, Dublin 1, at Capel Street, on July 27 last year.

Lunny, who is a director of the management company of Mr Christies office building, was convicted and fined 100 and also ordered to pay prosecution costs.

It was a rainy and windy evening and both men had been walking with their umbrellas up at the time of the incident, Judge John ONeill heard.

Mr Christie said he was the victim of a cowardly assault which has left him feeling absolutely paranoid on the street when I see or hear someone behind me.

He said he felt an unmerciful bang to his right leg from behind and that he was struck twice to his head with an umbrella by Mr Lunny. He told the court that they did not make contact with each other beforehand.

Mr Lunny denied assaulting him. He claimed that his leg had been hurt after he and the complainant passed each other and he went after the solicitor to demand an apology. He told the court he just swished Mr Christies umbrella with his own.

Judge ONeill viewed CCTV footage and said he was satisfied there was an earlier incident and Lunny took offence and reacted badly. He also said that all Mr Christies evidence had not been corroborated.

Judge ONeill said the footage showed two parties passing and Mr Lunny coming after Mr Christie. He said the footpaths on Capel Street are narrow but that did not give Lunny the right to run after Mr Christie and strike him.

The court heard that there had been High Court proceedings previously involving both men in connection with Mr Christies offices.

The solicitor told the court he walked to Capel Street to his office car park and was carrying a rucksack of heavy files over his right shoulder and he had an umbrella in his right hand.

He said that during the incident Lunny had called him a f**king bastard. He agreed that he thought he was hit with such force the umbrella broke. He said that he had a large bump on the back of his head.
Crime gangs are targeting farmers in a racket in which stolen machinery is sold on  only to be stolen again, from its new owner, a short time later. (Photo By: Education Images/UIG via Getty Images)

Crime gangs are targeting farmers in a racket in which stolen machinery is sold on - only to be stolen again, from its new owner, a short time later.

Typically, such criminals will advertise stolen property, such as a trailer, and sell it second-hand for cash to an unsuspecting buyer. The transaction often takes place at the buyer's home or somewhere that the criminal won't be seen.

Expand Close Colin Connolly / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Colin Connolly

However, the buyer will typically find the newly bought item stolen a couple of weeks later - usually by the seller themselves, according to Colin Connolly, a former garda who is now the Rural Crime Prevention Executive for the Irish Farmers Association, (IFA),

He warned that a failure by rural-dwellers to take more responsibility for their goods is driving a cycle of criminal activity. People need to be more proactive in protecting their valuables, he said.

Yet many victims of rural crime are still not reporting thefts because they believe the goods won't be recovered or that they aren't doing enough to prevent burglaries in the first place.

"A lot of these people are people who still leave their keys in the door," he said.

Read more: Farmers and buyers warned over online sale of stolen machinery

However, such thinking is playing into the hands of organised criminals operating in rural areas across Ireland, who are not only burgling rural properties, but selling the stolen goods on over and over again.

Mr Connolly pointed out initiatives, such as the IFA's free Theft Stop. Users simply register with the Theft Stop database at www.theftstop.ie and are given an ID number which they can stencil or punch with a metal puncher onto their equipment or property.

Anyone looking to buy second-hand equipment or valuables can also check on the website to see whether it has been stolen before being duped by the "seller".

However, in many cases, farmers and other rural dwellers are failing to take such simple steps to avoid being victims of crime.

He said the recent discovery of a cache of valuable goods stolen during burglaries in counties Meath and Westmeath was an encouraging sign.

The stolen goods were all recovered during a raid on a house in Oldcastle, Co Meath as part of Operation Thor.

They included a 2015 Audi A5, a 2010 Audi A4 Estate, a rigid inflatable boat and motor and three ride-on lawnmowers.

These are indicative of the kind of high-value, resellable goods that organised criminals are targeting from rural homes and businesses, he said.

"It represents right across the board the stuff that's being taken," he said.

"To me, this is an encouraging sign. They're breaking the link in the chain."

In the meantime, Mr Connolly is urging farmers who are buying new machines or expensive equipment to be discreet when making or discussing such purchases. He is also trying to discourage people from buying such goods from the second-hand market.

More than 2,500 agricultural crimes were reported in the first six months of 2014, according to statistics from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The bulk of crimes involved 1,720 thefts of farm machinery alone. But the theft of tools and even livestock is on the rise, as is that of farm machinery that is being stolen to order.
The coast guard boat which capsized during a rescue in Kilkee County Clare during a search for a missing local man. Pic:Mark Condren

Search operation for a missing local man continues in in Kilkee Co Clare Pic:Mark Condren

The coast guard boat which capsized during a rescue in Kilkee County Clare during a search for a missing local man. Pic:Mark Condren

The coast guard boat which capsized during a recue in Kilkee County Clare during a search for a missing local man. Pic:Mark Condren

Volunteers resumed a search for a missing man in Co Clare this morning after a coast guard operation on Monday ended in tragedy.

Caitriona Lucas, a member of the Irish Coastguard, was killed when the boat she was in alongside two coastguard colleagues capsized.

Ms Lucas (41), a mum of two who was originally from North Clare, was taking part in the search for missing school teacher David McMahon.

Mr McMahon has been missing since last Friday and hundreds of people have taken part in the search operation for him.

However, Gardai have asked volunteers to stay away from the cliff area in Kilkee today. The Clare Civil Defense were on site this morning to help with the search operation.

Clare Civil Defence have opted to deploy drones in the area which can cover a large area, as it has been deemed the safest way to progress the search at this time. It is expected that the coastguard helicopter will be called in if necessary later today.

Expand Close The coast guard boat which capsized during a rescue in Kilkee County Clare during a search for a missing local man. Pic:Mark Condren / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp The coast guard boat which capsized during a rescue in Kilkee County Clare during a search for a missing local man. Pic:Mark Condren

The Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB) which Ms Lucas and two members of the Coastguard, Jenny Carway and James Lucey were travelling in, could be seen at the edge of a cave along the shoreline this morning.

Last night those organising the search party for the young man paid tribute to brave Caitriona.

Expand Close Search operation for a missing local man continues in Kilkee Co Clare Pic:Mark Condren / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Search operation for a missing local man continues in Kilkee Co Clare Pic:Mark Condren

"We cannot put words together that will be of any comfort but know that our entire community hold you all dearly in our hearts tonight and will do so forever.

"It is unimaginable to think that this is the reward for someone carrying out such a brave and selfless act & in a voluntary capacity. It is just not right," they said in a statement.

Sports Minister Shane Ross also paid tribute to Ms Lucas who has been hailed as a hero.

"This is an appalling tragedy; the loss of a brave and valiant woman engaged in the most heroic of and unselfish of duties," he said.

Expand Close Search operation for a missing local man continues in Kilkee Co Clare Pic:Mark Condren / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Search operation for a missing local man continues in Kilkee Co Clare Pic:Mark Condren

"Such remarkable courage and heroism in the service of others is rarely equalled and never surpassed. On behalf of myself and my Department I would like to extend my deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Caitriona  a woman who made the ultimate sacrifice in her service to others."

Locals are still coming to terms with yesterday's tragedy, one local man said there was "a sense of disbelief" in the area at the loss of Ms Lucas.

Expand Close Search operation for a missing local man continues in Kilkee Co Clare Pic:Mark Condren / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Search operation for a missing local man continues in Kilkee Co Clare Pic:Mark Condren

Her colleague Jenny Carway, who was rescued after the boat capsized and hospitalised, remains in hospital this morning but her condition is said not to be serious.

Mr Lucey is recovering at home following the incident.

Expand Close Search operation for a missing local man continues in in Kilkee Co Clare Pic:Mark Condren / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Search operation for a missing local man continues in in Kilkee Co Clare Pic:Mark Condren
Gardai are encouraging publicans to minimise overcrowding by improving the layout of their establishments to cut down on night-time assaults.

Community gardai are contacting business owners as part of an initiative to tackle so-called "assault hotspots".

Expand Close Sgt Kelvin Courtney, of the National Crime Prevention Unit / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Sgt Kelvin Courtney, of the National Crime Prevention Unit

Publicans, nightclub operators and takeaway owners will also be encouraged to improve lighting and CCTV in and around their premises.

The initiative is voluntary and separate from existing conditions that licensed premises must abide by.

The move comes as the Garda Analysis Service released new research showing that a quarter of assaults taking place between 8pm and 5am involve the intoxication of the suspected offender, the victim, or both.

It also found that the vast majority of assaults are committed by young men against other young men.

But officers expressed concern that the research did not tell the full story and they estimated that around 40pc of assaults are not reported.

Sgt Kelvin Courtney, of the National Crime Prevention Unit, said some assault victims, particularly young men, were embarrassed to say that they had been assaulted.

"Damaged pride is probably holding them back from making a report. What we are saying to these people is not to be embarrassed," he said.

Sgt Courtney said it was important for assaults to be reported so gardai know where to divert resources.

Read more: Young men urged to 'use brain not fists' in bid to reduce violent street attacks

He said the force was supporting an initiative known as Purple Flag, which encourages businesses and local authorities to make establishments and areas safer to socialise in.

"Most of our crime-prevention officers are qualified in environmental design. So they can go in and give best advice on how people should lay out their premises, be it the physical layout or their security," said Sgt Courtney.

"This can include ensuring their security is Private Security Authority-approved, that their CCTV is in working order, collecting proper images and the place is well lit. Lighting goes a long way to reducing assaults."

According to the garda research, around 70pc of assaults are male on male, with the majority of offenders aged between 18 and 39.

The analysis showed that the level of assault was typically associated with the vibrancy of the night-time economy, which has showed signs of recovery since the recession.

In Dublin, assaults causing harm rose from 1,396 in 2012 to 1,707 in 2015, while minor assaults increased from 3,100 to 3,337 in the same period.

The data showed just 3pc of perpetrators were repeat offenders.
'It just seems so unfair. We were told four weeks ago that we were getting jobs . . . To be told we wont is devastating . . . Now Ill have to emigrate' (Stock picture)

Nursing graduates promised jobs just a few weeks ago have been devastated after the offer was 'withdrawn' by the HSE.

The Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) ended an industrial dispute last month after the HSE agreed a measure of packages including the recruitment of all students completing graduate courses next month.

However 11 students at Letterkenny IT who have just completed internships with the HSE have been by told by letter they won't be offered staff jobs.

"This is a clear breach of the national agreement reached at the Workplace Relations Commission just a few weeks ago," said PNA spokesman Derek Cunningham.

"This agreement is being implemented in every other area of the country except Donegal. We are being told that there are no vacancies but we know there are jobs currently being filled by a combination of agency staff and overtime."

The union's Industrial Relations Officer Rory Kavanagh said nurses who have left the service haven't been replaced.

"Part of the reason behind the decision to employ these new nurses was to cut down on overtime and the massive additional costs of agency nurses," he said.

In a letter to the graduates John McCardle, Acting Area Director of Nursing Donegal Mental Health Services, congratulated them and even thanked them for helping staff during the industrial disputes.

He then told them: "I realise that during this dispute there has been a significant amount of media coverage indicating that you will all get job offers and that finding employment should not be difficult.

"Ideally I would like to be able to offer each and every one of you the opportunity to remain within the Donegal Mental Health Service and benefit from the knowledge and skills that you have developed to date.

"However, the Donegal Mental Health Service is currently fully staffed and while there are a number of people in acting positions, it remains to be seen how these will be resolved before any prediction could be made as to the likelihood of vacancies in the immediate future."

Mr McArdle then suggested the newly-qualified nurses might benefit from working outside Donegal.

He went on: "I understand that this will be disappointing news for many of you and that for some of you, travelling further afield to get work will be more challenging than for others.

"My own personal experience has been that this is also an opportunity for many of you to gain a wider understanding of your chosen profession and when you get the opportunity in the future to return to work here, you will do so with confidence in your abilities to bring a unique perspective to the service."

He added: "Thanks again and good luck with your endeavours in the future."

The PNA says it will meet tomorrow to discuss a response to the decision.

One of those affected by the decision, who asked not to be named, said: "It just seems so unfair. We were told four weeks ago that we were getting jobs as we graduated and then to be told we won't is devastating.

"We all just want to help others. Now I'll have to emigrate."

The HSE was unable to provide a statement last night.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shakes hands with Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China September 13, 2016. Photo by Reuters/Lintao Zhang/Pool

Common interests between China and Vietnam far outweigh differences.

Common interests between China and Vietnam far outweigh differences, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Vietnam's prime minister on Tuesday, calling for their maritime dispute to be resolved through talks.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea, which Vietnam calls the East Sea, where about $5 trillion worth of seaborne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims in the sea, believed to have rich deposits of oil and gas.

A court of arbitration in The Hague in July said China's claims to the waterway were invalid, after a case was brought by the Philippines. Beijing has refused to recognise the ruling.

Vietnam welcomed the ruling, saying it strongly supports peaceful resolution of disputes, while reasserting its own sovereignty claims.

Meeting in Beijing, Xi told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc that "China and Vietnam can manage their differences and promote maritime cooperation through friendly negotiations", the official Xinhua news agency said.

"The common interests between the two countries far outweigh the differences," it paraphrased Xi as saying.

The South China Sea issue should be resolved by bilateral consultations and maritime challenges transformed into opportunities for cooperation, Xi added.

Phuc met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang a day earlier.

Li told Phuc that the South China Sea involved both issues of sovereignty and maritime rights as well as "national feelings", China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

"China and Vietnam should work hard together, scrupulously abide by their high level consensus, maintain maritime stability, manage and control disputes, promote maritime cooperation, continue to accumulate consensus, jointly maintain maritime and regional peace and stability and create conditions for the stable development of bilateral ties," Li said.

The ministry cited Phuc as saying maritime issues should be appropriately handled in a peaceful way on the basis of equality and mutual respect and not allow maritime issues to affect the development of relations.

Earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered Vietnam a credit line of half a billion dollars for defence cooperation.

Related news:

> China says should maintain peace with Vietnam

> China, Russia naval drill in S.China Sea to begin Monday
Maternity hospitals are struggling with a staffing crisis at a time when they are faced with increasingly complex pregnancies. Stock Image

Maternity hospitals are struggling with a staffing crisis at a time when they are faced with increasingly complex pregnancies, Coombe Hospital master Dr Sharon Sheehan has warned.

"The most staggering deficits are in the three Dublin maternity hospitals, where we are operating at a 17pc deficit in the number of midwifery staff that we need to run our services. This must be addressed."

Dr Sheehan was addressing a conference in Dublin yesterday on patient safety, organised by the State Claims Agency. It expects a record pay-out of 300m in medical negligence claims this year, driven mostly by compensation awards in obstetric cases.

Difficult pregnancies are on the rise because more women are obese and developing gestational diabetes or having babies at an older age after undergoing fertility treatment.

"In my view there are a number of factors that have to be addressed if we are to make any meaningful impact on improving quality and patient safety.

"They include staffing, training, the woman herself, our resources, leadership and governance as well as our severe lack of public confidence."

The main problem when it comes to staffing is not so much recruitment but retention, she added.

There was also the problem of mixed messages about hiring coming from the HSE the Department of Health and politicians.

Hospitals are also in difficulty because of laws regulating the working hours of junior doctors which means more trainees are less experienced and had less time to train.

Dr Sheehan said the perinatal mortality rate - deaths of babies at or around the time of birth - in Irish services is very good and the maternal mortality rate low.

But too often negative stories grabbed front pages and served to terrify expectant mothers and staff, she told the gathering.

Obstetrician Prof Michael Turner, the HSE's clinical lead in obstetrics, said he wants to see a national cerebral palsy register set up to understand more about causation and prevention.

Addressing the conference Health Minister Simon Harris said he expects legislation which will make it mandatory for health staff to own up to patients and relatives if they have made a mistake to be published in the autumn.

Experience

It will go before the Oireachtas health committee for discussion. The long-awaited National Patient Safety Office will open at the end of the year.

"I am absolutely committed to making sure that the patient experience is listened to," he added. Part of its work of the new office will involve a national survey of patient's experience next year.

Dr Dubhfeasa Slattery, head of clinical risk at the State Claims Agency, said one of the issues highlighted in a safety review was the problem of out of date equipment.

There is a need for hospitals to replace this equipment and get involved in leasing arrangements if necessary, she said.
Heroic volunteer coast guard Caitriona Lucas tragically lost her life at sea during a search and rescue mission in Co Clare.

The mother-of-two, originally from Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, was killed yesterday while trying to locate a man who had gone missing over the weekend.

Expand Close Rescuers try to reach James Lucey, who was trapped in a cave. Photo: Press 22 / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Rescuers try to reach James Lucey, who was trapped in a cave. Photo: Press 22

Ms Lucas (41), a volunteer with the Doolin coast guard, was in a rigid inflatable boat (RIB), searching for missing teacher David McMahon.

Ms Lucas was part of a three-person crew searching off the coast around Kilkee Bay, when the boat she was in capsized in difficult weather conditions.

It is now understood the group were returning to base when they got into trouble.

Irish Coastguard Operations Director Declan Geoghegan told RTE Radio One's Morning Ireland; "That crew had radioed around midday and said they had completed the mission and were ready to return to base.

Expand Close Rescuers winch James Lucey to safety after he became trapped in a cave. Photo: Press 22 / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Rescuers winch James Lucey to safety after he became trapped in a cave. Photo: Press 22

"Very soon afterwards, they broadcast a mayday call. We didn't get much information from it, we obviously have to listen again but I understand that it was the mayday itself which indicated they were in grave and imminent danger

Search and rescue helicopters and rescue boats were dispatched as part of a massive search operation to find the volunteers.

Ms Lucas, whose partner Bernard also volunteers for Doolin coast guard, was taken out of the water by Shannon-based helicopter Rescue 115 at around 2.15pm.

It is understood she had been in the water for around one hour at the time. Emergency crews found her unresponsive.

Expand Close James Lucey / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp James Lucey

She was airlifted to University Hospital Limerick (UHL) but was declared dead a short time later.

Jenny Carway (51), another member of the crew, had been discovered and taken out of the water in a RIB around 30 minutes before Ms Lucas was found.

She was taken at first to Kilkee garda station where she was treated by paramedics and then transferred to UHL, where she was recovering last night.

Another of her brave volunteer colleagues, James Lucey (49), was discovered in a cave underneath a cliff.

Expand Close Jenny Carway survived the search mission that went wrong / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Jenny Carway survived the search mission that went wrong

About 5.30pm he was rescued from the cave by Waterford-based helicopter Rescue 117.

That operation was described as "highly dangerous" because the capsized boat had trapped him in the cave.

Rescue workers were forced to abseil down the cliff to get a rope to Mr Lucey, who was winched to safety by a helicopter. There were serious concerns about hypothermia, given the amount of time he was in the water. He was also taken to hospital, where his condition is not thought to be serious.

It is understood there were force five winds when the boat capsized. The crew had been in an area that was known to be dangerous, due to the presence of a reef.

Swells on the sea were around three metres high and it is believed the boat turned over as the crew tried to get behind the reef.

An investigation has been launched into the tragedy.

A coast guard official told the Irish Independent that one theory was the crew may have seen something in a cave before deciding to investigate.

Read More

Trained

"They are very well trained and have the best equipment, but when you go into the water anything can happen," he said.

He spoke about the bravery of coast guard volunteers, who give their time and risk everything to help others.

"This is a black day for us. These are volunteers who risk their lives everyday to save others. [Caitriona Lucas] was a hero," he said.

While Ms Lucas was stationed at Doolin, the two surviving volunteers were members of the Kilkee coast guard.

Manual De Lucia, a member of Kilkee Marine Rescue Service and knows both survivors of the tragedy, told Newstalk Breakfast: "It's devastating because we are a very tight knit community here and everybody looks out for everybody else.

"This is so tragic that it will take a long time to get over. This young lady that was lost, my sympathies and all the sympathies of Kilkee Coast Guard Rescue Recovery service go out to her husband and family."

Ms Lucas lived in Liscannor with her husband and two young children and worked as a librarian in Clare.

She was described by those who knew her as a "dedicated" and "selfless" woman.

Declan Geoghegan, operations manager with the Irish Coast Guard, said there would be an inquiry into what caused the vessel to capsize.

The Irish Coast Guard said in a statement: "The Coast Guard extends sincere condolences to Lucas family and all the volunteer members of the Doolin and Kilkee units."

Search for missing man ended in a terrible loss

7.30am - Searches for teacher David McMahon, who has been missing since last Friday, resumed.

9.10am - The shift changed over and Irish Coast Guard volunteers Caitriona Lucas, Jenny Carway and James Lucey took over the search off the coast off Kilkee, Co Clare.

12.50pm - It is believed that around this time one of the team may have spotted something in a cave below a cliff. They decided to investigate.

1.15pm - The rigid inflatable boat RIB which they were travelling in got into trouble. The wind was around force five but the area is known to be dangerous, with swells of up to three metres caused by reefs.

1.15pm - The crew sent a mayday call to indicate they were in trouble. The boat turned over.

1.45pm - A Delta RIB rescued Jenny Carway from the water.

2.15pm - Around half-an-hour later, Shannon-based helicopter Rescue 115 took Caitriona Lucas from the water.

She was unresponsive and declared dead a short time later.

2.15pm - 5.20pm - Rescuers located the remaining crew member, James Lucey, but efforts to rescue him were hampered because his capsized boat had trapped him in a cave underneath a cliff.

5.30pm - Mr Lucey was rescued from the cave. He was winched to safety and taken onboard Waterford-based helicopter Rescue 117 following a difficult operation in which Coast Guard members abseiled down the cliff face.
Best friends Shane De Roiste (left) and Dale Carr were surfing 200m from shore when a great white latched on to Dales thigh and buttocks

Irishman Shane De Roiste has been hailed a hero for the bravery he displayed after his friend was attacked by a great white shark off the Australian coast.

Best friends Shane De Roiste and Dale Carr were surfing 200m from shore when a great white latched on to Dales thigh and buttocks.

The father-of-two was mauled to within an inch of his life, but thanks to Wexford native Mr de Roiste, he lived to tell the tale.

Now, to thank him for his bravery, Mr Carr put his surfing buddy forward for a Pride of Australia nomination.

The Pride of Australia Medal is one of Australias most important community endeavours. It celebrates the remarkable contribution and achievements of individuals across the country.

Retelling the story of what happened that day last August, awards and nominations were far from his mind back then.

Expand Close Dale's injuries after the 'intense' attack / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Dale's injuries after the 'intense' attack

When I first saw the fin, I thought it was a dolphin, Shane told Independent.ie.

Dale actually shouted shark straight away. I guess being from Wexford I didnt comprehend what a shark can do so quickly.

It was an intense and ferocious attack. It really is like you see in the Jaws movies; the person is just shaken around in the water.

Dale screamed at Shane to get out of the water, but Shane said he couldnt leave his friend.

Expand Close Shane De Roiste (left) and his buddy Dale Carr / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Shane De Roiste (left) and his buddy Dale Carr

I just swam towards him to see what I could do. Dale had been punching the shark but it was like hitting a brick wall. He then cleverly jammed his thumb in the sharks eye, and the shark swam away, he said.

Miraculously, Dales body board remained in tact. Shane linked the two together and paddled them back to shore.

At this point, he was losing a lot of blood, but Shanes quick-thinking kept Dale alive until the paramedics arrived.

He dragged his friend up the beach and alerted passers by to call an ambulance.

I realised Dale had some shoe laces connected to the fins of his board, and I was just delighted because I had nothing to work with, we had nothing to put him back together while waiting on emergency services.

I used the laces to hold his leg together and stop more blood pouring out until the paramedics arrived.

Mr Carr lost 2.5 litres of blood that day and stopped breathing twice in hospital.

Were blessed as in that we have the best hospital in Australia, right up the road from where it happened. The surgeons are second to none.

Surprisingly, the vicious attack hasn't deterred the two from getting back in the water.

We went back surfing about six weeks after, he had to wear special things to go surfing because it was six months before it actually healed, Mr de Roiste said.

Just last week, Shane received a phone call from his pal telling him to come down to the beach for a photo-shoot, but he was misled as to what it was for.

When Dale rang me and said we had to go down to the beach and do a photoshoot, I didnt have a clue what it was for. He told me it was for gay monthly magazine, he laughed.

It was only when the photographs were published in Australias Daily Telegraph did Shane realise his surfing buddy had nominated him for the prestigious award.

When asked what it would mean for him to win it, Shane said the real award was having his best friend alive and well.

Its fantastic to be nominated, it really is, but ultimately all I care about is the fact Dale is still here. I remember looking at the shore after the attack and thinking, I have to make sure this man is going to see his kids and wife again.
Minister of State with responsibility for Defence, Paul Kehoe with Lt. Col. Mary Carroll who is leading the mission, and Vice Admiral Mark Mellett, Chief of Staff pictured at the Glen of Immal. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin.

A Roscommon officer is set to make history as the first woman to lead a group of soldiers on an overseas mission.

Lt Colonel Mary Carroll is commanding officer of the 54th infantry group, consisting of 130 troops.

Expand Close Lt. Col. Mary Carroll will lead the overseas mission. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Lt. Col. Mary Carroll will lead the overseas mission. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin.

Soldiers were put through their paces yesterday in the rugged Glen of Imaal ahead of their deployment to the Golan Heights in Syria, where they will serve with the United Nations Disengagement Observation Force in the troubled region.

The army officer, who is a mother of two, said she was looking forward to leading the mission.

"I'm very privileged to be in command," said Lt Col Carroll. "I'm delighted to see the Defence Forces is recruiting women. Our new recruitment drive has been very positive. More women can see this is a viable career."

Tipperary man Patrick 'Bonnar' Maher (26) will be switching his hurley for a gun when he jets off overseas.

Expand Close Lt Grainne Kenneally, from Tipperary, is No. 1 Platoon Commander. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Lt Grainne Kenneally, from Tipperary, is No. 1 Platoon Commander. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin.

The hurler, who was a key player in the Tipp All-Ireland winning team, says he is looking forward to his first mission.

Maher joined the army in 2012 and says all the training has been building up to this moment.

"The training is going very well. Everybody has confidence in each other and it makes things a lot easier," said Maher. "It will be challenging, but I'm looking forward to that challenge."

He said he hoped there would be time to play hurling in the Golan Heights.

Expand Close A member of the Defence Forces during a simulated ambush at the Glen of Imaal. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp A member of the Defence Forces during a simulated ambush at the Glen of Imaal. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin.

"The GAA is touching an awful lot of places around the world, you never know," he said.
Further disruptive Dublin Bus strikes are set to go ahead this week

Further disruptive Dublin Bus strikes are set to go ahead this week as the company and unions refuse to budge over a 2.75pc a year pay rise.

Dublin Bus and unions say they are willing to attend talks to end the dispute, but neither party is willing to compromise on the wage increase.

The largest union at the company, Siptu, said it would only defer industrial action on Thursday and Friday if the company makes an offer that is "not a million miles" from 5pc.

But a Dublin Bus spokesperson said it will only go above 2.75pc if unions show that any increase would be funded by workers giving extra productivity.

She said the 2.75pc pay rise would cost the company 30m.

Workers have already rejected the 2.75pc a year increase, which was recommended by the Labour Court and would be given for three years.

Siptu official John Murphy said the unions want a bigger flat rate increase that would not include any productivity measures, before they will defer industrial action.

When asked how much of an improvement would have to be made, he said it was open to discussion but could not be "a million miles from 5pc".

He said although a 5pc pay rise would be well above the Luas deal negotiated earlier this year, worth 3.8pc, this would help bridge the gap between bus drivers' and Luas drivers' wages.

Read more: Public is on bus drivers' side - so far - and holding us to ransom is wrong

Read more: 'I just want the strike to end' - Downbeat commuters told to brace themselves for all-out Dublin Bus strike

"It looks likely that the next 48-hour strike will go ahead," he said. "But of course we would accept an invitation to talks.

"If any third party, whether that is the industrial relations institutions or the department, wants to assist the parties, I don't think any of the unions would resist.

"We want to go back to work driving buses around the city."

However, he was pessimistic that the dispute could be resolved this week. "We are not willing to defer action just on an invite," he said.

"Progress would have to be made in serious negotiations on the flat-rate increase before we would consider it."

He said that Siptu would not apologise if its members are among the best-paid bus drivers in the world as this probably reflected a "race to the bottom" in the transport sector as terms and conditions were eroded.

Mr Murphy claimed workers got a lot of public support on radio, in print and on the picket lines during last week's strike.

"People using the buses were coming up and talking to representatives and saying they had heard about the cuts in the last 10 years and felt they were not just looking for more for the sake of looking for more."

The unions are set to meet on Thursday to discuss the possibility of escalating the action that has already caused chaos for over 400,000 passengers a day during the first 48-hour strike last week.

However, Mr Murphy said an all-out strike is unlikely to happen until the existing planned industrial action is played out.

Unions have served notice of a third 48-hour strike on Friday and Saturday week.

Sources at the state mediation bodies were sceptical about intervening at this point.

The Workplace Relations Commission and Labour Court are unlikely to get involved until there are clear signs that there might be some prospect of success.

Dublin Bus said it is losing over 600,000 a day during the strike in revenue and National Transport Authority fines, even when wage and fuel savings are factored in.
A garda investigation has been launched after a rampaging gang burst into a home armed with hammers, screwdrivers and hatchets.

The terrifying incident unfolded in the early hours of Monday morning at a home in the Rathmullan Park area of Drogheda, Co Louth.

During the attack a couple, aged 40 and 34, were forced to barricade themselves into their kitchen with chairs while the violent mob smashed up their home.

Two people were later arrested by gardai and questioned over the alleged incident.

Detectives are investigating if the attack was sparked by an altercation on Sunday on West Street in Dorgheda.

During that incident a man and the homeowner (40) clashed. It is unclear what sparked the row.

At 3am on Monday gardai from Drogheda station were called to the man's home in Rathmullan Park after receiving a report that two windows were broken.

At 6.10am officers received a second call from the homeowner who claimed that eight people had entered the house armed with a sledgehammer, screwdriver and hatchet.

The man and his partner (34) barricaded themselves into the kitchen using chairs after the mob burst through the front door. The gang broke through a number of walls and caused extensive damage to the home.

Nobody was injured in the incident and no items were taken.

Later that day gardai arrested a man and a woman, in their 30s, in connection with the incident and the pair were questioned at Drogheda Garda station under section 4 of the criminal justice act. The pair were later released without charge and a file is now being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Investigators believe that all those involved were in their 30s.

Senior sources say this latest incident is not connected to a spate of recent crimes in the Drogheda area.
A FORMER accountant and IT systems analyst went to hit a garda with a closed fist after patrons at a theatre complained a man was drunk and causing trouble.

Des Leavy (50) was very aggressive and agitated when gardai spoke to him, and he resisted arrest.

A garda said he was forced to use his pepper spray to arrest Leavy.

Tallaght District Court heard Leavy was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder a few years ago and has been battling a problem with alcohol.

Judge Patricia McNamara praised Leavy, who is now sober, for his progress so far and ordered him to enter into a 12-month probation bond.

The defendant admitted to threatening and abusive behaviour at Belgard Square North in Tallaght on April 1 last.

Garda Thomas Corcoran said gardai were called to the Civic Theatre following reports of a drunk and aggressive male.

Gda Corcoran said security staff told gardai that Leavy was causing trouble for patrons outside the establishment.

Stumbling

The garda said he saw a large male stumbling towards him and he asked him for his name, but Leavy became verbally threatening and abusive, and he resisted arrest, attempting to hit him with a closed fist.

The court heard the defendant, with addresses at Redwood Court in Kilnamanagh and Windy Acre, Carne, Rosslare, Co Wexford, has 15 previous convictions.

Defence lawyer George Burns said Leavy's keyworker was in court to support him.

The court had heard Leavy is a qualified accountant and worked as an IT systems analyst prior to having a breakdown in 2008.

Mr Burns said Leavy was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and has also had a problem with alcohol. He has completed a residential treatment course, is no longer drinking and hasn't been in trouble since this incident.

Mr Burns also said Leavy is on medication for his condition, and is linking in well with the support services.
A Dublin taxi driver stabbed repeatedly by passengers in a horrific attack at the weekend was celebrating on Monday night after his wife gave birth.

Thomas Vayalil, who is in his mid-30s and originally from India, was subjected to a vicious and unprovoked attack and had his taxi stolen in Swords, Co Dublin, in the early hours of Saturday.

However his upset turned to joy on Monday when his wife Sneha gave birth to the couple's fourth child - a baby girl.

One friend told the Irish Daily Star: "Thomas and Sneha are exhausted but are delighted their little girl arrived safely."

The pal continued: Thomas is still in a lot of pain but is taking as much rest as he possibly can. His wife gave birth a little earlier than expected. He feels like the last few days have been a dream - he's still in shock from the attack."

The pal went on to say that Mr Vayalil is spending as much time in the hospital as possible.

Mr Vyalil picked up two men outside a busy fast-food restaurant at the Airside Retail Park about 3am on Saturday.

Read More

He then drove the two men just a short distance to a roundabout near the Pavilion Shopping Centre where he was assaulted and stabbed a number of times.

It is believed that he was stabbed six times in the neck, chest and stomach.

"The two guys were friendly at first and even gave him a deposit of 50 to take them to Drogheda, but then when they were on the dual carriageway and Thomas asked them the address they were going to he got suspicious of their behaviour," a close friend of the driver said.

"They got angry and started using bad language, and when he pulled over, the guy in the back held a knife to his throat and the man in the passenger seat started punching him."

The driver escaped from the car but the two men jumped out and stabbed him several times. "One of the wounds is 4 or 5cm deep and near his spleen," said his friend.

The two thugs then drove off in the taxi towards Balbriggan. The car was later found burnt out near Bellewstown, Co Meath. Mr Mathew was rushed to Beaumont Hospital by an ambulance but was later discharged.

"His wife is due to have their fourth baby today, it is a very difficult time for him right now with no car and the trauma of the attack," he said.
Olly Murs has paid tribute to Nicola Kenny, the young Irish mum killed so tragically in an incident on the M8 last week.

Kenny had just given birth to her first child and the car she was travelling in had pulled in to the hard shoulder so she could take a call from Temple Street about her child, who had been hospitalised.

They pulled into the hard shoulder of the M8 motorway to take the call, which was the good news that little baby Lily-Rose was recovering well and was about to be transferred back to Clonmel hospital where she was born.

It was just after the phone conversation ended when a truck smashed into the back of the car, killing Nicola, who was in the back seat and injuring her mother and aunt.

Since her tragic death her friends had been in touch with Murs on social media to explain to him how big a fan Nicola was of him and asking him to pay tribute to the 26-year-old Tipp native.

The #OllyForNicola hashtag began and the friends of Nicola who started the campaign got in touch with as many big names as they could to highlight their campaign.

Today, it paid off.

On Tuesday morning Murs posted these tweets:

So sad to hear one of my biggest fans @NicolaKenny1990 has died!R.I.P Babe  Olly Murs (@ollyofficial) September 13, 2016

My love & thoughts got out to her Family & close friends at this tragic time  Olly Murs (@ollyofficial) September 13, 2016

The reaction from those behind the campaign was happiness at getting a special tribute paid to Nicola.
A graphic rendition for the Hoa Sens steel plant complex in Ninh Thuan Province. Photo by VnExpress

The $10-billion project is reminiscent of the toxic disaster in central Vietnam.

Vietnam, still reeling from a pollution disaster linked to Taiwanese steel company Formosa, is being put to a new development-versus-environment test as a long abandoned steel project has been brought back to discussion again.

Hoa Sen Group, one of Vietnams biggest steelmakers, reportedly plans to spend US$10 billion on the mothballed project in the central province of Ninh Thuan.

The original plan was developed by state-owned shipping giant Vinashin and Malaysias Lion Group, but the foreign investor pulled the plug about one year after the project was licensed in 2008. Local authorities revoked the license in 2011.

Hoa Sen now plans to take over and build the complex project over more than 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres), including a mill with an annual output of 16 million tons and a solar panel plant.

Although the investment has not been officially licensed, Truong Thanh Hoai, in charge of heavy industry at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said at a recent press briefing that the plant has government backing.

Now is the good time to invest in steel, Hoai said, as cited by VnEconomy.

He said Vietnam still imports a large amount of steel. On average the industry runs a trade deficit of around $7 billion a year.

Steel import hit 10 million tons in the first six months, up 25 percent from the same period last year, data showed.

Hoai said the country still has billions of tons of iron ores that can be mined and that domestic demand for steel is expected to surge to 27 million tons in the next four years.

But environmental concerns may make all this mathematics less appealing, especially after a steel plant was recently at the center of a major toxic spill scandal.

An estimated 70 tons of dead fish washed ashore along more than 200 kilometers of the coast in Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue Provinces in April.

A unit of Formosa Plastics operating a steel plant in Ha Tinh was held responsible for what is thought to be Vietnams worst environmental disaster.

The government said the company had discharged waste containing phenol, cyanide and iron hydroxides into the sea. It created a seafood scare across the country, harming the livelihoods of more than tens of thousands of fishermen.

The environment ministry last month announced that the sea is safe for swimming and aquaculture but set no-fishing zones of over 800 square kilometers, saying the environment needs time to recover.

Disaster in the making?

Environment experts and those who with insight into the steel industry now question that if Vietnam wants a similar catastrophe.

Studies by the Vietnam Foundry and Metallurgy Science and Technology Association found that the production of each ton of steel creates around 600 kilograms of solid waste, three cubic meters of toxic sewage and 2.3 tons of poisonous gases.

Pham Chi Cuong, chairman of the association who has more than 50 years of experience in the steel industry, conceded: Steel production is not friendly to the environment.

There is no steel plant that is clean. Where theres steel, theres pollution, Cuong told Thanh Nien newspaper, expressing concerns that Vietnam has not been doing a good job with environment protection. He formerly served as chair of the Vietnam Steel Association.

Insiders are also worried that the new complex will come with supporting facilities which can also be harmful to the environment, including a coal-fired power plant.

Dinh Huy Tam, vice chairman of the Vietnam Steel Association, said that the Formosa scandal is a big lesson.

Vietnam should think very carefully before approving a similar project, Tam said.

Environment experts are also concerned that the new plant will only exacerbate water shortages in one of the driest provinces in Vietnam.

A report from Ninh Thuans environment department last June said that more than 11,000 people in Thuan Nam District, the proposed location for the Hoa Sen project, were usually short of clean water.

The district depends on a few wells for fresh water, but even these sources are unreliable during dry months because of saltwater intrusion. There is tap water but access is limited.

Water is rare and expensive. We are miserable, Le Van Duc, a local, told Tuoi Tre newspaper.

To have enough water for daily uses, Ducs family has to buy 12 cubic meters a month, when the family well is running low. He is usually asked to pay more than VND60,000 for a cubic meter, more than 10 times the national rates.

The new complex, if approved, will certainly need a large amount of water and will aggravate water scarcity in the area.

Pham Van Hau, vice chairman of Ninh Thuan, told Phap Luat newspaper that the province may only be able to meet 13 percent of the steel mills water demand.

Related news:

> How Formosas toxin caused the mass fish deaths in Vietnam

>Formosa: a costly precedent for Vietnam
Taoiseach Enda Kenny pictured alongside party colleagues at the Fine Gael think in at the Keadeen Hotel in Newbridge. Picture credit; Damien Eagers

Enda Kenny now intends to continue as Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael "for at least another two years", Fine Gael ministers have been told.

Senior party sources last night confirmed that Mr Kenny has now signalled a 2018 departure - in a move that will cause alarm among backbenchers who want him replaced by the spring at the latest.

Expand Close FG TDs Marcella Corcoran Kennedy, Neil Richmond and Maria Bailey go for a walk before the Fine Gael think-in at the Keadeen Hotel in Newbridge. Photo: Damien Eagers / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp FG TDs Marcella Corcoran Kennedy, Neil Richmond and Maria Bailey go for a walk before the Fine Gael think-in at the Keadeen Hotel in Newbridge. Photo: Damien Eagers

It is the first time details of an exit strategy have been revealed since Mr Kenny announced that this will be his final term as Taoiseach.

During a private session at the Fine Gael think-in in Newbridge, Co Kildare, Mr Kenny said he is "just months in" as a second-term Taoiseach.

"And I have no intention of going anywhere," sources say he told the meeting.

One minister last night said it was made "clear" by Mr Kenny's inner circle that he intends to resist any attempt to oust him.

Expand Close Kate OConnell arrives for the think-in in Kildare. Photo: Damien Eagers / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Kate OConnell arrives for the think-in in Kildare. Photo: Damien Eagers

"The Taoiseach is now making it clear that he wants to do another two years. We are quite surprised," the minister told the Irish Independent.

In a clear bid to reassert his authority over the party, Mr Kenny yesterday signalled plans for a reshuffle next year.

Read more: What's the Fine Gael think-in all about? Here are six hot topics up for discussion

Read more: Enda Kenny: 'I've got my mojo back'

And during a series of radio interview, he told Pat Kenny on Newstalk that he has his "mojo back" following the election.

"I'm not interested in history personally at all insofar as myself is concerned. I didn't enjoy the election. I had a reflection on this over the summer. As I say, I've got my mojo back," Mr Kenny said.

"I have a mandate and I'm not going to walk away from that mandate," he added.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the think-in, Mr Kenny tried to clarify the 'mojo' remark.

"It's my zeal for life in politics. It's the recovery of meeting the challenge in politics in very difficult situations."

On the issue of the leadership, Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar joked that he potentially "feeds" talk of Mr Kenny's leadership.

"It's up to the Taoiseach to make his own decisions on that and I think he is entitled to have the time and space to make his own decision," Mr Varadkar said.

"I have been complaining recently about people writing about me and leadership and I probably feed that by answering too many questions on it so I'll leave it at that," he added.

The remarks came as a new opinion poll show Mr Varadkar is the preferred choice among the public to succeed Mr Kenny as Fine Gael leader.

The 'Claire Byrne Live'/ Amarach Research put Mr Varadkar on 37pc, followed by Housing Minister Simon Coveney (21pc) and Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald (8pc).

Read more: How Fine Gael rebels want Enda 'gone by Christmas' - but he has other ideas

Read more: Kenny hints at plans to reshuffle government ministers next year

Meanwhile, the think-in itself was dominated by talk about the Budget and the prospect of Independent Alliance Minister John Halligan quitting the Government.

During a private session, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said he is confident that the Budget - which will be split 2:1 in favour of spending - will be passed next month.

He also told TDs and senators that he believes Fianna Fail is equally as keen to ensure the Budget passes.

Earlier, Dublin Bay South TD Kate O'Connell and Dr Marion Coy gave separate presentations on the party's election performance.

TDs noted a significant difference in the way the reports were written.

There had been tensions between Dr Coy and a group of TDs over which report should take precedence. Mr Kenny said both will now be published.
Mr Noonan said he still intends for the USC to be phased out over five budgets. Pic Tom Burke

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has admitted that plans to slash the Universal Social Charge (USC) by a full 1pc in the Budget have been shelved.

The Fine Gael manifesto committed to the move, which would have seen workers save 500 each next year.

But as revealed by the Irish Independent last week, ministers are now veering towards a smaller USC cut ahead of the Budget on October 11.

Speaking to reporters at the Fine Gael think-in in Kildare, Mr Noonan confirmed that the 1pc commitment no longer stands.

"No, we are no longer committed to the detail. Obviously, the Government wasn't re-elected in its older form, everybody knows that," Mr Noonan said.

"The Programme for Government is now the new document from what we are working... we are not building the Budget on an election manifesto. We are building on the Programme for Government," he added.

Mr Noonan said he still intends for the USC to be phased out over five budgets.

The Limerick TD said he had no plans to include tax hikes in the Budget, other than an increase in excise duties on cigarettes and a sugar tax.

And he said the sugar tax - a levy on fizzy drinks - won't come into effect until 2018, in line with a move taken by the UK authorities.

Mr Noonan said the Budget will be done in consultation with Fianna Fail.

Asked what people can expect, the minister said the Government will invest in services, and hire additional gardai and nurses.

Meanwhile, Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe said he expects the demands for ministers for money for spending projects is "many multiples" of what the Government can afford.

The Budget will be just 1bn in size, he added.
Taoiseach Enda Kennys claim on another two years has been promptly and strongly challenged by two maverick Fine Gael TDs.

The criticisms came little more than two hours after Mr Kenny signalled on national radio that he wanted to stay on for a longer period and fulfil his mandate.

Expand Close Kerry TD Brendan Griffin / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Kerry TD Brendan Griffin

At the same time, Housing Minister, Simon Coveney  a contender to succeed Mr Kenny  stressed that the Taoiseach was entitled to pick his own timetable for departure. But Mr Coveney also said it was difficult to see how things would be for the years ahead.

At Fine Gaels gathering in Newbridge, Co Kildare, two TDs, Brendan Griffin of Kerry and Jim Daly of Cork South West, said the party had to discuss the party leadership soon.

Mr Griffin said his views on the need for leadership change were shared by others in the party who had yet to identify themselves.

I certainly feel that, for the countrys sake and for the partys sake, we need to confront this issue now, the Kerry TD said.

Mr Griffin said Fine Gael had 50pc more TDs a year ago and they had also lost over 100 councillors after the 2014 local elections. If thats not a wake-up call for a party in any scenario, what is? he asked.

The Cork South West TD, Jim Daly, stressed at length that Mr Kenny was a good Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader. He said the leadership issue only arose because Mr Kenny had himself said he would not lead the party in the next general election.

Mr Daly said current instability meant an election could happen at any time the issue was urgent. But he was not definite about a timeline.

He said Fianna Fail, in underpinning the minority coalition, had guaranteed three Budgets.

Sometime after the next Budget on October 11 next, and the following Budget in autumn 2017, the leadership issue had to be dealt with.

Theres absolutely no point pretending that it will go away, Mr Daly added.
The contract for clothing includes supplying tracksuits, dressing gowns and underpants for 4,212 prisoners over the next three years. (Stock photo)

Prison chiefs have agreed to spend 548,000 on clothing for inmates.

The contract for clothing includes supplying tracksuits, dressing gowns and underpants for 4,212 prisoners over the next three years.

Earlier this year the Irish Prison Service (IPS) invited businesses across the country to submit a proposal if they were interested in supplying prisoner clothing.

Although most of the country's inmates are not required to wear prison clothing, the prison service sought a number of items.

Over the next three years thousands of Y-front briefs and socks will be shipped to prisons around the country.

Prisoners can expect green polo shirts and white vests as well as runners, and tracksuits are expected to come on stream over the next three years.

The massive order will cater for prisoners of all shapes and sizes all the way up to 3XL.

The clothing will be supplied to Mountjoy, Cloverhill, Portlaoise, Limerick Prison as well as The Dochas Centre, Arbour Hill and Shelton Abbey have also been chosen to receive new clothing.

Bidders were reminded that should they be successful in the contract, their workers maybe have to undergo "routine garda and prison service security clearance procedures".

A prison service spokesman said that prisoners are allowed to wear their own clothing subject to a number of conditions regarding "cleanliness, warmth and health".
A group of 20 Defence Forces personnel marched on Lotto HQ to collect nearly 500,000 in winnings.

The army syndicate, based in Kilkenny, matched five numbers and the bonus to win a 452,700.

There were smiles all around as the men, aged 23-54, walked to in the National Lottery offices in Dublin this afternoon to collect their cheque.

Each of the syndicate members will take home 22,635.

Theres a few lads getting married soon and a couple buying houses, so it could not have come at a better time, said Private Daniel McGrath (30), from Cork.

My wife is actually due in December with our first so the timing is beyond perfect. We actually just finished doing up the house when I got the new wed won, so Ive nothing to spend the money on.

I guess it will all have to go towards spoiling the little one, he joked.

Clive Parsons (36) said he received news of the win when he was out driving with his family after a trip to Dublin Zoo.

I got an email from the Lotto earlier saying wed won but I figured it was a few quid so I didnt look at it. It was only when I got a chance to sit down and scan my emails that I saw wed won the big one.

Private McGrath, who has served overseas twice with the defence forces, said the close knit group of lads from Stephens Barracks could not be more excited with their windfall.

It will pay for a lot of wedding cake and champagne, said David Feehan (27), from south Kilkenny.

Private Feehan recently got engage and told Independent.ie that his bride-to-be already had plans for the money.

It will be a big help, he joked has he lifted up the 452,700 cheque.

Most of my share will be going towards the wedding.

Fellow Kilkenny man Robbie Flynn (27) quipped: Ive nothing in the pipeline yet but Im sure Ill think of something.

The pair trained together when they first joined the Defence Forces almost ten years ago, and served with one another during a four month deployment in Chad in late 2008.

It was some experience but we did a lot of good there. The Irish do a lot of good wherever were deployed, added Private Flynn.

The 452,700 claimed by the army syndicate is the biggest prize won to date in this Lotto prize category.

This Wednesday's Lotto jackpot is a guaranteed 2 million.
Fianna Fail has been joined by Sinn Fein and the Anti-Austerity Alliance/People before Profit in calling for water charges to be abolished and households to be refunded bills that they have already paid.

The parties have told the Expert Commission on Water Charges that no household should have to pay for water and that general taxation should be used to provide the 700m a year needed to upgrade the network and annual operating costs of some 1bn.

The submissions were sent to the expert group which must report to a special Dail committee next November.

The final decision on whether charges will return or be abolished will be put to a Dail vote next year. The Government suspended domestic water charges for nine months from July as a condition of Fianna Fail support for a minority government.

Fianna Fail had previously argued that charges should be suspended until the network was brought up to standard.

But the party, which previously accepted the principal of charging as part of the troika bailout, now wants them to be permanently abolished.

Its submission, 'A fairer way to a sustainable water infrastructure in the 21st century', says all overdue bills are a "legal charge and should be paid".

Read more: Water bill payers should be refunded through tax credit - Fianna Fail

But significantly, it indicates it is in favour of refunding those who have already paid their bills by way of a tax credit. This has been a contentious issue for many months.

"The expert water commission should provide examples of mechanisms to refund bill payers, such as through a tax credit, or give a clear outline of the feasibility of pursuing non-payment based on international best practice examples," the document says. Signed by the party's environment spokesman Barry Cowen, the submission says charges should be ended and the revenue loss of some 270m a year compensated by government funding.

"Irish Water should remain solely in public ownership," the party added.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Fianna Fail's position on water charges represented a U-turn.

His party also wants charges to be abolished, the metering project to be ended and a referendum to be held to enshrine the water network in public ownership.

Sinn Fein also accused the expert commission of working to a "pre-determined outcome",

The resignation of its original chairman, Joe O'Toole, over comments he made about supporting water charges and the "short timeframe" for submissions to be made meant the party was "concerned" about its independence and credibility.

Fine Gael has supported the retention of charges and raised concerns that if charges were abolished it could result in fines from the EU.

"Fine Gael believes that after the establishment of Irish Water and the introduction of domestic water charges a decision to permanently abolish water charges would leave Ireland financially exposed to EU compliance proceedings," it said.

The Labour Party said charges should be retained, with free allowances and exemptions for low-income households, families with young children or people with a disability.

The AAA/PbP said the State should fund services, with local authorities operating the network.
Disabled drivers who approach other motorists illegally using their parking spaces are often met with aggression and abuse.

The Disabled Drivers Association of Ireland said the most common non-aggressive excuse for 'invading' an accessible space for disabled drivers is 'I'll only be a minute'. But that's never the case and illegal parking like this causes genuine misery.

Other commonly used excuses are 'I'll move if somebody comes along and wants the space' or 'I'll park where I like', both showing a total disregard for drivers who need those spaces the most.

Transport Minister Shane Ross said: "It is totally unacceptable that people who do not need them would take up disabled parking spaces. These are not just reserved spaces. They are spaces designed with wider dimensions than standard parking spaces, and generally placed near to shops and other facilities to enable people with disabilities to access facilities which they would otherwise find difficult to reach."
Tan Son Nhat Airport is flooded after a heavy downpour in October 2015. Photo by VnExpress

Many had to divert to other airports after recent torrential rains.

After two bad floods affected many flights to and from Tan Son Nhat Airport the past two weeks, the aviation authorities now warn that they might have to shut down the countrys largest airport anytime it pours.

Many flights were unable to land at the Ho Chi Minh Citys airport on Sunday afternoon after heavy rain inundated parts of the airport.

Some had to land at other airports in central Vietnam, the Mekong Delta, and even Thailand.

Worse flooding on August 26 affected nearly 70 flights, including four international flights which had to divert to Cambodia and Thailand.

Flooding in August and October last year submerged the airport by up to 20 centimeters and threatened to shut down the power station of its traffic control tower.

Lai Xuan Thanh, director of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam, said the problem can totally happen again, as the airport is sharing the strained drainage system with the entire city.

In the worst scenario, we will have to shut down the airport for safety reason, he said.

That is not an ideal solution as Tan Son Nhat is accomodating nearly half of air traffic in Vietnam, but it might be the only way.

Other more sustainable solutions such as building reservoirs and dredging waterways around the airport are still on paper.

The city government last July said that it is working on a project to upgrade the 745-meter Japanese canal, one of the main ones around the airport, to help prevent future flooding.

But the project will cost around US$16 million, it said.

Related news:

> Heavy rains turn Saigon airport to seaport

> Saigon to spend $16 mln to save airport from drowning
It is natural to assume that all doctors are trustworthy and act honourably for the good of their patients. Regrettably this trust is not always honoured, and there have been well documented cases of individual psychiatrists abusing their position, such as Pascual Javier Ramon Mora, who fabricated psychiatric risk in order to facilitate late-term abortions in Spain - he was recently imprisoned for same.

While these "rotten apple" cases do occur, even more terrifying is the collusion of the psychiatric profession with the state for political purposes.

Here I am not referring to "structural violence" such as inequality, discrimination, stigma and so on. I am instead referring to the role of psychiatrists in diagnosing and detaining individuals for the express purpose, not of treating them, but of obstructing their fundamental human rights.

One man who has studied these systemic abuses is Robert van Voren of the Human Rights in Mental Health Federation, based in the Netherlands. He has recently written about this in the February issue of BJPsych Bulletin, published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

He points out that this is usually used for political or religious dissenters and other "bothersome citizens" for expedience or for ideological reasons. In some instances these long-term detentions have been ordered by the courts and this is particularly true of totalitarian regimes.

The starting point is the belief that the person's ideas, political or religious convictions, are evidence of a troubled mind. Quoting President Khrushchev in 1959, he says: "A crime is a deviation from the generally recognised standards of behaviour frequently caused by mental disorders To those who might start calling for opposition to Communism on this basis, we can say that clearly the mental state of such people is not normal".

Thus opposing the regime that nearly everybody supposedly supported amounted to mental illness. A group of psychiatrists shared this view and became known as the Moscow School of Psychiatry headed by professor Andrei Snezhnevsky. The majority of Soviet psychiatrists were excluded from contact with international psychiatry and this view percolated unopposed through the profession.

This justified the forcible detention of these people whom they diagnosed with "sluggish schizophrenia". This has of course now ended with the fall of Communism.

Psychiatry's greatest shame was their collusion with the Nazis. A terrifying book The Nazi Doctors details their role in the killing of the mentally ill. This idea first surfaced in 1920 in a publication by Karl Binding, a lawyer, and Alfred Hoche, a psychiatrist. Entitled Permission for the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life, it posed the question: "Is there human life which has so far forfeited the character of something entitled to enjoy the protection of the law, that its prolongation represents a perpetual loss of value, both for its bearer and for society as a whole".

This idea continued to be discussed in private by Nazi officials and after Hitler came to power the result was a memorandum on "the destruction of life unworthy of life".

Selected professors of psychiatry and asylum directors who were known to be sympathetic agreed that such a programme was necessary. A law on this was passed on September 1 1939 that allowed for the killing of a person with mental illness requiring permanent institutional care.

Psychiatrists identified the patients who were to be included in the 'Aktion T4' programme as it came to be known, and by mid-1940 over 70,000 psychiatric patients had been gassed.

After horrors such as this, is it possible that psychiatrists are still abusing their position? There is concern about activities in China where some "petitioners" as they are known, (people who frequently complain about local officials) are hospitalised and "treatment" is used as a threat. Members of the Falun Gong organisation have also been subject to repression and forced hospitalisation for their religious beliefs.

There is a lesson in the sorry tale of psychiatry's shameful role in human rights abuses. And it is this: no specialty has the right to decide who should live and who's life is unworthy of life. The activities of psychiatrists during this period are a horrifying example of how good practice can be perverted by the misuse of science for ideological reasons.
Premium

Colette Browne Opinion Every effort must be made to retrieve oral histories of mother and baby home survivors

With three days to go until the Mother and Baby Homes Commission ceases to exist as a legal entity, we are being told that audio recordings of hundreds of witnesses which were deleted may not actually be gone forever. It is another usual twist in a most emotional saga. For decades, survivors of mother and baby homes have been denied a voice and denied autonomy. When they fell pregnant, many through rape and abuse, they were marched to the doors of religious institutions.
Premium

Ian O'Doherty Opinion For once, the UN is right  were standing on the edge of a deadly nuclear precipice

For those of us of a certain age, the last few months have felt as if we have somehow time-warped back to the 1980s. Stranger Things, which is set in that decade, has been the biggest show on TV. Kate Bush  thanks, incidentally, to Stranger Things  is now regularly played on the radio and she has reached number one in 2022 with the re-release of her 1985 hit, Running Up That Hill.
Premium

John Downing Opinion New British prime minister Rishi Sunaks succession proves an important milestone in British political inclusivity

There is an old saying in British politics that goes: The right looks for converts while the left seeks out traitors. It comes to mind when one reflects upon the election of Rishi Sunak as the UKs first non-white prime minister in a party traditionally seen as most opposed to mass immigration and the dilution of national identity via multiculturalism.
The EU Commission's decision that Ireland must collect 13bn in back taxes from Apple has created quite a sensation. Most people agree that multinational companies can, and should, pay more tax. That general goal of the European Commission is widely supported.

The key question is whether Apple was given selective aid and, if so, if this breached EU competition rules.

It is therefore important to say that the Irish Government never "selected" Apple for subsidy.

Apple, of its own accord, simply applied for, and was given, an interpretation of Irish tax law as it stood at the time (in 1991 and again in 2007). Any other company, in a comparable legal and factual situation, could have applied for, and got, a similar ruling.

It is important to stress that, in its interpretation of the meaning of Irish tax laws, the Irish Revenue Commissioners act independently of the Government. Their relations with individual taxpayers, large and small, are confidential. They hold themselves to a high standard of objectivity and integrity.

The Commission ruling - going back and revising 10 years of tax liability on grounds of competition policy, rather than of tax law - creates uncertainty for many other companies about their present liabilities.

At a time when too many companies are failing to invest and are, instead, paying down debt or accumulating piles of cash, this added uncertainty is not good for the revival of the European economy.

It may even encourage some companies to incorporate or invest outside the EU, where the Competition directorate of the European Commission will not have the same power to issue retrospective directives to national tax authorities.

The Commission decision in the Apple case attempts to change the way in which profits can be attributed, for taxation purposes, as between different parts of a multinational company's structure.

Previously, companies could get authoritative guidance on what was permissible in this respect from the relevant national tax authorities. This was possible because taxation was understood by companies to be primarily a member state, rather than an EU, competence.

Now companies will no longer be able to rely in the same way on these rulings, but will have to seek clarity from the European Commission on whether a ruling could be construed as offering a "selective" advantage to the company. In light of the Irish experience, revenue authorities of member states will be very cautious. All doubtful cases will tend to be referred to Brussels.

This will add greatly to the burden of work of the Commission, and will entail an extension of the Commission's field of activity. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager herself has said that companies should double-check the compatibility with EU competition and state aid laws of the rulings they have been given by their national tax authorities.

As the corporate structures of multinationals vary considerably, the national tax ruling on each of them will have to be individually examined and adjudicated upon as to whether "selectivity" of some kind is involved.

The test of whether a ruling is illegal, in the Commission's eyes, is whether it is "selective". "Selective" is defined as giving a company an advantage over other companies in "comparable legal and financial situation". As the factual situation of every company is different, this leaves a lot of room for subjectivity and argument.

The Commission will have hundreds of thousands of tax ruling of the 28 member states to review, and so far it has only looked at a thousand.

The Apple ruling also raises new questions about which country is responsible for collecting the taxes on particular profits. Up to now, it was understood that a country was expected to collect taxes on profits derived from activities within that country.

Now, Ireland is being told it must collect the 13bn from Apple, even though, in Commissioner Vestager's own words, "other countries" may actually be owed the money, not Ireland.

Much of the profit may actually be derived from activity undertaken by Apple in the United States and any tax to be collected may belong to the US. But Ireland now is told it must collect the money anyway. This is a new form of universal jurisdiction.

This precedent will increase uncertainty, jurisdictional disputes, and compliance costs. Yet the Commission is promoting TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), precisely in order to reduce uncertainty and compliance costs. The form of the Apple decision sends a directly contradictory signal.

I believe it would have been wiser for the Commission to concentrate its attention, in a forward-looking way, on ensuring the uniform and rigorous implementation of the EU Anti Tax Avoidance Directive which has already been approved by all member states, including Ireland.

The determination of the amount, and the collection, of back taxes should be left to national tax authorities, who after all have plenty of incentive already to go after the money.
You might think Repeal the Eighth supporters would be quietly heartened by someone coming out and speaking publicly for their cause. My experience on Claire Byrne Live last week clearly showed me that this was not the case.

I told Claire I supported abortion rights for all women in this country, but that I felt the pro-choice movement consistently fails to deal with the central argument of the other side - that abortion ends a life. On Twitter, feminists and Repealers picked apart my phrasing - a true pro-choice person would never use the phrase abortion "on demand" they chided (I get the argument that "demand" makes it sound like a consumerist whim, but doesn't the phrase "on request" sound like a timid plea by comparison?).

Several people asked why I was speaking for women, something I never claimed I was doing. The comedian and writer, Tara Flynn, who has been open about her own abortion, told me outright that I might think I'm pro-choice, but I'm not. Even though I would be far more libertarian than the average Irish person on this subject. Even though I sincerely believe all women should be granted abortions when they ask for them. For the shrill Repeal sisterhood, it's not enough to want the same thing, we have to want it for the right reasons.

Personally, I can take the flack, but it doesn't fill me with much hope that the least successful abortion-rights movement in Europe is finally getting its act together. They think that it's gay marriage part two and that the critical mass of personal testimony - women's emotive stories - will finally turn the tide toward repeal of the Eighth. There's no doubt these narratives will be very important - nobody is silencing women - but testimony alone won't close the deal. It never has. Just look at the history of this debate in Ireland. Look at how dogged and successful the pro-life side have always been. We haven't really heard as much from them in the public debate so far, but they are surely coming, with their gruesome placards and crucifixes and their own emotive arguments. They have always won. The cantankerous godmother of Irish feminism - Nell McCafferty - put it best a few weeks ago on her Facebook page. Most Repeal campaigners, she wrote, cannot answer "basic questions" about human gestation. "Those who campaign against abortion will make mincemeat of the opposition on TV, radio and debates, with their outrageous claims about death by dismemberment, injections into the heart of the foetus, etc."

That is exactly what we're facing into. The most basic question of all is, of course, the actual death of the foetus. Just as the pro-life brigade never fully engage with the experience of the woman, so pro-choice activists ignore the idea of the unborn child. They do this at their peril. The patriarchy may have crumbled somewhat since we last debated this issue properly, but in the meantime, other things have also changed. We live in a world where medical science makes births viable earlier and earlier - we see the sonograms on Facebook. We push the expectant-mother books to the top of the bestseller charts. We have not remotely, as Joycelyn Elders (former Surgeon General in the US), once urged, "gotten over our love affair with the foetus". We are in the midst of a baby boom. In some senses, the foetus has never been a bigger part of society.

So how does the average person reconcile this vista and the knowledge that, hairsplitting aside, something with a heartbeat and a face must be a living thing, with support for abortions for those who want them? The answer might be in the last place the Repealers would think to look: in the idea of redemption and atonement.

After appearing on Claire Byrne Live, I received a message from Professor Chris Fitzpatrick, former Master of the Coombe. He agreed with me "about the failure by pro-choice advocates to discuss the issue of 'ending a life' - however small and remote from viability", and included a short story he had written. The story sympathetically deals with a woman who travels to England for an abortion. In its aftermath, she visits a church and thinks about what has just happened to her: "And as for God - whose presence and attitude she frequently considered during this time - she was convinced that if he really did exist, that he must have the compassion to understand. She remembered a quotation by someone she had once read about forgiveness being God's line of business: 'C'est son metier [It's his job]'."

When I read this, I immediately thought about the comments that the enlightened priest who was sitting beside me made after the abortion debate unfolded on Claire Byrne Live. Father Joe McDonald told me that he could "very much understand why a young woman would make that decision". He said that the real tragedy of abortion is that we have created a world in which women have to make choices like this. Most interestingly of all, he added: "My view would be that it is between themselves and their conscience."

These are men - I am a man - whom the Repeal movement considers the natural enemy of its cause: a doctor, a priest, a journalist with the clumsy phrasing of a pro-lifer. We three do not all have the same views on abortion, but we share one thing; we see the grey areas around this issue. And perhaps like a lot of Irish people, we simply yearn for a proper language for the moral struggle around abortion.

It's no surprise, really, that we don't have this language. There is a spiritual vacuum at the heart of Irish life. We have rejected the old Church - for good reasons - but in doing so, we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. We have let go of ideas that are common to all world religions, ideas like atonement, redemption and divine compassion. Paradoxically, this has caused retrenchment to a rigid morality that has made us the odd man out in Europe for abortion rights. And so we are still fighting tooth-and-nail for abortion in hard-case circumstances like fatal foetal abnormality, while other countries have abortion for those who want it, when they want it. The Repealers must absorb this lesson. Germaine Greer's idea that a woman will never be free until she can have an abortion on her lunchtime never quite caught on, even among other feminists. Abortion is a complex issue that affects at least three living beings in every case - the mother, the father and the foetus. It is about pain and death - this needs to acknowledged - and there needs to be a language of grief and respect around it.

Pro-choice activists flinch from this kind of talk. It immediately reminds them of the Catholic hegemony - even though ideas like redemption and grace are common to all world religions - and it forces them to think about a moral framework for abortion outside of the woman as a victim of circumstance. But acknowledging these issues not only shows respect for the terrible responsibility of the woman (her 'choice'), it takes on the pro-life lobby on their own spiritual turf. It beats them with their own crucifix.

It's often presumed that if the Eighth Amendment were removed that we would eventually get what they have in England - where there are roughly 200,000 abortions a year and the procedure is basically used like a contraceptive (over one-third of UK abortions are for women who have previously had one).

But maybe we could instead have what they have in Japan. There, abortion is entirely legal in the first five months of pregnancy and hardly stirs a murmur within society. Proportionately, there are far fewer abortions than in the UK. There are no protests at abortion clinics, no debates about banning abortions and no politicians taking showboating positions on the issue.

The last legal restrictions on abortion in Japan were quietly removed in 1948. Still, the society discreetly acknowledges the sense of unease around abortion. On hillside Buddhist temples, there are seas of tiny statuettes that signify the foetuses that have been aborted. Women, and sometimes men, come to stand before these mystical monuments to express their grief, sadness, confusions and hopes of forgiveness.

Our own naive pro-choice campaigners would scoff at such practices. To the Irish Twitter mob, talk of atonement smacks of giving up too much ground. They will never acknowledge that, at the heart of abortion, is the fact that it is one life for another, an impossible decision - different for every woman - that must somehow be made. This is a terrible shame. Facing up to these issues might go some way toward bringing along the 'mushy middle' of Irish society, who have long accepted we must change our constitution (just look at all the polls), but still can't quite bring themselves to flag-wave for abortion.

Perhaps the real key to bringing some justice to our abortion laws will be to do more for these people than lecture them. We need, rather, to help them imagine an Ireland where we are prepared to look every difficult fact about abortion square in the eye, an Ireland where women have the rights and responsibilities that make up real, free choice. And maybe one day, in the not-too-distant future, we principled, determined Repealers can take our own spirituality, candles and rosary beads (I have a beautiful set from my grandmother), and join the likes of Youth Defence in grieving for the dead.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law. And Taoiseach Enda Kenny is intent on keeping hold of the reins of power. Kenny raised eyebrows yesterday when he signalled his intention to cling on for another two years. It was the first time details of an exit strategy have been revealed since he announced he won't be leading the party into the next general election.

During a private session at the Fine Gael think-in, Kenny told a private meeting he was only months into his second term: "And I have no intention of going anywhere."

Kenny claims he has his "mojo back". Where it was gone all this time is not entirely clear. He says he didn't "enjoy the election". Neither did the Fine Gael TDs who lost their seats as a result of his inept performance and inadequate management of the party's campaign.

Kenny says he has a mandate and he's not going to walk away from it. Such a self-centred attitude towards the responsibility of government does not serve the country.

His party's problem is nobody is willing to drop him the less-than-subtle hint that is it time to allow someone else to carry out the mandate bestowed on his party.

As reported in the Irish Independent yesterday, Fine Gael ministers have a plan ready to replace Kenny swiftly if the Government collapses and there is a snap election.

If such a plan ultimately has to be put into action, Fine Gael will already have failed and the new leader will have little hope of regaining ground in an election campaign.

Caitriona bravely lost on an unforgiving sea

Crews of the Irish Coast Guard know the risks when they set to sea. In fair weather and foul, they put their lives on the line to come to the assistance of those in trouble on the water. There is no such thing as a routine mission, as every call out is fraught with danger.

The crews are highly trained and their equipment is up to the highest standard.

But the sea is unpredictable and unforgiving.

Yesterday, the Irish Coast Guard was involved in the search for a man missing off the coast of Co Clare.

The crew of the Doolin lifeboat headed out on to the Atlantic before lunchtime. Conditions had prevented the search operation from going out before that time and there were reports of heavy swells.

Tragically, the two women and a man from the unit were thrown from the rigid inflatable in a heavy swell as they scoured cliffs and the shoreline near the town.

The alarm was raised shortly after 1pm, with numerous crews joining the search and rescue operation.

Despite the efforts of multiple rescue teams, a member of the Coast Guard crew died and her two colleagues were rescued. Caitriona Lucas, a mother-of-two, gave her life on a mission for the Irish Coast Guard.

Her friends and colleagues describe a woman who gave selflessly. She was remembered for her good humour and as a woman who always prioritised helping others.

That she was a volunteer speaks volumes of her dedication to her community and saving lives.

This brave woman made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of the State. Her legacy will be to raise awareness for the often thankless efforts of her colleagues around the country.
Retail Excellence Ireland in association with Barclaycard are delighted to announce the finalists in our Best Store Consumer Choice Award 2016.

The shortlist of finalists, representing retailers big and small from across the country, has been chosen based on their ability to combine superior customer service and instore brilliance to deliver an exceptional customer experience every time. The Retail Excellence Ireland Awards showcase our industrys best in class in each category. The variety of the shortlist reflects the strength of Ireland's retail offering.

For the first time ever, Retail Excellence Ireland have opened up a category for the public vote. This is your time to vote for the store who truly excels.

The exciting list of nominees includes some of Irelands best known names in retail (Brown Thomas; Avoca, Penneys, Arnotts, SuperValu, Tilestyle); some leading international brand names who have become an essential part of the Irish retail mix (H&M, Zara); and some new arrivals on the retail landscape who have had a big impact (LOfficina, Scrumdiddly's). The winning store will be announced at Ireland's leading retails award ceremony in Galway in November.

Below is our shortlist of winners which you can vote for or if you feel there is another store in your local town or village who deserves to be awarded you can nominate them instead. The closing date for voting for your favourite store is 11th October.

Get voting, and be sure to share this with your friends and family so they can cast their vote too!

Sponsored by:
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc attend a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, September 12, 2016. Photo by Reuters/Lintao Zhang/Pool

The two countries should work together to maintain peace and stability at sea.

China and Vietnam should work together to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea and manage and control disputes, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea, which Vietnam calls the East Sea, where about $5 trillion worth of seaborne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims in the sea believed to have rich deposits of oil and gas.

A court of arbitration in The Hague in July said China's claims to the waterway were invalid, after a case was brought by the Philippines. Beijing has refused to recognize the ruling.

Vietnam welcomed the ruling, saying it strongly supports peaceful resolution of disputes, while reasserting its own sovereignty claims.

A ship (top) of the Chinese Coast Guard is seen near a ship of the Vietnam Marine Guard in theSouth China Sea, about 210 km (130 miles) off shore of Vietnam May 14, 2014. Photo by Reuters/Nguyen Minh/File Photo

Meeting in Beijing on Monday, Li told Phuc that the South China Sea involved both issues of sovereignty and maritime rights as well as "national feelings", China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

"China and Vietnam should work hard together, scrupulously abide by their high level consensus, maintain maritime stability, manage and control disputes, promote maritime cooperation, continue to accumulate consensus, jointly maintain maritime and regional peace and stability and create conditions for the stable development of bilateral ties," Li said.

The ministry cited Phuc as saying maritime issues should be appropriately handled in a peaceful way on the basis of equality and mutual respect and not allow maritime issues to affect the development of relations.

Earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered Vietnam a credit line of half a billion dollars for defense cooperation, giving a lift to a country rapidly pursing a military deterrent as discord festers in the South China Sea.

Related news:

> Chinese coast guard involved in most S.China Sea clashes

> Vietnam says all will lose in any South China Sea war
Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins will not be staying on The Great British Bake Off

Presenting duo Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc have said they will not return to host The Great British Bake Off when it moves to Channel 4, adding that they are "not going with the dough".

The pair have fronted the show since it first aired on BBC Two in 2010, alongside judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood.

Perkins and Giedroyc said in a joint statement that they were "shocked and saddened" to learn of the Bake Off's move from the BBC.

They continued: " We made no secret of our desire for the show to remain where it was.

"The BBC nurtured the show from its infancy and helped give it its distinctive warmth and charm, growing it from an audience of two million to nearly 15 at its peak."

They ended their statement with the wit that has made them a hit on the show, saying: "We've had the most amazing time on Bake Off, and have loved seeing it rise and rise like a pair of yeasted Latvian baps.

"We're not going with the dough. We wish all the future bakers every success."

The presenters have been a formidable team, with their "good cop, bad cop" approach and their many double entendres.

Their innuendo-laced references to things such as soggy bottoms and hot baps, as well as comments such as "You have got two hours to pop Mary's cherry ... ", have been a hit with viewers.

Off screen they have been friends for many years after meeting when they were students at Cambridge University.

Video of the Day

On Monday the BBC said it would love to have kept Bake Off, but it had not been able to afford it.

According to BBC News, the corporation is believed to have offered Love Productions, the producers of the popular baking programme, 15 million per year to keep the show.

This amount fell 10 million short of what the corporation would need to retain the show on BBC One, it was reported.

Channel 4 has signed a three-year agreement with Love Productions.

The BBC said it had " made a very strong offer to keep the show but we are a considerable distance apart on the money".

Its statement continued: "The BBC's resources are not infinite. GBBO is a quintessentially BBC programme."

Perkins and Giedroyc presented Channel 4's comedy talk show, Light Lunch, together from 1997-1998.

They went on to host ITV's panel game show, Casting Couch, and also appeared on Channel 4's breakfast TV show RI:SE, which was a replacement for The Big Breakfast.

At the beginning of 2015 they made their return to ITV with a daytime chat show titled Mel A nd Sue.

The channel move will see Bake Off remain on free-to-air television.

The first Bake Off programme set to be broadcast on Channel 4 will be a celebrity version of the show in 2017, in aid of Stand Up To Cancer.

Channel 4 said it was "very proud" to be the new home for the series.

It is not yet known if Berry and Hollywood will stay as judges on the show when it moves to Channel 4.

A spokesman from Love Productions said: "We would like to thank Mel and Sue for bringing their own unique humour to the tent over the past years and we respect their decision not to be part of the Bake Off team on Channel 4."

Former chief executive of Channel 4 Lord Grade has condemned the move of Bake Off from the BBC, saying: "Channel 4 has shot itself very seriously in the foot."

He told BBC Radio 4's World At One: "It's been arguing very strongly for the last year or so against privatisation, putting up an argument that says its remit (is) to cater for tastes and interests not catered for on other channels and being different and innovating.

"(It) has just splashed out, if reports are to be believed, 25 million on a show that really belongs to the BBC.

"I think they have completely undermined their case against privatisation, that's the first thing to say.

"The second thing to say is I think the BBC were quite right not to overpay for this product, it leaves a gap in the schedule and they will invent another one."
Paris and Nicky Hilton attend the Sean John Fall 2001 collection show February 10, 2001 on the third day of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week 2001 at Bryant Park in New York City. (Photo by George De Sota/Newsmakers)

(L-R) Socialites Paris and Nicky Hilton arrive for the Diane von Furstenberg Spring/Summer 2003 collection show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week September 17, 2002 in New York City. (Photo by Matthew Peyton/Getty Images)

(L-R) Socialites Paris and Nicky Hilton arrive for the Diane von Furstenberg Spring/Summer 2003 collection show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week September 17, 2002 in New York City. (Photo by Matthew Peyton/Getty Images)

(L to R) Socialites Paris Hilton, Nicky Hilton and their mother Kathy Hilton watch the Tommy Hilfiger Spring/Summer 2003 Collection at Bryant Park during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week September 18, 2002 in New York City. (Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images)

Paris Hilton arrives for the Lloyd Klein Spring/Summer 2003 Collection fashion show at Studio 54 during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week September 20, 2002 in New York City. (Photo by Keith Bedford/Getty Images)

Paris Hilton walks down the runway during the show for the Lloyd Klein Fall/Winter 2003 Collection at the Theater in Bryant Park during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week February 7, 2003 in New York City. (Photo by Adam Rountree/Getty Images)

Socialites Nicky (L) and Paris Hilton attend a show featuring the Luca Luca Fall/Winter 2002 Fashion Collection February 12, 2002 during the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week 2002 in New York City. (Photo by George De Sota/Getty Images)

Sisters Paris and Nicky Hilton pose in the lobby during Olympus Fashion Week in Bryant Park September 11, 2006 in New York City. (Photo by Katy Winn/Getty Images for IMG)

Tara Reid (L) and socialite Paris Hilton attend the Sean John Fall Winter Mercedes Benz Fashion Show 2002 February 9, 2002 at Cipriani in New York. Fashion week ends February 15, 2002. (Photo by George De Sota/Getty Images

Socialites Nicky and Paris Hilton attend the Diane von Furstenberg Fall/Winter 2003 Collection fashion show at her West Village Studio during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week February 9, 2003 in New York City. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)

At 35, Paris Hilton is a Fashion Week veteran.

Before The Simple Life, before a perfume empire and before bi-monthly trips to Japan for her handbag range, Paris was another emerging 'It' girl commanding attention on the front row.

Paris Hilton's NYFW journey began in 2001 at Sean John's Fall 2001 collection show.

Expand Close Paris and Nicky Hilton attend the Sean John Fall 2001 collection show February 10, 2001 on the third day of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week 2001 at Bryant Park in New York City. (Photo by George De Sota/Newsmakers) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Paris and Nicky Hilton attend the Sean John Fall 2001 collection show February 10, 2001 on the third day of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week 2001 at Bryant Park in New York City. (Photo by George De Sota/Newsmakers)

By 2002, she was modelling for Lloyd Klein.

Expand Close Paris Hilton arrives for the Lloyd Klein Spring/Summer 2003 Collection fashion show at Studio 54 during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week September 20, 2002 in New York City. (Photo by Keith Bedford/Getty Images) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Paris Hilton arrives for the Lloyd Klein Spring/Summer 2003 Collection fashion show at Studio 54 during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week September 20, 2002 in New York City. (Photo by Keith Bedford/Getty Images)

And sitting next to former BFF Tara Reid.

Expand Close Tara Reid (L) and socialite Paris Hilton attend the Sean John Fall Winter Mercedes Benz Fashion Show 2002 February 9, 2002 at Cipriani in New York. Fashion week ends February 15, 2002. (Photo by George De Sota/Getty Images / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Tara Reid (L) and socialite Paris Hilton attend the Sean John Fall Winter Mercedes Benz Fashion Show 2002 February 9, 2002 at Cipriani in New York. Fashion week ends February 15, 2002. (Photo by George De Sota/Getty Images

Before attending Luca Luca's show with her sister Nicky.

Expand Close Socialites Nicky (L) and Paris Hilton attend a show featuring the Luca Luca Fall/Winter 2002 Fashion Collection February 12, 2002 during the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week 2002 in New York City. (Photo by George De Sota/Getty Images) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Socialites Nicky (L) and Paris Hilton attend a show featuring the Luca Luca Fall/Winter 2002 Fashion Collection February 12, 2002 during the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week 2002 in New York City. (Photo by George De Sota/Getty Images)

Video of the Day

2003 was her year to shine - she walked for Lloyd Klein again...

Expand Close Paris Hilton walks down the runway during the show for the Lloyd Klein Fall/Winter 2003 Collection at the Theater in Bryant Park during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week February 7, 2003 in New York City. (Photo by Adam Rountree/Getty Images) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Paris Hilton walks down the runway during the show for the Lloyd Klein Fall/Winter 2003 Collection at the Theater in Bryant Park during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week February 7, 2003 in New York City. (Photo by Adam Rountree/Getty Images)

...and attended Diane Von Furstenberg's show wearing a killer outfit.

Expand Close (L-R) Socialites Paris and Nicky Hilton arrive for the Diane von Furstenberg Spring/Summer 2003 collection show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week September 17, 2002 in New York City. (Photo by Matthew Peyton/Getty Images) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp (L-R) Socialites Paris and Nicky Hilton arrive for the Diane von Furstenberg Spring/Summer 2003 collection show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week September 17, 2002 in New York City. (Photo by Matthew Peyton/Getty Images)

In 2016, she's still glued to Nicky's side.

Expand Close Paris Hilton and Nicky Hilton Rothschild arrive to the Jeremy Scott fashion show at September 2016 New York Fashion Week: The Shows at Skylight at Moynihan Station on September 12, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Paris Hilton and Nicky Hilton Rothschild arrive to the Jeremy Scott fashion show at September 2016 New York Fashion Week: The Shows at Skylight at Moynihan Station on September 12, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

She's upgraded from a pink Motorola Razr...

Expand Close Nicky Hilton Rothschild and Paris Hilton arrive to the Jeremy Scott fashion show at September 2016 New York Fashion Week: The Shows at Skylight at Moynihan Station on September 12, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Nicky Hilton Rothschild and Paris Hilton arrive to the Jeremy Scott fashion show at September 2016 New York Fashion Week: The Shows at Skylight at Moynihan Station on September 12, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

And still just as camera shy.

Expand Close Paris Hilton attends the W Magazine and Hugo Boss Celebrate "The Shot" event at the International Center of Photography Museum on September 12, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images for Hugo Boss) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Paris Hilton attends the W Magazine and Hugo Boss Celebrate "The Shot" event at the International Center of Photography Museum on September 12, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images for Hugo Boss)

Never stop being you, Paris.
Like all great love stories, these couples journeys started in a hazy night at a Harcourt Street nightclub.

Copper Face Jack's have a launched a nationwide competition to find couples who first met at the iconic nightclub and after just a week, more than 150 entrants have sent in their love stories. We've teamed up with the club to share some of the best so far.

Melissa and Mark

Expand Close Melissa and Mark met in Coppers / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Melissa and Mark met in Coppers

When they met: December 22, 2013

How they met: "It was the final pub of our 12 pubs of Christmas," Melissa says. "I was invited by my college friend Michelle to join her on her 12 pubs so after finishing up working in BT2 I met her in Coppers.

There, standing in his bright blue penguin Christmas jumper was mark. We chatted away for the night and that was the start of an amazing relationship. A year and a half later he proposed on The Palm in Dubai and this summer we became husband and wife at the age of 23 and 25."

Meghan and Cathal

Expand Close Meghan and Cathal met in Coppers / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Meghan and Cathal met in Coppers

When they met: October 18, 2015

How they met: After matching twice on Tinder, Meghan finally caved and the couple began messaging.

"We chatted here and there, but it all changed one night when we both found ourselves in the big shmoke on a night out! I'd been out with my brother, who lives in Dublin, for Oktoberfest then onto a few other bars," she explains.

In a complete moment of madness, myself and my brother decided it was completely fine and normal to bring him along for the first time meeting a 'Tinder person'. We wiped the rice off our faces and soldiered on to Harcourt Street.

There, I met Cathal for the first time in person, big brother in tow. Poor Cathal. Somewhere amongst all the awkwardness one of us suggested Coppers! The three of us headed in and I genuinely had one of the best nights of my life. Drinks, chats and dancing! The three amigos! We stayed 'til closing and then headed back to my brother's house where Cathal slept on the couch.

Video of the Day

We've been "official" since January. Coppers holds a special place in our heart. If I hadn't had so much fun with Cathal that night and realised that he was actually a complete gentleman who was obviously head over heels in love with me (who else would abandon all the lads on a night out to meet a girl and her brother?! ) , then I don't know if we would have met up at all. It was fate. Whenever I hear Westlife's When You're Looking Like That, it reminds me of the night that we met.

"Cheers Coppers for helping me find the man of my dreams, you're sound!"

Maria and Nigel

Expand Close Maria met her husband in Coppers / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Maria met her husband in Coppers

When they met: August 1999

How they met: "A mutual friend introduced my husband and I last century," Maria explains.

"It was a brief introduction as I was catching up and chatting more to my old school friend about my impending plans to emigrate to Australia. I didn't make it to Australia after all as my future husband started emailing me in work (in Italian) and asked me out on a date.

For some reason, I was intrigued by this tall dark handsome Irish guy I met in Coppers who wrote in Italian (he was using a translation tool online). I'm Irish Italian and yes, it's true, Italian is the language of love.

We went to see the movie Mickey Blue Eyes on our first date and the rest is history. Well, that's amore. We got engaged in Barcelona in 2002 and got married in my dads hometown in Italy in 2004. We have two beautiful daughters thankfully.

We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary this year. Would love to say Ciao Bella Roma and of course grazie Coppers for our grande amore <3"

Maria and Ian

Expand Close Maria and Ian met in Coppers / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Maria and Ian met in Coppers

When they met: 2011

How they met: "College days were definitely the best days of my life," Maria reveals. "Being a true Pats girl, Id go to Coppers as least three times a week  and meet the same old people there. But after so many lonely nights alone without that someone special it got pretty monotonous.

So, when my friend Siobhan suggested that we visit Irelands finest nightclub one Valentines night, I jumped at the chance.

I dont remember anything special about that night (apart from Cormac from Tallafornia being spotted in the bar upstairs) or even what I wore. I dont remember what anyone looked like or what wonderful conversations Siobhan and I had (and Im sure there were a few in the toilets before we hit the dance floor) I do remember getting lost, and wondering where I was.

I do remember there being chairs lined up blocking off part of the smoking area  Valentines Night must have been a slow night in Coppers with all the couples on their dates! I remember finding a chair and dragging myself onto it. I didnt think that that small action would change the course of my life.

I remember turning to my left and seeing a nice young man with black spiky hair in a white t-shirt to my left. I remember him turning his whole body towards mine and introducing himself. Hi Im Ian he said. I definitely swooned  my night was getting better!

Neither of us remember the contents of the conversation apart from the fact that he told me about moving to Canada for a year and I told him about moving to London (which we both did!). Fast forward almost five years in February and weve just bought our first house together, and things are absolutely perfect.

I cant wait to start our future together. Im not lying when I say that hes still my favorite person in the whole entire world. And I have Coppers to thank for that! Because of that we make time every year, usually February 14th, to return to our spot to celebrate our anniversary. I can't believe that Coppers is where my love story began! Thanks Coppers!"

Keith and Annelie

Expand Close Keith and Annelie / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Keith and Annelie

When they met: 2012

How they met: "I met my now fiancee in Coppers nearly four years ago on a fine summer night," Keith writes. "I am originally from Cavan and decided to hit the big smoke with three of my mates.

We had a few drinks in your bar and headed on our way to Temple Bar where we drank our fill before going to Coppers. There I met my fiancee - Annelie Kavanagh - and life hasn't been the same since. I sawher on the dancefloor throwing some shapes and decided the best approach was to tell her that her dancing routine was, 'The worst I had ever seen in my life!'"

We had a drink and a smooch before she told me she had to go to the smoking area and left me dancing with her friend. I was there for 10-15mins and no sign of this girl coming back so I took the hint and did the awkward "dance off the dancefloor" dance and met the lads again before calling it a night.

The next morning I had a text back and it started from there. So we met up every weekend for one year whether in Dublin or Virginia.

A year into the relationship, we decided I would have to move to Dublin. We are due to nail down a wedding date in the next month and we couldn't be happier."

Eimear and Ciaran

Expand Close Eimear and Ciaran met in Coppers / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Eimear and Ciaran met in Coppers

When they met: 2011

How they met: "Being a nurse, I spent many a Monday night in Flannery's followed by Copper's until the wee hours of the morning," Eimear recalls.

"When I turned 26 I was ready to find 'The One'. My Dearest Mother always told me "you'll never find him in a nightclub and especially in that Copper Face Jack's place!". So out to prove her wrong and with a bit of luck on my side that's exactly where I did find him!

It was the Sunday night of the October Bank Holiday and I was out with the girls for one of their birthdays. Near the end of the night I was out having a smoke with one of the girls when I was approached by this tall handsome beau who asked me for a light. Naturally I obliged and we were so engrossed in conversation we never noticed all our friends leaving.

Both of us being Southsiders, we shared a taxi home. I was patiently waiting for him to ask for my number but when he still hadn't by the time I got to my stop I was a little annoyed and rudely asked, "Well do you want my number or what?!" Of course he took it whether he wanted to or not!

We got married in 2013, with our table plan based on the clubs and pubs we dated in and of course the top table had to be Coppers! We have a beautiful daughter who's nearly two and another baby on the way in January.

Thank you Coppers for helping me meet 'The One' and more importantly thank you for helping me prove my mother wrong!"

Coppers is offering one lucky couple the chance to win a romantic trip to Rome for Valentine's 2017 and are asking couples who first met there to share their stories. To enter, couples must share the competition post on Facebook using the hashtag #MetInCoppers and tell them their Coppers story on an online form.
Relatives of some of the 239 passengers and crew on missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have called for more of its possible debris to be examined to define a new search area.

Malaysia, China and Australia agreed in July that the search in the southern Indian Ocean would be suspended after the current 120,000sq. km expanse had been thoroughly examined with deep sea sonar equipment in the absence of credible new evidence that identified the plane's location.

Eight relatives of lost passengers who met with Australian officials co-ordinating the search on behalf of Malaysia expressed frustration that they were not given a definition of what constituted credible new evidence that would result in a continuation of the search.

US wreckage hunter Blaine Gibson attended the meeting at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau headquarters with the relatives from Malaysia, China, Australia and Indonesia and handed over to investigators five pieces of potential debris he found on beaches in Madagascar. Two of the pieces were burnt, which could indicate a fire on board, he said.

Mr Gibson previously found a panel from Flight 370 in Mozambique. Malaysia has yet to collect other potential debris he has found washed up on Madagascar since June and handed to authorities there.

"I hope that the search will go on and in my amateur opinion this constitutes new, credible evidence that justifies continuing the search," he told reporters of his unconfirmed debris find.

Some confirmed pieces of debris have washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean, and the families believe other items yet to be examined may be clues to the plane's location.

Grace Nathan, a Malaysian whose mother was on the Boeing 777 that vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, said governments should be co-ordinating a search for debris and using drift modelling to define a new area to search after the current search ends in December. "We want to call on the three nations - Australia, China and Malaysia - to make a concerted effort to go out and look for this credible new information," Ms Nathan said.

"It's very impressive that one private individual citizen, Blaine Alan Gibson, has managed to find up to 15 pieces of aircraft debris and we hope that these three nations do more than just hope by fluke people find more debris," she added.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau confirmed that it had received debris from Mr Gibson and was seeking advice from Malaysia on how Australia should proceed.

Oceanographers are analysing the first piece of wreckage found, a wing flap that washed up on Reunion Island in July last year, in the hope of narrowing a possible next search area through drift modelling.
Four suspects have been charged with rape and murder after a Muslim woman and her 14-year-old cousin were gang-raped and two of their relations murdered in Indias Haryana province last month.

The group of men in their 30s allegedly entered the victims home in the Mewat district on August 24, assaulting the 20-year-old woman and teenager. An older man and woman were tied up and beaten to death.

The woman told the BBC: "They [the accused men] said that we ate cow meat and that is why we were being disgraced [raped]. They even threatened to kill me and my family if we ever told anybody what happened to us."

Abid Khan, a member of the Mewat Bar Association, said: We have never had any religious tensions here since independence. People [Hindus and Muslims] have always lived in peace in this area. Its possible that this incident was planned to create religious tensions in the area.

Killing cows is banned in many states of India, a majority-Hindu country that also has sizeable Muslim, Christian and Buddhist minorities.

Cow protection groups have recently proliferated across the country, buoyed by a ruling Hindu nationalist government which has encouraged stronger anti-cow slaughter laws.

In July this year violent protests broke out across the state of Gujarat after a Hindu gang beat and publicly humiliated four low-caste youths accused of killing a cow.

The youths were spotted stripping the dead cows hide near the town of Una. They were subsequently stripped, tied to a car and beaten with belts and iron rods by the vigilantes, as a large crowd looked on. A video of the attack was widely circulated online.

In 2015, a 50-year-old Muslim man, Mohammad Akhlaq, was beaten to death over rumours he had eaten beef.

Police told reporters Mr Akhlaq was dragged from his house on the outskirts of New Delhi and attacked by around 100 people.

Mr Akhlaq's daughter, Sajida, told the Indian Express: "They accused us of keeping cow meat, broke down our doors and started beating my father and brother. My father was dragged outside and beaten with bricks."

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Parents Otas and Faith pose for a photo with baby Newman Otas, born on board MV Aquarius in the Mediterranean Sea (MSF via AP)

A baby boy has been born aboard a vessel in the Mediterranean Sea just 24 hours after his family was rescued from an overcrowded rubber boat.

Doctors Without Borders, one of the operators of the rescue ship Aquarius, said the boy was born to Nigerian parents in international waters on Monday morning. He was named Newman Otas.

Jonquil Nicholl, a midwife with the aid group who delivered the baby, said it was "a very normal birth in dangerously abnormal conditions".

Parents Otas and Faith and older brothers Victory and Rollres were rescued from a rubber boat trying to cross the Mediterranean from Libya a day previously.

The baby's mother said she was panicking before the rescue that she would go into labour, and had been having contractions for three days.

AP
A bag strap left at the scene of Stephen Lawrence's murder was originally believed to have been discovered further away after punctuation in police notes was misread, it has emerged.

It had been thought the item was found around 80 to 90 metres (260 feet to 295 feet) away from the spot where the 18-year-old was attacked in Eltham, south east London, on April 22 1993.

However, officers established in 2014 that the strap was actually discarded only a few metres from where Stephen was set upon.

Chris Le Pere, the senior investigator in the case, described the discrepancy as an "honest mistake", adding: "In my judgment there is no misconduct involved in this."

He said: "We've established since I took over the investigation in February 2014 that it is not where the original investigation thought it was."

Mr Lawrence's bag was found around 6 metres (20 feet) from a footway, his blood was 10 metres (32 feet) away and the strap was 15 metres (50 feet) away, according to the revised position.

Expand Close Duwayne Brooks, friend of murdered south London teenager Stephen Lawrence, arriving for his meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Duwayne Brooks, friend of murdered south London teenager Stephen Lawrence, arriving for his meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg

The location of the strap was correctly recorded in notes by examiners who recovered exhibits at the scene.

However, the examiners' statements were written up for them as they were unavailable and they did not have their notes to hand when the statements were signed.

Asked about the difference in the location recorded in the notes to the statement, Mr Le Pere said: "Because the way the actual examiners' notes are ... the punctuation hasn't been read correctly."

He added: "It is a misinterpretation of the scene examiners' notes." Mr Le Pere said he did not know who wrote the statements up.

Mr Lawrence was stabbed to death by a group of up to six white men in an unprovoked racist assault as he waited at a bus stop with a friend.

In January 2012, Gary Dobson and David Norris were found guilty of being involved in the attack and jailed for life.

Scotland Yard renewed its public appeal for information after improvements in forensic testing produced a DNA profile of an unidentified female from the black leather bag strap.

Detectives believe the profile belongs to the main user of the bag and are attempting to trace her.

Mr Le Pere stressed the female is not a suspect.

He said: "She is a witness. There is no evidence to suggest a female was involved in the murder of Stephen Lawrence."

The female may have been a victim of a theft or the bag or strap may have been given to someone unwittingly, Mr Le Pere said.

He said he believed the strap was left at the scene by the suspects, with one possible theory being explored that it was an "adapted offensive weapon".

Officers have spoken to around 110 people in connection with the line of inquiry. Fifty of these individuals gave DNA samples, 46 refused, 12 failed to respond to police requests and the remainder were eliminated for medical reasons.

A reconstruction and appeal was shown on BBC's Crimewatch on Monday night.

Mr Lawrence's father Neville pleaded with anyone with information to come forward, saying: "One small little bit of information can bring it all together."

Anyone with information is asked to call the Met Police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Shimon Peres has suffered a stroke and been rushed to hospital, according to a spokeswoman for the former Israeli president.

Ayelet Frisch said that he was stable and fully conscious.

Mr Peres, 93, has held virtually every senior political office in Israel over a seven-decade career.

He stepped down as president in 2014 after completing a seven-year term.

More to follow.
A MAN has been charged with attempted murder after a woman's main parachute failed to open in a 4,000ft jump, police said.

Emile Cilliers, 36, is accused of two counts of attempted murder and a further charge of criminal damage reckless to the endangerment of life.

The 40-year-old woman suffered "multiple serious injuries" after plummeting to the ground during a jump at Netheravon Airfield on Salisbury Plain on April 5.

At the time Wiltshire Police said the woman's reserve also failed and deployed only partially. She sustained multiple serious injuries and was taken to Southampton Hospital and later discharged.

Cilliers, of Amesbury, Wiltshire, has been released on bail and is due to appear at Salisbury Magistrates' Court on October 14.
In this issue: interview with Nicolas Veron, and the latest podcast  on recent EU measures to tackle the energy crisis.
Undated handout photo issued by Thames Valley Police of CCTV image of a man they would like to speak to in connection with an assault. Photo: Thames Valley Police/PA Wire

A 34-YEAR-OLD pregnant woman lost her baby after she was kicked to the ground in a racially aggravated attack, police in the UK have said.

Police are appealing for information and have released a CCTV image of a man they would like to speak to in connection with the assault, which happened at around 9.40pm on August 6 in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire.

The woman was in the Co-op store on Water Eaton Road when she was approached by a man who made racial remarks, Thames Valley Police said.

She was followed to her car, where the suspect hit a 40-year-old man over the head with a bag of ice and a bottle, before kicking the woman in the torso, causing her to fall to the floor, police said.

The woman lost her baby as a result of the attack, while the male victim sustained head injuries.

Both were taken to Milton Keynes General Hospital but have since been discharged.

Investigating officer Pc Richard Armitage said: "This racially aggravated assault had absolutely devastating consequences for the victim, who lost her baby as a result of the attack. Our thoughts are with her and her family at this incredibly difficult and sad time.

"A thorough investigation is under way and we would like to speak to the man pictured as he may have information which could help with the investigation."

Anyone who recognises the man in the CCTV image or who has any information is urged to contact police.
Syrian children slide down rubble of destroyed a building in the rebel-held city of Daraa, in southwestern Syria on as Muslims mark the first day of Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) holiday Photo: MOHAMAD ABAZEED/AFP/Getty Images

A US-Russian brokered ceasefire for Syria has come into effect, with monitoring groups and state media reporting clashes up until the final minutes and the most powerful rebel groups having yet to commit to the truce.

Syria's military announced at 7pm local time yesterday that it would abide by a ceasefire until Sunday at midnight, while maintaining its right to defend itself against any violations.

The ceasefire marks the latest attempt to end the five-year conflict, which has killed more than 250,000 people and driven some 11 million from their homes. The 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad began with peaceful protests but escalated into a civil war following a brutal government crackdown and the rise of an armed insurgency.

Russia and Western nations hope the truce can lead to the revival of peace talks between Assad's government and the rebels battling to overthrow him, and contribute to efforts to defeat the Islamic State (Isil) group and other extremists in Syria.

Russia's deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov said peace talks between opposition groups and the government could resume as early as next month.

Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the contested city of Daraa, said calm had prevailed over the city since 4pm, but observers elsewhere in the country reported fighting all the way up to and after the start of the ceasefire.

In Aleppo, the northern city that has emerged as the epicentre of the fighting, opposition media activist Mahmoud Raslan said government helicopters dropped crude barrel bombs on a contested neighbourhood.

The terms of the agreement permit government forces to target the al Qaida-linked Jabhat Fatah al-Sham for the first week of the ceasefire.

It was unclear whether the group's positions were being targeted after the truce began.

Hours before the ceasefire went into effect, Assad vowed that his government would take back land from "terrorists" and rebuild the country.
Splendiferous joins yogalates and moobs as new entries to the 150-year-old dictionarys collection of 600,000 words

You know, some yogalates could tackle those splendiferous moobs.

Confused? Then turn to the 'Oxford English Dictionary', which has included the words among more than 1,000 revisions and updates for its latest edition.

'Splendiferous', meaning full of or abounding in splendour, joins 'yogalates', a fitness routine combining pilates exercises with the techniques of yoga, and 'moobs', unusually prominent breasts on a man, as new entries to the 150-year-old dictionary's collection of 600,000 words.

Other words and phrases in the latest edition include the 'Westminster Bubble' of supposedly insular British politicians and civil servants, 'gender-fluid', meaning a person with a fluid or unfixed gender identity, and 'YOLO'- an acronym for "you only live once".

Read more: Revealed: The most bizarre words added to the new Oxford English Dictionary

The 'Oxford English Dictionary' is updated every three months, and September's revamp marks the centenary of the birth of children's book author Roald Dahl. It is littered with vocabulary described by another newly added word: 'Dahlesque'.

Besides 'splendiferous', Dahl-inspired vocabulary in the new edition includes an updated entry for the word 'gremlins', the meddlesome imps in Dahl's first children's book in 1943, and 'human bean', a humorous alteration or mispronunciation of human being.

"Other horrors created by Dahl, including snozzcumbers, the cannibalistic Bloodbottler, and the ferocious Vermicious Knid, remain confined to the Dahl universe ... for now," Jonathan Dent, the dictionary's senior assistant editor, said.
Joel Cervantes Macias was driving in Chicagos Little Italy village neighbourhood when he noticed 89-year-old Fidencio Sanchez struggling to push his cart of paletas. Mr Macias pulled over and took a photo of the man, bought 20 ice cream bars, and handed him $50.

It broke my heart seeing this man that should be enjoying retirement still working at this age, he wrote on GoFundMe.

He also learned that Mr Sanchezs only daughter died in July. Two years earlier, his wife injured her shoulder and was forced to stop selling paletas by his side.

Moved by the mans story, Mr Macias set up a fundraiser on GoFundMe and raised more than $100,000 by the end of the day.

We're trying to raise money to help him with whatever we can, he wrote. Anything helps. Let's all pitch in and help make life a little easier and brighten both of their day.

Mr Sanchez is originally from Mexico and only returned to work after his daughter died. He recently told Univision Chicago that he planned to donate most of the proceeds to his churches in Chicago and Mexico.

He also told Telemundo Chicago that he was not sure if he would retire.

But on the other hand, yes, because I need go out in the fresh air," he said. "I like it a lot and it helps me a lot."

Mr Macias said he would present the check to Mr Sanchez by the end of the week.
The uncle of a nine-year-old Maryland boy who was beaten to death over a missing piece of birthday cake has pleaded guilty to first-degree child abuse.

Jacob Barajas, 24, entered the plea on Tuesday as jury selection was set to begin for his trial in Hagerstown.

He faces up to 15 years at his sentencing, which has not been scheduled. The offence carries a maximum penalty of 25 years.

Prosecutors dropped other charges, including second-degree murder.

Barajas is among three people charged in the July 2015 death of Jack Garcia.

Robert Wilson, the mother's boyfriend, is serving a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder for beating Jack after Barajas had handcuffed him to a chair.

The mother, Oriana Garcia, is scheduled for trial in February on charges including second-degree murder.
A Muslim woman had her blouse set on fire outside an upscale boutique in Manhattan, police sources told The New York Daily News.

The 36-year-old woman was wearing traditional Muslim attire and was able to douse the flames herself, in what appears to be the latest anti-Muslim attack in New York City.

Police sources said a man stood nearby the victim with a lighter in his hand. Without speaking to her, the suspect fled the scene, in front of Valentino flagship store on Fifth Avenue. As of Monday night, no arrests have been made.

Now, the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a potential hate crime.

The attack took place the night before the 15th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. In 2001, anti-Muslim hate crimes surged by 1,600 per cent in 2001, according to the FBI.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, spoke on the importance of the investigation.

I would obviously be concerned because its symptomatic of the overall rise in Islamophobic sentiment in our society, he told The Daily News. Thats based on the spike across the country in hate crimes and hate incidents, in recent days and over the past year.

Two days prior, another incident was reported in Brooklyn where two Muslim women were allegedly attacked while pushing their babies in strollers. Police said the suspect yelled anti-Muslim sentiments at the women such as get the f*ck out of America, you dont belong here and said they are not supposed to be different from us.

Emirjeta Xhelili, 32, allegedly tried to remove the hijab from the women while striking their heads, and at one point, tipped over the stroller and attacked the children. Neither child suffered serious injuries in the attack. Xhelili was later charged with assault, reckless endangerment of a child, and harassment. She is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday and her bail has been set at $50,000.

On Monday, authorities in Florida ruled that the mosque where the Orlando nightclub shooter occasionally worshipped was intentionally set on fire by arsonists.
Police in New York are hunting for a man who set fire to a Scottish Muslim tourists clothes while she was shopping on Fifth Avenue.

The 36-year-old woman was browsing the boutiques on Saturday evening when she felt heat on her arm. She looked down and realised her blouse had been set on fire.

She saw the suspect pull a lighter away and walk away, a police source told The New York Daily News. He doesnt say anything.

The woman, who was unharmed, went to the police  who published photographs showing the suspect swaggering along East 54th Street, minutes after the attack. The young black man is wearing a black sleeveless vest, black trousers and a hat.

Police are treating the incident as a possible hate crime.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, urged a full investigation.

I would obviously be concerned because its symptomatic of the overall rise in Islamophobic sentiment in our society, he said.

The attack on the tourist came days after a 32-year-old woman from Brooklyn, who had written anti-Islamic rants on Facebook, attacked two young mothers pushing their children in prams.

Emirjeta Xhelili allegedly punched the women in the face and tried to rip the hijabs from their heads.

Prosecutors claimed that Xhelili shouted Islamophobic abuse at the woman, telling them: Get the f--- out of here. Get the f--- out of America b----s  This is America  you shouldnt be different from us."

She was arrested around half an hour after the alleged assault, after the two women pointed her out to police officers. She was later arraigned on a charge of misdemeanor assault as a hate crime at Brooklyn Criminal Court.

She didnt even care for the well-being of a baby  thats how serious this hate crime is, Kelli Muse, the assistant district attorney, told the court. She continued to taunt the victims in front of police while in custody, saying You guys dont belong here.

Xhelili was held on $50,000 (37,500) bond or $25,000 cash bail.

She had posted numerous anti-Muslim comments on her Facebook page, including one the day before the alleged attack, saying: From this moment on, every woman that waers (sic) the jihab/hijab will go to hell!! I cant stand you f---ing hypocrites. You have been warned."

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Many in the international community held high hopes that the 2016 elections in Zambia would signal yet another win for democracy in Africa.

But the run-up to the elections, as well as the post-election environment, were marred by violence, intimidation, and an environment that tilted the playing field unfairly in favor of the ruling party. This included the closure of the countrys most popular and one of its few independent newspapers.

The Post Newspaper was shut down by the government revenue service on claims of $6 million worth of unpaid taxes, while government news outlets and other entities that reportedly also owed substantial amounts to the government revenue service remained open.

After the election, Zambias broadcasting regulation entity, the Independent Broadcasting Authority, suspended the licenses of an additional three private media outlets, citing un-professional conduct and unspecified national security grounds. The closure of independent media outlets, without warning, on ill-defined national security grounds carries with it the potential to muzzle all non-government controlled media outlets and creates a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

This is not the way a multiparty democracy operates; it is not the way to help the country unify after a close election; is not the way to give confidence to the international community and outside investors that the rule of law is respected and carried out in a consistent manner in Zambia.

The United States is disappointed that politically motivated violence and constraints on media freedom have continued after Zambias August 11 general election, said State Department Spokesperson John Kirby in a written statement.

We are especially concerned about the Independent Broadcaster Associations August 22 suspension of three broadcasting licenses, which is a continuation of a troubling pre-electoral trend of restrictions on independent media voices and freedom of peaceful assembly. Zambias proud democratic traditions are not enhanced by such restrictions, nor will they help the country to unite and move forward.

Zambias election is over, and judicial authorities have carried out their constitutional duties to rule on the challenge to the election results. The United States Government urges the Government of the Republic of Zambia to work with the Zambian Revenue Authority and the Independent Broadcasting Authority to find a way forward that allows all media outlets to freely report.

The free flow of information is an essential element of a democracy. The United States calls on all political actors to meet and seek reconciliation in a display of leadership.
Scientists found the sounds used for the words of common objects and ideas across different languages are strikingly similar Photo: Depositphotos

Humans across the globe may be speaking the same language, according to scientists who found the sounds used for the words of common objects and ideas are strikingly similar.

The discovery challenges one of the fundamental principles of linguistics, that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is arbitrary.

Research that looked into several thousand languages showed that, for basic concepts such as body parts, family relationships or aspects of the natural world, there are common sounds.

"These sound-symbolic patterns show up again and again across the world, independent of the geographical dispersal of humans and independent of language lineage," said Dr Morten Christiansen, director of Cornell's Cognitive Neuroscience Lab in the US where the study was carried out. "There does seem to be something about the human condition that leads to these patterns."

For example, in most languages, the word for "nose" is likely to include the sounds "neh" or the "oo" sound, as in "ooze". The words for "red" and "round" are likely to include the "r" sound.

"It doesn't mean all words have these sounds, but the relationship is much stronger than we'd expect by chance," said Dr Christiansen.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leaves her daughter Chelsea's home in New York, New York, United States September 11, 2016, after Clinton left ceremonies commemorating the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks feeling "overheated."

Hillary Clinton didnt go to a Manhattan hospital for fear of her medical records being leaked to reporters

The Democratic President nominee was headed to an emergency room after her fainting incident at the September 11 but detoured to her daughter Chelsea Clintons apartment to keep details of her medical treatment under wraps, says a report in the New York Post.

Expand Close U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton greets a girl on the sidewalk after leaving her daughter Chelsea's home in New York, U.S. September 11, 2016 in this still image taken from video / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton greets a girl on the sidewalk after leaving her daughter Chelsea's home in New York, U.S. September 11, 2016 in this still image taken from video

According to Secret Service protocols, Ms Clinton should have been brought straight to Bellevue Hospital. However, a campaign operative decided that Clinton should not be seen by doctors, nurses and other medical workers who potentially could leak details to the media.

Meanwhile, Ms Clinton has said she became dizzy but did not lose consciousness when she stumbled on the way out of the 9/11 memorial ceremony on Sunday.

The Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview on CNN that she felt dizzy and "did lose my balance" while waiting for the motorcade. But she felt immediately better after getting into her air-conditioned vehicle.

She said she did not immediately disclose that she has been diagnosed with pneumonia because she "just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal".

Read More

Mrs Clinton said her doctor had told her to rest for five days, but she "didn't follow that very wise advice".

She added that she will be back on the campaign trail "in the next couple of days".

Read More

Asked whether she had fainted at the New York event, Mrs Clinton replied: "No, I didn't. I felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute. But I got in, once I could sit down, once I could cool off, once I got some water, I immediately started feeling better."

She later told supporters via text message and Facebook: "I'm feeling fine and getting better." She added: "Like anyone who's ever been home sick from work, I'm just anxious to get back out there."

Read More

Her comments came as her campaign scrambled to head off lasting damage from a difficult weekend. Aides are promising to release more of her medical records following her bout of pneumonia and conceding they were too slow in providing information about her condition.

An outbreak of respiratory illness swept through Mrs Clinton's campaign in the weeks before she was diagnosed with pneumonia, campaign aides said.

Read More

They said it was Mrs Clinton's decision to attend weekend fundraisers and the Sunday ceremony in lower Manhattan, despite the diagnosis of pneumonia.

Late on Sunday evening, she cancelled a California campaign trip scheduled for early this week. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, will headline some of her events.

Read More:

Her Republican Party rival Donald Trump, who has long questioned Mrs Clinton's fitness for the presidency, was notably restrained on the health matter, saying he hopes she feels better soon.

He focused on her remark last week that half of his supporters belonged in "a basket of deplorables," denouncing the comment as "an explicit attack on the American voter" and suggesting that it makes her unfit for the presidency.

Read More

"You cannot run for president if you have such contempt in your heart for the American voter," he said at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina. "You can't lead this nation if you have such a low opinion of its citizens."

But even as the tycoon defended his backers, one lashed out at protesters in the hall by appearing to punch and slap them.

The rally was interrupted several times by demonstrators and, at one moment, brief violence.

Read More

As several protesters were being escorted out by security, a man in the crowd grabbed a male protester around the neck and then punched him. He then slapped at a woman being led out. The Trump supporter was not ejected by security.

The celebrity businessman talked through the scuffle and said after the disturbance: "Is there any place more fun than a Trump rally?"
Despite assurances from Hillary Clinton's doctor that she was "recovering nicely", the scare raised concerns about her health and prompted questions about why she had failed to disclose the information, having been diagnosed on Friday.

With a trip to California this week cancelled and aides struggling to spin a positive angle from the development, the twist in the election campaign threw up an unwelcome question for the Democrats: What would happen if she had to drop out of the race due to ill health?

Expand Close Joe Biden Photo: MAXWELLPHOTOGRAPHY.IE / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Joe Biden Photo: MAXWELLPHOTOGRAPHY.IE

Ms Clinton can only be replaced as the nominee if she herself decides to step down - and there is no suggestion of that at this stage.

However, David Shuster, a journalist who has anchored for Al Jazeera America and MSNBC, quoted a Democratic operative as saying they had entered "uncharted political territory".

The unidentified source said the party may hold an emergency meeting to consider a possible replacement, but stressed selecting a new nominee would only arise if Ms Clinton herself decided to withdraw. "We can make contingencies, argue, plead with Hillary Clinton, but DNC bylaws are clear her nominee status [is] now totally up to her," Mr Shuster quoted the operative as saying.

Were she to decide to step down, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden and would be the likely names linked to the vacancy. According to the rules of the Democratic Party, the national committee is responsible for filling the position. Party officials would each cast one vote and the winner is whoever gets the majority.

No special consideration would be given to Tim Kaine, the current vice-presidential candidate, or Bernie Sanders, Ms Clinton's closest rival in the race to secure the Democratic nomination. And if someone other than Mr Kaine were selected, he would remain the vice-presidential candidate.

When the unlikely possibility of Ms Clinton dropping out was raised months ago amid the furore surrounding her emails and whether she would be indicted, Mr Biden was widely considered the likely replacement at the time.

Ms Clinton has been in the news before for serious health issues. In December 2012, she suffered a concussion and shortly afterward developed a blood clot. In a letter released by her doctor in July 2015, Clinton was described as being in "excellent health" and "fit to serve" in the White House. It noted that her current medical conditions include hyperthyroidism and seasonal pollen allergies.

Ms Clinton had a coughing fit while campaigning in Cleveland early last week. It was dismissed by her campaign as allergies and by the Democratic nominee herself at the time as coming from "talking so much".

Speculation about a presidential candidate's health is nothing new.

Rumours about Franklin D Roosevelt's health dogged his final campaign in 1944. Since then, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and Senator John McCain all faced questions about their health as presidential nominees.

Political strategists said the Clinton campaign should confront the health issue head on to tamp down any concerns. Bud Jackson, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist, said the statement from the doctor was a good start. He said the incident should encourage more transparency from the campaign about her health. "They had her examined and put out a statement. It means less speculation," he said.

Donald Trump has also faced calls to release detailed information on his health and medical history. Instead, Mr Trump's doctor wrote in a short letter that he would be "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says "calm is prevailing" in most of Syria on Tuesday

The Russian military says US-backed rebels have broken the truce in Syria

The Russian military has said US-backed rebels have repeatedly violated a ceasefire in Syria, but that the nearly day-old truce has largely held.

Col Sergei Kopytsyn said in a video call from an area near Aleppo that six people have been killed and another 10 have been wounded in the northern city since the truce went into force at sunset on Monday.

Separately, he said two Syrian government troops were killed and another soldier was wounded by opposition shelling of the Castello road, a key route leading to rebel-held parts of Aleppo, on Monday night.

Lt Gen Viktor Poznikhir, of the Russian military's General Staff, said there have been 23 ceasefire violations by US-backed opposition units since the start of the truce.

Meanwhile, the UN envoy for Syria hailed a "significant drop in violence" over the first 24 hours of the new ceasefire.

Staffan de Mistura said no UN humanitarian aid trucks have yet moved across the Turkish border into Syria.

He said UN officials are awaiting assurances that drivers of aid trucks will be "unhindered and untouched".

Mr de Mistura said no letters of authorisation from Syria's government are needed under the US and Russian arrangement, only a simple "notification" to Damascus about the contents of the trucks that "have not yet moved".

He said aid for rebel-held eastern Aleppo is a top priority. He added that a key concern about the overall ceasefire is whether sporadic "incidents" snowball to threaten the deal.

AP
Chris Sheerin wrote about Elko and Elkoans as a reporter and publisher of the Elko Daily Free Press. A resident for over 70 years, he also invested his time into Elkos growth through business and recreation.

Chris Sheerin was born in Virginia City in 1903. His family moved to Tonopah, where he graduated high school before attending the University of Nevada, Reno. He graduated in the universitys first class from the School of Journalism in 1924. After a job as a reporter with the Nevada State Journal, Sheerin joined the Elko Free Press in 1926.

Chris met and married Grace Weiser in 1928. Five years later, while giving birth to their son, John, Grace died. Sheerin raised John for a few years before marrying Evelyn Asher in 1936. Their son, Gary, was born in Elko a year later.

Sheerin was promoted from cub reporter to city editor and then managing editor at the Free Press. Eber M. Steninger retired, selling the newspaper to his son, E.B. and Sheerin in 1945. They ran the newspaper for 22 years.

Developing lasting friendships with many Elkoans, Chris profiled them in his Street Corners column that ran for years, even after his retirement.

Believing that Elko and surrounding areas would benefit from a radio station, he and a group of local businessmen formed Elko Broadcasting Company that put KELK on the air in 1948.

Sheerin participated in several civic organizations, many times in a leadership role. He was involved in the Chamber of Commerce, Elko Rotary, and Boy Scouts of America. Chris was a two-term president of the Nevada State Press Association and served on the Board of Regents from 1943 to 1950.

An avid outdoorsman, Chris was on the Nevada State Park Advisory Committee for almost 30 years. He helped develop Wildhorse State Park and went before the Nevada Park Commission to make a motion on behalf of the South Fork Dam Project.

Among Chriss many honors, he was named a Distinguished Nevadan in 1960 by the Board of Regents, awarded the Silver Quill from the Reno Press Club, and, in 1985, served as Grand Marshal of both the Elko County Fair Parade and Carson Citys Nevada Day Parade.

Elko City Council recognized Sheerins contributions in 1984, naming the street by the Northeastern Nevada Museum and City Park, Chris Sheerin Way.
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 Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde are hoping Indian Country is ready for another Carcieri decision from the U.S. Supreme Court

Seven years after the disastrous ruling upset the land-into-trust process, Grand Ronde leaders want the nation's highest court to take Carcieri even further. In doing so, they hope to prevent the Cowlitz Tribe from opening a casino.

"Speaking for myself, I support requesting the Supreme Court to consider the case. It isn't entirely about fighting another tribe," council member Tonya Gleason-Shepek said at an August 31 meeting, The Salem Statesman Journal reported. "I am also interested in having a clarifying Supreme Court [Carcieri] decision. This would be good for all Indian country."

Things are taking shape --- quite literally! :) Posted by ilani on Friday, September 2, 2016

In Carcieri, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bureau of Indian Affairs can only place land into trust for tribes that were "under federal jurisdiction" in 1934, a requirement that has caused uncertainty for casino projects across the nation. Grand Ronde leaders want to add another hurdle to the process -- they believe a tribe must have been "recognized" in 1934 in order to follow the Indian Reorganization Act

So far, Grand Ronde has been losing the battle. A federal judge and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals have both refused to add the "recognized" requirement to the process. An appeal to the Supreme Court represents the tribe's best and possibly last chance at making the argument.

Meanwhile, the Cowlitz Tribe continues to make progress on the ilani Casino Resort . The facility, located in Ridgefield, Washington, is due to open on April 17, 2017.

Ridgefield is only about 25 miles from downtown Portland, Oregon's biggest city. The Grand Ronde Tribes believe their Spirit Mountain Casino , about 60 miles from downtown, will lose up to 41 percent of revenues once ilani opens.

Read More on the Story: Grand Ronde appeals to U.S. Supreme Court (The Salem Statesman Journal 9/13)

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
Artist's rendering of the First Light Resort and Casino in Taunton, Massachusetts. Image from Steelman Partners / Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe



The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe of Massachusetts had hoped to open a long-awaited casino in the summer of 2017 but plans are on hold due to litigation.

Work stopped on the First Light Resort and Casino after a federal judge on July 28 ruled that the Bureau of Indian Affairs should not have approved the land-into-trust application for the site. Now it's anyone's guess as to what might happen next.

Weve been talking about getting a casino in this region for more than 25 years, and all of a sudden were the region that doesnt have anything, Christopher Cooney, the chief executive of the Metro South Chamber of Commerce, told The Boston Globe. Its extremely frustrating.

The tribe has since filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit, known as Littlefield v. Department of the Interior , and the Obama administration has asked the judge to reconsider the ruling in the case. As of Tuesday morning, no rulings have been issued on those requests.

The dispute arose as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v. Salazar . In that case, the justices ruled that the BIA can only place land into trust for tribes that were "under federal jurisdiction" as of 1934.

The New England Casino Race: Tribal and commercial gaming facilities in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island



The Mashpees didn't gain formal recognition until 2007 so casino opponents don't believe the tribe qualifies for the land-into-trust process. In his July 28 ruling, Judge William G. Young agreed but did not say what should happen, if anything, to the casino site in the city of Taunton.

The case is the second of its kind to emerge in the post-Carciera era. The first involves the Cowlitz Tribe of Washington and The Boston Globe notes that the outcome in that lawsuit was different.

On July 29 -- a day after Young issued his ruling -- the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the BIA did the right thing by approving a land-into-trust application for the Cowlitz Tribe in Washington. Observers believe the decision will have an impact on the Mashpee case.

The two rulings are inconsistent, and that gives the Mashpee a chance to get a reversal, attorney Dennis Whittlesey , who is not involved in either case, told The Globe.

Read More on the Story: With the Mashpee casino in legal tangle, uncertainty reigns (The Boston Globe 9/13) Second ruling gives Mashpee new hope (The Boston Globe 9/3)

Court Decisions: District Court of Massachusetts: Littlefield v. Department of the Interior (July 28, 2016) D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals: Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon v. Jewell (July 29, 2016)

Supreme Court Decision in Carcieri v. Salazar:

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
DEAR DOCTOR K: Im convinced my husband is depressed, but he refuses to seek help. What can I say to convince him that he could benefit from therapy?

DEAR READER: Most men dont like to ask for help or to talk about their feelings. Thats not going to be easy for your husband. However, doing nothing could make it harder for him. If he is suffering from depression and doesnt get help, it could threaten everything important in his life, starting with family, friends and work.

Left unchecked, the symptoms of depression can make a person miserable. The sadness, lack of energy, loss of interest in sex, difficulty thinking and constant feeling of stress can cause serious problems at home and at work. They may even lead to destructive behavior like alcohol or drug dependence.

Your husband likely recognizes these negative feelings and changes. But he may not know the root cause, or if he does, what he can do about it. You need to gently help him recognize that he is unhappy, and that it is causing tensions at home and at work (assuming thats true). And you need to assure him that help is available, and what that involves.

You might explain to him that, generally speaking, a therapist will help establish treatment goals and then outline a strategy to meet them. This may include a combination of therapy during regular sessions and homework in between visits. After a series of initial treatment sessions, your husband might return periodically for booster visits to prevent a future relapse.

If youre able to convince your husband to try therapy, hell need to find a therapist. A primary care physician is a good place to start. Your husband can speak with his PCP about his situation, how he feels and his symptoms. The doctor can recommend therapists who can help.

If your husband would prefer not to go through his PCP, there are other resources. Many employee health care plans offer confidential help lines where you can ask questions and find therapists in your network. Another source is the National Alliance on Mental Illness Helpline (1-800-950-6264).

Finally, once you get him started, encourage your husband to stick with therapy, even if he does not feel a strong connection with the first therapist he tries. Advise him to try someone else and not get discouraged.
After actor Kapil Sharma, actor Irrfan Khan has been served a notice by the Municipal Corporation for unauthoriaed constructions at his fifth-floor flat in the same Goregaon building. DLH Enclave, where both Irrfan and Kapil Sharma stay, has been under the scanner since 2014 after many complaints regarding unauthorised constructions were received by the P-south ward office of the BMC.

The notices were issued to Sharma for his ninth-floor flat in the building and Khan for his fifth-floor flat for carrying out unauthorised constructions. This also included the merger of a common passage and a part of the podium for parking.

Filmmaker and activist Ashoke Pandit spoke to TOI and said,

"I had raised an alarm about the irregularities in this building a year ago. But the building proposal department of the BMC, as usual, didn't respond to my concerns and went ahead to give an occupation certificate, which was quite shocking. I demand the withdrawal of the certificate and suspension of all those officers involved in granting the approval. The builder-architect-BMC nexus has ruined this city."

The notice was served under Section 53 (1) of the MRTP Act 1966. Several other residents in the building living on the fourth floor and twelfth floor, among others, too were served a notice by the corporation.

Apart from them, many actors have had similar experiences

1. In 2011, Suniel Shetty was accused of carrying out illegal construction without BMCs permission.

BCCL

A right to information (RTI) application by activist Assad Patel had details of Suniel Shettys furniture showroom, which was constructed by renovating a building on Dr.E.Moses Road in Worli without obtaining necessary permissions from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

2. In February 2016, Shah Rukh Khan was fined Rs.1.93 lakh for creating an illegal ramp outside Mannat.

BCCL

Shah Rukh Khan has been fined Rs.1,93,784 by the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation for constructing an illegal ramp outside his bungalow 'Mannat' in Bandra.

3. Residents say Arshad Warsi and Maria Goretti allegedly violated Municipal Corporation regulations during construction in 2004.

Cricket.Yahoo

A Hindu report claimed that residents of an Air India Co-operative Housing Society named Shantiniketan filed a complaint against Arshad Warsi and his wife for violating Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) regulations. They were accused of constructing a second floor measuring 1,300 sq. ft. on a bungalow that he purchased.
purefilmy

We all know Priyanka Chopra is killing it in the West these days, and the girl definitely seems to be having a gala time. With her Hollywood debut Baywatch alongside Dwayne Johnson, and her American TV series Quantico, PC is totally unstoppable. The girl is literally going places, and naturally, one would think that she's modern in her thoughts and mentality. But looks like Priyanka is still pretty conservative. She was recently present at the New York Fashion Week, where she even met Sunny Leone.

Such a nice afternoon with @priyankachopra good times in NYC!! LOVE ;) you are such a doll! A photo posted by Sunny Leone (@sunnyleone) on Sep 10, 2016 at 10:29pm PDT

And while there, Priyanka made an honest confession. According to a Bollywoodlife report, she was asked if she would ever treat her bra as a shirt, to which she replied with a straight no.

She said, "No. Im a little shy and Id prefer a shirt. I think a bra should be kept hidden, layered underneath."

You might know that the #FreeTheNipple campaign is fighting against social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram banning frontal nude pictures of women. In fact, ex Bigg Boss contestant, Priya Malik had recently posted a braless picture, protesting against the chopping off of a bra scene in Baar Baar Dekho.

Looks like Priyanka definitely holds a different opinion.
Another couple from Kerala, that left India along with 20 others including three children and six women to join Islamic State in May-June this year, has given birth to a baby girl in the so called caliphate-held territory in Afghanistan.

Reuters

The National Investigation Agency sources said that the Kerala-based sister of one Dr Ijas, who left India with his wife Refaela in the group, approached it on Monday informing that Ijas contacted the family on Sunday from Afghanistan and said that Refaela has been blessed with a baby girl on September 6.

Earlier, Asfhaq's wife gave birth to a girl in August, taking the number of newborns from Indian parents in IS territory to two.

Reuters

The probe so far has revealed that the 22 missing persons had left their houses in Kasargod and Palakkad districts of Kerala between mid-May and first week of July .

All of them had exited India from Bengaluru, Hyderabad or Mumbai airports for Kuwait, Dubai, Muscat or Abu Dhabi from where they are learnt to have travelled to Afghanistan through Iran, said sources.

Meanwhile, 29-year-old Yasmin Mohammad Zahid from Bihar, who was supposed to travel with the Kerala group, and was caught at IGI airport while trying to go to Kabul on August 1, has made some startling revelations during her interrogation with NIA.

BCCL

She has claimed that she got married to Abdul Rashid (30), an Indian already in IS territory and instrumental in sending these 22 persons from Kerala to IS held territory , on May 3 this year in a nikah ceremony solemnized over phone in which another IS mem ber Shihas acted as wali (guardian) of the bride while other accused - Ashfaq and Yahya (all three from Kerala in this group), acted as witnesses.

Abdul Rashid then used to send videos and messages in support of caliphate and its leader Abu Bakr-al Baghdadi. According to sources, Yasmin disclosed that Abdul Rashid and his first wife Ayisha were in touch with a UK couple who were themselves converts to Islam and were spreading messages in support of IS and the caliphate over Telegram channel to which she had also subscribed.
The valley will hardly see any Eid festivities on Tuesday with the state, after a high-level meeting of all security agencies, deciding to use drones, choppers and high-resolution cameras to monitor the situation and prevent movement of separatists, violent mobs and protesters during Eid.

BCCL

The decision was taken following a call by the separatists for a march to the Srinagar office of the UN, officials said. This would be the first time in 26 years since the onset of militancy in 1990 that there would be no Eid gatherings at Idgah and Hazratbal shrines.

Also Read: Ahead Of All Party Delegation Visit, Curfew In Parts Of Srinagar, Restrictions In Rest Of Kashmir

The state also ordered shutdown of internet services of all telecom networks and mobile telephony except state-run BSNL for the next 72 hours.

BCCL

The Army has been put on standby and will step in if there is fresh outbreak of violence in the valley. which has been witnessing widespread unrest for over two months leading to death of over 75 people so far, official sources said. Troops have already been stationed at vantage points in rural areas which have a history of violent protests.

Also Read: Kashmir Reaches Breaking Point As Curfew Cripples The Valley For The 43rd Day And Counting

Meanwhile, in the ongoing Poonch encounter, a fourth terrorist was killed, holed up in a semi-finished government building on Monday. On Sunday, three Pakistani fidayeen were killed in a day-long firefight with security forces. One cop was also killed.

BCCL

Sources said two groups consisting of four fidayeen each had sneaked in from the LoC and taken shelter in a government building and an under-construction private house in Poonch town.

Defence spokesman at 16 Corp, Col N Hari, said the gunbattle is still on. But he refused to give the number of terrorists in the vacant building.

Also Read: Youth Allegedly Killed By Pellet Gun Fired At Point-Blank Range Near Kashmir Hospital

The decision to completely ban the internet was taken after a review of the prevailing law and order situation, sources said. They said Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone and Reliance have been ordered to shut down their services with immediate effect for 72 hours. BSNL too has been asked to stop its broadband services for internet.

BCCL

However, post-paid BSNL connections, which are mainly used by the police, Army and government officials, have been kept out of the purview of the ban, sources said.

Also Read: Over 1.3 Million Pellets Were Fired In Kashmir By CRPF Since July

Mobile telephony was banned immediately after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8 which set off the current spiral of violence in the Valley. It was partially restored on July 27 followed by opening of only broadband Internet.
Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal is fast becoming like KRK on Twitter, lashing out at anyone who asks him uncomfortable questions.

BCCL

Yesterday evening veteran journalist Shekhar Gupta was called a wheeler-dealer for the Congress and Modi, and someone who has spoiled journalism

Guptas fault? Simply pointing out the obvious  Delhi was hit by malaria and chikungunya, even as the citys managers, the Aam Admi Partys cabinet were literally missing in action, conquering Punjab, Goa & Gujarat, as Gupta put it.

1st malaria deaths in 5 yrs, 1st Chikungunya death now. While Delhi govt safely out conquering Punjab, Goa & Gujarat https://t.co/xJ9hIHp0Hq  Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) September 12, 2016

Kejriwal could have posted a few references to any ongoing work in the city to combat these easily preventable diseases. Nope. He called Modi the master of Gupta, and that the PM has "set out on a journey to conquer the world".

BCCL

Delhi has seen 4 chikungunya deaths this month, and 10 have died from dengue and malaria.

Kejriwal is incidentally not using Delhis own hospitals for throat surgery for his famous cough, but currently in Bengaluru for medical treatment.

Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister is in Finland for an education programme, while Kapil Mishra, a Delhi minister who is actually in Delhi seems to be blaming the mayor of Delhi asking where the "mayor has disappeared".

CM n min left wid no power now, even to buy a pen. LG n PM enjoy all powers wrt Del. LG abroad.Question them for Del https://t.co/t8ygcZmo1P  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) September 13, 2016

Even as Delhi's three civic bodies have recorded 432 chikungunya cases till August 27, an inquiry by IANS shows that seven big hospitals of Delhi have reported more than 1,000 cases.

According to sources in the hospitals, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) alone recorded 391 cases till August 20, followed by Safdarjung Hospital (246), Apollo Hospital (almost 350), Lok Nayak Hospital (23), Hindu Rao Hospital (28), Kasturba Hospital (11) and the Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital (GTBH) has registered three confirmed cases.

ALSO READ: Parody Arvind Kejriwal Account Tweeting To 'Modi Could Get Me Killed' Is Absolutely Hilarious

The total number of confirmed chikungunya cases in just these seven hospitals come to 1,052.
In a decade, Baba Ramdevs ayurvedic company has challenged established consumer businesses in a tightly knit fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) business cocoon that is rarely invaded by outsiders.

Reuters

A pronoun often used for Ramdev is yoga-turned-business-tycoon. And rightly so. The companys net sales for the fiscal year 2015-2016 were calculated at INR 5,000 crores. Thats a staggering 150% growth rarely achieved by novice businesses.

Patanjali Ayurved, with headquarters in Haridwar, was founded in 2006 to take on multinational corporation and perhaps also build on the yogic brand Baba Ramdev had established for himself by shifting into humble yoga postures on Aastha channel on television. It produced everything from toothpaste to soaps to honey to aloe vera juice, and in its latest ventures, it is going to produce swadeshi jeans, which gave Twitter users an open window to troll the yoga guru.

I am assuming there will be no ripped #Patanjali jeans; that will be so anti-national.  Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) September 12, 2016

#Patanjali to introduce swadeshi jeans in the Indian market. Wonder what they will look like? pic.twitter.com/5ldfdgJrfY  Harsh Goenka (@hvgoenka) September 11, 2016

Ramdev reiterated the same reasoning when asked why he was expanding his business in all directions. He said that he wanted to end dominance of multinational corporations. His fight is against foreign companies trying to take over our economy. When Nestles Maggi was taken off Indian shelves last year for high proportions of lead and MSG, Baba Ramdev quickly swooped in with a local brand of noodles in November 2015, which he claimed were deplete of harmful ingredients. However, his atta noodles were boiling in controversy after it was alleged that the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India had not, in fact, approved the fast-food product. Also a team of food and drug administrators in Meerut gave Patanjali noodles a sub-standard rating with ash content in the tastemaker exceeding the prescribed limits by nearly three times.

Reuters

ALSO READ: With Maggi Off The Shelves, Baba Ramdev Finds The Perfect Time To Launch His Patanjali Noodles

While Patanjalis success, and by default its CEO Acharya Balakrishna and founder Ramdevs success, cannot be challenged, capitalist products like jeans and fast-food products like noodles do prop up the question of business integrity. It is an ayurvedic company after all. And such is the success of this ayurvedic company that Balakrishna, who owns 94% of its stakes, is now in the league of the richest people in the country with an astounding INR 25,600 crores under his belt.

ALSO READ: Patanjali's CEO Acharya Balakrishna Is Now Among The Richest People In India

However, the company has been met with consistent criticism. Apart from the noodles controversy mentioned above, it was reported in August this year that according to the consumer affairs department, 17 out of 21 advertisements by Patanjali were considered to be in violation of Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) code. Also at the beginning of the year, Uttarakhand health department pointed fingers at Patanjali's fertility pill and said it violated Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act 1994. Then there was fungus found in a bottle of ghee as well, an allegation that was outright denied by Ramdev.

The duo want to expand Patanjalis hands into every vacuum that exists in the Indian market by producing everything from home-cleaning products to oils. And while they already have manufacturing units in neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh, they want to move further out by setting base in African countries. Currently, Patanjali Ayurvedic products are available in stores in Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and Canada, with plans to enter Pakistan.

ALSO READ: Ramdev Announces Patanjali Jeans To Fight MNCs with Factories In Bangladesh And Africa

Baba Ramdev, who was named as one of the world's most creative people by a US business magazine, has continuously maintained a sense of transparency in Patanjali Ayurvedic's products and is not afraid of passing them under a scrutiny test. His company is growing at the speed of light which is going to increase the noises of criticism, especially if he's going to venture into folds outside of ayurveda.

Well, with time, we should find out if Patanjali really is as transparent as Ramdev's yoga.
With a lifetime of experience behind him, Nawab Shafath Ali Khan - India's most celebrated hunter in recent times, fails to see why the government is allowing young and inexperienced hunters to go ahead and kill man-eating leopards and tigers in Himachal Pradesh. "Animal culling is not a sport. You do not just sling a gun and walk off into the woods to kill an animal," he says. "Culling is first about following and observing the animals, identifying a few old males, killing them to make the herd feel there is a threat without harming the rest of them. A few firecrackers to guide them into the direction they should be headed completes the job."

"All animals are born with the fear of man, we just need to remind them of it."

Gun Geek

"I was trained in culling animals in Tanzania, South Africa, where I went to study this specifically. My grandfather was a consultant to the British Raj for elephant culling," he shares. "Every country that takes nature seriously has well-trained culling officers to help keep human-animal conflict at bay. It is only in India that a handful of mindless self-proclaimed activists have ruined the image of culling. It has been repeatedly portrayed as a crime against life. Culling is a scientific process."

Sudhakar Reddy

"At present, if the government is encouraging young and inexperienced hunters to kill man-eaters, it is wrong. A wounded tiger or leopard is far more dangerous, the slightest mistake could cost an additional innocent life. Also, these young hunters do not understand the change in mannerisms of a man-eater," Khan emphasises.

"Once a tiger or leopard has got the taste of human flesh, it undergoes certain changes. It stalks humans very differently from how it stalks its usual prey. Since human flesh is not the natural food for these animals, it affects their behaviour. Do the young hunters claiming to kill man-eaters even know this difference? If they don't, they might just kill a normal tiger or leopard and call it a man-eater while the actual animal escapes to strike again!"

ALSO READ: The Fight Between Humans And Elephants Is Taking A Nasty Turn With A Shocking Number Of Deaths

The Hindu

Nawab Shafath Ali Khan is a conservationist who understands that nature needs balance to function. "Less than 30 years ago, the total population of elephants in India was a little over 15,000 and last year, it was recorded at nearly 36,000. Where do we keep these elephants now? Conservation does not mean encouraging to breed and multiply. People in Bihar, Jharkhand, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra among others are facing the wrath of elephants. If you try to tell the affected people on why they should participate in conserving the animal, they will not care."

ALSO READ: Number Of Cases Of Animals Seeking Revenge From The Humans That Hurt Them On The Rise

Citing a recent example from one of his interactions with villagers on dealing with tigers, he says, "There were about 200 people present there including forest officials and the villagers were openly asking me to advise them on forms of poison they could use to kill the tigers that would not be detected later on.

In this age of social media activism, we fail to understand that we cannot turn a blind eye to the over 4 lakh people who live around forests."

Gun Geek

Khan was recently in Bihar for the culling of nilgai and lauds the efforts of the state to ensure trained culling officials are present to handle conflict situations. "For the villager who has not seen proper rain in two years, who has borrowed beyond his credit limit to provide for his family and invest in his crop, to see his ready-to-harvest crop being devoured by a herd of nilgai or destroyed by monkeys - there is no room for talk about conservation. It is only when a culling officer stays with the afflicted village, identifies the issue and finds out the least damaging path to turn the animals away from the village, that he does what he does."

"Even when culling takes place, pregnant members and young males are not shot."

Sudhakar Reddy

"What I do not understand is why have we not been systematically culling animals to prevent this unrest over the past 30-40 years?" he asks. "We have failed to keep animals numbers in check. In the name of conservation, we have blatantly overlooked our capacity. All our tiger reserves are full, where do the tigers go now? In the past few years, an increasing number of tigers and leopards have started to live outside the core regions, in buffer zones and yet the census is conducted in the core regions alone."

"This means that the numbers by Project Tiger is wrong, we have a lot more tigers in India than reported."

wildlifetranquiforce

Calling upon the need for better-trained culling officers in every state, Khan says, "Trained culling officers will not kill for sport or pleasure. I have never killed for pleasure. It pains me to take the life of an animal. I have moved completely to tranquilising guns now. Culling is humane, not only for people but also for nature." Khan always acts with the government's permission and ensures that concerned forest officials are with him on all assignments.
Stolen from his parents and sold twice, a 13-month-old boy born to a couple in Ghaziabad ended up in the house in Delhi's Laxmi Nagar, as the 'son' of a bakery owner and his wife.

BCCL/representational image

The primary conduit in this operation was a doctor, Anita Vij, who bought the boy from what police suspect is a gang of baby snatchers for Rs 70,000. Vij then sold the boy to the childless Delhi couple for Rs 3 lakh, police said.

A Ghaziabad police team found little Yash in bakery owner Paras Jain's house in Laxmi Nagar in the early hours of Monday after it arrested Vij (40) from her flat in Patparganj's Karishma Apartments on Sunday night. Vij led the police to Jain. Police suspect Vij is a qualified doctor.

wendellodom/representational image

Jain and his wife Archana (27) had been consulting Vij for the past few years because of their inability to conceive. Vij had bought Yash from Chandvir, a 30-year-old who drives an app-based taxi, and his wife Poonam (28) on the evening of September 10, police said.

Chandvir and Poonam got Yash from a man called Sunil, who police said was known to the boy's parents, and had snatched the sleeping baby from its cot when the house was empty. They lost no time in rushing Yash to Delhi selling him to Vij.

Around the same time, Yash's parents Sachin and Pooja rushed to Tronica City police station in Ghaziabad to report their child was missing. Yash had gone missing in a moment of carelessness by the parents Sachin was away and Pooja had gone to a neighbour's house to fetch water, leaving the main door open. Their five-year-old elder son was in the house, in Ghaziabad's Nauraspur area, but had followed Pooja out. Yash was sleeping on the cot. When Pooja returned, he had disappeared.

BCCL/representational image

In the police complaint, Sachin said he suspected Sunil (22), who lives with his brother-in-law Kallu, a driver, in a rented house located just across the road. Pooja had gone to Kallu's house to fetch water, and Sachin suspected Sunil had been keeping a close watch, biding his time.

"My elder son had followed me across the road to Kallu's house. When I returned a few minutes later, Yash was not there on the cot," Pooja told TOI on Monday. We raised an alarm and enquired from neighbours and relatives. But no one had any idea where Yash was."

How It All Happened

Police said Sunil picked him up from the house with the help of a cousin, Rahul. The duo called up Chandvir on his mobile phone, who arrived in his taxi at a location near Yash's house accompanied by Poonam. All four travelled in the car along with the kid till the Tulsi Niketan overbridge, where Sunil and Rahul got off. Chandvir and Poonam took the boy to Patparganj, where they sold him to Vij, police said.

The breakthrough in the investigation came with the arrest of Rahul.

The arrests of Chandvir and Poonam followed before Vij and bakery owner Jain's. Jain's wife Archana is missing.

Ghaziabad SP (rural) Rakesh Kumar Pandey said, "Police teams were sent to various parts of western UP and Delhi. Rahul was nabbed from Muzaffarnagar on Sunday morning. He spilled the beans. It Anita Vij used to call herself a doctor even though she is a qualified nurse. The money paid for the kid was shared among all accomplices."
A 55-year-old Christian woman, allegedly accused of desecration of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, was hacked to death by some unidentified persons outside her house in Punjab's Veroke village on Sunday night.

myinforms

Senior superintendent of police, Amritsar, rural Harkamal Preet Singh Khakh told said that Balwinder Kaur was severely beaten by some unidentified persons with sharp edged weapons and died due to excessive bleeding.

At the time of incident, her husband Labh Masih , an alcoholic , was also present in the house but was hiding after hearing her help cries.

Kaur who got mentally retarded after getting an accidental electrical shock was booked under section 295A, 505 and 511 IPC in 2015 after she had entered in Gurdwara Babe di Ber Sahib wearing slippers and was currently on bail.

2.bp.blogspot/representational image

Khakh informed that police was also investigating on the theory that she could have been eliminated by some Sikh radical elements who wanted to revenge the sacrilege incident.

He informed that after the assailants left her severely injured and crying , she crawled nearly forty feet to reach the room where her granddaughter was sleeping who in turn tried to find and wake up Labh Singh but in vain. About four hours later she died of excessive bleeding.

desibucket/representational image

SSP informed that police was also investigating to find whether there was some other cause behind Kaur's murder. "The assailants could have stabbed or shot her dead but they inflicted injuries upon her below knee only which has made us to think on several theories" he said.

As three persons were involved in the incident who knocked at her door at around 12.30 AM on Monday and when she opened the door they pulled her out of house and started thrashing her with sickle. He said police have registered a case and started investigations.
Awadh may pride itself on Nawabi culture and biryani, but a few Muslims chose a blood free Eid this year in Lucknow.

The Awadh unit of Muslim Rashtriya Manch, an RSS backed organisation refused to sacrifice cattle for today's Bakr-Eid. A goat will still be cut - a 5 kg goat shaped cake.

BCCL

The 5 kg cake will get a jhatka treatment at the Manch's Awadh office. At home, the Muslim workers have promised to not cook biryani, instead enjoying Eid by offering sewaiyan and dahi vada to their loved ones.

"We can sacrifice our children too for Allah but it is not right to kill a goat without any reason and eat its meat"

oxforddictionaries

Awadh Prant convener Raees Khan told Indian Express that the gesture was a message to society "Bakr-Eid can be celebrated also by cutting a cake just like people celebrate birth anniversaries,". Co-convener Hasan Kausar said, "The Bakr-Eid festival spreads a message of humanity."

100 Years Ago, The Muslims Of Lucknow Voluntarily Gave Up Cow Slaughter For Eid-ul-Zuha
Controversial CDs as a result of sting operations have put Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the dock at several occasions. Originally, the party pitched them as a tool to unmask the corrupt to the common man. When Arvind Kejriwal first sworn in as Delhi chief minister on December 27, 2013, he said people should use stings to trap corrupt officials. After coming to power, the party used sting operations to establish its image as a crusader against corruption.

But  of late  the idea that was coined by the AAP chief as means to expose corruption were reduced to mere a political tool to shell out personal grudges. The party was itself stung and its leaders have in the recent past used sting operations to trap and dislodge each other.

People having different political leanings allegedly began recording sometimes private and apparently consensual acts to settle their scores.

Here we take you to a flashback where AAP leaders themselves fell in their own trap:

1. Sandeep Kumar

BCCL

On August 31, a sex CD surfaced showing former AAP leader Sandeep Kumar  who served as minister of SC/ST Welfare and Women and Child Welfare in the Delhi government  showing Kumar in a compromising position having sex with two women.

After receiving a copy of the controversial recording, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal removed him from the ministry and suspended his primary membership of the party.

Kumar was later arrested by the Delhi Police on September 3, 2016 after a woman alleged Kumar had spiked her drink, raped her and secretly filmed her.

Sources in the AAP had confirmed Indiatimes that the 9-minute objectionable video was recorded by Kumar himself and that it was a consensual act.

2. Amanatullah Khan

abplive.in

The controversy surrounding Kumar had not even died down, when another woman registered an FIR against Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan alleging sexual harassment and molestation. To back her allegation, she has submitted a CD and a pen drive to the police with a recording of her conversation with the MLA  who is out on bail in another molestation case filed earlier this month.

The woman said she was molested at least five times, once in a lift, in the past one-and-a-half-years.

The complainant  who is none other than the legislators sister-in-law  has alleged in the FIR filed under sections 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), 506 (criminal intimidation), 498A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) and 120B (criminal conspiracy to commit an offence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that Khan used to pressurise her for sexual relations with him. Her husband  as per the complainant  also asked her to follow Khan as the lawmaker has been helping him in his businesses.

The woman further alleged that she was regularly tortured for dowry by her in-laws. She reiterated allegations in her statement before the court.

Denying all allegations, Khan said the compliant is politically motivated with an aim to tarnish his image. I have been working wholeheartedly to serve people of Delhi. But some people are not liking my honesty and dedication. And therefore, I am being framed, he said.

Khan stated that he has run out of patience of issuing clarifications to the public pleading innocence over a number of allegations levelled against him and his family members.

3. Sucha Singh Chhotepur

BCCL

A purported 12-minute video clip recently went viral that allegedly shows Sucha Singh Chhotepur, AAPs former convener in Punjab, accepting cash from a prospective candidate. It prompted AAPs central leadership to expel him from all post he held.

Terming the so-called sting planned and engineered, Chhotepur has dared his party of which he is still a member to make the video public.

Chhotepur said he was unaware of being recorded both times and publicly denounced the party for conspiring against him. A day later, even Punjab unit spokesperson Sukhpal Singh Khaira decried AAPs sting politics.

Chhotepurs supporters have demanded that their leader be reinstated, otherwise the party should be ready for a split.

4. Asim Ahmed Khan

indiatvnews.com

Food and Civil Supplies Minister Asim Ahmed Khan was sacked last October by CM Kejriwal following allegations of corruption against him.

There is a complain of corruption against the minister. We will not tolerate corruption no matter who is involved in it, said Kejriwal before releasing a slice of the audio recording in which Khan is allegedly heard seeking bribe.

Khan is heard in the audio clip speaking with a middleman and a builder seeking bribe of Rs 6 lakh. It was the builder who carried out the sting operation on Khan, who is the AAP MLA from Matia Mahal.

5. Arvind Kejriwal

BCCL

In a major blow to the party, a sting operation emerged in March last year in which Chief Minister Kejriwal was heard asking his own party man to indulge in horse-trading to break Congress.

Recorded in July, a time when AAP was fighting a case in the Supreme Court seeking fresh elections in Delhi, the purported conversations between Kejriwal and former AAP MLA Rajesh Garg, the AAP chief urged the former Rohini legislator to try and separate six Congress MLAs, ask them to form their own party and support the AAP from outside.

In another part of the audio, Kejriwal was heard using derogatory words against senior party leaders  Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha  who were later suspended.

Garg said it was not his intention to record Kejriwal specially but it was done on his phone through an app.

6. Sting Operation By A News Portal

BCCL

Media Sarkar  a news portal  conducted a sting operation showing some AAP leaders  Kumar Vishwas and Shazia Ilmi  accepting funds allegedly through illegal means.

The AAP and the news portal CEO Anuranjan Jha later filed complaints against each other at Indirapuram police station in Ghaziabad February 6, 2014.
As many as 24 policewomen have accused an inspector-level officer in Delhi Police of sexual harassment at the workplace.

The women claim they have also informed Delhi Commission for Women.

BBCL/Representative Image

Senior police officers confirmed they had received the complaints and said an inquiry had been marked.

Sources said one of the women, a constable, has alleged she was being harassed ever since she rebuffed the man's overtures and complained against him to the deputy commissioner of police (DCP) concerned.

The accused had allegedly commented on her clothes and called her to his office alone. He started harassing her openly after the DCP let him off with a warning.

In her complaint that was received at the police headquarters on April 13, the woman said she was depressed over the issue and would commit suicide.

"We have referred the case to the internal sexual harassment committee and are waiting for the report, after which required steps will be taken against the accused," said a Delhi Police spokesperson.

ALSO READ: Delhi Police Launches All-Women PCR Vans, Lady Cops Trained In Musketry And Firing

In another complaint, 23 women personnel from the same unit have accused the same inspector of mocking their skin colour and gait. They said he threatened them on learning about their complaint to the police HQ, and boasted he was as influential as the DCP.

They also alleged that the inspector's personal staff was also involved in the harassment, and in one instance the inspector had refused to take orders from an ACP during a parade.

BCCL/ Representative Image

The women claim they continued to face harassment for four months even after the complaint was forwarded to the departmental inquiry cell. Some of them were made to chase dogs out of the office premises.

They also approached the chief secretary, but an inquiry was initiated only when the complaints were made public after five months. Delhi Police's vigilance department is looking into the second complaint and will call the inspector for questioning.
27 year old Manipuri Bishesh Huirem will represent India at the Miss International Beauty Queen contest, scheduled to be held next month in Thailand.

She's among 30 transgenders selected from applicants from 155 countries

Not just a pretty face



The Bangalore University Fashion grad has worked in 'mobile theatre', films, and has many design prizes. She's one of the state's highest paid theatre actress, and has won many awards for her work. Pretty great for someone who got their start in a bridal beauty salon.

Khomdonleima, her mother remembered initial days of confusion: "As a child she was attracted toward girls' clothes and her grand mother would bring such dresses for her. I beat her several times to get her to change her orientation. I now realise that was a mistake."

Ms. Huirem told a local daily that she's proud to represent India at the competition, but also spoke of the discrimination transgenders face in Manipur.
With almost 40 buses torched and one person dead in clashes between police and protesters in Karnataka's capital, Bengaluru, over the release of water from the Cauvery to Tamil Nadu, the prophecy of future wars to be fought over water doesn't look all that superfluous.

AFP

Cauvery isn't the only water dispute getting uglier. India has scores of water disputes between its states and its neighbours that can get bloody in the times to come.

Cauvery dispute

The Cauvery dispute between the South Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu pertains to the issue of re-sharing of waters that are already being fully utilised. Between 1968 and 1990, 26 meetings were held at the ministerial level but no consensus could be reached. Even now, the issue still remains unresolved. The Cauvery Water Dispute tribunal was constituted on June 2, 1990 under the ISWD Act, 1956.

PTI

The two major arguments from both the states are:

The government of Tamil Nadu says that since Karnataka was constructing the Kabini, Hemavathi, Harangi, Swarnavathi dams on the river Cauvery and was expanding the ayacuts (irrigation works), Karnataka was unilaterally diminishing the supply of waters to Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu also says that Karnataka has failed to implement terms of the 1892 and 1924 Agreements relating to the use, distribution and control of the Cauvery waters. Tamil Nadu asserts that the entitlements of the 1924 Agreement are permanent. But Karnataka questions the agreement of 1924 and asks that the Cauvery water issue be viewed from an angle that emphasises equity and regional balance in future sharing arrangements.

Krishna-Godavari water dispute

The Krishna-Godavari water dispute is among the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh (AP), Madhya Pradesh (MP), and Orissa and hasn't been resolved till date.

Almati Dam/Wikipedia

On the one hand, both Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are the lower riparian states on the river Krishna, whereas Maharashtra, from where the river originates, is the upper riparian state. The dispute was mainly about the inter-state utilisation of untapped surplus water. The Krishna Tribunal which was constituted in 1973 did try to solve the issue and thus relied on the principle of equitable apportionment for the actual allocation of the water. But till now the issue is still unsolved.

Narmada dispute

Narmada River Dispute put the riparian states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat as well as the non-riparian state of Rajasthan, a potential beneficiary of irrigation water, in opposition to one another. The dispute started soon after Independence when attempts were made to harness the waters of the Narmada. Central Waterways, Irrigation and Navigation Commission (CWINC) identified several storage schemes, and in 1948, the Khosla Committee prioritised the proposals and named Tawa, Bargi, Punasa and Bharuch projects. But the bifurcation of Bombay state into Maharashtra and Gujarat created problems.

AFP

Gujarat wanted to raise the height of the dam at Navagam to maximise storage benefits but Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh feared that construction of large dams in Gujarat would flood their territories without irrigation benefits.

In 1969, the Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal (NWDT) was set up by the government. The conflict lasted ten years before an agreement was reached. The main obstacle to a compromise was the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam which was to overshadow or drown three projects and large parts of land in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, if implemented.

The issue ended in 1970 with Gujarat abiding by the terms with MP and Maharashtra.

Ravi-Beas dispute

Punjab and Haryana, the main agricultural surplus states, providing large quantities of grain for the rest of India, are the main parties in this dispute. The present dispute is mainly between Punjab and Haryana about Ravi-Beas water and started with the reorganisation of Punjab in November 1966. This was when Punjab and Haryana were carved out of erstwhile Punjab. Haryana laid claim to over 4.8 out of 7.2 million acre foot (MAF) (which was the entitlement of the composite Punjab State), on the principle of equitable distribution. The new State of Punjab, on the other hand, conceded nothing to Haryana, mainly on the plea that Haryana was not a riparian State.

Punjabrise.com/Bhakra dam

But an aggrieved Punjab moved the Supreme Court against the statutory decision. Haryana, on the other hand, moved the same court for compelling Punjab to implement it. In the meantime, chief ministers of the three states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan arrived at an agreement on 31st December, 1981, and agreed upon a few terms. Punjab, whose share was 4.2 MAF apart from Haryana's 3.5 MAF, would continue to use Rajasthan's share until Rajasthan was able to utilise its full share. It was also stipulated that Punjab would complete the Satluj Yamuna Link Canal (SYL) canal within a period of two years. The suits pending in the Supreme Court were withdrawn, and Punjab issued a white paper on 23rd April, 1982, hailing the Agreement, which had resulted in an increase of 1.32 MAF of waters to Punjab over the allocation made by the Central Government (the allocation to Haryana remaining unchanged).

But in November 1985, the Punjab Legislative Assembly passed a resolution, repudiating the Agreement of 31st December,1981, and declaring the white paper to be redundant.

The issue is pending ever since, despite the tribunal being constituted in 1986.

Pakistan-India water dispute

The water dispute between Pakistan and India began during the early 1960s. Pakistan claims that India violated the Indus Water treaty signed in 1955 which earmarks the understanding of water usage of six main rivers of the region by India and Pakistan.

Six rivers, that is the Chenab, Indus, Beas, Sutlej, Ravi and Jhelum, flow to Pakistan from India. This treaty divided three rivers for use by each country, and India had the Beas, Sutlej and Ravi. Pakistan had access to the Jhelum, Chenab and Indus. During the 1990s, India constructed a hydro-electric plant in Doda district along Chenab River. This river is one of the tributaries of the Indus River and was designated by the Indus Treaty for use by Pakistan. Pakistan called it violation of Indus water treaty and accused India of deliberately trying to sabotage Pakistan's agrarian economy by blocking its share of water.

Baglihar Dam/Wikipedia

India, however, has consistently maintained that the design will continue to supply Pakistan the 43 million acre feet every day, as it is supposed to do under the treaty, and as it has done right through, even when the two countries were at war. Construction of Kishanganga began in 2007, but was halted in 2011 because Pakistan went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration and said the Kishanganga project would adversely affect the Neelum Jhelum hydropower project it planned on the same river. The Pakistani government said its project had been on the boards since 1989, long before the Kishanganga project was conceived, though it had been able to raise the money to start work.

In February 2013, the arbitration court gave an interim ruling that India could divert a minimum amount of water for power generation, and work on the Kishanganga project was resumed. The court confirmed its ruling in December 2013. But the political deadlock over this issue still continues and like all other issues between the two countries, this one is also likely to remain unsolved.

India-Bangladesh water dispute

Although India and Bangladesh share 54 big, small and minor rivers and other water bodies between them, the two countries have many unresolved water issues. Despite setting up a Joint River Commission for water management as early as 1972, tensions between the countries on how to share resources came to a head in a dispute over the Teesta River. Apart from Teesta, Ganges which flows to Bangladesh and ends up in the Bay of Bengal is also a bone of contention for the two countries.

TheHindu

Although in 1996, India and Bangladesh signed a bilateral treaty that established a 30-year water-sharing arrangement between the two countries. But much hasn't changed even after this pact. The Teesta  which has its source in Sikkim  flows through the northern part of West Bengal in India before entering Bangladesh, where after coursing through about 45km of irrigable land, merges with the Brahmaputra River (or Jamuna when it enters Bangladesh). In 1983, an ad-hoc water sharing agreement was reached between India and Bangladesh, whereby both countries were allocated 39% and 36% of the water flow respectively. The new bilateral treaty expands upon this agreement by proposing an equal allocation of the Teesta River.

However, in 2011, the deal failed when CM of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, refused to approve the treaty, fearing that the loss of higher volume of water to the lower riparian would cause the state water to become scarce especially in the summers. Bangladesh, in retaliation, warned India of spoiling the bilateral ties if Teesta pact is breached. The issue is pending till date despite PM Narendra Modi promising a fair solution to the issue through negotiations.
This past weekend, an unnamed 12-year-old boy bravely stepped in front of an approaching group of 11,000 anti-LGBT protestors in order to make a point and perhaps teach the world a thing or two about humanity.

The photo, that went viral on Monday, was taken by Mexican photojournalist Manuel Rodriguez on Saturday who was also present in Tijuana, the venue of the protest. Mexican news site Regeneracion asked Rodriguez about the photo who at first didn't realise that the boy had a point to make.

Nino enfrenta a multitud que protestaba contra matrimonios igualitarios https://t.co/uZfJK77oiu via @RegeneracionMx pic.twitter.com/M0so4JVX7G  Regeneracion (@RegeneracionMx) September 11, 2016

"I have an uncle who is gay and I don't like that they hate him," the boy later told an amazed Rodriguez, reports dailydot.com.

The protest, organised by Frente Nacional por la Familia (National Front for the Family), was a result of President Enrique Pena Nietos move to legalise same-sex marriages nationally. But what is most amazing at the moment is that a boy had the courage to do what most would have easily backed out off.

It's true when they say a photo can speak a thousand words. It's only more so when the photo has a courageous 12-year-old child at the centre of it.
It's not uncommon for people to go on a world adventure and leave the rest of us with a serious travel itch that refuses to die down. We try to get over it but sooner than later, another traveller makes news, leaving us feeling useless for not doing enough with our lives.

Naveen Rabelli is one such guy. An Indian-origin engineer, he arrived in Britain on Monday after covering 10,000 km in his solar-powered tuk-tuk - a journey that lasted seven months.

@WorldReachComms

Naveen, who was born in India but later became an Australian citizen, embarked on his journey to raise awareness about electric and solar-powered vehicles. The idea to bring about a low-cost, more sustainable mode of transport struck Naveen when he and his friend were stuck in noisy traffic in India.

@Solar_tuk_tuk

His trip started in India, before his tuk-tuk was shipped to Bandar Abbas in Iran from where Naveen drove through Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Austria, Switzerland, Germany and France.

However, after Naveen obtained his emergency passport and crossed the Channel from Calais, he arrived in Paris to meet bad luck - the poor guy's passport and wallet got stolen and two battery packs died!

@Solar_tuk_tuk

"The highlights have been the way people have helped me out along the way and supported me. People love the tuk-tuk, particularly in Iran and many other countries. They come forward and take selfies. And the moment I tell them it doesn't require petrol, their minds are blown," Naveen was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

Naveen fitted his tuk-tuk with a bed, co-passenger seat, cupboard, and a solar-powered cooker and went about his travels with the food people donated him along the way. He now wants to end his journey at Buckingham Palace.
Nadia Murad, an Yazidi woman who survived the Islamic State as a sex slave under their barbaric regime has now been appointed as UN Goodwill Ambassador on human trafficking.

The Independent

She will now work with human rights lawyer Amal Clooney who will represent her and other Yazidi woman who faced atrocities at the hands of ISIS at the International Criminal Court.

USA Today

The 21-year-old who was among the nearly 5000 Yazidi women who were taken by ISIS after their villages in Mosul were overrun by the the terrorists in 2014 .

The young woman had witnessed the murder of her father and six brothers in front of her and was later taken forcefully as a sex slave; along with two younger sisters.

While a number of them were killed or still are in captivity of ISIS, Murad escaped captivity and was granted asylum in Germany.

Nadia's two sisters also survived their ordeal - one is with her in Germany while her other sister is in a refugee camp in Iraq with her two surviving brothers.

Time

It was through her narration the world came to know the harrowing experiences the women captives under ISIS go through.

She also spoke at the UN last year and called for an international coalition to take on the ISIS.

Murad who is currently working with the refugee women also met Mrs Clooney who is is fighting to bring the ISIS to the court and get them face the law for the crimes against humanity committed by them.
Reuters

In a decade, Baba Ramdevs ayurvedic company has challenged established consumer businesses in a tightly knit fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) business cocoon that is rarely invaded by outsiders.

A pronoun often used for Ramdev is yoga-turned-business-tycoon. And rightly so. The companys net sales for the fiscal year 2015-2016 were calculated at INR 5,000 crores. Thats a staggering 150% growth rarely achieved by novice businesses. Read more here.

Here are 5 more stories that may interest you:

1. India Might Be Building Asia's Largest Thermonuclear Military Complex In Karnataka

AFP

A leading American foreign policy journal today alleged that India is building a top-secret nuclear city to produce thermos nuclear weapons which would upgrade the country as a nuclear power and unsettle its two major neighbours - Pakistan and China.

Foreign Policy magazine alleged that India started building this secret city in Challakere in Karnataka, which when completed in 2017 would be "the subcontinent's largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic-research laboratories, and weapons- and aircraft-testing fac ilities". More details here

2. Bihar CM Says Alcohol Lovers Should Drink Juice In The Darkness - It's Like Liquor

AFP

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday dished out some original advice to drinkers who've been left high and dry by prohibition in the state. He suggested that juice, if consumed in darkness, would be indistinguishable from alcoholic drinks.

"Such big positive change has come in, why ruin it for a peg or two? Turn off the lights and drink juice, you will feel its the same," Nitish was quoted as saying by ANI.

Nitish also spoke about the sense of fulfillment implementing prohibition had given him. Read more here

3.This Manipuri Transgender Actress Is Representing India At 'Miss International Beauty Queen'

27 year old Manipuri Bishesh Huirem will represent India at the Miss International Beauty Queen contest, scheduled to be held next month in Thailand.

She's among 30 transgenders selected from applicants from 155 countries. Read more here

4.Ahead Of Municipal Elections, Kejriwal Govt To Increase MLA Funds From Rs 4 Crore To 14 Crore

AFP

The Aam Aadmi Party government has proposed to hike the MLA local area development (LAD) funding to Rs 14 crore from the existing Rs 4 crore, an increase of 250%.

Officials said that the increase was being considered to ensure that the MLAs had sufficient funds to implement the development works in their constituencies. Read more here

5. Kejriwal Says He'll End #PunjabDrugCrisis in 1 Month. Meanwhile 4,000 Child-Addicts Of Delhi Ar

Reuters

The last quarter of the Punjab election season cycle is in full form, so is AAP leader and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. After winning Delhi, he's taking his appeal of quick fixes to deep rooted problems to Punjab.

Last month, he promised something way too heady - ending Punjab's drug problems in 30 days.

"If AAP comes to power, it can put an end to the drugs business and mafias in Punjab within a month," Kejriwal claimed at a public rally in Amritsar.

Ending the drug mafia, a multi-billion dollar business is a mammoth task for such a short deadline -and tougher in a state that loves getting high. Read the details here.
Conspiracy theorists are at it again. This time, they claim that Vladimir Putin has in his possession secret satellite images from the 9/11 attacks that can prove that it was an inside job.

According to them, the evidence the Russian president owns points towards the US government and intelligence services for bringing about the world's worst terrorist siege.

Reuters

The theorists believe the onus of the attacks falls squarely on the George Bush administration, that used Osama Bin Laden's henchmen as pawns, reported Daily Star.

Even though there is no concrete evidence that the US government had any involvement in the Twin Tower attacks, the theorists firmly believe that Putin is very close to revealing "authoritative evidence" which will directly link the White House to the explosions.

The report suggesting these claims was published on 7 February 2015 by a Russian broadsheet newspaper named Pravda, which stated:

"Putin is going to hit once, but hes going to hit hard."

forbes

The report also said,

"The attack was planned by the US government, but exercised using her proxy, so that an attack on America and the people of the United States looked like an act of aggression by international terrorist organisations."

Since the paper has close ties with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, experts have strongly refuted these rumours. In fact, Putin himself has, on several occasions, said that inside jobs would have been impossible.
ELKO  The Elko City Council will evaluate the job performance of the Elko City Manager, possibly add part-time veterinarian services for the animal shelter, and examine the dismissal of a court petition concerning Aspen Plaza Tuesday.

The audit of appointed officials is always conducted by the council, according to documents provided by the City.

Each council member rated Curtis Calder on valuations numbered one through five as to how on target his skills are viewed.

These skills include knowledge and experience, judgment, planning and organization, risk management, communications, leadership, innovation and supervisory skills.

Overall, he was found to be above or significantly above target.

The City will discuss and possibly appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court an order concerning the tax status of Aspen Plaza on Mountain City Highway.

The Fourth Judicial District Court dismissed the petition sought by the City and Aspen Plaza Partners on the grounds that there was a lack of subject matter jurisdictions, stated the City.

Additionally, the Local Animal Shelter Support Organization would like to expand the services at the Dumke-Weeks Spay/Neuter Clinic by including Dr. William Wright. This is in addition to the agreement between the City and Dr. Erika Johnson.

Also, the meeting will begin with two presentations by Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities Executive Director Wes Henderson on league activities and business development resources, and Police Chief Ben Reed will discuss the police radio project.

The council meets at 4 p.m. at City Hall at 1751 College Ave.

Also on Tuesday, the Council may review, consider or accept:

Great Basin Engineering warrants, which are specific to the first phase of the Cedar Street Reconstruction Project.

The Federal Aviation Administration Airport Improvement Program Grant offer No. 47 and accept substantial completion of the contracts associated with this grant, including the purchase and delivery of snow removal equipment for the airport.

Final acceptance of the Public Works Department Preventive Maintenance Project 2016, to apply Micro Slurry Seal to select city streets. The project was awarded to Sierra Nevada Construction for a total of $314,007.

The Elko Police Departments acceptance of a community service grant of $2,500 from Wal-Mart  the department plans to purchase safety equipment with the sum, including crime scene camera and reflective vests. A grant match is not required.

Award the bid for the Elko Pool Boiler Replacement Project

Awarding five-year airport and airline marketing professional services contract to Letter23 LLC of Utah

The public improvements associated with Great Basin Estates phase 1A  upon acceptance, the developer posted a cash maintenance bond of $72,111 with the City for the 12-month maintenance period.

There may be a rejection of all bids associated with the food or beverage concession area at the Elko Regional Airport and re-advertise a request for proposals, following the airport receiving one incomplete bid.

Requirements of a section of the Elko City Code at 1875 Royal Crest Drive may be waived as the extension of a sewer main across the full frontage of developing properties may be impractical.

A utility easement may be granted to NV Energy to install a power line across the property owned by the City near the Water Reclamation Facility lined storage reservoirs located at Bullion Road.

Approval of a request from the City of Elko Parks & Recreation Department for the closure of the 700-block of the downtown corridor and the Green Belt Park. Additionally, there is a request for permission to open the caboose for a new, non-vendor Trunk or Treat Event from 6 to 9 p.m on Oct. 27.

Appoint a new candidate to serve on the Arts and Culture Advisory Board; a letter of interest was submitted by Simone Turner.

Authorization to advertise for one vacant position on the California Trail Advisory Board as Chairman Kurt Alleman has submitted a letter of resignation.

Public hearings will also be held at 6 p.m. on the following topics:

Two resolutions adopting a new landfill fee schedule and amending the water connection fees, following Elko City Code.
ELKO  Great Basin College invites the community to Constitution Day with GBC, at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 14 at Greenhaw Technical Arts Building, Room 130.

The evening will feature a discussion of the Second Amendment with Family Court Master Andrew Mierins and Elko Chief of Police Ben Reed. The presentation is scheduled to end around 6:45 p.m.

The event is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Student Financial Services Departments.

According to Tawney Crum, assistant director of student financial services and veteran affairs, Constitution Day is required by the Department of Education to be held around the anniversary of the signing of the final draft of the United States Constitution, September 17, 1787.

Due to the upcoming election, organizer and GBC professor Wendy Charlebois noted that the Second Amendment is important for voters this year.

Its a hot topic, said Charlebois. Especially with Question 1.

It would be good to come out and learn about the Second Amendment, added Charlebois. There will be time for questions and answers.

In addition, a pre-taped lecture by local gun historian, Jeff Williams, will be shown to the audience. In it, Williams will give the history of the United States through guns, said Crum.

Due to a scheduling conflict, Williams speech was videotaped by Charlebois and history professor, Dr. Scott Garvorsky, added Crum.

GBC branch locations in Battle Mountain, Ely, Pahrump and Winnemucca will also show the lecture through Interactive Video at the same time.

For information, contact Kayla McCarson at 753-2105.
Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com.

A new look and an improved experience means you can still stay ahead of this fast-moving market with price data, news and market intelligence right here on Fastmarkets.

Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials.

If you already have a Fastmarkets account, youll still have uninterrupted access to your markets by logging in with your current details.
Fooled Again By Chris Hedges September 13, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Truth Dig " - The naive hopes of Bernie Sanders supportersto build a grass-roots political movement, change the Democratic Party from within and push Hillary Clinton to the lefthave failed. Clinton, aware that the liberal class and the left are not going to mount genuine resistance, is running as Mitt Romney in drag. The corporate elites across the political spectrum, Republican and Democrat, have gleefully united to anoint her president. All that remains of Sanders revolution is a 501(c)(4) designed to raise money, including from wealthy, anonymous donors, to ensure that he will be a senator for life. Great historical events happen twice, as Karl Marx quipped, first as tragedy and then as farce. The multibillion-dollar extravaganza of our electoral Circus Maximus is part of the smokescreen that covers the ongoing devastation of globalization, deindustrialization, trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, endless war, climate change and the intrusion into every corner of our lives by the security and surveillance state. Our democracy is dead. Clinton and Donald Trump do not have the power or the interest to revive it. They kneel before the war machine, which consumes trillions of dollars to wage futile wars and bankroll a bloated military. To defy the fortress state is political suicide. Politicians are courtiers to Wall Street. The candidates mouth the cliches of justice, improvements in income equality and democratic choice, but it is a cynical game. Once it is over, the victors will go to Washington to work with the lobbyists and financial elites to carry out the real business of ruling. While there is a difference in the temperament of the two major presidential candidates, that difference will play out only in how our poison will be delivered. Political personalities serve global corporate centers of power. They do not control them. Barack Obama illustrates this. To neoliberals, everyone and everything are disposable. The failed states that have risen up across the Middle East, Africa, the Caucasus and Asia in the wake of the Cold War herald a neoliberal world driven by violence, corruption, greed and desperation. The drug traffickers, smugglers, pirates, kidnappers, jihadists, criminal gangs and militias that roam huge swaths of territory where central authority has vanished are the real faces of globalization. These nihilists define Islamic State just as they define the corporate state. Corruption may be more naked and cruder in Afghanistan or Iraq, but it has its parallel in the for-sale politicians and political parties that dominate the United States and Europe. The common goodthe building of community and solidarityhas been replaced through decades of corporate indoctrination with the callous call to amass all you can for yourself and leave the stranger bleeding on the side of the road. Is the Goldman Sachs commodity trader, who hoards futures of rice, wheat, corn, sugar and livestock to jack up prices on the global market, leaving poor people in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to starve, any less morally repugnant than the drug trafficker? Are F-16 pilots who incinerate families in Raqqa morally distinct from jihadists who burn a captured Jordanian pilot in a cage? Is torture in one of our black sites or offshore penal colonies any less barbaric than torture at the hands of Islamic State? Are the decapitations of children by military drones any more defensible than decapitations of Egyptian laborers on a beach in Libya by self-described holy warriors? Is Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, who raised the price of the lifesaving EpiPen by 400 percent or more and whose compensation since 2007 has risen by 600 percent to above $18 million a year, any less venal than a human trafficker who sends an overloaded boat and its occupants to their doom on the coast of Libya? There is a new world order. It is based on naked exploitation. Itnot democracyis what we have exported across the globe. And it looks a lot like the anarchic state that Hobbes feared. The criminal gangs that deliver migrants to Europe make about $100 million a month for their work. They exploit and traffic human beings just as highly paid CEOs do. The failed states of Iraq, Syria and Libya, a direct result of globalization, have their counterparts in Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Memphis, Baltimore, Atlanta, Milwaukee and the south side of Chicago. They are our versions of Mogadishu, complete with lawlessness, senseless killings, armed gangs, widespread hunger, fear, a population retreating into the numbing embrace of opiates, crippling poverty, dysfunctional state institutions, the growth of private security companies that protect the elites, and indiscriminate police violence that creates reigns of terror aimed at the poor. The more the global corporate forces extract from us in the name of austerity and the maximization of profit, the more parts of the U.S. will descend into domestic versions of the failed states overseas. The same system exists here and abroad. And it has the same result here and abroad. It may appear first in Somalia, Mali, Guinea-Bissau and Libya, but it will soon come to characterize much of America. The proliferation of weapons will do to our society what it has done to every other failed state where there has been unchecked access to arsenalshand power to those with a penchant for violence. Anyone who wants to rule men first tries to humiliate them, to trick them out of their rights and their capacity for resistance, until they are as powerless before him as animals, Elias Canetti wrote in Crowds and Power. He uses them like animals and, even if he does not tell them so, in himself he always knows quite clearly that they mean just as little to him; when he speaks to his intimates he will call them sheep or cattle. His ultimate aim is to incorporate them into himself and to suck the substance out of them. What remains of them afterwards does not matter to him. The worse he has treated them, the more he despises them. When they are no more use at all, he disposes of them as he does of his excrement, simply seeing to it that they do not poison the air of his house. History has amply demonstrated where this will end up. The continued exploitation by an unchecked elite, and the rising levels of poverty and insecurity, will unleash a legitimate rage among the desperate. They will see through the lies and propaganda of the elites. They will demand retribution. They will turn to those who express the hatred they feel for the powerful and the institutions, now shams, that were designed to give them a voice. They will seek not reform but destruction of a system that has betrayed them. Failed statesczarist Russia, the Weimar Republic, the former Yugoslaviavomit up political monstrosities. We will be no different. A form of fascism has already taken hold in two nations on the edges of the European Union, Hungary and Poland. Far-right parties, reacting to the flood of more than a million migrants that descended on Europe last year, are gaining ground in France, Austria, Sweden, Germany and Greece. Nationalism, buttressed by a deification of the military, will be used to compensate for individual powerlessness and a loss of national identity. Dissent in the U.S. will become anti-American, a form of treason. Enemies at home will be vilified along with enemies abroad. And this will lead to even more warfare in the Middle East. The far-right political parties in Eastern Europe flirt rhetorically with military conflict with Russia. And because of its membership in NATO, the United States would be obligated to enter any hostilities. Voting for Hillary Clinton will not halt this slide into the apocalypse. It will only accelerate it. Donald Trump may vanish from the political landscape, but someone even more venal, and probably more intelligent, will take his place. Our job is to dismantle the machinery that is pushing toward the cliff. And this means sustained and massive civil disobedience. As exemplified by the protests at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and by prisoners across the nation who carried out work stoppages last Friday, it means doing everything possible not to cooperate with the elements of authority. It means disrupting the mechanisms of power. It means overcoming fear. It means no longer believing the lies we are told. Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
Facebook Collaborating With Israeli Government To Determine What Should Be Censored

By Glenn Greenwald

September 13, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " The Intercept " - Last week, a major censorship controversy erupted when Facebook began deleting all posts containing the iconic photograph of the Vietnamese Napalm Girl on the ground that it violated the companys ban on child nudity. Facebook even deleted a post from the prime minister of Norway, who posted the photograph in protest of the censorship. As outrage spread, Facebook ultimately reversed itself  acknowledging the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time  but this episode illustrated many of the dangers Ive previously highlighted in having private tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google become the arbiters of what we can and cannot see.

Having just resolved that censorship effort, Facebook seems to be vigorously courting another. The Associated Press reports today from Jerusalem that the Israeli government and Facebook have agreed to work together to determine how to tackle incitement on the social media network. These meetings are taking place as the government pushes ahead with legislative steps meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says incites violence. In other words, Israel is about to legislatively force Facebook to censor content deemed by Israeli officials to be improper, and Facebook appears eager to appease those threats by working directly with the Israeli government to determine what content should be censored.

The joint Facebook-Israel censorship efforts, needless to say, will be directed at Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians who oppose Israeli occupation. The AP article makes that clear: Israel has argued that a wave of violence with the Palestinians over the past year has been fueled by incitement, much of it spread on social media sites. As Alex Kane reported in The Intercept in June, Israel has begun actively surveilling Palestinians for the content of their Facebook posts and even arresting some for clear political speech. Israels obsession with controlling Palestinians use of social media is motivated by the way it has enabled political organizing by occupation opponents; as Kane wrote: A demonstration against the Israeli occupation can be organized in a matter of hours, while the monitoring of Palestinians is made easier by the large digital footprint they leave on their laptops and mobile phones.

Notably, Israel was represented in this meeting with Facebook by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, an extremist by all measures who has previously said she does not believe in a Palestinian state. Shaked has proposed legislation that seeks to force social networks to remove content that Israel considers to be incitement, and recently boasted that Facebook is already extremely compliant with Israeli censorship demands: Over the past four months Israel submitted 158 requests to Facebook to remove inciting content, she said, and Facebook has accepted those requests in 95 percent of the cases.

All of this underscores the severe dangers of having our public discourse overtaken, regulated, and controlled by a tiny number of unaccountable tech giants. I suppose some people are comforted by the idea that benevolent Facebook executives like Mark Zuckerberg are going to protect us all from hate speech and incitement, but  like terrorism  neither of those terms have any fixed meanings, are entirely malleable, and are highly subject to manipulation for propagandistic ends. Do you trust Facebook  or the Israeli government  to assess when a Palestinians post against Israeli occupation and aggression passes over into censorship-worthy hate speech or incitement?

While the focus here is on Palestinians incitement, its actually very common for Israelis to use Facebook to urge violence against Palestinians, including settlers urging vengeance when there is an attack on an Israeli. Indeed, as the Washington Post recently noted, Palestinians have also taken issue with social-media platforms, saying they incite violence and foster an Israeli discourse of hatred, racism and discriminatory attitudes against Palestinians.

In 2014, thousands of Israelis used Facebook to post messages calling for the murder of Palestinians. When an IDF occupying soldier was arrested for shooting and killing a wounded Palestinian point blank in the head last year, IDF soldiers used Facebook to praise the killing and justify that violence, with online Israeli mobs gathering in support. Indeed, Justice Minister Shaked herself  now part of the government team helping Facebook determine what to censor  has used Facebook to post astonishingly extremist and violence-inducing rhetoric against Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his other top ministers have done the same. As Al Jazeera America detailed in 2014:

The hate speech against Arabs that gathered momentum on Facebook and Twitter soon spilled out onto the streets of Jerusalem as extremist Israelis kicked up violence and caused chaos. This violence then made its way back online: YouTube and Facebook videos show hundreds of angry Israeli mobs running around chanting, Death to Arabs, and looking for Palestinians to attack. A video of an Israeli Jew attacking a Palestinian on a public bus shouting, Filthy Arabs, filthy Arab murderers of children, emerged from Tel Aviv. And more video footage showing Israeli security forces using excessive force on a handcuffed Palestinian-American boy further called into question who was really inciting this chaos.

Can anyone imagine Facebook deleting the posts of prominent Israelis calling for increased violence or oppression against Palestinians? Indeed, is it even possible to imagine Facebook deleting the posts of Americans or western Europeans who call for aggressive wars or other forms of violence against predominantly Muslim countries, or against critics of the West? To ask the question is to answer it. Facebook is a private company, with a legal obligation to maximize profit, and so it will interpret very slippery concepts such as hate speech and inciting violence to please those who wield the greatest power. Its thus inconceivable that Facebook would ever dream of deleting this type of actual advocacy or incitement of violence:

Facebook is confronting extreme pressure to censor content disliked by various governments. The U.S. and U.K. have jointly launched a campaign to malign Silicon Valley companies as terrorist helpers or ISIS supporters for refusing to take more active steps to ban content from those whom these governments regard as terrorists. Israel has been particularly aggressive in attempting to blame Facebook for violence and coerce it to censor. Family members of Israelis killed by Palestinians are suing Facebook claiming the company helped facilitate those attacks, while some Israelis have actually complained that Facebook is biased against Israel in its censorship practices.

About all of this, The Intercept submitted the following questions to Facebook, which has not yet responded; we will update this article if it does:

1) Has FB ever met with Palestinian leaders in an effort to identify and suppress posts from Israelis that incite violence? Is there any plan to do so? 2) If an Israeli advocates that Palestinians be attacked and/or bombed, would those posts violate FBs terms of service and be deleted? Have any ever been? 3) What role, exactly, is the Israeli government playing in helping FB identify content that should be barred? 4) FB said it granted some 95% of the requests from Israeli officials to remove content. What percentage of requests from Palestinians to remove content has been accepted? 5) If someone says that Israels occupation is illegal and should be resisted using all means, would that be permitted?

Its true that these companies have the legal right as private actors to censor whatever they want. But that proposition ignores the unprecedented control this small group of corporations now exerts over global communications. That this censorship is within their legal rights does not obviate the serious danger this corporate conduct poses, for reasons I set forth here in describing how vast their influence has become in shaping our discourse (see here for a disturbing story today on how Twitter banned a Scottish pro-independence group after it criticized an article from a tabloid journalist, who then complained she was being harassed).

Its not an exaggeration to say that Facebook, at this point, is far and away the most dominant force in journalism. It is indescribably significant to see it work with a government to censor the speech of that governments opponents. But as is so often the case with censorship, people are content with its application until it is used to suppress views they agree with or like.
Donald Trump, Picks Top Iraq Hawk as Security Adviser By Alex Emmons, Naomi LaChance September 13, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " The Intercept " - Donald Trump named former CIA director and extremist neoconservative James Woolsey his senior adviser on national security issues on Monday. Woolsey, who left the CIA in 1995, went on to become one of Washingtons most outspoken promoters of U.S. war in Iraq and the Middle East. As such, Woolseys selection either clashes with Trumps noninterventionist rhetoric  or represents a pivot towards a more muscular, neoconservative approach to resolving international conflicts. Trump has called the Iraq War a disaster. Woolsey, by contrast, was a key member of the Project for the New American Century  a neoconservative think tank largely founded to encourage a second war with Iraq. Woolsey signed a letter in 1998 calling on Clinton to depose Saddam Hussein and only hours after the 9/11 attacks appeared on CNN and blamed the attacks on Iraq. Woolsey has continued to insist on such a connection despite the complete lack of evidence to support his argument. He also blames Iran. Weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Woolsey called for broader war in the Middle East, saying World War IV was already underway. Woolsey has also put himself in a position to profit from the wars he has promoted. He has served as vice president of Pentagon contracting giant Booz Allen, and as chairman of Paladin Capital Group, a private equity fund that invests in national security and cybersecurity. He chairs the leadership council at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a hawkish national security nonprofit, and is a venture partner with Lux Capital Management, which invests in emerging technologies like drones, satellite imaging, and artificial intelligence. Woolsey went on CNN on Monday and said that he was principally motivated to support Trump because of his plans to expand U.S. military spending. Trump gave a speech last week in which he proposed dramatic expansions of the Army and Marines, and hundred-billion-dollar weapons systems for the Navy and Air Force. He offered no justification  aside from citing a few officials who claimed they wanted more firepower. Woolsey stood by Trumps proposal on Monday. I think the problem is her budget, Woolsey said of Trumps opponent, Hillary Clinton. She is spending so much money on domestic programs  including ones that we dont even have now, and the ones we have now are underfunded  I think there can be very little room for the improvements in defense and intelligence that have to be made. Woolsey has previously called for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be hanged by the neck until hes dead, rather than merely electrocuted. In the past, Woolsey has publicly disagreed with Trump on a number of national security issues  including Trumps plan to ban Muslim immigration. On Monday, Woolsey told CNN that such a plan would raise First Amendment issues, but that he supported a temporary immigration block from certain Muslim countries. Thus far, at least, most prominent war hawks have found they had more in common with Clinton than Trump. I would say all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump, leading neoconservative Robert Kagan told a group in July. Ray McGovern Debates James Woolsey On Iraq War - Charlie Rose - Audio Only - 8/20/2004
Nuclear Hypocrisy- Exposing Shoddy Monopoly Media Analysis And Disinformation By Kim Petersen September 13, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) conducted another nuclear test on Friday, 9 September. President Barack Obama stated: To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state... Today's nuclear test, a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council Resolutions, makes clear North Korea's disregard for international norms and standards for behavior and demonstrates it has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community. With Obama's statement in mind, consider the answer to these relevant questions: Has the DPRK attacked another country? Can the same be said about the Republic of Korea (ROK)? Does every member of the United Nations not have the right to self defense under article 51 of the United Nations Charter? Does the US refrain from attacking other countries? Did the aggressions launched against Iraq, Libya, and Syria show a regard for international norms and standards? Has the US genuinely demonstrated an interested in being a responsible member of the international community? Has the US adhered to article VI of the NPT  a binding commitment for disarmament by the nuclear-weapon states? Would Iraq, Libya, and Syria have been attacked if they had been nuclear-weapon states? Monopoly Media "Analysis" as Disinformation Do state/corporate media in the West give a balanced reporting on the DPRK? Or independent media? Consider the level of "analysis" by Sasa Petricic of Canadian state media, the CBC. From Petricic's "analysis": "Appeals, inducements or threats [against the DPRK] ... nothing seems to have worked." Whose fault is that? Petricic is ignorant of, or even worse, fails to mention that in 1994 the US and DPRK signed the Agreed Framework, whereby the DPRK would freeze operation and construction of nuclear reactors allegedly part of a covert nuclear weapons program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactors. The US was to supply the DPRK with fuel oil pending construction of the reactors. The George Bush II regime undermined this agreement brokered by the Bill Clinton regime. So much for that inducement. Writes Petricic: "Not even some of the toughest sanctions the UN Security Council has applied against any country, implemented in March. Those were meant to severely limit trade with North Korea, and choke off the money and supplies Pyongyang needs to continue its nuclear program." In an Atlantic article titled "Why Is the U.S. Withholding Food Aid From Starving North Korea?," Morton Abramowitz questioned the morality behind US sanctions against the DPRK: "The American policy, meant to punish the regime, is worsening a humanitarian crisis." If there is any verisimilitude to the idiom  you catch more flies with honey than vinegar  then the US strategy is highly dubious, immoral, and at cross purposes. Sanctions are commonly considered an act of war. The DPRK views the sanctions to be an act of war. Noam Chomsky criticized sanctions against Iraq as "murderous" and "devastating"  akin to a WMD. Hence, by placing the DPRK under sanctions, the US had orchestrated a state of war. But that is hardly surprising since the US has refused to entertain a peace or non-hostility pact with the DPRK. Consider one contradiction within Petricic's article. He writes: North Korea says its aim is to become a nuclear power, one with the means to threaten the United States with weapons powerful enough to wreak havoc, small enough to shoot overseas on the tip of a missile. Compare with what follows later in article: The North Korean people are "always ready to retaliate against the enemies," it said on state TV after Friday's blast. "It is part of practical countermeasures to the racket of threat and sanctions against [North Korea] kicked up by the U.S.-led hostile forces who have gone desperate." Let's analyze! In quotation one, "North Korea says...," but there is no spokesperson cited, no source, no link, no footnote. How is one to verify or refute such a statement? It is shoddy journalism. Petricic shreds his own analysis by the quotation in case two. Here North Korean state TV is provided as a source. Now compare what Petricic states in quotation one  "its aim is ... the means to threaten the United States with weapons powerful enough to wreak havoc"  to quotation two  "ready to retaliate against the enemies." [italics added] In the unsourced quotation the DPRK is presented as threatening; in the sourced quotation the DPRK is presented as defensive, i.e., "ready to retaliate." There is a world of difference between the two quotations, but that has seemed to elude Petricic's "analysis." Petricic asserts, "And, it [the DPRK] continues to threaten the United States and South Korea." How is it that Petricic determines and defines a threat? One might imagine that the DPRK has client states bordering the US where DPRK forces and missiles are stationed. No? Presumably, according to Petricic's logic, the mere possession of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capability is considered a threat by the world military superpower and its militarily occupied subaltern. How then should the DPRK feel considering a peace pact has been rebuffed, that the use of US nukes were sought during the US war on Korea and that the nukes remained stationed in the Republic of Korea until 1991, that 28,500 US troops are still stationed in the south, and that the US-ROK engage in annual war games (ramped up in 2016)? Why is all this pertinent history and information undiscussed in the CBC "analysis"? Petricic even found a Chinese source to cite: Xiaohe Cheng, the deputy director of Renmin University's Centre for China's International Strategic studies in Beijing who is quoted: "I think the decision makers in Pyongyang have to think hard before they make further nuclear and missile provocations. China's tolerance of DPRK's bad behaviours is limited," he says. "Don't push China too hard." Indeed! That same advice ought to be viewed from all angles. It is not forgotten in China, and should not be forgotten in the US, what happened when the US pushed toward the Yalu River in its war crimes galore, scorched earth campaign in Korea from 1950-1953 [See Korean Truth Commission, Report on U.S. Crimes in Korea: 1945-2001 (New York: 2001)]. The obvious solution is perforating the bubble of media disinformation and pursuing peace, all parties entering into a binding peace treaty, withdrawal of US forces from the south of Korea, and an end to sanctions against the north of Korea. Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of Dissident Voice.
9/11: 15 Years Of A Transparent Lie By Paul Craig Roberts September 13, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - There are many conspiracy theories about 9/11. The US governments own expanation of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory in which a few Saudi Arabians outwitted the American national security state. Little doubt that many of the more imaginative conspiracy theories were created for the purpose of stigmatizing any skepticism, no matter how well reasoned and supported, of the official story. When thinking about 9/11, it is important to differentiate expert opinion from improbable explanations. Among the expert opinion are 2,600 structural engineers and high-rise architects who comprise Architects & Engineers for 9/11 truth and have written to Congress asking for a real investigation, Firefighters for 9/11 truth, Pilots for 9/11 truth, physicists and chemists who analyzed the dust from the twin towers and report finding reacted and unreacted materials used in controlled demolitions, and former government officials who understand that a security failure as great as 9/11 would have produced an immediate and exacting investigation. These groups of qualified and experienced people say that the official story of 9/11 is false. Architects, engineers, and scientists say that the official story is physically impossible. Firefighters and WTC maintenance personnel say that there were numerous explosions within the towers and that the first explosions were in the sub-basements prior to the buildings being hit by airplanes. Experienced military and civilian pilots say the maneuvers of the aircraft are beyond the capability of the alleged hijackers. Both co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission and the legal counsel have written books in which they have said that information was withheld from the Commission, that the US government lied to the Commission, and that the Commission was set up to fail In other words, the hard evidence simply does not support the official story. We know that the official story is false. We dont know who is responsible or the purpose the event was intended to serve. However, circumstantial evidence strongly supports suspicion of the neoconservatives whose high positions in the government would have enabled them to succeed with a false flag attack and to delay and divert any investigation until the official story was set in stone. We also know from the dancing Israelis that elements in the Israeli government had advance notice of the attack as Israeli agents were set up ready to film the destruction of the twin towers. Neoconservative position papers written in the 1990s called for a new Pearl Harbor in order to launch Washingtons wars for hegemony, first in the Middle East. These position papers signaled out Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Libya for attack prior to the event of 9/11. None of these countries had anything whatsoever to do with the official story of 9/11 that blames Osama bin Ladens al-Qaeda, a jihadist group set up by Washington in the 1970s to resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. None of these countries had jihadist governments. Iran has a muted form of Islamic law, but Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Assad in Syria headed secular governments. Yet, neoconservatives falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaeda connections. This lie and the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that threatened the US were used to invade Iraq under the 9/11 banner. Then the rationale for the invasions changed. 9/11 dropped away, and the war on terror and bringing democracy took its place. From my quarter century in Washington, it is clear to me that if such an event as 9/11 had actually happened for the reason given, the White House, Congress, and media would have been screaming for explanation of how a few Arabs outwitted the entire US National Security Stateall 16 US intelligence agencies, the security agencies of Washingtons NATO allies and Israel, the National Security Council, Air Traffic Control, and airport security four times in one hour on the same day. Instead the government refused any inquiry for one year until most of the evidence was destroyed. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/09/government-hid-destroyed-911-evidence.html That a few Arabs defeated US national security would be the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on a superpower, but no one was held responsible. This tells me that 9/11 was a State Crime Against Democracy. 9/11 was used by the US government to launch wars that have destroyed in whole or part seven countries, killing millions of peoples and producing millions of refugees. 9/11 was also used to create an American police state, which is a far greater threat to freedom and democracy than Muslim terrorism. See

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/08/24/the-term-conspiracy-theory-was-invented-by-the-cia-in-order-to-prevent-disbelief-of-official-government-stories/ and

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/09/07/the-neoconservatives-who-gave-us-911-gave-us-the-american-police-state/ and

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/09/07/the-tide-is-turning-the-official-story-is-now-the-conspiracy-theory-paul-craig-roberts/ and

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/07/20/is-the-saudi-911-story-part-of-the-deception-paul-craig-roberts/ Support Dr. Roberts Work : http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/09/08/truth-can-prevail/ Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order .
A 50-year-old man that goes by the name Joseph Sunday has been arrested by the Police in Ogun State for allegedly having sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl in Ilaro, Yewa North Local Government Area of the state.

He was reportedly to have ambushed the girl while she was on her way to the stream to fetch water, he then dragged her to an uncompleted building around Abule Taju area of the town, where he carried out the illicit act.

Confirming the incident, the State Police Spokesperson, Abimbola Oyeyemi, said the suspect was arrested following a complaint from the mother of the victim.

The policemen at the station where the case was reported immediately arrested the man. On interrogation, the suspect confessed to the crime.

The state Commissioner of Police, Ahmed Iliyasu, has ordered the immediate transfer of the case to the Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Labour Unit of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department for further investigation, ASP Oyeyemi said.
ELKO  School board trustees may vote Tuesday to fill the District 2 seat, which was left vacant when Cindy Elquist resigned to become a teacher at Grammar No. 2.

District 2 was the only contested school board seat in the November election. The board voted to leave the position open during a previous meeting. The trustees did not want to create a possible advantage for either candidate  Michael Ayala or Tammie Cracraft-Dickenson.

Ayala has since withdrawn his candidacy for the seat as he intends to move out of state in the near future.

School District Superintendent Jeff Zander said that Ayala had reached out to him to inform him of his intention to withdraw his candidacy. Zander then brought the topic back to the school board so they could reconsider filling the vacant seat.

He told me he was leaving in the spring to go to Arizona, Zander said. I talked to the board and asked if they wanted me to advertise that seat and get Tammie in there a couple of months early and they said that was a good idea.

Zander further explained that Cracraft-Dickenson will probably take the seat sometime in the middle of October if the board approves the move.

The board may approve a new collective bargaining agreement from the teachers in the county.

The new agreement calls for an increase in starting teacher salary from $36,288 to $40,000 a year.

All of the teachers who were hired by the district will start at $40,000 a year once the agreement is approved by the board.

Zander said the salary increase will help them stay competitive with the school district in Clark County and make Elko County a more attractive destination for potential teachers.

I want to commend our teachers association and all of our barging teams for doing whats best for the district, he said. Its a board priority to higher high quality teachers. We feel student achievement is directly related to the teacher in front of the classroom.
The Sultan of Sokoto and president-general of the Nigerian National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Muhammadu Saad Abubakar III, yesterday, Sept. 12, played host to business mogul, Alhaji Aliko Dangote at the palace.

The influential leaders were joined by Governor of Sokoto state, Aminu Tambuwal and some members of the state Executive.

See more photos below:
The Publicity Secretary of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) in Edo State, Hon (Chief) Pius Okolie, has led 1,000 of his supporters, including executive members and chieftains of the party, to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Those who defected with Okolie to the APC included, the Organising Secretary, Mr. Chidi Eze; Ikpoba Okha Ward 1 Chairman, Festus Agbonlahor; Ward 2 Chairman, Uchenna Ogugba; Ward 7 Youth Leader, Pastor Peter Akeredolu; Woman Leader, Mrs. Blessing Aikharaekpen; Uhunmwode Youth Leader, Godfrey Ogbarate and Chief Raymond Okpara, Ex-Officio.

Okolie, who spoke with newsmen in Benin City, said his decision to defect was based on the conviction that only an APC government led by Mr. Godwin Obaseki and his deputy, Hon. Philip Shaibu, can sustain the good works already started by the Adams Oshiomhole outgoing administration.

According to him, I believe Obaseki will consolidate on Oshiomholes good works and even do better.

The former APGA spokesman said the pedigree of Obaseki will live up to expectations.

He disclosed that his defection to APC would enable him contribute his quota more to the development of the state, which he has called home for over 40 years.

Assuring his Igbo kinsmen that under the Obaseki led government, the enabling environment would be created for their businesses to grow, Okolie said there would a review of the tax regime with a view to making it more people friendly.

He also assured his kinsmen that Obaseki led government would build more markets for their businesses to flourish, while urging them to vote APC during the September 28 governorship election.
Nigerias leading domestic airline, Arik Air, has issued a statement to announce temporary disruption to its operations.

It was earlier reported here that the airline shut down operations following an inability to pay for its running costs.

The report further stated that Arik purportedly owes N3 billion in insurance and has also found it impossible to pay suppliers for aviation fuel.

The airline, in a statement issued by its spokesperson, Ola Adebanji, said Arik Air, West and Central Africas largest airline has alerted all air travellers of a temporary disruption to its operations, pending approval of aircraft documentation related to insurance renewal.

It, however, said it was working around the clock to resolve the necessary documentation, which has been a challenge due to the long weekend holidays due to Eid-el-Kabir.

At the present time, all flights of the airline have been cancelled for Tuesday, 13 September 2016 and the airline has stated that it would be getting in touch with passengers to provide an update on rescheduling of their flights.

This situation is likely to continue for the next few days until such time that NAICOM (National Insurance Commission) approves a waiver on a priority basis for the new insurance company to renew the policy.

All customers are kindly advised to contact Arik Airs Call Centre (01-2799999), Airport or City ticket offices or visit the airlines Website (www.arikair.com) for further updates. Passengers are also advised to check with the airline regarding the status of their flights before proceeding to the airport.

Arik Airs Group CEO, Dr. Michael Arumemi-Ikhide, wishes to advise and assure the public, its customers, stakeholders and partners that we are fully committed to returning to our normal operations and minimize any unfortunate inconvenience to our passengers. Where flights have been cancelled, the airline will notify passengers through SMS and in such cases, passengers will be accommodated on first available alternative flight as soon as normal flight operations resume.

The Group CEO has apologised and appealed (on behalf of the airline) for the understanding of passengers while it works diligently to resume normal operations at the earliest, the statement reads.

It would be recalled that Aero Contractors and First Nation suspended operations two weeks ago.
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), in August generated N95,760,763,642.04 in revenue  the highest revenue in 10 years.

The Public Relations Unit of the service made this known on its website on Monday.

It said the feat despite was achieved despite the Forex difficulty, low imports and general economic downturn.

Last month, August 2016, the Service recorded the highest revenue in 10 years despite the Forex difficulty, low imports and general economic downturn. The Service generated N95,760,763,642.04, a feat that points to the efficacy of the Comptroller-Generals policy thrust, it said.

According to statement, the strong stance of the Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hammed Ali (retd.) on issues of Discipline, Integrity and Strict adherence to Customs Codes and Clearance procedures, is yielding positive results in the areas of suppression of smuggling and revenue collection.

The statement noted that this is evident in the rising revenue generation profile of the service, one year after Mr. Ali took over helm of affairs of the NCS.

The statement reads in part: Col. Hammed Ibrahim Ali (Rtd) on assumption of office as the Comptroller-General of Customs August last year arrived with a three prone Presidential mandate, namely:- Reform, Restructure and Raise revenue.

To achieve these, he drew his policy thrust, which harped, on Honesty, Integrity and Transparency as bases for achieving the mandate. Starting from the Headquarters and then to all Customs formations across the Country.

Knowing that reform and restructuring are activities within the Nigeria Customs Service, while raising the much needed revenue requires cooperation and Compliance from the part of Stakeholders, the CGC embarked on Stakeholders visitations to secure their buy into the new way of doing business with the Service.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have reportedly seized some houses in Abuja worth N4.8 billion allegedly belonging to former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dieziani Alison-Madueke. According to the Nation, one of the mansions seized is worth N3.58 billion.

Meanwhile operatives of the antigraft agency are said to have been deployed to Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, to investigate the ownership of five choice houses believed to be owned by Alison-Maduekes. The properties under surveillance in Port Harcourt are said to be worth over N3billion.

A top source in EFCC, who spoke in confidence said:

Based on latest intelligence, we have been able to trace more choice assets to Mrs. Alison-Madueke in Port Harcourt. We have drafted more operatives in Rivers State. We have identified more than five of such assets but we need to verify the ownership by going through some documents before attaching the properties in line with our mandate. In the next one week, our team in Port Harcourt would have completed their assignment. We will then release the value of the assets. We are also on the trail of some accomplices who were used for the property deals.

The source added

We are still working in collaboration with NCA in the UK. I think we are getting closer to the final leg of the Mrs. Alison-Madueke probe.

One of the seized properties which is worth N500million is believed to be at Frederick Chiluba Close in Asokoro District in Abuja. The asset is now placed under interim forfeiture until the court decides otherwise, he added.

Sections 28 and 34 of the EFCC (Establishment Act) 2004 and Section 13(1) of the Federal High Court Act, 2004 empower the anti-graft agency to invoke the Interim Assets Forfeiture Clause.

Section 28 of the EFCC Act reads: Where a person is arrested for an offence under this Act, the Commission shall immediately trace and attach all the assets and properties of the person acquired as a result of such economic or financial crime and shall thereafter cause to be obtained an interim attachment order from the Court.

Section 13 of the Federal High Court Act reads in part: The sourt may grant an injunction or appoint a receiver by an interlocutory order in all cases in which it appears to the Court to be just or convenient so to do.

Any such order may be made either unconditionally or on such terms and conditions as the Court thinks just.

The NCA in the UK arrested and quizzed the former Minister and four others on October 2nd last year for alleged bribery and corruption and money laundering. Also the EFCC has interrogated three to five more suspects since the interrogation of Mrs. Alison-Madueke by the NCA. The NCA last year obtained permission from a Westminster Magistrates Court to seize 27,000 pounds from Mrs. Alison-Madueke and two other women.

Source: The Nation
The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate in the rescheduled governorship election in Edo State, Osaro Onaiwu, has called for further shift of the exercise to Oct. 1.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last Thursday announced the postponement of the election earlier fixed for Saturday to Sept. 28, following a security advice by the Police and State Security Services.

Mr. Onaiwu, who spoke with journalists in Benin, the state capital on Monday explained that a further shift in the election date was necessary as Sept. 28 was the day students sitting for the ongoing General Certificate of Education (GCE) across the country, would write Physics.

He said Oct.1 was the earliest possible date for the election.

Mr. Onaiwu said the shift would afford eligible voters among the students to participate in the election.

According to him, education is number one pillar in APGAs manifesto, and the authorities must be wary of threats from some of the students that they would sue INEC if they were prevented from voting in the election.

On the claim by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that the election was postponed because it was obvious to the governing All Progressives Congress that it would lose to the PDP, the APGA candidate described such claim as a mere presumption.

He also berated the PDP for insisting that the election should have been allowed to go on.

Are we going to wait for what happened in Rivers? PDP is crying because they know what we dont know.

Since security agencies said the election was not possible and INEC has shifted it, everybody should abide, said Onaiwu, who resigned his position as Director-General of the PDP Governors Forum, to contest for the governorship seat of Edo.
The Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammad Sanusi II, on Monday called on the local, state and federal governments to focus on agriculture so as to boost food production in the country.

Alh Sanusi who made this call while delivering his traditional Eid-el-Kabir message shortly after the Eid prayer at the Kofar Mata Eid praying ground in Kano metropolis said there is also the need for the Federal Government to construct additional dams across the country to enhance dry season farming for massive production of cash and food crops.

He said constructing more dams was necessary in view of the fact that most of the developed countries had for long stopped depending on wet season farming.

The monarch added that boosting agriculture in the country would provide job opportunities to the teeming number of unemployed youths as well as ensure food security in the country.

Emir Sanusi also appealed to the wealthy and influential Muslims to support the less privileged persons in the society in order to alleviate their sufferings, especially during the current economic recession in the country.
Emirates has started to detour to Accra, Ghana, to refuel its daily flight to Abuja in order to bypass pricey, and increasingly scarce, jet fuel.

The move comes as Nigeria battles a hard currency shortage that has made fuel available only at a very high price.

The airline already cut its twice-daily flights to Lagos and Abuja to just one.

The decision to detour was aided by a substantial drop in Ghanas jet prices amid tax reform last month, according to the Ghana Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors.

Other foreign airlines flying to Nigeria have also started to fill up elsewhere. Air France-KLM said it had refuelled abroad in very exceptional cases by juggling suppliers and stomaching extra costs.

Germanys Lufthansa is loading more fuel in Frankfurt for its Lagos flight, where the ground staff doubt their ability to refuel for the final destination of Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, an executive said.

The crash in the Naira since a devaluation in June has led firms who market jet fuel locally, such as Total, Sahara and ConocoPhillips, to double the price to N 220 a litre in August, and to as much as N 400 this month, an airline executive said.

Even at the higher costs, marketers lack of dollars has made fuel scarce. Some carriers have had aircraft stuck, or were forced to cancel planned journeys, after frantic last-minute calls from ground staff warned there was no fuel available.

The economy is crying out for investment, and now it is going to be even harder for anyone to visit, said John Ashbourne, an economist. Who is going to want to park a billion dollars in a country that you cant even easily fly to? It sends the worst possible signal.

Spains Iberia and United Airlines have already cancelled their Nigeria services, including Arik airlines. Other international airlines responded by boosting ticket prices within Nigeria, charging as much as US$2,000 for an economy class ticket to Europe to cut losses  more than double the cost of a Lagos ticket bought abroad.

British Airways, a popular choice for well-heeled Nigerians, said it is using smaller aircraft on its Lagos-London route, as did Air France-KLM.

Turkish Airlines use of smaller planes has added another inconvenience: passengers complained there is not always space for luggage on the smaller aircraft, delaying it for days.

SEE ALSO: Arik Air: Why We Suspended Operations
The Enugu State Police Command has arrested six notorious bandits that had been terrorising residents of the state.

According to a statement by the commands spokesperson, Mr Ebere Amaraizu, following a tip-off from some members of the public, its operatives in Adani Division in the early hours of Saturday, September 10th, nabbed six notorious armed bandits that have been terrorising the lives of the innocent citizens of Opanda,Nimbo and Adani Axis of Uzouwani local Government Area of Enugu state and its environs.

The suspects who gave their names as Ernest Umeh,Okwudili Ugwuoke,Sunday Agbo,Arinze Agu,Ezeata Ugochukwu,Arinze Agu and Nnamdi ojobo are helping the police in their investigations in relation to their alleged nefarious activities ranging from armed robbery, burglary, amongst others.

The command has launched a manhunt for the remaining gang members. Items recovered from the suspects included locally made gun,two short axes and some exhibits like TV Set,DVD,six handsets suspected to have robbed from their various victims,standing fan amongst others.

The State Commissioner of Police, Emmanuel Ojukwu has applauded the effort of his men and the synergy between his operatives and members of the community and maintained that the command under his watch will continue to partner communities,sister security agencies and all relevant stake holders to ensure a safe and secured environment.

Source: Vanguard
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has deployed its operatives in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, as part of the last leg of ongoing probe of former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke.

Of interest to the anti-graft agency are five choice houses believed to be owned by the former minister who is undergoing cancer treatment in the United Kingdom.

The U.Ks National Crime Agency and the EFCC are jointly coordinating investigations to nail Mrs. Alison-Madueke, who is suspected of being part of former public officials that looted about $10billion in cash and assets.

Amid the Port Harcourt operation, another asset of the ex-minister in Abuja, allegedly worth over N500million, has been confiscated pending her trial.

It would be recalled that the commission had earlier seized a mansion worth N3.58billion from Alison-Madueke, bringing the haul in Abuja to about N4.08billion of assets believed to be hers.

The EFCC shifted its attention in the probe of the former minister to Port Harcourt after it received intelligence report on the properties said to be worth over N3billion

A top source in EFCC, who spoke in confidence, said: Based on latest intelligence, we have been able to trace more choice assets to Mrs. Alison-Madueke in Port Harcourt. We have drafted more operatives in Rivers State.

We have identified more than five of such assets but we need to verify the ownership by going through some documents before attaching the properties in line with our mandate.

In the next one week, our team in Port Harcourt would have completed their assignment. We will then release the value of the assets.

We are also on the trail of some accomplices who were used for the property deals.

Responding to a question, the source said: We are still working in collaboration with NCA in the UK. I think we are getting closer to the final leg of the Mrs. Alison-Madueke probe.

The EFCC is acting on the strength of Sections 28 and 34 of the Act establishing it and Section 13(1) of the Federal High Court Act, 2004.

The Acts empower the anti-graft agency to invoke the Interim Assets Forfeiture Clause.

For instance, Section 28 of the EFCC (Establishment Act) 2004 reads: Where a person is arrested for an offence under this Act, the Commission shall immediately trace and attach all the assets and properties of the person acquired as a result of such economic or financial crime and shall thereafter cause to be obtained an interim attachment order from the Court.

Section 13 of the Federal High Court Act reads in part: The sourt may grant an injunction or appoint a receiver by an interlocutory order in all cases in which it appears to the Court to be just or convenient so to do. Any such order may be made either unconditionally or on such terms and conditions as the Court thinks just.
NBCs Commander in Chief Forum, held Wednesday night aboard the USS Intrepid in New York, was the closest thing to a debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton until the real thing on Sept. 26. And it showed an advantage Trump might have when the two meet face-to-face: She has a record in government to defend, while he doesnt. On that score, Trump, at 70, a newcomer to politics, seems new, while Clinton, at 68, a veteran of decades in public life, seems, well, not new.

The format of the NBC forum, in which the two candidates were separated by only a commercial break, put that contrast into higher relief than ever before.

Clinton cited her experience right out of the blocks, when moderator Matt Lauer asked her, What is the most important characteristic that a commander-in-chief can possess?

Steadiness, Clinton answered instantly. An absolute rock steadiness, and mixed with strength to be able to make the hard decisions. Because Ive had the unique experience of watching and working with several presidents...

The problem for Clinton was that talk of her experience leads naturally to talk of what she has done  and that, in todays campaign environment, means talk of her mishandling of classified information as secretary of state. Why wasnt it disqualifying? was Lauers second question of the evening.

Then, when it came time for the military audience to ask questions of their own, the first for Clinton, from a retired naval officer, was brutal. Secretary Clinton, how can you expect those such as myself who were and are entrusted with Americas most sensitive information to have any confidence in your leadership as president when you clearly corrupted our national security?

Ouch. Clinton argued that she did not send or receive emails with a header marked TOP SECRET or the like. Maybe voters will find that convincing, and maybe they wont. But it was a rocky start.

The next question, from Lauer, was about Clintons vote in 2002 to authorize the Iraq War.

Another audience member stood to ask: You have had an extensive record with military intervention. How do you respond to progressives like myself who worry and have concerns that your hawkish foreign policy will continue?

And then Lauer asked about Clintons role in the Iran nuclear negotiations.

One common theme of all the questions: They focused on things Clinton did in her years in office, in the Senate and as secretary of state. She started out by citing her experience, so Lauer and the audience answered, in effect, OK, lets talk about your experience.

Trump has no such experience. Theres no Trump record in public office, no government decisions that went awry, no votes to back away from, no nothing. When running for public office, even for the presidency, that can be an advantage.

In a number of presidential elections in recent decades, especially races between two non-incumbents, the candidate with less governmental experience, especially less national government experience, won.

Barack Obama had a lot less experience in government than John McCain when he defeated McCain in 2008.

George W. Bush, midway through his second term as governor of Texas, had less experience in government than Al Gore, who by 2000 had served 16 years in the House and Senate and eight as vice president.

And Bill Clinton, a long-time governor of Arkansas, had nowhere near the experience that President George H.W. Bush had when Clinton defeated Bush in 1992.

Thats not to say Obama, Bush I, and Clinton had no experience at all in government, as is the case with Trump. But in 2008, 2000, and 1992, less was more when it came to national government experience.

Democrats who try to pin Trump down on his record have a harder time than Republicans going after Clinton. Look at what Clinton tried to do Wednesday evening with Trump on Iraq. My opponent was for the war in Iraq, she said. He says he wasnt. You can go back and look at the record. He supported it. He told Howard Stern he supported it.

On Sept. 11, 2002, Stern asked Trump, Are you for invading Iraq? Trump answered, haltingly, Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.

Compare that brief exchange  on the Howard Stern show!  with Clintons extended and carefully reasoned speech on the Senate floor supporting military action against Saddam Hussein, plus her vote to authorize the war, and its not clear voters will see the equivalence Clinton is trying to sell.

Thats the challengers advantage: The candidate who has done less on the national stage has less to answer for, and his hopeful promises and pronouncements are less weighted by an actual record.

Of course, Clinton has significant advantages of her own. But for Democrats hoping Clinton will land a knockout blow in the upcoming debate, Wednesday night was a cautionary moment. It showed that Trump has some serious strengths of his own, and that in what could be the most asymmetrical matchup ever, Clintons experience might not be the advantage her supporters hope it will be.
President Muhammadu Buhari has told those agitating for Biafra Republic to perish the thought, stressing the need for all Nigerians to unite to build the country.

Buhari spoke on Tuesday while receiving over 100 National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members serving in his Daura Local Government Area at his residence in Katsina State.

President Buhari, who specifically addressed corps members from the southern parts of the country said: Tell your colleagues who want Biafra to forget about it. As a military commander, I walked from Degem, a border town between the north and the east, to the border between Cameroons and Nigeria.

I walked on my foot for most of the 30 months that we fought the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, in which at least 2 million Nigerians were killed.

We were made by our leaders to go and fight Biafra not because of money or oil, because oil was not critical factor then, but because of one Nigeria.

So, if leaderships at various levels failed, it was not the fault of the rest of Nigerians who have no quarrel with one another.

So, please tell your colleagues that we must be together to build this country. It is big enough for us and potentially big enough in terms of resources.

Those who work hard will earn a respectable living. I have seen this country, I fought for this country and I will continue to work for the unity of this country.

He also called on Nigerian youths to make Nigeria great again through pursuit of knowledge, patriotism and commitment to values that promote national unity.

Buhari, who reiterated his commitment to the unity and prosperity of Nigeria, urged the youth to remain focused in life, pursue their dreams and reject those fanning embers of discord and disintegration of Nigeria.

The president, who specially recognised corps members from the Niger Delta and South-Eastern states serving in Daura, commended former head of state, retired General Yakubu Gowon for setting up the NYSC in 1973.

He affirmed that the scheme had creditably promoted national unity and cohesion by exposing young people to the uniqueness and cultural diversity of Nigeria.

I asked for those from the other extreme of Nigeria because I very much appreciate the NYSC scheme and whenever I see General Gowon, I always thank him for that, he said.

Speaking on behalf of the corps members, Egbewumi Adebolu, the Corps Liaison Officer in Daura, thanked President Buhari for receiving them and making their stay in Daura memorable.

The CLO pointed out that the youths strongly believed in the programme of the present administration to reduce unemployment and create jobs for more Nigerians.

Adebolu also thanked Buhari for his personal gifts of cows, bags of rice and cash to corps members in the community for Sallah celebration.
Nollywood actress, Genevieve Nnaji is currently attending the Toronto International Film Festival. The renowned actress is in Toronto to attend the screening of some of the eight Nigerians movies selected for this years event.
The Kaduna State Governor Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has partnered with a waste management company, ZL Global Alliance to launch a waste to cash programme in an effort to rid the state of waste materials and improve the living condition and well-being of the people.

The programme conform with the governors commitment to keeping the state clean, green and healthy; the managing director of ZL Global Alliance Nigeria, Mrs Abiola Bashorun, said at the official launch over the weekend.

Mrs Bashorun added that the initiative is meant to encourage the people to turn in their waste in exchange for cash, saying a payment of N1.00 per kilogramme of waste will be paid to the people. We, however, expect a minimum of 10 to 25kg per lot.

The state government under the initiative wants to take its commitment to get job and wealth creation a notch higher. The state government has found that it has a large population of youths and women who are either unemployed or under-employed, she explained.

The waste management expert further explained that the programme which is scheduled to kick- off on September 14, 2016, will begin with the two major cities of Kaduna and Zaria, then Kafanchan and other towns will join in no distant time.

She disclosed that ZL Global Alliance and the international partners were investing over $1billion into the waste to wealth initiative across states in Nigeria.
Seven nursing mothers and their new babies narrowly escaped death as flood ravaged the maternity ward of a hospital in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.

The victims were admitted at Christ Apostolic Church Maternity Home, Isale-Ake.

They were asleep when torrential rain started Monday evening. The downpour led to a flood which forced its way into the ward.

A witness said by the time patients and medical staff realised the emergency, the flood had risen to bed level, causing confusion in the ward.

The matron of the home, Abigail Asiwaju, said the patients were asleep and the nursing staff did not notice the surge of water until it was beyond control. She said the patients were hurriedly evacuated.

We were inside the ward as the rain was falling, but before we knew it, the flood had taken over the ward and labour room, Ms. Asiwaju narrated.

The matron attributed the flood to a nearby uncompleted road along Isale-Ake, which has no channel for flood. The hospital is in a church premises beside the road.

Nothing like this has happened before in the 20 years I have been working in this maternity home. The cause is the state government road, which has no flood channel, she said.

Mrs. Asiwaju said the flood destroyed medical equipment in the hospital.

A PREMIUM TIMES correspondent saw some of the equipment packed in a corner of the church premises.

The flood also pulled down a section of the churchs fence. The premises was still flooded when our correspondent visited, while the maternity home has been abandoned.

In a related development, some residents of Filade community in Abeokuta were sacked from their homes by flood also on Monday. The rain lasted over four hours and wreaked havoc on the community.

The head of the community, Baale Oguntoyinbo, appealed to the state government for aid.

Source: PremiumTimes
The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has organised its 21st edition of Consumer Town Hall Meeting (CTM) at the Ayo Kehinde multi-purpose Hall at Bukuru, Jos, Plateau state.

Mr. Abayomi Olawoyin of the Initiative for the Support of Consumer Rights of the NCC, while speaking on the occasion called on telecommunications service providers to shun ambiguity in their information to consumers.

Olawoyin also added that the service providers should stop engaging in the use of complex language but should use plain language that the consumers can easily understand.

We want clear information that people will understand. We dont want ambiguity. Plain language is the word, which consumers can understand without any stress, he said.

Dr. Atoyebi Joseph, Deputy Director of NCC, said the essence of the meeting in Jos was to enlighten telecom subscribers on their rights and responsibilities.

Joseph added that the commission wanted the consumers not only to know their rights but to also appreciate their own responsibilities to the industry.

He said: NCC has been holding consultation meetings with stakeholders on all burning and contemporary issues with a view to addressing them. Some of the policies rolled out by the commission actually came from interactive fora like this, because we take everything here, the proceedings, back home as a feedback and review them and escalate to management through which policies now come out to address issues. So, it is like an input into the efforts the commission is making to make sure we really feel the pulse of the consumers and through which we now come out with policies and initiatives that will address the concerns.

SEE ALSO: 5 more Infrastructure Companies to be licensed by NCC

Joseph also addressed the issue of unsolicited text messages, saying that NCC was not soft on the matter.

He said: If I may just tell you straight away, the world has become a global village. Regulating telecom in you domain, yes; but to regulate internet across the globe is problematic. Some of these messages come directly from other sources aside from the service providers and which is a fact of todays technology.

So, part of what the commission has done is to enforce this Dont Disturb Me and I have the option to stop it. If it is partial DND or full DND, I have the option to take. The commission has done that. The commission has also licensed infrastructure companies to boost the level of infrastructure provisions in the telecom industry in Nigeria. The commission is not sleeping over any issue. In fact, we are on top of it at any time of the day. If you go to our website, you see so many things and other policies, initiatives that the commission has put out to regulate the industry. Regulation is continuous; it is ongoing. It is never final because issues come every now and then and as they come, they are tackled.

Because as at today, nobody is regulating internet, but we regulate the services within our domain. If you dont want any message, you stop it through DND (Do Not Disturb) and send STOP to 2442 and it stops.

SEE ALSO: Innjoo Fined N4 Million by NCC

Director, Consumer Affairs Bureau of NCC, Alhaji Abdullahi Maikano, said the event sought to educate telecom consumers and other stakeholders on contemporary issues generating interest in the industry.

He also stressed that it was also a feedback mechanism for the commission in making regulatory intervention for the benefit of the consumers and the service providers as well as the industry as a whole.

Maikano also mentioned that the consumers are the target beneficiaries of NCCs activities where they enjoy primary focus in terms of ensuring that they get good quality of service, value for money spent, timely and fair redress of complaints and protection from unwholesome practices of some service providers.

The general theme for discussion was Information and Education as a Catalyst for Consumer Protection, which he said was a topic carefully chosen to reflect one of the cardinal objectives of NCC in ensuring the protection of telecom consumers from market exploitation and empowering them to make rational and informed decisions, when making their choices of services.

According to him, Consumer education is identified by the commission as one of the most cost effective mechanisms that provides and guarantees consumer protection. Besides serving as a pro-active way of protecting consumers from making wrong choices, it also serves as a preventive measure that protects consumers from being exploited and being defrauded.

Maikano further stated, These rights include but not limited to the right to receive correct information on services they subscribed to; information provided should be clear, complete, and accurate and in a language that will be understood. This will guide them to make informed decisions when making their choices. Give consumers the choice of receiving information in a language they can understand.

SEE ALSO: Nokia To Re-Open Office Sealed By NCC
The Nigerian Prisons Service has dispelled reports that mastermind of the 2011 Christmas Day bombing in Madalla, a suburb of Niger State near Abuja, has been released from prison by the Federal Government.

Several online reports this week reported that Dikko may have been released as part of a purported prisoners swap deal between the Federal Government and Boko Haram sect.

But the NPS described the reports as mere rumour.

Please disregard the rumour. Hes still in prisons custody, Biyi Jeje, NPS spokesman said on Tuesday.

Mr. Dikko alias Kabiru Sokoto, was convicted in December 2013 after being found guilty of masterminding the car suicide bombing on St. Theresas Catholic Church, Madalla, in which 40 people were killed.

Boko Haram, in a video released last month, demanded the release of its members held by the government in exchange for Chibok schoolgirls abducted by the group in 2014.

While the governments body language suggests it is disposed to a swap deal, the modalities for this have yet to be made public even as President Muhammadu Buhari has said his administration will negotiate with credible leaders of the sect, which is presently factionalized.

Theres no truth in all the reports claiming that Mr. Dikko had been released, Mr. Jeje added.
Some of the members of the National Youth Service Corps paid a visit to President Buhari on Tuesday.

Their visit was to felicitate with the President on the occasion of the Muslim holiday, Eid-El-Kabir.

They paid the visit to his townhome in Daura, Katrina state
Former Governor of Rivers State and current Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, has said that only the All Progressives Congress (APC) has development and security plan for the people.

He made this declaration at the APC Rivers West Senatorial Zonal Special Rally, which took place at the Industrial Unit Field, Bonny, as part of preparations for the forthcoming rerun elections in the state.

The minister, represented by the APC deputy governorship candidate during the 2015 election in the state, said: Only the APC can provide good things of life for the people of Rivers West.

Mr. Amaechi assured the people of the area that several roads would be rehabilitated in the state by the APC-led federal government, especially the Bonny-Bomu Road, Ring Road among others.

According to him, When the federal government is willing to help us, and we elect opposition members, would the federal government be able to help us freely?

The former governor also said that only the APC-led federal government can bring about genuine and effective security to the state as the Peoples Democratic Party-led government in the state had failed in that aspect.

Is it (Nyesom) Wikes security you want or that of the federal government? There are many undecided voters, now take the message to them, we have tried PDP for 16 years and we were not better off, lets try the APC Amaechi said.

Earlier, the Rivers South-east Senatorial District candidate of the party, Senator Magnus Ngei Abe, said that there was unity of purpose among people ahead of the forthcoming rerun election.

I know it has been a long and torturous journey, but nothing good comes easy. Work hard and play hard. Victory is certain by the grace of God, Abe said.
Osun State youths newly trained in agricultural production in Germany returned to Nigeria at the weekend with a promise to create a huge impact in the agriculture and general food production sector of the country.

The youths, numbering 20, arrived into the waiting hands of officials of the Osun State Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Youth Engagement at the Muritala International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos.

The youths, who were sponsored to Germany by the state government, gave the assurance that they would deliver on their training mandate on arrival in Osogbo, the state capital, after their two months trip abroad.

It would be recalled that the state government had previously in 2013 sponsored 20 youths to Germany on the need to acquire knowledge in modern agricultural practices with greater impacts in various aspects of agriculture in the state since the team arrived.

This initiative was part of the states resolve to banish hunger, enhance wealth through massive increase in food production and agriculture and as well providing assistance and support to farmers in finding and exploiting profitable agricultural practices.

The leader of the youths, Adebayo Waheed Adekunle, who described the initiative as timely, necessary and wise intervention, said the team was ready to bring about the development needed in agriculture.

Adekunle said every member of the team was also ready to translate the experiences they gathered in the course of the training to effect greater agricultural production.

The captain of the team, who described agriculture as the only feasible and workable alternative to crude oil, said the time has come for all and sundry to rise to the occasion and invest hugely in agriculture.

He called for better orientation capable of creating worthy environment for agriculture to thrive, adding: There is a need to transit from primitive farming method to modern way of practising agriculture.

Adekunle, who identified contemporary knowledge as the key to successful agricultural practices, said the time has come for every farmer to invest in knowledge-based agriculture.

He said agricultural practice has gone beyond physical manual method, hence called for the need to transit to scientific system, which, according to him, has the capacity to bring the desired result.

According to him: This trip is an eye opener to modern agricultural methods as we were trained in different aspects of agriculture vis-a-vis technological implications in farming.

We have been exposed to secrets in agriculture as per how one can improve geometrically on his yields, inputs and outputs easily and professionally.

I am saying this because we have been made to know that agriculture has gone beyond traditional manual method but rather highly advanced system, which only required knowledge not unwarranted stress.

Knowledge rules the world and as such we are ready to put things in the right perspective to turn around agriculture in the state by ensuring that what we learnt brings positive impacts in the lives of the teeming youths and other farmers.

Adekunle called on the youth to see the need to go back to agriculture instead of relying on white collar jobs that are not existed while also expressing hope in the better improvement of the nations economy.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Tuesday said Nigerias over-dependence on oil was responsible for the nations present economic challenges.

He stated this at a news conference held at his residence in Oro, Irepodun local government area of Kwara State.

The minister said the prevailing economic situation was not about trading blames, pointing out that those who understand knew that this recession was bound to happen in such circumstance.

He added that the crash in global price of oil exposed the countrys defective economic policy, with oil accounting for over 60 per cent of the nations Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Mr. Mohammed stated that the situation was further compounded by inadequate reserve to cushion the effect of oil misfortunes on the country.

We have a very defective economic structure, which depended largely on a single platform of crude oil and fuel, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quoted the minister as saying at the briefing.

Crude oil accounts for between eight and 12 per cent of our GDP and another 53 per cent of the GDP which we call non-oil, unfortunately also depend on the same oil.

When the price of oil now crashes in the international market, definitely you are bound to have this kind of shock in the economy.

He decried the citizens preference for imported goods to local products, saying substantial amount of the countrys foreign exchange earnings was being expended on importation of goods and services.
As the United States heads into the final stretch of a very long election season, Nevadans need to make sure that candidates and the media focus on issues that matter to our daily lives. Certainly, health care and the policies that candidates are proposing to address health care need to be a vital part of the discussion.

To that end, the Nevada Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD) is working with its many partner groups to encourage Nevadans to ask candidates what they plan to do to address chronic diseases. Using television, radio, newspaper, and outdoor advertisingalong with participating in health fairs and engaging in other grassroots activitiesthe Nevada PFCD is working to bring the issue into the forefront of the political dialogue. The PFCDs message highlights the importance of addressing chronic disease in health care policies and the major impact that chronic diseases have on our lives, our health care spending and our productivity.

Over half of all Nevadans have at least one chronic disease and nearly 700,000 have more than one. Chronic diseases account for seven out of ten deaths in our state and 86 cents of every dollar spent on health care costs. And the problem is getting worse every year. For example, right now, projections are that one in three first graders will develop diabetes during their lifetime.

Yet the news is not all bad. The Nevada PFCD released a study showing that simple changes in lifestyles and a focus on prevention and developing new treatments could save nearly 11,000 Nevada lives every year and cut spending on health care in our state by $55 billion over the next 15 years. Health care policies that work to encourage prevention, medical breakthroughs, and providing treatment options are a major part of the cure.

Chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease impact every one of us, whether we suffer from one of those conditions or a loved one does. Given the impact of chronic disease on all Nevadans, we should be able to expect candidates to address the issue before they ask for our vote.

The Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease is a nonpartisan group and does not support any specific candidate or political party. As Chairman Dr. Ken Thorpe noted, the purpose of the national and state organizations is to command the attention of our elected leaders to the spectrum of issues that chronic disease presents and to advocate for policies that will bridge gaps in health care and create opportunities that promote and enable better overall health for our population.

The Nevada PFCD and its partner organizations will be working hard on all fronts this election season to ensure candidates address health care in a meaningful way. But advertising and advocacy campaigns wont work without the vocal support of voters.

So the next time a candidate or a campaign knocks on your door or calls to ask you for your vote, join us by asking in return, What do you plan to do to fight chronic disease?
The wife of the president, Hajia Aisha Buhari, has called on all Nigerians to remain confident of divine intervention in the affairs of the nation.

She made the call in her Sallah message to Nigerians on Monday after observing Eid-el-Kabir prayers at the Ansar-ul-Deen Central Mosque, Abuja

Mrs. Buhari also asked the citizens to remain confident about the unique intervention of the Creator, Almighty God in the present situation of the country.

The wife of the president urged prayers for the nations leadership as well as for the safe return of the over 200 abducted Chibok schoolgirls.

According to her, the period of Eid-el-kabir is very special to Muslims because of the spiritual uplift and exhortation on the position of sacrifice as enshrined in the Holy Quran.

She, therefore, urged the Muslim faithful to reflect on the lessons of Eid-el-Kabir season to reappraise their closeness to God, level of sacrifice, commitment and sense of patriotism to the country.
Top Nollywood star, Mr. Ifeanyi Azodo, has been arrested by the police in Onitsha for alleged robbery. The Area Commander of Onistha Police Area Command, Abubarkar Yahaya, confirmed Azodos arrest to journalists in his office.

There was a case against him and we just invited him to make statement and we released him on bail because it is a bailable offence. If you want details of the matter, then go to the state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO).

Dont quote me wrong, I said we had a case reported against him and we invited him for questioning and along the line we found out that he took laws into his hands and in the course of our investigation we found him wanting. However, we have recovered about 80 per cent of the missing items in relation with the matter and investigation is still ongoing.

I said we are still investigating the matter. It is the conclusion of the investigation that will determine the next line of action.

A top police officer, however, told our correspondent that owner of a hotel in Ontsha reported the case of robbery against Azodo.

According to investigation, Azodo invited a 30-yearold man into the hotel. During their discussion, there arose a misunderstanding between them which attracted the hotel management which invited the police. The man, who gave his name simply as Stephen, did not speak on the cause of the argument.

He, however, gave his phone number and said he would not want to say anything about the matter until after the police concluded their investigation. When contacted through a text message, Azodo replied: Ya bro got ur message. Will call u once am done shooting.

However, Azodo did not call at press time. The PPRO, ASP Nkiru Nwode, confirmed Azodos arrest. Nwode said that it was a case of robbery and not homosexual as being rumoured in some quarters. Yes there was a case of robbery reported against him. I did not see it as a homosexual; it was a case of robbery, the PPRO added.
Amid skyrocketing costs of basic food items and other consumables, President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday assured Nigerians that this year will witness a bumper harvest.

He gave the assurance in his hometown of Daura, Katsina State, after observing the Eid prayers to celebrate Eid-el-Kabir.

The president also said the Federal Government will resolve the issue of militancy in the Niger Delta just as he assured Nigerians that the ongoing war against corruption will be waged in the spirit of justice and fairness to all.

Mr. Buhari, according to a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said: Nigerians can see what we have done on Boko Haram and what we are doing to resolve the problem in the Niger Delta.

Before the elections, we identified three major problems confronting our country. The first is security; we need to sufficiently secure our country to manage it well.

The second is economy, especially job for the youths and fighting corruption which is continuous.

For the youths, graduates and non-graduates who are interested in agriculture, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the CBN are doing something to provide employment for them, the president said.

Buhari also said those who abuse public trust will face justice in addition to returning their stolen assets to the nations coffers.

He thanked Nigerians for supporting the Federal Governments policies, programmes and actions aimed at improving security, revamping the economy and deepening the fight against corruption.

The president expressed joy that the harvest this year would be good.

We should thank God this year, the reports Im getting, which is very pleasing, is that we will have a bumper harvest this year, he said.

I want Nigerians to realise that what this government inherited after 16 years of the PDP government was no savings, no infrastructure, no power, no rail, no road and no security, he added, assuring Nigerians that better days lie ahead.

President Buhari, who is observing this years Eid holiday in Daura, will return to Abuja after the two-day public holidays.
A former Lagos State Governor and National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, said yesterday that Lagos has political and economic stability because of a solid foundation.

He told reporters after observing the Eid prayers at Dodan Barracks praying ground in Lagos that lack of solid foundation was the bane of the nations current economic woes.

Tinubu said economic re-strategizing and re-planning were however, necessary, to achieve sustainable national prosperity.

The political and economic stability we are enjoying in Lagos today is as a result of a solid foundation, he said.

Without a good and solid foundation, we cannot achieve a sustainable economic prosperity.

On the hardship sweeping across the country, the APC national leader said We need to re-strategize and re-plan, but that planning period is always a very difficult period in any family, organisation and nation.

That is what we are experiencing now, but it is for a better and stronger future.

Speaking with reporters too after observing the Eid prayers, Lagos State Deputy Governor, Mrs. Idiat Adebule, urged Nigerians to uphold the significance of Eid-el-Kabir, total trust and obedience to God, to accelerate the pace of economic recovery.

Adebule also urged them to celebrate peacefully and reach out to the less-privileged among them.

We can only enjoy Allahs favour when we totally trust and obey His will. He is our creator and He knows what is best for us as individuals and as a nation, Mrs. Adebule said.

House of Representatives Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila, also spoke to reporters, urging them to convey a message of hope to Nigerians.

Gbajabiamila said President Muhammadu Buhari was making efforts to reform the economy.

I urge us to be prayerful and by Gods grace we shall get better and stronger as a nation, he said.
Limit up on Wheat? Banghart Properties - Sat Oct 29, 7:09PM CDT News broke over the weekend that could help wheat trade limit up when it reopens.

Rains in the Plains, Dow soars Sidwell Strategies - Sat Oct 29, 8:38AM CDT 1st winter wheat ratings Monday; consider carbon for cash flow during drought

Open Enrollment 101: Make the Most of Your Benefits Young & The Invested - Sat Oct 29, 6:00AM CDT The 2022 open enrollment season will be a difficult one as workers have to factor in persistently high inflation while they choose their coverage. These tips can help you maximize your benefits.

Cattle Market Fades on Friday Barchart - Fri Oct 28, 4:39PM CDT Live cattle futures ended the weeks last trade day down by 35 cents to $1.02 with soon to expire October down the most. Cash trade picked up later in the week with some Friday catch up sales mostly... LEV22 : 150.375s (-0.68%) LEZ22 : 153.000s (-0.28%) LEG23 : 156.325s (-0.33%) GFX22 : 177.875s (-0.14%) GFF23 : 180.375s (-0.04%)

Hogs Rebound into Weekend Barchart - Fri Oct 28, 4:39PM CDT Lean hog futures ended the Friday round with 32 to 97 cent gains to fade the triple digit losses from Thursday. The USDA National Average Base Hog Price was $90.54 in the PM update, down by $1.15. The... HEZ22 : 86.100s (+1.15%) HEJ23 : 92.700s (+0.62%) KMZ22 : 96.125s (+0.37%)

Cotton Falls Triple Digits Barchart - Fri Oct 28, 4:39PM CDT December cotton ended the day locked limit lower on the 3c loss. The March contract worked back off the limit for the bell, but still went home down by 274 points. For the week, Dec cotton closed 702 points... CTZ22 : 72.11s (-3.99%) CTH23 : 72.07s (-3.66%) CTK23 : 72.30s (-2.99%)

Loss for Friday Wheat Barchart - Fri Oct 28, 4:39PM CDT Wheat futures faded on Friday with the front month contracts going home 6 1/4 to 9 1/4 cents lower in SRW. For the December contract that completed the week with a 21 1/2 cent loss. KC futures closed down... ZWZ22 : 829-2s (-1.10%) ZWH23 : 849-0s (-1.05%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.6281 (-1.18%) KEZ22 : 925-0s (-0.78%) KEPAWS.CM : 8.8324 (-0.81%) MWZ22 : 945-0s (-0.58%)
I appreciated the Nevada Sheriffs' and Chiefs' Association announcing its opposition to Question 2 on the November ballot. Their concern about the safety of young people being compromised by the availability of recreational marijuana is of prime importance to all of us. There are other safety problems with it as well. Twenty-five states have "legalized" the use of medical marijuana, but it is still illegal under federal law, where it is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, meaning that it has no approved medical use in the United States and that it cannot be prescribed or dispensed by licensed medical and pharmaceutical personnel. Hence, doctors, pharmacists, and nurses are not involved in its use. Another concern is that marijuana smoke contains carcinogens, just as tobacco smoke does. Also, the availability of edible marijuana products poses the risk of unpredictable drug levels in users. When Colorado "legalized" the use of recreational marijuana in 2012, there was a 30 percent increase in hospitalizations for marijuana overdose. Overdose can produce such adverse reactions as schizophrenia, heart attack, and transient ischemia. Chemical compounds found in marijuana cross the placenta into an unborn child and are found in breast milk as well. They are also detectable in urine up to 12 days after use. There is the potential for interaction with other medications, as well as concern for impaired driving and operating of machinery. (Kate O'Rourke, quoted in Pharmacy Practice News, July 2016, p 22)
Earlier this year, Bridgespan Group outlined a set of billion-dollar funding bets that might just lead to some real systemic change. If the experts are right, these are some of todays best opportunities for philanthropists who want to create a more equitable America. Some ways down the Bridgespan list, under transforming communities, comes a rather wonky idea: Expand housing vouchers to encourage families to move to neighborhoods with more high-quality jobs, better schools, and stronger health systems.

Intriguing, right? But should funders really be giving big to shift inner-city residents off to a nicer life elsewhere? And is this kind of intervention scalable in a meaningful way?

As it stands, the success or failure of housing vouchers can come down to a set of related services, grouped under the name "housing mobility." In a nutshell, housing mobility refers to counseling and support for people who benefit (or want to benefit) from federal housing vouchers, subsidizing their move away from a chronically underserved area into one with better public and private resources.

The origins of this issue trace back to the 1970s, with the creation of the Housing Choice Voucher Program (known as Section 8) which provides rental assistance for qualifying low-income households via several landmark civil rights cases. Theoretically, the vouchers let struggling families compete as renters and buyers in the open market.

Forty-odd years later, the system's still rife with problems. While all signs point to better outcomes for those who escape chronically impoverished areas, actually doing so is difficult. Applicants need to work within a maze of public housing authorities (PHAs), bureaucratic strictures, and local rules favoring landlords over prospective tenants. Housing mobility programs attempt to correct that imbalance, as we've reported in the past.

Such programs are just one way to take on the problem of residential segregation, which is the primary driver of enduring school segregation. As we've reported, funders worried inequity in American society should be devoting serious attention to this problem, and especially to dismantling the exclusionary zoning laws that make it so hard for families of modest means to afford better places.

Related:

While there arent many funders working on housing mobility and even fewer taking on the larger drivers of residential segregation, that's starting to change.

Housing mobility is not a solution that thrills everyone. It does, after all, prompt the thought that historically black neighborhoods (in particular) are bad places that people should flee from. Many funders want to make places better, not convince residents to leave. Other critics call housing mobility a form of social engineering.

Nevertheless, several funders are moving forward despite the challenges, and with some new ideas. Weve covered the use of Pay for Success approaches to housing mobility, tapping money from private sources. Investors pay to house extremely vulnerable people, and if all goes well, theyre paid back based on the money saved in healthcare, public safety, and other social costs.

For a Pay for Success project in Santa Clara we profiled last year, the coalition of funders included the California Endowment, the Health Trust, the Reinvestment Fund, the Corporation for Supportive Housing, the James Irvine Foundation and Google.org.

You can understand why there's a lot of excitement around using Pay for Success to improve housing mobility. For the experts who've long been touting housing mobility, PFS offers a way to finally mobilize some serious cash behind the idea. For those excited about PFS, housing mobility offers a great testing ground their ideas. (See this working paper from the Community Development Investment Center on the synergies here.)

It's not just private funders who are intrigued by using PFS to support housing mobility. HUD has put up $8.6 million for state and local initiatives in this area.

Meanwhile, other approaches to housing mobility are moving forward here and there with funder support. Recently, the Kresge Foundation made a two-year grant to fund Mobility Works, a technical assistance collaboration between mobility practitioners and policy experts. Headed by the Poverty and Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), Mobility Works includes staff from PRRAC, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and three regional housing mobility programs.

Some of the services Mobility Works may deliver include analysis of PHA practices, assistance with applying for HUD funds, and trainings for landlord outreach, community tours and counseling to clients.

Other funders also have an eye on housing mobility. During its Making Connection study of educational outcomes for low-income children, the Annie E. Casey Foundation researched the effects of housing mobility in conjunction with school choice (findings were mixed). In Chicago, the MacArthur Foundation supported a RAND evaluation of Housing Choice Partners, a housing mobility nonprofit. And both Ford and MacArthur have partnered with PRRAC on its housing work.

One other set of funders worth mentioning are those worried about public health, who've given growing attention to the role of housing in health outcomes. We haven't seen any of these funders yet focus on mobility, but it wouldn't surprise us if they did, since it makes sense that moving to a better placewith more parks and wider food choices, for instancecould definitely boost family health.

Related:
We mostly see a lot of education giving from car companies, and while Toyota does its share, it also gives more to the environment than you might expectincluding a recent national park donation. What gives?

Lets just get it out there: Cars are terrible for the environment. The transportation sector overall is responsible for 26 percent of the United States greenhouse gas emissions, with cars and trucks alone contributing nearly one-fifth of national emissions.

While we really need to get individuals driving less in order to mitigate climate change, cleaner cars do help. Toyota has been a leader in this area, which may explain why its one of the few major automakers that gives substantially to environmental work.

Outside of their company sustainability and cleaner cars measures, which we recently reported on, some of the grants within their green giving are pretty surprising.

Related: What's Toyota Up to With Its Green Research Grants?

Take, for example, the most recent $1 million award to Yellowstone Park Foundation. The donation will establish a Yellowstone Youth Campus that will house educational programming, but also seek Living Building Challenge Certification, the most advanced rating for green building, requiring structures to help restore the natural environment.

Toyotas backed other Yellowstone projects in the past, too, including introducing a renewable energy system to a ranger station, and backing the construction of a new Old Faithful visitors center. Toyota also recently entered a partnership with WWF to support the Living Asian Forest Project, including $1 million in funding annually for the next five years.

Other efforts include a Young Investigator Fellowship program that supports research in green energy technology. Even its luxury subsidiary Lexus has gotten in on the action. And weve written before about the companys philanthropic partnership with the Audubon Society, and the way it ties STEM education into environmentalism.

Related:

Car companies, along with all kinds of various community giving you see in most corporate CSR programs, often have a thing for STEM education, for reasons weve explored at length. But why is a car company doing things like building a super-green building in a national park?

First off, there is still some overlap here with Toyotas STEM interests, considering the educational component. But really, were talking about the automakers branding as one of, if not the most environmentally friendly of the major car companies.

It doesnt have a perfect record, as it did have to pay around $34 million following a 2003 settlement with the EPA, after the agency charged that the company sold cars in the 1990s with flawed emissions-control systems.

But throughout the 2000s and up to today, Toyota has been an environmental darlingfor a car company, that is. Theres the ever-present Prius that made hybrid cars go mainstream. The company continues to pioneer alternative fuel research. The EPA and nonprofits have recognized Toyotas energy use reduction efforts.

This identity for the company is crucial, particularly as millennials become an increasingly important consumer demographic. Car companies have struggled to connect with these younger consumers, who tend to drive less, care more about the environment, and lean more toward sustainable products.

As Toyota continues its sustainability efforts and green philanthropy, it bolsters its standing in the minds of Americans as a more responsible option for car buyers.
Update 9/13/16  Despite objections from Barefoot Bay residents, Superior Self Storage of Wichita has received zoning approval and begun construction on phase one of its project near Hoover Road. To secure the go-ahead, Hitschmann agreed to go above and beyond the normal zoning to ensure the facility doesnt just look like a bunch of metal buildings sitting next to million-dollar homes, the developer told the source. It was obviously very long and strenuous, but its relieving to get it to go through.

As part of the rezoning, city officials changed the address of the property to 5800 W. 29th St. to better align with other addresses in the area, the source reported.

The first phase of the project will include 238 units in 14 buildings, with the first spaces expected to be available in January.

6/5/15  Real estate developer Francis Hitschmann is seeking zoning approval to develop Superior Self Storage of Wichita on 5 acres of land in Wichita, Kan. The Wichita-Sedgwick County Planning Commission discussed the proposal at its June 4 meeting, according to the source. The site at 6008 W. 29th St., just west of Hoover Road, is already partially zoned for commercial usage but requires a conditional-use permit for the development of self-storage.

If approved, the facility will include storage for boats and other watercrafts due to its proximity to several private lakes, Hitschmann, who lives in the community with his family, told the source. I just kind of see the demand, and I hear neighbors talking, he said.

Hitschmann has received feedback from residents and made changes to the proposal to reflect their concerns. The initial development will only include 3 acres of the land.

If the zoning request is approved by the planning commission, the proposal will be presented to the Wichita City Council.

Hitschmann is a product engineer for Murfin Drilling Co. Inc., a Wichita-based gas- and oil-production company. Hes also the owner of Automated Treating Systems LLC, which builds products to automate the production-chemical program of a well.
Spencer F. Kirk, CEO of publicly traded self-storage real estate investment trust (REIT) and third-party management firm Extra Space Storage Inc., will retire from his position on Dec. 31. Kirk will be replaced by Joseph D. Margolis, presently the companys chief investment officer, according to a press release. Kirk and Margolis are scheduled to speak tomorrow at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) 2016 Global Real Estate Conference in New York City.

Kirk has served as CEO since April 2009. He also served as company chair from 2009 to 2012, and has been president since 2007. "I am grateful to have worked with a dedicated team, and we should all be proud of what we are building together, Kirk said in a released statement. Having worked with Joe for nearly two decades, I am confident that we share a common vision for the continued growth of Extra Space. The strength and dedication of our deep executive bench ensures that Extra Space will remain on a successful path, and I look forward to supporting a seamless transition with Joe and the team."

Kirk will continue to serve on the Extra Space board of directors. He intends to devote more time to his non-profit foundation, Kirk Humanitarian, which works to provide micronutrient supplementation to at-risk women and children living in underdeveloped areas of the world. Since 2005, the organization has distributed more than 2 million doses of multi-vitamins and minerals, according to its website.

"The board would like to thank Spencer for his contribution to Extra Space, said Ken Woolley, founder and executive chairman of Extra Space. He has been a phenomenal leader, and he will continue to influence our strategic direction for years to come. We are pleased to have him continue to advise Extra Space as a member of the board."

Margolis will begin his new role on Jan. 1. He has served as chief investment officer for Extra Space since July 2015 and been involved with the company in various roles for 18 years. He served on the board of directors from February 2005 to July 2015 and was a member of its audit and compensation, nominating and governance committees. Prior to joining Extra Space, Margolis was partner and senior managing director of Penzance Properties in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. He was a co-founding partner of Arsenal Real Estate Funds and previously held senior positions at Prudential Real Estate Investors. Margolis is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia University School of Law, according to the release.

"It is both an honor and great responsibility to be appointed chief executive officer of Extra Space Storage," Margolis said. "I have worked closely with Spencer, the board and the Extra Space team for more than 18 years, and I have a deep respect and admiration for the strategic focus, track record and unique culture that has been built. Spencer is an exemplary CEO, and I am confident that together we can make this a smooth transition. I look forward to leading a team that will continue the Extra Space legacy of consistently delivering a great product to our customers, providing an enriching workplace for our fellow team members, and striving to execute on our strategy to enhance shareholder value over the long term."

"We heartily welcome Joe as chief executive officer. He has been intimately involved with Extra Space Storage since 1998, Woolley said. We are confident that Joe brings the right balance of real estate expertise and leadership skills to take Extra Space through its next phase of growth. We have a deep and experienced management team, and a formidable platform to continue to execute our proven business plan and deliver outstanding shareholder results."

Kirk, Margolis and Scott Stubbs, chief financial officer at Extra Space, are scheduled to participate in a roundtable presentation at the BAML conference at 2:55 p.m. ET on Tuesday. The session will be accessible via webcast by Veracast. A recorded version will be available for viewing through Dec. 12.

Past BAML conferences have featured panel presentations along with one-on-one and small-group meetings with top executives from real estate companies. The 2016 event will be held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Westin Hotel Times Square.

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Extra Space owns or operates 1,412 self-storage properties in 37 states; Washington, D.C.; and Puerto Rico. The companys properties comprise approximately 945,000 units and 106 million square feet of rentable space.
A sell-off across multiple asset classes last week left many investors nervous on Friday. U.S. futures contracts for the Standard & Poors 500 finished the week down by nearly 2.6 percent while the CBOE volatility index (VIX) rose by 40 percent to 17.5. The sell-off continued early today in Asia and Europe, with the MSCI all-country index off by more than 0.8 percent at one point and heavy selling in emerging markets. After a summer notable for extraordinary complacency in the face of sluggish economic demand, lowered corporate growth forecasts and significant geopolitical risks, the spike in volatility suggests that many managers returned from the beach with a changed mindset. If allocators now believe that the era of easy money is approaching the end, with the Federal Reserve considering tightening and the European Central Bank seeing no need for more action, a rush for the exits could occur. The baseline expectation following a decline like this is for quick stabilization and snapback, according to Waverly Advisors CIO Adam Grimes, who added, However, a feedback loop could develop if further moderate declines trigger stops. Grimes believes its possible  although he doesnt believe it likely  that markets could accelerate into a sharp mini crash early this week, the potential magnitude of the move demands attention. The selling pressure was not unique to equities as yields for benchmark U.S. and German government bonds rose and futures for front-month delivery of West Texas Intermediate crude oil sank by almost 2 percent to close just above $45 per barrel. For now, many market participants appear uneasy over future prospects for any financial assets.

Clintons health called into question. After appearing to need help to get into her vehicle after a visit to the 9/11 Memorial in New York on Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintons campaign staff revealed that the former secretary of state has contracted pneumonia. Market analysts jumped on the delay between the incident and the disclosure, suggesting that the candidate will continue to face criticism for a perceived lack of transparency. GOP candidate Donald Trump was unusually measured in his response to the incident. In the past, the flamboyant real-estate mogul has questioned Clintons physical well-being.

Linde calls off Praxair deal. Media reports today indicate that Germany-based Linde has ended merger discussions with U.S.-based Praxair, shutting down a deal that might have created the worlds largest industrial gas producer with a combined market capitalization in excess of $30 billion. The proposed merger had been widely discussed since August and would have been the latest in a wave of consolidation in specialized industrial segments. Proposed as a near merger of equals, unnamed sources said that integration at the executive level proved daunting.

Fertilizer merger announced. This morning Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan announced an agreement to merge with Agrium in an all-stock transaction that will create the worlds largest fertilizer company by market capitalization at more than $27 billion. Potash is focused on mining and refining agricultural nutrients while Agriums specialty is marketing and distribution, creating a combined full-service agricultural brand when combined. The newly created entity will be headquartered in Saskatoon, Potashs corporate home.

HP to purchase Samsungs printer business. Hewlett-Packard revealed an agreement today to acquire the printing division of Samsung Electronics in a $1.05 billion transaction designed to solidify HPs dominance in enterprise printing. HP is a standalone hardware-focused company spun out of Hewlett-Packard in late 2015. As part of the acquisition, HP will now control manufacturing for laser printer production previously purchased from third parties.

Juncker calls for investigation of Barroso. On Sunday a probe was announced to determine whether former EU chief Jose Manuel Barroso violated EU laws in accepting a post with investment bank Goldman Sachs that involved advising on policy risk. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker  Barrosos successor  has asked the former Portuguese leader to provide clarification of his role with Goldman. Many political analysts view the inquiry as politically motivated, given that Barroso waited the required 18 months prior to joining the firm.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba just posted a blowout quarter, growing revenue 59 percent, to $4.8 billion, increasing monthly mobile active users by 39 percent and more than doubling mobile revenue. Its Taobao app now boasts 427 million monthly users, who open the app seven times a day on average.

But short-seller Jim Chanos isnt impressed. The founder of short-biased hedge fund firm Kynikos Associates said on Tuesday from the stage at the Pierre hotel at the Delivering Alpha conference that Alibaba is growing its balance sheet much faster than its growing revenue and repeated earlier criticisms of Alibabas delivery arm.

Its the Chinese model; you never see anything, Chanos said. You see the cash going out the door, not coming in the door ... thats concerning. Theres maddeningly not enough disclosure to tell you whats happening in this vast network.

Just a couple of hours after he made these remarks, Joseph Tsai, Alibabas vice chairman, took to the stage to defend his company, saying that while he respects Chanos as a short-seller, Alibabas stock has appreciated more than 50 percent since Chanos began talking about it.

The problem is he doesnt seem to try to understand the business and the power of the digital economy in China. Id like to invite Jim Chanos to see our campus, see our business, so we can explain our business to him.

When asked why, given that Amazon.com has full control over its distribution, Alibaba doesnt also consolidate its distribution business, Tsai explained that to do so would mean the company would have to manage a distribution force of some 2 million people.

Our platforms generate 40 million packages a day. Amazon handles 5 to 6 million packages a day, Tsai said. When you look at 2 million people, managing the warehouses and delivering packages on the streets  if you combine entire work force of FedEx and UPS, thats 500,000, 600,000 people.

Alibaba went public on September 19, 2014, listing on the New York Stock Exchange in what turned out to be the biggest IPO in history. It fell sharply during the Chinese stock market rout of last summer, but its since bounced back, and then some. The stock is up 61 percent over the past year, gaining 27 percent in the last three months alone.

Chanos clearly hasnt made money shorting Alibaba. But hedge fund managers havent made any money going long on the stock either. Thats because few of them actually own it. At the end of the third quarter of 2014, the same quarter Alibaba went public, at least 106 hedge funds held a position in the stock. As of the end of the second quarter of 2016, just 15 hedge funds counted Alibaba among their top ten U.S. equity positions. Many of those 15 funds are either small firms or manage small U.S. equity portfolios. So much for delivering alpha.

Visit our Delivering Alpha channel for the latest on the conference. Follow #deliveringalpha on Twitter for real time updates, and follow Amanda Cantrell at @amandakcantrell.
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.)
ELY  The Bureau of Land Managements Ely District is hauling water to wild horses in the Big Sand Spring Valley portion of the Pancake Herd Management Area the agency announced Monday.

This management area is about 60 miles west of Ely, and the water supply is to supplement spring sources impacted by drought, and prevent further declines in animal health or mortalities.

The district has been hauling water to Martilletti Spring, which is estimated to be flowing at a rate of a half-gallon per minute  insufficient to meet the demands of the 75-plus horses that depend upon the water  since Aug. 30.

On Sept. 8, the Ely District immediately began hauling water to nearby Moody Spring upon receiving a report of three deceased horses.

Moody Spring is flowing at a rate of about one gallon per minute, insufficient to meet the needs of the estimated 200-plus horses gathering to drink. The effected horses range in body condition score from 4 to 1.5, said the BLM.

The BLM continually monitors drought conditions, district wide. As late as July, water sources in the area were keeping up with usage, in part due to precipitation received in May and June, said the agency, explaining those sources have dried up since that time and have resulted in additional horses trying to find water at the few remaining springs.

The BLM estimated there are 1,800-plus wild horses in the Pancake HMA, about 1,000 of them in Big Sand Spring Valley. The areas appropriate management level is between 240 and 493 wild horses.
Bank of Queensland is reportedly mulling the sale of its insurance arm, St Andrews Insurance.The bank is looking to offload the insurance unit which provides consumer credit and life insurance products, AFR.com has reported.The Brisbane-based bank purchased St Andrews from Commonwealth Bank in 2010 and has sought advice from Citigroup on the sale, the report continued.The move follows reports that Japanese insurance powerhouse MS&AD was weighing up a deal for the wealth management arm of ANZ Bank as Australian firms look to drop non-core assets.The AFR reported that Bank of Queensland has been mulling the decision for the past six to twelve months as Citi have continually looked at the merits of the transaction.When Bank of Queensland purchased the unit, it had annual gross written premiums (GWP) of $75 million with 165,000 policyholders.



Related stories:

Japanese insurers MS&AD and Meijei Yasuda mull major Aussie deal

Aussie insurance M&As set to continue
PERILS, a European firm which specialises in industry-wide catastrophe insurance data, has announced its launch in Australia.The Zurich based firm has made available market-wide property sum insured exposed to bushfire, earthquake, flood, hail and tropical and extratropical cyclones in Australia via its database.The firm will also provide loss data for catastrophe events above a market loss of $500 million, it has been announced in a statement.Luzi Hitz, CEO of PERILS, said that the firm will look to expand across the Asia Pacific region and thanked the industry for its support."We are particularly grateful for the support we have received from the primary insurance industry in Australia.Without this support, we could not fulfill our mission to increase transparency in the field of natural catastrophe insurance, and as a result facilitate a more liquid and stable Cat market, Hitz said.Julie Batch, chief customer officer at IAG , welcomed PERILS to the market and said that the launch opens up new opportunities for the industry in Australia.The Australian insurance market represents the intersections of strong regulation, high insurance penetration and catastrophe risk, Batch said.Creating vehicles that help develop alternate capital structures and encourage and support new investors to the region is critical for the health of the industry.
Is it time to eradicate the term insurance broker? A pair of industry leaders have mooted the idea at the NIBA Convention held in Melbourne this week. Mark Searles , CEO and managing director of broker network AUB Group , was the first to mention the idea in a presentation at the convention that looked at the future of the broking industry,In five years' time, the name insurance broker - should it be insurance broker or risk consultant?If you actually break down that very phrase, insurance broker says two things: first, insurance; and broking, by definition, means I am going to get you the best price.It is not about the value proposition that we are proposing for the future about being a true risk consultant and being a true trusted adviser, Searles said. Lambros Lambrou , CEO of Aon Risk Solutions in Australia, agreed with Searles and said that the title undermines much of the good work brokers do for clients.One of the things that we would do well as an industry would be to eradicate the term insurance broker, Lambrou said.There are all sorts of connotations with that, one of which is that brokers in every industry around the world are people who match buyers with sellers. In reality, if you think about what we do as a trusted adviser for our clients, there is much, much more than that.Lambrou noted that as the global risk landscape continues to shift and evolve, brokers are being given a platform to communicate their value to clients in a far bigger way than a transactional relationship.Searles suggested that an omni-channel approach to risk and communication will be key for the insurance broking industry of the future as brokers will need to focus on both people and financial risk as well as traditional physical risks.There will still be a critical role for brokers in the future of the industry, Searles said, as younger generations have demonstrated that they are willing to pay for specialist advice, despite the onset of disruption and the commoditisation of many lines of insurance.The whole concept of the trusted advisor is incredibly relevant and is the protection against disruption, Searles continued.The nature of people who actually want to have a professional adviser, a true trusted adviser working for them and more importantly, being prepared to pay for it as well, we believe is creating a very strong future for this industry.
With M&A activity expected to continue over the next five years, brokerage owners have "never had a better time to cash in", according to one industry leader.Speaking at the NIBA Convention, held in Melbourne this week, David Hosking, chief general manager of the Broker and Agency division of Allianz , said that consolidation is set to continue over the next several years.I am expecting more consolidation, Hosking said of the industry landscape to 2021.It is a pretty low organic growth environment at the moment and when that happens, it is the right time for inorganic growth via mergers and acquisitions.He added that for owners, it has never been a better time to cash in.There will always be room for smaller, specialist offerings, as there always is. However, these specialist offerings will have to have a nice, niche plan because they wont be able to compete with the scale and advantage that the larger players will bring.Hosking also noted that changing consumer dynamics will have an impact on brokers and insurers over the coming years.Currently, many consumers and businesses are in what Hosking called the RO-PO phase: research online, purchase offline. However, the insurance industry continues its creep towards digitalisation as more consumers look to transact fully online.Hosking stressed that this will impact intermediary businesses. Advice and service will be critical as technology continues to break down traditional barriers to entry in the insurance market.Commercial risks will also change as they move from physical to intangible risks as the oft-discussed Internet of Things is superseded by the Internet of Experiences."This is the data and digital age, Hosking continued.Information has never been richer, nor has it been easier to access.Digital is changing that customer expectation forever. Consumers now want transparency, ease of use and personalisation when dealing with suppliers.
Digital solution provider to insurance industry eBaoTech has announced Tegos implementation of Collaborus Cloud, a full lifecycle insurance distribution and policy processing platform available via cloud.eBaoTechs Collaborus Cloud will allow Tego, an underwriting agency specialising in the healthcare sector, to further optimise its operation processes and significantly expand its business in Australia via distribution to brokers.Eric Lowenstein, CEO of Tego, commented: "As a new market entrant unencumbered by legacy, we had the opportunity to think differently and we aim to be highly responsive to the needs of doctors to bring a new and different perspective to risk selection, pricing, claims, and cover."We were impressed by the strong capabilities and flexibility of Collaborus Cloud which allows full policy lifecycle for brokers, internal insurance processing staff, and underwriters. The Cloud approach and out-of-box iform functions will enable us to provide an integrated application form on our website and quickly expand our business."Ken Slevin, GM of Collaborus business unit and corporate VP, eBaoTech, said: "We are delighted to be selected by Tego as their software partner to support their expansion in Australia. We believe our digital insurance distribution platform will quickly deliver business values to insurance carriers, underwriters and brokers, especially to those start-ups and underwriting agency firms. We look forward to assisting Tego in achieving the maximum effect and promise of Collabrous Cloud."Collaborus Cloud is a global digital insurance platform that has multilingual and multi-currency capabilities that allow for country level product configuration. Presently, it is being used by insurance carriers such as AIG in some 10 countries and by US-based AmFed.
The constitutionality of Oklahomas workers compensation alternative, the Oklahoma Option, which was established in the 2013 overhaul of the states workers comp system, is currently being challenged in an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The Oklahoma Employee Injury Benefit Act was created by Senate Bill 1062 in 2013 as an alternative system that employers may use to satisfy state requirements to provide benefits to injured workers. That bill also established the Oklahoma Workers Compensation Commission to replace the former Oklahoma Workers Compensation Court.

Ruling in Vasquez v. Dillards in February, the Oklahoma Workers Compensation Commission found the Oklahoma Employee Injury Benefit Act to be unconstitutional and not enforceable.

The Oklahoma Option allows qualified employers to opt-out of the Oklahoma workers comp system by establishing an Employee Benefit Plan (Plan) under the provisions of the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Plan benefits are supposed to be equal to or better than those provided under the workers comp system.

The case before the Oklahoma Supreme Court involves the denial of a work injury claim filed by Dillards Inc. employee Jonnie Yvonne Vasquez, who injured her shoulder and neck while lifting shoe boxes at her workplace. Dillards denied her claim saying Vasquezs injury was a pre-existing condition and not an injury as defined by the Plan, according to the OWCC order.

In its February order, the OWCC said the benefit plans permitted to be used to opt-out establish a dual system under which injured workers are not treated equally. The commissioners recognized in their ruling that the decision would be appealed to the states highest court.

Its a case that has created an odd situation in which insurance company trade groups and plaintiffs lawyers are on the same side of an issue. While acknowledging that improvements to the workers comp system are in order, opt-out opponents believe the traditional workers comp status quo should be preserved.

On the other side are those that see an option whereby companies may choose to establish their own plans for assisting workers who have been injured on the job to be a viable alternative, one which can both lower employer costs and result in positive outcomes for the employees.

Bill Minick, with the Dallas-based injury benefit consulting firm, PartnerSource, says however that the facts of the case are being overlooked by those seeking to overturn the opt-out portion of Oklahomas workers compensation act.

A strong supporter of both the workers comp nonsubscriber system in Texas and the Oklahoma Option, Minick says in the Vasquez ruling the OWCC never actually found that the employee at the center of the case was harmed by her employers alternative workers comp plan, nor did they find any wrong doing by her employer.

Dillards plan, he says, paid substantial benefits while Ms. Vasquezs claim was being reviewed.

The claim was denied after it was determined that the condition for which Vasquez made the workers comp claim was found by her employer to be pre-existing.

Minick says Oklahoma Option opponents are over-reaching in their challenge to Oklahomas 2013 legislative reforms.

In an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court, the Workers Injury Law and Advocacy Group (WILG) said opt-out plans, which are developed using ERISA guidelines, are a wholly inadequate substitute for traditional workers compensation plans.

One reason for that is the limitation on the right to sue under ERISA-based plans. But even if the right to sue is included in the ERISA plan, such plans are still inadequate and will inevitably shift the burden of liability from employers for employees injuries to state and federal programs, the WILG brief states.

Similarly, a brief jointly filed by three property/casualty insurer groups  the American Insurance Association (AIA), the Property/Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) and the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC)  states that Oklahomas opt-out alternative constitutes a prohibited special law that deprives injured workers of equal protection under the law.

In addition, the opt-out provision does not require the qualified employer to cover all of the injuries and occupational diseases covered by traditional workers comp, and it enables the employer to terminate benefits before the injured worker has completed medical care or returned to work, the brief states. The losses that are not covered by the plan, will be shifted to the employee and, in many cases, to taxpayers via state and federal programs like Social Security Disability, Medicaid and Medicare, the insurer groups brief asserts.

According to Minick, those groups that oppose workers comp alternatives are ignoring data that he says illustrate the positive outcomes opt-out plans have achieved for both employees and employers.

Changing the status quo in workers compensation is difficult. Theres a lot of resistance to the ideas of greater employer and employee, and medical provider accountability, and competition, Minick says.

Listen to a podcast with Bill Minick at www.insurancejournal.tv.

Topics Workers' Compensation Oklahoma
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed suit against national insurance brokerage firm Brown & Brown, based in Daytona Beach, Fla., over allegations it violated the Civil Rights Act by rescinding a job offer to a pregnant woman. Brown & Brown denies the allegations.

The suit alleges that Brown & Browns Daytona Beach location offered the position of personal lines technical assistant to Nicole Purcell back in March of 2015. Purcell says after receiving her offer letter and employment agreement form via e-mail, but before formally accepting the offer, she disclosed to Brown & Browns employee services coordinator that she was in the early stages of pregnancy and asked about the firms maternity benefits.

Purcell said she told the Brown & Brown representative that she did not intend to take extended leave from work.

According to the court documents, Brown & Browns representative responded that she would have to get back to Purcell and mentioned a former employee who was pregnant, and that it didnt turn out well.

Brown & Brown is firmly committed to complying with the law and does not discriminate against people based on pregnancy or any other protected category...

Purcell said later that day she received an email from Brown & Brown rescinding the job offer saying the company had a very urgent need to have somebody in this position long term We appreciate you telling us beforehand.

In the suit, EEOC claims Brown & Brown committed unlawful employment practices causing out-of-pocket expenses, lost earnings, compensation and benefits as Purcell had already submitted her two week-notice to her previous employer in anticipation of taking the new position. The EEOC also states that Purcell suffered other damages including emotional pain, mental anguish, suffering, humiliation, inconvenience and loss of enjoyment of life.

The company is being accused of violating Title 1 of the Civil Rights Act and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act for allegedly discriminating against Purcell by failing to hire her because of her pregnancy, a condition of her sex.

EEOC filed suit July 25 in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division (EEOC v. w Brown & Brown of Florida, Inc., Case No. 6:16-cv-1326-ORL18-DAB) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.

Brown & Browns attorney Todd Aidman, a partner with national labor and defense firm FordHarrison in its Tampa office, said the lawsuits allegations against the company are untrue and that the broker hires based upon merit and merit alone.

Brown & Brown is firmly committed to complying with the law and does not discriminate against people based on pregnancy or any other protected category, Aidman told Insurance Journal. Any other allegation otherwise is simply not true.

The EEOC hadnt yet served Brown & Brown when it announced its lawsuit against the company via press release on July 25. The company was eventually served in mid-August.

Aidman said he wouldnt get into specifics of the case on what statements may or may not have been made, but said that Brown & Brown was not expecting the EEOC to file suit.

According to the press release from the EEOC, the agency seeks back pay and compensatory and punitive damages for the applicant. The suit also seeks injunctive relief to prevent and correct pregnancy discrimination, the posting of anti-discrimination notices, and training of Brown & Browns managers and employees about federal equal employment opportunity laws.

Pregnant women have the right to seek jobs and not be denied employment because they are pregnant, Robert Weisberg, EEOCs Miami regional attorney, said in the press release. The federal law which prohibits pregnancy discrimination against pregnant employees also applies to pregnant applicants. EEOC continues, with this suit, to seek vigorous enforcement of the laws that protect all women from this kind of intentional and harmful discrimination.

Michael Farrell, director of the Miami District Office added, Pregnant women have the right to seek employment free of discrimination and EEOC remains steadfast in its commitment to take legal action against employers who employ such tactics.

Aidman said he doesnt know when the case will be brought to trial, but that Brown & Brown will continue to fight the charges.

Any employment rescission related to Ms. Purcell was not related to pregnancy, he said.

Topics Lawsuits Florida
New York City-based Breakaway Courier Corp. has filed a lawsuit against Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for an alleged illegal scheme to steal workers compensation premiums.

A complaint against Berkshire Hathaway was filed with the state supreme court in Manhattan on behalf of Breakaway by Raymond J. Dowd and Samuel A. Blaustein of New York City based law firm Dunnington Bartholow & Miller.

In the complaint, the scheme is referred to as a reverse Ponzi scheme targeting New York consumers. It alleges that Berkshire Hathaway is in violation of multiple sections of New York insurance law by causing an unlicensed foreign insurance company to divert insurance premiums to another entity unlicensed by New York State and siphoning those premiums through under collateralized shell companies.

The scheme differs from a typical Ponzi scheme in which victims are paid with investments by others. Instead, it requires insureds to cover each others losses. The complaint states victims of the scheme are led to believe their capital is being paid into protected cells and will eventually be returned to them. Instead, it is siphoned off through an unregistered Hawaiian entity, leaving New York employers and injured workers without the funds required by New York state to cover losses related to worker injuries.

This is because Berkshire Hathaway promises New York insureds discounted workers comp insurance, a share in underwriting profits from workers comp policies and rewards for low incurred losses, while the companies are actually signing a Reinsurance Participation Agreement (RPA)  a complex derivative instrument that shifts all risk of losses from worker injuries back onto the insureds, according to the complaint.

As injured New York workers make claims, defendants use the RPA to hit New York insureds with huge, illegal premium bills  the functional equivalent of a margin call, the complaint says. Defendants scheme relies on withholding information from state regulators. The scheme has indeed put all of New Yorks taxpayers at risk.

Raymond J. Dowd, with the New York law firm of Dunnington Bartholow & Miller LLP, is representing Breakaway in this case.

Dowd said the case is similar to a case in California in which Commissioner Dave Jones has faulted Berkshires Applied Underwriters Inc. and California Insurance Co. units over the sale to Shasta Linen Supply Inc. of a nontraditional workers comp policy whose terms and rates had not been reviewed by state officials.

Its on all fours with that, Dowd said.

In July Jones office issued a cease and desist notice in the Applied case. That matter is still ongoing.

Dowd also explained the parallels in the Breakaway case with a so-called Ponzi scheme.

Here everybody thinks they have insurance and everybody has to pay their own claims and theyre slowly realizing it that the thing they signed was not insurance, he said. Theres no stop-loss.

He also said it differs in an important way with an insurance pool.

This is a pool with a drain, and the drain goes right into Berkshire Hathaway, he said. Everything is swept out of the pool into a Hawaii captive.

The case was filed on Friday. He said no court date has been set.

A spokesperson for Berkshire Hathaway did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Insurance Journal West Editor Don Jergler contributed reporting.

Topics Lawsuits Workers' Compensation Fraud New York
Officials in the city of Hartford have reversed their position and now say they wont pay damages that might be awarded against two city police officers in an upcoming trial over an illegal police search that ended with one of the officers killing a familys dog.

The move means that the officers, Johnmichael OHare and Anthony Pia, may be personally liable to pay any jury awards, and the family may have trouble collecting damages if OHare and Pia cant afford them.

They (the city) spend all this money and time defending them and they say youre on your own now, said Sgt. Richard Holton, president of the Hartford Police Union. You hate to see your members go through something like this and be hung out to dry.

Jury selection in the 8-year-old case is set to begin Tuesday in federal court in Hartford, and the trial is scheduled to start Sept. 19.

OHare and Pia, who are now both sergeants, went to Glen Harris home in December 2006 on what turned out to be a false report that two guns were in an abandoned car on the property. The familys Saint Bernard, Seven, which was playing in the backyard with Harris 12-year-old daughter, ran at the sergeants after they walked onto the property, and OHare fatally shot the dog. No guns were found on the property.

Harris sued the city and the officers on allegations of illegal search and seizure, violation of constitutional rights and emotional distress, but a jury cleared the city and the officers on all counts.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, however, reversed the jurys verdict in October 2014, saying the officers should not have entered the property without a warrant and ordered a trial to determine damages. The court said lawyers for the city and officers had overvalued Hartfords high crime rate as an exigent circumstances justification to enter the yard.

Lawyers for the city said earlier this year in court documents that state law required the city to indemnify  or pay any judgments issued against  OHare and Pia.

But Harris lawyer, Jon Schoenhorn, wrote in a court document filed Wednesday that the city now believes it is not obligated to indemnify OHare and Pia, and the citys insurer has informed the city that it wont cover any damage awards in the case.

Schoenhorn declined to comment.

A lawyer for the city and a spokesman for Mayor Luke Bronin declined to comment.

OHare and Pia did not return messages.

Holton said the citys refusal to indemnify the officers appears to be a new practice. He said it will have a chilling effect on police work if the city refuses to pay damages when officers get sued.

Harris testified at the May 2012 trial that his daughter needed hospitalization and antidepressants after the dog was killed and still believes she should have prevented the shooting.

His daughter, identified only as K.H. in court papers, said in a statement provided by Schoenhorn in 2014 that Sevens death was hard on her entire family, especially herself.

Seven was my brother, my companion, my everything, she added.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Law Enforcement
A New Hampshire prep school criticized for how it has handled sexual misconduct and assault cases is facing a federal lawsuit from the parents of a 15-year-old boy, saying it was wrong to withdraw their son after he had sex with another student.

The lawsuit filed Aug. 30 by Father and Mother Doe against Phillips Exeter Academy says school administrators at first told them their son, John Doe, would be placed on leave in the spring semester, but could return this fall after meeting certain conditions, including seeking therapy.

The parents say administrators changed their minds and decided to withdraw him altogether, as the school was responding to reports it mishandled sexual assault allegations involving staff and students.

The case is the latest to beset the elite private school. Earlier this year, two teachers who worked at Phillips Exeter acknowledged sexual misconduct and a former admissions officer pleaded not guilty to sexual abuse charges. Police are investigating other accusations at the private school.

In response to the lawsuit, Phillips Exeter said in a court document filed Wednesday there wasnt any contractual promise the boy would be allowed to return. The filing said the other student, a 15-year-old girl, is still a student at Phillips Exeter and the boy is enrolled in a public school in his home state.

The Academy made a difficult, but principled determination that the boy violated its sexual misconduct and harassment policies, the school filing said.

A school spokeswoman did not immediately return a message Thursday seeking comment.

According to the lawsuit, the boy returned to school from Christmas break in January and went to a dance, where Jane Doe flirted with him, and the two had sex the next day. A dean in February contacted the boys father about reports of a consensual encounter between the two students, the lawsuit said. An investigator interviewed the boy and a dean later told the father the girl felt pressured to have sex, the suit said.

Exeter placed the boy on leave for the semester and wrote to the parents that the deans would review his case and determine whether he would be permitted to return in the fall, the suit said. By June 22, the father learned that his son would be placed on permanent leave.

The boy has not been charged with a crime.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits New Hampshire
Reinsurance broker JLT Re has named Matthew Carter as a partner in its London Market & International Division, which is led by Bill Bennett. Carter will be based in JLT Res London office.

In his new role, Carter will be leading all structured and non-traditional reinsurance for the UK and Europe as well as working with JLT Res structured products team in North America.

He joins JLT Re from Guy Carpenter, where he was a senior vice president in the Structured Products and Capital Solutions team.

Source: JLT Re

Topics London
A former Ohio insurance agent and agency owner has been sentenced for grand theft after pleading guilty to misappropriating more than $58,000 from two clients, the Ohio Department of Insurance announced.

Charles Gabel, of Fremont, was sentenced in the Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas to three years of community control supervision and 100 hours of community service. He also was ordered to pay restitution to his victims.

The Ohio Department of Insurance said Gabel intentionally produced fictitious policy premium invoices to defraud clients for his financial benefit. Gabel stated an audit revealed additional premium payment funds were owed. It was later determined the clients accounts were already in good financial standing.

Gabel surrendered his Ohio insurance agent license on Aug. 12, 2015.

Source: Ohio Department of Insurance

Topics Agencies Fraud Ohio
Four Republican members of Congress on Monday urged U.S. auto safety regulators to convene an industry-wide effort to prevent possible attacks on computer systems in vehicles.

The lawmakers addressed their concerns in a letter to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. While there have been no reported cases of vehicle hacking, researchers have shown they could take remote control of vehicle functions such as car horns, brakes and power steering.

The letter cited work published in August by Wired magazine by two researchers who were able to force a Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV 2014 Jeep SUV to perform in an erratic and unsafe manner after accessing its on-board diagnostics (OBD) port. Automakers have been required to install the port in all vehicles since 1994 to test for emissions compliance.

The letter from Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and three others said the port as it currently exists creates a growing risk to the safety and security of passengers.

Fiat Chrysler said in August the demonstration published by Wired required a computer to be physically connected into the vehicles port. The company emphasized that owners should not connect any unknown or untrusted devices to the OBD port.

NHTSA didnt immediately comment on the letter. The safety agency has said it plans to release cybersecurity guidelines to the auto industry in the coming weeks.

The U.S. government is taking the issue seriously.

On Friday, the U.S. Justice Department said it has formed a threat analysis team to study potential national security challenges posed by self-driving cars, medical devices and other internet-connected tools.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and NHTSA issued a bulletin in March warning that motor vehicles were increasingly vulnerable to hacking.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Richard Chang and James Dalgleish)

Related:

Topics USA Legislation Cyber Auto
A federal appeals court on Monday revived a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. private bankers whistleblower lawsuit accusing the bank of firing her in retaliation for warning that an Israeli client might be committing fraud.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York found enough evidence to suggest that former JPMorgan employee Jennifer Sharkey had a reasonable belief that the client was engaged in fraud and money laundering involving Colombia.

Sharkey said she was fired as a vice president and wealth manager in August 2009, just a week after formally urging the bank to heed red flags and sever its ties with the client, who generated about $600,000 of annual billings.

The client was not identified in court papers. Sharkey was terminated eight months after the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme of longtime JPMorgan client Bernard Madoff was exposed.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet in Manhattan dismissed Sharkeys lawsuit last October.

Sweet said JPMorgan could have fired Sharkey based on her performance, or for having purportedly lied about communications involving another client. Sharkey disputed having lied.

But the appeals court said the close temporal proximity between Sharkeys warning and her firing justified letting the case continue. It also said her qualifications as a whistleblower was an issue of fact to be resolved at trial.

The court returned the case to Sweets courtroom.

JPMorgan spokesman Darin Oduyoye said the bank believes the lawsuit is without merit, and looks forward to presenting its case in court.

Lawrence Pearson, a partner at Wigdor LLP representing Sharkey, said he was pleased with the decision and looks forward to a trial.

Sharkey had sued under the whistleblower provisions of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance law.

Sweet had dismissed Sharkeys case in December 2013. Last Octobers dismissal came after the appeals court in the interim imposed a more lenient standard for whistleblower protection.

JPMorgan agreed in January 2014 to pay $2.6 billion to settle litigation over Madoff, and in a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. government acknowledged responsibility for failing to stop him.

The case is Sharkey v. JPMorgan Chase & Co. et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 15-3400.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Grant McCool)

Topics USA
A jury has ordered the owners of a metro Atlanta apartment complex to pay $10 million to the family of a resident who was fatally shot last year.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports a jury in Clayton County reached its civil verdict Thursday in a lawsuit filed by the family of 33-year-old Florencia Gomez-Mendez, a carpenter and father of three. He was killed during an apparent robbery while walking home from a store.

Mendezs attorney, Jeff Shiver, argued security was lax at the Bradford Ridge Apartments despite high crime in the area.

Billy Gunn, an attorney for the apartment owners, said he would ask for a new trial and for the judge to reconsider the verdict. He said, The reality is this should have been a $2 million case.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Georgia
Brightway, Riverside has added Adam Plante to its Jacksonville, Fla., location.

Plante has experience in contracts and sales and earned his law degree from State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law and a bachelors degree from State University of New York at Oswego.

Brightway, Riverside is located at 2104 Park Street in downtown Jacksonville.

Brightway Insurance is a national property/casualty insurance retailer selling through a network of franchised independent agencies throughout the country. Brightway provides its agency owners with access to insurance companies, along with a comprehensive system of support.

Brightway began franchising operations in 2008 and has since grown to 770 people in 12 states serving customers in all 50 states

Topics Florida
A bankrupt Brentwood, Tenn., company is facing a federal lawsuit over conditions at six Tennessee nursing homes.

WPLN-FM reports prosecutors accuse Vanguard Healthcare LLC of earning big profits while providing grossly substandard care. They also accuse the company of fraudulently billing TennCare.

Investigators say they found forged paperwork, staff and supply shortages, and a lack of basic nursing services. That resulted in residents suffering falls, ulcers and malnutrition.

The case covers nearly 800 beds run by Vanguard in Nashville, Memphis, Murfreesboro, Shelbyville and Manchester.

The lawsuit also names Vanguards former director of operations, Mark Miller, for failing to correct problems.

In a statement, the company denies the allegations and says it is committed to the consistent delivery of high quality care.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Homeowners Tennessee
U.S. coal miner Arch Coal has agreed to set aside collateral to cover future mine cleanup costs as part of its bankruptcy reorganization plan, according to a court filing, ending its controversial use of self-bonds.

For decades the largest U.S. coal companies have used a federal subsidy known as self-bonding, which exempts companies from posting bonds or other securities to cover the cost of returning mined land to its natural state, as required by law.

Arch had $485.5 million in self-bonds in Wyoming when it filed for bankruptcy protection in January, saddled with $6 billion of debt and a deep slump in the coal sector.

Under a reorganization plan set for a confirmation trial in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Louis on Tuesday, Arch must replace all of its self-bonds within 15 days of its bankruptcy exit plan becoming effective, a court filing by the company showed on Sunday.

Environmental groups that have waged legal battles to hold coal companies accountable for their cleanup obligations welcomed the news.

Better financial assurance will protect taxpayers and will ensure that the mining company remains responsible for any clean-up costs for its large Wyoming coal mines, said Shannon Anderson, a lawyer for Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Wyoming conservation group.

Arch operates one of the largest U.S. mines, Black Thunder, in the coal-rich Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming.

Arch had initially resisted replacing its self-bonds, arguing in court filings that providing other forms of guarantees would eat into its delicate liquidity. Coal businesses have suffered from falling demand in China and competition from lower natural gas prices.

Arch has demonstrated it is possible to phase out self-bonding while keeping mines going, and we hope other companies, including Peabody, follow their example, Anderson said.

U.S. coal watchdog Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement has asked state regulators to crack down on self-bonding following Chapter 11 filings by some of the largest U.S. coal companies.

Peabody Energy Corp., Alpha Natural Resources and Arch had a combined $2.2 billion in self-bonding liabilities when they filed for bankruptcy over the past 13 months.

Peabody, which filed for bankruptcy in April with $10 billion of debt, has $1.14 billion of self-bonds in four states.

In July, Alpha agreed to replace its self-bonds in Wyoming with other guarantees as part of a complex deal to exit bankruptcy but will continue to cover reclamation at former mine sites in West Virginia with self-bonds.

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Related:

Topics USA Trends Mining
The atomic bombs tested in the middle of the 20th century mark the beginning of the Anthropocene.

If you were born before 1950, news that the Earth has moved into a new geological era called the Anthropocene  the Age of Man  meaning your life has spanned two different geological ages, may simply make you feel even older than you already do.

After seven years of research, an official expert group made up of 35 scientists, environmentalists and a lawyer, last month presented their recommendations to the International Geological Congress in Cape Town, ushering in the Anthropocene as the latest of the planets many ages.

Proof the world has changed forever can be found in the estuary of the Spanish northern port city of Bilbao

They decided to peg the change to the spread of radioactive plutonium waste in the middle of the 20th century left in the wake of atomic bomb tests, making 1950 the definitive date of the end of the Holocene. Although according to Alejandro Cearreta, the only Spaniard on the scientific team, 1952 would be more exact as the moment radioactive isotopes settled across the planet.

We have already changed the planet, he continues, adding: The Anthropocene began the moment humans managed to change the life-cycle of the planet, taking it out of its natural range of variables.

Assigned the task of determining whether or not we have left the Holocene behind us forever, the scientific team agreed that the arrival of the Anthropocene must be reflected geologically in the layers of the Earths rock as a permanent reference for future scientists.

Cearreta, who teaches at the University of the Basque Country, says that definitive proof can be found in the Tunel Boca beach in the estuary of the Spanish northern port city of Bilbao, where a seven-meter-deep strip of industrial sediment accumulated over the last century was recently unearthed.

Cearreta believes that the advent of the Anthropocene is indicative of our failure as a society

In order to move from one geological age to another, he says, there has to be unmistakable global and synchronic signs of planetary change, such as the sediment deposits in Bilbao. This is why he and his colleagues dismissed the original idea of placing the start of the Anthropocene to the onset of the Industrial Revolution in 1800  the evidence at that time was far from uniformly distributed.

Since the 1940s, waves and ocean currents have been helping to form a cement beach at the foot of the Getxo cliffs, says Cearreta.

An earlier example would be the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, defined by a spike in sediments around the world of the metal iridium, which was dispersed from the meteorite that collided with Earth causing the end of the dinosaur age.

Detection of the latest cyclical change in the planets behavior has been triggered by plastics, greenhouse emissions and industrial waste that have tampered with ecosystems, diminishing biodiversity and increasing the acidification of our oceans.

Many of these changes have geological consequences, some of which are irreversible, says Cearreta. It is a scientific fact that is being registered geologically, says Cearreta. The Anthropocene evidence will be there forever.

As with climate change, this has inevitable political repercussions, says Cearreta, who believes that the advent of the Anthropocene is indicative of our failure as a society.

Is it good or bad that dinosaurs died off? We are not here to judge, but now there has been indisputable change in the Earths system, says Cearreta, who admits his camp were under extraordinary pressure during the voting process in South Africa. It was slightly overwhelming. We are not used to generating this kind of interest, he says.

In any event, the teams decision will not appear in textbooks until a number of other official bodies ratify it formally over the next few years. Decisions in this field are taken at a geological pace, jokes Cearreta  there was no formal timeframe for the Quaternary Epoch that started 2.5 million years ago until 2009. And they are yet to identify the golden spike, a mark in the Earths rock that serves as a reference point for the start of a new global geological period.

English version by Heather Galloway.
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.
Nel terzo trimestre del 2016 il prodotto interno lordo, espresso in valori concatenati con anno di riferimento 2010, corretto per gli effetti di calendario e destagionalizzato, e aumentato dello 0,3% rispetto al trimestre precedente e dello 0,9% nei confronti del terzo trimestre del 2015. Lo sostiene lIstat.

La crescita congiunturale e la sintesi di un aumento del valore aggiunto nei comparti dellindustria e dei servizi e di una diminuzione nellagricoltura. Dal lato della domanda, vi e un contributo ampiamente positivo della componente nazionale (al lordo delle scorte), in parte compensato da un apporto negativo della componente estera netta.

Nello stesso periodo il Pil e aumentato in termini congiunturali dello 0,7% negli Stati Uniti, dello 0,5% nel Regno Unito e dello 0,2% in Francia. In termini tendenziali, si e registrato un aumento del 2,3% nel Regno Unito, dell1,5% negli Stati Uniti, dell1,1% in Francia. Nel complesso, il Pil dei paesi dellarea Euro e cresciuto dello 0,3% rispetto al trimestre precedente ed dell1,6% nel confronto con lo stesso trimestre del 2015.

I dati Istat sul Pil sono in linea con le stime del governo ha commentato il ministro dellEconomia, Pier Carlo Padoan, arrivando alla Camera per lincontro con il gruppo Pd sulla legge di Bilancio. ll titolare di via XX Settembre in un tweet, poco prima, aveva sottolineato come i dati Istat confermano che leconomia e sulla strada giusta e le stime di crescita sono affidabili. Ma occorre spingere per accelerare
The alternative energy sector is comprised of companies that engage in the generation, distribution, and sale of renewable and clean energy, as well as related products and services. Examples of alternative energy sources include solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal. The growing list of names in the sector includes companies like Israel-based SolarEdge Technologies Inc., Brazil-based Companhia Energetica de Minas Gerais, and First Solar Inc.

Alternative energy stocks, as represented by the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ICLN), have outperformed the broader market, posting a total return of -1.0% compared to the Russell 1000's total return of -7.1% over the past 12 months. These market performance numbers and all statistics in the tables below are as of Aug. 6, 2022.

Here are the top three alternative energy stocks with the best value, the fastest growth, and the most momentum.

Important On Aug. 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a piece of legislation that is likely to have a significant impact on the alternative energy industry. The IRA is expected to invest roughly $369 billion in energy security and climate change in the coming years.

These are the alternative energy stocks with the lowest 12-month trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. Because profits can be returned to shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks, a low P/E ratio shows youre paying less for each dollar of profit generated.
What Is the Bermudian Dollar (BMD)?

BMD is the currency abbreviation or currency symbol for the Bermudian dollar, the official currency of the island of Bermuda. Like the U.S. dollar, the Bermudian dollar is made up of 100 cents, and it's often presented with the dollar sign as BD$. It's present that way to allow the BMD to be distinguished from other currencies denominated in dollars, such as the U.S. dollar (USD).

The BMD is pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 1:1.

Key Takeaways The Bermudian dollar (BMD) is the official currency of Bermuda, an island nation in the Atlantic ocean.

The BMD is pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 1:1, and American currency is often used interchangeably on the island.

Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory, but it has its own parliament and currency.

The Bermudian dollar replaced the Bermudian pound in 1970. The Bermudian pound was pegged 1:1 to the British pound.

The United States accounts for about 75% of Bermuda's tourism and trade.

Understanding the Bermudian Dollar

The BMD was first introduced in 1970. The preceding currency, the Bermudian pound, was equivalent the United Kingdom's pound sterling and similarly divided at the time into shillings and pence. The transition allowed Bermuda to decimalize its currency and reorient its economy towards the larger economy of the United States.

When the BMD was introduced, the exchange rate was fixed at a rate of 2.40 BD$ to one pound sterling. The new currency circulated alongside British currency until 1972, when the BMD was officially pegged at parity with the USD.

Because the BMD is fixed to the USD, U.S. dollars can be used throughout the island of Bermuda. Other foreign currencies such as the British pound, euro, and Canadian dollars are generally not accepted for payment on the island. The U.S. dollar is the only accepted foreign currency in Bermuda, and approximately three-quarters of all Bermuda's imports, tourists, and commerce originate from America.

Even though the Bermudian dollar is worth the same as a U.S. dollar, they are still different currencies. Credit card transactions and ATM withdrawals may come with international conversion fees.

Special Considerations

If you visit the island and need to withdraw cash from an ATM, you will receive your funds in Bermudian dollars. This is important to be aware of because as a local-only currency, the Bermudian dollar is not exchangeable or cashable by the banks of foreign countries. So if you dont exchange any BMD back to the currency of your national residence before you depart the island, any BMD currency you bring home with you is only useful as a souvenir, at least until you return to Bermuda.

Bermuda dollar notes are available in denominations of $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. Coins are available in increments of 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 cents, as well as a $1 coin, which replaced Bermudas $1 dollar note.

Early History of Money in Bermuda

Bermudas first formal minted currency was introduced in approximately 1615. These coins, which preceded the advent of paper currency in the country, depicted images of the wild boar that were prevalent on the island. The coins soon came to be called hog or hogge money.

Sometime later, Bermuda adopted the Spanish dollar as its national currency, which was later replaced by the pound sterling in 1842. The pound sterling remained Bermudas legal tender for the next 130 years until 1972, when the island nation formally pegged the BMD to the USD.

CorrectionJan. 16, 2022: A previous version of this article mistakenly stated that Bermuda was independent. In fact, it is a British Overseas Territory.
Russia has never been an easy country for outsiders to understand. Winston Churchill described it as a "riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," and today's investors might well share his viewpoint. It's still hard for many investors to shake memories of the era of Soviet communist rule, even decades after its spectacular collapse in 1991. The period of euphoria that followed was brief and was replaced with a regime of heavy-handed government and a culture of crony capitalism.

While everyday investors may not be able to invest directly in the Russian stock market, you may have some exposure to the country through mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and American depositary receipts (ADRs), which are certificates issued by U.S. banks that represent a certain number of shares in foreign companies.

Whether you choose to actively invest in Russia is completely up to you, but it isn't always easy. In this article, we explore some of the intricacies of what it means to invest in the largest country in the world.

Key Takeaways Russia is a country that can present challenges for foreign investors who are seeking huge returns.

Investing directly in Russia's stock market may not be easy but foreign investors have access to the country through mutual funds, ETFs, and ADRs.

Russia has enormous natural wealth in oil, gas, and minerals, including diamonds.

Corruption and a lack of transparency are significant barriers to business.

Its dependence on oil leaves it vulnerable to commodity price swings.

Bust to Boom in Russia

Russia's economy ranks 11th among the world's largest economies. In 2020, its gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 3%, with nominal GDP coming in at $1.48 trillion.

Russia's transition from communist world power to an emerging economy was not easy. The ruble was devalued in 1998 following a national economic crisisthe same year that its economy began growing after several years of contraction.

On April 6, 2022, the Biden administration announced new economic sanctions that bar all Americans from making new investments in Russia.

In 2001, economist Jim O'Neill coined the acronym BRIC to refer to the four developing economies he predicted would dominate the global economy by the middle of the 21st century: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. In 10 of the next 11 years, Russia's GDP grew more than 4% annually.

Plummeting oil prices and sanctions from Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 set off a financial crisis that plagued the country's economy until 2016. The economy rebounded in the second half of the decade, with the MOEX Russia Index reaching all-time highs in January 2020 before the COVID-19 selloff.

Russian stocks rebounded quickly from their March 2020 lows and climbed steadily through 2021 just to be knocked back down in early 2022 when the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent stocks tumbling 44%. As a result, markets were closed for a month beginning the week of Feb. 28, 2022, and reopened in March with vast trading restrictions.



Russia's per capita GDP, a reasonable measure of the personal wealth of ordinary citizens, is about a third that of European Union nations.

Russia's Challenges

Russia is the largest country in the world by landmass, coming in ninth on the list of the world's largest nations by population, at around 146 million. Many of them have enjoyed some income growth over the past decade and are spending an increasing amount of their income on holidays and luxury goods and services.

However, the country's reputation as a haven for oligarchs is not understated. Its per capita GDP, which is a reasonable measure of the prosperity of a nation's citizenry, was $10,127 in 2020, according to the World Bank. That was below the level of some former Soviet Socialist Republics (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and most former Eastern Bloc countries, including Romania, Poland, and Slovakia.

According to the World Bank, Russia's economy grew 4.3% in 2021, a strong rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in December 2021, the organization reduced growth forecasts for 2022 and 2023 to 2.4% and 1.8% respectively, on account of risks stemming from COVID-19 and inflation. And that was before the invasion of Ukraine led many of the world's major economies to impose harsh sanctions that some economists estimate could shrink GDP by as much as 15%.

On March 2, 2022, the World Bank announced the suspension of all of its active programs in Russia and Belarus.

Russia's Natural Resources

Investors are generally attracted to the Russian market for its natural resources. Oil and gas are a major part of the national economy. In fact, Russia was the world's third-largest oil producer in 2020 after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, accounting for 11% of global production. Its primary market for its oil and petroleum exports is Europe, from which it derives the majority of its oil and gas revenues.

Russia's continuing dependence on oil leaves its economy vulnerable to the volatility of global oil prices and other factorsnotably economic sanctions from other countries. They were imposed on Russia by the United States and the European Union (EU) in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

In 2022, the U.S. banned Russian oil imports completely and the EU began developing plans to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.

Mineral Wealth

Aside from its oil and gas reserves, the nation also sits on trillions of dollars in mineral deposits. It claims to be the source of 83% of the gold exported to Europe. It is also believed to possess the world's largest diamond resources.

That being said, energy and minerals are considered a partial blessing and a partial curse because Russia's heavy dependence on resources represents a risk. When you invest in Russia, you have to keep in mind the direction of commodity pricesjust like energy.

Human Capital

Russia is rich in human resources as well. Its educational tradition is superb in mathematics and the hard sciences and excellent in languages. As such, it produces plenty of brainy workers. Russia boasts an astounding 99% literacy rate and boasts one of the highest rates of tertiary education attainment among OECD countries.

$86 billion The value of Russian equities held by foreign investors. Roughly $150 billion was held in Russian bonds and stocks by foreign fund managers, according to Moscow Exchange data reported by Financial Times.



Corruption in Russia

Politics may represent Russia's biggest investment risk. While there are many examples, the case involving Yukos is, perhaps, one of the most notable examples in modern times.

Yukos was arguably one of Russia's biggest and most successful oil companies until 2003. The company's chief executive officer (CEO), Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ran afoul of President Vladimir Putin when he made comments in 2003 against the country's corruption and political system. Khodorkovsky was arrested that same year on fraud and tax evasion charges and was sentenced to 14 years in jail.

Yukos was forced into bankruptcy, and its pieces were sold off for fractions of its actual market value.



A Barrier to Doing Business

"Corruption significantly impedes businesses operating or planning to invest in Russia. High-level and petty corruption is common, especially in the judicial system and public procurement," notes a 2020 profile of business in Russia prepared by the Risk and Compliance Portal, a business resource maintained by GAN Integrity.

Foreign investors have often faced challenges brought on by Russian bureaucracy. The Russian government also has a record of putting pressure on foreign energy companies to consolidate control over the country's largest and most important hydrocarbon deposits.

In 2008, police raided BP's Moscow office in an attempt to persuade shareholders to sell their stakes in a joint venture between the British oil giant and Russian oil producer TNK. Meanwhile, major multinational companies like Ikea, McDonald's, and Starbucks have declared a moratorium on Russian operations and investments due to the war in Ukraine.

Ranking Russian Corruption

Russia came in 129th out of 179 nations on the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index from the anti-corruption organization Transparency International, a tie with Azerbaijan, Malawi, and Gabon. (The U.S. came in 25th.)

Russia has a lot of obstacles to fair and efficient business practices, according to the index. Even Iran, Libya, and Pakistan are perceived as having less corruption. It's safe to say that corporate corruption and a lack of transparency are major risks for investors in Russia.

The Bottom Line

Investors need to know the national risks that can threaten their investments as they seek investment opportunities around the world. High returns come from high-risk investments and emerging markets are among the likeliest of places to find returns that outperform those of developed nations.

While Russia offers high returns, it is dominated by energy companies, the state of regulation is still under development at best, and the political risks are greater than elsewhere. That's a striking feature of investing in Russia. The risks and potential rewards are both high.
It's difficult to determine how best to quantify the difference between developed and developing countries. Although gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the most well-known values for assessing economic health, several other metrics can also be used to gauge a nation's development.

While some have the potential to be more accurate than others, none of them are inherently wrong to use. To further complicate matters, most countries are large, complex entities that can't be neatly categorized. As a result, there are several nations that exhibit characteristics of more than one category.

Even the experts have yet to agree on a consistent definition. For instance, the United Nations (UN) classifies countries as either developed economies, economies in transition, or developing economies, although it doesn't specify its basis for applying these groupings other than that they "reflect basic economic country conditions."

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), on the other hand, takes several different factors into account when determining whether a nation is an advanced economy, an emerging market and developing economy, or a low-income developing country. The World Bank uses gross national income (GNI) per capita for its measurements, and it has four different categories: high-income economies, upper middle-income economies, lower middle-income economies, and low-income economies.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the development status of the 25 largest countries on Earth by GDP. This metric was chosen to better illustrate how nations meeting the traditional criteria for being "wealthy" can still be considered developing. That being said, countries on this list have been categorized according to the UN's standards because its classification system is the closest to our definitions of "developed" and "developing."

Key Takeaways Countries may be classified as either developed or developing based on the gross domestic product (GDP) or gross national income (GNI) per capita, the level of industrialization, the general standard of living, and the amount of technological infrastructure, among several other potential factors.

According to the United Nations (UN), a nation's development status is a reflection of its "basic economic country conditions."

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a metric developed by the United Nations that's used to assess the social and economic development levels of countries based on life expectancy, educational attainment, and income, which serves as an alternate means of assessing a nation's development status.

The United States was the richest developed country on Earth in 2021, with a total GDP of $23 trillion.

China was the richest developing country on Earth in 2021 with a total GDP of $17.73 trillion.

What Is a Developed Nation?

A nation is typically considered to be "developed" if it meets certain socioeconomic criteria. In some cases, this can be as simple as having a sufficiently developed economy. Where that isn't adequate, other qualifiers can include but are not limited to a country's GDP/GNI per capita, its level of industrialization, its general standard of living, and/or the amount of technological infrastructure it has. These factors are typically interconnected (i.e., the level of available technology can impact the amount of GDP a country is capable of generating, etc.).

According to the UN, in 2022, 36 countries were considered "developed." All developed countries were located in either North America, Europe, or "Developed Asia and Pacific."

Developed countries typically share several other characteristics:

Their birth and death rates are stable. They do not have very high birth rates because, thanks to quality medical care and high living standards, infant mortality rates are low. Families do not feel the need to have large numbers of children due to the expectation that some will not survive.

They have more women working. These career-oriented women may have chosen to have smaller families or eschew having children altogether.

They use a disproportionate amount of the world's resources. In developed countries, more people drive cars, fly on airplanes, and power their homes with electricity and gas. Inhabitants of developing countries often do not have access to technologies that require the use of these resources.

They have higher levels of debt. Nations with developing economies cannot obtain the kind of seemingly bottomless financing that more developed nations can.

What Is a Developing Nation?

A nation is typically considered to still be "developing" if it does not meet the socioeconomic criteria listed above. Simply put, these are most often countries with a lower income, an underdeveloped industrial base, a lower standard of living, and a lack of access to modern technology. As a result, developing nations frequently experience a lack of jobs, food, clean drinking water, education, healthcare, and housing.

According to the UN, in 2022, 126 countries were considered "developing." All developing countries were located in either Africa, Asia, or Latin America and the Caribbean.

Due to definitional discrepancies, countries such as Mexico, Greece, and Turkey are considered developed by some organizations and developing by others.

Development status determines which countries have a right to receive development aid under the rules of a multilateral or bilateral agency, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). This is likely the primary reason why there are so many varied definitions of "developed" versus "developing," as each organization has different qualifications for what should constitute the latter in order to receive their assistance.

This is also why even the terminology is inconsistent, as this binary is often insufficient for categorizing large, complex territories. For instance, the World Bank announced in 2016 that it would no longer be distinguishing between developing countries and developed countries, due to the terms no longer being considered relevant.

Which Countries Have the Highest GDP per Capita?

GDP represents the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period. The calculation of a nation's GDP encompasses all private and public consumption, government outlays, investments, additions to private inventories, paid-in construction costs, and the foreign balance of trade.

While useful for acquiring a snapshot of the world's economic powerhouses, this metric by itself is typically insufficient. Every country is obviously going to have a different population, which means that looking exclusively at GDP can distort the truth and/or be so obvious as to be meaningless. Of course, a nation as large as China, with a total population of 1.4 billion people, would have a larger GDP than a much smaller country like Ireland, which has a total population of 5 million.

GDP per capita is a much more relevant statistic for better illustrating how a hypothetical average citizen might experience a nation's economic output. GDP per capita, a tally of all the goods and services produced in a country in one year (as expressed in U.S. dollars) per person, is a useful metric for distinguishing developed countries from developing ones. GDP per capita is calculated by dividing a country's GDP by its total population.

For example, the population of China is approximately 283 times larger than the population of Ireland. Yet the typical Irish person ($99,152 in 2021) is nearly eight times richer than their Chinese counterpart ($12,556 in 2021), despite the fact that their country is so much smaller The countries with the highest GDP per capita are often those with an unusual concentration of wealth.

What Does HDI Mean?

Another measuring device, the Human Development Index (HDI), was developed by the UN as a metric to assess the social and economic development levels of a given country. HDI quantifies life expectancy, educational attainment, and income into a standardized number between zero and one; the closer to one, the more developed the country. No minimum requirement exists for developed status, but most developed countries have HDIs of 0.8 or higher.

The life expectancy aspect of the HDI is calculated at the time of birth, which is equal to zero when life expectancy is 20 and equal to one when life expectancy is 85. Education is measured according to the mean years of schooling for residents of a country and the expected years of schooling that a child has at the average age for starting school. Finally, the metric chosen to represent the standard of living is GNI (gross national income) per capita based on purchasing power parity (PPP).

This index is useful for examining the impact of policy choices made by each nation. For example, if two countries have approximately the same GNI per capita but wildly different HDI scores, then it stands to reason that these disparities could stem from policies regarding life expectancy, educational attainment, or another factor unrelated to economic health.

It's important to remember no set minimums or maximums exist for these metrics. Economists look at the totality of a country's situation before rendering judgment, and they do not always agree on a country's development status.

Development Status of the Top 25 Countries by GDP

Here is our analysis of the development status of the top 25 countries by GDP as of 2021, organized alphabetically. Of this total, 15 countries are considered "developed," nine are considered "developing," and one is considered "in transition."

Australia

GDP (2021): $1.54 trillion

$1.54 trillion Population (2021): 25.74 million

25.74 million GDP per Capita (2021): $59,934

$59,934 HDI (2021): 0.951

Australia is a developed country.

The Land Down Under has widespread industrialization and provides quality healthcare for the majority of its citizens. Australians also enjoy a higher quality of life than some other countries; according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), citizens on average graded their life satisfaction as 7.5 out of 10, which is reasonably better than the 6.7 global average. Australia is one of the wealthiest AsiaPacific nations, enjoying several years of economic growth.

Australia has a high average life expectancy of 83 years, much of which can be attributed to its excellent healthcare system. The country's infant mortality rate is three per 1,000 live births, one of the lowest rates in the world, as of 2020.

Belgium

GDP (2021): $599.88 billion

$599.88 billion Population (2021): 11.59 million

11.59 million GDP per Capita (2021): $51,767

$51,767 HDI (201): 0.937

Belgium is a developed country.

The Kingdom of Belgium has a life satisfaction rating of 6.5.

At 77.2%, the services sector accounted for the largest portion of the country's GDP according to the CIA World Factbook. Belgium lacks an abundance of natural resources, making it heavily reliant on imports of raw materials; however, given its central geographic location, highly developed transport network, and diversified industrial and commercial base, the country is well suited to act as a major exporter of manufactured goods.

As of 2020, the country's average life expectancy was 81 years from birth, while its infant mortality rate was three deaths per 1,000 live births.

Brazil

GDP (2021): $1.61 trillion

$1.61 trillion Population (2021): 213.99 million

213.99 million GDP per Capita (2021): $7,518

$7,518 HDI (2021): 0.754

Brazil is a developing country.

Though it has several characteristics of a developed nation, including the largest economy in South America or Central America, Brazil is still considered a developing country due to its lower GDP per capita, higher infant mortality rate, and other factors.

Its high birth rate, at 13 births per 1,000 people in 2020, is also a common characteristic of a developing country. Several factors contribute to all of these metrics, including lack of clean water; limited access to adequate healthcare, particularly in rural areas; abysmal housing conditions in many regions; and substandard diets.

A Brazilian's average life expectancy, at 76 years since birth as of 2020, ranks higher than that of some other developing countries, though it's just barely above the global average of 75 years.

Canada

GDP (2021): $1.99 trillion

$1.99 trillion Population (2021): 38.25 million

38.25 million GDP per Capita (2021): $52,051

$52,051 HDI (2021): 0.936

Canada is a developed country.

As the 9th-largest world economy on the basis of GDP, Canada has a diverse economic base. It has a wealth of natural resources, including oil, gas, and coal. As such, the country is able to support its own energy needs as well as export natural resources to other countries.

In spite of this fact, Canada is also a world leader in the production and use of renewable energy sources, which provide approximately 18.9% of the country's overall energy supply, while moving water specifically accounts for 59.3% of its electricity. Canada's proximity to the United States and a favorable exchange rate have also contributed to a strong manufacturing climate in the country.

Canadians enjoy universal healthcare coverage, with all residents having access to free medical care through a government-provided program. As of 2020, the country's average life expectancy was 82 years, while its infant mortality rate was four deaths per 1,000 live births.

China

GDP (2021): $17.73 trillion

$17.73 trillion Population (2021): 1.41 billion

1.41 billion GDP per Capita (2021): $12,556

$12,556 HDI (2021): 0.768

China is a developing country.

Despite having the world's second-largest economy and the largest military, China is still not classified as a developed country by the criteria of most organizations. In addition to having one of the lowest GDPs per capita on this list, another attribute indicating that China is still developing is its dependence on agriculture, although this has been trending downward over time.

According to the CIA World Factbook, 7.9% of China's overall GDP was derived from agriculture. As of 2020, China's average life expectancy was 77 years and its infant mortality rate was six per 1,000 live births. Although these rates aren't exceptionally high, they are noticeably worse than most other countries with trillions of dollars in overall wealth.

France

GDP (2021): $2.94 trillion

$2.94 trillion Population (2021): 67.50 million

67.50 million GDP per Capita (2021): $43,518

$43,518 HDI (2021): 0.903

France is a developed country.

The French Republic is one of the world's economic powerhouses. As of 2021, France has the seventh-largest economy by GDP. The country benefits from a diverse economy, including tourism, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals. The French government has partially or fully privatized many prominent companies, though it maintains a strong presence in its power, public transport, and defense sectors.

As of 2020, French citizens enjoyed a higher-than-average life expectancy of 82 years since birth and a low infant mortality rate of three deaths per 1,000 live births. The French healthcare system combines universal access to care with a substantial amount of freedom for patients, with surveys showing that citizens are overall satisfied with their country's system.

Germany

GDP (2021): $4.22 trillion

$4.22 trillion Population (2021): 83.13 million

83.13 million GDP per Capita (2021): $50,801

$50,801 HDI (2021): 0.942

Germany is a developed country.

Driven by its highly skilled labor force, Germany is Europe's strongest economy, and it is the fourth-largest economy in the world. The nation is known for delivering world-class quality products, including machinery, motor vehicles, electronics, and pharmaceuticals.

In 2019, Germany was second only to China as the world's largest surplus economy, with its exported products exceeding its imported products. This, however, changed in 2021 for the first time since 1991, due to rising energy and food prices. As of 2020, Germany had a life expectancy of 81 years since birth as well as an infant mortality rate of only three deaths per 1,000 live births.

German citizens enjoy access to universal healthcare coverage. All Germans must belong to a not-for-profit sickness fund that covers most necessary medical procedures and medications.

India

GDP (2021): $3.17 trillion

$3.17 trillion Population (2021): 1.39 billion

1.39 billion GDP per Capita (2021): $2,277

$2,277 HDI (2021): 0.633

India is a developing country.

Although India is an exceptionally wealthy country (ranked sixth in terms of overall GDP), like China, its high population results in a rather low GDP per capita. The Republic of India is considered both a newly industrialized nation and one of the fastest developing countries on Earth; however, the country continues to struggle with issues like widespread poverty, poor water and sanitation, and overpopulation.

India hosts a diverse economy, ranging from traditional farming to contemporary agriculture, and handicrafts to a wide range of industrial products. Thanks to a large and well-educated English-speaking population, India is a major exporter of IT services, business outsourcing services, and software workers. As of 2020, India had a life expectancy of 70 years since birth as well as an extremely high infant mortality rate of 27 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Indonesia

GDP (2021): $1.12 trillion

$1.12 trillion Population (2021): 276.36 million

276.36 million GDP per Capita (2021): $4,291

$4,291 HDI (2021): 0.705

Indonesia is a developing country.

The Republic of Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim-majority country and Southeast Asia's largest economy. The nation's key exports include rubber, animal and vegetable fat, mineral fuels, machinery, electrical machinery, and mechanical appliance parts. A unique aspect of Indonesia's quality of life is that the country lies within the Pacific Ring of Fire, which is responsible for 90% of earthquakes and has 75% of the world's active volcanos.

In addition to natural disaster hazards, the nation also faces challenges more common to developing countries, with 18 million Indonesians lacking safe water, 20 million lacking access to improved sanitation facilities, and 22.9 million being unable to meet their dietary requirements. As of 2020, Indonesia had a life expectancy of 72 years since birth, as well as a high infant mortality rate of 20 deaths per 1,000 live births.

JoeGough / Getty Images

Ireland

GDP (2021): $498.56 billion

$498.56 billion Population (2021): 5 million

5 million GDP per Capita (2021): $99,152

$99,152 HDI (2021): 0.945

Ireland is a developed country.

Given its relatively high GDP and small population, Ireland has the fifth-highest GDP per capita of any nation on Earth. The country has benefited from large, multinational corporations setting up shop in the country due to favorable tax treatments.

The country is primarily a services country, with the sector making up 60% of GDP. Industry makes up 39%, with the remainder being agriculture. Ireland has a life expectancy age of 82 and a mortality rate of three deaths per 1,000 births.



Italy

GDP (2021): $2.10 trillion

$2.10 trillion Population (2021): 59.10 million

59.10 million GDP per Capita (2021): $35,551

$35,551 HDI (2021): 0.895

Italy is a developed country.

Italy's manufacturing industry is very well developed, and it is ranked seventh on Earth according to the World Economic Forum. In particular, Italy is known for producing high-quality luxury products, such as fashion accessories, expensive cars, and food products. Nearly 74% of Italy's workers are employed in the services sector, while just over 2% work in agriculture, which is a strong indicator that this nation is developed.

Italy is ranked eighth in the world for overall GDP. The present-day commercial banking industry had its beginning in Italy, and today the nation's largest financial services company, Intesa Sanpaolo is regularly ranked on the Fortune 500 list. As of 2020, the country's average life expectancy was 82 years from birth, while its infant mortality rate was a low three deaths per 1,000 live births.

Japan

GDP (2021): $4.94 trillion

$4.94 trillion Population (2021): 125.67 million

125.67 million GDP per Capita (2021): $39,285

$39,285 HDI (2021): 0.925

Japan is a developed country.

Despite its smaller size compared to other economically healthy countries, such as Germany or France, Japan is the third wealthiest nation on Earth in terms of overall GDP. Almost 70% of the nation's workforce was in the services sector, while approximately 1.1% was in agriculture.

The archipelago is heavily dependent on imports of natural resources, and it is the world's largest net buyer of food products, the largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and the third-largest coal importer. As of 2020, Japan has an average life expectancy of 85 years from birth and an exceptionally low infant mortality rate of two deaths per 1,000 live births.

Mexico

GDP (2021): $1.30 trillion

$1.30 trillion Population (2021): 130.26 million

130.26 million GDP per Capita (2021): $9,926

$9,926 HDI (2021): 0.758

Mexico is a developing country.

Mexico's development status is despite the fact that it exceeds the majority of its peers in the developing world on most economic and quality-of-life metrics. In fact, according to the CIA World Factbook, Mexico's economy wasn't heavily reliant on agriculture, at just 3.6%, while its services and industry sectors were much larger.

Various other factors come close to, but don't quite hit, acceptable levels for developed-nation status. A life expectancy of 75 years since birth, as of 2020, ranks Mexico higher than most developing countries, but it still falls below its North American neighbors. The story is the same for the infant mortality rate, which was 12 per 1,000 live births that same year. In addition, Mexico is plagued by large swaths of poverty, lack of quality healthcare, and limited access to clean water.

The Netherlands

GDP (2021): $1.02 trillion

$1.02 trillion Population (2021): 17.53 million

17.53 million GDP per Capita (2021): $58,061

$58,061 HDI (2021): 0.941

The Netherlands is a developed country.

This nation demonstrates relative strength across all the metrics and combines a robust economy with a high standard of living for the majority of its residents. In 2017, the Dutch were the fifth-lowest population at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the European Union. As of 2020, the Netherlands had a life expectancy of 81 years since birth as well as an infant mortality rate of four deaths per 1,000 live births.

According to the OECD, the Netherlands fares well in providing its citizens with the tools necessary to build a high quality of life. Although the country is below average in environmental quality, the health and life expectancy for residents are in line with other developed countries. The Netherlands also ranks very highly in terms of work/life balance, with almost 0% of residents reporting that they work long hours in comparison with the global average of 10%.

Poland

GDP (2021): $674.05 billion

$674.05 billion Population (2021): 37.78 million

37.78 million GDP per Capita (2021): $17,840

$17,840 HDI (2021): 0.876

Poland is a developed country.

The Republic of Poland, as of 2020, is the sixth-largest country in the EU by GDP. A Soviet satellite state until 1989, the country has nearly completed its transformation into a democratic and market-oriented economy. Thanks to its strong economy, Poland is expected to quickly rebound once the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end.

Like many developed nations, Poland offers both free healthcare and higher education for its citizens. As of 2020, the country's infant mortality rate was four per 1,000 live births, while the life expectancy rate was 77 years since birth. The country also has 17 properties recognized on the UNESCO World Heritage List, only one of which isn't a cultural site.

Russia

GDP (2021): $1.78 trillion

$1.78 trillion Population (2021): 143.45 million

143.45 million GDP per Capita (2021): $12,172

$12,172 HDI (2021): 0.822

Russia is a country in transition.

Russia is not currently classified as a developed country, though it once reigned alongside the United States as a world superpower. The country's economy fell apart with the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union. Recently, the country's war on Ukraine has adversely impacted its economy due to sanctions imposed by other nations.

Poverty is widespread (at 13% of the population; the majority of whom are children) and life satisfaction is low (with Russian citizens on average giving it a 2.1 out of 10). As is typical of a non-developed country, the exportation of natural resources fuels much of Russia's economy.

Russia is borderline at best on most developed-country metrics. Its infant mortality rate is four per 1,000, while life expectancy is 71 years since birth.

Saudi Arabia

GDP (2021): $833.54 billion

$833.54 billion Population (2021): 35.34 million

35.34 million GDP per Capita (2021): $23,585

$23,585 HDI (2021): 0.875

Saudi Arabia is a developing country.

On a purely monetary level, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is rather successful when compared to other developing countries. It was the largest economy in the Middle East in terms of GDP in 2021; however, its economy lacks diversification. Over 87% of government revenue is derived from oil exports, making Saudi Arabia the world's largest exporter of petroleum.

Additionally, according to a 2020 Amnesty International report, the government has been heavily criticized for numerous human rights abuses, with nearly all known Saudi Arabian human rights defenders within the country having been detained or imprisoned.

As of 2020, Saudi Arabians had an average life expectancy of 75 years since birth as well as an infant mortality rate of six deaths per 1,000 live births.

South Korea

GDP (2021): $1.80 trillion

$1.80 trillion Population (2021): 51.74 million

51.74 million GDP per Capita (2021): $34,757

$34,757 HDI (2021): 0.925

South Korea is a developing country.

The country has a strong GDP and offers its citizens widespread access to quality healthcare and higher education. Following several decades of rapid economic growth and global integration, the Republic of Korea has become a high-technology and industrialized nation, with its most important sectors being electronics, telecommunications, automobile production, chemicals, shipbuilding, and steel.

That said, the country is reliant on exports and is currently facing other major challenges, such as an aging population and low worker productivity. Life expectancy in 2020 was an impressive 83 years since birth. The infant mortality rate is three per 1,000 live births.

Spain

GDP (2021): $1.43 trillion

$1.43 trillion Population (2021): 47.33 million

47.33 million GDP per Capita (2021): $30,115

$30,115 HDI (2021): 0.905

Spain is a developed country.

Nearly all organizations that analyze development status classify Spain as such. The country has a strong GDP, a literacy rate of over 98%, and a healthcare system that's one of the best in the world.

Since returning to a democratic system in 1975, Spain has become the eurozone's fourth-largest economy, with a diverse assortment of industries including manufacturing, financial services, pharmaceuticals, textiles and apparel, footwear, chemicals, and tourism.

Spain's infant mortality and life expectancy numbers are excellent; an estimated three infants died per 1,000 live births in 2020, and the average Spaniard lived to 82 years during the same year.

Sweden

GDP (2021): $627.44 billion

$627.44 billion Population (2021): 10.42 million

10.42 million GDP per Capita (2021): $60,239

$60,239 HDI (2021): 0.947

Sweden is a developed country.

Sweden is one of the most highly developed post-industrial societies in the world. Sweden's life expectancy is at 82 years since birth, while infant mortality is two deaths per 1,000 live births.

Although Sweden has the highest income tax rate in the world, the country is also known for having a high quality of life and a low unemployment rate of roughly 8.7% in 2021.

Additionally, Swedish citizens have free access to healthcare and higher education. The average Swede enjoys nearly 20 years of education. As a society, Sweden places great importance on environmental sustainability as well.

Switzerland

GDP (2021): $812.87 billion

$812.87 billion Population (2020): 8.70 million

8.70 million GDP per Capita (2020): $93,457

$93,457 HDI (2019): 0.962

Switzerland is a developed country.

According to the World Bank, Switzerland has the sixth-highest GDP per capita and the second-highest of the countries on this list. This can be attributed to the country's highly skilled labor force, which helps compensate for its smaller population.

The country's largest economic sectors are financial services, precision manufacturing, metals, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and electronics. Switzerland has a universal healthcare system while also preserving a private marketplace. As of 2020, the country's average life expectancy was an excellent 83 years, with an infant mortality rate of four per 1,000 live births.

Thailand

GDP (2021): $505.98 billion

$505.98 billion Population (2021): 69.95 million

69.95 million GDP per Capita (2021): $7,233

$7,233 HDI (2021): 0.800

Thailand is a developing country.

The Kingdom of Thailand is the second-largest economy in Southeast Asia. Thailand has a free-market economy, with a relatively well-developed infrastructure. About two-thirds of the country's GDP is derived from exports of electronics, agricultural commodities, automobiles and parts, processed foods, and other goods.

Over the last four decades, the country has moved from a low-income to an upper-income country by making substantial progress in social and economic development. The country's average life expectancy was above average at 77 years, while its infant mortality rate was a fairly high seven per 1,000 live births.

Turkey

GDP (2021): $815.27 billion

$815.27 billion Population (2021): 85.04 million

85.04 million GDP per Capita (2021): $9,586

$9,586 HDI (2021): 0.838

Turkey is a developing country.

Turkey is perhaps the best example of a country that straddles the line between developed and developing. In the past, the UN has classified it as a developed country. Today, most groups, including Turkey itself, agree on the country's status as a developing nation.

Confounding the issue are Turkey's GDP, infant mortality rate, and life expectancy, all of which hover in the gray area. Its infant mortality rate of eight per 1,000 live births, as of 2020, is lower than some other developing countries, but it's still fairly high. Conversely, the country's life expectancy is 78 years from birth.

United Kingdom

GDP (2021): $3.19 trillion

$3.19 trillion Population (2021): 67.33 million

67.33 million GDP per Capita (2021): $47,334

$47,334 HDI (2021): 0.929

The United Kingdom is a developed country.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was the fifth-largest country by GDP in 2020, with Great Britain being the first industrialized country in history. GDP growth is heavily reliant on the services sector, particularly banking, insurance, and business services, whereas large oil and natural gas reserves are shrinking.

In 2016, British citizens voted in favor of departing from the European Uniona decision that became known as Brexit. The U.K. formally left the EU on Jan. 31, 2020, although there wasn't a proper trade agreement between the two entities until a provisional one was approved by the European Parliament on April 28, 2021. As of 2020, the country's average life expectancy was a solid 81 years, while its infant mortality rate was quite low at four per 1,000 live births.

United States

GDP (2021): $23.00 trillion

$23.00 trillion Population (2021): 331.89 million

331.89 million GDP per Capita (2021): $69,287

$69,287 HDI (2021): 0.921

The United States is a developed country.

As of 2021, the United States was the wealthiest country on Earth in terms of total GDP, which is 24% of the world's entire wealth. The U.S. is both the largest goods importer and the second-largest exporter, making it the world's largest trading nation. Additionally, as of 2021, America has the third-largest military in terms of personnel.

However, despite its wealth and high HDI score, the U.S. has also been heavily criticized for traits more commonly seen in developing nations, such as it being the only developed country without universal healthcare, having a poverty rate higher than any other industrialized nation, and its infrastructure being in severe need of repair and overhaul. As of 2020, the country's average life expectancy was 77 years from birth, while its infant mortality rate was five deaths per 1,000 live births.

What Defines a Developed Nation? A developed nation is defined as one where citizens have easy access to quality healthcare and education, advanced technology and infrastructure, diverse and well-balanced economic sectors, such as industrial, service, and agriculture, and a relatively high gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per capita.

What Is an Example of a Developed Nation? Examples of developed nations include the United States, the United Kingdom, and the majority of Western and Northern Europe, such as Germany, France, Denmark, and Sweden.
PSOE Secretary General Pedro Sanchez. ANDER GILLENEA (AFP)

The head of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and leading party officials are not discussing ways of preventing a third general election in Spain.

The communication channels between party chief Pedro Sanchez and regional premiers are still open, but nobody is saying anything, reflecting a cooling of relations at the personal and political level.

I will continue to be loyal to the secretary general, but loyalty does not always mean simple backslapping

Extremadura premier Guillermo Fernandez Vara

After two back-to-back national elections and nine months of political deadlock, there is mounting pressure on the PSOE to let acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, of the Popular Party (PP), form a minority government. The PP won the most votes at the December 2015 and June elections, but fell short of a congressional majority on both occasions.

But so far, Sanchez has refused to provide this support either actively or passively: at a recent investiture vote in Congress, the PSOE voted no to Rajoys reinstatement bid. An abstention would have delivered the post to Rajoy in the second round of voting.

With the threat of a third election  on Christmas Day, to make matters worse  looming ever closer, some voices within the PSOE are suggesting that the party should provide this abstention, even if it means helping its traditional opponent. One high-profile proponent of such a move is Felipe Gonzalez, who was Spains longest-serving prime minister and remains a leading figure in Spanish socialism.

Wait until September 25

In the meantime, PSOE leaders are not planning to meet at a federal committee until after Galicia and the Basque Country hold regional elections on September 25. The Socialists are not expected to do well in either one.

Regional premiers consulted by this newspaper confirmed that theres been no contact with Sanchez for several weeks. The exception is Francina Armengol, the head of the Balearic Islands, who has frequent conversations with him.

Ex-Spanish PM Felipe Gonzalez has asked the PSOE not to obstruct a PP government if necessary to break the deadlock in Spain. ELVIS GONZALEZ (EFE)

Its probably 50% his decision and 50% mine... Hes got my phone number and Ive got his, so its probably a shared responsibility, said Extremadura premier Guillermo Fernandez Vara. Its not good for anybody not to have a flowing communication, but I accept my share of responsibility.

Vara also noted that I will continue to be loyal to the secretary general, but loyalty does not always mean simple backslapping, it means being loyal to the organization.

A Metroscopia survey for EL PAIS indicates that 50% of Socialist voters disagree with the idea of helping the PP into government.

The survey also shows that if third elections were held, the PP would benefit from low turnout rates and perform even better than in June, while the PSOE would lose some support at the polls.

English version by Susana Urra.
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
The Toro de la Vega is history.

On Tuesday morning, a new era began for a controversial bull-hunt that has been held in the Spanish town of Tordesillas since medieval times.

Tordesillas cries out for tradition, democracy and freedom!

Marchers at a pro-hunt rally

The renamed event, Toro de la Pena, still featured a bull getting chased by humans on foot and on horseback. The difference was that hunters were no longer allowed to kill it with spears under new rules introduced by the regional government.

At 11.15am, a 640-kilogram bull named Pelado was let loose in the streets of Tordesillas, in Valladolid province. The animal was steered down toward the bridge over the Duero river. Pelado crossed it, leaving the town behind and entering the countryside, where the hunt got underway.

It began to rain shortly afterwards, and the bull soon returned to the center of town with a crowd of people in tow. At around 12.10pm, a firecracker went off, signaling the official end to Tordesillas first ever Toro de la Pena. People started heading back into town; Pelado was to be taken to a nearby corral.

Banned in May

In May, the regional government of Castilla y Leon issued a ban on killing bulls during public fiestas such as this one. The new rules mean that hunters may no longer spear the animal, either. Tordesillas tradition had mandated that the first person to lance the bull got to finish it off in a one-on-one face-off between man and animal.

The ban came after growing annual clashes between animal-rights activists and defenders of the local fiesta, who feel that outsiders have come to impose their views and destroy their time-honored custom.

In a bid to calm the waters, Tordesillas officials had been insisting that apart from not killing the bull, everything else would remain the same.

It will not be our timeless Toro de la Vega. But it will run down the same course as always, noted a brochure handed out by local authorities. But even the mayor, Jose Antonio Gonzalez of the Socialist Party (PSOE), publicly lamented that weve been orphaned.

More clashes

But the confrontation between supporters and detractors of the event did not end this year. Around 3,000 people gathered in the central square at 10am to protest the dictatorial regional decree and to defend their freedom to hold the fiesta. Marchers held up a large sign with the slogan Tordesillas no se rinde (Tordesillas is not giving up).

A ban in the 1960s Juan Carlos Blanco Between 1964 and 1977, when Spain was still under the Franco dictatorship, national authorities banned the killing of the bull during local fiestas. A decree signed in 1963 prohibited all public spectacles that entailed animal abuse, even traditional ones such as Toro de la Vega. The only exception was the official bullfights held inside the rings. The point was to establish a clear difference between the "art" of real corridas de toros, which Spain wanted to make more prestigious, and the savagery of other bull-related fiestas held across the Spanish geography, which Madrid wanted to phase out. But locals ignored the ban and killed the bull anyway in 1964 and 1965, leading to several arrests.

Some animal-rights activists also showed up, but the Civil Guard was on hand to prevent major clashes. A man was arrested after refusing to hand over a spear to officers.

An animal-rights activist was reportedly injured at around 10.45am after coming out in defense of a young woman who was having an argument with Toro de la Vega supporters. They were hitting her and I tried to separate them, and then they hit me in the back, said the activist.

Toro de la Vega supporters read out a manifesto stating that their town is being unfairly targeted by the media. Their final cry was Tordesillas cries out for tradition, democracy and freedom!

English version by Susana Urra.
On Thursday, September 8, Manhattan judge Michael Katz ruled thatstar Jules Wainstein will receive $10,000 in spousal and child support from her estranged husband, Michael Wainstein.According to Us Weekly , Jules' estranged husband Michael agreed to pay her $200 a week to cover the food bill for their kids, son Jagger, 5, and daughter Rio, 3  but refused his soon-to-be-ex-wifes demand for $25,000 a month in spousal and child support.According to the New York Daily News , Michael's lawyer, Morghan Leia Richardson, said that his businesses have suffered tremendously from the publicity he has received from the couples public divorce. Additionally, the outlet reports that Richardson claimed that her client is struggling financially because he is in heavy credit card debt and an apartment that he and Jules purchased to rent out is currently vacant.Though Jules was not granted the amount she asked for in spousal and child support, Judge Katz ordered that Michael, a principal at Private Capital Group, give the Modern Alkeme founder $10,000 a month.While the pair did not speak and avoided eye contact at all costs during their court hearing, they will continue to live under the same roof. Katz said that Michael will live on the first floor (with second-floor office access) of the once-in-love duos downtown triplex, while Jules and their children will occupy the top two stories."Both parties will remain in their respective spaces and with no infringement, the judge said. Both of you need to keep a respectful distance, especially for the children's sake. It would not serve them well if there is visible tension between you.As previously reported, Jules and Michael decided to call it quits on their eight-year marriage after she learned of her husbands alleged indiscretions with another woman.Last week it was reported that Jules will not return to the Real Housewives of New York City just after one season. Her rep tells E! News , "Jules is going good through a divorce and is putting her family first."Photo Credit: Bravo
A Vodafone merger with the cable group would yield considerable strategic and financial benefits, said the financial newspaper, which describes Liberty Global chairman John Malone as a shareholder-focused deal maker who may be inclined to pursue such a deal if terms can be worked out.

Vodafone has already said it was no longer in talks with Liberty, Barrons said, but the two companies have partnered on a joint venture in the Netherlands.

Mr Malones Liberty is best known here as the owner of TV3 and cable firm Virgin Media, formerly known as UPC. Liberty bought Dublin-based broadcaster UTV Ireland in July.

The companys shares could rise for other reasons too, the newspaper said. Vodafone has managed to increase its revenue in Europe in recent quarters after eight years of decline. Vodafone shares are little changed this year.

While competition and regulations in the European market are difficult, conditions seem to have stabilised. The company has also invested $28bn (24.9bn) over the past two years to improve its network.

The companys operations in India, South Africa, and other developing markets are unappreciated, the report said, adding those markets accounted for one third of Vodafone sales.

The companys more than 5% yield compares favorably with rivals Verizon Communications, AT&T, and Deutsche Telekom, as well as measly British government bond rates, according to Barrons.

The company expects its cashflow to grow enough to cover the dividends it pays out.

Earlier this month, Vodafone said it would take a decision on an IPO of its Indian unit by the end of the year, though stressing that nothing had been decided yet.

We are getting ready for the IPO in India and we will make a decision before the end of the year, said the chief executive at Vodafone Group, Vittorio Colao.

India is the worlds second-biggest mobile phone market by subscriptions, behind China, but high competition in the crowded market has kept profits under pressure.

Last month, Indias No 3 mobile phone carrier, Idea Cellular, strongly denied a news report it was in exploratory talks about a merger with larger rival Vodafone India.

A spokeswoman for Ideas parent, conglomerate Aditya Birla, said the report of talks between Idea and Vodafone baseless and absolutely false.

A spokesman for Vodafone India, Indias No 2 operator by market share, had declined to comment on the report.

Adding to the competition, Reliance Jio  a telecom venture backed by Indias richest man, Mukesh Ambani  is set to launch commercial operations in the coming months.

Both of them are struggling with their data revenue market share and ahead of a big competitive change in the industry they might want to get bigger, IDFC securities analyst Abhishek Gupta said of Idea and Vodafone India.

Any such deal would also face tough regulatory scrutiny and analysts say approvals would be unlikely, as the companies would breach the 50% revenue market share limit in many regions of the country if they did try to merge.
The ECBs draft guidelines aim to help eurozone banks get out from under 1.1trn of doubtful and non-performing loans. The proposals issued yesterday address the main aspects regarding strategy, governance and operations needed for banks to reduce their stocks of bad loans, and set out best practices that will constitute the ECBs supervisory expectations, the bank said.

Daniele Nouy, head of the ECBs supervisory arm, has made tackling non-performing loans a priority since the central bank began overseeing eurozone banks in 2014. The problem, which is particularly acute in Italy, has been exacerbated by factors including the anaemic economy, poor banking practices, flawed legal frameworks for debt recovery and a lack of capacity in the judiciary system, Ms Nouy said in June.
The plant located in Killala is designed to generate electricity and produce biomass woodchips, and was due to become operational in 2017.

Work stopped on the site in July due to funding shortages and the developer, Mayo Renewable Power, (MRP), is now insolvent and sought the protection of the courts.

Last month, the High Court appointed insolvency practitioner Michael McAteer of Grant Thornton as the interim examiner to MRP. Yesterday, the matter returned before Mr Justice Anthony Barr, who confirmed Mr McAteer as examiner to the company. There were no objections to his appointment.

The move gives the company the protection of the court and will allow the examiner take steps including securing additional investment so the plant can be completed.

Barrister Kelley Smith, for the examiner, told the court Mr McAteer had already held discussions with a number of interested parties, and that the talks have been positive.

During the currency of the examinership process, Mr McAteer will attempt to put together a scheme of arrangement with creditors, which, if approved by the High Court, would allow the company to continue to trade as a going concern.

The proposed 42.5 megawatt biomass-fuelled plant, which is designed to generate both electricity and biomass woodchips used as a solid fuel, was 50% complete when work ceased.

James Doherty SC, for the company, said the plant was a significant and long-planned undertaking and had created 350 jobs for the construction phase.

When operational the plant would create 130 jobs and has the potential to create 1,000 jobs in the Irish biomass market.

The plant was initially to be funded partly by its parent company, the US-registered Rockland Mayo LLC, for some 80m.

The remainder was to come from a syndicate of lenders including Ulster Bank, AIB, and Barclays Bank who were to provide 118m.

However, those funds were not drawn down after a problem emerged with a supplier. The parent did increase its funding by an additional 10m, but new finance from lenders is required.

The company is also facing a damages claim for $60m brought against it and others in the US courts. John Sisk & Son, which has given its qualified support for the examinership process, is the main contractor on the site.
AB InBev, maker of Budweiser and Corona, already forged agreements to sell SABs brands in western Europe and its joint venture stakes in the US and China to speed approval for one of the biggest deals in history.

It also plans to offload SABs assets in eastern Europe, worth up to 7bn, but has not agreed a buyer.

Besides those, SAB has a cross-shareholding with Frances Castel Group that, according to sources, includes the first right to buy out the wine, beer and soft drink maker should it ever seek new owners outside the billionaire Castel family, helmed by Pierre Castel, who is nearly 90.

That right would transfer to AB InBev, giving it a path toward potential full ownership of Castel, which some analysts estimate is worth more than $30bn due partly to it being the second-largest beer and soft drink maker in Africa.

The continent, with its increasingly thirsty middle class, is one of the main drivers of ABIs takeover expected to close in October following a shareholder vote on September 28.

Castel, which also boasts wine estates in Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia, is such a jewel in the crown, according to Liberum analyst Alicia Forry, that AB InBev would likely jump at the chance to own it.

Its a very important relationship we intend to continue to develop and evolve, AB InBev chief executive Carlos Brito told analysts last month when asked about Castel.

Aside from beer, which SABMiller has sold in South Africa since 1895, the brewer now owns 57% of soft drinks seller Coca-Cola Bottling Africa. Under an existing change-of-control clause, Coke will have the right to buy SABs stake  estimated to be worth as much as $4bn once the takeover closes.

Coke declined to comment on its intentions but several analysts, including Bernsteins Trevor Stirling, believe it will buy the stake, in part to keep ABI away from its door.

With no more room to grow in beer, chatter among bankers has turned to whether the mega brewer will eventually move into soft drinks.

A takeover of Coke  which has a market value of $188bn  would be of unprecedented scale, even for the renowned dealmakers at AB InBev.

Yet a growing relationship between AB InBev backers 3G Capital and major Coke shareholder Warren Buffett have led some fee-hungry bankers to imagine the legendary investor lending a hand.
Chief among these is Brexit. The topic was discussed at the recent G20 meeting in China and is also the basis of this weeks informal EU leaders meeting in Slovenia, to which the UK is not invited.

Markets have taken a more sanguine view of Brexit recently on the back of UK economic data tending to surprise to the upside of expectations, showing only a limited impact from the June referendum vote in favour of leaving the EU.

UK stock markets have rebounded strongly from their post-referendum vote falls, while sterling has recovered some ground in the past month.

Last months rate cut in the UK has also helped sentiment.

However, the Brexit process is only getting started.

Indeed, until the UK triggers Article 50, the official negotiation process cannot get underway. Current indications are that this will not happen until early in 2017.

On this basis, it is likely to be 2019, at the earliest, before the UK exits the EU.

There seems to be a lack of understanding in the UK that some very difficult decisions lie ahead on Brexit.

Indeed, some recent commentary would point to a belief that the key event for the economy was the referendum vote, rather than Brexit itself when the UK actually leaves the EU.

This is despite the fact that the UKs trading relationships have not been impacted by the referendum vote and the institutional arrangements with the EU remain in place for now.

The UKs departure from the EU, though, will be a different ball game entirely.

There appears to be a widespread expectation, in the UK, that because it is a large economy and an important export market for many other EU countries it will be able to secure a favourable trade deal on exiting the EU which will see it retain access to the single market.

However, the indications from the EU are that talks on a new trade deal can only begin after the UK leaves the EU, meaning any exit deal may only contain an interim trade arrangement, which could very well be a diluted version of the single market.

Key EU policymakers have also stressed that access to the single market requires freedom of movement of people.

The UK will have to make a trade-off, at some stage, between its desire to maintain access to the single market while regaining control over migration policy.

It is also important to bear in mind that EU leaders will not want to create a precedent of an easy Brexit that other countries might be tempted to follow.

Nationalism is on the rise in many European countries, which could undermine the whole basis of the EU.

Meantime, based on recent comments from members of the UK cabinet, there seems to be some disagreement on the strategy for the exit talks and what type of Brexit the government wants.

It is unclear if the UK wants to remain in a customs union, the extent of inward migration that it feels is appropriate and what shape any new trading relationship with the EU should take.

What is clear is that Brexit is likely to prove a long and difficult process with considerable downside risks for the UK economy.

Some 45% of UK exports go to the EU, while the UK is heavily reliant on imports of intermediate goods from the EU for use by industry.

The single market has been a key factor in fostering strong growth in these trading relationships.

The UK is also the biggest recipient of foreign direct investment in the EU, with much of it coming from mainland Europe.

London is the centre of the financial services industry in Europe.

Meanwhile, large inward migration has played an important role in the strong performance of the UK economy in recent years.

We wont see the full impact Brexit has on all these factors until the UK leaves the EU.

In our view, the current complacency about Brexit  including in financial markets  is likely to prove misplaced.

Oliver Mangan is chief economist with AIB
The figures come as gardai launch a campaign to reduce the number of assaults on Irish streets.

The Garda Analysis Service data reveals that 83% of offenders in assault cases are male, with the majority of offenders are aged between 18 and 39 years old.

These assaults typically take place in and around public places (street, roads, pubs, and hotels) between 8pm and 5am at the weekend.

Around one quarter of assault incidents linked to the nighttime economy involved intoxication of either the suspect offender, the victim, or both.

Seven out of every 10 assaults involve men attacking other men, while three-quarters of all assault victims are also male.

Perpetrators of assaults tend not to repeat the crime and there is a very low level of repeat victimisation.

According to gardai, analysis has also shown that the level of assaults is typically associated with the vibrancy of the nighttime economy which has shown signs of recovery following the recession.

For example, in the Dublin Metropolitan Region, the number of assaults causing harm rose from 1,396 in 2012 to 1,707 in 2015, while minor assaults increased from 3,100 to 3,337 in the same period.

Assaults nationally have fallen this year, with minor assaults down 2% and assaults causing harm down 4%.

Describing the effect a serious assault had on his life, one 26-year-old male described his life as a living hell in a victim impact statement to gardai.

Before the assault I was a happy-go-lucky guy, but since then I would describe my life as hell, he said.

Along with the terrible injuries that kept me in hospital for a long time, I have suffered from depression and paranoia and I still feel angry a lot of the time.

Another man, aged 29 years old, told gardai he felt more anxious when out socialising.

Since the incident I think about the vulnerability of myself, my girlfriend and my family when out socialising or going about daily life. In the weeks that followed the incident I experienced disturbed sleep and anxiety, he said.

Sgt Kelvin Courtney of the Garda Bureau of Community Engagement urged young men to think about the impact of their actions and advised people to be streetwise when they are socialising.

Dont be that guy. Use your brain, not your fists. Never attempt to reason with drunk or aggressive people. Walk away and look for help, he said.

Gardai have implemented its multi-strand anti-crime strategy and have implemented a range of actions to help reduce assaults.

Assault hotspots have been identified and since early August there has been a high visibility policing presence in these areas at key times.

Gardai are also working with pubs, the business community and local councils to address issues around antisocial behaviour.
Former Valencia mayor Rita Barbera. Tolo Ramon (Archivo)

Spains Supreme Court announced on Tuesday it was to investigate Rita Barbera for money laundering offenses allegedly committed during her 24 years as the Popular Partys (PP) mayor of Valencia. The top tribunal will be looking into her supposed role as part of an illegal financing network that is thought to have operated out of Valencia City Hall, and that has already seen most of Barberas team accused of corruption.

The Supreme Courts decision is in response to a request filed in July by its public prosecutors to investigate Barbera, who is now a PP senator. If the probe turns up evidence of wrongdoing, she now faces the likelihood of being officially named as a suspect in the ongoing illegal financing case.

This latest turn of events will weaken acting PM Mariano Rajoy as he attempts to garner support to form a PP-led government

In April, a lower court judge had requested an investigation, but Barberas position as a senator, which grants her legal immunity from the lower courts, means the case can only be investigated by the Supreme Court.

The probe relates to so-called Operation Taula, which saw 24 people arrested in January and is targeting local government officials in the provinces of Valencia, Alicante and Castellon, as well as the Valencia provincial authority. All the detainees have ties to the Popular Party (PP), which governed the Mediterranean region for two decades until May 2015, when local and regional elections resulted in a political shift to the left. Barbera ran Valencia City Hall between 1991 and 2015.

Barberas name comes up in several surveillance recordings, in which she is referred to as the lady boss

More than 50 people are now under investigation as part of Operation Taula. The judge overseeing the case is investigating donations of 1,000 from elected PP officials and party advisors, including Barbera, supposedly used to launder money of allegedly illegal origin that funded election campaigns in 2015, 2011 and 2003. In exchange for their donations, the officials were allegedly given two 500 banknotes in return.

One of the suspects, according to sources familiar with the investigation, is Alfonso Rus, a former provincial chief and ex-mayor of the Valencia town of Xativa. Another is Maria Jose Alcon, who used to work as an advisor to Barbera. Alcon is married to Alfonso Grau, a former deputy mayor of Valencia who is a defendant in the ongoing Noos corruption trial, which has also ensnared a member of the Spanish royal family, King Felipes sister Cristina.

Barberas name comes up in several surveillance recordings turned over by a former top PP official referred to by co-conspirators as the lady boss.

This latest turn of events will weaken acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as he attempts to garner support to form a PP-led government and avoid a third general election in a year, following two inconclusive polls that have left Spain rudderless for almost nine months.

Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sanchez has cited the many corruption cases involving the PP as one of the reasons he wont be supporting Rajoy.

Similarly, an anti-corruption pact with emerging center-right party Ciudadanos requires the PP to expel anybody accused of corruption from the group.

English version by Nick Lyne.
Darren Coffey, aged 25, of 40 Upper John St, Cork, was brought before Cork District Court yesterday on a charge of causing criminal damage to a Garda vehicle at Cathedral Walk, Blackpool, Cork, on Saturday.

The charge arose out of an alleged ramming of the Garda car as the motorist attempted to drive away at speed from the gardai.
He made the forecast as Bord Bia announced yesterday the opening of a second office in Asia. With its Shanghai hub serving the Chinese market, the new base in Singapore will focus on the South and East Asian countries of Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea.

Given that Irish food and drink exports to China have grown tenfold in ten years to reach 654m, we are confident China will be a 1bn market in the next three years, he said. China is currently our second-largest market for pork and dairy, while it remains a valuable and increasingly important market destination for Irish seafood.

The UK is the Irish food and drink industrys largest trading partner but that may be about to change, not just because of Brexit but also due to the huge efforts being made by Bord Bia and Irish companies to capture a slice of the huge Asian market.

Irelands biggest industry has an annual turnover of 25bn, exports of 10bn, supports 230,000 jobs, and is the UKs biggest supplier of food and drink  but the Chinese are expected to import more of our food than Britain within the next few years.

This week, Bord Bia launched a campaign to promote Irish dairy to Chinas online shoppers and influencers. It is the first consumer-facing campaign undertaken by Bord Bia in China. In the initial phase, it is expected to reach 33m people through a series of online ads, promotions, and targeted blogs.

Despite its relatively small population of 5.5m, Singapore is one of the largest importers of Irish food and drink in the region. It also boasts a large manufacturing base and a significant trading influence in the region.

Yesterday, Bord Bia concluded what it considered its most ambitious trade mission ever, spanning four countries in eight days with 90 senior representatives from Irelands food sector.

In Singapore, Agriculture Minister Michael Creed, who led the delegation, said the opening of the office was testament to the Governments ambition to meet t Food Harvest 2020 and FoodWise 2025 targets to grow food exports.

From here Bord Bia will have its finger on the pulse of the Asian economy and the office will be the launchpad for Irish food and drink exporters to explore new opportunities in the region. I believe the investment will pay handsome dividends in the coming years, he said.
So said Kilkee, Co Clare-based Irish Coast Guard volunteer Jenny Carway in an interview with The Clare Champion two years ago. Her words are especially poignant today as she and her coastguard colleagues mourn the devastating loss of one of their own.

In an awful reversal of roles, the people who regularly put their own lives in peril to save others found themselves the focus of a dramatic air and sea search that ended in tragedy for Caitriona Lucas, mother-of-two in her early 40s, from Ballyvaughan.

Together with Jenny Carway, 51, and James Lucey, 49, Ms Lucas had set out yesterday morning as part of a search for a man missing since last Friday. However, their Delta RIB flipped over as they searched near the cliffs at Kilkee around lunchtime yesterday.

The alarm was raised at around 1pm as they were thrown into the sea on the western side of Kilkee Bay. A major rescue operation was mounted involving the Doolin unit of the Irish Coast Guard along with Kilrush and Aran Islands RNLI lifeboats.

The crew of the Shannon- based search and rescue helicopter Rescue 115 recovered Ms Carway and Ms Lucas from the water. However, efforts to reach Mr Lucey proved very difficult.

Ms Carway, the coast guards longest-serving volunteer, originally from Somalia, was treated by ambulance paramedics in Kilkee before being transported to University Hospital Limerick for further assessment.

However, Ms Lucas was airlifted to UHL in an unresponsive state, and was later pronounced dead.

It is understood she was attached to the Doolin unit of the coast guard, and her partner Bernard is also a member of the service.

The official Irish Coast Guard Facebook page changed its profile photo to the service logo with a black band through it while the page received many expressions of sympathy.

Mr Lucey, the boats coxswain, was trapped on a ledge in a sea cave and conditions were too dangerous to mount a water-based recovery.

Coastguard volunteer James Lucey is airlifted from the sea after he became trapped in a cave below the cliffs in Kilkee, Co Clare, where he sheltered when his boat capsized while searching for a man missing since Friday. Picture: Press 22

Members of Doolin Coast Guard abseiled down to Mr Lucey and remained with him. He was winched onto the helicopter at around 5.30pm and flown to hospital. He was said to have been uninjured but exhausted and badly shaken.

Irish Coast Guard spokesman Declan Geoghegan confirmed there would be an inquiry into the tragedy.

We dont know if it was a heavy swell or a rogue wave or what happened but we got a mayday call at around midday when a coastguard boat got into difficulty. We mobilised rescue boats and the helicopter to the scene. They obviously got thrown into the water and unfortunately we lost a colleague.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the death of Ms Lucas casts a dark shadow over people all over the island.

Transport Minister Shane Ross described her as a member of that extraordinary group of men and women who dedicate their skills, time and passion so that others may be safe on our coastlines.

The community in Kilkee has been left stunned by the tragedy.

We always hear how the coastguard risk their lives for others but you never think and always hope that something like this doesnt happen. This is shocking altogether, an onlooker said.
However, a suggestion that the loan repayments could be linked to agreed increases in the citys local property tax rates (LPT) has already sparked opposition.

Council chief executive Ann Doherty has discussed the broad outline of the proposal with party whips and declined to discuss it in detail while it is still being considered by councillors.

However, in a statement, she said: The investment needs of the city are kept under continuous review by the council, including the requirements for investment in the public realm.

As chief executive, it is incumbent upon me to identify possible options whereby these needs can be funded, and to work with the members of the city council in the first instance to explore how these options might be advanced.

However, it is understood the proposal is for a long-term loan from international lending markets of up to 30 years, with an agreed increase in LPT rates being ringfenced to fund the repayments.

Fianna Fail councillor Sean Martin said he felt the loan term was too long and linking repayments to LPT rates is a non-runner.

I dont think its viable, he said.

Its like the 1985 council imposing something on the present council. I dont think we have the moral authority to tie later councils to such a proposal.

Fianna Fail councillor Ken OFlynn also rejected the proposal, saying: It would tie the hands of council for up to 30-years. We need to find a far more imaginative way of resolving our funding issues.

Fine Gael party whip John Buttimer said he could not see councillors voting to raise LPT rates to repay a loan. He added that the finance committee was told last week that if there is no change to Cork Citys LPT rate this year, the council will be 600,000 better off.

Our decision last year to decrease the rate by 10% was based on populism. The brave decision is not to change it, he said.

Independent councillor Mick Finn, the technical groups whip, declined to comment but confirmed he had relayed the proposal to his fellow councillors.
However, Cork County Council chief executive Tim Lucey said that while he would take on board their request, what action, if any, he would take against the owners of Mount Vernon would depend on the local authoritys own legal advice.

The motion to seek a prosecution was tabled at a meeting in County Hall by Independent councillor Marcia DAlton who also sought information on what notices the council had previously served on the owners to protect the property in Douglas.

Ms DAlton said local authorities needed to send out a signal that owners of such houses had a legal obligation to protect them under Section 58 of the Planning and Development Act 2000.

An Taisce has listed some 100 protected structures on its buildings at risk register, she said. Nine of these are in the Cork County Council jurisdictional area. One was Vernon Mount. The serious fire damage to Vernon Mount highlights the continuing failure of Irish planning legislation to enforce the maintenance of legally protected historic buildings.

She said she commended the council for repairing the roof of Vernon Mount in 2012 and 2014. The council itself spent 169,000 on the repairs after serving notices in both those years for the owners to carry out works.

The condition of Vernon Mount had been significantly deteriorating, not just since 1997, when it was purchased by its current owners, but since the 1960s and 70s, said Ms DAlton.

The citizens of this county place their trust in Cork County Council as the planning authority to ensure such owners or occupiers observe their responsibility. By not enforcing their powers under Section 59 of the act, the reality is that Cork County Council is reneging on that trust.

Ms DAlton said a prosecution would demonstrate the councils commitment to and appreciation of Irelands protected structures and convey to owners and occupiers of all other protected structures the need to uphold their societal responsibility.

Fianna Fail councillor Mary Rose Desmond agreed and said some owners were neglecting their responsibilities because they dont see any enforcement coming down the tracks.

Sinn Fein councillor Eoghan Jeffers said taking prosecutions would show that owners would not be allowed to let protected buildings deteriorate.

Fine Gael councillor Deirdre Forde said she had previously proposed the council buy the house and turn it into a civic centre.

Mr Lucey said: We actually went in there ourselves and spent 169,000 on it. Whether wed act on the motion Im not sure. The most effective way is to work with property owners. We have a very strong record on working on protected structures.

The advancement of legal proceedings will be based on our own legal advice. It will be a decision of the executive of the council.
The situation occurred as former environment minister Alan Kelly challenged Fianna Fail to publish legal advice which claims to show Ireland can avoid an EU backlash if it scraps the charges.

The Labour TD was adamant Ireland will be hit with severe fines if it makes the move.

It emerged yesterday that Fianna Fails submission to the independent water commission had sought a permanent end to the water charge. On RTE Radios Morning Ireland, Mr Martin insisted that, despite surprise at the move, his party was still being consistent with its pre-election policies.

Previous plans pointed to Fianna Fail being in favour of suspending charges for a significant period before introducing a new, fairer, charges system.

However, in a submission to the water commission, the party says it wants to scrap charges completely and replace them with a three-fold funding system based on general taxation, the strategic investment fund and the European investment bank.

Responding to criticism, Mr Martin said the change was not a U-turn and said it was very consistent with our general election position.

Despite warnings from the EU that Ireland will face significant fines if water charges are scrapped entirely instead of being suspended for a lengthy period of time, Mr Martin insisted his own party had received independent legal advice contradicting the view.

The position was repeated by a Fianna Fail spokesperson, who told the Irish Examiner the quite detailed and clear legal advice from an unnamed senior counsel notes there was legal precedence for national flexibility on water charges.

However, Mr Kelly lashed out at Mr Martins remarks, accusing the Fianna Fail leader of not knowing what hes talking about.

Mr Kelly, synonymous with the water charges regime due to his time as minister, said Ireland was unable to scrap the charges without facing into an abyss on the issue.

Challenging Fianna Fail to publish the legal advice, Mr Kelly said he believes the attorney generals own advice that Fianna Fails view will be found to be flawed.

Alan Kelly

The stand-off came as Sinn Fein yesterday published its own legal advice on the issue, further ratcheting up the pressure on Fianna Fail to release the file.

The legal opinion [from Mattias Kelly SC] has confirmed what we have been saying all along, that the abolition of water charges would not contravene the water framework directive providing that Ireland can meet the objectives of the directive, which is about conservation and protection of water, said Sinn Fein MEP Lynn Boylan.

Claiming there is now a clear majority in favour of scrapping water charges, she said water charges should be scrapped immediately adding the water commission was redundant.

Meanwhile, a Right2Water campaign is due to hold a protest in Dublin City on Saturday.
But as he prepared to attend Fine Gaels pre-Dail think-in in Newbridge, Kildare, Mr Kenny warned the Government could not be held to ransom on a weekly basis.

Mr Halligans comments come as speculation on whether he will resign over a refusal to fund a second specialist cardiac lab for the South East continues.

A clinical review has recommended improving staffing levels and equipment, but said there is no need for a second lab for the region.

Mr Halligan claims government ministers reneged on a vow to fund a second lab at Waterford Hospital.

In a highly inflammatory interview over the weekend, the Independent Alliance minister also said he would bring all hell down on the Government if the lab is not delivered. He accused Fine Gael ministers of employing dirty politics.

Mr Kenny said he did not condone the interview. He called on Mr Halligan to devote himself to his responsibilities in government, including the 11 areas of his education and jobs portfolio.

Enda Kenny

But, speaking to Newstalk, Mr Kenny warned that there cannot be a situation where every week the Government is held to ransom.

The Independent Alliance will meet this week to discuss budget preparations but Mr Halligans position will also be discussed with him.

Arriving at his partys meeting, Mr Kenny dodged questions about whether he had confidence in his embattled minister.

In a poignant remark, he also warned that he was the person who had the power to appoint and dismiss government officials. It was his [Mr Halligans] decision whether he resigned or not, he said.

Mr Kenny also said he would assess the performance of ministers next year.

Fine Gael sources confirmed there is active consideration being given to Mr Halligans replacement if he resigns.
He downplayed ongoing calls for a state inquiry to be set up yesterday, saying a still unpublished Comptroller and Auditor General report has not found any sign of illegal activity and that he wants its findings to be examined by a cross-party Dail group before making any decision on the matter.

Speaking on RTE Radios Morning Ireland, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin repeated his call for a full investigation into the issue due to the shocking revelations in last weeks BBC Spotlight programme which appeared to show former Nama official Frank Cushnahan receive 40,000 from a Co Down developer.
TDs should not spend time dealing with Marys medical card or social welfare payments and instead should focus on national issues, said the Fine Gael TD.

If we want to attract the bright people, the best people in to politics, theyre not going to go into politics as it is at present. Many wont as they have to go to every funeral, because they have to go to the opening of every envelope, or they have to be at every cock fight, he told the Irish Examiner.

Mr Griffin thinks that multi-seat constituencies should be eliminated and replaced by single seat, smaller electoral areas.

Politicians should then not focus on spending as much time on local issues, he explained.

Not issues relating to personal stuff, such as medical cards and social protection.

At the moment, you can almost have a race to the bottom for some constituencies.

Theres a certain number of people who will reward the guy who fills the pothole, who does the social welfare. Thats fine but what youre effectively losing out on is someone who does the bigger stuff, who ensures youve the proper planning for jobs, the proper infrastructure. Its [politics] too local.

His comments will be viewed as criticism of constituency competitors the Healy-Raes, who have defended going to large numbers of funerals. Mr Griffin denied being specific in his remarks.

Elsewhere, the Oireachtas committee chairman has said he supports reforming the abortion laws but that the process will be difficult for his party.

As his party finishes up its pre-Dail think-in today, he said Fine Gael cannot bury its head in the sand on repealing the Eighth Amendment, the part of the Constitution that protects the life of of the unborn.

My feeling is that the Eighth Amendment needs to be repealed but you need to know what replaces that, what fills that vacuum.

It will be difficult but we are going to have confront it, were going to have to deal with it.

READ MORE: Brendan Griffin is looking for a clearer vision of the future
Mr Meaney said the former IRA commander, now Northern Irelands Deputy First Minister, is an astute politician working towards the laudable goal of uniting the island of Ireland.

The Irish actor stars in The Journey, a fictional drama about the friendship forged between Mr McGuinness and his political opponent Ian Paisley during the Northern Ireland peace process.

Appearing at the Toronto International Film Festival, Mr Meaney said: I think Martin McGuinness has become an extraordinary statesman, a real statesman.

I supported him in his candidacy for president of Ireland at the last election because I thought he was the most qualified person to do it.

Hes proved himself over the last 10 years to be a very astute politician and a remarkably competent statesman, which surprises a lot of people.

Mr Meaney  known for his roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Snapper  brushed off controversy surrounding Mr McGuinness, saying: Anyone who is involved in politics in Ireland is controversial.

He added: I think what Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein have achieved in Ireland in the last 10 years is tremendous. Theyre the only all-Ireland party. Theyre moving towards bringing the island of Ireland together which I think is a laudable goal.

Mr Paisley, the Democratic Unionist Party leader who died in 2014, is portrayed in The Journey by English actor Timothy Spall.

His widow, Baroness Paisley, is reportedly boycotting the film, telling the Belfast News Letter: I dont think it was written with great knowledge.

Director Nick Hamm insisted the film is not a documentary but a fictionalised account of two A-list politicians.

We were not looking for either side to feel comfortable with the film, Mr Hamm said.

Neither were we looking for either side to condemn the film. We were looking to present a balanced argument where both sides would be equally comfortable and equally uncomfortable.

It is not a documentary. Its a fictionalised, entertaining feelgood movie about peace.

A release date for The Journey has not yet been announced.
How did Armenia's PMs resign? (video)

Who will vote to reject the resignation of Prime Minister Vazgen Manukyan? This very issue was put to a vote during the sitting of Armenia's Supreme Council on September 21, 1991. One hundred and thirty-five people voted for Manukyans resignation. Hrant Bagratyan became acting PM of Armenia. Former Community Gagik Harutyunyan became Armenias Prime Minister on November 1, 1991. Only ten months after his appointment he quitted the post without resignation. His successor became Khosrov Harutyunyan, another Communist who reached an agreement with Russia to import wheat and fuel to Armenia. Harutyunyan worked as PM for six months and left offices without resignation. Hrant Bagratyan was finally appointed Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia. During his tenure in office, Armenia had its own currency, reopened the nuclear power station and imported gas. Bagratyan handed in his resignation letter amid tensions in the political arena and loss of confidence in the Pan-Armenian National Movement (HHSh). The next premier was invited from Great Britain and remained in office for three months. He resigned from office when he was not in Armenia. He was succeeded by Robert Kocharyan, who became President of Karabakh in 1998. Kocharyan was succeeded by Armen Darbinyan as Armenias PM. He differed from his predecessors: he sang and even wrote poems. Darbinyan resigned after the May 1999 parliamentary elections. His successor, Vazgen Sargsyan, was a sociable persons, but had a frightening image. On October 27, 1999, Sargsyan was killed in parliament shooting by gunmen who swept into Armenia's parliament killing at least five people. He was succeeded by his brother Aram Sargsyan, who remained in office six months. Andranik Margaryan was appointed Prime Minister of Armenia in May 2000, only a few months after major political turmoil. He died in March 2007 and was succeeded by Serzh Sargsyan who became the countrys President a year later. Tigran Sargsyan succeeded Serzh Sargsyan as Prime Minister and served a six-year term until he resigned without explanation following a sharp economic downturn. Hovik Abrahamyan became the countrys next PM. Social polarization and economic downturn continued during his term of office. Armenias newly appointed Prime Minister is Karen Karapetyan who lived in Russia for five years before returning to Armenia. In 2011, he resigned as Mayor of Yerevan and left for Russia without explaining the reasons for his resignation.
His comments will be viewed as a U-turn by the lead government party after Fine Gael pledged in its general election manifesto to cut USC by 1% to help squeezed middle-income earners. While Fine Gael specifically promised this cut next year, the Programme for Government and separate deals with Fianna Fail make more general pledges on when or how to cut the tax.

Last night, Mr Noonan also dismissed expectations that a full inquiry will be launched quickly by the Government into Namas Northern property portfolio sale.

On the budget, he said 1bn was still available to spend on a 2:1 ratio between services and tax cuts.

There isnt an awful lot for tax relief, so while we will fulfill our commitments it will be by way of making a strong start which we will continue over three budgets, he said.

The 1bn is part of a bigger spend of up to 1.8bn, he said, with the extra going on public sector pay and demographic changes. However, reductions in the USC will be limited.

If only a third of the resources are available for tax deductions, what can be delivered is small enough, said Mr Noonan.

The Government was no longer committed to the Fine Gael manifesto, he said.

A 1% cut would cost over 300m. With 330m to spend on tax cuts, the Government may instead decide on a half percent cut or increase the entry level for USC.

With limited revenue- raising planned, Mr Noonans options are restricted. Instead, he hinted the Budget would play to Fianna Fails demands to reinvest in public services.

Mr Noonan said: [People] can expect significant improvements in public services and that seems to be the message of the electorate in the election.

So lots of extra teachers, extra nurses, garda. Theyll have some reductions in the taxes regarded as most penal, and that will include USC.

However, USC changes would not be dramatic, he said.

Elsewhere, he said the Government was unlikely to agree to an inquiry into Namas Project Eagle until after a report by the states financial watchdog is debated by TDs in the weeks ahead. He said the Cabinet would discuss the comptroller and auditor general (C&AG) report tomorrow. Nama, though, is set to reject claims it lost hundreds of millions of euro in the Northern loan sale.

Some of what has been said about it is incorrect, he said. Theres nothing in it that suggests theres anything illegal, anything improper or any irregularities in the way that Nama behaved.

The Public Accounts Committee will examine the C&AG report, which will take several weeks, before the Government responds to any calls for an inquiry.

I wouldnt rule out an inquiry after that, but lets see what comes out of it, said Mr Noonan. I also know the suggestions in the report that extra money might have been got are going to be rebutted very strongly.

Meanwhile, Fine Gael members at yesterdays pre-Dail think-in at Newbridge, Co Kildare, heard how party headquarters had a fortress mentality and did not engage enough with the grassroots members.

Details of two reports commissioned to analyse the partys disastrous election campaign were outlined.

Academic Marion Coy said there were failures in vision, empathy, planning, tactical positioning, communication, campaigning, and responsiveness during the party election campaign.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny yesterday deflected calls for him to step down by saying he had found his mojo over the summer.
Speaking at the US embassys Creative Minds series in Dublin, Mr OLeary said the failure to grant the licence was the result of nothing more than a lack of political will.

We dont have deregulation and, without deregulation, you cant really have long-haul. We have a stunning example of that going on at the moment. We technically have US-Europe Open Skies yet Norwegian are utterly shamefully being blocked, mainly by the lobbying activity of the pilots union on this side and the American pilots union in the States using the current elections as a means of forcing the [US] state department, or whoever it is, to not licence Norwegian to fly, he said.
Drinkaware and Alcohol Action Ireland are advising parents that alcohol should play no part in post-exam celebrations.

These results are a fantastic achievement and of course, should be celebrated. However we are talking about young people who are about 15 years old. This is simply too young to be drinking alcohol and the harms associated with drinking from such a young age cannot be underestimated, said Drinkaware CEO, Yvonne Rossiter.
Researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland discovered a drug that prevents the deadly disease from spreading throughout the body.

Up to 60% of all hospital deaths in Ireland in 2013 had a sepsis or infection diagnosis. There were 9,000 diagnosed cases of sepsis and the mortality rate at the time had been 28.8%  almost 3,000 deaths.

Sepsis, also known as blood poisoning or septicaemia, is a condition triggered by an infection or injury. If not treated quickly, it can lead to multiple organ failure.

The drug works by preventing bacteria that may get into the bloodstream from sticking to the inner-most side of a blood vessel.

Sepsis usually occurs when the bacteria interferes with blood vessels so they die and pull apart. Multiple organ failure occurs rapidly due to a lack of blood supply.

The Science Foundation of Ireland-funded research is published in the current edition of Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis and is a collaboration between the RCSI, Dublin City University and the Univesity of Leuven, Belgium.

Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

Lead researcher and senior lecturer in pharmacology at RCSI, Steve Kerrigan, said it was a new approach to combating sepsis.

Currently, there are no approved specific treatments for the underlying pathophysiology of sepsis which means the disease management plan focuses on reducing the infection through the use of aggressive intravenous antibiotics, said Dr Kerrigan.

What makes sepsis such a dangerous healthcare issue is that it arises unpredictably and can progress and spread quickly.

One of the main challenges with sepsis is that early signs are often non-specific and develops rapidly from what looks like a mild infection to a life-threatening situation.

What we are trying to do is to stop the body from swelling so the organs wont fail and we will then have a better chance of targeting the bacteria.

A patent has been filed on the drug and Dr Kerrigan has begun seeking a large pharmaceutical company to begin human clinical trials.

Dr Kerrigan, who has been involved in the sepsis research for the past five years, believes all going well, the drug could be available within the next five to ten years.

World Sepsis Day takes place today and the new drug is the first in many years that shows promise in battling the disease.

Dr Kerrigan said sepsis was also the most expensive condition to treat in hospitals. The cost to the Exchequer for solely treating sepsis was about 220m a year.

Globally, this is a massive problem and it is getting worse, not better, because our antibiotics are beginning to fail, he said.
Dr Sharon Sheehan, Master of the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital, also said it was completely unacceptable that only some of our maternity hospitals offered foetal anomaly screening.

Dr Sheehan was speaking at a patient safety conference yesterday, hosted by the State Claims Agency.

In my view, there are a number of factors that have to be addressed if we are to make any meaningful impact on improving quality and patient safety, staffing, training, the woman herself, our resources, leadership and governance and our severe lack of public confidence, she said.

In terms of resources, there is absolutely no doubt that the Irish maternity services, like many other services, have suffered from chronic under-investment.

Dr Sheehan, in making her presentation, showed the high workload of consultant obstetricians in Ireland and the low staff count in some maternity hospitals.

In terms of staffing it is absolutely of no surprise to anyone in the audience here that staffing in the Irish maternity services is in crisis and that the staff shortages are having a serious impact on staff morale, she said.

In terms of consultants, this graph shows that Ireland there, down at the bottom left-hand side of that graph, has the lowest number of consultant obstetricians per 100,000 women of every OECD country. We are Paddy last on that graph.

I guess most staggering are the deficits we are seeing in the three Dublin maternity hospitals, whereby we are operating at a 17% deficit in the number of midwifery staff that we need to run our services. This must be addressed.

She explained that unlike other medical procedures carried out in our hospitals, maternal care is demand-led with mothers giving birth around the clock and therefore waiting lists are of no use when it comes to alleviating pressures on the service.

The Master of the Coombe also addressed the dearth of foetal anomaly screening across Irish maternity hospitals.

All 19 units must be offering the same standard of care, we have got to eliminate this postcode lottery that exists in terms of standards, whereby at the moment most of our 19 units, in fact, do not offer foetal anomaly screening, which in this day and age is completely unacceptable, she said.

Dr Sheehan asked how public confidence, that we have lost so badly over the last number of years could be regained. She said it was a team effort across society and in particular asked the media to balance their negative coverage with the positive outcomes.

With open disclosure and transparency weve got to restore public confidence for those patients who come into use our services every day, she added.

Paperless hospitals

Cork University Maternity Hospital is leading the national way when it comes to digitising our healthcare system.

The hospital is due to go paperless next month.

Imagine taking a completely paper-based solution and making it digital on Saturday morning when on Friday it was paper, thats the intention in the hospital in Cork on October 22, said the HSEs chief information officer, Richard Corbridge.

Mr Corbridge was speaking at a patient safety conference in Dublin Castle yesterday, hosted by the State Claims Agency.

Eight thousand man hours training in Cork, to get ready for that solution.

The effort that hospital and the sister hospital in Kerry, put into this implementation is bigger than I have seen in any other health organisation, he said.

He is also the CEO of eHealth Ireland and was giving a presentation on the digitisation of the Irish healthcare system

It will take us 10 years to remove that paper across the entire healthcare system.

Perhaps one of the biggest success stories of the last 18 months is electronic referral.

Every single hospital in Ireland now is able to receive an electronic referral. Last month 40% of GPs used electronic referral and around 10,000 electronic referrals passed through the system.
While university presidents called for urgent decisions to be made on the options put forward in a report in July, Education Minister Richard Bruton will not bring any proposals to Cabinet before political consensus is reached.

However, the Oireachtas Education Committee, to which he has referred it, will not begin to deal with it for several weeks. Chairwoman Fiona OLoughlin, a Fianna Fail TD, said the Cassells report is a key issue for all members of the cross-party committee, but a number of issues had come in front of it on their agenda.

The issue was briefly discussed in private at its first meeting last Wednesday, before a public confirmation hearing with the chairperson designate of the Educational Research Centre, Pauric Travers.

Its next meeting is not scheduled until Wednesday September 21, when it has invited Student Universal Support Ireland to discuss third-level grants, and it convenes again on September 29 to discuss the 2017 education budget with Mr Bruton.

The key thing is the upcoming budget and I have no doubt it will raise its head at that meeting with the minister. I expect the process will start in October, said Ms OLoughlin.

The Union of Students in Ireland is opposed to an income-contingent student loan scheme, one of three main options proposed by Cassells. Under that option, the current 3,000 annual undergraduate fee would be significantly increased but would be covered by loans that would only fall due to be paid when graduates reach a certain income level. Another option it proposed was to abolish the 3,000 fee, making third-level entirely free, but requiring the State to provide almost the entire 600m a year the system needs by 2021, rising to 1bn by 2030. A third option is to retain the 3,000 fee and still significantly increase public funding. Evidence of the difficulties caused to students and their families by the charges make that an unlikely option.

While the Cassells report emerged from nearly two years of consultation with experts and interest groups, Ms OLoughlin said the committee needs to remain open.

He has made three clear recommendations but there may be other proposals that may be aired to us, she said.

Fianna Fails general election manifesto opposed an increase in fees but that option is not on the table. The idea of a fees-loan scheme was not opposed by the partys education spokesman, Thomas Byrne, following the Cassells reports publication in July, but he raised concerns about how the Government might finance the capital to advance loans to students.

Following the latest fall by most Irish universities in a world ranking table last week, presidents of Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, and University College Dublin said a political decision on how to provide the extra funding needed by the system can no longer be delayed.

More than a third has been cut from the annual budget which the higher-education sector receives between 2008 and 2015, from 1.4bn to 923m. Student numbers have risen by nearly 40,000 to more than 190,000 in the same time, with the 22,000 new students now registered in universities each year up 6% since 2008.
KIRSTEN Johnson has enjoyed a garlanded career making documentaries, working as a cinematographer on some of the most important films of recent times, including Citizenfour about the whistle-blower Edward Snowden, Michael Moores Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Invisible War.

In Cameraperson, which premiered earlier in the year to acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, the American sits in the directors chair and gazes back over her 25-year career. When it came to reviewing an early, 150-minute cut of the documentary, she was taken aback.

I had gathered all this footage that was so troubling to me. We worked on it for many months. We put it together and we watched it. It was shockingly horrific. I had no awareness that it would be as awful as it was. It was five genocides, two rapes, a baby dying, and I had put them altogether, with voiceover, unmitigated.

Edward Snowden in Citizenfour.

The fact that I had put it together without realising that it would be unwatchable really shocked me. It made me think I didnt know my own mind. It made me question do I have post-traumatic stress. How do I compartmentalise? What does this mean? I was only putting the enormous injustices of the world in the film, and it was unbearable. It was almost a diagnosis of my state.

With some canny editing by her editor Nels Bangerter, and a decision to take out the narration, Johnson and her production team managed to draw out the beauty and the joy and the complexity of the world, in addition to some of its horrors.

The spark for Cameraperson, a memoir that acts as a meditation on the practice of making documentaries, came from a documentary Johnson worked on in Afghanistan, starting in 2009. She spent three years filming two teenagers.

At the end of filming, one of the interviewees withdrew permission to screen footage taken of her because of fears for her safety. She was, says Johnson, too afraid.

Johnson didnt see it coming. It got her thinking about her trade, and the promises documentary filmmakers make to their subjects, parachuting into their lives for intense periods of filming, and then disappearing, without being able to fully control the impact their films might have on the community they leave behind.

Its not that I wasnt aware of problems of representation and ethical conundrums my entire career, but were in a new moment in history, says Johnson. Its a game-changer that we all have cell phones and can record images anywhere and distribute them anywhere.

A lot of the films Ive worked on have been post-conflict stories. Money and often time, too, is limited in making films. So here you go walking into someones life who has lived through something extraordinarily horrific like a genocide. You go, say, to Rwanda and you have maybe two hours to meet someone and talk to them about what they experienced during the genocide.

First, its incredibly presumptuous  even though they might be desperate for people to hear their story  and second it puts you in this position of going straight to the tough stuff and in many ways treating people only as victims in the topics you bring up.

Johnson has worked in some of the most trying political environments around the globe. Being a woman hasnt been an impediment, she stresses. Sometimes, its like Ive landed out of space. Im a white woman with a camera. In some ways, it can be an invasion, but other times I represent the idea of another possibility. I remember filming in this separatist Christian community in Alaska where girls could only do certain things. I could see the girls watching me go, Oh, girls can do other things.

And on the level of experiencing sexism, its funny, one of the effects of sexism is being underestimated. People patronise you or are unable to imagine you can do something powerful. That was always one of our greatest assets  working on films with Laura Poitras like The Oath or Citizenfour. Many people, including the US military, underestimated our capacity. That was fine by us.

Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency intelligence analyst, reached out to Poitras, the film director, and Johnson to make Citizenfour after he fled the US, setting in train a clandestine operation that culminated in eight days of secret filming in his hotel room in Hong Kong in 2013.

The film won an Oscar. Johnson remembers how frightening the project was at the beginning.

When the first emails came through from Snowden, which were anonymous, asking for us to go to Hong Kong  that was utterly terrifying, trying to determine if he was a credible person. I remember we put our phones in my freezer and we went down to the laundry room of my building and talked about it with the dryers going.

Cameraperson will screen as part of the IFI Documentary Festival, on Sept 23, at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin

1. Man With a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov): It helped me figure out how to see.

2. Sans Soleil (1983, Chris Marker): It gave me the possibility to question perspective.

3. Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997, Johan Grimonprez): Because of its freedom and its not-literalness.

4. Nostalgia for the Light (2012, Patricio Guzman): He succeeded in examining this question that hes been trying to cope with for the last 40 years since the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile  how can he speak in a film about what his country and himself have experienced emotionally because of the coup.

5. Diary (2010, Tim Hetherington): Tim succeeded in expressing visually the state of going in and out of worlds  the experience of being the kind of people we [documentary makers] are.
WHEN awaiting the arrival of their first child, most parents are concerned primarily with the health of their baby and then worry about taking care of the new arrival; finances can be well down the list of concerns. But, even for parents who do not yet have childcare costs, the bundle of joy comes with a hefty price tag.

I spoke to Laura Erskine, Mum-in-Residence at Irish site mummypages.ie, about what new parents can expect financially in the first year.

Having a baby is a very exciting time for both mum and dad, particularly so when it is their first child. The last few years have brought increased financial pressure for parents, with most families now trying to be sensible. Gone are the days where parents feel the need to emulate their celebrity mum icons with all of their designer trappings.

Nonetheless, the site estimates that parents will easily spend more than 4,000 in the first year, when you factor in all the equipment needed, plus food, clothes and nappies. Budget-conscious parents should focus their spending on what matters most, such as a car seat.

This is an absolute necessity which needs to be bought before baby arrives, Erskine explains. Your baby cannot leave the hospital without one. Its also essential that infant car seats are purchased new to ensure safety. You can expect to pay between 150 and 300 for a car seat.

Nursery furniture is also necessary but neednt cost the earth.

For a basic setup, including a crib, mattress and changing table, the average price of each item is at least 150. However, you can spend much more if you use matching nursery furniture sets and invest in the latest mattress technology. Many parents-to-be will receive second-hand cots and changing tables from family or friends or buy them up second-hand.

Given that a lot of baby equipment and clothes are used for a very short time before being outgrown, purchasing gently used items is becoming more common.

Lots of our mums are only too happy to buy a designer buggy second-hand and indeed beautifully crafted nursery furniture which unfortunately only has a finite life before the childs needs evolve to the next stage, says Erskine.

We have seen a huge surge in mums buying second-hand clothes and accessories for their newborn babies and toddler children. From passing gently used baby equipment and clothes between siblings and friends, to buying through online baby classifieds websites and local pre-loved baby markets.

Websites such as adverts.ie and donedeal.ie carry a huge number of ads for baby equpment, and donedeal also has a very useful blog post on how to check baby equipment before buying. Another idea is to talk to family and friends about gifts before the baby is born. New parents will find themselves inundated with adorable dresses, dungarees, and booties for their newborn. But the truth is fancy outfits will get worn once or twice at most. Suggest that family and groups of friends club together to get one item, such as a changing unit or baby monitor.

New parents may find they have far less free time to spend on their smartphones but one app well worth downloading is BabyDoc. This app finds special offers on everything from nappies to wipes to baby equipment and includes most major Irish retailers including Dunnes Stores, Tesco, Lloyds Pharmacy, Mothercare, McCabes Pharmacy, and Boots.

Financial constraints can have a huge impact on life with a new baby: Almost two-thirds of mummypages mums claim to have experienced financial difficulty while on maternity leave.

Make sure you are claiming the benefits you are entitled to, starting with maternity leave and childrens allowance. New dads are now entitled to two weeks paternity leave, but must check PRSI contributions to find out if they qualify for paternity benefit. If you are struggling financially you may qualify for extra help through the Family Income Supplement.

DEAL OF THE WEEK

For those looking to extend the summer holiday feeling into the autumn, Brittany Ferries are promoting value deals both for crossings and booking entire holidays with them.

Their 2016 season runs until November 5, so they have a wide range of autumn ferry-plus-accommodation deals on hotel breaks and cottage holidays on offer.

Deals include a six-day break in France from as little as 160 per person  based on four people sharing.

Even if sorting the accommodation yourself, you can book the Cork to Roscoff crossing for as little as 132 return, again based on four people sharing.

Brittany Ferries offers the fastest direct ferry crossing from Ireland to France, taking just 14 hours and operating to a weekend schedule.

If you are interested in some autumn sun in France, bookings can be made either online at brittanyferries.ie or over the phone on 0214277801.
IT HAS taken some time, but it appears Namas obstinacy in resisting a wide-ranging public scrutiny over its handling of the sale of a big bundle of distressed bank loans advanced to property developers in the North, known as Project Eagle, could well lead to another state inquiry.

With opposition TDs now jumping on the bandwagon, the political fallout from the scandal has the potential to seriously wound Finance Minister Michael Noonan too.

As recently as June, Mr Noonan was offering his full endorsement of the controversial auction process behind the 2014 sale of the Project Eagle loans.

The decisions made were a matter for the executive board of Nama and I have full confidence in the decisions they made, he told journalists at the time.

The revelations of BBC Spotlight programmes and allegations made by Independent TD Mick Wallace in the Dail were batted away by the Government.

Mr Wallace had alleged that monies in an Isle of Man bank account were meant to pay off political fixers in the North. The PSNI handed over its criminal investigation to the National Crime Agency late last year. A Stormont committee launched an investigation.

Mick Wallace

All were ignored by the Government.

For over a year, a public relations campaign by Nama has appeared to try to convince TDs and the public that the revelations out of Belfast were so much Northern business and held no interest for southern taxpayers.

Those revelations have included allegations about Frank Cushnahan, a former Nama representative of its now defunct Northern Ireland advisory committee, or NIAC. Mr Cushnahan has said he has done no wrong.

In the Oireachtas, the Public Accounts Committee, which has few investigatory powers, first quizzed Nama officials in July last year.

But what has finally led to a sea-change in Dublin is a report by the Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG). It sent its examination of the Project Eagle sale to Mr Noonan early last month and is set to be published this week.

Its reported findings of shortcomings and irregularities in the Project Eagle sale pose a huge challenge to Nama. After all, the C&AG is all about working on behalf of taxpayers to ensure value for money. Its findings cannot be easily dismissed. The sale of the Project Eagle was a huge transaction.

The auction was at the time the largest ever undertaken by Nama of distressed loans advanced by Dublin banks during the boom years.

The loans which had a face value of 4.5bn (on the eve of the auction that sum was equivalent to up to 6bn) had been advanced to a number of mostly Northern commercial property developers.

The reckless lending by Dublin banks during the Celtic Tiger boom times that had sent the prices of Dublin development sites skywards had also transformed swathes of Lagan-side properties in Belfast city centre.

As is the way of such loan disposals, the Project Eagle bundle also contained a portion of loans advanced on near-worthless sites across the North.

The Government and Nama insisted the 2014 sale of the Project Eagle loans was based on a sound footing. Nama policed any reports that southern taxpayers were shortchanged in any way.

Nama chairman Frank Daly had repeatedly insisted the auction process had competitive tension and delivered value for taxpayers.

The auction officially got under way in January 2014. A few months earlier, Frank Cushnahan had resigned his post on NIAC .

Nine bidders, including Pimco and another huge US fund, Cerberus, were on the roster. The reserve price was set at 1.24bn. In early March, the roster had been whittled down from the nine potential bidders to a list of three US bidders: Pimco, Cerberus, and Fortress Investment.

Pimco then landed a bombshell.

Pimco had told Nama that a legal fee arrangement it had struck with its main legal advisers Brown Rudnick had included a payment of fees to Tughans  a Belfast firm of solicitors which was helping Brown Rudnick on the ground, as well as to a former external member of Namas Northern advisory committee. Pimco named the ex-NIAC member as Frank Cushnahan.

Pimco said that it had learnt there was a fee of 15m to be split three ways, including Brown Rudnick and Frank Cushnahan.

The Nama board scrambled and decided that its serious concerns about the fee arrangement proposals and in particular the proposed fee payment to Frank Cushnahan warranted the withdrawal of Pimco from the auction.

Now down to only two bidders, the auction nonetheless went ahead. In April 2014, Cerberus won by bidding a shade over 1.24bn and Fortress bid 1.1bn.

It later emerged that a short while after Pimcos exit, Cerberus engaged Brown Rudnick as its lawyers to advise it in the ongoing auction. Cerberus said it didnt know the circumstances of the withdrawal by Pimco. It also said that Brown Rudnick had told it that Brown Rudnick wanted to retain Tughans as its Belfast-based-based legal firm.

Brown Rudnick has said it did everything above board and that it was assisting all investigations.

Last summer, the Irish Examiner wrote of on the number of issues raised by Project Eagle sale.

Nama has stood behind the integrity of the auction. One big question remains: How can Nama be so sure that Pimcos exit didnt lessen the competitive tension in the auction in March two years ago?

Surely, Nama would have been wise to postpone the sales process when it first learned about the fee arrangements proposed by Pimco.

The Comptroller & Auditor General report has also focused on the auction process.

Nama and the Government may struggle to ignore the spending watchdogs report.
WHEN something is started in secrecy and operates in secrecy, it runs the risk of scandal. When it is also given immense power, the risk increases. When it has to report to nobody except the minister, it becomes harder and harder to escape the perception of scandal.

Fine Gael knows that. They said it again and again during the debate that led to NAMA. They even opposed its establishment. And one of the key reasons they gave for opposing NAMA was the growing concerns from creating a secretive, politically directed, state-managed, tax funded work-out process for 1,500 property developers.

The logic of NAMA was simple. Wed had the disastrous bank guarantee, and our banks were in freefall. That was to continue until we were forced  again in attempted secrecy  to hand over our sovereignty to an equally unaccountable troika.

Richard Bruton, who led for Fine Gael on the issue, forcefully made the point, in the debate on the bill to establish NAMA, that transparency was fundamental. We want to see the unacceptable recovery system, which is shrouded in secrecy, exposed, he said, with full disclosure and the protection of the comptroller and auditor general. He should be in a position to objectively advise the House on how business is being conducted on our behalf. We want to see proper Oireachtas oversight of this extraordinary animal the minister is creating.

Bruton wasnt alone. Even the redoubtable Phil Hogan said that secrecy in the use of taxpayers money is at the very heart of NAMA. He listed a huge range of things that would be kept secret: the names of the developers whose loans would be bought by NAMA with taxpayers money, the price paid by the taxpayer, who would benefit from 5bn in new tax-funded loans that NAMA would make available to developers to complete their projects, and so on.

Throughout the debate, the issue of secrecy was key. Opposition spokespeople, especially Joan Burton and Richard Bruton, tried, again and again, to get the government to agree to independent oversight. Both had amendments down at every stage of the bills passage, and both were rejected, again and again, by the minister for finance, Brian Lenihan.

They were looking for codes of practice, more open reporting systems, the right of the Oireachtas to approve any guarantees issued by the minister, and scrutiny of any directions given to NAMA by him.

All to no avail. NAMA was set up as an all-powerful, highly secretive agency of the State. And now, inevitably, the chickens have come home to roost.

Is there a scandal in NAMA? I dont know. There is an imminent report from the comptroller and auditor general that appears to be highly critical. The implication in all the pre-reporting suggests that hundreds of millions of profit that could have been made (for the taxpayer) by NAMA have been lost, as a result of poor procedure and practice.

That may not, in itself, amount to a scandal  it may suggest a lack of competence in key areas. But the depth and breadth of other allegations, especially in relation to the sale of NAMAs assets in Northern Ireland, are staggering.

Operating behind its wall of secrecy, NAMA has consistently denied any wrong-doing, but has failed utterly to provide reassurance. It has put itself in the position where it cannot now, in my view, avoid an independent enquiry into its operations. And the Government has done precisely the same thing.

This is one of the really puzzling bits of this story. The Government is largely composed of people who opposed, tooth and nail, the wall of secrecy built around NAMA. And yet they, and especially the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, have adopted a tone of nothing to see here.

There may not be anything to see. There may not be any connection between the C&AG report and the mounting allegations that need proper answers. But there is an accumulation of suspicion that has to be addressed.

Regardless of the policy mistakes that led to the need for an agency like NAMA, and regardless of the way it was designed, NAMA was set up for a simple purpose. The banks were drowning in bad debt. There was a need to take those debts off the books of the banks, to acquire the assets (land and property) that led to the bad debts, and get back as much as the State could, while, at the same time, enabling the banks to get back on their feet.

NAMA was the agency designed to do all that. Essentially, its job is to get back 30bn by selling the assets it acquired after it was set up. By its own account, it has done a great job.

In its most recent annual report, the chairman says they expect to report a several billion surplus by the time they finish their work. The chief executive says that many countries now look to NAMA as an example of international best practice, especially when implementing complex programmes in a diligent, professional and effective manner.

But heres the key thing. NAMA belongs to us. It needs to be accountable to us in exactly the same way as the IDA, or the Road Safety Authority, or the HSE. It might have a difficult and complex brief, and it might speak a language that the likes of me have difficulty following (they seem to have invented new words, like deleveraging, just to confuse us).

But it has to operate, because its operating on our behalf, without a hint of suspicion.

According to news headlines, NAMA is going to challenge any investigation. Why? In my experience, every state agency makes mistakes. Many of them lose sight of their fundamental mission, and have to be hauled back. Occasionally, just very occasionally, there have been reasons why trust in one or other of them has been eroded.

But the money involved in NAMA, the billions and billions of it, is greater than at all of the other state agencies put together. If trust in the probity of NAMA is undermined, that would do incredible damage to Ireland. In that sense, its more important to establish that NAMA can be fully trusted than it is to find out whether mistakes have led to lower profits.

So, not only must all these allegations be thoroughly, transparently and independently investigated, but NAMA should be pressing for that. They shouldnt be forced into it; they should be demanding it. We chose to set up NAMA behind a concrete wall of secrecy, despite grave reservations. Its that secrecy, more than anything else, that has damaged trust. Thats what has to be undone now.
SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

Google Ad

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

Google Ad

The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET

STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN

This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan

Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments

Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan

Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement

With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building

OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh

USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens

ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression
HERE comes another inquiry with all bells and whistles attached. The latest revelations about Namas disposal of its assets in the North looks set to open up fresh prairies of investigation in this state.

The filming of an adviser to Nama in the North apparently accepting a bag with 40,000 in cash from a developer appears to have pushed over the line the requirement for an inquiry down here.

There has been a smell off Namas business in the North since Mick Wallace first told the Dail in July 2015 that 7m had been deposited in an offshore account as a pay-off associated with the sale of Namas assets in the North.

For over a year, the Government rejected calls for a full-blown inquiry on the basis that there are inquiries, including a criminal investigation, afoot in the North and in the US over the deal. Fianna Fail has largely supported the Governments stance on the matter, but now the smell has become a stench.

A commission of investigation, the mother and father of all inquiries these days, looks set to be established. A hunt will be undertaken to track down an idle, retired judge, a species that is becoming increasingly rare in these inquiry saturated days.

Once a commission is established the whole affair will be off the political agenda and deemed out of bounds. Any political reckoning will be placed on the never-never. In the Nama controversy, this amounts largely to a question as to whether the agency was put under political pressure to sell off assets quicker than its original design allowed for. In such a scenario, the potential opened up for the exchequer to get fleeced as a price for the political capital that might accrue to the Government.

Any such question will be long-fingered with an actual result most likely due between two and four years into the retirement of Michael Noonan and Enda Kenny.

So like much else, the Nama inquiry will be another problem to be long-fingered by the coalition for kicking the can down the road.

A huge chunk of the business of government has been thrust onto the never-never in this fashion. Apart from Nama, there are commisisons of investigation afoot into alleged Garda malpractice, alleged sweetheart deals in the IBRC/Siteserv, and alleged ticket touting at the Olympic games.

An inquiry has also been completed into the case of alleged abuse of Grace, the disabled girl whose experiences in a foster home in the South-East were highlighted by the Irish Examiner.

That inquiry is at a stage where the minister of state concerned, Finian McGrath, is examining whether it can be referred to a full commission of inquiry.

All of these have about them the common theme of kicking the can down the road. In each case, the Government has effectively silenced controversy by setting up an inquiry. What is noticeable is the difference in approach to establishing these inquiries.

Some, such as Fennelly (into taping of calls at Garda stations) and the Rio affair, get off the ground almost immediately.

In both those cases, the fallout is likely to fall on bodies or agencies outside the Cabinet and therefore there is no reluctance to find those who should be held accountable.

This approach differs when dealing with the likes of Siteserv/IBRC and Nama. In these instances, decisions at Cabinet come under close scrutiny and possible criticism. While Messers Noonan and Kenny can fortify themselves in the knowledge that a result wont be due for years, there is also the matter of their legacies, something politicians hold dear.

Its not just controversies that involve allegations of wrongdoing that are getting kicked down the road: Two of the most contentious issues of recent years, water and abortion, are also being thrust onto the never-never.

The expert commission on domestic public water services has been handed the task of debating what exactly is the best way to pay for the water infrastructure in this country. There was a time when a government would decide a matter like this, but that was oh so long ago.

At least this commission has done some service for one of the political parties by giving cover to Fianna Fail to change its principles on paying for water.

An anti-water charges protest in Cork. The issue of paying for water is another one kicked down the road. Picture: Dan Linehan

Heretofore, the party was in favour of some form of water charges but it has now told the commission that it no longer espouses that principle. The people didnt like Micheal Martins principles, so he changed them.

Another handy vehicle to kick another can down the road is the citizens assembly which will decide on whether and how to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

In a functioning democracy, the Oireachtas would make this decision, but that would cause headaches for the Cabinet. In a functioning democracy, the people would simply be allowed to have their say on such a primal matter, but that might cause further grief.

So as with much else, the issue is put on the never never, where a decision might be arrived at after the next election, which, in political, terms, is engulfed in a foggy future off on the horizon.

Water woes

- Noel Baker

The issue the Government must wish would simply disappear down the plughole.

Water charges proved to be an issue that many voters wouldnt swallow, meaning the Governments planned rollout of payments was stymied from the beginning. First came the sop of the water conservation grant, then the precipitous drop in the number of people making quarterly payments, and finally the general election result. The Government would still prefer to pay for water through charges, but without Labour and down numbers in the Dail, there was no way it could push it through.

With charges suspended, the expert commission on domestic public water services was formed as part of the agreement which allowed for the formation of the Government. It will make recommendations having considered submissions made before last Fridays cut-off, but the Fianna Fail position has hardened. It wants water paid for through general taxation and a scrapping of any charges.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has said Ireland could be fined over the suspension of water charges as it is a signatory to the water framework directive. Like a yard tap on a frosty night, this one will run and run.

Abortion

- Noel Baker

Historically, no single issue has proved as divisive, emotive and, arguably, downright toxic as abortion.

It could be argued Labours implosion in the last general election had one silver lining for the Government: The smaller party was committed to holding a referendum on repealing the Eighth Amendment, whereas Taoiseach Enda Kennys position was always more circumspect.

Amnesty International and supporters demonstrate outside Government Buildings over the Eighth Amendment and issues surrounding abortion in Ireland. Picture: Rollingnews.ie

The issue hoved back into view after the election when the UN concluded Irelands ban on abortion subjected a woman carrying a foetus with a fatal abnormality to discrimination and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

It sparked calls from pro-choice advocates for the Government to change the laws, with pro-life groups equally steadfast in calling for the existing ban to remain in place.

The Government-appointed citizens assembly, chaired by Ms Justice Mary Laffoy, is now due to meet next month and the matter of the Eighth Amendment will be top of the agenda.

Just this week People Before Profit TD Brid Smith said: The citizens assembly is really just a cover and kicking to touch an issue that is very urgent.

Project Eagle

- Noel Baker

Nothing to do with a fictional German plot to kidnap Winston Churchill at the height of the Second World War, nonetheless Project Eagle appears to have its own fair share of intrigue.

Nama, the States bad bank, took over property loans made by Irish banks in the North with a book value of more than 6bn. In April 2014, it sold the lot of them in a single transaction, covering 860 properties, to Cerberus, a US investment giant, for about 1.6bn. The codename for the sale within Nama was Project Eagle.

As the biggest property deal in Northern Ireland, the sale was first dogged by controversy after 7m linked to it was found in an Isle of Man bank account.

Project Eagle has been examined on several occasions by the Dails Public Accounts Committee and opposition politicians are currently calling for a commission of inquiry. Its also under investigation by the UKs National Crime Agency, the US department of justices securities and exchange commission, and the subject of a parliamentary inquiry in Stormont.

In August, Finance Minister Michael Noonan received a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General into the sale by Nama of its Northern Ireland properties.

It is due to be published on Wednesday.

Undue benefits

- Noel Baker

The Apple cart was well and truly upset when the European Commission ruled that Ireland had granted undue tax benefits of up to 13bn to the technology giant, in a move which not only called into question the countrys international reputation, but also caused a significant wobble within the Government.

The finding by European competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager prompted sustained complaint from senior government figures, with Finance Minister Michael Noonan instantly saying that the decision would be appealed.

However, some Independent figures in government, including Finian McGrath and Katherine Zappone, needed to be convinced.

The issue was also complicated by soundings that other EU states would be interested in sharing any 13bn windfall, with Taoiseach Enda Kenny and others stressing that at no time did Apple get a sweetheart deal, and that our tax affairs were entirely our own concern.

According to the Department of Finance, the State has two months and 10 days to lodge the appeal but the European Court process is expected to take several years and it is likely to be a year before there is an oral hearing. Ultimately, the result will have huge ramifications for the countrys finances and economic outlook into the future.

Siteserv sale

- Noel Baker

Siteserv was sold by the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) in March 2012 to the Denis OBrien-owned firm Millington for 45m.

The deal saw State-owned IBRC (formerly Anglo Irish Bank) write off 110m of its 150m debt, effectively a 70% haircut.

Subsequently, an unsuccessful underbidder raised concerns saying they were prepared to offer more for Siteserv. It also emerged the law firm Arthur Cox advised both Siteserv and Millington on the sale. In 2015, the Siteserv controversy blew up again after Independent TD Catherine Murphy retrieved documents under freedom of information, which revealed a level of official concern over the deal. In an effort to quell the controversy, the Government announced a review of IBRC deals, including Siteserv and a commission of inquiry was set up. The inquiry is investigating the sale of IBRC loans where there was a loss of at least 10m to the taxpayer. Six transactions involved write-offs of over 100m. Last year, the commissions examination of up to 38 transactions  including the 2012 sale of Siteserv  effectively stalled after the commissions chairman, Judge Brian Cregan, concluded he did not have sufficient legal powers to proceed. New laws were drafted to allow him continue his work.

Grace report should clear way for full inquiry

- Noel Baker

The report into the Grace case is with Disabilities Minister Finian McGrath, who said just last month that he would aim to bring it to government as soon as possible with a view to early publication.

Finian McGrath: Has received Grace report.

The allegations are grave: That decades of sexual abuse of a woman with severe intellectual disabilities who lived in foster care may have been covered up.

The case involves a foster family in the South-east who looked after 47 children and adults with severe intellectual disabilities between 1983 and 2009. The old South Eastern Health Board became aware of concerns about the family as far back as 1992 and three years later removed all of the people in their care.

Yet one woman, given the pseudonym Grace and who turned 18 in 1996, was left with the family for 14 more years, and is alleged to have suffered severe sexual abuse.

The report into matters related to the former foster home was prepared by Conor Dignam SC, who advised some legal procedural and administrative issues should be addressed before the report is published.

Once published, it should open the way to a full commission of investigation into the care of individuals with a disability in the former foster home. The case is also the subject of a garda investigation.

A separate case, based in Cork, is the subject of another review by the HSE and Tusla.

Olympics lap of honour turned into massive headache

- Noel Baker

When OCI president Pat Hickey flew out to Rio for the Olympic Games, it must have seemed like a lap of honour at the end of a glittering career. Instead it has turned into a personal nightmare for Mr Hickey and a massive headache for the Government.

While Mr Hickey has consistently proclaimed his innocence of all the charges levelled at him by Brazilian authorities, the staccato nature of the controversy seemed to catch the Government on the backfoot. Some members of the Dail were not convinced a non-statutory inquiry would be sufficient to answer the many questions sparked by the tickets scandal.

Transport Minister Shane Ross admitted Mr Hickey ate me for breakfast during their meeting in Rio before the latters arrest, although hes bound to be the more chipper of the two men at the moment.

The collective countenance could change if Brazilian authorities do provide the evidence they claim they have that shows widespread abuses regarding the dissemination of tickets.

In addition to the process in Brazil and the inquiry here, the OCI is carrying out its own review, which is likely to conclude in October. Already, some OCI affiliate bodies are querying why everything seems to be on hold and have called for changes in corporate governance.

Given the importance of sport to this country and its international reputation, the outcome of all three probes are eagerly awaited.

Industrial action over pay

- Noel Baker

And now begins the winter of our discontent. That is how some members of the Government might be feeling after the Luas strikes gave way to the on-running (and sometimes non-running) Dublin Bus dispute.

Last weeks two-day stoppage by Dublin Bus staff affected as many as 400,000 commuters daily.

Last weeks two-day stoppage affected as many as 400,000 commuters daily, and more stoppages are planned after workers rejected a Labour Court recommendation on increased wages, to be phased in over three years.

The next stoppage is scheduled for Thursday and Friday of this week. The situation appears to be in deadlock, but given the earlier Luas drivers wrangle, how this plays out could influence how workers elsewhere view their rights to increased pay following years of austerity.

Where the bus drivers go, Dart and train workers could follow. There is also the issue of teachers, who have consistently voiced their concerns not only over central issues such as pay and pupil-teacher ratio, but also over proposed reforms to the curriculum.

Just last month, the Teachers Union of Ireland said it may take industrial action over pay discrimination against newly recruited teachers, claiming the removal of qualification allowances from new entrants almost five years ago was effectively a 20% pay cut compared to their colleagues.
Burma American Business Lobby to Host Exclusive Dinner with Aung San Suu Kyi

Dinner Diplomacy: On Thursday, a roundtable, reception and dinner will be held in honor of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at Washington DCs Four Season Hotel. Above, President Barack Obama leaves his seat to come to the end of the head table to greet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at the Asean Summit gala dinner in Vientiane, Laos on September 7. / Reuters

RANGOON  When the US government relaxed sanctions on Burmas state-run companies and banks but stopped short of lifting all sanctions in May this year, the US Chamber of Commerce was not pleased.

The American business lobby called for the US to normalize relations fully and introduce preferable trade terms to encourage export-led industries in Burma.

Now the US Chamber of Commerce is pressing hardernot with the US government this time, but with Burmas State Counselor and Foreign Minister Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

In collaboration with the US-Asean Business Council, the US Chamber of Commerce is hosting a roundtable discussion, reception and dinner with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at the Four Seasons Hotel on Thursday during her visit to Washington DC this week.

The invitation describes the dinner as a unique opportunity to learn about Daw Aung San Suu Kyis priorities in government, the current state of US-Burma economic relations, and how the US business community can best support Burmas development.

The invitation pins participation to sponsorship packagesvariously costing US$7,500, $15,000 and $25,000in which individuals or corporate entities gain an exclusive, off the record opportunity to engage the State Counselor and her entourage.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be in Washington DC on Wednesday and Thursday this week to meet with US President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, members of the US Congress and business leaders.

After the idea was floated by US officials at the beginning of the month, Barack Obama is anticipated to announce a further easing of US sanctions on Burma, although human rights groups have objected to further sanctions relief, and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is believed to be in favor of keeping targeted sanctions to maintain pressure on the military.

The US sanctions that remain largely target military-run enterprises, or businessmen with close links with Burmas former military junta. A ban on importing Burmese jade and gemstones into the US also remains in place, as well as a ban on arms sales to Burma.

In their recent reportMyanmars New Dawn: Opportunities for Aung San Suu Kyi and US-Myanmar Relationsthe Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies recommended that the US ease economic sanctions further.

The US government should set realistic benchmarks that would make it possible for businesspersons who have reformed their business and social practices to graduate from the SDN list, it says, referring to the list of over a hundred Specially Designated Nationals that US individuals and companies are still barred from doing business with, but who control a large chunk of Burmas economy.
Burma Govt Investigates Taungthaman Lake Project, Following Locals Complaints

Aerial view of Taungthaman Thitsar resort and culture park project, located on the east bank of Taungthaman lake, Amarapura Township, Mandalay seen in early September 2016. / Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy

MANDALAY  The divisional government launched an investigation into a resort and culture park under construction on the eastern bank of the famous Thaungthaman Lake outside the city of Mandalay, after local residents complained about the impact of the project.

Some of the initial construction near the famous U Bein Bridge has been suspended after staff from a number of ministries visited the site last Thursday. They gave notice to halt construction after concerns were raised that it could damage the local culture and environment.

Representatives from the Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry, the Department of Archaeology under the Ministry of Culture, and Mandalays Department of Municipal Affairs all visited the site.

The archaeological department has instructed them to suspend their operations near U Bein Bridge and to repair the area, said U Myo Thit, divisional minister of environmental conservation and forestry.

According to a spokesperson for construction company Taungthaman Thitsar, the project is approximately halfway finished clearing the area and piling soil for foundations. The process will take at least one year to be completed.

The investigation comes after residents of Amarapura Township appealed to the divisional government regarding the impact of the project. Locals blamed the development for abnormal flood levels during the early August monsoon, and complained that the construction has cut off access between villages, the lake, and nearby waterways.

Locals said it took around one month for water throughout the surrounding area to recede after flooding, although the level of the lake itself went down after just two days.

This is abnormal and it only happened after the project began building up the eastern bank. Normally, any flooding recedes along with the water level of the lake. Weve suffered a lot to clean out our village, said U Chit Thin, an elder of Thaungthaman village.

Locals complain that although road conditions have been improved, they have been constructed on raised soil, and the extra sediment in turn blocks waterways. They say that the culture park has blocked access to the lake and other adjoining waterways. Farmers were hoping to grow crops on fields recently drained by government schemes after decades under water.

In the past, Taungthaman Lake naturally experienced seasonal shifts in water levels. It filled up with water during monsoons and drained in the winter and summer. Locals worked as fishermen during the monsoon season and grew corn, pulses and vegetables during the winter. The area is known for its beauty, including the worlds oldest and longest teakwood bridge, U Bein Bridge.

We are watching closely and will appeal to the government to review the project, though we understand that it is good for regional development, said U Kan Myint, 62, an elder in Taungthaman village. We are not against the development, but we also want the authorities and the responsible persons to think about locals as well.

Taungthaman Thitsar said they are committed to the needs of locals living around Thaungthaman Lake.

In every aspect of the project, we are taking care to make sure not to affect the environment, the regions historical value, or the livelihood of the locals. The local flooding was due to heavy rain and rising water levels, not because of our project, said Khin Maung Tun, spokesperson of Taungthaman Thitsar company.

The locals can tell us openly any disagreements that they have and we are ready to listen to them, he added.

The spokesperson said the culture park intends to revive and promote Burmese culture and history. The park will be public and will host traditional seasonal events. There are plans to employ the locals who have traditional handicraft skills. We believe our project will not only develop the region but also the lives of the locals, Khin Maung Tun said.
Interview US Training of Burmas Military Could Help Democratization: David Steinberg

David Steinberg gives a talk at the Myanmar Peace Center in Rangoon in October 2013. / Kyaw Phyo Tha / The Irrawaddy

The Irrawaddy speaks with veteran Burma scholar David Steinberg about burgeoning US-Burma relations, an anticipated easing of US sanctions, and the prospect of military-to-military engagement between the two countries.

Some say that policy changes by the United States towards Myanmar in recent years were the result of an expanding Chinese role in the country and the region. What do you think?

I think the Obama engagement with Myanmar did not start because of China. The junta sent signals that they were interested in change and the Obama administration recognized that the previous [ClintonBush] administrations policy of regime change through sanctions had essentially failed. So there was a mutuality of interests, but the Obama administration was constrained from going too far by the Congress. So high-level contacts were started but the sanctions remained, essentially because of US internal political considerations.

I think China figured into the picture only later but the US recognized that Myanmar must continue to have good relations with China. Certainly China was worried about too great a role for the US in Myanmar, but I do not think this will happen, and I think that Myanmar will have a balanced foreign policy with China, the US, the European Union, India, Japan, and of course Asean. Myanmar needs good relations with China to solve the ethnic issues in the north, but China needs Myanmar for investments, markets, access to the Indian Ocean, etc.

The whole concept of the pivot or rebalancing of the US in East Asia is nothing new, and came two years after improvements in Myanmar relations. I have been lecturing and writing for years that the US policy in that region has been a constant for about 150 years: to prevent the rise of any hegemonic power in the region, e.g. the open-door policy in China in the 19th century, the Washington Naval Treaty with Japan in the early 1920s, World War II in the Pacific, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the US foreign aid program, etc. I think the US does not want any one powerChina at the momentto dominate the region.

There is disagreement over the appropriateness of improved US-Myanmar military relations. What is your view?

I would like to see better US relations with the Myanmar military and the reintroduction of the International Military Education & Training (IMET) program for non-lethal training. I think that arms sales should not resume at this time. But training is important and I believe it is wanted by the Myanmar military. Some human rights groups say that it should not resume until true democracy is in evidence. But democracy is a goal that has never completely been achieved (even in the US); and training should be a means to help the process of democratization along. The Myanmar military must feel comfortable in both its internal political and external relations.

What is the likelihood of any new US administration changing its policies?

I hope any new US administration will continue its positive engagement with Myanmar. One of the few positive elements of the Obama administrations East Asia policy has been relations with Myanmar. Hillary Clinton would continue that. Myanmar is not (yet) on Donald Trumps agenda, but he would have little to gain by changing US policy and engagement. The present US ambassador is a seasoned, careful, and thoughtful representative of the US who is well aware of the dangers of an inappropriate attempt to be domineering.

Will Daw Aung San Suu Kyis US trip result in the removal of remaining sanctions?

Sanctions could be removed if she said they were no longer appropriate. Some are congressionally mandated and others imposed by the executive branch. But it seems she wants them as potential leverage against the military, should they stop the reform process. I think it would be wiser to try to reassure the military that the broad goals of the state are mutually shared. The National League for Democracy and the Tatmadaw [Burmese military] need to collaborate to be effective. Mutual trust, including among the ethnic groups, is essential, and is presently lacking.

I have never believed that it is appropriate for US foreign policy toward any country to be effectively determined by a person in that country, whether that person is the British prime minister, the president of any state, or in the case of Myanmara Burmese. Yet Aung San Suu Kyi effectively determined US policy toward Myanmar until well into President Obamas first term. She still, I believe, exerts a strong influence but no longer plays the only dominant role. But if she told the Congress that sanctions were an impediment both to development and to better governance, they would likely go along.

There are cronies and others still on the US sanctions list. Should they remain on it?

There is a lot of talk about cronies. The term, in my memory, came about through Philippine President Marcos buddies, who were ineffective as well as venal. I am sure there are cronies in Myanmar and plenty of illegal activities that benefited a few with access to power. But let us remember that President Park Chung Hees cronies in South Korea in the military government period of the 1960s-1970s were the guys who founded Hyundai, Daewoo, LG, etc. I am sure they were given extra-legal opportunities. I am not justifying their past roles, but simply trying to say that the pejorative term cronies should be carefully used. In both cases a free press was lacking and civil society censored. That situation no longer applies to Myanmar.

I think US firms would partner with the cronies of Myanmar with danger, because public opinion both here and there would complain. That is what a free press is all about. The Myanmar legal system has to come to terms with these people, and it would be a test of the independence of the judiciary (so obviously lacking for more than half a century) to begin to deal with these issues. In other words, the media and civil society in Myanmar have essential roles to play to ensure that justice is done. Foreign intervention in the highly nationalistic environment of Myanmar is both dangerous and likely to be ineffective, and denigrates the capacity of the people of Myanmar to address their own problems. It denies the dignity that the people of Myanmar deserve.

David I. Steinberg is Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies Emeritus, Georgetown University. His latest book as editor is Myanmar: The Dynamics of an Evolving Polity.
Top 5 Tips for Building a Fail-Safe Network

A lot of what research and development teams at carriers, service providers and the companies that support them do is try to find ways to reuse infrastructure that is deployed but on the verge of being antiquated. The cable industry faces the challenge with coaxial cable, and the telcos in the copper that dominates the edges of its networks.

One of the techniques aimed at extending the life of copper is the forthcoming IEEE P802.3bz, which will enable most copper cables to carry Ethernet at a much faster clip than previously. Another is G.fast, a technique that does the same thing for copper wires being used for digital subscriber line (DSL) applications.

G.fast has been in the pipeline for several years and is now beginning to emerge. Lightreading reports that CenturyLink will use Calixs AXOS g.fast technology to provide broadband to hundreds of apartments in Platteville, Wisconsin. In total, G.fast will serve 44 multiple dwelling units (MDUs) housing 800 people.

The same Calix technology is bound for Nebraska. In late July, Telecompetitor reported that Windstream is deploying AXOS to two apartment complexes in the Lincoln market. The implementation covers 550 units in 25 buildings. In addition, Calixs GigaCenter platform will provide Wi-Fi coverage in the buildings.

The deployments are significant despite their relatively modest size. In another important move, the Broadband Forum this week released specifications on Fiber-to-the-Distribution Point (FTTdp). TR-355 uses the new YANG modeling language. The goal is to make it possible to manage networks that use different combinations of networking approaches. In essence, the Broadband Forum is trying to make it easy for carriers and service providers to mix and match as they upgrade and retrofit their networks:

TR-355 consists of seven YANG data model software specifications, including common Broadband Forum YANG types, an interface object supporting xDSL and G.fast, and the ITUT standardized objects for start up of G.fast or VDSL, G.fast and VDSL2 configuration, status monitoring, performance management, testing and diagnostics, and Single-Ended Line Test (SELT) and Metallic Line Test (MELT) configuration and test results. The modules are publicly available via GitHub.

Developers have done a great job of squeezing capacity out of copper. If they fail, the ramifications are costly, time consuming and altogether unpleasant upgrades. Companies want to avoid this at all costs, and copper is at the center of those efforts.

The importance that copper will play going forward is illustrated by the centrality it holds for Adtran, as this Fierce Telecom interview with CEO Tom Stanton suggests. The bottom line is that even in the world of software-defined networks (SDNs), copper  which has been used by the telephone industry since its birth  still has a vital role.

Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at [email protected] and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk.
5 Tips for Managing a Multi-Generational Workforce

In a post last month, I shared some tips for managing political tensions in the workplace from a human resources perspective. But with just eight weeks left until Election Day, and with escalating political rhetoric being an inescapable fact of daily life, what constitutes permissible and prohibited political activity in the workplace from a legal perspective?

I had the opportunity to discuss that question at length yesterday with R. Scott Oswald, managing principal at the Employment Law Group in Washington. One takeaway from the discussion was that if you work for a private-sector company, and you think the First Amendment guarantees your right to express your political views in the workplace  even if its in as unimposing a manner as displaying a Clinton or Trump bumper sticker in your cubicle  youre likely in for a surprise.

Well get to that potential eyebrow-raiser in a moment. First, its important to lay the groundwork with what Oswald said is an essential first step for private-sector employers  having a clear policy that defines what is and is not permitted:

The key is to ensure that theres a clearly articulated policy, in writing; that the policy is disseminated to all employees; and that there is consistency in enforcement. What I regularly see is that most employers dont have these policies in place, and when election time comes, they dont have anything to fall back on. For a lot of tech companies, its difficult to do  they dont want to stifle individuals creativity. They dont want to weigh them down with policies and protocols. But this is an area where it absolutely is a best practice for the tech world, and indeed for employers in general.

So what do employees have the constitutional right to do in terms of expressing their political views in the workplace? A lot depends, Oswald said, on whether you work in the public sector or the private sector:

Public-sector entities are covered by the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution requires certain kinds of political freedoms that may not be required in the private sector, except in certain states that have protections. The first thing that has to be determined is whether there is some sort of overarching reason for the employer to discriminate, based upon political affiliation.

This can be the case with certain kinds of political positions in the federal government, and at the state government level. For instance, the governor of a state has the absolute right to fill certain agency positions with people who are of the same political persuasion  he or she can literally discriminate, based on politics.

In the private sector, Oswald said, employers are free to make decisions based upon political affiliation, so long as there isnt a state law that prohibits it.

For example, in Washington, D.C., we have the District of Columbia Human Rights Act, which defines, among other protected classes, political affiliation. So in the District, that means belonging to or endorsing any political party  a private-sector employer may not discriminate based upon political affiliation.

Other states, including California, New York, and Connecticut, have similar concepts in their laws, so in those states, there are restrictions on what an employer can do. But in these jurisdictions, what you can do is have a policy that is neutral on its face, that prohibits political expression in the workplace.

So private-sector employers, in D.C., for example, can prohibit individuals from having certain kinds of presidential candidate buttons. The key is that it has to be neutral  you cant allow a Hillary button and disallow a Trump button. But you can prohibit buttons, wall posters, and all of those sorts of things, so long as it applies to all political candidates.

As far as soliciting political contributions in the workplace is concerned, Oswald said in the public sector its prohibited at the federal level by the Hatch Act; at the state level, most states have laws that pick up where the Hatch Act left off. But he said theres nothing inherently wrong with it in the private sector:

We hear all the time about companies that at least encourage their employees to be involved in certain kinds of political fundraising events. So theres nothing that prevents a company from soliciting contributions from its employees. But you can see how there is at least the possibility that the employee could say, I felt very uncomfortable with this. So in those states that prohibit discrimination based on political affiliation, that could create a problem for a company.

The key, to the extent that a company wants to permit it, is to have a very clear policy that states that it is entirely voluntary; that an individual has no obligation to participate; and that it creates some kind of anonymity for employees so that the person making the solicitation doesnt know who is giving  and, more importantly, who is not giving.

By the same token, Oswald said, private-sector companies have every right to prohibit their employees from soliciting political contributions in the workplace:

Many companies prohibit it because of the potential for employees to feel put upon. But again, the key is that it has to be neutral on its face; it has to be disseminated to all employees; and it has to be fairly and equally enforced. An individual has no First Amendment right to solicit employees in a private workspace for political contributions.

I brought up the fact that a number of high-profile tech executives, including Meg Whitman of HP, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, and Mark Benioff of Salesforce, have publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton, with Whitman going so far as to publicly label Donald Trump a dishonest demagogue. I asked Oswald if he sees any inherent problem with these endorsements, in terms of fueling divisiveness in their companies, or creating a perception among employees that if they want to advance their careers, its in their best interest to support one candidate over another. He said the latter concern is the one thats the real challenge for these executives:

If youre Meg Whitman, youre probably thinking, I want to take a position  Ive been a political candidate myself, I feel strongly about the subject, I dont want to sit on the sidelines and do nothing. But how do I make sure that my personal endorsement of this candidate does not create some kind of chilling effect in my organization, such that individuals who might have a different view than I have, dont feel welcome?

So the issue for these executives is whether their endorsement in any way discourages those individuals who are working for the company from feeling that theyre fully vested in the company  thats the challenge they face. Its an enormously difficult conundrum for these tech executives. Tech workers, especially in smaller companies, may not be getting paid a whole lot in many instances, but theyre there because they believe in the product and in their leadership. Now, their leadership has just told them that there might be a real problem with their political affiliation or beliefs.

And then theres what Oswald called the new frontier  dealing with the issue of whether employees can post political commentary on social media:

The scenario is, youre putting political commentary on your Facebook page  youre not doing it in the office, but you may be doing pretty much the same thing, because your officemates may be your friends on Facebook. Public-sector employers are going to need to know that this kind of activity is protected under the First Amendment. That doesnt mean that it cant be abridged or limited, but it absolutely is protected under the First Amendment.

So at least in the public-sector context, there are some protections that likely apply. It can be prohibited in the private sector if an employer has a very clear policy that prohibits it. Its similar to the fact that you cant sexually harass another employee, even if youre offsite  it spills over into the workplace. The employer just has to be careful, because an overly inclusive policy might sweep up a lot of things that employees simply arent willing to tolerate. The policy just has to be very carefully crafted.

Bottom line, if you work in the private sector, your employer can potentially prohibit you from posting political commentary on Twitter or your Facebook page. The question, Oswald said, is whether an employer would really want to do that:

Its going to have to enforce that policy, not only with line employees, but with executives. Does that senior executive really want to have his or her Facebook monitored by, perhaps, the IT professionals in the company? What an unsavory job for the IT department, to have to be policing all of it.

A contributing writer on IT management and career topics with IT Business Edge since 2009, Don Tennant began his technology journalism career in 1990 in Hong Kong, where he served as editor of the Hong Kong edition of Computerworld. After returning to the U.S. in 2000, he became Editor in Chief of the U.S. edition of Computerworld, and later assumed the editorial directorship of Computerworld and InfoWorld. Don was presented with the 2007 Timothy White Award for Editorial Integrity by American Business Media, and he is a recipient of the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for editorial excellence in news coverage. Follow him on Twitter @dontennant.

Save
New action cameras from Sony have just been announced. The FDR-X3000R and HDR-AS300R are both waterproof cameras with optical image stabilization or B.O.SS (Balanced Optical SteadyShot) as what Sony likes to call it.

The BOSS feature allows users to capture smoother footage. The main difference between the two action cam models is that the FDR-X3000R records 4K UHD footage while the other model records in Full HD only, GSMArena reports.

Sony Action Cameras Specs

Both of the Sony cameras use Zeiss lens and have 8.2 MP BSI Exmor R CMOS sensors. The two devices also share the same look and are generally smaller than their manufacturer's previous action cameras.

In addition, the user interface has been changed and improved from the last versions of action cams. Furthermore, buyers can use these new action cameras with a separately sold live view remote.

Sony Action Cameras vs Go Pro Cams

With the Hero 4 Go Pro Camera still at $450, Sony's new action cameras definitely have a shot in the action cam market. The Go Pro cameras actually have great specs too, giving Sony action cams some good competition. However, since the Hero 5 from Go Pro has not been announced yet, those excited to buy an action cam might consider buying Sony's cameras instead.

Sony Action Cameras 2016 Price

According to reports, the Sony X3000 Action Cam is priced at $400 while the AS300 is sold at $300 for a body only purchase. Whereas the X3000 is selling for $550 and the AS300 for $450 if the live view remote is included.

Sony Action Cameras 2016 Release

According to a source, the new cameras from Sony will be released later this month. However, the source only specified the release for North America. Whether or not the cameras will also be released in other countries, the report did not confirm.


Just when we thought that Samsung was at an all-time high with its Galaxy S7 and S7 edge blowing up in sales, the Samsung galaxy gear S3's release and its incredible features, the next thing you know the news blows up with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices literally blowing up and initiating a worldwide recall.

2016 Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Recall Issues

All of us were expecting that the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 plus has nothing on the Galaxy Note 7. In fact, we were pretty sure that the Samsung Gear S3 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 will trump anything that Apple will release at IFA 2016 and the Apple event itself, but boy, were we all wrong!

Just a few weeks before the iPhone 7's scheduled release, Samsung made headlines about a Galaxy Note 7 recall. There have been news that it's been exploding while being hooked up in the charger and on a boy who was injured in Brooklyn because the phone exploded in his hands, as reported by Complex.

Galaxy Note 7 Banned From Major Airline Companies After Several Explosion Incidents

Not only did Samsung's latest flagship device cause explosions and injuries, with those news flying around - the Galaxy Note 7 made it to the no-fly list or at least, the list of flight hazards. Unfortunately, major airlines have instructed their passengers to either not bring their Samsung Galaxy Note 7 in the cabin or at least turn it off during the whole flight.

Stocks Plummet After Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Recall

Since the news about the Galaxy Note 7 recall broke out, Samsung stocks took a nose dive and have been plummeting ever since. We all can't help but wonder, will the brand ever recover? If so, how can Samsung ever recover from this? It seems like a hopeless question, but we all know that one way or another - Samsung will rise up again from the ashes of the Galaxy Note 7 recall.

Samsung Loses Points Against Apple in The Smartphone Scorebaords = 0 for Samsung, 1 for Apple

Although Samsung can comeback from a series of scandalous incidents caused by their latest flagship, it is so obvious that the one company has seriously profited from the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 recall is Apple. As the saying goes, one man's loss is a gain for the other and in this case, Samsung's loss was a definite win for Apple especially when it was just days away from releasing their best flagship ever.

Samsung Fans Not Giving Up On Tech Company Even After Galaxy Note 7 Recall

Either Samsung Fans believe in the company and their products so much or they are just ignoring the Samsung's recall exchange program. The tech company has gone out of their way to communicate with Galaxy Note 7 owners by way of emails and calls to make sure they were aware of the recent issues with the device and if they were aware there was a recall exchange program for them.

According to a report published in Forbes, Samsung is taking all the responsibility in cleaning up their mess. They have reached out to Note 7 owners and they are hoping, everyone would cooperate because if anything happens to them after they've been notified that is out of the company's control.
The upcoming Nintendo 3DS game "One Piece: Great Pirate Colosseum" will be clashing in a crossover video game play with "Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden."

Both creators Bandai Namco and Arc System Works who cooked-up "One Piece: Great Pirate Colosseum" and "Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden" respectively issued the team-up, as reported in Game Spot.

This gameplay will allow users to have clash modes between the heroes and villains of both the One Piece and Dragon Ball franchise.

This feature supports both local and online multiplayer and allows you to mix characters from the two fighting games. Yes, players will once again be treated to a fight between Luffy and Goku (and their crew) in a huge duking-out session out just like they did in J-Stars Victory Vs.

"Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden" is a battling title of two-dimensional, which has more than 100 unique characters (albeit just twenty of them are playable), one on one fights, group matches, et cetera.

"One Piece: Great Pirate Colosseum" take after the same line, in spite of the fact that its European release has not yet been affirmed. In Japan the title will touch base on September 21.

The principal duplicates of the diversion will incorporate an early arrival of characters of Edward Newgate, Mark and Jozu, in addition to an in-amusement article to be utilized as a part of the "Make a Pirate Crew" mode and a code to download an uncommon topic for the console.

A previous review of their team-up however, was met with lackluster praise.

The "One Piece: Great Colosseum" "Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden" crossover game is mechanically light, substantial on fanservice volume yet that exclusive ever skims the surface of the characters it incorporates. On the chance that you need an anime brawler that spotlights on the sheer volume of anime characters spoke to then this is most likely the diversion for you. In the event that you need a diversion that truly exploits the incredibly shifted cast available to its, look somewhere else, as reported by IGN.
The social media has murdered another celebrity once again with another death hoax. Contrary to the rumors currently circulating on the social media, "Karate Kid" star Jaden Smith is alive and doing well.

According to reports, a viral internet death hoax claims that Jaden Smith has committed suicide after uploading a video message which contains his plan to kill himself as well as a farewell to his father, popular actor Will Smith.

Two internet new sites have written the report regarding Jaden Smith's apparent suicide, Hollywood Life reported. It is also not the first time that Jaden was reported dead as a similar death hoax went into circulation just last month.

The report further explained that a tweeted picture of the 18-year-old Hollywood actor's girlfriend, Sarah Snyder, 21, which showed her on a bed with another guy further added fuel to the fire as rumors began to circulate that he decided to commit suicide due to his girlfriend's cheating.

Mirror UK says the hoax, which needs a user's permission to be posted, has been trending in the social media for a week now. The fake article link contains a headline and a photo of the actor to make it look credible at first glance. And although Jaden Smith is active in his social media accounts, many fans were still fooled and reposted the link.

Hollywood Life also revealed that Jaden Smith and his girlfriend were on a double date with Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth just a few days ago and was also spotted in Manhattan, New York on September 10, Saturday.

The Daily Mail also reported that Jaden Smith and Sarah Snyder met with Kendall Jenner at Gigi Hadid's apartment to attend an event.

Other celebrities who had once been victimized by such death hoaxes in social media include Angelina Jolie, Miley Cyrus, Sylvester Stallone and Jack Black



View on YouTube
SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

Google Ad

The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET

STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN

This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan

Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments

Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan

Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement

With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building

OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh

USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens

ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression
The year has already provided the general public with plenty of smartphone units to choose from. Some of the most exciting of which have been the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, the LG V20 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. Yet despite the impeccable list of existing 2016 phones, there is still plenty of hype left over for the 2016 Google Nexus phones.

First Things First

Google's 2016 Nexus phones have already gotten their names - the Marlin and the Starfish. But more recent reports are stating that Google is dropping the Nexus branding completely, which includes the Marlin and Starfish name as well. Instead, the public will receive the Pixel (Sailfish) and the Pixel XL (Marlin).

Pixel And Pixel XL - Expected Specs

According to BGR, the 2016 Google Phones will be the first US handhelds to come powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, which theoretically means that it could be the most powerful handheld of 2016. Thus far, no other handheld has sported the chip.

The 2016 Google phones are also expected to come with other high-end specs as the search engine giant is expected to leave the cheaper smartphone market alone.

In addition, both the Pixel and Pixel XL devices are expected to come with internal storage options, either at 32 GB or 128 GB.

The Unveiling Event

As Android Police notes, the unveiling event might be this October 4th. Furthermore, it will be more exciting than previous events, precisely because Google is focusing on itself. Unlike before, the company is expected to leave out talks of partners or the Nexus program in general.

Nexus vs Google

The question though, is just how Pixel will stack up against Nexus. The branding itself is doing well, and the publication argues that Google is not leaving behind the branding because there was anything wrong in particular. Rather, Google is gearing up to tackle Apple directly, without the need to mention any partners pulling them behind.


Nvidia Corp. debuted two new graphics processors for systems and computers that use artificial intelligence putting them directly in competition with chips giant Intel.

Nvidia hopes that its two new graphic processors would be utilized by tech companies in their products that run artificial intelligence software like smartphones, driverless cars and smart homes, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The chipmaker, which is the leading company in video gaming graphics, released a new set of graphics chips for running software that "makes split-second decisions needed when everything from phones to cars to internet search engines respond to inputs such as speech, images and moving objects," according to Bloomberg.

Nvidia calls the new chip "Tesla P4 chip" and is designed for servers used in massive data centers that process big data like Facebook, "The Division" and "World of Warcraft."

Based on Nvidia's Pascal design, the P4 is more than three times as efficient at processing images than its predecessor and 40 times more efficient than Intel server chips, as stated in Nvidia's report. Another new chip, called the P40, is designed for more-powerful single computers like supercomputers.

Nvidia is seeking to go head to head with Intel, which last month announced its own artificial intelligence chips. Both tech titans also want to make sure big data operators like Google not only rely on their technology but are not swayed to design their own custom solutions.

Nvidia told Bloomberg that its graphics chips, which "perform multiple small manipulations of data simultaneously," are apparently the perfect answer for computers and software that use artificial intelligence, stating that the P4 and P40 will make the use of AI easier.

The chipmaker announced the two new chips in its GPU conference in Beijing on Tuesday, as reported by Forbes. Along with the Tesla P4 and Tesla P40, Nvidia also revealed two new pieces of software - TensorRT and DeepStream designed to make inferencing in computing machines faster and resource efficient than existing systems on the processor market.

Forbes describes the two new chip as based on Nvidia's "newest Pascal architecture with the Tesla P4 is smaller in size and about the length of a pencil."

Intel countered saying that although its chips have less ability to work in parallel, they are more capable in general purpose computing and can offer the right solutions for everyday needs.

Bloomberg opined that data center owners, whose biggest cost is energy, are focused on components that can get the job done using less power.

The site speculates that the market for AI chips is still in its infancy. In its latest quarter, Nvidia's data center business more than doubled its sales to $151 million and most of this came from AI tasks. Intel's data center unit had sales of $4 billion, but very little of that revenue came from AI projects.
Since January, Thailand has recorded about 200 cases of the dreaded Zika virus, health officials confirmed.

Thailand is now one of the countries in Asia to have the highest number of confirmed cases. The report comes after health officials asked the government to make its Zika reports more apparent to the public. Government officials fear that the Zika threat could have a negative impact on the country's tourism, one of the most important assets of Thailand.

The Zika virus has been linked to microcephaly, a birth defect wherein babies born have abnormally smaller heads than other babies of the same age. Health officials are currently assessing the condition of about two dozen pregnant women infected with the virus. Six women have given birth to normal babies.

"Since January, we have recorded about 200 cases and over the past three weeks, we have confirmed an average of 20 new cases per week," Ministry of Public Health spokesman Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai said in a statement.

"The number of cases is stable," he added.

Asia has seen the sudden surge of the mosquito-borne illness in some of its countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. When Singapore reported its first case in August, the number has increased to about 300 as per record.

Zika virus, which is transmitted through Aedes mosquito bites, has long been present for decades but the first link of the virus to microcephaly was first established in Brazil in 2015. The country has reported more than 1,800 confirmed cases of microcephaly.

Apart from microcephaly, the virus has been associated with the emergence of a neurological condition dubbed as Guillain-Barre syndrome in adults. The condition happens when the body's immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system leading to changes in pain sensation and muscle weakness.

Thus, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned the public to protect themselves from mosquito bites by wearing protective clothes such as long-sleeves and pants, applying mosquito repellents, eradicating mosquito breeding sites and postponing travel to Zika-stricken countries or locations. Zika virus has still no known cure or vaccine so far.
In an effort to take its social responsibility to the next level, social media giant Facebook has teamed up with the country of Israel to take down terrorism on social media which terrorist groups have used to radicalize and brainwash scores of Western individuals to join their cause.

Bloomberg reported that Facebook Inc.'s Joel Kaplan and Monika Bickert met with Israeli ministers in Tel Aviv on Monday. Kaplan is Facebook's vice president of U.S. public policy, while Bickert is the company's head of global policy management and counter-terrorism. The duo took to heart the message of the Israeli ministers who insisted that the social network must exert more effort to obliterate the incitement of terrorism and radicalization of individuals on its pages.

"The internet can't be allowed to become an incubator for terrorism," said Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who joined the meeting with Kaplan and Bickert.

Based on a released statement from Erdan and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, many of the Palestinians arrested following attacks against Israelis in the past year admitted of having been influenced by content on Facebook and other online platforms such as Twitter and Youtube.

Both Facebook and the Israeli government agreed to create joint teams which will cooperate on how to best deal with internet incitement and radicalization.

Shaked said that Facebook and Israel share a common goal "especially during the week that commemorates Sept. 11, the event that changed the face of the United States."

According to a statement from the justice minister's office, in the past four months Facebook has already taken down 95 percent of content which has been flagged as offensive by Israeli officials, while Google's YouTube has removed 80 percent of such content.

"This is impressive, but we understand that the amount of online incitement is much greater and we must continue to increase our efforts," Shaked shared at a counterterrorism conference Monday in Herzliya.

The Jerusalem Post reported that a Facebook representative called the meeting constructive and said the delegation visited Israel "as part our ongoing dialogue with policy makers and experts around the world to keep terrorist content off our platform and support counter-speech initiatives."

The publication further explained that "Online extremism can only be tackled with a strong partnership between policy makers, civil society, academia and companies, and this is true in Israel and around the world. We had constructive discussions about these important issues and look forward to a continued dialogue and cooperation," the representative stated.

The discussion with Israel came days after Facebook faced a firestorm of complaints when the company removed then reinstated the iconic "Napalm Girl" Vietnam War photo which apparently was first taken down because it violated Facebook's nudity guidelines.

The social media behemoth is seeking to find its footing to establish an acceptable universal standard for its 1.7 billion Facebook users which will balance between free speech and prudent censorship of content that is offensive or incites violence.

"A Facebook delegation visited Israel as part of our ongoing dialog with policymakers and experts around the world to keep terrorist content off our platform and support counterspeech initiatives," according to an e-mailed statement from the company sent to Bloomebrg.

"Facebook has zero tolerance for terrorism. We want people to feel safe when using Facebook," the statement added.
They make all look the same but the long-neck giraffe has actually four species, a new study found.

Known to many as a mammal belonging to only one species, this iconic African animal has four separate ones, shedding light on its conservation and protection needs. In a study published in the journal Current Biology, giraffes are said to be divided into four distinct lineages, not just subspecies.

At present, scientists and animal experts claim that giraffes belong to the species Giraffa camelopardalis, with 11 subspecies recognized based on their coat patterns and where they live. However, a closer assessment of their genes shows that giraffes should be divided into four species that do not interbreed in the wild.

"It was an amazing finding," study lead investigator Axel Janke, a geneticist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, said in a statement.

"The million-dollar question is what kept them apart in the past," he said, adding that perhaps physical barriers like rivers kept the giraffe population separated, hindering new species to arise.

The study suggests that giraffes should be separated into the Masai giraffe (G. tippelskirchi), the southern giraffe (G. giraffe), the northern giraffe (G. camelopardalis) and the reticulated giraffe (G. reticulate).

According to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF), giraffes are largely under-studied compared to other large animals in Africa such as elephants, gorillas, lions and rhinoceroses.

"We were extremely surprised because the morphological and coat pattern differences between giraffe are limited," Janke said.

"Giraffe are also assumed to have similar ecological requirements across their range, but no one really knows, because this megafauna has been largely overlooked by science," he added.

The population of giraffes has dramatically declined over the past three decades in Africa. The population decreased from more than 150,000 to less than 100,000. Despite this decline, little research has been done to conserve and protect their population. Thus, the new study aims to shed light on the animal's genetics to help scientists plan for its protection in the wild.
Smart door locks, padlocks, thermostats, refrigerators, wheelchairs and even solar panel arrays were among the internet-of-things devices that fell to hackers during the IoT Village held at the DEF CON security conference in August.

A month after the conference ended, the results are in: 47 new vulnerabilities affecting 23 devices from 21 manufacturers were disclosed during the IoT security talks, workshops and onsite hacking contests.

The types of vulnerabilities found ranged from poor design decisions like the use of plaintext and hard-coded passwords to coding flaws like buffer overflows and command injection.

Door locks and padlocks from vendors like Quicklock, iBlulock, Plantraco, Ceomate, Elecycle, Vians, Lagute, Okidokeys, Danalock were found to be vulnerable to password sniffing and replay attacks, where a captured command can be replayed later to open the locks.

A wheelchair from an unknown vendor had a vulnerability that could be exploited to disable a safety feature and take control of the device. A thermostat from Trane used a weak plain text protocol potentially allowing attackers to cause excessive heating, furnace failures or frozen water pipes by manipulating thermostat functionality.

Several security issues, including a hard-coded password, a command injection flaw, an open access point connection and a lack of network segmentation were found in a solar array management device from Tigro Energy.

By exploiting these flaws "I can shut down the equivalent of a small to mid-sized power generation facility or I can use that device as a trojan within a target's network to spy on them," Fred Bret-Mounet, the researcher who found the issues, wrote in their description. "It looks very likely that I can remotely physically damage a solar array using this device."

Another researcher found that he could convert guest access to a smart lock from a vendor called August into irrevocable admin access. Gaining short-term access to the lock owner's phone could also be turned into long-term admin access.

"If you bought a used ASL-01 lock, any previous owner or guest of a previous owner could gain access to your home," the researcher said. "If you bought a used lock on eBay said previous owner knows where you live."

Home networking devices were not left out. A buffer overflow and a cross-site request forgery flaw was found in the Belkin F9K1122 wireless range extender and a buffer overflow was found in the ZyXel NBG6716 wireless router. The flaws could be exploited to take control of local networks.

This is the second year that the IoT Village was held at DEF CON and the event has so far led to the discovery of 113 critical vulnerabilities across consumer and business IoT products. Its success shows that many device manufacturers in this tech segment continue to ignore security best practices.

Even though there have been some efforts to draft security guides and standards for IoT vendors, the rush to bring new "smart" devices to market will unfortunately mean that many of them will have critical flaws.
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.
Get unlimited access to all content and features at ivpressonline.com with our Full Online Access Subscription. Read our E-Edition, the digital replica of the print newspaper online, access content in exclusive sections including Family, Teen, Business, Databases, Farm and more. This option does not include daily home delivery of the Imperial Valley Press newspaper. For home delivery service, please select Premium or Premium Plus.
Stortford 195-2

Letchworth 194-7 dec

Stortford won by eight wickets

(Home Counties East League premier division)

DARREN WITTINGHAM starred for Bishop's Stortford as they picked up their first Home Counties East League premier division win of the season against visitors Letchworth on Saturday.

The Cricketfield Lane side strolled to victory by a comfortable eight-wicket margin with down-under all-rounder Wittingham, a 19-year-old Australian spotted by Stortford players touring New South Wales in the winter, giving a fine performance with both bat and ball.

Letchworth batted first and managed a total of 194-7, Wittingham using his right-arm seam to good effect with three wickets.

In reply, Stortford lost two early wickets but recovered superbly as Wittingham and Steve Burrow both made unbeaten 70s. They reached their target of 195-2 with two overs to spare.

Skipper Ben Debenham said: 'In the end it was fairly tight but we always looked like making the runs. Darren Wittingham is clearly a very talented player. It's always good to get the first win of the season on the board and hopefully we can build on that.'

Stortford, who drew their opening game against West Herts the previous week, have the chance to concentrate fully on their league campaign as they were knocked out of the National Cup at the second round stage at Stanmore on Sunday.

The home side batted first in the 45 overs-apiece contest and scored 168-6. Stortford fielded well to run three Stanmore players out.

Good bowling performances came from Charlie Bannister and Gareth Lindop, another promising youngster starting his first season for the Hertfordshire side.

The pitch deteriorated as the match wore on and Stortford struggled to score runs quickly. They eventually completed their allotted overs with 140-9 to lose by 28 runs.
Sos Gimishyan: I cannot accept the fact that the West or Russia should appoint our prime ministers (video)

We should try to get our sovereignty back from power centres if we want our country to return to normal, Chairman of the Christian-Democratic Party said on September 13 speaking about Karen Karapetyans appointment as Prime Minister of Armenia. As an Armenian, I cannot accept the fact that our prime minister should be appointed by the West or Russia, Sos Gimishyan said today. He says Armenians can decide themselves whom they want to see as the next PM but the system does not work in Armenia. It is the Venice Commission that decides whether the government in Armenia is legitimate or not, who is to become the countrys next president. The Venice Commission has the final say. The opinion of all other observers is ignored. A person with a 5-percent rating is appointed president by the Venice Commission because it would be terrible for them to see the people and authorities united in Armenia, Mr. Gimishyan stressed. Speaking about the policy of former Prime Minister [Hovik Abrahamyan], Sos Gimishyan said it was always determined and approved by Serzh Sargsyan. So was the case with the government led by Tigran Sargsyan. They did whatever Serzh Sargsyan told them to do. Everything is decided by one person in our country, he added. Mr. Gimishyan advised everyone to wait and see what Karen Karapetyan will do as Prime Minister.
Candidates are not aware of theatre life (video)

Actors of Gyumri's Vardan Achemyan Drama Theatre disapprove of the new competition for the post of director. Two candidates  Margarita Minasyan and Araksya Kirakosyan  participate in the competition. Actress Susanna Baghdasaryan says neither of them has anything to do with the theatre. They have no notion of this organism, its structure and functions, said the distinguished actress. None of the employees was aware that the term of office of Director Gevorg Khachatryan had expired. Arkadi Gharagulyan added that the director had been busy with the renovation of the stage and forgotten to submit the necessary documents for the contest. The actors have turned to the Minister of Culture who has promised to help them. If the problem is not resolved, Arkadi Gharagulyan says the staff is ready to resort to extreme measures. Aspram Baghdasaryan added in turn that they have nothing against the two candidates, but they want to see a competent person in their theatre. Most actors want Gevorg Khachatryan to be re-appointed as Director of the Vardan Achemyan Drama Theatre. Khachatryan is a member of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia. Our director has never ordered us to participate in elections or vote for a definite candidate. We have never been involved in politics, Susanna Baghdasaryan added.
Reddit Email 0 Shares

Special Correspondent | (Niqash.org) |  

The liberation of the northern Iraqi town of Qayyarah from the [so-called] Islamic State group [IS] is a strategic victory in defeating the extremists, in addition to being a major financial blow to their efforts.

Since it was liberated by Iraqi forces last month, Qayyarah has come to be seen as the key to freeing surrounding areas from the grip of the extremist . . . IS.

For more than two years, the town in northern Iraqi province of Ninawa was home to the IS treasury. But today the organizations black banners and bearded fighters are nowhere to be seen.

The liberation of Qayyarah brought us closer to our bigger goal of liberating not just Mosul, but also the Ninawa province from the grip of IS group, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on 25 August.

Mosul is the extremists last stronghold in the region, some 60 kilometres to the north.

For us, Qayyarah is the key for entering Mosul, as it was the strongest defensive line for IS fighters in the southern part of the province, Major General Saleh al-Jibouri, mayor of Qayyarah, told NIQASH. The citys air field would be crucial to future operations, he said.

Perhaps even more importantly, the IS group has also lost a major source of income.

Economically, Qayyarah was an inexhaustible treasure, al-Jibouri said. Around 100 tankers of crude oil are transported from its fields everyday, bringing an income of about US$1 million per month,al-Jibouri said.

Local officials, politicians and security leaders in the Ninawa province have said they consider the liberation of Qayyarah exemplary because it preserved the lives of civilians. Losses are estimated at just five deaths and 10 wounded. Whats more, the operation was carried out without the participation of the Shiite popular factions accused of committing abuses against the local population. Both Sunnis and Kurds strongly oppose their participation in the upcoming Mosul operations.

Qayyarahs 20,000 residents celebrated in the streets after Iraqi forces drove out the militants. Locals were lucky on two counts: Not only did they live to see an end to 26 months of terror, hunger and repression, but they also werent displaced by the battle to retake the city.

People were joyous when the security forces told them over the loudspeakers that were now safe, 36-year-old resident Abu Haidar told NIQASH. We went out to the streets to cheer and applaud the Iraqi soldiers after shaving our beards, and smokers lit their cigarettes publicly and blew the white smoke up in the air in a festive manner.

Their oppressors had imposed a strict dress code and banned indulgences such as smoking.

But some of these smiling faces were concealing the fear that these new forces might bring fresh troubles, as IS preachers had promised. Now, more than two weeks after the arrival of the Iraqi forces, these fears appear to be fading.

Civilians did not suffer from any violations and the town did not witness any revenge acts, said mayor al-Jibouri.

There has been another troubling development outside of town, though. IS fighters set fire to surrounding oil fields to prevent the advancement of the Iraqi forces, and fire fighters have yet to quell the blazes.

We are afraid of an environmental disaster due to the fires, and the leakage of large quantities of crude oil into residential neighborhoods, especially as firefighters have been working hard over the last 10 days to extinguish the fires but havent yet succeeded, al-Jibouri said.

Some living near the burning oil fields have been forced to move away to avoid the resulting respiratory problems and skin diseases that have started to spread among the population.

Another challenge is the reconstruction of vital public services, in particular healthcare and electricity. Damage to infrastructure is estimated at 90 percent, al-Jibouri said.

Currently, the town is living on humanitarian aid provided by the local and federal governments and aid organizations.But an entry point for supplies is expected to open soon.

Counterterrorism forces that liberated Qayyarah withdrew from the town one week after its liberation, handing over responsibility for security to the local security forces. A police directorate was opened on 1 September.

The security situation in the town is stable, al-Jibouri said. The Shiite Muslim militias and the police are sharing the security responsibility, and the army is watching the citys walls in anticipation of any attack by the IS group.

Qayyarah residents, including children, have also offered unprecedented cooperation to the security forces by providing information about IS group members and collaborators, he added.

We will provide the army and the police with all what they need to preserve our liberty, said resident Abu Haidar.

via Niqash.org



related video added by Juan Cole:

Press TV: Qayyarah residents recount tales of Daesh atrocities
Reddit Email 8 Shares

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

A Boston U. political scientist estimates that as of 2016, The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have cost the American taxpayers $5 trillion. That number isnt important when we consider the human cost Some 7,000 US troops dead, 52,000 wounded in action; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead who wouldnt otherwise be, 4 million displaced and made homeless, etc.

Just to put that $5 trillion in perspective. Lets say you chose five individuals. Each of the five will spend $10 million a day. Thats the cost of Heidi Klums mansion. Theyd be buying the equivalent of five of those each day.

Theyll do that every day of their lives. All five of them. And then each of them will be succeeded by one their children, who will spend $10 million dollars a day, and one of their grandchildren, and one of their great-grandchildren, until 270 years have passed and it is the year 2286. Thats the equivalent of a stardate for Captain Picard of the Enterprise.

Neta Crawford, a professor of Political Science at Brown University published the study for Brown Universitys Watson Institute.

Professor Crawford writes:

As of August 2016, the US has already appropriated, spent , or taken on obligations to spend more than $ 3 . 6 trillion in current dollars on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria and o n Homeland Security ( 2001 through fiscal year 2016 ) . To t his total should be added the approximately $6 5 billion in dedicated war spending the Department of Defense and State Department have requested for the next fiscal year, 2017 , along with an additional nearly $3 2 billion requested for the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, and estimated spending on veterans in future years . When those are included , the total US budgetary cost of the wars reach es $4.79 trillion.

The US has spent $1.7 trillion for combat and reconstruction. I have a sinking feeling that first they spent half of it on destroying things and then they spent the other half on rebuilding them.

Through 2053, the US government owes the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans $1 trillion in medical and disability payments along with the money to administer all that.

Crawford adds,

Interest costs for overseas contingency operations spending alone are projected to add more than $1 trillion dollars to the national debt by 2023. By 2053 , interest costs will be at least $7.9 trillion unless the US changes the way it pays for the wars.

Of 2.7 million military personnel who served in those two theaters, 2 million have now left the military and have entered the Veterans Administration system. Some 52,000 of them were wounded in action and many need care.

Because the Bush administration borrowed money to pay for the wars, weve paid half a trillion dollars in interest alone.

At least al-Qaeda had been based in Afghanistan. Iraq had had nothing to do with September 11. It was Bushs invasion that brought al-Qaeda there, which later morphed into ISIL.

We were lied into that war, and it has weakened our economy. If anyone can tell me what benefit that war brought the average American, Id like to hear it.

The Iraq War was a government-led Ponzi scheme and as usual the little people are the ones who took a bath.
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Sept. 13, 2016) - Americas Silver Corporation (TSX:USA)(OTCQX:USAPF) ("Americas Silver" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has received approval from its Board of Directors, to begin construction on its 100% owned, San Rafael zinc-lead-silver project within the Cosala district of Sinaloa, Mexico.

The San Rafael Project (the "Project") is expected to deliver average annual production of 1.0 million ounces of silver, 50 million pounds of zinc and 20 million pounds of lead over a 6 year initial mine life at negative AISC based on current reserves and have a pre-tax IRR of greater than 80% using current silver, zinc and lead prices. The Project is a brownfield development that will utilize certain existing infrastructure at the Cosala Operations and is expected to have an initial capital cost of approximately $20 million using current exchange rates. The Company targets commercial production in Q3 2017 following stockpiling of development ore starting in Q2 2017. The Project is permitted for development, road access has already been completed and portal construction has begun. Please see the Company's website at www.americassilvercorp.com for photos updating the Project's progress.

The Company currently has the necessary financial resources to fully fund the Project, and is using existing cash to commence construction, but is actively evaluating a number of low cost, non-dilutive financing proposals.

"We are very excited to start full construction on our brownfield San Rafael Project," said Americas Silver President & CEO Darren Blasutti. "Once commercial production is achieved in the third quarter of 2017, it will provide a step change in terms of both reducing cash costs and creating significant free cash flow for the Company. We expect that the mine life will extend well beyond the initial estimate of 6 years with resource conversion through underground exploration drilling and the increase to metal prices since the prefeasibility study was published in April."

Prefeasibility Study (1)

The San Rafael property hosts a zinc-lead-silver deposit and is located approximately 8km north of the Company's Los Braceros process plant. Preliminary evaluation work completed in 2012 considered exploitation of a larger deposit by open pit with a relatively small underground mine component.

A prefeasibility study was initiated on the San Rafael Project by new management in H1-2015 and published on April 30, 2016. The study considers a stand-alone underground operation at San Rafael focused on the Main Zone with processing at the existing Los Braceros facility to produce separate zinc and lead concentrates. The resources have been estimated by Mine Development Associates of Reno, Nevada. Following a ten-month development period, the existing Los Braceros processing plant will begin producing zinc and lead concentrates. The project is expected to produce approximately 1.0 million ounces of silver, 50 million pounds of zinc and 20 million pounds of lead over the initial 6 year mine life. As a result of the Project's by-product credits, the silver AISC will be negative.

Further Updates and Optimization

Since the publication of the prefeasibility study the Project's initial capital has been reduced from $22-25 million to $20 million. The prefeasibility study considered San Rafael as a stand-alone project, ignoring contributions from the existing operations. The decrease in capital is a result of current operations in Cosala offsetting the projects initial working capital until San Rafael start-up and the devaluation of the Mexican peso used in the prefeasibility study.

On-going optimization of the Project is expected to enhance the Project's economics by further reducing initial capital expenditures and future operating costs by: maximizing existing mill capacity through changes in operating practices, using existing but reconditioned equipment brought over from Nuestra Senora in place of new equipment purchases, and applying productivity improvements which were not included in the prefeasibility study but have since been demonstrated at the Nuestra Senora mine.

Since publishing of the prefeasibility study in H1-2016, metal prices have increased significantly. Current prices allow the Project to extend its mine life by lowering the cut-off grade and converting additional resources.

Improved future access from the San Rafael underground infrastructure will allow more for efficient exploration in the immediate area. The initial focus of this work will be to extend the existing San Rafael resource as well as to delineate and expand the silver-rich Zone 120. The expected resource conversion and extended mine life have not been factored into the IRR calculation.

Potential U.S. Exchange Listing

Americas Silver is considering listing its common shares on the NYSE "MKT" (a U.S. securities exchange) to increase trading volume and liquidity. The potential benefits of a U.S. exchange listing may also include access to a significantly deeper pool of new capital, greater international recognition and increased retail interest. The Company has started the initial listing process but a final decision to proceed with a listing on a U.S. exchange has not been made and the Company may elect not to proceed with such a listing.

A U.S. listing is expected, among other things, to require the Company to undertake a share consolidation in order to enable the Company to satisfy certain U.S. exchange minimum listing requirements. Such share consolidation would be subject to shareholder approval, with specific particulars to be included in a management information circular to be mailed to shareholders in advance of the shareholder meeting. Further updates will follow in due course as more information is gathered and the Company reaches a definitive decision on whether to proceed with such a listing.

Americas Silver to present at Precious Metals Summit & Denver Gold Forum

The Precious Metals Summit will be held September 14-16, 2016, at the Park Hyatt in Beaver Creek, Colorado. President & CEO, Darren Blasutti will be presenting at 10:10am on Wednesday, September 14, 2016. The Denver Gold Show will be held September 18-21, 2016, at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Mr. Blasutti will be presenting at 9:00am on Wednesday, September 21, 2016.

Mr. Blasutti will provide a Company update during the live presentation period at both shows and participate in one-on-one meetings with registered conference investors. A copy of the investor presentation is available on the Company's website at www.americassilvercorp.com

About Americas Silver

Americas Silver Corporation is a mining company focused on growth in precious metals from its existing asset base and execution of targeted accretive acquisitions. The Company owns and operates the Cosala Operations in Sinaloa, Mexico and the Galena Mine Complex in Idaho, USA.

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information:

This news release contains "forwardlooking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forwardlooking information includes, but is not limited to, the Company's expectations intentions, plans, assumptions and beliefs with respect to, among other things, the Cosala Operations, the Project and Galena Complex. Often, but not always, forwardlooking information can be identified by forwardlooking words such as "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "goal", "plan", "intend", "estimate", "may", "assume" and "will" or similar words suggesting future outcomes, or other expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions, intentions, or statements about future events or performance. Forwardlooking information is based on the opinions and estimates of the Company as of the date such information is provided and is 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 or implied by such forward looking information. This includes the ability to develop and operate the Cosala and Galena properties, risks associated with the mining industry such as economic factors (including future commodity prices, currency fluctuations and energy prices), failure of plant, equipment, processes and transportation services to operate as anticipated, environmental risks, government regulation, actual results of current exploration activities, possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates, permitting timelines, capital expenditures, reclamation activities, social and political developments and other risks of the mining industry. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forwardlooking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such information. By its nature, forwardlooking information involves numerous assumptions, inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, forecasts, and projections of various future events will not occur. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forwardlooking information whether as a result of new information, future events or other such factors which affect this information, except as required by law.

(1) The San Rafael Project prefeasibility study is available on the Company's website at www.americassilvercorp.com and at www.sedar.com. A summary is available in the Company's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2015.
RENO, NEVADA--(Marketwired - Sept. 13, 2016) - NuLegacy Gold Corporation (TSX VENTURE:NUG)(OTCQX:NULGF) is pleased to report that the assay results from hole AV-02 confirm the Avocado IP/Resistivity anomaly hosts a Carlin-type gold deposit. This is the second Carlin-type gold deposit (Iceberg being the first) discovered within NuLegacy's 100% owned 38 sq. mile Cortez-trend property (the Red Hill project) in Nevada.

Hole AV-02, located 1,750 meters north-west of the Iceberg gold deposit, has discovered a massive bloom of gold grading 0.26 g/t over 199.7 meters (655 feet) including 24 and 35 meter intervals of 0.5-gram material, and 10 and 13 meter intervals of better than 1.0-gram material (details in table below). The gold mineralization is continuous from a depth of 415 meters to the bottom of the hole at 615 meters (200 m interval).

"We are very encouraged by the results from Hole AV-02", says Dr. Roger Steininger NuLegacy's CGO, "This is the second Carlin-type gold system we have confirmed on the property. It is at the same depth as Barrick Gold's multi-million ounce Goldrush deposit just 9 km to the northwest and on trend with the Avocado and Iceberg depositsii. Compilation and reinterpretation of all available data is underway and additional IP geophysical lines are being surveyed to vector the next drilling for higher grade gold mineralization".

AV-02 is 120 meters north of AV-01 (reported 10/28/2014) which returned three anomalous (less than 0.1 g/t) gold intervals of 12, 20 and 35 meters encountered at 253, 331 and 419 meters respectively. These anomalous intervals are within the same black carbonaceous pyritic limestone material that hosts much of the gold mineralization in the deeper parts of Nevada's major Carlin-type gold deposits. The suite of anomalous trace elements present in the material in AV-01 (typical of large Carlin-type gold systems) indicated that higher grade gold mineralization should occur in the vicinity.

AV-02's higher grades and very thick gold-bearing horizon of 200+ meters together with the same classic trace elements suite indicates the possibility of much higher grade gold mineralization within the 2.5 km long and 1 km wide Avocado geophysical anomaly.

A complete review of all geophysical and geochemical data is underway to determine the exact locations of the next drill holes. Assays for exploration hole AV-03 are expected shortly; drilling to expand the Iceberg deposit continues.

Avocado - 2016 assay details Hole From To Length Grade number (m) (m) (m) (ft.) (g/t) AV-02 414.6 614.3 199.7 655 0.26 including 419.2 443.6 24.4 80 0.55 within which 422.9 432.9 10.7 35 1.01 including 579.3 614.4 35.1 115 0.50 within which 591.5 605.2 13.7 45 1.03

About NuLegacy: NuLegacy Gold Corporation is a Nevada based exploration company focused on expanding its Carlin-style near-surface Iceberg oxide gold deposit with an established exploration target of 90-110 million tonnes of 0.9 to 1.1 grams of gold per tonnei, and exploring for additional gold deposits on its 38 sq. mile (98 sq. km) Red Hill property located in the Cortez gold trend of Nevada.

The Iceberg gold deposit has similar geology to that of Barrick Gold's multi-million-ounce Pipeline deposit the discovery of which is credited to NuLegacy's Chief Geoscience Officer, Dr. Roger Steininger. The Iceberg is located on trend and adjacentii to three of Barrick Gold`s multi-million ounce Carlin-type gold deposits (the Pipeline, Cortez Hills and Goldrush deposits) that are amongst Barrick's lowest cost and politically safest gold assetsiii.

i These figures are conceptual in nature and derived from a compilation of 149 historic and 34 NuLegacy drill holes in and around the Iceberg deposit. To date, there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource.

ii The similarity and close proximity of these deposits in the Cortez Trend is not necessarily indicative of the gold mineralization in the Iceberg deposit.

iii As extracted from Barrick's Q4-2013 and Q1-2014 reports.

On Behalf Of NuLegacy Gold Corporation

James E Anderson, Chief Executive Officer

Sampling Methodology, Chain of Custody, Quality Control and Quality Assurance: Reverse circulation drilling was conducted by AK Drilling of Butte, Montana under the supervision of Thomas Roman, Exploration Manager, and Dr. Roger Steininger, CGO (CPG 7417) and the chain of custody from the project to the sample preparation facility was continuously monitored. The samples were analyzed by American Assay Labs of Sparks, NV and sufficient commercially prepared standards, blanks, and duplicates were inserted to assure quality analytical results. Data verification of the analytical results included a statistical analysis of the duplicates, standards and blanks that must pass certain parameters for acceptance to ensure accurate and verifiable results. The reported gold intervals may or may not represent true thicknesses and/or widths as there is insufficient data at this time with respect to the shape of mineralization to calculate its true orientation.

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 news release.

This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Readers are cautioned that these forward looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. There are no known resources or reserves in the Iceberg and Avocado deposits and the proposed exploration programs are exploratory searches for commercial bodies of ore. In addition, the presence of gold deposits on properties adjacent or in close proximity to the Iceberg and Avocado deposits is not necessarily indicative of the gold mineralization on the Iceberg and Avocado deposits. All of the forward-looking statements made in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements and those in our continuous disclosure filings available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com including our annual management's discussion and analysis dated July 28, 2016 for the year ended March 31, 2016. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances save as required under applicable securities legislation.
September 13, 2016 / TheNewswire / Redstar Gold Corp. (TSX.V: RGC, US: RGCTF, FRA: RGG) ("Redstar" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that, further to its news release dated August 22, 2016, the Company has closed its non-brokered private placement of 41,000,000 shares ("Shares") at a price of CDN$0.10 per share to raise gross proceeds of CDN$4,100,000 (the "Financing").

The Company appreciates the positive response from the markets and strong investor interest in the Financing, which was oversubscribed, but in order to minimize any additional dilution, the Financing was capped at 41,000,000 Shares, as previously announced.

Eric Sprott acquired 9.6 million Shares pursuant to the Financing and together with other purchases of Shares, Mr. Sprott now holds approximately 11.6% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company on a non-diluted basis. The above percentages are calculated based on 259,763,296 common shares issued and outstanding after giving effect to the Financing. Prior to the Financing, Mr. Sprott owned 20.4 million Shares of the Company representing approximately 9.3% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company on a non-diluted basis.

"I would like to welcome Mr. Sprott as one of Redstar's largest shareholders and newest strategic investor. The Company can now make plans to initiate drilling up at our 100% controlled Unga Gold Project in Alaska," commented Peter A. Ball, President & CEO of Redstar Gold.

The proceeds from the Financing will be used to continue to progress the Unga Gold Project with additional drilling, continuing and expanding exploration across other known gold zones, complete a NI 43-101 Technical Report, and for general corporate purposes.

The Company paid finders' fees totalling CDN$48,000 and 480,000 broker warrants. Each whole warrant can be exercised into one common share of Redstar at a price of CDN$0.20 per share for a period of 2 years from closing. The private placement is subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange and the securities will be subject to a four month and one day hold period under securities laws.

Mr. Sprott is acquiring the shares for investment purposes. Mr. Sprott has a long-term view of the investment and may acquire additional Shares either on the open market or through private acquisitions or sell the Shares either on the open market or through private dispositions in the future depending on market conditions, reformulation of plans and/or other relevant factors. A copy of Mr. Sprott's early warning report will appear on the Company's profile on SEDAR and may also be obtained by calling (416) 362-7172 (200 Bay Street, Suite 2600, Royal Bank Plaza, South Tower, Toronto, Ontario M5J 2J2).

Shumagin Gold Zone

The Shumagin prospect is characterized by multi-episodic gold-silver bearing quartz-adularia-rhodochrosite breccia bodies that occur within structurally controlled dilation zones along the >1,200-meter-long Shumagin Scarp. High-grade gold-silver mineralization is open at depth within the main breccia body at Shumagin. Multiple dilation zones and coincident gold-silver bearing breccia bodies exist along strike of the Shumagin Scarp and remain to be fully drill tested.

About The Unga Gold Project

The 100% controlled Unga Gold Project covers key strategic portions of adjacent Unga and Popof Islands, approximately 900 kilometers southwest of Anchorage, Alaska. Redstar controls a 240 square kilometer land package that is host to numerous structurally controlled, volcanic hosted intermediate-sulfidation epithermal high-grade vein, breccia, stockwork and disseminated gold-silver occurrences.

The Unga Project has excellent infrastructure, including direct daily flights from Anchorage, a deep-sea port and a temperate climate. The former Apollo-Sitka gold mine, located on the southern Apollo-Sitka Trend, was Alaska's first underground gold mine and the site of historic high-grade gold production.

Selected drill highlights from the Shumagin Gold Zone:

Hole# From (meters) To (meters) Length1 (meters) Gold Grade (g/t) Silver Grade (g/t) DDH-26 49.07 49.83 0.76 37.7 20.6 DDH-28 44.81 46.02 1.22 16.5 55.5 DDH-35 77.27 77.88 0.61 192.6 5403.4 DDH-42 132.59 134.11 1.52 30.96 35.0 DDH-46 153.62 154.84 1.22 365.35 190.6 DDH-51 156.06 156.67 0.61 182.02 88.5 DDH-57 38.1 39.62 1.52 59.59 50.05 BMS-01 272.8 278.28 5.49 24.02 19.4 11SH007 223.0 224.0 1.00 43.9 18.5 11SH009 210.1 211.0 0.9 43.1 37.2 11SH010 259.25 259.8 0.55 738.0 408.0 15SH011 60.1 62.0 1.90 202.0 82.0 15SH012 64.0 66.0 2.00 35.3 209.0 15SH012 82.0 85.0 3.00 16.95 183.0 15SH012 89.0 89.7 0.70 133.0 422.0 15SH013 144.0 145.0 1.00 17.45 122.0 15SH013 146.0 147.0 1.00 20.9 232.0 15SH014 187.0 188.0 1.00 19.9 16.0 15SH018 196.0 197.0 1.00 41.2 130.0

*True widths of the mineralized intervals are close to 70-80% of Core Length

**DDH-26, 28, 35, 42, 46, 51, 57 & BMS-01 are historic in nature and are not reported herein as new drill results

**11SH007-010 and 15SH011-018 have been previously disclosed and may be viewed on Redstar's Website at www.redstargold.com/s/NewsReleases.asp

Jesse C. Grady, MSc, CPG-11592, is a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. Mr. Grady has prepared and approved the technical information contained within this release.

About Redstar Gold Corp

Redstar is a junior exploration company focused on high-grade gold exploration in North America. In Alaska, the Company is exploring the 100% controlled high-grade Unga Gold Project. In Nevada, Redstar has signed a Definitive Agreement with NV Gold Corp. to sell its Nevada portfolio and will receive 29.9% of NV Gold and 2 Board Seats at closing and approval of the transaction. Redstar also owns 30% of the Newman Todd Gold Project, in Red Lake, Ontario, Canada.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors,

Peter A. Ball, President and CEO

For additional information please contact:

T: +1.604.245.5861

Toll Free: 877.310.3330

E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Information This release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that Redstar Gold Corporation (the "Company") 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. 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 actual results may differ materially from those in the 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 successes, and continued availability of capital and financing, 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. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

Stated lengths are core width as drilled

Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - September 13, 2016) - Almaden Minerals Ltd. ("Almaden" or "the Company") (TSX: AMM) (NYSE MKT: AAU) is pleased to announce assay results from Almaden's ongoing exploration and development program at the Company's Tuligtic project, Mexico. Results from drill holes TU-16-463, 464 and 465, all drilled on section 10+550 East have been received.

These results confirm the presence of a shallow dipping ("SD") zone of veining adjacent and outside of the January 2016 Amended PEA pit. In addition, hole TU-16-465 intersected what is likely a new zone of high grade veining immediately beneath the Amended PEA pit, while TU-16-463 intersected two new veins located roughly 100 meters north of the previously known vein system. The holes were all drilled from the same pad and intersected the previously defined subvertical Ixtaca North vein zone as well as the new zones of veining (see attached section and plan maps). Highlights from these drillholes include the following intercepts for the Ixtaca North Zone and new zones:

Hole TU-16-463, SECTION 10+550 EAST Az. 330, Dip -30 Zone 22.50 meters @ 1.14 g/t Au and 19.3 g/t Ag Ixtaca North Zone Including 6.50 meters @ 3.31 g/t Au and 16.0 g/t Ag Ixtaca North Zone 15.00 meters @ 0.56 g/t Au and 72.3 g/t Ag Ixtaca North Zone? 3.50 meters @ 0.70 g/t Au and 113.0 g/t Ag New Vein Zone to North 2.58 meters @ 0.30 g/t Au and 349.8 g/t Ag New Vein Zone to North Hole TU-16-464, SECTION 10+550 EAST Az. 330, Dip -70 5.10 meters @ 2.45 g/t Au and 274.4 g/t Ag ? 20.70 meters @ 0.23 g/t Au and 88.6 g/t Ag ? 33.70 meters @ 0.84 g/t Au and 77.1 g/t Ag Ixtaca North Zone Including 4.60 meters @ 2.63 g/t Au and 330.2 g/t Ag Ixtaca North Zone 13.00 meters @ 1.90 g/t Au and 42.8 g/t Ag SD Vein Zone Including 2.70 meters @ 6.45 g/t Au and 116.9 g/t Ag SD Vein Zone Hole TU-16-465, SECTION 10+550 EAST Az. 330, Dip -80 12.00 meters @ 2.70 g/t Au and 114.8 g/t Ag New Vein Zone Including 5.50 meters @ 5.06 g/t Au and 219.6 g/t Ag New Vein Zone 13.70 meters @ 1.07 g/t Au and 26.5 g/t Ag New Vein Zone Including 0.70 meters @ 14.55 g/t Au and 400.0 g/t Ag New Vein Zone 13.50 meters @ 1.53 g/t Au and 15.8 g/t Ag SD Vein Zone Including 0.60 meters @ 15.60 g/t Au and 96.9 g/t Ag SD Vein Zone And 0.80 meters @ 5.25 g/t Au and 87.2 g/t Ag SD Vein Zone And 0.65 meters @ 6.85 g/t Au and 72.7 g/t Ag SD Vein Zone

The mineralisation reported today confirms the presence of additional important zones of veining immediately adjacent to the Ixtaca Zone and points to the exploration potential of the project in general. The Ixtaca Zone was discovered in 2010 beneath a large area of largely barren clay alteration which has been confirmed subsequently to represent the upper portions of a gold and silver bearing epithermal vein system. Since the discovery Almaden has focussed its efforts on the development of the Ixtaca Zone, however today's results clearly show the potential for additional mineralisation, not only proximal to the deposit, but more broadly project wide beneath the high level clay alteration.

Hole ID From (m) To (m) Interval (m) Gold (g/t) Silver (g/t) TU-16-463 62.00 84.50 22.50 1.14 19.3 including 62.90 63.40 0.50 3.18 221.0 including 70.00 76.50 6.50 3.31 16.0 including 70.00 71.50 1.50 13.00 6.9 including 81.00 83.62 2.62 0.49 50.5 TU-16-463 94.00 109.00 15.00 0.56 72.3 including 100.40 101.00 0.60 7.26 700.0 including 107.20 108.20 1.00 3.00 517.5 TU-16-463 123.10 123.60 0.50 3.24 839.0 TU-16-463 237.00 242.00 5.00 0.05 22.6 including 238.00 239.50 1.50 0.08 49.3 TU-16-463 324.80 326.20 1.40 0.14 33.8 TU-16-463 363.00 366.50 3.50 0.70 113.0 TU-16-463 392.00 394.58 2.58 0.30 349.8 TU-16-464 76.90 82.00 5.10 2.45 274.4 including 76.90 79.90 3.00 4.06 454.0 including 76.90 78.40 1.50 7.37 838.7 TU-16-464 115.30 136.00 20.70 0.23 88.6 including 115.80 116.38 0.58 0.92 1490.0 including 131.40 132.05 0.65 3.97 962.0 TU-16-464 153.00 155.00 2.00 0.31 31.0 TU-16-464 191.00 224.70 33.70 0.84 77.1 including 200.00 201.60 1.60 2.14 332.4 including 210.00 223.60 13.60 1.62 134.1 including 219.00 223.60 4.60 2.63 330.2 TU-16-464 234.00 245.10 11.10 0.82 33.1 including 234.95 236.10 1.15 2.48 163.3 including 243.90 244.55 0.65 7.17 143.0 TU-16-464 261.00 274.00 13.00 1.90 42.8 including 269.20 271.90 2.70 6.45 116.9 including 271.40 271.90 0.50 30.10 453.0 TU-16-465 113.40 129.10 15.70 0.12 34.5 including 113.40 113.90 0.50 1.17 621.0 including 125.90 126.40 0.50 0.73 183.0 TU-16-465 205.00 217.00 12.00 2.70 114.8 including 205.50 211.00 5.50 5.06 219.6 including 206.95 211.00 4.05 6.64 273.3 including 206.95 208.45 1.50 14.83 642.3 TU-16-465 233.50 247.20 13.70 1.07 26.5 including 233.50 234.20 0.70 14.55 400.0 TU-16-465 303.00 316.50 13.50 1.53 15.8 including 303.90 304.50 0.60 15.60 96.9 including 306.90 307.70 0.80 5.25 87.2 including 313.90 314.55 0.65 6.85 72.7

Currently, geotechnical drilling relating to ongoing pre-feasibility work is nearing completion while exploration drilling is ongoing and further exploration results will be reported once received. Recently the Company released a positive Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") on the Ixtaca deposit (see news release dated December 9th, 2015). Approximately 97% of the mineral resources incorporated into the updated PEA mine plan were in the Measured and Indicated categories.

J.D. Poliquin, chairman of Almaden stated, "We have been focussed on developing the Ixtaca deposit into a significant precious metals producer in Mexico, and are currently busy with engineering work and studies towards producing a PFS. Nevertheless, our ongoing exploration drilling is finding extensions of known zones and new vein zones with good gold and silver values close to the proposed pit outline. These intercepts and newly found veins clearly show the potential to grow the project."

About the Ixtaca Deposit PFS Program

Development related activities are currently underway, including advanced engineering and environmental baseline studies to meet the requirements of a PFS and the submittal of an environmental permit application and risk assessment to the Mexican regulatory agency responsible for mine permitting. To date Almaden has completed or initiated the following studies:

Hydrologic studies including the drilling of water test wells and installation of hydrologic equipment for baseline monitoring of existing subsurface water flow and quality on the project site (installation complete, monitoring ongoing);

Baseline surface water quality and flow measurements (monitoring ongoing);

Geochemical characterization of rock materials (complete);

Condemnation drilling of areas where mine infrastructure is planned (complete);

Geotechnical drilling to confirm foundation, footing and subsurface material quality (final holes based on updated mine plan are now complete);

Geomechanical drilling to confirm rock strength, hardness and pit slope parameters (complete);

PFS level metallurgical test work (ongoing);

Flora and fauna studies (complete);

Installation of a weather station (complete).

The Company has selected independent engineers Moose Mountain Technical Services and Knight Piesold Ltd. to prepare a PFS study. MMTS is an association of Geologists, Engineers and Technicians providing experienced knowledge in Geology, Mine Engineering, and Metallurgical Services and Support to the mining industry for over 15 years. Through their network of associates they provide an integrated team of experts and QP's. Services range from early grassroots exploration and development, block model builds, resource and reserve estimates, advanced planning and studies for mine proposals (including operational support), process design and permitting process guidance and support. MMTS has experience working on coal, gold, silver, copper, molybdenum, and tungsten deposits throughout North and South America and around the world. A list of specific projects worked on by MMTS can be found at www.moosemmc.com.

KP is an international consulting firm and recognized leader in providing engineering and environmental services. KP's expertise has been applied to hundreds of surface and underground mining projects in all stages of development and a broad range of environmental settings. KP provides industry leading services in water and waste management, tailings disposal, heap leach pads, rock mechanics and environmental services, and has been recognized for innovative services that meet high standards of reliability, security and cost effectiveness.

About the Ixtaca Drilling Program and the Ixtaca Zone

The Ixtaca Zone is a blind discovery made by the Company in 2010 on claims staked by the Company. The deposit is an epithermal gold-silver deposit, mostly hosted by veins in carbonate units and crosscutting dykes ("basement rocks") with a minor component of disseminated mineralisation hosted in overlying volcanic rocks.

The Ixtaca deposit is located in a developed part of Mexico in Puebla State, the location of significant manufacturing investments including Volkswagen and Audi plants. The deposit is accessed by paved road and is roughly 20 kilometres from an industrial park with rail service where significant manufacturers such as Kimberly Clarke have facilities. Any potential mining operation at Ixtaca would be located in an area previously logged or cleared with negligible to no current land usage.

The Company has employed roughly 70 people in its exploration program who live local to the Ixtaca deposit, and works closely with local officials and residents. For example, local employees have made up virtually all the drilling staff and have been trained on the job to operate the Company's wholly owned drills. The Company has implemented a comprehensive science based and objective community relations and education program for employees and all local stakeholders to transparently explain the exploration and development program underway as well as the potential impacts and benefits of any possible future mining operation at Ixtaca. The Company regards the local inhabitants to be major stakeholders in the Ixtaca deposit's future along with the Company's shareholders. Every effort is being made to create an open and clear dialogue with our stakeholders to ensure that any possible development scenarios that could evolve from the anticipated PFS are properly understood and communicated throughout the course of the Company's exploration and development program. To better explain the impacts of a mining operation at Ixtaca the Company has conducted numerous tours for local residents to third party operated mines in Mexico so that interested individuals can form their own opinions of mining based on first-hand experience. The Company invites all interested parties to visit www.almadenminerals.com to find out more about our community development, education and outreach programs.

Technical Details of the Ixtaca Drilling Program

The Main Ixtaca and Ixtaca North Zones of veining are interpreted to have a north-easterly trend. Holes to date suggest that the Main Ixtaca and Ixtaca North Zones are sub vertical with local variations. This interpretation suggests that true widths range from approximately 35% of intersected widths for a -70 degree hole to 94% of intersected widths for a -20 degree hole. The drilling completed to date has traced mineralisation over 1,000 meters along this northeast trend. The Chemalaco (Northeast Extension) Zone strikes roughly north-south (340 azimuth) and dips at 55 degrees to the west. This interpretation suggests that true widths range from approximately 82% of intersected widths for a -70 degree hole to 99% of intersected widths for a -40 degree hole. The orientation of the new vein zone intersected in the holes reported today is not well understood and true widths cannot be calculated at this time.

Mr. Norm Dircks, P.Geo., a qualified person ("QP") under the meaning of NI 43-101, is the QP and project manager of Almaden's Ixtaca program and reviewed the technical information in this news release. The analyses reported were carried out at ALS Chemex Laboratories of North Vancouver using industry standard analytical techniques. For gold, samples are first analysed by fire assay and atomic absorption spectroscopy ("AAS"). Samples that return values greater than 10 g/t gold using this technique are then re-analysed by fire assay but with a gravimetric finish. Silver is first analysed by Inductively Coupled Plasma - Atomic Emission Spectroscopy ("ICP-AES"). Samples that return values greater than 100 g/t silver by ICP-AES are then re analysed by HF-HNO 3 -HCLO 4 digestion with HCL leach and ICP-AES finish. Of these samples those that return silver values greater than 1,500 g/t are further analysed by fire assay with a gravimetric finish. Intervals that returned assays below detection were assigned zero values.

Blanks, field duplicates and certified standards were inserted into the sample stream as part of Almaden's quality assurance and control program which complies with National Instrument 43-101 requirements.

Cautionary Note concerning estimates of Measured, Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources

This news release uses terms that comply with reporting standards in Canada and certain estimates are made in accordance with Canadian National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"). NI 43-101 is a rule developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators that establishes Canadian standards for all public disclosure an issuer makes of scientific and technical information concerning mineral projects. These standards differ significantly from the requirements of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), and mineral resource information contained herein may not be comparable to similar information disclosed by United States companies.

This news release uses the terms "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" and "inferred mineral resources" to comply with reporting standards in Canada. We advise United States investors that while such terms are recognized and required by Canadian regulations, the SEC does not recognize them. United States investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the mineral deposits in such categories will ever be converted into mineral reserves under SEC definitions. These terms have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. Therefore, United States investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of the "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" or "inferred mineral resources" exist. In accordance with Canadian rules, estimates of "inferred mineral resources" cannot form the basis of pre-feasibility or other economic studies. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of the "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" or "inferred mineral resources" will ever be upgraded to a higher category.

About Almaden

Almaden Minerals Ltd. is a well-financed company which owns 100% of the Tuligtic project in Puebla State, Mexico, subject to a 2.0% NSR royalty held by Almadex Minerals Limited. Tuligtic covers the Ixtaca Gold-Silver Deposit, which was discovered by Almaden in 2010.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

"Morgan Poliquin"

Morgan J. Poliquin, Ph.D., P.Eng.

President, CEO and Director

Almaden Minerals Ltd.

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) nor the NYSE MKT have reviewed or accepted responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the contents of this news release which has been prepared by management. Except for the statements of historical fact contained herein, certain information presented constitutes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Canadian securities laws. Such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to, those with respect to potential expansion of mineralization, potential size of mineralized zone, and size and timing of exploration and development programs, estimated project capital and other project costs and the timing of submission and receipt and availability of regulatory approvals involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievement of Almaden to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, risks related to international operations and joint ventures, the actual results of current exploration activities, conclusions of economic evaluations, uncertainty in the estimation of mineral resources, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, environmental risks and hazards, increased infrastructure and/or operating costs, labour and employment matters, and government regulation and permitting requirements as well as those factors discussed in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Almaden's Annual Information form and Almaden's latest Form 20-F on file with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. Although Almaden has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Almaden disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required pursuant to applicable securities laws. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will introduce legislation to hold a national vote on same-sex marriage after the plebiscite was approved by the Cabinet [official websites] on Tuesday. The national vote would gauge voters thoughts on the issue but would not actually legalize same-sex marriage as the parliament would still have to decide [SkyNews report] the issue. Under the prime ministers proposal, voters will be asked to respond on February 11 to the question [Australian report]: Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry? The move is creating opposition [press release] by same sex-marriage advocates who believe the non-binding measure is delaying the granting of rights to same-sex couples. The vote is estimated to cost at least 7.5 million dollars.

The rights of same-sex couples are still being debated throughout the globe. Tens of thousands of people marched [JURIST report] in Mexico in protest of same-sex marriage Saturday, a controversial topic in the country exacerbated by a proposal from embattled President Enrique Pena Nieto to recognize same-sex marriage. The Aruban legislature on Friday voted [JURIST report] to give official recognition to same-sex couples, giving them the right to register their unions and receive the benefits granted to other married people. The New York Court of Appeals ruled [ JURIST report ] in August that the definition of parent under a section of the states Domestic Relations Law should be expanded, in a decision that will serve to better accommodate same-sex couples. Also last month the Belize Supreme Court struck down [JURIST report] a law banning sodomy, declaring it unconstitutional. Section 53 of the Belize Criminal Code banned carnal intercourse against the order of nature.
Brazils lower house of Congress [official website] voted to expel [press release] the formerly influential congress member Eduardo Cunha on Monday. The vote was largely in favor of ousting the lawmaker for conduct incompatible with parliamentary decorum. Cunha was charged [JURIST report] by the Supreme Court with corruption for allegedly taking bribes from companies trying to secure oil contracts. The lower house decision banned Cunha from politics for eight years and he may be arrested now that he has lost his congressional prerogatives. Other politicians under investigation fear that Cunha could implicate others in a tell all plea bargain [Al Jazeera report] in relation to the Petrobras scandal.

Brazils political establishment has been in turmoil as many powerful politicians have been brought to the center of embarrassing corruption investigations and trials. More than 100 individuals and 50 politicians have been arrested in connection to the Petrobras scandal, including the chief of staff under Brazils former President Jose Dirceu and the former president Fernando Collor de Mellon. Cunha was the main supporter of the removal of ex-president Dilma Rousseff. Rousseff was removed from office [JURIST report] in September. While Rousseff was impeached, the Senate decided to allow her to run for public office in the future and she has appealed [JURIST report] to the Supreme Court following her removal from office.
[JURIST] US Assistant Attorney General John Carlin [official profile] told reporters [Reuters report] Monday that more than 110 people have been charged in federal court since 2013 on counts related to the Islamic State (IS) militant group. In more than 80 percent of these cases prosecuted, someone who had accused the person believed they had witnessed the activity for which the individual was charged. However, in more than half of those cases, the witnesses did not report the activity to the police until after the charges were made. Many IS supporters prosecuted were charged under material support statutes that criminalize supporting certain foreign terrorist groups. Carlin noted that supporting a domestic group in which some of its members have committed crimes should not be criminalized because it runs into our Constitution and values and gets close to making illegal ideas. The Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] charged 60 people in 2015 with supporting or committing crimes due to sympathizing with IS, but the number arrested in 2016 has been lower than 2015s statistics.

IS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), have been accused of war crimes on a massive scale in Iraq and Syria. In March US Secretary of State John Kerry said [JURIST report] that IS is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Also in March the US House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution [JURIST report] denouncing the actions of IS as genocide and called for the establishment of international and domestic tribunals by UN member states. Frances anti-terror prosecutor announced his decision last week to hand down harsher criminal charges [JURIST report], with sentences up to 30 years, for returning French jihadists from Iraq, Syria, and other areas where IS is actively involved.
The Neubrandenburg state court in Germany on Monday started the trial of a 95-year-old former SS medic who served at the Auschwitz camp. Hubert Zafke is charged [AP report] with 3,681 counts of accessory to murder for a one-month period at the camp. Zafkes trial was set to start in February, but the judge determined he was unfit to stand trial due to high levels of stress, high blood pressure and suicidal thoughts. The trial had also been postponed last year for concerns over Zafkes health. At the outset of trial, plaintiffs accused the judge of being biased and petitioned for him to be removed. Zafke was removed after two hours due to a spike in blood pressure, and the judge has stated that arguments on the motion for his removal must be heard before another session in the trial can occur.

German courts have recently seen an increase of war crime charges against former members of the Nazi party. A court in Kiel, Germany, ruled Friday that a 92-year-old woman charged with Nazi crimes is unfit to stand trial [JURIST report]. Prior to 2011, German prosecutors often chose not to charge individuals they regarded as cogs in, rather than active members of, the Nazi war machine. The 2011 conviction [JURIST report] of former Nazi guard John Demjanjuk may have emboldened German prosecutors to pursue cases against all those who materially helped Nazi Germany function. In December a German court allowed [JURIST report] the trial of a 95-year-old Auschwitz paramedic accused of being an accessory to the murder of 3,681 people at Auschwitz. In September 2014 German authorities imprisoned Oskar Groening, known as the accountant of Auschwitz, who was charged [JURIST report] as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people. Last year Groening was given a four-year jail sentence for his role at Auschwitz, a sentence he said he would appeal [JURIST reports].
An act against government's inaction is not crime - lawyer

Supporters of the Sasna Dzrer group condemn court decisions to keep the group members in custody. Today they held a protest outside the National Assembly expressing their solidarity with the group. The participants of the action are surprised at the silence of lawmakers. We demand that all political prisoners be released. Our demand coincides with that of our people, we want heroes to be called heroes and rascals to be called rascals, says Alexander Ghumashyan. The lawmakers hurrying to participate in the fall session of the National Assembly had to stop to talk to the citizens gathered at the entrance of the NA building. Political activist Vardges Gaspari was among the group but this time he did not come to talk to the authorities. I expect the lawmakers from the Armenian National Congress (HAK) to express a clear stance on the groups actions. Let them not forget that the acting regime came to power through violence and assassinations, Mr. Gaspari said. Alexander Ghumashyan, the father of Vahagn Ghumashyan who has been in custody for a month, considers his son to be a political prisoner. Lawyer Hovhannes Baghdasaryan draws attention to another fact. Before the surrender of the group members, the National Security Service promised to use incentive provision if Sasna Dzrer laid down their arms and surrendered to law enforcement bodies, while they are still in prison. The lawyer says it has not been proved until now that Sasna Dzrer committed a crime. An act against government's inaction cannot be considered a crime.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest [official profile] said Monday that US President Barack Obama [official profile] will veto [press briefing] legislation [text, PDF] that would allow families of 9/11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration has maintained this stance [CNN report] as the legislation progressed through Congress. While legislators are expected to attempt an override, a success would be the first one during Obamas presidency. The bill has yet to be presented to Obama.

The US House of Representatives [official website] approved the legislation [JURIST report] Friday, which would allow US nationals to seek relief from foreign governments if that entity is believed to have had involvement with a terrorist attack taking place within the US that caused physical damage to that citizens person or property. The Act was approved [JURIST report] by the Senate in May. In 2012 a US District judge dismissed a motion [JURIST report] to reinstate Saudi Arabia as a defendant in a civil compensation lawsuit by victims against the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The claim against Saudi Arabia was dismissed in 2008 by a US Appeals Court due to insufficient evidence that the Kingdoms princes has actual knowledge that their money was going to be used in the attacks. In 2005 Judge Richard Casey dismissed [PDF text; JURIST report] Saudi Arabia, its defense minister and its ambassador to the UK as defendants in litigation stemming from the terrorist attacks, ruling that all had sovereign immunity [Cornell LII backgrounder].
[JURIST] The Zambia Supreme Court has denied an application by the countrys main opposition party to stop Tuesdays inauguration of President Edgar Lungu [BBC profile], a lawyer for the opposition party stated Monday. Lungus inauguration had been postponed when Hakainde Hichilema [campaign website], opposition leader of the United Party for National Development (UPND), filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] contesting the results of the August 11 election. A single judge on the court rejected [Reuters report] the application because he had no jurisdiction. The lawyer said that his clients intend to file another application before the supreme court en banc.

Zambias presidency has been surrounded by controversy in recent years. In 2013 Zambian authorities arrested [JURIST report] former president Rupiah Banda on allegations that he misappropriated over USD $11 million during his three-year tenure in office. Zambias Supreme Court in 2010 acquitted [JURIST report] Regina Chiluba, the wife of former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba, of charges that she accepted stolen property during the years of her husbands administration. Prior to his wifes acquittal, former president Chiluba was acquitted [JURIST report] in 2009 of charges of stealing money from the countrys treasury while in office from 1991-2001. He was ordered to stand trial [JURIST report] on the corruption charges in February 2008.
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
Today (13 September), PepsiCo publishes the first update on its palm oil action plan. Ben Cooper spoke with Andrew Aulisi, senior director for global environmental policy at PepsiCo, about the progress to date and how the companys initial actions and achievements are likely to be received by environmental campaigners.

PepsiCo chose not to launch its palm oil action plan with a great flourish or fanfare last October. Instead, it simply shared its plan with a number of key NGOs before posting it on its website. Proud rhetoric and mission statements are not uncommon in how companies approach sustainability but there is a palpable sense that PepsiCo wants to place the emphasis on action and not intention.

Nevertheless, there has to be a framework for action and PepsiCos palm oil plan provides a detailed blueprint for the sustainable palm oil supply chain it hopes to have by 2020. Included in the plan is a commitment to report regularly on progress, with the first update published today (13 September).

Andrew Aulisi, senior director for global environmental policy at PepsiCo, says the company is in full execution mode on its palm oil commitments, adding the ball is rolling and theres a lot of momentum behind our programme. Leaving no doubt that PepsiCo wants to highlight action, he says: Its called an action plan and what were reporting on is actions that weve taken over the year.

We have a very comprehensive plan, Aulisi continues. And theres a sequence of things that have to happen for us to get to 2020 and meet all of our commitments, and so it starts with this year. In a way, year one is the most important year and weve made incredible progress this year.

PepsiCo had set two specific targets for 2016. It has committed to ensure all its direct suppliers are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) by the end of the year. By midway through 2016, approximately 91% of its direct suppliers had joined the RSPO, the report states, representing 96% of anticipated volumes.

Aulisi says the suppliers currently not in the RSPO are outside East Asia where RSPO growth and implementation has been the strongest. These suppliers happen to be on the other side of the world. Were talking to them and its not hard for them to sign up. I think well get there.

PepsiCo has also committed to ensure traceability to the mill of origin by end of 2016. As of July 2016, PepsiCo estimates approximately 72% of the palm oil it expects to use for the year has been traced to the mill level, against the 65% reported when the action plan was launched. Aulisi is confident the end-year target will also be achieved.

The plan includes a further target to map supply chains all the way to the farm/plantation level by the end of 2020, which represents a far greater challenge. We always knew that was going to be very difficult, Aulisi says. However, he stresses full traceability to those tens of thousands of farms and plantations is vital to achieving a sustainable supply chain. What is necessary and what our stakeholders expect is that we know specifically where the palm oil is coming from, right down to the plantation level.

As the company has sought to achieve the first stage in traceability this year, Aulisi says PepsiCo has been able to discuss the task of establishing total traceability with suppliers. To the credit of some of the big suppliers they have begun doing this work, trying to get that look through to the plantation level. The progress report details numerous examples of PepsiCo engaging with suppliers across a range of issues pertaining to its palm oil commitments.

For Aulisi, this speaks to the fundamental need for stakeholder collaboration in achieving its aims on palm oil. There has to be broad and deep collaboration within the industry and what we are indeed seeing right now is movement on all fronts.

The other key target in the plan is to source 100% physically certified sustainable palm oil by end of 2020. This is a vital component in the bid to establish a sustainable palm oil market. PepsiCo in fact achieved its target of sourcing 100% certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) by 2015 but this was achieved largely through the use of GreenPalm credits. Advocates for the GreenPalm system contend that it represented an important initial step to foster market development but it has attracted criticism from campaigners.

Underlining the extent of the challenge, PepsiCos use of mass balance physically certified palm oil in 2015 was only 8% of its volumes, up from 5% in 2014. However, Aulisi is bullish. We will meet the 2020 target. 2015 was slower than we thought it would be. We are ramping up significantly now and were confident well meet the target.

The complexity of the definitions and certification system for palm oil prompts one to question the degree of consumer knowledge around the issue. There is relatively broad public awareness about palm oil primarily because of concerns over deforestation but the details of how, for instance, the CSPO certification system works is little appreciated. PepsiCo has not conducted any research specifically on consumer knowledge of palm oil but Aulisi says consumers have broader expectations on sustainability, informed by their awareness of headline issues around human rights or the environment.

We will get into the weeds with the technical stakeholders but I think for our consumers its a more generalised set of expectations, he says.

Among those scrutinising the PepsiCo progress report and those which will follow will be the many campaign groups who have become impatient at the slow progress on palm oil sustainability generally. Recently, PepsiCo has been subject to some particularly hefty criticism and campaigning.

Consumer rights group SumofUs has created a parody ad, mimicking an iconic Pepsi ad from the 1990s featuring Cindy Crawford. Timed to coincide with the re-launch of Pepsi Crystal, the ad ends with the words Crystal Pepsi. New look. Same old palm oil problem.

In June, a report from Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Indonesian NGO OPPUK and International Labor Rights Forum, based on interviews with 41 workers at two palm oil plantations operated by IndoAgri Resources (IndoAgri), a subsidiary of PepsiCos Indonesian partner, Indofood, alleged abusive labour practices and child labour.

PepsiCo addresses this in its update, stating that chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi had conveyed PepsiCos concerns to Indofood and expressed her expectation that Indofood is taking such allegations as seriously as PepsiCo does.

While PepsiCo has been targeted by some campaigners, possibly because of the ubiquity of the Pepsi brand, Aulisi sees the primary message from NGOs as urging the company to accelerate what it is doing. The RSPO itself has been subject to similar criticism, with campaigners unhappy at the slow pace of development. This prompted the RSPO to launch the RSPO Next enhanced criteria earlier this year. The main line of criticism is could we do it faster. Theres a lot of urgency around the palm oil issue, particularly in South East Asia, and what we often hear is could you accelerate and do it more quickly.

The PepsiCo palm oil action plan recognises the value external stakeholders can bring. For example, the progress report details examples of utilising specialist expertise from Proforest, a non-profit group that supports companies and other organisations in implementing commitments to sustainable production, and Netherlands-based public-private partnership IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative. It also states that during the past year PepsiCo met on multiple occasions with Greenpeace, Oxfam, World Wildlife Fund, RAN and other NGOs to discuss our efforts, exchange information and consider ways to achieve shared objectives.

The focus on PepsiCo by some activists is perhaps not surprising given that a report from WWF in 2014 placed PepsiCo among the slower moving multinational companies on the palm oil issue. Also, the company did not join the RSPO until 2009, some five years after its formation.

Even if justified, PepsiCo could say that is the past, and it should now be judged by its actions and planned actions for the coming four years. Aulisi believes the work it has done over the past year will be positively received by campaigners. The campaigners want to see action and I think what weve demonstrated over the last year is we got started right away, we made a lot of progress, we put a lot of resources to this and importantly, critically, were reporting against it in a very transparent way.
While many Americans will always remember what they were doing on 9/11, most high school students were under three years old in 2001; they will only remember the day as a piece of history.

Gabrielle Coleman was born on September 11, 2001 and she said she always looked forward to her birthday because the town would put up American flags.

"My mom told me that they were putting them up because I was a princess, said Coleman, I actually thought that for a couple of years."

Eventually Coleman said she realized the flags actually told a sad story.

"I just heard people talking about it on my birthday, said Coleman. I was like, 'Im so confused; what is this?

Most young kids said they gradually learned about 9/11 from the whispers of adults.

"Anytime someone brought up the topic, the entire atmosphere of the room changed," said Will Brouillette.

They don't really talk about it, said Lauren Hynson. It's just something that comes up in conversation and you're supposed to know everything about it."

Without memories of the tragic event, high-schoolers today will remember 9/11 based on the stories of their parents and teachers.

"She just described to me what it was actually like, being able to comprehend 9/11 as it happened," said Brouillette.

"She sat there the entire day, with me in her arms, watching the entire thing unfold," said Hynson.

Teachers said that they will use different methods to teach this younger generation of students about 9/11.

"This is my first class of juniors who have no memory whatsoever, said Wayne Edmondson. They were babies, so I knew I was going to have to approach it differently."

Edmondson said he used to teach students about 9/11 near the actual date, but from now on, he plans to build up to that lesson as he moves through history.

"It is certainly important, said Edmondson. It is certainly something we must talk about because basically we have America before September 11 and after September 11."

"Its hard to imagine America without the threat of terrorism," said Hynson.
Sedrak Saroyan: Who would miss such a position from his hands! (video)

Republican lawmaker Samvel Alexanyan will continue to speak to journalists in the same manner in the fall session of the National Assembly. My dear girl, give me  500 and I shall answer all your questions, he said. Karo Karapetyan, a lawmaker from the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), refrained from speaking about the relationship between the National Assembly and the new cabinet led by Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, as well as the activities of the former government. Republican lawmaker Sedrak Saroyan believes that Hovik Abrahamyan decided to leave the post of Prime Minister himself. Who would miss such a position from his hands! he said. Saroyan thinks Karen Karapetyans appointment as Prime Minister was a right decision though he did not see any social polarization during the term of office of Hovik Abrahamyan. Karen Karapetyan has demonstrated himself everywhere, he will show his talent in his new post as well, the Republican lawmaker said. Vice-Chairman of the National Assembly Eduard Sharmazanov reminds that the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) bears responsibility for all failures of the government. Hovik Abrahamyan did not bring that government from his fathers home, he said. The Republican Party has been responsible for all negative and positive developments in this country since 1999, Eduard Sharmazanov said. Mr. Sharmazanov could not recall any economic success registered by Abrahamyan-led government. In his farewell speech, Abrahamyan said there is a polarization in society. Today, all Republicans hope that Karen Karapetyan will put an end to that polarization. However, are these failures due to the prime minister? The problem lies with people who seat in their places and do not want to make their own decisions, says Republican Samvel Nikoyan. Opposition lawmaker Levon Zurabyan does not pin hopes on Karen Karapetyan because he will deal with the same majority in the National Assembly. I have a question to ask: did the regime led by Serzh Sargsyan decide to fight against monopolies and corruption? In that case, the change of Prime Minister is mere imitation, Zurabyan said. He says Serzh Sargsyan has tried everything but nothing has changed in the country in the last eight years. Therefore, it is necessary to change the clan system, Zurabyan said in conclusion.
By Louisa Naks

Is the murder of Polish immigrant Arkadiusz Jozwik yet another example of post-Brexit racism or is it media sensationalism?

British media have been recently reporting on the rise in hate crimes. According to some reports there has been a 20% increase in hate crimes following the referendum results. While this is a troubling figure, we shouldnt jump to conclusion that any crime perpetrated against an immigrant is a hate crime.

Take for instance the case of Arkadiusz Jozwik. Jozwik was a 40-year-old Polish man who died after sustaining head injuries following an unprovoked attack in Harlow, Essex. Six teenagers were arrested following the attack, which is now largely being reported as a hate crime. However, the claims that this attack was indeed a hate crime are still unconfirmed, which has led to speculation that the media are being a bit hasty in drawing such conclusions. Perhaps Jozwik was merely the unfortunate victim of a gang of bored teenagers, determined to vent their frustrations clockwork orange style?

We shouldnt jump to conclusion that any crime perpetrated against an immigrant is a hate crime.

Colm OCinneide, professor of law and a Vice-President of the European Committee of Social Rights says that although some of the support for Brexit was clearly rooted in hostility towards immigrants and particular ethnic groups, as well as in suspicion of outsiders there is no necessary correlation between supporting Brexit and having such attitudes. Some elements of the leave campaign  in particular some of the rhetoric of UKIP-affiliated campaigners  may have deepened already existing hostility towards immigrants. But anti-immigrant political rhetoric has been a feature of the UKs political landscape for years now.

Professor OCinneide argues that Brexit will make it easier for future UK governments to limit migrant rights and it may be encouraging more overt expressions of racist attitudes at street level. Early indicators are that there has been a noticeable spike in racist incidents, as reported to the police. It is difficult to see why Brexit would encourage more reporting than had previously been the case.

By comparing the level of reported racist and hate crimes from July 2016 and July 2015, it is evident that the number has jumped dramatically- it has risen from 1,251 reported incidents to 1,975 in 2016. A 57.9% increase. This figure is shocking to say the least, but it does not take into account whether this is as a result of Brexit or not.

The terrorist attack in Nice, France, on 14 July has to be taken into consideration. There are indicators that following such attacks, the level of hate crime against Muslims significantly increases. Following the 2015 attacks in Paris, the level of Islamophobic crimes is said to have tripled. Furthermore, if we look at the statistics for the level of violent crimes including murder, assault and bodily harm committed in the same period, we can see the number rise from 19,961 to 21,640  an 8.4% increase. This is by no means as dramatic a rise as in the reported level of hate crimes, but it is still significant in showing that the number of violent crimes being committed in the UK is on the increase in general.

The death of Arkadiusz Jozwik is far more than a statistic or media sensationalism  it is now a symbol of the new reality in Britain.

Whilst the statistics show that post-Brexit Britain is experiencing a hike in reported violent crimes, it is perhaps a bit foolhardy to jump to immediate conclusions. Unfortunately, there is not enough data for us to be certain in making such conclusions. Brexit has shown us one thing is certain  that words have a greater impact than we think. As Professor OCinneide mentioned, the rhetoric of the Leave campaign may have helped to inflame resentment. But perhaps the media shouting hate-crime every time someone of a different nationality becomes a victim of crime is only adding fuel to the fire. By removing the possibility of a crime against an immigrant being anything other than a hate crime, the media are further emphasizing the otherness of immigrants, as well as demonizing Leave voters by representing them as violent racists. This does not help our divided society to heal. It builds more tension and ultimately deepens the rift.

Regardless of whether the killing of Arkadiusz Jozwik was a hate crime or not, the rise in the amount of violent crimes being committed in general is a worrying trend in the UK, and one which needs to be addressed. More must be done to understand the causes of this increase so more steps can be taken to close the widening gap which is dividing Britain. Equally, the media need to assume a level of responsibility for maintaining calmness and stability during such turbulent times. By stirring up emotions without the relevant facts to prove or disprove their claims, the media run the risk of intensifying the tension.

For now, regardless of the motive, the death of Arkadiusz Jozwik is far more than a statistic or media sensationalism  it is now a symbol of the new reality in Britain. Even if it does transpire that he was a victim purely by circumstance as opposed to being targeted because of his immigrant status, the fact his murder was labelled a hate crime from the outset is a stark reminder of how divided Britain is.

Louisa Naks studied Polish and Russian at University College London.

The article was originally published on PoliticalCritique.org.
A man dressed in camouflage and armed with a rifle opened fire among holiday shoppers in an Omaha department store Wednesday, killing eight people, wounding at least five others and sending hundreds into terrified panic.

The 19-year-old shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His body was found on the third floor of the Von Maur at Westroads Mall.

It was the deadliest shooting spree in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather's 1958 rampage.

Witnesses described the carefree sounds of holiday music suddenly punctuated by rapid gunfire shortly before 2 p.m.

They related horrific scenes: multiple people gunned down in the store's customer service department, others on a floor below shot as they were looking up an escalator toward the chaos.

"The shots wouldn't stop," said Von Maur shopper Carol Padon.

The shooter was identified as Robert A. Hawkins. Witnesses at the mall described the gunman as having a military-style haircut, wearing a camouflage vest and a black backpack and carrying a rifle.

The man was found dead in the store's customer service area, apparently shooting himself before officers arrived. The events appeared related to a suicide note found in Sarpy County around the time of the shootings.

"The shooter is deceased, and it appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound," said Sgt. Teresa Negron, an Omaha police spokeswoman. She said police believe the gunman acted alone.

Dozens of Omaha police, Douglas County sheriff's deputies, FBI agents and officers from area police departments sealed off and closed the mall. Rescue workers were seen carrying multiple gurneys into the store.

The five wounded people were being treated at Creighton University Medical Center and the Nebraska Medical Center. Two were reported to be in critical condition.

Once the shooting started, employees and customers rushed to hide wherever they could, in storerooms and other rooms off the shopping floor.

Renee Toney was working in the gift wrap area behind the customer service counter when the gunman came off a third-floor elevator and began firing shots into the ceiling.

"He was moving very fast," she said. The shots "were very, very fast, I would say closer to 30 (shots) in all."

A supervisor called for everyone to go into a stockroom behind the customer service area, and she rushed there, the others just feet behind her.

But she was the only one of her immediate co-workers to make it to the stockroom.

"None of them made it out," Toney said. "I was up front, and everybody except me was shot.

It's a blur. I don't even know how I got to the stockroom. I was the closest one to the stockroom. Within seconds, they were shot right behind me."

A supervisor later told Toney that the man had said, "Open the safe." One of the employees moved to open the safe, Toney said. "She never made it to the safe. He shot her before she made it."

When police later arrived and ushered Toney out, she said she saw blood all over the floor and as many as six bodies, some on top of each other.

Mickey Vickroy, who was wrapping gifts at customer service but out of sight of the service counter, said she heard gunshots and some yell, "Gun!"

About a dozen customer service employees ran back into a storage area.

Roxanne Philip, another customer service worker, said the gunshots were so close that it sounded like they were being fired right next to her. She said she took cover and was scared "because I thought I would be next."

Philip said she never saw the shooter, but as she left the customer service area after police arrived, she saw that a woman on the other side of the customer service counter had been shot and appeared to be dead. She said she thought her boss had been shot because she heard him moaning.

Chuck Wright, a Von Maur employee, said a co-worker who also worked in customer service described hearing the shooting break out and people running. The co-worker saw what appeared to be a customer who had been shot and heard a co-worker in customer service yelling for help.

Someone yelled, "Hold on, Fred, we'll get to you."

Another co-worker of Wright's described standing on the second floor near the escalator and looking up toward the commotion. She then saw a man with a gun lean over a third-floor railing. He then shot a man standing next to her in the head.

Shoppers leaving the mall near Von Maur were instructed to walk out with their hands over their heads. Many of them were hysterical and crying. Most of them were women.

Others anxiously waited outside the store. One woman said she was awaiting word of whether her mother was safe.

Police and rescue personnel set up a meeting point at a nearby hotel to meet with family members of the victims.

A Von Maur employee who had left the store said one customer was shot while going down the escalator.

Padon said she was shopping on the second floor of the store in the men's wear department when she heard what sounded like 15 to 25 shots. As she hid in a back room, Padon said, "I was so busy praying that it's really hard to tell the details."

She said police later arrived and escorted her from the store. As she was leaving, she said, she saw a man in his 40s on the floor with a serious gunshot wound. He did not appear to be breathing, she said.

Marvelene Sturgeon of Council Bluffs said she and her daughter were getting ready to leave the mall through Von Maur when the scene turned chaotic.

"People started running out of the door yelling, 'They're shooting, they have guns,' and we heard a lot of shots," the 73-year-old said.

Police said the call of an active shooting at the mall first came in at 1:42 p.m., and it took six minutes for the first officer to arrive at the scene. Police located a victim soon after entering the store.

At 2:12 p.m., officers located the apparent shooter dead from a gunshot wound.

A Papillion-La Vista Public Schools spokeswoman said Hawkins had attended district schools since kindergarten, but withdrew from PapillionLa Vista High School in March 2006.

A suicide note delivered to authorities appears to be directly related to the killing spree.

Within 30 minutes of the shooting, a woman contacted the Sarpy County Sheriff's Office with a note she had found. Capt. Rolly Yost said "it could be interpreted as suicidal." He declined to release its contents or say why authorities considered it related to the shooting.

The woman was not aware of the Westroads killings, which had occurred about a half-hour earlier.

The eight deaths mark the deadliest shooting spree in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather almost a half century ago killed 10 Nebraskans in a multiple-day rampage. He also killed a 11th victim before his capture in Wyoming.

It's also believed to be the deadliest single shooting incident in state history. In October 1975, Erwin Charles Simants shot and killed six members of a family in Sutherland, Neb.

World-Herald staff writers Steve Jordon, Christopher Burbach, Lynn Safranek, Judith Nygren, Kevin Cole and Tom Shaw contributed to this report.
OMAHA  A three-month-long effort led to the arrests of 268 fugitives, gang members and violent offenders in Omaha and Lincoln, the U.S. Marshals Service said Tuesday.

Operation Triple Beam also involved state and local law enforcement agencies as well as federal, state and local prosecutors offices.

The operation focused on fugitive investigations; targeted firearms and drug investigations; and street investigations and patrols, officials said.

From June 1 to Sept. 1, officials said, the crackdown resulted in 208 felony arrests that included 75 gang members plus the seizure of 101 firearms, illegal narcotics valued at more than $443,250 and approximately $11,200 in U.S. currency, officials said.

Mark Martinez, U.S. marshal for the district of Nebraska, applauded the officers on the streets for working together to complete a difficult job.

Its the front-line officers that have to make it work, he said. They willingly share resources, intelligence, tactics, equipment and anything else that contributes to the success of the operation.

Martinez wouldnt say how much the operation cost, just that it was funded by a significant amount from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Marshals touted one case in particular that led to the arrest of two men and the seizure of a firearm and 1.3 pounds of marijuana with a street value of more than $13,000.

Another arrest that was highlighted involved a gang member wanted on a federal warrant from California for a supervised release violation. He was found in Omaha with 1,361 grams of meth, $4,000 cash and a loaded firearm.

Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said people who were arrested had a negative impact on Omaha.

Theres a much bigger mushroom effect that law enforcement suspects that they have impacted, he said.

Officials still are looking for Bernard R. Turner Jr., who is wanted in connection with the March 2 fatal shooting of Jarrell Haynes. Turner is charged in an arrest warrant on first-degree murder, use of a firearm to commit a felony and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. Marshals are offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to his arrest. People with tips on federal fugitives should call 1-877-926-8332.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to form
FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 6, 2007, file photo, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart speaks at an Atlanta Press Club luncheon, in Atlanta. Lockhart, the president of the Federal ReserveAos Atlanta regional bank, has announced plans to step down in February 2017. Lockhart is leaving after a decade as president of the Atlanta bank, one of the FedAos 12 regional banks. Lockhart says he plans to pursue his interests in public policy, civic work and private business after stepping down on Feb. 28. (AP Photo/Gene Blythe, File)
U.S. B-1 bomber, center, flies over Osan Air Base with South Korean Air Forces jet in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. The United States has flown nuclear-capable supersonic bombers over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its fifth nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
138 Shares Share

The month of September has been Women In Medicine Month (according to the AMA) since 1989.

Statistics are always telling:

Currently 65 percent of practicing physicians are men, and 35 percent women.

According to the Medscape Physician Compensation Report of 2016, male physicians still make substantially more than their female counterparts ($252,000 vs. $192,000 for primary care, $324,000 vs. $242,000 for specialties, on average)

47.5 percent of medical school graduates in 2014 were women.

But I want to talk about an important area where women are clearly underrepresented. Im talking about medical eponyms.

Lets just take the As.

Aicardi-Goutieres syndrome. An early onset encephalopathy, apparently genetic, this was first described in 1984 by observation of 8 families by these two eminent neurologists: Jean Aicardi, MD and Francoise Goutieres, MD. While Dr. Aicardi is well-known as one of the most respected pediatric neurologists of all time, according to Wikipedia, there is almost nothing online about the latter, the woman of the pair.

Albright-Butler-Bloomberg disease. Also called X-linked vitamin D-resistant rickets, the only physician who has nothing about her online is the 3rd, the mysterious Esther Bloomberg, while Fuller Albright was a renowned U.S. endocrinologist, and Allan Macy Butler the long-time chief of pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Andersens disease. This is a rare hereditary metabolic disorder, also called Glycogen Storage Disease Type IV. It is sometimes called by the name of its discoverer, Columbia pathologist Dorothy Hansine Andersen, who just  by the way  was the first physician to notice and describe cystic fibrosis (CF). I have to wonder: If Dr. Andersen had been a man, would we know CF as Andersens disease? And why isnt it known as that? Is it that women are less likely to want to name things after themselves? This is one of Dr. Andersens seminal articles from 1938, regarding her initial observations about CF.

The National Library of Medicine says:

Andersens duties included performing autopsies. While conducting an autopsy on a child who had presented the clinical picture of celiac disease  an illness caused by an intestinal hypersensitivity to gluten that inhibits digestion  Andersen noticed a lesion in the pancreas. Following an extensive search of the autopsy records and related medical literature, she discovered a clear, though previously unrecognized, disease pattern. She called it cystic fibrosis. But Andersen did not think of herself solely as a pathologist and continued to work on diagnosing this new disease in living patients. Andersen and her research team made numerous discoveries that led to a simple diagnostic test for cystic fibrosis, one that is still in use today.

Andersen-Tawil syndrome. This is a form of periodic paralysis and long QT. It was first described by a Danish team headed by Ellen Andersen MD in 1971, then further described by Dr. Rabi Tawil in an article titled Andersen syndrome in 1994, at which point the name was changed to Andersen-Tawil syndrome. Again, I cant find anything about Dr. Andersen online. I did find a letter, however, disputing the eponym.

From that letter:

Ptacek and collaborators introduced the term Andersens syndrome, and Tawil and colleagues credit Andersen and associates with identifying potassium sensitivity. However, Andersen and associates did not recognize the similarity to HyPP [hyperkalemic periodic paralysis], did not challenge their patient with potassium or examine for myotonia, and wrote that they were unaware of any previous reports  If an eponym is to be used, it seems reasonable to include the first author of the first description and the first author of the first study describing it as potassium-sensitive: the Klein-Lisak syndrome would be appropriate, with or without Andersen.

Here we have one instance of an answer to my question above; this Dr. Andersen did not name the syndrome after herself, while it was a pair of male physicians who wanted to strip her of her eponymity.

Apgar score. Finally we get to Virginia Apgar MD, and her Apgar score, which I presume needs no introduction. Dr. Apgar was an obstetric anesthesiologist, the first woman to become a full professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the first woman to head a department there. She introduced the Apgar score in 1953, but that was hardly her only accomplishment. She was a fierce public health advocate, championing rubella vaccination to prevent health defects, as well as Rh testing. She did much to draw attention to newborn health, at a time when most of the attention at the time of birth was directed toward the mother. So perhaps fittingly, she said this (disparagingly) about the Womens Liberation movement: Women are liberated from the time they leave the womb.

In the list of medically eponymous diseases and signs, there is only one more under the letter A, but it turns out that Dr. Winifred Ashby (1879-1975) was just a PhD doctor. Still, the Ashby method she developed, for determining erythrocyte survival, remains a cornerstone of hematology. Before she came up with that method, it was widely believed that red cells all died after just two to three weeks, when in fact, they remain alive up to 110 days.

Somehow, that seems a fitting metaphor for women in medicine as well.

Antoinette Rose is an internal medicine physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
A total of 1,141 students in Kilkenny will receive their Junior Certificate results.

Students can also access their results through the on-line examination results service on www.examinations.ie from 4pm.

As always, the ever-popular No Name Club disco will play a role in the celebration of the results for many local teens. The disco takes place at the Hub, and will be a strictly alcohol=free and drug-free event.

Earlier this week, Drinkaware and Alcohol Action Ireland issued a statement advising parents that alcohol should have no role to play in the celebrations.

The overall numbers sitting the examination has increased by 1.2% on last year. The proportion of candidates who are re-entrants to education has decreased slightly to

1.2% of the cohort.

Applications for review of Junior Certificate examination results, which must be made through the candidates school, should be received by the State Examinations Commission no later than 5pm on Friday, September 30. The fee for this service is 32 per subject, which will be refunded in the event that a result is upgraded.

Applications are accepted only from a school authority which must confirm that the result obtained is at variance with the result expected.

The official marking schemes for all subjects will be published on the SEC website, www.examinations.ie, in the coming days.

The very best of luck to all students receiving results today.
Tuesday, September 13, 2016 1:59 AM SHANGHAI,

Sept 13 (Reuters) - China's central bank cut its 28-day reverse bond repurchase agreement guidance rate, the bank said in a statement on Tuesday.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) lowered the 28-day reverse repo rate to 2.55 percent, compared with the 2.60 percent the central bank set on Feb.5.

China's central bank on Tuesday will inject 70 billion yuan ($10.48 billion)into money markets through seven-day reverse bond repurchase agreements, 30 billion yuan through 14-day reverse repos and an additional 60 billion yuan through 28-day reverse repos, traders said.

It was the first time since February that the PBOC is utilising the 28-day facility to inject cash.

Traders said the longer-tenor was used to avoid any holiday cash crunch ahead of the National Day holiday in early October.

($1 = 6.6790 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting By the Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
HANOI, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchangerates in the official market and indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi at 0137GMT.

Sept 13 Sept 12 USD/VND mid-point 21,954 21,945

USD/VND interbank 22,299/22,301 22,300/22,302 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.08/36.35 36.10/36.37

NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016 the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting themid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in aband of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by aband. Interbank quotes are indicative bid/ask prices.

One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold pricesare quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co, the gold manufacturer.

Interbank offered rates are indicative, quoted from market sources.

For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom)
* Czech central bank says will remove crown cap in H2 2017

* Six-month crown forwards imply 26.858 per euro from 26.85

* Warsaw stocks ease, but off two-month low

* Hungary's MOL stocks hit 2-month low after Croatianelection

(Adds Hungarian stocks, kuna)

By Sandor Peto

BUDAPEST, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Expectations the Czech crown will surge in value, implied by forward contracts,eased on Tuesday after the Czech central bank said it would notremove its crown floor earlier than planned.

Central Bank Governor Jiri Rusnok said the cap, which wasadopted in 2013 and stops the crown appreciating to less than 27per euro, could be removed some time in the second half of 2017. A recovery in Czech economic growth has kept the crown nearthat level for most of the past year and reserve figurespublished last week showed the central bank had stepped upinterventions in the foreign currency market to defend the cap.

That led to speculation the bank might scrap the policyearlier than planned and that the crown could surge next year.

The crown exchange rates implied by six-month and one-yearforwards contracts eased slightly after the latest Rusnokcomments although they remained firmer than 27 per euro impliedby the cap.

Bids for the six-month contract showed animplied level of 26.858 at 1339 GMT, compared to Monday's closeof 26.85 and Friday's low of 26.7835. The 12-month rate eased to 26.68 from 26.53 on Friday.

In the spot market, the crown traded flat at 27.02against the euro. Other regional currencies were mixed, with thezloty firming and the forint easing by 0.2percent against the euro.

Comments by Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn thatHungary should be excluded from the European Union because ofits tough anti-migrant policies were largely ignored, oneBudapest-based currency dealer said. The forint has been stuck around the 310 level for someweeks, with Tuesday's slight weakening caused by somepositioning in some crosses like the forint-zloty ,dealers said.

Monday's dovish comments from Federal Reserve rate-setterLael Brainard provided a positive global backdrop, but theimpact on the region was muted as the odds for a Fed rate hikein September had been low anyway, traders said.

Hungarian government bond yields dropped by a few basispoints, while other regional markets were mixed. Equities mostlytracked Western European markets higher.

Budapest's main index fell 0.8 percent, dragged downby 1.4 fall in oil group MOL to a two-month low.

The stock has fallen since Sunday's election in Croatiawhich is expected to lead to tough coalition talks, delayingtalks about the future of energy group INA , co-owned byMOL and the Croatian government. The kuna eased 0.3 percent against the euro, butwas remained within the past two months' ranges.

CEE SNAP AT 1539

MARKETS SHOT CET

CURRENCIES

Late Prev Dail Chan

st ious y ge

bid clos chan in

e ge 2016 Czech <EURCZK 27.0 27.0 +0. -0.0 crown => 200 255 02% 8% Hungary <EURHUF 310. 309. -0.1 1.46 forint => 1000 5150 9% % Polish <EURPLN 4.35 4.35 +0. -2.1 zloty => 05 78 17% 3% Romanian <EURRON 4.44 4.44 +0. 1.64 leu => 60 77 04% % Croatian <EURHRK 7.48 7.48 -0.0 2.02 kuna => 80 65 2% % Serbian <EURRSD 123. 123. +0. -1.4 dinar => 2000 2700 06% 0% Note: calcula prev clos 1800 daily ted ious e at CET change from

STOC

KS

Late Prev Dail Chan

st ious y ge

clos chan in

e ge 2016 Prague 873. 870. +0. -8.6

98 08 45% 1% Budapest 2795 2816 -0.7 +16

2.96 7.57 6% .86% Warsaw <.WIG20 1736 1731 +0. -6.6

> .35 .37 29% 1% Buchares 6952 6911 +0. -0.7 t .56 .19 60% 4% Ljubljan <.SBITO 735. 732. +0. +5. a P> 64 42 44% 67% Zagreb <.CRBEX 1865 1852 +0. +10

> .59 .59 70% .41% Belgrade <.BELEX 631. 633. -0.4 -2.0

15> 25 86 1% 0% Sofia <.SOFIX 472. 470. +0. +2.

> 74 95 38% 57%

BOND

S

Yiel Yiel Spre Dail

d d ad y

(bid chan vs chan

) ge Bund ge

in Czech spre Republic ad 2-year <CZ2YT= -0.5 -0.0 +01 -1bp

RR> 04 07 3bps s 5-year <CZ5YT= -0.2 -0.0 +01 +1b

RR> 91 02 9bps ps

<CZ10YT 0.26 0 +02 +3b 10-year =RR> 9 5bps ps Poland 2-year <PL2YT= 1.76 -0.3 +24 -39b

RR> 3 9 0bps ps 5-year <PL5YT= 2.28 -0.0 +27 +0b

RR> 5 14 7bps ps

<PL10YT 2.89 0.00 +28 +4b 10-year =RR> 9 8 8bps ps

FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT

3x6 6x9 9x12 3M

inte

rban

k Czech <CZKFRA 0.27 0.24 0.21 0 Rep ><PRIBO

R=> Hungary <HUFFRA 0.71 0.7 0.72 0.88

><BUBOR

=> Poland <PLNFRA 1.70 1.68 1.67 1.71

><WIBOR 25 5

=> Note: are for FRA ask quotes prices ***************************************** ********************* (Additional reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague; Editing byCatherine Evans/Keith Weir)
FRANKFURT, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Linde said itsfinance chief Georg Denoke was leaving the management board,effective Tuesday, a day after merger talks ended between theGerman industrial gases group and U.S. rival Praxair .

Denoke's duties will be assumed by group treasury head SvenSchneider until a successor has been appointed, Linde said in astatement on Tuesday.

Although the logic of a deal to create a $60-billion-plusmarket leader was clear, the talks foundered on where thecombined firm would have its headquarters and research anddevelopment, and who would occupy the main management roles,sources had told Reuters. (Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Victoria Bryan)
HANOI, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchangerates in the official and unofficial markets, indicative SJC gold prices inHanoi and interbank offered rates at 0414 GMT.

Sept 13 Sept 12 USD/VND mid-point 21,954 21,945 USD/VND interbank 22,302/22,303 22,300/22,302 USD/VND unofficial 22,290/22,305 22,290/22,300 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.10/36.37 36.10/36.37

Interbank offered rates Overnight 0.4-1.0 0.4-1.0

1 week 0.5-1.1 0.5-1.2

1 month 1.7-2.4 1.7-2.4

3 months 3.3-4.2 3.3-4.2

NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016 the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting themid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in aband of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by aband. Interbank offered rates are the latest indicative bid/ask prices, quotedfrom market sources.

One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold pricesare quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co.

For more interbank rate fixings released at 0400 GMT, click on .

For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom)
(Adds background on Novum and Pemex, details of import)

HOUSTON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Houston-based trading firmNovum Energy has completed Mexico's first private import ofdiesel fuel, the company said on Tuesday, after the governmentauthorized purchases earlier this year.

Mexico, which buys some 750,000 barrels per day (bpd) ofU.S. gasoline and other fuels to satisfy its domestic market'sdemand, is encouraging private imports of refined products aspart of its deep energy reform.

The government of President Enrique Pena Nieto in Februaryannounced purchases would be authorized this year and the firstpermits were delivered in April. State-run company PEMEX hadpreviously been in charge of all of Mexico's oil imports.

"The first successful import of diesel was completed lastweek by a private group in Mexico," Novum said in a newsrelease.

Novum, which is focused on the Latin American and Caribbeanoil market, did not disclose the name of the buyer in Mexico,but a company source said it was not a fuel retailer, as hightaxes have been an obstacle preventing some station networksfrom making their own purchases.

Transportation of the diesel into Mexico was by road. Thefuel was bought from a refinery in the United States and sentvia pipeline to a location close to the border, added thesource, who was not authorized to speak to the media.

The authorization Novum received from Mexico's Secretary ofEnergy is valid for a year.

(Reporting by Marianna Parraga; Editing by Terry Wade andMatthew Lewis)
(Adds detail, background and market context)

* Proceeds from new shares to raise DKK 5.5 bln

* Nets IPO is Europe's second biggest since Brexit vote

* Operates in increasingly competitive mobile paymentssector

By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen

COPENHAGEN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Denmark-based card paymentservices company Nets set an indicative price range for itsplanned initial public offering (IPO) that values the businessat up to $4.8 billion, nearly double the sum paid by two U.S.equity firms in 2014.

Scandinavia's largest payments processor said on Tuesdaythat it expects to price the offering at 130-160 Danish crownsper share when it lists on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange onSept. 27, indicating a valuation of 26 billion to 32 billionDanish crowns ($3.92 billion to $4.83 billion). Nets, issuer of the most used debit card in Denmark,Dankort, will offer between 40 percent and 60 percent of itstotal share capital. That includes up to 42.3 million new sharesexpected to raise proceeds of about 5.5 billion crowns.

The IPO, Europe's second biggest since Britain's June voteto leave the EU, comes only two years after its 17 billion crownacquisition by private equity firms Advent International andBain Capital along with Danish pension fund ATP in March 2014. "There is clearly a real appreciation of the transformationNets has undergone in the past two years," Chief Executive BoNilsson said in a statement.

Since mid-2014 Nilsson has made seven acquisitions, sackedhundreds of staff and invested more than 800 million crowns onIT.

Advent and Bain were also behind British payments processorWorldpay Group's 4.8 billion pound ($6.34 billion).London listing last October. The next challenge for Nets will to navigate an increasinglycompetitive online payments sector that includes card networkrivals Visa and MasterCard as well as paymentprocessing companies such as Worldpay and Wirecard andDanske Bank's Mobilepay service in the Nordics.

As more consumers ditch cash, European online paymentsbusinesses such as iZettle and SumUp face tougher competition intheir domestic markets from North American rivals such as SanFrancisco-based Square . Existing Nets shareholders will sell between 37.7 millionand 70.6 million of their shares while managers at the companyhave been granted an overallotment option of up to 15.75 millionshares, Nets said.

The offer period starts Sept. 13 and ends Sept. 26, but itcould be closed as early as Sept 22, the company added.

Deutsche Bank , Morgan Stanley and Nordea have been appointed as joint global co-ordinators andjoint bookrunners.

Nets this month reported a 13 percent rise in first-halfearnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisationbefore special items (EBITDA) to 1.2 billion Danish crowns forthe first six months of 2016 corresponding to an EBITDA marginof 33.4 percent.

<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Europe's mobile payment players braced for battle as U.S. rivalsmove in Worldpay valued at $7.4 billion in London listing ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia and Annabella PultzNielsen; Editing by Jason Neely and David Goodman)
LUKE WESSON | FOR the KITSAP SUN When Rick Steadman shows up at Willum's place, he's not what anyone expected.

SHARE LUKE WESSON | FOR the KITSAP SUN Rick Steadman (Scott Ventrice, back) keeps (from left) Warnock (Scott Usher), Clelia (Christine Usher), Tansy (Christine Salo), Willum (Carmen Pinto) and Axel (Ashley Hurd) in the dark. LUKE WESSON | FOR the KITSAP SUN Rick Steadman (Scott Ventrice), the titular title character of "The Nerd," shows up and throws Willum's house and its occupants into turmoil. LUKE WESSON | FOR the KITSAP SUN Director David Siskin watches a rehearsal of "The Nerd" from Bremerton Community Theatre's newly renovated gallery. Related Coverage Theater: The Nerd requires tolerance for silliness

By Michael C. Moore, mmoore@kitsapsun.com

BREMERTON  Director David Siskin was anything but heartened when one of his cast members, 11-year-old Julie McMurtrey, sat in the gallery and laughed hysterically at the onstage antics of her castmates during a rehearsal for "The Nerd," which opens Sept. 16 at Bremerton Community Theatre.

"I've done this play before, with high school kids, and they all thought it was hilarious," said Siskin. "But here, it's going to be a completely different demographic. It's a much older, more mature crowd here. I think they'll think it's funny, but you never know."

The last play Siskin directed at BCT, during summer 2015, might've established playwright Larry Shue as a sure thing with audiences there. "The Foreigner" was an unqualified success.

(Tragically, Shue's career was cut short shortly after "The Foreigner" became a bona fide hit; he died in a plane crash in 1985, at age 39.)

"I don't know which play is funnier," Siskin said of "The Nerd" (which debuted in 1981) and "The Foreigner" (1983). "There's a lot of funny stuff in both of them. Shue had back-to-back smash hits, and then he's gone. Really sad."

The show is named for Rick Steadman, the poster child for nerds everywhere who shows up at the doorstep of his friend Willum  who owes Rick one for having saved his life in Vietnam.

But the story of how Willum  a successful but timid architect  deals with Rick almost takes a back seat to Willum's dealings with the two renters with whom he shares his house  Tansy, a sharp TV meteorologist, and Axel, a free-drinking drama critic. Mainly, he and Tansy share a mutual attraction, and Tansy is pondering a career move that would take her from their Terre Haute, Indiana, digs to a posh new job in Washington, D.C.

"It's a lot more complicated than you might think," Siskin said. "All these people are trying to manipulate each other. Willum's friends and his girlfriend all conspire to get Willum to go with her. Technically, there's a lot going on, too. There are a lot of answering machine recordings that have to be timed right, a lot of things that have to work the right way."

In BCT's production, Willum will be played by Carmen Pinto, most recently seen in the Jewel Box's "The Red Velvet Cake War." Rick will be played by Scott Ventrice, who has established himself as a comic force in two previous Jewel Box shows  "Don't Dress for Dinner" and "Arsenic and Old Lace," the latter directed by Siskin. Christine Salo, who went green for BCT's 2015 "Wizard of Oz," plays Tansy, and Ashley Hurd (last season's "12 Angry Men") is Axel.

A trio of players from the recent Western Washington Center for the Arts production of "A Little Night Music"  the husband-and-wife team of Scott and Christine Usher and young McMurtrey  complete the cast as the Waldgraves. Warnock Waldgrave (Scott) is a hotelier and a client of Willum; Clelia (Christine) is his wife; and Thor (McMurtrey, playing against gender) is their "poster child for planned parenthood" son.

Shue himself played the role of Willum in "The Nerd's" premiere at Milwaukee Repertory Theater in 1981. It made its Broadway debut six years later, starring Mark (Luke Skywalker) Hamill. "The Nerd" and "The Foreigner" both are frequently produced by regional and community theater groups.

Playgoers for "The Nerd" will actually be treated to a double feature of sorts. Not only will the get to see the play itself, but they'll be the first to take a gander at  and put their sitzmarks into  BCT's brand-spankin' new seats, part of a renovation project executed over the summer. The upgrades also include a new rigging system for backdrops.

"It's really nice," Siskin said of the upgrades, funded by the C. Keith Birkenfeld Trust. "It's always been a nice theater, but it's real-deal now."

PREVIEW

'THE NERD'

Who: Bremerton Community Theatre

What: Comedy by Larry Shue

Where: BCT's Montgomery Auditorium, 599 Lebo Blvd., Bremerton

When: Sept. 16-Oct. 2; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays

Tickets: $15-$8

Information: 360-373-5152, bremertoncommunitytheatre.org
RICHARD THORNTON | JEWEL BOX THEATRE Kristopher Jones (middle) and Becky Eastgard rehearse a scene from "Murder at Cafe Noir" as castmate Cody Amboage-Masoner watches.

By Michael C. Moore, mmoore@kitsapsun.com

POULSBO  If Albert Guerra was looking for a change of pace, this is certainly his month.

Guerra is directing the chamber-musical whodunit "Murder at Cafe Noir," which opens Sept. 16 at the Jewel Box. It's his first experience with the 1991 homage to 1940s gumshoe detective movies, and it's the first time he's worked in the little Poulsbo 99-seater, after acting and directing in dozens of shows at Bremerton Community Theatre and CSTOCK.

"That was really appealing," Guerra said of the fresh-air aspect of the gig offered to him by Jewel Box artistic director Gwen Adams. "I had submitted plays there before, but hadn't gotten anything accepted. On this one, Gwen sent me a message that there was a play open, and would I be interested?

"I read the script, which I'd never seen before, and thought it would be fun."

The chamber musical is set in a dive bar  the Cafe Noir. The body of the owner has just washed ashore nearby, and private investigator Rick Archer is called in to find out who's behind the foul play. Screenwriter-playwright David Landau wrote the book, with songs added by Nikki Stern, and the play debuted in 1991. Its campy nature and interactive format (think Sam Spade, or Dick Tracy, in a song-and-dance) have made it a favorite in community and dinner theater venues around the country ever since.

It's perfect, Guerra said, for the Jewel Box, where everyone is within a few feet of the action on the floor/stage surrounded on three sides by the gallery.

"It was really easy to turn (the performance space) into a bar," he said. "And it makes the interactive aspect of the show easy to pull off, too. The actors talk to the audience, and the audience is right there."

The actual music will come from a prerecorded soundtrack.

"The whole idea is that the music comes out of a radio," Guerra said of a key onstage prop.

The seven-member cast will be mostly familiar to JB audiences. Michael Schmidt, who plays Archer, is making his Poulsbo debut, though. Most recently, he was in recent productions of "Romeo and Juliet" at both Bremerton Community Theatre and Western Washington Center for the Arts. Cody Amboage-Masoner, who was Romeo in the BCT production and filled in for a week in the same role at WWCA, also is on hand for "Cafe Noir."

The cast also includes Paul Adkins, Becky Eastgard, Kristopher Jones, Karen Galvan and Tamara Bale. Each gets to play a stereotype noir character (or, in Jones' case, several characters).

"Everybody has to be a little bit bigger, a little over the top," Guerra said. "They get to camp it up, and they're having a lot of fun with it."

He said he thinks JB audiences will, too.

"It's a murder mystery, but it has a little bit of fun," he said. "It's not Agatha Christie, but people will find themselves thinking, 'Hey, this is funny.'"

PREVIEW

'MURDER AT CAFE NOIR'

Who: Jewel Box Theatre

What: Musical comedy by David Landau and Nikki Stern

Where: Jewel Box Theatre, 225 Iverson St., Poulsbo

When: Sept. 16-Oct. 9; 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays

Tickets: $17-$15

Information: 360-697-3183, jewelboxpoulsbo.org. Brown Paper Tickets  800-838-3006, brownpapertickets.com
SHARE

Marilyn Ellen Pratt

of Bremerton

Jan. 30, 1926

to Sept. 10, 2016



Marilyn was born Jan. 30, 1926 and passed away peacefully Sept. 10, 2016. Marilyn was born and raised in Walton, Indiana and raised with her twin sister, Marge and brother, Everett.



In 1944, at age 18, she married Lt. Clarence Daugherty in Texas. When Clarence returned from the war in 1946, they moved to Bremerton, Washington. While Clarence worked for the Bremerton Post Office, together, they were landlords of several homes, doing much of the renovations themselves.



In 1972, Marilyn was widowed at age 45 and continued to buy, rent and sell houses. She became a snowbird, living in Arizona during the winters, and spending summers in Bremerton. Her hobby was making cards, and she enjoyed giving them away to see the happiness they brought others. She was a member of the First Baptist Church of Bremerton since 1946 and enjoyed the fellowship.



In 1986, Marilyn married Richard Pratt. They both enjoyed visiting relatives and friends on their road trips to and from Arizona. In 2011, she lost him to a stroke.



Marilyn is survived by her sons, Robert (Teri) and Michael (Judy); and daughter, Susan (Donald). She leaves seven grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Services will be held Friday, Sept. 16, 2016 at 11 a.m., followed by a reception at noon. Please visit www.miller-woodlawn.com for service information.
SHARE

Republican congressional leaders ardently want conservative members of the House to not force a vote on impeaching the IRS commissioner. The public does not care about John Koskinen's many misdeeds. And impeachment will distract attention from issues that interest the public. And because Democrats are not ingrates, the required two-thirds of the Senate will never vote to convict Koskinen, whose behavior continues the pattern of doing what Democrats desire with the most intrusive and potentially punitive government agency.

These Republican leaders' reasons are cumulatively unpersuasive. Resuscitating the impeachment power would contribute to revitalizing Congress' Article I powers. Impeachments are rare  no appointed official of the executive branch has been impeached in 140 years. But what James Madison called the "indispensable" power to impeach should not be allowed to atrophy, as has Congress' power to declare war.

Here are a few pertinent facts. At the IRS, Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner participated in delaying for up to five years  effectively denying  tax-exempt status for, and hence suppressing political advocacy by, conservative groups. She retired after refusing to testify to congressional committees, invoking the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination.

Koskinen, who became commissioner after Lerner left, failed to disclose the disappearance of emails germane to a congressional investigation of IRS misbehavior. Under his leadership, the IRS failed to comply with a preservation order pertaining to an investigation. He did not testify accurately. Subpoenaed documents, including 422 tapes potentially containing 24,000 Lerner emails, were destroyed. He falsely testified that the Government Accountability Office's report on IRS practices found "no examples of anyone who was improperly selected for an audit."

In June testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School noted that the Obama administration stands accused of "effectively weaponizing the IRS." And the Koskinen controversy comes as Congress "is facing an unprecedented erosion of its authority vis-a-vis the executive branch." The "increasing obstruction and contempt displayed by federal agencies in congressional investigations reflects the loss of any credible threat of congressional action. Congress has become a paper tiger within our tripartite system  a branch that often expresses outrage, yet fails to enforce its constitutional authority."

The Koskinen controversy, Turley said, "falls at the very crossroads of expanding executive power, diminishing congressional authority, and the rise of the Fourth Branch," which consists of "federal agencies that exercise increasingly unilateral and independent powers."

The Constitution authorizes impeachment for "high crimes and misdemeanors." Madison favored this language and interpreted it to include "maladministration," which surely encompasses perjury and obstruction of Congress. The idea that an IRS commissioner is not a high enough official for impeachment ignores, Turley says, "the realities of the modern regulatory state."

One of the articles of impeachment filed by the House against Richard Nixon was that he, "acting personally and through his subordinates" (emphasis added), had "endeavored" to use the IRS to violate Americans' rights, causing IRS actions "to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

If presidents are, as McCarthy says, "derivatively responsible" for misconduct by executive branch subordinates, surely those officials are responsible for their own misconduct and that of underlings. Refusing to impeach Koskinen would continue the passivity by which members of Congress have become, in Turley's words, "agents of their own obsolescence."

George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com. He writes for The Washington Post Writers Group.
SHARE

In some respects, the Islamic State is the perfect enemy for Donald Trump. Its evil is unambiguous and its thinking is medieval. Its adherents are swarthy, bearded and be-turbaned. These are people that we could torture without a qualm and "bomb the hell out of" with little regard for collateral damage.

In fact, Trump says that, if he's elected, ISIS will be eliminated quickly. He declines to reveal his plan because he says he doesn't want to give away his intentions to the enemy.

The plan may not be fully developed. At last week's commander-in-chief forum Trump told Matt Lauer that after he is elected he will give the generals 30 days to come up with a plan, and he indicated that he might use their plan or part of it or, maybe, just use his own plan.

During the forum, the question of how to deal with ISIS might have been the most distinct point of difference between Hillary Clinton and Trump.

Clinton was emphatic: under her administration, America will be engaged in Syria and Iraq against ISIS but will not deploy ground troops.

Her strategy is likely to resemble President Obama's, which Trump pictures as a disaster. But while Obama's strategy hasn't yet destroyed ISIS, it has halted and reversed its expansion in the region, and ISIS's leaders have regularly been killed by airstrikes. Clinton says that ISIS supreme leader al Baghdadi will be a target.

Obama's achievements against ISIS have been gradual and steady but undramatic. Whatever its shortcomings, the chief virtue of Obama's strategy is that it doesn't involve large numbers of American troops in the Middle East.

Experts have warned about the futility of the deployment of America's awesome military might in this region. As long ago as December 2002, while aircraft carriers and hundreds of thousands of troops were being marshaled for an attack on Saddam Hussein, Middle East expert Sandra Mackey cautioned against being "pulled into the abyss of Iraq."

And as recently as last week, Fareed Zakaria said clearly in The Washington Post what experience should have taught us during the last 15 years: "The war on terrorism won't be won on the battlefield."

Still, Trump appears to believe that this time things will be different. Trump's plan for ISIS is unknown, but it's not hard to imagine that it involves significant numbers of American troops. Evidently, America's military leadership does not favor the deployment of troops in Syria and Iraq, but Trump says that he will probably get "different generals."

Here's another indication that Trump is thinking "troops on the ground": he has insisted all along  and he insisted during last week's forum  that we should just "take the oil."

Of course, taking the oil would be a violation of international law, as well as a spur to jihadi recruitment on a par with Pearl Harbor.

But when Lauer asked him how we would take the oil, Trump had a ready answer: We just "leave a certain group behind," presumably after the main force of many thousands of troops  that's what it would take  had already "knocked the hell out of ISIS."

No American president can afford to be a pacifist. In fact, when Clinton said that she would never send American troops into Syria or Iraq, she may have been making a promise that she will find difficult to keep.

But the last 15 years in Afghanistan and Iraq have damaged a generation of loyal, brave American soldiers. Many of them and their families will feel the effects for a lifetime.

Despite our soldiers' courage and commitment, however, ground troop deployment is unlikely to be effective in this kind of battle, and it has a significant chance of being counterproductive.

Trump says he doesn't want to tip his hand to ISIS. Fair enough. Still, he's been ambiguous about troop deployment. If he intends to send thousands of American soldiers to the Middle East, he's obligated to let us know before the election.

John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. Readers may send him email at jcrisp@delmar.edu.
SHARE

What can be done to deter pharmaceutical companies from jacking up the prices of critical drugs, prevent Wall Street banks from excessive gambling, and nudge CEOs into taking a longer-term view?

Answer: Fulfill Bill Clinton's campaign pledge on CEO pay.

In 1992, he proposed to bar companies from deducting pay above $1 million. Once elected, he asked his economic advisers (including yours truly) to put the measure into his first budget.

My colleagues weren't exactly enthusiastic about the new president's proposal. "Maybe there's some way we can do this without actually limiting executive pay," one said.

"Look, we're not limiting executive pay," I argued. "Companies could still pay their executives whatever they wanted to pay them. We're just saying society shouldn't subsidize through the tax code any pay over a million bucks."

My colleagues continued to resist.

"Why not require that pay over $1 million be linked to company performance?" said another. "Executives have to receive it in shares of stock or stock options, that sort of thing. If no linkage, no deduction."

"Good idea," a third chimed in. "It's consistent with what the president promised, and it won't create flak in the business community."

"But," I objected, "we're not just talking about shareholders. The wage gap is widening in this country, and it affects everybody."

"Look, Bob," said the first one. "We shouldn't do social engineering through the tax code And there's no reason to declare class warfare. I think we've arrived at a good compromise. I propose that we recommend it to the president."

The vote was 4 to 1. The measure became section 162(m) of the IRS tax code. It was supposed to cap executive pay, but it just shifted executive pay from salaries to stock options.

After that, not surprisingly, stock options soared, becoming by far the largest portion of CEO pay.

When Bill Clinton first proposed his idea, total compensation for CEOs at America's 350 largest corporations averaged $4.9 million. By the end of the Clinton administration it had ballooned to $20.3 million. Since then, it's gone into the stratosphere.

And because corporations can deduct all this from their corporate income taxes, you and I and other taxpayers have been subsidizing this growing bonanza.

Hillary Clinton gets it. "When you see that you've got CEOs making 300 times what the average worker's making you know the deck is stacked in favor of those at the top," she has said in her presidential campaign.

And she's taken direct aim at executive stock options.

"Many stock-heavy pay packages have created a perverse incentive for executives to seek the big payouts that could come from a temporary rise in share price," she said last year. "And we ended up encouraging some of the same short-term thinking we meant to discourage."

Exactly.

Two years ago, pharmaceutical company Mylan put in place a one-time stock grant worth as much as $82 million to the company's top five executives if Mylan's earnings and stock price met certain goals by the end of 2018. But the executives would get nothing if the company  whose star product is the EpiPen allergy treatment  failed to meet the target. Almost immediately, Mylan stepped up the pace of EpiPen price increases. Since then, the price of an EpiPen two-pack has doubled to $600  a move Hillary Clinton has rightfully called "outrageous."

Stock options doled out to Wall Street executives in the early 2000s didn't exactly encourage good behavior, either. They contributed to the near meltdown of the Street and a taxpayer-funded bailout.

Now that Wall Street is no longer restrained by the terms of the bailout, it's back to issuing stock options with a vengeance.

According to a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies, the top 20 banks paid their executives more than $2 billion in performance bonuses from 2012 to 2015. That translates into a taxpayer subsidy of $1.7 million per executive per year.

Hillary Clinton has proposed penalizing pharmaceutical companies such as Mylan that suddenly jack up the prices of crucial drugs. And she's promised to go after big banks that make excessively risky bets.

These are useful steps. But she should also consider a more basic measure that would better align executive incentives with what's good for the public.

It's doing what her husband pledged in 1992 but which his economic advisers sabotaged: Bar corporations from deducting all executive pay in excess of $1 million. Period.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich is a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future." He blogs at www.robertreich.org.
Stuff reports:

Wellington mayoral candidate Justin Lester has vowed to simplify the city councils unnecessarily difficult consents process with a one-stop shop and individualised case managers for major projects.

But one developer has expressed doubts, saying Wellingtons consents process is already much smoother than in other cities.

Lester, the capitals deputy mayor, said the existing process for both resource and building consents was not user friendly and did not give adequate feedback.

Some people were waiting weeks before having to make a raft of time consuming changes, he said.

Ive had personal experience in being a business owner and having to negotiate the processes. It isnt hopelessly convoluted, but it is more complicated than it needs to be.

Ive already had three people come and complain to me about it in the past week alone.

If elected mayor in October, Lester said he would fix the problem by establishing a one-stop shop for consents, providing individual case management and support for major building and resource consents.

Wellington developer and engineer Maurice Clark said consents processing was often a tricky area, and one that would be unwise to rush through.

I kind of hate to say it, but I generally feel that there are good reasons for things being the way they are, he said.

On one hand you could say yeah, simplification sounds good, but on the other hand, council consents can be extremely technical and complicated.

With these youve got to be careful not to oversimplify  you dont want to end up with, say, a leaky buildings situation and have to pay out millions of dollars.
There is a bill going through Parliament called the Judicature Modernisation Bill. It is a technical and reasonably innocuous reform of New Zealands judicial administration.

It was supported unanimously at first reading and second reading.

One of the interesting features of the Judicature Modernisation Bill was that it would require (Clause 401) final judgments to be published online of District Courts. At present, only the judgments of the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court are published online as a matter of course  on Judicial Decisions Online. So this reform would mean District Court judgments would now be routinely published online. This would be great as it would lead to much more open justice.

As present you have to request release of a district court judgement from the Judge and provide reasons for your request. This is highly unsatisfactory. Courts should not be secret.

But something very unusual has just happened.

The Minister of Justice, Amy Adams, has recently published an SOP (Supplementary Order Paper), an amendment if you like, to the Bill before Parliament that completely strikes out the section requiring judgments to be published.

The explanation in the SOP says the publishing of judgments will remain at the discretion of the Judiciary  as is now the case. This is a major backdown, considering it was in the bill at first and second reading and at select committee.

Lets be clear, if the law does not require judgments to be routinely published online, they wont be  except for those already being published for the Senior Courts.

It is bad enough to remove this clause, but worse to try and do so at committee stage which means it bypasses the select committee.

I hope that Labour, Greens, NZ First, Maori Party, ACT and United Future vote against deleting Clause 401 and vote in favour of open justice. Weve had widespread Internet for around 20 years now. Having all court judgments online is well overdue.

The original Clause 401 allowed some judgments not to be published if met certain criteria (Family Court, Youth Court, suppression) but set a presumption in favour of publication. This is the correct setting. It is sad to see the Government backtracking on this.

UPDATE: The Office of the Chief District Court Judge has helpfully pointed out that some District Court judgments are now published online at their website. They announced last month:

A new website, www.districtcourts.govt.nz, has started publishing judicial decisions from the District Courts. The website is run from the Office of the Chief District Court Judge and marks a significant milestone in the modernisation of New Zealands District Courts. About 200,000 criminal, family, youth and civil matters come before the District Courts every year, where 160 judges make about 25,000 decisions, sentences or orders. Chief District Court Judge Jan-Marie Doogue said that from now on, a Publications Unit working under an editorial board of senior judges, will select for online publication those decisions considered of high public or legal interest and which meet criteria for publication. This calendar year, the website expects to publish about 2500 decisions, rising to about 4000 next year.

It is good to see this occurring. However 4,000 out of 25,000 decisions is a small minority. Fundamentally I think the default setting should be opt out, not opt in. That is the decision should be published unless there is a strong reason not to, rather than it only get published if someone thinks it is of interest.

I still hope Clause 401 is retained. If there are worried about the capacity to cope, then one could delay the date it comes in, rather than remove the requirement.

UPDATE 2: A statement from the Minister:

The Justice Ministry has advised me that each year the District Court (excluding the Family Court and Youth Court) delivers 15,300 final decisions that would fall within the scope of the requirement in the Bill. They are made up of: * 300 written decisions (reserved judgments), mainly delivered in the civil jurisdiction; and * 15,000 transcribed oral decisions, including civil and criminal judgments, and sentencing notes. The District Court doesnt publish its judgments online, because it does not have the judicial resource that senior courts have in the form of Clerks and other judicial staff. The sheer volume of decisions by the District Court alone make it difficult for every decision to be published, especially due to the fact 15,000 oral decisions would need to be transcribed, checked, and for each Judge to sign off on each decision before they are published. The resourcing of staff alone to begin publishing final judgments would result in an increase of at least 10 FTE publication staff, at approximately $1 million. This does not take into consideration other staffing increases, training, overhead costs, equipment, and increases in workload. The vast majority of these decisions are also oral, meaning transcribing services would need to be resourced and serviced. Considering there is essentially no precedent value (i.e. decisions do not bind the higher courts, and they are often just a straight declaration of sentence rather than reasoning) in the decisions made by the District Court, the time, effort and resource that transcribing would take would add little value to access to justice. To argue that all 15,000 final decisions should be made online simply for the sake of it would require significant funds and resources. That would mean less money for supporting victims, putting police on the beat, and keeping our communities safe. Its worth noting that the judiciary have launched a new website (www.districtcourts.govt.nz<http://www.districtcourts.govt.nz>) which has started publishing judicial decisions from the District Courts. Criteria for publication in the criminal jurisdiction include sentencing notes and reserved decisions from judge-alone trials in cases of more serious offending, or cases where there has been discussion of high-level principles. All decisions resulting from proceedings brought under the Harmful Digital Communications Act will be published automatically because this is a requirement of that legislation.

I think $1 million a year is not unreasonable for open justice. Also if it was such a bad idea to publish all these decisions online, why was it in the bill in the first place? Why was the cost not flagged at the select committee so MPs could consider fully whether the benefits are worth the cost.

Share this: Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Reddit

WhatsApp

More

Pinterest

Print



Tumblr


Stuff reports:

A wine-making rich-listers son has sworn off alcohol since assaulting a female police officer in serious violent attack. Nikolas James Posa Delegat, 19, appeared for sentencing before Judge Kevin Phillips in the Dunedin District Court on Monday. The first-year University of Otago student told a female officer get off me, cop before punching her in the face, and several more times after she lost consciousness. It nearly destroyed her life, Judge Phillips said. It was a serious violent attack, the judge said of the alcohol-fuelled incident outside the popular Dunedin student haunt, Starters Bar, about 11pm on March 26, 2015. The court heard Delegat became enraged at a comment made by a male associate about his girlfriend, and punched a hole in the bars window. That led to an argument, with Delegat punching a University of Otago Campus Watch officer, after he tried to intervene. A passing police patrol noticed the disturbance and stopped to help. Constable Alana Kane, who was in court for the sentencing, suffered a black eye and serious swelling to her face after being punched by Delegat. She spent 15 hours at Dunedin Hospital after the incident, was off work and could not drive for two months and still suffered headaches.

Bad enough to assault a police officer, but to keep punching her after she was unconscious is incredibly serious.

Name suppression was initially sought for fair trial and personal hardship reasons, and was declined on both grounds.

Good.

His Auckland-based lawyer, Mark Ryan, applied for a discharge without conviction but it was declined.

You have to be kidding!

Ryan argued a conviction would stop Delegat pursuing a Financial Markets Authority career and he would be unable to race in yachting competitions in the United States.

Oh poor diddums.

The judge sentenced Delegat to 300 hours community service and ordered him to pay a $5000 emotional harm repayment.

Im not exactly a social justice warrior but if Delegat was say a young Pacific Islander in South Aucklander who had punched a cop unconscious and then kept punching her, Id say hed probably be serving a significant jail term.

Ryan said his client had done everything asked of a young man following this one-off fall of grace. This incident was completely out of character.

I dont buy that. We all can do stupid stuff when drunk. But most people would never ever assault a police officer, yet alone keep punching them while unconscious. You either are the sort of person who can do that, or you are not.

Ryan said his client wanted to work alongside authorities with young people involved in the out-of-control drinking culture at the University of Otago.

This comes across to me as blaming alcohol, rather than blaming himself. The problem is not the drinking culture, but that Delegat got violent when drunk.

Share this: Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Reddit

WhatsApp

More

Pinterest

Print



Tumblr


President Tran Dai Quang receives the delegation of the Kansai Economic Federation on September 12th (Photo: VNA)



He had a meeting in Hanoi on September 12th with a delegation of Japans Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren), which organised the economic dialogue together with the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment.

Talking to Kankeiren Chairman Shosuke Mori, President Quang expressed his delight at the expansion of economic, trade and investment ties between Vietnam and Japan, saying it has contributed to the countries extensive strategic partnership.

He thanked Japans Government and investors for effectively helping Vietnam in socio-economic development and welcomed more investments from Japan.

Kansai is among the top Japanese investors in the Southeast Asian nation with a number of big projects, he noted.

President Quang said he hopes advanced technologies which are the strength of Kansai businesses will greatly help his country better infrastructure and develop support industries while protecting the environment.

Vietnam pledges the best possible conditions for Japanese enterprises, including those from Kansai, to operate in the country, he said, repeating its consistent viewpoint of prioritising relations with Japan.

Shosuke Mori said Kankeiren groups 1,300 companies and aims to support its members to promote competitiveness in Kansai region and expand operations in the world.

He noted through this visit, his federation looks to enhance economic ties between Kansai and Vietnam and seek business opportunities, especially when the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will take effect in the near future.

He added that he hopes the Vietnam-Kansai economic dialogue will become an annual event through which Kansai businesses can contribute more to Vietnams development.

Kansai, a region in the centre of Japan, comprises 10 prefectures, including the big cities of Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. It is the second biggest economic, financial and sci-tech hub of Japan after Kanto region of Tokyo and has strength in manufacturing industry.

Kansai accounts for 25-30 percent of its countrys trade with and investment in Vietnam, mostly in the fields of seafood processing, household electric and electronic products, automobile spare parts, machinery components, and building materials./.
Over six days audiences in Hanoi can experience contemporary dance in a variety of styles from different countries: Germany, France, Israel, Japan and Austria, as well as the host country Vietnam. After their performance in the capital, the productions from Germany, Austria and Vietnam can also be seen in HCMC.

The performances move between reality and imagination and explore the innermost depths of human beings, staged with breathtaking choreography and impressive light and media installations. A special highlight is the co-production of German dancer and choreographer Riki von Falken and the moving image artist Nguyen Trinh Thi from Hanoi.

The festival received a lot of attention and applause from both media and the public, has successfully contributed to a growing awareness of contemporary dance in Hanoi since 2011, and has long been a major fixture in the cultural calendar of the capital.

The artistic and cultural event promotes and enhances the value of contemporary dance in Vietnam, creating a bridge for artists to exchange and to share experiences.

Europe meets Asia in Contemporary Dance is an initiative of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), the Network of European cultural institutes and embassies in Hanoi, in cooperation with the Youth Theatre Vietnam and the HCMC Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Ballet (HBSO).

The venues: Europe meets Asia in Contemporary Dance will take place primarily in the National Youth Theatre Hanoi, No.11 Ngo Thi Nham. The French production Hakanai will be performed on September 24th - 25th at the Star Galaxy, No.87 Lang Ha. The productions from Germany, Austria, HBSO and HCMC Dance College can be seen from September 25th - 27th in HCMC Opera House, No.7 Lam Son Square./.
SHARE

By Kristi L. Nelson of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Tennova Healthcare said this week that preparation on the site of its planned new hospital in West Knoxville continues.

Since 2014, when the state approved its Certificate of Need, the health system has planned to build a replacement hospital for its aging flagship facility in North Knoxville, formerly St. Mary's and now Physicians Regional Medical Center, on more than 100 acres at Middlebrook Pike and Old Weisgarber Road.

Now, amid quiet rumors of a scale-back, Tennova Vice President of External Relations Jerry Askew said hospital plans are moving forward.

Knoxville Utilities Board's "relocation of gas and sewer lines is near completion, and we anticipate land clearing for the new hospital will begin next month," Askew said.

Metropolitan Planning Commission records right now show only small tweaks to Tennova's building plan for the 109-acre property, for which it paid a total of $11.8 million in 2014 and 2015. But two years have passed since the state approved Tennova's CON, and changes in the industry and community may translate to changes in the final plan for the hospital campus.

"Since receiving CON approval, we have continued to fine-tune the design of the hospital to make certain it incorporates the constantly changing care delivery models present in virtually all our service lines," Askew said.

The state Health Services Development Agency approved Tennova's CON for the new hospital in November 2014, despite opposition from both Covenant Health, which owns two West Knoxville hospitals, and some community groups in West and North Knoxville, which argued the move would leave North Knoxville underserved and increase traffic in a primarily residential area in West Knoxville.

Tennova previously announced plans for a new five-story, $303.5 million hospital, intentionally located across from the Dowell Springs medical complex, to open in late 2018. The planned hospital would have 91 fewer beds than the older North Knoxville building, which opened in 1930 near the intersection of Broadway and Woodland Avenue, but would include most services offered at the former St. Mary's, Tennova said. No plans have been announced for the older building, once the hospital moves.

Tennova has said the 1 million-square-foot Physicians Regional has had 12 additions in 84 years and could not reasonably be renovated to efficiently deliver health care in today's market.

"Our goal is to build a hospital that will meet the needs of our patients and their families well into the future," Askew said.
By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

The alleged ringleader of a series of kidnappings of bank executives and their families wants to know what his accused partner-in-crime has been saying from behind bars, and he wants to whisper his reasons in the ear of a judge.

In a rare move, the defense team for Michael Benanti is trying via a subpoena to get jail recordings of phone calls between Benanti's co-defendant, Brian Witham, and Witham's girlfriend. Rarer still, attorneys Richard Gaines and Robert Kurtz are essentially asking for a private chat  out of earshot of Assistant U.S. Attorney David Lewen  with U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley on why.

Benanti is charged in a 23-count indictment accusing him of a series of violent crimes in at least four states. All arise from an alleged plot last year to kidnap bank executives and their families and force those executives to essentially rob their own financial institutions so Benanti could funnel money back into a business from which he was stealing. One of those alleged kidnappings occurred in Knoxville, one in Oak Ridge and one in Elizabethton, Tenn.

Lewen has painted a portrait of Benanti as a compulsive planner with a penchant for violence  pointing guns at the heads of young children, using fake explosives to terrorize a 70-year-old woman and threatening to slaughter entire families if his demands were not met. The FBI also suspects Benanti killed his girlfriend to keep her from exposing him, although he is not charged in her shooting death, court records show.

Witham already has confessed and is expected to be a key witness against Benanti at his trial, currently set for Nov. 7 in U.S. District Court.

In a motion filed late last week, Gaines and Kurtz are seeking permission to issue a subpoena for the recorded conversations between Witham and girlfriend Kathy McGrath that have taken place since Witham's arrest last November.

The attorneys have scant information about what is on the recordings, and the law doesn't allow what's often termed a "fishing expedition" by the defense without proof the information is relevant and admissible.

But they contend a memorandum from the FBI turned over to the defense by Lewen suggests Witham and his girlfriend both were involved in the extortions and that Witham might be lying about Benanti's role. McGrath has not been charged.

"Mr. Witham previously told FBI Agents that he and Mr. Benanti were the only two people involved in the bank robberies," the attorneys wrote. "Based on jail calls between Mr. Witham and Ms. McGrath, the FBI determined that Ms. McGrath was a person of interest and sought to interview her.

"Counsel has learned that Ms. McGrath has denied personal knowledge about the robberies, but admitted discussing these robberies with Mr. Witham since he has been incarcerated," the motion stated. "Ms. McGrath indicated that they discussed what he's doing to Mike. Accordingly, Mr. Benanti has a strong basis to believe, through the FBI Memorandum and counsel's interview of Ms. McGrath, that the recorded jail calls between Mr. Witham and Ms. McGrath contain discussions of the indicted crimes and are material to an issue in the case."

They do not elaborate on that "issue" and instead seek to privately talk to Shirley about it.

Lewen fired back Monday against the move, saying the law doesn't allow the attorneys the access they seek.

"Defendant's circumstances are not extraordinary and the items which the defendant wishes to subpoena would constitute impeachment evidence not subject to pretrial production," Lewen wrote. "Prior defense attempts to obtain co-defendant jail calls in this district and others have proven to be futile and amount to nothing more than a delay tactic  Witham and McGrath are both available as witnesses."

The FBI alleges Witham and Benanti met in prison, where they serving time for robberies. Benanti was freed first and launched a business, Prisoner Assistant, in which he convinced inmates and their supporters to give him money to invest for them as the inmates prepared for a law-abiding future. Benanti joined the staff when he was freed from prison. The business was, according to the FBI, a sham.

But it had been featured in The Wall Street Journal in January 2014. Witham has told authorities Benanti needed to replenish the money he was stealing from Prisoner Assistant and concocted a plan that initially involved traditional bank robberies but, in 2015, grew to include highly-orchestrated, violent hostage-takings of bank officials and their families to extort money from the banks.

Benanti's girlfriend, Natasha Bogoev, served as chief financial officer. The FBI alleges she became aware of Benanti's crimes and wound up shot to death just as the agency began closing in on the identities of the kidnappers. Her death was initially ruled a suicide, and Benanti had her cremated.

Benanti and Witham were arrested last November after a car chase in North Carolina. The defense is challenging the legality of a series of searches that led to the indictment of the duo. Shirley has not yet ruled.
SHARE

By Kristi L. Nelson of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Four Blount County middle-school students were taken by ambulance to Blount Memorial Hospital Tuesday morning after "potentially ingesting" pills a student brought to school.

The students, who attend Eagleton Middle School, all are in "stable" condition, said Marla Holbert, communications director for Blount County Schools.

Holbert said the school system's central office was notified about 11 a.m. Tuesday that a student had brought some "unidentified pills" to school, and "upon further investigation, four students were identified as potentially ingesting the pills." She said the school dispatched ambulances to take the students to Blount Memorial Hospital, and called their parents.

Holbert said she did not know what type of pills the student had, or whether the student reported to have brought the pills was one of the four who might have taken them.

Blount County Sheriff's Office and the school system are investigating the incident, said BCSO spokeswoman Marian O'Brient.

Holbert said it's too early in the investigation to say what consequences the students might face, but she noted the school system does have a "zero tolerance" drug policy.

In February, the Blount County Substance Abuse Prevention Action Team provided naloxone nasal spray kits to middle and high schools in all three school systems in Blount County. The drug can reverse the effects of opioid overdose.

However, Holbert said she was not aware naloxone was needed in this instance.

Josh West, public relations manager for Blount Memorial Hospital, said he could not comment on whether the students were admitted to the hospital, or treated in the emergency room and then released.

More details as they become available.
SHARE In this Oct. 2, 2015, file photo, John King Jr. speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. King will speak at Pellissippi State Community College today as part of his back-to-school bus tour. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) U.S. Education Secretary John King and PSCC president Dr. Anthony Wise, center, lead a countable discussion at Pellissippi State Community College about the American Promise proposal Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL) Students Anyra Morrison, left, and Tristan Winters, center, talk about their experiences at Pellissippi State Community College with U.S. Education Secretary John King on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL) Student Makayla Edwards, left, talks about her experience at Pellissippi State Community College with U.S. Education Secretary John King on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel

U.S. Education Secretary John King lauded Tennessee's free community college program during a visit to Knoxville Tuesday, where he also touted a new federal "playbook" aimed at helping other states and cities launch similar initiatives.

King's visit to Pellissippi State Community College came a year and a half after President Barack Obama arrived on the campus to announce America's College Promise, a proposal inspired by Tennessee Promise.

But the plan has gained no traction in Congress, and even Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, who have praised the Tennessee program, have pushed back against the idea of a federally-administered version.

The 25-page playbook, which was announced by the U.S. Department of Education Tuesday morning, is not a shift in strategy, King said.

"We're going to keep working up until the last moment on Jan. 20, and we expect Congress to continue their work," King said after the event Tuesday. "We're hopeful Congress will make progress on the president's proposal as part of the budget process.

"That said, we do want to encourage and support communities that are taking actions on their own."

Since Obama's announcement in January 2015, at least 30 free community programs launched around the country, according to the department.

King said he had a call earlier Tuesday with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has announced plans to offer one year of free community college to graduates of the city's school district.

"Tennessee's work to ensure free community college is really an inspiration around the country," King said. "You see communities all across the country trying to replicate what Tennessee is doing."

During his visit, King hosted a roundtable with seven second-year Pellissippi State students who were among the inaugural class of high school seniors to benefit from Tennessee Promise. Pellissippi President Anthony Wise and State Education Commissioner Candice McQueen also took part of the discussion, during which several students said they would likely not be in college without the financial help.

Tennessee Promise launched in Knoxville as KnoxAchieves and then expanded to other counties as TnAchieves before Gov. Bill Haslam announced his intention to take it statewide during his 2014 State of the State address. It's a last-dollar scholarship that provides gap funding after students apply for federal aid and institutional scholarships.

The program costs an average of $938 per student in Tennessee.

"Quite frankly, without Tennessee Promise, I'd probably be paying off college loans right now, and it gives me more opportunity  heck, I might not even be in college right now if this program weren't available," said Gabriel Hayes.

Other students on hand said they had plans to go to mortuary school, become an inner-city schoolteacher, study 3D printing and become a physical therapist.

Most said they planned to go on to four-year schools, and some had set sights on graduate degrees.

King arrived on campus shortly on a bus from Bristol, where he spoke about classroom technology at Vance Middle School. He went on to Chattanooga Tuesday afternoon and planned to visit Memphis Wednesday, all part of a weeklong back-to-school bus tour through the South.
SHARE Students fill the pedestrian walkway over Phillip Fulmer Way on the University of Tennessee campus as fall classes begin Wednesday August 17, 2016. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel

The University of Tennessee moved up one spot to No. 46 in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings of public universities, thanks largely to its rising graduation rates, increased alumni giving and a higher-achieving freshman class.

The new list, released Tuesday, shows UT held steady at No. 103 among all schools, where it's joined by the University of Alabama, University of Oregon and Illinois Institute of Technology.

Once again, University of California-Berkeley topped the list of public schools, with UCLA, Virginia, Michigan and North Carolina rounding out the top five.

Chancellor Jimmy Cheek said he was pleased by UT's movement in the list, but also said the university has become a better school more rapidly than the rankings suggest.

"It takes a long time to make inroads, especially on subjective rankings and what people think of you," Cheek said, referring to the significant weight given to a school's reputation among its peers. "If you could take all those people, have them come to campus, look around, visit with faculty and students, our reputation would be much stronger than it is now."

UT has attracted high-achieving freshmen for years now, but only recently have they seen the needle move on graduation rates. In 2012, UT had a six-year graduation rate of 63 percent, according to rankings data. This year, it reached 70 percent.

Cheek pointed to millions of dollars the university has invested in hiring professional advisers and addressing bottleneck courses. The school created a pool of money that gives UT the flexibility to add more course sections to accommodate students who need it that semester.

"This year we had 100 more freshman engineering students," Cheek said. "That means 100 more students had to take Calculus I  that's about four more classes of Calculus I."

UT also changed the tuition payment schedule, so that students pay per credit hour until they reach 15 hours. Previously, they paid only for the first 12. They've also advised students on graduating earlier to reduce their debt, and now hand out tassels with students' graduation years when they arrive on campus as freshmen.

Also contributing to UT's uptick was an increase in the average alumni giving rate from 9.5 percent to 9.9 percent. Also, now 54 percent of freshmen were in the top tenth of their high school class, an increase of 4 percentage points over last year.

The rankings released Tuesday, which reflect data from 2015, also show UT's business college climbed two spots to No. 30 among public universities and the engineering school moved four spots to No. 32 among public schools.

Carson Newman University and Lincoln Memorial University both tied for No. 59 among the best regional universities in the South, and Maryville College was named a second-tier school among the best liberal arts schools in the county.
Rep. Jeremy Durham looks through papers at his desk in the House Chambers during a special session Tuesday Sept. 13, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn. (George Walker IV, The Tennessean)

By Joel Ebert and Dave Boucher, The Tennessean

Embattled Rep. Jeremy Durham, accused of sexual misconduct toward at least 22 women and still under investigation by state and federal officials, was expelled Tuesday from the Tennessee House of Representatives during a special legislative session.

Republicans and Democrats joined together to oust the 32-year-old Franklin Republican, voting 70-2 to cast Durham out after more than an hour of discussion to approve the first legislative expulsion since 1980, and only the second since the Civil War. The House needed 66 votes to remove him.

House Speaker Beth Harwell, who was emotional in a plea to colleagues earlier in the day to protect the identifies of Durham's accusers, said, "I'm very pleased that the House made the decision it did today. This was good for the taxpayers of the state. It was good for the victims of the state."

Durham appeared Tuesday to defend himself before the House. He again noted that no formal complaint had been filed against him and that he's never been charged with a crime.

"No matter how guilty you think I am, there are aspects of this situation that should bother you," Durham said.

Durham, however, was not present for the expulsion vote, having abruptly departed after listening to his colleagues and fielding questions for nearly an hour. With reporters in pursuit, he briskly left the building ahead of the chamber's vote.

Among those to question Durham were Rep. William Lamberth, R-Cottontown, who was clearly bothered. A former prosecutor, he thundered away at Durham the moment the embattled lawmaker stopped speaking on the House. He asked Durham to respond to numerous allegations outlined in the report, including whether Durham has sex in his office with a 20-year-old woman.

Durham appeared agitated as he spoke from the well, but never directly responded to those questions.

House Democratic Caucus Leader Mike Stewart, D-Nashville, walked Durham through a series of questions about the attorney general report and investigation.

No complaint or charge is required to remove a member from the House, according to rules and the Constitution. Durham repeatedly tried to argue that an ouster procedure should be treated like a criminal hearing or any trial. But Rep. Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol, noted earlier in the day that court procedure has nothing to do with the House expelling a member.

Durham went on again to say the attorney general report was "anonymous hearsay" and that it was an unethical investigation. Much of Durham's speech focused on the mechanism of the investigation, not the substance of the allegations. But he denied sexually harassing anyone, as he's done in the past. He also argued that the alleged transgressions happened outside a 180-day statute of limitations that he noted pertaining to sexual harassment in law.

"I ask that you vote for due process," Durham said, after speaking for roughly 20 minutes.

House leadership once thought they would get as many as 80 votes to expel Durham. Four members  Reps. David Byrd, Jimmy Eldrige, Andy Holt and Antonio Parkinson  voted present. As many as 12 members did not vote at all, which is what accounted for such a narrow vote.

House Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada, R-Franklin, said the narrow vote was due in large part because "members thought we were a court and they viewed it in that process."

Rep. Charles Sargent, R-Franklin, said Durham's expulsion allows the voters of Williamson County to have closure.

The move to expel Durham comes nearly eight months after leading Republicans, including Gov. Bill Haslam, state party chairman Ryan Haynes and House Speaker Beth Harwell called for Durham to resign in the wake of a Tennessean investigation. The January investigation, which included reports from three women who accused Durham of sending inappropriate late night text message, set off a firestorm of scrutiny for the once-rising star.

In the aftermath of the Tennessean investigation Durham resigned from his leadership post, left the House Republican caucus and took a two week hiatus from the legislature. At the time, Harwell also began exploring the process for expelling Durham while also calling for Attorney General Herbert Slatery to open an independent investigation.

That led to the roughly six-month investigation by Slatery's office, culminating in the scathing report issued in July. The report was released only after a Davidson County judge nixed an effort by Durham and his attorney Bill Harbison to stop the release of the report. The day after the report was released, Durham denied most of the accusations but announced he would suspend his re-election campaign.

The attorney general also sent information from a former Durham employee to state election officials. The former employee said Durham told him to put money from his campaign finances into his personal business. Durham has denied the allegation, arguing the state has also cleared him on this particular issue.

The state registry of election finance did say that a payment from Durham's campaign to the former employee "appears to have not been paid directly from Rep. Durham's campaign account," although a payment was listed to the employee in Durham's election finance report. The registry is still investigating a $191,000 discrepancy between Durham's campaign report and his bank account. In his letter to colleagues, Durham said the discrepancy is due to investments but didn't elaborate.

A federal investigation also still appears to be underway. Peter Strianse, a Nashville criminal defense attorney recently hired by Durham, recently told The Tennessean that the U.S. attorney issued two subpoenas for records related to campaign finances and a possible tax violation. Durham also closed his title company recently.

Before Tuesday's vote, the session was halted after House Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada, R-Franklin, called for a recess, which lasted almost 45 minutes.

"I'm asking the speaker if I can go into recess to remind the caucus that paramount is to protect the Jane Does  the innocent women who are brave enough to come forward. So were going to break here in a few minutes," Casada said moments before the start of session.

The vote to oust Durham, R-Franklin, comes months after The Tennessean's investigation into inappropriate late-night text messages from the lawmaker prompted a Tennessee attorney general investigation and calls for his resignation.

The attorney general found 22 women who said Durham had acted sexually inappropriate with them, referred to in the report as Jane Does. The report includes an array of allegations, from lewd comments and inappropriate hugs to giving beer to and having sex with a 20-year-old "college student/political worker" in his legislative office and home.

During the recess, Rep. William Lamberth said he planned to make a motion on the floor that would allow Durham's microphone to be cut off if he tried to name any of the women noted in the report.

Her voice breaking, House Speaker Beth Harwell asked the GOP caucus to support the motion in order to try and protect the women from the attorney general's report.

"Don't do this to these women. Don't you dare," Harwell said.

Lamberth also called on the press not to print the names of any victims if Durham does mention them or try to release them.

"Please, for God sakes, do not print anybody's name. It is not right," Lamberth said.

The Tennessean has never published the names of any women who have accused Durham of inappropriate conduct. Neither Durham nor anyone else named any victims during the proceedings.

The caucus also debated the constitutionality of the session in general, with Rep. Andy Holt vowing not to vote on any measure to oust Durham.

Others disagreed.

"Let's go up there and flush this commode," said Rep. David Alexander.

Durham has denied sexually harassing anyone, calling the investigation unconstitutional and an attempt to remove a conservative stalwart. He sent a letter to colleagues Monday outlining his critiques of the investigation and other allegations, and threatened to release a document that he says names the women who accused him of inappropriate conduct.
What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?  A good start.

Why did New Jersey get all the toxic waste and California all the lawyers?  New Jersey got to pick first.

Whats the difference between a lawyer and a tick?  Both are bloodsucking parasites, but one stops when youre dead.

Youve probably heard a million lawyer jokes. And of course, theres the famous line from Shakespeare, The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers. (Though that line was uttered by Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, and Dick the Butcher was trying to set off a civil war and revolution, and wasnt a good guy.)

And theres an argument  my colleague Ben Barton has made it at book length  that lawyers and judges (who, of course, are lawyers themselves) make law unnecessarily complicated, enriching the legal profession at everyones expense.

But while lawyer-bashing is fun for many people, the fact is in a legalistic society such as ours, what we really need is more lawyers on the side of the good guys. Happily, there are a few out there.

One group that Ive admired for years is the Institute For Justice, a free-market public-interest law firm that works to protect people, mostly poor people, from the heavy hand of the state.

The Institute for Justice has fought hard against civil forfeiture, which lets cops take your stuff without proving you committed a crime and then keep it for their own benefit. This policing for profit is deeply corrupting to law enforcement, and its also fundamentally unfair. If the government wants to take your stuff, they should have to prove youre guilty of something. And even then, the police shouldnt get to keep the money. It should go into the general treasury so that theyre not tempted to choose their targets based on what theyd like to seize.

The institute has fought this in court and has pushed legislation to limit such misbehavior at both state and federal levels. According to the institute's John Kramer, Since 2014, IJ has been instrumental in persuading six states to now require criminal convictions to forfeit property. And of those six, two have completely abolished civil forfeiture.

One thing holding poor people back, as even Barack Obamas White House has noted, is the spread of intrusive occupational licensing laws. Its hard to get ahead when you have to invest time and money making the state happy  300 hours of training to shampoo hair.

The folks at the institute have brought suit on behalf of florists, casket-making monks, cab and van drivers, independent tax preparers, African hair braiders and more. And theyve also pushed legislative change: According to Kramer, In just the past two years, IJ has persuaded nine states to do away with their licensing laws for hair braiders. This year alone, five states eliminated licensing for braiders  Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska and West Virginia.

Economists and (a few) politicians have talked about the problem of excessive occupational licensing regulations for years, but the Institute for Justice is one of the few places to do anything about it. And theyre able to be effective because, well, theyre lawyers.

But theyd better stop soon. Otherwise, they might give the legal profession a good name. And nobody wants that.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.
SHARE

Communication failures dating back to former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe's administration will cost city taxpayers about $908,000 in additional pension funding. With the city still trying to catch up on its pension obligations, the timing could not have been worse.

Employees hired prior to 2001 were not informed they could purchase city pension credit for their military service. Twenty-four affected employees have bought military pension credits at the price they would have paid on Jan. 1, 2001, plus interest, not the value of the credits today.

The city will have to make up the difference. Police Chief David Rausch, who was hired in 1993 and worked his way up through the ranks, is paying $30,089 for his credit, with the city's share being $170,730. Ed Kingsbury, the police investigator who sued the city when he finally found out about the credit-purchase provision, is paying $15,101 for his credit, a $27,162 discount.

The amount will be added to the city's $175 million unfunded pension liability  which is the gap between how much the city is paying into the system with regular contributions and the amount the city expects to pay out in benefits in the coming decades. The city will continue paying off the difference over the next 21 years. Last year's payment toward the gap was about $12 million.

Local governments large and small across the country have been grappling with underfunded pension plans in recent years. According to Governing, a news organization focused on state and local governments, 51 municipalities filed for bankruptcy between January 2010 and August 2015. Underfunded pensions and high debt are the primary reasons cities fail.

Unfunded pension liabilities played a major role in Detroit's bankruptcy in 2013, the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation's history. The city emerged from bankruptcy last year only because pension benefits were slashed.

Other local governments to file for bankruptcy since 2010 include Jefferson County (Birmingham), Alabama; San Bernardino, California; Hillview, Kentucky; and Stockton, California.

At least Knoxville's fiscal situation is not nearly so dire, and the city is trying to dig out of its hole.

In 2014 Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero persuaded City Council to raise property taxes by 34 cents per $100 of assessed value, in large measure to speed up pension payments over the next two decades. The city also has changed its retirement plans, moving from defined-benefit plans to hybrids that combine defined-benefit and defined-contribution components.

The added pension liability of roughly $908,000 amounts to a small fraction of the city's $307 million net budget, but any step backward in the quest to fully fund the city's retirement plans is troubling.

The mess could have been avoided if city officials merely had informed those hired prior to 2001 of the credit purchase provision. Bill Lyons, deputy to the mayor, said safeguards now are in place to make sure employees know about their benefits. New communications procedures are long overdue. These men and women have served their country and their city and deserved better.
9/11 propelled senior Pentagon official into public service

By Cheryl Pellerin, DoD

SEPTEMBER 13, 2016 at 10:33 a.m.







Marcel Lettre, center, undersecretary of defense of intelligence, hosts his French counterpart, Lt. Gen. Christophe Gomart, second from left, chief of defense intelligence, and other members of the French and U.S. military intelligence communities during a meeting at the Pentagon, May 11, 2016. Army photo by Spc. Trevor Wiegel





WASHINGTON  On the cloudless morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Marcel Lettre and a few coworkers at their Park Avenue management consulting firm in New York began hearing that the nearby World Trade Center was on fire. Lettre went to the southwest side of the building where six others were gathered in an office with a view of the two towers.



The two plane crashes had already occurred and the buildings were burning against a blue clear sky, he wrote in notes to himself shortly after that day. Once people explained to me that it had been two separate passenger planes, and with the weather being so beautifully clear, it seemed clear that there was no air traffic error.



As he tried to call family members, an image of the Pentagon joined images of the towers on fire on a television screen in the office and they heard an announcement that the Federal Aviation Administration had grounded all planes nationwide. Soon a huge ball of smoke and glass exploded from one of the WTC buildings and Lettre and his coworkers realized the whole structure was collapsing.



Thinking there would be hundreds of casualties, Lettre, a former emergency medical technician with the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad in Maryland, changed clothes and hit the streets to look for ways to help. Eventually he joined up with some New York Fire Department EMTs and they headed for the twin towers.





Ground Zero



On the street approaching the trade center area were perhaps a dozen fire vehicles -- engines, a ladder truck, command Suburbans -- that appeared at least temporarily abandoned. Some appeared fully out of commission with windows blown out, twisted pieces of metal, steel I-beams and large pieces of cement on top of them, everything completely blanketed in gray dust, he wrote.



So much [dust] covered the interior of a few police cars that they looked like they were cement sculptures of cars. Some of the doors were left open and some tires were blown. A city bus, abandoned, had lit up its emergency notice, emergency ... call police -- a scrolling banner across the front.



There was little sound -- the dust, like snow, muffling all sound. Mixed in with the dust, thousands of sheets of white office paper were littered everywhere so that you were constantly walking on it, my leather-soled shoes alternately kicking up soft dust and then scraping across the dusty paper.



In our minds, Lettre wrote, we were looking for some command center to report in to, or a triage facility, or someplace where people were treating patients  The [building] collapse had been a shocking and operationally paralyzing event to those initial responders, I realize in retrospect.





15 Years Later



Today Lettre is the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, the fourth person to hold the position. Nominated by President Barack Obama, he is Defense Secretary Ash Carters principal intelligence advisor. Lettre oversees the $17 billion military intelligence program across the defense intelligence components.



Hes also director of defense intelligence in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and DoDs principal interface with the CIA and other intelligence community elements. He represents the department on intelligence and sensitive operations at the National Security Council.



Lettre says his work in public service and in the intelligence community arose directly from the events of that day in 2001.



The experiences of 9/11 fundamentally influenced my career and have every day since, he said in a recent interview with DoD News.



Before 9/11 hed worked for a short time on foreign policy issues and around counterterrorism, but had decided to shift his career focus and spend some years in the private sector.



When 9/11 happened, in the days and weeks to follow, I felt this incessant tug to come back into service in some form, as did as did thousands of others, Lettre said. So for me, there was a real sense of calling. Those events compelled me to try to find a way to serve back in foreign policy and [they] continue to motivate me and my service in foreign policy and the defense arena to this day.





Threat of Terrorism



Lettre says he was one of millions of people who learned that day how powerfully negative a challenge terrorism is and how important it is for the United States to have a national and international effort focused on addressing the threat.



It was brought home to millions that day that this was not a threat that existed in far-off places with no impact on the United States and some of our traditional allies, but that it could affect all of us at home as well, he said.



The national effort that the nation then began -- to work its way through how to counter the destructive threat of terrorism and how to address it at its root causes -- was the big lesson taken away from the tragedy of that day, Lettre added.



In the 15 years since 9/11, we've been  transforming our intelligence community to be more effective, and the single greatest dynamic that we've pursued in a more effective intelligence community is jointness or integrated effort, across the 17 organizations that make up the U.S. intelligence community, he explained.



On 9/11, as the 9/11 Commission and others who studied those events concluded, the intelligence community had challenges pulling together a coherent intelligence picture that could warn the nation tactically and strategically, Lettre said, so most resulting efforts have focused on effectively integrating intelligence more seamlessly into operations.



I think we're far better positioned than we were in being able to do our part to protect the nation, he said. That said, there's still a lot to do and the threats we face change every week and every month and we need to constantly be challenging ourselves to be vigilant about how to adapt and innovate to try to stay ahead of those threats and challenges.



Lettre added, I think were safer but not safe, noting that Defense Secretary Ash Carter has referred to counterterrorism in some ways less as a challenge and more as a condition that we will be facing in a multiyear way.

Published September 13, 2016
Photo for illustration

The report proposes that the importation of fresh dragon fruit to Australia be permitted from all commercial production areas of Vietnam, subject to a range of bio-security conditions.

It has been prepared following a review of scientific knowledge of pests and diseases of concern, technical discussions with the Plant Protection Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and an inspection of dragon fruit production areas in Vietnam by Australian government officials in June 2016.

The report has been released for a 60-day comment period, which closes on November 14th. Following this, stakeholder comments will be considered and a final report will be prepared.

It is expected that the risk analysis will be completed by the end of 2016.

Last week, in Vientiane, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc emphasised the high priority of this market access request during a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull./.
Lee Hoon-seung, left, executive vice president of POSCO Daewoo, with Joo Eun-hee, chairman and founder of Caolion Cosmetics, after signing a memorandum of understanding at POSCO Daewoo's headquarters in Songdo, west of Seoul, Monday. / Courtesy of POSCO Daewoo



By Park Si-soo

POSCO Daewoo has signed a deal to promote exports of a mid-sized Korean cosmetics company, Caolion Cosmetics.

The nation's biggest trading company signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the cosmetics firm at the former's headquarters in Songdo, west of Seoul, Monday. Under the deal, POSCO Daewoo will promote exports of Caolion Cosmetics' products to China, Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America and Africa using its global marketing network

The cosmetics firm will export products under two brands -- "CAOLION" for sensitive skin and "JJ Young" for young people.

"We will do our best to promote Caolion Cosmetics' products globally through our marketing network," said Nam Si-kyung, senior vice president of POSCO Daewoo. "Beside this company, POSCO Daewoo will continue to help competitive small and medium-sized Korean companies seeking overseas expansion."

Early this year, POSCO Daewoo launched a task force dedicated to exploring new products or services suitable to become the company's new growth engines.
By Choi Sung-jin



It is with uncomfortable feelings that Kim Mun-shik, a farmer in Boeun County, South Chungcheong Province, is watching his warehouse bursting with newly harvested rice. "Can you believe it, if the bumper crops bring tears to our eyes?" Kim said.



This should be the most joyous season for farmers. But rice prices have plunged so steeply as to make most growers of the staple lament their sweat and toil throughout this summer, one of the longest and hottest in memory.



Kim's was as an early maturing rice variety. Thanks to his early sowing and hard work, he could begin harvesting crops on Aug. 30. Last year, he produced 200 kilograms of rice from a 660-square meter patch -- called a "majigi" in Korean -- but the unit production soared to 280kg this year. Kim reaped 270 40-kg bags of rice from his 12,000-square-meter field.



"I have lived as a farmer all my life but never seen a bumper crop like this," Kim said.



He will polish his harvest with pounding and hand the grain over to wholesalers in Seoul and Daejeon at 120,000 won ($108) per 80-kg sack, down more than 20 percent from 160,000 won a year ago. The price of early rice will fall further after Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving Day), so Kim has to bite bullet and sell it off. The situation is little different for Kim's neighbors who will spend the biggest traditional holiday also worried.



Officials at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs expect this year's rice production will hover above the record-high bumper crops of last year. There was a lot of sunshine, little disease and few insect pests this year while monsoons and typhoons steered past the Korean Peninsula, or at least its southern half.



"The figures are not all in but this year's crop will reach last year's at least," said Song Jae-won, a section chief at the ministry's food industry division.



The two consecutive years of bumper crops and mountains of rice stockpiles have sent prices plummeting. As of June 30, the government's rice stockpile amounted to 1.75 million tons, up 420,000 tons from a year earlier and more than doubled the optimal stock of 800,000 tons recommended by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.



According to GS&J, a private research group, the rice price was 137,152 won per 80kg bag, on average, as of Sept. 5, down 14.3 percent from 159,972 won on the same day last year.



The National Rice Producers Association held a news conference in front of the National Assembly on Sept. 1 to call on the government to come up with price-bolstering steps. Farmers' organizations in Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces also held a rally in front of the Government Office Complex in Seoul to protest against plunging rice prices.



The participants said the government's "clueless and irresponsible" imports of rice and failed policy have resulted in the price plunge, urging Seoul to stop imports, get rid of swelling inventories, buy all the crops harvested this year and guarantee support price.



"The government, which has failed in rice policy, is trying to pass all the pain to farmers," said Park Ki-soo, head of the National Farmers Federation's chapter in North Chungcheong Province. "The plunging price is due to the government's annual import of 400,000 tons of rice, and so it should stop imports immediately and come up with price-stabilizing steps from the aspect of food security."



On the other hand, North Korea's food shortage amounts to 665,000 tons this year, the Voice of America said Tuesday, quoting an FAO report.



According to the report released Tuesday, North Korea had to import 694,000 tons of food between last November and next month. But it had managed to secure only 29,000 tons through imports and aid by Aug. 30, falling 665,000 tons short of its target.



The food shortage in the reclusive regime has worsened from three months ago, the VOA said, adding the U.N. agency has included North Korea on the list of 36 countries with food shortages that require outside help.




By Choi Sung-jin



To buy a house in Seoul, an average Korean has to save all his or her income, besides taxes, for 16 years.



The Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEZ) said so Tuesday, based on its analysis of regional home prices and household income using data from the Korea Appraisal Board and Statistics Korea.



The coalition, a civic group pursuing a fair and just society, said of the 16 provinces and metropolises, it took longest to buy a home in the capital city. Following Seoul's lead were Busan and Daegu (8.9 years each), Gyeonggi Province (8.5 years) and Incheon (8.1 years).



CCEZ compared regional household incomes and apartment prices and used the median value as its average figure. Ulsan, a southeastern city that houses Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Heavy Industries, recorded the highest household income of 51 million won ($45,940) a year while South Jeolla Province was lowest with 29.95 million won.



The national average household income was 38.6 million won, while average disposable income is reduced to about 30 million won after excluding non-consumption expenditure such as taxes and social insurance premiums.



Last month, the average apartment price was 260 million won, with flats in Seoul showing the highest price of 520 million won and those in South Jeolla the lowest at 100 million won.



"It is virtually impossible to save all of the household income except for taxes," the CCEZ report said. "It will take several dozen years to buy a home with savings after excluding living costs, and a considerable number of families will unlikely be able to buy their own homes for life."



Those who cannot afford to buy homes have to live with monthly rent or "jeonse" _ Korea's unique rental system that requires tenants to deposit lump sums with their landlords instead of paying monthly rent. But rising jeonse prices are making even that difficult.



"To control the spiraling jeonse prices and ensure residential stability, the government is urged to put a ceiling on it while ensuring at least four to six years of a contract period in which homeowners cannot demand a rise in key money," the report said.




By Nam Hyun-woo



Hanjin Group CEO Cho Yang-ho's fate under the President Park Geun-hye administration is up in the air as misfortune continues to batter his business empire.



Cho's troubles started with the "nut rage" scandal in which Cho's daughter Heather ordered her Korean Air flight departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport to return to the gate so she could eject a chief steward after she was dissatisfied with the way a flight attendant served her nuts on the plane.



The time was very sensitive for Cho  also chairman of the airline  who was heading the PyeongChang Olympics Organizing Committee, and served a critical role in getting the county host the Winter Olympics.



Cho was appointed to the committee, but abruptly resigned after one year to tend to his ailing businesses in early May.



Though various reasons were given for the resignation, the widely held view was the debacle at Hanijn Shipping was behind it.



Over the weekend, Hanjin Shipping was granted court protection in the U.S. allowing some of its vessels to unload cargo at the Port of Long Beach, breaking a weeklong logjam there.



Observers expect Cho to be summoned by the National Assembly as a witness during its hearings on mismanagement at Hanjin Shipping; but another suspicion has arisen that he helped a family member of Moon Hee-sang, a representative of the Minjoo Party of Korea, get a job at Korean Air, which is also part of the Hanjin Group.



Last year, Moon was summoned during a prosecution investigation as a witness.



Cho's misfortune under the current administration was compounded by his absence from President Park's entourage during her trip to Iran. Just one month after the absence, he tendered his resignation as the chief organizer of the PyeongChang Games.



Cho cited "Hanjin Group issues" as the reason for his resignation, but reportedly he had to step down as Park had lost trust in him.



Other problems on the horizon for Cho is Korean Air's bid to join the Ministry of Defenses KF-X project and the group's attempt to build a seven-star hotel near Gyeongbok Palace in central Seoul. He offered to build a culture center near the palace, but the Seoul Metropolitan Government is questioning the entire plan.



An industry official said that Cho is "being held responsible for the Hanjin Shipping debacle."




Mr. Vu Hong Nam updates information about the country (Photo: baotintuc.vn)





The visit was made in the spirit of continuing to promote the implementation of Resolution 36-NQ/TW issued on March 26th, 2004 of the Politburo on overseas Vietnamese in the new situation. Vietnamese Ambassador to Canada To Anh Dung, and officials and staff of the Embassy were actively involved in and supported activities of the delegation.

In the cities of Vancouver and Ottawa, Deputy Minister Vu Hong Nam had open, frank and honest working sessions with a wide range of overseas Vietnamese.

The majority of the representatives of the Vietnamese community in Canada expressed their excitement and delight to be updated with information on the guidelines and policies of the Party and the State on all fields of the social life, as well as Vietnams great progress in recent years, by Deputy Minister Vu Hong Nam.

According to Mr. Nam, from being a country facing many difficulties and large population, thanks to right guidelines and steps, Vietnam has now ensured the basic goals of social justice, economic development and empowerment in the international arena.

At the talk, the Deputy Minister spent time to exchange information about specific fields overseas Vietnamese are interested in, such as nationality, land, housing, business investment, repatriation and consistent policies in maintaining territorial integrity and protecting the country's sovereignty. The Deputy Minister and the members of the delegation also listened to the thoughts and aspirations of the overseas Vietnamese and timely answered questions.

Besides the recognition of these efforts and practical contributions of the overseas Vietnamese in building and developing the community, preserving and promoting Vietnamese cultural identity and maintaining Vietnamese language for younger generations in Canada, Mr. Nam encouraged the overseas Vietnamese to continue stable development, to further active participation in community activities, to actively contribute wisdom and strength for the homeland, and encouraged them to go back to Vietnam to witness the changing of the country when they have the chance.

On this occasion, Mr. Vu Hong Nam congratulated the establishment of the Canada - Vietnam Society (CVS) and presented Certificates of Merit to the CVS leaders and some outstanding overseas Vietnamese.

Canadian artist Jean Maurice Gelinas, who painted Uncle Ho, also presented a painting of President Ho Chi Minh to CVS. Different from the previous single paintings, the painting was created from five pencil sketches depicting the beauty of Uncle Ho in his various activities by Gelinas.

During the visit, the delegation visited some establishments of overseas Vietnamese and met representatives of VietNet channel.



The delegation also visited the Vietnamese Embassy, and listened to the Ambassador report the work in general and the community work in particular. Deputy Minister Vu Hong Nam asked Embassy staff to learn about necessary guidelines and community works./.
Rev. Billy Jang-hwan Kim



By Park Jin-hai

Rev. Kim Jang-hwan, chairman of the missionary radio station Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) Korea, led a prayer service for the United Nations in New York, Tuesday.

At the annual international prayer breakfast, organized ahead of the U.N. General Assembly by the U.N. Foreign Service Fellowship, the prominent Korean Christian evangelist spoke "the power of one person" to 250 U.N. officials and diplomats including U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Korea's U.N. Ambassador Oh Joon.

Kim, also called Billy Kim in English, became the first Korean person to lead the prayer.

Saying that "One person can make a great difference beyond culture, geography, race and society," Kim shared his personal story, about his humble beginnings working as a houseboy for the U.S. military under Sgt. Carl Powers in Suwon during the Korean War (1950-1953), coming to America in 1951 and receiving an education with the sergeant's help.

"During the Korean War, he turned down five rotations to be sure this Korean houseboy would be safely on his way to the U.S.," Kim said, recalling the late army under-sergeant who went to great trouble to free him from the misery of war and funded his education for nine years in the U.S.

Powers enrolled Kim at Bob Jones Academy in Greenville, South Carolina where he converted to Christianity.

"Without his help, that houseboy will still be a houseboy, today," he said.

Kim served as an interpreter for Billy Graham in the 1973 Seoul Crusade, and was seated as the president of the Baptist World Alliance from 2000 to 2005.

"As one song can spark a moment and one tree can start a forest, one person can make the difference and you are the one," he said.
A high-speed KTX train hit four employees who were working on a track near Gimchun station in North Gyeongsang Province early Tuesday, killing two. The train was running late because of earthquakes that hit the nearby city of Gyeongju. / Courtesy of YouTube



By Hong Dam-young

A high-speed KTX train delayed by Monday night's earthquakes has hit four track workers, killing two and injuring the others.

The accident happened near a KTX station in Gimchun, North Gyeongsang Province, about 12:49 a.m. Tuesday. It occurred a few hours after 5.1 and 5.8-magnitude earthquakes hit the city of Gyeongju in the same province.

The victims were on their regular night shift replacing gravel along the track when the train hit them, according to YTN.

There are usually no trains after midnight but the earthquakes caused delays.












Eight Chinese tourists on Jeju Island were arrested Saturday for allegedly attacking and injuring four Koreans, including a restaurant owner who stopped them drinking alcohol they brought from outside. / Courtesy of YouTube



By Hong Dam-young

Police have arrested eight Chinese tourists on Jeju Island for allegedly bashing four Koreans, including a restaurant owner.

The tourists  six men and two women  were arrested Saturday for allegedly assaulting and injuring the Korean restaurant owner and three others, Jeju Seobu Police Station said on Monday.

The incident happened at the restaurant in the Yeondong district of Jeju.

Police said the tourists became angry when the restaurant owner, surnamed Ahn, 53, stopped them from drinking alcohol they had brought with them. They had placed their order but then decided to leave.












By Jun Ji-hye

President Park Geun-hye ordered the military, Tuesday, to maintain a high-level of combat readiness so that it can retaliate against North Korea the moment it starts the launch sequence for a nuclear missile.

During a Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, she also said the militaries of South Korea and the United States need to maintain closer cooperation.

"The military should be determined to bring about an end to the North Korean regime once it fires a nuclear missile," she said. "We need to take more effective actions against its nuclear provocations."

The comment comes after the reclusive state carried out its fifth nuclear test, Friday, claiming that it successfully detonated a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can be placed on a ballistic missile.

To better deter growing threats from the North's nuclear and missile programs, the President called for a consensus on the need to deploy a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here.

"Objections to THAAD will only result in exposing the people's safety to the danger of the North's provocation," she said. "It is questionable how national security can be protected if we go back to square one with the deployment plan at this time when the North continues to push ahead with nuclear and missile provocations."












A U.S. B-1B supersonic bomber, center, escorted by fighter jets, flies over Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday. The United States sent two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers to South Korea in a show of force against North Korea after its fifth nuclear test, Friday. / Joint press corps



By Jun Ji-hye

Two B-1B nuclear-capable strategic bombers of the U.S. Air Force flew over South Korea, Tuesday, in a show of force against North Korea that conducted its fifth nuclear test last week in defiance of global warnings.

The B-1B Lancers conducted a low-altitude flight over Osan Air Base, south of Seoul, around 10:00 a.m. after having flown from the Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The aircraft is capable of carrying the largest payload of both guided and unguided weapons of any current American bombers.

One B-1B was escorted by four F-15Ks from South Korean Air Force, while the other was escorted by four F-16s from the U.S. Air Force during the flight.

The North conducted its fifth and the biggest-ever nuclear test, Friday, claiming to have successfully detonated a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can be placed on a ballistic missile.

"North Korea's nuclear test is a dangerous escalation and poses an unacceptable threat," Gen. Vincent Brooks, the commander of the Combined Forces Command (CFC) and the United States Forces Korea (USFK), said at a news conference held after the flyover.

"The United States has an unshakable commitment to defend allies in the region and will take the necessary steps to do so, including operations like this one today, and the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) battery on the Korean Peninsula."

South Korea and Washington announced a decision in July to deploy a THAAD battery here by the end of next year to better deter evolving threats from the North's nuclear and missile programs.
By Kim Hyo-jin

South Korea and the United States agreed Tuesday that they will use all possible means, including adopting a new set of international sanctions, to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

The agreement was reached during a meeting between Kim Hong-kyun, Seoul's special representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, and Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy on North Korea's nuclear issue, here.

"I think it's clear that the latest nuclear test has strengthened, international resolve to hold the DPRK accountable," Sung Kim told a joint press conference.

"Our intention is to secure the strongest possible (United Nations Security Council) resolution that includes new sanctions as quickly as possible."

The U.S. envoy's visit to Seoul came after the Kim Jong-un regime conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday, the most powerful yet.

"We will work to incorporate stronger measures in a new resolution including ones to fill loopholes discovered in the process of imposing existing resolutions," Kim Hong-kyun said.












A family, with the children clad in traditional Korean attire, or hanbok, heads to board a train bound to the parents' hometown at Seoul Station, Tuesday, ahead of Chuseok, which falls on Thursday. / Yonhap



By Lee Kyung-min

More than 18 million people are expected to travel across the country to return to their hometowns for the Chuseok long weekend, traffic authorities said Tuesday.

According to the Korea Expressway Corp. and Korea Transport Institute, 500,000 vehicles had departed Seoul using expressways on Tuesday alone.

Monday's 5.8 magnitude earthquake has not affected the annual holiday migration, as no major damage was reported on expressways nationwide, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

On the return trip after Chuseok ceremonies are finished Thursday morning, less congestion is expected as travelers have three days to choose from for the return trip, from Friday to Sunday.

The government has increased the number of express buses, trains, flights and ferries active for the holiday.
By Kim Bo-eun

Korea's strongest-ever earthquake, which jolted the nation Monday with a 5.8 magnitude, is likely to have subsided, but Korea faces the possibility of even stronger quakes in the future, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), Tuesday.

"There is the possibility that additional quakes of magnitudes between 5.8 and 6 and even over 6 could hit the nation," said Ko Yun-hwa, head of the KMA, in a meeting with government and ruling Saenuri Party officials at the National Assembly in Seoul to discuss measures following the quake.

"It is unlikely, however, for the magnitude of future quakes to reach 6.5 or above," he added.

A magnitude 5.1 earthquake began at 7:44 p.m., its epicenter at Naenam Elementary School in the southeastern city of Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province. Then, 48 minutes later, an aftershock measuring 5.8 struck the country, which was felt as far north as Seoul. A total of 210 aftershocks were observed in total, more than double those recorded in 2013, when Korea had the largest number of tremors, 93, since records started being kept in 1978.

Regarding the cause of the quake, Ko said opinions vary.

"Some experts say it was affected by Japan's powerful earthquake in 2011, and others say the Japan quake has nothing to do with it."

A total of eight people were injured and there were 253 reports of property damage, according to the Ministry of Public Safety and Security.












Prosecutors on Tuesday said they have indicted an opposition lawmaker on charges of illegally distributing rice to voters in violation of the local election law in the runup to April's general elections.

The Suwon District Prosecutors' Office said Rep. Kim Jin-pyo of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea is accused of distributing some 810,000 won ($726) worth of rice to 37 members of a local mountaineering club in February.

Cho Byung-don, the mayor of Incheon, some 80 kilometers south of Seoul, will also stand trial for similar allegations, prosecutors said.

The two have been denying the correlation between the rice and the April's elections, saying they only intended to advertise the regional specialty to the people who visited Icheon from Suwon, some 45 kilometers south of the capital city.

Prosecutors have been accelerating their probes into the country's lawmakers, as the statute of limitations for the offenses committed during the latest elections is slated to expire in mid-October. (Yonhap)
By Yi Whan-woo



Given the nation's staggering low birthrate and growing concerns over bullying in the military, potential candidates for the 2017 presidential election may suggest a voluntary military system for their campaign pledges.



However, political analysts remain skeptical about whether such a pledge will help candidates win the presidency, saying voters will not feel secure about adopting an all-volunteer force unless North Korea's military threats are removed.



This comment came after high-profile politicians met, Monday, to discuss whether to move from a conscription to a volunteer military for all able-bodied men aged between 19 and 37.



Gyeonggi Province Governor Nam Kyung-pil, who organized the meeting, drew attention to the issue as he pledged to call for an all-volunteer force if he runs for the presidency in 2017. Nam is a possible presidential contender from the ruling Saenuri Party.



Former Saenuri Party lawmaker Chung Doo-un, former Environment Minister Yoon Yeo-joon, former National Human Rights Commission Chairman Ahn Kyung-hwan and Byeon Yang-kyoon, who served as chief secretary of national policy for the late President Roh Moo-hyun, also attended.



"The discussion on Monday was politically motivated and I believe Nam took next year's presidential election into account when he organized the meeting," said Shin Yul, a political science professor at Yongin University. "But it will not be easy for him to convince the Saenuri Party as well as conservative voters as long as Pyongyang continues its provocations."



He also said voters will consider any related pledges as "sugar-coated promises" if made by progressive-minded candidates.



The participants from the opposition side, Monday, included Rep. Kim Du-kwan of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK). The MPK legislator served as a home affairs minister and South Gyeongsang Province governor.



Lee Kang-yun, a journalist-turned-political commentator, agreed with Shin.



"It is not the right time to discuss the topic considering North Korea is making advances in its nuclear and ballistic missile technologies," he said. "The candidates may be the center of media attention but it will lead nowhere on their road to election victory."



Citing that there are 600,000 active-duty South Korean military personnel here, Shin In-kyun, president of the Korea Defense Network, said "Such numbers should be sustained regardless of any reason. The number of personnel matters even in the era of advanced weapons."



He also called Nam's suggestion to raise the average monthly wage for soldiers to 2 million won "nonsense."



He added that a voluntary recruitment system would create, not resolve, problems stemming from the low birthrate.



"If, for some reason, able-bodied men in their 20s and 30s do not join the service, the military will be left with older combatants and I doubt they will be capable of carrying out combat missions in the field effectively."




South Korea's top diplomat Yun Byung-se is scheduled to discuss North Korea's latest nuclear provocation with his Chinese and Russian counterparts, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.

Yun plans to have separate telephone talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Tuesday night to discuss measures that can be taken in response to Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test, foreign ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said in a regular briefing.

Friday's nuclear detonation test was the strongest yet by the reclusive country. Pyongyang tested its first nuclear device in 2006, followed by 2009 and 2013. It carried out its fourth nuclear test in January of this year.

"The ministers plan to assess North Korea's fifth nuclear test and discuss future responses," Cho said.

The test prompted South Korea, the United States and other partner countries to rush to adopt tougher sanctions against North Korea which was affected by the harshest United Nations Security Council resolution following its previous nuclear test.

Yun had talked with U.S. counterpart John Kerry and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida immediately after the North Korean test took place.

U.S. special envoy on North Korea Sung Kim, meanwhile, said after talks with his South Korean counterpart in Seoul earlier in the day that the U.S. and South Korea will work closely with Japan and other partners as well as China and Russia to secure the "strongest possible (UNSC) resolution as quickly as possible." (Yonhap)
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited a farm run by the military, the North's state media said Tuesday, marking his first field inspection since last week's nuclear test.

The North's leader reviewed the farm under the Korean People's Army, expressing satisfaction over high-yielding strains of new maize and dry-field rice, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Kim encouraged officials and employees at the farm to become the vanguard in implementing policies outlined by the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) of "bringing about a radical turn in seed improvement," it added.

Kim's on-site inspection followed just days after North Korea conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test to date on Friday, eight months after its fourth nuke test.

The North claimed that it successfully conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test, vowing to bolster its nuclear force.

Right after Pyongyang carried out the nuclear test in January, the North's leader visited the Ministry of Armed Forces, the North's defense ministry. (Yonhap)
By Kim Hyo-jin



President Park Geun-hye has yet to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss measures to take against North Korea for its fifth nuclear test, Friday.



This is in sharp contrast to her talks with leaders of other countries. Park spoke with President Barack Obama less than an hour after the test and with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a few hours later.



While the international community is moving toward another round of United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang, attention is being focused on whether Beijing, the reclusive country's only major ally, will participate.



In that respect, the timing and details of talks between Park and Xi may serve as an indicator on China's willingness to join in curtailing North Korea's nuclear drive, according to analysts.



Cheong Wa Dae said "a plan for talks has yet to be drawn up."













"Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se has already spoken with his counterparts in the U.S., Japan, and the European Union and is seeking to do the same with China and Russia," a presidential official told reporters Sunday, following the North's most powerful nuclear test.



Following the reclusive country's fourth test on Jan. 6, talks between Park and Xi came almost a month later, Feb. 5.



This time, the presidential office may hope to arrange contact sooner, considering its agitation over the North's advanced nuclear capability and shortened cycle of nuclear tests.



Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, says Beijing would be reluctant to contact Seoul prematurely.



"As the North's patron, China needs to lessen the burdens on the isolated country while keeping South Korea in check," he said.



"China's discontent over South Korea's policies toward North Korea including the planned deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery is also a hurdle to cooperation."



Park and Xi earlier held a summit on the sidelines of the G20 conference in Hangzhou, China, Sept. 5.



Xi reaffirmed his commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula but remained at odds with Park over the deployment of the U.S. advanced anti-missile system in South Korea. His view is that it could be used to monitor Chinese assets in the region.
By Jane Han

DALLAS  It's no longer surprising that many South Koreans remain unfazed by North Korea's provocations  whether it be a missile or nuclear test  and the reaction following Pyongyang's nuclear test Friday was no different.

But a prominent nuclear expert in the U.S. says this is a "huge mistake."

"These are real military capabilities that could kill millions of Koreans, and eventually, Americans, too," said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in an interview with The Korea Times.

"North Korea believes its nuclear weapons are necessary to deter an attack and, if deterrence fails, repel an invasion by the United States and South Korea," said Lewis.

What this means is they'll hit Seoul, they'll hit Busan and they'll hit U.S. forces in Japan in the hopes that the shock of that nuclear attack will stop the U.S.

North Korea conducted its fifth, largest and most successful nuclear test, Friday. Pyongyang claimed it had mastered the technology to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile.

According to many nuclear experts, the size of the latest explosion is slightly below the power of the bombs that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

"These are not playthings or props," said Lewis. "North Korea is moving toward deploying a force of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles."












The likelihood of nuclear conflict on the Korean Peninsula will become "dramatically higher" over the next several years as North Korea beefs up its nuclear capabilities, a U.S. expert said Monday.



Van Jackson, an associate professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, issued the warning in an article, saying Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test shows the communist nation is seeking an "assured retaliation" nuclear posture that ensures any attempt to decapitate its nuclear capability with preventive strikes will all but guarantee nuclear war.



"Until it has a clearly recognizable assured retaliation capability, North Korea's de facto nuclear posture is ... 'asymmetric escalation' that is, a posture that contemplates nuclear first-use as a de-escalatory measure during crises or conflict," Jackson said in an article posted at Beyond Parallel, a website run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.



"As a consequence, over the next several years, the likelihood of nuclear conflict in Korea will become dramatically higher than in the past," he said.



The expert stressed that the U.S. and South Korea must acknowledge sanctions on Pyongyang don't work.



"The alliance and the international community must acknowledge that sanctions and other forms of 'cost imposition' in response to North Korean testing serve the purpose of reinforcing the nuclear taboo but will not change the current path," he said.



Seoul and Washington should also "move away from statements that North Korean testing is 'totally unacceptable' when there is nothing short of violence that can be done to stop testing," he said, adding that a better alternative is to underscore the high economic cost of North Korea's continuing down this path.



The allies should not also allow "a replay of the violence in 2010," he said, referring to the North's sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan and the North's artillery attack on the South's Yeonpyeong Island.



"If the alliance is attacked, even in small or deniable ways, swift and concentrated retaliation must follow," Jackson said. "North Korea should no longer be given the benefit of the doubt in cases of ambiguity about attribution." (Yonhap)




By Ranjit Kumar Dhawan

Korea's successful economic transformation from an agricultural based economy to an industrial giant is popularly known as the "Miracle on the Han River." The country which had a per-capita income of less than $100 in the 1950s became a member of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1996. Hence, the Korean economic development became a role model for several developing countries.

As a result, Korea initiated the "Knowledge Sharing Program" to disseminate its knowledge and experience of economic development with other developing nations of the world. Korea has also transformed itself from an aid recipient to a donor country and it has been involved in the promotion of economic activities in several parts of the world.

However, there is other side of the Korean economic development which Koreans would not like to share with the rest of the world. Korea presently has one of the highest suicide rates and lowest birth rates in the world. The rising unemployment problem and dissatisfaction of the people regarding the living conditions in Korea negates the success story of its economic miracle.

According to Korea's own estimate its entire population would become extinct by 2750 due to the declining birth rate. Being an aging society, the situation of the older generation in Korea remains pathetic as several of them are left alone without much social security. A large number of younger people are also forced to remain single because of rising economic problems.

Korea's rapid economic development is mainly due to the low cost production based on cheap labor in the export oriented development strategy. But the economic changes brought about by the forces of globalization and technological changes such as use of robots in manufacturing have created problems for the Korean export dependent economy.

A number of jobs have vanished in Korea due to the mechanization of production techniques and outsourcing to cheaper wage locations outside the country. Korea's competitive edge is being challenged by new technology. In recent years Korea has also been witnessing decline in the export of goods.

The "developmental state" in Korea created the business giants, chaebol, for faster economic transformation of the country. But these chaebol now control a large part of the Korean economy. According to a report, in 2011 the total sales of the top ten chaebol groups was equal to about eighty percent of the entire Korean gross domestic production. There has been a massive concentration of wealth in the country.

The Sewol ferry incident in 2014 highlighted the corrupt business practices that exist in Korea. But it also showed the state of education in the country and the condition of young students who were left to die in the cold water of the sea. On the other hand, the shrinking middle class in Korea only depicts the declining economic condition of the people.

In the milieu of rising economic and social problems, terms like "Hell Joseon" is being used to describe the present situation in Korea where young people are increasingly finding it difficult to survive. Despite all these issues Korea's expenditure on welfare remains one of the lowest among the OECD countries.

Under these circumstances Korea needs to remodel its economic development strategy so as to mitigate the problems of the masses. While developing countries can learn from Korea's economic success, Korea also needs to learn from the developed Scandinavian countries to build a strong welfare state and promote technological innovation in the country.

Ranjit Kumar Dhawan has done PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. His e-mail address is rkdhawan13@hotmail.com.
By Choi Sung-jin

President Park Geun-hye is well known for her restrained language.

At a National Security Council meeting Saturday in the wake of North Korea's fifth and latest nuclear test, however, Park said, "Kim Jong-un's state of mind has gone out of control." That day, the New York Times carried a column headlined "North Korea, far from crazy, is all too rational," written by U.S. commentator Max Fisher.

I don't want to argue about who could be closer to the truth or compare the two very different persons in too many aspects. One thing seems to be certain, though: one remark was an emotional eruption while the other was based on some cold-headed analysis.

A high-ranking defense official said that if the North shows any signs of using its nuclear weapons, the South's military would "banish Pyongyang from the map."

That sounds quite confident. But is the so-called Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation (KMPR) conceivable without the full, unconditional support from the United States that has all the necessary strategic assets Seoul does not have?

Some ruling party leaders are going further, calling for the introduction of the U.S. tactical nuclear weapons or arming South Korea with atomic bombs. These assertions are neither practicable nor responsible. Seoul's withdrawal from the Nonproliferation Treaty means its instant isolation from the international community, including the U.S., making it difficult for the small open economy to survive. Moreover, Washington, not Seoul, has wartime operational command.

All this emotional hysteria and good-to-hear grandiloquence from the commander-in-chief and her aides with few, if any, calm, plausible countermeasures make the South Korean people, often notoriously insensitive to security threats from the North as many foreigners see it, feel somewhat anxious and insecure. President Park termed the current situation as a national emergency. Yet what makes people jittery is that the administration seems to have little or maybe even no inkling about what's going on in the northern half of this divided peninsula.

Take Defense Minister Han Min-koo. On Jan. 6, Minister Han visited his ministry's pressroom. When a reporter asked about rumors of the North's impending test of a hydrogen bomb, Han said, "Such media reports are full of scissors and paste. There are no signs that I know of." What happened the following day is now a history. Even more problematic, at a National Assembly Defense Committee session on Friday, eight months after the fourth nuclear test, Minister Han was still unable to tell whether or not it was a boosted fission bomb, which would be an essential sign of the North's success to lighten warheads.

Despite the apparent lack of ability and preparedness, it is also apparent President Park would neither change her direction nor hear advice from her political opponents. As expected, the rare get-together of the president with the leaders of the three major political parties Tuesday ended with no results  except for their unanimous denunciation of the North's military provocations. Flatly rejecting an opposition leader's proposal to activate a bipartisan consultative body of national security, Park said, "Basically, decisions on national security should center round the President." This chief executive is asking for the cooperation of others with no intention of listening to, let alone accepting, their words.

At Saturday's NSC meeting, too, President Park called for national unity but made remarks that squarely ran counter to her appeals. She described other parties' opposition to deploy the U.S. antimissile system here as a "political gambit with no practical alternatives," and instructed her aides to ferret out "impure elements" in reference to activists and other dissidents to Park and her administration. If older South Koreans found these phrases familiar, that's because they were time-traveling to the days of the incumbent leader's father, the late Park Chung-hee. Few people will be surprised if this government resumes its crackdown on the "jongbuk group," or followers of North Korea in the run-up to the presidential election next year.

Actually, not only political opponents of Park but neutral experts, both here and abroad, have offered "alternatives"  peace instead of war, diplomacy instead of militancy and cooperation instead of confrontation  had the President listened to them.

Some Western analysts call China the "enabler" of the North Korean nuclear weapons program. I beg to differ. It's not a matter of Seoul siding with Beijing or Washington. Any fair and objective watchers can know it was the conservative politicians of the U.S. and South Korea who have all but encouraged Pyongyang by either ignoring the latter's threats or resorting to ineffective sanctions. The Chinese government has at least, whatever their motivations may be, attempted to revive dialogue but even the liberal Barack Obama administration has snubbed the North in part because it had more urgent matters to handle and because Seoul, which should have brought its reluctant ally back to the bargaining table, did the very opposite.

No South Koreans in their right mind would either approve or forgive the North's dangerous play with fire targeting their compatriots. But nothing is more dangerous than to play with fire against fire, particularly if it's a nuclear fire.

If you cannot completely rule out the possibility of the North Korean leadership driven into the corner doing the unthinkable, there can be no other option  dissuade Pyongyang to let down its weapons by persuading the regime that it can go on without them in the foreseeable future. Then the South and its allies can gradually change the North by opening it up to the outside world through more exchanges.

Conservatives cite Germany as Korea's role model, as the capitalist West merged the socialist East with it. That might not have been possible had the conservative opposition party not taken over the liberal ruling party's reconciliation policy. And West Germany never asked its powerful friends to punish its recalcitrant little brother but gradually changed the latter with limitless patience.

After a recent summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Park said, "I can't sleep thinking that the safety of 50 million South Koreans is on my narrow shoulder."

Many South Koreans cannot sleep either, thinking their fate is on the narrow mind of their leader who thinks herself as error-free.
Fifteen years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the day's images remain vivid, and Americans are still vigilant about the threat of terrorism. But in the larger national security picture, there are other areas where U.S. vigilance is just as necessary. The most obvious example is our cyberspace cold war with Russia.



Last week, The Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement authorities have determined that Russia has launched a broad covert operation to influence both the U.S. presidential election and perceptions about the trustworthiness of America's leaders and institutions. While some of the recent high-profile hacks of U.S. institutions are murky, security experts believe, despite Kremlin denials, that the hack of the Democratic National Committee revealed in June was perpetrated by Moscow  not by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which released a trove of embarrassing DNC documents. It is not clear whether Vladimir Putin might be actively trying to promote the candidacy of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or just to sow chaos.



Writing in The Hill last month, cybersecurity expert Tomer Weingarten said it appeared that Moscow and Washington no longer were attempting to hide the fact that a de facto war is being waged online  by both sides. He likened Moscow's recent aggressiveness to Soviet attempts to put nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962  an attempt to determine how far it could go in challenging Washington. This ominous appraisal was underscored last week at the G-20 summit in China, when President Obama said that he had warned Putin that the U.S. cyber arsenal has "more capacity than anybody, both offensively and defensively" and had told him to "act responsibly and start instituting norms."



There is a real danger that this cold war could turn hot. Russia's cyber harassment of former Soviet states dramatically escalated in December when hackers that the U.S. government believes were working for Moscow launched an attack with destructive malware on six Ukraine power providers that played havoc with the nation's power grid. If Russia were held or found to be responsible for a similar attack in the United States, it is easy to see how matters could quickly escalate. It's also easy to imagine a scenario in which it could be difficult to establish who was ultimately to blame.



A further complicating factor is that if the United States were hit with such an attack, it won't necessarily be seen as holding the moral high ground. Beginning in 2008, U.S. and Israeli officials used what WIRED magazine called "the world's first digital weapon"  the ultrasophisticated Stuxnet virus  to break Iranian centrifuges and hinder Tehran's nuclear program. The U.S. also has a long history of trying to influence events and elections in other nations, and a more recent history of mass spying on friends and foes alike.



With WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promising more leaks of secret Hilary Clinton documents next week, the remaining 61 days until the presidential election could see tensions ratchet up considerably between Washington and Moscow. This is a tricky, dangerous time. Americans need the Obama administration to rise to the occasion and to respond to Russian cyber provocations with both nuance and resolve  while also continuing to prevent the possibility of what then-Homeland Security czar Janet Napolitano dubbed in 2013 a "cyber 9/11."



This editorial appeared on the San Diego Union-Tribune and was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.




Monday's meeting between President Park Geun-hye and the heads of the ruling and opposition parties ended without any meaningful results. The participants concurred only on condemning Pyongyang's escalating nuclear brinkmanship but disagreed on how to react to the North's nuclear tests, including the issue of deploying a U.S.-made missile defense system here.



The party leaders left Cheong Wa Dae empty-handed after failing to reach any agreement to diffuse public concerns.



President Park called for nonpartisan cooperation to put stronger pressure on the North to give up its nuclear weapons program, saying Pyongyang wants to be a nuclear state by any means. She asked the opposition parties to support her decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to deter the North's nuclear and missile threats.



But Rep. Park Jie-won, acting head of the minor opposition People's Party, expressed his party's clear opposition to the THAAD deployment. Rep. Choo Mi-ae, the newly elected chairwoman of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea, said her party has yet to decide on its stance on that matter.



The two opposition leaders reportedly said sanctions and dialogue must be implemented simultaneously. Choo, in particular, proposed sending a special envoy to Pyongyang, and Park offered to create a national security consultative body among the parties and the government, both of which were rejected by President Park.



It's quite regrettable that our political leaders are poles apart on urgent and sensitive security issues at a time when nonpartisan cooperation is needed to ride out the looming security crisis. Of course, opinions can differ according to party affiliation, but the magnitude of their perception gaps is alarming.



Nonetheless, it is not without significance that the head of state met with party leaders so swiftly and they united in condemning the North's nuclear provocations in this emergency situation. Their differing views are real and wide, but it's not necessarily impossible for them to narrow their differences through frequent meetings and brisk dialogue. Hopefully the rival parties will be able to speak with one voice when it comes to security issues.



At this juncture, one can't overemphasize the crucial role of President Park. She must renounce her long-held belief that only the government can hold sway over security issues and deal with them as if she is running a nonpartisan cabinet. The time may come soon when she will have to send an envoy to Pyongyang, depending on the circumstances.




All possibilities including NK nuke tests need studying



Korea turned into the Japan it most feared to be for hours on Monday night.



The strongest-ever earthquakes dealt a one-two punch  one at magnitude 5.1 followed by one with 5.8 near Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province  shaking the entire nation and keeping people awake in fear of aftershocks.



A survey on the morning after showed relatively minor damage  several injuries, ruptured water mains, partially destroyed houses, etc,  but the one that was irreparably shattered was the sense of safety from seismic eruptions that the nation had taken for granted. Korea is geographically blocked by Japan that embraces the Ring of Fire, the rim of a horseshoe-shaped basin in the Pacific where 80 percent of the earthquakes in the world occur.



The latest quakes occurred on the Eurasian Plate on which the Korean Peninsula sits. More specifically, the epicenters are located where small fault lines converge and big earthquakes are believed to have taken place in the past.



The Monday tremblers were believed to be the delayed result of earthquakes with a magnitude up to 7 that hit Kumamoto, Japan, in April this year  killing 49 people and injuring over 3,000. The theory goes that Friday saw a kind of leftover seismic force being balanced out.



A big moot point is whether bigger earthquakes will follow or not. The Monday quakes show an unconventional pattern  a stronger quake being preceded by a weaker one. In this case, it can be scientifically inferred that even stronger quakes can follow but it is still an educated guess.



Amid a thick fog of uncertainty, it is odd that the chance of North Korea's repeated underground nuclear tests playing a role is dismissed off the cuff but, considering the uncertainty prevailing on the cause, this possibility needs studying as well. The North conducted five tests in the same area, triggering "artificial" earthquakes with magnitudes from 3.9 to 5.0. Already, a theory came out that these tests may help cause Mt. Baekdu to erupt again. It is believed that its last volcanic eruption occurred about 1,000 years ago.



It's time to remind ourselves of a recent study predicting that up to 110,000 people may be killed or injured, if an earthquake with the magnitude of 6.5 hit Seoul. It is still open to dispute whether even a more powerful quake with a magnitude of 7 can happen.



Judging by the added sense of urgency, the nation remains unprepared for and vulnerable to a killer quake. It was only in 1988 when the nation started to apply anti-quake requirements for new buildings.



On Monday night, the government failed to text alarms to people on time, triggering over 50,000 calls to Emergency 119 and more inquiries to newspapers and TV stations. Kakao Talk, the messenger service, got inundated by traffic three times the usual and was down for two hours. Uninformed people went out in throngs to the streets and didn't know what to do. The state-run KBS, which is supposed to play as the official disaster broadcaster, proved to be tardy and less than professional.

Thankfully, without accidents, high-speed KTX trains were brought to a stop and operation of nuclear power stations in the region were put on hold.



It's our job to put the Monday experience to its best use by stepping up preparations for an earthquake, the coming of which now looks to be a matter of time.




Actor Kang Ha Neul, known for his roles in dramas such as "Monstar" and "The Heirs" and the ever popular movie, "Twenty" recently had made his appearence at the sunny island, Singapore.

At a press conference, on 26 August at The Westin Singapore, the actor appeared in a dashing black suit and expressed his gratitude as he didn't expect the large number of fans in Singapore. It was the actor's second time in Singapore, but he gave a warm smile greeting media promoting his new upcoming drama, Scarlet Heart.

Kang said that he was aware of the ever popular original Chinese version prior the remake. He also expressed the pressure he received, but that did not stopped the actor from giving his all and to enjoy as much as he can. Along with the most prominent director in Korea, He really enjoyed the whole process.

Besides the outstanding line-up of actors working together with him, he mentioned that fans or viewers should look out for the aesthetic visuals and the colours of the scenes in the drama. The drama will definitely push one notch forward with this element.

Kang was being asked about a fun fact of himself, and something that the public does not know of. Compared to the 8th prince, he's character in the drama, he's not as smart or exactly good in martial arts. He described himself, a boy next door, nothing extra-ordinary.

When asked about how can the drama appeal to the younger viewers, as it is based in the historical era. He said that, " The drama is a mixture of historical era with fantasy elements that provokes imagination is an appealing factor."

" What other roles that do you want to try in your upcoming production?" The actor smiled grinly as he answered " I'm attracted to roles that has traits which i do not have in my real life. I've thought about acting as a young father to a child and I want to bring that to the table. It really makes me think on how do i deliver so i want to try it out "

Regarding what he likes about his 8th prince character, the actor exploded in English, " Everything! Just kidding!" Continued, " I was born as a prince. I wanted to explore life and did a lot of things but as a prince, I'm restricted " He explained, he met the female lead 'Haesoo' (played by IU) who allowed him to find his freedom and realised what he really wants to pursue in life. The girl element in the drama made him realise of his capabilities.

Actor was taken aback when being asked if his life were to turn into a movie, who would he want to play him in the movie? After pondered for a while, he replied, "That's a really difficult question, I want someone that is my best friend or someone who knows me well to play out this role."

The drama is related with transporting back in time. Between transporting back in time or take a peek into the future, he chose to go back in time. As the future was already been decided by the present, he doesn't have the power to make a difference. But if he travels back in time, he could make amendments and make the right decision in life

" I was really surprised and happy to see the venue is packed with people who came to see me. Thank you for the invitation, I will make good memories. When I return to Korea, I'll try my best to give you a better image " he said as the press conference comes to an end.

Kang Ha Neul also made a public appearance on the 27 August, at the Waterway point. He greeted his Singaporean fans and spent a memorable time with a few lucky fans.

You can watch the footage from the press conference captured by the KpopStarz team.

Scarlet Heart premieres on 29 August at the SAME TIME AS KOREA, every Monday and Tuesday at 9pm, first and exclusively on ONE. ONE is available in Singapore through Singtel TV Ch 513 & 604 and StarHub TV Ch 124, 820 & 823.

Written by: Hanisah | Photos by: Hanisah and Ong Melin | Video by: Ong Melin

Special thanks to ONE for the invitation to cover the press conference.
At 'Seoul International Drama Awards 2016', actor Song Joong Ki surprised the red carpet audiences as he walked down with his latest haircut - one that's actually shorter than what he had for his Captain Yoo Si Jin role in Descendants of the Sun.

Photo Credits: Yonhap

As the Hallyu actor enjoys his global popularity, he seems to constantly maintainedshort hairstyle fashion even after he completed his mandatory military service, albeit for short-haircut acting roles he accepted.

Photo Credits: Yonhap

Photo Credits: Yonhap

Photo Credits: KBS 2TV

Before Song Joong Ki started filming for the upcoming movie Battleship Island, he promised to have his hair cut short, and to lose weight as preparations for his role as a freedom fighter. He appears to have kept his words as he revealed his current hairstyle in the night of awards.

In Song Joong Ki's previous projects before he joined military in 2013, he was always admired with his medium-length layered hairstyle for his characters in The Innocent Man, and A Werewolf Boy, both in 2012.

Photo Credits: KBS 2TV

Source:HelloKpop
A former Ozark police chief and his attorney will split a $100,000 payout to end his lawsuit against the City of Ozark. Lyle Hodges resigned in June 2015 after a scathing report concluded he was incompetent and the city said it was going to cut his pay.

Ozark city attorney Dave Collignon says, when you are dealing with public funds, its important to be a good steward of taxpayers money. He says the decision to settle Hodges lawsuit came down to it being cheaper to settle than to fight it.

It's a new day in policing in Ozark.

We're definitely moving in the right direction, said Police Chief Tim Clothier.

The former major with the Owensboro, Ky., Police Department brought 24 years of law enforcement experience to Ozark.

Clothier says Ozark officers are now on the streets, on their beats, face to face with members of the public.

In a year's time, the department has seemingly done a 180-degree turn.

We have together implemented those changes, said Clothier.

Hodges resigned after 34 years on the Ozark police department. He claims he was essentially forced to resign even though his attorney says his review "did not reflect any negative issues needing to be addressed."

The independent report by Jack Merritt, a retired state trooper and former Greene County sheriff, showed otherwise. Merritt called Hodges ineffective as a leader, and incompetent to do his job.

Collignon says a three-year-old state law makes it almost impossible to fire a city police chief for being incompetent. He says a firing is only possible when a police chief is insubordinate.

"That seems crazy," a reporter said.

I agree, so talk to your legislator, said Collignon. What makes them any different than any other department head? If you are going to provide that kind of protection, so to speak, to a police chief, why not to the public works department?

Hodges filed suit in July 2015. He claimed age discrimination. His attorney, Jay Kirksey, on Monday sent this statement about the settlement, which was filed with the judge on Aug. 30:

Lyle Hodges and the City of Ozark came to a settlement agreement in the legal action Mr. Hodges filed for wrongful discharge and related age discrimination. Mr. Hodges was forced to resign on June 26, 2015.

The performance evaluations of Mr. Hodges did not reflect any negative issues needing to be addressed. The depositions of the City Administrator, Mr. Childers, and Mike Hunter were taken. It was admitted that Mr. Childers told the City Alderman that he was going to suggest that Mr. Hodges retire.

It was admitted that there existed no cause to terminate. It was testified that we didnt think cause existed to terminate Lyle Hodges. Having no cause, Mr. Childers then decided to cut the wages of Mr. Hodges by 30 percent, and implement a disciplinary plan, unless Mr. Hodges retired and released the City and its representatives from a claim for age discrimination.

Mr. Hodges is pleased that the matter has now been resolved.

In the end, city officials believe the new chief is good for the city. Clothier says the biggest thing that citizens will see different is they can actually get to know the officer who works in their specific zone. Under Hodges, officers did not have assigned zones or beats.

The settlement document says Hodges will receive about $55,000 and Kirksey will receive about $45,000.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has called for the withdrawal of U.S. military from a restive southern island, fearing an American troop presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners.

Duterte, who was in the spotlight last week over his televised tirade against the United States and President Barack Obama, said special forces now training Filipino troops were high-value targets for the Islamic State-linked Abu Sayyaf as counter-insurgency operations intensify.

These special forces, they have to go, Duterte said in a speech during an oath-taking ceremony for new officials. I do not want a rift with America  but they have to go, the Filipino president added.



Americans, they will really kill them, they will try to kidnap them to get ransom.

The comment by Duterte, a former southern mayor known for his terse words and volatile temperament, adds to uncertainty about what impact his rise to the presidency will have on one of Washingtons best alliances in Asia.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Enugu Catholic priest, who predicted the outcome of the 2015 presidential election, Revd. Fr. Ejike Mbaka has observed that Nigerians were yet to experience the real change being midwifed by President Muhammadu Buhari because some strategic positions were still occupied by the same people who milked the country dry in the past.

Stressing that the president was not totally free from the grip of those who ran the country aground in the past, he averred that The government we are experiencing is not yet a Buharinised government.

Mbaka stated this to newsmen in Enugu during the graduation of Niger Delta youths, who trained at Innoson Plastic Factory under Federal Governments Amnesty Programme, explaining that Buhari currently works with some people who do not want him to succeed in office and are desperate to pull him down.



Stating that he was yet to see the change he wants in Nigeria through the present government, he, however acknowledged that it was too early to give Buharis regime a dispassionate assessment, adding that Nigerians should give the President more time.

Many people who are in different strategic positions are still the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) people and Buhari may not even know and even some people who are working around him are working to pull him down.

Buhari means well, Buhari is a good man, Buhari is God-sent for this country but, I am telling you that there are crocodiles in the fish pond.

Buhari may not know that he is feeding not the fish in the fishpond but crocodiles that are even feeding on the fishes!

He also urged Nigerians to be prayerful. He said; Nigerians should go on their knees and pray for divine intervention because apart from God, we are going to see horrible things.

The way these people are ganging up, they want to break Nigeria and take over power and take us back to where we were coming from. I pray it shall be well with Nigeria and it shall be well with Nigerians.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
The Enugu State Police Command has arrested six notorious bandits that have been terrorising the residents of Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of the State.

Mr Ebere Amaraizu, the commands spokesman told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday that items recovered from the bandits included locally made guns and two short axes. He said other items recovered were TV sets, DVDs, standing fans, six handsets suspected to have been stolen from their victims.

Amaraizu said that the gang was rounded up by the police following a tip-off from some members of the public.

The police operatives in Adani Division in the early hours of Saturday, Sept. 10 nabbed six notorious armed bandits. They have been terrorising the residents of Opanda, Nimbo and Adani communities in Uzo-Uwani LGA of the state and its environs.



Suspects, name withheld, are helping the police in their investigations in relations to their alleged nefarious activities.

Their activities ranges from armed robbery and burglary among others, he said.

The police spokesman, however, said that the command had launched a manhunt on the remaining gang members.

Meanwhile, the State Commissioner of Police, Mr Emmanuel Ojukwu, had applauded the effort of his men and the synergy between the police and members of the community.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Anti-riot police have just deployed at the National Theatre in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where a group of about 30 women had gathered for a protest.

They were intending to match to parliament to protest against a bill that seeks to amend the constitution to remove the age limit for judges, which currently stands at 75.

Protesters are worried that MPs lifting the age limit for judges could start the country down a path leading to lifting of an age limit for the presidency.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who is 72 and has led the country since 1986, would not be allowed to run for a sixth term in 2021 under current rules.



Several trucks carrying heavily armed policemen surrounded the premises this morning.

The women, who had dressed in white to show the peaceful nature of their protest, were then bundled into a police truck and taken away.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
The controversial US pastor Steven Anderson who has just been banned from entering South Africa has said on Facebookthat he feels sorry for people who live in South Africa, saying that religious freedom no longer exists there.

He added: Thank God we still have a wide open door in Botswana. Stand by for reports of MULTITUDES saved in Botswana.

He was banned for alleged homophobic remarks.

South Africas Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said he could not enter the country because he would have engaged in hate speech.



Pastor Anderson said in a video posted on You Tube before todays decision that the trip to South Africa was not going to be about homosexuality, and he stood by his views against homosexuality, which he said were endorsed by the Bible.

In another video, he said that in a way he had already entered South Africa as a lot of people are now talking about him. Lol, talk about a trouble maker.

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
Edelman plays the cello in "The Passions and Politics of Ed Edelman," a 2013 PBS SoCal documentary.



Retired Los Angeles County Supervisor Edmund Edelman died Monday at the age of 85. He had been incapacitated by Atypical Parkinsonism, a neurodegenerative brain disorder that gradually impairs mobility and muscle function, after a lengthy career in public service.

He was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1965, defeating Rosalind Wyman to become, at 34, the youngest council member at the time. He won reelection twice in the Westside's 5th district. In 1974 Edelman was elected to the Board of Supervisors, defeating another City Council member, John Ferraro, and succeeding Ernest Debs on the board. He remained on the board until 1994, when he was succeeded by Zev Yaroslavsky, who also had followed Edelman to the City Council.

"Los Angeles has lost a true giant of a public servant," Yaroslavsky said in a statement tonight. "Few persons had as profound an impact on the history of our city and county as Ed. His contributions to child welfare, transportation, mental health services and the arts are second to none in our region."

Edelman was a liberal who took on homelessness, public transportation, public health services and parks. He led the push to establish the county Department of Children and Family Services, to protect abused and neglected children, and the childrens dependency court in Monterey Park bears his name. So does a county mental health center in West LA. Edelman was an outspoken supporter of the gay community and advocate for AIDS services and treatments when that was a controversial position.

He also was a big supporter of the arts, known for playing the cello himself and feted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for his backing of the orchestra. A 1987 profile in the Los Angeles Times Magazine by Patt Morrison revealed this side of Edelman.

"It's the relaxation, the joy of it--feeling you're somehow participating in the great beauties of music. It provides a break from what I'm doing every day--speaking, reading, meeting with people. You're completely absorbed by it. The demands it makes come from within me rather than from others, and it's cut off from daily distractions."

The performing arts were not always this elegant for Edelman. He took up the cello eight years ago, after being persuaded diplomatically by his wife, Mari, a psychologist, to give up his childhood musical legacy, the accordion. Actually, "Stop playing that instrument, " is how she put it, or at least how he recalls it.



A PBS SoCal documentary by his wife Mari Edelman, narrated by Tom Brokaw, credited Ed Edelman with re-establishing the Pilgrimage Theater (renamed the John Anson Ford Amphitheater), establishing a live music series at LACMA and the Clark Library Chamber Music Series, and with the planning of Disney Hall. He authored a bond measure that raised funds for renovation of the Hollywood Bowl and played a pivotal role in the successful completion of the Colburn School of Music on Bunker Hill.

Trailer for The Passions and Politics of Ed Edelman:

LA Observed columnist Bill Boyarsky wrote in 2013 that he had his battles with Edelman while trying to open up the secrecy of the county supervisors, but he said that Edelman "got a lot done behind those closed doors."

Patiently working with his supervisorial colleagues, some of whom were incredibly bull headed and backward, he pushed through one of the most important reforms in county history, the childrens court, where children, caught in the juvenile justice system, face the judges in surroundings that are much more child friendly and humane than they were in the past. Its named after him.

And today, as the U. S. Supreme Court ponders same-sex marriage, its timely to remember how he stood up for gays and lesbians in a time when they hovered in the shadows. A great civil libertarian, he forced the West Hollywood sheriffs personnel to stop their overbearing, often brutal treatment of gays and lesbians, who were scorned or ignored by most political leaders.



Joel Bellman, a contributor to LA Observed who worked for Edelman and for Yaroslavsky, wrote in a piece for us in 2013 that Edelman was ahead of his time and that his accomplishments are not as well known today as they should be.

Ed came of age in the pre-Watergate and pre-Vietnam era before politics acquired its current toxic reputation for little more than empty gesture, wasteful self-aggrandizement, and cowardly abandonment of all principle. In those days, an idealistic young man of modest means could attend a fine public university, serve in the military with his liberal politics intact, gain a law degree and practice in the public sector as part of an apprenticeship to a respectable career in elected office.

Ed was first elected to the City Council in 1965, the year of the Voting Rights Act, the initiation of Johnson's Great Society programs - and, fatefully, the first major escalation of the Vietnam War, the Watts riots, and the onset of a period of urban unrest that encompassed more riots, assassinations, domestic terrorism and student protesters gunned down in the street by the National Guard. It was a tumultuous era, unimaginably challenging for elected officeholders - but there were no term limits, no tax revolt, and most importantly, as yet no stigma to political aspirations. Ronald Reagan was just a has-been minor actor, and most people still believed that government was a solution, not the problem. By 1989, Ed was a veteran six-term elected official. I was a veteran journalist, having spent the previous decade in radio news and on a newspaper editorial page, a career I had every intention of continuing. But that year, neither of us could have known that his chance phone call would completely change my life. That November, my newspaper, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, ceased publication after 86 years. Never having recovered financially from a devastating nine-year strike more than a decade before, the closure came as no surprise. But with my most promising post-Herald job opportunity having unexpectedly just fallen through only days before, I found myself on that final day of publication miserably cleaning out my desk with no viable prospects for continued employment in journalism. Then the phone rang, and I heard the voice of the County's Public Information Officer on the other end, telling me that Ed had always admired my work - apart from generally similar politics, we particularly shared a deep antipathy toward Prop. 13 and everything it represented - and if I didn't have anything else lined up, would I consider applying for a job on his staff as press deputy?



Born in Los Angeles in 1930, Edelman attended Burnside Elementary School, Los Angeles High and Beverly Hills High, and earned his BA in political science and his law degree from UCLA. Edelman lived in Westwood, close to the UCLA campus.

Funeral services will be held at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City on Thursday, September 15 at 1 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Ed Edelman Endowment for Chamber Music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, and the Ed and Mari Edelman Chamber Music Institute at the Colburn School of Music.
PRESS RELEASE

Obama Deserves Impeachment Even Now, If He Vetoes JASTA Bill

Sept. 12, 2016 (EIRNS)"The President does plan to veto this legislation," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest replied to a reporters question on Obamas already stated intention to veto the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) bill, and thus defend his chosen British and Saudi "allies." At todays mid-day press briefing, Earnest stated, "That is still the plan. I do anticipate the President will veto the legislation when it is presented to him, [although] it hasnt been presented to him yet."

Such an action by the "lame duck" Obama would only seal his "legacy" as a defender of terrorist states.

A letter from 19 members of the 9/11 families group urging Obama to sign the JASTA bill, was released yesterday, upping the pressure on Obama. Their letter says this 15th anniversary of 9/11 is more difficult than previous ones, precisely because Obama is leaving them hanging by threatening the veto.

Calling the bill the "missing piece of Americas anti-terrorism campaign," they say that the right to sue Saudi Arabia, and other state sponsors of terrorism, "is important for our nation, because it will help to deter state-sponsored terrorism."

"You have had your differences with us about JASTA. And we have been supportive of the reasonable efforts Congress has made to address your misgivings. But, now, Congress has acted, and ... passed [this legislation] without a single dissenting voice. "JASTA will be delivered to you soon, perhaps Monday. And, here lies the reason this anniversary is made even harder than past ones: We dont know what you will do. We are left to wait, to hear remembrances and reassurances and regrets."

A similar request was made, today, by the 9/11 Families of Connecticut, with spokesman Brett Eagleson, whose father was killed at the World Trade Center, telling the press that a threatened veto was like, "a kick in the stomach to 2,996 victims of terrorism on American soil."
PRESS RELEASE

Tent Cities Grow in Major U.S. Cities, as Poverty, Homelessness Soar

Sept. 12, 2016 (EIRNS)Homeless encampments and tent cities are cropping up in most major U.S. cities, due to economic disintegration which leads to higher rates of poverty, unemployment and homelessness. According to The Economic Collapse blog, there are currently half a million homeless in the U.S., but the number is increasing on a daily basis.

The proliferation of tent cities in such major cities as Washington, D.C., Seattle, and St. Louis reflects the worsening situation. In California, the homelessness rate is so high that the Los Angeles City Council has asked Gov. Jerry Brown to officially declare a state of emergency. Portland, Oregon has extended its "homeless emergency" for another year.

The creation of tent cities is "booming" in many locations, according to this report, and local officials have no means to deal with the problem. Often, residents are ordered to take down their tents and leavewith nowhere else to go.

The plight of children is particularly dire. The Economic Collapse blog, citing its own archives, reported that since 2008, the number of homeless children has risen by 60%. "Poverty USA" adds that at some point over the last year, 1.6 million children slept either in a homeless shelter or in some other form of emergency housing. Obama calls this a "recovery."

In 27 major U.S. cities, large tent cities have become so well established that they have their own namesCamp Hope in Las Cruces, New Mexico; Camp Take Notice in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Safe Ground in Sacramento, California, and The Jungle, in San Jose, California, are just a few.

The Economic Collapse blog warns that as the economic "downturn" continues to accelerate, "our homelessness boom is going to spiral out of control. Pretty soon, there will be tent cities in virtually every community in America."
PRESS RELEASE

Philippines President Duterte: U.S. Military Must Leave Mindanao

Sept. 12, 2016 (EIRNS)Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte took a huge step forward in freeing his country from Washingtons neo-colonial control today by announcing that the U.S. Special Forces, which have operated in the southern island of Mindanao since 2002, have got to get out.

"The U.S. Special Forces, they have to go," he said, according to the Philippines Inquirer. "They have to [leave] Mindanao. There are many [Americans] there," the President said in a speech at the oath-taking ceremony of the new government appointees in Malacanang, the Presidential palace.

"I just could not say it [at the ASEAN summit in Laos]," he continued, "because I dont want a rift with America. The situation there [in Mindanao] will be more volatile. If they are seen there, they will really be killed," he added.

Duterte has launched a major escalation in the war on terrorists, primarily against the Abu Sayyaf, originally spawned from the Afghansi fighters trained by the United States to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. The "Abus," as they are called, now claim allegiance to ISIS. Duterte said the American presence will make it more difficult to win a real war on terrorism: "Americans, they will really kill them; they will try to kidnap them to get ransom."

So far, Duterte has not given any hint that he will cancel the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Act (EDCA), the illegal deal former President Aquino rammed through without the Senate approval which the Constitution requires. The EDCA, which allows the U.S. to set up five bases across the country, is now being implemented; but the EDCA was put into effect as an "executive action," based the devious pretext that it was only an extension of a 2002 agreement approved by the Senate, which allowed U.S. Special Forces trainers to go to Mindanao to help fight the terrorists. They have been there ever since.

So, if Duterte makes the U.S. forces leave Mindanao, the new bases in the rest of the country, intended to be the core of a war on China, could go with them. In fact, since Aquino illegally imposed EDCA as an "executive action," Duterte can easily scrap it on the same basis.
The New York state attorney general announced settlements Tuesday with Mattel, Viacom, Hasbro and JumpStart Games to stop them from using or allowing tracking technology on their popular childrens websites.

The settlements require El Segundo-based Mattel, Viacom and JumpStart to pay penalties totaling $835,000 following a two-year investigation into violations of the 1998 federal law that prohibits unauthorized collection of childrens personal information on websites directed at users under 13. Hasbro wont pay a penalty because it was enrolled in a Federal Trade Commission-approved online-privacy program that had some problems, according to the attorney generals office.

All four companies allowed tracking technology such as cookies on their websites in violation of the law, New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman said. Such technology can be used by marketers and advertisers to target potential customers.

Advertisement

The way the law is structured, the companies have the primary obligation to police their sites, Schneiderman said. When we notified them, they took immediate action.

Their websites include Mattels Barbie, Hot Wheels and American Girl; Viacoms Nick Jr. and Nickelodeon; JumpStarts Neopets; and Hasbros My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop and Nerf.

Mattel said it takes online privacy and security seriously.

Any time we become aware of a question about whether a Mattel-operated website is in full compliance with the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act or other laws, we take prompt action to investigate and, if necessary, remedy the situation and look for additional controls to avoid a re-occurrence, spokesman Alex Clark said.

Hasbro said it cooperated with investigators and will closely monitor companies working on its behalf.

Viacom and JumpStart didnt immediately reply to requests for comment.

All four companies signed agreements to regularly scan their childrens websites to screen advertisers or others data-collection practices to ensure legal compliance and update their privacy policies. Penalties are $500,000 for Viacom, $250,000 for Mattel and $85,000 for JumpStart.

UPDATES:

2:35 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information.

This article was originally published at 11:45 a.m.
Arthur Miller begins his drama A View From the Bridge with stage directions on how a modest apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn, circa 1956 should look: a clean and homely living room and dining room; a rocking chair down front; a round dining table with chairs; a portable phonograph.

None of these elements was visible on the stage of the Ahmanson Theatre on a recent morning when Ivo van Hove was fine-tuning his production of the classic play, which he first directed at the Young Vic in London and later brought to Broadway, where it won Tony Awards for revival and director in June.

Stay as close to the edge as possible, he told the actors, steering them to the periphery of the productions minimalist set  a long, rectangular platform that suggests a fashion catwalk lighted to a celestial glow.

Advertisement

That push to the edge symbolizes the artistic spirit of the entire production. In many respects, this re-imagining of A View From the Bridge, set to open at the Ahmanson on Wednesday, is unlike any revival of the play that has come before  an avant-garde interpretation that is both faithful and defamiliarizing.

Wait for the beat, then turn your head, Van Hove later instructed an actor, coordinating movement with the productions percussive music track. The tiniest gesture turns out to be crucial when theres little else on stage but actors circling one another with dance-like physicality. Visually, Van Hoves conception has the spare, antiseptic look of a trendy art gallery that one might find in Red Hook, Brooklyn, circa 2016.

The fact that its so empty  there are no props  it becomes very sculptural, said the Belgian-born, Amsterdam-based director during a break in dress rehearsals. Its like Noh theater, without being too formal.

The overarching concept, he said, was to turn what Miller wrote into a modern Greek tragedy and not into a naturalistic family drama about immigrants. Thats not what its about.

The production opens with the set enclosed in a giant box-like structure, with rows of audience benches on both sides, like a modern take on an ancient amphitheater. When the set reveals itself, its like Pandoras box opening up, according to Jan Versweyveld, who designed the sets and lighting.

The often intense lighting feels like these people are the subject of a laboratory investigation, he said. Its also a kind of voyeurism. The actors have no privacy at all, and the audience is watching the audience on the other side.

Director Ivo van Hove accepts the Tony Award for direction of a play for A View From the Bridge in New York on June 12. (Theo Wargo / Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions )

A View From the Bridge has almost always been performed as a slice-of-life 1950s-era drama, with realistic sets and costumes. In this production, the cast wears contemporary business-casual clothes  button-down shirts and slacks for the men, blouses and skirts for the women.

The unconventional approach was welcomed by Rebecca Miller, the playwrights daughter and a filmmaker whose latest feature, Maggies Plan, opened this year. She oversees the rights to her fathers body of work.

Im always interested in new perspectives on the plays, she said via email.

What Ivo has done is to strip away the trappings of the play and leave the language, unveiling its ancient power, which springs from a root of human sexual obsession.

The unabashed sexuality of the play takes center stage in the productions first few minutes, when longshoreman Eddie Carbone (Frederick Weller) takes a shower in full view of the audience. (The actor is shirtless but keeps his pants on.)

A family man teetering toward the abyss, Eddie lives with his wife, Beatrice, and his orphaned 17-year-old niece, Catherine. His domestic life is disrupted by the arrival of two male relatives from Italy, one of whom catches the eye of Catherine, sparking jealousy in Eddie.

Weller said he saw the recent Broadway run featuring a different cast led by Mark Strong, and Weller later auditioned for the L.A. engagement the day before the Tony Awards.

Van Hove is the kind of director whos not acting out of fear, Weller said. And thats what you dont want in a director  someone whos timid or worried about critics.

The play is narrated by an omniscient chorus played by actor Thomas Jay Ryan, who has appeared in a few of Van Hoves productions including Molieres The Misanthrope at New York Theatre Workshop and last springs revival of Millers The Crucible on Broadway.

At first, I kind of anticipated a tyrannical presence, a dictatorial European director, because I knew his work and its so forceful, Ryan recalled. But he really is gentle with actors.

Which isnt to say that hes easy: On the first day of rehearsals, which took place in New York before moving to L.A., cast members were expected to be off book, or to know all their lines, which is a rarity in the theater world.

Not only that, we were all in costumes, on a mock-up set and there were sound cues. That was intimidating at first, said actress Andrus Nichols, who plays Beatrice. But the crew was incredibly efficient and grounded. It was a very precise and efficient room from the beginning.

The cast of A View From the Bridge rehearses at the Ahmanson. (David Ng / Los Angeles Times )

For one of Europes most in-demand stage directors, Los Angeles might seem like alien territory. But Van Hove said he enjoys coming to Southern California.

I come here very often ... like two times a year, he said. I was here four weeks ago. This is my hideaway. I like to relax, read some books and sit at the pool.

Since directing the two Miller plays on Broadway, Van Hove has kept a packed schedule. He directed a stage version of the 1969 Luchino Visconti movie The Damned at this summers Festival dAvignon in France, with actors from La Comedie-Francaise.

Its about fascism and the extreme right wing, which is a huge thing in France right now, he said. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

Van Hove continues to lead the Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the innovative Dutch theater company, where many of his productions originated. Future projects include a stage adaptation of another Visconti movie, Obsession, starring Jude Law, which will be a coproduction with Londons Barbican Centre.

This fall, Van Hove will restage his Shakespeare-themed Kings of War at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and his production of Ibsens Hedda Gabler at Londons National Theatre, with Ruth Wilson of Showtimes The Affair in the title role.

For me, its a suicide play, he said of Hedda. I think suicide is on her mind from the first scene. Its not a consequence of anything.

But A View From the Bridge remains his biggest international success. It has been performed on the West End and in Paris. After L.A., the production will travel to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

I think we were spot on with everything, the director said. Sometimes you make every right decision.

------------

A View From the Bridge

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave, Los Angeles

When: Opens Wednesday; ends Oct. 16

Tickets: $25-$125

Information: (213) 972-4400 or www.centertheatregroup.org

david.ng@latimes.com

ALSO

Amelie, Big Daddy, Hedwig: Familiar names hit SoCal stages this fall

The Troubies turn an ancient Roman comedy into a modern Haunted House Party

Better than Bryan Cranston? Star of South Coast Reps All the Way delivers a most convincing LBJ
Thats enough of me for one day, Dev Patel said, walking over to a poster board featuring a huge image of his head and flipping it over.

Much better, he said, grinning proudly.

It was the day after his new movie Lion had premiered here, and he was holed up in a hotel room fielding a barrage of fresh interview requests. Heading into the festival, everyone in Hollywood seemed to be buzzing about a few films  the musical La La Land, the love story Moonlight  but Lion wasnt one of them.

That all changed Sunday night, when the movie from first-time feature director Garth Davis caused a theater packed with jaded industry types to break into full-blown sobs. The film is based on the true story of Saroo Brierley, who got lost on the crowded streets of Calcutta when he was just 5 years old. He ended up in an orphanage, where he was adopted by a well-off couple in Australia. He grew up in a loving home where he thrived, eventually attending college in Melbourne.

Advertisement

It was there that he began to share his origin story with some classmates, one of whom suggested he try searching for his long-lost home on a then-primitive Google Earth. With only a few vague landmarks from India still imprinted in his memory, he spent years scouring the satellite images in the hopes he might reunite with his biological family. To find out how it all plays out, youll have to see the film when the Weinstein Co. releases it this Thanksgiving.

 Rooney Mara, Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman star in Lion.

Newcomer Sunny Pawar plays young Saroo -- youre going to have a difficult time handling his level of adorable -- while Patel plays the character in his older years. Though the 26-year-old Patel was born in London, like his character, he too was always curious about his familys roots in India. At school, he said, he felt he had to hide his culture so that he wasnt singled out as somehow different.

The only way to try and fit in was to try to be like everyone else, otherwise youd get bullied, recalled Patel. I spent a lot of growing up trying to shun that part of myself.

That shifted when he was 17 and traveled to India to shoot Slumdog Millionaire, the Oscar-winning Danny Boyle film that would launch his Hollywood career. Walking the streets of the country, he found himself shell shocked: It was a life-changing moment for me, he said. It made me feel a bit more whole and understand myself and my heritage more.

See more coverage from the Toronto Film Festival 

Before the trip, he admitted, his idea of India was rather stereotypical. Heading into auditions for his Slumdog characters love interest, he thought the local young women were going to have these little bindi marks and have coconut oil in their hair and wear saris and a cow would be outside walking by, he said with a laugh. And actually they just came in with ripped jeans, beautiful, just listening to Led Zeppelin. They were more forward-thinking in culture than I was. It was eye-opening.

Lion, meanwhile, is already drawing comparisons to Slumdog Millionaire -- largely because the film features a young Indian boy fighting his way out of poverty. Its a correlation that bothers Patel, who considers his character to be more Australian than he is Indian. (He spent eight months trying to perfect Saroos Tasmanian accent and met with Saroo and his Australian parents -- played by Nicole Kidman and David Wenham -- to prepare for the role.)

Everyone will pigeonhole you into, Oh, hes playing an Indian guy. The movie is kind of set of India and theres poverty, so its like Slumdog, he said. Its such a shame. Thats just naivete to me. It just takes away from all the hard work.

Its been a struggle getting casting directors to look beyond his skin color, Patel said.

There arent many roles written for someone that looks like me. Its slim pickings, the actor acknowledged. Its difficult, but I try and stay on the optimistic side. I want there to be people that look like me represented on screen. Because when I was growing up, the only person that I could look up to that kind of resembled what I looked like was Bruce Lee.

Were at the front of something, Patel continued. If you look at the African American struggle in Hollywood, there are so many of these great icons -- from Sidney Poitier to Denzel Washington to Samuel L. Jackson to Cuba Gooding to Will Smith. But in terms of being Asian or South Asian -- whatever you want to call it -- were treading new ground.

amy.kaufman@latimes.com

Twitter: @AmyKinLA
A rare technical glitch briefly halted a Toronto press screening of Vikram Gandhis Barry on Sunday morning, muffling the films sound quality and rendering the dialogue mostly inaudible. Order and volume were happily restored in due course, though not until after the audience spent several minutes waiting in the dark  by which point a few viewers, either concerned about making their next screenings or taking advantage of a guilt-free bathroom break, made their way to the exits.

Let me know if he gets the girl, one viewer joked to her screening companion as she departed. For of course, the outcome of the love story in Barry is no more in doubt than its title characters ultimate destiny. Barry, played without a hint of affectation by the Australian actor Devon Terrell, is in fact a young, college-age version of Barack Obama, and the girl is Charlotte (Anya Taylor-Joy, The Witch), a fictionalized composite of three girlfriends that Obama had at Columbia, according to a post-screening Q&A.

In other words, Barry, which made its world premiere in the festivals Special Presentations section, is the other Obama movie making its way into the spotlight mere months before the real Obama ends his presidency. The first one, which premiered at Sundance and is now playing in theaters, is Southside With You, Richard Tannes sweetly meandering speculation on Obamas first date with his future first lady, Michelle Robinson, in 1989 Chicago.

Advertisement

That movie, with its romantic walking-and-talking structure, owed an obvious debt to the trilogy that began with Richard Linklaters Before Sunrise. Oddly enough, Barry has a faint Linklater connection as well: Ellar Coltrane turns up in a few scenes as Barrys bookish, goateed roommate at Columbia, briefly transforming the movie into a sort of time-traveling sequel to Boyhood. (The fact that Obama singled out Boyhood as his favorite movie in 2014 only adds to the charming weirdness of the experience.)

Because its set during an earlier, more formative period than Southside With You, Barry features far less wink-wink foreshadowing, and Terrells performance, while no less winning than that of Parker Sawyers, has far less cocksure charisma. Barry, who reads voraciously and smokes compulsively, is constantly plagued by doubt and worry, anxious about what life and love will bring, and increasingly uncertain about where he fits in, as either an American or a citizen of the world. He has roots spread all over Hawaii, California and Kenya, a father he barely knows, and a tendency to slightly unbalance everyone he meets  whether its the campus cops who keep asking him to show his student ID, or the black New York locals who dont take kindly to seeing him with a white girlfriend.

A modest production imbued with political savvy and a surprising depth of feeling, Barry is the rare biographical drama that, rather than giving us a bland recitation of accomplishments, takes the formation of identity as its very subject  and has the confidence to acknowledge that the process of formation will continue well past the closing credits. By addressing the life of one of the most famous people in the world, the film gets away with telling only part of the story, allowing us to make intuitive connections between past and present.

If theres a genre of prestige filmmaking that could benefit from this kind of less-is-more approach overall, its the biopic, which is as reliable a staple of the fall season as Brussels sprouts (and just as nutritional in its appeal). Torontos nearly 300-feature program is awash in fictional portraits of real-life figures, few of which are more prominent or conventionally styled than Oliver Stones Snowden, which stars a fine Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the young computer whiz who blew the whistle on the National Security Agencys surveillance.

Ill have more to say about Snowden in my review later this week (it opens Friday in theaters). By then I also hope to have a word or two about Jackie, which stars Natalie Portman as a recently widowed Jacqueline Kennedy, and which was such a hot ticket in Toronto that a number of other journalists (myself included) were shut out of the films Monday afternoon press screening.

Jackie is the latest film and first English-language production from Pablo Larrain, who with every film seems to further cement his standing as the preeminent Chilean director of his generation and one of the leading filmmakers in world cinema. Hes certainly one of the busiest: Jackie is one of two biopics Larrain has brought to the festival this year, the other being the Cannes-premiered Neruda, which is less an ordinary biopic of Pablo Neruda than a richly inventive fantasia on the poets themes. Its a bracing reminder that there are many ways to capture an artists vibrant essence truthfully on screen, and cleaving strictly to the historical record isnt necessarily one of them.

As it happens, Neruda isnt the only fine film about a great poet screening in Toronto this year. More dramatically straightforward but similarly playful and literate in sensibility, A Quiet Passion is a richly idiosyncratic portrait of Emily Dickinson from the great and newly prolific British filmmaker Terence Davies (his previous film, Sunset Song, was at Toronto just last year).

On the surface, A Quiet Passion would seem to boast all the familiar hallmarks of a 19th century chamber piece. The interiors of the Dickinson familys home in Amherst, Mass., are exquisitely if not lavishly appointed, and Davies camera (the cinematographer is Florian Hoffmeister) inhabits every room with characteristic sensitivity. We dont see Dickinson doing much writing, but expertly chosen excerpts from her work are laid over the soundtrack at significant moments.

Whats bold about the film is how unexpectedly, hilariously funny it is, as the independent-minded Dickinson  played with steely wit and piercing vulnerability by Cynthia Nixon  brilliantly deflects her familys every attempt to tame her into social, spiritual and intellectual submission. Before it tilts inevitably toward tragedy, the film is a riotous assemblage of drawing-room banter to rival Whit Stillmans recent Jane Austen comedy Love & Friendship. Yet in contrast with that films effervescent delivery, Davies has directed his actors to recite their dialogue slowly and clearly, in a stately, formalized rhythm that has the gradual effect of clearing the mind  of the speakers, and of the viewer.

Dickinsons rejection of patriarchal oppression and forced piety (Davies, a lapsed Catholic, surely identifies) becomes something trenchant, laudable and deeply sad, as her exactingly high standards increasingly isolate her from those in her midst. In documenting this trajectory, A Quiet Passion does something precious few films about writers attempt, much less pull off. Masterfully precise in its language, its delineation of physical space and its sensitivity to its characters emotional and moral states, Davies film utterly collapses the distance between its subjects outer and inner lives. The directors patient, rigorous pursuit of a higher form of artistic truth merges with Dickinsons own.

justin.chang@latimes.com
LSwop, which stands for Luxury Swop, wants to bring the Rent the Runway experience to men. European designer sneakers are to men what designer handbags are to women, said Jonathan Escoffery, who founded the business with Jinette Cordero. I saw Rent the Runways success and realized there wasnt a concept like this for men.

According to Escoffery, who used to work in creative development for brands and stores, hes focusing solely on European luxury sneakers from designers including Tom Ford, Christian Louboutin, Pierre Hardy and Rick Owens. These are typically priced at $800 to $1,000 at retail.

We see where everything is going with the sneaker reselling business and I feel like that market is so oversaturated. There are so many sites and blogs dedicated to Jordan and Nike, Escoffery told WWD.

Advertisement

LSwop operates on a monthly subscription model and sneakers can be rented for one to four days. For $150 customers can rent one sneaker each month, for $250 customers can rent two sneakers each month and for $350 customers can rent three sneakers each month. Subscribers receive the sneaker, which features a 3M sole protector, in their own custom wood shoe box that also includes a free pair of socks. Escoffery said no sneaker will be sent out more than two times. After the sneakers have reached their rental life span, members will have the opportunity to purchase the lightly used sneakers at a discounted price.

Escoffery also plans on offering other incentives to his subscribers including surprise pop-up events and sample sales. To celebrate the launch of the service LSwop will run a pop-up thats open until Wednesday at 8 Greene Street in SoHo. Its stocked with mens wear from brands including Vetements, Balmain, Givenchy and Rick Owens.
Innovative craft brewers are always looking for new avenues to explore with their beer, from interesting ingredients to off-the-beaten path styles nearly forgotten. One style thats started to get attention in the craft beer world is the grisette  a relative of Belgian saisons that feels like a perfect fit for Southern California.

A member of the loose collection of farmhouse ales that developed along the border of France and Belgium, grisette originated not in the fertile farmlands of Wallonia but to the south, in the Hainaut province, where Belgians mined coal and ore. Where saisons developed as restorative beverages for tired farmhands toiling in the fields, grisette was brewed to quench the thirst of the men laboring with pick and shovel in the mines. The name grisette literally means little gray and refers to either the gray stone that the miners dug through, or the gray-clad worker women who served the eponymous ales to the workers. Like the saison ales served in the fields, grisette was brewed primarily to refresh. Light in body and low in alcohol, a glass of grisette cut through the dust and grit after a days work, the dry finish helping to further quench the thirst. These bright and refreshing qualities, and a complex flavor that remains easy to drink, make grisette a natural fit for Southern Californias lingering summer warmth.

Today, brewers are revisiting many regional specialties such as grisette and the ultra-trendy gose style from Germany, but there are no instruction manuals for making these Old World brews. There is little evidence suggesting what the traditional versions were like. Most beer historians rely on brewery records and recipe logs when investigating historical styles, but the small farmhouse operations producing grisette in Belgium didnt leave many records behind.

Advertisement

In the book Farmhouse Ales, author Phil Markowski says, Oral accounts of those who remember the old grisettes say they were low alcohol, light bodied, saison-like golden ales of no great distinction. This description gives todays brewers plenty of leeway to design a saison-like beer that emphasizes refreshment, and the handful of craft breweries now making grisette vary greatly in their approach. Sometimes the brews are hopped more aggressively than saisons, often they employ a balancing tartness, and theyre usually kept low in alcohol.

The lone Belgian brewery still producing a grisette in any quantity  Brasserie St. Feuillien  doesnt export its line of four grisettes. Likewise, many of the well-regarded modern examples brewed in America  such as Side Project brewing from St. Louis and Pennsylvanias Sly Fox brewing  are not available in Southern California, but a pair of Los Angeles brewers do produce noteworthy versions.

The Agoura Hills brewpub Ladyface Ale Companie makes La Grisette, an example brewed with wheat, built around a brisk, tart zing. Its pale and dry and about 5% alcohol; La Grisette is as welcoming to food as it is thirst-quenching  a natural match to moules fritte or goat cheese. While you can occasionally find La Grisette on tap around town, your best bet is to visit the Ladyface brewpub for a glass (or a growler fill).

In Torrance, Monkish Brewing bottles Ghetto Bird  a grisette thats light and tart thanks to three months spent maturing in an oak vat. The hazy, pale beer is made with a mix of grains, including spelt and oats, that add texture and subtle cereal flavors.

Monkish owner Henry Nguyen, who specializes in saison brewing, calls the grisette style romanticized and says he isnt even really sure what makes them different from the more common saison. We approached it the same as any saison we have brewed, he says. We like lower [alcohol] beers to drink ourselves, and I wanted a complex beer at that. Why do we call it a grisette? Why not?

Bottles of Ghetto Bird are available in the Monkish tasting room for about $18, and the tart, slightly oaky and refreshing beer is an excellent table beer served with brunch, a picnic lunch or with a spread of cheese and charcuterie.

With a combination of refreshing drinkability and farmhouse ale complexity, at a session-friendly strength, the grisette is primed for a comeback. And as drinkers get comfortable quaffing tart gose and grow bored with attempts to homogenize Belgian witbiers, grisette may be the next Old World style to captivate the craft brewing scene.

Ladyface Ale Companie, 29281 Agoura Road, Agoura Hills, (818) 477-4566, www.ladyfaceale.com

Monkish Brewing, 20311 S. Western Ave., Torrance, (310) 295-2157, www.monkishbrewing.com

ALSO:

The 6 beers you should be drinking this fall

Four peach beers to toast the end of summer

Four new happy hours to check out now: Paley in Hollywood, Simbal in Little Tokyo and more
The University of Californias youngest, smallest and least-prestigious campus finally got some big-time respect, when a closely watched list of the nations best universities included UC Merced for the first time.

Long considered the campus of last resort for UC-bound students, UC Merced ranked 152nd among 298 national universities reviewed by U.S. News & World Report. All of UCs nine undergraduate campuses made the list, topped by UC Berkeley as the nations best public university, followed by UCLA in second place.

UC Merced, opened to undergraduates in 2005 to expand educational and economic opportunities in the impoverished San Joaquin Valley, was particularly noted for its graduation rates and alumni giving.

Advertisement

Dorothy Leland, UC Merceds chancellor, said she was thrilled by the recognition.

This will really start changing the perception of the campus, she said in an interview.

At first, people saw UC Merced as the last-resort spot offered to students who meet UC eligibility requirements but are rejected from their preferred campuses, and altering that view has been difficult, Leland said. Yet students from that referral pool have steadily declined from 28% in 2005 to about 6% this fall, university data show.

UC Merced educates the highest proportion of undergraduate students who are underrepresented minorities (54%), low income (61%) and the first in their families to attend college (67%) among all 10 campuses in the UC system, according to fall 2015 data. California residents made up 99.6% of the 6,237 undergraduates, including 27% from Los Angeles County.

The campus significantly outperformed expectations, posting a 66% graduation rate in 2015 over the 52% predicted using the magazines methodology. The review considered factors including assessments by peers and high school counselors, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, class sizes, acceptance rates, standardized test scores and alumni giving.

Although most UC Merced alumni are still in their 20s, 11% of them contributed to their alma mater  outstripping the giving rate of all other UC campuses except UC Santa Barbara (16%) and UC Berkeley (12%). UCLAs rate was 8%, and UC Riverside, the most comparable campus, was 4%.

In terms of graduation-rate improvement, Leland cited strong programs to help struggling students, including one led by peers who in their first year experienced difficulties and learned how to overcome them.

Campus momentum will accelerate next month when UC Merced breaks ground on a $1.14-billion project to almost double its physical capacity with state-of-the-art facilities for nearly 4,000 more students by 2020.

In rankings of the nations best public universities, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UC Davis and UC San Diego all placed in the top 10.

But a bit of bad news for the Bruins: UCLA slipped one notch to 24th in overall rankings of public and private universities, falling one behind rival USC.

Princeton University, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Yale University, Columbia University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University were named the top 10 national universities.

MORE EDUCATION NEWS

Californias schools wont be judged only by their test scores, school board votes

Closing of ITT Tech and other for-profit schools leaves thousands of students in limbo

As two all-girls schools open in L.A. this year, a motto emerges: We want you to know your voice matters
A leader of the Bling Ring  the celebrity burglary scheme that drew headlines and inspired a movie of the same name  and another man pleaded guilty Monday to stalking a West Hollywood skin-care guru after a judge gutted the case by tossing out the more serious charge of solicitation to commit rape.

Nicholas Prugo, 25, and Edward Feinstein, 32, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count each of stalking Dawn DaLuise, the proprietor of a skin refinery that catered to celebrities, according to the Los Angeles County district attorneys office.

The pair did not strike a deal with prosecutors but opted for the plea after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan dismissed the solicitation of rape charge.

Advertisement

Tynan cited insufficient evidence that was presented during a 12-hour preliminary hearing that took place over several days in late July and early August.

Prosecutors had previously dropped charges that the men stalked DaLuises daughters. Tynan also reduced the felony stalking charge to a misdemeanor, setting the stage for the sudden plea deal  an anti-climatic ending for a case that became regular tabloid fodder.

Prugo was a member of the Bling Ring burglary crew of teens and twentysomethings accused of stealing more than $3 million in jewelry and designer apparel from the homes of celebrities Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Orlando Bloom, among others.

Prugo and Feinstein are scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 24.

The district attorneys office had alleged the pair schemed to stalk DaLuise and her two daughters between Dec. 1, 2013, and April 1, 2014. The pair, prosecutors said, published an online ad seeking men to visit DaLuises residence and sexually assault her.

DaLuise was arrested in 2014 and charged with trying to solicit the assault and murder of a business competitor, Gabriel Suarez. Prosecutors said DaLuise targeted Suarez after he opened a skin-care boutique next to her business.

But in January 2015, after just an hour of deliberations, a Los Angeles jury acquitted DaLuise of all charges

West Hollywood skin-care specialist found not guilty of plotting to kill rival 

A subsequent lawsuit by DeLuise alleges that the stalking was the work of Feinstein, who was also telling detectives that DaLuise was colluding with him to make it look like Suarez was targeting her. Feinstein, the suit says, provided detectives with the texts that were ultimately used as evidence against DaLuise.

Feinstein was arrested on suspicion of stalking DaLuise in 2014 but was released.

After being convicted in the Bling Ring crimes, Prugo served one year of a two-year prison sentence. He pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree residential burglary.

The burglaries were famously chronicled in a movie directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Emma Watson.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Follow @lacrimes on Twitter

ALSO

Man accused of bludgeoning his friend with an ax and dumping the body pleads not guilty

Remains found during dig for missing Cal Poly student Kristin Smart could be human or animal

Ex-Assemblyman Tom Calderon is sentenced to a year in federal custody in bribery case
Californians got their first dose of fall weather Tuesday as snow, rain and cooler temperatures gripped the state early this week.

Northern California experienced thunderstorms and showers that brought less than an inch of rain across Butte and Plumas counties Monday, while communities south of Lake Tahoe received a bit of snow early Tuesday. The precipitation is not enough to affect travel, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

Advertisement

In the Bay Area, rain moved through the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Central California wont receive rain, but will enjoy cooler temperatures  up to a 15-degree drop in some cities.

Highs will top out in the 70s Tuesday in the San Joaquin Valley for the first time in roughly 90 days due to a low-pressure system moving over California and Nevada, according to the National Weather Service in Hanford.

Its been a while since high temperatures have not reached 80 degrees in the San Joaquin Valley, the weather service said. This afternoon may be the first time in nearly three months for some locations.

The last day the temperature did not reach 80 degrees in Bakersfield was May 25  110 days ago.

Scattered storms could affect parts of the Sierra Nevada on Tuesday afternoon and strong winds could affect driving conditions in Kern County.

In Southern California, powerful winds howled through the Antelope Valley early Tuesday. Winds reached 57 mph in Lake Palmdale and 42 mph at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve in Lancaster.

Light drizzle left highways and roads slick across Los Angeles overnight. Los Angeles County Fire Camp 9 in Sylmar received the most rain: a tenth of an inch, according to meteorologist Todd Hall at the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

The taste of fall wont last long, with Californias usual late-summer heat expected to return with a vengeance within the week, Hall said. By Monday, temperatures are expected to soar to 100 degrees in Woodland Hills, he said.

Our warmest temperatures are usually in September, Hall said.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in downtown Los Angeles was 113 degrees on Sept. 27, 2010.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

ALSO

2 men are arrested during Ryan Lochtes debut on Dancing With the Stars

Man who stole parking enforcement car dies in contact with sheriffs deputies at a McDonalds

Firefighters battle flames and exploding gas cylinders in downtown L.A. building fire
More than four decades after two girls were shot to death in Yuba County, two men were arrested on suspicion of murder Tuesday after DNA evidence tied the pair to the unsolved case that shocked the area, officials said.

Larry Don Patterson, 65, and William Lloyd Harbour, 65, were taken into custody by U.S. marshals and Yuba County authorities in Oklahoma and Yuba County, respectively, in connection with the November 1973 slayings.

It was mid-morning on Nov. 12, 1973, when the mothers of Valerie Janice Lane, 12, and Doris Karen Derryberry, 13, both from Olivehurst, reported them missing.

Advertisement

The good friends had left home around noon Nov. 11 to go shopping at a mall in the nearby town of Linda. They were seen around the town until early that Sunday evening. They did not return home, so their mothers went to the police the next day.

A few hours later, the bodies of the two girls were found along a dirt road near Camp Far West Lake outside of Wheatland. Valerie and Doris had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range, said Leslie Carbah, a Yuba County sheriffs spokeswoman. Boys who had been target shooting that day found the bodies in a wooded area near a Bear River diversion dam.

Despite more than 60 interviews and three years of investigation, detectives did not find any worthwhile leads in the slayings. The case went cold, but many in the community never forgot.

In 2014, Carbah said, Yuba County sheriffs detectives reviewed the case and sent crime scene evidence to the California Department of Justice Bureau of Forensic Services for testing. That December, DNA evidence yielded matches that identified Patterson and Harbour, Carbah said.

The DNA finally gave us a lead in the case to chase, Carbah said. Both have prior crimes that put their DNA in the database.

Patterson was convicted of rape in the 1970s and spent time in prison; Harbour has a history of drug charges.

Detectives had to reconstruct the events and build a case that showed how the pair could have committed the slayings. Prosecutors filed charges against the men before their arrests Tuesday.

We express our sympathy and condolences to the families of Valerie and Doris after enduring decades of not knowing who was responsible for the brutal murders, Yuba County Sheriff Steve Durfor said at a news conference Tuesday.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Follow @lacrimes on Twitter

ALSO

SoCal Gas to pay $4-million settlement over massive Porter Ranch gas leak

Driver of stolen big rig carrying hazardous material surrenders after three-hour pursuit

Remains found during dig for missing Cal Poly student Kristin Smart could be human or animal

UPDATES:

4:30 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details from a news conference.

This article was originally published at 2:45 p.m.
At San Pedro and Third streets Tuesday, businesses tried to get back to normal, while some coped with damage from a fire that tore through a two-story business the night before in downtown Los Angeles.

The fire broke out about 8 p.m. Monday in the 300 block of East 3rd Street, said Brian Humphrey, spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The fire burned in the second floor of a two-story building. Aerial footage from TV news stations showed flames pushing through the buildings roof and engulfing the top of the structure.

Advertisement

It took more than 160 firefighters about two hours to put out the blaze, with the flames largely confined to the business Smoke Tokes, a wholesaler and distributor of smoking paraphernalia, according to the LAFD.

Firefighters encountered pressurized gas cylinders that exploded amid the inferno, fire officials said.

It was a tricky fire for us, LAFD Battalion Chief Mark Curry said Tuesday. We had multiple explosions going off inside the fire while it was burning due to the butane containers releasing.

 Firefighters battle a blaze at a two-story business on South San Pedro Street in downtown Los Angeles.

The building that houses Smoke Tokes has been red-tagged, or deemed unsafe for entry, fire officials said. Because of water damage, a few nearby businesses were yellow-tagged, meaning occupants could enter the building to retrieve belongings.

On Tuesday, workers repaired doors broken during the firefight, while arson investigators made their way around the building.

Because of the amount of inventory inside the business, tractor units will be used to pull everything out, Curry said.

Once they get all that stuff out, my arson investigators can come in and try and determine a cause, he said.

No injuries or evacuations were reported during the fire.

Times staff writer Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.

For more California news, follow @brittny_mejia

ALSO

SoCal Gas to pay $4-million settlement over massive Porter Ranch gas leak

2 Fullerton firefighters missing in Yosemite National Park found amid intense search

Driver of stolen big rig carrying possibly hazardous material surrenders after three hour pursuit
Flames tore through a two-story business in downtown Los Angeles on Monday night, putting firefighters on the defensive as they worked to control the blaze.

The fire broke out about 8 p.m. in the 300 block of East 3rd Street, said Brian Humphrey, spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The intense fire has burned in the second floor of a two-story building, and aerial footage from TV news stations showed flames pushing through the buildings roof and engulfing the top of the structure.

Advertisement

The flames were largely confined to the business Smoke Tokes, a wholesaler and distributor of smoking paraphernalia, according to the LAFD.

The more than 160 firefighters on scene have encountered pressurized gas cylinders that have been exploding amid the inferno, Humphrey said.

 Firefighters battle a blaze at a two-story business on South San Pedro Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Firefighters switched to a defensive strategy about 25 minutes after responding to the blaze.

Other buildings in the area, between Little Tokyo and skid row, were initially exposed to the flames. Peter Sanders, an LAFD spokesman, said firefighters worked to contain the blaze and prevent it from spreading.

As of 9:45 p.m., the blaze remained active but firefighters had blocked the fire from reaching other nearby structures, Humphrey said.

Its unclear what started the fire. No injuries or evacuations were reported.

Throngs of LAFD firetrucks and other emergency responders crowded the streets around the fire.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno.

ALSO

Man accused of bludgeoning his friend with an ax and dumping the body pleads not guilty

Remains found during dig for missing Cal Poly student Kristin Smart could be human or animal

Bling Ring leader and another man abruptly plead guilty to stalking after judge dismisses solicitation of rape charge

UPDATES:

10:10 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details, including the address of the fire.

8:50 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details.

This article was originally published at 8:30 p.m.
An assistant chief with the Los Angeles World Airports Police Division resigned Monday following a federal corruption investigation involving the former chief of police at the Port of Los Angeles.

Brian Walker, who oversaw the departments office of support services at Los Angeles, Ontario and Van Nuys airports, was on administrative leave before he resigned, police spokesman Rob Pedregon said.



For the record: A previous version of this post incorrectly listed Oxnard, rather than Ontario, airport among the locations served by Brian Walkers office.

The Rancho Cucamonga resident, 52, was charged in February with a misdemeanor count of filing a false tax return in 2012 after federal prosecutors began investigating Ronald Boyd, who oversaw the seaports police agency. Walker, who pleaded guilty in June, was scheduled to be sentenced Monday, but the hearing was delayed.

Advertisement

Walkers attorney Robin Yanes said prosecutors interviewed his client after they learned he worked with Boyd at Torrance security company At Close Range Inc. Boyd had an ownership interest in the company.

He was fully cooperating with them, honest and forthright, Yanes said.

Boyd was indicted in April 2015 and accused of defrauding the city for private gain and providing confidential information about the port to a software company that was developing a smartphone application. Later, Boyd pleaded guilty to tax evasion for failing to file taxes on the Torrance company, and providing a false statement to the FBI.

Walkers attorney said his client was wrongly persecuted because of his ties to Boyd and now he is losing his job on that.

According to U.S. District Court documents, Walker failed to report income from his work with Boyds company as well as the owner of American Guard Services Inc.

The charging document alleged that Walker stated he made $149,756 in 2012, but his income was actually substantially higher than that amount.

His attorney said Walker has paid his outstanding tax debt, which was roughly $10,000.

After Walker pleaded guilty, the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Assn. called on the inspector general to investigate the divisions command and operation practices.

The situation with Chief Walker is unfortunate, association President Marshall McClain said in the June statement. The public expects our officers to follow the law and we expect our police chief and command staff to follow the law.

Walker oversaw the divisions fiscal operations, a $130 million budget, including overtime, according to the police website. He also was responsible for seven units, including human resources, internal affairs, training, communications, backgrounds and recruitment, crime analysis and video network enforcement. Walker managed critical technology projects, the firing range and airport intelligence.

At one point, Walker, who worked with the division for more than 21 years, served as the acting chief of police.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.
A man died inside a McDonalds eatery early Tuesday while in contact with sheriffs deputies in East San Gabriel, authorities said.

Few details were released about the mans death, but authorities said it started when he stole a parking enforcement officers car at about 5:25 a.m. in Rosemead.

The parking enforcement officer was writing a ticket when the man jumped into the car and drove off, KTLA-TV reported.

Advertisement

After stealing the car, the man drove to a parking lot in the 6900 block of Rosemead Boulevard in San Gabriel, said Deputy Mike Barraza of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department.

TV footage showed deputies surrounding a McDonalds restaurant.

At some point, deputies contacted the man, Barraza said. During the exchange, the man died, he said. A Los Angeles County coroners official said the man was dead inside the restaurant.

Barraza said deputies did not use a Taser, nor did they shoot during the confrontation.

Homicide investigators, he said, will determine how the man died and whether some type of force was used.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

ALSO

Woman in Bay Area police sex scandal is charged with battery in Florida

First fall weather of 2016 brings powerful winds, rain and snow to California

2 men are arrested during Ryan Lochtes debut on Dancing With the Stars
Two missing Fullerton Fire Department firefighters were found Tuesday after they disappeared during a six-day backpacking trip in Yosemite National Park, officials said.

Javier Avelar, a firefighter and paramedic, and fire Capt. Dave Brown were reported missing after they failed to return Sunday from their trip, according to park officials.

Brown, 21-year veteran of the department, walked into a ranger station during an intense search in the park Tuesday morning, said fire Battalion Chief Kathy Schaefer.

Advertisement

He was safe, she said. He is going to be medically cleared.

Avelar, who has been with the department for four years, was later found and was safe, she said.

Its really good news, Schaefer said. It was really emotional for us.

The experienced hikers planned to start their annual trip in White Wolf, then head through Pleasant Valley over Rancheria Mountain. From there, Avelar and Brown were supposed to stay on the northern side of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir at the backpackers camp.

After spending some time at the campsite, the friends planned to hike along a road to Smith Meadow trail.

Avelar and Brown were supposed to exit White Wolf on Sunday, park officials said.

Volunteers from the fire department assisted in the search efforts, Schaefer said.

We are a fire family, she said.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter

ALSO

First fall weather of 2016 brings powerful winds, rain and snow to California

Man who stole parking enforcement car dies in contact with sheriffs deputies at a McDonalds

2 men are arrested during Ryan Lochtes debut on Dancing With the Stars

UPDATES:

1:10 p.m.: This article was updated with the firefighters being found.

This article was originally published at 10:05 a.m.
The protesters who occupied an Oregon wildlife refuge this year documented the siege in detail because they wanted the world to know they had taken over the 187,000-acre sanctuary in the belief they could become its owners, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday.

They held daily news conferences, sent Internet communications and posted videos on YouTube, Assistant U.S. Atty. Geoffrey Barrow said.

Much of that material is now being used as evidence against the protesters in court, and the government expects it will show the defendants  by their words, by their actions and by their conduct  are guilty of conspiracy, Barrow said in his opening statement.

Advertisement

There was little doubt they were there, Barrow said. They took pictures of themselves working at the desks of federal employees, going through U.S. records.

The standoff left one protester dead and caused millions of dollars in damage, including the creation of bunkers and trenches. Authorities also found dozens of guns and 15,000 rounds of ammunition in the refuges various work areas.

The seven on trial here, including leaders Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of Nevada militant leader Cliven Bundy, were among 26 occupiers arrested after ending their 41-day siege of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon. They are charged with conspiracy to impede the work of government employees.

Ammon Bundys attorney, Marcus Mumford, said in his opening statement that conspiracy suggest acts of darkness. But the occupiers acted openly and in the belief what they did was lawful, he argued. They asserted what they felt was their right to recover land wrongfully taken by the U.S.

Bundy grew up watching his father battle the Bureau of Land Management over cattle grazing rights, Mumford said. The son came to believe in the words of Ronald Reagan, he said, who once proclaimed, The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: Im from the government and Im here to help.

The government has a tape of Bundy at a rally before the takeover saying he was going to take a hard stand against the U.S. He then led the refuge occupation later that day, Jan. 2. They make it sound like hes preparing for something extreme, Mumford said. But is it extreme to ask the government to obey the law? he asked.

Ryan Bundy, acting as his own attorney, said in his opening statement that hes in favor of government as long as its done correctly. He also submitted a copy of the Pocket Constitution as Exhibit 1 but was denied a request to hand a copy to each juror.

Attorney Matthew Schindler, who is assisting Ken Medenbach, the only Oregon defendant, said his clients participation was in part an attempt to prevent the demise of rural life in America.

These people have no voice in Washington anymore, he said. As for the takeover, Schindler added, it worked. Reporters from around the world showed up and finally gave the occupiers a voice.

Opening statements were expected to spill over to Wednesday in what is predicted to be a lengthy trial, presided over by U.S. District Judge Anna Brown, nominated to the bench by President Clinton 17 years ago.

Cliven Bundy, 70, declared victory after his 2014 Nevada standoff ended when federal officers backed down. But after the Oregon takeover ended in February, the government belatedly went after him and others. He was arrested at the Portland airport en route to support his sons at the refuge and charged in the Nevada standoff, along with two other sons, David, 39, and Melvin, 42. He is in custody in Las Vegas awaiting trial next year. Ammon, 41, and Ryan, 44, also will stand trial in Las Vegas.

The unfolding Oregon case marks the first of two mass trials  the second is set for next year  stemming from the Malheur standoff, and Brown has tried to keep the process from bogging down in arcane legal arguments over adverse possession or complicated interpretations of the Founding Fathers intentions.

Though some defendants also face gun and theft charges, federal prosecutors, to prove conspiracy, will need to show only that the defendants interfered with the work of federal employees. Law enforcement officers and others who witnessed the siege are prepared to tell the court that refuge workers were run off by the defendants, prosecutors say. If convicted, the maximum sentence for interfering with a federal employee is six years.

Brown also is expected to have her hands full with more than a dozen attorneys representing or assisting the seven defendants. (Charges against an eighth defendant were dropped last week.) A courtroom in the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse  named for the late U.S. senator once considered a vice presidential running mate to Richard Nixon  has been remodeled, with defendants and attorneys given workstations with computers and microphones. Theyll face a jury of eight women and four men and eight alternates. About 25 seats are set aside for the media and public on a first-come, first-served basis. Two other courtrooms with live audio and video feeds will host the expected crowd overflow.

The judge also must deal with three defendants who are representing themselves, with some assistance from appointed counsel. Ryan Bundy, for example, already has strained the judges patience by reportedly planning a jail escape and filing questionable motions, including one declaring himself an idiot. In one of her first legal moves, protester Shawna Cox, who was in the vehicle driven by occupier Robert LaVoy Finicum just before his shooting death by Oregon State Police, sued the government for damages in excess of $666,666,666,666.66.

Brown has told Cox not to take screwball positions. But the judge didnt seem too hopeful about that and other courtroom slowdowns. Despite her attempts at tight control, she expects the trial to run for more than two months and has cleared her calendar through Thanksgiving.

Anderson is a special correspondent.

UPDATES:

6:20 p.m.: This article was updated with more reporting from opening statements.

2:10 p.m.: Updated with details of the opening statements.

This article was originally published at 9:00 a.m.
Two technicians who worked on Hillary Clintons private email server refused on Tuesday to answer questions posed by House lawmakers, citing their constitutional right to remain silent.

The men, including one who reportedly erased an archive of Clintons emails despite being aware of an order to preserve them, repeatedly asserted their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. They were excused from the hearing.



For the record: An earlier version of this article spelled the last name of Platte River Networks technician Bill Thornton as Thorton.

A third, former State Department staffer Bryan Pagliano, who played a key role in setting up the server, did not show up to testify before the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee.

Advertisement

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of committee, said the witnesses decision not to answer questions will complicate efforts to learn more about the Democratic presidential candidates use of the controversial private email server. He was particularly irked by Paglianos decision not to appear, despite having been subpoenaed.

Its not optional, Chaffetz said.

Paglianos lawyers, led by Mark MacDougall, sent a letter to Chaffetz on Monday, saying their client has repeatedly asserted his 5th Amendment rights before Congress and doing so again serves no legislative purpose and is a transparent effort to publicly harass and humiliate the former staffer.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committees ranking Democrat, defended the decision of the technicians and Pagliano to assert their right to remain silent, saying, This committee is abusing taxpayer dollars and the authority of Congress in an astonishing onslaught of political attacks to damage Secretary Clintons campaign. He and other Democrats have long accused House Republicans of using their investigative powers as a political attack against Clinton.

The two technicians, Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton, work for Platte River Networks, a private company based in Colorado that started managing the server in 2013.

Combetta told FBI agents that when the use of the server became public in March 2015, he realized he had not deleted an archive of emails on Platte Rivers server as directed by a Clinton aide four months earlier. He then deleted the files using a software program known as BleachBit, which later complicated efforts to recover the data, according to an FBI report and a source familiar with its findings.

Combetta, who Cummings said was granted limited immunity by the Justice Department for his cooperation in the probe, told the FBI he was aware of a congressional order to preserve documents but had not received any specific guidance about it.

Clinton and her aides told the FBI they were unaware that Combetta had deleted emails in March 2015.

The FBI and Justice Department concluded there was no evidence that Clinton or her aides deliberately tried to conceal or delete work-related emails that should have been turned over to authorities.

Justin Cooper, a former employee of Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, helped set up and run the server from 2009 through 2013 in the basement of the Clintons home in New York. He also appeared before the committee and answered questions posed by lawmakers in line with what he previously had told the FBI, according to the bureaus report.

Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Sign up for the newsletter

The hearing is the latest in a string of proceedings seeking to examine Clintons email practices since the Justice Department in July declined to press criminal charges against her.

FBI agents and federal prosecutors spent nearly a year investigating whether Clinton violated laws governing the protection of classified material by using her private email system while serving as the nations top diplomat.

In July, FBI Director James Comey said that agents found 113 emails that contained classified information in at least 52 chains. Eight email chains had top secret information at the time they were sent, he said.

A subsequent FBI report, which was released publicly Sept. 2, revised the figures upward. The FBI and intelligence community determined that classified information was in 193 emails that were part of 81 email chains. Of those chains, eight contained top secret information, the highest level of classification. Thirty-seven chains had information containing secret information, and 36 had material deemed confidential, the lowest level of classification.

Comey called Clintons handling of classified material extremely careless but said she did not violate any laws because she did not knowingly or willfully mishandle sensitive information.

Clinton has said she decided to use the private email account for both work and personal business as a matter of convenience.

Twitter: @delwilber

ALSO

Obama, breaking from his busy day job, is campaigning again for Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has millennials support, and now shes trying to make sure they vote

Democratic and Republican voters are further apart than theyve been in a generation. Heres why

UPDATES:

12:45 p.m.: The article was updated with additional background.

The article was originally published at 9:35 a.m.
How much should presidential candidates tell the public about their health?

Hillary Clinton, 68, was recently diagnosed with pneumonia, and the public didnt know about it until two days later, when she abruptly left a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony feeling unwell and needing to be helped into a vehicle.

If Donald Trump, 70, were elected, he would be older than any previous president at the start of his first term  and, like Clinton, he hasnt released detailed records about his health beyond a doctors letter. Both candidates promised Monday to release more detailed medical records soon.

Advertisement

But the idea of presidential candidates, or sitting presidents, disclosing their health history is relatively new. And though recent presidents have released detailed updates about their health, there is no law mandating disclosure.

America has a rich history of presidents and presidential candidates hiding their health problems from the public, sometimes successfully and sometimes with serious consequences.

What have recent presidential health disclosures looked like?

The report for President Obamas most recent physical examination, in February, by White House physician Ronny L. Jackson is two pages long.

It lists basic vital information such as his height, weight, body mass, resting heart rate and blood pressure, as well as numbers from laboratory tests for his cholesterol, glucose and vitamin D levels, among other information.

The report also lists the results of tests for Obamas physical and neural health, lists the medication he is taking (which includes the occasional use of nicotine gum) and says he drinks alcohol only occasionally.

All clinical data indicates that the president is currently very healthy and that he will remain so for the duration of his presidency, the report concludes.

A similar report for George W. Bush in 2006 was four pages long and included a lengthy medical history.

What have Trump and Clintons doctors letters looked like?

In 2015, Clinton released a two-page letter from her doctor that discussed Clintons medical history, including her hypothyroidism  a type of hormone deficiency  and the concussion she suffered in 2012 after she was weakened by a stomach virus and dehydration.

The letter also disclosed her blood pressure, respiratory rate, cholesterol levels, as well as her exercise habits, which include yoga, swimming and weight training.

She is in excellent physical condition and fit to serve as president of the United States, wrote Dr. Lisa Bardack, chairwoman of internal medicine at CareMount Medical in Mount Kisco, N.Y., who has been Clintons physician since 2001.

The letter released by Trumps doctor in December is four paragraphs long, and said Trump had had no significant health problems over the last 39 years.

The letter gives figures for Trumps blood pressure and his prostate blood test, says he takes 81 milligrams of aspirin and a low dose of cholesterol-lowering statin daily, and variously describes Trumps health as astonishingly excellent, extraordinary and excellent.

If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency, said Harold N. Bornstein, a gastroenterologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York who has been Trumps physician since 1980.

Why does it matter?

Nearly half the presidents in the nations history have had significant illnesses or injuries while in office, including most of the presidents since the start of the 20th century, according to academic research on presidential health. Many of those presidents hid their health problems from the public.

Grover Cleveland had a secret surgery for oral cancer during his second term in 1893, survived and served until 1897, and his surgery was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after his death.

Woodrow Wilson had a serious stroke in 1919 that in effect ended his ability to run the country, yet his condition was kept secret. His wife, Edith, quietly took over his work until his term ended in 1921.

Wilsons successor, Warren Harding, didnt have much better luck: In poor health for years, he died in office in 1923 while traveling in San Francisco. His wife declined to have an autopsy done.

Paralysis caused by polio did not prevent Franklin Roosevelt from taking office and serving with distinction starting in 1933. But by Roosevelts fourth campaign in 1944, his health was failing. He won and then died of a cerebral hemorrhage in April 1945, leaving Vice President Harry Truman to finish World War II.

Dwight Eisenhower had a well-publicized heart attack during his first term in 1955. Doctors werent sure whether he would survive a second term, but he ran for reelection the next year, won and lived until 1969.

Among other health problems, his successor, John F. Kennedy, had Addisons disease, an adrenaline deficiency, which his team denied during his 1960 campaign  a lie that may have helped Kennedy win the razor-thin election against Richard Nixon. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

Lyndon Johnson, Kennedys successor, flouted that type of discretion. After Johnson had gall bladder surgery in 1965, he lifted up his shirt to show reporters his scar.

How much should candidates disclose?

Since vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton dropped out of the 1972 presidential race after the disclosure that he had been hospitalized for depression, the health status of presidential candidates has been seen as fair game by the press, George J. Annas wrote in a 1995 article for the New England Journal of Medicine.

Health disclosures by modern presidential candidates, although generally standard since then, are still sometimes an uneven affair. Democratic hopeful Eugene McCarthy refused to release his medical records in 1976, calling them private.

Bill Clinton resisted releasing his health records during his first run in 1992, leading the New York Times doctor-reporter Lawrence K. Altman to declare that the Democrat had been less forthcoming about his health than any presidential nominee in the last 20 years.

Clinton continued to resist releasing his full records during his reelection in 1996, which led Republicans to repeatedly raise questions about whether he was hiding a secret health issue. His opponent, Bob Dole, issued detailed medical results and made his doctor available for an interview.

Obama initially released a one-page letter from his doctor in 2008 with no supporting documents, then later released lab tests and echocardiograms. His opponent, John McCain, gave reporters several hours to review 1,200 pages of health records.

The release of health records has not been standardized practice compared with the release of tax records, which is common for candidates (with the notable exception of Trump, who has declined to release his).

Although 96% of respondents in a 2004 Gallup poll said the presidents health was important, 61% of respondents said presidents should have a right to choose to keep their health records private like everyone else.

Without a legal mechanism to force disclosure for such records, you really need the public to hold them accountable, said Robert Streiffer, associate professor of bioethics and medical history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

But the bar for disclosure should be high, Streiffer said. He defined the threshold as a condition that has a significant chance of seriously undermining the persons ability to perform the core competencies of the presidency if they are elected.

Former White House physician Lawrence C. Mohr said that althought the American people are entitled to know the health status of their president and presidential candidates ... the release of any medical information has to be the decision of the candidate and not the doctor.

If disclosure happens, Mohr said, the information should be accurate, it should be complete, it should be timely, and it should include whatever medicine is being prescribed, and the physician should offer some prognosis about how long it will take to get well.

Mohr, who was a White House physician during the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, said public understanding was also an important part of disclosure.

Just because a president has an illness doesnt mean thats a disqualifying factor if that illness can be effectively treated, Mohr said, pointing to Roosevelts long years in office.

The things that are really important, Mohr said, are not the name of the illness or the specific diagnosis, but whether the president can think clearly, act appropriately and communicate effectively.

Email: matt.pearce@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @mattdpearce
Doom and gloom. White and uptight. Self-righteous. Litigious. Shrill.

You have heard the cliches about environmentalists.



For the record: For the record, Sept 13: An earlier version of this article misstated the first name of filmmaker Sterlin Harjo as Sterling.Oct. 13: An earlier version of this story stated that DearTomorrow won money from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The nonprofit actually received an award from MIT,

But have you heard of Dallas Goldtooth?

He helped stop the Keystone XL pipeline, and now he is trying to stop another  the 1,170-mile Dakota Access pipeline that would carry crude from the Bakken region of western North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

In the process, he has made a lot of people laugh.

Like in his skit about Native American hunters running through the woods in loincloths, only to wind up in a fast-food joint ordering hamburgers. Or in his interview with MSNBC, talking about how tribes had pitched tepees on the National Mall to protest a pipeline. He was charging tourists $10 to take his picture, Goldtooth deadpanned. After all, he is a real, live Native American.

Advertisement

As a member of the Dakota and Dine tribes, Goldtooth is both sketch comic and committed conservation campaigner. He is the son of Tom B.K. Goldtooth, the director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, one of the nations leading Native American environmental organizations. And while the younger Goldtooth is out on the protest lines too, he may be better known for his comedy bits on YouTube.

Weve been told this narrative that we have a certain amount of issues that are bad and we have to respond to these certain amount of issues with this certain kind of approach, and Im just tired of it, Goldtooth said in a recent interview. The angry Indian activist character, I think, is hilarious. I actively choose to go about my organizing in a different manner.

The angry Indian activist character, I think, is hilarious. I actively choose to go about my organizing in a different manner.  Dallas Goldtooth

Most recently, he was here in North Dakota, serving as an improvisational emcee at a meeting of several hundred people camped along the Cannonball and Missouri rivers to fight the Dakota Access pipeline, which would travel just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Indian reservation.

The protest has become a rallying point for Native Americans across the country, and the meeting this month was part planning and part pep rally. Goldtooths job was to keep it moving. He also kept people giggling.

As Dave Archambault, the imposing chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, stood a few feet away, Goldtooth informed the crowd that organizers of the protest had run out of towels for people who wanted to use the sweat lodge. Not to worry, he reassured them, the chairman himself had volunteered to take his steam bath wearing only a dish cloth.

For the people, Goldtooth said, feigning tribal solemnity. For the people.

It was another joke  and it was good enough that even the chairman laughed.

Environmental protests are not inherently funny, nor is the frustration felt by Native Americans over having their land and way of life repeatedly threatened. Yet Goldtooth has become a mainstay at recent indigenous protests.

Whenever we need an emcee for an event, Dallas is definitely high on the list, said Jane Kleeb, the executive director of Bold Alliance, a nonprofit that fights oil pipelines.

Sometimes you see large environmental groups thinking they need another cultural values memo written to their staff in order for them to resonate and connect with people, Kleeb added. Dallas never does focus groups or writes a values memo before he goes out and speaks with people. He can be very serious but also in that same serious moment be very funny. He just has this way of connecting.

It is a surprisingly elusive skill in this realm. Environmental groups often excel at organizing, pressuring and creating spectacle  boarding oil rigs at sea, blocking railroad tracks and occupying trees. But intimate, persuasive engagement with human beings has not always come naturally  and some of them know it.

Organizations as mammoth as the United Nations and the World Bank have tried to increase awareness of climate change by sponsoring storytelling contests. The tiny nonprofit DearTomorrow recently won money from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a project it says will shift behavior and broaden the climate culture by asking people to send open letters about climate change to loved ones in the future. Earthjustice, known for years for filing lawsuits, has asked staff to post personal stories about what inspires their work.

Goldtooth does much of his work as part of the 1491s, a sketch comedy group that confronts stereotypes that surround the kind of Americans who were here before the arrival of Columbus.

His motto on Instagram: Laugh. Love. And live.

Learning from his father, he grew up blending humor, people skills and protest. He and his stepbrother, Migizi Pensoneau, spent their youths traveling to events with Tom Goldtooth, watching him navigate between native and largely white audiences. They had a chance to see how differently Native Americans lived and were perceived in various parts of the country.

Then they would come back home to Bemidji, Minn., and watch Monty Python movies.

Years later, after both boys attended the Native American Preparatory School in New Mexico, they began making short, satirical videos about native themes with a friend, Bobby Wilson. They soon connected with Sterlin Harjo and Ryan Red Corn, who were also making comic videos.

The five were just getting to know one another when they made their first video, New Moon Wolf Pack Auditions, in 2010. It portrays them trying out for roles in the Twilight film series, doing their best to out-Indian one another.

At one point, Goldtooths character tells the producer conducting the audition that he cannot be filmed because the camera may take my soul. When the producer explains that he would not get a role without trying out on camera, Goldtooth quickly changes his mind. Film away, he says.

The video has been viewed nearly 300,000 times. The 1491s have become a steady act, making dozens of videos, some crass, some cryptic, some laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Their work often mocks stereotypes that have been perpetuated in mainstream culture, high and low, whether the 19th century photographs of Edward Curtis or the 1970s Billy Jack movies. Their send-up of Irving Berlins show tune Im an Indian, Too, filmed at the Santa Fe Indian Market, demands repeated viewings.

The world is so lazy, society is so lazy, that it continuously tries to minimize the complexities of entire cultures and people in the simplest of terms, said Goldtooth, who is also a poet. Our job is to push back, to make it complex. Dont be afraid to dirty that narrative.

His comedy career developed along with his activism. The long fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have delivered oil from Canadas tar sands into the United States but was rejected by President Obama late last year, brought him fully into the environmental work his father had helped lead for two decades.

For too long, its been upper-class, Ivy League-educated white folks who have been on the front lines of press releases and press conferences, Kleeb said. Dallas represents this whole new generation of people fighting for climate justice, which is very different than saying youre fighting against climate change. For Dallas, that means making sure that sovereignty is protected for tribal nations.

Goldtooth said saving the planet is serious business but does not require taking himself too seriously.

At times, I do get angry and I do speak out with passion on certain issues, he said. But I love to not lose sight of the lightheartedness of the world, to not lose sight of the power of laughter in the work that we do.

william.yardley@latimes.com

ALSO

The Marines wouldnt take him. So Levi Shirley went to war on his own

Retired fertility doctor accused of impregnating several patients pleads not guilty to obstruction

Trial begins for militants who occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon standoff
Trump continues new trend -- not attacking Clinton for being sick

.@realDonaldTrump: "I just hope [@HillaryClinton] gets better & she can get back out. I just have no view" #Hannity pic.twitter.com/vez4pR2wzE  Fox News (@FoxNews) September 14, 2016

Donald Trump has a message for Hillary Clinton: Get well soon.

For a candidate who has castigated his rivals as low energy (see Jeb Bush) and questioned their military service (see John McCain), Trump in recent days has eschewed attacking Clintons health problems as she recovers from pneumonia.

I just dont want to get involved with it. I just hope shes going to be fine and shell continue onward, he said Tuesday night during an interview on Fox News Hannity.

In recent days, Trump has been pressed with questions about Clintons pneumonia diagnosis, which was disclosed after she publicly fell ill Sunday, and hes offered the same subdued response.

Trump, seeking to make inroads with suburban women voters who polls have shown continue to strongly support the Democratic nominee, has focused instead on another target: Clintons comments labeling half of his supporters as a basket of deplorables. Clinton has said she regrets saying that half of his supporters fall into that category.

Trump also continued to insist hes not participating in any formal debate preparation.

He did, however, note that hell bring respect to the debate later this month  at least at the outset.

I will treat her with great respect, Trump said of Clinton. Unless she treats me in a certain manner, in which case that will be the end of that. I am not looking to go in and treat her with disrespect.
Clinton ignored doctors advice to rest for five days after pneumonia diagnosis

(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Hillary Clinton said Monday that she ignored her doctors advice to rest for five days after she was diagnosed with pneumonia.

Im feeling so much better. Obviously I should have gotten some rest sooner, Clinton told CNNs Anderson Cooper in a phone interview from her home in Chappaqua, N.Y. Like a lot of people, I thought I could keep going forward and power through it, and obviously that didnt work out so well.

Clinton said she would return to the campaign trail in the next couple days.

Clinton made the remarks a day after she abruptly left a Sept. 11 ceremony because she felt overheated. Video emerged of Clinton struggling to stand and needing assistance to get in her van, leading to speculation that the Democratic presidential nominee had fainted.

Clinton said she did not lose consciousness.

I felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute, but once I got in [the van], once I could sit down, once I could cool off, once I had some water, I immediately started feeling better, she said.

Clinton acknowledged previously feeling unwell because of dehydration.

It is something that has occurred a few times over the course of my life, and Im aware of it and usually can avoid it, she said.

She added that she ignored her doctors advice and attended the memorial because she was representing New York as a senator when the terrorists attacked. It was incredibly personal for me.

Clintons campaign has come under criticism for not releasing the pneumonia diagnosis Friday, the day it was made, and for not telling the press traveling with her what happened for about 90 minutes after she left the ceremony.

Clinton pushed back at the notion that she had not been transparent, noting that she had released 40 years of tax returns, tens of thousands of emails, and a medical note from her physician that contained the same information as previous nominees of both parties.

She argued that Republican rival Donald Trump, who has not released his tax returns and very little medical information, needs to provide more details about his background.

People know more about me than almost anyone in public life, she said.  Compare everything you know about me with my opponent. I think its time he met the same level of disclosure that I have for years.

Trump and Clinton plan to release additional medical information this week.
Back in February, a Gallup poll found American voters from across the political spectrum agreeing on four key issues facing the nation as it headed into the heart of the 2016 presidential election. What weighed so heavily on their minds? Terrorism and national security; the economy; employment and jobs; and healthcare and the Affordable Care Act. Their interests havent changed much since then; in August, the economy was the top concern. So what did the campaign  and campaign coverage  focus on over the last few days? Whether Hillary Clintons contracting pneumonia somehow makes her less viable as a president, and whether her lumping half of Trumps supporters into a basket of deplorables makes her less electable.

The focus on such minor events and controversies doesnt really come as a surprise; its been the hallmark of this prolonged campaign season. Nevertheless, its dumbfounding to realize that North Koreas successful test of a nuclear bomb last week was a come-and-go moment in the campaign. Also mostly ignored: that the civil war in Syria, which has caused one of the worst humanitarian tragedies in modern human history and has unsettled the political stability of Europe, may be entering into a truce (or not, given the five-year history of the war and related crises). Meanwhile, President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping recently signed off on the 2015 Paris accord to try to limit the increase in global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, yet climate change barely registers as a political issue.

This, of course, is at least as much a failure of journalism  particularly the round-robins of political surrogates on cable news shows  as it is about the campaigns themselves. Journalists tend to set the pace of the discussion by what they report on and thus magnify. Trump has provided a rich and deep vein to tap, but it is important to not let his sensational comments, or a treatable illness contracted by Clinton, push truly important subjects off the agenda.

The larger issues matter. Clinton has tried to focus on some of them. On Friday she decried the North Korean nuclear test as outrageous and unacceptable. It constitutes a direct threat to the United States, she added, and we cannot and will never accept this. But she was short on details of what to do other than press for negotiations and a stronger response from China, and to equip allies in the region with missile defense systems  a step that China has said it will not abide.

Advertisement

For Trumps part, a spokesman for his campaign blamed Clinton for the worlds inability to bring North Korea to heel. Clinton promised to work to end North Koreas nuclear program as secretary of State, yet the program has only grown in strength and sophistication. But the campaign was silent on what he would do to address it. (Trump previously has said he would consider allowing Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear arsenals  an escalation that would further destabilize a volatile situation and strengthen Chinas support for the rogue state.)

Yet there has been little sober public analysis of where the candidates stand, and where their policy positions would bring the world. This has been the arc of the campaign  thrashing about over relative trivialities. Thats not to say that the health of top presidential candidates isnt serious, and the candidates ages  Clinton would be the second oldest president in history, Trump would be the oldest  deserve consideration. So yes, both candidates should release detailed medical records.

But the nation should be spending more time seriously challenging and dissecting the candidates grasp of the world, and their solutions to its problems. Trump doesnt believe that human activity has played a role in global warming, despite overwhelming agreement among scientists. He has advocated war crimes, from the killing of terrorists families to torture, and plundering Iraqi oil at the end of the war as he suggested would have violated the Geneva Conventions. His immigration policies would throttle back one of the main pipelines that historically has made the nation an economic powerhouse.

The world, and the nation, are far from the dystopia that Trump peddles in his campaign appearances. Nevertheless, we face significant issues that require serious investigation and discussion, from geopolitics to the depressingly strained state of relations between police and African American communities, and from crumbling infrastructure to the somnambulant economy and the income divide that has propelled some of the deep dissatisfaction that expressed itself in the rise of both Trump and Bernie Sanders. Treating Clintons pneumonia is easy. The rest is hard.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
The House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on whether to impeach John Koskinen. the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. It would be the first impeachment of an executive branch official other than the president since 1876.

The so-called privileged resolution to impeach Koskinen, which bypasses usual House procedure, is a preposterous exercise in ideological politics. Defeating it may require some profiles in courage from the GOP leadership.

The effort to impeach Koskinen, which is being led by the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is the latest installment of a long-running controversy over the alleged targeting by the IRS of tea party affiliates and other conservative groups that had sought tax-exempt status. In May 2013, an inspector general in the Treasury Department concluded that between 2010 and 2012, the agency had used inappropriate criteria  such as the terms tea party and patriot  in identifying applications for review.

Advertisement

Koskinen didnt become commissioner until December 2013, but had to deal with the political aftershocks of the controversy, including investigations by outraged Republicans in Congress. Those seeking his impeachment claim that he failed to comply with a subpoena for records associated with the scrutiny of conservative groups and that he provided false and misleading information to Congress.

But the bill of particulars that accompanies the resolution proves, at most, that Koskinen wasnt as attentive to the importance of securing records sought by Congress as he should have been. Its also clear that he misspoke when he told a congressional committee that every email associated with Lois Lerner, a former IRS official responsible for tax-exempt groups, had been preserved; in fact, IRS employees in West Virginia had erased as many as 24,000 of her emails. (A Treasury Department inspector general found no evidence that the erasures were a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence.) But inaccurate or incomplete testimony isnt the same as willfully lying to Congress.

In short, there is nothing to suggest that Koskinen is guilty of the high crimes and misdemeanors the Constitution cites as grounds for impeachment. And even if the House were to vote to impeach him, there is no chance that the Senate would provide the two-thirds majority necessary for a conviction.

The GOPs ire at the apparent targeting of conservative tax-exempt groups is understandable, but thats not the only thing motivating the Freedom Caucus. Instead, the attempt to impeach Koskinen is a political exercise that cant be divorced from longstanding efforts by conservatives to demonize and defund the IRS. More directly, its tied to Republicans apparent determination to stop the IRS from enforcing the law barring political campaigns from masquerading as charities. If the House were to impeach the commissioner  or even censure him  the reputation of that body would suffer and members would be tempted to use the impeachment power to push other pet political causes. The only fair outcome is for the House to refer the resolution to the panel the Freedom Caucus is trying to bypass, the House Judiciary Committee. The resolution is likely to die there, as it should.

Responsible Republicans  including Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy  need to support that action and stand against this abuse of the impeachment power.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Donald Trump has gotten a lot of well-justified criticism for his paeans to Vladimir Putin, Russias anti-American dictator. Just last week Trump said that Putin has very strong control over a country. Certainly in that system hes been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.

Imagine a Republican in the 1930s saying, Hitler has been far more of a leader than Franklin Roosevelt. That is, in fact, the kind of thing that the original America Firsters, led by Charles Lindbergh, did say, which is why it is so appalling that Trump has borrowed their slogan for his campaign.

But Trump isnt backing down from these offensive claims, and neither are his supporters. In a Twitter exchange with me, for example, the radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt wrote: Putins an evil man. POTUS a good but incompetent man. Putin has served his countrys national interest better.

Advertisement

I commend Hewitt for admitting that Putin is evil  something that Trump has never done. Trump, in fact, has never uttered one word of criticism of the Russian strongman. But what of Hewitts larger claim  that Putin has done a better job of serving Russian interests than Obama has done of serving American interests?

I am no defender of President Obama. I was a foreign policy advisor to John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, and I have been very critical of Obamas weak foreign policy. I think the Iran nuclear deal, the withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and the hands-off policy toward Syria, in particular, have been catastrophic mistakes. I am no fan, either, of Obamas tax-and-spend policies culminating in the passage of a costly healthcare mandate. But on both foreign and domestic policy there is simply no comparison between the democratically elected president of America and the thug who has seized control of Russia.

Lets start with the domestic side. Granted, the U.S. recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-2009 has been anemic under Obama  the growth rate of 2.1% is below the postwar average of 2.9%  but GDP still has grown in 25 of the last 27 quarters and the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.9%.

And how has Putin done by comparison? According to the World Bank, Russias GDP fell 40% between 2013 and 2015  from $2.23 trillion to $1.33 trillion. To put that in perspective, notes CNBC, U.S. GDP shrank at the onset of the Great Recession from $14.719 trillion in 2008 to $14.419 trillion in 2009  a decline of 2%.

Moreover, Lauren Goodrich of the Stratfor geopolitical consultancy points out, Over the past year, the average Russians monthly wage fell 9.5%, slipping below $450  less than in China, Serbia and Romania. According to state statistics, 50% of that income goes toward food, a figure on par with many African countries.

In other words, the Putin presidency has been an economic disaster for the Russian people. To the extent that Russia has prospered at all since the dawn of the Putin era in 1999, its due entirely to its oil wealth. Putin has done nothing to develop a viable economy. Russia (population 146 million, according to Wikipedia) has a smaller GDP than South Korea (population 50 million).

Putin defenders will reply that its not all his fault  that Russias economy has been badly hurt by sanctions imposed by the West. But why did the U.S. and Europe impose sanctions on Russia? Heres where foreign policy comes in: Because Putin brazenly violated international law by invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. His proxies even shot down a Malaysian jetliner, killing all 293 people on board, using a Russian-supplied anti-aircraft missile. These are war crimes that cannot in good conscience be compared with anything that Obama has done.

Putins actions, and in particular the annexation of Crimea, have been widely applauded by Russians who have been given a one-sided view of the world by his propaganda apparatus. The Kremlins media lackeys claim that the Russia intervention in Ukraine was a response to the rise of fascists and neo-Nazis, rather than to the rise of a democratically elected, pro-Western government.

This is what makes Trumps claim that Putin has an 82% approval rating  and therefore he must be a good leader so ridiculous. Sure, hes popular, but no alternative is allowed. As Human Rights Watch notes, The Kremlins crackdown on civil society, media and the Internet took a more sinister turn in 2015 as the government further intensified harassment and persecution of independent critics. For the fourth year in a row, parliament adopted laws and authorities engaged in repressive practices that increasingly isolated the country. Anyone who dares to openly criticize Putin risks going in to jail, exile or an early grave.

Putin is pursuing the classic despots strategy: He is invading neighbors and beating the drums of war in order to distract his own people from his ruinous and tyrannical rule. He is not serving Russias interests, only his own and those of his crooked cronies. It is terrifying that Trump sees Putin as an admirable leader, and shameful that his supporters have fallen in line to defend his indefensible views.

Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to Opinion.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
In the wake of the collapse of the Corinthian Colleges and questions about other for-profit career colleges, the Department of Education has drafted broad new rules for when people can get out of repaying federal loans. These proposed changes to whats called the borrower defense rule would let people petition for loan forgiveness or even sue their school.

The problem is the proposed rules, which will be finalized by Nov. 1, are so vague they may invite abuse and lawsuits. For example, student borrowers could apply to discharge their loans if the college made statements that were misleading under the circumstances. What does that mean exactly? Who knows? Department of Education employees and courts will get to decide on a case-by-case basis, apparently.

These poorly devised standards [are likely to] spur new lawsuits.

Advertisement

More troublesome is that these poorly devised standards likely would spur new lawsuits. Indeed, the proposed regulations expressly contemplate students suing their schools: One of the major proposed changes outlaws binding arbitration as a means of resolving disputes. Instead, students could either file an administrative petition asking the Department of Education to cancel their debt, or file a lawsuit against their school (or perhaps both). Indeed, the proposed regulations seek to protect the use of class action lawsuits against colleges.

Students have a tremendous incentive to try to get out of paying for their education. More than two-thirds of college graduates carry student loans with an average debt of almost $35,000  more for graduate students. Many will struggle to keep up with payments, especially in their first jobs. You can bet plenty will try to take advantage of this rule change.

As long as a college did not mislead prospective or current students about, say, graduation or job placement rates, or the cost of tuition, it should not have to worry, right? Hard to say. The old standard required proving that the school deceived students, and it referred to state law requirements for misrepresentation.

The newly proposed standard, mislead, is intentionally broader than misrepresent. It includes affirmative statements, but also failure to disclose something that the student can argue influenced their decision to enroll or to continue at the college. That could be just about anything and a borrowers defense can be raised any time before a loan is paid off.

California colleges should be worried. Claremont McKenna, for instance, is among a handful of colleges that admitted reporting inflated average SAT scores during the 2000s, hoping to influence the annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings.

Other schools have employed more creative methods. In 2008, Texas Baylor University offered $300 in bookstore credits to any incoming student whod retake the SAT  and if their score went up 50 points they were given a $1,000 scholarship. Baylor got a 10-point average SAT score bump out of the deal. Leaders at UC Irvine Law School also had their eye on cracking the top 20 in their initial U.S. News ranking when they gave their entire inaugural class full three-year scholarships. The offer was designed to attract top students whod otherwise pass on applying to a brand new law school. The problem? Subsequent classes didnt get the same deal, so the school cannot guarantee it would maintain a student body of that caliber.

Are such ranking-rigging strategies misleading? A student with significant debt will certainly be tempted to make the argument.

This is not the only area of risk. A number of California colleges, including UCLA and UC San Diego, have been criticized for inaccurately reporting campus crime rates. A 2014 investigative report by the Columbus Dispatch concluded that: The crime statistics being released by colleges nationwide are so misleading that they give students and parents a false sense of security. Is this misleading enough for a student to sue?

It is also not hard to imagine that different standards might emerge in every state where lawsuits are filed.

No court judgments, however, would be binding on the Department of Education. Even if a judge determines a case is meritless, department officials might still wipe out a students loan debt. These officials would be given complete discretion to decide whether a school is guilty of misleading under the circumstances statements. The Department of Education would then demand the school reimburse the government for all the forgiven loans. There is no procedure for the college to challenge those rulings.

Instead of protecting students from predatory or even fraudulent programs, the proposed new regulations would just spawn litigation and create substantial costs for colleges and universities. Those costs would be passed on to students. Rather than solve a problem, the Department of Educations rules look to be a lose-lose proposition for all parties.

Anthony T. Caso is a professor at Chapman Universitys Fowler School of Law and the director of the Claremont Institutes Constitutional Jurisprudence Clinic.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
At some point in every election cycle, a TV news anchor  and more likely several of them  will speak in reverential tones about the wisdom of the American people. This expression of cliched, lazy patriotism implies that the collective choice made by voters when they go to the polls is magically infallible. Unfortunately, that is simply not true.

Consider the man many Americans think of as the countrys greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. We got him by chance, not because the people were so smart. Lincoln was elected in 1860 with less than 40% of the vote, the lowest percentage of any winning presidential candidate in U.S. history. If the opposition had not been split three ways, Honest Abe would have gone back to his law office in Illinois and someone who was more willing to let the United States be dismembered or allow slavery to continue would have gone to the White House.

In 1860, the majority of American voters cast their ballots, not with wisdom, but in a way that reflected their prejudices, fears and tribal instincts. Things have not changed much in the subsequent 156 years.

Advertisement

1 / 51 la-1491523602-y7ephyarj1-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 51 la-1491368625-0bgh58ihw8-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los angeles Times) 6 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 51 Trump inspires millions to take to the streets -- to oppose him. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 51 Cartoon caption contest winner at the DENT conference in Sun Valley, Idaho: Jon Duval, executive director of the Ketchum Community Development Corporation. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 51 Old radicals and big media descend on Selma (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 51 Horsey imagined the creation of the Ann Coulter phenomenon in this cartoon from 2007. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 51 This David Horsey drawing is a reconfiguration of a cartoon he first published in 2006. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 51 Donald Sterling, owner of the L.A. Clippers, should give Cliven Bundy a call. After Sterling loses his NBA franchise and the deadbeat Nevada rancher loses his cattle, the two old racists will both need a buddy. Maybe they can team up together and open an all-white rodeo. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 51 Besides sending a chill up the spine of the international community, Vladimir Putin has accomplished one other thing by seizing Crimea and threatening the rest of Ukraine: Putin has brought back the bear. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 51 The right-wing insurrection at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., has taken another weird turn with new revelations about the family history of Cliven Bundy. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 42 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 51 David Horsey / Los Angeles Times (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times)

Hillary Clinton has run into a buzz saw of criticism because of her overstatement that half of Donald Trumps supporters could be placed in a basket of deplorables. She said these people are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic  you name it. Mike Pence, Trumps running mate, called this a slander on hardworking Americans who deserve more respect.

Clinton quickly apologized for using the word half, saying she meant to criticize a much smaller cadre of right-wing fanatics who are riding the Trump bandwagon. Still, she was not entirely off the mark. It is clear from evidence gleaned from poll after poll that at least half of Republicans hold some curious ideas. More than 50%, for instance, are convinced that Obama is a Muslim born somewhere outside the United States.

The Vox website has gathered together several national public opinion polls that compared the views of Clinton and Trump voters. They are instructive.

Though Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan deplored Trumps idea of barring Muslims from entering the U.S., calling it a religious test that violated the Constitution, just under half of Republican voters in one poll said they strongly supported the scheme and another 28% gave it tentative approval. Ryan also criticized Trumps insistence that a judge should recuse himself from a lawsuit against Trump University because of his Mexican heritage, but 43% of Republicans sided with Trump while only 39% were with Ryan.

Polls also show that Trump voters are much more likely than Clinton voters to have negative views of Mexican immigrants  and not just the illegal ones. They also are much more likely to think African Americans are less smart and more lazy, rude, violent and criminally inclined than white people. While 58% of white Americans say they harbor some level of resentment against blacks, a whopping 81% of Trump voters expressed such resentment.

The Vox analysis importantly notes that this does not mean most Trump voters are overtly racist or horrible people. More precisely, these poll results are an indication that a big share  half or more?  of the folks voting for Trump are fearful and angry about social and cultural changes that they believe are shifting the country away from what it has been. This is why a Trump surrogate warned that if Clinton wins the election, there will be taco trucks on every corner, the Vox analysis said. The worry isnt that delicious food will be everywhere, but that the cultural makeup of America will dramatically change

Those in the Trump camp, of course, would argue this is not fearfulness but wisdom. So, that is what this election has come down to: a furious contest between two very different visions of Americas future. Whichever way the election goes, it will be a victory of one vision over another, but there is no guarantee that it will be a choice that confirms the inherent wisdom of the American people.

David.Horsey@latimes.com

Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter
President Obama hadnt hit the campaign trail in a while. So he wanted to make sure Tuesday that voters remembered where he stood.

I am really into electing Hillary Clinton, Obama told a crowd at an outdoor rally in Philadelphia. This is not me going through the motions here. I really, really, really want to elect Hillary Clinton.

Obamas day job has kept him busy, but he returned to the stump with vigor, alternately making the case for his former secretary of State and repudiating Republican nominee Donald Trump, often with biting sarcasm.

Advertisement

This guy who spent 70 years on this earth showing no concern for working people  this guys suddenly going to be your champion? Obama asked.

Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Sign up for the newsletter | The race to 270

In front of an enthusiastic crowd, the president previewed a role he will play with greater regularity in the campaigns closing weeks as Clintons most high-profile advocate. Both the White House and Clintons campaign aim to use the power of the presidential seal, Obamas enhanced popularity and his credibility with key segments of voters to preserve the presidency for Democrats, and much of his personal legacy in the process.

The presidents last public campaign appearance was nearly seven weeks ago, also here in Philadelphia, where he delivered a full-throated endorsement of Clinton at the Democratic convention.

Since then, hes traveled to Asia for a series of international summits. Hes also minding an admittedly scant legislative agenda while Congress is in town. On Monday, he met with the top leaders in both parties to discuss a government funding measure that must be passed by months end to avoid a pre-election government shutdown.

But aware that the campaign is roiling around, and often overshadowing, him, Obama is increasingly eager to engage more fully in the debate himself.

Even though I have run my last campaign, I am going to work as hard as I can this fall to elect Hillary Clinton as our next president, Obama said.

His return to the campaign trail couldnt have come at a better time for her as she recuperates from pneumonia, which her campaign delayed in revealing, renewing widespread criticism about her level of transparency.

Obama made a subtle reference to Clintons health, lauding her for the stamina she displayed on record-setting travel as his top diplomat. He focused more on her character and her readiness to assume the office.

This is not the usual choice between parties and policies and left and right. This is more fundamental, Obama said. This is a fundamental choice about who we are as a people. This is a choice about the very meaning of America.

A message of staying the course typically doesnt help a party seeking a third consecutive term in the White House. And second-term presidents have rarely been as active on the campaign trail as Obama intends to be this fall.

But a new Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Obama enjoying his strongest poll numbers in years, with 58% of those surveyed saying they approved of his job performance. That makes him a valuable asset for the Clinton campaign as she struggles to win over skeptical voters frustrated with both of their options.

And Obama came into the event with more good news, citing fresh Census data that showed household incomes grew sharply in 2015 after years of stagnation.

Weve shown that progress is possible, Obama said, declaring he was ready to pass the baton to Clinton.

Obamas exact fall itinerary is a work in progress. The White House political office works with Clinton campaign officials in devising the most effective deployment of the commander in chief, with a special focus on how to drive likely Democratic voters to register and vote. Senior Democrats are reluctant to speculate about just how much, if at all, voter turnout might deviate from Obamas two campaigns.

Obama also publicly voiced frustration over news coverage of the race that he and many Democrats have expressed privately, agitating over what he sees as a false equivalency between the liabilities of two of the least-liked nominees in generations.

Donald Trump says stuff every day that used to be considered as disqualifying for being president. Because he says it over and over again, the press just gives up, he said. We cannot afford to treat this like a reality show.

He also rebuked Trump for his fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Obama has to do business with Putin, he noted, but he hardly considered him a role model.

Can you imagine Ronald Reagan idolizing someone like that? he asked.

As for Clinton, he underscored her dogged nature, talking at length about their prolonged 2008 Democratic primary battle.

No matter how daunting the odds, no matter how many times people knock her down and mess with her, she does not quit, he said. Thats the Hillary that I know. And thats why I really want to get her elected.

michael.memoli@latimes.com

For more 2016 campaign coverage, follow @mikememoli on Twitter

ALSO

Obama says Trump is unfit to serve

Obama portrays Clinton, his former foe and advisor, as uniquely qualified for the White House

Joe Biden makes the case for Hillary Clinton to working-class voters: She gets it

UPDATES:

3:10 p.m.: This story was updated with Obamas comments.

This story was originally published at 3 a.m.
Barack Obamas presidency appears to have profoundly shifted the voter coalitions behind the two major parties, with older and blue-collar whites moving to the Republicans as college graduates and secular voters have accelerated their shift to the Democrats.

The result, as this election season moves toward a snarling finale, is two parties whose voters differ more from each other than at any point in a generation, according to a new study by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, based on interviews of some 8,000 voters this year.

That finding helps explain both the fraught tone of the campaign, with warnings from each side of catastrophe if the other wins, and the continued close nature of the contest. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both have weaknesses, but voting has become more and more tribal, and voters are unlikely to shift based on a particular candidates abilities.

Advertisement

About a third of voters currently call themselves independents  more than say they are Republicans and about the same share as those who call themselves Democrats. But the vast majority of those self-proclaimed independents actually lean either to the Democrats or the Republicans. Repeated studies have shown them to be reliably partisan in their voting behavior.

Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Sign up for the newsletter | The race to 270

Including those who lean one way or the other, the number of voters who identify with each of the two parties remains closely balanced, Pew found: 48% for Democrats and 44% for Republicans. Thats the same partisan division that existed four years ago, when Obama was reelected.

Underneath that steady division, however, change has taken place:

The Democrats have continued a rapid move toward greater ethnic and racial diversity, changing faster than the electorate as a whole. As the nations Latino and Asian American populations have grown, the Democrats have captured the lions share of their votes while retaining the loyalty of nearly nine out of 10 African Americans. The party has made strong gains among younger voters and among the growing number of nonreligious Americans and those with advanced education.

While the Democrats have gone broader, the Republicans have gone deeper, building support among their existing core groups  whites and older voters, especially men and those without college degrees.

The result: two parties sharply split along lines of culture, outlook and experience, divisions that go much deeper than political ideology for most voters.

Detailed results from the USC Dornsife/LAT daily tracking poll 

Democrats have become the party of the nations youthful, increasingly secular, racially and ethnically diverse urban population. Republicans represent an older America, both literally, given their backing from voters older than 50, and figuratively, with their support centered on white, religiously devout Protestants living in non-urban areas.

In each of those areas, the Republican advantage comes among parts of the population that are in decline.

Whites, for example, now make up 70% of the nations registered voters, down from 84% in 1992.

By contrast, the Latino share of the electorate has almost doubled in the last quarter century, from 5% to 9%, and continues to grow, as does the Asian population, now with about 2% of voters. The black share has risen slightly, from 10% to 12%. Democrats have consistently held the loyalty of more than six in 10 Latino voters and a similar percentage of Asian Americans, the Pew data show.

One part of the GOP coalition, in particular, whites without a college education, has become identified with Donald Trump, providing his most loyal supporters. But the GOPs gains among that group started long before Trump entered the race.

Through the George W. Bush years, Democrats and Republicans ran roughly even among whites without college experience. But soon after Obamas election, those voters started moving away from the Democrats in large numbers. The GOP now holds a 59% to 33% advantage among them.

The shift has been driven primarily by men. Almost two-thirds of white men without college degrees now identify with or lean to the GOP, while among white women without a degree, about half do.

Looked at another way, whites without a college education made up almost six in 10Democrats in 1992, the year Bill Clinton first won the White House. Now, as Hillary Clinton runs, non-college-educated whites count for just one in three Democrats. Their share among Republicans has dropped only slightly in that time, from 67% to 58%.

The Pew data do not show what motivated those voters to move away from the Democrats. Other research, however, has shown that Trumps support corresponds closely to voters standing on measurements of racial animosity. That finding suggests that at least some of the shift in partisanship came in response to Democrats being associated in voters minds with the first black man to occupy to Oval Office.

While Republicans have gained ground among those without a college degree, Democrats have picked up support at the other end of the scale, a shift that began during Bushs second term.

Since 1992, the share of Democrats with a college education has increased from about one in five to more than one in three. Among Republicans, the share with a college degree has remained steady and is now slightly below the Democratic level.

The trade-off, with Democrats gaining among the college educated while Republicans amass support among those without degrees, creates a long-term advantage for the Democrats because college graduates are growing as a share of the U.S. voting population.

About a third of voters now have college degrees, another third have some college experience but not a four-year degree and the remainder have not attended college. In 1992, half of voters had no college experience and fewer than one-quarter had a degree.

Along with those shifts along lines of race and education, the two parties have also divided by age.

Republicans used to be younger on average than Democrats, in part because for many years, Democrats depended on support from the generation that came of age under Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. But in the last couple of decades, as the World War II generation has passed away, older voters have become central to Republican electoral chances.

At the same time, voters 35 and younger, the millennial generation, have emerged as a key part of the Democratic coalition. Millennials, who are now equal to baby boomers as a share of the electorate, lean to the Democrats 57% to 36%. Thats partly because the generation is more racially diverse than older generations.

Even among white millennials, however, the Democrats have parity with the Republicans. By contrast, the GOP has the edge among all older generations of white voters.

The Republican edge among older voters and the Democratic advantage among younger ones affects another important part of peoples identity  religion.

Democrats have become the party of choice for the nations nones, as Pew refers to them  the rapidly growing and generally youthful part of the population who consider themselves agnostics, atheists or nothing in particular when asked about religion. Republicans have solidified the loyalty of the nations white, evangelical Protestants.

More than a third of those who identify or lean to the GOP are white evangelicals; almost three in 10 Democrats are nonreligious.

Among other religious groups, Catholics remain closely divided. Republicans have made gains among white Catholics, but those have been offset by the growth of the Latino Catholic population, which strongly favors Democrats.

Jews, by contrast, overwhelmingly favor the Democrats. Despite strains between the administration and some Jewish community leaders over policy toward Israel, about three-quarters of American Jews identify with the Democrats, a number that has ticked up slightly during Obamas years in office.

The Pew study has a margin of error of 1.2 percentage points in either direction.

David.Lauter@latimes.com

For more on Politics and Policy, follow me @DavidLauter

ALSO

Believe me: People say Trumps language is affecting political discourse bigly

Health episode raises new doubts and brings up old concerns about Clinton. Thats why its so damaging

She once compared Donald Trump to a street dog. Now its her job to sell him to Latino voters
On Nov. 8, California voters will have the opportunity to legalize recreational use of marijuana. It wont be the first time.

Weve put together a timeline of the Golden States history with cannabis, which stretches back more than a century to the Poison Act of 1907.

1913: Addendum to the Poison Act

Advertisement

California became the first state to prohibit marijuana in an addendum to the Poison Act of 1907. The Poison Act made it illegal to sell or use cocaine or opiates such as opium and morphine without a prescription. In 1913, the law was amended to include cannabis.

1937: The Marihuana Tax Act

This federal act prohibited cannabis in the United States except for industrial and medicinal uses.

Following the Mexican Revolution in 1910, many Mexicans immigrated to the U.S., prompting an outcry about the effects of immigration. Anti-Mexican sentiment surfaced in public fears of marihuana, which some believed came across the border with the immigrants and turned users into raging violent lunatics.

The Marihuana Tax Act had other contributing causes, including William Randolph Hearsts campaign against hemp as an alternative to using wood pulp for paper and reports from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics about the dangers of cannabis smoking.

The head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was Harry Anslinger, who went on a nationwide campaign against the drug. He often played on peoples fears of immigrants and people of color to further his cause, once saying that most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage.

1970: Controlled Substances Act

This act repealed the Marihuana Tax Act and replaced it with a more stringent anti-drug law that outlawed many narcotics, including cannabis.

The previous year, a report by the Field Poll  an independent nonpartisan statewide public opinion survey  found that only 3% of state residents supported complete marijuana legalization. Another 10% felt it should be legalized but treated similarly to alcohol, including limiting it to consumers by age.

1972: Proposition 19, marijuana legalization

Proposition 19 marked the first time California tried to independently legalize pot. The measure would have decriminalized marijuana possession and cultivation for people 18 and older, and was championed by Bay Area attorney Leo Paoli.

An editorial in the Sept. 25, 1972, edition of The Times recommended voters say no to Proposition 19, asking, Does the state really want to run the risk of greatly increasing the smoking of marijuana? That, we fear, is what Proposition 19 would do.

The final vote was 33.5% for and 66.5% against.

One of the only legislative districts that passed Prop. 19 was the one that included San Francisco, represented by George Moscone in the state Senate, who went on to become the citys mayor. After the proposition failed, Paoli and Moscone worked to create the California Senate Select Committee on the Control of Marijuana. That group, often referred to as the Moscone Committee, organized the first major study of the fiscal and social impacts of marijuana prohibition.

A medical marijuana patient and activist holds joints in this 1995 file photo. (Andrew Itkoff / For The Times )

1975: California Senate Bill 95

Moscone introduced this bill in Sacramento in response to his committees study, which found that 90% of marijuana arrests were for simple possession and were costing the state $100 million annually. This bill downgraded possession of an ounce or less of marijuana from a possible felony to a misdemeanor with a traffic-style citation and a maximum fine of $100, according to a Times article on the bill from July 10, 1975. An editorial that ran the next day called the new law sensible and humane.

Jerry Brown signed the bill into law during his first term as governor. The bill was considered controversial, with critics saying it effectively legalized marijuana. Brown released a statement at the time underscoring that marijuana was still illegal and that severe penalties still remain for possession by minors and for selling or cultivating the drug.

L.A.s police chief at the time, Edward M. Davis, asserted that the law would double both the crime rate and the number of heroin addicts. Brown publicly refuted him, saying it sounded like Davis was running for office or to head some international police organization and that his declarations were not well-founded. Neither of Davis predictions came to pass.

The counter at San Franciscos Cannibus Buyers Club in 1995. (Richard Haro / Los Angeles Times )

1996: Proposition 215, the medical marijuana initiative

With this ballot measure, California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana. Arizona passed a medical marijuana bill the same year, but the state suspended its implementation until the Food and Drug Administration approved cannabis for medical use, which essentially nullified it.

Californias proposition was one of the most significant pieces of marijuana legislation in modern history. Marijuana had been outlawed everywhere in every form for nearly 60 years.

The Times editorial board was against Proposition 215, saying that allowing marijuana use for virtually any medical condition was a huge loophole.

The proposition passed with 55.58% of Californians voting for it and 44.42% against it.

We have legal anarchy, blasted Steve Telliano, a spokesman for then-Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

2003: Senate Bill 420, the Medical Marijuana Program Act

This bill clarified a few things in the California medical marijuana law passed by voters, including the scope of the law and which government agencies were in charge of enforcing it. It also created the voluntary ID card system to identify verified medical marijuana patients.

The following year, the Field Poll found that nearly three-fourths of all state residents supported the existing medical marijuana legislation.

Signs created by visitors to the Oakland Museums marijuana exhibit in June 2016. (Robin Abcarian / Los Angeles Times )

2010: Senate Bill 1449

Just before leaving office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that downgraded possession of up to an ounce of marijuana from a misdemeanor to an infraction  the same as a traffic violation.

In this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket, he said in a statement that accompanied the signing.

In the same year, the Field Poll found that half of all Californians supported legalizing marijuana, either by making it available to everyone (4% ) or by treating it similarly to alcohol (46%).

2010: Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative

This ballot measure sought to legalize recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older. Every major state official, including Gov. Schwarzenegger, Sen. Diane Feinstein, Sen. Barbara Boxer and then-Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, opposed it, and the California Democratic Party declined to endorse it, opting to take a neutral position in order to avoid conflicting with the partys candidates.

In April of 2010, 56% of poll respondents said they were in favor of the initiative. But that number dropped steadily leading up to the election. Ultimately, the final vote was 53.5% against and 46.5% for.

2012: Marijuana is legalized for recreational use in two states  but not California

In 2012, Colorado and Washington voters elected to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes. Since then, state legislators across the country have been keeping an eye on what this has meant for crime rates, drug use and new taxes.

The following year, the Field Poll found that 55% of Californians supported marijuana legalization.

2015: The Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation is established

Last year, California lawmakers sent a slate of bills to Browns desk to create new statewide medical marijuana regulations. The Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation was created to dictate how cannabis is grown and sold in the state, and to set fees and licensing standards for marijuana-related businesses. Marijuana growers must also now adhere to the laws and regulations other types of farmers are subject to.

In early 2016, Brown appointed the Bureaus first pot czar, Lori Ajax. The bills also laid the groundwork for marijuana distribution and regulation if voters choose to legalize it for recreational use.

2016: The Adult Use of Marijuana Act

This years shot at legalizing pot has a number of differences from the 2010 initiative.

Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML, a group dedicated to reforming the states marijuana laws, said a number of legalization efforts cropped up this year, but thanks to former Facebook President Sean Parkers hefty investment, this is the one that rose to the top.

Gieringer said the bills organizers did a good job of getting key endorsements in place early from the California Medical Assn., Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Democratic Party. The bill also very clearly lays out how taxation will work, said Gieringer, who was the author of the 1996 law that legalized medical marijuana.

And its not a midterm election year. Elections that take place between presidential elections often have low voter turnout in California, and those who do vote have historically tended to be older and more conservative. This time around, more young people are expected to come out to the polls.

I expect it will win, Gieringer said of Proposition 64.

A recent poll backs that up: Released by UC Berkeleys Institute of Governmental Studies, it shows 63.8% of California voters supported the recreational marijuana bill.

Find Jessica Roy on Twitter @jessica_roy.

jessica.roy@latimes.com
As political introductions go, the one made by the late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez for Gov. Jerry Brown in 1976 was for the history books.

A mans acts reveal what he is, Chavez said at that summers Democratic National Convention, as he lauded Brown and placed the young governors name into nomination for the presidency.

Fast forward to Monday, four decades later, and similar praise from leaders of the the union Chavez founded, as Brown signed into law a major expansion of overtime pay for California farmworkers.

Advertisement

Good morning from the state capital. Im Sacramento Bureau Chief John Myers, and political watchers were caught a bit off guard by the governors quick action on Assembly Bill 1066.

Like hundreds of other bills left on his desk by the Legislature last month, he had until Sept. 30 to weigh in. But on Monday morning, Brown quietly signed into law what was one of Sacramentos most hotly debated summertime proposals.

The law, which raises overtime pay beginning in 2019, may be the bookend of Browns legacy on farm labor  having championed union rights for farmworkers during his first term in 1975. Not that UFW leaders and Brown have always been in agreement.

I think that relationship is complicated and its had its ups and downs, said Darrell Steinberg, the former state Senate leader who saw Brown veto his 2011 bill to expand union organizing rights.

Its also worth viewing the farmworker wage fight in the context of Browns decision earlier this year to boost the statewide minimum wage and even Mondays action to sign a law making permanent overtime pay rules for domestic workers  all items that might fall under what he called a matter of economic justice when announcing the minimum wage agreement in March.

Well keep watching the hundreds of other bills Brown must sign or veto by months end on our Essential Politics news feed.

HILLARY HEALS WHILE THE EX-PRESIDENT PINCH-HITS

As Hillary Clinton recovers from complications of pneumonia, her campaign faced a dilemma about this weeks big campaign and fundraising swing through California and Nevada.

Enter Bill Clinton.

The former president, who said in a TV interview on Monday that the candidate is doing fine, will fill in for his wife today at Beverly Hills fundraisers, as well as events in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

ARROGANCE AND ENTITLEMENT, SAYS TRUMP

Donald Trump largely avoided the Clinton health issue on Monday, choosing instead to lash out at the Democratic nominees weekend remarks about some of his supporters.

You cant lead this nation if you have such a low opinion of its citizens, Trump said during a speech in Baltimore in front of the National Guard Assn.

ON THE TRAIL AGAIN

President Obama returns to the campaign trail today in Philadelphia, his first foray in several weeks into a swing state to make the case for his former secretary of State.

While presidential duties are expected to dominate his September schedule, advisers say hell increase his efforts in October.

As always, keep track of all the latest presidential news on our Trail Guide news feed.

DOES THE MARIJUANA MEASURE HAVE MOMENTUM?

With election day just eight weeks away, supporters of the Proposition 64 effort to fully legalize marijuana have something to celebrate.

A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll finds 58% of voters surveyed support the measure, while only 34% oppose it. Its no doubt a good place to be in, though political experts in the Golden State will also point out that, historically, successful statewide propositions are closer to the 60% mark in early support. Opposition campaigns usually take away a chunk of that initial enthusiasm.

Weve also put together a timeline of Californias cannabis history over the past century, from efforts to outlaw it to decriminalization and beyond.

TENS OF THOUSANDS OF VOTING ERRORS IN U.S. SENATE PRIMARY

The November race for the U.S. Senate has only two candidates, but the June 7 primary was replete with contenders  34 in all. In April, we wrote how election observers were worried about how to design the ballot in a way that didnt confuse voters.

In more than 235,000 cases, that wasnt successful.

A new election data analysis finds thats how many California voters  maybe more  somehow selected more than one candidate, and thus created an over-vote that had to be discarded.

The more complicated the design, the more likely voters were to over-vote, which caused their votes to be disqualified, said researcher Davit Avagyan.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

 Californians will be asked to weigh in on the historic Citizens United campaign finance case this fall, thanks to Proposition 59. Weve got a look at whos for it and why.

 Hillary Clinton has been courting the votes of millennials. Can she get them to vote?

 Trumpisms may be odd phrases used by the GOP nominee, but linguists say the words carry a quiet power.

 Tom Calderon  a former assemblyman who was nabbed in a corruption sting that focused on his brother (who was at the time a state senator)  was sentenced Monday to a year in federal custody for laundering bribes.

 Stanley Sheinbaum  who took up liberal causes, held salons in his Brentwood house featuring world leaders, moguls and celebrities, and left his mark on history in L.A., nationally and abroad  died at age 96.

 Ed Edelman, a former Los Angeles County supervisor whose crusading policymaking influenced child welfare, health services and environmental preservation, died at age 85.

 Six officers who responded to Decembers San Bernardino terrorist attack were among those awarded the Medal of Valor on Monday by Brown and Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris in an event at the state Capitol.

LOGISTICS

Miss yesterdays newsletter? Here you go. Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox daily. And keep an eye on our politics page throughout the day for the latest and greatest. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics and @LATpoliticsCA?

Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed historic legislation Monday that would gradually add hundreds of thousands of California farmworkers to the ranks of those who are paid overtime after eight hours on the job or 40 hours in a single week, closing out one of the years most intense political battles in Sacramento.

Leaders of the United Farm Workers of America, which sponsored the overtime bill, called Browns decision a victory in a nearly 80-year quest to establish broad rights and protections for farm laborers. But the move shocked the agricultural community, which lobbied heavily against its provisions, saying the new law would hurt a valuable state industry already on the decline.

Assembly Bill 1066, authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), calls for a phase-in of new overtime rules over four years beginning in 2019.

Advertisement

It will lower the current 10-hour-day threshold for overtime by half an hour each year until it reaches the standard eight-hour day by 2022. It also will phase in a 40-hour standard workweek for the first time. The governor will be able to suspend any part of the process for a year depending on economic conditions.

Gonzalez on Monday lauded the governors decision, saying the new rules would provide equal protections for California farmworkers, more than 90% of whom are Latino and 80% of whom are immigrants.

This is a historic day, Gonzalez said. They are finally going to be treated with the same dignity and respect as every other hourly worker.

Browns signature followed a pair of intense showdowns on the floor of the state Assembly, where a similar proposal died in June a few votes short of the majority it needed to pass. Gonzalez then resurrected the bill in the final month of the legislative session, and Brown offered no explanation for his decision to sign the proposal.

We are letting the signature speak for itself, said Deborah Hoffman, a spokesperson for the governor.

Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers union, said he was grateful to the lawmakers who voted for the legislation and to Brown for making a tough decision like this and changing the course of history.

AB 1066 would give license to farmworkers in other states fighting for the same thing, Rodriguez said. Im crying tears of joy after so many years that farmworkers have worked so hard to win a significant victory like this that will dramatically change their lives.

The legislation had drawn wide support from a diverse group of associations and political leaders, including Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, who tweeted his support for the bill last month, on Monday commended Brown for ensuring strong and sensible safeguards for farmworkers and their families.

People who work on farms and in our homes are some of Americas most vulnerable workers, he said in a statement. We all depend on their work to feed and care for our families, but far too often they cant afford to put food on their own dinner tables.

But farmers and agricultural lobby groups expressed deep disappointment with the new laws. In a critique similar to those used by opponents of increasing the minimum wage, they had argued that the legislation could backfire on farmworkers, as it saddles farmers and growers with higher costs and could force them to limit work hours and hire more employees.

Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, said growers would have no choice but to reduce employee hours and increase food prices for consumers. Some also could leave the state.

Farmers will struggle to compete with products out of Mexico where farmworkers there make in a week what farmworkers here make in a day, he said. And this is not a good day for farmworkers who want to live that California dream of working a lot of hours to buy a home and do things they wouldnt be able to do in Mexico.

State Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber) said there was no doubt the impact would be negative.

I am disappointed at the insensitivity to this vital industry, he said in a statement. And sadly I say, stay tuned for loss in salary for workers and higher prices for consumers.

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 first established minimum wage and overtime standards but excluded all agricultural workers, the majority of whom at the time were African American.

In California, the Legislature exempted farmworkers from earning overtime pay in 1941. That prohibition remained unchanged until 1976, when the state Industrial Welfare Commission ordered overtime pay for farmworkers after 10 hours on the job on any single day and 60 hours in a week. Hourly workers in other jobs across the state receive overtime pay after eight hours a day and 40 hours a week.

There have been fights over the issue twice before in recent years. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar overtime bill in 2010. In 2012, another bill passed through both houses of the Legislature, but was killed when it came back to the Assembly for a final vote.

Mondays signature on the overtime bill placed a bookend of sorts on Browns legacy of efforts to address the needs of California farmworkers.

During his first year in office in 1975, the governor signed the landmark law allowing field laborers to unionize, forging a close alliance with Cesar Chavez, the late founder of the United Farm Workers.

Chavez then placed Browns name into nomination for the presidency at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, proclaiming the young governor knew that work is a cornerstone to a mans dignity.

But Brown angered UFW members in 2011, his first year back in Sacramento, by vetoing a bill to strengthen the unions ability to organize farmworkers.

I think the relationship is complicated and its had its ups and downs, said Darrell Steinberg, the former leader of the state Senate who wrote the vetoed bill.

Brown ultimately signed a narrower version of the bill, but then vetoed yet another bill pertaining to farm labor contracts in 2014.

Steinberg said he believes Browns signature Monday on the expansion of farmworker overtime showed the difference for the governor in the intricacies of labor law versus how visceral it is to put real money in working peoples pockets.

Brown himself voiced a similar sentiment this year when agreeing to a gradual increase of the statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour, calling it a matter of economic justice.

jazmine.ulloa@latimes.com; john.myers@latimes.com

Follow @jazmineulloa and @johnmyers on Twitter

ALSO:

California farmworkers could see overtime expanded in the next decade after historic Assembly vote

California lawmakers expect another showdown on overtime pay for farmworkers

Updates on California politics
The more that vaping takes hold in England, the better the odds that smokers there will succeed in their attempts to stop using regular cigarettes.

These parallel trends, reported Wednesday in the BMJ medical journal, dont prove that electronic cigarettes help smokers kick the habit. But that possibility is looking more and more likely, experts said.

Smoking prevalence in the United Kingdom fell significantly from 2014 to 2015, and thats a sign that something over there is working, according to an editorial that accompanies the study.

Advertisement

Successful quitting through substitution with e-cigarettes is one likely major contributor, wrote John Britton, director of the UK Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at the University of Nottingham. The challenge for public health is to embrace the potential of this new technology and put it to full use.

The challenge for public health is to embrace the potential of this new technology and put it to full use.  John Britton, director of the UK Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at the University of Nottingham

Health experts in England have been contemplating the smoking-cessation benefits of e-cigarettes for several years. A previous study of English smokers found that would-be quitters who vaped were about 60% more likely to succeed compared with smokers who tried to go cold turkey or used nicotine replacement products, like patches or gum.

This time, researchers from University College London wanted to see whether the prevalence of e-cigarette use among active smokers  and especially among those trying to quit  had anything to do with a smokers likelihood of kicking the habit.

The researchers examined data on nearly 80,000 smokers who took part in Englands Smoking Toolkit Study from 2006 to 2015. In the last quarter of 2006, 10.6% of quit attempts succeeded. By the first quarter of 2015, the success rate had climbed to 18.6%, according to the study.

Meanwhile, the proportion of smokers who also vaped increased from virtually zero to 21.3% during the same period, the researchers found.

Vaping was even more popular among smokers who were trying to quit, with 35% of them using the electronic devices in 2015. That embrace of e-cigarettes coincided with a drop in use of more conventional nicotine replacement products.

The researchers found no conclusive link between vaping and attempts to quit smoking. But their calculations showed that for every 1% increase in e-cigarette use, the success of quit attempts increased by 0.098%, according to the study. In addition, for every 1% increase in vaping among smokers trying to quit, the success rate of quit attempts rose by 0.058%, the study said.

If e-cigarette use really is helping smokers quit, that means 54,288 people in England who were able to stop smoking in 2015 can thank vaping for their success. Although roughly two-thirds of them can be expected to fall off the wagon, that still leaves about 18,000 long term ex-smokers as a result of e-cigarette use, the study authors wrote.

It may not sound like much of an improvement, but its clinically significant because of the huge health gains from stopping smoking, the researchers wrote. A 40-year-old smoker who quits permanently can expect to gain nine life years compared with a continuing smoker.

In the early days of vaping, health experts worried that e-cigarettes would encourage smokers to keep on smoking by providing a socially acceptable substitute in venues where regular cigarettes were banned. But the new study suggests that the opposite is true, Britton wrote in the editorial.

(One of the study authors, health psychologist Robert West, has served as a consultant to companies that make smoking cessation products but doesnt accept money from tobacco or e-cigarette companies. Two others coauthors, Emma Beard and Jamie Brown, disclosed that they have received funding from Pfizer.)

karen.kaplan@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @LATkarenkaplan and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

MORE IN SCIENCE

Is youth soccer getting more dangerous? The injury rate has more than doubled since 1990.

Pneumonia: What does Clintons affliction say about her health?

Move over DNA. Scientists can identify you based on the unique pattern of proteins in your hair
In the early evening of Aug. 26, Yang Gailan brought her four young children behind her small, mud-brick house in a northwestern Chinese village and hacked them to death with an ax. Afterward, she drank pesticide.

Before she died, she found her grandmother. I was forced to, she told the 73-year-old woman, according to Chinese news reports. You dont understand. I cant make you understand.

Yangs husband committed suicide after learning what happened, according the China Youth Daily, a state-run newspaper. He also drank pesticide.

Advertisement

This weekend, news of Yangs murder-suicide spread on Chinese social networks. Many commentators cast Yang as a remarkably sympathetic figure, drawing widespread attention to the poverty, inequality and general air of hopelessness that pervades the countrys vast, economically stagnant countryside.

China has made huge strides in addressing rural poverty: The countrys poverty rate fell from 88% in 1981 to 6.5% in 2012, according to the World Bank. Yet more than 70 million people in China still live below the poverty line, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, and income inequality has soared. The richest 1% of Chinas households own one-third of its wealth, according to a recent report by Peking University.

On Sunday, an article about the case titled Ants in The Prosperous Era went viral on WeChat, Chinas most popular social network. If theres no incident like Yang Gailan killing her whole family, who would believe that these disadvantaged people and groups still exist in this prosperous era? the author, a well-known commentator who posts under the name Ge Long, wrote.

This case shocked urban Chinese people living in developed eastern cities, Dang Guoying, an expert on rural development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the state-run Global Times newspaper. Because most of us cannot imagine that millions of Chinese people still live in poverty in rural areas, especially in a country with the worlds second-largest economy.

The story began to spread on WeChat and Weibo, Chinas version of Twitter. Although the scope of the response is difficult to quantify  WeChat does not reveal metrics, and Weibo is heavily censored  the proliferation of commentary and intensity of discussion suggest that the story struck a nerve.

Yang, 28, was quiet and withdrawn, according to the China Youth Daily. Even in her village of Agu Shan, population 300, she qualified as exceptionally poor. Pictures posted online suggest a grinding existence. Her bed was a concrete slab, her walls covered in newspaper, her ceiling broken and frayed. Her kitchen was a pile of blackened bricks. She spent her days working in the fields.

Rural China has emptied out in recent decades, as its young, able-bodied people leave home for better opportunities in the cities. Yangs family was no exception. Her husband, Li Keying, worked in a nearby city, and sent about $500 home each month, according to a statement on the website of the Kangle County government, which oversees Agu Shan Village. Yang used the money to feed herself and her son and three daughters. The youngest was 3, the oldest 6.

But the added income had a catch. In 2013, the family received more than $400 a year in state welfare payments, according to the statement. In 2014, authorities determined that her familys income surpassed $350 per person per month, raising her above the poverty line. They cut her benefits. No one in Yangs family complained, the statement said.

Yet Yang couldnt even read the official notice about the decision, according to Serious News, a WeChat-based investigative reporting outfit. Like her father and grandmother, she was illiterate.

Doubts linger about the official narrative. The China Youth Daily cited an anonymous relative of Yangs as saying that her husband earned only about $1,000 a year. Serious News insinuated that local officials may have misappropriated the funds.

A man who picked up the phone at the Kangle County government refused to answer questions. He suggested reading the online statement, and hung up before giving his name.

On Sept. 9, an investigative team from Chinas powerful State Council launched an investigation into the case, according to the China Youth Daily.

Yet many social media users were divided about how much blame to place on society, and how much to place on Yang.

Nothing can justify a monster who kills her own kids  not even poverty, not even hopelessness, said one post on Weibo. If you ask her kids, Do you want to be killed? the answer must be No. 

I hope this is only due to poverty because at least its easy to give them more money, said another. But Im afraid this is about unfairness, abuse and corruption, which is invisible in Chinese society and very difficult to correct.

Yingzhi Yang in the Times Beijing bureau contributed to this report

jonathan.kaiman@latimes.com

ALSO

Heres why China refuses to block North Koreas nuclear ambitions

Chinese police arrest 13 in crackdown to suppress protests in Wukan

South Sudans leaders got rich off war as their people suffered, report finds
India on Tuesday rejected a request by the United Nations human rights chief for a visit to gather information on the disputed territory of Kashmir, where security forces have been accused of using excessive violence in trying to quell unrest.

Zeid Raad Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, called for access that is unconditional to both sides of the Line of Control, the boundary between India and Pakistan that runs through Kashmir.

Speaking to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Hussein said his request was granted by Pakistan, which accuses Indian forces of human rights violations in the Himalayan territory that the countries have skirmished over for seven decades.

Advertisement

I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides, Hussein said.

New Delhi swiftly responded that an external inquiry was unnecessary and that it was fully engaged in normalizing the situation as soon as possible.

Indian democracy has all that is required to address legitimate grievances, the Indian external affairs ministry said in a statement.

At least 81 people  nearly all civilians  have died in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir since July 9, when protests erupted after Indian security forces killed Burhan Wani, a 22-year-old separatist.

Stone-throwing demonstrators have attacked police stations and government buildings. Indian paramilitary police have responded by firing live rounds, tear gas and pellets from pump-action shotguns, often striking demonstrators in the head.

In the main government hospital in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, more than 800 people have been treated for eye injuries caused by the pellets, which are made of metal and encased in a thin rubber coating. Many of them have lost at least partial eyesight.

The violence continued Tuesday when two people were killed, including a 19-year-old man, and dozens injured in clashes with security forces who were enforcing a rare curfew on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Authorities imposed the curfew across all 10 districts of Kashmir to thwart plans by separatist groups to march to the local offices of the United Nations, Indian news media reported.

India and Pakistan each control portions of Kashmir but claim the territory in its entirety. Separatists in the Muslim-majority territory have taken up arms to seek independence from Hindu-dominated India or a merger with Pakistan.

Under a controversial security law, Indian authorities enjoy broad powers to crack down on unrest in Kashmir. Human rights groups have assailed tactics used by security forces, accusing paramilitary police of firing pellets that have injured or blinded peaceful demonstrators and even children sitting in their homes.

These weapons are inherently indiscriminate and always carry the risk of causing serious injury to people who are not engaging in violence, said Amnesty Internationals India director, Aakar Patel. There is simply no proper way to use these weapons, and they should be prohibited.

On Sept. 2, Indian officials approved an alternate to the pellets  a shell packed with a compound derived from chili peppers  that it said would be used only in rare cases. But Amnesty said more than 100 cases of pellet injuries were reported at hospitals in Srinagar in the first week of the month.

India has defended its actions in Kashmir, saying its forces have shown tremendous restraint and accusing Pakistan of supporting militant groups.

Relations between the nuclear-armed rivals have deteriorated markedly since last Christmas, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unannounced visit to his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. Hopes that the meeting would help re-launch peace talks quickly collapsed after a militant raid on an Indian air base that New Delhi said was sponsored by Pakistan.

In recent weeks, Modi has referred to Pakistan, without naming it, as the one country spreading terrorism in South Asia.

Read more: The telegenic young militant whose death has fueled two months of unrest in Kashmir 

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia
The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a major new 10-year package of security assistance for Israel despite sharp disagreements between the two allies.

The agreement, a memo of understanding, is to be signed Wednesday at the State Department, which called the deal the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in U.S. history.

Officials said the package will increase U.S. aid from about $3.1 billion a year to as much as $3.8 billion a year.

Advertisement

The deal emerged in prolonged negotiations that followed a public rift between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the nuclear deal with Iran, the Palestinian peace process and other issues.

Officials in both countries had said the deal was near completion for some time. However, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had criticized the package and indicated that he believes Israel should receive more aid.

Until Tuesday, the White House was reluctant to announce the deal if there were a chance Graham would try to undercut it.

President Obama is eager to put the aid in place before he leaves office in January, however. Analysts said he wants his legacy to show a strong commitment to Israels security independent of his clashes with Netanyahu.

Netanyahu plans to visit New York next week to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly. Officials have not said if he will meet with Obama.

Obama administration officials say U.S. security cooperation with Israel has reached record levels over the last year despite the disputes with Netanyahus government.

The new U.S. aid package would be the largest ever to a single country. It will allow Israel to buy high-end U.S.-made military hardware to help it maintain a clear technological advantage over its foes.

Palestinians and other critics of Israel complained that the new aid package and its decade-long duration, from fiscal year 2019 to 2028, essentially rewards the Netanyahu government despite its expansion of much-criticized settlements in the West Bank and other points of contention.

Israel will not be held accountable [for] anything, Basel Ghattas, an Arab member of Israels Knesset, or parliament, said recently in Washington.

But the State Department responded that actions the Obama administration may not like, such as settlement expansion, have to be compartmentalized from the United States ironclad commitment to Israels security.

Israeli critics of the aid negotiations say Israel could have have gotten a more generous aid package if Netanyahu had engaged in talks last year when Obama was trying to secure Israels backing for a nuclear deal with Iran.

The aid has important symbolic value. If the aid is seen as going down, or not going up significantly, it will be seen as a barometer of Israels position in Washington, said Jonathan Rhynold, a professor of political science at Israels Bar Ilan University and an author of a book on U.S.-Israeli ties.

After an initial deal to curb Irans nuclear program was concluded in April 2015, Obama publicly appealed to Israel to start talks aimed at boosting security cooperation and expanding military aid.

That was very clear language: Lets sit down and talk about what we can do for you, said a diplomat familiar with the often-fraught relationship. The prime minister didnt want to engage, so the issue lingered.

Analysts said Netanyahu, who was waging a campaign in the U.S. Congress to block the Iran deal, delayed the aid talks to avoid the appearance of giving up his opposition in exchange for more assistance.

We could have and should have obtained a more generous package that better answers our needs, Uzi Arad, a former national security advisor to Netanyahu, said in a June interview with the Israeli financial website Calcalist.

Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence and the director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Israels decision to pass up a deal last year was mistaken and that it hurt Israeli security interests.

Under the terms of the new package, Israel will no longer be able to spend one-fourth of the U.S. aid for purchases at Israeli companies  a change that could be a blow to the countrys defense industry.

The Obama administration also insisted -- to Israels chagrin -- that the country it will no longer be able to rely on Congress to approve funds separate from the aid package.

Some Israeli officials speculated that Obamas successor may be inclined to offer the Israelis a better package, and one of Grahams arguments was that the president has no business effectively removing the issue of appropriations from Congress.

Beyond the aid package, the two governments still have not formulated a joint policy on Iran following the nuclear deal.

Obama has insisted that the deal, under which Iran has mothballed or destroyed most of its nuclear infrastructure, has made Israel safer by removing the nuclear threat for at least a decade.

A number of Israeli security officials apparently agree. Over the last year, they have muted their public criticism of the Iran deal and warnings of a looming nuclear threat.

The relative silence reflects Israels recognition that its too late to block the accord and that the threat of Iran using a nuclear weapon has indeed become more distant.

The nuclear challenge is far away right now. They recognize its not something thats going to erupt in the next five years. They have other things on their plate, said Mike Herzog, the former head of strategic planning for Israels Defense Ministry and currently a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Israeli officials and the defense establishment still consider the Iran agreement problematic, Herzog said. They worry that Iran could still seek to become a nuclear power after terms of the deal expire, and that it is still developing ballistic missiles.

Israels focus for now has shifted to the other impact of the nuclear deal: The easing of international economic sanctions has given Iran money to help Syrias President Bashar Assad as well as Hezbollah, its Lebanese Shiite ally.

Special correspondent Mitnick reported from Tel Aviv.
One day into Syrias latest cease-fire, the United Nations said Tuesday that violence had decreased significantly in the war-ravaged country, but a system for delivering humanitarian aid remained undetermined.

While some level of violence continued after the start of the cease-fire at sunset Monday, reports indicated a significant, significant drop, said Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy.

The first attempt to deliver aid to the rebel-held city of Aleppo, however, failed to reach its destination after the Syrian government demanded prior approval of all aid shipments.

Advertisement

The delivery failure exposed a possible gap in the cease-fire agreement the United States and Russia negotiated in Geneva and announced Saturday: how humanitarian aid would reach the estimated 1 million people who have been living in dire circumstances under government siege for up to four years.

The Syrian government said it would block any humanitarian aid entering Aleppo that was not coordinated with the government and the U.N. It said this applied especially to Turkey, which has long supported the Syrian opposition seeking the ouster of President Bashar Assad.

De Mistura said Syria only had to be notified about U.N. aid shipments to Aleppo and had no right to inspect or block it.

It appeared that Turkeys shipment had not been sanctioned by the U.N. Turkeys state-run Anadolu news agency claimed that the 20 trucks of flour and food sent to the border were a U.N. convoy, but the U.N. said it hadnt yet approved any shipment because of the risks of transiting the war zone between the Turkish border and Aleppo.

We are waiting for this cessation of hostilities to actually deliver the assurances and the peace before trucks can start moving from Turkey, Jens Laerke, a U.N. spokesman, told Reuters on Tuesday. As I speak, that has not been the case.

Russia, an ally of Assad, charged that moderate rebels had broken the cease-fire 23 times, killing six people near Aleppo, while opposition news media reported that Russian or Syrian government warplanes attacked civilian targets.

In Bzaa, a town controlled by Islamic State extremists, three civilians were killed and more than 20 wounded in a Russian airstrike, the Smart news agency reported. Another airstrike, in Al Bab, killed one person, the agency said.

The agreement struck by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for a seven-day cease-fire. If the arrangement holds, it is expected to lead to the setting up of a joint U.S.-Russian military center to coordinate operations against Islamic extremists and eventually a revived effort to reach a political accord between the Syrian government and the opposition.

Its also supposed to lead to deliveries of food and medical supplies to areas under siege. According to the latest issue of the bulletin Siege Watch, at least 1 million people are living in 40 besieged communities, not including east Aleppo. The quarterly bulletin is issued by two humanitarian watchdog groups, PAX and the Syria Institute.

By virtue of the cease-fire agreement, the Syrian government needs to allow unhindered access to U.N. trucks, and a senior U.S. official told reporters in Washington that the Syrian government was expected to pull its forces back.

De Mistura said Russia is obliged to facilitate the movement of the convoys, noting this was still being worked on. The movement of aid from commercial and other sources, De Mistura said, depends on other phases of the agreement.

The full agreement has not yet been made public. After Lavrov said he would like to publish the full texts, the State Department said it favored holding up publication because of the security details in them.

Russian state news media reported that the Russian government had set up an observation post on Castello Road, a post intended to enable the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to inspect shipments into the rebel-held zone.

The reception the U.N. will receive when its convoy arrives in the besieged zone remained uncertain. De Mistura indicated he is expecting a hostile reception and said the Aleppo provincial council needs to accept the fact that this aid is urgent and there should be no preconditions.

In east Aleppo, about 200 marchers staged a demonstration in the Tariq al Bab and Shaar neighborhoods. They protested against the international communitys apparent plan to send food but do nothing to lift the siege.

The U.N. is a partner in the siege of Aleppo, read one poster. Death is better than humiliation, said another.

A third read: This is a revolution of freedom, not of hunger.

Gutman is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington and special correspondent Duygu Guvenc in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

UPDATES:

6:30 p.m.: This article was updated with more information about humanitarian aid.

This article was originally published at 2 p.m.
Latinos now trail Asians in U.S. population growth rate thanks to lingering effects from the Great Recession.

A new study from the Pew Research Center found the birth rate among Latina women slowed over the last decade, as did the influx of undocumented immigrants crossing over. The country's Hispanic population grew 5.8 percent annually in the 1990s but hovered near 2.4 percent growth between 2010 and 2014.

Part of the reason is economic distress. Like much of the nation, the Hispanic community struggled through unemployment or poverty, watching as the net worth of Hispanic households fell from $18,359 in 2005 to just $6,325 a year later.

Birth rates among Hispanic women aged 15 to 44 were about 98.3 births per 1,000 women in 2006. By 2014, it dropped by nearly 25.

Pew researchers Renee Stepler and Mark Hugo Lopez noted that immigration was "the principal driver of Hispanic population growth" over the last four decades, until it stagnated. A 2015 poll of Mexicans who emigrated back south found 25 percent did so for employment reasons; either they could not find work in the U.S. or they lined something up in Mexico.

"Immigration, which in the 1980s and 1990s was the principal driver of Hispanic population growth, began to slow in the mid-2000. And, in the case of Mexico, immigration has now reversed back toward Mexico since 2009," researchers wrote.

The country's undocumented immigration population is often estimated between 11 and 14 million, though the figure has wavered over the last eight years.

Despite anti-immigration rhetoric during 2012 and 2016 presidential elections and increased deportation efforts from the Obama administration, the biggest turn-off for undocumented individuals remains the economy.

Where Latinos Choose to Live

Latinos still account for about 54 percent of the nation's population growth this century. While metropolises in New York and California are attractive to newcomers, many are settling in rural, non-metropolitan areas with better job prospects.

"General population growth and economic opportunities in places that traditionally had few Latinos led to dispersal of the Latino population across the U.S. beginning in the 1990s, just as Latino population growth was accelerating," the study read.

South and Southwest border states still account for the largest share of Hispanic population growth, and they increasingly steer towards ethnic cities like Los Angeles, Houston, and Miami, but the fastest-growing counties aren't in conspicuous areas.

Williams County in North Dakota saw 367 percent population growth between 2007 and 2014, followed by Stark County (294 percent) and Ward County (117 percent). The population Luzerne County in Pennsylvania grew 91 percent. In Beadle County, South Dakota it was 85 percent. Burleigh County, another North Dakotan block, rose 82 percent.

"Counties in Southern states have long dominated the list of the fast-growing Hispanic counties. This was especially true from 2000 to 2007, when eight of the 10 fastest growing counties were in the South," researchers wrote.

They added that North Dakota's Latino population nearly doubled from 2007 to 2014, "making it the state with highest Hispanic growth rate (though it ranks 49th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia by Hispanic population)."

U.S.-born Hispanics outnumber foreign-born Hispanics in every territory save two: Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Texas, California, New York, Florida, and Illinois combined house 65 percent of the total population.

How Changing Trends Affect Future Elections

A record 27.3 million Latinos will be eligible to vote come November, about 3.2 million of which came of age since 2012.

In a decade or so, where they live may directly affect how electoral votes are distributed.

"The growing and dispersing Latino population has led to rising electoral influence of Latino voters in recent elections as the number eligible to vote has grown in many battleground states such as Colorado, Nevada, Virginia and North Carolina, even though Latino voters are largely concentrated in non-battleground states," researchers wrote.

Even if each of these states' fast-growing Latino population was eligible to vote, they likely wouldn't. At least not this election cycle. It will take decades for the Hispanic community to impact Red states, if only because voter turnout was significantly lower than other groups in 2012 and again during 2014 midterm elections.

Latino voters today are more informed than ever. Their influence on Election Day, however, is relative to state politics.

North and South Dakota are reliably Republican states. So is Utah, though a June Salt Lake Tribune poll showed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a virtual tie with Republican contender Donald Trump.

Arizona, a state known for stringent immigration proposals, has multiple polls with Clinton trailing Trump by as few as two percentage points. Georgia, a southern state that hasn't voted Democrat since Bill Clinton won office, is a deadlock, according to an NBC News poll. And Florida, the perennial swing state, has Clinton up in at least three of five recent polls.

The common thread is a prevalent Latino presence. Change will come gradually amid slowing population growth.
The Leicester City squad touched down in Belgium on Tuesday morning ahead of their highly-anticipated UEFA Champions League debut this week.

- Leicester City begin maiden UEFA Champions League campaign on Wednesday

- Foxes arrive in Bruges ahead of match against Belgian champions Club Brugge

- English champions to train at Jan Breydel Stadium on Tuesday

- Danny Simpson travels with squad after weekend injury

The Leicester City squad touched down in Belgium on Tuesday morning ahead of their highly-anticipated UEFA Champions League debut this week.

The Foxes travel to Belgian champions Club Brugge for their Group G opener on Wednesday night  the start of a European adventure fans have been looking forward to since qualification was secured back in April.



The 2016/17 season will see City competing in Europes premier club competition for the first time in the Clubs 132-year history, adding another chapter to a fairy-tale 2016, which has already included lifting the Premier League title in May.

But while such sentimentality is understandably rife among supporters and onlookers, there was a steely focus about Claudio Ranieris squad as they embarked at Birmingham Airport on Tuesday morning.

Happy to be here? Of course. Along for the ride? Absolutely not.



Club Brugge was, geographically, the shortest journey available to City in last months draw for the group stages, meaning a brief 45-minute flight across the North Sea to northwest Belgium, followed by a transfer to the team hotel on the outskirts of Bruges.

Among the travelling party is defender Danny Simpson, who will be hoping to be fit in time for Wednesday night. The full-back was replaced during the first half of Saturdays defeat at Liverpool with a hamstring complaint, but could be in contention for the clash with the Blauw-Zwart.



Ranieris squad will train at Brugges Jan Breydel Stadium on Tuesday evening following Claudio Ranieris pre-match press conference. The Italian will be joined by captain Wes Morgan to discuss preparations for Wednesday nights match and what can be expected from Michel Preud'hommes Belgian champions.

Stay logged on to lcfc.com, LCFC TV and the LCFC social media channels for all the pre-match build-up.


Three men are charged in a drug-trafficking bust early Monday at the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, according to city police.

Left to Right: David G. Powell, Daniel Felix Cordero Jr. and Jaime Rosario Jr. (Courtesy Photo)

Charged are David G. Powell, 33, of Rosedale, New York; Jaime Rosario Jr., 38, of Astoria, New York; and Daniel Felix Cordero Jr., 29, of the 300 block of Parkside Drive in Macungie.

Bearing a search warrant, officers with the Bethlehem Police Department's Special Operations Bureau Vice Unit at 1 a.m. raided Suite 1201 in the hotel of the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, 77 Sands Boulevard.

Police reportedly seized vacuum-sealed bags containing marijuana as well as packaging materials and other drug paraphernalia, plus about $17,000 in cash. Police said Powell and Rosario were occupying the hotel room.

Officers stopped Cordero at an undisclosed location within the casino propety and found him in possession of a duffle bag containing several double vacuum-sealed bags containing marijuana, according to court records.

Police said the amount of marijuana seized is consistent with drug trafficking.

Powell is charged with three felony counts of drug possession with intent to deliver, while Cordero and Rosario each are charged with one felony count of drug possession with intent to deliver.

Court records indicate Rosario has a previous felony drug arrest.

All three were arraigned before District Judge James Narlesky, who set bail at $150,000 each. In lieu of bail, all three were sent to Northampton County Prison to await preliminary hearings.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Lehigh Valley Academy's charter is up for renewal, and Bethlehem is subjecting it to a rigorous review.

Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School is up for charter renewal. (Photo Courtesy of Lehigh Valley Academy | For lehighvalleylive.com)

The school's charter is issued by the Bethlehem Area School District, so it is up to the school board to determine whether the school deserves another five years.

Charter schools are public schools funded by taxpayer dollars funneled from an enrolled student's home district.

The K-12 charter school is located in leased office space off of Valley Center Parkway in Hanover Township, Northampton County.

This year, Lehigh Valley Academy has 1,689 students enrolled from 16 different school districts, school CEO Susan Mauser told the Bethlehem school board Monday night. Although, 1,013 of the students come from Bethlehem.

Students are selected through an enrollment lottery that gives preference to Bethlehem Area and Saucon Valley school district students and siblings of current students. The school often has a waiting list for lower grades.

Eventually, the charter school plans to enroll 1,950 students with 150 students per grade level.

Bethlehem Assistant Superintendent Jack Silva noted that since almost 60 percent of students come from Bethlehem, renewing the charter means likely losing another 200-plus students as it reaches full enrollment.

The district plans to pay the charter school $11 million in tuition this year.

Bethlehem school board President Michael Faccinetto noted that 25 percent of the charter school's budget goes to facility costs and asked if there are plans to lower that cost.

"That's exceptionally high," he said.

Lehigh Valley Academy would love its own facility, but when a charter school is just starting out with a five-year charter it is challenging to find a space to grow into, Mauser said.

"We know the long-term plan has to be to own our own facility," she said.

During the school's ramp up to a K-12 school, the office park has allowed some crucial flexibility, she said.

"We do certainly recognize that $330,000 of that is Bethlehem school taxes," she said.

Bethlehem has asked Auditor General Eugene DePasquale to investigate whether the charter school violated public bidding laws each time it expanded. Mauser said she's not received a ruling from DePasquale.

Much of the Bethlehem school board member's questions focused on how the charter school is different from the district and what it offers students that Bethlehem cannot.

Lehigh Valley Academy is an International Baccalaureate program school, which is a research-based method of teaching and learning that incorporates local and national standards, Mauser said. The assessment are internationally bench-marked to "allow graduates to continue their education anywhere in the world," she said.

"It's really about teaching kids how to learn," Mauser said.

Students can graduate with a specialized diploma, but it requires extensive testing, similar to Advanced Placement tests.

The school's Class of 2016 included 50 graduates and 11 of the students were awarded a full IB-diploma, while a number earned some certificates but did not take all of the exams, Mauser said.

Director Angela Sinkler pressed Mauser to specify how the charter school offers a better option for families.

Mauser bristled at the term "better" saying the school's goal was not to be better than the Bethlehem Area School District.

"We certainly want to be the best possible school for our students," Mauser said.

She promised concrete examples of how the school is different at the board's Oct. 10 meeting and invited the board to visit the school.

The Bethlehem school board expects to take a vote on the renewal at its October or November regular board meeting.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.

Save
palmerpark.jpeg

Palmer Township police say two men had nearly 20 fraudulent credit cards in their possession Monday at Palmer Park Mall. (File photo)

A Philadelphia man and a New York man are facing a slew of charges after having nearly 20 fraudulent credit cards at Palmer Park Mall, police said.

Sayidd Guiste and Adalberto Fuentes III (Courtesy photo)

Sayyid Mervin Guiste, 31, of Philadelphia, and Adalberto Fuentes III, 29, of Arverne, N.Y., at 7:14 p.m. Monday entered the mall's T-Mobile store.

Palmer Township police said Fuentes attempted to buy a cellphone, electronic pin and starter kit for $907 with one of nearly 20 fraudulent cards in possession of the pair.

Guiste was attempting to buy an Apple iPhone, electronic pin and starter kit for $1,003 with another fraudulent card, police said.

A T-Mobile employee alerted police and Fuentes ran from the store. Following a chase, police arrested Fuentes outside the mall. Fuentes left behind a Citgo Mastercard when he fled the store, according to police, who said they determined that was fraudulent, too.

Another officer then stopped Guiste leaving the mall's parking lot in a Ford Fusion. A T-Mobile employee identified Guiste as the male who was with Fuentes.

Police searched Guiste and found four of the credit cards in his underwear and nine credit cards in his wallet. Another two cards were found in Fuentes' wallet.

Police said all the credit cards were in the names of Guiste and Fuentes, however the bank identification numbers came back to a different MasterCard, which did not match the bank names on any of the cards.

Officers seized all the credit cards and impounded the Ford Fusion. A search warrant is pending on the Ford, which is owned by a Rockaway, N.Y. woman.

Guiste is charged with one felony count and 13 misdemeanor counts of access device fraud, one count of misdemeanor possessing an instrument of crime, receiving stolen property, criminal conspiracy to commit access device fraud, criminal conspiracy to possess instruments of crime and unlawful use of a computer.

Fuentes is charged with a felony count of access device fraud, three counts of possessing a device knowing it's counterfeit, resisting arrest, conspiracy to possess a device knowing it's counterfeit and three counts of possession of an instrument of crime.

Both Guiste and Fuentes were arraigned before District Judge James Narlesky, who set bail at $200,000 each.

In lieu of bail, Guiste and Fuentes were 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.
Ukraine expects that the majority of board members of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would support the decision to provide a third tranche to Kyiv under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program despite Russia's statement about its intent to vote against, Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk has said.

"At the previous voting Russia has never backed the IMF's decisions to provide tranches to Ukraine under EFF program. Despite this fact, the IMF twice made positive decisions," he said in comments provided to Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.

Danyliuk recalled that the IMF Executive Board makes decisions by the majority of votes. Russia has the same right to vote as any other board member.

"We are waiting for positive results of the board voting on September 14 and the third tranche in the near term," the minister said.

As reported, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov earlier said that Russia will cast its vote against providing IMF money to Ukraine.
A Newbridge primary school has moved to reassure local residents that construction traffic will not be passing through two neighbouring estates during the building of a new special needs unit.

A leaflet was sent around The Elms and The Oaks by a group of concerned residents recently.

They raised concerns that a hedgerow on the boundary with The Elms would be replaced with a security type palisade fence.

With the hedgerow gone, we are advised that the developer intends to access the building site through the Oaks and the Elms estates, with all site traffic, machinery, deliveries, etc. travelling through both estates, read the leaflet.

This will result in traffic chaos, be hugely disruptive and pose real dangers for all residents, particularly our children.

The residents said they fully supported the development of the school, however, they said they were disappointed at the complete absence of information or consultation with residents regarding these plans.

They pointed out there was no reference to removing the hedgerow on the planning file or the intention to access the site through the estates. They say this meant they did not have the opportunity to raise concerns during the planning process.

Scoil Mhuire Junior School Principal Brian O'Reilly told the Leader: Be assured there is no question (and there never has been) of any access being opened into the new unit from the Elms either during or after construction. It would never be our intention to cause any inconvenience or upset to any of our neighbours.

He said individuals, who had contacted the school, have all been responded to and the school doors are always open to discuss any issue that residents might wish to raise.

We have created a subcommittee within the Board of Management to discuss all the other issues which have been raised. A meeting will be arranged then, he added.

He said it was a privilege to have received Department funding for this badly needed facility.

The Board have spent a lot of time over the last few months trying to resolve all the various issues which have arisen with the proposed new special needs facility, he said, We did have an opportunity of discussing the concerns of the residents in proximity to the school before the planning application.
ANOTHER Irish language sign is to be changed in Clane after the Kildare County Council found itself in the doghouse over the Irish grammar on a warning sign.

The Council said the signs referred to will be removed and the vinyl front will be replaced with the correct version.

The thrust of the campaign is "Any bag any Bin" and this is reflecting the fact that owners should bring a bag with them, clean up after their dog and bring the bag to the nearest bin (even if that involves bringing the bag home).

But Irish language enthusiast, and one time local election candidate, Seanan OCoistin, complained that a new sign erected in Claonadh in both official languages of the state had errors in the Irish version.

He said this sign is beyond rectification and will need to be replaced. It was a complete waste of money and completely avoidable, he said.

Mr OCoistin said the sign has "Aon mala, aon bosca bruscar" but it should be "Aon mhala, aon bhosca bruscair."

One of the features of the Irish language is that most words following the word "aon" has the letter H in it e.g. aon bho amhain, aon fhear, aon chaoi, aon phluais etc.

The proper spelling of bin in Irish is bosca bruscair, not bosca bruscar.

This is the second successful complaint Mr OCoistin has made about signs in the area.
Even though before the election Matteo Renzi especially insisted on the local impact of these elections and asserted that this wont result in any political signal, it currently seems to be hard to believe. The situation is all the more alarming for the President of the Italian Council who will present his law reform of the State by referendum next October. The law plans to weaken the bicameral system by reforming the Senate of the Republic (the Italian Senate) and reducing its size and prerogatives. The referendums results should ensure the upholding or the departure of the President of the Council. However, following the election results, doubt seems to settle in the Palazzo Chigi, head office of the Presidency of the Council. Can the yes vote win? Rumour is spreading in the Italian press that Matteo Renzi might be about to announce that if the no will win in October, he wont resign. This leaves much doubt.
I cannot recall a political issue since I joined the party in 1998 that has engaged public interest so deeply and for so long as the EU referendum and its aftermath. Almost 3 months after polling day, you can still hear people you pass at the bus stop, in pubs and cafes and other public places talking about it.

I agree with the analysis of David Allen Green of the FT that Brexit is not inevitable and will be with us as a political issue for a very long time.

Tim Farron has set out the Liberal Democrat plan for Britain in Europe. We do not want a re-run of the 2016 referendum. But we demand that the people of Britain should have the final say. When the government can tell us what the terms of exit actually are, the people should be able to vote on whether they want them or not. That is the legitimately democratic stance. The public did not vote on 23 June to give a blank cheque. They did not vote for Leave on any terms. Quite the opposite.

The public may have instructed the government to negotiate exit terms. The public can give further instructions on whether to accept those terms or not.

All over the country local meetings are taking place between people from progressive parties (and people of no party) about this issue.

Last Friday I spoke at such a meeting in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, where the local MP campaigned for Leave despite most local people voting for Remain. Over the summer, I have spoken at a number of other meetings in other counties too.

Last Friday at Amersham saw a packed meeting with Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green speakers. I explained the Liberal Democrat position and invited progressives of all parties to get behind this. Many people said they agreed with what Tim Farron has said. Pictured above are just some of those who attended.

It will take many years before the government is in a position to say here are the draft terms for exit on offer. It is vital that we do not wait until then to organise our campaign but make our case now, and continue to make it. Our case is a liberal, open, prosperous Britain, which is in the Single Market, protects the environment and gives UK citizens all the benefits they currently enjoy as EU citizens.

Over the years ahead, more and more people will come to conclude that they were lied to in June 2016. They were lied to about 350 million per week. They were lied to about immigration. They were lied to about Turkey. And, fundamentally, they were lied to that exit could be beneficial and not harmful. As with Blairs WMD in Iraq, time will expose these lies. Our job is to prepare a better option for the future.

We are one people in Europe, with a shared history and a shared future, shared problems and shared strengths. We need to say so and go deeper than the vacuous arguments of Cameron and Osborne that failed so badly on 23 June.

Public meetings like this should be encouraged to continue to take place and so should taking every opportunity to get the Liberal Democrat message across.

* Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party's representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup.
MORE than sixty drivers a week are being caught using mobile phones, shocking new figures have revealed.

The figures, which were released to coincide with the launch of Operation Handsfree, show a total of 1,996 fixed penalty notices were issued to drivers in the Limerick garda division during the first eight months of the year.

Its very concerning because despite all of the operations which we have conducted targeting mobile phone use and the significant number of detections, we find that the numbers are still quite substantial during each and every operation so we feel the message isnt getting out there, said Inspector Paul Reidy, head of the divisional traffic corps.

A breakdown of people who are texting or using social media is not available as the the offence is simply one of holding a mobile phone while driving.

Those caught driving while holding a mobile phone face an on-the-spot fine of 60 and three penalty points.

As part of Operation Handsfree, which is supported by Limerick Chamber, local businesses involved in the sale of mobile phones and accessories will be offering discounted prices for bluetooth handsfree kits between September 19 and September 30.

The head of the Limerick garda division, Chief Superintendent David Sheahan, who has welcomed the initiative, is encouraging people to invest in a handsfree kit.

The idea of driving while using a mobile phone is a non-runner, everyone knows how dangerous it is but yet people continue to do it. We are not out to catch people using mobile phones, we are out to save their lives, he said.

Insp Reidy says the use of mobile phones while driving is extremely dangerous and he is warning of a further clampdown across the division following the conclusion of Operation Handsfree.

He said the use of mobile phones by drivers causes injury collisions as well as fatalities.

It distracts drivers to a great extent, he said.
FORMER HMV staff in Limerick could be left to wait up to six months for statutory redundancy payments.

The iconic music store closed its final outlet in the city, at the Crescent Shopping Centre last month, after turnaround specialist Hilco deemed the Irish market unviable, and brought the shutters down on all its operations here.

Twelve people had been employed prior to this.

Hilco liquidated the music chains operation here on Thursday, the night before workers were due to receive redundancy settlements into their accounts.

Now, former staff will be forced to apply through the governments insolvency payments scheme to get the cash they are owed.

Former assistant manager in the Crescent store Damien Mullane said this could take up to six months.

We will be getting our P45 forms from next week, and from there, we will have to wait for the liquidator to be officially appointed. This will not happen until September 26, then after that, there is a bit of a moratorium between this and when they can start applying for state redundancy which I think usually takes three to six months, he told Live95FM.

However, the Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar has pledged that his department would promptly deal with redundancy applications from former staff.

Anti-Austerity Alliance councillor Cian Prendiville has accused Hilco of engaging in "pure gangster capitalism", and claimed the company had reneged on a promise made to workers who lost their jobs.

It now seems that was just a lie in order to avoid a sit in from the workers, like took place in 2013. Instead, Larry Howard, the managing director of Hilco who made the promise in writing to the workers put the company into liquidation in order to avoid paying the workers what they were due," he said.

Cllr Prendiville called for changes in business law to ensure workers are entitled to redundancy even in the event of liquidation. Hilco was not available for comment.
LIMERICK City and County Council has delayed making a decision on a controversial plan for a waste facility at the Dock Road.

In a move which could bring 30 permanent roles, and 100 construction jobs, Valcroft Ltd, trading as Mr Binman is seeking to construct a waste transfer facility on a four acre site at the Dock Road, close to the M7 exit.

But the proposals  which will see up to 90,000 tonnes of waste handled per year  have been criticised by local residents, and environmental campaigners, with around 50 objections to the planning department.

Now, planners have called on the company to provide significantly more information on its multi-million euro project.

In a letter to the company, the council says having consulted Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), this body considers insufficient data has been submitted with the planning application to demonstrate the pans will not have a negative impact on the operational efficiency of the national road network near the site.

The local authority has also ordered Mr Binman to redesign the front entrance at the proposed site, near the Dock Road roundabout, as well as provide a cycleway and footpath around the boundary of the site.

The company has also been asked to give further details in relation to odour control measures, as well as submitting proposals to prevent the spread of invasive alien species, where waste material is transported from one location to another.

The council added: More details are required as to how measures such as bird deterrent and pest control activities and on-site work practices will contribute to reducing or eliminating problems from scavenging species such as crows, seagulls and rats.

Mr Binman has six months to provide this information. Until then, the plans are on hold.
Ukraine could stop operating around 400 km of gas pipelines in next 10 years due to surplus capacity, President of public joint-stock company Ukrtransgaz Ihor Prokopiv has said.

"We have reached the point where we can approve a plan by the government and say to the whole world that we do not require 275 billion cubic meter gas pumping capacity, which incurs extra expenses for maintaining staff, compressor stations and other things. We could stop operating around 400 km of gas pipelines in the next 10 years," he said in an interview with the NV Business publication.

He said that today around 30% of gas compressor units are idle due to the large surplus capacity of the Ukrainian gas transport system.

Ukrtransgaz intends to mothball industrial assets not used by the company.

"Today we have a clear strategy for the next 10 years, according to which we would start optimizing the gas transport system. It must be ready for challenges we spoke about: a zero option, 30 and 70 billion cubic meters of transit across Ukraine a year," Prokopiv said.

The company continues upgrading gas pipelines and gas compressor units. The company is switching to electrical drives and in 2015 and saved UAH 200 million.

Prokopiv also recalled that there are projects to develop and build new transit routes on the western border of Ukraine.

"The start of imports from Europe showed that Ukraine can pump gas not only from east to west, but from west to east. Now we have interesting proposals to develop and build new transit routes in Ukraine from gas transport system operators of neighbor countries. I think that the state should study and compete for these routes, just as it competed for reverse supplies earlier," he said.
A YOUNG man who performed a u-turn and took off as he approached a garda checkpoint has been sentenced to six months imprisonment.

Gary Moloney, aged 19, of South Claughan Road, Garryowen pleaded guilty guilty to multiple road traffic charges  including dangerous driving and driving without insurance  relating to an incident during the early hours of November 2, 2014.

Limerick District Court was told the defendant, who was a juvenile at the time, panicked when he approached the checkpoint on the Dublin Road at around 3.45am.

Sergeant Donal Cronin said Moloney, who was driving his mothers car, was pursued at high speed in-and-around the Garryowen / St Patricks Road area of the city.

He failed to stop for gardai and at one stage he broke a red light and also collided with a number of parked cars.

The defendant, who was disqualified from driving at the time of the offence, was not apprehended on the night as he jumped over a wall and fled on foot after stopping the English-registered car near his home.

He made admissions when arrested some time later.

Solicitor Ted McCarthy said his client, who has had a difficult upbringing, had decided to take his mothers car earlier in the night while she was asleep off his own bat.

He said Moloney, who was seriously injured in a shooting incident last year, has abused prescription tablets in the past and that he is finding life as an adult difficult.

Judge Marian OLeary imposed prison sentences totalling six months and she also disqualified the teenager from driving for ten years.
MORE than 100 new jobs are to be created in Newcastle West by leading biomaterial and polymer technology company, Ortec Inc.

The company, which is headquartered in South Carolina, has announced it is to establish its European Headquarters, Manufacturing and Operations Centre in the town, creating up to 110 skilled engineering and science jobs over the coming years.

The project is supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation through IDA Ireland.

Founded in 1980 Ortec offers custom materials which are used in medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and other health-related industries.

The company, which is privately owned, says it will commence its manufacturing operation in a 13,000 square-foot leased building at Newcastle West Business Park.

It plans to double capacity at the facility in the coming months subject to planning permission.

This is our first investment outside of the US, and we are pleased to be doing it in Ireland. It is a strategic part of our global expansion. Bringing the project to this stage has required a great deal of collaboration. We have received tremendous support from IDA Ireland, Limerick City and County Council, Shannon Properties, and a multitude of local professional advisors," said Christopher Brotherton, Senior Vice President with Ortec.

Local TD and Minister for Tourism and Sport Patrick ODonovan says the jobs announcement is a once in a lifetime event for Newcastle West.

The promoters and the wider Newcastle West community are really thrilled to welcome Ortec to our home town," he said.

"This is a fantastic endorsement of the promoters of this project and our community, and we all look forward to working successfully with the company for many years to come. Todays announcement is a great boost for Newcastle West and the surrounding areas and is evidence of what is possible for manufacturing companies in regional locations."

"I wish both the Ortec and promoters every success with this project, he added.

Fianna Fail TD Niall Collins said such jobs announcements must "become the norm" for county Limerick.

"This is fantastic news for Limerick and shows that Limerick can be a leading choice for companies looking for a high-quality workforce, said Deputy Collins.

"When the IDA and the Department of Jobs focus on attracting new employers to rural counties such as Limerick, they succeed. I hope that they will continue to focus on Limerick and the wider Mid-West region for site visits.

However, we cannot get complacent. A jobs announcement like todays should become norm for the people of Limerick. That should become the priority.

We are incredibly fortunate to have an expertly education workforce, with UL and LIT, providing some of the best education employees in the country.

Ortec should be congratulated for choosing Limerick, and Newcastle West in particular. These new jobs will be of significant importance in kick-starting other enterprises in the region," he added.

See this weeks broadsheet editions for full coverage and reaction.
ATTORNEY Dean Strang, who featured in the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer, will discuss implications of the Steven Avery case at an event in Limerick later this month.

An Evening with Dean Strang, will take place at the University Concert Hall on September 26, and is organised by the University of Limerick Law Society.

It will be chaired by Professor Shane Kilcommins, head of ULs School of Law and will be followed by a question and answer session.

Mr Strang, along with Jerry Buting, represented Steven Avery in his trial for the 2005 murder of photographer, Teresa Halbach. Mr Avery had previously served 18 years in prison for sexual assault and attempted murder before being exonerated in 2003. Making a Murderer covers his 2007 trial and his subsequent conviction for the murder of Ms Halbach.

Amy Dermody, second-year law student at UL and conference convener with the UL Law Society, explained why the group decided to invite Mr Strang to the campus.

Most law students have seen Making a Murderer and it really highlights potential inadequacies in the American legal system, and how important it is to correctly frame legislation to prevent miscarriages of justice, she explained.

We contacted Mr Strangs office earlier this year and they mentioned that Mr Strang would be in Ireland in September, and while initially he had no plans to visit Limerick, we were told he would be delighted to accept our invitation.

We are thrilled to have such a well-known and highly respected attorney coming to speak to us. One of the things I really liked about Making a Murderer was the way it highlighted the commitment and dedication to the law of a down-to-earth, working attorney rather than a celebrity lawyer, she added.

Obviously this talk is of great interest to law students but we believe that it will also be of huge interest to the wider public because of the unprecedented popularity of the Netflix show. It has attracted an audience far beyond those directly involved in the law, Ms Dermody said.

Professor Shane Kilcommins commended the students and said he was looking forward to chairing the event.

Attracting Dean Strang here is an outstanding coup and it is part of UL School of Laws broader engagement with community and is an excellent example of law in action. It fulfils part of ULs mission in engaging with practitioners and the community, he said.

It is fantastic that the UL School of Law has such a positive relationship with the student law society.

This type of event is part of the wider curriculum - that students should learn in their modules but also should be involved in societies that promote broader learning, Professor Kilcommins added.

As well as promising to be an enjoyable and interesting evening for students and members of the public, this event offers excellent pedagogical outcomes for students who will have the opportunity to listen to a practitioner and to tease out some compelling issues around the justice system.

In chairing this, I will be asking questions about issues of policing, integrity in the criminal justice process, miscarriages of justice, the evidential process and the consequences of decision making, he added.

Dean Strang currently works as an attorney in Wisconsin with Strang Bradley Trial Lawyers and has taught in the University of Wisconsin since 2008.

Tickets are now on sale for the event. Student tickets are priced at 12 and general admission is 20 with proceeds going to the UL Law Society.

See www.uch.ie.
PRESIDENT Michael D Higgins has led tributes to slain Irish Coast Guard member Caitriona Lucas, who tragically died in Kilkee during a search operation.

Ms Lucas, who lived in Liscannor and whose husband Bernard is also a member of the Doolin unit that was assisting in the search operation in Kilkee on Monday, was killed when the Coast Guard boat she was in was overturned in rough seas off the West End of the popular seaside village.

Another female member of the Coast Guard was rescued and taken to University Hospital Limerick while, after a dramatic day in Co Clare, a third member  James Lucey  was rescued having spent a number of hours in a cave after the boat was capsized.

Mr Lucey was winched to safety at around 5.30pm by a Coast Guard helicopter following an extensive and complex operation.

A number of investigations will be launched following the incident.

The Coast Guard and volunteers were taking part in a search operation for a missing local man, which has been ongoing since Friday.

As a mark of respect for Ms Lucas, the Irish flag is being flown at half mast outside the corporate offices of Limerick City and County Council in Merchants Quay and Dooradoyle.

Mayor of the City and County of Limerick, Cllr Kieran OHanlon said: Everyone has been numbed by the tragedy which unfolded in Kilkee yesterday. The seaside town is synonymous with Limerick holidaymakers who would be very familiar with local people and the area where the tragedy happened.

It is with great sadness that a volunteer who was helping in the search for a missing man lost her life so cruelly. Our heartfelt condolences go to Caitrionas family and indeed to her colleagues in the Irish Coast Guard. As a mark of respect to Caitriona, the Irish flag will be flying at half mast outside our council offices in the city and Dooradoyle. Caitrionas sacrifice will never be forgotten.

President Higgins has written to express his condolences to the family of Ms Lucas, the young librarian and mother of two in her early 40s, who lost her life in the course of the rescue operation.

Minister Shane Ross also paid tribute to Ms Lucas, saying it was with extreme sadness that I learned of the tragedy.

Caitriona was a member of that extraordinary group of men and women who dedicate their skills, time and passion so that others may be safe on our coastlines, he said.

This is an appalling tragedy; the loss of a brave and valiant woman engaged in the most heroic of and unselfish of duties.

Local TD Pat Breen  Minister of State for Employment and Small Business  said it was a stark reminder of the courage, dedication and selflessness or those unique and brave people who make up the crews of our rescue and emergency services.

Each time they are called to duty they risk all to save and assist not just neighbours and friends, but any stranger in distress. The crew member of the Irish Coast Guard was one such brave woman, who has paid the ultimate price for her selfless mission to help others, he said.

I would like to extend my deepest sympathy to her husband, her family, colleagues and friends. The death of this hero has resonated with everyone throughout Clare and we must never forget her sacrifice.

Heart-breaking to come home & see the tragic #CoastGuard loss in #Kilkee A life given in the service of others. There's no greater sacrifice  Michael Finneran (@soilsitheoir) September 12, 2016

Day/night volunteers ensure our waters are safe, many lives saved. Tragic events in Kilkee . Thoughts with Caitriona's family & friends RIP  David Hall (@davidhall75) September 12, 2016

Our thoughts today are with the members of the Kilkee Coast Guard and their families. Ar Dheis De Go Raibh A h-Anam Dilis  Irish Air Corps (@IrishAirCorps) September 12, 2016

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all in KIlkee and Doolin Coast Guard  Kilbaha Gallery (@kilbahagallery) September 12, 2016
Sep 12, 2016, 11 PM

Medical doctor and researcher Walter Reed was honored in 1940 on a 5 stamp in the Famous Americans series.

By Michael Baadke

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., is named for a United States Army doctor who led the research breakthrough in combating yellow fever at the dawn of the 20th century.

Walter Reed was born Sept. 13, 1851, in Belroi, Va., the youngest of five children. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a medical degree at age 17, and earned a second degree at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York before entering the Army Medical Corps in 1875. Reed held various posts during his military career, including as an instructor in bacteriology at the Army Medical School in Washington, D.C.

He was involved in successful military efforts to fight the spread of typhoid fever and yellow fever. While at work in Cuba in 1900, he found that yellow fever was transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito, leading to victory in stemming the yellow fever mortality rates. Reed credited the earlier work of Cuban epidemiologist Carlos Finlay for his own achievements.

Reed died in 1902 following emergency appendix surgery. He is honored on a 5 ultramarine stamp issued in 1940 in the American Scientists set of the Famous Americans series (Scott 877).
May 2, 2021, 4 PM

Cartor Security Printing, based in France and England, will soon begin producing stamps for Denmark and Sweden. Previously, all production of Swedish and Danish stamps was done internally at Postnord.

Postnord, the combined postal administration of Sweden and Denmark, has signed an agreement with Cartor Security Printing for the production of Swedish and Danish stamps.

Britt-Inger Hahne, head of Postnord Stamps, said: In an increasingly digital world, there is less demand for stamps since people are sending fewer letters and more parcels. This new agreement is one way for Postnord to adapt its operations to a changed market and create better conditions for developing its stamp issues.

Connect with Linns Stamp News:

Sign up for our newsletter

Like us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

In the press release announcing the change, Postnord said that printing of Swedish and Danish stamps will gradually be transferred to Cartor Security Printing in 2017.

A global printing company that has specialized in stamps, Cartor is located in France and England and works with more than 180 postal administrations and other customers throughout the world.

Previously, all production of Swedish and Danish stamps was done internally at Postnord, and the design work on stamps will remain within the company.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) hopes to receive two credit tranches of $2.3 billion this year from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Deputy NBU Governor Oleh Churiy has said.

"We expect $1 billion in this tranche [the decision will be made by the IMF on September 14] and if we continue cooperation with the IMF  additionally $1.3 billion. A total of $2.3 billion by the end of this year," he told reporters after a roundtable in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Churiy said that if the positive decision is made for the first tranche, the funds would arrive to Ukraine in two or three days. He said that the NBU hopes to receive this tranche and the next one.

"We take this into account in the reserve forecast for the end of this year," he said.

He said that the positive decision of the IMF board on the first tranche would open an opportunity for Ukraine to attract an additional $1 billion via the issue of U.S. secured eurobonds and EUR 600 million from the European Commission.
Ukraine and Georgia have signed an agreement at the governmental level on arranging direct international railroad services through the two countries' seaports, the Ukrainian Infrastructure Ministry press service reported on Tuesday.

The agreement was signed at the International Maritime Forum in Batumi on September 13.

"We signed a very important document today, which links Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan along the Silk Road. This initiative has gotten a second wind and, undeniably, has great prospects. Our countries have applied a lot of effort to simplify the logistics, make the transit cheaper, and, above all, speed up the delivery of goods, so as to make it as comfortable for business as possible," Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan said.

In the current market conditions, the speed of goods delivery is just as important as the delivery cost, and increasingly more companies agree to bear extra expenditures to deliver goods not in two or three months but in 9-15 days, he said.

"We should increase the speed at which containers pass from China to Ukraine's western border to 9-10 days," Omelyan said.

The two countries are continuing negotiations on introducing a through rate and simplifying the customs procedures, he said.

"I hope we will complete the formalities this year and will start deliveries as such next year. We see great interest on the part of the EU countries. This is not only an economic but also a political project for Ukraine. We should be independent from a particular country's moods. We should launch a procedure in such a way that a cargo be delivered timely and in any weather, either political or economic," he said.
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.
Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council to consider, endorse defense budget for 2017 on Tuesday

The Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council will consider a defense budget for 2017 at its meeting on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.

"I am returning from Dnipro to the National Security and Defense Council now, where we will endorse a military budget for 2017. It will amount to 5% [of GDP], and I hope UAH 129 billion [$1/UAH 26.6] will be allotted for the defense and security sector," Poroshenko said in opening a new kindergarten in the village of Slobozhanske in Dnipropetrovsk region.

The financing of the armed forces is a priority for Ukraine now, and therefore "the country is giving away everything for the defense and security sector," he said.

"This is necessary for a Ukrainian warrior to be well trained, well prepared, well dressed, well fed, and well armed, as he is a symbol of our independence," Poroshenko said.

It was reported earlier that Ukraine's budget for 2016 also envisioned defense spending in the amount of 5% of GDP.
Germany is interested in further use of the Ukrainian gas transportation system to meet the needs of Europe, German Ambassador to Ukraine Ernst Reichel told Interfax-Ukraine in an exclusive interview.

"The German government is fully aware of Ukraine's concerns regarding the Nord Stream 2 project and the foreign policy context behind it. The government will continue to stand for using the Ukrainian gas transportation system to provide gas to the EU member countries, for example, the countries of South-Eastern Europe," he said.

He said that if the Nord Stream 2 project is implemented, it should fully comply with the demands of European legislation. "If the interested firms decide to implement it finally, Nord Stream 2 should comply with all legal acts on this case, which are applied in the EU to all projects of such nature," he said.

At that, the diplomat said that it is too early to raise the question of participation of German companies in the management of the Ukrainian gas transportation system. "I believe it is too early to raise the question. Naftogaz is still not disaggregated. The conditions under which the EU firms could participate in one of the separate successor companies of Ukrtransgaz are still unclear," he said.

"Regarding the overall economic and investment climate in Ukraine, there is still room for improvement, for instance, in the reforms of the activities of judicial bodies and the fight against corruption," he said.
Illegal armed formations shelled Ukrainian positions in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, 35 times on Monday, September 12, the press center of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) reported on Tuesday morning.

"Over the 24 hours, the Russian occupation forces opened fire on Ukrainian defenders' positions 35 times," the ATO HQ wrote on Facebook.

Nine violations were reported in the Mariupol sector. Militants used 122mm artillery systems, which are banned by the Minsk agreement, to shell ATO forces in the village of Chermalyk. Ukrainian troops in the village of Shyrokyne and the town of Krasnohorivka came under 82mm mortar fire. Further, grenade launchers, machine-guns and small arms were used to fire on the villages of Hranitne, Shyrokyne, Starohnativka, and the town of Maryinka.

The ceasefire in the Luhansk sector was violated 10 times. Militants used an infantry fighting vehicle to attack the village of Novozvanivka, while grenade launchers, machine-guns and small arms were used to shell the town of Popasna, the villages of Novo-Oleksandrivka, Novozvanivka, and Nyzhnioteple. At about 16:00 local time on Monday, a unit of the Ukrainian armed forces stationed near the village of Stanytsia Luhanska was attacked by an enemy special forces unit. The Ukrainian side had to fire back.

The truce in the Donetsk sector was violated 16 times. Provocative militant attacks targeted the ATO positions in the town of Avdiyivka, the villages of Luhanske, Zaitseve, Verkhniotoretske, and Novgorodske. Areas near Avdiyivka also came under fire, militants used 120mm and 82mm mortars.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine strictly abide by the Minsk peace agreements on Donbas, the ATO HQ said.
Ukraine will file a large-scale comprehensive suit against Russia in an international court this week, and this claim concerns the violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin has said.

"The first big lawsuit will be lodged as early as this week. It concerns the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is in fact comprehensive, as it contains such fundamental issues as the use of maritime space, infringements on environmental safety, and also cultural heritage facilities. It is a very large-scale claim," he told the Svoboda Slova (Freedom of Speech) program on ICTV on Monday evening.

Any claim initiated within the framework of such conventions provides for three stages: the rights, restitution of these rights, and compensation, he said. "For sure, we'll go as far as the compensation, it is absolutely clear," he added.
Sakurajima is one of the most active volcanoes in Japan, with eruptions occurring daily. New research suggests the volcano is due for a major eruption in the next 25 years.

A Japanese volcano that last erupted in 1914 could be set to blow in the next few decades, new research suggests.

The pool of liquid magma swelling beneath Sakurajima volcano is growing every year  a sign of a growing threat.

"This big reservoir is growing, and it's growing at quite a fast rate," said study co-author James Hickey, a geophysical volcanologist at the University of Exeter's Camborne School of Mines in England.

At the current rate, Sakurajima could erupt catastrophically in about 25 years, according to the study.

The new analysis could also help scientists better forecast when other big volcanoes could erupt, the researchers said. [Raw Video: Volcano in Southern Japan Erupts]

Major eruptions

Sakurajima volcano, located on the southwestern edge of Japan's Kyushu island, last erupted in 1914, killing 58 people and causing a massive flood in the nearby seaside city of Kagoshima. Sakurajima is fed by a pool of magma lying beneath the subterranean Aira caldera, and the filling of this magma reservoir causes the volcano to have minor eruptions roughly every day.

In the 1950s, scientists tried to quantify the risk of future eruptions at Sakurajima by using a simple model, assuming the Earth's surface above the volcano was flat and that the pool of magma was spherical. The model had a big advantage: "You can basically solve it with pen and paper," Hickey told Live Science.

However, over the years, scientists realized that this ultrasimplified model did not match volcanic activity at Sakurajima.

Better forecasts

To better forecast eruptions at Sakurajima, Hickey and his colleagues developed a much more complicated computer model  one that incorporated the unique topography of the area surrounding the volcano. That model also took into account that the Earth's crust is made up of different layers, with different properties. Then, the team incorporated data from seismometers and highly precise GPS devices placed in and around the volcano. Those sensors revealed tiny changes in the Earth that were clues to the activity of the magma pool deep below.

The researchers discovered that the reservoir of magma beneath the caldera was growing at a significant rate. From this model, they forecast that it would take 130 years from the past major eruption for the next one to occur  meaning the region is due for a major explosion around 2044.

The new model was better at capturing past behavior at the volcano, the researchers reported today (Sept. 13) in the journal Scientific Reports. It also found that the pool of magma beneath the caldera looks more squashed and oblong than spherical, Hickey said.

Volcanologists don't have a crystal ball, however, and the current forecast could be slightly off because they assume a constant growth rate for the magma pool. But if the daily eruptions were to increase to two or three times per day  releasing small amounts of that magma  that could offset the growth of the magma pool, which could delay a deadly eruption for a long time, Hickey said.

And even with highly accurate models, volcanoes sometimes surprise experts. For instance, in 2014, Mount Ontake volcano in Japan erupted without warning, killing about 57 people.

However, leaders in the region are already prepared for an eruption in the near term: The Kagoshima City Office prepared a new evacuation plan after an eruption scare in August 2015 prompted an evacuation crisis, study co-author Haruhisa Nakamichi, associate professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, said in a statement.

Original article on Live Science.
A newly discovered species of bee does things the hard way, gnawing its nests out of solid rock even when softer dirt is available.

This hard work appears to pay off, however, by providing the bees greater protection from the vagaries of life in the desert Southwest. The species, dubbed Anthophora pueblo, has been found in Utah, in southwest Colorado and in Death Valley in California, where it pocks vertical sandstone rock faces with tiny holes. Though the bees seem to be solitary nesters, they build these rocky alcoves next to one another, like insect apartment-dwellers.

"The bee is very unusual," study researcher Michael Orr, a doctoral student in biology at Utah State University, told Live Science. [See Images of the Sandstone Bee Nests]

Hidden discovery

The first hint of Anthophora peublo's existence dates back to the early 1980s, when entomologist Frank Parker  an author on the current study and the former head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Lab in Utah  discovered bees nesting in holes dug into sandstone in Utah's San Rafael Desert. Parker chipped out a couple of blocks of sandstone and reared the bees until they emerged from the rock; the nests and bee specimens then sat in a museum collection, unstudied.

Flash forward to the present day, when Orr began doing fieldwork studying other members of the Anthophora genus. He'd seen bees using the sandstone nests, and when Parker told him about the original discoveries in the 1980s, he knew he had to investigate more fully.

He did some detective work to rediscover Parker's original field sites, where the gap is still visible from the chunk of rock he chiseled out 36 years ago, Orr said. Something else remains the same, too.

"One of the greatest moments for me of this project was going back and revisiting that site from almost 40 years ago, and just walking up and the bees are still there," Orr said. "They're still using this same spot."

Orr and his colleagues discovered the sandstone-dwelling bees at seven sites total, the researchers reported on Sept. 12 in the journal Current Biology. They're mostly found in natural rock formations, but some nest in ancient Pueblo dwellings made by human hands  lending them their species name.

The bees, which are covered in the familiar black-and-yellow stripes, nest in sandstone at all but two sites, Orr said, where they burrow into silt. At these silt sites, the sandstone is about 2.5 times harder than the sandstones that the bees burrow into.

"They prefer it up until it's at a certain hardness threshold and then it doesn't make sense for them anymore," he said.

Costs of excavating

There's a cost to burrowing in stone. Older female bees commonly show wear and tear on their mandibles, Orr and his colleagues reported, and it takes more energy and time to dig through sandstone than dirt. However, there's evidence that building nests to last confers benefits to the bees' offspring, which may reuse their parents' tunnels. The bees are also able to hole up in their dwellings and delay emergence for up to four years when times are lean and not many desert flowers are blooming; sandstone probably protects the bees from erosion or flash floods better than dirt during these long quiescent periods, the researchers wrote.

While long-lasting nests used through multiple generations can attract parasites, the sandstone also seems to stymy freeloaders, the researchers found. In the sandstone blocks found in 1980, the nesting sites had been colonized by parasitic beetles called Tricrania stansburii. The larva of these beetles hitch rides on bees back to the bee nests. However, only six out of 69 larvae had successfully emerged from their nesting cells, Orr said. The rest died, unable to get out of the tough stone. The hardness of the rock seems to help keep the parasite population in check. [The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites]

The sandstone should also deter microbial parasites. "Sandstone has relatively little organic matter in it naturally because of the way it's formed, and because of that most of the microbes that are using it are making their own food through things like photosynthesis," which requires sunlight, he said. "Anything making its own food through photosynthesis will be much less likely to invade a bee's nest and eat the bee's food."

The bee nests also provide a sort of secondary shelter for insects and arachnids that can't chew through rock on their own, Orr said. At least 20 species use the burrows, about half of which are parasites. Other "renters" of the rock apartments include spiders, other bee species and wasps, he said.

In the future, Orr hopes to track the bees as they come and go to find out if they're entirely solitary or if they cooperate to share nests. He's also working to get the local Native American community involved in the study and to draw more non-scientists into noticing these odd bees.

"I'm hoping to build kind of this sort of citizen science network where people can report these nest sites to me," he said. Acting on tips and doing his own explorations, he's found more than 50 new nesting sites since the paper was submitted to the journal, he said.

Original article on Live Science.
An indictment against former head of the State Aviation Service of Ukraine Denys Antoniuk has been endorsed by a prosecutor from the Specialized Anti-Corruption Procedure and sent to Kyiv's Solomyansky district court on September 9.

Agents of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) have completed a pretrial investigation in criminal proceedings under Part 2 of Article 364 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (abuse of power or misuse of office with grave consequences), NABU said in an announcement on its official website.

NABU claims that UM Air LLC sustained over UAH 750,000 in losses from Antoniuk's activity.

"In keeping with materials of the pretrial investigation, the [then] head of the State Aviation Service (a category-A public servant) violated laws when he gave preferences to PrJSC Ukraine International Airlines, aiming to obtain illegal benefits. Contrary to the Aviation Service's interests and using his official position, he did not agree the departure schedule of state-owned enterprise UM Air LLC's duly certified aircraft for November 17 and February 5, 2015, thus in fact cancelling the flights en route between Kyiv and Tehran," NABU said.
Sorry, Einstein: It looks like the world is spooky  even when your most famous theory is tossed out.

This finding comes from a close look at quantum entanglement, in which two particles that are "entangled" affect each other even when separated by a large distance. Einstein found that his theory of special relativity meant that this weird behavior was impossible, calling it "spooky."

Now, researchers have found that even if they were to scrap this theory, allowing entangled particles to communicate with each other faster than the speed of light or even instantaneously, that couldn't explain the odd behavior. The findings rule out certain "realist" interpretations of spooky quantum behavior. [Infographic: How Quantum Entanglement Works]

"What that tells us is that we have to look a little bit deeper," said study co-author Martin Ringbauer, a doctoral candidate in physics at the University of Queensland in Australia. "This kind of action-at-a-distance is not enough to explain quantum correlations" seen between entangled particles, Ringbauer said.

Action at a distance

Most of the time, the world seems  if not precisely orderly  then at least governed by fixed rules. At the macroscale, cause-and-effect rules the behavior of the universe, time always marches forward and objects in the universe have objective, measurable properties.

But zoom in enough, and those common-sense notions seem to evaporate. At the subatomic scale, particles can become entangled, meaning their fates are bizarrely linked. For instance, if two photons are sent from a laser through a crystal, after they fly off in separate directions, their spin will be linked the moment one of the particles is measured. Several studies have now confirmed that, no matter how far apart entangled particles are, how fast one particle is measured, or how many times particles are measured, their states become inextricably linked once they are measured.

For nearly a century, physicists have tried to understand what this means about the universe. The dominant interpretation was that entangled particles have no fixed position or orientation until they are measured. Instead, both particles travel as the sum of the probability of all their potential positions, and both only "choose" one state at the moment of measurement. This behavior seems to defy notions of Einstein's theory of special relativity, which argues that no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light. It was so frustrating to Einstein that he famously called it "spooky action at a distance."

To get around this notion, in 1935, Einstein and colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen laid out a paradox that could test the alternate hypothesis that some hidden variable affected the fate of both objects as they traveled. If the hidden variable model were true, that would mean "there's some description of reality which is objective," Ringbauer told Live Science. [Spooky! The Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]

Then in 1964, Irish physicist John Stewart Bell came up with a mathematical expression, now known as Bell's Inequality, that could experimentally prove Einstein wrong by proving the act of measuring a particle affects its state.

In hundreds of tests since, Einstein's basic explanation for entanglement has failed: Hidden variables can't seem to explain the correlations between entangled particles.

But there was still some wiggle room: Bell's Inequality didn't address the situation in which two entangled photons travel faster than light.

A little wiggle left

In the new study, however, Ringbauer and his colleagues took a little bit more of that wiggle room away. In a combination of experiments and theoretical calculations, they show that even if a hidden variable were to travel from entangled photon "A" to entangled photon "B" instantaneously, that would not explain the correlations found between the two particles.

The findings may bolster the traditional interpretation of quantum mechanics, but that leaves physicists with other headaches, Ringbauer said. For one, it lays waste to our conventional notions of cause and effect, he said.

For another, it means that measurements and observations are subjective, Ognyan Oreshkov, a theoretical physicist at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, told Live Science.

If the state of a particle depends on being measured or observed, then who or what is the observer when, for instance, subatomic particles in a distant supernova interact? What is the measurement? Who is "inside" the entangled system and who is on the outside observing it? Depending on how the system is defined, for instance, to include more and more objects and things, the "state" of any given particle may then be different, Ringbauer said.

"You can always draw a bigger box," Ringbauer said.

Still, realists should take heart. The new findings are not a complete death knell for faster-than-light interpretations of entanglement, said Oreshkov, who was not involved in the current study.

The new study "rules out only one specific model where the influence goes from the outcome of one measurement to the outcome of the other measurement," Oreshkov said. In other words, that photon A is talking to photon B at faster-than-light speeds.

Another possibility, however, is that the influence starts earlier, with the correlation in states somehow going from the point at which the photons became entangled (or at some point earlier in the experiment) to the measured photons at the end of the experiment, Oreshkov added. That, however, wasn't tested in the current research, he said. [10 Effects of Faster-Than-Light Travel]

Most physicists who were holding out for a nonlocal interpretation, meaning one not constrained by the speed of light, believe this latter scenario is more likely, said Jacques Pienaar, a physicist who was recently at the University of Vienna in Austria.

"There won't be anybody reading this paper saying, 'Oh, my God, I've been wrong my whole life,'" Pienaar, who was not involved in the current study, told Live Science. "Everybody is going to find it maybe surprising but not challenging, they'll very easily incorporate it into their theories."

Beyond Bell's Inequality

The new study suggests it may be time to retire Bell's Inequality, Pienaar said.

"I think that people are too focused on, too obsessed with Bell Inequalities," Pienaar said. "I think it's an idea which was really amazing and changed the whole field, but it's run its course."

Instead, a tangential idea laid out in the paper may be more intriguing  the development of a definition of causality on the quantum scale, he said.

If people focus on cracking quantum entanglement from these new perspectives, "I think lots of cool discoveries could be made," Pienaar said.

Original article on Live Science.
Sleep problems and gloomy daydreams may worsen the symptoms of a rare psychiatric disorder that causes people to feel as though they are "unreal," a new report of one man's case suggests.

In the report, researchers in the United Kingdom looked at sleep problems and daydreaming habits in a man with a disorder called depersonalization-derealization disorder, which makes the person feel disconnected from the real world. It turned out that, the worse he slept on a given night, the more severe his symptoms were the following day.

Moreover, repetitive and negative daydreams that the man experienced on some days were also linked to worsened psychiatric symptoms. [Daydreaming Again? 5 Facts About the Wandering Mind]

The new findings suggest that some of the symptoms of the disorder may be treated by addressing the persons sleep problems and daydreaming in therapy, the researchers wrote in the study, which was published in August in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Feeling unreal

Between 1 and 2.4 percent of the population may have depersonalization-derealization disorder, according to a 2013 study that was published in the journal BMC Psychology. People with the condition may have the persistent feeling that they are observing themselves from outside of their bodies. They may also feel as though the things around them are not real, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Traditionally, psychiatrists don't consider that sleep problems are a potential contributor to the symptoms of dissociative disorders, but the new study suggests that perhaps such problems should be considered, and addressed with treatments, Dr. Matthew Lorber, acting director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told Live Science. Lorber was not involved in the study.

The patient in the new study was 24 years old, and had experienced trauma during his childhood that included an assault. Dissociative disorders are usually rooted in severe past trauma, the researchers noted.

At the start of the study, the researchers assessed the man's mental health and told him what exactly the study was going to involve. During this initial meeting with the researchers, the patient told the researchers that he often had vivid dreams, and that his sleep patterns were irregular.

Then, for 40 days, the researchers texted the man six times a day with questions about his psychiatric symptoms, mood, sleep quality and the frequency of his daydreaming experiences, and recorded his replies. [5 Things You Must Know About Sleep]

They found that the symptoms of his disorder were worse on those days that followed nights when he had not slept well.

Good daydreams, bad daydreams

Moreover, his symptoms were also worse on the days that the man experienced negative daydreams. In contrast, when his daydreams were more positive, his symptoms did not get worse, according to the study.

Previous research has also suggested that there is a link between daydreaming and the worsening of this disorders symptoms, but the new study shows that only daydreams with negative, and not positive, content may affect these symptoms, the researchers said.

The new findings are in line with some other research, which has suggested that improving sleep quality in people with dissociative disorders may help to improve their symptoms, the researchers said.

However, Lorber said that more research is needed to test the new findings in a larger number of patients.

Originally published on Live Science.
Russian diplomatic missions to Ukraine should respect Ukrainian laws, which define Crimea as a part of Ukrainian territory, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said.

"As to holding the elections here, at diplomatic missions, the diplomatic missions shall respect laws of the country of stay. Our constitution is very clear about Crimea as an integral part of Ukraine, which makes this decision both political and legal," he said in the Svoboda Slova program aired by the ICTV television channel on Monday evening.

Klimkin expects Russia to demonstrate "a reasonable attitude" to this matter. "Speaking of future events, we will interact with international partners so that contacts with the prospective Duma depend on the outcome of these elections," he said.

The issue does not have a direct impact on the possible breakup of diplomatic relations with Russia, the Ukrainian foreign minister said.
The Trilateral Contact Group for Ukraine is holding a videoconference on Tuesday, and representatives of the self-proclaimed republics of Donbas are taking part in it.

"The Trilateral Contact Group's videoconference with the participation of representatives of certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions has begun," Darka Olifer, spokesperson for Kyiv's envoy to the Contact Group, Ukraine's second President Leonid Kuchma, wrote on her Facebook account.
Releases

In this section of the Lockheed Martin Newsroom, you'll find our news releases. The releases are listed in chronological order and are archived by year.
The next Leinster Property Auction public auction, takes place on Thursday, October 6 in the Clarion Hotel, Liffey Valley, Dublin at 7pm. Registration starts at 6.30pm.

With stock levels still at record lows during 2016 and demand still outstripping supply, The Leinster Property Auction feel that now is an excellent time to sell, for vendors looking to generate competitive bidding on their properties.

September and October have traditionally been strong months for selling residential homes, commercial property and land.

The auction team have noted that they are keen to speak to property owners who are considering selling their property before the end of the year.

Patrick Folan from The Leinster Property Auction remarked: Construction figures show that close to 100,000 houses were built annually at the peak of the boom, however, less than 10,000 houses have been completed per annum during the downturn.

A recent survey on current construction figures showed that under 5,000 houses were under construction in June of this year while demand for homes has increased substantially. Latest figures from the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland reveal an increase in both the number and value of mortgages drawn down on an annual basis.

Furthermore, the figures show that the number of mortgage applications being approved is significantly higher last quarter than the previous 3 month period.

Overall this paints a very positive picture for selling residential property in the coming months.
In just four short years, Polish native Wiktoria Glogowska has gone from needing extra classes in English to securing a B2 at Higher Level in the language.

The 18-year-old, who arrived to Mean Scoil Mhuire, Longford in second year, was one of the countys top-scoring pupils, earning an incredible 625 points in her State Exams. It wasnt always easy, but the process has taught Wiktoria a lot.

I think I wasnt sure for a long time that I wanted to move, she admitted, before looking towards the positive impact the move had on her life.

It meant I had to focus more. My English wasnt great at the time but it gave me the determination to improve and showed me that nothing comes for free.

I think my experience from the previous years really helped too, for this year, Wiktoria continued, before revealing the Winston Churchill quote that stood to her over the years; If youre going through hell, keep going.

Wiktoria had studied English in Poland, but not to the extent that she needed it when she arrived in Ireland.

I received help from the school and I had extra classes for the first year I was here, the talented teen said, mentioning teacher Mrs Costello, in particular, for the help and support she offered.

Referring to her education, and her tremendous success in her State Exams, in which she earned six Higher Level A1s and a Higher Level B2, Wiktoria added; It was quite a lot of work but I think I like the challenge. Im an ambitious person.

Now, Wiktoria is turning that determination towards University College Dublin (UCD), where she will commence her studies in Science this month.

Im excited and nervous at the same time, she laughed, before concluding with a word of advice to those starting out - like she did just four years ago - in a new school or country.

You just have to give yourself time and keep a balance.

Do your best and the hard work will pay off!
35th Annual Fall Family Festival Returns to Montauk Bringing Together Locals and Visitors for a Weekend Full of Fun, Oct. 8-9

Family & Parenting, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases, Seasonal & Current Events

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 13 2016

Celebrate the arrival of fall and crisp October weather at Montauks 35th Annual Fall Festival, sponsored by the Montauk Chamber of Commerce.

The family-oriented community event takes place on Columbus Day Weekend, Oct 8th and 9th on the Green in the center of downtown Montauk.

Montauk, NY - September 8, 2016 - Celebrate the arrival of fall and crisp October weather at Montauks 35th Annual Fall Festival, sponsored by the Montauk Chamber of Commerce. The family-oriented community event takes place on Columbus Day Weekend, Oct 8th and 9th on the Green in the center of downtown Montauk.

Montauk Fall Festival is the Chambers major annual fundraiser, says Laraine Creegan, the chamber executive director In turn, the Chamber donates proceeds to Montauks other not-for-profits such as the Montauk Food Pantry, the July 4th and Fall Fireworks Fund, the Frank Cappozola Scholarship Fund and others.

On Saturday, the festival kicks off with the Famous Clam Chowder contest at 11 am sharp, with a variety of unforgettable chowders from local restaurants available until it runs out which is usually around 1 pm. Food personalities judge and present awards for the best New England and Manhattan chowders. Festival attendees may also participate in this contest by voting in the Peoples Choice Award. Winners are announced at 3 pm that day on the Chambers Facebook page and posted at www.montaukchamber.com.

Both days include childrens activities: inflatable rides, face painting, pumpkin decorating, street painting, crab races, pony rides (Sunday), a free 30 horse Carousel and more. For adults is live music by Hopefully Forgiven on Saturday, 2 to 5 pm, raffles, delicious Oktoberfest style food, clams and oysters, Long Island wines and beer. The Montauk Farmers Market is situated in the tent on Saturday and on Sunday on the street.

On Sunday, the Festival continues with additional activities under the tent including the annual auction by the Montauk Playhouse and live music by the 3 B's from 12 to 3 pm. To round off the weekend, Montauk Chamber's annual Cash Catch drawing is held at 4:30 pm Sunday with cash prizes up to $20,000 awarded.

Avoid the parking hassles! Hampton Jitney is providing free, local, intra-town service to help people get to/from the Montauk Fall Festival on October 8 & 9. Service is available at the Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk stop locations. Reservations are required, call 631-283-4600 for more information.

Volunteers are needed and should contact the Chambers executive director Laraine Creegan at 668-2355 or email, or Kiersten Lavery at 668-2429 or email

The Carousel Sponsors are Kandell, Farnsworth & Pubins CPAs, Gurneys Montauk, Scarpetta Beach, Duryeas Lobster Deck, American Tent Co, 668 The Gig Shack, Ocean Surf Motel, South Edison Restaurant, Thomas Lavin Construction, Southampton Hospital.

For updates on the Festival, visit here.
Pets & Animal, Local News, Health & Wellness, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 13 2016

Although the clinic is available to all county residents, the quantity of vaccine is limited and available only while supplies last.

All dogs must be on leashes and all cats and ferrets must be in carriers.

Brookhaven, NY - September 9, 2016 - The Suffolk County Department of Health Services (SCDHS) and the Town of Brookhaven will offer free rabies vaccinations* for dogs, cats and ferrets as follows:

Saturday, September 24, 2016

10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Brookhaven Animal Shelter

300 Horseblock Road, Brookhaven, NY

*Although the clinic is available to all county residents, the quantity of vaccine is limited and available only while supplies last. All dogs must be on leashes and all cats and ferrets must be in carriers.

Rabies, a deadly disease caused by a virus that attacks the central nervous system, is most often seen among wild animals such as raccoons, bats, skunks and foxes, but any mammal can be infected with rabies. Pets and livestock can get rabies if they are not vaccinated to protect them against infection.

New York State and Suffolk County laws require that all dogs, cats and ferrets be vaccinated against rabies. Vaccinating pets not only provides protection for the animals but also acts as a barrier to keep the rabies virus from spreading between wild animals and people.

The SCDHS Bureau of Public Health Protection tests animals that are reported to be acting strangely or have come into contact with humans. Although a number of different animal species were tested in 2015, only bats tested positive for rabies. Of the 110 bats tested last year, 3 tested positive for rabies.

On March 24, 2016 the Nassau County Department of Health reported that a raccoon from Hicksville tested positive for rabies . This is the first positive raccoon found in Nassau County since 2007. Suffolk Countys last confirmed rabid raccoon was in January 2009. Between 2006 and 2009, rabies was identified in 19 raccoons near the Nassau-Suffolk border in the northwestern portion of the Town of Huntington.

Dr. James Tomarken, Commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services recommends the following precautions to protect your pets and your family from possible exposure to rabies:

Do not feed, touch or approach wild animals, or stray dogs or cats.

Be sure your pet dogs, cats and ferrets as well as horses and other livestock animals are up-to-date on their rabies vaccinations. Vaccination protects pets if they are exposed to rabid animals. Pets too young to be vaccinated should be kept indoors and allowed outside only under direct observation.

Keep family pets indoors at night. Do not leave them outside unattended or let them roam free.

Do not attract wild animals to your home or yard. Keep your property free of stored bird seed or other foods that may attract wild animals. Feed pets indoors. Tightly cover or put away garbage cans. Board up any openings to your attic, basement, porch or garage. Cap your chimney with screens.

Do not transport or relocate any wild animals.

Teach children not to touch any animal they do not know and to tell an adult immediately if they are bitten by any animal.

Heatlh officials advise residents to report all animal bites or physical contact with wild animals to the Suffolk County Department of Health Services at (631) 853-0333 weekdays, 9:00 a.m.  4:30 p.m. After hours, contact (631) 852-4820. If possible, try to contain the animal that so it can be tested.
Local News, Health & Wellness, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 13 2016

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced actions taken to safeguard water quality on Long Island.

Long Island, NY - September 12, 2016 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced actions taken to safeguard water quality on Long Island, including the designation of a Superfund Site at Gabreski Air National Guard Base and $5 million in funding to support the development of emerging contaminant treatment systems at SUNY Stony Brook's Center for Clean Water Technology.



In addition, the Advanced Oxidative Process, a cutting-edge drinking water treatment, will be approved by the state and soon be used for the first time in New York in a pilot program to treat 1,4 dioxane contamination. These actions further the efforts of the Governor's Water Quality Rapid Response Team, launched on Long Island in February to swiftly address water quality issues across the state and develop new policies, programs, and technologies to ensure clean water for all New Yorkers.



"Ensuring that all New Yorkers have access to clean drinking water is a top priority and the Water Quality Rapid Response Team continues to take action across the state to stay ahead of this emerging challenge," said Governor Cuomo. "Working together with environmental experts, elected officials, and community stakeholders, we are holding polluters accountable, investing in water treatment technologies to keep our natural resources safe, and laying the ground work for a cleaner, brighter future for the state of New York."



Gabreski Air National Guard Base Declared a State Superfund Site

To support the ongoing efforts of Governor Cuomo's Water Quality Rapid Response Team, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has declared the Air National Guard Base located at the Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Suffolk County a Class 2 Superfund Site. With this designation, DEC has identified the U.S. Department of Defense, which oversees the sites operations, as the potentially responsible party for perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) contamination detected in nearby groundwater supplies. DEC will use its full legal authority under the State Superfund law to ensure a thorough site clean-up.



On April 25, 2016, DEC added PFOS to the states list of hazardous substances to utilize the State Superfund program. The Water Quality Rapid Response Team continues to analyze data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule program to identify potential areas of contamination, which led to the discovery of the groundwater contamination near Gabreski Airport.



In July, DEC identified the Air National Guard Base, including the former fire training area at the airport, as a potential Superfund site due to historic use of firefighting foam containing PFOS. DEC immediately initiated an investigation and took groundwater and soil samples at the base, which confirmed that the site is a significant source of PFOS contamination in the area.



Also, in late July, Suffolk County collected samples of 66 private drinking water wells from Westhampton Beach and found several of them to be contaminated. The state has been working closely with Suffolk County and the Suffolk County Water Authority to ensure residents are fully informed, have access to bottled water, and are quickly connected to the municipal water supply.



Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos said, "DEC works aggressively to protect public health and the environment whenever contamination is found and to hold polluters accountable for their actions. With the Superfund declaration of the Air National Guard Base at Gabreski Airport, DEC will direct and oversee the Department of Defense as they conduct a full site investigation into the nature and extent of the PFOS contamination and develop necessary remedial action plans. The funding provided to the Center for Clean Water Technology will also provide essential support to identifying new treatment technologies to more quickly address groundwater contamination at Superfund sites across Long Island and the state."



In addition to an investigation of the Superfund site, the state has directed the U.S. Department of Defense to finance the connection of private wells to the municipal water supply that have been or may be impacted by contamination. If the DOD fails to do this, the state will use Superfund dollars to advance these connections and then seek cost recovery from the responsible party, in addition to providing impacted residents with clean drinking water.



Last week, the Governor called on the EPA to expand the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule program to require sampling for all public water supplies, regardless of size of population served, to ensure all New Yorkers served by public systems have access to clean water and are protected from contamination. Currently, only water systems with more than 10,000 people are required to test for unregulated contaminants, leaving out 2.5 million New Yorkers who get their drinking water from smaller systems. If the EPA fails to address this national challenge, the administration will step in and advance legislation to ensure all public water in New York State - regardless of size - test for unregulated contaminants and report the results.



In addition, the Governor is advancing legislation to provide oversight of private wells - which are used by 4 million New Yorkers - by requiring homeowners test for contaminants prior to the sale of a home, and mandate that landlords with properties on private wells test their water and share those results with tenants. Such testing is essential to protecting all New Yorkers from emerging contaminants such as PFOS.



$5 Million Investment: Stony Brook Center for Clean Water Technology

To assist water suppliers with the removal of emerging contaminants in drinking water on Long Island, the state will invest $5 million to support the development of new contaminant filtration technologies.



Funding, administered by the new SUNY Stony Brook Center for Clean Water Technology, will support:

Grants for water suppliers to develop and conduct pilot projects to test cutting-edge contaminant filtration and treatment technologies,

Research needed for the development, evaluation and advancement of these technologies; and

Commercialization of viable technologies to create economic development opportunities for the region and state.

The state has already committed $3.5 million from the Environmental Protection Fund to support the Center for Clean Water Technology, which was established at SUNY Stony Brook in 2014 by Governor Cuomo in partnership with Suffolk County and the Town of Southampton. With an additional $5 million in funding, the Center will continue to develop new technologies to improve both drinking water and wastewater quality on Long Island.



In addition, a new treatment technology, the Advanced Oxidative Process, will be approved by the New York State Department of Health, in consultation with the Suffolk County Department of Health. This is the first time the technology will be used in New York as the state continues to leverage new technologies to stay ahead of emerging water quality issues including 1,4 Dioxane, which is an important issue to Long Island.



Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said, "The New York State Department of Health is committed to ensuring clean drinking water for all New Yorkers, and this new partnership with the Center for Clean Water Technology will further our efforts to combat the threat of emerging contaminants in drinking water, while DEC utilizes the Superfund program to clean up contaminated sites like Gabreski Airport. I look forward to working with the Center to advance new research into emerging contaminants in order to quickly and effectively remove them from drinking water supplies across the state."



Senator Ken LaValle said, "I'm pleased that additional resources are being dedicated towards water quality issues. The Superfund designation at Gabreski Airport is critically important to begin to properly address the contamination in an expedited manner. The residents deserve to have every tool available utilized to clean up their water as soon as physically possible."



Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele , Jr. said, "Todays Superfund designation is a timely and significant step in the right direction. I applaud our government officials for acting so quickly to identify the scope of the problem, notify residents and now secure the funding necessary to ensure these contaminated soils and waters are contained, removed and remediated. In addition, the new funding for the Stony Brook Center for Clean Water Technology will help fast-track the development and implementation of advanced, alternative wastewater treatment systems which will not only address our nitrogen crisis, but also emerging pollutants which are threatening our ground and surface water quality."



Assemblyman Steve Englebright said, "The new funding for the SUNY Center for Clean Water Technology is a game changer for our efforts to address emerging contaminants, and I look forward to working with the Governor and his administration in continuing to advance new protections for Long Islands water resources."



Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said, "This is great news for clean water in Suffolk County. I applaud Governor Cuomo for taking strong action to protect the health of Suffolk residents. Declaring Gabreski as a State Superfund site will allow access to significant resources to address contamination and provide peace of mind to homeowners by helping then connect to safe public water. Investing in the Center for Clean Water Technology is critical to develop the affordable, next generation systems we need to tackle the nitrogen crisis."



Co-Director of the Center for Clean Water Technology at SUNY Stony Brook Christopher J. Gobler, Ph.D. said, "Every year, new and emerging contaminants threaten public water supplies. In other cases, traditional contaminants appear quickly or in an unexpected manner. The NYS Center for Clean Water Technology stands ready to help bring the best technologies available to water districts and water suppliers across New York to ensure a continued supply of safe and clean drinking water for all New Yorkers."



Suffolk County Water Authority CEO Jeffrey Szabo said, "We commend Governor Cuomo for the grant announced today, as it demonstrates his full engagement in the effort to address emerging contaminants proactively. We also commend the governor for his commitment to approve a pilot project the Suffolk County Water Authority has developed to remove 1,4 dioxane from groundwater. These actions will go a long way toward helping us to continue to provide a high quality drinking water supply to Suffolk residents."



About the Statewide Water Quality Rapid Response Team

In February 2016 the Governor launched a Statewide Water Quality Rapid Response Team charged with identifying and developing plans to swiftly address critical drinking water contamination concerns, as well as related groundwater and surface water contamination problems. The Team was directed to develop the nation's leading water quality program and prepare a comprehensive action plan to immediately address water quality issues raised by municipalities and concerned citizens, tackling matters ranging from currently regulated contaminants, such as lead, to emerging contaminants, like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The Team will incorporate the best available science and may include new review standards for currently unregulated contaminants, enhanced testing and oversight of drinking water systems, including private wells, and state of the art drinking water treatment options.
Three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 15 were wounded in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine in the last day, spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry for ATO issues Oleksandr Motuzianyk said.

"Three our soldiers were killed and 15 were wounded in fighting in the last day. Another soldier is missing," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.

The heaviest ATO casualties were in the Luhansk sector amid a skirmish with an enemy special forces group on Monday. It happened on the left bank of the Siversky Donets River.

"The special forces group crossed the river and attacked our troops. The fight lasted for 15 minutes," he said.

According to Motuzianyk, two Ukrainian servicemen were killed in the fight alone, and another one died amid an artillery attack near the village of Chermalyk in Luhansk region.

In his words, massive attacks by illegal armed groups were also recorded in Luhansk region's Popasna district: the enemy used light weapons and equipment. For the first time in recent weeks, militants used heavy 82 mm weapons. Nine attacks were recorded in this sector.

Motuzianyk also added that fighting in the Donetsk sector had also intensified: militants also used heavy weapons there. The village of Luhanske and the industrial area in the town of Avdiyivka came under mortar fire. The village of Zaitseve saw firing, which lasted for 2.5 hours. Sixteen attacks were recorded in this sector.

The town of Krasnohorivka in the Mariupol sector came under mortar fire. The enemy used banned 122mm guns to shell the village of Chermalyk - they fired 45 artillery shells on Ukrainian positions. The village of Shyrokyne, which is close to the Ukrainian-controlled strategic port city of Mariupol came under mortar fire. The town of Maryinka also saw a number of provocations. Nine attacks were recorded in the Mariupol sector, three of them were with the use of heavy weapons.
Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 13 2016

John De Vito, Democratic candidate for New Yorks third Senate district, held a fundraiser hosted by Dave Calone and joined by Anna Throne-Holst.

Patchogue, NY - September 9, 2016 - John De Vito, Democratic candidate for New Yorks third Senate district, held a fundraiser last night hosted by Dave Calone and joined by Anna Throne-Holst Thursday, at the Main Street Italian Bistro in Patchogue.



The event showcased Democratic Party unity and grassroots momentum in New Yorks third Senate district, and the first Congressional district. Both of these races are considered to be some of the most competitive elections which will be held in November.



Despite the upcoming primary the event was extremely well attended, with County Legislator Kate Browning, who has endorsed De Vito also present. The event solidified De Vitos substantial financial lead over his opponents, and with over 50 attendees, made clear his momentum going into Tuesdays Democratic primary.



The 25 year-old candidate spoke after Calone, and Congressional candidate Throne-Holst, saying he will be the state senator who stands up to up-state, who stands up to New York City and says that the time you have used Long Island as a piggy bank is over.



He also laid out his platform on affordability, the zombie home crisis, and ethics stating corruption is a bipartisan practice in Albany, but my opponent, chairman of the ethics committee, couldnt find the political willpower to strip these disgraced, corrupt politicians of their pensions. We need action on ethics in Albany and when you sit silent, you are complicit.
Community, Charity & Cause, Health & Wellness, Press Releases, Local News, School & Education, Seasonal & Current Events

By WFSD News Published: September 13 2016

The Family Service Leagues William Floyd Family Center in collaboration with U.S. Congressman Lee Zeldin, will be hosting a free Naloxone training and resource fair.

Mastic Beach, NY - September 12, 2016 - The Family Service Leagues William Floyd Family Center in collaboration with U.S. Congressman Lee Zeldin, will be hosting a free Naloxone training and resource fair for local residents on Friday, September 23 from 6-8 pm in the William Floyd High School auditorium. Naloxone, better known under its brand name, Narcan, is a prescription medicine that blocks the effects of opioids and reverses an overdose.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes heroin and opioid use as an epidemic that knows no boundaries. Heroin use has increased across the United States among men and women, most age groups and all income levels, according to the CDC website.

The training and resource fair will include guest speakers sharing their personal stories, representatives from various organizations that specialize in treatment, rehabilitation, education and awareness, as well as a representative from the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (LICADD) who will conduct the Naloxone training. The first 50 families will receive one free Naloxone kit.

Combatting drug addiction and overdose requires a multi-faceted approach that includes prevention, treatment and counseling, said Karen Boorshtein, President and CEO of Family Service League. Family Service League has a long track record of helping individuals overcome addictions. When overdose does happen  and it occurs all too often as weve seen lately in our communities  Narcan is an effective way to reverse overdose. FSL is proud to partner with the William Floyd School District and Congressman Lee Zeldin to provide training so that more people can administer this life-saving medication.

Congressman Lee Zeldin, member of the Bipartisan Task Force to Combat the Heroin Epidemic in the House of Representatives, said, Our communities and families have been severely impacted by the rise of prescription drug abuse and the growing heroin crisis. In Congress, I have been working to combat this growing epidemic that is plaguing our country and taking hold of our loved ones. Through a three-pronged approach focusing on treatment, enforcement, and education, we can overcome this crisis. Equally needed is an increase in the supply and training of how to administer the lifesaving medication, Naloxone, or Narcan, which reverses an overdose within minutes. It only takes five minutes to train a person with no medical training on how to identify signs of an overdose and administer Narcan. The upcoming Narcan training and resource fair, which I am proud to host with the William Floyd Family Center, will help supply our community with the training needed to administer Narcan, which can save lives.
Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 13 2016

Nassau County Police report the details of an Aided Case involving the birth of a baby girl on Monday, September 12, 2016 at 1:30 pm.

Update - September 13, 2016 - Baby Ailish Padilla was delivered by NCPD medic and police officers in an ambulance on the way to the Nassau University Medical Center. Mother Kenia Borjas Arias and Dad, Ronnie Padilla, are all doing well and are grateful for the quick action of the officers and physicians. They were met in the ambulance bay parking lot at NUMC by OB/GYN chief resident Angela Szee, MD, who then took over and mother and baby were then admitted.

They are my heroes, said Ms. Borjas Arias when she saw the officers in her room at NUMC. She was personally congratulated by County Executive Mangano who brought a huge teddy bear as a gift to welcome the newborn baby. The entire family thanked the officers and the NUMC staff for all their efforts in helping deliver a healthy baby.

The original press release is below.

Uniondale, NY - September 13, 2016 - Nassau County Police report the details of an Aided Case involving the birth of a baby girl on Monday, September 12, 2016 at 1:30 pm in Uniondale.

According to police, First Precinct Police Officers responded to a Henry Street residence for a call of a pregnant 32 year old woman unable to walk and in pain. Upon arrival the First Precinct Police officers assisted Nassau County Police Medic Matthews with transporting the woman into the ambulance. Once inside, Police Medic Matthews determined the womans water had broken. The babys head was being presented with the umbilical cord wrapped around the babys neck causing the baby to turn blue. Police Medic Matthews was able to remove the umbilical cord and complete the delivery of a healthy baby girl in the back of the ambulance. With the assistance of the First Precinct police the baby was transported to a local area hospital. The mother and baby are doing fine.
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
The Trilateral Contact Group met via Skype, together with representatives of some areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, on Tuesday to call for observance of the ceasefire regime in Donbas, Darka Olifer, spokesperson for Kyiv's envoy to the Contact Group, Ukraine's second President Leonid Kuchma, said.

"The Trilateral Contact Group called for observance of the ceasefire regime," she wrote on her Facebook account.

Olifer went on to reveal that OSCE Special Monitoring Mission chief monitor Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan, OSCE coordinator in the Contact Group security working subgroup, read his report to everyone at the meeting, as did the Joint Center for Control and Coordination officers.

The next Trilateral Contact Group meeting is due to be held in Minsk on September 21, Olifer said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says he expects the European Union will take a decision on visa-free travel for Ukraine next month.

"We'll have a visa-free regime in a few weeks, I hope, in October," he said an official ribbon-cutting ceremony of a kindergarten in the village of Slobozhanske in Dnipropetrovsk region.

It was reported that on July 7 the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs voted in favor of recommending that the European Parliament cancel visa requirements as soon as possible for citizens of Ukraine, Georgia and Kosovo who make short trips in the Schengen zone.

Foreign Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin said that the procedure of the approval of the visa regime liberalization would take a few months.

The abolition of short-stay visas should be considered at a meeting of the parliamentary committee, then adopted at the plenary session of the European Parliament, and, finally, approved by the EU Council (by member states).

The European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs on September 5 heard a report on the liberalization of the visa regime with Ukraine which suggests putting Ukraine on the list of the countries with which the EU has a visa-free regime.

  
Poroshenko, Steinmeier, Ayrault in Kyiv on Sept 14 to coordinate means of pressure on Russia to implement Minsk agreements

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko plans to meet with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault in Kyiv on Wednesday in order to coordinate measures of pressure on Russia in order to ensure the observance of the security points of the Minsk agreements.

The meeting, set for September 14, is expected to address, among other topics, the prospects for resuming the fully-fledged work of the Normandy format (Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France) as a follow-up to agreements reached as a result of the trilateral telephone conversation held on September 9, the Ukrainian leader's website said.

The Ukrainian president will also hear the report of the foreign affairs minister of Germany as the OSCE chairman-in-office on the ways to strengthen the role of this organization in the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

Special attention will be paid to the progress in the liberation of Ukrainian hostages in Donbas and Ukrainian political prisoners illegally held in Russia.
Fourteen days after the Islamic State announced that Abu Muhammad al Adnani, one of the groups top leaders, was killed in an airstrike near Al Bab, Syria, the US military released a statement confirming his death. The US militarys announcement discredits claims from Russias Ministry of Defense that one of its warplanes killed Adnani in Maaratat-Umm Khaush.

The following statement from Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook confirming Adnanis death was released by the US Department of Defense on Sept. 12:

The Department of Defense has confirmed that the US precision airstrike on Aug. 30 targeting senior ISIL [Islamic State] leader Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani was successful. The strike near Al Bab, Syria, removes from the battlefield ISILs chief propagandist, recruiter and architect of external terrorist operations. It is one in a series of successful strikes against ISIL leaders, including those responsible for finances and military planning, that make it harder for the group to operate. As we continue to gather momentum in our counter-ISIL campaign, we will continue to target ISIL leaders, relentlessly pursue its external plotters, and, working with our partners on the ground, we will not rest in our efforts to destroy ISILs parent tumor in Iraq and Syria, combat its metastases around the world, and protect our homeland.

It is unclear why the US military needed two weeks to confirm that it eliminated Adnani. On Aug. 30, the Islamic States official media outlets announced that Adnani was killed and eulogized the commander, who served as the groups top spokesman, recruiter, and head of its external operations branch. [See LWJ report, Islamic State says senior official killed in Aleppo province.]

Russia initially claimed it killed Adnani in attacks carried out by a Su-34 bomber in Maaratat-Umm Khaush, Syria, NBC News reported the day after Adnanis death was announced. US military officials dismissed Russias claim as a joke, while the Department of Defense acknowledged on Aug. 30 that its warplanes targeted Adnani in Al Bab.

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.
First Deputy Speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Ukraine's representative in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group on Donbas Iryna Gerashchenko has called on the OSCE and UNICEF to verify online reports about detention and tortures of Ukrainian teenagers captured by militants from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.

"Media reported shocking information that the 'orcs' from the self-proclaimed republics have detained a group of teenagers allegedly for 'sabotage' and are now torturing them This information obviously requires verification. And I think this is a good opportunity for UNICEF to check this information, use access to the poor children who are being tried by public interrogations on video (...) The footage was posted by the 'orcs' on the Internet. It is obvious it needs to be verified and responded. Today, I've sent a letter to the OSCE and UNICEF, asking to urgently check these reports," Gerashchenko wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

She also said she would most likely raise the issue in Minsk on September 21, when the next Trilateral Contact Group meeting is to take place.

She stresses that it is appropriate to engage UNICEF to help with issues involving children in the conflict zone.

"We support efforts made by this respected international organization, but we believe this should not be a kind of ceremonial engagement with routine workshops and roundtables on children's issues," she said.

She added UNICEF must be permitted to monitor the situation of children's rights in the occupied territories and in Russia, where the organization's work is de facto blocked.

Gerashchenko also pointed to the importance of assistance Ukraine in searching Ukrainians, illegally removed orphans and children deprived of parental care, and joint prevention of any attempt to involve minors in the conflict.
Luton is a large town, borough and unitary authority area of Bedfordshire. Luton and its near neighbours, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, form the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area with a population of about 258,000. Luton is home to Championship team Luton Town Football Club, London Luton Airport and The University of Bedfordshire. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. For all the latest news from Luton sign up to our newsletter here.
Cars / Yachts

Oct 15, 2016 | By Vimi Haridasan

We are just weeks away from the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS and the excitement is heating up. While we cant share too much information about whats in store just yet (more reason for you to get those tickets to see it in person), we are able to give you just a few hints that are sure to whet your appetite. For many, the yachting industry in Asia may be one that is daunting and challenging. Thankfully, we have industry insiders such as Kit Chotithamaporn, Asia Regional Manager for Leopard Catamarans, to help us navigate through uncharted territory. As one of the exhibitors at the highly anticipated and inaugural SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS, he took some time to tell us more about his thoughts in the future of the yachting industry and why the event is one that shouldnt be missed.

What inspired you to get involved in the yacht industry?

I was born in Phuket, Thailand and my father loved the sea. He was an avid recreational fisherman who can most likely be considered the first recreational boater in Phuket. He had his own boat built and went fishing. At a very early age my father would bring us fishing, boating, and swimming at the beach so the sea and the beach or anything related to both became a passion for me. When the opportunity came along for me to get involved in the yachting industry 13 years ago, it was a very easy decision.

Where would you say is the best location for boating in Asia?

Personally I believe Southeast Asia is one of the most amazing areas for boating in the world. Its a massive area covering different countries with vast cultural and environmental diversity which makes for great boating. Weather wise its also mild compared to other areas in Asia. I am of course from Phuket so I will forever be biased towards the island and its surrounding cruising grounds. Phuket itself has lots of beautiful beaches and bays to moor up in and the numerous islands within close cruising range which offer a boater years of cruising. Ive seen Phuket back in the days when it was a sleepy little town with pristine beaches and all the islands around were untouched and barely had a soul on it. Obviously the changes in Phuket have been drastic over the years with the development of tourism and there are good and bad effects that come with it but I still love the place deeply and see many reasons to live and boat here.

What is your biggest sales market and why do you think it is so?

Currently my biggest sales market would be Southeast Asia. For Asia I believe Southeast Asia is the region that has been exposed to the boating lifestyle at an earlier stage therefore its had more time to grow and develop. With an earlier start the infrastructure and services in the region has had fairly good development with marinas and yachting related services from Indonesia up to Thailand. Having said that the region and whole of Asia is still in need of more development for the industrys continued growth. Besides the infrastructure growth, of course the main reason is also the amazing cruising grounds. As stated previously Phuket is one of these amazing areas and hence the reason why it is now considered the hub for boating in the region.

What are some of the things that clients look out for when purchasing Catamarans?

When someone is looking to purchase a catamaran I think the first thing they look for is the space and comfort it provides compared to a monohull. On deck, the rear cockpit on a catamaran is huge as it spreads out over both hulls. The rear cockpit and saloon are also on the same level which gives better light, visibility, and spaciousness. The foredeck or bow area is also a massive area with a big trampoline that goes across both hulls and makes for a great area for lounging and sunbathing. Underway its always a favorite space to be as it gives one the feeling of floating over the water. On a Leopard Catamaran we have a unique feature which is our forward saloon door and forward cockpit seating area. The forward saloon door offers convenient and safe access to the bow directly from the main saloon and you will also go through our very unique and famed forward cockpit which provides another shaded seating and dining area.

Down below you will find good headroom and overall space in all the cabins. On our Leopard 48 for example, you will find all cabins to be ensuite which is unlikely on a monohull.

Sailing wise catamarans offer much better stability and while sailing underway the boat does not heel like you would on a monohull. Performance is also an advantage where a catamaran is generally faster under power or sail. Draft is another advantage meaning you can get into shallower and hard to reach areas as well as anchoring closer to shore.

With power catamarans, the one major advantage over a monohull would be the fuel consumption. Normally consumption would be half, if not more due to the small surface area below the waterline for the two hulls. With Leopard Catamarans, our powercats are true powercats offering good performance with 25 knot top speed and cruising in the 18 to 20 knot range.

Could you tell us more about the latest model, Leopard 40?

The Leopard 40 is our newest model, launched a year ago, replacing its predecessor the Leopard 39. The Leopard 40 is a completely new design with nothing carrying over from the Leopard 39. The main saloon space has been increased significantly with a forward facing galley offering great visibility through our large vertical forward windows and the Leopard 40 now also has our signature forward saloon door offering direct access to the bow. The main saloon sofa is now positioned towards the rear adjacent to the rear cockpit seating area. With the new Leopard 40 the sliding saloon glass door now opens all the way and you can now join the indoor main saloon sofa seating area with the outdoor rear cockpit. This is a great feature which opens up the entire main saloon level offering great entertaining space and keeping everyone onboard together. Leopard Catamarans main identity has always been conviviality and to keep everyone onboard together as a group without anyone feeling left out. The new Leopard 40s features keeps to this promise and improves upon it.

What makes this model stand out against previous Leopard Catamarans?

Besides the new features mentioned above, the Leopard 40 brings our smallest model in line with the same design concept and features with our larger models such as the Leopard 48. Although it is our smallest model at 40 feet, the Leopard 40 now offers much more space and comfort compared to the previous Leopard 39. Compared to a monohull you would need at least a 50 foot boat to get the same space provided by the Leopard 40.

How receptive have clients been to the Leopard 40?

The Leopard 40 has been well received since its launch with deliveries now well into mid 2017. We have also recently delivered one of the very first Leopard 40 to a client in the Philippines through our dealer there. I believe more will be sold to Asia once we launch the model here and start to display a boat in the upcoming SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS and regional boat shows. The Leopard 40 offers a lot of boat at its price range.

Leopard Catamarans are designed by a team in Florida, crafted by a team in South Africa and sold in Asia. Are there any difficulties faced in working with teams that are spread across various continents?

The whole partnership between our head office in Florida and Roberson & Caine in Cape Town works very smoothly and after so many years of partnership weve managed to work out all the hurdles and now operate at a very high level of efficiency. For me in Asia the biggest issue would be the time zone differences and having to wait for replies to emails etc.

Leopard Catamarans prides itself in delivering quality products to customers and catering to their needs. Does this also extend to the way in which each catamaran is delivered?

For delivery we actually offer our owners a few options. The most obvious one is shipping from Cape Town to the boats destination. Another very popular option for our sailing catamarans is our on water delivery where we sail the boat with a delivery crew on its own hull from the factory in Cape Town to any destination worldwide. We have delivered over 1,300 boats this way and have become well known in the industry for this achievement and its a testament to the quality of a Leopard Catamaran. Finally, we also offer owners an option where they can fly into Cape Town to take possession of their boat and from there they can sail to their desired destination on the beginning of their sailing adventure.

Why do you think clients should invest in Leopard Catamarans?

The overall build quality of a Leopard Catamaran is superior and our fittings and materials used also tend to be of higher quality. Many of these features are subtle and not be immediately noticeable but once noticed owners will know the difference immediately. As in all things, its the details that make the difference. Besides the hardware, Leopard Catamarans also have unique and innovative features such as our forward saloon door, forward cockpit, safe rig with double back stays and rigid boom vang, standard hard top on all boats, and a helm station designed for short-handed sailing. Performance wise our boats tend to sail better due to our stepped hull design and powerful sail plan. With our powercats, they are true powercats with high speed ability and not just a sailing hull without the mast.

Another main reason which Im proud to say is Leopard Catamarans is the only builder that can lay claim to the fact that our boats are truly blue water tried and tested. We have delivered well over 1,300 boats on their own hull to destinations all over the world from our shipyard in Cape Town. For example, there were two Leopard 48s delivered to Hong Kong towards the end of last year and both boats spent 1 and  months at sea from Cape Town to Hong Kong with three delivery crew onboard. One of the boats went through 30 knot winds and 3 to 4 meter waves for 30 days continuously. This is the ultimate testament to the build and quality of these boats and the delivery journey offers the best sea trial a boat can possibly go through. After arriving at its destination, anything that can break has most likely broken and any problems would have presented itself. Through Leopard Catamarans post-delivery commissioning process, we repair and replace all the items and the owner will never see these problems again as most owners will never go through the same conditions the delivery crew has gone through.

Whats next for Leopard Catamarans?

Leopard Catamarans is constantly improving and evolving with new models being introduced. Currently we have a completely new model to be launched soon with new designs and features but Id like to keep that a secret for now so watch this space.

Are there any exclusive benefits of owning Leopard Catamarans? Such as customer care or perks?

In my years of working in the yachting industry and working with various shipyards, Id say Leopard Catamarans offers one of the best after sales care to our owners. We accept all warranty claims and manufacturer defects without question and the process is very easy and straight forward. We absolutely do not go out of our way to make the claim process difficult or question the claim endlessly causing long delays and ending up with a frustrated and unhappy owner. I personally look after all the claims and work very closely with owners so they are confident they are dealing with someone close and with local knowledge.

Leopard Catamarans will be one of the exhibitors at the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS, which is right around the corner. What do you hope to achieve there as an exhibitor and would there be other types of catamarans on display?

We are looking forward to the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS and we committed to the event immediately as we like the new concept and timing wise it is also positioned at a good time. I hope the show can attract a more diverse type of crowd for attendance or at least it can offer visitors a different and more approachable boat show. Id like to use this event to raise the awareness of Leopard Catamarans brand in the region and of course closing a few deals through the show wouldnt be bad either! Leopard Catamarans plans to have our brand new Leopard 40, brand new Leopard 43 Powercat, and the Leopard 51 Powercat which has proven to be a very popular model in the region. Both the Leopard 40 and 43 Powercat will be a brand new model being shown for the first time in Asia.

What are your thoughts on Asias future yachting industry?

I believe Asias yachting industry will continue to grow at a steady pace as it has since I started in the industry 13 years ago. Southeast Asia will continue its gradual but steady growth. China, which is in a bit of a slump due to its political climate especially after its glamorous rise into the yachting lifestyle a few years ago, will slowly come back given that the players involved in the industry there market the yachting lifestyle in a more sustainable way. More interestingly I believe will be the emergence of completely new markets where there has been little to no movement in terms of yacht sales. Countries such as Taiwan which has had a thriving yacht building industry purely for export for the last 30-odd years has only just changed its laws allowing Taiwanese citizens to own their personal yachts. A few years ago it was illegal for a Taiwanese to own a private yacht. Vietnam with a lack of infrastructure and difficult regulations has a big potential as there have been some interesting announcements there lately. Myanmar is another place to look out for as the country is currently going through a dramatic change in governance as well as being part of the AEC should see some interesting changes. Overall, Asia still has a lot of potential for growth over the coming years.
Cookies used for analytics help us improve our website by collecting the information on how you use it. This information is collected in a way that doesn't allow to directly identify anyone. For more information on how these cookies work, please see our
Patent implications of Brexit

The Forum in Munich kicked off with a light-hearted apology from Karl Barnfather of Withers & Rogers. Please dont direct your anger towards me for the Brexit vote, he said. In his remarks Barnfather said, although the IP Federation cited its concerns, overall the UK patent community backs the UPC and that there are legal proceedings over whether Parliamentary approval is needed to trigger Article 50.

Margot Frohlinger of the EPO gave a historical account of previous failed attempts to create a unitary patent system in the EU before 25 member states agreed in 2011 to proceed through the enhanced cooperation procedure. In a nutshell, they failed because of disagreement over language and the associated court system. Frohlinger said the Brexit result was hugely disappointing, but hopes history wont repeat itself because the system is nearly ready and, in her view, very important to the Single Market. She said: There is hope that the system will not come to a halt. It will go ahead. There is too much support and too much investment. To her mind, the question now is whether the system will go ahead with or without the UK. She said: Its now a political issue not a legal one because it is relatively easy to change an agreement which is not yet in force.

The two key UPC Agreement provisions which require amendment are Article 89, to remove the requirement for UK ratification, and Article 7(2), which deals with the UKs Central Division seat. She went on to explain how this solution may be achieved. The first step is for the other member states to convene a diplomatic meeting on the margins of an EU Summit or the Competitiveness Council meeting to discuss possible amendments. This must include the UK. In terms of agreement by member states, only a qualified majority is needed. But she expressed concerns over likely disagreements which will cause delay. There is a risk that other member states will start throwing in their amendments. In terms of seat, she said France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy are all likely to stake a claim. Getting all of the amendments approved quickly would depend on the constitutions of member states, but if all goes well we shouldnt expect years of delay. Most member states will be able to do a simplified ratification, she said, citing Denmark as an example where another referendum wont be required. So we could be looking at 6 to 9 months delay not 5 years.

The expectation was that the system will start operation next year. With the uncertainty over the UK governments Brexit policy and plans, how long can other member states wait for the UK to make a decision? That was a question put to the panel. Member states shouldnt wait too long. Perhaps a matter of months, Frohlinger responded. If there is no sign of UKs participation at the Competitiveness Council meeting this month or in November then member states should act quickly. She added: Germanys ratification should go ahead to avoid giving bad signal to other countries.

Frohlinger envisages no major legal obstacle to the continued participation of the UK in the UPC after its exit, provided it accepts Chapter IV of the UPCA, and, moreover, other member states want the UK to be part of it. She takes comfort in the CJEUs decision in challenge to the Unitary Patent Regulations. The CJEU demonstrated extreme pragmatism, she said, but then went on to warn that the CJEUs Opinion 1/09, which dealt with the UPCAs predecessor, is open to interpretation. There are no guarantees in life so no one is sure if the CJEU will agree on the legality of UKs participation if challenged, she added. Frohlinger also fears the risk of unravelling the compromises in the UPCA but questions if the CJEU will be politically insensitive. She believes the CJEU will give its blessing to the system again when called up.

Winfried Tilmann of Hogan Lovells, who is also a member of the UPC Preparatory Committee, presented his own analysis of the options open to the UK in order to participate in the system. One key legal difficulty is whether a non-EU member state can be party to the UPCA considering that referral to the CJEU is one way to ensure primacy of Union law under Chapter IV, Article 21. The CJEU may say the UK will abide with this provision, he argued. Tilmann also noted that there is no legal authority on whether a member state that has ratified the UPCA can still participate in the system after it has left the EU and it is unlikely that UPCA signatories will cancel the treaty. In his view, the easiest option is for the UK to ratify the UPCA while still an EU member. The UK can be rather sure theyll stay in the UPC if they ratify now.

In summary, the panel was of the view that Brexit will delay the start of the UPC, but how long remains to be seen, and with certain amendments to extricate the UK from the legal framework the system can come into operation. There was consensus that the majority of the patent user community in Europe support the system.

In Paris, Stanislas Roux-Vaillard of Hogan Lovells emphasised that We need ratification from the UK as things stand while his London colleague Laura Whiting set out the large spectrum of possible Brexits being considered by the UK government  ranging from a renegotiation to a full divorce. Sonia Cooper of Microsofts Skype division said: We were looking forward to the UPC. We would welcome a solution that includes UK participation. The UPC without the UK would be a less attractive proposition with the current fee structure. But she said above all what was needed was clarity.

Litigation and enforcement strategies

Mark Ridgway of Allen & Overy started this session in Munich with a review of patent cases in the English courts which dealt with declaratory relief. One of such cases was Fujifilm v AbbVie, a High Court dispute concerning the drug Humira. According to Ridgway, the case proves that declaratory relief is a powerful tool available to those seeking to clear the way before launching a product, in this case a biosimilar version of Humira. There are still questions raised by this decision and we understand there is a pending appeal. Ridgway went on to review cases on disclosure, such as Illumina Inc & others v Premaitha Health and Positec v Husqvarna, which demonstrate how strict English courts are in restricting disclosure in patent disputes. Lastly, the extent to which English courts can exercise jurisdiction over foreign patents was seen in Rhodia v Molycorp where Mr Justice Arnold refused to grant the claimants application for an order to obtain evidence from the defendant to aid its infringement case in Germany.

Joachim Feldges of Allen & Overy said declaratory relief action is more of an English thing. German judges dont like this sort of relief, he added. He presented recent cases in the German courts on second medical use patents (Swiss-type claims), one of which was on Pregabalin. On contributory patent infringement, the courts view was that even the physician may not be excluded from liability. According to Feldges, these cases have had an impact on the way tenders have been worded. On FRAND cases, he said there is divergence in opinion between German courts on the interpretation CJEUs guidance in Huawei v ZTE, especially on the level of discretion available to an SEP holder in terms of the amount of information it provides. Feldges also looked at the recent decision of the German Federal Court of Justice (X ZR 29/15 Pemetrexed) dealing with the doctrine of equivalents in patent infringement cases. The ruling generally confirms previous judgments but has its limits.

In Paris, David Por of Allen & Overy discussed the saisie procedure, saying that despite recent decisions that have raised the bar somewhat, the threshold remains relatively low. A carefully drafted application can be very powerful  getting broad information quickly, at one thousandth the cost of US discovery.

From an in-house perspective, George Moore of Sandoz wondered if the number of declaratory relief actions could have resulted in the proliferation of divisionals at the EPO. On second medical use patent cases, his view was that the regulatory systems in Europe are to blame. Patent law wont solve the problem, he said. Solving the problem would require tweaks in regulation and both sides of the industry coming together. In his view, these multinational pharmaceutical patent litigation is great advert for the UPC. The current situation is not ideal, he added. On disclosure, Moore said it is an expensive process.

Anne Vincent of B Braun Melsungen advised those conducting multinational patent litigation to be consistent. Be careful you dont argue one way in one country and another in other countries, she said, adding that you should also keep an eye on what the EPO is doing. In Paris, Robert Fitt of Mylan provided a generic companys perspective, emphasising how prescribing systems vary from country to country, and predicting that the number of cases  and the possibility of different decisions  will increase.

IT and TMT focus

Graham Burnett-Hall of Marks & Clerk said he is sceptical the UK will ratify the UPCA. I cant see a political will to sign up to an agreement which says you must accept supremacy of Union law. How do patent owners in the IT and TMT sectors view the UPC and Unitary Patent system? Burnett-Hall said overall the Unitary Patent will be a lot cheaper but this varies by industry. He believes the role of renewal service companies and their fees should be considered when dealing with Unitary Patent costs. It will be interesting to see if theyll keep their fees at the same level, he noted.

Maarten Mooij of Nokia didnt see industry decisions on using the system to be allabout costs. In his view every jurisdiction has its own procedural benefits and there are patents which will have an impact on licensing revenues which some telecoms companies may which keep out of the UPC. He said companies wont mind litigating in both the UPC and UK courts, adding that it will be strange if the UK courts ignored UPC case law. In terms of prosecution strategies post-Brexit, he thinks most in the telecoms industry will stay with the EPO and there is no indication theyll go national.

Mooij also doesnt foresee a big change in the activities of non-practising entities in Europe when (or if) the UPC starts. Ultimately, it depends on the case law direction of the UPC, he added. In Paris, Pete Wilson of BT and Adrien Renoult of Nokia said that decisions about using the Unitary Patent and/or opting out of the UPC involved various considerations, including costs (especially renewal costs), research locations and competitor activity.

Tim Hargreaves of Marks & Clerk said some companies from the Far East, especially in the electronics sector, are seeing positive changes which make Europe attractive in terms of filing. However, Brexit has generated enquiries on the legal position. Hargreaves hoped the UK government will safeguard the interests of research centres and universities in the UK so as to maintain innovative strength post-Brexit. He thought pharmaceutical companies are more likely to opt-out of the UPC while other sectors are more likely to stay in. On the Unitary Patent, he believed SMEs will find getting a single patent covering the EU countries beneficial and even a small difference in renewal fees will make a huge difference to those in the telecoms sector.

On patent drafting for new technologies and computer-related inventions, he said as a patent attorney you should look 10 years down the line when drafting patents and put yourself in the shoes of a litigator. Go through the thought process systematically and pick individual components of the product. Have a claim to the server, software and so on, he explained. Think if it could fall foul of patentability exclusions. The good news for attorneys is that the terms used by patent offices in Europe and US are becoming similar.

The panel was of the view that the UK IPO and EPOs position on computer-related inventions is much more predictable than other IP offices, but you must be careful with your drafting.

In Paris, Marks & Clerk partner Thomas Prock looked ahead to Industry 4.0 and the panellists discussed issues that are likely to affect patent law in the next 20 years, such as 3D printing and protecting data files. Twenty years ago, they were trialling putting PCs on partners desks in law firms and wondered whether they would be used, said Prock. Renoult said the toughest decision for patent professionals is choosing the correct invention  which patent will you file or not?

FRAND and SEPs

David Barron of Gowling WLG opened this session in Munich reminding the audience thatmost SEP cases in Europe are seen in Germany. Generally the licensing system works but there is a huge disconnect between court decisions and industry practice.

Clemens Heusch of Nokia said there are complexities in licensing patent portfolios on a global scale therefore each case should be tailored so one is not paying for a country where no patent exists.

Claudia Tapia of Ericsson believed the CJEUs decision in Huawei v ZTE was clear on the criteria for FRAND negotiations because some often come to the table with the intention of delaying the whole process. Both sides must work in good faith, she said, but the difficulty is whether all courts will strictly follow it. Another difficulty, especially in automotive and telecoms sectors, is that an owner may not know where the patent will be implemented.

Matthias Schneider of Audi also agreed with Tapia on the CJEUs decision. It provides clear timing in terms of negotiations, he said, and also feels there isnt uniform application in Germany. He said it remains to be seen how the court will deal with a situation where the parties are unwilling to negotiate and that there should be guidance on how to calculate good value security. Schneider argued that FRAND is complex and should be more than just royalty rate. German courts are reluctant to define FRAND, he said. He agreed with the view that you can involve a third party, for example an arbitrator, to determine what a FRAND offer is. He said some in the automotive sector dont like the idea of basing royalty rate on the entire value of a product because it can cause delay, rather he prefers where this is done by specific component and on a global basis.

On submitting FRAND disputes to arbitration, the panel agreed the parties must be willing: If you force it, it wont work. Panellists also said you need to select arbitrators who understand FRAND, patent law and business. One issue is that there is little guidance on how to define FRAND, in part due to the fact arbitration and licensing negotiations are confidential, which adds to costs because there are different ways to interpret it. Frankly it would be good if we can have something public, Schneider suggested. The other issue is that most companies wont risk bringing all their patent portfolios to arbitration.

Michael Schneider of Gowling WLG said Huawei v ZTE is about willing licensors and licensees. The CJEUs decision validates German case law on SEPs, he said. The recent decisions in Germany, he argued, will shift the litigation landscape. A global licence isnt necessarily anti-FRAND unless, for example, it forces the implementer to take certain actions. In Paris, Alexandra Brodie of the firms UK office noted that the big Unwired Planet trial on FRAND issues is set for this autumn, provided it is not settled in the meantime while Oranges Olivier Thirard added that French courts have not yet had the opportunity to determine FRAND rates, but that there is a framework to do so when the right case emerges.

Effective dispute resolution

Alex Wilson of Powell Gilbert asked whether having a judge with technical background may mean the judge will have entrenched or strong views on issues such as patentability.

Avoiding litigation in the first place is good, said Neil Trueman of Mundipharma International. He said there are ways to exchange ideas with your opponent. Its easy to be angry but rise over that. Think rationally and in commercial terms, he advised. Being tenacious as a litigator is part of it but see the other sides viewpoint.

Trueman said mediation has to be delicately handled especially if it is a court-based one then you need to consider whether it will be the same judge who will decide your case later. For those involved in multinational patent litigation, he warned that if you litigate in say Germany and it goes against you there then it may affect you elsewhere. His view was that you should go where you think youre going to win based on what you know about that jurisdiction. You need the right team though.

The conversation moved to Peter Berg of Draxlmaier who said getting into conflict is not the issue, its how you resolve it. The goal of senior management is to get the infringer off the market. The level of litigation in a sector depends on the product cycle and of course value of the patent. Berg said if you are going to use mediation then get a mediator who will ask the right questions because this is helpful down the line in terms of dispute resolution strategy.

For Berg, predictability, language, timing and fairness of judicial process are some of the important considerations when deciding on where to litigate. Too many translations in communication can create issues, he warned. If you know a system well, then you have to play it. If there is uncertainty, then get patent advice and think twice. He stressed the importance of getting a lead counsel who is experienced in coordinating multinational patent litigation.

The general view of the panel was that it doesnt matter if a judge lacks knowledge in the technology at issue but it is important for the judge to have a technical background or the confidence to take on and understand the technology.

Tom Oliver of Powell Gilbert said he has noticed new market entrants in the telecoms sector and some patentees who are more interested in monetising their patents. He added that it is worth getting into negotiations early because you may end up with a global royalty rate. In terms of getting evidence for use in other jurisdictions, the UK is more difficult compared to jurisdictions like France or Belgium. Oliver advised against micro-managing cases when youre playing the lead coordinating counsel role.

In Paris, a panel comprising Peter Damerell and David Lancaster of Powell Gilbert, Alesandra Cincott of Inserm Transfert and Masimin Gourcy of DS Smith discussed approaches to licensing and dispute resolution with and without the UPC, and also what the ideal IP court would look like. Gourcy provided some advice for outside counsel: My in-house clients dont care about the pure technical aspects of a law. They understand risks, costs and time but they dont care about the legal aspects as such. Keep your legal background to yourself.

Life sciences and pharma

The moderator for the session Dominic Adair of Bristows backed up his own apology, following the trend set by previous speakers from the UK, for the Brexit vote by showing a screenshot of his EU referendum voter card. He asked his fellow panellists about their views on the UPC.

George Moore of Sandoz said the UPC without the UK will still be attractive to the pharmaceutical sector. Even though there are faults in the system it will be better than what we have now across Europe, he argued. Moore didnt believe the project should be abandoned simply because the UK isnt participating. He agreed that the quality of judgments in England and Wales and its legal profession make it an attractive jurisdiction but questioned whether its worth paying that extra money just to litigate in the UK. He said this is not necessary in all cases but understands why some may decide to get a UK decision and then take it elsewhere. No one litigates in the UK for fun, he noted.

Cost is going to be a key factor when deciding who to instruct when, or if, the UPC starts. European rates are much lower than Londons, he said. Clients will decide how to run their cases. We may want to staff it with different people from different countries and it may involve a UK patent litigator and/or patent attorneys and lawyers from other countries. He said it will be interesting to see if London can carve out a niche for itself in patent litigation when the system is up and running, but doesn't feel the UPC would take away the advantages of EPO oppositions.

Cordula Schumacher of Arnold Ruess reviewed the pros and cons of litigating in the UPC, EPO and national courts. On timing, she said, it remains to be seen if UPC will deliver in 12 months. Schumacher didnt see any clear advantage on the issue of legal predictability.

In Paris, Gavin Lawson of Gilead Sciences said that the UPC without the UK might still be useful for the industry. Without discovery, it might be cheaper and tightly controlled cross-examination can be useful in getting to the truth. In a show of hands, a majority of the audience agreed. Charlotte Retzler of Ipsen Pharma said: The UPC will not be initially over-used by pharma, but once we know abut quality of judges we may use it more. Once established, I think the court will be attractive.

Katie Hutchinson of Bristows said parties will be able to get disclosure in the UPC but on an issue-by-issue basis. She believesowners will opt out their crown jewel patents in the early stages and that UK, outside the system, may still be able to influence UPC case law. The English courts are already working towards more flexibility and shorter, faster trials.

Adair added: The UK courts may decide to pull its socks up and say well deliver a timely, reasoned decision which you can take elsewhere. Adair reminded the audience that UK patent attorneys and UK lawyers who are also qualified in Ireland can litigate in the UPC.

Hutchinson said the SPC regime in the UK will depend on its relationship with the EU but, in agreement with Adair, added that the UK has the opportunity to shape its own SPC legislation. For example, the UK could grant longer SPCs and add medical devices to the regime.

Obtaining evidence of an infringement

The panellists for the session on obtaining evidence in Munich were Caroline Casalonga and Gerard Dossmann of Casalonga and Cyrille Sevin of Airbus. Casalonga and Dossmann presented case studies on search and seizure (saisie-contrefacon) orders in France, one of which involved the American Embassy and an alleged infringer who was reluctant to accept the court order. The alleged infringer ended up accepting it after they were convinced that refusal would be bad for their image.

Casalonga and Dossmann explained that there is a duty to produce evidence in the UPC (Rule 172 of the Rules of Procedure). You can provide evidence how you want, they argued, and there is a strong burden on the claimant. Casalonga advised that evidence should be prepared in advance considering the timeline for UPC proceedings is 12 months.

Unlike in France, it is uncertain if search and seizure procedure can be done ex parte in the UPC. In any case, Casalonga advised that it would be best to ask the court for two orders  to inspect and to preserve evidence  and this can be ordered before or during an action in the UPC. She said the court will consider the defendants interests before granting such an order; for example the court may ask for payment of security into court.

According to Cyrille Sevin of Airbus, major players in the aircraft manufacturing industry dont often litigate against each other: We try to avoid litigation at all costs. Sevin also has experience of search and seizure. Youre not allowed to make mistakes in search and seizure as it could cost you millions of euros. Make sure you get the right order, he warned.

In France, the bailiff is assisted by the patent attorney of the claimant. In Dossmanns experience, there are special circumstances in which you may need others involved, for example: an IT specialist, a locksmith or the police. In one of the orders he handled they discovered paperwork with instructions on how to manufacture the medicine in question. Thats evidence for infringement, he said.

Judge Sam Granata of the Antwerp Commercial Court took part in the discussion in Paris.

Alternatives to court proceedings

Heike Wollgast of WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre presented some statistics on the Centre in Munich. Patent disputes account for 30% of the Centres caseload. The Centre has also introduced changes recently including the ability to unilaterally request for mediation (Article 4 of the Mediation Rules). Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes such as arbitration and mediation allow for flexibility and party autonomy, among other things. Collaboration between parties is important, she said. Joachim Feldges of Allen & Overy testified that WIPOs Arbitration and Mediation Centre is cheaper than other institutions he has used.

Clemens Heusch of Nokia said sometimes it is difficult to agree to arbitrate but it is particularly useful where, for example, youve accepted to pay licence fees over a large patent portfolio and all youre going to arbitration for is to decide how much. He warned the audience to beware of parties who try to use mediation as a delaying tactic and that arbitration can be very expensive. Unlike a court, arbitrators have the tendency to make everyone happy  something that can lead to a bad compromise, says Heusch.This is why picking the right arbitrator is very important. Experienced ones are extremely diligent to avoid an award being lifted by a court. This is particularly so in FRAND cases where you dont want antitrust law to step in. Technical ability isnt necessarily important. Heusch suggested that someone with a background in for example economics may be best suited for an arbitration involving several patents where you need a commercial decision.

According to the panel, awareness among senior level management and best practices in ADR among practitioners are important but the principle of confidentiality is an obstacle. Its a conflict we cant really solve, says Heusch. On the other hand, confidentiality as well as procedural flexibilities maketrade secret disputes most suitable for arbitration. According to Heusch, this type of dispute is very difficult to litigate in court.

The panellists agreed that the finality of arbitral awards is something that makes arbitration very attractive because no one wants a situation where the award can be appealed. There was a question on whether third party intervention is common in arbitration. None of the panellists had any experience on this but Heusch said a supplier can help in the background during arbitration instead of being involved.

In Paris, Pauline Debre, Julia Schonbohm and Yohan Liyanage of Linklaters and Ben Ostapuk of Intel compared the merits of arbitration and mediation, and introduced the Eldorado of investment treaty arbitration, citing recent cases between Eli Lilly and Canada and various tobacco cases (such as Philip Morris v Australia). But they cautioned that parties cannot assume that just because they can bring a case it will necessarily be successful.

A US perspective

In Paris, Edward Kelly of Ropes & Gray and Bruce Elder of Integrated Device Technology presented the PTAB, and compared it with European practice. Weve moved to a prove-your-patent-is-valid system, said Kelly, describing it as bifurcation. It is growing in interest and validity will be decided more and more at the PTO rather than in the courts.

The panellists agreed that the PTAB and recent Supreme Court decisions had been driven by the need to tackle the perceived problem of patent trolls, and had done so partly by removing the incentive of contingency fees. A clear majority of defendants now challenge patents asserted against them, said Elder: Its now almost automatic you will challenge patents asserted against you. The odds are really high  thats a radical change.

Kelly added that PTAB proceedings would feel familiar to European practitioners: Theyre like a small bench trial or EPO opposition but a little bit more formal.

All the panellists spoke in their personal capacity and their views do not reflect that of their companies. You can read all the views from both events on Twitter by searching #EUPATENT16.
In 2016 nearly 3,000 people have been shot in the city, an average of one victim every two hours.

The streets are gone, Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago police union, told me last month. The night before, Aug. 14, a Chicago police officers son had been killed in a shooting while sitting on his familys porch, one of 92 people killed in Chicago during the worst month for homicides in the Windy City since July 1993. The August victims who survived included 10-year-old Tavon Tanner, shot while playing in front of his house (the bullet ripped through Tavons pancreas, intestines, kidney and spleen); an 8-year-old girl shot in the arm while crossing the street; and two 6-year-old girls.

Chicagos cops are responding to political signals from the most powerful segments of society. ... Never mind that it is the law-abiding residents of high-crime areas who beg the police to clear their corners of loiterers and trespassers.

On Sept. 6, a 71-year-old man was accosted by a teen on a bike while watering his lawn. The robber demanded the mans wallet and when he refused shot him in the abdomen, then grabbed his wallet before pedaling away.

By Sept. 8, nearly 3,000 people had been shot in Chicago in 2016, an average of one shooting victim every two hours. Five hundred and sixteen people had been murdered. Gun homicides and non-fatal shootings were up 47% over the same period of 2015, which had seen a significant rise in crime over 2014.

There is no way out of this shooting spree, Mr. Angelo said. His despair is understandable, because Chicago is the countrys most-glaring example of what I have called the Ferguson effect. Chicago officers have cut back drastically on proactive policing under the onslaught of criticism from the Black Lives Matter movement and its political and media enablers.

In October 2015, Mayor Rahm Emanuel told U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch during a crime meeting in Washington, D.C., that the Chicago police had gone fetal, and were less likely to interdict criminal behavior. That pull-back worsened in 2016, with pedestrian stops dropping 82% from January through July 20, 2016, compared with the same period in 2015, according to the Chicago police department. The cops are just driving by people on the corners, Mr. Angelo says, rather than checking out known drug dealers and others who raise suspicions. Criminals are back in control and black lives are being lost at a rate not seen for two decades.

Chicagos cops are responding to political signals from the most powerful segments of society. President Obama takes every opportunity to accuse police of racially profiling blacks and Hispanics. The media, activists and academics routinely denounce pedestrian stops and public-order enforcementsuch as dispersing crowds of unruly teensas racial oppression intended to control African-American and poor communities, in the words of Columbia law professor Bernard Harcourt. Never mind that it is the law-abiding residents of high-crime areas who beg the police to clear their corners of loiterers and trespassers.

Further discouraging proactive policing in Chicago is a misguided agreement between the Illinois American Civil Liberties Union and the city that allows the ACLU to review every police stop. The police are also experiencing fallout from City Halls mishandling of the unjustified fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald in October 2014.

Chicago cops regularly encounter aggressive hostility when they leave their vehicles. In August a Chicago Tribune reporter filmed a group of teens taunting officers for over an hour while the cops investigated a shooting on the West Side. F--- the police! went one chant. Get the f--- off my block! came another insult. Someone fired off shots in a nearby alley for the fun of seeing cops run toward another possible victim. Run, b----, run! a shirtless male shouted as the officers took off in a sprint.

Three gangsthe Vice Lords, Black Disciples and Four Corner Hustlersreached a pact in August to assassinate Chicago officers, according to a police departmental alert. The National Gang Intelligence Center has also picked up on plans to shoot officers.

The media blame poverty, racism and a lack of government services for the growing mayhem. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson blames lenient prison sentences for releasing Chicagos gun criminals onto the streets too soon. The Illinois Legislatures Black Caucus, however, blocks any effort to mandate stricter sentences for gun-toting felonsin a sub rosa acknowledgment that the vast majority (80%) of Chicagos gun criminals are black.

But neither Mr. Johnsons lax-sentencing explanation nor the medias systemic-injustice explanation aligns with the timing of Chicagos surge in violence. Sentencing protocols did not weaken in 2015 when crime started rising. Nor did poverty or alleged racism grow worse. What did change was the intensity of antipolice ideology, driven by the Black Lives Matter movement, relentlessly amplified by the press, and echoed by President Obama.

Where does this end? Mr. Angelo asked last month. Were in an unknown environment. We dont know at what point in time the people in this city and the city council will stand up and say: Enough is enough, so that cops feel that they have the support to be the police again.

The ideal solution to Chicagos violence would be for more at-risk boys to be raised by their mother and their father. Until that happens, the only hope for law-abiding residents of Chicagos high-crime areas is that police regain control of the streets.

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal

______________________

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal.
File Photo

The country's first commercial space industry base will be built in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, according to an agreement signed on Monday.

The Wuhan National Space Industry Base will focus on the development of carrier rockets and satellites, commercial launch services and applications of satellite data.

The base plans to establish an annual production capacity of 50 carrier rockets and 140 commercial satellites by 2020, said Zhang Di, deputy head of the Fourth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, after a signing ceremony between his company and the governments of Hubei and Wuhan at the Second China Commercial Aerospace Forum.

More than 700 government officials, military officers and experts from the space industry and universities attended the forum in Wuhan.

In mid-February, the Fourth Academy set up the nation's second commercial launch provider, Expace Technology Co, as the backbone of the Wuhan space base, with Zhang as the new company's chairman.

The company, which has registered capital of 300 million yuan ($44.9 million), has signed a 100 million yuan launch contract with several domestic clients, Zhang said. He declined to give clients' names due to business confidentiality.

He added that Expace has received orders for more than 10 launches using the academy's solid-fuel Kuaizhou, or Fast Vessel, rockets.

"In fact, orders have been continuing to swarm into our company, but we have to reject some of them because we must guarantee a good service quality," Zhang said. "We don't worry about orders because our rate, around $10,000 for each kilogram of payload, is much lower than the average charge in the international market, which ranges from $25,000 to $30,000."

In China, a commercial launch generally refers to a space launch activity paid for by an entity other than a Chinese government department or military agency.

China has launched 53 Long March rockets to carry 61 satellites into space for 24 foreign clients.

However, all of these commercial missions were undertaken by the country's Long March rockets, which were developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, another major contractor in China's space sector.

Because of different mission requirements, the Long March series, which mainly uses liquid propellant, has heavier launch capacities and longer flight ranges.

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp began to develop Kuaizhou solid-fuel rockets in 2009, intending to form a low-cost, quick-response rocket family for the commercial launch market.

The first flight of a Kuai-zhou rocket occurred in September 2013, when the company launched the Kuaizhou 1 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province to put an Earth observation satellite into orbit. In November 2014, the Kuaizhou 2 sent another satellite into space from the same launch center.

The Fourth Academy is now making the Kuaizhou 11 and plans to launch it in 2017, according to Liang Jiqiu, chief designer of the Kuaizhou program at the Fourth Academy.

Liang said the Kuaizhou 11 has a liftoff weight of 78 metric tons and will be capable of placing a 1-metric-ton payload into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers, or a 1.5-metric-ton payload into a low Earth orbit at an altitude of 400 km.

He said the road-mobile rocket's prelaunch preparations will take very little time, and the launch can be conducted on rough terrain.

Gao Hongwei, chairman of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, said the Kuaizhou rockets have a high level of strategic importance and a huge market potential.

He said investments in the commercial launch sector bring a return of up to 14 times the original input.

Hu Shengyun, a senior rocket engineer at the Fourth Academy, estimates that by 2020, the market value of commercial space activities in China will reach 30 billion yuan annually.
Money market funds typically get little coverage in the financial press because, except under extreme circumstances, they don't rise or fall in value. Boring! But that's about to change, as new rules will soon require institutional prime money market funds to report their real-time market value and hold more liquid assets. Many worry this will dry up short-term funding markets, as money market funds are one of the primary investors in commercial paper. Sure enough, Libor rates have risen lately, driving fears of "stealth tightening" in credit markets. While the nervousness is understandable, it's unlikely major turmoil lies ahead.

The London Interbank Offered Rate, better known as Libor, is the average rate banks pay to borrow from each other over short time periods. It is also the reference rate for many bank loans-hence why people are worried about the apparent spike. The volatility is quite simple to trace to the money market fund reforms, which take effect on October 14. Money market funds have long invested in commercial paper for its yield (which exceeds T-bills), offering investors a way to hold "cash" with a higher return than a plain old bank deposit. But the looming rule changes will require prime institutional money market funds to have floating net asset values instead of being fixed at $1 / share-regulators' attempt to prevent a repeat of the panic that ensued when one huge money market fund "broke the buck" in 2008, triggering a run on money market funds.[i] The rules also impose liquidity requirements and tighter restrictions on portfolio holdings, and many fund providers have decided to switch from prime funds to funds that invest primarily in government debt, which regulators treat with more leniency. As a result, banks and other firms that issue commercial paper have had to raise rates a tad to attract buyers.

Yet there is a large gap between incrementally higher funding costs due to a structural change in the marketplace and an actual, acute funding squeeze. For one thing, despite the clamor, Libor remains low by historical standards. (Exhibit 1)

Exhibit 1: 3-Month Libor, 1986 - 2016

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, as of 9/13/2016. 3-Month Libor based on US dollars, January 1986 - August 2016.

Rates were much higher from the mid-1980s through 2007, both during good times and bad. Libor routinely topped 5% in the mid- and late-1990s, when credit was plentiful. Rates rose quite a bit in the few years leading up to 2008's financial crisis, but this is coincidental, not causal, as the crisis had a completely unrelated culprit. Short rates, whether Libor or otherwise, are only one input into credit supply. Long rates matter too, and all banks really need is a sufficient spread between the two.

Jitters about demand for commercial paper are also a bit myopic. For one, they overlook that supply has also plunged-these rules were a long time coming, and firms adapted.

Exhibit 2: Commercial Paper Outstanding

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, as of 9/13/2016. Commercial paper outstanding, seasonally adjusted, January 2001 - August 2016.

Firms have other ways of funding cash needs, and they've already been doing this in greater numbers since the global financial crisis. For one, they can issue more bonds.

Exhibit 3: Bond Issuance Is Up

Source: Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, as of 9/13/2016. Total US corporate bond issuance, annually, 2000 - 2015.

They can also hold more cash, which they've also been doing more of in recent years. According to the Federal Reserve, non-financial corporations held a record $1.9 trillion in cash in 2015. Additionally, since the financial crisis, regulators have nudged banks to rely less on wholesale funding (which includes commercial paper), perceiving traditional deposits as more stable-further limiting supply. Banks have also amassed piles of excess reserves since 2008 as the Fed injected trillions into the banking system. (Exhibit 4).

Exhibit 4: Banks' Excess Reserves Have Risen Dramatically

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, as of 9/13/2016. Excess reserves of depository institutions in billions of dollars, January 2007 - August 2016.

All that said, there are implications for investors. In advance of the new rules, many fund companies closed prime funds or switched the default cash reserves fund to government money market funds, which have lower yields. It's possible more changes lie ahead, so you may want to check with your broker-dealer to see if your options have changed. Also, investors in institutional prime money market funds-which include many 401(k) participants-will soon see these funds fluctuate in price. At times the price may dip below $1 / share (and at times it might go a wee bit higher). Money market funds should remain a perfectly viable cash-like option-just as they have since that one isolated issue in 2008. People are already aware money markets can go below $1 and haven't stayed away.
After a big, volatile bounce back Wednesday, in which the S&P 500 surged 1.8%, negativity struck US markets on Thursday, with the S&P 500 down 2.1% on the day.[i] Since October began, the S&P has swung more than 1% up or down five times (two up, three down). The back-and-forth is rather predictably spurring some eye-catching headlines. Here is a small sample so you get the flavor:

Interested in market analysis for your portfolio? Our latest report looks at key stock market drivers including market, political, and economic factors. Click Here for More!

However, all these headlines look at either one day or this month's seven trading sessions under a microscope. A broader view can add some very valuable perspective.

Now, nearly all of these cite reasons: The stronger dollar threatening multinationals' profits; eurozone economic data showing a less-than-robust recovery continues; Ebola; the Chinese hard landing; geopolitics. Many posit the question: Are we in a correction-or worse? Exhibit 1 shows the S&P 500's recent swings that are garnering the attention.

Exhibit 1: S&P 500 Total Return Index Daily Percentage Change, October 1 - 9, 2014[iv]

Source: FactSet, as of 10/09/2014.

The negativity we've seen thus far is certainly not fun to weather. And perhaps-just perhaps-it does turn into a correction (a short, sharp, sentiment-driven dip of greater than 10%). Corrections are unpredictable, their beginnings and ends unidentifiable until they're very past-tense. They arrive and exit quickly. No one we have ever come across in this industry has a history of repeatedly identifying them. Corrections do not give off warning signs or red flags. From a peak, they drop fast. From a trough, they rise steep. As for a bear market indicator, consider: In the five bull markets since 1982, there have been 140 single-day drops of -2% or more. [v] 56 came in this bull market-Thursday's is this year's fourth![vi]

While the present may feel correction-like, after Thursday's negative day, stocks sit 4.1% below all-time highs achieved 16 trading sessions ago. In historical bull markets since 1928, stocks have fallen more than the peak-to-present pullback in a single day 52 times.[vii] In this bull market, five single (very volatile) days exceed this. None ended the bull.

Exhibit 2: S&P 500 Total Return Index, 07/31/2014 - 10/09/2014

Source: FactSet, as of 10/09/2014.

The index is still positive for the year by about 6%.The present isn't even the largest dip this calendar year to date! In January and early February, stocks fell by a hair over 5%.

Exhibit 3: S&P 500 Total Return Index, 12/31/2013 - 10/09/2014

Source: FactSet, as of 10/09/2014. Highlighted days are the January/early February negative period.

In this bull market, stocks have fallen more than the present -4.1% on 17 occasions. Yes-a few were amid corrections, but most weren't-and none ended the bull.

Exhibit 4: S&P 500 Total Return Index, 03/09/2009 - 10/09/2014.

Source: FactSet, as of 10/09/2014. Highlighted segments represent 4% or greater down moves.

By no means are we trying to dismiss how volatility can feel. But keeping it in proper perspective is vital. Our brains are hardwired to exaggerate threats, an evolutionary tool for keeping us safe when saber-toothed tigers roamed. Nobel Prize winning professor Daniel Kahneman, in a landmark study, discovered prospect theory, a sense that investors tend to feel losses about 2.5 times as much as they appreciate gains. But markets cannot be gamed via fight or flight instincts. They tend to blind investors to the broad picture, eschewing positivity in the name of a hyper-fixation on very short-term fears. Prospect theory has another, more telling name, too: myopic loss aversion. This is the effect media targets. This is why headlines focus on not only daily results, but intraday results. It is our sincere hope that if you invest in stocks the time horizon for your assets is longer than a matter of hours, days or months. If that's true, your focus should probably come closer to matching it than the headlines.
Sorry, You Cant Have Your Gold - Own Physical, Allocated Gold

Sorry, You Cant Have Your Gold by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com

In this publication, we warn regularly of the risk involved in storing wealth in banks. Theyve made the removal of your deposits increasingly difficult in addition to colluding with governments to allow them to legally freeze or confiscate your money.

To add insult to injury, theyre creating reporting requirements with regard to the contents of safe deposit boxes and restricting what can be stored in them  again, at risk of confiscation.

More and more, banks are becoming one of the more risky places to store wealth in any form. Not surprising, then, that many people are returning to those facilities that treat wealth storage the way the first banks did millennia ago  vault facilities that store your wealth for a fee but engage in no other banking activities.

But, in suggesting to our readers that such facilities are a better bet, Ive also repeatedly warned readers that many such facilities dont store actual, physical gold. They instead provide a contract to you that states that they will deliver an agreed-upon amount of gold upon demand. The trouble with this idea is that it becomes tempting for such facilities to sign such a contract with you and collect the purchase price but never actually purchase and store any gold. Its been estimated that the total worldwide value of such contracts equals 150 times the amount of gold in existence in the world.

Uh-oh.

This is why its imperative that you purchase only physical, allocated gold.

And another caution: Ive repeatedly stated that, although many of the most secure facilities in the world are located in North America and Europe, these jurisdictions are on the cusp of economic crisis, a fact that suggests that, if and when the crisis arrives, the rule book will be thrown out the window. Governments and facilities alike may prove untrustworthy and, at some point, you may drop by the facility to withdraw your gold and be told, Sorry, were unable to provide delivery. There could be a multitude of reasons given, hoops to jump through, and endless red tape to deal with. And still, in the end, you may never be able to take delivery.

Its for these reasons that we advise that, although nothing in life is guaranteed, you should always protect your wealth by choosing the least risky option.

This means that you should follow two simple rules  Rule #1: Select the jurisdiction with the best laws and reputation. Rule #2: Make sure theres a reputable storage facility in that jurisdiction that has a Class III vault and a contract that meets your needs.

But am I being overly cautious when I so frequently offer this advice? Unfortunately, no. Ive predicted that, in the future, as we get closer to a monetary crisis, banks and storage facilities that are located in countries that are likely to be heavily affected will work ever harder to avoid releasing either money on deposit (in the case of banks) and precious metals (in the case of storage facilities).

Recently, the reports that Ive been receiving from wealth storage facilities in advantageous jurisdictions are indicating that that prediction is beginning to come to fruition. In case after case, clients are having a harder time getting their money and their metals out. In most cases, those institutions that dont wish to deliver are creating red tape, stalling techniques (which are costly in both time and money), and, in some cases, outright refusals to deliver.

Lets look at two actual examples  one of a bank, one of a wealth-storage facility.

USA: A client asks his bank to wire transfer US$178,000 in funds to an overseas facility to purchase precious metals for storage. The bank then created a series of roadblocks:

Required a written request with an original, signed copy to be hand-delivered.

Once that was done, a voice authorization of the letter by phone was required.

Once that was done, it required the client to receive a PIN number, which would take several days to create and would need to be sent by courier.

After the client jumped through all those hoops, the bank changed its requirements completely, requiring that a cashiers cheque be sent instead, which required ten days clearance.

Lost time  four weeks from date of first request.

Austria: A client tries to transfer his allocated 138 gold Philharmonics from his bank to a facility in another jurisdiction. The bank repeatedly produced roadblocks, as follows:

Refused to ship the products themselves and refused to arrange shipment.

Refused to release the goods to FedEx when they arrived, even though proof of insurance was provided. The bank then insisted on the hiring of a Brinks truck.

They then refused to release the coins at all, except to another bank.

They then claimed that they were not ready to release the coins. The client was invited to try again if he wished. (Eight attempts were required.)

Finally, they agreed to release the coins, but only if a 1% withdrawal fee were applied (not part of the original agreement  essentially a ransom).

There are many, many more examples already, but these should suffice to illustrate the growing trend: If you wish to get your money or metals out of an endangered jurisdiction, such as an EU country or North America, the window of opportunity is closing. Expect them to make it difficult, costly, and even impossible for you to get out.

But why should this be? What are these institutions up to? Dont they realise that theyre sending a message to clients that theyre not helpful partners?

Well, yes they do, but theyre also aware of another factor thats more important to them. As the economic crisis gets ever closer, they understand that the day will soon come when a banking emergency is declared and the banks will shut their doors for an as-yet-unknown period of time (presumably until a solution is found). What will the new rules be? No one knows. Will the banks and storage facilities be obligated to deliver in full if the doors open once again? No one knows.

Therefore, in the final stretch of this race to the bottom, they want to be holding as much of your money and metals as they can.

The above examples are just the thin end of the wedge and we can expect the future to reveal greater restrictions. Whilst, in an economic crisis, there are no guarantees, what we can do is opt for the situation thats least likely to cost us our wealth. Again,

Choose a jurisdiction that has the best track record  a long history of a low-tax, or no-tax, regime; a stable government and legislation that protects rather than victimises the foreign investor.

Choose the jurisdiction thats easiest for you to access  In Europe, this might be Switzerland or Austria. In Asia, this might be Singapore or Hong Kong. In the Western Hemisphere, this might be the Cayman Islands.

Choose the best facility within that jurisdiction  the one that has the best reputation and offers the best contract (competitive rates, Class III vault facility, 24-hour viewing access, etc.).

At this juncture, we cant say how long the need to safeguard wealth will be as essential as it will be in the near future. It may be brief (a few years), or it may be many years before the dust has settled. Whatever the outcome of the coming economic crisis, those who have chosen the safest havens for their wealth will be those who will fare best.

See full article by Jeff Thomas on InternationalMan.com

Gold Prices (LBMA AM)

13Sep: USD 1,328.50, GBP 1,000.36 & EUR 1,183.69 per ounce

12Sep: USD 1,327.50, GBP 1,000.80 & EUR 1,182.54 per ounce

09Sep: USD 1,335.65, GBP 1,004.68 & EUR 1,184.86 per ounce

08Sep: USD 1,348.00, GBP 1,009.11 & EUR 1,195.81 per ounce

07Sep: USD 1,348.75, GBP 1,008.60 & EUR 1,199.85 per ounce

06Sep: USD 1,330.05, GBP 997.94 & EUR 1,191.46 per ounce

05Sep: USD 1,328.30, GBP 996.23 & EUR 1,189.49 per ounce

Silver Prices (LBMA)

13Sep: USD 19.16, GBP 14.44 & EUR 17.06 per ounce

12Sep: USD 18.72, GBP 14.11 & EUR 16.68 per ounce

09Sep: USD 19.41, GBP 14.58 & EUR 17.23 per ounce

08Sep: USD 19.93, GBP 14.90 & EUR 17.65 per ounce

07Sep: USD 19.92, GBP 14.89 & EUR 17.71 per ounce

06Sep: USD 19.60, GBP 14.70 & EUR 17.55 per ounce

05Sep: USD 19.46, GBP 14.60 & EUR 17.43 per ounce

This update can be found on the GoldCore blog here.

Mark O'Byrne

IRL

63

FITZWILLIAM SQUARE

DUBLIN 2 E info@goldcore.com UK

NO. 1 CORNHILL

LONDON 2

EC3V 3ND IRL +353 (0)1 632 5010

UK +44 (0)203 086 9200

US +1 (302)635 1160 W http://www.goldcore.com/uk/

WINNERS MoneyMate and Investor Magazine Financial Analysts 2006

Disclaimer: The information in this document has been obtained from sources, which we believe to be reliable. We cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness. It does not constitute a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any investment. Any person acting on the information contained in this document does so at their own risk. Recommendations in this document may not be suitable for all investors. Individual circumstances should be considered before a decision to invest is taken. Investors should note the following: Past experience is not necessarily a guide to future performance. The value of investments may fall or rise against investors' interests. Income levels from investments may fluctuate. Changes in exchange rates may have an adverse effect on the value of, or income from, investments denominated in foreign currencies. GoldCore Limited, trading as GoldCore is a Multi-Agency Intermediary regulated by the Irish Financial Regulator.

GoldCore is committed to complying with the requirements of the Data Protection Act. This means that in the provision of our services, appropriate personal information is processed and kept securely. It also means that we will never sell your details to a third party. The information you provide will remain confidential and may be used for the provision of related services. Such information may be disclosed in confidence to agents or service providers, regulatory bodies and group companies. You have the right to ask for a copy of certain information held by us in our records in return for payment of a small fee. You also have the right to require us to correct any inaccuracies in your information. The details you are being asked to supply may be used to provide you with information about other products and services either from GoldCore or other group companies or to provide services which any member of the group has arranged for you with a third party. If you do not wish to receive such contact, please write to the Marketing Manager GoldCore, 63 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2 marking the envelope 'data protection'

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




There Is Only One Right Way to Do a Precious Metals IRA

A small handful of outfits in our industry recently sprang up and started heavily promoting a so-called self-storage or LLC IRA. The pitch is for you to establish an LLC company to store the metals on behalf of your IRA in your home (or nearby).

At first glance, it sounds like an attractive option. Investors buy metals to increase privacy and control. Some do not want to rely on third-party vaults and would prefer having personal access to their metals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We totally agree with this sentiment when it comes to precious metals that you personally and directly own. But anyone considering this self-storage IRA scheme should be extremely careful and aware of the risks.

In short, the scheme appears likely to blow up. The IRS may one day disallow the whole thing and declare taxes immediately due on the entire IRA balance, along with any applicable penalties.

First, a little background on the IRA structure. The IRS requires the assets in your retirement account to be held by a third party.

The intent is to stop account holders from using or accessing IRA assets for personal benefit because doing so would be tantamount to a fully taxable distribution. There are also a number of prohibited transactions and disqualified persons.

The innovation these dealers promote involves IRA holders setting up a stand-alone LLC company which they personally manage. The investor takes possession of the metals on behalf of their IRA rather than personally, thereby supposedly meeting the third-party requirement.

LLC IRA promoters havent convinced the IRS or any court that, in the context of precious metals stored at home, the LLC company scheme can be reliably managed to avoid impropriety with regard to IRA rules.

As one expert frames it; you can own a bakery with your IRA, but you cannot be the baker. Owning a business with your self-directed IRA is okay. Hiring yourself and paying a salary is a definite no-no. Likewise it is perfectly fine to buy investment real estate, but your IRA cannot purchase your personal residence.

Creating an LLC company to purchase gold and silver coins and then storing them in your home safe  e.g. next to the rifles and some coins you inherited from grandma  hasnt been found definitively to be a violation of IRS rules, but it sure looks like trouble, particularly because IRS rules do state that IRA assets cannot be commingled with other property.

IRS Has Signaled It Will Disqualify Home Storage IRAs

It is easy to imagine the IRS ruling against attempts to store IRA metals at home  nailing people with a huge bill for taxes and penalties. In fact, the agency is now issuing warnings. Laura Saunders of the Wall Street Journal recently covered the topic; The Internal Revenue Service says it warns taxpayers to be wary of anyone claiming that precious metals held in your IRA can be stored at home or in a safe-deposit box.

So, thanks to the recent hype, these schemes are now on the IRSs radar. Although we are the last ones to say that the IRS is always right in their interpretation of the law, it does appear they will start going after home storage IRAs soon. We doubt many of our customers would want to be a test case for this iffy strategy.

Here are some other reasons to tread with caution:

The rules around third-party management and control of IRA assets are highly complicated, and it would be easy to trip up and violate them.

There can be significant costs of setting up and maintaining the LLC's operating agreements and state LLC filings.

Costs could be higher if the holder takes a bit more prudent course and has prospective transactions reviewed by an attorney and/or CPA.

There is currently a lack of clarity on what coins, rounds, and bars can and cannot be held in the LLC IRA, even assuming the structure itself withstands legal muster.

If that still isnt enough to give investors pause, we are also troubled by what we discovered when looking into some of the people who are aggressively marketing the home storage IRA scheme. Some of the characters involved are connected to shady, or even failed, rare coin dealers. They may tell you they have several letters from attorneys they've paid which declare the scheme is perfectly legal. They will charge what always amounts to huge set up fees. And they may try to sell you some of their overpriced proof coins to hold in the account.

But they may not mention any tricky nuances about what metal products might be allowed, assuming any would be allowed at all. They wont focus on the complicated reporting and file keeping that is required in order to have a reasonable chance of defending the scheme against an IRS attack. And they certainly won't take the fall for people when the IRS disqualifies the scheme and demands tax and penalty on ones entire precious metals holding.

In our view, the hype underplays  or outright ignores  the potential risks. Investors should only go down this road with their eyes wide open. And do so only after consulting your own attorney and accountant.

Doing Your Due Diligence Is a Must

If you actually want to explore this, please do some additional due diligence. And dont limit your investigation to IRS rules and guidance. Check out your prospective dealer as well. The internet is a great tool. You can check the Secretary of States website in the dealers home state to find out how long a firm has been in business. Look for the firms owners and key personnel, then do an internet search on those names.

If you do that, dont be surprised to find complaints, lawsuits, or ties to a precious metals dealer that went out of business while facing a prosecution for deceptive business practices. You can also find out what people are saying about their experiences with the dealer online  at the BBBs website and elsewhere.

There really is only one right way to own physical metal in your IRA. Choose a custodian and set up a self-directed account, purchase bullion from a reputable dealer, and store it in a professional third party vault. Many people can even find such a facility close to home.

At Money Metals, we help people to establish proper gold and silver IRAs daily. At a minimum, they save a fortune in coin premiums and set-up fees, and they are likely to save a whole lot more in taxes and penalties.

By Clint Siegner

MoneyMetals.com

Clint Siegner is a Director at Money Metals Exchange, perhaps the nation's fastest-growing dealer of low-premium precious metals coins, rounds, and bars. Siegner, a graduate of Linfield College in Oregon, puts his experience in business management along with his passion for personal liberty, limited government, and honest money into the development of Money Metals' brand and reach. This includes writing extensively on the bullion markets and their intersection with policy and world affairs.

 2016 Clint Siegner - All Rights Reserved



Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




The 251 dash-line map on Ministry of Harmony, a satirical news site

In May, the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University hosted an international conference to explore the South China Sea dispute. The conference brought together experts from universities and research institutions from around the world and across the United States, including U.S. Naval War College, Harvard Law School, and Yales CSEAS, to speak about the South China Sea issue. The conference was a typical academic workshop with panels of experts talking about their work and promoting their ideas, but this particular conference may have raised an even more important issue regarding deeply ingrained Western misperceptions about China.

In a recent article penned by Dr. Harry Kazianis, Director of Defense Studies at The Center for the National Interest, the author describes some of the more lively backroom drama at the conference. He writes that on the sidelines of the conference most panel experts were focused on rumors of Chinas latest territorial claims about a 251 dash-line that extends Beijings claims to Hawaii and almost the entire Pacific Ocean, something he calls mapfare. As it turns out, Dr. Kazianis and unspecified other experts were actually fooled by a 2-year-old piece of political satire.

How Chinas latest territorial claims got the conference buzzing in the first place is not talked about, but the 251 dash-line mapfare that caused the stir is from a little-known satirical news site called Ministry of Harmony. One might expect a different conclusion to soon emerge after the experts realized the outrageous territorial claims were a joke, but the story continues along the same line in an attempt to drive home a much larger point. The point being that China is perceived as some sort of rogue state and this ingrained perception of China on the world stage as a power bent on domination is none other than Chinas fault. Dr. Kazianis writes: The fact that none of us at the conference were shocked speaks volumes to the now ingrained perception of China on the international stage as a power bent on changing the status-quono matter what the cost. He closes by saying, Its something Beijing should bear in mind.

The story is amusing but also alarming and ultimately insightful. Well-studied, experienced authorities fall for an Onion-esque article that is 2 years old at a major academic conference and after realizing that they were duped nevertheless reach the same exact conclusion and then blame China for the negative perception. What does this tell us about how the West perceives China? Old thinking that is out of step with the new realities of world politics and not the fact that none of us at the conference were shocked is what really speaks volumes about the whole perception issue. The deeply ingrained Western belief that China has no choice but to act aggressively and therefore will and must act aggressively just like Western powers of the past is pushing a narrative that Beijing wants to avoid. Simply put, Chinas negative image on the world stage is more manufactured by the West than it is shaped by Chinas actions, and perhaps this is the something we should carry in our mind. If you open up the black box and study Chinas actions, it is clear that leaders in Beijing want to tamp down geopolitical rivalry, not promote it.
Guangzhou Canton tower at night

China Africa friendship is common singsong especially at the diplomatic level, but it is in the Guangdong Province of the southern China that the people-to-people dimension is acted out.

A visit to the mega city of Guangzhou would unarguably convince you. Last week, a tour of the city was revealing. The two sides blend into each other in so many ways even in culture exchanges and the bulk of the businesses African do in China is domiciled in Guangdong while the province also handles about 25% Chinas exports to Africa and 30% of Africa exports into China.

With understanding of the close ties they have with Africa, Guangdong is exploring the benefits, tapping into the policies of President Xi Jinping and the expanded economic ties between the two sides at the instance of the virile Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)

Last week, the Investing in Africa business forum held in Guangzhou, the second time, after the maiden edition in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last year. Next year, the forum would shift base to Dakar, the peninsula city of Senegal in West Africa.

China/Africa community

It is estimated that Guangzhou city alone has at least 400,000 African residents and remains the part of China with the largest concentration of Africans. In other cities of the Guangdong Province Africans are also found.

Guangzhou at night

During a visit to the Yue Xiu District of the city, we found that half of the people on the streets and the busy market are blacks with few other foreigners. The two sides  Chinese and Africans, have found a way of coexisting without problems. One of the approaches is an NGO that caters for fresh migrants and some older ones and settles disputes and creates peace among the people.

At the international office located under a rail line, a volunteer Chinese worker narrated what their relationship with their African guests has been and how they assist them adjust on arrival in China.

While there, four African girls that should be sisters from their similar features filed into an office later identified as free Chinese language study class. All the girls of school age get lessons there to assist them adapt in the regular school.

Apart from language assistance, the NGO office also provides the Africans lodging registration, policy consultation, health maintenance, social assistance and cultural exchanges as depicted on a sign on the wall.

Because of this close rapport between Africans and China in Guangdong that has been a melting pot for the two sides, the province also is the highest investor in African countries.

Guangzhou NGO worker for Africa community

At the investment forum this year, the World Bank, China Development Bank, two presidents from South Africa and Benin Republic attended in addition to delegates from over 38 African countries. It agreed on the further need to industrialize Africa like an extension of the Hangzhou G20 Summit call.
MARTINSVILLE  Students from Carlisle School joined forces last week to pack meals for local community members in need.

Organizers said students worked to help provide roughly seventy-five meals to hungry community members living in Martinsville and Henry County. The student participants were selected to participate in the Chick-fil-A Leader Academy, a national high school leadership program that not only teaches students leadership skills, but also empowers students to put their skills into action.

David Salyers is vice president of brand activation at Chick-fil-A Inc. He said students from those schools made an immediate and direct impact through the Chick-fil-A Leader Academy when they packed meals.

"We are excited to partner with high schools across the country with Chick-fil-A Leader Academy to provide opportunities for the next generation of leaders to strengthen their communities," said Salyers.

Students are expected to learn leadership skills and apply them throughout the school year to plan and implement an "impact project" such as a special needs carnival or charity softball game. The students dont just learn about leadership in the classroom, but they get out in the community to put it into action, making an "impact through action" in their community.

The Chick-fil-A Foundation offers financial support to the impact projects and local Chick-fil-A Franchisee Operators sponsor the program for the schools in their community and often serve as mentors to the students involved.

Organizers said students began in the Chick-fil-A Leader Academy helping to make as many as 1 million meals for feed families in need, but they will end this school year as leaders positively influencing their communities.

Learn more about the Chick-fil-A Leader Academy at www.chickfilaleaderacademy.com.
MARTINSVILLE  An alleged gang member charged with multiple crimes in Martinsville will stay in jail until his court date.

At a bond hearing Friday in Martinsville Circuit Court, Judge G. Carter Greer denied bail for Tushon Lamar Hairston, 22, of 907 Palace Court, Martinsville. Hairston is charged with point/brandish a firearm, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of ammunition by a convicted felon and break and enter, in connection with an incident March 25.

According to a criminal complaint, on March 25 a police officer responded to 308 Armstead Avenue in reference to a fight in progress. En route, police were advised that someone had a firearm. Upon arrival, the officer spoke with the homeowner, Catina Hodge, and her boyfriend, Willie Perkins, and both advised that a male, later identified as Tushon Hairston, came into the home uninvited and brandishing a firearm.

According to the criminal complaint, Hodge and Perkins said a fight ensued before police arrived on scene. A loaded Hi-Point Arms .40-caliber handgun was located inside the home that was identified as the firearm Hairston possessed upon entry into the house. Hairston is a convicted felon.

At the bond hearing Friday, Robert Williams, Hairstons lawyer, said, "Hairston is the victim here."

Williams said that for some time he has requested that the firearm be analyzed but that has not been done. According to court records, Hairston denies he had possession of the gun and ammunition, the defense made a motion requesting that the gun and ammunition be analyzed, and, according to a defense motion, the police department refused to do so under the contention it had enough evidence for conviction.

On Aug. 25, the commonwealth and defense reached an agreement under which the gun and ammunition will be sent to the Department of Forensics for analysis to determine if Hairstons fingerprints are on them, according to court records.

Alberto Herrero, Martinsville assistant commonwealths attorney, said Friday that most times such firearm analysis is inconclusive.

Williams argued that more than 20 people were at the party and that the defense has some witnesses who say Hairston did not have a gun on that occasion.

Williams asked for reasonable bail to be set. He noted that Hairston has been in jail since his arrest in March. Court records indicate that on Nov. 22 a trial date is to be scheduled.

Hairstons mother testified that if released on bond, Hairston could live with her, that she will monitor him, and she said efforts are being made to try to find a job for Hairston.

Herrero, said that, according to information from the Virginia Criminal Information Network, Hairston allegedly is as an active member of the Southside Locos, a subset of a violent gang.

Hairston testified that he was a member of a gang when he was 15 or 16 years old and living in North Carolina. He indicated he has not been a gang member since he has lived in Virginia for the last several years.

Herrero argued that the commonwealth has witnesses who say, on this occasion, that Hairston crashed a party and wielded a gun.

Herrero also argued that Hairston has tattoos that link him to gang and to the Southside Locos.

Herrero expressed opposition against Hairston possibly being released into the custody of his mother, with whom he was living on the date of the incident in question.

Williams argued that many young people have tattoos. Williams also said that Hairston was forthright about admitting past gang membership when he was younger but that he says he hasnt been a gang member for the last several years. Williams called it "absurd" for the prosecution to suggest as corroborating evidence a government report alleging that Hairston is an active gang member.

Judge Greer ruled there is a presumption against bail in this case and that Hairston had not overcome that presumption. Greer said he typically requires in such cases that the defendant have a stable place to live, that he abide by the terms of the bond, and most important, that he have a job.

Greer also found that evidence indicates Hairston is a member of a subset of an extremely violent gang; and that Hairston has tattoos of horns above his eyes and "South" above one eye and "Side" above the other eye.

Also in Martinsville Circuit Court on Friday, Troy Lamont Pitzer of Martinsville received active sentences totaling 7  years after pleading guilty to three counts of distribute cocaine  first offense, two counts of distribute cocaine  second or subsequent offense, and one count of possess firearm while in possession of cocaine.

Specifically, Judge Greer sentenced Pitzer on each of the three counts to distribute cocaine  first offense to five years in prison, of which 4  years is suspended and six months is active, on condition of active probation for 10 years and 15 years of good behavior. Greer sentenced Pitzer on each of the two counts of distribute cocaine  second or subsequent offense to five years in prison, with two years suspended and three years active, on condition of 10 years of supervised probation and 15 years of good behavior.

Greer sentenced Pitzer on the charge of possess firearm while in possession of cocaine to one year of incarceration, all suspended on condition of 10 years of supervised probation and other conditions.

The commonwealth dropped a charge of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

The distribution of cocaine offenses allegedly happened on March 13, March 27, March 31, April 20 and May 22, 2015, and involved substances containing cocaine that were purchased in undercover drug operations for a total of about $330.

Paul Collins reports for the Martinsville Bulletin and can be reached at paul.collins@martinsvillebulletin.com.
Hudson said that his department received a call regarding the structure fire at about 4 p.m. Monday, and after arriving on the scene, they had the fire under control by 4:30 p.m. When fire fighters arrived on the scene, Hudson said, flames were visible at the lower window on the left side of the house. Above, the burn damage still is visible around that window. As of Monday afternoon, it was not clear what had caused the fire, but Hudson said that Deputy Fire Marshal Andy Powers is investigating the incident.
As of sunset yesterday a new major ceasefire has been agreed in Syria. But what does it mean for Syria, the Middle East and world relations?

On Friday, John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov the foreign ministers of the United States and Russia, appeared before the world press to announce a newly agreed upon roadmap to end the Syrian Civil War. Although most of the details of the deal were not presented, what was announced was that the deal starts with a ceasefire between the Assad regime and the western backed opposition starting yesterday at sunset. That opens a seven-day period that will allow for humanitarian aid into Aleppo and other besieged areas. All fighting groups will also pull back from Castello Road, a key road into Aleppo. The Syrian air force will also stop operating in all of these areas, which will from now on be patrolled by Russian and US planes.

A week after the ceasefire the United States and Russia are to set up a Joint Implementation Center to coordinate their interventions in Syria. The two countries will then launch a campaign against the Islamic State as well as Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham (JFS) a new name taken on by Jabhat Al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.

Whether the ceasefire will last through its first week is yet to be seen. All the powers in the region have agreed to it, but that does not mean that their proxies and local militias will abide by it. The salafi/wahhabi group, Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham (AAS), which along with JFS, constitutes one of two strongest groups in the anti-Assad opposition, has already refused to accept the deal. The vast majority of the so-called moderate opposition groups which are supported by the US are tiny groups embedded within these two larger groups. In fact, it is impossible to tell where the US proxies stop and where the Jihadist groups begin. It will be very hard for these groups to separate, even if they wished to do so. At the same time Assad, who previously agreed to the deal, has declared his full intention to retake all of Syria - a clear provocation.

However, the main point about this deal is not the deal itself, which may or may not last, but the changing balance of power in the Middle East and world relations which it reflects. "The United States is going the extra mile John Kerry said at the announcement, because we believe Russia and my colleague have the capability to press the Assad regime to stop this conflict and come to the table and make peace."

The role of Russia on a world scale is becoming more prominent and the US ruling class is forced to accept it. On Sunday, head of the CIA, John Brennan, said in an interview on CBC:

I think that Russia is a world power, clearly. And they are involved in many different parts of the world, military capability. Theyre involved in the Middle East right now, obviously in Ukraine, Central Asia.

So, Russia is a formidable adversary in a number of areas. Also, there are areas that we need to be able to work with Russia, specifically in Syria.

These are significant words coming from a top official of the US ruling class. Until recently it would have been unthinkable for the United States, the sole superpower, to present a common peace plan with Russia, call it a world power or go the extra mile for it. On the contrary, Barack Obama and the US political establishment were aiming all their guns at Russia which they portrayed as a threat to western democracy. Nevertheless, that is exactly what has happened.

Sergei Lavrov was quick to remind the press that Russia had already made a similar proposal last year when it began its intervention in Syria. Back then the proposal was flatly refused.

John Kerry also had to underline that going after JFS was not a concession. That would be plausible if it wasnt for the fact that the vast majority of US vetted groups in Syria are in close cooperation with JFS. In fact, since the beginning of the US coalition bombing of Syria, JFS has only been the target of a handful of the thousands of raids the US has made. That is in spite of the fact that JSF - which, along with its close partner AAS, controls all of Idlib governorate and large parts of Aleppo - has no ideological difference with the Islamic State. In fact, ISIS set up JFS before they split over matters of personal power and prestige.

Going after JFS will also mean targeting the main threats to the Assad regime. Thus, all the noise about removing Assad has died down, although it will resume eventually.

Even until a few weeks ago the prospects for a deal seemed dim as the US refused to accept the facts on the ground. The re-imposition of a siege on Aleppo and the Turkish incursion into Northern Syria threatened to leave the US in the cold, however, with very little room to manoeuvre. With this deal Russia is essentially extending a face-saving helping hand to the US, although Putin will make sure to point this out at every possible opportunity.

Since the beginning of the civil war the US has been staggering from one failure to another. The original intervention by the CIA along with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan which channelled billions of dollars into the Islamist opposition, quickly spiralled out of control leading to the rise of Islamic State. Scarred by the economic and political effects of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US could not intervene directly in Syria and had to withdraw most of its troops from Iraq. A new US led war would lead to a huge political and economic crisis as well as sparking off a mass movement which would dwarf the anti-war movement of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The crisis of US imperialism is the key to its relative decline, as it limits its abilities to intervene. Instead, it is forced to lean on forces such as Hezbollah and Iran to battle ISIS. This was the basis of the nuclear deal that the US struck with Iran, basically accepting the former member of the Axis of Evil as a major power and a possible partner in the Middle East.

The deal with Iran and the lack of any appetite to finish what it started in Syria and Iraq, in turn alienated the traditional allies of the US who had invested much in the campaign against Assad and who, more importantly, were in fierce competition with Iran. This led to the opening of big fissures in the US-led bloc and even inside the US establishment itself. While the Pentagon and the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) began a campaign against ISIS, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the CIA continued support for Jihadist groups of all shapes and kinds.

Image: Carlos LatuffThe Pentagon instead threw its weight behind the Kurdish YPG group, which is the largest and most efficient army in Syria at the moment. This alienated the Turkish regime, which sees the Kurds as an existential threat to the interests of Turkish capitalism and feels threatened by a Kurdish state stretching its southern borders. But while the US armed forces wanted to target ISIS, the CIA, backed by the Saudis and the Turks, were only interested in fighting the Assad regime. These contradictions led to a low intensity war between CIA and DIA backed groups taking place over the past 10 months.

US-Turkey relations in particular have ebbed. While the US-backed YPG forces were advancing across northern Syria, Erdogans neo-Ottoman designs were collapsing rapidly. Aleppo was being besieged, the YPG was advancing west of the Euphrates, the fall of Assad seemed improbable, Islamist attacks were on the rise inside Turkey and the economic effects of Erdogans clash with Russia after the downing of the Russian fighter jet last year were bearing heavily on the economy. The Erdogan regime was in crisis and retreating to the extent that Erdogan had to publicly apologise to Putin in order to normalise relations between the two countries.

Being a coldblooded cynic, however, Putin extended an olive branch to Erdogan and re-opened ties between the two countries at a time when Turkeys relationship with the US was at an all-time low.

The 15 July attempted coup in Turkey was a decisive turning point. While the coup was not organised and promoted by the US, it was clear that Turkish officers deep inside NATO structures were involved. The following purge of the army was also a major source of concern for NATO, which has always been closer to the Turkish army than any of its governments. As Erdogan strengthened his domestic position and got closer to Russia, there was a real fear amongst US and western strategists that NATO could lose its second largest army and a key geopolitical asset.

It was in this context that Turkey embarked on its incursion into Syria with tacit support from the Russians. Erdogan has long been calling for such a campaign by NATO, but the west has opposed it on the grounds that it would drag NATO into a full scale war in Syria. Furthermore, it is a clear move against the YPG who have been the most reliable boots on the ground for the US. The fact that the US has special forces embedded amongst the Kurdish forces makes the Turkish move an even greater provocation. But with the tacit support of Russia - who could easily have stopped the intervention - Erdogan presented a fait accompli which the US is helpless to do anything about. In fact, US rhetoric towards Erdogan has suddenly softened as they are trying to bring him back into the fold and away from Russia.

The incursion into northern Aleppo by Turkey seems to have been traded off for Aleppo city which Loyalist forces managed to besiege in the past two months. This was the final straw that convinced the US to accept Russias terms. In fact, it is true to say that Putin is extending a hand and saving Obama from a complete humiliation.

Russia is now calling the shots in Syria. Of course this does not mean that Russia is a power on the same level as the US. The Russian economy is in a crisis and the government has just announced deep cuts in defence spending. In fact, Russia did not have the resources to intervene on a massive scale in Syria. Instead it has had to rely on Iranian backed troops on the ground who have been able to avoid the collapse of the regime, but are not efficient in offensive situations. The Syrian army itself is in a state of complete decay. Desertions, corruption and a very weak general staff means that it is highly inefficient against well motivated and relatively well fed jihadists. In fact, in large areas the army has disintegrated into local gangs led by warlords outside the control of the Assad regime.

In July, the Tiger Forces, a glorified private militia, managed over many weeks to close the siege of Aleppo by taking the northern parts of the city. A few days later, however, the easily defendable southern parts of the siege collapsed under the impact of a week-long rebel offensive. It took the relocation of the Tiger Forces and a massive one month bombing campaign to close the siege again.

At the same time an unexpected rebel offensive in the relatively dormant northern Hama front led to the collapse of loyalist defences and the rebels coming within 6 miles of the key city of Hama. The weakness of the Assad regime is clearly evident for all, a fact which weakens his army even more.

But while the Russians and the Iranians are not strong enough to take over all of Syria the weakness of the US means that they can use access denial  that is, to put in place massive military and political obstacles to render difficult any manoeuvres of its adversaries  as a strategy to punch above their economic and military weight. The Russians have no interest in solving the crisis, which would weaken their overall influence over other parties in the conflict. They want to keep the region concentrated on Syria in order to use their weight and play the local powers and groups off against each other. This was the rationale behind Putin allowing Turkey back into the war by invading northern Aleppo.

By creating a de facto frozen conflict involving all Middle Eastern powers - in which he holds all the cards - Putin has turned himself into a regional power broker. The traditional allies of the US on the other hand - as we saw in the case of Turkey - are using the presence of a second power to pressure the US to give more concessions. In a similar manner, Israel and Russia have recently announced plans for a joint Israeli-Palestinian peace-summit - another clear provocation by both governments towards the Obama administration.

The weakness of US imperialism has opened a vacuum into which Russia is stepping. With very little investment Russia is becoming a key player in the Middle East.
The essence of the North Korean nuclear issue is the conflict between the U.S. and North Korea, and the U.S. should shoulder its due responsibility, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying at a press conference on Sept. 12. Huas statement refuted the remarks made by U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter that China is responsible for the recent nuclear test by North Korea.

Hua pointed out that the essence of the North Korean nuclear issue is a conflict between the U.S. and North Korea. She therefore suggested that the U.S. review the issue carefully and seriously consider practical solutions.

As for how to ease the conflict, Hua urged the U.S. to shoulder its due responsibilities. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and as a neighboring country to the Korean Peninsula, China has spared no efforts to find a proper solution to the issue so as to safeguard regional peace and stability, as well as to maintain the authority of the international nuclear non-proliferation system.

However, it has now been proven that pressure and resistance only serve to escalate the conflict to a deadlock. It is now time for the directly related parties to step up and make their own efforts to address the root causes of the conflict, Hua said.

China insists that measures to balance the security concerns of each party and achieve long-term stability on the peninsula must be sought through dialogue that addresses root causes, she emphasized.

The spokesperson stressed again that each party should examine the big picture, take prudent actions and make a true contribution to the non-proliferation and stability of the Korean Peninsula.
SPRINGFIELD -- New owners have rebranded the former Blackjack Steakhouse at 904-912 Main St. with a name from the South End neighborhood's past -- Ciro's.

New awnings are up at the former steakhouse, once home to an Italian restaurant called Carpaccio, proclaiming the location "Ciro's 'A Tradition'." The new restaurant has not yet opened.

Documents at the office of William Francis Galvin, secretary of the Commonwealth, indicated that Charles R. Della Penna established a business entity called Ciro's Restaurant Group LLC in August with 904-912 Main St. as its business address. Della Pena couldn't be reached over the past two weeks.

The new Ciro's does not have a liquor license and has not applied for one, according to the Springfield Licensing Commission.

Blackjack Steakhouse closed in July with owner Mark Laramee blaming the location, crime and public perception of the neighborhood.

Before it was Blackjack's Steakhouse, the location was briefly an Italian restaurant called Carpaccio.

The original Ciro's, located just down the street at 868-870 Main St., was a longtime fixture in the South End with ties to organized crime.

Salvatore "Big Nose Sam" Cufari used the restaurant as a headquarters when he was head of the local Genovese family crew.

According to their obituaries, Albert S. Scibelli and Rose M. (Langone) Scibelli, owned and operated Ciro's for 24 years. Scibelli died in 1997, a year after his wife.
26-lynch.jpg

Karen Lynch.

(Courtesy of Aetna)

SPRINGFIELD

-- A native of Western Massachusetts has been named one of the most powerful women in the country.

Aetna President Karen S. Lynch was placed on Fortune's

of the "Most Powerful Women" in business. She was ranked alongside GM

CEO

and Chairman Mary Barra, Facebook

COO

Sheryl Sandberg and Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard. Lynch came in at 26.

She is one of nine newcomers on the list of 50 women working across numerous industries.

Lynch was named president of Aetna in 2015, the first female president in the company's history. She joined Aetna four years ago as an executive vice president and head of speciality products and quickly made herself an integral part of the health care company.

It's been a busy first year for Lynch as president. Aetna announced plans last month to withdraw from multiple state Obamacare exchanges, which accounts for about 5 percent of the company's sales. She also faces a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice to block Aetna's $33 billion purchase of Humana.

Prior to becoming one of the top executives in her industry, Lynch lived in Western Massachusetts. She grew up in Ware - known then as Karen S. Rohan - and is a 1980 graduate of Ware High School.

"The lessons I learned while growing up and attending school in Ware shaped so much of who I am today," Lynch wrote in a piece for her alma mater's website last year. "I was raised by my aunt, and her guidance, coupled with the lessons I learned at Ware High, formed many of my defining values."
SOUTH DEERFIELD -- Yankee Candle is honoring Red Sox DH David "Big Papi" Ortiz on the eve of his retirement with his own candle.

The David Ortiz "Big Papi's Retirement Party" candle has the company's "MidSummer's Night" fragrance and was chosen by Ortiz himself, Yankee Candle said Tuesday. The scent is described as a masculine blend of musk, patchouli, sage and mahogany cologne.

Ortiz will retire at the end of this season.

The custom candles will be available in limited quantities online and at Yankee Candle stores throughout New England, according to the news release. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to The David Ortiz Children's Fund, Ortiz' foundation created to raise funds for children in need of life-saving surgeries.



In addition to purchasing candles, customers are able to participate in The David Ortiz Children's Fund Sweepstakes for the chance to win an autographed candle from Big Papi himself. The sweepstakes runs from Sept. 13 through Oct. 2, 2016 at YankeeCandle.com/Ortiz.

Ortiz started the David Ortiz Children's Fund (DOCF) after he visited the CEDIMAT Hospital in the Dominican Republic. He met with children who had recently received life-saving heart operations and left feeling amazed at the resilience of the children and with the burning desire to help, according to the release.
EASTHAMPTON -- The Licensing Board on Monday approved four local business for full liquor licenses, while telling another applicant to amend his plans and come back next month.

Licenses were awarded to three venues in the Cottage Street Cultural District: Luthier's Coop, The Library (now a part of Amy's Place), and Off The Map Tattoo. In the city's Mill District, a license was granted to Community Food Engine, the entity behind the brand-new indoor Mill 180 Park.

Will Bundy, owner of the Eastworks Building at 116 Pleasant Street, was told to submit new plans showing a permanent bar installed at a 2,183 square-foot event space in the building. Board member Kelly Richey said she would not be inclined to support a license for "just an empty room." The space across the hall from Riff's Place in the restored mill currently has a beer and wine license. Bundy, doing business as Under the Bridge, LLC, said he would come before the board again in October.

Luthier's Coop, the guitar shop and music venue at 108 Cottage St., plans an expansion into the adjoining storefront, the former home of Off The Map Tattoo. It will effectively double the venue's size to more than 2,000 square feet. Late-night food service is planned, and a second bar will serve cocktails and espresso drinks, said applicant Steven Richard Baer. Luthier's already has a beer and wine license.

Off The Map Tattoo gained a license for the entire first floor of its new location at 84 Cottage St., the former Majestic Theater. The licensed premise will comprise six rooms for a total of 7,772 feet. Sanderson said the tattoo shop will produce events drawing tattoo artists and enthusiasts from around the world. Sanderson appeared along with manager Larisa Allen.

Amy Florek, proprietor of Amy's Place Bar & Grill at 80 Cottage St., won a separate full-liquor license for The Library, her 800-square-foot cocktail bar at 82 Cottage St. The two adjacent venues currently share a liquor license. Florek said she will close the interior connection between the two spaces and run the venues separately.

Florek fielded questions from board chairman Jason Duda, who at first said he wasn't convinced giving one of the new licenses to an already-functioning bar would return the most benefit to the city.

Florek responded by saying she has a proven track record, and pays taxes and contributes to the community. Plus, she said the license would enable her to sell The Library at some point, if she wanted to. "Nobody would want to buy that without a liquor license," she said. Off The Map co-owner Steve Sanderson vouched for Florek, saying assigning a license to the small space would benefit the city's business economy regardless of who owns the property.

Ultimately, Duda joined board members Raymond Redfern and Kelly Richey in approving Florek's application.

Community Food Engine operates a 14,000 square-foot space in a former mill that has been re-purposed into an indoor urban park. It features a hydroponic growing operation, places for people to wander and explore, and a restaurant and bar.

The entire premise at Mill 180 Park will be licensed for alcohol. Manager Lystra Blake said that was necessary because she will hold events such as wedding receptions. She said on a daily basis, patrons will be discouraged from wandering away from the restaurant and bar area while carrying drinks. "If someone wants to go the Mushroom House with a beer in his hand, we would say, 'no, you can't do that.'"

The city has eight new over-quota liquor licenses at its disposal thanks to special legislation signed in June by Gov. Charlie Baker. The number of liquor licenses in any town is limited by population. Any extras must be approved by the Massachusetts Legislature. The city asked Beacon Hill for the extra licenses last fall, and the bill was introduced by Sen. Don Humason, R-Westfield.

The language, crafted by the City Council, gives "highest preference to establishments located in the mill industrial zone and the downtown business zone in the city of Easthampton."

The licenses can not be used until they are approved by the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission. They must stay with their assigned location, and may not be sold. Members of the board said they had conducted site visits at each of the venues.

The successful applicants were seen leaving the upstairs meeting room at 50 Payson Ave. with smiles on their faces. Sanderson and Baer offered each other a fist-bump. "I'm incredibly happy," said Baer.

Mary Serreze can be reached at mserreze@gmail.com
In the wake of the G20 Hangzhou summit, a global governance index report has shown that China ranks fourth among G20 countries for its role in global governance.

According to the 2016 G20 index report, which analyzed 19 G20 member states participation in and contributions to global governance, China was No. 4, following the U.S., France and the U.K. The U.S. snagged the top spot with 737 points. In the second tier, Japan, Russia, Germany, Canada, Italy, India, South Korea and Australia all scored between 400 and 500 points.

Other countries such as Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and Saudi Arabia ranked in the third tier, scoring between 300 and 400 points, which is still higher than the global average of 286 points. This demonstrates the major role that G20 plays in global governance, the report stated.

It is remarkable that China ranks fourth under the new index. However, a countrys impact on international society and global contributions is also reflected in soft power. Therefore, I believe China should play a bigger role in global contributions, such as donating public goods to the UN or WHO. This will also help to improve our global image, said Cai Tuo, director of the Globalization and Global Issues Institute at China University of Political Science and Law.

The remarks were made at a seminar on Sept. 12 held by the Political Science Institute of East China at the University of Political Science and Law (ECUPL), the Center for China & Globalization (CCG) and China International Publishing Group. The report, compiled by ECUPL, was also released at the seminar.

The States Participation Index of Global Governance (SPIGG) analyzes four primary indicators: mechanism, performance, decision-making and responsibilities. These factors constitute a solid basis for determining a nations role in the world. On the four primary indicators, G20 members almost without exception boasted better results than the world average, especially in mechanism, decision-making and responsibility, the report showed.

The report also indicated that rising powers among the G20  represented by China, India and Brazil  are becoming major contributors to global governance, as China shines in economic performance and India in responsibility, with its massive number of peacekeepers dispatched to the UN.

We can see that G20 members play a leading role in international political and economic organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They also play a very important part in decision-making, and even in the formation of decision-making mechanisms. Therefore, the integrated and joint efforts of G20 mean a bigger consensus in global governance, said Yan Xingjian, an assistant professor at ECUPL.

Cai called to promote globalization in the face of rising nationalism and populism. Echoing Cai, Xie Peihong, deputy director of the Center for China & Globalization (CCG), noted that China should take the lead in efforts that benefit the nation and the world as a whole.

It will be a backwards world if there is more protectionism to inhibit the flow of commodities and talents, he said.

Most of the indexes we use nowadays are established and promoted by Western countries. Some indexes are good in quality, but some carry strong ideological leanings, said ECUPL Professor Gao Qiqi.

Gao pointed out that the most recent index took into consideration ideas of realism, liberalism and constructivism in international studies while selecting its primary indicators. Different from Western-led indices, which stress subjective assessment, SPIGG uses only objective data to guarantee its scientific accuracy.
MANCHESTER, N.H. - A fighter jet with the 104th Fighter Wing inadvertently dropped flares over southwestern New Hampshire's Monadnock region on Tuesday morning.

The F-15C jet flying out of Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield, Mass., was conducting target intercept training when it released countermeasure flares at about 10 a.m.

No one was hurt.

All 13 flares, dropped over a four-minute period from an altitude of 5,000 feet, exploded before hitting the ground.

In a statement, the 104th Fighter Wing blamed human error, and said neither personnel nor the public were ever in danger.

The training exercise was unannounced in order to test combat readiness.
SPRINGFIELD - Author Junot Diaz delivered a raw, funny and bracingly uncondescending talk to a crowd of high school and college students at Springfield Technical Community College Tuesday morning,

Diaz, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" grant, urged his audience to value art and personal authenticity, opened up about his background growing up in a poor Dominican family in New Jersey and discussed the barriers that faced him as he sought to become a writer.

"I often think about the absolute odds that were against folks like me and folks in my community to receive an education," Diaz said. "There was absolutely no money for education, and nobody was slipping us even a hundred dollars to go buy books."

Diaz, a creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, answered a number of questions with reflections on how the intersection of emotional struggles and societal racism and sexism made his personal story so unlikely.

In between moments of levity -- "I don't know if you've ever done any public speaking, this shit is terrible," he said early in the talk - Diaz held little back, describing a cultural "derangement" that makes discussions of race and class difficult in America.

"I teach at MIT, and they're considered the brightest and best. Students will be like, there's no sexism. And forget a conversation about racism," Diaz said. "We still have a large group of people that are literally on the crack pipe on denial."

The exhaustion facing students who work their way through college, compared to those who can focus on their studies due to their parents' financial support. Self-hatred that afflicts minority students when they learn from an early age that they are not expected to succeed in school. The legacies of overt racism and housing discrimination that make a college education seem unimaginable for many.

All are challenges that black, poor and Latino students must reckon disproportionately reckon with, Diaz said.

"My mom didn't have any idea what college was. For her, it was an abstraction more than anything --- something that was good," he said.

He survived through competitive grit, he said. He knew what it was to work - he grew up in a military family that expected kids to get jobs early and help out with the family finances. But that drive did not immediately translate into academic skills he had not been exposed to as a child, he said.

"When I got to grad school with kids who had gone to Harvard, Yale and Cornell, I felt it," Diaz said. "There's no way a class room is going to defeat someone who survived being poor in this country But it takes learning you might have a deficit in skills."

Diaz has earned popular and critical acclaim for his fiction, which often centers on the immigrant experience, Dominican American culture and the complexities of his characters' interpersonal relationships.

He was driven to write by both his love of books and absence in those books of people who looked like him, he said - poor, Latino, immigrant, Dominican.

"It looks like if I don't write this, ain't nobody going to write it," he said. "There' s nothing like being a perpetual ghost in your own country to create in you a desire to alter that reality."

Diaz also said students should work to shed the fears and personal "masks" that stop them from sincerely engaging with their education, their passions and other people. Too many of his students waste energy trying to be "cute, smart or cool," in the classroom, and too many men -himself include -- wall themselves off from appearing vulnerable, he said.

"Your dream is the one you dreamed all by yourself, and that really scares you, because you're not going to get support for it," Diaz said.

He described art as a form of cultural transgression. And as if to prove the point, Diaz read his short story "Alma," an elegiacally sad and sexually raw tale of infidelity that drew nervous laughter from the high schoolers in the audience who had never heard anything that explicit on a field trip.

"Art allows you to have access to your best self," Diaz said. "What we have done as artists is we have preserved for a little bit longer what is valuable about this whole civilization, which is our humanity."
NORTHAMPTON - As of about 11 a.m. Tuesday 19 prospective jurors were excused, mostly for work commitments, in the Cara Rintala murder trial in Hampshire Superior Court.

Among those was a man who wore his "Got Ammo!" t-shirt to court.

The hope is to get three more jurors today to add to the 13 already selected over three days. Those 19 excused by Judge Mary Lou Rup are from jurors called in Tuesday.

Rup then switched gears and began talking to the 29 jurors who were called in Monday and filled out questionnaires. They were told to report back today.

Eleven jurors were selected last week, and a long day of jury selection Monday only yielded two jurors.

Rintala is charged in the 2010 killing of her wife, Annamarie Cochrane Rintala, in the basement of their Granby home.

The former Granby paramedic is now facing her third trial, following mistrials in 2013 and 2014.

She has been free on $150,000 bail since March 2014, after a second mistrial was declared due to a deadlocked jury. In both cases, eight jurors reportedly voted to convict Rintala and four voted for acquittal.

Rintala, 49, is the first woman in Massachusetts charged with murdering her wife, and one of relatively few defendants nationwide to be tried three times for murder.

In the first two trials, Assistant District Attorney Steven E. Gagne asserted that Rintala strangled her wife following years of abuse, mounting debts and custody disputes over their adopted child.

Defense lawyer David P. Hoose argued that investigators concluded Rintala was guilty early in the investigation and failed to pursue other suspects.

The trial is expected to last four weeks, which is one of the reasons jury selection is difficult.

Only 12 jurors will ultimately deliberate but 16 are being chosen in case some have to be excused by the judge during the trial or deliberations.
Last week Monday, the Hangzhou G20 Summit ended in celebration note and was recorded as the best hosting in the eleven seasons of the event.

But beyond the member states that include the 19 biggest economies of the world as sovereign states and the largest world economic bloc, the European Union, whom the union is supposed primarily to benefit, the hosting by China changed the configuration of the summit deliberations.

That was actually in fulfillment of the promise of China to do so.

Also, judging from the presence of Africa in the summit at the behest of China that invited two presidents and the chairman of the African Union, and also the coverage of the event by 28 African journalists from 27 countries, the largest in the history of the G20, also, it would be properly tagged that Hangzhou G20 was a summit for African interest.

With the presidents and the bevy of journalists from the continent, the China hosting of G20 made it a household event in Africa especially at a time dire economic realities make the economy a most discussed issue in the world.

In addition, the summit captured the world media attention and hosted the largest team of journalists since G20 Summit started.

For instance, the three presidents from Africa came with their media teams. That was also the case with the three presidents from Asia, including the chairman of ASEAN, also the President of Laos and another guest state from South America. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon and president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, and IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde also attended.

The spacious world class media centre that was equipped with modern facilities was always filled to capacity for four days. Outside the main hall of the media centre, the larger media bodies from US, Germany, UK, France etc, including of course radio, TV and newspapers from China and also the Peoples Daily had elaborate private booths that were enough to serve as alternative media house to their head offices for the duration of the event.

The vast media centre was also a high point of the summit as about 2500 journalists from at least 65 countries fraternized and did their work of projecting the same summit to the world.

The Hangzhou summit with super organizational touch in security, catering, transportation, accommodation and facilities were most commendable. The security measures in todays world of terror attack was sophisticated and flowed with precision and without inhibitions of overzealous operatives. The journalists work centre and hotels provided 24 hours transport and refreshment services for the days the summit lasted that made every accredited journalist work optimally.

Hangzhou G20 Summit media centre

Africa inclusive

But above all else, President Xi during his media briefing at the close of the summit assured that the G20 is today not just a body for the members but for the whole world economy, and being certain that the group of states that control the affairs of the whole world economy, it decided to handle the global economic issues as part of its agenda.

Prior to the Summit, China had assured that it would bring to the attention of the body issues relating to over 123 poorer countries and make G20 see the importance of focusing on their benefits for growth. At a briefing by the Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing in May, China said until those poor nations are helped out of poverty, the world would have no peace and for the world to make progress means the poor countries must be considered.

Sequel to that resolve, the summit agreed that: We will work to ensure that our economic growth serves the needs of everyone and benefits all countries and all people including in particular women, youth and disadvantaged groups, generating more quality jobs, addressing inequalities and eradicating poverty so that no one is left behind.

President Xi stated that the G20 concluded that the poorer countries are priority of the economic growth, and also that the growth and industrialization of African countries which China pursues through the awesome FOCAC has become a concern and business of the G20.

Article 13 of the decisions of the Hangzhou G20 read out by Xi noted that: To seize the opportunity that the new industrial revolution (NIR) presents for industry, particularly manufacturing and related services, we deliver the G20 New Industrial Revolution Action Plan. We commit to strengthen communication, cooperation and relevant research on the NIR, facilitate small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to leverage benefits from the NIR, address employment and workforce skill challenges, encourage more cooperation on standards, adequate and effective IPR protection in line with existing multilateral treaties to which they are parties, new industrial infrastructure, and support industrialization, as committed in the action plan. We also support industrialization in developing countries, especially those in Africa and Least Developed Countries (LDCs). We are committed to supporting our workforces throughout this transition and to ensuring that the benefits of the NIR extend to all, including women, youth and disadvantaged groups. We call for cooperation to maximize the benefits and mitigate the negative impact of the expected technological and industrial changes. In all these initiatives, the G20 will take into consideration the different opportunities and challenges for developing and developed countries.

That promise kept by President Xi at the world larger platform for the biggest economies was further demonstration of his earlier commitment to Africa industrialization for which he had pledged $60b in the Johannesburg FOCAC Summit in December 2015. This agenda has been pursued to a very large extent as explained in the July evaluation FOCAC forum in Beijing attended by 53 African state members where about $51b of the fund had already been signed off in about 250 MoUs between China and the African state members.

Another issue of great importance the G20 agreed on as read out by the Chinese president is the plan to pursue an international agenda to stop people indicted of corruption in their country from hiding themselves or their loot in any country. That if implemented would be of great benefit to Africa where many leaders loot the state and ferry the money to foreign countries and leave the continent less impoverished and also evade punishment. If such law comes into force, maybe through the UN at the instance of the G20, which some of the members are the custodians of such slush fund, then Africa would have had a better chance of economic recovery. If that is done, the credit would go mainly to China whose hosting of the Summit made such vital decision possible.

Emewu is senior editor of The Sun Newspaper, Nigeria, Fellow of the China Public Diplomacy, Beijing. He was until last month intern in Peoples Daily ([email protected])
The rise of the sharing economy is one factor in the development of apartment buildings that dont have parking spaces. People are still adapting to the change in deep-rooted habits to the way living spaces and communities are designed. "While there is a menu of options for residentsUber, light rail, bicyclepeople still endeavor to own a car to get to the mountains," Chris Waggett, chief executive of D4 Urban in Denver told the WSJs Esther Fung.

By Steve Rosenbush

Full Story: http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/09/13/the-morning-download-sharing-economy-hits-home-as-developers-ditch-parking-spaces/
Medical marijuana shouldnt be used for menstrual cramps  and one "hit" is comparable to drinking 10 beers, according to a speaker who presented Monday at City Club Missoula.

Some 64 percent of Montana voters said yes to medical marijuana in 2004, but the laws have taken a circuitous path since then. The most recent ballot initiative, I-182, was the topic of two lunch presentations, one in favor of the measure and one against it. Among other things, I-182 would allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for chronic pain or post-traumatic stress disorder.

The event was hosted by City Club Missoula http://www.cityclubmissoula.com/ , which aims to "inform and inspire citizens" on vital issues. At the DoubleTree Hotel event, participants quizzed the speakers on the topic of medical marijuana after their presentations.

KEILA SZPALLER [email protected]

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/local/city-club-takes-up-medical-marijuana-i/article_9a505845-adba-58ba-b281-b79d3c7f8d2e.html
Officials with FedEx Ground confirmed on Wednesday that their new Great Falls plant opened operations in late August and explained why they chose to locate in the new Great Falls AgriTech Park.

In a statement released through Great Falls Development Authority http://www.greatfallsdevelopment.org/ President Brett Doney, the company said:

Peter Johnson, [email protected]

Full Story: http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2016/09/07/fedex-ground-discusses-new-business-agritech-park/89980528/
In the course of the just-concluded flood season, 19 of the 30 pilot "sponge cities" in China witnessed flooding, which has triggered doubts about the efficacy of the whole sponge city project.

The idea behind sponge cities is simple: collect and store excess water during periods of heavy rainfall, and then parcel it out during subsequent dry periods. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development defended the plan on Sept. 12, saying that the sponge cities will not become effective immediately, and that their construction is still accelerating.

According to guidelines for the sponge city project, by 2020, 20 percent of urban areas will be able to absorb excess rainwater through upgraded sewer systems, filtration pools, wetlands and permeable public spaces; by 2030, that figure will rise to 30 percent, an official with the ministry said.

Xie Yingxia, deputy director of the Water Affairs Institute under the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, noted that the public should not deny the utility of sponge cities just because of flooding caused by extremely heavy rainfall. Xie added that even sponge cities are only effective at offsetting flooding within a certain range.

In 2015 and 2016, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Water Resources selected 30 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, in which to pilot the sponge city project.
Sept. 12 marked China's 11th Birth Defect Prevention Day. The annual event has become increasingly important in recent years, as the birth defect rate is steadily increasing. The rate of birth defects in China has been on an incline ever since pre-marital medical check-ups were made optional in 2003.

According to a report released by the Ministry of Health, China reports about 900,000 new cases of birth defects every year. Ge Junbo, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said birth defects have almost doubled in one decade, becoming the second most common cause of infant deaths.

The uptick in birth defects is undeniably linked to the repeal of mandatory pre-marital check-ups. According to a Xinhua report from April, fewer than 10 percent of new couples opted to receive pre-marital check-ups in Beijing and Guangzhou in 2015. In contrast, more than 90 percent of new couples were checked before 2003.

"Such a high rate [of birth defects] will cause huge losses not only for families, but also for the entire country," Ge said.

To tackle the problem, Ge suggested that health authorities adjust the current pre-marital check-up system, establishing a system that finds a middle ground between individual will and mandatory measures.
A promotional clip of a film about the history of the Korean War, released earlier this month, has sparked controversy online. Some netizens insist that it's inappropriate to make a big deal about something that happened more than 60 years ago, while others worry that the film may worsen already tense ties with South Korea.

In the clip, several elderly Chinese tourists played by veteran actors proudly talk about how they triumphantly entered Seoul during the war. The characters claim that they used neither passports nor visas to enter the country.

Hong Kong director Pang Chun, who is directing the film, defended himself and his movie, saying that he and his collaborators had nothing to do with the promotional clip.

Produced by the China Film Group Corporation and starring popular actors Liu Ye and Wang Luodan, "My War" focuses on a group of young people who leave their hometown to take part in the war efforts. The film is an adaptation of renowned writer Ba Jin's novel "Tuanyuan" (Reunion).

"Young people today should know more about the sacrifices the older generation made, which brought about the peace and happiness we enjoy today," actor Liu Ye was quoted as saying by CCTV.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Korean War was a popular setting for many Chinese war films. Among them, 1964's "Heroic Breed" was an especially major hit that influenced a generation. However, it has been some time since film studios and filmmakers last chose to capture this era in China's history.
Xiaowen, a girl from Shanghai, recently flew more than 1,000 kilometers to Chengdu in order to find new owners for her two beloved pet dogs, Chengdu Economic Daily reported.

The two dogs, named Lucky and Zhuzhu, were both adopted by Xiaowen before she was diagnosed with a malignant tumor. Xiaowen said her only requirement for the dogs' new owners is that they truly love the animals.

"My health condition does not allow me to take care of so many stray animals," said Xiaowen, who, in addition to Lucky and Zhuzhu, has also adopted two homeless cats and two stray dogs.

Chengdu's pet adoption platform is one of the main reasons Xiaowen decided to bring the dogs there. She worried that there are too many dogs already awaiting adoption in Shanghai, so it might be a long time before Lucky and Zhuzhu got adopted by a Shanghai family.

Traveling all the way to Chengdu, Xiaowen hoped to meet potential adopters in person and show her sincerity. She said that as long as the dogs could be adopted by good people, it would be completely worth the cost of the trip. Xiaowen looked for adopters who would be caring and patient. Most importantly, she emphasized, it was essential that they would never abandon the dogs.

Finally, one of the dogs was adopted by a young girl, though the other is still waiting for its "forever home." Xiaowen was scheduled to return to Shanghai on Monday, Sept. 12, but she went back early due to her health condition. She will soon receive further treatment in Shanghai.
McDowell County officials will take another look at the rules for development on Lake James and see if they should be replaced with tougher rules to protect the lake and its surrounding land.

The issue about development on Lake James was the primary focus of Mondays meeting of the McDowell County Commissioners. Last month, the countys Planning Board gave its unanimous approval for the first phase of a controversial housing development called The Peninsula at Lake James.

This subdivision will be located on the northwestern part of the lake, past Bear Creek Marina and right off Lake James Road. The proposed development will cover 223 acres with 150 lots for both phases. Phase one will have 62 lots, according to County Manager Ashley Wooten.

Opponents say this development will make the lake and its shoreline more crowded and would harm the quality of Lake James. During the meeting, the commissioners agreed to have the Planning Board take another look at the rules concerning development on the lake, which were adopted in 2003, and see if any changes should be made.

Its totally appropriate to go back and examine what we have got right now, said Commissioner Randy Hollifield.

Commission Chairman David Walker and Commissioner Tony Brown did not attend Mondays meeting. Vice Chairman Barry McPeters presided instead.

The countys Planning Board has reviewed the development several times before, first when it was called Grey Ridge and later when it became the Peninsula at Lake James. The Planning Board reviewed a preliminary plat in March. In May, the preliminary master plan was formally submitted to the Planning Board. A representative for the company behind the project explained the development would occur in two phases and it would yield between 143 to 145 lots.

Last month, the Planning Board considered it again and approved the first phase. But opponents said this development would dramatically increase crowding along the lake and the roads, affect the water quality and harm the overall area around the lake. Specifically, they have asked that some rules adopted by Burke County should be applied here as well.

On Monday, they came to the county commissioners prepared with maps, charts and written statements about why developments like this could seriously harm the lake. Others submitted their comments to The McDowell News.

We believe the 220+ acre parcel, known as The Peninsula at Lake James, if developed as proposed, could significantly harm the lake, said George Johnson, president of the Lake James Environmental Association, to the commissioners. There appear to be too many lake front lots on very steep slopes. As a result they may be too small to accommodate a home, primary and back-up septic fields and a well. Lots are also laid out without regard for natural creeks and streams that already drain the land. This flawed design was possible because the current lake protection ordinance is not strong enough to fully defend the lake.

The more forest that is turned into impervious surfaces, that dont absorb water - like roads, driveways, sidewalks and roofs - the more likely it is that surging stormwater will erode soil and flush silt and other contaminants into the lake, leaving behind ugly scars. This is why bigger lots, larger setbacks and slope restrictions were used in Old Wildlife, Black Forest and 1780, developments with comparable topography.

Like her husband, Suzy Johnson said the countys current rules need to be strengthened.

Our Lake Protection Ordinance needs updating, said Suzy Johnson. The easiest fix is to adopt Burkes Lake Overlay protections or at least adopt the protections recommended by Lake James Environmental Association, the Catawba Riverkeeper and other concerned citizens. These safeguards have already proven to be effective in Crescent Conservation developments in McDowell and Burke counties. Protections of the waters that feed the lake are also needed before developers begin to eye land around them.

Over a decade ago, McDowell County Commissioners were leaders in the fight for water rights related to the Inter Basin Transfer, said Ann Costello to the commissioners. Today, there is a new threat to the regions water and its coming from within in the form of inadequate ordinances that permit development on steep slopes, resulting in erosion, runoff, and pollution to McDowells future water source.

Costello produced a map showing that some of the waterfront lots are less than an acre. She questioned how a house, a well, a septic and a backup septic can be built on these lots. She also said the development was designed with little or no regard for the lay of the land.

I call on each of you in your role as county commissioner to have the vision and courage and leadership to correct this grossly deficient ordinance before Phase 2 is even considered, said Costello. It is time to rise again, as county leaders have done before, to see the future, protect our water, and lead the way.

Paul Braun, a long-time advocate for the lake, also spoke to the commissioners about the need for stricter rules.

The Foothills Conservancy submitted a statement to The McDowell News. McDowell County is blessed to have the natural and recreational asset of Lake James, reads the statement from Director Susie Hamrick-Jones. The lake attracts people who help the countys economy, both as property owners and tourists. Ordinances which protect the lakes water, while also allowing for careful and thoughtful development are proven to be a win-win solution. This was the case for Burke County when it revised its lake ordinances in 2004-06. Therefore, Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina urges the McDowell County Commissioners to strengthen the current waterway ordinances.

The McDowell County Planning Board will hold its next meeting on Monday, Sept. 26.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  Activists nationwide are holding rallies and calling on elected officials to support what they call a "moral public framework" to protect the poor, minorities, the sick and other disenfranchised people.

The rallies being held Monday are part of the "Higher Ground Moral Day of Action," led by the Rev. William Barber, the architect of the "Moral Monday" protests that begin in April 2013 in North Carolina. He gained national attention when he spoke this year at the Democratic National Convention.

They're asking elected officials and candidates to sign a "Higher Ground Moral Declaration" to support voting rights and other issues. Barber says a true moral agenda critiques how policies treat all of humanity.

Crowds ranged from more than 300 people in Raleigh to a few dozen in Richmond, Virginia.
A female Chinese tourist named Gao Liping has been missing in Thailand since September 11, 2016. [Photo: yangtse.com]

The female Chinese tourist who was reported missing at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand's Chonburi province has been found on Tuesday, according to Thai media outlets.

Local villagers found Gao Liping cleaning clothes by a river, in a county four kilometers away from the zoo where she was last seen last Saturday, says Thai media.

Sources said she looked tired and had no injuries.

Over 200 police and volunteers had joined the search.

An undated photo shows policemen and volunteers were searching for the missing tourist. [Photo: yangtse.com]

Thai authorities said 36-year-old Gao was wearing a white T-shirt, short red pants and a white hat when she went missing.

Gao's tour guide at the zoo earler said Gao was traveling alone and that she had been recently divorced from her husband, appeared to be in low spirits and preferred to stay away from the group she was traveling with.

A screenshot captured by a camera showing the missing Chinese tourist. [Photo: yangtse.com]
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.
S. Korea, U.S. agree to seek further sanctions on DPRK over nuke test

(Xinhua) 18:16, September 13, 2016

Top nuclear envoys of South Korea and the United States agreed on Tuesday to seek the strongest possible sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) over its recent nuclear test.

Sung Kim, special representative for DPRK Policy of the U.S. Department of State, arrived in Seoul on Monday afternoon after holding talks with his Japanese counterpart in Tokyo.

The U.S. official met with his South Korean counterpart Kim Hong-kyun, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs at Seoul's foreign ministry, to discuss how to address the DPRK's fifth nuclear test that was conducted on Sept.9.

Kim said at a joint press conference that the two allies agreed to pursue the strongest possible sanctions and pressure on the DPRK by pressuring Pyongyang in an omni-directional way through UN Security Council measures, unilateral sanctions and international pressure.

Meanwhile, the U.S. official said Washington will make best efforts to take strong actions as rapidly as possible through the United Nations, noting that the U.S., South Korea and Japan will consider additional measures toward the DPRK separately.

He said that if Pyongyang is really ready to talk about denuclearization, it can be discussed through six-party talks, but the U.S. diplomat noted that the DPRK showed no interest in dialogue as it conducted unprecedented provocations.

The six-way talks, which involve DPRK, South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, have been halted since late2008.

The DPRK announced on Sept. 9 that it had successfully conducted an explosion test of nuclear warhead that can be mounted on ballistic missiles.

Seoul's military estimated the fifth test was the most powerful as it produced an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, stronger than 6 kilotons generated during the fourth nuclear detonation in January.
Preventing a blood clot from causing a stroke sounds like a fantastic innovation that could save thousands, but at what cost? Pradaxa was a prescribed medication that promised delivery on this novel idea, but instead caused life-threatening side effects in some patients who used the drug. The active ingredient in the medication is dabigatran, which prevents platelets from sticking together to form a clot in the blood. Patients at risk for stroke, pulmonary embolism, and deep vein thrombosis were prescribed this drug to manage their conditions, but in the end the costs outweighed the benefits for many. Because the drug was designed to prevent coagulation, minor cuts and bruises turned excessive and required emergency medical attention. Some patients were not aware of the potential risks of the medication and filed lawsuits against the company who marketed the drug. The German based company, Boehringer Ingelheim, settled hundreds of lawsuits in just the first couple of years of distribution. It is important to be aware of the risks and rewards of anything a person consumes, but even more so with medications. Three reasons why patients should practice medication awareness are listed below.

Its your life on the line. Some prescriptive, and over the counter, medications have such severe side effects that death may be a consequence of using them. It is critical to discuss with your doctor the potential risks of any medication they recommend and the odds of the risk occurring to you specifically before you experience irreversible damage to your body and health. It is also important to know what to abstain from and what to warn doctors about while on certain medications. For example, patients on Pradaxa may need to stop their dosing schedule before having surgery or dental work.

Allergic reactions. Some medications can cause allergic reactions in a person; but without researching the drug first, these side effects can be a little too late for someone. Any sign of swelling in the face or throat, difficulty breathing, pain or tight feeling in the chest, or hives should result in an immediate call to your doctor and urgent medical attention.

Its a relatively newer drug. Even though drugs undergo extensive research and experimentation before public exposure, not everything can be tested for in a lab. Some people have no reactions to a drug, where others develop life-threatening symptoms. Everybody works differently, and some side effects are unknown until a variety of patients have tried a drug. Once a pattern has been identified, the drug may be recalled until a solution is found. If any of your medications have been recalled, talk to your doctor right away about why it was recalled and find a replacement option if necessary. Some medications are recalled for minor issues such as packaging information or difficult administration techniques, but it is still imperative to ask how a recall will affect you.

RecallGuide.org is a website designed to help educate patients on side effects, warnings, recalls, and pending lawsuits of certain drugs. Visit them today to learn more about the medications you are currently taking and the risks associated.
The mainstream Western media is, almost by definition, the last place to consult for honest reporting of Western crimes. Consider the appalling case of Yemen which is consumed by war and an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.

Since March 2015, a coalition of Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia, and supported by the US, Britain and France, has been dropping bombs on neighbouring Yemen. The scale of the bombing is indicated in a recent article by Felicity Arbuthnot  in one year, 330,000 homes, 648 mosques, 630 schools and institutes, and 250 health facilities were destroyed or damaged. The stated aim of Saudi Arabias devastating assault on Yemen is to reinstate the Yemeni president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and to hold back Houthi rebels who are allied with the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudis assert that the Houthis, who control Yemens capital, Sanaa, are proxies for Iran: always a convenient propaganda claim to elicit Western backing and justify intervention.

Philip Hammond, who was UK defence secretary when the Saudi bombing began in 2015, promised:

Well support the Saudis in every practical way short of engaging in combat.

The British government has been true to its word; in this respect at least. Campaign Against Arms Trade says that UK sales to Saudi Arabia since the start of the attacks on Yemen include 2.2 billion of aircraft, helicopters and drones, 1.1 billion of missiles, bombs and grenades, and nearly half a million pounds of armoured vehicles and tanks. Just days ago, it was revealed that Britain is now the second biggest dealer of arms in the world. Is there any clearer sign of the corrupt nature of UK foreign policy?

Perhaps there is. Last month, Oxfam reported that in excess of 21 million people in Yemen, out of a total population of around 27 million, are in need of humanitarian aid, more than in any other country. Over 6,000 people have been killed, more than 3 million displaced and more than 14 million are suffering hunger and malnutrition.

Amnesty International reports that British-made cluster bombs have been used in deadly attacks on civilians. Children are among those who have been killed and maimed. The human rights organisation says that the UK should stop all arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Amnesty has also called for Saudi Arabia to be dropped from the United Nations Human Rights Council because of gross and systematic violations of human rights, both at home and abroad.

They Call It Natural Death. But Its Not.

In a two-part piece for BBC Newsnight last year, Gabriel Gatehouse commendably reported from Yemen on the plight of civilians there, including the Saudi targeting of civilian infrastructure. The BBC journalist also alluded to the British dimension in which the Saudi coalitions efforts are supported by Britain and the United States, with British-supplied weaponry being used by the Saudis. Although a welcome deviation from the norm, his criticism of UK foreign policy was muted and not subsequently maintained by BBC News, as far as we could see (with limited recent exceptions as we will discuss later).

Peter Oborne is a rare example of a Western journalist reporting from Yemen, also pointing unequivocally to British complicity in the countrys nightmare. Together with his colleague Nawal Al-Maghafi, Oborne notes in a recent article that:

We discovered indisputable evidence that the coalition, backed by the UK as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is targeting Yemeni civilians in blatant breach of the rules of war.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia has imposed a brutal blockade on Yemen preventing vital commodities from getting into the country. One doctor at the Republic teaching hospital in Sanaa told Oborne:

We are unable to get medical supplies. Anaesthetics. Medicines for kidneys. There are babies dying in incubators because we cant get supplies to treat them.

The doctor estimated that 25 people were dying every day at the Republic hospital because of the blockade. He continued:

They call it natural death. But its not. If we had the medicines they wouldnt be dead. I consider them killed as if they were killed by an air strike, because if we had the medicines they would still be alive.

This is shocking enough. But Oborne adds that there is:

powerful evidence that the Saudi-led coalition has deliberately targeted hospitals across the country. Four MSF [Medecins Sans Frontieres] hospitals had been hit by Saudi air strikes prior to the organisations withdrawal from the country, even though MSF were careful to give the Saudi authorities their GPS positions.

Oborne, who resigned as political commentator from the Telegraph last year, places Western complicity in Yemens nightmare at the front and centre of his reporting. He points out that Britain has continued to sell arms to Saudi Arabia and its partners, despite copious evidence of breaches of international humanitarian law presented by human rights organisations.

This is an echo of Britains shameful role in arming Indonesia while it crushed tiny independence-seeking East Timor, killing around 200,000 people  about one-third of its population. Noam Chomsky described it as a slaughter of near-genocidal levels. He noted that:

By 1998, Britain had become the leading supplier of arms to Indonesiaover the strong protests of Amnesty International, Indonesian dissidents, and Timorese victims. Arms sales are reported to make up at least a fifth of Britains exports to Indonesia (estimated at one billion pounds), led by British Aerospace. (Noam Chomsky, Rogue States, Pluto Books, 2000, p. 232)

In the present case of Yemen, the British Foreign Office has repeatedly denied that Saudi Arabia had broken humanitarian law, asserting until a couple of months ago that the FOs own assessment had cleared the Saudis of any wrong-doing. As Oborne notes, however, on July 21 this year, the last day of parliament before the long summer recess:

the British government was forced to admit that it had repeatedly misled parliament over the war in Yemen.

It turns out that no such assessment had taken place; a grudging and potentially damaging admission that ministers had clearly hoped to slip out quietly without proper scrutiny. Oborne describes it as a dark moment of official embarrassment. You have to dig deep in the BBC News website to find scant mention of this shameful episode.

Moreover, Britain has supported the UN Security Council resolution backing a Saudi blockade, and the UK has also provided the Saudis with intelligence and logistical support.

Perhaps most crucially of all, Britain and the United States have provided Saudi Arabia with diplomatic cover. Last year, Britain and the United States helped to block a Dutch initiative at the UN Human Rights Council for an independent investigation into violations of international humanitarian law.

In a powerful accompanying filmed report on the destruction of Yemens capital Sanaa, Oborne concludes:

This city of old Sanaa is as extraordinary, as priceless, as unique as any of the masterpieces of Western civilisation  like Florence or Venice. Just imagine the outcry if bombs were falling on Florence or Venice. But because this is old Sanaa, in forgotten Yemen, nobody cares a damn.

And least of all Britains new Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, who callously waved away copious evidence of Saudi breaches of international humanitarian law. The Guardians diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour writes of Johnsons assertion that the Saudis are not in clear breach of humanitarian law:

His judgment is based largely on a Saudi-led inquiry into eight controversial incidents, including the bombing of hospitals.

To his credit, Wintour notes that Johnson was defending the credibility of a Saudi-led inquiry exonerating Saudi targeting. Comment seems superfluous. He then adds Johnsons own unwittingly self-damning statement:

They [the Saudis] have the best insight into their own procedures and will be able to conduct the most thorough and conclusive investigations. It will also allow the coalition forces to work out what went wrong and apply the lessons learned in the best possible way. This is the standard we set ourselves and our allies.

Indeed, this is the same standard that the world saw with horror last year when the US investigated, and largely exonerated itself, over its dreadful bombing of an MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

Boris Johnson is sweeping aside compelling evidence of serious breaches of international law in a cynical move to maintain lucrative UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and to protect close strategic ties with a brutal kingdom of state beheaders and torturers. All this belies his carefully-crafted media image as an amiably bumbling and largely harmless P.G. Wodehouse-like character. In reality, he is a dangerous, extreme right-wing politician with too much power. Sadly, even the often admirable Peter Obornes judgement went awry on his return from Yemen when he appealed to Johnson to act boldly to reset Riyadh [i.e. Saudi Arabia] relations:

Boris Johnson has the potential to be one of the great British foreign secretaries of the modern era.

Sadly, this line by Oborne does not appear to be satire.

Meanwhile, on September 5, the foreign office minister, Tobias Ellwood, addressed the Commons after being requested to do so by the Speaker, John Bercow, because of previously misleading statements on Yemen given by ministers to parliament. Wintour claims in his Guardian report that Ellwood apologised for these inaccurate answers. But the quoted wording is far from a proper apology. Indeed, the foreign minister obfuscated further in support of Saudi Arabia. Ellwood:

said it was not for the UK government to conclude whether individual bombing incidents by the Saudis represented breaches of international humanitarian law (IHL), but instead to take an overall view of the approach and attitude by Saudi Arabia to international humanitarian law.

In effect, the UK would continue to rely on Saudi Arabias assessments on whether the latter had breached international humanitarian law. Worse, while Yemenis continued to die under US/UK-supported bombing, Ellwood went on to support the Saudis:

Defending the Saudi response to criticisms of its campaign, Ellwood said: It was new territory for Saudi Arabia and a conservative nation was not used to such exposure.

This was sophistry of the worst order. New territory entails a murderous bombing campaign and a crippling blockade. And describing Saudi Arabia  a brutal and repressive regime which ranks amongst the worlds worst offenders of human rights  as merely a conservative nation, speaks volumes about the mental and ethical contortions required to defend British foreign policy.

But there is even more to say about the UKs shameful complicity in Yemens destruction. And, from what we have seen so far, it has had zero coverage in the mainstream media.

Media Silence Over UK Role In Targeted Killing

Last week, the online investigative journal The Intercept published an in-depth piece on revelations about spying based on top-secret documents provided to them by Edward Snowden, the US National Security Agency whistle-blower. Titled Inside Menwith Hill. The NSAs British Base at the Heart of U.S. Targeted Killing, the article was written by Ryan Gallagher, a UK-based journalist specialising in government surveillance, technology and civil liberties.

The RAF Menwith Hill base lies a few miles from Harrogate in North Yorkshire and is the largest electronic monitoring station in the world. As Gallagher notes: it is a vital part of the NSAs sprawling global surveillance network. Consequently, its activities are shrouded in secrecy, despite the best efforts of human rights groups and a few British politicians demanding greater transparency. These efforts have been continually rebuffed by the UK government citing a longstanding policy not to discuss matters related to national security.

Now, however, the NSA files released by Snowden:

reveal for the first time how the NSA has used the British base to aid a significant number of capture-kill operations across the Middle East and North Africa, fueled by powerful eavesdropping technology that can harvest data from more than 300 million emails and phone calls a day.

Over the past decade, advanced surveillance programmes at Menwith Hill have located suspected terrorists accessing the internet in remote parts of the world and provided support for conventional British and American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, adds Gallagher, they have also aided covert missions in countries where the U.S. has not declared war, including Yemen. These disclosures raise new questions about the extent of British complicity in U.S. drone strikes and other so-called targeted killing missions, which may in some cases have violated international laws or constituted war crimes.

Kat Craig, legal director of London-based human rights group Reprieve, told Gallagher that Snowdens revelations are:

yet another example of the unacceptable level of secrecy that surrounds U.K. involvement in the U.S. targeted killing program. It is now imperative that the prime minister comes clean about U.K. involvement in targeted killing.

Gallagher describes a number of surveillance programmes, including one called GHOSTWOLF used to monitor terrorist activity in internet cafes in the Middle East. This information is being used to capture or eliminate key nodes in terrorist networks.

As Gallagher observes:

GHOSTWOLF ties Menwith Hill to lethal operations in Yemen, providing the first documentary evidence that directly implicates the U.K. in covert actions in the country. Menwith Hills previously undisclosed role aiding the so-called targeted killing of terror suspects highlights the extent of the British governments apparent complicity in controversial U.S. attacks  and raises questions about the legality of the secret operations carried out from the base.

The British government has consistently asserted that operations at Menwith have always been, and continue to be carried out with its knowledge and consent. In the context of the commission of war crimes, this is a damning admission.

Gallagher expands:

For several years, British human rights campaigners and lawmakers have been pressuring the government to provide information about whether it has had any role aiding U.S. targeted killing operations, yet they have been met with silence. In particular, there has been an attempt to establish whether the U.K. has aided U.S. drone bombings outside of declared war zones  in countries including Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia  which have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and are in some cases considered by United Nations officials to possibly constitute war crimes and violations of international law.

These new, deeply damaging revelations by Snowden appear to have been completely blanked by the mainstream media. Searches of the Lexis-Nexis newspaper database yield zero hits on Snowdens Menwith revelations, and there appears to have been nothing published on the BBC News website. Indeed, this dearth of coverage by UK media, including BBC News, had been anticipated by US investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald, who previously worked with Snowden.

Not unusually, one has to go to media such as RT or PressTV to find any coverage; another reason why these outlets are so often bitterly denigrated as propaganda operations by corporate journalists who havent done their job of holding Western power to account.

The Post-Brexit, $2 Trillion Saudi Carrot

On September 7, BBC Newsnight revealed how a draft report by MPs on the influential committee on arms export control was being watered down to remove the call for a suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia (clip available here). A statement in the draft report had said:

The weight of evidence of violations of international humanitarian law by the Saudi-led coalition is now so great, that it is very difficult to continue to support Saudi Arabia.

But a number of pro-defence MPs had then tabled more than 130 amendments, including a move to remove the call to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The Guardian noted cautiously that this attempt:

underlines the sensitivity of the issue of UK-Saudi relations at Westminster, the importance of the Gulf to the UK defence industry and the concern that Britain, for a variety of security reasons, is too ready to take Saudi assurances about how it is conducting a difficult civil war in Yemen.

That is putting it all too mildly; a point to which we return below.

The following evening (September 8), Tory MP Crispin Blunt refused to respond when pressed by Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark about reportedly walking out of the committee meeting in order to stall a vote. It appears that Blunt had feared his amendments were about to be rejected, and by walking out of the meeting the quorum requirement would fail and no valid vote could take place.

But the sickness of government priorities at the intersection of foreign policy and economic imperatives was really highlighted when the Saudi foreign minister declared last week that it was in Britains interest to continue supporting Saudi Arabia in its murderous assault on Yemen. Or, as the neocon Telegraph defence editor Con Coughlin put it:

to continue supporting the Saudis in the battle to prevent Yemen falling into the hands of Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, then dangled a carrot in front of British ministers noses.

Apart from maintaining traditional links on military and intelligence cooperation, Mr Jubeir also said post-Brexit Britain could look forward to forging new trade links with the kingdom as Saudi Arabia embarks on its ambitious plan to restructure its economy under a plan called Saudi Vision 2030. We are looking at more than $2 trillion worth of investment opportunities over the next decade, and this will take the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Britain to an entirely new level post-Brexit.

Sometimes, you have to go to the extreme right-wing press to have the crude realpolitik spelled out so clearly.

Saudi pressure is considerable and difficult to resist. In June, it was reported that even the UN succumbed when it removed Saudi Arabia from a blacklist of countries responsible for child casualties in conflicts around the globe. Saudi Arabia had been placed on the list for killing and maiming children in Yemen bombing attacks. The country, along with other Arab and Muslim countries, had reportedly threatened to withdraw funding from vital UN humanitarian programmes. One anonymous diplomat spoke of bullying, threats, pressure, and summed it up as real blackmail.

The reports on Yemen cited in this media alert from the Guardian and BBC News show the permissible limits of occasional  very occasional  challenges to state power. What is routinely missing, and what would be prominent in coverage of British foreign policy in honest news media, has never been better highlighted than by historian Mark Curtis. For many years, he has extensively analysed formerly secret government records detailing internal discussions about state policies and priorities. In his book, Web of Deceit, which lays out Britains real role in the world, Curtis concludes that the primary function of the British state:

virtually its raison detre for several centuries  is to aid British companies in getting their hands on other countries resources. (Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit, 2003, Vintage, p. 210)

To pursue such state policies means initiating war, military interventions, threats, bullying, and other aggressive actions, usually in support of the United States and/or Nato. This global imperialism is dressed up in propaganda garb as countering terrorism, improving world security, working with our allies and similar pieties propagated by the mainstream media. Curtis lays particular responsibility for such propaganda at the door of the liberal media, notably the Guardian and BBC News:

The liberal intelligentsia in Britain is in my view guilty of helping to weave a collective web of deceit. To read many mainstream commentators writings on Britains role in the world is to enter a surreal, Kafkaesque world where the reality is often the direct opposite of what is contended and where the startling assumptions are frighteningly supportive of state power. (Ibid., p. 4)

This surreal, Kafkaesque world  in which Britain shares responsibility for appalling violence, while proclaiming its supposed desire for peace and security  will continue for as long as we do not have an honest media that seriously and consistently challenges brutal state power.

DC
by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, September 12, 2016

According to a Nielsen study covering the rise of the US Hispanic population, Hispanics are a rapidly growing influence in the US. The Hispanic population is expected to reach almost one-quarter (24%) of the total US population by 2040, and the study looks into the media habits of this all-important group, says the report.

Continuing, the report says that Hispanic power and influence is surging, as 50% of recent U.S. population growth has come from Hispanics and the U.S. Latino population, which is expected to double within the next two generations. And todays significantly-younger, increasingly U.S. born, dynamic Hispanic population is shaping the American mainstream by maintaining strong ties to its cultures of origin, developing an ambicultural personality that is at once entirely American and entirely of ones culture of origin, says the report.

Todays younger generations of Hispanics are predominantly bilingual and, with each new generation, more English dominant, continues the report. Currently, 40.6 million Hispanics over the age of five speak English well, and 96% of Hispanics under 18 are either bilingual or English dominant. In total, 55% of Hispanics are bilingual, while 27% are English dominant and 19% are Spanish dominant.

Percent of Hispanics in U.S. by Age & Language Preference Age Language Spanish Dominant Bilingual English Dominant Under 18 4% 58% 37% 18-34 14 58 28 35-54 28 51 20  55 35 46 18 Source: Nielsen, September 2016

Where Hispanics over-index significantly is in online radio, says Marketing Charts in a separate review. In the analysis of 18-34-year-olds, the report shows that Hispanics are: 25% more likely than non-Hispanic whites to have listened to internet radio in the past 30 days; 42% most likely to have listened to a local radio station online in the past 30 days; and 26^ more likely to have listened to any radio online in the prior 30 days.

Those trends are repeated among non-Millennials, with Hispanics over-indexing their non-Hispanic white counterparts to an even greater degree in their past-30 day use of internet radio (62% more likely), local radio stations online (62% more likely) or any radio online (54% more likely).

Marketers are taking notice and crafting dual-language communications that speak to both the American spirit and the Latino soul, says the report. To better understand these young and vibrant consumers, this report on the Latino consumer examines the latest trends in Hispanic demographics, consumption and media behaviors.

Media Reach, Hispanics vs. Non-Hispanic Whites (September 2016) Hispanics 18-34 Hispanics  35 Media Used Reach % Index Reach % Index Broadcast Any, past 7 days 82% 114 91% 102 Any, TV websites 37 118 25 103 Any cable viewing 77 101 79 93 Radio Any, past 7 days 92 100 91 101 Web radio, past 30 days 34 125 19 162 Local station, online, 30 days 26 142 17 162 Any online, any device, 30 days 42 126 25 154 Newspaper Print or web, past 30 days 44 84 48 73 Mobile, 30 days 29 85 18 89 Any website, 7 days 30 89 21 83 Local news online, 30 days 28 84 21 76 Source: Nielsen, September 2016

With a record number of Hispanic-Americans eligible to vote this year, its application in politics is obvious, concludes the report. But the same data is equally relevant to marketing and advertising campaigns in any sphere, as a fundamental message of this report concerns the sheer size of the Hispanic population as a percentage of all Americans.

For additional information from Nielsen, please visit here.
by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, September 12, 2016

The sensors of the Internet of Things will help marketers determine where people are so they can determine the best time and location for any appropriate messaging.

Beacons, which have been being installed in retail stores in earnest during the last year or so, can help brands determine when shoppers are near their products. They then can either interact with those shoppers or decide to passively capture traffic activity and patterns around them.

Before a consumer gets to the store, there also are opportunities to interact via various location technologies, such as Wi-Fi and geofences.

And then theres connected lighting.

Continuing its push into IoT activities, Verizon just agreed to purchase Sensity Systems, a California company that specializes in connected LED lighting found as a component of smart city installations.

From a market standpoint, the lighting could be a significant tracking device for retail.

Sensity Systems products are promoted as having the ability to track:

Conversion  Of people walking by, how many went into the store

Bounce  The number of those who went into a store and came out quickly

Return rate  The number of people who return to a store

Dwell time  The length of time people spend in a store

Some of these tracking capabilities have been available through other technologies but not via lighting.

The smart lights are sensor-equipped, solid state smart devices, each with its own unique IP address.

Philips Lighting recently added connected lights to a major retailer in France. When a shopper opens a phone, the light hitting the phone can identify the location of the person to within inches.

Verizon already had a collection of connected-intelligent things that involve parking lighting, traffic management and security, all generally aimed at aiding making cities smart.

Adding the LED lighting technology of Sensity to Verizons portfolio may provide a boost for smart cities.

But location data may be the crown jewel here.

Depending on if and how much (or in what way) Verizon will make any of that consumer location data available to marketers could add another critical link in the IoT consumer value chain.
by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, September 12, 2016

If youre ever walking around New York City and happen to see a guy on a bike with five cameras attached to a handlebar extension, that might be Rich Collier. I cant say for sure because its New York. Maybe theres someone else doing that, too.

But probably not. For a few years now, Collier has been spending his days pedaling around the city, stopping at random places to enlist pedestrians for an impromptu quiz show mainly about New York-centric subjects.

Those short video pieces end up as little drop-ins called Roll Play on Create, the public television channel, on Time Warner cable, and in a different form, on Fox Business Network. A few are on Vimeo, and even fewer still on YouTube.

I have a budget of nothing, Collier says. I am entirely a one-man band. But Im a glimpse of the future. As the technology gets better, Im confident other people will be doing this kind of thing.

advertisement advertisement

Well, this kind of thing covers a lot of ground. But it would be nice it that were true.

Collier pedals a 20-year-old Gary Fisher bicycle. On vertical shafts attached to the handlebars, he has two YI Action cams, and a couple DSLRs. A GoPro is attached to his cap. When he talks to passersby, they wear a GoPro too, to get video of Collier. The bike also has lighting.

He edits all of that using a Final Cut Pro 7, among other gear, and this is a how Collier separates from you or me. Hes had a long career as a producer at ABC, NBC, Lifetime, FX, VH1 and MTV. Prior to Roll Play, he won local Emmys for producing and hosting Subway Q&A for the short-lived Metro channel in New York.

Surprisingly, there isn't a lot of really locally-flavored video online, regardless of what locale youre talking about. Marketing consultants often suggest real estate companies create hyperlocal sites. A story on a Website called Inman.com makes it sound like the easiest thing in the world. It isnt.

Most of the video sites seem to be news oriented, or tourism and marketing based, not just content that focuses on locals just being locals, like Roll Play. Collier gives clues to New York themed songs and asks people to guess the artist, or he asks them to name famous landmarks. Obviously, some of this works better in big cities like New York than it would if some traveling bicyclist quizzed pedestrians about the most famous songs about Omaha. Hed have to do a lot of pedaling to find a winner.

But not every question is about New York. Once, Collier told contestants he would tell them a name, and theyd have to decide if that was a Pokemon character, a rapper or an infomercial product. (The names: TumTum, Fushigi and Can-U. I know the answers and Im not telling.)

Winners get a Roll Play t-shirt; He applies shirt's "Roll Play" graphic in his apartment. Im my own sweatshop.

Collier wants to syndicate the show. He resists going deep into YouTube, which he thinks is too youth-oriented for him to succeed. Im out of my cavity prone years, he says. He took my suggestion to look into it, but not until he purposely mangled his pronounciation of "PewDiePie."

For now, hes still supplying those few outlets, and quizzing proud New Yorkers about their buildings, politicians, monuments and artists. Some of the contestants know their stuff. Some dont. On the streets of New York, he says its pride versus knowledge.

The most passionate he says, are from Brooklyn. The smartest? He says, I would like to diplomatically say that each borough is, um, equally informed.

pj@mediapost.com
The Washington Post, Tuesday, September 13, 2016 12:27 PM

Tim Kaine made his radio advertising debut in a Spanish-language ad. The ad is airing in Florida, Ohio and Nevada, and talks about the values he assimilated working with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras. Kaine frequently breaks into Spanish on the campaign trail. He made history in 2013 when he delivered an entire speech about immigration on the Senate floor in Spanish.

Read the whole story at The Washington Post 
(Xinhua) 20:27, September 13, 2016

China has condemned Japan's weapon sales to India as a "shameless move."

According to media report, the Japanese Government is promoting the sale of weapons worth 1.6 billion U.S. dollars to India. Japan will lower the prices as much as possible in exchange for strengthened cooperation in defense and security and to encourage India to become more involved on the South China Sea issue.

Hua Chunying, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Tuesday that China has no objection to normal defense cooperation, but it would be a "shameless move" if somebody uses this for ulterior motives.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, September 13, 2016

In a blow to Yelp, a judge has refused to throw out a class-action alleging that the company wrongly uploaded iPhone users' address books.

U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar in the Northern District of California ruled late last week that Yelp wasn't entitled to summary judgment in the 4-year-old privacy dispute because the case presents unresolved factual questions.

The battle stems from reports in 2012 of surreptitious address-book uploads. Initially, developers accused mobile social networks Path and Hipster of accessing and storing users' address books without their knowledge. The allegations against Path resulted in charges by the Federal Trade Commission, which the company settled by agreeing to create a comprehensive privacy policy.

advertisement advertisement

Soon after reports about Path and Hipster surfaced, other mobile companies -- including Twitter and Yelp -- were accused of wrongly uploading users' address books. Unlike Path, those other developers reportedly asked people for permission to access their address books, in order to help them connect with friends who also used the service. But Yelp and the other developers allegedly didn't specify that they would keep the data in their servers

iPhone user Marc Opperman, and other consumers, sued Apple and more than a dozen developers over the allegations. The consumers argued that address-book uploads amount to "intrusion upon seclusion," which is actionable in California.

Some of the developers recently settled the lawsuits, according to court records. But others including Foursquare, Instagram, Kik, Twitter and Yelp are still fighting the case.

The ruling issued by Tigar late last week deals only with Yelp.

The review company had argued that the consumers shouldn't be able to proceed because they agreed to allow the company to access their contacts. But the consumers successfully countered that they only allowed Yelp to "access" or "look at" their contacts, and not to "upload" the data.

Tigar ruled that the consumers successfully raised questions about the scope of their consent. "There is a material factual dispute as to whether Yelp's in-app user prompt obtained effective consent to upload the address book data to its servers," he wrote in a ruling issued late last week.

Tigar added that Yelp didn't "explicitly disclose" that it would upload the address books. "The text of the disclosure during the class period simply told users that the feature would [f]ind friends on Yelp using your Contacts or look at your contacts to find friends," Tigar wrote. "The Plaintiffs have produced evidence suggesting that, based on these disclosures, they expected a matching process that would take place locally on their phone, not on Yelps servers."

The judge previously allowed the consumers to proceed as a class against Apple. The device manufacturer recently asked an appellate court for permission to appeal that ruling.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, September 13, 2016



Dentsu Aegis Network has acquired Brazilian consulting firm Cosin Consulting, the companies have confirmed. Terms werent disclosed.

DAN said that the firm, based in Sao Paulo with about 200 staffers, would become part of Isobar Brazil Group and is being re-branded Cosin-Linked by Isobar.

Consultants and agencies are increasingly getting into each others businesses. The acquisition is designed to bolster Isobars growing business transformation and strategic consulting service offering across the Americas.

Cosin Consulting was established in 2005 by Co-Founders Arnaldo Cosin and his brother Alessandro Cosin, who previously had worked at major consulting companies Accenture, IBM and CapGemini. Post-acquisition, Alessandro Cosin will take on the role of CEO of Cosin -Linked by Isobar, while Arnaldo Cosin will assume a new advisory position.

advertisement advertisement

Cosin Consultings services include Business Consulting, IT Consulting and Project Management. Clients include Kroton Educational, Itau, GPA, AB Inbev, Walmart, Bradesco and O Boticario Group.

With the addition of Cosin Consulting, Dentsu Aegis Network Brazil is able to work with clients to both redesign their business model and brand development, as well as deliver the right strategy, implementation and execution to excel in todays omnichannel world, stated Abel Reis, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Brazil.
A recent study, the largest of its type, looks set to unhinge a commonly held linguistic theory. According to the results, the sounds of the words we use are much less random than previously thought. Share on Pinterest A deep analysis of language busts age-old linguistic theory. For more than a century, linguists have believed that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is arbitrary. Of course, the sounds of onomatopoeic words, such as bang and crash have a match between their meaning and their sound. But for other words, like nose, fish, he, and walk, there is not considered to be any link between the sound of the word when spoken and its meaning. A study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents evidence that punches a hole in this long-held belief. The investigation, carried out at Cornells Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, found a strong statistical relationship between certain basic concepts and the sound of the words used to describe them.

Sound and meaning Over the last 20 years, linguists have seen hints that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning might not be entirely arbitrary. For instance, earlier studies showed that words for smaller objects are more likely to contain high-pitched sounds. However, previous findings in this field have been hindered by only studying small groups of words across a limited selection of languages. In contrast, this most recent, large-scale study brings these hints into sharper focus. As the study author says: People havent been able to show whether sound symbolism is really something more pervasive throughout languages all over the world. And this is the first time anyone has been able to show that at such a scale. Morten H. Christiansen, professor of psychology Language groups are known to share common roots, for instance, the Indo-European group of languages . This group is thought to have stemmed from a theoretical language  Proto-Indo-European  which spread from Eastern Europe around 3,500 BC, eventually reaching multiple continents. Proto-Indo-European has left its trace in more than 400 modern languages including English, Portuguese, Hindi, Bengali, and Russian. However, this study runs deeper than the origins of any one family of languages. In total, the analysis covered 85 percent of all linguistic lineages. The investigators looked at the sounds of 40-100 basic vocabulary words across 62 percent of the worlds 6,000 current languages. For the analysis, the team focused on a variety of words, including pronouns (me, he, she, herself), body parts, properties (full, small), verbs, and nouns (fish, star).

Language similarities across the world To the investigators surprise, words for parts of the body shared particularly strong similarities across disparate languages. For instance, the word nose is statistically more likely to use the sounds neh or oo. Similarly, the word tongue is likely to include the l sound, as in llengua in Catalan, keel in Estonian, nyelv in Hungarian, and langue in French. These deep statistical similarities did not stop at body parts. For instance, the word for leaf was likely to include the sounds b, p, and l. Sand more commonly includes the sound s, and the words red and round are more likely to use the r sound. The researchers did not just investigate the sounds used in certain words, they also looked at sounds that were less likely to be included. As an example, words for I  as in I like  are less likely to use the sounds u, p, b, t, s, r and l than would be expected by chance. Similarly, the word you is unlikely to include u, o, p, t, d, q, s, r and l sounds. These sound symbolic patterns show up again and again across the world, independent of the geographical dispersal of humans and independent of language lineage. There does seem to be something about the human condition that leads to these patterns. We dont know what it is, but we know its there. Prof. Morten H. Christiansen Not every word in every language will fit these rules, but, as Prof. Christiansen explains, the relationship is much stronger than wed expect by chance.
A new study indicates that adolescent females with acute leukemia have low rates of pregnancy screening prior to receiving chemotherapy that can cause birth defects. The findings are published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

Although many chemotherapy drugs can cause birth defects, there are no standardized guidelines for pregnancy screening in adolescent female cancer patients and little is known about how often they are screened prior to treatment. To investigate, a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia examined pregnancy screening patterns among adolescents with acute leukemia compared with adolescents with an emergency room (ER) visit who received computed tomography scans of the abdomen or pelvis. (In emergency medicine, pregnancy screening protocols exist for adolescents prior to receiving radiation due to known teratogenic risks of radiation.)

The analysis included acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and ER admissions in hospitals across the United States affiliated with the Pediatric Health Information System from 1999 to 2011. Among 35,650 patient admissions of females aged 10 to 18 years with newly diagnosed leukemia or ER admissions with scans of the abdomen or pelvis, the proportion of visits with an appropriately timed pregnancy test was 35 percent, 64 percent, and 58 percent in the ALL, AML, and ER groups, respectively. Patients with ALL were 29 percent less likely to have a pregnancy test compared with the ER patients, but there was no significant difference between the AML and ER groups. There was substantial variation in pregnancy screening patterns among different hospitals.

"We found that adolescent girls are not adequately screened for pregnancy prior to receiving chemotherapy or CT scans that could harm a developing fetus. Adolescents with ALL, the most common childhood cancer, had the lowest rates of pregnancy screening of the patients we studied," said lead author Pooja Rao, MD, MSCE, who is currently at Penn State Health's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. "Since nearly all chemotherapy agents used for childhood/adolescent acute leukemia can cause potential harm to a developing fetus, our findings indicate a need for standardized pregnancy screening practices for adolescent patients being treated for cancer."

Dr. Rao also noted that the low rates of pregnancy screening observed in this study may indicate a reluctance on the part of pediatric oncologists to discuss sexual health practices with adolescent patients. "While sexual health discussions and education may traditionally be thought to be the responsibility of the patient's primary care provider, adolescents with cancer will often see their oncologist frequently over the course of their cancer treatment, and afterwards," she said. "Oncologists therefore are well-positioned to initiate discussions about sexual health with their patients."

September is Blood Cancer Awareness and Childhood Cancer Awareness month.
A new study on euthanasia trends in Belgium, which shows an increase in reported cases since legislation was introduced, provides lessons for countries that have legalized assisted dying. The research is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

In 2002, Belgium legalized the intentional ending of life by a physician at the patient's explicit request. The government introduced safeguards to protect patients, including a multidisciplinary review panel - the Belgian Federal Control and Evaluation Committee for Euthanasia - to ensure that each procedure was performed according to legal guidelines.

The Belgian researchers found that the number of officially reported euthanasia cases in Belgium increased from 235 in 2003 to 1807 in 2013 across all age groups and in all settings (home or care facility). They also noted an increase among people with conditions other than cancer and in people over age 80, a finding that was rare in the first few years after legalization. The highest incidence was consistently found among people dying with cancer, those younger than 80 years of age and those dying at home. There were also increases in euthanasia among people without terminal disease and those with psychiatric disorders, but their numbers remain relatively small.

"These findings might suggest an increase in the number of requests from these groups as they increasingly became aware of the legal possibility to request euthanasia. These findings might also reflect a decrease in reluctance to provide euthanasia within these groups as physicians became more experienced and the wider society became more familiar with these types of cases," writes Prof. Kenneth Chambaere, End-of-Life Care Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University, Brussels, Belgium, with coauthors.

Palliative care specialists were also consulted increasingly in the euthanasia procedure, though this is not a legal requirement.

"The increase in euthanasia among cases with noncancer diagnoses and nonterminal diseases emphasizes the importance of thorough evaluation and monitoring of the practice, since these situations are often more complex and may include psychiatric disorders and 'tiredness of life'."

"Given differences in developments between jurisdictions and even within Belgium, it is clear that societal and cultural contexts play a key role in how euthanasia practice has been adopted after legalization," the authors conclude.

Article: Euthanasia in Belgium: trends in reported cases between 2003 and 2013, Sigrid Dierickx MSc, Luc Deliens PhD, Joachim Cohen PhD, Kenneth Chambaere PhD, CMAJ, doi: 10.1503/cmaj.160202, published 12 September 2016.
It's been known that the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae secretes small molecules called siderophores that enable it to acquire iron from a host and fuel its spread. Now, Michigan researchers have found that these molecules play additional roles in helping the organism invade. Their report is published in mBio, an online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

In mice infected with K. pneumoniae, the investigators found, siderophores caused the animals to turn on proteins that increase inflammation and activated a master protein called HIF-1 alpha that paved the way for bacteria to spread from the lungs to the spleen. HIF-1 alpha controls the ability of substances to pass through blood vessels and is involved in the immune response.

"We've known for a long time that siderophores are critical for bacteria to cause infection, because they steal iron from the host to grow," said senior study author Michael Bachman, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of clinical pathology and associate director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "This study sheds some light on the consequences of that. When the bacterium steals this iron, what's likely happening is the host cells are becoming stressed and are inducing inflammation and cell signaling pathways that actually worsen the infection by allowing the bacteria to escape from the lungs to the spleen."

K. pneumoniae can cause a wide range of infections, including pneumonia, bacteremia, wound or surgical site infections and urinary tract infections. Klebsiella are estimated to be the third most common cause of hospital-acquired infections in the United States, Bachman said. The bacterium is rapidly becoming resistant to all known antibiotics, therefore becoming more difficult to treat. Resistant forms are considered an urgent threat to public health by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the study, Bachman and colleagues infected mice with either a strain of K. pneumoniae that makes three siderophores called enterobactin (Ent), salmochelin (Sal) and yersiniabactin (Ybt), or a mutant form of the bacterium that could not produce siderophores. Mice infected with the siderophore-producing strain had about 100 times the number of bacteria in their lungs as those infected with the mutant bacterium; they also had more bacteria invading from the lung to the spleen and they activated proteins involved in inflammation.

"We had assumed that siderophores simply helped the bacteria grow more, triggering more inflammation and spread," Bachman said. "Now we know siderophores can trigger these effects directly."

Additional laboratory experiments in mice revealed that all three siderophores were required for the most bacterial dissemination to the spleen; that siderophores secreted by K. pneumoniae stabilized HIF-1 alpha; and that HIF-1 alpha in the cells lining the lungs is required for the bacteria to spread to the spleen. Mice that produced HIF-1 alpha and were infected with K. pneumoniae had more bacterial invasion to the spleen than mice that did not produce HIF-1 alpha and were similarly infected.

"These results indicate that bacterial siderophores directly alter the host response to pneumonia in addition to providing iron for bacterial growth," Bachman said. "Therapies that disrupt production of siderophores could provide a two-pronged attack against K. pneumoniae infection by preventing bacterial growth and preventing bacterial dissemination to the blood."

The study was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Canada Discovery Grant.




BLAINVILLE, QC , Sept. 13, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Duchesnay Inc. proudly announced today that it has entered into a license and supply agreement with Medinova AG, a Swiss pharmaceutical company. The agreement grants Duchesnay exclusive Canadian rights to market FLUOMIZIN, a product indicated for the treatment of vaginal infections.



FLUOMIZIN is a vaginal tablet containing dequalinium chloride, a well-established anti-infection and antiseptic quinolone derivative used in the treatment of certain vaginal infections. Currently, there are no approved products in Canada containing dequalinium chloride for vaginal use. Duchesnay plans to submit a New Drug Application to Health Canada and will consult with the agency to ensure that all requirements are met prior to filing.



"Duchesnay is pleased to add FLUOMIZIN to its growing portfolio of women's health products. If approved, FLUOMIZIN has the potential to contribute to improving the health and quality of life of women who suffer from vaginal infections. This agreement with Medinova AG reinforces Duchesnay's position as a Canadian leader in women's health," explained Eric Gervais, Executive Vice President of Duchesnay.



"We are delighted to partner with Duchesnay to introduce FLUOMIZIN in Canada . FLUOMIZIN has been studied in extensive clinical trials and has already been approved in 39 countries across Europe , Asia-Pacific , the Middle East , Africa and Central America . We are much looking forward to adding Canada to the list of countries where Medinova's products will be present." says Frank Buennig , Managing Director of Medinova AG.



About Duchesnay



Duchesnay Inc. is a Canadian specialty pharmaceutical company dedicated to improving the health and quality of life of pregnant women by working to advance maternal-foetal medicine to reduce the risks of birth defects and by developing safe and effective pharmacological solutions for use during pregnancy and breastfeeding.



Duchesnay's commitment to women's health does not stop at pregnancy and breastfeeding. Duchesnay is equally committed to ensuring women's health and improving their quality of life at every stage. Thus, Duchesnay offers a continuously expanding portfolio of high-quality, effective treatment options in both obstetrics and gynecology. For more information about the company, visit http://www.duchesnay.com/en/.



About Medinova



Medinova AG was founded in 1945 as a pharmacy in Zurich, Switzerland , by Dr. Fritz Muller . Over the following decades, Medinova quickly grew its operations and production facilities, manufacturing pharmaceutical specialty products for pharmacists and synthesizing chemical raw materials for several foreign markets.



Today, Medinova markets and distributes prescription drugs and over-the-counter products in gynecology, dermatology, rheumatology and other therapeutic areas in over 45 countries worldwide. The company actively manages its core products throughout their life cycle and remains committed to maintaining the highest quality standards and achieving continuous growth through its broad network of partners. For more information, visit http://www.medinova.ch/en/.







SOURCE Duchesnay inc.




In this free webinar, learn about the rapidly growing cell and gene therapy and vaccine markets. Attendees will get an overview of the manufacturing process for adeno-associated virus (AAV) and how Akron Bio's new facility is designed to address ...
The missing Chinese tourist last seen at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailands Chonburi province has been found. The 36-year-old, Gao Liping, was last seen with her tour group visiting the zoo. Her tour guide later said Gao looked to be in low spirits due to her recent divorce. She preferred to venture off on her own away from the group.

Over 200 police and volunteers joined the search efforts to find Gao. Local authorities also examined footage from the 122 security cameras installed around the zoo in hopes of pinpointing her location.

After being reported missing around 6:00 pm Sunday evening, she was discovered washing her clothes by a river roughly four kilometers away from the zoo on Tuesday morning.

Police reported that despite feeling exhausted, Gao had sustained no injuries.


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.
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.

Cartoons Of The Week



Vk.com/13studiya, September 11, 2016.



Twitter.com/sharzhipero, September 7, 2016.

US President Barack Obama appearing on the TV show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is asked to name the "most extraordinary country in the world:

Possible answers: Russia, China, Venezuela, Narnia

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:



(Source: Mid.ru, September 8, 2016)

"Today a hero showed himself. There are different kinds of heroes: some save people, or do some other very important and necessary things for which they are awarded medals. But our hero today is the man who carried the Russian flag at the opening ceremony of the Rio Paralympic Games as a tribute to the Russian Paralympic athletes, to show solidarity with them after they were barred from the Rio Games in a mean-spirited, inhumane, and absolutely unjustified move. We are proud that there are people who stand above politics. We believe that what this man has done goes beyond politics. This human gesture is extremely important to our Paralympic athletes and to all of us. We are grateful to this man. I hope we'll learn his name. To us, he is a hero. We are grateful to our Belarusian friends and to this man in particular for what he has done. We will never forget it. It was a truly human gesture."

(Mid.ru, September 8)



A member of the Belarusian team's delegation carried the flag of Russia at the opening of the Paralympics Games in Rio. The man was later reportedly stripped of his accreditation. (Source: Rt.com, September 8, 2016)

Quote Of The Week:

"Russia, of course, does not intend to discuss the electoral process on its territory with any country," said Kremlin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, in answer to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's instruction about the "impossibility of conducting Russian elections on Ukrainian territory" scheduled on September 18.

(Sputniknews.com, September 12)





Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov (Source: Sputniknews.com)

In The News:

Levada-Center Listed By Justice Ministry As A "Foreign Agent"

The Levada-Center, an independent non-governmental Russian sociological research organization, has been placed on the foreign agent registry by the Russian Ministry of Justice. Levada's CEO, Lev Gudkov, claimed that the listing could halt the organization's ability to function. "We cannot run sociologic research with this label. How would you imagine this? Our interviewer comes and says 'Hello, I'm a foreign agent, may I ask you a couple of questions?' If we are unsuccessful in our appeal to the court [to lift the designation] this decision [effectively] means shutting our center down", said Gudkov. The Levada CEO also explained that the Ministry of Justice accused the organization of being foreign-funded, but emphasized that the funding received from abroad represented payment for marketing research services on behalf of foreign companies. Gudkov considers the designation politically motivated. Ministry of Justice's main pretext for designating the Levada-Center as a foreign agent was the work that the center performed under contract for the American University of Wisconsin.

(Gazeta.ru, September 5; See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6599, September 18 Duma Election Update - Russian Political Scientist: The Current Campaign Is One Of The Most Boring in Memory, September 6, 2016 )

According to Everyday Journal's columnist, Igor Yakovenko, the decision by the Ministry of Justice is motivated by Levada's management remarks concerning the nature of Russian authorities. Quoting from the official Ministry of Justice press release, Yakovenko wrote: "CEO Gudkov has openly expressed his opinion about the authorities 'as corrupted and driven by mafia -like style'. Moreover Gudkov said that according to his view the Russian system of power 'is a closed authoritarian system, where the authorities rely on power structures, oligarchs, bureaucracy and represents their interests." According to Yakovenko, the real reason behind the Levada Center's designation as a foreign agent was the center's recently-published opinion survey, showing the ruling United Russia Party with an 31% approval rating, while the state sociological agencies estimate UR's support at 41-45%.

(Ej.ru, September 7)



A Levada-Center poll on Russian approval for Putin. (Source: Levada.ru)

Russia-Germany Relations: AfD Supporters Trust Putin More Than Merkel

On August 31, the German daily Die Zeit published an article showing that 30 percent of the right wing anti-immigration, Euroskeptic party Alternative for Germany's (AfD) supporters and 31 percent of Germany's leftwing democratic socialist Die Linke's supporters (which include former East German Communists) trust Putin more than German Chancellor Angela Merkel. With supporters of other German parties the level of those finding Putin more trustworthy than Merkel drops below 10%.

It is worth noting that in the September 4 elections in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania the AfD outpolled German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), taking 20.8 percent of the vote (the first time in the history of the Federal Republic that the CDU has been outpolled by a party to its right). The SPD (center-left Social Democrats) got 30.6%, AfD got 20.8%, while the CDU got 19%, which is considered to be its worst result in the state.

(Sputniknews.com, September 1; Zeit.de, August 31; Dw.com, September 5)



"Why is Putin so beloved?" asks Die Zeit (Source: Zeit.de)

Philippines' President Duterte Boasts Of Personal Similarities With Putin

Speaking ahead of the ASEAN summit (Laos, September 5-8), Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte said that he "likes" Putin. "We have similarities," Duterte added. When asked to elaborate about his similarities with Putin, Duterte said: "Perhaps when it comes to girls."

(Philstar.com, August 31)

Denmark Rejects Russian Approach On The Arctic

Russia, as a rule, has attempted to steer decision making to the UN where it holds a veto power but when it comes to the Arctic it prefers a bilateral approach because the UN tendency in Antarctica and in space has been to preserve the rights of all nations.

The Russians approached Denmark on the issue of overlapping claims in the Arctic but Denmark turned Russia down and stated that it adheres to the UN process even though it may last for decades.

(Thelocal.dk, September 12, 2016)

Russia's Drills And Defense News

The Russian Baltic Fleet's coastal troops launched drills in the Kaliningrad Region. Russian Baltic Fleet's spokesman Roman Martov said. "About 1,000 servicemen, over 70 items of military and special hardware, including BMP-2 infantry combat vehicles, T-72 tanks, Akatsiya and Gvozdika self-propelled artillery howitzers, Tunguska air defense artillery systems, Grad multiple launch rocket systems, as well as fifth-generation communications equipment are used in the exercise." The drills will last a few days and will involve both offensive and defensive actions.

(Tass.ru, September 6)

Strategic exercises Kavkaz-2016 were launched in Russia's Southern Military District. The Defense Ministry's press-service said: "The Kavkaz-2016 exercise is the final phase of a package of command staff and special practices and drills for military command bodies and snap checks of troops' combat readiness due in 2016. It will be held at test sites of the Southern Military District, the Black and Caspian sees on September 5-10... Taking part in the exercise there are about 12,500 troops, aviation, combat vehicles and naval vessels".

The Russian news agency TASS reported that one of the special tasks assigned the Kavkaz-2016 exercise will be testing new types of weapons and military equipment. It will also practice mobilization readiness and territorial defense measures, and employ aviation and the forces of the Black Sea Fleet and the Caspian flotilla.

(Tass.com, September 8)

According to the Russian media outlet Rbc.ru, the Russian Ministry of Defense is planning to spend 130 billion rubles (around 2 billion USD) for weapons modernization programs - this includes the first 100 T-14 Armata tanks, 6 "Varshavyanka" type submarines, and T-50 PAKFA (the fifth generation fighter jet).

(Rbc.ru, September 7)

Pakistan-Russia Military Drills

For the first time Russia and Pakistan are going to conduct joint military drills. Pakistan is mulling the purchase of advanced Russian planes. The American Congress recently blocked the sale of American military jets to Pakistan and the country is seeking alternative military suppliers.

(Economictimes.indiatimes.com, September 12)

China Defends Drills With Russia

The Chinese news agency Xinhua published a spirited defense of the joint China-Russia drills that will last eight days.. The drills were seen in some quarters as Russian backing for China's territorial demands in the South China Sea.

"...The defensive nature of these maneuvers is in line with China's defense policy, which makes it clear that China will not be the first to strike'.

"It may be true that growing military ties between Russia and China have irritated someone's sensitive nerves, but it is worth noting that excessive geo-political interpretation of a specific military drill is neither necessary nor justified.

"China and Russia, both key players in global affairs, have a common interest in upholding peace in Asia and beyond, and they certainly welcome a constructive role by other stakeholders..."

(Globaltimes.cn, September 12)

Russia-Ukraine Relations

Russia's Investigative Committee, the main federal investigating authority in Russia, launched criminal cases against the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and General Staff officials, accusing them of "genocide" of Russian-speakers in the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic. According to the Investigative Committee, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense gave unlawful orders to use heavy artillery against the infrastructure of the self-proclaimed republic and "completely or partially eliminated the ethnic group of Russian-speaking people, including minors." The Committee stated that at least 9 people were killed and 110 more were wounded as a result, including 9 children.

(Sledcom.ru, September 8; Rt.com, September 8)

Russia's Economy

According to the newspaper Kommersant, the ministry of finance, for the third time in this current year, is withdrawing money from the Reserve Fund, accumulated from oil and gas income, to cover the federal budgetary deficit. According to the newspaper, in 2017 the Reserve Fund will be exhausted and then the ministry of finance will start spending the money in the National Welfare Fund (72.7 billion USD). At the rate of current spending, the Welfare Fund as well will be exhausted by the end of 2018.

(Kommersant.ru, September 13)

RBC.ru adds that this withdrawal represents an 18% shrinkage of the Reserve Fund in a single month.

(Rbc.ru, September 6)

According to Vedomosti in 2017- 2019 share of income redistributed through the federal budget will be the lowest in the last 20 years and will represent only 13.3% of the GDP as opposed to an average of 20% in the past 10 years.

(Vedomosti.ru, September 4)

Strange But True

The Russian Supreme Court upheld a conviction against a Russian blogger, Vladimir Luzgin, for "rehabilitating Nazism" by posting a 2014 article on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and USSR's 1939 invasion of Poland. According to the court, Luzgin has deliberately falsified history, since the article stated that the USSR and Nazi Germany "cooperated together prior to the WWII and that the USSR and Nazi Germany jointly attacked Poland". According to the court, even though only 20 users have read the post, "Luzgin was aware of the dangerous outcome of his deeds, which could have led to forming a firm view of USSR's negative actions during WWII". Luzgin was sentenced to a fine of 200 thousand rubles.

(Novayagazeta.ru, September 5)



Vk.com/13studiya, June 8, 2016

Current Time TV, a Russian speaking news service broadcasting from Europe, posted a short video from a Chechen school, showing children on their first day of school (September, 1) repeating after the teacher: "Oh, Allah, bless Ramzan-haj [Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov] and keep him [safe] for us for long years to come".

(See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lGMNzW1nyU)



(Source: YouTube, September 6)
Twenty-three years ago today, on the lawn of the White House, the Oslo Accord was signed. Both Israel and the US shared the questionable assumption that the PLO represented the one and only option for peace with the Palestinian people. Indeed, such was the situation at that time. However, this situation was the product of the policies of all the parties involved - the US, Israel, and, in its own way, the PLO, which had systematically eliminated its opponents. Fifteen years previously, a Palestinian movement had emerged in the Palestinian territories that sought peace with Israel in opposition to the PLO. It failed. Although 38 years have passed since that failure, the PLO and its supporters in the West are still haunted by this movement. I was personally involved in this endeavor and witnessed it firsthand. Here is the story of the Village Leagues.

In August 1978, Mustafa Dodin and a group of Palestinian activists submitted a request to the Military Administration in the West Bank to establish a village league in the Hebron area. Dodin, a former Jordanian minister, was a prominent figure in that region, and was known for his opposition to the PLO and his ties with the Jordanian government, especially with the circle of Wasfi Al-Tal, who had been Jordan's prime minister.[1] Having returned from Jordan to his native town of Dura near Hebron, Dodin wanted to establish a political movement that would strive for a settlement with Israel. However, the Israeli administration refused to allow political activity of any kind in the occupied territories, even if its objective was to negotiate a peace treaty with Israel. Dodin was therefore compelled to submit a new request for establishing a social-administrative body as was legal under Jordanian law (which continued to apply to the occupied territories under the Israeli Military Administration), namely a village league. Even this request was held up for about a year and a half until its final approval in August 1978.

The objection to political activity reflected what was known as the "Dayan policy," which had prevailed since the summer of 1967. This policy was never formulated systematically by Dayan himself, but was, rather, a composite of general principles, guidelines and specific ad hoc directives that he issued to his subordinates. It included a ban on political activity of any kind, as well as an instruction to avoid any preferential treatment of moderate elements. This applied equally to supporters of Jordan and to the handful of individuals who strove for Palestinian autonomy under the aegis of Israel, whose most notable representative was the renowned attorney from Ramallah, Aziz Shehadeh.[2] In practice, however, implementation of the policy went much further: extremist PLO supporters were treated sympathetically by the Israeli authorities and extremist newspapers such as Al-Fajr and Al-Shaab were granted licenses on direct instructions from Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan. The official explanation given for this was that Israel did not intervene in the public conduct and freedom of speech of residents of the territories so long as they refrained from terrorist activities.

The Dayan Policy And The Establishment Of The Village Leagues

The authorization accorded to former Jordanian government minister Mustafa Dodin and his supporters, who declared openly that their objective was a negotiated peace treaty with Israel, represented, therefore, an abrupt departure from the principles of the Dayan policy. This change was the outcome of a prolonged struggle on the part of the office of the Advisor on Arab Affairs at West Bank military HQ, which was headed by Professor Menahem Milson. But even after authorization had been given, members of the village leagues were obliged to deal with opposition from almost all bodies concerned - directly or indirectly - with matters in the West Bank, from figures within the Military Administration itself to local and foreign journalists.

Why was there so much opposition to a policy that on the face of it was both necessary and desirable? The answer is that the Dayan policy was considered a success and was supported by most of these bodies. Never clearly formulated, the Dayan doctrine comprised a variety of constituents such as the open bridges policy, the holding of local elections, good and enlightened governance and a liberal attitude at all levels that included maximum freedom on the public plane. This attitude went so far as to create the impression that the Dayan policy sought to establish a Jordanian-Israeli condominium in the area. At the political level, however, the objective was just the opposite: Dayan wanted to reduce Jordanian political claims in the territories, partly, at least, by means of weakening Jordanian supporters' status on the ground.[3]

Despite the Dayan policy's intentions, liberal journalistic and political circles supported it for a variety of reasons: some because they disliked Jordan's autocratic monarchical regime and others because they favored Palestinian autonomy. Among Israel's right-wingers, too, there was support for Dayan's policies, because of their anti-Jordanian orientation, which suited the position of the proponents of "greater Israel."

As long as the territories remained quiet from the political and security point of view, the Dayan policy appeared to be a success, and, indeed, the continuing quiet was mistakenly attributed to this policy rather than to the presence of the moderate Palestinian elements who were in actuality responsible for maintaining calm. However, in the wake of the October 1974 Arab Summit decision to recognize it as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian People, the PLO gained strength in the territories, and anti-Israeli incitement increased. Violence escalated still more when Minister of Defense Shimon Peres, who had replaced Dayan while retaining his policies, ordered municipal elections to be held in the territories.

Two years had by this time elapsed since the Rabat resolution that recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian People, and since the organization's recognition by the UN General Assembly. But the Israeli Military Administration, like many people in Israeli political circles, completely ignored the significance of these historic events and continued its long-standing embrace of the Dayan policy. Thus, when riots broke out in the occupied territories in 1975, these people were unwilling to recognize them as the outcome of the erosion of the public status of the pro-Jordanian faction and other moderates and the result of the policy of the Israeli Military Administration, which purposely undermined the status of pro-Jordanian elements while affording freedom of action to the anti-Jordanian faction, i.e., supporters of the PLO. They had believed that the 1976 elections would have a different outcome and when, contrary to their expectations, PLO supporters were elected, they sought every means to cast the results in a positive light: "When all's said and done, these are public servants who will clean the streets and develop the towns, because that's what they were elected to do - they won't get involved in politics." But the hopes of those who expressed this optimistic forecast were soon dashed, as the first action taken by the supposedly pragmatic Mayor of Hebron was not street sweeping but the rejection of government bonuses due to his municipality, as he wished to avoid having to sign a contract with the Israeli authorities in accordance with the formulation in use since 1967. Very soon the pro-PLO mayors united around their opposition to the imposition of value added tax in the territories, a purely financial issue stemming from the introduction of VAT in Israel, which they exploited for purposes of anti-Israeli propaganda. The heads of the chambers of commerce, however, who were known to be pro-Jordanian, assumed a pragmatic stance and conducted practical negotiations over the ways in which the imposition of VAT was applied in practice.

It should be emphasized here that the cumulative result of the implementation of the Dayan policy over the years was an increasing radicalization of the population in the direction of the PLO and its objectives. Nonetheless, the Military Administration and its senior officers continued to operate in accordance with the spirit of the Dayan policy, which still lived on in the offices of the Coordinator of Activities in the Territories and the Military Administration, even after Dayan was forced to resign and was replaced by Shimon Peres. Significant change in the political approach came only in the summer of 1976, when Professor Menahem Milson took office as Advisor on Arab Affairs in the West Bank. Now the sanctity of Dayan's policy was challenged and a new approach was introduced. In November 1976 I joined the Arab Affairs Department as Milson's aide.

Our activities contradicted the Dayan policy in practice at every level. It should be noted, however, that we did nothing clandestinely, nor did we violate military discipline. Unlike Dayan's policies, which tacitly contradicted and undermined official government policy, we acted in accordance with the declared fundamental principles of the Israeli government: namely, as Jordan was regarded as a non-hostile entity, we made efforts to transform it into a partner for political dialogue, despite the Rabat resolutions, and pro-Jordanian elements were now to be supported rather than suppressed.

Our point of departure was completely contrary to that of the Dayan policy. Dayan had striven to perpetuate Israel's control of the territories, while hoping that Jordan would collapse as a result of internal conflict with the terrorist organizations in 1970 and so provide a solution to the Palestinian national problem. His speeches at the time are evidence of the fact that he did not believe in the possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. We, however, did not subscribe to this pessimistic and fatalistic view of strife as perpetual and inescapable. Although we were acutely aware of the depth and seriousness of the conflict and its historical roots, our familiarity with events on the ground gave us reason to believe in the possibility of pursuing a judicious peace-directed policy by strengthening moderate elements who understood that terrorism endangered the Palestinians themselves and were interested in promoting peace. Although we were well aware that these elements were not dominant and that the positions they espoused were not largely shared by the urban elite that for years had constituted the leading sector of Palestinian society, we also knew that most members of the non-urban population - the silent majority - were prepared to accept this approach if assured of an Israeli commitment to it expressed both on the political plane and by actions on the ground.

With the approval of the minister of defense, seven village leagues were established in the West Bank, initially in Hebron, later in Ramallah and Bethlehem and finally in the northern districts of Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm.

The fact that they were founded despite extensive opposition from both the Israeli and Palestinian Arab establishment shows that we had appraised the situation correctly. We regarded the encouragement of peace-oriented moderates opposed to the violent path of the PLO as a principle of moral and political importance. We could not be sure that it would lead to peace, but we were quite sure that peace with the PLO was impossible, as the organization represented the problem of the refugees of 1948 and the demand for the right of return. We were right about this, too: the PLO's demand for the right of return has hindered all progress towards a peace agreement, even when Israel offered ninety-seven percent of the occupied territories (when Ehud Barak was prime minister) or one hundred percent, with a territorial swap (during Olmert's term).

We did not regard our political struggle against the PLO as one that could be resolved decisively at a single stroke; we viewed it, rather, as a prolonged campaign that could be won on points. We were convinced it would be better for Israel to deal with Palestinians who opposed terrorism and sought peace negotiations, rather than with an organization whose very essence was armed struggle and a return to Israel within the Green Line. This strategic principle, which we regarded as natural and justified even if it did not bring peace, was not acceptable to Israeli politicians on either left or right. Each clung to its own policy: the right rejected dialogue with Arab moderates because of its fear that such talks would lead to territorial compromise, while the left refused to abandon its belief and hope that the PLO would turn out to be a partner for peace. Our successful establishment of village leagues throughout the West Bank was short lived because we were working against a political consensus that was not just international and pan-Arab but, unfortunately, Israeli too.

Authorization for the operation of the village leagues was, as we have said, the outcome of a prolonged and determined months-long struggle conducted tirelessly against the legal advisor to the Military HQ in the West Bank, the ministry of defense's department of international law, and, of course, the defense minister's bureau and the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. In order to promote the idea of the village leagues within the defense minister's bureau, Milson agreed to proposal of Ezer Weizman, defense minister in the Likud government, that he accept the post of Advisor on Arab Affairs to the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. Milson assumed the post in January 1978 and did eventually succeed in persuading Weizman, who was defense minister at the time, to agree, albeit halfheartedly, to the establishment of the village leagues. The office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which represented the Dayan policy, was not the only factor involved in the dispute over the approval of the village leagues, as many other figures within the security establishment had also adopted this policy and regarded it as "the height of political wisdom."[4] Brigadier-General David HaGoel, commander of IDF forces in the West Bank, however, supported approving the village leagues and allowed us to fight for it, but he was replaced in the spring of 1978 by Brigadier-General Ben-Eliezer whose attitude towards the whole initiative lay somewhere between indifference and hostility. Several months later, at the end of September, Menahem Milson concluded his term of office as Arab Affairs Advisor to the Coordinator of Israeli Activities in the Territories and returned to his post at the Hebrew University, leaving me to fight on alone. Although I had a superb staff of aides - officers with an excellent command of Arabic and an extensive background in Arab and Middle-Eastern studies who did their work diligently and devotedly, identified with their jobs and shared my approach to the task in hand - I had no support from anyone within the defense minister's bureau who could fight for the village league initiative.

Opponents Of The Village Leagues And Their Motives

As was to be expected, the struggle did not end with the minister of defense's authorization. Instead it intensified, as all those who had been opposed and had prophesied, on the basis of their supposed expertise, that the initiative would fail, now strove with all their might to ensure that their prophecy would be fulfilled. Notable opponents included journalists reporting on the occupied territories and left-wing political figures; some staff officers in the Military Administration; military personnel, especially IDF Central Command under Major-General Moshe Levi and his successor Ori Or; the foreign press; the consuls, especially the US consul in East Jerusalem; Jordan; the PLO; and the settlers.

Why were all these groups opposed to an initiative that had been approved by the minister of defense and which should have seemed natural and justified from all points of view, both moral and political? The following is a brief survey:

The overwhelming majority of journalists reporting on events in the occupied territories had strong political views and regarded the PLO as the appropriate representative of the Palestinians. They maintained that, although the declared positions of the PLO were radical, its real positions were moderate, or else they believed that they would become so in the future. Most of these journalists were personally acquainted with supporters of the PLO in the territories, who saved them time and effort by supplying them regularly - and selectively, of course - with information as to what was happening on the ground. But this willingness of pro-PLO Palestinian figures to supply information came at a price, as the journalists were expected to reciprocate with sympathetic media coverage. As these reporters were in any case weary to the point of abhorrence of Jordan and its supporters, they had no difficulty in providing sympathetic coverage of pro-PLO public figures such as Fahd Qawasme (mayor of Hebron), Muhammad Milhem (mayor of Halhul) and their ilk. For some of the Israeli journalists, fostering relationships with radical Palestinian figures in the context of the Dayan policy was a way of representing themselves to the foreign media as enlightened and progressive. In short, their behavior was unprofessional and clearly uncritical.

Left-wing political circles in Israel regarded the Palestinian moderates as quislings[5] and referred to PLO supporters as "national figures" and "the authentic leadership." Thus, their opposition to the activities of the village leagues was both political and emotional.

The civilian staff officers of the Military Administration, who deserve credit for managing the routine of life in the territories for years and who were, in the great majority, conscientious civil servants, opposed the village league activities because their desire to retain their jobs and status made them extremely unwilling to transfer any responsibilities to the local population. Sometimes their behavior verged on the pathetic, so much so that we used to joke that some of them would, perhaps, prefer to remain at their posts under Palestinian rule rather than lose their jobs. This situation was very different from that of the early months after the 1967 war, when these posts were filled by senior staff officers ("ministers" who worked alongside the regional commander and dealt with civilian matters) who had held very high rank in the relevant government ministries before being seconded to these newly-created positions in the wake of the Six-Day War. Twelve years later, however, these posts were now filled by mid-level Israeli functionaries who had been dispatched by their ministries to this "exile" where they at once achieved the status of "ministers" - a position they were understandably reluctant to relinquish by transferring their responsibilities to members of the local population.

Some of the generals who headed IDF Central Command were similarly offended by our activities. Their indignation was primarily personal, as we had deprived them of their status as policy czars in the occupied territories and as the Central Command's representatives to the upper echelons of government - i.e., the ministry of defense and sometimes the cabinet, too - a status that was very important to them. This situation had come about because until 1981 the territories were under the control of a military administration that was subordinate to the military authorities and first and foremost to IDF Central Command. The generals strove to absolve themselves completely of any responsibility for our activities, which had attracted criticism from the media and left-wing elements: these officers wished to make it clear to critics that they had no part in this initiative and should therefore be excluded from any criticism of it. They undermined our activities, which often impinged upon those of the army, and generally helped the settlers, in part because of their military obligation to defend them. In most cases they also believed that the Dayan policy was indeed "the height of political wisdom" and that Dayan "understands the Arabs" better than the rest of us.

There was an additional reason for the army's dissatisfaction with our activities. When Professor Milson was appointed head of the Civil Administration in 1981, he asked Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon to remove a number of military governors whom for a variety of reasons we considered unsuitable, and replace them with a group of reserve officers, mainly from HaShomer HaTzair kibbutzim. These potential replacements possessed the following qualities: they had served in military intelligence, they spoke Arabic and had a background in Middle East studies, they understood the significance of political ideology and were familiar with political plans, demonstrations and pamphlets, and, most importantly, they had been brought up to strive for peace. The minister of defense approved this apparently odd request immediately. Naturally, he had his own reasons for doing so: he realized at once that people with these qualities would help to calm the situation on the ground. Milson approached veteran Mapam leader Yaakov Hazan, as the officers required permission from the movement to enlist as career soldiers. Hazan questioned him on our activities, on their objectives and on the aims of the Palestinian moderates whom we wished to encourage. When he had ascertained that the goal was a peace agreement with Israel, he allowed the officers to enlist. However, when Aliza Amir, then executive secretary of the Kibbutz Artzi Federation, heard of this, she appealed urgently to party secretary Victor Shem-Tov, shouting: "The old man (i.e. Hazan) has gone mad, he's going to help Sharon," and Shem-Tov revoked the authorization. Only two people were prepared to flout kibbutz discipline and join us, but neither was allowed to remain with us for very long.

Nearly all representatives of the foreign media supported the PLO, which by this time had already attained international recognition. Like the local Israeli reporters, they tried to compensate for their ignorance of the situation and their lack of Arabic by maintaining close ties with extremists who provided them with information that they did not have to go to the trouble of obtaining for themselves. The resulting reports were unprofessional and uncritical, though less so than those of Israeli reporters in the territories, as they lacked the sense of emotional identification that characterized the Israeli journalists. (For example, when the village leagues held their large conference in Hebron in November 1982, attended by many thousands and covered by all the international television networks, at which the Village Leagues leadership called for peace with Israel, Davar reporter Danny Rubinstein headed his article "A Sad and Depressing Day in Hebron").

The foreign consuls, spearheaded by the US Consulate, implemented the policies of their foreign ministries, opposing Israeli occupation and supporting the PLO, which had been accorded international recognition by the UN. Insofar as they could, the consuls sabotaged our policies and extended help to extremist PLO supporters.

Jordan's attitude to the village leagues can be divided into two different periods. At first official Jordan lent them tacit support, as it realized that their activities were designed to strengthen Jordan's position in the territories and support its status as the political representative of the occupied areas, in defiance of the Rabat and UN resolutions of 1974.[6] However, after March 8, 1982, when Border Guard Commander Tzvi Bar revealed that the Border Guards were providing weapons training for members of the village leagues for the purpose of self-defense,[7] Jordan had no choice but to declare officially that the leagues were illegal under Jordanian law. After making this decision, it took a number of administrative measures to discourage Jordanian passport holders - i.e., all residents of the occupied territories - from joining the village leagues. Jordan was obliged to do this in order not to appear to be acting against the Arab consensus, which, in the wake of the Rabat resolution, viewed the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian People. It should be pointed out here that there was never any intention of establishing militias of any kind within the framework of the village leagues; a small number of league members were equipped with weapons from the IDF armory only after terrorists had murdered the leader of the Ramallah league, and this move was designed solely to allow members to protect themselves. The head of IDF Central Command refused to allow military personnel to provide weapons training, a problem the ministry of defense staff solved by approaching Tzvi Bar, who was close to Arik Sharon.

The PLO's natural opposition to the village leagues found expression in the murder of the head of the Ramallah league, and, several years later, of the head of the Jenin league, too. Throughout the entire period this opposition was also expressed on a routine basis by violent threats, a public boycott and a variety of actions designed to paralyze league activities.

From the outset the Israeli Security Agency (ISA, also known as the Shin Bet) had reservations about a policy of support for moderates and a corresponding withholding of support for hostile elements. There were a number of reasons for this, including a desire to stick to the Dayan doctrine, which opposed helping moderate elements and preferred the extremists, to whom it referred as "the authentic leadership." Moreover, as the ISA's mandate was defined as the prevention of terrorism and spying, the organization did not consider incitement or hostile public activity to be within its purview, even though both led directly to extremism and acts of terrorism. And the ISA had another reason for opposing the leagues: some very highly placed hostile Palestinian public figures had duplicitously acquired ISA protection in return for information. I believe it was hard for the ISA to come to terms with the fact that the Arab Affairs Advisory Department was operating in every way as an intelligence research network in an area so closely contingent upon its own and distributing its findings extensively to both the political echelon and the media.

The Jewish settlers were another influential element in the occupied territories. Their attitude to the village leagues, like their attitude to the rest of the local population, ranged from indifference to hostility. Certain circles and individuals in the Hebron area were especially hostile; among them was Elyakim Haetzni, a well-known public figure because of his struggle within Israel as an activist in the Shurat HaMitnadvim organization in the early 1950s. Although he had taken up residence in the occupied territories, unlike most settlers he was a secular Jew and preserved a fair-minded attitude towards his Arab neighbors. As a lawyer he represented local Arabs in court cases against the Israeli authorities when he believed they had been unjustly treated, and also maintained good personal relations with a number of the village league activists. On the public and political plane, however, he was in favor of total annexation of the territories, utterly opposed league activities and appealed to Israel's ministers of defense to prevent their developing any further. He explained his opposition by claiming that he had no fear of the PLO, as Israel would never hold talks with it. The village leagues, on the other hand, posed a problem and it was Mustafa Dodin, rather than Arafat, who frightened Haetzni, as his striving for peace was liable to cause Israel to withdraw from the territories in order to reach an agreement with him. Later, after the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, when Minister of Defense Arik Sharon found himself in serious political isolation and vitally needed the settlers' support, Haetzni's pressure on Sharon to stop the activities of the village leagues acquired significant weight.

Sharon And The Village Leagues

In 1981, after Ariel Sharon's appointment as minister of defense, it seemed as if the village leagues were being granted a fresh opportunity, as Sharon invited Professor Milson to become commander of the West Bank. Despite our many doubts, we wanted to believe that the mere fact of Sharon's having chosen to appoint Professor Milson to this position was evidence of a genuine intention to initiate new moves in the territories. Sharon expressed verbal support for the concept of the village leagues and appeared willing to help our activities. These hopes, however, were soon dashed. Firstly, he yielded to the pressure of many people who were opposed both to our policy and to us personally. Instead of continuing military rule in the territories - a situation that the Palestinians themselves had come to terms with since 1967, as it was rooted in international law as regards occupied territory - he transformed the Military Administration into a new entity known as the Civil Administration, which had no basis in international law. This new framework complicated our activities from the outset with a pointless and unnecessary struggle over its legitimacy. It also provided an excuse for all PLO supporters to fight against it on the grounds that this new framework constituted a step towards annexation of the territories. Secondly, Sharon did not keep a single one of his promises to help the village leagues; he provided no financial aid for development of the territories, and held no discussions - neither one on one nor in wider forums - on overall policy for the area. To our sorrow, we realized that all his promises amounted to nothing more than a great deception: he had no interest in the subject and no intention of devoting his time or the ministry of defense's resources to it. As a result the leagues, which in early 1981 had organized themselves into a national framework as the Federation of Village Leagues, continued to languish amid their internal and external problems without any prospect of improvement. This was despite their own best efforts and the widening of the circle of supporters who believed that the leagues represented a new political direction with which the Israeli government would cooperate for the sake of peace. In September 1982, less than a year after his appointment, Milson resigned his post in the wake of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and I was appointed to replace him. Now began the inevitable process of decline, as the minister of defense was entirely preoccupied by the massacres and their repercussions. After Sharon was forced to resign and was replaced by Moshe Arens, Shlomo Ilya was appointed head of the Civil Administration. He treated the village leagues with hostility and plotted against their leaders until eventually, due also to the pressure their many opponents applied to the new minister of defense, the league federation was disbanded and the weapons supplied to its members for self-defense purposes were taken away from them, leaving them vulnerable and susceptible to harm. All the opponents of the leagues celebrated what they referred to as their "failure," which in fact was no failure at all: neither the PLO nor the Arab states nor any of the other hostile elements had been able to overcome them - the Israeli government alone was responsible for their demise, without ever once having discussed the concept, its significance or its prospects. One could say that such failure was inevitable when an attempt was made to initiate a historic political process in the face of universal opposition. The subsequent initiative attempted by the Israeli government with the PLO in 1993, with the full support of a national and international consensus, was no more successful, for reasons we ourselves had foreseen and had warned against.

Popular Misconceptions About The Village Leagues

I should like to take this opportunity to lay to rest two false perceptions propagated by the opponents of the village leagues. The first is that the establishment of the village leagues and the assistance they received were part of a putative "Sharon-Milson plan." As we have described above, the leagues were established three years before Sharon became minister of defense, and he was in no way involved in their creation: he assumed office years after they were already in existence. The expression "Sharon-Milson plan," which refers, of course, to something that never existed, was invented by a number of journalists in order to discredit the leagues by presenting them as Sharon's creation, and others parroted the expression through ignorance.

The second misconception is the claim that our objective in establishing the village leagues was to sow dissent between the rural and urban Palestinian populations, in accordance with the doctrine of "divide and rule." This claim, too, is devoid of any substance. As stated above, the real reason behind Mustafa Dodin's request to establish a village league was that he was precluded from establishing a political movement that would work openly towards peace negotiations with Israel. When he came to us with this request in 1977, we told him there was no chance it would be granted, as the minister of defense refused to allow the formation of political movements, even if their stated objective was to reach a peace settlement, and therefore his only chance was to establish an administrative body, as sanctioned by Jordanian law. A few days later Dodin proposed that he solve this problem by creating a village league. In other words, the village-league structure was imposed upon Dodin and his supporters against their will - and thus it was similarly imposed upon us, as we wanted to help those Palestinians who wished to work towards peace negotiations with Israel.

HaDerech LaShalom Movement

We cannot conclude this article without mentioning that the Israeli consensus against the village leagues was not total. In 1983 a movement supporting the leagues sprang up within the extreme Israeli left. This movement, which was named HaDerech LaShalom ("The Way to Peace") did not represent any official body, but was composed of leading kibbutz movement activists from HaShomer HaTzair, Ihud HaKvutzot and HaKibbutz HaMeuhad. Prominent figures included Yonah Eisenberg from Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, Hanoch Beeri of HaZorea, Dudik Shoshani from Lahav, Yaakov Yonish of Beit HaShita, Ezra Dloomy of Rosh HaNikra and Shlomo Leshem of Urim. They got in touch with members of the leagues, met with them, helped them, organized conferences and other events with them and generally made every effort to show the Israeli public that an option for Israeli-Palestinian peace could be found close to home, with no need to look overseas. But, as in 1983 the Israeli authorities were already engaged in the process of doing away with the leagues, there was little they could do and their support did not bring salvation.

*Yigal Carmon is President of MEMRI. This article was first published in the Israeli magazine Kivvunim Hadashim, Issue n. 29, Jerusalem, December 2013.

Endnotes:
Liyba is steadily turning into a war zone. While the Russian and American troops are trying their best to push back the ISIS, the terrorist outfit isnt ready accepting defeat either. In a latest act of terror, the ISIS tried burning 12 innocent people alive. But just when they thought they had succeeded, they were sent to meet their maker!

 Reuters

The militants had rounded up 12 people around an SUV which they would eventually set on fire. Then out of nowhere, a bullet came through and took out all the four ISIS militants. Yes, one shot, 4 men down! Though the identity of the sniper is concealed, it sure that he was a sniper from the British Special Air Services (SAS). The SAS is a British special force and its men are one of the best commandos in the world.

 YouTube

Well, this is whats bound to happen when you kill innocent people!
China supports rational restraint and advises against any sort of activity or behavior that may provoke or cause instability in Korean Peninsula, said Hua Chunying, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She was responding to the report of American bombers flying over Korean Peninsula.

According to the media report, American B1-B Bombers flew near North Korea on Tuesday. The move is seen as a sign of military strength aimed towards North Korea as tensions rise on the peninsula.

A situation in which tensions escalate and those involved enter a vicious circle is not favorable to any party, said Hua.
Innovation

Humans, animals and the environment  our health is all connected

Why the One Health approach is important now more than ever
Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte speaks during his victory party in Davao, the Philippines, June 4, 2016. [Photo: Xinhua/Stringer]

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday that U.S. special forces in southern Philippines should leave.

"The (United States) special forces, they have to go," said Duterte in a speech at the oath taking ceremony of newly appointed officials in the presidential palace.

The president said that during his attendance at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related Summits in Laos last week he wanted to mention the plan, but he did not raise this "out of respect."

"I do not want rift with America, but they have to go," he said.

Duterte said he wanted the U.S. forces to leave Mindanao because they might be targeted by the kidnap-for-ransom groups.

Earlier, the president has said the Philippines under his administration would pursue an independent foreign policy "without any interference" from any country.

In Vientiane, controversy hounded Duterte for making "strong remarks" against U.S. President Barack Obama in connection with comments made by U.S. officials on drug-related extrajudicial killings in the country.

Duterte's remarks prompted Obama to cancel a scheduled meeting with Duterte on the sidelines of the ASEAN meetings.
(Xinhua) 10:17, September 13, 2016

SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. military on Tuesday flew two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers over South Korea in a show of force following the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s recent nuclear test.

Two B-1B Lancers, which can carry nuclear weapons, flew over the Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, some 70 km south of capital Seoul, at about 10 a.m. local time (0100GMT).

The one was flanked by four South Korean F-15K fighter jets, while the other was joined by four U.S. F-16 fighter planes before returning to the base. The high-speed bombers made a sortie from the U.S. air base in Guam.

U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) said in an emailed statement that the flyover highlights the close cooperation between U.S. and South Korean military forces that keep them ready to respond at any time to threats to stability and security.

The flights are a day later than scheduled. The United States reportedly planned to send the bombers to South Korea on Monday, but it was delayed due to unfavorable weather conditions.

The U.S. allegedly forward-deployed several B-1Bs to Andersen base in Guam in early August from Ellsworth air base in South Dakota to replace B-52 strategic bombers.

Three B-2 stealth bombers also arrived in Guam last month from Whiteman base in Missouri. It was the first time that the U.S. strategic bomber trio was mobilized together in the Pacific region.

The DPRK had denounced the forward-deployment of U.S. nuclear-capable bombers, saying it was an evidence to show the U.S. intention of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Pyongyang.

The flight of B-1Bs over South Korean territory near the inter-Korean border came just four days after the DPRK announced its successful explosion test of nuclear warhead that can be mounted on ballistic missiles.

South Korea's military estimated the fifth nuclear test was the most powerful as it produced an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, bigger than 6 kilotons generated in the previous test.

Following the Jan. 6 nuclear detonation, the fourth from the DPRK, the U.S. military staged an armed protest by flying a B-52 strategic bomber over the Osan Air Base.

In early 2013, the U.S. flew nuclear-capable B-2s, B-52s and F-22 fighter jets close to the inter-Korean border. In February of the year, Pyongyang carried out its third atomic device test.

"Today's demonstration provides just one example of the full range of military capabilities in the deep resources of this strong alliance to provide and strengthen extended deterrence," said Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, USFK commander, indicating further mobilization of U.S. strategic assets on the Korean peninsula.

The U.S. deployment of its nuclear-capable bomber trio in the Pacific escalates the already heightened tensions in the region, which is one the world's most-armed powder kegs.

The B-1B, which went into operation in 1980s, is known to be capable of carrying as heavy as 61 tons of weapons, including 24 nuclear bombs as well as 24 joint direct attack munitions (JDAM), 84 conventional bombs, 24 air-to-surface missiles and 8 cruise missiles.

The supersonic bomber can fly at a maximum speed of Mach 2, faster than B-2's Mach 0.9 and B-52's 957 kilometers per hour. It can travel as far as 12,000 km without refueling.

The B-2 stealth bomber, which began to be deployed in 1990s, can be armed with the maximum of 22-ton weapons, including 16 nuclear bombs and air-launched cruise missiles. It can travel 12,000 km without refueling.

The B-52 bomber can travel as far as 16,000 km without refueling, carrying as heavy as 31 tons of weapons including nuclear bombs and "bunker buster" missiles that can destroy underground facilities.
The Chinese Air Force on Monday sent multiple aircraft models to the West Pacific, via the Bashi Strait, for a routine combat simulation drill at sea. [Photo: Chinese Air Force]

The Chinese Air Force on Monday sent multiple aircraft models to the West Pacific, via the Bashi Strait, for a routine combat simulation drill at sea, a spokesperson said.

Shen Jinke, spokesperson of the People's Liberation Army Air Force, said the fleet included H-6K bombers, Su-30 fighters, and air tankers.

The fleet conducted reconnaissance and early warning, sea surface cruising, inflight refueling, and achieved all the drill's targets.

The drill was a routine arrangement as part of the Air Force's annual training plan, and conformed to international law and practice, said Shen.

Drills at sea are common practices of coastal countries and a requirement of Chinese defense. The Chinese Air Force will organize drills at sea, off island chains at regular basis, Shen said.

The Air Force will focus on improving the quality of combat simulation drills, flying over island chains, controlling the East China Sea and cruising the South China Sea. It will also improve capability in plateau areas.

The Air Force will also speed up its advanced new military equipment system in a bid to promote strategic transformation, Shen said.
Alternate Foreign Minister for European Affairs Nikos Xydakis met with Fabio Pigliapoco, Secretary General of the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative (AII), today, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Let it be noted that Greece is chairing the AII as of June 1st 2016 for a year and that it is, moreover, co-chairing the EUSAIR (EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region) Governing Board along with the European Commission.



During the meeting, the Secretary General briefed the Alternate FM for European Affairs on AII actions. Mr. Pigliapoco stressed that during Greeces chairing pro tempore that a program of the Initiative is being financed by the European Commission for the first time. This is the Adrion Programme, which the region of Western Greece, the Universities of Patras and Ioannina, the Ionian University, as well as respective regions and universities from all countries taking part in the AII, are involved in.



Alternate FM Xydakis for his part informed his interlocutor that, on the occasion of chairing the AII, Greece is preparing for a Meeting of Senior Officials next month in Athens and will host a Forum for the AII in May 2017.
Missile frigate Yuncheng launches an anti-ship missile during a military exercise in the water area near South China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands, July 8, 2016. [Photo: Xinhua]

China and Japan will hold the fifth round of high-level talks on maritime affairs Wednesday through Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Monday.

The talks, to be held in Hiroshima, Japan, will see officials from both countries in foreign affairs, defense, maritime law and marine management.

"The Chinese side hopes to exchange views on sea-related issues of common concern and enhance mutual trust with the Japanese side," spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a press briefing.
Yesterday, between 4:30 PM and 6:00 PM, four software engineers working in Alibabas security response center lost their jobs. The reason? Mooncakes. 124 boxes of mooncakes, to be exact.

For those that dont know, Chinese people celebrate the upcoming Lunar Festival by buying mooncakes for their friends, family members, co-workers, taxi drivers, doormen, dogs, their dogs friends, and pretty much anyone with a heartbeat. The little desserts come in all shapes and sizes: some are filled with custard, eggnog, pork, or even coconut flakes. The price ranges from dirt-cheap to absurdly expensive. And sending these tiny little cakes is seen in China as a way of sending someone your respects and affection.

Alibaba, Chinas homegrown tech behemoth, took the liberty of offering their employees a mooncake discount. As one can imagine, Alibaba employees were quick to jump at the opportunity to save some money while buying the dozens of mooncakes necessary for a successful holiday. Unfortunately, when four software engineers decided to write a JavaScript program to automate their purchasing needs, they made a mistake in the program. Or, at least, thats what theyre saying.

According to an unconfirmed post on Zhihu, Chinas version of Quora, the engineers say they are innocent and simply made a small error in writing the code. The error resulted in them buying 124 boxes of mooncakes. Thats anywhere between 700 to 800 mooncakes.

Within an hour and a half of their grave error, they were summoned by superiors, their contracts terminated, and they were escorted out of the building. Since then, one of the four engineers has taken to the internet and succeeded in drawing mass attention to the seemingly unfair resolution. While many support the engineers, others suspect them of taking advantage of the discount in order to sell the cakes later. Some feel they were just flexing their programming muscles.

An important note here is that software engineers at Alibaba are paid well. Senior engineers can make up to $123,658 USD a year, according the glassdoor.com. Additionally, Alibaba is one of the most competitive companies for Chinese people to break into, similar to Apple or Google. Perhaps these four werent looking to make some extra cash. Maybe they were really just showing off their programming skills, shooting themselves in the foot by accident.

In response, Alibabas Chief Risk Office Wang Shuai has come out and provided the other side of the story. Liu said that because of the groups mass purchasing, other employees were unable to reap the benefits of cheap mooncakes. The tasty, sweet benefits. He also noted that Alibaba disapproves of using company discounts to flip goods for a profit, including desserts. Lastly, Mr. Liu signed off with a word of wisdom for their employees: Every game has rules, and occasionally there are inevitabilities. Theres nothing we can do as everything has a limit. We are regretful and wish them (the four ex-employees) a better future.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

Armenias armed forces have 19 times violated the ceasefire on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops over the past 24 hours, said Azerbaijans Defense Ministry Sept. 13.

The Armenian armed forces stationed in Barekamavan village of the Noyembryan district opened fire at the Azerbaijani positions located in Qaymaqli village of the Gazakh district.

The Armenian armed forces stationed in Chinari village of the Berd district opened fire at the Azerbaijani positions located in Kokhanebi village of the Tovuz district.

Positions of the Azerbaijani army also underwent fire from the Armenian positions located near Chilaburt village of Azerbaijani Tartar district, Marzili village of the Aghdam district, Kuropatkino village of the Khojavand district, Horadiz and Qarakhanbayli villages of the Fizuli district and the nameless heights of the Goranboy district.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

Trend:

The OSCE is expected to monitor the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops Sept. 14, said Azerbaijans Defense Ministry Sept. 13.

The monitoring will be held under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative along the line of contact near Alkhanly village of Azerbaijans Fizuli district, said the ministry.

On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring will be held by Jiri Aberle, Peter Svedberg, Simon Tiller, field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative.

On the opposite side, the monitoring will be carried out by Andrzej Kasprzyk, personal representative of the OSCE chairperson-in-office, Ghenadii Petrica and Hristo Hristov, field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Samir Ali  Trend:

There is no reason for holding a rally in Azerbaijan, Bakhtiyar Aliyev, Azerbaijani MP, told Trend Sept. 13.

The MP was commenting on a 2500-person rally that was held in Baku on Sept. 11. The event was attended by representatives of various parties of the National Council, the opposition and non-governmental organizations. The rally was agreed with the executive power of the city.

"If anyone just shares an opinion, this is not a rally, he added. As for a protest made by anyone in connection with the referendum in Azerbaijan, I do not see any reason for this issue because these are processes which are being carried out for the development of the statehood, the future of people and the entire Azerbaijani society supports these processes.

So, I do not think that clear-minded people will protest against this, Aliyev said. Everyone must support these actions.

Aliyev stressed that some people instructed by the pro-Armenian forces, centers and diasporas in the US and other countries are expressing certain views against Azerbaijan.

"Of course, there are people in Azerbaijan who have fallen under the influence of these forces," Aliyev said.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed an order to hold a referendum on amending the countrys constitution September 26, 2016.
PIGEON  Elkton-Pigeon-Bay Port Laker Elementary students met some local heroes this week during a Hallway of Heroes event.

The 15 heroes  who included police officers, firefighters, nurses and EMTs  visited classrooms to talk about their jobs and answer questions.

The heroes then walked through the hallways as students applauded and gave them high fives. Thank you signs were made for the heroes, as well as a Thank you for your service banner.

The Hallway of Heroes event was the result of a $1,500 grant from the Michigan Community Service Commission.

Through the grant, the school purchased books about heroes, which were distributed to classrooms and the school library. The grant also paid for some fire alarms, first aid kits, carbon monoxide alarms and flashlights, and students in each classroom were randomly chosen to receive these safety items.

The following local heroes participated in the Hallway of Heroes event:

Scheurer Hospital RN Alicia Swartzendruber; Scheurer Hospital RN Louise Beyerlein; Scheurer EMT Todd Schember; Scheurer EMT Tim Rujan; Dan Armbruster and Chad Seley, both of the Elkton Fire Department; Terry Stafford, Nate Licht, Aaron Diebel, Jim Gilbert and Lee Gettel, all of the Winsor Township Fire Department; Huron Medical Center RN Jeanine Starcher; Nate Flores of the Bad Axe Police Department; Huron County Sheriff Kelly Hanson; and EMT Josh Bletl, who also is a firefighter from Port Austin.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

Kazakh President appointed all members of the new government, the presidential press-service said on Sept. 13.

Saken Zhasuzakov was appointed to the post of defense minister. Previous Defense Minister Imangali Tasmagambetov was earlier appointed to the post of the deputy prime minister.

Marat Bakytzhanov was dismissed from the post of deputy head of the Presidential Administration and appointed as justice minister.

Other ministers retained their positions: Erlan Idrisov was appointed to the post of foreign minister, Kalmukhanbet Kasymov - minister of internal affairs, Dauren Abayev - minister of information and communications; Yerlan Sagadiyev - education and science minister, Tamara Duysenova - minister of health and social development.

Zhenis Kasymbek retained his post of investment and development minister, Bakhyt Sultanov - finance minister, Arystanbek Muhamediuly - minister of culture and sports, Kuandyk Bishimbaev - national economy minister, Kanat Bozumbayev - energy minister.

The new government was formed after dismissal of former Prime Minister Karim Massimov from his post. Bakytzhan Sagintayev who earlier served as the first deputy prime minister was appointed to this post in a new government.

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
China Mobile Limited provides mobile telecommunications and related services in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The company offers local calls; domestic and international long distance calls and roaming services; and value-added services, such as caller identity display, call waiting, conference calls, and others. It also provides wireless Internet service, as well as digital applications comprising music, video, reading, gaming, and animation; wireline broadband services; and wireline voice services. In addition, it offers dedicated line and IDC services to corporate customers in a range of industry sectors; and basic corporate communication products comprising corporate VPMN and SMS, and tailor made solutions. Further, the company provides international telecommunications services, which includes IDD, roaming, Internet, MNC, and value added business services. Additionally, it offers telecommunications network planning, design, and consulting services; roaming clearance, IT system operation, and technology support services; value-added platform development and maintenance services; mobile data, and system integration and development services; network construction and maintenance, network planning and optimizing, and training services; electronic communication products design and sale of related products; and non-banking financial services. It also provides mobile cloud research and development services; call center services; e-payment, e-commerce, and Internet finance services; and mobile Internet digital content services, as well as operates a network and business coordination center. The company serves 950 million mobile customers and 187 million wireline broadband customers. The company was formerly known as China Mobile (Hong Kong) Limited and changed its name to China Mobile Limited in May 2006. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is based in Central, Hong Kong. China Mobile Limited is a subsidiary of China Mobile Hong Kong (BVI) Limited.
Advance Auto Parts, Inc. provides automotive replacement parts, accessories, batteries, and maintenance items for domestic and imported cars, vans, sport utility vehicles, and light and heavy duty trucks. The company offers battery accessories; belts and hoses; brakes and brake pads; chassis and climate control parts; clutches and drive shafts; engines and engine parts; exhaust systems and parts; hub assemblies; ignition components and wires; radiators and cooling parts; starters and alternators; and steering and alignment parts. It also offers air conditioning chemicals and accessories; air fresheners; antifreeze and washer fluids; electrical wires and fuses; electronics; floor mats, seat covers, and interior accessories; hand and specialty tools; lighting products; performance parts; sealants, adhesives and compounds; tire repair accessories; vent shades, mirrors and exterior accessories; washes, waxes and cleaning supplies; and wiper blades. In addition, the company offers air filters; fuel and oil additives; fuel filters; grease and lubricants; motor oils; oil filters, part cleaners and treatments; and transmission fluids for engine maintenance. Further, it offers battery and wiper installation; engine light scanning and checking; electrical system testing; video clinic; oil and battery recycling; and loaner tool program services. Additionally, the company sells its products through its website. It serves professional installers and do-it-yourself customers. The company operates stores under the Advance Auto Parts, Autopart International, and Carquest brands, as well as branches under the Worldpac name. As of April 23, 2022, it operated 4,687 stores and 311 branches in the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Canada; and served 1,318 independently owned Carquest branded stores in Mexico, Grand Cayman, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and the British Virgin Islands. The company was founded in 1929 and is based in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The following companies are subsidiares of Stanley Black & Decker: 2315708 Ontario Inc., 3-V Fastener Co. Inc., 3xLOGIC Dalian Technology Company Limited, 3xLogic Florida LLC, 3xLogic Inc., 3xLogic Indiana LLC, 8 Commerce Drive LLC, ADT France, ASIA FASTENING (US) INC., Advanced Turf Technologies LTD, AeroFit LLC, AeroScout (US) LLC, AeroScout Industrial, AeroScout LLC, AeroScout Ltd., Aeroscout (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Al Khaja Pimex LLC, Allan Brothers, Automatic Doors Systems, Automatic Entrances of Colorado, Avdel Holding Limited, Avdel Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited, Avdel UK Limited, Aven Tools Limited, B&D Holdings Inc., B.B.W. BAYRISCHE BOHRERWERKE GmbH, BD Precision (Hong Kong) Limited, BD Suzhou (Hong Kong) Limited, BD Suzhou Power Tools (Hong Kong) Limited, BD Xiamen (Hong Kong) Limited, BDB Ferramentas do Brasil Ltda, BDC International Limited, BDK FAUCET HOLDINGS INC., BLACK & DECKER (SUZHOU) CO. LTD., BLACK & DECKER (SUZHOU) POWER TOOLS CO. LTD., BLACK & DECKER (SUZHOU) PRECISION MANUFACTURING CO. LTD., BLACK & DECKER ASIA MANUFACTURING HOLDINGS 1 S.a.r.l., BLACK & DECKER ASIA MANUFACTURING HOLDINGS 2 S.a.r.l., BLACK & DECKER DE REYNOSA S. DE R.L. DE C.V., BLACK & DECKER GLOBAL HOLDINGS S.a.r.l., BLACK & DECKER GROUP LLC, BLACK & DECKER HOLDINGS LLC, BLACK & DECKER INC, BLACK & DECKER INDIA INC., BLACK & DECKER INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS S.A.R.L., BLACK & DECKER INVESTMENT COMPANY LLC, BLACK & DECKER SHELBYVILLE LLC, BLACK & DECKER SSC CO. LTD., BLACK & DECKER TRANSASIA S.a.r.l., BLACK AND DECKER S.A. de C.V., Bagley Road LLC, Baltimore Financial Services Company Unlimited Company, Baltimore Insurance Designated Activity Company, Bandhart, Bandhart Overseas, Bed-Check, Belco Investments Company Unlimited Company, Besco Investment Group Co. Ltd., Besco Investment Holdings Ltd., Besco Pneumatic Corporation, Besco Pneumatic Corporation, Best Lock Corporation, Black & Decker, Black & Decker (Czech) s.r.o., Black & Decker (Ireland) Inc., Black & Decker (OVERSEAS) GmbH, Black & Decker (Thailand) Limited, Black & Decker (U.S.) Inc., Black & Decker Argentina S.A., Black & Decker Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Black & Decker Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Black & Decker Distribution Pty. Ltd, Black & Decker Europe, Black & Decker Far East Holdings B.V., Black & Decker Finance, Black & Decker Finance (Australia) Ltd., Black & Decker Finance SAS, Black & Decker Funding Corporation, Black & Decker Hardware Holdings B.V., Black & Decker Healthcare Management Inc., Black & Decker Holdings (Australia) Pty. Ltd., Black & Decker Holdings B.V., Black & Decker Inc., Black & Decker International, Black & Decker International Finance (UK) Limited, Black & Decker International Finance 1 Unlimited Company, Black & Decker International Finance 3 Designated Activity Company, Black & Decker International Finance Holdings (UK) Limited, Black & Decker International Holdings B.V. & CO. KG, Black & Decker Investments (Australia) Limited, Black & Decker Investments LLC, Black & Decker Limited BV, Black & Decker Luxembourg S.A.R.L., Black & Decker Mexfin LLC, Black & Decker No. 4 Pty. Ltd., Black & Decker Puerto Rico Inc., Black & Decker de Colombia S.A.S., Black & Decker de Panama LLC, Black & Decker del Ecuador S.A., Black & Decker del Peru S.A., Black & Decker do Brasil Ltda., Black and Decker de Costa Rica Limitada, Blick Plc, Bostitch-Holding L.L.C., Bristol Industries LLC, Bulldog Barrels LLC, C&C Enterprise Co. Ltd., CAM International Holdings Inc., CAMACC Systems Inc., CONNEXCENTER SA, CPE Acquisition Co., CRC-EVANS INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS INC., CRC-EVANS INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LLC, CRC-EVANS WELDING SERVICES INC., CRC-Evans B.V., CRC-Evans Canada LTD., CRC-Evans International LLC, CRC-Evans Offshore Limited, CRC-Evans PIH Servios De Tubulao do Brasil Ltda, CRC-Evans Pipeline International Inc., CRC-Evans Pipeline International Sdn Bhd, CWS Industries (Mfg.) Corp., Chesapeake Falls Holdings Company Unlimited Company, Chesapeake Investments Company S.A.R.L., Chicago Steel Tape, Chiro Tools Holdings B.V., Christie Intruder Alarms Limited, Clarke Security Services Incorporated, Columbia Manufacturing Company Incorporated, Compass Corporation, Compass II Co. Ltd., Consolidated Aerospace Manufacturing, Consolidated Aerospace Manufacturing LLC, Constellation (Luxembourg) Holdings S.a r.l., Contact East, Craftman, Cub Cadet LLC, DADO Inc., DEVILBISS AIR POWER COMPANY, DIYZ LLC, DeWalt Industrial Tools S.p.A., Dewalt Industrial Power Tool Company LTD., Doncasters US Holdings Inc., Dubuis et Cie SAS, E.A. Patten Co. LLC, ELU B.V., ELU Power Tools LTD, EMHART TEKNOLOGIES LLC, Eastern Vault & Security, Emhart Guangzhou (Hong Kong) Limited, Emhart Harttung A/S, Emhart Harttung Inc., Emhart International Holdings Limited, Emhart International Limited, Emhart Teknologies (Thailand) LTD., Excel Industries, Excel Industries Inc., F. Robotics Acquisitions Ltd., Facom, Facom Belgie BV, Fastener Jamher Taiwan Inc., First National AlarmCap LP/Premiere Societe en Commandite Nationale Alarmcap, First National AlarmCap. Trust, Frisco Bay Industries, GDX Technologies, GMT China, GRUPO BLACK & DECKER MEXICO S. DE R.L. DE C.V., GUANGZHOU EMHART FASTENING SYSTEM CO. LTD., Gamrie Designated Activity Company, Garden Way LLC, Generale de Protection, HSM Electronic Protection Systems, Hangtech Limited, Hardware City Associates Limited Partnership, Hefei INTACA Science & Technology Development Co. Ltd., Herramientas Stanley S.A. de c.v., Horst Sprenger GmbH Recycling-tools, Hustler Turf Equipment Inc., I.D.L. Techni-Edge LLC, INFASTECH CAMCAR MALAYSIA SDN BHD, INFASTECH DECORAH LLC, ISR Solutions, IguanaFix, Infastech (China) Limited, Infastech (Korea) Limited, Infastech (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Infastech (Mauritius) Limited, Infastech (Shenzhen) Limited, Infastech (Singapore) Pte. Ltd, Infastech Company Limited, Infastech Fastening Systems (Wuxi) Limited, Infastech Holdings (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Infastech Intellectual Properties Pte. Ltd., Infastech Receivables Company Pte. Ltd., Infastech/Tri-Star Limited, InfoLogix, InfoLogix Systems Corporation, Infologix - DDMS Inc., Infologix Inc., Innerspace Products, Interfast B.V., Irwin Industrial Tool Ferramentas do Brasil Ltda., JAFFORD LLC, JRB Attachments LLC, JennCo1 Inc., Jewel Attachments LLC, Jiangsu Guoqiang Tools Co., Jiangus Guopiang Tools Co. Ltd., Jointech Corporation LTD., K.And.M. Holdco Products Ltd., Kodiak Mfg. Inc., Lista International Corporation, Lux Star International S.a r.l., M. HART DO BRASIL LTDA., M.P.N. HOLDINGS LIMITED, M.T.D. France SAS, MTD Asia Hong Kong Limited, MTD Austria Handelsgesellschaft m.b.H., MTD Consumer Group Inc., MTD Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG, MTD Deutschland Verwaltungsgeschellschaft mbH, MTD Europe Holding GmbH, MTD Holdings, MTD Hungaria Kft., MTD International Operations Inc., MTD Investments Australia Pty Ltd., MTD LLC, MTD PRODUCTS ITALIA S.R.L., MTD Poland Sp. z.o.o., MTD Products AG, MTD Products Australia Party LTD, MTD Products Benelux B.V., MTD Products Company, MTD Products Czech Spol. s.r.o., MTD Products Denmark ApS, MTD Products Inc., MTD Products India Private India Limited, MTD Products Limited, MTD Products New Zealand Limited, MTD Products Nordic AB, MTD Products S.A. de C.V., MTD Products Singapore, MTD Schweiz AG, MTD Southwest Inc., Mac Tools Canada Inc., Maquinas y Herramientas Black & Decker de Chile S.A., Microalloying International Inc., Microtec Enterprises, Moeller Manufacturing & Supply LLC, Monarch Mirror Door Co., NEWFREY LLC, NFASTECH COMPANY LIMITED, NIscayah, NSW Fabristeel Netherlands B.V., National Manufacturing, Nelson Bolzenschwei-Technik GmbH & Co. KG, Nelson Bolzenschwei-Technik GmbH Verwaltungs GmbH, Nelson Fastener Systems, Nelson Fastener Systems de Mexico SA de CV, Nelson Saldatura Perni S.r.l., Nelson Soudage de Goujons SAS, Nelson Stud Welding (Tianjin) Company Ltd., Nelson Stud Welding Canada Inc., Nelson Stud Welding Inc., Nelson Stud Welding India Private Limited, Nelson Stud Welding International LLC, New FEP Co. LLC, Newell Brands - Tools Business, Nippon Pop Rivets & Fasteners LTD., Niscayah Asia Limited, Niscayah Group AB, Niscayah Holdings Limited, Niscayah Investments Limited, Niscayah Teknik AB, Novia SWK SAS, OSI Security Devices, Onglin International Limited, P I H Holdings Limited, P&B Re Holdings LLC, PIH Services Limited, PIH Services ME LLC, PIH Services ME Ltd., PIH Services ME W.L.L., PIH U.S. LLC, PIPELINE EQUIPMENT AND SERVICES SARL, PORTER-CABLE ARGENTINA LLC, PT Stanley Black & Decker, Pacom Group AB, Pacom Systems (North America) Inc., Pacom Systems Espana S.L., Pacom Systems Pty Limited, Paladin Brands Group Inc., Paladin Brands Holdings Inc., Paladin Brands International Holdings Inc., Panalok Limited, Pengo Corporation, Pillo Health, Pinnacle Electronic Systems, Pipeline Induction Heat Limited, Pipeline Induction Heat Limited, Powers Fasteners Australasia Pty Limited, Powers Fasteners Inc., Powers Fasteners Inc. (Panama), Powers Rawl Pty. Ltd., Powers Shanghai Trading Ltd., Precision Hardware, Prikos & Becker LLC, Pro One Finance SAS, QRP Inc, RCTENN LLC, RIGHTCO II LLC, Rawl Australasia Pty. Ltd., Rawlplug Unit Trust, Refal Industria e Comercio de Rebites e Rebitadeiras Ltda., Remington LLC, SBD Cayman LLC, SBD European Investment Unlimited Company, SBD European Security Holdings S.a r.l., SBD European Security International Unlimited Company, SBD European Security Investment Unlimited Company, SBD Holding AB, SBD Insurance Inc., SBD MDGP Partnership Holdings LLC, SBD MDGP Partnership Holdings S.a r.l., SBD Manufacturing Distribution & Global Purchasing Holdings L.P., SBD Niscayah S.a r.l., SBD Property Holdings LLC, SBD UK Canada Holdings Inc., SPIRALOCK GLOBAL VENTURES LIMITED, STANLEY BLACK & DECKER HUNGARY KORALTOLT FELELOSSEGU TARSASAG, STANLEY BLACK & DECKER IBERICA S.L., STANLEY BLACK & DECKER MOROCCO SARL, STANLEY BLACK AND DECKER CYPRUS INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LTD, STANLEY BLACK AND DECKER CYPRUS ONE HOLDINGS LTD, STANLEY BLACK AND DECKER CYPRUS S1 HOLDINGS LTD, STANLEY BLACK AND DECKER CYPRUS S2 HOLDINGS LTD, STANLEY ENGINEERED FASTENING EASTERN EUROPE SP.Z O.O., SWK (U.K.) Holding Limited, SWK (UK) Limited, SWK Utensilerie S.r.l., Scan Modul, Security Group, SecurityCo Solutions Inc., Shanghai Emhart Fastening System Co. Ltd., Sidchrome Tool, Sielox Security Systems, Societe Miniere et Commerciale SAS, Sonitrol, Sonitrol Distribution Canada Inc., Sonitrol Security Systems of Buffalo Inc., Southern Monitoring Services Limited, Specialty Bar Products Company, Spiegelberg Manufacturing Inc., Spiralock Corporation, Stanley Access Technologies LLC, Stanley Atlantic Inc., Stanley Black & Decker (Barbados) SRL, Stanley Black & Decker (Hellas) EPE, Stanley Black & Decker Asia Holdings LLC, Stanley Black & Decker Asian Holdings B.V., Stanley Black & Decker Australia Pty Ltd., Stanley Black & Decker Austria GmbH, Stanley Black & Decker Belgium BV, Stanley Black & Decker CCA S. de R.L., Stanley Black & Decker Canada Corporation, Stanley Black & Decker Cayman Holdings Inc., Stanley Black & Decker Cayman International Financing LLC, Stanley Black & Decker Centroamerica S. de R.L., Stanley Black & Decker Chile L.L.C., Stanley Black & Decker Colombia Services S.A.S., Stanley Black & Decker Czech Republic s.r.o., Stanley Black & Decker Deutschland GmbH, Stanley Black & Decker Distribution SAS, Stanley Black & Decker Finance 1 LLC, Stanley Black & Decker Finance 2 LLC, Stanley Black & Decker Finance Limited, Stanley Black & Decker Finance Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker Finland Oy, Stanley Black & Decker France SAS, Stanley Black & Decker France Services SAS, Stanley Black & Decker Hermosillo S. de R.L. de C.V., Stanley Black & Decker Holdings Australia Pty Ltd, Stanley Black & Decker Holdings S.a r.l., Stanley Black & Decker IP Holdings Limited, Stanley Black & Decker India Private Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International FZE, Stanley Black & Decker International Fiance 2 Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 1 Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 2 Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 3 Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 3 Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 4 Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 4 Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 5 Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance L.P., Stanley Black & Decker Ireland Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker Italia S.r.l., Stanley Black & Decker Latin American Holding BV, Stanley Black & Decker Latin American Investment Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker Limited, Stanley Black & Decker Limited Liability Company, Stanley Black & Decker Logistics BV, Stanley Black & Decker MEA FZE, Stanley Black & Decker Manufacturing SAS, Stanley Black & Decker Middle East Trading FZE, Stanley Black & Decker NZ Limited, Stanley Black & Decker Netherlands B.V., Stanley Black & Decker Norway AS, Stanley Black & Decker Partnership Japan, Stanley Black & Decker Partnership Japan Holdings S.a r.l., Stanley Black & Decker Polska Sp. z o.o., Stanley Black & Decker Precision Manufacturing (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Stanley Black & Decker Romania SRL, Stanley Black & Decker Slovakia s.r.o., Stanley Black & Decker Sweden AB, Stanley Black & Decker Turkey Alet Uretim Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Stanley Black & Decker UK Group Limited, Stanley Black & Decker UK Limited, Stanley Black & Decker de Monterrey S. de R.L. de C.V., Stanley Black and Decker Commercial Private India, Stanley Black and Decker Security Solutions Mexico S.A. de C.V. (fka DEWALT INDUSTRIAL TOOLS S.A. DE C.V.), Stanley CLP3, Stanley Canada Holdings L.L.C., Stanley Chiro International Ltd, Stanley Convergent Security Solutions Inc., Stanley Engineered Fastening Benelux B.V., Stanley Engineered Fastening France SAS, Stanley Engineered Fastening India Private Limited, Stanley Engineered Fastening Industrial Deutschland GmbH, Stanley Engineered Fastening Italy S.r.l., Stanley Engineered Fastening Spain S.L.U., Stanley Europe BV, Stanley European Holdings B.V., Stanley European Holdings II B.V., Stanley Fastening Systems Investment (Taiwan) Co., Stanley Fastening Systems L.P., Stanley Fastening Systems Poland Sp. z o.o., Stanley Feinwerktechnik GmbH, Stanley Grundstuecksverwaltungs GmbH, Stanley Healthcare Solutions France Sarl, Stanley Housing Fund Inc., Stanley Industrial & Automotive LLC, Stanley Infrastructure LLC Formerly f/k/a International Equipment Solutions ("IES"), Stanley Inspection L.L.C., Stanley Inspection US L.L.C., Stanley International Holdings Inc., Stanley Israel Investments B.V., Stanley Logistics L.L.C., Stanley Pipeline Inspection L.L.C., Stanley Safety Corporation LLC, Stanley Security AS, Stanley Security Alarmcentrale B.V., Stanley Security B.V., Stanley Security Belgium BV, Stanley Security Canada ULC (fka 3xLogic Holdings Inc.), Stanley Security Denmark ApS, Stanley Security Europe BV, Stanley Security Federal Systema LLC, Stanley Security Holding AS, Stanley Security Limited, Stanley Security Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Stanley Security Nederland B.V., Stanley Security Oy, Stanley Security Singapore Pte. Ltd., Stanley Security Solutions (NI) Limited, Stanley Security Solutions - Europe Limited, Stanley Security Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Stanley Security Solutions Inc., Stanley Security Solutions India Private Limited, Stanley Security Solutions Limited, Stanley Security Sverige AB, Stanley Technical Services Ltd., Stanley Tools SAS, Stanley U.K. Holdings Ltd., Stanley UK Acquisition Company Limited, Stanley UK Services Limited, Stanley Works (Europe) GmbH, Stanley Works (India) Private Limited, Stanley Works (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Stanley Works (Wendeng) Tools Co. Ltd., Stanley Works Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Stanley Works China Investments Limited, Stanley Works Holdings B.V., Stanley Works Limited, Stanley-Bostitch S.A. de c.v., Stanley-Bostitch Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Stichting Beheer Intellectuele Eigendomsrechten Blick Benelux B.V., SureHand Inc. f.k.a. SBD Aura Inc., Sweepster Attachments LLC, THE BLACK & DECKER CORPORATION, TOG Holdings Inc., TOG Manufacturing Company Inc., TSI Monitoring LLC, TSI Sales & Installation LLC, The EAP Acquisition Co. LLC, The Farmington River Power Company, The Ferry Cap & Set Screw Company, The Stanley Works (Langfang) Fastening Systems Co. Ltd., The Stanley Works (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., The Stanley Works (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., The Stanley Works (Zhongshan) Tool Co. Ltd., The Stanley Works Israel Ltd., The Stanley Works Limited, The Stanley Works Pty. Ltd., Tong Lung Metal Industry, Troy-Bilt LLC, Tucker Fasteners Limited, Tucker GmbH, Tucker S.R.O., Universal Inspection Systems Limited, Venus Enterprise Co. Ltd., Visiocom International Pte Ltd, Voss Industries Inc., Wintech Corporation Limited, XMARK Corporation, XMARK Corporation., Yong Ru Plastics Industry (Suzhou) Co. Ltd, and Zag USA Inc..

Read More
The following companies are subsidiares of Prudential Financial: 210-220 E. 22nd Street SSGA Owner LLC, AIG Edison, AIG Star, AREF Cayman Co Ltd., AREF GP II Pte. Ltd., AREF GP Ltd., ASPF II - Feeder Fund GmbH, ASPF II - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, ASPF II Management GmbH, ASPF III Scots L.P., ASSURANCE, AST Investment Services Inc., Adlerwerke CB Investment LLC, Administradora de Fondos de Pensiones Habitat S.A., Administradora de Inversiones Previsionales SpA, Aoba Life Insurance Company, Aoba Life Insurance Company Ltd., Asia Property Fund III GP S.a.r.l., Assurance IQ LLC, Assurance Intelligence LLC, BSC CP LP, Braeloch Holdings Inc., Braeloch Successor Corporation, Brazilian Capital Fund GP Limited, Broad Street Global Advisors LLC, Broome Street Holdings LLC, CB German Retail LLC, CLIS Co. Ltd., COLICO INC., Capital Agricultural Property Services Inc., Chadwick Boulevard Investment Holdings Co. LLC, Cibecue LLC, Coconino LLC, Colico II Inc., Columbus Drive Partners L.P., Commerce Street Holdings LLC, Commerce Street Investments LLC, Coolidge LLC, Coral Reef GP, Coral Reef L.P., Coral Reef Unit Trust, Cottage Street Investments LLC, Cottage Street Orbit Acquisition LLC, DICKENS AVENUE HOLDINGS VI LLC, DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI Ireland L.P., DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI US L.P., Dale/P Minerals Limited Partnership, Don Cesar Investor LLC, Dryden Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Dryden Finance II LLC, EVP II GP S.a r.l., EVP II Horizon GP S.a r.l., EVP II Sprint GP S.a r.l., Edison Place Senior Note LLC, Essex LLC, EuroCore GP S.a r.l., European Value Partners GP S.a.r.l., Everbright PGIM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Flagstaff LLC, GA 1600 Commons LLC, GA 333 Hennepin Investor LLC, GA BV LLC, GA Bay Area GP LLC, GA Bay Area Investor LLC, GA Belden LLC, GA CLARENDON LLC, GA Cal Crossings LLC, GA Collins LLC, GA E. 22nd Street Apartments Holdings LLC, GA East 86 Street LLC, GA JHCII LLC, GA MENLO PARK INVESTOR LLC, GA Manor at Harbour Island LLC, GA Metro LLC, GA TRITON INVESTOR LLC, GA W Paces LLC, GA/MDI 333 Hennepin Associates LLC, GIBRALTAR BSN HOLDINGS SDN BHD, GIBRALTAR INDIA SOLUTIONS LLP, Gateway Holdings II LLC, Gateway Holdings LLC, German Retail Income CP LP, Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, Gibraltar International Insurance Services Company Inc., Gibraltar International Service LLC, Gibraltar Reinsurance Company Ltd., Gibraltar Universal Life Reinsurance Company, Glenealy International Limited, Global Portfolio Strategies Inc., Gold GP Limited, Gold II L.P., Gold L.P., Graham Resources Inc., Graham Royalty Ltd., Green Harvest Asset Management LLC, Green Tree GP, Green Tree L.P., Greenlee LLC, Halsey Street Investments LLC, Hirakata LLC, IVP Fund GP LLC, Impact Investments Bridges UK S.a.r.l, Inter-Atlantic G Fund L.P., Inversiones Previsionales Chile SpA, Inversiones Previsionales Dos SpA, Ironbound Fund LLC, Jennison Associates LLC, Kyarra S.a r.l., Kyoei Annuity Home Co. Ltd. Kabushiki Kaisha Kyouei Nenkin Home, LINEUP LLC, Lake Street Partners IV L.P., Lotus Reinsurance Company Ltd., MC GA COLLINS HOLDINGS LLC, MC GA COLLINS REALTY LLC, MC Insurance Agency Services LLC, Manor at Harbour Island LLC, Marble Canyon LLC, Maricopa LLC, Market Street Holdings IV LLC, Montana Capital Partners, Morenci LLC, Mulberry Street Holdings LLC, Mulberry Street Investment L.P., Mulberry Street Partners LLC, Mullin TBG Insurance Agency Services LLC, MullinTBG Insurance Agency Services, National Family Assurance Group LLC, New Savanna, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund A LP, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund II - A LP, Orchard Street Acres Inc., PAI Bay Farm LLC, PAI Bayrock Groves LLC, PAI Belvidere Farms LLC, PAI Big Cypress Farm LLC, PAI Corcoran 640 Ranch LLC, PAI DeKalb Farm LLC, PAI Delano 1500 Ranches LLC, PAI Desert Falcon Farms Manager LLC, PAI Flicker Orchard LLC, PAI Good Hope Farm LLC, PAI Hawk Creek Ranch LLC, PAI Hills Valley Ranches LLC, PAI Holly Hill Groves LLC, PAI Hunt Farm LLC, PAI Jackson Bayou Farm LLC, PAI Lake Placid Groves LLC, PAI River Bend Ranches LLC, PAI Wallula Gap Vineyard LLC, PCP V Cayman AIV GP L.P., PEREF II Co-Invest 1 GP S.a r.l., PEREF II GP S.a r.l., PFI EM-Tech Fund I LLC, PG Business Service Co. Ltd, PG Collection Service Co. Ltd., PG Friendly Partners Co. Ltd., PGA Asian Retail Limited, PGA European Limited, PGI Co. Ltd, PGIM AC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM AVP IV GP S.a r.l., PGIM Advisory Shanghai Co. Ltd., PGIM Agricultural Investments GP LLC, PGIM Australia Pty Ltd, PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Fund L.P., PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Partners LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Feeder VI LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Fund VI L.P., PGIM Custom Harvest LLC, PGIM DC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM DC JV GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM DC Solutions LLC, PGIM European Financing Limited, PGIM European Services Limited, PGIM Financial Limited, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund II L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives GP LLC, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives II GP LLC, PGIM Foreign Investments Inc., PGIM Holding Company LLC, PGIM Holdings Limited, PGIM Hong Kong Ltd., PGIM INDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM INDIA TRUSTEES PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM IRELAND LIMITED, PGIM Inc., PGIM International Financing Inc., PGIM Investments Ireland Limited, PGIM Investments LLC, PGIM Japan Co. Ltd., PGIM Korea Inc., PGIM LTIF Berlin GP S.a r.l., PGIM LTIF Berlin MLP S.ar.l., PGIM LTIF GP S.a.r.l., PGIM Limited, PGIM Loan Originator Manager Limited, PGIM M Campus GP S.a r.l., PGIM Management Partner Limited, PGIM MetaProp Investor LP LLC, PGIM Netherlands B.V., PGIM Overseas Investment Fund Management Shanghai Company Ltd, PGIM Private Capital Ireland Limited, PGIM Private Capital Limited, PGIM Private Placement Investors Inc., PGIM Private Placement Investors L.P., PGIM QUANTITATIVE SOLUTIONS LLC, PGIM REF EUROPE SCSp, PGIM REF Europe GP S.a r.l., PGIM REF Europe Member LLC, PGIM REF Intermediary Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate CD S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Capital VII GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest L.P., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest SCSp, PGIM Real Estate Co-Invest Holdings LLC, PGIM Real Estate Debt GmbH, PGIM Real Estate Finance Holding Company, PGIM Real Estate Finance LLC, PGIM Real Estate France SAS, PGIM Real Estate Germany AG, PGIM Real Estate Global Debt GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Global Master Fund GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles II S de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles S. de R.L. de C.V, PGIM Real Estate Italy S.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Japan Ltd., PGIM Real Estate Loan Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate Luxembourg S.A., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Management Luxembourg S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Mexico S.C., PGIM Real Estate S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate U.S. CORE Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate U.S. Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate UK Limited, PGIM Scots Limited, PGIM Securities Investment Trust Enterprise, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management (Feeder) I LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management Fund I L.P., PGIM Shanghai Company Ltd., PGIM Singapore Pte. Ltd., PGIM Strategic Financing LLC, PGIM Strategic Investments Inc., PGIM Taronga Investor GP LLC, PGIM U.S. Agriculture Fund LP, PGIM USPF VI Manager LLC, PGIM Wadhwani LLP, PGIM Warehouse Inc., PGLH of Delaware Inc., PIFM Holdco LLC, PIIC Limited, PIISC Holdings UK Limited, PIM KF Blocker V Holdings LLC, PIM USPF V Manager LLC, PLA Administradora Industrial SRL, PLA Administradora LLC, PLA Administradora S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional II S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional S.de R.L. de C.V., PLA Co-Investor LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager I LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager II LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Blue LP, PLA Retail Fund I Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LP, PLA Retail Fund II Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II U.S. Carry/Co-Invest LP, PLA Services Manager Mexico LLC, PLAI Limited, PMCF Holdings LLC, PMCF Properties LLC, PPPF General Partner LLP, PR GA SCP Apartments LLC, PRAMERICA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP LLP, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP SCOTS FEEDER LLP, PRECO Account IV LLC, PRECO Account Partnership IV LP, PRECO III GP LLP, PREFG Hanwha Manager LLC, PREI Acquisition I Inc., PREI Acquisition II Inc., PREI Acquisition LLC, PREI HYDG LLC, PREI International Inc., PRIAC Property Acquisitions LLC, PRICOA Management Partner Limited, PRISA Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Pooled Manager LLC, PRISA III Fund GP LLC, PRISA III Fund PIM LLC, PRREF Debt Fund Manager LLC, PRREF II Fund Manager LLC, PRU 3XSquare LLC, PRUCO LLC, PRUDENTIAL CAPITAL ENERGY PARTNERS MANAGEMENT (FEEDER) LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP MEMBER LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP REIT LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE 2 LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE LLC, PT PFI Mega Life Insurance, Passaic Fund LLC, Pine Tree GP, Pine Tree L.P., Platinum GP Limited, Platinum II L.P., Platinum L.P., Pramerica Business Consulting Shanghai Company Limited, Pramerica EVP CP LP, Pramerica Financial Asia Headquarters Pte. Ltd., Pramerica Financial Asia Limited, Pramerica Fixed Income Funds Management Limited, Pramerica Fosun Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Pramerica Holdings Ltd, Pramerica Hong Kong Holdings Limited, Pramerica Insurance Agency China Company Ltd., Pramerica Luxembourg CP GP S.a.r.l., Pramerica PRECAP I GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP II GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP III GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP IV GP LLP, Pramerica Pan European Real Estate Scots LP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I GP Scots Feeder LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I Scotland Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital II Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital III Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Limited, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Scots Feeder LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V Netherlands GP LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital VI Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Scots CP GP LLP, Preco III Scotland Limited Partnership, Pru 101 Wood LLC, Pru Alpha Partners I LLC, Pru Fixed Income Emerging Markets Partners I LLC, PruVen Capital Partners Fund I L.P., Pruco Assignment Corporation, Pruco Life Insurance Company, Pruco Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, Pruco Securities LLC, Prudential 900 Aviation Boulevard LLC, Prudential Affordable Mortgage Company LLC, Prudential Agricultural Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Annuities Distributors Inc., Prudential Annuities Holding Company Inc., Prudential Annuities Inc., Prudential Annuities Information Services & Technology Corporation, Prudential Annuities Life Assurance Corporation, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Captive Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Universal Company, Prudential Bank & Trust FSB, Prudential Capital Energy Opportunity Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners Management Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Partners Management Fund IV L.P., Prudential Capital and Investment Services LLC, Prudential Chile II SpA, Prudential Chile SpA, Prudential Commercial Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Equity Group LLC, Prudential Financial Inc., Prudential Fixed Income Global Liquidity Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Fixed Income U.S. Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Funding LLC, Prudential General Services of Japan Y.K., Prudential Gibraltar Agency Co. Ltd. Prudential Gibraltar Agency Kabushiki Kaisha, Prudential Global Funding LLC, Prudential Holdings of Japan Inc., Prudential Huntoon Paige Associates LLC, Prudential IBH Holdco Inc., Prudential Impact Investments Mortgage Loans LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Debt LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Equity LLC, Prudential Insurance Agency LLC, Prudential International Insurance Holdings Ltd., Prudential International Insurance Service Company L.L.C., Prudential International Investments Advisers LLC, Prudential International Investments Company LLC, Prudential International Investments LLC, Prudential Investment Management Services LLC, Prudential Japan Holdings LLC, Prudential Legacy Insurance Company of New Jersey, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 1 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 2 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Capital Asset Holding Company LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Funding LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Holdings LLC, Prudential Multifamily Mortgage LLC, Prudential Mutual Fund Services LLC, Prudential Newark Realty LLC, Prudential QOZ Investment Fund 1 LLC, Prudential Realty Securities Inc., Prudential Retirement Financial Services Holding LLC, Prudential Retirement Holdings LLC, Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, Prudential Securities Secured Financing Corporation, Prudential Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., Prudential Seguros S.A., Prudential Select Strategies LLC, Prudential Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Prudential Structured Settlement Company, Prudential Systems Japan Limited, Prudential Tax Services LLC, Prudential Term Reinsurance Company, Prudential Trust Co. Ltd., Prudential Trust Company, Prudential Universal Reinsurance Company, Prudential Workplace Solutions Group Services LLC, Prudential do Brasil Seguros de Vida S.A., Prudential do Brasil Vida em Grupo S.A., Prudential/TMW Real Estate Group LLC, Pruservicos Participacoes Ltda., QMA JP EM All Cap Equity Partners LLC, Quartzsite LLC, Residential Services Corporation of America LLC, Rio CP LP, Rock European Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock Global Real Estate LLC, Rock Kensington Limited, Rock Marty GP S.a r.l., Rock Oxford S.a r.l., Rock UK Real Estate II S.a.r.l., Rockstone Co. Ltd., Rosado Grande LLC, Ross Avenue Energy Fund Holdings LLC, Ross Avenue Minerals 2012 LLC, SCP Apartments LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERS VI GP LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERSHIP FUND VI GP LLC, SHP IV Carried Interest LP, SHP V Carried Interest L.P., SMP Holdings Inc., SVIIT Holdings Inc., Sanei Collection Service Co. Ltd. Kabushiki Kaisha Sanei Shuuno Service, Senior Housing Partners V LLC, Senior Housing Partnership Fund V LLC, Sterling Private Placement Management LLP, Stetson Street Partners L.P., Strand Investments Limited, TBG Insurance Services Corporation, TENSATOR HOLDINGS LTD, TF Proveedora S.C., TMW ASPF I Verwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, TMW ASPF Management GmbH, TMW Management LLC, TMW Real Estate Group LLC, TMW Realty Advisors LLC, TMW USPF Verwaltungs GmbH, TRGOAG Company Inc., The Gibraltar Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Keynes Dynamic Beta Strategy US Fund GP LLC, The Prudential Assigned Settlement Services Corp., The Prudential Brazilian Capital Fund LP, The Prudential Gibraltar Financial Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Prudential Home Mortgage Company Inc., The Prudential Insurance Company of America, The Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd., The Prudential Real Estate Financial Services of America Inc., The WMF Group, Thurloe Commercial Guernsey Limited, USPF V - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, USPF V Carry LLC, USPF V Co-Invest LLC, USPF V Investment LP, United States Property Fund VI GP S.a r.l., VIP Australia Holding Company LLC, VIP Australia Trustee Pty Ltd, Vailsburg Fund LLC, Vantage Casualty Insurance Company, Wabash Avenue Holdings V LLC, Wabash Avenue Partners V L.P., Wadhwani Capital Limited, Waveland Avenue Holdings I LLC, Waveland Avenue Partners I Ireland L.P., Waveland Avenue Partners I US L.P., Wellness Services Ecossistema De Bem Estar Ltda., Wellness Services SRL, Yamato Life, and Yavapai LLC.

Read More
Royal Bank of Canada operates as a diversified financial service company worldwide. The company's Personal & Commercial Banking segment offers checking and savings accounts, home equity financing, personal lending, private banking, indirect lending, including auto financing, mutual funds and self-directed brokerage accounts, guaranteed investment certificates, credit cards, and payment products and solutions; and lending, leasing, deposit, investment, foreign exchange, cash management, auto dealer financing, trade products, and services to small and medium-sized commercial businesses. This segment offers financial products and services through branches, automated teller machines, and mobile sales network. Its Wealth Management segment provides a suite of advice-based solutions and strategies to high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, and institutional clients. The company's Insurance segment offers life, health, home, auto, travel, wealth, annuities, and reinsurance advice and solutions; and business insurance services to individual, business, and group clients through its advice centers, RBC insurance stores, and mobile advisors; digital, mobile, and social platforms; independent brokers; and travel partners. Its Investor & Treasury Services segment provides asset servicing, custody, payments, and treasury services to financial and other investors; and fund and investment administration, shareholder, private capital, performance measurement and compliance monitoring, distribution, transaction banking, cash and liquidity management, foreign exchange, and global securities finance services. The company's Capital Markets segment offers corporate and investment banking, as well as equity and debt origination, distribution, advisory services, sale, and trading services for corporations, institutional investors, asset managers, private equity firms, and governments. The company was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Fatih Karimov  Trend:



Iran and China have agreed on a project for development of Abadan refinery in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, Abbas Kazemi, Iran's deputy oil minister said.



The first phase of the project worth $1.2 billion will start soon, Kazemi, who heads the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), said, Mehr news agency reported Sept. 10.



Under the deal the Chinese Sinopec will undertake the project aimed at improving the quality of products of the refinery, Kazemi said.



He further said that increasing gasoline and gas oil production capacity as well as decreasing the fuel oil output is the main objective of the project.



Talks have been held with Chinas Central Bank for funding the project, he said, forecasting that the project will start by November.



Kazemi also said that the project will be implemented within four years.



Iran plans to decrease the share of fuel oil production from the total refining capacity which is about 27 percent at the moment.



Kazemi said in December 2015 that production of fuel oil in Iran will decrease to 10 percent of the total refining capacity by 2025.



Iran is the world's third major fuel oil producer, which indicates low performance of the country's refineries.
The U.S. is preparing to send two B-1B Lancer bombers to South Korea in a show of force and commitment to Seoul's defense following the latest underground nuclear test by North Korea, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

The U.S. had planned to have the bombers fly over Osan Air Base, about 50 miles southeast of Seoul, on Monday, but the overflight was postponed because of Typhoon Lionrock in the region, Yonhap reported.

The overflight of the B-1Bs, flanked by South Korean and U.S. fighter jets, is now scheduled for Tuesday, Yonhap reported, citing a spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea.

The bomber flights are a response to North Korea's underground nuclear test last Friday, which Pyongyang said was aimed at perfecting a miniaturized nuclear warhead capable of being fitted on a long-range missile.

The nuclear test was the fifth conducted by North Korea. Yonhap, citing government sources, said plans appear to be underway to conduct a sixth test in defiance of the international community, even as North Korea reportedly is seeking aid to cope with deadly torrential rains and flooding caused by the typhoon.

The Korean Central News Agency, an official North Korean outlet, said, "The country's manpower and material and technical potentials are now concentrated on the flood damage rehabilitation."

The ruling party urged citizens to "achieve the miraculous victory of converting misfortune into favorable conditions."

North Korean media also said the focus of a 200-day "loyalty campaign" already underway to mobilize the nation behind leader Kim Jong Un in a mandatory show of devotion had been switched to a call for all citizens to support the recovery effort, The Associated Press reported.

According to a United Nations report issued by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the floods displaced tens of thousands of people and destroyed homes, buildings and critical infrastructure.

The U.N. report said the North Korean government has confirmed that 133 people were killed, another 395 were missing, and 140,000 were in need of urgent assistance.

It said more than 35,500 houses, schools and public buildings were damaged, with 69 percent of those completely destroyed, and there was widespread inundation of farmland.

"It's not unheard of, but it's rare for the North Korean government to make an open and public call for assistance," Bradley Williams, an international relations professor at City University in Hong Kong, told CNN.

Following the North's nuclear test last week, President Obama issued a statement condemning it as "a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability. North Korea stands out as the only country to have tested nuclear weapons this century."

Obama said the U.S. would seek to defend its regional allies "through our deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense [THAAD] battery to the [Republic of Korea], and the commitment to provide extended deterrence, guaranteed by the full spectrum of U.S. defense capabilities."

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the defensive capabilities would include the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" as a last resort. In remarks last Friday after the underground nuke test, Carter said he had told his South Korean counterpart that the U.S. was prepared to use "all aspects of our extended deterrent capabilities, including conventional capabilities, missile defense and the nuclear umbrella."

At the Pentagon last Friday, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a spokesman, said that negotiations were continuing with South Korea on the placement of the THAAD system, but "it could be moved in quickly" in an emergency.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.

Related Video:
The U.S. Army is investigating the death of a 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) soldier in Kuwait.

First Lt. Jeffrey D. Cooper, of Mill Creek, Washington, died Sept. 10 as a result of a vehicle rollover accident while traveling from Camp Buehring, Kuwait, to Ali Al Salem Air Base, according to an Army press release.

The death has been ruled a "non-combat related incident," but the cause of the accident is under investigation, according to the release.

Cooper, 25, was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne.

He was in Kuwait working to push new soldiers into Iraq to advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, said Master Sgt. Kevin Doheny, a 101st spokesman.

Cooper joined the Army in June 2013 and arrived at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in July 2015. His awards and decorations include the National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.

The Army deployed about 500 101st Airborne soldiers to Iraq and Kuwait in early 2016 to advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces.

The 101st headquarters element assumed the role of Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command-Iraq.

During the nine-month deployment, the division headquarters will provide command and control of coalition troops who are training, advising and assisting Iraqi forces as part of Inherent Resolve to fight militants affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.
Despite Flipping in Surf 4 Times in a Year, Marines Say New ACV Is the Future of Amphibious Warfare

Some Marine veterans familiar with the vehicle and its operations have worried about the reliability of the ACV.
With a recent rash of close encounters and fast approaches by Iranian vessels in international waters prompting U.S. ship commanders to fire flares and warning shots, the Navy's top officer is warning that the consequences of this harassment could be significant and advocating for an agreed-upon rule set to govern these at-sea encounters.

During a discussion at the Center for American Progress on Monday in Washington, D.C., Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson told Military.com that individual ship commanders had broad autonomy to respond to these Iranian harassment incidents.

"There's really nothing that limits the way they can respond," Richardson said. "These things happen on a time scale that really doesn't allow those commanders to sort of phone home for permission and then respond. They've got to know what their commander's guidance is, they've got to be given the freedom to act, to take advantage of fleeting opportunities, and also to make sure that they can respond to these very fast moving opportunities."

To date, these responses have been limited to warning measures and rebukes. But the Iranian ships' behavior, Richardson suggested, could have grave consequences.

"From the standpoint of, is our Navy prepared to respond, I would say, yes in every respect," Richardson said. "These are some of these potentially destabilizing things. A tactical miscalculation, the closer and closer you get to these kinds of things, the margin for error gets smaller, human error can play a bigger and bigger role. I think it's very important that we eliminate this sort of activity when we can and nothing good can come from it."

Richardson said he hopes to establish a dialogue with Iranian naval leaders in order to develop a code of conduct to govern encounters at sea. He added that such a rule set had been very effective in dictating behavior during maritime encounters with the Chinese Navy, even amid heightened tensions in the South China Sea.

"We're working to sort of think our way through what are the possibilities there, both with the Iranians and I would say with the Russians who exhibit this behavior as well," Richardson said, "so we can get up on the line and sort of have a conversation of, whether this would be helpful or hurtful, this is not in the helpful category."

It remains unclear whether the leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy would be interested in engaging in the sort of dialogue Richardson wants.

The deputy chief of staff for Iran's armed forces, Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, told a state news agency this week that Iranian boats involved in the encounters with U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf were in keeping with international standards and norms.

"The claims [of harassment] are not only untrue, but stem from their fear of the power of Iran's soldiers," Jazayeri said, according to Agence France-Presse reports.

The Pentagon has reported at least five incidents of harassment by Iranian boats in the last month. In at least one of the encounters, an Iranian vessel came within 100 yards of a U.S. patrol ship.

Separately, Iran over the weekend threatened to shoot down two U.S. Navy aircraft -- a P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance plane and an EP-3 -- that were flying in international airspace near the Strait of Hormuz, CNN reported.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
The U.S. commander of the air war in Syria and Iraq said Tuesday that he is wary of getting cooperation from Russia and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the tentative "cessation of hostilities" agreement worked out by the State Department.

"Right now, the Russians and the [Syrian] regime have to do the right thing" and live up to the cessation agreement. "I'm not going to tell you that I trust them," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, commander of air forces for U.S. Central Command in southwest Asia.

In a briefing to the Pentagon from Southwest Asia, Harrigian said the Russians and the Assad regime must first honor the tentative seven-day "cessation of hostilities" agreed to by Washington and Moscow before the U.S. can begin cooperating with the Russians on joint action against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

Initial reports from the region are that the cessation is generally holding in Syria despite sporadic violations.

Harrigian said "the intelligence community will continue to monitor the cessation" to determine whether to take the next step in working with the Russians, but he appeared to be skeptical. "That is, if we get that far," he said.

Echoing the comments of U.S. ground commanders, Harrigian said that the battlespace in Syria is getting more crowded and complex, with various militias competing for influence and territory in the multi-sided, five-year-old civil war.

Last month, Turkish tanks and troops pushed into Syria on a mission to close off the border to ISIS, but also to limit the influence of the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia that has been the most effective partner for the U.S. in Syria.

Harrigian said he was in close coordination with all elements of the U.S. command structure and with anti-ISIS coalition partners on how the deal with the Russians would play out, "but this will take some work."

"As the terms of reference are finalized, we will take the guidance, review it and build an operational plan that executes the mission precisely while minimizing risk to the coalition team and civilians on the ground," said Harrigian, who took over earlier this summer from Lt. Gen. Charles Brown Jr. as the Central Command air commander.

One of his major concerns, Harrigian said, is the Russians' use of so-called "dumb bombs," as opposed to the precision-guided munitions used by the U.S. in airstrikes.

The U.S. has conducted the "most precise air campaign in U.S. history" in Iraq and Syria, Harrigian said. He suggested that coordinating with Russian warplanes using dumb bombs would greatly increase the risk of civilian casualties.

"Our intent is to ensure we don't impact coalition cohesion, our current momentum or the precision effects we demand," Harrigian said. "We're still working out the details, but these are areas that will be addressed."

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

Iran has exported $41.7 1 million worth of products to the US in Jan-July 2016, while the export amount of the same period in 2015 was about zero, according to a report from the US Census Bureau.

Irans export to US stood at $4.8 million in July, while the country's imports from US increased by 54 percent, to $25.9 million.

Despite an increase in July statistics, the US decreased commodity exports to Iran from $157.5 million in seven months of 2015 to $97.7 million during the same period in 2016.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Khalid Kazimov  Trend:

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has once again warned about ageing population amid concerns over declining birth rate in the country.

The issue of ageing population is an unsolvable problem and nowadays the developed countries even have no solutions to the problem, IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying at a meeting with the members of the countrys supreme statistics council Sep. 13.

He added that the countrys officials should have stopped policies aimed at controlling population growth.

The leader also underlined the significant role of statistics in developing policies and called on Iranians to actively take part in the upcoming round of the nationwide census to be conducted next month.

A national census is taken every five years in Iran and the country will carry out next round of general census from October 16.

Earlier in 2014, Ayatollah Khamenei published his 14-point plan to speed up the countrys population growth.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13 By Khalid Kazimov  Trend:

Iran has expressed concern over the possibility of militants taking advantage out of the Syrian truce. Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan has said that the ceasefire could reinforce the militant groups fighting against President Bashar al-Assads government, Mehr news agency reported. Supporters of militant groups may use the ceasefire as an opportunity to equip them, he added. Expressing support for establishing truce in Syria, he said that during the ceasefire all involved parties should make efforts in order to deliver humanitarian aid to Syrians in besieged areas. Following a meeting in Geneva on September 10, Russia and the US agreed to co-ordinate air strikes against extremists in Syria. As part of a detailed agreement to reduce the violence there, a "cessation of hostilities" is expected to be established. The ceasefire does not include terrorist groups such as the IS terrorist group (ISIS,ISIL, Daesh).
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

The Armenian Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) poses a nuclear threat and the international community must assess that fact, Choe Chong-dae, president of Dae-kwang International Co., said in an article in The Korea Times.

Choe Chong-dae, who is also director of the Korean-Swedish Association, said that Hrant Bagratyan, former prime minister of Armenia, stressed that Armenia has created nuclear weaponry. The author said that Bagratyans comments raise profound concern.

Armenian former prime minister's comments should not be taken lightly, the author said. Armenian citizens have played an instrumental role in smuggling nuclear and radioactive nuclear waste materials, as reflected in media reports exposing them.

Many groups of Armenian citizens associated with the smuggling of radioactive materials were exposed many times in the territories of neighboring countries, he added. Furthermore, some Armenian groups even tried to smuggle highly enriched uranium and cesium-137 from Armenia in 2003 and 2010.

The author added that three Armenian citizens who previously worked at Metsamor NPP were arrested in Georgia in April 2016 for attempting to smuggle and illegally sell nuclear materials.

One of the detainees was identified as a former associate of the Armenian secret service, the author said. This group planned to sell a quantity of uranium-238 costing $200 million to the Middle East.

There is great nuclear security risk to the region regarding Metsamor NPP, especially in the context of the occupation of Azerbaijan territory by Armenia, the article said. The dubious condition of spent fuel and waste material from Metsamor NPP also raises safety concerns.

The author said that built in 1976, Metsamor NPP is based on technologies from Chernobyl NPP that ceased operations in 1988 due to a nuclear disaster.

The operation of the Metsamor NPP in Armenia and the cases of smuggling of nuclear and radioactive materials from this NPP poses a nuclear threat to the entire region, and it also constitutes a serious threat and danger for the Korean investment in the region, the article said.



The author said that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev delivered a speech at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on March 31-April 1, 2016.

The presidents speech drew great attention from the international community to Metsamor NPP and called on nations to take measures against the threat emanating from this facility, he added.



We urge that the International Atomic Energy Agency and global community assess and exercise strict control of the systematic cases of smuggling of radioactive materials arranged by Armenia, the article said.

Threats of the use of nuclear weapons by Armenian officials who are obsessed with revenge against Azerbaijan are unnerving, the author said. If Armenia and North Korea continue to pursue their nuclear weapon ambitions and smuggling of nuclear materials, we will all face hastening self-destruction.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

Russia will try to strengthen military cooperation with Azerbaijan after Armenias representative is appointed secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Sergey Markov, Russian presidents confidant, member of the Russian Public Chamber, told Trend Sept. 13.

Previously, Nikolay Bordyuzha, incumbent CSTO secretary general, said that the name of the new CSTO secretary general will be announced at a meeting of the CSTO Collective Security Council in Yerevan on October 14.

Bordyuzha said that Armenias representative will be appointed to that post.

Later, Interfax agency reported citing a source in the Armenian government that Seyran Ohanyan, Armenian defense minister, is likely to be appointed the CSTO secretary general.

"Armenia is a full member of the CSTO, so its representatives are not deprived of the right to hold any senior posts, Markov told Trend. But I think that Russia understands that this appointment will be negatively perceived in Baku.

Azerbaijan is also considered as an important ally of Russia, so I think that the appointment of the Armenian politician to the post of the CSTO secretary general will be countervailed by strengthening some other formats of the Russia-Azerbaijan cooperation in military and military-technical cooperation," Markov said.

He added that the appointment will not affect Russia's efforts to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Markov said that today there is a real possibility of a serious breakthrough in the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement.

Markov added that the new CSTO head, as well as all representatives of Armenia in other organizations, will try to win the favor of other countries and organizations over Nagorno-Karabakh region.

"But I do not think that the new CSTO head will have any success in this direction," he said.

Markov added that other CSTO countries, in particular Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, are favorably disposed to Azerbaijan and consider Azerbaijan as a friendly country.

Bordyuzha led the organization in 2003. Later, he was re-elected to that post three times.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

Trend:

The relatives and supporters of the gunmen who seized the police building in Armenia in July and later surrendered to the authorities, are holding a rally near the countrys parliament building, News Armenia agency reported Sept. 13.

The protesters are trying to ask the MPs about the actions to be taken in connection with the "Sasna Tsrer" armed group members.

The armed group seized the headquarters of the police and interior troops in Erebuni, Yerevan, July 17, demanding the release of the participant of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, coordinator of the oppositional Armenian civil initiative Founding Parliament Zhirayr Sefilyan.
Kerry added that although the US-Russia peace plan was flawed, it was better than experiencing sectarian violence on a daily basis, describing the new agreement as the last chance "to save a united Syria.", Sputnik reported.

"This renewed cessation of hostilities went into effect at sundown in Syria a few hours ago," Kerry told reporters. "The earliest reports are that there is some reduction in violence."

US Department of State John Kirby later said he was unaware if any groups in Syria had refused to abide by the deal, although he had seen reports that the opposition faction Ahrar al-Sham rejected calls to adhere to the cessation of hostilities.

On September 9, Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced a new peace plan to address the conflict in Syria that called for a ceasefire to come into force on Monday. If the new ceasefire in Syria lasts for seven days, the United States and Russia will work together to establish a joint implementation center.

The agreement also includes the creation of a demilitarized zone around Aleppo to deliver humanitarian aid to the city, as well as close coordination of Russian and US airstrikes against the Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, and the Islamic State terrorist groups operating in Syria.
This Account has been suspended.
Vice President U Myint Swe has urged officials from Chinas Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to help with investments into Myanmars special economic zones.





Following a meeting in Nanning this week, U Myint Swe said he was encouraged by Chinese investment in industrial parks to date, but hoped that more would come in the future as Myanmar seeks to build its export industries, like garment manufacturing.

Please continue providing assistance to Myanmar. We will repay you for your debt of gratitude when we can stand on our own, the vice president said in Nanning.

China is the largest foreign investor in Myanmar, accounting for about 37 percent of foreign investments, U Myint Swe said.

Chen Wu, chair of the Peoples Government of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said his government saw several areas of opportunity for investment in Myanmar, including tourism and agriculture.

He added that both countries were enjoying a period of strong relations.

Both the central government and our local government support Myanmars peace process, he said.

Translation by Zar Zar Soe
The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation is weighing the merits of issuing fishing permits for over 500 dams across the country, in response to requests from flood-afflicted pond fish farmers.





Would-be dam fishermen first requested the ministry consider the proposal in June, after their pond-based stocks took another hit from the monsoon flooding. They say increased frequency of flooding sees them lose their investment every year.

The proposal was being considered and negotiations are underway, Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation U Tun Win told The Myanmar Times on September 9.

The Department of Fisheries [also] approved of the proposal, he said.

Lawmakers face a challenge on the issue, with fisheries in dams not specifically outlined in the Irrigation Act. The act will require amendment in order to accommodate the proposed new fish breeding method.

Addressing the media after a parliamentary session, U Tun Win said putting the dams out to tender could also be a boon for landless rural dwellers.

We do not give [licences] individually. We will give them only if they join with a cooperative, he said, indicating that the department intends to provide training and technical assistance on fish breeding if the proposal is greenlit.





Environmental changes brought about by the construction of dams has had a major impact on fish stocks in the nations waterways, he said, with some species populations showing a marked decline.

The proposal comes as the ministry begins a three-year project to improve living standards for farmers in tropical regions. The project, being carried out with the Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund, is aimed at improving the health of animals, production and markets.

One key task will be conducting an animal census in central Myanmar, in the townships of Mahlaing, Myingyan, Taungtha, Nwartogyi, Pakokku and Yesagyo.

This, U Tun Win said, will provide a clearer picture of the number of fisheries in the region and inform decisions made about fish and prawn-rearing businesses. The project is being conducted with assistance from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

U Tun Win said the dam fishing proposal has his support.

Breeding the fish in the dams is not strange for me, he said, pointing out that using dams for breeding fish is common practice in Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh and China.

If the fish are kept in the dams, they would not suffer natural disasters. They will [only] get lost when the dams break. It is the surest, and dams are seas for fishes.

Translation by San Layy and Khine Thazin Han
The 13th China-ASEAN Expo is underway in Nanning, with over 138 exhibits being presented by the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI).





Some 112 of Myanmars stallholders at the convention are showcasing jade and jewellery-related products. Also on show are finished products made from Myanmar timber, as well as pulses and fruits.

The number of Myanmar companies represented at this years expo is higher than ever before, say attendees.

I participate in the China-ASEAN Expo every year. This year, we have more exhibits, said Daw Khin Moe Phyu, owner of Linn Yaung Chi jewellery company.

Despite a reported general downturn in demand for jade, Daw Khin Moe Phyu said she is optimistic about the market for gems at this years convention.

I think the gem jewellery will be sold more this year than the years before. All of the owners of exhibits including me sold many products [at past exhibitions], she said.

Myanmar joins other ASEAN nations - including Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam - in participating at the event, which is being held from September 11 to 14 in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The Myanmar Fishery Federation, as well as fish breeders, importers and exporters, are taking part in the event for the first time.





Vice President U Myint Swe and Union Minister for the Ministry of Commerce Dr Than Myint attended the event, along with officials from the UMFCCI.

Translation by Win Thaw Tar
The temporary suspension of logging in Myanmars forested areas is set to be lifted in April, with production next financial year to resume at reduced levels, according to Myanma Timber Enterprise deputy director U Aye Cho Thaung.





There are about 19,000 teak trees and 530,000 hardwood trees for potential logging next fiscal year, he said. Each teak tree is capable of producing up to 1.2 tons of timber, he added, but production would be restricted to just 15,000 tons of teak next year and 350,000 tons of hardwood.

In a bid to curb deforestation, the government implemented a nation-wide ban on logging for the 2016-2017 financial year. Major forested areas, like the mountain ranges in Rakhine, Shan and Kachin states, were included in the suspension. A logging ban of 10 years will be maintained in Bago Yoma mountain range.

The UK-based watchdog group the Environmental Investigation Agency released a report last year that said close to one-half of Myanmar is covered in natural forest  but that it is shrinking at rapid pace.

About 1.7 million hectares of forest cover was lost from 2001 to 2013, according to the report.

According to government figures, exports in the 2013-14 financial year were worth US$637.5 million, but it is likely much greater given the high levels of illegal trade, largely with China and Thailand.

Since 2014 exports of raw timber has been banned under Myanmar law.





The suspension of raw material export will continue, U Aye Cho Thaung confirmed.

The resumption of logging will be managed by the state-owned Myanmar Timber Enterprise, he said.

U Win Myo Thu, co-founder and manager of the environmental NGO Ecodev, said yesterday that it was expected that production was going to restart, but it should be done with greater restrictions than in the past.

Read more: Illegal logging mars Magwe's deep forests
Boy meets girl. Couple has child. Child becomes mermaid.





Its a dilemma that Yangonites are now familiar with after the premiere of Mira at the National Theatre on September 11.

Expectations were high for what was billed as Broadways arrival in Yangon.

Breakout from the fast pace reality of life and behold an exciting and magical story before your eyes, material from organisers Fusion Dance Troupe loftily promised.

But the excitement and magic must have hit a snag along the way as the 6pm gala show was one hour late in starting.

The production, an original English-language work created and directed by Philippines-based Ian Alcaraz, featured an estimated 80 percent Myanmar cast and crew along with a smattering of internationals.





It opened by introducing a young girl Mira, who on her seventh birthday is turned into a mermaid as the result of a family curse.

Adding to the usual drama of growing up, Mira is sent to live in the ocean where she meets an array of characters who have definitely not featured on a Myanmar stage before: hip-hop-inspired alligators, the occasional sea witch and psychedelic jellyfish to name a few.

Mira sings and dances her way through various plot points, eventually managing to turn back into a human, fall in love, die  then be resurrected  and live happily ever after. The production value was not quite New York City Broadway, but perhaps more of its own Bogyoke Road kind of Broadway.

Colourful costumes and sophisticated lighting design did enough to mask the clunking scene changes and audio blips. Some songs hit the mark, others did not.

But any foibles faded away during the finale and curtain call. Performers were visibly emotional and clearly aware that this was one small but important step in the theatre history of Myanmar. There is a lot of great musical theatre talent in this country, director Alcaraz told The Myanmar Times, They are very eager to learn but they just dont have anywhere to perform.

I hope this show is a stepping stone for government and society to realise that there is so much talent here.

The Myanmar Times also spoke with aspiring Yangon actress Hsu Yee Ko Ko, who played the grown-up version of Mira. Under the weight of several bouquets of flowers and mobbed by newfound fans, she could only muster, I loved it, I loved it!

One area of concern was ticket prices. Patrons said the cheapest available ticket on the night was K20,000, a figure far out of reach for many Myanmar people.

But for those who could afford it, there did seem to be a little dose of excitement and magic inside the National Theatre.
The Syrian regime Monday announced the start of the U.S.-Russia-brokered cease-fire across the country, the official news agency said, Anadolu Agency reported.

The Syrian Arab News Agency said the truce would run from 7.00 p.m. local time Monday to 11.59 p.m. local time on Sept. 18.

According to a statement from the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces, the seven-day truce applied across Syria but the army retained the right to respond decisively using all types of firepower to any breach by armed groups.

A civil defense official reported a potential breach of the cease-fire, although it was unclear exactly when the attack occurred.

Mohammed Maznuk said regime aircraft struck Maarat Misriun to the north of Idlib city, killing at least 10 people. He told Anadolu Agency 17 people were injured in the attack.

The cease-fire is aimed at introduced humanitarian aid to besieged parts of the country. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry dubbed the deal a turning point and said it could mark a move towards a negotiated peace and a political transition in Syria.

It applies to all armed groups in Syria apart from Daesh and the Nusra Front, which recently changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.
About 2000 residents of Kayin States Hlaingbwe township have taken refuge at the Myaing Gyi Nguu monastery since September 11 to avoid ongoing fighting between the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA) and the Tatmadaw, according to a state hluttaw MP.





The displaced residents come from villages in the Mae Tha Wow area. Some fled to Thailand, according to lawmaker U Tin Win Kyaw (NLD; Hlaingbwe 1).

The state government will come and support the refugees [today], he said. We are planning the process. The state government will report back to the Union government about the refugee situation.

The DKBA announced an offensive against a Tatmadaw-aligned Border Guard Force earlier this month. Tatmadaw troops have since reinforced the BGF and heavy-weapons fire has been reported. Villagers in the affected area were informed before the fighting broke out and fled to the safety of the monastery.

A number of Karen ethnic armed groups, including the Karen National Union, the KNU/KNLA Peace Council and the DKBA, as well as government-controlled BGFs, have sparred in Kayin State over who controls the Asia Highway  and the right to collect illegal tolls along the road.
A fatal combination of old loyalties, competing factions and increasingly radical members wresting control of the platform has driven the countrys most successful ethnic party to the edge. One-half of the Arakan National Party, the former Arakan League for Democracy, is calling for secession, while the other side isnt sorry to see them go.





Forged two years ago from a merger between the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) and the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) , the ANP has since struggled to maintain cohesion, especially due to the widespread perception that the RNDP acts as the upper hand.

On September 11, members of the ALD faction assembled in Yangon to discuss a separation plan.

U Myo Kyaw, a senior ALD member, told The Myanmar Times yesterday that members of his former party have felt squeezed out ever since an ANP expulsion of six senior officials in March. The oustre was a response to senior members who had rebuffed a party directive to oppose the ruling National League for Democracy after a perceived slighting in state government appointments.

In terms of policy outlooks, the two camps were not seeing eye to eye anymore, U Myo Kyaw added. Due to a lack of leadership, the Rakhine people have becomes very nationalistic and radical, with a hostile view of the international community, he said.

The ANP strongly defends the interests of the Buddhist Rakhine majority in the state, which was torn apart by communal violence in 2012, resulting in the military-backed governments policy of segregating the stateless Muslim minority. Members of the international community engaged in Rakhine had been alarmed at the prospect of an ANP-led state government.

But the ALD members no longer want to be synonymous with acting as a belligerent opposition, much less when they have been sidelined from party decision-making.





They [the RNDP members] never listen to our suggestions or take our opinion into account. When they make addresses for the state affairs, their attitude does not match our own, he said. Therefore, we have decided to secede from them and we will confirm that after our final meeting this coming month.

U Tun Aung Kyaw, ANP secretary and a former RNDP member, said there was no point disputing the other members desire to leave.

Seceding is their right and we will not object whether they secede or not, he told The Myanmar Times.

Secession of a party faction is not strange because in the history of the countrys politics many parties have split, he added.

U Tun Aung Kyaw also appeared to suggest that if the ALD members dont voluntarily leave, they could face expulsion.

They [the ALD] held unofficial meetings without informing the party and did other things that violated the partys rules and regulations, he said.

We offered them the chance to discuss internal party affairs at the 2017 party conference but they did not want to wait until then to try and secede from the ANP, said U Tun Aung Kyaw. We will not object to it, but we will protest them continuing to use the party name and flags after they have seceded.

The ANP won 22 seats in the national parliament and became the single largest party in Rakhines state parliament last November, holding just short of an overall majority. The ANP was the only merger of ethnic political blocs to successfully net seats in the polls.

After Daw Aung San Suu Kyi rebuffed ANP demands to be given the position of Rakhine chief minister, the party established itself in opposition to the NLD.
Sunsest viewings in Bagan are about to get a new vantage point.





For years, tourists have been clambering on top of the ancient pagodas to catch the iconic sight, and the activity is regularly included as a must do on Myanmar tourism lists. But scurrying up the sides of the old relics can cause damage, Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Assistant Director U Han Nyunt said yesterday. To lessen the burden on the pagodas, JICA is hoping to arrange a viewing area next to Ko Mount Lake.

Ko Mount Lake is in the centre of Bagans ancient heritage region and it is very convenient for watching the sunsets, U Han Nyunt said.

To better enhance views from the lake, the bank, which now stands at 2 feet high, will be raised to 4 feet.

He added that allowing tourists to clamber on top of the archaeological sites is not good for the pagodas in long term.

Residents, the regional government and the Ancient Culture Department are all coming around to the idea of directing tourists to the lake in Phwar Saw West village, he said.

Previous attempts to curtail pagoda sunset viewing raised ire in the tourism industry. In February, the Ministry of Culture banned pagoda-based sunset viewings after a private company had conducted a show on top of a monument, which allegedly reflected poorly on Myanmars heritage. The prohibition was rolled back amid outrage from tourists and tourism operators.

The viewing-area proposal has regaining traction following the damage imparted by last months earthquake. Centred in nearby Chauk township, the 6.8-magnitude quake damaged nearly 400 pagodas. Government officials have estimated restoration work could take one year.





The proposal will be submitted to the government in the next month and, if permission is granted, the project will be completed in two months  before the end of the year.

So, next tourist season, locals and foreign travellers will be able to take in the view from the bank, U Han Nyunt said.

Project expenses will be covered by the Japanese government.

If we watch the sunset from the bank, it protects the strength of pagodas and provides advantages for residents, said U Aung Aung Kyaw, director of the Department of Archaeology, National Museum and Library in Bagan. The travellers can buy handicrafts from the residents. Mainly, we must keep the bank of the lake clean.

Translation by Khine Thazin Han
Min Oke Soe, an actor sentenced to life imprisonment for killing an employee of a magazine he owned, saw his prison term reduced to 10 years in a ruling last week by the Supreme Court.





On December 25, 2014, Min Oke Soe turned himself in to police in Yangon, having confessed to beating to death Tarapa magazine editor Ma Nu Nu Yin the day prior at his Bahan township home.

He was found guilty of murder and handed a life sentence in July 2015, but the high court in Nay Pyi Taw ruled on September 9 that the convicted should have been tried on a lesser charge: culpable homicide not amounting to murder. His lawyer had lobbied prosecutors unsuccessfully for the lesser charge  reflecting the absence of intent to kill  during Min Oke Soes original trial.

Last weeks decision reduced Min Oke Soes offence to section 304 of the penal code, from the original murder charge under section 302.

The brutal killing was reportedly the result of a personal dispute between Ma Nu Nu Yin, who also went by Ma Tay Nu Yin, and the actor.

Discussing the reduced sentence, lawyer U Robert San Aung questioned whether the Supreme Court had handled the case with the great deliberation that it required.

For murder cases and other major cases, if a victim is killed by any means or at any time, Id like the courts to decide with great deliberation. I think the case of Min Oke Soe should not be changed from a murder case to [a culpable homicide] case, according to the legal procedure, he said, adding that the life sentence Min Oke Soe had originally received was also intended to have a deterrent effect on similar criminality.





Critics of the high courts decision also pointed to the severity of the victims injuries  she died of internal bleeding and was found with blunt force trauma wounds to her head, neck and torso  to argue that a murder charge was most appropriate.

The injuries the victim sustained in his case are not in line with the conditions of a [culpable homicide] case. Id like the Supreme Court to reconsider the case as a fair and just judiciary, U Robert San Aung said.

The victims younger brother Ko Sithu Maung expressed dismay when asked about the sentence reduction.

We are so angry, he told The Myanmar Times. The entire family has felt inconsolable grief because she was disfigured when she was killed. It gave me quite a shock when we heard the decision of the court.

Although we are dissatisfied with the outcome, we cant afford more trials like him [Min Oke Soe] as we are not rich like him, Ko Sithu Maung added.

Advocate U Maung Maung Win, who was hired by Ma Nu Nu Yins family for the original murder trial, said neither he nor the family had been informed of the Supreme Courts re-examination of the case. The court heard from Min Oke Soes lawyer and the prosecutor but no members of the victims family, he said.

U Maung Maung Win added that he had not yet been contacted by the family, which as a matter of last resort could ask the Supreme Court to re-hear the case.

Translation by Thiri Min Htun
A Rakhine State lawmaker forged ahead yesterday with an effort to continue stoking controversy over the recent formation of an advisory commission for the state chaired by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.





At the first day of the state legislatures second session, U Kyaw Zaw Oo (Arakan National Party; Sittwe 2) submitted a proposal objecting to the Rakhine State Advisory Commission formed by the Union government last month, urging the hluttaw not to recognise the body.

He argued that the commission lacked legitimacy because it was created without the consent of ethnic minorities, including his states Rakhine majority in particular.

Lawmakers in the state legislature voted to continue debate on the proposal, likely later this week.

U Kyaw Zaw Oo acknowledged the defeat of a similar motion in the Pyithu Hluttaw last week, but contended that the Rakhine State parliament deserved its own discussion on the commission, given that its work will focus on conditions in the state.

Parliament [in Nay Pyi Taw] rejected the proposal on September 6. However, we submitted one again in the state parliament because the decision of the state parliament is the most important as the issue is mainly related to Rakhine State, said U Kyaw Zaw Oo.

The proposal, among other points, raises concern about possible adverse effects of the commission and its recommendations.





According to state hluttaw MPs, discussion on the objection proposal could take place at a session as soon as tomorrow.

We absolutely agree with the proposal as it concerns all Rakhine ethnics, said lawmaker U Aung Win (ANP; Myebon 1). Although the proposal failed in the Union-level parliament, we asked the Speaker of the state parliament to submit a [similar] proposal about the Rakhine commission.

The nine-member Rakhine State Advisory Commission was formed on August 23 via a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of the Office of the State Counsellor and the Kofi Annan Foundation.

In addition to the Ghanaian Mr Annan, it includes former UN officials from Lebanon and Norway, as well as six Myanmar nationals, including both Buddhists and Muslims.

The commission has been tasked with finding solutions to ease inter-religious tensions that linger after violence between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012, as well as proposing development strategies for the state, which is one of Myanmars poorest.

Opponents of its composition have argued that the presence of foreigners on the commission risked undermining the countrys sovereignty and encouraged outside intervention in Myanmars domestic affairs.

A protest against the commission by Buddhist nationalists on September 11 turned violent as locals and participants confronted one another in Yangon.

Translation by Win Thaw Tar
Photojournalist Myat Thu Kyaw has filed a lawsuit, claiming he was verbally and physically assaulted while covering a demonstration led by nationalists in Yangon Regions Bahan township on September 11.





Several hundred nationalists had assembled in a field to protest the appointment of former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to the head of a commission tasked with settling affairs in Rakhine State  a move the nationalists perceive as an international intrusion on domestic issues.

In an incident witnessed by a Myanmar Times reporter, the Myanmar Pressphoto Agencys Myat Thu Kyaw was hit while he was trying to take a picture of the clash between the residents and the demonstrators.

I was hit once in the back, once in the chest and once on my face, he said at a press conference yesterday. I had some difficulty breathing the next day but it only hurts a bit on my back now.

In the chaos, he said, it was unclear who the assailant was. The lawsuit has been filed against an unknown perpetrator.

It was a rush and I could not determine the attacker, he said.

He told the press that he filed the lawsuit not only to protect himself but also for the future protection of those who cover the news. The media should have freedom and safety while working, he said.





When I was hit, the only thought I had was to protect my camera, which was being grabbed at by them, he said. Then, I escaped when the police pulled me out.

European Pressphoto Agency-Myanmar chief photographer Ko Nyein Chan Naing, who was also involved in the process of filing the lawsuit, said that security concerns extend not just to the media but also to anyone who passes by. Protesters must obey certain restrictions during their demonstrations, he said, so actions should be taken.

Photojournalists and video journalists are the ones who have to go closest to the area in order to cover the event so things like grabbing the camera or swearing at the journalists can be considered robbery or threats, and so on, he said. For the safety of us all, the government should protect reporters under the appropriate laws.

The trial is scheduled to begin on September 26.

Ko Aung Naing Soe, a photojournalist from Coconuts Media who was also at the protest, said, We already filed the case at the Bahan police station, so the remaining process will depend on the actions taken by the authorities.
The Thai justice ministrys recent plan to decriminalise yaba has sparked a debate over whether the government has thrown in the towel on the wars on drugs. After 20 years of successive governments taking a famously harsh approach in the fight against drugs, conservative voices are questioning whether decriminalisation of yaba would mean the currently leadership has chosen to go soft on offenders.





Such perceptions are misguided. In fact, reform of national narcotics policies are imperative as the repressive and deadly war on drugs which has focused on suppression has proven to be ineffective.

The justice ministry plans to revise the Narcotics Act, while reclassifying yaba, or methamphetamine pills, to a less severe category as part of its effort to rethink its approach to drug offences.

Yaba makes up more than half of all drug-related offences in Thailand. It is listed in the most restrictive category, alongside heroin, and the maximum penalty for those charged with dealing, manufacturing or trafficking is the death sentence.

Despite the criticism, an overhaul of the narcotics law, including the reclassification of certain types of drugs, is desirable.

Of course, abuse of yaba or any kind of narcotic drug is a criminal offence. However, the punishment should be proportionate and after 20 years of treating yaba as the most serious category of drug with stiff penalties it is time to rebalance the approach.

At present, prisons are crowded with yaba-related inmates. Unfortunately, a majority are either users or small-time dealers. It means that despite the hardline approach, big-time dealers and producers have managed to avoid arrest and suppression, leaving the small fish to bear the brunt of the punishment.





The reclassification would allow amphetamines to be used medically, including in the treatment for methamphetamine and yaba abuse, and allow those caught abusing the substances without prescriptions to be given a second chance by encouraging them to seek treatment.

The result of the zero-tolerance policies focusing on suppression rather than prevention is clear  the authorities have lost the battle. Governments spend more than 10 billion baht a year on the problem, but the level of drug abuse has not been reduced. About half the justice ministrys entire budget goes to the Corrections Department, where more than 70 percent of the inmates are jailed on drug-related cases, with too little being spent on prevention and rehabilitation.

Prison has not reduced the number of drug users in Thailand, with over 60pc of inmates failing to change their behaviour after incarceration. Worse, the experience behind bars leaves a lasting stigma on inmates, regardless of the extent of their offence.

A draft of the Narcotics Bill is now being deliberated by the Council of State. Once it clears that hurdle, it will be sent for debate and approval in the National Legislative Assembly.

The NLA will have to debate the details of the law including the annex prescribing the narcotics list in each category to classify the level of legal punishment.

Under the draft law, penalties for drug users and suppliers would be reduced. Drug users are likely to have more options than going to jail, such as undergoing rehabilitation or community service if they commit low-level of offences.

Of course, removing criminal penalties for users will not fix the overall problem.

Drug reform, however, requires a new strategy to distinguish the real dealers from the victims by incorporating public health and human rights objectives to take against the real culprits and protect the rights of the victims.

Instead of having police suppression lead the narcotic policy, the government should instead incorporate a public health approach by encouraging users to undergo rehabilitation.

Users should be distinguished from dealers and treated as patients, not criminals. The treatment should be based on the scientific approaches, as some users cannot just quit the drug without therapy.

The distinction between users and dealers would enable the police to focus their energy on arresting the big-time dealers and producers who are the root cause. The laws should also prevent some officers from abusing their power.

Meanwhile, the public should have a realistic understanding about those jailed for drug offences to help them recover and return to society without prejudice and stigma.

 Bangkok Post
Unified Brand Identity will Strengthen Customer Experience in Every Interaction with Blackfoot

Today, Blackfoot unveiled a new unified brand identity, creating a seamless approach to serving customers across the region with the latest voice, data and cloud solutions. The new brand identity includes a modern logo and brand assets that create instant recognition of the company's products, customer service and community support.

"Today's Blackfoot brand represents the continued efforts to provide advanced communications and broadband services in Montana, Idaho and beyond," said Bill Squires, CEO at Blackfoot. "Blackfoot's new brand identity and logo unifies its operating companies by completng the integration of Fremont Communications into Blackfoot and signifying our intent to continue developing and enhancing our services and solutions."







For more than 60 years, Blackfoot's mission has been to deliver superior technology solutions that improve its customers' ability to communicate, collaborate and compete. Through trusted relationships with its community, the unified brand identify will strengthen the experience customers have with its entire team.

"Blackfoot has changed a lot since we began serving customers in 1954. We've grown from a local telephone provider to a regional technology leader, providing modern technologies starting from regional telephone service to today's innovative voice, data and cloud solutions," said Joel Block, VP of Customer Operations and Marketing at Blackfoot. "Just like our solutions and community have grown over time, our brand continues to evolve to meet the needs of our customers."

To read more about the Blackfoot's new brand identity, please visit www.blackfoot.com/more.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913006424/en/
[September 13, 2016] Centrify's Survey Finds Consumers More Concerned with Financial Data Getting Hacked than Private Information about Their Families Being Exposed

Centrify, the leader in securing enterprise identities against cyberthreats, today released findings from its 2016 Consumer Trust research study that examined consumer attitudes toward hacking, including what information people most fear being hacked, how often consumers change their passwords and how aware they are when a hack does occur. The online study, commissioned by Centrify, found that people are most fearful of their credit cards or bank statements being hacked, with 78 percent of Americans and Germans ranking it a top concern. That number is even higher in the U.K., where 85 percent of residents rank credit card and bank data as their biggest hack concern. The study, which surveyed 2,400 people across the U.S., U.K. and Germany, also found that consumers are very concerned about their financial investment information falling prey to hackers, with 58 percent in the U.S., 56 percent in the U.K. and 43 percent in Germany citing it as a top concern. This is followed by health and medical records, with 46 percent in the U.S., 45 percent in the U.K. and 48 percent in Germany saying they are most fearful of this information being hacked. By contrast, consumers are less worried about their family information falling into the hands of hackers, with just 44 percent in the U.S., 41 percent in the U.K. and 43 percent in Germany citing this as a top concern. Hacks related to criminal history, web browsing history and dating profile information are least concerning for consumers, according to the survey. This is likely because a significant percentage of people do not find this information embarrassing. The study also found that when personal information is hacked, consumers do not always hear directly from the targeted business or organization that holds their data. At least half of respondents in eah country who were victims of a hack said they heard about the hack via the news. Younger adults are more likely to hear about such hacks from social media.



Additionally, the survey revealed that, despite the growing media spotlight on high profile hacks, most consumers have poor password habits and do not take adequate precaution to protect their personal information. Just one-quarter of Americans change their passwords at least once a month (more than in any other country). One-quarter of Americans and one-third of consumers in the U.K. and Germany change their passwords once a year, less or never. This is striking given that consumers are increasingly vulnerable to attacks. Over half of Americas and two-thirds in the U.K. do most or all of their banking online, and about one-third do most or all of their shopping online, according to the study.

The good news is that many consumers are eager to improve their online habits. The study found that frequent password changes are more common among those who have had their personal info hacked in the past and those who tend to do more online shopping. What's more, survey respondents indicated they are willing to invest time in completing security tasks if it makes them safer. More than half of all Germans (52 percent) expressed a willingness to spend at least 10 minutes on security measures, followed by 46 percent in the U.S. and 30 percent in the U.K. Half or more selected a fingerprint ID as one of the top two security measures they would be comfortable using. The alphanumeric password, the four-digit password and voice ID follow. The study revealed that people are much less comfortable with the graphic password, GPS locator and the ability to erase data remotely. "Consumers can no longer afford to put their data at risk," said Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify. "To protect themselves and their personal information, consumers need to follow a number of precautionary steps, such as monitoring accounts and frequently changing passwords. They should also look to transact with businesses that provide next-level security such as multi-factor authentication (MFA (News - Alert)). MFA adds a layer of security that protects against the leading cause of a data breach-namely, weak passwords." About Centrify Centrify is the leader in securing enterprise identities against cyberthreats that target today's hybrid IT environment of cloud, mobile and on-premises. The Centrify Identity Platform protects against the leading point of attack used in data breaches ? compromised credentials - by securing an enterprise's internal and external users as well as its privileged accounts. Centrify delivers stronger security, continuous compliance and enhanced user productivity through single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, mobile and Mac management, privileged access security and session monitoring. Centrify is trusted by over 5000 customers, including more than half of the Fortune 50. Centrify is a registered trademark and Centrify Server Suite, Centrify Privilege Service and Centrify Identity Service are trademarks of Centrify Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005284/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[September 13, 2016] Imaging Scientist and Social Impact Inventor Awarded $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize

Ramesh Raskar, founder of the Camera Culture research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and associate professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT (News - Alert), is the recipient of the 2016 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize. Raskar is the co-inventor of radical imaging solutions including Femto-photography, an ultra-fast imaging camera that can see around corners, low-cost eye-care solutions for the developing world, and a camera that allows users to read pages of a book without opening the cover. Raskar seeks to catalyze change on a massive scale by launching platforms that empower inventors to create solutions to improve lives globally. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005903/en/ Ramesh Raskar, 2016 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize Winner. Photo Credit: Len Rubenstein Raskar has dedicated his career to linking the best of the academic and entrepreneurial worlds with young engineers, igniting a passion for impact inventing. He is a pioneer in the fields of imaging, computer vision and machine learning and his novel imaging platforms offer an understanding of the world that far exceeds human ability. Raskar has mentored more than 100 students, visiting students, interns and postdoctoral associates who, with his guidance and support, have been able to kick-start their own highly successful careers. "Raskar is a multi-faceted leader as an inventor, educator, change maker and exemplar connector," said Stephanie Couch, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program. "In addition to creating his own remarkable inventions, he is working to connect communities and inventors all over the world to create positive change." The Lemelson-MIT Prize honors outstanding mid-career inventors improving the world through technological invention and demonstrating a commitment to mentorship in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The prize is made possible through the support of The Lemelson Foundation, the world's leading funder of invention in service of social and economic change. Over the next three years, Raskar will be investing a portion of the prize money to support the development of young inventors. "We are thrilled to honor Ramesh Raskar, whose breakthrough research is impacting how we see the world," said Dorothy Lemelson, chair of The Lemelson Foundation. "Ramesh's Femto-photography work not only has the potential to transform industries ranging from internal medicine to transportation safety, it is also helping to inspire a new generation of inventors to tackle the biggest problems of our time." Making the Invisible Visible

Raskar co-created Femto-photography in 2012, an advanced form of photography allowing cameras to see around corners. The technology, currently in development for commercialization, uses ultra-fast imaging to capture light at one-trillion frames per second, allowing the camera to create slow motion vidos of light in motion. Raskar and his team have received significant funding from corporate sponsors including DARPA, the National Science Foundation and MIT to further develop the idea of using 'scattered light imaging' to see around corners; potential future applications include: avoiding car collisions at blind spots; detecting survivors in fire and rescue situations; and performing endoscopy and medical imaging to eliminate the need of an X-ray. Raskar is continuing this research to make the seemingly impossible possible - from reading a book without opening the cover to capturing images of out-of-sight objects using sound waves.



A Vision for Improved Eye-Care in the Developing World

Raskar is the co-founder of EyeNetra, an inexpensive, disruptive eye-care platform that spun-out of Media Lab research. EyeNetra enables on-demand eye testing in remote locations via a hand-held technology that snaps onto a mobile device. When looking into the binocular the user is provided with interactive cues to rapidly calculate a prescription for eyeglasses. The technology was created to eliminate the need for expensive diagnostic tools in the developing world; the young company has performed eye-tests for hundreds of thousands of subjects and is currently active in the U.S., Brazil and India. Raskar's team has also worked on many areas of preventable blindness, low vision and diagnostics at MIT and launched LVP-MITRA in 2013 in Hyderabad, India, a center where hundreds of young inventors have been co-inventing next generation screening, diagnostic and therapeutic tools for eye-care. Empowering Social Impact among Youth and Entrepreneurs

Raskar is also the founder of the Emerging Worlds initiative, a year-round effort focused on solving some of the world's most pressing problems and impacting billions worldwide. This initiative based at MIT links corporate members, government organizations, educational institutes and venture partners. The members, MIT researchers, young innovators and entrepreneurs work in very specific integrated ecosystems to spot problems, probe solutions, grow adoption and scale the deployment. This methodology was recently used at Kumbhathon for innovations at Kumbh Mela, a gathering of 30 million people and at the Digital Impact Square, a multi-million dollar living lab and open co-innovation center. Raskar has mentored several teams that span crowd-steering via use of cell tower data to display heat maps of crowd movements, stations to test vital statistics using portable instruments and an analytics-based system to detect impending epidemic outbreaks in real time.

Launching Co-Innovation Pathways for Young Inventors

Raskar states: "Everyone has the power to solve problems and through peer-to-peer co-invention and purposeful collaboration, we can solve problems that will impact billions of lives." He plans to use a portion of the Lemelson-MIT Prize money to launch a new effort using peer-to-peer invention platforms that offer new approaches for helping young people in multiple countries to co-invent in a collaborative way. Visit http://redx.io/ to learn more or apply. He will speak at EmTech MIT, the annual conference on emerging technologies hosted by MIT Technology Review at the MIT Media Lab on Tuesday, October 18, 2016. Seeking Nominees for 2017 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize

The Lemelson-MIT Program is now seeking nominations for the 2017 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize. Please contact the Lemelson-MIT Program at [email protected] for more information or go to: http://lemelson.mit.edu/prize. ABOUT THE LEMELSON-MIT PROGRAM

Celebrating invention, inspiring youth

The Lemelson-MIT Program celebrates outstanding inventors and inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention. Jerome H. Lemelson, one of U.S. history's most prolific inventors, and his wife Dorothy founded the Lemelson-MIT Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. It is funded by The Lemelson Foundation and administered by the School of Engineering at MIT, an institution with a strong ongoing commitment to creating meaningful opportunities for K-12 STEM education. For more information, visit Lemelson.MIT.edu. ABOUT THE LEMELSON FOUNDATION

Based in Portland, The Lemelson Foundation uses the power of invention to improve lives. Inspired by the belief that invention can solve many of the biggest economic and social challenges of our time, the Foundation helps the next generation of inventors and invention-based businesses to flourish. The Lemelson Foundation was established in the early 1990s by prolific inventor Jerome Lemelson and his wife Dorothy. To date the Foundation has made grants totaling more than $200 million in support of its mission. For more information, visit http://www.lemelson.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913005903/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Orkhan Quluzade  Trend:

The Turkish province of Hatay has come under rocket fire from Syrias territory, the Turkish Haberturk newspaper reported Sept. 13.

According to the newspaper, two rocket shells launched from Syrias territory have exploded in the province.

No casualties have been reported as a result of the shelling.

In response, Turkish armed forces inflicted strikes on the positions of the Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) militants in Syria.

Earlier, a special security zone was created in Turkeys Hatay province on the border with Syria.

Hatay province is periodically attacked by IS militants.
[September 13, 2016] Comcast Brings Fiber Network Capable of 100-Gigabit Speeds To Southwest Florida's Business Community

Comcast Business is expanding its advanced fiber network in Sarasota and Southwest Florida to offer local businesses Ethernet services with speeds up to 100 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps), making it ideal for businesses that need bandwidth to move large amounts of data for operations like video conferencing, streaming, multiple users on a Wi-Fi network, file sharing and back-up, and cloud-based applications. With greater needs for increased bandwidth on smaller budgets, businesses today need efficient and cost-effective networking options that allow employees in different offices to communicate seamlessly. Comcast (News - Alert) Business offers efficient and scalable options to help employees collaborate with each other and communicate with clients. Comcast made the announcement at the Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County Annual Meeting at the Hyatt Regency Sarasota on September 9. Comcast Business was the Presenting Sponsor for the event. "There could be no better occasion than at our annual meeting to announce the exciting news that Comcast Business is expanding its network here, as we gather to reflect on our region's recent successes and bright economic future," said Mark Huey, President and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County. "We look forward to seeing how the expanded service offerings and community support fuel additional business and job growth across Sarasota County and in Southwest Florida." Sarasota's business climate recently earned it recognition from CNBC, which ranked the city 15th among its To 20 Metro Areas to Start a Business in America.



"Multi-gigabit speeds and reliability are critical for businesses today, and in a thriving area like Sarasota, those needs are growing exponentially," said Reggie Scales, Vice President, Business Services for the Comcast Florida Region. "Not only will our network deliver the highest speed and capacity to area businesses, it's also built to easily accommodate future growth in Sarasota and across Southwest Florida." Comcast's services can also be used by businesses that need a redundant or second network to support business continuity and provide file access, back-up and recovery in the event of a disaster. This can be particularly critical to Florida businesses during hurricane season when severe weather can cause power outages or make office buildings inaccessible.

Comcast Business serves schools, businesses, hospitals, and other organizations that require large amounts of bandwidth, are looking to link multiple locations, or that plan to connect their offices to a third-party data center. Services offered include: Ethernet Private Line: point-to-point connectivity between two customer sites for bandwidth-intensive applications.

Ethernet Virtual Private Line: point-to-multipoint connection to enable customers to tailor bandwidth, performance characteristics, and cost.

Ethernet Network Service: multipoint-to-multipoint connectivity to connect organizations with high-bandwidth requirements and multiple locations across Comcast's network.

Ethernet Dedicated Internet: continuous, high-bandwidth connectivity between customers' LANs and the public Internet. This is Comcast Business's second major expansion announcement in Florida in less than a month, following its August announcement in Tallahassee. Comcast has continually expanded its network in Florida since it began delivering multi-gig (up to 10 Gbps) Ethernet service to businesses in the state in 2011. Nationally, Comcast Business's Ethernet services are delivered over an advanced network that spans 150,000 miles and features a 100 Gbps backbone and expanded local footprint through Ethernet over hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC). Bandwidth (News - Alert) is available up to 100 Gbps and can be scaled in increments and offered in three different classes of service, backed by strict service level agreements and monitored 24x7x365 from Comcast's dedicated Network Operations Centers. The network expansion into Sarasota and Southwest Florida will also make a variety of other Comcast Business services available to local businesses, including TV and Business VoiceEdge, a cloud-based voice and unified communications solution that helps employees be productive even when they're away from their desks by delivering HD-quality voice service and an innovative user experience accessible via computers, desktop phones and mobile devices. About Comcast Business: Comcast Business offers Ethernet, Internet, Wi-Fi, Voice, TV and Managed Enterprise Solutions to help organizations of all sizes transform their business. Powered by a next-generation, advanced network, and backed by 24/7 technical support, Comcast Business is one of the largest contributors to the growth of Comcast Cable. Comcast Business is the nation's largest cable provider to small and mid-size businesses and has emerged as a force in the Enterprise market; recognized over the last two years by leading industry associations as one of the fastest growing provider of Ethernet services. For more information, call 866-429-3085. Follow on Twitter (News - Alert) @ComcastBusiness and on other social media networks at http://business.comcast.com/social. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160913006211/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Ahead of the second edition of United Nations Fashion Week and Awards in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the organizers have revealed that there will be 30 accomplished philanthropists for the awards at the event.

Member representing Ehimembano/ihitte Uboma/Obowo Federal constituency of Imo State at the House of Representatives, Deacon Chike Okafor, 5 Nigerian Senators and 2 wives of state governors including Mrs. Eberechi Suzzette Wike, wife of Rivers State Governor, were amongst the global awardees who were described as perfect, according to the President of Face of the World Organization, Hon. Nwabueze Buchi George.

Buchi George said that the awardees were carefully picked with regards to their humanitarian activities especially in the area of education for less privileged children, adding that he is looking forward to a wonderful outing at the event which will be taking place from October 20 to 23, 2016.

Fashion still remains the main thing, he said, while making it clear that the awards will not steal spotlight from the main reason the event has been put up.

We already have designers from around the world warming up for the event which is almost here and we are working so hard to get things going the way they are supposed to be. We also have classic runway models on ground as well as others that will be coming in from other countries to grace the event.

Dubai will witness a confluence of global fashion designers and models and it will surely be an unforgettable experience, he said.

The United Nations Ambassador also added that there is nothing like a point of reference for the designers and everyone will be operation in an atmosphere ruled by freedom, creativity and fashion.

Its not a showcase of dinner wears, seasonal wears or cultural wears. It is a showcase of freedom, creativity and fashion. We expect to see something and everything because I see designers coming with their culture, style and fresh creations.

For me, I want awesomeness and nothing more, he concluded.

[email protected] still remains the official email address where interested participants could send in their profiles as screening has commenced since July 2016.

United Nations Fashion Week and Awards [UNFW] celebrates artistry, and honors excellence in fashion and style. It is globally produced and managed by Face of World Organisation, an initiative founded by a team of goodwill and United Nations Ambassadors, with the sole aim of using Fashion as a means for cause campaign.

The project also aims at creating awareness on Education for disadvantaged background and less privileged children, hence the theme: Catwalk to Educate a Child. Proceeds from UNFW dinner, gala, live charity concert, awards and awardees supports, red carpet, donations, lectures and World Fashion Summit, are totally dedicated to Global Children Education.

The event is which is tagged The Gulf Edition is expected to feature fashion exhibition; gala, ball and dinners; live charity concerts; awards, super model search, pattern/sketches challenge and after fashion party, will be kicking off on the 20th of October, 2016, rounding off three days after on 23rd at Dubai, United Arab Emirates. More information are on the events official website, www.unfw.org .
Self-acclaimed Rap God M.anifest, has declined to commit to a future collaboration with Sarkodie few months after the two came out hard at each other in their respective tracks.

M.anifest who made his maiden appearance on the most popular satirical talk show in Ghana, Tonight with Nii Kpakpo Thomson on Viasat1 also indicated that he had done some tracks with Sarkodie in the past but didnt disclose why they are not out yet.

Asked by the host, Nii Kpakpo Thomson when he plans to do another collaboration with Sarkodie after he recently released his 14-track album, M.anifest cleverly avoided the question, opting to play around the question.

I think weve done some songs in the past that is not out, so maybe you can pay some hefty amounts and you can hear it. I dont know I just finished an album.

M.anifest however revealed that his new album had taught him the essence of collaborative effort in coming out with a very good body of work.

M.anifest was also given a run for his money when he challenged Nii Kpakpo Thomson to a rap battle on the show. After three rounds of hilarious rap composition from the duo on the show last Friday, the verdict was very obvious; Nii Kpakpo Thomson had successfully stood his ground and narrowly beaten the Rap God in his own Kingdom.

Tonight with Nii Kpakpo Thomson airs every Friday at 9pm with a repeat broadcast on Tuesdays at 11 am, only on Viasat1 Ghana.
Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL.
Oxygen aka "Ogabeatz" himself Jumps On Olamide's "Who You Epp" Shows his Vocal Skills on this Trending Tune by Baddo, I guess you will find something unique on this, As Oxygen Drops it as it is Hot!



DOWNLOAD LINK: https://my.notjustok.com/track/download/id/81449
13.09.2016 LISTEN

Gospel music sensation, Okoro Ese, popularly known as EesQlic, hit the limelight after emerging as the second runner up from the prestigious Destiny Child Gospel Music Talent Hunt Season 2.

She dropped her first single Kuwiye in 2014 produced by GreenWox under the music label Autograph Records. Kuwiye is an African high-life gospel praise song with a sensational touch of the Uhrobo dialect; born out of the desire to give praise to our sovereign Lord.

EseQlic is back with her first visuals for her debut single KUWIYE directed by Dare Oluwasanmi

It is our desire that this song will stir up praise to God from within you.

As part of our own contribution to the promoting God's kingdom we are fulfilling our promises we made at the inception of Destiny Child Gospel Music Talent Hunt to shoot music videos for our winners.

This video is a top notch, shot with the best cameras the industry has, we know you'll like it. Also find below the Youtube Link to the video.


13.09.2016 LISTEN

R&B artiste Lily Welbeck, an intelligent young lady with a powerful and sensual voice, is set to drop her maiden album next week on the music market.

The artiste who went on a short break to further her education after releasing five hit singles to her credit has worked with a number of Ghanaian music icons who are making waves on the music scene.

Lily's maiden album contains motivating and soul-soothing songs, and the title track of the new album, 'I Love You', is a mid-paced tune which is also, indeed, a timeless danceable masterpiece fit for all occasions.

Most of the songs on the album sang in English and French can be considered as highlife but fused with funky and hiphop beats.

The lyrics on the album were carefully chosen in order to communicate to everybody, and all the songs on the album have high soul-touching themes.

Known as Miss Lee, she has planned to release three music videos to back the promotion and sale of the album.

The videos as soon as it is released will be showed on all TV stations across the country, she said.

Behind the scenes footages of the music video so far give a good impression that she will be serving something unique that is likely to garner worldwide attention.

Lily, a product of Keta Senior High School and Wisconsin University, in an interview with BEATWAVES, expressed her optimism to make a breakthrough this year with her album.

Some of the songs on the eight-track album include 'For You To Love Me Again', Ton Amour' (Your Love), among others.


The Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Elizabeth Ofosu-Agyare, has indicated that the realigning of the Tourism Ministry by incorporating culture and creative arts in 2013 is a well-thought out decision as Ghana's tourism depends mainly on its culture and creative arts in addition to its natural and historic heritage.

She mentioned that the realignment has expanded the ministry's mandate to provide a firm and stable policy environment for the effective mainstreaming of the Ghanaian culture into all aspects of national life and to ensure the emergence of a vibrant and creative economy to improve and advance the tourism industry.

According to the minister, the creation of the 'Explore Ghana Domestic Tourism Programme' which was launched in 2014 for instance, is aimed at popularising domestic tourism among ordinary Ghanaians and available statics show that more Ghanaians and foreign residents in Ghana are visiting tourism sites today than before.

Madam Ofosu-Agyare was speaking at a durbar to climax this year's Kente Festival by the chiefs and people of the Agortime Traditional Area in the Volta Region.

The minister said domestic tourism would improve local communities and improve livelihood, especially in the rural areas, and, therefore, called on all to support the 'Explore Ghana' initiative.

She added that the Agortime Traditional Area has one of the highest concentrations of weavers in Ghana and beyond and, therefore, urged all stakeholders to preserve the uniqueness of the kente cloth to ensure the sustainability of the kente weaving industry in the area and its surroundings.

The Volta Regional Minister, Helen Adwoa Ntoso, called on the Agortime Traditional Area and the Ghana Tourism Authority to dialogue and find ways of facilitating the development of the tourism industry in the area.

The Paramount Chief of Agortime Traditional Area, Nene Nuer Keteku, drew government's attention to the 'Kente Village Project' as captured in the 2014 national budget, saying it is an important venture that will create a lot of ancillary jobs and preserve the cultural heritage of kente.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13

By Orkhan Quluzade - Trend:

The Turkish Ministry of Justice has officially appealed to the US over the arrest of Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish Anadolu agency reported Sept. 13.

According to the agency, Gulen is accused of giving a direct order to begin the military coup and direct commanding those involved in the military coup attempt.

The US should, at least, arrest Fethullah Gulen before extradition, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier during a meeting with U.S. Vice President Biden.
South African batsman Dean Elgar plays a shot during the first day of the first test between South Africa and Sri Lanka on December 26, 2016. By Gianluigi Guercia (AFP)

26.12.2016 LISTEN

Port Elizabeth (South Africa) (AFP) - South Africa won the toss and decided to bat on the first day of the first Test against Sri Lanka at St George's Park on Monday.

Both teams are coming off wins in their most recent two series -- South Africa beat New Zealand at home in August and Australia away in November, while Sri Lanka beat Australia at home in July and August and Zimbabwe away in November.

But Sri Lanka have a poor record in South Africa, with just one win against eight defeats in 10 previous Test matches.

The pitch had a good covering of grass and was expected to give some early assistance to the bowlers before becoming a good batting pitch.

Teams

South Africa: Faf du Plessis (captain), Stephen Cook, Dean Elgar, Hashim Amla, JP Duminy, Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock (wkt), Vernon Philander, Keshav Maharaj, Kyle Abbott, Kagiso Rabada

Sri Lanka: Angelo Mathews (captain), Kaushal Silva, Dimuth Karunaratne, Kusal Mendis, Dinesh Chandimal (wkt), Dhananjaya de Silva, Kusal Perera, Rangana Herath, Suranga Lakmal, Nuwan Pradeep, Dushmantha Chameera.

Umpires: Aleem Dar (PAK), Bruce Oxenford (AUS)

TV umpire: Rod Tucker (AUS)

Match referee: David Boon (AUS)
Paris (AFP) - Imbolo Mbue's rise to the top of the literary tree is a true fairytale of New York.

The 33-year-old Cameroonian writer, who was born in a house without running water or electricity, became the talk of the town when she got a million-dollar advance for her first novel, "Behold the Dreamers", in 2014.

Two years later the book that Mbue wrote at the kitchen table of her tiny New York apartment -- often while breastfeeding her babies -- is getting the kind of reviews that authors dream of.

The New York Times called it a "dissection of the American dream that is savage and compassionate in all the right places".

The critical reception on the other side of the Atlantic -- where it was published simultaneously in French -- has been equally warm, with Le Monde hailing "the discovery of a formidable writer".

"I started the book when my first child was a baby," Mbue told AFP, "and I rewrote it while nursing my second.

"I perfected the art of holding them with one hand and writing with the other," she laughed.

"People afterwards said, 'How wonderful for you!' And I said, 'Oh, no it wasn't. Really, you don't understand!'"

Mbue's tale of a migrant from her oceanside hometown of Limbe who lands a job as a chauffeur for a Lehman Brothers executive -- just before the bank's collapse triggered a global financial crisis -- is a bittersweet tale of great expectations slowly shattered.

Folly of the 1 percent

Cameroonian author Imbolo Mbue arrived in America at 17 with little more than her wide-eyed innocence and doggedness to declare

Despite the latitude that the subject matter gave her to skewer the people who drove the world into recession, Mbue's immigrant heroes take a surprisingly tender view of the follies of the privileged one percent of US society they serve.

This gives the book what the Washington Post called "a kind of angelic annunciation of hope, which ultimately makes her story even more poignant".

Like her characters Junde Jonga and his wife Neni, Mbue arrived in America at 17 with little more than her wide-eyed innocence and doggedness to declare.

Still Mbue had reason to feel embittered by the crash. The crisis cost her the good job in market research she landed after working herself through a master's degree selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.

With "so many Americans also out of work", she found it hard to get work and started writing.

"I wanted to be a college professor but my husband said only I could tell this story.

"It's funny because he didn't actually read the book until months after it was sold. Then he asked, 'What is it about?'"

Instead of sending her manuscript to any old agent, Mbue went straight to Susan Golomb, who represents Jonathan Franzen, one of America's most admired novelists.

Age of Trump

"I spent three years pursuing her," she recalled. "I stalked her basically. She finally read it and I rewrote it and then she rejected me again, before finally saying OK.

"I don't give up easily," she said.

Despite her success, Mbue is under no illusion about the American Dream in the age of Donald Trump.

"The odds are against you in America as an immigrant. I hope people realise this. Washing dishes or working in a cab, you get stuck and exhausted.

"You don't come to America to fail, but you have to have a lot of weapons to succeed.

"I've done some tough jobs," Mbue added, "but writing and raising children are the hardest things I've ever done."

"I am not the sort of person who would chose this path (as a writer). I have that immigrant mentality of wanting stability. I cannot just think of myself."

So despite her new-found fame, Mbue is not leaving her "very small" apartment. "I am superstitious. I had so many good things happen there I don't want to move. I am all cramped in there with screaming children, but I think if I move maybe my mojo will go away."
Geneva (AFP) - Countries are increasingly refusing to cooperate with the UN on human rights, the world body warned Tuesday, voicing alarm at situations in dozens of states, including Syria, Iran and Venezuela.

"States may shut my office out, but they will not shut us up; neither will they blind us," UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, opening the 32nd session of the UN Human Rights Council.

He decried "an emerging pattern" in which a growing number of states were refusing access to his staff and other UN representatives tasked with investigating allegations of rights violations in their countries.

Zeid voiced alarm at the situation in war-ravaged Syria, where no UN human rights monitors have been allowed in since the deadly conflict erupted in March 2011.

The UN has criticized Venezuela for refusing to issue a visa to any representative from the organization in the region, raising concerns in particular over allegations of repression of opposition voices and civil society groups in the country

"This is a state led by a medical doctor and yet is believed to have gassed its own people," he said, also decrying attacks on hospitals and civilians neighbourhoods, and the detention of tens of thousands of people in "inhuman conditions".

"Words cannot convey how profoundly I condemn this situation," he said.

Zeid also criticised Venezuela, which for the past two and a half years has refused to even issue a visa to his representative in the region.

"Its comprehensive denial of access to my staff is particularly shocking in the light of our acute concerns regarding allegations of repression of opposition voices and civil society groups," he said.

Among his concerns he listed arbitrary arrests, excessive use of force against peaceful protests, and a dramatic decline in economic and social rights that has sparked widespread hunger.

Iran meanwhile had blocked all access to his staff since 2013, which he said was "particularly regrettable given the reports we continue to receive of fundamental problems with the administration of criminal justice" in the country.

Especially worrying, is the "continued execution of large numbers of people, including juveniles", he said.

Belarus, Eritrea and North Korea have also flatly refused all access by UN rights monitors, while Israel has repeatedly refused to cooperate with probes into the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, he said.

Zeid also slammed the Turkey for not allowing his staff into its restive southeastern region, despite "repeated and serious allegations" of violations including "extrajudicial killings and massive displacement" amid demolition of entire towns and villages.

Zeid stressed that rights investigators would not turn a blind eye to situations simply because they were blocked from investigating them on the ground.

"If access is refused us, we will assume the worst," he said.
The programme will commence on Tuesday 13 September with a week-long training course of 40 delegates from Pemba Municipality, the Government of Cabo Delgado Province and surrounding districts including Palma and Montepuez.

The programme will support the development of a high-level Pemba investment promotion strategy and provide recommendations on the creation of a dedicated Oil and Gas promotion unit. The USD 100,000 investment by the UK Prosperity Fund represents the UK Governments commitment to partner with the Government of Mozambique, Cabo Delgado Provincial Government and Pemba Municipality on sustainable urban development.

The British High Commissioner to Mozambique, Joanna Kuenssberg, said:

The UK government looks forward to building the partnership created within the Pemba Municipality and Cabo Delgado Province into the oil and gas sectors and beyond. As part of this process, through the Prosperity Fund, we will continue providing support in sectors where we can reduce poverty and our companies have significant global expertise.

The Prosperity Fund is a UK Government development programme devoted to promoting the economic reform and development needed for growth in partner countries. The Prosperity Fund provides expertise and technical assistance in areas of UK strength to remove barriers to trade, strengthen policy capacity and develop sectors which support growth such as infrastructure, energy, finance, education and healthcare.
I believe the Change Begins With Me, campaign inaugurated recently by President Muhammadu Buhari has failed, if not dead on arrival. Buhari had, in his speech at the inauguration, said before Nigerians could see the change he promised, during the 2015 election campaign, they must first change their attitudes by shunning corruption and other social vices.

But sincerely such comment only goes to tell us that this government cannot give Nigerians what they want.

An adage says only an unserious and irresponsible father hinges the possibility of performing his duties to his children on their ability and/or condition to impress him. Change should start from the top downwards? It is not a enough to continue to blame the Peoples Democratic Party for squandering Nigeria's future for 16years, when Nigerians need results.

The degeneration of the Nigeria's situation and the continuous accusation of the PDP, is also an indictment on the All Progressives Congress to the truth that it lacks solution to the current economic hardship, because it fails to prepare adequately. To be persistent in criticising the old order, is to willfully subject its intelligence and ability to resolve the problems to defeat.

It also seems that all the APC, or better still, the opposition, wanted to achieve for 16years was to grab power and not proffer solutions. It is obvious that he who fails to prepare, prepares to fail. The greatest problem of a leader is for him to know what he wants or where he is going but not to know how to get what he wants or to his destination.

It's obvious that his followers, knowing fully well that their leader is focusless, would not hesitate to find their focus and level. There is nothing as bad as a focusless person or government, because his entire life becomes a guess work or a try and error.

The change starts or begins with me is like asking an hungry child not to be hungry when there is obviously nothing to eat at home. Let the father first provide food in the house and see if that child would still be crying of hunger.

Some people make reference to popular JF Kenny's advice to the Americans, asking them not to think of what America would do for them but what they could do for their country. But then I ask them if JF Kennedy actually told America not to do anything for them.

It is sad that our own government is yet to do anything to gain the people's trust, yet it is asking for too much. Buhari and his people must realise that Nigerians are not fools, and they will not tolerate this one chance government in the name of change.

This government must realize that it has no goodwill yet, because it has failed in all fronts. The Buharis government has no moral justification yet to ask Nigerians to change, when its yet to live by example. As far as Im concern there is no need for this Change Begins With Me, campaign as at now. Let the government give Nigerians electricity and other basic amenities and lets see if Nigerians would not change naturally.

Take or leave it, gone were days when the people believed in the effectiveness of the mechanism of government.

Today, they see the Nigeria project, as a disarrayed jungle, where every animal fends for itself. They are alive to the reality that even in this supposed progressive republic, the notion of once beaten twice shy is unsurprisingly in operation, as no animal wants to be caught unaware twice by a predator.

No doubt, the times are hard, and Nigerians have been very considerate and passionate about this government, but in a situation those in power failed to see this truth, and became too egocentric, inefficient and wasteful, there is bound to be anxiety and perhaps, a fundamental disquietness amongst the people for survival.

Nigerians had tolerated bad leadership and rulership as well as countless killer governments, and I know that they are no longer ready to sit back and watch any government take them for granted again. Nigerians understand it is impossible for a leopard - politician - to change its spot, but at the same time, are ready, with their eyes wide opened, to give true agents of change their best faith and assurance to succeed.

But this government or perhaps politicians, especially those in the legislature, must realize that good-optimism is unquestionably not goodwill. Good-optimism is the ability to be patient and tolerant in anticipation, while goodwill is the ability to be kind and friendly in anticipation.

The difference is that while good-optimism is based on hope, goodwill is based on facts and truth. In other words, good-optimism is believe that it would perform, but goodwill is substance and/or physical or concrete evidence that it has performed. And what the APC is enjoying now is good-optimism, because it is yet to demonstrate to Nigerians that it is capable of running the affairs of the nation.

The people are not stupid!
12.09.2016 LISTEN

For the past few years, Ghanaians have seen, heard and read with much disdain, acts of dictatorship emanating from a small section of the Clergy, who normally think that when they talk, we  the ordinary citizens should not talk back because of their pious/angelic public standing. At the least opportunity they create for themselves, they run leadership of this country down under the guise of speaking the truth as well as fighting acts of corruption.

One such imposing figure within the Clergy who has arrogated to himself the politico/religious Over Lord Authority of this country, is the immediate past Moderator of the much respected orthodox Presbyterian Church of Ghana.

Nobody should take me to be anti-Christian because I also belong to the same faith, but truth must be told, that even though these men of GOD are to be respected  a minority of them who mount the pulpit with arrogance must be told in the face that they are reducing the worship of God to mere human adoration. In this stride  GOD is not the Personality we now worship, but these human demi-gods and bigots in the sight of GOD.

The truth-speaker, a few days back got himself into the filthy gutters of political insults  all in the guise of telling the holy-ghostal truth to Ghanaians. In the course of the spirit-filled display of their holier than Thou authority, invectives such as babies with sharp teeth, and many others are not left out of their speeches.

As well, this is a man of God, who would have chosen to go extra judicial by unleashing, if he had big dogs on his alleged bribe-givers to bite them These are the types of concealed wicked hearts that we adore as Rev. Ministers. This particular development has exposed what some church leaders can do when it comes to conflict situations.

I am forced to recall what happened in Burundi and Rwanda on ethnic cleansing  in which countries my church, the Roman Catholic Church is predominant. BUT  what did we hear in the course of the SATANIC BUTCHERING of human against human  it was also Catholic against Catholic. And some hot-headed priests gave out the other side hated tribes to be massacred.

It was just a few indigenous Priests of Hutus and Tutsis origin (the main tribes of the conflict) who stood the test of Christs COMPASSION dictates to Christendom to LOVE, save and protect one another. And I can imagine, the good LORD forbid, if something of the sort befalls Ghana, what will the likes of the Marteys do than to release wild dogs on unfortunate people. Sorry for this digression but it has a connection.

These are men of God who see some physical deformities of their fellow mortals  begotten by the Almighty, as description of derogatory in order to make a point. Controversially, it may be said, that they are not the first to have described some people as such (babies with sharp teeth)  but we forget that the originator of that insulting descriptive term, former President Jerry John Rawlings, is not identified with the title  REVEREND.

The man being referred to here, goes with a distinguished prefixed letters  RIGHT REVEREND (?) But why this long introduction that is almost concluding on the personality on which this piece is being released  and who by now is already known thus far. Most Rev. Prof. Martey is the subject matter for this feature.

On Tuesday, August 30, 2016, I was personally shocked to have heard a Right Reverend who claims to be speaking the truth but lacks the courage to wholly walk that path of truth-speaking.

We heard the former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, who, about three weeks back surrendered the whole congregation of the Church to a political party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), as if the Church is his bona fide property.

This is a man who, over a year ago, and without reverend compunction, called the political leadership of this country  senseless people and went ahead to ask; NYANSA FUO YEEI, MOWOR HE? (SENSIBLE PEOPLE, WHERE ARE YOU?). It seemed a somewhat clear admission that he himself is not part of the comity of sensible Ghanaians, regardless of his professorial title. That is my understanding of what he said at the time.

The same man of God, who blew his trumpet that he was capable of solving the power crises we suffered some three years back, within a few months  failed to avail himself with the technical know-how, not to help the Presidency only, but the entire citizenry from what we went through. This man would have been our hero if he had done so. If you are a priest with an energy engineering background and choose to keep it to your chest when a whole country was suffering  then you better remain silent without letting us know of your gift of selfishness. He does not need to advertise/sell his greed to the public.

His current un-reverend vituperations have succeeded in given himself out as the worst of a hypocrite in the name of a god, and not the Supreme GOD we all worship. It is high time we tell some of these unrepentant braggarts that they cannot hide in the name of GOD to foment trouble in this country. They are now PARTISAN politicians and they must be seen as such.

It is their constitutional right to opt for politics but the fact is that if one wants to do so  make a declaration; so that when one is on the pulpit of GOD we know how to address one and when in political suit, one can be addressed appropriately.

And any Cleric who chooses to go political will not constitute a global novelty. It can only be a novelty in Ghana  and maybe, Africa. Rev. Fr. Jean Bertrand Aristide of the Salesian Order of the Roman Catholic Church, was a member of the Clergy became a politician and elected president of Haiti. That is the best way to go  so that when you insult politically and the other party has no patience to ignore you, you can be insulted back.

What the likes of Prof. Martey are doing is  put on the clerical cassock/collar but the voice-tone being political  and when they insult us we cannot insult back because we must respect their authority in reverend apparels.

This is a man who wants to be seen as a personality crusading against acts of corruption and thievery. When the corrupt/thief people availed him with goodies such as a mansion with a swimming pool at Trassaco, a 4-wheel drive-car and $100,000; as he claims were offered to influence/stop him from talking  failed to get them exposed or better still, call in the police to arrest them. He could even quietly call the media to serve as witness but he chose not. Not even at the press conference within which he made the allegations could he be a man of himself with two well-managed solid balls in between his thighs, to name those involved? How courageous is this man for Ghanaians to trust?

It is gratifying that Prof. Martey is being exposed by a former Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. One Dr. Emmanuel Osei Acheampong, has given credence to the allegation but that it is rather an opposition party which gave him the very goodies which he (Prof.) accepted but claimed at the conference that he declined. It does not matter which political party attempted or made the offer.

The former PRO specifically stated that the alleged day of engagement when the offers were made, was on July 28, 2013, and the PRO himself was given $50,000 by the good Professor, which he also claims to have rejected. Dr. Acheampong, went a step further to even challenge the Professor to a public discourse in which engagement he will be dropping the names of those who offered the gifts. An Accra radio station accepted the suggestion and alleged they placed calls to the Professor who progressively refused to pick the calls.

According to Prof. Martey, the alleged attempted bribery was to stop him from talking. However, Ghanaians are aware that he has never-ever spoken against the opposition NPP. His recorded attacks has always been sustained and targeted at the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) in government and it commenced just after about a year the former PRO alleged he took the bribe. Now, with this emerging allegation by the former PRO, I ask: Is it the case that he had hint of he (Prof.) being exposed sooner than later hence his attempt to pre-empt it?

It is trite asking the above question because the purpose of the press conference was to be a fare-well activity which was effectively relegated to the background for the Professor to blow his horn of uprightness in a bid to cloud the obvious.

Dr. Emmanuel Acheampong, has boldness in him and has been able to undo, if only his allegation is true, what the Professors public standing within Christendom, the Ghanaian citizenry and citizens of the world was  previously.

The man, who was full of insults for members of the Executive wing of government, and who gave the real meaning of KPOKPO-GBRI-GBRI  indeed got himself swimming in the evil spiritual bout and some Ghanaians can only leave him to the beginning of his days of SHAME.

I am, like previous commentators and via this write-up, challenging Prof. Martey, to come public with the names of whoever visited him with the alleged promises  and if he fails to do so, my bad-self leave him to his conscience and the judgment of the Supreme GOD, Whose name is being used for EVIL engagements.

However, in the event that the vocal Cleric is able to prove his case if it emerges that the ruling Party (National Democratic Congress) in government engaged the Professor, and made such offers  it would be the biggest shame on it and it must consider resigning. And when that happens, I shall humbly withdraw the emotion with which I have written this piece.

INTERVENTION BY THE BRESBY. CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN COUNCIL OF GHANA

Surprisingly, the Presbyterian Church and the Christian Council of Ghana have chosen to jump into the battle which ...is not the LORDs I would have wished to limit myself to the good old Professor who raised the dust that is refusing to settle anytime soon.

The Church should begin to emulate what the Ghana Police Service has begun doing  arresting their own colleagues who are engaging in criminal activities. They are supposed to fight crime and if they go out of their way to act discordantly in the name of the Service, must not be allowed to go with it without punishment when caught.

Prof. Marteys Church has come to his defense, claiming after the attempted bribe entanglement, the church hierarchy was duly informed. This is rather strange and very absurd! Is the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, telling Ghanaians and the world at large that both the Church and Prof. Martey agreed to the concealment of the act of an age-old canker we all claim to be fighting?

If/when that is the case, then what MORALITY do we have left in us to be trumpeting our resolve to fight it? We already know the pretense in which some churches fight acts of corruption. The noise being made now is that acts of corruption has worsened in this period of the NDC government. But I ask whether it is true that it has worsened? YES, it has! So, it is generally agreed that the canker has been with us overtime and got to its current worse situation.

The vociferous church voices should give us records they have, in condemning the NPP eight-year period on corrupt engagements by it. Is it the case that government was so clean that the government had never-ever entangled itself in it? If so then it means it started from this current regime and fast worsened to its present state?

The church is supposed to take a neutral position in the governance of any country it finds itself, but when individuals opt to sell the church to politicians for ownership, membership of the church have the right to voice out a caveat. At this stage I wish to SALUTE the youth of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, who have defied the official position of the Church in defending Prof. Martey  to condemn him, that he has brought disgrace to the Church.

I admire their courage and with to urge them on that the worship of GOD is not the worship of mortal man, and when leadership goes berserk  it is the duty of those in the Church who see their crooked ways to bring them to order. No man must be allowed to play GOD over his fellow men.

The name of JESUS DE CHRIST, is being badly BUTURED by these evil men who are using HIS name RECKLESSLY. Their days of shame is gradually setting in. This is just the beginning! Is Prof. Martey possessed with the bad spirit of KPOKPO-GBIRI-GBIRI? GOD be with us all.
12.09.2016 LISTEN

In this 21st century, Africa does not have dynamic leaders that can meaningfully challenge adverse world policies affecting its people on the continent or in the diaspora. There is no equivalence of the 1960s and the 70s who led most of the African states out of the clutches of imperialism and bondage into independence. The modus operandi of the current leadership is just a pure manifestation of greed coupled with docility.

They spring into power invariably through the use of force; and many a time, they hail from backgrounds of abject poverty and once they catapult into the leadership, their sole aim is to amass wealth from the public trough at the expense of the unwitting citizenry they are supposed to be serving. Fundamentally their agenda for seeking public office is just to transform their lives into opulence.

Youll see that no sooner had they stepped into office than their skins begin to glow with power as they traverse through the corridors of influence and wealth. They are not nation builders, nor do they have any interests or agendas in creating the necessary conditions that can generate enough public good for their people. Poverty, squalor and or human degradation are often the hallmarks of their legacies.

If you want to see how weak and ineffective our African leadership is today, you must take a trip to the UN and see their accomplishments there. They dont have their own agenda there as a bloc to be able to challenge any global policy issue being debated at the UN on their own accord. Rumor has it that most of our permanent representatives at the UN just sleep through the General Assembly debates in a passive manner because their mission there is just to kowtow to the dictates of their former imperial powers.

They therefore dont put any premium on live debates happening there because they knew already before the debate begins what their votes are going to be at the end. This may sound like an exaggerated metaphor to most of you but its for real. Let our former imperial rulers write our narratives for us at the UN. So if you are from a Francophone African state, you get to vote the interests of France and same goes for the Anglophone African nations too. The Africans do all these for a measly financial aid which quite often are in fact loans with hefty interests.

The Francophone nations also suffer from more exploitative schemes buried in the formation of their currency bloc which is controlled by France. As a guarantee for the stability of their currency, the CFA for example (which is underwritten by France), France gets to retain about 60% of their foreign exchange emanating from trade and when they are in need of a loan from France, Paris would lend them the money from that same foreign exchange account and charge them interests for their own money. Who actually gets to use that money is neither told nor accounted for to any of the currency bloc members and none bothers to inquire for fear of retributions from France.

In recent developments, the new President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte lashed out at the UN and the United States for interfering with his domestic measures against heavy drug trafficking and threatened to leave the UN if they continue. Just look at the structure of the UN itself as a democratic institution. Here we have a Security Council (SC) with all its permanent members being nuclear powers; and all five of them have veto powers which are willfully used from time to time to throw a monkey-wrench into any world issues being debated at the UN that they disagree with; then we have the plebeians in the name of the General Assembly out of which ten member states are elected on a two-year staggered term to the Security Council that have no veto power at all; and unfortunately thats where most of the third world nations are located; powerless, muted and controlled.

The only thing they get is an insipid power through their roving Council membership which only enables them to vote with the so-called Super Powers, the nuclear warlords. This kind of hierarchical structure is nothing close to an egalitarian system which must be the bedrock for all democratic institutions. The Security Council thus is just a tool for the so-called developed nations to maintain their hegemony over the rest of the world.

If nuclear arm is not good selectively for North Korea, it should not be good for any of the permanent members of the Security Council either. Ever heard of any that is ready and willing to relinquish its stock piles of nuclear armaments? Never! Not a single one of them is willing. Instead they are rather building more or modifying the olds in terms of technology to add to their stockpiles.

After all, dont they gain access to that body (the SC) by their acquisition of nuclear power? Nuclear armament is immoral and should not be allowed for any country at all, be it Pyongyang, Tehran, Islamabad or Jerusalem nor the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In the past, those powers that met at the Berlin Conference in 1884 to divide Africa up in their scramble for Africa did so by the power of their military might. They convoked to partition the continent without any representation from the Kingdoms of Africa itself. This is the epitome of the imbecility the so called Western powers operated with in the past and still at it today but with high level of subtleties.

By the ending of this conference Africa would forever change for the worst. The looting and pillage of its resources would intensify and continue up till today. Part of the Congo Basin for instance actually became Belgiums King Leopolds personal Kingdom and under his reign, over half of the regions population died while countless others were also brutalized and or mutilated.

I think the African nations should examine these as examples of the atrocities and inequalities that they have condemned the continent into and try to free themselves from all the superficial international organizations from which they are gaining nothing favorable in return. Not long ago, Gambia dropped out of the British Commonwealth of Nations and they are doing just fine to date.

This is about fairness! The Africans were coerced into signing nuclear non-proliferation treaty and they were all contented to sign as dictated by our former colonial rulers despite the fact that they dont have any nuclear armaments to proliferate in the first place. What a colossal blunder! Why pledge not to proliferate something you dont even have?

I remember growing up in the early 1960s in Ghana when Nkrumah was at the helms of the African leadership; there used to be a place near the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra we used to refer to as Atomic Energy; a very revered place that sparks goose bumps but mixed with fillips (if you were a patriotic Ghanaian) on your skin when you tried walking towards the area.

The kinds of people you see there in those days as workers were very refined and their skins glowed with power. Nkrumah was allegedly working on Ghanas acquisition of nuclear power in addition to his hydro-electric energy ambitions at Akosombo. The Akosombo dam has helped Ghana and its neighboring nations for years in terms of energy supply. Thats nation building 101 in action. It is high time the current African leaderships cease and desist from their crippling levels of mental masturbations and provide a dynamic leadership that has high utility values for its people both at home and in the diaspora.

President Duterte of the Philippines recently took the courage to question the inordinate police killings of black men and members of other minority groups in the United States. There is a kernel of truth in Dutertes contention from my point of view as a black man living in the US. Right now the US ridicules communist bloc nations about how brutal and or oppressive they are towards their citizens but hides behind its states authorities which continue to allow one sided police brutality and oppression against the minority citizens unabated. Invariably too, the US Justice Department quite often finds no probable cause for the civil rights violations of the police shooting victims.

The US is a very hypocritical nation brutalizing its colored citizens while at the same time pointing fingers at other totalitarian nations how oppressive they are. If the leader of the Philippines could see this and recognize it why then do the African leaders continue to remain muted on this vital issue affecting the diasporic Africans? It is high time the African countries too threaten to leave the UN if their High Commission on Human Rights is not going to take a stance and seriously cite the US for these egregious violations against its minorities.

It is intrinsically a human rights issue no doubt about it; when a black man lying on his back with his hands raised in the air and yelling to a disabled Caucasian man he was caring for to do the same in order to play it safe, yet got shot by the police officer anyway then one could see what we the blacks are up against here in America. Many a time a law enforcement officer would shoot a black boy down because the officer perceives his/her life in an imminent danger; a black boy barely out of his diapers with a toy gun!

These are just some of the synopses of the things that blacks in America are up against. One might also ask why the so called world leaders (especially the freedom and liberty loving Western nations) too remained asininely silent on these police brutalities against minorities in the US? The new President of the Philippines, despite his abrasive nature, is a true measure of a world leader; the caliber very much needed in this 21st century.

The African leadership has to start thinking. They must try to think through the values of the benefits that they reap from us in the diaspora and start getting involved with protecting our interests abroad. In 2010, it was reported by the World Bank that the remittances coming from the diaspora Africans to their various origins surpassed $300 billion. It might probably be close to a trillion dollar now. These remittances at times represent a major resource inflow that often exceeds a host of other balance of payment flows.

Most sensible nations protect the interests of their citizens abroad. It is quite amazing that with all the police brutality incidents that have permeated the Internet, none of the African nations managed to speak out against it; at least if not at the UN then maybe in their own countries thus bringing the issue to the consciousness of the populace at home. As an American citizen from Africa, my American born children and I are more concerned about police brutality here in the United States than we are about terrorism. Every time we stepped outside, we are constantly worried about any possible encounter with the police (who are supposed to be protecting us but are biased against us) than the Islamophobia being propagated by the current Republican Partys standard-bearer.

Whatever is happening to our leaderships, it has become glaringly clear that they are all lacking spines. That none has the gut to stand up to the injustices being visited onto the Africans both at home and abroad. What Africa wants today is a radical redistribution of global power and wealth away from the white world and its hegemony. A Nigerian journalist wrote a couple years ago that what Africa needs as a whole is 4 cardinal Rawlings; I will recommend 5 instead; one in the North, one in the South; and one in the East, one in the West; and finally one situated at the Center to create a balance for the continent.

Up till today, most Ghanaians dont recognize their blessings through Jerry Rawlings. Instead out of tribal prejudice they have become very blind and clannish in every conceptual way about poor Jerry Rawlings. Rawlings did a lot of good things for Ghana; and just for the love of his country. He didnt enrich himself with Ghanas paltry revenues from its natural resources like others.

On the contrary, he sought to increase them for the people of Ghana. In addition to bringing the first true democracy in Africa, he was able to fight the West, vis-a-vis the UK to have the Ashanti Goldfields listed on the open London Stock Exchange in 1994. That move alone is benefiting Ghana now tremendously. Just imagine more and more of our commodities circumventing all trade restrictions and middle men and heading straight to the open market. Just imagine that. This should become the standard for all Africas natural resources/commodities. According to Mark Curtis (Huffintonpost.co.uk):

Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange control over $1trillion worth of Africas resources in just five commodities - oil, gold, diamonds, coal and platinum. My research for the NGO, War on Want, which has just been published, reveals that 101 companies, most of them British, control $305billion worth of platinum, $276billion worth of oil and $216billion worth of coal at current market prices. The Scramble for Africa is proceeding apace, with the result that African governments have largely handed over their treasure (July 26, 2016).

These are practically the reasons why the British find it necessary to remain in any form of association with us. It is part of the neocolonialisms economic exploits which is based on practically a unidirectional flow of resources; our natural resources flowing to them incessantly while we get farthing in return. This is the only rationale why the Brits try to keep as around as parts of the empire but operate with us with a remote control. Just think about the most recent events leading to the Brexit. Most of the Brexit proponents contention is predicated on being in a union with inferior people or nations from Eastern Europe; mostly the breakaway republics from the former Soviet Union. The Brits have difficulties being in a Union with people who are anatomically identical to them, why then with the people of sub-Saharan Africa?

The same foreign companies which are in control of our commodities also try to use manipulative tax schemes to further cheat on the African governments measly revenues from these commodities. Right now there is an issue with the distribution of Ghanas oil revenues and what had been presented or being debated is a total lunacy. A movement led by Professor Lungu calling for approval of Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) which will guarantee more revenues for our crude oil in lieu of the current awful Ghana Hybrid System" oil bill recently passed by Parliament is being taunted by the so called elites of Ghanas society.

The people working or who have worked this bill think Ghanaians are stupid and could be easily bamboozled into a dubious deal. Why they are choosing to go against the obvious is beyond comprehension. It is like the entire country is being negotiated away into an infantile deal that hands everything we have over into the hands of the foreign players. This could never happen under strongman Jerry Rawlings! Is someone making money out of this deal secretly? Certainly there are some pages in this dubious oil bill that we are not seeing but I submit to you all that sooner than later the light will shine on the entire deal.

Back to the politics of police brutality in the US; this is not a new issue at all. It has been there time and time again. One of Malcolm Xs contentions in the 1960s was about the police brutality against blacks under the former Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty. Paradoxically too, the United States National Anthem turned out to contain scornful lyrics in some of its stanzas ridiculing the demise of slaves fighting for their freedom and the US tries to shield that away from its people and still takes pride in its obnoxious National Anthem; a sure proof that the US puts no premium on the lives of its black citizens at all from inception. Malcolm X once said in the 1960s that To be black in America is enough to be deemed un-American, but to be black and Muslim is to be anti-American (Sohail Daulatzai, Aljazeera July, 2012).

No matter what we do or do not do as a people, the West will always see us as non-humans; and any rebellion from the Africans both at home and abroad will always be deemed as coming from fringe fanatical psychopaths and must be squashed or dealt with heavy handedly. Unfortunately thats the way the West underdeveloped Africa and kept it impoverished for centuries now. Similarly what they have done to the sub-Saharan Africa the same they did to the Africans especially in the Americas too from the time of slavery to date. Just take for instance the formation of the current Brazilian government; a nation with 50.7% of its population being of African extractions yet has no representation in their current cabinet. And they even threatened to close down their embassies in Africa and the Caribbean. Africa only has spineless leaders who are sheepishly herding us into the abyss. That gloom and doom are what have guided the recent Ghanaians petroleum deal. If we continue down this path with these calibers of leaderships we are going to be ruined forever beyond any salvation. We have to remember that neither the World Bank nor the IMF will be able to help us out by their same old rigged economic schemes. It is time we to take the bull by the horn ourselves.

The mutant infantile behavior of our leaders on important world issues, the useless kowtowing to the West, signing away of our resources into penury exchanges and above all remaining silence on police brutality against Africans especially those in the diaspora are detestable acts which are not parts of the African repertoire from antiquity. They should refrain from them and walk onto the world stage with some levels of maturity, intelligence and accountability. They must understand that the buck stops with them. Africa needs new strong and intelligent leaders now. This must come very quickly if at all there is going to be any salvation for the continent.

Komla Sam Ganu, Ph. D.

Retired Sociology Professor at the City University of New York; and formerly had worked for the New York City Commission on Human Rights for eleven and half years as one of its two Research Associates (1991 to 2003).

The Author of:

The dilemmas of the Uptown Street Vendors (Harlem and its environs). Patterns of Hate Crimes and Incidents in the City of New York.

I could be reached at [email protected] or 718-436-0843.
On September 25, 2016, David Barnard will take on the Grand to Grand Ultra in honour of the END Fund and the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Africa. By participating in this extreme multi-stage race, David has committed himself to raising awareness and funds to help the over 1.6 billion people worldwide whose lives are affected by NTDs.

The Grand to Grand Ultra is a six-stage, 273 km race held in vicinity of one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, the Grand Canyon, in the United States. David, a well-known South African tech and development activist and Africa Policy Advisory Board member of the ONE Campaign, is no stranger to extreme multi-stage races of this nature. He has already completed races in the Kalahari, Namib, Sahara, Gobi and Atacama deserts, as well as Antarctica. This will be his first race in North America and the fifth leg of his quest to complete a desert race on all seven continents.

Running the Grand to Grand Ultra is more than just trying to finish another desert race. My participation in these races provides me with an opportunity to support causes and campaigns dedicated to development issues in Africa and making a difference in society, David said. For this adventure, my aim is to raise funds for the END Fund, promote its work, and contribute to increased public understanding of NTDs and their devastating impact, especially in Africa.

Many parts of the world still reel from the health and socio-economic impacts that are caused by these diseases of neglect. Five of the most common NTDs, and ones the END Fund focuses on, include trachoma, river blindness, schistosomiasis, intestinal worms, and lymphatic filariasis. While they may not cause immediate deaths like more globally known diseases such as malaria or HIV, they leave long-lasting devastation like disabilities, stunt education and economic growth, and create other health problems that can lead to death.

As David embarks on his seven-day race at the end of this month, all funds raised will go towards END Fund initiatives in Africa.

# Links

Davids fundraising page: http://goo.gl/FopK9u

Davids blog: https://desert2desert4socialcauses.wordpress.com/

END Fund: http://www.end.org/

Grand to Grand Ultra: http://www.g2gultra.com/home

# About the END Fund

The END Fund, founded in 2012, is a private philanthropic initiative to end the five most common NTDs. It advocates for innovative, integrated and cost-effective NTD programmes; facilitates strong partnerships with the private sector; and supports 20 national control programmes on the African continent.

The END Fund has raised over $50 million to treat people at risk of NTDs. In sub-Saharan Africa, the organisation has supported partners to distribute over $300 million worth of treatment to nearly 59 million people at risk of NTDs and train more than 247,000 health workers and officials in NTD prevention, control and treatment strategies.

The END Fund is poised to scale this work with additional investment.

About the Five Most Common NTDs in sub-Saharan Africa

Lymphatic filariasis (LF or elephantiasis) is a parasitic disease spread by mosquitoes that affects the lymph nodes and often causes enlargement of body parts, such as the limbs and genitals.

Onchocerciasis (river blindness) is a parasitic worm infection, transmitted through the bites of infected black flies, that causes massive damage to skin and eyes.

Schistosomiasis (bilharzia) is a parasitic disease carried by fresh water snails that can cause major damage to the urinary and digestive tracts.

Soil-transmitted helminths (STH or intestinal worms) are intestinal infections caused by parasitic worms. They are most common in children and can cause serious physical, nutritional and cognitive impairments. Intestinal worms are the most common NTD worldwide.

Trachoma is a contagious bacterial eye infection that can lead to inflammation and the development of scar tissue on the eyes. It is the worlds leading cause of preventable blindness.
12.09.2016 LISTEN

By Philip Tengzu, GNA

Wa, Sept. 12. GNA - Alhaji Amidu Sulemana, Upper West Regional Minister, has called on Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) to organise periodic review meetings in their respective assemblies.

He said this would help the assemblies to assess the implementation of their development agenda as well as help in instilling principles of transparency and accountability among stakeholders in local governance.

Alhaji Sulemana made the call on Wednesday during the Upper West Regional 2016 Mid-Year Review Meeting in Wa.

He said such meetings would also serve as a platform for the regional and district leaders as well as development partners to discuss the level of development of the region.

'We are expected to dispassionately assess the development status of the region based on Ghana Shared Grow and Development Agenda (GSGDA) as the measuring rod to success', he said.

He said regional authorities constitute an important tool in the decentralization process adding that they were required to make known to development planners, the outcome of community and district planning to facilitate the bottom-up approach to development.

The meeting was in line with the Local Government Act 1993 (462), which mandates Regional Coordinating Councils to carry out periodic coordination, monitoring, evaluation and harmonization functions.

GNA
At least three terrorists were killed in airstrikes carried out by Turkish jets in the country's southeast, the military announced Tuesday, Anadolu reported.

The Turkish General Staff said in a statement that three terrorists were "neutralized" in a security operation in the Semdinli district of southeastern Turkey's Hakkari province Monday night.

Three targets were also destroyed in the operation, the statement said.

In a separate operation in the province's Cukurca district, weapons were seized.

The two districts have seen broad anti-terror operations since the PKK - listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and the EU - resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July last year.

Since then, PKK terrorist attacks martyred more than 600 security personnel and also claimed the lives of many civilians, including women and children, while more than 7,000 PKK terrorists were killed in army operations.
12.09.2016 LISTEN

The downward spiral of the Ghanaian depressing economy can be blamed on wayward governance which is becoming a drain on the public purse and waste of our natural resources as well as creating limited avenues for the good people of Ghana to see improvement in the lives of the average Ghanaian. This is typical of Mahama led administration which has stifled the countrys development for the past eight (8) years of their so called better Ghana agenda.

The challenge facing the country now is that of a clueless, indecisive and incompetent leadership that only thrives on the ignorance of the society. It is imperative to note that in every good society the government formulate and implement policies that can advance the course of the citizens. The question is has the lives of the average Ghanaian improved in the area of health, education, employment, economic opportunities, social interventions, utility prices, fuel prices, transportation, food, shelter, among others over the past eight years. The obvious answer is no. So then, where is the better Ghana promised by this NDC administration?

John Agyekum Kufours NPP administration in 2001 inherited 3.7 % Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and by the time they left office in 2008 Ghanas Gross Domestic Product ( GDP) had hit 9.1 % without oil proceeds and NDC had been in power for almost eight (8) years and the best they have achieved so far is reducing our GDP to 3.8 % and you ask yourself whether the oil we have been blessed with is a curse or it is bad leadership that has put Ghanas economy backward making it look like a full grown old man struggling to walk upright.

For example records show that the Mahama led administration has had access to massive inflow of resources and revenues in the last seven (7) years than any other government in the past. Taxes, loans and oil revenues alone amounted to an inflow of a whopping GHC 200 billion within this space of time under the eight (8) years of the erstwhile Kufour led NPP government from 2001  2008, taxes, loans and other revenues amounted to some GHC 20 billion.

This therefore means that comparatively this government has had ten (10) times the quantum of money accrued to its predecessor. To this extent, one would have thought that in principle the country should have seen significant improvement in the lives of the ordinary Ghanaian in every divide of their livelihood, yet the story is sharp mismatch of the expected commensurating outcome as this government continues to use clandestine measures to remedy the situation.

Notwithstanding, the government has continue to play ostrich game in finding a workable solution to the worsening plight of the electorates. Clearly the use of subterfuge and cheap propaganda in the intelligence of Ghanaians is far-fetched and cannot continue to exchange their votes. Every Ghanaian irrespective of our age desires to travel to the elite countries for greener pasture. Lets not forget these elite countries did not develop by chance or conjure magic to make their countries a better place to live.

If aliens who seek political asylum in these elite countries are well catered for then we the electorates have a cause to raise concern about how the so called social democrats have looked indifferent about our welfare after given them power . Its a pity people who told us they are coming to serve us are eating fat with their families and party gurus while we the power givers continues to grow lean.

The electorates in the elite countries know power belongs to them when it comes to elections to choose who leads them. They value the power of their thumb that is why their politicians cant make fool out of them and cannot make unachievable promises during their campaign tours which they themselves know they cannot fulfill them. NDC before we gave them power in 2008 gave us high hopes in their campaign messages that our good Ghana under NPP needs to be improved to be better Ghana and they have been in power for almost eight (8) years and there is absolutely nothing to talk about their better Ghana looking at the economic hardships Ghanaians are experiencing. Redundancy situations on the increase due to energy crisis, high utility tariffs, food insecurity, high taxes on importations and many others.

As good citizens and electorates of Ghana our conviction to vote should not be based on tribal lines, ethnicity, personality, cronyism and other trivial factors which have no basis in advancing the course of the citizenry. Now our intent to vote should be premised on issues such as good policies, track record, and excellence in public service. President Barrak Obama for instance became a leader in United States of America because of his distinct role exhibited in public life.

President John Dramani Mahamas conduct in his assignment to purchase a military aircraft during the late Professor Atta Millss administration reveals that the price tag of the aircraft was inflated which subsequently gave room for the then president to form a committee to investigate issues surrounding the purchase of the aircraft which became public knowledge through Mr. Martin Alamisi Amidu the then attorney general. In effect one can clearly say that the current presidents conduct during his position as the vice president was tantamount to corruption and thus this has clearly be manifested in his administration as a substantive president.

One can therefore state categorically that this clear warning signs were anything to go by President John Dramani Mahama should not have become president in elite country such as USA, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Switzerland, China, Japan, France and many others. One can clearly say that the absence of strict vigilance by the citizenry, state institutions such as CHRAJ, NCCE who should be playing a watchdog role to safeguard the interest of the public have been up and doing Ghana would not be wallowing in this bad economic state under president John Dramani Mahama, such a questionable leader who says he is indecisive in his own book titled My First Coup detat suggest that a leader of his caliber lacks the quality of being assertive on fair and firm and taking bold decisions where it matters most or as require of any competent leader should not be taking for granted so no wonder Ghanas faith and destiny is in a bad state that is growing from bad to worst.

A new opportunity for Ghanaian electorates is just around the corner come 7th December, 2016 to make the right decision to save the country from its dwindling fortunes. In this regard the choice is obvious that looking at these key factors and alternatives that is require of a good leader such as selfless, committed, dedicated, affable, visionary, creative, inspirational, trustworthy, honesty, positive attitude and incorruptible then Ghanaian electorates cannot look further but rather settle on the most tried and tested personality Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo the perfect gentleman and a politician who will not promise us bread, fish and he will give us stones and snakes as being exhibited by the current NDC leadership who promised us fuel prices will be reduced drastically but ever since they assumed power fuel prices has seen erratic increases .

One of NDCs sweet promises made to the good people of western region was that at least 10% of the oil proceeds will be offered them. It may interest Ghanaians to note that all their sweet promises made so far had turned to be an April fool or Kwaku Ananse story that is the reason why today we have some residence in other regions who are dissatisfied with their performance in government as compared to NPPs administration whose policy directions and social interventions was second to none.

My passionate appeal goes to all aggrieved electorates who have declared publicly if their demands are not met to have a second thought and just vote against the NDC and vote for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo for the sake of mother Ghana. Rejecting the NDC government in the upcoming elections is inevitable and as this will put politicians on their toes to live up to their promises.

Mahamas government should not starve us for almost eight (8) years and just some few months to the elections they will give us food, pans, clothes, cars, laptops, motorcycles, outboard motors, cash to deceive us to insult our intelligence. Ghanaian electorates our vote is our power so let us not sell our right because of money and other material things and go into slavery for another four (4) years.
Some persons in the All Progressives Congress (APC), Rivers State Chapter, on September 12 2016, made some radio comments that the amnesty for repentant cultists in Rivers State given by Governor Nyesom Ezebunwo Wike of the state was a ruse. They hinged their blundering views on a lackadaisical standpoint that the governor wanted to use the boys after, for whatever reason. By this statement, one was thrown aback to think of what it pays to play deconstructive politics in the state all in the name of playing the opposition.

In the beginning, some of us in the media were against the way the governor emerged as the Peoples Democratic Partys (PDP) flag bearer in the twilight of the election and drew attention to that. But since the Supreme Court had canceled all our views on January 27, as regards to that and authenticated Wike as the rightful elected Governor of Rivers State, we took a bow.

So, it is a lost battle when some persons or groups rather than criticise the governor and his government being that public opinion helps in shaping government policies, have decided to throw caution to the dogs and feed the general public with statements capable of maligning the governor. And this is sinking in the public consciousness.

Many residents of the state and across the country think that Governor Wike was a killer or dines with militants. Yet, the governor and his media team are only writing press releases to some of the events and have no strong article-writing team to tell the people that the governor was not a killer or militant, as being speculated.

If Wike was a killer, he would not have shown piety to the charlatans that caused mayhem in the Ogba-Orashi axis of Rivers State that left hundreds of thousands of people dead in the late months of last year to the middle of this year when the governor decided to show them amnesty. The amnesty by the governor has shown that the governor does not like wasting blood. If not, he had the security at his disposal to match it fire for fire and waste the once hoodlums. But the governor said no, eye for an eye combusts the world. We are not sure from where the purveyors of the statement that Wike would be using the boys given amnesty for nefarious activities. What we heard on June 24 while Wike was speaking with the National Administrative Council of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers led by its President, Mr. Igwe Achese at the Government House, Port Harcourt, was that the state government was working with germane security agencies to guarantee that Rivers State remained safe for investors.

It would have been the same persons or group calling Wike a killer that would have written a letter to the International Criminal Court that he was killing innocent agitators if he had used force to curtail their brainless excesses. There could not be any last option to the once worthless boys and men if not the amnesty granted them. Apart from the political imbroglio that once characterised the immediate past governor of the state with Wike, the later had always made peace as the first and last option. Yes, he had said some words in many quarters that were deemed dim-witted coming from a man of such a caliber. But situations that warranted such words were like soldiers trained not to kill people but to fire their gun when the enemy attacks.

Wike has always been a man who shows traits to peace. We could remember in 2015, while speaking when he received in audience, Brigadier-General Paul Boroh, the Presidential Adviser/Coordinator of the Amnesty Programme at the Government House, Port Harcourt on Thursday, November 12, Wike said the sustenance of the amnesty programme would further promote peace, stabilise the economy and generate empowerment. His words, "It is important to note that the peace we enjoy today in the Niger Delta is largely due to the Programme. That was even given that Wike said recently that his administration would not pay cash to kidnappers, cultists and armed robbers that surrendered their weapons in the states amnesty programme.

It was in that meeting that the Presidential Adviser/Coordinator of the Amnesty Programme, Brigadier-General Paul Boroh, told Wike that Rivers State had 7652 beneficiaries of the federal amnesty programme, with 4310 beneficiaries involved in skills acquisition and vocational training. Imagine what the fate of the amnesty beneficiaries and the state could have been in term of public disturbances if the federal government had used force on the once militants. In that courtesy, Wike urged the agitating labour unions to use strike as the last option. If Wike was crude as some persons wanted the world to believe, he would have told the labour that they can do their worst.

The deconstructive critics would not see that the state government and NUPENG in collaboration developed a Tankers Village at Eleme with a view to decongest the highways of trucks and most importantly, generate revenue. The governors option in giving the once inadequate cultists amnesty was in order, apart from some opinions that said it contravened some sections of the constitution. While the constitution was always right, the opinion holders in this direction were not apolitical. That was the reason the Commissioner for information and communication, Austin Tam-Gorge, appeared on a radio programme monitored in Port Harcourt in July and said it was the incessant move by hardened criminals who had promised to lay down their arms and embrace the amnesty offer. The commissioner said they placed calls to the special adviser to the governor on Amnesty that showed the boys were tired of the dastardly acts but perhaps did not know how to get off them.

As according to the commissioner, As soon as we have properly vetted them and go through the process of screening, there will be a rehabilitation scheme. Those who forsake their ways are going to benefit from the amnesty programme. They should know that it is not going to last forever. Those who are interested should act very fast so they can benefit. Cultists who belong to DeyBam, DeyWell or whatever from the Ahaoda area, the Etche area, the Abua-Odual and Omoku area have contacted the amnesty office already. So, they should act very fast and embrace this offer because the Governor has continually said those who engage in criminality will have no hiding place.

We must be thankful to Governor Ezenwo Nyesom Wike for this initiative. In our culture, we do not use force on one, we first summon the person for a peace talk. That was what the governor had done by giving the former cultists amnesty. Any of them or other that goes back to criminality would be seen by free-thinkers as being not fair and whatever he or she sees and receives from the government would be the persons own cup of tea. That was the reason the applaud by the state PDP on June 28th, 2016, saying that the amnesty by Wike was aimed at curbing criminality; cultism in the state would continue to be a welcomed development.

Wikes hands of olive branch to the former street urchins to accept the amnesty should be praised than pummeled. The governor has shown that everybody should be tolerant and live with one another in peace. If the governor was not a peace-loving person, by now, many of the bodies of those given amnesty today would have been a source of manure to the crops.

Odimegwu Onwumere is award-winning journalist based in Rivers State. Tel: +2348057778358. Email: [email protected]
13.09.2016 LISTEN

It was a Monday morning in the early 90s and the sun refused to shine as though it had lost in an argument with the moon. Life was as difficult as a bird participating in a swimming competition in the animal kingdom. There was mayhem at home; mum howled and sweats profusely. Daddy was totally at sea. We the children cried unceasingly.

All this was because my little brother had swallowed a coin and a neighbor has told my parents the boy may die in the next few hours if the coin remains in his stomach. He said it with confidence as though he was a medical practitioner. He said his childhood friend died in the early 70s for swallowing a coin. He provided enough evidence that my little brother may die if the coin is not expelled as soon as possible.

A family friend in the village advised that the little boy be taken to the hospital. At the village hospital, the nurse said the boy must be operated before the coin can be taken out and advised that the boy be sent to Komfo Anokye Hospital in Kumasi.

In fact it was hell, mum broke into tears. Immediately, Dad borrowed money from his friends and the little boy was taken to KATH. The entire family was thrown into the pitch of disconsolateness. My little brother seemed to have been the first child to swallow a coin in the village and per a neighbors experience and the village nurse advice, he may not survive.

On their arrival at KATH, Dad informed the nurses it was an emergency case which involved an operation. Unhesitatingly, the little boy was given an emergency bed and my parents were asked to wait patiently for the senior doctor to examine the boy. Upon the senior doctors arrival, he inquired and after my mum had told him everything, he said take him back home and get him fufu or banku to eat, he will expel the coin when he goes to toilet, this case doesnt require any operation. In fact my mum felt offended and almost insulted the senior doctor for cracking jokes at the expense of her sons life. Howbeit the doctor insisted. My little brother was brought home and after given him fufu and light soup, the coin was expelled through his feaces when he defecated the following morning. My mum was ashamed for doubting the senior doctor, the neighbor and the village nurse were ashamed for exaggerated and falsehood reports.

One thing about Ghanaians is that the very people who exaggerate issues are the ones who have no knowledge about the issue. They will kill you with fear and falsehood. There are a number of people going through such situations in life. We have challenges which solutions are very simple but we allow false narratives to scare us.

We are dying not because of our conditions but because of FEAR. Trust me that disease cant kill you but if you subject yourself to narratives from people, fear may kill you instead of the disease. Put your trust in God. That situation is surmountable, you can overcome it within a spilt of time. There are times when people make you feel like you are good for nothing or a living dead just because of your challenges.

There are times when they will tell you asomasi died of this same disease They brim you with fear instead of hope. They tell you you cant do it just because they couldnt do it. They have no knowledge about your condition but they are able to tell you chronicles of narratives. Those are the times that if you dont hold unto God, you are forced to give up. My dear, dont give up. Like the story above, the solution to the challenge scaring you is very simple. Put your trust in the Lord and allow your faith to work.. Fear not because the challenge you are facing wont kill you.

We are not children of a lesser god

Ntenhene Felix

( [email protected] )
The Social Public Accountability and Financial Accountability (SPEFA) Groups in the Bolgatanga Municipal of the Upper East Region, have been urged to form stronger coalitions to enable them engage the Municipal Assembly effectively in demanding accountability and responsiveness from the duty bearers.

The Social Public Accountability and Financial Accountability is an initiative of the Government of Ghana and supported by the World Bank, aimed at building the capacities of citizens groups in the Bolgatanga Municipality to participate effectively in the Public Financial Management issues (PFM) and the improvement of public sector physical development performance .

Since 2015, the Netherlands Development Organization ( SNV )- Ghana as the Local Capacity Builder ( LCB), under the Local Government Capacity Support Project (LGCSP) has provided support to Development Research Centre (DRAC), a Non-Governmental Organization in the Upper East Region to implement many SPEFA activities in the Bolgatanga Municipality.

There are currently twenty-three interests groups represented by one hundred and twenty persons on a learning platform called the SPEFA Groups whose capacity had been built in the area of demanding Social Accountability from duty bearers from the Assembly.

The Programmes Manager of DRAC, Mr Aberinga Milton, who made the call during the fourth SPEFA capacity building forum held in Bolgataanga, on the theme The Role of Citizens in Social Accountability, told the SPEFA groups that it was only through formidable coalitions that they could make a greater impact in holding the duty bearers to account properly for their stewardship.

He explained that the third forum, which was organised earlier on was used to educate the media on their role in social accountability and noted that this time round the organizers thought it appropriate to build the capacity of the SPEFA groups to effectively engage the Municipal Assembly on their own.

Therefore the objectives of this session seeks to among other things equip the participants with the needed tools and skills for building stronger coalitions to engage the Municipal Assembly effectively. This is timely and appropriate since the project is exiting soon and there is the need to continue SPEFA activities, Mr Aberinga stressed.

He stated that the fourth forum would equip the participants on why civil societies must be organized for Social Accountability and how civil society has to prepare for engagements with with duty-bearers for enhanced Social Accountability, acquire communication skills for enhancing Social Accountability and understand and appreciate the factors that can inhibit Civil Society organizations in their operations.

Mr Aberinga stated that since the implementation of the project in the Municipality, a lot of success had been chalked and mentioned that it had contributed to an increase in citizens awareness and understanding of Local government public financial management , especially in relation to budget formulation and development planning

The project has contributed immensely to an increase in womens participation in the local governance issues. Female Participation has increased considerably and consistently; from 35% in 2014 in the first quarter to 39% in the second quarter SPEFA forum same year. In 2015, the number increased to 45% and 55% in the first and second quarters respectively, he indicated.

He added that SPEFA had consistently enabled and sustained the interest of the disability community in the affairs of local government and indicated that since 2014, the number of persons with disabilities who attend SPEFA forums trainings and meetings had increased consistently.

In all about 131 members made of 71 males and 60 females from the various SPEFA groups consisting of Youth groups, PWDs, GHABA, Chiefs and Queen mothers, beauticians , hairdressers, driver union, students traders, among others attended the forum and pledged to form stronger coalitions to press home their demands.

The Municipal Budget Officer, Gbeduruna Mustapha B Adam, in responding to complaints about heaped waste at certain points in the town which were not disposed of, he asked the citizens to report such cases to the assembly for the appropriate actions to be taken.

The Public Relations Officer of the Bolgatanga Municipality, Mr Eugene Dong Purye, who doubles as the chairman of the Public Complaint Committee (PCC) of the Assembly, announced that the Assembly had opened PCC formally, to help address concerns of citizens and Civil Society Organizations and called on them not hesitate to report issues of concern to the PCC for redress.
NPP Vice Presidential Candidate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, on September 8, 2016 delivered a lecture on Ghanas economy at the National Theatre in Accra.

Among other things he said the countrys economy has been built on straw because of the recklessness and mismanagement of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).

He said the NDC has within eight years ballooned Ghanas debt stock by $39billion.

President John Mahama alone has added 66 percent debt to the countrys public debt, he claimed.

Click here to access his full presentation.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
Total Ghana last Thursday launched yet another exclusive range of petroleum products onto the Ghanaian market at the plush Labadi Beach Hotel in Accra Accra.

Total customers in Ghana can now put new life into their car with the introduction of total Excellium line of products namely Excellium Diesel, Excellium Super and Excellium Super 95.

According to the Managing Director of total, Olivier Van Parys, the introduction of the product falls within Totals commitment to innovate and give customers value for money.

"With the launch of Excellium product today, Ghana has become one of the few African countries that has experienced the rich quality of Excellium petroleum with the likes of Morocco, Ivory Coast and Uganda respectively."

The Chief Executive of NPA, Mr. Moses Asaga, on his part commended total Ghana for the introduction of Excellium and the best of its technology to the country.

"We are happy that total Ghana is introducing Excellium and the best of its technology to the country this makes our industry progressive and we do recognize your great contribution to it. With this good projection we will support total in its advancement which will be ours as a nation," he said

Transport Minister, Fifi Kwetey, in his official address also thanked Total Ghana for their creative innovation and also for being the force in driving Ghana's economy in its 60th year of existence in Ghana.

With the introduction of Excellium products, am confident it will go a long way in helping consumers save money and also bring satisfaction and help strengthen the environmental management system to ensure efficiency in the transport system, Hon. Fiifi Kwetey stated.
Since Scanad Ghanas inception in 2011, one if its key ambitions is to be recognized as a top advertising and communication business operating in Ghana.

This year, Scanad Ghana took the bold step to participate in the 15th Edition of GC100 for the first time and was ranked 30 out of 100 companies in Ghana.

Scanad Ghana is the only creative agency listed in the GC 100.

Scanad Ghana is full service communications agency offering creative, media planning and buying, digital and Public Relations services.

It is a member of the Advertising Association of Ghana (AAG) and in 2014 won 33 Gong Gong awards and 2015 won 15 Gong Gong Awards, making Scanad the most awarded creative agency in Ghana.

The GC100 ranking has elevated Scanad Ghana in the eyes of corporate Ghana, we have demonstrated that we take pride in corporate excellence in line with our parent company WPP-Scangroups mission of integrity, transparency, accountability and the pursuit of professional excellence to provide world class communication to our clients.

Scanad Ghana is a subsidiary of WPP-Scangroup listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, Kenya, and it is part of the largest communication global brand WPP.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
A new Al Jazeera documentary finds:

 Time is fast running out for China to pay off its bad debts

 China has more than two billion square metres of empty residential space  thats enough to house more than 100m people. Entire neighbourhoods have become ghost towns

 Its a craziness on a level that you havent seen elsewhere in the world and you have to think that thats going to create a crisis on a level that hasnt been seen elsewhere Analyst Anne Stevenson-Yang

 Economists predict global fall-out that could send worlds economy into a tailspin

In The End of China Inc?, Al Jazeeras 101 East travels to Shenfu, one of hundredsof new cities in China built during the boom years that are now deserted. Scores of abandoned high-rise buildings stretch for kilometres - a ghost town of epic proportions.

Presenter and senior reporter Steve Chao says officials spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the new city but construction ground to a halt last year. Shenfu now stands as a silent testament to the countrys faltering economy.

Theres an eerie feeling, walking through these abandoned buildings.Its like time has come to a standstill, says Chao. According to the government, China has more than two billion square metres of empty residential space  thats enough to house more than 100 million people. These empty shells have in many ways become symbols of a wild spending spree that some say has gone on far too long.

Chinas transformation into an economic powerhouse has been astonishing, but now the economy is slowing and cracks in the system are appearing.

Some economists warn the countrys building boom never delivered real prosperity and that, with all the bad investments, the countrys debt is mounting at an alarming pace. In 2005, China owed 164% of its GDP, says Chao. Today its almost double. This mountain of debt is piling up faster than its economy is growing.

Anne Stevenson-Yang, who spent 20 years in China and witnessed the boom years, says thefailed building projects 101 East visited are just the tip of the iceberg.

Its a craziness on a level that you havent seen elsewhere in the world and you have to think that thats going to create a crisis on a level that hasnt been seen elsewhere, she says. If China had been willing to give up that hyper growth, then it might have avoided the potential for a serious crash and a serious debt crisis. But it didnt and it wont.

In China, many people are reaching breaking point, with falling wages and lay-offs fuelling anxiety and anger. A group of coal miners recently went on strike in the countrys southwest after learning their company had cheated them out of their medical and retirement funds.

We feel in our hearts that life is so unfair, a miner tells 101 East. We are treated like the lowest of the low. When the economy goes bad, we are the ones that bear the brunt of it.

While government economists claim China will be able to cover its bad loans, others fear that defaulting on it could send the worlds economy into a tailspin.

China is roughly 16% of global population and its been consuming roughly 50% of global resources, says Stevenson-Yang. Thats going to stop and thats going to be hugely impactful Theres a huge chain of consequences.

The End of China Inc? screens on Al Jazeera English at 1830 CAT on Sunday, 18 September 2016 on 101 East, Al Jazeeras award-winning weekly current affairs programme focusing on a diverse range of stories across Asia and the Pacific. After it airs, the documentary will be available on YouTube and http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/ .

For more information, follow 101 East on Twitter on @AJ101East and Facebook at 101East  Al Jazeera.

The-end-of-china-inc-2
13.09.2016 LISTEN

Government of Kenya, USAID, African Development Bank, Kenya Commercial Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation Seize the Moment to push aggressive economic agenda

NAIROBI, KENYA --- It was a blockbuster moment for African agriculture yesterday as African leaders, businesses, and major development partners pledged more than US $30 billion dollars in investments to increase production, income and employment for smallholder farmers and local African agriculture businesses over the next ten years.

The collective pledges at the AGRF are believed to represent the largest package of financial commitments to the African agricultural sector to date, backed by the broadest coalitions ever assembled in support of food production on the continent.

The commitments were made at the official opening of the sixth African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) that has attracted more than 1,500 influential figures from 40 countries for three days of brokering new agricultural initiatives. The historic investments represent just the first wave of support for the new Seize the Moment campaign, one backed by the African Union Commission, the New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa ( AGRA), key NGOs, companies and donor countries.

While African agriculture has seen significant progress in the last ten years, the Seize the Moment campaign is a frank acknowledgment that much more is needed for African countries to achieve inclusive economic developmentand ultimately realize the international communitys Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The campaign is a decisive push for the political, policy, and financial commitments essential to transforming Africas agricultural sector. The goal: a new era of business opportunities for the 70 percent of the African population that depend on farming for food and income, yet too often face poverty and poor nutrition.

Joined by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Kenyas President, His Excellency Uhuru Kenyatta, officially opened AGRF 2016 by laying out a bold vision for how agriculture transformation should play out in Kenya and across Africa. Committing himself to deliver on both the political and policy agenda, President Kenyatta announced his government will invest US $200 million so at least 150,000 young farmers and young agriculture entrepreneurs can gain access to markets, finance, and insurance. He then called on his fellow heads of state across Africa to step-up and invest aggressively over the next five years in agriculture-related endeavors.

Gayle Smith, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), set the tone for the day with a call for investors and donors to be bold and do their part to achieve A Food-Secure 2030. The US government already has invested more than $6.6 billion in global food security and nutrition efforts through its Feed the Future initiative. This commitment is now locked in for the long-term following approval in July of the bipartisan Global Food Security Act legislation. Smith noted that the initiative signals the US government's enduring commitment to global food security and nutrition and is the largest development authorization the US Congress has made in a decade.

Other agriculture investors and development partners announcing new financial and policy commitments included: The African Development Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) Group, OCP Africa, World Food Programme, Yara International ASA, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Additional new investments are expected at the three-day forum. Strive Masiyiwa, AGRF Partners Chairman and Founder and CEO of Econet recorded the specific commitments in detail and called for other investors and partners to join the Seize the Moment campaign during the year ahead.

President Kenyatta, as Chair of the African Peer Review Mechanism concluded the ceremony by calling for a continental scorecard that will measure and track the commitments to agriculture transformation and ensure they translate into action.

Note to Editors

Specific commitments came from each of the following champions of African agriculture:

USAID launched a global report entitled  A Food-Secure 2030. The US government has invested more than $6.6 billion in global food security and nutrition efforts through its Feed the Future initiative, and the Global Food Security Act signals the US government's enduring commitment to global food security and nutrition and is the largest development authorization the US Congress has made in a decade.

A Food-Secure 2030. The US government has invested more than $6.6 billion in global food security and nutrition efforts through its Feed the Future initiative, and the Global Food Security Act signals the US government's enduring commitment to global food security and nutrition and is the largest development authorization the US Congress has made in a decade. US $24 billion from the African Development Bank (AfDB) over the next ten years , a 400 percent increase over previous commitments, to help drive agricultural transformation in Africa. Remarks from AfDB President Akin Adesina noted that a key pillar of the AfDB work will be support for the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation or TAAT program, which is scaling up various agriculture technologies for millions of farmers. Adesina said AfDB support will also accelerate access to commercial financing, buttressed by proven approaches to reducing risks of commercial lending to smallholder farmers and other agriculture businesses.



Now is the time to come to the aid of our long-suffering farmers and give them the modern agriculture technologies they need to ensure a good return for their labor and hard work, Adesina said.

, a 400 percent increase over previous commitments, to help drive agricultural transformation in Africa. Remarks from AfDB President Akin Adesina noted that a key pillar of the AfDB work will be support for the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation or TAAT program, which is scaling up various agriculture technologies for millions of farmers. Adesina said AfDB support will also accelerate access to commercial financing, buttressed by proven approaches to reducing risks of commercial lending to smallholder farmers and other agriculture businesses. Now is the time to come to the aid of our long-suffering farmers and give them the modern agriculture technologies they need to ensure a good return for their labor and hard work, Adesina said. Support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to contribute at least US $5 billion to African development over the next five years. It is expected that will include at least US $1 billion for agriculture, based on expenditures in recent years . The agriculture investments will continue the Gates Foundations work to expand crop and livestock research, strengthen data for decision-making, and improve systems to deliver better tools, information and innovations to farmers.



In addition, both the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation today promised to renew their support for AGRA as it embarks on an ambitious series of partnerships to support agriculture-led economic transformation across entire countries. The Gates Foundation also promised to match dollar for dollar other development partner support for AGRA programs.



Speaking to the conference via a pre-recorded video, Bill Gates praised AGRA, which sponsors and organizes the AGRF, for work over the last ten years that has reached some 15 million farmers.



Reflecting on AGRAs ten year anniversary, Gates said, Were excited about what AGRA has achieved. We are committed to them and feel like it is a huge part of this whole vision.

It is expected that will include at least US $1 billion for agriculture, based on expenditures in recent years The agriculture investments will continue the Gates Foundations work to expand crop and livestock research, strengthen data for decision-making, and improve systems to deliver better tools, information and innovations to farmers. In addition, both the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation today promised to renew their support for AGRA as it embarks on an ambitious series of partnerships to support agriculture-led economic transformation across entire countries. The Gates Foundation also promised to match dollar for dollar other development partner support for AGRA programs. Speaking to the conference via a pre-recorded video, Bill Gates praised AGRA, which sponsors and organizes the AGRF, for work over the last ten years that has reached some 15 million farmers. Reflecting on AGRAs ten year anniversary, Gates said, Were excited about what AGRA has achieved. We are committed to them and feel like it is a huge part of this whole vision. US $180 million in additional commitments from The Rockefeller Foundation . The contribution includes US $50 million beyond the US $105 million already invested in AGRA and its partners over the last ten years. In addition, the Foundation is providing US $130 million for its Yieldwise initiative, work directed by AGRA and other partners that is deploying better storage, handling and processing capabilities to reduce the significant post-harvest losses on African farms due spoilage or pests



Food loss and waste across the value chain threatens farmers livelihoods and costs the global economy more than the combined 2015 profits of the Fortune 500, said Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. In sub-Saharan Africa, 40 to 50 percent of certain staple crops are lost post-harvest.

. The contribution includes US $50 million beyond the US $105 million already invested in AGRA and its partners over the last ten years. In addition, the Foundation is providing US $130 million for its Yieldwise initiative, work directed by AGRA and other partners that is deploying better storage, handling and processing capabilities to reduce the significant post-harvest losses on African farms due spoilage or pests Food loss and waste across the value chain threatens farmers livelihoods and costs the global economy more than the combined 2015 profits of the Fortune 500, said Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. In sub-Saharan Africa, 40 to 50 percent of certain staple crops are lost post-harvest. US $350 million from Kenya Commercial Bank Group (KCB) to finance agriculture business opportunities that could reach some two million smallholder farmers, which is 5 percent of the banks overall lending portfolio. US $200 million will go toward improving market infrastructure and mobilizing farmers and US $150 million through the KCB Foundation to support livestock farmers. KCB will also work with the MasterCard Foundation, contributing US $30 million each year to helping smallholder farmers access credit and market information via mobile devices.



Moreover, Mr. Joshua Oigara, CEO of KCBEast Africas largest commercial bankchallenged his colleagues at other leading financial institutions in sub-Saharan Africa to match KCBs commitment. That could infuse several billion dollars into Africas agriculture sector, where a dearth of financing has been a major impediment to boosting production and income for smallholder farmers, local seed companies and other agriculture businesses.

to finance agriculture business opportunities that could reach some two million smallholder farmers, which is 5 percent of the banks overall lending portfolio. US $200 million will go toward improving market infrastructure and mobilizing farmers and US $150 million through the KCB Foundation to support livestock farmers. KCB will also work with the MasterCard Foundation, contributing US $30 million each year to helping smallholder farmers access credit and market information via mobile devices. Moreover, Mr. Joshua Oigara, CEO of KCBEast Africas largest commercial bankchallenged his colleagues at other leading financial institutions in sub-Saharan Africa to match KCBs commitment. That could infuse several billion dollars into Africas agriculture sector, where a dearth of financing has been a major impediment to boosting production and income for smallholder farmers, local seed companies and other agriculture businesses. A commitment by the World Food Programme (WFP) to purchasing at least US $120 million of its agricultural products each year from smallholder farmers through a partnership called the Patient Procurement Platform. That US $120 million represents 10 percent of WFPs annual procurement budget. Ertharin Cousin, WFP Executive Director, also announced that the Patient Procurement Platform would expand into Kenya and three other countries in 2017.

each year from smallholder farmers through a partnership called the Patient Procurement Platform. That US $120 million represents 10 percent of WFPs annual procurement budget. Ertharin Cousin, WFP Executive Director, also announced that the Patient Procurement Platform would expand into Kenya and three other countries in 2017. US $150 million over the next five years from OCP Africa to support local fertilizer distribution, storage and blending in Africa . Mr. Tark Choho, Managing Director of the OCP Group and Chief Executive Officer of OCP Africa, said OCP also will focus on building fertilizer plants in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa and is in discussions with five countries. This investment is expected to significantly increase access to fertilizers for Africas smallholder farmers and is projected to cost US $1 billion.

. Mr. Tark Choho, Managing Director of the OCP Group and Chief Executive Officer of OCP Africa, said OCP also will focus on building fertilizer plants in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa and is in discussions with five countries. This investment is expected to significantly increase access to fertilizers for Africas smallholder farmers and is projected to cost US $1 billion. Over $US 3 billion to African agriculture over the next six years from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)  in keeping with its current policy of spending at least 50 percent of its annual US $1.1 billion in Africa. IFADs investments focus on intensive efforts to generate jobs in farming and food production, particularly for African youth and African women.



Those of us who have been fortunate to achieve so much over a rich and full lifetime must now do everything in our power to provide our young people with opportunity and hope, said Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of IFAD and first winner of the prestigious new Africa Food Prize.

in keeping with its current policy of spending at least 50 percent of its annual US $1.1 billion in Africa. IFADs investments focus on intensive efforts to generate jobs in farming and food production, particularly for African youth and African women. Those of us who have been fortunate to achieve so much over a rich and full lifetime must now do everything in our power to provide our young people with opportunity and hope, said Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of IFAD and first winner of the prestigious new Africa Food Prize. Yara International ASA (Yara), which has been involved in African agriculture for more than 50 years, has pledged to continue with significant investments that can link smallholder farmers to lucrative value chains. We believe there is a tremendous opportunity for the African agriculture sector to grow from being a net importer to an exporter of food, said Yara CEO Svein Tore Holsether.

### About AGRF 2016

The AGRF is a platform for global and African leaders to develop actionable plans that will move African agriculture forward. Established in 2010, the Forum has emerged as Africas leading platform of agriculture platforms that brings together a range of critical stakeholders in the African agriculture landscape including African heads of state, ministers, farmers, private agribusiness firms, financial institutions, NGOs, civil society, scientists, as well as international development and technical partners of Africa to discuss and develop concrete plans for achieving the green revolution in Africa.

Principle strategic AGRF partners include AGRA, the Rockefeller Foundation, Grow Africa, African Development Bank (AfDB), OCP, AGCO, the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP), Syngenta, the MasterCard Foundation, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Yara International ASA, Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU), the Africa Union (AU) and NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency.

http://agrf.org/
Hotel and hospitality industry stakeholders in Africa who are meeting in Tanzania said the African continent remains the worlds most attractive investment area in tourism despite the low figures of tourist inflow from key global travel markets.

They said Africa remains the leading continent in the world and that it is endowed with diversified natural resources, attractive geographical features, and rich history and cultures - all of which attract international tourists to visit this continent.

During their first day at the Fourth Annual Africa Hotel Expansion Summit and Hospitality Round Table in the Tanzanian commercial city of Dar es Salaam, hotel and hospitality industry executives noted that Africa needs to establish intra-Africa travel packages to attract tourists within the continent.

Africa needs to encourage intra-Africa travel programs that would attract more people to travel from one country to another country within the continent, said Amaechi Ndili, President and Chief Executive Officer, Lionstone Group and Golden Tulip West Africa Hospitality Group in Nigeria.

We need to stimulate intra-Africa tourism and business travel while governments across the continent take serious steps and policies to create more open skies for Africans, Ndili noted.

In the context of tourism competitiveness in Africa, most countries on the continent are still lacking competitive tools to support growth and competition in tourism at global market levels, despite the continents rich and untapped natural resources.

The hotel executives further noted that more than 80 percent of Africans dont know tourist attractive sites available in their own countries compared to Europe, America, and other continents where the citizens outnumber foreign tourists.

Nigeria is the leading country in Africa to generate outbound tourists to other countries within the continent, mostly to other West African states, as well as East and Southern Africa.

Kenya was rated among top African countries looking to develop tourism by encouraging its residents to visit attractive sites within this country and book the hotels as a move to attract more hotel and accommodation investments.

Rwanda is the other African country rated with friendly and positive growth in the tourism and hospitality industry in Africa. Top-level international investors, business leaders, hotel industry experts, and travel market leaders from the world are currently focusing their eyes on Rwanda.

Kigali, the Rwandan capital, has been rated the most attractive city in Eastern Africa for the global hospitality industry. Several international conferences and gatherings have been taking place there, attracting a high level of tourists from Africa and other parts of the world.

Among the key global gatherings to be taking place in Kigali later this year is the 41st Congress of the Africa Travel Association (ATA) to be held in Kigali from November 14 to 17 and which is expected to bring delegates from Africa, the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world.

Bearing a theme of Destination Africa: The Future of African Tourism, the ATAs 41st Congress is set to focus the East African region as the single tourist destination in Africa and best for a combined African safari.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
An asteroid similar to this one was photographed by a Chinese observatory as it travels past the Earth. (Photo : Twitter)

A Chinese telescope has captured images of an asteroid as it approaches the Earth.



The images of the asteroid, named 2009ES by the International Astronomical Union;s Minor Planet Center, was captured by the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, the Global Times reported.



Advertisement

According to Zhao Haibin, one of the observatory's staff, the images were captured by the facility;s 1.2 meter Schmidt telescope while the asteroid was at a distance 18.8 times as far the moon is from the earth. Zhao added that they were first notified by the MPC about the asteroid's approached on Sept. 5 and was requested by the center to observe it as it passes over their scope of view.



This is the first time that the observatory has captured images of the asteroid. However, eight other observatories from around the world have tracked and imaged the asteroid.



Zhao said that the images they have captured will help astronomers around keep track of the trajectory traveled by the asteroid. 2009ES is one of the 1,640 asteroids and other minor bodies the MPC classified as potentially coming close to the Earth.



He explained that the trajectories of asteroids could be affected by the gravitational pull of planet like Mars, which is why it is crucial to continuously keep track of its path.



According to scientists, an asteroid 10 kilometers across colliding with the Earth could cause an impact comparable to the one that is believed to have caused the extinction of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.



Meanwhile, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has launched a new probe to collect samples from the asteroid Bennu. The Osiris-Rex probe was launched aboard an Atlas V rocket on Sept. 9 and is expected to t5ake two years to reach the asteroid, which circles the sun at a slightly larger orbit than that of Earth, the China Post reported.



Measuring 500 meters across, Bennu is believed to contain carbon dating back to the beginning of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago. It is hoped that the samples to be collect ted would provide clues to the origin of life on our planet and possible in other parts of the solar system.


A Ghanaian Law Professor based in the United States is asking political parties to challenge in court the 2016 presidential and parliamentary filing fees announced by the Electoral Commission.

Professor Stephen Kweku Asare, says the EC, should not be allowed to violate the constitution by imposing "performance tax" on candidates in the name of filing fees.

The EC with three months to go for the crucial 2016 elections announced a a50,000 and a10,000 filing fees for presidential and parliamentary aspirants respectively.

Per CI 75, the presidential aspirants get a full refund if they get at least 29% of the votes cast in the presidential election while the parliamentary aspirants get a full refund if they get at least 12.5% of the votes cast in the constituency.

Even though the EC has not officially explained the sharp rise in the filing fees, it has been suggested, that the fees are to discourage people, who for the fun of it, would contest the positions without any gravitas.

The announcement of the fees have left some candidates heartbroken with a near possibility of many filing out of the contest.

Some of the parties, including the PNC and CPP have roundly condemned the fees describing it as an attempt by the EC to sell the presidency and house of Parliament to the highest bidders.

Rather than criticizing the EC in the media, Prof Stephen Kweku Asare, would rather have the parties take the matter up in court.

In a Facebook post, the University of Florida lecturer said by insisting on this exorbitant fees, the EC, is violating sections of the constitution which give every Ghanaian the right to vote and be voted for without being financially restricted.

"In my mind, the constitutional right to be voted for cannot be fettered by a means test. Nor is it dependent on the probability of being a successful candidate. Your high office, with all due respect, does not come with the power to set performance standards and impose a tax on candidates who do not meet those standards," he stated.

He said the EC has "no power under the Ghana Constitution to impose a performance tax on candidates. It is not part of your remit to discourage so-called "non-serious" candidates anymore than it is your remit to subsidize "serious" candidates."

Prof Asare, popularly referred to as Kweku Azar, chided Parliament for sleeping on the job and allowing Regulations 6 and 42 to be passed as part of CI 75.

It is based on these regulations that the EC announced the new filing fees. But Kweku Azar says the EC must drop the deposit requirement it has imposed on the aspirants.

The following is the full Facebook post

Dear Electoral Commission Ghana:

I write to alert you that you have no power under the Ghana Constitution to impose a performance tax on candidates. It is not part of your remit to discourage so-called "non-serious" candidates anymore than it is your remit to subsidize "serious" candidates.

I am aware of Regulation 6 of CI 75, which empowers you to determine an amount of money that candidates must deposit with you subject to the refund rules of Regulation 42 of the same CI.

I am also fully aware that it is pursuant to the combined effect of those Regulations that you have decided that for the 2016 general elections a presidential candidate must deposit a50,000 ($12,505) while parliamentary candidates deposit a10,000 ($2,501). Further, under the regulations the former gets a full refund if she gets at least 29% of the votes cast in the presidential election while the latter gets a full refund if she gets at least 12.5% of the votes cast in the constituency.

I need not remind you that the Constitution delineates your functions and does not vest you with the power to tax voters and candidates for elections. As such, no self-respecting Parliament would have allowed CI 75 to pass without striking out Regulations 6 and 42. Be that as it may, it is beyond dispute that Parliament may not delegate its taxation power nor lawfully acquiesce to violating the Constitution.

Elections are mandatory quadrennial events which require citizens to participate as voters and/or candidates. Those who wrote the 1992 Constitution understood that democracy and good governance thrive well when citizens can fully participate in the process, unrestricted by their financial status. They affirmed that whatever their inequalities of wealth, status, and power in the everyday activities of civil society, citizenship gives everyone the same status as peers in the political public.

This is why Chapter 7 of the Constitution stipulates that citizens have the unfettered right to vote. This right has several derivative rights, including the right to be registered, the right to participate fully and equally in the political process, the right to cast a ballot, the right for the ballot to be counted, the right for the ballot to be weighed equally, the right to run for elected office, the right to hold unelected public office, and the right to finance a candidate.

In my mind, the constitutional right to be voted for cannot be fettered by a means test. Nor is it dependent on the probability of being a successful candidate. Your high office, with all due respect, does not come with the power to set performance standards and impose a tax on candidates who do not meet those standards.

If X is a good legislator who cannot afford the deposit and Y is a bad legislator who can afford the deposit, a system that disqualifies X cannot be democratic or functional.

Nor should your high office compel X to raise funds only for him to engage in corrupt activities, when elected, to pay his sponsors.

It is because of the forgoing reasons that I have found it necessary to have intercourse with your office on this day and to request, as a matter of urgency, that you repudiate the deposit requirement that you recently announced.

Da Yie!

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Nathan Gadugah
The Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE) in collaboration with the Civil Technical Division has held Civil Engineers Conference at the Engineers Centre on Thursday, 8th September, 2016.

Under the theme,Regulating the Civil Engineering Profession in Ghana for Effective Delivery, the conference attracted Civil Engineers Subgroups namely: Geogroup, Structures, Transport, Water, Sanitary, Environmental, Hydrological, Geomatic and Construction Management, Health & Safety.

Chairman of the Conference, Ing. Wilfred E.O. Apatu called for integration of Sandwich Courses into the Engineers Training Programme to keep them abreast with changing trends in their Design, Construction and Management.

In our part of the world, we would have to, in addition to the theoretical training of the Civil Engineers, look seriously at the integration of Sandwich courses into the Engineers Training Programme, by attachment to the construction industry. 

Those in the practice need attachments to Foreign to consultancies and large scale Civil Engineering Construction sites to keep abreast with changing trends. It will be worthwhile to focus the acquisition of further degree programmes in Civil Engineering on practical training in Building Construction on large scale projects and in Highway Engineering on the practical aspects of Quality Control that will ensure more durable infrastructure, Ing. Apatu explained.

The Chair of the Civil Technical Division, Ing. Oddei explained the key objective for deliberations at the conference, which supported the views of the Conference Chairman, to include how to develop professional capacities to meet the challenges ahead.

I want to remind my colleagues of the Engineering Council, which is now regulating our practice. One important parameters required for renewal of our annual professional license is the Continuous Professional Development (CPD), which includes our involvement in the training programmes and activities organized by GhIE, Ing. Oddei concluded.

The Conference, which was attended by some Engineering Council members, Executive Secretary of GhIE, Ing. George Essandoh, was sponsored by Fotcal Ventures, Saint-Gobain and Rain Coat Roofing Systems Ltd.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com


Alhaji Yussif Adam, Upper East Regional Chief Imam, has advised all Muslims and Ghanaians as a whole, to patiently listen to all political parties that come to seek their votes and choose the party with the best message and plans for the development of the region in particular and the country at large during the December 7 polls.

He gave the admonition when he was preaching during this year's Eid-ul-Adha open-air prayers at the NAFAC Ground in the Bolgatanga municipality.

Alhaji Yussif Adam advised all Muslims to renew their faith and commitment to the will of Allah and be ready to sacrifice their time, resources and even their comfort, to live in peace with their neighbours.

The Eid-ul-Adha prayers are said by Muslims the world over in commemoration of the submission of Prophet Ibrahim and his willingness to sacrifice his only son as directed by Allah. During this period many preachers remind Muslims of the need to be obedient to Allah, abide by His words, be ready to sacrifice to His glory and foster peace on earth.

The Upper East Regional Police Commander, DCOP Simon Afeku, was happy with the peaceful nature of the event and called on the congregants to be ambassadors of peace and continue deliberating on the submission and obedience of Prophet Ibrahim and the blessings Allah bestowed on him as a result.

The New Patriotic Party's (NPP's) Bolgatanga Central parliamentary candidate, Rex Asanga, joined the event and called on Muslims to ignore recent comments by a key figure of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) that the NPP does not like Muslims. According to him, the NPP has no problem with Muslims and would never have any problems with them.

He advised Muslims, especially those living in the Zongo communities, to vote massively for the NPP to enable a Nana Akufo-Addo-led government to implement the Zongo Development Fund policy.

According to him, just as the NPP was poised to implement a Northern Development Fund to bridge the development gap between the northern and the southern sectors of the country, so would the party implement the proposed Zongo Development Fund and create opportunities for people living there, especially the youth.

FROM Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Bolgatanga


There was pandemonium during the broadcasting of the Joy News flagship programme dubbed, The Ballot Box, in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis last Friday evening when supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) nearly traded blows, bringing an abrupt end to the well-attended programme.

That was during an open forum as alleged supporters of the NPP who thronged the programme in their numbers, insisted that they would not allow NDC activists to dominate in the asking of questions because none of the NDC's parliamentary candidates showed up for the programme.

The programme, which tackles key issues relevant to Ghanaians as the general election inches closer, has been replicated in the ten regions of Ghana.

The Western Region edition of the programme centred on the oil sector and how it could be managed efficiently to develop the region.

The NPP was represented by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Takoradi, Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah and the parliamentary candidates for Sekondi and Wassa East, Andrew Mercer and Wilson Arthur respectively as panelists.

The candidates of the Convention People's Party (CPP) and the Progressive People's Party (PPP) were also present. Conspicuously missing were the candidates of the NDC.

Unknown to the organizers of the programme, more NDC activists were those given the microphone to ask questions and after realizing that, supporters of the NPP stood up and protested.

Even the explanation by the moderator of the programme, Evans Mensah, that the programme was non-partisan and so all should sit down to allow it to run, could not save the situation and so he had no other alternative than to end the event.

Earlier, Mr Darko Mensah noted that the NDC government had done nothing to improve the lives of residents in the Western Region, in spite of the discovery of crude oil there.

He promised that the next NPP government to be headed by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would relocate the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) from Tema in the Greater Accra Region to the Western Region.

The MP pointed out that the relocation would form part of a complete decentralization of the oil sector to boost employment in the region.

Mr Darko Mensah described the performance of John Mahama and his NDC government as spectacular failure, adding that there was lack of transparency in the use of the revenue generated from the region's resources.

Kwabena Okyere Darko explained that with the Coastal Development Authority promised by the NPP flag bearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, the next NPP government would implement policies that would benefit the over two million Ghanaians living along the coast.

The NPP will use the oil as growth pole to change the Western Region. When the GNPC, which is the regulatory body for all oil production activities, is relocated to the Western Region other related businesses will follow suit and move to the region and that will boost employment in the area, he assured.

The parliamentary candidate for Sekondi, Andrew Mercer asserted that the under-development of the region had left the youth disillusioned with most of them moving to Libya and other countries in search of 'greener pastures.'

From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi
If Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is reading this piece, we wish to inform him that President John Mahama has told Ghanaians that the economy is about to take-off.

He said the take-off date is 2017 and the announcement was made during his speech to Muslims at the Black Star Square yesterday.

We are unable to tell whether the President listened to Dr. Bawumia's lecture at the National Theatre last week. If he did he might have forgotten the reference by the gentleman to the President's repetitious announcements about take-offs which never leave the runway after boring and screeching taxing.

Unfortunately our President does not find it necessary to express remorse for toying with our intelligence. It would appear that he is overstretching his conviction that Ghanaians have short memory and would therefore not remember the promises he made to them.

The Ghanaian has mutated with time and no longer exhibits the previous characteristics of amnesia which the President thinks he can exploit to his political leverage.

Today the economic hardship as a factor has changed him and he is able to tell when the President is not being honest with him.

A foundation, he told us earlier, has been constructed for a forward movement of the economy. Now we are told government is preparing the grounds for the economic take-off next year.

The campaign speeches are so muddled up that we are unable to follow the President any longer. Ghana is set to become the hub of economic activities in West Africa. We have heard this over and over again that it no longer sounds pleasant to our ears.

Those who prepared the President's speech for the Eid El Adha yesterday did not serve their boss well because the presentation only provoked laughter and sneers from Ghanaians.

The speech should not have contained anything about an economic take-off which sounds more offensive than appealing.

The quality of a performance is determined early in the morning not in its twilight.

We have witnessed so many shortcomings and omissions, all of them bordering on incompetency that when the President dangles an umpteenth economic take-off we can only yawn and ask what the hell is happening in this country under these guys?

One of the remedies for economic downturns is infrastructural development. This creates employment and triggers economic growth.

We are not witnessing such growth under the circumstances and so we are constrained to wonder why Ghana, under the present crop of politicians, is defying economic standards by not responding to the infrastructural development treatment for our fiscal malaise.

President Mahama makes political statements to cushion himself and he is living up to the standards of his kind.

Not so however his deputy, who as an economist with Bank of Ghana (BoG) experience, should know better and avoid passing snide remarks in his mad bid to be relevant.

We are unable to place the Vice President when he says that our opponents do not understand basic economics.

What a Vice President! He promised to fire double shots in response to single bursts from their opponents. Is that the best response he can put up to the Bawumia lecture? More like the serial callers response dubbed, 'Setting The Records Straight.'
President John Mahama yesterday painted a rosy picture of the country's future when he announced that Ghana is ready for an economic take-off starting 2017.

All sectors of the economy, according to him, have been prepared for the take-off, a development which according to him will transform the lives of Ghanaians.

The President was speaking as a special guest at the Black Star Square during this year's Eid El Adha or festival of sacrifice observed worldwide by Muslims.

The attendance at the annual event was very poor, compared to the last Eid-il-Fitri  about two months ago  and a lot of the congregants had left by the time the president was delivering his speech.

It was not the first time the president was telling the congregations about 'better days ahead,' as they were given similar promises in past celebrations but with nothing to show, except more promises.

Still on the economy, he assured Ghanaians that his government was working towards making Ghana an economic powerhouse in West Africa.

He said: together we have come very far and I believe that together we will achieve even more.

President Mahama's speech was segmented because it would appear he wanted to cover many subjects, being an election year.

It was like rehashing the NDC manifesto to the gathering.

For instance, he said that government had undertaken many projects which are intended to impact positively the lives of Ghanaians.

We are expanding our ports; we are building more airports; we are upgrading others to international standards and we are providing more buses to create easy transportation linkages between our towns and villages throughout the country to facilitate movement of people and goods from one place to the other, he said.

Government, he asserted, had built new roads and rehabilitated several others across the country.

On agriculture, as if to water down the NPP presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo's 'one village one dam' promise, President Mahama said irrigation projects are being constructed in readiness towards our green agricultural revolution.

More communities, he said, were being connected to the electricity grid to open them up for development.

We are developing our oil and gas resources to guarantee power and energy supply; we are investing heavily in restoring our railways and together we have come very far.

The president charged Ghanaians to uphold the country's democracy pedigree, as it goes to the polls on December 7.

All Ghanaians, he urged, should uphold the country's image as a model of democracy before, during and after the forthcoming polls.

As we gradually inch towards the 2016 general elections, we should all endeavour to uphold the peace that has characterized our elections. It is this that has made us to be described as the model of democracy in Africa. I am always thankful that Allah has blessed me with the opportunity to be the president of such an industrious united and peace-loving people like Ghanaians. It is for this reason that I am very confident that once again when our democratic credentials are tested on December 7, we will respond with vigour and deliver yet another peaceful, fair and transparent election to the world.



Hajj Fiasco

He did not have kind words for the management of this year's Hajj, following perhaps the inability of many prospective pilgrims to embark upon the trip.

He gave assurance that the challenges encountered this year would not recur in future because certain measures would be put in place.

This year, we conducted a successful Hajj, and I wish to express my regret to all who due to certain reasons were unable to embark on the Hajj this year. This was due to many factors. One was the airlifting of 2,000 passengers from the Tamale International Airport, which was very well patronized, and reduced the quota of those who took off from Accra.

Another factor was the dramatic growth in pilgrim numbers beyond the quota that was assigned Ghana by the Saudi authorities.

I have asked the Hajj Committee to request an increase in our quota of pilgrims from the current 5,424, to 7,000 pilgrims next year, he claimed.
A good leader changes his followers. The people you influence will never forget you. They will be indebted to you forever. If God has told you to be a leader, you must see yourself working on the lives of the people you lead. Leadership is not just about being called Chairman or President.

Leadership is not a matter of sporting fancy titles. To lead is also to work on people until they become better.

For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,

Philippians 1:19

By the time Jesus had led his disciples for three years, their lives had been completely transformed. It is recorded that:

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.

Acts 4:13

Being with a good leader changes your life forever! A good leader changes the lives of his followers until he is unforgettable in their lives. A good leader affects the lives of his followers so much that his followers will be indebted to him.

Albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.

Philemon 19

Eight Ways to Become an Unforgettable Leader

Lead someone to Christ.

When you lead someone to Christ he will be forever indebted to you for bringing him to the Lord.

Lead someone to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

The person you lead to be filled with the Holy Spirit will forever be indebted to you for leading them to the greatest power and helper on the earth today. How can he ever forget you!

Establish someone in the Word of God.

They will forever be indebted to you for leading them to the greatest source of wisdom and direction for mankind. I am forever indebted to my mother in the Lord who taught me how to have my quiet time. My daily quiet time with the Word of God has become the greatest secret of my life. Most definitely I am indebted to the one who taught me this great secret.

Lead someone to the right church.

The right fellowship makes the difference between Christians. The Bible enjoins us in Hebrews 10:25 not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. A church fellowship is the most important factor that challenges a Christian to stay on the right path after salvation.

Help somebody find his way into the ministry.

The ministry is the highest calling on earth. Can you imagine what you are to someone you lead along this path? It is the best vocation for a human being. It is the only job with eternal value. We will all find out that there is no higher privilege than to be called to serve in the ministry. It is just a matter of time.

Help somebody to get married.

Finding a marriage partner is one of life's greatest decisions after choosing Christ. It will make or break you. If you help someone to get married to the right person at the right time he is indebted to you for life!

Help to save somebody's marriage.

Marriage is like glass, it is easily broken. Troubled marriages are very difficult to heal. If you successfully help to heal someone's marriage, he will remember you for life.

Help somebody to make the right decisions at the crossroads of his or her life.

Decisions make a great difference in a person's life. For instance, where you live, your job, school, etc. If you influence somebody in the right direction you will be an unforgettable person to him.

That was the kind of leader Paul was to Philemon. Apostle Paul reminded Philemon how much he (Paul) had affected His life. Are you a leader? Can you tell one of your followers that he owes his life to you? Philemon's life had been transformed through his relationship with Paul. Paul could tell Philemon that he owed him his very life! Paul said:

Albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.

Philemon 19

May God help you to be such a leader! May your influence so positively change the lives of your followers that they will attest to the fact that they owe even their very lives to you.

[email protected]

By Dag Heward-Mills
The IMANI Ghanas quick rebuttal to Dr. Bawumias assessment on the state of Ghanas economy presents some questions. Did IMANI seek experts advice from economists or they assented to solipsism? Where did IMANI get their data to quickly uncover the pitfalls in the aforesaid analysis? When we experience physical malady it is only a physician who can name the disease through diagnosis. In the academic world, it is only scholars of the same discipline that can appraise or critique their peers. This partly explains why academic journals are scholarly peer-reviewed. The purpose of this article is to explain the significance of annotation in knowledge acquisition by comparing Dr. Bawumias profile with some leading members of IMANI.

The credentials, academic qualifications and work experience are very significant as they help learners and the general public to know the authenticity of information given to them. I will begin by presenting the profile of Dr. Bawumia and then Mr Franklin Kujoe. After graduating from Tamale Secondary School, Bawumia proceeded to the United Kingdom where he undertook professional banking studies and obtained the Chartered Institute of Bankers Diploma (ACIB) with distinctions in Banking Law, Monetary Economics, Accounting and Banking within the rather short period of 18 months! He obtained undergraduate degree in economics in 1987 from Buckingham University

He subsequently gained admission to Oxford University, Lincoln College, where, one year later, he received a Master's Degree in Economics. He pursued his doctoral studies in economics at the reputable Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Economics in 1995. His areas of concentration include Macroeconomics, International Economics, Development Economics and Monetary Policy. He has numerous publications to his credit.

From 1988 to 1990, Dr. Bawumia worked as a lecturer in Monetary Economics, and International Finance at the Emile Woolf College of Accountancy in London, England. He also served as an economist at the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, USA. Between 1996 and 2000, Dr. Bawumia served as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, Texas, USA, where he also received the Young Researcher Award in 1998. As a result of Dr. Bawumia's commitment to excellence in teaching, he made the list of "Who is who among America's Teachers' in 1999.

Dr. Bawumia returned to Ghana in 2000 to work as an economist at the Bank of Ghana. He rose through the ranks from Senior Economist to Head of Department, and subsequently as Special Assistant to the Governor of the Bank. His Excellency President J.A. Kufuor appointed Dr. Bawumia as Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana in June 2006 (Source, modernghana.com. August, 15, 2008).

Mr Franklin Kujoe obtained bachelors degree in land economy from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in 2002. He obtained MBA, Non-profit public and organizational management from Atlas Economic Research foundation. He is currently pursuing Doctorate in Philosophy (D. Phil) at the University of Buckingham. Mr Kofi Bentil is a brilliant attorney, and Mr Bright Simons, a brilliant IT man (I stand for correction).

These IMANI guys are fantastic individuals contributing to the development of Ghana. However, they are not economic experts to punch holes in Dr. Bawumias assessment of current state of Ghanas economy. As an organization, IMANI, needs experts advice to undertake such exercise. MBA, Law and IT are different from economics and thus those graduates cannot critique an economist of Dr. Bawumias pedigree. They could have the same data but the methodology, analysis could be different. Empiricism and statistical data are not free from philosophical encumbrances. Many scholars are befuddled with the understanding of competing theories relating to a given data. The imperative need of IMANI seeking experts advice must be encouraged. Per his publications in the scholarly peer-reviewed journal of economics, Dr. Bawumia is an authority while our IMANI brothers are not. IMANI is not in the capacity to critique Dr. Bawumia on the economy. I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing. (Socrates)

Feedbacks must be directed to [email protected]

Nana Yaw Osei (Padigo), PhD Candidate, Psychology

Arizona, USA
South Africa is kicking Jacob Zuma and the ANC out of office. In Germany, Angela Merkel is losing ground because the people say so and Britain has closed itself out of the European market with the Brexit vote. You might not agree with all the reasons for these developments by citizens, and particularly when you think that the USA might just vote Donald Trump into office  I shudder and get feverish.

But more exciting and what I welcome is the Turkish push against ISIS and the possibility of cessation of fighting in Syria, routing Assad out of office and the choices we can make freely of who governs us in Zimbabwe, DRC, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Like many Africans, I am fed up with the way we do our politics and I am desperate for a change in elective procedure. I am desperate for a change in the threat of Boko Haram and all the dictators to whose advantage illiteracy contributes wealth and hegemony and I believe sincerely that given half a chance we can show a different side of Africans and demonstrate some capability to exceed if not match what is dished to us by the West.

In South Africa where they have moved from the first past the post voting to electing municipal officers on a proportional representation basis, the ruling ANC is reeling from a badly managed economy and corruption by a misdirected leader and we are readying to see a more appealing party that conveys some hope in the future and is pressing for a change in the way the autocracy washes its face chin up in spite of the looming financial crisis and anaesthetized politics, as if nothing else can dislodge the solid majority bequeathed by Nelson Mandela.

And this week, the NPP mounted the stage at the National Theatre, where their Vice Presidential candidate took the stage to compare claims by the government of its economic success in making roads in places not necessarily justified; but only after stealers had successfully stopped them from using their preferred choice of the International Conference Centre.

The NDC is claiming re-election on the basis that over the eight years, their massive infrastructure push intended to achieve enormous economic activity and create much needed youth employment across the country, has been wildly successful and they deserve another term in office to move the process on. Of course the NPP disagrees and went wild on the podium to reiterate their development and state their case for a return to make Ghana a much more liveable landmass for the next four years.

Unfortunately for the ruling party, Ghanaians are yet to be convinced that this is as clear-cut as they would like us believe. I certainly don't; I neither see the roads nor feel the employment and the jury is still out whether all these roads actually exist and were built in this term of their government.

Every possibility for development I believe in was in Bawumia's two-hour delivery. I want to see factories in every district. I want dams in every village, I would like to see a change in the way we elect District Chief Executives, I desperately believe we should change the way we borrow money and spend, I want free education to SHS level and I need to be assured that we will put these resources into bigger more targeted solutions; visible and measurable and clear solutions to rural and community development.

But let me add to the list. I want proportional representation all the way down to district level; I want parliament to change to a more resource management institution, where financial resources will be better distributed to districts and administrative and development autonomy devolved to districts and municipalities so we can judge capability properly and measure growth direct with comparisons from data that the regions can collect and analyse to ensure that citizen's needs are addressed and particularly, that youth can find placements in places of excellence right at their doorstep of birth and not have to travel needlessly to come to urban centres to beg for their rightful access to better education and jobs.

We cannot keep on mismanaging our economy year after decade. There are countries just next door; similar weather, nearly identical produce, same foreign markets and same access to commodities as we have. Ivory Coast is in a tsunami of development. You need to go see what Outarra is doing with the resources he has at his disposal and how he has succeeded with a war-ravaged inheritance to stay the lead in cocoa, palm oil and now cashew. A remarkable achievement by any standard, and no blaming world markets. By the time we re-visit elections and this piece next time, they will have up-to-capacity energy solutions for their industries and we will still be haggling over killer tariffs for ours. It is what we do. We haggle and bicker while the cocoa production shrinks and our revenues dwindle to our levels of religious acceptance. We give it to God and wait for the rains to fill our single lake.

But what is it we have to do in Ghana?

Change the avaricious politicians who have strangled our development till they realise we will keep advocating for better governance and more progressive living standards and sit up to meet our needs. This primitive attack approach to resolving good governance and development has to end. If nothing struck me at all from Mahamudu's speech, it was his clear voice and sincerity of the direction needed to turn the economy.

The NDC Government has gone to town to call him a liar, his use of data, which they generated and recorded, has created an uproar because the numbers are true. Even so that the ever so subdued Veep, Kwesi Amissah-Arthur has peaked from under the blanket of quiet and waded into trying to disprove his matched counterpart. They don't question the results; they insult Bawumia's intelligent interpretation of the numbers that demonstrates the flaws in their financial strategy and their failure to better the NPP success between 2000 and 2008.

I will count down the first 100-day program for a change to district elections and hopefully mayoral and/or municipal chiefs who will respect the will of the people and engage every citizen in their community as well as the traditional chiefs who should once and for all stop selling our civil rights for land cruisers, motorcycles and bicycles.

Democracy is not a war, it is not Aleppo; we should grow up into elections from this year. I don't have to agree to your politics. Respect mine as I will yours and let my ideas metastasize citizen thinking so we can all make sensible contributions away from primitivism. Those who find this too difficult to accept have an option. Head for the door, it is right in front of you, and don't bother with the lights, dumsor has already taken care of them for you.

Ghana, Aha a y din papa. Alius atrox week advenio. Another terrible week to come!

Sydney Casely-Hayford, [email protected]
The Presiding Bishop of the Church of God, Ghana, Bishop Joseph Manful Crentsil, has prophesied that any politician that will plunge the country into civil war after the December 7 elections will suffer severely for the rest of his or her life.

He therefore admonished politicians that have the plans of destabilizing the country because of their inordinate desire for political power to shun their evil plans, warning that such politicians would definitely be arrested, humiliated and prosecuted in the end.

This is a prophecy from God: any politician that will plunge the country into chaos because of the love for political power will be arrested, humiliated and prosecuted even if he or she decides to relocate abroad, the man of God declared.

Bishop Manful Crentsil stated emphatically that there would not be any safe place on earth for politicians and their family members that plunge the country into chaos, urging politicians to take note and behave properly in order not to incur the wrath of God.

He admonished politicians in the country to have a clean heart and shun every diabolic ploy that would cause commotion in the country and make Ghanaians refugees in other countries, noting that Ghana is surrounded by Francophone countries so the people would suffer if war breaks out.

Your Cedi currency, which is the medium of exchange, will be not recognized if you go to Togo, Burkina Faso or Cote d'Ivoire. God forbid, if war breaks out in Ghana, the sea will be the only safe place for us Ghanaians to run to for safety, he pointed out.

Bishop Manful Crentsil disclosed this while delivering his inaugural speech after he and other executives of the church were officially inducted into office during a well-attended church service which was held at the City Church of God at Patasi in Kumasi on Sunday.

Electoral Commission

He charged the Electoral Commission (EC) to conduct the general elections in a free, fair, transparent and credible manner so that all stakeholders would accept the outcome for peace to prevail.

Bishop Manful Crentsil also urged the security agencies, especially the Ghana Police Service, to also play their crucial role in a professional manner, devoid of favouritism so that peace would be sustained before, during and after the polls.



Vision

He disclosed that he would focus on four thematic areas, including rigorous membership drive, organization of periodic workshops for members, supporting the extreme poor in the church to become self-reliant and boosting the church's bilateral relations with other churches.

The Presiding bishop, who would steer the affairs of the church for the next four years, stated that plans were underway to offer scholarships to brilliant but needy students in the church and also equip members with skills during programmes to enhance their livelihoods.

Bishop David Mills Snr, Superintendent, Church of God International, West Africa, charged the new presiding bishop and his team to eschew sin and lead the church in truth so that their great vision of transforming the church would become a reality.

From I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi
The New Yalu Bridge remains unfinished. (Photo : Getty Images)

The relationship between China and North Korea has been up in the air. This is the reason why the New Yalu River Bridge remains unfinished.



The $330 million bridge was constructed to renew ties between the two countries as it connects Dandong City and Pyongyang.



It was envisioned that Dandong is the new Singapore city. The Dandong New Zone now stands with malls which are barely filled and apartments half-finished.



Advertisement

Sun Lixia, a shopkeeper at a lighting store in Guomen Wanjia Home & Life Square Mall, said, "North Korea hasn't opened their end of the bridge and we can't really do anything about it. It's been bad for the local economy here. Who knows when they'll open it?"



She added, "Apartments haven't been selling quickly, a lot of people aren't willing to move here. There isn't even a proper hospital here, it's only been half completed."



"The government was counting on trade between China and North Korea to drive economic growth here but that hasn't happened," said a security guard named Liu, who works at an office building located on Commercial Street.



"To be honest, the main reason the new zone hasn't developed is because the bridge isn't open," Liu added.



China has been angered by the recent nuclear weapons testing by North Korea and as a result abandoned the bridge construction altogether.



According to Beijing-based journalist Mu Chunsan, "Turning completely away from North Korea, however, is not in line with Xi's policy of developing normal relations with China's neighbors. Normal relations involve a willingness to negotiate and resolve differences."



Jin Qiangyi, Director of Yanbian University's Centre for North and South Korea Studies, believes that the relations between the two countries are disappointing the Chinese government.



"We have a choice about whether we can push them to reform and open up, to get them to change," Jin said. "Of course political and military sanctions need to be stepped up, but civilian opening up and exchanges must be strengthened too."


DUAYAW NKWANTA Prison Camp at Tano North District of the Brong-Ahafo Region where prisoners are relocated to serve their last prison terms is facing a lot of challenges.

Bamboos are now being used to fence the prison yard instead of barbed wires, water supply to both officers and inmates was inadequate, lack of proper infirmary to take care of sick prisoners, bad road leading to the prison yard, unhygienic toilet facility shared by both inmates and officers and overcrowding.

This came to light when Member of Parliament for Tano North, Freda Prempeh visited the facility recently to donate a motor-tricycle and one hundred pair of boots and sandals to both the prisons officers and the inmates. The 100 sandals for the inmates, was to protect them in their farming activities at the camp. Duayaw Nkwanta Prison camp is noted for large farm plantation in crops such as oil palm, maize and vegetables.

Addressing them before handing over the items, Madam Freda Prempeh who was once a prisons officer said she was aware of the challenges the officers face in their daily duties hence the gesture. She advised the officers to be diligent and professional in their duties despite the challenges assuring them of sending their concerns to parliament for the appropriate actions to be taken.

According to her, one of the necessary conditions that needs to be changed to make the prisons better is to change the name of the institution from Ghana Prison Service to Ghana Reformation Centre to reflect the core mandate of the institution which is to reform prisoners and give them vocational training so that after serving their terms, they could go back and lead meaningful lives. She disclosed that the issue had been tabled already and was referred to the Prisons Council for technical study.

Receiving the items, the prison commander, Assistance Director of Prisons, John Aseidu Benayee was thankful for the items and said they would be put to good use. The motor-tricycle, he said, would help them cart palm fruits from the farms to the yard for oil palm extraction. He said currently there are 136 inmates in the prison which was originally built to accommodate only 120 prisoners.

He later led the MP to inspect the prison facilities like the kitchen, senior officers' broken down wooden-offices, a broken down bamboo fence and the congested building which she promised to sought help for.

FROM Daniel Y Dayee, Duayaw Nkwanta

[email protected]
Teachers in all thirty eight (38) Public Colleges of Education have declared an indefinite strike effective Monday September 12.

Their strike according to a statement is over what they described as unduly delayed migration to enable them draw salaries as tutors from other tertiary institutions.

The National Executives Committee of the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana took the decision after a meeting, resolved to implement the strike because previous meetings have failed to yield any fruitful outcome.

The teachers blame the Ministries of Finance and Employment and Labour Relations and the National Labour Commission for, according to them, showing lack of commitment to migrate the tutors to our requisite placement in our tertiary dispensation according to the dictates of ACT 847.

The National Secretary of the association Prince Obeng Heman said from 2012 up till now all the engagements that we've had have ended in a deadlock. So we think that they have not shown any strong commitment of doing that.

We should be on new ranks now that should commensurate the new job that we are doing. All the meetings we've had, not even one minister has been there. If even you say the substantive minister is busy, he has two deputies Not even one of them has shown the commitment to be there.

The strike would affect teaching in all the institutions across the country.

Mr. Heman further indicated that we take this as a strike of our lives, a strike of destiny and we are prepared to stretch up to the limit until we are migrated. When we see the payment reflect in our bank accounts, that is when we would reconsider our decision.
WANTED: Dennis Kortey

13.09.2016 LISTEN

An Accra Circuit Court has issued a warrant for the immediate arrest of a 29-year-old suspect, Dennis Kortey, for the offence of forfeiture of recognizance contrary to Section 2&3 of Act 30/60.

A statement issued in Accra and signed by ASP Joseph Darkwah, Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), headquarters, said Kortey, who is about five feet, eight inches tall and fair in complexion, is a businessman and native of Teshie.

He is suspected to be hiding at Suntreso in Kumasi, Teshie in Accra or Aflao in the Volta Region.

Anybody with information of his whereabouts is expected to contact the Osu Police on 0244746984, 0242644653, 0244891313 or report to the nearest police station.
As Ghana approaches the periodic routine of presidential and parliamentary election, tensions are already raging high and furiously scary with every passing moment in all corners of our beloved country as the contest keeps getting keener and stiffer with the major players strategically utilizing every platform to tenaciously preach their political sermons.

This years election just like previous ones backdating to 1992 is being contested by a myriad of political parties ostensibly giving credence to the countrys strong veneration for multi-party democracy. However, the forerunners of this years election continue to be the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the largest opposition party at the moment, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), depicting an almost two-party system.

The fear of the occurrence of two crucial potential unprecedented trends in the lead up to the election is especially peaking tensions. The fact that President John Dramani Mahama would not like his name to be recorded in the history books of the 4th republic as the only incumbent President to have lost an election and Nana Akufo-Addos unwillingness to be referred to as that failed leader who on three successive occasions failed to garner enough valid votes to propel the largest opposition party to power. These two explain to a large extend why the battle keeps getting ferocious as we count barely less than ninety days to December 7 when every candidates fate will be spelt crystal clear whether for better or for worse.

Indeed, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) had a point when he opined that the police administration would consider blocking social media on Election Day. But will that be an antidote potent enough o curb the malevolence of social media? Alas! most social media addicts, users, lovers and commentators were quick to verbally vilify and crucify the police chief without any in-depth thought. Mind you this same platform we so much cherish that most people tend to visit first thing at dawn and last thing at night has fast become the bane of moral decadences, abuse and disregard for authority, in fact; its the simplest, swiftest, and most anonymous platform where people easily spew out gibberish, insight chaos and insinuate all kinds of things. It must be noted with depths of regret how people abuse social media to denigrate state institutions, personalities and spread falsehood as swift as desert bushfire.

Suffice to say, President Mahama could not have said it any better when he lamented that he is the most vilified president in Ghanas history. Without any strain of imagination one thing is pretty sure; this phenomenon is not going to be peculiar to president Mahama neither is it going to cease any moment soon if no stringent measures are instituted to regulate how social media is used. We can however not pretend to be oblivious to the gainful side of social media. It has been an awesome driver of accountability, dissemination of information, speedy communication among others. Ultimately, social media is a two-sided phenomenon (good and bad) and as such, moving into the election it is only expedient that we choose the former.

Considering that youth form the chunk of social media users and the most prey-prone to the diabolic practices of politicians whiles at the same time considered as future leaders, it is imperative that we use social media and our exuberance; productively and not problematically, for victory and not for victims and above all, for transformation and not for troubles. No leader prides in leading a wrecked nation.

Just as a faulty vehicle cannot move, so will a wrecked nation not make progress; Not even the great Moses could lead divided and undecided Israel to the promise land despite Gods continuous Grace and favor on them. Remember no individuals quest for political victory is worth the irreplaceable drop of another persons blood. We have grown past being dolled with money and freebies to become terrorists to ambush our own brothers and sisters and cause mayhem. We are not mercenaries to be used for violence nor are we dogs to be instigated into chasing and attaching one another, neither did any fruitless struggle deserves the minutest effort of our muscles.

For the sake of mother Ghana and our reverence for human life and rule of law, we cannot be felons for the advancement of any diabolic and hypocritical mischief and naughtiness of politicians who will openly pledge for peace and decorum in their bid to either retain or capture power but turn to use foul languages, hurl insults at each other, and instigate the unsuspected youth to fight, kill and injure one another.

Referencing madam Charlotte Oseis remarks there are only victims but no victors in violence, it is my humblest and passionate plea to all youth and other persons who are potentially prone to the diabolic gambits of politicians, that we live in a civilized and bright century and age hence it is important that we wise up and emancipate ourselves from the ploys of politicians and become the authors of our own thoughts. Make a pledge for peace and not for war, make a resolution to stand for peace and unity, make it your strongest conviction to ensure peace in this years election by not being used to instigate or cause chaos, champion peace and not crises. I do not know of you, but like Joshua in the Bible; as for me and my house, we are for peace!

#iam4peace2016.

Aaron Atimpe

Department of Geography and Rural Development

KNUST

[email protected]
So far Hon.Abdallah Abubakari has proven his critics of the largest opposition party beyond reasonable doubt that his injury time minister is better than the two terms kufour- Alhaji Aliu Mahama reign in mamprugu.

It is on records that the NPP didn't do anything substantial in mamprugu even though we were privileged to have a full-time cabinet minister and regional minister yet the injury time minister will always be stencil on the mental sheets of every succeeding generation for championing the development of mamprugu.

Hon.Abdallah Abubakari the member of Parliament hopefully by the grace of Allah for walewale constituency come 7th December, 2016 deserves commendation for his unprecedented monumental history made for the development of mamprugu. Immediately Hon.Abdallah Abubakari was nominated by the first gentleman of the land his Excellency Wumpini John Dramani Mahama, our opponents in the elephant fraternity referred to him as injury time minister and that he cannot make any impact for mamprugu and northern region as a whole but he has proven them of their claims.

My dear readers I will at this juncture make known to the general public and our opponents what he has been able to do in mamprugu within his injury time period of which full term cabinet minister and regional minister of mamprugu origin in the erstwhile NPP administration could not do.

Hon.Abdallah Abubakari relieved the people of wungu the hometown of the NPP member of parliament for the area of their long quest for a regular supply of water by the water project provided by the world vision intentional which was using solar power to supply water to the whole community. The supply was very low making it difficult for the people of the town to get water and at worst women had to travel to a far place for water. This was really a disturbing issue within wungu township which even resulted for contributions to be made by every member in a household to get the wungu water project get connected to the national grid which indeed could have taken the indigence of wungu over decade to be successful. But with the timely intervention by the regional minister provisions were made for the whole project and can confidently say that the wungu water project is now connected to electricity with the biggest transformer which can supply water to the people of wungu township and it's environs in including walewale.

This dedicated gentleman has also fixed the acute shortage of water in Nadia immediately after his nomination as the regional minister. In fact in his quest to make sure that his people are adequately supplied with enough water as a social intervention programme to end water shortage joined the president to commissioned the kparigu water project in west mamprusi district during the President accounting to the people tour of the northern region.

With regards to connecting communities to national grid the NDC administration with the help of Hon. Abdallah Abubakari connected twenty one communities in west mamprusi as against six communities in the NPP two terms administration of the country. The number of communities to enjoy electricity will soon hit forty because additional nineteen communities have been awarded to contracts to get them also connected.

Hon. Abdallah Abubakari has also done well in terms roads construction. This is because works are ongoing on the walewale-wungu road, walewale-tampulingu road, walewale-zangum road, walewale-nalerigu road, akamara junction-nalerigu road, kparigu-shelinvoya road all under the watch of Hon. Abdallah Abubakari.

In fact Hon. Abdallah Abubakari is the originator of the plagiarised policy of NPP one district one dam. He has dug and drenched dams in the following communities namely zangu, gbimsi, zangum, sakuri and funggu to help them in their irrigation farming and also to supply water for their animals. This policy was smartly stolen by one of the NPP bigwigs who hails from walewale constituency to be incorporated into their manifesto as was promised by Nana Addo somewhere in upper East region which was already executed by our distinguished and widely respected regional minister Hon. Abdallah Abubakari.

Touching on some of his achievements on education ,Hon. Abdallah Abubakari with his Excellency WUMPINI John Dramani Mahama cut sod for the construction of Ghana education district office complex at walewale. There are also massive infrastructural development in all the schools in mamprugu.

Hon. Abdallah Abubakari the member of Parliament hopefully for walewale constituency has really proven his critics from the elephant fraternity that what he has done within the period of his injury time far better than eight years of NPP rule with even full time cabinet and regional minister.

I shall return with more biegya. #JMzang-tugi#hon.Abdallah Abubakari Nawunni katidumba.

ABDUL MAJEED ALI (Founding member and an interim executive of Students Network For JM and PCs in Mamprugu)

Tel:+233244671304

E-mail:[email protected]
The Electoral Commission will today, September 13, open nominations for registered political parties and independent candidates to pick their nomination forms to contest the December 7, polls.

Deputy Director in charge of Public Affairs of the EC, Yussif Alhassan Ayuba, has said the filing of the nomination forms will be done on September 29 and 30.

Presidential candidates of the various political parties are expected to pay GHC50,000 to enable them file their nominations to contest in the polls.

The Commission has also pegged the filing fee for parliamentary candidates at GHC10,000.

The forms will be available for all Presidential and Parliamentary candidates to fill and get endorsements before the filling date of September 29 and 30 respectively.

"The forms for the Parliamentary candidates will be available at the district offices across the country while that of the Presidential candidates will be available at the head office of the Electoral Commission in Accra, Mr. Ayuba told Starr News.
Ghana is set to become a beneficiary of a major intervention in the housing sector. The mini-city housing project is expected to have all facilities and utilities necessary to create thriving communities where people feel a sense of pride and place.

The project, when completed would go a long way to bring housing relief to Ghanaians in some selected regions, and create over 400.000 jobs over the period of its construction.

As Ghana struggles to deal with its housing deficit, the project has been deemed timely and also as a contribution to bridge the persistent gap.

The project is a USD$1billion financing support for State Housing Company Limited to construct and build the houses.

This intervention is being led and spearheaded by Dr. Lorinda Liang, Executive Chair for State Clinical Translational Scientific Research GH Limited and their working partners THE ROSENTHALL GROUP INC, USA,AFRICA.

It is against this background that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed by the State Housing Company Limited, and The Rosenthall Group INC, USA, Africa and Asia.

Present at the signing ceremony were Mr. Kofi B. Kukubor, Vice President for State Clinical Translational Scientific Research GH Limited, Dr. Lorinda Liang, Executive Chair/ President Clinical Translational Scientific Research GH Limited, Mr. Robert Rosenthall, President -The Rosenthall Group,USA/AFRICA/ASIA, and Dr. Samuel Sarpong, Managing Director State Housing Company Limited.
Innovation and partnership are the main themes as UK companies exhibit a wide range of innovative defence and security capabilities at AAD 2016. This reflects UK Government and UK companies continuing commitment to partnership with Africa.

UK companies are offering new capabilities to meet Africas security challenges, especially border protection where the UK is a global leader. The UK delegation to AAD offers particular strengths in counter-poaching, disaster relief, borders and maritime security.

UK companies are looking to develop innovative industrial partnerships across Africa. AAD is an ideal opportunity for companies from the UK and across Africa to identify areas where they can work together.

British High Commissioner to South Africa, Dame Judith Macgregor said:

The UK is recognised as a world leader in the security field, largely due to our long experience of having to deal with a significant security threat. The UK has particular strengths in Major Event security, Critical National Infrastructure Protection, Counter-Terrorism and Policing, Cyber Security, Border Security, Offender Management and Services (such as guarding, consultancy and training). The strong participation of the UK in the African Aerospace and Defence Show highlights the importance that the UK places in the relationship with South Africa, and the wider region.

The UK team is led by Air Vice Marshal Nigel Maddox Senior Military Advisor in the Department of International Trades Defence and Security Organisation, supported by Stuart Armstrong, the Assistant Director for Africa.

Sophie Lane Regional Director, Department for International Trades Defence and Security Organisation said:

South Africa is an important partner for the UK and we are continuing to deepen and strengthen our defence relationship. We also value relationships across Africa and welcome opportunities to discuss how the UK is developing solutions and to share experience and expertise. The world is ever changing and the role of the Armed Forces, Security and Police Forces in securing the safety of our citizens requires an ever increasing breadth of tactics, doctrine and equipment. I am very keen that UK companies look for industrial partnerships and joint ventures in Africa so that we can continue to share knowledge, understanding and technology that will take our relationship from strength to strength.

Both UK industry and UKTI Defence and Security Organisation look forward to a successful exhibition AAD 2016. Visit the UK Stand at 4E13 in Hanger 4, AFB Waterkloof, Centurion from 14-18 September. The exhibition is open to the public 17 and 18 September.
Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller announces the new 9.7" iPad pro during an Apple special event at the Apple headquarters on March 21, 2016 in Cupertino, California. The company announced updates to its iPhone and iPad lines (Photo : Getty Images/ Justin Sullivan)

iPad Pro 2 was one of the devices snubbed at Apple's recent release event, but it does not come as a surprise as the latest rumors of the giant phablet is not expected to be unveiled anytime this year.



Ming Chi-Kuo, a reputable analyst said that the new iPad Pro will be launched in 2017 alongside a smaller version with a 10.5-inch display, Mac Rumors reported.



Advertisement

The iPad Pro 2 plus the said 10.5-inch version, which Kuo says "will be helpful to bid for tenders in the education and commercial markets," will come with the new A10X processor under the hood.



According to Bloomberg, in addition, the iPad Pro 2 will get some additional features care of iPad-centric software updates to be integrated on the iOS 10.



One of these upgrades will have to do with the highly rumored Apple Pencil, which will be made with professionals in mind. This will be done by making it a drawing and handwriting stylus.



Apple is also allegedly looking into giving the iPad Pro 2 users the ability to annotate objects in various applications like the Mail, iMessage and the Safari web browser in the iPad Pro 2.



Already Apple Pencil enables this, but only on specific applications. The Redmond-based company is looking to make it a full-fledged spec on the iOS 10.



Meanwhile, the iPad Pro 2 is also rumored to sport faster display technology, which will make for faultless panning, zooming and scrolling.



While the iPad was snubbed in the event on Sept. 7, Apple actually did some tweaks on some of those available on the market but did not reveal them on stage.



One is that the original iPad Pro is now cheaper with the 256GB model getting a $100 discount and 128GB version $50 less. Apple now offers the 32GB version as the base model for the tablets and the best part is that they come with the same price as the 16GB versions.



For now, there is no more 64GB versions for the iPad mini 4 as the tablet and the Air 2 come in 32GB and 128GB. The iPad mini 2 now has only one version, which is 32GB.



As for the iPad Pro 2, the device is speculated to be released March 2017.



Watch a video of the new Apple Pencil on iPad Pro here:






The Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States condemn this weekends attacks on Zueitina, Ras Lanuf, Es Sider, and Brega oil terminals in Libya. We call on all parties to undertake an immediate ceasefire and to refrain from any further hostilities. We also call on all forces to avoid any action that could damage Libyas energy infrastructure or further disrupt its exports. Libyas oil belongs to the Libyan people. The Presidency Council (PC) is the sole steward of these resources. The PC and other Government of National Accord (GNA) institutions have an obligation to ensure oil revenues are used to provide essential services for the Libyan people. Oil infrastructure, production, and export must remain under the exclusive control of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) acting under the GNAs authority. We call for all military forces that have moved into the oil crescent to withdraw immediately, without preconditions.

The Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States reaffirm their full support for the GNA as Libyas sole executive authority. Libyan forces should unite in fighting Daesh and other UN-designated terrorist groups. Violence against fellow Libyans undermines Libyas stability and encourages division. Political agreements, not conflicts, must determine Libyas future. Creating a unified, capable national security force under GNA authority is Libyas best hope for protecting its resources for the benefit of all its people. We urge peaceful cooperation among Libyas armed forces and immediate efforts to unify into one professional military force. All Libyan forces have a responsibility to serve the entire nation, and to act on behalf of all Libyans. We welcome efforts by partners to encourage all forces to avoid further clashes.

We reiterate our intent to enforce UNSCR 2259, including measures concerning illicit oil exports, activities which could damage the integrity and unity of Libyan State financial institutions and the NOC, and individuals and entities engaging in or providing support for acts that threaten the peace, stability or security of Libya.
Washington (AFP) - A report commissioned by actor-activist George Clooney alleging massive corruption and war profiteering by leaders of South Sudan, the world's newest nation, is "completely rubbish", the government said Tuesday.

A spokesman for President Salva Kiir said the report released in Washington at a high-profile press conference headed by Clooney was both "misleading" and ill-intentioned.

Released after a two-year inquiry, it says Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar -- currently on the run -- have benefitted substantially from a three-year conflict that has forced 2.5 million people from their homes and left half the population dependent on food aid to survive.

The report said the "key catalyst" of the war was "competition for the grand prize -- control over state assets and the country's abundant natural resources," notably its oil.

'The report itself is completely rubbish," said Wek. "Yes, there is corruption in South Sudan but this report has fallen short of detailing the corruption."

Actor George Clooney, co-founder of Sentry, speaks during a news conference on September 12, 2016, in Washington, DC, to present the report "War Crimes Shouldn't Pay: Stopping the looting and destruction in South Sudan"

He alleged the report aimed to undermine the regime, saying it "is misleading, it is politically motivated to tarnish the personality of President Kiir ... and those generals struggling for the betterment of South Sudan."

The government will form a legal committee to respond in writing, he added.

Clooney charged that South Sudan's warring leaders and their cronies have amassed fortunes, including foreign properties and stakes in international firms, while prosecuting a murderous conflict.

Top officials' families "often live in multi-million-dollar mansions outside the country, stay in five-star hotels, reap the benefits of what appears to be a system of nepotism and shady corporate deals, and drive around in luxury cars," the report said.

The inquiry was carried out by The Sentry, a watchdog group founded by Clooney and rights activist John Prendergast.

After presenting its results, Clooney and actor Don Cheadle stopped by at the White House to discuss South Sudan with President Barack Obama.

The United Nations is currently seeking to beef up its peace-keeping effort to protect civilians and aid workers due to a new flare-up in fighting.

After decades of fighting, South Sudan became independent in 2011. The latest bout of bloodshed erupted in December 2013 when Kiir accused former deputy Machar of plotting a coup. UN experts have blamed both camps for reigniting the fighting.
13.09.2016 LISTEN

"....While the detractors of African independence are predicting that the continent will revert to the jungles once it is left on its own people's rule, Ghana is wasting no time refuting that prophecy.... Instead, with its own financial and manpower resources and technical and financial aid from the U.S. and other nations around the world, it is toiling around the clock, building an industrial economy the likes of which colonial Africa had never seen....[ Dear Reader, that was precisely the planned industrial take-off for Ghana...By 1964, Nkrumah's development plans had begun to bear fruits for Ghana...Sadly, all of that success and promise, the Take-Off of Ghana's industrial revolution, was stolen from Ghanaians with an aggressive coup d'etat...].... " (Ebony Magazine report, May 1964; plus commentary by Prof Lungu, 9 Sep 16-rev).

As far as we are concerned, critics, including those who call themselves "learned", those who will attempt to compare Ghana to Singapore (or Korea, for that matter) looking at the window when Kwame Nkrumah was at the helm of government in Ghana, can never prove their case. In our series "Only mad 60-year olds fault Kwame Nkrumah for Ghana's development quagmire" essays on that topic, we proved that their thesis is false at best, and a fraud, at worst.

There is no data to support their thesis. Rather, on all important metrics, the data shows that Kwame Nkrumah's performance and leadership of Ghana was superior during that same "window". Fact is, 40 years and counting, none of those critics have ever presented data that actually, fairly, rationally, compared "equal" data precisely for the period Kwame Nkrumah's CPP ruled Ghana, compared to the same period under Lee Kwan Yew, of Singapore.

In our "Only mad 60-year olds fault Kwame Nkrumah" essays, we proved that in actuality, the objective data that shows that under Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana actually witnessed sharper increases in GDP per capita during 1963-1965, compared to Singapore for the same period; that there was sudden loss of economic performance beginning with the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah in February of 1966.

For Ghana, the period 1962-1965 can actually be represented as the beginning of the lift-off of Ghana's Industrial Revolution". That is, until the CIA-sponsored coup d'etat in 1966.

Regrettably for Ghanaians and Ghana's "industrial revolution", one of the major reasons documented in official US State Department records for the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah is this:

The Johnson administration and CIA, at the same time they were branding Martin Luther King a communist, positively did not want Kwame Nkrumah to receive any credit, to earn "political capital", in the minds and faces of Ghanaians and Africans for the biggest industrial project in Sub-Sahara Africa. That project, the Akosombo Hydro Electric Dam, was planned as the major driver for Ghana's "Industrial Take-Off". It was officially commissioned 22 January, 1966. Practically 1 month and 2 days later, Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown.

In "There Was No 'Dum-Sor' Under Kwame Nkrumah!", we noted last year that:

"...the comprehensive, integrated "Akosombo Hydo Electric Power-Volta Lake-VALCO" project was the planned industrial, agricultural, and service industry 'take-off' initiative for the fast-track development of Ghana in accordance with the vision of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah..."

We stand by that statement!

Fact is, in all of the 80 plus years the British controlled Gold Coast, the British never bothered to construct an oil refinery in their "Crown Colony." Yet, the same British, in 1936, constructed that massive (54.39 square kilometer (21 square mile)) naval base in Singapore. That project cost the British and its Empire, the Gold Coast included, a whopping 60 million...($3.8 billion in 2016 dollars), cementing Singapore as a major commercial, trading, and industrial port, at that time. (Using Nkrumah's back envelop calculations, the Gold Coast probably contributed 25% of that 60 million).

On the other hand, per credible sources and data, the cost for the most expensive industrial project the British ever constructed in the Gold Coast, ever, the Takoradi port, probably did not exceed 3 million.

And all of that, exactly to the penny, was paid for by the People of the Gold Coast.

As one authority observed 10 years after the overthrow:

"...from 1919 to 1928 because of trade recession after the first world war, he ...(Gordon Guggisberg)... retained the construction of the Port with two other projects namely, 4800 km motor roads construction and the Kumasi/Accra railway line...The funds for the three projects totaling about 12million were generated locally and farmers contributed a great deal of it...".

The Akosombo Hydro Electric Power project was constructed with $324 million. Even now, though poorly managed and maintained over the years, Akosombo still provides enormous benefits to Ghana's industry, service, residential, economic, and social needs.

And so, we thought it was fortuitous when we found an article in the May, 1964 issue of Ebony Magazine, published a mere 2 years before Nkrumah's overthrow. The Ebony magazine article was titled, "Ghana's Industrial Revolution: Nation Toils to Close the Technology Gap." Luckily, Google Books (weblink), has excepts of that Ebony report, also referenced below, #3).

READ EBONY, May, 1964:

"....While the detractors of African independence are predicting that the continent will revert to the jungles once it is left on its own people's rule, Ghana is wasting no time refuting that prophecy with words. Instead, with its own financial and manpower resources and technical and financial aid from the U.S. and other nations around the world, it is toiling around the clock, building an industrial economy the likes of which colonial Africa had never seen....".

Dear reader, that period represented the second year, the beginning actually, of dramatic increase in economic productivity for Ghana: through industry, hard work, and belief by Ghanaians in themselves.

READ EBONY FURTHER:

"...Key projects in Ghana's effort to close the technology gap that separates it from the industrial world community are the already completed $81 million Port of Tema and the giant $210 million Volta River dam to be operational in 1966. The Tema harbor and adjacent Tema town, built on a site once occupied by a tiny fishing village, were officially opened early in 1962. Where only a decade ago indigenous fishermen had plied their ancient craft, thousands of Ghanaian men and women work today

in ultra-modern industrial plants, live in comfortable homes and spend leisure hours in modern recreation....Ghana's people know that much work remains yet to be done. But, they are willing to keep up the hectic pace until the last vestiges of their colonial past have been removed. Said one young Ghanaian woman in summing up the spirit of her generation: We in Ghana have accepted the principal of hard work as the only solution to a better way of life... (Ebony, May 1964).

Dear Reader, that was precisely the planned industrial take-off for Ghana.

And it did, for Ghana!



By 1964, Nkrumah's development plans had begun to bear fruits for Ghana as GDP figures confirm. Sadly, all of that success and promise, the Take-Off of Ghana's industrial revolution, was stolen from Ghanaians through that Johnson-CIA-induced coup d'etat. That overthrow was fronted by a soldier-police Benedict-Arnold-elite group (Ankrah-Afrifa-Kotoka-Nunoo-Harlley, and rascal Busia), a traitor bunch who lied to Ghana and the entire World.

Yes, Ankrah-Afrifa-Kotoka-Nunoo-Harlley, and rascal Busia, lied to Ghanaians.

Yes, beginning somewhere is 1963 and ending in February, 1966, they planned and stole Ghana's "Industrial Revolution" as Ghana, under Kwame Nkrumah, "toiled to close technology gap".

SOURCES/NOTES

1. Prof Lungu. 2015. GhanaHero.com (http://www.ghanahero.com/Visions/Nkrumah_Legacy_Project/Prof_Lungu/There_Was_No_Dum-Sor_Under_Kwame_Nkrumah-v2.pdf/).

2. David Meredith. The Construction of Takoradi Harbour in the Gold Coast 1919 to 1930: A Case Study in Colonial Development and Administration. 1976, Transafrican Journal of History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1976), pp. 134-149.

3. Ebony Magazine. Ghana's Industrial Revolution: Nation Toils to Close the Technology Gap, May 1964. (Open book).

Visit for more information:

www.GhanaHero.com.

Read Mo'! Listen Mo'! See Mo'! Reflect Mo'!

Prof Lungu is Ghana-Centered/Ghana-Proud!

Subj: They Stole Ghana's Industrial Revolution as Nation Toiled to Close Technology Gap! (Definitive Serial).

Twitter: https://twitter.com/professorlungu

Support Fair-Trade Oil Share Ghana Campaign/Petition

https://www.change.org/p/ghana-fair-trade-oil-share-psa-campaign-ftos-gh-psa/

Brought to you courtesy www.GhanaHero.com11 Sep 16-rev.
In the past months a number of regions have been hit hard by the El Nino phenomenon, the effects of which are still posing a global threat to agricultural livelihoods. The most affected include the Horn of Africa, Southern Africa, Central America's Dry Corridor, Caribbean islands, Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands.

Scientists are now predicting the probable occurrence of the "opposite twin" phenomenon, La Nina. This could increase the chance of above-average rainfall and flooding in areas that have been affected by El Nino-associated drought.

For Madagascar, La Nina could have serious consequences, such as increasing the intensity of cyclones and tropical storms thus aggravating the food insecurity of the countrys rural population, whose capacity to face climate shocks is already fragile.

Madagascar has the potential to become the granary of the Small Island Development States of the Indian Ocean. However, it is also one of the 20 countries in the world that are most vulnerable to climate change - in Africa it is the fourth most vulnerable country in terms of recurrent cyclones and tropical storms.

The 2015-2016 agricultural season has seen a dramatic reduction in crop production in southern Madagascar mainly due to a severe drought. In particular, production of maize and cassava crops this year declined by up to 95 percent compared to the previous five-year average -- last year it was over 80 percent. Vulnerable households, whose already-low purchasing power is eroded by prevailing high prices, have been forced to adopt multiple survival strategies, especially in Madagascars seven southern regions.

Currently available estimates indicate that the number of food insecure people in southern Madagascar exceeds 1.4 million in September 2016. Of these, 600,000 are considered as severely food insecure, which according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) scale represents the last stages before the famine phase. They need immediate emergency assistance: hungry people cant wait.

In the recent past, most of the attention of the international community has been given to the dramatic impact on food security caused by several conflicts. FAO has been highlighting the cases of countries such as South Sudan, Yemen, Syria and regions such as Lake Chad, where millions of people are in a severe food insecurity situation. Yet, this should not stop to pay attention to other crises that are not capturing the media attention.

The international community is urged to step up to prevent a repeat in Madagascar of the situation faced by Somalia in 2011, when 200,000 people died of hunger for lack of speedy response.

Somalia taught us a crucial lesson: if we provide people with cash, they will find food. This is the Zero Hunger approach: access to money to revitalize local production and local markets. Then distribute seeds so that they can replant. In sum, to promote local development.

Emergency interventions provide a short-term solution and must be implemented immediately to assist vulnerable households. These actions need to be complemented by medium term, interventions aimed at building the resilience of rural communities so they can deal better with future shocks, overcome chronic poverty and safeguard their livelihoods..

The Zero Hunger approach includes cash transfers as part of emergency social protection measures that allow people to access food. In addition, small-scale farmers need be assisted in preparing for the upcoming planting season through the provision of seeds, fertilizers, tools, irrigation equipment and other inputs while also helping them store water for human and animal consumption - capitalzing on spite the rainy season that we hope will start soon in Madagascar.

We all have recognised during the World Humanitarian Summit of Istanbul that ending poverty, hunger and malnutrition must become the basis of a new social contract in which no one is left behind. We have a second chance now. This is what the Sustainable Development Goals are all about and it is key to resolving the world humanitarian crisis.

We must act immediately since the effects of La Nina could be felt as early as October - there is now a 55 to 75% probability of La Nina. Thousands of vulnerable people in the south of Madagascar cant wait; they will try to survive by starting to migrate to other regions and a failure to intervene will mean the situation will get worse.

Two things are urgently needed in this moment: the political will to take decisions and the support and resource mobilization from the international community. The partners I met during my visit to Madagascar early September agree that this is the right way to act. Our strong message is: we must pay attention to what is going on in Madagascar. This is a fragile democracy that needs global community assistance. We need to act fast.

* Jose Graziano da Silva is Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The Working Group on Higher Education (hosted by the Association of African Universities) presents The Role of Women in Fighting Climate Change webinar

The Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEAs) Working Group on Higher Education (WGHE) under the auspices of the Association of African Universities (AAU) has rolled out a series of Webinars facilitated by TEDxAccra.

The second Webinar in the series is slated to take off on (the) 15th September 2016 at 12:00 GMT. The topic for discussion is The Role of Women in Fighting Against Climate Change. Dr. Elisabeth N. Mimiafo epse Ayuk-Etang, a gender advocate and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Buea, Cameroon will be facilitating this session.

The purpose of these Webinars is to address pertinent issues pertaining to higher education in Africa. The presentations are geared towards achieving the major interventions and aspirations enshrined in the international and continental agenda such as the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Continental Education Strategy (CESA 2016-2025), African Unions Agenda 2063 and the Science Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA-2024).

Over the years, our climate has been changing and is rapidly changing with disruptive impact, such as rising sea levels; melting snow and ice; more extreme heat events, fires and drought; and more extreme storms, desertification, rainfalls, and floods. This change could be attributed to natural as well as anthropogenic causes. This interactive web seminar will seek to highlight the role of women in fighting climate change.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

1. Register and watch us live at www.aau.org/webinars

2. You can also join the conversation with your comments and questions via Twitter and Facebook using: #WGHETalks @TEDxAccraGH @AAU_67

ABOUT

The Association of African Universities (AAU) is an international non-governmental organisation set up by universities in Africa to promote cooperation among themselves and with the international academic community. The core mandate of the AAU is to raise the quality of higher education in Africa and strengthen its contribution to Africas development by fostering collaboration among member institutions; providing support to their core functions of teaching, learning, research and community engagement; and facilitating critical reflection on, and consensus-building around, issues affecting higher education and the development of Africa.

The Working Group on Higher Education (WGHE) was established in 1989 to strengthen collaboration among African governments, development partners, and tertiary education institutions to improve the effectiveness of development assistance. WGHE draws on its extensive knowledge of the education sector to help tertiary institutions in Africa devise creative responses to challenges and promote consensus among governments and development partners around the revitalization of policies and strategies. Participants in WGHE include African higher education institutions, African governments and Ministries of Education, and development partners supporting the revitalization of tertiary education in Africa.

TEDxAccra is a social impact organization where thinkers and doers of our community gather to create and share ideas. We focus on social impact initiatives across Ghana. Our events seek to develop and leverage the TED experience at a community level, bringing together innovative thinkers to connect and discuss great ideas.

THE SPEAKER

Dr. Elisabeth N. Mimiafo epse Ayuk-Etang is a gender advocate and a Senior Lecturer in

the Department of English at the University of Buea, Cameroon. She holds a PhD. in

Black Womens Writings and Ecofeminism from the University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon.

She is a recipient of several awards, amongst which is the University of Michigan African

Presidential Scholar (UMAPS), 2015 fellowship.
Oil Marketing firm Total Petroleum Ghana has introduced its new range of fuels, Total Excellium onto the Ghanaian market.

Total Excellium, according to the oil marketing firm has been designed and developed who customers who need fuels that provide excellent engine protection at an affordable price for all types of cars, diesel or petrol.

Speaking at the launch of the product, Transport Minister Fiifi Kwetey commended Total for introducing Excellium, emphasizing the need for quality fuels to preserve the lifespan of vehicles.

One cannot afford to compromise on quality where todays consuming public is concerned. Total Excellium has come at an opportune time when concerns have been raised about the rising prices of fuel on the world market, Mr. Kwetey said.

French Ambassador to Ghana, Francois Pujolas expressed delight at the French companys immense contribution in creating solutions to existing problems which would improve upon the economy of Ghana.

The new fuel, Excellium, a more advanced product being brought to the public will further strengthen private and public industries as they require a reliable and upgraded fuel to meet their technical, he said.

Meanwhile the Sales and Sales and Marketing Manager of Total Petroleum Ghana, Abdul Rahim Saddique has urged motorists to try out the new product which comes in three types; Excellium Diesel, Excellium Super, Excellium Super 95.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
File Photo

13.09.2016 LISTEN

Gold was discovered, (circa) ca. BC/BCE 6,000 in Egypt (Cramb, Alan W, A Short History of Metals, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University). It was the first and by far the earliest metal discovered and utilised by humans as a result of its excellent reflectivity (throws back almost 100% of light incident on it); non-perishability (cannot be dissolved or destroyed by any single strong acid or alkali); has highest malleability (can be beaten into very thin flat sheet without a hole) and has the best ductility (can be drawn to long hair-thin wire without breaking); It is very good conductor of heat and electricity; it is attractive, sectile; among others properties. It was followed by discovery of copper ca. BC 4,200 (a gap of 1,800 years between) and silver ca, BC 4,000.

The metals unique properties (few enumerated above), together with its scarcity won it divine names and attributes: the metal for the gods by the gods; the Incas of South America called it the sweat of the sun; the Egyptians called it, the breath of gods. In Ghana, Asantehenes (King of Asantes) soulmates (selected males born on the same day of the week as he was born) wear gold shields and gold plated or decorated helmets, to ward off any evil directed towards the King.

The ancient worlds contention was that being touched on your body by physical gold produces therapeutic effect and wards off evil spirits. With large amount of gold in your possession (buried with you) paves the way directly to heaven when you die. That was why the kings, queens, emperors, pharaohs, etc. were lavishly buried with gold artefacts. Physical gold has special place in all the ancient religions  Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc.

The availability of golds worldwide production statistics started from the Copper Age, ca. BC 3,900. The records available showed that for the Copper Age (BC 3900-BC 2,000), a period 1,900 years, Egypt was the worlds largest gold producer. Its gold was described as plenty as the sand. During the Bronze Age (BC 2,100-BC 1,200), a period of 900 years, Nubia, the modern Sudan was the worlds largest gold producer. From the Iron Age through the Roman Empire (BC 1,200-AD 500), a period of 1,700 years, Iberia, modern Spain was the worlds largest gold producer.

It was followed by India as the worlds largest producer for the period of AD 500-1,000 or 500 years. West Africa or the Guinea Coast or the Gold Coast (the Modern Ghana) followed from the Middle Ages, AD 1,000 to part of the Modern Age, AD 1,600, as the worlds largest gold producer. From AD 1493 to 1600 a period of about 130 years, Ghana was on average responsible for 35.5% of the entire worlds production. For detailed statistics on the world production, see Akakpo, L M K, The Metal Gold: Properties, World Production Statistics BC 3,900  AD 2,009, Units of Measurement & Trading and the Uses; Xlibris Corporation, USA; 2010; Page 79-80. See also: Quashie, L A K, Report of the Committee for Increased Gold Output in Ghana, Accra, Ghana, December, 1980.

Ghana started gold production in the Bronze Age, that was from ca. BC 2,100 continuously to date (AD 2,016) and is now among the worlds first 10 largest producers. For greater part of last century it was the fifth largest producer after: South Africa, the then Soviet Union, Canada and the United States, in that order. That makes its production over 4,000 years continuously. All the countries which started gold production before Ghana were: Egypt, Nubia (Sudan), Ethiopia, Iberia (Spain), Arabia, Asia Minor or the modern Turkey and India. They started production before or during the Copper Age, BC 3,900 and all fell off the radar.

All Ghanas contemporaries in production were: Gaul (France), Great Britain, Italy, Carpathians (part of Eastern Europe) and China. Once again they all fell off from the production radar. China is an interesting point. It fell off the production league for a very long period of time, over a millennium for a number of reasons but restarted production on small scale from late 1960s. The production expanded so much that in 2007, it had de-thrown South Africa, the worlds largest producer for over a century and the worlds greatest producer ever recorded, (produced 1,000.4 tonnes in 1970 alone), to become the worlds number one producer. It still holds on to the position to date (2016).

On the account of all the above facts and statistics stated:

I, LAWRENCE KOFI AKAKPO DECLARE GHANA AS THE WORLDS OLDEST CONTINUOUS GOLD PRODUCING COUNTRY, WITH OVER 4,000 YEARS OF INCESSANT PRODUCTION.

The above declaration may sound grand and heart-warming. The saddest facts however are that:

1) Ghana has nothing to show for the over 4,000 years of its gold production. The country is now at the height of its gold being plundered by the unscrupulous transnational gold mining corporations and the World Bank Group, aided and abetted by few corrupt and incompetent Ghanaians and the two state owned newspapers in the country: the Daily Graphic and the Ghanaian Times.

The two papers will never publish anything from me and perhaps from others that exposes the high degree of looting of Ghanas gold. They have no problem writing to praise the mining companies plundering the country telling lies in doing so. I will soon come out with the details on this and a lot more when my website under development is finished.

The looting is wrapped up in propaganda and lies! Take for example, on the 24 June 2016, Business page of Ghanaian Times came this statement in big bold letters: The Mining Industry last year, paid GH 463.12 billion in taxes to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Mr. Sulemanu Koney, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the [Ghana] Chamber of Mines, has announced. The trouble with the statement was that GH 463.12 billion was equivalent to $120.92 billion at last years average exchange rate of GH3.83 to $, which was more than three times Ghanas GDP of $37.86billion for 2015.

I wrote to challenge both the CEO and the Editor of Ghanaian Times for publishing lie. None of them was a man enough to come out and apologise to the Ghanaian public for the falsehood published. For propaganda purpose, the publication had achieved its objective. In fact it was the second time the CEO of Ghana Chamber of Mines presented dodgy, if not outright fabricated statistics to Ghanaians and the world at large this year. The first was his reply to African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) in an attempt to exculpate the mining companies charged with looting the countrys gold industry, in what has become known as: Out of $23billion from gold, Ghana gets 7%. Why did Ministry of Communication not spot this lie and challenge it formally? Neither did GRA, to whom the non-existent money was supposed to have been paid, challenge the publication. What is going on in Ghana!!

Ghanas minerals industry has for some time now been plagued by, corruption, mismanagement, peddling ignorance as intelligence and in some instances telling blatant lies to the public to the detriment of the country, but are in the interest of corporations.

Ignoring of all correspondence to the authorities to whom they are addressed and expect reply has, become the hallmark in almost everything in the country. What a shame!

In the Secret World of Gold, the metal was described as: The ultimate guarantor of a nations survival. In the same video was enacted the golden rule: THOSE WITH GOLD RULE! Yet we have the gold but are being the slaves! Why?

Surely, we must come out together and bring the criminal fraternity plaguing the industry to an end! We have the facts, we have the figures, we have the knowledge, what else??

2) As if the above fact and information not depressing enough, Ghanas gold industry of over 4,000 years has far less than 50 years lifespan for the fire to extinguish permanently as it had done in Egypt, Spain, India, etc.! See below 

http://vibeghana.com/2011/02/22/ghanas-gold-to-finish-within-next-50-years/

Note that:

1. Long before 2008, 25% of Ghanas landmass is under concession to gold mining companies. That is, land of size larger than the total area of Ashanti Region (10.2%); Eastern Region (8.1%) Central Region (4.1%) and Greater Accra Region (1.4%) even with Volta Lake. See Armstrong, A T  Gold Strike in the Breadbasket: Indigenous Livelihoods, the World Bank, and Territorial Restructuring in Western Ghana; FoodFirst, Development Report No. 18, 2008.

2. There is acute worldwide shortage of gold deposits. As a result we resorted to mining high-tonnage very low-grade deposits  thanks to advances in extractive technology and the generally high gold price, but with appalling environmental consequences. West and Central Africa and Colombia/Ecuador in South America are the only regions in the world now for free gold  low environmental standards and protection, low wages and generally poor service conditions for the local workers and with high degree of corruption. Nevertheless, Ghana continues, to market our gold deposits still not yet already allocated, like confetti or rather like inexhaustible beach sand, all out of ignorance wrapped up as intelligence and market strategy. It is for the gold investors to look for us and accept our terms, not the other way round  because we have the gold deposits and the world need the gold!

Why did the authorities remove an experienced geologist (technical man) as a CEO for Minerals Commission and filled his place with a lawyer and propagandist for the mining corporations, despite objection from a think tank on the industry? Is he there in the interest of Ghana or the mining corporations which had served faithfully for over 10 years undermining Ghanas interests all the way? I was personally shocked to receive a call from my younger brother, telling me that Dr. Aubynn has been appointed CEO of Minerals Commission. It was then about 6 months when he made a provocative presentation in Brong Ahafo  condemning Ghanas policy and told lies, as CEO for the GCM. I replied strongly as a rejoinder to his assertions in ModernGhana.

Ghana Now Unattractive to Investors

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=285608

Rejoinder to Dr Tony Aubynns: Ghana Now Unattractive to Investors

http://www.modernghana.com/news/497256/1/rejoinder-to-dr-tony-aubynns-ghana-now-unattractiv.html

Lawrence M K Akakpo, Mining Engineer & Analyst; also Mathematician (retired as a senior lecturer in mathematics & IT Applications, London); Author of 256-page book: THE METAL GOLD: Properties, World Production Statistics: BC 3,900  AD 2009, Units of Measurements & Trading and the USES.
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Ketu North has cautioned supporters of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Volta Region to be wary of attitudes which might affect the chances of the party in the election.

James Avedzi says risking the December polls to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) would be a huge mistake hence the need to watch out for cases of indifference towards the NDC.

Addressing party faithful at the launch of Campaign Task Force for Ketu North constituency at Dzodzi, the MP said the NDC lost the 2000 election because of a misconception about government performance in the region after eight years in office.

This led to low turnout by residents in the Region until the second round when it became obvious that the party was losing the election to the NPP yet it was fruitless, he said.

"It is nearly eight years of the NDC in power and the same issue of the NDC doing nothing in the Region is cropping up," he warned.

If we are not careful, history might repeat itself, therefore, we might act as ambassadors and educate all NDC people to guarantee our victory, he added.

He charged the supporters to convince their colleagues in the Region to rally behind the leadership of the party to deliver victory in the election.

Even though he believes the Region is the World Bank of the NDC, Mr Avedzi said no stone should be left unturned if the party is to be victorious.

So far, the NDC commands a strong influence in the Volta Region. The party has 25 Members of Parliament out of the 26 seats with one independent candidate. The largest opposition NPP has no seat in the Region but they are poised to change the situation.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | Email: [email protected]
The Attorney General Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong has cautioned lawyers in the country to desist from backing and encouraging disgruntled losers in the upcoming polls.

According to her, lawyers have an integral role to play in protecting the integrity of the polls and must not underrate their influence in the electoral process.

Speaking to lawyers at the 2016/2017 annual BAR conference in Accra, the Attorney General urged lawyers to avoid using legal technicalities to frustrate the electoral process.

The speed with which matters are disposed off, depend to a greater extent, on the cooperation of lawyers, beside the nature of proceedings. Employing technicalities to delay proceedings is the lawyers version of abuse of power and must be avoided.

In short, lawyers should contribute positively to the electoral process and should desist from giving disgruntled persons or losers the chance to scuttle the process when there is no merit. Lawyers must respect their profession in order not to be used by anyone, she noted.

A dispute after the 2012 elections led to an eight-month long litigation at the Supreme Court. The opposition New Patriotic Party flagbearer Nana Akufo-Addo challenged the victory of President John Mahama in the polls. The Supreme Court, however, after the long trial, which was beamed live on TV, affirmed the legitimacy of Mr. Mahama as declared by the Electoral Commission.

Ghana goes to the polls again on December 7. The frontrunners are once again, President Mahama and the former attorney general Akufo-Addo.
By Godwill Arthur-Mensah, GNA

Manso, (WR), Sept. 13, GNA - Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, the Flagbearer of the Progressive People's Party, (PPP), has asked the electorate not to allow themselves to be deceived by monetary benefits and other juicy gifts showered on them by political parties.

He warned that if the electorate took those petty gifts and voted for them in the December General Election, they would suffer the next four years in poverty, sickness, unemployment, frequent power outages and general economic hardship.

Dr. Nduom said this at a rally at Manso, in the Mpohor Constituency, of the Western Region, at which he introduced the Parliamentary Candidate of his party for the area, Mr. Joseph B. Aubyn to the electorate.

He explained that as a successful entrepreneur, with conglomerate of companies both home and abroad, he was capable of driving the economy of Ghana to the right direction, which would translate into jobs.

His administration would also address the needs of many Ghanaians, he said.

He asked the electorate not to fall for the lies and unrealistic promises bandied about by other parties just to influence Ghanaians to vote for them.

Dr. Nduom promised to donate 100 bags of cement and two trucks of chippings to the community to support the construction of a community centre.

GNA
Contemporary Artist Adel Abdessemed designs Napalm Girl sculpture at London exhibition. (Photo : Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A month-long protest in Norway instigated Facebook to lift their ban on famous Pulitzer prize winning photo of a naked girl screaming after a napalm attack in Vietnam War of 1972.



In a recent turn of events, Facebook was heavily criticized for deleting the iconic "Napalm Girl" photo from Facebook based on child nudity rules. However, this image was an iconic Pulitzer prize winning photo of a naked girl, running on the streets from a napalm assault, as Vietnam is attacked amid 1972 war. This image is one of the most famous war photographs in history.



Advertisement

Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that they understand that the historical importance of this image is far more crucial and that it has much more value in sharing than removing it from the platform. Hence, the company has agreed to reinstate that image, Fox 61 reported. Facebook also added that the image will become shareable "in the coming days."



The incident was sparked after a Norwegian author, Tom Egeland, posted some exemplary historic war photos on his Facebook page. However, the famous social network removed the famous photo of Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc, captured running unclothed through the streets as napalm melts away her skin. But when Egeland reacted to the photo's deletion, Facebook suspended his account too.



However, the revolt took turn for the worse when the same image was also deleted from Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg's account.



As the protests began to flare up, Facebook initially decided to stand by its decision on the grounds that it is hard to bend the child nudity rules in one case and not others. However, after much censure, the social network giant decided to keep the image and permit its sharing, CBC News reported.



The photo in question was clicked by an Associated Press photojournalist, Nick Ut, that earned him a Pulitzer prize. The image garnered favorable reviews as it was a stark depiction of what war does to innocent lives. Even though the photo is graphic in nature, it has been single-handedly responsible for changing public sentiment in US against Vietnamese War.






Sunyani, Sept. 13, GNA - Alhaj Baba Seidu, the Deputy Brong-Ahafo Regional Chief Imam on Monday appealed to Moslems to exhibit the virtue of 'true love' in their lives to ensure a peaceful Election 2016.

He said the purpose of any election is to prepare a way for development and emphasised that the upcoming December 7 polls to elect a president and parliamentarians must not result in chaos.

Alhaji Seidu made the appeal when he addressed Moslems who converged at the Sunyani Coronation Park to observe the regional celebration of the 2016 Eid al-Adha festival.

He urged political party supporters to be tolerant and avoid any situation that could cause misunderstanding, conflict and violence before, during and after the general election.

Alhaji Seidu expressed the need for tribal chiefs in the Zongo communities to advise their youth groups to be guided by the teachings of the Islam to promote peaceful co-existence.

Nana Takyi Abeam, Dwanetoahene of Sunyani who represented Nana Bosoma Asor Nkrawiri II, the Paramount Chief of Sunyani urged supporters of the political parties to eschew electoral violence.

The three parliamentary candidates for Sunyani- East; Mr Kwasi Oppong Ababio, Mr George Kumi and Mr Kwasi Ameyaw Cheremeh, appealed to the electorate to be ambassadors of peace since it is a pre-condition for a stable socio-economic progress of any country.

In a related development at Kranka in the Nkoranza North District Chief Imam asked Moslems Muslims youth to refrain from any negative behaviour to avoid soiling the image of the Islam.

GNA
Kumasi, Sept. 12 (Firempong) GNA - Dr (Mrs) Beatrice Wiafe-Addai, President of Breast Care International (BCI) an NGO on Monday said the survival or death of a Breast Cancer patient should not be determined by her location in the country.

'Where a woman lives, should not determine whether she should survive or die from Breast Cancer. Let us all walk for the cure; together we can defeat Breast Cancer'.

Dr Wiafe-Addai made the observation at the Media Launch for the Sixth BCI Ghana Walk for the Cure 2016 in Kumasi.

It is on the theme 'Do Not Be Afraid, Get Checked'. 'Early Detection and Prompt Action is the Key and Equal to Prevention'.

The annual Walk is jointly organized by the Management of Peace and Love Hospitals in Accra and Kumasi and BCI, an NGO dedicated to breast cancer awareness, screening and treatment throughout the country.

The first Walk was held in Kumasi in 2011 and participated by about 13,000 people; the second also in Kumasi in 2012 by about 20,000 people and the third in Accra in 2013 had about 30,000 people participating.

About 35,000 people took part in the fourth Walk in Sunyani in 2014, while about 40,000 people participated in the fifth Walk in the twin-city of Sekondi-Takoradi in 2015; about 40,000 people are expected in this year's Walk in Kumasi on Saturday, October 1.

Dr Wiafe-Addai who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Peace and Love Hospitals in Accra and Kumasi noted that most of the patients lived in rural areas and had difficulty in accessing health care but with the intensified awareness creation through the Walk early detection would continue to be the cure.

She explained that the Walk was initiated to showcase breast cancer survivors to the public to enable them to disabuse their minds of the myths and misconceptions about the disease and the notion that the patients die when attacked by the disease.

Dr Wiafe-Addai commended members of the Peace and Love Survivors Association (PALSA) mostly patients who had survived from the disease for their tremendous work to create awareness about the disease in the communities through their personal experiences.

She urged media practitioners particularly the electronic media to intensify the awareness creation on the disease especially in the rural communities to reduce deaths.

Dr Wiafe-Addai, a Breast Cancer Specialist and Surgeon, pointed out that with the achievements and impacts made through the Walk, BCI would not be complacent because advanced stages of the disease continued to be reported at health facilities indicating that people still had fear about it.

'Women should endeavour to do away with the fear. Diagnosis of breast cancer is not akin to death. The disease is curable and patients can survive,' She added.

GNA
Accra, Sept. 13, GNA - The Osu Traditional Council, has expressed concern about native lands taken over by past and present governments without the payment of royalties.

They therefore called on the people of Osu, especially the youth to rally behind the Council to demand for their right because they have been cheated for far too long.

The traditional leaders led by Nii Okwei Kinka Dowuona VI, the Osu Mantse and the President of the Traditional Council made the call when he addressed members to end the Osu Homowo Festival.

He said almost all Osu lands have been occupied by government agencies from the ministries through the Roman Ridge to part of the Aburi mountains and royalties due the community are not forthcoming, thus denying the traditional leaders revenue to develop the area.

Nii Kinka Dowuona said: 'It is about time we wake up from our slumber and demand for our pound of flesh otherwise Osu which has been the seat of government since time immemorial, will remain under-developed and lag behind among its peers.

'If we failed to do this we have no cause to blame anybody when posterity holds us into account. We have reached a point to call a spade and spade for the authorities to know the harm they have done and continue to do to the citizens of Osu,' he said.

Nii Kinka Dowuona said the people should not stand aloof whilst the leaders are left alone to fight the course, but every citizen must show concern and get involved for a better future.

He said plans are far advanced for the establishment of Osu Lands Secretariat to spearhead in the collection of royalties.

Outlining some of the programmes put in place by the Traditional Council to generate income and to create job opportunities, he said an Osu Tourism Committee has been set up for the collection and documentation of historical artifact for tourists' attraction.

He said the tourism initiative would be launched in September, this year and urged citizens who might have information on places of tourists' interest within the area to forward them to the committee.

He said the Council is making efforts for the creation of a municipal assembly for Osu 'to manage our own resources'.

The Osu Mante urged the people to support the traditional leaders in their endeavours to improve their lot so that Osu regains its reputable position in the society.

At a thanksgiving church service at Osu Presbyterian Church to climax the Osu Homowo festival, Rev Philip Tetteh Laryea of the Akrofi Christian Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture at Akropong in a sermon urged the traditional leaders to institute a an 'Osu Community Heroes Day' so that great men and women who had contributed to the advancement of the area are honoured during the Homowo festival.

He said this would inspire the youth to also sacrifice for the growth of the society.

Rev Laryea advised the youth to eschew laziness and instead work hard to earn a good living.

GNA
Policy think tank IMANI Ghana has a diabolic agenda against Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the vice-presidential nominee of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), hence the spirited attacks on the economic lecture he delivered last week, the Movement for the Kingdom Image (MFKI) has said.

Dr Bawumia delivered a lecture on The State of the Ghanaian Economy  A Foundation of Concrete or Straw at the National Theatre, where he said among other things that: By the end of 2008, following the adoption and implementation of the HIPC initiative, the governments policy framework of fiscal discipline, the countrys debt-to-GDP ratio had declined from 189% in 2000 to 32% of GDP by 2008. Indeed from independence in 1957 to 2008, Ghanas total debt was 9.5 billion cedis. However, in the last seven years alone, under this NDC government, Ghanas total debt has ballooned from GHS99.5 billion to GHS100billion in 2015, and GHS105 billion by May 2016. In fact, 66 per cent of Ghanas debt from independence has been accumulated under the presidency of John Mahama in just the last three and half years.

Soon after the lecture, IMANI Ghana, through its President Franklin Cudjoe, said Dr Bawumia unfairly interpreted some data for partisan advantage.

But the MFKI has in a statement signed by its president, Osempakani Kaakyire Kofi, said: It was a great shock to us, the Movement for the Kingdom Image (MFKI), a Christian group, to hear the consistent condemnation and attacks on the running mate of the NPP Dr Mahamudu Bawumia by the political think tank IMANI Ghana after his recent lecture on the state of the economy of Ghana.

We were also highly disappointed in IMANI Ghana to hear them describe Dr Bawumias lecture as political rather than a reality or otherwise academic. In the first place Dr Bawumia is a politician and you don't expect him to give such lectures without ending up by making the sitting government unpopular per his lectures and we think that is normal.

Again, this is not the first time a politician is saying something that ends up favouring his political party, but why has IMANI been quiet on those times but now attacking Bawumia's lectures only to kill its effect.

The statement added: IMANI Ghana was in Ghana when President Mahama went to parliament for the State of the Nation address and turned the place into a political platform instead of telling the reality on the ground, but no IMANI [official] came out with attacks and condemnations. Where was IMANI when the Speaker of parliament threw the Minority petition to probe the president's Ford saga out after inviting MPs to the house? Was that also not political?

Moreover, where were IMANI Ghana when Finance Minister Seth Terkper, delivering the state of the economy address, turned to praising his government for an excellent performance? While Ghanaians were crying over hardship, instead of the Minister of state to speak for the people, he was doing politics with the economy.

The Movement for the Kingdom Image wants to tell IMANI Ghana to serve the interests of Ghana instead of doing the bidding of a politician or political party. If Ghana needs peace, the peace won't come from the firmament; rather it comes from us the people. So, let's all deal with it and not serve our selfish interests. We are disappointed in IMANI Ghana for the unfair treatment being directed at Dr Bawumia.
Shaharawi Bashiru

13.09.2016 LISTEN

The New Patriotic Party parliamentary candidate for the Karaga constituency in the Northern region for the 2016 elections Shaharawi Bashiru has stepped down, party executives in the region have confirmed.

Northern regional secretary of the party, Sule Salifu told Starr News Northern regional correspondent Eliasu Tanko that Mr. Shaharawi withdrew from the race after his doctors declared him unfit for the contest.

Mr. Shaharawi, according to Starr News sources, was advised to resign to pave way for his intensive treatment following a fatal accident he had with some other persons last year.

The NPP parliamentary aspirant narrowly escaped death when the V8 vehicle he and two other persons were traveling in, spurt a front tyre and crashed into a tree killing the two other individuals instantly on the Kumasi-Kintampo Highway, Saturday, November 08, 2015.

Mr. Shaharawi was also pronounced dead until they reached the Tamale Teaching Hospital morgue where he was found to be unconscious.

It was said that the parliamentary candidate shook his body when they were about to put him in the hospital morgue.

The NPP candidate was traveling from Accra to Tamale in his newly purchased V8 vehicle when the sad incident happened.

He was quickly rushed to the emergency ward of the facility where he was treated and later referred to seek healthcare outside the country.

Starr News has no current details of the health of the Parliamentary candidate, but the regional scribe of the party said he resigned "on health grounds".

Mr. Sule said the party has since declared the position vacant.

He said so far three persons have picked up forms to contest.

He told Starr News vetting of the candidates will be on Thursday followed by the elections on Saturday at Savelugu.
The Chief Justice Theodora Georgina Wood has cautioned lawyers in the country against arguing their cases in the media.

...I wish once again to caution learned colleagues against Media trials. Those media discourses come off to us as interviews, then they may decide to court sympathies to one spot and to incite public emotions against an opponents case on the bench.

In the best traditions of the profession, there are legal avenues and processes for correcting decisions of the court and so I will urge you to adopt these mechanisms to seek redress, the Chief Justice told lawyers at the ongoing 2016/2017 annual BAR conference in Accra.

She also urged the lawyers to always remember that their first loyalty is to the cause of justice.

For her part, the Attorney General Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong cautioned lawyers against encouraging disgruntled losers in the upcoming polls.

The speed with which matters are disposed off, depend to a greater extent, on the cooperation of lawyers, beside the nature of proceedings. Employing technicalities to delay proceedings is the lawyers version of abuse of power and must be avoided.

In short, lawyers should contribute positively to the electoral process and should desist from giving disgruntled persons or losers the chance to scuttle the process when there is no merit. Lawyers must respect their profession in order not to be used by anyone, she noted.
Hundreds of people including students are signing a petition to remove the statue of Mohandas Karamchand Ghandhi removed from the University of Ghana, Legon campus.

Spearheaded by a former Director of Institute of African Studies (IAS), Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, the group is accusing Mohandas Ghandhi - an Indian freedom fighter - of being a racist when he was alive hence the call.

In a petition addressed to the University Council, Prof Ampofo argues that mounting a racists statue in the University sends the wrong signal to students.

We are of the view that if there should be statutes on our campus then they should first be African heroes and heroines, who can serve as examples of who we are and what we have achieved as a people, she maintained.

Mr Ghandhi was an Indian nationalist who developed a practice of non-violent civic disobedience to raise awareness of oppressive practices in his country during British rule.

He is celebrated and widely quoted because most of his sayings talks about non-violence in the face of oppression.

But Prof Ampofo said Mr Ghandhi has spoken ill against Africans when he sought to compare Indians with natives of Africans.

A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir, Mr Ghandhi said on December 19, 1894.

Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness, the Indian leader has also said.

Considering the weight of his comment and treatment of Africans, Prof Ampofo said Mr Ghandhi does not deserve a place in a school that wants to be a world-class university.

In a context where our youth know so little about our own history, such statutes can serve as an opportunity for such learning to occur. Why should we uplift other peoples heroes at an African university when we havent lifted up our own? she quizzed.

She believes the decision to mount the statue in the school represents a slap in the face that undermines our struggles for autonomy, recognition and respect.

Instead of Mr Ghandhis statue, she said a statue of the former member of the University Council, Sam Aboah who financed the construction of the quadrangle and the teak trees on top of the Legon Hill near the Registry would have been more ennobling.

She has urged the University Council to pull down the statue and replace it with African nationalists who have helped champion the cause of the continent.

Read the full petition below:

Dear Honourable members of the University of Ghana Council:

Re: Petition for the removal of the Statute of Gandhi

We the undersigned bring this petition for the removal of the statute of Gandhi to the esteemed Council of the University of Ghana Council for your consideration.

Background:

On 14 June 2016, a statue of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi [1] was erected at the Sam Aboah quadrangle[DOK1] . This is the only statue of a historical personality on Legon campus, and soon after it came to the notice of members of the University community and the general public, calls for its removal began within the University community and beyond.[2] We, the undersigned associate ourselves with that call for the reasons outlined below.

Rationale for Removal:

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhis racist identity:

Below we provide just a few citations from his own writings to illustrate this.

Before Dec. 19, 1894

A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir. ~ Vol. I, p. 193

Before May 5, 1895

In the face, too, of financial operations, the success of which many of their detractors would envy, one fails to understand the agitation which would place the operators in the same category as the half-heathen Native and confine him to Locations, and subject him to the harsher laws by which the Transvaal Kaffir is governed. ~ Vol. I, pp. 224-225

Before May 5, 1895

So far as the feeling has been expressed, it is to degrade the Indian to the position of the Kaffir. ~ Vol. I, p. 229

Sept. 26, 1896

Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness. ~ Vol. I, pp. 409-410

Before May 27, 1899

Your Petitioner has seen the Location intended to be used by the Indians. It would place them, who are undoubtedly infinitely superior to the Kaffirs, in close proximity to the latter. ~ Vol. II, p. 270

June 1, 1906

The Boer Government insulted the Indians by classing them with the Kaffirs. ~ Vol. V, p. 59

Source: Gandhi and South African Blacks ( http://www.gandhiserve.org/e/cwmg/cwmg.htm )

*(NOTE-The term kaffir is considered a racial slur used in reference to Black South African natives.)

Gandhi also campaigned against the efforts of the Dalits, The Black Untouchables of India, and for the maintenance of the caste system right up to his death.

There are currently no statues of our own heroes and heroines on our campus:

We are of the view that if there should be statutes on our campus then they should first be African heroes and heroines, who can serve as examples of who we are and what we have achieved as a people. In a context where our youth know so little about our own history, such statutes can serve as an opportunity for such learning to occur. Why should we uplift other peoples heroes at an African university when we havent lifted up our own? We consider this to be a slap in the face that undermines our struggles for autonomy, recognition and respect. Indeed, what would have been more fitting than to erect a statute of the former member of the University Council, Mr Sam Aboah, who financed the building of the quadrangle, and also financed the planting of the teak trees on the top of the Legon Hill near the Registry?

Removal of racist symbols from world-class universities:

The University of Ghana seeks to be a world-class university. At world class universities, even former bastions of slavery, apartheid and white supremacy, statutes and other symbols associated with controversial persons have been pulled down or removed. Below are just a few examples:

 August 2016: Yale University is in the process of removing stained glass windows that depict slaves. It is also reconsidering keeping the name of Calhoun College, named for John C Calhoun, a 19th-century vice-president, South Carolina senator and Yale alumnus who established himself as a vocal advocate for slavery. In April 2016 President of Yale, Peter Salovey had said the name would remain. He has also appointed a new committee to develop guidelines for proposals to remove historical names from university buildings, including Calhouns.

 May 2016: Yale announced it would name a residential college, set to open in 2017, for Anna Pauline Pauli Murray, a black Yale Law School alumna and civil rights activist.

 March 2016: A committee tasked with re-considering Harvard Law Schools seal in light of its ties to slavery recommended that the Harvard Corporation revoke the emblems status as the schools official symbol. The seal bears the crest of the former slave-owning Royall family, whose donation helped establish Harvards first law professorship in the late 18th century.

 November 2015: Georgetown University renamed two buildings on campus, Mulledy and McSherry Hall, that honour former presidents who organized the sale of slaves to a Louisiana plantation to help pay off the schools debt. (The school has not yet chosen permanent names, but for now, Mulledy Hall will be called Freedom Hall, and McSherry Hall will be named Remembrance Hall, according to the Washington Post).

 October 2015: Rhodes University established a renaming team to remove the name of Cecil Rhodes, former prime minister of the Cape colony, and one of the founders of apartheid.[3]

 March to April 2015: First the senate and then the Council of the University of Cape Town voted to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes.

4.There was no consultation about the placing of the statute:

The University of Ghana has a tradition for the naming of buildingsa committee works on this and seeks the views of members of the university community, important stakeholders as the case may be. While we speak here about a statue and not the naming of a building, we are of the view that similar principles of transparency and consultation should apply. In the case of the Gandhi statute, it would appear from responses the former Vice-chancellor gave to emails on the University email list, that he took the decision alone. He explained that the statute was a gift from the embassy of the Republic of India. To questions about what we received or were promised in return, no answer was forthcoming.[4]

We urge Council and the management of the University of Ghana, that in the future when buildings are named or statutes erected, that colleagues from requisite Departments be consulted so it does not appear as if our academics do not have the relevant information.

We can do the honourable thing by pulling down the statue. It is better to stand up for our dignity than to kowtow to the wishes of a Third World super-power. Some harm has been done by erecting the statue. We have failed the generation that looks up to us, namely our students. How will the historian teach and explain that Gandhi was uncharitable in his attitude towards the Black race and see that were glorifying him by erecting a statue on our campus? The same goes for the human rights lecturer, the International Law lecturer, the Political Science lecturer teaching on apartheid in South Africa, etc. However, to allow the statue to remain on our campus will do even more harm and make us appear to hold double standards.

We should not bury our head in the sand and expect that the storm will die down.

We thank you for your attention!

Sincerely

Prof Akosua Adomako Ampofo

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | Email: [email protected]
NPP Vice Presidential Candidate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, on September 8, 2016 delivered a lecture on Ghana's economy at the National Theatre in Accra.

Among other things he said the country's economy has been built on straw because of the recklessness and mismanagement of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).

He said the NDC has within eight years ballooned Ghana's debt stock by $39billion.

President John Mahama alone has added 66 percent debt to the country's public debt, he claimed.

Click here to access the full speech
Juba (AFP) - A report commissioned by actor-activist George Clooney alleging massive corruption and war profiteering by leaders of South Sudan, the world's newest nation, is "completely rubbish", the government said Tuesday.

A spokesman for President Salva Kiir said the report released in Washington at a high-profile press conference headed by Clooney was "misleading" and ill-intentioned.

The result of a two-year inquiry, the report details how Kiir and his former deputy turned rebel leader Riek Machar -- who is currently in Khartoum receiving medical treatment -- profited largely from a three-year conflict that has driven 2.5 million people from their homes and left half the population dependent on food aid to survive.

The "key catalyst" of the war was "competition for the grand prize -- control over state assets and the country's abundant natural resources," notably its oil, it said.

'The report itself is completely rubbish," said Wek. "Yes, there is corruption in South Sudan but this report has fallen short of detailing the corruption."

'Politically motivated'

Actor George Clooney, co-founder of Sentry, speaks during a news conference on September 12, 2016, in Washington, DC, to present the report "War Crimes Shouldn't Pay: Stopping the looting and destruction in South Sudan"

He said its real aim was to undermine the regime. "The report is misleading, it is politically motivated to tarnish the personality of President Kiir."

The government may decide to make a legal challenge, hiring a legal firm in the US, he added.

Clooney charged that South Sudan's warring leaders and their cronies have amassed fortunes, including foreign properties and stakes in international firms, while prosecuting a murderous conflict.

Top officials' families "often live in multi-million-dollar mansions outside the country, stay in five-star hotels, reap the benefits of what appears to be a system of nepotism and shady corporate deals, and drive around in luxury cars," the report said.

A spokesman for Machar denied the allegations, saying "the house he's staying in is being paid using the money contributed by the members of the movement."

The report "is a baseless lie," said Dickson Gatluak.

The inquiry was carried out by The Sentry, a watchdog group founded by Clooney and rights activist John Prendergast.

After presenting its results, Clooney and actor Don Cheadle stopped by at the White House to discuss South Sudan with President Barack Obama.

The United Nations is currently seeking to beef up its peace-keeping effort to protect civilians and aid workers due to a new flare-up in fighting.

After decades of fighting, South Sudan became independent in 2011. The latest bout of bloodshed erupted in December 2013 when Kiir accused former deputy Machar of plotting a coup. UN experts have blamed both camps for reigniting the fighting.
Tripoli (AFP) - Forces opposed to Libya's unity government on Tuesday seized a fourth oil port, completing their takeover of vital installations in the North African country's "oil crescent", a military source said.

The battle for control of Libya's oil assets has renewed fears of a civil war in the country, which plunged into chaos after the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

The UN-backed Government of National Accord based in Tripoli is struggling to assert its authority and has been facing staunch resistance from a rival administration based in Libya's remote east.

Military strongman General Khalifa Haftar on Sunday launched an offensive on Libya's "oil crescent" along the northern coast.

His forces fought off guards to gain control of the oil terminals at Ras Lanuf, Al-Sidra and Zuwaytania, and they finally secured Brega unopposed on Tuesday.

"We have taken control of the Brega port completely and without any fighting," said Colonel Muftah al-Muqarief, who heads oil guards loyal to Haftar.

"The entire oil crescent region is now under our control," Muqarief told AFP.

Rival forces seize key Libyan ports

Brega was taken largely thanks to "mediation involving residents and town elders", he said.

The loss of Brega is a fresh blow to the GNA.

Haftar, 73, who sees himself as Libya's saviour after battling jihadists out of most of second city Benghazi in the east, backs the parliament which has refused to grant the GNA a vote of confidence.

The Brega takeover comes hours after the United States and its major European allies -- which back the GNA -- condemned Haftar's offensive, echoing remarks by UN special envoy Martin Kobler.

"I call for the respect of UN Security Council Resolution 2259 which recognises the Government of National Accord... as the sole executive authority in Libya," Kobler said Monday.

Oil is Libya's main natural resource with reserves estimated at 48 billion barrels, the largest in Africa, but production has plummeted since 2011 as the country plunged into turmoil.

'Withdraw, without preconditions'

General Khalifa Haftar, pictured on August 24, 2015, sees himself as Libya's saviour after battling jihadists out of most of second city Benghazi in the east

On Sunday, Haftar's forces took Al-Sidra and Ras Lanuf ports before attacking Zuwaytina to the east.

The "oil crescent" lies between Benghazi and Kadhafi's hometown of Sirte, where pro-GNA forces have been battling the Islamic State group since May.

It was the first time Haftar's forces and fighters loyal to the GNA clashed directly since the unity government started working in the capital in March.

Kobler said oil installations must remain under the authority of the GNA's presidential council and stressed that Resolution 2259 "contains a clear prohibition on illicit oil exports".

Meanwhile, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States condemned the attacks on the four oil ports and called on Haftar's forces to withdraw.

These powers are major players in the struggle to reunify and rebuild Libya, and insisted in a joint statement that the country's oil should be administered by the GNA.

"We call for all military forces that have moved into the oil crescent to withdraw immediately, without preconditions," they said.

The embattled GNA called on loyalist forces to "protect and defend" the ports against what it called a "flagrant aggression" of Libya's sovereignty.

The head of the rival government, Abdullah al-Thani, said from the eastern city of Bayda that his administration "will work on the oil ports resuming work as soon as possible so as to guarantee all Libyans a decent life".

The head of the parliament based in the east, Aguila Saleh, said that Haftar's forces would withdraw and hand over the ports to the National Oil Corporation to resume oil exports.

The NOC is split into two rival branches, however, one allied to the GNA and the other to the administration that Haftar supports.
A Russian air defense system of the type Pakistan is interested in acquiring. (Photo : Tass)

Pakistan, India's arch rival and China's most powerful ally in Asia, has announced its first ever joint military exercise with Russia will take place later this year.



The small scale military exercise named "Friendship 2016" will involve only 200 military personnel from both sides. Pakistan's Ambassador to Moscow Qazi Khalilullah described the exercise as the first time the militaries of both countries will hold a joint military drill.



Advertisement

The name Friendship 2016 itself is ominous, suggesting a growing of the military relations between both countries that before were bitter Cold War foes on account of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.



The announcement of the Pakistani-Russian war game quickly follows on the heels of reports India and the United States will hold their "Yudh Abhyas 2016" joint military exercise from Sept. 14 to 27.



This drill will be the twelfth staging of this joint exercise hosted alternately by India and the U.S. It will take place at the settlement of Chaubattia in the Almora District of Uttarakhand State in northern India, which shares a long border with China.



The Pakistan-Russia war game comes amid increasing defence ties between Moscow and Islamabad and as Pakistan considers buying Russian warplanes.



Khalilullah didn't reveal any details about the nature of the exercises, where it will take place and when. He did, however, state this historic event was a reflection of the increased cooperation between the two countries.



"This obviously indicates a desire on both sides to broaden defense and military-technical cooperation," he said.



Over the last 15 months, the chiefs of Pakistan's Army, Navy and Air Force have traveled to Russia to bolster military-to-military ties. The high-level exchanges between the two nations resulted in a deal in Aug. 2015 for the sale of four Mil Mi-35 heavily armored ground attack helicopter gunships to Pakistan.



The formal agreement was considered a major policy shift on the part of Pakistan following the growing strategic partnership between the U.S. and India.



Analysts said Pakistan wants to boost its ties with Russia to diversify its options in the event its relations with Washington sour any further.



Just last week, Maj. Gen. Naveed Ahmed, Director General of Defense Procurement Pakistan, said the Pakistan Armed Forces has a keen interest in Russian air defense systems, tanks, arms and ammunition. Gen. Ahmed led the Pakistan delegation on the Army-2016 in Russia that ended last week.



"Our army services are (showing) keen interest in different Russian products," he said.



"We are looking for the air platform; for any sorts of helicopters. For the army, we are looking for tanks. We are looking for anti-tank weapon system and more importantly we are looking for the air defense system."


After witnessing the devastation caused in the mining sector, the Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM) has warned that privatisation of Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will seal Ghanas doom.

In a passionate appeal, Hannah Owusu Koranteng is convinced that the privatisation will hand over the control of Ghanas economy to private international interests.

That is why I agree with those who say we are going back to neo-colonialism she said at a forum to discuss the concession agreement of ECG.

Recounting her experience with the private sector, Hannah Owusu Koranteng said despite the promise of development for mining-rich areas in Ghana, the reality shows just waste, corruption and plunder of our natural resources.

MiDA background

The Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) was established by an Act of Parliament (Act 702, 709 & 897 as amended). The objectives of the Authority are:

To oversee, manage and implement the Programmes under the Millennium Challenge Account for poverty reduction through economic growth as set out in each agreement between the Government of Ghana and the Millennium Challenge Corporation acting for and on behalf of the Government of the United States of America and for any other national development programme of similar nature funded by the Government of Ghana, a Development Partner or both and to provide for related matters.

Government of Ghana through the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) is seeking to privatise ECG in a deal to last for 25 years.

MiDA has shortlisted six companies, out of which one will eventually be selected as the private investor to take over the management of the company.

The companies are Manila Electric Company from the Philippines registered and operating in Ghana; Enel S.P.A.from Italy; and Tata Power Company Limited from India.

Workers of ECG are angry at the Authority over what they say is gross disrespect shown them in the privatisation of the Company.

National Secretary of ECG Senior Staff, Patrick Benyemi, says the dealings of MiDA regarding the decision to give the nations power distributor to a concessionaire have been shrouded in secrecy which would affect the country in the foreseeable future.

A public forum was organised by Integrity Initiative with representatives of MiDA, the Public Utilities Workers Union and other stakeholders in the power sector.

It was a Consultative Forum on Enhancing the Effectiveness of Ghana's Public Financial Management System.

Speaking at the forum in Accra, Madam Hannah Koranteng lamented that government is ready to give out the most lucrative asset left in Ghana.

Revealing her suspicions, Hannah Koranteng said she warned the Ghana is inviting a Trojan horse when it allowed private sector participation in the power sector in 1997.

Dismissing claims by MiDA that the privatisation is about improving power supply, she argued it is pushing out those who cannot afford electricity  the power-poor Ghanaians.

The focus isnot about developing Ghana, it is not about reducing people who are dying because of dumsor.but to make profitI have seen this in mining, she said.

Madam Hannah Koranteng was emphatic that the whole agenda of MiDA is about making electricity a private good and not a marketable public good that is now is.

Should the concession deal be successful, the determination of electricity tariff will no longer be determined by the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission, the regulator, she said.

According to her, it will not be determined by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) which is in contravention of PURC Act 538, she said.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|Edwin Appiah|[email protected]
The New Patriotic Party in the Volta Region is ready to take advantage of the seeming apathy in the region believed to the 'world bank' of the governing party.

The Volta Region Chairman of the NPP Peter Amewu said the people of Volta Region are very discerning and will no longer be taken for granted.

He told Joy News Editor Evans Mensah democracy is about development and the people have compared the eight year administration of the NPP to that of the NDC and are convinced the tenure of the NPP was far better.

He said gone were the days when followers of the governing National Democratic Congress will be sermonizing that even if a goat stands on the ticket of the NDC, that goat will be voted for rather than voting for the NPP.

Peter Amewu's comments are in reaction to the caution given by James Avedzi MP for Ketu North to the people of Volta Region that the NDC risks losing the 2016 elections if the people do not wake up from the complacency they are in.

Mr Avedzi cited the example in the 2000 election saying the people complained of lack of development under the eight year tenure of the Rawlings administration and failed to turn to vote in the first round.

He said it was only when the election went into a run-off that the people decided to go out and vote but that was too little too late.

James Avedzi believes the same apathy and complacency that were apparent in the 2000 election is rearing its ugly head and if the party does not wake up and fight it the party could lose the elections.

The Deputy Volta Regional Secretary of the NDC Moustapha Gbande in an interview said the MP was right about the complacency and was only admonishing the people of Volta Region to step up their game.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com
13.09.2016 LISTEN

By Belinda Ayamgha, GNA

Accra, Sept. 13, GNA - The International Monetary Fund (IMF), says Sub-Saharan Africa has bright prospects for growth in spite of persistent slowdown in growth owing to the slump in commodity prices and a more difficult global environment.

While there have been quite significant slowdown in some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in resource-intensive countries, including Ghana, non-resource-intensive countries like Kenya, Senegal and Cote d'Ivoire have been able to maintain growth.

Ms Natalia Koliadina, IMF Resident Representative for Ghana, who briefed members of the Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists on the IMF's April 2016 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, said there is the need for countries in the region to diversify their economies to minimise shocks from slumps in commodity prices.

This, she noted, would require policy as well as structural reforms, building of infrastructure and skills upgrade for its workforce.

She added that it is also important for countries to insulate themselves against the effects of commodity price slumps by building up buffers when the prices are high.

The report noted that while dependency on natural resources had in the past supported the growth of these countries, it had also made them vulnerable to declines in commodity prices, with strong macroeconomic downturns and the most vulnerable are the region's oil exporters.

The report also encouraged boosting the private sector business activity in the region to drive its economies by putting in place enabling policies for businesses, especially small businesses and building the requisite infrastructure and environment for businesses to thrive.

The report expressed the need for a major policy reset by authorities in the region to address the risks to the outlook although it recognises that policies in the region had improved quite significantly in the last decade.

The IMF has also expressed its readiness to engage more with the media in Ghana in order to engender increased understanding of the Fund's work in member-states and its role in programme implementation.

Ms Koliadina said the building of trust and confidence are essential aspects of its work.

GNA
Panpanso Krokese (E/R) Sept. 13, GNA - The Chief and people of Panpanso Krokese near Nsawam in the Eastern Region, have ended their Homowo festival with an appeal to the Ministry of Education and the Nsawam-Adoagyiri Municipal Assembly to rehabilitate the local school.

Barimah Ansah Mankatah IV, the Chief made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at a durbar to climax their annual festival.

He said the school structure, comprising a nursery and a kindergarten was started about eight years ago by the Jesus Mission Church through communal labour, but the project had become standstill.

The Chief said the project was aimed at saving more 300 school-going children from Panpanso Krokese and its surroundings villages from travelling far to Panpanso Teshie, Obredwoma and Obedeka to have access to education.

He pleaded with philanthropists, non-governmental organisations and non-resident citizens to assist in cash and kind to complete the project.

Barimah Ansah Mankatah said he had pledged land to the Nsawam-Adoagyiri Municipal Assembly for the provision of school structures in the town to support education.

He called on the authorities of the feeder roads to help in the re-gravelling of the 11-kilometre road from the town to link the main Nsawam - Suhum trunk road to facilitate transportation of food items to marketing centres.

GNA
By Elsie Appiah-Osei, GNA

Accra, Sept. 13, GNA - SEND Ghana, a non-governmental organisation, has sensitised community members of Boi and Akporman in the Ga East District of the Greater Accra Region, on anti-corruption laws and socio- economic practices that hinder the fight against corruption.

Addressing community members at a durbar, Ms Rachel Gyabaah, the Programme Officer for SEND-Ghana, said the engagement formed part of a project called Accountable Democratic Institution and System Strengthening (ADISS).

She said ADISS which is being funded by USAID is being undertaken by SEND Ghana to engage, educate and sensitise civil society organisations as well as citizens on corruption and its broader effects on the country and governing issues.

"We have laws governing everything but its implementation is a problem so letting citizens understand their part and role to play in fighting corruption is worthwhile," she said.

Ms Gyabaah noted that though their coming together serves as an engagement, it is the ultimate goal of SEND Ghana to focus on socio-cultural practices that promotes corruption.

She mentioned nepotism, cronyism, family and peer pressure, gift giving, tribalism and conflict of interest as some major factors that influence unlawful deeds mostly done in the country.

According to her the exercise which is being done concurrently in all 10 regions and 50 districts are being carried out following various researches done by SEND-Ghana.

"We having this in Ga East is also happening in Ga South, Jirapa, Tamale Metro, Ada West among other places," she said.

Mrs Gyabaah advised the community members and citizenry not to look beyond the fight of corruption but rather collaborate to fight it extensively.

"If we are not eradicating it completely let us help to control the canker," she said.

She gave 0800 100 25 as a contact to be used by Vodafone customers, and 0800 100 250 to be used by Tigo and and Airtel customers to report corruption cases.

"Alternatively one can also visit www.ipaidabribe.org.gh to tell his or her story," she added.

Mrs Araba Awua-Boateng, the Ga West Municipal Commission for Human Rights Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) Director, encouraged the citizenry to continue to report cases to authorised bodies in the country.

"The Police, Attorney General, Auditor General, Bureau for National Investigations, National Media Commission, CHRAJ, Narcotics Control Board, chiefs, family heads, district chief executives, queen mothers, pastors, Revenue Governance Agency Board are all authorised people you can report corrupt cases to," she said.

Mrs Awua-Boateng educated the community members on the bad socio-economic practices that society had accepted as normal acts and advised them not to practice them.

"Corruption is not solely about money but ones negative actions and behaviour are classified as such," she said.

She however cautioned members of the community and the public at large to have evidence before reporting issues.

Some community members who spoke to the Ghana News Agency said the education was timely especially when election is only three months away.

GNA
13.09.2016 LISTEN

By A.B. Kafui Kanyi, GNA

Ho, Sept. 13, GNA - Mr Benjamin Kpodo, the Member of Parliament for the Ho Central Constituency, has asserted that only the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is committed to initiating and completing development projects in the Volta Region.

He, therefore, urged the electorates in the Region to ignore the deceitful promises of the other Parties and retain the NDC in power in the December polls.

Mr Kpodo made the assertion at the inauguration of the NDC's Election Campaign Taskforce for the Ho Central Constituency.

'If you vote for the NPP, know that they will discontinue all projects ongoing in the Region. That is their track record,' he said. 'They relocated the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre from Akoefe to Accra, so you know what I'm talking about.'

Mr Kpodo enumerated the projects undertaken by the Government in the Constituency and said it was important for the people to appreciate President Mahama by retaining him in power.

Mr Francis Ganyaglo, the Deputy Volta Regional Minister, who inaugurated the 15-Member Taskforce, said the Constituency was targeting 80,000 votes each for President Mahama and Mr Kpodo and charged the members of the Taskforce to deliver the results.

He said the Volta Region remained the NDC's 'World Bank' and asked the Taskforce to make results of the impending elections reflect that status.

Mr Ludwig Hlordze, a former National Youth Organizer of the NDC, urged the members of the Taskforce and branch executives to distribute logistics and souvenirs equitably for a successful campaign.

GNA
By D.I. Laary, GNA

Accra, Sept. 13, GNA - The Chief of Sefwi Yamfo, Nana Kojo Kintoh I, has appealed to government and corporate institutions to support the only basic school in the area with computers and electricity to promote teaching and learning.

'We need computers for our ICT [Information and Communication Technology] centre, we have seven communities around this area that feed on one school, our roads are bad, and there is no electricity too,' he said.

Nana Kintoh told the Ghana News Agency that pupils in the area have been writing the Basic Education Certificate Examination without access to computers since the introduction of ICT in basic school examinations.

'This is one of the ways we can use to help our communities and the poor farmers who provide us with baskets of food every day, but whose children cannot access quality education, our children have been writing iCT exams without learning about computers practically,' he said.

'So we are appealing to the government, non-governmental organisations and corporate institutions to support us with, at least, some computers so that our children can also compete with those in cities during exams,' he added.

He said the communities made annual contributions out of their meagre seasonal earnings to put up the 50-capacity building, which is near completion but would require computers to furnish it and electricity to power the computers.

'We had no support from anybody, we did it ourselves, through our small, small contributions, sometimes we do one kilogramme deductions from our cocoa sales,' he said.

Sefwi Yamfo is a predominantly cocoa growing community that is located between two district capitals - Sefwi Wiawso and Akontonbra - in the Western Region.

It is about 25 kilometres away from Sefwi Akontonbra, the District capital where community dwellers travel along deplorable road to receive basic services.

The basic school comprises kindergarten, primary and junior high schools serving seven communities and other micro villages.

Nana Kintoh said the school has a population of 600 pupils, many of whom trek long distances to attend classes in the community with only three boreholes, poor mobile phone network services and deplorable roads.

He said many of the students, particularly girls, drop out school to learn trade because they have no hope for the future when they continue to stay in the village where many basic facilities are lacking.

The Chief said the only health facility serving the communities has one midwife and lack other supporting staff or relevant equipment and logistics to respond to emergency health needs of the people.

GNA
Winneba (C/R) Sept. 13, GNA - Speakers at service to commemorate this year's Eid-Ul-Adha festival in Winneba have emphasized the need for Muslims to continue to pray for the nation for the sustenance of the peace and stability of Ghana.

Mr Francis A. Tagoe Effutu Municipal Chief Executive and Alhaji Mohammed Monsuri Issah Chief Imam of Muslims in the Municipality were addressing Muslims at Winneba in turns to mark the Day.

Mr Tagoe reminded Muslims to take into consideration the peaceful nature of their religion and advised them especially the youth not to allow any politician to use them for his or her personal gains.

He said peace is the master key for development and urged Muslims to do everything possible to avoid soiling the good name of the religion.

Alhaji Issah gave the assurance that Muslims in the area would embark on intensive prayers as their contributions to help ensure that the coming elections would be conducted in a peaceful manner.

He advised Muslim parents in the area to educate their children on the need to lead exemplary life's so that they would not involve themselves in acts that could disturb the peace and stability.

Alhaji Issah led a prayer session for peace to prevail in the country during and after the December 7 elections.

GNA
Tema, Sept. 13, GNA - Mr Solomon Amponsah, the only independent Parliamentary Candidate vying for the Tema West seat, says most young voters are attracted to his youth empowerment campaign agenda because it addresses their concerns.

Speaking at the maiden Tema Parliamentary Debate organised by the Institute for Liberty and Policy Innovation (ILAPI), he said the youths of the country need to be awakened to their duties and privileges in society.

The ILAP is a non- partisan and non-profit policy research Think Tank based in Tema.

Mr Ankoma, who is a telecomunication engineer, said he intends to institute a Youth Parliament which would draw membership from all the communities to debate and take consensus on issues affecting the youth and the communities.

According to him, such tabled issues would guide him to properly execute his mandate as a Member of Parliament.

Mr Amponsah said Tema Metropolis was well resourced with social and economic amenities and employment opportunities but the youths were not well prepared to tap into it.

"I will use my share of the common fund and seek other forms of funding to train the youth to be employable in Tema's vibrant maritime and industrial sectors."

Mr Peter Bismark Kwofie, President,ILAPI,who moderated the debate, said the forum was created for the parliamentary candidates to communicate their visions effectively to the constituents thereby strengthening the democratic dispensation of Ghana.

"This would also popularise the ideas they have on the growth and sustainability of Tema and Ghana as a whole."

Mr Carlos Ahenkora and Mr James Enu, New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary candidates respectfully, failed to attend.

GNA
Samsung brings Scion Lee Jae-Yong to its board of directors as Galaxy Note 7 crisis boils over

Samsung Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong is thought to have been making key decisions since his father was hospitalized after a heart attack in 2014. (Photo : Getty Images/ Justin Sullivan)

Samsung Electronics Co. Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, the only son of its ailing chairman, was nominated on Monday to join its board of directors.



The announcement of Jae-yongs' appointment comes as the South Korean company struggles with a smartphone recall that has reduced billions of dollars from its market value. Samsung recalled about 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 phones this month after discovering that rechargeable lithium batteries that were made by one of its suppliers were faulty and could explode.



Advertisement

During the announcement, the company said the Samsung board believes that "this is now the right time." Rather than waiting until the shareholder meeting scheduled for next year, "his appointment now will make him to more actively participate, and take formal responsibility, as a board member in important decisions such as the composition of the executive management team and strategic growth initiatives."



According to ABC News, the nomination signals a new era for Samsung Electronics under a third generation of its founding family.



Lee, 48, is a Harvard-educated Samsung vice chairman and is said to have been making crucial decisions for Samsung since his dad, Lee Kun-hee, 74, suffered a heart attack in 2014 and has been hospitalized, leaving him unable to oversee the company.



Lee made national headlines last year after he apologized on live TV for a Samsung-owned hospital's failure to stop the spread of Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome. It was his first public debut as Samsung's de facto leader, LA Times reported.



Samsung executives have said given the Confucian tradition of filial piety, it has been a challenge for the younger Lee to take on a bigger leadership position while his father is still alive.



Lee's nomination will be put to a shareholder vote Oct. 27. In addition, the shareholders will also vote during the October meeting on Samsung's decision to sell its printer business to HP Inc.



If this gets approved, Samsung plans to spin-off its printing business into a separate company as of Nov. 1 and sell all of its shares in the new company to HP.



Palo Alto, California-based HP has noted it agreed to purchase Samsung's printer business for about $1.05 billion. Currently, Samsung's printer business has 6,000 employees and a production station base in China.



Samsung has been working to restructure and streamline businesses that are not important for its future.



Here is a video of Lee Jae-Yongs' appointment to Samsung board as Galaxy Note 7 crisis boils over:






13.09.2016 LISTEN

By George-Ramsey Benamba, GNA

Accra, Sept 13, GNA - Africa's cement giant, Dangote Cement Ghana Limited has embarked on an exercise to distribute one thousand tarpaulins to its cement distributors across the country, Mr Evans Oloquaye Martey, Marketing Manager of the Company has announced.

The move, he said was aimed at reducing the high cost of putting up or renting office space, which was mostly required to trade in cement.

After distributing the first batch of the tarpaulins, the Marketing Manager said it is part of the overall strategy of the company to make its products affordable and accessible in the Ghanaian market.

"We want many Ghanaians, who desire to put up houses and other infrastructure to buy cement at very affordable prices without having to pay indirectly for the operational cost.

'This is why we are introducing this technology that does not really require an office space to set-up," he said.

He explained that with the tarpaulin technology, distributors only need all platforms on which to put the cement then use the tarpaulins to cover and secure them against theft and rain.

"The tarpaulin concept of trading cement is an age-long practice in Nigeria and other West African countries that does not require any investment in office space."

Mr Martey said already the cost of office space in the cities are very high and the tarpaulin concept is being introduced to relieve the plight of the distributors.

Frank Kwadwo Ofori of K. Ofori Enterprise one of the first batch beneficiaries at Tema expressed appreciation to Dangote for the initiative.

He said the move would reduce the marketing burdens they face by the day adding: "Dangote Cement understands our needs and we appreciate them for this initiative. They are supporting our business to grow and our customers definitely will benefit at the end".

On his part, Joseph Attah Anyen of Paa Nii Agency, said: "Apart from the good quality of cement we get from Dangote, they also have innovative ways of helping small businesses to grow."

Dangote Cement, producers of the 42.5R grade of cement, within the last two months, have imported 1000 trucks into the country that cart cement from the Tema factory to all parts of the country.

"This is one way we get cement to the Ghanaian at very affordable price. We are not just doing business, we are also helping to develop our infrastructure and ensure there is stability in the pricing of cement in the country so that anyone who intends to build can afford to buy cement.'

GNA
By Hafsa Obeng, GNA

Accra, Sept. 13, GNA - An Accra Circuit Court on Monday remanded a businessman, Dennis Ndukwu, for defrauding by false pretences.

Dennis was charged for conspiracy, forgery of documents, impersonation and defrauding by false pretences.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges but was remanded by the court to reappear on September 15.

Dennis conspired with one other now at large, and forged certain documents, to wit certificate of ownership, Ministry of Justice letter head and a Law firm letter head, presented himself as the Secretary to the Chief of Staff and defrauded one Le Van Khiem of an amount of $105,740.00.

Prosecuting Police Chief Inspector Kwabena Adu told the court that the complainant and the accused person are both Businessmen living in Accra.

He said the complainant is a business partner to the victim Le Van Khiem, who had a power of Attorney for his partner to lodge a complaint on his behalf after the accused person and his accomplices now at large defrauded him of the money.

He said the complainant told the police that his partner a Vietnamese national, whose uncle invested in Ghana and had $ 8,500,000.00 in his account with the Standard Chartered Bank.

The prosecution said this said uncle later died in an earthquake in Japan and he Le Van Khiem, being the next of kin, called the Bank of Ghana and informed them of his intention to stop the investment and take his money.

He told the court that the bank gave his a number to contact a lawyer in Ghana by name Henry Adako, to assist him end the investment, which he did.

Police Chief Inspector Adu said in 2011, the said lawyer also died. Dennis and his accomplices met the victim through the internet after they had conducted series of research into his background and told him they could help him to end the investment and also retrieve what he had already invested.

He said Dennis and his accomplices forged a letter head with the name, Jam Kojo Chambers as a law firm for the Chief of Staff Mr Julius Debrah and that, he Dennis is the Secretary of the Chief of Staff.

Dennis also forged a document purported to have come from the Ministry of Justice and certificate of ownership transferring the investment in victim name.

He told the court that the accused person then demanded that, the victim bring the original investment documents and death certificate of his uncle to help complete the transfer. Victim sent same to the him and his accomplices

He said they also demanded money and collected $ 4,740.00 from the victim to use for the processing of the documents. Not satisfied demanded more money to complete the process, but he informed them that it was difficult to send money to Vietnam so he travelled to Thailand to do the transfer.

Police Chief Inspector Adu said based on this information, they made the victim send them his Visa card which they used to withdraw an amount of $ 100,000.00 from his account.

He told the court that it came to a point where the Bank became suspicious about the rate at which money was being withdrawn from the account and consequently blocked the visa card.

He said when they were not getting access to the money at the bank, they demanded an amount of $1,500.00 from the victim to see the Finance Minister who, they said was reluctant to append his signature.

Le Van Khiem, instructed a friend in the US to send $1000.00 to them, which he did, after which they demanded for the remaining $500.00 de requested for.

The prosecution said, the victim later contacted the complainant's partner in Ghana and discussed the issue with him, only to find out that the persons he had been dealing with were fraudsters.

He said the complainant them instructed the complainant to report the matter to the police, after which he called the accused person to meet him for the remaining $500.00,

He told the court that an arrangement was made with the police and when the accused person and one accomplice by name Robert Amuzu came to collect the money, Dennis was arrested by the other managed to escape.

GNA
13.09.2016 LISTEN

By Joyce Danso, GNA

Accra Sept. 13, GNA - An Accra Magistrate Court hearing the case of Braimah Kamoko, aka Bukom Banku, a Ghanaian Boxer, over charges of assault and causing unlawful damage has adjourned the matter to October 6.

Bukom Banku is alleged to have demanded a kiss from a hairdresser in her shop but she declined.

Following the resistance of Madam Martha Nelson, the complainant, the boxer slapped her twice and punched her in the rib.

The matter was adjourned following the absence of the trial judge.

Meanwhile a source close to the accused told the GNA that the parties in that matter have attempted an out of court settlement.

Bukom Banku allegedly smashed the complainant's Nokia mobile phone valued at GHa 40 saying it was inferior and that he would buy her a Galaxy phone.

The complainant in tears reported the matter to the Police at James Town and Bukom Banku was arrested.

The boxer had earlier been reported in two separate incidents for assaulting one Michael Abbey and other persons during a procession in Accra last year.

GNA
13.09.2016 LISTEN

International wildlife charity, Born Free Foundation, has welcomed a motion passed at the International Union for the Conservation of Natures (IUCN) World Conservation Congress encouraging governments globally to close their domestic markets for elephant ivory as a matter of urgency.

Welcoming the IUCNs motion, Born Free Foundations President and CEO, Will Travers OBE, said: The worlds foremost conservation body has taken a bold and hugely important step in efforts to save elephants from almost certain extinction. While not legally binding, the opinion of the IUCN is widely respected by governments, and should go a long way to persuading those that are dragging their heels to join the United States, China, France and others and bring their domestic trade in ivory to a permanent end. We cannot trade our way out of the crisis facing elephants and were running out of time. Only by making it clear that ivory trade will not be tolerated anywhere in the world can we bring the devastating poaching crisis to an end and provide a secure future for elephants.

Elephant populations across Africa are being devastated by poachers seeking to supply ivory into lucrative global markets. According to the Great Elephant Census carried out across 18 countries over the past three years, Africas savannah elephant populations have reduced by some 30% over the past seven years, and now number fewer than 400,000. Forest elephants declined by over 60% in the decade to 2011, and the downward spiral continues.

While the international trade in elephant ivory has, with some exceptions, effectively been banned since African elephants were placed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1989, legal domestic ivory trade continues to varying extents in many countries across the world. The existence of domestic markets is widely thought to facilitate illegal trade by providing a mechanism for the laundering of ivory from poached elephants into legal markets, and by stimulating demand among consumers who believe its legality renders the trade and purchase of ivory legitimate.

In recognition of this, a number of key countries have taken or committed to take action to close down their commercial domestic ivory markets. In September 2015, US President Obama and Chinese President Xi made a joint commitment to "enact nearly complete bans on ivory import and exportand to take significant and timely steps to halt the domestic commercial trade of ivory". The United States prohibited domestic elephant ivory trade in July 2016 and France followed suit the following month. The government of Hong Kong announced in June 2016 that it intends to ban all forms of ivory trading within five years.

Focus now moves to Johannesburg, where parties to CITES will debate a number of proposals relating to elephants, including a legally-binding resolution on the closure of domestic ivory markets.
you are here:
Hun Sen and Li Keqiang (Photo : Getty Images)

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen promised the Cambodian people that China gave assurances it will grant greater access to its markets for Cambodia's agricultural products in the face of a drought severely affecting the agriculture sector.



Advertisement

Hun Sen last week led a group of Cambodian delegates and private sector representatives to the 13th ASEAN-China Expo and the First Cambodia-China Trade and Investment Forum in Nanning city in China's Guangxi province.



He said China will import 200,000 metric tons of rice annually from Cambodia starting 2017, or double the current volume. Hun Sen and Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang reached the agreement on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Laos last week.



The Cambodian government in a statement said a number of other projects was also agreed upon. Among these is for China to provide assistance to an irrigation system at the Vaiko River in Svay Rieng province and to rehabilitate National Road 51 that links national roads 4 and 5 to the west of Phnom Penh.



"It is my mission to ensure that domestic goods, especially agricultural products, can be exported to China in greater quantities," said Hun Sen.



"I just completed my three-day trip to China and arrived back in Phnom Penh ... This is the assurance that I have received (from the Chinese)."



Also last week, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed in Phnom Penh between the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.



The MoU will contribute further to enhancing trade and investment relations between the two countries. It covers areas of cooperation such as exchange of information, trade promotion activities, exchange of visits, experience sharing and capacity building.



As part of the deal, CCPIT will encourage more Chinese enterprises to invest in Cambodia and to assist Cambodian companies wishing to do businesses in China.


A Morganton man facing federal charges for defrauding the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was released on bond Monday.

Roy Lee Ross Jr., a.k.a. Daniel Alfred Sullivan Jr., 64, of Morganton, received a $25,000 unsecured bond during his initial appearance and arraignment in federal court in Asheville. He pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and he asked for and was granted a court-appointed attorney, Fredilyn Sison.

Magistrate Judge Dennis Howell set conditions on Ross release but those conditions have been sealed by the court, according to federal documents.

The court also has sealed a pretrial report on Ross.

Ross was indicted in August on one count of executing a scheme to defraud a health benefit organization (the VA), which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine; and two counts of making false statements in connection with the delivery of health care benefits by the VA, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He also is charged with two counts of stealing from the VA, a charge has a potential maximum prison term of five years and a $250,000 fine, and one count of a making false claim for travel benefits from the VA, which carries a potential maximum prison term of five years and a $250,000 fine,

The initial indictment on him said Ross, who was discharged from the U.S. Army Under Conditions Other Than Honorable, started falsely representing himself to the VA Medical Center in Asheville as a U.S. Army veteran named Daniel Alfred Sullivan Jr. around June 2007. The indictment alleges Ross, as Sullivan, claimed that he had served in the Special Forces, that he had been wounded in combat and that he had been honorably discharged from the Army. The indictment goes on to say Ross claimed he was suffering from nightmares caused by his wartime service and his combat-related injuries.

As a result of his misrepresentations, in 2007, Ross was diagnosed with suffering from service-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and started receiving health benefits from the VA, court documents say.

The indictment alleges that in 2012, based on the PTSD diagnosis and other multiple false statements regarding his military service, including his fake injuries, honors and medals received, Ross filed for, and was granted, disability-based compensation at a rate of 60 percent. He was given a retroactive lump sum of $18,349 and started receiving a monthly tax-free compensation of $1,026, the indictment says.

In 2014, Ross filed a second claim for increased evaluation, seeking additional disability-based compensation. The indictment alleges Ross, still using the name Sullivan, claimed he had been shot in the neck during combat, and that he was suffering from physical pain due to his service-connected injury.

As a result of Rosss false statements and accounts, his disability rating was increased, reflecting an increase in his monthly tax-free compensation to $1,743.48, according to federal officials.

Then in 2015, still claiming to be Daniel Sullivan, Ross filed a third claim for increased evaluation, claiming that he was suffering from cervical (neck) impairment and pain due to his injuries while on active duty. He was eventually granted his claim, and Ross received a $3,490.95 back payment award and his monthly disability payment was increased to $2,906.83, according to federal officials.

The indictment says that in addition to his disability benefits, Rossgot around $57,000 in health care benefits from the VA, to which he was not entitled, say federal documents.

Ross also defrauded the VAs Beneficiary Travel Program after filing claims for mileage reimbursement in connection with his medical appointments.

The indictment says Ross also defrauded the Veterans Retraining Assistance Program by receiving $10,218.14 in VRAP payments. The VRAP program offers up to one year of training assistance at a VA-approved educational program and it is available to unemployed veterans who meet certain criteria, say federal officials.

Ross next court date is set for 9 a.m. on Oct. 31 in courtroom 1 before District Judge Martin Reidinger at the federal courthouse in Asheville.

Sharon McBrayer is a staff writer and can be reached at smcbrayer@morganton.com or at 828-432-8946.
BrahMos battery. (Photo : Indian Army)

The joint venture company that produces the supersonic BrahMos supersonic cruise missile claims the Indian Army will buy more of the world beating missile in the next few years.



News reports by Russian media said BrahMos Aerospace Ltd., the Indian-Russian joint venture company that makes the missile in India, also has the capability to supply the missile to countries friendly to India and Russia.



Advertisement

"Yes, definitely, there will be more BrahMos production in the Indian Armed Forces," said a company spokesperson.



"BrahMos is a world-class weapons system and there is no equivalent in the world today. Speed, precision and power -- all exists in this system."



The Indian Army's boosting its already formidable inventory of BrahMos, the world's fastest cruise missile with a speed of Mach 3 (3,000 km/h), is being revealed as tensions with China rise in disputed and volatile border regions such as Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.



The Indian Army operates the newest operation version, the BrahMos Block III, to engage land targets, even those behind the reverse slopes of hills or mountains. Block III can be launched in either a vertical or inclined position and is capable of covering targets over a 360 degree horizon.



The army has deployed Block III to five regiments, each operating about 100 missiles. The land-attack version of BrahMos has been operational in the Indian Army since 2007.



The army will deploy a BrahMos regiment operating the Block III to defend the state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims belongs to it.



Indian media reported a huge build-up of Chinese military forces all along the 4,057 kilometer Line of Actual Control (LAC). Arunachal Pradesh is the most northerly state along the LAC and one of the most threatened by China.



To be deployed to Arunachal Pradesh will be the 864 Regiment of the Indian Army's 41st Artillery Division. The regiment will operate from four and six BrahMos batteries and three to four Mobile Autonomous Launchers (MALs).



The regiment will command up to 100 BrahMos Block III cruise missiles, each armed with a 290 kg warhead. It is the fourth missile regiment to be equipped with BrahMos.



The fire-and-forget BrahMos Block III possesses unique trajectory maneuver and steep-dive capabilities that allow it to hit targets on the reverse slopes of mountains. It can steep dive up to 75 degrees.


Morningstar's "Perspectives" series features investment insights from third-party contributors. Here, Richard Turnill, BlackRocks Global Chief Investment Strategist, explains why he thinks all investors should consider incorporating climate-change awareness into their investment processes.

A tide of new regulations to combat climate change is rising. The risks are underappreciated, yet could soon start to unfold. Significant spending on sustainable infrastructure and government incentives are needed to meet emissions-reduction targets. These present large investment risks and opportunities.

Most countries have signed the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels  the threshold where many scientists see irreversible damage and extreme weather effects kicking in. The countries have submitted plans to reduce carbon emissions in so-called intended nationally determined contributions. Yet scientists say these commitments alone are not enough to keep temperature rises below 2C.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to reducing emissions. Developed regions such as the European Union and U.S. are placing a greater emphasis on improving energy efficiency, while emerging market economies such as India and China are prioritizing low-carbon energy generation such as wind and solar power.

Coordinated action is key, since carbon emissions do not respect national borders. Emissions are a global problem. No place to hide The world is rapidly using up its carbon budget. To keep the average global temperature rise below 2C, cumulative carbon dioxide emissions need to be capped at one trillion metric tons above the levels of the late 1800s, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated in its latest assessment in 2013.

The problem? We have already burned through over half that amount. To meet the 2C warming cap, three-quarters of proven coal, oil and gas reserves would have to remain in the ground, the World Resources Institute estimates. These assets could be effectively stranded  with their owners exposed to write-downs.. The sums at risk are enormous. The damage from climate change could shave 5%-20% off global GDP annually by 2100, according to the landmark Stern Review prepared for the UK government in 2006.

The economic impacts are not just in the distant future. More frequent  and more intense  extreme weather events such as hurricanes, flooding and droughts are already affecting assets and economies. Even if you are sceptical about the science of climate change, there is no escaping a swelling tide of climate-related regulation. Technological changes in areas such as renewables and batteries are already causing disruption, while pressures on companies and asset owners to support sustainability are increasing.

Governments, investors and consumers have been slow to appreciate climate factors. Why? Scientific uncertainty is one reason. Behavioural biases also offer some clues; Risks or opportunities that are unlikely to materialise over the next few years but could be significant over longer horizons tend to be under-priced or underappreciated. This is similar to a consumer who chooses a cheap, high-energy appliance over an expensive energy-efficient model that saves money in the long run.

Markets tend to focus on the shark closest to the boat. Risks we can see, especially visceral ones, occupy most of our attention. Contentious elections, referenda and monetary policy decisions dominate headlines. The effects of climate change are less visible and perceived by many as distant. This leads to a bias toward inaction.

Bottom line: We believe climate factors have been underappreciated and under-priced. Yet this could change as the effects of climate change become more visible.

Green Infrastructure

Meeting emissions-reduction targets requires steps such as retooling energy-inefficient infrastructure and reducing fossil fuel subsidies. This creates opportunities in areas such as renewable infrastructure and underscores the importance of using investment tools that incorporate climate factors. The global economy will require big investments in infrastructure as populations and the middle class grow  especially in energy systems and cities.

The demand for new infrastructure could top $90 trillion over 2015-2030, according to The New Climate Economys 2014 report, Better Growth, Better Climate. The drive to cut carbon emissions changes the mix of this spending. Clean energy, efficient power grids and energy-efficient buildings are on the menu. The energy and transport sectors make up two-thirds of the needs, a 2016 McKinsey report estimates. Water and waste take up a fifth.

Most of the spending is needed in emerging markets. There has arguably never been a better time for governments to finance sustainable infrastructure. Financing is cheap, with around one-third of government bonds in the developed world today yielding below zero.

We expect more public spending on infrastructure as countries pivot from monetary to fiscal stimulus. Yet we also see the private sector playing a key role. The challenge is finding ways to leverage the available financing. The world is currently spending only half the amount needed to meet the $90 trillion target by 2030, the New Climate Economy estimates. Private investors could fill much of the gap, with the right incentives.

Disclaimer

The views contained herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of Morningstar. If you are interested in Morningstar featuring your content on our website, please email submissions to UKEditorial@morningstar.com
To share with friends and brethren The Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (the Everlasting Gospel), and to prepare a people to stand when He returns to redeem His remnant. Also, to share relevant information of current events, and to show how they relate to prophecy; By means of articles, editorials, opinions, scripture readings, and poetry.

Disclaimer

Endrtimes does not necessarily endorse or agree with every opinion expressed in every article/video posted on this site. The information provided here is done so for personal edification; It's up to the reader to separate truth from error, and to examine everything (like the Bereans) from a Biblical perspective. Let the Holy Scriptures be you guide! - - - FAIR USE NOTICE: These pages/videos may contain copyrighted () material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of ecological, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, economic, DEMOCRACY, scientific, MORAL, ETHICAL, and SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, etc. It is believed that 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, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior general interest in receiving similar information for research and educational purposes.
43 years is a long time for any independent business, but even more impressive for one in the constantly evolving business of coffee. On Tuesday, September 13 Boston Stoker celebrates their 43rd anniversary as one of Ohios leading coffee roasters.

Coffee has always been a part of our lives but its also changed a lot over the past 43 years, Henry Dean, Boston Stoker President said. We started as a pipe tobacco and custom pipe shop in 1973 and as the times changed we started offering our tobacco customers complimentary coffee and then in 1983 we started roasting our own coffee.

Throughout the 43 years as a business, what a coffee house is has evolved just as much as peoples tastes in the drink.

Coffee houses are a fixture of their communities. Theyre a place for people to meet, to send out a few emails, to listen to music, Henry Dean said. We ingrain our shops into the neighborhoods and communities they serve, no two shops are the same.

To celebrate this anniversary, Boston Stoker will be offering $5 off of all 12oz bags of coffee and $1 off beverages at all shops for one day only on Tuesday, September 13 at all their shops.

Our customers are why weve been growing over the last 43 years, Henry Dean said. This is our way of saying thanks and heres to the next 43.
Part II. I had planned to focus entirely on real estate agents this year because I was convinced that the refinance boom was over. Turns out I was wrong. It seems like my turn towards agents was wasted. What could I have done differently?



--Mario from Arkansas



Last week I mentioned the importance of diversity, no matter what the "flavor of the day" is. I also mentioned that purchases can lead to refinances and refinances can lead to purchases. This week I would like to elaborate on this concept. Every application has a sphere  and the key to building your business from within is opening your eyes and understanding the opportunities presented by the sphere of that transaction. Let's take a look at one part of that sphere  the insurance agent.



The insurance agent typically has a large list of present customers. What if the agent sent an email to their customers letting them know that rates are down and recommending you to assess their opportunity for refinancing, or opportunity for purchasing if they are renting? In much the same way, you can send an email to your customer base recommending an insurance "checkup." Insurance agents also know many real estate agents. If you are referring business to them, have you asked them to introduce you to agents they know?



Speaking of real estate agents, when you take a refinance application, do you ask the client what agent they worked with to purchase the house? With their permission, you can give the agent status of what is happening with their previous customer. Imagine giving an agent status on a transaction they did not refer on the same day they are chasing after another loan officer for information and not getting an answer? That is called positive differentiation. Next week we will wrap this series up by talking about the key to this process, which is automation.



--Dave Hershman



Dave Hershman has been the leading author and a top speaker for the industry for decades with six books authored and hundreds of articles published. His website is www.originationpro.com. If you have a reaction to this commentary or another question you would like answered in this column? Email Dave directly at [email protected].
Women better at paying their mortgages says Urban Institute

Women are better at keeping up the payments on their mortgages according to analysis by the Urban Institute.



By analysing data on 13 million single female borrowers and 17 million single male borrowers, the institute found that women are less likely to default on their mortgage than the men. The analysis ensured that FICO scores, loan length and rates and loan-to-value ratios were steady for the comparisons.



The Urban Institute says that despite their strong payment profile, women are paying too much for their mortgages as rates are determined when they take out the loan. It also says women are more frequently denied mortgages due to lending criteria.



It is calling for a more robust and accurate measures of risk to ensure that we arent denying mortgages to people who are fully able to make good on their payments.



Massachusetts pending sales surged despite August heat

The hot weather last month was no deterrent for Massachusetts home buyers with pending home sales rising 24.4 per cent year-over-year.



The Massachusetts Association of Realtors report 6,052 sales of single-family homes with a median price of $375,000, up 2.7 per cent from August 2015. For condos, pending sales rose 17.1 per cent to 2,095 with a median price of $342,000, up 2 per cent year-over-year.



In terms of buyer activity, this market is going against most seasonal norms with the winter, and now the summer, continuing at the same pace we typically see in a busy spring, said 2016 MAR President Annie Blatz, branch executive at Kinlin Grover Real Estate on Cape Cod. With the number of homes for sale continuing to be down, we see no obvious reason for pending sales to slow in the coming months.



Real estate is 6th largest industry in Virginia

The impact of the real estate industry on the economy of Virginia has been assessed by the states real estate association.



It found that real estate is the 6th largest private industry sector in the state in terms of direct output with $21.8 billion contributed to economic growth in 2015. The total economic activity generated by the industry was $47.8 billion.



In addition to the employment and spending impact cited in this report, we are proud that homeownership uplifts individual families with the opportunity to build wealth through equity, creating even greater long term economic benefits to individuals and to our entire state, commented Virginia Association of Realtors president Bill White.
The executive vice president of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association has been honored with the Jim Mahoney Distinguished Service Award, according to a Reverse Mortgage Daily report.Steve Irwin was awarded the honor last week at the 16Annual Reverse Mortgage Day conference in Dallas. The award is granted to those who contribute significant work to the reverse mortgage industry, according to Reverse Mortgage Daily.This award is given to an individual who has given more to the industry than they receive, said conference organizer Scott Normal. In his many years of distinguished service to the reverse mortgage industry, Steve has exemplified this.In his role as executive vice president of NRMLA, Irwin oversees the organizations policy, education and public affairs initiatives, according to Reverse Mortgage Daily.I am thrilled, humbled and honored to receive this recognition, Irwin told Reverse Mortgage Daily. This is particularly special coming from a man who I have had the pleasure of working with and learning from for many years, Jim Mahoney.
Oil declined as the International Energy Agency changed its view on the global oversupply, seeing a glut persisting into 2017.

Futures dropped as much as 2.7 percent in New York after gaining 0.9 percent Monday. The oil surplus will last longer than previously thought as demand growth slumps and supply proves resilient, the IEA said in its monthly report. U.S. crude inventories probably increased by 4 million barrels last week, according to a Bloomberg survey before an Energy Information Administration report Wednesday.

Oil has fluctuated since rallying in August amid speculation the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia would agree on measures to stabilize the market at a meeting later this month. All solutions are possible, Algerias energy minister said Friday when asked whether producers could raise output within the framework of a freeze. Rising production from OPEC has offset the effect of declining supplies elsewhere, maintaining the oversupply, the IEA said.

This was a marked shift in outlook by the IEA, said Harry Tchilinguirian, head of commodity markets strategy at BNP Paribas in London. OPECs long game got a little longer, implying the need for oil prices to remain lower for longer to spur the necessary adjustments in supply for the re-balancing of the market.

Sluggish demand

West Texas Intermediate for October delivery lost as much as $1.25 to $45.04 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $45.26 as of 1:04 p.m. London time. The contract added 41 cents to close at $46.29 on Monday. Total volume traded Tuesday was about 4 percent above the 100-day average.

Brent for November settlement lost as much as $1.14 to $47.18 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange, and traded at a $1.60 premium to WTI for the same month. The global benchmark crude rose 31 cents to $48.32 on Monday.

Global oil consumption growth sagged to a two-year low in the third quarter as demand faltered in China and India, while record output from OPECs Gulf members is compounding the glut, the IEA said. Just last month, the agency saw the market returning to equilibrium this year.

U.S. gasoline stockpiles probably dropped by 1.3 million barrels last week, according to the median estimate in the Bloomberg survey before the EIA report. Nationwide crude supplies are at 511.4 million barrels, more than 100 million barrels above the five-year average, according to EIA data.
Visiting Germany in all its splendid, historic grandeur had never been much more than a vague idea to me; the sense of desired adventure had always seemed far-fetched. But this summer that mere desire was replaced by the very tangible reality of actually visiting Germany through sponsorship from the Midland Northside Lions Club.

With the members blessing, and a will to see what I could see, I set out on June 26 for Germany and was immediately met with adversity. Delays, subsequent missed flights and reschedules tried to stand in the way between Germany and me. I no longer consider myself a novice flyer. Never go through London Heathrow Terminal 5 unless you have at least two hours to do so. Through it all, touching down in Germany to stay for the next three weeks was both relieving and exciting.

Being a family-oriented person, I can say without a doubt that staying with my host family, the Kleins, along with a fellow exchange student, in their little village marked among the top of my list of favorite experiences. In living with them, I immediately came to the realization that beer, bread and sausage truly are the triple kings of German cuisine.

Their excellent manners and sense of humor made me feel at great ease while I stayed with them. Even though I wouldnt say it was like being at home -- for it was vastly different -- staying with the Kleins was on a footing equivalent in comfort. Some days were spent at a lake near their home, on others we got a chance to mill about and catch our senses. We also took the chance to see a bit of Thuringia upon visiting Coburg Castle one day and the Automobile Museum in Suhl.

My first week in Germany was very hard to beat, but there was still another two weeks of exploration left for me to enjoy. So on July 3, Mrs. Klein drove me and my fellow exchange student to the town of Jena two hours away to meet up with the rest of the youth camp exchange students. From that point onward, the trip took a turn toward being busy but in a good way.

Nearly every day was something or somewhere new. Meeting the mayor of and exploring Jena, learning the history of the trading town of Erfurt, visiting the castle in Eisenach and exploring the city of Weimar were exploits that numbered among the collective experiences of the 22 exchange students.

As the week passed, we all grew closer to each other as friends in Jena, and thanks to the more open society generally found in Europe, we were in turn quite open to conversation of all sorts with one another. Soon our week in Jena came to an end, and it was time to move headquarters to the city of Halle. We packed up our things on July 10 and headed for Halle by way of canoe on the River Salle. That week was as busy as the one before with the exploration of Halle and its history, and a visit to Leipzig and, my favorite, doing volunteer work at the recreation house just outside the city.

The morning our whole group departed from Germany was terribly solemn, and as we parted, I shared in a lot of hugs with a lot of friends, who had affectionately given me the nickname old man.

Now as I sit here at home, it is with impressive affection that I look back upon my escapades in der Deutschland, and the opportunity the Midland Northside Lions Club gave me. I feel that one could experience few things as wonderful as that.
There were approximately 35,000 students that were effected recently when ITT Technical Institute closed its doors. These students had hopes and dreams of new skills, career advancement, helping their families, and improving their lives. These students approached their education with honesty, hard work and hope. What college students and prospective college students need to know is that they can identify poorly performing academic institutions.

Students at all educational institutions need to realize that another ITT Technical Institute could be looming in their future as well. Higher education students from all backgrounds; high school students, returning adult students, and everyone in between needs to look at the educational results that schools deliver and not at the marketing material that colleges and universities provide. When we buy a new cell phone, we look at information that describes how much memory the phone has, the speed of the network, and how much data is in the wireless service plan. College students need to behave as skeptical, informed consumers and understand how an academic institution performs over time.

-- Beware the college marketing material.

Above all, schools want you to enroll and attend their school. Schools promise great faculty, prestigious buildings, equally distinguished faculty, and living spaces that look more like hotel rooms than dormitories. What the marketing material needs to tell you but does not is how many of their students get jobs following graduation, how much student debt will you take out, and how many of their graduates do not pay back their student loans.

-- Truly ask and answer why you are at college.

If what you want to after college does not revolve around career advancement, improving your income, having the lowest amount of student debt possible, or matching your education with a fulfilling sense of purpose. If you are at college to sample courses, enjoy the social scene, try and discover what you are interested in, or postpone the pressure of work and career, then nearly any educational institution will meet those needs. There are many reasons students go to college - make sure that you know precisely what your personal reasons are.

-- Educational institution accreditation is a useless evaluation measure.

All of the recent colleges that have shut their doors or been sanctioned by the federal government for poor educational practices have been accredited by one or more educational accrediting organizations. Students need to look at how a college delivers in terms of graduation rates, low levels of student debt, and students that find meaningful employment.

-- If your current educational institution is unsatisfactory, take a break.

The factors that you need to focus on for an educational institution is one that delivers a high graduation rates, a high level of income at graduation, a low tuition level, and a high percentage of graduates that can pay back their student loans. These are some of the most important criteria and all of them are equally important. If you are attending a school that has a poor educational outcome, then stop immediately and reassess your choice. Attend the educational institution that delivers you the best chance of future success.

-- Focus on educational outcome criteria above emotion.

The following eight educational outcome criteria are available through and reflect the outcome that you want from attending higher education. These criteria are equally important because focusing on a single metric, such as high average income, will only tell a part of the story if graduation rates are low or if tuition levels and student debt levels are also high.

- undergraduate enrollment,

- percentage level of students who continue their education at the college,

- percentage level of students who graduate at the college,

- average salary of all students following graduation,

- percentage level of all students who successfully pay back their college debts,

- average amount of student loan debt upon graduation,

- the average amount of in-state tuition and

- the number of educational complaints against the school that may signal financial collapse, compliance to accreditation, or deceptive financial or recruiting practices.

Success in college is important and picking the right college is vitally important. The focus for current and prospective college students must be the delivered educational outcomes and not on slick marketing material or materials that make campus living a dream experience but then a nightmare after graduation. Focus on educational outcomes, focus on your post college dreams, and you will be successful.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency
When the Texas Legislature passed HB-5 in 2013, the business community was deeply concerned that the changes to high school graduation requirements would open the door for many more students entering institutions of higher education unprepared. At the time there was limited data to back that concern up. That, however, isnt the case now. The data is in and it demonstrates that we have more challenges ahead of us.

HB-5 defined five different endorsement pathways students could take through high school, and only one of those five, STEM, requires a student to take math up through Algebra II. For all other students, Algebra II and higher math courses are optional. One thing we all believe is that if challenging courses are optional, the chances are pretty high that they wont be taken.

The E3 Alliance recently released a study on math courses being taken by students across the state. The study examined the relationship between the highest level of math students took and passed in high school and their subsequent education outcomes across Texas. The findings supported what the business community has been saying: rigorous math courses in high school are critical for college readiness. The study also shows that even taking and passing Algebra II, now optional for most students, is not nearly enough. Those students who pass Algebra II have only a one in five chance of getting any higher education credential within six years of graduating - that means everything from a four-year bachelors degree to a two-year associates degree to even a post-secondary certification for a specific job.

Think about that for a minute. Because of current state law that doesnt require higher level math courses, your kids only have a one in five chance of getting a post-secondary credential of any kind. That doesnt spell success for our childrens future or the future of our workforce in Texas.

Compare, for instance, students who only passed a year of math beyond Algebra II, that would be Pre-Calculus. Those students had a one in two chance of getting a college credential, far better than the one in five chance without taking higher math courses. Students who took any AP math were three times as likely to complete college than those who took just Algebra II. So the more rigorous math courses our students take, the better their chances get. Here is the key -- four years of math in four years of high school. That goal will be made even easier because soon there will be more math options for students to choose from.

There needs to be a greater awareness among students, families, counselors and our policy makers that it is critical for students to take advanced math classes to greatly increase their chances of graduating career and college ready, completing higher education and competing for high wage jobs. Lets make it our state mantra: Math Matters! It matters for the success of our kids and the future prosperity of our state to continue to grow and develop our workforce.

There is a real cause for concern when we lower our expectations for what our students can achieve. In the past, every time we have raised the bar for our students and teachers, both have answered the bell and raised achievement levels. This is not something we should be fearful of or fight against. Our students and our teachers can meet these challenges if we raise standards. We cant keep lowering academic requirements and expect students to be ready for college, careers and life.
(Artists) hope our work will survive ... and that it will mean something to people as time goes by.

- Woody Gwyn

It is hard to think of renown southwestern landscape painter Woody Gwyn and that his work hasnt mattered.

On the contrary; it matters very much. It doesnt matter if the artwork is on display in Santa Fe, New Mexico, or in Midland, where it has been on display at the Museum of the Southwest. Gwyn said the show, which ends this week, is his third at the local museum.

But that doesnt stop his work from being seen.

Gwyn is a graduate of Midland High -- Class of 1962 -- and for decades, thousands of students have seen Gwyns work -- whether they realized it or not -- as they ascended or descended a staircase on the schools east side.

Far above the reach of any student or school employee hangs Gwyns giant mural of an oil rig at night.

----

Gwyn is reserved in his comments about the mural because its been more than five decades since he created the work of art and handed -- the gift of the Class of 1962.

I was 18 years old when I did it, Gwyn said in a telephone interview from his residence at Galisteo, New Mexico. Dorothy Perkins, an English teacher at the time -- it was her idea for me to paint (the mural) on behalf of the graduating class.

He said that the Class of 62 got the materials for him, including linen on which to paint the mural. School officials allowed him to use a classroom by the auditorium as a studio. Gwyn recalls working on the mural most of the school year.

It is wonderful that it is still there and there are people that want to save it, he said.

---

Enter art restoration expert Steven Prins of Santa Fe. He was in Midland last month to inspect the 6-foot-by-18 foot painting. He is expected to provide a report on its condition and offer an opinion of what could be done to restore it.

Recently the school board addressed the painting and got an update on the privately funded restoration project. There was even talk about whether -- looking ahead -- Midland High is the proper place for the Gwyn mural. Could another place, such as the Petroleum Museum, be a better place so more people who appreciate art could see Gwyns gift?

Thats a decision for later. Prins said the painting is overdue for restoration and that hes honored to be part of the process.

He said people have repainted places on the mural because of damage. He said his proposal will include treatment options and whether the painting can be removed so it could be remounted on to a new support for preservation purposes.

----

Gwyn had a passion for art and the stage, according to his sister, Norma (Gwyn) Baumann, MHS class of 1954. She still lives in Midland.

I love the subject matter, because I love West Texas, Baumann said.

She said the painting is different than what most people who know Gwyns work would expect. Gwyn told the Reporter-Telegram that while he has returned to Midland several times -- most recently five or six years ago -- he hasnt seen the painting in decades.

It is a great thing they are doing (restoring the mural), he said. It is wonderful how Midland has been supportive of me throughout the years.
The cable news talking heads are calling for Hillary Clinton to release her medical records. After the weekends medical episode at the 9/11 event and the subsequent announcement that she was diagnosed Friday with pneumonia, they think that disclosing this information will do her right by the voters.

If it were anyone other than Hillary Clinton, that would make sense. At this point there is no reason for the American people to believe that Clinton is shooting straight with them.

For local Democrats, the Clinton campaign has to be a head-shaker. Her Republican opponent made this election hers to lose, and shes close to losing it.

Her handling of the email and server issues has been one of the biggest political disasters in recent memory. It has been one failed attempt after another to cover up the truth. An August Fox News poll showed 36 percent of Americans trusted Clinton. That was before her latest email issues and this health episode. Remember, earlier in the week Clinton had laughed off concerns about her health.

So what if she releases her health records? Does anyone believe Clinton is going to release any information she deems disconcerting? We dont think so. Her history is to release less information and blame someone else for her or her familys alleged shortcomings.

Clinton is supposed to take off to get some rest. We hope her health does improve. But she knows, her opponent knows and the media that appears ready to pounce knows that she will need her strength. She was caught over the weekend talking about how half of Trumps voters can be placed in to a basket of deplorables. There was no justification for the attack on people who might be supporting Trump because they dislike her politics, who vote Republican because thats what they do or will vote for Trump because hes the so-called outsider. She mixed them in with the David Dukes and racists who make up a small fringe of Trumps supporters.

Make no mistake -- we are not fans of Donald Trump. He doesnt come close to representing the values of conservative West Texans. Hes been a disaster of a candidate who appears content to take down the party he represents.

But Clinton is an elitist, is untrustworthy and is an unlikeable candidate whos taken advantage of a political system to personally benefit herself and her family. Now shes asking Americans to elect her to become the next president so she can deliver four more years of President Obamas failed policies at home and abroad. Shes no different than Trump in that she will use the politics of divisiveness to get her way, no matter who she has to walk over to make that happen.

She started with Bernie Sanders voters. She then gave a political stiff-arm to those who requested she tell the truth about her email/server situation. She laughed off those who suggested her health wasnt what it appeared. She continues by degrading decent people who have committed themselves to Trump. Whos next?

We are afraid to ask. You might be next.
According to news reports, the violence erupted due to a fight over traffic

Two Christians were injured on Monday when violence erupted between Muslims and Christians in a remote Minya village, the local Coptic Orthodox bishop announced on Tuesday.

According to a short statement issued by Bishop Makarious of Minya, a fight took place between Muslim and Christian youth at 10am on Monday in Assam village.

Bishop Makarious added that the security forces arrived immediately at the scene and 20 Muslims and 17 Christians were arrested; the general prosecution is investigating the incident.

He also said that two Christians were transferred to the hospital after being injured in the clashes, including a man in a very critical condition.

The bishop added that the same village witnessed similar sectarian clashes in July and implied that no one was held accountable.

According to news reports on Tuesday, the sectarian clashes erupted when a Muslim young man and a Christian young man fought over traffic and who would move first. As the fight expanded, several Christian-owned properties were torched.

Minya has seen a number of incidents of sectarian violence in recent months, usually resolved by authorities via traditional reconciliation sessions between local community leaders.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egypt will build a memorial for Mexican tourists killed by a mistake in May 2015 , says Mexico's government

Egypt will build a memorial for Mexican tourists mistakenly killed in a military strike last year while a travel association will compensate their families and survivors, Mexico's government said Tuesday.

Eight tourists and four Egyptians were killed by security forces on September 13, 2015 when they came under fire during a lunch break in Egypt's vast Western Desert while on their way to the Bahariya oasis.

Survivors have told Mexican diplomats that they came under fire from a plane and helicopters.

Egypt said the tourists had entered a restricted area and were "mistakenly" killed as security forces chased jihadists.

Mexico's foreign ministry said in a statement that the Egyptian Travel Agents Association has agreed to provide an "economic compensation" to the survivors and families of the dead.

The ministry did not provide a monetary figure but the association said in May that it had paid $140,000 each to the families of three of the victims after they agreed not to press legal proceedings against Egypt.

Ahmed Ibrahim, treasurer of the Egyptian Travel Agents Association, told AFP at the time that the group agreed to compensate them after an investigation found that the travel agency looking after the tourists was responsible for their deaths.

In January, Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu said Egypt's tourism ministry "found that the administrative authorities and the travel agency should have had more clarity on the permit" to visit the desert.

The ministry did not indicate where the memorial for the Mexican and Egyptian victims would be built but it said that Egyptian authorities agreed to erect it "as one of the measures for reparations."

Search Keywords:

Short link:


We have been cursed with leaders ...
Syria's military said it shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone early Tuesday in response to an attack on Syrian army positions -- a claim denied by Israel.

"Our air defences blocked the attack and shot down the military aircraft in (the southern province of) Quneitra and a drone" in the province of Damascus, said the Syrian army statement carried by state news agency SANA.

It accused Israeli forces of supporting "armed terrorist groups" in the country's south.

The Israeli army said none of its aircraft had been downed.

"Overnight two surface-to-air missiles were launched from Syria after the (Israeli) mission overnight to target Syrian artillery positions," military spokesman Arye Shalicar said.

"At no point was the safety of (Israeli) aircraft compromised. Nothing true about what they claim."

The Israeli military earlier said it targeted Syrian army positions after stray fire from its war-torn neighbour hit the Israeli-held zone of the Golan Heights on Monday.

An Israeli military spokeswoman told AFP Monday's projectile was most likely not intentional, rather spillover from "internal fighting in Syria."

It was the fourth such incident in nine days, and came as a new Syrian ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States came into force on Monday.

The initial 48-hour truce does not apply to areas held by Islamist militants such as the Islamic State (IS) group.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Countries are increasingly refusing to cooperate with the UN on human rights, the world body warned Tuesday, voicing alarm at situations in dozens of states, including Syria, Iran and Venezuela.

"States may shut my office out, but they will not shut us up; neither will they blind us," UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, opening the 32nd session of the UN Human Rights Council.

He decried "an emerging pattern" in which a growing number of states were refusing access to his staff and other UN representatives tasked with investigating allegations of rights violations in their countries.

Zeid voiced alarm at the situation in war-ravaged Syria, where no UN human rights monitors have been allowed in since the deadly conflict erupted in March 2011.

"This is a state led by a medical doctor and yet is believed to have gassed its own people," he said, also decrying attacks on hospitals and civilians neighbourhoods, and the detention of tens of thousands of people in "inhuman conditions".

"Words cannot convey how profoundly I condemn this situation," he said.

Zeid also criticised Venezuela, which for the past two and a half years has refused to even issue a visa to his representative in the region.

"Its comprehensive denial of access to my staff is particularly shocking in the light of our acute concerns regarding allegations of repression of opposition voices and civil society groups," he said.

Among his concerns he listed arbitrary arrests, excessive use of force against peaceful protests, and a dramatic decline in economic and social rights that has sparked widespread hunger.

Iran meanwhile had blocked all access to his staff since 2013, which he said was "particularly regrettable given the reports we continue to receive of fundamental problems with the administration of criminal justice" in the country.

Especially worrying, is the "continued execution of large numbers of people, including juveniles", he said.

Belarus, Eritrea and North Korea have also flatly refused all access by UN rights monitors, while Israel has repeatedly refused to cooperate with probes into the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, he said.

Zeid also slammed the Turkey for not allowing his staff into its restive southeastern region, despite "repeated and serious allegations" of violations including "extrajudicial killings and massive displacement" amid demolition of entire towns and villages.

Zeid stressed that rights investigators would not turn a blind eye to situations simply because they were blocked from investigating them on the ground.

"If access is refused us, we will assume the worst," he said.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Sacramento, CA  The California Farm Bureau and the Mother Lodes state Senator are criticizing a bill signed into law yesterday by Governor Jerry Brown.

It requires farmworkers to receive the same overtime pay as employees in other industries. Farmworkers will start receiving overtime pay after eight hours per day or 40 hours per week, as opposed to the current rules of 10 hours per day or 60 hours per week.

District 8 Republican Senator Tom Berryhill says, Of the 789 bills presented to the Governor in the final days of the legislative session, no one bill will be ultimately more devastating to the California economy than Assembly Bill 1066. While well intended, this bill will result in less income for the agricultural worker.

Paul Wegner, President of the California Farm Bureau Federation was also dire about the legislation, saying, Those who work on California farms will see reduced paychecks and have their lives disrupted as these new worker overtime rules come into play. California consumers will have fewer opportunities to buy California-grown farm products that are produced under the most stringent food safety, employment and environmental rules in the world.

Proponents, however, praised the bill as a way to give equal protections and rights to California farmworkers.
Congressman Tom McClintock View Photos

Washington D.C.  Local Congressman Tom McClintock spoke to the National Association of Counties about Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) money calling the Federal Government an inattentive and incompetent landlord.

Congressman McClintock told the Association, PILT funding only makes a small dent in this bad situationOur intermediate goal must be long term reauthorization, so that you dont have to come back here every six to 12 months, and stated, Counties impacted by excessive federal land ownership should not have to beg to reauthorize this compensation every year.

His remarks build on his earlier statements that the Federal Government owns an excessive amount of land in California and other western states. McClintock states Mariposa County in my district includes Yosemite Valley, one of the crown jewels of the National Park System. Obviously, the federal governments presence there is essential for the preservation of this national treasure But weve got to restore balance and common sense to federal land ownership and management. He also provides details on Tuolumne and Fresno County as big recipients of PILT funding in his district. His full statement is in his new blog Payments In Lieu Of Taxes here.
Sacramento, CA  Arguing that it would cost the state over $300 million through the next fiscal year, the Governor has vetoed seven bills.

The package of bills nixed by the Governor Jerry Brown Tuesday he described as supporting new tax breaks or expanding on existing ones. The Governor explained that his decision was key to both maintaining the states fiscal stability and budget in balance.

Brown stated, As I said last year, tax breaks are the same as new spending  they both cost the General Fund money. As such, they must be considered during budget deliberations so that all spending proposals are weighed against each other at the same time. This is even more important when the states budget remains precariously balanced. Therefore, I cannot sign these measures.

Among the legislation Brown refused to enact are AB 717 and AB 1561, which would have ended the California sales tax on diapers and feminine hygiene products; SB 907 that sought to provide mortgage debt forgiveness for homeowners through tax relief; AB 2728, allowing tax credits for a variety of community development-related investments; and AB 2127, providing tax breaks on certain motor vehicle fuels. Two more, SB 898 and AB 724 would have respectively excluded from state sales taxes animal blood sold by nonprofit animal blood banks for animal medical treatments and items purchased by certain museums solely for display purposes.
Ormond Beach Police are searching for a man whom they say posed as an Uber driver in order to lure a group of women into his car.

Incident reported by actual Uber driver

Occurred outside downtown Ormond Beach restaurant

Fake Uber driver sped off when 'real' driver arrived

Officials said the incident, which happened Friday, was reported to Ormond Beach Police by an actual Uber driver who heard about it from the women.

According to Ormond Beach Police:

The women said they were waiting for an Uber driver to pick them up outside a downtown Ormond Beach restaurant when they were approached by the suspected fake Uber driver. The driver asked them whether they were waiting for an Uber driver  when they replied "yes," he told them he was their driver and to get in.



One of the women in the group, however, noticed that the driver and car did not match the description that Uber specified for their intended driver. The driver reportedly continued to insist they get in the car until the "real" Uber driver arrived. The first driver then sped off.

The women described the suspected fake Uber driver as a Hispanic man with a muscular build, with teardrop-shaped tattoos on his face. They described the driver's car as a "tricked out" Chrysler, black in color, with a Tennessee license plate.

Police urged the public to verify their taxi/transportation services and to use the security features on the Uber app. Those features include a picture of the driver, the driver's vehicle and the vehicle's tag number, when requested. Police also asked that, because the incident was reported third-hand, the potential victims and any other residents who might have had similar experiences to contact Sgt. D.W. Smith at (386) 676-3520.
The man arrested Monday in connection with the case of a woman found dismembered in Lake Underhill has been formally charged with first-degree murder, Orlando Police said Tuesday.

Rafael Gonzalez arrested Monday on destruction of evidence charge

Charges added Tuesday: 1st-degree murder, abuse of a dead human body

Person who lived near Gonzalez: 'They didn't seem like trouble'

Rafael Gonzalez, 46, was also charged with abuse of a dead human body in Olivia Diggs' killing.

"I'm going to go to every court date there is for this man," said Susan Friel, a friend Diggs. "And I'm going to make sure that he never gets back on the street and hurts another woman."

Friel said that the women supported each other through rough times, from homelessness to recovery. Friel continues to relive the moment she heard her friend with "the contagious smile" was dead.

"I didn't believe it," she said. "There was no way it could possible be Olivia. I had just spoken to her. I started calling people trying to find out if this was real. And it was. And I immediately went to the lake."

Gonzalez was initially arrested Monday and charged with destruction of evidence after a four-day search of his home along Dorado Avenue in Orlando. He didn't appear before a judge Tuesday morning as scheduled, and "mental health" was cited.

Investigators began searching Gonzalez's home Friday. By 11 a.m. Tuesday, crime scene tape was removed, and the man's roommates were back in the house.

A four-page police report said human blood was found in Gonzalez's bedroom, under floorboards and furniture. Orlando Police on Tuesday said written confirmation was received from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's lab on the blood match. Additional charges were added.

UPDATE: Rafael Gonzalez charged with first degree murder and abuse of a dead human body in Olivia Diggs killing. pic.twitter.com/dq6cymlZmV  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) September 13, 2016

Todd Pastore has lived in the neighborhood since 2012.

"I would see them outside, but honestly, that house almost seemed invisible," Pastore said. "They weren't noisy, they wouldn't party, they didn't seem like trouble."

Pastore said he never thought suspicious activity could be going on at Gonzalez's house.

Gonzalez's roommate told investigators that he saw Diggs, 32, sitting outside on the same day she was murdered.

"It is creepy," Pastore said. "It's really creepy."

Investigators on Monday said they believe Gonzalez met Diggs on a LYNX bus, where they exchanged phone numbers. After meeting on the bus, the two spoke on the phone, and Diggs later arrived at the Dorado Avenue home located near Lake Underhill and State Road 408.

Diggs' body was found dismembered Aug. 22 in Lake Underhill. A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer found Diggs' body.

Friel said that she now goes to Lake Underhill every day.

"I go to talk to Olivia," she said.



Olivia Diggs, 32, was found dismembered in a shallow area of Lake Underhill on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. (Orlando Police Department)
Ukraine said Tuesday that pro-Russian insurgents had killed three of its soldiers in violation of a truce the foreign ministers of Germany and France will try to revive in Kiev this week.

"In the past day, as a result of combat, tragically, three Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 15 of our fighters were wounded. One serviceman remains unaccounted for," military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told reporters.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


SpaceX plans to return to flight in November, but not at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

SpaceX announces November target for return to flight



Launch to happen at Kennedy Space Center or Vandenberg



Cape Canaveral AFS launch pad damaged in explosion

RELATED: Upcoming Space Coast launch schedule



SpaceX announced Tuesday that it would target November for a return-to-launch date, but that launch would either happen at Kennedy Space Center or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.



Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was damaged earlier this month when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded before a test firing.

SpaceX is still investigating the "anomaly" that caused the explosion. The rocket was being fueled ahead of the test when it exploded. SpaceX thinks the explosion occurred around the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.

SpaceX did not say how badly the launch pad was damaged in the explosion, except that it was definitely damaged and that they're investigating.

SpaceX took over Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center and has been upgrading the pad. It was on schedule to be operational in November. So was the company's launch complex at Vandenberg.

If SpaceX does launch a mission in November, it will be a regular Falcon 9 rocket launch. A planned Falcon 9 Heavy lauch will now occur sometime early in 2017, the company said.

If SpaceX chooses KSC for a November launch, it will be the first time Kennedy's Launch Pad 39A has been used since the space shuttle program shut down in 2011.


This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Mariya Hapiy, pronounced Maria Happy, has been librarian at Unger Memorial Library for four months. Recently she spoke to Hi-Plains Genealogical Society about the happy chance that led her to the United States and, eventually to Plainview.

Hapiy was born in Chortkiv, a city just a little larger than Plainview in western Ukraine. Her upbringing was middle class: her father drove a fire truck, and her mother worked in a grocery store. Now retired, the couple owns and runs a hobby farm.

In contrast to Plainview, Ukraine is hilly country, a beautiful country with beautiful traditions, Hapiy said. There are four distinct seasons with extreme temperatures and plenty of snow. The economy is a mixture of agriculture and industry.

It was in Chortkiv that Hapiy developed the love of learning that led her to acquire a masters of education degree and become a teacher of English at the elementary level. She explains that in the Ukraine, grades 1-4 are kept together and taught most of their subjects by the same teacher. Usually students graduate with the same classmates they started with.

One of the lessons Hapiy learned as an elementary teacher was never to lower yourself to a childs level. Instead, You must grow to a childs level.

While she was teaching, Hapiy met a Peace Corps worker from Indiana named Robert Hurst. The couple married in 2008 in the Ukraine, and they came to the United States.

Hapiy began work as a volunteer library aide and certified medication aide at Reinhardt Elementary School in Dallas. She enjoyed her work so much that she decided to further her education in library work.

After receiving her Masters of Library Science from Texas Womens University in Denton, Hapiy went on to work as a metadata creator in the Special Collections Catalog at Central University Library at Southern Methodist University.

Metadata allows people the opportunity to access information from all over the world. As an example, Hapiy showed the group a picture and information from the Ware Hotel in Plainview dated 1926 with a reference to Richland College in Dallas.

Hapiy introduced her vision for the Unger Library by paraphrasing Nelson Mandela. Courage is not an absence of fear. Courage is triumph over fear.

Hapiy sees Unger Memorial Library becoming a 21st century library that can gather the community together so that they can share their gifts and talents to promote services and resources.

One of the positive aspects of Unger is the Hale County Cemetery Database, established by previous librarian John Sigwald.

The database is updated daily with people from all over the world, who not only make corrections but add information, Hapiy said.

Hapiy listed Unger Memorial Librarys extensive resources including more than 50,000 books in print, 2,000 books on CDs and around 2,000 films.

In addition, the library has more than 100 magazine subscriptions in print.

Thats a rarity in libraries now that everything is going online, getting lost in this huge cyberspace. The Unger is a place where people can actually come in, sit down and enjoy reading the newspaper, Hapiy said.

In addition to 15 public access computers, the library has four childrens computers, thanks to Hale County Literacy Council.

Parents really like the childrens computers, especially when their child doesnt have a computer at home, Hapiy said.

Faxes and circulating Kindles are also available at the library.

When a parent is deciding whether to buy a book or a Kindle edition for a child, Buy them both, Hapiy suggests. Let them make their own choices.

One of Hapiys goals is to improve the librarys webpage, which she calls the digital face of the library.

While Unger Memorial has an extensive genealogy section, it is catalogued under its own system that doesnt correspond to either the Dewey Decimal or the Library of Congress classification.

Theres an enormous amount of information, Hapiy said. Her vision for the genealogy section is to learn the system and catalog the many books that remain uncatalogued. She and the society pledged to help one another in the effort.

Hapiys daughter Viktoriya recently turned 15. She is enrolled at Plainview High School. Hapiys is a library associate at Dallas Public Library.

I truly feel like I belong here, Hapiy said. We have all the resources, strong technical support and a highly professional staff. The community comes to us and asks how they can help. They offer to volunteer.

Unger Memorial Library is located at 825 N. Austin St. For more information, call 806-296-1148 or go visit them on the web at unger.myplainview.com.
MERIDEN  Police will be patrolling the Meriden Green during the day and night while the City Council continues to discuss the idea of hiring park rangers.



While the councils finance committee recommended adopting a job description for the park ranger position at a Sept. 6 meeting, the full City Council decided to send the matter back to the finance committee for further discussion because of concerns about salary and responsibilities.



The council decided to suspend the idea of rangers. There was a lot of controversy, a lot of questions regarding the price and things like that, so we are not instituting rangers right away, Mayor Kevin Scarpati said Monday. We have an arrangement with the (police) department to make sure we have officers actively at the park, especially during the overnight hours to keep an eye on things.



Under city ordinance, the park closes 30 minutes after sundown. Residents will also not be allowed to use the bridge across the park, according to Sgt. Christopher Fry, a police spokesman.



Fry said that regardless of whether park rangers are hired, police will maintain a constant presence at the Green.



Were going to have continuous patrols throughout the parks existence, Fry said.



At its last meeting, the City Council voted to fund $60,000 in police overtime so the department could restore a resource officer for the elementary schools after Police Chief Jeffry Cossette said staffing and funding issues led to the position being cut. Fry could not say how many officers would be patrolling the Green at once, but said with the resources we have were going to do the best we can to preserve the integrity and safety of the park.



Fry said he does not believe increasing police presence at the park will jeopardize police coverage of other areas.



We do a pretty good job at maintaining an omnipresence throughout the city to the best of our ability, Fry said.



Fry said he doesnt think keeping people out of the park at night will be a problem.



What increases our ability to patrol the area is the fact that its so well lit, he said.



Although the unarmed park rangers were initially conceived as 10-month positions, City Manager Guy Scaife said the city is looking to make the jobs year round.



That has been rethought and its going to come forward as a full-time position, he said.



Finance Director Michael Lupkas said the position would pay between $35,339 and $48,006 a year. The city would be looking to hire two rangers who would work during the day, Lupkas said.



Scaife said the ranger position is critical to maintaining the parks integrity.



This is a $15.5 million investment, but its more than just that. (It) is the start, and I think a critical piece, as we move forward with really massive economic development in our city, Scaife said. That area has to be clean and safe and very inviting.



City Councilor David Lowell said the finance committee should better define the purpose of the park ranger.



Is it a public safety officer because people think its unsafe or is it a resource that people in the park can go ask a question? he said.



City Council Majority Leader Brian Daniels said that with police presence, a ranger may not be needed for public safety purposes.



I think the park is safe regardless of whether we put a park ranger there or not, Daniels said.



Daniels said with the park being open and illuminated at night, he expects residents will want to explore it after hours.



My guess is that youre going to have that curiosity, I think, for awhile. People are going to go down and look at it and well deal with it, but Im not looking at having a problem with people going in there after dusk; Im just not concerned about that, Daniels said.



City Councilor Miguel Castro said the park should be accessible to the public at night, much like the New Haven Green remains open.



This is a downtown green, it falls under the umbrella of city parks, but it shouldnt be subject to that kind of mandate in my opinion, Castro said. We have a green for a purpose, lets use it.



The finance committee is expected to discuss park rangers again at its Sept. 27 meeting.



ltauss@record-journal.com 203-317-2231 Twitter: @LeighTaussRJ






Scalias legacy



Editor:



The fairly recent passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia led to media gushing for his polished opinions, his pointed attacks on his adversaries, his charming ways, and his exemplary family life, but omitted his corporate hobnobbing. Clearly, Im a nay-sayer for this Scalia fan club.



Ive heard that God, upon our deaths, will ask us, not about high places and rich corporate friends, but What did you do for the least of my brethren? If we dare use Mother Teresa or Mohandas Gandhi as benchmarks, we all fall terribly short, even writing checks for good causes, volunteering in soup kitchens, working politically, etc. Unfortunately, the poor are effectively hidden from us, unless we shop regularly at inner-city Wal-Marts or frequent homeless shelters. We have to work hard to see them, and work harder to find and address their needs.



But how about if we spend our vacations hobnobbing with the wealthy, as Justice Scalia was doing at his death, a frequent practice of his, a nice perk. Only the naive would believe that we are not influenced, significantly, by those we spend time with.



By their deeds you will know them. Two critical decisions of Justice Scalia are Citizens United and Shelby vs. Holder, both of which gravely affect the little people. The first licensed the wealthy to write checks that make the contributions of the rest of us virtually irrelevant, allowing dark money to unduly influence decision-making from the highest to most local offices. The second gutted critical section five of the Voting Rights Act, giving eager Southern states the means to disenfranchise thousands, via bills enacted in the name of voter fraud. These critical decisions, both 5-4, and both of which erode the power of democracy, are the hidden but real legacy of the late Antonin Scalia.



Michael Gannon, Wallingford



A puzzlement



Editor:



I read with puzzlement Raymond J. Ryss letter (9/7/16) about his support of Donald Trump. I dont understand how a combat veteran of Vietnam can support a man who mocked a fellow veterans (John McCain) POW experience: Hes not a war hero ... Hes a war hero because he was captured. I like people that werent captured. Lets not also forget how he criticized a Gold Star familys loss and his callous remarks about how easy it was for him to obtain a Purple Heart medal. Trump has stated he knows more about ISIS than our generals. Really? This is coming from a man who thinks attending a military academy makes him an authority on warfare and who has never served in the military. He has no understanding how NATO works or the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent. America: Is this the kind of person we want to lead our troops?



John F. Colaresi, South Meriden



Research needed



Editor:



Recently, I read a letter to the Editor in the Meriden Record-Journal by Michael S. Rhode. After reading the letter, I wondered who exactly lives on Fantasy Island? Mr. Rhode stated, The Democratic Party supports working men and women. How can that be when the State of Connecticut is currently broke and our Democratic governor wants to bring refugees into the state. But who will support them, the middle class! Under Gov. Molloy, we have had the biggest tax increases and the greatest losses to our economic base because the cost of doing business is too high in Connecticut. Now, if you please, turn to the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton who vowed in speeches in the past two weeks to raise taxes on the middle class. So, how do the Democrats support working men and women and then raise their taxes and cause them to lose jobs? I do believe Mr. Rhode should do some research and find out who is helping the middle class!



John J. Anzidei, Wallingford














This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway Co. is opening a $40 million switching yard in Von Ormy in southwestern Bexar County, aimed at speeding rail service into and out of South Texas and Mexico.

The new rail facility, the Cadet Yard, begins operations at a time when U.S. rail traffic has declined due to softness in the energy and manufacturing sectors, according to the Association of American Railroads.

U.S. carload traffic, including intermodal containers and trailers, in 2015 totaled 27.97 million carloads, down 2.5 percent from the year before. Mexican rail volumes, however, were on the rise last year, nearly reaching 1.4 million loads, up 1.1 percent from 2014.

Before opening the Cadet Yard  which will handle sand, ethanol and other fuels, grain, autos, auto parts and consumer goods  BNSF Railway routed freight from Mexico, crossing the border at Eagle Pass, to a BNSF switching yard in Temple, company spokesman Joe Faust said.

The new yard will receive and sort trains with mixed freight and reorganize the cars for delivery to customers, Faust said in an interview. It will take pressure off of the Temple yard and move freight sorting closer to Texas and Mexico for more efficient and quicker service to customers, he said.

The site used to be a passenger railway station that routed new Air Force recruits to basic training at Lackland AFB, Faust said.

The BNSF Cadet Yard will operate 365 days a year and already employs 85 people, 20 of them new hires, Faust and San Antonio Economic Development Foundation CEO Jenna Saucedo-Herrera said Tuesday.

Saucedo-Herrera said the switching yard will be a great value to existing and potential new companies in San Antonio. No local government incentives were used for the project, she said.

The Cadet Yard is an asset for the areas connectivity landscape, she said. It will enhance logistics, especially to Mexico.

The new yard features 10 tracks and a side track for parking railcars away from the main tracks. It will have the capacity to hold 350 railcars.

Railroad tracks in the San Antonio area are all owned by Omaha, Nebraska-based Union Pacific Railroad. BNSF Railway has a trackage-rights agreement with Union Pacific to operate in the San Antonio area.

BNSFs 32,500-mile network includes five border connections. In addition to the Eagle Pass crossing, the others are at Brownsville, El Paso, Laredo and San Diego.

dhendricks@express-news.net
(Beijing)  Thirty years after entering China, U.S. fast-food giants Yum Brands and McDonald's are changing their recipes for business operations in the country, with each using the same recipe  offloading their respective China operations.

In early September, Yum, which owns the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains, announced a sale of a slice of its China operations to private equity fund Primavera Capital Group and Ant Financial Services Group, which is affiliated with Alibaba Group. The move is a step in the company's plan to spin off its China operation and list it on the New York Stock Exchange separately.

The deal came as Yum's archrival, McDonald's, said in March it will sell 20-year franchise rights for its restaurants in China, Hong Kong and South Korea, a move that attracted suitors like U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group and Chinese state-backed conglomerate CITIC Group.

Both Yum and McDonald's are reshuffling their China operations partly due to "pressures from investors," said an investor who closely followed the Yum and McDonald's deals and who asked not to be named.

The companies are "taking the chance to cash out during the market downturn and reduce risks in the regional business," said the investor, adding that both companies showed a clear intention to "improve (their) market value" in the short term.

Since KFC opened its first China outlet near Tiananmen Square in 1987, and McDonald's entered Shenzhen three years later, the smiling Colonel Sanders of KFC and the golden arches of McDonald's have battled side by side in China to become ubiquitous icons of Western tastes.

Yum now operates about 5,000 KFCs and 3,000 Pizza Huts in China, which contribute over a half of the company's global revenue and profit, whereas McDonald's runs 2,200 Chinese outlets, accounting for about 5 percent of its revenue worldwide.

But both Yum and McDonald's have seen their luster dim as China's fast-food industry has grown from nothing to a multibillion-dollar market. Chinese diners, who once saw KFC's fried chicken and McDonald's burgers as a special treat, are now turning to more-diverse options as their incomes grow.

A series of food-safety scandals between 2012 and 2014, in which local suppliers of KFC and McDonald's were found using substandard food products, resulted in many consumers shying away from the brands.

In 2015, Yum reported $6.9 billion of sales in China, up from $6.3 billion the previous year. However, China's same-store sales declined 4 percent in 2015, continuing a slide since 2013.

Spinoff Sought

The plan to spin off Yum's China operations was pushed forward in May 2015 by two activist investors  Dan Loeb, founder of hedge fund Third Point LLC, and Keith Meister of Corvex Management LP  after the company reported a 6 percent decline in China sales in the first quarter. Operating profit in China decreased 31 percent, according to the company's financial report.

"Backed by investors, Yum's headquarters worked out a licensing plan specially designed for the China division, which requires Yum China to pay a 3 percent royalty rate," said a source close to Yum's China operations.

In October, Yum officially announced the spinoff plan to be completed by the end of 2016. Chief Executive Greg Creed said in a statement that the separation of the China business will bring up to $6.2 billion in capital returns to shareholders.

"Chinese investors are definitely interested in targets like KFC and McDonald's, but their interest stems from the controlling stake," said Wang Ou, director of sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp.'s private equity department.

Sources with knowledge of the matter told Caixin that a consortium consisting of CIC, U.S private equity firm KKR & Co., Hopu Investment Management Co. and Taiwan's Baring Private Equity Asia had sought to buy Yum China. Other potential suitors also approached Yum, including Primavera Capital and Singapore's Temasek Holdings.

But Yum China's spinoff and asset sale may lead to a payment of as much as $5 billion in capital gains taxes and other taxes. Yum had hoped the acquirer would shoulder all the payments in any buyout deal, but that turned off most bidders, according to an investor who participated in the bidding.

According to the final sales plan, Primavera Capital, founded by former Goldman Sachs Greater China Chairman Fred Hu, invested $410 million while Ant Financial invested $50 million for Yum China shares. They will get an 8 percent discount to the average share price of Yum China traded between 31 days and 60 days after it is listed. It will also grant the two investors a combined 4.3 percent to 5.4 percent stake in Yum China, based on its current valuation of $8.5 billion to $10.5 billion. Primavera Capital and Ant Financial will also have warrants to increase their ownership to nearly 10 percent in five years.

Rather than a takeover, the deal "is more of getting cornerstone investors from China to take part in Yum's business spinoff plan," said a source close to the deal who asked not to be named.

Market analysts said bringing in Chinese investors will help Yum China enhance government relationships and further localize its business. Some say the partnership with Ant Financial will allow the company to better access the country's fast-growing online food-booking market.

But a source close to Ant Financials' management said that with merely a 0.5 percent stake in Yum China, the deal "is just a financial investment."

Seeking Franchising

While Yum is working on the spinoff plan, McDonald's is also seeking to revamp its China business in an alternate way. The U.S. burger chain announced in March the auction of 20-year franchise rights in China, involving 1,500 restaurants, as well as new outlets to open. The franchise-right sales will not affect McDonald's existing franchise restaurants. The deal will not include any asset sales, McDonald's said in response to Caixin's request.

Caixin learned from sources close to McDonald's that a long list of potential bidders has shown their interests in the McDonald's franchise rights, including hotel chain operator GreenTree Inn, China National Chemical Corp, China Cinda Asset Management Corp and Beijing Capital Tourism Co.

An executive whose company participated in the bidding said that because McDonald's prefers bidders with related business backgrounds, it did not have a plan to list the China operations with a way for investors to exit, so most private equity investors have dropped out.

Several sources close to the matter told Caixin that Beijing Capital Agribusiness Group, the partner of McDonald's China joint ventures, and a team formed by U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group and state-backed conglomerate CITIC Group are considered the main contenders to buy the franchise.

One source close to the deal said CITIC has been determined to win the deal and has started finding professionals to form the management team. One of them is Sam Su, the long-term head of Yum China operations who quit in August 2015.

McDonald's has not yet revealed its price tag, but media have reported that the 20-year franchise right is likely to be valued at $2 billion to $3 billion. Several sources close to the bidding told Caixin that most suitors consider $1 billion to $2 billion to be a more acceptable price range for a deal.

The restructuring in China is part of McDonald's worldwide strategy to remake itself into an asset-light, franchise-focused model to revive growth following a continuous business slide since 2013. Last year, McDonald's Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook revealed a long-term goal to franchise 95 percent of its stores worldwide, up from the then-current 80 percent. By the end of 2015, only 30 percent of McDonald's stores in China were franchised, including those operated by its two 50-50 joint ventures in Beijing and Guangdong with Sanyuan Foods, a subsidiary of Beijing Capital Agribusiness Group.

An executive at a Shanghai-based restaurant chain said that unlike KFC, which has been operated by an independent team in China from the beginning, McDonald's China operations have been directly controlled from corporate headquarters in Chicago.

McDonald's material supply, equipment procurement and menu development in China must follow unified standards applied globally for McDonald's restaurants, which "ensures the quality," said an investor close to the company.

McDonald's has never released its China business figures, but data from its China partner Sanyuan Foods revealed lukewarm performance of its Beijing venture. In 2015, Beijing McDonald's reported 13.5 million yuan ($2 million) net profit from 2.8 billion yuan in revenue, rising slightly from 2.2 billion yuan in 2011, Sanyuan company reports showed.

"McDonald's has been losing money in every newly opened shop in China," said the restaurant chain executive.

But Easterbrook is expecting the franchise sale to unlock the potential of growth. "This will allow McDonald's to accelerate our growth and scale faster across diverse markets," he said in March. "Asia represents a significant area of opportunity."

Contact reporter Han Wei at weihan@caixin.com; editor Ken Howe at kennethhowe@caixin.com
Two young men who robbed high school students in Fairfield at gunpoint Monday morning prompted a school lockdown and led four police agencies on a high-speed chase that ended in Vallejo, where the suspects abandoned their car and tried to run away before being arrested, officials said.

The suspected robbers, ages 18 and 20, were using a .22 caliber rifle with a silencer attachment as they demanded property from three students at a parking lot on the 2500 block of North Texas Street in Fairfield.

Officers went to the parking lot about 7:30 a.m. and saw the car leaving, but instead of pulling over, the vehicle accelerated, said Lt. Rob Lenke of the Fairfield Police Department. Officers started to pursue it but had to stop because the number of children in the area made chasing after the car too dangerous, police said. The pair of robbers then went east on Interstate 80.

A description of the getaway car, a blue Nissan, was broadcast to other law enforcement agencies. Vacaville police soon found a car with a matching description in their city and tried to pull it over, but the car went west on I-80, at which point Solano County sheriffs deputies joined in the pursuit.

The suspects got off the highway in Vallejo and abandoned the car on the 300 block of Valle Vista Drive, where they tried to run away, officials said. A police dog quickly caught the suspected driver, 20-year-old Jakari Taylor of Sacramento. A few minutes later, Vallejo police arrested the suspected passenger, 18-year-old Jakobi Brumfield of Fairfield, hiding in the back yard of a nearby home.

As the search was going on for the second suspect, police issued a shelter-in-place order for students and staff at the nearby Vallejo High School, said Fairfield Police Lt. Kent Tribble.

The order was was lifted when police found Brumfield, he said.

A citizen spotted the gun on a sidewalk in Fairfield where the pursuit began, police said.

Taylor was booked into Solano County Jail on suspicion of robbery, attempted robbery, evading police, conspiracy and weapons violations. Brumfield was booked on suspicion of robbery, attempted robbery, conspiracy and resisting arrest.

Bill Hutchinson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: bhutchinson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @bill_hutchinson
Whether you stream, buy or rent, heres a look at whats new or notable in home video. Movies are available on streaming sites such as iTunes, Amazon and Vudu unless otherwise noted.

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother and Haunted Honeymoon: Young Frankenstein is endlessly rewatchable, but if you want to dig deeper into the late Gene Wilders film career, here are two movies he directed. A genre spoof with Marty Feldman and Madeline Khan, Sherlock is Mel Brooks light. The best thing about it is a rogues gallery of British character actors. Honeymoon is a throwback horror-comedy, Wilder and (Gilda) Radner meet the the Wolfman. It has a few laughs, not too many scares, and the never-to-be-forgotten sight of Radner and Dom DeLuis ballin the jack. (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

In theaters

Antibirth: Disgusting indie horror flicks drenched in psychedellic nightmare visions are surely nothing new, but they dont all star Natasha Lyonne (Orange is the New Black) and Oscar nominee Chloe Sevigny. Lyonne realizes shes pregnant not too long after a night of drunken abandon. Trouble is, she doesnt know who the father is. Even more trouble: She soon has reason to suspect the father may not be human.

Rent it now

The Conjuring 2: If The Conjuring kept you up at night, so will the similar but still effective sequel. (Its like another episode of Law and Order: Demonic Possession Unit.) This time the action moves to late70s London, where a single mom (Frances OConnor) has plenty on her hands before her adolescent daughter starts teleporting around the house.

Love & Friendship: The settings, the costumes, the music are just about perfect in director Whit Stillmans adaptation of an early Jane Austen story. The plot, which revolves around a widow (Kate Beckinsale) and her daughter with a good name but no money, involves so much calculation that an advanced math degree may be required to understand it. See the movie anyway, if only for the hilarious performance by Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin, the dumbest man ever to offer a lady a reliable income.

Also: Captain America: Civil War, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Television

South Park: Season 19: If you want to understand the nostalgic appeal of Netflix hit Stranger Things, consider the present-day horrors another familiar group of schoolkids had to confront: PC police, Trump, internet bullies, ISIS panic and Yelpers. Kyle, Stan, Kenny and Cartman probably would have fared better against the Demogorgon. (Well, they did destroy the Yelpers.)

Also: American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson

In focus

Tale of Tales: Fairy tales are strange things, something this Italian import  based on the stories of Giambattista Basile, which influenced the Brothers Grimm  reminds viewers of again and again with its made-by-hand visual effects. Amazing sights abound in three interlocking tales exploring the dangers of desire. A scene in which a king (John C. Reilly) stalks an underwater beast could be the work of film pioneer Georges Melies  its that primal and odd.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The growing downtown bar scene added a new, boozy hangout to the mix this weekend that distills its vodka in-house.

Artisan Distillery and Drinks on Alamo, located at 315 8th St., celebrated its grand opening over the weekend with handcrafted vodka.

RELATED: Group party cycles hitting the San Antonio road soon

Owner and master distiller Nick Spink told mySA.com he runs a one-man production show at the micro distillery. He previously operated for four years at an 1,500-square-foot location off De Zavala Road and Interstate 10.

He decided to make the move to the downtown area "to give people the chance to sample" his vodka and showcase it at his new, 4,000-square-foot spot.

Artisan is a vodka-exclusive bar selling cocktails that use one of Spinks two products: Spike, which he told mySA.com is the only vodka made of prickly pear cactus, or Texas Pride, a corn-based spirit.

RELATED: New brunch spot 'Snooze' to open in Alamo Quarry Market next year

"It is truly handcrafted from beginning to end," Spink said. "I hand roll every label, cap every bottle and my filling machine is a one-bottle filler."

Spink's new location offers a "craft vodka lounge," where patrons can sip on the in-house product from a full cocktail menu. The owner gets behind the bar, too, but has some help from bartending staff.

"Farmers Market," which has bell pepper, poblano, basil, Spike Vodka, lemon infusion and jalapenos upon request, has been one of the best sellers, Spink said.

"It warms up around the lips," he added. "You don't realize everything that's in it because it blends well together."

RELATED: San Antonio bar serving 'crazy' turkey leg michelada, chicken-on-a-stick-garnished bloody mary

Another favorite is the "Blackberry Fizz" drink, with, you guessed it  blueberries, mint, vodka, lemon infusion and club soda.

"It's very fresh and fruity, but not overly sweet, it tastes like fresh-picked blueberries," he said.

RELATED: San Antonio's Fox & Hound Sports Tavern closed after company files bankruptcy

Spink said he hopes to eventually add additional seating and food trucks to the bar's exterior.

Customers are able to purchase bottles of Spike or Texas Pride before 9 p.m., Spink said. The Artisan Distillery is open Thursday through Saturday until 2 .m.

Artistan's happy hour, when drinks are $5, is from 4 to 8 p.m. Regular menu prices are about $7.50, Spink said.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Albany

About 30 people gathered Tuesday evening in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota's opposition to the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.

The environmental and social justice groups said the issue especially resonates with them due to their concerns about trains carrying oil through the Capital Region.

The tribe opposes the oil pipeline because its route would cross sacred sites and burial grounds. Protesters are also concerned about what would happen in the pipeline were to rupture.

The action in Albany was among more than 100 similar events planned for Tuesday across the United States.

"This is a consortium of various peace and justice and environmental groups that have come together to stand against the pipeline," said one participant, Bob Elmendorf, of Malden Bridge in Columbia County. "We want to stand up for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe."

He said the day native Americans were attacked by guard dogs also marked the anniversary of the Whitestone Massacre of 1863, when 300 members of the Standing Rock tribe were killed by the U.S. Army.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Another of the protesters, Susan Weber of Colonie, said the group wants to see a move away from oil and gas use.

"We're trying to stop all the pipelines and all the fossil fuel infrastructure that is going to ruin our planet with climate change," she said. "We're going to have to move to safe, sane renewable energy immediately."

The protesters stood in Townsend Park at the intersection of Central Avenue and Henry Johnson Boulevard in Albany. They held signs saying "Love Water, Not Oil," "Water Is Life" and "There are alternatives for fossil fuels, not for water."

Chuck Nasmith of Averill Park wore a Navajo vest as he joined in.

"It's great to see people protesting here to support them when we have the same problem here with the oil trains, the same Bakken oil," he said. "We need to stop our addiction to oil because global warming is definitely happening."

Tina Lieberman of the Sierra Club and the People's Climate Movement led the group in chants of "People Over Pipelines" and "What do we want? Clean water. When do we want it? Forever."

"Their fight is our fight. This is a human rights issue," she said. "This is where human rights meets environmental rights."

Albany County Legislator Doug Bullock participated.

"I think it's outrageous we don't respect the Indian nations to this day," he said.
GREENWICH  A taste of international mystery is coming to Greenwich Library on Wednesday to kick off a busy month of authors paying a visit to town.

Stuart Neville, a resident of Belfast, Ireland and an award-winning novelist, will speaking Wednesday at 7 p.m. as part of a tour for his new novel So Say the Fallen, which is a sequel to his acclaimed 2015 novel Those We Left Behind. The new book continues the story of Belfast Detective Chief Inspector Serena Flanagan and has already come with advance acclaim for the author, who has been called the king of Belfast noir by The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom.

Neville is speaking as part of the AuthorsLive@GreenwichLibrary series. He will appear in the librarys meeting room. The author will talk about his new work as well as his past novels, which have been finalists for some of the top mystery prizes in the world. He will also be signing books and taking questions from the audience.

Marianne Weill, Greenwich Librarys coordinator of selection and acquisitions, said she knows from her own reading what an exciting author Neville is.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Ive been reading his books since the first one, Weill said. Irish crime fiction has a lot of moral complexity in it. Even though hes younger and wasnt around during the troubles theres a lot of social change and unrest as a backdrop in these novels. Hes a really good writer and these are really interesting mysteries.

Weill said she believes Neville has an eager audience in Greenwich given how his books circulate.

Hes a little bit different from the authors we typically feature because he is a mystery writer, Weill said. Thats something thats important for us. We want to bring in interesting people who write books we think people are going to want to be reading.

Neville is not the only author who is coming to Greenwich Library in the coming weeks.

On Sept. 19, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Gross will speak at 7 p.m. in the meeting room. Gross has spoken at Greenwich Library before and will be talking about his new novel The One Man.

The story is about a United States intelligence mission into the infamous Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz to find one prisoner who is considered crucial to the Allies war effort. Gross has written a popular series of novels about detective Ty Hauck, many of which are set in Greenwich.

Then on Sept. 27, Amor Towles will speak at 7 p.m. about his new book A Gentlemen in Moscow. Also a New York Times bestselling author, Towles is going to talk about his new book, his second novel, which focuses on a young Russian aristocrat who is sentenced to house arrest inside a luxury hotel.

According to the library, Towles book embodies the style and spirit of Russias golden age of literature.

We want to feature authors who are both good speakers and good writers, Weill said. We want authors that people might not know and we also want to be able to show off all kinds of different authors. We want to be able to talk about works that people might not be aware of and bring something new to our audiences. The main criteria, though is that they be good writers.

Towles appearance will be in the Cole Auditorium because library officials are expecting a large audience for it.

The AuthorsLive series is made possible through the support of Greenwich Librarys Board of Trustees as well as donors from the community. Dianes Books will provide copies of the books for purchase. The events are free and open to the public but seating in both the meeting room and the Cole Auditorium is limited.

More information is available online at www.greenwichlibrary.org/authorslive .

kborsuk@scni.com
RIDGEFIELD  A California-based company is seeking to build a 120-foot cell phone tower along Route 7 as part of a major Connecticut expansion that might include more than 100 municipalities across the state.

The town received notice Sept. 2 that Mobilitie, a telecommunications infrastructure company, wants to build the monopole on state-owned land on the west side of the road about a half-mile north of the intersection with Route 35.

According to the letter, Mobilitie said the companys technology will improve wireless service in the area.

To meet the growing demand for connectivity, Mobilitie is deploying a hybrid transport network that provides high-speed, high-capacity bandwidth in order to facilitate the next generation of sevices and data-driven services, the letter read.

These transport utility poles and facilities are not dedicated to any particular customer, and, to the extent capacity on the structures is available, it is available to be used by other entities, including the Town of Ridgefield, the letter continued.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

The letter, titled Mobilitie, LLC Permit Application, includes detailed drawings of the proposed tower and the specific location, but it has not yet been submitted to state regulators who are charged with approving such applications.

Similar applications have been received by more than 100 towns and cities across the state, said Kevin Maloney, a spokesman for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.

Melanie Bachman, executive director for the Connecticut Siting Council, has reviewed some of the information sent to the municipalities and said she is concerned about the lack of detail, including information about which mobile providers would use the towers and data proving the need for a tower.

Its unclear how Mobilitie came to the conclusion that the sites they are proposing in all of the towns are needed, Bachman said. Thats completely absent, and thats contributed to the confusion.

Mobilitie holds a Certificate of Public Necessity and Convenience issued from the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. Dennis Schain, a spokesman for that agency, said the license allows the company to provide certain telecommunications services in Connecticut.

Bachman speculated that the company might try to circumvent the application process by arguing that wireless service is a public utility that it is already licensed to provide.

The interpretation is that some towns are seeing the letter as telling them, We dont need anybodys approval because we have the certificate, Bachman said.

Schain said the certificate provides that Mobilities projects could be subject to review by PURA or the siting council depending on size and location.

Calls and emails seeking comment from Mobilitie were not returned Tuesday.

Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi said company representatives told him last week that the letters were designed to establish lines of communication with municipalities before the formal applications are made to the siting council.

Marconi said he is concerned about the proximity of the proposed tower to a major thoroughfare.

Our concern is the location of the 120-foot monopole being 12 feet off the road on Route 7, an area with a high accident rate over the years, Marconi said.

He said that the representatives seemed open to moving the site, but he is concerned about the lack of control municipalities have over mobile infrastructure.

Theres not a lot of control that we can do other than be an active participant in whatever takes place, Marconi said. "What else is on the horizon that were not aware of yet that may be in the planning stages right now? Our voice needs to be heard loud and clear.

awolff@newstimes.com; 203-731-3333; @awolffster
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

BRIDGEPORT  State transportation officials have plans to make a downtown intersection notorious for crashes safer for drivers and pedestrians.

Many of the motor vehicle accidents at the corner of State Street and Lafayette Boulevard are caused by motorists running red lights, but the Department of Transportations planned upgrades address that issue too, spokesman Kevin Nursick said Tuesday.

There have been at least a half-dozen crashes at the intersection so far this year, and many more  including at least one fatal  in the past few years. About 8,100 vehicles a day travel through the intersection, according to state DOT data.

In the latest incident Monday evening, a gray sedan that appeared to have run the red light T-boned a maroon SUV traveling south on Lafayette Boulevard.

Neither of the drivers appeared to be injured. But the driver of the SUV immediately got out of her vehicle and  standing in the middle of the intersection  began screaming at the other driver, Are you (expletive) crazy? I have my daughter in the car.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

The other driver, pinned to her seat by the exploded airbag, did not reply.

When the $150,000 to $200,000 worth of new equipment is installed sometime next year, the traffic signals will be larger, with reflective back plates and their placement at the intersection will be strategic, Nursick said.

These improvements are designed to make the signal heads more conspicuous and prevent violations of the traffic control, (for example) I didnt see the red light and went through it, officer, the DOT spokesman said.

Vehicles heading south on Lafayette Boulevard will also have an advanced green arrow light, allowing for safer left turns onto State Street, he said. Drivers now making that left turn must wait for all northbound traffic to pass through the intersection.

New walk lights will have a vocal wait message when the button is pushed, and an audio tone when it is safe to cross, according to project specifications. The countdown of seconds left to safely cross that is used on the current walk lights will also be included in the new ones.

The Lafayette and State project is one of about a dozen in a package of signalization upgrades at various locations around the state, Nursick said.

Rep. Christopher Rosario requested the improvements, and noted that one of his constituents was killed at the ort intersection.

Rosario said one of his constituents was killed in an accident at the intersection.

The changes are designed to make the signal heads more conspicuous and prevent violations of the traffic control, Rosario said recently.

Mayra Cardona, 39, was killed at the intersection on Nov. 23, 2013, in a two-vehicle accident.

One vehicle with three occupants rolled over after impact.

Cardona, the driver, was partially ejected and died from her injuries at the scene.

Two passengers, aged 15 and 16, were transported to Bridgeport Hospital with minor injuries and were treated and later released.
Albany

Amidst a legal battle over whether Albany County should build a 180-foot emergency communications tower in Rensselaerville, legislators Monday determined proposed towers there and in the neighboring town of Berne won't hurt the environment.

The Albany Legislature declared in a unanimous vote that the county is the lead agency over the environmental review. In the same breath it unanimously approved two declarations that there are no negative environmental impacts in the review, ensuring that at least the tower planned in Berne will move forward shortly.

The towers are two of a dozen in a new $19.3 million countywide system backed by state Homeland Security money that will replace 1950s-era technology, which Sheriff Craig Apple says will help save lives by allowing police, fire and EMS at all levels of government to talk to each other and by filling in dead spots in communities that currently lack reliable radio coverage.

With the legislature's approval, County Executive Daniel McCoy will now have 10 days to veto or sign the bills, Apple said.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

"Then we plan on starting our Berne tower to get that one done," he said. "We think the Rensselaerville one will be adjudicated shortly."

The county has been embroiled in legal conflict since Scenic Rensselaerville  a coalition of property owners, residents and artists that claims 170 members  and nine individual plaintiffs filed a lawsuit late last year against the project. They argue the town Planning Board didn't properly conduct the state-mandated environmental review, ignored the town's comprehensive plan and violated a 1999 town law governing communication towers when it approved the Edwards Hill tower project.

The county and town attempted to dismiss the case under the notions that the group doesn't have standing and that the county is immune from local regulation. The legislature in February passed a resolution affording the Sheriff's Office immunity from local land use laws.

On Aug. 26, the court denied the county's request and now it must move forward in responding to the allegations that the "planning board's decision-making was somehow flawed," said Jacqueline Murray, the county's attorney for the case.

Pending the court's signoff on dates, Murray said the county will have until Sept. 30 to submit a response. Scenic Rensselaerville then has until Oct. 14 to reply, she said.

"We are optimistic that we can bring the case to a resolution that allows the project to move forward as quickly as possible because it is important to improve public safety communications in the foothills of Albany, where they are indisputably inadequate," Murray said.

Whether the county is immune to local regulations will be determined at a later time, the court decided. Attorney Victoria Polidoro, who represents the residents, said they're pleased with the court's denial and look forward to a decision based on whether the town and county failed to comply with the town's zoning law and the State Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA. The decision also recognized that all but two petitioners had legal standing to file the lawsuit.

"The court's decision that local artists have standing to challenge the approval of the telecommunications tower recognizes the significance of the protected view shed," Polidoro said. "Scenic Rensselaerville hopes that this decision will cause the county to reconsider the environmental impact of the proposed tower on aesthetic resources and to find an alternate location for the tower instead of engaging in continued motion practice over the applicability of the town's zoning law."

afries@timesunion.com  518-454-5353  @mandy_fries
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

GREENWICH  Since it was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy, the sole dock on Calf Island has been little more than a large floating platform. At high tide, several feet of water teeming with fish and horseshoe crabs lie between the edge of the structure and the shoreline.

Visitors to the island currently have to run their boat straight onto Crescent Beach on the eastern side of the island or tie it to the floating platform away from shore.

After the hurricane the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requested funding to get the dock fixed. Like many of the services recent requests, this one was denied, victim of congressional cuts.

If someone gave me the money tomorrow to put a dock in, we would put a dock in, said Rick Potvin, refuge manager and Connecticut state coordinator for the FWS. Like anything else, we have to put our money where its being put to the best use.

The island was acquired by the federal service from the town YMCA in 2003, a move that worried some Greenwich residents who feared access to the island would diminish as a result of the sale.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Now, the Calf Island Conservancy, a citizens group formed after the sale, wants to help pay for a new dock. But members want to make sure it is built in a way that will make it more resistant to the next big storm, said Franklin Bloomer, secretary and treasurer of the conservancy.

Bloomer said the dock replacement would cost in excess of $200,000, possibly far in excess.

Conditions of an agreement with the conservancy to construct a new dock still must be determined, Potvin said, and then the agency will move forward with plans if officials think the project is within their mission. The agency would also like to see more people visit the island, but that desire has to be balanced with what is best for wildlife, he said.

Bloomer agreed that a study has to be done to see how any construction would affect the sea life that lives on the floor of Long Island Sound. That study is expected to cost about $13,000; the two parties recently agreed it would be funded by the conservancy.

Potvin said some islands within the 10-island Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge, of which Calf Island is a part, dont have docks at all. He estimates about 800 people visit Calf Island each year, and he thinks if the damaged dock has affected that number at all, the difference is slight.

The island is close enough to be relatively easily accessed by kayaks and canoes, Potvin said, and on nearby islands without docks boat owners are resourceful about finding ways to make it to shore.

He is just as worried about people without boats, he said, adding the federal service spends resources every year to get those people out to the island.

We should work hard and get a dock, but after that we should figure out how to get other people out there, Potvin said. Getting a dock is only part of the equation.

Last weekend, the Calf Island Conservancy and the Fish and Wildlife Service teamed up with Greenwich Audubon to bring more than 40 members of the public out to explore the island and observe some of the wildlife that calls it home. The boat transporting them landed right on shore, using a flip-down ramp to help people get off without getting wet.

Potvin was there, and so was Bloomer. In between forays wading through the shallows of the sound, the participants rested under a canopy attached to a building that Potvin said was also badly damaged in the hurricane. The roof is an example of past cooperation between the federal service and the local conservancy.

The conservancy purchased new shingles for the structure, the FWS provided the crew to strip the damaged shingles off and put the new ones on. The town helped transport the old shingles off the island.

Longtime Greenwich residents Dagmar and Mike Doll were two of the folks resting under the canopy Saturday. This was their first time on Calf Island.

We used to go out to Great Captains Island, decades ago, Mike Doll said.

We dont have a boat, Dagmar said. I think we would come out again if we got a chance.

pfrissell@hearstmediact.com; @PeregrineFriss
09.13.2016 16:46

Critics of poverty-alleviation policy say CSRC should focus instead on ensuring level playing field for companies, investors

By Wang Yuqian

(Beijing)  Among the many missions China's securities regulator has set for itself, one stands out as a little unusual: poverty alleviation.

As recently as last week, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) described the goal as a "noble political duty" when it released rules to fast-track equity and bond issuances for companies operating in "impoverished" counties.
On this date in ...

1916: A police raid was conducted on a poker and craps game taking place right on Montgomery Street, where 14 boys were found gambling. They all scattered when someone called out, yes, "Cheese it  here's a cop!" except for 14-year-old Phillip Feldman, who was trying to rescue the abandoned "kitty" and was arrested. He was brought before Judge Brady, where he was fined $1 and given until the weekend to pay it.

1966: A faulty valve was blamed for the chain reaction of geysers as water pressure rose 10 to 12 pounds a square inch above normal, rupturing eight mains in Albany. Except for a bubbling "well" at the intersection of Sheridan Avenue and Chapel Street, the city's problems of bursting water mains were solved and service was restored. Twenty weary workers were sent home after they had toiled for 36 straight hours.

1991: Save The Pine Bush Inc. went to court to try to overturn zoning changes that would allow construction of two office complexes in the Pine Bush. In papers filed in state Supreme Court, the group charged that Albany Common Council failed to consider the cumulative impact of development in the area when it approved zoning changes that would allow construction of office buildings at 300 Washington Ave. Ext. and 40 Karner Road.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Want to read more about the Capital Region's past? Have any memories or thoughts about how our history relates to today's events? See http://blog.timesunion.com/history/
STAMFORD  For defense attorney Stephan Seeger, the case was one of free speech, plain and simple.

His client Joseph Caputo, of Stamford, went to Washington, D.C., last Thanksgiving to deliver his own rendition of the Constitution. He went to Pennsylvania Avenue, and with a flag draped across his back like a cape and his handwritten magna carta clenched in his teeth, leaped over the White House fence, where he was stopped immediately by secret service agents.

He is a politically conscious young man, and the way he chose to deliver his message of change conflicted with criminal law, Seeger said by telephone while traveling back from Washington, where Caputo on Monday accepted a plea agreement that will keep him out of jail. How do we deal with young Americans, who we encourage to have ideas and effect change? How do we deal with them when the act they employ to get their message out conflicts with the law?

Caputo pleaded guilty to unlawful entry onto restricted grounds. Prosecutors agreed not to seek jail time in the case but may ask for up to three years probation. At Caputos sentencing Dec. 6, Seeger will argue for a shorter sentence.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Seeger said the negotiations that produced the plea agreement were productive and Caputo was very involved in them. He is a bright, articulate young man and he has accepted responsibility for what he has done and is ready to put this chapter of his life behind him and become a productive member of society, Seeger said.

Another Stamford attorney, Lindy Urso, said despite his intentions, Seeger never had a chance to resolve the case on free speech grounds, even though he may have convinced the court that Caputo had no criminal intent when he got to the White House.

The Constitution as a whole is on life support. The Fourth Amendment is dead, the Second is under attack and the First Amendment seems the next to fall, Urso said adding, "If people dont get their noses out of their smart phones and start paying attention, it's going to be too late to save (the Constitution).

Urso said that if the case had been taken to trial, Caputo would have had to give up a sweetheart deal while opening himself up to much greater penalties if his attorney did not prevail. I dont think the courts today would have ruled in his favor on a free speech argument, Urso said.

As part of the agreement, Caputo agreed not to enter D.C. during supervised release or probation, among other restrictions.

After the incident Caputo said he had no intention of harming President Barack Obama, who was sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with his family at the time. He said he wanted to share his thoughts on what the country should stand for.

Following his arrest by the Secret Service, Caputo was released into the custody of his mother, given a curfew, was being electronically monitored and had his passport taken away until the case is resolved.

Caputo, who has Aspergers syndrome, was also ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and he spent 72 hours following the incident under observation in a D.C. hospital.

In April, Caputo had turned down a different plea agreement that would have required him to admit wrongdoing and acknowledge that he knew what he did was against the law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

jnickerson@scni.com
Mickey Leland's wanderlust led him across the globe, often to sub-saharan Africa to see countries like Sudan, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Instead of returning to Houston jubilant from seeing the world, he came back emotionally drained, family and friends said. His heart grew heavier navigating grocery stores' mountainous piles of produce, aisles of food and shelves stocked with medicine.

Children half the world away were starving. Many failed to survive a simple case of diarrhea, as some 8 million people were at risk of starvation in Ethiopia in 1984. He watched one girl from Sudan die in front of him that year.

Feeding the hungry became George Thomas "Mickey" Leland's life's work. The schmoozing pharmacy graduate-turned-civil rights protester who won election to the Texas Legislature, then Congress, lived with a drive to improve conditions for his fellow man before time ran out.

"He was someone who felt he had to squeeze as much life and activity and action as he possibly could into a short time," recalled his widow, Alison, who gave birth to his twin sons five months after his death. "In retrospect, it was as if he had a sense that his time was limited and he wanted to be sure that he could do the things that he was determined, set out to do. That he could really make an impact, that he could make a difference."

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Leland and 15 others were delivering supplies to Ethiopia when their plane crashed into a mountainside there in 1989. He was 44.

"I am as much of a citizen of this world as I am of this country," he said a few months before his death, responding to critics who said he should focus on hunger here before focusing abroad. "To hell with those people who are critical of what I am able to do to help save people's lives. I don't mean to sound hokey, but I grew up on the Christian ethic, which says we are supposed to help the least of our brothers."

More Information Timeline Nov. 27, 1944 George Thomas "Mickey" Leland born in Lubbock. 1963 Graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston. 1966-69 Attended Texas Southern University, where he was active in the civil rights movement. 1972 Elected to the Texas Legislature. 1978 Elected to the 18th Congressional District. 1984 Worked with Reps. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., and Tony Hall, D-Ohio, to establish the House Select Committee on Hunger. Aug. 7, 1989 Died in plane crash delivering supplies in Ethiopia. Jan. 14, 1990 Leland's twin sons, Austin Mickey and Cameron George, Leland are born. See More Collapse

Leland is remembered as one of Congress' most prominent black legislators and its conscience on world hunger. He served there 10 years.

Leland spent five of those years urging Congress to establish the House Select Committee on Hunger and then became its chairman.

He persuaded President Ronald Reagan to spend $800 million to feed the hungry in Ethiopia and other nations in crisis and took on myriad other battles, including developing a friendly relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, which helped him win the release of American political prisoners there; pushing for generic prescriptions and universal health care; fighting minority and gender discrimination in the telecommunication industry; and devising a way to send black teenagers to Israel for the summer to learn more about the world. The Leland Kibbutzim internship sent its 36th class there this summer.

"Some people measure success by the percentage of initiatives that they throw out there and they pass. Mickey measured success by how many ideas you would pursue, always a very ambitious agenda," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat, Leland's former chief of staff and roommate.

Her husband often was bursting with ideas, said Alison Leland, now a political science professor at the University of Houston.

"He was smart and funny and unorganized and impulsive and passionate and creative and filled with ideas. Many of them were good ones, maybe not all of them."

Born in 1944 in Lubbock, he and his brother grew up in Houston's Fifth Ward, watching his mother work her way through school as a short-order cook to become a teacher. He studied pharmacy at Texas Southern University, stayed to teach and helped open free rudimentary health clinics in areas where people lacked access to health care.

"He was always frustrated by, even in Houston, the oil capital of the world, our infant mortality rate was higher than many Third World countries," said Keith Wade, senior adviser to Mayor Sylvester Turner and Leland's former district director in the Legislature. "It was not that the health care wasn't here, it was that it was not available to all segments of the community."

He heeded the influence of Roman Catholic principles and black writers, like Malcolm X, fashioning himself a Marxist and a revolutionary. He protested police brutality on the streets of Houston as the organizer and leader of the Black Citizens Action Teams, known as the "Black Cats." It was at one such demonstration that he was arrested, sparking a realization that he could effect change better from inside than out.

Voters elected him to the 88th District of the Texas Legislature in 1972, sending to Austin a 28-year-old with an Afro, platform shoes and an African dashiki on his first day. He would wear the eye-catching outfits "on days he wanted to make a point" to the conservative Texas Legislature, said Ellis, who interned in the Senate at the time.

It was during his six years in the Legislature that he made his first visit to Africa, a three-week trip that turned into a three-month mission to better understand the continent. The trip planted the seed for Leland's belief in a worldwide kinship that blossomed into his advocacy to fight hunger across the globe.

He later ran for Congress, winning Houston's 18th District seat in 1978, when Barbara Jordan retired. He hung up his dashikis and switched to Giorgio Armani suits to take on the roll of a statesman, but he kept the swagger and the passion. He argued in Spanish on the House floor for maintaining bilingual clauses in the Voting Rights Act, stepped into leadership as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus for two years and served on the Democratic National Committee's Black Caucus from 1981 to 1985.

He was on his sixth tour of refugee camps along the Ethiopia-Sudan border in five years when his plane went down. The fatal trip was his second venture that year.

A federal building in downtown Houston is named for him, as is Terminal D at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy for Young Men in the Fifth Ward and the Mickey Leland Environmental Internship Program with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Ellis, the state senator, named his son, Leland, after his friend.

Extensive archives of his papers, notes and photos now live on at the Texas Southern University Mickey Leland Center for Environment Justice and Sustainability at the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs where Patriccus Fortiori, an archives specialist there, says researchers and the public are beginning to get a greater sense of the depth of his work.

"At a time where politicians were moving comparatively at the speed of sound, Mickey was moving at the speed of light," Fortiori said.
1 No shows: Two technicians who worked on Hillary Clintons private email server refused on Tuesday to answer questions posed by House lawmakers, citing their constitutional right to remain silent. The men, including one who reportedly erased an archive of Clintons emails despite being aware of an order to preserve them, repeatedly asserted their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. They were excused from the hearing. A third, former State Department staffer Bryan Pagliano, who played a key role in setting up the server, did not show up to testify before the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee.

2 Mosque fire: The Islamic community says it will repair and reopen the arson-damaged Florida mosque that was occasionally attended by Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen. An assistant imam of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce says the mosques members are saddened and scared by the fire, which was started on the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha. Meanwhile, police are searching for the person who set fire to the building.
(Beijing)  About 3.6 million people who have refused to meet their financial obligations to landlords, banks, employees and their own children have been barred from air travel and sleeper trains.

The number of indebted deadbeats who are blacklisted as of Jan. 1 appeared in a white paper on human rights protection and the judicial system that was released Monday by the Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet.

The travel restrictions, enforced by transportation agencies in cooperation with judicial authorities, cover all domestic and international flights as well as conventional and high-speed rail travel. The restrictions for every person on the list will last until all the person's debts are cleared.

No one blacklisted may buy a sleeper-car rail ticket, nor a business or first-class seat on a bullet train. A deadbeat may, however, buy general passenger tickets.

Debtors covered by the rule include employers who stiffed migrant laborers, such as urban construction workers from rural areas, and divorced parents who refuse to pay child support.

The white paper also shed light on the Chinese judiciary's efforts to clear the names of thousands of people who were wrongly accused or convicted of various crimes.

For example, the report said, courts overturned nearly 3,400 convictions between 2012 and 2015. And prosecutors around the country refused to accept police recommendations for the arrests of nearly 131,700 detainees.

Prosecutors also dropped all charges filed against 25,778 detainees in 2015 on grounds of insufficient evidence, according to the white paper.

The report was released in the wake of media coverage of several high-profile wrongful convictions that led to executions and long prison sentences.

Contact reporter Li Rongde at (rongdeli@caixin.com); editor Eric Johnson at ericjohnson@caixin.com
UPPER THUMB  The Huron County EDC received funding as a regranting agency for Huron, Sanilac, St. Clair and Tuscola counties from Michigan Council of Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA).

As a regranting agency, we grant money out for mini grants and professional development projects in those counties. The applicants are registered non-profit organizations, schools, colleges/universities and municipalities located in those four counties.

The applicants can apply for up to $4,000 for locally developed, high quality arts and cultural projects, which are special opportunities to address local arts and cultural needs and increase public access to arts and culture. The deadline was August 3, 2016 and we are pleased to award $17,000 in mini grants and $1,500 for a professional development Grant.

The grant winners are:

 Huron County  Greater Port Austin Art & Placemaking Fund for their 53 North: Detroit Exported Project  $2,500; Thumb Arts Guild for their annual events Members Seconds Sale and Art in the Park  $3,000.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

 Sanilac County  Port Sanilac DDA for the Port Sanilac Blues Festival  $3,000; and Sandusky Arts Council for the 2017 Lawn Chair Music Series  $3,000.

 St. Clair County  American Indian Communities Leadership Council, which will host the Algonac Powwow & Indian Festival  $2,500; and The Immaculate Conception Catholic School for their Spring Musical  $2,200.

 Tuscola County  Bullard Sanford Memorial Library for their Library Concert Series  $800.

Also receiving money for a Professional Development Grant was The Elephant Works Studio in St. Clair, to help attend a Professional Development Conference in the amount of $1,500.

 This is our opportunity to help support local, grass roots organizations provide arts and cultural affairs programming in the region, stated Carl Osentoski, executive director of the Huron County EDC. These funds allow the organizations involved leverage local dollars increasing the impact on our communities.

For more information, call Osentoski at 989-269-6431.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

NORWALK  Kerry Rice took off her shoes at the classroom door. She walked into the dimly lit space, gazed at its sterile white walls and blacked out windows, and listened for any hint of sound.

Stillness and silence enveloped her.

But in a few short moments  and with a bit of exploration  the room came alive.

Large cylindrical bubble tubes that stretched up from the floor lit in neon colors. Strands of lights that lay strewn across the floor glowed. Music played from speakers. A projector reflected images onto the ceiling.

I was left on my own to figure out exactly what it was that attracted me the most, said Rice, a speech-language pathologist at Rowayton Elementary School.

That was Rices first experience at a Snoezelen room, a multi-sensory environment set up to encourage communication and better functioning among people with an array of conditions ranging from ADHD to autism to emotional trauma.

The idea is that it will stimulate senses that might be deficient, Rice said. If you need more tactile stimulation, you get more tactile. If you need more visual, you get more visual  Whatever it is your body is seeking out, it can get.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Rice said Snoezelen is what the researchers who invented the concept called it, mixing the Dutch words for to explore and to relax.

Rice said that sort of stimulation can help release barriers within people.

Whatever is blocking communication for you  that can all be taken away, Rice said.

The Snoezelen room Rice entered was in a Chicago school. It was set up by speech-language pathologist Marilyn Sandler after a trip she took to Israel to learn more about the use of multisensory environments in the field of education. Sandlers research was funded by the Fund for Teachers, a national organization that supports educators' efforts to develop skills, knowledge and confidence to increase student achievement.

Rice decided she too would consider the use of Snoezelen rooms as she applied for Fund for Teachers in Norwalk last year after hearing about Sandlers experience.

I wanted to do it in my own way, Rice said. I researched and found it (the Snoezelen room) was created in the Netherlands in the 1970s.

Fast-forward several months later and Rice was informed by Norwalk Public Schools, the Norwalk Federation of Teachers, the Dalio Foundation and Fund for Teachers that she was the recipient of a grant that would allow her to travel to both Chicago and the Netherlands to investigate the use of Snoezelen rooms and ways she could use that insight at Rowayton.

My idea for this trip was to see how they use these rooms for kids with autism, Rice said. In exploring that I learned more about further uses.

First up for Rices research was a trip to see Sandlers room at the Chicago school.

It was great for me to see that, Rice said. Its the gold standard for U.S. Snoezelen rooms.

For example, the room in Chicago has a sound meter attached to a microphone, so that any students who speak into the it can see a visual of the sound they make.

A girl who had never spoken before started speaking into the microphone, Rice said.

Later, in early August, Rice spent a week in the Netherlands.

There, she got an inside look at a manufacturer of Snoezelen parts, as well as of several rooms that exist there, including in a residential home for adults, an adult care center, a child care center and a freestanding Snoezelen room that was available for the public to rent out.

It really showed me how it works with different populations, ages and settings, Rice said.

She was also able to meet with the co-creator of the Snoezelen room, Ad Verheul, who walked her through the origin of the room and held a workshop with just her and one other attendee.

Overall, Rice said she learned a lot about the effects sensory experiences can have on students.

It opens up the line of communication, Rice said. It gives kids a chance to be in charge  A byproduct is this natural communication that isnt fixed upon them.

Sara Reilly, principal of Rowayton Elementary School, said Rice has been able to share her findings with educators across the entire school.

What we are really excited about is that this gives us another avenue to be more inclusive with students and it provides them with strategies to promote achievement as well, Reilly said. It focuses on their whole well-being, social and emotional, and translating that into terms of how they do academically.

In the long-term, Rice would like to research ways to create Rowaytons own version of a Snoezelen room, but faces the obvious restrictions of both space and funding.

For now Im looking at just little things that I can use here  such as a shag rug that sits on someones lap while they work, Rice said. Just being able to increase my use of sensory things.

One Snoezelen-related item Rice is already using is a large, vibrating stuffed animal turtle.

I had it in mind for one girl student, Rice said. She took one squeeze and just threw it.

At that point, Rice said it was important to remember what the Chicago teacher, Sandler, had told her: Everyone finds what they need in Snoezelen.

Later that day, Rice said the school was running a drill that called for the dimming of the lights. A scared student rocked back and forth in the dark, Rice said. The student picked up the vibrating turtle, hugged it, stopped rocking and said, I feel so much better now.

KSchultz@thehour.com; 203- 354-1049; @kevinedschultz
09.13.2016 18:13

Beijing's 77 out of 100 topped nation, but most urban areas had failing scores

By Li Rongde

(Beijing)  Local governments in nearly 100 cities have failed a non-governmental organizations' test that measures how well they inform the public about environmental hazards.

Failing the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) test with scores of less than 60 out of 100 points were governments in more than 80 of 120 cities surveyed, two Beijing-based NGOs reported Monday.
The Waffle Taco. The Pizza Cake. Loaded Doritos. Love them or hate them, these weird menu items are being cranked out by some of America's beloved fast-food chains and dominating on social media.

In the last few years, chains have becomes obsessed with creating bizarre food concoctions in the hopes of creating a buzz-worthy new bestseller. Waffles and tacos? Sure. Bacon and milkshakes? Sounds good. Pizza and cake? Why not.

Related: 7 Fast Food Restaurants That Feature Secret Menus

With social-media savvy customers ready to Instagram and Tweet about their bizarre orders, the mashup market is hotter than ever. A freaky food item is bound to spread across Twitter and Facebook like wildfire, giving fast-food companies a chance to garner the attention of the highly sought-after millennial market. There's more innovation in the world of fast-food franchises than ever -- and that's a good thing, whether or not you want to try Carl's Jr.'s "Bisnut."

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Here are some of the most famous and infamous fast food mashups sweeping the world.

Cheetos Quesadilla

Image credit: Taco Bell Philippines

Taco Bell has been a leader in introducing snack-infused menu items. This time, the Tex-Mex chain has combined Americas popular chip Cheetos with its simple cheesy quesadilla. The new mashup is only available for a limited time at Taco Bell branches in the Philippines.

The Hamdog

Why didnt someone think of this sooner? After leaving a bar in Nashville with most likely a case of the drunchies, entrepreneur Mark Murray picked up a hamburger and hot dog. Eating both at the same time, Murray came up with the genius idea that makes our lives easier: a hamdog.

The Hamdog features a burger patty with a hot dog sausage running through it and comes with a custom bun molded to the peculiar shape. Hamdogs are available in Australia and are making their way to the U.S. in 2017.

Loaded Doritos

For true Doritos fans, making nachos isn't cheesy enough. Loaded Doritos are aimed at Doritos obsessives who want their cheese inside their chips. The warm nacho cheese with Doritos breading debuted at 7-Eleven on Wednesday.

Related: KFC to Bring Back the Infamous Double Down

The Bisnut

The weirdest thing about this mashup is the name. Carl's Jr. apparently decided that if the croissant-doughnut hybrid Cronut was a hit, then the biscuit-meets-doughnut Bisnut should be as well. The actual product is less exciting than its moniker: essentially, it's a biscuit shaped like a doughnut, with icing and sprinkles.

Doritos Locos Tacos

Before the Cronut and the Waffle Taco, Doritos Locos was the freshest mashup in the food world when it was released in 2012. Taco Bell released sold more than a billion Doritos Locos Tacos in the first year it was available. The taco chain is still releasing new flavors, with Spicy Chicken Cool Ranch as a recent limited time offering.

Bacon Shake

In 2012, Jack in the Box decided to combine two All-American favorites in a bacon milkshake. While the fast-food chain no longer offers the mashup shake according to their website, you can still fulfill your bacon milkshake cravings at Sonic, with the Peanut Butter & Bacon Shake.

Waffle Taco

Taco Bell jumpstarted the quirky food trend in 2014 with its breakfast roll out in March. The chain's first foray into breakfast offered items including breakfast burritos and AM Crunchwraps, but what grabbed the public's attention was the Waffle Taco.

"I'd rather have people have an opinion than no opinion. I don't want to be in the land of same-ness," Taco Bell President Brian Niccol told Entrepreneur.com regarding the launch. "I'd rather be in the land of, you either love it, or you can tell me why you don't love it. What I don't want is bland."

Related: The Real Reason Taco Bell Made the Waffle Taco

Chicken Corsage

Calling KFC's Chicken Corsage a fast-food innovation is a bit of a stretch, seeing as it's just a classic drumstick attached to baby's breath flowers and a ribbon. However, as the chicken-chain's commercial for the product hit 645,000 views on Youtube in the product's week, it is certainly getting the attention of chicken hungry high schoolers.

Specialty Chicken

As chicken became an increasingly hot commodity in 2014, Domino's beefed up offerings with the Specialty Chicken. The offering substitutes fried chicken for dough as the base for pizza toppings, with options including Crispy Bacon and Tomato, Spicy Jalapeno and Pineapple, Classic Hot Buffalo and Sweet BBQ Bacon.

Pizza Cake

Image credit: Boston Pizza

Pizza Cake isn't on the market  yet. The mega-pizza won Boston Pizza's Pizza Game Changers campaign in April. The campaign allowed customers to vote online for their favorite innovative  or just plain bizarre  pizza products, with the winner eventually making it to market. In addition to the Pizza Cake, options included cheese clippers, pizza mints, a gas powered pizza cutter and a pizza protector guaranteed to keep hungry roommates away.

Related: Like It or Not, 'Pizza Cake' Could Soon Be a Thing

Cheetos Chicken Fries

Move over Doritos Locos tacos, Burger King has unveiled its latest snack-infused item, Cheetos Chicken Fries, which are fried and covered in Cheetos-flavored breading. After being removed from the menu in 2005, chicken fries were reintroduced in 2014 and have grown in popularity. Time will only tell if this new whacky mashup will also be a hit. (Rose Leadem)

Related:

Taco Bell's New Snack-Infused Item Is Cheesier Than Ever

McDonald's Will Soon Have Self-Serve Kiosks and Mobile Ordering in U.S. Stores

McDonald's Is Finally Catching Up to Other Fast Food Chains in One Big Way



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Two weeks after an attorney representing former Beaumont ISD contract electrician Calvin Walker and former district employee Jessie Haynes filed to withdraw as counsel in their federal conspiracy and defamation lawsuit, Walker is asking for a refund.

Citing several grounds in her Aug. 29 motion, including a recent move to Colorado and "a total breakdown" in the relationship with her clients, Maria-Vittoria Carminati also claims Walker breached his agreement with her by failing to make any payments after November 2015, leaving a $71,000 outstanding balance with her firm.

In a response filed on Monday, Walker said that amount was never part of the May 2015 agreement he made with Carminati, and that he only agreed to pay a $10,000 retainer fee, of which, Walker said in his response, he has already paid $8,500.

He has requested Carminati refund him the $8,500 and that U.S. District Judge Marcia Crone hold a hearing on the matter.

Walker wrote in his response that "ironically, there was no mention of nonpayment until after (he) voiced opposition" to Carminati's withdrawal.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Walker said in an Aug. 30 interview with The Enterprise that Carminati's fees were contingent on the case's success.

Walker's lawsuit, which was filed in July 2015, accuses more than 30 defendants of conspiring to ruin Walker's electrician business with claims he overcharged the Beaumont Independent School District by millions of dollars.

Haynes, a former BISD employee convicted of a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a public passageway at the district's administration building, later joined Walker's lawsuit.

Ten defendants have been dismissed from the lawsuit. Walker has said he plans to appeal the dismissals with the Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans.

A magistrate judge in August also recommended dismissing all of Walker's claims against the Beaumont school district and 12 of its representatives, according to court records.

Beaumont City Councilman Mike Getz, one of the defendants named in the lawsuit, has filed a motion opposing Carminati's withdrawal from the suit.

Carminati should remain on the case for the limited purpose of rulings on pending motions, according to Getz.

Getz has also requested Crone order sanctions against Carminati for filing what he calls a frivolous lawsuit. His requests are still pending.

Walker said in the Aug. 30 interview that Carminati first approached him after learning he was interested in suing BISD, U.S. attorney Malcolm Bales and then-Jefferson County district attorney Cory Crenshaw.

Walker said he originally intended for his lawsuit to address BISD - for discrimination and slander allegations - and the two lead prosecutors for denying his double jeopardy protection.

Walker's federal case for fraud and money laundering resulted in a mistrial four years ago. He later pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of failure to pay taxes in a timely manner.

Walker was later indicted in state court on fraud and money laundering charges relating to payments he allegedly received from BISD and the city of Port Arthur.

Walker is asking the United States Supreme Court to review his double jeopardy claim, which was rejected by the trial and appeal courts. He has not entered a plea on the state charge but has told The Enterprise he is not guilty.

BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott
09.13.2016 19:17

China executes 'a few thousand' criminals last year after putting to death more than 10,000 in 2006

By Shan Yuxiao and Li Rongde

(Beijing)  China's criminal-execution tally fell about 60 percent to "a few thousand" last year from more than 10,000 a decade earlier, according to academics who spoke at a legal forum Sunday.

Spearheading the reduction was a 2006 decision by the Supreme People's Court that introduced a system through which the supreme court reviews capital-punishment sentences before executions can take place.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A committee of Texas educators and historians recently released a 54-page report examining a proposed social studies textbook that has come under fire for "dripping with racism." The report details 68 factual errors along with 73 interpretive and omission errors within the text.

Trinidad Gonzales, a committee member, says the errors can have a problematic and lasting impact on Hispanic students who read them.

"If a Latino student reads and accepts these errors as fact, they may reject their heritage and community," says Gonzales, a professor at South Texas College in the Rio Grande Valley and a member of the American Historical Association. "It will make them question their sense of belonging."

READ MORE: Mexican American textbook incites controversy

One of the most flagged areas in the material is the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, a peaceful social movement that addressed racism against Latinos in the 1960s.

The textbook, however, said Chicanos"... adopted a revolutionary narrative that opposed Western civilization and wanted to destroy this society."

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

In reality, the movement used boycotts, school walkouts and protests to spread their message.

Gonzales says that when this information is used by Texas schools, it validates a racist curriculum.

READ MORE: Mexican-American textbook moves Texas SBOE member to tears

He says a lot of the "us vs. them" mentality seen throughout the book comes from citing Samuel P. Huntington's "Who Are We," a book that Gonzales says is discredited and was "destroyed by academics."

"What you're doing is creating pathological damage to Latino children by having them view themselves as inferior," says Gonzales. "Texas should not be in the business of hate and racism."

Click through above to see some examples of factual errors found within the textbook.
Listicle-loving website Thrillist has released yet another spot-on look at suburban America.

This time it's "The Most Obnoxiously Rich Suburb of America's 35 Biggest Cities," and, at least for Texas, it's pretty accurate.

So where in this state are the metro outskirts where residents have access to pricey, often exclusive amenities?

For the San Antonio area, it's The Dominion master-planned community, where, Thrillist claims, "literally every single famous person you can think of that might reside in San Antonio lives here." The website even quotes a source who says: "The Dominion is actually in Northwest San Antonio proper, I think, so this might be technically wrong, but if you pick anything else, everyone here will judge you, and you won't get a chance to talk about the fact that Stone Cold Steve Austin lives here, and that would be a mistake that could ruin your life."

SEE ALSO: The richest town in Texas

In Austin it's West Lake Hills, which, of course, sits atop West Austin's hills. The better to look down upon Austinites. Thrillist calls children of West Lake Hills residents "insanely privileged spawn who terrorize the area around Westlake High School in their Range Rovers."

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

One might argue that several Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs could've made this roster, but Thrillist decided upon Frisco. The community just saw the addition of the $1.5 billion Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters at The Star. This suburb, which extends between Denton and Collin counties, is also home to several multimillion-dollar homes which puts the median home price here at a whopping $370,000.

RELATED: Where San Antonio's rich live and play

In Houston the chosen community is The Woodlands, about 30 miles north of the city center. It's home to the second full-line Nordstrom in the entire greater Houston area, as well as to America's most famous closet. It also has a country club that ranges in annual membership fees from $10,000 to $100,000. The median home price here, according to Zillow, is $449,000.
A Bexar County Juvenile Detention Center employee was arrested Monday on the Southwest Side after police said they discovered she was buying and selling stolen goods.

Vanessa Vasquez, 26, a juvenile community service restitution specialist, faces a charge of organized retail theft. She was arrested Monday afternoon in the 5800 block of Medina Base Road, San Antonio police said.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A San Antonio couple buying property on the Northeast Side was shocked by racist stipulations in the deed limiting use of the property to whites, except for the "servants quarters."

Maggie Rios, a small business owner, and her fiance, Fidel Simmons, a Barbados native and adviser to international students at Alamo Colleges, called their realtor at midnight after first seeing the language in the land's deed initially signed on Oct. 18, 1948.

"No lot, site, structure, or dwelling, with the exception of bona fide domestic servant's quarters shall be used or occupied by any person, or persons, other than members of the Caucasian or White Race," the now-void document stipulates.

RELATED: Fifty-five years ago, San Antonio was the first southern city to integrate lunch counters

Bexar County Clerk Gerry Rickhoff estimated seeing a handful of similar deeds in his 20 years, in a statement to mySA.com Tuesday.

"Some historic racism is indeed bound in our public records," he said, adding that the city's "not-so-proud past" should serve as a "reminder to never go there again."

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

The couple, who previously purchased two adjacent lots, noticed the fine print while scrutinizing the paperwork when preparing to buy the new parcel of land.

RELATED: San Antonio native's perfect response to Internet meme featuring Trinity athlete wearing turban

"(Rios) said, 'Have you seen this?," Simmons recounted."We called the realtor at midnight, I still wasn't in my rational mind, I can't believe this ever really existed  it's one thing to read about something in a book, it's another when it's something personal."

The deed was binding until 1974, when the documents would then be subject to annual renewal with all stipulations in tact. Six years prior to the expiration date, the Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, was passed, overruling the conditions and prohibiting discrimination "because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability and the presence of children."

Still, the buyers told mySA.com they feel sharing the deed is important, because it remains relevant to situations they have heard their friends experience in modern times. They said interracial couples they know have been the subjects of "blatant prejudice" when attempting to buy property on the outskirts of San Antonio controlled by "private clubs."

"Just because the Fair Housing Act exists, doesn't mean you can get property wherever you want," Simmons said.

He added that peers have shared similar deeds with more explicit, derogatory language.

RELATED: Where former slaves in San Antonio lived

Rickhoff said there is not an applicable statute in place allowing him to strike stipulations, like those mentioned in the 1948 deed, from the record. However, documents controlled by his office are stamped with a disclaimer stating: "Any provision herein which restricts the sale, or use of the described the real property because of race is invalid and unenforceable [...]"

The couple said they have received negative, racial comments since their story garnered exposure, which Simmons said he "expected."

"Hopefully, it (the story) can be used to enlighten folks who don't understand there are people of color who still do not feel fully embraced by American society," he said. "Land is a legacy so lack of access, for generations, to that resource is one way that many minorities in the country have been disenfranchised. Maggie and I are on our quest for our literal '40 acres.'"

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee for president's oldest child, is making a pit stop in the Alamo City Tuesday to fundraise for his father.

Trump Jr. will start the day fundraising in Longview before heading to San Antonio, the Texas Tribune reported Sept. 7. Requested donations for the private San Antonio event, which is at an undisclosed location, range from $1,000 to $25,000. In Longview, requested donations range from $1,000 to $100,000.
Sheriff Susan Pamerleau defended her track record Monday from attacks by three re-election opponents who cited unresolved problems and misguided solutions in the Bexar County Sheriffs Office.

The first-term Republican incumbent faced her Nov. 8 election competition on live television in a forum presented by News 4 San Antonio and sponsored by the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. The slew of candidates made for a quick hour of discussion that touched on staffing levels, deputy morale, patrol response times and the planned construction of sheriffs substations.

Joining Pamerleau on stage at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts were Democrat Javier Salazar, Green Party candidate James Dorsey and Libertarian candidate Larry Ricketts. All three challengers heaped criticism on Pamerleau, describing her has a failure who hasnt fixed legacy problems as promised.

They lamented the high numbers of deputies arrested and jail inmates who committed suicide, blaming Pamerleau for unrelenting staff turnover and a lack of confidence among staff. But Pamerleau frequently challenged her opponents statements and called them people who dont know the facts.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Pamerleau backed up some of her positions by citing her bipartisan support from Commissioners Court, but that only fanned the flames as Ricketts, a Precinct 4 constables captain, said the court doesnt know anything about law enforcement.

Both Ricketts and Dorsey derided Pamerleaus recently approved plans for East and West Side substations as ineffective. The two third-party candidates also argued that the substations would not improve response times for calls in far-flung, unincorporated areas of the county  which Pamerleau disputed. She said the countys North Side substation has reduced those times by 20 percent.

Pamerleau, a retired Air Force major general and former USAA executive, said the soon-to-be constructed substations will enhance public safety by improving patrol response times while saving taxpayer dollars. She also called attention to administrative changes, modernizations and other steps to improve efficiency.

These changes didnt just happen. It took leadership, Pamerleau said. This election is about performance, not politics.

But Dorsey, a South San Independent School District police sergeant, disagreed, saying, the reason Im running for sheriff is that Susan Pamerleau has failed us.

A San Antonio police sergeant and 23-year veteran of the force, Salazar said his number one priority as sheriff would be constantly monitoring response times and making sure were allocating the personnel and equipment as needed.

Salazar chided Pamerleau for losing a no-confidence vote among unionized deputies earlier this year. When Pamerleau said only a small percentage of deputies participated, Ricketts claimed it would have been higher and the outcome would have been 100 percent against her, but many deputies didnt participate because they were afraid of losing their jobs.

When Pamerleau described the introduction of new-technology, body-worn cameras as an improvement, opponents questioned why it was taking so long to equip all deputies with the devices. Pamerleau said they would be fully deployed by the end of the year.

Early voting in the race starts Oct. 24.

jgonzalez@express-news.net

Twitter: @johnwgonzalez
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Since April 1, 2016, the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission busted 28 Bexar County establishments for selling alcohol to a minor, state records show.

Of the 28 infractions, 15 resulted in fines and suspensions of their licenses, according to documents obtained from the TABC. Coupled with the 20 infractions made in the first three months of 2016, there have been 48 infractions made by establishments in Bexar County so far this year.

RELATED: TABC: 20 establishments in Bexar County busted for selling alcohol to minors so far in 2016

April had the highest number of recorded violations with 17 infractions, two of which were made at the same place JBM Event Services LLC, which is considered a restrained case, records show.

Titos Mexican Restaurant, located on S. Alamo St. in Southtown, paid a $1,200 fine July 15 after they were found to have served a minor on April 15, records show.

RELATED: TABC to conduct undercover 'back-to-school' stings across Texas to catch bars serving to minors

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Records show 13 cases are considered "restrained administrative cases," meaning the TABC won't take action against the establishment for selling minors for a number of reasons.

Reasons the TABC would not take action include:

The owner or an officer of the company did not conduct the sale

The person selling holds a current seller-server training certificate from a TABC-approved school

All employees engaged in the sale, service or delivery of alcoholic beverages and their immediate managers, are certified through a TABC-approved seller training course  which covers laws regarding selling alcohol to minors and ways to prevent such sales  within 30 days of their hire date

The employer has written policies for responsible alcohol service and ensures that each employee reads and understands these policies

The employer does not encourage the employee to violate the law

There are not more than three such violations within a 12-month period

Records show that the last violation served was July 16 at an E-Z Mart Store on Sulphur Springs Road and at a Commercial Express on Commercial Avenue.

Commerical Express has not yet paid the $1,200 it was fined, records show, and the E-Z Mart Store is considered a restrained case.

In an attempt to curb such violations, the agency is conducting its annual undercover operation this month. At thousands of locations across the state, undercover TABC agents will go to retail locations with a minor who will attempt to purchase alcohol. If the minor is successful in purchasing alcohol, the business could face TABC administrative action such as a civil penalty or license suspension.

RELATED: TABC launches app to curb violations at drinking establishments across state

Additionally, selling alcohol to a minor is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

The agency also launched an app Aug. 25 which allows users to report violations they witness, or to see if the establishment they're drinking with holds a liquor license.

"TABC:Mobile serves as a direct line of communication between TABC and the public from anywhere at any time," Chris Porter, agency spokesman, said in a news release. "The app allows retailers to report a breach of the peace at their business as required by the Alcoholic Beverage Code and agency rules. It's our hope that this new tool will keep those lines of communication open while promoting the safe and lawful sale of alcohol in Texas."

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Texas State University police are in the midst of an investigation into three university offices that were ransacked as recently as Sunday.

University Police Sergeant Alex Villalobos told mySA.com Tuesday two offices in Old Main, the school's most recognizable building, and one in nearby Lampasas were ransacked, resulting in university property being damaged.

He said the calls for the Old Main offices came in Sept. 11 around 1 p.m. and the office in Lampasas was reported vandalized Sept. 12 around 9 a.m. But officials are still unclear as to what time the offices were damaged, he said, because the damage could have occurred days before an employee came to work.

Most of it was university property that was damaged, he said. (I) cant speak to the specifics on what was taken.

RELATED: Video: College pool party brawl in San Marcos goes viral

The University Star reported that one of the victims is Kelly Kaufhold, an assistant professor for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Kaufhold, whose office is located on the second floor of Old Main, told the Star nothing was taken, some of his items were broken, and there was blood on his office walls.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

According to an email obtained by mySA.com, the suspect is thought to have cut their hand when trying to break open a piggy bank in Kaufhold's office, and then left blood on a door in one of the men's restrooms in the building. Lecturer Holly Wise's office was also broken into, the email said.

RELATED: Texas State student arrested on 14 counts of possession of child pornography

Villalobos could not confirm to mySA.com the substance was blood, because the department is still testing and analyzing evidence.

He also could not speculate on how a suspect gained access to the two buildings, located next to each other on the east side of the campus in San Marcos.

At this time, the University Police Department has no leads on any suspects, Villalobos said.

RELATED: Texas State opened exhibit to honor late Tejano star, university alumnus Emilio Navaira

Villalobos did not rule out the possibility of a Texas State employee being the culprit.

You know, we look at everything, so theres a possibility of many different factors here, he said. (But its) inappropriate to center in on any one individual.

He said the employees involved have been released to use their offices after officials picked up everything needed for the investigation.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A woman is in jail after she allegedly tried to take a body from its casket during a funeral proceeding.

Cynthia Ann Frierson, 36, was arrested Sept. 5 in Columbia, Tennessee where she was charged with disrupting a funeral or memorial service, public intoxication, driving on a revoked/suspended license, immediate notice of accident and unlawful drug paraphernalia, according to the Maury County Sherriff's Office.

A witness told police officers that Frierson showed up at the funeral home as they were actively having a funeral and walked up to the open casket where she began grabbing at the body inside of the casket and at one point attempted to get the body out of the casket, according to a police report obtained by the Daily Herald reported Sept. 6.

RELATED: Family discovers wrong person in late grandmother's clothes and casket

It took about six people to remove Friersons grip from the body, witnesses said.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Before the alleged attempt to steal the dead body from the casket, police received a call concerning two hit and runs of parked vehicles. Driving in a red pickup truck, Frierson allegedly side swiped multiple parked cars along South Glade Street and East 10th Street, which is roughly 12 miles from the Roundtree-Napier-Ogilvie Funeral Home, southwest of Nashville.

Once police arrived at the funeral home, they said Frierson was outside and smelled of alcohol and her speech was slurred.

RELATED: Family of woman whose body was taken from casket sues funeral home in San Antonio

Frierson was charged with disorderly conduct at funerals due to her grabbing the body inside of the casket, which was offensive to the sensibilities of an ordinary person, Officer Landen Barber wrote in his incident report, which was obtained by the Daily Herald.

In an interview from jail with WKRN, Frierson said her cousin dropped her off at the funeral home and she did not try to take the body.

I did not do that, Frierson said. When I went up, I just went up and touched him, and if they were recording, I just touched him and turned around and I said, He is just asleep, and I said, Everything is going to be okay."

He wasnt dead, he was just asleep, thats all I said, she said.

She told the station she wasnt drunk and apologized to the family for the police coming to the funeral.

RELATED: Renovators uncover 120-year-old casket of little girl under SF home

This is awful, she said.

Keith Mayes Sr., the son of the man whose funeral was that day, told the station he doesnt want Frierson accused of something she did not do.

But as upset as we were about her presence, I dont want her to be accused of something that she did not do, and in no way did she try to remove his body from the casket, he told the station.

He also said he hopes Frierson gets the help she needs.

She kept saying, He is not dead, he is sleeping, so when she did make one effort to touch his hand at that time my brother and I told her that she would have to step away from the casket, which she did and as she was walking down the aisle we told her we wanted her to leave, he said.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

SAN ANTONIO  A 23-year-old Spanish teacher at Lanier High School was arrested Monday after a police canine unit detected drugs inside her backpack, according to a statement from the San Antonio Independent School District.

Ana Carrera was charged with a Class A misdemeanor for possession of marijuana under 2 ounces in a drug-free zone.

RELATED: Records: San Antonio-area schools with the highest number of drug and alcohol seizures in 2014-15

A random canine search at Lanier High School determined that Carrera had marijuana inside her backpack, the statement said. She was arrested Monday morning and resigned the same day from SAISD, a news release said Tuesday.

She posted her $1,200 bond and has been released from jail, according to Bexar County records.

RELATED: These are the San Antonio area's best and worst school districts, according to Niche

Carrera was a first-year teacher who was instructing Spanish to students, officials said.

This is a very disappointing incident, and we do not want it to take away from the rest of the faculty, who serve as positive role models for the students of Lanier High School, said SAISD spokeswoman Leslie Price.

RELATED: 50 San Antonio-area high schools with the best teachers, according to Niche, for 2016

During the 2014-2015 school year, Lanier High School had 61 drug seizures on campus, according to a previous mySA.com report.

Typically, possession of marijuana under 2 ounces is a Class B misdemeanor, but the charge is elevated because it was on a school campus, according to the Texas Penal Code.

Text "NEWS" to 72727 to sign up for breaking news from mySA

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
For almost $4,000 a month, you too can live like one of Mexicos most infamous drug leaders.

The house of Ignacio Nacho Coronel Villarreal, who was one of the four leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel before he died in 2010, is for rent in Zapopan, located in the Mexican state of Jalisco, El Blog del Narco reported Monday.
As founder and superintendent of the George Gervin Academy, I have been involved in the charter school movement since its inception in Texas, and Im deeply concerned about the most recent resolution for consideration by members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) calling for a moratorium on charter schools.

It appears the NAACP is painting all charter schools with an unfair broad brush. Twenty years ago, my brother and I opened the doors to the George Gervin Academy with at-risk youth and their families in mind. In 1996, we began with 150 students who had dropped out of school and today, we have more than 1,500 students in grades prekindergarten through 12th, with a waiting list of 238 children. I have seen firsthand the life-changing experience and tremendous benefit our public charter school has had on our community.

Forty-two percent of our students are African American and 48 percent are Hispanic. One hundred percent are considered economically disadvantaged and at-risk. This is not at all uncommon for public charter schools in Texas whose populations have higher proportions of African American, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, and limited English proficiency students.

At-risk students bring a unique set of challenges with them to the classroom each day and this certainly impacts learning and outcomes. Regardless, I still hold fast to the notion that a child whether economically disadvantaged or academically challenged should receive the type of educational opportunities that benefits him or her. At the core, this is why I support public charter schools and have made this my lifes work for the last 20 years.

I strongly believe that each child deserves a high quality, free, public education. We live in a time where one size does not fit all, and it is imperative that parents have choices to find the public school that best meets the needs of their child. Most public charters schools reside in urban areas where innovation and the offering of support and resources to families and local communities is a must.

As a proud, lifelong member of the NAACP, I share the values and commitment of the mission of the organization. I commend the NAACP for its efforts to help bring about equality for all Americans, and I have considered my work with students at our charter school a contribution to both my community and in line with the priorities and values of the NAACP.

However, this most recent resolution is in direct conflict with the experience I have as a superintendent of a public charter school. I know with certainty the at-risk students at my campus have benefited tremendously by attending a school that meets individualized needs. Success at the George Gervin Academy includes winning several distinction awards and graduating more than 1,200 students who had previously dropped out of school. We have also helped to send students to college, universities, trades schools, and the military in addition to supporting and strengthening families.

The George Gervin Academy and its students are examples of how public charter schools are effective in providing a quality education to an underserved community. I strongly support offering parents options within public education and will continue to work toward representing the needs of at-risk students and their families. I hope the NAACP rethinks its position and makes a commitment to work with charters that are not meeting expectations.

Barbara Gervin-Hawkins is a candidate for State Representative, District 120.
Society pushes elected officials toward a desired direction through awareness and activism. The means to achieving both has been consistent throughout American history  through public forums and media outlets. Those outlets have evolved over time, from newspapers to television to the internet, but the fundamental effects have remained the same. Wide public knowledge, often acquired through debate inspired by the press, helps influence elections. The information does more than give voters a voice; it makes them decision makers.

The trial of John Peter Zenger represents one of the early debates on the power the voters wield through free expression. Zenger, accused of publishing accounts detailing the wrongdoings of the governor in the New York Weekly Journal, was put on trial in the 18th century. The ruling was hugely significant. The printer was acquitted by his peers  not because of his guilt or innocence under the law of seditious libel. Rather, he was acquitted because the jury realized that the ability to expose such corruption shifts the balance of power to the people.
Texans are often known for telling tall tales, but when myths and misinformation turn into perception, it is important to set the record straight. Especially when we are talking about the health of some of our most fragile citizens.

Senate Bill 7 (2013) directed the Health and Human Services Commission to create a tailored managed care program for 180,000 children and young adults under the age of 21 who have disabilities. On Nov. 1, those Medicaid clients will move into the new STAR Kids program, where they will receive comprehensive, coordinated and high quality care. Many of the kids are from the San Antonio area. Those in the new program will join more than 80 percent of the Texans on Medicaid already in managed care programs.

Often when there is a new program, there is some anxiety about upcoming changes. It is important to note, what wont change are the services Medicaid provides and the commitment the Health and Human Services Commission has to making sure the children of Texas get exactly the care they need.

STAR Kids was designed to provide a benefit to families who care for young people with disabilities. Unfortunately, this has been misconstrued in recently aired news stories, as well as rumors circulating on social media. The goal of STAR Kids is not to cut services or restrict medically necessary care for children, nor was the program designed to create hardships or additional barriers to care for busy families.

STAR Kids brings a focus on the individual. Its not a one-size-fits-all approach. Participants will receive a needs assessment  developed by the state in partnership with Texas A&M University and stakeholder advisory groups  to look at whats working, whats not working and what new things can be done. Participants will also get a unique service plan, developed in cooperation with their caregivers.

Once that plan is in place, a service coordinator will work with participants and caregivers to make sure their main doctor knows what other specialists are doing, help arrange appointments and help with any problems that might arise in getting care.

We realize individuals and their families know their needs best and thats why STAR Kids is designed to support the work individuals and caregivers do to coordinate care.

Texas Medicaid has been working with our agencys advisory groups, families, providers and health plans to anticipate issues and address them as we roll out STAR Kids. We have sent informational packets explaining STAR Kids and the enrollment process to give individuals and caregivers the information they need to pick a health plan.

Children in STAR Kids will continue to receive the Medicaid services they need, and Texas Medicaid is working with the STAR Kids health plans to make sure no one loses medically necessary services during the transition period.

To help STAR Kids health plans identify and contract with critical providers while maintaining continuity of care, members can continue to see their current providers for the first six months of the program  even if these providers are not in the health plans network.

Commission staff are traveling across the state to meet with families and providers to explain STAR Kids in detail and to answer any and all questions. Our team will be in San Antonio later this month.

Its important Texans get accurate information on the changes. The bottom line is what will change is Texans in the program will have a choice of health plans. Each of the 13 regions in Texas will have at least two health plans providing coverage under STAR Kids and families can choose what is best for them. After selecting a plan, the family can change the plan at any time in the future.

Despite what you may hear, STAR Kids will provide better health care and a brighter future for a special group of kids and young adults.

Charles Smith was appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott to serve as Texas Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner.
At first blush, a new state policy to withhold auto registration renewals for parents six months or more behind in child support seems a worthwhile effort. But that assessment rests on a lot of ifs and buts. And that is why we wish this had been rolled out as a pilot project, subject to elimination if this cure worsens the disease.

Nonpayment of child support is indeed an affliction for families that depend on this income. But loss of a car can hamper efforts to provide support if the parent needs a vehicle to work. And if driving illegally means tickets and fines that cant be paid and then compound, this also diminishes the ability to pay back child support. This is what experts told staff writer Bruce Selcraig for an Express-News article on the topic.
A DREAM Act has stalled in Congress, but Texas was a pioneer in enabling undocumented immigrants who came here as children to attend college and pay in-state tuition.

The Legislature passed this in 2001 and Gov. Rick Perry signed it into law. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has now targeted this eminently decent program for repeal.

The measures proponents  it passed near unanimously  reasoned that these students had no say in coming here and had attended the states public schools at taxpayer expense.

Basic fairness, decency and that initial investment dictated that, for purposes of attending the states two- and four-year institutions, they be considered residents. They were eligible if they had been Texas residents for at least three years, graduated from high school or gotten a GED and signed an affidavit promising to work at becoming legal residents if that avenue occurred.

Sadly, fairness and decency  in the state and in the nation  have given way to scapegoating and fearmongering when it comes to the entire issue of immigration.

Immigration and border security were themes in the 2014 race for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor. And, Patrick, the most vocal, won both the primary and the general election.

The allegation is that these students take up space that should go to U.S. citizens or legal residents. Doubtful. They represent only 2 percent of the states college population, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

This is not just about decency. It is about investment so that these students may more ably contribute to, yes, their home states economy.

The president through executive orders has allowed many of these students to get work permits and has shielded them from deportation. President Barack Obama did this in recognition that families with roots here and contributing economically had a right to stay here free of fear. It was much the same reasoning Texas once employed.

The November election will determine how much this anti-immigration sentiment actually resonates. Even if it does win in Texas, shifting demographics dictate that, politically, this action has only relatively short-term benefit.

The Legislature should reject Patricks call. Fairness should be the real impetus here.
STAMFORD-A Bridgeport man was found in a stolen car in Stamford reeking of pot with two juveniles and a cache of stolen wallets and charge cards that had been taken out of area cars, police said.

On Saturday at 8 p.m., police were called to Springdale parking lot off Camp Avenue on the report of a strange car without a front license plate that did not belong there.

When police arrived the smell of marijuana was thick in the air, even though the windows to the Hyundai Elantra, were rolled up.

After walking up to the car as the driver of the vehicle rolled down his window, a blast of burnt marijuana smoke hit my face, Officer Christopher Petrizzi said in his police report.

Petrizzi said the three occupants of the car admitted to smoking pot and said they were sleeping when he pulled up.

When the driver of the car, Erick Gonzalez, 18, was pulled out of the vehicle, the officer saw that he was sitting on a number of charge cards.

Petrizzi ran the plates to the car and discovered that they belonged to a blue Saab out of Bridgeport. When he asked Gonzalez who the car belonged to, he said a friend of his named OG. Gonzalez was immediately put into handcuffs and the vehicle identification number was run through the system, which showed the car had been stolen out of Manchester, the police report said.

More for you Man charged with stalking Black Rifle Coffee employee

Inside the car, police found several female zippered wallets and on the drivers seat was an assortment of charge cards.

On one of the cards was a name that officer George Momplaisir recognized as that of a man who just two hours before made a complaint that his car had been broken into on Camelot Court, a distance up Hope Street.

Gonzalez, of Madison Avenue, Bridgeport, was charged with first-degree larceny, conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny, criminal trespass, sixth-degree larceny and two counts of risk of injury to a minor.

The two boys, age 16, were given similar charges.

jnickerson@scni.com;
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A gated community of single-family homes planned next to Trinity University is facing opposition from Monte Vista residents who say it violates the historic character of the neighborhood.

Last month, the city Planning Commission approved the project, known as La Marquesa Estates, which would put 52 single-family homes on 9.2 acres of green space owned by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate congregation at the southwest corner of Kings Highway and Shook Avenue.

Some Monte Vista residents have taken to social media websites such as NextDoor to say the project wouldnt fit in the neighborhood, a historic district with homes showcasing a range of architectural styles from the early 20th century.

That doesnt seem right, to have a separated, segregated little gated area that is not really in keeping of the rest of the neighborhood, said Theresa Poenisch, a member of the Monte Vista Neighborhood Association, in a phone interview.

Residents said they didnt become aware of the proposed development until after it got approval from Planning Commission on Aug. 10. That complaint isnt uncommon in near-downtown neighborhoods that are experiencing a surge of growth due to a trend of moving toward urban areas.

District 1 City Councilman Roberto Trevino, whose district would include the project, said in a phone interview that it doesnt sound like a good fit to me, either. Last week, he submitted a request for City Council to consider reforming the Planning Commission in an effort to make it more representative of the city.

We see this in District 1 happening all too often, and we need to find better ways to make sure that neighborhoods feel theyre protected, that theyre thought of, that theyre included in the conversation about how the citys growing, Trevino said.

For more on this story, visit ExpressNews.com or read the Wednesday edition of the San Antonio Express-News.
Industry experts will share tips for protecting your business from ATM skimming.

ALEXANDRIA, Va.  Recent media reports suggest that skimming is on the rise at ATMs. In conjunction with a recently released guide, called the ATM Skimming Detection and Deterrence Guide, available under the Conexxus/NACS WeCare program, Conexxus and the National ATM Council will host a free webinar on preventing and detecting skimming at ATMs.

Industry experts Al Jamir, vice president of Cash Depot, and Bruce Renard, executive director of the National ATM Council, will share insights about security related to retail and bank ATMs and practical ways to protect your ATMs in a convenience store environment.

The free webinar takes place on September 15 at 12:00 pm ET. To register, click here.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Readers, this is a little bit light because Im recovering from travel on Monday. Tomorrow I should be back in form!

TPP/TTIP/TISA

The U.S. tech industry is making a push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership in a letter sent to congressional leaders this morning asking them to intensify their focus to work with the Obama administration on a path forward for the deal in 2016 [Poltico].The United Fresh Produce Association and the National Pork Producers Council are holding fly-ins this week where TPP will be one of the big talking points with lawmakers.

Jamie Dimon: Im a big believer of getting the trade deal done, but acknowledge that it actually hurts some people, and give income assistance, do development, relocation, retraining, so those hurt by it can be made better [Politico]. I especially like relocation. Throw Momma in a home so Dimons pals can avoid lost profits?

Nationwide, the TPP would roughly double U.S. exposure to ISDS attacks and a TTIP would quadruple the exposure, spelling an unprecedented increase in U.S. ISDS liability. Under all existing ISDS-enforced pacts, the total number of firms that can currently launch ISDS cases against the U.S. government is about 4,100 foreign corporations that own about 9,829 U.S. subsidiaries. The TPP would newly empower more than 3,682 additional corporations in TPP countries that own more than 10,085 subsidiaries here, to launch cases against the U.S. government. The TTIP would newly empower more than 12,100 European Union parent corporations that own more than 26,961 U.S. subsidiaries, to go to the panels of corporate lawyers and demand U.S. taxpayer compensation [Public Citizen]. With interactive map showing state-by-state effects.

2016

Money

The [Donald J. Trump Foundation[ acts as a conduit, receiving gifts from individuals and other wealthy peoples foundations and then distributing those gifts to charities under the Donald J. Trump Foundation name, typically with no credit given to the donor or donors funding the Trump Foundation gift' [Nonprofit Quarterly]. The Trump Foundations small size, its lack of employees, and its board composed four-fifths of family members (and one hundred percent Trump Organization employees) may explainbut does not at all excuseits seat-of-the-pants operating style.

Our Famously Free Press

Why Are The Media Objectively Pro-Trump? [Paul Krugman, The New York Times]. Hes got a point. After all, the press systematically suppressed stories about Sanders, who would have been a stronger opponent for Trump than Clinton.

The Voters

Polansky is the kind of voter both campaigns covet: working-class, from a swing state, with networks of friends, coworkers and family they can influence. Thats especially true in Polanskys home state of Ohio, which polls show may be the closest of the battleground states in play [Bloomberg]. Shes putting us in a category of we dont know anything, were dummies and she knows whats best for us, Polansky said. I know whats best for my family; Hillary dont.' Our quest was to find the disaffected, currently Democratic, working-class white males Trump appears to be wooing with his appeals to economic angstand the ones hell need to change the electoral arithmetic in the states in question [Bloomberg]. Since the parties conventions this summer, the candidates and their running mates have held nearly 40 campaign events in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan aloneaveraging at least one every other day when you count surrogate appearances from Vice President Joe Biden, the Obama-Clinton machines designated working-man whisperer. Hmm: Liberals believe in addressing every issue within a socio-economic context (Crime, Terrorism, ) Except racism. That issue is context free  Chris Arnade (@Chris_arnade) September 13, 2016

Realignment

Candidates do themselves a tremendous disservice when they attack voters [as with special place in hell and #Berniebros, let us remember] rather than campaigns. Whatever advantage is procured through the rallying of ones own base is outweighed by what will be read as divisiveness and disdain [Charles Blow, New York Times]. But: I understand that people recoil at the notion that they are part of a pejorative basket. I understand the reflexive resistance to having your negative beliefs disrobed and your sense of self dressed down. I understand your outrage, but Im unmoved by it. If the basket fits 

Stats Watch

NFIB Small Business Optimism Index, August 2016: [A] barely significant decrease yet softer than expectations of a slight increase that would have continued a weak rebound from [Econoday].

Personal Income: Another positive is that this marked the first real annual increase in median household income since 2007 [247 Wall Street]. After eight years. Income, of course, not wealth. If you put money into your house and lost it, thats all gone.

Housing: [N]early one in five home buyers are making offers on homes without even viewing a property (via Redfin) [Dr. Housing Bubble]. Buyers of high-end homes were almost twice as likely to have made offers on homes sight unseen. Thirty-nine percent of people who bought homes for more than $750,000 made offers without seeing homes in person.

Concentration:  A proposed merger of two Canadian fertilizer giants would create a single business that would control an enormous part of the North American supply chain for crop nutrients. Agrium Inc. [Wall Street Journal]. Agrium Inc. and Potash Corp. of Saska tchewan Inc. confirmed the merger plans. in a deal that would create a crop-nutrient giant worth about $27 billion.

Shipping: According to Kantar Retail, about 73% of rural consumersdefined as those who drive at least 10 miles for everyday shoppingare now buying online versus 68% two years ago. Last year, 30% were members of Amazon Prime, up from 22% in 2014 [Wall Street Journal, E-Commerce Is a Boon for Rural America, but It Comes With a Price]. Residents here are even starting to buy groceries online because frequently it is cheaper than at the towns United Supermarkets.

Shipping: Is Hanjin shippings Lehman moment? [Splash247]. Speaking on Bloomberg Television, the Vancouver domiciled shipping veteran [Gerry Wang, the head of Seaspan,] said: The fallout of Hanjin Shipping is like Lehman Brothers to the financial markets. Its a huge, huge nuclear bomb. It shakes up the supply chain, the cornerstone of globalisation. But: Splashs lead finance columnist, respected ship finance veteran Dagfinn Lunde commented: I do not agree at all. Very little will happen due to Hanjins demise; the ships will still be there.'

Shipping: [I]t is believed that many shippers, freight forwarders, and beneficial cargo owners (BCOs) had sufficiently diversified their bookings so that the Hanjin collapse would not be an undue burden on their supply chains [DC Velocity].

Supply Chain: Labor has become an increasingly important make-or-break factor in determining the success of retailers and delivery companies during a period marked by a sudden surge in online orders [Wall Street Journal, Hunt for Holiday Workers Heats Up, Giving Wages a Boost].

Shipping: Seven clues that Game of Thrones is really about hazmat shipping [DC Velocity]. 3. Flammable liquids play a prominent role.

Oil: Global oil demand growth is faltering and oil production is stabilizing, providing a recipe for the global glut of petroleum and its products to continue through much of next year, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. [Wall Street Journal, IEA Cuts Global Oil Demand Forecast Amid Wobbling Asian Demand]. The IEAs closely watched monthly oil-market report marked an abrupt shift for an agency that a month ago said the worlds oil glut had begun disappearing.

Honey for the Bears: Thieves are stealing catalytic converters out of cars for their precious metals [Ars Technica]. I put this in the metal theft box, which is never a good sign for the economy.

Honey for the Bears:  Yuan Liquidity Squeeze a Bad Sign for Chinas Equity Market  [Bloomberg]. The rise in Hibor [Hong Kong Interbank Offer Rate] is probably due to increased demand for liquidity before the end of the quarter, according to Wing Lung Bank treasurer Terry Siu. Chinas markets are closed for holidays on Thursday and Friday, as well as during the first week of October.

Political Risk:  A riot broke out in the southern Chinese village of Wukan on Tuesday as dozens of people, many of them waving flags and hurling stones, protested early morning raids that led to the arrests of activists who had criticized the government [New York Times].

The Fed: I think the FOMC should stop playing monetary Hamlet, grow a set of testicular appendages, and raise rates [Across the Curve].

The Fed: I am skeptical that a large-scale expansion of government spending by itself is the best way forward, since larger fiscal deficits will lead to higher expected future taxes, which could further undermine private sector confidence [Neel Kashkari, Medium].

The Fed: The Fed Is Planning for Another Slow Recovery [Narayana Kocherlakota, Bloomberg]. Planning? Planning?

Todays Fear & Greed Index: 35 Fear (previous close: 55, Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 65 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Sep 13 at 11:56am. Yikes! This is what happens when I take my eye off the ball.

Gaia

In the minds of many, soil is simply dirt, but without it we would all cease to exist. Unlike the water we drink and the air we breathe, soil is not protected in the EU and its quality is getting worse [Euractiv].

Police State Watch

Police forces across the United States are stockpiling massive databases with personal information from millions of Americans who crossed paths with officers but were not charged with a crime [Post and Courier]. Of particular concern to many advocates is the lack of standards and transparency associated with the use of field inquiries. They exist outside of stringent incident reporting guidelines set by the FBI and, in some places, arent considered public documents at all. In others, police have worked to put up barriers to sidestep scrutiny. Excellent actual reporting from the Post and Courier.

Class Warfare

A Wealth Of Problems: How The Housing Bust Widened The Rich-Poor Gap [Zillow]. If foreclosed homeowners had been able to hold on, they would have been able to see their homes equity  and therefore their wealth  increase. In fact, throughout the entire recovery foreclosed homes showed greater annual appreciation than homes in general. And: This state of affairs has given rise to much of the social anger and instability we see today. The 99 percent movement, the increasing homelessness issue, the ever-contentious presidential election and a growing housing affordability crisis all have roots in this growing divide between rich and poor. Weve taken to calling it income inequality, but that only speaks to a small part of the problem. Wealth inequality is incredibly real, is getting worse and is distressingly unheralded. We hope this research helps bring the issue to light. Zillow joins the Communist Party!

[M]ost of the tax code benefits families with more wealth than they can consume in one lifetime. In this context, the estate tax is really just an imperfect, partial, insufficient way to slightly mitigate the inter-generational transmission of wealth and the development of an aristocracy of hedge fund managers and their children. The big question isnt whether we should have an estate tax or not. Its whether we should take much more aggressive measures to give all children a fair shot at a comfortable and prosperous future. Eliminating the estate tax, without addressing the sources of inter-generational inequality, would only accelerate the transformation of American into a new feudal society [James Kwak, Baseline Scenario]. Kwak too!

Wells Fargo Exec Who Headed Phony Accounts Unit Collected $125 Million [Fortune]. I think its very important that a woman Carrie Tolstedt  shattered the glass ceiling for accounting control fraud.

Interviews on the Long Island University lockout [Democracy Now]. If you read what the adminstrators say, it seems that they believe they represent the university, not the faculty. Which is odd, since I cant ever remember hearing anybody say they chose their university because it had really good deans.

News of the Wired

Neglected Food Bubbles: The Espresso Coffee Foam [National Library of Medicine]. n spite of the relevant role played by crema as a quality marker, espresso coffee foam has not yet been the subject of detailed investigations.

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And heres todays plant:

One more from the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

* * *

Readers, if you can, please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help.
ERC Starting Grant to revolutionize the efficiency, cost and stability of thin-film solar cells (Nanowerk News) Imec, Europes top nanoelectronics research center and Hasselt University, today announce that one of their scientists has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. The grantee is Bart Vermang, researcher at IMOMEC, imecs associated lab at the Hasselt University. He receives two million euros to apply techniques from silicon solar cell processing to revolutionize the design of thin-film solar cells, improving their efficiency, cost and stability.

Bart Vermang, researcher at IMOMEC, imecs associated lab at the Hasselt University.

With these 5-year ERC Starting Grants, the European Research Council wants to back young and promising researchers, giving them a perspective to pursue ambitious fundamental research that may lead to breakthroughs, and encouraging them to pursue a career in research and set up their own labs and teams.

Bart Vermangs field of study is thin-film solar technology, more specifically CIGS(e) solar cells. These combine flexible use with high efficiency, but they still have stability and reliability issues. Vermang proposes to revolutionize the design of CIGS(e) solar cells by implementing advanced surface techniques, introducing structures and layers also used in silicon solar technology. This includes adding innovative nanostructures to capture more light into the cells active layers.

Other new techniques he envisages are inversion layer emitters, passivated contacts and surface passivation layers, which will make energy generation more efficient by avoiding that charge carriers recombine. In combination, these new techniques should lead to cells with conversion efficiencies between 23 and 26% with an improved stability and reliability.

One of the main applications of thin-film solar cells will be building-integrated energy generation, where solar technology will be an integral part of building elements such as window panes, facade elements in all shapes, or curved roof covering. This is a key technology for Europe as regulations will require new buildings to become near energy neutral by 2020. The results of this research should directly lead to more efficient and long-lasting PV technology for buildings, and will thus contribute to reaching Europes ambitious climate goals.
Find the newest releases to watch from National Geographic on Disney+, including favourite documentary series and films Free Solo, The Rescue, Shark Beach with Chris Hemsworth and The World According to Jeff Goldblum.
Walter Investment Management Corp. subsidiary Ditech Financial will begin to enroll a number of rejected loan applicants in a new program aimed at helping people qualify for a mortgage.

The web-based program, called HLP.Guru, pairs prospective homebuyers with a certified nonprofit housing counselor to help them create a plan on how to qualify for a mortgage. Ditech plans to choose roughly 2,000 prospective homeowners during the next six months and will pay for their membership in HLP.Guru.

"Ditech wants to help make homeownership possible for as many Americans as we can," Ditech Senior Vice President Laura Reichel said in a news release Monday. "By offering access to HLP.guru, potential homebuyers can get the tools and guidance needed to make that dream easier to reach."

HLP.Guru is owned by Baltimore-based nonprofit HLP and was introduced earlier this year. The app was developed for HLP by Dallas-based consumer credit modeling company CE Analytics.

Beyond expanding access to credit, the program could help to improve Ditech and its parent company Walter's reputations. Ditech had the second lowest satisfaction score in J.D. Power's latest mortgage servicing survey and rankings released in July.
Homeowners who want to tap their hard-to-access nest eggs have a new option.

A fintech startup called Point is allowing consumers sell a piece of their home equity to investors, rather than borrowing against the value of their houses. The Palo Alto, Calif., firm, which is currently operating in California and Washington state, announced Tuesday that it has raised $8.4 million in a second round of fundraising.

Point is touting its product as a way for households that cannot qualify for a home equity loan  a product that has become harder to obtain in recent years  to tap into their equity. Customers can use the funds, anywhere from $40,000 to $250,000, to remodel their homes, pay off debt or buy other properties.

The firm evaluates applicants based on an analysis of both homeowner and the property, under the theory that homeowners have some influence over the future trajectory of their property values.

In an interview, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Lim said that Point is looking for homeowners who have at least 30% to 35% equity in their properties. That equity gets purchased by accredited investors  including both individuals and institutions  that invest their money through the firm's platform.

One of the company's main selling points is that homeowners receive a lump-sum payment upfront, and they do not have to repay a loan. "It's really this alternative to debt with no monthly payments," Lim said.

But the deal also carries some significant downsides for homeowners.

First, the home equity is sold to investors at a markdown of 10% to 20% from the appraised value. And second, Point's contracts have a 10-year term, which means that homeowners will typically have to sell or refinance their properties within that timeframe.

Point received its initial seed funding in January 2015. The company's latest fundraising found was led by the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Former Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit is an angel investor in the firm.

Point plans to use the new funds in part to expand into additional states and to bolster its marketing efforts, the company said in a press release.
First Gardasil jab leads to flu-like symptoms

Second Gardasil jab adds extreme stomach pain, dizziness

Third Gardasil jab takes away all strength, leads to leg paralysis at night

(NaturalNews) A young woman from Denmark has become one of the latest victims of the Gardasil vaccine scam after multiple doctors lied to her about its safety. As relayed by, the story of Sanni Charlotte Falcke is all too familiar -- a trusted physician urged Sanni to get the jab on the false promise that "this vaccine has no side effects," only to result in a cascade of chronic symptoms that has permanently changed this young woman's life.What began as a simple biopsy for a preexisting condition led to Sanni being propositioned by her doctor to get the Gardasil shot because she was allegedly in the "risk zone" for cervical cancer. Sanni initially rejected this proposition, partly out of concern about its safety and partly because the vaccine is quite expensive. But when Denmark several years later began to offer the vaccine for "free" (paid for by taxpayers), Sanni decided to reconsider."After a year or two the Danish government decided to make the vaccine free for girls in my age group but it was a time limited offer so I contacted my doctor to hear more about it," writes Sanni. "I asked her if there were any side effects but she just replied, 'No, this vaccine has no side effects. You may get some redness or swelling at the injection site but nothing else.'"This blatant lie would change everything for Sanni, who after agreeing to get the first of the three-part vaccine series based on this false reassurance quickly came down with symptoms of nausea, vomiting, fever and chills. Within days, these symptoms progressed into frequent blackouts, dizziness for no apparent reason and low metabolism, for which Sanni went back to the doctor to seek answers.She was not given any but was encouraged to continue the Gardasil vaccine series despite the obvious harm it had caused. On her second vaccine visit, Sanni saw a different doctor whom she asked the same question about the vaccine's safety. Like the first doctor, this second one told her that the influenza symptoms she had previously suffered were not caused by the vaccine and, again, that the vaccine did not have any side effects.Trusting what appeared to be a general consensus within the medical community, Sanni got her second Gardasil shot as directed and experienced all the same symptoms she had before, with the addition of extreme stomach pains and much more serious dizziness episodes. She also began to suffer extreme migraine headaches and an inability to think clearly, which correlated with a new pattern of chronic fatigue she developed as a result of the vaccine."The weeks following this shot I just felt so awful, I was so dizzy that people actually thought I was drunk," she writes. "I began to have daily headaches and sometimes had a bad migraine. I couldn't concentrate, had trouble remembering things, got extremely tired and could sleep anywhere any time."After seeing the doctor nearly a dozen more times for these symptoms and not finding answers, Sanni eventually reached her third appointment for Gardasil and saw a third doctor, who like the first two insisted that the shot series does not have side effects . Sanni proceeded to take the third dose and quickly fell into an even worse state in which she lost all strength and no longer had the ability to perform everyday tasks."After Gardasil, I have had many problems but the one thing that stands out in my mind was when I had problems with serious cramps in my legs, paralysis in my legs and the feeling I got in my legs when I woke up in the morning and had to actually beat them to get them to waken up," she explains. "Fortunately it's 'only' a sleeping sensation in my legs now, I haven't got the same problems anymore... but the symptoms keep on coming and changing every week."Be sure to read Sanni's story here:
(NaturalNews) Much attention has been given to China's pollution of its air, water and soil that has occurred while it has played industrial catch-up with the rest of the world. However, these phenomena are not solely endemic to China as all of Southeast Asia is under chemical pollution attack due to the efforts of the countries within this region to catch up to the modern world's questionable standards of production in both industry and agriculture. The environmental threats from industry and agriculture in Southeast Asia have affected Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Vietnam is still struggling from the effects of Agent Orange used within the country years ago.A recent discovery of excess pollutants in Pakistan's Ravi and Chenab rivers has determined that the sediment in those tributaries of the Indus River contained large amounts of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which include organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).POPs are not biodegradable. They linger and affect the area in which they're deposited. For example, PCBs are so pervasively toxic that they're banned from landfills in many regions, yet they somehow find their way from rivers into oceans.PCBs are carcinogenic, create adverse nervous system effects, throw off endocrine systems and impede reproductive systems. PCB manufacturing was banned by the USA's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1979. Prior to 1979, PCBs were used in the manufacture of electronic parts and circuit boards. While banned in the USA, third world countries and ambitious developing nations still use them and multinational corporations still share them.A recent study published in thedetermined that Pakistan's Mangla Lake, a large reservoir used for fishing and swimming, contained high levels of heavy metals on the water's surface.Not all pollution comes from industrial sources. Increasingly, agrochemicals have been used by small Southeast Asian farmers as part of the "Green Revolution" to produce more crops with less effort. These agrochemicals contaminate the soil and find their way into streams, rivers and lakes. They also find their way into humans.India and Sri Lanka have endured a kidney disease epidemic for a couple of decades now. The people most often afflicted are male farmers between the ages of 30 and 60 who do not have any kidney disease precursors, such as high blood pressure or diabetes. As such, the rise in kidney disease in these countries has been attributed to agrochemical use. Some agrochemicals used, such as DDT, have been banned in most western industrialized nations.
(NaturalNews) As tens of millions of American citizens remain unemployed or underemployed or are seeing their wages stagnate, President Obama -- as well as Democratic and Republican leaders -- see no problem allowing millions more illegal aliens into the country to take jobs for less money.In fact, public policy throughout the Obama Administration has encouraged this phenomenon, and none so much as the Affordable Care Act, which imposes massive new costs on American business and the entire private sector -- anyone who hires American citizens to work for them.Indeed, under Obama's recently announced executive amnesty plan, "businesses will have a $3,000-per-employee incentive to hire illegal immigrants over native-born workers because of a quirk" in Obamacare,reported recently.The temporary amnesty, which is slated to last three years, essentially legalizes some 5 million who are in the country unlawfully. It makes them eligible for work permits, though it still deems them to be ineligible fortaxpayer-supported benefits like Obamacare, for example (though the administration has said the 5 million could be eligible for Social Security and Medicaid eventually).Thecontinued:"If it is true that the president's actions give employers a $3,000 incentive to hire those who came here illegally, he has added insult to injury," Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, told the paper. "The president's actions would have just moved those who came here illegally to the front of the line, ahead of unemployed and underemployed Americans."An official with the Department of Homeland Security, the mega-agency that oversees the nation's immigration services and border security, confirmed that newly legalized migrants will not be permitted to take out health insurance coverage under Obamacare -- and that, in turn, opens up the loophole for employers who are likely going to be looking for any way they can to avoid the employer mandate and resultant non-coverage penalty.Health and Human Services officials referred anyquestions to the White House, which in turn did not return requests for comment. HHS is the lead agency managing and overseeing the massive health law.In the days following his executive amnesty announcement, made Nov. 20, the president defended his actions. Traveling in Chicago recently, Obama said his policies would boost the economy and promised that they would not harm American workers."Immigrants are good for the economy. We keep on hearing that they're bad, but a report by my Council of Economic Advisers put out last week shows how the actions we're taking will grow our economy for everybody," he said.In fact, studies have shown that immigrants -- most of whom are from poor countries -- are a drain on the U.S. economy; a 2010 study by the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration moratoriums, among other related policies, found that even "immigrants who have been in the United States for 20 years are much more likely to live in poverty, lack health insurance, and access the welfare system than are native-born Americans."Regarding the Obamcare-immigrant loophole, this is not the first time the issue has come up. An immigration overhaul measure that passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote in 2013 essentially created the very same scenario, giving illegal immigrants long periods where they could legally work in the country but have no access to Obamacare benefits.
(NaturalNews) Wayne State University oncology professor and "Science"Blogger David Gorski is a hypocritical and crooked "doctor" who should be fired, de-licensed and not allowed anywhere near patients. He should also be investigated for his social media role in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's cover up of vaccine injury, a topic he squirms over when questioned about his lies publicly. And now, it is clear he had a conflict of interest in human subjects research at his university according to academic policy despite his denials.(Article by Jake Crosby, republished from www.autisminvestigated.com Unfortunately, he has yet to get what he deserves as he continues to misrepresent his conflict of interest with Sanofi and the pharmaceutical industry while both smearing the parents of severely disabled children who were never the same again following vaccination and lying for the federal government that covers up that harm. Just recently, he spoke on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe  a podcast hosted by front group advisor Steven Novella  apparently upset at some recent critical coverage Gorski has been getting from NaturalNews. In the podcast, he complained of having talks with his supervisor at his job as a result of the NaturalNews reports.Among the unflattering facts NaturalNews cited about Gorski is the six year old discovery by Autism Investigated's editor that he has been conducting a since-withdrawn trial of Sanofi drug Riluzole, sponsored by his employer that was in a partnership with Sanofi. The finding led to a letter-writing campaign by concerned readers to Gorski's employer informing them of the conflict, an event Gorski has complained about ever since. Yet despite his university apparently letting him off the hook and his repeat claims that he was not conflicted in any way, the Institutional Review Board policies of his employer say otherwise:Institutional Conflict of Interest consist of two major types: (1) l Conflict of Interest involving University equity holdings or a royalty arrangement related to sponsored programsThe principal investigator Gorski is a professor at Wayne State. The trial sponsor Barbara Anne Karmanos Cancer Institute is affiliated with Wayne State, which was partnered with Sanofi. Whereas before Gorski did not disclose this conflict in human subjects research, he now misrepresents it as not being a conflict on his bio at "ScienceBasedMedicine"  a blog he edits.On the clinicaltrials.gov website, the following is stated about Gorski's now-defunct trial: "This study has been withdrawn prior to enrollment. (Funding ended)". According to the website, Gorski failed to enroll patients into his trial after two-and-a-half years of patient recruitment. Perhaps his reputation has something to do with it. A simple Google search of Gorski yields the following title on the first page: "David Gorski's Financial Pharma Ties: What He Didn't Tell You". Any patient being recruited for Gorski's trial who is curious about its principal investigator would no doubt see that headline and have concerns, and Gorski himself is undoubtedly aware of the potential for patients to find his blog.The trial's cancellation is remarkable in light of Gorski's expressed hopes for it, suggesting Riluzole may prove to be as effective a treatment for breast cancer as surgery, radiation or chemo. That would certainly not be something a drug company would lack any interest in funding as Gorski had claimed about his research.But even more remarkable is the hypocrisy as it relates to the ethical standards with which Gorski holds other doctors. He was a huge online cheerleader for the ruin of absolved British doctor Andrew Wakefield's career, even though medical disciplinary findings against him that included conflict of interest and unethical research allegations were disproved.Yet here we have Gorski not being up front about his own conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry in human subjects research on blogs that he knows could be written by the very patients he was trying to recruit for his Sanofi drug trial. Not only did he possess an undisclosed conflict of interest according to his own university's IRB, but also according to the very medical disciplinary panel in the UK that yanked Dr. Wakefield's license. Those guidelines make very clear that doctors should be up front to patients about potential conflicts of interest, including those of their employer. Gorski's employer Wayne State was in a partnership with Sanofi that was probably worth millions while he was actively trying to recruit patients for his trial, yet nowhere was that mentioned on his public blog.But these connections do not just conflict Gorski's role in medicine and human subjects research, but also in medical education. On his academic bio, Gorski reveals that he encourages students to contribute to his online blog:As the managing editor of Science-Based Medicine (SBM), a weblog devoted to discussing the science of medicine, Dr. Gorski is very interested in science communication and critical thinking, and interested students are welcome to publish in SBM under Dr. Gorski's guidance to hone their writing skills for lay audiences.Little would his students know that his since-cancelled drug trial was tainted by an institutional conflict of interest that connected his employer Wayne State to the drug company Sanofi, the maker of Riluzole that Gorski was recruiting patients to a breast cancer trial on. While being misled into thinking they are honing their writing skills, they are merely providing content free-of-charge to an agenda-driven, corporatist blog edited by a doctor who was not upfront about his conflicts on his blog.By not including his connections on his blog and continuing to misrepresent them, he continually misleads both students and patients about his competing interests. It is hardly surprising that such a dishonest hypocrite would help expand the CDC's vaccine-autism cover-up to social media.Read more at Autisminvestigated.com
(NaturalNews) German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG seems to know no limits in its quest to acquire the world's most notorious agricultural company . The drug manufacturer has recently pushed its offer for procuring Monsanto up to a whopping $65 billion Bayer has confirmed that the two corporations are currently engaged in "advanced negotiations," though it seems less like negotiating and more like Monsanto trying to take Bayer for everything they have. The original offer from Bayer averaged out to $122 per share, or $62 billion. Their new $65 billion offer averages out to about $127.50 per share. Bayer would also assume Monsanto's $9 billion in debt, which pushes their offer up by an additional 2 percent. However, Monsanto is apparently seeking a jaw-dropping $130 per share, at least according to Bloomberg The attempted wooing of Monsanto is just one of many consolidations that have occurred lately in the agricultural industry.reports, "China National Chemical Corp. agreed in February to acquire Syngenta AG, while DuPont Co. and Dow Chemical Co. plan to merge and then carve out a new crop-science unit." These kinds of deals in the crop and seed industry threaten to leave just a few oversized global giants in the Big Ag industrial complex.If Bayer and Monsanto were to merge, they would create what would be one of the world's largest agricultural suppliers. Monsanto is presently the world's largest seed manufacturer, and Bayer currently offers their own "crop-protection" products (if you can really call them that). Between the two, they will make for a nearly-untouchable conglomerate. Monsanto has announced that it is considering Bayer's offer, but the company is not the GMO giant's only suitor; several other companies are seeking to acquire Monsanto as well.In spite of their tremendous offer, Monsanto reportedly feels that their company is somehow being undervalued, but is still "open" to negotiation. Clearly, Monsanto is blind to the growing aversion to its name and products.While the apparent ego of the company is worrisome, there are many more things to be concerned about, especially if this deal were to come to fruition. If two massive companies tied to the agricultural industry join forces, it could spell disaster for farmers and food prices. Their consolidation would lead to fewer choices for farmers, and you know what happens when there is a monopoly: prices skyrocket. With farmer bargaining power limited, it's natural to expect seed prices to increase. And that means that the price of produce in supermarkets will increase along with them.Robert Lawrence, a professor from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the founding director of the Center for a Liveable Future, told Market Watch , "The consolidation and driving out of smaller competitors, and controlling the marketplace and raising prices of seeds and pesticides for farmers worldwide is going to be a real shock to the food system."The merger could also mean fewer options for consumers, and may even effect the availability of organic crops and crops grown with fewer pesticides. Given the size of the two companies, the potential for them to further reduce farmers' options is very real.You would think that with the growing demand for organic, pesticide-free produce , Bayer would not be so interested in Monsanto; after all, that name has become something of a dirty word.However, Bayer reportedly took Monsanto's poor image into account, but made their offer to acquire the company anyway. This isn't surprising though; anytime two large companies such as these merge together, the net result will always be more power. Even if people don't like them, the increase in market share will still inevitably yield more economic power. And with economic power comes political power. As if Monsanto doesn't already have their claws deep enough into our political system, merging with Bayer would surely grant them invincibility.The most frightening thing about this acquisition is its potential to make Monsanto a stronger force in the agricultural industry, and consequently, further reduce the availability of non-GMO foods.
Collusion with Pharma criminals

Afraid of competition

(NaturalNews) The campaign to prevent cannabis legalization in Arizona recently accepted a half-million dollar donation from a pharmaceutical company accused of peddling a dangerous narcotic painkiller off-label.Drug company Insys made the donation to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy on Aug. 31, according to information posted by the Arizona Secretary of State. The revelation has lent support to longstanding claims by legalization proponents that drug companies view cannabis as a source of competition for their more addictive, dangerous and expensive products."Our opponents have made a conscious decision to associate with this company," said J.P. Holyoak, chairman of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. "They are now funding their campaign with profits from the sale of opioids  and maybe even the improper sale of opioids. We hope that every Arizonan understands that Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy is now a complete misnomer."In November, Arizona citizens will vote on Proposition 205, which would legalize marijuana possession in small quantities and regulate sale of the plant and its products for recreational use.Twenty-five U.S. states, including Arizona, have legalized medical use of marijuana. The Arizona law passed in 2010 by a margin of only 4,000 votes.An additional four states plus the District of Columbia now also permit recreational marijuana use. Arizona is one of five states that will vote to join them in November, along with California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada. Supporters of Proposition 205 expect the vote to be close again, possibly as close as it was in 2010.The federal government continues to ban marijuana as a Schedule I drug with "no accepted medical use."The large donation from Insys to the anti-legalization campaign is particularly notable because the company only markets a single product: Subsys, a sublingual spray form of the synthetic opioid painkiller fentanyl. Fentanyl is stronger than heroin, highly addictive and can cause lethal overdoses. It was fentanyl that led to the accidental death of the musician Prince in April.In August, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit against Insys, accusing the company of promoting Subsys to doctors for off-label uses, in violation of federal drug laws. Madigan claims that the company's "desire for increased profits led it to disregard patients' health and push addictive opioids for non-FDA approved purposes."Two former Insys employees are also facing federal criminal charges, standing accused of involvement in a kickback scheme to encourage doctors to prescribe the drug.Barrett Marson, spokesperson for the Arizona legalization campaign, said that given Insys' murky record, the anti-legalization group should return the donation.Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy has said that they will keep the money."We are truly shocked by our opponents' decision to keep a donation from what appears to be one of the more unscrupulous members of Big Pharma ," Holyoak said.The impression that Insys is trying to prevent a competing product from entering the market is enhanced by the fact that the company used to market a synthetic version of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the major chemical responsible for the marijuana "high." While the federal government bans cannabis as having "no accepted medical use," it ironically permits the use of synthetic THC for treating nausea, loss of appetite and other symptoms in patients with cancer and HIV.These are some of the same medicinal benefits that cannabis provides, at much lower cost.Although Insys no longer markets that particular synthetic THC product, it is currently working on a new one.Even without those products, however, medical cannabis is considered a major potential competitor to opioids, as both products are prescribed for chronic pain.A 2014 study by researchers from Johns Hopkins University found that states that legalized medical marijuana saw significant drops in opioid overdose deaths.A study published earlier this summer in the journalfound that those states also saw a significant decrease in pharmaceutical prescriptions for conditions that can be treated by cannabis, including anxiety, depression, pain, nausea, psychosis, seizures, sleep disorders and spasticity. This led to substantial savings in Medicare spending.
Scientific and market acceptance of curcumin has come a long way, driven by more than 7,500 scientific publications to its credit. The source of curcuminturmericis widely used as a kitchen ingredient and popularly known as curry powder in India and other parts of Southeast Asia. It is documented in the ancient texts of Ayurveda for its potential antimicrobial property and multiple health benefits. Modern research as confirmed and expanded upon traditional knowledge, which has driven market acceptance.

After the identification of curcuminoids and elucidation of their structure, its evaluation for a number of properties such as antimicrobial, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory were initiated in vitro. Increasing evidence on its therapeutic benefits led to more studies on animal models and human subjects.

The role of curcumin has been substantiated in chronic inflammatory conditionsthe compound is found to effectively inhibit NFB, the master switch of inflammation. Inflammation has been identified as the underlying condition for chronic health conditions such as arthritis, Alzheimers, pulmonary disorders, auto-immune disorders and several forms of cancer. The role of curcumin is not limited to this inflammatory target, but other markers such as COX-2, STAT-3, TNF-, interleukins, MMPs and other cytokines. With this plethora of information, it is one of the most preferred safe and effective natural supplements for improving general health and wellness.

Curcumin has gained immense popularity through these studies and wide reaching popular articles, blogs, product websites and books, driving the need for safe and effective consumer products. Efforts to standardize this compound and offer effective dosage forms to deliver health benefits was pioneered by the Sabinsa group. Its trademark registered and patented standardized 95% curcuminoids composition, Curcumin C3 Complex, has more than 45 clinical studies carried out for diverse applications, making it the most clinically evaluated curcumin brand in the world today.

The knowledge about the biotransformation of curcumin in the body has been understood and communicated effectively only by a few researchers. Publications beginning in the 1980s up to 2011 discuss the poor bioavailability of this natural compound. It is only after ground breaking research and publication of that research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) about the reductive metabolites of curcumin, that its bioconversion in the body has been understood. It is important to deliver curcumin that improves the bioavailability of its active metabolites, in turn enhancing its efficacy. Piperine from black pepper has been reported to effectively improve the efficacy of curcuminoids and cause no adverse effects.

With increasing demand for curcumin, there are always some manufacturers who will seek out cheaper alternatives to natural curcumin, adulterating with synthetic versions that are not supported by research on safety and efficacy. Modern scientific techniques such as radioisotope analysis can help identify such practices. It is the ethical responsibility of manufacturers to deliver to the consumer safe, natural forms of this ingredient.

Curcumin from turmeric is truly one of natures greatest gifts to mankind. Wise use of this natural ingredient is essential and more important is to utilize the vast scientific information available on curcumin to ensure its sustainability in the marketplace, so future generations will benefit as much as we have.

Shaheen Majeed, marketing director for Sabinsa Corp., knows Sabinsa from the ground up. When he was just 17 years old, Shaheen began in the warehouse of the science-based ingredients company his father founded in 1988. Subsequent positions included customer service, a variety of sales positions, representing the company's substantial portfolio of proprietary nutritional and cosmeceutical ingredients, managing contract manufacturing, cosmetic marketing manager and executive assistant to the CEO. He is spearheading the companys expansion of its functional foods offerings, while being actively involved in Sabinsa's cultivation program, interacting with farmers to ensure sustainability of quality raw materials from which Sabinsa manufacturers the companys proprietary ingredients.
China has expressed its intent to become the next "Space Giant" earlier this year. And it looks like the country is true to their word as a new Chinese space laboratory is set for launch next week.

The advanced Chinese space lab is capable of monitoring physics in outer space, studying the behavior of microgravity and observing gamma rays. Reports say that the new Chinese space lab can observe and analyze a total of 10 gamma rays per year.

To become the next super space giant, the Chinese Space Agency are launching one project after the other to prove their capability to dominate the space flight industry. The agency is all set to launch the second space lab Tiangong-2. The Long Mars 2F rocket will send Tiangong-2 to space. Both the space lab and the rocket have been positioned at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and are ready to take flight. The docking of the rocket and the space lab aired live on China. Tiangong-2 is scheduled for launch sometime between Sept. 15 and 20, according to CCTV News.

The Chinese space station will habituate an orbit of 393 kilometers above the Earth. Tiangong-2 is a 60-ton space station and will be a testing ground for life support systems and refueling processes. The new space station will be instrumental in various scientific research including physics, fluid mechanics in space, biology and space science. China will also be able to observe the Earth from space through the space lab.

Tiangong-2 also boasts of the capability to observe gamma ray using its gamma-ray detector POLAR. POLAR is a joint project developed by the collaboration between China, Switzerland and Poland.

But China's ambitious plans don't stop there. The agency plans a rendezvous with the new space station and Tianzhou-1, the first cargo and refueling spacecraft of China.

"The vast majority of space technology being developed is dual-use, and so serves Chinese security interests as well," Johnson-Freese, a professor at the US Naval War College and Chinese space expert said in an interview.

Earlier this year, reports say that China is also building a deep-sea space station underneath the South China Sea.
SpaceX is still dealing with the aftermath of its Falcon 9 rocket explosion. The unfortunate incident that took place at Cape Canaveral Air Force base in Florida is proving to be a burden not only to Elon Musk and SpaceX, but also to other companies involved. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was even quoted saying that this is the "most difficult and complex" failure the company has to deal with so far.

On Sept.1, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was being refueled for its scheduled launch on Sept. 3 to carry Facebook's Internet satellite, Amos-6, to space when it exploded. Reports say that the rocket exploded during the procedure but the cause of the explosion remains unknown until today.

The catastrophic incident forced Musk to ask for the public's help in investigating the cause of the problem. SpaceX asked for any other videos and images taken of the explosion. "If you have audio, photos or videos of our anomaly last week, please send to report@spacex.com. Material may be useful for investigation, " a SpaceX official said in a Tweet.

If you have audio, photos or videos of our anomaly last week, please send to report@spacex.com. Material may be useful for investigation  SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 9, 2016

SpaceX competitors stated that the company may even face suspension of up to a year due to the incident. That, and SpaceX's responsibility to Facebook, whose satellite was destroyed together with the rocket, are only some of the issues that Musk and SpaceX have to face. The rocket costs $60 million, while the Israel-made Amos-6 satellite amounts to $200 million. "Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years," Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX said in a Tweet.

Currently, SpaceX is leading an investigation with the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation office. Initial results show that all engines of the rocket were not fired during the fuelling stage; therefore, there are "no apparent heat source" that may have caused the explosion. Reports say that there was a bang heard before the explosion, and it could have originated somewhere else and not from the rocket.

Further investigations are still ongoing and SpaceX still has not yet revealed the total amount of damages incurred by the explosion. Photographs of the wrecked booster at the launch pad already surfaced, but experts say the launch pad is the least of the problem for SpaceX today.

SpaceX has a lineup of commercial and government space missions amounting to $10 billion. "We remain fully confident in the results of [that] investigation... The current investigation has no bearing on this," SpaceX spokesman Dex Torricke-Barton said in an email to Reuters.

Meanwhile, some of SpaceX's customers remain hopeful that the company will be able to resolve the issue and proceed with its scheduled launch at the soonest time possible.

Read More:

SpaceX Rival, Blue Origin Likely to Blow Up New Shepard Rocket Next Month

How the SpaceX Falcon 9 Explosion Will Affect the Space, Telecom Industries, According to Experts

SpaceX Might Face Up to 1 Year Suspension After Rocket Explosion
Twenty dolphins were slaughtered as the annual Taiji dolphin hunt in the south of Japan began on Friday. The hunt has earned worldwide attention after the controversial documentary, "The Cove," was released in 2009.

According to a news release from Agence France-Press via The Guardian, during the six-month hunting season this year, local fishermen from Taiji plan to kill 1,820 dolphins -- the 20 dolphins were the first victim of this gruesome hunt.

"For several days the hunters have been pursuing pods offshore, who were able to escape capture. This pod of Risso's dolphins was not so lucky. The senseless slaughter of the adult dolphins, while forcing the young to fend for themselves in the open sea, should serve as a call to action for everyone," Ric O'Barry, the founder of the Dolphin Project and proprietor of "The Cove" documentary, told National Geographic in an email.

The six-long Taiji hunt will run from September 2016 to March 2017. One hundred fifty live bottlenose dolphins have also been pre-sold to marine parks while trainers will get the chance to choose who to get for captivity.

Meanwhile, environmental organizations and advocates have expressed their concern regarding the controversial Taiji dolphin hunt. Some of them have even visited the local town of Taiji to show their protest, but Japanese authorities have also boosted their numbers to prevent any clashes between animal rights advocates and local hunters.

To recall, "The Cove" documentary in 2009 exposed this gruesome dolphin slaughter that most of Japan and the world don't know about. The film shows local fishermen drawing dolphins to the shore of a secret cove using nets and stress sounds, where they are stabbed and pierced, turning the blue sea to blood red.

The killing of dolphins is indefensible given our scientific knowledge of dolphins, which has demonstrated their sophisticated cognitive abilities including self and social awareness, Diana Reiss, a psychologist from Hunter College, told New Scientist in 2013.

Kris Simpson of International Dolphin Watch also expressed the same concern, saying that dolphins must not be hunted and should " receive the highest standards of treatment in any hunt, equal to that granted to domestic animals."

Read More:

Sea Talk: Dolphins Recorded Having a Conservation Using Sentences Up to 5 Words Long

WATCH: Tourists Play With Dolphins Before Japan's Annual Slaughter Begins

Victory for Animal Rights! Baltimore National Aquarium Frees Dolphins to Oceanside Habitat
A new study has revealed that after umami, the human tongue now has a sixth sense which could explain why humans love carbs so much.

According to the study published in the journal Chemical Senses, food rich in carbohydrates could produce a distinct "starchy" flavor that's different from sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Juyun Lim from Oregon State University in Corvallis explains that for so long, scientists have not considered the idea of humans specifically tasting carbohydrates.

Every culture has a major source of complex carbohydrate. The idea that we cant taste what were eating doesnt make sense, Lim said via New Scientist.

Complex carbohydrates could be broken down to short chains of sugar molecules; thus, scientists have categorized starch's taste based on these sweet molecules. However, to prove that starch has a unique flavor separate from sweetness, Lim and her team gave different carbohydrate solutions to participants that vary in race. The participants were also given a compound to block the sweet receptors in the tongue.

Results showed that the test subjects detected the starch flavor despite the sweet receptor block. Asians described it as being akin to rice while Caucasians described the flavor as "bread-like or pasta-like." This suggests that humans could taste starch even before it's broken down to sugar molecules.

The participants were also given a compound to block the enzyme that breaks carbohydrates to shorter ones. After the compound was given, the subjects were unable to taste the starch flavor, proving that the distinct flavor from starch comes from short carbohydrate chains.

Many people think there are only five tastes, but a bunch of us think there might be others, said Michael Tordoff at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
For those who have yet to visit Australia's Great Barrier Reef, now would be the best time to visit. Reports state that the Great Barrier Reef is dying, with almost half of the reef's corals already having vanished. All this due to the effects of global warming and coral bleaching.

In 2015, approximately 70 percent of people have made it to the Great Barrier Reef due to reports that it is close to death. The reports are anything but false. In fact, while some studies state half of the coral reefs are affected by the warming ocean temperature, one study estimated that more than 90 percent of it is.

Due to the effects of global warming and coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, this has brought on the last-chance tourism phenomenon. This happens each time a destination is close to death, of which the same instance occurred at the Galapagos Islands and Maldives. While this may be great news for the tourism industry in Australia, it's bad news for the coral reefs.

"There's a vicious cycle at play here: tourists travel to see a destination before it disappears, but in so doing they contribute to its demise, either directly through on-site pressures or ... through greenhouse gas emissions," stated an author of the study in the Conversation.

On the other hand, reef scientist Peter Mumbly claims otherwise. In an interview with the Motherboard, Mumby states that the effects of tourism are "overwhelmingly positive."

"The greater the value of Great Barrier Reef tourism, the easier it is to justify government investment in reef management," said Mumby.

The effects of global warming and coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef may not be immediately evident, but researcher Brett Lewis of the Queensland University of Technology managed to capture it all on video. On his YouTube channel, the time-lapse video reminds everyone just how pressing the issue of coral bleaching is.

Read More:

The Great Barrier Reef Has Been Hiding Massive Donut-Shaped Reef For Years

Consequences of Climate Change: Kelp! Australia's Underwater Forest Wiped Out by Marine Heatwave

Coral Bleaching Gets Worse, Shows No Signs of Stopping
A team of geologists from the University of Tokyo has made a surprising discovery. In their study, Suguru Yabe and Yoshiyuki Tanaka state that the full moon can trigger enormous earthquakes. They found strong evidence after examining three separate databases on large scale seismic activities.

Led by Satoshi Ide, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, Yabe and Tanaka along with their team had examined three seismic events. These include the 2004 Sumatra quake with a magnitude of 9.3, the 2010 Maule quake in Chile with a magnitude of 8.8, and the 2011 Fukushima quake with a magnitude of 9.0.

The geologists found an overlap between these events and periods of high tidal stress, along with the alignment of the Sun and Moon which yields the strongest gravitational tug on Earth. In addition, the 2011 Japan quake and the 2004 Sumatra quake occurred during a high tide. Based on further research and examination, nine of the 12 biggest earthquakes recorded had occurred on days with a new or full moon.

"This sort of tidal triggering could teach us something pretty fundamental about how earthquakes start, grow, and ultimately run their course," stated the authors of the study.

Details as to how the earthquakes form and evolve have yet to be worked out. Yet, the study by the Japanese geologists brings more insight to earthquakes and its relation to the moon.

"[The study] suggests that the small additional encouragement from the tides can actually make an earthquake grow a bit larger than it would have otherwise. This is surprising, considering how small the tidal stress is, compared to the stresses generated by the ongoing earthquake. If the observation can be confirmed, this sort of tidal triggering could teach us something pretty fundamental about how earthquakes start, grow, and ultimately run their course," stated Nicholas van der Elst of the U.S. Geological Survey.

It is still too early to conclude that earthquakes are indeed caused by the movements of the moon.

Read More:

Mystery Solved! Moon Came From Earth's Tidbits, Study Reveals

Oklahoma Earthquake is the States Largest on Record So Far

Awakening the Giant! Iceland's Largest Volcano Might Erupt After Unusual Big Quakes
Blue Origin has just revealed its new reusable rocket that would compete against SpaceX's Falcon 9.

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, who also founded Amazon, announced that the new rocket named New Glenn. It wiill stand 270 feet tall and will have 3.85 million pounds of thrust. It will also have an even bigger 3-stage version, which will stand 313 feet tall.

New Glenn was named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, who was also the first American to orbit the Earth. The rocket will be taller and more powerful than SpaceX's Falcon 9, which measures 230 feet tall and has a thrust of 1.7 million pounds.

"New Glenn is designed to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into space," Bezos told Reuters.

Blue Origin intends to refurbish and re-fly the New Glenn rocket, the same direction Elon Musk had taken with his Falcon 9 rocket. New Glenn will have a booster capable of vertical landings, which will enable Blue Origin to reuse the first stage of the rocket to be used for satellite launches and manned spacecrafts.

Two versions of the New Glenn are being developed and both will use a first stage powered by seven methane-burning BE-4 engines, which the company also intends to sell to United Launch Alliance (ULA) for its new Vulcan rocket.

The company is currently building a launch site and test facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, as well as a rocket manufacturing plant at the Kennedy Space Center.

"We plan to fly New Glenn for the first time before the end of this decade from historic Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida," Bezos told Popular Mechanics. "The 3-stage variant -- with its high specific impulse hydrogen upper stage -- is capable of flying demanding beyond-LEO missions."

Blue Origin has been testing a smaller, reusable rocket and spacecraft called New Shepard, a space tourism project that will ferry paying passengers up at an altitude of about 62 miles to experience microgravity and view the Earth from space.
Lightning strike deaths are up by three times as much as tornado deaths, a new report said.

Data from the National Weather Service (NWS) show that as of today, Sept. 13, 35 people in the U.S. have died from lightning strikes in 2016 alone. This makes lightning even deadlier than tornadoes, which have only caused 12 fatalities in 2016 so far.

In 2015, the number of U.S. lightning fatalities was at 27, and since 2010, totals for the year have been in the 20s only. In 2009, however, fatalities reached 34, another year when lightning-related deaths surpassed deaths from tornadoes. The highest number of lightning strike fatalities was recorded in 2006, with deaths reaching 48.

According to John Jensenius, lightning safety specialist at the NWS, the increase in the number of deaths is partly due to people's lack of awareness about the dangers of lightning.

The latest lightning strike death was that of a man in Wisconsin, who died last week. In July and August, a total of 24 people died from lightning strikes - 12 people each month. While lightning strike deaths are typically high in July, the number of deaths in August has been unusually high and is said to be the deadliest since 2007.

Fridays are the deadliest day of the week for this year, Jensenius told Reuters. He added that it was unusual since the highest number of incidents typically happen on Saturdays and Sundays when people engage in outdoor activities.

For this year, Florida has recorded the most number of lightning deaths (7), followed by Louisiana (4) and New York (4).

About 10 percent of people who are struck by lightning are killed, the other 90 percent may suffer lifelong disabilities, NWS said. To avoid lightning strikes, experts advise people to stay indoors or inside a hard-topped vehicle.

"When you're struck, you have electricity moving either over or through your body," Jensenius told LiveScience. "The electricity typically goes through either the cardiovascular and/or the nervous system."

According to Jensenius, a lightning could stop a person's heart and cause cardiac arrest, which could lead to death. A lightning strike could also send tiny electrical impulses throughout the body. People who survive, however, will have problems with their memory.
Former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and ex-governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman apologized, for the first time in 15 years, for assuring the people living near the ground zero that water and air are safe after the tragic 9/11 attack.

"Whatever we got wrong, we should acknowledge and people should be helped," Whitman said in a report from The Guardian. "I'm very sorry that people are sick. I'm very sorry that people are dying and if the EPA and I in any way contributed to that, I'm sorry. We did the very best we could at the time with the knowledge we had."

The terrorist attack at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 has been embedded in the minds and hearts of Americans. After the planes hit the building, making it collapse, massive plume of ash covered a wide area in lower Manhattan.

A week later, Whitman reassured people living near the ground zero in lower Manhattan that "their air is safe to breathe and their water safe to drink." In 2013, however, EPA inspector general criticized the claim made by the former chief, saying that the agency has no basis for its swift pronouncement anout air quality.

According to a report from the New York Daily News, more than 37,ooo people registered to the World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP) were declared sick. This includes more than 1,000 people who have died in the past 15 years.

Furthermore, about 10,233 firefighters, who responded during and after the attack, had at least on 9/11-linked illness. Among them, 1,396 are suffering from cancer, 5,723 with gastroesophageal problem, 5,577 afflicted with upper respiratory illness and 5,456 diagnosed with lower respiratory illness.

EPA did recommend the first responders on the ground zero to wear masks and respirators while conducting searches and retrievals. However, they declared the surrounding areas to be safe, despite knowing the presence of asbestos, lead and other toxins lingering in and near the wreckage of the Twin Towers.
Menlo Park firefighters from Station 2 returned from a call on Sunday - the 15th anniversary of Sept. 11 - to find that 343 flags honoring their fallen brothers and sisters in New York had been torched.

The flags represent the number of firefighters lost at the World Trade Center in 2001. And many Menlo Park Fire District firefighters flew to New York that year to help with the aftermath of the tragedy.

I dont get angry easily," fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said in a statement. "But knowing that someone tried to burn not only our flag memorial, but a specific tribute to 343 heroic fallen brothers, some of whom I personally knew, worked with and helped to look for at Ground Zero, and that this occurred here on the actual 15th anniversary date of this event, its a despicable act of disrespect and cowardice; its truly hard for me to comprehend, accept and I need to stop myself there because I dont want you to know what Im thinking right now.

The damage was contained to about six flags, according to Battalion Chief Ben Marra. The vandalism likely occurred around 1 p.m., Schapelhouman said.

"Fortunately it's minor," Marra said. But "given the density of the flags on the pallet, it could have been much worse."

Marra said the crew took pictures of the damage and turned the photos over to East Palo Alto police. Police descibed the suspect as a man in his 20s, with collar-length, bushy hair, wearing a horizontal striped shirt and having a distinctive walk.

Police also had surveillance video from the scene, showing the suspect setting the fire.

"Stopping at the corner, waiting for traffic to leave, and then squatting down and setting the flags on fire," East Palo Alto police Cmdr. Jeff Liu said, describing what the footage shows.

Police plan to release the surveillance video Wednesday.

In Hollister on Sunday, police received a report of a man with a knife slashing American flags along a main city street. The flags had been placed by a Boy Scout troop.

Hollister police located the man on San Benito Street and cited him for vandalism. At least three flags were detroyed.

In Southern California, a 9/11 tribute was also trashed. Nearly 3,000 miniature American flgas were removed from the grass at Occidental College in Eagle Rock, California, broken and thrown in the trash.

NBC Bay Area's Peggy Bunker contributed to this report.
A Santa Clara County Sheriff's deputy ended up shooting a killing a man they say wouldn't drop his handgun in Saratoga on Monday night, a spokesman for the sheriff's office said.

The shooting occurred at 7:49 p.m. off Titus Avenue at Prospect Avenue, according to sheriff's spokesman Lt. James Jensen. That's after deputies had been called out earlier to perform a welfare check at the home, where they had been called out to in the past for undisclosed reasons, he said.

"I can confirm there has been a sheriff's deputy involved in a shooting and that standard protocols following these types of incidents are being followed," Jensen said. "These types of incidents demonstrate how inherently dangerous the jobs of our deputies are."

When deputies arrived, they tried to get inside for 50 minutes. They finally entered the house through the back, Jensen said, and saw a man with a handgun. Jensen did not say whether deputies broke down the door or entered with permission.

Jensen said deputies repeatedly told the man to drop his weapon, which they said he didn't. A single veteran officer fired and hit the man, Jensen said. The man was taken to the hospital and was later pronounced dead. It is unclear who exactly the man was, and whether he was the subject of the original welfare call.

The last deputy-involved shooting was in March 2015, when two sheriff's deputies on Sweigert Road say a green sedan accelerated and struck a patrol car toward one of them. That's when his colleague fired, hitting the man, but not killing him.

Cupertino Union School Supt. Wendy Gudalewicz said she was working with the sheriff's department to try an open the parking lot before school started to make drop-off easier.
After nearly a year, a preliminary hearing for a pair of drifters accused of murder is set to begin next week, and defense attorneys were rebuffed in their request to close proceedings to the media and public.

Morrison Lampley and Lila Alligood are standing trial in the slayings of 67-year-old Steve Carter, of Fairfax, and 23-year-old Audrey Carey, of Quebec.

Lampley's attorney, chief deputy public defender David Brown, asked the judge to close a hearing scheduled for Tuesday for fear that statements made by co-defendant Alligood, 18, could be put on the record, and those statements could implicate Lampley and predjudice potential jurors.

Brown argued that the statements may be inadmissible at trial.

But an attorney for the San Francisco Chronicle and Marin Independent Journal newspapers told the court that hearing which evidence will or will not be included at trial is part of the publics right to access.

"It can be key to developments in the case, and the public has a constitutional right of access to see that process as part of the preliminary hearing," media attorney Duffy Carolan said.

In the end, the judge agreed. The preliminary hearing will not be closed.

"We respect the judges ruling, and we will prepare in accordance with her rulings," Brown said.

A third suspect, 24-year-old Sean Angold, of San Francisco, has pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder in exhange for a 15-years-to-life sentence and his cooperation in testifying against Lampley and Alligood.
A magnitude-3.5 earthquake struck near Piedmont Tuesday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake struck at 12:50 a.m. roughly two miles east-southeast of Piedmont at a recorded depth of 2.98 miles.

There were no immediate reports of damage according to fire departments in Berkeley, Alameda County and Piedmont. But people from San Leandro to Santa Clara said they felt the Earth move.

Jade Hernandez wrote on Facebook that she was binge-watching Stranger Things when she felt it. "Scared the heck out of me," she wrote, adding she grabbed her 2-year-old and rousted him out of bed.

Sara Dunaway Seitz wrote she was headed to bed when the quake hit her penthouse rooftop in San Leandro, shaking her building for about 10 to 15 seconds.

Molly Stanley Wolter wrote she felt the earthquake about 45 miles away. "The cat began to go nuts" for a few seconds, she wrote, before jumping into the window and "banging her tail!!"
A confidentiality agreement between a public agency and the developer helped keep the Millennium Towers sinking problem from the public starting back in 2010, NBC Bay Area has learned.

The agreement, which was signed on Feb. 26, 2010, is signed off by representatives of the obscure state agency constructing a transit terminal, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the San Francisco City Attorneys Office and Millennium Partners, the developer of the already sinking tower building next to the $2 billion plus Transbay project.

Transbay had begun to monitor the sinking of the building in 2009 as it prepared to build a wall between the two projects. Under the deal reached a year later: Any documents exchanged during or as a result of the Feb. 26 meeting, the agreement specifies, would be deemed for all purposesconfidential to the extent allowed by law.

The agreement even offered to keep any evidence of what was discussed from being disclosed in lawsuits.

While the February 2010 agreement does not spell out what was discussed at the meeting and therefore could not be disclosed, NBC Bay Area has learned the deal concerned data about the Millenniums growing problem and the public agencys potential liability for making it worse.

NBC Bay Area has obtained a separate email from the chief engineer of the Transbay project, Brian Dykes, sent shortly after the agreement was inked. In that email, sent March 12, 2010, Dykes notified the parties to the Feb. 26 deal that monitoring data should be considered CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION and not for public release.

City Supervisor Aaron Peskin says the email and confidentiality agreement are troubling, in light of the need for the public disclosure on a major project.

This brings into question who knew what when and how come the public wasnt informed? Peskin said.

The city attorneys office and developer at the table for the talks told NBC Bay Area that they did not believe the deal would result in data being kept secret. The talks, they agreed, dealt with the financial settlement of a dispute related to the sinking building.

In a statement, Millennium spokesman PJ Johnston said the Transbay team wanted the confidentiality and the developer had no expectation the data would be kept confidential when the talks collapsed.

The City Attorneys Office, which had two representatives at the talks, said they did not have any expectation that the monitoring data would be kept confidential.

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority could not explain why the data sent shortly after the confidentiality deal was marked confidential, given that other data was not.

Andrea Guzman, spokeswoman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a statement that the city never considered the monitoring data confidential, only the discussions related to the financial deal related to the settlement problem. Guzman said it was the Transbay agency that mistakenly labelled two sets of monitoring data as confidential.

However, Guzman did not specify when the label error was discovered or explain why the attorneys who got the email labeling a set of data as confidential back in 2010 did not act to assure the data was available.

In July of this year, Andrew Schwartz, an attorney for the authority, sent a letter to Millennium that declared a prior non-disclosure deal void and gave Millennium 10 days notice that the agency was going to provide monitoring data in response to a records act request.

Since data was marked confidential back in 2010  mistake or not -- the Millennium Tower has sunk at least 16 inches and is now leaning at least two inches at the base.

The Millennium Tower Association, which represents the owners, told NBC Bay Area in a statement that it is troubled at reports about the meetings between the developer and the joint powers agency six years ago related to the sinking issue.

The Association also finds troubling  as should the public  the allegation that a public agency sought to keep secret the buildings condition, said owners spokesman Charlie Goodyear. The Association continues its investigation to get to the facts of these matters.

Obviously, any accusations of collusion are disturbing, Goodyear said in an earlier statement.

Peskin says any deal that labeled data as NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE would leave those who need that information the most, the owners, in the dark. He said he wants answers about any circumstance that would mean that the Joint Powers Authority would not disclose data.

it is obviously deeply disturbing, he said, that this public agency did not allow the public to know what was going on.

Peskin announced Tuesday is going to convene a hearing Sept. 22 to learn the truth. How come they didnt come clean with the public? Those are the questions were going to ask and were going to get answers one way or the other.
It's traditional during presidential elections to hold off on reporting final results until everyone has voted.

Until now.

A Silicon Valley startup called Votecastr wants to shake things up on Election Day, giving voters results in real time, before the polls close.

"Technology is allowing us to track in real time," said Melinda Jackson, political science professor at San Jose State University.

Sasha Issenberg, editorial director for Votecastr, said it's only fair that the public have the same access as political insiders.

"If the information exists, and people have access to it, there's no reason voters, news consumers, shouldn't have it also," he said.

But some believe such technology could keep voters away from the polls, especially if they already know who's heading to the White House.

"We've got city council, assembly positions and 17 ballot initiatives in California," Jackson said. "If turnout is depressed, it could affect the outcome of all the other races as well."

Issenberg disagrees.

"There's no real reason to think that voters being exposed to more information is gonna scare them away from playing their part in the process," he said.
A possible toll, parking officers, reservations and a fully funded "Lombard Ambassadors" program are being considered as ways to curb congestion along San Francisco's most crooked street.

After more than a year of study, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority has issued several potential solutions on better managing the tourists who flock to Lombard Street, and who inevitably clog the access for those residents who actually live there.

On Tuesday night, frustrations boiled over at a community meeting as longtime Russian Hill residents said what used to be a weekend inconvenience of gridlocked traffic and people spilling into the streets is now a daily headache.

Longtime resident Judith Carlson said that it's not just traffic, but trash and toilets that are also a burden on those who live there.

"There's no place for people to sit, so they're all sitting on our steps and throwing trash on our steps," Carlson said. "There's no bathrooms, so they knock on my doors."

Selfies on 'Crooked' Lombard Street in San Francisco

As far as the transportation authority knows, it's the first time a toll has ever been considered for Lombard Street, spokesman Eric Young told NBC Bay Area. How much the toll would cost and who would pay it, hasn't yet been hashed out. The specifics of a toll, if it is approved, he said, would require yet another study.

The fee is one of several options to offset the average 16,000 visitors on peak days, and roughly 2 million tourists a year who flock to see the multimillion-dollar homes and 600-foot stretch of winding street, which is now the second most popular tourist destination in San Francisco.

Tolls are commonplace on bridges and highways, and even for driving to see redwood trees. But they're unusual in residential areas. In a suburban town outside Dallas, transportation leaders once considered the idea of charging a toll on Mockingbird Lane for non-residents in 2008, which at the time, would have been the first toll on a surface street in the United States. It never passed, however, because the idea died before it ever made it to the town council, according to Highland Park town spokesman Lance Koppa.

Young said he wasn't aware of any other U.S. tolls on residential streets - that question wasn't part of the study focus.

"Clearly, Lombard has been a tourist destination spot for many years," Young said. "But there seem to be waves of popularity. We're in a peak period, right now."

[PHOTOS] San Francisco's Lombard Street

Greg Bundage of the Lombard Hill Improvement Association has lived on Lombard for 20 years.

"This used to be a great place to live, but the city has turned its head and let this happen," Bundage said. "And even though it may be an icon, we deserve to have some privacy."

Bundage liked the idea of dynamic pricing. "Tolls with surge pricing cheaper during the week vs. the weekend," he said. "And night should be max. Nobody knows unless they live here. At night, people go down 2 or 3 a.m., honking, yelling, boom boxes."

Some tourists on Tuesday said they understood the residents' frustrations and said they would be willing to pay a small fee for access to the street.

But a toll was not the answer for many others. "Insane. Greedy," Kayrn Pierce tweeted.

"It's kind of a highlight for people to come here to San Francisco to see this pretty street, and to charge to see the street would be an injustice, actually," said tourist Anand Raivaderaand of London, while enjoying the unusual street and stunning surrounding views.

Aside from the toll, the study's other possible recommendations include adding parking control officers to direct traffic and shepherd pedestrians meandering along with their iPhones, and creating a permanent funding base for an ambassador program first started in August 2015. The program currently costs $110,000. Other ideas include asking people to make reservations to drive down Lombard, now a victim of its own popularity.

The transportation authority will consider the feedback from Tuesday night's community meeting and forward some ideas to the Board of Supervisors by the end of 2016, Young said.

Lombard Street is "the second most popular spot next to the Golden Gate Bridge," Supervisor Mark Farrell's legislative aide, Jess Montejano, said Tuesday. "Within the last year and a half, the congestion and quality of life have gotten worse and we need to get our act together."

NBC Bay Area's Pete Suratos, Marianne Favro and Jean Elle contributed to this report.
Two people have been arrested on suspicion of launching Molotov cocktails at an Antioch house, and painting N----- and a Swastika on its exterior, to target one of its inhabitants, police said Tuesday.

Investigators identified the suspects as 25-year-old Christyne Gail McDaniel of Brentwood and 27-year-old Roy Charles Sorvari of Antioch, according to the city's Police Chief Allan Cantando. They were arrested Thursday, the day after the attack.

Another person who hasn't yet been arrested may have also been involved, police said, declining to divulge further details.

"This was an ongoing dispute between a relative of McDaniel and a resident that lived within the house," Cantando said. "It was not a random incident."

Details of the feud remain unclear, but police said the resident in question is Lloyd Shackleford.

Authorities say McDaniel and Sorvari intentionally started a fire that they hoped would trap Shackleford, his mother, his sister and her four children  all of whom were sleeping  inside the burning house. Grainy surveillance video shows the attack unfold in the cloak of darkness.

"We saw him light three bottles right there on the sidewalk and proceed to throw them at the house," Shackleford's mother Roshon Williams said in an earlier interview.

No one was injured, but court documents show that the suspects began plotting the crime at least a week before the hateful vandalism.

Cell phone records Sorvari texted McDaniel on Sept. 1.

"I have a rope and you got the tree," he wrote.

"I've got the cross and some matches," she replied.

"Darn right, wanna torture a [N-----] with me," Sorvari continued.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney's office has charged the duo on several counts, including arson, mayhem, torture, conspiracy to commit murder, and assault with a deadly weapon. They have also been slapped with hate crimes enhancements, and are being held on $1,290,000 bail, police said.

If Shackleford's sister hadn't woken up and alerted the family about the blaze, the vandalism could have had deadly results, police said.

Victoria Adams, president of the East Bay branch of the NAACP, said on Tuesday that hate cannot be tolerated.

"I dont know why they did what they did, however, it's an act of hate so it is not acceptable," she said.

Antioch resident Roger Martin was equally enraged.

"Of course I was upset. They are friends," he said.

Having seen the Williams' house defaced with Swastikas and N-----, Martin said he hoped the family would continue to live in the neighborhood.

"They are good people," he said. "We like them. We hope they stay. We hope they dont feel threatened."

People with information about the case are asked to call the Antioch Police Department's Investigations Bureau at (925) 779-6933 or text a tip to 274637, using the word Antioch.

NBC Bay Area's Rhea Mahbubani contributed to this report.
A U.S. Navy commander was arrested in San Diego Monday on suspicion of assault with intent to rape, according to a San Diego Police Department sex crimes investigator.

Commander John M. Neuhart II, 39, was arrested Monday by SDPD patrol officers. He was booked into San Diego County Jail on one count of attempted rape by force and one count of assault with intent to rape, police said.

Neuhart is the commanding officer of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 25, based at Anderson Air Force Base on Guam.

The incident took place Monday, when San Diego police responded to a call of a sexual assault occurring in the city's Valencia Park neighborhood, SDPD Sex Crimes Lt. Paul Phillips said.

It wasn't clear Tuesday if Neuhart was being represented by an attorney. He was released on bail, according to a representative of the San Diego County District Attorney's Office.

Neuhart and the victim, both members of the Navy, met at a hotel downtown when the victim, with a group of friends, recognized Neuhart, according to Phillips. The group talked for a while until the victim left the bar to go home, with Neuhart going as well.

Neuhart followed the victim into her house, at which point he allegedly attempted to rape her.

"The suspect immediately became forceful with her and attempted to sexually assault her," Phillips said.

The victim fought the suspect off and screamed loudly, Phillips said. A neighbor heard the screams and ran to the front of the house to ask if the victim was okay. When she answered no, the neighbor called 911 and said through the window that the police were on the way.

Neuhart apparently heard the remark, Phillips said, and escaped through the back door.

The neighbor flagged down police when they arrived and pointed out Neuhart, who was running down the street and into a nearby canyon.

Officers apprehended Neuhart in the canyon and took him into custody.

District Attorney representative Tanya Sierra noted that charges listed under an arrest may not be the same charges prosecutors file when Neuhart appears in court for his arraignment.

He is scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 19 at 1:30 p.m., she said.

Assistant PAO Command of Naval Air Forces Lt. Leslie Hubbell would not confirm the allegation that led to the arrest.

"Things are in investigatory phase," Hubbell told NBC 7 late Monday.

The Navy Times reports Neuhart was in San Diego for a conference.

According to a website for the Navy, Neuhart joined the "Warhawks" of Fleet Replacement Squadron, HS-10 in San Diego in 2002. Since then, he was deployed aboard USS Harry S. Truman, and served as a Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) at the Seahawk Weapons School "Seawolf" in Fallon, Nevada.

Navy officials told NBC 7 that Commander William Easthamis was given temporary command of Neuhart's squadron.
Chicago museums will grant free admission on multiple Illinois Resident Discount Days this fall.

During the discount days, residents can present a valid ID with an Illinois address to get into the museum without paying a dime.

Whether you are looking for free activities for kids, want to learn more about space or take in the amazing view of the Chicago skyline, free days are a great time to stop by!" the Adler Planetarium wrote.

Upcoming free admission days will be as follows:

Adler Planetarium

September: 12  16

October: 10 (Columbus Day)

November: 11 (Veterans Day)

December: 3  9

For more information, visit adlerplanetarium.org.

Museum of Science + Industry

September: 6-9, 12-16, 19-23, 26-30

October: 4-6

November: 3, 10

December: 1

For more information, visit msichicago.org.

Field Museum

September: 10, 17, 18, 19

October: 2, 16, 30, 31

November: 27

December: 3, 4, 18

For more information, visit fieldmuseum.org.

Shedd Aquarium

September: 12, 13, 19, 20, 26, 27

October: 3, 4, 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, 31

November:1, 7, 8, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28, 29

For more information, visit sheddaquarium.org.

Art Institute of Chicago

Every Thursday from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. throughout the year

For more information, visit artic.edu.
The City Councils Zoning Committee signed off on a plan to revitalize what they call the carnival atmosphere of Chicagos Navy Pier in an attempt to transform the iconic spot into a top, year-round destination.

It's already the state's number one tourist attraction, but critics complain it's outdated and underutilized, especially during the off-season. That could be about to change, if Navy Pier officials can secure funding.

Renderings show a modern, sleek version of what officials have in mind.

The newly approved pplan includes the additions of a unique 7-story hotel, an elevated walkway that juts out over Lake Michigan, a reflecting pool, a seasonal ice rink, and a 4,000 square foot cafe as well as new retail shops.

Navy Pier Proposes Upgrades for Attraction

Navy Piers improvements will begin on the south dock with the hotel, the plans show, but the rest of the renovations will depend on the generosity of private donors.

Provided funding is secured, the focus will then shift to revamping the piers east end with the elevated lake overlook.

A new park at Navy Piers entrance was paid for by a $20 million donation from the Polk Brothers Foundation. Navy Pier officials the donation will pave way for more contributions to complete the overhaul, which is expected to boost attendance to the iconic attraction.
Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson is seeking to remove a man from the departments list of potential future police officers, citing his previous arrests in incidents of alleged domestic violence.

In a Monday Circuit Court filing, Johnson said the citys Board of Human Resources incorrectly reversed the police departments April 2015 decision to remove a man from its list of people eligible to become probationary police officers.

The man is not currently on the citys payroll.

Johnson said the police department initially removed the man from consideration because he had twice previously been arrested in incidents of domestic violence, once in 2003 and again in 2014.

In the first instance, the man grabbed his mothers neck and threw her to the ground, according to the filing. In the second, he allegedly punched his female roommate in the head and face as the two were in his car.

Johnson stated that despite the weight of the evidence, the citys Board of Human Resources recommended that the man be restored to the departments eligibility list.

Salvador A. Cicero, chairman of the Board of Human Resources, declined to comment on the filing.
Ward Room's Campaign Round-Up is a weekly column dedicated to keeping you in the know about the upcoming 2016 elections. Check the Ward Room blog for continued coverage every Tuesday.

U.S. Senate Race

Sen. Mark Kirk's campaign criticized Rep. Tammy Duckworth for missing a series of congressional votes last week, including one on the Sexual Assault Survivors Act. Duckworth has missed 19 out of 26 votes in September following a seven week recess. That includes seven votes Tuesday.

It is no surprise that Rep. Duckworth has been rated on of the least effective member of Congress, always putting politics ahead of her responsibilities to her constituents, Kirk spokesperson Kevin Artl said.

Last week, the Duckworth campaign claimed the congresswoman missed votes because she was busy on the campaign trail.

On Tuesday, Tammy was warmly received by over 2,000 working men and women of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union, where she laid out her vision for an economy based on fair trade and opportunity for all in contrast to Senator Kirk, who supports the tax loopholes companies use to ship jobs overseas and tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, paid for by raising taxes on middle-class families by $2,000, Duckworth spokesman Matt McGrath said in a statement.

She also noted that Illinois has lost more than 270,000 manufacturing jobs since Kirk was first elected to Congress, a fact not lost on those in attendance, or working families across Illinois, McGrath added. With that record, its no surprise Kirk was a no-show in Illinois on Labor Day.

The Duckworth campaign also pointed to votes missed by Kirk, including one in May that looked to protect and enhance the rights of sexual assault survivors. The Kirk campaign noted that Duckworth also missed a vote that day on a measure that looked to help police find kidnap victims.

Cook County States Attorney Race

Kim Foxx is facing questions about a potential conflict of interest after the Chicago Tribune reported that shes doing consulting work for a personal injury law firm, Powers Rogers & Smith.

On Saturday, Foxx told the Tribune that she has been doing consulting work for the firm since 2015, but wouldnt disclose how much they have paid her. She hadnt publicly disclosed her work for the firm until the Tribune asked about it. Lawyers from the firm have contributed $18,500 to her campaign fund, according to the Tribune.

Foxx, a Democrat, said the firm wouldnt get preferential treatment and that their cases would be treated "in the same manner that I would treat every other case," according to the Tribune.

Foxx did not indicate that she would recuse herself from cases in which the firm sues Cook County, but insisted to the Tribune that there is no conflict of interest.

The firm has successfully sued the county multiple times, the Tribune reports. This year, they were paid $6 million by to settle a lawsuit with the family of a Dolton teenager who was killed by a car being pursued by sheriffs police, according to the Tribune. Additionally, the Tribune reports that Powers Rogers & Smith won a $3 million settlement against Cook County Hospital in 2000 and a $3.1 million verdict in a medical negligence case the same year against the county.

Foxx beat out current Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez in the March Democratic primary after Alvarez was widely criticized for her handling of the Laquan McDonald case. Foxx will face Republican Christopher Pfannkuche in November.

Illinois House District 20 Race

The Illinois Republican Party released a new ad tying state representative candidate Merry Marwig to House Speaker Mike Madigan on Monday. Marwig is locked in a tight race with incumbent state Rep. Michael McAuliffe for the 20th House district that includes parts of Chicago's Northwest Side as well as suburban Schiller Park, Rosemont, and Norridge, among others.

The ad accuses Marwig and Madigan of profiting from the same corrupt system, noting that Madigan made a fortune on tax appeals representing the powerful and politically connected.

In 2010, the Chicago Tribune reported that Madigans law firm had become a top player in Chicagos skyscrapers property tax appeals."

The 30-second spot, which refers to Marwig as the speakers handpicked candidate, claims she had her property taxes lowered twice as part of an inside game that has saved Madigans friends millions and forced taxpayers to pay more. The narrator goes on to accuse Madigan and Marwig of "looking out for themselves, instead of you.

Marwig responded to the ad in a statement that accused McAuliffe of benefiting from a property tax appeal and tying him to Donald Trump.

"Mike McAuliffe is a hypocrite 20-year career politician who is so out of touch he believes local residents who appeal their property taxes are corrupt, even though he personally benefited himself from a successful property tax appeal on a condo he owned," she said, adding that he "and Donald Trump are using the same playbook of distracting voters from the issues our neighborhoods are concerned about."

Madigans chief political opponent, Gov. Bruce Rauner, has contributed most of the $13 million spent on GOP House and Senate candidates during this election cycle, the Associated Press reports. On top of that, the Illinois Republican Party still has $3 million more of Rauners money in the bank.

However, Rauner told reporters Monday that he was not involved in particular races or campaigns for the legislature."

In terms of specific races, Im not involved in those in any material way, he added.

Notable Contributions

State Rep. Michael McAuliffes campaign committee reported a $6,640 donation from the Illinois Republican Party Tuesday.

The Illinois Republican Party contributed $50,000 to the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee Tuesday.

Speaker Madigans committee reported $260,500 in donations Monday. This includes $53,900 each from the political committees of state Rep. Kathleen Willis, state Rep. Natalie Manley and state Rep. Anna Moeller. Another $53,900 came from the Carpenters Legislative Improvement Committee.

Comptroller Leslie Mungers committee reported a $25,000 donation from the Illinois Republican Party last week.

Kim Foxx's committee reported donations from some high-profile Democrats earlier this month. This includes $1,000 from Senate President John Cullertons committee and $5,000 from Ald. Ed Burkes committee. Treasurer Kurt Summers also pitched in $1,500.
Donald Trump's running mate Mike Pence refused on Tuesday to say whether he thinks white supremacist David Duke is deplorable, repeating that he's "not in the name-calling business," as he tried to brush off the issue as a distraction.

Pence was asked at a news conference with House Republican leaders in Washington whether he wanted to amend comments he made on CNN the previous day. In the interview, he denounced support from Duke, but declined to say whether the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan can be considered part of the "basket of deplorables"  the phrase Hillary Clinton used to describe half of Trump's supporters last week.

"The simple fact is I'm not in the name calling business," Pence said Tuesday. "But I'm also not going to validate the language Hillary Clinton used to describe the American people."

Clinton weighed in on Twitter on Monday, saying, "If you won't say the KKK is deplorable, you have no business running the country."

Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine said Tuesday that Trump's campaign is not taking a tough enough line on bigotry.

"If you are chumming around with the head of the Klu Klux Klan, people who have that title, that's deplorable," Kaine said. He did not say who was "chumming around" with Duke.

Pence, the governor of Indiana, said on Twitter Monday night that his comments about Duke, in a pair of interviews on CNN and Fox News, were being taken out of context. And on Tuesday, when he gathered with House Republican leaders, Pence again expressed frustration with being asked about Duke for a second day.

"For all the world, I have no idea why this man keeps coming up," he said, calling Duke a "bad man," and saying that the issue has served as a mere distraction.

"Donald Trump and I have denounced David Duke repeatedly," he added. "We have said we do not want his support and we do not want the support of people who think like him."

A spokesman for Duke, who is running for Louisiana's U.S. Senate seat, had no immediate comment Tuesday. But Duke told BuzzFeed News on Monday that he was pleased that Pence declined to call him "deplorable."

"It's good to see an individual like Pence and others start to reject this absolute controlled media," Duke told BuzzFeed News. "The truth is the Republican Party is big tent. I served in the Republican caucus. I was in the Republican caucus in the legislature. I had a perfect Republican voting record. It's ridiculous that they attack me because of my involvement in that nonviolent Klan four decades ago."

Pence tried to keep the focus on Clinton's original comments from an LGBT fundraiser Friday night, where she said half of Trump's supporters were "deplorables." She has said she regrets using the term "half" to describe the proportion of Trump supporters she considers "deplorables," but she didn't back down from describing his campaign as largely built on prejudice and paranoia.

"What Hillary Clinton apparently doesn't know is the people supporting this campaign are hard-working Americans," Pence said. "For Hillary Clinton to express such disdain for millions of Americans I think is one more reason that disqualifies her to serve in the highest office of the land."

Pence, a 12-year veteran of the House, made the rounds Tuesday in Washington, meeting privately with House and Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill. One of those meetings was with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who Pence had endorsed prior to Indiana's primary. Cruz, who dropped out of the race after losing Indiana, has refused to endorse Trump.

Cruz told reporters Tuesday afternoon that he had a "good and productive conversation" with Pence and a "very good meeting." He called Pence a "good man, a friend" and a "strong conservative."

But Cruz left without answering questions about whether he will vote for Trump, endorse him or whether Pence asked him to publicly back Trump.
Deep-pocketed Super PACs are pouring tens of millions of dollars into key U.S. Senate races, outspending the candidates themselves in several states, according to an NBC analysis of Federal Elections Commission data.

Since January, Super PACs have spent just over $100 million in nine Senate races that are rated a toss-up by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Those nine races could determine control of the Senate: If Hillary Clinton wins the White House and Democrats flip four seats, the Democrats will control the Senate, with newly elected Vice President Tim Kaine breaking ties.

Those races are in Nevada, where Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is retiring, and for Republican-held seats in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Super PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts for federal elections but cant coordinate with candidates, are focusing on four of those key races: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and New Hampshire. The other races, particularly Illinois and Wisconsin, where Republican incumbents are struggling to survive in Democratic-leaning states, are getting little attention.

Theyre simply allocating to the most competitive races, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. Illinois is wasted money. Pennsylvania is highly competitive, and its a very expensive state.

Republican incumbents Mark Kirk of Illinois and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have been considered dead from the start, Sabato said. Thats why the Super PACs are spending most of their money elsewhere.

Ohio is supposed to be one of the most competitive races of the cycle so outside groups went in early and have been spending heavily, said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at the Cook Political Report. It has started to taper off as Democrats realize that they are too far behind to win.

Super PACs have spent $31 million in Pennsylvania this year, most of it for ads trashing one-term Republican Sen. Pat Toomey or his Democratic opponent, Katie McGinty.

Thats five times more than Toomey and McGinty together spent on their own campaigns through June 30.

Theyve spent $29 million in neighboring Ohio  most of that to bury former Democratic congressman Ted Strickland, who is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Rob Portman.

Together Portman and Strickland spent less than $4 million through June 30.

Super PAC money began surging into the Senate contests in April, after Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump locked up the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations. Since then, with the exception of a single $50 million expenditure for Trump in June, most of the Super PAC money generally has flowed into Senate races.

It isn't unusual that groups didn't start spending (on Senate races) until May, Duffy said. That expenditures on Senate races is outpacing the presidential contest is unusual, but not surprising. Once it became clear that Trump was the GOP nominee, a lot of the establishment money went into saving the Senate majority.

Republicans Super PACs are dominating the spending spree. Through the end of August, Republican-leaning groups spent $67 million supporting GOP candidates and attacking Democrats in the toss-up races. Democratic groups spent $36 million.

Theyve spent most of that money, about $8 of every $10, opposing the enemy rather than supporting friendly candidates.
Police released the frantic 911 calls after 30 people were hurt in a balcony collapse at Trinity College over the weekend.

Authorities tell NBC Connecticut that it will take weeks, months, maybe even years to vet the situation and determine what caused both second and third floor balconies to collapse.

Police said there were five to ten students on each and, approximately 40 to 50 people total at the off campus trinity party, in a building that Trinity College owns.

Here is one of the phone calls to police:

Caller: We need help by Trinity College.

911 Dispatcher: Whats wrong sir?

Caller:The porch just fell.

Dispatcher:Is it on Crescent Street?

Caller:Crescent Street, yeah,

911 Dispatcher: Ok, how many people are hurt?

Caller:I think, uh, maybe 6 people. 6 or 7 6:42

911 Dispatcher:6 to 7 people hurt, ok, what happened the porch collapsed?

Caller: I dont know. I came out and the porch was on top of people. 6:48

911 Dispatcher:Ok, are these people conscious? Can you tell?

Caller:They are. They are.

Caller: There might be blunt trauma. I can see a lot of bleeding

911 Dispatcher:You see a lot of bleeding?

Trinity senior, 21-year-old Julianna Leone of Chicago fell from that second floor balcony. She was rushed to the hospital to get her scalp stapled shut.

Leone told NBC Connecticut, "I was hit in the back of the head and crushed underneath all the wood. I was trapped for a while."

According to city records the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters dug up, Trinity owns the house where the balconies collapsed and dozens of other properties in the neighborhood.

But because this home isn't a three-family or larger, city officials don't inspect.

Hartford Fire Chief Reginald Freeman, "The last time the deck was inspected? It's a two family home, so city of hartford doesn't inspect single family or two family homes."

Freeman said they are looking into past records:

"The cursory search we've done in the fm office doesn't come up with any complaints for this two-family home on Broad Street, we will look at data in our records management system or any hard copies on file that may come up."

When asked about the criminal aspect of the incident, Deputy Police Chief Brian Foley responded, "We're investigating that, it will be something we try to determine, whether a criminal investigation."

What Hartford police said is they're in contact with Trinity officials, who won't confirm who the property management company is publicly.

Foley added, "Were aware of the property, it was a sanctioned event, students were all of age and there was a keg on site."

Karen Leone got a call in the middle of the night from her daughter's phone. She was in Illinois. It was a classmate, who was able to put her daughter, Julianna on the line.

Karen leone told NBC Connecticut, "She said something about the porch collapsing."

The mother said she and her daughter are grateful the balconies collapsing was not a worse situation.

"The last 24 hours, our focus is on juliannas condition. The school hopefully, with time, will have some answers for us, as the owners. Circumstances with kids on balcony, it is predictable and you have to make sure structures are sound, but they're old too," Karen Leone added.

Trinity would not answer questions on camera. They released this statement instead:

Trinity college is continuing to care for students who were affected by the balcony collapse that occurred on saturday, september 10, 2016, especially those students who were injured, students present at the social gathering during the accident, residents of the house where the incident occurred, friends and families, and the staff and other responders at the scene.

Two students who were injured in the accident remain in the hospital with moderate injuries and one is expected to be released within 24 hours. The dean of students is in contact with the students and their families for ongoing support.

Trinity is in the process of investigating the incident and we will be cooperating with any authorities representing the city of hartford in their review of this incident. The property is owned by the college and is managed by an outside property manager. Accommodations have been made for the five student residents of the house. The house cannot be occupied, and the students have been relocated to other campus housing.

The trinity community is continuing to process and recover from the incident, and on sunday at 4:00 p.m., students, support staff, and faculty gathered in the trinity college chapel to reflect and offer care and support to one another.

Trinity counseling center staff and chaplains remain available to students, and urgent requests for assistance should be directed to campus safety at (860) 297-2222.
Torrington police are searching for a suspect accused of attacking a store manager during a shoplifting incident.

It happened shortly before 1 p.m. Sunday. Police said the suspect pictured above entered the Famous Footwear on East Main Street and took a pair of sneakers. When the store manager confronted him, the suspect struck the manager in the head.

The victim was taken to Hartford Hospital for treatment.

According to police, the suspect left in a light-colored vehicle.

Anyone who thinks they recognize the suspect or witnessed the incident is asked to contact Torrington police at (860) 489-2061.
How short is too short?

That question was on the minds of parents who met with the principal of Granby Memorial High School on Monday night. They said some faculty members are taking enforcement of the school's new dress code too far.

"I had an issue with the attitudes and the way they were treating the kids. I think it was inappropriate," said Liz Bennett, the mother of a sophomore student.

Bennett was one of nearly 100 parents who attended the first Principal's Advisory Committee meeting of the school year. There were a number of items on the agenda, but parents say the new dress code was the hot topic.

"They felt like some of the kids were being picked on," said Sarah Wheeler, who has two daughters at the school.

The news media was not allowed inside the meeting, but those who were said many complained about the lack of communication between the school and parents.

"My parents ultimately have a say in what Im wearing to school so the fact that they were calling me out on what I was wearing. I would go home and say I got in trouble for this outfit today and they would say why whats wrong with it?" said Arielle Bocanegra, a senior at Granby Memorial.

The school handbook states that students shall be, "attired in clothing that is appropriate to the school setting."

Students dressed inappropriately will be sent home according to the handbook. Among the items deemed inappropriate are sleepwear, strapless tops, short shorts or skirts, and bare midriffs.

The students said the biggest issue isn't what they're wearing, it's how their teachers are treating them.

Bocanegra and fellow high school senior Erin Stoetzner started a petition to get the policy relaxed. They said they had a productive meeting with principal Mike Dunn on Monday and attended Monday night's meeting as well.

"The faculty in there was saying it was much more about a learning environment, but the students here definitely got the feeling that it had a lot to do with sexist actions towards girl," said Stoetzner.

The pair complained that their female classmates have been embarrassed in front of their peers, picked on by their teachers, and singled out in the school.

"They would stop girls before going into the lunch room and call them down to the office," said Bocanegra. "Friday was kind of the breaking point for everybody. Everybody was afraid. I didnt even go to lunch that day because I didnt want to get in trouble for my spaghetti strap."

With temperatures reaching over 90-degrees on Friday, Stoetnzer said many of her female classmates came to school in short shorts, shorter than the, "no more than six-inch above the knee policy," they said was set by the school. She herself wore jeans because she didn't want to fight with faculty.

"I have so many nice clothing that can still look classy but can be a little bit above the six inch mark but I think we really need to meet in the middle on that," she said.

Still, some said they dont believe a policy change is needed.

"This is an educational institution. You know its not your living room and its not your bedroom," said Wheeler. "We do show the way we feel about where we are by how we dress. So, I think its totally appropriate to ask kids to dress respectably."

"I do have concerns about the dress code and that the focus is on education," added Ken Mounting, who's daughter is a ninth-grader at the school.

Students and parents who attended Monday night's meeting say the administration backed off the policy. A statement from the schools principal doesnt say what changes will be made, only that the administration is taking the concerns seriously and will make the appropriate adjustments.
State police have arrested a former Newington police officer on child pornography charges.

Mark Dichiara, 48, of Burlington, was arrested by state police on Monday. He is accused of possessing child pornography and sharing it over the Internet.

According to state police, in April 2016 the Computer Crimes Unit began investigating child porn being shared over the internet. Investigators tracked the activity to a Burlington home.

State police said the on May 3 investigators executed a search and seizure warrant at 16 Mountain Briar Road in Burlington, Dichiaras home. Police said they seized several items that lead to the discovery of suspected child pornography.

On Sept. 12, Dichiara turned himself in on an active arrest warrant. He was released on a $100,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in Bristol Superior Court on Sept. 26.

Newington police confirmed that Dichiara was hired as a dispatcher for their department in 1990. In 1993, he was hired as a police officer. He spent his career in the patrol division and retired in January 2013. Dichiara also served as a volunteer firefighter between 1986 and 1992.

"He was a great guy, straight as an arrow, he was very professional in everything he did. This would be the last thing I would expect of him," said Newington Volunteer Fire Chief, Chris Schroeder.

Newington police said they were aware of his arrest. The Newington police chief confirms that Dichiara did not work with children during his tenure as a cop.

Members of the Connecticut State Police Computer Crimes Unit, the Burlington Resident Troopers Office, US Department of Homeland Security  Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI were all involved in the investigation, police said.

NBC Connecticut has reached out to Dichiara for comment.
A school bus carrying 13 middle school students was involved in an accident in Bloomfield Tuesday afternoon.

Bloomfield police said the accident happened at the intersection of Blue Hills Avenue and Farmstead Circle around 1:22 p.m.

According to police, a Honda Civic traveling north on Blue Hills Ave crossed into the southbound side and struck the school bus.

Police confirmed the bus was from the Windsor School District. None of the 13 students were injured, nor was the bus driver. The driver of the Honda, a 66-year-old woman from Windsor, was transported to Saint Francis Hospital for moderate injuries.

The children were taken to the Bloomfield Public Schools Board of Education at 1133 Blue Hills Avenue and reunited with parents and guardians.

The accident is under investigation.
In the sweltering Rio Grande Valley, just north of the Texas-Mexico border, concerns about Zika virus travel through the streets.

Rafael Prado is a volunteer who goes door-to-door passing out health department warnings in neighborhoods in Hidalgo and Starr counties.

At one home he finds Irma Castillo, pregnant and due in November, worried about Zika infection.

"Well, it scares you. I mean, it being my first child, it's something that really concerns me," expressed Castillo.

Mosquito transmission of Zika could happen almost anywhere in Texas, but some experts fear counties along the Mexican border and the Gulf Coast are among the areas most at risk.

Neighborhoods near the border, known as the Colonias, present some of the biggest concerns for health officials. There are many vacant lots and places for mosquitoes to breed, and many families who live there travel back and forth to Mexico all the time where Zika has already taken hold.

But despite the risks, an NBC 5 investigation found few people have been tested for Zika in some border and Gulf Coast counties in Texas.

More than 800,000 live in Hidalgo County, but the local health department said it has submitted Zika tests for just 25 people to the state health department.

The local health department said only nine people have been tested in Brazoria County, 12 in El Paso County, four in Webb County and just six in Nueces County.

In several other nearby counties, Zapata, Duval and Jim Hogg, a health official tells NBC 5 Investigates not one Zika test has been submitted to the state.

Dr. Peter Hotez is the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston. NBC 5 Investigates shared those numbers and his reaction is that of concern.

"It means there's no active surveillance. We are not doing any active detection of Zika transmission," said Hotez.

He fears a lack of testing in some south Texas counties could cause dangerous delays in detecting the first cases of local transmission of Zika.

"A key point here is that we may already have transmission underway in Texas, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast," said Hotez.

Hotez thinks transmission could be happening without anyone knowing, because no one is looking hard enough.

Hotez believes health officials need to implement "active surveillance" teams in hospitals or clinics in some counties to aggressively test more people with fevers and rashes, seeking out possible Zika cases.

Eddie Olivarez, the Hidalgo County health director, said his county does not have funding to conduct active surveillance like Hotez suggests.

In his county health lab, they have a tiny room where they can analyze mosquitoes but there's no equipment for human Zika testing. They depend on the state for that.

And there's no staff here to run a more aggressive active surveillance program even if it might help.

"Definitely would be very helpful -- it would be very supportive of the community if that capacity was made available to us to expand the number of people being tested, of course, within the guidance and criteria to provide testing for," said Olivarez.

NBC 5 Investigates went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to see if they can do more to help Texas.

At the CDC's operations center, NBC 5 Investigates interviewed Dr. Lyle Peterson, who's in charge of the federal government's Zika response.

Petersen said he's concerned not enough testing is being done but that the CDC can't afford to put active surveillance teams in Texas.

Less than two weeks ago, the CDC announced it's nearly out of Zika funding. Plus, Peterson said frontline testing is really the state's job.

"Public health in the United States is really the domain of the states. We assist health departments, but it's really up to the health departments to mobilize the troops out there," said Peterson.

But at the state health department in Austin, officials told NBC 5 Investigates they can't afford an active surveillance program either.

"If we were given money to do that kind of sentinel surveillance that Dr. Hotez is very interested in, we would do it. We don't have the funds and we don't have the system in place to get that done," said Dr. John Hellerstedt, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Hellerstedt said it would also be hard to choose where to send active surveillance teams because the possibility of local transmission is widespread across the state. But even without those surveillance teams, he's confident Texas doctors will spot any possible Zika cases and get patients tested.

"I have every reason to believe the physicians are doing a good job of referring these people for testing," said Hellerstedt.

Hellerstedt said the state is doing a lot of outreach to doctors to encourage them to test more patients with symptoms.

But some experts fear the process of sending tests to the state lab is time consuming and many doctors won't do it if the patient only has mild symptoms or is not pregnant. That could miss opportunities to spot locally transmission as early as possible.

Hotez argues the low number of tests sent from some counties proves that.

"It's expecting too much, because they're not doing it," said Hotez.

NBC 5 Investigates spoke to doctors who said the paperwork involved with submitting Zika tests to the state can take 30 minutes to complete and that discourages some doctors from doing it.

The state said it recognizes the time it takes to fill out the paperwork, but argues the information needed on the forms is important so they won't change the process.

Some doctors are now sending tests to private labs to avoid the state process, and that has likely increased the amount of testing occurring in some places.

Hotez said the state and feds need to find the funding to do what's best to protect people.

"Month after month after month passed and really, right now, no program is in place in terms of active surveillance," said Hotez.

As more weeks go by he worries about pregnant women, like Irma Castillo.

"You know, just to be inside a certain amount of time, it's not a good thing," said Castillo, who is staying indoors to avoid mosquito bites.

She lives in a place where the risk is high and the warnings are out. But it's a place where some still wonder if health officials are missing chances to protect people.

"We have had so much lead time and that is what's so astonishing," said Hotez.

NBC 5 Investigates found much more testing is occurring in Dallas and Tarrant counties because local health department labs can now conduct Zika tests on their own, and they've partnered with local hospitals to make the process easier for doctors. But that is not happened in many smaller counties with fewer resources.
Activists and educators protested outside a Texas State Board of Education meeting Tuesday over a controversial textbook about Mexican-American history.

The board is considering the textbook, titled "Mexican American Heritage," for use in the 2017-2018 school year. Protesters said the book is filled with inaccurate claims and promotes offensive stereotypes.

Democrats, who are outnumbered 10-5 on the board, pushed unsuccessfully two years ago to create a full Mexican-American studies program. Instead, publishers were asked to submit textbooks on a variety of ethnic studies topics that the board could consider for use.

"Mexican-American Heritage," which was submitted by Virginia-based publisher Momentum Instruction, is the first Mexican-American history book being considered for adoption.

A rally was held in Austin Tuesday morning against a controversial Mexican-American textbook.

The book is now being decried as racist and inaccurate by many of the same advocates who had wanted a broader Mexican-American studies course.

"They depict the Mexican-American community in stereotypical terms, as lazy, as threats to American society. It's not only disturbing for me as a historian but I find it very offensive that they should be speaking so carelessly," Emilio Zamora, a University of Texas Professor of History, told NBC affiliate KXAN.

The education board will vote in November on whether to approve the "Mexican American Heritage" textbook. State schools are not required to use state board-sanctioned classroom materials.
As the child of a soldier who has been missing in action for 44 years, a North Texas woman knows all too well that it is the not knowing that can hurt the most.

The questions never stopped, said Shannon Spake after some thought and a deep breath. Wondering where he was, if he had been taken prisoner, imagining the worst of the worst.

Spake, a Haslet resident, will speak Tuesday to sailors stationed at the Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base who will observe National Prisoner of War Missing in Action (POW/MIA) Recognition Day.

Spakes father, Lieutenant Commander Dennis Pike, has been listed as Missing in Action since March 23, 1972 when his Naval airplane went down and he ejected during a bombing run over Laos.

For more than 40 years, Spakes family knew little else about the fate her father may have suffered.

In 2014, Spake said she learned, through her involvement with the National League of POW/MIA Families, that her fathers ejection seat and flight suit had been recovered. The belief, Spake said, is that the parachute on the ejection seat failed and her father was likely killed on impact.

She remains hopeful, she said, that his story will one day become fully known.

Your one directive as an MIA family is to keep the hope. And thats what we were told, that our job is to remain hopeful, Spake said.

Although it is a deeply personal one, the story of Spakes fathers fate can unfortunately be told by thousands of families who never learned what happened of their service member.

73,126 Americans are still missing from World War II, 7,802 Americans from the Korean War, 1,618 from the Vietnam War, 126 from the Cold War, and six Americans from Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflicts, according to a public affairs officer from the NASJRB. That number totals a staggering 82,678.

The Department of Veterans Affairs reports that of the Americans who've been held as prisoners of war, 4,120 were captured and interned during World War I, 130,201 during World War II, 7,140 during the Korean War, 725 during the Vietnam War, 47 during the Gulf War, one while in conflict in Somalia, three while in conflict in Kosovo, and nine during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Of the total 142,246 Americans captured by hostile forces, 125,213 came home.

National POW/MIA Recognition Day is typically observed on the third Friday of September each year, but the Fort Worth NASJRB will observe the day on Tuesday due to a scheduling conflict, according to a public affairs officer.

Spake said she is honored to share her fathers story with the sailors in Fort Worth.

To let people know that this case and this cause is not dead, Spake said. Im passionate about this because our current and future military service members need to know that if they are lost behind enemy lines that our government will not forsake them. That we will go to the nth degree to return their remains, or to fight for their release, because thats what we do as Americans. We leave no one behind.
Prosecutors said a 36-year-old convicted human smuggler from Mexico linked to the deaths of two immigrants must live out his life in a U.S. prison.

Noe Aranda-Soto of San Carlos, Mexico, was sentenced Monday by a federal judge in Victoria.

Investigators said Aranda-Soto, who was in the U.S. illegally and lived in Houston, pleaded guilty in May to immigrant smuggling-related counts, including kidnapping resulting in death. He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport immigrants for private financial gain resulting in death.

Aranda-Soto, in the plea deal, said some cases involved immigrants hidden in stash houses in Houston. Authorities say some female immigrants were held hostage.

Prosecutors say a 2010 rollover wreck near Victoria left one immigrant dead. Another immigrant died of exposure after being left in some brush.
Authorities said a hiker from North Texas was found dead near a trailhead in Colorado following a weeklong search.

The Denver Post reported 44-year-old Jeffrey Pickering, of Grapevine, was found dead in heavy brush near the Avalanche Trailhead on Saturday night. He had parked nearby Sept. 3, and co-workers reported him missing two days later.

A large crew involving horses, helicopters, a drone and a plane helped search for Pickering.

Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze said foul play is not suspected in the death.
Police said they arrested a man who stole lawn equipment and fired at officers during a chase in Seagoville Tuesday morning.

Seagoville police said they received a call about a suspicious vehicle possibly involved in the theft of lawn equipment just before 6 a.m. Officers tried to stop a vehicle matching the description, but the driver fled.

During pursuit, police said the driver fired two times at officers before crashing into a ditch in the 1500 block of West Simonds Road.

No injuries have been reported.

After the crash, police said the man fled the vehicle. Officers searched the area with help from Dallas police and the Texas Department of Transportation choppers.

Police said tips led them to the Pecan Lake Mobile Home Community and arrested 35-year-old Rosalio Vargas-Ojeda. The lawn equipment that was reported stolen was found in his vehicle.

Vargas-Ojeda was transpoted to the Dallas County Jail and charged with aggravated assault on a public servant and evading arrest.

Check back and refresh this page for the latest update. As this story is developing, elements may change.
Leaders of a West Texas county have approved an agreement to fix headstones at a cemetery where a 4-year-old boy died last year when a tombstone fell on him.

Ector County Commissioners on Monday approved a master service agreement with Sadler Monument Works of Slaton.

The Odessa American reports no dollar amount was immediately available for the deal to help maintain the Ector County Cemetery in Odessa.

Police said Levi Driver died in May 2015 when a nearly 100-year-old headstone toppled on him.

County Judge Ron Eckert said the service agreement is to make sure something similar does not happen again.

Eckert declined to release details about the investigation into the incident, which happened as the boy was with his family visiting a grave site.
In an arrest warrant affidavit released Tuesday, Royse City police say the wife of a well-respected University Park firefighter conspired with her lover to kill her husband.

Capt. Robert Louis Poynter III was shot and killed in what police described as an "ambush slaying" late in the evening of Sept. 9. His wife, Chacey Poynter, called police and told officers her husband had been shot.

When officers arrived, they found Poynter, an 18-year veteran of the University Park Fire Department, in a vehicle dead of an apparent single gunshot wound.

Police initially said Chacey was arrested after information she provided to investigators was suspicious and conflicting.

After having been read her rights, police said in an arrest warrant affidavit that Chacey Poynter provided a written statement and told them she had been seeing a man, 37-year-old Michael Garza, of Quinlan, while married to Robert. She said her husband abused her both physically and emotionally and that he'd filed divorce papers while asserting that she would not get custody of their daughter.

Chacey Poynter said she told Garza of the alleged abuse and that he said he was a "shot caller" and could order people killed if she wanted. At about 7 p.m. Sept. 9, Chacey and Garza met up at his residence where they discussed hurting Robert so they could be together.

"Chacey advised she was told by Garza to have Robert Poynter meet her in 'deep' Dallas so they could make 'it' look like a robbery," police said in the affidavit. Garza then began placing a camouflaged shotgun and shells on the kitchen table and told Chacey to "relax and smile."

Police said Chacey Poynter told them she and Garza had sex that night at his residence before putting their plan into motion. According to the affidavit, Chacey and Garza took her Jeep to a remote area where she dropped off Garza. Chacey told police she then moved her vehicle to an area where it appeared stuck and called her husband for help.

[[393173771,C]]

Chacey told investigators she met her husband at the end of the road and walked back with him to the Jeep where Garza was waiting nearby. After Robert moved the Jeep back onto the road, Chacey said she yelled, 'Stop' and Garza fatally shot him in the head with his shotgun.

Garza, according to Chacey's statement, planned to burn Robert's truck and his own clothes to destroy the evidence, but that didn't happen. Chacey said after Garza killed her husband she began screaming for help and called 911. She said Garza took her phone, hung up on 911 and threw it in the mud where she couldn't' find it.

Chacey told police she did not want her husband dead, "she only wanted him to hurt the way he made her hurt."

Police officers arrived at the location at about 11 p.m. and began talking with Chacey about what took place. Garza left the scene but surrendered to the Hunt County Sheriff's Department Sunday night following a manhunt.

The person who owns the land where Poynter was killed reported seeing a truck in the area prior to the murder and shared the license plate number with police. Investigators said the truck was registered to Garza. Additionally, police said Garza had a photo of himself on Facebook holding a camouflaged shotgun.

Police have charged Chacey Poynter with second-degree felony conspiracy to commit murder with another and is being held on $500,000 bond. Garza has been charged with first-degree murder. Jail records do not list attorney's for either Poynter or Garza.

In a previous interview with NBC 5, University Park Fire Chief Randy Howell said Poynter was a devoted and loving dad to his three daughters, ages 21, 17 and 6, and he'd often talk lovingly about his girls with his colleagues. Howell described Poynter as a great mentor and leader who was passionate about his job.

According to University Park city officials, in lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to University Park Firefighters Association Local 2092, 3419 Westminster Avenue., P.O. Box 338 Dallas, Texas 75205.

Visitation for Poynter will be held at the University Park Fire Department on Wednesday, Sept. 14 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

A funeral service will take place at Highland Park Presbyterian Church Thursday, Sept. 15 at 10 a.m. with the University Park Fire Department Chaplain Nelson Bell officiating.

A Last Alarm ceremony will be held in Goar Park at 3800 University Boulevard at the Gazebo.

Arrest Warrant Affidavit

[[393298231,C]]
The skeletal remains found in an old New Jersey police headquarters gutted by fire more than three decades ago may belong to a homeless man who accidentally locked himself in a holding cell and couldn't get out, according to a woman whose family owns the building.



Susan Greenbaum, whose family is in the process of selling the building to a developer, told NBC 4 New York police believe the man got into the Paterson Police Department station on Washington Street, which has been boarded up since the devastating 1980 blaze, and somehow locked himself in the cell.



Greenbaum said police think he died there about eight to 10 years ago; she said the approximate date of death is based on a water bottle and over-the-counter medication found near him in the cell. A contractor working with the new owner of the building found the remains Monday, she said.

"It's tragic and we are upset about it," said Greenbaum. "My family was born and raised in this community, and we have a great respect for the community. It's sad that we have a homeless problem."



Police did not responds to requests for comment on the circumstances Greenbaum detailed to NBC 4 New York. Earlier, authorities said only that a decomposing body belonging to a man was found in the building.



The building has been vacant and boarded up since it was damaged by a fire on Feb. 8, 1980.



The department's headquarters were temporarily moved to the old Central High School on Hamilton Street after the fire; the headquarters are now housed on Broadway. According to a New Jersey history blog, the Washington Street headquarters had been consumed by flames previously -- in the so-called "Great Fire" of Feb. 9, 1902 that devoured more than 450 buildings and 25 city blocks.



The headquarters were rebuilt after that fire, but abandoned after the one 78 years later.



Authorities say additional information about the man's identity will not be released at this time.
The Pentagon said Monday it has confirmed that a U.S. airstrike killed ISIS' second-in-command, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, despite Russia's insistence last month that it was one of its planes that killed him, NBC News reported.

ISIS itself has already said al-Adnani, who also served as the terrorist group's main spokesman, died in the Aug. 30 strike in al-Bab in Syria's devastated Aleppo province.

But the Defense Department said at the time that it hadn't been able to nail that down.

On Monday, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said that "the U.S. precision airstrike" specifically targeted al-Adnani and removed ISIS' "chief propagandist, recruiter and architect of external terrorist operations."
For Jessica Boord, Texas 78 is a lifeline.

"If you want to go through the two lakes, Lavon and Ray Hubbard, that's the only way through," said Boord, who lives just outside Lavon. "That's our main artery."

She drives it everyday  along with a rapidly increasing number of people. Lavon has seen tremendous growth in recent years. And more drivers from north of Lavon are using Texas 78 to head south towards Plano.

It's more traffic than the small highway can handle  so, in 2012 The Texas Department of Transportation began work on a project to widen it between Lavon and Wylie.

"Everybody was happy about the widening," said Boord. "But nobody really knows what's going on with that. They're just not finishing it."

Construction was slated to be complete in 2015. A year later, it's still not done. For Boord and other drivers, that's meant months of unanticipated headaches.

"It's pretty much the main concern right now -- the major concern in Lavon," said Boord. "100 percent."

While construction is underway, Texas 78 has been reduced to a two-lane road between Wylie and Lavon, with one-lane going in each direction.

During rush hour, it regularly takes drivers more than an hour to get through the construction zone because of the congestion and backups.

Lavon Police Chief Mike Jones told NBC 5 it's also created safety issues. He says the poor decisions of impatient drivers, coupled with the fact there are no barriers between the lanes, have led to numerous crashes in the construction zone  including one in March that left a Nevada firefighter and his two young children dead.

In addition, he says his department is seeing more drivers cut through neighborhoods to avoid the traffic, many of them traveling at a high rate of speed. He regularly posts his officers in those neighborhoods to make sure they're slowing down.

"We're a small department," said Jones. "I can't have officers there all the time."

TxDOT blames heavy rainfall during each of the last two Springs for slowing construction. In a written statement, the agency said:

"Several months ago the project was flooded, then every time there was a release from Lake Lavon it flooded again. Even when there wasn't water over the road, our construction zone was a soupy mess that couldn't be worked on."

TxDOT added, "we are making good progress on the project now that the weather has cleared."

Lavon Mayor Chuck Teske told NBC 5 it's a "no win situation" for either side.

"It's frustrating, sure," said Teske. "But I don't want to throw stones at the contractors. I think they're doing the best they can."

He was a bit more pointed, however, after crews recently removed the right turn lane that allows northbound traffic to turn onto SH 205.

"This is causing massive delays in the afternoon drive-time," he wrote in an email to TxDOT that he provided to NBC 5. "Can we reestablish a turn lane or is it time for me to have my PD start directing traffic on 78 for several hours every evening?"

A TxDOT spokesperson said they're currently working on a plan to add a right turn lane at the intersection and adjust the timing of the traffic signal there to improve traffic flow.

Until then, Lavon Police are manually operating the light, at Teske's request, so it stays green longer and keeps traffic moving.

Teske has also asked a truck terminal south of the construction zone to direct all of its trucks away from the area.

TxDOT estimates construction will be complete by May of 2017.

"I don't want to punish anybody, I don't even care -- I just want it done," said Boord. "I just want it safe for everybody to drive on."
Fire engulfed a two-story commercial building in downtown Los Angeles Monday, causing gas cylinders inside to explode and forcing firefighters to battle the flames from a distance.

Firefighters declared a knockdown a little more than two hours after the fire was reported at 8:10 p.m. at a wholesaler and distributor of smoking materials called "SmokeTokes," at 330 E. Third Street, near San Pedro Street, according to Brian Humphrey of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

More than 160 firefighters responded to what Humphrey deemed as a "stubborn blaze," that caused heavy damage to the 100-year-old building. No injuries were reported.

The loss and cause are to be determined with LAFD firefighters expected to remain at the scene until early Tuesday morning, according to Humphrey.

Motorists are advised to avoid the immediate area and expect delays and closure of one or more lanes on nearby San Pedro and Third streets until LAFD operations are complete, Humphrey said.
Two Fullerton firefighters who went missing in Yosemite National Park have been found, authorities said Tuesday.

Veteran firefighters, Javier Avelar, 48, and Dave Brown, 33, arrived in Yosemite last Tuesday, where they planned to backpack until Sunday, according to the National Park Service. The two men went missing sometime last week.

On Tuesday, Brown walked into a ranger's station and aked for assistance, according to Dep. Chief Julie Kunze of the Fullerton Fire Department. He was in good health.

Kunze said Brown had been separated from Avelar at some point, and that authorities were focusing their search for him in the area where they were separated.

Later on Tuesday, Avelar was located by a ground search crew on Tuesday, according to Fullerton Fire Chief Wolfgang Knabe.

When they left for the trip, the firefighter's plan was to backpack from "White Wolf, through Pleasant Valley over Rancheria Mountain stayng on the north side of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, through Hetchy backpackers camp, planned to hike the road to the Smith Medow trail, and were supposed to be exiting through White Wolf on Sunday," a flyer released by the National Park Service read.

Knabe said both men are experienced backpackers in good shape, adding that at least one of them is familiar with the Yosemite area.

The firefighters had not contacted their families or the fire department, according to Knabe. One of the firefighters was scheduled to work on Monday, but did not show up.

After searching all day Monday, the search for the missing men began again at 8 a.m. Tuesday. The National Park Service lead the search with about 20 National Parks Service members, and were assisted by seven Fullerton Fire Department members. Airships were expected to aid the search also.

Knabe arrived in Yosemite Tuesday morning. He said their main search location was around a 50 mile area known as the White Wolf area of Yosemite. Some crews helping with the search were aware that they might be spending the night, and some were expecting to work a 14-hour shift.

The National Park Service encouraged anyone who was in the area of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, White Wolf, or Smith Meadow between September 6-12, or anyone who has information about the missing men to call Yosemite National Park Dispatch at 209-379-1992.

Vikki Vargas contributed to this report.
Two Los Angeles Police Officers Charged with Filing a False Report, Conspiracy

Two Los Angeles Police Department officers have been charged with purportedly filing a false police report when they responded to an alleged DUI traffic collision, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced today.

Rene Marcial Ponce (dob 06/06/77) and Irene Gomez (dob 05/01/78) have been charged with one felony count each of filing a false report and conspiracy to commit an act injurious to the public in case BA449841.

Ponce and Gomez pleaded not guilty on Sept. 7. Their next court hearing is Oct. 11 in Department 30 of the Foltz Criminal Justice Center.

On Oct. 26, 2014, Ponce and Gomez were on patrol in the Hollenbeck area when they responded to an early morning traffic collision in the 3000 block of East Side Boulevard. At the scene, an alleged drunken driver was accused of colliding with two parked vehicles, Justice System Integrity Division prosecutors said.

Ponce and Gomez allegedly avoided conducting a driving under the influence investigation and collectively wrote a traffic collision report in which they lied about the driver not being present at the scene, according to overt acts detailed in the felony complaint.

The charging document additionally alleges that Ponce and Gomez failed to conduct a sobriety examination, placed the driver in their patrol vehicle and drove him home where they directed him to go to sleep. Ponce had been with the LAPD for 13 years and Gomez for three years at the time of the incident.

If convicted as charged, the defendants face a maximum sentence of three years in local custody. The case was filed for warrant on Sept. 6 and remains under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department, Internal Affairs Division.

Two Los Angeles Police Department officers have been charged with purportedly filing a false police report when they responded to an alleged DUI traffic collision, prosecutors said.

Rene Marcial Ponce, 39, and Irene Gomez, 38, have been charged with one felony count each of filing a false report and conspiracy to commit an act injurious to the public, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

Ponce and Gomez have pleaded not guilty.

On Oct. 26, 2014, Ponce and Gomez were on patrol in the Hollenbeck area when they responded to an early morning traffic collision in the 3000 block of East Side Boulevard.

At the scene, an alleged drunken driver was accused of colliding with two parked vehicles, prosecutors said.

Ponce and Gomez allegedly avoided conducting a driving under the influence investigation and collectively wrote a traffic collision report in which they lied about the driver not being present at the scene, according to the felony complaint.

The charging document additionally alleges that Ponce and Gomez failed to conduct a sobriety examination, placed the driver in their patrol vehicle and drove him home where they directed him to go to sleep.

Ponce had been with the LAPD for 13 years and Gomez for three years at the time of the incident.
Kensington Palace has announced that Prince William and his wife Kate will bring their two young children on an official visit to Canada later this month.

The trip announced Monday will mark the first official overseas jaunt for 1-year-old Princess Charlotte.

Her older brother Prince George, 3, is an old hand at royal travel, having visited Australia and New Zealand on an official tour.
A community rally was held in Pompano Beach Monday night to discuss the fatal shooting of a 56-year-old man by Broward Sheriff's deputies.

Family, friends and supporters packed the Bethel A.M.E Church off 3rd Avenue to demand justice for Gregory Frazier.

They addressed a panel of attorneys, representatives and Sheriff Scott Israel asking for the need of trust and transparency.

"I never knew my father would become part of this pattern of a horrible trend across this country -- to shoot first, ask questions later," said Xavier Frazier, Gregory Frazier's son.

Xavier told the crowd he's struggling to explain his father's shooting death.

BSO deputies responded to the scene off Northwest 14th Street Friday night following a call from Deborah Frazier, who said she had been in a fight with her brother.

When deputies arrived, they said Frazier was holding a knife while sitting on the porch outside the home. They would eventually open fire and Frazier would be pronounced dead at the scene.

"The police did not help the situation. They took my father," said Xavier.

NBC 6 obtained 911 calls of the moments leading up to the deadly night from a panicked sister.

At the community meeting, Sheriff Israel said neither of the two deputies involved were wearing a body camera.

Israel said this community can expect change.

"Every member of our agency within the next six months to a year will be wearing body cameras. I will be signing a memo of understanding that all deputy-related shootings from this point forward will be investigated by the FDLE," said Sheriff Israel.

BSO is asking the community for peace and calm as they join together to get the facts on this case.

The Broward County State Attorney Michael Satz promised transparency. "I am going to ask for an outside prosecutor to review the investigation," said Satz.

Civil Rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing members of the Frazier family, said the family hopes eyewitness evidence can demonstrate whether the deadly force was actually required.
The Islamic community says it will repair and reopen the arson-damaged Florida mosque that was occasionally attended by Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen.

Hamaad Rahman, assistant imam of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, said the mosque's approximately 100 members are "saddened and scared" by the fire, which was started late Sunday and burned for more than five hours before it was extinguished early Monday. The fire was started on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha.

"Our community is bigger than a building. We are stronger than that," Rahman said Monday. "I feel we will be able to pull together from this, and as time goes by we will be able to rebuild."

St. Lucie County sheriff's spokesman Maj. David Thompson said Tuesday that an arson investigation group has pledged a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has also pledged $5,000.

The mosque has been subjected to more threats since June's nightclub shooting than it did in its previous 20 years of existence, Rahman said.

Given the timing of the blaze, investigators believe it may have been a hate crime, Thompson said.

No one was injured. The fire burned a 10-by-10-foot hole in the roof at the back of the mosque's main building and blackened its eaves with soot.

A surveillance video from the mosque showed a man on a Harley-Davidson type motorcycle approaching the building with a bottle of liquid and some papers, then leaving when there was a flash and shaking his hand as though he may have burned it, Thompson said. The first 911 calls were made about 45 minutes later after the fire had spread to the attic. It took about 4 1/2 hours for firefighters to extinguish the blaze. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, he said.

The arsonist "is terrorizing our community because we don't know where he is at and we don't know what he is capable of doing," said Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, Florida spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations who was representing the mosque's leadership.

Mateen opened fire at the Pulse nightclub June 12 in a rampage that left 49 victims dead and 53 wounded before the gunman was killed by police. He professed allegiance to the Islamic State group. His father is among roughly 100 people who attend the mosque.

Ruiz said the mosque and its worshippers have been harassed since the massacre.

"First there were threatening voicemails," he said. "Then drivers would splash water on the parishioners leaving on Fridays, and then a member got beat up in the parking lot when he came to the mosque for early morning prayers, and now the mosque has been set on fire."

The FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives joined the investigation into the fire. Sheriff's officials released the video and asked for the public's help in identifying the arsonist.

Michael Parsons, 22, was standing outside his parents' home, directly across the street from the mosque. He said that since the Orlando shooting, "a lot of people have been driving by hollering and yelling expletives at the church or mosque or whatever they call it."

Parsons, a gutter installer with "trust no one" tattooed on his chest, said his mother's cancer doctor attends the mosque.

"America was founded so people can believe what they want to believe and do what they want to do," he said. "These guys flying the American flag on their trucks don't really know what the freedom is they're fighting for."

On July 2, a few weeks after the nightclub massacre, a man was beaten outside the mosque. CAIR said the victim was a Muslim and the attacker hurled slurs. A suspect was arrested. CAIR said that earlier that day, a man in a truck stopped outside the mosque and said, "You Muslims need to get back to your country."

On Monday morning, a pickup truck with a "Don't Tread on Me" bumper sticker rolled past the mosque. The driver revved his engine and raised his index finger in the air as if making the gesture for No. 1.
A Miami man and two teens are facing charges after police say an escort who thought she was meeting with a client was carjacked at gunpoint.

Eduardo Bustamante, 27, was arrested Monday on charges of armed carjacking, conspiracy to commit carjacking and contributing to the delinquency of a child, according to an arrest report. A 17-year-old suspect was also charged with carjacking and a 16-year-old suspect was arrested on undisclosed charges.

According to the report, the escort was contacted by phone on September 5 by Bustamante, who requested her services, and she agreed to meet him in the area of Southwest 122nd Avenue and Southwest 202nd Street.

When she arrived, Bustamante sat in her car and the two talked. At one point, the 16-year-old approached the car and pointed a handgun at the woman and ordered her out, the report said. The 16-year-old got in the driver's seat and they drove away, the report said.

The 17-year-old, who was with Bustamante and the other teen during the carjacking but was hiding, was stopped by police the next day as he was driving the car, the report said. The teen gave police information about Bustamante and how he planned the carjacking with the other teen, the arrest report said.

The victim later identified Bustamante in a six-person photographic lineup, the report said. Bustamante was ordered held without bond during an appearance in court Tuesday. He was also appointed a public defender.
The two major party candidates for the U.S. Senate from Florida this fall will meet and debate multiple times before voters head to the polls - the question remains, though, how many times they will exactly be on stage together.

Republican Sen. and Miami native Marco Rubio, looking to get re-elected for a second term in office, will meet U.S. Representative and Democratic Party nominee Patrick Murphy in at least two debates that have been confirmed by both sides.

The first debate will take place in Orlando on October 17th, followed by a second one in Davie on October 26th.

The Murphy campaign issued a statement saying they had agreed to a third debate to be held in Tampa and sponsored by Telemundo, as well as a forum in West Palm Beach on November 2nd - just six days before the general election.

Rubio's campaign, in their own press release, mentioned nothing about either of those events - instead saying they had agreed to four additional debates, including one each in Orlando and the Tampa Bay area as well as two in Miami.

Rubio, who initially said he would not seek another term after announced his candidacy for President, reversed course this summer and easily defeated his challengers in the GOP primary.

Murphy, whose district includes St. Lucie and Martin Counties in addition to part of Palm Beach County, also was the clear winner in his primary race, defeating fellow Rep. Alan Grayson and several other candidates.
One of the most prestigious personalities on Hispanic television is celebrating a monumental anniversary this week  with a star studded show case of the last 15 years on air.

Dr. Ana Maria Polo has spent the last decade and a half as the host of Caso Cerrado (Case Closed) on Telemundo (a sister network to NBC). Polo started as host of the networks show Sala de Parejas (Couples Room) in 2001 before the show changed titles in 2005.

The daytime program gained such success that a primetime version was created for the show, which is seen in over 21 countries throughout Latin America.

Thursday, the show will air a special 15th anniversary episode at 7 PM. The episode will feature never before seen bloopers, reunions with past guest and performances by former stars of the hit Telemundo show La Voz Kids.

Polo, who has over 20 years experience as a lawyer, will also be honored by the Mayor of Miami, Tomas Regalado, during the show.

The host was recently honored by the network during the 2016 Premios Tu Mundo event in Miami for her years on the air.
Police are looking for a thief who was caught on camera breaking into a taxi to steal a computer in Miami.

The theft happened back on July 10 when the cabbie parked at the Publix supermarket garage at 1776 Biscayne Boulevard and went inside to shop, Miami Police officials said Tuesday.

While the cab driver was inside, the suspect got into the taxi, stole a laptop worth about $1,000, and fled the scene police said. A camera inside the taxi recorded the suspect, who was described as a black male, 30-35, 220 pounds and bald with a beard.

Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.
Miami-Dade County says a woman's open-air treehouse was built illegally, is unsafe and must be demolished in the next four months.

Shawnee Chasser, 65, refuses to remove her treehouse nestled against the forked trunks of an oak and strangler fig in the wooded front yard of her late son's Biscayne Gardens home.

Chasser, who discovered her aversion to indoor living decades ago, has slept in a tree since 1992 after she moved her family back to Miami from California.

The county's issue with Chasser's abode isn't specifically that she lives there, says Roig, but that it's unsafe.

The cottage, which can't be seen from the street, is off to the south side of "Shawnee's Paradise," on the corner of Be Here Now Street and Joshua's Way, an ode to her late son, who died inside his house in 2009 of a heart attack. The property  recently featured by the Tiny House Giant Journey travel blog  is just under a half-acre of wooded lawn stretched around a man-made pond and waterfall and hiding from its surroundings behind a hedge.

A land trust run by Chasser's daughter bought the home in 2013. Chasser makes the property available to tenants who want to rent rooms, a mini-camper, or even set up tents in the front yard. It helps her pay the bills, along with proceeds from Shawnee's Greenthumb Popcorn, which she mass produces and sells.

But everything changed about a year ago, when someone called 311 to complain that Chasser was running the property like an apartment complex and campground in the middle of a single-family neighborhood. Chasser, who says she's tight with her neighbors, blames a booted tenant. But the unexpected visit from county code enforcement last September jarred her world.

She was issued a citation for illegally running a rooming house and for work conducted at the property without permits, including the tree house.

"This has got to be my first time ever of somebody living in a tree house," said Ricardo Roig, Miami-Dade's code enforcement division director and a 26-year county employee.

Roig said South Florida has strict rules about building code due to the frequency of hurricanes, and added that running water and electricity have to be installed with permits and inspections. He said Chasser is welcome to live in a legal tree house, but code and unsafe-structure inspectors looked at the cottage and found it constructed in a way that it can't be brought up to county standards.

The department calls the tree house "substandard construction" and that it's "improperly running electricity."

Chasser, who has already paid $3,000 in fines, potentially faces more than $7,000 in additional liens, according to the county.

Officials also says "plumbing on a property presents a hazard not just to those on the property, but also to neighbors."

They are giving Chasser 120 days to bring her home up to code or it could be demolished.

"They've come in like petty tyrants and want to pretty much take down the whole place," said Chasser.

The self-proclaimed hippie said her tree house is up to code, but she is getting help from an architect.

"He's organizing a whole crew of engineers and trying to make it all legal," said Chasser.

Chasser, who sells bags of organic popcorn at Whole Foods, said she is not going down without a fight.

"Well, then we all come and chain myself and everybody else to the tree house," the grandmother said.
When Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia late last week, she informed a handful of her closest advisers, but pressed on with a busy campaign schedule and did not inform the public that she was sick. "I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal," she said.

Clinton's first comments about her health condition came in a CNN interview late Monday, a day after a dizzy spell caught on video forced the Democratic nominee to disclose her illness and cancel a West Coast campaign trip.

The incident reinforced Clinton's reputation as a public figure with a predisposition for privacy. While her top campaign aides conceded they were too slow in providing the public with information about Clinton's condition, it was unclear how quickly they themselves had been informed by the candidate.

In a move aimed at quieting questions about transparency, Clinton said she would be releasing more medical information this week. Her campaign has sought to turn the matter around on Republican opponent Donald Trump, who has released only a glowing letter from his doctor, though the billionaire real estate mogul says that he, too, plans to make public additional information in the coming days.

Less than two months from Election Day, Clinton's handling of her health incident added to Democrats' growing sense of uncertainty about the presidential race. While Democrats said the matter is unlikely to fundamentally alter the presidential race, Democrats worry the race with Trump is too close for comfort.

"If you look at the way the last couple months have gone, it feels like the race should be further apart," said Greg Haas, an Ohio-based Democratic strategist and former county party chairman.

Aaron Regunberg, a Democratic state representative from Rhode Island, said he was "surprised and concerned" that the race is so tight.

"I still think that we are likely to win, but I think anyone who's not concerned about a bigoted, KKK-endorsed sociopath being this close right now in the polls is not living in reality," Regunberg said of Trump.

Clinton abruptly left a 9-11 anniversary event Sunday in New York and was seen on video stumbling and being held up by aides. After roughly 90 minutes of silence from her campaign, aides said Clinton left because she was overheated. Several hours later, her doctor acknowledged she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.

Clinton spent Monday at her home in Chappaqua, New York, after canceling a fundraising trip in California. It was unclear when she planned to return to the campaign trail.

In a text message to supporters Monday night, Clinton wrote: "Like anyone who's ever been home sick from work, I'm just anxious to get back out there."

Trump showed surprising restraint regarding Clinton's health. He wished her well and did not repeat questions he has previously raised about whether the former secretary of state has the strength and stamina to be president.

He did hammer Clinton for her assertion Friday night that half of his supporters belong in a "basket of deplorables" and are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. Clinton later said she regretted applying that description to "half" of Trump's backers, but stuck by her assertion that the GOP nominee has given a platform to "hateful views and voices."

Speaking in Maryland Monday, Trump said he was shocked to hear Clinton "attack, slander, smear and demean these wonderful, amazing people who are supporting our campaign."

After a staff shake-up in August, Trump has largely abandoned the free-wheeling style of campaigning that energized his supporters but also led to an endless string of controversial comments about women, minorities and others. The Republican nominee's newfound ability to stay on script has coincided with tightening in both national polls and surveys in some key swing states.

"The last few days feed into a sense of uncertainty," said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist. He said Clinton's rough weekend raises the stakes for the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, which "will either finish Trump or, if he does well, it will create a race."

Privately, some Republicans say Trump would likely be losing more convincingly to another Democratic nominee. But Clinton's unpopularity rivals that of her opponent, and she's been unable to do much to change the minds of Americans who believe she is dishonest and secretive.

To be sure, Clinton continues to have numerous advantages over Trump as the race presses into its final weeks.

Polls show Trump struggling mightily with big swaths of the electorate, including women, blacks, Hispanics and young people. His path to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win in November is also narrow  he likely needs to carry Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina  while Clinton has numerous routes. Clinton's campaign is also running a sophisticated voter targeting and turnout operation, led by several people involved in President Barack Obama's winning campaigns, while Trump is banking on the Republican National Committee for his field operations.

Given those built-in advantages and Trump's weaknesses, some Democrats say their biggest fear is complacency  making the tightening of the race not such a bad development.

"It really says to me and other supporters of Hillary that we have to be invested, and we're going to have to get out and work," said Missouri state Rep. Margo McNeil of suburban St. Louis, who was a Clinton delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
HP is buying Samsung's printer business in a transaction worth $1.05 billion.

HP said Monday that it is the largest print acquisition in the company's history and will help it go from traditional copiers to multifunction printers. HP also said the deal will strengthen its position in laser printing, which it established with Canon.

Samsung's printer business includes more than 6,500 printing patents. The deal is expected to close within a year.
What to Know Federal officials urged users last week to stop charging their Samsung Galaxy Note 7s immediately and turn them off

There have been at least 35 confirmed cases of the phone exploded or catching fire, Samsung said

The phones were pulled from shelves in 10 countries two weeks after launch over concerns about the batteries

The MTA and New Jersey Transit are both urging passengers not to use their Samsung Galaxy Note 7 mobile devices on its trains and buses.

The agencies on Tuesday told passengers they should turn them off before entering a station or boarding a vehicle because of concerns the device's battery can burst into flames.

Samsung has told owners to power them down and return them.

NJ Transit has not had any reported cases of the Note 7 catching fire. It's not clear if there have been any on New York city subways, buses or commuter rails, either.

Samsung, which recalled the phones from stores in 10 countries two weeks after the product launch, said it has confirmed at least 35 such cases.



NJ Transit in February restricted customers and employees from using, charging, storing or transporting hoverboards following similar fire safety concerns.



The Federal Aviation Administration has also issued a warning about using the Samsung Galaxy Note 7s on flights.
What to Know Cherelle Jovanna Locklear's roommates found her hanging in a dorm bathroom on Nov. 22, 2015

Locklear's mother said her daughter said she was raped at a fraternity in late September 2015 and reported it in October

The lawsuit says a victim services coordinator didn't report it to cops right away, and even then, cops failed to investigate appropriately

A college student killed herself because the university she attended didn't properly investigate her rape report, her mother said in a lawsuit.

William Paterson University officials knew about, but didn't address, sexual violence against students, creating a climate in which such misconduct was tolerated, Marquesa Jackson-Locklear alleged.

School officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Jackson-Locklear's 21-year-old daughter, Cherelle Jovanna Locklear, said she was raped at a fraternity house in September 2015, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday.

About a month later, Locklear tried to kill herself. After the suicide attempt, she reported the sexual assault to the school's victim services coordinator, the lawsuit said.

The coordinator didn't immediately notify campus police, and when the police did hear about it, they didn't conduct an "appropriate and thorough investigation," the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit says Locklear hanged herself in November 2015. Originally from Jackson, she had been a student at the school in Wayne since 2012.

Besides the university and its police force, defendants named in the lawsuit include several school officials and the school's chapter of the Sigma Pi fraternity, where Locklear had said the rape occurred.

The AP couldn't locate phone numbers for the fraternity or its leaders, and the organization didn't immediately return a message sent to its Twitter account on Tuesday. Jason Walker, executive director of the Sigma Pi Fraternity International in Lebanon, Tennessee, said he was not aware of the lawsuit and declined comment on the matter.

Peter Till, a lawyer representing Locklear's relatives, declined further comment on the litigation. He said the firm usually does not comment on pending litigation and did not want to discuss the matter without Jackson-Locklear being present. He said they were planning to hold a news conference, but it has not yet been scheduled.

No charges have been filed in the alleged sex assault.
What to Know Police say they've arrested a 37-year-old Bronx woman in the robbery of an elderly woman in a wheelchair

The robbery was captured on surveillance video

The victim told NBC 4 the robber should "get a J-O-B like I had to"

Police say they've found and arrested the woman captured on surveillance video snatching the purse of an elderly woman in a wheelchair outside a Bronx building.

The 37-year-old suspect, Adrianne Terry of the Bronx, was arrested Tuesday on charges of grand larceny and petit larceny.

The victim, 86-year-old Bernice Starnes, was sitting in a wheelchair outside a building near East 179th Street and Marmion Avenue in Bronx Park South on Sunday afternoon when the suspect approached her and began talking to her, police said. Video shows the suspect then snatching Starnes' purse and runs off with it. She's then seen disposing of the entire purse in a trash can.

Starnes had some choice words for the thief Monday.

"You need to get a J-O-B like I had to," the victim, Bernice Starnes, said during an interview with NBC 4 New York.

"All I know is that my purse has been taken and my money was taken out of it," said Starnes. "Now I'm finding out that I don't have my benefits card."

Starnes, who wasn't hurt in the robbery, got a her money and her purse back Monday when community officers from the 48th Precinct returned her money.

Starnes told NBC 4 she doesn't recall ever seeing the woman before.

"I'm 86 years old, I thank God I remember to get up and use the bathroom out of a Pamper. I mean, really," said Starnes.

Attorney information for Terry wasn't immediately available.

Last week, a similar robbery targeting a 93-year-old woman in a wheelchair in Manhattan outraged New Yorkers and prompted a flood of a donations for the victim, who said the $600 in stolen cash was Social Security money that was meant to pay the rent. A 26-year-old Brooklyn man was arrested in the incident, also captured on surveillance camera.
As Seen On

As seen on News 4
A wreck involving two tractor-trailers closed the Schuylkill Expressway headed into Philadelphia for about 45 minutes Tuesday morning.

The wreck closed all lanes of Interstate 76 eastbound near Girard Avenue in Philadelphia around 6:15 a.m.

Many emergency vehicles could be seen responding. One person could be seen be loaded into an ambulance. That person was treated at Hahnemann Hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

The crash caused a massive backup leading back to Montgomery County. Crews began letting one lane of traffic by around 7 a.m. By 7:30 a.m. all lanes were reopened but delays remained.

With Kelly and Martin Luther King drives already detoured due to President Barack Obama's visit at Eakins Oval, surface streets like Belmont Avenue served as the best routes around the crash.
Prosecutors in South Jersey say a man has admitted to tying up a disabled man and hitting him in the head, leading to the man's death.

Under a plea agreement, Gloucester County prosecutors say 44-year-old Jon Nordberg pleaded guilty on Monday to aggravated manslaughter in the March 2013 death of John McConnell.

Authorities say Nordberg knew McConnell and was aware that he was disabled and receiving insurance annuity payments stemming from an auto accident.

Nordberg admitted to entering McConnell's Franklin log cabin, tying him up and beating him. Two safes were later discovered missing from the home.

Nordberg's sentencing is scheduled for November.
Foreign investors led the decline by net selling W217.5 billion worth of Korean stocks (US$1=W1,116). The last time the KOSPI fell below 2,000 was on Aug. 3.

The Korea Composite Stock Price Index fell below the key 2,000-point level on Monday as investor sentiment soured over Samsung's massive smartphone recall, jitters over a U.S. Fed rate hike and North Korea's nuclear test.

 Samsung Debacle

The main reason was the steep fall in Samsung Electronics' shares, which plunged seven percent to W1.47 million, meaning W15 trillion in Samsung Electronics' market capital was wiped out. The decline was due to the recall of the Galaxy Note 7 over a battery defect.

The recall announcement last week did not have a severe impact as investor confidence was boosted by the company's quick response. But now U.S. aviation authorities have banned passengers from carrying the phablet on board and Samsung urged customers to switch off their devices, and that was too much for tender market sentiment.

Samsung is so big that it accounts for 20 percent of the KOSPI's total market capital, and seven-percent drop in shares translates into a 1.4-percent decline in the KOSPI.

Roh Geun-chang at HMC Investment and Securities said, "This has exposed the weakness of the KOSPI, which only stayed in the upper limits of a boxed range thanks to Samsung."

 Fed Rate Hike Fears

Even before trading began, concerns over a U.S. Fed rate hike loomed large after Eric Rosengren, head of the Boston Fed, said Friday that a "gradual rate hike" should resume. The comments prompted U.S. stocks to drop almost two percent.

Investors fled into dollars, and the won plunged W15.1 to W1,113.5 on Monday.

 North Korea's Nuke Test

North Korea's previous nuclear tests were largely shrugged off by investors because the risks were believed to have been reflected already and investors had grown used to them at certain intervals. But the fifth and most powerful test so far last Friday was seen as different.
Police in suburban Philadelphia investigating reports of a man masturbating naked in the bushes arrested a man who previously pleaded guilty to indecent exposure.

A West Goshen police officer witnessed Gary Hacker, 59, masturbating along the side of Boot Road near Route 202 Friday, said West Goshen Township Police.

Police had been on the search for a naked man who neighbors say was masturbating in the bushes off Boot Road back in August when they made the arrest, said investigators.

Hacker posted 10 percent of 25,000 bail after a judge arraigned the Collegeville man on indecent exposure, lewdness and disorderly conduct.



This wasn't the first time Hacker faced indecent exposure charges. He pleaded guilty to indecent exposure in Montgomery County in 2007 and received two years probation, according to court records.

NBC10 reached out to an attorney who represented Hacker in his previous indecent exposure case for comment.
About 100 people showed up at Lower Merion High School on Monday night to ask for answers about what happens next, following a judge's rejection of the prestigious districts tax increase adopted earlier this summer.

The meeting was the first for the school board since Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Joseph Smyth ruled Aug. 29 that Lower Merion needed to take a new look at its 2016-2017 budget and lower its 4.4 percent tax increase.

At the center of contention is the districts $55 million in surplus accounts. Smyth ruled that the district should not have raised taxes above a 2.4 percent state-mandated limit. The district has filed an appeal, arguing that more than $35 million of that surplus money is in dedicated accounts that pay for pensions and capital projects. The state did sign off on Lower Merions tax increase above the limit.

The board approved two resolutions related to the appeal: the appointment of special counsel to oversee the appeal, and the formation of an escrow account to hold money in question pending the outcome of the litigation. The special counsel will be an attorney with Drinker Biddle at a rate of $495 an hour, board attorney Kenneth Roos said.

Prior to the board's vote on those resolutions, district officials presented their case for the tax increase, arguing that unprecedented growth in enrollment the past several years has contributed to the need for the surplus accounts, which in part go toward employee pensions and new buildings.

Copeland and the board found some resistance from township taxpayers and residents who spoke during the public comment period, though numerous speakers said they support the elected school board and district officials.

Copeland said taxpayer money has been spent properly, with current and future students in mind.

The district employs good, sound accounting practices. Without a doubt, Superintendent Robert Copeland told a crowd spread out across the 850-seat auditorium. You want to maintain enough for a rainy day. And also to maintain a high debt rating.

In addition to explaining the pension and capital projects funds, Copeland also defended the $20.1 million in unassigned budget surplus, saying that total is about half the $42 million, or two months expenditures, that the state budget officials recommend for government agencies.

Heres our biggest issue, the impact of growth in enrollment, Copeland said. Whats the enrollment growth meant? 100 new teachers.

Those teachers, he said, add about $10 million more to the annual budget. He also cited capital projects necessary to create room for the roughly 1,000 new students that are now in the district above enrollment a mere five years ago.

Weve had unprecedented enrollment growth, which has been beyond the range of our neighbors, Copeland said. He and other district officials have noted that most districts in southeastern Pennsylvania have seen stagnant or falling enrollment.

Lower Merion has increased from about 7,300 students five years ago to nearly 8,400 students this school year, according to Pennsylvania Department of Education statistics.

The decision against Lower Merion School District calling into question their budgeting practices is erroneous and creates potentially negative implications not only for Lower Merion School District but for all school districts across the commonwealth that follow the rules, budget conservatively, and engage in long-term financial planning, the Pennsylvania Association of School Budget Officials said in a statement Monday.

A court date for the districts appeal has not yet been set. A spokesman for the district said the filing of the appeal has given the school board a stay from having to address the budget and tax increase while litigation is ongoing.

The district has said lowering the tax increase by 2 percent would mean cutting about $4 million from the $258 million 2016-2017 budget.

Gail Simon, of Wynnewood, said she, like many of the public who spoke in favor of the school board, graduated from Lower Merion schools -- as did her children.

"Lower Merion schools have a wonderful reputation because of the time, effort and money spent," Simon said.

But Arthur Wolk, the attorney who filed the lawsuit and who has lived in Lower Merion for three decades, said he is not against funding high-level public education. He again derided the district for "falsifying" their annual budget.

"The court found in the last six years there were $81 million worth of false claims by the district of deficits when in fact they had surpluses," Wolk said. "Give us back our money."
A Delaware police officer stands accused of possessing and sharing child pornography.

The investigation into the officer, identified as 45-year-old Robert Vasecka, who works for New Castle County Police, began when an Internet chat room reported one of its users uploaded child pornography, according to the Delaware Department of Justice.

The Child Predator Task Force looked into the suspected child porn upload, and their investigation led them to Vasecka, a state DOJ spokesman said. Authorities arrested Vasecka, and a search of his phone after his arrest revealed at least 25 child porn images on his phone, authorities said.

Vasecka is charged with 25 counts of dealing in child pornography. He is being held on $500,000 bail at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center.

New Castle County Police officials said Vasecka has been placed on paid administrative leave.
The Allegheny County medical examiner has identified a Pittsburgh teen who was gunned down after attending a court-ordered after-school program.

The victim is 17-year-old Dalon Williams.

Police say Williams was shot after he was dropped off by a Community Intensive Supervision Program van on Mossfield Street in Pittsburgh's Garfield neighborhood on Monday night.

An autopsy was scheduled Tuesday.

Police were continuing to investigate, but haven't said if they have any suspects or a motive.
San Diego County Sheriffs Deputies have launched an investigation into the death of a male juvenile at a Poway home.

Poway Fire Department crews were called to the home on Orchard Gate Road at approximately 8 p.m. on Friday, September 9.

They call was to help an unresponsive juevnile who was having difficulty breathing, according to deputies. Deputies did not release an age of the victim.

Emergency personnel began CPR. However, the juvenile was pronounced dead, deputies said.

An investigation into the cause of death is underway.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the Poway Station at (858) 513-2800/after hours at (858) 565-5200 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-TIPS(8477).
A North County woman and a man, allegedly involved in a murder-for-hire plot, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and conspiracy charges on Monday in a Vista court.

Diana Lovejoy, 43, and Weldon McDavid Jr., 49, are being held on $2 million bail, accused of shooting Lovejoys estranged husband.

Lovejoy and her husband had been involved in an ugly two year divorce battle. She had won custody of their son, who turned 4-years old on Monday. She had a current restraining order against her husband.

On Monday, NBC 7 learned that Lovejoys husband had also filed a restraining order against her.

According to police, Lovejoy and McDavid allegedly lured her estranged husband to an isolated access road off Avenida Soledad in Carlsbad on Sept. 2., where he was shot once in the side. The shooting prompted a lock down of the neighborhood while authorities searched the area.

Police say McDavid, an employee at a shooting range in Oceanside, had been teaching Lovejoy how to shoot.

The victim did survive the shooting.

If convicted, McDavid is facing 50 years to life in prison while Lovejoy faces 25 years to life. According to the prosecutor in the case, Lovejoy is facing the lesser term because she did not pull the trigger, but was vicariously armed with a firearm and was aware and participated in the shooting.

Lovejoy and McDavid are scheduled to be back in court on September 21.
North Korea is ready to conduct another nuclear test any time, the Defense Ministry here said Monday.

"Assessment by South Korean and U.S. intelligence is that the North is ready for an additional nuclear test in the Punggye-ri area whenever it wants," Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun told reporters.

"North Korea has a couple of tunnels where it can conduct an additional nuclear test," Moon added.

There are thought to be three main tunnels at the Punggye-ri site, each with branch tunnels that lead to other test areas. Tunnel No. 1 was sealed after the first test in 2006, while the second to fifth nuclear tests took place in tunnel No. 2. According to Moon, the additional tests could take place in the remaining branch shafts of tunnel No. 2 or tunnel No. 3.

Earlier, National Intelligence Service chief Lee Byung-ho was summoned to the National Assembly after the spy agency was taken by surprise by the latest test on Friday.

Lee told lawmakers he "would not be surprised" if the North conducts a sixth and even seventh nuclear test.

Kim Hwang-rok, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, met with the heads of ruling and opposition parties and also said North Korea could conduct more nuclear tests judging by the existence of "two to three more tunnels."

The intervals between the North's nuclear tests have shrunk from over three years to eight months. The North claimed the fourth test in January was of a hydrogen bomb, but that seems unlikely. The latest and most powerful test so far was of a "warhead" for a missile, North Korean state media have claimed.


Note: This story was updated on September 14 to include newly filed information reflecting why the plaintiffs are opposing the request to move the trial date.

Donald Trump and his attorneys have requested the trial date in one of the Trump University class-action lawsuits be moved to a later date, according to federal court documents filed Monday.

A San Diego federal judge scheduled the Low v. Trump case to begin November 28. Trump and his attorneys are asking the date to be moved to either to January 2, 2017 or December 12, 2016 in order to resolve a scheduling conflict, the court document details.

According to the court document, Daniel Petrocelli, one of Trumps attorneys, is the lead trial attorney in another case involving Sirius Radio. That trial is set to begin on November 15 and is estimated to last seven court days. The current schedule would prevent Mr. Petrocelli from conducting the necessary pretrial work and preparation in this case, and defendants will suffer substantial prejudice, the documents detail.

Click here to read the complete court document.

In court documents filed Wednesday, Jason Forge writing for the plaintiffs, said he opposes any more delays. Four months ago the court chose a trial date that wouldnt conflict with the presidential campaign or the holidays, he wrote in the court documents.

"We have waited six and half years to get this case to trial, Forge wrote. "There is no mystery about what happened here....a possible Trump victory (in the presidential election) would spawn a host of potential new excuses to postpone trial for years.

Click here to read the complete opposition filed by the plaintiffs.

The Trump University lawsuits allege the former university, which took in over $40 million, was fraudulent and deceptive. Two class-action lawsuits against the now-closed Trump University are being heard in San Diego courtrooms; another lawsuit is based in a New York court.

The San Diego cases include: Cohen v. Trump, a nationwide class action lawsuit and Low v. Trump, a class action in California, Florida and New York. Trump denies the allegations in the lawsuits.
A local Iraq War veteran is among more than 6,800 GI beneficiaries who enrolled at ITT Technical Institute -- only to be out of education when the school system abruptly shut down.

And Ted Lindley, along with the thousands of others, are wondering what to do next and are unsure whether other schools will accept their college credits.

Ted Lindley served in the US Marine Corps for seven years. He was first deployed to Iraq in 2004, and again in 2005. It was during his last stint, when he received a Purple Heart during a convoy operation.

I was inside the vehicle. I took shrapnel to the side of the head in my left temple, Ted told NBC 7.

Ted still has consistent headaches and a chronic numbness in his hand from his injury.

When Ted came home in 2005 he wanted to start a new life for his family. He first enrolled at Palomar College, but found the class schedule to be inconvenient and confusing. Then he met a recruiter at ITT Technical Institute and decided to enroll there because the school made the process easy and simple, he said.

There was never a question of what course am I taking next, what class am I going to take next, what do I have to do to pay for this, Ted said.

Ted estimates about 70 percent of his classmates were either active duty or former military members. He said ITT Tech classes were available at night and that appealed to him and his classmates.

For the first three-and-a-half years, things at ITT Tech were going well for Ted. He graduated with an associates degree with honors and began working on his bachelors degree in electrical engineering.

He would stay up at night and do his homework all night long, so he wouldnt have to miss the time he had with us, Teds wife Tammy said.

Thats why the news of ITT Tech shutting down was so devastating for the Lindley family. After more than three years of studying, and just three semesters shy of graduating with a degree, Ted may have to retake most, if not all of his courses, because ITT Tech was not a regionally accredited school.

Im just defeated, discouraged, scared what our future is going to be, Tammy said.

NBC7 reached out to several schools on Monday to find out which schools will accept ITT credits.

Coleman University told NBC 7 they will accept some credits from ITT students, but not all. Cal State San Marcos will not accept any ITT credits, saying ITT Tech was not a regionally accredited school. The San Diego Community Colleges may offer students the chance to test out of courses and receive credits, but they havent finalized a method yet.

Congressman Scott Peters has agreed to cosponsor the Education Recovery and Restoration Act (HR 3991) which would:

1. Restore entitlement for individuals who pursued a program of education with VA educational assistance and failed to receive credit, or lost training time, toward completion of the individuals educational, professional, or vocational objective as a result of the closure of their educational institution.

2. Continue monthly educational assistance payments, including monthly housing allowance, through the end of the term, quarter, or semester in which the school closes, or for up to four months from the date of the school closure.

Rep. Peters is hoping to see this legislation move, but in the meantime veterans can reach out to resources through the VA and the Department of Education to determine the best options for them moving forward, including transferring and getting their federal student loans discharged if they have any.

NBC7 also reached out to the VA. Here is their response: We regret the sudden inconvenience and disruption of studies for the more than 6,800 GI Bill beneficiaries recently identified as pursuing programs at ITT Technical Institute or planning to embark on studies there. VA has resources available to help such students relocate their academic pursuits, including VAs Comparison Tool and its web page providing a Choosing a School guide. Students with concerns about the status of their benefits can consult with VA staff at VAs education toll-free line, 888-442-4551.

Additional information for students, as available, will be posted here.
What to Know DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier said our criminal justice system is "beyond broken." I agree.

Harry Jaffe, a longtime chronicler of the people and politics of Washington, D.C., writes an occasional column for NBC Washington's First Read DMV blog.

Cathy Lanier tossed a bitter bouquet last week on her last days as D.C. police chief when she said our criminal justice system is "beyond broken." I agree. Take the case of Romeo Hayes.

It began on the night of Aug. 13, 2014. D.C. Detective Thurman Stallings couldn't sleep. A murder case on his desk beckoned. He woke his wife up about 2 a.m. and said he was heading into homicide headquarters. "Back by noon," he said. She wasn't surprised. He had 25 years on as a cop, loved his job and dedicated himself to getting killers off the street.

Behind the wheel of his green SUV, Stallings was stopped at a light near Alabama Avenue SE, when a small car pulled up to his left. The window dropped down; he saw the barrel of a Glock-17. Figuring he was being carjacked, he told the shooter: "Not tonight." Then he ducked.

The first bullet hit him in the arm. The car sped off. He gave chase.

Stallings cut the car off a few blocks away. When the car teed into his door, he saw the Glock come out of the passenger window and the flash of the muzzle. Bullets pierced his windshield. Three hit him in the chest. The car backed away and sped off again. Stallings saw police cars in his rear view mirror and managed to pull off into a side street.

A chopper airlifted him to Washington Hospital Center.

Romeo Hayes, then 28, had left the Opera Ultra Lounge at 14th and I streets NW with evil intent. Riding shotgun in a stolen car, he first squeezed off a few shots at a sedan, also driven by an off-duty cop, before turning his pistol on Stallings. Later that morning police arrested Hayes in Prince George's County when he tried to ditch the car. Prosecutors charged him with eight felonies, including assault with intent to kill and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.

You would expect judges to put Hayes away for a long, long time. Not quite. In March prosecutors allowed Hayes to take an Alford plea -- in which he acknowledged they had enough to convict him, but he was allowed to deny the allegations. The deal gave him a sentence of 10 years. So in 2026, a repeat offender with a penchant for randomly shooting at people could be back on the street.

I have had my differences with Chief Lanier, most recently on her dismantling of D.C.'s vice squads. But she's spot on with her thrashing of the criminal justice system. Apologists might blame violent crime on schools that fail to educate, lack of jobs, troubled families and more. All true, but they are missing the point. We know that a few career criminals are terrorizing our streets. We know gun crimes are on the rise in and around D.C. The criminal justice system fails to keep us safe.

Take Romeo Hayes. He has a rap sheet going back to his first arrest for armed car jacking in 2004. He's been arrested and charged in 14 cases in Prince George's County, many for possession of weapons. When he shot Stallings, a search warrant was out for failing to show up in court.

When I dug through case files, I found that prosecutors and judges kept letting Hayes slide. Lawyers stood by as he failed to show up in court. Judges never jailed him. In Prince George's County and the District, Romeo Hayes got the "okeedoke" from the law, so he kept racking up the gun crimes.

Lanier is correct when she fingers prosecutors and judges. She told the Washington Post that people want more police and more arrests, "but if we're arresting the same people over and over again, there's got to be some questions being asked."

Responding to her criticism, Chief Superior Court Judge Lee Satterfield told reporters at a press conference he "disagreed" but refused to elaborate. U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips defended the system.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser cut close to the bone when she pointed out that both prosecutors and judges are part of the federal government, as opposed to locally controlled systems in most major cities. "The prosecutors don't report to the people -- they don't report to me either. Judges and others don't."

When NBC4 reporter Mark Segraves asked if prosecutors and local judges should be elected, Bowser said, "I would rather have our criminal justice system accountable to the people who pay the taxes here and are affected by crime here."

That's not going to happen, so what can be done to fix the system and protect us from predators?

First, pressure D.C. councilmembers to pass tough laws to punish career criminals and stiffen jail time for gun crimes. As it is, too many councilmembers are weak-kneed and prone to blame society for bad behavior. That's especially true of at-large member David Grosso and Judiciary Chair Kenyan McDuffie. Nonsense. Treat drug offenders, but jail violent offenders.

Stop prosecutors from offering up plea deals to violent criminals like Romeo Hayes.

Monitor judges. I have sat in Superior Court time after time and watched judges give light sentences to people who used guns to rob or settle scores. They should serve hard time.

This is not about race. Violent men or women, regardless of skin color or class, must be taken off the streets.

By the way, Detective Thurmond Stallings is back on the streets. Doctors sent him home without removing the bullets. He's healed. He's on the homicide squad trying to arrest killers in our midst.

At least that part of the system is working.
The driver who hit and killed a 5-month-old boy and seriously hurt the infant's mother deleted a voicemail on his cellphone before it was used to call 911, investigators believe.

Newly filed search warrant documents reveal that investigators want to hear the voicemail the driver deleted at the time of the crash.

Mindy Schulz was pushing her infant son, Tristan, in a stroller in a crosswalk on Riverside Parkway in Landsdowne, Virginia, when an SUV hit them just after 8:15 a.m. The mother and son were rushed to a hospital, where the baby died.

Court documents say the driver, who has not been charged, deleted a voicemail. The phone then was used to call 911. Investigators have asked the cellphone provider to preserve the record of that voicemail so they can find out what was said.

A witness to the crash told police the SUV driver had been "holding a phone in his left hand, as if he was watching or reading something," court documents said.

The witness said the SUV driver was tailgating the vehicle in front of him and appeared to speed up to try to get ahead of the Schulzes. The "walk" sign was illuminated as the mother and son crossed the street, the witness said.

After the SUV driver struck them, the witness said the driver pulled onto a grassy shoulder area and crouched next to his vehicle.

When police arrived to the scene, the driver's lawyer was there and told investigators the driver would not provide a statement.
Donald Trump hasn't let many insults slide this campaign season - except when they come from Hillary Clinton's running mate.

The Republican presidential nominee has all but ignored the constant barrage of attacks from Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who has assumed the traditional attack-dog role of a vice presidential candidate with gusto, but little notice.

It could be a sign of a newfound discipline by Trump. Or it could that Kaine's attacks don't rise above the din of the daily news cycle. Or, perhaps, that Trump just doesn't care.

In recent weeks, Kaine has asserted Trump has a "bizarre fascination'' with dictators and Vladimir Putin, said he "choked'' during his trip to Mexico and even associated Trump's values with those of the Ku Klux Klan. Criticizing Trump as unfit to be president has become a central theme of Kaine's public remarks as he works to show the Democratic ticket as more qualified to run the country. In an attempt to paint Trump as reckless, Kaine often repeats Clinton's line that Trump is a candidate you can "bait with a Tweet.''

But if it's bait Kaine is casting, Trump isn't biting. Trump's only recent retort - ia a Tweet - came after a recent Kaine appearance on a morning news show. He didn't even mention Kaine by name.

"Crooked Hillary's V.P. pick said this morning that I was not aware that Russia took over Crimea. A total lie - and taken over during O term!'' Trump tweeted, with "O'' referring to President Barack Obama.

Ignoring the barbs of the opposing side's vice presidential candidate is common practice among presidential candidates who don't want to be seen punching below their weight. Presidential hopefuls typically attack only their main opponent, but Trump is an uncommon candidate whose rise is largely marked by his willingness to buck tradition. And Trump has not held back from attacking those he believes have slighted him, whatever their prominence. His many targets have included many other politicians, individual journalists, and celebrities.

In recent weeks Trump has made more of an effort to attack GOP Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and morning TV news host Mika Brzezinski than he has Kaine.

"Just heard that crazy and very dumb (Mika) had a mental breakdown while talking about me,'' Trump tweeted recently.

Still, Trump has been showing more restraint lately than he has during much of his campaign. When Clinton abruptly left a 9/11 anniversary ceremony Sunday and her campaign revealed that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia, Trump said that he hopes she feels better.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Kaine's counterpart on the Republican ticket, did punch back at Kaine on Saturday for calling the GOP ticket unpatriotic in their praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Well, Tim, when Donald Trump and I said that the small and bullying president of Russia was a strong leader on the world stage, that wasn't an endorsement of Putin,'' Pence said, going on to say it was an "indictment'' of Obama.

But Pence has also largely stayed away from attacking Kaine.

Trump's campaign has paid particular attention lately to Kaine's home state with a heavy TV ad buy. Once viewed as a crucial swing state, Virginia has been increasingly leaning in favor of Clinton this campaign cycle. Kaine is the state's former governor and has a strong following among the state's Democratic base. But his support is not strong enough to make Trump hesitant to attack him.

The Clinton campaign suggests Trump may be keeping mum because his past attempts to criticize Kaine haven't been effective. In late July, Trump wrongly identified Kaine as the governor of New Jersey as he attempted to attack his record. When Clinton first named Kaine her running mate, Trump's campaign labeled him "Corrupt Kaine.'' The Republican National Committee has also called him "Weathervane Kaine,'' charging him with flip-flopping. But none of the attacks have been used with regularity or proved to have the same staying power as Trump's nickname for Clinton, "Crooked Hillary.''

Asked along the ropeline in Norfolk, Virginia, if he was surprised Trump wasn't responding more to him, Kaine demurred.

"Not really,'' he said. "I mean, who knows?''

Trump campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller was even more blunt when asked about Trump's Kaine avoidance strategy.

"Who?'' he asked.
A Montgomery County police officer who was fatally struck by a drunken driver while conducting a DUI checkpoint was being honored Tuesday afternoon at a street naming ceremony.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan dedicated part of Georgia Avenue in the Olney area to Officer Noah Leotta, who was raised and educated in Olney, where he is now buried.

Hogan called Leotta a true Maryland hero.

Leotta's parents received a copy of the sign unveiled Tuesday.

"It reminds us of the sacrifice of Noah and all the men and women in blue, and it also reminds us of the senseless and tragic deaths of all drunk drivers," said his father, Rich Leotta.

"To have a sign like this unveiled along a busy roadway like this really demonstrates that people do honor his sacrifice," Montgomery County Police Chief Tom Manger said. "They do honor the work that he did."

Leotta, 24, was critically injured the evening of Dec. 3, 2015, after volunteering to work on a special holiday drunk-driving patrol. He had stopped a suspected drunken driver at Rockville Pike and Edmonston Drive in Rockville, Maryland, and was outside his cruiser when Luis Reluzco smashed into the police car and then struck him, police said.

Leotta was rushed to a hospital but died on Dec. 10. Reluzco pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter in May.

Police say Reluzco was driving with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit and with evidence of marijuana and Xanax in his system. Reluzco had at least three previous alcohol-related arrests, police said in February.

Next month, a law named in Leotta's honor will go into effect. Noah's Law requires breath-testing ignition devices for anyone convicted of drunken driving.

The law will require the devices to be installed for six months in the vehicle of anyone who blows a .08 in a breath test or else the person's license would be suspended for that time period. If someone refuses a breath test, they would either have to install the devices for nine months or have their license suspended for that time.

"We now have the toughest interlock ignition laws in the entire country, and it is going to save lives," Hogan said. "We anticipate somewhere between 50 and 100 lives a year are going to be saved as a result of this law being on the books."
Hyundai is pulling up its sleeves to promote green cars as it has agreed to work with regional governments to introduce hydrogen-electric taxis and launch a car-sharing initiative with hydrogen fuel-cell cars.

The automaker on Monday signed memorandums of understanding with the Ulsan and Gwangju city governments for the green-car projects.

The taxi program will begin in Ulsan in November with 10 Tucson ix hydrogen-electric cars, with five more to be added. Gwangju will launch the program with five cars next year.
A community in Northern Virginia is upset, because their road was repaved. It is an unusual sentiment, but they said the new surface around their homes is kicking up all sorts of dust and debris and ruining their quality of life.

A road in Amissville, Virginia, in Culpeper County, was fine the way it was, according to residents in the area. However, the Virginia Department of Transportation came in and started putting down tar and gravel, called chip and seal pavement, which met with disapproval from those living along the road.

"You've got dust that's 30, 40, 50 feet in the air, just plastering you," said John Beck.

"We are very upset about this. Absolutely," said Thomas Ketcham.

In rural communities, the road really matters, because there aren't many sidewalks. With the bumpy, gravel-filled pavement, things like riding a bike pushing a stroller or walking a dog became a little harder.

"We really want to be made whole again, Ketcham said. We want the roads replaced as they were before, as we've been living on for the last 15 years.

Residents said they were given no notice by the state the road work was going to happen. A lot of these people said they just walked out of their houses, and the road was different.

VDOT said it did fail to have the contractor notify the residents of the work and apologized. They said the work was necessary to keep the road in good shape.

Alexia Groser, who has asthma, has been leading a charge to get VDOT to explain more fully why they did this. She said she can't spend a lot of time outside in her neighborhood since the new road was put down.

I'm wondering why did they put this down on road that was already in good shape? Groser said. "I (used to) look forward to going for a walk with my daughter. We used to go for a mile and a half around the neighborhood, but now, we don't do it anymore. I've got asthma, and I don't want to breathe in all the dust."

The community said VDOT told them in a few weeks, the road would go back to a dust free environment. It's been a few weeks already, and there's still the dust.
For the first time, a federal appeals court will consider whether or not states should allow voters to take and share selfies from polling locations. The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston will be considering a New Hampshire voter selfie case Tuesday.

One side of the emerging debate argues that voting booth selfies, in addition to being a valuable way for young people to engage in the democratic process, is a right protected by the First Amendment. Opponents cite voter fraud and violation of voter privacy and voter safety as potential risks of protecting polling place selfies.

Current laws vary state to state, and in many states, their legal status is unclear, NBC News reported. Voting selfies are unlawful in at least 25 states, and violators could be subject to substantial fines. A handful of states do allow them, including New Hampshire, where the court case in question originated.
A police investigation is underway in Concord, Massachusetts, after a breach at one of the town's public underground drinking water storage tanks.

Over the weekend, police say a 1,500 pound cement boulder was moved off the top of the tank and the latches were broken, so that the drinking water could be accessed.

"...someone had taken a 1,500 pound cement block, moved it off the hatches to this reservoir, knocked a padlock off and opened up the hatches," said Chief Joseph O'Connor, of the Concord Police Department.

The boulder was placed on top of the tank after a similar incident back in August.

That time, the latches were broken with a rock.

The rock was found in the tank.

Police said they don't believe that terrorism is involved, and say it could be teenagers.

Authorities said beer cans were found nearby.

The state Department of Environmental Management told necn the tank has been taken offline, until all water testing is complete.

Some of the tests have already come back negative for anything dangerous.

The town says the tank has had a "negligible" contribution to the distribution system since a routine inspection that occurred on Friday September 9.

"We're fortunate that the time this occurred, the reservoir was filling, not distributing water out to the town, but really out of an abundance of caution, we wanted to notify our community that this did occur," Chief O'Connor said.

Police also say the town is looking to add new detection equipment to the water tank area, and possibly some cameras.

In the meantime, they urge residents if you see something suspicious, say something.

The town also says there swill be enough drinking water, even with the tank offline.

However, they are asking people to continue to conserve water considering the extreme drought.
Police officers in Vermont's largest city trained Tuesday on how to de-escalate encounters with people experiencing a mental health crisis.

"The percentage of our mental health calls in the past three or four years has increased 500 percent," said Deputy Chief Jan Wright of the Burlington Police Department. "That's now a major component of our calls  situations stemming from mental health issues and substance abuse."

Burlington is one of five departments nationwide participating in a pilot program from the Police Executive Research Forum. It's developing a curriculum on how to de-escalate encounters with people in crisis.

Wright said a key message of the training, which has taken place both in classrooms and in scenario-based experiences, is slowing things down in the heat of the moment and connecting with people on a personal level.

"We don't want to go into every situation just with tools  with physical tools," Wright said. "We need communication. And if we can de-escalate every situation we go into, that is ideal."

Tuesday's drill comes nearly six months after an encounter between Burlington Police and a 76-year-old man suffering from schizophrenia, who was off his medications and promising to hurt people in his housing complex.

Phil Grenon refused to put down large knives, the investigation revealed. After responding officers tried reaching out numerous times, and after a stun gun had no real effect, an officer fired his handgun several times when Grenon moved toward him holding the blades.

The actions of Officer David Bowers were deemed legally justified, Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan announced in May, because he had a reasonable belief that he or colleagues could be harmed.

The case renewed calls for more police understanding about mental health emergencies.

Bob Bick, the chief executive officer of Burlington's Howard Center, called Tuesday's police training "critical."

Howard Center offers crisis and counseling services to people in the Burlington area struggling with substance abuse, persistent mental health challenges, and other concerns.

"We can't expect in a training, or in multiple trainings, that law enforcement officers are going to become trained clinicians," Bick added. "What law enforcement is really honing their skills on is how to stabilize the situation safely, then let the clinical people that need to do the clinical work, do their work. And, how to stabilize the situation without re-traumatizing the clients."

Wright said Burlington Police will give its feedback to the Police Executive Research Forum, as that nonprofit continues developing its training curriculum.

Wright noted that in the training pilot, nearly 20 members of the Burlington Police Department received lessons on de-escalation techniques. She said she expects when the curriculum is finalized, it will become mandatory for all members of the force.
A driver for an adult day care facility accused of inappropriately touching six female clients in Massachusetts, was arraigned on charges Monday in Plymouth District Court.

Robert McNeil, 57, of Pembroke, was working for CareWell Adult Day Health in Norwell when the alleged assaults occurred between 2014 and 2016.

Prosecutors said the victims range in age from 60 to 83 and some Alzheimer's and developmental disabilities.

"These particular clients all have health issues including dementia, Alzheimer's, and in one instance there was an individual that has severe disabilities as well." said Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney, Shannon Buckingham.

Court documents showed that McNeil allegedly reported the assaults himself back in July.

McNeil was charged with 10 counts of indecent assault and battery on an elder or disabled person.

"These six individuals that serve as the basis of the indictment all at one point were alone with Mr. McNeil during his transport route and that is the reason why he chose that particular individual," said Buckingham.

The judge released McNeil on personal recognizance and said he must wear a GPS monitoring bracelet and stay away from the victims and their families. He can also not work as a transport driver.

He is due back in court on October 25.
A Maine man is behind bars, accused of murdering his next-door neighbor with a machete, and burying his body under a pile of rotting deer carcasses. According to court documents, the violence may have stemmed from a dispute over a stolen six-pack of beer.

Bruce Akers, 57, of Limington, Maine entered a not guilty plea in York County Superior Court Tuesday. Akers is accused of killing 55-year-old Douglas Flint in June.

In a police affidavit, investigators say Flint's body was found nearly decapitated on Akers' property, and a bloody machete was found in Akers' home.

Police say the day before the murder, Akers called the Sheriff's Department to report that he thought Flint had stolen a six-pack of beer from him. Flint's family told investigators that the two neighbors had several disputes in the past.

Investigators say when Akers was questioned, he told them Flint "wouldn't leave me alone," and admitted that Flint was no longer alive.

He allegedly told detectives, "I actually would have called you guys right away but I wanted a few hours of freedom," and later told police where to find Flint's body.

Akers' attorney said this kind of violence is out of character for his client.

"He's got relatively no criminal record, and he was in the military," said attorney Paul Aranson. "If you met him, he's very personable. So this is a highly unusual circumstance he has found himself in."

Akers is being held without bail. His next court date is November 18.
A missing 15-year-old Maine girl last seen with her stepfather was found in New Hampshire, authorities said.

Natalee Cote was found safe in Hampton, and her stepfather, Christopher Julian, was placed into police custody.

No other details were immediately available.

Earlier story below:

Natalee Cote of Old Town was reported missing on Monday afternoon by her mother who called police after Natalee was picked up from school by her stepfather, 44-year-old Christopher Julian, and noticed there were several missing items, including a debit card.

Old Town police say they've since learned that Cote may possibly be endangered, and they've issued a temporary warrant for Julian for criminal restraint.

Natalee is described as about 5-foot 4-inches with short, dark brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing jeans, a black sweatshirt and DC sneakers.

Julian is believed to be driving a black Mercury Mountaineer with a Maine license plate reading 1874MD. He's described as about 5-feet 9-inches to 6-feet, with a shaved head, brown goateee, heavy set and several tattoos, including left arm tattoos from his left hand knuckles to his shoulder. Police say he's currently wearing an air cast.

Anyone with information on their whereabouts is asked to call police immediately.
A Vermont woman was taken into custody on Monday night after state police say she was driving drunk with her 8-year-old son in the vehicle in Grantham, New Hampshire.

Authorities said a trooper observed a Jeep Grand Cherokee driving erratically at 9:10 p.m. on Interstate 89.

After pulling the driver over, police said the woman was found to be in possession of several open containers of alcohol.

The driver, identified as Shauna Graham, 47, of Rutland, Vermont, was given a breathalyzer test which measured .11.

Police said by New Hampshire statute, driving while intoxicated with a passenger under the age of 16 is an aggravated level offense.

Graham was taken into custody and is scheduled to be arraigned in the Newport Circuit Court on September 20.
A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a man suspected of murdering his ex-girlfriend in Methuen, Massachusetts.

The victim, 29-year-old Wanda Rosa, modified her restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, 32-year-old Emilio Delarosa, three months before she was found dead in her home, according to court documents.

Police announced Tuesday afternoon that an arrest warrant had been issued for Delarosa, the father of Rosa's 4-year-old child.

Rosa was found dead inside her home Monday morning. Her child was found inside unharmed.

Rosa had filed a restraining order against Delarosa, who also has a criminal history. He served four years in prison for assault and battery on Rosa in the past.

According to court documents from June, Rosa modified her restraining order to allow Delarosa to have contact with her son again so they could "do things together as a family."

Delarosa, who is on the run, is not considered to be a danger to the public, according to the district attorney.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho arrived in Beijing on Monday en route to New York to attend the UN General Assembly. The trip comes just three days after the North's latest nuclear test.

Ri was met by North Korean Ambassador Ji Jae-ryong at Beijing Capital International Airport and whisked away to the embassy, according to Kyodo News.

It is unclear whether he will meet senior Chinese figures. According to AP, Ri is to attend a nonaligned summit in Venezuela prior to the UN General Assembly, which starts Tuesday.

Back on July 26, Ri told reporters at the ASEAN Regional Forum, "Whether we will conduct an additional nuclear test or not depends totally on the U.S. attitude."


A woman was injured when her car was struck by a falling tree in Dover, Massachusetts, Tuesday morning.

The incident happened at 7:45 a.m. at Farm and Bridge Street, according to police.

The woman was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.

Traffic in the area was impacted, but the scene was expected to be cleared shortly after.


Colourful way for Norwich church to celebrate 50

St George's Catholic Church in Norwich has celebrated its 50th anniversary in a very artistic and colourful way.

The church held a three-day flower festival and art exhibition from September 10 to 12 in which Catholic parishes from across the Diocese of East Anglia were invited to contribute displays alongside other local churches and floral clubs.



Parish Priest, Fr Sean Connolly, said: Fifty years ago our beautiful church was consecrated and made a spiritual home for the people of North Norwich and the flower festival and art exhibition are part of a year of celebrations.



The festival has brought a lot of new people into the church and there is a real sense of community and feeling of Gods presence.



All around the church itself were 44 floral arrangements from Catholic parishes including Stowmarket, Sheringham, North Walsham, St Ives, Gorleston, Norwich, Peterborough, Wymondham, Wisbech, Beccles, Downham Market, Hunstanton, Felixstowe, Kings Lynn and Cherry Hinton. A couple of local Anglican churches and the Thorpe Floral Design Club also took part.



In the church hall was an art and craft exhibition, including around 120 pictures. Resident artist Helen Otter, a parishioner at Our Lady in Thorpe, was also present and there was the chance for visitors to contribute to a communal watercolour painting.



Norwich Lord Mayor, Cllr Marion Maxwell, paid a visit on Sunday and had a go at painting as well as enjoying the displays.



Festival Co-ordinator, Marie Drew, said: The overall theme was Celebrating with Family and Friends and we let people do what they wanted to. It is a celebration of the wonderful people who caused this church to be built and the 50 years since then.



It has been a very prayerful experience and all the displays have a theme of some kind, like the Far East Prisoners of War from Wymondham and Jesus the Teacher and Healer and Saint George and the Dragon.



Art and craft organisers were Gill Bannon and Tony Buxton and design consultant was Carol Hipperson.



Any profits from the event will go towards the Bethlehem Hospital, which the church and Diocese has existing links with.



Pictured above Marie Drew, Mayor Marion Maxwell, Fr Sean Connolly and Carol Hipperson admiring a flower display.



See a full picture gallery below




Anna Price encourages Christians to engage positively with Halloween rather than hide away, on what many see as the darkest night of the year.

Anna Price encourages Christians to engage positively with Halloween rather than hide away, on what many see as the darkest night of the year.

First service takes place at Norwich church site SOUL Church hosted around 400 people for a special service on the site of their new building on Heartsease Lane. Read more

Dereham draws up list of warm places for winter As rising energy prices make it harder to heat homes, churches in Dereham are leading the way in creating warm spaces where people can go. Read more

South Norfolk church scoops national award A medieval Anglican church in a tiny hamlet in South Norfolk has won a national award and a 10,000 boost. Read more

Dereham churches help people to help themselves A group of churches in Dereham have launched an ambitious project which aims to meet needs in the town, including the provision of food and skills training. Read more

Executive assistant and nursery manager jobs SOUL Church is a vibrant, welcoming and growing church in Norwich. They are seeking an organised and versatile Executive Assistant to provide key support to the churchs Senior Pastors, as well as a qualified Nursery Manager to head up SOUL Nursery. Read more

Halloween light in Gorleston church On Halloween this year, St Mary Magdalene Church in Gorleston will be preparing to welcome around 200 families to experience their Light on a Dark Night event. Read more

An opportunity for Norwich to pray for the nation Rev Nigel Fox, who has served as a Methodist Minister for 15 years in Norwich, shares an open invitation to pray for the nation at a crucial moment. Read more

Norwich church seeks musicians Kingdom Ambassadors International Church is appealing for instrumentlists, keyboardists and guitarists to be part of their worship experience. Read more

Please keep Rishi in your prayers Andy Bryant urges us to pray for our political leaders, especially the new Prime Minister, and avoid unhelpful judgementalism. Read more

Emilys art boosts growing Yarmouth foodbank A pupil at a primary school in Bradwell has been selling her pictures in order to raise money for the Yarmouth and Magdalen Foodbank, which is expanding its capacity and is seeking more volunteers. Read more

Patrick Regan helps Norwich to bounce forwards On Saturday St Stephens in Norwich hosted Bouncing Forwards as part of a national tour by the mental health charity Kintsugi Hope. Read more

Painting and biblical feasting in Overstrand There will be opportunities to improve your painting skills and indulge in some biblical feasting next month at the Pleasaunce in Overstrand in North Norfolk. Read more

Latest Norfolk Christian community events Events of interest to the Norwich and Norfolk Christian community happening over the next few weeks are listed. Read more

National award for Dereham Christian bookshop The Green Pastures Christian bookshop in Dereham has won a national award for providing boxes of Christian books to 21 local schools. Read more

Norma's care home jigsaw challenge complete A resident at Norwich-based care home Corton House has completed an incredible 70 jigsaw puzzles in celebration of the homes 70th anniversary this year. Read more

Norwich charity's appeal to support Palestinian students A Norwich educational charity, set up in memory of a Norwich Anglican priest, to support students from a Palestinian refugee camp, is inviting people to support its Christmas appeal  to be launched on November 29. Read more

Norfolk drug and alcohol charity pays tribute to its founder Andy Sexton, CEO of the Matthew Project, introduces a series of tributes from the charity to its founder, Peter Farley. Read more
Corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can be fraught with risks related to financial matters, company culture, personnel, IT systems integration and other areas.

Security risks, both cyber and physical, certainly belong on the list of concerns. And with the ongoing shortage of professionals who are expert in various aspects of data protectioncoupled with the seemingly endless stream of reports about data breaches and other security threatsthis has become an even bigger concern for companies that are considering or in the midst of M&A deals.

Any M&A activity involves an assumption of risk, says Ariel Silverstone, vice president of security strategy, privacy and trust at GoDaddy, a provider of domain name registrations.

Among the issues Silverstone has looked at during M&A activity are regulatory compliance, security framework compatibility and potentially different business risks presented by the new organization. Examples include physical access control, geographic data center location, cloud use model, exposure after breach, and organizational placement of the security function, he says.

[ ALSO ON CSO: How to make mergers and acquistions work ]

A recent report by business and technology consulting firm West Monroe Partners found that businesses lack qualified cyber security talent during an M&A. According to the study, a majority of companies (80 percent) said cyber security issues have become highly important in the M&A due diligence process.

But more than one third (40 percent) of acquiring businesses said they had discovered a cyber security problem at an acquisition after a deal went through, indicating that standards for due diligence remain low, the report said.

The lack of skilled information security talent seemed to be the leading cause, as 32 percent of acquirers claimed not enough qualified people were involved in the cyber security diligence process in recent deals. To conduct the study, West Monroe commissioned Mergermarket to interview 30 North America-based senior M&A practitioners from the healthcare, manufacturing and distribution, banking and high-tech sectors.

Many of those queried for the report said compliance problems are one of the most common types of cyber security issues uncovered during due diligence, and a lack of comprehensive security architecture is another common issue.

In the realm of M&A, concerns about cyber security are becoming a critical issue when companies target acquisitions, the report notes. A companys cyber security infrastructureor lack thereofcan affect the deal price, and at times determine whether a potential acquirer goes through with a deal at all.

For companies looking to acquire another business, one of the first things to do as part of due diligence is thoroughly investigate and understand the organization theyre intending to acquire.

That includes not only the obviouspending claims and reported breaches, for examplebut also what the target [company] may not realize is deficient, says Behnam Dayanim, a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Paul Hastings LLP, and global co-chair of its Privacy and Cybersecurity practice.

Privacy and security issues should be an integral part of every M&A deal, Dayanim says. Beyond simply requiring a representation, which amazingly some still do not require, acquirers and merger partners should understand what regulatory regimes apply to the counterpartys business.

[ RELATED: Inherited risk: The downside of mergers and acquisitions ]

They should also review all security policies and procedures and talk directly with the CISO or other executive officer responsible for security, to gain insight into the degree of sophistication of the organizations security program, Dayanim says.

Companies that are anticipating a potential acquisition would do well to audit the target companys information security compliance status. That may involve external validation, but at a minimum should include a review of existing policies and procedures and an evaluation of current resources, Dayanim says.

The pre-acquisition evaluation should include gathering security intelligence by using a third-party and directing a security questionnaire to the IT security staff of the target company, says

David Barton, CISO at security company Forcepoint said that includes identifying the crown jewels of the company such as intellectual property and financial data and making sure its adequately protected.

Its also important to make sure the company has proactive employee communications in place regarding areas such as phishing and data sharing, Barton says.

As the transaction moves forward, the acquiring company should take steps to remediate any vulnerabilities that have been found, and evaluate both companies security policies to determine gaps and differences, Barton says.

Having people in place with the right security skills and knowledge of M&A issues is ideal. But hiring cyber security talent to help when an acquisition is imminent is too late.

It is unrealistic to expect a company to be able to bring in a white knight who can revamp a deficient security situation, Dayanim says. Nonetheless, if a company finds itself in that situation, it would be prudent to hire capable staff and, most likely, retain external assistance to put its house in as good an order as possible before the acquisition.

Upgrading talent before the completion of an M&A activity is difficult at best, Barton says. In most cases, the security teams are not informed of the M&A activity until its near the completion of the merger.

Some organizations approach the new threat landscape only after the merger is complete, Silverstone says. This implies a possible impairment in the value of the acquired/merged organization, he says.

A good practice is to have the information security functionor at least a prepared checklistbefore the closure of the deal. I've used that model successfully, which resulted, at times, in deal dollars put in escrow towards mitigation of discovered security issues post deal closure, Silverstone says.

Companies should use a risk-based approach to merger review, Silverstone says. It would be good to have a security-focused project manager on board, and a person familiar with unique risks involved in the acquired company's business, he says.

When such skills are not internally available, a reputable third party should conduct a risk assessment relevant to the acquiring company's framework and to the acquired company's market, such as financial services, Silverstone says.

The role of senior security executives in M&A transactions will vary from deal to deal, based on the degree of sensitivity of the industry and data to be protected, the target companys history including whether it has experienced prior breaches or problems, the clarity of the targets existing policies and procedures, and other factors, Dayanim says.

Generally, the CSO/CISO of the acquiring company will only become directly involved if requested by the deal team, Dayanim says. That involvement may consist of review of key documents, a conversation with his or her counterpart at the target or a more extensive investigation of the target.

The level of involvement of senior security executives in M&A transactions also depends on the comparative size of both organizations, Silverstone says. The CSO should at least be responsible for consulting the business throughout the process, and review reports before these are submitted to the board, to the CFO or to the M&A function, he says.

The CSO and/or CISO should be included in any M&A activity from the beginning, Barton says. The CSO should be assigned to take the lead on all security-related issues for a merger or acquisition, he says. This lets them prepare for the eventual connection of the two merger companys networks. Too often those networks are connected without regard to any potential security risks.

RELATED VIDEO:

This story, "Mergers create greater security risk" was originally published by CSO .
For more than a decade, Intel was driven by a "tick/tock" development model. The "tick" took place one year and was a manufacturing process shrink, from 45nm to 32nm, for example. The "tock," which took place one year later, was a whole new microarchitecture, such as Penryn to Nehalem.

For about a decade, tick/tock worked well. Intel choked the life out of the insurgent AMD and dominated the x86 market for a long timeand still does. But the limitations of physics have caught up with the company, and ticks are becoming much harder to come by.

As it is, Intel delayed the move to 10nm by adding a third generation of 14nm chips called Kaby Lake. The shrink to 10nm was planned for next year's Cannonlake processor. Now word is that might be delayed another year, with 10nm coming in 2018. And the next shrink, down to 7nm, won't take place until after 2020.

Last year, Motley Fool writer Ashraf Eassa spotted a job listing for Intel's India research office looking for engineers to work on an advanced process technology specifically geared for 7nm designs and for release in 2020.

Since then, the job listing has been updated, pushing back the launch date by two years and does not mention 7nm technology:

The India Lab specifically, in collaboration with MRL-US and Intel product architecture teams worldwide, will spearhead the research and advanced development of Microprocessor Cores in the 2022 and beyond timeframe. By conceiving of and prototyping radical approaches, the Lab will aim to deliver much greater CPU power and area efficiency while still delivering industry-leading performance. The microarchitecture and design of these advanced CPUs will be aggressively co-optimized with Intel's sub-10nm technology nodes deep into the next decade.

Intel has said it plans three waves of 10nm technology: 10-nanometer, 10-nanometer+, and 10-nanometer++, to be released with Cannonlake in 2018, Icelake in 2019, and Tigerlake in 2020. Since Tigerlake is supposed to be the "tick," the next generation after Tigerlake will be the new microarchitecture, which does not get a shrink. So, by this schedule, Intel doesn't get to 7nm until 2022.

It doesnt really matter if number of transistors double again

Does this matter to anyone beyond the Tom's Hardware/Anandtech propellerhead crowd? Not really. Sure there are power savings to be had with a process shrink, but look at what is being done with the current generation. Kaby Lake is going to unleash some powerful tablets and 2-in-1 laptops. My desktop processor is a Haswell generation, and I feel no great compulsion to upgrade. My SSD and GPU were much more important upgrades.

For years, Intel lived and died by a marketing maxim masquerading as a technology maxim: Moore's Law. Why should you care that transistors double every 18 months, except that you are now out-of-date technologically and should upgrade? That was the real genius of selling Moore's Law to the public. It codified planned obsolescence better than any marketing guru could hope for.

But now physics has caught up with processor design, and processor performance is so good that it really doesn't matter any more if the number of transistors doubles again.
Apple faces major obstacles to becoming a car companyor even a supplier of navigation and infotainment systems voluntarily integrated into vehicles by auto manufacturers. Hopelessly addicted to rich margin, premium iPhones, Apple doesnt have much to offer automakers, and what little it could offer will be rejected for good business reasons.

Apple designs premium smartphones and consumer products, contracting their manufacture to a mature Chinese supply chain. Reports by Bloomberg and The New York Times about Apples shift in its autonomous car program missed this most fundamental point. But the shift from building an autonomous electric vehicle (EV) to building the software that guides self-driving vehicles will not earn Apple a leading position in the autonomous vehicle business.

Here are seven reason why Apple wont win this battle:

1. Car makers are resistant to becoming low-margin hardware suppliers for Silicon Valley internet companies. Car makers fear a standard car operating system that demotes their brand and limits their returns. Apple Auto and Android Auto enforce a barrier between the phone makers and the car makers, keeping the phone outside of vehicle dashboards. Automakers wont become dependent on an Apple proprietary autonomous vehicle technology.

German automakers have been especially resistant to ceding the heart of their core business to Silicon Valley. A co-branded, BMW/Apple premium car is unimaginable.

2. Apple does not supply components to complete other companies consumer products. Apple has never sold a component product that enhances and improves another companys product. Tier 1 automotive OEMs (pdf) such as Robert Bosch and Denso do this by investing in research to improve component products that automakers use to build cars. All of Apples research is focused on producing consumer end products. Although not completely impossible, Apples R&D and product teams would have to learn to operate like a Tier 1 OEM.

Apple is unaccustomed to alternative revenue models for selling component technologies. Google might give away its autonomous driving technology, monetizing geolocation data to pay a return on its R&Dlike it monetizes search data and Android. Apple has never built a product that fits this model.

3. Autonomous navigation systems require machine learning expertise that Apple doesnt have. Autonomous cars learn to drive with driving data using machine learning. Apple has some expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, but it isnt a leader because of its secretive research strategy. Machine learning R&D is open and collegial among corporate research teams and universities, except Apple chooses not to participate in working groups, run meetings or publish research. Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and universities openly collaborate and co-author research papers together. Machine learning lurkers like Apple cant lead open innovation like machine learning because the top talent attracted to this type of research wont work in secrecy.

4. Autonomous car innovators will not share machine learning data with Apple. The machine learning component of autonomous vehicles require millions of miles of actual driving data. The raw material for building autonomous vehicles is the three-dimensional video captured by on-board forward-facing cameras, steering angles and sensor data accumulated by driving actual vehicles. Tesla acquired millions of miles of data from its owners' cars before turning on partially autonomous driving features. Since 2012, Google autonomous cars have travelled about 2 million milesfar fewer than Tesla and many more than Apples secretly tested vehiclebut all truly autonomous.

Apples driving data, all accumulated in secrecy, is millions of miles of behind Tesla and years behind Google. The only way Apple can shorten the development time is to acquire more driving data from other companies. Google and Tesla have not agreed to share their data. Even if they do, given Apples closed innovation model, Apple has nothing to trade in return for driving data.

5. Autonomous car companies will not use Apple Maps in their vehicle guidance system. Apple Maps is a defense strategy for eliminating Google Maps from its iPhones to stop Google from deriving advertising revenue from iPhone customers with geolocation data. Apple doesnt have the business model to monetize geolocation data any more than Microsoft Bing can monetize search data.

Audi, BMW and Daimler bought Nokias Here mapping system to ensure independent mapping and navigation systems and data. If Apple had a superior product and a trusted partner business model, the German car makers would have partnered with Apple Maps.

6. The mobile app economy is producing more attractive infotainment ecosystem options for automakers than iTunes. Automakers will have to accommodate drivers iTunes libraries through their dashboard, but Spotify and Pandora and other streamed media app companies are neutral partners for integration into an automakers infotainment system.

7. Apple doesnt have the manufacturing experience to build an EV, and the EV supply chain is too immature. Most of the components used to build EVs are engineered differently than combustion engine-powered vehicles. A robust and enabling EV supply chain that makes diverse components and manufacturing supply chains that serve the mobile and consumer business are still developing in the EV sector. Apple doesnt have the manufacturing expertise to build an EV without a mature supply chain like the mobile supply chain behind it.

The technology in EVs is different, and EV components are engineered and manufactured differently. These technologies are most efficiently developed by suppliers that can generate a return on the investment by supplying the entire industry. Getting elbow to elbow with innovative suppliers to develop new components that will benefit the whole EV business isnt in Apples DNA.
Two B-1B supersonic strategic bombers belatedly arrived in skies over the U.S. air base in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul on Thursday morning.

U.S. Forces Korea Commander Vincent Brooks said their flight from Guam demonstrates the U.S.' "steadfast and unshakable" commitment to its key ally in the wake of North Korea's nuclear test.

But the flight had been postponed on Monday morning. The cancellation raised fears that the much-vaunted U.S. nuclear umbrella might not open if it rains in an emergency.

A USFK spokesman said Monday the flight was postponed due to "inclement weather."
Cranston East no match for Portsmouth

With their 36-6 victory on Friday night, the Patriots clinched the top seed in their half of Division II.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Cloudy early with showers for the afternoon hours. High 59F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional rain showers. Low 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
A new hypothesis published in the British medical journal The Lancet

At 85, Nobel laureate James D. Watson, the co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, continues to advance intriguing scientific ideas. His latest, a hypothesis on the causation of type 2 diabetes, is to appear 7 pm Thursday US time in the online pages of The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal.

Watson's hypothesis, which is featured as the Lancet cover story in the U.S. print edition dated March 1-7, 2014, suggests that diabetes, dementias, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers are linked to a failure to generate sufficient biological oxidants, called reactive oxygen species (ROS). Watson also argues the case for a better understanding of the role of exercise in helping to remedy this deficiency.

"The prevalent view of type 2 diabetes," Dr. Watson says, "is that an excess of intracellular oxidation causes inflammation, which in turn kills cells in pancreatic tissue." Proper function of those cells, it is well understood, is critical for the maintenance of normal blood glucose levels.

Over the last several years Watson has been puzzling out an alternative view, based on facts reported in the peer-reviewed literature of medicine and molecular biology. (He makes clear that he is not a medical doctor, rather a student of science.) He does not question that pancreatic tissue in people with type 2 diabetes is indeed inflamed. But he does present a novel theory of why. "The fundamental cause, I suggest, is a lack of biological oxidants, not an excess," he says.

For years, Watson knew, doctors have been telling patients with incipient type 2 diabetes - those with high blood sugar levels -- to exercise, often before putting them on a well-proven glucose-lowering drug regimen such as Metformin. Exercise seemed to Watson the key to the puzzle: what was it about exercise that served to benefit people with high blood sugar?

Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

There were important clues, he speculated, in the chemistry of oxidation and reduction reactions. The body's cells cannot survive without making both oxidants and antioxidants. "There is a delicate balance" between the two, Watson observes. Physical exercise prompts the body to make large numbers of oxidants - molecules called reactive oxygen species, or ROS. In a cellular organ called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), one such "species," the oxidant hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), helps forge chemical bonds (disulfide bonds) which stabilize proteins as they fold.

When there is not enough oxidation in the ER, Watson says, proteins emerge unfolded, and cannot function. This, he proposes, causes the inflammation that harms the pancreas, sometimes causing type 2 diabetes. Hence, Watson suggests, exercise, which promotes oxidation, plausibly can have a beneficial effect on those with high blood sugar. Such benefit would be lessened if not abolished, he speculates, if such an individual consumed large quantities of antioxidants - just as athletes who take large quantities of antioxidant supplements do not seem to benefit or benefit less from their exertions.

Watson has two take-home messages for his audience. "The first is that we sorely need to take a much more serious and thorough scientific look at the mechanisms through which exercise improves our health." Watson is planning a scientific meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory later this year which he hopes will launch a larger scientific effort.

There is a second message. "I am not a physician and I cannot offer advice about how people should treat their diabetes; I am advancing a novel idea about how type 2 diabetes can occur. But I also note that just about every doctor I've ever known tells every patient who is capable of doing so to exercise. I think exercise helps us produce healthy, functional proteins. But we really need to have some high quality research to demonstrate this."
Countless microorganisms live in the intestinal tract. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have been able to demonstrate that intestinal bacteria also play a role in determining the strength of anaphylactic reactions to food allergens. The scientists presented their results at the annual convention of the European Society for Dermatological Research (ESDR), which is hosted by and at TUM this year.

The intestinal microbiota (shown here is a histological staining of a colon section) is significantly influencing the immune system of the host. (Picture: Caspar Ohnmacht / ZAUM)

The human microbiota - the entirety of bacteria which live e.g. on the skin or in the intestinal tract - has a complex influence on health. A team led by Prof. Tilo Biedermann, the director of the Clinic for Dermatology and Allergology at Rechts der Isar Hospital, examined the role microbiota plays in the digestive system in the case of food allergies.

The gut flora and the various elements of the immune system are closely interwoven and mutually influence each other. During its investigations, the team of researchers at TUM focused on a protein called NOD2. This receptor of the immune system is able to "recognize" intestinal bacteria - or more precisely, the main component of their cell wall - and initiate numerous complex processes. The scientists investigated the effects that occurred when this recognition receptor is absent.

A fundamentally changed immune reaction

Tilo Biedermann and his colleagues were able to demonstrate that when NOD2 was absent, the body's immune reaction changed fundamentally. Instead of cells such as regulatory T cells, which suppress an activation of the immune system, a greater number of what are called Th2 helper cells are formed.

These cells cause a larger number of the antibody immunoglobulin E (or IgE for short) to be produced. In persons suffering from food allergies, the IgE in the body has been "trained" for the corresponding allergens, and stimulates distinct cells to trigger an allergic reaction when it detects the allergen in the intestine, for example. The greater the amount of IgE, the stronger the allergic reaction.

Accordingly, the scientists observed particularly serious allergic reactions in mouse models when NOD2 was absent. The composition of the intestinal microbiota of these animals had also changed. Another aspect of the study demonstrates the true complexity of the interactions between microbiota and the immune system: When the composition of the intestinal bacteria was re-normalized, serious allergic reactions could be prevented even when NOD2 was absent.

Harmless bacteria as a new therapeutic approach

"This relationship between intestinal flora and the production of antibodies opens up new therapeutic approaches for patients whose microbiota is altered", said Tilo Biedermann. "For example, if it is possible to encourage harmless bacteria to colonize the intestines, this would also reduce the body's reaction to allergens."

So far, the findings have not yet been published. The scientists presented them on Thursday, September 8 at the main plenary session of the 46th annual convention of the European Society for Dermatological Research (ESDR). 1200 researchers travelled to Munich to attend the annual convention. This year's host and organizer is TUM. The topic "Microbiomes and Allergies" is one of the focal points of the convention. Prior to that, on Wednesday, September 7, Dr. Thomas Volz, a dermatologist at TUM, will be heading a symposium on skin bacteria titled "You'll never walk alone".
In papers receiving advance online publication in Nature Genetics, two international multi-institutional research teams describe identifying a total of 44 novel gene sites associated with hypertension or high blood pressure. The studies, co-led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), point towards potential new treatment strategies for the condition affecting around one-third of U.S. adults.

"High blood pressure or hypertension is a major cause of heart disease and stroke worldwide, but its underlying causes are poorly understood," says Christopher Newton-Cheh, MD, MPH, of the MGH Center for Human Genetic Research and Cardiovascular Research Center, senior author of both papers. "Existing therapies target only a small subset of the pathways that contribute to hypertension, so identifying additional genes that influence blood pressure can point us in new directions, giving us exciting new leads for drug development."

It is well known that hypertension tends to run in families, but while around half the risk of the condition can be attributed to inheritance, the approximately 60 hypertension genes identified in previous studies explain only about 2 percent of that risk. To identify additional risk variants, the two current investigations conducted meta-analyses using novel, custom genotyping arrays, each of which test for more than 200,000 variants, combined with data from the group's previously published studies.

In one study the researchers analyzed data from more than 327,000 individuals genotyped with an array called the Exome Chip, which is designed to identify rare gene variants that change protein structure. That analysis identified 31 novel gene sites associated with hypertension risk, as well as rare gene variants in natriuretic peptide receptor 1, which is the receptor for two proteins called natriuretic peptides that are known to relax blood vessels and control sodium excretion and were shown in previous work led by Newton-Cheh to be associated with hypertension risk.

Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

For the second study, the investigators used the Cardio-Metabochip array, which focuses on variants associated with cardiovascular and metabolic traits, to analyze data from more than 345,000 individuals participating in 73 studies. That analysis revealed associations with 66 gene sites, 17 of which were new. While that analysis was conducted on studies enrolling individuals of European ancestry, analyzing data from more than 64,000 non-European individuals with a risk score based on those 66 variants showed a similar association with both hypertension and with damage to tissues in the heart and key vascular structures but not to the kidney which has long been considered a major regulator of blood pressure.

Four risk-associated sites were identified by both studies, leaving a total of 44 novel risk-associated genes. Overall these two studies, the largest reported meta-analyses of investigations into the genetics of hypertension, point towards pathways other than that involved with salt excretion by the kidneys -- the system previous genetic studies have focused on -- as potential treatment targets. Findings of the Cardio-Metabochip study particularly highlighted the role of the endothelial cells that line blood vessels and control how strongly they constrict. Other potential targets, other than the previously identified natriuretic peptides, include an enzyme involved in the synthesis of the hormone noradrenaline, which is well known to influence heart rate and blood pressure.

An assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Newton-Cheh explains, "Even with hundreds of thousands of people studied and over 100 blood pressure genes identified to date, we estimate that there are still hundreds more to find. Only when we can study millions of people -- particularly people of non-European ancestry who have been underrepresented in past studies -- will we have a chance at finding them all."

Source: Massachusetts General Hospital
Royal Philips today announced that it will unveil its latest innovation in interventional oncology at the 2016 Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe annual meeting (CIRSE 2016), which will be held in Barcelona (Spain) from September 10 until 14. Philips next generation interventional oncology solution OncoSuite will enable physicians to provide analysis and minimally invasive, targeted treatment of tumor lesions reducing the impact to healthy tissue. It offers clinicians a better view of the treatment targets for informed decision making, while performing the procedure.

While OncoSuite can be used for a number of different cancers including bone, kidney and lung, the solution and its specific tools have been optimized for the treatment of patients with liver cancer, said Dr Jeff Geschwind, Chairman and Chief of the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the Yale School of Medicine. Given the steady increase in the prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and liver cancer, the development and availability of new technology is much needed to provide interventional oncologists with a breakthrough that allows best possible treatment for these patients.

Dr. Geschwind continued:

What matters most in these cases, is the ability to visualize the liver tumors, even small ones, during the procedure and to approach them in a very targeted way to maximize the therapeutic outcome, while avoiding the destruction of healthy liver tissue. OncoSuite is designed to help us see, reach and treat liver cancer in a better way.

OncoSuite is Philips integrated solution to enhance tumor embolization and ablation procedures with Philips interventional X-ray systems. It is the only platform in the industry that supports both procedures enabling physicians to target multiple tumor lesions simultaneously. OncoSuite comprises Philips innovative product offerings for enhanced imaging (XperCT Dual), live 3D image guidance for tumor embolization (EmboGuide) and live 3D image guidance for tumor ablation (XperGuide). It is yet another example of Philips Image Guided Therapy solutions that advances minimally invasive procedures by helping physicians decide, guide, treat and confirm the right therapy for each patient.

Minimally invasive, image-guided interventional oncology procedures are a highly effective option for patients who cannot be treated through conventional techniques such as surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy, said Ronald Tabaksblat, Business Leader Image Guided Therapy Systems at Philips. Interventional oncology procedures are rapidly increasing and OncoSuite provides the first complete interventional oncology portfolio for interventional radiologists, enabling physicians to see the entire tumor and its feeder vessels to directly target treatment avoiding healthy tissue.

The next generation OncoSuite allows targeted treatment of an entire tumor and its feeder vessels, sparing surrounding tissue or organs. The innovative Open Trajectory function within XperCT Dual enables better centering of the liver with significantly improved visualization during the procedure of peripheral hepatic tumors in a single sweep. This feature provides a more targeted field of view making it possible to effectively scan larger patients. Previously, with the traditional geometric movement of the C-arm of the interventional X-ray system, part of the liver image was truncated and larger patients required multiple scans to visualize tumors in the periphery of the liver.

Embolization procedures involve blocking the arteries feeding a tumor with beads to deprive it of nutrients and oxygen. They require the insertion of a catheter, which must be guided to the tumor site with the aid of live image-guidance. BTG and Philips have been working in close collaboration on the visualization benefits of radio-opaque beads in combination with image-guided therapy. Together the companies have calibrated LC Bead LUMITM and Philips Live Image Guidance Software to help interventional radiologists and multi-disciplinary teams to visualize better treatment options for patients with liver cancer. As a result, the next generation OncoSuite also features the worlds first optimized imaging for LC Bead LUMITM that provides real-time visible confirmation of bead location during embolization procedures. In addition, the new Wiper Movement functionality improves workflow with automatic Dual Phase imaging, helping physicians to acquire two 3D cone beam CT datasets at different times of the procedure in a single step.

The next generation OncoSuite reflects Philips commitment to deliver better, more personalized care to patients, while reducing healthcare costs.
Over half of young adults (18-24 year olds) in Europe take comfort in hearing about peoples health experiences that are similar to theirs while less than a quarter of the same age-group trust online health websites and even less (17%) believe they will receive quality and dependable information from online search engines such as Google.

While nearly three-quarters of information-hungry Millennials search more than once a month for health information online, new data suggests that young adults are struggling to find the information they need about their health, and are turning to forum-style websites, which may contain inaccurate health advice. The habits of young adults looking for health information online have been revealed as part of new research involving 5,000 participants across France, Poland, Germany, Russia and the UK, which has been released today by Teva Pharmaceuticals Europe.

Teva published these findings to coincide with the start of the flagship UK healthcare conference  NHS Englands Health & Care Innovation Expo 2016, being held in Manchester on September 7 & 8. Teva is serving as NHS Englands Digital Zone partner at this years Expo, with the aim of sharing experiences, examining best practices, and understanding drivers and barriers to adopting digital technologies in healthcare that have the potential to improve patients healthcare experience and boost healthcare outcomes. Teva commissioned the study to gain deep insights into how people in Europe interact with digital technology in their day-to-day lives and in managing their personal health & well-being.

Tim White, Head of Digital Experience at Teva Pharmaceuticals Europe, and speaker on a joint NHS-Teva conference panel discussing digital technologies, patient empowerment and healthcare outcomes, said:

Across Europe, our research shows a generation of young people fully engaged in digital technologies to improve or maintain good health, but theyre not turning to peer-reviewed, professionally recognized healthcare resources available online. Digital technology is creating the connected patient whos having a greater say in managing his or her own care. So its our responsibility to work together with European healthcare providers to build confidence, foster healthcare literacy and ensure that information and health technologies accessed by people of all ages is reliable and trusted.

Teva believes a key to better health outcomes is patient-empowerment, backed by digital technologies that can lead to a more integrated, efficient and patient-centered approach to healthcare. Tim White, at Teva continued:

If we are to empower people across Europe to feel more in control of their health, we need foster greater healthcare literacy, and provide them with the right information and tools that they trust. Unfortunately, the extent to which Europeans feel in control of their health today varies widely, with our research showing over two thirds of Germans describe themselves as having high control over their health, while less than half were as confident in France and Russia. That isnt good enough when the health technologies available today have the power to support people to better understand their health than ever before.

On day two of the conference, Teva along with NHS England, will co-host a panel discussion to explore how to digitally empower patients and clinicians to drive improved health outcomes. In commenting on the survey findings, Juliet Bauer, the newly appointed Director of Digital Experience at NHS England, who will participate in the panel discussion, said Simplicity for the patient is critical. The adoption of digital technology presents us with a very real opportunity to guide people to the right place, support them to make the right decisions and transform that consumer experience. In everyday life we rely on high quality digital journeys to access services and information we need. In health and care we have some serious catching up to do. I know the task is significant but the commitment is clear. The investment in paperless 2020, the strong partnerships across health and care organisations, the department of health and industry, all combined with technology that is evolving. these are exciting times. Wayne Middleton, Non-Executive Director of the Patient Information Forum, and another panel participant added, For people to make informed decisions about their health and wellbeing choices, they need access to high-quality, clearly communicated, and evidence-based healthcare information. But healthcare information needs to be understandable and accessible for patients and the general public, otherwise it wont resonate with them. Thats why patients and laypeople have a key part to play in any healthcare literacy programmes and campaigns  even more so as digital technologies put patients more in the driving seat in managing their own health and well-being.
A University of Melbourne ethicist is encouraging doctors to recognise the autonomy of parents, even if this could mean less than optimal treatment decisions for their children.

In a new book, When doctors and parents disagree, co-editor Rosalind McDougall said more than ever, doctors authority is being challenged by parents access to online sources of information.

Doctors should respect parents opinions, even if they are sometimes unorthodox, but they do need to draw the line if parents advocate anything likely to harm their child, now or in the future, she said.

The book, which is aimed at clinicians, contains 26 case studies, including:

parents refusing rehabilitation physiotherapy that is distressing for their child

parents who disagree with each other on whether their seven-year-old, who has ADHD, should be given stimulant medication

parents of a six-week-old child with cystic fibrosis who request genetic testing for their other children to determine if they are carriers

a parent keen for his young child to have surgery to pin back her ears to prevent her being teased at school

Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

Dr McDougall said doctors had traditionally been guided by what was in the childs best interests, but on its own, this principle was often not enough.

In situations where doctors and parents disagree, often its just not possible to identify a single course of action thats best for the child, she said.

There is often a grey zone, and this is where we encourage doctors to strive to balance both the childs wellbeing and the parents autonomy.

By invoking what we call the Zone of Parental Discretion, doctors should aim to weigh up the potential harm of each treatment option, she said. It might result in a decision that is not the doctors first choice for the childs wellbeing.

Dr McDougall said cases such as that of Oshin Kiszko, a Perth boy with brain cancer, highlighted the ethical complexity of these situations. In these types of cases, doctors need to consider the harm to the child from the parents choice, but also the harm to the child if they try to override the parents choice.

Dr McDougall and her co-editors work in ethics support to clinicians at the Royal Childrens Hospital Melbourne, through the Childrens Bioethics Centre, a joint RCH-University of Melbourne centre.

She said it was important for doctors to be able to seek advice on treatment dilemmas.

These decisions are often not straightforward, and its critical for doctors to have access to a formal way to seek input from their peers, facilitated by ethicists, she said.

This happens in a few Australian hospitals, but is missing in many other settings. Australia is lagging a long way behind the UK and US in providing ethics support to doctors.

Source: http://www.unimelb.edu.au/
According to new Aon data, one of the big consequences of self-driving cars' life-saving capabilities, could be big money savings in the form of lower insurance premiums. The Global Insurance Market Opportunities Report suggests that even if uptake is slow, by 2035, there could be enough autonomous cars on US roads to cut insurance premiums by 20% compared with current levels. And, if autonomous cars become the norm by 2050 (that's the model that Aon is working with) premiums will be 40% lower."Adoption of autonomous vehicles will, of course, be affected by many variables," said Paul Mang, CEO of Aon Analytics. "However, we as an industry need to act quickly to ensure that we have the products available to align to the new paradigm." Aon's research predicts that there could be an 81% drop in insurance claims frequency once self-driving really hit the road. However, that could be offset by an increase in repair costs  radar and laser sensors are very expensive to replace.Consumers may be warming to the idea of self-driving cars, but even recent studies on the subject show that people still aren't completely convinced by the benefits of autonomous vehicles.A March study from JD Power of 7,900 US adults found that only young drivers (56%) are ready to actively embrace and put their trust in the concept. Just 23% of Baby Boomers (the biggest car buyers) have faith in the technologies. Aon's data could change this as it appeals to the public's purse strings, rather than their heart strings, particularly those of older drivers. However, there are still ethical issues to overcome.A research paper published in the journal Science in June, found that consumers believe a self-driving car should sacrifice its driver in order to save 10 pedestrians, unless it's their car, of course. Then it should protect their life at all costs. Therefore, clarity is key according to Thatcham, the UK insurance industry-funded automotive research center. It is calling for a simplification of the language around self-driving car systems."Keeping things simple and clear is paramount," said Peter Shaw, Chief Executive of Thatcham Research. "There is still much work to be done by legislators and the automotive industry to give drivers absolute clarity and confidence around what automated driving systems are capable of doing and under what circumstances they can be used."Yet it also says that drivers will have to take responsibility for actions, and a list of strict rules relating to what they will and won't be allowed to do when behind the wheel of an autonomous car should be created.
Bengaluru: After police imposed curfew in almost all of riot hit western parts of Bengaluru, there have been no reports of fresh incidents of violence from any part of the city.



After showing restraint all through the day, police opened fire at the miscreants on Monday evening killing one youth and injuring four others. It scared the arsonists and the looting suddenly stopped by night.



After an emergency meeting with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, the police imposed curfew in 16 police station limits - all in western parts of Bengaluru. Section 144 which prohibits crowding and processions has been imposed across the city for two days.



All offices and educational institutions are closed for Bakrid on Tuesday and likely to remain shut for two more days.



The city's bus services have also been hit causing a huge problem to commuters. Namma Metro has also suspended its operations till afternoon.



More than 30,000 police constables are on the streets maintaining law and order. Central forces have also been rushed to the city.



All interstate bus services between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have also been suspended.



The KSRTC has halted bus services in southern parts of the state.



Siddaramaiah has once again appealed for calm and warned against arson and looting. In a recorded message he said, "strictest action will be take against such people. No mercy will be shown to hooligans".


.



The main crops in the basin are rice and sugarcane, pulses and millet. However, only rice and cane provide a decent measure of income support to farmers.



Sugarcane was planted on 2 lakh acres of land and paddy on 1.5 lakh acres across Mandya, Mysore and Hassan, according to J.M. Veerasangaiah, the working president of the Karnataka Rajya Rythu Sangha.



After two years of drought, farmers were expecting some profits on the back of these crops and invested accordingly.



The problem is that rice and cane are water-intensive crops and there just is not enough water in the Cauvery to irrigate them.







As many as 102 farmers committed suicide in Mandya district in 2015, Dr. KJV Vasu, who is a part of the Karnataka Rythu Horata Samiti, said.



The drought years saw an increase in farm loans from banks and money lenders, which they were unable to pay back.



To add to their woes, the prices of sugarcane and paddy have declined over the past three years, which has further reduced the already meagre purchasing power of farmers.



For instance, the rate for sugarcane was upto Rs 2,600 per ton three years ago compared to Rs 1,600 now. Similarly, rice has declined from Rs 4,000 per quintal to Rs 2,500.



Even the Karnataka governments instructions on agriculture have not been helpful. Earlier this year the Karnataka government tried to get farmers to plant less water-intensive crops, citing the low levels of water in reservoirs.



By the time the government communicated this most farmers had finished planting cane and paddy and were waiting for the water to irrigate them.



The result is a simmering anger among people in the Cauvery basin that is being expressed in terms of a regional identity. Water is scarce, and in times of distress it becomes a highly contested resource, S. Vishwanath, an adviser to the Biome environmental trust in Bangalore said.



It is being falsely projected in terms of a state or a language identity, as is happening between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, he added.



People along the Cauvery basin in Karnataka are angry at the notion that the government has mismanaged the water resources of the state.



Government figures show that sugarcane and paddy take up nearly 45% of the 2,48,825 hectares of sown area in Mandya.



In Mysore district, of a total cultivable area of 6,76,382 hectares, rice is grown on 1,05,592 hectares and sugarcane on 8,451 hectares.



People are further incensed that the government, after claiming there was no water for crops, is being forced to release water to Tamil Nadu by the Supreme Court.



On Monday, a group of enraged farmers went to Mandya town and asked Cauvery Raitha Hitharakshana Samithi president D. Made Gowda to leave the town.He and his followers had mounted a peaceful protest in support of Karnatakas stand in the Cauvery waters dispute.Matters reached a head as tempers flared and the police told Made Gowda to leave as they could not control the mob. The farmers were angry because they felt they had been cheated.The incident highlights the lack of trust in the political class as the Cauvery river waters inflames passions yet again in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.A failure to address the underlying issues of agriculture and water use in the Cauvery basin has meant that the decades old dispute remains unresolved.At the heart of the dispute is a history of despair and distrust with official policies over water and agriculture.In the Cauvery basin in Karnataka, which spans the districts of Mysore, Mandya, Hassan, Chamrajnagar, Tumkur and Bengaluru rural, agriculture is in dire straits, given the last two years of drought.Even 2016 has not been a deficit monsoon year, with 90% of Karnataka having a rainfall deficit
Mewat, Haryana's Muslim-dominated district, has long been an island for biryani, especially when you drive down from Delhi to Alwar. It starts soon after you cross Manesar and continues right till you reach Firozpur, Zirka and Doha.But Bakrid this time is a subdued affair here. Haryana police has been picking up samples of biryani from vends to test for beef for a few weeks now. The biryani sellers are gone.At the Doha Chowk stretch where you would earlier find a minimum of 15-20 biryani vendors, only two were seen on Bakrid eve. Wasim, owner of one of the stalls say the rest of them are just scared to come out and open their shops.At the Doha Chowk stretch where you would earlier find a minimum of 15-20 biryani vendors, only two were seen on the eve of Bakrid.Wasim, owner of one of the stalls say the rest of them are just scared to come out and open their shops.This is the result of continuous police raids over the last three months, sanctioned by a DIG-level officer of Haryana police's new 'Gau-Rakshak' wing.Their job is to collect food samples to test them for cow meat. The biryani sellers say for the last three months, police have been seizing every kind of biryani, including the chicken variants.The biryani sellers claim they make biriyani only from chicken and buffalo meat and that this is what they have been doing all their life.These raids, they claim, are a direct hit on their livelihood. And this is coming in at a time when the demand for biryani peaks.But many in Doha village are speaking in a surprisingly new voice. Md Akbar tells us that, "till the raids took place they only made beef biryani. It is only now that they have started using chicken. It is good that the raid took place , else there was a chance of communal violence".And he was not alone; after him many others opened up saying only 10-15 people sell biryani and that there is no point inviting trouble to an entire village for these few.While the oblique reference to the new BJP government in Haryana is clear, it also appears that Mewat is speaking a new tune.It gives the impression that people of Mewat are scared of inviting instances like the one that happened in Dadri where villagers lynched a 50-year-old man over suspicion that he slaughtered a cow. And that they are even giving up buffalo meat - a case of a community changing its food habit - for the sake of security.
On Monday night, as parts of Bengaluru city burnt around him, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddharamaiah summoned six of his close confidantes and a few cabinet colleagues to his official residence  incidentally, called Cauvery  for a closed-door meeting.



The Chief Minister rubbished the idea that the riots and arson protesting Supreme Court order to share the Cauvery water with Tamil Nadu was spontaneous. He wanted to know who was behind the mobs, a participant in the meeting and an MLA known as the CMs shadow told CNN-News18. "The CM suspects vested interests within and without the ruling Congress party who are trying to throw him off the CMs chair to have played a part in sudden violence," he said. The CM is learnt to have said the BJP national leadership could use the Central government to use this spike in violence to unseat  or at least destabilize  what is the lone Congress-led government in a big state.



There were quite a few takers for that line of argument in the meeting. A few of Siddaramaiahs friends told him that a riot led by faceless garment workers against the new Provident Fund (PF) withdrawal rules earlier this year was also aimed at dislodging his government and that both local Congress and the opposition party workers were involved in it. They even argued that the same elements were once again out in public leading the violence.



Well, the fact remains that not many observers of Karnataka politics will dismiss the CMs suspicions as political paranoia. Especially in the current charged atmosphere where the son-of-the-soil sentiment is ruling the roost. According to sources close to former CM and BJP state chief BS Yedyurappa, even the saffron brigade wants the emotions to cool down since the only beneficiary of the current turmoil would be JD (S) and the father-son duo of HD Deve Gowda and HD Kumara Swamy.



Within the Congress hierarchy, Siddaramaiah is a rank outsider. A vocal opponent of the party till 2005, he led the same Congress to a convincing victory in the 2013 assembly elections and became the CM. The high command move to anoint him as the CM had caused considerable heartburn among other stalwarts of the party. Read the mismatch of words between the CM and his Home Minister G Parameswara  also the state Congress chief  in responding to the Bengaluru situation against this context. Instead of defending Siddaramaiah, he had said we did not expect this kind of violence. Such a thing should not have happened."



Except a dozen ministers who were earlier with his Janata pariwar, Siddaramaiah does not trust the others in Congress. There is a clear Us & Them divide in the party. During every crisis that visited the Siddaramiah government, the Congress legacy brigade including ministers maintained radio silence and refused to defend the chief minister whom they still consider an "outsider". It is no secret that Veterans like CK Jaffer Sharief, Janardhana Poojary, SM Krishna and Mallikarjuna Kharge want to see Siddaramaiahs back and mostly keep quiet during the crisis.



Interestingly, the water wars have also slowed down BJP's campaign against the CM. After the Cauvery riots broke out, the BJP leadership is worried that the present crisis might go against them benefiting JD (S). The Congress is demanding the intervention of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in resolving the issue. Karnatakas lead lawyer in the case Fali S Nariman sarcastically told the SC that Prime Minister did not have the time to reply to Siddaramaiahs letter seeking his mediation in solving the dispute.



CNN-News18 contacted former CM and state BJP president BS Yeddyurappa, but he was not exactly forthcoming. The usually outspoken leader had this much to say: The PM cant intervene as the matter is being heard by the SC. How can Karnataka government demand that?



Yeddyurappa who is hoping to reclaim the chief ministership in the 2018 assembly elections knows that an escalation in the riots will only benefit his and Siddaramaiahs enemy the Deve Gowda family which runs the JDS as the Cauvery basin districts are Gowda stronghold.



The JDS which is hoping to play the role of a kingmaker after 2018 Assembly elections is the most aggressive on the ground in the Cauvery basin districts expecting a rich harvest of votes.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday appealed for calm over the Cauvery water dispute and his government assured all help to Karnataka and Tamil Nadu which have been hit by violence and arson.



PM Modi urged the people of both states to show sensitivity and mind their civic responsibilities, while letting the law take its course in the bitter dispute over river-water sharng between the two southern neighbouring states.



"I am personally pained at the developments. Violence cannot provide a solution to any problem. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint and mutual dialogue. This dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit. Breaking the law is not a viable alternative. The violence and arson seen in the last two days is only causing loss to the poor, and to our nations property," the PM said in his appeal.



Union Home Minister Rajnath singh spoke to the chief ministers, J Jayalalithaa and Siddaramiah on the phone and and assured them of central assistance as and when required. Sources in the ministry said 10 companies of Riot Action Police have been sent to Bengaluru, while 10 more companies of ITBP and BSF have been put on standby.



Mallikarjun Kharge, the party MP from Congress-ruled Karnataka however said: " The PM must intervene. In the past, prime ministers have intervened. Nothing stops the PM now."



One person was killed and scores of vehicles were set on fire in the violence that hit many parts of Bengaluru on Monday afternoon in retaliation against reported attacks on properties of Kannadigas on the other side of the border.



Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi told News18.com that he was in touch with chief secretary of Karnataka and that whatever additional help is needed will be provided.



However the Union government is letting the state government of Karnataka tackle the situation in Bengaluru, arguing that since law and order is a state subject, the Centre cannot intervene unilaterally.



An MHA spokesperson said, "No meeting of MHA offcials on Cauvery is happening today. Water resource ministry is the nodal ministry for the dispute. The law and order situation is for the state to tackle."



Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Venkiah Naidu appealed for peace and asked media houses to refrain from showing any video which would incite further violence. " Water is no doubt a sensitive and emotive issue, and particularly, in times of scarcity. It is in the fitness of things that such issues are resolved through discussions among the parties concerned. The Cauvery Waters issue is sub-judice and the Supreme Court has given a direction after listening to both the states. If still there are any issues, leadership of both the states could discuss the same and come out with a way forward," he said.



Union Minister for Railways, Suresh Prabhu tweeted that two special trains will leave Bengaluru City for Thiruvananthapuram and Kannur to bring back home Keralities who had gone to celebrate Onam.



In February this year, the country had seen a riot-like situation in BJP-ruled Haryana, with the home minister and the prime minister himself taking stock of the situation then.


: Hotel Mocambo on Park Street in Kolkata wouldn't have seen this coming. Until September 9, in the 60-year-old fine dining restaurant in the City of Joy, everything was business as usual.Oddly enough, Mocambo now finds itself embroiled in a controversy which is threatening to tarnish its reputation.On Friday evening, a Mumbai based lady named Dilashi Hemnani, a Marketing Manager with Tata Motors walked into Mocambo along with her driver but failed to secure a seat even after waiting for more than 45 minutes and multiple requests to the staff.Outraged at their behavior, Hemnani went on to allege that the restaurant deliberately chose to keep her away because she was accompanied by her driver who didn't meet the restaurant's standards of an ideal customer.Hemnani's post (read full post in the end) on social media has garnered a lot of views. Some readers have even decided to boycott the restaurant.In the post she stated that they first informed her that a table would be available for two within 15 minutes which later on changed to 45 minutes after seeing the driver.After 10 minutes she noticed the tables were empty and diners who had walked in after her were given a table.She asked for the Manager and one of the staff who spoke to her asked her who she was with, signaling towards the driver and stated he was not dressed properly for a fine dine restaurant.The driver who understood bits and pieces of the conversation offered to walk away. But the lady would have none of it, asking if there was a dress code, which there was none.When she asked to talk to the Manager, another staff who refused to give out his name when she asked him, says the driver was drunk and hence would not be allowed in.Furious, she asked how he came to the conclusion. The staff said he was informed by his colleague.But when she asked him to prove the same, the staff had no valid explanation saying he was told so by his colleague. Furious, Hemnani walked away saying she did not want to dine at a racist restaurant that discriminates between class of people.When we contacted Mocambo, the head steward Sean Sams said, "We never said he was drunk. He was not neatly dressed and not clean. We are a 60-year-old fine dine restaurant.We have allowed under privileged people to have dinner here before. People have come here earlier with their drivers and maids."How will Mocambo's reputation be impacted over the coming days is what Kolkatans will decide. There are some people who have come out on social media in support of Mocambo and say they will continue to patronize the restaurant.The Congress held a demonstration on Tuesday afternoon outside Mocambo asking for the manager to be arrested.Last night being my last day in Kolkata decided to try out this popular restaurant called Mocambo' at Park Street .I decided to go with my driver - Manish bhaiyya here whose great service and care throughout my stay in Kolkata for a week was excellent.(Also yesterday afternoon he missed his lunch because I forgot to tell him to go for lunch - uncertain about the time it would take me to finish the meeting - he missed his lunch)Guilty of my mistake. I decided to go out for dinner with him.As soon as I reached Mocambo at around 8:40 PM. I asked the staff to give me a table for 2.Staff : There is a waiting of 15 minutes.Me : *as excited I was to try out this popular joint *happily agreed.Staff :* by this time they observed I was with Manish bhaiya * walked up to me and said it will take 45 minutes for the table to get ready .Me : *little confused by time communicated *earlier ...now eagerly asked but you said 15 minutesStaff : yes the table was going to get empty but they ordered for more foodMe : *peeping through the glass windows *but I can see some empty tables inside .Staff : they are four seaters.. today is Friday we cannot give that table .Me: okAfter waiting for 10-15 minutes . When I see people who came after me getting the table .Me : why are you not giving me the table ?Staff : Maam we can't give you a tableMe : But why ?Staff : who are you withMe : subtly pointing towards Manish bhaiya .Staff : aahhh....Maam he is not properly dressed .Me : * he was cleanly dressed in a cream trouser and a shirt tucked out .. And floaters *I asked what is your dress code ?Staff : we don't have a dress code .Me : then ??Staff :No No he is not properly dressed it's a fine dine restaurantMe : *agitated by now *what's wrong with his dressing tell me and is there a written dress code he is not following ?By this time Manish bhaiya understood parts of the conversation in English and by the daunting looks of the staff - walks up to me and says - 'Didi hum Nahi Khaenge aap Khana Kha lijiyega na 'Me : *hurt with his innocence and inhuman inconsiderate behaviour of the staff at Mocambo*Me : call your manager give me a valid reason why he cannot come in .Staff : goes and calls another personMe : sir why can't he come in ?Staff : because he is drunkMe : *furious and baffled with the audacity of the staff *How do you know he is drunk ?Staff : because my other colleague told me he is soMe : on what basis due you make such assumptions . Did he drink in front of you or did you even go near him * they were standing 2-3 meters apart *He is driving me around since 8 o clock in the morning leave apart being drunk he is not even had foodStaff : but I know he is drunkMe : prove it thenMe : what's your nameStaff : I can't tell you my nameMe : why ?Staff : No No I can't it's just I can't let you in with himMe : I Don't want to get in to your racist restaurant walks away with Manish bhaiya with deep grief in my heart on how Inhuman and shallow the world has become :(Manish bhaiya is one of the finest human beings I have met in a long time he took good care of me and did his duty with all his heart .He is a simple man make 275 Rs a day for 12 hours of driving and sends more then half of the money back home . he has a difficult life Still he laughs a lot shares a lot of stories and is more human and empathetic then any I know .To Mocambo staff and restaurant at Park Street Kolkata Which doesn't consider human as human and differentiates, discriminates and stratifies them into classes just because he doesn't fit into your description of a perfect customer.(doesn't own a iPhone maybe doesn't talk in English ) I m sorry you don't deserve a fine human like Manish bhaiya sitting and eating in your racist restaurant.( Disclaimer : This is entirely based on my personal experience and has no relation with my organisation / profession )
New Delhi: With the government claiming to have set up 18 one-stop centres to extend support to women affected by violence under the Nirbhaya fund, an NGO on Monday said only one of these facilities was functional.



Officials of the Women and Child Development Ministry, however, maintained that 18 one-stop centres were functional.



The founder of Aman Satya Kachroo Trust, Rajendra Kachroo, said, "17 of 18 One Stop Centres are dysfunctional. None of these 17 are operating. They are just bluff, they exist only in name. Corruption, favouritism, incompetence and arrogance is seen in almost every state."



When the OSC scheme was introduced in 2015, 35 centres were to be set up. In May, 2016, the government revised that figure to 150 centres.



"Why is the government setting up more centres when these 17 centres are as good as non-existent?" Kachroo asked.



"Many centres have a board outside but nothing inside. Some have a desk with files. Those that are marginally better do not have any provision for food or changing facilities.



"...None of the centres are collecting computerised data about the survivors brought there and details of the crime. Update on a daily basis through web-based software for UID and facility for video conferencing is also not available anywhere except in the model centre in Raipur," he claimed.



He said the Centre should actively monitor the implementation of OSC scheme, while officials maintain that execution is the responsibility of the states.



Kachroo claimed, "Money spent on this scheme is not from regular budget allocation of the Union government to states. It comes from the Nirbhaya Fund. The Ministry of Women and Child Development is the custodian of the fund.



"...It is not the Government of India but an agency that has the responsibility to spend the money and to ensure that the money is utilised properly."



The government has shared in Parliament details of women who were assisted at six OSCs, which is at 689.



Ministry sources said that funds are allocated for two kinds of OSCs -- temporary and permanent. A sum of Rs 1 lakh is sanctioned for a temporary centre in an existing building like hospitals. A sum of Rs 46 lakh is sanctioned for a permanent structure.



Kachroo, who is also the contractor for the model One Stop Centre at Raipur, claims that apart from Goa, Meghalaya, Ranchi, no other state has accepted his proposal for setting up an OSC.



The Nirbhaya fund was set up in the aftermath of December 2012 gangrape incident in the capital.


Mumbai Bollywood celebrities including Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, and Farhan Akhtar said they would be part of social action platform and The Global Education and Leadership Foundation which was launched on Monday evening.



Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was also present on the occasion.



The inaugural Global Citizen Festival India, to be held here on November 19, will be its first initiative, and will be headlined by Coldplay, Jay Z, Aamir, Ranveer Singh, Katrina Kaif, A.R. Rahman, Farhan, Shraddha Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Arijit Singh, Dia Mirza, Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Monali Thakur.



Several major artists and international guests will be announced at different stages of the campaign.



Amitabh said "It is a great honour to see the words of Prime Minister Modi at Global Citizen Festival in New York coming to light with the first edition of Global Citizen taking place in India. It is both a pleasure and honour for me to support this campaign that creates a momentum, connecting individuals globally to work together and bring about change and eradicate poverty."



Aamir urged people to follow his lead in taking their first Action Journey on GlobalCitizen.in.



Maharashtra is the host partner for the inaugural Global Citizen Festival India, and Fadnavis extended his complete support to the initiative.



"Global Citizen is an important initiative given its ability to engage citizens and engage them in crucial issues. The Global Education and Leadership Foundation's focus on ethical altruistic leadership is important work that involves investing in our demographic dividend. The synergy of these promises exciting outcomes," he said.



"The commitments raised over the last five editions of the festival are remarkable and the work done to get citizens to take action is unique. I believe this is an interesting night an innovative approach to achieve important goals. Maharashtra looks forward to lead this movement across India. We are proud to bring this initiative to the country and be the voice of India to the world," he added.




New Delhi: Three people have died in Delhi in the last 48 hours due to Chikungunya but the Aam Aadmi Party government is not ready to accept responsibility and instead has shifted blame on the Lieutenant Governor and Centre. This despite the health ministry falling under the purview of the state government.



Chikungunya cases in the national capital rose sharply to over a thousand this season, marking a jump of nearly 90 per cent from its count last week.



Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal took on to Twitter to pass the buck. "Chief Minister and Ministers are left with no power now - even to buy a pen. Lieutenant Governor and Prime Minister enjoy all powers with respect to Delhi. Lieutenant Governor is abroad. Question them for Delhi," Kejriwal tweeted.



65-year-old Ramendra Pandey on Monday died of chikungunya at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, in what could be the first such death in the national capital.



The other two deaths also took place at the same hospital on Monday and both victims were aged above 60 as well, hospital authorities told PTI.



"Uday Shanker of Dwarka was admitted on September 11 and he died on September 12. His RT-PCR test for chikungunya had come positive. He had come to our OPD and then admitted.



"Ashok Chauhan, 62, from Aligarh also died of chikungunya yesterday. He too was admitted in ICU on September 11 and his RT-PCR test came positive," a senior official of the hospital said.



Pandey, who was referred from a Ghaziabad hospital, had succumbed to the disease at the hospital at 4 AM after suffering chikungunya with sepsis.



Meanwhile, Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain, who is presently in Goa, has blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party run MCD for the Chikungunya deaths.



"There is a lot of influx of people in Delhi, who come from various states. So one can't say the problem is in Delhi, it could be spread from any source. We have done our best to provide more beds in hospitals and make the infrastructure better in hospitals across Delhi. But it is mainly the duty of MCD to control the spread of such diseases and clearly they are not doing anything. But nobody questions that. What are the MCD people doing? Delhi government has done the best in their abilities," Jain said.







The blamegame continues even as the death toll is on the rise.



Union Health Minister JP Nadda said AAP didn't act despite warnings. "We have given 11 advisories to the state government till now in this case. We had called a meeting with Delhi state health minister and MCD officials well in time to look into the facilities and requirement on the situation. Whatever assistance the state governments need we are ready," Nadda said.



Hitting out at Kejriwal, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said, "If you say you have no role as the Chief Minister of Delhi, why the paraprenelia of the CM office and the ministers and crores of rupees being spent on the MLAs. You neither resign, nor answer people's questions. You spent Rs 526 crore on advertisements, half of your ministrers are abroad or out of Delhi, where does this money come from? Whose money are you spending? You should answer people's questions democratically rather than calling them agents and dalals."



Doctors say that chikungunya is not a life-threatening disease in general, but in rare cases leads to complications that prove fatal, especially in children and old persons.



According to a municipal report released on Monday, at least 1,057 cases of this vector-borne disease have been recorded till September 10, however, hospitals in the city altogether are reporting much higher number.



Authorities at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said, Pandey was kept under the care of a senior specialist in the Department of Medicine and a team of doctors from the Internal Medicine-ICU.



Lalit Dar of Department of Microbiology at AIIMS said, "At our laboratories, 1,360 chikungunya blood test samples have tested positive till yesterday. Cases are rising and more and more people are getting affected."



(With additional information from PTI)
Mumbai: Alarmed by a slew of rallies by Marathas demanding amendments in Atrocities Act and quota, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said his government was taking steps to resolve "various social issues" concerning the politically powerful community.



The rallies have assumed significance in the view of forthcoming elections to civic bodies in state. "The government has taken a serious note of the morchas being taken out across the state.



The morchas are a reflection of the pent up resentment of many years within the Maratha community," Fadnavis said told Maratha leaders. Marathas, who constitute 32 per cent of population in

Maharashtra, are reportedly in sulk.



The rallies have been held since August at Aurangabad, Osmanabad, Jalgaon, Beed and Parbhani, and more are planned in Nanded, Jalna, Solapur, Navi Mumbai, Ahmednagar, Pune, Sangli,

Satara and Mumbai from September 18.



Assuring the community that government was positive towards their demands, the CM said more consultations will be held with legislators, senior leaders, senior officers in the administration, various social organisations and student bodies.



"The government is taking steps to resolve various social issues of the community through dialogue without creating any caste tensions," he said.



State BJP president Raosaheb Danve later said the government was in agreement with various demands of the Maratha community.



"There is no cause for anyone to oppose the demands of the community," he said.



Sources said that BJP is dealing cautiously given that elections to major municipal corporations are due soon.



The trigger for holding the rallies was the gangrape and murder of a teenage girl in Ahmednagar district, as the accused in the case belonged to different caste. Following the incident, Marathas are raising demand for amendments to the SC and ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, and quota in government jobs and education.



Another prominent Maratha leader and BJP MLC Vinayak Mete said the morchas being taken out by the community across were not against dalit community.



To counter rallies by Marathas, many dalit organisations have begun staging morchas in Nanded and other parts of the state.



Mete clarified the rallies by Marathas are not led by any political party or political leader.



"It would be wrong to say that these morchas are being sponsored by the NCP," he said.



Referring to SC/ST Atrocities Act, the Shiv Sangram organisation leader said dalit icon Babasaheb Ambedkar had guaranteed the right to air one's opinion on any Act if its provisions are hurting someone.



Earlier, Bharipa-Bahujan Mahasangh leader and Ambedkar's grandson Prakash Ambedkar urged his dalit community to exercise restraint and not to carry out parallel counter morchas.



He said "RSS is deliberately trying to mislead dalit community by arguing that the morchas being taken out by the Maratha community are against them."



Hinting that some disgruntled Maratha leaders could be behind organising the rallies, Ambedkar said, "the heat of the government probe into cooperative sector is being felt by some.



A handful of 159 families control cooperative sector, whereas others from Maratha community have no toehold in cooperative sector."
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has decided to halt television advertisements for the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone in South Korea until the firm can resume new sales of the phone, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.The person said ads already paid for would run until the end of their respective contracts but TV advertisements for the phones should end in South Korea sometime this week.The person, who was not authorised to speak to media on the matter, declined to be identified. A Samsung spokeswoman declined to comment.Samsung Electronics announced on September 2 a recall of its oversized "phablet" after faulty batteries caused some handsets to burst into flames during charging.Since then, airlines and air safety agencies around the world have warned passengers against using them on flights. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission Friday urged Note 7 owners to stop using the device.As concern grew over the battery catching fire, with more cases reported last week, Samsung on Sunday escalated its warning, telling Note 7 users around the world to immediately turn the device off.
A man asking the Virginia Supreme Court to clear his name of a 20-year-old rape conviction on the basis of new DNA evidence died in prison over the weekend.

The Virginia Department of Corrections said Nathaniel E. Epps, 66, died Saturday at the Greensville Correctional Center. The state medical examiners office said Monday that the cause and manner of death were still pending.

Olga Akselrod, Epps lawyer with the Innocence Project in New York, said she was told he fell ill a few weeks ago and was diagnosed with liver cancer a week ago. This just adds yet another layer of tragedy to this case, she said.

Epps and Percel F. Warren, who died in prison in 2012, were convicted in the Feb. 20, 1996, attack in which a woman was beaten and raped at gunpoint in her apartment. Epps was sentenced to 153 years and Warren to 160.

The DNA proves hes innocent and we are going to fight to clear his name, Akselrod said Monday, referring to Epps. We need to research what our options are to do that. At this point Im not sure.

She said the Virginia Supreme Court and the Virginia attorney generals office, which opposed Epps petition for a writ of actual innocence, have been notified.

The Innocence Project filed the petition for Epps in June reporting that the evidence available for testing  sperm from two males found on the victims jeans  was limited and required a type of DNA technology that is not as discriminating as some others.

But the results, said Akselrod, prove that at least one of the two men could not have been a contributor to the sperm. The prosecutions case was predicated on Epps and Warren committing the crime together.

DNA results excluding at least one of the defendants as the source of the sperm proves that they are both actually innocent, contends the Innocence Project. The victim, at the time 40 years old, said she had not had sexual relations with another man for almost a year.

The Virginia attorney generals office, however, opposed Epps petition, arguing that while it did not challenge the validity of the DNA testing, the record did not support Epps contention that the only possible source of the trace male DNA identified by testing came from the perpetrators. It could even have come from laundering the jeans.

Epps has not met his statutory burden to show that no rational juror would convict beyond a reasonable doubt when his new evidence is considered in light of the record, the attorney generals office wrote in a 58-page brief.

The Innocence Project disagrees and responded in papers filed last week that: Here, the weakness of the trial evidence provides further grounds to conclude that no reasonable juror would come to the same conclusion given the new DNA results.

Akselrod said Epps family has established a website  www.razoo.com/us/story/Soh0qf  to raise money to pay for funeral costs.
Virginias housing industry generated $47.8 billion in economic activity in 2015, with $21.8 billion in direct output, making it the sixth-largest private sector industry in Virginia in terms of direct output, according to a study released Sept. 2 by the Virginia Housing Policy Advisory Council.

The council develops policy initiatives aimed at addressing critical housing needs.

In addition to the employment and spending impact cited in this report, we are proud that homeownership uplifts individual families with the opportunity to build wealth through equity, creating even greater long-term economic benefits to individuals and to our entire state, said Bill White, 2016 president of the Virginia Association of Realtors and president of Joyner Fine Properties in Richmond.

The association is a stakeholder in the Virginia Housing Policy Advisory Council.

The housing industry in Virginia supported more than 314,000 jobs paying more than $14 billion in annual wages, salaries and benefits in 2015, according to the study. It provides about 8 percent of Virginias jobs.

The industry represents a diversified group of economic sectors, including construction, finance, retail trade, transportation, and professional and residential services.

The economic impact study showcases Virginias housing industry as an economic driver that generates thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity, making it a central component of our economic strategy, Gov. Terry McAuliffe said in a statement.

Housing is a key indicator of any communitys vitality, and we will continue to develop strong housing policies as we build a new Virginia economy.

The study was commissioned by the governors Housing Policy Advisory Council and is the first component of a larger research effort, Assessing the Importance of Housing for Virginias Economy, conducted by the Virginia Coalition of Housing and Economic Development Researchers.

The coalition includes faculty and graduate students from Virginia Tech, George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University and the College of William & Mary.
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
Apps for beauty, cuisine are here

While there is much information available to help make our lives easier, accessing that information can also prove to be challenging.

Pertinent questions such as, where to go liming? or, how to find a good eating place or even where to locate a beautician for that long-term or emergency fix? can send us on a time-consuming chase. The contact information is not always readily at hand to access some service providers.

But, worry no more.

Heres Your Technology (HYT) Solutions Ltd is putting some choices at your fingertips to help you beat the stress. The company has developed three service-oriented applications for mobile phones that are geared to making everyday life easier.

Founder and CEO of HYT, Dayne E Thompson said the company is using innovative technology to assist people on the go.

The goal is to use innovative technology to help people enjoy life and make life easier. The reason being that our lives are becoming so mobile- oriented that we do everything on the go, so it would be easier if we have our virtual life on the go as well, Thompson said.

One of the mobile apps called Flawless, he says, is for women. It is a beautician app for females, which shows all the beauticians in country with location, contact numbers and pictures of their past work. With a touch on each relevant information the associated app would open. For example, touching the phone number would open the phone app, the location would open Google Maps or Waze. Thompson added that all women have to do is open Flawless and the section for the beautician type they are looking for (make-up, nail tech, and so on) and search for one in their area. He said HYT has also incorporated daily beauty tips, do-it-yourself  videos and a lot more.

The We Cuisine application is geared to exposing the culinary culture of Trinidad and Tobago.

It shows all the restaurants in TT and allows users to view their full menu, prices, location, contact numbers and even pictures of the plated food. All features work just as the Flawless app. We also have an additional feature with this where we also deliver the food for you if you dont wish to dine out, he said However, We Pumpin is being touted as HYTs marquee app.

Though it was originally launched in January, it has been developed to increase Trinidads social life.

It displays all parties, sports, outdoors activities, boat cruises, fetes and more every day of the year.

It shows the artwork associated with each event, promotional dialogue, pictures, locations, cost, contact and more. We also incorporated our own music section, where we have all our local music for you to listen to, videos of local parties and more.

Our best feature is our live streaming option.

This allows users to view a live stream of how Pumpin inside a club or party or event is so they can make a more informed decision on when and where they want to spend their night out. An example of the feed can be seen at: https:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=6xIlbxkm1Uo All applications are available for iOS and Android devices and are free for any user to download.

While Thompson develops the applications and runs the daily functions of the business, he has Rhea Mc Comie taking care of marketing duties.

The business was founded in January 2015 after he learned to develop the mobile applications.

I was always into IT in various fields and the development of mobile applications interested me a lot.

After gaining the knowledge in the same, I decided to use it to help improve the daily lives of our citizens, such as exposing our culture and social life, making it easier and safer for people to go out, to allow people to have a larger choice and variation for food, travel safer and more.

The idea is to use technology to make every task for users easier and safer. Another app, We Taxi is being developed.

This is for drivers to deliver the food to users.

Thompson said there is also a section for local recipes, both video and written that was launched back in January.

He said the feedback has been good for the We Pumping and We Cuisine apps with both receiving 3,000 downloads each since being launched.

Reviews on the Play Store as well Facebook have also been good, he said.

Told of the annual WeBeat Festival and the similarities between the names of the events and their apps Thompson confessed: Honestly I never heard of the WeBeat from St James. But if any thing I would look to work with them to see how we can collaborate on something. For more info: www.hytsolutions.

com .
Teen detained for guards killing during robbery

While charges have not yet been laid against the teenager, Newsday understands that he is assisting police in the investigation, while detectives continue the search for other persons who may have been involved in the robbery.

Meanwhile, at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, relatives of the slain man told reporters that his death has sent shock waves through the family.

At this point in time, the entire family is shattered because of this, said Adesh Maraj, the slain security guards brother.

This was something that no one was prepared for, but we are trying our best to cope. For me, when crime reaches home like this it is a very different feeling. Adesh described his brother as a quiet and loving person.

He added that Maraj had been in the security industry for about nine years.

Newsday understands that there were four bandits involved in the robbery which led to Marajs killing.

According to reports, at about 7.55 pm on Saturday, two armed men entered Cantonese Superstore, located at Eastern Main Road, Maturita and announced a hold-up. But while they were robbing the grocery, one of the patrons panicked and attempted to run. He was shot by one of the bandits.

Upon hearing the gunshot, the other two bandits burst into the store with firearms in hand and began shooting indiscriminately.

During the shooting, Maraj was shot six times along the right side of his body. He died on the scene as the bandits escaped.

Two other employees and a customer were also shot in the incident. A 15-yearold employee of the grocery who lives in Arima was shot in the buttocks, Xiao Zhen - a cashier, was shot in her right leg, and 39-year-old Keith Thomas was shot in the left foot. The three are said to be in stable condition at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope.
Install the Newser News app

in two easy steps:

1. Tap in your navigation bar.

2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.




China, Japan to hold maritime talks

2016-09-13 14:44

BEIJING, Sep. 12 (Xinhua) -- China and Japan will hold the fifth round of high-level talks on maritime affairs Wednesday through Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Monday.

The talks, to be held in Hiroshima, Japan, will see officials from both countries in foreign affairs, defense, maritime law and marine management.

"The Chinese side hopes to exchange views on sea-related issues of common concern and enhance mutual trust with the Japanese side," spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a press briefing.
(Newser)  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Monday he wants US forces out of his country's south and blamed America for inflaming Muslim insurgencies in the region, in his first public statement opposing the presence of American troops, the AP reports. Washington, however, said it had not received a formal request to remove US military personnel. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Duterte had a tendency to make "colorful comments" and drew a comparison with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Duterte did not mention any deadline or say how he intends to pursue his wishes. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Monday that the US was aware of Duterte's comments, but is "not aware of any official communication by the Philippine government to that effect and to seek that result." He said the US remained committed to its long-standing alliance with the Philippines.

In opposing the US military presence in the southern Mindanao region, Duterte cited the killing of Muslims during a US pacification campaign in the early 1900s, which he said was at the root of the long restiveness of minority Muslims in the largely Catholic nation's south. "For as long as we stay with America, we will never have peace in that land," Duterte said in a speech to newly appointed government officials. He showed photos of what he described as Muslim Filipinos, including children and women, who were slain by U.S. forces in the early 1900s and dumped in a pit in Bud Daho, a mountainous region in southern Sulu province. American soldiers stood around the mass grave. "The special forces, they have to go. They have to go in Mindanao, there are many whites there, they have to go," he said, adding that he was reorienting the country's foreign policy. "I do not want a rift with America, but they have to go." Last week, Obama called off what would have been his first meeting with Duterte after an apparent insult. (Read more Rodrigo Duterte stories.)
(Newser)  A crowdfunding effort to get Donald Trump to release his taxes is offering the same reward Trump dangled when he wanted to see President Obama's birth certificate: a large donation to charity. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has thrown his support behind Marine Corps veteran Pete Kiernan's plan, offering up to $5 million, which will be donated to 10 veterans' charities if Trump releases his income tax returns, CNET reports. Hoffman says he will pledge five times what Kiernan raises at Crowdpac.com, with a $5 million ceiling.

Kiernan, 26, served in Afghanistan and has "the moral authority to challenge Trump to demonstrate his own commitment to the core American values of transparency and accountability," Hoffman writes in a post at Medium.com, accusing Trump of holding back his tax returns as a "bargaining chip." By releasing the returns before the final debate on Oct. 19, Trump can "help voters make more informed decisions on Election Day and support many worthy veterans' organizations at the same time," he writes. (A Facebook co-founder has donated $20 million to efforts to stop Trump.)
(Newser)  A week ago, 89-year-old Fidencio Sanchez was selling Mexican popsicles in Chicago. Now he'll never have to push his paleta cart again, thanks to a kind stranger. Joel Cervantes Macias says he spotted Sanchez struggling to push his cart in the Little Village neighborhood on Thursday. It turns out Sanchez and his wife retired two months ago, but Sanchez was forced back to work when their daughter died last month. She was "like a mother to us," he tells DNAinfo. Cervantes snapped a photo of the man and gave him a $20 tip on his purchase, reports the Chicago Tribune. But back at home, he couldn't forget him. Instead, he created a GoFundMe page to raise $3,000 for Sanchez. He reached that goal in an hour.

The tally sits at more than $250,000 as of Tuesday. "It broke my heart seeing this man who should be enjoying retirement still working at this age," Cervantes wrote. He adds: "If it touches me, I should've known it touches everybody else who sees him." He credits the photo he took of Sanchezwho makes about $50 a day selling ice pops, per NBC Chicagofor inspiring some 11,000 people to donate. "He looks like he's suffering, like he'll never give up," Cervantes says. Now, "there will be no need for me to work," Sanchez says through his granddaughter. "I will be able to rest more at home." Sanchez will be presented with the donated funds this week. (Strangers also donated to a man who walks 21 miles to work.)
(Newser)  Hillary Clinton spoke to CNN Monday night and tried to tamp down any concerns over her health. She said she's feeling "much better" and hoped to be back on the campaign trail "in the next couple of days," per Reuters. Her campaign has taken flak for not disclosing her diagnosis of pneumonia on Friday, but she downplayed that when asked about it by Anderson Cooper. I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal, said Clinton, as quoted by Politico. It's just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you're a busy, active person, you keep moving forward.

When Clinton left the 9/11 memorial on Sunday, her doctor said she'd been dehydrated, and Cooper pressed her on how often that has happened. Oh, I think really only twice that I can recall, she said. You know, it is something that has occurred a few times over the course of my life, and I'm aware of it and usually can avoid it. Clinton couldn't resist a dig at Donald Trump, saying that the public knew far more about every aspect of her life when compared to his. "I think it's time he met the same level of disclosure that I have for years. (One prominent blogger thinks this episode makes her "unelectable.")
(Newser)  Wells Fargo has been fined $185 million over a scam that involved employees opening phony accounts for customers who were forced to pay fees, but the executive in charge of those employees will take home almost as much. Carrie Tolstedt, former head of community banking, will receive $124.6 million in shares, options, and restricted stock when she abandons ship at the end of the year. The bank announced her retirement in July, before the scam was revealed, reports Fortune. It can reclaim pay from executives linked to wrongful behavior but says it wont do that with Tolstedt; it isn't clear if she was aware of the scam, though she ran the retail banking and credit card divisions from 2008.

A Wells Fargo rep tells CNBC that community banking executives worked to "significantly strengthen" the bank's "training, monitoring, oversight and compensation structure" to combat the accounts scam. The bank says her retirement was a "personal decision" while CEO John Stumpf praised Tolstedt in July as "one of our most valuable Wells Fargo leaders, a standard-bearer of our culture, a champion for our customers, and a role model for responsible, principled and inclusive leadership." In 2014, Wells Fargo cited "strong cross-sell ratios" in justifying Tolstedt's $1.7 million salary. She took home $9 million last year as a reward for "continued growth in primary checking customers," reports CNNMoney. (Read more Wells Fargo stories.)
(Newser)  A ceasefire allegedly went into effect in Syria at sundown on Mondaythough most reports suggest that there are still a lot of people shooting at each other. Amid confusion over which opposition areas could be considered valid targets, there were reports of several attacks late Monday and early Tuesday, the Guardian reports. Separately, the Syrian government claimed to have shot down an Israeli warplane and drone near the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights area, the AP reports. Israel denied the claim, saying it fired two missiles at Syrian artillery positions overnight and the safety of Israeli aircraft was never compromised.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the ceasefire was broken by sporadic attacks, but it did not record any civilian deaths in the first 15 hours of the truce, the BBC reports. John Kerry, one of the deal's main architects, says it is "far too early" to draw conclusions about whether the truce will hold in the days ahead. "There will be undoubtedly be reports of violations here and there and thats the nature of ceasefires, he told reporters in Washington. "For all the doubts that exist, and there will be many challenges in the days to come, despite that, this plan has a chance to work." (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance on Monday.)
Cambodian PM's trip to ASEAN-China Expo brings fruitful outcome for bilateral ties: official

2016-09-13 14:44

PHNOM PENH, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen's visit to Nanning in southwestern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has brought closer relations between the two countries, a Cambodian senior official said on Monday.

"The prime minister's visit to Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in China ended with a fruitful result, which contributes further to enhancing relations between Cambodia and China in economics, trade, investment, tourism, and people-to-people," Kao Kim Hourn, minister attached to the prime minister, told reporters at Phnom Penh International Airport upon Hun Sen's return from Nanning.

"The visit has further strengthened and expanded ties and cooperation between Cambodia and China," he said, expressing his belief that, through the visit, more Chinese investors and tourists would come to Cambodia.

According to the official, Hun Sen had been in Nanning on Sept. 10-12 and attended the opening ceremony of the 13th ASEAN-China Expo.

On the sidelines of the expo, he also met with Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, and Li Jin'ge, president of Huawei Asia Pacific, as well as Wang Zhenghua, chairman of China budget carrier Spring Airlines.

Besides, Hun Sen opened the 1st Cambodia-China Trade and Investment Forum, which was participated by more than 400 Chinese and Cambodian business executives, said Kao.
(Newser)  Monday night saw what the Guardian describes as the "first violent incident at a Trump rally in months" when a Donald Trump supporter punched protesters at a campaign event in Asheville, NC. The New York Daily News reports that the unidentified supporter, possibly angered by an obscene gesture one protester made in Trump's direction, grabbed a protester by the neck and punched him. In ABC News' video of the incident, the man can be seen grabbing at other protesters as they were removed from the stadium. "The dishonest media will not report that," Trump said. "They say we're bad people, they're not going to report that."

The Washington Post reports that repeated interruptions from protesters created a tense atmosphere in the stadium, where Trump attacked Hillary Clinton for Friday's "basket of deplorables" remark. "While my opponent slams you as deplorable and irredeemable, I call you hard-working American patriots who love your country," said Trump, who didn't mention her illness. "Hillary Clinton has been running a hate-filled and negative campaign, with no policy, no solutions, and no ideas," he said. "By contrast, I've been going around the country offering very detailed plans for reform and change." (The founder of LinkedIn has pledged up to $5 million to an effort to get Trump to release his tax returns.)
(Newser)  Stuck counting sheep while your hubby sleeps soundly? A new study suggests you're not alone. McGill University researchers explain that while men and women tend to go to bed and rise at roughly the same times, women have more trouble staying asleepbecause their internal body clocks are dfferent, reports HealthDay News. "Womens body clock causes them to fall asleep and wake up earlier than men," says study author Diane Boivin of McGill University in a release. "The reason is simple: their body clock is shifted to a more easterly time zone. Researchers came to that conclusion after measuring levels of sleep and alertness in 15 men and 11 women monitored over 36 hours.

Female participants appeared more tired and therefore less alert at night than men, meaning they may be "less biologically suited for night work" and more likely to suffer work-related injuries, writes Boivin. The female sleep signal was also weaker than the male signal at the end of a night, meaning women may have "a difficult time staying asleep later in the night," says a UCLA professor. "Perhaps women are predisposed to having insomnia based on their circadian phase." The study could also help explain why women tend to be more likely to feel drowsy during the day and more likely to suffer from sleep problems, researchers say. (Here's why it's hard to sleep in a strange place.)
(Newser)  As one of Russia's northernmost rivers turned a bloodlike red last week, plenty of fingers were pointed at the nearby Norilsk Nickel factory. But the world's "largest producer of nickel and palladium" initially had only denials, going so far as to say that "the color of the [Daldykan River] today doesn't differ from its usual condition." Now, a changed tune: In a Monday press release the company stated that an internal investigation found that "abnormal heavy rain" on Sept. 5 caused what the BBC refers to as a "filtration dam" to overflow, sending "residual wash water" into the river. The AP reports the dike that was crested was located outside a waste storage facility at its Nadezhdinskaya plant. "Short-term river color staining with iron salts presents no hazards for people and river fauna," the press release continues.

A Russian Greenpeace official isn't assuaged by that line, telling the AFP that while "there is a ministry of environment commission there" now, following up on alleged pollution wrought by Norilsk Nickel is challenging because of the remote location and the company's control of the Taymyr peninsula where the incident occurred. The AP notes the area has struggled with environmental issues dating back to the construction of the first plant there roughly eight decades ago. Indeed, the New York Times last week called the company "by many measures one of the worlds most polluting enterprises," noting the sulfur dioxide generated by the plant has formed a dead zone equal to two Rhode Islands around it. (This river turned blood-red in an hour.)
(Newser)  Leonardo Sanchez should be celebrating his second birthday on Saturday, but instead of a party, "I'm planning his funeral," his mom tells Utah's KSL. In what police are calling a "very tragic, sad accident," Leonardo was playing with other children at West Jordan Child Center in the Salt Lake City suburb Thursday when he crawled under a beanbag chair, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. An employee, apparently unaware, then sat on it to read to other kids, and employees found Leonardo unconscious 10 to 15 minutes later. He was given CPR before being rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police say he suffocated. "I'm so confused on how you don't know where my kid is," says mom Danielle Sanchez. "How do you not feel him? How do you not hear him scream?"

"I dropped him off at daycare not realizing I would never be able to hold him again," Sanchez adds, per KUTV. "Somebody dropped the ball and now we're going to have to bury a boy because of that." In a statement, the daycare says "we regret deeply the tragic death of a young toddler at our daycare facility. ... We know the family well, we grieve with them, and we pray that God will provide them the comfort and peace they inevitably will need." A rep for the Utah Office of Children's Licensing says the daycare was cited twice in five years for a lack of supervision on its patio and for a hole in a fence through which a child could have escaped, reports Fox 13. An investigation is underway. (A baby girl died on her first day at daycare.)
(Newser)  A newly discovered punctuation error regarding a piece of evidence may help British police zero in on accomplices in a notorious murder now 23 years old. The case is that of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager beaten to death in 1993 as he stood at a bus stop. Two white men are serving time for the murder, but police think three or four others took part in the attack. Now the leather strap of a bag found at the scene has provided a DNA sample from a woman, and if police can track her down, it could lead to more arrests, reports the Telegraph. Authorities think the strap was part of a homemade weapon used to kill Lawrenceperhaps with the head of a hammer attachedbut it was disregarded for years after being mistakenly cataloged as having been found 300 feet from the body.

It turns out the strap was actually less than 15 feet away. The gaffe happened because "the punctuation [from the scene examiners notes] hadnt been read correctly," explains the new lead investigator. The exact error isn't revealed, but whoever typed up the examiner's notes grouped the strap with something that was found 300 feet away. Police don't necessarily think the woman who owned the bag took part in the killing, but she might have given it to a relative or friend. Police have asked female relatives of all suspects to provide DNA, but so far most have refused, reports the BBC. Police are now offering a $26,000 reward for information. Inquiries into the original high-profile investigation raised allegations of institutional racism and police corruption, notes the Independent. (Read more punctuation stories.)
(Newser)  There are 45,000 horses no one wants, and the US government is suggesting destroying them all, the Verge reports. In what an exec for the Humane Society calls "a complete abdication of responsibility for their care," the Bureau of Land Management's National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board has recommended euthanizing the horses, removed from public land and placed in holding pens over the years so there'd be more room for cattle. The horses are available for adoption, but the pens are now crammed and the costs have ballooned, per the BLM: $49 million last year alone, or almost half of the board's annual budget. A Humane Society press release calls it "long-term mismanagement" at the hands of the BLM, which the Humane Society says could more effectively use birth control to manage the horse population.

Still others point out the unseemliness of removing wildlife from its natural habitat to make room for profit-generating cattle. But not everyone is critical of the plan. RT.com notes that the horses trample on and kick up the protective layer of topsoil that lies over the country's grasslands. And per a December 2015 Slate article, these horses aren't technically natives: They're the "feral descendants of animals brought by Europeans in the past few hundred years," and that timespan has been too short for US plants and wildlife to acclimate to the equine intruders. The horses can be adopted for $125 a pop, but RT.com notes that even if all 45,000 horses were scooped up, that would total just under $6 millionnot even close to the $49 million spent on them just last year alone. (Abused horses are finding new life helping veterans.)
(Newser)  It was just your average Facebook chat between two folks trying to arrange a get-together, except that one party was a man with outstanding warrants who resembles a bank robbery suspect and the other was the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. After the RNC post about 25-year-old Brandon Melbourne went up on Monday, Melbourne himself commented, advising police that he'd turn himself in later that night. "I just got a few things to take care of busy day then I'll be down." Police politely thanked him and offered a ride, but he said he was OK on that front. Melbourne insisted he was a "man of my word," and he did indeed turn himself in Monday night, reports the Toronto Star.

The outstanding warrants were for relatively minor infractions and missed court appearances, but commenters immediately pounced upon the fact that Melbourne bears a resemblance to the man in a police photo who robbed the Bank of Montreal last week. (See the photo here via the CBC.) "I can understand your opinions it kinda do look a little like me but my neck tattoo comes on to my face and this guy has zero tattoos," wrote Melbourne. He added that he wouldn't steal so much as a chocolate bar. So far, no charges have been filed related to the robbery. (Police say a 70-year-old man robbed a bank to get out of living with his wife.)
(Newser)  "For richer and for poorer, through broken-down cars and in health" is how Angelique Arsenault could have rewritten her vows after a pre-wedding roadblock in New Hampshire. The AP reports Arsenault was in her limo with her bridal party on Saturday, on her way to say "I do" in Milford, when suddenly the car came to a halt on a somewhat-deserted road in Brookline. "I'm like, 'It's fine. Maybe he just hit something,'" the maid of honor tells CBS Boston, adding that he then informed his passengers that the limo had a flat.

The bridal party decided to take the incident in stride, indulging in some of the limo's champagne and then sticking their thumbs out to hitch a ride to the wedding ceremony and Jarrod Dunne, Arsenault's waiting fiance, at the Mile Away restaurant (which was actually seven miles away at that point). That's when a Good Samaritan named Jay pulled over with a car full of kids, heard their story, ran to drop the kids off, and returned to offer his chauffeuring services. The bride tells WCVB she arrived a half-hour late to the ceremony, but she says her wedding day still turned out to be "amazing." (A Tennessee bride helped out at an accident scene, dress and all.)
(Newser)  The frontman of Darkthrone, a Norwegian "black metal" band, has accidentally gotten himself elected to his local town council, Pitchfork reports. As Glyve "Fenriz" Nagell explained to Clrvynt last week, "basically, they called and asked if I wanted to be on the list [of backup representatives]. I said yeah, thinking I would be like 18th on the list and I wouldnt really have to do anything." He then took a campaign photo of himself holding his cat, Peanut Butter, with the message, "Please don't vote for me." People did not listen.

Nagell was indeed elected to be a backup representative in Kolbotn, an Oslo suburb, a role that lasts four years and, he complains, doesn't pay much. "I'm not too pleased about it," he says. "It's boring." As for how exactly he got added to the list of candidates in the first place, he says, per FACT, "They just need a list to be able to  well, its hard to talk local politics in another language." He says he will be required to step in if another council member is sick or otherwise unavailable. Meanwhile, Darkthrone has its 17th studio album coming out Oct. 14. (Minnesota recently got a mayor in Duke the dog.)
Around 89 people have been infected with Hepatitis A and the outbreak has been linked to strawberries used in smoothies that were served from the different branches of Tropical Smoothie Cafe.

Food Poison Journal reported that the outbreak has involved sevens states as of September 8, 2016. The states were North Carolina, New York, West Virginia, Maryland, Oregon, Virginia, and Wisconsin. At least 54 people who were infected by Hepatitis A virus confirmed consuming smoothies that contain strawberries and at least 39 people have been hospitalized because of the outbreak

It was reported that the fresh strawberries were imported from Egypt. Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have been investigating the case and they are in touch with the Egyptian International Health Regulation National Focal Point.

Why Strawberries?

According to Benjamin Chapman, the professor at North Carolina State University, berries are a "common conduit" for many viruses. Fox News reported that since berries such as strawberries are quite delicate by nature, it needs to be harvested by hands. If the one handling the berries are infected by Hepatitis A, it is likely that the virus is going to be transferred to the berries.

Experts are also trying to find out if the water is infected with the virus. It is possible that the water used in irrigation might have been contaminated, especially the overhead water irrigation. If the virus attaches to the strawberries, it is quite difficult to remove it. Actually, no amount of washing and rinsing can remove the virus. Freezing the strawberries will only help in keeping the virus alive. Heat can probably kill the virus but most of us do not heat frozen berries before actually eating it.

Tropical Smoothie Cafe reported that they've removed all Egyptian frozen strawberries from all of their cafes nationwide. The FDA is reportedly improving their monitoring and surveillance of imported berries entering the United States.
3rd Franco-Chinese Month of Environment to open in Beijing

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-09-13 17:45

Poster for the Franco-Chinese Month of the Environment [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The 3rd Franco-Chinese Month of the Environment will begin on September 27, according to a news conference held on Monday.

Organized by the French embassy in China, this year's month-long project will focus on the theme of biodiversity. A wide range of cultural events, including exhibitions, film screenings, concerts, art workshops, lectures, seminars and forums will be held in 25 Chinese cities.

"This year's event covers more diversified disciplines compared with the last two years and targets wider audiences, enhancing interaction with the general public," said Matthieu Berton, technical coordinator of the Environment, Heritage, and Sustainable Development Department of the French embassy. A variety of topics and subjects will be discussed and explored throughout the month, such as natural resource management, urbanization and lifestyles, environmental protection and technological innovation, promoting public awareness of biodiversity richness and exploring more balanced relations between people and the natural world.

Famed Chinese actress Tao Hong was present as the image ambassador of the event. After stressing the importance of environmental protection and prevention of climate change, she recommended two films that will be screened during the event.

"French films have their distinctive taste and style," Tao said. "They dont cater to commercial trends and have their own focus." Tao said that the French documentary Oceans (Oceans) and its sequel Seasons (Les Saisons) are two must-sees. The latter will be on big screens in China later in September.

The Franco-Chinese Month of the Environment was started in 2014 and is the only multi-disciplinary festival dedicated to the environment organized by an embassy in multiple Chinese cities. It will last until October 27. For more information please visit its website: http://mfce.faguowenhua.com/

A screenshot from the upcoming documentarySeasons (Les Saisons).The French film will arrive on Chinese big screens later in September. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese actress Tao Hong is the events image ambassador. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A press conference for the Franco-Chinese Month of the Environment was held on Monday. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
Bengaluru:

Low-cost carrier AirAsia on Monday said passengers of their flights departing from Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru on September 13 can reschedule their travel at no charge due to logistical difficulties that they may face in getting to the airport following the outbreak of violence over the Cauvery issue.



AirAsia understands the seriousness of the current situation in Bengaluru. All AirAsia guests booked onto flights departing from Bengaluru on Tuesday, 13th September 2016 can reschedule their travel at no charge, the aircraft carrier said in a statement in Bengaluru.



The airline understands the logistical difficulty that some guests might face in getting to the airport for their flight, AirAsia added.



The carrier has made arrangements for rescheduling the passengers travel to any time up to 72 hours at no charge, AirAsia said.

Also read:

Cauvery water protests: 30 buses set on fire; one killed in police firing in Bengaluru

Public transport bears the brunt as Cauvery water war between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka rages

Cauvery water protests: Karnataka govt asks Tamil Nadu to ensure safety of Kannadigas

Any guest travelling from Bengaluru on Tuesday, 13th September 2016 can contact our airline staff or call centres to reschedule their travel to anytime up to 72 hours from now at no charge, it said.



AirAsia as a group believes in providing the best of safety, security and comfort to our guests and crew at all times, AirAsia said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

An Inspector of Delhi Police has been accused by 25 women police personnel of misbehaving and sexually harassing them over a period of many months.



Four months back, a woman personnel, posted at provisions and logistics department, complained against the erring officer to the DCP concerned. But when no action was taken against the officer, she complained to the commissioner.



Later, 24 more personnel, ranging from constables to assistant sub inspectors, complained against the inspector, who is posted at Provisions and Logistics Department of the force, to the commissioner.



The complainants have alleged that the accused used words pertaining to physical attributes and made sexual overtures to them while threatening to spoil their career when protested, a senior official said.



The complaints are being probed by the vigilance branch and the sexual harassment committee. Action will be taken if the accused is found guilty in the probe, the official added.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Several Muslims offered prayers at Indiaas biggest mosque Jama Masjid on Tuesday morning in New Delhi to celebrate Eid al-Adha, one of the two most important festivals in the faithas calendar. In Lucknow, aA joint Shia-Sunni namaz was performed at Imambara in to commerate the occasion of Bakra Eid.

The prayers were also offered at various mosques across Nagpur, Kolkata, Hyderabad,A Moradabad andA Ahmedabad.A



The holy day is also known as the Feast of Sacrifice and symbolises Ibrahimas willingness to sacrifice his sonas life as a testament to the strength of his faith. It is distinct from Eid-al-Fitr, or athe Lesser Eida which marks the end of Ramadan and which was celebrated on 6 July this year.



On Eid al-Adha, people greet each other wishing them 'Eid Mubarak' or a blessed Eid. Many believers will start the day with morning prayers, followed by spending time with relatives, neighbours and friends. Some worshippers will also slaughter an animal such as a sheep or goat to echo Ibrahimas sacrifice.

Devotees offer namaz on the occasion of Bakrid at Jama Masjid in Nagpur. pic.twitter.com/vuvPnzkL9i a ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Kolkata (WB): Bakrid prayers being offered at Red Road. pic.twitter.com/HWOVln5R0d a ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Hyderabad: People offer their namaz at Eidgah in Madannapet on the occasion of Bakrid. pic.twitter.com/ASxn811MCU a ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Uttar Pradesh: Bakrid prayers being offered at Eidgah in Moradabad. pic.twitter.com/tdKGlENcqp a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 13, 2016

Bakrid prayers being offered at Jama Mosque in Ahmedabad. pic.twitter.com/IbAxgAWQKs a ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

A joint Shia-Sunni namaz being performed at Imambara in Lucknow on the occasion of Bakra Eid. pic.twitter.com/7YMLZTpZR6 a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 13, 2016

Eid-ul -Zuha prayers being offered at Kanchenjunga Stadium in Siliguri. pic.twitter.com/lTu0p28vtz a ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Eid-ul -Zuha prayers being offered at Eidgah in Bhopal. pic.twitter.com/PctEl7QKjp a ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Bengaluru:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed pain over the developments in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the Cauvery water dispute and appealed for peace while underlining that violence cannot provide solution to any problem.

He asserted that the dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit and "breaking the law is not a viable alternative".

Meanwhile, opposition DMK has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention in the Cauvery crisis, urging him to convene a meeting of chief ministers of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and "ensure a cordial atmosphere" in both states.

"Prime Minister Narenda Modi should invite the Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu (J Jayalalithaa) and Karnataka(Siddaramiah) soon for talks and ensure a cordial atmosphere (in the two states)," DMK Treasurer and Opposition Leader in Tamil Nadu Assembly, M K Stalin, said.

[ALSO READ: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah appeals for peace; writes to PM Modi for his intervention]

Karnataka Home Minister KJ George on Tuesday said that his government will find the people responsible for instigating violnce in the name Cauvery water protests and take strict action. The home minister also said that it should be appreciated that the government was able to bring the city to order in time otherwise there would have been more loss of life.

Earlier in the day, Union minister Venkaiah Naidu said that violence in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over Cauvery waters is quite disturbing and it cannot be justified on any ground. Addressing the media over rising violence, Naidu appealed to the people of both the States to immediately stop indulging in violence and ensure peace and normalcy.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is going to hold a cabinet meeting at 11am to discuss the ongoing unrest over the Cauvery water dispute. High level Congress Party leaders are expected to attend the meeting.



Widespread violence erupted on Monday in Bengaluru and some other parts of Karnataka, while sporadic trouble was witnessed in Tamil Nadu following Supreme Courts modified order on sharing Cauvery water by the two riparian states.



Hyderabad Police has issued a directive to all TV channel to gate-keep any content which might incite further violence in the region. Managements of all TV Channels are requested/advised to adhere to program code in interest of maintenance of public order/peace in Hyderabad, Hyderabad Police said.



Here are the live updates:

I trust you'll keep national interest, nation building above all else, gv priority to harmony, & finding a solution, eschewing violence: PM  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Personally pained at the developments. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint & mutual dialogue: PM Modi  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

PM Modi appeals to people in Karnataka and TN, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities. #CauveryIssue  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

#WATCH Aftermath of #CauveryProtests: Visuals from #Bengaluru's KPN bus depot, where 56 buses were set on fire y'day pic.twitter.com/GJvwy3vZtO  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

It must be appreciated that we brought the city to order in time otherwise there would have been more loss of life: K'taka HM #CauveryIssue  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

It is our responsibility to ensure safety of every citizen and we will do exactly that: K'taka HM #CauveryIssue  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Some ppl indulged in violence using names of some organisations; will find who they are, arrest them & take action: K'taka HM #CauveryIssue  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

I request people of K'taka to please maintain peace in the state, dont take law in your hands: Karnataka HM pic.twitter.com/v3sI8R2amx  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

I fervently appeal to the people of both the States to immediately stop indulging in violence and ensure peace and normalcy: Venkaiah Naidu  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

SC has given direction after listening to both States.If still there are any issues, leadership of both States could discuss the same:Naidu  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Ppl have been making significant contribut'n to the development of states of their choice of living;shouldn't be made to feel insecure:Naidu  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

#CauveryProtests in many parts of Karnataka; security forces (ITBP & K'taka Police) flag march in Mandya. pic.twitter.com/zarojF06Rg  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Violence in K'taka & TN over Cauvery waters quite disturbing. This can't be justified on any ground: Venkaiah Naidu pic.twitter.com/i5dZYuyjBw  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Mandya (Karnataka): #CauveryProtests in many parts of Karnataka, security forces on high alert. pic.twitter.com/D84mK7XWrF  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

#CauveryProtests :Bengaluru Situation is totally calm. Strict action will be taken against vandals/miscreants: B'lore Police  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

All positive steps will be taken to save interest of K'taka farmers: TB Jayachandra (K'taka Law Min) #CauveryProtests  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

This is critical time, law & order needs to be maintained: TB Jayachandra (K'taka Law Min) #CauveryProtests pic.twitter.com/nLqIr9uWOx  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

#CauveryProtests All necessary security arrangements made all over the city. In any emergencies kindly call 100 and report: B'lore Police  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

#CauveryProtests KSRP & Quick Reaction Teams deployed all over the city to check violence. Be safe,Section 144 imposed: BLR Police  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

#CauveryProtests Central forces CRPF, CISF, RPF deployed to assist BLR City Police to maintain law and order through all over the city  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Cauvery belongs to us also, we have all rights. SC has made it clear that K'taka must oblige: CR Saraswathi, AIADMK pic.twitter.com/s90lnnSCNx  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Managements of all TV Channels are requested/advised to adhere to program code in interest of maintenance of public order/peace in Hyderabad  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Aftermath of pro-kannada activist protests in Bengaluru, charred debris of vehicles seen. pic.twitter.com/HOL1L5Kikk  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

#TopStory Karnataka CM to hold a cabinet meeting at 11 AM #CauveryIssue  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

#TopStory K'taka CM will hold high level meeting at his residence, Senior Congress leaders to be present in the meting #CauveryIssue  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

On Monday, Police opened fire when a mob tried to attack a patrol vehicle at Hegganahalli in Rajagopal Nagar police limits as violence flared up in Bengaluru city with rampaging mobs setting fire to buses and trucks with Tamil Nadu registration plates.



[ALSO READ: Cauvery water protests - More than 20 buses torched]

Two were brought with bullet injuries. One with bullet injury near the heart has died. The other is being operated for injury on right thigh, Dr. Giridhar, Managing Director of Lakshmi Multi-Speciality Hospital, where they were taken said.



Soon after the apex court gave its amended order, directing Karnataka to release 12000 cusecs of water daily to Tamil Nadu till September 20, violence and arson flared up in Bengaluru, with rampaging mobs setting afire at least 30 vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu number plates.



[IN PICS: Cauvery water war - Karnataka burns as protests turn violent]



As violence broke out sending a wave of panic across Bengaluru, the city was brought under prohibitory orders till September 14. A prominent transport company depot in the city bore the brunt with at least 30 buses going up in flames.



Managing Director of Salem headquartered KPN Tours and Travels Limited Rajesh Natarajan claimed in Chennai 40 of his buses were set on fire.

[ALSO READ: Cauvery water protests highlights - 30 buses torched; curfew imposed]



Incidents of arson came even as police said they have made elaborate security arrangements with 15,000 policemen being deployed, bolstered by Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve Police, Rapid Action Force, Quick Reaction Teams, special forces, Central Industrial Security Force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force.



In view of the deteriorating situation, the Centre rushed 10 companies (about 1,000 personnel) of the special anti-riot paramilitary force RAF to Karnataka.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Consider this: A convicted criminal-turned-politician, Mohammad Shahabuddin, out on bail after eleven years in jail has the temerity to take a jibe at the chief minister of the state that incarcerated him. He is no ordinary criminal though. He walked into the hallowed portals of Parliament by a combination of political patronage and and brute muscle power.



His reputation preceded him, thanks to the reign of terror he had unleashed in his political constituency and karm-bhoomi, Siwan - the city in Bihar that gave the Indian republic its first President.



Shahabuddin's release from Bhagalpur Jail hit headlines not just because of the terror tag he carries, but also because of his closeness to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo and former chief minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad.



Lalu, on his part, has been more than eager to flaunt his protege, despite Shahabuddin's notoriety as a criminal. One of the kodak moments of the duo that should win the best representative photo award of a symbiotic criminal-politician relationship shows Siwan's 'Saheb' feeding Lalu from his hands, literally and figuratively.



Not that a convicted criminal is expected to openly sing paeans of his political master but the fact that he draws his credibility and standing from the worthy politician is never lost on him. His career graph soars and dips with the politician's ability to flit in and out of power.



In Indian political milieu a criminal worth his terror quotient and not being patronised by a worthy politician is unthinkable. The slow-paced electoral reforms ensure politicians have a field day scouting and cultivating such talents. Usually such talents are also tested in a caste cauldron; a politician seeks to leverage the criminal's caste antecedents for his own political sustenance. In Shahabuddin's case it was the Muslim vote-bank at the centre of Lalu's political jugglery.



So with Lalu's ascendance as Bihar's chief minister and later as the husband of the chief minister one man whose stature grew in proportion to the couple who ruled from 1, Anne Marg was Mohammed Shahabuddin. Lalu was the darling of the masses, and, Shahabuddin, the uncrowned king of Siwan whose acts of cruelty travelled beyond pachas-pachas kos dur.



The nineties was an interesting era of Indian politics. The Sarkar in New Delhi was cobbled together by buying out opposition members of Parliament in the biggest bribery deal in Indian politics ever. When JMM bribery case did not make headlines Lalu Yadav's doses of earthy humour travelled all the way from Madhepura and Patna and parked themselves on the front pages of Delhi dailies. The newly emerging electronic media discovered audience lapped up the news on Lalu with considerable glee.



The issue of Mandal and Kamandal had already polarised Indian politics. Having stopped LK Advani's Rath at Samastipur in 1990, Lalu had been catapulted at the forefront of the anti-hindutva forces. He was now hailed as the new messiah of the minorities.



Already an undisputed leader of the Gop (Yadavs), Lalu wanted to cement his standing among the masses. Muslims along with Yadavs were the new pawns on Lalu's political chessboard now. Muslim-Yadav (MY) equation proved to be a winning formula that would yield him huge dividends next decade and a half. The troika of Mohd Shahabuddin along with Mohd Ali Ashraf Fatmi and Taslimuddin were the new mascots of 'M' of Lalu's 'MY' political jugglery.



This Muslim-Yadav combo did stand him in good stead even when Lalu hit a rough patch following corruption charges in 'chara-ghotala' that threw him off his mount and threatened to render him politically irrelevant. His wife saved the day for him as Lalu continued to pull the strings from behind the curtains. One man's political survival did come at a great cost to clean polity though.



A semblance of law and order was visible by its absence as Bihar plunged further into chaos. Opposition charged Lalu with perpetuating a jungle raj in Bihar. But as long as Lalu enjoyed the support of MY, it was difficult to translate the gravity of those charges into a wave of protest against him on the ground Lalu's almost celestial halo would take its own time to come unstuck.



At the peak of chaara ghotala, Lalu Yadav fielded his trusted lieutenant, strongman and MLA Mohd Shahabuddin for Lok Sabha. For the next decade or so, between 1996 to 2008, Mohd Shahabuddin would go on to win four consecutive Lok Sabha elections on RJD ticket from Siwan.



But nemesis did catch up with Lalu as his one-time friend-turned-political rival Nitish Kumar upstaged him in 2005 state elections. And yet again after ten months, with an even larger mandate.



With Lalu's graph taking a nose-dive, Shahabuddin too ran out of luck. As Nitish took over the reins of Bihar, he ensured Lalu's right hand man was better off behind bars.



But as they say, in politics there is nothing absolutely permanent. Neither friends, nor foes. Neither friend-turned-foes. Because they can shake hands to be bedfellows again. Lalu and Nitish are friends again ending almost two decades of bitter rivalry.



Each of them has his own reason to stick together. Each of them has an attendant circumstance to justify their political position.

Shahabuddin summed it up well. Nitish sure is a CM of circumstance; a compromised image of his earlier no-nonsense self who blew the lights out of Lalu's lantern to stake his worthy claim as Bihar's ruler in 2005. Just as a combination of circumstances coupled with a stroke of good luck has put Lalu back into a bargaining position - a status where he can call the shots once again and bask in the glory of being the de-facto ruler of Bihar.

But, will gains for Lalu translate into gains for Bihar? The answer is a huge NO. The release of Shahabuddin on bail has deepened that perception beyond reasonable doubt.



History shall judge Lalu as a victim of the circumstances of his own making. And when that chapter is being written, who else but criminal-turned-politician Mohd Shahabuddin would qualify to be the best man to write little more than a circumstantial epilogue on his political mentor.



(The views expressed in the column are solely those of the author)

For all the Latest News, NN Blog News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Srinagar:

Two youths were killed on Tuesday while several others were injured as fresh clashes broke out between security forces and stone-pelting protesters in Kashmir where authorities have imposed curfew in all 10 districts.

Soon after Eid prayers ended in Bandipora, a group of protesters started hurling stones at security forces who retaliated by firing tear smoke shells and pellet guns, a police official said.

He said 20-year-old Murtaza Ahmed was hit by a tear smoke shell resulting in his death. Several others were injured in the security forces' action in Bandipora town.

Clashes were also reported from South Kashmir after a youth, Shahid Ahmed, was killed during fresh protests at Bonpora in Shopian district, another police official said.

With these deaths, the toll in the ongoing agitation in Kashmir has risen to 78.



Despite strict curfew, protests erupted after Eid prayers across Kashmir. Protests were also reported from the Sopore area in which one woman was critically injured.

According to the reports, people defied the curfew and staged pro-azadi protests at different places. Protestors turned violent at some places and clashed with the security forces.



For the first time in many years, authorities on Tuesday imposed curfew in all 10 districts of the Kashmir Valley on Eid even as helicopters and drones have been pressed into service for surveillance.

Also read:

Eid al-Adha: Curfew imposed in entire Valley, choppers and drones keeping vigil



Restrictions on assembly of large number of people have been imposed in view of the call by separatists for a march to the local offices of the United Nations on Tuesday, coinciding with the global bodys Opening of 71st Session of the UN General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York.



The Army, which has been asked to be on standby, will step in if there is fresh outbreak of violence in the Valley, which has been witnessing widespread unrest for over two months leading to death of over 75 people so far, official sources said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi :

Chikungunya is taking its toll in Delhi, with at least five deaths due to the vector-borne disease reported in the last two days, including one on Tuesday in the national capital where its number of cases have climbed to over 1,000 this season.



75-year-old Prakash Kalra of Mathura died of the disease this evening at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, where three other elderly men succumbed to it on Monday.



aHe was brought to our hospital in a very aggressive stage of disease, having suffered kidney failure. He was admitted yesterday in the ICU and his chikungunya RT-PCR test had come positive,a hospital authorities said.



Death of a 22-year-old girl from chikungunya at the Hindu Rao Hospital was also reported today. She had died on September 1, officials said.



Two of the three deaths that took place yesterday at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, were reported today as well.



65-year-old Ramendra Pandey yesterday had died of chikungunya at the same hospital, in what could be the first such death in the national capital.

CM n min left wid no power now, even to buy a pen. LG n PM enjoy all powers wrt Del. LG abroad.Question them for Del https://t.co/t8ygcZmo1P a Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) September 13, 2016

Dr B S Rana, Chairman, Board of Management of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, said in all the four deaths which have taken place, the victims were elderly.



aUday Shanker (61) of Dwarka was admitted on September 11 and he died on September 12. His RT-PCR test for chikungunya had come positive. He had come to our OPD and then admitted.



aAshok Chauhan, 62, from Aligarh also died of chikungunya yesterday. He too was admitted in ICU on September 11 and his RT-PCR test came positive,a hospital authorities said.



Doctors say that chikungunya is not a life-threatening disease in general, but in rare cases leads to complications that prove fatal, especially in children and old persons.



Incidentally, Isha of Kabir Nagar area, died at Hindu Rao Hospital, one of the biggest municipal hospitals in Delhi, due to acomplications triggered by chikungunyaa.



aShe was admitted on August 26 at the hospital. Her chikungunya test had come positive. She died due to cardiac arrest triggered by complications from chikungunya,a a senior doctor at the Hindu Rao Hospital said.



Pandey, who was referred to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital from a Ghaziabad hospital, had succumbed to the disease at the hospital at 4 AM after suffering chikungunya with sepsis.



Incidentally, one suspected chikungunya death has also been reported at the AIIMS, but hospital authorities are yet to confirm it. According to reports, the achikungunya deatha at the AIIMS took place sometime in September.



Chikungunya cases in the national capital have sharply risen to over 1,000 this season, marking a jump of nearly 90 per cent from its count last week.



According to a municipal report released yesterday, at least 1,057 cases of this vector-borne disease have been recorded till September 10, however, hospitals in the city altogether are reporting much higher number.



Lalit Dar of Department of Microbiology at AIIMS said, aAt our laboratories, 1,360 chikungunya blood test samples have tested positive till September 11.aA

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

An uneasy calm prevailed in Bengaluru on Tuesday after outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery River water with Tamil Nadu, as Karnatakas Siddaramaiah government warned of stringent action against vandalism or attempts to disturb peace.

As the water war between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka escalated, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday appealed for peace and said he has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to intervene in the matter. Siddaramaiah said that he will most probably meet the PM on Wednesday and will also request him to call Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.



Here is what all Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said while addressing a Press Conference:



#Once again I appeal to all to please cooperate

#We have full confidence in judiciary

#I will request PM to call TN CM Jayalalithaa as well



#But problem arose yesterday at Mysore Road even after that, so we brought in more security forces today

#Violence is not a solution to any problem. We have to maintain peace and tranquillity in the society

#It is true that violence is not a solution to any problem. We have to maintain peace and tranquillity in the society

#In sensitive areas where Ganesh Chaturthi, Onam & BakrEid are being celebrated we have deployed security forces

#I have written to the Prime Minister to intervene in the matter, have asked for an appointment immediately. Most probably I will meet him tomorrow.



#Was water released today?: Reporter. Yes we have been releasing water today, on and off: K'taka CM



#Difficult to implement SC order, bt will make sure theres enough drinking water for B'lore, Mysore, Mandya, other Cauvery basin area

#If you dont show volatility it will help. Bengaluru isnt just capital for Karnataka but an international city - Silicon Valley of India



#I need media's cooperation in bringing the situation to normal. Please join hands with the govt

#I need the media's co-operation in bringing the situation to normal. Please join hands with the Govt

#Whoever lost his or her life in police firing, will get Rs 10 lakh compensation



#As per the order we've released water for six days. The order is hard to follow but we'll still follow the SC order



#People should not take law in their own hands, don't cause damage to public property

#But we have had to deal with the situation arising out of it, we have to implement in the executive what judiciary has directed

#The inability to implement the 5th Sep judgement is the reason why yesterdays direction came from the SC

#We have been facing injustice on #CauveryIssue for a very long time



#One additional army brigade deployed in South Kashmir to assist civil administration to maintain peace



#Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah addresses the media

What PM Narendra Modi said on Karnataka violence?



Earlier on Tuesday, Modi expressed pain over the developments in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the Cauvery water dispute and appealed for peace while underlining that violence cannot provide solution to any problem.



He asserted that the dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit and breaking the law is not a viable alternative.



Situation that has emerged in Karnataka & Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of issue of distribution of waters of Cauvery River, is distressful.I am personally pained at the developments, he said in a statement.



Violence cannot provide a solution to any problem. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint and mutual dialogue, he said.



Karnataka witnessed a violent Monday



One person was killed and another injured in police firing in Karnataka on Monday as the Cauvery water sharing row with Tamil Nadu turned violent, escalating tensions between the two states. As Bangalore witnessed widespread violence bringing it on the edge, night curfew was imposed in 16 police station limits late Tuesday night. Several buses were set on fire and shops were attacked.



The Supreme Court, modifying its September 5 order, had on Tuesday asked Karnataka to release a reduced amount of 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery River water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.



Supreme Courts September 5 order

In its September five order, the apex court had directed release of 15,000 cusecs for 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers of the neighbouring state, which had triggered strong protests from farmers and pro-Kannada outfits with Karnataka observing a bandh against it on September nine.



700 additional central forces rush to Karnataka

An additional 700 riot control police personnel were on Tuesday rushed to Karnataka to tackle the situation arising out of the protests over Cauvery river water sharing. The Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel have been sent to the violence-prone areas of Karnataka to assist the local administration to ensure peace, official sources said.



With this, a total of 1,700 paramilitary personnel have been deployed in violence-hit areas of Karnataka for maintaining law and order.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi :

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has referred the report of Baswan committee, that has suggested changes in civil services exam pattern, to the government for final decision.

The UPSC had constituted the expert committee under the chairmanship of former Human Resource Development Secretary and retired IAS officer B S Baswan in August last year.

The panel had submitted its report to the UPSC last month in a sealed cover and it has been sent to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) for a final decision on the committees recommendations, official sources said today.

The committee is understood to have recommended reduction in upper age limit of 32 years to appear in the civil services exam, they said.

Lakhs of aspirants appear in the examination conducted annually by UPSC in three stagespreliminary, main and interviewto select officers for Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Police Service (IPS), among others.

A candidate must have attained the age of 21 years and must not have attained the age of 32 years on the 1st of August, 2016, as per the latest notification for the exam.

The upper age limit is further extendable for candidates belonging to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Other Backward Classes, and those who had ordinarily been domiciled in Jammu and Kashmir during the period from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 1989.

The Baswan committee has examined the plan of examination, number of papers, their structure and duration, marking scheme, weightage of marks and system of evaluation among others, the sources said.

The committee was earlier asked to submit its report within six months but it was given an extension for a further period of six months, till last month end. It submitted the report on August 9.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Japanese auto major Toyota hogged the limelight in the Indian auto markets by launching the upgraded versions of mid-sized sedan Etios and hatchback Liva earlier in the day.

The sedan Etios and hatchback Liva have been priced between Rs 5.24 lakh and Rs 8.87 lakh (ex-showroom Mumbai). Toyota, which operates in India through a joint ventue Toyota Kirloskar Motor -- with the Kirloskar group, has named the new sedan Platinum Etios. It is available in both petrol and diesel versions. The petrol option of the Etios is powered by a 1.5 litre engine and is priced between Rs 6.43 lakh and Rs 7.74 lakh, while the diesel option is powered by a 1.4 litre engine with a price tag ranging from Rs 7.56 lakh to Rs 8.87 lakh.

The new Liva, on the other hand, has a 1.2 litre petrol engine and is priced between Rs 5.24 lakh and Rs 6.28 lakh, while the diesel version of the hatchback with a 1.4 litre engine is priced between Rs 6.61 lakh and Rs 7.44 lakh, all prices (ex-showroom Mumbai). "We have been getting continuous customer feedback and improving the Etios family. The new Platinum Etios and the new Liva altogether have 20 changes, including safety and comfort features, over the previous versions," TKM Director and Senior Vice President N Raja told reporters at Bengaluru.

Safety features such as airbags and ABS will be available across all variants of the two models, he added. He said the company has sold a total of over 3.3 lakh units from the Etios family since it was launched in December 2010. "We are prepared to produce as many units of the two cars depending on customer demand," he said, when asked about the company's sales expectations of the new cars. The company is targeting more customers in personal usage segment with the new design and upgrades.

The advanced versions of the new Platinum Etios will be priced higher by Rs 10,000-22,000 as compared to the older versions. TKM is keeping the existing design for the entry level variant of the Etios unchanged targeting the fleet segment. It will, however, be costlier by around Rs 12,000. Toyota had developed the Etios family as a car meant for the Indian market but didn't meet the success that it had desired.

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Patna:

The controversy following Mohammad Shahabuddins remarks against Bihar Chief Minister has not gone down well with the JD(U) rank and file as RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav sought to play it down. He said that the controversy was created by the media and asserted that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is the leader of the RJD-JD(U) coalition.



The RJD president, however, defended party strongman Mohammad Shahabuddin, saying he did not made any derogatory comments. This turmoil is created by the media, Lalu said.

[ALSO READ: Lalu, Shahabuddin and the murky Bihar politics gift-wrapped in Nitish Kumar's 'sushasan']



With fissures appearing in the ruling coalition following RJD vice-president Raghubansh Prasad Singhs remarks on Kumar while supporting Shahabuddins comment that he was Chief Minister by circumstance, Prasad asserted Nitish Kumar is the leader of the coalition.



The coalition is intact and there is no danger to it, Prasad, whose son Tejaswi Yadav is Deputy Chief Minister and another son Tej Pratap Yadav is the state Health Minister, said.



While he did not see any derogatory contents in the utterances of Shahabuddin while coming out of Bhagalpur jail on Saturday after getting bail from the Patna High Court, the RJD chief did not appreciate comments of Raghubansh Prasad Singh on Kumar.



Despite telling him repeatedly, Raghubansh Singh speaks something to media, he said, adding he would speak to everybody within the party and tell them categorically not to make unnecessary comments about coalition.On Shahabuddin saying that for him Prasad is the leader and Kumar is Chief Minister due to circumstance, the RJD chief said, He is a member of RJD, so what is wrong if he says I am his leader.



He said Shahabuddins release was part of a judicial process and the government had no role in it. Shahabuddin walked out of jail after 11 years on the basis of bail from the Patna High Court, he said.



On Shahabuddins comment that Kumar is not a mass leader, Prasad said no one becomes a mass leader on someones comment in favour or against it.



Asked if he agreed to Shahabuddins comment that Kumar was circumstantial chief minister, Prasad told mediaperson not to irritate him.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

China has condemned its East Asian neighbors Japan over a report that states that Japan plans to sell search and rescue aircraft to India at a lower cost. China reacted vehemently to the report and said that it would consider such a move "disgraceful" if it is aimed at pressuring Beijing over the disputed South China Sea issue.

"I have noted this report. We hold no objection to normal state to state cooperation including defence cooperation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying told media briefing at Beijing.

"But if the report is true that if someone is making unrighteous move then this is very disgraceful," she said replying to a question that Tokyo plans sell USD 1.6 billion worth of Shinmaywa US-2+ search and rescue aircraft to India at a cheaper rates to strengthen security cooperation with New Delhi.

Asked to elaborate on why China regards this sale of weapons disgraceful, Hua said "we hold no objection to state to state cooperation including defence cooperation as long is such cooperation is normal".

"But as reported that the Japanese government is to cut the price to sell weapons to India with an aim to pressurise China on the South China Sea issue and such attempt is targeted at China. If such a report is true then we don't think the purpose such cooperation is righteous".

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi :

Two wanted sharpshooters, including wanted shooter, were spotted with RJD strongman Mohammad Shahabuddin after he walked out of prison on bail after 11 years on September 10, reports said on Tuesday.

1. Shooter wanted in Siwan journalist murder case spotted with Shahabuddin

Mohammad Kaif is wanted in the murder case of journalist Rajdev Ranjan. Another shooter seen with Shahabuddin is named Javed, ANI reported. Police probe against the accused Mohammad Kaif in Journalist Rajdev Ranjan murder case is underway ,Siwan SP Saurabh Shah said.

2. Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain says 'no chikungunya outbreak';

Amid mounting criticism over the spread of vector-borne diseases in the city, Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain claimed that there is no chikungunya outbreak in the city even as the death toll rose to 4 on Tuesday.

3. Cauvery water row: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah appeals for peace

An uneasy calm prevailed in Bengaluru on Tuesday after the outbreak of violence over the issue of sharing Cauvery River water with Tamil Nadu, as Karnatakas Siddaramaiah government warned of stringent action against vandalism or attempts to disturb the peace.

4. Shivpal Singh Yadav replaces Akhilesh Yadav as Samajwadi Party's Uttar Pradesh unit President

The rift within the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh widened on Tuesday as party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav replaced his son and Chief Minister Akhilesh as the state unit chief with his brother and senior minister Shivpal Singh Yadav.

5. Hyderabad: Wife commits suicide after techie husband beats her up for leaving the geyser on

A woman committed suicide after she was beaten up by her husband for leaving the geyser on for too long. 31-year-old Susrutha is married to Mohan Rao, a software engineer. Her elder son told the police that his father had beaten his mother.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The Delhi government on Tuesday put the onus on Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and the Centre for the outbreak of dengue and chikungunya in the national capital even as Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues came in for criticism for remaining absent from the city.



Kejriwal, who returned from Punjab on Monday, said Jung and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be questioned over the issue as all powers rested with them.

[ALSO READ: Kejriwal govt needs 'proof' of chikungunya deaths]

CM n min left wid no power now, even to buy a pen. LG n PM enjoy all powers wrt Del. LG abroad. Question them for Del, (sic) he tweeted.



Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said in a tweet that officials of the Delhi government were busy following the LGs instructions of going through the files of the past 18 months and sending these to him.

[ALSO READ: Chikungunya-Dengue outbreak with 2200 cases in Delhi: Death toll rises to 5]



There are five ministers left in the Kejriwal cabinet after Sandeep Kumars removal. They are Manish Sisodia, Gopal Rai, Satyendra Jain, Kapil Mishra, Imran Hussain.



As the city reels under a major health crisis, virtually the entire Delhi Cabinet is missing from action as Sisodia, Rai and Hussain are out of station. Only Mishra and Jain are in the city. Jain, who was on a two-day Goa visit, returned to Delhi this afternoon.



Kejriwal left for Bengaluru, where he is scheduled to undergo a throat surgery today. He will remain there for 10 days.



Sisodia is in Finland to study its education system for about two-three days. Labour Minister Gopal Rai is in Chhattisgarh, while Environment Minister Imran Hussain is on Haj pilgrimage. Also, Lt Governor Najeeb Jung is in the United States for 10 days.



Three persons have died due to chikungunya in Delhi. While one death was reported yesterday, two more fatalities were recorded today. The dengue and malaria toll stand at nine and two respectively.



Former chief minister Sheila Dikshit hit out at Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues for touring other states while Delhi is reeling under chikungunya.



As far as I know, all the ministers are out of Delhi. It is the responsibility of the government...More than negligence, it is a matter of playing with the lives of people, Dikshit said. Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken slammed Kejriwal and Jung for passing the buck.



State BJP chief Satish Upadhyay also denounced Kejriwal and his ministers for remaining absent from the city even as he directed the party-ruled MCDs to make best efforts to halt the spread of chikungunya and dengue.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.


I WOULD like to thank the kind samaritans who took me home on Sunday night just when I had decided the only way to get home from Princes Risborough was on foot not only a long cold walk but as I was dressed in dark clothes also quite dangerous.

This kind couple had been carol singing and although they were going home in the opposite direction, drove me all the way home. For some reason it was impossible to get a taxi and the taxi offices were closed.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

DANBURY  The former owner of Tonellis, a once-popular Italian restaurant in downtown Bethel, was found guilty of sex-assault charges Tuesday after accepting a plea deal calling for no jail time.

Antonio Fernandes was arrested in April 2013 on several charges, including two counts of first-degree sexual assault, after two waitresses said he had raped them at the restaurant. Fernandes had disputed the charges, claiming the sex was consensual.

But in state Superior Court in Danbury on Tuesday, he pleaded no contest to two counts of unlawful restraint and two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault as part of a deal with prosecutors calling for a 10-year suspended prison sentence and three years of probation.

Fernandes entered the plea on Tuesday as the courts were preparing for a trial.

A no-contest plea means a defendant denies guilt but concedes prosecutors likely have enough evidence to obtain a conviction. Such a plea typically helps protect a defendant against potential civil claims, although no claims have been filed in the case.

Fernandes was tried in October 2014, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict after six days of deliberation.

Assistant States Attorney Sharmese Hodge said the plea agreement was a reasonable disposition, given the circumstances of the case. She said the victims would have preferred to see Fernandes serve prison time and register as a sexual offender, but the plea can give them some closure after their encounters with Fernandes five years ago.

They still believe he is a sexual predator, she said.

One of the women, who was 20 at the time, said she was walking to a storage room at the back of the restaurant one night in December 2011 when Fernandes wrapped his arms around her waist and sexually assaulted her, according to court records. The woman claimed Fernandes ignored her pleas for him to stop, the affidavit said.

The woman later described the incident to a co-worker, who said Fernandes had sexually assaulted her several months earlier, court documents state. That waitress, who was 26 at the time, claimed Fernandes called her into his basement office, where he first showed her a pornographic video, then grabbed her and sexually assaulted her, according to the affidavit.

The two women, who later became roommates, waited nearly a year to report the incidents and continued working at the restaurant until shortly before going to police in October 2012, according to court documents. They told police they didnt report the incidents sooner because they were afraid of their boss.

Attorney Gene Zingaro, who represented Fernandes, credited Hodge of doing an admirable job representing the interests of both the state and the victims.

The defendant is happy with the resolution to the case, he said.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

BETHEL  Three conservationists waded through the waste-high muck and brown water of the Sympaug Brook on Monday afternoon, pausing to measure and make note of the streams failing water quality.

This isnt the worst weve seen, said Mike Jastremski, director of the watershed conservation program at the Housatonic Valley Association.

The Sympaug Brook is just a piece of the 40 stream miles the association is surveying to create an action plan for the Still River watershed. The plan will be used to implement restoration projects to improve water quality, recreational opportunities and mitigate flood damage. The organization began working on the project in 2014, with the bulk of the field work starting last April. The action plan wont be ready for at least another year, based on the size of the watershed and its complex issues.

The association is focusing on the streams in the Still River watershed the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection considers impaired. This is slightly less than half of the total stream miles that make up the Still River watershed, which includes parts of Danbury, Bethel, Brookfield, New Milford, New Fairfield and Ridgefield.

HVA is examining water near impervious surfaces, especially in Bethel where the town is piloting a stormwater program through the Western Connecticut Council of Governments.

Where that raindrop hits the ground, we want it to be sucked into the ground as close to where it falls as possible, Jastremski said.

Conservation project managers Savannah Judge and Ryan Williams look for eight possible indicators of a water-quality problem while out on the one-mile sections of water, including impaired buffers, severely eroding banks, utilities crossing the stream, large piles of trash and stream crossings.

One of the quickest ways to determine a possible problem is if water is flowing from an outfall, such as a pipe or drain during dry conditions. Only stormwater should be traveling through these outfalls, so movement during other times could indicate a possible illicit discharge. This is why the group surveys after 48 hours without rain.

The second big indicator is the presence of nitrogen and ammonia in the water. This generally indicates sewage or animal waste.

Each section is then scored using a rubric with a maximum possible score of 160, which will help prioritize the projects. So far, Judge and Williams have found streams ranging from 40 to 120.

Sometimes Im surprised to find less impacts than I thought there would be, Williams said. They have yet to find a perfect score because many places are overgrown with invasive plants, but several places have had a lot of fish and animals.

About $104,000, or 60 percent, of the total watershed plan project is covered by a grant through the federal Clean Water Act. Other grants helped cover the rest of the cost. The plan will help the association secure more money for remediation projects, Jastremski said.

The three conservationists have ideas for remediation projects, including for the section they surveyed Monday across from Parloa Field.

A place like this is great, Jastremski said. We could easily do a buffer planting on either side.

Adding vegetation to the stream banks has the approval of Elaine Dube, a concerned resident who has lived next to the stream for 50 years.

Its a shame, said told the conservationists as they worked next to her home.

Dube has seen the stream deteriorate within the past 15 years as more trees fall into it and the bank erodes. She said she was concerned about the town sewer line running along the stream, and the lot across the street where the snow cleared from the roads is stored in winter.

After speaking with the conservationists, though, she said she was excited the association was studying the stream and was hopeful about fixing her section by planting buffers.

Judge, who recorded Dubes comments along with the teams observations of the site, said residents feedback is valuable for the plan and developing projects. It raises public awareness about the watershed.

In a lot of places, the streams are out of sight, out of mind, Judge said.

Its something the association hopes to rectify with the plan and projects.

We want to raise awareness about it, and that it can be a great amenity for the community, Jastremski said.

kkoerting@newstimes.com; 203-731-3345
Delta made headlines last week, and not in a good way.

The airline grounded, canceled and delayed more than 4,000 flights within three days, leaving customers stranded, fuming and frustrated. Still, Delta did a good job scrambling to fix the system failures responsible and the company combined this with proactive communication via social media and its website newsroom to mend relationships with customers they unintentionally hung out to dry.

While many believe Delta will walk away from the incident unscathed no matter how the company handles the situation, the truth of the matter is that customer loyalty is at stake. And Delta knows it. Thats why the airline is working around the clock to communicate with customers; offer alternative solutions; and build trust in the face of uncertainty.

Delta isnt the first company to fail its customers in a massive way, and it wont be the last. Ultimately, these instances unearth opportunity - a chance to be transparent and win customer loyalty for the long haul. Mistakes happen, and thats okay. Brands can come away from failure stronger than ever as long as its handled the right way.

From small customer service hiccups to massive debacles, here are four tips to help you come out of any crisis stronger than ever before.

1. Communication is key.

Before you communicate with customers, make sure youve communicated internally. Its important to come together as an organization to figure out what happened, what needs to be done and what should be said externally. That way, when it comes time to communicate with customers, everyone is on the same page, the message is well thought out and delivered seamlessly.

Once youve worked out a communication strategy, cut off any unnecessary advertising and marketing campaigns. Doing so gets rid of any extra noise, allowing you and your team to focus on delivering the information that is most important. It also ensures that customers can easily find news and updates without distraction.

When it comes time to bring customers into the conversation, be transparent. Explain what the issue is, why it happened and whats being done to resolve it. This information should be shared on every channel - from the company website and newsletters to Internet forums, social channels and everything inbetween. Leave no stone unturned. And be sure to keep information and updates consistent across channels to avoid confusion.

Take Delta, for example.

The moment delays and cancellations began to accumulate, Delta dedicated its website and social channels to communicating updates. Whats more, Delta CEO Ed Bastian, openly and honestly explained the situation and recovery process to customers, apologizing for the mishap and promising it wont happen again.

Related: The 'When' and 'How' of Using PR Correctly

2. Show compassion. Dont make excuses.

As you engage with customers, make sure to maintain a consistent tone of voice, and show empathy from start to finish.

Dont say or publish anything that feels impersonal or cold. And, as you explain what went wrong, be prepared to take full responsibility even if some circumstances are unavoidable.

Finally, its important to go beyond the obvious "Im sorry." Show customers you know what theyre going through and that you understand their frustration. If this is done well, customers will be more forgiving. If its done poorly, youre in for a social media storm that could very well spill over into traditional media. The result? A series of unflattering headlines that will stick with you longer than youd like.

Following the disappearance of Malaysia flight MH370, the airline sent an insensitive text to inform relatives of the deceased that the plane had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. As you can imagine, the company received widespread criticism, as angry customers took to Twitter and the media. Although this case called for extreme care and caution, its an important reminder that all situations should be addressed with appropriate compassion.

Related: How to Gracefully Handle an Online PR Crisis

3. Keep employees informed.

Every department plays a role in crisis management.

Make sure all employees are aware of whats going on and that they understand their role in resolving the issue. At the end of the day, your employees will be left to handle the brunt of customer frustration. Thats why every team member should be kept up-to-date with the latest information.

During Black Friday last November, we watched customers become frustrated with some retailers for lack of proper information on inventory location. What made it worse was clerks were telling people to shop online, and online sites were telling customers the asset sat in the store. Its important to ensure everyone sees the same information.

Whats more, youll need to empower your employees to comfort upset customers and offer solutions to make the situation better. For example, a hotel chain that is experiencing power outages should empower employees to assist guests in booking alternative accommodations, compensating those displaced by the incident.

Related: Starbucks Couldn't Buy Better PR Than the Red Cups Coverage. Here's What We Can Learn From It.

4. Make things right.

While you work out the kinks and resolve whatever has gone wrong, be sure to offer a solution.

For example, Delta is allowing delayed customers to reschedule their flights free of charge. On top of that, the company is giving out $200 vouchers for delayed customers - a move that will encourage customers to continue flying Delta down the road.

In some situations, youll want to work with each customer on a case-by-case basis, prioritizing the most urgent cases first. This ensures that each unique situation is handled with care. Forexample, Delta brought in its private jet fleet to help transport some stranded passengers more quickly.

Outages happen. Weather gets in the way. Systems go down, and products break. Its all part of being in business.

In an ideal world, wed be able to avoid these disasters that cause both customers and companies a whole lot of heartache. But sometimes failure is unavoidable. At that point, its all about how your brand handles the situation. With each hiccup, there comes opportunity. If you treat customers with care and respect, youre likely to walk away with stronger, long-lasting relationships.

Related:

4 Tips for Handling a Delta-Sized Customer Experience Debacle

Your Hashtag and Your Brand Go Hand in Hand

7 Tips for Getting Your Money's Worth Now That You've Hired a PR Firm



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
A Canadian judge is facing the possibility of removal from the bench after he faulted a 19-year-old woman who said she was raped for not doing enough to defend herself during the alleged attack and suggesting that she wanted to have sex.

Among Federal Court Justice Robin Camp's remarks during a 2014 sexual assault trial, according to a notice of allegations posted on the Canadian Judicial Council website:

"Why couldn't you just keep your knees together? Why didn't you just sink your bottom down into the basin so he couldn't penetrate you?"

Young women, the judge said, "want to have sex, particularly if they're drunk," according to the notice.

He also said that "some sex and pain sometimes go together" and "that's not necessarily a bad thing."

Camp's controversial remarks resulted in an investigation by the Canadian Judicial Council, a federal body that polices judges.

He is expected to testify Friday before a five-member committee as part of a week-long proceeding that began Tuesday and will end next week in Calgary, Alberta.

The committee will decide on Camp's fate after hearing evidence and testimony.

Camp made the comments during a five-day trial in June 2014. At the time, he was appointed to the Alberta Provincial Court Criminal Division in Calgary. He became a federal judge last year.

The woman had accused a Calgary man, Alexander Wagar, of raping her over a bathroom sink during a house party.

Camp acquitted Wagar in September 2014. The woman appealed, and the Alberta Court of Appeal overturned Camp's ruling, according to a statement of facts. Wagar is scheduled for a second trial in November.

The Canadian Judicial Council's investigation began in November 2015, after four law professors filed a complaint against Camp, who later recused himself from any cases involving sex crimes, according to the statement of facts.

Members of the public later followed suit in filing complaints.

In December, the Alberta attorney general filed a formal complaint against Camp and referred the matter to what's called an "inquiry committee," which is made up of three judges and two lawyers.

The committee will decide whether Camp should be removed from the bench.

According to the notice of allegations, Camp's "rude and derogatory" comments "belittle(d) and trivialize(d) the nature of the allegations." He also made "stereotypical assumptions about how someone confronted with sexual assault would or would not behave."

The woman, whose identity has been concealed, said the judge's remarks made her hate herself, CBC News reported.

"He made me feel like I should have done something, like I was some kind of a slut," she said.

During the proceeding, Camp's daughter, who said she herself is a rape victim, testified that her father's comments were "disgraceful."

But, she said, she stands behind her father, according to CBC News.

Lauren Camp wrote that although her father is "old-fashioned in some ways" and does not completely understand "how women think," he is not "an inherent or dedicated sexist," CBC News reported.

"I have seen him advance in understanding and empathy for victims, vulnerable litigants and those who have experienced trauma," she wrote.

Camp has since apologized for his conduct. His attorney, Frank Addario, argued that Camp has "consistently shown remorse," records say, and has taken steps "to educate himself and gain insight into his beliefs."

Addario also argued that although Camp made "insensitive and inappropriate" comments, his misconduct can be "remedied by education" and does not warrant removal from office, records say.

Camp also has gone through mentoring, counseling about how victims of abuse respond to trauma, and a crash course on the history and current state of sexual assault law.

Records say Camp did not receive any training or judicial education on sexual assault law or how to preside over sexual assault trials.

A law professor who called Camp's comments "rude and stupid" testified Thursday that she had five educational sessions with Camp and believes he is now familiar with how to deal with sexual assault cases, CBC News reported.

The 64-year-old judge is married with three children. He grew up in South Africa and attended the University of Stellenbosch, where he received degrees in commerce and law, according to a statement of facts from the Canadian Judicial Council.

He later practiced as a barrister in Johannesburg and has represented members of the African National Congress.

Camp moved his family to Botswana in 1992, then to Calgary in 1998.

His practice in Canada mostly focused on contractual, trust, oil and gas, and bankruptcy litigation.

In March 2012, he was appointed to the Alberta Provincial Court Criminal Division in Calgary. He became a federal judge in June 2015.
Blackberry Geared Up For A Comeback To South Korea With Priv

New Delhi, Tue, 13 Sep 2016 NI Wire

There was a time when BlackBerry enjoyed the cult status in the smartphone market. The device had the then loved premium features and impressive built.

And we are sure most of you must have enjoyed the BlackBerry messenger too, which was what we had back then instead of Watsapp. However, times changed for BlackBerry as more and more companies started stepping in the smartphone arena.

With the onset of smartphones, scenario changed completely and BlackBerry was almost on the verge of going extinct. This is what had happened too. However, latest buss states that BlackBerry is now gearing up for a comeback in the market after being in anonymity for years. Reports say that the company would be returning with a new device in South Korea.

Sources have updated that the Canadian company is gearing up to launch its first ever Android device, named as Priv in the Asian country. The device would be unveiled during an event to be held on September 20.

It is notable that BlackBerry had stepped into South Korean smartphone market in the year 2009. Soon the company decided to pull back when its sales dropped drastically in 2012. It is notable that it was the same year when we saw some other prominent devices exiting the market which included HTC, Nokia, and Motorola. Samsung and LG had taken over the buyer space which resulted in these brands taking a backseat.

With this, BlackBerry has even made it clear that it has no plans of setting up an office in South Korea. But it's all geared up to launch the new Android device and compete with the current giants in the field.

Result On Market

We are already spoiled with choices and with BlackBerry joining the smartphone making league, it would be interesting to see how other devices will face this challenge. It will be a tough fight but as we know the current market is full of some amazing designs and premium devices, and where Prive will stand is something to wait and watch for.

For now, it's just the news about BlackBerry making a comeback, let us know see when it unveils the features of its debut Android device.

Till then, you stay tuned to this space for all the latest updates from the world of smartphones. We will soon be updating you about BlackBerry Priv.
Improving global capacity to respond to public health emergencies, combat antimicrobial resistance, encourage research and development, and build sustainable health systems

OTTAWA, Sept. 13, 2016 /CNW/ - Now, more than ever, countries need resilient, sustainable and equitable health systems in order to protect the health of not only their citizens, but people around the world.

This past week, Canada participated in the G7 Health Ministers' Meeting (HMM) in Kobe, Japan, where discussions focused on concrete actions to advance global health. The Honourable Jane Philpott, Minister of Health, and Dr. Gregory Taylor, Chief Public Health Officer, shared Canada's perspectives with health leaders from other G7 countries and international organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), on actions to advance the health commitments endorsed by G7 Leaders earlier this year. Discussions focused on reinforcing the global health architecture for health emergencies, combatting antimicrobial resistance (AMR), encouraging research and development, and attaining universal health coverage.

Ministers considered how countries can help strengthen existing organizations, including the WHO's central role in enabling and supporting timely, coordinated and effective responses to global public health emergencies. Health leaders also discussed how to build upon and leverage countries' previous commitments and actions on AMR and implement a coordinated, multi-sectoral One Health approach that takes into account people, animals and the environment. They also explored how G7 countries can promote greater sharing and coordination of research and development without duplicating resources. The final session focused on the importance of universal health coverage in ensuring people have access to the health services and support they need to protect and improve the health of all individuals  in particular, those of an ageing population.

Minister Philpott confirmed Canada's support for actions that will help meet these global health commitments and reinforced some of the actions Canada is already taking that will contribute to strengthening emergency health responses, addressing the challenge of AMR and supporting sustainable, resilient and inclusive health systems. She also reiterated Canada's support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in advance of this week's replenishment conference, September 16-17, 2016, in Montreal.

The G7 HMM offered opportunities for Minister Philpott and Dr. Taylor to hold additional meetings with colleagues from Japan, France, Germany and the U.K. to discuss shared health priorities, exchange experiences and discuss opportunities for collaboration in areas such as dementia, medical marijuana and childhood obesity.

Quotes

"Poor health anywhere in the world is a threat to wellness everywhere. That's why meetings such as the G7 HMM are essential to help direct effective, coordinated action to address global health challenges. I am proud to have represented Canada in these fruitful discussions and look forward watching our collective efforts make real strides in improving global health."

The Honourable Jane Philpott

Minister of Health

"Sustainable, responsive health systems are at the heart of any solutions to today's pressing global health challenges. G7 countries have an important role to play in helping all countries strengthen their capacities to respond to public health emergencies, offer equitable and quality health services to their populations, and address antimicrobial resistance. Canada will continue to work with the international community to strengthen global health."

Dr. Gregory Taylor

Chief Public Health Officer

Associated Links

Kobe Communique  Actions agreed to by G7 Health Ministers

G7 Kobe Health Ministers' Meeting

G7 Leaders Summit

Fifth Replenishment Conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria

Follow us on Twitter: @PHAC_GC, @CPHO_Canada

Like us on Facebook: Public Health Agency of Canada

SOURCE Public Health Agency of Canada

For further information: Andrew MacKendrick, Office of Jane Philpott, Minister of Health, 613-957-0200; Media Relations, Public Health Agency of Canada, (613) 957-2983
HAMILTON, ON, Sept. 13, 2016 /CNW/ - "Big data" is of little value to society unless it can be analyzed, interpreted and applied toward improving our response to issues ranging from infectious disease outbreaks to managing food crops to support the growing world population. The Government of Canada recognizes the need to invest in research and partnerships that develop innovative approaches that will improve the well-being of Canadians and strengthen the middle class.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development, Karina Gould, on behalf of the Minister of Science, Kirsty Duncan, today announced an investment of $4 million in 16 new bioinformatics and computational (B/CB) biology research projects to be conducted at academic institutions across Canada. These projects will strengthen the development of new tools to help provide maximum value from research investments in genomics and related fields  areas that produce a massive and ongoing influx of data.

Ms. Gould highlighted the work of McMaster University's Dr. Andrew McArthur, who is a co-leader on two B/CB projects looking to develop new software and database tools that will empower public health agencies and the agri-food sector to more rapidly respond to threats posed by infectious disease outbreaks such as, food-borne illnesses or the growing crisis of microbes resistant to antimicrobials. Dr. McArthur's research will bolster federal action on antimicrobial resistance through stronger surveillance, stewardship and innovation. Other projects will enhance diagnosis and treatment for patients, improve crops of importance to Canada, and strengthen environmental monitoring.

The investments are being made through Genome Canada's 2015 Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Competition, a partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Quick Facts

In life sciences research, data is generated from a variety of sources, including biological research, data-intensive technologies such as quantitative imaging, environmental biodiversity studies, large population cohorts, plant and livestock breeding programs, multi-national clinical trials and e-health initiatives.

In recent years, the increase of data production has been particularly dramatic in genomics and related research fields, specifically in the area of genome sequencing. Some estimates suggest that by 2020, data will be generated at up to one million times the current rate.

The analysis of human genomes will provide the basic knowledge necessary to diagnose, understand and cure many diseases with associated impacts on health care.

Research in the agriculture, energy, environment, fisheries, forestry, and mining sectors is providing important information to guide pest management strategies, sustainable farming practices, natural resource management, crop developments and environmental monitoring in the face of climate change.

Quotes

"The Government of Canada is pleased to support these important bioinformatics and computational biology projects that will maximize the return on investment in genomics research. This work will help guide research that safeguards the well-being of all Canadians and will increase our capacity to respond to important societal challenges like climate change."

 Hon. Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science

"Bioinformatics and Computational Biology is a priority area for Genome Canada given the growing need for enhanced tools and methodologies to make sense of the huge and growing influx of data stemming from genomics research. These projects will advance the useful application of genomics across multiple sectors, harnessing the power of this technology for the benefit of Canadians."

 Mr. Marc LePage, President and CEO, Genome Canada

"Advances in bioinformatics and computational biology are providing scientists with innovative strategies for dealing with the vast amounts of information generated by genomics and extended 'omic' research. These tools will change the way we interpret, store, share and use big data, in a cost-effective way."

 Dr. Paul Lasko, Scientific Director, Institute of Genetics, CIHR

Associated Links

2015 B/CB Competition results  List of Funded Projects

2015 B/CB Competition

Follow Minister Duncan on social media.

Twitter: @ScienceMin

Follow Genome Canada on social media.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN: @GenomeCanada

Follow CIHR on social media.

Twitter: @CIHR_IRSC

Genome Canada is a not-for-profit organization that acts as a catalyst for developing and applying genomics and genomic-based technologies, to create economic and social benefits for Canadians. Genome Canada connects ideas and people across public and private sectors to find new uses for genomics, invests in large-scale science and technology to fuel innovation, and translates discoveries into applications and solutions across key sectors of national importance, including health, agriculture, forestry, fisheries & aquaculture, energy, mining, and the environment.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research(CIHR) is the Government of Canada's health research investment agency. CIHR's mission is to create new scientific knowledge and to enable its translation into improved health, more effective health services and products, and a strengthened health care system for Canadians. Composed of 13 Institutes, CIHR provides leadership and support to more than 13,000 health researchers and trainees across Canada.

SOURCE Canadian Institutes of Health Research

For further information: Media Relations, Innovation, Science andEconomic Development Canada, 343-291-1777, [email protected]; Andrea Matyas, Director, Communications, Genome Canada, 613-790-0106, [email protected]; David Coulombe, Media Relations, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 613-941-4563, [email protected]
After death threats in Bangladesh, Abir continues to fight for free expression from Canada

TORONTO, Sept. 13, 2016 /CNW/ - Author and blogger Raihan Abir will receive the PEN Canada/Ken Filkow Prize at the PEN Canada benefit at the International Festival of Authors, October 22.

Introduced in 2014 in memory of PEN's Canadian Issues Committee member and former Chair of the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, Kenneth A. Filkow, the annual award is presented to an individual or institution in Canada who has shown courage in opposing restraint on freedom of expression and ideas.

Abir, co-author of The Philosophy of Atheism, left Dhaka in June 2015 after the murders of his colleague Avijit Roy, his editor Ananta Bijoy Das, and other secular writers and activists associated with the freethinking website Mukto-Mona.

With the help of PEN Canada, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and Centre for Inquiry Canada, Abir and his pregnant wife, Samia Hossain, applied for asylum in September 2015. After his immigration hearing in November, attended in solidarity by PEN Canada member Rohinton Mistry, Abir was granted refugee status.

Despite continuing death threats Abir has continued to speak out against religious fundamentalism and seek justice for his murdered friends and colleagues. Abir has given a voice to the victims of religious violence and blasphemy legislation, speaking openly with Canadian media and consulting with government officials.

"With a list of really good candidates, the committee's deliberations were nevertheless brief and our choice of Raihan was unanimous," said Canadian Issues Chair, Elise Moser. "He has demonstrated tremendous courage and integrity in defense of freedom of expression."

Abir now lives in Toronto with his wife and young daughter, Sophie.

The PEN Canada/Ken Filkow Prize is valued at $1000, and will be presented to Abir by Filkow's son-in-law, Brian Borzykowski. The prize is funded by Philip Slayton and Cynthia Wine.

Available for interview:

Raihan Abir , Ken Filkow Prize recipient

, Ken Filkow Prize recipient Elise Moser , Chair, Canadian Issues Committee

PEN Canada is a nonpartisan organization of writers that works with others to defend freedom of expression as a basic human right at home and abroad. PEN Canada celebrates literature, fights censorship, helps free persecuted writers from prison, and assists writers living in exile in Canada. www.pencanada.ca

Our thanks to CNW Group for sponsoring this announcement.

SOURCE PEN Canada

Image with caption: "Raihan Abir is the PEN Canada/Ken Filkow Prize recipient. Photo: Chris Thomaidis. (CNW Group/PEN Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160913_C6192_PHOTO_EN_771269.jpg

For further information: For interviews and further information: Amy Smith, PEN Canada, [email protected], 416-703-8448 ext. 27
TORONTO, Sept. 13, 2016 /CNW/ - On September 10, UPS Canada hosted the first annual Pulling for U plane pull event in support of United Way Peel Region at Toronto Pearson International Airport. A total of 14 teams came together to take on the challenge of pulling a UPS Airbus A300 50 feet across the tarmac in the shortest amount of time. The event will help fund local programs aimed at improving peoples quality of life in Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga.

SOURCE UPS Canada Ltd.

Image with caption: "On September 10, UPS Canada hosted the first annual Pulling for U plane pull event in support of United Way Peel Region at Toronto Pearson International Airport. A total of 14 teams came together to take on the challenge of pulling a UPS Airbus A300 50 feet across the tarmac in the shortest amount of time. The event will help fund local programs aimed at improving peoples quality of life in Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga. (CNW Group/UPS Canada Ltd.)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160913_C6906_PHOTO_EN_771549.jpg
The Federal Government will solve the Niger Delta militancy, President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday.

The Federal Government will solve the Niger Delta militancy, President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday.Besides, he assured Nigerians that the patriotic ones should not have any fears about the fight against corruption because his administration will ensure justice and fairness to all.He spoke in his hometown Daura in Katsina State after attending the Eid prayers tocelebrate Eid-El-Kabir.The President, according to a statement by Senior Special Assistant (Media and Publicity) Garba Shehu, said: Nigerians can see what we have done on Boko Haram and what we are doing to resolve the problem in the Niger Delta.Before the elections, we identified three major problems confronting our country. The first is security; we need to sufficiently secure our country to manage it well.The second is economy, especially job for the youths and fighting corruption which is continuous.For the youths, graduates and non-graduates who are interested in agriculture, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the CBN are doing something to provide employment for them, the President said.Although he did not state how the Niger Delta militancy would be solved, the fedral government has confirmed having indirect talks with some of the militant groups.Besides, there is a full troops build up in the region following the launch of Operation Crocodile Smile by the military.The blowing up of oil installations and pipelines in the Niger Delta has reduced the countrys revenue by about 60 per cent, according to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.Buhari also said those who abuse public trust will face justice in addition to returning their stolen assets to the nations coffers.He thanked Nigerians for supporting the Federal Governments policies, programmes and actions aimed at improving security, revamping the economy and deepening the fight against corruption.He expressed joy that the harvest this year would be good. We should thank God this year, the reports Im getting, which is very pleasing, is that we will have a bumper harvest this year.The President said: I want Nigerians to realise that what this government inherited after 16 years of the PDP government was no savings, no infrastructure, no power, no rail, no road and no security, and assured Nigerians that better days lie ahead.
The Eid el-Kabir celebration was marred in different areas of Lagos yesterday, following the death of two persons.

The Eid el-Kabir celebration was marred in different areas of Lagos yesterday, following the death of two persons.It was gathered that one of the celebrants collapsed and died during a drinking competition at Orile, Iganmu area of state. The second victim, it was gathered, who was returning from a friends home was crushed by a vehicle at Ikeja, on Agege Motorway in his attempt to cross the road.On the dead drinker, an eyewitness said that he was with some of his friends on Adeyeye Street, where they were competing on who would finish the largest quantity of a local gin, popularly called sepe. The victim, identified as Onyibo, was said to have gulped down 13 small-sized plastic containers of the local gin, while the other eight competitors were on three, four, six and 10 plastics, respectively.He was reportedly on the 14th when he started coughing. An eyewitness, who gave his name as Kunle Fagba, said: He was offered water but he kept coughing and held on to his chest. Before we knew it, he started vomiting blood and then slumped. At that point, everyone was afraid. His friends, who earlier contemplated on taking him to the hospital, abandoned him at his mechanic workshop and fled. One of the competitors even fell while running away.We were told they had a bet of N5,000 on whoever could finish 20 plastics of sepe.Some of the plastics were bought from local vendors, while they brought some along with them.
The media personality took to his website to condemn the way Nigeria is being governed.



Nigerian youths make una do something o, dem dey steal una future go be dat o."

The media personality took to his website to condemn the way Nigeria is being governed.According to him the current administration has back tracked on the change they promised and now want Nigerians to be the change they want to see.He wrote,
Hackensack Gurbir Grewal 1/4/16

Gurbir Grewal was again nominated for appointment to be Bergen County prosecutor by Gov. Christie. He was sworn in as Acting Bergen County Prosecutor in the Bergen County Justice Center in Hackensack, Jan, 4, 2016 in this file photo. (Myles Ma | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Gov. Chris Christie has again nominated Gurbir Grewal to be Bergen County prosecutor.

Christie announced late Monday that he would ask the state Senate to approve Grewal, who has been serving as acting county prosecutor. Christie previously nominated Grewal for the job in 2013, but the Senate did not approve the appointment.

Grewal was appointed acting prosecutor by Christie in January when former County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli retired from the job.

Grewal said in a statement that he was "extremely honored and humbled" to be nominated by Christie.

"I look forward to meeting with the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss my qualifications and my vision for the office," Grewal said in the statement. "If afforded the opportunity, I would continue to work tirelessly to ensure the safety and well-being of all those who live and work in the county."

Christie's nomination goes before the state Senate's judiciary committee and, if the committee approves, it will be put up to a vote by the full Senate, said State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, who is a member of the judiciary committee. She said she was "looking forward" to having the nomination move before the committee.

"I think he's got an excellent reputation and from a little bit of distance, he seems to have all the qualifications that one would want in a county prosecutor," Weinberg (D-Bergen) said.

Grewal, a Democrat, was the former chief of the Economic Crimes Unit at the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey. Grewal, who lives in Glen Rock, became the state's first Sikh county prosecutor and first of South Asian descent when he took the oath as acting prosecutor.

In 2013, Christie praised Grewal's experience as a federal prosecutor and his diverse background.

Sara Jerde may be reached at sjerde@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SaraJerde. Staff writer Myles Ma contributed to this report.
CHERRY HILL TWP. -- A 14-year-old Williamstown student was accepted to Camden Catholic High School and awarded scholarships earlier this year, but is not attending the school this fall.

Mason Catrambone is transgender, and the school refused to welcome him as a male when the student they had admitted was a female named Madelyn Catrambone, according to a petition supporting him.

The diocese spokesman said the school could not accommodate the student's wishes to live as male there because doing so would "contradict Catholic teaching on gender identity."

Now, the diocese is defending itself after an online petition in support of Mason was circulated. It had nearly 1,400 signatures by Tuesday morning.

"When Camden Catholic learned that since then Catrambone goes by Mason and identifies as male, the school refused to accept him for who he is," the Change.org petition states. "I ask that students, faculty, alumni, and anyone else who doesn't support Camden Catholic's decision, sign this and show that you stand with Mason."

The petition was started by a student at the high school, according to the website.

Letters: Camden Catholic Highs rejection of transgender student is hardly Jesus-like https://t.co/YOqXGq5lDO pic.twitter.com/VRph1uO1rR  Philly Inquirer (@PhillyInquirer) September 13, 2016

Michael Walsh, a spokesman for the Diocese of Camden, said that it was the family's decision for Catrambone not to attend the high school and news sites have erroneously reported that the school refused to accept Catrambone as a student.

"We recently received a request from parents of a student registered as female to change the registration to male and to make various accommodations. After discussion with the student's parents and reflection on the requests, it was clear that we could not provide the accommodations, as they would contradict Catholic teaching on gender identity," Walsh said on behalf of Camden Catholic High School. "As a Catholic school, our principal mission is to form students in the Faith and we must always be true to the teachings of that Faith, even -- indeed especially -- when those teachings are challenged by the secular world."

Walsh said the teachings of the Catholic Church and Pope Francis are that biological sex and gender "can be distinguished but not separated."

He said the Diocese of Camden fully supports the school's decision.

"In the last several years the topic of gender identity has been pushed to the forefront of the national consciousness," the diocese statement said. "It is a subject the Church has wrestled with, as we have strived to remain open and welcoming to all, even though the philosophy of gender change sits opposite to Catholic teaching."

The family told the Philadelphia Inquirer that they insisted their son be able to wear a boy's uniform and said that he would be willing to change and go to the bathroom in the facilities in the nurse's office. But the school refused to allow these requests.

Catrambone, who came out to his parents as transgender in May, told the Inquirer that he doesn't want to go to a school that sees him as a "problem."

"They can't look past what I'm going through, and see me as a human being," he told the newspaper.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
WOODBRIDGE -- A New Jersey elementary school is de-emphasizing homework this school year and telling parents their children should spend more time playing, doing household chores and eating dinner with their families.

Robert Mascenik School #26 in Woodbridge Township is testing the importance of homework by giving fewer traditional assignments, principal Judith Martino wrote in a message to parents.

The goal is to make school work at home a more meaningful experience and not an exercise in compliance, Martino wrote. Studies have shown that there is no link between homework and academic achievement for elementary school students, she added.

"The most important things students can do when they go home each day are play, eat dinner with their family, engage in conversations, help with family responsibilities or chores and read by themselves or with a family member," Martino wrote. "The skills of responsibility, time management and creativity are all fostered through the aforementioned activities."

The change comes as a small number of schools nationwide have recently done away with homework, mostly in elementary schools, and some New Jersey districts have scheduled "no homework" nights or weekends throughout the year.

"It's not that there's no homework," Woodbridge Township School District Superintendent Robert Zega said of School #26, which has about 300 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. "The homework that students will be coming home with is a little bit different."

Students will likely see fewer worksheets asking them to fill in the blank or circle the correct answer, Zega said.

Some reading assignments may no longer be tied to a specific written response, and students might be asked to read a book of their choosing rather than a specific passage, he said.

Students may be assigned homework if they are unable to complete assignments they were given time to do during class or it they miss a day of class, the school said.

Long-term projects will still be assigned and students will expected to study for test and quizzes at home. Students will also be required to read every day and keep a reading log.

The departure from traditional daily homework assignments comes as part of a district-wide shift toward making homework more relevant and creating a more positive learning experience, Zega said.

In some instances, homework has been counterproductive, especially for students participating in multiple activities after school, Zega said. Students otherwise earning high marks have seen their grades drop solely because they were not completing homework, he said.

"If you think back to your own educational experience, how many homework assignments did you do to get them done just so that you didn't get a bad grade?" Zega said. "And how many of them did you really learn from?"

Another district elementary school, Port Reading School #9, will also participate in the pilot program testing the importance of homework, Zega said.

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Bubble Wrap, the packing implement, stress reliever, and, yes, toy, is now a finalist for the National Toy Hall of Fame.

The plastic cushioning joins other, more general nominees like "swing" and "coloring book" in the list of finalists. Three toys will be announced as inductees in November. The last toys to make the cut for the toy hall, organized by the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y., were the Super Soaker, Twister and "puppet." "Stick" made it in 2008.

On Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day this past January, we explored the history of the Jersey-born product and the enduring fascination with popping those bubbles. The uses for Bubble Wrap have far exceeded its original purpose.

Created in 1957 by Swiss engineer Marc Chavannes and Hackensack native Alfred Fielding in a Hawthorne garage, Bubble Wrap was originally intended to be a textured wallpaper. The story goes that Chavannes found inspiration for the material as his plane was landing at Newark Airport. The clouds, he found, looked as if they were cushioning the plane.

Fielding and Chavannes attempted to sell the product as greenhouse insulation. Frederick Bowers, an employee of the engineers' fledgling company, pitched Bubble Wrap, originally called Air Cap, to IBM in 1960. A plastic icon was born when the company bought the package protection for its 1401 Data Processing System.

Sealed Air, the company that manufactures Bubble Wrap, used to be headquartered in Elmwood Park before moving to Charlotte, N.C. in 2015. A company factory still operates in Saddle Brook.

While most simply enjoy the cathartic "pop" that results from pressing the little air chambers down in the wrap, you can now pop digital bubbles in Bubble Wrap app, too. The uses for the plastic cushioning have ranged from stress relief to wedding dresses. One artist creates paintings by injecting each bubble with pigment. A comedian even created a Bubble Wrap bike that unfurls the stuff in front of the tires as he rides.

The Toy Hall of Fame looks at "icon status," "longevity," discovery" and "innovation" when nominating toys.

Here is the full list of other nominees for the toy hall:

Care Bears

Clue

coloring book

Dungeons & Dragons

Nerf

Fisher-Price Little People

Pinball

Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots

Swing

Transformers

Uno

You can vote (up to once a day) for Bubble Wrap or your favorite toy at the Toy Hall of Fame website. Inductees will be decided by a national selection advisory committee and announced on November 10.

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
NEWARK-- Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong is recuperating after suffering a stroke before a planned speaking engagement in Michigan Saturday, the Episcopal Diocese of Newark said on its Facebook page.

"Many thanks to all of you who have been praying for Bishop Jack Spong and his family since we received the news that he suffered a stroke last Saturday morning. Bishop Beckwith is in contact with the Spong family, and reports that Bishop Spong is stable and talking, and that our prayers offer hope and help. Updates will be provided as they become available," the diocese said Monday.

Spong, 85, served as bishop of the diocese for nearly a quarter-century before his retirement in 2001 but has remained active as a speaker and writer promoting an inclusive form of Christianity that acknowledges some problematic aspects of the Bible while recognizing its centrality to the Christian faith.

"I am a believer who knows and loves the Bible deeply. But I also recognize that parts of it have been used to undergird prejudices and to mask violence," Spong wrote in a biography appearing on his Web page.

Spong, who has sold more than a million books, is the author of Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, A New Christianity for a New World, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and Here I Stand and has also been a guest on television shows including Fox News Live and Politically Incorrect.

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- NJ Transit police arrested a Hillsborough man Friday morning, two days after he allegedly touched a female train passenger inappropriately.

Raghavan E. Narayanan (NJ Transit police)

Raghavan E. Narayanan, 50, was arrested at Penn Station by police who recognized him from a description provided by the victim. He was charged with criminal sexual contact and released pending a court appearance later this month.

"We are grateful that the New Jersey Transit Police were able to act so quickly in apprehending this person,'' said Interim Executive Director Dennis Martin. "The safety of our customers is paramount to us and we do not take that lightly.''

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
MONROE TWP. -- A 9-year-old middle school student is hospitalized after he was struck by a car Tuesday morning, a township school official confirmed.

The fifth-grader was crossing Main Street near Eldridge Avenue around 7:30 a.m. when he was hit by the vehicle, Monroe Superintendent Charles Earling reported.

The child was transported to Kennedy University Hospital with a leg fracture and then airlifted to Cooper University Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition, Earling said.

"We are waiting to hear back from his parents with an update on his condition," he said.

The student was walking to his bus stop at the time at the accident, Earling said.

The driver of the car, a Lincoln MKZ, stopped at the scene. The driver does not face charges, police said.

The police account of the incident stated that the student was waiting for his bus when he began walking in the roadway "for an unknown reason." The youth stepped in front of the vehicle, which could not stop in time, police said.

Counselors were on hand at the middle school for any students who needed to speak with someone about the incident.

School officials constantly stress the importance of safety when crossing streets and waiting for school buses, Earling noted.

"Safety is our number one goal in all of our schools," he said. "We take it seriously."

This was the second accident involving students in Gloucester County in the last week.

A Delsea Regional High School student was struck by the mirror of a passing truck as she waited at her bus stop last Tuesday, the first day of school in that district. The 14-year-old suffered a minor shoulder injury, police said.

The driver was issued motor vehicle summonses.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
Injured East Baton Rouge deputy will go to rehab facility in Texas, family says
When Baton Rouge police describe their beats as 'hell,' we ought to expect the worst
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.
Welcome to nonleaguedaily.coms news provision, your go-to source for all non league updates, rumours, interviews, and much more besides.

Founded by a team with a genuine passion for the world of non league football, nonleaguedaily.com understands exactly what supporters of the so-called lower leagues are looking for. You want the high-quality reporting, in-depth analysis, and match reporting that matches that is more commonly found in the journalism for the top flights, but with the focus firmly fixed on the national leagues.

We understand that your passion, interest, and dedication is constant, and we believe you need a news service that matches that commitment with its own dedication and thoroughness  so thats what you can expect from our site.

The latest non league news, as and when it happens

Conventionally, non league news has always travelled fairly slowly, especially when compared to the instantaneous, constant breaking news cycles found in the upper leagues. Tales are told on terraces, rumours passed between pub patrons and circled between supporters at the latest game, often forced to remain somewhat local initially before word eventually spreads to other locales.

For us, this slow spread may be fairly organic in nature, but it simply isnt compatible with the modern football environment. Its also not conducive to the current fast-paced, always-available media landscape, nor the way that people tend to consume news nowadays. Thats why we have put together a non league news source that fans can turn to for the latest updates, as and when they happen, and as and when you want to read them. Non-league news now is the only acceptable speed at Betting.co.uk.

We update our non-league football news coverage constantly, bringing you all the latest developments and seeking to spread the word as quickly and accurately as possible. So if youre wondering whats happening both with your local team and with the lower leagues as a whole, you can visit us for non league news now, and be confident the stories you find are completely up to date.

News reported by passionate fans

Our efforts to bring you the very best non league football news are undeniably a professional concern, and one that we take seriously. We are  if youll excuse the uncharacteristic tooting of our own horns  good at what we do, and we know that the efforts we make in this regard are one of the reasons our site has enjoyed such success thus far.

However, everyone who writes for us also shares our readers enthusiasm for non league football. Were not just churning out content in the hopes of cashing in on a professional dream; were here because we want to be, and will always be dedicated and committed to non league football as an entity and thriving in the experience of being able to talk about our favourite subject whenever we can. We create non-league news now that is written by genuine fans and enthusiasts, for fans. We know what you want to know and what matters most to an ardent non league supporter, and we always ensure that focusing on these elements is our guiding principle as we seek to solidify our status as an online non league paper fans can always rely on.

When compiling non league news, we think with the mind of a fan first and foremost. We cover the angles and stories that we find compelling and that we know our fellow non league enthusiasts also care about. News doesnt have to be dry and formulaic, in our opinion. When its written by people who are genuinely as fascinated by the stories they are reporting on as their readership will be, we believe news can be interesting, compelling, and even have a sense of personality and humour.

News content written with passion and expertise

We believe that thanks to our dedication, insightfulness, and commitment to our subject matter of non league today, we are offering the best of both worlds to those searching for an online non league paper. We give you the professional approach we feel is appropriate for news about one of the most intriguing aspects of UK football; an aspect that we genuinely feel does not receive the interest and plaudits that it should be generating. Nevertheless, we dont let that professionalism take over everything we do: we remain committed fans, nurturing our own personal interest in non league football and ensuring every word we compose is infused with a sense of passion and dedication that enhances the posts we create.

Its therefore obvious that our non-league content today isnt ever going to be dry, basic, or put together by a tired staff writer who has never heard of any team below the Championship before they rush off to the pub for the evening. Our writers are genuine experts: were covering non league football because we want to, because we believe in it, and because its where our strengths lie. The result is informed content that capitalises on our deep knowledge of the history, as well as the present-day realities, of non league football in the UK.

Beyond news: the nonleaguedaily.com interview series

One of our goals with nonleaguedaily.com is to not just dryly report the news from an outsiders perspective, effectively regurgitating press releases that are devoid of genuinely illuminating information. We also go right to the source of the stories: the managers and club insiders who have direct experience, and often influence, on the sport and how it is managed.

We regularly conduct interviews as part of our news provision, asking the questions that are on everyones lips and providing the best possible view into the non league world. We have reporters pitchside at matches, microphone to hand and plentiful questions ready to be asked. The end result for you, the reader, is the kind of information and close-up looks into the non league world that just cant be found anywhere else.

As our commitment to providing interesting interviews amply demonstrates, we want to be involved in breaking the stories that everyone then talks about, rather than following along and focusing solely on what everyone already knows. If youre looking for leading content that you cant find anywhere else, and that goes right to the centre of the non league world, then you can turn to nonleaguedaily.com for all the benefits of a conventional non league paper, but in electronic, easily-accessed form.

A host of other content to enjoy alongside the non league today

Our focus on providing non league news will always be maintained: we consider this aspect the most important of what we do, and it will always be the recipient of our time, dedication, and interest. Well be here, a consistent and trustworthy news portal, for as long as non league football news exists.

With that said, when you have read up on the latest goings-on, were here with further content for you to enjoy. Naturally, given our partnership with leading brand Betting.co.uk, we provide guidelines for those interested in the world of sports betting. Well help you find the best UK bookmaker with our plentiful coverage of existing brands; ideal if youre looking to put your newfound knowledge, courtesy of us, about non league to use and place a few bets.

Furthermore, we also provide highlights of all the latest UK betting offers, so you can ensure youre achieving the best value with all the latest betting deals whenever youre betting on the latest non league matches. Youll find all of this coverage is as consistent and reliable as our non league news provision,

Non league features and deep dives

Returning to the world of non league football, we also provide a range of feature content that goes deeper and further into the non league world than ever before. Less instantaneously topical but still hugely relevant to the modern game, our features are the dream deep dives that we feel non league fans deserve. Were always striving to do better, offer more, and ensure that non league fans can enjoy the same wealth of content as followers of the top tiers, so you can expect top-flight content with the same commitment and dedication as found throughout the upper echelons of the sport.

So whether youre looking to find the most recent non league football news, seeking a new bookmaker for your non league bets, or hoping to delve deep into a niche non league-related topic, nonleaguedaily.com is always going to be worth a visit.

Return to nonleaguedaily.com for all your non league news needs

Weve told you what you can expect from nonleaguedaily.coms news; now we need to put our confidence where our promises are, make sure we deliver on those promises, and establish trust as an online non league paper you can trust. We look forward to welcoming you back to our news section and showcasing the best we have to offer, from exciting new non league interviews to cutting-edge news to transfer speculation. If you want to truly have your finger on the non league pulse, then nonleaguedaily.com is always going to be here for you.
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.
Page Content 2

The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent federal agency charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States and significant accidents in other modes of transportation  highway, marine, pipeline, and railroad. We determine the probable cause of the accidents we investigate and issue safety recommendations aimed at preventing future accidents. In addition, we conduct transportation safety research and coordinate the resources of the federal government and other organizations to assist victims and their family members who have been impacted by major transportation disasters.




Barker Mansion in Michigan City is a perfect setting for the Sept. 22 NWI Next discussion of wealth and the economy.

The opulent mansion was built by freight car magnate John Barker in 1857 and expanded in 1905. The mansion features heavily carved woodwork and many furnishings imported from Europe. Its Gilded Age decor is a sharp contrast to that of the homes of the factory workers the Barkers employed.

The Barkers lived in a mansion, while the average employee had a shotgun house. The Barkers had indoor plumbing, but the workers had outhouses. And while the Barkers had European furnishings and clothing, the workers had locally made goods and apparel.

Visit Barker Mansion, 631 Washington St, Michigan City, for a guided tour at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 22 prior to the 7 p.m. discussion.

Youll hear about the mansion and the wealth disparities before we begin a guided conversation on the topic.

The Times Media Co. and Valparaiso University are partners with Barker Mansion for this program.

I hope to see you there!
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is looking to fine BP after it discharged about five times more total suspended solids of industrial waste into Lake Michigan than allowed this summer.

IDEM sent BP a letter last week stating "violations were observed and will be referred to the enforcement section." The state agency said the company discharged "brown and turbid effluent" into the lake, the main source of drinking water in the Chicago area, and faulted BP's operation of the wastewater treatment plant.

Under state law, the agency could impose a base fine of between $1,000 to $25,000 a day. Fines can vary based on a matrix that looks at factors such as history of non-compliance and what was done after the violation.

BP is allowed to discharge up to 5,694 pounds of industrial waste a day in Lake Michigan, but exceeded its permit three times: on July 14, August 1 and August 2, according to IDEM. The former Standard Oil Refinery in Whiting sent 26,621 pounds of total suspended solids into the lake on Aug. 2, about five times the limit.

Refinery workers reduced the amount being discharged partly by removing solids from the wastewater treatment plant, drying them out and sending them to a landfill in Newton County after initially telling inspectors the waste would be slowly reintroduced into the treatment system, according to IDEM.

"This matter will be processed as an enforcement case for appropriate action," Northwest Regional Office Deputy Director Rick Massoels wrote in the letter to BP.

Massoels questioned BP's characterization of the discharge as an upset, or equipment failure.

"An upset does not include noncompliance to the extent caused by operational error, improperly designed treatment facilities, inadequate treatment facilities, lack of preventative maintenance, or careless or improper operation," he wrote. "IDEM does not consider this situation an 'upset.'"

BP Whiting Refinery Manager Don Porter recently apologized to the Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce for the discharge, which took place after BP started up a new dissolved nitrogen flotation unit in its wastewater treatment plant to remove dissolved organics in the wastewater. The new equipment went online in May and was required by a 2012 EPA agreement that BP invest more than $400 million in the refinery to cut emissions and control pollution.

We had difficulty starting that up, and I want to apologize, Porter told the chamber on Sept. 1. Thats not what we strive to do, but we got that straightened out. Now it operates very well, more efficiently than before.

IDEM inspectors faulted BP's response to the discharge, describing records, reports and laboratory as "marginal."

Massoels wrote in his letter that much of the information workers gave to inspectors on site was inconsistent with what was in the reports, which were sometimes incomplete. Two mercury tests from July 28 and August 1 also had to be invalidated.

"The discarded results would have shown elevated amounts of mercury compared to normal operations, but would not have caused an exceedance at the time, as the permit requires compliance with the limitation to be based on a 12-month rolling average," he wrote.
NEW YORK  Potash Corp. and Agrium said Monday that they are combining to create the worlds largest crop nutrient company.

Just two weeks ago, Potash Corp. opened a $90 million rail depot and transfer warehouse in Hammond, with CEO Jochen Tilk telling guests the U.S. facility is a vote of confidence in our future.

Both companies are based in Canada and sell fertilizers and nutrients to farmers that help them grow their crops. The new combined company will have 20,000 employees, a market value of $36 billion and annual revenue of $20.6 billion, the companies said.

A name for the new company will be announced before the deal closes in the middle of next year.

Agrium CEO Chuck Magro will be CEO of the new company and Tilk will be executive chairman.

Tilk told attendees at the Hammond opening last week the Hammond Regional Distribution Center gives PotashCorp a competitive advantage because its close to the nations rail hub in Chicago but bypasses the congestion there.

A name for the new, merged company will be announced before the deal closes in the middle of next year. The new company will be based in Potashs headquarters of Saskatoon.

Potash shareholders will own about 52 percent of the new company and Agrium shareholders will own about 48 percent. As part of the deal, Potash shareholders will receive 0.4 of a share of the new company for every Potash stock they own. Agrium shareholders will receive 2.23 shares of the new company for every Agrium stock they own.

Shares of Potash fell 21 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $16.76 in midday trading Monday while Agrium shares fell $1.37, or 1.4 percent, to $93.84.

The rail lines serving the Hammond depot were said to be the largest rail yard construction project in Chicagoland in 100 years. Seven new tracks were laid in Hammonds Gibson yard on a 2-mile stretch under the Nine Span Bridge on Indianapolis Boulevard.

That project added a total of 14 new miles of rail and can accommodate up to 1,000 railcars. The massive warehouse, which looks like a ship turned upside down, can hold up to 100,000 tons of potash.
EAST CHICAGO  A 32-year-old woman was arrested Monday after allegedly striking a man in the face with a bottle of tequila and screaming at police as they investigated a report of a disturbance.

Danette Jones, of East Chicago, faces charges of disorderly conduct, battery and resisting law enforcement, according to East Chicago Police Lt. Marguerite Wilder.

Police were called just after 11:30 p.m. to the 3500 block of Guthrie Street to find a man screaming out of a second-story apartment window. He screamed at officers to arrest a woman, wearing an all-white jumpsuit, who could be seen fleeing from the scene, according to police.

The victim told police the woman smashed a window in the apartment using an empty bottle of Don Julio tequila. When he came out of the apartment, she struck him in the face with another empty bottle, according to the police report.

According to police, Jones refused to calm down when approached by police, saying she did nothing wrong.

The victims lip was split open, but he refused medical treatment, according to police.
HAMMOND  Police are seeking the publics help after a Sprint store was robbed Tuesday.

The robbery occurred about 10:40 a.m. at 4758 Calumet Ave., in Hammond, according to Hammond Police Lt. Richard Hoyda.

Two men entered the store wearing masks and blue rubber gloves and left with iPhones and an undetermined amount of cash, according to Hoyda.

One suspect was described to police as black, 6 feet tall, and wearing a green hoodie and black pants. He held his hand behind his back as if he had a weapon, police were told.

A second man was described as black, 5 feet, 10 inches tall, with a heavy build, and wearing a dark hoodie.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Hammond Detective Sgt. Nicole Duncanson at (219) 852-2968.
CROWN POINT  Two brothers charged with murder in perpetration of kidnapping and other felonies appeared Tuesday in Lake County Criminal Court, but with different results.

Gary residents Cory Hightower, 28, and Michael Hightower, 31, were charged in the April 15 death of Derrick D. Walker, of Gary. The brothers were accused of shooting Walker to death after he dropped off his daughter at a home in the 4300 block of West 23rd Avenue in Gary.

Both have been held without bond in the Lake County Jail since their arrests April 20.

In August, Michael Hightowers attorneys Alexander Woloshansky and Cipriano Rodriguez filed a stipulated plea agreement with the defendant pleading guilty to battery resulting in serious bodily injury, a class D felony.

On Tuesday, Lake Criminal Court Judge Samuel Cappas accepted Michael Hightowers plea agreement and sentenced him to two years in the Indiana Department of Correction.

Youve received substantial benefit from this plea agreement, Cappas told Michael Hightower before he was led away. Mr. Hightower, dont come back.

Cory Hightower, however, will stand trial on felony charges including reckless homicide in the death of Walker, who died of a single gunshot wound to the head, according to the Lake County coroners report.

The defendant appeared before Cappas with defense attorney Lemuel Stigler.

Cory Hightowers jury trial date of Sept. 26 was affirmed. He will appear in court again on Tuesday for another pretrial conference.
VALPARAISO  A Portage man convicted of leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in the death of another motorist is asking the court to return his driving privileges early.

Reinaldo Figueroa III is asking for the right to drive during limited times to limited locations, including work, doctor appointments, probation appointments and to the home of his daughters mother.

He is prohibited from driving through Feb. 20, 2018, after serving one year of a three-year prison term he was given after pleading guilty to leaving the scene of an April 2, 2012, accident that resulted in the death of Frank Ivey, 22, of South Haven, who was riding his moped on County Road 700 North.

The above-mentioned drivers license suspension has imposed an undue hardship on the Defendant, the request reads.

Figueroa appeared Tuesday before Porter Circuit Court Judge Mary Harper on the request, but the hearing was delayed until Oct. 25 because his primary attorney could not be present.

Thomas Ivey II, Frank Iveys brother, had asked Harper during the Feb. 20, 2013, sentencing hearing to show no leniency, no mercy because Figueroa showed none to his brother after striking him with his car and leaving him in the road only to be struck by another vehicle.

Harper sentenced Figueroa to six years in prison, suspending three years of the term to be served on formal probation after his release from prison. His drivers license also was suspended for four years after his release, which was Feb. 21, 2014, according to the Indiana Department of Correction.

Figueroa is seeking permission to drive to and from his job at a steel supply company at the Port of Indiana, according to his request. The privilege would be limited to designated hours Thursday through Saturday.

He also wants to drive from his Portage home to Valparaiso for probation appointments, and for doctor and dentist appointments for himself and his infant daughter.

The mother of his child also lives in Valparaiso and he hopes to drive there as well, according to the request.
HAMMOND  A 17-year-old boy was robbed Sunday after traveling to a location in Hammond to sell a cellphone, police said.

The boy and a 17-year-old girl, both from Hammond, drove about 8 p.m. Sunday to the 6000 block of Columbia Avenue, Lt. Richard Hoyda said. As they sat in a vehicle, a man approached and robbed the boy of the cellphone at gunpoint.

The man allegedly tried to rob the girl of cash, but the money fell under a car seat before the man could retrieve it, Hoyda said. The man fled on foot.

The suspect was described as a black man wearing a gray hoodie and gray shorts.

Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Sgt. Shawn Ford at (219) 852-2998.
A man shot in fall 2014 by a Jasper County sheriff's deputy turned himself in Monday on eight felony charges linked to the shooting, police said.

George Woodward, 41, was booked into Jasper County Jail on eight felony charges filed Aug. 18 by the Jasper County prosecutor's office, according to Indiana State Police.

Jasper County sheriff's police were called Nov. 25, 2014, to a disturbance at a home near county roads 950 North and 950 West, police said.

Deputies encountered Woodward, who appeared "agitated and aggressive," police said. Woodward at one point retreated into the residence and retrieved a rifle.

When he walked outside, police ordered him to drop the rifle. Woodward instead pointed the loaded rifle at the deputies, and one of them fired a single shot that struck Woodward in the shoulder, police said.

Woodward was taken to Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus in Gary for treatment. Indiana State Police investigated the officer-involved shooting at the request of the Jasper County Sheriff's Office.

No officers were hurt in the shooting, police have said.

Woodward remained in the hospital for treatment and recovery for some time after the shooting, Jasper County Sheriff Terry Risner said. When a warrant was issued for his arrest in August, police learned he was out of state. Woodward called the sheriff's police and arranged to turn himself in Monday, Risner said.

Woodward faces charges of attempted murder, two counts of attempted aggravated battery, unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon, two counts of criminal recklessness, resisting law enforcement and pointing a firearm.
Heavy (7- 11 cm in 24 hours) rainfall is very likely to occur at isolated places in Kerala till Wednesday.
LAPORTE  It appears the deadly combination of heroin laced with the powerful painkiller fentanyl has found its way into LaPorte.

At least six overdoses have occurred in the LaPorte area since intelligence first developed last week that heroin mixed with fentanyl had crept in, said Harlan Williams, LaPorte Metro Operations coordinator.

The mixture of the two highly addictive opiates is suspected in each of the cases and could have played a role in a half-dozen other people overdosing during a two-week stretch prior to that, authorities said.

Less than 5 grams of fentanyl were recovered Sunday night during the arrest of a 39-year old LaPorte man who emerged as a target from a ramped-up investigation intended to quickly cut off the source.

Williams said fentanyl used illegally originates from Mexico and overseas and from people selling a portion of their medication prescribed to them.

Police agencies from as close as the Indianapolis area have intercepted shipments of the drug intended for illegal purposes.

It was just a matter of time before it showed up in our community. Well be rooting it out and hopefully stay on top of it from this point forward, Williams said.

All of the people overdosing recently survived.

Had it not been for opioid reversing drug Narcan, the death toll could have been extreme, officials said.

Its almost a guaranteed death when you combine the two, said LaPorte County Coroner John Sullivan, a first responder and firefighter for the city of LaPorte and Cass-Clinton Township fire departments.

According to police, fentanyl comes in a variety of forms and the kind seized from the man taken into custody during a traffic stop in LaPorte was in a powder obtained from Chicago.

When taken in prescribed amounts, fentanyl is an effective painkiller for patients dealing with serious medical conditions like cancer.

However, it doesnt take much to overdose on fentanyl, blamed for the recent death of music icon Prince.

Sullivan said he was involved in the recent resuscitation of two young people who after cutting up fentanyl patches placed them between the cheek and gum for quick absorption into the bloodstream.

LaPorte Fire Chief Andy Snyder said the recent spike in overdoses is about double the number that has occurred during previous high points.

He said first responders are also doing things like watching closely for any used syringes or powders and making sure rubber gloves are worn to avoid fentanyl being inhaled or having contact with the skin.

Just be vigilant. Thats all we can do. Keep our eyes open and make sure that we use personal protective equipment to its fullest, Snyder said.
INDIANAPOLIS  Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner is dropping a fraction of his multimillion-dollar fortune across the state line trying to keep a fellow Republican in place as Indianas chief executive.

The first-term governor gave $100,000 last week to Indiana Lt. Gov. Eric Holcombs campaign to succeed Gov. Mike Pence.

The donation is among the largest Holcomb has taken in since July 26 when Hoosier Republicans selected Holcomb to replace Pence on the Nov. 8 ballot after GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump picked Pence as his running mate.

Holcomb spokesman Pete Seat, a Schererville native, said the former Indiana Republican Party chairman is honored to have support from anyone and everyone who believes in responsible Republican leadership.

Eric and Gov. Rauner have known each other for years, going back to when Rauner was exploring a bid and sought out Gov. Mitch Daniels and Eric for advice, Seat said.

Holcomb appears to be the first Indiana candidate for statewide office to receive a donation directly from Rauner.

Indiana campaign finance records indicate Rauner also gave $50,000 to a national Republican fund supporting Hoosier candidates in 2000 when Holcomb failed to win an Indiana House seat in his only other bid for elected office.

In Illinois, Rauner has financially commandeered the Republican Party, contributing more than $16 million this year, or 95 percent of all the money the party has raised, hoping to break firm Democratic control of the General Assembly.

Indiana Democratic Party spokesman Drew Anderson said he believes Rauners donation to Holcomb is more about Rauners 2018 re-election bid than any genuine interest in Indiana politics.

Gov. Rauner wants to keep Indianas current leadership and failed economy in place  one that includes falling wages and discriminatory policies, Anderson said. Rauner wants a Holcomb administration so he can continue to make himself look better.
INDIANAPOLIS  Republican Todd Young is perhaps the happiest person ever to be losing a U.S. Senate race.

Thats because hes confident on Nov. 8 Hoosiers will elect him over Democratic former U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh to succeed U.S. Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind.

We have momentum, our message is resonating and we have a national spotlight correctly shining on this U.S. Senate race, Young said Monday.

An independent public opinion poll released last week showed the three-term Bloomington congressman is running just four points behind Bayh, 44 percent to 40 percent, with 11 percent undecided and a 4 percent margin of error.

Thats a huge improvement over Democratic polls conducted in July that found Bayh leading Young by 21 points immediately after the two-term Indiana governor and U.S. senator was chosen to replace former U.S. Rep Baron Hill, D-Seymour, in the Senate race.

Clearly our message is working. Hoosiers are uncomfortable with the policy direction of the Obama-Clinton approach to economic growth, Young said. They want something different.

So Im running to ensure that every Hoosier has access to a quality education that turns into a good-paying job that leads to a meaningful career.

His effort got an assist Monday from Republican former President George W. Bush who helped Young raise hundreds of thousands of dollars at fundraisers in Elkhart and Indianapolis.

Young said the rare campaign appearance by the former commander-in-chief shows how significant Indianas Senate race is for maintaining Republican control of the chamber and for the future of the United States.

Were gratified that President Bush would take time to come visit with Hoosiers and express the importance of this race and his strong conviction that it is essential that Republicans hold on to this seat in what is otherwise a Republican state, Young said.

Young sidestepped questions about the awkwardness of his support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump vis-a-vis Bush who has refused to endorse the man who defeated his brother Jeb in the Republican primary.

Our partys presidential nominee is better than Hillary Clinton, Young said.

The Bayh campaign warned that if Young is elected he will support the revival of Bush-era trade deals that harmed Hoosier workers and take steps to privatize Social Security as Bush attempted to do.
GARY  Gary school officials are preparing to ask the General Assembly for tens of millions of dollars in debt relief.

School Board members spoke of their hopes for debt elimination Monday night with outgoing state Sen. Earline Rogers, Eddie Melton, Democratic nominee for state Senate and Earl L. Harris Jr., the Democratic nominee for the Statehouse.

Jack Martin, an accountant the board hired to handle its fiscal operations, said Monday the full language of proposed legislation would be made public after full consultation with community leaders.

Martin said the Gary Community School Corp. owed $69 million as of last year. Gateway, the states public information database, reveals a total of $103 million in loan principal, interest and lease payments due by 2033.

The payments represent loans for school renovation, school operations and other expenses going back a decade.

School Board members said the money earmarked for debt service would be better used paying for new school repairs and operational expenses.

Melton said he is confident some sort of legislation for Garys debt relief will be before the General Assembly next year.

It is important to act as one, Rogers said. We need to get Jack involved. We need the mayor and the School Board. The superintendent needs to be here too.

The Legislature doesnt want to be made to look like they are not sensitive to our needs. We have to come before them with all of the information to show them we have done all we can do and we still need their help, she said.

The district asked voters last year to pass a general fund referendum to boost the operating budget and reduce the schools deficit.

Although voters turned that referendum down, the district has drafted a new one that will be on the fall ballot asking city residents to raise city property taxes .475 cents per $100 assessed value.

That could raise several million dollars a year for seven years to supplement teachers salaries and educational programs.

The General Assembly recently passed a law giving Gary the chance to work with the states Distressed United Appeals Board.

Melton, a member of the Indiana State Board of Education, said the districts declining enrollment is driving the schools problems. The Indiana Department of Education indicates it has dropped by 29 percent since the 2011-12 school year.

Rogers blames the proliferation of private charter schools in Gary for attracting students who might otherwise go to public schools in the city.
CHICAGO  A grand jury will consider if Chicago police lied in connection with the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a white officer.

Special prosecutor Patricia Brown Holmes said Monday that the grand jury is the fairest way to handle the case instead of making charging decisions on her own. She was appointed in July to investigate whether there was a possible Chicago police cover-up in the October 2014 shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Holmes is a former Cook County judge.
HAMMOND  A former bank building that was being considered as a possible location for a new City Hall apparently has been auctioned off along with two other former bank buildings in Blue Island, Illinois.

The high bidder for all three buildings is only identified by the number 1378 on the Hilco Real Estate site. The high bid for the former Bank Calumet building, which has been owned by First Midwest Bank, was $285,000.

James M. Roolf, a senior vice president with First Midwest Bancorp, Inc., said the building was sold through auction.

Its under contract and the closing is yet to be determined, said Roolf, although he expected it to occur within the next 30 to 60 days.

Roolf indicated the same buyer purchased all three bank buildings, but said the contract does not allow us to say who the buyer is.

At the request of Mayor Thomas M. McDermott Jr., the City Council earlier this year agreed to fund a study of what it would cost to renovate and move into the former downtown bank building at 5231 Hohman Ave. It was later decided to also look at what it would cost to build a new City Hall at some vacant land and a parking lot at the northwest corner of Hohman Avenue and Fayette Street, diagonally across from the bank building.

McDermott was not ready to declare the bank building off the table yet since it is not known who the winning bidder is or what they intend to do with the building.

He said he hopes the purchaser is a strong buyer and that the building is put to good use.

Another City Hall option besides building a new building, McDermott noted, would be to do nothing and stay put.

McDermott said earlier that if the council decided to remain at the current facility, another study would be done to determine what would be needed to repair and renovate that structure. A preliminary study given to the council indicated it could cost at least $5.25 million to repair and renovate the current structure.

In February, McDermott estimated it would cost about $50,000 and take about three months to conduct the due diligence study on the bank building. Now, McDermott said, the study on the various options may not be ready until the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

McDermott said he slowed the study down in light of two other major projects that could have a significant financial impact on the city and its residents and business owners.

The Hammond Sanitary District Board is expected to enter into a consent decree with state and federal agencies to reduce combined sewer overflows that are expected to increase customers wastewater rates. In addition, the City Council has given conditional support for a planned South Shore railroad extension that could cost the city $900,000 a year in Lake County economic development income tax revenue.
CROWN POINT  A 42-year old Lowell woman charged with felony attempted murder for allegedly shooting her husband on Sept. 3 during a domestic dispute in their home appeared in court Monday.

Dressed in jail attire and shackled, Miranda D. Anozie pleaded not guilty to five felony charges.

Substituting for Lake County Public Defender Adam Tavitas, attorney Aaron Koonce represented her. Pro-Tem Judge Michael Lambert presided in Judge Clarence Murrays courtroom. Lake County Superior Court judges are attending a weeklong judicial conference.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Christopher Bruno asked to obtain a no-contact order, prohibiting Miranda Anozie from contacting her husband, Chukwunonso Anozie, who came to court wearing a stabilizing neck brace.

When Koonce took the no-contact order papers to Miranda Anozie for her signature, she broke down and sobbed, turning her back on her attorney and the gallery where her husband was seated, before signing the order.

Lambert reduced Miranda Anozies bond from $75,000 to $20,000.

Miranda Anozies next court appearance is set for Oct. 31.

According to court records, Crown Point police responded at 1:24 a.m. Sept. 3 to Franciscan St. Anthony Health hospital in Crown Point about a male identified as Chukwunonso Anozie brought to the lobby with a gunshot wound to the face and head. Medical staff told police Miranda Anozie had dropped the man off.

Lowell police went to the Anozie home in the 5800 block of West 172nd Place, where they found five children, ages 1 to 6 years old, in one bedroom. One of the children told police she overheard Chukwunonso and Miranda Anozie arguing prior to a loud noise, court records state.

Chukwunonso advised that he arrived home from work at approximately midnight, court documents state. He said Miranda Anozie came downstairs and asked him where he went and an argument ensued, according to the documents.

The man told police Miranda Anozie went back upstairs before returning with a handgun, demanded that he show her his time slip, then shot him from a short distance.

After serving a search warrant at the Lowell home, police found a black revolver in the living room. The revolver contained four unspent rounds, with one spent round in the cylinder.
NEW HAVEN, Conn.  As they waited as refugees in Jordan to come to America, Syrian couple Abdullah and Fatema were assured that the United States welcomes all people and that being Muslim would not be a problem.

Those expectations were first dashed when, upon arrival in the U.S. in November, Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Pence blocked their entry into his state and they were diverted to Connecticut.

In their new home state, they have been received warmly by many, including Connecticuts Democratic governor, but they say they also have faced difficulties with finding work and with discrimination. On balance, it has been a year of struggle for the family, who were among the first of the 10,000 Syrians resettled in the United States over the last year.

There are people who are really good to us and try to help us every day, Fatema said through an interpreter at the Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services office in New Haven as her 5-year-old son, Ayham, napped beside her. But there are other people. We hear them and we feel unsafe. I feel bad for my child. Is something bad going to happen to us? We dont know.

The couple gave only their first names out of security concerns.

Abdullah owned a clothing store in Homs before it was destroyed in Syrias civil war. He would like to work at a store or dry cleaning business in Connecticut, but he has struggled to learn English. He works two days a week as a dishwasher as he continues looking for a full-time job.

Ayham is currently repeating kindergarten. His teachers feel he also needs to improve his English before moving on to first grade, his mother said.

IRIS, the resettlement agency, found housing for the family in New Haven and helped pay their rent. They also have assisted with the paperwork needed to apply for state benefits and provided translators, transportation, food, cultural support, English classes and other necessities. But most of the financial support ended after about four months.

The philosophy of refugee resettlement is the agencies like IRIS are responsible to get them off to a good start, said Chris George, the agencys executive director.

Fatema said the family was surprised and confused when they landed in the U.S., after learning about Indiana and making contacts there, to find out that Pence wanted to block Muslims from entering his state after Islamic extremists killed 130 in Paris.

It broke our hearts, she said. If you are in a group and one person did a bad thing, it doesnt mean the whole group is bad.

A federal judge overturned attempts by Pence, the GOPs vice presidential nominee, to block resettlement efforts in Indiana.

That was the only family that was moved, in spite of the number of governors that protested the placement of Syrians in their state, said Barbara Day, the U.S. State Departments domestic resettlement section chief.

The family said they have become friendly with other refugees at IRIS. They help each other, sharing tips on cultural differences, or the best markets for shopping.

When I feel bad about something, I come to IRIS, said Abdullah. When I feel happy about something, I come to IRIS. They have helped me a lot.

The couple, who fled Syria in 2011 and underwent a lengthy vetting process while living in Jordan, said Americans should have no reason to fear them. They said they are hopeful about their future in this country, but after several years of fleeing violence and living in chaos, they have learned not to look too far ahead.

We dont know what is going to happen, Fatema said. What we care about is just make us safe today.
FORT PIERCE, Fla.  The mosque that Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen attended was heavily damaged in an arson fire that Muslim leaders said was the latest incident in an escalating campaign of harassment and violence against the house of worship and its members.

Given the timing  Sundays 15th anniversary of 9/11 and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha  investigators believe the blaze that broke out shortly before midnight Sunday at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce may have been a hate crime, St. Lucie County sheriffs spokesman Maj. David Thompson said.

No one was injured. The fire burned a 10-by-10-foot (3-by-3-meter) hole in the roof at the back of the mosques main building and blackened its eaves with soot.

A surveillance video from the mosque showed a man on a motorcycle approaching the building with a bottle of liquid and some papers, then leaving when there was a flash and shaking his hand as though he may have burned it, Thompson said.

The arsonist is terrorizing our community because we dont know where he is at and we dont know what he is capable of doing, said Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, a Florida spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Mateen was killed by police after opening fire at the Pulse nightclub June 12 in a rampage that left 49 victims dead and 53 wounded. He professed allegiance to the Islamic State group. His father is among roughly 100 people who attend the mosque.

Ruiz said the mosque and its worshippers have been harassed since the massacre.

First there were threating voicemails, he said. Then drivers would splash water on the parishioners leaving on Fridays, and then a member got beat up in the parking lot when he came to the mosque for early morning prayers, and now the mosque has been set on fire.

The mosque has received more threats since the nightclub shooting than it did in its previous 20 years of existence, assistant imam Hamaad Rahman said.

For this to happen to us on the morning of our biggest celebration of the year has made everyone saddened and scared, but our community is bigger than a building. We are stronger than that, he said. I feel we will be able to pull together from this, and as time goes by we will be able to rebuild.

The FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives joined the investigation into the fire. Sheriffs officials released the video and asked for the publics help in identifying the arsonist.

Ariana Borras stopped by the mosque with her 2-year-old son to pay respects Monday morning. Borras said she is Hispanic and not a Muslim but is sometimes asked if she is Muslim because of the color of her skin.

The fire makes me scared for my son. It makes me scared for my skin color, she said. There have been a lot of racial issues going on and theres so much hate in the world right now.

Michael Parsons, 22, was standing outside his parents home, directly across the street from the mosque. He said that since the Orlando shooting, a lot of people have been driving by hollering and yelling expletives at the church or mosque or whatever they call it.

Parsons, a gutter installer with trust no one tattooed on his chest, said his mothers cancer doctor attends the mosque.

America was founded so people can believe what they want to believe and do what they want to do, he said. These guys flying the American flag on their trucks dont really know what the freedom is theyre fighting for.

On July 2, a man was beaten outside the mosque. CAIR said the victim was a Muslim and the attacker hurled slurs. A suspect was arrested. CAIR said that earlier that day, a man in a truck stopped outside the mosque and said, You Muslims need to get back to your country.

On Monday morning, a pickup truck with a Dont Tread on Me bumper sticker rolled past the mosque. The driver revved his engine and raised his index finger in the air as if making the gesture for No. 1.
The city of Indianapolis will be linked forever to one of the worst naval disasters in history  the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in World War II.

This was the 10,000-ton cruiser that delivered secret components for the atomic bomb to be used against Japan, only to be sunk by Japanese torpedoes on the return trip. More than 870 men died in shark-filled waters, and the ships captain, Charles McVay, was unjustly court martialed, his name cleared long after he took his own life.

Its a story that deserved a better ending. The Indianapolis was the pride of the U.S. Navy, equipped with the latest technology and capable of traveling at 32 knots, over 36 miles per hour. Her speed and massive firepower truly captured the spirit of America, said Edgar Harrell, a survivor from Clarksville, Tenn.

When the boat launched in 1931, its connection to Indianapolis was in name only. The U.S. Navy traditionally names cruisers after cities. In the years since, both Indianapolis and the survivors forged a meaningful relationship aimed at preserving its story.

On the eve of war, the ships homeport was Pearl Harbor; luckily, on Dec. 7, 1941, she was performing exercises at Johnston Island 500 miles west of Hawaii. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, she immediately joined the search for the attacking Japanese carriers and remained in operation against the enemy until her sinking.

Because of her reputation, the Indianapolis was selected in July 1945 to transport components for one of the atomic bombs that would be used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She did so with amazing speed, covering 5,000 miles from San Francisco to Tinian Island  in the Pacific Ocean south of Japan  in only 10 days.

After the successful mission, the Indianapolis headed back to Leyte in the Philippines for training exercises in advance of an expected U.S. invasion of Japan.

She was halfway between the Philippines and Guam when a Japanese submarine I-58, commanded by Mochitsura Hashimoto, spotted her. At 12:15 a.m. on July 30, two torpedoes struck the Indianapolis on her bow and starboard side.

Of 1,196 men on board, some 300 went down with the boat. The rest jumped into pitch-dark water, infested with sharks, with only a few life rafts and almost no food or water. For reasons never made clear by the Navy, the ship was not missed, and by the time the survivors were noticed by a pilot in the area four days later, only 316 men were alive.

The Navy did not release the news to the press until Aug. 15, the day Japan surrendered, no doubt to ensure the disaster would be overshadowed by joyous news.

McVay survived, was court-martialed and convicted of hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag, a movement that could have evaded a torpedo strike. Evidence was overwhelming that the Navy itself had placed the ship in harms way, and that McVay was under no requirement to zigzag. Materials later declassified suggest the Navy was trying to cover up its own culpability.

Thanks to relentless efforts of survivors and a 1996 National History Day project by Florida sixth-grader Hunter Scott, both Congress and the Navy cleared McVay of wrongdoing in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Vindication came too late for McVay, who killed himself in 1968 using his Navy-issued pistol.

Since 1960, survivors have routinely held reunions in Indianapolis to commemorate the bravery of the crew. In 1995, the USS Indianapolis National Memorial was dedicated along the citys downtown canal. In 2007, the USS Indianapolis Museum opened as a gallery within the Indiana War Memorial.
Last weeks shutdown of ITT Educational Services Inc. operations, including the campus in Merrillville, offers one more lesson for ITT students cut adrift and for prospective college students. Before you enroll in a college, do your homework.

ITT, which was the subject of various state and federal investigations, shut down after a federal crackdown prohibited it from accepting any new students with federal financial aid.

A state-supported school like Ivy Tech is more likely to meet your needs than a for-profit institution like ITT.

Prospective college students, no matter their age, need to become good consumers. Ask tough questions about each college youre considering to see whether that college will meet your needs well.

Begin with checking on whether each college youre considering is properly accredited. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation will tell you whether the accreditation the college is touting is worth its salt.

The Indiana College Costs Estimator website also has a wealth of information for prospective students. It will help you determine whether the college is affordable, as the name of the website implies, but it also offers other valuable resources to compare colleges.

Explore that website, and begin compiling a list of questions you should ask before you check out colleges online, at a college fair or on campus.

Whats the job placement rate for graduates? Whats life on campus like? Are the courses and programs suitable for my chosen career path? How much debt will I be saddled with when I graduate? Will I earn enough money that the student loans wont prevent me from attaining my financial goals? These questions, and others, should be on everyones list.

As higher education evolves, these questions are essential no matter what institution youre considering.

Massive open online courses and other programs are being developed by legitimate universities to meet the needs of nontraditional students who, for whatever reason, cant attend school in a physical classroom. If youre working shift work, for example, this might help. But make sure its offered by a legitimate university, not an attempt to get you to pay more money for higher education than you should.

The federal government is cracking down on diploma mills that offer worthless degrees to students. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education is stressing return on investment. Colleges are being pressured to perform well.

That makes it all the more important to do your research. A college degree is one of the biggest investments youll ever make. Invest in yourself, but do so wisely by researching colleges first.
A proper funeral was held Monday for a 22-year-old Bronx man whose family was not told for months he had died in prison and was buried. NY1 Criminal Justice Reporter was the first to report on this story and has the follow up.

Lonnie Hamilton's casket gleamed in the sunlight Monday, after his funeral service at a Bronx church six months after the 22-year-old died in an upstate prison.

"Just sending him off properly," said Lonnie Hamilton Sr.

The family remains heartbroken and outraged over the circumstances surrounding Hamilton's death.

He died at Marcy Correctional facility outside of Syracuse in March and was then buried  all without the state Corrections Department notifying his family. Last week his father had his son's body exhumed.

The family's lawyer says the state's autopsy determined the 22-year-old hanged himself. Corrections tells NY1 it tried to contact loved ones, but couldn't find any for the Bronx man who was doing prison time for robbery.

"Even though he made his mistakes, he was a great person," Hamilton's father said.

His father doesn't believe the state's story and says his son shouldn't have died in prison and been buried.

The family had an independent autopsy done, but doesn't know if it will provide answers.

"The problem is the body was not embalmed or preserved in any way," said Zachary Giampa, a lawyer for the family.

So when the body is buried it is set to decompose for the next six months over an entire summer."

The lawyer says corrections department guidelines do not require the embalming of dead prisoners it buries. The family is still battling to get paperwork from corrections.

"Basic paperwork that is performed when anybody in DOC custody, dies while in custody," Giampa said.

Hamilton's family says they are going to keep pushing until they're satisfied they have all of the information about his death.

"We don't believe that this done," Hamilton's father said. "We believe that there is a lot more that is not being said that is going to come out eventually."

They plan to sue the state for that information and what they call the wrongful death of Hamilton and the inability of his family to give him a proper funeral.
Changes are coming to a memorial dedicated to first responders from Staten Island who died from September 11th-related illnesses.

Earlier this month, NY1 told the story of Staten Island's September 11th first responder memorial, a monument that some families of sickened first responders pushed for years to build.

The $200,000 wall was erected at taxpayer expense in 2014, but no names were ever added to the marble slabs, as was expected, according to a design approved by several island elected officials and at least one family of a police officer who died of a September 11th-related cancer.

The city's Economic Development Corporation claims it could not compile an accurate list of names. It also said two families declined to have their relatives memorialized, so officials decided not to etch any names in the wall.

That decision angered many families, including Deborah Thompson.

Thompson attended several meetings about the memorial after her police officer son, Ned, died of cancer.

Bryan Ellicott, the son of a paramedic who died of a September 11th-related cancer, was also profiled in the NY1 report and wrote a letter to the EDC urging them to add names to the memorial in honor of the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

Now, Staten Island Borough President James Oddo tells NY1 exclusively that that will happen, much to the relief of Thompson.

"We are so grateful, and I know this wouldn't have happened if you didn't do this and investigate the way you did, trying to get people to answer you. It's like the best news," Thompson said.

The borough president says, "The de Blasio Administration and our team at Borough Hall are committed to getting in a room, along with any other appropriate individuals or groups, and working together to accurately identify those Staten Islanders who have succumbed to illnesses resulting from their presence at Ground Zero. We will work to ensure that their names will be added to the existing first responder memorial and look forward to an ongoing conversation with the Staten Island community."

This, of course, couldn't have happened at a better time for these families, as many say they are still reeling from the 15th anniversary of the attacks commemorated Sunday.
Police say a woman who had her 9-month-old son with her was stabbed to death in Brooklyn early Tuesday morning.

Authorities say police responded to a call of a dispute with a knife in front of 531 Bristol Street in Brownsville around 12:45 a.m. Tuesday.

Police say when officers responded, they found 22-year-old Joann Beauzier in front of nearby 120 Lott Avenue who had been stabbed in the chest.

Beauzier was pronounced dead at Brookdale Hospital.

Police say the victim was with her 9-month-old son, who was in a stroller. The baby boy was unharmed.

Authorities are searching for a female suspect.

It is unclear if the suspect and the victim knew each other, but sources say the victim and suspect had three separate altercations on the same day, with the last one being the fatal stabbing.

Anyone with information on the case should contact the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS, or text CRIMES and then enter TIP577, or visit www.nypdcrimestoppers.com.
The NYPD has put out a photo of the woman who is believed to have robbed an elderly woman in a wheelchair in the Bronx over the weekend.

Investigators are looking for 37-year-old Adrienne Terry.

They say she stole a purse from 85-year-old Bernice Starnes on Sunday afternoon.

The robbery was caught on surveillance video.

Starnes was sitting in her wheelchair outside her building near East 179th Street and Marmion Avenue in East Tremont when the thief struck.

"She said, 'Hello'. And I said 'Hello.' She said, 'And it's a beautiful day isn't it?' And then she grabbed my bag and she said, 'It's gonna be even beautiful now for me.' I said, 'Come back here with my bag, come back here with my bag.' And she said something that was derogatory and kept on running," Starnes said.

Starnes says neighbors chased the woman and were able to get her bag back.

But the thief took more than a hundred dollars and some credit cards from the purse.

Police in the 48th Precinct have since donated $130 to Starnes.

Anyone with information on the case should contact the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS, or text CRIMES and then enter TIP577, or visit www.nypdcrimestoppers.com.
A bill on the President's desk that could empower families of September 11th victims to sue foreign nations like Saudi Arabia in connection with the terror attack is heading back to Congress. But, as our Lori Chung explains, advocates of the bill say they won't stop fighting.

Two days after the house passed a bipartisan bill that would allow the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia, comes a clear sign the measure will not clear the white house.

"The president does intend to veto this legislation," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "This law actually opens the United States to risks of being hauled into court in countries around the world."

The White House says that is one of the possible unintended consequences of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terror Act, which was unanimously approved by the Senate in May. Officials argue that designating state sponsored terrorism is an executive responsibility that could be undermined by the courts.

"You could have judges at different levels in different courtrooms reaching different conclusions about the same country," Earnest said.

And as the bill stokes fears it will strain relations between the two countries. Family members who support the measure are disappointed by the president's position.

"To now hear that all of hard work is going to be threatened by a potential veto, is a kick in the stomach to 2,996 thousand victims of terrorism on American soil," said Brett Eagleson, the son of a 9/11 victim.

Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi nationals. Advocacy groups say they should have the right to go after a country they believe helped terrorists.

"They didn't come without any help and the assistance came from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia," said Terry Strada with 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism.

Strada lost her husband tom during the attacks and says the concerns about the bill are unfounded.

"To only hold accountable a nation that gave aid, logistical aid or financial aid to a designated terrorist organization and carried out an attack on U.S. soil that injured or killed American citizens," Strada said. "That is all this bill does."

So far, U.S. investigations have not been able to substantiate allegations that the attackers had ties to the Saudi government.

Relatives like Strada say they'll be working to get the votes of two thirds of the members in the house and the senate needed to override a veto.
Blake Lively takes on Jaws, more or less, in The Shallows. The Contenders  16 for 16 dissects some of the most fascinating presidential campaigns of the last half-century. And Deadliest Catch adds Dungeness crabs to its menu.

Whats Streaming

THE SHALLOWS (2016) on Amazon and iTunes. Blake Lively plays Nancy, first seen peering at family pictures on a smartphone before tethering herself to a surfboard and hitting the waves on the same secret Mexican beach her mother, now dead, visited when she was pregnant with her. Then a whopper of a shark arrives on the scene, and its really, really hungry. Since The Shallows is a star vehicle for the attractive and statuesque Ms. Lively, the suspense here is somewhat circumscribed, Glenn Kenny wrote in The New York Times. Still, she acquits herself well here, especially in the vulnerable-to-shark-attack department.
I dont want anyone ever offering a product to someone when they dont know what the benefit is, or the customer doesnt understand it, or doesnt want it, or doesnt need it.

That was John Stumpf, the chief executive of Wells Fargo, one of the nations largest banks, in an interview about a year ago with The San Francisco Chronicle.

We found out Friday that at least 5,300 of his employees  let me repeat that number because it is so mind-bogglingly large: 5,300  were engaged in rampant sham deals, secretly signing up myriad customers for two million accounts that they did not authorize, did not know they had, did not need, and clearly did not understand.

Wells Fargo then charged customers at least $1.5 million in fees for those unwanted sham accounts, which were created simply to goose the income of bank employees whose incentive programs rewarded them for opening as many new accounts as possible. Some of the accounts were closed right away, as soon as the employee got credit for them.
Robert Timberg, a Marine combat veteran who became an author and journalist after his agonizing recovery from disfiguring scars inflicted by a land mine in Vietnam, died on Sept. 6 in Annapolis, Md. He was 76.

The cause was respiratory failure, his son Craig, a reporter for The Washington Post, said.

Mr. Timbergs best-known book, The Nightingales Song, wove together the lives of five of his fellow Naval Academy graduates who went to war in Vietnam.

They included Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who endured torture by the North Vietnamese; Jim Webb, a former Navy secretary and senator from Virginia; and three others who became enmeshed in the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration in the 1980s: Lt. Col. Oliver L. North of the Marines and two former White House national security advisers, John M. Poindexter and Robert C. McFarlane.

The scandal involved shipping arms to Tehran to win the freedom of hostages in Lebanon while using some of the proceeds to fund C.I.A.-backed rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.
Blue Origin, the secretive space company created by Jeffrey P. Bezos, offered a look at its newest rocket design on Monday  and, by extension, its ambitions to make space travel more frequent and inexpensive.

Both the rocket and the ambitions appear to be big.

The rockets, named New Glenn after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, are almost as large as the Saturn V rocket that NASA used from 1966 to 1973, before rockets started being built smaller. The two-stage version that could venture to low-Earth orbit will be 270 feet tall, and the three-stage version, which could fly outside Earths orbit, will be 313 feet tall. Both will be 23 feet in diameter, packing seven BE-4 engines, which are developed by Blue Origin, and lifting off with 3.85 million pounds of thrust.

Blue Origin plans to first launch the rocket from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Fla., before the end of the decade.

Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step, Mr. Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, said in an email update.
TUESDAY PUZZLE  When last we saw Stan Newman, the editor of the Newsday crossword puzzles, in the New York Times crossword, he was capitalizing on a national holiday to say thank you. Today hes back to offer us a puzzle that happens to double up on a high-scoring Scrabble letter.

Todays Theme

Words and phrases that contain two Qs are the theme today, and while this grid was a trifle light on theme material compared to recent puzzle themes, Mr. Newmans puzzle solved smoothly and pleasantly.

A theme set like this one is tough to pull together without having an odd man out, so we have two, two-word phrases and one single word:



17A: QUINQUAGENARIAN 40A: SHAQ ATTAQ 65A: QUEBEC NORDIQUES

Most solvers wont even notice that, to be honest, and I was so besotted with the word QUINQUAGENARIAN that I decided to give it a pass.

After I finished solving, I wished that something had been done with the entry at 38A, CUE CARDS, because that would have made a spiffy revealer had the theme entries been clued in a jokey way. Im not sure it would really work, but it would have been fun.
Albert Kumin, one of the most celebrated pastry chefs in the United States, who created desserts for the Four Seasons and Windows on the World in Manhattan as well as for Jimmy Carters White House, died on Friday at his home in Stowe, Vt. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his daughter, Julie Kumin.

Mr. Kumin, Swiss by birth, had been working for a decade in top Canadian hotels when Joe Baum invited him to come to New York in 1958 to work at the Four Seasons, his latest project for Restaurant Associates.

It turned out to be a brilliant hire. For the restaurants signature dessert, Mr. Kumin invented chocolate velvet cake, a variation on the classic bombe  a dome of chocolate cake, glazed in chocolate, containing a mousse made with chopped-up Heath bars, amaretto and rum. Over the years, the restaurant made more than 200,000 of them.

For Mr. Baum, the endlessly inventive Mr. Kumin created a Mexican chocolate candy cake for the pan-Latin restaurant La Fonda del Sol in Manhattan and several desserts for Windows on the World, atop the north tower of the World Trade Center, that attained star status, notably a lemon cream tart and a Grand Marnier chocolate cake.
For the first time in perhaps decades, Grace Coddington isnt part of the grind of New York Fashion Week. Since stepping down in January from her full-time role as the creative director of Vogue, Ms. Coddington now follows her own calendar.

I pick and choose which shows to attend, she said, standing in the Calvin Klein store on Madison Avenue on Monday evening.

She wasnt there for a fashion presentation but rather her own book party, to celebrate the publication of Grace: The American Vogue Years (Phaidon). The 400-page doorstopper contains nearly 300 images and collects her work in the magazine from 2002 until present (Phaidon also reprinted an earlier book that surveyed her entire career until 2002, Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue).

Ms. Coddington said the book wasnt a collection of fashion spreads but a life, adding that selecting the images was almost like looking through your family pictures because, in a way, this is my family.
Times Insider shares insights into how we work at The New York Times. In this piece, Christopher Mele, a reporter on the Timess Express Team, reveals what its like to investigate hard-news crimes allegedly committed by those in the ... ahem ... laughter profession.

Another round of clown sightings? This time in Winston-Salem, N.C.?

Oh yes, you bet I raised my hand to write about that.

An email about the latest sightings was circulating among members of the Express Team, where we cover breaking news and write articles we believe will be of wide interest on social and digital platforms.

One of my colleagues, Katie Rogers, wrote about sightings of people dressed as clowns in Greenville County, S.C., on Aug. 30. Several children said the clowns offered them money to come into the woods. A woman walking home late one night told the police she had seen a clown waving at her from under a streetlight.
The Transportation Department plans to spend $200 million on the 60 cars, said Mr. Cameron, who is a former chairman of the Connecticut Commuter Rail Council. He said the cars would be models known as M8s, which the state first ordered from Kawasaki a decade ago. They should help to alleviate the crowded conditions that leave some passengers standing throughout their commutes during rush hours on the Metro-North New Haven line, he said.

Mr. Cameron said he was not certain why state officials had decided to bring back bar cars, but he pointed out that the announcement would coincide with public hearings on a proposed fare increase. Connecticut, which controls the operation of the New Haven line beyond the New York state border, plans to raise fares by 6 percent on Dec. 1.

Ive had nobody come to me in the last few years and say, Gee, we dont have bar cars anymore, Mr. Cameron said. But hardly a week goes by when someone doesnt say, Why am I paying $300 or $400 a month when I dont get a seat on the train?

Mr. Malloy, a Democrat, may alleviate anger about rising fares  some of which would increase by $25 a month  by demonstrating that he is enhancing service, Mr. Cameron said. Still, he said he was anticipating a large, vocal, angry turnout at the hearings this week.
If Mr. Nojay wins, election law states, Republican party leaders in the three counties that fall partly or fully within the 133rd Assembly District  Livingston, Monroe and Steuben  will choose someone to run as the general-election Republican candidate in his place. They have until 10 days after his death to do so, or about a week after the primary on Tuesday. If he loses to his challenger, Rick Milne, the mayor of the village of Honeoye Falls, Mr. Milne will simply claim the nomination. That is all assuming that it isnt a tie, or some other strange thing, as Mr. Conrad pointed out.

The choice of a successor for Mr. Nojay lies with the chairmen of the Republican parties in each of the three counties, whose votes will be weighted according to the percentage of votes cast in each county the last time Mr. Nojay was elected. Given the districts deep Republican bent, whoever ends up with the nomination will most likely go on to Albany next year to join the Republican minority in the Assembly.

With the support of local party leaders, the advantage of incumbency and widespread name recognition as the host of a daily talk radio show, Mr. Nojay, who was first elected to the Assembly in 2012 and was a prominent cheerleader for Donald J. Trump, was supposed to have little trouble on Tuesday. He was, however, fending off at least one federal investigation related to his business interests outside the Legislature.

On Friday morning, as police officers raced to Riverside Cemetery in Rochester to check on him, Mr. Nojay, who was 59, shot himself to death.
Updated, 9:19 a.m.

Good morning on this terrific Tuesday.

This week, Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice.

(Its the second of two major Muslim holidays during the year, the other being Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan.)

The four-day holiday, which began on Monday and runs through Thursday, commemorates Abrahams willingness to sacrifice his son, Ishmael, to God. The festival calls for a symbolic animal sacrifice, called qurbani, and encourages families to share that meat with those less fortunate.

Its considered a joyful day, making people come together to show friendship, unity and solidarity, Shamsi Ali, the imam of the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens, said.
There was the time that inspiration for a radio commercial struck as Jerry Carroll was walking down Third Avenue. He explained it to the advertising executive he was with, who said, Sounds like a good idea. They stopped for a moment, just long enough for Mr. Carroll to write out the commercial, using the top of a trash can as a desk.

Now that was insa-a-a-a-ane.

Mr. Carroll was the high-energy, high-volume pitchman in the commercials for Crazy Eddie, the Brooklyn-based chain of electronics stores that flourished in the days when videocassette recorders and answering machines were innovations. Arms flailing, eyes bulging, he promised prices so low they were  well, you know.

There was a real Eddie  Eddie Antar, who was one of the founders of the chain and who died on Saturday at 68. But the public face was Mr. Carroll, three years older and a New York radio personality who caught Mr. Antars ear with the way he stretched out the long A in insane. The result was zany but startlingly effective. The chain claimed that among consumers in the New York area, Crazy Eddies name recognition was higher than Coca-Colas.

In all, Mr. Carroll appeared in more than 7,500 commercials on radio and television that were sly attention-getters. He dressed as Santa in winter and again in summer (after Mr. Antar dreamed up Christmas in August). He put on a beard and a stovepipe hat, and a moment later, a white wig to honor three great Americans  Lincoln, Washington and Crazy Eddie. He flew like Superman, who, disguised as this annoying television announcer, fights a never-ending battle for service, selection and prices that are insa-a-a-ane, as the voice-over bellowed in one commercial.
Jacob Monty is not a RINO  a Republican in Name Only  even though some of his hate mail says otherwise. Mr. Monty, an immigration lawyer in Houston, has been deeply involved in Republican politics in Texas and nationally for much of the past 20 years. He was a fund-raiser for both of George W. Bushs campaigns, and estimates that he has personally contributed more than $250,000 to Republican candidates.

But this years presidential race has pushed Mr. Monty to abandon his partys presidential nominee.

On Aug. 20, Mr. Monty and a group of Hispanic Republicans on an advisory council to Donald J. Trump gathered at Trump Tower in New York to discuss Mr. Trumps immigration proposals. They left with the impression that Mr. Trump had changed course and would put forward a plan that included a path to legal status for some undocumented immigrants. Mr. Monty said he felt that hed just met the real Donald Trump.

I connected with him  I think everyone at the table did, he said. He added: Im not going to say who I think the real Donald Trump is. I think I met him on Aug. 20.

Whomever he met then, someone else spoke at the end of the month, when Mr. Trump used a speech in Phoenix to double down on his hard-line position on immigration, call for a new special deportation task force and lay the blame for all of societys ills  from crime, to joblessness, to an implicit loss of Americas cultural identity  squarely at the feet of immigrants.
Hillary Clinton has pneumonia. Did you know she has a body double? She was that blond woman waving at reporters in front of Chelsea Clintons apartment a few hours after Mrs. Clinton felt unwell and left the Sept. 11 commemoration at ground zero.

Did you also hear that Mrs. Clinton has Parkinsons disease? Her coughing fits prove it, as does her latest bout of illness. She has epilepsy, as well as advancing dementia. She has managed to hide all these illnesses through almost a year and a half of a grueling campaign because the man the world thinks is the head of her Secret Service detail is actually her hypnotist. Hes also a medical doctor.

No, I havent lost my mind. Ive just lost many hours on social media, where these conspiracy theories run rampant.

Well before Mrs. Clinton fell ill and had to be assisted into a van on Sunday, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, a supporter of Donald J. Trump, said on Fox News that the news media had failed to cover her health and that viewers should go online and put down Hillary Clinton illness, take a look at the videos for yourself.
Arthur Brooks: Welcome back from the break, Gail. Two months until Election Day, and no doubt our readers have been at loose ends without being able to kick off every Tuesday with our conversation. So lets jump back into the ring.

First assignment, though: How did you spend your summer vacation?

Gail Collins: Ive missed conversing, Arthur. I spent my vacation  if thats what you want to call it  working on a book Im writing on the history of older women in America. Youll be happy to know my older women have made it to the 1970s.

Arthur: I cant wait to learn about older womens role in the Disco Revolution. I hope you got a little vacation, too. My family visited Iceland, where we learned that these days, everybody is visiting Iceland. Apparently, moss growing on lava is the new thing.

Gail: But enough about us.

Arthur: Is that really possible, Gail? Fine, move on if you must.

Gail: First of all, what did you think of Pneumonia-gate? Im pretty much with the media mainstream on this one. Once again were stuck asking why Hillary couldnt just be open about what was going on.
Beijing would certainly prefer that Kim Jong-un give up his nuclear weapons. And the Chinese do occasionally use their economic ties with North Korea to pressure Pyongyang. But Chinas overriding priority will continue to be keeping North Korea as a stable buffer against American influence in South Korea. No amount of cajoling from Washington will cause China to squeeze North Korea with enough sanctions that it will give up its weapons or risk the governments collapse.

The next administration must recognize that the United States, not China, is the indispensable nation when it comes to dealing with North Korea. Our allies, who look to us to provide leadership, already know this. So do the Chinese, who insist that only Washington can persuade the North Koreans to stop their bad behavior. North Korean officials have even told me in private that it is true for them, too.

If a new administration understands that the United States must take the lead, it can use the substantial diplomatic, military and economic power at its disposal to manage and potentially resolve this challenge. At the core will be a willingness to take all necessary steps to protect our allies, even measures that can anger China, like the recent decision to deploy advanced missile defenses in South Korea. A new administration should also seek to tighten sanctions, just as the Obama administration is doing, recognizing that, because of Chinas enduring support for the government in Pyongyang, sanctions will always fall far short of pressuring North Korea the same way they did Iran.

A successful strategy will have to include a new diplomatic initiative aimed at persuading the North to first stop expanding its arsenal and then to eventually reduce and dismantle its weapons. To persuade the North Koreans to do this, Washington will have to address their security concerns. In the short term, that may mean temporarily suspending or modifying some American-South Korean military exercises. In the longer term, it may mean replacing the armistice in place since the end of the Korean War with a permanent peace agreement.
This is an important step given Myanmars dismal human rights record. The oppression of the Rohingya, who are deprived of basic rights, including citizenship and freedom to worship and marry, is appalling. More than 120,000 Rohingya remain detained in government camps. Thousands have fled the country, many into the hands of traffickers. The use of forced labor in Myanmar, including sex trafficking, is widespread. In June, the Obama administration listed Myanmar among the worlds worst offenders in human trafficking.

Unfortunately, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyis new government has limited ability to tackle these problems because it is hobbled by the countrys 2008 Constitution, which gives Myanmars military the upper hand by reserving a quarter of the seats in Parliament for the military, empowering the military to appoint the ministers of defense, home affairs and border affairs, and to dissolve the government during a national emergency. Secretary of State John Kerry warned in May that the key to lifting the remaining sanctions is the current Constitution. It needs to be changed.

Apparently, some of Myanmars lawmakers agree, and they believe that sanctions are still needed to keep the pressure on military leaders. Last month, U Hla Moe, a senior official in Ms. Aung San Suu Kyis party, explained that the sanctions are imposed for those who are obstructions to the countrys democratic movements.

The Obama administration has progressively eased sanctions as Myanmar has moved toward democracy. In May, the administration lifted a broad range of sanctions, including against state-run banks and businesses. But, until there is constitutional reform that can deliver a durable democracy without military control, the remaining bans on trade and investment with Myanmars Department of Defense, armed groups and individuals who do business with the military, including in the lucrative gems trade, should remain in place.
To impeach the commissioner, his antagonists aim to bypass the House leadership and bring the measure directly to the floor as a privileged resolution. Such a move threatens to set a dangerous new low in congressional politicking. Should this shabby precedent be established, what sub-cabinet officials and bureaucrats might be singled out next?

No executive official below president has been impeached since the secretary of war in 1876. Constitutional scholars have told Congress there is no basis here for impeachment. The Constitution specifies treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, not partisan dissatisfaction with an agency head. Eight former I.R.S. commissioners from Republican and Democratic administrations have defended Mr. Koskinen as an honest and honorable public servant, warning that impeachment would do serious long-term damage to our revenue system.

But Freedom Caucus members insist they will not back down and will act this month. One of them, Representative John Fleming, a Louisiana Republican, is cynically fund-raising off his fervor: Friend, Im fighting back with an impeachment vote against the head of the I.R.S.

With a Republican meeting on the matter set for this week, Mr. Ryan is caught between the sort of right-wing pressure that ground down his predecessor, John Boehner, and the concerns of less fanatical members, who are wary of looking frivolous before the voters. Having to go on the record to vote against impeachment could leave these Republicans vulnerable to primary challengers from the right. But the deeper question for Mr. Ryan is why he would allow the Republican House to toy with an embarrassing impeachment issue when it should be attending to a new federal budget and a host of other pressing needs.

The speaker could show some leadership by sending any such floor motion to a quick and quiet death in committee. That is exactly what the Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi did in 2008, when Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio brought a privileged resolution to the floor to impeach President George W. Bush.
Zeislers piece was an interesting read, strongly pro-Clinton, and pro-feminist. But several readers took issue both with the headline and the editors decision to use it.

This one from Paula DiPerna of New York City was typical: I know the piece is mere opinion, but it nevertheless represents a new low in titillation journalism, as if written by a gleeful child who just got permission to use curse words. It is a disservice to the idea of public good in that, disguised as feminism, it actually delivers nothing but tweet fodder to anti-Clinton forces.

I sought out the Opinion editor Rachel Dry to ask her how the essay came about as well as the concerns highlighted in DiPernas letter, some of which I share. Dry says she commissioned the piece because she wanted someone to wrestle with how this particular profanity is being used against Clinton. Certainly the word focuses ones attention, Dry said to my questions about its use in the headline and so frequently in the story. But thats what the essay is about.

I did find the essay readable and smart, and given that the Op-Ed pages are intended to throw out the welcome mat to all views, its hard to argue that this wasnt a worthy offering. But I too was jolted by the headline. Have we really reached the point that its O.K. for The Times to refer to Clinton in bold type as The Bitch America Needs?

Dry said she was unaware of a previous time when the word was used in a headline.

What bothered me about the headline was that it seemed to come from the voice of The Times, at least when you come on it cold, as all readers do. Its one thing for an author, under her own byline and in the context of her ideas, to write the type of opinion piece Zeisler did. But the word bitch  particularly when its lobbed at you across a room or on the street or in social media  is surely intended as crude and demeaning. I suspect thats the same way Trump supporters use it. And it seems to be the way the Clinton campaign takes it, as it has made clear in the past.
The couples early work, at the tail end of the 1960s, was Pop-inflected yet driven by a budding desire to slay such idols as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius by adding daring ornament to cherished Modernist iconography. One chair, with a leopard-covered seat, is made of neon tubes instead of the then-ubiquitous steel; another seems to be melting like chocolate into pools on the floor. In a twist on the classic Thonet bentwood No. 14 chair, the Haussmanns knitted together three chairs painted in primary hues, their backs meshed in a graceful jumble like Martha Graham dancers.

In the 1970s, they dubbed their evolving aesthetic Critical Mannerism, which was inspired by the late High Renaissance style of European art that emerged around 1490. Like the Mannerists, the Haussmanns celebrated artificiality and illusion, though instead of battling the clarity and simplicity of Michelangelo, they were jabbing at the pared-down heart of Modernism. They toyed with perspective, using mirrors and intricate intarsia (had Escher made furniture, it might have looked like this). They dabbled in conceptual art that included text: The Log-O-rithmic Slide Rule consisted of a list of adjectives and adverbs that could be slid up and down against each other to form Dadaesque phrases. And while they were designing buildings and retail interiors that disrupted staid Swiss expectations, they also made dozens of hauntingly beautiful objects that deconstructed classical forms, including perhaps their most seminal piece, an elaborate Roman column with radially hinged drawers.

Like the Memphis crew, loosely led by Ettore Sottsass, the Haussmanns believed that function should follow form, but the form they mastered could actually function in real life instead of just the fever dreams of collectors. (Karl Lagerfeld vacuumed up many of the early Memphis pieces as soon as they were made; the rest are mostly confined to museums.) Due to their elaborate construction, few Haussmann pieces made it to wide-scale production, though their restrained, cerebral geometry renders them timeless. Recently Walter Knoll rereleased the pairs Chesterfield armchair, an arch take on the cozily traditional shape, outfitted with wittily incongruous tubular steel legs. It bears the same revolutionary punch today.

For decades the Haussmanns lived on the top floors of a slender building that includes their studio, which they continue to visit daily. But home is now across town, a 1,700-square-foot apartment with an elevator that overlooks one of Zurichs historic streets. The rooms are filled with their work, including a massive neo-Classical desk that Robert trompe loeiled by hand, as though it were deep blue marble  a blue that doesnt exist in nature, Trix notes proudly. To us, the best thing is to not be a slave to what is natural, she says, to go beyond, to shock, to twist, not to accept.
Good morning.

Welcome to California Today, a morning update on the stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state).

Tell us about the issues that matter to you  and what youd like to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

Want to receive California Today by email? Sign up.

If you think its been a fiery year, were only just getting started.

Since January, the number of fires threatening areas guarded by Californias Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has jumped roughly 23 percent compared to the five-year average. Their size has grown, too, by nearly 90 percent, according to data released by the agency.

In their wake, at least seven people have died, according to reports, and hundreds of homes have been destroyed.
DAYTON, Ohio  When Hillary Clinton was searching for a running mate, she made clear her top criterion: Her selection needed to be ready to become president if something were to happen, as she put it.

When she announced Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her choice, Mrs. Clinton affirmed that he had passed that test.

Now, after Mrs. Clinton had to be helped into a van while departing a Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony on Sunday and the later disclosure that she had been given a pneumonia diagnosis on Friday, Mr. Kaine is coming under a more intense spotlight. When he took questions from reporters on Monday, cable news channels carried the exchange live, a rare level of attention for his candidacy.

While everyone  politicians included  gets sick from time to time, the intense focus on Mrs. Clintons health brings with it a constitutional reminder: Mr. Kaine is not only a campaign-trail booster, but also a possible president himself.
MIAMI  So many pregnant women have taken advantage of Floridas offer of free Zika testing that state laboratories have been unable to keep pace, doctors and patients say, leading to long delays for women anxious to know whether the virus has passed to their fetuses.

The delays began with a well-intentioned and much-applauded offer. On Aug. 3, Gov. Rick Scott announced that the state would provide the costly Zika tests to all pregnant women, a move intended to quell fears and allow low-income or uninsured women to be tested. Babies infected with Zika can be born with microcephaly, a devastating brain malformation, or with eye and ear defects.

Were ramping that up across the entire state, Mr. Scott said at the time.

But hundreds of women in Miami-Dade County, where Zika is spreading, have been waiting weeks for state results on the same kinds of tests that private laboratories are turning around in three to seven days, doctors said. For some women, the delays could complicate already distressing decisions about whether to terminate their pregnancies if they test positive. Florida forbids abortions after 24 weeks.

State health officials declined to say how many tests had been done, provide a reason for the delay or explain how they planned to remedy it. But doctors and researchers attributed some of the delay to a lack of resources, with not enough staff members to analyze the test results.
But it is far from certain that Mr. Ban can get enough countries to add up to the 55 percent threshold. No other countries have close to as many carbon emissions as China or the United States. The worlds third-largest carbon polluter, India, which emits about 7 percent of the worlds emissions, has been unclear about its plans to sign on. Although Indias prime minister, Narendra Modi, emerged as a key broker of the Paris agreement, many members of his government remain wary of taking the final steps to clinch the deal.

Rajendra M. Abhyankar, a former Indian minister of foreign affairs who is now a professor at Indiana University, said, While many in our government want to go forward with the terms of the agreement, there is still a feeling that ratifying the agreement would be tying our hands in terms of what we can do economically.

And from an international point of view, the sense is, why should we sign on if the United States might one day drop out? he said. The United States has signed on for now, but what will happen once Trump comes?

Another question mark is the European Union, whose 28 member countries together account for about 10 percent of global emissions. Under the Paris agreement, the union has pledged to collectively reduce its emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. But the union cannot legally ratify that pledge until all 28 countries have separately ratified it in their own parliaments, a process that could take years. The British vote to leave the European Union could further complicate that process.

Within the union, advocates of the Paris deal who fear a Trump presidency have pushed for new legislation that would allow the body to quickly ratify the Paris deal with executive authority  or would allow individual countries to ratify it separately from the union. But those proposals are already creating political rifts within the European body.

In the face of such difficulties, Mr. Ban has redoubled his diplomatic efforts. In recent weeks, he has met with or telephoned dozens of world leaders, including Mr. Modi, to urge them to complete their ratification of the Paris deal by Sept. 21. At the Chinese summit meeting of the Group of 20 largest industrial economies this month, he pressed the issue with every world leader present, according to aides.

He is seeing some success. On Monday, Brazil, which emits about 2 percent of global emissions, announced that it had completed its domestic ratification of the Paris deal. That came as a surprise to many, since Brazils climate pledge had been a signature policy of Dilma Rousseff, the countrys recently impeached president.
BERLIN  Jutta Limbach, a lawyer who became the first woman to head Germanys highest court and later led a commission to mediate disputes about the restitution of art seized by the Nazis, died on Saturday at her home here. She was 82.

Her death was announced by the Federal Constitutional Court, which gave no cause.

Ms. Limbach was born Jutta Ryneck on March 27, 1934, into a well-known Social Democratic family in Berlin. She was 11 when World War II ended. Decades later, she said that she was of the generation that had learned of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes as a rude shock.

She kept with her, she said, a first edition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was passed in December 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly.

My family did something to develop my sense for human rights, she told the Berlin daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel in 2007.
WASSENAAR, the Netherlands  The Dutch chemical company executive and art collector Joop van Caldenborgh was attending a dinner in London in the 1990s when the American abstract artist Ellsworth Kelly approached him.

I didnt even know what the artist looked like, Mr. van Caldenborgh confessed recently. A man came to me and said: You must be Joop van Caldenborgh. You have Blue Ripe. I was so astonished that he knew.

Blue Ripe (1959), one of Mr. Kellys early colorist paintings, is the first work that visitors encounter when they enter the Ellsworth Kelly retrospective at Mr. van Caldenborghs new private museum here, Museum Voorlinden, situated on a 100-acre nature preserve in the meadows and on the dunes of the Netherlands west coast. The exhibition, Anthology, is the first large-scale survey of Kellys work since the artist died in December.

That this low-profile Dutch businessman could pull together such a significant representation of Kellys work  with loans from the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, Tate London, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the artists own studio  for his private museum in a far-flung corner of the Netherlands indicates the kind of leverage that Mr. van Caldenborgh, 75, and other major collectors, now have in the art world.
LONDON  The shortlist for this years Man Booker Prize for Fiction, among the most prestigious literary honors in the world, includes six books by authors from Britain, Canada, South Africa and the United States, the prize committee said on Tuesday.

The nominees for the award, which comes with a cash prize of 50,000, or around $66,400, were chosen from a longlist of 13 names, which was announced in July.

The shortlisted books are:

 The Canadian author Madeleine Thiens Do Not Say We Have Nothing, about the legacy of the Cultural Revolution in China.

 The American writer Paul Beattys The Sellout, a satire on black life in the United States.

 The Canadian-British author David Szalays All That Man Is, a series of nine stories about male protagonists.
The Federal Reserve has taken dead aim on merchant banking, proposing to ban the practice as part of a take no risk regulation strategy.

Merchant banking has been around for centuries. Why crack down now?

The business originated during the Italian Renaissance. Small, family-run banks would finance sea voyages and other trading missions, taking a share of the profits. This was high-risk finance. All could be lost as a result of a storm, the occasional war or even piracy. In the following centuries, merchant banking spread across Europe and then to the United States, becoming the occupation of the big banking houses like J.P. Morgan.

Bank trading activities are more limited today. Now, when the term merchant banking is used, it generally refers to banks like Goldman Sachs buying and selling nonfinancial companies. In other words, when banks act like private equity or venture capital firms in buying a company or investing in a start-up.

Despite merchant bankings storied past, the Federal Reserve has seized this moment to try to strike it down. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, the Fed was required to conduct a study of risk-taking by banks like Goldman and Bank of America.
TOKYO  Five years ago, Renesas Electronics was a limping Japanese microchip manufacturer with a main factory ravaged by an earthquake threatening its ability to survive.

Now, after a rescue by the Japanese government and an agonizing restructuring, Renesas has re-emerged as a cash-rich international acquirer, clinching a deal on Tuesday to buy Intersil, a California-based chip maker, for $3.2 billion.

The microchip industry is experiencing a wave of consolidation, as manufacturers seek to build scale and reduce costs. Renesas and Intersil said in a joint news release that their businesses, which are focused on different kinds of chips, would complement each other, though Renesas chief executive, Bunsei Kure, told analysts it could be four or five years before the combination translated into higher profits.

Renesas is paying a steep price for Intersil. Its accepted offer of $22.50 a share is 14 percent above Intersils closing price on Monday and 44 percent more than the company was worth in mid-August, when a Japanese newspaper reported that executives were negotiating a possible deal.
Lets start the day by going through the Wells Fargo fraudulent accounts scandal, by the numbers:

5,300  the number of Wells Fargo employees engaged in creating sham accounts for customers.

$1.5 million  the fees customers were charged for these unwanted accounts.

$124.6 million  the amount, according to Fortune, that the executive who oversaw the group of rogue employees is receiving as a payout.

$185 million  the amount that Wells Fargo was fined for the fraudulent accounts.

And consider this: There is, to say the least, some disconnect between the Wells Fargo that tried to be a trusted bank and the Wells Fargo where thousands of employees engaged in rampant sham deals.

The deceit may have been small in dollar amounts, but what does it say about the bank that these practices were so pervasive?
Headliner

FISH CHEEKS Ohm Suansilphong, a chef who worked at the highly rated Nahm in Bangkok, has joined his brother, Chat Suansilphong, a chef who worked for Tom Colicchio, to help bolster New Yorks somewhat scant offering of reasonably authentic Thai food. The room, decorated with Thai motifs, is a glowing, golden affair. And their concise, creative menu of mostly family-style dishes is heavy on seafood (coconut crab curry with betel leaves, crispy garlic branzino) and frequently fueled by tiny, potent birds-eye chiles. Were not dumbing down the dishes or the spice levels, said Chat, adding that they are grinding their spice mixtures: 55 Bond Street (Bowery), 212-677-2223, fishcheeksnyc.com.

Opening

ALMANAK The full-service counter in Claus Meyers Grand Central Terminal food hall has opened, with a menu that includes crudo, a cod cake with herbs, a salad of cabbage and blue cheese, beef tartare, and a bun with spinach and bone marrow: Great Northern Food Hall, Grand Central Terminal, 646-568-4018, greatnorthernfood.com.

CITY PERCH KITCHEN & BAR Sherry Yard, who worked for many years with Wolfgang Puck in California, mainly as a pastry chef and a partner, is running this farm-to-table restaurant attached to a movie theater near the New Jersey entrance to the George Washington Bridge. Its the second location for the company, which has one in North Bethesda, Md. Here, she has added pizzas, one of them topped with grilled local vegetables. Her signature desserts include a deep, dark chocolate doughnut: Hudson Lights, 2023 Hudson Street, Fort Lee, N.J., 201-582-7101, cityperch.com.

GUAC TACOS & TEQUILA Guacamole? Let us count the ways. Chipotle, mango and bacon are some of the varieties served at this new spot that also features tequila: 179 Avenue B (11th Street), 212-254-4822, guacnyc.com.
Zinfandel, she said, holds up well, as do monastrells from eastern Spain, which tend to be less tannic than those from southern France, where the word for monastrell is mourvedre. She is also planning to expand the selection of sherries, which, though high in alcohol are low in tannins.

Like pinot noirs, sparkling wines are often thought to be versatile, but its not always the case with Indian dishes. Champagne can go well with fried dishes, Mr. Parr suggested, but often it is too austere, particularly those labeled extra brut or brut nature. Other types of sparkling wines that show some sweetness, like Bugeys from the Savoie in France and petillant naturels, can be great.

As for that other sparkling beverage, beer, few sommeliers believe that it enhances Indian dishes. Mr. Parr says it refreshes the palate without accentuating the flavors, while Mr. Dolinski is disdainful.

When the British arrived in India, it didnt have an alcohol tradition, so they brought Scotch and beer, he said. Beer wipes out the spices and destroys the flavors. To the British, that was great.

Given all the complexities in pairing wine and Indian dishes, I have two suggestions. First, in a fine Indian restaurant with a good wine list and a sommelier, ask for help. The sommelier has an intimate sense of the restaurants cuisine and how it will go with wine. Second, if you are choosing wines at home, be experimental. Dont fear failures; chalk them up as lessons learned.

We dont yet know enough about all the Indian cuisines in order to say what goes and what doesnt, said Mr. Beedle of Indian Accent, but I think were going to learn a ton.
American military history is full of misguided wars, botched battles and scandals of all sorts, so its no secret that there is fallibility all through the ranks. But the events chronicled in Command and Control, a documentary by Robert Kenner based on the book by Eric Schlosser, are terrifying nonetheless. Our most destructive weapons are somehow immune to our own clumsiness and inexactitude, arent they? No, theyre not.

The film recounts in harrowing detail an accident in a Titan II missile silo in Arkansas in September 1980 caused by the most innocuous of mistakes: An airman doing routine maintenance dropped a piece of equipment. The ordinariness of the precipitating event and how unprepared officials were to deal with it are shocking.

Mr. Kenner interviews many of the participants, including David F. Powell and Jeffrey L. Plumb, who were just a couple of young grunts doing their jobs when Mr. Powell mishandled a metal socket, which fell some 70 feet and punctured the Titans fuel tank. Mr. Powell speaks movingly about how the moment has haunted him.

The film effectively recreates the sense of confusion over how to try to contain the leak and what might happen if the fuel ignited. The Titan carried the most destructive nuclear warhead in the arsenal; a good chunk of Arkansas, whose governor at the time was Bill Clinton, could have been affected had it exploded or had its nuclear contaminants been spewed across the landscape.
Soon after, on Feb. 3, 2010, another social worker, Veronica L. Mo, wrote something similar and said he had also asked about another child. Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu traveled to Washington to meet one of the boys, according to the records. He soon took another child.

Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu was a one-man operation used by several different agencies that considered his home a safe haven for boys who were developmentally or physically disabled, or had severe behavioral problems.

That dependency proved blinding for those agencies, law enforcement officials have said.

Mr. Mates said that nothing was overlooked and that his client is innocent. Over the past 20 years, Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu had been the subject of 30 to 40 complaints about abuse or other mistreatment of children, and the police or social services had investigated them all, Mr. Mates said. Each and every time that an investigation was done, no charges were brought, he said.

And records suggested that the authorities at Washingtons child welfare agency were more directly involved in monitoring Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu than was New York Citys child welfare agency. Although New Yorks agency sent more than 90 boys to him, it had outsourced oversight of Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu to the nonprofit SCO Family of Services.

Through the years, there were several different agencies involved, like the boys schools, hospitals where they went for care, and a residential treatment center called Little Flower in Suffolk County.

A developmentally disabled boy from Washington whom Gonzales-Mugaburu adopted left his direct supervision to live at Little Flower. There, in 2014, he told a psychotherapist about horrific abuses inside Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburus home on a quiet cul-de-sac. The therapist, Amy DAntonio, alerted the authorities about the allegations, prompting an investigation by Suffolk County Child Protective Services.

Ms. DAntonio had helped the young man, who was 18 years old at the time, reconnect with his biological family in Washington. She said Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu objected, once approaching her in the parking lot of the treatment center and telling her that the teenager did not have the mental capacity to make such a decision.
Lets assume, just for the sake of argument, that Donald Trump and his supporters on the deplorable right actually mean what they say and are not just spewing sound bites for fun or attention.

If thats the case, here are some of the things they want Americans to believe:

 Vladimir Putin, an unabashed dictator who invades other countries, tramples on his peoples civil and human rights, and has the blood of Russian journalists on his hands is the proper role model for an American president.

 Disgruntled right-wingers would be justified to rise in armed rebellion if they dont like the results in November. Because of course thats what Thomas Jefferson and the other founding fathers had in mind when they set in motion more than 200 years of peaceful transfer of power.

 Hillary Clinton has a fatal illness and the national media are conspiring to cover it up. (Why have I never been invited to join these conspiracies?)
PORT CHESTER, N.Y.  The mayor of this compact, working-class village bordering Connecticut cant resist the comparison. Like so many boosters of their own towns, he invokes a New York City boroughs name as he describes changes to Port Chester over the last few years. Yes, he calls it the Brooklyn of Westchester County.

Downtown has become a magnet for food, with upscale eateries like Bartaco and Tarry Lodge, a Mario Batali restaurant, competing with a Brazilian steakhouse, a Peruvian cafe and many other ethnic restaurants. A refurbishment of the Capitol Theater music hall has kick-started village night life. And a rezoning of the area several years ago helped spur development of new apartment buildings aimed at young professionals, who can walk to the villages Metro-North rail station and get to Manhattan in about an hour.

Millennials are moving here from the outer boroughs and other places because of the bang for the buck, said the mayor, Dennis G. Pilla. The village is going through a transformation.

But the gentrifying of this former industrial center is also generating tension, particularly as the village considers its biggest development proposal yet. Starwood Capitol Group, of neighboring Greenwich, Conn., wants to build a $300 million, mixed-use development on an abandoned hospital campus at the edge of downtown and near Interstate 287.
An understated warning comes toward the end of a new documentary on a Titan 2 missile accident that shook the small town of Damascus, Ark., in mid-September 1980.

The missile exploded in its underground silo, throwing aloft a thermonuclear warhead with a destructive potential greater than all the bombs dropped in World War II. Its detonation would have leveled much of Arkansas and sent clouds of deadly radioactivity raining down on the East Coast.

Harold Brown was the defense secretary who breathed a sigh of relief once miliary officials had managed to locate the missing warhead and render it safe. As a young physicist, he had designed nuclear arms and risen to serve as Secretary of the Air Force and director of Defense Research and Engineering in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. For President Carter, he ran the American military.

Dr. Brown gives his take on the modern implications of the Titan 2 accident as part of the new documentary, Command and Control, released this month. He casts it as a cautionary tale, warning that the nations atomic complex has fallen into decline.
Robert E. Allen, who as chief executive and chairman of AT&T for almost a decade presided over major reorganizations of the company as the telecommunications industry remade itself in the late 1980s and 90s, died on Saturday in Chatham, N.J. He was 81.

His son Jay said the cause was complications of a stroke that Mr. Allen had in January.

Mr. Allen had a 40-year career with AT&T, beginning straight out of college in 1957 managing telephone operators at Indiana Bell. He reached the top post after the death of James E. Olson in 1988.

Mr. Allen, who was president at the time, had been running the company on an interim basis while Mr. Olson was being treated for cancer.

Mr. Allen took the reins in a time of great uncertainty for AT&T. The company was struggling to become a competitive computer and communications business after the federal government, in a landmark antitrust case, had broken up its telephone monopoly. Long-distance carriers were posing a challenge, and mobile phones and the internet were coming into their own.
Donald J. Trump has departed from Republican orthodoxy in multiple ways, but his consistently kind words for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia stand as the most striking.

Mr. Trumps rejection of traditional Republican stances on trade and immigration helped him win the presidential nomination by building a powerful base among blue-collar white voters who feel most aggrieved by economic and cultural change.

His embrace of Mr. Putin, however, fits no obvious political strategy. Staunch opposition to Moscow united the Republican Party throughout the Cold War.

The collapse of what Ronald Reagan called the Evil Empire only changed so much; four years ago, the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, described Russia as Americas top geopolitical foe.
The billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, has pledged to give up to $5 million to veterans groups if Donald J. Trump agrees to release his tax returns before the Oct. 19 presidential debate.

Mr. Hoffman announced his challenge in a statement published Monday on Medium that said he was offering a matching donation to support a crowdfunding campaign started by Peter Kiernan, a former Marine.

By midday Tuesday, Mr. Kiernans fund-raising on Crowdpac.com had raised more than $74,000 toward its $1 million goal of donating funds to 10 nonprofit organizations that help war veterans. Mr. Hoffman offered to match those donations 5 to 1 up to $5 million.

He said that offer was inspired by Mr. Trumps own pledge in 2012 to donate that amount to a charity if President Obama revealed his college and passport records and applications. At the time, Mr. Trump had been questioning whether Mr. Obama was born in the United States (indeed he was, in Hawaii).
New Yorks attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, announced Tuesday that his office was looking into Donald J. Trumps nonprofit foundation, which is facing intense criticism in light of a political donation it made in support of the Florida attorney general.

Mr. Schneiderman said his office was seeking to determine whether the charity had been in compliance with state laws. Mr. Trumps campaign disclosed this month that he had paid a $2,500 penalty to the Internal Revenue Service because the 2013 contribution in Florida was sent from his nonprofit foundation, in violation of tax regulations.

Mr. Schneiderman did not give specifics of the extent of his offices investigation but told CNN, We have been concerned that the Trump Foundation may have engaged in some improprieties.

Jason Miller, a senior aide in the Trump campaign, dismissed the inquiry. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is a partisan hack who has turned a blind eye to the Clinton Foundation for years and has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, he said.
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to restore a period of early voting in Ohio during which people could register and vote in the same day.

The courts brief order came in response to an emergency application from Democratic groups. There were no noted dissents.

The case, Ohio Democratic Party v. Husted, No. 16A223, has its roots in the 2004 general election, when Ohio voters faced exceptionally long lines, leaving them, in the words of one court, effectively disenfranchised.

In response, the state adopted a measure allowing in-person early voting in the 35 days before Election Day. As registration in the state closes 30 days before Election Day, the measure introduced a brief period, known as the Golden Week, in which voters could register and vote at the same time.
They feel invested in this American presidential race, like no election before, and fret about its outcome  even if, for the most part, they dont have a vote.

A current of helpless anxiety runs through hundreds of emails and Facebook posts from New York Times readers around the world since I arrived here in July to help cover the helter-skelter presidential election, now hurtling down its homestretch. Among foreigners, it boils down to a single question: How did it come to this?

In one of the most mature democracies in the world, how does a campaign get so wild? asked Manu Duggar, a Nepali living in Canada. Im afraid, said Bernt Klein, a computer scientist in Germany.

Overwhelmingly, international readers say they are transfixed by the unorthodox candidacy of Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate, and confounded by the strong emotions that Hillary Clinton evokes among many Americans, including Democrats.
Over the past few decades, Stan Lai has established a reputation as one of the most celebrated Chinese-language playwrights and directors. His works include more than 30 original plays, two feature films and four operas. Mr. Lai, who was born in the United States and is based in Taiwan, has written classics like Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land (1986), now an iconic play in contemporary Chinese theater, while still continuing to experiment with new forms, as seen in his eight-hour epic A Dream Like a Dream (2000), which has audiences sitting on swivel chairs in the center of the stage.

He is a co-founder of the Performance Workshop in Taiwan and the Wuzhen Theater Festival in China. In 2015, he opened his first theater, Theater Above, a 699-seat venue in Shanghai. Most recently, he directed San Francisco Operas production of the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber, which had its premiere last weekend. In a recent interview, Mr. Lai spoke about changes in the theater industry in China and Taiwan and how his Buddhist beliefs influence his writing.

When did you first start writing plays?

I started writing plays in 1983. As a new teacher in Taiwan just having received my Ph.D. from Berkeley, I found a great lack of teaching materials for my students, who didnt read English. Since Taiwan had been under martial law for so long, there wasnt a body of creative work  plays  and there were very few translated materials to fall back on as teaching material, so I decided to create my own.

What was the environment for theater in Taiwan like at the time?

It was a time when there was no theater industry in Taiwan, so no professional anything  writers, directors, actors, designers, scene shops, etc. Not even a theater with a fully functioning fly system. So my way of creating new works also was my way of conducting actor training and general training in creating works for the theater, with the larger context being the lack of theater facilities or even a style of training or performing.
SEOUL, South Korea  The United States and South Korea vowed on Tuesday to push for the strongest possible resolution at the United Nations Security Council, including new sanctions and the removal of existing loopholes, to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear test.

The top American and South Korean envoys on North Korea expressed their resolve during a news conference in Seoul, the Souths capital, on Tuesday, speaking shortly after two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers from the United States Air Force base in Guam streaked over the South in a show of force.

The flight by the B-1B bombers demonstrated the United States commitment to providing extended deterrence, including the threat of using nuclear weapons, to protect the South, said Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the top American military commander in the country. It was also intended to help counter calls among nationalist politicians and scholars here who contend that the South must arm itself with nuclear weapons.

On Tuesday, Sung Kim, Washingtons top official dealing with North Korea, and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Hong-kyun, reiterated that the South did not need to build its own nuclear bombs or to reintroduce American tactical atomic bombs that were withdrawn in the early 1990s.
MANILA  Military cooperation between the Philippines and the United States appeared to be undisturbed on Tuesday, as the Southeast Asian country sought to temper comments by its president suggesting American troops should leave Mindanao, where they have been helping to fight an insurgency.

Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla, a spokesman for the Philippine armed forces, said the remarks the president, Rodrigo Duterte, delivered on Monday at a swearing-in ceremony for officials in Manila were an expression of his concern to the U.S. servicemen in Mindanao.

Pursuant to the same statement, he desires that our American counterparts should be eased from harms way, General Padilla said.

Mr. Duterte said on Monday that the American Special Forces in Mindanao should withdraw.

I do not want a rift with America, he added, but they have to go.
BEIJING  A riot broke out in the southern Chinese village of Wukan on Tuesday as dozens of people, many of them waving flags and hurling stones, protested early morning raids that led to the arrests of activists who had criticized the government.

The police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas, leaving several people with bloody backs and faces, according to interviews with villagers and images posted online.

The turmoil in Wukan, a fishing village of 13,000 in Guangdong Province, began before sunrise, as hundreds of police officers descended and rounded up 13 people, accusing them of spreading rumors, inciting mobs and disrupting public order.

Soon after, protesters began marching through the streets, denouncing the arrests as unjust. The activists had been pressing for the release of a village leader, Lin Zuluan, who was sentenced last week to three years in prison on corruption charges.
BERLIN  Three Syrians who entered Germany as migrants have been arrested on suspicion of belonging to the Islamic State and may have links to those who carried out the Paris terrorist attacks last year, the authorities said on Tuesday.

Thomas de Maiziere, the German interior minister, said the travel documents the men were carrying when they were arrested on Tuesday had been issued by the same authority as ones found on some of the men who carried out the attacks in and around Paris in November. The authorities also said that the three Syrians appeared to have used the same smugglers to enter Germany and to apply for asylum as some of those involved in the terrorist assaults in France.

It could be that this was a sleeper cell, Mr. de Maiziere told reporters.

Prosecutors said in a statement that they believed the three came to Germany in November to carry out a planned attack for the group, also known as ISIL or ISIS, or to await instructions for one.
Even Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose own health minister started the campaign, distanced himself from the ads in a radio interview, noting ironically that none of his friends had their kids after seeing an advert.

Mr. Renzi said that to increase the birthrate, structural issues like day care and services needed to be addressed.

Under Mr. Renzi, Italys government has tried to help families with a so-called baby bonus of 80 to 160 euros, or about $90 to $180, for low- and middle-income households, and it has approved labor laws giving more flexibility on parental leave. But Italy allocates only 1 percent of its gross domestic product to social protection benefits  half the European average. One child out of three here is at risk of relative poverty.

Italy has a terrible combination: low birthrate, low womens employment and high risk of child poverty, said Alessandro Rosina, a professor of demography at Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. On this path, Italy can only but have increasing costs for aging people, and increased public debt.

We defend our present, but cant design the future, Professor Rosina said.

Figures from Istat, the national statistics agency, show that Italian women with children are far less likely to work than mothers in other European countries, which provide greater social services.

In much of northern Europe, where social services are greater, about 70 percent of women work  and almost all of them continue to work after having children. By comparison, according to Eurostat, Italy has the second-lowest female employment rate in Europe, especially in the south.

So many young women are even asked to presign a resignation letter here, especially in small companies, said Teresa Potenza, a longtime womens advocate in Naples, referring to a practice in which some women are asked to sign a resignation letter in case of pregnancy before they are hired. Even to all those women, that campaign is a punch to the gut.
They are advancing pawns here and everywhere; they want to show that there is only one Russia, the Russia of Putin, said Alexis Obolensky, vice president of the Association Culturelle Orthodoxe Russe de Nice, a group of French believers, many of them descendants of White Russians who fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. They want nothing to do with a Moscow-based church leadership headed by Kirill, patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, a close ally of the Russian president.

A Broader Push

The French Orthodox association is instead loyal to the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, a rival church leadership in Istanbul that has provided a haven for many of Mr. Putins churchgoing foes. After a long legal battle with Moscow, Mr. Obolenskys association in 2013 lost control of Nices Orthodox cathedral, St. Nicholas, to the Moscow Patriarchate, which installed its own priests and rallied the faithful behind projects to warm Frances frosty relations with Russia.

When Russian church staff and their lay French supporters broke into the Nice Orthodox cemetery in February and declared it Russian property, allies of Mr. Obolensky hoisted a banner on the iron gate: Hands off, Mr. Putin. We are not in Crimea or Ukraine. Let our dead rest in peace.

Moscows quest to gain control of churches and graves dating from czarist times and squeeze out believers who look to the Constantinople patriarch is part of a broader push by the Kremlin to assert itself as both the legitimate heir to and master of Holy Russia, and as a champion of traditional values against the decadent heresies, notably liberal democracy, promoted by the United States and what they frequently call Gayropa.

The church has become an instrument of the Russian state. It is used to extend and legitimize the interests of the Kremlin, said Sergei Chapnin, who is the former editor of the official journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church and affiliated churches outside Russia.

Unlike the Catholic Church, which has a single, undisputed leader, the pope in Rome, the Orthodox or Eastern branch of Christianity is divided into more than a dozen self-governing provinces, each with its own patriarch. The biggest of these, the Russian Orthodox Church, covers not only Russia, but also fragile new states like Moldova that formerly belonged to the Russian and later Soviet empires.

We have been independent for 25 years but our church is still dependent on Moscow, complained Iurie Leanca, a former prime minister of Moldova, who in 2014 signed a trade and political pact with the European Union that the church and the Kremlin worked hard to derail.
JERUSALEM  The Israeli military said on Tuesday that Syrian forces had fired two surface-to-air missiles after Israeli aircraft targeted artillery positions in the Syrian Golan Heights overnight, but it categorically denied a claim by the Syrians that they had shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone.

It was not immediately clear whether the Syrian antiaircraft fire early Tuesday, a rare response to an Israeli air incursion, was intended to hit the Israeli planes or to serve as a warning. Syrias state news agency, SANA, cited the countrys General Command of the Army and Armed Forces as saying that defense forces responded to an attack by the Israeli enemys air force on a military position in the southern province of Quneitra around 1 a.m.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said the Syrians didnt shoot anything down. Suggesting that the missile fire had not come close to hitting the Israeli aircraft, he added that they were in no danger and that at no point was the safety of the aircraft compromised.

Israeli Army Radio said that the missile fire had been inaccurate and had occurred long after the Israeli attack.
JERUSALEM  Shimon Peres, the Israeli former prime minister and president who shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve the long-running conflict with the Palestinians, remained hospitalized on Wednesday after suffering what his doctor called a massive stroke.

Mr. Peres, 93, was sedated and put on a respirator on Tuesday when he was brought to the Israeli hospital, where he suffered the stroke after complaining of a headache.

After an all-night vigil in the hospital, with expressions of sympathy pouring in from around the world, his doctor said Wednesday morning that Mr. Peres was in critical but stable condition and was not in immediate danger of death, although his chances of recovery remained uncertain.

Its very emotional, as you can imagine, the doctor, Rafi Walden, who is also Mr. Peress son-in-law, told reporters on a conference call. We are very close to him, and obviously we are very moved and touched by his condition, but also very moved by the reaction of the public.
JERUSALEM  The United States has finalized a $38 billion package of military aid for Israel over the next 10 years, the largest of its kind ever, and the two allies plan to sign the agreement on Wednesday, American and Israeli officials said.

The State Department scheduled a ceremony to formally announce the pact, which will be signed by Jacob Nagel, the acting national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Thomas A. Shannon Jr., the under secretary of state for political affairs. Susan E. Rice, President Obamas national security adviser who handled negotiations, plans to be on hand.

The package represents a major commitment to Israels security in the waning months of Mr. Obamas presidency after years of fractious relations with Mr. Netanyahu over issues like the Iran nuclear agreement. Mr. Netanyahu agreed to several concessions to cement the deal rather than gamble on winning better terms from the next president.

The package will provide an average of $3.8 billion a year over the next decade to Israel, already the largest recipient of American aid, including financing for missile defense systems that defend against rockets fired by groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Under a previous 10-year agreement that expires in 2018, the United States provides about $3 billion a year, but lately Congress has added up to $500 million a year for missile defense.
GENEVA  The top human rights official at the United Nations denounced a range of countries on Tuesday for what he called their escalating efforts to stop the Human Rights Council from monitoring abuses.

In a scathing appraisal, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the high commissioner for human rights, said he was appalled at what he called attempts to block or evade human rights scrutiny by the United Nations member states that created the Human Rights Council a decade ago.

Mr. al-Hussein said these states often invoke what he described as spurious arguments that human rights inquiries violate national sovereignty.

The trend toward obstruction, he said, has been accompanied by efforts to discredit global institutions like the United Nations and repudiate human rights protections that grew out of the two world wars. Those who have provoked these efforts, he said, include jihadist militant groups and dangerous xenophobes and bigots running for office in well-established democracies.
It had been decades since Id flown over a pair of handlebars.

One moment I was bouncing along, knee-deep in sagebrush, mind reeling from all the natural beauty zipping by, and the next Id caught a wheel on a rock and gone sailing into that familiar somersault: butt rising from the saddle, shoulders twisting violently, hips lurching up-and-over, heels actually clicking midair, sunglasses and water bottle and half-eaten Clif Bar hurtling into the trees, the ground closing in.

Because I was aimed steeply downhill, partway into a soft-clay gully, I landed more or less on my feet, like a gymnast, before flopping onto my stomach with an Ugh! and briefly bodysurfing. Miraculously unscathed, I dusted myself off and glanced around. Out here, alone in the wilderness, at least nobody was watching.

Looking back, it seems strange that I kept going. I was just one-sixteenth of the way into a 96-mile-long bike-packing trip with an old friend, Dacus, whom I had abandoned an hour earlier with a broken chain. It wasnt even my first wipeout. My shins were already pulped after crashing through a wall of thistle. Most alarmingly, I had scant cellphone reception.
The main street in Gracanica, a village on the outskirts of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, is lined with bakeries and markets strung together in a jumble until the shop fronts give way to a high stone wall. Step to the other side, and the hum of Volkswagens and Skodas falls away almost entirely. At the center of a wide lawn sits Gracanica Monastery, a masterpiece of late-Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture, its rosy domes like steppingstones that draw the eye and the spirit toward the sky.

Gracanica was the last monastery constructed, in the early 14th century, by the Serbian King Stefan Milutin, who had promised God that he would build a church for each of the 40-odd years of his reign. Inside the nave, scarcely an inch of the stone shows through the hundreds of frescoes that ascend the walls and pool in the arches of the cupolas. One need not count oneself among the faithful to be silenced by the suffusion of contemplation and color  seabed blue, the opulent scarlets and gold halos of the sainted patriarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church, their faces blackened remarkably little over seven centuries.

When I visited Gracanica, a protected Unesco World Heritage site, in late May, Trojan Parlic, a caretaker with delicately graying curls and a corduroy blazer, led me to a rendering in the churchs nave of 16 branches of the medieval ruling dynasty. Christ the Pantocrator floated protectively at the summit. Mr. Parlic told me that the entire interior had been completed over three years, from 1318 to 1321, by two artists from Thessaloniki.

So the painters were Greek? I said.

Mr. Parlic shrugged. I dont know if they were Greeks or if they were Serbs. It doesnt matter.
While young people, poor people and Hispanics are often singled out for low voting rates, there are millions of nonvoters in every demographic group. In fact, the majority of people who didnt vote in the 2012 presidential election were white, middle-income and middle-aged.

Participation by eligible voters in the 2012 presidential election Voted Did not vote White RACE Black Hispanic Asian Less than $20K INCOME $20K to $50K $50K to $100K $100K or more 18-29 AGE 30-39 40-64 65+ 80 million people 60 40 20 0 20 40 Did not vote Voted RACE White Black Hispanic Asian INCOME Less than $20K $20K to $50K $50K to $100K $100K or more AGE 18-29 30-39 40-64 65+ 80 million 60 40 20 0 20 40 Did not vote Voted White Black Hispanic Asian Less than $20K $20K to $50K $50K to $100K $100K or more 18-29 30-39 40-64 65+ 80 million 60 40 20 0 20 40 Voted Did not vote White RACE Black Hispanic Asian Less than $20K INCOME $20K to $50K $50K to $100K $100K or more 18-29 AGE 30-39 40-64 65+ 80 million people 60 40 20 0 20 40

But what distinguishes voters from nonvoters can be only partly explained by demographics. Experts say individuals tend to be motivated by a combination of their priorities, their group culture, how competitive their state is, and how easy or hard it is to vote.

The richer, older and more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote .

At the individual level, education and income are still two of the strongest predictors of whether someone will turn out at the polls.

Most of the differences between people who vote and those who dont vote can be accounted for by motivational reasons  levels of political interest and engagement, said Benjamin Highton, a professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. And levels of political interest and engagement are strongly correlated with education and income.

Voting rates in the 2012 presidential election

While education increases political knowledge and engagement, the factors that drive an individual to pursue education may be the same ones that lead to participation in politics.

Age is also strongly correlated to voting. One explanation is that as people get older, they tend to own homes, pay more taxes and have less residential mobility, increasing their stakes in the political system. Voting rates begin to fall when people reach their late 70s, as health and mobility obstacles make it harder to get to the polls.

Among voters with little education, African-Americans are 1.7 times more likely to vote than whites.

There are also group dynamics that influence voting rates across racial and ethnic lines. Even when statistics are adjusted for income and education, there are large gaps among rates for whites, blacks and Hispanics in the United States. Black voters, particularly women, have the highest turnout rates over all. The turnout gap with whites is most pronounced at lower levels of income and education.

Voting rates in the 2012 presidential election

Experts give several explanations for high black turnout, which has increased by nearly 20 percentage points since the mid-1990s. The presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama encouraged more African-Americans to register to vote, and black churches have played a strong role in mobilization.

African-Americans are also more reliable partisan voters  more than 90 percent voted for President Obama in 2012  so Democrats may be more likely to put resources toward getting them to turn out than other groups.

Turnout rates for Hispanic voters are much lower over all. Language barriers and weaker connections to the political system are part of the explanation, said Melissa R. Michelson, a professor of political science at Menlo College in California. Theres this idea that even if you are legally entitled to vote, you dont see it as something that matters to you and your community, she said.

Voting rates for Hispanics in the 2012 presidential election

But Hispanic voters are not a homogeneous group. Hispanics who are naturalized citizens are more likely to vote than those born in the United States. Immigrant communities perceive a higher stake in election outcomes, Professor Michelson said.

Being an immigrant has become a politicized identity, and theres a very clear connection between your identity as an immigrant and whats going on in the political areas, she said.

In Florida, the gap between Hispanics and other racial groups is smaller, in part because the state has a large number of Cuban-Americans, who tend to be wealthier and more educated.

Upper Midwesterners are model voters, while Hawaii residents regularly stay home.

Range of voting rates in U.S. presidential elections since 1980 Note: States are grouped by U.S. Census Bureau region

In states with competitive races, people may have a sense that their vote matters more, and campaigns will pour more resources into getting out the vote. Some of the worst turnout rates in recent cycles have been in Hawaii and West Virginia, which have had some of the largest margins  favoring Democrats in Hawaii and Republicans in West Virginia.

State voting laws like registration deadlines, early and no-excuse absentee voting, and voter identification also dictate some of the differences in turnout among states, but the effects appear to be minimal.

Experts cite same-day registration as the policy with the best potential for increasing turnout, but the true effect can be hard to measure because it is often adopted in places that already have an active voting culture, like Upper Midwestern states.

While research shows that minorities are disproportionately affected by voter identification laws, which Republican governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures have fought to expand in recent years, there has been mixed evidence on whether the laws have significantly reduced turnout. Political scientists say mobilization in response to the laws may have helped to counter the effects.

Turnout in the U.S. is lower than in Canada, Mexico and most of Europe.

Western Europe Asia and Oceana Northern Europe Southern Europe Eastern Europe Americas 90% Belgium Australia Turnout among voting-age population Turkey Sweden Denmark South Korea 80% Iceland Norway Israel New Zealand Finland France Netherlands 70% Austria Italy Germany Mexico Portugal Hungary Greece Canada U.K. Spain 60% Czech Repub. Slovakia Ireland Estonia Luxembourg Poland Slovenia U.S. Japan Latvia 50% Chile 40% Switzerland Western Europe Asia and Oceana Northern Europe Southern Europe Eastern Europe Americas 90% Belgium Australia Turnout among voting-age population Turkey Sweden Denmark 80% South Korea Iceland Norway Israel New Zealand Finland France Netherlands 70% Austria Italy Germany Mexico Portugal Hungary Greece Canada U.K. Spain 60% Czech Repub. Slovakia Ireland Estonia Luxembourg Poland Slovenia U.S. Japan Latvia 50% Chile 40% Switzerland Western Europe Asia and Oceana Northern Europe Southern Europe Eastern Europe Americas 90% Turnout among voting-age population Belgium Australia Turkey Sweden Denmark 80 S. Korea Iceland Norway Israel New Zealand Finland France Netherlands 70 Austria Italy Germany Mexico Portugal Hungary Greece Canada U.K. Czech Repub. Spain 60 Slovakia Ireland Estonia Luxembourg Poland Slovenia U.S. Japan Latvia 50 Chile 40 Switzerland Source: Pew Research Center analysis of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data

In the 2012 United States presidential election, about 58 percent of eligible voters turned out. That rate, which was generally on par with other United States presidential elections in the modern era, trails rates for most other developed countries. (The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development uses rates for entire voting-age populations, not just eligible citizens, so the United States rate shown is 53.6 percent.)

Some structural differences are at play: Several countries at the top of the list, including Belgium, Australia and Turkey, have laws requiring citizens to vote. Others automatically register, or are more active in registering, their citizens.

Systems of proportional representation, in which multiple parties earn seats based on the vote, have also been found to encourage participation in elections.

But many experts argue that low turnout isnt a problem.

Some prominent studies have concluded that 100 percent participation would not result in significantly different election outcomes. Still, differences in preferences between voters and nonvoters could make a difference at the margins. A 2012 Pew Research Center poll found that nonvoters were more likely to support Mr. Obama, and research suggests that if low-income voters were more proportionally represented, lawmakers would prioritize policies that favor income redistribution.
Veterinary officials are urging people and their furry friends to stay safe this month by getting a rabies vaccination in recognition of World Rabies Day on Sept. 28.

Veterinarians are seeing an increase in rabies cases; however, rabies can be prevented, Alabama Veterinary Medical Association President Hal Pate said in a press release. Statistics show 40 percent of the people bitten are young children. Keep your pets vaccinated and talk to your children about the risk of contact with wild animals.

In Alabama, rabies is most frequently seen in raccoons. Its a viral disease that spreads through an infected animals bite, said Lee County rabies officer Dr. Buddy Bruce, of the Animal Health Center. He said hes also had cases where bats transferred rabies to other animals.

There have been three raccoon and three bat rabies cases in Lee County as of Aug. 26, according to an Alabama Department of Public Health chart. About 50 to 60 percent of the dogs and 20-25 percent of the cats in Alabama are vaccinated against rabies.

Pet owners should have their pet companions vaccinated because they provide a buffer between humans and wild animals, Bruce said.

Rabid creatures easily can be lurking in someones backyard, he said.

If you see an animal you dont normally see in the daytime, you need to think about rabies, Bruce said. Let the wild animals stay in the wild, and dont go and pet them.

Symptoms of rabies in humans include fever, headache and weakness. Rabies in animals can include fever, loss of appetite and subtle changes in behavior.

If someone suspects a pet has rabies, he should not try to handle the situation himself, he said.

Contact your veterinarian and discuss it with them. You dont want to get bitten or scratched, Bruce said. Make sure your pets are updated on vaccinations. Its your responsibility to make sure its done. If you have any questions, call a veterinarian.
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO  If youre selling your car and you place a for-sale sign in the window, you could face a $50 fine here.

But one resident hopes to change that.

Michael Cefali, 26, wanted to sell his 2014 Volkswagen Tiguan and decided to just put a sign in the back window after a bad experience on Craigslist.

Cefali was shocked one May morning when he found a $50 ticket on his car, parked outside of his home: I couldnt believe I was getting a ticket just for trying to sell my car.

The citys Municipal Code prohibits the parking of a vehicle on a city street to display it for sale, hire or rental, or for painting or repairs.

Cefali said he requested records from the city and found the city generated roughly $15,000 in tickets in three years from the code, although its not clear how many were for actual for-sale signs in cars.

Its the signs that are the targets of the law in regard to selling vehicles, his lawyer said.

Jacob Green, San Juan Capistranos assistant city manager, said in a statement the city is reviewing the law.

The citys ordinance prohibiting vehicles parked on a public street for the purpose of sale is intended to prevent blight, ensure adequate residential parking and maintain the quality and safety of San Juan Capistranos neighborhoods, he said in the statement, declining to answer questions.

Cefali, who graduated from Chapman Law School in July, said its an issue of free speech.

On Tuesday, he filed a federal lawsuit against the city, alleging a violation of the First Amendment. Cefali is represented by Pacific Legal Foundation, a public-interest property rights law firm.

Larry Salzman, a principal attorney with the foundation, said people have the constitutional right to display a sign indicating a car is for sale. He noted that other messages, like statement bumper stickers, are covered under free speech.

The city is continuing to generate revenue on a law that is plainly unconstitutional, Salzman said.

Salzman said cities across the country continue to enforce similar ordinances despite legal challenges. Last year, the foundation successfully sued the city of Alexandria, Va., over the same issue.

In 2000, the American Civil Liberties Union won a lawsuit against Los Angeles after a judge determined a city law prohibiting for-sale signs in parked cars was a violation of free speech.

Its important to vindicate the right to free speech, Cefali said. Even if its just for a $50 ticket.

Contact the writer: kpuente@ocregister.com

http://launch.newsinc.com/js/embed.js

var _ndnq = _ndnq || []; _ndnq.push([embed]);
WASHINGTON  When Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia late last week, she informed a handful of her closest advisers, but pressed on with a busy campaign schedule and did not inform the public that she was sick. I just didnt think it was going to be that big a deal, she said.

Clintons first comments about her health condition came in a CNN interview late Monday, a day after a dizzy spell caught on video forced the Democratic nominee to disclose her illness and cancel a West Coast campaign trip.

The incident reinforced Clintons reputation as a public figure with a predisposition for privacy. While her top campaign aides conceded they were too slow in providing the public with information about Clintons condition, it was unclear how quickly they themselves had been informed by the candidate.

In a move aimed at quieting questions about transparency, Clinton said she would be releasing more medical information this week. Her campaign has sought to turn the matter around on Republican opponent Donald Trump, who has released only a glowing letter from his doctor, though the billionaire real estate mogul says that he, too, plans to make public additional information in the coming days.

Less than two months from Election Day, Clintons handling of her health incident added to Democrats growing sense of uncertainty about the presidential race. While Democrats said the matter is unlikely to fundamentally alter the presidential race, Democrats worry the race with Trump is too close for comfort.

If you look at the way the last couple months have gone, it feels like the race should be further apart, said Greg Haas, an Ohio-based Democratic strategist and former county party chairman.

Aaron Regunberg, a Democratic state representative from Rhode Island, said he was surprised and concerned that the race is so tight.

I still think that we are likely to win, but I think anyone whos not concerned about a bigoted, KKK-endorsed sociopath being this close right now in the polls is not living in reality, Regunberg said of Trump.

Clinton abruptly left a 9/11 anniversary event Sunday in New York and was seen on video stumbling and being held up by aides. After roughly 90 minutes of silence from her campaign, aides said Clinton left because she was overheated. Several hours later, her doctor acknowledged she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.

Clinton spent Monday at her home in Chappaqua, New York, after canceling a fundraising trip in California. It was unclear when she planned to return to the campaign trail.

In a text message to supporters Monday night, Clinton wrote: Like anyone whos ever been home sick from work, Im just anxious to get back out there.

Trump showed surprising restraint regarding Clintons health. He wished her well and did not repeat questions he has previously raised about whether the former secretary of state has the strength and stamina to be president.

He did hammer Clinton for her assertion Friday night that half of his supporters belong in a basket of deplorables and are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. Clinton later said she regretted applying that description to half of Trumps backers, but stuck by her assertion that the GOP nominee has given a platform to hateful views and voices.

Speaking in Maryland Monday, Trump said he was shocked to hear Clinton attack, slander, smear and demean these wonderful, amazing people who are supporting our campaign.

After a staff shake-up in August, Trump has largely abandoned the free-wheeling style of campaigning that energized his supporters but also led to an endless string of controversial comments about women, minorities and others. The Republican nominees newfound ability to stay on script has coincided with tightening in both national polls and surveys in some key swing states.

The last few days feed into a sense of uncertainty, said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist. He said Clintons rough weekend raises the stakes for the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, which will either finish Trump or, if he does well, it will create a race.

Privately, some Republicans say Trump would likely be losing more convincingly to another Democratic nominee. But Clintons unpopularity rivals that of her opponent, and shes been unable to do much to change the minds of Americans who believe she is dishonest and secretive.

To be sure, Clinton continues to have numerous advantages over Trump as the race presses into its final weeks.

Polls show Trump struggling mightily with big swaths of the electorate, including women, blacks, Hispanics and young people. His path to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win in November is also narrow  he likely needs to carry Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina  while Clinton has numerous routes. Clintons campaign is also running a sophisticated voter targeting and turnout operation, led by several people involved in President Barack Obamas winning campaigns, while Trump is banking on the Republican National Committee for his field operations.

Given those built-in advantages and Trumps weaknesses, some Democrats say their biggest fear is complacency  making the tightening of the race not such a bad development.

It really says to me and other supporters of Hillary that we have to be invested, and were going to have to get out and work, said Missouri state Rep. Margo McNeil of suburban St. Louis, who was a Clinton delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

AP writers Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, Lisa Lerer in White Plains, N.Y. and Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton holds a commanding lead in California, but her support  like the support for Republican nominee Donald Trump  is marred by a lack of enthusiasm, according to a poll of California voters released Monday by the Southern California News Group and KABC/Eyewitness News.

Clinton leads Trump 57 percent to 32 percent, about the same margin held by Barack Obama when he defeated John McCain and Mitt Romney in the 2008 and 2012 elections.

But one-in-three people voting for Clinton, and an almost identical one-in-three who plan to vote for Trump, are doing so as a statement against the nominee from the other party, according to the poll conducted by Survey USA. Only about two-thirds of the voters for each candidate could be described as an enthusiastic or mild supporter.

Its unclear how that support stacks up against support for candidates in previous elections.

It is clear that California voters have a stronger antipathy toward Trump than they do toward Clinton. About 52 percent of voters have an extremely unfavorable view of Trump, while 31 percent said they have that same feeling about Clinton, according to the poll.

Another takeaway: Third-party candidates arent faring well in California. The poll found that Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson would win about 3 percent of the vote in California and Green Party nominee Jill Stein would capture just 1 percent of the Golden State electorate. About 7 percent of those polled said they havent picked a presidential candidate yet.

Beyond the seemingly mixed backing for the leading presidential candidates, the poll found California Attorney General Kamala Harris leading Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez 44 to 27 percent in the race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. Harris and Sanchez, like Boxer, are Democrats.

The poll queried voters about four of the 18 proposals on the Nov. 8 ballot. Californians are on track to approve proposals to legalize the recreational use of marijuana (Proposition 64), restrict the sale of ammunition (Prop. 63) and add a $2 tax to a pack of cigarettes (Prop. 56).

Meanwhile, a proposal to ban the death penalty and replace it with life in prison (Prop. 62) is on track for defeat, according to the poll.

SurveyUSA interviewed 900 California adults, including 782 who were registered to vote and 678 who are considered likely to vote in the Nov. 8 general election.

Here are several of the 27 questions:

California will elect a President on Tuesday, November 8. Please listen to these 5 statements and tell me which ONE statement best describes you: One: I always vote in presidential elections, and will definitely vote in this years presidential election. Two: I always vote in presidential elections, but this year, I do not like the candidates, so I will not vote in the presidential election this year. Three: Im not sure yet whether I will or will not vote this year. Four: I rarely vote in presidential elections, but this year I will go out of my way to vote. Five: I dont vote in presidential elections, and I wont vote this year.

81% Always Do / Will This Year

4% Always Do / Not This Year

8% Not Sure Yet

6% Rarely Do / Will This Year

1% Dont / Wont This Year

If the election for president of the United States were today, and you were filling out your ballot right now, who would you vote for? (names rotated) Republican Donald Trump? Democrat Hillary Clinton? Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party candidate Jill Stein?

32% Donald Trump (R)

57% Hillary Clinton (D)

3% Gary Johnson (L)

1% Jill Stein

7% Undecided

Is yours more a vote FOR Donald Trump, or more a vote AGAINST Hillary Clinton?

62% For Trump

36% Against Clinton

2% Not Sure

Do you vote for Trump enthusiastically? Or with reservations?

64% Enthusiastically

33% With Reservations

3% Not Sure

Is yours more a vote FOR Hillary Clinton or more a vote AGAINST Donald Trump?

63% For Clinton

34% Against Trump

3% Not Sure

Do you vote for Clinton enthusiastically? Or with reservations?

62% Enthusiastically

34% With Reservations

4% Not Sure

Is yours more a vote FOR Gary Johnson? A vote AGAINST Donald Trump? Or a vote AGAINST Hillary Clinton?

51% For Johnson

25% Against Trump

11% Against Clinton

13% Not Sure

Is yours more a vote FOR Jill Stein? A vote AGAINST Hillary Clinton? Or a vote AGAINST Donald Trump?

47% For Stein

42% Against Clinton

5% Against Trump

7% Not Sure

In past Presidential elections, have you more often voted for the Republican candidate? More often voted for the Democratic candidate? Or have you in the past split pretty much down the middle?

26% Republican

31% Democrat

42% Split

0% Not Sure

In the election for United States Senator from California, if you were filling out your ballot right now, who would you vote for? (names rotated) Democrat Kamala Harris? Or Democrat Loretta Sanchez?

44% Harris

27% Sanchez

29% Undecided

There are 18 propositions on the California ballot this year. We are going to ask about 4 of them. First  On Proposition 56, will you vote YES, to increase the tax on cigarettes to $2 per pack? Or will you vote NO, to leave the tax on cigarettes unchanged?

60% Yes On 56

33% No On 56

7% Undecided

0% Will Not Vote

On Proposition 62, will you vote YES, to replace the death penalty in California with life in prison? Or will you vote NO, to leave the death penalty in place?

36% Yes On 62

52% No On 62

12% Undecided

0% Will Not Vote

Proposition 63 is known as the Firearms and Ammunition Sales Initiative. A YES vote would require persons who want to buy ammunition to pass a background check with the California Department of Justice. And Proposition 63 would make it against the law to possess large-capacity ammunition containers, known as magazines. Will you vote YES on 63, to require background checks on ammo purchases and to make large-capacity magazines illegal? Or will you vote NO on 63, which would leave the existing system in place?

63% Yes On 63

29% No On 63

8% Undecided

1% Will Not Vote

Currently, medical marijuana is legal in California, but recreational marijuana is not. Proposition 64 would legalize and tax the recreational use of marijuana. Will you vote YES on Proposition 64, which would legalize the recreational use of marijuana by adults age 21 and older, and which would license, regulate and tax the marijuana industry? Or, will you vote NO on 64, which would keep state laws as they now are?

52% Yes On 64

40% No On 64

8% Undecided

0% Will Not Vote

Is your opinion of Barack Obama extremely favorable? Favorable? Unfavorable? Or extremely unfavorable?

36% Extremely Favorable

28% Favorable

11% Unfavorable

24% Extremely Unfavorable

1% Not Sure

Is your opinion of Donald Trump extremely favorable? Favorable? Unfavorable? Or extremely unfavorable?

13% Extremely Favorable

19% Favorable

14% Unfavorable

52% Extremely Unfavorable

2% Not Sure

Is your opinion of Hillary Clinton extremely favorable? Favorable? Unfavorable? Or extremely unfavorable?

19% Extremely Favorable

33% Favorable

15% Unfavorable

31% Extremely Unfavorable

2% Not Sure

Is your opinion of Jerry Brown extremely favorable? Favorable? Unfavorable? Or extremely unfavorable?

15% Extremely Favorable

35% Favorable

20% Unfavorable

18% Extremely Unfavorable

12% Not Sure

Is your opinion of Dianne Feinstein extremely favorable? Favorable? Unfavorable? Or extremely unfavorable?

14% Extremely Favorable

38% Favorable

20% Unfavorable

17% Extremely Unfavorable

11% Not Sure

Is your opinion of Barbara Boxer extremely favorable? Favorable? Unfavorable? Or extremely unfavorable?

14% Extremely Favorable

33% Favorable

17% Unfavorable

22% Extremely Unfavorable

13% Not Sure

Here are 6 issues important to some voters but not to others. In deciding who to support for President, please tell me if a particular issue isextremely important, important, unimportant, or extremely unimportant.

First, immigration. In deciding who you support for president, is immigration extremely important, important, unimportant, or extremely unimportant?

41% Extremely Important

44% Important

11% Unimportant

3% Extremely Unimportant

2% Not Sure

Next, terrorism. In deciding who you support for president, if terrorism is extremely important, important, unimportant, or extremely unimportant?

63% Extremely Important

28% Important

5% Unimportant

2% Extremely Unimportant

2% Not Sure

Next, Supreme Court appointments. In deciding who you support for president, if Supreme Court appointments are extremely important, important, unimportant, or extremely unimportant?

51% Extremely Important

33% Important

11% Unimportant

2% Extremely Unimportant

4% Not Sure

The environment. If the environment is extremely important, important, unimportant, or extremely unimportant?

46% Extremely Important

38% Important

12% Unimportant

3% Extremely Unimportant

1% Not Sure

Treatment of racial minorities. If the treatment of racial minorities is extremely important, important, unimportant, or extremely unimportant?

40% Extremely Important

40% Important

13% Unimportant

4% Extremely Unimportant

2% Not Sure

Treatment of gays, lesbians, and transgender persons. If the treatment of the GLBT community is extremely important, important, unimportant, or extremely unimportant?

32% Extremely Important

38% Important

17% Unimportant

10% Extremely Unimportant

3% Not Sure

In the community where you live, do the police treat everyone the same? Or, are the police tougher on some groups than others?

54% Treat Everyone The Same

30% Tougher On Some Groups

15% Not Sure

Contact the writer: amouchard@scng.com
LA HABRA  A La Habra police officer was injured Monday when his motorcycle was involved in a crash with a car, authorities said.

The incident occurred about 4 p.m. in the 600 block of North Harbor Boulevard, said La Habra police Sgt. Jeff Baylos.

Details about the cause of the mishap were not immediately available.

The officer was transported by a Los Angeles County Fire Department ambulance to a local hospital and the driver of the other vehicle was not injured, Baylos said. Information about the severity of the officers injuries were not immediately released.

The crash is being investigated by the California Highway Patrol, which is standard procedure in traffic collisions involving La Habra officers, Baylos said.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7767 sschwebke@scng.com Twitter: @thechalkoutline
Gary Johnsons governorship of New Mexico in the 1990s coincided with Mike Laynes college years in Santa Fe.

Today, Laynes front yard in Redlands features a Johnson campaign sign. Layne, a 47-year-old consultant who helps nonprofit groups, cities and schools pursue grant funding, is drawn to Johnsons mix of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism.

I think thats what were missing from the candidates. Theyre either left of center or right of center, said Layne, a former Redlands City Council candidate who is not registered with a political party. You used to be able to be socially liberal in the Republican Party, and they ran those people out several years ago.

With this years presidential race featuring a matchup between two unpopular major party candidates, supporters of Libertarian Johnson and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein see a golden opportunity to loosen the Republican and Democratic parties stranglehold on political power.

This is an opportunity that just does not happen, said Jim Gray, a retired Orange County judge who was the 2012 Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee. Its a perfect storm for us with regard to the candidates for the Democrats and the Republicans, but its very scary for the country.

As of Wednesday, an average of recent polls showed Johnson and Stein with 8.4 percent and 3.2 percent of the vote, respectively, according to the polling website RealClearPolitics, which gave Democrat Hillary Clinton a 2.1 percentage point edge over Republican Donald Trump.

A Field Poll from July shows Johnson at 10 percent in California, with Clinton leading Trump by 24 percentage points here. Clinton is widely expected to win Californias 55 electoral votes in the November general election.

This years race for the White House is unusual given voters general dislike of Clinton and Trump. RealClearPolitics as of Wednesday reported a minus-13.9 percent favorability rating for Clinton, who has been dogged by questions about her email practices and the Clinton Foundation charity, and a minus-21.5 favorability rating for Trump, who has been condemned by critics as an offensive narcissist who caters to white supremacists.

Johnson, who was a Republican while governor, supports positions appealing to conservatives, including a balanced federal budget, cutting regulations and replacing income and payroll taxes with a sales tax.

But he departs from GOP orthodoxy in his support of marijuana legalization, abortion rights and immigration reform that emphasizes assimilating immigrants over building a border wall. On his campaign website, Johnson argues against interventionist foreign policy, saying it only creates more problems and perpetuates war.

Stein, who ran for Massachusetts governor and other offices in that state, wants to create jobs through a Green New Deal that would have America running entirely on clean renewable energy by 2030. She supports guaranteed access to housing, health care, food and water, a federal $15 an hour minimum wage, abolishing student loan debt and cutting military spending by at least 50 percent while closing overseas military bases.

Libertarians and Greens made up fewer than 2 percent of all registered voters in California as of June. Forty-five percent of state voters are Democrats, 27 percent are Republicans and 23 percent are not affiliated with any political party.

REAL CHANCE

Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College, agrees that this election cycle offers hope for Greens and Libertarians long confined to the political sidelines. Johnson probably has greater potential, he said.

Neither Stein nor Johnson is going to win in 2016; the two-party system is too deeply entrenched, Pitney said. But the Trump candidacy has severely damaged the GOPs reputation, and many limited-government types will be looking for a new political home.

And if Clinton wins and disappoints progressives  a very real possibility  the Greens will have a real chance at growth.

But Pitney also sees obstacles for Stein and Johnson.

Stein can appeal to Bernie Sanders Democrats who think that Hillary Clinton is too close to business interests, he said. One big problem, however, is the memory of Ralph Nader. In 2000, Nader took enough votes from (Al) Gore to tip the state of Florida  along with the presidency  to George W. Bush. That memory is a huge burden for any Green candidate.

Stein, a physician, has waffled on the issue of vaccination, Pitney said. While Stein told The Washington Post that vaccines have been absolutely critical in preventing diseases such as smallpox, Stein also has been quoted as saying there are real questions about vaccine safety.

To be credible, Stein has to shift the focus away from such issues and emphasize bread-and-butter concerns such as economic inequality, Pitney said.

With Johnson and his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, the Libertarians are in the unusual position of offering a presidential and vice presidential candidate who both have real governing experience, Pitney said.

But to break through to the public and make a bigger dent in the Trump vote, (Johnson) needs some high-profile endorsements. If Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney got behind him, he might be able to pick up the few additional points he needs to meet the debate threshold.

Johnson hopes to break the 15-percent polling threshold needed to participate in the upcoming presidential debates. The first one is Sept. 26 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

Getting into the debates is crucial for Johnson, said Gray, who was Johnsons running mate four years ago.

If that happens, we will capture the voters imagination and become the odds-on favorite to win, Gray said. Were asking people (if a pollster calls) to say you support Gary Johnson. Get us in the debate and it will be a game-changer.

Johnson also will have to convince voters hes qualified, and a recent TV interview didnt help. Asked what he would do to solve the refugee crisis in Aleppo, Johnson replied: What is Aleppo?

The gaffe didnt faze Layne. I would venture that 90 percent or more of registered voters could not answer the same question that Johnson was asked, and yet he is somehow now not qualified? he said.

The Stein campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

MOOD IS RIGHT

Johnson and Stein have reached out to disaffected voters in both major parties. Johnson has wooed Republicans who dont like Trump, while Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka, a human rights activist, are trying to recruit Sanders supporters angry with Clinton and the Democratic establishment.

Andy Favor, a 52-year-old certified public accountant from Laguna Niguel, registered as a Republican to vote for then-GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul. This time around, he has a Johnson bumper sticker on his car and has donated to Johnsons campaign.

I hope that Republicans would realize that Trump cant win, and take a look at Johnson, Favor said. I think Republicans are going down with the ship.

Christopher Cruz, a 25-year-old from Montebello who works in tech support for the Los Angeles Unified School District, thinks Stein cares more about issues facing people of color than Clinton.

I really want communities to be aware theres another option, Cruz said. We grew up with hereditary politics. We saw our parents voting Democratic or Republican and we think there are only two options.

To those who think he is wasting his vote, Cruz said: The Democratic Party is not entitled to my vote. Theyre not entitled to anybodys vote. Look at the Democratic Party and look what theyve done for you.

From my perspective, I could vote for Hillary and I might prevent some deportations from happening, Cruz added. But that wont stop it. It will continue to happen, just based on Obamas record. For me, Im not comfortable with that.

Given Clinton and Trumps unpopularity, I think it really will push third party candidates to another level, Cruz said.

I really think the mood is right, the time is right, especially at the local level. The local level is where you can make a lot of change.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@scng.com
When Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson was asked by the condescending crew at MSNBC what he would do about Aleppo, Johnson asked, What is Aleppo? Some say it was his Alamo.

Knowing about this obscure city in Syria is apparently the litmus test to be president, according to the Washington, D.C. chattering class  the same ones who said nothing when candidate Obama said he had visited all 57 states.

Most of us like Johnsons refreshing admission that he didnt know. He owned it. He admitted he made a mistake and then went on to discuss his views on Syria. In general, we Libertarians do not bother to learn the names of cities we dont plan to occupy.

If asked about Aleppo, Trump would instinctively say to bomb the *#(#^ out of it. Hillary would call the question sexist and then have her goons go after the questioner, who would soon be found dead of natural causes.

I thought Aleppo was a lesser-known Marx brother. Like most Americans, I only learn world geography when we fight there.

If Mike Barnicle wanted to get Johnson to talk about this, he could have simply followed with, What would you do about the Syrian refugee issue? The MSNBC host seemed to relish the gotcha moment and smugly let Johnson flounder. Barnicle was being a Johnson about it himself, even saying slowly A-lep-po like he was telling you the name of a fancy restaurant he frequents or an island where he summers.

MSNBC has Barnicle, a plagiarist who lied about it, and Brian Williams, the faux-war hero. Theres your Basket of Deplorables.

Obama appointee Chris Hill, our recent Ambassador to Iraq, appeared on MSNBC right after Johnson and, with a smirky arrogance those type liberals have, misidentified Aleppo himself. Then the liberal torchbearer, The New York Times, reported on the story and had to correct two mistakes they had made explaining Aleppo. Just Google it: New York Times. Googles on the Mac computer, right next to your dog-eared copy of Rules for Radicals. The cavalcade of condescension was perfect.

The net of the Gary Johnson/Aleppo gaffe is that now more people know him. He was on the verge of releasing a sex tape to get the mainstream medias attention.

Heres the real issue. Obama drew a red line in Syria that President Bashar al-Assad clearly crossed. He runs foreign policy like he is afraid some nation might write a sternly worded letter to the U.N. on him. The Obama Doctrine seems to be, Well, we cant win em all. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, could not break up a catsup fight at a Heinz family picnic. Obamas muddled, passive-aggressive, The whole world loves me, so it will do what I say strategy hasnt worked. We no longer have theaters of wars, we have suburban mall-sized multiplexes of wars.

The libertarian policy of Johnson and our crew would have us less involved in the Middle East. Our non-interventionism would have saved us $2 trillion and not entangled us in wars of choice.

From the Bay of Pigs to the Shah of Iran, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Egypt, Libya, etc., the U.S. just costs itself trillions and never makes the situation better. If we won one, it would be one in a row. Germany at least lost to us and to Russia; they should be ranked higher in the polls than we are just on strength of schedule.

Both Hillary and Obama say they have no plans to send ground troops to Syria. When has having a plan ever stopped us? They say they will send advisors in. Since Vietnam, we have dropped probably 50 megatons of advice on other countries.

Russia and Assad are battling ISIS in Syria. We need to stay out. Its like me watching Ohio State play USC: I hope its a 0-to-0 tie with lots of injuries.

The U.S. has spent $500 million recruiting Syrian rebels to fight. We got three. Not bad for D.C.; the government official in charge of that program probably got a performance bonus. We like the Free Syrian Army in this battle. If you are wondering who they are, they will be the group we send troops to fight against in about a year. And we will recognize the weapons they will be using against us because we will have the receipts.

Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author, Ron is a frequent guest on CNN. He can be contacted at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.
Moments before delivering a speech at the state capitol building in April, Rachel and Helen Lee thought back to that Target parking lot they sat in last summer.

Bound for UCLA, the identical twins and La Palma residents hunted for bargains on school supplies and dorm necessities.

They pored over receipts, and noticed their pads and tampons were taxed.

Wed first heard about the Pink Tax in other countries and states, said Rachel Lee, referring to pricing disparity between similar male and female products. We wondered if California law subjected us to the same inequality. We sat in that Target parking lot thinking about a lot of things.

Mainly, why the tax on feminine necessities wasnt a larger issue.

Rachel and Helen Lee, 18, took to the Internet  gathering support from thousands of men and women in California and inspiring Assemblywomen Cristina Garcia and Ling Ling Chang to submit a bill ending sales and use taxes on pads, tampons, menstrual sponges and menstrual cups.

On Tuesday, the Lees crusade came to a disappointing end when Gov. Jerry Brown announced his veto plans.

Learning the decision, its an education point for both of us, said Rachel Lee, who said she and her sister were disheartened with the news. Not everything goes your way, even if you work hard at it.

But well go even harder next time, be more creative with methods to try to show the impact of his decision and why it should go the other way next year.

***

Born in South Korea, Rachel and Helen Lee moved to California with their parents in 2002.

Their parents owned and operated a beauty supply store in Los Angeles, making days long and commutes strenuous. Rachel Lee said she and her sister often ate meals behind the counter, on cardboard boxes and plastic crates.

But Yoon Lee, Rachel and Helens mother, kept spirits high.

She showed us the power of creativity and the power of ingenuity, Rachel Lee said. Shed tell us to imagine that we were camping, instead of sitting on newspapers on the ground. She told us stories to take our minds away from being behind that store counter.

She had us imagining we were somewhere more desirable, which helped grow our ability to tell a story.

Rachel and Helen Lee went to elementary, junior high and high school in Cypress.

In middle school, they joined an international childrens foundation at their mothers behest, volunteering time and supporting its activism.

Incoming Cypress High freshmen in 2011, Rachel and Helen Lee signed their first petition  in support of host countries having the authority to adopt North Korean orphans and refugees seeking a new life away from home.

The process opened our eyes to how many people you can get in contact with, Helen Lee said.

In June 2015, shortly after finishing their back-to-school shopping, the Lees started their own petition.

The slogan? Axe the Pink Tax.

I love that they wanted to develop themselves while simultaneously helping others by trying to get rid of a tax that affects so many women, Yoon Lee said, being translated by Helen. I was first taken aback when they pitched the idea. But theyve pitched previous ideas, so I was kind of expecting it from them.

***

Rachel and Helen Lee had close to 300 signatures last summer, but their movement had hit a wall.

In a few months, theyd exhausted their group of friends and their mothers personal network. In September, on the eve of their first day of UCLA, they posted their petition on Change.org and promoted it on Facebook, Tumblr and other social media platforms.

By December, the petition had close to 9,000 signatures.

Here you had two young girls with limited income and resources asking, What can we use to get our message out there? said Garcia, who stumbled upon the website last year in search of women and organizations protesting the Pink Tax.

They came up with the Internet.

Garcia tasked her staff with finding the petitions teenaged authors. In January, Assembly Bill 1561 was introduced.

Their resolve, poise, drive, vision of responsibility to their community and other human beings, we need more of that, said Garcia, whose bill is co-authored by 34 assembly members and 11 state senators, male and female.

Rachel and Helen Lee created Theindieactivists.org, a website explaining their #AxethePinkTax initiative and promoting womens rights and mental health research.

The twins made a three-plus-minute video encouraging Gov. Brown to sign Garcias bill into state law.

It is only a bill, Rachel Lee says in the video, quoting Schoolhouse Rock! It is just a bill. One of many thousands placed upon your desk during your time in office.

And while it may be just a bill, Helen Lee says, with its stack of paper, its 12-point legal font and jargon that people like us may never completely comprehend, it has the potential to change the lives of people with periods, namely women, all across California.

In April, the Lees traveled north for the press conference to launch the campaign supporting the bills signing.

Standing with them that afternoon was Garcia, Chang and Fiona Ma  a member of the California Board of Equalization.

They were the stars of the press conference, Garcia said of the teens, whose petition now has more than 24,000 signatures. For us, as adults, to have young women remind us of the responsibilities and the oaths we took, that theyre not a joke, these young girls put that in perspective. They changed the dynamic.

When I was younger, I joined my friends in parking lots trying to register adults to be voters, Garcia said. We have similarities, but these girls definitely are ahead of the curve.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7724 or bwhitehead@scng.com
WESTMINSTER  A 20-year-old Costa Mesa man pleaded guilty Monday and was immediately sentenced to four years in prison for a distracted-driving, marijuana-fueled crash that killed a 32-year-old Tennessee man.

Jesus Guadalupe Silva-Manriquez pleaded guilty to felony vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated without gross negligence.

He was driving under the influence of marijuana, not paying attention and speeding when he collided with the victims vehicle, killing the driver and injuring his son, Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker said.

Silva-Manriquezs passenger was also injured in the crash.

Alberto Lopez of Clarksville, Tennessee, was driving a 2010 Toyota Yaris with his 14-year-old son on Feb. 4, 2015, exiting a grocery store parking lot when the defendants 2009 Nissan Titan pickup slammed into the Yaris on Fairview Road, Walker said.

Silva-Manriquez also pleaded guilty to several other misdemeanor charges involving speeding and running a red light, including some he picked up after he was charged with manslaughter, Walker said.

In one case, Silva-Manriquez drove to court on a suspended license and was arrested by Costa Mesa police, Walker said.
Two hundred boards donated by Orange County surfers made their way overseas, and now impoverished young surfers in Jamaica are riding warm Caribbean waves.

The Gudauskas brothers of San Clemente  Pat, Tanner and Dane  held a surfboard drive this year, and tonight at the Surfing Heritage & Culture Center in San Clemente they will premiere the documentary Positive Vibration, showing the pro surfers bringing the boards to Jamaica.

The people who contributed, they will see their boards being ridden and kids stoked on it, said Dane Gudauskas. That whole story of sharing that feeling with helping another culture  its going to be a cool thing for the California surf community. Hopefully, people find inspiration in any way they can and apply it to their own lives.

The brothers traveled to Jamaica in 2014 and fell in love with the people and culture. They met Jamaican local Billy Mystic Wilmot, who began riding waves on his bodyboard in the 1960s. His home, known as Jamnesia, is a gathering spot for young surfers, skateboarders, musicians and artists. The brothers spent time surfing with the locals and noticed the potential of some of the younger surfers.

But the boards they used were beat up and barely usable. The brothers left the trip wondering what they could do to help.

They teamed with Jacks Surfboards to hold a surfboard drive, asking surfers to drop off unwanted boards at one of the chains locations around Southern California.

It was super satisfying and rewarding, Dane Gudauskas said. 

Contact the writer: lconnelly@ocregister.com
It was August 1969. David Cohen was home for the summer when he and a buddy decided to drive upstate to check out a concert theyd heard about.

They headed north in his friends lime-green Volkswagen Beetle. What should have taken 2 hours took seven. Once there, they never got close to the stage.

Still, Cohen remembers the three-day Woodstock music festival as a life-changing experience.

People were generally very high, very peaceful, Cohen, 65, recalled. There was a lot of drugs, a lot of sex going on. For an 18-year-old kid it was heaven on earth.

On Saturday, Cohen will join other Laguna Woods Village residents at Clubhouse Five to pay homage to the days of peace, love and psychedelic music at the eighth annual Laguna Woodstock.

Two live bands  Woodstock Mud and Love Saves the Day, featuring Ruby K  will play music from the era beginning at 4:30 p.m.

There wont be mud, and no rain is forecast.

But its going to be colorful, said Kathy Gaskins, 65, president of the Baby Boomers Club, organizers of the event.

The reunion is expected to draw about 500 people, many donning tie-dye, bell bottoms and other hippie garb.

Laguna Woodstock (formerly known as Woodstock Reunion) attracted about 300 residents when first staged in 2009. The events popularity has mirrored the growth of the Baby Boomers Club, which was founded in 2008 with about 150 members.

Baby boomers are generally between the ages of 55-70. The club was formed to put on dances and concerts with the music their generation grew up with, Gaskins said.

There wasnt any in the Village  it was all Frank Sinatra, she said.

Today, the club is one of the largest in Laguna Woods Village, boasting nearly 700 members.

As the baby boomers retire, more and more are coming to live in the Village, Gaskins said. At some point, well be the largest group as the other generations die off.

Club member Judith Okonski said Woodstock reunions inspire a sense of oneness, whether or not you attended the original festival.

Music of the 60s defined what was going on with our generation, Okonski said. It spoke of peace and love and of demonstration against war and government overreach and of freedom.

Cohen said he didnt realize the significance of Woodstock until years later, when he had kids.

After it was over, it was over. And then it became the event that defined my generation, he said.

Cohen smiles when he sees people celebrating Woodstock in psychedelic shirts, headbands and love beads. I was there and I didnt really dress for the occasion then. A couple of T-shirts, a pair of shorts and that was it.

He plans to dress down this year, too.

Contact the writer: 949-837-5200 or jkarmarkar@ocregister.com
Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly...
Agricultural News

House Ag Committee Chairman Michael Conaway Applauds Trade Enforcement Action Against China

Today, House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway (R-TX) joined U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and a bipartisan group of Members of Congress in announcing the U.S. has launched a new trade enforcement action against China at the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a result of China's excessive government support for corn, rice, and wheat production.





Chairman Conaway convened two full committee hearings last year (June and October) to review foreign agricultural subsidies and their detrimental, trade-distorting impact on American agricultural producers. Conaway has long raised concerns about the actions of foreign competitors and has frequently called on the Obama Administration to initiate WTO challenges against the high and rising foreign subsidies, tariffs, and non-tariff trade barriers. In announcing the enforcement action today, USTR noted that China has exceeded its allowable subsidy limits on corn, rice, and wheat by $100 billion in 2015 alone. In contrast, it is worth noting that the United States abides by the limits agreed to in the WTO.





The Chairman's remarks as prepared follow:





"I appreciate Ambassador Froman and Secretary Vilsack's work to begin to draw attention to and to challenge high and rising foreign subsidies, tariffs, and other barriers to trade, and particularly those of China. I also want to thank Ambassadors Darci Vetter and Michael Punke for their tireless work on these important issues.





"Even as U.S. support for American farmers and ranchers declines, we have seen a tremendous and steady rise in foreign barriers to trade which is troubling. Foreign subsidies and tariffs make it very difficult for American farmers and ranchers to make a living and support their families. They also undermine support for trade.





"I am grateful that the U.S. government has opened a case concerning China's treatment of corn, rice, and wheat. And, I do believe that this must only be a start because I believe that this is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the predatory practices going on around the world that harm our producers.





"As just one example, I am very hopeful that beyond the challenges announced today, that the U.S. government will also vigorously pursue a case against China concerning its cotton policy which has wreaked havoc on our domestic producers. Absent this, I fear that our domestic cotton production and all that it means to our nation's economy will be lost in much the same way we forfeited our textile industry, once the largest manufacturing sector of our economy.





"In any case, once again, I am very pleased that the U.S. is beginning to stand up and challenge the predatory trade practices of China. It is long overdue, and I appreciate the leadership of Ambassador Froman and Secretary Vilsack in getting the ball rolling."





Source - The House Committee on Agriculture













WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady NSI

Top Agricultural News
My 4-year-old son Ethan has taken an interest in cooking, and I love it! Whenever Im in the kitchen, he always wants to help. He tries to measure ingredients, crack eggs, and use a mixer. He was very excited on Labor Day when Eric let him assist with seasoning ribs. He even came up to me and said I helped daddy season the meat. Too bad Im not as enthusiastic about preparing meals.

When I was a kid, I would help my mom shred cheese for macaroni, and help my dad clean shrimp. I thought it was fun in those days, and although Im a self-proclaimed expert cheese shredder now, Ive never really been interested in cooking. Although I can cook and bake, I dont enjoy it.

I always hoped I would marry a chef because I love to eat. I love watching food shows and chef competitions on television. My husband Eric is definitely more adventurous in the kitchen than I am, but hes certainly no top chef. So naturally, the next best thing would be if one of my sons became a chef someday.

Weve been embracing Ethan's love for being in the kitchen by letting him help with easy things. He loves baking pumpkin muffins with me, and making eggs with Eric. He is my cheese shredder now, and absolutely loves it! He just wants to get his hands on everything we prepare in our kitchen. I wonder if this is how those 7-year-old cooks started before competing on food shows.

Oh how great would that be. I wonder if he would specialize in Asian flavors or maybe French cuisine.

I can picture it now  7-year-old Ethan walks onto the set of "Chopped Junior" and Ted Allen introduces him, Perhaps our most experienced junior yet, Ethan Goldson. He would pull out a nail-biter dessert round with a genius crab, Pop Rocks and black ink pasta dish. As he holds his $10,000 check he would interrupt the judge's praise to thank his mother.

Could that possibly be one of his dreams? Maybe. He might hate cooking tomorrow and develop a new interest. Whatever he decides, Im here to support him. In the meantime, maybe hell start eating some of the food he helps us cook.

* * *

Naeemah Ford Goldson is a mother of two boys who lives in Atlanta but is originally from Omaha. Shes the owner of Restore Order Professional Organizing, LLC. Read more posts from Naeemah 
Two giant North American fertilizer companies said Monday that they are combining, leaving Nebraska and Iowa farmers wondering about the implications for the costs of the elements they use to feed America, which have not been falling as fast as plummeting crop prices.

Canadian mega-producers Potash Corp. and Agrium Inc. confirmed the merger Monday, saying the deal will close next year if all goes as planned. Major producers of potash, phosphate and nitrogen  at least one of which is used by virtually every farmer as fertilizer  the company will command enormous market power.

Potash Corp. is the worlds largest fertilizer producer, with mines across the continent accounting for 20 percent of global production of potash, a potassium derivative crucial to crop health. Agrium, meanwhile, owns a worldwide dealer network of 1,400 locations, including dozens in Nebraska and Iowa.

There are several other massive ag mergers pending or under discussion; the U.S. Congress is now investigating. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is holding hearings next week into the merger wave.

The seed and chemical industries are critical to agriculture and the nations economy, and Iowans are concerned that this recent consolidation in the industry could cause rising input costs in an already declining agriculture economy, Grassley said in a statement to The World-Herald.

As for farmers, they try not to think the worst as to what the market concentration means when it comes time to comparison-shop for the best prices on seed, fertilizer and chemicals such as pesticide, herbicide and fungicide.

Its like anything else, said Kurt Goertzen, who farms corn and soybeans and raises show cattle in Henderson, Nebraska. Actions speak louder than words.

Goertzen said supply costs have not been falling as fast as crop prices. This year might be a washout, he said.

We have a good crop, but at these prices? It is not going to be a profitable year, said Goertzen, who termed the increasing consolidation of the global ag biz a sign of the times.

Certainly, this summers wave of consolidation comes as prices farmers pay for fertilizer have not keep pace with falling crop prices. According to the U.S. Department of Agricultures Index of Prices Paid for Fertilizer, costs farmers pay for fertilizer have fallen about 30 percent from July 2012, when corn briefly hit an all-time high of $8 a bushel.

Corn, meanwhile, has fallen through the floor since then, down by more than half, to around $3.40 a bushel.

U.S. Rep. Brad Ashford, an Omaha Democrat, said he commends the Senate Judiciary Committee for checking into the merger action, which includes recent U.S. regulatory approval for Chinese state-owned ChemChina to buy Swiss seed giant Syngenta.

Also in the works is a planned combination of Dupont Co. and Dow Chemical, which would create a colossal pesticide, seed and chemical firm. Seed and fertilizer giants Bayer AG of Germany and the U.S.-based Monsanto Co. are also in the midst of combination talks, according to Bloomberg News, which cited people familiar with the matter.

Nebraska farmers are struggling with low commodity prices and steady input costs, Ashford said. In an economy where we are already seeing fewer buying choices for farmers, these mega-mergers certainly raise concerns that need to be investigated.

John Campbell, a managing director of Omaha investment bank Ocean Park Advisors who follows ag markets, said the wave of mergers is a consequence of margin pressures being felt all up and down the supply chain after commodity prices fell from their all-time highs four to five years ago, prices that skyrocketed amid enormous worldwide demand for food, fuel and fiber, led by a growing Chinese economy.

Now, Campbell said, the idea at the highest level of ag commerce is to consolidate to maintain pricing power.

Once one big company merges, the others feel pressure to do the same in order to keep up, Campbell said. There is no more easy money to be made, and the agribusiness sector is going to consolidate to protect margins. The same thing is going to happen at the farm level.

The size and scope of the worlds largest ag-products companies are difficult to overstate. Potash and Agrium, both publicly traded on the stock market, would combine to form a company with almost $21 billion in revenue. Potashs part would be supply, or as it says on its website, it sells only in wholesale quantities, the minimum order being about 53,000 pounds.

Agrium, meanwhile, has been investing in getting fertilizers into farm equipment and on the ground. The company said in July that it agreed to buy 18 retail locations from rival Cargill located across the northern U.S. corn-belt region, including in Nebraska and South Dakota.

As far as the products they sell, they are crucial to modern agriculture. Potash Corp. says 45 percent of potash  mined from underground  is applied to corn, of which Iowa is the No. 1 U.S. producer, with Nebraska second. Nitrogen, another fertilizer produced and to be sold by the combined company, is also used in corn production. Phosphate, another major fertilizer, is a key to both corn and soybeans, another crop in which Iowa and Nebraska rank among the top in U.S. production.

Mark Jagels, who farms corn and soybeans near Davenport, Nebraska, said that he is willing so far to keep an open mind and that there are probably both positives and negatives to the mega-mergers going on.

He said a bigger company might be more efficient and eventually able to offer better prices, as long as there is at least some fair competition. Also, he said, a bigger company might invest more in research and development and devise ways for farmers to produce more with less.

What you dont want to see is the development of a monopoly-like price setting in the market, Jagels said. As in, you pay what we say or you dont get it.
Google Express, an online shopping service that delivers purchases to your doorstep, debuted Tuesday in some areas of Nebraska.

The service will be available in the Omaha area  including Council Bluffs  and in Lincoln and Grand Island.

The website and mobile app allow customers to shop from multiple retailers at one site, google.com/express. Purchases from multiple retailers are then delivered in one batch.

The service launches with 17 merchants, including Whole Foods, Walgreens and Petco, and features a mix of some bigger players as well as regional favorites, said Brian Elliott, general manager of Google Express.

The service doesnt deliver frozen foods or alcoholic beverages.

Google Express already operates in parts of Iowa, Kansas and Arizona. Its being extended to include portions of Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, South Dakota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan, Ohio and Arkansas.

The service has been available in some cities in eastern Iowa for about a year, Elliott said. Were adding more towns, more cities and more merchants.

Depending on the area, customers can choose from three delivery options: same-day service, overnight service or two-day service. For now, only the two-day delivery option will be available in Nebraska.

Over time well be able to go to overnight delivery, Elliott said.

Members pay a $95 annual fee and receive free delivery if they meet specific requirements, such as a minimum purchase before taxes or fees.

Nonmembers, or pay-as-you-go customers, pay a minimum $4.99 delivery charge for each store from which they order. Shoppers can view the tape total from all stores before they choose a delivery option and use the online checkout.

Locally, stores that offer to-your-door delivery options include Hy-Vee Supermarkets and some independent grocers. Hy-Vee also offers in-store pickup.

Walmart and Bakers Supermarkets are among the retailers that allow customers to order groceries online and then pick them up at the store.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer stands to collect a $44 million severance package if she leaves the once-mighty Internet company after Verizon completes its purchase.

Mayer hasnt announced plans to leave, but industry observers say shes unlikely to stay after the $4.8 billion sale closes early next year.

The 41-year-old executive stands to collect $3 million in cash and almost $41 million worth of stock options and awards under a golden parachute agreement described in a regulatory filing. In a filing last spring, Yahoo said Mayer could walk away with $55 million in compensation, but the estimates can vary with the value of Yahoos stock and the date she would leave.

Mayer has been CEO for four years but failed to reverse a long-standing slide in Yahoos advertising business. After an unsuccessful effort to spin off its investment in the Chinese Internet giant Alibaba, Yahoo Inc. began entertaining offers for its core business earlier this year.

Yahoo weighed a variety of offers, according to the proxy statement filed Friday. One was a merger proposal from Yahoo Japan, a separate company that Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo co-owns with Japanese tech giant SoftBank.

Another bid came from an unidentified group. The group had asked Yahoo co-founder David Filo to consider financing its bid.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The luxury hotel that Donald Trump built in an iconic downtown Washington building has opened its doors to customers able to pay $900 a night or more for a room.

The Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C., five blocks from the White House, opened without fanfare Monday. Grand-opening ceremonies are planned for October. Trump tweeted a photo of himself with the hotel staff but did not make a public appearance.

The Trump Organization won a 60-year lease from the federal government to transform the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue into a hotel. The new hotel, with 263 rooms and suites and a ballroom that Trump says is the biggest in the nations capital, is the result of a two-year renovation,

Rooms at the hotel are starting at $895 a night, and it features the first Ivanka Suite ($1,050 a night)  named for Trumps 34-year-old daughter Ivanka  and the first spa where her brand, not just the Trump name, is featured. Ivanka helped negotiate the $3 million-a-year lease of the government-owned building and oversaw its redevelopment and design.

We positioned this building to be the finest hotel in Washington, and it has the potential to be the finest in the country in terms of the amenities we built, Ivanka Trump said, mentioning incredibly spacious presidential suites, a nine-story glass atrium and guest rooms with 16-foot ceilings. Its so majestic, on Pennsylvania Avenue, and it doesnt take a lot of imagination to realize the potential.

With luxury-hotel supply in Washington on the rise, Trumps entry faces stiff competition. Room rates are well above the $313-a-night average this year through July for luxury hotels in downtown Washington, according to lodging-data provider STR.

This report includes material from Bloomberg News.
WASHINGTON  Five Democratic senators on Monday called for hearings into the aggressive sales tactics by Wells Fargo & Co. employees that led to a $185 million settlement package with federal and state regulators last week.

The magnitude of this situation warrants a thorough and comprehensive review, the lawmakers, led by Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, wrote to Sen. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

The five senators requested a committee investigation into pressure-cooker sales practices first uncovered in 2013 that pushed thousands of Wells Fargo employees to open as many as 2 million accounts that customers never wanted.

As members of the committee with oversight over the banking industry, we should accept nothing less than a full and transparent explanation of what went wrong, who is responsible, how to fix it and how to prevent such fraud in the future, the senators wrote.

The letter also was signed by Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Three shootings that occurred Monday in west and northeast Omaha were gang-related, Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said Tuesday.

The shootings involved rival gang members, he said: A few offenders can spur lots of violent moments.

Police had not announced arrests late Tuesday.

A man and a teenage boy were shot near Westroads Mall about 4:45 p.m. The victims ended up in a driveway at a home north of the mall.

Percy Eubanks, 20, and Brandon Garrett, 16, were then taken to the Nebraska Medical Center. Witnesses told police that people in two vehicles, a blue Chevy Trailblazer and a red Kia sedan, had exchanged gunfire. Officials found Eubanks and Garrett in the Kia near 100th and Seward Streets.

It was the second time in a month that Eubanks was shot. On Aug. 13, he was shot in the lower back near the Great Escape Theater at 7440 Crown Point Ave. Another man also was shot.

On Monday, Eubanks was shot in the face, police said. Garrett was shot in the left leg and hip. A hospital spokesman said Tuesday that Eubanks had been discharged. The spokesman said he could not release information about Garrett.

About 8:15 p.m., Drelin Perkins, 19, was shot near 43rd Street and Grand Avenue, police said. Officers found shell casings and saw that a house and a vehicle had been damaged by gunfire. Perkins later arrived at Bergan Mercy Medical Center with injuries that were not life-threatening, police said.

Justin Scaife, 27, was hit about 9:30 p.m. by bullets near 43rd and Emmet Streets, about a mile south of the 43rd and Grand shooting. Scaife was found on the side of a house. He was taken to Creighton University Medical Center with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, police said.

World-Herald staff writer Emerson Clarridge contributed to this report.
LEXINGTON, Neb.  A Lexington woman whose car struck and killed a woman pushing a baby stroller was sentenced Monday in Dawson County Court to two years of probation for misdemeanor motor vehicular homicide.

Krystal Saunders, 26, pleaded no contest to the charge and was found guilty in July.

Saunders also had been charged with careless driving and possession of less than 1 ounce of marijuana. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors dropped those charges.

On Aug. 31, 2015, Saunders was driving south on Taft Street in Lexington when she struck Alejandra Zamora, 32, of Lexington, who was pushing a stroller carrying her 2-month-old niece Eileen Arredondo, court documents say.

Zamora was transported to Lexington Regional Health Center, where she died from her injuries, and Eileen was transported to Childrens Hospital in Omaha with critical injuries. Zamora was accompanied by the infants mother, Cindy Arredondo, who was uninjured in the accident.

Saunders mother, Cheri Saunders, 50, of Lexington, a Dawson County sheriffs investigator, was accused of official misconduct, a Class II misdemeanor, for allegedly retrieving a purse, her grandchilds backpack, water and Gatorade bottles, and fruit from Krystal Saunders car at the scene of the accident while the Nebraska State Patrol was investigating, court records say. Cheri Saunders was found not guilty of the charge in July in Dawson County Court.
An Omaha man charged with felony motor vehicle homicide was ordered held on $250,000 bail Tuesday during a hearing at the Douglas County Jail.

Kenneth J. Williams Jr., 53, is accused of causing the death of Omahan Everts S. Sibbernsen, 88. Police say Williams ran a red light in the pickup truck he was driving about 7:15 p.m. Saturday at 120th and I Streets. The pickup collided with a 2011 Lincoln Town Car in which Sibbernsen was a back-seat passenger.

Williams must pay 10 percent of the bail amount  $25,000  to be released from jail. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Sibbernsen died shortly after arriving at Creighton University Medical Center. His 81-year-old wife, Beverly Sibbernsen, who was a front-seat passenger in the car, remains in the hospital with serious rib injuries, said David Wear, an assistant prosecutor with the Douglas County Attorneys Office.

Wear said Williams was impaired by alcohol and marijuana.

The driver of the car, Thomas J. Sullivan, 66, of Omaha, was treated for minor injuries at Bergan Mercy Medical Center and released. The Sibbernsens, married nearly 40 years, had been on their way to the Omaha Country Club for dinner with friends.

The car was northbound on 120th Street and passing through a green light when it was struck by Williams eastbound pickup, police said. Witnesses told police that Williams began picking up pieces from the wreck and was stopped from leaving the scene when a good Samaritan took his keys away, the prosecutor said.

Williams showed signs of impairment at the scene, and a marijuana pipe was found on him, Wear said. He admitting to taking a few gulps of vodka and had difficulty standing.

A breath test administered at the scene indicated a blood-alcohol level of .082, Wear said. A second test later found a blood-alcohol level of .064.

The legal threshold in Nebraska that determines driving while impaired is a blood alcohol content of .08.

A public defender asked Judge Darryl Lowe to take into account Williams low Breathalyzer tests and the fact that he has medical conditions that affect him. The attorney didnt specify Williams medical problems.

Wear noted that there are two active arrest warrants for Williams in Missouri. The first warrant is for driving while intoxicated and the second was issued for writing a bad check.
Two shooting victims Monday afternoon sought help in a residential neighborhood of tall trees and well-kept yards after they and their car were blasted with gunfire near one of Omahas premier shopping centers.

Ultimately the two victims injuries were not considered life-threatening, but the excitement disrupted the normally quiet area just north of Westroads Mall.

Police later identified the victims as Brandon Garrett, 16, and Percy Eubanks, 20.

Police and dispatchers said shots were fired on 102nd Street west of the mall about 4:40 p.m. A blue Chevrolet Trailblazer was apparently chasing a small red Kia sedan, someone in the Chevy firing at the Kias occupants.

It appears the initial shooting occurred in that area just on the west side of the Westroads, said Officer Phil Anson of the Omaha Police Department. (Investigators) are still actually trying to locate where it started and where it actually ended.

About 4:40 p.m. the Kias driver stopped in the half-circle driveway of a two-story house on Seward Street, about a block east of the intersection with 102nd Street, and sought help.

The victim vehicle did stop at a random house, Anson said. The residents of this particular house did not know these parties or have anything to do with our victims.

From there they were taken to the Nebraska Medical Center.

Officers retrieved a gun near the Von Maur store.

Police blocked off Seward Street just east of 102nd Street as they investigated. They also blocked off 102nd on the west side of the Westroads.

The Kia sat in the half-circle driveway of a house on the north side of the 1000 block of Seward, both drivers-side doors flung open, the back window shattered and the left front tire flattened. Clothes were strewn on the lawn.

Doug Little, who lives nearby, said he was on the scene shortly after the Kia arrived. Two young men had been wounded and one was being loaded into an ambulance. There were two young women, who apparently had been in the car with the men, who were hysterical, he said.

It wasnt hard to see why. With the back window apparently shot out, what appeared to be two bullet holes in the front of the car and a great deal of blood, the women seem lucky to have escaped injury.

I just cant believe that those girls walked out of there, he said.

The neighborhood is a quiet one, despite the heavy traffic of 102nd Street just to the west, said Wayne David, 80, who lives nearby.

Weve been here for 35 years, he said. Im very, very, shocked that this has taken place. Weird.

World-Herald staff writer Kevin Cole contributed to this report.

Some video from out here near on Seward near 102nd. pic.twitter.com/9WEirKYnJj  Andrew Nelson (@nelson_aj) September 12, 2016
Creighton University officials on Tuesday welcomed another year on top of Midwest regional universities in the U.S. News & World Reports Best Colleges edition.

Creighton said this is the 14th straight year that it has received the distinction.

U.S. News defines regional universities as those having a full range of undergraduate programs, some masters programs and few doctoral programs.

Yes, were very proud of the ranking, said Mary Chase, Creightons vice provost for enrollment. Chase said how Creighton transforms each student is more important, but she was delighted with the U.S. News ranking.

I think its very important to us in that it reaffirms our commitment to educating the whole person as a Jesuit, Catholic university, she said.

The magazine uses various criteria in its rankings, including graduation rates, first-year student retention rates, assessment by administrators at peer institutions, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving.

The Rev. Daniel Hendrickson, president of Creighton, said in a press release: We are energized and inspired by the ranking.

When it was suggested that the ranking is good for marketing, Creighton communications and marketing officer Jim Berscheidt responded: It is.

The University of Nebraska-Lincolns primary ranking among national universities dropped from tied for 103rd to tied for 111th. The University of Nebraska at Kearney dropped in its primary ranking from tied for 46th among Midwestern regional universities to tied for 56th. No primary ranking for the University of Nebraska at Omaha was published.

Iowa State Universitys ranking among national universities declined from a tie for 108th to a tie for 111th, while the University of Iowa remained tied for 82nd among national universities.

NEBRASKA

 College of St. Mary, tied for 94th, Midwest regional universities

 Concordia, tied for 40th, Midwest regional universities

 Doane, tied for 149th, national liberal arts colleges

 Hastings, 16th, Midwest regional colleges

 Midland, tied for 48th, Midwest regional colleges

 Nebraska Wesleyan, tied for 15th, Midwest regional universities

 Union, 32nd, Midwest regional colleges

 UNK, tied for 56th, Midwest regional universities

 UNL, tied for 111th, national universities

 Wayne State, tied for 94th, Midwest regional universities

Unranked or rank not published: Bellevue, Chadron State, Clarkson, Grace, Nebraska Methodist, Peru State, UNMC, UNO, York

IOWA

 Briar Cliff, tied for 30th, Midwest regional colleges

 Buena Vista, tied for 24th, Midwest regional colleges

 Dordt, tied for eighth, Midwest regional colleges

 Drake, third, Midwest regional universities

 Iowa State, tied for 111th, national universities

 Morningside, tied for 56th, Midwest regional universities

 Iowa, tied for 82nd, national universities
Eight metro Omaha school boards approved budgets Monday night, setting tax rates that in some cases will ensure bigger bills for property owners.

While some boards left tax rates unchanged or even lowered them, rising valuations for property in Douglas and Sarpy Counties will negate the potential savings for many.

The budgets of 11 metro-area school districts remain linked this year through the Learning Communitys common property tax levy. Set at 95 cents per $100 valuation yet again this year, the revenue is collected and disbursed back to districts through a needs-based state formula.

This is the last year for that arrangement, which was the most controversial aspect of the Learning Community.

Lawmakers have eliminated the common levy, effective for the 2017-18 budgets.

BELLEVUE

On the eve of finding out the results of a mail-in election for the districts first bond measure in decades, the school board adopted a slightly lower tax levy.

The total levy for school funding will be $1.09 per $100 assessed value. For a $150,000 home, that translates into $1,635.. Property valuations for Bellevue rose 4.6 percent.

The budget for 2016-17 is up about 2 percent, to $109 million.

Ballots for the school districts first bond issue since the 1970s are due today. Results are to be released tonight on a $76 million bond issue for building maintenance, technology upgrades and enhanced school safety measures. It would increase taxes on a $150,000 home by $290.34.

The district lost millions in federal impact aid as the number of military-connected students decreased. Impact aid offsets property tax revenue lost because federal property is not taxed.

Current enrollment: 10,096.

BENNINGTON

Bennington taxpayers will see an increase in property taxes for schools after the school board approved a 1-cent levy increase.

The budget increased 9.7 percent this year, to $23.67 million. The total levy is about $1.44 per $100 valuation, which means a tax bill of $2,169 for a home assessed at $150,000. Thats a $15 increase.

The districts bond fund is increasing, after voters approved a $38.5 million bond measure last year to build a new middle school and auxiliary gym.

Bennington continues to gain students. This year the districts K-12 enrollment grew 12.75 percent to 2,325.

DOUGLAS COUNTY WEST

The property tax levy for will stay about the same in the district next year.

The board OKd a levy of $1.08 per $100 of valuation, a slight reduction.

That amount includes the common levy. It reflects 5 cents for the general fund, 3 cents to pay off construction bonds and 5 cents for the special building fund.

Superintendent Melissa Poloncic said the district will have a small decrease in its general fund budget next year as operations and maintenance funds are shifted to the building fund.

The total budget will be $13.3 million, about a 1.6 percent increase, she said.

For the owner of a $150,000 house, the levy produces a tax bill of $1,620.

Property valuations were up 2.6 percent in the district, which has schools in Valley and Waterloo.

In the coming year the district will continue to address fire code and accessibility issues, Poloncic said.

Enrollment this year is 911, up about 4 percent from last year.

ELKHORN

Elkhorns total tax levy will rise about 2 cents as the district continues to make payments on the school construction bonds that voters authorized in 2014. The levy is $1.35 per $100 of valuation, translating to a tax bill of $2,025 toward schools for the owner of a $150,000 home. Thats up $30 from last year.

District spending is up 9.47 percent, for a total budget of $81.19 million. Officials chalked that up to salary increases, continued enrollment growth and staffing costs associated with opening Arbor View Elementary, the districts newest school.

Valuations were up 8.5 percent in Elkhorn.

Student enrollment continues to swell every year, with more than 7 percent growth this year. Preliminary figures estimated K-12 enrollment at 8,426. Another elementary school is expected to open in 2018, and the district is scouting a site for a third high school.

GRETNA

The property tax levy will rise 1.2 cents to $1.39 per $100 of valuation because of the bond issue that voters passed in May 2015, Superintendent Kevin Riley said.

With this increase, the owner of a $150,000 house would pay about $2,085 in school taxes.

The budget went up from 2015-16s $40 million to $44.4 million. The increase is mostly due to additional personnel as well as rising health care costs.

Gretna has 4,490 students.

PAPILLION-LA VISTA

The total property tax levy will inch up in Nebraskas fourth-largest district.

The school board raised the levy a fraction of a cent to slightly more than $1.30 per $100 valuation, including the common levy.

Under that rate the owner of a $150,000 house would pay $1,950 in property taxes for schools.

Property valuations within the district are up 6.5 percent, and some property owners wont escape a tax increase.

The district will spend more on general operations, which Doug Lewis, the districts assistant superintendent for business and finance, attributed largely to rising salaries and benefits and the additional staffing to open Liberty Middle School. The general fund will go up 4.23 percent to $129.8 million.

The district enrolled 197 more students this year for a total enrollment of 11,348.

RALSTON

The tax levy will drop slightly, to about $1.26 per $100 of valuation. Last years levy was $1.27. For the owner of a property assessed at $150,000, that means a tax bill of about $1,891.50.

The districts general fund budget of $32.4 million is a 2.6 percent increase on last years $31.6 million budget.

Most of that increase is going toward salaries, said Jason Buckingham, executive director of fiscal affairs. The district has added additional counselors and paraprofessional staff.

Enrollment is 3,203 students.

SPRINGFIELD PLATTEVIEW

The tax levy will be almost the same as last year, at about $1.07 per $100 of taxable valuation. That means homeowners will pay a tax bill of $1,610 on a $150,000 house.

The general fund budget increased to $15.4 million from last years $14.9 million.

Next year, Superintendent Brett Richards said he hopes to be able to add back programs lost because of the common levy, like the districts German language and computer science programs.

We hope to get a few of those things back in the future, he said.

Enrollment is just under 1,200 students.

World-Herald staff writers Erin Duffy, Hailey Konnath and Emily Nitcher contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of the story gave an incorrect date for the new elementary school opening.
The University of Nebraska at Omaha has partnered with three organizations to create a graduate degree program and provide free tuition to a group of child welfare employees.

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services and nonprofits Nebraska Family Collaborative and Project Harmony have selected 20 employees to participate in the three-year program, which will consist of online courses and monthly in-person classes. Students will continue to work full time while completing their education.

The program was founded to address the statewide need for social workers with advanced degrees. Amanda Duffy Randall, director of UNOs Grace Abbott School of Social Work, said she hopes to see students move into supervisory positions upon graduation. She also hopes the program will encourage more people to enter the field by providing programs to assist with education.

Federal grants will fund tuition for HHS employees. Nonprofit employees have received private funding through donations from Omaha philanthropists Ruth and Bill Scott, frequent supporters of UNO projects.

The employers set eligibility criteria, including two years of employment in child welfare within the state, a supervisor recommendation and an agreement to commit to service within Nebraska after graduation. Students also had to meet UNOs admission requirements. Employers selected the final candidates.

Students began the program in August and met for the first in-person course Friday.

The strength of UNO is community engagement, so this will really help since we have the only masters program in the state, Randall said. We are just really excited that this came to fruition.
Many kids get to spend a week at camp during the summer. Very few of them get to do it at space camp.

Thats what Kenny Duke, an eighth-grader at Mission Middle School, got to do this summer. Kenny went to Space Academy at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in July.

Thanks to a sponsorship from Northrop Grumman, Kenny and his seventh-grade science teacher Steven Daughtrey got to spend a week in Huntsville as part of a nationwide program honoring teachers and students.

Daughtrey was the lone teacher selected from Nebraska and selected Kenny to travel with him for a week of studying space travel.

I knew space camp existed, but I wasnt sure what kids did there, Daughtrey said. Kenny is a real leader and has done an excellent job with our robotics so whats why I selected him.

Teachers and students from 48 states, along with England and Australia, took part in the week-long camp.

The activities for both teachers and students covered everything from flight simulators to wearing space suits.

They paired the students off into different teams for the week and did the same thing with the teachers, Daughtrey said. There were a lot of instructional activities and some of them were pretty complex.

Kenny said one of his favorite parts was building a rocket.

We got to build a rocket that had to break apart and then land, Kenny said. We had team activities all week where they would keep score. We did pretty well.

Kenny said they also got to meet an astronaut who had been on four shuttle missions, and participants got to don astronaut gear.

I got to wear a space suit, which was really cool, he said.

Both Daughtrey and Kenny got to take part in flight simulations where they took turns as astronauts or being part of the control team.

The missions were pretty cool because you have a mock-up of a spaceship and you have to simulate a mission and they throw different problems at you, Daughtrey said. I was an astronaut on one of the teams where we got to land the shuttle.

Daughtrey said the week took him back to his youth when space travel seemed larger than life.

I remember when I was a kid and the shuttle would go up and I was so endeared to that, he said. It was pretty much a dream come true for me as far as that goes. It was also a great chance for me to meet other teachers and find out what theyre doing.

Daughtrey believes the camp will have a lasting impact on Kenny.

My hope for Kenny is that he can look back years from now and realize all the stuff he got to do, Daughtrey said.
The 78-year-old woman, whose name was not released, told Omaha Fire Department personnel that she was pulling weeds behind her house along the bank of Boxelder Creek when she lost her balance. The woman fell about 30 feet just before 1 p.m. Monday, said Battalion Chief Daniel Miller. Boxelder is the creek that feeds Zorinsky Lake; the womans home is east of the lake.
A proposed ordinance banning smoking in Bellevue apartments was condemned by some residents Monday night as an example of government being too intrusive into peoples lives.

Others insisted the ordinance would prevent fires, enhance safety, keep insurance rates low and make apartments a better place to live for everyone.

The ordinance sparked plenty of discussion at Mondays Bellevue City Council meeting with about a dozen people voicing their opinions.

In July, two fires less than a week apart caused at least $1.25 million in damage at the Gateway Park Apartments in the 300 block of Fort Crook Road South. Both fires were started by the careless disposal of smoking materials, according to the Nebraska State Fire Marshals Office.

In response to those fires and others, Councilman Don Preister proposed amending the citys fire prevention code to ban smoking in apartment buildings and the use of propane grills on decks and balconies in multifamily-dwelling units. Charcoal grills already are prohibited.

Under Preisters proposal, smokers would be able to go outside and smoke in a designated area.

Preister said Monday he introduced the ordinance to protect first responders and residents of apartment buildings, keep insurance rates low, and protect taxpayers from having to pay workers compensation and insurance claims for injured first responders.

Apartment residents, an insurance agent and apartment managers all voiced support of the ordinance.

Cindy Dropinski, community manager of Pavilion at Twin Creek, told the council that her complex went tobacco-free after several fires started by cigarettes damaged buildings there. While there was some pushback from residents, Dropinski said she knows of only one person who moved out because of the ban.

Other residents said it should be business owners who make the decision to ban grills or smoking at their properties.

Thats your home, said Brent Clatterbuck. I gotta honor that to a certain extent.

Clatterbuck owns three apartment buildings in Bellevue. He allows smoking in two but doesnt allow it in his newest building.

Clatterbuck said he despises smoking but questioned how the ordinance would be enforced, and he believes that smoking and the grills were two separate issues.

Other Bellevue residents, like Lucas Hartman, agreed. Hartman said he has a grill on his deck but hes not a smoker. Most of the talk Monday night was centered on smoking.

The council will vote on the ordinance at its next meeting.

The council also approved an agreement between the city and former administrator Dan Berlowitz that releases any claims he might have had against the city after being removed last month.

Bellevue will pay Berlowitz $125,979.97 in a lump sum. The city also will make monthly payments of $1,242.14 to the citys health insurance carrier beginning Oct. 1 and ending on July 1, 2017, or when Berlowitz gets another job with benefits. The amount would increase if insurance premiums rise.

Bellevue is searching for Berlowitzs replacement.
A section of Nebraska Highway 31 south of Schramm Park State Recreation Area in Sarpy County will be closed to through traffic beginning at 7 a.m. Monday.

For two months, Highway 31 will be closed south of Schramm Park to about 1 mile east of 192nd Street, Nebraska Department of Roads officials said.

The closing is for pavement replacement, roads officials said.

A marked detour will be provided, officials said, using Interstate 80 and Nebraska Highways 370 and 50.
DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP)  Dr. Steve Sloan never met the Rev. Aloysius Schmitt, the Dubuque residents great-uncle.

But in many ways he always felt as if he knew the man.

Stories about Schmitts life, and the heroism he displayed at Pearl Harbor on the day of his death, were recounted at many family gatherings Sloan attended.

Relatives proudly spoke to Sloan of how Chaplain Al had saved the lives of 12 sailors on Dec. 7, 1941, and how he placed their well-being before his own during the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian island.

But Sloan always could tell something was missing from these stories.

The idea that the remains were never identified was problematic for all of Father Als siblings, Sloan said of Schmitts nine older brothers and sisters. It bothered them a lot that their youngest little brother never came home. I could always tell that was a sad point for them.

After nearly 75 years, Schmitts relatives will receive the sense of closure they had sought for so long.

The Dubuque Telegraph Herald reported that the remains of Schmitt  who was born in St. Lucas, Iowa, and attended what is now Loras College in Dubuque  have been discovered and identified in an effort led by the U.S. Defense Department.

Currently being held in Hawaii, Schmitts remains will be transported to Iowa the first week of October. A service will be held in Schmitts hometown of St. Lucas on Oct. 5.

The remains then will be taken to Dubuque, where a wake will be held at Loras College on Oct. 7. A funeral service and interment will take place at Loras the following day.

***

Schmitt was born in 1909. He was raised on a farm and quickly became immersed in the local church.

He went on to attend Loras College, then called Columbia College, and graduated in 1932.

He served as an associate pastor at St. Marys Catholic Church in Dubuque and entered the chaplain corps of the U.S. Navy in 1939. One year later he was assigned to the USS Oklahoma.

Schmitt was aboard the battleship when the Japanese launched a surprise attack against the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.

Schmitt had just finished celebrating Mass when four torpedoes slammed into the ship. The lower decks quickly filled with water, trapping sailors who desperately searched for a way to escape.

Historical records indicate that Schmitt was among a group of sailors who discovered a small porthole leading out of the ship. Schmitt had the chance to escape but refused, instead choosing to use his tall, slender frame to hoist other sailors through the porthole and out of the sinking ship.

The USS Oklahoma capsized within minutes, and Schmitt became the first American chaplain killed in World War II.

His story continues to draw the admiration of military veterans such as Dick Bridges, who serves as vice president of Veterans Memorial Plaza in Dubuque.

This is somebody who gave his life to save other people, Bridges said.

The awards and honors bestowed upon Schmitt in the years that followed underscore the extent of his bravery.

He was awarded several military medals posthumously, including the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Medal for bravery and the Purple Heart. Two years after his death, the newest destroyer escort in the Navy was named the USS Schmitt.

In 1977 a memorial to him was dedicated on a site named after the hero, Chaplain Schmitt Island. The memorial was subsequently relocated to 1851 Admiral Sheehy Drive, also on the island.

***

Schmitt was among 429 crew members on the USS Oklahoma killed in the attack.

In the years that followed, the remains of just 35 of these sailors and Marines were identified.

The rest of the bodies  often referred to as the unknowns  were buried in 61 caskets at National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

More than a half-century later, technological advancements and forensic science sparked new efforts to explore the burial location.

Two of these caskets  the first in 2003 and the second in 2007  were disinterred. The first led to the identification of five crew members, while the second led to one more.

In April 2015 the Defense Department announced all the caskets would be exhumed.

Military officials aim to complete their analysis of the remains by the end of 2016. The department must estimate at least a 60 percent identification rate in order to exhume co-mingled remains, and Bridges said an ever higher success rate is expected.

They expect greater than an 80 percent identification success rate, Bridges said. That is 300 or some families scattered across America, for funerals to be planned. This is a big deal.

***

The Fayette County community of St. Lucas  it has 138 residents, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates  maintains a strong attachment to Schmitt.

At age 95, resident Lee Stammeyer conceded that not all memories come to him quickly, but those of Schmitt remain fresh today.

Stammeyer was about 11 years old when Schmitt was beginning his studies at Columbia College.

During Schmitts visits to St. Lucas, the two would occasionally play checkers together.

Stammeyer remembers Schmitt as well-educated, noting that it seemed he liked to read a lot.

Most of all, though, Stammeyer remembers Schmitts friendliness.

His character was just good, he said. You just believed in him.

Schmitt is memorialized in an exhibit on the second floor of the German-American Museum, Library & Family History Center in St. Lucas.

Clair Blong, who serves as president of the St. Lucas Historical Society, said Schmitts role in the community, the military and the church remains a point of interest.

He also emphasized that Schmitts death made an immediate impact in St. Lucas in 1941.

I think it really helped St. Lucas realize it was going to be a part of this war effort, when you have someone die on the first day of the conflict who is from this town, he recalled.

Virginia Manderfield, a volunteer with the historical society, said Schmitts impact and memory still touch St. Lucas today.

He was sort of a favorite son, she said. For a lot of people who have gone into the service, (Schmitts legacy) gave them pride in serving their country. He was very loved, respected and honored for what he did.

***

Teri Goodmann, Dubuques assistant city manager, will help plan the arrangements for Schmitts homecoming next month. She said she often reflects on his actions on the last day of his life.

Whenever I think back to that day and how Chaplain Schmitt didnt try to save himself, I am struck by the incredible self-sacrifice, she said. It gives me great reason to believe in the goodness of people, for the possibilities and potential of humankind.

Bridges believes the discovery of Schmitts remains will usher in a new chapter in Dubuques connection to him.

I think it will bring closure for the family, for the community and, especially, for veterans, he said.

To Sloan, his great-uncles homecoming will provide a happy ending to a tragic tale. He said he still struggles to accept the reality.

It just doesnt seem possible to me, he said. For my whole life, we always heard that he was never found. The opportunity to bring him home, it really is very humbling.

I didnt think it would ever happen.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Residents of Syracuse in southeast Nebraska have been boiling their water for health reasons since Saturday after a water main broke, draining the towns water tower.

Kelly Farmer, Syracuse city clerk, said the water main break  which occurred early Saturday, about a block south of downtown  emptied the towers 500,000 gallons of water.

Because the break occurred in the early morning, the tower drained before city officials were made aware of the situation, she said.

The tower was refilled by Saturday afternoon, she said. However, until state health officials give their assurance that bacteria are not present, the water must be boiled before it is consumed, Farmer said. Using the water for laundry and bathing was OK, she said.

State health officials received 10 water samples from Syracuse on Sunday and 10 more on Monday, she said. When there is a loss of water pressure on a large scale, Farmer said, health officials must test the water for harmful bacteria before the water is drinkable.

It was possible that the boil order could be lifted on Monday night, officials said earlier in the day. City officials undertook efforts Monday to keep Syracuses population of nearly 2,000 apprised of the boil notice, Farmer said. Mass emails on the matter were sent, notices posted on www.syracusene.com and updates read on Big Apple radio out of nearby Nebraska City, she said.

Its just a matter of getting notices out as often as possible, Farmer said. Were trying to keep everybody in the loop.

Syracuse is about halfway between Nebraska City and Lincoln along Nebraska Highway 2.
LINCOLN  The chance for a special budget-cutting session of the Legislature is very slim following a new state report on Nebraskas tax revenues, according to a key state lawmaker.

A State Department of Revenue report issued Monday shows that net tax collections for August were 0.4 percent  or $1.5 million  more than expected. Gross receipts were just 0.1 percent  or $400,000  less than predicted.

After seeing the August receipts I think theres a very slim chance there would be the need for a special session, said Omaha State Sen. Heath Mello, chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Unless September bottoms out, I just dont see the need.

Gov. Pete Ricketts said last month that the budget situation was not bad enough to require a special session.

On Monday he didnt rule out a special session and expressed more caution. Net receipts through the first two months of the new fiscal year were 2.7 percent  or $18 million  less than predicted.

While this month represents an improvement over previous months receipts, my office continues to monitor tax receipts closely and work with agencies to constrain spending and effectively manage the states budget, he said.

Officials have worried about the states fiscal health for months.

In July, legislative fiscal staff projected that the state would end the current fiscal year with revenues falling $113.7 million short of the budgeted amount, a gap based on lower-than-expected tax revenues for the year ended June 30, 2016.

Meanwhile, net tax collections for July were 7.6 percent  or $19 million  less than expected.

Ricketts last month ordered state agencies to review hiring and limit travel to essential services, among other efficiencies.

The state budget office also told agencies to identify potential cuts equal to 8 percent of their current budgets for the two-year budget period starting July 1, 2017.

According to the August report, gross individual income and miscellaneous tax revenues for the month were higher than expected, but sales and corporate income tax revenues came in lower.

State Tax Commissioner Tony Fulton said that although August was better than previous months, its hard to say what this tells us in the long term.

The Revenue Department report compares tax receipts with the revenue forecast issued in February by the Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board. The Legislature and governor use the boards revenue forecasts in crafting state budgets.

Past months have been down because of the farm economy, Fulton said. He said August and September are big months for tax collections. Well watch with great interest what happens in September, he said.

Mello, who is term-limited, said hes prepared for the forecasting board to lower its revenue projections for the current fiscal year when it meets to review its predictions in October.

Still, the Legislature next year will need to balance the state budget and identify key priorities cautiously, Mello said. He said he doesnt believe theres a need for a special session when it would be more manageable for lawmakers and Ricketts to address the fiscal situation in January.

While it was a positive month for August, I think taking a very cautious approach to spending over the next two years needs to be the priority, he said.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the state's gross receipts.
WASHINGTON  She responded this way when challenged about potential conflicts of interest involving her familys foundation, and again when questioned about her use of private email to conduct government business.

And when Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, she fell back on the same strategy that she has used for decades: silence.

Her secrecy seems to create as much controversy  if not more  than the initial issue itself, perpetuating a belief held by some voters since the start of the presidential campaign that she is not honest.

In other words, Clintons careful attempts to avoid political trouble only seem to get her into more political trouble.

Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia, tweeted David Axelrod, a top strategist for President Barack Obamas campaigns. Whats the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?

Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist in Florida who worked for Obama in 2008, said: When you have a crisis developing, I come from the school where you need to deal with it immediately. The quicker you can move on from things like this the better.

But Schale praised Clinton for quickly saying that she regretted dismissing half of Trumps supporters as a basket of deplorables or racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic while at a fundraiser Friday.

The deplorable comment was an unfortunate error, he said. But she came out pretty quickly and owned it.

Clinton has a history of staying quiet as controversy mounts, stemming to her days as first lady, when she and her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, found themselves involved in multiple investigations, from Travelgate to Whitewater.

The Clintons were criticized for failing to release their tax returns during his first run for president and billing records from her tenure at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas.

They were lambasted for meeting behind closed doors on health care.

Criticism followed multiple firings at the White House travel office; some thought the Clintons were putting friends into positions to take over the travel business.

And Bill Clinton successfully pushed to keep documents relating to the failed Whitewater, Arkansas, real estate deal hidden, which may have led to the appointment of a special prosecutor and the subsequent impeachment of Clinton on charges of lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Now, one of Hillary Clintons biggest challenges is her use of a private email system while secretary of state, a system that critics think she used to keep private communications secret from Congress or the media.

Since the system was revealed, even Clintons strongest supporters have called on her to say more about her email scandal, which eventually led to an FBI investigation.

The silence is going to hurt her, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said at the time.

Elie Attie, a speechwriter in Bill Clintons White House, explained the campaigns close-to-the-vest attitude as a combination of factors: Both the former secretary of state and former president are lawyers, and they put a premium on withholding information. You only release as much as you have to at the moment.

But Attie also said the couple have also been targeted and demonized for 25 years. Itd have been great if they had been a little bit more forthcoming about this. But if I had had Donald Trump and (Trump adviser) Roger Stone and an actual right-wing conspiracy making up crazy conspiracies, Id lie about a hangnail.

Sunday, after Hillary Clinton fell ill and abruptly departed from a 9/11 ceremony in New York, she ditched her press corps and waited 90 minutes to offer a first explanation of what happened.

It wasnt until hours later that Clintons campaign announced that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier and released a statement from her doctor.

Rather than controlling a story, silence allows critics to frame the debate. Republicans quickly seize on the lack of information, arguing that Clinton must be hiding something, sometimes forcing Democrats to push her to release more details.

It raises questions about  again  Clinton truthfulness, honesty and trust issues, Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said. It puts those issues once again front and center. It goes beyond the issue of her health and more to What else arent they telling us? 

Newhouse said the trouble for Clinton lay in the fact that polls revealed a solid percentage of voters who were tippable: They dont like either White House hopeful but could be persuaded by events to fall in with one.

Circumstances like Sunday  not the fact that Clinton got sick but that her campaign was slow to reveal it  could very well snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, he said.
WASHINGTON  Jeff Fortenberry was surprised when his 17-year-old daughter came down the stairs in tears.

Daddy, youve got to do something  Trump hates women, she told her father, a Republican congressman from Lincoln.

Fortenberry shared that story Tuesday with Mike Pence as the Republican vice presidential nominee visited Capitol Hill to speak with GOP House members. Fortenberry used the example of his daughters concern  which he said happened months ago  to urge Pence to improve the campaigns outreach to women.

Those comments apparently were leaked by one of his colleagues and reported by Bloomberg. Fortenberry told The World-Herald that he wasnt looking to make national news Tuesday and noted that the meeting was officially off the record.

Fortenberry served with Pence when he was in the House and described the Indiana governor as a friend, at times a mentor, and one of the leaders here in Congress.

He said he thought about sharing the story of his daughter  who is about to vote for the first time  when Trump himself visited Capitol Hill earlier this year but decided to bite his tongue at that time.

He said he felt more comfortable sharing the story with Pence because of their long-standing friendship.

I said, You asked for a conversation among friends, you asked for counsel, and so I need to tell you something,  Fortenberry said.

Fortenberry stressed that he was not attacking Trump.

I didnt do this with any intention other than my own conscience and trying to say to them ... that perhaps as they move forward, additional sensitivity to this point would be incorporated into their campaign, Fortenberry said.

He said Pence responded to his story by pointing to a poll that shows Trump leading among married women and by highlighting policy proposals designed to help working families, including one released Tuesday evening on child care.

Pence also came up after the meeting to thank him for his comments, Fortenberry said.

Fortenberry, who is in his sixth term representing Nebraskas 1st District, said he wasnt claiming to speak for women in general. Still, he noted that he might have some credibility on female political perceptions given that he is surrounded at home by six women  his wife and their five daughters.

Politics is in the air in their household, because he is an elected official, but everyone has his or her own opinions. He said another of his daughters is intensely opposed to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

He said hes not sure where his 17-year-olds feelings about Trump came from.

It was quite a surprise to me on a couple different levels  one that it would be so heartfelt as to bring her to tears, Fortenberry said.

Fortenberry noted that in the GOP presidential primary he backed Carly Fiorina, who is speaking this weekend at the congressmans annual fundraising tailgate event.

Fortenberry has said repeatedly that he doesnt want to be associated with many of Trumps unstudied remarks but that he also plans to vote for the businessman for three reasons.

The first is the importance of justices appointed to the Supreme Court.

Secondly, he said, Mike Pence has brought incredible credibility to this ticket. Hes a steady hand, hes a policy expert, hes a man of deep principle.

And finally, Fortenberry objects to Clinton. He said he didnt want to gloss over Trumps misguided remarks, but he suggested that the businessmans candidacy contrasts with what Fortenberry described as an elitist campaign being run by Clinton.

He has tapped into this sense, deep sense, of vulnerability that many people feel because theyve been left out of the current economic and political culture  and then she calls them deplorables,  he said. You see why a lot of the country  I dont know if itll be a majority or not  is saying elect someone who has more proximity to us.

Fortenberry may not have been trying to attack Trump, but it didnt take long for Democrats to seize on his remarks. The Nebraska Democratic Party quickly released a statement criticizing Nebraska politicians who support Trump.

Hopefully, Rep. Fortenberry is at least concerned enough by his daughters observation that he will follow the majority of Nebraskans who have been appalled by Trumps divisive and hateful rhetoric and end his support of Donald Trumps candidacy, according to the statement.

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., has been outspoken in opposing Trump. Fellow Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer has endorsed the GOP nominee.

She told The World-Herald on Tuesday that she sees progress in Trumps rhetoric.

Hes made comments in the past I wouldnt have ever made, but I think hes learning that when youre on a national stage, what you say does matter. And so Ive seen him start to moderate, and hopefully thatll happen, Fischer said.

And like Fortenberry, Fischer pointed to Clintons comments that half of Trumps supporters are racists, xenophobes and Islamophobes. Clinton later apologized for generalizing about so many of his supporters.

I found it really disgusting and disturbing, Fischer said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The United States will provide Israel's military with $38 billion during the next 10 years, officials said Tuesday, the largest batch of military assistance the U.S. has ever pledged to another country.

Following months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the State Department said the two countries had reached a 10-year agreement, with a signing ceremony planned for Wednesday. The U.S. and Israel haven't disclosed the exact sum, but officials familiar with the deal said it totals $3.8 billion a year  up from the $3.1 billion the U.S. gave Israel annually under the previous 10-year deal.

Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, planned to attend the ceremony at the State Department, a senior Obama administration official said. Israel's acting national security adviser, Jacob Nagel, arrived in Washington ahead of the announcement and was also expected to attend.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed in a brief statement that a deal had been reached, but offered no additional comment.

Under the agreement, Israel's ability to spend part of the funds on Israeli military products will be gradually phased out, eventually requiring all of the funds to be spend on American military industries. Israel's preference for spending some of the funds internally had been a major sticking point in the deal.

The new agreement also eliminates Israel's ability to spend a fraction of the funds on fuel for its military. In another apparent concession, Israel has agreed not to ask Congress to approve more funds than are included in the deal unless a new war breaks out, said the officials, who weren't authorized to discuss the details publicly ahead of a formal announcement and requested anonymity.

The agreement concludes many months of negotiations that involved a delicate calculation by Jerusalem about whether to strike a deal with the outgoing U.S. president. In February, Netanyahu quietly floated the prospect of waiting for Obama's successor in hopes of securing a better deal.

But the Obama administration has been eager to lock in the agreement before leaving office to help bolster Obama's legacy and undercut the criticism that his administration was insufficiently supportive of Israel.

Obama's relationship with Netanyahu has been famously fraught for years, and ties between the countries worsened significantly when the U.S. and world powers struck a deal with a nuclear deal with Iran. Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat and disagreed sharply with Obama's contention that the deal actually made Israel safer by limiting Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli officials have said predictability about U.S. aid is important to help its military plan ahead. Securing the deal ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November also ensures that Obama's successor won't have to delve into the issue during his or her first few months. Both Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton have vowed to protect Israel's security if elected.

The new U.S.-Israel deal also includes, for the first time, funding for missile defense programs. Under the previous arrangement, Congress approved funds for missile defense separately and on an annual basis.

Word of the agreement triggered pushback from pro-Palestinian groups, who said the U.S. shouldn't reward Israel with unprecedented aid despite its settlement-building in the disputed West Bank. The Palestinians have demanded that construction stop before restarting peace talks, and the U.S. considers the settlements illegitimate.

Last week, the U.S. was incensed by a video Netanyahu released in which he equated criticism of settlement-building to support for "ethnic cleansing." Netanyahu said it was "outrageous" that Palestinians wanted their future state to include "no Jews" and rejected the notion the settlements were an obstacle to peace. The State Department said it strongly disagreed with Netanyahu's characterization, calling the reference to ethnic cleansing "inappropriate and unhelpful."

Congress must still formally approve the funding each year, but is expected to put up few roadblocks. Both parties in Congress have sought to outdo each in with displays of support for the Jewish state. The previous 10-year agreement is set to expire in 2018.

Netanyahu and Obama both plan to be in New York next week for U.N. General Assembly meetings, but officials have not announced any plans for formal meeting.
We shouldnt be surprised by the coarseness spewing from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who insulted President Barack Obama by calling him a son of a whore.

Vulgarity is Dutertes calling card. Miffed at the traffic jam that Pope Francis visit to Manila caused in 2015, he called the pontiff exactly what he called Obama.

Whats more worrisome about Duterte is how he has overseen a vicious campaign of extrajudicial killings in the name of waging war against Philippine drug dealers and addicts. Local estimates put the number of people killed in his drug war at 2,400 in a span of two months. Police and vigilante groups are carrying out street executions, embracing what Duterte labeled his shoot to kill approach to drug dealing and drug use.

The 71-year-old leader took office earlier this summer and hasnt been vague about his intent, telling a crowd in a Manila slum on the day of his inauguration, If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself, as getting their parents to do it would be too painful.

Obama was right to respond to Dutertes intemperate babbling at an Asian summit in Laos by canceling a bilateral meeting with the Philippine leader, who now says he regretted what he said. (The two informally met Wednesday at a dinner of world leaders and exchanged niceties.)

But long after the summit, the U.S. faces a much trickier task in dealing with Duterte.

How hard should the U.S. come down on a government that jettisons due process, yet also serves as a vital ally in American policy toward China?

We think the answer is simple: The U.S. should get tough with Duterte. His bombastic populism has endeared him to a nation wearied by establishment politics and fed up with drug crime. But Filipinos for the most part are ardently pro-United States. Dutertes brutal drug war may be popular with Filipinos, but alienating the U.S. likely wont be.

Thats leverage Washington can use as it looks for ways to pressure Duterte to carry out his fight against drugs through lawful arrests and fair trials rather than by crassly flouting human rights.

Filipinos know how vital the U.S. is to their effort to keep China from commandeering a crucial swath of the Pacific. China has been creating artificial islands in the South China Sea to justify its claim to territorial waters there  a charade declared illegitimate by an international tribunal in July.

Under Dutertes predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, Manila bolstered an already strong military alliance with the U.S. as a counterpoint to Chinas actions in the South China Sea, allowing Washington to build military facilities at five Philippine bases.

Duterte has his own ideas about the South China Sea dispute, including the possibility of giving in to Chinas claim in exchange for China building a new rail line on the island of Mindanao, where Duterte is from.

Weve seen Dutertes kind before  around the globe, presidential candidates often build election campaigns on reckless populist rhetoric.

While Dutertes gutter talk is meant almost exclusively for domestic consumption, his lack of regard for human rights is something the West, and the U.S. in particular, shouldnt and cant ignore.

The Obama administration and its successor have to let Duterte know that he risks a scaled-back relationship with the U.S. if he continues to allow extrajudicial killings  an estrangement that surely would hurt the Filipino leaders popularity at home.
Fifteen years ago, in the first fearful days after Sept. 11, 2001, the verdict was almost universal: This changes everything.

Only it didnt. The American way of life hardly changed at all.

The U.S. economy recovered within months of the attack. (The crash of 2008 was caused by bankers, not terrorists.) We got used to taking off our shoes at airports and being screened at ballparks. The biggest impact came from our wars against terrorism: thousands of dead and wounded. But our biggest fear  that terrorists would use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and pose an existential threat to the U.S.  didnt come true.

Within the U.S., the total number of people killed by Islamic terrorists since 2001 comes to 94, an average of six a year. Statistically, youre in greater danger of being killed by lightning (about 46 deaths a year) or drowning in a bathtub (about 300).

Terrorism hasnt destroyed our economy, our government or our social fabric, which is what existential threat means. And there is no sign that it will in the future.

And yet Americans are still afraid. The worry that mass terrorism will reach our shores shot up after the attacks in 2001, and its never come down. In one poll this year, 51 percent of Americans said they worry that terrorism could harm someone in their family. I thought there would be an erosion, but there wasnt, said John Mueller of Ohio State University, a longtime scholar of public opinion.

The terrorism we face now is on a much smaller scale than Sept. 11. It comes from homegrown extremists  sporadic, individual attacks like the ones that killed 49 in Orlando in June and 14 in San Bernardino last year. They are terrible and terrifying, but compared to what we feared 15 years ago, they are few and far between.

Still, they are more than enough to keep the issue front and center in a high-decibel presidential election. Donald Trump has made Islamic terrorism a central theme of his campaign. This is a moment of crisis, Trump said at the Republican convention in July. The attacks on our police and the terrorism in our cities threaten our very way of life.

Trump has suggested that terrorist incidents will help him win. Its probably why Im number one in the polls, he said after the Islamic State attack in Brussels in March.

But that was during the primaries. The threat of terrorism doesnt seem to be driving many votes in the general election. We have had a real-time test of this with the Orlando attack in June. Trump reacted with a memorable tweet: Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.

But his support didnt grow in the weeks that followed. Indeed, in the average of polls compiled by the Real Clear Politics website, Hillary Clinton actually inched up by about 1 percent right after the attack, perhaps because some voters found Trumps response unseemly.

Like so many other things, fear of terrorism turns out to be partisan. A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 62 percent of Republicans say they worry that their families could be harmed by terrorists, compared with only 44 percent of Democrats.

If theres another attack, it might induce some waffling Republicans to vote for Trump, but it probably wont win him many Democrats, Mueller said.

So while most Americans worry about terrorism, that doesnt mean theyre panicked by it. Were learning to think about homegrown terrorism as a serious, long-term problem, but not the existential threat we thought we faced when the Sept. 11 attacks changed everything 15 years ago.

Indeed, at a conference last week sponsored by the Atlantic, that was the message from two secretaries of Homeland Security, one a Republican, the other a Democrat.

I want Americans to dial down some of the hyperbole, said Tom Ridge, who served under President George W. Bush. Terrorism will probably happen again here. Accept the reality.

You cant eliminate all risks, agreed Jeh Johnson, the current secretary.

On Friday, Johnson noted, the federal government opened its first office in the rebuilt World Trade Center in New York.

We are a remarkably resilient country in ways that we dont always appreciate, he said.
America has had better weeks than the one just past.

Only days away from the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates convened for what was dubbed the Commander-in-Chief Forum, sponsored by NBC News and hosted by Where in the world is Matt Lauer?

Indeed.

And then there was the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, whose spaceship apparently had just landed in the middle of Earths 2016. Appearing Thursday on Morning Joe, he responded to Mike Barnicles question about Aleppo with, And what is Aleppo? Barnicle might as well have said it was an Italian coffeemaker and moved on.

At the forum, we learned that Lauer apparently just got wind that Hillary Clinton used a private email server because he devoted fully one-third of her allotted time to questions about the email, which has been investigated exhaustively, including by the FBI, for about two years. Otherwise, we learned that Clintons top counterterrorism goal is to defeat the Islamic State, which failed to awaken any of the thousands of people who requested an induced coma until after Nov. 8.

From Donald Trump we learned that he built a great company, which was news to us, and that he has a plan for defeating the Islamic State but hes not about to tell anyone because he might win the election and then the terrorists would know that he intends to ask his top generals for a plan.

We also learned, because weve never heard this before, that the U.S.-led Iraq invasion was a mistake that Clinton once favored and that Trump did not, except that he did. But who, pray tell, ever cared what Trump the New York real estate developer thought about our military plans for Iraq? Why not just ask Joe the doorman at 30 E. 76th St.? Or the cashier at Madison Avenues 3 Guys Restaurant?

Today, lets face it, everybodys against it after they were for it.

Clinton seems to have abandoned even her qualifying trope for voting for the Iraq invasion  that it was based on the intelligence we had at the time. At the forum, rising from her seat, she simply and solemnly intoned that it was a mistake.

This was a noteworthy moment, obviously premeditated in anticipation of the question, and seems to have been choreographed to convey statesmanlike buck-stops-here gravitas. A curious choice when speaking to the military audience gathered and an unqualified obscenity to the ears of families whose loved ones perished.

Why not use the opportunity to say that as commander in chief, her first order of business would be to ensure no such intelligence failure ever happens again?

Similarly curious was Trumps response outlining his qualifications to command the military: Ive built a great company. For real? He missed an obvious opening to say something thoughtful and original that highlights what he has over his opponent  a record of dealmaking and negotiation.

He had a chance to create a new narrative: If war is a failure of diplomacy, then Trump could say hes uniquely qualified to use his talents to end all wars.

This isnt necessarily so, but it sure beats his usual campaign Big Talk about nukes and nationalistic jingoism.

Instead, he essentially finessed the forum by saying so little of substance that no ones the wiser and his supporters can continue to invent whatever fantasy narrative gets them through the night. Including, it would seem, that its OK for the Republican nominee to blow kisses at Vladimir Putin, whom Mitt Romney long ago, and to much eye-rolling, identified as our greatest geopolitical foe.

Not to Trump, who declared Wednesday that Putin is a far better leader for Russia than Barack Obama has been for the U.S.

Never mind that Putin  former KGB officer, aggressor, oppressor, autocrat and, yes, dictator  leads in part by ensuring that his opponents cease breathing. Is this really Trumps idea of leadership? What could go wrong?

To distill the week: Clinton proved herself knowledgeable, if foggy, and experienced in public affairs, as well as in artifice and deceit. Trump is a substance-free figment of his own imagination, whose stated reason for running for president is that he thinks he can win. Finally, Johnson is a former governor who stopped smoking pot to run for commander in chief because a crow landed on his shoulder in the New Mexico desert and whispered in his ear that he should.

Missing Romney yet?
Parents should have a bus backup plan

Just wondering: When did it become the sole responsibility of the school district to get your child to school? I didnt get that memo.

The beginning of a school year is always hectic  both in and out of the classroom. Parents who rely on busing should always have a backup transportation plan.

Bev Nurton, Council Bluffs

Death penalty is not justice

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind, as Mahatma Gandhi once said. So why should Americans believe that the death penalty provides justice in the criminal justice system?

Is it morally correct to take another persons life for a crime committed? It isnt fair to take a life for a crime.

I believe that our criminal justice system should work to open criminals eyes to what they have done for as long as it keeps them in custody. Individuals have no right to take a life, unless under very rare circumstances; this should apply to the government as well.

We need to stop being so blind and open our eyes.

Camryn Fisher, Omaha

Commissions powers need to be defined

The assault and death of Sherry Wounded Foot in Whiteclay, Nebraska, in August exposes yet another reason why the four beer licenses there should be revoked (Death a reason to end beer sales, activists say, Sept. 8 World-Herald).

Hobert Rupe, executive director of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, says the commission needs evidence from law enforcement of liquor law violations before it can revoke a liquor license. How much evidence does it need?

Activist Frank LaMere says that Wooded Foots death is not an isolated incident and calls the lawlessness a direct result of the nearly 4 million cans of beer that are sold each year in the unincorporated village of 12.

And, according to John Maisch, a documentary filmmaker and former alcohol regulator, the lack of adequate law enforcement in Whiteclay should be reason enough for the commission to revoke the liquor licenses.

The Nebraska Liquor Control Commission should request an opinion from the Nebraska Attorney Generals Office as to whether it has the authority to revoke a liquor license. Without action, the stalemate in Whiteclay will continue. How many more people will have to die before this standoff ends?

Alan Jacobsen, Denton, Neb.

Free speech is the enemy of the despot

Heartiest congratulations to The World-Herald for its decision to exercise its freedom of the press in support of the freedom of speech in the Sept. 11 editorial Let Gary Debate.

Those two freedoms are intimately intertwined and are close to the core of American liberty. Despots and would-be despots understand their significance. Press and speech are always the first two freedoms that are abolished whenever a dictator takes  or is foolishly granted  power.

Rob Bligh, San Antonio

Our debt crisis started with Bush

To those recent Public Pulse writers who blame the national debt on President Barack Obama, the two main components of our current public debt crisis are the bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the cost of the bank bailouts and economical stimulus required from the 2008 financial crisis.

I fail to see how giving people everything they want has caused this financial mess, unless it means giving President George W. Bush what he wanted  his spectacularly disastrous invasion of Iraq. Or giving Wall Street the deregulation that it wanted, leading to the 2008 economic crisis and the bailouts required to save our nations economy and financial system from near collapse.

Randall T. Langan, Cedar Rapids, Neb.

Smiling isnt in the job description

Regarding the complaint that Hillary Clinton doesnt smile enough, women often appear very serious when deep in thought. I believe most women understand this, and it is one reason why many support Clinton for president.

They recognize that she is an intelligent and serious problem-solver and cannot afford to smile and look pretty. The country can afford no less than to elect someone as our next president with such intelligence to work hard in solving todays problems.

So get over it, guys, and make the intelligent choice this fall when you vote.

Pam Langlie, Wayne, Neb.

A monster of their making

Thank you for publishing Norm Ornsteins commentary (Dont go back down obstructionist road, Sept. 8). As he says, doubling down by ideologues and partisan hacks is no solution to the real challenges facing us. Conservatives should be worried about the effects that Donald Trump has had on the GOP.

The partys base of zealots was created by decades of propaganda disguised as news. The resulting alternative universe was a bubble ridiculously out of touch with reality. The bases fact-free world bred the Frankensteins monster that now scares well-informed Republicans.

Jim Bechtel, Omaha
To receive once-a-day updates of Omnimystery News posts via email, enter your address:

Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz

Like and Follow Omnimystery News on Facebook to see more television and film mystery news as well as additional new and discounted mysterebooks!

@mysteries

Subscribe in a reader
Solar eclipse to be sighted in Bengaluru for 45 minutes: Report

Karnataka to survey all Arabic schools to check if on same page as state board

Cauvery row: Curfew in parts of Bengaluru brings back memories of 1991

Bengaluru

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, Sept 13: Curfew has been imposed in 16 police station limits of Bengaluru, bringing back memories of the 1991 riots which also took place due to the Cauvery waters issue.

Curfew was imposed at Rajgopal Nagar, Kamakshipalya, Vijaynagar, Byatarayanpura Kengeri, Magadi Road, Rajajinagar, RR Nagara, KP Agrahara Chandra layout, Yeshwanathapura, Mahalakshmi layout, Peenya, RMC Yard, Nandini Layout and Jnanabharathi.

Cauvery row (Day 2 LIVE): Siddaramaiah appeals for peace, to chair meeting

The decision to impose curfew in these parts was taken following the violence that broke out in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision in the Cauvery Waters issue.

Scenes in Bengaluru reminded many of the 1991 Cauvery Waters riots. The 1991 riots which is considered to be the worst in the history of the city had led to curfew being imposed.

Many from the city have not witnessed a curfew of this scale being imposed. There have been curfews that have been imposed in specific areas at night which prohibits unlawful assembly.

Taking into account the violence and also the Eid celebrations on Tuesday, the police decided to impose curfew in 16 police station limits.

In the rest of the city Section 144 of the Code of Criminal procedure has been imposed which prevents the assembly of 5 or more people.

An explainer to what Section 144 and curfew is

Prohibitory orders are issued when people with a mutual intent try to make a deliberate attempt to disturb peace.

Section 144 is a section of Indian Code of Criminal Procedure, which prohibits assembly of five or more people, holding of public meetings, and carrying of firearms and can be invoked for upto two months. Such an order is issued by the district magistrate.

A curfew is an order by a government for certain people to return home daily before a certain time. It can be imposed to maintain public order or suppress targeted groups.

When a curfew is imposed it does not necessarily mean that there are shoot at sight orders. However, depending on the situation the government can issue shoot at sight orders if people are found violating the curfew.

A curfew requires one to stay indoors.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, September 13, 2016, 9:25 [IST]
Karnataka to survey all Arabic schools to check if on same page as state board

Cauvery row: With great difficulty, will release water to TN, says Siddaramaiah

Bengaluru

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, Sept 13: The Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah said that with great difficulty they will continue to implement the order of the Supreme Court which had ordered release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

"We are bound by the Constitution and if we do not follow the order of the Supreme Court it will lead to a Constitutional crisis," the Chief Minister told a press conference on Tuesday after convening an urgent cabinet meeting.

Cauvery row (Day 2 LIVE): Violence is not a solution to any problem, says Siddaramaiah

"During the meeting, we took into consideration that the order of the court which was only interim in nature. The 2007 verdict of the Cauvery Waters Tribunal has been challenged by us in the Supreme Court and the matter is coming up on October 18. Our legal battle in the Supreme Court will continue and are team is on the job," Siddaramaiah also said.

"From the beginning on the Cauvery Waters issue, injustice has been meted out to us. However, we will abide by the Constitution," Siddaramaiah said.

Both the orders of the Supreme Court passed on September 5 and 12 have not gone in our favour. However, we still have confidence in the judiciary and hence our team will continue with the legal battle, Siddaramaiah said

We are releasing more water:

Explaining that the modification petition did not go in Karnataka's favour, Siddaramaiah said that they are now releasing more water. As per the order of the court on September 5, we would have released 1,50,000 cusecs of water.

However, after Monday's order we are releasing 1,68,000 cusecs of water. This is 18,000 cusecs more, the CM said.

"This is a very difficult order to follow. However, after a meeting of the cabinet and also with senior leaders of the Congress, it was decided that we shall abide by the Constitution. We do not want a Constitutional crisis," Siddaramaiah also said.

"We are taking all measures to fight our case. We are making arguments before the Supervisory Committee and also continue before the Supreme Court as well.

I have also written to the Prime Minister and expect to meet him tomorrow. I will urge him to convene a meeting of both CMs of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to sort out the issue. Law and order does not restrict to Karnataka alone. Tamil Nadu too is concerned," the CM said.

Siddaramaiah assured the people that there will be no cause for concern when drinking water is concerned. The government will do everything to ensure that drinking water is provided. I assure that people of Bengaluru, Mysuru and all other places in the Cauvery basin will get drinking water, the CM also said.

Will deal with an iron hand:

On the violence that erupted, the Chief Minister said that he will deal with the situation with an iron hand. "We have decided to take stern action to ensure law and order is abided. No one should take law into their own hands and public should not face hardship," he also said.

The CM also said that on Monday one person had died in police firing. "We have announced compensation of Rs 10 lakh. I am not saying that this is the value of his life, but this compensation is given because his family is facing hardship, Siddaramaiah said.

While stating that the state has remained peaceful on Tuesday, he also assured that no damage would be caused to life and property.

"I assure the people who have come from outside the state that they and their properties will be protected. The Tamil speaking people will be protected. We also appeal that the Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu are protected," he also said.

Further the CM appealed to television channels to stop displaying visuals that would incite violence. "Bengaluru is an international city. This is brand Bengaluru, let us all protect it," he also said.

OneIndia News
Karnataka to survey all Arabic schools to check if on same page as state board

Will Karnataka government defy the Supreme Court on Cauvery?

Bengaluru

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, Sept 13: Karnataka is likely to defy the order of the Supreme Court, following Monday's violent protests over the Cauvery Waters issue.

At the high level meeting being held at the Chief Minister's residence several leaders have suggested that the order of the court must be defied.

Cauvery row: SC directs release of 12,000 cusecs till Sept 20

If the high level meeting agrees to this proposal then the same would be placed before the cabinet at 11.30 am on Tuesday and an official decision will be taken. This would be a huge political gamble for the Congress government in Karnataka which has been at the receiving end over the Cauvery waters issue.

The high level meeting being held at the Chief Minister's residence is attended by several senior Congress leaders including Margret Alva, Oscar Fernandes, Veerappa Moily among others.

Sources say that the meeting is discussing the ongoing situation and is also considering the possibility of defying the Supreme Court's order which ordered on Monday to release 12,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu until September 20th.

If the state defies the order then it can be hauled up for contempt. The Supreme Court can also recommend to the President of India to dismiss the government.

Many within the Congress feel that such an order would help them politically in the Cauvery basin as the issue is an extremely emotive one. Many protestors have been urging the government to defy the order of the Supreme Court.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, September 13, 2016, 10:14 [IST]
Did not eat meat before temple visit, clarifies Siddaramaiah amid controversy

Siddaramaiah is chief guest at Indo-China Friendship event? I have declined says former CM

Kodagu Temple purified after visit by former Karnataka CM, Siddaramaiah

Rahul Gandhi invites Siddaramaiah for sprint during Bharat Jodo Yatra and this happens next [watch]

News flash: Three-storey building collapses in Kolkata

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Sept 13: Karnataka CM will hold high level meeting at his residence after Bengaluru witnessed violence in the city. Senior Congress leaders to be present in the meeting.

Get all the latest news updates of the day:

12.30 am: Case registered against MNS's Sandip Deshpande,Santosh Dhuri, Amey Khopkar,Gatneta & 5-6 party workers for forcefully stalling a press conference.

12.00: Three-storey building collapses in Kolkata's Pathuriaghata area. Details awaited.

11.40 pm: Fire in Delhi's Ghaffar Market is under control now.

11.15 pm: Fire breaks out in Delhi's Ghaffar Market.

10.45 pm: PM will felicitate Kunwar Bai at a function in New Delhi to mark Swachhta Diwas' on September 17

10.20 pm: 105-yr-old Kunwar Bai who built toilet by selling off her goats, chosen as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan mascot

Chhattisgarh:105-yr-old Kunwar Bai who built toilet by selling off her goats, chosen as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan mascot pic.twitter.com/6JpdoF2npV  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

9.30 pm: Jaguar aircraft catches fire during take-off in Ambala. Pilot makes quick exit. Court of Inquiry has been ordered.

Jaguar aircraft catches fire during take-off in Ambala. Pilot makes quick exit. Court of Inquiry has been ordered pic.twitter.com/o2MknyRCko  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

9.15 pm: Nitish ji, please wake up now. You can rectify your mistake, and take action against criminals out on bail: Ash, Wife of Siwan Journalist Rajdeo.

9.00 pm: Four months have passed, Nitish ji didn't even try to know the situation of the family that is suffering: Asha, Wife of Siwan Journalist Rajdeo

8.45 pm: Army representatives of India-Pak exchange sweets at Poonch-Rawalakot Crossing Point in Krishna Ghati on the ocassion Bakra Eid.

8.15 pm: Another person suffering from Chikungunya dies, at Delhi's Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

8.00 pm: Carcass of a rare species of whale washed ashore in Rameswaram.

Rameswaram (Tamil Nadu): Carcass of a rare species of whale washed ashore pic.twitter.com/l4IYmdKONQ  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

7.45 pm: Shivpal Yadav appointed as the new Uttar Pradesh Samajwadi party's State President.

7.40 pm: Poonch encounter: Operation ended; four terrorists killed.

7.35 pm: In view of Cauvery row, Air India waives penalties of date change,cancellation and refund charges fr travel from/to Bengaluru&Hubli airport for Sep 13.

7.30 pm: In view of Cauvery row, Jet Airways waives off penalties for date change & flight change on confirmed tickets to and from Bengaluru for Sep 13.



7.13 pm: #CauveryProtests VISTARA Airlines has waived off date and flight change fee to & from #Bengaluru for travel on 13th & 14th September.

7.11 pm: In the fight b/w MCD, Kejriwal & Modi, it is common man who is suffering- Husband of lady suffering from dengue

6.53 pm: Tamil Nadu-Sri Lankan National apprehended by Indian Coast Guard near Adam's Bridge,brought to Mandapam Coast Guard station for questioning

6.51 pm: Essential raids are being conducted.Hv received new photos which are being analysed, they'll be arrested soon: SShah

6.49 pm: Police probe against the accused (Mohammad Kaif) in case (Journalist Rajdev Ranjan murder case) is underway: Saurabh Shah (Siwan SP)

6.43 pm: Poonch Encounter UPDATE: Total of 4 bodies of terrorists recovered. One Under Barrel Grenade, 4 AK 47, 16 magazine recovered from them.

6.35 pm: The discussions were candid, pragmatic and substantive. The two sides agreed to meet for the next round on a mutually convenient date.

6.30 pm: As agreed by EAM&Chinese Foreign Minister in meet on 13 Aug,2 sides focused in particular on issue of priority for India- membership of NSG

6.25 pm: A Chinese delegation visited India on 13 Sep for talks with Indian delegation led by Joint Secy (Disarmament & Int'l Security) in MEA.

Bhagalpur (Bihar): Wanted Shooter Mohammad Kaif spotted with RJD leader Mohammad Shahabuddin (Sep 10) pic.twitter.com/AXspXvxln1  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

6:20 pm: Last and final leg of operations underway in Poonch on the third day of the encounter in the J&K district. 4 terrorists neutralised.

6:02 pm: Bureaucrats have been transferred by L-G. He has paralysed the entire system: Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain.

5:49 pm: 2 MCD Mayors are out of Delhi,ask them why? Their only work is to ensure cleanliness-Satyendra Jain,Delhi Health Min. on rise in chikungunya.

5:38 pm: Chikunguniya deaths: Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain briefs media.

5:25 pm: MNS workers hijack press conference of Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti.

5:15 pm: Delhi govt. responsibility is to coordinate between different agencies. I don't know how CM is functioning: Shiela Dixit.

5:00 pm: We reiterated our party's stand to CM of Karnataka that water release to TN to be stopped: BS Yeddyurappa, BJP on Cauvery issue.

4:50 pm: Environment Ministers of BRICS countries to meet later this week in Goa to prioritise actions for cooperation in critical areas.

4:45 pm: Cauvery protests: Karnataka CM seeks appointment with PM Modi for tomorrow. Expects to meet him on Wednesday.

4:40 pm: Terrorism is grossest violation of human rights: MEAIndia's response to comments on J&K by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

4:30 pm: J&K is part of a pluralistic & secular democracy, where freedoms are guaranteed by an independent judiciary, & a vibrant civil society: MEA

4.16 pm: Kerala: People throng markets in Thiruvananthapuram ahead of Onam festival

Mumbai: MNS activists forcefully stop Vidharbha Rajya Andolan Samiti's press conference, raise 'united Maha' slogans pic.twitter.com/ZE8aYUcqF2  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

3.09 pm: #FLASH One additional army brigade deployed in South Kashmir to assist civil administration to maintain peace.

3.08 pm: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah addresses the media

#CauveryProtests #CauveryIssue

2.58 pm: Such big positive change has come in, why ruin it for a peg or two? Turn off the lights & drink juice, you will feel its the same: Bihar CM

2.57 pm: The happiness & satisfaction that I achieved from banning alcohol was something I never achieved before: Bihar CM

Agra (Uttar Pradesh): Devotees offer prayers at Taj Mahal on the occasion of #Bakrid pic.twitter.com/ClhPIiRciJ  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 13, 2016

2.25 pm: Cases of Chikungunya and Dengue on the rise in Delhi, 3 deaths due to Chikungunya so far

Bengaluru: Karnataka unrest over #CauveryIssue, protesters burn truck at NH 4 near Chitradurga area pic.twitter.com/XUx834N3qB  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

2.15 pm: Metro service not yet resumed. Will start it after reviewing situation - PRO #Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) #CauveryProtests

2.10 pm: Goa AAP announces 1st 4 candidates for assembly polls. Panaji- Valmiki Naik, Shiroda- Molu Velip, Mayem- Ajitsing Rane and Velim- Cruz Silva

2.08 pm: Once certification is done, the State Govt will promote the startup projects: Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh

2.06 pm: Will be visiting colleges in coming days & select best 300 ideas & forward it to GoI for certification: Raman Singh

2.05 pm: Trying to develop system to give impetus to startups in state, State Govt will give tax exemptions to ones venturing into this-Raman Singh

2.04 pm: Delhi: PM Narendra Modi meets LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner

1.53 pm: Leaders in mahagathbandhan mustn't disrespect CM's position while in alliance. Sends wrong message to ppl-AChoudhary

1.52 pm: Each party was independent yr & half ago,if you feel grand alliance isn't working fine,everyone is free to leave: Ashok Choudhary, Bihar Min

1.42 pm: It is Govt's responsibility to take preemptive steps when this season arrives before people get sick: Sheila Dikshit

1.40 pm: We saw no fumigation this time in the city. If the Govt doesn't fulfil responsibility how will it work?: Sheila Dikshit on diseases in Delhi

1.22 pm: Exchange of fire between security forces and terrorists continues for the 3rd day in Poonch (J&K)

1.17 pm: Have sent 11 advisories since Jan to State Govts to take precautionary measures in chikungunya cases; working in co-ordination with them-Nadda

1.12 pm: Israel army denies Syrian claim it shot down Israeli aircraft (Source: AFP)

1.12 pm: Just want to say that one must not panic, there is a need to take symptomatic treatment & increase liquid intake: JP Nadda, Health Minister

1.09 pm: Centre is also reviewing situation on day-to-day basis & in fact a meeting has been called tomm morn which I'll b reviewing myself: JP Nadda

1.08 pm: Centre is ready to provide whatever assistance needed by State Govts: JP Nadda on rise in chikungunya cases in Delhi

12.58 pm: Syrian army says shoots down two Israeli military aircraft (Source: AFP)

Etah (UP): 9 dead, over 18 injured after a high-tension live wire falls on a roadways bus near National highway pic.twitter.com/kZTqwCr8v8  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 13, 2016

Hosur (Tamil Nadu): Normal life hit due to protests over #CauveryIssue; security forces deployed. pic.twitter.com/l6j0B7gL58  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

12.50 pm: #FLASh: Deepak Singhal removed as UP chief secretary, senior IAS officer Rahul Bhatnagar appointed as new UP Chief Secy.

Tripura: People celebrate #EidAlAdha at Gedu Mia mosque in Agartala. pic.twitter.com/wxCAkP3czG  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Kanpur (UP): People celebrate #Bakrid with foods and rides after offering namaz. pic.twitter.com/6E6YS6GXbs  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 13, 2016

#CauveryProtests in many parts of K'taka; security forces conduct combing operation in Hegganahalli area #Bengaluru pic.twitter.com/dVRYb3hBEn  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

12.12 pm: I am personally pained at the developments. Violence cannot provide a solution to any problem. In a democracy, solutions are found through restraint and mutual dialogue. This dispute can only be solved within the legal ambit. Breaking the law is not a viable alternative. The violence and arson seen in the last two days is only causing loss to the poor, and to our nation's property. Whenever the country has faced adverse circumstances, the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, just like people across the country have always handled the situation with sensitivity. I appeal to the people of the two States, to display sensitivity, and also keep in mind their civic responsibilities. I trust you will keep national interest and nation building above all else and give priority to restraint, harmony, and finding a solution, eschewing violence, destruction and arson: PM Narendra Modi

Situation that has emerged in Karnataka & Tamil Nadu, as a fallout of issue of distribution of waters of Cauvery River, is distressful: PM  PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 13, 2016

12.09 pm: Rajasthan: 2 dead after a wall of an oil mill collapses in Alwar, many feared trapped under the debris. Rescue and search ops underway.

12.00 pm: Person who died yesterday due to chikungunya was from UP; people come for treatment at last stage: Satyendra Jain, Del Health Min

11:59 am: BMTC starts service in Bengaluru City: B'lore Police

11:30 am: 3 died due to chikungunya at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi.

11:00 am: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to visit India on 14th-15th September, to hold talks with PM Modi tomorrow.

Exchange of sweets between Pak Rangers & Border Security Force on the occasion of #EidalAdha at Wagah Border pic.twitter.com/oNXX05EgHZ  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

10:59 am:

Mandya (Karnataka): #CauveryProtests in many parts of Karnataka, security forces on high alert. pic.twitter.com/D84mK7XWrF  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

10:30 am:

10:17 am: Sirsa (Haryana): 7 dead & 48 injured in a road accident on National Highway 9 when two canter vehicles collided, near Panniwala Mota.

9:45 am: Chhattisgarh: 5 naxals arrested during a search operation conducted by security forces in a forest in Bijapur district.

Chhattisgarh: Gidhauri head constable arrested for killing birds (eagle and dove) near Pithora. pic.twitter.com/U4wtiN8Iga  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

Jaipur: A Hindu man & a Muslim man donate a kidney each for the other's wives to save their lives. pic.twitter.com/XMLPGnp9yl  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

9:30 am:

9:15 am: 15,000 police men & officers have been deployed all over the city. Around 270 Hoysala vehicles are deployed: B'lore Police

8:40 am: Managements of all TV Channels are requested/advised to adhere to program code in interest of maintenance of public order/peace in Hyderabad.

8:37 am: Hyderabad Police issues advisory to all cable TV channels/cable TV network operators over protests in Bangalore; says no program shall be transmitted in the cable service which is likely to incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law & order.

Cauvery belongs to us also, we have all rights. SC has made it clear that K'taka must oblige: CR Saraswathi, AIADMK pic.twitter.com/s90lnnSCNx  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

8:35 am:

8.05 am: Eid-ul -Zuha to be celebrated all over the nation today; prayers being offered at Jama Masjid, Delhi.

#TopStory Eid-ul -Zuha to be celebrated all over the nation today; prayers being offered at Jama Masjid, Delhi pic.twitter.com/p7Cqpstuyp  ANI (@ANI_news) September 13, 2016

8.00 am: Siddaramaiah will hold high level meeting at his residence, senior Congress leaders to be present in the meeting.

OneIndia News
Will regional parties be able to stop BJP in UP?

Is ministerial berth to Apna Dal president main issue behind differences between them?

FIR against Apna Dal MLA, 150 others for blocking highway

India

oi-PTI

Pratapgarh, Sep 13 An FIR has been registered against an Apna Dal MLA and 150 party workers for blocking the Raebareli-Varanasi Highway to protest the alleged misbehavior of a local leader with Union Minister Anupriya Patel.

Local leader Vinod Dubey and over 157 others had on Sunday allegedly misbehaved with Patel and Apna Dal workers during their party's roadshow.

Subsequently, the protesters led by party legislator R K Verma had blocked traffic on the highway for six hours to protest the incident.

A case was yesterday registered against them at Raniganj police station, a senior police officer said.

Also, an FIR was on Sunday registered against Dubey and 158 people for "misbehaving" with the Union Minister.

PTI
Gopuja at all Karnataka Temples today: Govt explains how it should be done

No Karnataka bandh Wed (Sept 14): Karnataka Govt

India

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, Sep 13: The Karnataka government has said that there will be no bandh tomorrow in Karnataka.

Earlier in the day pro Kannada activist, Vatal Nagraj said that he has not given any bandh call. He however added that there would be a rail rokho programme on September 15th.

Although certain splinter groups have been circulating messages about a Bengaluru bandh, the Chief Secretary of the state said that life would be normal in the city tomorrow.

The government also made it clear all state run institutions would be open tomorrow. The private institutions however have declared a holiday tomorrow.

Cauvery row (Day 2 LIVE): Private schools declare holiday tomorrow (14 Sept)

The private unaided institutions say that there would be a holiday tomorrow, but also added that the Dusshera vacations would be reduced. Police commissioner of Bengaluru, N S Megharik said that parents of students would need to contact the private institutions to find about if there was a holiday or not.

Meanwhile Section 144 of the CRPC or prohibitory orders would be in force tomorrow too. The decision to relax curfew in the 15 areas of the city would only be taken tomorrow depending on how the situation is tonight.

What Siddaramaiah tells Tamilians in Karnataka

Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah said earlier during a press conference that he would deal with an iron hand to ensure that peace is maintained in the state.

OneIndia News
Bihar: When asked to take off hijab to check for bluetooth device, Muslim student leaves exam centre

Central team roped in as dengue cases in Bihar rise to over 5000

Bihar's Gopalganj by-poll to see a tough fight between BJP and RJD

Bihar flood: Punpun breaches embankment, Nitish conducts aerial survey

India

oi-PTI

Patna, Sep 14: The swollen Punpun river caused a breach in the ring embankment near Shahbajpur in the district and flood waters entered adjoining two-three villages, prompting Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to conduct an aerial survey of the area.

Kumar, accompanied by Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav and water resources minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh, conducted the aerial survey of Dhanarua, Mokama, Sarmera and Taal areas in Patna district, an official release said.

After conducting the survey, the Chief Minister held a high-level meeting to review the flood and drought situation in the state and gave necessary directions to the officials.

Kumar directed Patna Divisional Commissioner Anand Kishore and Patna District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar Agarwal to expedite relief work among the flood-affected people of the catchment areas of Punpun river and make necessary arrangements, the release said.

"Water level of river Punpun has been rising for the past two days in some of areas (of Punpun block). Today it breached a ring embankment which may be about ten feet in length near Shahbajpur, affecting its adjoining two-three villages.

Bihar flood toll rises to 205

Our engineers are working on war footing to plug the breach," the Patna DM told PTI. Relief camps have been opened for those displaced by the flood waters, the DM said.

National and State Disaster Response Force teams and medical teams have been deployed to rescue people, Agarwal said. The CM also reviewed the situation in the areas that received comparatively less rainfall and directed officials to ensure distribution of diesel subsidy and uninterrupted power supply to protect the crops in those areas.

Kumar said arrangements should be made to irrigate farm lands through canals. The high level meeting was attended by Tejaswi Prasad Yadav, Rajiv Ranjan Singh, Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh and other senior officials.

PTI
Karnataka to survey all Arabic schools to check if on same page as state board

What Siddaramaiah tells Tamilians in Karnataka

India

oi-PTI

Bengaluru, Sep 12: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today assured Tamil Sangam of protection for Tamils in the state in the wake of violence in the city following a Supreme Court direction to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery water everyday for next ten days to Tamil Nadu.

Siddaramaiah also informed the Sangam leaders, who met him at his residence, that a suo motu case has been filed against culprits who had assaulted a youth Santosh Deena for posting comments on Cauvery issue on Facebook on September 10.

A suo motu case has been filed against the persons who had assaulted Santosh, Sangam President George Damodaran told reporters here. The youth was allegedly beaten up by culprits as he had questioned Kannada film stars for protesting over Cauvery issue.

[Read: Cauvery row: Curfew imposed in various areas of Bengaluru]

Siddaramaiah also asked the Sangam leaders to petition Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa to give protection to Kannadigas living in Tamil Nadu, Damodaran said. "We are petitioning the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister via email," he said.

The Chief Minister has directed the police to maintain law and order and provide security to Tamils living in the state, the Sangam President said.

Damodaran said he also brought to the notice of the chief minister the "provocative" statement of Narayana Gowda who is heading 'Karnataka Rakshana Vedike'. Gowda had reportedly said the situation that prevailed in 1991 should prevail and all Tamil films should be stopped from screening to teach them lesson.

In 1991, during Bangarappa's tenure as chief minister, anti-Tamil violence had taken place in Bengaluru in which 18 people had died and hundreds fled.

PTI
People already getting 5Gs of 'garibi', 'ghotala', 'ghapla', 'ghalmel', 'gorakhdhanda under BJP: Akhilesh

Akhilesh Yadav removes Shivpal's close officer from post of Chief Secretary

India

oi-PTI

Lucknow, Sep 13: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today shunted out Chief Secretary Deepak Singhal, considered close to minister Shivpal Yadav, barely two months after he took charge.

Principal Secretary (Finance) Rahul Bhatnagar has been appointed the new Chief Secretary. "Singhal has been removed and put on wait list.

Principal Secretary (Finance) Rahul Bhatnagar has been made new Chief Secretary," an official spokesman said here.

Bhatnagar is an UP-cadre IAS officer of 1983 batch. Singhal, one year senior to him, had taken charge on July 7, replacing Alok Ranjan who had retired on June 30.

Though no reason was given behind the development, Samajwadi Party insiders said the chief minister was perhaps not happy with him as he had attended a dinner hosted by SP Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh in Delhi which Akhilesh gave a miss.

SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and some other top party leaders were peresent at the dinner. The party insiders said Akhilesh was not very happy with Singhal, considered close to the chief minister's uncle and senior cabinet minister Shivpal Yadav.

Differences of opinion between Akhilesh and Shivpal have been reported on several occasions in the past, including on the choice of official to be appointed as the state's chief secretary after Alok Ranjan's term ended, and the postponement of Qaumi Ekta Dal's merger with SP.

Singhal was earlier Principal Secretary (Irrigation), a department held by Shivpal. The removal of Singhal comes hours after Principal Secretary (Mining) Gurdeep Singh was transferred to Food and Civil Supplies department replacing Sudhir Garg, who was made Principal Secretary (Mining).

The CBI is probing allegations of corruption in the mining department on the direction of the Allahabad High Court.

In an image-refurbishing exercise ahead of Assembly elections, Akhilesh had yesterday cracked the whip on two ministers -- Mining minister Gayatri Prajapati and Panchayti Raj minister Rajkishore Singh -- facing corruption charges. The Opposition, however, dubbed their sacking as a "poll-oriented eyewash".

PTI
TRS, BJP are two sides of same coin: Rahul Gandhi in Telangana

Won't stop grants to English medium schools: Goa BJP

India

oi-PTI

Panaji, Sep 12 Drawing battle lines with the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) over the issue of Medium of Instruction (MoI), the ruling BJP in Goa today reiterated its stand that it would not withdraw grants given to the English-medium schools in the state.

"BJP is a political party and we believe in taking all people along. We respect the decision of RSS to support mother tongue, but our stand on MoI will continue to be the same," BJP MP Narendra Sawaikar told reporters here today.

Sawaikar's statement comes a day after RSS 'Goa Prant' held a mega convention appealing people to vote against BJP, and RSS' newly-appointed Goa Vibhag Sanghchalak Laxman Behre's demand that BJP should withdraw grants to English-medium schools.

The Lok Sabha MP clarified that the party has utmost respect for RSS.

"RSS is one of the rewarded and respectable organisation, not only in India but across the world," he said.

When asked about the call given by the Subhash Velingkar-led 'RSS Goa Prant' not to vote for BJP in the upcoming Assembly polls, Sawaikar said such things will have no impact on the party's prospects.

"BJP will win election because of its work. Our work will speak and we are confident of winning 2017 election," he said.

BBSM has been vociferously opposing grants to English medium schools in Goa and led agitations against the Laxmikant Parsekar government demanding that primacy be given to Marathi and Konkani languages as the MoI in schools.

PTI
Why is 'Mr. Bean controversy trending on Twitter after Zimbabwe beat Pakistan?

Pak off the FATF grey list doesn't mean it's not under scrutiny anymore: MEA secretary

Imran Khan again targets Pakistan's establishment on Day 2 of protest march; govt rules out talks over snap polls

10 injured in suicide blast during Eid prayers in Pakistan

International

oi-PTI

Karachi, Sept 13: At least 10 people, including two policemen, were injured on Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Shia mosque during Eid-ul Azha prayers in Pakistan's southern Sindh province.

The suicide blast took place in Shikarpur district's Khanpur tehsil, around 470 kilometres north of Karachi, police said, adding another attacker fled from the spot.

Police also foiled a separate suicide blast at another Shia mosque in the Shikarpur district where last year at least 61 people were killed in a suicide attack on a mosque.

Police said four suicide attackers had infiltrated Khanpur during Eid prayers, the Dawn reported.

Two attackers had targeted a Shia mosque but were stopped by police at the entrance on account of appearing suspicious. When the attackers attempted to flee, one was gunned down by a policeman and the other was arrested.

Pakistan has been hit by frequent sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shia Muslims. PTI PMS

PTI
In last 3 years, 3.92 lakh Indians gave up citizenship to settle abroad

After two year of COVID-19 delay, China plans to issue visas for stranded Indian students

Now, IT dept going into 'new areas' to check tax evasion

Kartavya Path: Not just Indians, it struck a chord with French too

5 Indians held at airport in China for drug smuggling

International

oi-PTI

Beijing, Sept 13: Five Indians have been arrested by Chinese immigration officials at an airport in Yunnan province for allegedly smuggling about 18 kgs of cannabis from India.

The five accused who had kept cannabis in food packets and laptop bags were held at Kunming airport after they came from Kolkata on September 7, officials said.

The drug packets were discovered by the scanners at the airport. Their arrests have been notified to Indian officials and they have been granted counsellor access on September 21, the officials said.

Currently, seven Indians are held in prisons at Guangxi and Guangzhou on drug smuggling charges.

Drug smuggling in China is treated as a serious offence and in some cases the crime attracts death penalty or long prison terms. In July, a Colombian model was sentenced to 15 years in jail for drug smuggling in China.

PTI
Dalai Lama urges talks with Islamic State, help for refugees

International

oi-PTI

Paris, Sep 13: The Dalai Lama says there should be dialogue with Islamic State extremists to end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, and argues that religion is never a justification for killing.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, speaking today in Paris, said dialogue "is the only way," but didn't elaborate on how it should take place or with whom. He insisted that Islam should never be conflated with terrorism.

"A genuine practitioner of Islam must respect others' lives," he said, adding that someone who kills in the name of Islam or Buddhism "is no longer a Muslim, or a Buddhist." He urged European countries to take in refugees, such as those fleeing Syria's war, but said European governments should also work toward ending the war so that the refugees can go home.

The Dalai Lama himself fled Tibet and has lived in India for decades, effectively as a refugee, and is viewed by China as a separatist. He slammed Chinese censorship as "immoral" but said he's optimistic that China will eventually relax restrictions and open up more.

J&K: ISIS ideology a bigger threat than the Hurriyat

He is on a weeklong visit to France for conferences on the environment, spirituality, secular ethics and preserving Tibetan language and culture. While he is no longer involved in politics, the Dalai Lama said he'd be happy to meet French President Francois Hollande.

Hollande's office said no such meeting was considered, however. China has frequently imposed diplomatic and economic punishments on countries whose leaders meet with the Dalai Lama.

AP
Siddaramaiah wrote a letter to his Tamil Nadu counterpart J Jayalalithaa, asking her to cooperate in maintaining peace and calm in both the states in the wake of the recent attacks on state vehicles and a hotel, which is run by a native of Karnataka, in Tamil Nadu. Jayalalithaa responded by requesting safety and security of Tamilians in Karnataka. expressing her concern, she said "hotels and properties belonging to Tamils in Karnataka are being attacked and damaged. She also wrote that despite very provocative incidents that are taking place in Karnataka, absolute restraint was observed in Tamil Nadu. Siddaramaiah also appealed to the Centre and PM Modi to intervene. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Siddaramaiah and was apprised of the situation. He has assured Centre's full assistance to both the states. To know more watch the above video.
An Inspector of Delhi Police has been accused by 25 women police personnel of misbehaving and sexually harassing them over a period of many months. Four months back, a woman personnel, posted at provisions and logistics department, complained against the erring officer to the DCP concerned. To know more watch this video.
Accession Day: Valley lights up on this day when J&K became part of India

One killed, cop martyred as J&K observes Eid under curfew

Srinagar

oi-Vicky

Srinagar, Sept 13: One person has been killed during clashes with security forces at Jammu and Kashmir's Bandipora. Curfew has been imposed in ten districts in the Valley.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir is observing Eid under curfew. In another development, police constable Rouf Ahmed who was injured in a gun fight in Nowhatta area on August 15, succumbed to injuries.

CI ops: A two-week IB programme to restore normalcy in the Valley

The death toll in the Valley has now gone up to 80 since protests began on July 9th after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander, Burhan Wani. Over 10,000 people have been injured in clashes with security forces.

Curfew was imposed in the Valley after separatists gave calls for protests which included a march to the United Nations office.

As part of the arrangements, the police disallowed Eid congregation in Srinagar and all others major cities and towns to avoid large scale violence. People could offer prayers only in mosques.

In the Valley, the army has been asked to be on standby. Violence prone areas in rural Kashmir are being monitored by a large presence of security personnel.

In addition to this drones and helicopters are also keeping an eye. Warning messages would be sent to the security personnel on the ground in case of assembly of people.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, September 13, 2016, 12:05 [IST]
 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd.

All rights reserved.

One News is a registered trademark

of One News Page Ltd.
by  Graham Pierrepoint



The result of the EU referendum held in the UK this summer heralded a number of big changes coming the countrys way  while not all of them may be immediate, both the economic and business worlds went into panic mode as a result of leaping into the unknown  just how much legislative and financial change will need to take place as a result of the country resigning membership? As it transpires, there is allegedly set to be much work taking place behind the scene untangling all of the red tape and legal frameworks already in place  and there have been further revelations this week as to what UK citizens may have to face in the years to come after they have left the union.

Its been suggested and reported by various sources that the European Commission may be considering a paid visa system to be rolled out for British nationals hoping to travel to the continent, meaning that it would fall in line more with a similar system employed in the US. This system has seen small fees paid by travellers to visit America and as a result has won fans over in various EU member states.

As Britain will leave the EU, it could well mean that citizens will have to pay to live and work if they are wishing to visit areas such as France or Italy  a move which has been predicted by several experts ahead of the EU referendum occurring. However, there is little to say that the move to introduce paid visas will in fact come into force  but there is every chance that it will appear on the negotiation table, before or after Article 50 is triggered and formal notice is applied for the UK to take its leave.

Brexit will result in a number of big changes being made to trade, political relations, local economics and free movement  and UK Prime Minister Theresa May has been tasked with managing the country through its watershed ahead of the eventual exit. The vote for the country to leave the union was considerably tighter than many had imagined, which has resulted with split opinions and commentary throughout the British media over the past few months. With negotiations barely reaching the table at the time of writing, it is not yet known exactly when Brexit mania will be over  but there is a winding road to walk down to get to the end goal  independence.
BANG Showbiz 13 Sep 2022

Amanda Seyfried admitted it was "a really nice feeling" to receive her first Emmy Award for her work on 'The Dropout'.
One News Page Staff 11 Feb 2018

by Graham Pierrepoint -

Anyone who has been paying attention to our movie reviews section over the past two years will know..
Eurasia Review 29 Oct 2022

The threats to Israels existence as a democratic Jewish state have multiplied and could weaken or undermine a pillar of Israeli..
Jerusalem Post 30 Oct 2022

Israeli hi-tech companies and employees alike have got to keep their wits about them, and it is up to the government and public to..
The Hollywood Reporter 15 Jun 2022

One can only hope that the first-look photo of Gosling as Ken in the live-action Barbie movie reveals the La La Land actors true..
Jerusalem Post 30 Oct 2022

There are an estimated 60,000 Holocaust survivors still living in the US. Of those, a third live at or below the poverty line ..
Mr. Guterres said hes been in very close contact with Russia and Turkey, appealing for a cease-fire in the Idlib region but..

Hindu 29 Feb 2020
Fiji values its relations with Papua New Guinea and all its trading partners and takes measured and concerted approach to swiftly address any issues, impediments or misunderstandings that may arise, says Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism Faiyaz Koya.Koya welcomes the co-operation from his counterpart, Minister for Trade, Commerce and Industry Richard Maru."In his letter of September 5, 2016, minister Maru has acknowledged the commitment by Fiji and assured that his technical team will cooperate with their Fijian counterparts to resolve the current impasse," he saidIt is understood the Fijian delegation is expected to arrive at PNG this week which hopes to urgently resolve any pending issues regarding the opening of a biosecurity pathway between Fiji and PNG for Ox & Palm corned beef, snack biscuits and Trukai rice to be exported to Fiji without any more restrictions.In his response to the Fiji Times newspaper, Maru wants all issues resolved and has welcomed his Fijian counterpart, Faiyaz Koyas, response to send two officials from Biosecurity Authority of Fiji to PNG to meet with officials from the National Agriculture Quarantine Inspection Authority (NAQIA) of PNG.Koya said this would be done through proper and official channels. PAC News
See original here

One hundred and fifty Iowans converged on an active construction site in Boone County, Iowa. Nineteen activists were arrested while peacefully blocking an access road to the construction site. The action came one day after President Obama halted construction in North Dakota at the Missouri River crossing. Obama's ruling did not halt construction in Iowa, where the governor has supported the project from the beginning.

I spoke with two landowners with land adjacent to the protest. Both opposed the use of eminent domain to force landowners to allow the pipeline to cross through their lands. The owner of the land across the road from the protest pointed to his well, which is only 100 yards from the pipeline. He called the process that got the project approved in Iowa corrupt.

Carolyn Raffensperger, the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, said that Obama's decision to delay the pipeline's crossing of the Missouri River offers hope that on other stretches of land where the Army Corp of Engineers has to issue permits, there might be similar action.

This was the second protest that ended in arrests in the last two weeks in Iowa, where a coalition of groups has vowed to continue to risk arrest to stop construction of the pipeline.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
The erosion of traditional livelihoods and family support, along with weak health systems, is simply increasing their vulnerability. Old age means different things to different people. The quality of the sunset years is influenced by factors like economic security, social support, literacy, gender and one's own mindset and thinking. While, as the modern saying goes, life might be beginning at 60-65 for some, for many it starts fading painfully at this juncture.

Mrs Mac Thi Mua, is one such elderly people who lives in Luu Ha village in Kinh Mon district of Hai Duong Province, Vietnam. I met her in her modest two-roomed house and was instantly struck by her beauty. The wrinkles on her 88 years old face and her indigent situation had failed to wipe the twinkle in her eyes. Seated on a mosquito-net fitted bed with a wheel chair kept close by, her sad but lovely demeanour spoke a thousand words.

"Son lost to lung cancer..."

Mua lost her son in 2006 to lung cancer. Her two married daughters live far away and are not in a position to take care of her. Mua was doomed to live alone, with her failing health and abject penury, in her twilight years. To top it all, last year she broke her femur bone due to a fall and has since been almost immobile - confined to her bed and to her wheel chair.

A ray of hope when it was getting dark...

But 3 years ago, a stroke of luck brought her in contact with an Intergenerational Self-Help Club (ISHC) operating in her district. Since then, her life changed for the better. While her own kin have left her, two volunteers (Nguyen Thi Phong and Vu Thu Thu) of the club, living in her neighbourhood, have taken it upon themselves to fill her dark night with some stars.

These two volunteers have enough work on their hands of tending to their paddy fields. Yet they manage to find time to look after the old lady. Every day they bring milk and cooked meals for her; feed her; bathe her and clean the house - it was spick and span. Earlier, they would visit her once a week, to help her with her weekly chores. But since her fall, one or the other is with her for almost the entire day. They take turns to stay with her at night.

Mua cannot go out but can move around inside the house when put on the wheel chair. She has no income of her own. The volunteers take care of her food. Some money has been collected by the club members to support her. The nurse from community healthcare facility comes to her house for the monthly checkups. Her eyesight is failing and her hearing is impaired. But her mental faculties are very alert and her spirits are high. She thanked us for coming to visit her and apologised for not being able to entertain us as her guests. Mua's situation aptly describes the Vietnamese saying that neighbours help when families fail to do so.

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Though it may not make any sense to continue dissecting the US media's take on Vladimir Putin, one is driven by a combination of indignation and amazement.



New York Times Building, NYC

(Image by alextorrenegra) Details DMCA



The panic in the US over the Russian President has reached such a pitch that September 11th's Sunday Times devoted both an oped and a lengthy front-page story to the 'former KGB officer' (as if one of our most respected presidents, George Walker Bush, had not been head of the CIA!).

Dispatching the Oped first, it falls back apologetically on a brief history of American attitudes toward the Soviet Union and Russia, claiming that our present confusion is justified because "neither the US nor Russia knows what kind of power 'it' intends to be. Painting an adversary as a mystery goes back a long way with Russia, and is now the default mode, and as for finding out what kind of power Russia wants to be it's called 'a multi-polar world' and has been described over and over by Vladimir Putin.

Still leaning on the historical crutch, Ross Douthat claims that under George W Bush, the US became a 'revolutionary' power, preaching liberalism (!), while Putin now seeks to 'destabilize' the Western order, including through tacit support for Donald Trump.'

Conjuring up a word with sinister connotations, Douthat refers to the Russian annexation of Crimea (ignoring the overwhelming popular vote) as an 'Anschluss', and a 'shadow war against (unidentified) neighbors'.. Compounding his show of ignorance, he suggests that if China is in the long run the bigger threat, the US should try to adopt 'wary cooperation' with Russia. Apparently, Douthat has not heard that China and Russia are ever closer military and economic partners".

On now to the front page article: occupying half an inside page it shows this writer's ignorance in the second paragraph, where he fails to identify the para-Olympian who raised the Russian flag as a Belo-Russian, referring to him misleadingly as 'a pro-Putin athlete' (Bela Rus is a Russian ally, but it's verboten to divulge that Russia has allies.)

In the third paragraph, Putin is referred to snidely as 'caring father of his people': Indeed, a video currently available on the web from his first year (2000) as president shows him announcing an important social program, whose progress is plotted in speeches and interviews ever since. The writer, Andrew Higgens, goes on to say that Putin "projects an image of towering strength", although he is below average height. This impression is confirmed in the recent photo of Putin and Obama shaking hands at the G20, Obama much taller, but leaning forward in what a Russian journalist called an ingratiating attitude, while Putin calmly stands his ground looking him in the eye. In a ridiculous quote, the famous chess master Gary Kasparov says: "Putin is a strong leader in the same way that arsenic is a strong drink"(sic)""Praising a brutal KGB dictator, whether you like Obama or hate him is despicable and dangerous." (That KGB reference again")

The next paragraph grudgingly admits Putin's domestic support, (suggesting there must be something wrong with the Russian people), and among international leaders "scattered" across Europe (always that belittling choice of words), going on to specify inaccurately that these are all right-wing politicians like Trump. (Apparently Higgens has never heard of the 'new (European) right' which has little in common with America's 'Alt right'.)

Surprisingly, the Times longer doctors the facts about Crimea, stating that the Russian President 'annexed' it (without pretending he invaded it), but without signaling the largely Russian population's 80-plus percent support for this in an internationally monitored referendum, or mentioning that in the nineties, the Kosovars were permitted to leave Serbia via a similar referendum.

According to the Times, Mr Putin "stirred up and armed a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine", failing to mention that a US-backed coup had brought neo-Nazis to power in Kiev. This brings us to the crux of America's 'Russian Problem', title of fore-mentioned oped: Utter lack of knowledge of Russian history, that facilitates biased reporting. When will the Times' readers be told that Russia lost 26 million in the war against Nazi Germany to the US's 400 thousand? American history books fail to acknowledge the greater role played by Russia in defeating Hitler, however, a recent French historian points out that Europeans knew it at the time, but have had their memories blurred by a Western-oriented media.)

Higgens grudgingly acknowledges Russia's commonality of interests with the US in terms of destroying ISIS, while failing to signal how long it has taken the US to agree, going on to state in a non-sequitur that Putin has "often faltered" in terms of keeping the promises he made before being elected in 2000. Accurately reporting that many of the oligarchs he promised to rid the country of had been 'driven into exile' or 'cut down to size', Higgens fails to identify one of the most crucial differences between the Russian and American presidents, namely, Putin's ability to tell his oligarchs that they can continue their business activities as long as they refrain from meddling in politics! The Times' version: "They do not dare challenge the Kremlin" makes it sound sinister instead of being a loyal warning. The US president can't even dream of imposing a similar rule, and that's why he has lost the world popularity contest to Putin.

Never mentioning the annual International Economic Forum held in St Petersburg - Russia's historical showcase - Higgens says Russia's economy is stuck in the doldrums, having failed to diversify (one wonders why all those international businessmen come to the forum, one of many international gatherings hosted by Putin each year). Simplistically, an 'economy on the ropes' forces Putin to 'turn toward international affairs' to maintain his rating. Seeming to disparage "patriotic fervor", Higgens warns that Russia's claim to be an indispensable (where have I heard that word before?) player on the world stage have made world leaders 'deeply wary'. He accuses Putin of having 'inserted' (another negative word) Russia not only into Syria but into that 'even more intractable Israel-Palestinian conflict, describing Russian diplomats as "working frantically" (sic) to organize a meeting in Moscow between Bibi and Abbas.

Intent on echoing President Obama's description of Russia as a 'regional power' by President Obama, Higgens accuses it of exercising its power 'beyond the narrow (sic) confines of the former Soviet Union", as if Russia were not the largest country in the world, covering nine time zones, with 14 neighbors!

Higgins mentions a Russian journalist who is "effectively barred from publishing in Russia" having to live 'mostly' in France, (while American journalists barred from publishing in the US flock to RT...). In the ultimate put-down (perhaps the one clever idea), she "granted Putin an indisputable asset that appalls Moscow intellectuals but delights Donald Trump: "People elected him," in a comment similar to Hillary Clinton describing Trump voters as a 'basket of deplorables'.

In what must be the own goal of the year, the article concludes on a diagnosis of America's Russia problem: "Mr Putin's popularity..has made him a seductive figure for Western politicians and electors, who often pine for decisive action and a more secure world, free from the uncertainties created by immigration, insecurity and economic globalization."

Indeed.
As the public opinion carries on being uninterested in the slow depletion of cash in its everyday transactions, various studies are shedding more and more light on the potentially catastrophic consequences it could yield on our economies and democracies. Clearly, this topic deserves far more attention than it is getting.

All banks are in agreement that cash is tedious and expensive to handle. Scandinavian countries, which are the Western economies the closest to giving up on cash, have produced relatively solid arguments that turning away from hard currency has made the banking sector more "cost-effective".

Denmark claims it has gone so far as to add an entire point of GDP since the sharp drop in the economy's share of cash. In those countries, the shift has operated quite smoothly in the sense that the national populations more or less carried it out themselves, or at least have shown no resistance or hostility towards the change.

Cities all around Europe have already been launching bank-sponsored initiatives to test out the next cashless phase. Wolfstreet published in November of 2015: "In May this year the city of Bergamo launched an ambitious pilot scheme to become Italy's first cashless city. The initiative, which awards people who use electronic payments with discounts on retail products, is sponsored by (once again) MasterCard, together with CartaSi, Visa, UbiBanca, Banca Popolare di Bergamo and Banco Popolare".

The Irish city of Cork has played along, the British city of Gloucester, and in Scandinavia, it has become standard. Nina Lyon, from the Coin Telegraph , stated in January of 2016 that "The Chamber of Commerce of Denmark has also proposed to allow most retailers (except for essential services like hospitals, post offices, etc.) to make all money transactions electronically and ban cash. Moreover, the Danish government has "set a 2030 deadline to completely do away with paper money." But it will probably be beaten to the chase by Sweden, expected to become the first cashless society ever, in history.

So, a simple snapshot of Scandinavian societies and economies should tell us that destroying cash is a harmless and even smart thing to do. But that would lack perspective. Indeed, national banks market cash, they have the upper hand, until the currency is distributed to the market, at which point the sovereignty of choice -i.e. what to do with the money -- is transferred to the holder.

So, everything is fine in these quasi-cashless societies, for the moment; but that will only last until "something is rotten again in the State of Denmark" -- or anywhere else in Sweden, Norway or in the world. If, and some would fear "when" be a better choice of words, these States were to become dictatorial or turn on their people, the latter would have nowhere to go to protect their livelihood.

With automatic registering of every financial operation, including names, dates, amounts, forms, goods purchased, etc., governments would quietly receive an amount of power unheard of in history. Complete and absolute control of their economies is something the greatest dictators were unable to achieve.

Low-cash economic configurations are also made somewhat popular thanks to the economically strange phenomenon they are able to produce: negative-interest loans. In Europe, there are currently a few rare cases where negative rates are applied, due to the European central bank pressing down the prime rate. So of course, the idea of free credit or even making money off your mortgage is very entertaining to many people who struggle to meet monthly payments. But this argument is both void and dangerous.

First of all, this was already possible with virtual currency, so nothing new here. Second, and most important, this is economically unsound. If national leaders made the (politically very costly) choice to bail banks out, it is because they are essential to a nation's economy, and banks need to keep their earning up.

Now, these cases of negative rates are very isolated, because cash still exists in Western societies. But with a complete deletion of currency, the phenomenon could become widespread. It would be fun in the beginning, but quickly reveal the economic disaster on our hands. If banks collapse for lack of earnings, no matter how disliked they are, we would be foolish to rejoice because our economies and livelihoods would be up next.

There is a reason why politicians, during the 2008 subprime crisis, made the very costly choice to bail banks out: letting them collapse would have plunged their countries into chaos. So, in short, banks not making any money practicing their trade and customers trapped within the system with nowhere to hide, don't make for a very sound and sustainable economy.

The reasons to destroy cash are valid, but because they are presented in a partial way (i.e. without their logical counterparts), they are irrelevant. They should be examined and scrutinized in perspective with all the (numerous and important) reasons not to destroy cash. Only then could a sound decision be made. This partial presentation of the matter, along with the fact that the move is left conspicuously undebated should raise our awareness on it. If anything, the public should make sure that, if cash is indeed suppressed from our economies, it is willing and able to pay the high price for it. If not, by the time it realizes what it has done, it will be too late to draw back.
This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.



Shrine of John The Baptist

(Image by stevendamron) Details DMCA



Two years ago, "Majd" wrote these words on a Facebook posting:

"I am Syrian" living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent by your gvt. they are al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans etc and the like extremists jihadists sent by the West and the Saudis and Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country. We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them. The majority here loves Assad. He has never committed a crime against his own people"the chemical attack was staged by the terrorists helped by USA and UK etc..everyone knows that here. American soldiers and people should not be supporting barbarian al Qaeda terrorists who are killing Christians, Muslims in my country and everyone. Every massacre has committed by them. We were all happy in Syria= we have free school and university education available for everyone, free healthcare, no GMO, no fluoride, no chemtrails, no Rothschild IMF- controlled bank, state owned central bank which gives 11% interest, we are self-sufficient and have no foreign debt to any country or bank. Life before the crisis was so beautiful here. Now it is hard and horrific in some regions. I do not understand how the good and brave American people can accept to bomb my country who has never harmed them and therefore help the barbarian al Qaeda . These animals slit throats and behead for pleasure" they behead babies and rape young kids. They are satanic. Our military helped.by the millions of civilian militias are winning the battle against al Qaeda..but now the usa want to bomb the sh*t out of us so the al Qaeda can get the upper hand . Please help us American people. They are destroying the cradle of civilization. Stop your government. Impeach that bankster puppet ape you have as president... support Ron Paul or Rand or anyone the like who are true American patriots. but be sure of one.thing..if they attack and I think they will....it will be hell. Be sure that it be world war and many many will die. Syria can and will defend itself and will sink many US ships. Iran will go to war..Russia and China eventually if it escalates" and all this for what ? For the elites who created al Qaeda through the US gvt and use it to conduct proxy wars and destabilize countries who do not go along with their new world order agenda !!!?!! American people...you gotta regain control of your once admirable country. Now everyone hates you for.the.death you bring almost everywhere. Ask the Iraqis"the Afghans"the Pakistanis"the Palestinians"the Syrians...the Macedonians and Serbs...the Libyans...the Somalis...the Yemenis ....all the ones you kill with drones everyday. Stop your wars stop wars. Enough wars. Use diplomacy..dialogue...help..not force."

Consistent testimonies from Syrians, as well as well-documented, open-source Western sources, and historical memory, all serve to reinforce the accuracy of the aforementioned testimony.

Syrians are living the horror brought to them by the criminal West. They can not afford the complacency of shrugging their shoulders in indecision, not when their lives and their ancient civilization is being threatened by Western-paid terrorist mercenaries of the worst kind.

"Our" proxies, slit throats, chop heads, and take no prisoners as we waffle in indecision, ignore empirical evidence, and take the comfortable easy road of believing the labyrinth of lies promulgated by Western media messaging.

The veil of comfortable confusion, nested in an unconscious belief that our government knows best or that it is patriotic to believe the lies and fabrications implicit in the hollow words of politicians (who no longer represent us) and the false pronouncements of Imperial messengers, is concealing an overseas holocaust.

Western societies are rotting from the inside out because of these lies and this barbarity. We are protecting a criminal cabal of corporate globalists who do not serve our interests and never will.

Our democracies, which we should be protecting, have long disappeared -- except in the hollow words of newspaper stenographers. Instead we are supporting transnational corporate elites and their delusional projects.

Poverty and disemployment are all soaring beneath the fakery of government pronouncements, as the public domain evaporates beneath words like "efficiency" or the "economy" -- all false covers that serve to enrich elites and destroy us. Internal imperialism at home is a faded replica of the foreign imperialism abroad.

As countries are destroyed, and its peoples are slaughtered --- think Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and others -- by abhorrent Western proxies -- public institutions are contaminated, and ultimately replaced by parasitical "privatized" facsimiles. Public banking is looted and destroyed in favour of transnational banksterism, World Bank funding, and IMF usury. Food security is destroyed and replaced by biotech tentacles and engineered dependencies on cash crops and unhealthy food. Currencies are destroyed, sanctions are imposed, and the unknown, unseen hand of totalitarian control imposes itself, amidst the cloud of diversions and confusions, aided by comprador regimes, oligarch interests, and shrugging domestic populations.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
See original here

Dallas Goldtooth, a veteran organizer of the Keystone XL fight, is amazed at the historic support from tribes at Standing Rock--even tribes that rely on resource extraction.

By Sarah van Gelder

This year's massive buildup of resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline follows closely on the heels of the victory over Keystone XL pipeline, something often credited to feverish organizing by 350.org. But years before 350's involvement, there was the Indigenous Environmental Network, which launched that movement and its "Keep It In the Ground" messaging. This time, with nearly 200 tribes unified behind the Standing Rock tribe's opposition to the pipeline and more than 3,000 people gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, Native Americans are clearly leading the movement.

The encampments at Standing Rock are filled with prayers and ceremonies, and the spiritual core to this movement gives it resilience and power. The courage and clarity of the stand to protect our water is attracting support across the nation and around the world.

I came to Standing Rock to cover the arrival of Northwest tribal canoes and stayed for the rulings Friday on whether construction of the pipeline can continue. I spoke to Dallas Goldtooth, a veteran of the Keystone XL movement, on a hill overlooking the camp. Goldtooth (Mdewakanton Dakota and Dine) is the Keep It In The Ground campaign organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network.

Sarah van Gelder: What's going to happen following these rulings?

Dallas Goldtooth: We can only focus on this cherished moment that we have with each other. And the organizing continues. One thing that the uncertainty provides is this constant drive to see what else can we do to change the social dial toward our direction and change the conversation. I think slowly it's happening, it's coming. Standing Rock has now entered into the national narrative in some ways, in some places, so how can we further that?

van Gelder: I just asked a woman from the Oglala Nation if she'd ever seen anything like this. She said not since 1973 at Wounded Knee. Tell me how you see this in a historic context.

Goldtooth: I've talked to folks who were there, who are in this camp. At its very most there were about 200 people at Wounded Knee at its peak, and a lot of those were people who came in for the weekend and left. At its peak in this camp, we reached up to 3,500 people. People that traveled across the country. They carpooled, hitchhiked. They organized caravans and buses. It's magnificent to see that. It makes me think how different it would have been if we had had Facebook in 1973.

This is a special moment in the climate justice movement. We've had significant wins: Keystone XL. The Cherry Point coal terminal, another win in support of treaty rights. I'm looking forward to what happens next. There are people very committed --through nonviolent direct action, through legal strategies, through social movement strategies -- to make sure we see a win in this case, too.

van Gelder: This is a pretty big moment for treaty rights and for indigenous folks standing together.

Goldtooth: It is. I don't think there has ever been as large a mobilization and a unified, unilateral Indian Country support like this. We've had chairmen, traditional chiefs, chairwomen, the leaders of the leaders of Indian Country, who have come to this camp. Also, we've had a lot of non-Native allies that are 100 percent supportive of the fight and struggle here because they see the connections. This fight right now, it's about the water. And because the messaging is that water is life, so many people can connect with that. Whether you're native or non-Native, whether you're from Chicago or Detroit or New Orleans or up in the Bakken, we all understand the importance of protecting the water. That brings us together.

Indigenous Environmental Network, our organization, has been fighting Dakota Access for about two years, when they first applied for the state permits. In South Dakota, we were intervening in the Keystone XL stuff, and we saw Dakota Access come up. So we intervened on behalf of Standing Rock at the time. And even back then we had the Tribal Historic Preservation Office testify saying the court is not consulting with us: "We have not been consulted. There are sacred sites out there that they missed." And that was two years ago. And look where we're at now.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
In my opinion- the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has no heart. Aside from carrying out cruel helicopter roundups of wild horses in the past which is tantamount to running some of them to death, last week they made the decision to kill 45,000 wild horses currently being held captive in government facilities throughout the US.

Why are they being held captive in the first place when clearly the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971 which Wild Horse Annie (Velma Bronn Johnston) worked so hard to get passed in Congress should have prevented this from happening? If you haven't already guessed why -- it is to allow privately owned cattle to graze on the land bequeathed to the horses and burros by virtue of this act.

I may be going out on a limb here but if this is public land -- shouldn't the public have a say on how it is used? Maybe meat eaters will side with the cattle barons and the BLM and maybe they won't - but for a certainty people who love and respect these beautiful wild horses of the West will not want them removed and killed for commercial interests.

Organizations which have interest and concern in helping our wild horses have been arguing for using birth control to minimize population growth. However, reading about one of their ways of implementing this had me shaking my head in disbelief. Can't we do anything right for these magnificent creatures who are a part of our western history?

There must be a compassionate way to do this.

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 Consortium News



Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015.

(Image by (UN Photo)) Details DMCA



Arguably, the nuttiest neoconservative idea -- among a long list of nutty ideas -- has been to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia by weakening its economy, isolating it from Europe, pushing NATO up to its borders, demonizing its leadership, and sponsoring anti-government political activists inside Russia to promote "regime change."

This breathtakingly dangerous strategy has been formulated and implemented with little serious debate inside the United States as the major mainstream news media and the neocons' liberal-interventionist sidekicks have fallen in line much as they did during the run-up to the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Except with Russia, the risks are even greater -- conceivably, a nuclear war that could exterminate life on the planet. Yet, despite those stakes, there has been a cavalier -- even goofy -- attitude in the U.S. political/media mainstream about undertaking this new "regime change" project aimed at Moscow.

There is also little appreciation of how lucky the world was when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 without some Russian extremists seizing control of the nuclear codes and taking humanity to the brink of extinction. Back then, there was a mix of luck and restrained leadership, especially on the Soviet side.

Plus, there were at least verbal assurances from George H.W. Bush's administration that the Soviet retreat from East Germany and Eastern Europe would not be exploited by NATO and that a new era of cooperation with the West could follow the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Instead, the United States dispatched financial "experts" -- many from Harvard Business School -- who arrived in Moscow with neoliberal plans for "shock therapy" to "privatize" Russia's resources, which turned a handful of corrupt insiders into powerful billionaires, known as "oligarchs," and the "Harvard Boys" into well-rewarded consultants.

But the result for the average Russian was horrific as the population experienced a drop in life expectancy unprecedented in a country not at war. While a Russian could expect to live to be almost 70 in the mid-1980s, that expectation had dropped to less than 65 by the mid-1990s.

The "Harvard Boys" were living the high-life with beautiful women, caviar and champagne in the lavish enclaves of Moscow -- as the U.S.-favored President Boris Yeltsin drank himself into stupors -- but there were reports of starvation in villages in the Russian heartland and organized crime murdered people on the street with near impunity.

Meanwhile, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush cast aside any restraint regarding Russia's national pride and historic fears by expanding NATO across Eastern Europe, including the incorporation of former Soviet republics.

In the 1990s, the "triumphalist" neocons formulated a doctrine for permanent U.S. global dominance with their thinking reaching its most belligerent form during George W. Bush's presidency, which asserted the virtually unlimited right for the United States to intervene militarily anywhere in the world regardless of international law and treaties.

How Despair Led to Putin

Without recognizing the desperation and despair of the Russian people during the Yeltsin era -- and the soaring American arrogance in the 1990s -- it is hard to comprehend the political rise and enduring popularity of Vladimir Putin, who became president after Yeltsin abruptly resigned on New Year's Eve 1999. (In declining health, Yeltsin died on April 23, 2007).

Putin, a former KGB officer with a strong devotion to his native land, began to put Russia's house back in order. Though he collaborated with some oligarchs, he reined in others by putting them in jail for corruption or forcing them into exile.

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.

For the sake of this discussion -- of any discussion of Donald Trump, in fact -- what our language needs is an extreme vetting. Certain words and phrases arriving from dangerous linguistic zones and threatening to upend The Donald's world really should be banned. And I'm not just talking about "Sharia law" or "Syrian refugee." The dangers to his thinking process are endless, even though setting up Cold War-style extreme-vetting tests for words that might emigrate into The Donald's universe with mayhem in mind would take time and effort.

Let me just give you a sense of what might be involved with a single word: "irony." (Think of it, for safety's sake, as the I-word.) We're talking about the man who, having just met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto , promptly gave a 7,000 word, 10-point stemwinder of a speech in Phoenix, Arizona, on what to do about "illegal immigration." It began with him magnanimously hailing "the great contributions of Mexican-American citizens to our two countries, my love for the people of Mexico, and the leadership and friendship between Mexico and the United States." And then moved on to point one: "We will build a great wall along the southern border. And Mexico will pay for the wall. One hundred percent. They don't know it yet, but they're going to pay for it." (The suckers!) And oh yes, somewhere in there -- I forget which point it was -- he suggested deporting Hillary Clinton for, like an illegal immigrant who has committed crimes in this country, "evading justice."

Lurking terroristically in the vicinity of the speech threatening violence, however, was that I-word. After all, it was given by the man who personally chose to hire undocumented Polish workers to tear down the building that was replaced by Trump Tower. He reportedly worked them "in 12-hour shifts with inadequate safety equipment at subpar wages that their contractor paid sporadically, if at all." One of the points in his Phoenix speech, by the way, was that illegal immigrants of the sort he hired are taking away good American jobs. (They aren't.) But -- shhh, no I-word allowed -- he himself made a point of hiring "guest workers," mainly from Romania, for his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida; hundreds of them, in fact, while, according to the New York Times, hiring only 17 local residents from among the hundreds who applied.

A second word in need of a Trumpian vetting is "contradiction," but don't get me started on that, especially since yet another reason for extreme vetting is laid out today by TomDispatchregular Aviva Chomsky. She makes clear just how dangerous it might be if a phrase like "American history" were allowed to enter the immigration debate right now. It might terrorize us all with a vision of an urge, deep in the country's make-up, to create an all-white America. Tom

Is Trump an Aberration?

The Dark History of the "Nation of Immigrants"

By Aviva Chomsky Liberal Americans like to think of Donald Trump as an aberration and believe that his idea of building a great wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent immigrants from entering the country goes against American values. After all, as Hillary Clinton says, "We are a nation of immigrants." In certain ways, in terms of the grim history of this country, they couldn't be more wrong. Donald Trump may differ from other contemporary politicians in so openly stating his antipathy to immigrants of a certain sort. (He's actually urged the opening of the country to more European immigrants.) Democrats like Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton sound so much less hateful and so much more tolerant. But the policies Trump is advocating, including that well-publicized wall and mass deportations, are really nothing new. They are the very policies initiated by Bill Clinton in the 1990s and -- from border militarization to mass deportations -- enthusiastically promoted by Barack Obama. The president is, in fact, responsible for raising such deportations to levels previously unknown in American history. And were you to take a long look back into that very history, you would find that Trump's open appeal to white fears of a future non-white majority, and his support of immigration policies aimed at racial whitening, are really nothing new either. The policies he's promoting are, in an eerie way, a logical continuation of centuries of policymaking that sought to create a country of white people. The first step in that process was to deport the indigenous population starting in the 1600s. Later, deportation policies started to focus on Mexicans -- seen by many whites as practically indistinguishable from Indians. Except, white settlers found, Mexicans were more willing to work as wage laborers. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Mexicans have been treated as disposable workers. As Europeans were invited to immigrate here permanently and become citizens, Mexican workers were invited into the country to work -- but not to become citizens. The particular legal rationales have changed over time, but the system has been surprisingly durable. Prior to the 1960s, deportation was based openly on discrimination against Mexicans on the basis of their supposed race or nationality. It was only with the civil rights advances of the 1960s that such discrimination became untenable -- and new immigration restrictions created a fresh legal rationale for treating Mexican workers as deportable. Having redefined them as "illegal" or "undocumented," nativists could now clamor for deportation without seeming openly racist. Creating a Country for White People A closer look at American history makes the notion that "we are a nation of immigrants" instantly darker than its proponents imagine. As a start, what could the very idea of a "nation of immigrants" mean in a land that was already home to a large native population when European immigrants started to colonize it? From its first moments, American history has, in fact, been a history of deportation. The initial deportees from the British colonies and the American nation were, of course, Native Americans, removed from their villages, farms, and hunting grounds through legalized and extra-legal force everywhere that white immigrants wanted to settle. The deportations that began in the 1600s continued at least until the end of the nineteenth century. In other words, to celebrate the country's "immigrant" origins also means celebrating the settler colonialism and native displacement that made the United States that nation of immigrants -- and this has important implications for immigrants today, many of whom are indigenous people from Mexico and Central America. Conflicts between immigrants and Natives were central to the colonial histories of both North and South America, and to the American Revolution. In the Proclamation of 1763, the British attempted to mitigate such conflicts by banning colonist (that is, immigrant) encroachment on native lands west of the Appalachian Divide. The British Crown even restricted immigration itself in another fruitless attempt to balance native and settler interests. These prohibitions were among the major grievances that led to the American Revolution. Among the list of "injuries and usurpations" carried out by the King that were denounced in the Declaration of Independence, there was the fact that he had "endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands." In addition, he had, it claimed, "excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Reprinted from Huffington Post

After the events of September 11, 2001, as a longtime FBI agent and division legal counsel, I blew the whistle on the FBI's failure to act on information provided by the Minneapolis field office that could have prevented the attacks.

On this sad 15th anniversary of 9/11, I am encouraged to see that Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein put out a statement calling for a new investigation not afflicted by all the limitations, partisan obstacles and other problems that adversely affected the 9/11 Commission.



It's what so many of us have long called for, including me personally (see here and here) as someone with a front row seat to the FBI's initial cover-ups. The FBI was only one of the agencies and political entities which strived to cover up the truth of why and how they all ignored a "system blinking red" in the months before the attacks. So successful had this been that when I testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2002, I actually felt I had to explain why the truth was important. That we "owed it to the public, especially the victims of terrorism, to be completely honest" and "learning from our mistakes" were two of the reasons I came up with.

But the biggest mistake, the launching of the ruinous, counter-productive "war on terror," had already broken out even before my testimony (and long before the 9/11 Commission was allowed to begin work), along with its attendant war crimes such as torture, which were secretly "legalized." Not only had truth again become the first casualty, but Cicero's adage was playing out: "in times of war, the law falls silent."



As retired Major Todd Pierce recently said in an interview: "Everything that we have done since 9/11 is wrong." And I think that is largely because people still don't know the full truth about how 9/11 could have easily been prevented if only agencies and the Bush Administration had shared information internally, between agencies and with the public (see "Wikileaks and 9-11: What If?").

I debated, early on, with a former CIA legal counsel who claimed war was the answer as opposed to investigating/prosecuting terrorism as plain crime, and later tried to explain more fully why "The War on Terror (Is) A False Promise for National Security," published in the International Journal of Intelligence Ethics.

So much of the ease in perpetrating this type of deceit, described so well in David Swanson's book "War Is A Lie," comes back to Mark Twain's classic adage that "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." So it took a couple years after 9-11, after the first in the long series of Mideast wars had been launched, with US military occupations firmly installed for the duration (in what has now come to be called "perma-war") before the 9/11 Commission and other official and congressional inquiries could get out even the tiniest bit of truth, revealing that 9/11 was enabled by the lack of sharing of pertinent intelligence information inside and between agencies as well as with the public, not any lack of massive, non-relevant metadata collection on innocent people.

We also learned that the countries we had launched war on, or had judged culpable for the attacks, Iraq and Iran, were not at all involved in 9-11. It's jaw-dropping that it's taken nearly 15 years to get the "28 pages" in the Joint Intelligence Committee's Report finally released. The "28 pages" show no culpability on the part of either Iraq or Iran, just strong indications of Saudi funding and support of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.



Another retired intelligence officer who cares about integrity in intelligence, Elizabeth Murray, also agrees with Jill Stein's call:

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
"The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat."--Lysander Spooner, American abolitionist and legal theorist

It used to be that the Constitution served as a bulwark against government abuses, excesses and wrongdoing.

That is no longer the case.

Having been reduced to little more than a historic document, the Constitution now provides scant protection against government abuses, misconduct and corruption.

Not only are "we the people" painfully vulnerable to the whims of any militarized cop on the beat, but we are also sitting targets for every government huckster out to fleece the taxpayer of their hard-earned dollars.

We get taxed on how much we earn, taxed on what we eat, taxed on what we buy, taxed on where we go, taxed on what we drive, and taxed on how much is left of our assets when we die.

Because the government's voracious appetite for money, power and control has grown out of control, its agents have devised other means of funding its excesses and adding to its largesse through taxes disguised as fines, taxes disguised as fees, and taxes disguised as tolls, tickets and penalties.

The government's schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally defraud Americans have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture schemes, the modern-day equivalent of highway robbery, astronomical health care "reform," and costly stimulus packages.

Now the government and its corporate partners in crime have come up with a new scheme to not only scam taxpayers out of what's left of their paychecks but also make us foot the bill, and it's coming at us in the form of a war on cash.

What is this war on cash?

It's a concerted campaign to do away with large bills such as $20s, $50s, $100s and shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

Much like the war on drugs and the war on terror, this so-called "war on cash" is being sold to the public as a means of fighting terrorists, drug dealers and tax evaders. Just the mere possession of cash is enough to implicate you in suspicious activity and have you investigated. In other words, cash has become another way for the government to profile Americans and render them criminals.

The rationale is that cash is the currency for illegal transactions given that it's harder to track, can be used to pay illegal immigrants, and denies the government its share of the "take," so doing away with paper money will help law enforcement fight crime and help the government realize more revenue.

Despite what we know about the government and its history of corruption, bumbling, fumbling and data breaches, not to mention how easily technology can be used against us, the campaign to do away with cash is really not a hard sell.

It's not a hard sell, that is, if you know the right buttons to push, and the government has become a grand master in the art of getting the citizenry to do exactly what it wants. And if you belong to the growing class of Americans--46% of consumers, approximately 114 million adults and rising--who use your cell phone to pay bills, purchase goods, and transfer funds, then the government is just preaching to the choir when it comes to persuading you of the convenience of digital cash.

In much the same way that Americans have opted into government surveillance through the convenience of GPS devices and cell phones, digital cash--the means of paying with one's debit card, credit card or cell phone--is becoming the de facto commerce of the American police state.

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Paints and Coatings Market Worth $153.0 Billion by 2020

Paints and Coatings Market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/requestsample/paints-and-coatings-market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/paints-and-coatings-market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/

Florida, September 12: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Paints & Coatings Market by Resin Type (Epoxy, Acrylic, Polyurethane, & Others), by Technology (Waterborne, High Solids, Powder, Solvent Borne, & Others), by Application (Architectural & Paints) - Global Forecasts to 2020Download Free Sample Report:A coating is a covering that is applied to the surface of an object, usually referred to as the substrate. The purpose of applying the coating is protective, decorative, functional, or both. The coating itself may be an all-over coating, completely covering the substrate, and cover parts of the substrate.The paint and coating market segmented in High Solids/Radiation Cure, Powder Coatings, Waterborne Coatings, and Solvent Borne Technologies. Also for the automotive sector it segmented for Aviation, Medical & Healthcare, Residential, Commercial uses.The global paints and coatings market is expected to reach $125.0 billion by the end of 2015 and further increase to $153.6 billion by 2020, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.9% over the next five-year period of 2015 through 2020.Browse Full Report here:This report provides: An overview of the global market for paints and coatings and related technologies. Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2013, estimates for 2014 and 2015, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2020. Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for paints and coatings. Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications. 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 AkzoNobel N.V., Asian Paints Ltd., Bergers Paints India Ltd., Deutsche Amphibolin-Werke Von Robert Murjahn Stiftung & Company, Diamond Vogel, Dow Corning, Helios Group, KCC Corporation, Masco Corporation, PPG Industries etc. 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 market has been segmented as below:Paints and Coatings Market: by Product Segment Analysis High solids/radiation cure Powder coating Waterborne coating Solvent-borne technologies Others (including specialty coatings, etc.)Paints and Coatings Market: by End-user Analysis Automotives & aviation Medical & healthcare Residential Commercial Others (including other industries, special purpose, etc.)Paints and Coatings Market: by Regional Analysis North America Europe Asia-Pacific Rest of the WorldReasons to Buy this Report Obtain the most up to date information available on all active and planned coating industry globally Identify growth segments and opportunities in the industry Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong historic and forecast of coating industry and unit capacity data 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, +91-860-565-7204Website:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
SOLO MUSICA has signed a longterm contract with 27-year-old cellist ESTELLE REVAZ from Switzerland

Her first recording for the label, to be released in Spring 2017, distributed by Sony Music in Europe and by Naxos worldwide, will feature Cello solo works by J.S. Bach and their reflections in selected repertoire of contemporary composers. Estelle Revaz belongs to the leading cellists of her generation, received several important prizes and is performing worldwide with great success as a soloist and chambermusician, as well. Since 2015 Estelle Revaz is a member of the prestigious "Forum of the 100" which shows off those who represent the future of Switzerland.Solo Musica is a German classical record Label.Kerstin Haenssler, Bruehlstrasse 18, D- 73765 Neuhausen, 0174 7121026
Global Sodium Chlorate Market 2016 by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2021

http://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/2843/request-sample

http://www.fiormarkets.com/report/global-sodium-chlorate-market-by-manufacturers-regions-type-2843.html

www.fiormarkets.com

Sodium chlorate is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula NaClO3. It is a white crystalline powder that is readily soluble in water. It is hygroscopic. It decomposes above 250 C to release oxygen and leave sodium chloride. Sodium chlorate has a high oxidizing potential and functions as a powerful oxidizing agent. An example of this type of reaction would be the production of chlorine dioxide.Download sample report atScope of the Report:This report focuses on the Sodium Chlorate in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversAkzoNobel Eka, Kemira, ERCO, CANEXUS, Tronox, Chemtrade, Arkema, Ercros, China First Chemical Holdings, Inner Mongolia Lantai Industrial, CHG, Lianyungang Xingang Chemical, Sanxiang Electrochemical.Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)Latin America, Middle and AfricaMarket Segment by Type, coversNaClO3 Purity 99.5%NaClO3 Purity99.5%Market Segment by Applications, can be divided intoPulp & Paper IndustryWater treatmentChemical raw materialsOthersAccess full report atThere are 11 Chapters to deeply display the global Sodium Chlorate market.Chanter 1, to analyze the top manufacturers of Sodium Chlorate, with sales, revenue, and price of Sodium Chlorate, in 2015 and 2016;Chapter 2, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2015 and 2016;Chapter 3, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Sodium Chlorate, for each region, from 2011 to 2016;Chapter 4, 5, 6 and 7, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 8 and 9, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2011 to 2016.Chapter 10, Sodium Chlorate market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2016 to 2021.Fior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Fior Markets provides you the full spectrum of services related to market research, and corroborate with the clients to increase the revenue stream, and address process gaps.Contact UsMark StoneSales Manager2566, Lincoln StreetPrinceton,New Jersey 08540USAPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:
Allen Maintenance Inc. Wants To Help Keep Michigan Clean

Allen Maintenance Janitorial Wants To Help Keep Michigan Clean

http://www.allenmaintenancejanitorial.com

Michigan consumers deserve to do business with clean business environments. After all, clean environments help Michigan businesses generate revenue.Allen Maintenance Inc., a Lincoln Park, MI commercial cleaning corporation, is looking to build better alliances with local business owners, in an effort to help Michigan businesses provide better business environments.Unfortunately, due to a lack of cleanliness in many Michigan business environments, more Michigan consumers are coming in contact with germs and bacteria that causes illness, which requires them to lose days on the job, due to sickness.In fact, the average worker is sick 7.7 days a year; costing business 225.8 billion dollars annually.This is why the ISSA Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association conveys that workers are 2-8% more productive in a clean environment.Interestingly, consumers report- they would rather do business with environments that seek to help them stay healthy, by offering services in a clean environment.Allen Maintenance Inc. offers superior professional quality cleaning services that impacts the way consumers talk about your business, with family, friends, and co-workers; this is a great way to gain good referrals.Therefore, isnt it time your Michigan business begin taking a sincere interest in offering local consumers- a business environment that considers the health of its business partners?Take action today; call Allen Maintenance Inc. to learn how we can help your business achieve its healthy sanitation goals. Log on to our Web site at:Allen Maintenance Janitorial, is a Lincoln Park, MI corporation, offering quality cleaning services throughout Wayne, Oakland, Monroe, Macomb, and Livingston counties. Services include: desktop cleaning, sweeping, mopping, refurbishing, daily maintenance, and more.Press Contact:Construction EMarketingBrad FowlerP.O. Box 871631Canton, MI 48187734.680.5370E-mail: info@constructionemarketing.biz
Global Composites Market 2016: Layup, Injection Molding, Compression Molding

http://www.intenseresearch.com/market-analysis/world-composites-market-opportunities-and-forecasts-2014-2022.html#request-sample

http://www.intenseresearch.com/market-analysis/world-composites-market-opportunities-and-forecasts-2014-2022.html#inquiry-for-buying

http://www.intenseresearch.com/

Latest industry research report on Composites are made up of two or more materials at microscopic level having chemically distinct phase. Based on the matrix, composites are classified into polymer, metal, ceramic, carbon, and graphite. Its enhanced desired properties make it applicable to be used in several industries such as aerospace & defense and construction.Rise in demand from the end user industries drives the composites market. Improved properties such as high fatigue life, high strength and modulus, reduced weight, acoustic insulation, and corrosion resistance has led to an increase in the demand. Volatility in the raw material prices, and non-recyclable nature of composites pose a great threat in the growth of the market.The report segments the composites market on the basis of fiber type, resin type, manufacturing process, and application.Request a Brochure of This Report, here:On the basis of fiber, the market is divided into carbon fiber composites, glass fiber composites, and others. Based on the resin type, market is classified into thermosetting composites and thermoplastic composites. On the basis of type of manufacturing process, the market is categorized into layup, filament, injection molding, pultrusion, compression molding, RTM, and others. On the basis of application, the market is divided into transportation, aerospace & defense, electrical & electronics, construction, wind energy, pipes and tanks, marines, and others. Geographic breakdown and deep analysis of each of the aforesaid segments is included for North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA. Growth of the electricals & electronics, construction & infrastructure, and improved transportation facilities has led Asia-Pacific to be the largest market of composites.Comprehensive competitive analysis and profiles of major market players such as Hexcel Corporation, Huntsman Corporation, Toray Industries, Teijin Limited, and Owens Corning are also provided in this report. The target end users for these companies can be categorized as automotive, aerospace, construction, and wind energy related companies such as BMW, Ford, Bell Helicopter, Boeing, Mercedes-Benz, and Vestas.Do Inquiry Before Purchasing Report:About Intense ResearchIntense Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Intense Research cover more than 30 industries includsing energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@intenseresearch.comWeb:
Corrosion Monitoring Market - Global Industry Analysis, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=14513

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Corrosion is an electrochemical process that transforms metals and alloys into oxides, hydroxides, and aqueous salts. In the corrosion process, there are generally two types of reactions that take place. The first is the anodic reaction, in which reaction metal atoms are ionized and pass into solutions, leaving their electrons in the original metal. In the second process, the cathodic reaction, reduction takes place and metals are degraded by chemical reactions with O2 and H2O. Corrosion monitoring is the process of controlling and preventing of corrosion. In this process, the corrosion monitoring is done by using probes. The probes, which can be mechanical, electrical, and electromechanical, are inserted into the process stream and constantly exposed to the process stream. Corrosion monitoring techniques provide direct and online measurement of metal loss and corrosion rate in industrial process. There are a number of corrosion monitoring techniques being used in the industry to estimate metal loss and to take preventive measures such as weight loss coupons, electrical resistance, linear polarization, hydrogen penetration, galvanic current, and microbial. Weight loss coupons, electrical resistance, and linear polarization resistance are the most popular techniques used in industrial corrosion monitoring systems.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:Corrosion monitoring systems have applications where the risks of operation are high such as, in areas, where corrosion inhibitors are used and other processes involving high corrosion. The corrosion monitoring system is essential to maintain safety standards in batch productions, where corrosive component is concentrated due to repeated cycles. The oil & gas industry is the major application area for corrosion monitoring system. The oil & gas industry comprises upstream, downstream, and midstream industries and every stream is under strict scrutiny by regulators and environmental agencies. Thus, the industry needs a high level of safety and protection standards to increase their assets durability and a best practice to manage the corrosion-free environment. The need of corrosion monitoring system in oil & gas industry are essential in specific areas where accidental safety and prevention is highly important such as flow line, gathering system, transport pipeline, water injection facilities, vessels, chemical injection system, drilling mud system, etc. Increasing exploration & production of crude oil and rising demand from the downstream market is likely to propel the demand for corrosion monitoring system in the near future. Paper & pulp industry is another key market for corrosion monitoring in areas such as digesters and boiler systems.Asia-Pacific has been the key region for corrosion monitoring system in the global corrosion monitoring market in 2015 followed by North America. The region is likely to demonstrate the significant growth during the forecast period due to rise in demand from the rapidly developing economies within the region such as India and China. The North America region is expected to maintain its share in the global corrosion monitoring market due to increasing shale gas exploration activities during the forecast period. Expansion of stabilizing chemical manufacturing industries is expected to support the same trend in North America for corrosion monitoring market. Increasing investment in oil & gas and chemical industry concerning the high safety standards are anticipated to boost the corrosion monitoring market during the forecast period.The key players operates in the corrosion monitoring market are Intertek (U.K.), SGS SA (Switzerland), Cosasco (U.S.), Korosi Specindo (Indonesia), Rysco Corrosion Services (Canada), BAC Corrosion Control (U.K.) Applied Corrosion Monitoring (U.S.), Permasense (U.K.), ICORR Technologies (U.S.), and Pyramid Technical Services (India).The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth insights, understanding market evolution by tracking historical developments, and analyzing the present scenario and future projections based on optimistic and likely scenarios. Each research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology developments, types, applications, and the competitive landscape.The study is a source of reliable data on:Key market segments and sub-segmentsEvolving market trends and dynamicsChanging supply and demand scenariosQuantifying market opportunities through market sizing and market forecastingTracking current trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive insightsOpportunity mapping in terms of technological breakthroughsAbout UsTransparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We are privileged with highly experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700Albany NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453E-mail: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
3D Printing Powder Market - Global Industry Analysis, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=14501

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

3D printing powder is used in additive manufacturing process where a three-dimensional component is built up from digital data. Several materials are used to create a 3D printed object. Successive layers of 3D printing powder are used under digital control to make a three-dimensional object. Various materials that are used as 3D printing powder include stainless steel, tool steel, aluminum alloys, copper alloys, titanium alloys, diamond catalyst alloys, super alloys of chromium and nickel, and pure metals such as gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. 3D printing powder has characteristic morphology and packing density that ensure good flow and uniformity in 3D printing. Size and shape of powder differ broadly depending on the processing technology and end-user requirement. 3D printing materials are mostly available in spherical shape with particle size ranging between 50 m and 150 m.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:3D printing powder is also known as additive manufacturing material or rapid prototyping material. Several techniques are used to produce 3D printing powder. These include water atomization, gas atomization, plasma atomization, and centrifugal atomization. 3D printing powder has extensive usage in numerous industries such as aerospace & defense, medical, automotive, and architecture. The aerospace & defense industry is the major consumer of 3D printing powder. Aircraft and spacecraft used in commercial and military purposes, airbus, missiles, engine components, etc., are principal applications of 3D printing powder in the aerospace industry. Usage of this powder ensures excellent durability and toughness in products along with weight reduction. 3D printing powder is used in orthopedic implants in the medical industry. They are used to manufacture standard and custom implants in a cost-effective manner. They are also implemented in the drug discovery process. 3D printing powder is used to manufacture dental crowns, bridges, removable dentures, etc., in the dental industry. On the other hand, usage of 3D printing powder in the automotive industry helps design automotive components with excellent mechanical strength and amended functionalities. 3D printing powder is used in prototyping and tooling by automotive manufacturers owing to improved robustness. 3D printing powder is used in architectural components. It is also consumed in the production of several consumer goods such as watch, belts, cosmetics, jewelry, and footwear.The global market for 3D printing powder has witnessed significant growth in the past few years. North America was the largest market for 3D printing powder in the past few years followed by Europe and Asia Pacific in 2014. Growth in the aerospace & defense industry favored the progress of 3D printing powder market in North America. Developed countries such as the U.S. and Canada generated strong demand for 3D printing powder in the past few years. Europe also held substantial share of the global 3D printing powder market in 2014. However, Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing market in the next few years. Potential market growth is anticipated in this region during the forecast period. Increasing presence of aerospace and automotive manufacturers in developing countries such as Japan, China, and South Korea boosts the market growth in this region. Latin America and Middle East & Africa are also anticipated to be lucrative markets for 3D printing powder in the next few years.Rising demand for lightweight aircraft components with superior functionality is principally driving demand for 3D printing powder. Increasing demand for jet engine components propels significant demand for 3D printing powder. Furthermore, rising demand for medical implants in the elderly population boosts the 3D printing powder market. However, lack of awareness and economic barriers are anticipated to hinder growth in the 3D printing powder market. Enhanced research and innovation programs are being carried out to bring in technological development in the 3D printing powder market. Such initiatives are projected to create emerging opportunities in the market, enabling accessibility of 3D printing powder to small- and medium-scale manufacturers.Key manufacturers of 3D printing powder include Arcam AB, Arkema S.A., Carpenter Technology Corporation, Erasteel Kloster AB, Metalysis, Praxair Technology, Inc., and Sandvik AB.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth insights, understanding market evolution by tracking historical developments, and analyzing the present scenario and future projections based on optimistic and likely scenarios. Each research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology developments, types, applications, and the competitive landscape.The study is a source of reliable data on:Key market segments and sub-segmentsEvolving market trends and dynamicsChanging supply and demand scenariosQuantifying market opportunities through market sizing and market forecastingTracking current trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive insightsOpportunity mapping in terms of technological breakthroughsAbout UsTransparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We are privileged with highly experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700Albany NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453E-mail: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Food Service Equipment Market 2016: Booster Heaters, Dishwashers, Utensil Washer

http://www.intenseresearch.com/market-analysis/world-food-service-equipment-market-opportunities-and-forecasts.html

http://bit.ly/2c7duZF

http://www.intenseresearch.com/

Latest industry research report on Food service equipment market comprises kitchenware, washware, and storage equipment. This equipment plays vital roles in hotels, restaurants, educational institutes, nursing homes, and hospitals among others. Increase in global population has fueled the demand for food service equipment in the recent years.Increasing demand for refrigerated food products and growing inclination towards junk foods have fueled the adoption of food service equipment, worldwide. In addition, improving hygiene standards and growing awareness regarding energy scarcity have encouraged customers to adopt energy-efficient products. Increasing shift towards modular kitchen with advanced features has boosted the demand for kitchen food service equipment, worldwide. The government in various regions have implemented stringent regulations regarding the hygiene of equipment used in the retail food sector and food service industries due to rising incidence of foodborne diseasesAccess Full Report:Moreover, increase in adoption of (internet of things) IoT to monitor storage conditions has fueled the popularity of food service equipment. However, high capital investment and complexities associated with the usage of equipment restrict the market growth.The world food service equipment market is segmented based on product, washware equipment, application, and geography. Based on product, the market is segmented into kitchen purpose, ware washing, refrigeration, storage, food holding, and serving products. Based on application, the market is segmented into residential and commercial sectors. Washware equipment, such as booster heater, disposer, utensil washer, and dishwasher among others have been discussed in the report.Request a Brochure of This Report, here:The market is analyzed on the basis of four regions, namely, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA. Asia-Pacific countries, especially China and India, are expected to offer lucrative market opportunities during the forecast period due to the high demand for these equipment in this region.The key players profiled in the report include Electrolux AB, Duke Manufacturing Co., Inc., Dover Corporation, Ali Group, Haier Group Corporation, Hoshizaki Electric Co. Ltd., Manitowoc Company, Inc., ITW, SMEG, and Middleby Corporation.About Intense ResearchIntense Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Intense Research cover more than 30 industries includsing energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact Us:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@intenseresearch.comWeb:
Global Servo Motors and Drives Market Dynamics 2016  2024

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/5765

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/5765

Automation in industrial processes has resulted in high throughput, less cost, low errors and less man-power requirement. Thus the automation market has grown leaps and bounds in recent times. Servo motors and drives serve the purpose of automation and thus servo motor market has seen a high growth rate. Technological advancements in servo systems have further led to increased end-user interest. The application areas of servo motors are varied and include packaging machines, automobile manufacturing industries, food processing, health care industries, semiconductors and robotics. Servo motors are segmented based on the technology as DC brushless, DC Brushed, AC motors and linear servo motors. Similarly, servo drives are segmented as DC servo drives, AC servo drives and adjustable speed drives. When compared to other competing technologies such as stepper motors, future markets would rely on servo systems to exploit the market opportunities because of its high accuracy and speed. Light weight machines, reduced size, increase in speed and higher torque are providing huge market opportunities. Reduced prices have grabbed the attention of manufacturers on the subjects such as advanced design, production techniques and production time.Download Sample @Regionally North America, Asia and Europe are largest manufacturers and consumers in servo motor and drive market. USA, China and Germany form occupy more than a third of world servo motor market. Robotics market has grown at a significant rate in recent times and thus presents a huge opportunity for servo motors and drives market. The landscape of competition in this market has an interesting feature, in which a large number of small players have come to fore in recent years. The key participants in this market are Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Danaher Corporation, ABB, FANUC FA, Siemens AG, Galil Motion Control, General Electric, Bosch Rexroth and Yaskawa Electric Corporation.Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report: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 Wiring Devices Market Competitive landscape By 2015  2021

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.Download Sample @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 (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report: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.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 DNA Vaccines Market Trends, Regulations And Competitive Landscape 2016

http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/807316

http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/

"The Report Global DNA Vaccines Industry 2016, Trends and Forecast Report provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"2016 Global DNA Vaccines Market Report is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions of the DNA Vaccines industry, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia) and the main countries (United States, Germany, Japan and China).The report firstly introduced the DNA Vaccines basics: definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain overview; industry policies and plans; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, capacity utilization, supply, demand and industry growth rate etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.The report includes six parts, dealing with: 1.) basic information; 2.) the Asia DNA Vaccines industry; 3.) the North American DNA Vaccines industry; 4.) the European DNA Vaccines industry; 5.) market entry and investment feasibility; and 6.) the report conclusion.Download Sample copy of this Report at :Table of ContentsPart I DNA Vaccines Industry OverviewChapter One DNA Vaccines Industry Overview1.1 DNA Vaccines Definition1.2 DNA Vaccines Classification Analysis1.2.1 DNA Vaccines Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 DNA Vaccines Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 DNA Vaccines Application Analysis1.3.1 DNA Vaccines Main Application Analysis1.3.2 DNA Vaccines Main Application Share Analysis1.4 DNA Vaccines Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 DNA Vaccines Industry Development Overview1.5.1 DNA Vaccines Product History Development Overview1.5.1 DNA Vaccines Product Market Development Overview1.6 DNA Vaccines Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 DNA Vaccines Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 DNA Vaccines Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 DNA Vaccines Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 DNA Vaccines Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 DNA Vaccines Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two DNA Vaccines Up and Down Stream Industry Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Materials Analysis2.1.1 Upstream Raw Materials Price Analysis2.1.2 Upstream Raw Materials Market Analysis2.1.3 Upstream Raw Materials Market Trend2.2 Down Stream Market Analysis2.1.1 Down Stream Market Analysis2.2.2 Down Stream Demand Analysis2.2.3 Down Stream Market Trend AnalysisPart II Asia DNA Vaccines Industry (The Report Company Including the Below Listed But Not All)Chapter Three Asia DNA Vaccines Market Analysis3.1 Asia DNA Vaccines Product Development History3.2 Asia DNA Vaccines Process Development History3.3 Asia DNA Vaccines Industry Policy and Plan Analysis3.4 Asia DNA Vaccines Competitive Landscape Analysis3.5 Asia DNA Vaccines Market Development TrendChapter Four 2011-2016 Asia DNA Vaccines Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast4.1 2011-2016 DNA Vaccines Capacity Production Overview4.2 2011-2016 DNA Vaccines Production Market Share Analysis4.3 2011-2016 DNA Vaccines Demand Overview4.4 2011-2016 DNA Vaccines Supply Demand and Shortage4.5 2011-2016 DNA Vaccines Import Export Consumption4.6 2011-2016 DNA Vaccines Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginChapter Five Asia DNA Vaccines Key Manufacturers Analysis5.1 Company A5.1.1 Company Profile5.1.2 Product Picture and Specification5.1.3 Product Application Analysis5.1.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.1.5 Contact Information5.2 Company B5.2.1 Company Profile5.2.2 Product Picture and Specification5.2.3 Product Application Analysis5.2.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.2.5 Contact Information5.3 Company C5.3.1 Company ProfileMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Mr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Automotive Foams Market Revenue and Key Trends 2016-2026

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1753

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1753

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Automotive foams are generally polymer foams and are made up of gas and solid phase mixed together to form a foam which is achieved by combining the two phases too briskly for the system to respond in a smooth fashion. The resulting foam is incorporated with either air bubbles or air tunnels also known as either closed cell structure or open cell structure. Open cell foams are usually flexible, while closed cell foams are generally rigid. The gas involved in the manufacturing of automotive foam can either be chemical or physical and is termed as a blowing agent. Physical blowing agents are those gases which are not involved in direct chemical reaction in the foaming process and thus are inert in nature whereas chemical blowing agents are those gases that take part in the chemical reaction and thus decompose to release chemicals in the foaming process. Polymer foams can be produced through various methods including extrusion, slab-stock by pouring and different types of molding. There are various types of polymer foams including polyurethane, biodegradable foams, starch foams among others. Polymer foams find their applications in various sectors including automotive, packaging, building & construction, furniture & bedding among others. Major methods of manufacturing automotive foams are molding and slabstock.Global Automotive Foams Market: SegmentationThe global automotive foams market can be segmented on the basis of types, application and end-use industry. On the basis of type, the global automotive foams market can be segmented into polyurethane, starch foams, biodegradable foams and others. On the basis of application, the global automotive foams market can be segmented on the basis of instrument panels, seating, door panels, headliners, water shields, gaskets, seals, Noise-Vibration and Harshness (NVH) solutions and others. On the basis of end-use industry, the global automotive foams market can be segmented into passenger cars, light commercial vehicles (LCV), and heavy commercial vehicles (HCV).Request Free Report Sample@Global Automotive Foams Market: DynamicsVarious properties of automotive/ polymer foams including low density, weight reduction characteristics and cost effectiveness are some of the main reasons driving the global automotive foams market. Moreover, automotive foams are optimal insulators with low heat transfer properties, which is a key factor fuelling the demand for automotive foams over other alternatives thus in turn driving the overall global automotive foams market. Flexibility and softness of automotive foams also provide extra comfort to the passengers which is a major factor pumping the growth of the global automotive foams market. Furthermore, growing consumer preference for polymer foams in vehicles and increasing manufacturers inclination towards automotive foam products in commercial vehicle applications is a major factor driving the demand for automotive foams thus fuelling the overall global automotive foams market.The major challenges involved in the global automotive foams market include waste disposal, flammability, recyclability and others. Moreover, adverse effects of blowing agents on the environment is another major challenge hampering the growth of the global automotive foams market. Stringent government regulations on the adverse effects of chloro-fluoro-carbons (CFCs) involved in the manufacture of polymer foams is another key factor restraining the growth of the global automotive foams market.Global Automotive Foams Market: Region-wise OutlookConsidering regions, North America in the global automotive foams market is anticipated to dominate the other regions throughout the forecast period followed by Western Europe. Moreover, APAC is expected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period. The global automotive foams market is divided into seven key regions including North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East & Africa and Japan.Request For TOC@Global Automotive Foams Market: Key PlayersThe key players involved in the manufacture of automotive foams include Woodbridge Foam Corporation, Bridgestone Corporation, Johnson Controls, The Dow Chemical Company, BASF Chemical Company, Lear Corporation, Vitafoams, Saint-Gobain, Armacell, Recticel among others.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:
Non GMO Yogurt Market Analysis and Segments 2016-2026

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1808

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1808

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/non-gmo-yogurt-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Non-GMO and organic foods, apart from natural food stores, Non-GMO products now came in mainstream and sold in major supermarkets nationwide. It has been noticed, consumer is demanding more organic & Non GMO products. Non-GMO yogurt is where the presence of toxic persistent pesticides, artificial hormones and antibiotics, for production of the milk is zero. The use of Non-GMO reached nearly 11% on food and beverages since 2013, the demand has been increased of Non-GMO products. In the US, a survey was conducted for GMO and Non-GMO food products, Maximum Americans agreed on the fact that GMO food product are not safe to eat and also not good for health.Non-GMO Yogurt Market: SegmentationNon GMO yogurt market is segmented on the basis of types, flavors & distribution channel. On the basis of types: Regular Yogurt, Blended Yogurt, Low fat yogurt, nonfat yogurt, Purely Unsweetened Yogurt, Sour Yogurt, Plain Yogurt, Drinkable yogurt and Heavy Cream Yogurt. On the basis of Flavors: Fruit (mango, Strawberry, Blueberry, Kiwi and Peach), Chocolate and Vanilla. On the basis of distribution Channel: Super Market/ Hyper Market, Food Service Outlets, Convenience Stores, Specialty Stores, Online Stores and others.Non-GMO Yogurt Market: Region wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global Non-GMO yogurt market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Request Free Report Sample@North America is the prominent market for Non-GMO yogurt due to the key players in this region and the availability of raw materials. Whereas, in Europe it is projected to grow at a substantial growth due to consumer as they are becoming concerned about their health, the global Non-GMO yogurt market value exhibiting a robust CAGR during the forecast period, 2016-2026. In the USA, Chobani is the largest manufacturer of greek yogurt, which covers 50% of the market share. Dannon is also one of the largest manufacturer of Non-GMO yogurt in USA which contain more natural ingredients, it has also partnered with Non-Government Organization (NGO) Green America and the Non-GMO Project, So that they can develop Sources of Non-GMO feed for cows.Non-GMO Yogurt Market: DriversAs the demand of Non-GMO product is rising every day as consumers are becoming more concerned about their health. Consumers are becoming more aware about Non-GMO products and easy availability of raw materials in some regions. Raising awareness about the Non-GMO products all across over the Globe is also one of the major factors anticipated to expand the growth of Non-GMO Yogurt market over the forecast period. In 2018, Dannon will introduce 3 brands of Non-GMO Yogurt i.e. Dannon, Oikos & Danimals, that will be fed by the Non-GMO Feed.Request For TOC@Non-GMO Market: Key PlayersSome of the international key players identified operating in Non-GMO yogurt market includes Brown Cow Yogurt, Stonyfield Farm, Maia inspired nutrition, Chobani, General Mills, THE GREEK GODS and others. The company is likely to expand its share over the next coming years as consumers are becoming more aware about Non-GMO products and are more concerned about their health. More companies are expected to enter into manufacturing of Non-GMO products in future.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:
Automotive Garage Equipment Market Growth and Value Chain 2016-2026

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1819

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1819

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/automotive-garage-equipment-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

The global automotive garage equipment market is rapidly evolving from a traditional repair services provider to a modern computerized and electronic diagnostic solution provider. The legal regulations imposed by authorities in developed countries such as the U.S., Europe and Japan to reduce emissions and to increase passenger safety have constrained vehicle manufacturers to enhance the automotive safety technologies in vehicles. As a consequence the garages have had to constantly update their existing equipment and machinery to keep pace with the evolving technologies and to keep the vehicles in good running condition.The growth of automotive garage equipment market is relational to the growth of the global automotive industry. Additionally, automotive industry has grown steadily, owing to number of factors such as rising standard of living, ongoing development in urban and rural areas, and improvement in road infrastructure has further driven automotive garage equipment demand in the market. The automotive garage equipment market is dependent on the growing vehicle parc, sales, production, increasing average miles driven, rising spending on vehicle maintenance. This have led to grow the global market for automotive garage equipment.Request Free Report Sample@The automotive garage equipment market is going through high innovations and technological advancements in recent years and one of them is the automotive asymmetric and symmetric lifts. These technological advancements and innovative equipment contributes to spur the global automotive garage equipment market.Global Automotive Garage Equipment Market Dynamics:Drivers:Increasing vehicle production and enhanced average aftermarket spend on vehicle maintenance are the primary factors which are driving the automotive garage equipment market.A key growth driver is expected to be the automotive garage equipment kits concept wherein companies offer a complete set of equipment targeted at an application.Restraints:The most significant restraints associated increased complexity of automotive electronics architecture in vehicles.Additional training for technicians to handle advance garage equipment acting as growth restraints in the global automotive garage equipment market.Global Automotive Garage Equipment Market Segmentation:Global automotive garage equipment market is segmented on the basis of vehicle type as follows: Passenger Cars, LCV (Light Commercial Vehicle), HCV (Heavy Commercial Vehicle).Global automotive garage equipment market is segmented on the basis of garage type as follows: automobile dealerships, franchise general repairs, specialty shops, locally owned repair shops, others.Global automotive garage equipment market also segmented on the basis garage equipment as follows: Mechanical handling and testing equipment, Diagnostic instrumentation, and others. Mechanical handling and testing equipment further segmented as: Brake testers, wheel aligners, wheel balancers, tire changers and others. Diagnostic instrumentation further segmented as: Engine analyzers, hand-held diagnostics, others. Others garage equipment further segmented as Battery chargers, air-conditioning service, headlamp testers, and others.Request For TOC@Global Automotive Garage Equipment Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the global automotive garage equipment market can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan (Japan), Japan, Middle East and Africa.On the basis of region, Asia Pacific (APEJ) is expected to be the growth engine of automotive garage equipment market in the coming years. As an outcome of growth in the vehicle production which in turn is resulting in increase in demand of automotive garage equipment in Asia Pacific countries such as China, India, and South Korea. Japan, Latin America and Middle East & Africa are expected to grow at a steady rate over the forecast period. The North America and Europe are matured market for automotive garage equipment market.Global Automotive Garage Equipment: Market PlayersSome of the key market participants in the global automotive garage equipment market are:Arex Test Systems b.v.GETECH (Garage Equipment Technology)Boston Garage Equipment Ltd.Gemco Equipment Ltd.Tecalemit Garage Equipment Company LimitedRobert Bosch GmbHContinental Automotive GmbHLKQ CoatingsManatec Electronics Private LimitedATS-ELGIBrowse 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 Electrical Insulation Materials Market Report 2016-2026

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1820

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1820

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/electrical-insulation-materials-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Electrical insulation is resistance to the flow of electric charge. Electrical insulation materials isolate individual components which are at different electrical potentials. The primary function of an electrical insulator is to support or separate electrical conductors without allowing current to flow through them. Conventionally, glass and ceramics were the most prominently used electrical insulation materials However, over the recent past, polymer based electrical insulation materials have accounted for a significant share in overall global electrical insulation materials market. Consumption of polymer based electrical insulation materials is expected to witness a steady growth during forecast period.Electrical Insulation Materials Market: Drivers and restraintsGlobal electrical insulation materials market is expected to witness a steady growth over the forecast period. Demand for electrical insulation materials is expected to be driven primarily by the growth in demand from construction industry, especially in developing economies in Asia Pacific region such as China and India. Moreover, the steady growth in re-insulation market across developed economies of North America and Europe is also expected to fuel the growth of global electrical insulation materials market during forecast period. Besides, increasing demand for consumer electronics and allied products is another factor that is expected to drive growth of global electrical insulation materials market. Also, increasing investments towards installation of transmission lines across developing regions is another factor that is expected to positively impact global electrical insulation materials market over forecast period.Request Free Report Sample@Electrical Insulation Materials Market: SegmentationThe electrical insulation materialsmarket can be segmented based on material types as:CeramicsGlassCompositesPlasticsPEEKPolypropylenePVCConsumption of polymer based and Composite materials for electrical insulation is expected to witness a relatively faster growth rate during forecast period. These materials are lighter in weight and exhibit favourable properties such as high mechanical strength and electrical resistance, capacity to withstand and deliver consistent performance in harsh climatic conditions and exhibit relatively more effective voltage endurance as compared to that of ceramics and some of the other materials.The electrical insulation materials market can be segmented based on applications as:Cables and Transmission LinesTransformer componentsCircuit boardsHigh voltage circuit breakersOthersThe electrical insulation materials market can be segmented based on end use industry as:InfrastructureTransportationManufacturingOthers (Utilities)The electrical insulation materials market can be segmented based on voltage as:Low VoltageMedium VoltageHigh VoltageRequest For TOC@Electrical insulation materials market: Region wise outlookGlobal electrical insulation materials market can be broadly classified based on geography into seven key segments as North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia  Pacific, Japan, Middle  East and Africa. Out of all these segments, Asia-Pacific has the highest market share.Increase in the Transmission and distribution line related investments is expected to drive the demand for the electric insulation materials especially in Asia-Pacific and MEA regions during forecast period.Electrical insulation materials market: Key market playersSome of the key players identified in the electrical insulation materials market are:BASF SEHuntsman CorporationKnauf Insulation GroupOwens CorningRecticelFletcher InsulationGAF Materials CorporationBrowse 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 Industrial Footwear Market Outlook 2016: Oil & Gas, Construction, Manufacturing, Chemicals

http://www.intenseresearch.com/market-analysis/world-industrial-footwear-market-opportunities-and-forecasts-2014.html

http://bit.ly/2cSuLah

http://www.intenseresearch.com/

Industrial footwear is designed for the safety of workers employed in industries such as mining, construction, oil & gas, transportation, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and chemicals. The shift toward worker safety has created huge demand for Industrial footwear in different industries. Various ongoing technological developments, such as use of lighter composite materials in the manufacturing of footwear, have resulted in increase in demand of these industrial footwear. Key players focus on the advancement of footwear material that provides comfort, style, and protection, all at the same time. These developments are intended to encourage workers to use proper shoes at the workplace.Industrial safety and health legislation across different countries mandate the use of safety boots in industries. Currently, these regulations across countries, such as the U.S., China, and Japan, fuel the demand for safety footwear. In addition, rising safety practices to reduce workplace fatalities are expected to boost the product demand during the forecast period. Moreover, worker safety issues are being addressed and industrialists are focused on improving the safety standards due to which there is an increase in the demand for safety footwear across the world. On the contrary, increase in price of raw materials hinders the market growth. However, the growing construction industry in India and China is expected to drive the market in the near future.Access Full Report:The world industrial footwear market is segmented on the basis of product type, application, and geography. The product type segment comprises leather footwear, waterproof footwear, rubber footwear, and plastic footwear. Based on the application, it is divided into construction, manufacturing, mining, oil & gas, chemicals, food, and others. It is categorized geographically into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.Key players operating in the market include UVEX Winter Holding GmbH Co. KG (Germany), Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.), VF Corporation (U.S.), COFRA Holding AG (Switzerland), Rahman Group (U.S.), Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Company (U.S.), DS Safety Wear (Germany), Ballyclare Limited (UK), Rock Fall UK Limited (UK), and ELTEN GmbH (Germany) among others.Request a Brochure of This Report, here:About Intense ResearchIntense Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Intense Research cover more than 30 industries includsing energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact Us:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@intenseresearch.comWeb:
New Research Report on Occupancy Sensor Market, 2016-2026

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1823

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1823

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/occupancy-sensor-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Occupancy sensor is a heat and light control device used to detect occupancy of space by people and accordingly turns light on or off by using infrared light rays, ultrasonic rays and microwave technology. Occupancy sensor is commonly used for providing automatic control, saving energy and complying with building codes etc. Increasing demand for energy saving devices have resulted into several technological advancement in occupancy sensors.Global Occupancy Sensor Market: Drivers and RestraintIncreasing demand for energy-efficient devices is one of the major factors responsible for the growth of global occupancy sensor market across the globe.Other factors such asfavourable government regulations and policies with regard to energy saving, continuous development and advancement of advanced and cost-effective sensors are expected to fuel growth of the global occupancy sensor market over the forecast period. In contrast, false triggering of switch and inconsistency issues associated with wireless network system are anticipated to impede the market growth during the forecast period. However, introduction of advanced occupancy sensors such as intelligent occupancy sensor, image processing occupancy sensor and micro-phonics in is boosting growth of global occupancy market.Request Free Report Sample@Global Occupancy Sensor Market: SegmentationGlobal occupancy sensor market is segmented on the basis of type, network connectivity and application. On the basis of types, the global occupancy sensor market is sub segmented into ultrasonic sensors, passive infrared sensors, microwave sensors and others. Ultrasonic sensor uses high frequency sound waves in order to detect space occupancy. Passive infrared sensor uses heat movement detection to detect infrared radiation radiated out of human body movement while microwave sensor works on the same principle as of ultrasonic sensor but with high sensitivity as well as detection range as compare to other two types of occupancy sensor.On the basis of network connectivity, the global occupancy sensor market is segmented into wired network and wireless network. Wireless network is further sub segmented into Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave and others.By application the market can be segmented into government, industrial, commercial and residential sectors.Request For TOC@Global Occupancy Sensor Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of region, the global occupancy sensor market can be segmented into seven major regions such as North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Eastern Europe, Japan and Middle East & Africa (MEA). Of these regions, the North America occupancy sensor market is expected dominate the global occupancy sensor market over the forecast period. However, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) is anticipated to witness the highest CAGR during the forecast period. This is mainly attributed to growth in construction and real estate sectors in developing countries such as India and China in the region.Global Occupancy Sensor Market: Key PlayersKey players operating in the global occupancy sensor market are Eaton Corporation Plc., Honeywell International Inc., Schneider Electric SA, Johnson Controls Inc., Acuity Brands Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., Leviton Manufacturing Co., Inc., Lutron Electronics Co., Inc., Legrand SA and Hubbell Incorporated among others. Major players in the market are focusing more on development of advanced and innovative sensors such as image processing sensor, micro-phonic based sensor and intelligent occupancy sensor in order to gain competitive advantage in the long term.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 Telescope Market 2016 with Company Profile, Trend, Analysis and Development 2021

Telescope

http://goo.gl/iOhJ7I

http://goo.gl/NQI6am

Global Telescope Market 2016 Industry Size Share Growth Forecast Research and DevelopmentThe Global Telescope Industry report gives a comprehensive account of the Global Telescope 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 Telescope 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 Telescope market revenue and its forecasts. The business model strategies of the key firms in the Telescope market are also included. Key strengths, weaknesses, and threats shaping the leading players in the market have also been included in this research report.The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing Global Telescope market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.Get Sample Copy of Report @The study on the Global Telescope 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 Telescope market. Investors will gain a clear insight on the dominant players in this industry and their future forecasts. Furthermore, readers will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of this market.Table of ContentChapter One Telescope Industry Overview1.1 Telescope Definition1.1.1 Telescope Definition1.1.2 Product Specifications1.2 Telescope Classification1.3 Telescope Application Field1.4 Telescope Industry Chain Structure1.5 Telescope Industry Regional Overview1.6 Telescope Industry Policy Analysis1.7 Telescope Industry Related Companies Contact InformationInquiry For Buying @Chapter Two Telescope 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 Telescope Manufacturing TechnologyAbout Us:MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact US:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803
Emergent FinTech: Defining the Potential and Opportunities

http://www.reportbazzar.com/request-sample/?pid=439916&ptitle=Emergent+FinTech%3A+Defining+the+Potential+and+Opportunities&req=Sample

http://www.reportbazzar.com/product/emergent-fintech-defining-the-potential-and-opportunities/

http://www.reportbazzar.com/

SummaryFintech has the potential to transform banking. Start-ups are introducing new services that are making existing tasks easier and cheaper to perform. They are also creating new markets, with the attendant prospect of new revenue streams. Although these developments could threaten the established banks, they also offer providers the chance to reinvent themselves and reconnect with their customers.Request Sample Report:Synopsis Find out which areas of retail banking are most susceptible to fintech-inspired disruption and transformation. Understand the pros and cons associated with the various strategies that banks can use to boost their involvement with fintech. Explore the impact that fintech innovation can have on customer satisfaction with, and loyalty towards, their bank.Reasons To Buy How can banks overcome internal resistance to change to instill a culture of innovation? In which sectors will fintech have the most impact and cause the most disruption? What strategies should banks pursue to respond to fintech-driven changes in the market and take advantage of the new opportunities on offer?Key HighlightsGlobal investment in fintech is growing rapidly, boosted by the creation of several accelerator programs in London, New York, and elsewhere. Banks are responding with their own schemes to identify and nurture fintech innovators.Fintech is affecting several aspects of retail banking, with peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding, data analytics, credit facilitation, and biometrics all significantly changing the dynamics of the industry.Banks are using a number of strategies to combat the threat posed by fintech entrants, including acquiring key targets, partnering with companies that will complement their own services, and allowing access to third-party applications through their platforms.Buy Complete Report:About Us:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors.ReportBazzarOffice # 203,Vishal Shopping Complex,DSK Ranwara, Bavdhan,Pune  411021, IndiaIndia: +91 20 66528525Email Id: sales@reportbazzar.comWebsite:
Global Offshore Investments Analytics

http://www.reportbazzar.com/request-sample/?pid=439724&ptitle=Global+Offshore+Investments+Analytics&req=Sample

http://www.reportbazzar.com/discount-form/?pid=439724&ptitle=Global+Offshore+Investments+Analytics&req=Discount

http://www.reportbazzar.com/product/global-offshore-investments-analytics/

http://www.reportbazzar.com/

SummaryGlobal Offshore Investments Analytics enables cross-comparison of the global offshore investments markets at a country level for 55 countries. For each of these markets, the dashboard presents historic data on the balances for the key product areas available for the market under consideration. The product areas are deposits, mutual funds, equities, and bonds.Request Sample Report:Synopsis Compare the performance of 55 offshore investments markets around the world. Understand the asset class composition of each market with segmentation for deposits, equities, bonds, and mutual funds. Understand the retail vs. non-retail and residents vs. non-residents composition of each market. Export the graphics from the dashboard, or if you are more at ease using Excel, export the data into your own worksheets.Reasons To Buy Which offshore markets across the globe have grown the most over the last five years? Which are the largest offshore markets and how has this changed in the last five years? What is the importance of non-resident deposits, mutual funds, equities, and bonds in each of the 55 markets? Which are the largest markets by balances for each product category?Enquiry Before Buying:Key HighlightsPressure to limit the role of offshore countries in tax avoidance schemes has impacted asset growth in many of the markets. Such pressures have come in the form of increased regulation and tax amnesties, as in the cases of the US, Germany, Italy, and the UK.The US is the largest offshore center for deposits, mainly because of its reputation as a safe haven. France, Germany and the UK, in second, third and fourth place respectively, are not usually associated with traditional offshore centers; however, high values of non-resident assets are held in these countries.The US has by far the largest non-resident holdings of bonds among the 55 countries examined, worth over $9tn in 2014. Other markets with significant non-resident bond holdings are France, Germany and Italy.Buy Complete Report:About Us:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors.ReportBazzarOffice # 203,Vishal Shopping Complex,DSK Ranwara, Bavdhan,Pune  411021, IndiaIndia: +91 20 66528525Email Id: sales@reportbazzar.comWebsite:
Luxury Goods Market: trends, size and growth, 2014 - 2020

http://www.syndicatemarketresearch.com/request-for-sample.html?flag=S&repid=50310

http://goo.gl/wdTx4i

http://www.syndicatemarketresearch.com/market-analysis/luxury-goods-market.html

http://www.syndicatemarketresearch.com/checkout/50310/1

www.syndicatemarketresearch.com

The demand of luxury goods is increasing due to rising disposable income. The products which are not essential to survive but which make life more pleasant for consumer are called as luxury goods. Luxury goods are also called as superior goods. The growth of luxury goods market is directly proportional to the income elasticity. The way of purchasing luxury goods also affect the luxury goods market. Being able to recognize the right channel for marketing, purchasing way of luxury consumers and choose the beneficial way of shopping in-store vs. online will be a key focus for luxury brands going forward. These factors are strongly associated with the growth of luxury goods market.Get a copy of free Sample Report @The report includes detailed competitive landscape of the global luxury goods market. It includes company market share analysis, product portfolio of the major industry participants. The report provides detailed segmentation of the luxury goods market based on product segment and region. Luxury cars, luxury watches & jewelry, apparels and leather goods, luxury personal care & cosmetics, wines/champagne and spirits, fragrances and others (tableware, luxury pens etc.) are major product segments of luxury goods market. The apparel and leather goods segment was the leading product segment in 2014 and is expected to continue its dominance throughout forecast period.Major regional segments analyzed in this study include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa. This report also provides further bifurcation of region on the country level. Major countries analyzed in this reports are U.S., Germany, France, UK, China, Japan, India, and Brazil. Luxury goods market was dominated by Europe due to strong per capita expenditure on luxury goods. Europe is followed by North America. Increasing consumption of luxury goods in emerging economies such as China and India triggers the luxury goods market. Additionally, due to growing consumer disposable income and luxurious lifestyle is expected to exhibit the rapid growth of this market in Asia Pacific region.Know more before buying this report @The report covers detailed competitive outlook including company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include LVMH Group, Kering S.A., Rolex S.A., LOreal Group, Tiffany & Co., Coty, Inc., The Swatch Group Ltd., Prada S.p.A, Compagnie Financiere Richemont S.A., Hermes International SCA, Graff Diamonds, Burberry Group plc, Revlon, Inc., and Avon Products, Inc.The report segments the global luxury goods market into:Global Luxury Goods Market: Product Segment AnalysisLuxury CarsLuxury Watches & JewelryApparels and Leather GoodsLuxury Personal Care & CosmeticsWines/Champagne and SpiritsFragrancesOthers (Tableware, Luxury Pens etc)Browse detail report with in-depth TOC @Global Luxury Goods Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeGermanyFranceUKAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaPurchase a direct copy of report with TOC @About UsSyndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries includsing energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact Us:Syndicate Market Research3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442,USATel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@syndicatemarketresearch.comWebsite:
myfairtool announces a partnership with Connect16

myfairtool partners with Connect16 in Dublin

www.myfairtool.com

HONG KONG, CHINA  September 13, 2016  Following their launch in Hong Kong in early 2016, myfairtool announces an exclusive partnership with Connect16, the Live Meetings Industry Market Place to take place in Dublin on September 28, 2016.As a Hong Kong-based startup graduated from StartUp Next (powered by Google for Entrepreneurs) and winner of Hong Kong PitchPerfect, myfairtool will join forces with Connect16 in September to enhance exhibitors experience and revolutionize the way companies manage their trade show booth.myfairtool built its reputation on the uniqueness of its offer. The company provides a service that covers the whole exhibitor journey, from early planning and budgeting to follow-ups and monitoring months after the show. Working as an online assistant for SMB exhibiting at trade shows, myfairtool acts as a digital toolbox for success.Julien Rio, Founder & CEO of myfairtool, believes in the importance of technology at trade shows."B2B companies bet on trade shows to generate new revenue. In average, these companies spend 39.2% of their annual marketing budget at exhibitions. For them, obtaining a positive ROI is vital. Technology offers solutions that reduce expenses and need for manpower, increase efficiency, speed up processes and ultimately improve ROI. Using technology isn't about following trends, it is about arming yourself with the right tools to achieve your goals. Trade Shows will always be about human interactions, but technology becomes an important part of it." says Julien Rio.The solution offered by myfairtool enables, among other things, better lead capture. Richard Erschik, trade show expert among the highest rated exhibitor educators and trainers in USA, said:"Capturing leads efficiently is crucial to assure ROI. Now is the time to try myfairtool and add measurement to your tradeshow success to protect your budget and your future."myfairtool partners with Connect16 to offer new tools to exhibitors and help them improve their trade show results."We are really proud to collaborate with the Connect16 team. Not many organizers understand the importance of user experience and helping exhibitors achieve their goals but it is part of Connect16's DNA. They understand the need for technology and mean to provide their exhibitors with the best possible tools to get the results they expect. This event is going to be very unique and companies that exhibited this year will definitely signup for another year." says Julien.Founded in 2016, myfairtool has grown to be Asias leader in exhibition software for exhibitors. Originally created to better capture leads at trade shows, the company has evolved into a more advanced platform covering every stage of the business event management process for companies participating in trade shows.Graduated from StartUp Next and winner of PitchPerfect, myfairtool is a Hong Kong startup that aims to revolutionize the way business is done at trade shows around the world.myfairtool chose the Cheetah as a symbol as it represents the speed and agility of the hunter that exhibitors require when "preying" at their trade show booth.Through its blog, The Exhibitor, myfairtool has built a community of industry experts that share tips and insights to help exhibitors better perform at trade shows.To learn more about the company, please visit:Unit C, 8/F, King Palace Plaza, No. 55 KING YIP STREET, KWUN TONG, KOWLOON, HONG KONG
Bit Error Rate Testers Market Demand rising for Increases Deployment of 3G and 4G Networks Throughout the Forecast Period 2015-2023

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=8839

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/bit-error-rate-ber-testers-market.html

Bit error rate testers are usually designed for testing radio telemetry systems, synchronous serial communication equipment, and communication links. The high rate of penetration of broadband communication and sharp rise in demand of the access lines are driving the need of communication links with high transmission capacity and very low bit error rate. When some data is transmitted over a particular communication channel, there is a probability of errors being arrived into the system. BER tester identifies the error frequency and bit error rate (BER) over a communication channel for evaluating its overall performance, thereby improving the communication link quality and enabling network system to incorporate complete link characteristics.Get a Free Report Brochure PDF:The global BER testers market is mainly driven by various technological advancements taking place in the telecommunication sectors including Ethernet over SONET (EoS), and Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET), among others. Rise in deployment of 3G and 4G networks are expected to garner more demand for BER testers. In order to detect and remove glitches in digital networks due to complex network design, BER testers are anticipated to drive the market demand throughout the forecast period. Moreover, the introduction of high modular and multi-functional bit error rate testers is predicted to further propel the market demand in the coming years. This is further supported by growing demand of digital interfaces coupled with technological innovations. Besides, the market demand is accelerated by growing video traffic over the internet because of video conferencing, high definition IPTV, online video streaming portals such as You Tube etc., and migration of enterprises from private networks towards the internet based virtual private networks (VPNs). Furthermore, growing use of bit error testers for various manufacturing processes and R&D activities is expected to contribute towards a substantial market growth over the forecast period. However, the growth of global BER testers market is restricted by low market awareness in emerging nations, and incompatibility of BER testers to cater into various end-user applications, among others. The low market awareness is generally due to complexity of technology which can be eradicated/minimized by vendors. Initiatives such as education to end users about the market and technical know-how can enable awareness about BER testers. Modularity, ease of use, price and features are currently the most competitive features in the global BER testers market.The global BER testers market can be segmented on the basis of product types, various end-users, applications and different geographical regions. On the basis of various product types, the market can be segmented into traditional BERTs and functional BERTs. Based on different end-users, the market is classified into service providers, enterprises, component and system manufacturers, and others which includes government contractors and contract manufacturing companies. Based on various end-use applications, BER testers market can be categorized into installation and maintenance, research and development, and manufacturing. Base on various geographical regions, the market is categorized into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. In Asia Pacific, the huge amount of data transmission over the communication network is presently contributing towards the appreciation of market growth.Some of the key participants in the global BER testers market includes Centellax Inc., Tektronix Inc., Anritsu Corporation, Luceo Technologies GMBH, Keysight Technologies, Inc.,Aeroflux Incorporated, LSHF Communication Technologies AG, Digital Lightwave Inc., EXFO Inc., and JDS Uniphase Corporation, among others.Browse Full Report@About Us:-Transparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact Us:-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Why North America is the Largest Market for Commercial Deep Fryer

Commercial Deep Fryer Market Research Report | Beige Market Intelligence

http://www.beigemarketintelligence.com/reports/research-report-consumer-and-retail-market/commercial-deep-fryer-market-research-report/

http://www.beigemarketintelligence.com/contactus/

Commercial Deep FryersA commercial deep fryer is a cooking appliance used to deep fry food items and is primarily used in commercial kitchens and restaurants. A heating element is used to superheat the oil at a temperature of 400 degrees Fahrenheit approximately. Once the food product is dipped into the oil, the moisture contained inside is steamed out; as oil and water do not mix with each other. Commercial deep fryer is a part of commercial cooking and warming equipment. The research analysis of the deep fryer market has identified the major markets region wise. The analysts at Beige Market Intelligence says that the market in North America is valued to grow at a CAGR of 4.3%.North America is the Largest Market for Commercial Deep FryerThe commercial deep fryer market in North America has developed in the last two decades. The US and Canada are the two largest markets and account for more than half of the global commercial deep fryer market. In the last two decades, the region as a whole has been experiencing steady growth with most of the US-based manufacturers registering a high upscale in business.The growth of QSRs has been phenomenal during this period with brands such as McDonalds, Subway, and Tim Hortons increasingly popularizing the concept of fast food joints not only in North America but also in international markets.QSRs witnessed a phenomenal growth in developed regions, particularly in North Americas during the last decade (2000-2010) due to growing popularity of fast food such as burgers and fries.The food service equipment market is dominated by the three leading players including ITW Food Equipment, Middleby and Manitowoc. These three players have a considerable share in the North American food service equipment market. Moreover, they are the only three companies that have a global footprint and full range of product offerings.Other Markets for Commercial Deep fryerEurope is the next big market following North America. The growth of commercial food service equipment business is expected to grow at a moderate pace. Countries such as the UK and Germany, which are the leading countries in this region, are likely to register a positive growth, whereas countries such as Italy and Spain are expected to witness stagnation in growth. The other markets including APAC, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America account for the remaining market share.Key vendors for Commercial Deep Fryer marketThe major players in the market include Manitowoc, ITW, Middleby.Other prominent vendors in the market include Henny Penny, Falcon Foodservice, Electrolux Professional, Grindmaster Cecilware, Waring, Avantco Equipment, Star Manufacturing, Standex.For detailed information:order a free sample :About Beige Market Intelligence:Beige Market Intelligence is new-age provider of competitive business intelligence, working across various industry verticals. Our expertise and knowledge ensures that the market analysis Beige provides is comprehensive, detailed and complete. The analysis helps our client organizations become aware and make educated decisions, as far as investing or devising a marketing strategy is concerned. The actionable insights delivered through our market research provide a comprehensive market analysis for every level of market segmentation in an industry. Beige Market Intelligence is a quality driven high end Market Research organization. Our team of experts ensure the analysis you receive is not just analysed and smartly presented, but is completely customized based on the clients requirement. Our deliverables guarantee our current global client base does not look beyond Beige when it comes to any kind of industry and market analysis.Reach us atBeige Market IntelligenceChinapannahalli , Bangalore- 560037contactus@beigemarketintelligence.comUS: +1 347 903 9949UK: +44 20 323 99499APAC: +91 99 012 75473
Power Banks Market: Key Trends, Demand, Growth, Size, Review, Share, Analysis to 2025 The Insight Partners

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/reports/power-banks-market

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPTE100000120

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/discount/TIPTE100000120

The Power Banks Market to 2025 - Global Analysis and Forecast by Capacity Range, Number of USB Ports and Technology report provides a detailed overview of the major factors impacting the global market with the market share analysis and revenues of various sub segments.Browse market data tables and in-depth TOC of the Power Banks Market to 2025 @Power bank or a portable charger is lithium-ion or lithium-polymer based battery used to charge a variety of electronic devices such as tablets, smartphones, music players and other devices with USB slots. With extensive use of internet on electronic devices and limited capacity of inbuilt batteries, there is a rising demand for an external power source that enables the users to charger their devices on the go. The growing demand of power bank in a variety of segments such as communication & technology, and medical & military is expected to create opportunities for the power banks market.Power bank has been witnessing a rising demand from the consumers worldwide, owing to its portability feature and reusability feature upon recharging. Depending upon the usage, consumers have options to purchase power banks with different capacities. Also, power banks are available in different shapes such as square, rectangular and cylinder and sizes providing users with a variety of choices.Request Sample Copy @The rising demand and usage of smartphones, tablets and other digital gadgets are expected to drive the global power banks market. Although the use of power banks is increasing significantly, rapid advancement in battery technology has led to the devices now being manufactured with sufficient battery power to eliminate the use of power banks. In addition, the power bank manufacturers are facing stiff competition in order to provide high quality products at lower prices to attract consumers. Thus, these factors combined are restricting the global power banks market.The global power bank can be segmented on the basis of capacity range, namely: up to 2,000 mAh; 2,001 mAh - 5,000 mAh; 5,001 mAh - 10,000 mAh; 10,001 mAh - 20,000 mAh, and above 20,000 mAh. Further, on basis of the number of Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports, the global power bank market is segmented as one, two, or more than two USB ports. Based on technology, the global power banks market is further segmented into lithium-ion (Li-ion or LIB) and lithium-polymer battery.The global power bank market is divided into five major regions which include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East & Africa (MEA), and South America (SAM). North America leads the global power banks market with high awareness regarding technologically advanced products/gadgets, leading to high adoption of power banks. However, APAC with significant penetration of smartphones and mobile devices by a huge number of consumers is expected to lead the global power banks market in the near future.Inquire about discount on this report @Some of the prominent players of the global power banks market include Microsoft Corporation, uNu Electronics Inc., Mophie Inc., Panasonic Corporation, OnePlus, Sony Corporation, Xiaomi Technology Co. Ltd, AdCom, Hitachi Maxell, Ltd., MiPow Limited, Xtorm BV, EassyAcc.com, Inc., Limefuel LLC, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Anker, GP Batteries International Ltd. And Apacer Technologies, Inc., among others. Strengthening distribution channel, product innovation, certifying products, and leveraging e-commerce platforms to drive sales are few of the strategies adopted by key players in the global power banks market.Some of the key points covered in the report: Power Banks Market Landscape Power Banks Market  Key Industry Dynamics Power Banks Market  Five Forces Analysis Power Banks Market Analysis Power Banks Market Revenue and Forecasts to 2025  Capacity Range Power Banks Market Revenue and Forecasts to 2025  Number of USB Ports Power Banks Market Revenue and Forecasts to 2025  Technology Power Banks Market Revenue and Forecasts to 2025  Geographical Analysis Power Banks Market, Key Company ProfilesAbout The Insight Partners:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.comintelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
iDoc Releases Over 300 Free Repair Guides in English

www.idoc.eu/manuals/en

Berlins smartphone repair experts help users repair their own devicesBERLIN, GERMANY, September 12, 2016  You break it, we fix it: For the past six years, iDoc has been helping users rescue their broken or defective smartphones and other devices at its locations in Berlin and Vienna. Customers who want iDoc to handle the repair have the option of mailing in or dropping off their mobile devices. But iDoc does more than just fix its customers malfunctioning phones: The company offers over 300 free repair guides for the 40 most popular smartphones and other mobile devices on its website, and is adding more all the time. As of this year, all of iDocs free repair guides, as well as the new video repair guides appearing on the companys YouTube channel, will also be available in English.The decision to go international was the next logical step for the Berlin-based startup that wants to enable users to fix their own devices. Following on beginner-friendly descriptions and photos, markings suitable for users with red-green color blindness, and video subtitles for the hearing-impaired, iDocs decision to translate all its repair guides means even more users can repair their own devices. The step-by-step instructions and visual aids allow even total amateurs who have never performed this type of repair to fix common issues like cracked screens, charging problems or water damage.Even as the amount of electronic waste increases by the year, the trend toward planned obsolescence, in which manufacturers deliberately limit the amount of time their products can be used, is on the rise. Repairing devices or replacing faulty parts instead of the whole phone is a great way to save resources and reduce waste. At the same time, knowing where to look for help can be a real relief for users whose phones stop working, whether because they dropped them or because a part unexpectedly failed.We want to give everyone the option of repairing his or her device instead of having to throw it away and buy a new one, says Managing Director Kaspar Padberg of the companys goals. That saves people money, its good for the environment, and its a great feeling to know you fixed something all by yourself. We want to offer users outside of the German-speaking world the same advantages.More than 350,000 device owners have used iDocs guides for their repairs so far, and 150,000 more visit the companys website every month. That figure is expected to grow considerably now that international users have access to iDocs free repair guides, photos and videos. iDocs English-language repair guides are available at. Users can simply select the series, model and type of repair they need. iDocs video guides are available both on the companys website and its YouTube channel. Users who need more help can post their questions or comments below the relevant step in the guide, and iDocs technicians will respond as soon as possible. iDoc also offers the replacement parts and tools used in the repairs in its online shop, now also available in English.iDoc is a Berlin-based startup that not only repairs smartphones and other devices, but also offers tools, replacement parts, and free step-by-step repair guides and videos.Mehringdamm 33, 10961 Berlin, Germany
Beet Sugar Market: Facts, Figures and Analytical Insights 2016 - 2026

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11131

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11131

Sugar has been the most widely used sweetener in the world, with its closest substitute being high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Tropical beet sugar is a biennial sugar producing tuber crop developed in temperate countries. It constitutes around 30% of the total world production as well as distributed in more than 45 countries. Sugar beet is efficient converter of solar energy to a form that can be used by animals and men. The top ten sugar beet producing countries include Russia, France, U.S., Germany, Ukraine, Turkey, Poland, China, U.K. and Egypt. Beet sugar is an industrial crop utilized in food processing as well as in production of ethanol and biogas. In tropical countries, the sugar beet crop offers precious alternative to sugarcane. The beet sugar market growth in terms of production and consumption has showcased an upliftment over the past few years and is likely to intensify at a rapid pace during the forecast period.Download TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report:The Global Beet Sugar market is segmented on the basis of consumption in industry such as cereal, bakery, ice-cream, confectionery, beverage and dairy industry. Over the next few years, beverage segment is anticipated to grab highest market attractiveness in the global beet sugar market till 2026. The global beet sugar market is also segmented on the basis of function such as regular and medical conditions. The global beet sugar market is also segmented on the basis of organizational structure such as unorganized and organized market. The share of former is anticipated to be more over the forecast period.Rising population and personal disposable income is anticipated to bolster the growth of global Beet Sugar market. Apart from this, changing lifestyle along with urbanization and increasing health related disorders are expected to drive the global Beet Sugar market during the forecast period as the consumption will rise. The advent of new class of customers as well as the entry of various new global players is expected to intensify the growth of Beet Sugar market all across the globe during the forecast period.Geographically, the Global Beet Sugar industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. North America contributed the highest share in the global Beet Sugar market in 2015. The size of America has been doubled over the past few years in production of beet sugar. For growers in Western and Central Europe, it is already a high value crop. But in Eastern Europe, while acreage and volumes are maximum, there is significant scope to increase quality of seed. Over the next few years, Asia Pacific is expected to expand at a higher pace during the forecast period. India is expected to be the worlds fastest growing market, driven by increasing standard of living. Apart from this, gains in developing regions such as Middle-east and Africa will also be strengthened by changing standard of living. Advances in Western Europe is expected to benefit from strong incline in number of new housing units.Request Sample Report@Some of the key vendors identified across the value chain of the global Beet Sugar market include syngenta, Renuka beet sugar, Spreckals Sugar Company, Michigan Sugar Company, Amalgamated Sugar Company. Various players are anticipated to appear in the industry with the manufacturing of new and innovative products in the industry. The companies are anticipated to invest in research and development in order to expand the business and to maintain the market share in the global beet sugar market.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 States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Thifensulfuron-Methyl Market 2016 - United States Industry Size, Trends, Growth, Share and Forecast by 2021

http://goo.gl/BVdGOa

http://goo.gl/F6XuBb

United States Thifensulfuron-Methyl Industry 2016The report provides a basic overview of Thifensulfuron-Methyl industry including definitions, applications and industry chain structure. United States market analysis and Chinese domestic market analysis are provided with a focus on history, developments, trends and competitive landscape of the market. A comparison between the international and Chinese situation is also offered.United States Thifensulfuron-Methyl Industry Research Report 2016 also focuses on development policies and plans for the industry as well as a consideration of a cost structure analysis. Capacity production, market share analysis, import and export consumption and price cost production value gross margins are discussed.Browse Full Report With TOC @A key feature of this report is it focus on major industry players, providing an overview, product specification, product capacity, production price and contact information for United States Top15 companies. This enables end users to gain a comprehensive insight into the structure of the international and Chinese Thifensulfuron-Methyl industry. Development proposals and the feasibility of new investments are also analyzed. Companies and individuals interested in the structure and value of the Thifensulfuron-Methyl industry should consult this report for guidance and direction.The report begins with a brief overview of the United States Thifensulfuron-Methyl market and then moves on to evaluate the key trends of the market. The key trends shaping the dynamics of the United States Thifensulfuron-Methyl market have been scrutinized along with the related current events, which is impacting the market. Drivers, restraints, opportunities, and threats of the United States Thifensulfuron-Methyl market have been analyzed in the report. Moreover, the key segments and the sub-segments that constitutes the market is also explained in the report.Get Free Sample @Table of ContentsChapter One Thifensulfuron-Methyl Industry Overview1.1 Thifensulfuron-Methyl Definition(Product Picture and Specifications)1.2 Thifensulfuron-Methyl Classification and Application1.3 Thifensulfuron-Methyl Industry Chain Structure1.4 Thifensulfuron-Methyl Industry Overview1.5 Thifensulfuron-Methyl Industry History1.6 Thifensulfuron-Methyl Industry Competitive Landscape1.7 Thifensulfuron-Methyl Industry International and China Development ComparisonChapter Two Thifensulfuron-Methyl Market Data Analysis2.1 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl Price List2.2 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl Gross Margin List2.3 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl Capacity and Market Share List2.4 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl Production and Market Share List2.5 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl Production Value and Market Share ListChapter Three Thifensulfuron-Methyl Technical Data Analysis3.1 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl Product Quality List3.2 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl Product Line Capacity and Commercial Production Date3.3 2016 Manufacturing Base(Factory) United States Regional Distribution3.4 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl R&D Status and Technology Sources3.5 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl Equipment Investment and Performance3.6 2016 United States Key Manufacturers Thifensulfuron-Methyl Raw Materials Sources AnalysisChapter Four Thifensulfuron-Methyl Government Policy and News4.1 Government Related Policy Analysis4.2 Industry News Analysis4.3 Thifensulfuron-Methyl Industry Development TrendAbout Us:MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact US:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803
Cresols (Ortho-Cresols, Meta-Cresols, and Para-Cresols) Market: Segmentation, Industry trends and Developments 2016 - 2026

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11092

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11092

Cresols is an aromatic organic compound and obtained from coal tar or petroleum as a mixture of three stereoisomers i.e. Ortho Cresols, Meta Cresols and Para Cresols. It is generally referred as tricresol or cresolic acid and very toxic in nature. It is a strong dermal irritant and on inhalation by human, it may cause serious hazards such as dryness, nasal constriction, and throat irritation among others. However it is widely used for variety of applications such as disinfectants, antiseptics, preservative and agrochemicals among others.Download TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report:Ortho, Meta and Para cresol are stereoisomers and commercially manufactured as phenol derivatives. There are two well-known manufacturing processes of cresol i.e. methylation of phenol using methanol and sulfonation of toluene, followed by hydrolysis. However manufacturing of cresol from toluene is industrially preferred route. It is appeared either as liquid or in solid form with sweet and phenolic odor. Cresol mixture is industrially preferred preservative, solvent, disinfectant and wood preservative. Meta cresol is for manufacturing of herbicides, insecticides, antioxidants, photographic chemicals and explosive. While para cresol is majorly used for manufacturing of antioxidants, dyes and fragrance chemicals. Ortho cresol has found great application as chemical intermediates, pharmaceutical intermediate, disinfectants and solvent.Average price of cresol is subjected to change with geographies and does not follow volume to revenue ration in each individual geographies. Growing demand for specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals intermediates and industrial lubricants is expected to drive global consumption of cresols. The growing demand for antioxidants and preservatives is another accelerator for global market of cresols. Sustainability of the global cresols market is majorly depends on price and availability of raw materials. However alarming government regulations on use of cresols for certain applications such as in cosmetics and hair and dye products may restrain the overall consumption of cresols across the globe.Request Sample Report@Major consumers of cresols are China, U.S., Western Europe and Japan and collectively accounted for more than 60% of total world consumption in 2015. China is the largest market in Asia-Pacific followed by India in 2016, and is expected to grow rapidly in the near future. Owing to cresols value added applications such as solvent, disinfectant and preservative, it is expected that the consumption of cresol will grow steadily especially in China and India. This is primarily because of expansion of end-use industries such as rubber and plastics, pharmaceuticals, dyes and chemicals in Asia Pacific. U.S. and Western Europe are two leading consumer of cresolic acid and consumption of cresol by this two geographies is expected to grow steadily at a CAGR of 3.0% till 2020.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 States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
The Mobile Phone Insurance Ecosystem: 2016  2030  Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts

http://www.reportbazzar.com/request-sample/?pid=517760&ptitle=The+Mobile+Phone+Insurance+Ecosystem%3A+2016+%E2%80%93+2030+%E2%80%93+Opportunities%2C+Challenges%2C+Strategies+%26%23038%3B+Forecasts&req=Sample

http://www.reportbazzar.com/discount-form/?pid=517760&ptitle=The+Mobile+Phone+Insurance+Ecosystem%3A+2016+%E2%80%93+2030+%E2%80%93+Opportunities%2C+Challenges%2C+Strategies+%26%23038%3B+Forecasts&req=Discount

http://www.reportbazzar.com/product/the-mobile-phone-insurance-ecosystem-2016-2030-opportunities-challenges-strategies-forecasts/

http://www.reportbazzar.com/

Given the increasing prevalence of expensive household goods, cars and consumer electronics, insurance has become an unavoidable and often necessary cost in modern life. Mobile phones, and smartphones in particular are no exception to this trend.Most major wireless carriers, insurance specialists, device OEMs, retailers and even banks now offer insurance plans that cover theft, loss, malfunctions and damage of mobile phones. Many policies now also integrate enhanced technical support and additional protection features such as data backup facilities, allowing users to securely backup their phone data online.Request Sample Report:SNS Research estimates that the global mobile phone insurance market is expected to account for nearly $20 Billion in revenue by the end of 2016. The market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 12% over the next four years, eventually accounting for over $30 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020.The Mobile Phone Insurance Ecosystem: 2016  2030  Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts report presents an in-depth assessment of the mobile phone insurance ecosystem including market drivers, challenges, opportunities, value chain, future roadmap, case studies, ecosystem player profiles and strategies. The report also presents market size forecasts from 2016 through to 2030. The forecasts are segmented for 5 regional and 25 country level markets.The report comes with an associated Excel datasheet suite covering quantitative data from all numeric forecasts presented in the report. Topics CoveredThe report covers the following topics: Mobile phone insurance ecosystem Market drivers and barriers Insurance policy structure, distribution channels and key trends Case studies of mobile phone insurance initiatives Industry roadmap and value chain Profiles and strategies of over 40 leading ecosystem players Strategic recommendations for ecosystem players Market analysis and forecasts from 2016 till 2030Forecast SegmentationMarket forecasts are provided for the following regional and country level submarkets:Regional Segmentation Asia Pacific Europe Latin & Central America Middle East & Africa North AmericaCountry Level Segmentation Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, UK & USAEnquiry Before Buying:Key Questions AnsweredThe report provides answers to the following key questions: How big is the mobile phone insurance opportunity? What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth? How is the ecosystem evolving by region? What will the market size be in 2020 and at what rate will it grow? Which countries will see the highest percentage of growth? Who are the key market players and what are their strategies? What risks are typically covered in mobile phone insurance offerings? How can insurance plans help wireless carriers in reducing churn? What strategies should wireless carriers, device OEMs and insurance providers adopt to remain competitive?Key FindingsThe report has the following key findings: SNS Research estimates that the global mobile phone insurance market is expected to account for nearly $20 Billion in revenue by the end of 2016. The market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 12% over the next four years, eventually accounting for over $30 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020. In an effort to boost the uptake of mobile phone insurance, wireless carriers and insurance providers have extensively enhanced their insurance offerings with the addition of location tracking, data protection/recovery features and integrated technical support. The success of mobile phone insurance plans has driven several wireless carriers, such as NTT DoCoMo and Orange, to invest in the sales of other insurance products through mobile phones and their retail outlets. New insurance models are also beginning to emerge, such as London-based So-Sures social insurance for mobile phones, which allows customers to get up to 80% of their money back, if they and their friends dont claim. Device OEMs are beginning to invest in tailored plans to suit the specific requirements of certain regional markets. A good example is Xiaomis Mi Protect plan in India, which covers accidental and liquid damage, for as little as $7 per year.Buy Complete Report:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors.ReportBazzarOffice # 203,Vishal Shopping Complex,DSK Ranwara, Bavdhan,Pune  411021, IndiaIndia: +91 20 66528525Email Id: sales@reportbazzar.comWebsite:
eXact learning solutions adds a new authoring feature to its LCMS

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2685635593365714692

www.exact-learning.com

In Septembers new release of its learning content management system (LCMS), global learning company, eXact learning solutions, is expanding users authoring options.In particular, its introducing a companion to HM, its XML-based templates library for generating e-learning content. The new feature is called Document Model (DM).Valerio Torda, eXact learning solutions Managing Director, explained, While HM is eXact learning solutions Content Model for developing pure e-learning - focusing on the standard learn and test approach, DM will be key for those organizations that need to produce engaging material for instructor-led training (ILT)-based scenarios.DM enables users to create technical manuals, guides, advanced textbooks and so on, he continued.While HM helps to build screens reading from left to right, DMs approach is vertical  its like building a classic A4 document. It includes elements such as headings, paragraphs, references and so on  but, like HM, it allows users to insert media, images, videos and so on, into the learning material.Content created with DM can be delivered online, via eXact learning solutions native HTML5 output. Alternatively, it can be delivered in Word or PDF formats via eXact learning solutions rendering engines.In addition, said Valerio Torda, thanks to the systems ingestion process, users will be able to create DM content starting from a pre-existing Word document. In this instance, the system will automatically map the Word structure and content into DM.Naturally, this innovation has full interoperability within the eXact LCMS - and its attendant Content Models. Consequently, users who use assets from within HM - such as a piece of text or an image  will, with one click, be able to reuse these assets within DM, too.To help explain the new technology involved in DM to users and potential users of its LCMS, eXact learning solutions is staging a webinar on 28th September. The webinar is the fourth of the companys popular series, called eXactly on Wednesdays.Federico Dondero, of eXact learning solutions, said: This webinar will focus on DM, along with its rendering engines - notably Word, and PDF.Later  on 26th October  a further eXactly on Wednesdays webinar will focus on ingestion processes for both HM and DM. In the case of HM, this involves translating PPT to HM and, for DM, the process will involve translating Word to DM.Those wanting to know more about DM and its rendering engines can begin by attending the webinar, being held on Wednesday 28th September at 17.00 to 17.45 CET (16.00  16.45 BST, 11.00  11.45 EDT and 08.00  08.45 PDT). To register for this event, visit:About eXact learning solutionseXact learning solutions is a leading business solution provider in the field of Digital Learning Content Management. Its content lifecycle care solutions include modular and interoperable tools enabling, supporting and optimizing specific processes within a Digital Learning Content ecosystem: collaborative content creation; structured and workflow-based content management, and multiple output delivery of content in any desired format, channel, device and language, with any look & feel.The eXact learning Suite comprises a fully-fledged, enterprise-wide Learning Content Management System (eXact learning LCMS), a professional template-based authoring environment, comprising an advanced, local client application and a 100% web-based tool (eXact learning Packager and Online Editor) as well as an app to manage, deliver and track learning content through iOS and Android-based mobile devices (eXact learning Mobile). The eXact learning solutions end-to-end provisioning is completed by a set of high level professional services including consulting, training and technical support in the field of Digital Learning Content Management.eXact learning solutions is a sister company of LATTANZIO Group, a holding company based in Italy which integrates knowledge-intensive business services blending management consulting, IT services, training and e-learning, market research and communication.eXact learning solutionsPiazza della Vittoria, 11/A (16121) Genoa, ItalyPhone: +39.010.81.77.500; WebContact: Gabriele CeroniPR contact: Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, Office +44 (0)1727 860405; email press.pr@exactls.com
Acetic Acid Market to Cross US$ 15 Billion by 2023

Acetic Acid Market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/acetic-acid-market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/requestsample/acetic-acid-market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/

New York, September 13: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Acetic Acid Market for VAM, PTA, Acetate Esters, Acetic Anhydride and Other Applications - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2015 - 2023Acetic acid is an organic compound with strong distinct sour smell. It is colourless and has carbon as its fundamental constituent. Acetic acid is most commonly used to produce VAM (vinyl acetate monomer). Another major application of this acid is in production of acetic anhydride which is useful in photographic films. It also has uses in medical and food industry as it is widely known to be used in vinegar which has extensive uses.Browse Full Report:Increasing demand for VAM in various industries such as paints, packaging, adhesives and other industries, is a driving factor for global acetic acid market. Owing to its exponential use in production of acetate anhydride is growth factor. China leads the global market followed with largest market share by volume.Acetic Acid Market states that the market will log more than 9% CAGR through the reports forecast period.Download Free Sample Report:The global acetic acid market is segmented based on its application which includes vinyl acetate monomer, acetic anhydride, acetate esters and PTA. The market segments in terms of geographical regions include North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (ROW).This report provides:1) An overview of the global market for acetic acid 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 acetic acid market.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 Celanese, British Petroleum (BP), Jiangsu Sopo (Group) Co., Ltd., Eastman Chemicals, DuPont, Saudi International Petrochemicals and Wacker Chemie. 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 Acetic Acid Market has been segmented as below:By Application: Acetate Esters Vinyl Acetate Monomer Acetic Anhydride PTABy Geography North America Europe Asia-Pacific Rest of the World (ROW)Reasons to buy this Report:1) Obtains the most up to date information available on all active and planned coating industry globally.2) Identify growth segments and opportunities in the industry.3) Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong historic and forecast of coating 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
Airport Infrastructure Investment in India to Cross $20 billion by 2020

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/requestsample/airport-infrastructure-investment-in-india

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/airport-infrastructure-investment-in-india

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/

New York, September 13: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Airport Infrastructure Investment in India (Infrastructure Investments, Projects, Airport, Airlines, & Associations) By Five Year Plans (12th Plan - 15th Plan): Trends & Forecast  2015-2020.The airport infrastructure investment in India is placed aggressively and it will reach $20 billion by 2020.Download Free Sample Report:Airport infrastructures are the part of economic development of the country. Airport transportation not only connects people, but also connects economies to the future development of global economy. The existence of airport infrastructure and associated ground infrastructure is an essential factor in the regional development. Aviation infrastructure needs to be developed to facilitate unconstrained growth of the aviation market. Many companies are looking to capitalize their investment into this emerging market.The Airport Infrastructure Market is a very competitive market, but has a lot of growth opportunities in India as it is set to become developed infrastructure in the next 10 years. The Airport Infrastructure total investment required is estimated to reach US$ 56,709.631 million by 2032 which includes Greenfield and Non-Greenfield Airport projects in India. Non-Greenfield airports hold a major share of 84.6% compared to Greenfield airports.Browse Full Report:Cities are separated by distance, but individual can easily travel between cities using various transportation. Nowadays, air travel for passenger has become more comfortable and cheaper due to growing tourism, increasing passengers and cargo traffic, and number of low cost carriers in India."The aviation industry is rapidly growing in India with increasing in number of visitors and Air traffic management. The passenger numbers are expected to triple over the next decade which will require massive investment in airport expansion and constructions.The Airport Infrastructure market is divided into Airports and Airlines. Again, the Airport market is analyzed by international airport, domestic airport and other operations. The Airlines segment contributes to majority of the market. The passenger and cargo traffic in India is expected to grow in next five years.For huge requirement of funds for the development of airport infrastructure and the financial constraints, the government has invited public private partnership model. With the rise in PPP projects in the next few years will be largely attributed to significant advantages such as better customer service, completion of projects on schedule and within budgets, reduced life-cycle maintenance costs, enhanced efficiency and cost savings including lower construction costs.Market DynamicsDrivers Public Private Partnership (PPP) Model Domestic, International and Cargo Traffic Increased Connecting Routes Across Countries Low Cost AirlinesRestraints Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) Facilities Inadequate RunwaysOpportunities Development of New Airports Employment in the CountryAbout 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
Bulls and horses race through the city  Entrada de toros y Caballos in Segorbe

www.Costadevalencia.com

Spanish language students participate in an extraordinary eventValencia. Segorbe is an idyllic, medieval little town of the province Castellon which is located close to Valencia. In the second week of September the town blossoms with its old traditions: because the Entrada de toroy y caballos or the entrance of the bulls and horses takes place. Language students of a Spanish language school from Valencia were able to experience the meaning of this spectacle.They took a day trip to Segorbe to join the last day of the Fiesta. They visited the Spanish town and went into the museum which should prepare them for the following happenings. At noon the group gathered to eat and drink a little bit, get to know new people and improve their Spanish skills before they went to save the best place for the event. The streets filled quickly because everyone wanted to see the hustle of the bulls and horses: surrounded by horsemen 6 bulls would chase down the path accompanied by the cheering of the crowd.On ladders and benches the Spanish language students prepared themselves and had cameras on hand because such a unique spectacle can only been seen in Spain  a special opportunity.However many people stayed on the streets to get an adrenalin rush. Nervous they started to jump, faster up to the point when the animals were in sight and everyone jumped to the side to make room for the race. Fortunately no one was hurt and the picture which was presented to the language students was breathtaking.After 5 seconds the whole spectacle was over and the students had time to profit from the Fiesta of the village. Spaniards gathered on the little squares, where little huts were established to sell food and drinks. There was no time to get bored and in a good atmosphere the language students enjoyed the afternoon and used the time to get to know new people in Spanish and have fun together.Following they went to a square with a well where a large audience already awaited the next event. Here a bull was brought into the improvised arena where the bull runners already were ready. Provocatively they ran past the bull and lured him in different directions. It was a fast back and forth with the goal to touch the bull as often as possible without hurting oneself. For the Spanish language students of Valencia this situation was very unusual but for many Spaniards, who grew up with it, this happening represented a fascinating event.Afterwards the students of the Spanish language school Costa de Valencia went back to Valencia where they could recover from a day filled with new impressions which they will not forget for a long time.Since 1995 the language school Costa de Valencia has focused on teaching Spanish to non-native speakers. This language school, which is situated in the heart of Valencia, is a Centro Acreditado of the Instituto Cervantes and a member of many associations.The teaching material, which is used during the lessons, is worked out by a team of well-versed teachers. One of the most important aspects of teaching in this school is the individual involvement of every single student. This way every student has the possibility to speak very much during the language course. Furthermore, both managers place big value the quality of the language lessons and a broadly diversified leisure programme.Costa de Valencia, S.L.Avda. Blasco Ibanez, 66E-46021 ValenciaTel.: (+34) 96 361 03 67Fax: (+34) 96 393 60 49info@costadevalencia.comContact person:Andreas Temer (manager)Andreas@Costadevalencia.com
Nurse Call Systems Market: Nurse Call Mobile Systems Gain Dominant Market Share

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/nurse-call-system-equipment-market.html

http://bit.ly/2cVDZBu

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Technological advancements in the information and communication technology (ICT) have led to the increased demand for improved healthcare communication. Rising technological awareness has encouraged healthcare organizations and healthcare service providers to scout new technological solutions and systems. In addition, decreasing costs and ease of deployment of IT systems has enabled healthcare organizations to adopt and implement innovative technological solutions. Nurse call systems have offered a viable solution to the healthcare organizations to improve the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of communication between the patients and nurses. These systems offer convenience and higher responsiveness in the patient-nurse communications, hence leading to improved quality of healthcare services. In addition, such systems play a critical role in enabling communication in cases of emergency including critical care, accident, and patient falls within the hospital premises.Describing the Market of Nurse Call Systems:Healthcare settings and organizations can choose from a wide range of nurse call systems including wired and wireless solutions, and stand-alone and integrated communication solutions. In addition, organizations are able to leverage the integrated solutions to help streamline nursing activities in order to offer better healthcare services. External factors such as aging population, increasing expenditure on healthcare services for aged population, and the rising number of assisted living centers across the world are expected to drive the growth of nurse call systems market during the forecast period. In 2013, the global nurse call systems market was valued at US$ 598.5 Mn and is expected to reach US$ 1,579.5 Mn by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 13.9% during the forecast period 2014 to 2020.Nurse call system providers offer various equipment, namely nurse call buttons, nurse call intercoms, nurse call mobile systems, and nurse call integrated communication systems. Customers choose from a wide range of nurse call solutions depending on various factors such as scalability, flexibility, accessibility and security. Nurse call integrated communication systems held the largest market share of the overall nurse call systems market in 2013. With increasing demand for mobile solutions, the nurse call mobile systems market is forecast to grow at a significant rate during the forecast period 2014 to 2020.Nurse call system providers offer wired and wireless communication equipment depending on the specific requirements of the healthcare facilities. In 2013, wired nurse call communication equipment held the largest market share in the overall nurse call systems market. Increasing demand for mobility and flexibility is expected to drive the demand for wireless nurse call communication equipment during the forecast period.Nurse call systems are widely used in the various healthcare settings including hospitals, out-patient department (OPD), assisted living centers, and ambulatory services. Increasing need for effective healthcare communication and to improve quality of healthcare services is driving the demand for nurse call systems in the acute care segment. In assisted living facilities, factors such as ensuring patient safety and need for effective communication systems are driving the growth of nurse call systems market.Nurse Call Systems:North America nurse call systems market led the overall nurse call systems market in terms of revenue in 2013 on account of significant adoption of nurse call systems in the region across various healthcare settings. Europe held the second largest revenue share of the overall nurse call systems market in 2013. However, economic slowdown and reduced public expenditure in the region are impacting the growth of nurse call systems market in Europe. Nurse call systems market in Asia Pacific is expected to achieve significant growth during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020. Increasing demand from countries such as China, India, Japan and Singapore are expected to primarily drive the growth of this market in Asia Pacific region. Opportunities from other regions including Latin America and Africa are expected to further drive the growth of the nurse call systems market during the forecast period 2014 to 2020.Rauland-Borg Corporation, Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc., Ascom Holding AG, and Azure Healthcare Limited were identified to be the top four players in the nurse call systems market in 2013. Other key players include Stanley Healthcare, Tyco SimplexGrinnell, Cornell Communications, Inc., Jeron Electronic Systems, Inc., TekTone Sound & Signal Mfg., Inc., Vigil Health Solutions, Inc. and Critical Alert Systems LLC.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Powder Coatings Market 2016: Global Industry Insights, Statistics, Market shares and Forecasts to 2022

http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/world-powder-coatings-market-opportunities-and-forecast-71413#RequestSample

http://bit.ly/2cWeKPt

http://www.marketresearchstore.com/

Powder coating is a dry finishing process in which fine particles of paint are electrostatically charged and sprayed onto a workpiece. Powder coatings possess various properties such as significant durability along with resistance to abrasion, corrosion, scratching, and chemicals. They meet various requirements of end-user industries such as unlimited color selection, high and low gloss, metallic and clear finishes, and texture choices such as rough textures, smooth surfaces, wrinkled, and matte finishes to hide surface imperfections. Powder coatings not only maximize production, but they also improve coating efficiency and cut coating costs, as over-sprayed powder coating can be retrieved and re-used as compared to liquid coatings.The powder coatings market is driven by factors such as supporting environmental regulations, increasing demand for appliances, booming construction industry, increasing adoption of powder coatings over liquid coatings, and rapid economic growth in emerging countries. Powder coatings offers superior finish and durability, which leads to increased life of coated products. They are highly desirable from an ecological standpoint as they are manufactured and applied without the use of organic solvents. All these factors are expected to supplement the market. However, powder coatings are not compatible in thin layer coatings applications, which is a major restraint to the market.Complete Report Of Powder Coatings Market :On the basis of resin type, the powder coatings market is segmented into thermoset and thermoplastics. The resin types are further sub-segmented into epoxy, polyester, acrylic, epoxy polyester hybrid for thermoset and PVC, Nylon, PVDF, and polyolefin for thermoplastic segment. Majority of the powder coating formulation is based on thermosetting resins, mainly epoxy and polyester, owing to their better outdoor weathering and physical properties.Based on the coating method, the market is divided into electrostatic spray method and fluidized bed method. Electrostatic spray is the highly adopted method by the key players. Unlike liquid coatings, powder coatings do not require venting, filtering, or solvent recovery. Strict environmental regulations in the paint and coatings industry drive the market as it does not require solvents, and minor amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are released during the cure.Get Free Sample Report Of Powder Coatings Market :The powder coatings application market is segmented into appliances, architecture, general industrial, furniture, agriculture, construction and earthmoving equipment (ACE), automotive, and others. The appliances application segment was the largest segment in 2015 in terms of volume due to increase in adoption of powder coatings in emerging and developed countries.About Market Research StoreMarket Research Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations. Market Research Store is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air. We have market research reports from number of leading publishers 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 UsJoel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@marketresearchstore.comWeb:
Ammonium Phosphate Market to Witness 3.6% CAGR During 2016  2022

www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/ammonium-phosphate-market

www.psmarketresearch.com/industry-report/chemicals-materials-and-energy

www.psmarketresearch.com

The global ammonium phosphate market was valued at $35,696.3 million in 2015, and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.6% during 2016 - 2022. The major factors driving the growth of the market globally include its increasing use in animal feed and industrial applications, and growing agriculture industry in the emerging nations. Asia-Pacific is anticipated to create significant growth opportunities for the growth of the global ammonium phosphate market. The significant growth of the end-user industries, such as food and beverages, and agriculture in the region is catalyzing the demand of ammonium phosphate. The continuous investment in these industries is also expected to drive the demand for ammonium phosphate in Asia-Pacific. The growing demand for food and food products, along with increasing population is expected to augment the growth of the agricultural industry, which in turn is expected to boost the growth of the ammonium phosphate market during the forecast period.Explore Market Research Report on Global Ammonium Phosphate Market at:Based on product type, the global ammonium phosphate market is segmented into monoammonium phosphate (MAP), diammonium phosphate (DAP) and ammonium polyphosphate. The diammonium phosphate (DAP) segment accounted for the largest market share among the various products in the global ammonium phosphate market in 2015. The major factors driving the growth of the DAP segment is its widespread use in fertilizers. DAP commonly helps in regulating pH levels in soil, thereby enhancing the quality of soil and boosting crop yield. MAP is mostly utilized as a food additive and emulsifier in the food and beverages industry.Based on application, the global ammonium phosphate market has been segmented into food and beverages, fertilizer, flame retardant, water treatment chemicals, and others. The fertilizer segment accounted for the largest market share among the various applications in the global ammonium phosphate market in 2015. On the other hand, the food and beverage segment, and the flame retardant segment accounted for a small volume percent in the application segment in the global ammonium phosphate market. However, the food and beverage segment is expected to witness significant gains during the forecast period, owing to their increasing demand globally. The flame retardant segment is also expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period, owing to increasing awareness regarding safety, as well as implementation of stringent regulations by regulatory bodies.In 2015, Asia-Pacific held the largest share in the global ammonium phosphate market with 62.6% share in terms of value. The growing agriculture, and food and beverages industries are some of the major growth driving forces in the Asia-Pacific ammonium phosphate market, particularly in countries, such as India and China. China is the largest market for ammonium phosphate in the region; however, India is expected to witness highest growth in the near future.The information and data in the publication Global Ammonium Phosphate Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2022, represents the research and analysis of data from various primary and secondary sources. Bottom-up approach has been used to calculate the market size. P&S Market Research analysts and consultants interacted with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every value of data presented in the report. The company bases its primary research on discussions with prominent professionals and analysts in the industry, which is followed by informed and detailed, online and offline research.To Browse For Related Research:GLOBAL AMMONIUM PHOSPHATE MARKET SEGMENTATIONBy TypeMonoammonium phosphate (MAP)Diammonium phosphate (DAP)Ammonium polyphosphateBy ApplicationFertilizerFlame retardantWater treatment chemicalsFood and beveragesOthersAbout P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.As one of the top growing market research agency, were keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.Contact:DeepAssistant  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Adult Day Care Services Market: Growing concern of global population towards the specialized day care services

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=11462

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

The global market for adult day care services has been thoroughly analyzed in a recent market intelligence report by Transparency Market Research. The report is titled " Adult Day Care Services Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024."The report presents a comprehensive overview of the market with the help of in-depth quantitative and qualitative data, historical insights, and verifiable forecast about the way the market will develop in the next few years. The projections given in the report are based on industry-standard research methodologies and analysis techniques.The report states that the global adult day care services market will exhibit healthy growth over the period between 2016 and 2024. Growth will be chiefly driven by factors such as the rising geriatric population globally, rising healthcare and medical expenditures, and a vast rise in the prevalence of chronic health conditions among the elderly. Of these, the factor of rising geriatric population is the key driver of the market and is expected to remain a factor with the most significant impact on the market's future development.Download Free exclusive Sample of this Report:Some of the key restraints of the global adult day care services market are the high cost associated with such services, limited pool of technically well-trained healthcare resources, and lack of awareness about these services among people in certain parts of the world. The factor of cost undermines the growth potential of the adult day care services marker especially across developing regions such as Asia Pacific. The market is well developed in regions such as Europe and North America, which together contribute the largest share in the global market's overall revenues.The factor of limited pool of well-trained personnel is no doubt a major hurdle for the global adult day care services market's growth. Nevertheless, development of training programs aimed at educating resources and making them viable for the sector could emerge as a key growth opportunity for market vendors.The report also gives an overview of other key drivers, restraints, and trends and the way they are expected to influence the overall development of the market in the next few years. A detailed overview of the market's regulatory framework and competitive landscape is also included in the report. Detailed business profiles of some of the market's notable players is also given, which include Alzheimer Association Day Care Center and National Adult Day Services Association (NADSA). With the help of a SWOT analysis, the report gives a thorough analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the stakeholders in the global waste derived biogas market.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Intrinsic Semiconductor Market 2016 Consumption Research Report explores Growth, Development Challenges and Opportunities Forecasts till 2022

Intrinsic Semiconductor

http://bit.ly/2ckHsW3

http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-intrinsic-semiconductor-market-2016-production-sales-supply.html

http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/

MRS Research Group new research on Global Intrinsic Semiconductor Market 2016 includes Market Size, Share, Trends, Growth, Demand, Supply, Application, Segmentation, Opportunity, Market Development, production, capacity utilization, supply, Analysis and Forecast by 2022The presented report by MRS Research Group on the global and china market is the in depth analysis of various factors surrounding Intrinsic Semiconductor industries globally. The report throws light on different drivers, restraints and opportunities that exists and expected to arise in future. Prepared by the team of experts and available on MRS Research site, the report offers an overview of all the key performance indicators of the industry. The analysis covers the industry on the accounts of revenue, volume, wherever applicable.Access Free Sample Report @This valuable information available in the MRS Research report is coupled with present and future opportunities hiding in the Intrinsic Semiconductor industry. Report considers the importance of R&D in the industry and fathoms upcoming inventions too. It compares the current status of global and china industry with the future goals and growth. In this report, available on MRS Research site, the expert team has successfully delivered a complete and realistic picture of the future actions, that the Intrinsic Semiconductor is expected to take. The report covers all question that a business faces in a bid to sustain its industrial position.Read Complete Report @This MRS Research report has taken considered all the internal and external factors influencing global and china industry. Report has covered the key players of the industry along with current and potential competitors. Report does not only highlight the glimpses of global market, but it goes in details of the industry, current scenario, revenues (net ad gross) of the competitors and their position in the market in terms of geography, monetary value and brand value or goodwill.MRS Research group provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Prof Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free : +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.comWebsite:
North America to remain in the dominant position in the Patient Temperature Management Market till 2021

Patient Temperature Management Market | Beige Market Intelligence

http://www.beigemarketintelligence.com/reports/research-report-healthcare-market/global-patient-temperature-management-market-strategic-assessment-and-forecast-till-2021/

North America accounts for the largest share of the Patient Temperature Management market and is expected to continue in the near future. This dominance can be attributed to a large number of surgical procedures that are taking place in the region. Mostly the market penetration is in the two major countries in the US and Canada.A recent report published at Beige Market Intelligence provides an in depth analysis of the Patient Temperature Management Market. The report along with the market growth by products and end user segment also gives a detailed analysis of the major regions holding the accountable number of market shares. The report has also outlined the factors which are going to drive the market for the forthcoming years.The report says In 2011, more than 1.2 million hip and knee replacement surgeries were performed in the US and this number is estimated to cross approximately 3.5 million by 2030. This figure shows the increased use of Patient Temperature Management systems.The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and Canadian Institute for health Information confirms that more than 2,00,0000 surgeries took place together only in Canada and US till 2013. (Exact figure and information available in the report). It gives a clear indication about the expected increase in use of Patient Temperature Management Devices. Furthermore, factors such as rise in number of surgical centers, high incidences of cardiac arrest and neurological disorders, and high adoption rate of technologically advanced products in North America can be attributed for the highest market share of North America.Patient Temperature Management Market in USThe US holds the largest share in the patient temperature management market in North America. The market in the US is primarily driven by high incidences of various diseases such as neurological disorders and cardiac arrests, rise in aging population, adoption of technologically advanced patient warming and cooling systems, to name a few to improve healthcare infrastructure.According to the American Medical Association (AMA) nearly 60% of the population aged above 65 years will be suffering from more than one chronic disorder by 2030. Furthermore, more than 85% of the population in this age die from heart disorders every year. Certain surgical procedures are required to be performed for the treatment of age-related disorders. Also large volumes of surgical procedures are being carried out in the country.The increasing prevalence of chronic disorders such as heart diseases and brain strokes in the US will continue to boost the growth of the patient temperature management market during the forecast period.View the Report Global Patient Temperature Management Market  Strategic Assessment and Forecast Till 2021.Patient Temperature Management Market in CanadaThe patient temperature management market in Canada is likely to increase due to high incidence and prevalence of strokes in Canada during the forecast period.It is estimated that more than 50,000 strokes (one stroke in every 10 minutes) occur in Canada every year. In 2012, approx. 6% (nearly 14,000) of deaths in Canada resulted due to strokes (Source: Statistics Canada). Also, the risk of strokes doubles every 10 years after an individual reaches 55 years of its age (Source: Heart and Stroke Foundation of Nova Scotia, Canada).In addition, growing number of surgeries is further accelerating the growth of the market. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), almost 500,000 Canadians underwent priority surgical procedures and specialized treatments in 2012, which was an increase as compared to 2011. Also, initiatives by the government to increase the number of highly qualified and skilled surgeons in Canada is also supporting the growth of the market. For instance, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2012 initiated the Future of General Surgery Project with an aim to ensure that all graduates undergoing Canadas General Surgery residency programs were well prepared to deliver surgical care in various practice settings across the country.According to the report after North America, Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow. Europe is expected to grow at a slow pace amongst all the geographies. The report provides a detailed analysis of the market size and growth aspect of the major regions. It includes a detailed analysis of the strategies used by major vendors in the market along with the emerging vendors analysis.For More Information ,Click :About Beige Market Intelligence:Beige Market Intelligence is new-age provider of competitive business intelligence, working across various industry verticals. Our expertise and knowledge ensures that the market analysis Beige provides is comprehensive, detailed and complete. The analysis helps our client organizations become aware and make educated decisions, as far as investing or devising a marketing strategy is concerned. The actionable insights delivered through our market research provide a comprehensive market analysis for every level of market segmentation in an industry. Beige Market Intelligence is a quality driven high end Market Research organization. Our team of experts ensure the analysis you receive is not just analysed and smartly presented, but is completely customized based on the clients requirement. Our deliverables guarantee our current global client base does not look beyond Beige when it comes to any kind of industry and market analysis.Beige Market IntelligenceChinnapannahalli, Bangalore-560037contactus@beigemarketintelligence.comUS: +1 347 903 9949UK: +44 20 323 99499APAC: +91 99 012 75473
Mechanical Seals Market Analysis and Value Forecast Snapshot by End-use Industry 2016-2026

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1596

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1596

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Increase in production of shale gas in developing and developed countries is a major factor driving the growth of the market. New oil and gas exploration activities, coupled with extensive investments in refineries and pipelines is escalating the growth of the global mechanical seals market. Moreover, introduction of new technologies is also a major element boosting the overall growth of the global mechanical seals market.Global Mechanical Seals Market: RestraintsIntroduction of alternate methods of sealing leakages like mechanical packaging eats into the revenue share of the mechanical seals market. Furthermore, use of electronic seals in automated manufacturing units can also impede growth during the forecast period 2016-2026.Global Mechanical Seals Market: Region-wise OutlookThe highest growth is expected to be witnessed in the Americas due to increase in adoption of mechanical seals to ensure precise and prefect sealing of pipelines. Demand for mechanical seals is anticipated to remain stable in Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is expected to offer growth opportunities to key players during the forecast period.Request Free Report Sample@Global Mechanical Seals Market: Key PlayersThe major players involved in the manufacturing of mechanical seals are AW Chesterton Company, EagleBurgmann India Private Limited, Flowserve Corporation, Flex-a-seal, John Crane Group, Bal Seal Engineering, Cooper-Standard, Federal-Mogul, Flexitallic Group, Garlock Sealing Technology, Henniges Automotive Sealing Systems, Hutchinson Sealing Systems, Timken AB, Freudenberg Sealing Technologies GmBH and Co. KG., Dana Corporation, Telleborg Industries and others.Global Mechanical Seals Market: SegmentationThe global mechanical seals market can be segmented on the basis of types, end use and geography.On the basis of types, the global mechanical seals market can be segmented into O-ring seals, lip seals, and rotary seals.On the basis of end use industry, the global mechanical seals market can be segmented into oil and gas industry, general industry, chemical industry, water industry, power industry and others.On the basis of geography, the global mechanical seals market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East and Africa and Japan.Visit For TOC@About Mechanical SealsMechanical seals are those leakage control devices which are deployed on rotating equipment like mixers and pumps to avoid the leakage of liquid and gases from escaping into the environment. Mechanical seals ensure that the medium stays in the system circuit, protecting it from external contaminations reducing environmental emissions.Mechanical seals also helps in stopping leakage in systems that contain pressure. Before mechanical seals, mechanical packaging was used; however, it wasnt as effective as seals are.Mechanical seals often consume energy since the frictional properties of the seal has a huge impact on the amount of power consumed by the machinery on which it is used. The four major classes of mechanical seals are traditional contact seals, cooled and lubricated seals, dry seals, and gas lubricated seals.Only a flat and smooth finish on mechanical seals is eligible to prevent leakage to its full efficiency. Mechanical seals are usually made by using carbon and silicon carbide but mostly carbon is used in the manufacturing of mechanical seals because of its self-lubricating properties. The two principle components of a mechanical seal are the stationary arm and the rotatory arm.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Barcode Printers Market Volume Analysis, size, share and Key Trends 2016-2026

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1625

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1625

www.futuremarketinsights.com

The computer peripherals used to print barcode labels that can be printed directly or can be attached to physical objects. The various applications of barcodes are hospital and healthcare settings, creating soap notes, patient identification etc. The key benefits of barcodes are accuracy, efficiency and consistency. Barcode printers use thermal transfer techniques to apply ink to the labels. The barcode thermal transfer printers deploy ink ribbons for the application of barcode into the label directly whereas thermal transfer printer use heat energy to blacken the barcode on the label. Barcode printers are designed according to the use and type of market. Large warehouses and manufacturing facilities deploy industrial barcode since it has large paper capacities, have a longer service life and operate faster whereas desktop barcode printers are mostly used in office and retail environments. Barcode printers are used in different terminals like retail, manufacturing, commercial and others. Barcode printers provide fast and feasible service with cost effectiveness, reliability, ease of accessibility, scanability, high durability and sharp printing quality.Global Barcode Printers Market: SegmentationThe global barcode printers market can be segmented on the basis of printer type, print technology, application and geography. On the basis of printer type, the global barcode printers market can be segmented into desktop barcode printers, mobile barcode printers and industrial barcode printers. Considering print technology, the global barcode printers market can be segmented into thermal barcode printers and non-thermal barcode printers. On account of application, the global barcode printers market can be segmented into retail, chemical, healthcare, manufacturing and shipping. On the basis of geography, the global barcode printers market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan and Middle East and Africa.Request Free Report Sample@Global Barcode Printers Market: DriversThe global barcode printers market is driven by various factors including rise in standard of living, increased e-commerce and logistics market etc. Moreover, economic growth and increasing healthcare industry is also fuelling the growth of the global barcode printers market. Due to the cost effectiveness of barcode printers, emerging regions are the key areas helping in driving the market due to low penetration of technology. Increasing FSCG market and increasing transportation is also pumping the overall growth of the global barcode printers market.Global Barcode Printers Market: RestraintsThe major challenge in the global barcode printers market is difficulty in scanning and issues in cleaning. Moreover, increasing adoption of Radio Frequency Identification (RIFD) is posing a serious challenge to the global barcode printers market.Global Barcode Printers Market: Trends and OpportunitiesAdvancement in technology, introduction of new technology printers like CL4NX, increased share of industrial products, new entrants and production of watermarked barcodes techniques are some of the key trends prevailing in the global barcode printers market. Pricing through barcodes can be a bright opportunity for the global barcode printers market to grow.Visit For TOC@Global Barcode Printers Market: Key PlayersSome of the major companies involved in the manufacturing of barcode printers are 3S industries, TSC Printers, Zebra Technologies Corporation, Digimac Corporation, Honeywell (Intermec), SATO Corporation, Toshiba Tec, Avery Dennison, Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd., Printek Inc, Dascom, Printronix.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Automatic Door Control Market Growth, Forecast and Value Chain 2016-2026

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1624

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1624

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Automatic door control is widely deployed in public places like theatres, hotels, shopping malls, grocery stores and many others to eliminate the tedious job of opening the door manually.. Sensor based automatic door control technologies include ultrasonic/radio, infra-red and other wireless sensing methods. The automatic door control system is basically based on intention analysis and human detection. This is achieved with the assistance of a passive infrared sensor. A live body emits infrared energy which is sensed by the PIR sensor from a considerable distance. This sensed signal is transferred to a microcontroller which in turn operates the door motor. While the closure of the door is managed through a fixed time delay. Further, interrupt signals are controlled through limit switches to avoid locked rotor condition of the motor. Automatic door control is a widely used product especially in the developed economies to avoid human labor and workforce.Global Automatic Door Control Market: SegmentationThe global automatic door control market can be segmented on the basis of geography, type, operating mechanism, technology and application. On the basis of geography, the global automatic door control market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Japan. On the basis of type, the global automatic door control market can be segmented into glass doors, metal doors, plastic doors and composite doors. On the basis of operating mechanism, the global automatic door control market can be segmented into swinging doors, sliding doors, folding doors, revolving doors and others. On the basis of technology, the global automatic door control market can be segmented into manual, automatic and access control. On account of applications, the global automatic door control market can be segmented into residential, industrial and commercial.Request Free Report Sample@Global Automatic Door Control Market: DriversThe key factor driving the global automatic door control market are high disposable incomes. Moreover, changing lifestyles of people also accounts for a major share in driving the global automatic door control market. Improvement and increase in construction activities and adoption of automation in most of the developed regions is another factor driving the growth of the market. Moreover, increased construction of malls, high technology airports, grand hotels and multiplexes have led to the growth of the global automatic door control market.Global Automatic Door Control Market: RestraintsHigh initial costs is one major challenge pulling down the growth of the global automatic door control market. Moreover, heavy maintenance and repair costs and less demands of automation in small and emerging economies restricts the global automatic door control market to grow. Further, increased price of raw materials like metal and glass is another factor restricting the builders or owners to use such automatic doors thus challenging the overall growth of the global automatic door control market.Global Automatic Door Control Market: Region Wise OutlookNorth America and Western Europe are the biggest markets for automatic door control because of high tech developments in the regions. Developed regions like North America and Western Europe are mature markets in terms of automatic door controls. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market followed by Middle East and Africa. Eastern Europe and Latin America are also showing positive growth in the global automatic door control market. Asia Pacific is expected to witness significant growth due to increasing development and automation in the developing economies like India and China.Visit For TOC@Global Automatic Door Control Market: Key PlayersSome of the major players in the global automatic door control market are GEZE Corporation, Door Controls Inc., Dorma, Automatic Door Controls Inc., Thomas Door and Windows.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Emerging Opportunities in Fungicide Active Ingredients Market with Current Trends Analysis

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1687

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1687

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Fungicides are first found chemical compounds utilized by people to preserve the plants from infections and pollutions. This chemical compound reduces the fungal growth in crops and thus plays a significant role in protection of crops. It has been observed that, diseases are the key source for damage of crop and plant that can be caused by number of organisms. Fungi is the topmost cause for infection of plants all across the globe. Apart from this, other diseases that hamper the growth of crops include nematodes, bacteria and viruses. Fungicides have become a significant component for the management of plant diseases for agrarian crops. Fungicides are utilized both in agriculture as well as to kill fungal infections in animals. Fungicides are utilized as a formulated product comprising of an active ingredient and as well as inert ingredients that enhance the functioning of the product. The global fungicide active ingredients market has grown at a rapid pace over the past few years and is anticipated to expand at a significant CAGR over the forecast period.Global Fungicide Active Ingredients: Market SegmentationGlobal Fungicide Active Ingredients market is segmented on the basis of type of active ingredients such as azoxystrobin, boscalid, chlorothalonil, cyazofamid, etridiazole (ethazole), fenarimol, fludioxonil, fluoxastrobin, flutolanil, fosetyl-Al, iprodione, mancozeb, mefenoxam, metconazole, myclobutanil, PCNB (quintozene), phosphites, polyoxin D zinc, propamocarb, propiconazole, pyraclostrobin, tebuconazole, thiophanate-methyl, triadimefon, trifloxystrobin, triticonazole and vinclozolin. The global fungicide active ingredients can also be bifurcated on the basis of application in crops such as cereals, grains, pulses, oilseeds, vegetables, fruits and others.Request Free Report Sample@Global Fungicide Active Ingredients Market: Growth DriversRising population leading to increase in food production which encourages the farmers to adopt optimum type fungicide for protection of crop in order to maximize the production and to minimize the risk related to crop infections. This is anticipated to expand the growth of global fungicide active ingredients market over the forecast period. Apart from this, robust demand for fungicides in major applications such as vegetable and fruit crops and in ornamental and turf grass is also likely to foster the growth of worldwide fungicide active ingredients market from 2016-2026. Expansion in population especially in developing countries such as India and China is expected to impel food related security concerns in the region which is likely to fuel the growth of global fungicide active ingredients market during the forecast period.Global Fungicide Active Ingredients Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the Global Fungicide Active Ingredients industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Europe captured the maximum market share in the total revenue of global fungicide active ingredients market in 2015. Rising population along with increasing the education level in developing countries is anticipated to bolster the growth of Asia Pacific fungicide active ingredients market over the forecast period. Besides this, Latin American fungicide active ingredients market is also expected to observe robust growth during the next few years.Visit For TOC@Global Fungicide Active Ingredients Market: PlayersSome of the leading players identified across the value chain of the global Fungicide Active Ingredients market include BASF, Bayer Cropscience, DuPont, Dow AgroSciences, Syngenta and Monsanto. In 2015, BASF marked the highest market share in terms of revenue in global fungicide active ingredients market. Most of players also function regional research and testing centers across all the geographic locations in order to keep the product market oriented as per the need. The companies are entering into widening their product portfolio and focusing on merger and acquisition in order to gain the competitive edge in global fungicide active ingredients market. Significant investment in research and development activities is expected by the companies over the coming few years in order to maintain the dominance in global fungicide active ingredients market in future.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
End-User Experience Monitoring for the City of Frankfurt: A customer's perspective on municipal IT services

End User Experience Monitoring assures and enhances Application Quality and thus End User Satisfaction

www.servicetrace.com

Since the comprehensive digitalization of local government systems, almost all administrative processes have been handled by specialist applications. The City of Frankfurts Department for Information and Communication Technology provides these applications as IT services to geographically distributed municipal sites. Until recently, there was no way to establish the actual quality of the services for the user. Now, the central infrastructure monitoring system at the IT Control Center for the City of Frankfurt, Germany, has been extended to monitor the end-user experience at a number of locations.With the advances in digitalization since it was established over 25 years ago, the Department for Information and Communication Technology in Frankfurt has developed to become the central IT service provider to local government. Today, the municipal service provider operates approximately 100 IT services for a user base of around 10,000 city employees across 600 sites using a technical infrastructure comprising 500 servers and 2,500 network components. "We serve a highly decentralized environment  from daycare centers, through schools, to the zoo, and registry offices," reports Jens Hubel, Head of the IT Control Center.Monitoring of specialist applications for the citizens of FrankfurtThe citizens of the City of Frankfurt rely on municipal processes, such as registering a marriage, being executed reliably and promptly. This can only happen if the City's administrators are able to access specialist applications at all times. "Ultimately, it is the citizens who are our customers and who finance our IT infrastructure through their taxes. The specialist municipal applications are the means by which we serve the citizens, albeit indirectly," continues Hubel. Monitoring the availability and performance of the IT services that are offered centrally is the responsibility of the IT Control Center: "Our job is to perform comprehensive monitoring of the IT services for the City of Frankfurt and to pinpoint and fix problems quickly when they occur." Central monitoring of the City's IT systems was initiated in 2012 in the form of basic monitoring of the infrastructure and the network. The central platform used is Microsoft's Systems Center Operations Manager (SCOM).End-user experience at distributed sites: IT services from a user perspective"SCOM gave us the ability to monitor the technical availability of the infrastructure. But, despite this capability, those of us responsible for the services didn't know whether the users out there could actually work with the IT service," explains Hubel. Information about service quality at the point of use is important though, particularly given the distributed sites with high numbers of users executing many critical municipal transactions every day. Following a suggestion from Sascha Hohn, head of the IT Control Center at the time, it was decided to introduce end-user experience monitoring at some representative sites, such as the registry office, in order to bring transparency to the user perspective. The end-user experience can vary significantly from site to site, with the quality of the network playing a role, as well as the performance of the terminal device used. "A user with a modern PC, a very high-quality network connection, and a short distance to our data center will have a completely different perception of the service to a user based at a distant site surfing over a slow, restricted mobile connection." Hubel has formulated the requirements for a suitable end-user experience monitoring solution, which is designed to deliver site-specific information about "how a service is working for a specific customer." This is intended to complement, not replace, the existing monitoring: "Infrastructure monitoring continues to be important for our technical administrators. For those responsible for service provision, it is the user perspective that is crucial. The combination of the two methods offers a comprehensive overview of the IT service, meaning that we can get much more precise information, much more quickly," explains Hubel in regard to this comprehensive monitoring concept, which integrates both bottom-up and top-down approaches.ServiceTracer, the robot userIn October 2015, the IT Control Center, under the leadership of Sascha Hohn, selected the ServiceTracer software system to implement user-perspective monitoring. "This solution is the ideal extension to our infrastructure monitoring," says Hohn in regard to this investment. ServiceTracer, created by ServiceTrace GmbH based in nearby Darmstadt, provides 'robot' users that are able to automatically operate IT services using the graphical user interface  exactly like a human user. Simultaneously, ServiceTracer measures the availability and response times of selected transactions, for example logging into an email system, thus providing an objective assessment of the end-user experience.ServiceTrace scored highly right from the proof of concept with their professional and efficient approach. All technical requirements were worked out in advance: "This meant we could work together on-site with the ServiceTrace consultants to establish the complete environment in a very short time," reports Hubel. During the proof of concept phase, the City of Frankfurt's IT management team recognized "a stable, mature, yet totally innovative piece of software." ServiceTracer can be used for end-user experience monitoring of all specialist applications, without limitation. The desktop measurements themselves run as hidden tasks, which allows the monitoring solution to fulfil one of the main predefined requirements: "The overarching constraint is that we want to offer secure services," explains Hubel. "As a public service, part of our work is official in nature. It is therefore essential that we have a solution that provides secure access and meets data protection requirements."The City of Frankfurt's IT team were also impressed by how easy it was to set up monitoring projects with the graphical WorkflowEditor and the flexibility with which these could be adapted. No knowledge of programming or scripts is required. "We're measuring a complex IT environment here, and this naturally means there's a certain degree of complexity when creating workflows. But one thing is for sure: it doesn't get any easier than with ServiceTracer WorkflowEditor."Critical performance threshold alertsIn the medium term, the system will run across 30 selected sites  the pilot project is currently running at five locations. Using dedicated measurement machines, ServiceTracer measures the availability and performance of the specialist applications from the user's perspective 24/7. Measurement data collected at the customer front end is sent by ServiceTracer via a connector to the central SCOM monitoring platform, which escalates alarms to service managers at critical thresholds. "That was another reason why we chose ServiceTracer: the open database structure with simple options for interfacing with SCOM." The IT managers for the City of Frankfurt had hoped to improve customer-oriented service quality assurance by implementing end-user experience monitoring. All the expected benefits were immediately apparent at the sites involved in the pilot project: "When our services are not working, we now see the problems ourselves, before the customer calls, and can make early interventions to restore the IT services affected."Defined Service LevelsThe benefits of ServiceTracer don't just stop with automated support for proactive incident management though. In addition, the measurement data supplied by ServiceTracer also provides a valid, data-driven basis for forming service level agreements relating to the customer experience. "Previously we had to bill for IT services on a flat rate basis because we didn't have the precise measurement data needed for calculating at the service level. ServiceTracer measurement data gives us the figures we need." Once service levels have been agreed, reporting becomes important in order to document whether the SLAs have been complied with. Service level reporting is straightforward too, implemented by simply passing the measurement data to SCOM.Keeping the customers of municipal IT services happy means, above all else, seeing things from their perspective. By introducing end-user experience monitoring for monitoring specialist applications from the user perspective, the City of Frankfurt has taken an important technical step towards delivering customer satisfaction and high-quality citizen services.ServiceTrace GmbHServiceTrace GmbH specialises on quality assurance of business critical IT services from a user's perspective.Software robot / Synthetic user ServiceTracer operates any application just like a human user and thus maps any business process from a user's perspective.ServiceTracer Test Automation and Application Performance Monitoring provide an universal, secure and easy quality assurance throughout an application's service lifecycle.ServiceTrace GmbHFeldbergstrae 8064293 DarmstadtGermanyPR contact:Johanna Mayjmay@servicetrace.de+49 (0)6151 950 46 20
Vast Growth Opportunities in Global Waste Derived Biogas Market to Boost Entry of New Players

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=757

The global market for waste derived biogas has been examined in a recent market research report by Transparency Market Research. The report is titled "Waste Derived Biogas Market - Global Industry Size, Market Share, Trends, Analysis And Forecasts 2012 - 2018."The report presents a thorough overview of the key factors driving, restraining, and influencing the overall development of the market globally. A detailed overview of the key trends of past and present times, feasibility analysis of new projects, impact of the regulatory framework governing several decisions in the market, and the competitive landscape of the market is also included.Get Free Sample Research Report :In the next few years, the area of energy generation from renewable and sustainable resources is expected gain huge prominence and gather increased focus from across the world. The rising awareness regarding the rapidly depleting stores of fossil fuels across the globe and the negative environmental impact of emissions produced from burning conventional fuels for energy production is key to factor driving this trend. Waste derived biogas being a key contender in the field of clean energy produced from renewable sources, its market is expected to witness significant traction in the next few years as well.The market for biogas obtained from waste varieties such as sewage, agricultural waste, landfill gas, and industrial wastewater is examined in the report. The key areas of application of waste derived biogas analyzed in the report include municipal electricity production, on-sire electricity production, and transportation fuel.From a geographic standpoint, the global waste derived biogas market is analyzed for Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and the Rest of the World (RoW). Presently, Asia Pacific is the leading regional market for waste derived biogas and is expected to hold a prominent position in the global market in the next few years as well, owing chiefly to the rising number of biogas production plants in the region. The easy availability of feedstock aacross rural areas in the region is expected to boost the amount of biogas generated in the region in the near future.Owing to the vast growth opportunities offered by the market, an increasing number of new players is expected to enter the market in the near future, making it highly competitive. Some of the key vendors operating in the market presently are Siemens AG, Biogas Technology Ltd., AAT GmbH & Co., Environmental Energy Engineering Co., Biotech Energy AG, ADI Systems Inc., Cargill Inc., Biogen Greenfinch, Bedminster International, Waste Energy Solutions LLC, Chevron Energy Solutions, and Bekon Biogas Energy Inc.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207
Novotech expands IoT & M2M portfolio by joining Gemaltos distributor channel program

In the news...

www.novotech.com

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) / Internet of Things (IoT) distributor, Novotech Technologies announces it is an authorized distributor of Gemaltos cellular connectivity and value added services and platforms. The agreement includes Gemaltos rugged line-up of Cinterion M2M modules and terminals and M2M cloud-based SensorLogic Enablement Platform. Recognized for their reliability and long lifespan even in the most extreme environments, Gemaltos Cinterion modules and terminals provide voice, high speed data and IP-based wireless communications with seamless global roaming.With its world-first launch of Cinterion Voice over LTE (VoLTE) Category 1 (CAT 1) module, Gemalto enables the combination of simultaneous voice and data capabilities using LTE. It is ideal for solutions migrating to LTE that want to keep the flexibility of cost-effective audio capabilities. This includes security and alarm services, mHealth monitoring as well as smart home and building applications.Novotech has successfully distributed cellular modules for over 15 years, says Richard Hobbs, President of Novotech. We are excited to be able to offer the Gemalto family of products which are a premium established brand and a recognized leader in the M2M market space.Gemalto also develops solutions using other cellular technology standards including CDMA, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA and beyond. All its products can be customized to suit the specific communications needs of virtually any application by integrating innovative technologies such as Java, GPS/GLONASS, SL Agent, SIM Access Profile and more. FTA and local network operator certifications ensure a swift approval process and all products comply with RoHS and WEEE environmental regulations for compliance with legislative directives. Gemaltos automotive products meet ISO TS 16949 quality benchmarks for automotive excellence.We launched the channel sales and distributor program to make it easier for M2M companies like Novotech to offer a complete, go-to-market offering to their customers without the complexity of working with multiple vendors, says Juan Carlos Lazcano, Head of M2M Sales for Americas at Gemalto. Novotech can expand their M2M footprint delivering customers a breadth of value added services and wireless communication technology. Our Cinterion modules are able to support any need whether its the network certification or configuration, bandwidth, size, ruggedization, or industry specific requirements.Cinterion M2M terminals work out of the box to quickly and easily add M2M connectivity to smart enterprise applications. With minimal integration effort, terminals can be connected to applications via standard industrial interfaces. They are ideal for new M2M implementers and mid- to small-sized deployments offering benefits including: Plug-in and play functionality Certifications and pre-approvals: R&TTE, GCF, e-mark (PTCRB, FCC, IC: TC65T) Standardized interfaces Integrated SIM card holderAbout Novotech Technologies:Through strategic partnerships with many of the worlds most advanced Machine-to-Machine (M2M) / Internet of Things (IoT) manufacturers, Novotech Technologies is a leading distributor of M2M/IoT products, services and solutions. To produce tangible outcomes that include reduced costs, optimized fleets/workforces, improved productivity and enhanced customer service, Novotechs comprehensive portfolio of M2M/IoT solutions  cellular, GPS and satellite  enable immediate communication, tracking and reporting in a wide range of applications. Established in 2001, Novotech is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, with offices throughout Canada and the United States.| @NovotechM2MNovotech Technologies57 Iber Road, Unit 2Ottawa, ONK2S 1E7Novotech Media Contact:Carolyn Gardner - Director of Marketing & Communications613.878.9294News@Novotech.com
Parking Reservation System Market Size, Growth, Forecast by 2024

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=11588

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Parking Reservation System Market: OverviewGrowing economy in many developing countries have fostered high disposable income among population which has given rise to increase in number of vehicle purchase. This has led to sharp increase in the number of vehicles on road in recent years. Passenger and goods carrier vehicles contribute to the most of the numbers of vehicles compared to as compared other types. Increase in number of vehicles have given rise to huge traffic congestion thereby leading to serious parking issues in many countries.Get FREE Sample PDF file of Parking Reservation System Market :Most of these problems are associated with urban areas where parking problems arise due to space constraint. Vehicle drivers waste substantial amount of their time finding proper parking space thereby creating traffic congestion for other vehicles. Lack of proper on-street parking lots and slow development of new parking complexes is expected to further increase the traffic congestion in coming years.Further, the current absence of parking slots in residential and commercial complexes creates serious concerns for employers and residential societies. Thus, the need for parking reservation or convenience parking is increasing owing to the time wasted in finding a proper parking slot. Parking complex providers are also facing problems in maintaining daily records related to parked vehicles thereby leading to inability to ensure round the clock security. Thus, the demand for parking reservation system is expected to witness trong growth owing to the above factors in coming years.Parking reservation system provides information of parking availability for both drivers and parking complexes providers in a certain area through continuous monitoring. Parking reservation system comprises software and equipment such as parking meters, cameras, sensors and automatic gates which help maintaining the smooth flow of traffic. Additionally, parking reservation system also enhances the aspect of security in parking lots.Parking Reservation System Market: SegmentationParking reservation system can be classified as on-street and off-street parking system. Off-street parking system consists a single point of interaction between parking areas and access points. Thus, the application of off-road parking system is expected to see more adoption among parking complex and garage providers in coming years. On-street parking system provides information of parking slot on real-time basis through web, mobile and voice based solution. Thus, the demand for on-street parking system is expected to increase owing to the increase in rise in smart cities projects across various region.Parking Reservation System Market: Region-wise OutlookFurther, the demand for parking reservation system is expected to increase in transportation sector due to the traffic congestion caused in truck terminals. Developed countries such as the U.S. and Germany are investing heavily in implementing parking reservation system for trucks. The market can also be segmented on the basis of end-use sector such as retail, government, hospitality, transportation and logistics, airports and commercial and corporate parks. The market for parking reservation system is expected to get a boost with the adoption of smart parking system in developed countries. India and China is expected to be a potential market for parking reservation system market in coming years. However, a slower adoption rate of parking reservation system in developing countries is expected to pose a challenge for this market in coming years.Parking Reservation System Market: Key PlayersSome of the key parking reservation system providers in the market are VINCI Park S.A., Streetline, Inc., National Car Parks Ltd., APCOA Parking AG, Ace Parking Management, Inc., ParkMe, Inc., Siemens AG, 3M Company and Xerox Corporation.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
ECT helps KCOM Transform Services

www.ect-telecoms.com

www.effective-contactcenters.com

www.ect-virtualpbx.com

Munich, September 13, 2016: KCOM, a leading provider of communications, applications and integration services to the UK enterprise market, has chosen ECT (European Computer Telecoms AG), a vendor of complete solutions for value-added services in the voice and multimedia domain, as the supplier of the technology for its intelligent voice services.ECT has implemented a full suite of products and applications which will enable KCOM to offer cloud-based value-added services over next-generation switching technology as well as over the Internet via WebRTC. KCOM has also entrusted ECT with the migration of services from several legacy silo solutions to next-generation technology architecture.The ECT solution is one of the key foundation blocks of the next-generation network evolution we are implementing. It is fundamental to our network transformation plans, which are already realising new and advanced products and propositions for our customers, said Sean Royce, Executive Vice President for Technology, Service and Operations at KCOM.Francine Kavesh, the managing director of ECTs UK subsidiary, explains: ECT and KCOM are really a perfect fit. I am delighted that we are able to assist KCOM with the migration of its current services to next-generation technology and am looking forward to many new and exciting services to be launched in the course of our partnership.About the INtellECT Next-Generation Intelligent Network and Service Delivery Platform:ECT has helped and is helping many service providers worldwide with intelligent network and VAS migration to IMS and LTE. Service providers phasing out their switched networks use an INtellECT Service Delivery Platform (SDP) to cross connect and orchestrate VAS over the various legacy and next-generation network technologies.For over 15 years, major European mobile and broadband carriers have utilized the INtellECT Platform as the basis for value-added services in legacy, IMS and VoLTE networks. Its proven architecture is based on industry standard technology for virtualization: all components, including the Application Servers (AS), Media Servers (MFR), Oracle Database Solutions and Web Servers, are available virtualized on the basis of VMWare or OpenStack as well as virtualized network functionality (VNF).There INtellECT Platform supports a full array of complete service applications for mobile and broadband value-added services and there is also an INtellECT Service Creation Environment (SCE) for communications service providers and third-party developers seeking to create and maintain their own valued-added services.About the INtellECT WebRTC SolutionAt ECT, we provide everything you need to launch service applications with voice and video calling both via your next-generation network as well as via WebRTC. The INtellECT WebRTC Solution of course provides a JavaScript API for voice and video calling via WebRTC as well as an optional registry. Moreover, WebRTC is integrated into our state-of-the-art applications for INtellECT Virtual PBX and effECTive Network-Based Contact Centers. You can offer these services immediately or quickly and easily launch new services via two unique service creation tools.Our Visual Application Builder (VAB) is a browser-based graphical tool. Without deep programming knowledge, you can use the VAB to define new services using interactive voice and video response with ASR/TTS, PCI-compliant video and voice recording, intelligent queuing, call distribution, data read and write to any database available in the cloud, http(s) and SOAP/XML integration of web services, etc. The VAB also allows you to define and automatically generate a web user interface and/or Android app for the service. The interactive elements, like menus, prompts and data entry, are then realized not via voice, but rather visually on web pages. Your customer can still access the service via a phone with standard IVR, e.g. by dialing a geographical or service number. But he/she can use the web page or mobile app within the browser of his/her PC or smart device with voice/video communications via WebRTC.The second, even more powerful service creation option is our comprehensive ECTXML JavaScript Library. It allows programmers working within an HTML5 browser to define new services using one unified JavaScipt API for WebRTC as well as all the routing and media processing functions in your network, such as call rerouting and distribution, recording, conferencing, ASR/TTS and billing via Diameter.With all these many options, we make it easy for you to realize commercial services with WebRTC.About ECT (European Computer Telecoms AG):At ECT, we develop technology for voice and multimedia value-added services based on our INtellECT Next-Generation Intelligent Network and INtellECT Service Delivery Platform. We help major carriers worldwide transform from legacy to next-generation networks, migrating legacy services from a myriad of platforms to one, multiservice, multi-country solution.We have state-of-the art complete service applications such as effECTive Network-Based Contact Centres, NTS, Televoting, Interactive Voice and Video Response as well as INtellECT Virtual PBX, VPN, MEX, NP and Carrier Routing. Virtually all of our services are enhanced with WebRTC for voice, video conferencing and multimedia.Our browser-based graphical service creation makes it easy to define new services using interactive voice and video response. In addition, we offer a comprehensive, open ECTXML JavaScript Library for all the routing and media processing functions available within the network.Major carriers and providers worldwide offer profitable telecoms services based on ECT technology, such as 21IN, BT OnePhone, Deutsche Telekom, DNA, DTMS, KCOM, Liberty Global, Numericable-SFR, Proximus, Teliasonera, Tele2, Virgin Media and Ziggo.Founded in 1998, ECT is an unlisted German public company with its headquarters in Munich, Germany and wholly owned sales and service subsidiaries in England, France, Germany, The Netherlands and the USA.For more information on this press release, please contact: communications@ect-telecoms.deEuropean Computer Telecoms AGWestendstrasse 160, D-80339 MunchenTel: +49 (0)89 55 29 47 - 0communications@ect-telecoms.de
NCI, Inc. (Formerly North Central Instruments) Pursues Growth Through Diversification

Representatives of NCI Inc., a distributor of scientific instrumentation, announced they have acquired Kruge Air, a Twin Cities-based distributor of major air compressor brands. The acquisition represents the latest move in NCIs plans to diversify its current base of business. Founded in 1967 as a distributor of microscopes for hospitals, the company is a leading distributor of equipment for microscopy and histology.NCI has always excelled in delivering exceptional value for our core business. When we looked to the future it was clear, however, the company would need to diversify to continue growing, said Brad Johnson, CEO of NCI for the past fifteen years and an employee of the organization since 1996. Our strategy is to acquire strong organizations who share a similar customer base. As we grow and diversify, well take our established model for sales, service and distribution and apply it to each newly created business unit. Our latest acquisition is just one more step toward accomplishing our objective of becoming the dominant distributor in our market space. Johnson added the goal of the company is to double the size of each business post-acquisition within five years.NCI completed its acquisition of Kruge Air on August 15th, 2016. In April of this year, NCI also acquired Unique Tool, a tooling company based in Hutchinson, Minnesota. The company has been assisted in its merger and acquisition activities by Twin Cities-based business brokerage Sunbelt Business Advisors. When an organization has such a strong vision for growth, our job becomes much easier, said Chris Jones, Managing Partner for Sunbelt. NCI has the advantage of being an ESOP-managed company, combined with leadership that has a razor-sharp focus on its goals. Sunbelt is exceptionally proud of its relationship with NCI in helping them achieve those objectives.NCI operates under an ESOP, or Employee Stock Ownership Plan. CEO Johnson reports that post-acquisition turnover has been extremely low.NCI Inc. is a major distributor of Microscopes, Cleanroom Accessories, Air Compressors and Tooling. The company supports life science research, hospitals, manufacturing and higher education organizations. NCI is headquartered in Plymouth, Minnesota and has distribution throughout the United States. More information is available at ncimicro.comNCI Inc.3700 Annapolis Lane, Suite 145Plymouth, MN 55447Media Contact:Bonnie Harris, Wax Marketing (For NCI)612-801-0912harris@waxmarketing.com
Establishing a Climate Sensitive International Freight Sector

LONDON - At the recent International Chamber of Shipping conference held in London, its chairman, Esben Poulsson highlighted concerning trends that the shipping and maritime sectors need to be aware of. He recognised there are three major challenges for the industry to tackle: maintaining the authority of IMO; addressing the legitimate demand for even greater levels of environmental protection and making policy makers better aware of the industrys existing achievements. He continued by stating that the current trend of the EU Member States positions to be co-ordinated by the EU and given as one response rather than individual members taking part in the debates is having a negative impact on decision making. This is something the sector needs to be mindful of in order to protect the global maritime regulatory system provided by IMO.In light of this, the shipping industry must be proactive in its response to the increasing demands for environmental performance. As the demand for the worldwide shipment of goods increases, so does the impact to the environment; each year maritime transport emits approximately 1000 million tonnes of CO2 and is responsible for around 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Shipping emissions are predicted to increase between 50% and 250% by 2050  depending on future economic and energy developments. Strong leadership and innovation within the industry is needed in order to meet commitments made to climate goals. The reputation of the shipping industry depends now on its environmental performance.Complete sustainability is impossible to acheive as fuel itself is non-renewable, however once petroleum-based fuel is bought, the efficiency of operations can still be measurably improved and environmental impact reduced. The important thing is to maximize sustainability wherever possible.High quality fuel additives can make a real difference in establishing an environmentally sustainable international freight sector and this shouldnt be deflected by some rogue (snake oil) suppliers.Aderco specialises in the development and production of the latest technological fuel additives of the latest technology. For an engine to operate efficiently it needs to burn fuel completely throughout the entire combustion cycle. Aderco combines the right fuel additives to deliver enhanced combustion, eliminating many of the difficulties associated with incomplete combustion. For instance, additives can be used to homogenise fuel, restore lubricating properties of low sulphur fuels and to protect against clogged filters, sludge and deposit build-up. Vessels can then work at their full efficiency, with reduced fuel consumption and maintenance costs, alongside reduced emissions into the environment.An additional benefit for the maritime and shipping sectors is that as Aderco products have the highest concentration this does result in users having an immediate return on their investment. Because of this unique high concentration the result is a smaller packaging footprint which means that logistic costs are reduced. These savings are further enhanced by Adercos high level of stock available at strategic global locations.Olivier dOlne, General Manager of Aderco Marine, adds: With our fuel treatment competence being second to none, we are committed to satisfying very demanding customers both through innovative solutions and outstanding service. Based on a partnership for progress, it greatly assists that our fuel treatment products more than pay for themselves with the savings they generate.As a company that continuously and progressively looks forward, the fast approaching challenges of biodiesel fuels are already being addressed by Aderco, with solutions showing compelling results for keeping bacterial growth under control without biocide action. Already more than 20 million metric tonnes are treated every year and this is growing as customer numbers increase.The Global Fuel Additives Market 2015-2019 report states that the market is expected to be worth 8.6 Billion USD by 2020.The shipping industry needs these kinds of proactive approaches to improve environmental performance and meet the demands of society. EndsEditors notes:Aderco International, a company involved in the research & development, manufacture and distribution of specialised fuel treatment covering the key maritime, industrial, mining and automotive sectors.Aderco started operations in 1981 when Canadian Paul Crevier identified a molecule with unique properties for improving fuel efficiency and addressing the issues specific to fuel oil-fired operations. Together with the Quebec Industrial Research Centre (CRIQ), the formulation was further optimised and validated into what is today, a highly regarded and trusted brand used across the globe.Adercos initial product iterations successfully overcame the problems of fuel incompatibility, sludge formation, inefficient combustion and deposit formations. Extensive laboratory and field testing ensued, with numerous base cases delivering compelling results.By the turn of the millennium, Aderco had further refined the formula to incorporate the benefits of vegetal organic derivatives. Besides enabling a higher concentration than was possible with solvent-based methods, it also addressed the sustainability dynamic, the result being a product that not only promised a far lower cost per tonne treated but also one that was more environmentally responsible and came with the all-important Non-Hazardous classification. The advantages included convenient 20-litre pails rather than 200-litre drums and no transportation restrictions. The green pails of Aderco 2055G, the latest-generation fuel conditioning formula, are increasingly a common sight on vessels of all types the world over.In 2011, Aderco had already begun applying R&D resources with regard to the growing concern of sulphur emissions, especially in view of impending Emissions Control Area legislation. Aderco L1050 Lubricity Improver  like 2055G a vegetal-organic formulation, 100% ashless and 100% metal-free  was introduced well in advance of the new, stricter SECA (Sulphur Emissions Control Area) regulations that came into force on 1st January 2015, enabling ship owners and ship managers to seamlessly and cost-effectively adapt to the new regime.Specifically developed to compensate for the loss of lubricity due to desulphurisation whilst also protecting vital engine components, L1050 has already established itself as the go-to solution when entering Sulphur Emission Control Areas (ECA). Aderco 2055G and L1050 consistently prove to be the ideal combination for ensuring risk-free fuel switch-over operations.More than 30 years of experience in improving fuel efficiency, performance and sustainability.Aderco International SAGroup HeadquartersChemin du Joran 11260 NyonSWITZERLANDTelephone : +41 22 362 39 04Fax : +41 22 362 39 06Email : adimch@aderco.com
Middle Easts Largest Information Security Training Event SANS Gulf Region 2016 Opens for Registration

SANS senior instructor Dave Shackleford

http://www.sans.org/u/ggU

www.SANS.org

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, 13 September, 2016: SANS returns to Dubai this November for the Gulf Region's largest Information Security training event offering six intensive training courses, five of which have associated GIAC certifications. SANS courses are full of vital and immediately useful techniques that can be put to work as soon as participants return to their offices.The event will take place at the Hilton Dubai Jumeirah Resort from November 5th  17th, with three 6-day courses running in the first week and another three 6-day courses in the second week. Led by a team of world class instructors from the US and Europe, SANS Gulf Region provides the only opportunity to take these intensive, hands-on SANS cyber security courses in the Middle East.Technical skills shortage, particularly in the cyber security arena, is a much discussed topic in Middle East IT industry. As the frequency and sophistication of attacks increases, the ability to mitigate attack will rely more heavily on businesses developing cyber security skillsets within their own organizations, explained Ned Baltagi, Managing Director, Middle East & Africa at SANS. The courses being offered during SANS Gulf Region 2016 will arm attendees with tools essential to the identification of vulnerabilities, mitigation of threats, and rapid remediation in case of security incident.Keeping abreast of current technology trends, SANS will be offering the newly updated course, SEC579: Virtualization and Private Cloud Security, led by senior instructor, Dave Shackleford. The course helps students understand best practices for configuring and designing virtual security controls and infrastructure. It also teaches how vulnerability assessment and forensic processes can be updated to more accurately detect and manage risks in virtual and cloud environments.Another course, SEC504: Hacker Tools, Techniques, Exploits and Incident Handling, provides hands-on experience in finding vulnerabilities and discovering intrusions, whilst also equipping students with a comprehensive incident-handling plan. The course addresses the latest cutting-edge, insidious attack vectors as well as less recent attacks that are still prevalent.Professionals can choose from the following 6 SANS courses:Week 1, November 5th -10thSEC401: Security Essentials Bootcamp StyleSEC504: Hacker Tools, Techniques, Exploits and Incident HandlingSEC579: Virtualization and Private Cloud SecurityWeek 2, November 12th  17thSEC511: Continuous Monitoring and Security OperationsSEC542: Web App Penetration Testing and Ethical HackingSEC560: Network Penetration Testing and Ethical HackingParticipants who register for any course onbefore 28th September, 2016 will receive a US$ 300 discount on training fees.About SANS InstituteThe SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. SANS is the most trusted and, by far . Renowned SANS instructors teach over 50 different courses at more than 200 live cyber security training events as well as online. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, validates employee qualifications via 27 hands-on, technical certifications in information security. The SANS Technology Institute, a regionally accredited independent subsidiary, offers master's degrees in cyber security. SANS offers a myriad of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet's early warning system--the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners, representing varied global organizations from corporations to universities, working together to help the entire information security community. (Procre8Villa 41, 81-d Street, Uptown MirdifP.O. Box 78835, DubaiUnited Arab Emirates
RDH Global Create New Client Account Sector for High Net Worth Clients

http://www.rdhglobal.com

RDH Global have recently announced that they have now created a new client account sector specifically aimed at their high net worth clients.This new account sector has been added to the 3 account sectors that were already operational, namely, retail client, corporate client and institutional client sectors.The introduction of this new sector will allow the company to offer specific opportunities and facilities to certain retail clients that were previously only available to corporate or institutional clients.For some time now we have been working on certain strategies that would allow our high net worth clients a similar exposure to markets that were previously only reserved or accessible to our corporate or institutional client base. Following numerous meetings and discussions with our senior personnel, we are now pleased to be able to offer, on certain occasions, our high net worth clients a wider product range, said Theo Vermeulen, RDH Globals Chief Risk Manager.This extra account sector is being made available in all our office locations and will not affect the other 3 sectors that are already in place. It is merely a niche account facility that will allow certain retail clients direct contact and advice from senior personnel and the possibility of entering trades that we had previously reserved for our corporate and institutional client base, Theo Vermeulen added.RDH Global currently have offices in Brussels, Hong Kong and Dubai to allow them to offer complete client services to Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle-Eastern based clients.We look upon this account sector addition as being confirmation that we place enormous emphasis on our client care. We strive to offer all of our clients the opportunities that they deserve and feel that this addition is just another way of ensuring that all of our clients have access to the opportunities that should be available to them, Vermeulen concluded.We are RDH Global, established by Reuben Rosenthal, Marc Dumont and Samuel Hansen, who with their considerable personal experience in multiple platforms, each covering various classes, afford every client, at every level, the ability to find the right product and solution for their personal goals.RDH GlobalAvenue Louise, 3261050 BrusselsBelgium+32 2 342 0279david-swain@rdhglobal.com
Hypoxemia Market Analysis on Growth, Share, Size, Forecast and Trends by 2021

http://www.marketintelreports.com/report/gdhc3239ctidb/hypoxemia-global-clinical-trials-review-h1-2016

http://www.marketintelreports.com/pdfdownload.php?id=gdhc3239ctidb

http://www.marketintelreports.com/purchase.php?id=gdhc3239ctidb

www.marketintelreports.com

Hypoxemia Global Clinical Trials Review, H1, 2016SummaryMarketIntelReports clinical trial report, Hypoxemia Global Clinical Trials Review, H1, 2016" provides an overview of Hypoxemia clinical trials scenario. This report provides top line data relating to the clinical trials on Hypoxemia.Browse Hypoxemia Global Clinical Trials Review, H1, 2016 Research @Report includes an overview of trial numbers and their average enrollment in top countries conducted across the globe. The report offers coverage of disease clinical trials by region, country (G7 & E7), phase, trial status, end points status and sponsor type. Report also provides prominent drugs for in-progress trials (based on number of ongoing trials). MarketIntelReports Clinical Trial Reports are generated using MarketIntelReports proprietary database - Pharma eTrack Clinical trials database. Clinical trials are collated from 80+ different clinical trial registries, conferences, journals, news etc across the globe. Clinical trials database undergoes periodic update by dynamic process.The report enhances the decision making capabilities and helps to create an effective counter strategies to gain competitive advantage.Scope of the report: The report provides a snapshot of the global clinical trials landscape Report provides top level data related to the clinical trials by Region, Country (G7 & E7), Trial Status, Trial Phase, Sponsor Type and End point status The report reviews top companies involved and enlists all trials (Trial title, Phase, and Status) pertaining to the company The report provides all the unaccomplished trials (Terminated, Suspended and Withdrawn) with reason for un-accomplishment The Report provides enrollment trends for the past five years Report provides latest news for the past three monthsGet Sample Brochure of the Report @This report enables you to: Assists in formulating key business strategies with regards to investment Helps in identifying prominent locations for conducting clinical trials which saves time and cost Provides top level analysis of Global Clinical Trials Market which helps in identifying key business opportunities Supports understanding of trials count and enrollment trends by country in global therapeutics market Aids in interpreting the success rates of clinical trials by providing a comparative scenario of completed and uncompleted (terminated, suspended or withdrawn) trials Facilitates clinical trial assessment of the indication on a global, regional and country levelOrder Hypoxemia Global Clinical Trials Review, H1, 2016 Research @About us:MarketIntelReports (MIR) aim to empower our clients to successfully manage and outperform in their business decisions, we do this by providing Premium Market Intelligence, Strategic Insights and Databases from a range of Global Publishers.A group of industry veterans who are well experienced in reputed international consulting firms after identifying the sourcing needs of MNCs for market intelligence, have together started this business savior MarketIntelReports.Contact us:Sales ManagerMayur S2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400,Wilmington,Delaware,19808United Statessales@marketintelreports.comTelephone: 1-302-261-5343
Chinese miners.JPG

In this June 19, 2009 photo, the rugged Hells Canyon surrounds tour boats as passengers are picked up at Chinese Massacre Cove. In 1887, Chinese miners were attacked and killed at the site. (AP Photo/Lewiston Tribune, Kyle Mills)

(The Associated Press)

If it hadn't been for a book about history, Peter Ludwin might never have written his latest collection of poetry.

Several years ago, the Washington poet was browsing in an Oregon bookstore when he happened upon "Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon," R. Gregory Nokes' 2009 book about a brutal 1887 attack on more than 30 Chinese men mining for gold along the Snake River. The miners were shot to death, then dismembered and thrown into the river. Several white men from Wallowa County were charged with the killings but none was convicted; other suspects fled and the attack was covered up.

"I started reading ("Massacred for Gold") and the further I got into it, the more engaged I became with it," Ludwin said. "By the time I finished reading it, I knew I wanted to write some poems about it."

He visited the attack site, now designated on maps as Chinese Massacre Cove. On one trip, he witnessed a healing ceremony: "They had a bell they had brought upriver from Lewiston (Idaho) and the names of each of the murdered miners would be read out and the bell would toll and they'd burn incense."

He also went to Lewiston, visiting a museum with artifacts from the 19th-century Chinese presence there and the town's Chinese cemetery, above the Snake River.

His resulting poetry collection was published in August as "Gone to Gold Mountain" (Moonpath Press, 104 pages, $15). Some poems are in Ludwin's voice while others are persona poems, written from the perspectives of real and imagined people: slain miners Chea Po and Ah Yow, the wife of a Chinese miner, a Chinese prostitute, fugitive Blue Evans, a Wallowa County clerk who admits to hiding trial records related to the killings. "I kind of like that trade-off and that back-and-forth," Ludwin said.

Ludwin, one of this year's winners in Willamette Writers' Kay Snow Writing Contest, said he hopes readers will take away several things from "Gone to Gold Mountain": knowledge of the attack, heightened awareness of racism and prejudice, and simple enjoyment of the poetry.

Here is a poem from the collection.

***

"Chea Po to Himself at Daybreak"

Breath. My spirit. An exiled crane

the cold displays abandoned by the moon.

Far above, dawn splashes the basaltic rim.

I dream of simple pleasures: a bowl

of steamed noodles in Guangzhou. The click

of many chopsticks when rain gutters the road.

Each day for months now like the last:

this water freezing my hands

as I sift sand and gravel for gold,

the river's thunder

a troubling rumble within the temple.

I who have always known the names

of things - this tree or that stone,

the strange four-legged creature

scampering among the rocks - have become

a straw man. Unable to speak the future.

Breath, you evaporate while I shiver.

Vacate this crabbed husk.

Afraid of the yellow bolt

that comes to steal the living.

Reprinted from "Gone to Gold Mountain" by Peter Ludwin, copyright 2016, with permission of MoonPath Press.
IMG_33351 (1).jpg

A lowcountry-inspired canape: Salmon skin chip with avocado mousse and a West Indies spice blend.

(Courtesy of Evan Sumrell)

Next week, the kitchen at Southeast Portland's former hip-hop pizzeria P.R.E.A.M. will come back to life. But it won't be for a preview of Associated, the indie-rock focused bar taking its place.

Instead, a new Midwestern restaurant group will take over the space with Lola, a pop-up dinner celebrating Lowcountry cuisine, the traditional Afro-Caribbean food of coastal South Carolina and Georgia.

But why are they in Portland? According to Malcolm Simkoff, it's to study the inner workings of ChefStable, the restaurant group behind St. Jack, Ox, Lardo and many other top Portland restaurants, with the intention of opening a similar group in the Midwest.

Simkoff, an Oregon native, says he admires ChefStable owner Kurt Huffman's approach, both in terms of restaurant design and in the group's model, which seeks to partner with chefs on their passion projects. In the Midwest, as in Japan, the idea of Portland has a certain cache.

"I'm interested in harnessing the next wave of hospitality," Simkoff says. "The natural essence of the Pacific Northwest is very alluring, very bohemian. When I tell people I'm from Portland, they're like, 'Oh my gosh.'"

Formerly with the Boka Restaurant Group, now working for Rick Bayless, Simkoff has opened several big-ticket restaurants in the Chicago area, including A-10 Hyde Park. His partners, Joshua Wludyka and Evan Sumrell, have similarly impressive Chicagoland resumes. But they're not looking to return to the Windy City, a market Simkoff calls "saturated."

Instead, they'll focus on Detroit and a handful of not-too-distant college towns -- East Lansing, Ann Arbor, Bloomington, Madison. The new group, tentatively called ChefStable Midwest, will look to find their own chef-partners and projects, rather than importing concepts from Portland. The Lowcountry dinner are a beginning to the partnership. The first ChefStable Midwest project could still be a year or two out.

"What they bring to the table is all the front-of-house and operations," Huffman says. "That's what I need if I'm going to another town. I've got all the accounting, all the HR stuff, but I need on-the ground operations pros who can support chefs with their restaurants."

"This is a working interview."

The pop-up dinner will have two options, one using Oregon produce, the other with ingredients brought from the Midwest. Guests will choose their menu based on a snack brought out before the meal. Dishes will include boiled peanuts, fermented romaine and smoked duck yolks, smoked mussels with thyme cream and stuffed chicken ballotine. Additionally, San Francisco bartender Enoch Cruz (Whitechapel) will pour Latin-American-inspired cocktails alongside a separate, globally focused small bites menu.

Tickets for the Sept. 20 dinner are $70 per person, including gratuity, with seatings nightly at 5 and 7 p.m. For more information or to make a reservation, email sara@chefstablegroup.com. Associated is located at 2131 S.E. 11th Ave.

-- Michael Russell
Oregon State University celebrated the grand opening Tuesday of the first new academic building at its branch campus in Bend.

Tykeson Hall, a 43,650-square-foot academic building, is the first finished structure on the school's 10-acre plot of land in west Bend. Construction on a dormitory and dining hall is ongoing and expected to finish in January.

The ribbon cutting Tuesday is a significant moment in the 30-year effort to bring a university to Central Oregon. OSU-Cascades is the first new, four-year public university in the state since the Oregon Institute of Technology was approved to issue bachelor's degrees fifty years ago.

Central Oregon has long needed a university, according to OSU President Ed Ray.

"This is a tribute to decades of work by countless individuals who early on saw the need, defined the future they wanted to achieve, and helped to make this day, and this university campus, possible," Ray said in a statement. "As important as this campus will be for Central Oregon, OSU-Cascades is an investment that will pay great returns for the entire state of Oregon."

OSU's Bend presence isn't new. The school first partnered with Central Oregon Community College in 2001 on a program allowing students to transfer to OSU after two years to finish bachelor's degrees in Bend. About 3,000 students have obtained bachelor's and master's degrees in Bend since that partnership, according to the school.

But the four-year branch is now open for business, with 18 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The Bend branch offers some niche degrees tailored to the region, including tourism, outdoor leadership and software development. State lawmakers dedicated $16 million in bonds in 2013 to help OSU expand.

The Bend program grew steadily from about 236 students in 2001 to more than 1,157 in 2015. Ray has said he wants to grow enrollment to between 3,000 and 5,000 by 2025.

Ed Ray, the president of Oregon State University since 2003, spoke with The Oregonian Editorial Board on Friday Feb. 12, 2016. Dave Killen / staff

The growth won't come cheap.

In January, OSU bought a 46-acre former pumice mine next to its Cascades campus for $8.1 million.

In April, Ray said that the Legislature should treat OSU-Cascades as the state's eighth university. Future expansion could require $150 million to $250 million in new construction, he said at the time.

The school is asking for $69.5 million in state bonds to build another academic hall in Bend, a student success center, and to prepare the pumice mine for future development.

OSU is also considering a separate, 76-acre plot to expand its footprint. The university is holding long-range planning meetings this fall and hopes to have a draft development plan in hand by early December.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

Clarification: An earlier version of this story implied OIT was founded fifty years ago. The technical institute was founded 69 years ago, but was approved to issue four-year degrees 50 years ago. The story has been clarified.
Students, parents and civil rights organizations, incensed over a "lockout" at Benson High School during a protest last week, are accusing Portland Public Schools of violating students' civil rights and have demanded a public reckoning.

The outcry follows the district's handling of a student protest over the school board's decision to push a $750 million construction bond from the fall ballot to next May. Interim Superintendent Bob McKean ordered Benson on lockout after Lincoln High School students marched to the campus -- triggering a situation where police stood guard outside Benson and signs went up inside saying "no one in or out."

For days, the district has said Benson students were free to join the protest, even though signs said otherwise and district policy during a "lockout," as first reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting, states no one comes into -- or out of -- schools under lockout.

"Initiating a lockout was a significant overreaction and an unnecessary measure by PPS leadership," said a statement signed by Benson and Lincoln student leadership sent to The Oregonian/OregonLive on Sunday night. "The lockout effectively silenced the voices of Benson students during the main portion of the protest."

The scene caused some -- including board member Paul Anthony and activist group Don't Shoot Portland -- to question why students from an affluent school appeared to be free to protest, while a a school serving less-privileged students seemed to be held hostage. Those concerns were echoed Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.

"The First Amendment protects students' rights to protest. I don't think the school gets to pick and choose who gets to speak -- intentionally or unintentionally -- and they need to be held accountable for their actions," Mat dos Santos, the group's legal director, told The Oregonian/OregonLive. "I get sometimes that government agencies make mistakes, but saying that's not what we meant when we took this action is neither an apology to the students who were harmed nor does it fix the problem."

Lincoln is 72.5 percent white, with just 6.6 percent of students listed as economically disadvantaged, according to 2015-16 enrollment data. Benson is 32.3 percent white, with 34.5 percent of students listed as economically disadvantaged.

Portland Public Schools has not responded to the students' demands and did not respond to questions Monday on why it said students were free to leave when signs posted in the school and the district's own policy dictated otherwise.

"I had no idea that this was getting out of hand to this extent," McKean told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Friday, saying his intent was that students would still be able to join the protest. "I fully believe we did the right thing in trying to protect kids here and I fully believe in First Amendment rights."

In the statement from student leaders at Benson and Lincoln, the students demanded a public meeting "with the goal of evaluating district procedure in this situation and subsequently creating new board policy regarding student protest rights."

Additionally, they formally requested "all communications related to this issue internally at [the district], its board members and/or staff, [Portland Public Schools'] Campus Security, Portland Police, and other individuals related to this incident. We request that this information is provided as soon as possible."

Don't Shoot Portland was first to call for a public hearing and release of information in a statement released Friday.

Several parents also submitted requests for the same records following Sunday's statement.

"If [Portland Public Schools] really wanted to take this seriously they would talk about what happened and address the problem and try to correct their course of action," dos Santos said. "By talking about what they intended and what they didn't intend to do, they come off as disingenuous and frankly as making excuses."

-- Bethany Barnes
Portland Public Schools officials took their first public steps Tuesday toward soothing students and activists angered by a district-ordered lockout during a protest at Benson High School.

New interim superintendent Bob McKean promised in a letter to rethink district policy even as he defended his decision last week to block off Benson, where police stood guard out front and signs went up telling students "no one in or out." Student leaders had accused officials of violating their civil rights in a letter Sunday.

And the school board's vice chair, Amy Kohnstamm, confirmed members are talking with school leaders to hold a public meeting to address their concerns.

"I'm looking forward to it," she said. "We want to start a process of doing a much better job of integrating students input into our decision making."

But even though student leaders said they were heartened McKean agreed with their request to review policies after the lockout, they found his reply lackluster all the same.

"Our concern is that our voice was silenced and he didn't put that in his statement," said Lisa Lau, a junior at Benson. "It was a lockout. You were supposed to stay inside and that's what I did. Not a lot of people would go up to administration and ask them 'Am I allowed to go out?'"

McKean ordered the lockout last Wednesday after students from Lincoln High School marched to Benson. They were protesting the school board's sudden decision to push a $750 million construction bond from the fall ballot to May -- a controversial move that saw angered parents and schools advocates pleading with the board for a last-minute change of heart.

The board instead voted 4-3 to cement its decision last week, but only after students threatened to stage a sit-in during their meeting.

McKean's letter went into detail to justify the lockout and ended with, "We plant to use this experience as an opportunity to better prepare our schools to safely support our students and staff in a way that is productive, respectful, and non-discriminatory. A review has already started to determine how to improve our planning, policies, and most importantly, communication during a fluid event like this one."

The word "non-discriminatory" is the only allusion to complaints the lockout set into motion an offensive scene where affluent students appeared free to roam Portland while students at a school serving less-privileged students were held in captive confusion.

Lincoln is 72.5 percent white, with just 6.6 percent of students listed as economically disadvantaged, according to 2015-16 enrollment data. Benson is 32.3 percent white, with 34.5 percent of students listed as economically disadvantaged.

Don't Shoot Portland and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon both spoke out against the district's handling of the protest as did Benson parent and school board member Paul Anthony.

McKean acknowledged the district's intent to allow students to leave was unclear.

"We now know that the message was not delivered to all staff and students throughout the building," McKean wrote. "I want to be clear that the doors at Benson were not locked in a way that prevented students from going outside and, in fact, some students did go outside."

Lau and Lincoln senior Michael Ioffe, the protest's lead organizer, said they felt McKean ignored key points from their letter.

Lau also said McKean's letter didn't note that Ioffe, had arrived at Benson early to coordinate with school personnel and talk about instructions for where students could protest.

"Except for the last bit about having discussion, it sort of disregards everything that we mentioned," Ioffe said. "The district has a massive communications issue, I feel, both internally and externally. The protest became necessary because student voices weren't being heard."

Mat dos Santos, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, said he found the letter to be "pretty disappointing."

"Basically it was simply reiterating the reasoning for the lockout," he said. "By failing to apologize they are not acknowledging that they caused students harm both legally and emotionally."



The letter from student leaders can be read here (PDF). McKean's response can be read here (PDF)



-- Bethany Barnes



bbarnes@oregonian.com
As the haze of the morning rain lifted, figures of pilots could be seen walking to their respective jets as maintainers stood ready to set them in the sky.



The 67th Fighter Squadron sent F-15s to Guam in support of Exercise Valiant Shield Sept. 9.



Exercise Valiant Shield is a joint exercise between U.S. armed forces focusing on maintaining land, air, sea and cyberspace dominance in the Pacific.



This is an important exercise because it shows our ability to relocate, integrate and demonstrate our ability to reach out to any adversary and provide air dominance, said Capt. Angelo Pelligrini, 67th Aircraft Maintenance Unit officer in charge. Our pilots will get valuable training by integrating with the Navy, Marine Corps and other military units.



For the exercise, Kadenas pilots will provide aerial support for joint partners.



They will be flying, fighting and winning by providing un-questioned air superiority, said Pelligrini. They will fly in large force exercises within a joint environment and sharpen their tactics for the defense of our nation and allies.



Pelligrini said this exercise showcases our prowess in generating combat airpower.



Our ability to launch aircraft in support of any mission or tasking is exactly what my job entails, said Master Sgt. Timothy Jordan, 67th AMU production superintendent. I gain a sense of pride and job satisfaction when we come together as a team with a myriad of moving parts and we are able to orchestrate all these complex actions into mission success.



Without the hard work of maintainers, Kadenas participation in large exercises like Valiant Shield would be limited.



It takes an incredible amount of man-hours throughout the maintenance group to get our fleet ready for a deployment, said Jordan. For example, we have to complete all upcoming scheduled maintenance actions in advance, configure each aircraft for its specific mission set, perform preflight inspections, all the while dealing with personnel and limited resources due to being prepositioned at the deployed location. This is just a fraction of what we do to prepare.



All of the preparation ensures peak performance during Valiant Shield.



This launch demonstrates our capability to deploy aircraft in support of Exercise Valiant Shield, said Jordan. It showcases our flexibility and our ability to rapidly deploy combat ready aircraft, pilots, and maintainers while still executing the maintenance mission at home station.
Question: It's harvest time again. Is McLean Countys greatest export to the rest of the planet -- our corn -- a vegetable, grain or fruit?

Answer: If you listen the Illinois Extension Association, its all three. Corn seed is a vegetable because it is harvested for eating. Corn seed is a grain because it is a dry seed of a grass species. And corn seed is a fruit because that is the botanical definition.
BLOOMINGTON  Between the guinea pigs, a chinchilla duo, rabbit, hedgehog, gecko, turtle and tank of sea monkeys, some of the halls at Bloomington Junior High School are starting to resemble Noahs Ark.

Sometimes, school isnt the place all kids want to be. Having pets in the classroom gets them excited about coming to class, said sixth-grade teacher Kelly Rosendahl.

Rosendahls classroom is home to two chinchillas, Moe and Larry, and two guinea pigs, Billie Jean and Pretty Mama.

Its a great way to teach kids about research; what the animals eat, what kind of homes they live in and what they need in their environment, said Rosendahl.

Rosendahl said guinea pigs are ideal classroom pets because of their mild temperament.

They let the kids hold them. If kids are having a hard day, they can sit in a bean bag chair, hold an animal and calm down, she said.

After one lunch period last week, sixth-grader Alex Kimmel explained how she plays with and feeds the guinea pigs before class starts.

Theyll come up to the cage in the morning and look at us, said Alex as she held Pretty Mama to her chest, feeding the guinea pig a handful of carrots. I want to learn more about chinchillas. I know they have floating rib cages.

Sixth-grader Morgan Masters eased Billie Jean out of her cage and began wiping her belly and paws clean with a cloth.

Pretty Mama likes people and food, said Morgan. Billie Jean doesnt really like people.

Even though he has pets at home, Sean Ndorongo said theres something different about having animals in the classroom.

You cant pick up a dog like this, said Sean while playing with the guinea pigs.

The students also helped Rosendahl give Moe and Larry a dust bath. She shook some dusting powder into a plastic tub and the students held it up to the open cage. Both rodents hopped into the tub and began spinning in the dust, coating their fur.

Rosendahl said a high cost can come with classroom pets for such things as food, bedding, items for the cages and cleansing dust for the chinchillas.

Thats one downside: it can get really expensive, said Rosendahl. We do use some of our classroom budget or buy things ourselves.

Rosendahl said her past and present students have hosted fundraisers to collect money for pet adoption fees and supplies.

Jen Swiderski said the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to having a classroom pet. A Holland Lop rabbit named Harley lives in her sixth-grade classroom at BJHS.

There are lots of benefits for students with a traumatic past, said Swiderski. They really form relationships with the animals and it always puts a smile on the kids face.

She utilizes the rabbit during teaching time, especially for science research projects and math problems.

A lot of kids shut down for math, but if I can tie the bunny into a word problem, they want to answer it, said Swiderski.

During summer and winter vacations, students in Rosendahls class have to fill out applications to take the pets home and care for them over break. The applications must include why the student wants to take the pet home, a parents signature and a letter of recommendation.

Swiderski said in order to take the rabbit home, her students must have good grades.

I tell them, If you cant remember to turn in an assignment, how will you remember to feed the rabbit? The kids get really excited about taking care of them, said Swiderski.

Many other schools in the Pantagraph area are using classroom reptiles, rodents, fish and therapy dogs in their teaching curriculum.

For 20 years, Britta Armstrong has kept mice as pets in her kindergarten classroom at Prairieland Elementary School.

This year, the little rodents are Nora and Bianca, named after characters in the book Noisy Nora and the childrens film, The Rescuers.

A lot of them think mice are icky, especially in kindergarten, said Armstrong. By the time the year is over, they think they are cute and will pet them.

Armstrong said she uses the mice to teach students about the needs of living things. The mice are also used as incentive for good behavior.

"We use the mice to talk about how all living things need water, food and shelter," said Armstrong. "Its something fun they will remember.
NORMAL  A piece of Bloomington-Normal history is set to be razed this fall.

After years trying to sell the former Illinois Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's School Administration Building, owner Nicholas Africano plans to demolish the structure at 1100 N. Beech St and give the land to the town of Normal.

It certainly has a great history, and I think everybody involved hoped there was some way to keep that structure intact and adapt it, said City Manager Mark Peterson, who worked with Africano and fellow town staff to market the property. We felt the only option left to us was to have it removed.

ISSCS, which took care of thousands of orphans and wards of the state over more than 114 years, closed in 1979. The campus, which included buildings near Beech and Lincoln streets in Normal, is now a redevelopment district including Mulberry School, The Baby Fold, residences and businesses.

That's the worst of the buildings. Its in very, very poor condition, Peterson said of the administration building. Weve tolerated that building for probably too long. We owe it to the surrounding neighbors to get that blight removed. ... It's a real eyesore."

The town plans to reimburse Africano for the demolition, which Normal's Historic Preservation Commission will discuss 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. If the commission votes against the demolition, Normal City Council can step in; the council is expected to approve an agreement with Africano on Sept. 19.

What we all thought would be the most reasonable thing to do would be to remove the blight that it represents, but more important to me, the health risks and the safety hazards that building represents, Africano said. The town has been very, very helpful."

The cost of the demolition will be made public on Friday, Peterson said.

We believe there is the potential to find someone to develop that site that will generate enough income through the existing tax increment financing district to allow the town to recoup all or most of that investment, he said.

Africano, a renowned local artist, also will develop the infirmary building as a studio under the agreement. Peterson said Africano plans to "restore it in such a way that its going to be flexible for future development.

Africano bought the administration building, infirmary and nine other buildings before a 1991 bankruptcy hearing for One Normal Plaza, which bought the properties in 1983. The nine other buildings have been renovated.

Peterson said after the administration building is knocked down  "within the next 30 to 60 days, he estimated  the campus will be in much better shape, though some areas could still use work.

Those are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, he said. Its a very nice development, and removing this general administration building and fixing up the infirmary will be a real positive move."
LINCOLN  The Logan County Board will consider changes to an existing conditional-use permit for the proposed Sugar Creek One Wind Farm to be located between New Holland and Middletown in Logan County.

Modifications have been made to the existing permit approved in June 2011, and the Logan County Zoning Board of Appeals approved the amendments last week. Those changes must now be approved by the County Board at the Sept. 20 meeting.

In April, American Wind Energy Management Corp sold the project to Apex Clean Energy, a renewable energy developer based in Virginia, but the permit remains valid, said Kyle Barry, an attorney representing the company.

Amendments are needed due to the change in ownership, changes in the wind industry since approval and changes in the plan since fewer turbines will be constructed, he said.

The ZBA approved the new conditions, which included setbacks of 1,225 feet, which is nearly 20 percent more than what is required by current ordinances, said Apex Project Development Manager Stan Komperda,

Construction could start next spring on the $300 million project, which covers more than 16,000 acres in Logan County and should be finished before the end of the year.

The new plans call for 77 turbines to be installed, a decrease of 40 from the original plans.

The planned turbines will be spaced a quarter of a mile apart, stand 492 feet tall and provide enough energy to power up to 80,000 homes, Apex officials said.

During construction, about 200 full-time jobs will be added. After construction, about 12 employees will be needed, Apex officials said.

Komperda said the company intends to be good neighbors and has been prompt in addressing questions, when possible, such as the impact of nearby real estate values.

Peter Poletti, who represents a real estate appraisal firm based in Collinsville, testified before the ZBA about property values.

He said a 2013 study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researched 51,276 home sales near 67 wind farms in 27 counties across nine states. All of the homes were within 10 miles of wind facilities, and the research indicated that even homes within half a mile of a wind turbine are not affected by its presence.

I dont believe this (wind) farm is likely to affect property sales at all, he said.
BLOOMINGTON  A Bloomington man injured when his motorcycle collided with an all-terrain vehicle near Lake Bloomington in March 2012 has reached a $2 million settlement to resolve his lawsuit against the driver of the ATV.

Douglas Peden, 69, filed the lawsuit in McLean County Circuit Court in 2013 against Michael W. Baker, of Towanda. Baker was traveling north on the ATV on McLean County Road 1925 East when he turned west onto P.J. Keller Highway. The ATV was struck in the rear by Peden's motorcycle, according to police reports.

Peden alleged in his lawsuit that Baker failed to place a slow-moving vehicle sign on the ATV that may have been required by state law. Peden claimed he suffered extensive injuries, including head and neck injuries, when he was thrown from his motorcycle.

Baker admitted no liability in the accident, according to the settlement. He was represented by Chicago lawyer William Porter.

Peden's lawyer, Terry Dodds of Bloomington, said proceeds from the settlement will help with medical and living expenses for Peden who is a quadriplegic as a result of the crash.

Peden was issued a citation for disregarding a stop sign.

Still pending is a lawsuit filed against Peden by Larry Stewart, of Lexington, a passenger on the ATV. Tammy Cermak, of Bloomington, a passenger on the motorcycle, also was injured; her lawsuit against Peden has been settled.
SPRINGFIELD  Independent congressional candidate David Gill is asking a federal appeals court to reconsider its decision to temporarily halt a lower courts order that his name should appear on the Nov. 8 ballot in the 13th Congressional District.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order Friday blocking the earlier decision from U.S. District Judge Sue Myerscough until the appeal is settled. She ruled last month that the Illinois State Board of Elections should allow Gill to appear on the ballot even though he didnt gather the required number of signatures on his nominating petitions.

The Illinois attorney generals office, which is representing the elections board, appealed Myerscoughs decision.

After Gill, a Bloomington physician whos previously run for Congress four times as a Democrat, collected only 8,593 of the 10,754 valid signatures he needed to earn a ballot spot, he challenged the requirement in federal court. He argues that its unconstitutional because its out of line with the requirements for major party candidates.

Gills would-be opponents, Republican U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis of Taylorville and Democratic challenger Mark Wicklund of Decatur, each had to collect fewer than 740 signatures.

While Myerscough didnt rule on the merits of Gills argument, she issued her Aug. 25 ruling because she said the candidate showed that he and his supporters would be irreparably harmed if he was left off the ballot. The elections board certified the ballot the next day with Gills name on it.

In its appeal, the attorney generals office argued that the signature requirement is valid because the state has an interest in preventing ballot overcrowding and potential voter confusion. Allowing judges to override signature requirements would sow uncertainty over the whole process, the state argues.

The attorney generals office declined to comment on the appellate courts order.

Gills attorneys are asking the full 7th Circuit to vacate Fridays order and hear the case quickly because the temporary decision could effectively settle the matter before all the facts are heard. Local election authorities are required to have absentee ballots ready to be mailed to military and overseas voters by Sept. 23.

Gill said he was disappointed, but not surprised, by the appellate courts order.

I was very disappointed, particularly for the voters in the district, Gill said. I think that they deserve to have as many options as possible, and weve worked very hard to provide them with an option other than the two major party candidates. I think that most voters have come to recognize that neither of the major parties is looking out for their benefit.

The appellate courts order is further evidence of how the system is rigged against independent candidates, he said.

Meanwhile, the elections board is scheduled to hold a hearing Monday on objections to Gills nominating petitions.

Some of the objections former Macon County Republican Party Chairman Jerry Stocks filed against Gills petitions were put on hold after it was determined that hed failed to collect enough signatures. After Myerscoughs ruling, however, the board decided to allow those matters to proceed.
Rockford Register Star

Illinois residents spoke loudly and clearly when more than half a million of them signed a petition to change the way Illinois draws its political maps.

A majority of the Illinois Supreme Court told them to shut up, further disenfranchising Illinois residents who have a deep distrust of government.

The court, in a 4-3 decision, recently ruled that the Independent Maps Amendment didn't meet constitutional requirements. The majority seems to be setting the bar so high for ballot initiatives that it's almost impossible for a citizen-led effort to succeed.

That seems contrary to the intent of the Illinois Constitution that gave voters the right to seek changes to legislation.

The decision is a victory for politicians  97 percent of whom get re-elected  and a slap in the face to Illinois residents who want more accountability from their elected officials.

Incumbents get to keep their cushy jobs  most don't even get challenged in an election anymore  and voters increasingly will stay home because they feel they can't make a difference. The system is rigged to favor the politicians and ignore the will of the people.

Fairly drawn maps increase competition and improve the democratic process. The current map making process offers only the illusion of democracy. Politicians choose their voters  the opposite of what the electoral process should be. Maps are drawn so that the party in power can have as many like-minded folks within district boundaries as possible.

The system needs to be repaired and Independent Maps organizers may be able to tinker with their proposed amendment enough so that the court OKs it next time.

We hope so. The people deserve to be heard.

The (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan

In 1990, Illinois miners produced 62 million tons of coal. By 2003, that number had been sliced in half. Last year that number was back up to 56 million tons and is expected to rise this year.

The industry had to adapt to regulations in the Clean Air Act. The availability of cheap natural gas depressed demand. And creeping gains by alternative energy sources and environmental concerns played a part.

Illinois employed 10,000 miners in 1990, that number is down to 3,500 now. Yet, the state is producing nearly the same amount of coal with one-third the work force.

Technological advances allow fewer miners to produce more coal more safely than before. What's more, it's seems clear that the future of the industry depends heavily on the ability to adapt.

Industry leaders tell us there are 35 to 50 years of coal reserves left in the region. Given current technology and emerging Asian and African markets, it is reasonable to assume coal will remain a vital part of the southern Illinois economy through that time period.

But no crystal ball is absolutely clear, even coal-fired ones.

The industry needs to remain nimble to remain a viable economic engine for southern Illinois.
SPRINGFIELD  Supporters of a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution that wouldve created an independent commission to redraw legislative districts are mulling their next move after the state Supreme Court dealt their plan a fatal blow.

In a 4-3 party-line decision, the high court has denied a request for a rehearing from the group Independent Maps that blocks a redistricting referendum from the Nov. 8 ballot. As they did late last month in ruling the proposed amendment unconstitutional, the four Democratic justices joined to deny the rehearing, while the three Republican justices dissented.

Illinois voters have been denied their right to vote on a constitutional amendment to remove politics from the way state legislative maps are drawn, Independent Maps Chairman Dennis FitzSimons said Tuesday in a prepared statement.

Meanwhile, Republicans, led by Gov. Bruce Rauner, are vowing to continue pressuring lawmakers to vote on a redistricting amendment when they return to the Capitol after the election.

In the 4-3 ruling, the high court ruled the Independent Maps proposal unconstitutional because it went beyond the scope allowed for a voter-driven initiative.

Proposed constitutional amendments placed on the ballot by petition are limited to making structural and procedural changes to the General Assembly, which currently controls redistricting. But the proposal would have given the state auditor general a role in the process.

FitzSimons said the courts majority ignored debate transcripts from the convention that drafted the 1970 Illinois Constitution. His group argues those records show the drafters believed redistricting was an appropriate subject for a petition-driven amendment.

The court also only ruled on one of seven arguments from opponents of the proposal, FitzSimons said, leaving those questions for another day. 

But that another day may never come, he said, noting the court declined to offer guidance for future proposals.

The future of Independent Maps, which collected more than 500,000 signatures in supporting the plan, is uncertain.

Our coalition remains committed to reform and believes an independent redistricting commission would be one important step in changing state government and making the legislature more responsive to the voters of this state, FitzSimons said. Whether that is possible through a citizen-initiated amendment is now an open question to be discussed by supporters throughout the state.

The Peoples Map, a group of minority business leaders that challenged the proposed amendment, didnt respond to requests for comment. The group was represented in court by Michael Kasper, an election attorney with ties to the state Democratic Party and its chairman, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago.

Rauner and fellow Republicans have argued the courts initial ruling is evidence of entrenched political corruption, and theyve been using it is a campaign issue as they seek to cut into the Democrats super majorities in the House and Senate.

The Illinois Republican Party jumped on Mondays decision as another opportunity to attack Madigan and Democrats over an issue thats popular with voters across the political spectrum.

The court again sided with the political machine against the people of Illinois, state GOP spokesman Steven Yaffe said in a written statement.

Speaking after addressing a law enforcement conference in Decatur on Tuesday, Rauner said he was very disappointed at the court's decision not to grant a rehearing.

Its a tragedy for the people of Illinois, he said. They are not going to be allowed to vote up or down on whether we can have nonpartisan districts so we can have competitive general elections and restore democracy.

The chances of the lawmakers approving a future proposal to take themselves out of the redistricting process appear to be slim. The House and Senate both passed their own plans this spring, but neither idea advanced in the other chamber.
Valmet to Supply Key Technology For Cheng Loong's New Containerboard Machine in Vietnam Sept. 9, 2016 - Valmet announced that it will supply Cheng Loong Binh Duong Paper Company with key process technology for its new BM 1 containerboard machine to be located in the company's Ben Cat mill in Binh Duong Province in Vietnam. Valmet's delivery includes a headbox, forming and press sections, a winder and quality measurement system. The value of the order was not disclosed, but Valmet said the value of an order of this type is typically EUR 15 - 20 million. According to Valmet, Cheng Loong decided to invest in this new recycled containerboard mill and box plant aiming to tap into Vietnam's growing packaging demands. The containerboard market is growing globally, driven by increasing e-commerce and new packaging applications. Valmet has developed a number of excellent solutions to meet the market needs. Energy efficiency, high board quality and very good productivity are among the most important highlights of Cheng Loong's board machine," says Jari Vahapesola, President of Paper Business Line, Valmet. Valmet's delivery for the new containerboard machine will include equipment for approach flow system, a new OptiFlo Fourdrinier headbox to ensure higher productivity, OptiFormer Hybrid forming section with blade technology and a center-roll based OptiPress press section with modern shoe press technology for high dryness to improve energy efficiency. Forming section is equipped with a VacuMaster high-vacuum suction box to significantly improve dryness, thus, energy efficiency. OptiWin Drum two-drum base winder has a high capacity to meet the production needs of BM 1 and it is also easy to operate. The delivery will also include Valmet IQ quality measurement system (QCS) to optimize production process and to maximize production. The 6,250 mm wide (wire) BM 1 will produce recycled fluting with a basis weight range of 90 - 180 g/m2 at maximum speed of 1,000 m/min. The annual production of BM 1 is 260,000 tonnes. Start-up of the new machine is scheduled for the beginning of 2018. Cheng Loong Binh Duong Paper Company is part of Cheng Loong Corporation, which was established in 1959. The company has four paper mills, seven box plants and a business form plant. It has also established manufacturing and sales sites in China, Vietnam, Japan, and the United States. Its annual production capacity is 2.12 million metric tonnes in paper and paperboard and nearly 2 billion square meters in converting products. Valmet is a leading global developer and supplier of services and technologies for the pulp, paper and energy industries. To learn more, please visit: www.valmet.com SOURCE: Valmet
They say time can heal all wounds but when one's left with a hanging case that altered a life's course, there's no peace of mind possible until answers creep in. After 20 years, the FBI decided to renew search for any traces of a California Polytechnic State University student who had gone missing on May 25, 1996.

In 1996, Kristin Smart was a freshman at California Polytechnic University (Cal Poly). It was the start of that year's Memorial day celebrations and like any other student, Smart went out to party.

According to People, Smart called her parents on May 24, 1996 and informed them she was going to party with friends. After a night of partying, she was too intoxicated to go back to her dorm alone as to why her friends, Cheryl Anderson and Paul Flores volunteered to walk her back. Anderson went home first and Flores was the last person seen with Smart.

The following day, Smart's friend contacted campus police when the Cal Poly freshman did not show up for lunch. Even then, the police only began investigation on Tuesday when classes had already started.

Accusations were hurled against Flores and he was questioned by authorities. Still, he was never indicted with any charges because no concrete evidence had been established against him.

Twenty years after and the Kristin Smart case was breathed new life into when the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office and FBI began excavating last Wednesday an area of the Cal Poly campus. They searched through three sites and found 'items of interest' on the location closest to Smart's dormitory, via NBC News.

Th search was timed to avoid students who will be back in school on Sept. 22. Police are still unsure where the recovered items may lead them, but they are hopeful that in the end, they will find "Kristin or evidence of Kristin."

As per The Washington Post, 25 FBI agents and around 15 members of the sheriff's office would search through 20,000 cubic feet of Cal Poly's campus hillside area. The excavation was instigated by a development of a lead that Smart's remains may be buried near or at the said sites.

This is not the first time that investigators have searched for remains or clues of Kristin Smart. As early as June 29-30, 1996, 400 people had volunteered for a massive campus search. Trained dogs were sent to different sites to smell the scent of Smart's remains.

From that time to 2007, authorities have already conducted searches at Paul Flores' dormitory, Flores' parents home in Arroyo Grande, a Huasna area, and Cal Poly's Student Academic Services Building. All searches led to no evidence of Smart that may have moved the case forward.

Although Kristin Smart was already pronounced dead in 2002, her family has remained hopeful for answers. They are constantly praying that a person of interest may emerge as responsible for their daughter's disappearance.

It has already been 20 years and the Kristin Smart case remains unsolved. What do you think are the investigators doing wrong? Sound off your thoughts in the comments section and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.


A recent casting call on "General Hospital" has sparked rumors that Jeff Webber, Liz's father, is coming back to Port Charles. Meanwhile, Jesica Ahlberg is set to appear again on the daytime soap.

"General Hospital" has released a casting call for a male in his late 50s to early 60s, according to Soaps.com. The recurring role wants a Caucasian, handsome, dynamic and charismatic man. There was no name revealed in the casting call for the character. However, based on the descriptions, many speculate that it is a recast for Jeff Webber, a role that was formerly played by Richard Dean Anderson from 1976 to 1981.

Having a new Jeff Webber would fit in the current storyline about Hayden Barns (Rebecca Budig) being Liz's (Rebecca Herbst) sister. Spoilers courtesy of Celebrity Dirty Laundry said that even though Naomi Dreyfus (Robin Riker) asked Franco (Roger Howarth) not to tell Liz the truth about Hayden being her sister, Franco wouldn't listen. Naomi said it would surely be a devastating news for Liz knowing that his father cheated on her mother. However, before Franco could tell Liz the secret, Liz went into code blue.

The secret would eventually be revealed to Liz, and Jeff would better be there to answer all her questions. Who knows there might be other secrets that will emerge? Plus, Jeff Webber would want to stay in town to get to know the daughter he wasn't aware exists for over 30 years.

When Soap Opera Digest asked co-head writers Shelly Altman and Jean Passanante about the possibility of having the character back to Port Charles now that it has been revealed that Jeff is Hayden's father, they only said, "That would be great, wouldn't it?" via We Love Soaps.

Meanwhile, Jesica Ahlberg is heading back to Port Charles and will appear again as Darby Collette. CDL spoilers tease that she will bring some trouble for Kiki and Morgan. Fans can expect to see her on the canvass on Tuesday, Sept. 13.

"General Hospital" airs Mondays to Fridays at 2:30 p.m. on ABC.
While "Homeland" Season 6 is expectedly taking place in New York, as producers have revealed early on, there's still some plots in the upcoming season that will happen overseas. Recent casting calls hint of more character additions and it looks the cast and crew will fly to Morocco in October for additional location shoots.

The Israel Hayom reports that "Homeland" casting call were made recently, where at least seven roles have been filled. These actors will be playing minor parts in "Homeland" Season 6, such as Mossad agents and technicians, but some actors are also going to play Palestinian or Iranian natives.

The actors who have been picked were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, hence not much else is known about their participation in "Homeland" Season 6. Additionally, the news report cites that filming will begin in Morocco from Oct. 14 to 21, which could suggest that "Homeland" will soon be moving from New York to outside the country in the later episodes.

Meanwhile, Variety reports that Dominic Fumusa ("Nurse Jackie") is going to be part of "Homeland" Season 6 in a recurring role as Agent Ray Conlin. It is unclear if the actor will be in the overseas filming location or if the character is Agent Quinn's replacement. Fumusa joins other guest recurring actors in "Homeland" Season 6, such Robert Knepper (as General McClendon) and Elizabeth Marvel (as the president).

"Homeland" Season 6 will see Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) inactive with the CIA. Instead, the character will be working with a foundation that helps Muslims in America. According to Deadline, "Homeland" Season 6 is supposed to begin on Election Day until the new president's inauguration, thus tackling the transition of power between two governments. Viewers are to expect more tension-filled story development in "Homeland" Season 6.

The show also stars Mandi Pantikin and Rupert Friend, who have been part of the show from the early seasons. "Homeland" Season 6 is going to premiere on Jan. 15, 2017 on Showtime.
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar's marriage is plagued with divorce drama. Reports have it that the "19 Kids and Counting" patriarch and matriarch are no longer happy with their marriage but remain together for the money.

For those following the Duggars, you would probably agree that the family's Christian and conservative values keep them as a whole. Splits and divorces are unlikely to happen in the Duggars but some sources claim that Jim Bob and Michelle are on the verge of breaking up.

According to Celeb Dirty Laundry, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar's divorce might happen before the year ends. The family was put into a bad light after Josh Duggar's molestation scandal went public.

The family's reputation was questioned, their credibility dropped and they lost their long-time reality show "19 Kids and Counting." The said reality show earned the Duggars tons of money and a number of sponsors but Josh Duggar ruined it all.

According to the report, when TLC canceled their show, the family lost millions of dollars in advertisement revenue and endorsement deals. They were able to return in "Jill & Jessa: Counting On" but reports have it that their exposure might be short-lived. The spinoff did not compare to the success of the family's first reality show.

Parent Herald previously reported that TLC sponsors continue to abandon the Duggars. A number of companies backed out upon learning that their ads are run during "Jill & Jessa: Counting On." So, most likely TLC might give up on the Duggars soon.

Per CDL, Jim Bob and Michelle beg their fans for financial donations to support their huge family. The family is hoping that Jessa's pregnancy and Jill's engagement and wedding will keep fans interested in following them.

GameNGuide added that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are no longer happy with their marriage but only stays together for the money. Of course, the family has been showing their dedication to keeping a whole family together and a divorce will just worsen their reputation.

However, reports have it that Michelle and Jim Bob are earning less than they do when they still have "19 Kids and Counting" and it might not take long for the two to call it quits. The pressure would be too much for the parents to raise their huge family without the million dollar paycheck they used to receive monthly and they might just part ways.

Do you believe that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are divorcing? Do you agree that the family is having issues financially? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Due to Kate Middleton's undeniable popularity, the Duchess of Cambridge has become a constant target of controversies and rumors. As a matter of fact, Duchess Kate is currently accused of feeling jealous and threatened over the rising popularity of the Swedish royal family, particularly of Princess Sofia, Prince Carl Philip and their heir Prince Alexander.

It has also been rumored that Kate Middleton's husband, Prince William, is also worried on the growing popularity of the Swedish royals, who are adored by many royal fans due to their natural charm and charisma that other royals did not possess. Celeb Dirty Laundry even hinted that Duchess Kate is jealous because Swedish royal couple Princess Sofia and Prince Carl Philip always share a "loving gaze" while the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are often photographed as "stiff" or distant with each other.

The celebrity gossip site also noted the difference between British royal couple Kate Middleton and Prince William and Swedish royal couple Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia. While the Brits are always criticized for their lazy, distant and awkward ways, the Swedes are admired for their easygoing, approachable and modern stylishness. With that said, do you think Kate Middleton and Prince William are losing their charm to attract attention from their royal subjects?

In other Celeb Dirty Laundry report, Queen Elizabeth II is reportedly warning Kate Middleton against any wardrobe malfunctions on her upcoming royal tour in Canada later this month. Since the British royal matriarch is worried over Prince William and Duchess Kate's state of affairs, she reportedly summoned the royal couple to her Balmoral estate.

In fact, Queen Elizabeth even drove Kate Middleton around her Scotland estate. Aside from the Duchess Prince William, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, the Queen also welcomed Kate's parents, Carole and Michael, who joined the royal family on their annual Balmoral trip, Vanity Fair revealed.

Speaking of the British royals' Canada tour, the Buckingham Palace said in a briefing on Monday that Prince William and Princess Kate are looking forward to introduce their children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, to the Canadians as they embark on their an eight-day visit on Sept. 24. According to People, the family is set to visit Victoria, British Columbia, Vancouver, Bella Bella, the Great Bear Rainforest and Yukon.

In addition, the royal family will also be staying at the Government House. Even though the upcoming Canada tour is not a first for Prince George, who joined parents Kate Middleton and Prince William during the 2014 royal tour in New Zealand and Australia, the royal visit is a first for his sister, Princess Charlotte.

Do you think Kate Middleton and Prince William are threatened over Swedish royal's growing popularity? Sound off below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
One person in the United States commits suicide every 12 minutes, which makes suicide awareness and prevention highly important as these gestures can possibly save a life. September is known as the National Suicide Awareness and Prevention Month and mental health care providers urge individuals to seek help if they are on the verge of taking their lives.

People struggling with hopelessness and depression may easily contemplate on taking their lives. At the brink of an eye, a person with suicidal thoughts wouldn't think twice when it comes to committing suicide. The number of suicide rate in the United States continually increase.

The surging numbers of suicide rates highly affect teenagers and adolescents which raises concerns for mental health experts. ABC News Center then mentioned that only one in every depressed suicidal individual gets the medical attention he or she needs. The low number of medical assistance among these patients plays an important factor on the increasing numbers of suicide rates.

"It's the second leading cause of death for adolescents and young adults nationwide," Leigh Gillespie, a psychiatric nurse told ABC.

Erika Flake, a psychiatric nurse practitioner also told ABC that adolescents are being placed on high risk as they'd find it hard to cope with whatever struggles life would throw. Adolescents and teenagers are often overwhelmed with emotions and daily stress, thus they are more prone to anxious and suicidal thoughts.

"Adolescents are more at risk because as we get older we develop those coping skills," Flake stated.

Parents should be keen when it comes to their child's sudden change of behavior. Dr. Jagadeesh Reddy a psychiatrist gave out a few red flags when it comes to suicidal signs. It was then added that suicidal individuals should understand that their struggles are nothing to be ashamed of and it's perfectly fine to ask for help.

"So some of the early signs we see is they are kind of isolating themselves from friends and family, that kind of gives you a red flag," Dr Reddy told WNDU. "You know they are withdrawn, there are big changes in the appetite, sometimes they lose a drastic amount of weight or gain drastically. Tiredness, fatigue for no reason and sometimes hopelessness."
This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions
Podcast

About 75% of military recruits arrive at a training base with no bank account and have to be bussed to a local bank to open one, says Jill Castilla, CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond. The bank's team is building a platform that will help service members save and build credit.
Stealth Sectarianism

09/13/16

By Sanam Naraghi Anderlini (source: LobeLog)



Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhabs mosque at Diriyah



Not a week goes by without Saudi Arabia and Iran ratcheting up their war of words. In the latest round of colorful insults, the Iranian leader called Saudi leaders puny satans incapable of managing Hajj while the Saudis retorted that Iranians are not real Muslims but, rather, Zoroastrians or sons of Magi (no mention was made of Iranian women). These exchanges support the conventional wisdom that Sunni-Shia sectarianism-with Saudi Arabia the leader of the Sunni world and Iran the Shia-is the greatest global threat to Muslims and the societies in which they live.

Certainly, the threat of sectarianism is growing. But the Shia-Sunni division is not the most urgent problem. Indeed it is convenient straw man that has detracted attention from the spread of extremely strict and intolerant Wahhabi and Salafi sectarian ideology from the fringes of the Sunni world into the mainstream. This sectarianism by stealth has been expanding globally over the past 30 years.

The roots and support branches of these sects are in Saudi Arabia (and more recently other Gulf States). The ideologies and practices have inspired and given rise to the militant movements such as al-Qaeda. al-Shabaab, and the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) that have sown fear into societies from Belgium to Bali. It has pitted not only Muslims against each other-turning the Shia-Sunni issue into a self-fulfilling prophecy-but also Muslims against Christians and others in every society in which they have historically co-existed peacefully.

This is not to deny the Iran-Saudi rivalry, or the involvement of Iran in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. But Iran and Saudi Arabia are not playing the same game by the same rules. Iran has not and would not foment social sectarianism for a very simple reason: the numbers dont add up.

The Limited Influence of Shiism

First, Shias make up just 10-13% of the entire Muslim population of the world. The remaining 87-90% are Sunnis. In other words, of the 1.57 Billion Muslims worldwide, some 204 million are Shias. The vast majority live in just four countries: Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and India. In the Arab world, just Iraq and Bahrain have majority Shia populations with Kuwait, Yemen, and Lebanon having sizeable minorities. Iran, a non-Arab state, has the largest with 77.5 million.

Besides, the notion of Shiism itself is not a homogenous unifying identity. There are multiple branches and ideologies under the broad Shia umbrella, including Ismailis, Zaidis and Twelvers. In principle they are united in believing that Ali was the designated successor to the Prophet Mohammad, but they have different doctrines and competing views. Over the past decades, Iran has not sought to unify or control these branches. Nor is it likely that any would accept such control.

If both Iran and Saudi were engaged in a similar Shia-Sunni competition, there would be evidence of Irans success in converting millions of people from Sunnism to Shiism. But just as most Protestants are unlikely to convert to Catholicism or vice versa, the same holds true among Muslims. The ratio has not altered over the years. There is no doubt that the Iranian revolution inspired Muslims in other countries-notably Nigeria and Indonesia-but there were no systematic efforts to convert people.

Irans involvement in its neighborhood and beyond is a classic example of a state-oriented hard-security approach to geopolitics. It is seeking to protect its own borders, while exerting influence abroad. It does so by forging security, political, and economic alliances with states and political parties alike. Even with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Lebanese Shias first rejected Irans overtures, and only sought its support it after the Israeli invasion of 1982. Irans alliance with Syrias Assad is far less about a shared Shia ideology or affinity per se (the Syrian regime is secular) and more about self-protection and paying back past favors (Syria was among the few countries in the world to assist Iran during the bloody eight-year war with Iraq).

Moreover Iran is ethnically, culturally, and linguistically different from its Arab neighbors. Despite ancient affinities, mutual animosity has defined much of their recent history. Evidence of the Arab-Persian division overriding Shia unity is plain to see. During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, for example, 60 percent of the Iraqi army was Shia. But they did not desert or ally with Shia Iran. They were Iraqis and Arabs first. Similarly in Bahrain, the majority Shia population has protested against a repressive regime in their own land, not in favor of affiliating with Iran across the Persian Gulf. Claiming that Bahraini protesters or, for that matter, Houthi rebels in Yemen are Iranian puppets or proxies is a convenient means for the Bahraini and Saudi regimes to justify their repression.

This is not to exonerate Irans support for Assad in Syria and militias in Iraq or its involvement with pockets of Shia populations in countries beyond its own borders. But it is important to avoid the trap of assuming equal capacity for influence between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The Spread of Wahhabism

The Saudis, have played a longer game, with deeper pockets and a more potent mix of hard- and soft-power strategies. In 1980, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia was a prime source of money and weapons for the mujahideen fighting the occupation. The framing of the struggle as a jihad for Muslims made Afghanistan of the 1980s for Sunni Muslims worldwide what the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s was to liberals and progressives in the West.

But alongside the military support, they also deployed their soft power in the region, particularly in Pakistan: funding and introducing madrassahs and mosques, training or sending Imams, and preaching their ideology. These developments helped influence Pakistans Zia-ul-Haq to change the trajectory of his country. Pakistan was founded as a moderate Muslim state, but the diverse religions, cultures, and Islamic sects coexisted peacefully. The shift that ul-Haq made under the influence of Saudi Wahhabism has, over the years, turned Pakistan into a country that invokes blasphemy laws against minorities and where impunity and violence against Christians and various Muslim sects is a fact of daily life.

The soft-power model has been expanded far and wide. From Indonesia to England, Wahhabis (and now Salafis) have funded schools and mosques, and beamed satellite TV across the world promulgating their beliefs. They have successfully overtaken moderate versions of the Sunnism practiced across the world for generations. In Sri Lanka for example, the impact of Wahhabi money and ideology became evident in 2006 when extremists attacked historic Sufi communities and set fire to 117 homes.

Wahhabi evangelists believe that they, the protectors of Mecca and Medina, are the true purveyors of real Islam. This message has resonated with local political institutions and organizations across Asia and the Middle East as they are drawn to this framing of their true religion to counter colonial legacies and so-called Western values and norms. It has, among other things, prompted a backlash against womens rights, which have become synonymous with Western values, despite their own indigenous roots and histories of womens active presence in public and political spaces.

The impact is evident not only in the teachings in mosques but also legislative changes and social practices. In 2009, for example, Malaysias Islamic Council issued a fatwa claiming that female circumcision (aka female genital mutilation) was a religious obligation. In Indonesia too, tetesan as it is known locally has been a contentious issue pitting moderate Muslim scholars and the state against the surge of Wahabbi and Salafi teachings, which claim the mantle of pure Islam. Writing in 2012, Matthias Hariyadi notes the [Muslim} Faction that supports tetesan is linked to the Salafi and Wahhabi community, which...are concentrated in Bandung and Aceh. A 2012 study in Malaysia revealed that 60-90% of girls have undergone the procedure. Similarly a Population Council study of six Indonesian provinces indicated that between 86% and 100% of teenage girls had undergone the procedure.

Wahhabis have also been strategic in adapting their messaging and tapping into local grievances, particularly among non-Arabic speaking societies. By using the grassroots as an entry point, they have infiltrated the psychosocial and cultural fabric of Muslim communities. As a result people are changing indigenous practices theyve come to believe are inauthentic in favor of norms of Islam that Wahhabis and Salafis preach are true religious duties. The sects takeover of Sunni communities is also becoming self-perpetuating, as people either seek to demonstrate their piety or social status by dressing and behaving in accordance with Wahhabi teachings.

Inundating India

Money plays its part too. Writing for OneIndia.com in 2015, Vikki Nanjappa reports that some 25,000 Wahhabis entered India between 2011-2013, bringing with them an estimated $250 million to spend on spreading their word and influence. They are also establishing four Wahhabi universities to cater to the sects teachings. Local mosques are fighting the new arrivals, but the Wahhabis have gained ground in Kerala and elsewhere. Their restrictive messages reflected in their rulebook are a stark contrast to the moderate ways of Indian Muslims. Among the rules introduced:

Shrines shall be forbidden

Every Muslim woman should wear purdah or be subject to severe punishment

Men have to compulsorily grow beards

Women should not be allowed to work. Exception can be made only if the family is in need.

Men and women should not mingle together in public.

No weeping loudly at funerals.

Abide by the Sharia law; every offense committed shall be punishable under this law.

All men should wear trousers, which are above their ankles.

No laughing loudly or listening to music; no dancing or watching television.

True, these developments are not part of the official government policies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or other states. Indeed these governments are fighting the same phenomenon. But whether the export of this ideology is state-sanctioned or not may be irrelevant now. The Wahhabism historically practiced by a small minority at the margins is now flooding mainstream Sunni communities. Precisely because they preach strict rules, Wahhabis are intolerant of diversity, especially among minority Muslim sects. This in turn is fomenting a self-fulfilling prophecy of Shia-Sunni sectarianism with attacks on Shias increasing globally. As Shias are attacked and threatened, they are reacting by mobilizing, forming militias or retaliating, and some are seeking support from Iran.

Violence between Shias and Sunnis may continue to escalate, but the capacity of Shias will remain circumscribed by virtue of their numbers. Meanwhile the Wahhabis potential for sectarianism by stealth still has significant capacity for penetration deeper into Muslim communities. As they spread, their intolerance of other religions and practices may become normalized, erasing the peaceful co-existence of centuries. As the plans for universities in India indicate, they have a long-term vision.

At a time in human history when societies are characterized by growing pluralism-ranging from religion and ethnicity to gender and sexuality-acceptance of and respect for diversity is critical and essential. The spreading Wahhabism is an anathema to this. This sectarianism by stealth demands urgent attention.





About the author:

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini is co-founder and executive director of the International Civil Society Action Network focusing on supporting womens participation in the promotion of peace, rights and pluralism in countries affected by extremism, war and closed political space. She has 20 years experience as a peace strategist working with NGOs, the UN, and governments on conflicts worldwide. She was the 2016 Greeley Peace Scholar at UMass Lowell and the 2014 UNA Perdita Huston Awardee for Human Rights.


Isfahan Music Museum: "Captivating, Wonderful"

09/13/16

Source: Tehran Times

Isfahan Music Museum features roughly 300 traditional musical instruments, those that are currently being played or used to be practiced across Iran. The private museum, named after the central Iranian city, has been divided into two main sections dedicated to the national and regional musical instruments.



Isfahan Music Museum



Visitors to the museum can audition live performances of traditional and classical Iranian pieces or join workshops on how such time-honored instruments are being crafted.

It also offers brief information about maestros, composers and musicians who are made contributes to enrich the music scene of the country in the course of history.

Isfahan Music Museum opened its doors to the public in 2015 under the auspices of the Cultural Heritage, Handcrafts and Tourism Organization.

Here is a select of comments that visitors to the museum have posted to TripAdvisor, one of the most popular travel websites in the world:

"Don't even think of not visiting"

I'm not particularly interested in music instruments, but my guide insisted I should visit. I followed his advice and would have been an idiot not to do so. I ended up spending almost 2 hours visiting and being enthused by the stories told by the private museum guide whilst both admiring and listening to wonderful instruments. A very unique place to visit when you are in Isfahan! (FrenchTraveler001 from Paris, visited August 2016)

"Captivating"

An absolutely beautiful experience with nice guides who gave a detailed explanation about each musical instrument, and even though I don't play music the visit was extremely fun and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Isfahan. The highlight of the visit was the mini concert played at the end of the tour. (Lemoclemo from Kuwait, visited August 2016)

"A music museum that's alive"

I have visited many music museums but this has many added extras. Firstly the collection itself. It is very comprehensive and has several key historic instruments, even recognized by UNESCO. Secondly, the staff are skilled performers themselves and speak informatively and enthusiastically... (Cmeikle245 from Yorkshire, United Kingdom, visited August 2016)

"Wonderful"

Music museums are everywhere, but Isfahan Music Museum is one of the most interactive and unforgettable ones I have visited. Almost all displayed musical instruments are touchable and playable by visitors accompanied by friendly staff who give clear explanation on the instruments' backgrounds and uses all the way... (Dleung2016 from Hong Kong, visited July 2016)





Take a virtual tour of the museum


Five-Year Prison Sentence for Dual National Woman Casts Shadow Over Iran's Opening to World

09/13/16

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffes Sentence Announced Two Weeks Before Rouhani Comes to NY





PETITION by Richard Ratcliffe: Free Nazanin Ratcliffe

808,452 supporters as of 9/13/2016



The five-year prison sentence for Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, a dual citizen of Iran and the UK who has been inside Iranian prisons for the past five months, lacks any legal justification, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said in a statement today. The Campaign asked the Iranian government to immediately release Ms. Zaghari, as well as the other dual citizens imprisoned in similarly politicized cases.

According to a statement released on Friday, September 9, by Nazanin Zagharis husband, Richard Ratcliffe, the five-year prison sentenced was issued by Judge Abolqasem Salavati in the presence of Ms. Zaghari and her lawyer. Mr. Ratcliffe added the charges that led to this sentence are unknown to Ms. Zagharis family. The family has appealed the decision, but no dates have been set for the appeals court.

The five-year prison sentence against Ms. Zaghari, has been issued without even a pretense of a fair judicial process, said Hadi Ghaemi, the Campaigns executive director.

Her prosecution shows that people are imprisoned in Iran not on the basis of the rule of law but rather the whim of hardline officials with political motives-which in this case are to intimidate dual nationals and undermine the opening up of the country, Ghaemi added.

Zaghari was sentenced by Judge Salavati, a judge whose harsh sentences in politicized cases are notorious. His sentencing pattern shows he has routinely followed recommendations from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Intelligence Organization.

In interviews with the Campaign, several lawyers have criticized Judge Salavati for ignoring arguments by the defense in court and bowing to the demands of the prosecution, especially in cases in which the arresting authority was the Guards Intelligence Organization.

Judge Salavati has presided over many cases against dual nationals, including Amir Hekmati, Reza Abedini, and Jason Rezaian, who were released in January 2016 in a prisoner swap with the US. He is also the presiding judge in current cases against Iranian-Canadian scholar Homa Hoodfar, and Iranian-American business consultant Siamak Namazi and his father Bagher Namazi. In all these cases, the victims have been held without due process and under unclear or unannounced charges, and denied full and proper legal representation.

A sentence with secret charges still seems crazy. Literally it is a punishment without a crime, her husband Richard Ratcliffe said in the familys statement.

On Friday September 9, Nazanin was allowed to call her husband. When asked what her charges were, she asked the Guard next to her by the phone who clarified that they were national security charges.

Over the phone, Nazanin said: Five years is ridiculous. For what? We will appeal. But I dont know how long it will take, how long it will last. Months? They said that sometimes you can settle cases on appeal through payment - but not often cases like mine. So I dont know how long it will go on taking.

Richard Ratcliffe said: It remains extraordinary that Nazanins interrogators clarify the sentence but not the crime. Because there is none.

Zagharis employer in London, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, issued a statement condemning the five-year prison sentence:

Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe was detained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard while on holiday visiting her parents in Tehran with her young daughter and has been in prison since early April. She has now been charged and will stand trial in the Revolutionary Court under Judge Salavati. The charges are unknown, but appear to relate to the completely unfounded allegation that Nazanin has plotted the soft overthrow of the Iranian regime. The nature of any alleged confession has not been disclosed and would have been obtained while Nazanin was held under interrogation in solitary confinement for 45 days, said the Monique Villa, the foundation CEO.

Zaghari was detained at Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport on her way back home to the UK on April 3, 2016. She is currently being held in Evin Prison in a ward controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards after being transferred from Kerman Prison in southeastern Iran on June 6.

In a statement on June 15, the Revolutionary Guards Sarallah division in Kerman Province accused Zaghari of being top operative in a foreign network who was participating in a plot for the soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

Zaghari was sentenced one day after the UK reopened its embassy in Tehran and the two countries exchanged ambassadors after five years.

A source from the UK Foreign Office told Reuters on June 15 that the British government was urgently seeking information from the Iranian authorities and had raised this case repeatedly and at the highest levels and will continue to do so at every available opportunity.
Iran's President Rouhani to pay visits to Caracas, Havana and New York

09/13/16

Source: Press TV

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will pay visits to Caracas, Havana and New York, his deputy chief of staff for communications and information, Parviz Esmaeili, says.



Will there finally be be a handshake between Presidents Rouhani and Obama?



He said on Monday that the Iranian president will leave Tehran for Venezuela on Friday to deliver a speech at the 17th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, slated to be held in the island of Margarita on September 13-18, and hand over the body's presidency to his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro.

He added that Rouhani will also hold talks with senior officials of some countries attending the NAM summit and said members of the Iranian delegation will also participate in expert meetings.

Esmaeili said the Iranian president would then set off for Havana to hold talks with senior Cuban officials, including revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

He noted that senior officials of Iran and Cuba are expected to sign several documents for cooperation.

"At the final stage of the trip, Rouhani will travel to New York for a two-day visit and deliver a speech at the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly," Esmaeili said.

Rouhani plans to meet world political and religious leaders, political and economic elites and speak to media in New York.

The 71st session of the UN General Assembly will open on September 13 while the annual general debate with the theme of "The Sustainable Development Goals: a universal push to transform our world" will be held on September 20.

Zarif's visit to Venezuela

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will also head to the Venezuelan island of Margarita on Tuesday at the head of a delegation to attend the 17th NAM meeting.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Ministers Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht-e-Ravanchi will accompany Zarif in his Venezuelan visit.

It is expected that foreign ministers of the 120-member NAM hold a meeting on September 15 and 16.
At least 151 people have been killed and 82 others injured in a deadly stampede in Seoul's Itaewon district as huge crowds of partygoers, many in their late teens and 20s, converge...
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
The modern world has a messaging problem: There are just too darn many apps and almost no one can get away with using just one. In many ways, were right back where we were in the late 90s and early aughts before apps like Adium and Digsby consolidated AOL, Google Talk, MSN, and Yahoo into one window.

Making matters worse this time around, many of todays chat apps arent third-party friendly. Even if a chat platform doesnt like third parties, many do have web apps, and thats where a useful new Chrome app called All-in-One Messenger comes in.

This Chrome app brings all those different messaging services into one place on your desktop with a tab for each. Its not like the days of old where all your messaging contacts were in one list regardless of platform, but it still works. Since this is a Chrome web app it can also be pinned to your taskbar or launched from the Start menu independent of the Chrome browser.

All-in-One Messengers settings tab.

To get started, download and install All-in-One Messenger from the Chrome Web Store.

Once the app is ready to go, click on any of the messaging services you want to use and sign-in to each platforms web app. You can always get back to the list of messaging services by clicking on the settings cog in the upper-left corner.

After youve signed in to a few services, youll see that each one has its own tab that you can switch among at the top of the window. You may also have to dip into the settings of each web app you use to enable desktop notifications.

Know, however, that since Chrome isnt fully integrated with Windows 10 your desktop notifications wont appear in Action Center. The All-in-One Messenger window also lacks a taskbar badge to let you know when new conversations are waiting for you.

At this writing All-in-One Messenger supported more than 30 chat services such as Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, HipChat, Skype, Slack, Steam, Telegram, Tencent QQ, WeChat, and WhatsApp. It also supports XMPP for old-school chat servicesnot to mention direct support for ICQ.

The bad news

In its current form, All-in-One Messenger is on borrowed time. Google plans a long, slow death for Chrome Apps like All-in-One Messenger on Windows, Mac, and Linux. By late 2016, youll no longer be able to download and install the app, and on Windows the app will cease to function in early 2018.

If All-in-One Messenger appeals to you, download it ASAP. Then once 2018 comes around, perhaps All-in-One Messenger will be available as a desktop app.

If not, one alternative to keep an eye on is called Franz. Currently in beta, Franz works similarly to All-in-One Messenger, but as a regular desktop program.
Updated 09-15-16: The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has officially recalled Samsung Galaxy Note7 devices sold before Sept 15, 2016. For more information, including details on reimbursement, please read the language on the commissions website.

Canada has recalled over 21,900 Galaxy Note7 smartphones after receiving a report of the overheating of the battery of one phone.

The Samsung Note7 smartphone battery has the potential to overheat and burn, posing a potential fire hazard, Health Canada, a Canadian federal government department said Monday.

The problem with the lithium-ion batteries may, however, turn out to be more serious in the U.S. where already reports of over 70 cases have been received by Samsung, according to the Canadian agency. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is charged with protecting the public from the risk of injury or death linked with certain consumer products, said Friday it was working on an official recall with Samsung but there has been no formal announcement yet of the move.

An official recall will make it illegal to sell the phone, lead to government oversight of the replacement program and provide clear guidance to consumers, said Consumer Reports, a consumer advocacy group.

CPSC has advised all users of the Note7 to power down the phones and stop charging or using the device. Samsung, which reported a battery cell issue on Sept. 2, has also advised people to power down their Note7 phones and exchange them.

There have been accidents that reports said could be traced to exploding Note7 devices. The New York Post reported Sunday that a 6-year-old boy in Brooklyn suffered burns after a Galaxy Note7 smartphone blew up in his hands, while he was watching videos.

Samsung, while announcing the problem with the Note7, said there had been 35 reports worldwide as of Sept. 1.

Consumers should immediately power down the recalled Samsung Note7 smartphone and register as soon as possible for the Canadian Product Exchange, Health Canada said in its statement. It said the recalled phones were sold in the country from Aug. 19 to Sept. 1 this year.

Samsung has confirmed working with Health Canada and said the terms of the recall will be announced as soon as they become available. The company could not immediately be reached for confirmation of the over 70 incidents in the U.S. reported by Health Canada.

The company has offered to replace the phones with newer ones, but there is uncertainty in the U.S. as to when users will get a new Galaxy Note7, as Samsung said this part of the exchange program will depend on when the CPSC process will be completed. CPSC is meanwhile looking into whether a replacement Note7 is an acceptable remedy for Samsung and phone carriers to provide to consumers.

Samsung has offered to exchange the Note7 with the Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge smartphones and to replace any Note7 specific accessories, with a refund of the price difference. It also offered loaner phones to those wanting to wait for new Note7 devices.
The U.S. governments plan to end its oversight of the internets domain name system should move forward as promised, despite last-minute efforts by some Republican lawmakers to derail the process, a coalition of tech companies and trade groups said.

The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) should end its supervision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Oct. 1 as planned, said a letter signed by Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon and more than 20 other companies and trade groups.

Some Republican lawmakers, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, are trying to halt the transition. Cruz, who has scheduled a Wednesday hearing on the transition, has said the proposal will give away the Internet to a multinational organization, even though ICANNs authority is limited to managing the domain name system.

If the plan goes through, countries like Russia, China, and Iran could be able to censor speech on the internet, Cruz said recently. Those countries already censor the internet within their borders, however.

A transition plan approved by the broad internet community must not be delayed, countered Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, one of the trade groups signing the letter.

The transition must move forward to ensure the continued stability and openness of the Internet, which bears directly on the economic and national security of the U.S., Black said by email.

The transition plan, required by the NTIA, is in place and will hold ICANN accountable to the global community, the letter said. Internet companies worked with civil society groups, government organizations, and the technical community on the transition plan, the letter noted.

The Internet is defined by its inclusivity and openness, the letter added. Those critical characteristics are reflected in the work that  went into the drafting of the transition proposal.

But the transition is premature and must be postponed, Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said this week. ICANN still needs some key transparency and process reforms to happen before a transition, he said.

A Hatch-sponsored Senate resolution, passed in February 2015, also calls on the U.S. government and ICANN to take steps to protect the organization from undue influence or capture by governments, multilateral or intergovernmental organizations, or commercial or noncommercial stakeholders.

Some conservative groups have called on Congress to block the transition, saying the U.S. needs to retain oversight over ICANN to protect internet freedoms. TechFreedom and other groups say if the NTIA ends its oversight contract with ICANN, the agency would violate a congressional appropriations rider barring the agency from moving forward with the plan this year.
Current and former first responders who went to New York after 9/11 gathered on Sundays 15-year anniversary for a first-time reunion.

We havent really all gotten together like this since then, retired Corona firefighter Darryl Cleveland said by phone before the event.

The search-and-rescue team that responded in 2001 included firefighters from Riverside, Corona, Hemet, Murrieta and CalFire/Riverside County Fire Department. Cleveland invited team members and their families to the reunion at the Old Spaghetti Factory in downtown Riverside.

Since serving at the World Trade Center site, Cleveland said, he and some of the others have experienced post-traumatic stress and health issues. In Clevelands his case, he had several bouts of pneumonia, a cough that lasted seven years and a heart attack at age 43.

Though the former team members dont get together often, they have a special bond and have stayed close, Cleveland said.

We went through something substantial together, and it was life-changing for all of us and history-changing for the world.

About 16 members of California Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 6 attended the reunion, Cleveland wrote in an email Monday, Sept. 12. They enjoyed reconnecting so much, they hope to make it an annual event, he said.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9461, arobinson@scng.com, @arobinson_pe
It was bad enough that Rob Reiners punishing 50 cents per pack tobacco tax proposition passed, and has been used for everything but tobacco-related health problems.

Now, smokers are expected to believe that Proposition 56s tyrannical $2 per pack tax will be used for public health, when in fact it will be just another cash cow for the state, inflicted upon those who can least afford the tax.

Worse, the proposition to legalize marijuana will surely be passed and become another cash cow for the state, even though it is a gateway to hard drugs. Indeed, it doesnt matter that the black market for cigarettes and crime will escalate because of both propositions.

Alas, traveling down the liberal road to punishing use of a legal product, while recklessly approving use of an illegal drug for taxes is unconscionable and amounts to little more than voter-assisted social, political and economic suicide.

Daniel B. Jeffs

Apple Valley

A basket of deplorables

Re: Clinton diagnosed with pneumonia [News, Sept. 12]: Hillary Clinton believes that I, by virtue of my support for Donald Trump, am a basket of deplorables. Imagine that. Im a law abiding, taxpaying, retired American citizen, and she has now made it crystal clear that if she is elected, she has no intention of representing me, or the tens of millions of citizens just like me. So she will join the ranks of Barrack Obama, Jerry Brown, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer and our own Mark Takano, all representatives of the people who are interested in only one thing, the furtherance of liberalism.

If you dont agree with Obamacare, carbon credits, killing unborn babies and selling their body parts, or similar insanity, then you simply dont exist to them. And Clintons hate-monger comment was made in front of a group of gay and lesbian citizens. These people know what its like to be viciously demeaned. But when they heard Clintons remark, they applauded and cheered wildly.

Mike Talarico

Riverside
The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors today will consider approving $1 million to continue contracting for temporary staff in the wake of the Dec. 2 terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center.

The mass shooting left 14 people dead, 13 of whom were employees of the countys Environmental Health Services Division, an arm of the Public Health Department. Twenty-two other employees of the division were wounded.

The attack decimated staffing levels, as many of the victims and other county employees went on leave following the shooting. Many of the environmental health services employees remain on extended leave, according to a staff report prepared for county supervisors.

Under the proposed memorandum of understanding, the county would increase its contract with the California Association of Environmental Health Administrators by $1 million  from $1.5 million to $2.5 million  and extend the term of the contract through Dec. 31, 2017. The county entered into the contract with the association in March.

County spokesman David Wert said in an email Monday that 18 employees remain on leave, 20 are working on a modified work schedule, and 18 are under the association contract.

The county will utilize temporary staffing for as long as its necessary, Wert said via email. The county has no idea how long that will be.

Contact the writer: jnelson@scng.com or @SBCountyNow on Twitter
Faced with a shrinking pool of inmates to help fight major wildfires, California is increasingly turning for new recruits to its state Conservation Corps, a program with an official motto that promises hard work, low pay, miserable conditions  and more!

Prisoners last year made up about 20 percent of state hand crews on several major blazes, where they used chain saws and hand tools to remove tinder-dry brush and trees to build fire breaks.

But the number of available inmates is declining because counties, and not state prisons, now oversee most lower-level felons under a law aimed at easing prison overcrowding, AB 109. In addition, there are fewer incentives for inmates to risk their lives since a federal court broadened an early release program for firefighters to include other inmates.

The state is about 600 inmates short of the 4,300 prisoners who could be available for fire lines. So this year, the California Conservation Corps reopened a camp to train three crews of young civilians to do the same backbreaking work as the inmates. Corps Director Bruce Saito expects to create at least four more fire crews with roughly 15 members each by next summer and a half-dozen new crews during each of the next two years.

Adding crew members will be important as California endures a fifth year of drought, which contributes to bigger and hotter fires.

Despite the decrease in the inmate pool, Cal Fires Inland inmate camps still have their maximum allotment of 95 crews, said Cal Fire Battalion Chief Mike Mohler, spokesman for the Southern Region Operations Center.

But the crews, once 15-17 members strong, now average 13.4, Mohler added. The desired average is 17, Mohler said, but the minimum is 12. The decrease began within months of the November 2014 passage of Prop. 47, which changed some offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, Mohler said. The resulting decrease in felony convictions also lessened the available pool of non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual offenders in prisons for the inmate crews.

Cal Fire had enough inmate crew members from the Inland region and around the state that the Conservation Corps crews that were sent to Inland fires this year  the Pilot and Blue Cut  werent needed on the fire lines, corps spokeswoman Susanne Levitsky said. Instead, they worked in the base camps setting up and tearing down temporary tent villages, serving meals, handing out equipment and cleaning the camp.

The corps has more than 1,400 members, and fewer than 200 are trained to work alongside firefighters. Corps members include both men and women and range in age from 18 to 25. They enlist for one year and earn the states minimum wage of $10 an hour. Military veterans can enroll until they turn 30.

Corps crews work on projects that include landscaping, trail building, tree planting, wildlife habitat improvement and flood prevention. They also respond to natural disasters, oil spills and pest infestations. Their skills transfer well into the work performed by the hand crews, Mohler said.

Mohler said there are discussions between Cal Fire and the corps about opening new joint centers that would house firefighting corps members or turning existing residential centers into fire centers. He said he could not discuss whether any of those centers would be in the Inland region.

The corps operates a nonresidential office in San Bernardino. From there, 90 people build trails, restore habitats and watershed and reduce hazards from abandoned mines in the desert.

HARD, FUN WORK

Several recruits said they were drawn by the chance to work outdoors, to make a difference as they decide what to do next with their lives and to improve their chances of landing permanent jobs as wildland firefighters.

Youre kind of like sacrificing a lot to gain experience and get ahead in life, said 21-year-old Jacint Duenez of Camarillo.

Participants said the program lives up to its motto.

They recalled tense hours trying to stay ahead of a fire that burned more than 72 square miles on the central coast and threatened historic Hearst Castle. They hiked past maybe a 100-foot wall of flames  you could feel the heat coming off of it, said Bobby Falagai, 23, of Oroville. Then they helped other firefighters save a home and outbuildings.

You could barely see. You could barely breathe. Your eyes are burning. Its a great time, Duenez said without a hint of sarcasm. I was having a lot of fun.

Conservation Corps firefighter Adrian Valdivia, 22, of Pomona hopes to turn his experience working under the direction of Cal Fire into a career battling wildfires.

I think the future of the CCC is to fill more fire crews, Valdivia said. Then Cal Fire can use the CCC as a potential hiring tool for future employees, so it works out for everybody.

Staff Writer Brian Rokos and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Shimmering strands of fabric imbued with love and hope, wrapped around a woman on one of her happiest days, are helping grieving parents cope on one of their worst days, the loss of a child to a miscarriage.

Its the future, new beginnings, said Jennifer Cole, explaining the significance of using wedding gowns to create handmade burial outfits for the remains of babies who died in utero or during birth.

Its also spiritual, she said, pausing as her eyes welled with tears. Im going to cry.

Cole, a French Valley resident, is a volunteer who works with a French Valley-based group called Heavenly Bound Gowns, which was started by Alicia Jenkins of Sage and her mother, Pattie Wimer of French Valley.

Jenkins, who makes custom swimwear for her Dirt Dames line, got the idea of making burial outfits from wedding gowns from a Corona-area woman, Pam Waller, who was soliciting gowns on the Temecula Talk Facebook group, a community page with tens of thousands of users.

Jenkins enlisted her mother, a longtime seamstress, and they volunteered for that womans Mira Loma-based group for a few months. This summer, they decided to start their own group, which would serve southwest county-area hospitals, and brought in Cole and Marjorie Gallardo of Lake Elsinore.

http://launch.newsinc.com/js/embed.js

var _ndnq = _ndnq || []; _ndnq.push([embed]);

Jenkins said Friday that there are now around eight dedicated members of the group and that they recently hit 500 likes on their Facebook page.

Gallardo, a longtime quilter, said she is on workers compensation and cant get around that well but that shes able to help the group by cutting patterns for the outfits and maximizing the donated fabric. She also has started to do some sewing. Its something to look forward to each day, she said.

Others help by picking up and delivering the gowns, or they help with embroidering or design.

The team has made around 80 outfits, unique pouches, gowns and little suits with colorful vests. Most of the outfits have been donated to Rancho Springs Medical Center in Murrieta, which makes them available to parents. Others are sent directly to people upon request, expanding the groups reach to Hemet, Palm Springs and beyond.

The women in the group have experienced the loss of a child to miscarriage, or they know someone who has, making their effort an emotionally restorative act of kindness.

I thought, what a wonderful way to give back. It really struck a chord with me, said Cole, who lost two children to miscarriages, one at 13 weeks and one at 15 weeks. The first was removed surgically, but Cole went through labor with the second one, an act that provided a quantum of solace and closure.

Mothers in that position dont generally think beforehand about how they are going to mark the moment, but with the pouches or an outfit, they have a vessel that allows for a more dignified ending.

And (they can) remember it that way, Jenkins said, adding that some use the outfits for pictures and others tuck them away as keepsakes.

Each member of the team brings a different skill set when making the outfits  some deconstruct the donated gowns and others take care of the sewing and delicate design work  and the group has a network of helpers who make knitted caps or other accessories.

Wimer, a foster parent who cares for fragile babies, said she wants the outfits to serve as both works of art and keepsakes for the bereaved.

The team works to make each outfit special by adding a bit of decorative beading or lace, or adding a charm to a boys outfit that looks like the fob for a waistcoat watch. And Jenkins said each outfit is sent out with a swatch that includes the name of the person who donated the gown for the cause.

My goal is never to have two baby gowns to be the same, she said.

Contact Heavenly Bound Gowns: heavenlyboundgowns@gmail.com

Contact the writer: 951-368-9698 or aclaverie@scng.com
When describing his approach to making public comments, Rep. Duncan Hunter recalls a Marine Corps saying  Hey diddle diddle, right up the middle.

Im a representative of the people, said Hunter, R-Alpine, whose district includes most of Temecula. For me to represent them properly, they need to know where I stand on things. I dont believe in equivocating.

Hunters straightforwardness earns him headlines, from his early support of Donald Trump to vaping in a congressional hearing to sponsoring an amendment to make women register for the draft, even though he opposes putting women in combat roles.

A conservative and the first veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan to serve in Congress, Hunter, 39, also has been in the news for his campaign spending, including charges for video games and expenses tied to an Italian trip.

Members of Congress are barred from spending campaign money on personal expenses. Hunters spending led Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to file complaints with the Federal Election Commission.

(Hunters case) appears to be one of the most egregious examples of personal spending weve seen with campaign funds, said CREW spokesman Jordan Libowitz. Its just over and over and over again  spending that does not appear to be appropriate for a candidate.

Hunters spokesman has said that CREW is a left-wing group that targets conservative congressmen, a charge Libowitz denied.

Hunter has reimbursed his campaign account for $12,000 in expenses deemed personal or mistaken. He said that an outside audit of his campaign is under way.

There were no nefarious intentions, he said.

Hunter, whose district is mostly in San Diego County, is up for re-election in November. His opponent is Democratic real estate agent Patrick Malloy, who said Hunter has been insulated in Washington.

Ive been outside on the street, Malloy said. I have a much better grip on what the people want.

Still, Hunter is favored to win another two-year term in a district where a plurality of voters  45 percent  are registered Republicans.

DADS FOOTSTEPS

If Hunters name sounds familiar, it might be because his father, Duncan L. Hunter, served in Congress from 1981 to 2009 and ran for president in 2008.

After graduating from San Diego State, the younger Hunter started working as a business analyst. After 9/11, Hunter quit his job and enlisted in the Marine Corps, becoming a lieutenant and serving with the field artillery in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hunter ran for his fathers seat and was elected in 2008, having never served in public office. Most of Temecula was shifted to Hunters district through 2011 redistricting.

Hunter, a Marine reservist who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, takes a keen interest in military affairs. He called for a re-evaluation of how the Medal of Honor is awarded while taking up the case of a Marine killed in Iraq in 2004.

Sgt. Rafael Peralta is said, after being shot, to have pulled a grenade close to him to absorb its blast, saving his fellow Marines lives. He posthumously received the Navy Cross and was recommended for the Medal of Honor, but then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates rejected the recommendation amid questions about whether Peralta was alive when the grenade landed near him.

Hunter also stood up for two Special Forces soldiers who faced discipline after beating an Afghan commander who reportedly admitted to keeping a boy as a sex slave.

Were going to be in a lot of other places in the next few years where local culture does things that are depraved and evil, said Hunter, who speaks with a booming baritone.

If we cant stop that, even on a U.S. military base  then we ourselves have lost the ability to see good and evil. And if so, why are we even there?

Hunter, a married father of a son and two daughters, is opposed to women in combat, once saying the Navy secretarys plan to open up all Marine combat positions to women made him a greater threat to the Marine Corps than ISIS.

During an armed services committee hearing in April, he offered an amendment to a defense-funding bill that would have required women to register for the draft.

A draft is there to put bodies on the front lines to take the hill, Hunter was quoted as saying. The draft is there to get more people to rip the enemies throats out and kill them.

Hunter voted against his amendment, but it passed anyway and made him fodder for late-night TV.

(Hunter) thought that by sarcastically introducing a bill to require (women) to register for the draft, he would make his point, Seth Meyers said on his show. But his O. Henrystyle strategy backfired.

Hunter does not regret offering the amendment. We needed to talk about this and I thought there needed to be at least some discourse in Congress, he said.

LIKE HIS STYLE

Hunter was one of the first GOP congressman to endorse Trump. He frequently appears on TV news shows to talk about the Republican presidential nominee.

I like his style, Hunter said. He obviously says sometimes the first thing that comes to mind. Thats to his detriment sometimes, but, at the same time, its refreshing and its honest.

As the campaign has gone on, Trump has become more eloquent, Hunter said.

This is like saying youve never driven a race car and were going to put you in the Indy 500, Hunter said. Its taken him a few hundred laps to get where he is now  Its not a different Trump. Its just more refined.

Hunter knows a thing or two about being outspoken. He once suggested using tactical nuclear weapons to prevent Iran from developing an atomic bomb and said that lying is a part of Middle Eastern culture. He later said he was referring to Middle Eastern leadership.

In February, Hunter earned the nickname The vaping Congressman when he vaped, or smoked an e-cigarette, during a congressional hearing on whether to ban the practice on airplanes.

It was an impromptu act, said Hunter, who credits vaping with helping him quit smoking and has defended tobacco sales at Navy installations. I just thought (the ban) was pretty stupid and thats why I did what I did, he said.

In 2014, Washingtonian magazine named Hunter the Houses top Party Animal. Hunter said he attends charity functions, speeches and other evening events and has a lot of military friends who visit Washington.

I enjoy socializing with them, he said. Im always out because Im not going to lock myself in my office at 8 p.m. at night. Its a bunch of baloney. Everyones out all the time.

CAMPAIGN SPENDING

Questions about Hunters campaign spending surfaced earlier this year. His year-end 2015 campaign finance report listed about $1,300 worth of charges for online video games.

At the time, Hunter said his son mistakenly used a campaign credit card for the games and that charges continued after Hunter canceled the subscription.

The San Diego Union-Tribune detailed other questionable expenses, including:

 $6,819 for groceries.

 $5,161 for a Hawaiian resort. Hunter spokesman Joe Kasper has said the hotel stay was for a campaign event and when the event was canceled, Hunter tried to get the room charged to his personal credit card.

 More than $2,000 for meals, train travel and lodging in three Italian cities during Thanksgiving week 2015. Kasper told the UT: It is permissible to use campaign funds for expenses not covered by the MRA (Mandatory Returning of Allowances) on travel, which includes international travel.

 $1,650 on Christian Unified Schools, which Hunters children attend. Kasper said the money was meant to be a charitable donation to the school but was applied to the Hunter familys tuition bill.

 $1,200 to a garage-door company. Kasper told the UT that the campaign had authorized a charge related to an incident that occurred as a result of moving campaign materials on campaign time.

 $811 paid to an oral/facial surgery office.

 $361 spent at a Coronado surf shop. Kasper was quoted as saying the purchases were for a community or campaign event.

 $297 for Jack in the Box food.

 $229 for food and beverages at the Star Trader gift shop in Disneyland. A Disneyland spokesman said the only edible items sold at the shop are Pez candy and a Rice Krispies treat, the UT reported.

Hunters wife, Margaret, served as campaign treasurer and received $3,000 a month from the campaign, according to the UT. Duncan Hunter has said that the campaign has a new treasurer and that he is now the only one holding his campaigns credit card.

I had not been as detailed in the expenses and the books as I should have been, he said. Were going to fix it.  Its not going to happen again. We have much more structure in place now to make sure it doesnt happen again.

Jennifer Walsh, dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Azusa Pacific University, said Hunters indiscretions  could be chalked up to lack of professional experience and relative political immaturity.

His thin professional resume didnt prevent him from capturing the congressional district seat in 2008, and it is unlikely that his missteps and unabashed endorsement of Trump will affect his re-election this year, either, Walsh said.

However, Hunter likely wouldnt fare well if he sought higher office, Walsh said.

His solid conservative positions would preclude him from seeking higher statewide office in California, she said. And he lacks the political intuition that would make him a viable candidate for the presidency.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@scng.com
Officers from three law enforcement agencies who worked together in a fierce gunbattle against terrorists Dec. 2 received the states highest award for valor Monday in Sacramento from Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris.

The men we are honoring today exemplify something beyond the ordinary, beyond duty, Brown said, according to a news release. That is to see something that somebody else needs and to respond, even at the risk of your own life.

From San Bernardino, Officer Brian Olvera and Officer Nicholas Koahou received the Medal of Valor. From Redlands, Officer Joseph Aguilar was honored.

And from the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department, Cpl. Chad Johnson, Deputy Bruce Southworth and Cpl. Rafael Ixco received the award.

Many officers performed admirably during the attack, said San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan.

These two guys are being recognized for some exceptional actions, but we know that people do phenomenal work every day, said Burguan, who attended the ceremony. Its always special when your folks are honored not just internally but at the state level.

This was the second consecutive year a San Bernardino officer won the award.

In 2015, Officer Marcus Pesquera was honored for quick action in the gunbattle that wounded his field training officer, Gabriel Garcia, in August 2014. Pesquera was one of two officers in California honored last year.

This year, eight public safety officers were honored at the Capitol. One was a California Highway Patrol officer and one was a San Diego firefighter.

The remaining six were among the hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement officers who responded after Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people and wounded 22 others at the Inland Regional Center.

The six medal recipients  Aguilar, Johnson, Koahou, Ixco, Olvera and Southworth  were honored for their actions during the deadly shootout with Farook and Malik in a San Bernardino neighborhood hours after the attack at the IRC.

Contact the writer: rhagen@scng.com or @rmhagen on Twitter
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will be in Palm Desert on Wednesday, where she is expected to approve the first phase of a renewable energy and conservation plan for Californias deserts.

Jewell will attend a signing ceremony for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan at the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument visitor center in Palm Desert, according to a press advisory.

The sweeping plan covers 10 million acres of public lands in the deserts of seven California counties, including Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles. It strives to speed up approvals for solar, wind and geothermal projects creating energy development zones in locations where such projects would do the least amount of harm to wildlife habitat and other natural and cultural resources.

The final plan has not been released, but its expected to give new protections to some of the most sensitive and pristine wildlife habitats left in the nation. The plan has been in the works for eight years.

It is expected to help California and the nation meet carbon-free goals set to combat climate charge.

But Shannon Eddy, executive director of the Large-scale Solar Association, said Monday that the latest version did not leave enough land needed for alternative energy development to meet Californias aggressive clean-energy goals. Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law last week requiring the state to reduce carbon emissions to 40 percent below 1990s levels by 2030.

The plan falls short of whats necessary to support the renewable energy goals, Eddy said.

In July, Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit objected to rules in the plan that he believed make it too difficult to built energy projects in the focus areas.

Those rules included requirements that power lines between projects and substations be placed underground, and the projects must stay clear of certain geological and natural features.

Benoit said Monday that he spoke to Bureau of Land Management officials, who said the plan would be modified to address the concerns of energy developers.

They listened and took it quite seriously, Benoit said. But we havent seen it yet.

The last versions of the plan focused energy development on 388,000 acres of BLM areas, including 170,700 acres in San Bernardino County and 148,000 acres in eastern Riverside County.

An earlier version also called for conservation designations for 4.9 million acres of public land managed by the BLM.

Danielle Murray of the national Conservation Land Foundation, said she is excited that the years of planning are coming to fruition.

This is an iconic American landscape we can make whole as we develop in the right places, while preserving wildlife and wildlife habitat connectivity, said Murray, a senior program director for the foundation.

She expects some of the deserts most spectacular areas to be protected. They include the Silurian Valley in San Bernardino County, Amargosa River Basin and Panamint Valley near Death Valley National Park and the Chuckwalla Bench, south of Interstate 10 in Riverside County.

Jewell is expected to approve a phase of the plan for public lands. A more comprehensive plan that includes privately owned lands is expected later.

http://cdn.thinglink.me/jse/embed.js

Contact the writer: 951-368-9471 or ddanelski@pressenterprise.com
Ghanas educational system has over the years placed much premium on the system of memorisation by repetition and has become an impediment for people to be forward-looking, Dr Patrick Awuah, founder and president of Ashesi University, has said.



According to him, when teaching and learning are based on rote learning, it only trains people to look back at what somebody else has discovered instead of thinking to discover things for themselves.



Speaking on the Ghana Report programme on Viasat 1 on Monday September 12, Dr Awuah said: I think Ghanas educational system is too much deep in rote learning  chew, pour, pass, and forget  and this cuts across, and this is a problem because if your education is always about memorising facts, it is not educating people to be forward-looking; it is educating people to always be looking back at what somebody else has discovered.



This is a fundamental problem, Dr Awuah told host Bernard Avle.



He added: The second problem is there is not enough emphasis placed on ethics and so you get people in incredibly influential positions who are behaving in unethical ways and it is extremely costly to society when they do that. So these are the problems.



Touching on the free senior high school policy debate, he said: I think that the most important thing is to make sure that we have teachers who are dedicated, who deeply care about their students, and that we have teachers who are not overburdened and who have the tools they need to get the job done. We also need great management in all the schools

Source: Classfmonline









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A former Director of the Institute of African Studies, Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, has started a campaign asking for the removal of the statue of Indian independence icon, Mahatma Ghandi, from the University of Ghana campus.



Prof Adomako Ampofo is urging members of the University of Ghana Council to heed her petition arguing among other things that, Ghandi was racist against black people and honoring him set the wrong example for students.



In June 2016, the statue of Ghandi was erected on the University campus to the dismay of some members of the university community aware of the apparent racist overtones Ghandi exuded.



Prof Adomako Ampofo cites some of these examples of racism in her petition, like this quote from 1894. "



"A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.



It should be noted that, the word Kaffir, is a derogatory term for black people with roots in Apartheid era of South African history.



No racists symbols on world class universities



The petition also contended that, if the University of Ghana sought to be a world class university, it should not be seen to be honoring former bastions of slavery, apartheid and white supremacy.



In other high profile universities, symbols edifying persons associated with controversial stances like white supremacy have been removed.



Prof Adomako Ampofo notes one such example in her petition when in October 2015, Rhodes University [in South Africa] established a renaming team to remove the name of Cecil Rhodes, former prime minister of the Cape colony, and one of the founders of apartheid.



The first senate and then the Council of the University of Cape Town, also voted to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes early in 2015, after protests by some students. With these arguments, Prof Adomako Ampofo urged the University of Ghana Council to do the honourable thing by pulling down the statue. It is better to stand up for our dignity than to kowtow to the wishes of a Third World super-power.



Find below her full petition



Dear Honourable members of the University of Ghana Council:



Re: Petition for the removal of the Statute of Gandhi



We the undersigned bring this petition for the removal of the statute of Gandhi to the esteemed Council of the University of Ghana Council for your consideration.



Background:



On 14 June 2016 a statue of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi [1] was erected at the Sam Aboah quadrangle[DOK1] . This is the only statue of an historical personality on Legon campus, and soon after it came to the notice of members of the University community and the general public, calls for its removal began within the University community and beyond. [2] We, the undersigned associate ourselves with that call for the reasons outlined below.



Rationale for Removal:



Mohandas Karamchand Gandhis racist identity:



Below we provide just a few citations from his own writings to illustrate this.



Before Dec. 19, 1894



A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir. ~ Vol. I, p. 193



Before May 5, 1895



In the face, too, of financial operations, the success of which many of their detractors would envy, one fails to understand the agitation which would place the operators in the same category as the half-heathen Native and confine him to Locations, and subject him to the harsher laws by which the Transvaal Kaffir is governed. ~ Vol. I, pp. 224-225



Before May 5, 1895



So far as the feeling has been expressed, it is to degrade the Indian to the position of the Kaffir. ~ Vol. I, p. 229



Sept. 26, 1896



Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness. ~ Vol. I, pp. 409-410



Before May 27, 1899



Your Petitioner has seen the Location intended to be used by the Indians. It would place them, who are undoubtedly infinitely superior to the Kaffirs, in close proximity to the latter. ~ Vol. II, p. 270



June 1, 1906



The Boer Government insulted the Indians by classing them with the Kaffirs. ~ Vol. V, p. 59



Source: Gandhi and South African Blacks ( http://www.gandhiserve.org/e/cwmg/cwmg.htm)



*(NOTE-The term kaffir is considered a racial slur used in reference to Black South African natives.)



Gandhi also campaigned against the efforts of the Dalits, The Black Untouchables of India, and for the maintenance of the caste system right up to his death.



2. There are currently no statues of our own heroes and heroines on our campus:



We are of the view that if there should be statutes on our campus then they should first be African heroes and heroines, who can serve as examples of who we are and what we have achieved as a people. In a context where our youth know so little about our own history, such statutes can serve as an opportunity for such learning to occur. Why should we uplift other peoples heroes at an African university when we havent lifted up our own? We consider this to be a slap in the face that undermines our struggles for autonomy, recognition and respect. Indeed, what would have been more fitting than to erect a statute of the former member of the University Council, Mr Sam Aboah, who financed the building of the quadrangle, and also financed the planting of the teak trees on the top of the Legon Hill near the Registry.



3. Removal of racist symbols from world-class universities:



The University of Ghana seeks to be a world class university. At world class universities, even former bastions of slavery, apartheid and white supremacy, statutes and other symbols associated with controversial persons have been pulled down or removed. Below are just a few examples:



 August 2016: Yale University is in the process of removing stained glass windows that depict slaves. It is also reconsidering keeping the name of Calhoun College, named for John C Calhoun, a 19th-century vice-president, South Carolina senator and Yale alumnus who established himself as a vocal advocate for slavery. In April 2016 President of Yale, Peter Salovey had said the name would remain. He has also appointed a new committee to develop guidelines for proposals to remove historical names from university buildings, including Calhouns.



 May 2016: Yale announced it would name a residential college, set to open in 2017, for Anna Pauline Pauli Murray, a black Yale Law School alumna and civil rights activist.



 March 2016: A committee tasked with re-considering Harvard Law Schools seal in light of its ties to slavery recommended that the Harvard Corporation revoke the emblems status as the schools official symbol. The seal bears the crest of the former slave-owning Royall family, whose donation helped establish Harvards first law professorship in the late 18th century.



 November 2015: Georgetown University renamed two buildings on campus, Mulledy and McSherry Hall, that honour former presidents who organized the sale of slaves to a Louisiana plantation to help pay off the schools debt. (The school has not yet chosen permanent names, but for now Mulledy Hall will be called Freedom Hall, and McSherry Hall will be named Remembrance Hall, according to the Washington Post).



 October 2015: Rhodes University established a renaming team to remove the name of Cecil Rhodes, former prime minister of the Cape colony, and one of the founders of apartheid.[3]



 March to April 2015: First the senate and then the Council of the University of Cape Town voted to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes.



4.There was no consultation about the placing of the statute:



The University of Ghana has a tradition for the naming of buildingsa committee works on this and seeks the views of members of the university community, important stakeholders as the case may be. While we speak here about a statue and not the naming of a building, we are of the view that similar principles of transparency and consultation should apply. In the case of the Gandhi statute it would appear from responses the former Vice-chancellor gave to emails on the University email list, that he took the decision alone. He explained that the statute was a gift from the embassy of the Republic of India. To questions about what we received or were promised in return no answer was forthcoming.[4]

We urge Council and the management of the University of Ghana, that in the future when buildings are named or statutes erected, that colleagues from requisite Departments be consulted so it does not appear as if our academics do not have the relevant information.



We can do the honourable thing by pulling down the statue. It is better to stand up for our dignity than to kowtow to the wishes of a Third World super-power. Some harm has been done by erecting the statue. We have failed the generation that look up to us, namely our students. How will the historian teach and explain that Gandhi was uncharitable in his attitude towards the Black race and see that were glorifying him by erecting a statue on our campus? The same goes for the human rights lecturer, the International Law lecturer, the Political Science lecturer teaching on apartheid in South Africa, etc. However, to allow the statue to remain on our campus will do even more harm and make us appear to hold double standards.



We should not bury our head in the sand and expect that the storm will die down.



We thank you for your attention!



Sincerely



Prof Akosua Adomako Ampofo

Source: citifmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
The Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE) in collaboration with the Civil Technical Division has held Civil Engineers Conference at the Engineers Centre on Thursday, 8th September, 2016.



Under the theme: Regulating the Civil Engineering Profession in Ghana for Effective Delivery, the conference attracted Civil Engineers Subgroups namely: Geogroup, Structures, Transport, Water/Sanitary/Environmental/Hydrological, Geomatic and Construction Management, Health & Safety.



Opening the conference, the Chairman of the Conference, Ing. Wilfred E.O. Apatu called for integration of Sandwich Courses into the Engineers Training Programme to keep them abreast with changing trends in their Design, Construction and Management.



In our part of the world, we would have to, in addition to the theoretical training of the Civil Engineers, look seriously at the integration of Sandwich courses into the Engineers Training Programme, by attachment to the construction industry.



Those in the practice need attachments to Foreign to consultancies and large scale Civil Engineering Construction sites to keep abreast with changing trends.



It will be worthwhile to focus the acquisition of further degree programmes in Civil Engineering on practical training in Building Construction on large scale projects and in Highway Engineering on the practical aspects of Quality Control that will ensure more durable infrastructure, Ing. Apatu explained.



On his part, the Chair of the Civil Technical Division, Ing. Oddei explained the key objective for deliberations at the conference, which supported the views of the Conference Chairman, to include how to develop professional capacities to meet the challenges ahead.



I want to remind my colleagues of the Engineering Council, which is now regulating our practice.



One important parameters required for renewal of our annual professional license is the Continuous Professional Development (CPD), which includes our involvement in the training programmes and activities organized by GhIE, Ing. Oddei concluded.



The Conference, which was attended by some Engineering Council members, Executive Secretary of GhIE, Ing. George Essandoh, was sponsored by Fotcal Ventures, Saint-Gobain and Rain Coat Roofing Systems Ltd.

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
There was pandemonium during the broadcasting of the Joy News flagship programme dubbed, The Ballot Box, in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis last Friday evening when supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) nearly traded blows, bringing an abrupt end to the well-attended programme.



That was during an open forum as alleged supporters of the NPP who thronged the programme in their numbers, insisted that they would not allow NDC activists to dominate in the asking of questions because none of the NDCs parliamentary candidates showed up for the programme.



The programme, which tackles key issues relevant to Ghanaians as the general election inches closer, has been replicated in the ten regions of Ghana.



The Western Region edition of the programme centred on the oil sector and how it could be managed efficiently to develop the region.



The NPP was represented by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Takoradi, Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah and the parliamentary candidates for Sekondi and Wassa East, Andrew Mercer and Wilson Arthur respectively as panelists.



The candidates of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) and the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) were also present. Conspicuously missing were the candidates of the NDC.



Unknown to the organizers of the programme, more NDC activists were those given the microphone to ask questions and after realizing that, supporters of the NPP stood up and protested.



Even the explanation by the moderator of the programme, Evans Mensah, that the programme was non-partisan and so all should sit down to allow it to run, could not save the situation and so he had no other alternative than to end the event.



Earlier, Mr Darko Mensah noted that the NDC government had done nothing to improve the lives of residents in the Western Region, in spite of the discovery of crude oil there.



He promised that the next NPP government to be headed by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would relocate the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) from Tema in the Greater Accra Region to the Western Region.



The MP pointed out that the relocation would form part of a complete decentralization of the oil sector to boost employment in the region.



Mr Darko Mensah described the performance of John Mahama and his NDC government as spectacular failure, adding that there was lack of transparency in the use of the revenue generated from the regions resources.



Kwabena Okyere Darko explained that with the Coastal Development Authority promised by the NPP flag bearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, the next NPP government would implement policies that would benefit the over two million Ghanaians living along the coast.



The NPP will use the oil as growth pole to change the Western Region. When the GNPC, which is the regulatory body for all oil production activities, is relocated to the Western Region other related businesses will follow suit and move to the region and that will boost employment in the area, he assured.



The parliamentary candidate for Sekondi, Andrew Mercer asserted that the under-development of the region had left the youth disillusioned with most of them moving to Libya and other countries in search of greener pastures.

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
The Campaign Coordinator for the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kofi Adams, says it will be extremely risky and speculative to hand over Ghana to NPPs flagbearer and his running mate to rule.



According to him  both Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Dr Mahamudu Bawumia are not fit for the position as President and Vice President respectively.



Ghana cannot take that risk to hand over the nation to these people who cannot even handle their small party issues, he said.



Speaking on NEAT FMs morning show dubbed Ghana Montie  Mr Adams opined that, NPPs running mate Dr Bawumia manipulated statistics and data in favour of his party during his recent economic lecture.



According Dr. Bawumia  Ghana was better under ex-President Mills' tenure than it has been under President Mahama, even though both fell short of the level of achievements under ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor.



All he said were lies. Bawumia has been consistent in lying, Kofi Adams told sit-in host, Nana Yaw Kese.



He however urged Ghanaians to vote massively to maintain the Mahama-led government in the upcoming Presidential polls.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/ Twitter: @Washman5/ Instagram: Washman007









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Canadian government would contribute USD 1.4 million to help pave the way for free, fair and peaceful elections in Ghana.



A statement issued and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra said the High Commissioner of Canada to Ghana announced his countrys support to a joint initiative led by the United Nations Development Programme to strengthen the 2016 electoral process.



The Ghanas Electoral Process Strengthening initiative would work with the Electoral Commission to strengthen the electoral administration mechanisms to improve election results transmission and dispute resolution.



It would provide professional and technical training to national, regional and local media, civil society and independent observers to provide objective, balanced and gender sensitive media coverage of election-related issues and events.



The statement said Canadian assistance would largely focus on supporting the political participation of women and activities to promote peaceful elections.



With the aim to enhance the participation of women and political parties in the electoral process, local election officers in all 275 constituencies, political party agents and candidates would be trained and the public sensitised on the importance of a gender balanced, inclusive and peaceful electoral process.



The initiative would also develop a conflict mediation strategy for outreach to the national police, regional peace councils, traditional authorities, religious leaders, civil society, the judiciary and women and youth, and support the development of a Peace Accord.



According to the statement, the Charge dAffaires of the Canadian High Commission, Ms Tina Guthrie, noted that Canada is very pleased to support this multi-donor initiative.



It added that engaging women in all aspects of the electoral and political process, and ensuring peaceful and fair elections are core values for Canada.



Canada encourages all Ghanaians to get out to vote and wishes much success with the elections.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The Public Relations Officer(PRO) of the outgoing board of the Film Producers Association Ghana (FIPAG), Michael Ola, has disclosed that the board chaired by Mr Hackman Asare managed to turn the image of FIPAG around and made it more attractive to corporate investors.



He, however, gave the outgoing administration an average rating of 55 percent saying there was still many projects and policies the outgoing executive have not been able to accomplish during their tenure.



In an interview with Showbiz on Friday, Michael Ola who was giving an assessment of the performance of the outgoing board which was elected in 2013, said although it was unable to achieve all it set out to do, it was able to chalk some notable successes.



Prior to us assuming office, one of the major challenges facing the association was the poor reputation of FIPAG. We used to be in the news for all the wrong reasons and all the internal infighting among the members of the board was constantly in the news.



Thankfully, one of our first priorities was to get this in check and I must say we have been successful in that regard, he said.



He added that the outgoing executives managed the financial affairs of the organisation prudently and as such, there was a significant amount of money in the coffers of FIPAG, which the incoming executives can draw on to fund their activities.



He also mentioned the establishment of more FIPAG offices across the country, a welfare fund to cater for executives, a database of all members of FIAPG, training workshops to improve the capacity of members of the association among others.



Touching on their failures, Michael Ola said, we failed to establish a film village; this is a piece of land which we had to develop and make available for film makers to shoot movies.



We also had issues with the establishment of channels of distribution as well as creating more avenues for revenue, he said.



Michael Ola identified some areas which he said the incoming executive would have to pay particular attention to.



Online distribution is a new area which the new executives have to manage effectively in order to generate revenue for members.



In addition to that, the new board has to be more media friendly and democratic in their affairs, he added.

Source: Graphic Showbiz









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
The news that Triple J is reconsidering the future of the Hottest 100, before confirming itll still go ahead on January 26 next year, has set Australia bloody spinning.

It also sparked a heated debate between Indigenous activist Nakkiah Lui and Triple Js own content director Ollie Wards during their appearance on tonights episode of Hack.



Despite her obvious ties to the ABC  shes a major player on Black Comedy, and a regular on Hack itself  Lui definitely didnt hold back on the broadcasters decision to leave the date as-is.

Opposite host Tom Tilley, Lui said the choice to celebrate Australian music on a day when people are excluded and discriminated against based on their values, and on their culture and their race is a decision that is heavily biased.



Going further, Lui said for many people in this community its a very political decision  despite the ABCs mandate to stay absolutely impartial in political matters.

Wards replied, saying  its political either way, before explaining its the worst that a really important section of our audience cant get involved on the day, because theyre going to [Survival Day] events.

Lui latched on that that admission. Her logic: what could possibly be exclusionary about placing the Hottest 100 on a date thatd also allow Indigenous Australians to observe Survival Day? She summed it up pretty solidly with the remark I dont understand what you think ABC will lose if you change the date.

What followed was a brief discussion of the ABCs involvement with Indigenous youth mentoring program AIME. That was a discussion Lui stopped in its tracks, saying its just one organisation among a constellation of varying Indigenous perspectives.

Somehow, she went harder from there. She drew attention to the events of Australia Day, 1938  when authorities took Aboriginal people from the missions, shackled them, put them them in the stables at Redfern Police Station and then made them reenact the massacres of the coming of the tall ships.

Thats what people are celebrating. The Triple J hottest 100: where over 50% of songs last year in the top 20 werent even Australian.

So I dont actually understand why were embedding so much value in having this date and investing in perspectives, when its just a day to celebrate music.

Wards assertion its just a countdown of the biggest bangers of the year, its a music countdown, and its weird that its been intrinsically linked with this day wasnt received too well, either.

Its not weird. Thats a cop out argument, because on one hand youre saying its not political, on the other youre saying its neither here nor there, and its just kinda serendipitous, Lui retorted.

Tilley cut to the news before the trio could examine the issue any further, but damn: if you needed a quick take on what celebrating the Hottest 100 on Australia Day means to segments of the Aussie community, Lui has you sorted.

Watch this space. This issue isnt going away any time soon.

Source: Triple J / Hack.

Photo: Nakkiah Lui / Twitter.
For now, at least, the Triple J Hottest 100  an institution thats the cornerstone of many young Aussies Australia Day celebrations  will continue to be broadcast on Australia Day (or Invasion Day, depending on your view).

The public broadcaster released a statement confirming it would remain after PEDESTRIAN.TV dropped an exclusive yarn early this morning, revealing that its been in serious talks to shift it to a less divisive day than January 26 due to growing public sentiment that its disrespectful to Indigenous Australians, who see it as a dark mark on our countrys history / a day of mourning.





Are we changing the date of triple js Hottest 100?

Short answer: For now No. In 2017, the Hottest 100 will be on January 26. triple js Hottest 100 is a countdown of your favourite songs of the past year on a public holiday in January. Its intended as a celebration of the years best music that everybody can enjoy. Weve been aware of, and have been a part of, the discussions around 26 January for some time. triple j is heavily involved in the growing dialogue around Indigenous recognition and perspectives on 26 January. This is really important to us. We will continue to talk to Indigenous communities, artists and our audience about the date for the Hottest 100 in future years. In short: its under review.

TLDR? The countdown will be on January 26, 2017, but the following year? Maybe not, pending internal review.

The topic of shifting the countdown has been discussed both internally and externally for years  with one Indigenous artist telling us they broached the subject with Triple J long ago  but it was only a few weeks ago that the politics and logistics of said switch were seriously discussed in closed-door meetings between ABC bigwigs.

Its off the back of a growing movement to #ChangeTheDate; a Change.org petition to support shifting the date has accrued close to 2,300 signatures, while its creator  Melbourne bloke Brendan Busch  recently announced hed give a Falls Festival camping ticket, valued at roughly $400, to anyone who can prove they got Triple J to announce they are changing the date.

He also urged the campaigns supporters to contact the broadcaster every day until he / someone gets a response that addresses what Busch claims to be more than 2,000 complaints lodged via the ABC website.

Triple J also announced its teamed back up with AIME, an Indigenous school mentoring program for which it raising $100,000 last year thanks to a special Hottest 100 partnership, for the Hottest 100 2016  and says its committed to working with the organisation to change the narrative of the day.

While we celebrate the years best music, we believe that together with a great organisation like AIME, triple j has a powerful opportunity and a responsibility to create a positive impact. In partnering with AIME we hope to raise money to empower Indigenous young people and also acknowledge and discuss all perspectives of 26 January.

Our partners at AIME acknowledge the different perspectives of 26 January and want to work with us to change the narrative of the day.

While its true that changing the date of the Hottest 100 would merely addresses a symptom of racism in Australia  as Indigenous rapper Briggs pointed out at BIGSOUND over the weekend  it would certainly be a positive step towards changing the way we perceive, and choose to spend our time, on Australia Day.

Itd also be a powerful statement of solidarity with First Nation peoples, for whom January 26 brings only painful memories of colonisation.

You can read Triple Js statement in full HERE, and have a listen to the opinions of a bunch of you good folk on the matter below.

Photo: Triple J.
Q&A is generally not the staging ground for family drama, though it occasionally rears its head. On last nights episode, Victorian Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie  who opposes marriage equality  faced down a video question from her gay brother Alastair. Drama! Drama!

Is a $160m plebiscite necessary & what impact do you think the debate will have? Our #QandA panel responds https://t.co/flpBk2EkWr  ABC Q&A (@QandA) September 12, 2016

What impact do you think the debate will have on the emotional wellbeing of gay and lesbians like me? asked Alastair McKenzie, resulting in his sister giving one of the truly greatest stunned mullet expressions imaginable. She didnt betray whether she knew she was going to cop this question, but either way she clearly didnt want to.

I think it will only be damaging if all of us as Australians choose to actually not respect each others views in this particular debate, she said, toeing the Coalitions line that the plebiscite is necessary to give every Australian a say in the issue.

She darted around specifically answering whether she will respect a Yes vote. What I think is that there is tension for some MPs, like myself, on both sides of the aisle between our desire to respect the sovereign will of the Australian people, and our conscience in a representative democracy.

Which, tbh, doesnt sound very promising. Sounds a lot like a no, actually. She further clarified, though. Im recognising the tension and one way to address it is by having a binding plebiscite.

So, ultimately, she will vote in favour of same-sex marriage if the plebiscite is binding and she is therefore forced to. Which must be a great comfort to her brother.

Source: Q&A.

Photo: Q&A.
With the news coming through this morning that the original Kings Cross Coke Sign, which has silently stood over the sinful acts of generations of Sydneysiders during its 42-year vigil, has been officially auctioned off, giant-soft-drink-corporation-sign-aficionados have good reason to be upset if they missed out on scoring one of those giant rusty letters for their warehouse-sized living spaces (srsly, those things are fkn YUGE, we visited them last week).

Well fret-not, weirdo collectors, as there is still a glimmer of hope for your next ludicrous homeware inclusion, and that shiny glimmer takes the shape of the motherflippin HYPHEN that no one obviously wanted/they just remembered they had to get rid of.

Fuck yeah, where all my hyphen fans at?!?! Lemme hear you make some grammatically-correct, linked-together noise!!!

Get pumped, ya Antiques Roadshow loving punks!

Whilst the individual letters of ye olde Coke Sign fetched around $10k each at the auction which closed last night, hyphen-a-holics wont need to be pulling out the wallet to win this scintillating four-decade old rhombus, instead youll be whipping out YOUR HEART!

Figuratively speaking, of course, youll need to comment on their Facebook page regaling them with a choice time you gave back to your community, like a big ol legend.

So if youre looking for that next great bookend for your many leather-bound volumes, want a killer pressie for the next wedding you go to where they choose to hyphenate their surnames, or perhaps youre apart of the elaborate conspiracy I just made up, in which Mike Bairds final Horcrux is actually INSIDE the Coke Sign hyphen and youd like to help me destroy it once and for all, then make like the first episodes of The Voice and whip out your sob stories about when you saved a kitten from a flood or something, idk.

The winner and proud owner of literally an old metal square, will be announced prior to the brand new, energy-efficient LED Coca-Cola sign getting lit af this Thursday evening.

Photo: Getty / Brian Cor.
It all ended with a crash, a bang and a whimper. After we reported earlier today that Triple J management were involving themselves in some pretty serious talks around moving the Hottest 100 away from Australia Day, they announced that they wont be doing that  yet.

Whether they chickened out because of the response, or just need a little longer to decide what day theyre putting it on  obviously New Years Day, guys, lets be real here  its obvious that this debate wont end now. Based on the responses we got on the street, this is still something people are passionate about.

So obviously this discussion is going to kick up again, and maybe sooner than we think. What will an Australia Day without the Hottest 100 look like?

For Gen Y, the countdown is a quintessential part of Australia Day. In fact, kicking back around the pool sinking longies and wearing one of those objectively shitty Daily Telegraph bucket hats while someone blasts Triple J through a shitty Bluetooth speaker is probably one of the more authentic January 26th experiences in 2016.

Theres even been a kind of conscious decoupling on the part of young, progressive Australians, who dismiss the nationalist connotations of Australia Day in favour of openly calling it the Hottest 100 Day, or something similar. So embedded is the worlds greatest music poll into January 26 that celebrations among younger Aussies tend to centre it way above and beyond its place as a national holiday. For them, its a public holiday where you listen to tunes with mates, and not a whole lot more.

Indigenous Australians are obviously beyond sick of communicating the fact that the specific date of January 26 is a singularly traumatic day which conjures remembrances of invasion, colonialism and the continuing violence and deprivation perpetrated against them. Whether its called Invasion Day or Survival Day, the debate around the date intensifies every year, and it feels like theres increasingly more of a national conversation around changing the date than commemorating the current one, anyway.

Despite that, theres little appetite for a change among the broader population. Knocking the Hottest 100 from Australia Day isnt going to change the debate overnight.

What will Australia Day look like without the Hottest 100? Triple J would be free to pursue whatever musical programming they wanted it its place, obviously  if they wanted to make a statement by highlighting indigenous music, they very well could do so. And look, itll just mean that for that specific period of 24 hours, you wont whinge about the countdown order.

Without the Hottest 100, Australia Day as it exists today will be a far droller affair, and would lose the connection it has with Australias youth  who are already much less connected to January 26th as a date than older Australians. What will it look like for the younger Aussies who arent crash hot on the implications, but have still awkwardly celebrated January 26th regardless?

Many of you have probably had this exact thought process: what mental gymnastics do I need to do to justify that Im cracking tinnies around the inflatable pool on a day that Im not particularly keen on celebrating otherwise? The claim that celebrating the Hottest 100 on January 26 is somehow subversive and overshadows Australia Day doesnt quite cut mustard. Without the Hottest 100, it removes the single reason I had left to celebrate it as it currently exists.

It will change the way Gen Y approaches January 26. Theres good reason Indigenous artists like Briggs are speaking out about changing the date of the Hottest 100  its not just a symbolic shift or a nicety.

Talking at BIGSOUND this year, Briggsy said that itd be a good way of showing solidarity  though thered still be a lot of work to do to address the root causes:

Thats solidarity right there, for something that would be right would be the right thing to do. Thats a conversation that we should all be having with why we are celebrating that day. [But] we can address the symptoms every day of the week, but until we change the idea and the attitudes of whats this perceived Australian way, then were not going to be moving a whole lot forward.

This isnt a matter of changing public opinion overnight. But as we consciously disconnect more and more relevant cultural events from Australia Day, it becomes less and less relevant to the community over time, and more and more people are aware of the discomfort people have celebrating it, its ultimately inevitable that the attitude to January 26 will change too.

By nature of the fact that baby boomers are pretty unlikely to agitate for change while theyve got their fingers on the levers of power, this is probably something thatll fall on Gen Y. For some of them, Australia Day will be the same its ever been  but for many, thisll be the end of what makes January 26 significant.

Ultimately there should be a date to celebrate all elements of Australian culture and achievement of the last 45,000 years  but i think the uncoupling will make a stronger case for younger Australians to no longer need it to happen on the 26th of January.

Photo: Triple J.
Redfoo is the human equivalent of a banana slowly rotting in a sharehouse freezer. He was barely interesting for a while, but his shelf-life has long passed and you have no idea why hes still here, being cruelly strung-along by an unknown someone in the blind hope that maybe parts of him can be recycled into something new, even though the far more likely option is that hell be tossed into the trash to make way for another rotting banana.

Stuck in a perpetual party rocking stasis, Redfoo  a 41-year-old man who dresses like that  last released his debut solo album Party Rock Mansion to dizzyingly underwhelming sales numbers back in March.

The album piggy-backed off the brief infatuation the globe experienced with Redfoos band LMFAO, which featured Foo (real name Stefan Gordy) alongside his actual nephew Skylar Gordy, better known as SkyBlu.

After Redfoo successfully Jannettyd SkyBlu out of the group in an apparent attempt to become the George Michael to Blus Andrew Ridgeley, the LMFAO brand absorbed itself into Redfoos visage of sleeveless shirts and lensless shutter shades; morphing into the shuffling blob of hair and lycra that ran an inglorious, fever-dream tour of Australian media that began with a seat on The X Factors judging panel and ended with a very minor glassing in a Double Bay pub.

SkyBlu, as it turns out, has not forgotten any of this. Now known as 8ky, the other half of the group teed off on his bandmate and uncle in a lengthy rant on Facebook that accused Redfoo of, among other things, screwing him out of royalties from the group, deliberately shutting him out of any future performances or earnings, actively preventing him from continuing to pursue a musical career, and generally being a miserable bastard.

Strap yourselves in, because this is a hell of a ride.

Thoughts From The 8ky Ive been wanting to speak my truth about this whole LMFAO situation for a looooooooooong time. Out of respect to our family I kept it all to myself. I woke up this morning excited to plan the release of my album that has been 2 years in the making, but then I get a call from my lawyer telling me you say you own all my LMFAO royalties. Different things like this would go on all the time when you know we are 50/50 across the board. The way you belittle people and your crazy power trips was [sic] some of the main reasons our relationship as family and partnership has greatly suffered. Im sure you know I have been trying to get this money released that was held up from the Rick Ross lawsuit.

For what its worth, Rick Ross himself backs up Skylars claims that Redfoo essentially screwed him out of LMFAO and the proceeds from the lawsuit by essentially keeping him out of the loop on all official band matters.

The statement continues:

Unlike you I didnt take the LMFAO brand for myself. Your whole vibe and style since our last show together is completely a half ass version of LMFAO. My back went out right before a big arena show, you went out and performed but then just left on the tour bus without seeing me. In fact, you didnt speak to me after that for about a year. Which is around the time you announced our hiatus. As someone who really cared, loved, and had your back, this really hurt. I mean, youre my Uncle! My blood! You even kept touring as LMFAO and made a lot of money doing it. You never once called me to ask me how I was recovering, you just kept shuffling every day without me. [Editors note: LOL] I really loved you, I looked up to you man, but the more successful we got, the more you wanted control. While I was hurt, you and some people at Interscope trued (and kinda succeeded) to put on a huge stadium tour and cut me out of it as much as you possibly could with still using the LMFAO brand. This is crazy! Something we built together, and after a while you took for yourself. I mean, you last album is called Party Rock Mansion. The only two LMFAO albums were called Party Rock and Sorry for Party Rocking. Even if we wanted to come back you severely damaged the brand, especially with your last album. You tried to sell happiness, but youre not a happy person. No matter how hard you try, LMFAO will never be the same without me. So therefore it will never be the same. I couldnt stand how you disrespect people. I was gonna let it all go but still you fucking with me and my livelihood even though you already just took so much from me. Its still not enough. Well the shit stops here, Stefan. I just wanted to make music from a real place, not from the 13-25 female demographic or whatever other statistics you and the label obsess over. Music for me is from the heart from the start. I will help people with my musical message and vision, not control them. A big portion of our music industry is fucked ip. They need to stop treating artists like cows and chickens, using them for all they can produce and then just discarding them without a care. Its time to treat artists like racehorses! They should be groomed to be strong and champions!

Uh by by having a small white man sit on your back and whip you for all youre worth, only to put a bullet in you the second you look like breaking down? The racehorse analogy is probably much better suited to the music industry now, to be honest.

But, I digress. SkyBlus statement concludes thusly:

Its time to put creativity first and the business after! A lot of yall got it fucked up. Its time for a change. That just means Big Bad is right on time. I am thankful for LMFAO and I love our music but most importantly, the people we touched with it! Its the behind the scenes realities that caused me to embrace myself more. This in part lead me to become the man I am today. The whole world looks at me as a member of LMFAO, but very soon the world will meet 8ky.

Whos to say what will come from any of this, though. We do know that 8ky has a 30-track hip hop album entitled Fxck Yeah: Chaos To Consciousness! thats due for release on the 23rd of this month.

Maybe Redfoo will continue to exist unabated. But maybe, just maybe, 8ky is right. Maybe Redfoo truly is unhappy.

Maybe after all the years and all the highs and all the money and fame and success, Redfoos finally starting to figure out that you can never

truly be sorry

for party rocking.

And thats eating him alive.

Source: 8ky/Facebook.

Photos: Andrew H. Walker, Rindoff Charriau/Getty.
FILE - This Aug. 6, 2016 file photo shows Venus Williams, of the United States, returning against Kirsten Flipkens, of Belarus, at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Confidential medical data of gold medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles, seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams and other female U.S. Olympians was hacked from a World Anti-Doping Agency database and posted online Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016. WADA said the hackers were a "Russian cyber espionage group" called Fancy Bears. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Pete Buttigieg visits Charlevoix to support Democratic candidates

In a show of support for the local slate of Democratic candidates, Pete Buttigieg made an appearance at the Charlevoix Public Library on Saturday.
Ten For Trails: Each $10 donation increases your chance of winning a custom Santa Cruz - Shimano XTR dream bike of your size and choice and 10% of Ten for Trails proceeds will be donated to the trail advocacy group of your choice. The remaining proceeds will benefit the trail advocacy efforts of the Trans-Cascadia team.

About the Trans-Cascadia Promoters:

Thank you to:

Donation Details

The primary goal of the Trans-Cascadia event has always been to share the incredibly unique trail systems of the Pacific Northwest Cascade mountain range with the world  as well as give back to the local community through Trail Work, Project Funding and support of the local economy. As Nick Gibson explains, in one sentence, our goal is to create a world-class event in our back yard that also gives back to our community.Trans-Cascdia, a non-profit organization in their first year invested 500 hours of trail building hours and raised $2800 for the Oakridge trail network. In 2016, they have logged over 1000 trail building hours, have invested in a tool library for local trail organizations to use, and hired trail boss, Derrick Bell, to guide their efforts.This year Santa Cruz Bicycles came onboard as Bike title sponsor and have been heavily involved with Trans-Cascadias trail advocacy efforts  participating in build weekends and helping to raise awareness and funds.In taking advocacy to a higher level, Trans-Cascadia will give away a custom Santa Cruz Bike to one of their donors, the winner's choice of a Bronson, a Nomad, or a Hightower. Each bike was custom built with no expense spared:-Custom frame by Santa Cruz - Nomad, Bronson and High Tower option - You Choose!-Shimano XTR Di2 components, 9020 crankset, XTR Trail brakes-PUSH Industries Custom 11/6 shock tuned to your weight and riding style-Chris King HS, BB and Hubs-PRO Carbon Tharsis 800mm Bar-PRO Tharsis Di2 Trail Stem 35-55mm stem options-PRO Grips-PRO Turnix Ti Saddle-FOX 36 Float Factory Series Fork-FOX Transfer 150mm Infinite Adjust Hydraulic Seat Post-ENVE M70 HV Hoops-Maxxis TiresDonations can be made until October 2, 2016 at midnight and the winner will be announced on Monday, October 3. Donations can be made online for $10 each, each $10 donation increases your chance of winning. Click here for more information. MODUS Sport Group  MODUS Sport Group understands that mountain biking is more than just a sport, its a way to grow an appreciation for the world that we live in, we feel that this is critically important and we understand that it takes effort and work to insure this experience for the generations of riders to come. As Trails Stewards we hope our work will open up new areas of riding and contribute to maintaining current trials in order to create lasting and sustainable riding areas that will be ridden and enjoyed for years to come. For more information on the Modus Sport Group visit www.modussportgroup.comShimano, Santa Cruz, MODUS Sport Group, PRO, Chris King, Pearl Izumi, FOX Shox, ENVE, PUSH, EVO, SMITH, Travel Oregon, Clif Bar, Stiegl, Clif Family Winery, Stumptown, The U.S. Forest Service, DAKINE, OBRA, and Oregon Adventures.Each $10 Donation increases your chance of winning. The winner chooses one complete bike of size and choice of one of 3 models; Nomad, Bronson or Hightower. Because the Frame and Shock are custom to your size and preference, expect 90 days for delivery. @chriskingbuzz / @foxracingshox / @ENVE
NLEOMF Board Officers Jon Adler and Ken Hartwick placed a special 9/11 Memorial wreath at the section of the Memorial Wall where all the 9/11 heroes' names are inscribed. (Photo: NLEOMF)

Shortly after noon on Monday, September 12, 2016, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) hosted a special remembrance ceremony at the Memorial Wall in Washington, DC, in honor of all our fallen 9/11 law enforcement heroes. The ceremony paid tribute to the 72 officers who made the ultimate sacrifice on September 11, 2001, as well as those 9/11 First Responders who served on the search and rescue teams at Ground Zero and ultimately died from medical related issues.

Memorial Fund Chief of Staff Herbert Giobbi officiated the ceremony. Federal Law Enforcement Officers Foundation President and NLEOMF Vice Chairman Jon Adler delivered the keynote remarks, and heralded the honor and patriotism of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Following those remarks, the fallen officers' names were read aloud, and NLEOMF Board Officers Jon Adler and Ken Hartwick placed a special 9/11 Memorial wreath at the section of the Memorial Wall where all the 9/11 heroes' names are inscribed. The names of the 72 officers are engraved together on the Memorial's west wall on Line 23 of Panels 9 through 22. Also, the names of 13 officers who died from subsequent illnesses related to rescue and recovery work at Ground Zero and other sites were included in the reading of names.

"It has been fifteen years since September 11, 2001, but we all remember it like it was yesterday," shared Memorial Fund Chief of Staff Herbert Giobbi. "Many of the memories about 9/11 and its aftermath are not all badthe heroes, the patriotism that was ignited, and the public's outpouring of support for our public safety officers. Today, at this Memorial, we pause from our daily routine to pay tribute to those law enforcement officers who died that day, and those officers who died from illnesses resulting from their efforts to find survivors and restore the World Trade Center site."

NLEOMF Board Officers Jon Adler and Ken Hartwick carry a special 9/11 Memorial wreath at a special remembrance ceremony at the Memorial Wall in Washington, DC. (Photo: NLEOMF)

September 11, 2001, remains the deadliest day in U.S. law enforcement history when 72 peace officers were killed in the line of duty during the terrorist attacks that shook the nation. Fifteen years after that horrific day, these heroic men and women were remembered along with the officers who have died from subsequent illnesses related to rescue and recovery efforts.

"On 9/11, seventy-two officers made the ultimate sacrifice responding to the terrorist attacks on our homeland," shared Mr. Adler. "These officers ran towards danger while others retreated to safety. The officers charged into the Twin Towers without having a risk assessment plan or concern for their wellness. There was only their sense of mission, their sense of honor, and their unrelenting desire to save lives," Mr. Adler stated.

(Photo: NLEOMF)

The names of 72 officers killed on 9/11 and those who died from subsequent illnesses related to rescue and recovery efforts can be found on the Memorial Fund's website at www.LawMemorial.org/911RollCall. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial contains the names of more than 20,000 officers who have died in the line of duty throughout U.S. history.
Florida third-grader Tyler Carcach brought donuts to the men and women of the Escambia County Sheriff's Office. (Photo: Facebook)

Eight-year-old Tyler Carach of Ecsambia County, FL, is a superhero, of sorts. He calls himself Donut Boy. But Carachs relationship with local law enforcement runs deeper than his cape and doughnut-shaped mask.

Hes one of the best supporters and biggest cheerleaders of law enforcement, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said. Donut Man or Donut Boy is not descriptive enough.

Entrepreneur might be a better way to describe Carach, who with his mother, Sheena, created I DONUT need a reason to THANK a cop, a campaign to show his appreciation for law enforcement professionals.

An encounter with four Escambia County Sheriff's Office deputies last month launched Tylers campaign, and on Thursday the boy, dressed in his cape and mask, presented 35 dozen doughnuts, candy and coffee to ECSO deputy sheriffs.

In early August, Tyler and Sheena were in a store near their home at the same time as four ECSO deputy sheriffs. Tyler asked Sheena if he could buy doughnuts and coffee for the deputies because it was his understanding that was their favorite food and beverage.

Tyler used his own money that day and bought mini-donuts for the deputies.

Sheena was a police officer several years ago when the family lived in Virginia. She said Tyler developed an infatuation with law enforcement around that time, and he grilled her on details from her work day and asked to hear stories, the Pensacola News Journal reports.

After the Carachs meeting with the ECSO deputies, Tyler told Sheena he wanted to buy doughnuts for every law enforcement officer in the United States. Sheena advised Tyler to start local and take it as far as he can take it.

You can Follow Tyler's efforts and look for information on the 'adopt a-cop-program' on his 'I DONUT need a reason to THANK a cop' Facebook page.
Dep. Brandon Finley and K-9 Furax on the job (Photo courtesy of Mission K9 Rescue)

Six years after suffering traumatic brain injury from a shooting, a former Tate County (MS) Sheriff's Deputy was reunited with his police K-9 partner Saturday.

Tate County, MS, Sheriff's Deputy Brandon Finley and his police K-9 partner Furax, an 8-year-old Belgian Malinois, spent three years protecting the citizens of Tate County, MS. That was until a fateful night in February 2011 when Brandon was shot while off duty. The shooting left Brandon critically injured with massive head trauma and Furax's future unknown.

While Brandon was fighting for his life, Furax was being retired from the department, because no one else could handle him. Brandon's family wanted to keep Furax, and asked a "friend" to hold Furax while focusing on Brandon. Instead, the friend sold Furax to a local man who wanted Furax for protection. Instead of giving Furax the retirement that he deserved, the man left Furax in his backyard, neglected for nearly six years.

Earlier this year, the man died, and Furax was rescued. He had suffered such a severe case of neglect that he too has extensive brain trauma and neurological disorders. His amazing rescuers knew that Furax needed a lot of help, and contacted Mission K9 Rescue, who took him into their care. Furax suffered from numerous issues including heartworms. Once he was treated, Mission K9 Rescue put him up for adoption and posted him on their Facebook page. Thanks to the power of social media, the family, who had been searching for Furax, contacted the page and the plan to get him back to Mississippi began.

Brandon Finley watching video of his former K-9 Furax (Photo: Mission K9 Rescue)

Even though Brandon has extensive brain injuries and has limited speech, he has never forgotten his K-9 partner. When he was told that Furax was coming home, he became very happy. According to Brandon's sister Amanda, when he was asked what he was going to do with Furax once he arrived, he responded in sign language, "Throw the ball." Since Mission K9 Rescue and the family have connected, many pictures and videos of Furax have been sent to them. When they showed a video of Furax to Brandon, he "lit up and began to cry happy tears."

It is clear from Brandon's reactions that no matter what the brain goes through, the bond between handler and K-9 is so unbreakable that the memory remains intact. These two heroes have been apart for too long, and it's time that they reunite and spend the rest of their lives healing together.

About Mission K9 Rescue

Mission K9 Rescue provides transportation, adoption facilitation, monetary and professional assistance to any retired canine who has served mankind in some capacity. The public can help make more of these reunions possible by donating to Mission K9 Rescue at www.missionk9rescue.org.
New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton blamed lax gun laws Friday for the alarming spike in murders in Chicago this year, reports the New York Daily News.

The Windy City surpassed 500 murders for the year over the Labor Day weekend, more than New York and Los Angeles combined.

"The problem, some of it, has to do with gun laws that just don't meet the reality of what's going on the streets," Commissioner Bill Bratton said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "That's a core issue there  the amount of guns and the failure of the laws and government to address that particular issue."

Bratton noted that the Chicago Police Department's number of officers compares favorably with other major metropolitan areas compared to population.

Bratton agreed with Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who recently said, "If we had the gun laws in Chicago that L.A. and New York have we would see our violent crime cut in half."
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

A request has been made for Asheville, NC police department to investigate Donald Trump and his campaign for potentially inciting a riot at a rally where protesters were assaulted by Trump supporters.

Here is the video of Trump supporters punching protesters:

https://youtu.be/e60q2bsQ0bs

Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, has requested a criminal investigation into Trump for inciting a riot:

I wanted to report an assault at Donald Trumps rally in Asheville. You can see the video here of at least two protestors being slapped by at least two other people, as others stand by and encourage the attacker. As the protestors who were assaulted were being dragged out of Donald Trumps rally, Donald Trump gives the thumbs up and smiles as his crowd chants hey hey hey, goodbye.

I believe that this is in violation of the NC General Statutes, specifically Chapter 14A Article 36A under Public Disturbance and Rioting. Specifically, I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of inciting a riot urging others to engage in violent activity under Chapter 14 Article 36A: http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/enactedlegislation/statutes/pdf/byarticle/chapter_14/article_36a.pdf.

.

Im asking for a full investigation into Donald Trump and his campaign on behalf of those who were assaulted.

So much for the idea that the Trump campaign could capitalize on Hillary Clintons recent illness and time away from the campaign trail.

Trump and his supporters have once again shown an inability to control their inner thugs. Whether or not criminal charges are actually filed against Trump isnt the point. The fact that the Republican nominee for president is in a position where it is possible for him to be investigated for instigating a riot is what voters should be focused on.

This is not normal.

The media attempts to normalize Trump, and the behavior of his supports must stop, and it is up to everyday Americans to stand up to anyone who injects violence into our democratic process.

Donald Trump could be facing criminal charges for inciting a riot, and that is a story that belongs at the top of every newscast and on the lips of each voter.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

As Jason Easley wrote just moments ago, Mike Pence declined to call KKK leader David Duke deplorable in an interview with CNNs Wolf Blitzer, instead saying that he doesnt like name-calling.

Video:

Mike Pence just refused to call David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, deplorable: pic.twitter.com/Trb2wIftW1  Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) September 12, 2016

Im not really sure why the media keeps dropping David Dukes name, Pence said. Donald Trump has denounced David Duke repeatedly.

After being pressed by Blitzer, Pence still refused to call the KKK leader deplorable, saying hes not in the name-calling business.

If youre keeping score at home, both candidates on the Republican ticket have now refused to make quick and forceful condemnations of a known and proud white supremacist.

Earlier this year, in an interview with CNNs Jake Tapper, Trump also refused to disavow Duke and the KKK, saying, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists.

Trump went on to say hed have to look into what the KKK was before deciding whether to denounce them.

The Trump campaign, from top to bottom, is often reluctant to denounce open bigots, yet they are almost always eager to throw the kitchen sink at folks who have done nothing wrong: Gold Star families, a judge with a Mexican background, a disabled reporter, and Muslim Americans who just want to live freely and peacefully.

Pretty deplorable, if you ask me.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Wow, what a weekend.

It started with the fallout from Hillary Clintons remarks on Friday which pretty appropriately described some Donald Trump supporters as deplorable.

After the Republican nominees supporters feigned outrage for a day, there was a momentary pause as the nation reflected on the 15-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. It was supposed to be a day when both candidates and their supporters put politics aside and came together in remembrance of all those we lost in the 2001 tragedy.

That didnt last long, though; Hillary Clinton had to gall to get sick.

After Clinton became overheated during her attendance to a muggy, outdoor 9/11 memorial in New York City, the right-wing conspiracy machine went into full throttle hoping to score political points.

Their response was to pounce, not wish her well.

Of course, we now know, per Clintons doctor, that the candidate was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, which explains the symptoms she displayed while leaving the memorial.

Even then, Trump supporters continued to stir up insane conspiracy theories.

Some claimed that Clinton was gravely ill and unfit to be president. Others suggested she had a stroke while leaving the memorial. After she left Chelsea Clintons apartment later in the day on Sunday, they criticized her for interacting with a little girl, even though Clinton wouldnt have been contagious at that point.

A large group of Trump supporters even took to Twitter to claim Clinton has a body double, and thats really the person that appeared outside Chelseas apartment yesterday. Their biggest piece of evidence is that there was no Secret Service with Clinton as she exited the building, even though there was.

If there is one word to describe the response of Trump supporters it would be  deplorable.

Hillary Clinton is sick with a common and treatable illness that affects millions of people each year. Like many of us, the Democratic nominee soldiered on and continued to do her job by attending campaign events, fundraisers, briefings, and a memorial to commemorate those we lost 15 years ago.

The idea that Trump supporters would make political hay out of this only validates the comments she made last week.

A sizable chunk of the GOP nominees supporters could indeed be put into a basket of deplorables. Their behavior this weekend only proves that.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Donald Trump loves to talk about his generosity, but its hard to tell whats true given his propensity to inflate his contributions and worth, sometimes, or even often, from nothing.

Spokesperson Hope Hicks said in a statement Monday he has given away tens of millions of dollars but she offered no specifics. She said Mr. Trump continues to be unfairly maligned for his generosity and we will continue to correct the record, but she did not actually set the record straight.

Sounds familiar. Thats how Republican nominee Donald Trump operates. We have no idea if she meant that Trump gives away other peoples money, which is the money in the foundation bearing his name, or that he personally contributed to charity.

It takes an iron will and dedication to follow a Trump claim through to its inevitably stunningly empty end, because hes so slippery. He responds to questions with vague superlatives and declarations so bold that the person on the other end cant help but assume its true because who would tell a lie that big.

Who would tell a lie that big? Donald Trump.

Trumps running mate, Governor Mike Pence (R-IN), told CNNs Wolf Blitzer Monday that Donald Trump has given away tens of millions of dollars to charitable causes throughout his business life.

To back this up, Pence offered up a $100,000.00 check to a church in August to help with clean up, according to David Fahrenthold at the Washington Post.

The good news is that this actually happened as verified by Fahrenthold, the bad news is its about the only giving that happened. And since it happened after Trump was unable to verify his claim that he had given $102 million over five years, and the Post busted him again as they were unable to verify a SINGLE instance of giving of his own money by Trump, it looks like this $100,000.00 donation was a deliberate attempt to put an end to Fahrentholds fierce investigation.

From the Post:

The Post has called 326 charities with connections to Trump, asking if they had received a gift of the nominees own money. Between 2008 and this May, that search turned up just one gift, from 2009. It worth less than $10,000.

Fahrenthold also reported unlike most private foundations  Trumps charity had been retooled to rely almost entirely on other donors money. In fact, tax records show no gifts at all from Trump to the Trump Foundation since 2008.

Basically Trump gives away other peoples money.

 Or does he.

The Post found that the foundation not only appeared to have defied tax laws but defied laws against self-dealing. That is to say that the foundation full of other peoples money bought things for Donald Trump.

Things like a $12,000.00 football helmet.

Things a man who is so rich and such a good businessman should be able to buy on his own. Why is Donald Trump using other peoples money in his foundation to buy himself expensive trinkets if hes so successful. And who does that. This is a troubling insight into the grotesque values that drive Trump.

While many Americans are frustrated with the media, there are people doing extraordinary work. For example, David Fahrenthold is relentlessly dedicated to his investigation into Trumps donations.

His tireless work tells a story about Donald Trump very different from the story the Republican candidate tells. Donald Trump is the little Oz spending other peoples money and taking credit for it, seemingly using other peoples money illegally to protect himself from investigations even.

This is who Donald Trump really is, and we see this over and over again. Its the story of his life, as told from the other people in it: Vague claims of ownership, success, wealth and generosity that fall apart under scrutiny. When called on his lies, Trump often retaliates, biting and sniping with the help of expensive lawyers like a scared little dog, hoping his intimidation tactics will shut down the questions.

Journalist Selina Scott found this out the hard way after she exposed Trump as a fraud. My 60-minute documentary exposed how through bluff, bombast and braggadocio, he had convinced the American business community he was far richer than he was, and that while the rest of his rivals were losers, he knew how to make the US great, Scott wrote.

As payback for this revelation of fact, Trump harassed Scott for years with intimidating letters, calling her sleazy, unattractive, obnoxious and boring.

Its hard to mark deplorable behavior since Trump has set the bar so low, but this is the mark of a petty, little man.

This pattern of Trumps behavior is reliable, and as such, any claim he makes should require verification before being accepted as truth. In fact, its harder to find claims hes made about himself that actually stand up under scrutiny than it is to find claims that fail the test of accuracy.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

The House Judiciary Committee Democrats urged the Department of Justice to investigate the Trump Foundation donations to Florida A.G. Pam Bondi Tuesday.

Citing the concern of several editorial boards  including the Tampa Bay Times, the Sun Sentinel, and the Washington Post  that have called for the feds to investigate the Trump-Bondi connection, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) wrote a letter requesting that DOJ Attorney General Loretta Lynch investigate allegations of bribery and other criminal misconduct concerning the $25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The letter, signed by every Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, read in part It has been reported that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump while her office deliberated joining an investigation of fraud at Trump University.

After receiving these funds, Mrs. Bondi declined to further investigate Mr. Trumps business interests. This fact pattern indicates that these payments may have influenced Mrs. Bondis official decision not to participate in litigation against Mr. Trump. A number of criminal statutes would appear to be implicated by this course of conduct.

They cited:

18 U.S.C.  201(b)  pertaining to unlawful bribery schemes. 18 U.S.C.  1341, 1343, and 1346  pertaining to bribery schemes that deprive constituents of the honest services of public officials. 26 U.S.C.  7206 and 18 U.S.C.  1001  concerning a deliberate failure to disclose the transfer of funds by a non-profit foundation to the Internal Revenue Service, under penalty of perjury.

Therefore, our concerns extend beyond Mr. Trumps violation of tax laws.

They noted Trump bragging about how giving to important people makes them do whatever you want them to do, In a 2015 interview with the Wall Street Journal, he justified his actions this way: As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.'[6] He was even more direct at campaign stop earlier this year: Ive given to everybody. Because that was my job. I gotta give to them . . . . Because when I want something, I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass.'[7]

Unlike the Republican-led witch hunts into Hillary Clinton, the Democrats are echoing the thoughts of non-partisans and concerned citizens about facts already in evidence.

In addition to investigating the Trump Bondi relationship, the feds should also be looking into the financial relationship between then Texas AG Greg Abbott and Donald Trump.

[6] Peter Nicholas, Donald Trump Walks Back His Past Praise of Hillary Clinton, Wall St. Journal, July 29, 2015.

[7] David A. Fahrenthold and Rosalind S. Helderman, Trump bragged that his money bought off politicians. Just not this time., Wash. Post, Sept. 7, 2016.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Overthrowing the legitimate Iranian government in 1953 is, unarguably, the central cause of our ongoing problems with Iran. It is hardly any surprise then when the obvious response by Republican John Bolton is to promote overthrow of Iranian government. That would require a real president, he says, lamenting that,

We dont have a president whos demonstrated competence in difficult international confrontations. Typical Republican foreign policy expert that he is, Bolton is confusing successful international relations with its failure; otherwise known as confrontations.

Watch courtesy of Media Matters for America:

MARTHA MACCALLUM (CO-HOST): Whats going on here?



JOHN BOLTON: Well I think this is yet another example of Irans effort to show that it is the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, pushing us around for everybody to see, letting the Arab states there know that theyre not really in the kind of defensive position with us that they want to be in. And I think weve now passed the point, we may have passed it some time back, where we really ought to be deciding on some kind of strategic response, not responding to this provocation or that provocation, but doing something about this to demonstrate to the leadership in Tehran its unacceptable. Let me just say, I have zero faith the Obama administration will do anything like that.



MACCALLUM: There was one quote, it was an unnamed source within the U.S. Navy, it said in a  I believe it was a Washington Post piece  of the U.S. saying we wanted to test the Iranian reaction. Is that wise?



BOLTON: Well I think if they thought they had some indication from leadership in the White House that theyd be backed up, that would be a different thing. I assume weve been flying these reconnaissance missions right close to the Iranian territorial waters for quite some time. If we havent been, thats a mistake Im glad is now corrected. But as aggravating and as potentially dangerous as the boats running against our destroyers, the threat to shoot down our planes, as bad as that is, if you escalate, youd better be prepared to think what it means if the Iranians escalate as well and what your strategic objective is. The Obama administrations strategic objective is to be nice to Iran. So I think you could end up in a worse situation if we escalate and then back down at a higher level. Thats why my hope is that everybody goes to sleep for the next four months and that we have a new president whos really prepared to deal with Iran because the lesson being taught around the world here is the United States just isnt pushing back.



MACCALLUM: You could get yourself in a red line sort of situation if youre testing this, and as you say, youre not prepared to take the next step, and you dont know what that next step is. So you would recommend that we not do any sort of stronger show of force in that area with larger naval ships or aircraft carriers that kind of thing because were not prepared to follow through?



BOLTON: Well, if we had a real president I would be prepared to do a lot of things. I mean, ultimately I think our objective should be to overthrow the regime in Tehran, but thats obviously not the policy we have now, and we dont have a president whos demonstrated competence in difficult international confrontations like this. I understand why people are irritated by what the Iranians are doing. Theyre clearly advancing their interests over ours, but we need to be prepared to do it right if were going to respond. I dont see that in the White House.

The 1953 coup was backed by the CIA and directed against democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. The operation was aided by the British, who actually came up with the scheme (and later convinced Eisenhower to help) after Iran nationalized the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

Sound familiar? The Iraq War took place after Iraq nationalized its oil industry. The 1953 response destroyed relations with Iran; the 2003 war destroyed Iraq and created a vacuum that led to the rise of ISIS. Our record of success with interventions in the Middle East is a less than sterling one, and now Bolton is proposing another.

The CIA was reluctant to admit is role, though the Iranians always knew who was behind it. The CIA did not finally come clean until 2013. The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who benefited from the coup, was a staunch US ally until his overthrow.

Unsurprisingly Iran has been Americas implacable enemy ever since he was driven out of power. And who can blame them?

They say two wrongs dont make a right; in this case, two wrongs cannot make it right. We alone are responsible for our current troubles with Iran. John Boltons plan wont fix anything. It will just make things worse. Which, unfortunately, seems to be the Republican way of doing things these days.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

When Mike Pence was asked if former KKK leader David Duke, who New York Magazine says is perhaps Americas most famous white supremacist, is deplorable, or deserving censure or contempt, Pence validated Hillary Clintons deplorables remark by answering, Im not in the name-calling business.

Pence told Wolf Blitzer,

Im not really sure why the media keeps dropping David Dukes name. Donald Trump has denounced David Duke repeatedly. We dont want his support, and we dont want the support of people who think like him.

Actually, Trumps alleged rejection of Duke is much less certain than Pence claims.

If David Duke is not deplorable, the word has no meaning. Even Wolf Blitzer took time away from his obsession over Hillary Clintons health to admit David Duke is a deplorable. Hillary Clinton tweeted, quick to seize on Pences refusal to condemn Duke,

If you wont say the KKK is deplorable, you have no business running the country. https://t.co/mFut8Qrz9A  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 12, 2016

David Duke was so vexed by Clinton calling KKK on him that he misspelled the VP nominees name:

Clinton attacks Pense for NOT calling me "Deplorable" Yet, #HypocriteHillary supported ex-kKK Robert Byrd for Senate Leader! "Deplorable?"  David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) September 13, 2016

This is a false equivalency of course, because Robert Byrds story is one of redemption. He became a champion of the Civil Rights Movement  which Duke clearly is not  and was honored in his passing by Eugene Robinson in a moving op-ed, and mourned by no less than the NAACP.

And Pences logic is strange, because Trumps deplorables regularly tell us that if theyre telling the truth about black and Muslims and Jews and others, its not name-calling; its not racism; its just facts.

You dont have to look for to find the source of this reasoning: David Duke has defended segregation by confusing racist stereotypes for facts, asking, Are facts racist too? Pence himself used that reasoning when he claimed his anti-LGBT legislation was not discrimination but Gods plan.

David Duke is deplorable. And it is not an insult, but a fact. One needs only look at the things Duke has said and done. But of course, the Trump campaign had to defend all its racist core because it cant afford to alienate the angry white folks who make up the majority of its supporters. And nobody was happier than David Duke himself, who told BuzzFeed News:

Its good to see an individual like Pence and others start to reject this absolute controlled media. The truth is that the Republican Party in Louisiana  I received the vast majority of Republican votes for United States Senator before and for governor before that in my state. The truth is the Republican Party is big tent. I served in the Republican caucus. I was in the Republican caucus in the legislature. I had a perfect Republican voting record. Its ridiculous that they attack me because of my involvement in that non-violent Klan four decades ago.

The Republican Party is anything but a big tent. It is a tent that includes a lot of white people, but it doesnt include blacks, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic and of whom, at most 1 percent support Trump; it doesnt include Jews, who reliably vote Democrat, and who will certainly not be attracted by Trumps anti-Semitic alt-right following; it doesnt include Muslims or Mexicans, neither of whom Trump thinks should be living here; and it doesnt include women, most of whom reject Trumps misogyny.

In a clear wink-wink, Pence said, We dont want his support and we dont want the support of the people who think like him, but he wont call Duke deplorable.

In fact, Trump and Pence not only want the support of people like Duke, they need it, because the GOP is anything but a big tent. What the GOP is instead, as Donald Trump Juniors recent retweeting of Nazi memes demonstrates, is the main-streamer of extremist ideologies.

Its an abuse of language to call the GOP big tent because includes those those who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic. What Duke is describing is not a big tent. It is, in fact, a basket of deplorables.

Photo: Twitter
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

During the Obama years, the Republican party increased their affiliation with older, whites, men and the lower educated. The deliberate shift of the Republican voter under President Obama led to the rise of the white supremacist-endorsed Donald Trump.

It is even worse for Republicans than they could have imagined, as new data shows that the GOP is aging rapidly and could be facing national extinction.

The Pew Research Center released the results of the shifting affiliations between the two major parties on Tuesday, which showed that the Democratic Party is becoming less white, less religious and better-educated at a faster rate than the country as a whole, while aging at a slower rate. Within the GOP the pattern is the reverse: Republican voters are becoming more diverse, better-educated and less religious at a slower rate than the country generally, while the age profile of the GOP is growing older more quickly than that of the country.

As Democrats grab up more constituencies, Republicans have focused on getting more of the older voters, who make up a larger share of the electorate now, as well as white voters, men and those with lower levels of education. This growth, Pew says, was especially apparent during Barack Obamas presidency.

Some of the sharpest movement toward the GOP has come among less educated and older whites. Whites with no college experience have become 14 points more likely to affiliate with the GOP since 2008, including a six-point shift over the last four years. White voters age 65 and older are now 13 points more likely to identify as Republican or lean Republican than they were eight years ago. Today, fully 58% of Republican voters are 50 and older while the share under 50 has declined to 41%. Among Democratic voters, 48% are 50 and older, while 51% are under 50. The share of voters who have a college degree or more education has increased by 10 percentage points since 1992, from 23% to 33%. Better-educated voters are increasingly identifying as Democrats and expressing liberal attitudes across a range of issues.

In spite of their growth with different groups, Democrats still maintain only a slight edge over Republicans in terms of party identification among registered voters, due to Republican growth with the large older population with 48% identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic. Forty-four percent identify as Republican or lean Republican. Pew notes, That is identical to the balance of leaned party identification in 2012.

As Republicans catered more and more to the populations they could get under Obama, it meant they doubled down on their Southern Strategy and sold their older, whiter, male, and less educated base a dream of white male poors with lower educations rising again.

Who to best sell that dream? Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump is great at telling lies and selling a turd as the most fabulous thing ever that he hand created on his own while ruling the world as an Alpha Male. This is why Donald Trumps running mate wouldnt denounce former KKK wizard Republican candidate David Duke as deplorable yesterday.

The truth is that Donald Trump is an entitled trust fund baby who wouldnt be anywhere but prison if he werent white and rich, thanks to the efforts of his father. Donald Trump is a con artist of the highest order, and this is what made him so appealing to the base Republicans have cultivated.

And this is also why that base doesnt care that Donald Trump lies, makes illegal donations to buy off an AG who is considering investigating Trump U, incites violence, says reprehensible things about everyone they hate and is the last person who could stand for family values.

Republicans like to blame Obama for Donald Trump, but the reality is that it was the Republican reaction to the growing Obama coalition that birthed Donald Trump.

The Republican party is relying on an aging group that will eventually die out. What may look good for Trump in the short run will haunt Republicans for years to come.

Donald Trump is the dinosaur leading the Republican Party to extinction, and demographics are the big bang in the Republican Partys future. While Trump may seem like a good idea today, he is a symptom of the disease that will lead to their demise.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Paul Ryan, head of the do-nothing House of Representatives, master of posturing, of talking but not doing, writes in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, that Americans would rather have free checking than be free protected against fraud committed by their banks.

Ryan criticized the Dodd-Frank Act, which, as we have just seen, ensured Wells Fargo was fined for defrauding its customers:

Weve also seen consolidation in the banking industry. Since Dodd-Frank became law, our country has lost on average one community financial institution per day. There are now fewer than 6,500 banks in total, the lowest level since the Great Depression.

Actually, Republicans overstate the number of banks closed as a result of Dodd-Frank, with American Banker reporting that the entire U.S., the total number of banks has fallen 18% since June 30, 2010. The Washington Post reports a dataset published by the Mercatus Center that a 14 percent decline in community banks.

And Ryan is wrong in more than respect to simple numbers. As American Banker explains, the Dodd-Frank Act Causing the demise of community banks is a narrative [that] confuses correlation with causation.

Thats right. Paul Ryan is wrong. And hes not through being wrong. Not by a long shot.

What is Ryan worried about amid all this flurry of flawed thinking and bogus statistics? Defrauded customers? No, he says Americans dont care about being defrauded! What they really want is free checking:

And Dodd-Franks regulations have not helped the American people. Before Dodd-Frank, 75 percent of banks offered free checking. Two years after it passed, only 39 percent did. A study by Javelin Strategy and Research suggests that Dodd-Frank regulations fueled a 21 percent surge in checking fees between 2006-12.

In fact, Ryans statistics are again bogus; most Americans still have free checking accounts. Ryan claims 39 percent for 2012 but the American Bankers Association (ABA) said in 2013 that 55 percent of Americans still had free checking accounts, and the actual number according to the same body was not 75 percent in 2010, the year Dodd-Frank took effect, but 53 percent.

In fact, Ryan is right about one thing: being protected by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is all part of the progressive vision. Ryan complains that federal oversight is not necessary, when, in fact, the Wells Fargo scandal very persuasively demonstrates the need for regulation of the banking industry.

Ryan, of course, does not mention Wells Fargos fraud. He does not mention the $185 million fine levied against them by the CFPB. Hes just worried about free checking most people still have.

This is all part of Ryans oft-repeated claim that The real Obama legacy is one of sprawling liberalism, divisive identity politics, bigger government, and America ceding leadership in the world.

In fact, Ryan is doing his level best to ensure Americans are fooled  by Republican talking points, when in fact, Republicans love big government when its regulating behavior or beliefs they dont approve of.

Ryan claims Obama wanted to consolidate the federal governments control over key aspects of our lives even while promoting a government that watches like a big brother over womens reproductive rights; over who can and cannot get married; or have abortions; or, if youre not Christian, practice their own religious beliefs without government interference.

Ryan complains that President Obama has given government the starring role and pushed the people into the wings, but the real problem for Ryan and the Republican Party is that that same government is protecting the American people from the rapacious activities of the GOPs corporate sponsors.
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.
In any war, it's not just a matter of defeating the invaders. You also must support the local population to help it, once again, thrive.

Of course, we're talking here about Indian Heights Park and its battle to eradicate invasive species.

A group of volunteers has been fighting the good fight at the park, located just east of Assisi Heights and up the steep hill along the west side of Third Avenue Northwest, against buckthorn and other invaders, and they are ready to take that final march to victory.

Dawn Littleton, a member of the Friends of Indian Heights Park board of directors, said the group is looking for volunteers to help in its two-pronged approach to restoring the park to a more native state.

One group of volunteers will be needed to help clean up the last of the invasive species at the park. The Conservation Corps of Minnesota has gone through with heavy equipment taking care of larger plants, but volunteers are needed to pile wood and clean up smaller invasive plants like new shoots of buckthorn or honeysuckle and reed canary grass.

ADVERTISEMENT

The second group will head to the Oronoco Prairie Scientific and Natural Area , a remnant prairie near Lake Zumbro, to collect seeds that will be used to replant Indian Heights Park with the types of vegetation that are native to the area.

"We've been collecting seeds since June," Littleton said. "Native plants are not like crop plants, so their seeds are ready at different times of the year." Volunteers from Friends of Indian Heights Park have helped collect seeds in milk containers specific to seed types. Milk containers for each one. "We'll probably collect 10 seed types depending on what is ripe."

Larissa Mottl, central region scientific and natural area program coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources , said the DNR gave FOIH a permit to hand-collect seeds and use a portion for their restoration efforts in exchange for collecting seeds for the DNR from the Oronoco site.

"It's a great win-win situation," Mottl said. "It's difficult for us to harvest the seeds. You have to visit the site multiple times. To have help from volunteers who can pick them as they're ready is a big help to us."

So far, the group has collected a bumper crop of native seeds for the DNR, Mottl said. "We're pleased they're using a local source of seeds," she said. "They are creating habitat for some of the rarest species that depend on prairie and savannah habitat." That includes a diverse group of pollenators that can be supported by the addition of another habitat of native plants available to them.

The replacement of the invasive species with native plants might be one benefit of the program, Mottl said, but getting people involved in their native environments helps educate the public as well. "She's had people of all ages out there helping with the harvest." Mottl said. "That excitement is a great part of introducing people to a prairie habitat."

Once those seeds are collected and the space is cleared, Littleton said the FOIH will seed the area in October of November. "We do frost seeding," she said. "Some of the seeds need to be kept cold for 30 days, or warmed and cold. We'll put them in the ground before the first snow."

To volunteer

ADVERTISEMENT

What: Indian Heights Park National Public Lands Day

When: Saturday, Sept. 24, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Volunteers can register for at least 90 minutes at Indian Heights Park. Activities include seed collecting, piling wood, and collecting invasive species after the Conservation Corps of Minnesota has gone through with its heavy equipment. Volunteers are encouraged to wear jeans, gloves, and a long-sleeved shirt. Contact Mitch Moore at mitchmoore614@gmail.com or Dawn Littleton at Littleton.dawn@gmail.com.

Visit the Friends of Indian Heights Park website at www.foih.org .
A Rochester man accused with his wife of spending several thousand dollars of a relative's money without permission was sentenced Monday in Olmsted County District Court.

Michael Thomas Krahn, 57, received a statutory stay of adjudication, was placed on probation for five years and forbidden from acting as power of attorney for anyone. He was ordered to pay $12,900 in restitution and complete 50 hours of community work service.

With a statutory stay of adjudication, the defendant pleads guilty, but the court doesn't "accept" the plea. When probation and its conditions are successfully completed, the charges are dismissed and the defendant's criminal record doesn't reflect a conviction. The arrest record remains.

Krahn pleaded guilty in July to one count of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult, a felony. In exchange for the plea, three identical counts were dismissed at sentencing.

His wife, Jennifer Krahn, made a similar deal in March and was sentenced in May to probation and work service.

ADVERTISEMENT

The investigation began when a family member reported concerns about the finances of the victim, claiming the couple was using the victim's money "to support their expensive lifestyle," the complaint says.

The victim lived at a senior living facility after a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, requiring assistance with basic needs.

According to the criminal complaint, the Krahns were responsible for the bills and expenses of the victim, and both had access to the victim's accounts.

An investigator noted several suspicious transactions and withdrawals from the accounts, court documents say, including the use of credit cards. The victim reportedly told officials the couple hadn't been told they could use the money for themselves.
A Rochester woman made her initial court appearance Monday, accused of crashing her vehicle into a building.

Erin Joy Daniels, 36, has been charged in Olmsted County District Court with felony counts of second-degree assault, first-degree damage to property and first-degree criminal damage, as well as one count of reckless driving, a misdemeanor.

She remains free in lieu of $10,000 conditional bond and is due back in court Nov. 18.

The investigation began about 4 a.m. Aug. 13, when police were sent to an apartment building in northeast Rochester for a report of a red Grand Am that had hit the building. An officer en route spotted the car leaving the area; it was driven by Daniels, who was alone in the car.

She had a bump on the head, a scraped shoulder, back and knee, the complaint says; her clothing was disheveled and she was upset.

ADVERTISEMENT

Daniels told the officer she'd been at a party at the apartment building when her ex-fiance showed up with his new girlfriend. An argument escalated to a physical altercation in the parking lot, court documents say, between Daniels, her ex-fiance, his brother and several others. She claimed the brother punched her, threw her against a truck, threw her to the ground and kicked her in the head and ribs.

According to the complaint, Daniels said she got into her car and tried to run over her ex-fiance's brother because of the assault. The man was standing in front of the door to the apartment complex, so Daniels reportedly drove up over the curb and across the sidewalk.

Her ex-fiance and his brother ran into the building to avoid being hit, the complaint says, and Daniels drove her car into the building, hitting the walls and windows of the ground level apartment, where the two men had gone.

The ex-fiance's brother said several people were standing near the door to the building when Daniels drove toward them, court documents say. The man told everyone to get inside before Daniels struck the building, then watched as she crashed into the windows of the apartment where they'd gone.
A Rochester man convicted of sexually assaulting a woman after entering her home in the middle of the night has been sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison.

Michael Paul Kahn, 51, was sentenced Monday in Olmsted County District Court to concurrent terms of 130 months and 33 months. A jury found him guilty of one count each of third-degree criminal sexual conduct-helpless and first-degree burglary, both felonies, during a three-day trial in May.

Kahn was accused of assaulting a woman on July 5 last year. The woman had been sleeping in her home and was awakened by the assault. She told the suspect  later identified as Kahn  to stop. When she awoke later on the floor of her bedroom, Kahn was sleeping in her bed, naked. The woman "got out of the house as fast as she could," the complaint says.

Though the victim didn't know the man's name, she recognized him from a party the night before. The woman told authorities at no time during the party did she and Kahn have any physical contact, nor was there any hint of a sexual interest between them, court documents say. She and Kahn had met briefly in the past, but he'd never been in  or invited to  her home, the woman said.

When investigators believed they had identified Kahn, they asked the woman to look at a photo lineup. She "immediately identified Kahn and began to sob," the complaint says. Detectives then asked the woman to place a recorded call to Kahn, during which he acknowledged she'd left the party alone and he'd gone to her home uninvited. He said he woke her up to talk and "whatever happened, happened," the report says.

ADVERTISEMENT

Kahn was arrested a few days later at his home. Though he repeated many of the things he'd told the woman in the covert phone call, he denied they had sex. When confronted with possible evidence and victim statements, Kahn said the woman had been flirting with him at the party, and if he had sex with her, he didn't remember.

On July 8, 2002, Kahn was sentenced to 21 months in prison, stayed for 10 years, for a conviction of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct. He was ordered to complete sex offender evaluation/treatment and register as a predatory offender. Kahn was discharged from probation on July 6, 2006.
More than 100 Rochester students may be affected by a state of Minnesota ruling that Minnesota School of Business and Globe University fraudulently marketed and recruited students.

The Minnesota Office of Higher Education is moving to revoke the schools' authorization to operate at its six locations throughout the state after a Hennepin County District Judge ordered the two schools to stop the fraudulent practices and imposed unspecified penalties.

The 130-page decision highlighted problems in the school's criminal justice program, but OHE is moving to revoke authorization because of an applicable state statute that says the office can't provide registration, degree, or name approval to a school "if there has been a criminal, civil or administration adjudication of fraud or misrepresentation in Minnesota or another state."

"Any finding of fraud or misrepresentation triggers the part where we basically have to revoke them," said Betsy Talbot, OHE's manager of institutional registration and licensing. "There's no quantity or scale, or magnitude in the statute, it's any adjudication of fraud or misrepresentation."

Attorney General Lori Swanson sued the Woodbury-based schools in 2014, saying it enrolled students for criminal justice programs despite lacking accreditation.

ADVERTISEMENT

The schools, owned by the Myhre family, were ordered to pay the state for legal and other costs. Swanson plans to seek restitution for more than 1,000 students affected. The for-profit schools closed its six campuses in Minnesota and Wisconsin while awaiting the court's decision. The website for the Rochester campus says classes will resume on Oct. 3.

The school will be allowed to remain open for one year, according to Talbot, but after that, it's not entirely clear what will happen.

"There's just so much up in the air," said Sandy Connolly, OHE's director of communications. "There are some moving pieces yet."

But Michelle Knoll, the school's marketing and communications director, said Monday the school has yet to receive any formal communication from OHE, she said the office hasn't yet communicated anything about revoking the school's registration.

"We are currently considering all of our legal options and our students and staff will most certainly be the first to know once an official decision has been made about the future of our schools," Knoll said.

In an email to students last week, Jeanne Herrmann, chief operating officer for Globe University and Minnesota School of Business, said she felt details released by the media weren't "reflective of the entire order."

"We are pleased to report that the Court found that our schools are currently fully compliant with state law," said the email to students. "However, the Court made some findings related to our now ceased criminal justice program. The Court ordered the State to provide additional information to complete its ruling on the matter."

The email noted the Attorney General's Office has until Sept. 22 to provide further detail to the Court before it can complete the ruling.

ADVERTISEMENT

Opportunities for appeal, 'teach-out'

The school won't close immediately, it'll have a year to operate, which OHE is calling a "teach-out" period.

This year will allow the school's 1,700 current students a chance to finish their programs. For those unable to finish, OHE is currently working with other schools to negotiate credit transfer, Talbot said.

"Right now, our focus is the students that are going to be impacted by this. Even though the program that the verdict is in relation to, it impacts all the employees, and all the students, and it's just trying to ensure that they get to complete the program, or any program that they are trying to complete," Talbot said Friday.

The school will have two opportunities to appeal, Talbot said. It can appeal the verdict itself, through the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and it can appeal OHE's administrative decision. During that process, the schools will be able to remain open.

She said the U.S. Department of Education and Veteran's Affairs  because of the school's high number of veterans  may weigh in. "We're still finding out the particulars from the attorney general's process," Talbot said.

OHE will be consulting with the Attorney General's office and Globe University and Minnesota School of Business to "minimize disruption for students," said OHE Commissioner Larry Pogemiller, in a Sept. 12 statement on OHE's website.

Talbot said school closings are especially difficult for veterans because of how their benefits work.

ADVERTISEMENT

"If your school closes before you use your eligibility and finish your degree, you don't get those veteran's benefits back," she said. "It's trying to ensure continuity of benefits for them. It's very important because they have earned those benefits by serving our country."

In addition to its Minnesota locations, the school also has one location in South Dakota and five in Wisconsin.

What does this mean for Rochester?

The Rochester MSOB campus currently has 112 students, and 34 instructors and staff, according to Knoll.

The criminal justice program, which the decision found fault with, was "officially ceased" in Minnesota in January 2015, according to Knoll, but she noted her records show the Rochester campus hadn't had any students in the program since October 2013.

One of the school's former students, Michael Flores, said he wasn't surprised by the news. He withdrew a few months ago because he felt like "they were wasting my time," he said.

Others, like Rochester-resident Alex Simone, said their experiences with the school were very positive.

"I had a great experience," Simone said Monday. "I was placed in my field within two quarters of starting."

One of the school's former admissions directors, Angie Helm, who worked at Globe University and Minnesota School of Business from 2005 to 2014, said, "I have nothing but the utmost respect for the school and all that they do."

"I feel very proud for the 10 years I was there with them," Helm said. "Programs were always under close watch to make sure we were doing what was in the best interest of students."

As a state, Talbot said, Minnesota supports diverse educational opportunities and business, and she said Globe University and Minnesota School of Business will be afforded due process  though, she noted, you won't see this type of court action against a nonprofit institution.

"There's just a lot of scrutiny in the for-profit industry. This is the second for-profit institution in Minnesota, or some sort of movement towards that in a week," she said, noting the closure of ITT Tech locations across the country. "It's just making sure the ones that do operate are treating students fairly."
WINONA  Eight legislative candidates faced off Monday night in Winona, weighing in on topics ranging from transportation to gun control.

Candidates participating in the debate were DFL Sen. Matt Schmit, of Red Wing, and his GOP rival, Mike Goggin, of Red Wing; GOP Sen. Jeremey Miller, of Winona, and DFL rival Jon Pieper, of Lanesboro; GOP Rep. Steve Drazkowski, of Mazeppa, and his DFL opponent, Elise Diesslin, of Elgin. Two other Democrats joined in the forum, but their Republican rivals did not attend. Winona Rep. Gene Pelowski and Spring Grove DFLer Thomas Trehus showed up. Their rivals, Adam Pace, of Winona, and Rep. Greg Davids, of Preston, did not attend.

For a little more than an hour, candidates answered a series of questions before a crowd at Winona City Hall. The forum was sponsored by the League of Women Voters Winona. The forum comes two months before voters head to the polls on Nov. 8. Here's a look at where the candidates stand on some of the major issues.

Transportation

Whether Democrat or Republican, all the candidates in the forum agreed, in rural Minnesota, transportation funding needs to be focused on fixing roads and repairing bridges.

ADVERTISEMENT

"In greater Minnesota, we have to focus on repairing current infrastructure," Pelowski said.

But differences emerged when it came to the topic of transit. Several Republicans in the forum said they don't support funding for light-rail transit because it is not cost effective. Goggin noted a $1 billion public works bill with funding for several road projects in greater Minnesota failed to pass the Legislature in the final minutes of the legislative session because Senate Democrats insisted on adding a provision to fund light-rail transit in the Twin Cities.

"That took away our funding for small communities for roads and bridges," Goggin said.

Schmit agreed roads and bridges need to be the priority when it comes to funding in rural Minnesota but said lawmakers need to be open to transit options in the metro area.

"We have to have dedicated funding for our rural roads and bridges, but we also have to give metropolitan residents  and their business community demands it  the options for investing in the kind of infrastructure they want in the 21st century," he said.

Rising health care costs

All the candidates argued it's critical that steps be taken to tackle soaring health insurance costs, but they differed on the best way to do that.

Drazkowski said the first step needs to be scrapping the state's health-insurance exchange, MNsure.

ADVERTISEMENT

"This is an abject failure that has sucked $400 million of taxpayer money out of the pockets of the taxpayers of Minnesota, and it still doesn't work," he said.

Several Democrats on the panel defended MNsure. Diesslin said MNsure plays an important role in making sure people can get health insurance.

"Before I worked where I work now, I didn't have health insurance provided for me. And so I think MNsure is a very important thing," she said.

Miller called MNsure "an absolute disaster" but said Republicans and Democrats need to work together to solve the problem. He said most of the work fixing Obamacare has to be done at the federal level, but he said lawmakers could seek waivers from the federal government to help lower costs and improve access. He also backs the idea of additional tax credits for people buying health insurance.

Pieper, who owns a restaurant, said MNsure has been critically important for his family. It has enabled him to get access to affordable health care, instead of having to shell out $30,000 per year to cover health costs.

"Without MNsure, I wouldn't have a small business," Pieper said.

Education funding

Several candidates said more needs to be done to improve equity between rural schools and their metro-area counterparts.

ADVERTISEMENT

A number of Democrats talked about the need to invest in pre-K funding. Trehus told the audience he supports state-funded universal pre-K.

"We need to continue to invest in pre-K. That's very important. We know that learning starts very, very early," he said.

But Drazkowski said he is skeptical of the benefits of pre-K funding. He warned universal pre-K funding would lead to much higher property taxes.

"If we bring forward mandatory pre-K, we are going to see property taxes skyrocket," he said.

Gun control

During the forum, candidates also were asked if they would support tougher restrictions on handguns and assault rifles. None of the candidates  with the exception of one  said they would back stricter laws.

Diesslin said her father was a firearms instructor, and she has undergone firearm safety training. But she indicated she would support requiring universal background checks for gun purchases. She noted 86 percent of people who took a poll at the Minnesota House's state fair booth support those checks.

Her Republican rival has a very different view. Drazkowski said he wouldn't support any additional regulations and would like to see Minnesota become a "constitutional carry" state, meaning handguns could be carried openly and/or concealed without a permit.

Goggin said he doesn't think additional gun regulations are necessary.

"Criminals are always going to get the guns one way or another because that's what they do," he said.

Schmit said he would like to see lawmakers take steps to address gun violence by focusing on what they agree on  the need to improve mental health services in the state.

He added, "It's an issue that is talked a lot about in Minnesota, but we haven't done nearly enough on this issue."
EYOTA  A Fergus Falls woman was injured Monday afternoon when the car she was in was rear-ended on Minnesota State Highway 42 at Second Street West in Eyota.

The State Patrol said Ruth E. Picketts, 44, was in a car being driven south by Ely A. Picketts, 18, of Eyota when the driver slowed to make a left-hand turn. The car was hit from behind by a car driven by a 16-year-old; the patrol did not identify that driver.

Ruth Picketts was taken to Mayo Clinic HospitalSaint Marys Campus in Rochester. She is not listed as a patient there today, according to a clinic spokeswoman.

The drivers and a passenger in the second car had no apparent injuries, the patrol said.

The crash was reported at 3:28 p.m.
Days away from closing its current facility, the 125 Live organization, formerly the Rochester Senior Center, is behind schedule in its effort to raise funds to move into a new facility.

125 Live staff reported that the organization has so far raised less than half of its $2.3 million fundraising goal through cash donations and grants. The organization has raised about $526,000; its minimum "move in" fundraising amount is $1.6 million.

The Rochester Senior Center, currently housed in the downtown armory building, closes Thursday. The new facility, 125 Live , is expected to open Nov. 1. The new facility had been expected to open Oct. 1, but a delay was announced in August due to humidity that pushed back flooring installation.

"I know that there's a lot of capital campaigns going on in Rochester right now, which is a positive in a growing community but also hinders other people's success in raising funds to some extent," said Beth Witt, 125 Live assistant director, Monday at a Rochester City Council committee of the whole meeting.

Of the amount raised so far, $206,000 had come from cash donations, Witt reported. Another $225,000 came from grants from other organizations, including the Otto Bremer Foundation and Mayo Clinic. 125 Live also received an estate gift of $95,000.

ADVERTISEMENT

What was potentially the largest portion of the capital campaign came from the sale of a parking lot. The Rochester Senior Center Board of Directors last year agreed to the $600,000 sale with the city of Rochester. The board committed that money to the 125 Live construction contingency fund, Witt noted on Monday, and Gallagher said on Tuesday that the $600,000 has already been spent.

The capital campaign was intended as the senior organization's share of a project that has pushed $26.4 million in public funding .

In light of lower than expected fundraising success, the organization has applied for additional grant funding and has scaled back some of its anticipated purchases. The new facility has no artwork and no shades on some of its windows, Witt reported. The organization is also financing purchases of some furniture and equipment for the facility.

"With all that being said, we're a little short so far in our fundraising efforts and goal, but what we have done in turn is worked closely with the finance committee and the board of directors with the senior center and staff to really adjust how are we approaching spending, how are we going to equip this facility as we move forward," Witt said.

125 Live staff plans to occupy the new facility by Oct. 10. In the last week of October, the staff plans to host several tours of the new facility before opening Nov. 1.

The opening date is not yet a certainty, though, said 125 Live Executive Director Sally Gallagher. The organization is still waiting for an update on the flooring installation that was hindered by humidity.

"I feel like I need to do a little qualifier  we have not heard moisture updates from last week, so we may need a little group prayer in terms of opening Nov. 1. But we're confident that we should be able to," Gallagher said.

The capital campaign will continue as 125 Live approaches opening, and Witt was confident the group would meet its goals.

ADVERTISEMENT

"We're feeling really confident that we are sitting in a great place as we move into 125 Live," she said.

Tour closed to public

Following its update at Monday's meeting, which was held at the Rochester Recreation Center, 125 Live staff led Rochester City Council members, senior center board members and a group of guests on a tour of the new facility. The public and media were barred from the tour due to what Gallagher called "liability issues" as construction on the building is not yet complete.

Five members of the council, a quorum, attended the tour, according to City Council President Randy Staver. Asked Tuesday morning whether he felt the tour constituted a meeting of the council, Staver said "absolutely not."

"I think the meat of the presentation was upstairs there (during the public meeting) because what we were really concerned about was what are your preparations for moving in, where are you at financially, what adjustments are you making. That was the real brunt of the discussion and the reason for the topic being on the agenda in the first place.

"The tour was kind of, I don't know, ancillary is one word that comes to mind," Staver said.

Staver also added council members are aware of open meeting law and are careful to separate themselves and to not discuss city business when a quorum of members is present outside of a public meeting.

City Attorney Terry Adkins was at Monday's meeting but did not attend the tour and was not aware of the situation, he said. Responding to Post-Bulletin questions Tuesday morning on whether the tour raised red flags regarding open meeting law, Adkins said, "Yes, it does."

ADVERTISEMENT

"I'm not aware of this, but yes, it's concerning," he said.
MINNEAPOLIS  Minnesota remains among the top states for refugee resettlement, new figures from the U.S. State Department show.

In the past year, Minnesota took in nearly 1,100 Somalis, 166 Ethiopians and 66 Congolese. That's a large increase from last year through August.

Twenty-five Syrian refugees also resettled in Minnesota in the past year, mostly in Rochester and Minneapolis.

Last year, President Barack Obama launched a Syrian resettlement program as millions fled to escape the country's civil war and persecution. The U.S. recently reached its goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees.

Concerned that government screenings did not have enough safeguards to stop Islamic State terrorists from entering the U.S. as refugees, some governors resisted letting Syrian refugees settle in their states. But some members of Congress wanted the U.S. to take in even more Syrians to help ease the flow of refugees into Europe.

ADVERTISEMENT

Ben Walen, of the Minnesota Council of Churches, said the debate over Syrian refugees has made more people want to help them.

"The sentiment, the public sphere, social media, all of that which was very negative about refugees, has more than been countered with positive reactions," Walen said. He said he has more than enough volunteers to help drive the new arrivals to English classes or job interviews.

A total of 2,335 refugees have settled in Minnesota since last year, the most since 2007. Minnesota ranks 13th nationally for the number of refugees living in the state.
It seems that presidential politics is all the rage these days.

But today, if you visit a certain Rochester coffee shop or restaurant, the political debate taking place inside isn't about the gladiatorial contest between Trump and Clinton.

It's about the landmark elections set to take place in Somalia in October  if tribal and political squabbling doesn't derail them. Minnesota is home to 38,500 Somalis, of which more than 2,150 live in Olmsted County, according to census data.

And if the U.S. race seems less than a tea party, at least a tea party has rules. In Somalia, clan and political leaders are still trying to write the rules for a country that hasn't held elections in 48 years, since 1968.

More than 50 people, including the current incumbent President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, have declared their candidacies for president.

ADVERTISEMENT

"This is a circus," said Mohamoud Hamud, a Rochester resident and former Rochester School Board member. "Every Tom, Dick and Harry has thrown their hat into the ring."

The stakes are huge for this Horn of Africa country, which finds itself at a hinge point of history, its leaders enmeshed in debates not unlike the ones America's founding fathers had 240 years ago: Trying to create a durable system from the chaos of civil war.

"It's very important, because otherwise Somalia would be doomed to failure for good," said Hamud, who, despite the dire warning, is optimistic about the country's future.

Four years ago, a transitional government was established following more than two decades of political vacuum and war with a mandate to set up a political process to select its next leaders.

But the process has run into tribal disagreements and stalemate.

Originally, the idea was to set up a one-person, one-vote system. But that idea was eventually ditched in favor of a clan-based, power-sharing 4.5 formula. Elders from Somalia's major clans would select an electorate of 14,000 delegates. They then will elect 275 members of parliament, and the parliament will then elect a president.

"After all these civil wars, all this fighting, this is the only way in which everybody can agree," said Hamud, who was reportedly a candidate for prime minister in 2012. "It needs trust-building. And when it comes  one-man, one-vote  the public will be able to select."

But the clock has been winding down on a process that kicked off four years ago. Regional and federal leaders meeting in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, to tie up loose ends blew past last Friday's mandated deadline for completing the process.

ADVERTISEMENT

And the international community and United Nations has been reluctant to the extend the timetable for electing a parliament and a president for fear that it will create more space and time for squabbling, Rochester Somalis say.

The political drama has been riveting to Somali-Americans here in Rochester, many of whom have traveled to their ancestral home to witness and help rebuild their country.

Saida Omar, a Rochester resident, has been playing such a role. She has spent the last eight months in Somalia as a deputy minister of women and human rights in the the central state of Galmudug. Omar says the country's politics may look chaotic to outsiders with its multitude of presidential candidates, but the messiness isn't that much different from the U.S.'s system.

"I think every country starting out (has that)," Omar said. "But then every election, even in the United States, anybody who wants to run will throw in their two cents. But in the end, there will be two or three people that are going to be out there."

Despite the inability to meet deadlines, the ongoing squabbling and the mistrust generated by two decades of civil war, Rochester Somalis say the progress in their home country has been unmistakable.

Despite the civil war, they say there is too much shared experience that binds the people and the country together. Somalis speak the same language and share a common religion and history.

They point to Mogadishu, a city that once was a war zone, as a place that has risen from the ash heap.

Abukar Mohamed, another Rochester resident, said when he visited the city in 2003, there were no water, little business activity, and no flights into the city. Today children are going to school, universities are up and running and the lights are on.

ADVERTISEMENT

But others believe too much blood has been shed and too many lives lost to war to piece all parts of the country together again. At a Somali restaurant in northwest Rochester, Abraham Salex took issue with two Somalis who were expressing optimism about the country's direction.

Salex, who hails from the northern part of Somalia, described Mogadishu as a "hell" that he would never want to visit. He said he has no faith that the country can exist as a unified country. The wounds are too deep. Too many in the north lost mothers and fathers to the war. Part of the north is trying to secede from the country.

"(Those in the north) are not going to accept the south," Salex said. "Memories are too strong. They're not going to accept."

Hamud also has a less-than-rosy view of the conditions in Mogadishu. He says that al-Shabaab, the jihadist terrorist organization, is now stronger in the capital than at any time in recent history. Mortar attacks of the airport are still being reported. But measured against what was, the country is in a much better place.

"Now at least we're talking power-sharing, and ten years ago, nobody was talking about power-sharing," Hamud said.

Jamal Egal, owner of Kulmiye Coffee in Rochester, is hopeful that eventually his country put its tribal animosities behind and become a unified country.

"Whatever happened in the past, it happened," Egal said. "I would like to see everybody forget what happened in the past, and Somalis become one country. And I'm fairly optimistic. I hope that happens."
Brothers again dominate federal duck stamp contest

MINNEAPOLIS  Two Minnesota brothers are keeping it all in the family at the Federal Duck Stamp art contest.

James Hautman, of Chaska, won the 2016 contest with his acrylic painting of Canada geese. It was Hautman's fifth win, tying him with his brother, Joseph Hautman of Plymouth, whose art appears on the 2016-17 stamp and was ineligible to compete this year.

In third was another brother, Robert Hautman of Delano, a previous two-time winner, with his acrylic painting of a pair of Canada geese.

The Hautman brothers have won 12 Federal Duck Stamp contests. Last year, they swept the top three spots.

ADVERTISEMENT

James Hautman's work will grace the 2017-18 stamp, which goes on sale in June. Stamp sales raise about $25 million a year from hunters and collectors to fund waterfowl habitat programs.  Associated Press

Minnesota Supreme Court's decision keeps Trump on ballot

ST. PAUL  Minnesota's Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a legal challenge by Democrats seeking to have Donald Trump removed from the ballot.

The state Democratic party argued that Republicans erred in how they sent in Trump's name for a spot on the ballot. While state law requires political parties to select electors  the people who cast Electoral College ballots following the popular vote  and their alternates at conventions as part of putting a nominee on the ballot, Democrats said the state GOP failed to properly select those alternates.

That lawsuit was filed late Thursday. With early voting set to begin Sept. 23 and some ballots already printed, the Supreme Court said Democrats waited too long to file the legal challenge. The GOP submitted Trump for placement on the ballot on Aug. 25.

Keith Downey, chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota, celebrated the court's ruling. He had called the lawsuit frivolous and accused Democrats of trying to unfairly strip Trump and running mate Mike Pence from the ballot.

"We are pleased the Court struck down this blatant Democrat attempt to rig the Minnesota election for Hillary Clinton and disenfranchise Minnesota voters," Downey said in a statement.

Downey previously acknowledged that the party forgot to vote for alternates at its convention in May, but he insisted Trump was placed on the ballot correctly.

ADVERTISEMENT

Ken Martin, chairman of Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, said he respected the court's decision and the tight electoral timelines in a statement but said Republicans should have to "follow the rules."  Associated Press

Veterinarian charged with sex trafficking

STILLWATER  A Wisconsin veterinarian is charged with sex trafficking in Minnesota.

Prosecutors in Washington County say Brian Lee Kersten brought young women from China to the U.S. for prostitution. A criminal complaint alleges the 60-year-old Baldwin, Wisconsin veterinarian picked up the women at the airport and drove them to area motels for prostitution.

Authorities say an undercover sting was set up at the Extended Stay Hotel in Woodbury in July after an employee notified police of suspicious activity. The complaint says officers questioned one woman with the assistance of an interpreter and she told them she had been promised work in a massage parlor after arriving in Minnesota, but instead was taken to the Woodbury hotel.

Kersten posted bail Monday. He did not immediately return a call for comment left at his office.  Associated Press

Man sentenced to a month in jail in crash that killed 2

MANKATO  A 19-year-old man has been sentenced to a month in jail for causing a crash that killed a North Mankato couple.

ADVERTISEMENT

Christopher Schneider pleaded guilty to careless driving in the July 2015 crash that killed 75-year-old Kathy Ohman and 74-year-old Rod Ebert. The two had left a dance performance at the Blue Earth County Fair and were headed home when Schneider blew through a stop sign and crashed into their vehicle.

Schneider was reportedly driving without a license. He says he looked down to put out his cigarette just before the crash. Prosecutors say the case did not meet the threshold for felony charges.

A Blue Earth County District Court judge on Monday also ordered Schneider to deliver 30 community presentations to groups about distracted driving and serve a year of probation.  Associated Press

Man gets 4 years in prison in pedestrian's death

DULUTH  A judge has sentenced a Duluth man to four years in prison for a crash that killed a pedestrian in December.

Twenty-seven-year-old David Andrew Smithson was sentenced Monday. Judge Mark Munger also ordered Smithson to pay $7,500 restitution for the victim's funeral expenses.

Smithson pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of a controlled substance. Prosecutors say Smithson was under the influence of heroin when he struck and killed 37-year-old Brian Respler of Duluth on Dec. 19.

Respler was walking on a sidewalk on Grand Avenue when he was struck. He died at the scene.

At his plea hearing in July, Smithson told the court that he fell asleep at the wheel. He told police he had used heroin the day before the crash.  Associated Press
Duane Sauke, House of Representatives 25B candidate, will bring expertise, experience, energy and excitement to the Minnesota Legislature.

As a long-time educator, small-business owner and community advocate, Duane has extensive broad-based knowledge of the many important issues facing Rochester and Southeast Minnesota. He understands the need to be fiscally responsible while still providing quality health care, education, employment opportunities and basic services for all Minnesotans.

Having worked with Duane on a number of business and community issues, I've witnessed his willingness to listen, search for information, seek out diverse viewpoints and broker compromise. He appreciates civil public dialogue and debate, believes in transparency and accountability, knows that good public policy results from give and take, and realizes that financial and policy decisions made today impact our future.

A vote for Duane Sauke on Nov. 8 will help make Rochester and southeast Minnesota a better place to live and work.

Don Supalla

ADVERTISEMENT

Rochester
As the United Way of Olmsted County gears up for its annual campaign kickoff Thursday, organizers are taking it to the community.

Rather than asking supporters to sit on stiff chairs and listen to a string of speakers touting reasons to participate in the fundraiser, the organization is asking those supporters to put their support in display.

2016 Campaign Chairwoman Elaine Garry and others leading the campaign effort will be at Soldiers Field Park at 6:30 a.m. Thursday for a brief rally before asking volunteers to spread out in the community to wave signs and encourage others to register for the annual campaign, which provides funding to 30 diverse programs in Olmsted County, ranging from youth programs to those that help elderly residents stay in their homes longer.

Without a doubt, everyone who sees a sign being waved on Thursday will either have benefited from a group supported by United Way or they will know someone who has.

Those wanting to take it a step further should consider becoming one of the sign wavers.

ADVERTISEMENT

Anyone wanting to take part in the campaign kickoff can sign up through the United Way website, www.uwolmsted.org, and those who are uncertain what their Thursday morning will hold can simply drop in at Soldiers Field at 6:30 a.m. "If there's someone who has last-minute change in the their schedule and they want to show up that morning, we will accommodate them," said Jerome Ferson, president of United Way of Olmsted County

We're excited to see the United Way take a more visible approach to starting its campaign this year. It holds promise to engage more community members and drive interest in the effort that truly helps the entire community

Ferson said the change stems from ongoing discussions that have pointed to an increased desire for community engagement. "This is just one way we are altering our activities to address what we've been hearing," he said.

While the organization is changing how it reaches out to the community, thankfully the goals have remained the same.

The United Way continues to build stronger communities by identifying needs and implementing solutions that improve lives. They work with partner agencies, from housing organizations to those providing a variety of needed services, to create lasting change in our community.

The agency and the programs it supports work with a multitude of area residents, providing hope for the future and building the community's future potential by ensuring families have homes, clothing and food needed to be strong and others have access to tools that can get them on successful paths.

As signs are being waved on Thursday morning, so is hope.

Please consider waving back.
If you follow the leading edge of post-modern silliness in higher education, youll be familiar with the term of art designed to paper over the inherent conflicts between the different benighted leftist identity groupsintersectionality. Its an attempt to sweep everything under a field theory that reduces to: Its all the fault of patriarchal White dudes. When stripped of the jargon, however, much of the time intersectionality is the ideological equivalent of a car crash at a four-way intersection. It always looks different to every witness.

The problem with the radical subjectivity of postmodernism can be seen in a simple quandary: while feminism is centered around womens rights, it is not clear the postmodern mind still believes we know what women are. (And dont get me started on what human rights can possibly be without humans.) Fortunately, we have Prof. Lena Gunnarsson of Orebro University in Sweden to the rescue, writing in Feminist Theory:

A defence of the category women Lena Gunnarsson Abstract Against influential strands of feminist theory, I argue that there is nothing essentialist or homogenising about the category women. I show that both intersectional claims that it is impossible to separate out the woman part of women, and deconstructionist contentions that the category women is a fiction, rest on untenable meta-theoretical assumptions. I posit that a more fruitful way of approaching this disputed category is to treat it as an abstraction. Drawing on the philosophical framework of critical realism I elucidate the nature of the vital and inevitable process of abstraction, as a means of finding a way out of the theoretical and methodological impasse that the ban on the category women has caused. Contrary to many contemporary feminist theorists, I contend that, although the category women does not reflect the whole reality of concrete and particular women, it nevertheless refers to something real, namely the structural position as woman.

I think this means that women are real. Which is certainly a relief. But it costs $36 to get the whole article to find out, so I guess well keep having to guess about it, as men have for thousands of years.
Which do better, blue states or red states? There is a veritable cottage industry devoted to obscure means of proving the superiority of the liberal tax-and-spend model, but when citizens vote with their feet, the result is clear: Americans are deserting blue states and moving to red states.

Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox have analyzed IRS data, which now allow us to track taxpayers moving from state to state, with basic income and demographic data:

To measure the states that are most attractive to Americans on the move, we developed an attraction ratio that measures the number of domestic in-migrants per 100 out-migrants. A state that has a rating of 100 would be perfectly balanced between those leaving and coming. Overall, the biggest winner  both in absolute numbers and in our ranking  is Texas. In 2014 the Lone Star State posted a remarkable 156 attraction ratio, gaining 229,000 more migrants than it lost, roughly twice as many as went to No. 3 Florida, which clocked an impressive 126.7 attraction ratio. Most of the top gainers of domestic migrants are low-tax, low-regulation states, including No. 2 South Carolina, with an attraction ratio of 127.3, as well as No. 5 North Dakota, and No. 7 Nevada.

Which states are the losers? Liberal ones:

High costs go a long way to explain which states are losing the most migrants. At the top, or rather, the bottom of the list is New York State, which had an abysmal 65.4 attraction ratio in 2014 and lost by far the most net migrants, an astounding 126,000 people. Close behind was Illinois, a high tax, high regulation, and low growth disaster area. In 2014 the Land of Lincoln had an abysmal 67.2 attraction ratio, losing a net 82,000 domestic migrants.

***

And then there is the big enchilada, California. For generations, the Golden State developed a reputation as the ultimate destination of choice for millions of Americans. No longer. Since 2000 the state has lost 1.75 million net domestic migrants, according to Census Bureau estimates. And even amid an economic recovery, the pattern of outmigration continued in 2014, with a loss of 57,900 people and an attraction ratio of 88.5, placing the Golden State 13th from the bottom, well behind longtime people exporters Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Louisiana.

A separate question, of course, is which citizens blue states are losing. Here the news gets even worse:

Overall, many of the most affluent states are the ones hemorrhaging high-income earners the most rapidly. As in overall migration, New York sets the standard, with the highest outmigration of high income earners (defined as annual income over $200,000) relative to in-migrants (attraction ratio: 53). New York is followed closely by Illinois, the District of Columbia and New Jersey, which are all losing the over-$200,000-a-year crowd at a faster pace than California. The big winners in terms of affluent migration tend to be historically poorer states, mainly in the Sun Belt and the Intermountain West. Florida has an attraction ratio for people earning over $200,000 a year of 223, the highest in the nation, followed by South Carolina, Montana, Idaho and North Carolina.

The IRS database used by Kotkin and Cox is the same one that Peter Nelson of Center of the American Experiment analyzed with respect to Minnesota. Nelsons paper, titled Minnesotans on the Move to Lower Tax States 2016 was a bombshell. Nelson found that since 2000, Minnesota has experienced a net outflow to other states in every year.

The numbers, and the household incomes that those leaving the state take with them, have continually increased. In 2014, Minnesota lost a shocking $948 million in net household income to other states. When it comes to affluent families, Minnesota is one of the nations least popular states. In 2014 it ranked 47th in net gain or loss of households with incomes over $200,000.

When Americans decide where they want to live, they take into account many factors. Among those factors are taxes, regulations and economic opportunity. In this competition, the pattern is blindingly obvious: blue states are losing, and red states are winning.
Roadsky Traffic Safety will have a business trip to Middle East and South America to research local traffic management industry in November.

Roadsky Business Trip Plan in November

PR-Inside.com: 2016-09-13 11:14:24

Press Information

Roadsky Traffic Safety

No.76 Panxin Road, Nanjing, China, 210000



Jacky Sanders

Marketing Manager

+86-25-57070536

email

http://www.roadsky.org





# 343 Words

No.76 Panxin Road, Nanjing, China, 210000Marketing Manager+86-25-57070536

Roadsky Traffic Safety, the leading traffic safety devices brand, recently launches business trip plan in November. In order to research the global market of traffic management, safety and parking industry, as well as communicate with customers. Roadsky decide to have a visit to Middle East and South America this November.Mr. Johnson, the general manager of Roadsky, will start the trip from Sri Lanka. He will visit Roadsky customers to discuss the current cooperation projects such as traffic cones, speed bumps and road studs. He will also research the market of other traffic management products in Sri Lanka such as road marking project and galvanized guardrails for future development.Middle East area is the second destination of this trip. Johnson will have meetings with customers in Middle East area and discuss the traffic safety industry prospects, especially the thermoplastic road marking, aluminum road studs and rubber speed bumps. "In these product areas, we have made long time cooperation with our customers from Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabic and Qatar etc." said Johnson. "So we intend to conduct more in-depth cooperation with each other. We will discuss the current market status and the future development of traffic management industry." The meets will influence the development plan of Roadsky Traffic Safety.After finishing the trip to Middle East countries, Johnson will continue his trip to Central and South America. This time he will travel from Mexico to Chile in 15 days. "Roadsky has many customers in this area such as Mexico, Dominica, Panama, Guatemala and Chile etc." said Johnson. Central and South America is the main market of Roadsky thermoplastic marking paint and machine. Johnson will not only discuss the current cooperation projects, but also looking for further business opportunities about rubber and plastic traffic safety devices such as rubber speed bumps, traffic cones and reflective safety vest.After the trip, Roadsky will adjust its development plan according to Johnson's market report. If you have interest in having a meeting and cooperation with Roadsky, feel free to contact admin@ roadsky.org
The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, said on Monday that it would commence a warning strike on October 2.

A statement signed by Ben Ugheoke, the Chairman, University of Abuja chapter of ASUU, stated that the Federal Government had failed to embark on meaningful dialogue with the union.

We have tried to dialogue with the Federal Government but they have been playing games with us; we will start with a warning strike to show them we are not jokers.

ASUU has being trying to get the attention of the Federal Government to intervene in the academic system of universities across Nigeria but it has all been abortive.

Consequently, ASUU will give a warning strike which will start on Oct. 2nd.

The strike will last for one week, and if they do not give us listening ears, we will start the indefinite strike in November, Mr. Ugheoke said in the statement.

The News Agency of Nigeria recalls that ASUU, had at a recent news briefing accused the Federal Government of reneging on the 2009 agreement with the union.

ASUUs Coordinator, Abuja Zone, Theophilus Lagi, also said in the statement that the government had only implemented 30 per cent of the provisions of Universities Needs Assessment document.

He said that the fund was disbursed indiscriminately to university councils as a fall out of the six months industrial action the union embarked upon in 2009.

Mr. Lagi urged the Federal Government to fully implement the 2009 agreement it reached with the union in order to avert another industrial action by the nations public universities.

The struggle to implement the 2009 ASUU/FGN agreement is not about the union; it is not about the personal benefits of the members only.

The current issues in contention include funding of universities for revitalisation in line with the Memorandum of Understanding the Federal Government and ASUU had signed in 2013.

Re-negotiation of the FGN/ASUU 2009 agreement ASUU believes will reposition the entire education sector.

We also demand the facilitation of the registration of the Nigerian Universities Pension Management Company (NUPEMCO), among other issues in the FG/ASUU 2009 agreement, he said.

(NAN)
Contrary to reports, Kabiru Dikko, the mastermind of 2011 Christmas Day bombing, is still in custody, the Nigerian Prisons Service said on Tuesday.

Please disregard the rumour. Hes still in prisons custody, Biyi Jeje, NPS spokesman told PREMIUM TIMES Tuesday afternoon.

Mr. Dikko, also known as Kabiru Sokoto, was convicted in December 2013 after being found guilty of plotting the car suicide bombing on St. Theresas Catholic Church, Madalla, near Abuja. The attack left about 40 people dead.

Various publications and blogs this week reported that Mr. Dikko, 32, may have been released as part of a purported prisoners swap deal between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram sect.

Boko Haram has demanded the release of its members held by the government in exchange for Chibok schoolgirls abducted by the group in 2014.

While the Nigerian government has indicated interest in a prisoners swap deal with Boko Haram, the modalities for this have yet to be made public.

Theres no truth in all the reports claiming that Mr. Dikko had been released, Mr. Jeje said.

A senior Boko Haram operative, Mr. Dikko was first arrested on January 1, 2012 by the police, but escaped from custody two days later when he was being taken to his residence at Abaji, Federal Capital Territory, for a search.

He was re-arrested in Mutum-Biu in Gassol Local Government Area of Taraba State in February 2012 and subsequently charged under Section 4(1) (a) of Terrorism and Prevention Act of 2011.

The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court found Mr. Dikko guilty of terrorism and handed him a life sentence on December 20, 2013.
The abundance of native nickel balls recently discovered in Nigeria is an extraordinary occurrence in a style not known to have been previously documented, Comet, a private mining syndicate headed by veteran Australian miner, Hugh Morgan, has said.

In a paper distributed at the Africa Down Under Conference which held September 7  9 in Perth, Australia, the company said the discovery had important implications for nickel exploration worldwide.

The paper was delivered by the Comet team comprising Mr. Morgan, Professor Louisa Lawrence, Stephen Davis, and Steven Pragnell.

The metal named Titan, measuring 0.1-5.0 millimetres in diameter and weighing an estimated three weight percent, was found on the southern margin of the Jos Plateau, near the rural villages of Dangoma and Bakin Kogi, Kaduna State.

Although the bedrock has not been tested at depth, the wide distribution of abundant nickel metal balls and their secondary ferruginous alteration product within residual weathered bedrock at Titan, indicates a highly endowed primary mineralised system, Comet said.

To our knowledge, this style of high-grade native nickel metal deposit has not been previously documented.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported, last month, about the world class and highly unusual nickel discovery in Nigeria, ahead of the Perth conference.

Nigerias Minister for Solid Minerals, Kayode Fayemi, was among the speakers at the three-day event held at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Australia.

Mohammed Abbas, the permanent secretary at the ministry, said the discovery was made many months ago and urged the public to allow the government produce a detailed report.

The Comet team said the metal was identified and exploration commenced in early 2015.

Pits dug up to six metres deep, at roughly 200 metre centres, show the nickel occurs in a coarse-grained micaceous felsic unit, associated with localised zones of mafic and olivine-rich ultramafic bedrocks, the team said.

Traces of other metals such as zinc, copper, lead, and cobalt were also detected in the core and rims of the nickel.

The team said ongoing activation of major bedrock structures in the area had resulted in recent tectonic shift and exposure of fresh nickel metal at the surface in an erosional drainage basin at Titan.

However, the nickel balls are not physically (concentrated) into a heavy mineral fraction within the soil cover sequence due to the low erosional gradient in the catchment and the freshness of the bedrock.

Furthermore, the exposed metal balls are prevented from significant oxidation due to good drainage and the formation of a protective stable secondary oxide layer on the metal surface.

The project area spans 20 square kilometres where high concentrations of ferruginous brown balls extend over a half a kilometre to the north and west of the nickel metal occurrence.

Although the bedrock has not yet been tested at depth, the wide distribution of abundant nickel metal balls and their secondary ferruginous alteration product within residual weathered bedrock at Titan, indicates a large highly endowed primary mineralized system, Comet said.

To our knowledge, this style of high-grade native nickel metal has not been previously documented.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered that Comet is currently focusing its exploration on developing a nickel project that targets the native nickel balls in the shallow weathered bedrock over an area of a half square kilometre.

The company is reportedly seeking funding to continue exploration and has approached a few interested parties.

Nickel is primarily sold for first use as a refined metal. About 65 percent of it, consumed in the West, is used to produce stainless steel.

The worlds largest producers of the metal include The Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, Canada, and Australia, according to the US Geological Survey.

Last month, Mr. Fayemi told Bloomberg that one of the Nigerian governments priorities is to meet its annual steel demand of 6.8 metric tons, from a current output of less than 2.5 metric tons, produced mainly from scrap iron.

In two to five years, we want to have started production of iron ore, lead, zinc, bitumen, nickel, coal, and gold at a serious scale, Mr. Fayemi had said.
Nigerias largest airline, Arik Air Limited, has announced the suspension of its flight operations, blaming a delay in insurance documentation.

Ariks Public Relations and Communications Manager, Olabanji Ola, said the airline will resume operations as soon as the problem is resolved.

Reports that Arik had cancelled flights on Tuesday morning and afternoon had fueled speculation that the airline might have become the latest casualty in the financial crisis plaguing Nigerias aviation sector.

But Mr. Ola said the delay in approval of documentation was caused by the Sallah public holiday which was followed a long weekend.

At the present time, all flights of the airline have been cancelled for Tuesday, 13 September, 2016 and the airline has stated that it would be getting in touch with passengers to provide an update on rescheduling of their flights, Mr. Ola said. This situation is likely to continue for the next few days until such time that NAICOM (National Insurance Commission) approves a waiver on a priority basis for the new insurance company to renew the policy.

Mr. Ola said passengers had been notified of the development via text messages but customers in need of information could contact Arik through its customer care lines or visit its website.

The statement was silent on compensation, but Mr. Olabanji told PREMIUM TIMES by telephone that the airline was taking care of all concerns arising from the crisis.

Were addressing all issues relating to the disruption, Mr. Olabanji said. But I am not going to get into specifics about compensation at this point.

On Tuesday , thousands of passengers were left stranded across the country as the Sallah holidays came to an end. It means many workers may be unable to resume duties on Wednesday.

The development came two weeks after two other national carriers, Aero Contractors and FirstNation, suspended operations on August 31 and September 1, respectively.

While Aero blamed a difficult business environment for its decision to close down and send staff on indefinite leave, FirstNation said it wanted engineers to carry out a routine maintenance of its fleet.

Nigerias economic crisis had seen operational costs  including the prices of aviation fuel skyrocket in recent months, forcing some international airlines to source fuel and engine parts from other West African countries.

Local and international flights operators have increased the prices of their tickets.
The Senate is planning an exhaustive and comprehensive debate on the economy, and will hold its managers accountable, senate president, Bukola Saraki, said on Tuesday.

But that will be done in a manner that is transparent and beneficial to the country, he said.

Mr. Saraki said he was aware Nigerians were really suffering, but told journalists in Ilorin the major preoccupation of the Senate upon resumption in September 20, would be on finding solutions to the economic recession.

We are going to have an exhaustive and comprehensive debate on fixing the countrys economy when we resume next week, he said.

Already, all the economic priority bills are being analysed and collated so that we can hit the ground running when we resume. We understand the pains that Nigerians are going through and we do not take this for granted.

Additionally, the Senate intends to invite everybody involved in the management of the economy to address the Nigerian people through the parliament on the steps that are being taken to get us out of this mess, he said.

He said, We fully intend to hold all those involved in the economic management of the country accountable.

However, we will do so in a manner that is transparent and beneficial to the country as a whole.

Mr. Saraki said it was important for the parliament to start asking questions that will lead to plausible solutions.

We need to ascertain our actual level of borrowing and what effect the devaluation of

the naira has had on our economy.

In every crisis, there is always an opportunity for positive reforms, in this regard, in order to solve this crisis, all hands must be on deck.

Ideas should be sourced from all quarters, all arms of government, people of different political beliefs, from all socio-economic backgrounds and every part of Nigeria must work together at this time, Mr. Saraki said.

Mr. Saraki harped on the need for Nigeria to rally its best economic minds both from within the country and in the Diaspora in order to tackle the economic recession.

This recession does not identify with any one party, we need to tap into the expertise of our best economic minds to come up with plans that both the executive and the legislature can evaluate and implement, he said. (NAN)
President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday urged Nigerian youth to remain focused in life, pursue their dreams and reject those fanning embers of discord and disintegration of Nigeria.

Mr. Buhari made the call when he received more than 100 National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members serving in Daura Local Government Area of Katsina.

The president, who received the Corp members at his residence in Daura, urged them to make Nigeria great again through pursuit of knowledge, patriotism and commitment to values that promote national unity.

He pledged his commitment to the unity and prosperity of Nigeria.

President Buhari specially recognised corps members from the Niger Delta and South-Eastern states serving in Daura, and praised the former military ruler, Yakubu Gowon, for setting up the scheme in 1973.

According to him, the scheme has creditably promoted national unity and cohesion by exposing young people to the uniqueness and cultural diversity of Nigeria.

I asked for those from the other extreme of Nigeria because I very much appreciate the NYSC scheme and whenever I see General Gowon, I always thank him for that, the president said according to a statement by his spokesperson, Garba Shehu.

Speaking specifically to corps members from the South Eastern states, the president said: tell your colleagues who want Biafra to forget about it.

As a military commander, I walked from Degem, a border town between the north and the east to the border between Cameroon and Nigeria.

I walked on my foot for most of the 30 months that we fought the Nigeria-Biafra civil war in which at least 2 million Nigerians were killed.

We were made by our leaders to go and fight Biafra not because of money or oil, because oil was not critical factor then, but because of one Nigeria.

So if leaderships at various levels failed, it was not the fault of the rest of Nigerians who have no quarrel with one another.

So, please tell your colleagues that we must be together to build this country. It is big enough for us and potentially big enough in terms of resources.

Those who work hard will earn a respectable living. I have seen this country, I fought for this country and I will continue to work for the unity of this country, the president said.

In his remarks, Egbewumi Adebolu, the Corps Liaison Officer in Daura, thanked the president for the honour of receiving them and making their stay in Daura memorable.

He said the youth strongly believed in the programmes of the president to reduce unemployment and create jobs for more Nigerians.

Mr. Adebolu thanked the president for his personal gifts of cows, bags of rice and cash to corps members in the community for Sallah celebration. (NAN)
Luke Palladino, a star chef in and around Atlantic City for almost 15 years, has declared bankruptcy and closed his latest South Jersey restaurant.

An answering machine was still giving out restaurant details Monday at Luke Palladino Seasonal Italian Cooking, in Linwoods Central Square shopping center. But the system wasnt taking messages, and the owner could not be reached for comment.

Central Squares managing partner said Palladino, who has run a series of well-reviewed restaurants in the citys casinos and on the local mainland since 2003, surrendered his space in Linwood late last week. A visitor Monday saw the restaurant with tables fully set, down to wine glasses and silverware, looking like all it would need to open up for the night was a key.

Palladino also filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last week in federal court in Camden. In the detailed, 88-page document, he estimated his assets at $50,000 to $100,000 and said his debts were in the range of $1 million to $10 million.

The filing said Palladino owed money to more than 100 creditors, including Atlantic County produce dealers, bakeries, liquor stores, seafood markets and other small businesses. But the creditors also include Ocean City Home Bank, Bank of America, a few automobile companies and other bigger companies.

Palladino was being hailed as a food star in Atlantic City even before he opened his first local restaurants, Ombra and Specchio, both of which were part of Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa when it debuted in July 2003.

The buzz is all around the Borgata restaurants, mostly celebrity chef Luke Palladino and what he will do foodwise at his two restaurants, a food critic for The Press wrote a few weeks before the opening of Atlantic Citys most successful casino.

Even before that, when Palladino was announced as a partner in some of the Borgata food venues, Atlantic Cape Community College invited the chef to be the featured speaker for a 2002 graduating class from the colleges Academy of Culinary Arts.

Palladino made several moves within Atlantic City in the years since, including starting another Borgata food spot, called Risi Bisi, then closing in that casino and opening new restaurants in Harrahs Resort and at the since-closed Revel Casino Hotel.

But he also expanded in other areas of the country, including opening two restaurants named Bragozzo in Biloxi, Mississippi in 2006 and in Pomano Beach, Florida, the next year.

In 2010, he moved to a much smaller space when he opened a restaurant called simply Luke Palladino in a strip shopping center at Route 9 and Tilton Road in Northfield. That version of his vision had just 30 seats and an open kitchen, and got the highest-rating, four stars, from a reviewer for The Press.

I wanted it to feel like every table is a chef's table, Palladino told an interviewer shortly after he opened in Northfield. They can see me, and I can see everyone. ... But the most important thing is that I am cooking every day and night and touching every single plate: every antipasti, every entree, every pasta, every dessert.

But by 2012 he apparently outgrew that space, because Northfield officials said his lunch business was so popular that the shopping center didnt have enough parking to hold his customers.

Palladino also started another restaurant and food market in Revel in 2012, in time for that casinos opening. And in late 2013, Palladino moved to Linwood  although he has also run restaurants on Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia and at the Valley Forge Casino Resort in Philadelphias western suburbs. LP Steak, at Valley Forge, is still open, but the Philadelphia restaurant closed earlier this summer.

His Central Square restaurant was beautiful, the food was very good and Im sorry it didnt work out for him, said Richard Steinberg, of Parkshore Development Corp., Central Squares managing partner.

The shopping center owners havent put a bit of advertising into the space, because we just found out ourselves that its open, Steinberg said. But, he added Monday, Theres a lot of interest in that location already, and I suspect it wont take long for it to be rented.

Contact: 609-272-7237
WILDWOOD  James Carpenter, 9, is more than happy to demonstrate the new bouncy chair in his classroom at the Glenwood Avenue School. Hes already developed a system to carefully bounce and write at the same time.

You just have to keep your arm on the table so it doesnt move, he said, demonstrating.

Laquell Holley, 8, is happier tucked into a bean bag chair. Its calm, comfortable, he said. And it doesnt do stuff like wobble.

The new flexible seating model in three classrooms at the Glenwood Avenue School is giving students more options while helping them focus and even enjoy school more.

The flexible seating addresses both health and education concerns. Research has shown that movement can help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder concentrate. Another showed movement helped students focus when they were doing complex tasks such as math.

Oakcrest High School finally gets long-awaited air conditioning MAYS LANDING _ The best part of the renovations at Oakcrest High School cant even be seen. 

A 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found children can spend as much as 85 percent of their day just sitting  at meals, in cars and buses, in school and at home. Childhood obesity remains a problem.

But there are efforts to change that.

Options are as inexpensive as $15 Bouncy Bands that were created by an elementary school guidance counselor and attach to traditional desks, giving students a way to move their feet while sitting.

A group called Standup Kids gives schools grants up to $5,000 to buy standing desks.

The variety of chairs is an effort to recognize that not every child learns in the same way, and all children need to move.

Seven-year-olds are just not meant to sit upright in a chair all day, said second-grade teacher Jennifer DeWeese, who developed the plan at Glenwood.

It started last year, when DeWeese had a student who had trouble sitting still. She did some research and found a wobble cushion for the students chair that allowed him to move while still sitting at his desk.

DeWeese wanted to expand the concept to her entire class this year. With the support of Principal Christel Pond, she researched different seating and desk models.

This year, her classroom has a few standing desks and a curved low table with floor cushions. Another table is surrounded by child-sized bouncy chairs  exercise balls inserted into wheeled chairs. There are Hokki stools that wobble, a couple of webbed bungee chairs and bean bag chairs. And yes, there are still a few traditional desks.

So far its working beautifully, DeWeese said. The students are mobile, and they are working more collaboratively. It keeps the energy high.

The bottom line for educators is that one size does not fit all, and offering options makes school more interesting and enjoyable.

We are creating a space where kids want to come to school, said Northfield Community School Principal Glenn Robbins.

The Northfield schools Idea Street project started last year by converting middle school hallways into alternative learning centers with stationary bikes, wobbly stools and cafe tables.

State tells Atlantic City to withhold teachers' opt-out pay The state Department of Education has told the Atlantic City school district not to pay teac

This year, Idea Street will include more exercise equipment, including stationary bike desks, some of it paid for with a grant from Sustainable Jersey for Schools.

Sitting still all day is impossible, Robbins said. We want to get away from the cemetery rows of desks. Flexible classrooms opens their minds, encourages creativity.

Kevin Jarretts digital shop classroom in Northfield has no chairs at all, which encourages students developing projects at worktables to move around and interact.

The seating in Wildwood teacher Catherine Elseys science and technology classroom includes wheeled office chairs, colorful stationary stools and wobbly Hokki stools.

But once they start working on projects, theyre all standing up, she said.

Teacher Maria Santiago also offers a choice of chairs in the learning resource room in Wildwood. She created a seating chart, and students each day clip a clothespin with their name on it to the picture of the chair they want to sit in. Santiago read a story about a boy looking for a quiet place to read as an introduction to the concept.

It gives them some ownership of their work, some control, she said. They really like to choose where theyre sitting, and giving them some choice reduces behavioral problems.

Pond said other teachers can visit the pilot classrooms and shell consider expanding the concept if there is support. Each classrooms new seating cost about $1,000.

You need to have teacher buy-in, she said. But I think of my own children and how theyd love this.

DeWeese set up basic Flexible Seating Expectations that include using the chairs correctly. Students do group activities on a carpet, and she began the year by assigning children to different seats to try them. Students have behaved because they dont want to lose the new seating.

Alexis Cruz, 7, used a bouncy chair at a table to write his Patriot Day paper, but the bean bag chair is his favorite.

I can read good there, he said. Its comfortable.

Wildwood Superintendent J. Kenyon Kummings, a former special education teacher, said he is excited by the pilot classrooms and would like to get support districtwide. The physical education teachers are also developing a first-period workout for students who need to burn off some energy.

Dozen area schools win sustainable status A dozen local schools are among 83 statewide that have achieved Sustainable Jersey for Schoo

They say sitting is the new smoking, he said. But its just nice to give students options.

Contact: 609-272-7241

Twitter @ACPressDamico
The first "Avatar" sequel is still years away from hitting movie theaters, but fans of the blue-hued Na'vi can get their fix at a touring Cirque du Soleil show that James Cameron helped create - without his having to reveal too much of what's up his cinematic sleeve.

Cameron, who plans four sequels starting in 2018, served as a consultant on "Toruk - The First Flight," a stadium show that opened in Montreal in November and has since toured North America.

The writer and director suggested to the Cirque team things that the Na'vi might do or how they might think about certain things, but said he largely let writer-directors Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon create freely.

"I was just a cheerleader on the side with some pompoms," Cameron said last week when the show stopped in Brooklyn. "Interestingly, left to their own devices, the Cirque guys creatively wound up resonating very, very closely to the overall arc of the four-sequel saga."

The Cirque show's upcoming stops include Newark, New Jersey; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Minneapolis; Winnipeg, Canada; Fresno, California; Ontario, Canada; Los Angeles; Phoenix; San Diego, California; Sacramento, California; and Portland, Oregon.

The original 2009 film centered on the conflict between humans and the blue-skinned alien race Na'vi of Pandora. "Toruk" is named after the massive, dragonlike creatures from the film and tells the story of two Na'vi warriors finding a series of sacred objects.

The action takes place on the planet before humans make contact, thereby sidestepping the problem of how to depict the 10-foot Na'vi. Now Cirque gymnasts, no matter how tall, can shine. "If you want to see that explosive celebration of human movement, they're not going to be tall people," said Cameron.

Cameron, always on the cutting edge of tech, will shoot his sequels partially using a high 48 frame rate format and said he appreciated the Cirque show employing 40 digital projectors to show everything from lava to water.

He said that after seeing the stage show, he might swipe some of the hairstyles and costumes for his films. He also said the Cirque team never asked what was coming up in the sequels, afraid of leaks.

The filmmaker has a history with Cirque that includes being an executive producer and camera operator for the 2012 fantasy film "Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away." He said he admires the way the company promotes talent and keeps creative lines open.

"They empower and celebrate creativity and empower the artist. It's the exact opposite of Hollywood," he said. "It's like the anti-Hollywood. If Hollywood were just more like that, I think movies would be a whole lot better."

Cameron said he hopes the first film sequel can open at Christmas 2018, and then he'll roll out three successive movies each year after that. But Cameron said he would tweak the timetable to ensure each film is released as closely as possible so there are no lengthy delays. "Once you're on that ride, you don't want to get off," he said.

The original 3-D "Avatar" film has netted over $2.7 billion and Cameron pointed to its beauty and its overall theme of protecting nature as reasons for its success. He noted that more than half of all humans now live in cities and that we're paving over all the green.

"We're all struggling with our own nature-deficit disorder," he said. "The angels of our better nature know that what we're doing is wrong, and I think 'Avatar' is just a way to process that in a way."
TRENTON  Assemblyman Ralph Caputo, D-Essex, is set to introduce a resolution Thursday that will detail how revenue from North Jersey casinos would be used if the states voters approve gambling outside of Atlantic City in November.

Caputo told The Associated Press on Tuesday that a casino at the Meadowlands Racetrack, if approved, might be taxed at 35 to 40 percent while a costlier one in Jersey City could pay 15 to 20 percent.

Voters will decide whether or not to approve as many as two casinos in North Jersey during the Nov. 8 general election. The ballot question states the new casinos must be in separate counties and at least 72 miles from Atlantic City, where four casinos closed in 2014 and another, Trump Taj Mahal, is set to close Oct. 10.

Revitalizing A.C. requires gaming expansion, says Jeffrey Gural I write this not as a casino operator, but as someone who loves harness racing and has dedic

Transparency and clarity is critical for residents and all parties involved in the North Jersey casino debate, especially as we move closer to November elections, Caputo said. We have seen and heard many different opinions on this issue, both negative and positive. However, it is important that the Legislatures intent for any funding coming out of a casino built in the north is spelled out clearly and as definitively as possible.

Deutsche Bank said last year that North Jersey casinos could generate $500 million in gambling revenue. A 50 percent tax rate would put $250 million in the states coffers, which would have to be divided among all the recipients. Atlantic City casinos pay an effective tax rate of 9.25 percent on gross gambling revenue.

Before Caputo mentioned the possible tax rates Tuesday, Assemblyman Chris Brown, R-Atlantic, called Caputos resolution a gimmick, saying it is simply the same old song with a different verse that still fails to provide a specific tax rate and fails to answer how cannibalizing Atlantic Citys gaming market by causing the loss of another 14,000 jobs and the closure of more casinos will somehow help Atlantic Countys working families and retirees.

A portion of the proposed North Jersey casino revenue would be dedicated to providing job placement for workers who lost their jobs when casinos closed, according to the proposed resolution. Money also will be provided for continued promotional support for Atlantic City as a destination resort, the resolution states.

Sen. Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, said there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

Right now we have no idea what the tax rate for the (North Jersey) casinos is going to be, Whelan said Monday. If you dont know what the tax rate is, then you dont know what Atlantic Citys cut is going to be.

The resolution includes guidelines for choosing a casino location, selecting licensed operators and the administration of programs to be funded by state revenues.

The revenues are expected to be used for fund the states senior tax freeze program, Meals on Wheels program and Pharmaceutical Assistance to the Aged and Disabled; public space and transportation improvements; and Atlantic City recovery initiatives, but the exact amount of how much each program would receive has not been decided.

Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo, D-Atlantic, said the failure to disclose the referendums full details and implications have doomed this misguided ballot question.

This is just further evidence that this disastrous referendum is on life support because residents across the state have concluded this is a bad deal for New Jersey and Atlantic County, which would face the loss of 10,000 more jobs, Mazzeo said.

Weve lagged behind in terms of being transparent, Caputo said Tuesday. Theres no use kidding anybody about that. The tax rate needs to be established.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact: 609-272-7046

Twitter @ACPressHuba
Generations of hikers, campers and Scouts have walked the Batona Trail out to the Apple Pie Hill Fire Tower in Wharton State Forest to get a view of the Pinelands from its highest point.

Now tourists need an appointment, or to be lucky enough to go when a staff member is there, thanks to the bad actions of a few.

Vandals have thrown television sets off the 60-foot tower, scribbled graffiti and left trash, according to environmentalists and officials.

They have also stolen and damaged New Jersey Forest Fire Service equipment at the Tabernacle, Burlington County, site, said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

On Sept. 7, the DEP began cordoning off the base and has since installed fencing around it.

It was one of the last fire towers in the state not to be fenced off, according to Assistant Division B Warden John Rieth, who oversees the tower.

But Rieth said Apple Pie Hill Tower, like all of the states 21 towers, will remain open to the public when staffed. Access to their stairs is locked when they are not staffed.

People can call Division B for an appointment to climb the Apple Pie Hill tower when one of its employees is there, he said.

Photographer Albert Horner, who spends a lot of time in the Pinelands and considers the tower view a powerful argument for the forests protection, is skeptical appointments will work.

Its only manned in times when fire potential is high, said Horner. He doesnt think hosting climbers will work well for someone who is supposed to be looking out for wildfires.

But Rieth said the system works well for the other towers. He said staffing time is limited to when the weather is dry enough for fires to be a risk.

Were not going to pay to have someone there if there is no reason to be there, Rieth said.

Is there enough enforcement of off-road rules at Wharton? Environmentalists say the state isnt living up to its promise to stop illegal off-road acti

If school groups or Girl or Boy Scout troops want to come out, special arrangements may be made, as long as there has not been rain, which can make the stairs slippery.

On Thursday the gate was open and fire observer Craig Watson welcomed visitors.

It has always been the policy that people were not supposed to climb the tower when it was unstaffed, Rieth said, even though the stairs were open. But that policy was generally ignored.

DEP officials said they had little choice but to close the tower when unsupervised.

Go on YouTube and plug in Apple Pie Hill Tower. Youll see a number of videos that pan down to what I would call a miniature debris field, said DEP spokeswoman Caryn Shinske. In what should be pristine fields, there is broken glass and other remnants.

Asked why the DEP doesnt install cameras and punish the wrongdoers, rather than limit access to all, Hajna said there is also a public safety issue.

The fire towers primary purpose is to check for wildfires and protect the community, said Hajna. If equipment needed to spot fires and fight fires is being stolen, that puts the community at risk.

He also said the DEP wanted to eliminate the possibility of someone falling from the tower.

Signs warn Wharton State Forest drivers of crackdown WATERFORD TOWNSHIP  Motorman and deer hunter Joe Mehaffey, of West Deptford, was helping en

The tower had been there with stairs unrestricted for 80 years.

Apple Pie Hill is 205 feet above sea level, making it the Pinelands natural high spot. But there is no view until people can see over the tree line. On clear days, visitors can see Philadelphia to the west and Atlantic City to the east from the top, according to a DEP website.

The Pinelands Preservation Alliance had organized cleanup efforts. But as fast as volunteers would clean up, more debris and graffiti would appear, Horner said.

Ive been up there on so many cleanups. The last one, eight people literally picked up broken glass with a snow shovel it was so deep, said Horner. Its always been a problem.

He said he thinks the DEP took action now to show the vandals it was serious about stopping them.

They are trying to show that enforcement is working, Horner said. Its simpler to do.

But some families feel they are being punished, rather than the vandals.

To close this down to families because theyve done nothing wrong is, I think, horrible, said Paula Yudkowitz, of Oaklyn in Camden County, another cleanup volunteer.

Yudkowitz said she got a phone call from a friends son who had taken his fiancee to Apple Pie Hill to show her where his parents had taken him hiking. He wanted her to see the Pinelands from the top of the tower but found it closed off.

He was worried he may not be able to take his own children there, said Yudkowitz.

The economy of off-roading MAURICE RIVER TOWNSHIP  The tiny hamlet of Port Elizabeth is known for its farmers, fisherm

Contact: 609-272-7219

Twitter @MichelleBPost
VINELAND  It will cost at least $8.7 million to clean up contamination from the former Kil-Tone Co. pesticide plant, and the federal government will likely have to pay for all the work, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday.

The $8.7 million only covers work related to the removal of an estimated 21,000 cubic yards of soil, contaminated to some degree by lead and arsenic, from 57 residential properties near the Kil-Tone site in the 500 block of Chestnut Avenue, the EPA said in a statement.

Jane Morton Galetto, president of Citizens United to Protect the Maurice River and Its Tributaries, said, Its scary that so many residential properties are considered at risk.

After beating acute pollution, Maurice River faces tougher challenge The Maurice River epitomizes the conflict in New Jersey between exceptional natural areas an

She said the EPA findings are clearly worrisome for the river, adding it is typical to start cleanups close to the source and move out from there.

And sometimes tearing up a river bed can be worse, Galetto said of the prospect of later cleanups of arsenic and lead focusing on the Tarkiln Branch, a waterway that leads to the Maurice River.

Other work linked to problems with commercial and industrial soil, surface water, sediment and groundwater at the actual Kil-Tone site and the Tarkiln Branch will be the subject of future cleanups, the statement reads. Surface water and sediment samples taken from the Tarkiln Branch in April 2015 showed elevated arsenic and lead levels related to the Kil-Tone property, it continued.

The EPA said it attempts to find parties responsible for contamination at Superfund sites in order to hold those parties accountable for the cost of investigations and cleanups.

Kil-Tone is a Superfund site, however, the EPA has not been able to locate any viable liable parties for (the Kil-Tone) site and, thus, the remedial action at this site will need to be funded by the Superfund program, according to the agencys statement.

Kil-Tone produced pesticides from about 1917 to 1926, the EPA said. Kil-Tone sold the property in 1926 to the Lucas Kil-Tone Co., which is believed to have continued manufacturing pesticides at the site until at least 1933, the agency said. The property is currently occupied by an unrelated and active business, the EPA said.

The important thing is that the property will be cleaned up, said Jeff Tittle, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club.

The only concern we have is that there is no party to go after, and we have to use public money and theres not enough of it, Tittle said. Thats the real concern.

Tittle said environmental organizations have pushed for the return of a special fee imposed on chemical and pesticide companies. That fee provided funds to help the federal government pay for Superfund cleanups at sites, like Kil-Tone, where no responsible entity can be found to finance the work, he said. The fees absence leaves the Superfund program dependent on funds allocated annually by Congress and the president, he said.

The money has done a lot of good, he said. The problem is that they run out.

Galetto said the Kil-Tone situation underscores the importance of dealing with problems early.

I think the lesson continues to be, if something is not right, or seems not right, to get it checked out and not to labor it because of some presumed benefit, Galetto said. Those things can migrate off site  then affect all these peoples lives.

Judith Enck, administrator for EPA Region 2, which covers New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and eight tribal nations, said the work must be done.

Lead is a toxic material that can build up in the body and, even at low levels, cause learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced attention spans, hyperactivity and other behavioral problems in children, and harm fetuses in pregnant women, the EPA said. Arsenic can cause various forms of cancer, it said.

The EPAs cleanup actions will help protect children and adults from exposure to arsenic and lead in soil at these (57) properties, Enck said. The EPA is committed to addressing the lead and arsenic contamination from the former pesticides manufacturing facility site.

EPA spokesman Elias Rodriguez said preparatory work at the 57 properties is underway. Full field work is expected to begin in the spring, he said.

The $8.7 million residential cleanup operation involves removing the existing soil from the 57 properties and disposing of it at a licensed facility, the EPA said. The excavated areas will be backfilled with clean soil, replanted with vegetation, if appropriate, and restored.

The soil-cleanup operation will be monitored to measure its effectiveness, and the EPA also will monitor the air near the work areas, the agency said.

The operation allows for work at more than the 57 properties. Other properties may be added based on EPA soil testing, the agency said.

The EPA will coordinate with the property owners and occupants to ensure that the work is done with minimal disruption, according to the agency.

The Kil-Tone site is one of four Superfund sites in the city, added to a list of toxic violators that includes Vineland Chemical Co., Iceland Coin Laundry and the Nascolite Corp. Those four sites are part of 10 Superfund locations in Atlantic, Cumberland, Cape May and Gloucester counties still undergoing some kind of treatment.

The EPA said cleanup operations at the other nine sites now exceed $403 million.

Contact: 609-226-9197
SEA ISLE CITY  A group of concerned residents and taxpayers packed council chambers Tuesday morning to publicly denounce an effort by City Council to extend the Sea Isle City Promenade by 65 blocks. But to their delight, their protest was unnecessary.

Im here to tell you today that, after discussions with the (New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection) and the state, that this proposal is probably dead on arrival, said Mayor Leonard Desiderio, as the room erupted in applause.

The group of about 30 people, which has a Facebook page titled Dont Pave Sea Isles Dunes, believed that the plan would have created an environmental hazard, increased flood insurance premiums and reduced property values.

Vicki Miller, who organized the residents, said after the meeting Tuesday that she was thrilled that the proposal was dropped.

I was surprised that it would happen this fast and was very very happy to see it, she said.

Miller said that this effort has spurred her to stay involved in Sea Isle government.

I think that our group now has organized and were going to stay vigilant on this and other issues just to see what the city is doing and whether we agree with the proposals that they have from time to time.

Which is great, because we should be involved, she said.

Sea Isle City Councilman Jack Gibson proposed the idea at a capital planning workshop last year in an effort to get bicyclists off the streets.

Sea Isle says longer Promenade the answer to bike woes SEA ISLE CITY  City Council President Jack Gibson on Tuesday suggested a novel approach to 

The promenade runs along the beachfront between 29th and 57th streets. Gibson had suggested that it could be extended from 57th to 93rd streets for $400,000, and from 29th to First streets for $300,000.

On Tuesday, Desiderio praised Gibson for thinking beyond the box.

I want to thank Councilman Gibson for stepping up on a very, not-too-popular idea and seeing how far it would go, he said.

In addition to the promenade announcement, Sea Isle Council heard from engineer Dale Foster on the progress of a project to elevate and widen Sea Isle Boulevard as an evacuation route.

Foster said that the next phase of the project would begin later this week. The $12.73 million road reconstruction will elevate the boulevard 4.5 feet. To date, the county has spent $5.7 million since it started in 2014. The next phase of the project will include paving the northern side of the roadway, rerouting traffic to the north side and beginning the elevation of the southern side of the roadway. Work on this phase must be complete before March 15, when osprey habitat restrictions go into effect until Aug. 15.

Its a critical thing that is really extending the schedule of our project, Foster said.

Council also unanimously approved an ordinance on introduction to adopt a watershed management plan. The plan is part of an effort to reduce flood insurance premiums for homeowners in the city through the Community Rating System. The CRS program is administered through the Federal Emergency Management Agencys and offers discounts on premiums obtained through the National Flood Insurance Program.

Councilwoman Mary Tighe also asked that the city resume negotiations with Uber to provide service in Sea Isle City.
CAMDEN  A Ventnor man who served eight years in prison for defrauding women he contacted through dating services has been charged with conning more victims while on supervised release.

Patrick Giblin, 52, appeared Monday in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Ann Marie Donio to answer charges of wire fraud for allegedly preying financially on women he contacted through telephone dating services between 2012 and 2014, the U.S. Attorney said.

He allegedly promised women he was moving to their respective states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia, all for the express purpose of kindling their newfound relationship made possible by the loans the women provided. But the FBI said Giblin never lived up to those promises and always kept the money.

Giblin had just finished serving a nine-year sentence for a similar scheme to defraud women he met through singles ads.

The U.S. Attorney said Giblin used telephone dating services such as Lavalife to find victims he would persuade to lend him money based on false promises of developing a relationship with them. He pleaded guilty in 2006 to 10 counts of fraud and was sentenced to 115 months in federal prison after conning at least 50 women out of more than $200,000.

The FBI said Giblin kept notebooks for each city he targeted with detailed notes on the women he was trying to scam, including their interests and hobbies.

Giblin targeted single, vulnerable women, including women with physical disabilities, widows and single mothers, including at least one who had recently lost a child, the U.S. Attorneys office said in court papers.

Some of the women were in financial straits and borrowed money from relatives to send to Giblin, authorities said.

According to court papers, Giblins ads said he was looking for a true, genuine woman for a long-term, committed relationship. He claimed to work for the New Jersey State Lottery Commission and had access to discounted plane fares through his airline-executive brother. None of that was true, the U.S. Attorney said.

He allegedly told his victims he needed money for car repairs, moving expenses or other phony bills and persuaded women to send him money by wire transfer. Federal authorities allege he conned at least eight women in five states and Canada out of $7,000.

One Pennsylvania victim sent Giblin $2,270 in eight wire transfers to Absecon before she grew suspicious and contacted Pennsylvania State Police, authorities said.

A Virginia victim said she sent Giblin $860, ostensibly for moving expenses. When he never showed up, she got a text from him claiming his car was impounded and he had to return to New Jersey to sort out his license.

Last year, Giblin was sentenced to 24 months in prison for violating his supervised release. Giblin was released temporarily from a halfway house to find work in Atlantic City but never returned. U.S. Marshals tracked him down at an Atlantic City hotel where he signed-in under an alias.

The U.S. Attorney said Giblin fled a halfway house and left the state for New York in violation of his supervised release.

If convicted of the new charges, Giblin faces 20 years in federal prison.

Contact: 609-463-6712

Twitter @ACPressMiller
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Soon we will no longer integrate with Facebook for story comments. The commenting option is not going away, however, readers will need to register for a FREE site account to continue sharing their thoughts and feedback on stories. If you already have an account (i.e. current subscribers, posting in obituary guestbooks, for submitting community events), you may use that login, otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account.
MAYS LANDING -- A Somers Point man made his first appearance in state Superior Court by telephone on Tuesday to answer murder charges in the fatal shooting of a store manager at Tanger Outlets The Walk that shut down the tourism district on a busy afternoon this month.

The Atlantic County Prosecutors Office charged Luis A. Maisonet, 55, with murder in connection with the fatal Sept. 1 shooting of Christopher Romero, 26, of Absecon, a Zumiez store manager.

Romero was shot multiple times in the store that sits on Columbus Avenue at Tanger Outlets The Walk.

Police said Maisonet then crossed the street at the mall and entered White House Black Market where he shot himself once in the chest. Maisonet survived the wound and was taken to AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center, City Campus, where he spoke by speakerphone to Superior Court Judge Bernard DeLury.

Maisonet waived a reading of the charges, which include murder, aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a handgun at a shopper at the Walk, and weapons charges.

DeLury asked Maisonet if he had obtained counsel.

"No, I need counsel from the state. I can't afford a lawyer," Maisonet said.

DeLury read the suspect his Miranda rights. Before the hearing ended, Maisonet asked about his bail. He is being guarded around the clock by the Atlantic County Sheriff's Office.

"Bail is presently set at $1 million full cash, no 10 percent," the judge said.

Chief Assistant Prosecutor Cary Shill said the state arranged the first appearance from Maisonet's hospital bed to meet statutory requirements. Defendants have the right to a first appearance within 72 hours of being charged, Shill said. Maisonet was charged on Sept. 7.

Shill said he did not know Maisonet's condition, which has not been publicly released.

The Zumiez in Atlantic City reopened for the first time Tuesday since the shooting. For the past two weeks, the windows have been covered by brown paper to prevent anyone from looking inside. There was no visible damage to the building and the stores around Zumiez opened hours after Maisonet was arrested.

Maisonet also was charged with possession of a handgun for an unlawful purpose, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of a handgun without a permit to carry and possession of a firearm while prohibited from doing so, due to a previous domestic-violence order.
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.




EDINBURGH, Scotland, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

From the Scottish Highlands to Downtown, NYC, the first unorthodox blend in a series of new experimental whiskies from Johnnie Walker gets two thumbs up from US mixology experts.

A new, experimental Scotch blend from Johnnie Walker has been given an enthusiastic thumbs up by some of New York's most influential mixologists and bartenders when it replaced traditional American rye whiskey in a classic Manhattan cocktail.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406466 )



(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406467 )



(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406468 )



Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch is a new range of experimental whiskies and the first release, Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish, is inspired by the bold flavours of American whiskey. It was created by the whisky maker's small team of expert blenders, led by master blender Jim Beveridge.

At any one time there are hundreds of ongoing flavour experiments being carried out by the blending team in Scotland, and Red Rye Finish is whisky fans' first chance to taste the results of some of these.

To mark the release of Red Rye Finish, which can be enjoyed neat but was designed specifically to create perfect cocktails at home, Johnnie Walker blender Emma Walker journeyed from Edinburgh to the home of the Manhattan to see how the new Scotch blend stacks up against its American cousins. Her adventure can be seen in a new film from the Scotch whisky maker entitled: Blenders' Batch - Emma's Red Rye In New York.

A tentative Emma put Red Rye Finish before the eyes, noses and palates of some of New York's most influential mixologists and taste-makers including Dave Arnold, founder and president of the Museum of Food and Drink and owner of the cutting edge Booker and Dax; legendary bartender-cum-philosopher Peter Napolitano of Brooklyn's Melody Lanes Bowling Alley; and bitters and mixology expert Sother Teague, beverage director at Amor y Amargo in Manhattan's East Village.

Emma said: "We're proud of every blend we make and know that people choose Johnnie Walker because of its quality. This blend combines all the characteristics of Scotch, matured in first fill American Oak casks with a Rye Cask finish. That's something I think people won't expect and I wanted truthful, face-to-face feedback from the people in the know. I was a bit nervous - getting the approval of New York's top mixology experts for a Manhattan featuring a Johnnie Walker blend instead of traditional American whiskey but, happily, it went really well."

In the film, Dave Arnold - well known for his whip-smart commentary and opinion - is in no doubt: "There's an old drink called a Rob Roy which is like a Manhattan but made using Scotch and I hate that drink. But this Red Rye Finish Manhattan drinks like a 'real' Manhattan. It's delicious." While Sother Teague added: "I'm really into this whisky."

Blenders' Batch - Emma's Red Rye In New York has been made as part of the Storyline initiative from Johnnie Walker that sees the brand working with a global network of storytellers - including writers, directors, photographers and filmmakers - to give people a voice to tell inspiring stories of positivity and progress.

Filmmaker Oliver Wurffell was fascinated by the film's characters: "The richness of the personalities in the film revealed a completely new world for me. Like discovering the incredible complexity and craft that goes into creating a whisky like Red Rye Finish, or seeing how Emma thinks about how it will work in the hands of legends like Dave, Jack and Sother was amazing. It's a great story to be able to tell."

Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish is one of the results of hundreds of ongoing experiments into flavour that take place at the brand's home in Scotland. It includes malt and grain whiskies aged in first-fill bourbon casks and finished in rye casks. It took more than 50 experiments exploring 203 malt and grain whisky samples to hit upon Red Rye Finish and it was created using a blend of just four whiskies, including Cardhu single malt for its vibrant, fresh fruitiness, along with creamy, vanilla grain whisky from Port Dundas.

Jim Beveridge said: "Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish is inspired by my own fascination with the bold flavours of American whiskies which first developed while I was working with bourbons and ryes in Louisville, Kentucky in the 1990s.

"When making blended Scotch whisky, we like to think 'from the bar back', ensuring bartenders and people at home have the perfect liquids at hand to serve neat, on the rocks, or as the foundation of a flawless Scotch-based cocktail - such as Emma's Red Rye Finish Manhattan.

"In the case of Red Rye Finish, the end result is an incredibly contemporary whisky. It is smooth, sweet and deliberately light - to my mind, the complex character of Scotch given an exciting twist inspired by the best traditional American whiskey flavours."

The Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch range lifts the lid on the skill and never-ending pursuit of flavour that drives the blending team. At any one time, there are hundreds of experiments into flavour being carried out by the Johnnie Walker blenders which include the study of distillation conditions, the types of wood and grain used, cask finishes and other elements of whisky-making in the pursuit of exceptional new flavours.

Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish is available from September in more than 50 countries with an RRP of 20.

You can watch the film of Emma's make-or-break adventure in Manhattan here: https://youtu.be/wq8lPbTKr08

To make the perfect Red Rye Finish Manhattan at home:

Fill a mixing glass or cocktail shaker with ice, combine 2oz. Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish with 1/2oz. sweet vermouth; 1/2 oz. dry vermouth and two dashes of Angostura bitters. Stir well, for about 20 seconds, then strain into cocktail glass. Add cherry or twist lemon peel directly over drink to release essential oils, and serve.

Notes to Editors:

About Diageo

Diageo is a global leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands including Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, J&B, Buchanan's and Windsor whiskies, Smirnoff and Ciroc vodkas, Captain Morgan, Baileys, Don Julio, Tanqueray and Guinness.

Diageo is listed on both the London Stock Exchange (DGE) and the New York Stock Exchange (DEO) and our products are sold in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information about Diageo, our people, our brands, and performance, visit us at http://www.diageo.com. Visit Diageo's global responsible drinking resource, http://www.DRINKiQ.com, for information, initiatives, and ways to share best practice.

Celebrating life, every day, everywhere.

The JOHNNIE WALKER and KEEP WALKING words, the Striding Figure device and associated logos are trademarks  John Walker & Sons 2016.

Enjoy Johnnie Walker responsibly.

DRINKiQ.com

SOURCE Johnnie Walker
MONTREAL, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Caprion Biosciences announced today that the company has acquired the assets of the immune monitoring laboratory of ImmuneHealth, ASBL. Located in Gosselies, Belgium, the ImmuneHealth laboratory will provide a fully operational immune monitoring laboratory infrastructure with well-established expertise, quality processes and industry services track record, which Caprion will leverage to expand its immune monitoring offering and strengthen its business partnerships and research collaborations throughout Europe. The ImmuneHealth lab also possesses complementary expertise and assays for cellular and humoral immunity that will help support Caprion's efforts to further diversify its services offering in the areas of infectious diseases and vaccine development.

As a leading global provider of specialized immunology and proteomics analytical laboratory services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, Caprion is positioned for continued growth particularly in the rapidly expanding R&D services for immune oncology therapies, precision medicine biomarkers and biologics drugs. Caprion has achieved strong growth in recent years based on rapidly expanding client demand for the high quality differentiated services of its ImmuneCarta platform for monitoring immune response of patients in clinical development of drugs that involve the immune system, as well as for its ProteoCarta proteomics platform for the identification and quantification of proteins for biomarker discovery and validation, and for quality control in the manufacturing processes of biological drugs.

This announcement marks Caprion's first acquisition since it was recapitalized in July with GHO Capital. With favourable trends in immuno-oncology and proteomics, Caprion will continue to expand its capabilities on a global scale. Martin LeBlanc, President and CEO of Caprion stated: "This European expansion is a core part of Caprion's strategy to strengthen our competitive positioning and expand our service offering to better support our pharma and biotech clients as part of their global and European clinical trial initiatives. The opportunity to partner with the outstanding operation and team of the ImmuneHealth lab also provides us with an immediate access to an exciting new network of business partners as well as a vibrant research environment for building scientific collaborations in Belgium and Europe".

Dominique Demonte, Chairman of ImmuneHealth said: "Caprion's expertise and vision will support the deployment of the services developed at ImmuneHealth on a broader scale and will create a natural bridge between Canada and Wallonia to promote strong business partnerships. This acquisition is therefore very good news for ImmuneHealth clients and for the development of our region".

With its two locations in North America and Europe, 120 employees including 70 PhD and/or MSc degrees, Caprion is now well-positioned to support the global clinical immune monitoring needs of its biopharma partners. Caprion will continue to operate from its headquarters in Montreal (Canada) as well as from its new location in Belgium under the leadership of Caprion's current management team.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

About Caprion Biosciences, Inc.

Caprion Biosciences is the leading provider of proteomics and immune monitoring services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Its immune monitoring business unit, ImmuneCarta, offers proprietary multiparametric flow cytometry services for functional analyses of innate and adaptive immune responses. Caprion's proteomics business unit, ProteoCarta, offers proprietary gel-free, label-free mass spectrometry (MS) for comprehensive, quantitative and robust comparative measurement of proteins across large sets of biological samples for the discovery and validation of protein biomarkers. Caprion also leverages ProteoCarta and ImmuneCarta to develop its own in-vitro diagnostic products targeting cancer, metabolic and infectious diseases. Caprion has been providing large-scale proteomics and immune monitoring services to over 50 major pharmaceutical and biotech clients for more than 15 years. For more information, please visit http://www.caprion.com.

About ImmuneHealth

ImmuneHealth was founded in 2007 by the Universite Libre de Bruxelles as a CRO offering human biospecimen procurement as well as immuno-monitoring testing for clinical trials in the fields of vaccines, immunotherapies, cell therapies and diagnostics. Over the years, the Gosselies-based CRO has built its recognition for its cellular and humoral immunity analytical services provided to biotech and pharma clients. Through its clinical unit, operating in compliance with clinical regulatory and ethical guidelines, ImmuneHealth has also established a strong clinical network supplying its partners with human biological samples through a prospective approach with access to a large panel of healthy donors and clinically characterized patients. Through the announced transaction, ImmuneHealth transfers its immune-monitoring laboratory to Caprion and retains the activities of its clinical unit. For more information, please visit http://www.immunehealth.eu.

About GHO Capital

Global Healthcare Opportunities, or GHO Capital Partners LLP, was founded in 2014 as a specialist healthcare investment adviser based in London. Its vision is to apply global capabilities and perspectives to build a world-class healthcare specialist private equity firm by recognising and seizing the highly attractive and underpenetrated European market opportunity. The firm has a powerful combination of transaction, investment and industry skills which sets it apart from traditional private equity firms. For further information, please visit http://www.ghocapital.com.

Patrick Tremblay, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Development, Caprion Biosciences, ptremblay@caprion.com, +1-514-513-1998

SOURCE Caprion Biosciences, Inc.
European Data Centre Services Market, is the new analysis that is part of the IT Services & Applications Growth Partnership Service program, which also includes subjects such as enterprise infrastructure transformation, physical to virtual back-up software, managed security services, mobile device management, software-defined networking and cloud computing.

To request exclusive information about this research and to schedule your one-on-one strategy dialogue with our analysts now, please click here or send an email to Anna Zanchi, anna.zanchi@frost.com

Different service providers are pursuing different strategies. For instance, carrier-neutral colocation providers will pursue interconnections as an important business. Meanwhile, traditional hosting providers are incorporating cloud capabilities of their own or by partnering with cloud service providers to enable different enterprise IT environments through managed services.

"Already, retail colocation providers are sealing partnerships with cloud providers to meet enterprise demand for cloud interconnections," said Digital Transformation Research Analyst Shuba Ramkumar. "Colocation providers are building cloud ecosystems to allow enterprises to operate in hybrid IT environments. There is increased focus on private networking models to deliver seamless access and increase security of data centre services."

Although Western Europe is the growth hub for colocation and managed hosting in Europe, Eastern Europe is fast catching up with cloud and hosting technology trends. The overall European market, driven by enterprise need to outsource IT infrastructure management, is expected to grow from $5.65 billion in 2015 to $10.13 billion in 2020, at a compound annual growth rate of 12.3%.

The data centre service market will also continue benefitting from the cost efficiency of outsourcing IT infrastructure management and enterprises' shortage of internal IT resources. The growth of content-heavy applications and focus on data analytics and application delivery will require organisations to outsource infrastructure management. Furthermore, the rising trend of the Internet of Things necessitates robust back-office computing, which can be delivered through data centre services.

"The managed hosting market is still favoured by enterprises for applications with predictable utilization and which need dedicated servers for optimal performance," noted Ramkumar. "Simultaneously, server virtualization technology is gaining traction, with managed hosting customers investing in managed virtualized servers instead of dedicated physical servers in the traditional hosting model."

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies?

Contact

Anna Zanchi

Corporate Communications  Europe

P: +39.02.4851 6133

E: anna.zanchi@frost.com

http://www.frost.com

Related Links

http://www.frost.com



SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
MELBOURNE, Australia, September 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

PRESS RELEASE FOR AUSTRALIAN MEDICAL MEDIA ONLY

Anti-epileptic treatment now available in Australia for people affected by primary generalised tonic-clonic seizures associated with idiopathic generalised epilepsy

Fycompa, a once-daily epilepsy treatment, is now available in Australia for adjunctive treatment of primary generalised tonic-clonic (PGTC) seizures in adults and adolescents (12 years) with idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE).[1] Fycompa is the first and only licensed anti-epileptic drug to selectively, non-competitively target AMPA receptors, a type of receptor that can play a critical role in the generation and spread of seizures.[1],[2] Few antiepileptic drugs are licensed to treat PGTC seizures.[3]

Fycompa was first made available in Australia in 2014 for the adjunctive treatment of partial-onset seizures, with or without secondarily generalised seizures, in patients with epilepsy aged 12 years and older.[1] Since launch, approximately 52,000 people living with epilepsy across the EMEA region[a] have been treated with Fycompa.[4]

There are approximately 225,000 people in Australia with epilepsy[5] and it is estimated that idiopathic generalised epilepsy make up 20 per cent of all epilepsies, with PGTC seizures being the most common seizure type.[6] The number of anti-epileptic drugs licensed for the treatment of PGTC seizures is limited and as many as 20 per cent of people with idiopathic generalised epilepsy remain uncontrolled despite treatment.[3],[6]

PGTC seizures start with a loss of consciousness and a sudden contraction of the muscles, which can cause the person to fall down (tonic phase). This is followed by violent seizures (clonic phase) until the muscles finally relax.[7] There is a risk of injury with PGTC seizures, including bone fractures and burns[8] and they can have long-term consequences.[9] The frequency of generalised tonic-clonic seizures increases the risk of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP).[10]

"This new indication for Fycompa is a welcome advance for people living with idiopathic generalised epilepsy who experience tonic-clonic seizures. This serious seizure type has a potential high risk for injury or even death for people with epilepsy," comments John Bower, Market Access and Medical Director of Eisai Australia.

In study 332, a pivotal Phase III randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 164 patients age 12 years or older taking 1-3 anti-epileptic drugs with PGTC seizures and IGE were randomised to receive adjunctive Fycompa (8mg/d or highest tolerated dose) or placebo in a 1:1 ratio (4-week titration period and 13 week maintenance period).[11] Fycompa subjects achieved a greater 50% PGTC seizure responder rate (50% reduction in PGTC seizure frequency; maintenance versus baseline) compared with placebo (64.2% vs 39.5%, respectively; P=0.0019).[11] Fycompa showed a greater median per cent reduction in PGTC seizure frequency per 28 days compared with placebo (76.5% vs 38.4%; P<0.0001).[11]Furthermore, 31% of patients were PGTC seizure free during the 13-week maintenance period when treated with Fycompa as an adjunctive therapy, compared to 12% in the placebo group (P-value not reported).[11]

The adverse event profile in study 332 in people with PGTC seizures was similar to that observed for the controlled Phase III studies in people with partial onset seizures.[1],[11] The most common treatment-emergent adverse events with Fycompa (10%) were dizziness, fatigue, headache, somnolence and irritability.[1],[11]

"Approval for our first-in-class treatment Fycompa in the PGTC indication is a positive step, building on the medicine's availability in focal seizures. Importantly, it also evidences Eisai's human health care mission, including our commitment to epilepsy and to improving outcomes for the many Australians living with this disease, and their families," states Jaime McCoy, Country POA, Sales & Marketing Director, Eisai, Australia.

Minimum Product Information: Fycompa (perampanel). INDICATIONS: Adjunctive treatment of partial-onset seizures with or without secondarily generalised seizures in adult and adolescent patients from 12 years of age with epilepsy. Adjunctive treatment of primary generalised tonic-clonic seizures in adult and adolescent patients from 12 years of age with idiopathic generalised epilepsy. CONTRAINDICATIONS: Hypersensitivity to perampanel or any of the excipients.PRECAUTIONS: Not recommended in children <12 years; use in elderly (use with caution); suicidal ideation and behaviour (monitor for emergence or worsening depression, suicidal thoughts or behaviour and unusual changes in mood or behaviour); nervous system disorders (dizziness, gait disturbance, somnolence and fatigue); falls (caution with elderly); recommend gradual discontinuation; serious psychiatric and behavioural reactions (monitor for changes in mood, behaviour or personality, particularly during titration and higher doses. Reduce dose if symptoms occur, discontinue if severe); abuse potential (caution with history of substance abuse); monotherapy not recommended; galactose intolerance (do not take with galactose intolerance, Lapp lactase deficiency or glucose-galactose malabsorption); pregnancy (category B3), not recommended; unknown if excreted in human milk (assess risk benefit). INTERACTIONS: Oral contraceptives (consider decreased efficacy of progestative containing OCs for women needing 12mg/day and additional non-hormonal form of contraception); other antiepileptic drugs (AEDs; enzyme inducers carbamazepine, phenytoin, oxcarbazepine and topiramate) increase perampanel clearance and decrease concentration, dose to clinical effect regardless of other AEDs; dose of perampanel may need to be adjusted according to CYP450 inhibitor and inducer coadministration; possible additive effects with CNS depressants (alcohol). ADVERSE REACTIONS : Dizziness, somnolence, fatigue, irritability, falls, nausea, ataxia, balance disorder, gait disturbance, back pain, vertigo, headache and weight gain. DOSAGE AND ADMINISTRATION: Film-coated tablets: 2 mg, 4 mg, 6 mg, 8 mg, 10 mg and 12 mg. Adults and adolescents: Initiate at 2 mg and titrate weekly or longer according to individual response to maintenance dose of 4 mg/day to 12 mg/day. Take orally once daily at bedtime, with or without food, swallowed whole with a glass of water. Not recommended in moderate or severe renal impairment or patients undergoing haemodialysis. Caution in mild to moderate hepatic impairment, do not exceed 8 mg. Not recommended in severe hepatitic impairment. Date of most recent amendment: 12 May 2016.

PBS Information: Authority required (STREAMLINED). Intractable partial epileptic seizures. Refer to PBS Schedule for full authority information.

Please review the Product Information before prescribing, available from www.eisai.com.au/PI

Fycompa is a registered trademark of Eisai Australia Pty Ltd, PO Box 33004, Melbourne VIC 3004. ABN 73 117 970 993. Eisai Australia Medical Information: 03-9832-9100 or medinfo_australia@eisai.net.

Notes to Editors

About Fycompa

Fycompa is a highly selective, non-competitive AMPA (alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid)-type glutamate receptor antagonist. AMPA receptors, widely present in almost all excitatory neurons, transmit signals stimulated by the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate within the brain and are believed to play a role in central nervous system diseases characterised by excess neuroexcitatory signalling including epilepsy.[2]

Fycompa has shown efficacy in, and is indicated for the adjunctive treatment of partial-onset seizures with or without secondarily generalised seizures in adult and adolescent patients from 12 years of age with epilepsy; and for the adjunctive treatment of primary generalised tonic-clonic (PGTC) seizures in adult and adolescent patients from 12 years of age with idiopathic generalised epilepsy.[1]

Further information for healthcare professionals can be found at www.eisai.com.au

About Epilepsy

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological conditions in the world, affecting approximately 6 million people in Europe, and an estimated 50 million people worldwide.[12] It is a collection of syndromes that have many possible causes but often the cause is unknown. Epilepsy is a chronic disorder of the brain that affects people of all ages. It is characterised by abnormal discharges of neuronal activity causing seizures. Seizures can vary in severity, from brief lapses of attention or jerking of muscles, to severe and prolonged seizures. Depending on the seizure type, seizures may be limited to one part of the body, or may involve the whole body. Seizures can also vary in frequency from less than one per year, to several per day.[13]

For the majority of idiopathic generalised epilepsy patients, a primary generalised tonic-clonic (PGTC) seizure begins with or without an aura (sensory or psychic phenomena), which is followed by loss of consciousness and muscle rigidity (tonic phase). This is followed by violent muscle contractions (clonic phase). As this is a serious event, it is seen as a major hindrance on daily life. While the seizure generally only lasts a few minutes, the patient will often feel confused or drowsy for a short period of time before returning to normal.[7] PGTC seizures can also result in risk of injury[8] and sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP).[10]

About Eisai EMEA in Epilepsy

Eisai is committed to developing and delivering highly beneficial new treatments to help improve the lives of people with epilepsy. The development of AEDs is a major strategic area for Eisai in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and Oceania (EMEA).

In Australia, Eisai currently has one marketed product for the treatment of epilepsy:

Fycompa is indicated for use as a once-daily, adjunctive therapy for both primary generalised tonic-clonic seizures with idiopathic generalised epilepsy and for partial onset seizures, with or without secondarily generalised seizures, in patients with epilepsy aged 12 years or older

About Eisai Co., Ltd.

Eisai Co., Ltd. is a leading global research and development-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in Japan. We define our corporate mission as "giving first thought to patients and their families and to increasing the benefits health care provides," which we call our human health care (hhc) philosophy. With over 10,000 employees working across our global network of R&D facilities, manufacturing sites and marketing subsidiaries, we strive to realise our hhc philosophy by delivering innovative products in multiple therapeutic areas with high-unmet medical needs, including Oncology and Neurology.

As a global pharmaceutical company, our mission extends to patients around the world through our investment and participation in partnership-based initiatives to improve access to medicines in developing and emerging countries.

a. EMEA countries are Germany, Italy, UK, Spain, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Portugal, Greece, Australia, Russia, Slovakia

References

1. Approved Fycompa Product Information. Available at: http://www.eisai.com.au/media/1778/1312-product-information-clean-australia.pdf

2. Rogawski MA. Revisiting AMPA receptors as an antiepileptic drug target. Epilepsy Currents 2011;11:56-63

3. Rheims S and Ryvlin P. Pharmacotherapy for tonic-clonic seizures. Exp Opin Pharmacother 2014;15:1417-26

4. Eisai. Data on File 2016 - PER211

5. Epilepsy Action Australia. Facts and statistics about Epilepsy. Available at: http://www.epilepsy.org.au/resources/for-media/facts-statistics-about-epilepsy. Accessed September 2016

6. Curatolo P, et al. Pharmacotherapy of idiopathic generalised epilepsies. Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy 2009; Jan;10(1):5-17. doi: 10.1517/14656560802618647

7. Epilepsy Foundation. Types of seizures. Available at: http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/types-seizures/tonic-clonic-seizures. Accessed September 2016

8. Asadi-Pooya A, et al. Physical injuries in patients with epilepsy and their associated risk factors. Seizure 2012;21:165-68

9. Trinka E, et al. A definition and classification of status epilepticus--Report of the ILAE Task Force on Classification of Status Epilepticus. Epilepsia 2015;56(10):1515-23

10. SUDEP Action. What is SUDEP? Available at: https://sudep.org/what-sudep-1. Accessed September 2016

11. French J, et al. Perampanel for tonic-clonic seizures in idiopathic generalised epilepsy. Neurology 2015;85 (11):950-57

12. Epilepsy in the WHO European Region: Fostering Epilepsy Care in Europe. http://www.ibe-epilepsy.org/downloads/EURO%20Report%20160510.pdf. Accessed September 2016

13. World Health Organisation - Epilepsy fact sheet (updated February 2016) Available at: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs999/en/. Accessed September 2016

September 2016

Fycompa-UK0293



SOURCE Eisai
DUBLIN, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Dublin - Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Food Grade Lubricants Market by Base Oil (Mineral, Synthetic (PAO and PAG), and Bio-Based), Application (Food (Bakery, Sugar, Dairy, Meat Poultry, and Sea Food), Beverages, Pharmaceuticals & Cosmetics) - Global Forecast to 2021" report to their offering.

The global market size of food grade lubricants is projected to reach 64.45 kilotons by 2021, registering a CAGR of 6.7% between 2016 and 2021

In terms of value, the market size for food grade lubricants was USD 182.8 Million in 2016, and is projected to reach USD 256.5 Million by 2021, registering a CAGR of 7.0% during the same period. The growing processed food industry i is expected to generate demand and drive the food grade lubricants market during the forecast period. The food application accounted for major share of the food grade lubricants market in 2015.



The food grade lubricants market is classified on the basis of base oil, namely, mineral oil, synthetic oil (PAO, PAG, and others), and bio-based. Mineral oil dominated the food grade lubricants market during the forecast period, followed by synthetic oil, in 2015. The dominance of mineral oil-based food grade lubricants is owed to its low cost and easy availability.



Synthetic oil based food grade lubricants are expected to witness the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2021. The growth is mainly due to the advanced properties such as better performance in extreme temperature conditions, oxidation stability, and durability compared to conventional mineral oil lubricants



The food grade lubricants market is classified on the basis of application, namely, food, beverages, pharmaceuticals & cosmetics, and others. It is dominated by the food application. The dominance of food segment is mainly attributed to the increasing concern over food safety and rapid growth of the food processing industry. The application of food is projected to register the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2021, in terms of volume.



Currently, Europe is the largest market for food grade lubricants. The stringent food safety regulations in the region are expected to drive the increasing demand for food grade lubricants. Asia-Pacific is projected to be the fastest-growing market between 2016 and 2021. This growth is attributed to the rising awareness and growing processed food industry in the region.



The major factor restraining the growth of the food grade lubricants market is the lack of proper training and awareness. Use of wrong lubricating oil or grease may result in huge losses. This issue restrains the growth of the market.



Some of the key players of the food grade lubricants market are



AB Skf

BP Plc

Bel-Ray Company Llc (U.S.)

Chemtura Corporation

Clearco Products Co, Inc. (U.S.)

D-A Lubricant Company, Inc. (U.S.)

Elba Lubrication Inc. (U.S.)

Exxon Mobil Corporation

Fuchs Petrolub Se

Haynes Manufacturing Company (U.S.)

Huskey Specialty Lubricants (U.S.)

Illinois Tool Works Inc.

Jax Inc.

Kluber Lubrication Munchen Se & Co. Kg

Lubricating Specialties Company (U.S.)

Matrix Specialty Lubricants ( Netherlands )

) Petro-Canada Lubricants Inc.

Royal Purple Llc (U.S.)

Southwestern Petroleum Corporation (Swepco) (U.S.)

The Chemrous Company (U.S.)

The Clarion Lubricants (U.S.)

The Dow Chemical Company (U.S.)

The Lubrizol Corporation (U.S.)

Total S.A.

Ultrachem Inc. (U.S.)



For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/4kld7r/food_grade



Related Topics: Dairy Products, Cosmetics, Sugar and Sweeteners , Lubricants and Greases

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
LONDON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Specialist technical fluid power products supplier, FLOWTECH FLUIDPOWER PLC, (AiM Symbol: FLO) releases its 2016 Half-Year Report:

HY2016 HY2015 FY2015 FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS 30.6.16 30.6.15 31.12.15 GROWTH UNAUDITED UNAUDITED AUDITED %  REVENUE: -Flowtechnology GBP18.093m GBP17.488m GBP33.168m +3% -Power Motion Control (PMC) GBP8.268m GBP3.935m GBP11.680m +110% -Process GBP1.026m - - - GROUP TOTAL REVENUE GBP27.387m GBP21.423m GBP44.848m +28%  GROSS PROFIT GBP9.551m GBP7.203m GBP15.345m +33%  UNDERLYING OPERATING PROFIT GBP4.059m GBP3.404m GBP6.868m +19%  OPERATING PROFIT GBP3.290m GBP3.012m GBP5.491m +9%  HALF-YEAR DIVIDEND 1.84p 1.75p +5%  EARNINGS PER SHARE (basic) 5.91p 5.62p +5%  NET DEBT GBP14.1m GBP7.5m GBP9.0m

OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS  SOLID FIRST HALF PERFORMANCE IN CHALLENGING MARKET CONDITIONS  STRONG MOMENTUM WITHIN THE RECENTLY ESTABLISHED PMC AND PROCESS DIVISIONS  GROSS MARGINS REMAIN RESILIENT ACROSS ALL DIVISIONS  ACQUISITION STRATEGY DELIVERING EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITIES TO ACQUIRE NICHE BUSINESSES WITH SPECIALIST SECTOR FOCUS: - THREE COMPLETED IN 2016 AND SIX SINCE BECOMING A PLC - ALL INTEGRATIONS ON TARGET - CONFIDENT OF FURTHER PROGRESS BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR  EXPANDED CUSTOMER PROFILE INTO NEW END USER MARKETS including: - AGRICULTURE, RAILWAY, ENVIRONMENTAL, WATER, PHARMACEUTICAL  STRONG FOCUS ON INVESTING IN GROUP RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE  NET DEBT COMFORTABLY WITHIN AVAILABLE FACILITIES AND COVENANTS

"Flowtech remains confident in its ability to execute its proven strategy to develop in its technically specialised sectors in the UK and internationally. The Company is recognised as a skilled and resilient business operating in a fragmented fluid power distribution market. In addition to organic sales growth there remains a number of opportunities to further enhance Flowtech's multi-channel approach through; its investment in people and increased sales resource, the ongoing development of Exclusive Brand and OEM product offering, as well as through earnings enhancing acquisitions." SEAN FENNON, CEO FLOWTECH FLUIDPOWER PLC

To read the full news release in full please visit http://www.flowtechfluidpower.com

About Flowtech Fluidpower plc Flowtech Fluidpower plc, founded as Flowtech in 1983, is the UK's leading specialist supplier of technical fluid power products. The Group has three divisions: Flowtechnology, Power Motion Control and Process. All three of the Group's divisions have overlapping product sets, allowing procurement synergies to be maximised. The Flowtechnology division focuses on supplying distributors and resellers of industrial MRO (maintenance, repair and operation) products, primarily serving urgent orders rather than bulk offerings. It is formed from Flowtechnology UK, Flowtechnology Benelux and Indequip. It offers an unrivalled range of Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and Exclusive Brand products to over 3,400 distributors and resellers. Its catalogues are recognised as the definitive source for fluid power products, containing approximately 106,000 individual product lines and are distributed to more than 85,000 industrial Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul end users (MRO). The Power Motion Control division specialises in the design, assembly and supply of engineering components and hydraulic systems and is further enhanced by a service and repair function. The division is formed from Primary Fluid Power, Nelson Hydraulics and TSL Fluidpower. The Process division focuses on the supply of industrial components to the process sectors. This is the newest division in the Group, formed by the acquisition of Hydravalve in March 2016. The Group's main distribution centre is in Skelmersdale, Lancashire with further distribution centres in the Netherlands and China. The Power Motion Control Division (PMC) has operations in Merseyside, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Yorkshire; Process operates from the West Midlands. In total the business employs 324 people. The Group has a clear view of its growth objectives - to create a specialist fluid power organisation that remains focused on its core competencies whilst servicing the varied industrial and manufacturing sectors through its delivery of 'class-leading' service and support. Our long term growth model is based on both organic growth, coupled with complementary acquisitions in a very fragmented marketplace.
DUBLIN, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Oil Refining Industry in Kuwait 2016" report to their offering.

This downstream energy sector report, Oil Refining Industry in Kuwait is a complete source of information on Kuwait crude oil refining industry.

It provides refinery level information relating to existing and planned (new build) refineries such as insights and forecasts of refinery capacities, refined petroleum products production and consumption, refinery complexity factor and comparison against peer group countries in the respective region.

The report also covers complete details of major players operating in the refining sector in Kuwait and in depth analysis of the latest industry news and deals.

Scope

Outlook of Country Oil Refining Industry and refined petroleum products beyond 2015

Forecasts of refined products production and consumption along with major refining companies, and operators.

Historic and Forecasted Refining capacity and secondary units capacities beyond 2015

Key Opportunities and Restraints in country Refinery market

Benchmark with five peer group countries on Nelson Complexity Factor.

Market structure of Country Refining Industry, companies, capacities and market share.

Information on planned refineries such as planned capacity, equity structure, Operator Company, expected commissioning date and project cost.

Refined petroleum products production and demand beyond 2015.

Refinery level information such as refinery name, commissioned year, primary and secondary units installed capacities along with future capacity expansions, refinery complexity factor, ownership and operator details.

Company profiles of major refining companies including SWOT Analysis.

Latest mergers, acquisitions, contract announcements, and all related industry news and deals analysis.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Figures & Tables

2 Introduction to Kuwait Refining Markets

3 Refining Industry in Kuwait 2015

4 Kuwait Refining Market- Drivers and Restraints

5 Kuwait Oil Products Demand and Supply Forecast to 2022

6 Kuwait Refinery Capacities Forecast to 2022

7 Kuwait Refining Industry- Future Developments and Investment Opportunities

8 Key Strategies Kuwait Refining Companies 2008-2022

9 Company Profiles

10 Kuwait Refining Industry Latest Tenders and Contracts

11 Kuwait Refining Industry Updates

12 Kuwait Refining Industry Deals

13 Appendix

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/wmg2nq/oil_refining

Related Topics: Oil, Gasoline and Diesel

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
ALBANY, New York, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The Latin America home healthcare market is fragmented in nature with stiff price competition among leading players, states a new research study by Transparency Market Research. Prominent companies, including Philips Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer AG, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., and Abbott Laboratories collectively accounted for more than 80% of the Latin America home healthcare market in 2013. Key players in the market are making constant efforts to expand and enhance their product portfolio and establish a strong presence through mergers and acquisitions.

According to the study, the Latin America market opportunity in home healthcare is projected to reach a value of US$17.55 bn by the end of 2020. On the basis of devices types, the medical supplies segment is expected to retain the leading position in the Latin America home healthcare market, reaching a value of US$3.92 bn by the end of 2020. The rising incidence of malnutrition and premature births and growing preference for home enteral therapeutics are key factors that are projected to bolster the medical supplies segment in the near future.

Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with free PDF Brochure: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=3020

Technological Advancements to Bolster Home Healthcare Market in Brazil

The demand for home healthcare services is very high, especially in Brazil and Mexico. Among the key geographical segments, Brazil is estimated to lead the Latin America home healthcare market and account for a 35% share by the end of 2020. "The high growth of this region likely due to the rising number of disabled geriatric population and technological advancements in home healthcare devices," says a TMR analyst.

By service, the unskilled home healthcare services segment is projected to lead the market, reaching a value of US$2.69 bn by the end of 2020. The rising adoption of personalized care devices is one of the primary factors augmenting the growth of this segment in the Latin America home healthcare market.

Changing Demographics to Actuate Growth of Home Healthcare Market in Latin America

The Latin America home healthcare market is anticipated to witness noteworthy growth in the next few years, owing to the rising adoption rate of home healthcare services and devices and growing prevalence of chronic diseases in this region. The emergence of new and innovative devices is expected to contribute extensively towards the growth of the home healthcare market in Latin America.

Furthermore, the changing demographics in Latin America are encouraging high acceptance of medical devices and homecare services, thereby augmenting the growth of the home healthcare market in Latin America. Technological developments and emergence of innovative healthcare services are further expected to bolster the growth of the market in the near future, states a TMR analyst.

View exclusive Latin America Strategic Business report: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/latin-america-home-healthcare-market.html

Economic Instability to Curb Growth of Latin America Home Healthcare Market

An increasing number of patients are preferring self-diagnosis in Latin America, thus making use of home healthcare devices. As a result, the risk of incorrect use of home healthcare devices is rising, leading to fatal health disorders. This is expected to curtail the growth of the overall market in the coming years. In addition, the economic disparity and immature and complex regulatory environment are projected to hamper the growth of the Latin America home healthcare market in the near future.

Nonetheless, leading players in the market are currently focusing on the underdeveloped regions in Latin America, such as Venezuela, Colombia, and Chile. The untapped opportunities in these countries are expected to drive the market in the next few years.

This information is based on the findings of a research report published by Transparency Market Research, titled "Latin America Home Healthcare Market - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2020."

Browse Latin America Home Healthcare Industry Press Release: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/latin-america-home-healthcare-market.htm

The Latin America home healthcare market has been segmented as below:

Device Types

Diagnostics and Monitoring Home Devices Blood Glucose Monitors Blood Pressure Monitors Heart Rate Monitors Temperature Monitors Sleep Apnea Monitors Coagulation Monitors Pregnancy Test Kits Pulse Oximeters Pedometers



Therapeutics Home Healthcare Devices Insulin Delivery Devices Nebulizers Ventilator and CPAP Devices IV Equipments Dialysis Equipment



Home Mobility Assist Devices Wheelchairs Cranes and Crutches Other Home Mobility Assist Devices



Medical Supplies

Services

Rehabilitation Services

Telehealth and Telemedicine Services

Infusion Therapy Services

Respiratory Therapy Services

Unskilled Home Healthcare Services

Geography

Brazil

Mexico

Argentina

Colombia

Others

Browse Other Latest Research Reports:

Global Home Healthcare Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/home-healthcare-market.html

Home Healthcare Software - Product & Service Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/home-healthcare-software-product-service-market.html

Canada Home Healthcare Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/canada-home-healthcare-market.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: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com



Website: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Blog: http://www.tmrblog.com/



SOURCE Transparency Market Research
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

iWedia, a leading provider of software solutions for TV devices to service operators and consumer electronics manufacturers, today announced it has been selected by Shenzhen-based leading STB manufacturer Justek Technology Co., Ltd. to provide the HbbTV 2.0 browser of its Android 5.1 hybrid UHD set-top box.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140226/671778 )



The announcement was made at IBC 2016, which is being held in Amsterdam from Friday, September 9th through to Tuesday, September 13th. Both Justek (hall 14, booth J01) and iWedia (hall 5, booth B40) exhibit at the show.

To target the European market, Justek will add support to HbbTV 2.0 to its Android 5.1 hybrid UHD HEVC (4Kp60) STB in integrating iWedia's browser.

HbbTV 2.0 enhances the previous specification with support to HTML5, HEVC, TTML, MPEG DASH (DVB profile), and CI Plus v1.4. It also introduces companion screens features, synchronization of applications and contents across devices, push VoD, etc.

A member of the HbbTV Association, iWedia has been involved in the specification of the standard since its inception and its HbbTV 1.5 implementation has been widely deployed by major TV set and STB manufacturers.

iWedia has upgraded its HbbTV browser towards 2.0. The solution is proposed as a standalone software component bundled with the Blink Web browser and is available for Linux and Android.

This component may be complemented with other software components of iWedia's product portfolio: MPEG DASH and HLS client software, TTML engine, CI Plus v1.4 host software.

Efficient porting, integration and validation processes are precisely defined. The component is accompanied with comprehensive documentations and testing tools.

"We are glad to cooperate with iWedia and to benefit from their strong expertise in HbbTV," says George Liao, CEO at Justek. "Based on cutting edge technology from chipset provider HiSilicon, our STB delivers an amazing user experience. Integrating iWedia's HbbTV 2.0 browser in this STB guarantees that we will be bringing on the European market a successful product fully compliant with the standard."

"We are delighted to work with Justek, a renowned STB manufacturer with a solid reputation of reliability", says Herve Creff, VP Marketing at iWedia. "In leveraging our HbbTV 2.0 software component and accumulated experience, we will enable them to rapidly take into account a major standard that shapes the European digital TV market."

About Shenzhen Justek Technology Co., Ltd.

Shenzhen Justek Technology Co., Ltd. is a professional DVB application and system integrator experienced in DVB system integration, DVB application development and integration as well as in STB manufacturing. With a strong R&D team we have brought out a complete range of DVB products with the capability to integrate any CAS & middleware, no matter whether it is an MPEG 2 or MPEG 4 platform, a normal zapper box or an Android STB, a single or multi combo/hybrid tuner device. Our world's first Android 5.1 hybrid STB for H.265/HEVC/4K@P60 supports multi tuners, UDP/IPTV, OTT, multi-screen, DRM, and chipset pairing CAS as well as HBBTV2.0. With 16+ years' experience in this industry, we have built up strong long term relationships with 100+ MSOs in 40+ countries together with 15+ CAS partners worldwide. Reliability has a name, and we strive to satisfy our customers.

Please visit http://www.justek.tv for more information.

Media Contact:

George Liao

CEO, Justek

+8613506923048

George@justek.tv



About iWedia

iWedia provides software components and solutions for TV devices to service operators and consumer electronics manufacturers. Its mission is to deliver the software products and services needed by its customers to adapt constantly to the ever-changing requirements of the digital TV markets. In addition to stand-alone components (HLS, DASH, VidiPath, DVB>IP, MHEG-5, HbbTV, CI Plus, DTCP-IP, TR-069, etc.), iWedia offers a range of complete solutions for zappers, connected receivers, Smart TVs, as well as for OTT and IPTV boxes. Dubbed Teatro, these solutions are available for RTOS, Linux/HTML, and Android/Java and are pre-integrated with leading service and delivery platforms, CA/DRM systems, and chipsets. Alongside its products, iWedia delivers efficient and scalable software integration services performed by an experienced team used to enable rapid deployments of high volume Consumer Electronics devices. iWedia is headquartered in Switzerland with development labs in Belgrade and Novi Sad, Serbia, and sales and support offices in Brazil, France, Germany, India, and Thailand.

Please visit http://www.iwedia.com for more information.

Media Contact:

Herve Creff

VP Marketing, iWedia

+33-2-99-27-92-63

herve.creff@iwedia.com



SOURCE iWedia
HATFIELD, England, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

FOR EMEA MEDIA ONLY - NOT FOR SWISS/AUSTRIAN/CZECH REPUBLIC JOURNALISTS

New data presented from registry study for Inovelon (rufinamide) for people with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome

New data presented today at the 12th European Congress on Epileptology (ECE) of an open-label extension study of the pivotal Phase III randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical Study 332, showed that long-term adjunctive perampanel for up to two and a half years (142 weeks) provided sustained seizure control and was generally well tolerated in poorly controlled patients with primary generalised tonic clonic (PGTC) seizures, in idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE).[1]

Perampanel is indicated in the European Union for adjunctive treatment of partial-onset seizures, with or without secondarily generalised seizures, and for adjunctive treatment of PGTC seizures in patients with IGE aged 12 years and older.[2]

In the open-label extension study, 138 patients received once-daily adjunctive perampanel for up to 136 weeks following dose-optimisation in a 6-week blinded conversion period. Sixty patients discontinued perampanel during the extension study, most (n=41) due to reasons other than adverse events or inadequate therapeutic response. By the end of the conversion period, results were as follows:[1]

Seizure Measure N=138 Perampanel (n=68) Placebo (n=70) Median per cent change in PGTC seizure frequency -93.1% -100% 50% responder rates 75.0% 74.3%

Treatment-emergent adverse events were seen in 120 patients (87.0%) with 20 patients (14.5%) having severe adverse events, 18 (13.0%) with serious adverse events, and 13 (9.4%) with adverse events leading to withdrawal.[1]

"The extension study shows that patients with primary generalised tonic clonic seizures in idiopathic generalised epilepsy achieve similar clinical benefits, with consistent tolerability, to those seen previously in Study 332," comments Eugen Trinka, Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.

Exploratory outcomes from a post-hoc analysis of the 17-week core phase of Study 332 showed that compared with placebo, adjunctive perampanel showed no clear evidence for worsening of myoclonic or absence seizures.[3] There was a difference in baseline seizure frequency for myoclonic and absence seizures between perampanel and placebo groups and the study was not powered to detect differences in these seizure types.

(n=162) Seizure Type Perampanel (n=81) Placebo (n=81) Baseline myoclonic 29.0% Baseline absence 37.0% Perampanel Placebo Absence seizure freedom 22.2% 12.1% Absence seizure worsening 29.6% 45.5% Myoclonic seizure freedom 16.7% 13.0% Myoclonic seizure worsening 29.2% 30.4%

The most common adverse events with perampanel in the 17-week core phase of Study 332 were dizziness, fatigue, headache, somnolence and irritability.[4]

Data from open-label extension Study 307 in patients with focal epilepsy treated with adjunctive perampanel for up to four years were also presented, including seizure outcomes:[5]

Change during last year of 3 Years Perampanel 4 Years Perampanel perampanel treatment Exposure (n=436) Exposure (n=78) Median % seizure reduction 61.98% 70.63% Median % seizure reduction in secondarily generalised seizures 87.96% 100% 50% responder rate 59.6% 67.9% No new safety signals were seen during long-term perampanel exposure

Final results from a European patient registry study[6] for safety in 111 patients of all ages (4 years) with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS), suggest the potential for rufinamide and 'other' antiepileptic drugs in the long-term treatment of LGS. At Month 12, the proportion of patients rated as 'much', or 'very much' improved in control of all seizures was 12/42 (28.6%) and 5/33 (15.2%) for rufinamide and other AEDs, respectively.

Treatment-related adverse events were reported for 40.6% for rufinamide and 27.7% for other AEDs patients, and led to discontinuation of 7.8% and 2.1% of patients, respectively. The most frequently reported rufinamide-related adverse events (5% patients) were somnolence (7.8%) and decreased appetite (6.3%). There were no unexpected safety findings.

Rufinamide is indicated in the European Union as adjunctive therapy in the treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome in patients four years of age and older.[7]

There are limited published data on the treatment of adults with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. In another analysis of this study,[8] data on adults (18 years) were extracted and analysed. Twenty-four adult patients were included (16 on rufinamide and 8 on another antiepileptic drug).

At Month 24, the proportion of patients rated as 'much' or 'very much' improved in control of all seizures was 2/7 (28.6%) and 2/4 (50.0%) for rufinamide and other AEDs, respectively. AED-related adverse events were reported for 50.0% for rufinamide and 37.5% for other AEDs patients, and led to discontinuation of 6.3% and 0% of patients, respectively. The only rufinamide-related adverse event reported for more than one adult was somnolence (n=2). There were no unexpected safety findings.

The registry enrolled patients with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (age 4 years) requiring modification to any anti-epileptic treatment, including initiation of rufinamide. The primary objective of the registry was to evaluate long-term safety.[6],[8] Seizure control was also assessed using a 7-point generic seizure frequency scale (rated from 'very much worse' to 'very much improved'). A total of 111 patients were enrolled and included in the safety analysis set, of whom 64 initiated rufinamide and 47 were initially allocated other antiepileptic drugs. For the analysis of the adult population from this safety analysis set, 24 patients were included (16 on rufinamide and 8 on another antiepileptic drug).[8]

"The data presented for perampanel and rufinamide provide new insights into the long-term care of people with epilepsy. There is no known cure and people have to live with the consequence of epilepsy day in and day out. Eisai is committed to understanding the long-term impact of its treatments, for seizure freedom and safety, and these results help us to enhance our knowledge of treatment in everyday life," comments Neil West, Vice President, Global Neurology Business Group, Eisai EMEA.

The continued development of its epilepsy portfolio underscores Eisai's human health care (hhc) mission, the company's commitment to innovative solutions in disease prevention, cure and care for the health and wellbeing of people worldwide. Eisai is committed to the therapeutic area of neurology and to address the unmet medical needs of people with epilepsy and their families.

Notes to Editors

About Fycompa (perampanel)

Perampanel is a highly selective, non-competitive AMPA (alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid)-type glutamate receptor antagonist. AMPA receptors, widely present in almost all excitatory neurons, transmit signals stimulated by the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate within the brain and are believed to play a role in central nervous system diseases characterised by excess neuroexcitatory signalling including epilepsy.

Since launch, approximately 52,000 people living with epilepsy across the EMEA region* have been treated with perampanel.[9]

*EMEA countries are Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Portugal, Greece, Australia, Russia, Slovakia, Israel.

Clinical data for Fycompa (perampanel) - Phase III study 332[4]

Study 332 is a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled, multicentre, parallel-group trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of adjunctive perampanel for refractory primary generalised tonic clonic (PGTC) seizures in idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE). 164 people (12 years old) with PGTC seizures and IGE (diagnoses confirmed by independent reviewers), despite treatment with one to three concomitant AEDs, were randomised to receive perampanel (8 mg/d or highest tolerated dose) or placebo in a 1:1 ratio.

About Inovelon (rufinamide)

Rufinamide was approved for adjunctive therapy for Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome in Europe (under the brand name Inovelon) in 2007. Rufinamide is available in 19 European countries as film-coated tablets containing 100mg, 200mg, and 400mg rufinamide. It is available in some countries as an oral suspension in orange flavour 40mg/ml concentration. The oral suspension formulation is bioequivalent to the tablet formulation on a milligram per milligram basis and is available in Austria, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Netherland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

About Epilepsy

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological conditions in the world, affecting approximately 6 million people in Europe, and an estimated 50 million people worldwide.[10] Epilepsy is a chronic disorder of the brain that affects people of all ages. It is characterised by abnormal discharges of neuronal activity which causes seizures. Seizures can vary in severity, from brief lapses of attention or jerking of muscles, to severe and prolonged convulsions. Depending on the seizure type, seizures may be limited to one part of the body, or may involve the whole body. Seizures can also vary in frequency from less than one per year, to several per day. Epilepsy has many possible causes but often the cause is unknown.

For the majority of idiopathic generalised epilepsy patients, a primary generalised tonic clonic (PGTC) seizure begins with or without an aura (sensory or psychic phenomena), which is followed by loss of consciousness and muscle rigidity (tonic phase). This is followed by violent muscle contractions (clonic phase). As this is a serious event, it is seen as a major hindrance on daily life. While the seizure generally only lasts a few minutes, the patient will often feel confused or drowsy for a short period of time before returning to normal.[11],[12] PGTC seizures can also result in risk of injury and sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP).[13]

About Eisai EMEA in Epilepsy

Eisai is committed to developing and delivering highly beneficial new treatments to help improve the lives of people with epilepsy. The development of AEDs is a major strategic area for Eisai in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and Oceania (EMEA). In the EMEA region, Eisai currently has four marketed treatments including:

Fycompa  (perampanel) is indicated for use as a once-daily, adjunctive therapy for both primary generalised tonic clonic seizures in idiopathic generalisation and for partial onset seizures, with or without secondary generalisation, in patients with epilepsy aged 12 years or older

(perampanel) is indicated for use as a once-daily, adjunctive therapy for both primary generalised tonic clonic seizures in idiopathic generalisation and for partial onset seizures, with or without secondary generalisation, in patients with epilepsy aged 12 years or older Inovelon  (rufinamide) is indicated for the adjunctive treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome in patients 4 years. (Rufinamide was originally developed by Novartis)

(rufinamide) is indicated for the adjunctive treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome in patients 4 years. (Rufinamide was originally developed by Novartis) Zonegran  (zonisamide) is indicated as monotherapy in the treatment of partial seizures, with or without secondary generalisation, in adults with newly diagnosed epilepsy and as adjunctive therapy in the treatment of partial seizures, with or without secondary generalisation, in adults, adolescents and children aged six years and above. (Zonegran  is under license from the originator Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma)

(zonisamide) is indicated as monotherapy in the treatment of partial seizures, with or without secondary generalisation, in adults with newly diagnosed epilepsy and as adjunctive therapy in the treatment of partial seizures, with or without secondary generalisation, in adults, adolescents and children aged six years and above. (Zonegran is under license from the originator Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma) Zebinix (eslicarbazepine acetate) is indicated as adjunctive therapy in adult patients with partial onset seizures, with or without secondary generalisation (Zebinix is under license from BIAL)

About Eisai Co., Ltd.

Eisai Co., Ltd. is a leading global research and development-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in Japan. We define our corporate mission as "giving first thought to patients and their families and to increasing the benefits health care provides," which we call our human health care (hhc) philosophy. With over 10,000 employees working across our global network of R&D facilities, manufacturing sites and marketing subsidiaries, we strive to realise our hhc philosophy by delivering innovative products in multiple therapeutic areas with high-unmet medical needs, including Oncology and Neurology.

As a global pharmaceutical company, our mission extends to patients around the world through our investment and participation in partnership-based initiatives to improve access to medicines in developing and emerging countries.

For more information about Eisai Co., Ltd., please visit http://www.eisai.com

References

1. Wechsler R, et al. Long-term safety and efficacy of adjunctive perampanel in patients with drug-resistant primary generalised tonic clonic seizures in idiopathic generalised epilepsy: results of an open-label extension; European Congress on Epileptology 2016: Abstract #555

2. Fycompa (perampanel) Summary of Product Characteristics (last updated March 2016). Available at: http://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/26951. Accessed September 2016

3. O'Brien T, et al. Myoclonic and Absence Seizures in Patients With Idiopathic Generalised Epilepsy (IGE): Exploratory Outcomes in a Phase III PGTC Study With Adjunctive Perampanel; European Congress on Epileptology 2016: Abstract #0073

4. French J, et al. Perampanel for tonic clonic seizures in idiopathic generalised epilepsy. Neurology 2015;85 (11):950-57

5. Perucca E, et al. Marked Reduction in Secondarily Generalised Seizures in Patients Treated With Perampanel for 3 and 4 Years; European Congress on Epileptology 2016: Abstract #0074

6. Auvin S, et al. European non-interventional registry study of antiepileptic drug use in patients with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome; European Congress on Epileptology 2016: Abstract #590

7. Inovelon (rufinamide) SPC - Inovelon Tablets and Oral Suspension. Available at: http://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/20165/SPC/ [updated 6 August 2013]. Accessed September 2016

8. Brandt C, et al. Use of rufinamide and other antiepileptic drugs in the management of adult patients (18 years) with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome; European Congress on Epileptology 2016: Abstract #P622

9. Eisai. Data on File 2016. DOF PER112

10. Epilepsy in the WHO European Region: Fostering Epilepsy Care in Europe. http://www.ibe-epilepsy.org/downloads/EURO%20Report%20160510.pdf. Accessed September 2016

11. Epilepsy Foundation. Types of Seizures. Available at: http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/types-seizures. Accessed September 2016

12. Epilepsy Foundation. IGE Summary. Available at: http://www.epilepsy.com/information/professionals/about-epilepsy-seizures/idiopathic-generalized-epilepsies/idiopathic. Accessed September 2016

13. Smithson WH, et al. Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy: Addressing the Challenges. Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep 2014; 14(12):502

September 2016

Fycompa-EU0180





SOURCE Eisai
DUBLIN, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Oil Refining Industry in Oman 2016" report to their offering.

This downstream energy sector report, Oil Refining Industry in Oman is a complete source of information on Oman crude oil refining industry.

It provides refinery level information relating to existing and planned (new build) refineries such as insights and forecasts of refinery capacities, refined petroleum products production and consumption, refinery complexity factor and comparison against peer group countries in the respective region.

The report also covers complete details of major players operating in the refining sector in Oman and in depth analysis of the latest industry news and deals.

Scope

Outlook of Country Oil Refining Industry and refined petroleum products beyond 2015

Forecasts of refined products production and consumption along with major refining companies, and operators.

Historic and Forecasted Refining capacity and secondary units capacities beyond 2015

Key Opportunities and Restraints in country Refinery market

Benchmark with five peer group countries on Nelson Complexity Factor.

Market structure of Country Refining Industry, companies, capacities and market share.

Information on planned refineries such as planned capacity, equity structure, Operator Company, expected commissioning date and project cost.

Refined petroleum products production and demand beyond 2015.

Refinery level information such as refinery name, commissioned year, primary and secondary units installed capacities along with future capacity expansions, refinery complexity factor, ownership and operator details.

Company profiles of major refining companies including SWOT Analysis.

Latest mergers, acquisitions, contract announcements, and all related industry news and deals analysis.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Figures & Tables

2 Introduction to Oman Refining Markets

3 Refining Industry in Oman 2015

4 Oman Refining Market- Drivers and Restraints

5 Oman Oil Products Demand and Supply Forecast to 2022

6 Oman Refinery Capacities Forecast to 2022

7 Oman Refining Industry- Future Developments and Investment Opportunities

8 Key Strategies Oman Refining Companies 2008-2022

9 Company Profiles

10 Oman Refining Industry Latest Tenders and Contracts

11 Oman Refining Industry Updates

12 Oman Refining Industry Deals

13 Appendix

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/q7mfll/oil_refining

Related Topics: Oil, Gasoline and Diesel

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
LONDON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Alternative banking provider and financial technology specialist Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) today announces the creation of 50 new jobs in the UK, Ireland, and Malta following explosive growth during the first six months of 2016.

The majority of roles will be based in the company's Irish offices in Navan. Founder and CEO Noel Moran hopes to see Navan, located in County Meath, develop into a FinTech hub for up-and-coming companies that will one day rival Dublin, home to several tech giants including Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Thirty new staff will be employed at the Navan location to support the business' fast-growing customer base, with the remaining twenty positions being split across sales, marketing, and IT positions in the London and Malta offices.

Noel Moran, CEO, said: "The last 12 months have seen explosive growth for PFS and our half year results have been fantastic with 60% growth from 2015 and projected EBIT for 2016 of 6.5 million. We have had some significant contract wins over the last 6 months so we are looking to bring some new people on board who share our ethos to keep driving the business forward. We have been incredibly successful across the EU and now have our sights set on global expansion.

The revenue generated by programmes across Europe has allowed us to invest in creating new jobs in the UK FinTech industry, which has been uncertain in the wake of Brexit, as well as growing our business in Ireland and Malta. As we fill positions internally wherever possible, this will also result in PFS being able to open up exciting career development opportunities to our existing employees."

New roles will be announced in the upcoming weeks with the aim to fill all positions within 5-6 months.

Notes to editors

About Prepaid Financial Services:

Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) is an award winning payments technology specialist offering a comprehensive range of e-money and banking solutions including e-wallets, physical and virtual prepaid cards and current accounts in the UK and the Eurozone. Authorised and regulated by the FCA in the UK, PFS has passported its e-money license across the SEPA region to enable card issuance throughout the region.

Founded in 2008, PFS is now one of the fastest growing issuers in Europe, with programmes live and active in 23 countries with the ability to transact in 20 different currencies. Its products and cutting-edge technology platforms are utilised by governments, local authorities, mobile network operators, banks and corporates globally.

PFS has been listed within the top 25 fastest growing technology companies in the UK by the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 for 3 consecutive years and most recently ranked number 108 in Deloitte's EMEA Technology Fast 500.

For more information about PFS's payment solutions please contact sales@prepaidfinancialservices.com

SOURCE Prepaid Financial Services (PFS)
SHANGHAI and LONDON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Shanghai Newsummit Biopharma and HandInScan - an innovative infection control technology company - signed an agreement today to introduce the HandInScan technology in China through validating with leading hospitals and key opinion leaders. The signing took place at the Wenzhou Biomedical Innovation Center Healthcare Forum held during the week of the China G20 Summit in the presence of Mr. Dai Tao, Deputy Director of the Development Center for Medical Science & Technology of the National Health & Family Planning Commission, and Mr. Zhang Geng, Mayor of Wenzhou.



(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160210/331945LOGO )



The HandInScan Technology is the only quality-assured system focusing on hand disinfection quality control that can objectively determine hand hygiene effectiveness. The system is designed to teach and verify if protocols are followed properly.

Infectious diseases are a significant threat to patients worldwide including China and have a burden on healthcare spending. Among them healthcare associated infections affect 2-3% of the patients which can be significantly reduced with proper hand washing compliance and technique following the WHO guidelines. HandInScan brings that much needed hand hygiene education and control to an everyday practice integrating with the hospital's quality control system.

Dr. Jun Ren, CEO of Shanghai Newsummit Biopharma, said "We are proud to form an alliance with HandinScan, since their technology can deliver an effective solution to healthcare organisations. The technology is now utilized in over 20 countries worldwide, and healthcare organizations implementing the HandInScan technology are seeing the effect of patient safety and provider benefits that the system can deliver. We believe the healthcare system in China and Chinese patients can also benefit from this innovation."

Peter Rona, CEO of HandinScan added: "We believe that Newsummit is the right organization to bring healthcare related innovation into China. This partnership is an important milestone in our commercial strategy. We look forward to working with Newsummit in bringing the benefits of the systems to Chinese hospitals."

About HandInScan

HandInScan Kft. is a health-tech company focusing on the unmet and critical need of reducing healthcare-associated infections.

About Newsummit

Newsummit Biopharma is one of China's most prominent healthcare resource integrators, providing a full range of market entry/regulatory services to international and domestic companies, with unrivaled access to top clinical KOLs nationwide.

SOURCE DBH Investment
MUNICH, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Discover The Message Cloud - the w orld ' s most innovative cross-channel digital marketing platform

Visit Stand E058, Hall 6.1 and get the chance to win an iPhone 7

Discover the best in personalised real-time digital interactions with SmartFocus at dmexco 2016. The company join forces with Bertelsmann's Campaign agency at the event to offer a fully integrated and innovative data-driven marketing solution.

The Message Cloud platform from SmartFocus provides the rich data, intelligence and the tools for contextually unique engagements, through any digital channel. SmartFocus continues to help brands smash their benchmarks, including these most recent results:

3x email revenue for UK's largest high street toy retailer The Entertainer by sending smarter emails through The Message Cloud

2x engagement rates for travel company Teletext Holidays by adding real-time user generated content to their emails

Meet industry visionaries from SmartFocus at Stand E058, Hall 6.1, to gain valuable insight into digital marketing solutions. Learn how to achieve a single customer view and realise true real-time personalised cross-channel messaging. Be safe in the knowledge SmartFocus has the world's best consumer privacy protection available.

Digital marketing is not just about 'meaningful experiences' or 'powerful engagements'. It is about using data to get the right content to your visitor, quickly and accurately. SmartFocus do this for 60 billion messages every year, from emails to web recommendations and more. You can't control the journey, but you can trigger the most relevant messages that influence sales. Customer-triggered communications sent through The Message Cloud deliver 4x the results of standard campaigns.

Juergen Neubauer, CRO of Smart Focus explains: "Your customer is busy and influencing them is hard. The Message Cloud is built for a world where there is not enough attention to go around. We deliver content, context and crowds to ensure your brand keep more customers, acquire new ones, predict their behaviour and increase all the good metrics, the ones you can take to the bank."

Book a meeting or come to the stand to get the chance to win an iPhone 7 - just drop off your business card. Dmexco is the digital economy's leading event, and takes place on 14 and 15 September in Cologne.

SmartFocus

SmartFocus is an innovator in messaging and communications, enabling the world's largest brands - including Nestle, Mercedes-Benz and HP - to understand and get closer to today's connected consumers via web, mobile, email or social channels. Through The Message Cloud solution, SmartFocus genuinely listens to and learns from customers using patented algorithms and unique location-based marketing tools. Using The Message Cloud, SmartFocus customers have the rich data, intelligence and the tools for contextually unique engagements, through any digital channel.

smartfocus.com

http://storyboard.me/smartfocus





SOURCE SmartFocus
ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bloomberg Law today announced the formation of its Litigation Innovation Board, which will provide input and consultation on new products, offer feedback on enhancements to current offerings, and inform the direction of future litigation and analytics solutions.

"We strive for product excellence and to that end it is critical that we incorporate ongoing feedback from litigation practitioners as part of our continual efforts to provide solutions that meet their evolving needs," said Darby Green, Commercial Product Director, Bloomberg Law and Litigation Innovation Board Chair. "We are honored that twenty renowned litigators have agreed to join this board and consult with us to guide ongoing enhancements to our existing offerings and development of future products."

As a Bloomberg Law subscriber, I am excited to have the opportunity to provide input to enhance its forward-looking technology," said Carolyn Anderson, Managing Partner, Zimmerman Reed. "I am honored to serve with the other distinguished attorneys on this board and help Bloomberg Law continue to innovate."

The board is comprised of both current and prospective Bloomberg Law customers and members represent a wide range of litigation specialties from across the country. Full biographies of each member can be found at http://on.bna.com/lFKv303CN3T and board members are:

Carolyn Anderson , Managing Partner, Zimmerman Reed

, Managing Partner, Fredric Bellamy , Shareholder, Ryley Carlock & Applewhite

, Shareholder, & Applewhite Jonathan Chally , Partner, King & Spalding

, Partner, King & Spalding Thomas Evans , Partner, Reed Smith

, Partner, T. Markus Funk , Partner, Perkins Coie

, Partner, Michael Hall , Shareholder, Buchanan Ingersoll and Rooney

, Shareholder, Buchanan Ingersoll and Rooney Randall Jackson , Partner, Boies, Schiller and Flexner

, Partner, Boies, Schiller and Flexner Thomas Jackson , Partner, Phillips Nizer

, Partner, Joshua Jessen , Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Jason Lichtman , Partner, Lieff Cabraser

, Partner, Lieff Cabraser Katherine McDaniel , Of Counsel, Troutman Sanders

, Of Counsel, Katherine O'Leary , Global Executive Litigation Counsel, GE

, Global Executive Litigation Counsel, GE Philip Oliss , Partner, Squire Patton Boggs

, Partner, Squire Patton Boggs Robert Owen , Partner, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan

, Partner, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan Archis Parasharami , Partner, Mayer Brown

Meredith Slawe , Partner, Drinker Biddle & Reath

, Partner, Drinker Biddle & Reath Douglas Smith , Partner, Kirkland & Ellis

, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis Jennifer Swize , Partner, Jones Day

, Partner, Ariana Tadler , Partner, Milberg

, Partner, Milberg Amber Wessels-Yen , Partner, Alston & Bird

About Bloomberg BNA

Bloomberg BNA provides legal, tax and compliance professionals with critical information, practical guidance and workflow solutions. We leverage leading technology and a global network of experts to deliver a unique combination of news and authoritative analysis, comprehensive research solutions, innovative practice tools, and proprietary business data and analytics. Bloomberg BNA is wholly-owned by Bloomberg L.P., the global business, financial information and news leader. For more information, visit www.bna.com.

About Bloomberg Law

Bloomberg Law helps legal professionals provide world-class counsel with access to actionable legal intelligence in a business context. Bloomberg Law delivers a unique combination of practical guidance, comprehensive primary and secondary source material, trusted content from Bloomberg BNA, news, time-saving practice tools, market data and business intelligence. For more information, visit www.bna.com/bloomberglaw.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120110/DC33627LOGO

SOURCE Bloomberg BNA

Related Links

http://www.bna.com


TAMPA, Fla., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Florida has had its first real hurricane scare in more than 10 years and many business owners realized they weren't prepared. Lykes Insurance, a premier Florida-based commercial insurance firm, offers four steps to help businesses prepare for catastrophic events.

"Everyone expects things to return to business as usual after such an event, but for many business owners, reality is much more devastating," says R. Mark Webb, senior vice president of Lykes Insurance. "Having a written disaster plan can give you direction and increase the chance of survival for your business, hopefully with minimal disruption. Unfortunately, only about 35 percent of small businesses have a Business Continuity Plan."

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 40 percent of businesses never reopen following a catastrophic event. Worse yet, a study by Touche Ross indicates that companies without a recovery plan have a survival rate of less than 10 percent.

A written Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a comprehensive plan for the continuation of critical business operations after a disaster to minimize decision-making during an event and make recovery more effective. Following are the four phases Webb suggests to help businesses develop and maintain a BCP:

Initiation

Assemble the people who understand the operational aspects of your business to identify which events create the greatest threats to your organization. Here in Florida , we automatically think of hurricanes or floods, but hazards also include technological events such as cyberattacks, utility outages or fires. Business Impact Analysis

Gather and analyze information about business functions to determine which are the critical elements of your business with the greatest risk potential. Don't waste time or resources if there is minimal impact on operations. Remember that key employees and management succession are important aspects. The essential part of this phase is asking the right questions -- although the process may seem overwhelming, there are a number of tools available, as well as trusted advisors to assist you. Develop Recovery Strategies

In an effective BCP, people come first. It's essential to communicate successfully with employees, customers and vendors. After you've identified the business impact of each critical function or process, develop the recovery capability. Your objective is to identify the people, facilities and assets required to achieve the four "R's" of Response, Resumption, Recovery and Restoration. Implementation, testing and monitoring

To be effective, the BCP must be written and communicated to all employees on an ongoing basis. However, risk is not static. Personnel changes, potential threats and critical functions change over time. A BCP must be validated periodically through testing or practical application and then kept current.

Properly placed and managed insurance coverage through an experienced advisor is essential to supporting your Business Continuity Plan. Not all insurance policies are created equal, so you must be proactive with your insurance advisor to evaluate your exposure and design an insurance program that meets your needs before you need it.

It's always better to be intentional rather than random, whether you're talking about business success or business survival after a catastrophe. Never forget that others are depending on your survival and continued success after a catastrophe: employees, their families, your customers, suppliers and vendors  and even your community. Now is the time to prepare. Will you be ready?

About Lykes Insurance

Lykes Insurance was founded in 1925 by Lykes Bros. Inc., a 101 year-old privately held Florida-based company. As a premier commercial insurance firm with offices in Tampa, Fort Myers, Winter Park and Sarasota, Lykes Insurance focuses on building long lasting partnerships with companies and individuals, providing protection for businesses, managing risk and designing innovative employee benefit solutions. For more information, please visit www.lykesinsurance.com.

Media Contact:

Suzie Boland

RFB Communications Group

[email protected]

Office: 813-259-0345

Mobile: 813-786-1019

SOURCE Lykes Insurance

Related Links

http://www.lykesinsurance.com


Beijing and Hanoi pledge to safeguard stability at sea Updated: 2016-09-13 01:47 By HU YONGQI(China Daily)

Premier Li says strategic communications, cooperation should be strengthened

Premier Li Keqiang welcomes visiting Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in front of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday. Wu Zhiyi / China Daily

China and Vietnam pledged on Monday to properly manage differences over the South China Sea and to strengthen maritime cooperation to enhance bilateral ties.

The pledge was made on Monday when Premier Li Keqiang met with visiting Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

Despite increasing bilateral trade, Beijing and Hanoi have competing claims over some islands of the South China Sea.

Phuc is leading an unprecedentedly large delegation of 132 members to Beijing during a six-day trip, his first to China as prime minister after a leadership reshuffle in Vietnam in July.

The South China Sea issue concerns China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights, and both countries should work together to safeguard stability at sea by managing differences and promoting maritime cooperation, Premier Li told Phuc.

China is willing to strengthen strategic communications and high-level exchanges as well as expand people-to-people exchanges with Vietnam, Li said. He added that he hoped both sides could link their development strategies, advance cooperation at sea, on land and in finance, and enhance practical cooperation in various fields.

Phuc said Vietnam will properly handle maritime differences to solve the issue in a peaceful way, boost maritime cooperation in less-sensitive fields and maintain stability at sea. He also said the Southeast Asian country will strengthen political trust, keep high-level exchanges and boost practical cooperation with China.

After their meeting, the two countries signed nine agreements to boost cooperation in such fields as production capacity, infrastructure, education, cross-border trade and climate change.

Last week, China and 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations released documents to apply the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea to the South China Sea and to establish a senior diplomats' hotline for maritime emergencies.

The agreements were signed after the 19th ASEAN-China Leaders' Meeting in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

China and Vietnam will manage differences over the South China Sea in accordance with agreements that both sides signed a few years ago and the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said.

Phuc said Vietnam maintains that maritime disputes should be solved peacefully through negotiations.

Phuc arrived in Beijing on Monday after attending the opening ceremony of the 13th China-ASEAN Expo on Sunday in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Phuc will head for Hong Kong on Wednesday after meeting with five members of China's top leadership, Liu said.

From January to July, the trade volume between the two neighbors reached $52 billion and is expected to exceed $100 billion this year.

huyongqi@chinadaily.com.cn
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The 8th Annual Bank M&A Symposium, formerly the SNL Bank M&A Symposium, will be held in Washington, D.C., on September 22nd through 23rd. Held in partnership with Sullivan & Cromwell, this is the preeminent executive conference for community and regional banks focused on their growth or exit strategies. The event features the industry's most influential commercial bankers, advisers, regulators and investors sharing their perspectives on the overall environment and strategic growth opportunities for banks.

This year, you will find fresh and expanded content, as we explore our theme: Buy, build, exit or partner. In addition to discussing trends and best practices in whole-bank, branch and business line M&A, we will also address ways banks can achieve profitable organic growth. If seeking a merger partner is the most viable option for a bank, we will cover this topic as well. We won't focus on high level trends or recent surveys, but rather on tactics banks can take back to their institution and implement right away. S&P Global Market Intelligence's and Sullivan & Cromwell's extensive experience and commitment to working with superregional, regional and community banks allow the conference to deliver high quality content to banks of any size.

Past attendees praise the event for providing relevant, timely and usable intelligence delivered by high quality speakers, backed by data and analytics you won't find at other events. While the content is unparalleled, the conference also provides ample time to network with executives from across the banking industry.

Sessions topics include:

Deal Trends

A Conversation with Key Stakeholders: How Investors View the Industry Today

Demystifying Fairness Opinions: What They Are and What They Aren't

A Fireside Chat with the Fed

Buy: Evaluating Your Strategic Alternatives

Build: Organic Growth Strategies to Enhance Earnings

What's Happening in Washington ?

? Exit: Seeking a Merger Partner

Partnering with Financial Technology to Deliver New Products to New Customers Through New Delivery Channels

Conference details and registration information are available at center.snl.com/bma-pr.

A limited number of press passes are available to members of the media. Reporters interested in attending should contact Maureen Hollar McKenna at [email protected].

About S&P Global Market Intelligence

At S&P Global Market Intelligence, we know that not all information is importantsome of it is vital. Accurate, deep and insightful. We integrate financial and industry data, research and news into tools that help track performance, generate alpha, identify investment ideas, understand competitive and industry dynamics, perform valuation and assess credit risk. Investment professionals, government agencies, corporations and universities globally can gain the intelligence essential to making business and financial decisions with conviction.



S&P Global Market Intelligence is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), which provides essential intelligence for individuals, companies and governments to make decisions with confidence. For more information, visit www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence.



Copyright  2016 by S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global. All rights reserved. The information contained in this Press Release and any referenced reports are for information purposes only. S&P Global Market Intelligence Parties assume no obligation to update the information contained herein or in any referenced reports ("Content") following publication in any form or format. The Content is provided on an "as is" basis

SOURCE S&P Global Market Intelligence
On the evening of Saturday, September 17th, FFLIC's 15th Anniversary Gala will be held from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at The McKenna Museum of African-American Art. Donald Cravins Sr., mayor and state senator, is the keynote speaker. Marguerite Casey Foundation and Flozell Daniels will be honored. Donations can be made and gala tickets can be purchased online at: http://fflicgala.eventbrite.com. Ticket price includes dinner and is 100% tax-deductible.

"We are extremely proud of our achievements over the last fifteen years, including leading the fight to close Tallulah, the nation's most abusive and corrupt juvenile prison," said Gina B. Womack, FFLIC's executive director and co-founder. "Our members and communities have lobbied for juvenile justice reform, marched for the rights of our young people, and have curbed the school-to-prison pipeline."

"There has never been a doubt for FFLIC that Black Lives Matter. Because FFLIC has been knowing that the fight for justice for our families and children is at the core of what Black Lives Matter is and can be," added Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and FFLIC gala honorary chairperson.

Let's join forces to keep FFLIC growing strong for the next fifteen years.

Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC) is a statewide parent-led, membership-based organization, dedicated to creating a better life for all of Louisiana's youth, especially those who are involved, or at risk of becoming involved in the juvenile justice system.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407020

SOURCE Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC)

Related Links

http://www.fflic.org


LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- One of New York's leading law firms, Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Formato, Ferrara & Wolf, LLP, announced today the move of its Long Island office to 3 Dakota Drive in Lake Success, New York, effective immediately. With over 50 attorneys and more than 40 support staff on Long Island, Abrams Fensterman, established in 2000 with a handful of lawyers, has grown to become the 3rd largest law firm on Long Island and a well recognized and respected name throughout New York State and the nation.

With offices in Manhattan, Rochester and Brooklyn, Abrams Fensterman, now a full service law firm, initially built its reputation for excellence through the representation of health care providers in all aspects of health care law. Currently, the firm is recognized for their work in the fields of health law (both regulatory and transactional), mental health law, mergers and acquisitions, matrimonial and family law, commercial litigation, corporate representation, elder law, personal injury litigation, estate planning administration and litigation, guardianship law, white-color criminal defense and real estate.

"Dakota Drive is not new to Abrams Fensterman," says Howard Fensterman, the firm's Managing Partner and Co-Founder. "Our firm's first offices were located in the #5 building, and returning to our Dakota Drive roots, in addition to being nostalgic for me, will, I trust, anchor our next generation of attorneys with a healthy appreciation for our firm's humble beginnings while instilling in them and our clients a sense of our depth, breadth and history as we all embrace the future."

Abrams Fensterman has been located at 1111 Marcus Avenue, directly across from the newly renovated offices at 3 Dakota Drive, for the past 14 years.

Abrams Fensterman occupies approximately 44,000 square feet on the third floor at 3 Dakota Drive.

For Long Island, and Lake Success specifically, Abrams Fensterman's decision to move 'across the street' was an important commercial retention. With over 75 percent of Abrams Fensterman's Long Island staff residing on Long Island, area restaurants, shops and banks will enjoy their continued patronage. Additionally, Howard Fensterman, his partners, associates and staff look forward to continuing the firm's culture of service to charitable causes benefiting the greater Long Island area as both residents and as members of Long Island's dynamic business community.

SOURCE Abrams Fensterman
LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Future Market Insights offer a 10-year forecast for the Germany acid proof lining market between 2016 and 2026. In terms of value, the market is expected to register a CAGR of 5.9% during the projected period. The primary objective of the report is to offer insights on the advancements in the Germany acid proof lining market. The study demonstrates market dynamics that are expected to influence the current environment and future status of the Germany acid proof lining market over the forecast period. The primary objective of this report is to offer updates on trends, drivers, restraints, value forecasts, and opportunities for manufacturers operating in the Germany acid proof lining market.



Acid proof lining's high mechanical strength and high acid resistance property is driving demand for this product over other corrosion protection methods such as polymer coatings and rubber lining systems as they use of solvent based coatings which are non-environment friendly. Acid proof lining are coatings that protect concrete, plastic piping, fiber glass and steel structures against strong acids, solvents and alkalis. Acid proof lining also provides protection against mechanical abuse and elevated temperatures. They are employed in several end-use industries wherein the floors, walls and equipment constantly exposed to strong chemicals and acids. Acid proof lining benefits the EPCMs working in these industries by saving on long-term maintenance costs. Furthermore, positive outlook of various end-use industries in Germany is poised to aid market growth. Also, low entry barrier coupled with high scope of application is expected to drive the market. These factors are expected to bolster growth of the Germany acid proof lining market over the next five to six years.



A section of report discusses on how the overall competition in the market is steadily increasing. It discusses various factors that are shaping internal as well as external competition in the market. Overall internal competition in the Germany acid proof lining market is studied to be comparatively low due to low number of major manufacturers of acid proofing products in the market. The Germany acid proof lining industry is facing external competition from availability of alternative lining solutions such as rubber lining systems. Various barriers to entry in the industry are analyzed and rated on the basis of their impact on the competition level in the market.



The report talks about the market share of total Germany acid proof lining market by each of the buyer segment including manufacturers, distributors and suppliers. A section of the report highlights acid proof lining demand, state-wise. It provides a market outlook for 20162026 and sets the forecast within the context of the acid proofing ecosystem, including the new technological developments as well as product offerings in the Germany acid proof lining market.



In the final section of the report, a competitive landscape has been included to provide report audiences with a dashboard view. Key categories of acid proofing solution providers covered in the report are acid proof lining suppliers and distributors. Detailed profiles of the manufacturers are also included in the scope of the report to evaluate their long-term and short-term strategies, key offerings and recent developments in the acid proof lining space. Key players in the Germany acid proof lining market include Steuler-Kch GmbH, AGRU Kunststofftechnik GmbH, Simona AG, SKO Saureschutz und Kunststoffbau GmbH, GBT-BUCOLIT GmbH, Nittel GmbH & Co. KG, Christen & Laudon GmbH Kunststoff  Apparatebau, Hurner-Funken GmbH, Knapper Oberflachentechnik GmbH and A-SPT Protective Solutions GmbH & Co. KG.



Key Segments Covered



By Material Type

Ceramic Brick Lining

Carbon Brick Lining

Tile Lining

Thermoplastics Lining

Fluoropolymer Lining

By End-use Industry

Power Generation

Chemicals

Pharmaceuticals

Petrochemicals

Metallurgy

Steel Processing

Aluminium Processing

Water Treatment & Processing

Sewage and Waste Water

Process Water

Others (Automotive, etc.)



On the basis of material type, the market is segmented into ceramic brick lining, carbon brick lining, tile lining, thermoplastics lining and fluoropolymer lining. The demand for thermoplastic lining is growing rapidly owing to its scope of application and cheap prices. The market is driven by the demand of carbon brick and tile lining as well. On the basis of end-use industry, the market segmentation includes power generation, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, metallurgy, water treatment & processing and others. A detailed analysis has been provided for every segment in terms of market size analysis for Germany acid proof lining market.



In addition, it is imperative to note that in an ever-fluctuating global economy, we not only conduct forecasts in terms of CAGR, but also analyse on the basis of key parameters such as year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth to understand the predictability of the market and to identify the right opportunities.



Also, another key feature of this report is the analysis of all key segments in terms of absolute dollar. This is traditionally overlooked while forecasting the market. However, absolute dollar opportunity is critical in assessing the level of opportunity that a provider can look to achieve, as well as to identify potential resources from a sales and delivery perspective in the Germany acid proof lining market.

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4135358/



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


LAS VEGAS, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In a continued effort to serve the Las Vegas community, attorney Adam S. Kutner has teamed with Threesquare to deliver over $500 worth of non-perishable food items to those in need.

Threesquare, Southern Nevada's only food bank, provides food assistance to the residents of Clark County, as well as Lincoln, Nye, and Esmerelda Counties. Their efforts go beyond simple food banking (holding non-perishables in a warehouse and distributing them) to include food rescue (gathering surplus food from the hospitality and grocery industry) and providing ready-to-eat meals to those in need.

This undertaking is a further attempt by Las Vegas Attorney Adam Kutner to help the homeless and hungry communities in the Las Vegas valley, a group that is near and dear to Mr. Kutner. He plans to make several similar donations throughout the remainder of the calendar year to other Las Vegas-based nonprofits that provide relief to local residents in need.

Employees who took part in the event were delighted to participate, expressing their pleasure throughout the process of transporting and unloading the hundreds of pounds of dry and canned food that were destined for drop-off at Threesquare.

"It's one of the simple things that I'm fortunate enough to be in the position to do for those in need," said Adam Kutner of the effort. "I'm planning several other donations over the next few months, so stay tuned."

Adam S. Kutner & Associates is the leading personal injury law firm in Las Vegas NV. With over two decades of proven results in the state of Nevada, Kutner has become a household name around the Las Vegas Valley. In addition to the donations Kutner makes directly to organizations in the community, he has created a scholarship program to further assist students in need. More information about Mr. Kutner and his community contributions can be found on his website: http://adamkutnercares.com/

SOURCE Adam S. Kutner & Associates

Related Links

http://adamkutnercares.com


MILWAUKEE, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Adelman Travel, a leading travel management company, has announced the addition of Denise Potter Hepler to their account management team. Hepler has over 20 years of travel industry experience in account management, operations, sales and marketing. In her role as Director of Account Management, Hepler will be responsible for maintaining successful relationships with Adelman's corporate clients and overseeing the management consultants in the south central region of the U.S. Hepler will be based at Adelman's St. Louis, Missouri location.

Prior to joining Adelman, Hepler spent 13 years with Hertz Corporation as a Key Account Manager where she managed a wide range of corporate clients and oversaw key insurance accounts. She previously spent time at TWA as the Director of Strategic Marketing Initiatives, gaining valuable knowledge in the workings of the airline industry. She also held account management positions with two major travel management firms.

"The addition of Denise Hepler as Director of Account Management supports our strategic initiatives in the Missouri area and demonstrates the importance of that region to the mutual success of Adelman Travel and our customers," said Steve Cline, President and COO of Adelman Travel. "Denise is an excellent fit for this position. With her extensive background in account management, supplier negotiations, and travel cost analysis, she will be a valuable resource for our management consultant team and corporate clients alike."

"I'm extremely excited to join the Adelman Travel account management team," said Hepler. "I greatly appreciate Adelman's philosophy of adapting to customers' needs and providing quick responses to those needs. This position will allow me to work closely with our valuable clients as well as mentor our account management team."

Hepler has a BA in Business Administration from Lindenwood University. She and her husband reside in St. Peters, Missouri.

About Adelman Travel

Adelman Travel is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based diversified travel services company with more than $600 million in annual revenue. Adelman specializes in corporate travel and expense management, global consolidations, vacations, loyalty rewards travel, meeting and incentive planning, affinity tours and chambers of commerce travel. The company has regional travel solution centers and corporate on-sites in the U.S. and dedicated affiliate offices in Asia, Canada and Europe. Learn more at www.adelmantravel.com and connect with us on facebook.com/adelmantravel, twitter.com/adelmantravel, linkedin.com/company/adelman-travel-group, and youtube.com/adelmantravel.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406713LOGO

SOURCE Adelman Travel Group

Related Links

http://www.adelmantravel.com


ST. HELENA, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sutter Home Family Vineyards today crowned Sarah Broomer of Culver City, CA, the Grand Prize Winner of its annual Build a Better Burger Recipe Contest, an American institution since 1990. The winning recipe dazzled the esteemed panel of culinary judges with its spice-infused burger and Peanut Coconut Sambal Sauce. Broomer earned undisputable bragging rights and a $25,000 grand prize. "We had a little girl on Friday born nearly 8 lbs., I'm sure in part due to the necessary "testing" of the burger! It's been a wonderful weekend for our family," said Broomer.

The 26th Annual Sutter Home Build a Better Burger Recipe Contest featured fresh variations on an American classic, with Asian spices, Middle-Eastern touches and a hint of smoke taking center stage. Five finalists were selected from scores of submissions, and each of the four runner-ups received a $1,000 prize from Sutter Home Family Vineyards.

"I especially appreciated the Indonesian Satay Burger, because I've been to Indonesia and I'm familiar with the local flavors," said contest judge Paul Lowe, food stylist and editor-in-chief of Sweet Paul Magazine. "This tasty burger had so many different textures. I really loved the shrimp chips on top and the pairing with Sutter Home Gewurztraminer was perfect."

Build a Better Burger Finalists:

Grand Prize Winner

Recipe: Indonesian Satay Burgers  Wine Pairing: Sutter Home Gewurztraminer

Created by: Sarah Broomer, Culver City, CA

First Runner-up

Recipe: Kofta Beef Burgers with Grilled Halloumi  Wine Pairing: Sutter Home Cabernet Sauvignon

Created by: Chris Denny-Brown, San Francisco, CA

Second Runner-up

Recipe: Buffalo Sliders with Creamy Crunchy Slaw  Wine Pairing: Sutter Home Red Moscato

Created by: Michelle Borst Polino, Sterling Heights, MI

Third Runner-up

Recipe: Chiang Mai Burger with Smoky Serrano Mint Relish  Wine Pairing: Sutter Home Sauvignon Blanc

Created by: Mimi Chang, Middletown, NJ

Fourth Runner-up

Recipe: All American Bacon Cheeseburger Redux  Wine Pairing: Sutter Home Zinfandel

Created by: Ben Mastracco, San Francisco, CA

"Congratulations to all of our finalists, who embody the imaginative spirit of this recipe contest," said Wendy Nyberg, vice president of marketing for Sutter Home. "For 26 years, people across the country have shared their incredible burger recipes with us, and we are always amazed by the talent and ingenuity of America's everyday chefs."

In addition to announcing this year's reigning champion for Build a Better Burger, Sutter Home also gave wine and burger enthusiasts across the country the chance to make their voices heard. Legions of fans casted their votes at www.SutterHome.com for the ultimate burger recipe, making the Buffalo Sliders with Creamy Crunchy Slaw America's Fan Favorite of 2016.

Partners

Promotional partners for the 2016 Sutter Home Build a Better Burger retail promotion include Weber-Stephen Products LLC, Bubba Burger, KC Masterpiece BBQ Sauce, Cape Cod Chips, Dole Packaged Foods, Mezzetta Deli Sliced Peppers, Blue Rhino Propane, Scripto Lighters and the California Beef Council.

Resources

Finalist recipes, photos of the finalist burgers and Sutter Home bottle shots can be accessed at the following links:

IMAGES:

To download high-resolution photos of the Grand Prize Winner Burger and Runner-Up Burgers, click here

To download high-resolution photos of Sutter Home Bottle Shots, click here

To download each burger recipe:

Indonesian Satay Burger Recipe, click here Kofta Beef Burgers with Grilled Halloumi, click here Buffalo Sliders with Creamy Crunchy Slaw Recipe, click here Chiang Mai Burger Topped with Smokey Serrano Mint Relish, click here All American Bacon Cheeseburger Redux Recipe, click here



About Sutter Home

When the Trinchero family bought the Sutter Home Winery in 1948, they had vision, passion and a keen insight into consumer tastes. In the early 1970s, Sutter Home revolutionized the way Americans enjoyed wine when it created the first-ever White Zinfandel, introducing a new, sweeter style of winealong with several other crowd-pleasing varietalsat an affordable price. By the 1980s and 1990s, Sutter Home became a household name as the second largest independent, family-run winery in the United States. In 2005, the winery was the first to produce the groundbreaking single-serve, 187ml package in light-weight plastic bottles. Today, Sutter Home continues to reflect the evolution of its consumers, offering more than 20 different varietals. For more information visit www.SutterHome.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407067LOGO

SOURCE Sutter Home Family Vineyards

Related Links

http://www.sutterhome.com


EDINBURGH, Scotland, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

From the Scottish Highlands to Downtown, NYC, the first unorthodox blend in a series of new experimental whiskies from Johnnie Walker gets two thumbs up from US mixology experts.

Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish was given an enthusiastic thumbs up by some of New York's most influential mixologists when it replaced traditional American rye whiskey in a classic Manhattan cocktail as can be seen in a new film from the Scotch whisky maker: Blenders' Batch - Emma's Red Rye In New York. (PRNewsFoto/Johnnie Walker) Dave Arnold, founder and president of the Museum of Food and Drink and owner of the cutting edge Booker and Dax in New York, interviews Johnnie Walker blender Emma Walker about Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish in a new film from the Scotch whisky maker: Blenders' Batch - Emma's Red Rye In New York. (PRNewsFoto/Johnnie Walker) Johnnie Walker blender Emma Walker journeyed from Edinburgh to the home of the Manhattan to see how new experimental Scotch blend Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish stacks up against its American cousins in a new film from the Scotch whisky maker: Blenders' Batch - Emma's Red Rye In New York. (PRNewsFoto/Johnnie Walker)

A new, experimental Scotch blend from Johnnie Walker has been given an enthusiastic thumbs up by some of New York's most influential mixologists and bartenders when it replaced traditional American rye whiskey in a classic Manhattan cocktail.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406466 )



(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406467 )



(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406468 )



Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch is a new range of experimental whiskies and the first release, Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish, is inspired by the bold flavours of American whiskey. It was created by the whisky maker's small team of expert blenders, led by master blender Jim Beveridge.

At any one time there are hundreds of ongoing flavour experiments being carried out by the blending team in Scotland, and Red Rye Finish is whisky fans' first chance to taste the results of some of these.

To mark the release of Red Rye Finish, which can be enjoyed neat but was designed specifically to create perfect cocktails at home, Johnnie Walker blender Emma Walker journeyed from Edinburgh to the home of the Manhattan to see how the new Scotch blend stacks up against its American cousins. Her adventure can be seen in a new film from the Scotch whisky maker entitled: Blenders' Batch - Emma's Red Rye In New York.

A tentative Emma put Red Rye Finish before the eyes, noses and palates of some of New York's most influential mixologists and taste-makers including Dave Arnold, founder and president of the Museum of Food and Drink and owner of the cutting edge Booker and Dax; legendary bartender-cum-philosopher Peter Napolitano of Brooklyn's Melody Lanes Bowling Alley; and bitters and mixology expert Sother Teague, beverage director at Amor y Amargo in Manhattan's East Village.

Emma said: "We're proud of every blend we make and know that people choose Johnnie Walker because of its quality. This blend combines all the characteristics of Scotch, matured in first fill American Oak casks with a Rye Cask finish. That's something I think people won't expect and I wanted truthful, face-to-face feedback from the people in the know. I was a bit nervous - getting the approval of New York's top mixology experts for a Manhattan featuring a Johnnie Walker blend instead of traditional American whiskey but, happily, it went really well."

In the film, Dave Arnold - well known for his whip-smart commentary and opinion - is in no doubt: "There's an old drink called a Rob Roy which is like a Manhattan but made using Scotch and I hate that drink. But this Red Rye Finish Manhattan drinks like a 'real' Manhattan. It's delicious." While Sother Teague added: "I'm really into this whisky."

Blenders' Batch - Emma's Red Rye In New York has been made as part of the Storyline initiative from Johnnie Walker that sees the brand working with a global network of storytellers - including writers, directors, photographers and filmmakers - to give people a voice to tell inspiring stories of positivity and progress.

Filmmaker Oliver Wurffell was fascinated by the film's characters: "The richness of the personalities in the film revealed a completely new world for me. Like discovering the incredible complexity and craft that goes into creating a whisky like Red Rye Finish, or seeing how Emma thinks about how it will work in the hands of legends like Dave, Jack and Sother was amazing. It's a great story to be able to tell."

Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish is one of the results of hundreds of ongoing experiments into flavour that take place at the brand's home in Scotland. It includes malt and grain whiskies aged in first-fill bourbon casks and finished in rye casks. It took more than 50 experiments exploring 203 malt and grain whisky samples to hit upon Red Rye Finish and it was created using a blend of just four whiskies, including Cardhu single malt for its vibrant, fresh fruitiness, along with creamy, vanilla grain whisky from Port Dundas.

Jim Beveridge said: "Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish is inspired by my own fascination with the bold flavours of American whiskies which first developed while I was working with bourbons and ryes in Louisville, Kentucky in the 1990s.

"When making blended Scotch whisky, we like to think 'from the bar back', ensuring bartenders and people at home have the perfect liquids at hand to serve neat, on the rocks, or as the foundation of a flawless Scotch-based cocktail - such as Emma's Red Rye Finish Manhattan.

"In the case of Red Rye Finish, the end result is an incredibly contemporary whisky. It is smooth, sweet and deliberately light - to my mind, the complex character of Scotch given an exciting twist inspired by the best traditional American whiskey flavours."

The Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch range lifts the lid on the skill and never-ending pursuit of flavour that drives the blending team. At any one time, there are hundreds of experiments into flavour being carried out by the Johnnie Walker blenders which include the study of distillation conditions, the types of wood and grain used, cask finishes and other elements of whisky-making in the pursuit of exceptional new flavours.

Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish is available from September in more than 50 countries with an RRP of 20.

You can watch the film of Emma's make-or-break adventure in Manhattan here: https://youtu.be/wq8lPbTKr08

To make the perfect Red Rye Finish Manhattan at home:

Fill a mixing glass or cocktail shaker with ice, combine 2oz. Johnnie Walker Blenders' Batch Red Rye Finish with 1/2oz. sweet vermouth; 1/2 oz. dry vermouth and two dashes of Angostura bitters. Stir well, for about 20 seconds, then strain into cocktail glass. Add cherry or twist lemon peel directly over drink to release essential oils, and serve.

Notes to Editors:

About Diageo

Diageo is a global leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands including Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, J&B, Buchanan's and Windsor whiskies, Smirnoff and Ciroc vodkas, Captain Morgan, Baileys, Don Julio, Tanqueray and Guinness.

Diageo is listed on both the London Stock Exchange (DGE) and the New York Stock Exchange (DEO) and our products are sold in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information about Diageo, our people, our brands, and performance, visit us at http://www.diageo.com. Visit Diageo's global responsible drinking resource, http://www.DRINKiQ.com, for information, initiatives, and ways to share best practice.

Celebrating life, every day, everywhere.

The JOHNNIE WALKER and KEEP WALKING words, the Striding Figure device and associated logos are trademarks  John Walker & Sons 2016.

Enjoy Johnnie Walker responsibly.

DRINKiQ.com

SOURCE Johnnie Walker
AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Precious Metals Technology Company, Anthem Vault, Inc. is pleased to announce that the company moved its operational headquarters to Austin, TX as of May of 2016.

"Our team is excited to call Austin our new company headquarters," said Anthem Blanchard, the company's founder and CEO. "We were heavily influenced by Texas' fostering of a 'business friendly' environment and feel Austin is the perfect city and its tech community is the perfect support system for Anthem Vault's continued growth and success."

Anthem Blanchard is the son of legendary pioneer James U. Blanchard III, who helped restore Americans' right to own gold bullion. Anthem has been a lifelong advocate of decentralized sound money.

Anthem added: "Austin's robust technology industry has already embraced our company, our team and our vision, so we feel that in Austin the 'sky is the limit' for creative and dynamic ideas to be executed to fruition."

The move to Texas comes at a time of great business expansion for Anthem Vault. The company last year purchased precious metals bullion dealer Amagi Metals, strengthening the company's position in the precious metals industry.

This summer, Anthem Vault also launched its registered investment advisor (RIA) Institutional platform, Anthem Professional, which enables investment brokers to place their clients' assets into actual physical gold and silver bullion with ease and liquidity, as well as Anthem National Reserve, which is a collectible coin division of the company.

Later this year, Anthem Vault will spin off a separate company, AnthemGold, Inc., a digital payment system enabling more people to own and spend gold. Each AnthemGold token (the Anthem), represents one gram of gold stored in a secure, world-class vaulting facility fully insured by Lloyds of London.

All gold stored at Anthem Vault facilities is refined at London Bullion Market Association-approved refineries and supplied by commercial bullion dealers. Anthem Vault stores 1 kilogram bars of gold and silver that customers can purchase at www.anthemvault.com. Anthem Vault is fully transparent, provides current bar lists on its website confirmed by its independent vault operator and conducts full third party audits annually.

For more information, go to www.anthemvault.com

About Anthem Vault

Founded in 2012, Anthem Vault, Inc. is a precious metals investment solutions company that provides retail and institutional investors an efficient and liquid way to buy, own, gift and sell physical, 100% fine gold and silver bullion. All metals are securely stored with an independent world-class vaulting facility in Salt Lake City, Utah and are insured for loss by theft or natural disaster. Details of the coverage provided under the policy can be obtained upon request.

Anthem Vault's offices and experienced operations team are based in Austin, Tex. The company is regulated as a precious metals dealer by the U.S. Department Treasury under the USA Patriot Act.

Media Contact:

Adam Dickter

Dukas Linden Public Relations

(646) 808-3700

[email protected]

SOURCE Anthem Vault Inc.

Related Links

http://www.anthemvault.com


"Over the last few years we have been focused on building the best-in-class CRM platform - from our platform, to our people and to our customers and their customers. Its an honor to be recognized for our hard work," said Mark Ghermezian, CEO of Appboy. "Working with the mobile titans of the world such as Tinder and Soundcloud to true enterprises like Domino's and ABC News has allowed us to build the top CRM in the market today. Having Forbes and Salesforce both recognize us is an honor to everyone at Appboy. We look forward to growing on today's momentum and the foundation we've built to serve current and future clients with our powerful technology and people."

"Cloud computing is understood to be the future of the trillion-dollar software industry," said Byron Deeter, a leading cloud investor and partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. "The Forbes Cloud 100: Rising Stars represent some of the most promising up-and-comers in each of their respective categories. As the cloud continues to revolutionize business, category-by-category, we are excited to highlight the potential of these Rising Stars."

Methodology

The first-ever Forbes 2016 Cloud 100 list profiles the world's top-tier private companies leading the cloud technology revolution, plus twenty Rising Stars within the field. One Rising Star company was chosen as a category stand-out in each of the twenty categories: Analytics, Content Management, Customer Feedback, Cyber Security, Data Infrastructure, Design, Developer Platform, Education, Enterprise Mobile, Finance, Healthcare, HR, Industry Software, Information Services, IT Operations, Marketing Automation, Network Security, Nonprofit, Productivity, Sales

The Forbes 2016 Cloud 100 and Rising Stars were selected by a panel of judges representing leading public cloud companies, using qualitative and quantitative data submitted by nominees, along with publicly available third-party data sources.

Recognition

Every Rising Star company named to the Forbes 2016 Cloud 100 is recognized online by Forbes, and Forbes' partners Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. The Rising Stars also receive physical awards and digital badges signifying their inclusion on this exclusive list, as well as an invitation to the celebratory Cloud 100 Awards Dinner, hosted in San Francisco by Forbes, Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures.

About Appboy

Formed to solve the unique challenges of today's mobile economy, Appboy is a lifecycle marketing platform for mobile-first marketers. Our technology empowers brands to build better relationships with their customers through mobile and other digital marketing channels.

Built around holistic profiles that offer a single view of the customer, Appboy's robust audience segmentation and advanced multichannel messaging system allow brands to create and automate highly personalized lifecycle marketing campaigns in every relevant channel -- from push, in-app, and web to email, wearables, and emerging technologies.

Thousands of global marketers worldwide use Appboy to connect with over 500 million active users, with 100 billion real-time events and 3 billion messages processed through our platform each month. Appboy helps brands like ABC News, Capital One, Domino's, iHeartMedia, Microsoft, Wallapop, Tinder, Opera, and SoundCloud to better engage, retain, and monetize their customers. Appboy is venture backed with over 120 employees with offices in New York, San Francisco, and London. Learn more at Appboy.com.

Media Contact:

Aimee Yoon

[email protected]

646-596-7502

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406818

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160219/335391LOGO

SOURCE Appboy

Related Links

http://www.appboy.com/


Chinese architect shines at London design fair Updated: 2016-09-13 16:21 By Angus McNeice(China Daily UK edition)

Liu Xiaodu, founding partner of Urbanus, explains the concept for his design. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Few cities have grown as rapidly as Shenzhen. A quiet fishing town of 30,000 in the 1970s, its population has mushroomed in the past three decades to more than15 million.

This growth, boosted by its designation as China's first special economic zone in 1980, has seen Shenzhen become an important economic hub in southern China.

However, the city faces mounting challenges in dealing with urban congestion.

Liu Xiaodu, founding partner of architectural company Urbanus, believes cities such as Shenzhen will benefit from a radical new approach to urban planning, centered around high-density, communal living spaces.

"We are running out of land," he said. "We have to think of alternative ways, rather than building endlessly... The world is changing. People are moving toward co-living, co-working areas. Younger people are starting small businesses and working in shared spaces. I think the old, conventional way is not suitable for themit's very expensive and not flexible."

Liu is exhibiting a model megastructure named DenCity at this year's London Design Biennale. The installation is China's entry at the design fair, which showcases 37 "visions of Utopia".

Other visions come from design teams worldwide, and this year's theme marks the 500th anniversary of the publication of Sir Thomas More's seminal book Utopia.

Sir John Sorrell, chairman of the biennale, said, "I believe that the installation that has come all the way from Shenzhen is a very intelligent piece of work."

DenCity imagines an enormous structure that could house 50,000 people who live, work and spend their leisure time in the self-sustaining building.

Liu said: "New ideas are needed to solve the problem of urban congestion. In Shenzhen's high-tech area, new young talent is coming to work in tech companies and it needs living space.

"Land is very costlywhat we propose is to double the density of a regular development project. With higher density and less spending on land, rent is cheaper."

Liu and his team draw inspiration from ancient forms of Chinese living and apply them to modern architecture. In 2009, Urbanus completed Tulou, a 220-apartment housing complex for people from low-income families in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
RESTON, Va., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, valuation professionals from around the world have gathered in Boca Raton for ASA's 2016 International Appraisers Conference. They will explore and discuss the foremost trends and issues related to the appraisal profession.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406440LOGO

Organized by the American Society of Appraisers (ASA), this year's Conference marks the 79th annual offering, making it one of the longest consecutive running multidiscipline appraisal conferences. Since the event first began in 1937, it has grown to become the leading conference for valuation professionals.

Co-located this year with the 2016 Advanced Business Valuation Conference, a specialized offering for business valuers, this joint event will feature a combined 800+ attendees, over 75 multidisciplinary educational sessions with presentations from recognized experts, valuable networking opportunities and exhibits from leading-edge companies, all in the luxurious and historic Boca Raton Resort & Club in tropical South Florida.

The International Appraisers Conference is for appraisers who specialize in appraisal review and management, gems and jewelry, machinery and technical specialties, personal property or real property; assessors; allied professionals; educators; government personnel; or students.

American Society of Appraisers

The American Society of Appraisers is a world renowned and respected international organization devoted to the appraisal profession. As the oldest and only major appraisal organization representing all appraisal specialists, ASA is devoted to providing the highest possible standards in all areas of ethics, professionalism, education and designation criteria. For more information about the American Society of Appraisers, the ASA designation program for appraisers or the Society's free "Find an Appraiser" Referral System, visit www.appraisers.org or call (800) 272-8258.

Media Contact:

Todd Paradis

Email

703-733-2124

SOURCE American Society of Appraisers

Related Links

http://www.appraisers.org


NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) is an important component of modern therapy for diabetes mellitus. SMBG has been recommended for people with diabetes and their health care professionals in order to achieve a specific level of glycemic control and to prevent hypoglycemia. Self-monitoring of blood glucose is a very lucrative business with enormous market opportunity. The primary growth factors for the SMBG market is the increasing global diabetic population; increasing awareness among the diabetes population, increasing spending on healthcare, active reimbursement policies and the technological advancement aimed at minimal and non-invasive testing methods.



Key Highlights



- In 2015, Asian SMBG market was valued at nearly US$ 2 Billion.



- It is anticipated that the Asian SMBG users will cross the figure of 20 Million by 2021.



- China dominates the self-monitoring of blood glucose users, with over XX percent users share in 2015.



- Thailand and Malaysia are competing closely with each other to grab maximum share of the blood glucose users.



- In Asia, China is the single largest market for SMBG followed by Australia and India.



- Test Strips account for maximum share of the SMBG market.



iGATE RESEARCH report titled "Asia - Self Monitoring of Blood Glucose (SMBG) (Test Strips, Lancet, Meter) Market and Forecast" is a 123 Page report with 122 Figures and 12 Tables. This report analyses the 7 Asian countries Diabetes Population, SMBG Users and SMBG Market by Product Segment (Test Strips, Lancet, Meter).



All the 7 Countries in the report have been studied from 3 viewpoints.





1. Country Wise Diabetes Population and Forecast (2007 - 2021)

I. Type 1 Diabetes Population

II. Type 2 Diabetes Population

2. Country Wise SMBG Users and Forecast (2007 - 2021)

3. Country Wise SMBG Market and Forecast (2007 - 2021)

I. Blood Glucose Test Strips Market

II. Blood Glucose Lancet Market

III. Blood Glucose Meter Market





The 7 Countries Studied in the reports are as follows:

1. India

2. China

3. Thailand

4. Korea

5. Malaysia

6. Australia

7. Kuwait



Research Methodologies



Primary Research Methodologies: Questionnaires, Surveys, Interviews with Individuals, Small Groups, Telephonic Interview, etc.

Secondary Research Methodologies: Printable and Non-printable sources, Newspaper, Magazine and Journal Content, Government And NGO Statistics, white Papers, Information on the Web, Information from Agencies Such as Industry Bodies, Companies Annual Report, Government Agencies, Libraries And Local Councils and a large number of Paid Databases.



Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04128995-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com





__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

http://www.reportlinker.com


ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, American Trucking Associations, with help from America's Road Team and the Share the Road highway safety program, highlighted National Truck Driver Appreciation Week by appearing on morning shows throughout the country.

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight.Trucking Moves America Forward.

"We wanted to put some of the leading voices in the truck driver community in the spotlight to talk about the important work that their colleagues in the industry do each day to deliver America's goods," said ATA COO and Executive Vice President of Industry Affairs Elisabeth Barna. "America's Road Team Captains and Share the Road professional truck drivers are great advocates for the safe, professional role that truck drivers play on our nation's highways."

National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, September 11-17, is an opportunity for the trucking industry to officially recognize the efforts of professional truck drivers. Today's media events and similar appreciation events being held nationwide seek to honor the men and women who safely deliver 70.1% of the country's total freight tonnage and draw attention to their essential work in moving the economy.

One of out every 16 jobs in America is tied to the trucking industry and there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers dedicated to safely transporting food, medicine and other critical goods. More than 80% of U.S. communities depend exclusively on trucking for the delivery of their goods, making it the most heavily relied on mode of transportation.

Today, television and radio shows from coast to coast broadcasted live via satellite from ATA First Vice Chairman Kevin Burch's Jet Express facility in Dayton, Ohio. America's Road Team Captains and Share the Road professional truck drivers came together for a joint media event to discuss the trucking industry and their careers as professional truck drivers. Viewers were made aware of National Truck Driver Appreciation Week and urged to show support to friends and neighbors in the trucking industry.

"Jet Express was proud to host ATA's premier image and outreach programs and take time to honor professional truck drivers around the country," said ATA Incoming Chairman Kevin Burch. "At the end of the day, we want to generate more respect and appreciation for these drivers because it makes their jobs more enjoyable and has major safety benefits for our roads."

ATA is asking the trucking industry to engage their communities in this week's celebration of truck drivers. The ATA official NTDAW site offers a collection of resources to enhance driver appreciation events. These resources improve the image of the professional truck driver and demonstrate public support for the challenging work that drivers do each day.

ACT 1 is a premier sponsor of National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. Sponsors for National Truck Driver Appreciation Week also include Help, Inc., Provider of PrePass, Velociti, U.S. Legal Services, Smart Drive and Trucker Path.

America's Road Team, sponsored by Volvo Trucks, is a national public outreach program led by a small group of professional truck drivers who share superior driving skills, remarkable safety records and a strong desire to spread the word about safety on the highway.www.americasroadteam.com.

Share the Road is a highway safety outreach program of the American Trucking Associations that educates all drivers about sharing the roads safely with large trucks. An elite team of professional truck drivers with millions of accident-free miles deliver life-saving messages to millions of motorists annually. The safety program is sponsored by Mack Trucks Inc., and supported by TA-Petro, Pre-Pass, Hyundai Translead, OmniTracs, SmartDrive, Mack Leasing, Bendix and Spireon. www.atastr.org. Follow the Share the Road on Twitter and Facebook.

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or on Facebook. Trucking Moves America Forward.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140523/90962

SOURCE American Trucking Associations

Related Links

http://www.trucking.org


ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Untangle, the mobile app developed to transform how the beauty and wellness industry communicates, is thrilled to announce its partnership with Circe of Alexandria located in Alexandria, Virginia. The partnership will enhance communication in between clients' appointments by connecting them with the day spa's full-service practitioners through the Untangle app.

"Our goal at Circe of Alexandria is to be a beauty partner to all of our clients. Untangle allows us to now be a partner at all times by granting our clients unparalleled access to their trusted beauty advisor," says Ellen Vlasak, owner of Circe of Alexandria. "The experience will help our clients achieve their 'Salon Look' at home through advice, seasonal looks and tailored upkeep regimens from their beauty pro in one place on their mobile device."

Untangle was recently awarded Bronze in the 2016 International Business Awards' Lifestyle App category for its visionary use of technology to increase conversation in between appointments, equipping professionals with a tool that helps them create genuine connections with their clients while also empowering consumers to work confidently toward their own beauty and wellness goals.

"Circe of Alexandria emulates the same connective and innovative values as Untangle, so naturally we are thrilled to have them as our first partner within the DC metro area, right where we started and operate Untangle today," says Untangle Founder and CEO Jenna Reese. "The beauty and wellness industry is truly built upon relationships, and Circe will use Untangle to put more communication and heart into their client relationsa valuable differentiator among DC metro salons and spas."

The app gives clients and patients the opportunity to have one-on-one communication with their stylists, beauty, spa, and wellness professionals in the following ways:

Regimens: Receive thoughtfully curated regimens infused with tips tailored directly toward personal goals

Calendar: Keep tips and regimens organizedgoing beyond appointment booking and focusing on maintenance in between appointments

Messaging: Allows consumers and professionals to check in with one another with questions and follow-up information regarding beauty and wellness goals

Video: View educational and inspirational content uploaded by beauty and wellness professionals

E-Commerce: Purchase products recommended by beauty and wellness professionals directly from the app

Throughout the year, Untangle's team will gather feedback and data against the app's approach in order to bring the best technology to professionals and consumers in time for its 2017 mass-market launch.

About Untangle

Untangle, an Alexandria-based company, is a relationship-focused mobile app that delivers a robust, enterprise-level solution for the beauty and wellness industry's communications created by Jenna Reese, Founder, President and CEO of AEi International, a multi-million-dollar-per-year management consulting company. The Untangle experience transforms relationships between beauty and wellness professionals and their clientele by merging innovative, multi-platform technology with meaningful communication. For more information, visit: http://untanglelife.com/.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160815/398227LOGO

SOURCE Untangle

Related Links

http://untanglelife.com


PHOENIX, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Axolotl Biologix, Inc., a biologics company that focuses on human tissue research and technology to enhance regenerative medicine, announced today that it will be attending the NIHB 33rd Annual Consumer Conference and 2016 National Tribal Health Conference as an exhibitor. The conference will be held September 19-22 at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, AZ.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406569LOGO

About Axolotl Biologix, Inc.

Axolotl Biologix, Inc. is a biologics company that develops and manufactures human tissue regenerative medicine products for orthopedic, wound care, podiatric, and cosmetic conditions. The Company's lead product is its AxoBioFluid, which is an amniotic allograft cryopreserved liquid that advances soft tissue repair, replacement, and reconstruction. The Company's vision is to be an innovative leader in regenerative medicine through research, technology, and clinical application. For more information, please visit Axolotl Biologix' website at www.axobio.com.

Media Contact:

Bob Maguire

Email

602-354-3081

SOURCE Axolotl Biologix, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.axobio.com


GREENFIELD, Mass., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As part of a progressive partnership to benefit community health care, the registered nurses of Baystate Franklin Medical Center (BFMC) will join the Greenfield residents' group Community Health Care Initiative (CHCI) on Thursday, Sept. 15 to discuss ways to encourage hospital owner Baystate Health to keep health care local and safe.

When: 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2016

Where: Greenfield High School Cafeteria, 1 Lenox Ave., Greenfield, MA

Who: BFMC nurses; members of the Community Health Care Initiative and general public; Moderator and CHCI member Susan Worgaftik; Panel Members Nina Thayer, BSN, RN, NCSN, a CHCI member; Donna Stern, MNA RN, Chair of the BFMC RN Bargaining Committee; and Suzanne Love, MNA RN in the BFMC Emergency Department

The extraordinary collaboration between community members and nurses represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) is meant to integrate the community's concerns about the future of health care in Greenfield into upcoming BFMC nurse contract negotiations.

"We are very excited to have the community as a partner in our efforts to ensure safe patient care at Baystate Franklin Medical Center," said Donna Stern, a psychiatric RN and chair of the BFMC RN Bargaining Committee. "As committed caregivers and members of this community, we look forward to working with our community allies to ensure patients have access to the health care services they need right here in Franklin County."

The partnership between BFMC nurses and the greater Greenfield community has deep roots. Nurses received tremendous community support during a nurse contract campaign three years ago that included a one-day strike as nurses fought to ensure patient safety and maintain basic nurse practice protections.

Over the course of two years, Franklin County residents showed their support for the nurses by posting some 1,200 yard signs, gathering more than 2,000 signatures on a petition to Baystate executives, passing resolutions at 10 town meetings county-wide, participating in rallies and pickets, and holding a community forum which called on Baystate to maintain and restore services at Franklin Medical Center.

Community Health Care Initiative formed following a public forum in March of 2013. A group of Greenfield residents concerned about the future of their hospital created CHCI to serve as an advocacy organization for better and expanded services at BFMC, and out of concern about services moving away from BFMC to Springfield. The group's advocacy, combined with the nurses' ongoing efforts, resulted in the restoration of some health care services and a commitment by Baystate Health to meet with community representatives on a regular basis.

"The public forum on Thursday is an opportunity for the entire community to get behind a renewed effort to keep our health care services local and safe," said CHCI member Nina Thayer, BSN, RN, NCSN. "Community members and our nurses share a mutual commitment to making Baystate Franklin Medical Center one of the best rural community hospitals in the nation."

Overall themes of the partnership include:

Ensuring patients receive the best and safest possible care at all times

Keeping appropriate health care services available locally at BFMC

Improving transportation to make health care accessible to Baystate Health patients, family members and visitors

Protecting nurse practice standards and benefits

Improving hospital transparency to ensure the community is informed about the quality of care at their hospital and is able to participate in maintaining, establishing or expanding appropriate health care services at BFMC

Negotiations are expected to begin this fall ahead of the expiration of their current contract on Dec. 31, 2016. There are slightly more than 200 MNA nurses at BFMC.

MassNurses.org  Facebook.com/MassNurses  Twitter.com/MassNurses

Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160810/397107LOGO

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association

Related Links

http://www.massnurses.org


BAYTOWN, Texas, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Baytown personal injury attorney Dan Linebaugh of The Linebaugh Law Firm has received the Diplomates of Trial Advocacy from the American Association for Justice (AAJ). The award recognizes AAJ member attorneys who have developed their professional and practical knowledge of trial skills and substantive law.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406768

Personal injury attorney Dan Linebaugh (right) of The Linebaugh Law Firm, Baytown, TX, receives the Diplomates of Trial Advocacy from the American Association for Justice.

AAJ Diplomates have attended over 400 hours of qualifying AAJ Education programs, including AAJ Education's Ultimate Trial Advocacy Course: Art of Persuasion. The award was presented at the AAJ 2016 Annual Convention in Los Angeles, where Linebaugh spoke to the AAJ Bus Litigation Group on Winning Cases Through Lay Witnesses and Investigative Discovery.

Linebaugh is one of only seven attorneys in Texas to be named an AAJ Diplomate of Trial Advocacy. The founder of The Linebaugh Law Firm in Baytown, Texas, Linebaugh is certified as a specialist in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He has been recognized as a "Texas Super Lawyer" by Thomson Reuters every year since 2003 and H Texas Magazine has named him one of "Houston's Top Lawyers for the People" every year since 2007.

Linebaugh received his JD from South Texas College of Law and a B.A. in speech communication from Youngstown State University. He completed advanced course work in trial advocacy sponsored by the National College of Advocacy at Harvard Law School and is a graduate of the prestigious Trial Lawyers College in Dubois, Wyoming, where he studied under the legendary trial attorney Gerry Spence.

Admitted to the Texas Bar in 1985, Linebaugh is also licensed to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U. S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of Texas.

Linebaugh has served on the Board of Directors for the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and on the board of Governors for American Association of Justice-Truck Litigation Group. He currently serves on the Board of Governors for the American Association of Justice-Bus Litigation Group.

Contact:

Dan Linebaugh

Email

281-422-0505

SOURCE The Linebaugh Law Firm
Smith, who returns to Birmingham from her position as San Antonio market CEO, has more than 21 years' experience in the financial industry, in roles of increasing seniority and importance. Before San Antonio, she spent 12 years as a senior commercial banker in Birmingham, focused on governmental and institutional lending to nonprofits, universities and municipalities. She also has experience in health care, commercial and industrial lending.

"We couldn't be more excited to bring Andrea back to Birmingham, our headquarters market and the city that boasts more employees than any other city in our footprint," said BBVA Compass East Region Executive Lee Smith. "She established herself as a true leader during her twelve years for us in Birmingham, which is why we sent her to San Antonio in 2013 to head up our efforts there. She quickly became an integral part of that community, so I know they'll miss her, but we're excited to have her back in Birmingham doing great things."

Before joining BBVA Compass, Smith spent six years in community banking at Lamar Bank and Pike County National Bank in Mississippi.

She is active in the community, having served on the New Program Funding Task Force with the United Way of Bexar County, the board of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and the board of the YMCA San Antonio. While in Birmingham, she was president of the board for the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama, and was a board member for the YMCA and the Railroad Park Foundation in Birmingham.

Smith earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Southern Mississippi. In addition, she completed the BBVA Compass UT School of Management program and the BBVA Corporate Management Program in Madrid, Spain. She is also a class of 2012 graduate of Leadership Birmingham.

About BBVA Group

BBVA Compass is a subsidiary of BBVA Compass Bancshares Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of BBVA (NYSE: BBVA) (MAD: BBVA). BBVA is a customer-centric global financial services group founded in 1857. The BBVA Group is the largest financial institution in Spain and Mexico, has leading franchises in South America and the Sunbelt region of the United States and is also the leading shareholder in Garanti, Turkey's largest bank based on market capitalization. Its diversified business is focused on high-growth markets and it relies on technology as a key sustainable competitive advantage. Corporate responsibility is at the core of its business model. BBVA fosters financial education and inclusion, and supports scientific research and culture. It operates with the highest integrity, a long-term vision and applies best practices. The Group is present in the main sustainability indexes. More information about the BBVA Group can be found at bbva.com.

About BBVA Compass

BBVA Compass is a Sunbelt-based financial institution that operates 674 branches, including 345 in Texas, 89 in Alabama, 75 in Arizona, 62 in California, 45 in Florida, 38 in Colorado and 20 in New Mexico, and commercial and private client offices throughout the U.S. BBVA Compass ranks among the top 25 largest U.S. commercial banks based on deposit market share and ranks among the largest banks in Alabama (2nd), Texas (4th) and Arizona (4th). BBVA Compass was recently named Best Digital Bank in North America by global finance magazine Euromoney, and earned top nods for best mobile app and best regional bank in the South & West in Money magazine's annual list of the Best Banks in America. Additional information about BBVA Compass can be found at bbvacompass.com, by following @BBVACompassNews on Twitter or visiting newsroom.bbvacompass.com.

Editor's Note:

BBVA Compass is a trade name of Compass Bank.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407170

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140825/139263

SOURCE BBVA Compass
NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The newly released dance film TRUE follows a young woman's quest for self-discovery under a Manhattan skyline, but the true destination for the mind is not always self-evidentin lightness or in darkness.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407136

The film, directed and edited by Julie Stahl, stars Israeli-based French dancer and choreographer, Laura Arend. TRUE was produced as original content by Blonde + Co (www.blondeandco.com), a New York-based content creation house known for their collaborations with global beauty brands. The studio, led by Stahl, with Executive Producer Victor Larue, partnered with Arend's Laboration Art Company (www.laborationartcompany.com) on the film.

To view the film, click here [TRUE].

The film opens with a stunning shot of Arend silhouetted against a bright blue New York City skyline, while the lilting, melodic soundtrack casts an ethereal mood. As she chases light across the roof of the Ace Hotel, she transitions to a much darker place. The story is carried through with stark contrasts in wardrobe, music, in-camera and editing effects, while the final scene allows the audience to draw its own conclusions.

"We wanted to create this concept of dualism, and staged the segments to heighten the sense of light and dark," says Stahl, the film's director. "We were inspired by the beautiful, saturated, New York skyline and the graffiti, industrial elements, iconic water tower and grittiness of the tar roof."

The project was undertaken as both a creative endeavor and to showcase the company's ability to develop original films for brands wishing to connect more organically with audiences. Totally improvised, it was the culmination of a longtime creative collaboration between Arend and Larue, also a dancer.

Arend and Larue approached the Ace Hotel, an advocate of art and fashion in New York, who supported the project. "With a tight shoot day and limited crew, the process was itself an exercise in improvisation," says Larue. "Making TRUE was really an opportunity for the team to work under very constrained parameters in terms of time, location, budget, and resources while still creating work that's compelling and insightful."

Blonde + Counder its original content divisionis currently developing several short films, a documentary as well as a feature length satirical drama.

Media Contacts:

Victor Larue, Blonde + Co, 212-741-1800, [email protected]

Anthony Vagnoni, avagnoni communications, 973-493-8736, [email protected]

Related Images

image1.jpg

image2.jpg

image3.jpg

image4.jpg

Related Links

True Film

Blonde + Co

Related Video

https://vimeo.com/181820609

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Blonde + Co

Related Links

http://www.blondeandconyc.com


WALTHAM, Mass., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA), in partnership with Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), is establishing four new Centers of Innovation at Boys & Girls Clubs that support military families. Located in California, Colorado, Florida and Texas the clubs are:

Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater San Diego

Boys & Girls Club of the Pikes Peak Region

Eglin AFB Youth Center

Boys & Girls Club of San Antonio

The centers will provide military youth access to advanced technologies that stimulate creative approaches to STEM exploration, including 3-D printers, robotics, high-definition video production and conferencing equipment. A fully dedicated STEM expert will offer individual and group support, using real-world applications to help youth program participants develop their STEM skills and critical thinking. In the U.S., STEM jobs are expected to grow nearly twice as fast as those in any other field by 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The Centers of Innovation are funded through Raytheon's $5 million, multi-year commitment to Boys & Girls Clubs of America, part of Raytheon's recent $10 million pledge to support military families and veterans.

"Military families go where and when they are needed, managing through social and academic transitions with each new post. The Centers of Innovation are designed to ensure that the excitement of STEM creativity and problem solving provides a constant source of inspiration," said Thomas A. Kennedy, Raytheon Chairman and CEO. "Ensuring that our military children have easy access to a stimulating learning environment is our collective responsibility."

The life of a military family is unique. On average, military families move six to nine times before their children graduate high school  about three times more often than civilian families ( see infographic ) . Boys & Girls Clubs of America aim to bring consistency and continuity to their lives; the club atmosphere provides continuity for military children, whether living on or off a military base.

"Boys & Girls Clubs in local communities and in BGCA-affiliated Youth Centers on military installations offer a safe and engaging place for military kids and teens to help address the unique circumstances that they navigate during formative years," said Jim Clark, president and CEO of BGCA. "With Raytheon's support, we'll be able to impact more of our military heroes' kids to help them achieve great futures in areas of science, math or wherever their interests take them."

To date, six Centers of Innovation locations in the United States and one abroad have been opened:

Joint Base Andrews Youth Center, Md.

Ramstein Air Base Youth Programs, Germany

Boys & Girls Clubs of South County, Chula Vista, Calif. , serving the families of Naval Outlying Landing Field Imperial Beach

, serving the families of Naval Outlying Landing Field Imperial Beach Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Texas , Killeen, Texas , serving the families of Fort Hood

, , serving the families of Boys & Girls Clubs of Huntsville, Ala. , serving the families of Redstone Arsenal

, serving the families of Harford County Boys & Girls Clubs, Aberdeen, Md. , serving the families of the Aberdeen Proving Ground

About Boys & Girls Clubs of America

For more than 150 years, Boys & Girls Clubs of America (GreatFutures.org) has enabled young people most in need to achieve great futures as productive, caring, responsible citizens. Today, more than 4,200 Clubs serve nearly 4 million young people annually through Club membership and community outreach. Clubs are located in cities, towns, public housing and on Native lands throughout the country, and serve military families in BGCA-affiliated Youth Centers on U.S. military installations worldwide. They provide a safe place, caring adult mentors, fun, friendship, and high-impact youth development programs on a daily basis during critical non-school hours. Priority programs emphasize academic success, good character and citizenship, and healthy lifestyles. In a Harris Survey of alumni, 54 percent said the Club saved their lives. BGCA's national headquarters is located in Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more at http://bgca.org/facebook and http://bgca.org/twitter.

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.

This document does not contain technology or technical data controlled under either the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or the U.S. Export Administration - E16-C9FP.

Media Contact

Brandie Gerrish

+1.781.522.5193

[email protected]

Sara Leutzinger

+1.404.487.5624

[email protected]

SOURCE Raytheon Company

Related Links

http://www.raytheon.com


San Marino visitors get a taste of TCM Updated: 2016-09-13 08:12 By YU RAN(China Daily)

Peverani Givseppe, a member of a visiting delegation from San Marino, tries Chinese massage at Central Hospital of Shanghai Putuo District on Monday.[Photo by GAO ERQIANG/CHINA DAILY]

Lying in a Shanghai hospital and experiencing TCM cupping treatment for the first time, Republic of San Marino resident Fernando Ceccoli says the pain on his lower back was relieved after a short time.

"I feel the comfortable warmth of the bamboo cups," said Ceccoli, a 58-year-old retiree from the landlocked country on the northern Italian Peninsula. "I've never tried this before and I would like to try it again."

Ceccoli, along with another 50 members from the microstate, was taking part in an exchange program at Central Hospital of Shanghai Putuo District, organized by the Shanghai People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

In the room next door, his counterpart Peverani Givseppe had just finished a short massage treatment on his shoulder and neck.

The foreign guests had been shown around the hospital and were invited to try the Traditional Chinese Medicine therapies on Monday.

"The TCM therapy is amazing. I'm glad I had the opportunity to try this magic," Givseppe said through an interpreter.

Liu Guizhen, chief physician at the hospital's rehabilitation department, explained: "Every year, 40 to 50 people come from overseas, including from countries like the United States, France, Belgium and Japan, to seek treatment here."

The hospital is known for combining TCM techniques, such as acupuncture, cupping and massage, with an evaluation system derived from Western medicine.

Liu said the exchange programs organized by the friendship association are helpful, as they promote cultural exchange and help more Westerners understand Chinese medicine and culture.

Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, the association organized delegations from San Marino, New Zealand, Singapore and some expats from other countries on Monday to visit a middle school, a hospital, a farmers' market and community recreational centers in Shanghai.

Monday's celebration also featured a performance of the San Marino delegation's exotic flag-waving show, a square dance by Shanghai women and a martial arts performance by local students.

"It is such a delight to have friends coming from afar to review the stormy history we've weathered, to look toward a better future and to create a new chapter in exchanges between Chinese and foreign people," said Zhou Minhao, head of Putuo district, at the ceremony.
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CamberView Partners, LLC, the leading provider of independent, investor-led advice to public companies in connection with investor engagement, contested situations, and complex and challenging corporate governance issues, today announced that it is pleased to welcome Corsair Capital, LLC as a long-term investor in its business. Corsair Capital is one of the longest-standing private equity firms focused on the financial services industry.

The partnership will provide CamberView with Corsair Capital's deep expertise in growing financial services firms. It will also enable CamberView to capitalize on Corsair Capital's extensive executive and shareholder relationships in Europe and the US both to expand the global reach of CamberView's platform and to meet the growing demand of public companies and their boards for sophisticated, investor-based advice regarding complex shareholder matters. As part of the transaction, Corsair Capital will receive a substantial minority stake in CamberView and director representation on its board. The existing CamberView team will continue in place with the day-to-day management of the firm and the execution of client engagements and will retain majority representation on its board of directors.

Abe Friedman, Managing Partner of CamberView Partners, stated, "Corsair Capital's investment is an important validation of the unique advisory platform that CamberView has built, and its long-term growth potential both domestically and internationally. The investment furthers strategically, financially, and operationally, CamberView's ability to build its infrastructure, investor insight, and market reach to serve the needs of clients. The partnership with Corsair Capital provides CamberView with a highly-regarded long-term strategic investor with significant institutional relationships and deep experience in helping to build and optimize human-capital businesses."

D. T. Ignacio Jayanti, Managing Partner of Corsair Capital, added, "Corsair Capital is pleased to commit both capital and expertise to help grow the long-term potential of CamberView. The dynamics of the relationship between public companies and their shareholders have become critical elements in how businesses operate. We have the highest regard for the expertise and capabilities of the CamberView team and look forward to contributing to CamberView's promising future."

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

About CamberView

CamberView Partners is the leading provider of independent, investor-led advice to public companies on how to successfully manage investor engagement, contested situations and complex and challenging corporate governance issues. We advise company executives and boards on a wide range of events including contested merger situations, hedge fund activism, director elections, compensation matters, difficult shareholder proposals and more. CamberView helps its clients succeed with their investors by making sure they understand the investor's perspective and how they will respond to the company's proposals, and by creating successful proactive strategies for investor engagement.

About Corsair Capital

Corsair Capital LLC, which includes a highly regarded private equity platform, is a leading investor in the financial services industry. Corsair Capital has invested across a range of geographies and in substantially all of the subsectors of the financial services industry including payments, financial technology & services, insurance, wealth & asset management, banking and specialty finance. Corsair has more than $5 billion of assets under management.

Media Contacts

For CamberView

Chad Spitler

415-660-3906

[email protected]

For Corsair Capital

Robert Siegfried / Ross Lovern

KEKST

212-521-4832 / 212-521-4876

[email protected] / [email protected]

SOURCE CamberView Partners, LLC
$39 million contract extends CGI's enterprise resource planning (ERP) partnership with state through 2026

Stock Market Symbols

GIB (NYSE)

GIB.A (TSX)

www.cgi.com/newsroom

FAIRFAX, VA, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - CGI (NYSE: GIB) (TSX: GIB.A) today announced the award of a contract from the State of Maine that extends the company's scope of work for the Office of the State Controller through 2026 with US$39 million of added revenue. Through one of its many flexible delivery models for CGI Advantage ERP, Managed Advantage, CGI will provide managed services and solutions that strengthen cloud security, improve financial management and streamline case workflow for 139 state agencies.

"The state will benefit from CGI's innovative private-cloud approach to reduce risk and deliver to our needs," said Maine's State Controller Doug Cotnoir. "The solution offered us the ability to leverage CGI's knowledge and experience without the need for us to provide our own infrastructure, security or technical expertise. This approach provides us the greatest level of efficiency and keeps our focus and attention on serving the needs of the state."



CGI has been a trusted IT partner to Maine since 1989, when the state implemented CGI Advantage Financial Management, a solution that modernized outdated systems plagued by redundant data entry points, slow processing times and a reliance on paper transactions. In 2005 the state once again chose CGI to upgrade its systems to the web-based solution featuring a centralized and integrated finance, budget and procurement environment. During this modernization, the state consolidated systems and streamlined processes, achieving greater efficiency and control through real-time budgeting information and the introduction of online forms, workflow processes and approvals. The new system was launched on-time and on-budget in 2007 and has since been serving 139 state agencies  and more than 100,000 vendors  including the departments of Education, Environmental Protection, Human Resources, Labor, Public Safety and Transportation, and the Treasurer.

CGI's innovative and secure cloud-based ERP model offers Maine a long-term solution that enables ongoing innovation and responsiveness to the state's current and future IT requirements. As part of a commitment to deliver innovation and predictable maintenance costs in the coming years, a local team of CGI professionals will continue to provide service based on in-depth knowledge of the state's systems.

"Maine is one of many states that have partnered with CGI for ERP modernization, reflecting our long-term investment in ERP technologies over the last four decades," said Daniel Keene, Senior Vice-President of CGI's Advantage program. "CGI's ERP solution is built-for-government, specifically to meet the processing, regulatory and funding requirements unique to the public sector."

"We are thrilled to extend our partnership with the State of Maine and demonstrate the power of our cloud-based services," said Steve Starace, Senior Vice President of CGI's U.S. Northeast operations. "Having been honored as a "Best Fit Integrator" from the Center for Digital Government for our work in Maine in 2012, CGI will continue its strong commitment to the State through building on a legacy of IT innovation and outstanding service to the Office of the Controller."

About CGI

Founded in 1976, CGI Group Inc. is the fifth largest independent information technology and business process services firm in the world. Approximately 65,000 professionals serve thousands of global clients from offices and delivery centers across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific, leveraging a comprehensive portfolio of services including high-end business and IT consulting, systems integration, application development and maintenance, infrastructure management as well as 150 IP-based services and solutions. With annual revenue in excess of C$10 billion and an order backlog exceeding C$20 billion, CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Website: www.cgi.com.



Forward-Looking Statements

All statements in this press release that do not directly and exclusively relate to historical facts constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of that term in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and are "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. These statements and this information represent the intentions of CGI and Sears Canada, plans, expectations and beliefs, and are subject to important risks, uncertainties and other factors, of which many are beyond the control of the Company. These factors could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. These factors include but are not restricted to: the timing and size of new contracts; acquisitions and other corporate developments; the ability to attract and retain qualified members; market competition in the rapidly evolving IT industry; general economic and business conditions; foreign exchange and other risks identified in the press release, in CGI's and Sears Canada's annual and quarterly Management's Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") and in other public disclosure documents filed with the Canadian securities authorities (filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (filed on EDGAR at www.sec.gov), as well as assumptions regarding the foregoing. The words "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "anticipate", "foresee", "plan", and similar expressions and variations thereof, identify certain of such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, which speak only as of the date on which they are made. In particular, statements relating to future performance are forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. CGI and Sears Canada disclaim any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements or on this forward-looking information.





SOURCE CGI Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cgi.com/


PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Keith Marks has been appointed Executive Vice President and Manager, Risk Engineering Services, Commercial Insurance, for Chubb North America based in Chicago. In his new role, Mr. Marks will oversee the design and delivery of risk engineering service programs for commercial customers in North America and provide leadership for the risk engineering Executive Specialists for workers compensation, casualty, commercial auto, property, and environmental insurance as well as the Market Segment team. Over the past 12 months, Chubb's global risk engineering professionals further strengthened the group's reputation as a champion for risk mitigation by making about 21,000 site visits and spending some 250,000 hours to help clients control risks and the costs associated with a potential loss.

"I am excited to have Keith lead our North America Risk Engineering Services team as they continue to expand their positive impact on our clients' management of risk," said Paul O'Neill, Executive Vice President and Chief Underwriting Officer, Property and Specialty for Chubb North America.

Mr. Marks most recently served as Senior Vice President, North America Field Operations for Chubb Risk Engineering Services. Prior to ACE's acquisition of Chubb in January 2016, he was Vice President, Western Territory Loss Control Manager for Chubb. Mr. Marks joined legacy Chubb in 1997 after working as a safety engineer for a major environmental services consulting firm. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Health from Illinois State University and a Master of Science degree in Industrial Management from Northern Illinois University.

Mr. Marks will report to Mr. O'Neill. He will also have a reporting relationship to Christopher A. Maleno, Division President, North America Major Accounts, and to Steven R. Pozzi, Division President, Commercial Insurance, Chubb North America.

Navakas Promoted to Executive Vice President

Raimund Navakas has been named Executive Vice President and will continue to lead the Risk Engineering Practice for Chubb's Overseas General Insurance division based in New York. Mr. Navakas is responsible for leading the global property risk engineering team and supporting the international property and casualty business with oversight for risk engineering program business, technical research, risk engineering product development, and Chubb's Loss Control University fire lab.

Prior to ACE's acquisition of Chubb in January 2016, Mr. Navakas relocated from Australia to the United States to serve as Senior Vice President, Global Property Engineering. Mr. Navakas joined legacy ACE in 2009 in the Sydney office as Asia Pacific Regional Risk Engineering Manager. Prior to joining legacy ACE, he worked as the director of casualty risk engineering for a global insurance company and served as an engineering officer in the Royal Australian Navy. Mr. Navakas holds Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Commerce degrees from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Mr. Navakas will continue to report to David Furby, Division President, Commercial Property and Casualty for the Overseas General Insurance division, and Joseph S. Clabby, Division President, Bermuda and Global Accounts.

"Keith and Rai are both talented leaders with a deep understanding of an expansive array of risks and committed to continually delivering tremendous value to our customers," said Mr. O'Neill. "Chubb's Risk Engineering Services is a Center of Excellence offering deep bench strength and global risk engineering service solutions to help our clients succeed in today's highly competitive markets."

Global Risk Engineering Services Offers Deep Industry Expertise

Chubb Risk Engineering Services offers commercial customers an in-house global network of more than 400 risk engineers worldwide providing thought leadership and practical advice on emerging hazards, risk assessment, and risk control. For more than 70 years, Chubb's Risk Engineering Services professionals have focused on identifying exposures, assessing existing procedures, and working with customers to improve their efforts to mitigate losses that can result in property damage and injuries.

Risk Engineering Services offers businesses interested in keeping property and people safer:

Customized risk management programs and servicesfrom sprinkler system analysis to worker safety and cyber risk mitigationdesigned to strengthen strategies across the enterprise

Deep expertise and benchmarking analytics in many industries including mixed occupancy real estate, medical device manufacturers, clean tech companies, and cultural institutions

Online customized client services and a library of risk management information accessible from any device

Loss Control University training and educational resources for fire protection

About Chubb

Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. With operations in 54 countries, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength and local operations globally. Parent company Chubb Limited is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (CB) and is a component of the S&P 500 index. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London and other locations, and employs approximately 31,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at: new.chubb.com.

Chubb, Chubb logo and Chubb. Insured.SM are trademarks of Chubb Limited.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160121/324916LOGO

SOURCE Chubb
SAN DIEGO, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cireson, world leaders in Microsoft Cloud and System Center, will exhibit this month at Microsoft Ignite, one of the industry's premier global technology events. As a leading community voice and Microsoft Cloud and System Center expert, Cireson will showcase their popular Service and Asset Management solutions for Microsoft Service Manager and Configuration Manager, including the recently released Cireson Self-Service Portal  Community. In addition, with the forthcoming release of Microsoft Service Manager 2016, they will be on hand to answers questions and help organizations prepare their migration plans and strategies.

Commenting on Cireson's attendance, Shaun Ericson, Joint Founder, says, "We are very excited to be attending Microsoft Ignite and share our expertise to help the IT community maximize their System Center investment. Ignite is always a productive event, and we look forward to connecting with customers, partners and new faces alike."

To further connect with the community, Cireson will be hosting a Happy Hour celebration mid-week.

When: Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Where: W Hotel, Studio 3 & 4 - 45 Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard  Atlanta, Georgia , 30308

W Hotel, Studio 3 & 4 - 45 Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard  , 30308 Registration: Space is filling up fast, but those who wish to attend can register here

Those who plan to attend Microsoft Ignite can connect with Cireson in the following ways:

September 26  30, 2016 in Atlanta, GA

 30, 2016 in Visit the team at booth 2182 in the expo hall

Join Cireson for Happy Hour at the W Hotel  register here

Individuals unable to attend but still interested in connecting with the Cireson team can enquire via their Contact Us page. Also, don't miss recent news regarding the company, including their placement as #167 on the Inc. 500 list and the recent launch of the free Cireson Self-Service Portal  Community.

About Cireson:

Born in 2012, Cireson was founded on a simple, powerful idea: to be the forward thinkers on all things Microsoft Cloud and System Center. Today, our values from the beginning remain the same; keep it genuine, do the right thing, and listen to customers.

As a world leader in Microsoft Cloud and System Center, our mission is to make your working life ridiculously more productive by bringing service and asset management together - that's the Cireson Platform.

Taking pride in our expertise, we proudly boast some of the brightest and most fanatical IT professionals in the industry. From the Cireson Platform to Consulting Services and community engagements  everything we do is designed to push technical brilliance forward.

Our headquarters are located in sunny San Diego with offices throughout North America, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

www.cireson.com

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160809/397015LOGO

SOURCE Cireson

Related Links

http://www.cireson.com


LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- About the Coffee Market in Mexico



The coffee market in Mexico comprises fresh roasted and ground coffee, instant coffee, RTD coffee, and coffee pods. Increasing demand from the millennial population has contributed to the rise in demand for coffee in Mexico. An improved economy and increased job opportunities have made different types of coffee more affordable for younger consumers. This demography is more likely to spend on premium beverage brands. This has led to a spurt of cafes and coffee shops, which has further strengthened Mexico's coffee market.





Mexico has many certified organically grown coffees, sold in many North American specialty coffee stores. These coffees are certified by independent monitoring agencies. Coffee from Mexico is exported to the US, Japan, and Europe, especially to Germany.



Technavio's analysts forecast the coffee market in Mexico to grow at a CAGR of 5.83% during the period 2016-2020.



Covered in this report

The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the coffee market in Mexico for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, Technavio considers the revenue generated from the total consumption of coffee in Mexico. The report does not include revenue generated from the aftermarket service of the product.



The market is divided into the following segments based on types:

-Instant coffee

-Fresh roasted and ground coffee

-RTD coffee

-Coffee pod



Technavio's report, Coffee Market in Mexico 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.



Key vendors

-Grupo LALA

-Nestle

-Sabormex

-Sigma Alimentos



Other prominent vendors :

-Cafinco

-Mondel?z International



Market driver

-Demand for organic coffee

-For a full, detailed list, view our report



Market challenge

-Price volatility of coffee

-For a full, detailed list, view our report



Market trend

-High demand for single-serve coffee pods

-For a full, detailed list, view our report



Key questions answered in this report

-What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?

-What are the key market trends?

-What is driving this market?

-What are the challenges to market growth?

-Who are the key vendors in this market space?

-What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?

-What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?



You can request one free hour of our analyst's time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.







Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/2279351/



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


EUGENE, Ore., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- College Choice, a leading authority in college and university rankings and resources, has published its 2016 rankings for the Most Affordable Online Masters in Accounting Degrees and the Most Affordable Bachelors in Accounting Degrees.

http://www.collegechoice.net/rankings/cheap-online-bachelors-in-accounting-degrees/http://www.collegechoice.net/rankings/cheap-online-masters-in-accounting-degrees/

Accounting continues to be a profession that is always in demand. Professionals who work in this field are not just about numbers; professionals also have a mastery of the law, the tax code, and economics. It's a well-rounded and stable career that many students are interested in pursuing.

But how does a student know which online school is best for them? These rankings are a great place to start.

Christian Amondson, Managing Editor of College Choice, had this to say about the online rankings for undergraduate and graduate degrees in accounting: "There is a reason that most of the world's oldest documents are records of financial transactions: as long as there is civilization, someone needs to be watching the books. That urgency has translated into accounting being one of the most stable professions around." Both rankings were created using the same factors. These include academic reputation, online programs and features, time to completion of the degree, overall education costs, student satisfaction, and employment rates after graduation. All of the educational programs listed were ranked based on information pulled from a school's online portal and reputable ranking websites.

The College Choice 2016 ranking for Most Affordable Online Masters in Accounting Degrees is led by Western Governors University. It is followed by American Public University and Western International University.

Athens State University takes the top honors, coming at number one on the College Choice 2016 ranking for Most Affordable Online Bachelors in Accounting Degrees. It is followed the American Public University System and University of Northwestern Ohio.

The complete rankings are as follows:

American Public University System, Charles Town, WV

Athens State University, Athens, AL

Baker College, Flint, MI

Belhaven University, Jackson, MS

Bemidji State University, Bemidji, MN

Central Methodist University, Fayette, MO

Clarion University of Pennsylvania, Clarion, PA

Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS

Franklin University, Columbus, OH

Kaplan University, Fort Lauderdale, FL

National University, San Diego, CA

Saint Joseph's College of Maine, Standish, ME

Shorter University, Rome, GA

University of Northwestern Ohio, Lima, OH

University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD

Western Governors University, Salt Lake City, UT

Western International University, Tempe, AZ

College Choice is the leading authority in college and university rankings, searches and resources dedicated to helping students and their families find the right college. The site publishes rankings and reviews that make finding the best colleges for different interests easier and more fun, as well as resources to help students get into, pay for, and thrive at the college of their choice.

Contact:

Christian Amondson

Managing Editor, College Choice

Web: http://collegechoice.net

Email

Phone:(541) 255-3801

SOURCE College Choice

Related Links

http://www.collegechoice.net


SANTA ANA, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CompWest Insurance announced today that it will offer workers' compensation insurance for artisan contractors in California and Utah. This new segment provides agents with a service-oriented, long-term workers' compensation solution for the growing needs of the construction industry.

The program targets artisan construction operations with annual premiums between $25,000 and $250,000 in California and $15,000 to $150,000 in Utah.

CompWest is a dynamic provider of workers' compensation insurance in California and select Western states, targeting customers in healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, retail, wholesale services, hospitality and artisan construction. Its focus on underwriting, specialized loss control and integrated claims management services brings policyholders assistance in minimizing injuries and reducing long-term insurance costs.

"We have seen a strong demand in the artisan contractor market and we're eager to add this focus to our comprehensive array of workers' compensation solutions," said Al Gileczek, president of CompWest. "We have best-in-class products, industry-leading expertise, and a strong network of agents throughout the West and we believe we're well positioned to make a difference in this particular market segment."

About CompWest

CompWest is a division of AF Group. All policies are underwritten by a licensed insurer subsidiary of AF Group.

About AF Group

Founded in 1912, AF Group (Lansing, Mich.) and its subsidiaries are a premier provider of innovative insurance solutions. Rated "A-" (Excellent) by A.M. Best, AF Group is a nationally recognized holding company conducting business through its brands: Accident Fund, United Heartland, CompWest and Third Coast Underwriters.

Contact:

Bob Lapinski

(517) 708-5664 or (517) 331-4890

[email protected]

AFGroupInsurance.com

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160229/338522LOGO

SOURCE AF Group

Related Links

http://www.afgroupinsurance.com/


NORTH HAVEN, Conn., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- InterMerchant Services LLC, (IMS) specializes in merchant services: small to mid-size business lending, credit card processing, payroll processing and Human Resource services. One of the leading merchant service providers in Connecticut, IMS is honored to announce that they were recently placed on the INC 5000 as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. Nationally, IMS, which was founded in 2011, ranked number 1,392 of the top 5,000 companies. IMS cracked the top ten in Connecticut for fastest growing companies in the state at number seven.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406529LOGO

Quote from Peter Amenta, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of IMS:

"We're incredibly honored to be recognized for the work we do on a daily basis to support our customers. This is really a tribute to the hard work our team puts forth every day. To be recognized for growth means we have been able to continually add new customers while maintaining our existing customer base. Our goal is to continue to focus on customer service, the awards or accolades are just icing on the cake."

IMS, located in North Haven, CT, can be found on the web at: www.imscash.com reached via phone at: 1-888-608-4002 ex 2525 or via e-mail at: [email protected]

Related Images

image1.gif

image2.png

image3.png

Related Links

http://www.inc.com/inc5000/list/2016/state/ct/

Related Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0CNzQRNsqc

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com.

SOURCE InterMerchant Services

Related Links

http://www.imscash.com


AVON LAKE, Ohio, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Construction Support Solutions, a full-service construction firm providing construction management, consulting and subcontracting services, announces its relocation to accommodate recent growth. The new Cleveland headquarters, located at 525 Avon Belden Road, Avon Lake, Ohio 44012, will increase the firm's capacity to serve current and potential markets, positioning it for future expansion.

Construction Support Solutions has come a long way since 2008, when Anna Klee started the company with her husband, Kevin, in the basement of their Avon Lake home. They have been operating out of their house since then, with the support of a small satellite office in Akron.

Now, with nine full-time employees, two contract employees and plans to hire at least one more staff member within the next year, the firm needed more room to house its growing workforce.

"Our new office space supports the growth we've been experiencing," said owner Anna Klee. "It's critical that we're able to grow alongside our clients and keep pace with their changing needs. This move increases our capacity and efficiency for providing the personal service we're known for, which will make us even more responsive to our clients' needs."

With annual construction volume exceeding $1 million, the firm's project portfolio spans seven states. Several large construction projects have contributed to recent growth, including the firm's selection as prime construction manager for the 536 S. Clark Street Federal Building in Chicago, a $15 million project, and the firm's role as owner's representative on the recently completed $47.9 million Center for Architectural and Environmental Design at Kent State University. These projects represent two key markets for the firm: government and higher education. As one of few GSA Contract Holders in Ohio, Construction Support Solutions can provide construction management services to government agencies through the General Services Administration (GSA).

The relocation reinforces Construction Support Solutions' future growth plans in market sectors like these, allowing the firm to strengthen its local presence and scale its reputation for leadership. The firm occupies 2,000 square feet of office space in its new facility. The telephone number will remain 440-653-9482.

About Construction Support Solutions

Founded in 2008, Construction Support Solutions is a full-service construction firm providing construction management, consulting and subcontracting services. With a depth of experience on public, private and federal building programs, the firm manages construction projects for clients in industries including higher education, government, transportation, correctional facilities and public assemblies. Construction Support Solutions is an approved GSA Contract Holder, and federally certified as a Women Owned Small Business (WOSB) and a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE). For more information about its services, certifications and current projects, please visit www.ConstructionSupportSolutions.com.

SOURCE Construction Support Solutions

Related Links

http://www.constructionsupportsolutions.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Attorney Advertising -- Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC notifies consumers of an investigation against Nissan Motor Company Ltd.'s ("Nissan") recall of 134,000 vehicles in the United States and Canada due to potential braking system defects that may cause fires.

On September 12, 2016 Nissan North America and U.S. regulators issued the recall of Nissan cars and crossovers from model years 2015  2017, that are affected by defective anti-lock braking system that can allow brake fluid to leak into the circuit boards, causing electrical shorts. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warns owners that when brake fluid has leaked onto the circuit board, the ABS warning lamp may remain illuminated for more than 10 seconds after engine start up. "If this occurs, owners are advised to park the vehicles outdoors away from other vehicles or structures and to not drive the vehicle," the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in its recall notice. Steve Yaeger, a spokesman for Nissan North America, said there had been several fires, including one that damaged a driver's home.

Affected U.S. vehicles include:

2016-2017 Maxima sedans

2015-2017 Murano crossovers

2015-2016 Murano hybrids

Only models equipped with Intelligent Cruise Control (adaptive cruise) are affected by this recall.

If you or someone you know owns or leases one of the affected vehicles or if you are aware of any facts relating to this investigation, you can assist this investigation by visiting the firm's site: http://www.bgandg.com/nissan. You can also contact Peretz Bronstein or his Investor Relations Analyst, Yael Hurwitz of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC: 212-697-6484 or via email [email protected]. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, email and telephone number.

Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC is a corporate litigation boutique. Our primary expertise is the aggressive pursuit of litigation claims on behalf of our clients. In addition to representing institutions and other investor plaintiffs in class action security litigation, the firm's expertise includes general corporate and commercial litigation, as well as securities arbitration. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Contact:

Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC

Peretz Bronstein or Yael Hurwitz

212-697-6484 | [email protected]

SOURCE Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC

Related Links

http://www.bgandg.com


Having trouble viewing? View this mailing online. SUBSCRIBE TO THE FLAME HOTLINE DONATE TO FLAME FORWARD TO A FRIEND September 13, 2016 Since the Palestinians Wont Stop Fighting, Its Time for Israel to Defeat Themand the U.S. Should Approve. Dear Friend of FLAME: I recently attended a parlor meeting with U.S. Representative Barbara Lee and a dozen pro-Israel supporters. During the meeting, Lee kept returning to her steadfast commitment to the two-state solution and opposing measures that would threaten this goal. This included Lees opposition to any efforts to stifle the BDS movement , which she believes would only increase opposition to Israel in general and the two-state solution specifically. This position would be comical if it werent so dangerous. Lees fantasy about the decades-old two-state formula makes her blind to the fact that BDS is inherently anti-Semitic and ironically stands in opposition to peace negotiations and recognition of a Jewish state. In fact its the Arabs themselves who are the greatest obstacle to peace two states living in mutual respect and security. Arab resistance to a Jewish presence in Palestine predates by half a century Israels founding in 1948. Arab pograms and other attacks on Jews were regular occurrences for 50 years before Israel declared statehood. The many Arab-initiated wars since that time have only represented the latest efforts to achieve an Arab one-state solution . The Arabs refusal to accept their Jewish neighbors continues unabated today. Of course the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Hamas terror group is organized solely on the principle of driving the Jews completely out of Palestine , from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Seaall of Israel. Even the so-called moderate Palestinians in Judea and Samaria (aka, the West Bank), incite their children to kill Jews in support of their claim to the entire Holy Land and praise as martyrs any Arab who murders innocent Israeli civilians. After all these hundred years, its time for those who have big-heartedly supported a two-state solution to become realistic. History tells us that most enemies dont give up until theyre defeated . Unfortunately, every time Israel has had the chance to defeat its enemies decisively on the battlefieldSyria, Egypt, Iraq, Hizbollah, HamasWestern powers, led by the United States, have stepped in to restrain Israel in the interests of regional stability. We might well ask some of those well-intentioned diplomats how that Middle East stability plan is working out so far. To date, Israel remains the only stableand prosperingstate in the entire Middle East. Israels greatest problem is Iran, which the U.S. has defended by pressuring Israel not to attack its nuclear facilities . Israels second greatest problem is the Palestinians, whose strategy of terror and ongoing missile attacks against Israel continue to this day. This weeks FLAME Hotline-featured article, below, makes the case for Israel once and for all to defeat its Palestinian opponents . . . and for the U.S. to step aside and permit it to happen. Author Gregg Roman, director of the Middle East Forum, argues that Israels defeat of the Palestinians would be the most important step ever toward reaching a peace. I think youll find Mr. Romans short article to be useful as we witness more futile attempts by President Obama, the French, the Russians or the Egyptians to launch peace talks. Even more pointedly, youll find this logic invaluable the next time Hamas or Hizbollah or ISIS mounts an attack on the Jewish state. Restraint by Israel seems no longer the shortest path to peace . In addition, I hope youll also quickly review the P.S. immediately below, which describes FLAMEs hasbarah campaign to oppose U.S. funding of United Nations schools that teach half a million Palestinian children to wage jihad and hate Jews. Best regards, Jim Sinkinson

President, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME) P.S. A Palestinian boy, standing in front of his UNRWA school in Jerusalem, says They teach us that Jews are bad people. I am ready to stab a Jew and drive over them. This school is one of hundreds operated by UNRWA, which is supported by more than $400 million annually in U.S. taxpayer dollars . In order to make Americans aware of this travesty, FLAME has just begun publishing a new position paper in media nationwidewhich exposes the extent of UNRWAs perpetuation of Islamic jihad and murderous terror among Palestinian youth. I urge you to review this outspokenn hasbarah message: "U.N. School for Terrorism This paid editorial is appearing in magazines and newspapers, including college newspapers, with a combined readership of some 10 million people. In addition, it is being sent to every member of the U.S. Congress and President Obama. If you agree that this kind of public relations effort on Israel's behalf is critical, I urge you to support us. Remember: FLAME's powerful ability to influence public opinionand U.S. aid to Israelcomes from individuals like you, one by one. I hope you'll consider giving a donation now, as you're ablewith $500, $250, $100, or even $18. (Remember, your donation to FLAME is tax deductible.) To donate online, just go to donate now. Now more than ever we need your support to ensure that the American people and the U.S. Congress end our support of blatantly anti-Semitic, global jihadist organizations. As of today, more than 15,000 Israel supporters receive the FLAME Hotline at no charge every week. If youre not yet a subscriber, wont you join us in receiving these timely updates, so you can more effectively tell the truth about Israel ? Just go to free subscription. Israeli Victory Is the Only Way to Bring Peace By Gregg Roman, The Hill, September 9, 2016 At his first security briefing, Avigdor Liberman, Israel's Defense Minister, declared that Israel no longer has "the luxury of conducting drawn-out wars of attrition." 100 days into his term, with no sign of the decades-long conflict slowing, it is clear that the time has come to apply that principle to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In order for there to be peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Israel must win and the Palestinians must lose. For most of human history, military victory ended wars. The Pax Romana, a period of 200 years of relative peace within the Roman Empire, began only when Augustus defeated Marc Antony in the Battle of Actium. When the North ravaged the South in the American Civil War, it caused the seemingly intractable conflict that claimed three quarters of a million lives over four years to fade away. The South, knowing it was defeated, never made trouble again. German and Japanese ill-will toward Western democracies in World War II rapidly dissipated, thanks to the bitter pill of defeat; friendship soon followed. Today's conventional wisdom holds that conflicts are best resolved through negotiation and compromise. But let's look at the facts. After 40 years of negotiations to reunite Cyprus, the island remains divided, and 60 years of standoff over the Korean peninsula have achieved little. In Syria, the killing continues unabated despite five years of talks to reconcile Sunnis and Alawites. And at the same time, years of diplomatic efforts to roll back Iran's nuclear program ended with the West's capitulation to Tehran's demands. The negotiations fallacy is especially evident in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The crux of the conflict is simple: Israel wants to survive; the Palestinian leadership wants to destroy it. Some Palestinian leaders make no secret of this. Hamas leaders' open incitement to violence spawned the so-called "stabbing intifada," and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas praises the Palestinian "martyrs" and names streets after them. Others talk peace but demand a Palestinian "right of return" to Israel, a requirement that would effectively eviscerate the Jewish state by allowing millions of Arabs of Palestinian descent to resettle permanently within Israel's borders. But no matter their angle, all Palestinian leaders preach hatred towards Israel. American policy has long been to prevent Israel from achieving a decisive military victory over its adversaries. In 1956, President Eisenhower forced Israel to abandon its territorial gains from the Suez Crisis. Similarly, following the 1967 Six Day War, the U.S. helped engineer a U.N. resolution calling on Israel to return unspecified "territories occupied" in the war. The Reagan administration stopped Israel from obliterating Yasser Arafat's PLO forces in Lebanon in 1982, and, most recently, the Obama administration pressured Israel to limit its objectives in its 2014 war with Hamas. These concessions, which are often unilateral and irreversible, include settlement freezes, prisoner releases and forfeiture of territory. Such policies deliver pernicious results; American "restraint" of Israel encourages its enemies to take risks. Much like government bailouts encourage banks to make high-risk, high-payoff investments by removing the consequences of failure, Israel's adversaries need not fret over irrevocable loss because they know the international community will admonish Israel for any gains it achieves. Moreover, restraining Israel legitimizes and nourishes Palestinian rejectionism, defined as the refusal to acknowledge Israeli sovereignty and right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland. Because it knows there will be no consequences for its sophisticated propaganda war, the Palestinian Authority can continue to demonize Israel. "To become a normal people, one whose parents do not encourage their children to become suicide terrorists, Palestinian Arabs need to undergo the crucible of defeat," writes Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes. When Israel has licensure, without American opprobrium, to unleash its military might after a Palestinian rocket or terror attack, as when Liberman ordered over 50 airstrikes on Hamas military infrastructure in Gaza in response to one rocket, the Palestinians retreat. The fear of crushing defeat is a potent weapon in neutralizing Palestinian resistance. America's handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict is preventing the kind of metamorphosis in Palestinian thinking about Israel that peace requires. It's time for Washington to allow Israel to demolish the Palestinian dream of a one-state solution, free of Jews. As Ronald Reagan said regarding the US fight against communism, the only way to "win is if they lose." This doesn't mean the U.S. should support a winner-take-all settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But we must dispense with the fallacy that Israel is only a concession or two away from an American-brokered diplomatic breakthrough. As Gen. Douglas MacArthur said famously, "there is no substitute for victory." HOME SUBSCRIBE DONATE PR FOR ISRAEL HOTLINE ARCHIVE ABOUT CONTACT US THIS MONTH'S AD APPEARED IN PUBLICATIONS REACHING 10 MILLION READERS IF YOU SUPPORT PUBLISHING FLAME'S BOLD PR MESSAGES, PLEASE HELP US!! FLAME is the only organization that defends Israel with paid editorial hasbarah messages placed in media nationwide every month: The dire threats from Iran, Hamas and Hizbollah, the injustice of BDS, Palestinian anti-Semitism and more. If you support a bold voice that tells the truth about Israel in American media, please donate now. FLAME'S WEEKLY HOTLINE E-NEWSLETTER FLAME's Hotline e-newsletter keeps you up to date on the most important pro-Israel advocacy issues and features our choice of the week's most informative and thought-provoking article on Israel and the Middle East. If you only subscribe to one pro-Israel news service, make it the FLAME Hotline.

Facts and Logic

About the Middle East

PO Box 3460

Berkeley, CA 94703 Copyright 2016 FLAME. All rights reserved.
CALGARY, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Mr. Nadeem Velani, Canadian Pacific's (TSX: CP) (NYSE: CP) interim Chief Financial Officer, will address the Morgan Stanley 4th Annual Laguna Conference on Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 12.15 p.m. pacific time in Laguna, California.

CP will provide access to a live audio webcast of Mr. Velani's remarks in the Investors section of its website, www.cpr.ca. A replay will be available following the conclusion of the event.

About Canadian Pacific

Canadian Pacific (TSX:CP)(NYSE:CP) is a transcontinental railway in Canada and the United States with direct links to eight major ports, including Vancouver and Montreal, providing North American customers a competitive rail service with access to key markets in every corner of the globe. CP is growing with its customers, offering a suite of freight transportation services, logistics solutions and supply chain expertise. Visit cpr.ca to see the rail advantages of CP.

SOURCE Canadian Pacific

Related Links

http://www.cpr.ca


WASHINGTON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Billington CyberSecurity Summit, Washington DC: CREST, an accreditation and certification body for the technical information security industry, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Security Agency (NSA) to take over the operation of its Cyber Incident Response Assistance (CIRA) accreditation program. CREST has also launched its USA Chapter with new offices in New York and the announcement of its first members - Gotham Digital Science (GDS) - a Stroz Friedberg company, MWR InfoSecurity, Nettitude, Stroz Friedberg and Trustwave.

The aim of the relationship between the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) of the NSA and CREST is to facilitate the growth of the Cyber Incident Response Assistance program, while also ensuring the continued integrity of all aspects of the strict accreditation process.

The NSA's IAD provides advanced Cyber Incident Response Assistance (CIRA) and Vulnerability Assessment (VA) services to address a growing number of sophisticated security incidents against National Security Systems (NSS). The National Security Cyber Assistance Program (NSCAP) was created to leverage the cyber expertise of industry to perform select cyber security services for NSS owners and operators. Accreditation of highly qualified commercial industry partners capable of consistently providing a high level of cyber security assistance services is based on a stringent set of criteria created from NSA, Industry and Government best practices.

"The CREST relationship with the NSA will support the maturity of incident response services into other government and commercial departments outside of NSS," explains Rowland Johnson, director of CREST International. "It is hoped that it will also encourage cyber security service providers to have their capabilities assessed and accredited. This will drive increasing levels of capability and capacity in to the market and we have kicked off this process by welcoming GDS - a Stroz Friedberg company, MWR InfoSecurity, Nettitude, Stroz Friedberg and Trustwave.

"The MOU demonstrates the increasing collaborative relationship between industry and government globally to support and develop the cyber security ecosystem," said Johnson. "It will provide an approach for aligning international accreditation standards and support stakeholders that operate in multiple countries and regions."

The CIRA accreditation process will remain unchanged and CREST will maintain secure communication through the NSCAP portal for all organisations that go through re-accreditation.

CREST's move into in the USA has been supported by the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) as part of its commitment to promoting the UK's professional cyber security skills and experience abroad.

For any organisations that are interested in learning more about CIRA accreditation, please contact [email protected]

About CREST

CREST is the not-for-profit accreditation body representing the technical information security industry. CREST provides internationally recognised accreditation for organisations and individuals providing penetration testing, cyber incident response and threat intelligence services. All CREST Member Companies undergo regular and stringent assessment; while CREST qualified individuals have to pass rigorous examinations to demonstrate knowledge, skill and competence. CREST is governed by an elected Executive of experienced security professionals who also promote and develop awareness, ethics and standards within the cyber security market.

SOURCE CREST
DALLAS, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Widely respected Dallas lawyer Deborah Hankinson has earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the editors of Texas Lawyer in recognition of her career as a Texas Supreme Court justice and her instrumental role in providing legal aid to low-income Texans.

Now focused on alternative dispute resolution and appellate work, Ms. Hankinson was among the attorneys selected in 2016 who have made an indelible mark on the Texas legal profession. Ms. Hankinson served on the Texas 5th District Court of Appeals in Dallas, followed by the Texas Supreme Court, where she served from 1997-2002. While on the state's highest court, she helped establish the Texas Access to Justice Commission, which has enabled thousands of low-income Texans to obtain legal aid in civil matters.

Since re-entering private practice in 2003, Ms. Hankinson has solidified her position as one of the state's leading appellate lawyers as well as one of the most sought-after arbitrators and mediators in the country.

For more information about Ms. Hankinson's work, please visit http://hankinsonlaw.com/our-team/deborah-hankinson/.

Ms. Hankinson and the other honorees will be recognized at a Sept. 13 awards ceremony at the Belo Mansion in Dallas. She and all the attorneys selected to the 2016 Professional Excellence Award: Lifetime Achievers list are profiled in the September issue of Texas Lawyer at http://www.texaslawyer.com.

Among one of the most honored appellate attorneys in Texas, Ms. Hankinson previously has been recognized by Texas Lawyer in its 2007 Go-To Guide and as one of its Winning Women in 2011. Earlier this year, she was selected to The National Law Journal's inaugural ADR Champions listing, recognizing the top 48 alternative dispute resolution trailblazers from across the nation.

Hankinson LLP, the pre-eminent civil appellate firm in the Southwest, provides clients with innovative legal insights and judicial perspective in all phases of litigation. The firm's attorneys work with trial teams to develop strategies designed to put a case in the best position before, during and after trial. Dallas-based Hankinson LLP represents national clients, regional companies, governmental bodies and individuals with trial and appellate matters, and offers mediation and arbitration services as well. Learn more about the firm at http://hankinsonlaw.com.

For more information, please contact Mark Annick at 800-559-4534 or [email protected].

SOURCE Hankinson LLP

Related Links

http://www.hankinsonlaw.com


PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Chairman's Office of Deals Secure Group Holding Company GP. ("DSGH") announced today that the company's name and two of its subsidiaries "Elite Capital & Co. Limited" and "Dr. Faisal Khazaal, LLD. Law Group, LP." along with the owners, the Kuwaiti Businessman Dr. Faisal Khazaal and his daughter Hind Khazaal have all joined the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample mission to Bennu. The names reside on two devices, one device placed in the Sample Return Capsule for a round-trip journey from Earth to Bennu and back; and on a second device affixed to the spacecraft instrument deck for continued travels in space.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission

Dr. Faisal Khazaal, Chairman of DSGH, said: "I'm glad to have our names and the names of our companies on this vessel along with the limited number of names who are fortunate enough to be part of history. I congratulate the people who have worked on this great project that will serve humanity, science and knowledge of human beings."

OSIRIS-REx is a NASA mission, and Messages to Bennu is a partnership between the Planetary Society and the University of Arizona. NASA chose the University of Arizona to lead its third New Frontiers Mission. OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins Spectral Interpretations Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer. Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta leads the mission.

Mr. George Matharu, President of Elite Capital & Co., said: "This is not only morally important but the idea that our companies and their owners' names may have crossed the limits of the earth is a great thing in itself, and most importantly of all, these names will remain outside the boundaries of Earth's atmosphere to swim in outer space throughout the ages."

OSIRIS-REx will travel to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study. The mission was launched on September 8, 2016 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. As planned, the spacecraft will reach Bennu in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.

Dr. David Hana, Director of Dr. Faisal Khazaal, Law Group, LP. concluded this statement by saying: "This is not new to Dr. Faisal Khazaal. His name and the name of his daughter are also listed along with another 1.2 million inhabitants of the earth who had their names carried by the Curiosity Rover which was launched from Earth in 2011 and landed on planet Mars. Since then those people and their siblings have the priority to live and invest on Mars as per the space laws of earth. In addition to that, Dr. Khazaal was one of those who participated in the funding of the spacecraft LightSail. Being recognized for his participation he was granted ownership of a square centimeter of this spacecraft as a symbolic property for his belief in the importance of space science."

 Visit NASA / OSIRIS-Rex Website 

https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex

 OSIRIS-REx Poised for Sampling Run to Asteroid 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cynVuXYiif8

 Liftoff of OSIRIS-REx 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULfQdFY9PQM

 Download copy of the Certificates of Participation 

http://dsgh.us/images/oc2016.pdf

 Deals Secure Group Holding Company, GP.  Contact Details 

The Chairman's Office

Deals Secure Group Holding Co., GP.

Suite 3750, BNY Mellon Center

1735 Market Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103

United States of America

Telephone : +1 (267) 507 6088

Facsimile : +1 (267) 507 6089

Deals Secure Group Holding Company GP. Website: dsgh.us

Elite Capital & Co. Limited Website: ec.uk.com

Dr. Faisal Khazaal, LLD. Law Group, LP. Website: khazaallaw.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406464

SOURCE Deals Secure Group Holding Company

Related Links

http://www.dsgh.us


DALLAS and HOUSTON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Six attorneys from the Texas trial law firm Deans & Lyons, LLP, have earned selection to the 2016 Texas Super Lawyers listing.

"From the start, our firm has focused on providing clients with innovative and aggressive representation. We are appreciative to receive the recognition of our peers, as it demonstrates that others respect what we are doing for our clients," says firm co-founder Michael Lyons. "I have tremendous respect for the work of these outstanding lawyers, and I am so proud to work alongside them."

To learn more about Deans & Lyons, visit http://www.deanslyons.com.

Mr. Lyons was selected to the Super Lawyers list for a fourth consecutive time based upon his work on catastrophic personal injury cases and high exposure commercial litigation. Firm co-founder Gregory Deans also earned his fourth consecutive appearance on the list for his work in civil litigation and mass torts. Both attorneys are based in Dallas.

Houston partner Jeff Nobles and of counsel Thomas Sartwelle both were selected to Super Lawyers for the 14th consecutive year for their work in appellate cases and civil litigation, respectively.

Dallas partners Brian Lauten and Katherine Stepp both earned their third consecutive Super Lawyers selections for their work in commercial litigation and civil litigation, respectively.

To develop the list of Texas' top attorneys, researchers with Thomson Reuters conduct a statewide survey asking lawyers to nominate their top legal peers. A blue-ribbon panel of attorneys then assists the Super Lawyers staff with final selections. No more than 5 percent of Texas attorneys are chosen each year.

The Texas Super Lawyers list is featured in the October 2016 issues of Texas Monthly and Super Lawyers magazines and is available at www.superlawyers.com.

Earlier this year, Dallas partners Robert Bogdanowicz III, Courtney Bowline and Christopher Simmons and associate Kathleen Kilanowski were selected to the companion 2016 Texas Rising Stars listing, which honors the state's top young lawyers.

Deans & Lyons, LLP, has offices in Dallas and Houston and maintains a reputation as one of the state's premier trial boutique firms. Its lawyers routinely handle high-stakes cases of all kinds, including business disputes, products liability, personal injury, wrongful death, professional liability, real estate, securities, and construction cases. To learn more, visit http://www.deanslyons.com.

For more information, please contact Rhonda Reddick at 800-559-4534 or [email protected].

SOURCE Deans & Lyons, LLP

Related Links

http://www.deanslyons.com


The "Go Bananas!" promotion gives consumers the chance to win a Del Monte branded banana costume to wear for their Halloween festivities. The contest will randomly award a banana costume to 1,000 Del Monte banana fans who enter online at www.freshhalloween.com . Fans who want to increase their chances of winning can obtain 5 additional entries by submitting a photo of themselves as a banana using the template provided on the website.

"We are thrilled to bring the Go Bananas Halloween promotion back for its 5th year," said Dennis Christou, VP Marketing NA. "Consumers of all ages love dressing up as bananas and it is a great opportunity to reward our loyal fans while at the same time promoting healthy Halloween treats. We haven't seen anyone turn down a Del Monte banana costume yet, or the chance to pose in one!"

The four-week promotion ends on September 30th, 2016 in order to guarantee costume delivery in time for Halloween. For more information about Del Monte's Go Bananas giveaway, visit us at www.freshhalloween.com.

About Del Monte Fresh Produce N.A., Inc. Del Monte Fresh Produce N.A., Inc. is one of North America's leading marketers and distributors of high-quality fresh and fresh-cut fruit and vegetables. Del Monte Fresh Produce N.A., Inc. markets its products in North America under the Del Monte brand (as well as other brands), a symbol of product innovation, quality, freshness and reliability for over 120 years.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406983

SOURCE Del Monte Fresh Produce N.A., Inc.

Related Links

http://www.freshhalloween.com


RADNOR, Pa., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of its ongoing efforts to build stronger brands and relationships in the digital community, Backe adds VP/Creative Director Dan Donovan to its creative team. Backe, a brand marketing and digital communications agency known for creating the Philadelphia area's first in-house interactive department, provides strategic analysis, content strategy, web design and back-end development for a host of clientele, regionally, nationally, and internationally.

"We're excited to welcome Dan to the Backe team in this vital role. His imagination, deep experience in digital marketing and background as a writer and content strategist will be an asset to both the agency and our clients," says John Backe, president and CEO.

In the last 10 years alone, Donovan has acquired and shared an incredible depth and breadth of creative, strategic, and technological understanding by working with leading advertising agencies, brands and institutions.

His educational background and creative leadership training with The University of Pennsylvania and Yale University, as well as his agency experience across numerous industry verticals, particularly high tech (Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Infor), higher education (University of Pennsylvania), pharmaceuticals (AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Genentech), healthcare (Digitas Health LifeBrands, GSW Worldwide, Razorfish Health), and non-profits (TEDx, Coalition for Green Capital), make him a strong fit for Backe's 20-year experience working with clients in highly-regulated industries.

"I am thrilled to have joined Backe and to be so warmly welcomed into their family-like culture. They clearly place a high value on relationships, community involvement and on producing work in a thoughtful, collaborative and creative environment."

Donovan's leadership comes at a perfect time for Backe, as the agency continues to expand its digital capabilities and find ways to help both start-up and established businesses create greater brand awareness and preference.

About Backe: Backe is a digital marketing and brand communications agency based in Radnor, PA. Focused on creating smart, beautiful and strategically driven work, Backe has a 20-year history of building long-lasting relationships with clients in highly-regulated industries like healthcare, higher education, energy, finance, and more. Clients include Airgas, Alfred Angelo, BCC Payments, GlaxoSmithKline, Peirce College and YSC Sports. In addition to for-profit clientele, the agency has a comprehensive portfolio of pro-bono work specifically in women's causes and children's education.

Interested parties can contact Malcolm Brown (610-947-6904, [email protected]) for a deeper understanding of the agency's capabilities.

Media Contact:

Erica Minutella

Social Media Manager

610-947-6922

[email protected]

backemarketing.com

facebook.com/BackeMarketing

twitter.com/BackeMarketing

SOURCE Backe Communications

Related Links

http://www.backecom.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bestselling and award-winning publisher DK is proud to announce that it will exhibit at the 11th annual Brooklyn Book Festival, the largest free literary event in New York City, this September 17th and September 18 in downtown Brooklyn. One of America's premier book festivals, Brooklyn Book Festival serves host to a diverse group of book and magazine publishers, features more than 200 national and international authors, and has one festival day dedicated to the celebration of children's literature. Organizers project crowds of 40,000+ will visit the literary marketplace over the course of the weekend.

During Children's Day on Saturday, September 17th, stop by DK booth #24 for new books that encourage readers to build, invent, and discover through kid-safe projects and crafts. From coding games in scratch to making a lemon battery, DK's fall collection builds upon upon STEAM education initiatives (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) and promotes hands-on learning and critical thinking. Titles available for purchase include Maker Lab, a Smithsonian produced activity book that uses household materials to create over 25 science experiments, and Children Just Like Me, a passport guide to the unique ways children live around the world, plus new offerings from the classic DK Readers line. Families can also participate in a trivia contest to win DKfindout! books, a new series full of amazing images, quizzes, and cutting-edge information kids need to know about their favorite subjects.

On Sunday, September 18th, visit DK Booth #319 in the main exhibitor area for an exclusive preview of its top holiday picks that celebrate Star Wars, LEGO, American Girl, and Marvel, available to purchase in an assortments of popular formats, including sticker collections and ultimate visual guides. In addition to books, visitors to the booth can pick up free bookmarks, coding kits, and stickers and participate in an interactive photo display featuring the Marvel comic character, Hulk.

Saturday, September 17, 2016 (10am-4pm)

MetroTech Commons, Downtown Brooklyn

Sunday, September 18, 2016 (10am-6pm)

Brooklyn Borough Hall

DK is the bestselling and award-winning publisher known for informing, entertaining, and educating global audiences through beautifully designed content. DK also publishes the Eyewitness series for children and Eyewitness Travel Guides. Prima Games, Alpha Books, and Rough Guides are also available from DK, a division of Penguin Random House, www.dk.com.

SOURCE DK

Related Links

http://www.dk.com


BOSTON and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Powering Precision Health 2016, the nation's first biomed innovation-driven summit, today announced that health luminary Dr. Dennis Ausiello will deliver a keynote address at the upcoming summit on September 26, 2016 at the Boston Marriott Cambridge. The first annual summit brings together the world's foremost scientists, innovators, physicians, providers, regulators, investors and patient advocates with the common goal of transforming today's sick care to precision healthcare.

"The future of healthy living can be realized today with disruptive innovations that foster disease prevention, early diagnosis, and nextgen treatments for improved patient care," said Kevin Hrusovsky, Founder & Chairman, Powering Precision Health Summit, Executive Chairman & CEO, Quanterix. "We look forward to Dr. Ausiello's keynote address and to collaborating with him on the future of personalized medicine."

Dennis A. Ausiello, MD is the Jackson Distinguished Professor of Clinical Medicine and Director, Emeritus of the MD/PhD Program at Harvard Medical School. He is also Chairman of Medicine, Emeritus and Director of the Center for Assessment Technology and Continuous Health (CATCH) at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). A graduate of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Ausiello is a nationally recognized leader in academic medicine, elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 1999 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. Dr. Ausiello will deliver a keynote on "Mobilizing Precision Health is Within Reach," which addresses how the data revolution, from genetic to digital, has provided a compelling need to assess wellness and its progression to disease. He is also a member of the summit's strategic steering committee: http://www.pphsummit.com/steering-committee.html

Powering Precision Health will be attended by hundreds of leading researchers from academia, pharma/biopharma, government research institutes, CROs and clinical labs. The summit will feature three executive panel sessions and speaker tracks diving deep into scientific solutions based on novel research for preventing, detecting and treating disease long before symptoms present. The focus will be primarily oncology, neurology, cardiology, and the basis of most disease pathways, inflammation. For more information visit www.pphsummit.com and join the conversation on social media using hashtag #PPHSUMMIT: Twitter @PPHSUMMIT Facebook @PPH2016 LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/powering-precision-health-2016

About Powering Precision Health Summit

Powering Precision Health 2016 is the nation's first summit dedicated to bringing the world's leading physicians and scientists together to unveil their latest research on new biomarkers that are revolutionizing precision health. Founded by Kevin Hrusovsky, a widely acclaimed thought leader and visionary in life sciences and personalized medicine, PPHSummit is an executive think tank of researchers and clinicians working together to transform healthcare. Addressing a wide spectrum of therapeutic areas -- neurology, cardiology, oncology, inflammation and infectious disease -- PPHSummit unveils groundbreaking approaches to prevention, early diagnosis, and nextgen treatments. PPHSUMMIT features an unprecedented keynote lineup of dignitaries from Harvard Medical School, Mass General Hospital, MIT, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Tufts, Whitehead Institute, Boston University, Dana Farber and more. Join the conversation on social media using hashtag #PPHSUMMIT. For more information: www.pphsummit.com, Twitter @PPHSUMMIT, Facebook @PPHC2016, Email: [email protected], Mobile/Text: 978-302-1198.

Media Contact: Heidi Creighton 978-302-1198 or email [email protected]

SOURCE Powering Precision Health Summit

Related Links

http://www.pphsummit.com


LONDON, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Ultra Electronics is in a replenishment phase, investing in new technologies to embed in programmes that should return the company to growth from FY17. In the current year the spending environment remains flat, but FX and M&A contributions will bolster performance, enabling the company to deliver EPS in excess of 2011's record level. Our fair value of 2,037p indicates decent upside for the shares should improve order intake and continuing investment deliver expected growth.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130417/608168 )



Our estimated fair value for Ultra currently stands at 2,037p, a simple average of our FY17 peer-based sum-of-the-parts and our capped DCF valuation. If Ultra continues to grow EPS in 2017 beyond the range of the last five years, and global defence spending does indeed start to accelerate as western world budgets increase, we feel a moderate rerating is plausible.

Click here to view the full report.

All reports published by Edison are available to download free of charge from its website http://www.edisoninvestmentresearch.com.

About Edison: Edison is an international equity research firm with a team of over 110 analysts, investment and roadshow professionals and works with both large and smaller capitalised companies, blue chip institutional investors, wealth managers, private equity and corporate finance houses to support their capital markets activity. Edison provides services to more than 420 retained corporate and investor clients from offices in London, New York, Frankfurt, Sydney and Wellington. Edison is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Edison is not an adviser or broker-dealer and does not provide investment advice. Edison's reports are not solicitations to buy or sell any securities.

Contact details: Learn more at http://www.edisongroup.com and connect with Edison on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/edison-investment-research

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Edison_Inv_Res

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/edisonitv

Google+: https://plus.google.com/105425025202328783163/posts

For more information please contact:

Andy Chambers, Edison Investment Research, +44(0)20-3681-2525

Roger Johnston, Edison Investment Research, +44(0)20-3077-5722, [email protected]

SOURCE Edison Investment Research
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants, a retail property, casualty insurance brokerage and employee benefits consultant, announced today that Jim Hughes has joined the firm as a vice president and the Managing Consultant of Loss Control Services in their National Construction Specialty Group.

Hughes will be focused on Bay Area and Sacramento offices as well as clients nationally. He will report to Brian McDonnell, managing principal of EPIC's National Construction Specialty Group.

"We are fortunate to have an expert of Jim's caliber join our team and support our clients," said McDonnell.

Hughes joins from Wells Fargo Insurance Services where he was vice president, risk control services. Hughes brings 40 years of experience in the loss prevention field to his role with EPIC. In his role with EPIC, he will be responsible for developing and implementing strong loss prevention programs, helping clients navigate the system when they have a claim and managing overall safety within these organizations.

Prior to joining EPIC, Hughes was with ABD since 2001, which was acquired by Wells Fargo in 2007. While with Wells Fargo, Hughes was responsible for partnering with clients to mitigate and manage their losses. He developed practical solutions for clients, including safety program evaluations and development, construction site and industrial facility inspections and surveys and ergonomic assessments.

Previously, Hughes held the positions with Marsh and McLennan in San Francisco as a vice president and senior managing consultant and in 1993 was promoted to manager of the Western Region of M&M Protection Consultants, Marsh's technical arm.

Hughes has served as director of risk and safety for a major Bay Area engineering and construction firm and as chief safety engineer representing the city and county of Denver's OCIP insuring construction of the Denver International Airport. He was also the director of BART Construction Insurance Administrators during the $1.4 billion construction of the BART extension project to San Francisco Airport. Most recently, Hughes led client loss control and safety services on the Sacramento Kings Arena, another multi-phase construction project which also includes retail, condominiums, office space and a 16-story hotel.

"Jim has made a significant impact throughout his career in the construction insurance industry, and we look forward to the positive impact he will have on our clients," said Tom O'Neil, western region president.

Hughes earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey. He is a professional member of the American Society of Safety Engineers and has earned the professional designation Certified Safety and Health Manager (CSHM). Hughes is a certified OSHA Construction Outreach 10 and 30 hour instructor. He serves on the Board of trustees and faculty of the non-profit Safety Center of California and has been active in the Center's fund raising activities for over 25 years.

Jim Hughes can be reached at:

EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants

1390 willow pass road, suite 800

Concord, CA 94520

[email protected]

925-822-9046 - office

About EPIC:

EPIC is a unique and innovative retail property and casualty and employee benefits insurance brokerage and consulting firm. EPIC has created a values-based, client-focused culture that attracts and retains top talent, fosters employee satisfaction and loyalty and sustains a high level of customer service excellence. EPIC team members have consistently recognized their company as a "Best Place to Work" in multiple regions and as a "Best Place to Work in the Insurance Industry" nationally.

EPIC now has more than 850 team members operating from offices across the U.S., providing Property Casualty, Employee Benefits, Specialty Programs and Private Client solutions to more than 13,000 clients.

With more than $200 million in revenues, EPIC ranks among the top 20 retail insurance brokers in the United States. Supported by the Carlyle Group, the company continues to expand organically and through strategic acquisitions across the country. For additional information, please visit www.epicbrokers.com.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Dave Hock, of EPIC

650-295-4608

[email protected]

Nicole Conley

650-422-3156

[email protected]

*PHOTO for media: Send2Press.com/mediaboom/16-0913-EPIC-JimHughes-300dpi.jpg

*LOGO for media: Send2Press.com/mediaboom/16-0308-epic-insurance-300dpi.jpg

This release was issued through Send2Press, a unit of Neotrope. For more information, visit Send2Press Newswire at https://www.Send2Press.com

SOURCE EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants

Related Links

http://www.epicbrokers.com


DES MOINES, Iowa, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Eurofins Food Safety Systems and AGGI Asociados of Mexico are excited to announce their partnership and signed agreement to provide co-branded public trainings for the food manufacturing markets in Mexico. The partnership kicked off with a well-attended debut course, FSMA Preventive Controls for Human Food, on July 20th-22nd in Mexico City. This new development demonstrates AGGI's continued efforts to provide valuable food safety services to Mexico and further exemplifies Eurofins' commitment to do the same across North America.

AGGI Asociados is a company that has been dedicated to the development of suppliers in the food, pharmaceutical, and personal care industries for more than 20 years. Through its qualified and experienced staff as well as its support programs for auditing, consulting, training, and related systems such as Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), AGGI's goal is to ensure the quality, efficacy and safety of its customers' products.

Eurofins Food Safety Systems is well-known as an industry-leading food safety training provider with its extensive portfolio of public courses as well as its roots as the global leader of analytical testing services. Continually investing in resources to stay ahead of the dynamic regulatory climate of the food manufacturing sector, Eurofins' commitment to providing its clients with comprehensive food safety solutions begins with valuable employee training.

Following the introductory Preventive Controls course in Mexico City, Eurofins and AGGI will expand their partnership to deliver more training opportunities for food producers and processors in Mexico. Additional offerings will include HACCP, Internal Food Safety Auditor courses and training to the GFSI benchmarked standard, Safe Quality Food (SQF).

"As a huge exporter to the United States, we've recognized the necessity for additional food safety training in Mexico and jumped at the chance to collaborate with the already well-known and reputable AGGI Asociados," said Eurofins' Food Safety Systems Director, Gary Smith. "Together with our expertise in the recent FSMA regulations and GFSI standards, we hope to be a very valuable asset to the food manufacturing industries of Mexico."

"The business relationship between Eurofins and AGGI provides the foundation for a greater presence and growth potential for food safety services in Mexico and also throughout Latin America. Our knowledge of the Mexican marketplace as well as our experience coupled with the skill sets provided by Eurofins undoubtedly ensures a successful future of providing high quality services to all companies in the food market in Mexico," said Ofelia Castanada Saldate of AGGI.

To learn more about the courses being offered by Eurofins and AGGI or for course registration, please visit our webpage at http://www.eurofinsus.com/food-safety/training/.

Notes for the editor:

Eurofins  a global leader in bio-analysis

Eurofins Scientific believes it is the world leader in food, environment and pharmaceutical products testing, as well as one of the global market leaders in agroscience, genomics, discovery pharmacology and central laboratory services. In addition, Eurofins is one of the key emerging players in specialty clinical diagnostic testing in Europe and the USA.

With over 25,000 staff in more than 250 laboratories across 39 countries, Eurofins offers a portfolio of over 130,000 validated analytical methods for evaluating the safety, identity, composition, authenticity, origin, traceability and purity of biological substances and products, as well as for innovative clinical diagnostic. The Group provides its customers with high-quality services, accurate results on time and expert advice by its highly qualified staff.

Eurofins is committed to pursuing its dynamic growth strategy by expanding both its technology portfolio and its geographic reach. Through R&D and acquisitions, the Group draws on the latest developments in the field of biotechnology and analytical chemistry to offer its clients unique analytical solutions and the most comprehensive range of testing methods.

As one of the most innovative and quality oriented international players in its industry, Eurofins is ideally positioned to support its clients' increasingly stringent quality and safety standards and the expanding demands of regulatory authorities and healthcare practitioners around the world.

The shares of Eurofins Scientific are listed on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange (ISIN FR0000038259, Reuters EUFI.PA, Bloomberg ERF FP).

Important disclaimer:

This press release contains forward-looking statements and estimates that involve risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements and estimates contained herein represent the judgment of Eurofins Scientific as of the date of this release. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees for future performance, and the forward-looking events discussed in this release may not occur. Eurofins Scientific disclaims any intent or obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements and estimates. All statements and estimates are made based on the data available to the Company as of the date of publication, but no guarantee can be made as to their validity.

For more information, please visit www.eurofinsus.com/food-safety

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160209/331126LOGO

SOURCE Eurofins
PITTSBURGH, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The United Steelworkers (USW) has declared that today's final vote by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) on duty orders for hot-rolled steel imports from seven countries, joins last week's vote on a separate trade case for cold-rolled steel to successfully conclude a year-long fight by American steel companies against these products.

"The trade commission final rulings will back-off the river of illegal steel imports," said USW International President Leo W. Gerard, "but these successful enforcement actions will hopefully return laid-off steelworkers suffering the consequences of slow trade justice at idled mills deeply damaged by imports."

He declared: "The tens-of-millions of dollars it cost American steelworkers in lost wages by imports will be evaluated between now and election day on how soon it brings production and jobs back in our steel-making communities. Enforcing our trade laws shouldn't always be the job of injured companies and their workers. Government needs to do more."

The USW president said, "Trade cases are only part of the solution. America's steelworkers need immediate, forceful action on the bigger crisis of global steel overcapacity. Aggressive trade action must come swiftly, especially for the permanent shutdown of China state-owned zombie steel mills that are our destroying industrial communities."

He warned the Administration that steelworkers will be voting in November on their jobs. "Despite the hard work of the Administration's negotiators, the G-20 statement this past Labor Day weekend falls far short of what's really needed. China is the single largest contributor to the glut of steel swamping world markets.

"China can't be allowed to again sit at a negotiating table to make commitments they have no intention of fulfilling. More empty promises will only lead to more empty factories."

The Congressional Steel Caucus wrote President Obama before he left last week on his trip to Hangzhou for the G-20 Summit asking that he secure the cooperation of China and pointing out the large number of downstream jobs that are dependent on steel.

Tom Conway, USW International Vice President, who participated in the trade case hearings and leads steel sector bargaining, said: "The final duty orders expand fairer pricing conditions on hot and cold-rolled steel products from four countries, combined with duties placed earlier this summer on the same steel import products from China and Japan."

The USITC final ruling on cold-rolled steel announced Sept. 2 applies to imports from Brazil, India, Korea, and the United Kingdom. Conway noted the hot-rolled duty orders will also now be placed on dumped steel imports from six countries: Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

The duties by law will remain in effect for five years to address predatory dumping, or selling below cost in order to gain market share and injure domestic producers.

The USW said the hot-and-cold-rolled steel trade case enforcement action will come as good news to steelworkers among 16 steel making facilities that make the product in the industrial states of Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Kentucky and the taconite miners on the Iron Range of northern Minnesota.

Fact sheets for the U.S. government's determination, antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CVD) duties can be viewed at: USDOC hot-rolled steel fact sheet, and USDOC cold-rolled steel fact sheet.

Many of these steelworkers and iron ore miners have exhausted unemployment eligibility, challenging food banks to meet rising demand and threatening home foreclosures. The Granite City steel works of U.S. Steel Corp. in Illinois has been idled since last year with 2,000 workers, along with miners on Minnesota's iron range.

The six steel corporations that filed the hot-rolled petition are: AK Steel Corp., Ohio; ArcelorMittal USA LLC, Ill.; Nucor Corporation, N.C.; SSAB Enterprises, LLC, Ill.; Steel Dynamics, Inc., Ind., and U.S. Steel Corp., Pa. The same companies also filed the cold-rolled case with the exception of SSAB Enterprises, LLC, Ill.

The USW represents 850,000 workers in North America employed in many industries that include metals, rubber, chemicals, paper, oil refining and the service and public sectors. For more information: http://www.usw.org/.

Contact: Gary Hubbard, 202-256-8125; [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080131/DC12982LOGO

SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW)

Related Links

http://www.usw.org


ST. GALLEN, Switzerland, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

ForaCare Suisse AG today announced that its Italian distributor, Meter Ltd., will present its free telehealth platform that includes ForaCare health monitoring devices as critical components on 13 and 14 September in the ForaCare booth at the European Association for the Study of Obesity.

Representatives from Meter will demonstrate the Diabtel.net platform, a free tool that provides a comprehensive way for both diabetes medical professionals and patients to interact simply and easily.

"ForaCare is proud to feature our partner's important platform and its centralized use of our health monitoring offerings in our booth at EASD," said Ty-Minh Tan, CEO of ForaCare Suisse AG. "The diabetes medical experts and patient educators who attend EASD will learn about this free platform and ways they can easily integrate telehealth into their programs."

Diabtel.net is a free telemonitoring system that provides a platform for self-monitoring tools and features ForaCare's blood glucose, blood pressure, body temperature and body weight measurement devices as well as uses ForaCare's Gateway data transmission tool. The telemonitoring system allows for health monitoring of important health parameters for patients at home or on the go via ForaCare's iFORA apps for smart phones and other mobile devices.

Meter will demonstrate the three simple steps for remote monitoring, including: 1) patients share their data via their devices with the Diabtel.net platform; 2) Diabtel.net monitors the patient's health parameters and 3) when there is a health need, sends alert messages to the patient's doctor who evaluates the data to determine the best course of action for each patient.

"Meter is pleased to demonstrate our platform with ForaCare to diabetes experts from around the world," said Nicola Frigione, marketing manager for Meter.

Meter's platform and ForaCare's technology has been central in a research study, the ARSAN project, that began in April 2015 and includes 120 insulin-treated patients who are monitored with four measurements per day. The ARSAN study is aimed at demonstrating the value of remote monitoring services for the management of chronic diseases such as congestive heart failure, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. To learn more, visit this link: https://www.ehtel.eu/references-files/jointdigitalhealthcaresymposium/d1-4b-enable-improved-self-management-and-care/United4Health%20Telehealth%20in%20Practice%20-%20Care%20Delivery%20Models%20from%2014%20Regions%20in%20Europe.pdf

All ForaCare monitoring devices are validated as highly accurate in the industry and provide superior quality directly to consumers. FORA Blood Glucose Monitors are validated according to ISO 15197 requirements at an internationally renowned diabetes institute in Ulm, Germany.

ForaCare provides FDA cleared and CE marked innovative health monitoring devices that provide simple connection to the FORA system. For more information, please visit http://www.foracare.ch/

About ForaCare Suisse AG: http://www.foracare.ch/

Contact:

Elena Birrer

+41-71-220-1001

SOURCE ForaCare Suisse AG
MIAMI, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --The Free Cuba Foundation welcomes the Cuba Internet Freedom Conference and its reminder that the United Nations has declared Internet access a basic Human right. Nevertheless, it is important to recall that the Internet is not a panacea:

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406700

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406701LOGO

"We must not mistake the Internet which is a tool, for a strategy to achieve democratic change in Cuba; even so, we must demand that it the Internet be uncensored and Independent of state control."

"Although Google has demonstrated the technical capability of its Loon project which claims to offer balloon powered Internet for everyone, it refuses to do so where it counts most. Instead of a disrupter Google seeks to act in complicity with the Castro regime."

"Google is choosing to stand with the oppressor rather then with the oppressed, in clear violation of their "Don't Be Evil" code of conduct, partnering with an octogenarian Socialist Dictatorship in favor of millions of Cuban youth; is not only wrong but a terrible business decision."

- said Augusto Monge of the Free Cuba Foundation and elected member of the Coordinating Council of the Congress of the Cuban National Conference.

The emphasis on Internet technology by pro-democracy activists should not overlook the role that companies such as Yahoo and Google have played in China to censor information and target dissidents for the dictatorship there in order to conduct business. These practices are now being carried out in Cuba by Google.

This is why it was so important that participants at the Second Cuban National Gathering in Puerto Rico representing activists from inside and outside of Cuba on August 16, 2016, unanimously voted and agreed on the following point:

"DENOUNCED THE INDIFFERENCE OF THE COMPANY GOOGLE IN VIOLATION OF ITS OWN CODE OF CORPORATE CONDUCT AND DEMANDED THAT IT ESTABLISH A CORRECT POLICY TO PROVIDE WIRELESS INTERNET SERVICE WITH NO CENSORSHIP AND WITHOUT DEPENDENCE ON THE REGIME IN BENEFIT OF THE CUBAN PEOPLE."

The Obama administration's Cuba policy that focuses on credits, micro-enterprises, travel, and internet will not lead to a democratic opening in Cuba, not in the short, medium, or long term. Instead, it will serve as a distraction that will prolong the life of the dictatorship in Cuba and the Castro regime's power and influence abroad.

Free Cuba Foundation on twitter: @freecubafndtn

Free Cuba Foundation Blog: http://freecubafoundation.blogspot.com/

Contact: Alex Martinez

(305) 697-6735

SOURCE Free Cuba Foundation
LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report analyzes and forecasts the fuel additives market on the global and regional level. The study provides historical data for 2014 along with the forecast from 2015 to 2023 based on volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). The report provides a decisive view of the fuel additives market by segmenting it in terms of product, application, and region.



This report provides detailed industry analysis of the fuel additives market. Industry analysis includes product information and applications that it serves along with its function. Fuel emission standards in some key regions and countries are also included to help understand the market dynamics. We have included detailed value chain analysis of the fuel additives market to provide a comprehensive view of the fuel additives market. The analysis of value chain includes information such as integration in the market, distribution channels, and end-user industries. The study also comprises drivers and restraints of the fuel additives market and their impact on demand during the forecast period. The report also analyzes the opportunities in the fuel additives market on the global and regional level. Drivers, restraints, and opportunities mentioned in the report are justified through qualitative and quantitative information. These factors have been verified through primary and secondary resources.



The report includes Porter's Five Forces Analysis that describes the competitiveness in the fuel additives market. The study comprises market attractiveness analysis, which has been benchmarked based on market size, compound annual growth rate (CAGR), general attractiveness, and company market share. We have also incorporated company market share analysis to provide detailed analysis of the market.



The study provides a decisive view of the fuel additives market by segmenting it on the basis of product and application. Product and application segments have been analyzed based on current and future trends, and the market has been estimated from 2015 to 2023 in terms of volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). Regional segmentation includes current and forecast demand for fuel additives in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. It also includes demand for individual products and applications in major countries in the respective regions.



The report provides detailed competitive outlook that includes profiles of Afton Chemical Corporation, Akzo Nobel N.V., Baker Hughes Incorporated, BASF SE, Chemtura Corporation, Evonik Industries AG, Huntsman Corporation LLC, Innospec, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS), The Dow Chemical Company, The Lubrizol Corporation, and Total S.A. Company profiles include attributes such as company overview, brand/product portfolio, financial overview, business strategy, and key/recent developments related to the market.



Constant currency rates have been considered while forecasting the market. Prices of fuel additives by product vary in each region. Hence, a similar volume-to-revenue ratio does not follow for each individual region. Regional average price has been considered while breaking down the market by product segment and application in each region. Models and estimates have been used to produce comprehensive datasets where hard data was not available. We have used the bottom-up approach by considering product and application segments, and integrating them to arrive at the global market. Products and applications have been further divided using the top-down approach to derive the consumption of fuel additives in the regional market.



We conducted in-depth interviews and discussions with a wide range of key industry participants and opinion leaders to compile this research report. Primary research represented the bulk of research efforts, supplemented by an extensive secondary research. We reviewed key players' product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents for competitive analysis and market understanding. Secondary research includes a search of recent trade, technical writing, internet sources, and statistical data from government websites, trade associations, and agencies. This has proven to be the most reliable, effective, and successful approach for obtaining precise market data, capturing industry participants' insights, and recognizing business opportunities.



The global fuel additives market has been segmented into:



Fuel Additives Market  Product Analysis



Deposit control additives

Cetane improvers

Antioxidants

Amines

Hindered phenols

Others (mixture of alkyl phenols and aromatic diamines)

Stability improvers

Lubricity improvers

Corrosion inhibitors

Cold flow improvers

Others (Including dyes and markers, metal deactivators, fuel dehazers, etc.)

Fuel Additives Market  Application Analysis



Gasoline

Diesel

Aviation fuel

Others (Including heating oils, etc.)

Fuel Additives Market  Regional Analysis



North America

U.S.

Rest of North America

Europe

U.K.

Germany

France

Spain

Italy

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

Japan

ASEAN

Rest of Asia Pacific

Latin America

Brazil

Rest of Latin America

Middle East & Africa (MEA)

GCC

South Africa

Rest of Middle East & Africa

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3999530/



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


SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fusion Recovery and Addictionologist Dr. Suma Singh, both innovative and evidence-based substance abuse treatment providers located in Santa Clara County, will begin offering completely free training sessions about how to administer a lifesaving dose of Narcan to someone who has overdosed on opiates. After the completion of the training, Fusion Recovery and Dr. Singh will provide free Narcan kits to all participants in an effort to reduce deaths from heroin and other opioid overdoses. This is the first free training and distribution of Narcan kits that specifically targets friends and loved ones in Santa Clara County.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406792LOGO

The opioid class of drugs includes the illicit drug heroin as well as the licit prescription pain relievers oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine, fentanyl and others. In research studies, Narcan has been successful in reviving a person who has overdosed in 98 percent of rescue attempts. Although Narcan can be purchased without a prescription from a pharmacy, it is expensive, costing as much as $145 per dose at pharmacies.

"As a substance abuse treatment facility that not only treats those struggling with addiction but also comprehensively supports family members, friends and loved ones of those who are addicted, Fusion Recovery identified a significant need in the community to arm loved ones with this critical lifesaving medication and training," says Therese Frey, chief executive officer of Fusion Recovery.

"Although these kits are not inexpensive for us to acquire, saving lives is part of our core mission at Fusion Recovery, and we are always looking at innovative and effective ways to do that. This will save lives in our community," explains Fusion Recovery Chief Operating Officer Michael O'Brien. "Approximately 70 percent of overdoses occur in the home or a hotel. We feel that it is critical for those who live with or are close to a heroin- or opiate medicationaddicted person to arm themselves with this lifesaving medication and training," says O'Brien.

The founder of Fusion Health, Dr. Suma Singh, will be conducting the training to help educate participants in many areas. Topics will include when an opioid user is at risk for overdose, signs and symptoms of overdose, how to identify the warning signs of an overdose, and how to appropriately administer Narcan and practice a sample administration of it. "This training and the Narcan nasal spray can often be the difference between life and death in overdose situations," says Dr. Singh. "Every second is critical during an overdose, and with emergency services averaging 5 to 15 minutes before arrival, being properly trained on how to use Narcan and when to use it may save your loved one's life," says Dr. Singh. Additional information will be provided on available community resources.

Use of Narcan resulted in almost 27,000 drug overdose reversals between 1996 and 2014, according to a government study published earlier this year. Providing Narcan kits to family members and friends is a safe and cost-effective way to reduce overdose deaths.

Narcan training will begin on September 28, 2016. If you would like to attend, please visit https://www.fusionrecovery.com and click on "Free Narcan Kit with Training" at the bottom right-hand side of the page. Please keep in mind that space for these trainings is limited, so reserve your spot early.

Fusion Recovery, Inc., is an outpatient substance abuse treatment provider serving Silicon Valley, California. To learn more, please visit www.fusionrecovery.com.

Dr. Suma Singh, founder of Fusion Health, is a Harvard- and Stanford-trained physician addiction specialist. Dr. Singh has treated patients with addiction problems for 20 years. Dr. Singh also provides medical care outside of Fusion Recovery through her private practice, Fusion Health. For more information, please visit http://www.fusionhealthmd.com.

Related Images

image1.jpg

image2.png

image3.png

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Fusion Recovery, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.fusionrecovery.com


LAS VEGAS, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- G6 Hospitality, the recognized leader in economy lodging and known for the iconic brands Motel 6 and Studio 6, announced this year's Franchisees of the Year award and other recognitions during its annual brand convention held at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas on September 12-15, 2016.

Jim Amorosia, President & CEO, G6 Hospitality (left); Rocky Patel, Motel 6 Franchisee of the Year (center), Tom Bodett, Voice of Motel 6 (right) (Photo Credit to Scott Cook)

With more than 1,600 attendees including franchisees, leaders and special guests, G6 Hospitality kicked off the four-day event with the traditional celebratory dinner to recognize its franchisees and partners. During the award's dinner, members of the G6's Executive Committee took the stage to acknowledge and honor the brand's top performers on several categories. Dean Savas, Executive Vice President of Franchise and International Development, welcomed attendees with a warming message that focused on recognizing franchises who excelled in operational performance, RevPAR, quality and guest satisfaction ratings overall. "I am honored to distinguish the efforts and dedication put forward year over year by our franchisees. Not only have they been instrumental to help us fulfill our primary goal, to be the recognized as the uncontested leader in the economy segment, but also and more importantly, they are our key vehicle for sustained development and growth," said Savas.

The G6 Hospitality Franchisee of the Year Award 2015 went to Mr. Rocky Patel for Motel 6 in Bend, Oregon [photo can be found here] and Mr. Don Desai for Studio 6 in Concord, California.

Other designations were given in these categories: Top Performers, Brand Image, Outstanding Renovations, Heart of Service, Brand Champion, Outstanding New Construction, G6 Legacy, and more as follows;

G6 Hospitality Top Performers Awards:

Motel 6  Harshad D. Patel , Lodi, CA Motel 6  Lucy Chao , Page, AZ Motel 6  Falguni Patel , El Reno, OK Motel 6  Kalpesh Patel , Riverside, CA Motel 6  Jiten M. Patel , Dixon, CA Studio 6  Vikram Sayania , Opelika, AL M6/S6 Canada  Realstar

G6 Hospitality Partnership Award:

Kim and Lee Judson - Multi Unit, OR

G6 Hospitality Legacy Award:

Subhash Patel  Multi Unit, GA

The full list of the G6 Hospitality Brand Convention winners can be found here.

About G6 Hospitality LLC

G6 Hospitality LLC owns, operates and franchises more than 1,350 economy lodging locations under the iconic Motel 6 and the extended stay Studio 6 brands in the U.S and Canada, and Hotel 6 and Estudio 6 brands in Latin America. Headquartered in Dallas (Carrollton), Texas, G6 Hospitality was rated one of the top ten hospitality companies according to the Hotel Management 2015 Top Hotel Companies rankings list, which evaluated over 260 hotel companies. For more information please visit G6Hospitality LLC.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406978

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150831/262348LOGO

SOURCE G6 Hospitality

Related Links

http://www.g6hospitality.com


PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Gladstone Associates LLC today announced that Peter Raimondi has joined the firm as Managing Director. Previously, Raimondi was founder and CEO of Banyan Partners, a registered investment advisory firm with $4.3 billion in assets under management when it was sold to Boston Private Bank in 2014 for a reported $65 million.

According to Gladstone President Paul Lally: "Peter brings tremendous experience and expertise, as evidenced by his successes as an entrepreneur. He also fully embraces the Gladstone philosophy, centering on our clients' needs for objective, customized guidance to best perpetuate their life's work into the future. Effecting an M&A transaction or implementing a Corporate Plan is the result of a process based on leading with advice."

"What I particularly admire about Gladstone is the professionalism throughout the organization," Raimondi says. "The quality of their people is second to none. Paul is more creative than anyone I've met in the M&A consulting space. He has a serious, multifaceted approach to getting clients from point A to point B."

Raimondi's experiences as a buyer and seller of RIA firms make him uniquely equipped to counsel other RIAs. A graduate of the Boston University School of Law, he started his financial career in 1986, when he founded The Colony Group in Boston. Starting in 2006, he built Banyan Partners, in part through acquisitions. "I made some wonderful acquisitions and one or two questionable ones. Either way, you have to take ownership of your decisions," he says. "I hope that my addition to the Gladstone team will draw clients who say, 'He's acquired and integrated seven companies in the past six years, and eventually sold his company to a public firmwhat kinds of experiences did he go through that we could learn from?' "

About Gladstone Associates LLC

Gladstone was founded in 2006 to provide high-end strategic consulting to successful independent financial advisory firms. The team at Gladstone, which collectively has more than 200 years of industry experience in M&A, Corporate Planning, Succession & Business Continuity Planning, as well as Tax, Legal & Corporate Finance expertise, capitalizes on this experience to ensure informed guidance, focused activity and measurable results. For more information, go to gstonellc.com or call 610-834-1989.

SOURCE Gladstone Associates LLC

Related Links

http://www.gstonellc.com


LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This report provides detailed information about the Global Packaging Industry bifurcated into distinct categories i.e. Flexible, Rigid, & Hybrid. The report also entails a detailed geographical analysis of the Packaging Industry and forecasts the growth trajectory by incorporating key industry drivers and deterrents. The report also identifies the need for focusing on the Packaging Industry by elucidating the key issues such as climate change and the way industry is innovating itself to rein the impact on the global climate health.

A detailed growth forecasts for the overall Packaging Industry by 2020 has also been evince considering the gamut of industry drivers and challenges that plagues the global packaging industry. The report also provides detailed analysis of different segments in the packaging industry such as flexible, rigid, & hybrid with the market size breakage geographical wise and the estimated forecast by 2020. The report identifies the growth drivers and inhibitors for the global packaging industry. The study also identifies various policies and political frameworks that impact the viability of the packaging industry. The report identifies various credit risks, policy risks, and technical risks associated with global packaging industry.



This report has detailed company profiles for 15 key players in the Global packaging industry by giving a short abridgement about their business profile, their positioning in the industry in terms of value chain, firm's business strategy i.e. product wise as well as process wise, financial performance as of last five years and its estimated growth projections for the next 5 years, & SWOT analysis. This report covers in detail the competitive landscape of the identified key players of the packaging industry so as to evince the competitive position that the firms occupy as against other players of the industry. The report identifies key industry bodies and associations and their role in the Global Packaging market's growth, sustenance, & the overall industry's vision.

In order to give a vantage point view for the industry the report also presents the PESTEL, Porter Five Forces, & the SWOT analysis for the complete industry. The report identifies the key challenges faced by new entrants in the industry so as to accentuate the analysis viewpoint regarding the competitive scale of the industry. This report also provides strategic recommendations for policy makers, end users, service providers and investors.



NOVONOUS estimates that Global Packaging Market will achieve annual CAGR of 5.1% till 2020. As per the current market state Rigid Plastic and Corrugated & Solid Board occupies the highest share in terms of the type of packaging that's employed which is 20% and 18% respectively. However, with the rise in the fraudulent handling of goods the Smart Packaging space is also expected to rise which also helps improving the operational efficiency.



Spanning over 170 pages and 121 exhibits, "Global Packaging Market 2016-2020" report presents an in-depth assessment of the industry from 2016 till 2020.

The report has detailed company profiles including their position in packaging market value chain, financial performance analysis product and service wise business strategy, SWOT analysis and key product details for 15 key players namely; Coveris, Amcor, ALPLA, Ball Corporation, Bemis, Berry Plastics Corporation, Crown Holdings Incorporated, Graphic Packaging International, Sealed Air Corporation, Tetra Pak, Mondi, Owens Illinois, Rexam PLC, Silgan Holdings Inc. and WestRock.



Scope of Global Packaging Market 2016  2020 Report:

- This report provides detailed information about Global packaging market and also entails future market forecasts.

- This report identifies the need for focusing on packaging market sector.

- This report provides detailed information on growth forecasts for overall Global packaging market up to 2020.

- This report provides forecast on packaging market by Packaging Type (Flexible, Rigid, Corrugated, Metal, Glass, Aerosol etc) up to 2020.

- This report provides detailed information on geography wise (Asia pacific, Africa & middle east, Europe, south America and north America) growth forecasts for global packaging market up to 2020.

- This report provides forecast on packaging market by Industry (Food and Beverages, Personal Care and healthcare)

- The report identifies the growth drivers and inhibitors for global packaging market.

- The report identifies various credit, policy and technical risks associated with global Packaging market.

- This report has detailed profiles 15 key players in Global Packaging market covering their business strategy, future forecasts and SWOT analysis.

- This report covers in details the competitive landscape in Global Packaging market.

- This report provides PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental) analysis for Global Packaging market.

- This report provides Porter's Five Forces analysis for Global Packaging market.

- This report provides SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats) analysis for Global Packaging market.

- This report identifies the key challenges faced by new players in Global Packaging market.

- This report provides future trends and opportunities for Global Packaging market.

- This report also provides strategic recommendations for policy makers, end users, service providers and investors.

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4012279/

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


"We wish to thank the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), particularly the Los Angeles and Denver offices, for their continued support of Global SuperTanker, and their diligence in ensuring all legal and safety requirements have been met. The air safety regime of the U.S. is second to none, and we are honored to have worked closely with the FAA," said Jim Wheeler, President and CEO of Global SuperTanker. "We are proud that our aircraft, the world's largest, fastest, and longest-range aerial firefighting asset, has met the agency's rigorous safety standards, and we look forward to working with the FAA in the years to come."

"Global SuperTanker has completed the requested USFS testing and we are now awaiting the outcome from the Interagency Air Tanker Board (IAB)," said Harry Toll, Managing Partner of Alterna Capital Partners LLC, whose portfolio company, Cyterna Air, LLC, owns Global SuperTanker. "This is a busy time of year for the IAB members, but we are confident they will review the test materials in the very near future. We are volunteering to do all that we can to receive their final approval."

"We sincerely appreciated the support during testing we received from the USFS staff in San Ditmas, California," said Wheeler. "We expect the Spirit of John Muir to be fully operational in FAA Standard Category shortly, and are looking forward to our first assignment assisting the current bout of devastating wildland fires."

Global SuperTanker's converted B747-400 had previously been issued the FAA's Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) authorizing the installation and utilization of its pressurized tanks. The FAA has now issued Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) certificate 137, which allows Global SuperTanker to fly in revenue service. The Spirit of John Muir is now fully certified to operate as an aerial platform for wildland and marine firefighting, as well as oil spill remediation.

The Spirit of John Muir is the world's youngest Very Large Air Tanker (VLAT), and has almost twice the capacity of the next biggest aerial tanker. The John Muir is capable of delivering single or multiple drops of nearly 20,000 gallons of water or fire retardant, either of which can be released at variable rates from its pressurized tanks, producing a tailored response to the firefighting need.

Global SuperTanker is currently working with the U.S. Forest Service to achieve its final USFS certifications. While the aircraft awaits USFS approval, it is currently available not only to U.S. states, counties, and cities, but also to overseas entities. Jim Wheeler said, "Discussions with fire-related agencies around the world will intensify over the next few weeks, as will our focus on previously discussed call-when-needed contracts."

Flying at nearly 600 miles per hour, the Spirit of John Muir can leave its home base in Colorado Springs and reach any mission in the western United States in less than three hours. In addition, the range and speed of the B747-400 permits it the ability to arrive anywhere in the world in 20 hours with a single fuel stop.

Follow Global SuperTanker on Facebook and Twitter. For further information, please contact Moira Whalen at [email protected] or 203-299-7696.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406430

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160427/360845LOGO

SOURCE Global SuperTanker Services, LLC
MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Granite City Food & Brewery CEO Phil Costner today announced the appointment of two key executive roles. Jim Macchitelli has joined the company as the vice president of marketing for Granite City Food & Brewery and Cadillac Ranch All America Bar & Grill. Also, Dave Brantner has been promoted to corporate executive chef.

"As Granite City continues to grow its restaurants across the Midwest, it is important that we have clear strategy to help us drive our brand differentiation, our guest count growth, and our overall performance," said Costner. "Jim has had significant successes with brand positioning, product development, promotional offer development and deployment, integrated digital marketing, and effective local restaurant marketing support. He has the background, the expertise and the leadership ability to help us realize our potential in all areas."

Jim Macchitelli is a graduate of Loyola University in Chicago and holds an MBA from the University of Minnesota, Curtis L. Carlson School of Management. Dave Brantner has a culinary arts degree from Washburne Trade School and his experience includes The Cheesecake Factory and Marriott's Corporate Services and Clubs.

"Dave Brantner brings exceptional culinary experience and leadership skills to his new role," added Costner. "Given the importance of the made-from-scratch food at our brewery restaurants, Dave will enable us further to elevate our cuisine so that every dining experience is a memorable one at Granite City and at Cadillac Ranch."

About Granite City Food & Brewery

Granite City Food & Brewery is America's preeminent brewery-restaurant with 35 locations through the mid-west. Granite City features scratch kitchens and a patented brewing process, "Fermentus Interruptus" enabling every location to brew and serve the finest and freshest hand crafted beer in the industry. Cadillac Ranch All American Bar & Grill offers the finest country themed food, music and fun in a country casual atmosphere. Granite City and Cadillac Ranch are owned by CIC Partners, Dallas Texas. Additional information about Granite City Food & Brewery can be found at www.gcfb.com. Follow Granite City Food & Brewery on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

SOURCE Granite City Food & Brewery

Related Links

http://www.gcfb.com


LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Future Market Insights offers a 10-year forecast for the graphite market between 2016 and 2026. In terms of value, the market is expected to register a CAGR of 11.1% during the forecast period (20162026). The main objective of the report is to offer insights on the advancements in the graphite market. The study provides market dynamics that are expected to influence current environment and future status of the graphite market over the forecast period. The primary objective of this report is to offer updates on trends, drivers, restraints, value forecasts, and opportunities for manufacturers operating in the graphite market.



A section of report discusses on how the overall competition in the market is steadily increasing. It discusses various factors that are shaping internal as well as external competition in the market. The consumption of graphite is facing slowdown in conventional applications due to downturn in steel and iron industry. However, adoption of graphite is increasing in emerging applications such as heat exchangers, batteries, aerospace, and nuclear reactors, among others.



The report provides details market share analysis of the graphite market on the basis of key manufacturers. A section of the report highlights country-wise graphite demand. It provides a market outlook for 20162026 and sets the forecast within the context of the report, including the new technological developments as well as product offerings for niche applications in the graphite market.



In the final section of the report, a competitive landscape has been included to provide report audiences with a dashboard view. Detailed profiles of manufacturers are also included within the scope of the report to evaluate their long- and short-term strategies, key offerings and recent developments in the graphite market. Key players in global graphite market include SGL Carbon SE, Showa Denko K.K., AMG Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V., Graphite India Limited, Toyo Tanso Co., Ltd., SEC Carbon Ltd., Tokai Carbon Co., Ltd., HEG Ltd. and GrafTech International Limited.



Key Segments Covered



By Product Type



Natural Graphite

Flake

Amorphous

Vein

Synthetic Graphite

Graphite Electrode

Carbon Fibre

Graphite Blocks

Graphite Powder

Others



By Application



Refractories

Lubricants & Crucible

Foundry Facing

Batteries

Others



By Region



North America

Latin America

Western Europe

Eastern Europe

Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ)

Middle East & Africa (MEA)

Japan



A detailed analysis has been provided for every segment in terms of market size analysis for graphite market



It is imperative to note that in an ever-fluctuating global economy, we not only conduct forecasts in terms of CAGR, but also analyse the same on the basis of key parameters such as year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth to understand the predictability of the market and to identify the right opportunities for market players.



Another key feature of this report is the analysis of all key segments in terms of absolute dollar. This is usually overlooked while forecasting the market. However, absolute dollar opportunity is critical in assessing the level of opportunity that a provider can look to achieve, as well as identify potential resources from a sales and delivery perspective in the graphite market.

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4135360/



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


Burgess has 22 years of experience working with small employers for three health insurance carriers on the Fortune 500. She was most recently at UnitedHealthcare of Texas, Inc. since 2004 where she led business development in Corpus Christi, growing it from an emerging to an established market in less than four years. UnitedHealthcare gave her a President's Award in 2007 for her sales performance. Burgess joined Humana, Inc. in 1999 marketing to independent agencies in the greater Corpus Christi area. Her sales achievement earned Humana's President's Club Award in 2001. She started her career at Prudential Health in 1994.

"With Robbi's extensive background on the carrier side of the insurance industry, she will bring a unique perspective to our employee benefits division," said Managing Director Rob Fraiche. "Her experience working with brokers will give us insight to get the best coverage terms available for our clients."

Burgess received a bachelor's degree in organizational communication from Texas State University, San Marcos.

About Higginbotham

Higginbotham is a single source for insurance and financial services that brokers business insurance, employee benefits, retirement plans, executive benefits, life insurance and home/auto insurance from more than 250 regional and national carriers. It supplements coverage with in-house risk management and benefit plan administration services. The firm was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, with 25 additional offices statewide. Higginbotham ranks as the nation's 31st largest independent insurance brokerage firm based on revenue, making it the largest Texas-based broker (Business Insurance, July 2016). Visit www.higginbotham.net for more information.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407176

SOURCE Higginbotham

Related Links

http://higginbotham.net


LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The grow lights market is expected to be valued at USD 4.19 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 9.63% between 2016 and 2022. A key influencing factor for the growth of the market is the emergence of vertical farming to meet the growing demands for fresh horticultural produce in urban areas across the world. Besides, the legalization of growing marijuana for medical and recreational purposes in North America is another factor that is encouraging the demand for grow lights in this market.



"LED set to be the dominating technology in grow lights market"

LED grow lights are expected to be the most preferred grow lights technology between 2016 and 2022. The growth is attributed to the improved energy efficiency offered by LED technology, long operational life, and the ability to vary the light spectrum depending on the type of plant being grown and its current growth stage.



"Vertical farming application expected to grow rapidly in the near future"

The grow lights market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR in the vertical farming application during the forecast period. The growth of vertical farms because of increased demand for horticultural produce would drive the grow lights market



"Europe to be the largest market for grow lights"

The European region is estimated to be the largest market for grow lights during the forecast period. The need to provide supplemental lighting to plants in commercial greenhouses set to drive the grow lights market in this region.



Break-up of profiles of primary participants for the report is given below:

- By Company Type: Tier 1  7%, Tier 2  23%, and Tier 3  70%

- By Designation: C-level 46%, Director level  24%, VP level  30%

- By Region: North America - 51%, Europe  32%, APAC  12%, RoW  5%



The key players in the market include Royal Philips Electronics N.V. (Netherlands), General Electric Company (U.S.), Osram Licht AG (Germany), Gavita Holland B.V. (Netherlands), LumiGrow, Inc. (U.S.), Heliospectra AB (Sweden), Iwasaki Electric Co. Ltd. (Japan), Illumitex, Inc. (U.S.), Hortilux Schreder B.V. (Netherlands), iGrow Induction Lighting LLC. (U.S.), and Sunlight Supply, Inc. (U.S.) among others.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3688666/



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


SYDNEY, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today a Hainan Airlines Airbus A330 set off from China's Changsha Huanghua International Airport and successfully touched down at Sydney Kingford Smith Airport after ten hours in the air. The aircraft flew over the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge, before landing. The flight formally launched Hainan Air's non-stop service between Changsha and Sydney, adding another spoke to the airline's intercontinental route network, and enhancing flight options for its international travelers.

With the signing of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA) on June 17, 2015, the Australian government extended the validity of multiple-entry visas for Chinese citizens from three years to 10, becoming the fourth country to offer Chinese citizens the ten-year multiple entry document. The loosened visa rules makes it easier for Chinese tourists who would like to visit the "Land Down Under", saving valuable time in preparing for the trip. The opening of the Changsha-Sydney route is likely to bring more Chinese investors to Australia as well as make the trip more convenient for business executives, students studying abroad and anyone travelling between the two countries.

Hainan Airlines has added four international routes - Changsha-Los Angeles, Beijing-Tel Aviv, Beijing-Manchester and Beijing-Calgary - so far this year. After launching the Changsha-Sydney flight, the airline plans to add Xi'an-Sydney and Xi'an-Changsha routes. The airline's international business has grown rapidly, with significant annual increases in revenue. Hainan Airlines currently operates a wide array of intercontinental flight routes, and when this network is coupled with the airline's extensive list of destinations within China, as well as the multiplicity of destinations across Australia as a result of cooperation with local carriers, a wide choice of options becomes available to anyone travelling between the two countries.

Hainan Airlines has safely operated its fleet for 23 years and its flights have logged over 5 million hours. The airline was ranked fifth in Airline Safety for 2016 by JACDEC, a German airline safety data evaluation firm, and has been named a 5-star airline by Skytrax six years in a row. The airline's high-quality services are acclaimed by both domestic and overseas travelers.

Hainan Airlines' Changsha-Sydney flight schedule (Note: All takeoff and landing times are local.)

Flight Number Aircraft Schedule Departure City Departure Time Arrival Time Arrival City HU7997 A330 Monday/Friday Changsha 18:15 06:35+1 Sydney HU7998 A330 Tuesday/Saturday Sydney 08:20 16:35 Changsha

SOURCE Hainan Airlines Co., LTD
HAMBURG, Germany, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- HANSAINVEST Hanseatische Investment-GmbH is creating a new real estate special fund designed to invest in residential real estate in the United States. The fund  known as HANSA US Residential  is geared towards institutional investors who want to be involved with core residential properties in the US. The target fund volume is USD 1 billion, and plans call for equity of some USD 500 million. The distribution yield for investors is forecast at 4.5 per cent p.a. The fund will be traded under the legal form of a German real estate special fund in accordance with the German Capital Investment Code (KAGB).

HANSAINVEST, the Fund Manager, will partner with Bell Partners (Bell)  an apartment investment and management company focused on high-quality multifamily communities throughout the US. At the moment, Bell has over 60,000 units under management. Bell offers an extensive and full service operating platform containing expertise in acquisitions and dispositions, property operations, construction, accounting, risk management, market research and all other related support functions. Since 2002, Bell has completed over USD 10 billion of apartment transactions, including almost USD 1.5 billion of activity in 2015 alone. Bell is also one of the largest apartment renovators in the US.

"Bell Partners is an excellent partner for HANSA US Residential," said Nicholas Brinckmann, managing director of HANSAINVEST. "Bell provides great market access and the necessary all-round expertise in the multi-family houses segment," Brinckmann noted, adding that a Bell investment entity will also invest in the fund as a co-investor. "This will enable us to be aligned and have common interests shared by the investors and our local partners," he said.

"The positive development of the overall economic and demographic data provides a clear argument in the long term for investments in the US residential real estate market. This was what ultimately prompted us to decide to create a US fund," the managing director of HANSAINVEST said, explaining the strategy further. "What's more, the legal framework makes it possible to increase rent for residential real estate in the US at much more regular intervals than here in Germany. From the perspective of investors, this is a great benefit," Brinckmann said.

Geographically, the fund will invest in metropolitan areas with positive demographic and economic fundamentals. The plans call for the properties to be located in strong areas in major cities. The focus will be on residential properties with a volume of between USD 50 million and USD 100 million, including high-rise residential buildings, blocks of flats and apartment complexes with between 150 and 550 units each.

HANSAINVEST pursues a buy-and-sell strategy and intends to hold the properties after their purchase for at least five to seven years. The first properties are scheduled to be purchased this year. Plans do not provide for a limit on the term of the fund. DONNER & REUSCHEL Aktiengesellschaft will serve as custodian.

About HANSAINVEST

Capital management company HANSAINVEST Hanseatische Investment-GmbH was founded in 1969 and is part of the SIGNAL IDUNA Group. Divided into three divisions, the Hamburg-based firm provides services related to the management and administration of alternative investments, real estate and securities. The company also operates in Luxembourg through a subsidiary. More than 180 employees manage assets of over EUR 23 billion in over 145 public and more than 60 special funds, of which about EUR 5.3 billion is in real estate.

In the Real Assets division, internationally operating experts manage office, retail, hotel, logistics and residential properties in 18 countries. Apart from portfolio management, the experts handle acquisitions and sales, as well as asset management, project development, fund administration and fund monitoring (most recently updated on 31 July 2016).

Access more information at www.hansainvest.de.

Media enquiries:

Sven Hildebrandt  Head of Marketing & Corporate Communications Kapstadtring 8  Germany - 22297 Hamburg  Telephone + 49 40 300 57-78 38

[email protected]

SOURCE HANSAINVEST

Related Links

http://www.hansainvest.de


LOS ANGELES, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Haxby, a premium menswear brand specializing in denim, accessories, and outerwear, are announcing the release of a $40 premium jean. Made from Italian and Japanese denim, constructed entirely in Los Angeles, CA, these jeans come in three colors and three cuts - for a perfect fit and style for every guy. Next month, the brand will be releasing a full line of luxury essentials at unheard of prices, including suiting made in Japan (starting at $395), outerwear made in Italy (starting at $299) and accessories made in Switzerland (starting at $45).

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406637

The inspiration behind Haxby's new collection came from a simple desire to design and create beautifully crafted garments and to deliver them to their customers at unparalleled prices. A luxury menswear brand - for everyman. Tim White, Haxby's Creative Director, states: We kept asking ourselves: "why can't elevated be accessible?" The answer is, it can. "We combined our passion for design with premier manufacturing and materials, to offer elevated classics, from casual to formal, that every guy can relate to. Affordable clothes that not only make you look and feel good, but are also crafted with care and integrity." To us, this is the future of menswear."

"The traditional retail model is broken and outdated," says Haxby CEO, Mike Dow. "Currently, the creators (brands) take all the risk, while the customer ends up paying 3 or 4 times more for the product than they really should - all due to the retailer's giant markup. It just doesn't make sense in today's connected, online world. We are here to change that. Our new mission is simple: to enable the "everyday guy" to achieve an elevated look, without breaking the bank."

A few key points on Haxby Menswear:

Haxby offers elevated menswear with immaculate craftsmanship at incredible price points.

Every Haxby item is constructed by the most prestigious manufacturers in Italy , Japan , and the USA , using only some of the most premium materials available.

, , and the , using only some of the most premium materials available. Denim starts at $40 , Accessories at $45 , Suiting at $395 , and Outerwear at $299 .

About Haxby

Haxby's ultimate mission is to re-define how menswear is made, bought and sold - all without sacrificing quality, design, and craftsmanship. Visit https://haxby.com to learn more.

Related Images

image1.jpg

image2.jpg

image3.jpg

image4.jpg

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Haxby
Sullivan is returning to McDonald Hopkins where she started her legal career in 2008. For the past four years, she served as associate counsel for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation where she provided regulatory advice and transactional guidance to various service lines including the clinical laboratory, professional pathology, imaging, transplant, and remote and distance health teams.

"We are thrilled that Elizabeth has returned to McDonald Hopkins," said Charles B. Zellmer, chair of the Business department. "She has added to her already strong expertise advising the healthcare industry on a multitude of topics."

During her career, Sullivan has assisted clinical laboratories, hospitals, physician specialty groups, telehealth providers, transplant centers, surgery centers, healthcare associations, pharmacies, and other healthcare providers throughout the U.S. with regulatory, licensing, compliance, reimbursement, contractual, and corporate matters. Sullivan has provided support to entities during licensure and accreditation surveys and assisted in navigating state professional licensure laws, CLIA standards and state laboratory laws, government and private payor reimbursement, fraud and abuse rules, state telehealth laws, HIPAA rules and regulations, and state and federal pharmacy regulations.

Sullivan earned a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 2008 where she also received a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Heath Law. She graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 2005 with a M.A. in Bioethics and a B.A. in Political Science, cum laude.

Elizabeth Sullivan can be reached at [email protected] or 216.348.5401.

About the Healthcare Practice at McDonald Hopkins

For over 50 years, our firm has provided legal service to individuals and entities in the healthcare industry. Today, our diverse, national practice enables us to provide a unique perspective on the issues you face in the rapidly changing healthcare environment. We utilize our knowledge of the business, financial and operational components of your industry to deliver value beyond traditional legal services.

About McDonald Hopkins

Founded in 1930, McDonald Hopkins is a business advisory and advocacy law firm with locations in Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Miami, and West Palm Beach. Our subsidiary, McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies LLC, is based in Washington, D.C. McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies is not a law firm and does not provide legal services. For more information about McDonald Hopkins, visit mcdonaldhopkins.com.

CONTACT:

Deborah W. Kelm

McDonald Hopkins LLC

Phone: 216.348.5733

Email: [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407211

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120131/CL44903LOGO

SOURCE McDonald Hopkins

Related Links

http://www.mcdonaldhopkins.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Business Intelligence (BI) platforms help build BI applications by providing competences in analysis, platform integration, and information delivery. As healthcare organizations are realizing the untapped potential of huge amounts of data, they are implementing solutions that utilize business intelligence to help collect, sort, and mine valuable insights from this data. The complex data gathered from numerous sources (operational, patient data) is analyzed and used by healthcare providers with the aid of BI platforms for the larger population.



This research report provides a detailed analysis of trends in the healthcare BI platform market. It also comprises a broad analysis of the industry drivers, restraints, and opportunities. The report also provides a comprehensive assessment of key market player strategies. The market for healthcare BI platform has been segmented into various functions: clinical analytics, financial analytics, operational analytics, and others. Financial analytics is expected to be the largest healthcare BI platform function over the forecast period, whereas clinical analytics is expected to be the fastest growing functional segment over the forecast period. The global healthcare BI platform market has been extensively analyzed on the basis of deployment type into on-premise and cloud. Cloud is expected to be the fastest growing healthcare BI platform segment by deployment type over the forecast period. On the basis of model type, the healthcare BI platform market is segmented as self-service BI and corporate BI. Self-service BI is the latest trend in the BI market and is expected to be the fastest growing segment over the forecast period. The market size and forecasts in terms of revenue (US$ Mn) for each of these segments have been provided for the period 2013 to 2023, considering 2013 and 2014 as the base years. The report also provides the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for each segment of the market for the forecast period 2015 to 2023.



The healthcare BI platform market is segmented based on geography into North America, Europe, Middle-East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and Latin America, and a detailed regional analysis is provided. A country-level analysis is also included in the report, covering the countries in each region. North America is expected to be the largest and fastest growing healthcare BI platform market among all regions. Europe is one of the mature markets for healthcare BI platform, whereas Asia Pacific is expected to be one of the most attractive markets in the near future.



Market estimates for the healthcare BI platform have been assessed considering different political, environmental, social, technological, economic, and legal factors. The share of leading players of the global healthcare BI platform market is provided for the year 2014. Company profiles (CPs) of market leaders elucidate on details such as company overview, segmentation, recent developments, business strategies, and financial information in the healthcare BI platform market. Companies profiled in the report include SAP SE, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, SAS Institute, Inc., IBM Corporation, OpenText Corporation, and Information Builders. The report would allow healthcare organizations and research and development agencies to make informed decisions about healthcare BI platforms, and thus gain competitive advantage in the market.



Segmentation of the Global Healthcare BI Platform Market



Global Healthcare BI Platform Market, by Function



Clinical Analytics

Financial Analytics

Operational Analytics

Others (Regulatory Reporting, etc.)

Global Healthcare BI Platform Market, By Deployment Type



On-premise

Cloud

Global Healthcare BI Platform Market, By Model Type



Self-service

Corporate

Global Healthcare BI Platform Market, By Geography



North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East and Africa

Latin America



Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03999387-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

Reportlinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com





__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

http://www.reportlinker.com


LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Holter monitor is a portable ECG device that can be worn by the patient to record heart activity continuously for a certain period. Other ECG devices record heart activity only for a certain period. However, a patient may suffer from irregular heartbeat at any point in time, thereby requiring continuous monitoring for a longer period. Holter ECGs are capable of recording data for a longer period, and transferring the same to doctors for analysis.

Persistence Market Research (PMR) offers a 10-year forecast of the global Holter monitoring Systems market between 2016 and 2024. In terms of value, the market is expected to register a CAGR of 4.5% during the forecast period. This study analyses market dynamics that are expected to influence the current environment and future status of the global Holter monitoring systems market over the forecast period. It includes key trends, drivers, restraints, and opportunities that are influencing growth of the global Holter monitoring systems market over the forecast period. Impact analysis of key growth drivers and restraints based on the weighted average model are included in this report to better equip clients with crystal clear decision-making insights.

The global Holter monitoring systems market is segmented on the basis of:



Product type

End user

Region

On the basis of product type the market is segmented as follows:



Holter monitoring systems

Holter monitoring devices

Event monitoring devices

Holter monitoring software

Holter monitoring devices segment is estimated to account for highest revenue share of US$ 512 Mn in 2016, and is expected to register highest CAGR during the forecast period.



On the basis of end user the market is segmented as follows;



End user

Hospitals

Diagnostic centers

Clinics

Ambulatory surgical centers

The hospitals segment is expected to witness highest CAGR of 4.8% during the forecast period.



On the basis of region/country the market is segmented as follows:



North America

U.S.

Canada

Latin America

Argentina

Brazil

Mexico

Rest of Latin America

Europe

France

Germany

Italy

Spain

U.K.

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

India

Japan

Australia & New Zealand

Rest of APAC

Middle East & Africa

GCC countries

South Africa

Rest of MEA

North America and APAC markets are estimated to account for 34.9 % and 27.3 % revenue share respectively in 2016 and are expected to dominate the market over the forecast period.



Key features of this report



Drivers and restraints

Latest product innovations and key developments in the market

Analysis of business strategies of top players

Holter monitoring systems market estimates and forecast

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3902173/

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


WASHINGTON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc., a nonprofit educational organization honoring the achievements of outstanding individuals and encouraging youth to pursue their dreams through higher education, today announced the findings of its State of Our Nation's Youth (SONY) survey, in advance of the 2016 presidential election. The State of Our Nation's Youth report has been produced by the Association since 1997 to give voice to the opinions, concerns, thoughts and aspirations of young people in the United States. The 2016 report offers key insights into the attitudes and beliefs of approximately 1,500 high school students and recent high school graduates nationwide on topics such as trust in government, determinants of success, the media, education, employment and managing stress. The primary purpose of the survey is to better understand the important influences shaping the next generation of American leaders within the context of a presidential election cycle.

The survey, fielded and published every four years, is commissioned by the Association and conducted by Hart Research Associates and Dr. Gregory Wolniak of New York University. The key findings from the 2016 SONY survey construct a compelling narrative about the values, goals, priorities and concerns of today's 14-23 year olds. Contrary to common assumptions about "Gen Z" and younger Millennials, responses clearly express that this generation is conscientious, hard-working, career-driven, dedicated to progressing racial, socioeconomic and LGBT equality, and yet, somewhat traditional in their life goals. Based on personal experiences, the survey shows that young people in the United States are redefining the means by which the American Dream is achieved  both personally and societally.

Of the high school students and recent high school graduates surveyed, results showed:

Despite the many challenges faced by this generation, young people remain cautiously optimistic about the future and aim to better society as a whole.

Hope and optimism about the country's future has been on the rise since 2008. Between 2001 and 2008, students were increasingly pessimistic about the country's future. However, since 2008 there has been an uptick in optimism. Most recently, in 2016, nearly two-thirds of high school students (64 percent) reported feeling hopeful and optimistic towards the country's future.

Between 2001 and 2008, students were increasingly pessimistic about the country's future. However, since 2008 there has been an uptick in optimism. Most recently, in 2016, nearly two-thirds of high school students (64 percent) reported feeling hopeful and optimistic towards the country's future. Social equality is the most important issue for change in the United States . According to high school students and graduates, areas most often identified as needing change in America are equal treatment of all races (35 and 33 percent, respectively) and narrowing the economic gap between rich and poor (34 and 30 percent).

According to high school students and graduates, areas most often identified as needing change in America are equal treatment of all races (35 and 33 percent, respectively) and narrowing the economic gap between rich and poor (34 and 30 percent). Most believe the presidential election will make a large difference for the country. 45 percent of high school students and 52 percent of graduates expect the 2016 election will make a very large difference for the country, with an additional 35 percent of both groups expecting it will make a fairly large difference.

45 percent of high school students and 52 percent of graduates expect the 2016 election will make a very large difference for the country, with an additional 35 percent of both groups expecting it will make a fairly large difference. Despite optimism for the country's future and a belief that the 2016 election will have a major impact on it, few trust the government. Small shares of today's young people have faith in the government to do what is right. Fourteen percent of high school students and 9 percent of high school graduates never trust the government to do what is right.

Contrary to what many believe about "Gen Z" and younger Millennials, these generations have fairly traditional life goals and desires.

Success is closely tied to financial stability, helping others and raising a family. Today's younger generations associate being well off financially (75 percent of high school students and 76 percent of high school graduates), helping others who are in difficulty (69 percent of students and 68 percent of graduates), and raising a family (66 and 64 percent, respectively) with success in life. Each of these life goals was rated essential or very important when considering life success.

Today's younger generations associate being well off financially (75 percent of high school students and 76 percent of high school graduates), helping others who are in difficulty (69 percent of students and 68 percent of graduates), and raising a family (66 and 64 percent, respectively) with success in life. Each of these life goals was rated essential or very important when considering life success. Young people today place much more emphasis on actions and hard work than luck. Nearly nine out of 10 high school students and high school graduates attribute success in life to hard work and actions rather than luck.

Nearly nine out of 10 high school students and high school graduates attribute success in life to hard work and actions rather than luck. The leading source of pressure among high school students is themselves. When evaluating the leading sources of pressure, students most often name themselves; 65 percent of students who characterized pressure to get into college as a major problem in their lives indicated that this pressure was self-induced, and 58 percent credited their parents.

Young Americans still see value in higher education, despite real concerns about cost.

The pursuit of a college degree remains a nearly universal aspiration among high school students. 90 percent of high school students intend to pursue some type of degree. However, this percentage has decreased from 97 percent in 2012, possibly indicating a minor shift in perceived value of higher education credentials or the very real impact of higher costs within this space. Among high school students who plan to complete a degree or certificate, roughly 16 percent intend to pursue a vocational, technical, or two-year degree or certificate, about half (49 percent) aim to complete a four-year degree, and just over one in three (34 percent) have their sights on a graduate degree.

90 percent of high school students intend to pursue some type of degree. However, this percentage has decreased from 97 percent in 2012, possibly indicating a minor shift in perceived value of higher education credentials or the very real impact of higher costs within this space. Among high school students who plan to complete a degree or certificate, roughly 16 percent intend to pursue a vocational, technical, or two-year degree or certificate, about half (49 percent) aim to complete a four-year degree, and just over one in three (34 percent) have their sights on a graduate degree. Progressing to college immediately after high school remains the norm, though other factors play a decisive role. Most students (91 percent) intend to enroll in college immediately after graduation. Of those that do not intend to enroll immediately, many cite the cost of going to college (59 percent), need to get a full-time job (47 percent), and lacking good enough grades (36 percent) as major factors in their decision. This is of note as the U.S. Department of Education reports that only 68 percent actually pursue a college degree the fall following high school graduation, potentially highlighting a disconnect between students desire and ability to do so.

Most students (91 percent) intend to enroll in college immediately after graduation. Of those that do not intend to enroll immediately, many cite the cost of going to college (59 percent), need to get a full-time job (47 percent), and lacking good enough grades (36 percent) as major factors in their decision. This is of note as the U.S. Department of Education reports that only 68 percent actually pursue a college degree the fall following high school graduation, potentially highlighting a disconnect between students desire and ability to do so. College costs are cause for concern among the vast majority of high school students. College costs continue to skyrocket. It is no surprise that students express a great deal of concern about their ability to finance their education. 46 percent acknowledge some concerns and 21 percent have major concerns.

"The results of the 2016 State of our Nation's Youth survey underscore not only the importance of providing financial support to students pursuing a four year degree, but also the need to support alternate forms of postsecondary education, such as career and technical programs. 59 percent of high school students who do not choose to enroll in college cite cost as the deciding factor and 47 percent cite the need to get a full-time job," said Terrence J. Giroux, executive director, Horatio Alger Association. "Understanding the many challenges students face today when considering higher education, the Association is addressing the increasing demand for career and technical education through its new scholarship programs tailored to students pursuing these degrees as well as four-year degrees. As our Members know well, there are many ways to achieve success and we are dedicated to providing scholarships for deserving young Americans, whichever path they choose."

Survey results equip key constituencies  including educators, policy makers and media  with valuable data that lends insights into the viewpoints and attitudes of United States youth  many of whom will be first-time voters in a national presidential election. Many of the same topics studied in 2012 and prior years remained consistent in the 2016 survey as this year's study re-examined key topics such as politics, academics and educational aspirations, news and media, family and relationships, communication and technology and future outlook on the country. New topics were also introduced, such as career and technical education, parental involvement, stress and depression and the impact of social media.

"Despite  or perhaps because of  the fact that this generation grew up within challenging social and economic circumstances, they are incredibly focused, concerned about their educational investments, hardworking and don't take success for granted," said Dr. Wolniak. "They put great pressure on themselves to do well and are determined not only to succeed individually, but also to achieve social justice. This generation appears to care a great deal about 'doing well by doing good.'"

Peter Hart, founder, Hart Research Associates, concurred, "After working with the Association for the past fifteen years, it is remarkable to see both the similarities and differences in young people over the past two decades. The 2016 survey points to a generation that is resilient, socially-conscious, career-driven and looking to make a real difference in this country. For our team, the State of Our Nation's Youth survey is such a meaningful project as it allows us a glimpse into the thoughts, concerns and dreams of those who will set the course for the United States in the coming years."

High school students surveyed were all enrolled in high school during the 2015 to 2016 academic year and recent high school graduates surveyed were ages 18 to 23, having graduated high school within the past six years. Among high school graduates, roughly two-thirds were pursuing some form of postsecondary education.

Horatio Alger Association aims to educate young people about the limitless opportunities afforded to them by the free-enterprise system. Since the establishment of its scholarship programs in 1984, the organization has awarded more than $125 million in undergraduate, graduate and specialized scholarships to students across the United States and Canada. The Association also annually bestows the Horatio Alger Award upon outstanding business, civic and cultural leaders who have succeeded despite facing significant adversity, and who are committed to philanthropy and higher education. Scholarships are funded solely through the generosity of Association Members, Life Partners and friends.

For the full State of Our Nation's Youth report, please visit www.horatioalger.org/news-events/state-of-our-nations-youth/. For more information about Horatio Alger Association, please visit www.horatioalger.org. Join the conversation on social media using #SONY2016 on Facebook (www.Facebook.com/HoratioAlgerUS), Twitter (www.Twitter.com/HoratioAlgerUS) and Instagram (www.Instagram.com/HoratioAlgerAssociation).

About Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans:

Founded in 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. is dedicated to the simple but powerful belief that hard work, honesty and determination can conquer all obstacles. The Association honors the achievements of outstanding leaders who have accomplished remarkable successes in spite of adversity by bestowing upon them the Horatio Alger Award and inducting them as lifetime Members. Horatio Alger Members support promising young people with the resources and confidence needed to overcome adversity in pursuit of their dreams through higher education. Through the generosity of its Members and friends, the Association awards more than $12 million annually in undergraduate and graduate need-based scholarships across the United States and Canada and provides college support and mentoring services to its Scholars. Since 1984, the Association has awarded more than $125 million in college scholarships to more than 22,000 deserving young people. For more information, please visit www.horatioalger.org.

About the Survey:

This memo summarizes key findings from a national online survey of 1,010 high school student and 502 recent high school graduates conducted on behalf of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans.[1] The interviews were conducted April 21 to 28, 2016.

[1] Participants qualified as high school students if they were enrolled in high school during the 2015 to 2016 academic year. Participants qualified as recent high school graduates if they were ages 18 to 23 and graduated high school within the past six years (most graduated in or after 2012).

CONTACT:

McKenna Young

484-385-2913 (office)

[email protected]

SOURCE Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.horatioalger.org


DALLAS, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Humach (humans + machines) is revolutionizing the way businesses engage, acquire, and support their customers by combining the creativity and experience of humans with the computational power, analytics and automation of machines.

Humach is pleased to announce that Tom Asher has joined the team as the SVP of Customer Engagement. In this new role, Asher will serve as a key leader in the strategic development of innovative customer experience solutions for Fortune 2000 companies and venture-backed start-ups.

"Humach is focused on improving the customer success journey. Tom's background in driving customer support and sales solutions will help our clients achieve unprecedented business value," said CEO Tim Houlne. "Tom will be working out of our San Francisco office, allowing us to partner with some of the most innovative companies in the world."

Prior to Humach, Tom was VP and General Manager of The Action Company, which developed a new communication channel and platform to provide a better mobile consumer service experience. Previously Tom built and led the Customer Care function for Sunrun, now the largest residential solar company in the U.S. Prior to Sunrun, Tom oversaw Consumer Relations for Levi Strauss & Co. for U.S., Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

"I'm very excited to join Humach. I've been following Humach since the company was launched," said Asher. "The philosophies and experience of the leadership team are closely aligned with my career long passion to redefine and drive a vastly improved customer experience."

Tom has been involved in the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Business (SOCAP International) since 1997, serving as an officer and then chairman on SOCAP's national board. Tom will be moderating a panel on "Dismantling Silos in an age of Digital Disruption" at SOCAP's Annual conference October 23-26 in Orlando, FL.

ABOUT HUMACH

Humach helps its clients find more innovative ways to engage, acquire and support their customers. By combining business intelligence, experienced agents and machine automation, Humach is shifting the business focus back to the customer. The Dallas, Texas-based company offers best-in-class multi-channel contact center services. Leveraging numerous patents spanning cloud-based, scalable infrastructure, Humach already provides contact center services to some of the world's largest enterprises. Learn more at www.humach.com

Contact:

Alithia Gallegos

(972) 694-0603

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160114/322287LOGO

SOURCE Humach

Related Links

http://www.humach.com


SAN ANTONIO, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hyundai Hope On Wheels (HHOW) and San Antonio-area Hyundai dealers will present University Hospital Center at San Antonio with a $250,000 Scholar Grant to be used to improve care and increase treatment options for kids with cancer. University Hospital Center at San Antonio was one of 24 recipients across the country selected by a rigorous scientific review panel to receive this highly competitive Hyundai Scholar Grant.

The $250,000 Scholar Grant will be presented at University Hospital Center at San Antonio, 4502 Medical Dr, San Antonio, TX 78229 on Tuesday, September 13 at 12:00pm at a Handprint Ceremony during which the handprints of local San Antonio-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*:

Mark Webb , CEO for Pediatrics, University Health Systems

Dr. Michelle Arandes, Acting Chair Pediatrics, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

Dr. Gail Tomlinson , Professor of Pediatrics, Division Director of Pediatric Hematology-oncology and Greehey Distinguished Chair in Cancer and Genetics

Stacy Malone , mother of Waylon Malone , pediatric cancer patient

Jake Casmir , Senior Manager, Region Marketing and Merchandising, Hyundai Motor America

Jimmy Willis , General Manager, World Car Hyundai

*ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEW AND PHOTO/B-ROLL OPPORTUNITIES*

"Our mission at Hyundai Hope On Wheels is clear: End Childhood Cancer," said Dave Zuchowski, President and CEO of Hyundai Motor America. "These individual awards to hospitals and organizations across the country are pivotal to ending childhood cancer. Although there remains a lot more work to be done, the innovation that comes from this research will ultimately help us find a cure. To all the kids, families and cancer researchers fighting this terrible disease  you are not alone and we remain committed to this important cause."

About the Hyundai Hope On Wheels Scholar Grants and Handprint Ceremonies

The Scholar Senior Research Grants will fund childhood research projects designed to improve the treatment and quality of life for children with cancer. The ultimate goal of the Scholar Senior Research Grant program is to find cures for childhood cancers once and for all. 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, now 13 years old, was only 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. Thirteen-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.

2016 National Call To Action: Give Hope A Hand

In addition to funding a multitude of research projects this September, HHOW is encouraging the public to contribute to the fight against childhood cancer in a personal way. The journey begins with one simple request: Give Hope A Hand. We invite visitors to the newly refreshed website at www.hyundaihopeonwheels.org, to tell how they will use their hands in the fight against pediatric cancer. Once there visitors can Learn + Care + Do + Give = Hope. There are a number of additional engaging, interactive ways the public can get involved and use their hands for good.

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


MONTVALE, N.J., Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- IMA (Institute of Management Accountants), the association of accountants and financial professionals in business, launched a creative advertising campaign this week, including commercials on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon," among other unexpected media outlets for its category. The multi-year campaign, targeting Millennials and finance professionals under 40, points to the CMA (Certified Management Accountant) certification  the world's leading management accounting credential  as the solution to confronting the skills gap in the finance and accounting profession.

The campaign, titled "You've got to earn it," was created in partnership with The Gate | New York. The multi-channel campaign will include TV, radio, print and digital ads, a new website experience, paid search, and integrated communications. Visit https://youtu.be/8fMMpSrjGqc to see the 30-second TV spot.

The focal point of the campaign is the story of a management accountant so proud of his CMA certification that he gets a large tattoo on his back, while his co-workers line up to be next. According to The Gate's research, 40 percent of adults 26 to 40 years old have at least one tattoo (and 43 percent of people with tattoos think a tattoo with a personal meaning is the most important factor).

"What's exciting about this campaign is its focus on the sense of pride and mastery of management accounting issues that comes with earning your CMA. Other certification programs might find it acceptable to grandfather in their candidates, but with the CMA, you've got to earn it," said Jeff Thomson, CMA, CAE, IMA president and CEO. "There is a market need for talented finance professionals, so we're highlighting that the CMA adds credibility to your name and shows employers that you are competent and capable of adding value to business."

"The 'You've got to earn it' campaign isn't just about the challenge of becoming a CMA; it's a dare," said David Bernstein, chief creative officer of The Gate. "We're essentially issuing a call to action for accountants to differentiate themselves in the market by taking a test with a 50 percent pass rate."

"To call yourself a CMA, you need to pass a two-part, eight-hour exam. Our campaign is a challenge for people who want the status that comes with the credential and a point of pride for people who already have it," added Beau Fraser, president of The Gate. "The creative and unconventional media strategy will break through typical financial certification marketing to show young finance professionals that earning a CMA is worth the effort for their career."

About IMA (Institute of Management Accountants)

IMA, the association of accountants and financial professionals in business, is one of the largest and most respected associations focused exclusively on advancing the management accounting profession. Globally, IMA supports the profession through research, the CMA (Certified Management Accountant) program, continuing education, networking and advocacy of the highest ethical business practices. IMA has a global network of more than 80,000 members in 140 countries and 300 professional and student chapters. Headquartered in Montvale, N.J., USA, IMA provides localized services through its four global regions: The Americas, Asia/Pacific, Europe, and Middle East/Africa. For more information about IMA, please visit www.imanet.org.

About The Gate Worldwide

The Gate | New York is part of The Gate Worldwide, an international advertising agency network that works with clients in tough, complicated industries to make their considered purchases products or services worth considering. The Gate manages over $250 million in client advertising and has a network of offices in New York, London, Edinburgh, Hong Kong and Shanghai. For more information, visit www.thegateworldwide.com.

SOURCE Institute of Management Accountants
CHICAGO, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Impact Advisors, LLC, a leading provider of healthcare information technology services, announced today that it has been ranked number six on Consulting Magazine's Best Small Firms to Work For list. This is the seventh time Impact Advisors has been recognized on the list.

"Being named to this list for the seventh time is really exciting for our firm," said Andy Smith, President and Co-Founder of Impact Advisors. "We run our business based on the principal that if you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients, so we are dedicated to creating an unmatched culture of caring, integrity and teamwork."

Consulting Magazine's Best Firms to Work For survey is widely considered to be the most comprehensive, independent source of opinion about the quality of life within the consulting professions' top firms. Rankings are based on an online survey, ranking firms in six different categories including client engagement, firm culture, firm leadership, career development, work/life balance and compensation and benefits. This is the ninth year the publication has ranked the Best Small Firms. More than 10,000 consultants participated in the survey, representing more than 300 firms.

Impact Advisors adds this honor to a growing list of workplace awards that includes Modern Healthcare's Best Places to Work in Healthcare for seven consecutive years and Becker's Hospital Review's 150 Great Places to Work in Healthcare for two consecutive years. The firm has been recognized by Consulting Magazine for a number of different awards. Most recently, Chief Executive Officer Peter Smith received honors as one of Consulting Magazine's Top 25 Consultants of 2016.

For more information on Impact Advisors, visit www.impact-advisors.com or visit the company on Facebook www.facebook.com/impactadvisors.

About Impact Advisors, LLC

Impact Advisors is a nationally recognized healthcare information technology consulting firm that is solving some of the toughest challenges in the industry by delivering strategic advisory, implementation and optimization services. Our comprehensive suite of patient access, clinical and revenue cycle services span the lifecycle of our clients' needs. Our experienced team has a powerful combination of clinical, revenue, operations, consulting, and IT experience. The firm has earned a number of prestigious industry and workplace awards including Best in KLAS for eight consecutive years, Healthcare Informatics HCI 100, Crain's Chicago Business Fast Fifty, as well as "best place to work" awards from: Modern Healthcare, Consulting Magazine, Becker's Hospital Review and Achievers. For more information about Impact Advisors, visit www.impact-advisors.com.

Media Contact:

Karli Smith

Chartwell Agency

815-977-5343

[email protected]

SOURCE Impact Advisors, LLC

Related Links

http://www.impact-advisors.com


SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Brazil topped the list of countries suffering from heightened cargo theft risks, according to the latest Global Supply Chain Security and Business Continuity Risk Index report from BSI Supply Chain Services and Solutions, closely followed by Venezuela and Germany.

The report showed that cargo theft continued to have a significant impact on trade globally, but highlighted that several countries were particularly affected.

In Brazil, Rio de Janeiro saw its highest rate of cargo theft in the last 23 years in 2015, with 7,225 incidents taking place  a 23% increase. Likely reasons for this include the severe impact of Brazil's overall economic crisis in Rio, and the increased law enforcement efforts in Sao Paulo, traditionally the leading area for theft in Brazil, driving a shift in more organized criminal activity to Rio.

With established and well organized 'fencing' networks in place, thieves have been able to target a range of product types, covering everything from food and beverages to cigarettes, electronics, pharmaceuticals.

This increase in theft forced companies to either relocate or adopt additional costly security measures, with figures showing cargo transportation companies in Rio de Janeiro devoting an average of 15-20% of their budget to security measures.

Worryingly, the rate of increase in theft is continuing into 2016 due to new gang activity in the Rio area and the movement of some gangs from Sao Paulo. Initial estimates suggest that theft increased by another 11% in the first quarter of 2016.

Similarly, in Venezuela, the worsening political and economic situation has continued to impact the availability of food and basic necessities. This in turn has led to an increase in looting and cargo truck hijackings of typically low-valued goods like rice, water, flour and liquor. In Aragua State for example, the rate of cargo theft has increased by 500%. The data shows thieves are using violence and tactics that are more frequently reserved for high-value shipments rather than loads of food, further impacting the scarcity of goods as cargo truck drivers refuse to transport them.

Daring vehicle shipment thefts have become increasingly commonplace in Germany. The figures show increases in both slash-and-grab and full-load thefts, with particular routes around the main cities and near borders being the most severely affected. Earlier this year, authorities disrupted a group suspected of stealing more than 100 cargo trucks across Germany since 2013. Separately, a group based in Lodz, Poland was apprehended and accused of stealing at least 60 fully-loaded cargo trucks in Berlin, Brandenburg, and Saxony over nearly two years. The statistics show that Saxony-Anhalt saw more than twice as many slash-and-grab incidents in first half 2016 compared to first half 2015.

Across 2015 BSI recorded 319 supply chain terrorism attacks. The figures showed that the proportion of supply chain attacks compared to all terrorism attacks increased 16 percent, and attacks were recorded in a record 33 countries, 38% more than the previous year.

The report found that terrorists targeted a wider range of industries than ever before. Attacks on agriculture and food and beverage targets more than tripled since 2013, and attacks on industrial and manufacturing materials, metals, and pharmaceutical cargo more than doubled.

Jim Yarbrough, Global Intelligence Program Manager at BSI commented:

"Companies have always faced a wide range of challenges to their supply chain, but these latest figures indicate just how severe the impact of violent theft can be. These events are creating extreme levels of risk for organizations, both directly affecting the bottom line and disrupting the supply chain in ways which, if not tackled, could do serious harm to a company's hard-earned reputation.

We know that for every shipment stolen, delayed, contaminated or destroyed, the cost to the end-consumer is raised. For exports this hurts competitiveness, undermines productivity and risks jobs; for imports it raises the cost of living for each and every citizen.

These organized gangs of thieves will always look for new ways to seize goods, so the ability to quantify and mitigate supply chain risks throughout the entire lifecycle is paramount. Understanding the risks, where they exist, and how likely they are to occur will help organizations minimise the delays, costs, and dangers that can result."

To download a copy of BSI's SCREEN Global Intelligence Risk Index Report, please click here.

The 2016 Supply Chain Security and Business Continuity Risk Index report is based on data from BSI's Supply Chain Risk Exposure Evaluation Network (SCREEN) which provides continuous evaluation across 22 proprietary risk factors and 204 countries. The data reveals a clear picture of the changing global threat landscape and how this varies by country, continent and industry sector.

About BSI Supply Chain Services and Solutions

BSI Supply Chain Services and Solutions is the leading global provider of supply chain intelligence, auditing services, audit compliance and risk management software solutions, and advisory services. Our mission is to help corporations, governments and associations identify, manage and mitigate global supply chain risks and maintain world class governance risk and compliance programs. Our holistic supply chain risk management suite is designed to predict and visualize risk, and develop robust risk mitigation and compliance management programs to protect your supply chain, brand and reputation. Our intelligence-infused supply chain solutions and global network empower our clients to understand global supply chain risk with unequaled precision.

To learn more, please visit www.bsi-supplychain.com

Media enquiries:

Kara Martin

BSI Supply Chain Services and Solutions

Tel: 480 448 7278

Email: [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110405/NE77664LOGO

SOURCE BSI Supply Chain Services and Solutions

Related Links

http://www.bsi-supplychain.com


BOSTON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cyber Security Network (CyberSN.com) announced today that Indigo Partners has merged with CyberSN.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406615

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406616LOGO

Veronica Mollica, CEO and Founder of Indigo Partners, joins the CyberSN.com executive team as Vice President of Business Development, responsible for building teams to support national expansion. Veronica is a Cyber Security Recruiter and the Founder of Indigo Partners, which was recognized in Hunt Scanlon's Cyber 20 and as one of the Top 10 Cyber Security Recruiting firms globally by Cybersecurity Ventures. She has been in the recruiting industry for 16 years, excelling at several national firms before opening Indigo's doors in 2003. She was named to CT Magazine's Top 40 Under 40 list in 2011 and prior to building a national niche in Information Security, her firm was twice voted the Top Employment Agency in Fairfield County, CT for its exceptional reputation in IT search, integrity, and personalized approach to the search process.

"I'm excited to work with an experienced individual who is cut from the same cloth of integrity and transparency, who has five-star sales and customer service skills, and who is a team player and believes there can be love in the work force," said CyberSN.com CEO and Founder Deidre Diamond. "Veronica is that rare person and I am beyond thrilled that we are uniting."

"I'm ecstatic to be joining forces with CyberSN, which in retrospect seems like a foregone conclusion thinking back to my first interaction with Deidre at the RSA Conference in 2015," said Veronica. "We share a vision for elevating the staffing industry and serving the cyber security community at the highest level by simplifying the search process for both clients and candidates."

"Deidre's proven track record in cyber security and search, combined with her leadership and passion, has led her to create an exceptionally talented team of experienced recruiters who understand the cyber security landscape and can fill security jobs faster and more efficiently than any other generalist or specialist staffing firm. We are committed to building the strongest network of the most talented cyber professionals in the industry."

CyberSN is the largest national cyber security staffing firm in the US.

About CyberSN

CyberSN (CyberSN.com), a Boston-based staffing company, is committed to making cyber security job searching and hiring simpler. For more information, visit cybersn.com or contact Lisa Kendall through Email.

Media Contact:

Lisa Kendall

888-470-8011 x 111

Email

http://www.cybersn.com

SOURCE CyberSN

Related Links

http://www.cybersn.com


For discussions on diversity, the Summit welcomes back Harden, former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and now Dupont's vice president of public policy and chief sustainability officer. She will present "The Future Faces of Farming: Embracing the Importance of Diversity," which will examine the critical role that women play in the agri-food markets, what diversity in U.S. agriculture looks like, and how embracing this diversity can move the sector forward.

Poindexter, vice president, government and industry affairs for Bunge, who will be the first of two keynote speakers, will present "Too Early to Declare Victory," which will address the evolution of agricultural policy and the role that women have played over the past three decades.

On the professional development side, author and accomplished human resource and talent executive, Grace Killelea, will present "The Confidence Effect," highlighting the steps that her company Half The Sky Leadership espouses in achieving confidence in business. Killelea has an outstanding network of women at every level and in diverse industries that support and promote women's advancement and achievement. Her book The Confidence Effect: Every Woman's Guide to the Attitude That Attracts Success, published in January 2016, was named "one of the seven most important new books" by Inc.com.

Other key topics and presenters at the Women in Agribusiness Summit include:

The Race for the White House and What It Means for Agriculture by John Gilliland , consultant to Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld

Addressing Food Waste in the Agri-Food Supply Chain, by Blythe Chorn , manager of sustainability for Deloitte Consulting, LLP

The Challenges and Opportunity of Co-Existence (of Organic/Non-GMO/GMO), by Lisa Spicka , founder and CEO of Maracuja Solutions

Food Safety Modernization Act: A Case Study, by Rachael Dettmann Spiegel , associate with Faegre Baker Daniels LLP, and Donna Taylor , senior advisory counsel at Valero

With skill workshops that include "Leading Through Change," "Things you can do TODAY to Take Back Your Life" and "Engaging in Fierce Conversations," this is a perfectly balanced professional and personal development event, attended by some 550-plus in the industry. A full third of the attendees are at the executive level, and the overall audience in 2015 included representation from 39 U.S. states and more than 200 ag companies.

Visit www.womeninag.com for more info, and join the conversation @Womeninagri, on Facebook and LinkedIn.

HighQuest Group, headquartered in Danvers, Mass., is a global consulting, events and media firm serving the agribusiness and food sectors. One of its key events is the annual Women in Agribusiness Summit that welcomes attendees to engage in discussions paramount to developing leaders, inspiring action and increasing industry knowledge. This year's Summit sponsors include: Cargill, Dow AgroSciences, Farm Credit Inc., Land O' Lakes, MetLife Agricultural Finance, Monsanto, Nationwide, Simplot and US Bank. www.highquestgroup.com





CONTACT: Michelle Pelletier Marshall

+1.978.887.8800, x117 [email protected]



Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406494

SOURCE HighQuest Group

Related Links

http://www.highquestpartners.com


CSE: IN

OTCQB: IMLFF

VANCOUVER, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - InMed Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ("InMed") (CSE: IN; OTCQB: IMLFF), a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the research and development of novel, cannabinoid-based drug therapies,today announced that Andrew Hull has been appointed to the Board of Directors, effective September 12, 2016.

Mr. Hull's career has spanned over thirty years as a corporate executive in the global healthcare and biotechnology industries, including the last fourteen years at Takeda Pharmaceuticals where he currently serves as the Vice President of Global Alliances. Mr. Hull has substantial experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with a focus on strategic partnerships and commercialization of prescription drugs.

Eric A. Adams, President & CEO of InMed, commented, "We are extremely pleased to have an individual of Mr. Hull's caliber and reputation within the pharmaceutical community on our Board of Directors. His impressive track record in sales, marketing and R&D partnership formation and execution, together with his extensive network within the biopharma community will be significant contributions to InMed as we seek to unlock the value of the Company's diverse assets."

"This is an exciting time for InMed and I look forward to working with the company's executive team and other Board members to help fulfill the company's mission to develop novel therapies to improve the quality of life for patients." said Mr. Hull.

Additionally, InMed announces it has accepted the resignation of Chris Bogart and Sazzad Hossain as Directors of the Company, effective today. The Board wishes to thank Mr. Bogart and Dr. Hossain for their efforts on the Board and both individuals will continue their current roles as senior executives at InMed.

About InMed

InMed is a pre-clinical stage biopharmaceutical company that specializes in developing novel therapies through the research and development into the extensive pharmacology of cannabinoids coupled with innovative drug delivery systems. InMed's proprietary in silico drug/disease targeting platform, cannabinoid biosynthesis technology and drug development pipeline are the fundamental value drivers of the Company. For more information, visit www.inmedpharma.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Forward Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking statements and information based on current expectations. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. Although such statements are based on management's reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be correct. We assume no responsibility to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances.

Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause InMed Pharmaceuticals actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein.

All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and InMed Pharmaceuticals disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events or developments, except as required by law.

These risks and uncertainties include, among others, the possibility that clinical trials will not be successful, or be completed, or confirm earlier clinical trial results, risks associated with obtaining funding from third parties, risks related to the timing and costs of clinical trials and the receipt of regulatory approvals.

NEITHER THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATIONS SERVICES PROVIDER HAVE REVIEWED OR ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

SOURCE InMed Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Related Links

www.imedpharma.com


NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Intercontinental New Orleans has named a new director of sales to help lead the hotel into a new season of success.

Providing a proven track record of excellence, Melanie Walent joins the luxury New Orleans hotel from her previous role as director of sales, marketing and events at Hyatt Regency Boston. During her stint in The City on a Hill, she was responsible for the creation and execution of a $52.2 million budget and was a 2014 nominee for annual awards in the director of sales and events team categories.

Following a successful stint at Hyatt Regency Boston, hospitality veteran Melanie Walent has been named the new director of sales at Intercontinental New Orleans. Her new hotel, in the heart of The Big Easy, has just undergone a multi-million dollar renovation that brings onboard state-of-the-art meeting spaces perfect for professional or social events. For information, visit www.icneworleans.com or call 1-504-525-5566.

"I'm excited to be returning to New Orleans, the great city where I grew up and where a lot of my family is still located," Walent said. "The hotel has recently undergone an incredible multi-million dollar transformation, and I can't wait to work with such an amazing team to reposition it within the New Orleans market."

Investing $26 million in a total renovation under the management of Dimension Development and General Manager John Romano, the Big Easy hotel recently added state-of-the-art meeting spaces and completed updates to its 484 luxurious guest rooms and suites as well as its first floor lobby with an exquisite restaurant and lounge. Walent said she is looking forward to the opportunity to employ her past experiences and lead the hotel toward a better future.

Before her role in Boston, Walent worked for five years at Hyatt Regency Dulles in Herndon, VA, where she assisted in the design and creation of the Executive Meeting Center, a $15 million expansion that added 29,000 square feet of gathering space to the hotel.

Beginning her career at Hyatt as a catering and convention services manager at Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa in Colorado, she then was hired as social catering manager at Park Hyatt Washington in D.C., where she continually exceeded expectations. She was next promoted to associate director of sales back at Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa.

Walent graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality and Tourism Management.

In her time outside of work, Walent loves doing anything outdoors, working out, experiencing new restaurants and volunteering in the community.

Intercontinental New Orleans, located in the Central Business District, offers 19 event rooms with 33,000 square feet available for conferences, strategic planning sessions, board meetings, weddings, receptions, showers and any other social or charity soirees. A professional team of event planners will assist in taking care of every last detail. For information, contact Walent at 1-504-585-4353.

About Intercontinental New Orleans

Intercontinental New Orleans at 444 Saint Charles Ave. in New Orleans, LA has been an integral part of the city's tourism for more than three decades. Located in the heart of the Central Business District, the hotel is located a few blocks from the historic French Quarter, Canal Street, Harrah's Casino, Smoothie King Arena and Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The downtown hotel, which recently completed a $26 million renovation, features 484 luxurious guest rooms and suites, a rooftop pool, state-of-the-art fitness center and 19 flexible meeting spaces. Guests are invited to dine on site at Pete's, offering lighter fare, and Trenasse with its exquisite Southern Louisiana-inspired dishes. For information, visit www.icneworleans.com or call 1-504-525-5566.

PRESS CONTACT

Melanie Walent

1-504-585-4353

[email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406644

SOURCE Intercontinental New Orleans

Related Links

http://www.icneworleans.com


PUNE, India, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market research report "IoT Telecom Services Market by Component, Connectivity Technology (Cellular, LPWAN, NB-IoT, and RF-Based), Network Management Solutions, Service (IoT Billing & Subscription and M2m Billing Management), and Application - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, market size is estimated to grow from USD 2.90 Billion in 2016 to USD 17.67 Billion by 2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 43.6%.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 68 market data Tables and 58 Figures spread through 162 Pages and in-depth TOC on "IoT Telecom Services Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/iot-telecom-service-market-104459962.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

The major forces driving this market are the growing need for enhanced connectivity solution to connect smart devices, critical need for smart network bandwidth management and automation in backend communication operations which is an essential pre-requisite for streamlining business processes, and the significant increase in adoption of BYOD among enterprises. Telcos are promoting an OTT application that helps to boost the adoption of IoT telecom services.

Transportation, connected logistics, and traffic management application is expected to grow at the highest CAGR in the IoT Telecom Services Market during the forecast period

Application of IoT with regards to connected logistics allows the clients and logistics providers to make quick adjustments, in case there is any delay in the shipment. IoT services strengthen the supply chain management by offering them transparency so that they can take effective decisions in real-time. Telcos offer connectivity solutions to IoT-enabled smart vehicles and trucks for location and tracking of assets, and real-time management of logistics services and control systems and smart devices to control and manage basic home functions automatically over the internet and network connectivity provided by telecom service providers.

Machine to Machine (M2M) billing management services segment is expected to hold the largest market share in the IoT Telecom Services Market and the current trend is expected to continue during the forecast period

M2M billing management services play a vital role in IoT telecom services, as they track the usage of services subscribed by users of M2M connected devices and manages the billing and rating of network-as-a service subscription offered by various telcos in the IoT space. As the there are millions of M2M and IoT devices connected over network which generates massive amount of data. This empowers great revenue opportunity for telecom service providers, by providing a wide range of features including remote monitoring, ubiquitous connectivity, automatic exchange of data, real-time notification, and many others which helps in better management of M2M billing of its associated services.

North America is expected to contribute the largest market share; Asia-Pacific (APAC) to grow at the fastest rate

North America is expected to hold the largest market share and would dominate the IoT Telecom Services Market from 2016 to 2021, due to the presence of a large number of IoT telecom service providers offering tailored solutions to multiple application areas. North America has been witnessing a high adoption of IoT telecom services on a large scale as they are the early adopters of smart technologies. APAC offers potential growth opportunities for the IoT Telecom Services Market to grow, as countries in the region are investing heavily in the development of IoT telecom services owing to major instances of rising adoption of smart devices and smart technologies.

Ask for PDF Brochure @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=104459962

The major vendors in the IoT Telecom Services Market include AT&T, Inc. (U.S.), Ericsson (Sweden), Verizon Communications, Inc. (U.S.), Deutsche Telekom AG (Germany), and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (China), among others.

Browse Related Reports

Internet of Things (IoT) Market by Software Solution (Real-Time Streaming Analytics, Security, Data Management, Remote Monitoring, & Network Bandwidth Management), Platform, Service, Application Domain, and Region - Global Forecast to 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/internet-of-things-market-573.html

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

MarketsandMarkets INC.

701 Pike Street

Suite 2175, Seattle,

WA 98101, United States

USA: 1-888-600-6441

Email: [email protected]



Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/telecom-it

Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets

SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
MEXICO CITY, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Industrias Unidas, S.A. de C.V. ("IUSA" or "the Company"), a Mexican diversified industrial company, today announced that it has commenced an offer to exchange (the "Exchange Offer") its outstanding Series A and Series B 11.50% Senior Secured Notes due 2016 (the "Old Notes") for, respectively, its Series A and Series B 9.00% Senior Secured Notes due 2023 (the "New Notes"), subject to certain conditions including the condition that holders of at least 95% in aggregate principal amount of the Old Notes participate in the Exchange Offer, as further described below. The New Notes will have substantially the same covenants and other terms and conditions as the Old Notes and will be secured by the same collateral as the Old Notes upon the repayment in full of such Old Notes, as further described below.

The Exchange Offer is being made only to holders of Old Notes (the "Holders"), pursuant to the Information Memorandum dated September 12, 2016 (the "Exchange Information Memorandum") and related Letter of Transmittal which set forth more fully the terms and conditions of the Exchange Offer. The Exchange Offer for the Old Notes is scheduled to expire at 12:00 midnight, New York City time, on October 7, 2016 (the "Expiration Date"), unless extended by the Company, and settlement will occur as soon as practicable following the Expiration Date.

For each US$1.00 stated face value of each series of Old Notes, tendering holders of Old Notes will, on the settlement date for the Exchange Offer, receive New Notes of the corresponding series with a principal amount equal to US$1.00. In addition, tendering holders of Old Notes will, on the Issue Date, receive additional New Notes with a principal amount equal to the amount of interest accrued on the Old Notes from and including August 15, 2016 to but not including the settlement date for the Exchange Offer (the "PIK Payment"). The PIK Payment will be made to tendering holders of Old Notes in lieu of the cash payment of such accrued interest.

No other payments, including in respect of principal, interest (including accrued or default interest other than the PIK Payment as described above) or additional amounts (if any), will be required to be paid to Holders.

The principal objective of the Exchange Offer is to refinance the Old Notes and avoid a potential concurso mercantil proceeding in Mexico. The Company does not have the means to repay the amounts that are payable under the Old Notes. The Company believes that it is currently not likely to find a material source of financing to fund the interest and principal payments on the Old Notes. The Company believes that the completion of the Exchange Offer is critical to resolving its constrained liquidity and ensuring its continued viability. The Company also believes that the Exchange Offer would benefit both Holders and the Company by helping the Company to avoid contentious litigation that could cause business disruptions or damage to the overall value of its business.

The Company reserves the right, subject to applicable law, to extend, withdraw or terminate the Exchange Offer, or otherwise amend the terms of the Exchange Offer. If any tendered Old Notes are not accepted for exchange, such Old Notes will be returned without expense to the tendering holder.

The consummation of the Exchange Offer is subject to the conditions set forth in the Exchange Information Memorandum, which the Company may assert or waive in full or in part in its sole discretion, including the condition that at least 95% in aggregate outstanding principal amount of the Old Notes (including any Old Notes which are owned by the Company or its affiliates) be validly tendered and not validly withdrawn on or prior to the Expiration Date. We currently believe that we will not have sufficient funding sources to pay off in full the Old Notes at their maturity if we obtain less than a 95% participation rate, which may result in the Company being placed in concurso mercantil.

The issuance of the New Notes is expected to occur simultaneously with the repayment in full of any Old Notes that are not tendered and exchanged in the Exchange Offer. On the settlement date for the Exchange Offer, the Company will release the liens on the Old Notes collateral and perfect the liens on the New Notes collateral as soon as practicable thereafter. Interest on the New Notes will accrue at the rate of 9% per annum and will be payable semi-annually in arrears every six months, commencing on a date that is six months following the settlement date for the Exchange Offer (each, an "Interest Payment Date"). The principal of the New Notes will be amortized in 12 equal semi-annual installments, commencing twelve months following the initial Interest Payment Date and occurring every six months thereafter.

The complete terms and conditions of the Exchange Offer are described in the Exchange Information Memorandum, copies of which may be obtained by eligible holders by contacting Epiq Corporate Restructuring, the information and exchange agent for the Exchange Offer, at 777 Third Avenue, 12th Floor, New York, New York 10017 Attn: IUSA Processing , +1(646) 282-2500 or (866) 734-9393, [email protected] (please reference "IUSA" in the subject line).



The Company intends to rely on Section 3(a)(9) of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act") to exempt the offering, issuance and distribution of the New Notes and the subsidiary guarantees thereunder pursuant to the Exchange Offer from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and of any state securities or "blue sky" laws.

This announcement is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the New Notes nor an offer to purchase Old Notes. The Exchange Offer is being made solely by means of the Exchange Information Memorandum and the related Letter of Transmittal.

About IUSA

IUSA is one of Mexico's largest diversified industrial groups, manufacturing copper-based and electrical products for the housing and electrical power markets primarily in the U.S. and Mexico.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains certain forward-looking statements regarding the future events or the future financial performance of IUSA. These statements reflect management's current views with respect to future events or financial performance, and are based on management's current assumptions and information currently available and are not guarantees of the Company's future performance. The timing of certain events and actual results could differ materially from those projected or contemplated by the forward-looking statements due to a number of factors including, but not limited to those inherent to operating in a highly regulated industry, strong competition, commercial and financial execution and economic conditions, among others.

SOURCE Industrias Unidas, S.A. de C.V.
"John is a world-renowned thought leader when it comes to the future of the mobility industry," said Sam Slaughter, 2017 NAIAS Chairman. "Having John and Google kick off NAIAS with a keynote address underscores Detroit's global importance in the area of mobility."

Located in Cobo Center's Atrium overlooking the international waterway and adjoining Hall E, AutoMobili-D will feature 120,000 sq. ft. of dynamic display communities that will be focused on five key mobility areas: Autonomous Driving, Connected Car Technologies, E-Mobility, Mobility Services and Urban Mobility.

"For the past century, Detroit has been at the center of the automobile," said John Krafcik, CEO of the Google Self-Driving Car Project. "As we look toward the next phase of mobility, it's clear that the Motor City will continue to play a pivotal role bringing together the best of what Detroit and Silicon Valley have to offer."

Google's Self-Driving Car Project announced in May it will open a 53,000-square-foot development center in Novi, Michigan. Krafcik said the Novi development center will serve as a hub that Google will use to work with a number of partners in the automotive industry.

"Tech companies, automakers, suppliers, industry partners and startups have all embraced AutoMobili-D and the global media platform our show provides," said Rod Alberts, NAIAS Executive Director. "With the largest gathering of automotive and mobility professionals, NAIAS continues to serve as one of the most influential shows in the world."

The NAIAS main stage in the atrium will feature panel discussions and symposiums about mobility while a smaller theatre in Hall E will offer presentations in a more intimate setting. NAIAS is in the process of curating this symposium and presentation schedule for Wednesday, January 11 and Thursday, January 12 (Industry Days). Companies have the option to be present a full symposium where they will supply the moderator, panelist, presentations/video content or the opportunity to suggest a key executive for participation on one of the mobility panels. If interested, please fill out and submit this form for consideration.

About the North American International Auto Show

Now in its 29th year as an international event, the NAIAS is among the most prestigious auto shows in the world, providing unparalleled access to the automotive products, technologies, people and ideas that matter most  up close and in one place. Administered by executive director Rod Alberts, the NAIAS is one of the largest media events in North America, and the only auto show in the United States to earn an annual distinguished sanction of the Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d'Automobiles, the Paris-based alliance of automotive trade associations and manufacturers from around the world. For more information, visit naias.com.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for highlights and updates.

2017 NAIAS Dates:

The Gallery  Saturday, January 7, 2017

AutoMobili-D  Sunday-Thursday, January 8-12, 2017

Press Preview  Monday-Tuesday, January 9-10, 2017

Industry Preview  Wednesday-Thursday, January 11-12, 2017

Charity Preview  Friday, January 13, 2017

Public Show  Saturday-Sunday, January 14-22, 2017

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406962

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090903/DE70318LOGO

SOURCE North American International Auto Show

Related Links

http://naias.com


Richard Funess, senior managing partner, Finn Partners, said Seigenthaler, the former NBC News anchor and public relations executive, will serve as the firm's Senior Counsel, advising clients across the agency's network of offices on Crisis Communications and Reputation Management emphasizing Message Development, Media Direction/Training, Video and Social Media strategy. He is based in Finn Partners headquarters, New York.

"We're excited to bring John's extraordinary talents to Finn Partners," said Funess. "He is recognized as one of the most skilled 'storytellers' in the broadcast industry. The combination of his experience in global media, message development and strategic public relations will be a tremendous asset to our current and future clients."

Seigenthaler spent much of his career as a journalist for NBC News. He was the anchor of NBC Nightly News Weekend Edition and Special Correspondent for NBC News for more than a decade. Seigenthaler appeared on Meet the Press, TODAY, Dateline, MSNBC and CNBC. He covered a wide range of major international and national stories, including: U.S. presidential campaigns and conventions, terror attacks in the Middle East, London, Paris, New York, and natural disasters worldwide.

Seigenthaler's work in public relations began in 2007, when he joined Seigenthaler Public Relations, the Nashville-based agency founded by his uncle, Tom Seigenthaler, which was acquired by Finn Partners in 2015. John led SPR's New York City office until 2013, focused on health care, financial services, environment, technology, academics, and public policy.

"I'm proud to join Finn Partners as it expands into a worldwide communications industry leader, committed to professionalism, creativity and integrity," said Seigenthaler. "I look forward to using my communications skills to help clients tell their stories in new ways and navigate an ever-changing media landscape."

Recently, he served as the Primetime News Anchor for cable news channel Aljazeera America. Early in his career, Seigenthaler worked as an anchor and reporter at Nashville's WKRN TV, WSMV TV and Seattle's KOMO TV.

About Finn Partners, Inc.

Finn Partners was launched in late 2011 to realize Peter Finn's vision to create a leading communications agency dedicated to shaping a bold new future in which innovation and partnership are strong brand drivers. Finn Partners specializes in the full spectrum of marketing and public relations services, including digital and social media. Practice areas include arts, consumer, CSR and social impact, education, financial services, health, technology and travel & lifestyle.

Since its inception four years ago, Finn Partners has received six agency awards that are indicators of client and cultural leadership: "Best Midsize Agency" in 2015, "Best Agency to Work For" in 2013 and "Best New Agency" in 2012 from the Holmes Report and "Midsize PR Firm of the Year" in 2015 and "Top Places to Work in PR" in 2013 from PR News. Headquartered in New York City, the company has approximately 550 employees, with offices in Chicago, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Jerusalem, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Nashville, Paris, Portland, San Francisco and Washington D.C., and offers international capabilities through its own global network and PROI Worldwide. Find us at www.finnpartners.com and follow us on Twitter @finnpartners.

About John Seigenthaler

John Seigenthaler, Finn Partners Senior Counsel, is an award winning communications professional and recognized as one of the most skilled "storytellers" in the broadcast industry. He helps clients tell their stories creating visual and thought-provoking narratives that positively impact target audiences. Seigenthaler, a former NBC News anchor, develops strategic communications plans for corporations and high profile C-level executives. His expertise spans Crisis Communications, Social Media Strategy, Media Interview Direction/Training and Video Production.

Seigenthaler is a former partner at Seigenthaler Public Relations, now DVL Seigenthaler, a Finn Partners Company. As an award winning journalist, Seigenthaler anchored NBC Nightly News Weekend edition for almost a decade. He appeared on Meet The Press, Dateline, TODAY, MSNBC, CNBC and Discovery Channel. Seigenthaler also worked at KOMO TV (ABC) in Seattle, and WKRN TV (ABC) and WSMV TV (NBC) in Nashville.

He is a member of the Newseum Board and Newseum Institute Board, the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors and Duke University Alumni Magazine Advisory Board. Seigenthaler is an RFK Journalism Award judge and a member of the Public Relations Society of America. He is a graduate of Duke University.

Contacts:

Finn Partners:

Renee Martin

[email protected]

212-715-1600

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406191

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140723/130030

SOURCE Finn Partners

Related Links

http://www.finnpartners.com


SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Kezar Life Sciences, a company focused on the discovery and development of drugs targeting protein homeostasis, announced today the initiation of its Phase 1 randomized, double-blind clinical program for KZR-616, a selective inhibitor of the immunoproteasome. Since enrollment of the first cohort on August 9, Kezar has completed dosing of 24 subjects across three cohorts in the single ascending dose (SAD) portion of the Company's Phase 1a study, which includes both SAD and multiple ascending dose (MAD) portions. The study is expected to enroll a total of 64-80 subjects, with key endpoints including pharmacokinetics and biomarkers of target engagement, as well as safety and tolerability. In the Phase 1 program, KZR-616 is administered once-weekly as a subcutaneous injection.

Pending progress of the study, the Company anticipates that it will report topline pharmacokinetics, safety, and target engagement data by the end of 2016. Additionally, in the first half of 2017 the Company anticipates commencing a Phase 1b study of KZR-616, which is expected to enroll up to 40 patients with autoimmune disorders and include a cohort with a placebo control.

"We are proud to be the first company to move a selective inhibitor of the immunoproteasome into the clinic," said John Fowler, Kezar's Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder. "The Kezar scientific team is unparalleled in its understanding of the unique biology and therapeutic potential of the immunoproteasome, and has done a tremendous job moving our lead program rapidly into the clinic. We look forward to demonstrating the safety profile and target engagement of KZR-616 in the coming months, and launching Phase 1b and 2 trials in patients in 2017."

Research using KZR-616 and its tool molecule, ONX 0914, has demonstrated the unique therapeutic potential of selective targeting of the immunoproteasome in preclinical in vivo models of autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, and other autoimmune diseases. Specifically, these compounds have been shown to block inflammatory cytokine production, downregulate inflammatory T cell activity, and deplete autoantibody-secreting plasma cells. Selective immunoproteasome inhibition has also been well-tolerated in these models and does not impair normal immune responses.

"Initiation of the KZR-616 clinical program represents an exciting milestone for our extensive research program to develop a first-in-class treatment that can address substantial unmet needs across many autoimmune disorders," said Christopher Kirk, Ph.D., President, Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Founder of Kezar. "We believe that the immunoproteasome is a profoundly untapped area of translational medicine. Our scientific research has shown that selective inhibitors of the immunoproteasome have the potential to reset normal immune function in patients with complex and difficult-to-treat autoimmune diseases. We look forward to the continued progress of the program."

About the Immunoproteasome

Protein degradation is a key process in the function and survival of all mammalian cells and is mediated by the ubiquitously expressed proteasome. Inhibitors of the proteasome, such as VELCADE and KYPROLIS, are currently used to treat multiple myeloma, a plasma cell malignancy. In cells of the immune system, such as B- and T-cells, a unique form of the proteasome, termed the immunoproteasome, is expressed. The immunoproteasome regulates multiple aspects of immune responses and selective inhibitors, such as KZR-616, are well-tolerated and highly active in multiple mouse models of autoimmunity, including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, and lupus.

About Kezar Life Sciences

Kezar Life Sciences, a privately held company based in South San Francisco, was founded in 2015 to develop small molecule drugs to revolutionize the treatment of autoimmune disorders. Leveraging research begun in 2006 under the direction of co-founder Dr. Kirk at Proteolix and then Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Kezar will advance drugs that selectively target the immunoproteasome for the treatment of autoimmune disorders. In addition, Kezar will discover and develop drugs that target protein secretion and transmembrane protein expression. For more information, please visit http://kezarlifesciences.com/.

CONTACTS:

For investors:

Ben Matone, Burns McClellan, Inc., on behalf of Kezar Life Sciences

212-213-0006

[email protected]

or

Michael Wolfe, Director of Finance & Operations at Kezar Life Sciences

[email protected]

SOURCE Kezar Life Sciences

Related Links

http://kezarlifesciences.com


WASHINGTON, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As litigators prepare oral arguments for the 24-state suit to stop the federal government from implementing the Clean Power Plan (CPP), a Citizen Cabinet survey finds that two-thirds of registered voters in the states party to the suit (67 percent) actually favor the Plan. Eight states were also surveyed, including four that are party to the lawsuit; in all four  Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas  two-thirds or more also support the plan. Across the country as a whole, 69 percent approve of the CPP, with similar majorities in key swing states surveyed.

The Clean Power Plan seeks to reduce greenhouse gases from power plants two to three percent a year. The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments on September 27.

The in-depth national survey, which also includes statewide samples in California, Florida, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia, was conducted by the Program for Public Consultation, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland (PPC), and released by the nonpartisan group, Voice Of the People.

"Clearly the forces driving this lawsuit are not arising from public resistance to the Clean Power Plan," said PPC Director Steven Kull.

Interestingly, even among respondents who work in the coal industry or have family members that do, 62 percent support the CPP.

Support was not however, bipartisan. Nationally only 47 percent of Republicans are in favor, and a slight majority of 52 percent oppose the plan. Among Democrats 89 percent approve, as does 64 percent of independents.

But if the federal government were to make efforts to mitigate the effect of the Clean Power Plan on coal workers  either by providing support for coal industry workers who lose their jobs or providing support to the coal industry by enabling it to sequester carbon dioxide  support increases to a bipartisan majority, rising to 61 percent among Republicans, 94 percent among Democrats, and 78 percent overall. Between these methods, providing support for coal industry workers who lose their job is far more popular (overall 73 percent, Republicans 68 percent, Democrats 80 percent) than providing support for carbon sequestration (overall 48 percent, Republicans 44 percent, Democrats 46 percent).

There is bipartisan majority support, though, for specific measure to reduce carbon dioxide. Support for providing tax credits for installing fuel-efficient lighting, doors, windows and insulation, building new energy efficient homes and installing wind and fuel cells (overall ranging from 73-78 percent), ranges from 62-69 percent among Republicans, while Democratic support ranges from 84-87 percent.

Bipartisan majorities also favor requiring higher fuel efficiency standards for light cars and trucks, heavy duty vehicles and requiring electric companies to have a minimum portion of their electricity come from renewable sources (overall 71-74 percent). Republican support for these ranges from 56-57 percent, while for Democrats, 84-89 percent.

The CPP is central to the commitment as part of the United States participating in the international agreement negotiated in Paris and signed in New York in April, 2016, by which the U.S. has agreed to pursue the goal of reducing its greenhouse gases by 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, or about two percent per year. Seventy-one percent of American registered voters approve of participating in the agreement. Among Republicans a slim majority (52 percent) approve, but 61 percent said the agreement is at least tolerable. Democrats overwhelmingly approve (89 percent) as did independents (66 percent).

Support for reduction of carbon dioxide appears to be driven by concerns about the health effects of air pollution as much or more than concerns about climate change. While carbon dioxide does not have a direct effect on health, steps that reduce carbon dioxide also reduce soot and smog, which do have negative health effects. Seventy-four percent say that it should be a high priority to reduce air pollution from energy production (Republicans 51 percent, Democrats 93 percent). Seventy percent nationally say it should be a high priority to reduce greenhouse gases (Republicans 44 percent, Democrats 91 percent).

The Citizen Cabinet panel of 5,975 respondents was drawn from Nielsen-Scarborough's probability-based national panel, which was recruited by mail and telephone using a random sample of households. Additional recruiting by telephone and mail was conducted by Communication for Research. The margin of error is +/- 1.6 percent. State samples: Calif. 523 (MoE +/- 4.3 percent); Fla. 421 (+/- 4.8 percent); Md. 419 (+/- 4.8 percent); N.Y. 414 (+/- 4.8 percent); Ohio 449 (+/- 4.6 percent); Okla. 419 (+/- 4.8 percent); Texas 419 (+/- 4.8 percent); and Va. 441 (+/- 4.7 percent). The survey was fielded April 16June 10, 2016.

Unlike a standard poll, Citizen Cabinet surveys take respondents through an online process called a 'policymaking simulation' that seeks to put them in the shoes of a policymaker, giving them essential information and presenting key arguments on both sides of each issue. The content of the simulation was vetted for accuracy and balance by Republican and Democratic congressional staffers, as well as experts from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy.

Once the survey results are released, a public version of the policymaking simulation is posted at vop.org for anyone to try. Citizens are encouraged to go through the simulation and then share their recommendations with their Congressional representatives at: http://research.cfrinc.net/vop16128pub/

The full report can be found at: http://vop.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/EE_Report.pdf

The full questionnaire with frequencies can be found at:

http://vop.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/EE_Quaire.pdf

Voice Of the People is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization using new methods and technology to give citizens a more effective voice in government.

Contact: Rich Robinson,

[email protected] or 202-232-7500

SOURCE Voice Of the People

Related Links

http://www.vop.org


BOONTON, N.J., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- iMedia, a strategic interactive digital agency, is proud to announce the launching of its social wall platform, wasab.io.

Wasab.io allows organizations to mine, monitor and display social media content into an engaging, branded digital experience, for use anywhere. Integrating your brand's social feeds and your brand advocates' social content into a consolidated digital experience that engages both current and prospective customers. Whether you're looking to have a social wall as a stand-alone element on your site, or have a TV display at your next conference Wasab.io can be styled and built to fit your objectives.

Wasab.io offers a variety of functionality that sets it apart from its competitors. Wasab.io gives admin users the option to manage, track, and design the social wall according to their brand's guidelines or to align to a specific campaign. It lets companies incorporate their social channels and followers into their brand story. Helping to bridge the gap between prospective and real customers, by giving them multiple "taste-twins" to relate to.

The wasab.io social wall platform is:

Able to integrate into any CMS platform

Completely customizable to align to any brand identity

Tailored to fit all industries and verticals

Easy to setup and manage

Companies such as Susan G. Komen, Houston Grand Opera and the Digital Summit Series have seen enormous success using the social wall platform to connect with a wider audience than ever before. Contact us today to see how you can leverage your brand's social reach and engagement with wasab.io.

About iMedia

iMedia is a full service, interactive agency with a long history of digital marketing that specializes in the design and development of online destinations. The award-winning digital solutions iMedia provides for clients create brand awareness, increase online engagement, drive higher revenue and dramatically increase the efficiency in the management of online content. For more information, visit www.imediainc.com or follow @iMediainc on Twitter.

Media Contact:

Jessica Lago

Manager of Marketing and Partnerships

iMedia Inc.

973-539-5255 x 304

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160520/370274LOGO

SOURCE iMedia

Related Links

http://www.imediainc.com


LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to the growing and rapidly evolving terror threat, insurance broker Lockton in conjunction with London Market insurers Hiscox, Beazley, Talbot and XL Catlin, have launched a new product  Terrorism Crisis Solutions (TCS). Designed to offer corporate clients a combined terrorism cover that encompasses a wide range of threats, the new policy brings together underwriting talent from the London Market's leading terrorism insurers, with the convenience and accessibility of one modular product.

Offering clients unique flexibility, TCS allows them to choose from a range of covers, including: sabotage and terrorism for both property damage and liability; financial protection when a client is impacted by an insured event; threat of a malicious act, nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological malicious acts; active assailant, active shooter, workplace violence and stalking threat as well as riots, strikes and civil commotion.

Adam Watson, a Lockton partner and Head of North American Property & Terrorism, said: "Businesses are facing not only a growing terrorist threat but one that is rapidly changing in nature. We have seen recent attacks across Belgium and France as well as in the US, which have brought home how terrorists are adapting their methods to inflict maximum casualties, fear and disruption.

"Recognising the uncertainties and vulnerabilities that this brings to businesses around the world, we have brought together a panel of the London Market's foremost terrorism insurers to develop a new comprehensive modular terrorism product. Terrorism Crisis Solutions enables clients to build a terrorism policy that can be customised to meet their precise needs."

Richard Halstead, War, Terrorism, and Political Violence Line Underwriter from Hiscox, added: "Terrorism can impact businesses in a multitude of ways and we're pleased to be part of an insurer panel that not only delivers a comprehensive insurance solution to the terrorism threats that many businesses face, but also continues to reaffirm London as a leading destination for businesses looking to protect themselves against this volatile and evolving risk."

Notes to editors

About Lockton

More than 6,000 professionals at Lockton provide 48,000 clients around the world with risk management, insurance, employee benefits consulting, and retirement services that improve their businesses. From its founding in 1966 in Kansas City, Missouri, Lockton has attracted entrepreneurial professionals who have driven its growth to become the largest privately held, independent insurance broker in the world and 10th largest overall. For six consecutive years, Business Insurance magazine has recognized Lockton as a "Best Place to Work in Insurance." To see the latest insights from Lockton's experts, check Lockton Market Update.

About Hiscox

Hiscox, the international specialist insurer, is headquartered in Bermuda and listed on the London Stock Exchange. There are three main underwriting divisions in the Group - Hiscox London Market, Hiscox Re and Hiscox Retail (which includes Hiscox UK and Europe, Hiscox Guernsey, Hiscox USA and subsidiary brand, DirectAsia). Hiscox underwrites internationally traded, bigger ticket business and reinsurance through Hiscox Re and Hiscox London Market. Through its retail businesses in the UK, Europe and the US Hiscox offers a range of specialist insurance for professionals and business customers, as well as homeowners.

For further information, visit www.hiscoxgroup.com.

About Beazley Group

Beazley plc (BEZ) is the parent company of specialist insurance businesses with operations in Europe, the US, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. Beazley manages six Lloyd's syndicates and, in 2015, underwrote gross premiums worldwide of $2,080.9 million. All Lloyd's syndicates are rated A by A.M. Best.

Beazley's underwriters in the United States focus on writing a range of specialist insurance products. In the admitted market, coverage is provided by Beazley Insurance Company, Inc., an A.M. Best A rated carrier licensed in all 50 states. In the surplus lines market, coverage is provided by the Beazley syndicates at Lloyd's.

Beazley is a market leader in many of its chosen lines, which include professional indemnity, property, marine, reinsurance, accident and life, and political risks and contingency business.

For more information please go to: www.beazley.com

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090415/CG99351LOGO

SOURCE Lockton

Related Links

http://www.lockton.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Love Has No Labels, the diversity and inclusion PSA campaign created by the Ad Council, R/GA, and Mindride, won the 2016 Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial at the Creative Arts Emmys held on September 10, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. The campaign is supported by an unprecedented group of brand partners including Bank of America, The Coca-Cola Company, Google, PepsiCo, P&G, Unilever, State Farm, Wells Fargo and others. The Emmy marks the first time that a PSA has won the Outstanding Commercial award and the first time the Ad Council, R/GA, and Mindride have been honored with this award.

"We are thrilled to be recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with this award and want to thank our extraordinary brand and media partners who have helped make the campaign such a success," said Lisa Sherman, president and CEO of the Ad Council. "We are so grateful to everyone who has watched and shared the PSA, and taken our message of love and inclusion to heart."

The winning video from Love Has No Labels, filmed on Valentine's Day in 2015, features real people in diverse relationships whose identities are hidden by an x-ray screen. As they embrace, dance, and kiss, viewers mentally fill in the blanks of what constitutes friendship, romantic love, and family. When the couples are revealed, so too are our individual implicit biases, as each relationship spanned different religions, races, disabilities, and more, demonstrating that "love has no labels." The campaign was developed with support from an advisory board of nonprofit partners, including The Perception Institute, Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League.

"It's satisfying when the work that you believe in so passionately is watched and shared by so many people," said Nick Law, Vice Chairman and Global Chief Creative Officer of R/GA. "But our greatest hope is that this commercial contributes to a more thoughtful and accepting America."

Since the video debuted exclusively on Upworthy, it has been viewed over 160 million times making it the 2nd most viewed social and community activism video of all time. As a result, there have been over 4 million sessions on lovehasnolabels.com, where visitors are offered a quiz to examine their own biases. Additionally, more adults report discussing discrimination and prejudice and saying that they are regularly accepting and inclusive of others, according to a recent survey commissioned by the Ad Council and conducted by Ipsos, Public Affairs. To date, the campaign has received over $40 million in donated media.

The other Emmy nominees for Outstanding Commercial included Gatorade for "Dear Peyton" by TBWA\Chiat\Day, Snickers for "Marilyn" by BBDO, RPA's animated spot "Paper" for Honda and 72andSunny's "Year In Search 2015" montage for Google.

To coincide with Independence Day in 2016, the Ad Council and R/GA launched "We Are America," an extension of Love Has No Labels, explaining that love for country is love for all the people who make up this country. The PSAs, featuring WWE Superstar John Cena, continue to further the campaign message Since the launch on July 4th, the online video has been viewed more than 35.6 million times, and since the campaign launch the percentage of adults who agree that they can create a more accepting environment has increased significantly, from 61% to 72%, according to Ad Council research.

To learn more, visit Love Has No Labels' website and join the campaign's social communities on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The Ad Council

The Ad Council is a private, non-profit organization with a rich history of marshaling volunteer talent from the advertising and media industries to deliver critical messages to the American public. To learn more about the Ad Council and its campaigns, visit www.adcouncil.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or view our PSAs on YouTube.

R/GA

R/GA, the agency for the Connected Age, develops products, services and communications to grow our clients' brands and businesses. Founded in 1977, the agency has been a pioneer at the intersection of technology, design and marketing with work spanning web, mobile, and social communications, retail and e-commerce, product innovation, brand development and business consulting. R/GA has more than 1,800 employees globally with offices across the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia-Pacific and is part of The Interpublic Group of Companies (NYSE:IPG), one of the world's largest advertising and marketing services organizations. For more information on R/GA, please visit us at www.rga.com and on Facebook and Twitter.

SOURCE The Ad Council

Related Links

http://www.adcouncil.org


Following an exhaustive search of potential locations throughout North Texas, Mary Kay identified the city of Lewisville in Denton County last November as the future site of its new state-of-the-art manufacturing and R&D facility. The new building will be located at the northeast corner of Denton Tap Road and Vista Ridge Mall Drive with a projected completion date of first quarter of 2018.

"Our company was founded in Dallas 53 years ago today and we are proud of our continued commitment to North Texas and products made in America," said David Holl, President and Chief Executive Officer for Mary Kay Inc. "We are committed to the latest in technological innovation and Mary Kay's new manufacturing and R&D operations will be on the leading edge of design and production. With the construction of this new facility, we will continue to produce best-in-the-industry products that our independent sales force members sell to Mary Kay brand lovers around the world."

The criteria for selecting the new site included employee and logistical considerations, as well as proximity to the company's other North Texas facilities, including its global headquarters in Addison, a distribution center in Carrollton and a warehouse facility in Dallas. Standing alongside Mary Kay's executive leadership team during the ceremonial groundbreaking were representatives from Jacobs Engineering which will provide the building design, Beck Construction serving as the general contractor, members of the Denton County Commissioners Court, the City of Lewisville City Council and Lewisville Mayor Rudy Durham.

"The city of Lewisville is thrilled to welcome Mary Kay Inc. as it breaks ground on the company's newest facility in the heart of North Texas," said Lewisville Mayor Rudy Durham. "As a recreational and business hub of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Lewisville is a perfect fit with an iconic hometown brand such as Mary Kay. We look forward to partnering on this exciting and innovative vision for Mary Kay's new U.S.-based global manufacturing and R&D facility."

The beauty company's current 420,000 square foot global manufacturing and R&D facility opened on Regal Row in Dallas in 1969. Today, the company employs more than 500 manufacturing and R&D employees and produces up to 1.1 million products per day, of which 57 percent are exported to Mary Kay's international markets. Mary Kay Inc. invests millions of dollars in research and development and conducts more than 500,000 tests each year to ensure Mary Kay products meet the highest standards of quality, safety and performance. For more information about the science behind Mary Kay products, click here.

About Mary Kay

Irresistible products. Positive community impact. Rewarding opportunity. For more than 50 years, Mary Kay has offered it all. With 3.5 million Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultants and $4 billion in global annual sales, Mary Kay is a top beauty brand and direct seller in more than 35 markets around the world. Discover what there is to love about Mary Kay by connecting with a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant at marykay.com.

Mary Kay Inc. Corporate Communications

marykay.com/newsroom

972.687.5332 or [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407172

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407171

SOURCE Mary Kay Inc.

Related Links

http://www.marykay.com


ATLANTA, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- McAlister's Deli, a leading fast casual restaurant chain known for its Famous Sweet Tea and recently ranked as one of consumers' favorite chains by Restaurant Business, today announced it is looking for new partnerships with experienced multi-unit franchise owners as the brand continues its expansion into the Baltimore Metropolitan area and Northern Virginia.

"Baltimore and Northern Virginia represent an important part of McAlister's growth strategy, and we're excited about the brand's continued expansion into the region," said Jeff Sturgis, McAlister's Vice President of Franchise Development. "The McAlister's Deli brand has become a top choice for some of the most successful multi-unit franchise owners in the country, so we're excited to watch the brand grow in these areas due in large part to the talent of our franchisees."

As the company looks to open additional locations in the region, they are actively seeking qualified franchisees to develop in the Baltimore/Washington DC corridor, as well as in Northern Virginia; including Fairfax, Loudon and Prince William Counties in Virginia and Prince George's, Montgomery, Howard, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties in Maryland. Currently, McAlister's has two locations in Northern Virginia  one in Herndon and the other in Front Royal  and a location slated to open in 2017 in Fairfax, VA. "Maryland and Northern Virginia are directly in the path of our recent growth in the mid-Atlantic region and the time is right to seek additional expansion in this region," said Sturgis.

McAlister's had a successful year of franchise growth in 2015 with $548 million in system-wide sales, the opening of 27 new restaurants  some in new markets, including Chicago, Rochester, and Orlando  and nearly 60 commitments for new restaurants. This growth is fueled by both existing franchisees as well as new partnerships with experienced multi-unit franchise owners with notable portfolios.

McAlister's currently operates more than 361 franchised locations in the U.S., across 28 states. The company has attracted a record number of franchise inquiries in recent years due to its quality leadership, healthy sales to investment ratio, and exceptional company performance.

To learn more about franchising opportunities with McAlister's, please contact (888) 855-DELI (3354) or [email protected], or visit www.mcalistersdelifranchise.com.

About McAlister's

Founded in 1989, McAlister's Deli is a fast casual restaurant chain known for its sandwiches, spuds, soups, salads, desserts and McAlister's Famous Sweet Tea. In addition to dine-in and take-out service, McAlister's also offers catering with a selection of sandwich trays, box lunches, desserts, a hot spud bar and more. With numerous industry accolades, the McAlister's brand has more than 361 restaurants in 28 states. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Ga. For more information, visit www.mcalistersdeli.com.

About FOCUS Brands Inc.

Atlanta-based FOCUS Brands Inc., through its affiliate brands, is the franchisor and operator of more than 5,000 ice cream shoppes, bakeries, restaurants, and cafes in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 60 foreign countries under the brand names Carvel, Cinnabon, Schlotzsky's, Moe's Southwest Grill, Auntie Anne's and McAlister's Deli, as well as Seattle's Best Coffee on certain military bases and in certain international markets. Please visit www.focusbrands.com to learn more.

Media Contact: Lauren Tweet, Allison+Partners, (214) 975-8784, [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160705/386062LOGO

SOURCE McAlister's Deli

Related Links

http://www.mcalistersdeli.com/


PHILADELPHIA and SAN DIEGO, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- MedCrypt, an early-stage medical device software security company, today announced the closing of $750,000 in seed round financing led by Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE: SFE) and a group of angel investors. Proceeds will be used to conduct commercial pilots with leading medical device vendors.

"The increased use of, and dependency on, connected devices at hospitals and health systems has revealed security risks and vulnerabilities, consequently putting patient safety at risk," said Mike Kijewski, co-founder and CEO of MedCrypt. "While it's distressing to think about a hacker remotely disabling a medical device, it's far more unnerving to consider a hacker silently taking over a device and sending it malicious instructions, resulting in a patient's injury or worse, death. MedCrypt's software allows manufacturers to authenticate users, encrypt data, and cryptographically sign settings and patient prescriptions. MedCrypt also has the ability to monitor transactions between clinicians and devices for malicious behavior, protecting struggling health networks from unforeseen cyber threats. Our technology is designed to ensure that only instructions from a trusted source are executed by the medical device."

In recent years, patient data has become increasingly at-risk due to a combination of sophisticated attacks and antiquated IT environments at health systems. An uptick in ransomware attacks has also contributed to greater demand for solutions that improve patient safety and secure health records. The Food and Drug Administration has responded accordingly, calling for device manufacturers to strengthen their software security.

MedCrypt's technology addresses current weaknesses by working with manufactures to prevent unauthorized access and use of their medical devices. The architecture leverages a machine-learning-based behavior analysis system to immediately flag unusual user behavior, as well as a "Threat Sharing" feature designed to facilitate anonymous communication between multiple medical device vendors. In this way, MedCrypt protects health systems' IT environment from unauthorized access through medical devices, thereby protecting patient data and avoiding patient harm. The software is compatible with a wide range of devices, from MRI machines to defibrillators. As the technology is deployed across multiple medical devices, MedCrypt's Threat Sharing features will allow a vendor to know what active security threats are targeting other medical devices, without having to share their specific vulnerabilities with others.

Kijewski and partner Eric Pancoast began laying the groundwork for MedCrypt in 2014, after the successful sale of their medical physics-related software company, Gamma Basics. The duo first teamed up in 2008 while Kijewski was a student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. MedCrypt co-founder Brett Hemenway, Ph.D., a cryptographer and research professor at the University of Pennsylvania, serves as the company's chief scientific officer.

"Device manufacturers, health systems, and patients all stand to benefit from MedCrypt's proprietary software," said Safeguard's Managing Director, Gary Kurtzman, M.D. who was Kijewski's professor at Wharton and who is also Chairman of the Board at MedCrypt. "Behind this company are a proven team and a technology with the potential to disrupt the way device manufacturers design products for the healthcare industry. Battling cyber threats begins at the design phase, and technology like this complements our efforts to holistically improve healthcare delivery."

Other angel investors in the seed funding include co-founders of ThingWorx, a former Safeguard partner company that was acquired by PTC in 2015; the co-founder/CEO of Coldlight; the Wharton Alumni Angel Network; the former Chair of Radiology at the University of Calgary; and the CIO of Christiana Care Health System. MedCrypt's advisory board includes CIOs and CISOs from major health systems, as well as former executives from leading medical device companies.

About MedCrypt

MedCrypt is a team of medical device and cryptography experts building "security as a service" for connected medical devices. The company has an initial fundraising round from a group of angel investors with deep connections in the Medical Device and Internet of Things spaces. For more information, visit www.medcrypt.co.

About Safeguard Scientifics

Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE: SFE) provides capital and relevant expertise to fuel the growth of technology-driven businesses in healthcare, financial services and digital media. Safeguard targets companies that are capitalizing on the next wave of enabling technologies with a particular focus on the Internet of Everything, enhanced security and predictive analytics. Safeguard typically deploys between $5 million and $25 million over the course of its partnership with a company, initially investing in a Series A or B Round and opportunistically in a Seed Round. Safeguard has a distinguished track record of fostering innovation and building market leaders that spans more than six decades. For more information, please visit www.safeguard.com or follow us on Twitter @safeguard.

MEDIA CONTACT FOR SAFEGUARD AND MEDCRYPT:

Heather R. Hunter

Vice President, Corporate Communications

610.975.4923

hhunter(at)safeguard(dot)com

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406907LOGO

SOURCE MedCrypt

Related Links

http://www.medcrypt.co


MANCHESTER, N.H., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- MegaFood, a pioneer in the health and wellness category, recently held its first annual ZingMojo Summit featuring some of the most creative talent and experts in the natural products industry.

MegaFood CEO Robert Craven leads a brainstorm for ZingMojo attendees.

Held near the MegaFood headquarters in New Hampshire, the two-day summit was intended for industry thought leaders to join together and inspire each other in creating real solutions to keep the natural retailer at the center of health and wellness in their community. By bringing natural products industry leaders together, MegaFood facilitated next level thinking towards broader industry challenges like "mass slippage," challenges with the internet, price and margin, and trust and transparency.

Speakers included storytelling expert Mary Kincaid, founder of Conscious Brands Rob Sinclair, Co-Founder and CEO of NetRush Brian Gonsalves, as well as representatives from The New Hope Network, the Mustard Seed Natural Living Center, Cambridge Naturals, Pharmavite and the Independent Natural Food Retail Association.

"There are many myths about the natural products industry that we uncovered at ZingMojo, including that natural retailers are in a war they can never win with mass and online retail, and that brands, like MegaFood, don't have any control over discounted online pricing," says Robert Craven, MegaFood CEO. "These myths are simply untrue and our main goal at ZingMojo was to come up with real opportunities for natural retailers and brands to rewrite these narratives in order to support retailers and industry and keep them on the cutting edge of wellness."

Over the course of two days, speakers and attendees tackled topics such as mission orientation and community building within the larger strategic context of questions relevant to the national conversation about health and wellness. Key learnings and best practices from the summit included:

Mission Orientation : Natural retailers are an important community hub for health and wellness. Unlike mass market retailers, natural retailers are partners in their communities, often sourcing ingredients locally and providing deeper educational experiences. It's crucial for the natural retailer to stay true to its mission of health and wellness while also being that "third space" for local community members to turn to for all of their wellness and educational needs.

: Natural retailers are an important community hub for health and wellness. Unlike mass market retailers, natural retailers are partners in their communities, often sourcing ingredients locally and providing deeper educational experiences. It's crucial for the natural retailer to stay true to its mission of health and wellness while also being that "third space" for local community members to turn to for all of their wellness and educational needs. Exceptional Work Place : Natural retail is an exciting and impactful place to work for people who want to create a better future. Natural retailers have an opportunity to turn their businesses into an even more desirable place to work by offering professional development and skill building opportunities to employees. With passion being stronger than ever before in the natural channel, it's important to make sure employees have all of the tools they need to help elevate what they are doing to improve lives on a daily basis.

: Natural retail is an exciting and impactful place to work for people who want to create a better future. Natural retailers have an opportunity to turn their businesses into an even more desirable place to work by offering professional development and skill building opportunities to employees. With passion being stronger than ever before in the natural channel, it's important to make sure employees have all of the tools they need to help elevate what they are doing to improve lives on a daily basis. Value Added Shopping Experience : Unlike mass retail, the natural retailer should continue to increase individuality in providing great service and education to consumers. Experiential shopping, such as sampling and offering unique incentives to purchase products, is one of the keys to success for the natural retailer.

: Unlike mass retail, the natural retailer should continue to increase individuality in providing great service and education to consumers. Experiential shopping, such as sampling and offering unique incentives to purchase products, is one of the keys to success for the natural retailer. Open Minded Business Practices: Rather than just speaking to those consumers who are already interested in natural and organic, the natural retailer should reach out in their communities to tell their story and attract those consumers who haven't yet made the jump to a wellness lifestyle. It's important for the natural retailer to reexamine who they are, what they stand for, and communicate that message to the general public using both traditional and new and emerging communication tools such as community outreach and digital marketing.

Robert Craven will also lead a follow-up ZingMojo session at MegaFood's booth at Expo East 2016. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear firsthand a recap of the discussions from the New Hampshire summit, and are invited to participate in a creative brainstorm on how best to bring the initiatives to life. The session is open to all and will be held in the MegaFood booth (#5006) on Friday, September 23 from 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM.

For more information on MegaFood's ZingMojo Summit, and to view all of the ZingMojo sessions, visit https://megafood.com/zingmojo/https://megafood.com/zingmojo/

 FoodState, Inc. 2016

About MegaFood

Fresh from farm to tablet, MegaFood is as real as it gets. Since 1973, MegaFood has been committed to making products that use real food from family-owned farms to make a real difference, and has produced some of the most effective and award-winning supplements available today. A pioneer in the natural products industry, MegaFood was one of the first companies to make their FoodState vitamin and minerals from scratch starting with farm fresh whole foods. MegaFood continues to innovate by manufacturing more than 36 individual FoodState Nutrients using their proprietary Slo-Food Process, all in their own facility in New Hampshire. You can watch the process live anytime on their 24/7 live cams at megafood.com/livecams. Their FoodState Nutrients are blended and combined to create over 65 handcrafted supplements that make up the MegaFood product line today, found in over 7,000 natural products retailers and vitamin specialty shops throughout North America.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406707

SOURCE MegaFood

Related Links

https://megafood.com


Karen Testman, RN, CFO of MemorialCare Health System, was selected for the nation's 100 Top Hospital and Health System Chief Financial Officers. Yair Katz, CFO of Long Beach Memorial , Miller Children's & Women's Hospital Long Beach and Community Hospital Long Beach , was named among the 50 Top Rising Stars: Health Care Executives Under Age 40.

Described by Becker's Hospital Review as among "the most impressive health care executives in the country," Testman, with more than 20 years of leadership experience, was MemorialCare's Senior Vice President, Financial Operations before becoming CFO in 2013. Joining MemorialCare in 1998, she was CFO at Orange Coast Memorial in Fountain Valley and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills. A popular speaker on finance, mergers and acquisitions and operational topics, and quoted frequently in the media, Testman also appeared on national lists of Top Women Executives and began her career as a registered nurse.

Testman has been instrumental in advancing MemorialCare's ambulatory growth and joint venture strategy and contributing to its strong financial resilience and stability, evidenced by accolades from various rating agencies. Earlier this year, Fitch ratings affirmed MemorialCare's AA- long-term and F1+ short-term ratings, citing strong liquidity, low debt burden, good profitability, system growth and integration. An AA- rating demonstrates very high credit quality and F1+ is Fitch's best quality grade and indicates an exceptionally strong capacity to meet financial commitments. In citing MemorialCare's "excellent management practices," Fitch also mentioned how MemorialCare handles growth and integration. "MemorialCare has invested heavily in strategic physician acquisition, building its electronic medical record, growing its ambulatory network and adding capabilities, including ownership of a health plan." Fitch praised "MemorialCare's managing wellness of its own employees and plans to extend wellness services in its service area."

Katz was recognized by Becker's Hospital Review for "considerable accomplishments in his relatively short career" and substantial experience in health care, academic and non-profit sectors. In his first year as CFO at MemorialCare's three Long Beach hospitals and community-based outpatient centers, Katz helped reinvigorate, revitalize and strengthen the research arm, finance division, Memorial Medical Center philanthropic Foundation, real estate activities, physician recruitment and retention and Miller Children's regional strategy. Together, Long Beach Memorial and Miller Children's & Women's Hospital Long Beach represent the West's second largest hospital campus.

Katz previously held executive positions with University of Southern California and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Katz served as USC's Assistant Vice President and Associate University Controller responsible for reviewing operational and financial performance of the three USC hospitals and re-designing and implementing their financial systems. He also served as liaison between the University and USC hospitals and was responsible for enhancing communication and collaboration among USC's Healthcare Enterprise executives and the University. Katz began his career in public accounting with PricewaterhouseCoopers, rising in senior management and overseeing large teams. He received Chai Lifeline's "Builders of Hope" award for contributing to its mission of providing comprehensive services free of charge to families with pediatric illnesses. A founder and Chair of Chai's Young Leadership Committee, he also serves on the Long Beach board of California Conference for Equality and Justice.

"On behalf of our 16,000 employees, affiliated physicians, volunteers and board members, we congratulate Karen and Yair on their outstanding achievements," says Barry Arbuckle, PhD, MemorialCare Health System president & CEO. "Their contributions ensure we provide the highest quality and most compassionate care to the communities we serve.

With more than 200 care locations throughout Orange and Los Angeles counties, MemorialCare Health System is a nonprofit, integrated delivery system including five top hospitals  Long Beach Memorial, Miller Children's & Women's Hospital Long Beach, Community Hospital Long Beach, Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills; MemorialCare Medical Group; Greater Newport Physicians; Seaside Health Plan; and numerous ambulatory surgery, imaging, kidney dialysis, urgent care and outpatient health centers. For more, visit memorialcare.org.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407138

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407139

SOURCE MemorialCare

Related Links

http://www.memorialcare.org


EAGAN, Minn., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Minnesota parents and guardians are nearly unanimous (93 percent) in their belief that there is a connection between students' health and their ability to learn and succeed in school, according to a recent poll conducted by the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Yet, a majority of those polled (69 percent) say they do not believe or are unsure if all Minnesota children currently have access to healthy food and opportunities for physical activity during the school day.

Despite this, only 12 percent of Minnesota parents and guardians have actively asked their local school to provide healthier options. It isn't due to a lack of support. Of the remaining respondents, 68 percent say they have been generally supportive of past proposals to include healthier options within school settings; only six percent say they have actively opposed changes.

"There's an undisputable connection between our surroundings  the places where we live, learn, work and play  and our health. For children, who spend a significant share of their day in school, this also has a significant impact on their learning and academic success," said Janelle Waldock, vice president of community health and health equity at Blue Cross, who leads the organization's Center for Prevention. "Parents and caregivers can play an important role by advocating for healthier options and encouraging schools to adopt programs, like Farm to School and active recess."

One reason parents haven't taken action may be their own sense of responsibility. Two-thirds (66 percent) of parents say they are responsible for ensuring their children eat healthy and have opportunities to be physically active. Yet, nearly as many (60 percent) also put at least some responsibility on schools.

Strong Support for Solutions

Nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of those polled think that when it comes to students' ability to succeed in school, it is important or very important to offer additional resources to students who are facing disparities due to their race, income, where they live, or other factors. This sentiment is strongest among those who believe that not all children have access to healthy food and physical activity during the school day, with 81 percent agreeing that some students should be offered additional resources. Parents who live in urban areas are also more likely to agree (85 percent), compared to those who live in suburban (74 percent) and rural areas (65 percent).

Parents overwhelmingly agree that these four actions are important or very important steps that schools can take to ensure that students eat and learn about healthy food:

Provide students at least 20 minutes to eat their meals (95 percent);

Offer nutrition education (90 percent);

Decrease the amount of unhealthy food available during the school day (79 percent); and

Teach students where their food comes from (78 percent).

Likewise, a vast majority of parents say these actions are important or very important ways schools can help students be more active:

Provide opportunities to participate in extra-curricular activities that encourage physical activity (92 percent);

Increase the time students are active during physical-education classes (87 percent);

Provide opportunities to participate in organized active games during recess or other breaks in the school day (83 percent); and

Provide opportunities to safely walk or bike to school (81 percent).

Despite the concerns revealed by this poll, many schools are taking active steps to increase healthy options. For example, Willmar Middle School is implementing active classrooms, which incorporate physical activity into the existing curriculum of non-physical education classes such as math and science. In the metro area, Minneapolis's Sanford Middle School has enhanced the universal breakfast program by adding "grab and go" breakfast carts throughout the school, thus increasing breakfast participation by 40 percent.

Willmar and Sanford are among four schools across the state involved in the Health-Learning Connection project, a collaboration between participating schools and Blue Cross's Center for Prevention. The project is helping bring healthier options to schools to improve student well-being and learning. Preliminary results from the project are anticipated in 2018.

"It is inspiring to see the work being done throughout the state to create additional healthy options for Minnesota children," said Waldock. "Parents and caregivers have a strong voice and can serve as a bridge between their school district and other local businesses and organizations, to inspire collaboration and create healthier communities for people of all ages."

About the Poll

The public-opinion online poll was commissioned by the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and conducted by ORC International's CARAVAN Geographic Omnibus in July and August 2016. It consisted of 503 Minnesota parents and guardians of children aged 5 to 17. Respondents were 18 years of age and older. The margin of error is +/-4 percentage points for the full sample.

About the Center for Prevention

The Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota delivers on Blue Cross' long-term commitment to improve the health of all Minnesotans by tackling the leading root causes of preventable disease: tobacco use, lack of physical activity and unhealthy eating. Funded through proceeds from Blue Cross' historic lawsuit against the tobacco industry, they collaborate with organizations statewide to increase health equity, transform communities and create a healthier state. Visit CenterforPreventionMN.com for more information and to see a timeline celebrating the Center's 10-year anniversary.

About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (bluecrossmn.com), with headquarters in the St. Paul suburb of Eagan, was chartered in 1933 as Minnesota's first health plan and continues to carry out its charter mission today as a health company: to promote a wider, more economical and timely availability of health services for the people of Minnesota. Blue Cross is a not-for-profit, taxable organization. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, headquartered in Chicago.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160713/389236LOGO

SOURCE Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota

Related Links

http://bluecrossmn.com


The hands on playing experience, along with the robust display of 14 Casio electronic musical instruments, serves to connect the company's many innovations directly with the public. It's a connection that underscores the mission of the museum. "At the museum, we showcase the vibrant legacy of musical instruments and seek to connect our visitors through a hands-on approach," shared Carolyn Grant, MoMM's Executive Director. "We are excited to highlight Casio's important contributions to our industry and to share its history with our many guests."

The opening champagne reception was attended by MoMM members and donors, NAMM staff leadership, Casio fans and Casio leadership, including Alli Colasacco-Sharpe, Marketing Communications Coordinator; Sandra Jordan, Education Consultant; and Stephen Schmidt, Vice President of Casio's Electronic Musical Instruments Division, who expressed his pleasure of the new exhibit. "As a worldwide leader in digital pianos, we are honored to be part of the NAMM Museum of Making Music," said Schmidt. "At Casio we understand the importance of providing musicians with high-performance instruments that foster creativity and deliver great sound. We are thrilled that NAMM has recognized the top-notch quality of our electronic musical instruments and invited us to be part of this exhibit."

As part of the reception, attendees were treated to a performance featuring multi-talented keyboardist, Steve Weingart. Weingart has enjoyed a career spanning 20 years, and has performed or recorded with the likes of Dave Weckl, Chaka Khan, Eric Marienthal, Victor Wooten, Warren Hill, among others. Earlier in the day, Weingart presented a piano technique masterclass where participants used WK6500 keyboards donated by Casio.

The Spotlight on Casio display will be open until January 29, 2017. The Museum of Making Music is open Tuesday through Sunday and free to all current NAMM members.

About Casio America, Inc.

Casio America, Inc., Dover, N.J., is the U.S. subsidiary of Casio Computer Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, one of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer electronics and business equipment solutions. Established in 1957, Casio America, Inc. markets calculators, keyboards, digital cameras, mobile presentation devices, disc title and label printers, watches, cash registers and other consumer electronic products. Casio has strived to fulfill its corporate creed of "creativity and contribution" through the introduction of innovative and imaginative products. For more information, visit www.casiousa.com.

About The Museum of Making Music

Opened to the public in March 2000 by NAMM, the Museum of Making Music (MoMM) is located on the first floor of NAMM's global headquarters in Carlsbad, California. The Museum was developed to celebrate the vibrancy of the music products industry and to showcase the deep impact music that music and musical instruments and products have on us as individuals and as a society. MoMM preserves our musical heritage (1900 to today) and provides opportunities for cultural enrichment through special exhibitions, innovative concerts and educational programs for a wide range of audiences.

MoMM's core message is that the world of making music is an inviting and remarkable ecosystem. Whether it's making the instrument, making the sale or making the music, the experience of music is a precious element of daily living and should be available to everyone, regardless of age, income level or ethnic background. For details on the Museum's concerts, exhibits, workshops and outreach programs, please visit http://www.museumofmakingmusic.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407108

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160223/336539LOGO

SOURCE Casio America, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.casiousa.com


ATLANTA, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- National DCP, (NDCP) the $2 billion supply chain management cooperative for Dunkin' Donuts franchisees, today announced plans to open its eighth distribution center in Twinsburg, Ohio in November. The center, which is located strategically between Cleveland and Akron, will fulfill and deliver ingredients, food products, beverages and supplies to the nearly 400 Dunkin' Donuts restaurants in the region and employ approximately 50 people.

"An important component of our 'Farm to Fork' procurement, sourcing and distribution model is facilitating expansion through distribution network optimization," noted Scott Carter, Chief Executive Officer for National DCP. "Twinsburg is the perfect location for our new distribution center. Our extensive analysis found that it will be the best geographic point for servicing the increasing number of Dunkin' restaurants in the region and we gained access to a talented, experienced labor pool with the Twinsburg, Cleveland and Akron markets."

NDCP has been strategically and systematically adding centers across the country in support of Dunkin' Donuts' ongoing growth. In 2015, Dunkin' Donuts franchisees opened 349 net new Dunkin' Donuts restaurants in the U.S., making it one of the fastest growing quick-service restaurant chains by unit count in the nation. With a footprint of 81,000 square feet and 19 truck docks, the Twinsburg distribution center will also save 1.2 million miles driven by NDCP trucks annually as a result of the more centralized new location.

"National DCP has done a tremendous job in managing the day-to-day operational costs of their infrastructure, focusing on improved service levels and, very importantly, demonstrating great expertise buying in a sometimes volatile commodities market," stated Nigel Travis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for Dunkin' Brands. "Their foresight and excellent management skills have resulted in, and I believe will continue to result in, significant cost savings, a higher level of service, and uniform product costs for Dunkin' Donuts franchisees across our US restaurant network. In a highly competitive market, NDCP is greatly contributing to franchisee profitability and, simultaneously, facilitating the national expansion of our Brand."

The Twinsburg center is scheduled to begin distribution in late October, and the official grand opening will take place in November.

About National DCP

National DCP, LLC (NDCP) is a $2 billion supply chain management company serving the franchisees of Dunkin' Donuts. They provide comprehensive business solutions including food, beverages, supplies, packaging, technology and healthcare to more than 8,900 Dunkin' locations in the U.S. and customers in 51 countries. Each year, NDCP purchases more than 100 million pounds of coffee, 112 million pounds of sugar and 24 million gallons of milk, and drives 30 million miles delivering approximately 75 million cases of product to Dunkin' stores. The organization was formed as a membership cooperative following the successful merger of five different operating companies in 2012 to support Dunkin' Brands' growth and expansion plans. NDCP won the 2015 Supply Chain Pioneer Award from Partnership Gwinnett for innovative supply chain management practices and was ranked #28 on the 2016 InformationWeek Elite 100 List.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160504/363863LOGO

SOURCE National DCP, LLC

Related Links

http://www.nationaldcp.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The natural gas Liquids market report by provides in-depth analysis of the natural gas Liquids market globally. The report segments the market on the basis of type and geography. The report analyzes the global natural gas Liquids market in terms of production (Kilo barrels/day) for the 20162024 period. For this research study, the base year is 2015, whereas the forecast is from 2016 to 2024. The report provides a comprehensive competitive landscape and features companies producing and processing natural gas liquids. This report includes the key market dynamics affecting the natural gas Liquids market globally. The analysis in the report provides detailed insights into the global natural gas Liquids market. Major dynamics such as drivers, opportunities, and restraints of the market were analyzed in detail and are illustrated in the report through tables. The report also provides a detailed industry analysis of the global natural gas Liquids market with the help of Porter's Five Forces model.



The natural gas Liquids market has been segmented on the basis of type into ethane, propane, normal butane, isobutane, and pentanes plus. Ethane was the largest type segment of the natural gas Liquids market globally, accounting for more than 45% of the global share, in 2015. Sales of ethane increased due to its growing applications across the globe. Propane was the second-largest type segment accounting for more than 20% of the global share, and Isobutane was the smallest type segment of the natural gas Liquids market globally, accounting for less than 10%, in 2015. Isobutane was the smallest type segment owing to its limited applications and market value. The global natural gas Liquids market growth is anticipated to be hampered by increasing use of alternatives such as naphtha.



The natural gas Liquids market was analyzed for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. The Middle East had the largest production of natural gas liquids, followed by North America and Europe. The market for natural gas liquid in the Middle East accounted for more than 35% of global market share in 2015, whereas the market in North America stood at around 30%. The U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Canada, and he UAE were the leading countries in these regions with respect to natural gas liquids production. Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia Pacific also had significant natural gas liquids production in 2015. Europe held around 10% market share of the global natural gas Liquids market, while Asia Pacific, Africa, and Latin America accounted for less than 10% of the global market share in 2015. These regions are expected to increase natural gas liquids production during the forecast period owing to rising demand and growing investments in natural gas liquid production and processing infrastructure.



Some of the key market participants in the natural gas Liquids market include BP Plc, Chesapeake Energy Corporation, ConocoPhillips Company, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Linn Energy LLC, Range Resources Corporation, Royal Dutch Shell Plc., SM Energy, Statoil ASA, and Swift Energy Company. The report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial details (if available), business strategies, and recent developments.



The natural gas Liquids market has been segmented as follows:



Global Natural Gas Liquids market: Type Analysis



Ethane

Propane

Normal Butane

Isobutane

Pentanes Plus

Global Natural Gas Liquids market: Regional Analysis



North America

U.S.

Canada

Mexico

Europe

Norway

Russia

U.K.

Netherlands

Asia Pacific

Indonesia

Australia

India

Rest of Asia Pacific

Middle East

Qatar

Iran

Saudi Arabia

U.A.E

Rest of Middle East

Africa

Algeria

Nigeria

Rest of Africa

Latin America

Argentina

Brazil

Venezuela

Rest of Latin America



Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03999840-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

Reportlinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com





__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

http://www.reportlinker.com


VANCOUVER, Wash., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- NetRush, a retail agency partner to premium brands, has built and launched One Piece Flow (OPF), a fully integrated Amazon processing tool that is native to the Salesforce platform.

The turn-key inventory and warehouse management system now serves as the backbone technology and processing platform for NetRush's primary processing facility in Erlanger, Kentucky.

"It's a one-step process that allows us to increase efficiency and eliminate errors," said NetRush COO, Brian Birch. "In one scan, the app will verify that we have the right product with the right purchase order, and then communicate with Amazon APIs to create one outbound shipment order."

In today's very open e-commerce retail environment, high quality customer experience means that processes need to ensure product safety, integrity, and low-impact packaging. "Our partner brands and Amazon want customers to shop with confidence, and everything we do, from content development to digital marketing and inventory processing, must enhance that great experience," said NetRush CFO, Chris Marantette.

NetRush, recently named to Inc. Magazine's prestigious 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies List, is now poised to expand its sales territory. "It's not a question of whether or not we can offer our brands the opportunity to reach new customers. We want to know that we can replicate how we manage inventory and meet customer expectations by giving them the best possible experience," Jacob Corey, NetRush CTO, who was instrumental in building OPF, said. "We have found a way to scale quality."

Visit the NetRush blog to see a handy infographic that explains how OPF works.

About NetRush.com, Inc.

Established in 2006, NetRush is a strategic retail agency that specializes in brand management on the Amazon marketplace. Our specialized teams collaborate with brands (our partners) to implement strategies that promote awareness, drive sales growth and customer engagement, and proactively manage their presence on the Amazon marketplace.

The successful implementation of OPF signals a breakthrough in scaling quality on the Amazon marketplace, through efficiency and the elimination of human error in NetRush's daily processing of inventory.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/400230LOGO

SOURCE NetRush.com, Inc

Related Links

http://www.netrush.com


LOS ALTOS, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Netskope, the leader in cloud security, today announced that it has been included as a distinguished vendor in the 2017 TAG Cyber Security Annual -- Practical Handbook and Reference Guide for the Working Cyber Security Professional. Netskope is part of an industry collective of 48 of the nation's foremost cyber security vendors participating in the report, which was published by The Amoroso Group (TAG Cyber) following in-depth industry research and analysis.

"The Netskope team is proud to have been included in this fine research initiative," said Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope. "Our work in the area of cloud security is a critical component in today's enterprise computing environment."

The report details a new urgency for how America's commercial, financial and utility sectors respond to escalating and increasingly complex cyber attacks. It includes a comprehensive analysis of the cyber security industry with specific insights from C-level executives and thought leaders. Dr. Edward G. Amoroso, former chief security officer of AT&T and author of six books on cyber security, spearheaded writing and researching the report.

"The approach to cloud security inherent in the Netskope solutions will be critical to proper protection of the modern virtual enterprise," explained Amoroso.

The 2017 TAG Cyber Security Annual has been written for information security and technology professionals in all industries with a special focus on U.S. infrastructure companies, including energy, telecommunications, manufacturing, healthcare and utilities. The report will be available at no cost to all users as a free download on the Netskope website and TAG Cyber's website.

The handbook is centered around a revolutionary new approach to cyber security that calls on tech leaders of the largest and most important American enterprises to explode existing infrastructure to disperse data across multiple platforms, offload sensitive information into secure cloud-based solutions and reload systems, policies and personnel to better position them to effectively defend against cyber attacks that are not only likely, but occurring at an increasing rate.

It includes three volumes:

Volume 1: TAG Cyber Security Fifty Controls details the fifty primary control areas required for CISO teams to be effective in this new era of cyber security. These areas include traditional controls such as firewall platforms and two-factor authentication along with non-traditional controls such as security recruiting and security R&D. For each control area, an extensive list of supporting vendors is included to help jumpstart local source selection.

details the fifty primary control areas required for CISO teams to be effective in this new era of cyber security. These areas include traditional controls such as firewall platforms and two-factor authentication along with non-traditional controls such as security recruiting and security R&D. For each control area, an extensive list of supporting vendors is included to help jumpstart local source selection. Volume 2: Interviews with Distinguished Vendor Principals includes in-depth conversations with the thought leaders and distinguished vendor principals. It offers a brief digest of the expert guidance and cyber security insights offered by these industry authorities during the research stages of this report.

includes in-depth conversations with the thought leaders and distinguished vendor principals. It offers a brief digest of the expert guidance and cyber security insights offered by these industry authorities during the research stages of this report. Volume 3: TAG Cyber Security Vendor Listings serves as a reference guide to the cyber security industry. This comprehensive review includes nearly 1,400 vendors this year, with an additional 500 vendors to be incorporated into the 2018 report.

Netskope Resources

Download the Netskope Cloud Report for more detailed analysis and to see the full list of the most widely used cloud apps by enterprises

Learn more about how to gain visibility into enterprise cloud apps and how to ensure they are secure and compliant

Visit the Netskope Hub for the latest commentary and insight on trends from the Netskope team

About Netskope

Netskope is the leader in cloud security. Using patented technology, Netskope's cloud-scale security platform provides context-aware governance of all cloud usage in the enterprise in real-time, whether accessed from the corporate network, remote, or from a mobile device. This means that security professionals can understand risky activities, protect sensitive data, stop online threats, and respond to incidents in a way that fits how people work today. With granular security policies, the most advanced cloud DLP, and unmatched breadth of workflows, Netskope is trusted by the largest companies in the world. Netskope  cloud with confidence. To learn more, visit our website.

About TAG Cyber, LLC

The Amoroso Group (TAG Cyber) is a global cyber security advisory, training, consulting and media services company. Led by Edward Amoroso, industry veteran and former chief security officer for AT&T, TAG Cyber supports hundreds of companies around the world by providing a roadmap for identifying, preventing and eliminating cyber attacks on their systems and data.

Media Contact

Matt Coolidge

Bateman Group for Netskope

347-410-7974

[email protected]

SOURCE Netskope

Related Links

www.netskope.com


AR inks allow wide format jobs on a broad range of substrates to be used immediately off the press. Whether printing on cloth, bond paper, backlit material or a variety of other media, Ricoh's AR inks cure quickly, reducing wait time for even the most complex jobs so campaigns can get off the ground or change quickly. Faster cure times mean faster turn times, which enable shops to take on more business and keep revenue flowing. Additionally, AR inks' longer shelf life reduces the risk of an ink "going bad" in storage and having to be disposed of, unused.

The new lineup of inks' low price point helps drive wide format's famously high margins even higher. Cutting ink costs without reducing quality allows signage shops to produce the same eye-catching work they are known for, at the same price point they usually charge customers, with lower upfront costs. Alternatively, shops secure revenue growth while also passing savings down to customers for competitive pricing. These savings only further incentivize the adoption of latex inks, which are known for their fast cure times and low environmental impact while still maintaining the high level of color quality that signage shops make their stock and trade. As latex inks' color quality has improved in recent years, many shops have started making the switch, spurred on by OSHA regulations concerning the fumes associated with solvent-based operations.

"Signage shops  and cutsheet shops adding wide format operations  are always looking for ways to better serve their customers, from new, creative applications to faster turn times to keep up with today's fast-paced signage needs," said John Fulena, Vice President, Production Printing Business Group, Ricoh USA, Inc. "Our team of graphic arts specialists know that for today's signage to succeed, it needs to be ready to go, as fast as possible without jeopardizing quality. These new aqueous resin inks deliver the quick cure times that speeds demand, while still producing outstanding, eye-catching output. That it does all of this at a drastically lower price point than its predecessor is a huge advantage for these shops, who can use that difference to reinvest in new capabilities, adjust prices to compete or simply drive higher profits."

For more information about Ricoh at SGIA, please visit: http://rpp.ricoh-usa.com/about/events/sgia. For details on Ricoh's full line of products, services and solutions for the production print market, please follow @RicohProPrint on Twitter and Ricoh USA Production Print on LinkedIn. If you are a member of the media or analyst community attending the show and are interested in speaking with Ricoh executives, please contact Tracey Sheehy at [email protected].

| About Ricoh |

Ricoh is a global technology company that has been transforming the way people work for more than 80 years. Under its corporate tagline  imagine. change.  Ricoh continues to empower companies and individuals with services and technologies that inspire innovation, enhance sustainability and boost business growth. These include document management systems, IT services, production print solutions, visual communications systems, digital cameras, and industrial systems.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ending March 2016, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 2,209 billion yen (approx. 19.6 billion USD).

For further information, please visit www.ricoh.com

 2016 Ricoh USA, Inc. All rights reserved. All referenced product names are the trademarks of their respective companies.

Contacts:

John Greco

Ricoh USA, Inc.

(973) 882-2023

[email protected]

Tracey Sheehy

Breakaway Communications

(212) 616-6003

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140718/128670

SOURCE Ricoh USA, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.ricoh-usa.com


"Rachel Flynn is a proven leader and a thoughtful, creative and collaborative planner," said Kofi Bonner, Northern California President of FivePoint. "She understands the complexity inherent in planning and delivering world class developments. Her efforts in Oakland have largely contributed to the new urban vitality currently experienced in the city. Above all, she's a tremendous person and we are delighted that she has agreed to lead our planning and entitlement efforts in Concord.''

Flynn has led planning and building departments in three different cities: Oakland, Richmond, Va. and Lynchburg, Va.

"I am honored to be joining the FivePoint team," Flynn said. "This is a top-notch development company and the Concord project is enormously important in meeting the growing demands of the Bay Area. I look forward to working with Kofi Bonner, his team, and the City of Concord in creating a major development that we can all be proud of. My work in Oakland has been enormously rewarding and I will miss the many colleagues and friends I have worked with over these last few years."

About Lennar Concord:

Lennar Concord is the master developer for the first 500 acres of the Concord Naval Weapons Station in Concord, the San Francisco Bay Area's fourth-largest city. The first phase is part of a 2,300-acre reuse of the shuttered weapons station, which abuts Highway 4 and is adjacent to a BART commuter line. Lennar Concord's plan calls for 4,392 homes, nearly 1.7 million square feet of commercial space, a school, two community centers and more than 100 acres of parks, open space and greenways. Infrastructure development is expected to begin sometime in 2018.

About FivePoint:

Spanning the state from Southern California to the San Francisco Bay Area, FivePoint is the largest owner and developer of mixed-use, master planned communities in coastal California based on the total number of residential homesites permitted under existing entitled zoning. FivePoint's real estate developments are located in three of the most dynamic and supply-constrained markets along the California coastOrange County, Los Angeles County and San Francisco County.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407338

SOURCE FivePoint
SAN FRANCISCO and SAN JACINTO, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- OhmConnect for "Your Cool School" is empowering a whole new era of home energy saving for school fundraising. At San Jacinto Valley Academy (SJVA), a K-12 charter school with almost 1400 students and more than 800 families, SJVA PTSA President Jolene Landeros is championing OhmConnect as the easiest way to earn money for school fundraising -- simply by reducing home energy use.

As more power plants come online during times of grid congestion or peak use, OhmConnect alerts the community to reduce home electricity use and some of those "dirty" power plants come offline. The money saved from turning on fewer power plants is passed to "Cool School" fundraising campaigns via OhmConnect. Due to the Aliso Canyon incident, the needs of the grid in Southern California are especially acute.

"I don't want to put down the Box Tops program, because it is one of the most dependable -- even if time-consuming -- school fundraising programs," explains Landeros. Our SJVA PTSA earns about $2,500 a year with box tops. My point is that school fundraising is very difficult -- we spend a lot of time and energy earning money to help support our school -- selling pre-packaged cookie dough, wrapping paper, candles -- all at only a 20-40% profit from the sales. So, quite simply OhmConnect Energy Saving Solution is a better, more time-efficient and year-round fundraising solution SJVA."

Landeros continues, "With OhmConnect, we can better educate our students about how to conserve energy in our homes and fundraise for essential school needs -- without having to sell anything. That's the big difference with OhmConnect for our Cool School."

Landeros forecasts that the SJVA PTSA could easily enroll more than 100 OhmConnect members just through word of mouth and social media outreach primarily via Facebook. You can support SVJA by visiting: http://www.sjva.net/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=152494&type=d&pREC_ID=928883

About OhmConnect for Your Cool School

OhmConnect is the first, truly simple, trusted and free service that enables parents, students and families to harness Energy Savings on behalf of "Your Cool School". Here's how OhmConnect works:

Join an OhmConnect Energy Saver Community: Using your school's referral link, parents sign up for OhmConnect using PG&E, SCE or SDG&E utility login information to create their home's Energy Saver account. Get Alerts During OhmHours: Families receive a text message or email during OhmHours -- alerting families to reduce home energy use -- before extra dirty generators turn on. Pool Funds from Home Energy Savings: Families simply hold off on doing any electricity-intensive activities like laundry or the dishwasher--during critical times of peak consumption and earn points that go to your school.

About OhmConnect

For more information visit: http://www.ohmconnect.com/schools.

SOURCE OhmConnect

Related Links

http://www.ohmconnect.com/schools


SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Einat Meisel, a leading transactional lawyer in the Israeli-related technology and life sciences sectors, is joining O'Melveny's Silicon Valley office as Chair of the Israel Practice and a partner in the Mergers & Acquisition Practice. She was previously a partner, member of the Executive Committee, and head of the Cross-Border Practice at Gross, Kleinhendler, Hodak, Halevy, Greenberg & Co. (GKH) one of Israel's leading law firms.

As a member of both the Israel and California bars, Meisel will expand the reach of O'Melveny's Israel Practice, which advises US companies and investors doing business in Israel, particularly in the technology and life sciences sectors, and Israeli entrepreneurs, companies, and investors doing business outside Israel. O'Melveny's Israel Practice includes US and Israeli venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds, publicly listed and private companies, venture-backed companies, and entrepreneurs engaged in cross-border transactions involving Israel. Members of O'Melveny's Israel Practice include lawyers who are admitted to the Israel Bar with significant experience in corporate and transactional work involving Israel.

Meisel has advised companies on their mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic alliances, and divestitures. She also has experience in venture capital financings, private placements of equity and debt, spin-outs, recapitalizations, and other corporate reorganizations. In addition, she regularly counsels boards of directors on governance, equity incentive plans and arrangements, employment matters, intellectual property issues, and commercial transactions.

"O'Melveny's global network will allow me to grow my practice and focus on helping US companies increase their cross-border business in Israel, China, and other markets around the world, while also advising Israeli companies in a variety of US transactions," Meisel said. "I'm excited to return to the Silicon Valley and advise both emerging growth and established companies as they capitalize on the rapidly growing opportunity for cross-border transactions in these markets."

Israel is widely considered one of the world's most important ecosystems for emerging growth companies. In 2015, Israeli technology companies attracted more than US$4.4 billion from local and foreign investors across more than 700 transactions; and in the first quarter of 2016 alone, 173 Israeli emerging growth companies raised nearly US$1.1 billion in funding from global private investors, according to a report by IVC Research Center and KPMG Somekh Chaikin. With China and Israel engaged in negotiations for a bilateral free-trade agreement, those numbers only stand to grow.

"O'Melveny lawyers, both in the US and in our Asia practice, often work on transactions that involve Israel for some of the firm's biggest clients, and we've only seen the demand increasing for access into the Israeli technology sector," said Bradley J. Butwin, Chair of O'Melveny. "Einat is well respected for her extensive knowledge and experience in this space and for her technical ability and pragmatic approach to her clients' businesses. We're thrilled to welcome her to our Silicon Valley office."

Meisel received her bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Indiana University and her law degree from Chicago Kent College of Law. Following law school, she moved to San Francisco where she developed an interest in working with entrepreneurs and international technology companies, particularly Israeli-related technology businesses. She served as in-house counsel for Influence, Inc., a medical device company founded by Israeli entrepreneurs, which was acquired by American Medical Systems. Meisel also cofounded the California-Israel Chamber of Commerce, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit dedicated to strengthening business and trade relations between California and Israel.

SOURCE O'Melveny & Myers LLP

Related Links

http://www.omm.com


HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Department of Human Services (DHS) is revitalizing a 25-year-old plan for what the future will look like for Pennsylvanians with disabilities. DHS will unveil Everyday Lives: Values in Action, its new plan, at a three-day conference focused on ensuring individuals with disabilities lead independent, fulfilling, everyday lives.

Nearly 1,500 stakeholders, advocates, families, government officials, and consumers, will convene from September 14-16, 2016, at the Hershey Lodge with a specialized pre-conference day today.

DHS values what is important to people with disabilities and their families, who are striving for an everyday life. An everyday life is about opportunities, relationships, rights, and responsibilities. It is about being a member of the community, having a valued role, contributing to society, and having one's rights as a citizen fully respected.

"We believe that people with disabilities have a right to an everyday life; a life that is no different than that of all Pennsylvanians," said DHS Secretary Ted Dallas. "The Wolf Administration is focused on a person-centered approach  meaning each individual has a choice and is at the heart of all decisions made regarding their life."

The conference will feature speakers from Pennsylvania and experts from around the country who will present information on a wide variety of topics including: employment, wellness, self-direction, relationships, community engagement, technology and supporting families throughout the lifespan. Information is available online. Conference information is also available in Spanish.

Everyday Lives will serve as a guide to DHS' Office of Developmental Programs (ODP) as it develops policy and designs programs, and to service providers who support individuals and their families. The new plan refreshes the 1991 outlook and adds a list of recommendations and values statements from the Information Sharing and Advisory Committee of individuals with disabilities and their families. A few of those recommendations include:

Assure effective communication;

Promote self-direction, choice, and control;

Increase employment;

Support families throughout the lifespan;

Develop and support qualified staff; and

Simplify the system.

Deeply rooted in the concept of self-determination, Everyday Lives promotes the belief that, with the support of family and friends, people with disabilities can and should decide how to live their lives.

"Everyday Lives affirms our dedication to making it possible for everyone to live a life of meaning and joy," said ODP Deputy Secretary Nancy Thaler.

For more information, visit www.dhs.pa.gov.

MEDIA CONTACT: Kait Gillis, 717-425-7606

SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Human Services

Related Links

http://www.dhs.pa.gov


VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- PageFreezer has released a new solution enabling government agencies to provide public access to their web and social media archives. Historic government website and social media data can now be made easily accessible through a public portal with powerful search capabilities.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406438

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406439LOGO

As government websites and social media are heavily relied on by citizens and businesses for a wealth of information, they are considered official government publications to which the Freedom of Information act (FOIA) and Open Records Laws apply. To comply with these laws, government agencies must ensure their internal processes and systems allow for easy delivery of information kept in house upon request, under short deadlines, and at minimal cost.

The new PageFreezer development stems from the recurring high costs of public records requests to governments. With a recent report from Washington State's Auditors Office highlighting the problem further by revealing that state and local governments spent $60 million to fill more than 285,000 public-records requests during a recent 12-month period.

PageFreezer's archiving platform is widely used by government agencies across North America and Europe to collect and archive website & social media content to meet recordkeeping requirements. With the new PageFreezer Public Portal capabilities, government agencies now can provide online access for their citizens to easily browse and full-text search across all their social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or their websites and blogs using a simple "Google-like" search page.

"It's really useful for citizens to be able to search through all current and historic online publications of a government agency," says Michael Riedyk, CEO of PageFreezer. "It improves a government agency's transparency while driving down the high costs of open records requests."

One of the first to launch its transparency efforts through PageFreezer's Public Portal is The City of Sacramento. With 6 websites and over 75 social media accounts, The City of Sacramento is heavily dependent on its online properties to communicate key information to its citizens from project updates, to employment information and even offering online services like animal services and traffic alerts. Making efforts to establish itself as a leader in forward-thinking cities, The City of Sacramento is making massive efforts to build public trust and give its citizens greater insight into its objectives and operations through its transparency strategy.

Taking the time to ensure any data of interest or use to its citizens can be easily found and accessed, the City partnered with PageFreezer to archive all of its social media accounts and websites. The content is now available through PageFreezer's Public Portal, allowing for easy browsing of archives or full text keyword search. Visit the portal here: http://portal.pagefreezer.com/cityofsacramento

About PageFreezer

PageFreezer is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) application that enables organizations and corporations of all sizes to permanently preserve their website and social media content in evidentiary quality and replay them as if they were still live. Uses for the archived data range from compliance with regulators such as the SEC, FINRA and the FDA to litigation preparedness, evidence capture, call center support and competitive intelligence.

PR Contact:

Michael Riedyk

CEO PageFreezer

Phone: 778 996 6063

Email: Email

SOURCE PageFreezer Software, Inc.
NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Parkinson's Disease Foundation (PDF), a division of the Parkinson's Foundation, is pleased to announce the launch of its eighth series of PD ExpertBriefings  six free online seminars which address unmet needs in Parkinson's education. The series, presented by leaders in Parkinson's research and care, begins today, Tuesday, September 13, at 1:00 PM ET at www.pdf.org/parkinsononline.

Many people living with Parkinson's disease have questions about practical aspects of living with the disease that often go unanswered. As part of PDF's annual educational needs survey, more than 1,000 respondents helped the organization to identify areas of unmet need, which if addressed through education, could significantly improve the lives of people with Parkinson's.

The series kicks off today with, "Getting Around: Transportation & Travel with PD." The seminar, co-led by Rebecca Gilbert, M.D., Ph.D., Clinical Associate Professor of Neurology, The Marlene and Paolo Fresco Institute for Parkinson's and Movement Disorders at NYU Langone and Sara Riggare, Ph.D. Candidate, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, will offer practical tips to help people with Parkinson's and their care partners to travel with confidence.

The series offers additional seminars that address aspects of day-to-day living with Parkinson's, such as coping with an early diagnosis, understanding misunderstood symptoms such as skin changes, sleep and pain, and navigating legal and financial issues as a Parkinson's care partner.

"As part of our strategy to end Parkinson's disease, PDF mobilizes the members of our team  in the research, health and patient communities  to work together. That teamwork is the foundation for the success of this educational series," said Robin Anthony Elliott, CEO, Parkinson's Disease Foundation. "The seminars are led by one group of experts in the field the researchers and health professionals who bring their expertise to bear on coping with the disease. And they are guided by another  the people with Parkinson's and care partners who have ensured that PDF addresses the topics that matter most."

"As a person with Parkinson's who has lived in several rural communities, I know that finding timely and accurate information on Parkinson's can be a challenge," said A.C. Woolnough of Sandpoint, ID, Vice Chair of PDF's People with Parkinson's Advisory Council. "That's the beauty of the PD ExpertBriefings  they allow anyone in the community to access relevant information regardless of where they live. Through PD ExpertBriefings, PDF ensures that people with Parkinson's have access to the information we need."

Qualifying health professionals have the opportunity to earn free continuing education credits by participating live or within 30 days of any PD ExpertBriefing. The full schedule appears below.

PD ExpertBriefings Schedule

Getting Around: Transportation & Travel with PD

Tuesday, September 13, 1:00-2:00 PM ET

Sara Riggare, Ph.D. Candidate, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and Rebecca Gilbert, M.D., Ph.D., Clinical Associate Professor of Neurology, The Marlene and Paolo Fresco Institute for Parkinson's and Movement Disorders at NYU Langone

Parkinson's Disease: Financial, Legal and Medical Planning Tips for Care Partners

In recognition of National Family Caregivers Month

Tuesday, November 8, 1:00 PM-2:00 PM ET

Martin M. Shenkman, C.P.A., M.B.A., P.F.S., A.E.P., J.D., Founder, Shenkman Law

Pain in PD

Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 1:00 PM-2:00 PM ET

Jori E. Fleisher, M.D., M.S.C.E., Assistant Professor of Neurology and Population Health, The Marlene and Paolo Fresco Institute for Parkinson's and Movement Disorders at NYU Langone

Diagnosis PD, Now What? Managing the First Few Years with Parkinson's

Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 1:00 PM-2:00 PM ET

Suketu Khandhar, M.D., Medical Director, Kaiser Permanente Northern California Movement Disorders Program, Kaiser Permanente Sacramento Medical Center

Is It Related to PD? Runny Noses, Skin Changes and Overlooked PD Symptoms

In recognition of Parkinson's Awareness Month

Tuesday, April 18, 2017, 1:00-2:00 PM ET

W. Lawrence Severt, M.D., Ph.D., Attending Neurologist, Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center

Sleep and Parkinson's

Tuesday, June 13, 2017, 1:00-2:00 PM ET

Aleksandar Videnovic, M.D., M.Sc., Assistant Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital

To join a PD ExpertBriefing online or by mobile device, visit www.pdf.org/parkinsononline or contact PDF at (800) 457-6676 or [email protected]. Pre-registration is recommended. Online viewers can submit questions to presenters during the live seminars.

About Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological disorder that affects nearly one million people in the US and over 10 million worldwide. Parkinson's is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's and is the 14th leading cause of death in the US. It is associated with a loss of motor control (e.g., shaking or tremor at rest and lack of facial expression) as well as non-motor symptoms (e.g., depression and anxiety). Although promising research is being conducted, there is currently no cure for Parkinson's disease.

About PD ExpertBriefings

PD ExpertBriefings are free interactive seminars that provide people with Parkinson's, families and health professionals with first-hand access to leaders in research and care. Since 2009, PDF has offered more than 50 PD ExpertBriefings, which are available online at www.pdf.org/parkinsononline and via DVD. Through its sponsorship of the American Society on Aging, PDF offers continuing education credits to health professionals who participate in PD ExpertBriefings live or within 30 days. The newest series covers topics chosen with the help of the community, including 1,000 survey respondents and eight regional organizations, including Dallas Area Parkinsonism Society (DAPS); Houston Area Parkinson Society (HAPS); Michigan Parkinson Foundation (MPF); Neuro Challenge Foundation (NCF); Parkinson Association of the Carolinas (PAC); Parkinson Association of the Rockies (PAR); Parkinson's Association (PA) and Parkinson Support Center of Kentuckiana (PSCKY). This series has been made possible by educational grants from AbbVie, Inc., ACADIA Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Lundbeck LLC.

About the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, a division of the Parkinson's Foundation

The Parkinson's Foundation is working toward a world without Parkinson's disease. Formed by the merger of National Parkinson Foundation (NPF) and the Parkinson's Disease Foundation (PDF) in August 2016, the mission of the Parkinson's Foundation is to invest in promising scientific research that will end Parkinson's disease and improve the lives of people with Parkinson's, and their families, through improved treatments, support and the best care. For more information, visit www.pdf.org or www.parkinson.org or call (800) 457-6676 or (800) 4PD-INFO (473-4636).

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20111101/DC97663LOGO

SOURCE Parkinson's Disease Foundation

Related Links

http://www.pdf.org


JERUSALEM, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Friends of Zion (FOZ) Museum and its founder, Dr. Mike D. Evans presented Pastor John C. Hagee, one of the leading Christian Zionist figures in the U.S., with the Friend of Zion Friendship Medallion, during his visit to Jerusalem on Sunday.

Dr. Evans said, "I am proud to present Pastor Hagee with this Friend of Zion Friendship Medallion in acknowledgement of his tremendous support for the State of Israel through education, humanitarian causes, leading delegations of pilgrims to the Holy Land, and helping so many in their hour of need."

Pastor John Hagee Receives the Friend of Zion Friendship Medallion on his Recent Trip to Jerusalem

Pastor Hagee is the founder and National Chairman of Christians United for Israel, the largest Christian pro-Israel organization in the United States with millions of followers. Serving as minister for nearly six decades, he broadcasts radio and television programs throughout the United States and internationally. He is Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church, in San Antonio, Texas, a non-denominational evangelical church, which he founded, that has more than 20,000 active members.

Pastor Hagee praised the experience, "Diana and I have just had the opportunity of going through this magnificent museum. It begins with the call of Abraham, through the tribes; it demonstrates what Israel has gone through as a people; through the Holocaust and those who helped them through the Holocaust; all the way through the history of the State of Israel. It is an education in the growth and development of the Zionist State and I encourage you to go see it."

Accompanying Pastor Hagee and Dr. Evans on a tour of the Friends of Zion Museum was Diana Hagee, the Pastor's wife. Addressing Dr. Evans, she said, "You have met your calling, because this museum is fantastic."

The FOZ Museum is one of the newest attractions in the very heart of Jerusalem, inviting visitors from all over the world to experience the courageous stories of Christians who have supported the Jewish people and the State of Israel in the last 200 years. Among the inspiring heroes presented are US President Harry Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Pastor George Bush, Major-General Orde Wingate and Righteous Among the Nations Irena Sendler, Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, and the Ten Boom family, who risked their lives to save Jews persecuted throughout the world, as well as many others who, through their faith, have forged an everlasting bond between Jewish and Christian people.

Magnificently told, the FOZ Museum uses groundbreaking technology, allowing visitors to experience the unfolding story as though stepping back in time. Exhibits employ a wide range of integrated and interactive technologies, from 3D presentations and giant touch screens to video mapping projections on unique sculptures and complex roto scope animations that transform live-action video footage into a painted media.

The FOZ Museum opened in Jerusalem one year ago with the vision of serving as a bridge, enabling people from around the world to join the scores of people throughout history who have supported the people, the promise and State of Israel.

Friends of Zion Museum, 20 Yosef Rivlin Street, Jerusalem. A reservation is recommended for museum visits: website: www.fozmuseum.com, email: [email protected], or phone: +972-2-532-9400.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407007

Media contact: Karen Gold Anisfeld, PR360 Ltd. Mobile: +972-54-420-9578, [email protected], telefax: +972-3-544-9494

SOURCE The Friends of Zion Museum

Related Links

http://www.fozmuseum.com


TRANSACTION PRESENTS STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY FOR BOTH ORGANIZATIONS

WINNIPEG and MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Pavilion Financial Corporation (Pavilion), an employee-owned, investment services firm, announced today an agreement to purchase the business of Jeffrey Slocum & Associates, Inc. (Slocum). At closing, a significant number of Slocum's senior management team, consultants and researchers will become shareholders in Pavilion and will maintain key leadership positions in the combined organization.

Slocum serves a broad array of institutional clients in the U.S. and Canada, including healthcare systems, endowments and foundations, retirement plans (defined contribution and defined benefit), insurance companies, religious organizations and Native American tribal communities. Its services include enterprise risk modeling, asset allocation and liability studies, risk management, manager searches, investment policy development, performance analysis and reporting, and client education. Slocum advises on approximately US$125 billion in client assets.

Pavilion offers institutional investment consulting in Canada and the U.S. through Pavilion Advisory Group, whose consultants provide tailored advice, strategies and solutions for institutional clients in every aspect of the investing process. In addition, Pavilion offers specialized advisory services on alternative asset classes to institutional clients through Pavilion Alternatives Group, one of the largest, dedicated alternative advisory groups in North America. At closing, Pavilion will combine the business of Slocum with its institutional investment consulting subsidiary in the U.S., Pavilion Advisory Group Inc., and the Slocum team will operate under the Pavilion name out of its current office in Minneapolis.

Daniel Friedman, President & CEO of Pavilion Financial Corporation, said the transaction presents a strategic opportunity for both organizations. "The combined team will have the resources and expertise to lead the industry across a wide range of areas such as healthcare, insurance and retirement benefit consulting. The combined resources and research-driven knowledge will allow the advisory teams to enhance their offering to both Pavilion and Slocum clients and to expand the quality advice and solutions they are seeking."

Jeffrey Slocum, who will be retiring from institutional consulting after a brief transition period, said the transaction provides a defined succession plan for the business he founded in 1986. "We found Pavilion's commitment to employee-ownership to be a very compelling feature of the transaction since it aligns consultant and client interests. Further, Pavilion's depth of expertise, its specialized and dedicated services and its commitment to meeting or exceeding client expectations are a good fit for our clients and our team."

The transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks subject to a number of conditions.

About Pavilion Financial Corporation

Founded in 2006, Pavilion Financial Corporation is an employee-owned investment services firm offering advice and execution services to institutional and other investors. Through its subsidiaries, Pavilion offers a comprehensive suite of integrated services such as investment consulting, implemented consulting, transition management, securities trading, research and wealth management. With business operations in 15 centers around the globe, it has assembled various expert and specialized teams to bring top quality and customized investment advisory services and solutions to clients. For more information, visit www.pavilioncorp.com.

About Pavilion Advisory Group

Pavilion Advisory Group offers investment consulting, advisory services, retirement benefit consulting, and implemented or discretionary solutions to corporate and public plan sponsors (DB and DC), not-for-profit healthcare systems, higher education endowments, foundations, and family offices. It serves a global clientele from offices in Chicago and Indianapolis in the U.S., and Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Edmonton in Canada. Pavilion Advisory Group is a trademark of Pavilion Financial Corporation, used under license by Pavilion Advisory Group Inc. in the U.S. and Pavilion Advisory Group Ltd. in Canada. For more information, visit www.pavilioncorp.com/advisory-services

SOURCE Pavilion Financial Corporation

Related Links

http://www.pavilioncorp.com


LOS ANGELES, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Penton's SpeedNews Conferences, the premier Conference organizer in the global aerospace and defense industries, brings its European Aerospace Raw Materials & Manufacturers Supply Chain Conference to Toulouse, France for a fourth year of uniting global commercial and military aerospace professionals to discuss supply chain strategies. Held in conjunction with the SpeedNews 17th Annual Aviation Industry Suppliers Conference in Toulouse, the event will take place September 19, 2016 at the Hotel Palladia. To register, visit http://speednews.com/european-aerospace-raw-materials-and-manufacturers-supply-chain-conferences.

The SpeedNews 4th Annual European Aerospace Raw Materials & Manufacturers Supply Chain Conference includes topics of interest for equipment OEMs, sub-tier manufacturers, supply chain executives, market analysts, investment bankers and raw material suppliers. Scheduled speakers include representatives from AeroDynamic Advisory, Airbus, Alcoa Titanium & Engineered Products, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, and KMue Consult.

The SpeedNews 4th Annual European Aerospace Raw Materials & Manufacturers Supply Chain Conference is sponsored by Aero Metals Alliance.

Information on registration for the event is available at http://speednews.com/european-aerospace-raw-materials-and-manufacturers-supply-chain-conferences/information or by calling +1-424-465-6501. On Twitter, follow @speednewsconf (https://twitter.com/speednewsconf). For information about all SpeedNews events, visit http://speednews.com/all/conference.

ABOUT PENTON'S AVIATION WEEK NETWORK

Penton's Aviation Week Network is the largest multimedia information and services provider for the global aviation, aerospace and defense industries that has a database of 1.2 million professionals around the world. Industry professionals rely on Aviation Week for analysis, marketing and intelligence. Customers include the world's leading manufacturers, suppliers, airlines, business aviation operators, militaries, governments and other organizations that serve this global market. The product portfolio includes Aviation Week & Space Technology, AC-U-KWIK, Aircraft Blue Book, Airportdata.com, Air Charter Guide, Air Transport World, AviationWeek.com, Aviation Week Intelligence Network, Business & Commercial Aviation, ShowNews, SpeedNews, Fleet and MRO forecasts, global maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) tradeshows and aerospace & defense conferences.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Joanna Speed

SpeedNews

O +1-424-465-6501

M +1-310-384-6942

[email protected]

@speednewsconf

Facebook.com/SpeedNews

linkedin.com/company/speednews

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151231/318607LOGO

SOURCE Penton

Related Links

http://www.penton.com


DENVER, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pinsight (www.pinsight.biz), an executive-assessment, software-as-a-service startup is proud to announce that its live, virtual leadership simulations received the Silver award for Best Use of Games or Simulations for Learning in the 2016 Brandon Hall Group Human Capital Management Excellence Awards. The winners are listed at http://www.brandonhall.com/excellenceawards/past-winners.php.

Winning a Brandon Hall Group Excellence Award means an organization is an elite innovator within Human Capital Management. The award signifies that the organization's work represents a leading practice in that HCM function," said Rachel Cooke, COO of Brandon Hall Group.

"We are honored and excited to receive this award, especially in the face of such strong competition," says Martin Lanik, CEO of Pinsight. "It validates our virtual assessment center solution as best-of-class."

"Imagine a live virtual simulation: today, you are the executive tasked with bringing a new product to market. What's your go-to-market strategy? How will you engage your team? The phone rings and there is your struggling direct report (actual live human actor) in a webcam chat seeking your help," explains Lanik. Pinsight simulations place employees in the hot seat and let them practice leadership skills in a safe environment.

Through its integrated data analytics, Pinsight helps companies make accurate succession decisions, and get their leaders ready faster. "This is not your traditional manager training. We have taken the previously $10,000 day-in-the-life developmental experience and moved it online, so that leaders at all levels and companies of all sizes can benefit," adds Lanik.

About Pinsight

Global Assessor Pool LLC (dba Pinsight) is an early-stage software-as-a-service provider, based in Denver, Colorado. Pinsight conducts executive assessment simulations in over 30 countries and in 8 languages. Pinsight is managed on a virtual basis, has more than 100 employees and independent contractors, and is represented in more than 10 countries. The company's founder, Martin Lanik, is an industrial/organizational psychologist, with a PhD from Colorado State University.

Media Contact

Tara Vega

+1 800 423 8295 Ext. 2

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150825/260796LOGO

SOURCE Pinsight

Related Links

http://www.pinsight.biz


HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) today issued an invitation for bids to award 40 expired restaurant licenses in the initial license auction authorized by Act 39 of 2016. This is the first time since Prohibition that a new population of licenses exceeding the existing quota has been made available in Pennsylvania.

This auction includes 40 licenses across 21 counties. Four licenses in Philadelphia and four in Allegheny County are available, while two licenses in each of the following counties are up for auction: Butler, Cameron, Chester, Dauphin, Delaware, Erie, Indiana, Lancaster, Lehigh, Montgomery, Somerset, Westmoreland, and York. A single license in each of Adams, Blair, Bucks, Centre, Cumberland, and Washington counties is also available. The auction licenses in Adams, Butler, Cameron, and Cumberland counties are the only expired licenses in those counties that qualify to be auctioned off at this time.

Licenses were selected for this auction based on anticipated high demand for licenses in these areas. The initial auction is capped at 40 licenses in order to test and evaluate market reaction, as well as to ensure the PLCB's Bureau of Licensing can operationally support the timely processing of the transfer applications and related investigations.

A sealed bid process was selected for the first auction so that the auction can be completed fairly and quickly through an established bidding process, as well as to maximize auction revenue. Bids for these 40 licenses are due Thursday, October 27.

Bids will be opened and auction winners will be determined the week of October 31.

The minimum bid for each license is $25,000, and each bid must be accompanied by a $5,000 bid surety intended to avoid frivolous and underfunded bids.

The highest responsive bidder for each license will win the right to submit an application for the license to the PLCB within six months of auction award. If bid payment is not received within two weeks of auction award, the second-highest bidder will have opportunity to apply for the license. Bids will be held in escrow by the PLCB, pending approval of the license application.

Bidders with questions regarding this invitation for bid must submit inquiries via email to [email protected] by Tuesday, September 27. Questions and answers will be posted to the Department of General Services e-marketplace website by Wednesday, October 5.

Statewide, about 1,200 licenses that have expired since 2000 will be made available through auctions in coming months and years. The PLCB will identify licenses available at each auction as each auction is introduced, in an effort to maintain short- and long-term interest in licenses available through auction.

Methods and timeframes for future auctions will be determined after the first auction is concluded.

The PLCB regulates the distribution of beverage alcohol in Pennsylvania, operates more than 600 wine and spirits stores statewide and licenses more than 20,000 beverage alcohol producers and retailers. The PLCB also works to reduce and prevent dangerous and underage drinking through partnerships with schools, community groups and licensees. Taxes and store profits  totaling $15.1 billion since the agency's inception  are returned to Pennsylvania's General Fund, which finances Pennsylvania's schools, health and human services programs, law enforcement, and public safety initiatives, among other important public services. The PLCB also provides financial support for the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, other state agencies and local municipalities across the state. For more information about the PLCB, visit www.lcb.state.pa.us.

MEDIA CONTACT: Elizabeth Brassell, 717-783-8864

SOURCE Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board

Related Links

http://www.lcb.state.pa.us


NEW YORK, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is the inspection of an embryo in vitro in order to eliminate a genetic condition in case a high risk of that condition is known. PGD is an evolving technique that provides a practical alternative to prenatal diagnosis and termination of pregnancy for couples who are at substantial risk of transmitting a serious genetic disorder to their offspring. Growing incidence of infertility across the world is the major driver of the PGD market. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis plays an important role in the detection and determination of genetic disorders, sex-linked diseases, and chromosomal abnormalities in the embryo before IVF can be performed. Rising incidence of infertility coupled with growing awareness about IVF and PGD is the major factor driving the PGD market in Asia.

The preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) market in Asia has been segmented based on test type, end-user, and geography. Based on test type, the market has been segmented into aneuploidy screening, chromosomal aberrations, gender selection, HLA typing, single gene disorder, and X-linked diseases. The market analysis is based on market size and forecast in terms of US$ Mn for the period 2013 to 2023 along with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) for the period 2015 to 2023, considering 2014 as the base year. The aneuploidy screening segment accounted for the largest share of 35% of the PGD market in Asia in 2014. Based on end-user, the market has been segmented into fertility clinics, health care facilities (including hospitals, diagnostic centers, and health care facilities), and academic institutes and research centers.

The market overview section of the report demonstrates major market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities that influence the current and future status of the industry. The market overview section includes Porter's Five Forces Analysis, overview of PGD, Regulatory Policies and Legality Framework for PGD, Heat Map Analysis for key market players, and country-wise number of PGD Centers in Asia. The report provides a detailed industry analysis of the preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) market in Asia with the help of market attractiveness analysis, by geography, for the year 2014.



The market has been analyzed for Asia covering South Eastern Asia, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia, Central Asia, and Western Asia. The market size and forecast of the regional and country-wise markets is provided for the period 2013 to 2023. CAGR (%) for each region is also estimated for the period 2015 to 2023, considering 2014 as the base year. South Eastern Asia includes Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Rest of SEA. Eastern Asia comprises China, Japan, South Korea, and Rest of Eastern Asia. Southern Asia constitutes India, Sri Lanka, and Rest of Southern Asia. Western Asia includes Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Rest of Western Asia. Eastern Asia accounted for the largest share of the PGD market in Asia.

The report also provides recommendations for market players and new entrants. These recommendations would enable existing market players to expand their market shares and help new companies to establish their presence in the PGD market in Asia. The report concludes with the company profiles section, which includes key information about major players in the market such as financial overview, business strategies, and recent developments. Major players in this market are Genesis Genetics (U.S.), Genea Limited (Australia), Illumina, Inc. (U.S.), Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (U.S.), Natera, Inc. (U.S.), PerkinElmer, Inc.(U.S.), Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (U.S.), Reprogenetics (U.S.), and Reproductive Genetics Innovations LLC (U.S.). The market share analysis of key players involved the study of company products or services portfolio, post sales services and maintenance, sales revenue, and its geographical presence.



The PGD market in Asia has been segmented as follows:



Asia Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) Market, by Test Type

PGD for Aneuploidy Screening

PGD for Chromosomal Aberrations

PGD for Gender Selection

PGD for HLA Typing

PGD for Single Gene Disorder

PGD for X-linked diseases

Asia Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) Market, by End-user

Fertility Clinics

Health Care Facilities (including hospitals, diagnostic centers, and health care facilities)

Academic Institutes and Research Centers

Asia Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) Market, by Geography

South Eastern Asia

Indonesia

Malaysia

Philippines

Singapore

Thailand

Rest of SEA

Eastern Asia

China

Japan

South Korea

Rest of Eastern Asia

Southern Asia

India

Sri Lanka

Rest of Southern Asia

Central Asia

Western Asia

Israel

Turkey

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

United Arab Emirates

Rest of Western Asia



Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04047930-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

http://www.reportlinker.com





__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

http://www.reportlinker.com


TAMPA, Fla., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Prime Medical, the producer of the SAF-T line of bactericidal apparel and textiles for healthcare, has donated 88 sets of scrubs to CURE International's Zambia hospital. The scrubs, which kill 99.9 percent of germs and bacteria on contact, will help protect patients and staff from harmful pathogens that can lead to deadly infections.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406727

Nurses at CURE International's Zambia hospital wear SAF-T scrubs, a bactericidal line of healthcare apparel that protects patients and staff from harmful pathogens that can lead to deadly infections.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406725LOGO

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 10 out of every 100 hospitalized patients in a developing country will acquire at least one hospital-associated infection (HAI). These infections result in more than 100,000 deaths each year in the U.S. alone. While limited data is available, experts predict that these numbers are even higher in low-income and developing countries like Zambia.

"Giving to those who give of themselves is the cornerstone of our business philosophy," said Jim Sampey, CEO of Prime Medical. "The staff at CURE International truly give of themselves to serve others, and we're proud to support them with this donation."

CURE International operates charitable hospitals and programs in 29 countries around the world. The hospitals specialize in treating children with orthopedic conditions such as clubfoot, bowed legs, cleft lips, untreated burns and hydrocephalus.

"These children deserve the very best we can give them, and preventing infection is so critical to the quality of care we can provide," said Andrew H. Groop, vice president of operations, CURE International. "It's reassuring to know that Prime Medical is helping us raise the standard of treatment for the children in our care."

SAF-T is the only line of healthcare apparel and textiles to use BioSmart by Milliken, a patented fabric technology that binds chlorine to the surface of fabric to continuously kill 99.9 percent of harmful pathogens for as long as 120 days between wash cycles. Each laundering with EPA-registered bleach completely recharges the germ-killing effectiveness through 75 wash cycles, with no loss of efficacy and without fading the fabric.

Since 2014, Prime Medical has donated nearly 550 sets of bactericidal scrubs to CURE International. The organization is currently planning its fourth donation, which will benefit Tebow CURE Hospital in the Philippines.

About Prime Medical

Prime Medical is the parent company and producer of the SAF-T line of products  an innovative unique line of bactericidal privacy curtains, linens, towels and healthcare apparel that kills 99.9 percent of common germs and bacteria on contact. Made in the USA, SAF-T products provide staff and patients continuous protection from harmful microorganisms that can lead to healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). For more information, visit www.primemedical.com or www.saf-t-scrubs.com.

About CURE International

CURE International is a Christian health care network that operates charitable hospitals and programs in 30 countries worldwide where patients experience the life-changing message of God's love for them, receiving surgical treatment regardless of gender, religion, or ethnicity. Since 1998, CURE has had over 2.5 million patient visits, provided over 180,000 life-changing surgeries, and trained over 7,200 medical professionals.

Media Contact :

Kasey Coryn

True Blue Communications

Office: (727) 726-3000

Cell: (727) 212-6720

Email

SOURCE Prime Medical

Related Links

http://www.primemedical.com


ACWORTH, Ga., Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Primrose Schools, a high-quality early education and care franchise company with more than 300 schools across the country, has announced two new additions to its executive team. Annette Cannata Heng starts today as senior vice president of school excellence, and Sarah Funk will join Primrose on September 19 as vice president of talent and performance.

These newly-created positions are a result of the dynamic growth of Primrose Schools, which has experienced an average increase of 13.3 percent in system revenue in the past five years. The franchise company was recently ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies in the United States and was named the third best franchise to buy by Forbes in the $500,000+ category.

"Annette and Sarah are joining Primrose at an incredibly exciting time," said Jo Kirchner, CEO of Primrose Schools. "Our company is experiencing unprecedented momentum, and their talents, expertise and leadership will play an integral role as we continue to forge a path to a brighter future for all children."

As senior vice president of school excellence, Heng will lead strategic efforts to foster a brand-driven, high performance environment for Primrose School Franchising Company and the Primrose schools system. She has worked in education for more than 30 years, having previously served as a regional vice president for Aramark Education, among other roles for the company. Heng holds a bachelor's degree from National Louis University and a master's degree in education from Erikson Institute and Loyola University.

When Funk begins her role as vice president of talent and performance, she will develop strategies to sustain and strengthen Primrose leadership, brand culture and management capabilities for Primrose Schools Franchising Company, which includes franchise sales, development, operations and marketing. Funk has held numerous positions with the Nebraska Book Company, most recently serving as vice president of human resources. Her past experience also includes leadership roles with Target. Funk received her bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Heng and Funk will report to Kirchner directly.

About Primrose Schools

Founded in 1982, Primrose Schools is the nation's leader in providing a premier early education and care experience in more than 300 schools in 26 states. Each Primrose school is independently owned and operated by Franchise Owners who partner with parents to help children build the right foundation for future learning and life, and offer an environment that helps children have fun while nurturing Active Minds, Healthy Bodies and Happy Hearts. Primrose is the first early childhood education organization in the country to receive AdvancED Corporation Systems Accreditation under the new Standards for Quality Early Learning Schools. For more information, visit www.PrimroseSchools.com, follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube, and explore our blog.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406139LOGO

SOURCE Primrose Schools

Related Links

https://www.primroseschools.com


LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In this report we have carried out detailed analysis of the PVC market in accordance with the MRC internal standards. Before starting the preparation of the Report we studied numerous researches conducted earlier on the PVC market by other companies and discovered several common gaps that had not allowed obtaining objective assessment of the Russian PVC market before.

- We have added general data about PVC shipments to Belarus. The common mistake in many researches is that the overall PVC consumption in Russia was frequently calculated without taking into account exports to this Republic. Russian customs officers do not take account of imports/exports from/to Belarus, considering it to be domestic trade.

- We have tried to estimate the capacity of the Russian PVC market, reducing the

consumption of the all known compounds based on unmixed PVC, in accordance with the

formulae of rigid, soft compounds as well as PVC-paste, regarding consumption volume

of unmixed PVC. Thus, general reduced capacity of the PVC market is calculated as

consumption of unmixed PVC and consumption of unmixed PVC in compounds.

Contrariwise: we have also estimated the capacity of PVC compounds market by

converting unmixed PVC consumption indices into domestic output of PVC compounds in

Russia.

- If you take the statistics of the domestic output as the basis for goods made of polyvinyl

chloride in the Russian Federation, then, unfortunately, your assessments of some PVC

processing sectors would be basically incorrect. Thus, the Federal State Statistics Service

of the Russian Federation takes into account processing volumes of only two dozens of

PVC converters. At the same time, the Federal State Statistics Service doesn't take into

account production statistics in the largest consumption sectors (particularly, in the official

statistics you will not find any data on production of window and door profiles, windowsills

or panels), though today there are more than 500 KTa of PVC are being converted in

these sectors. So, the leader of domestic PVC processing, Profine Rus, submit statistics

only on rigid compounds production. Corporate standards of this group suppose

reporting to the statistics service of the country, where Profiine works, but nevertheless

there is no code "profile-linear goods" in our statistics.

- We have taken into account processing volumes of more than 400 processors, including

200 consumers of rigid PVC grades used to produce profile goods and 70 consumers of

soft PVC grades for film and elastron production. That is why, our PVC consumption

volume estimations for the processors significantly differ from official statistical

estimations.

- We studied PVC traders' sales and tried to focus on end PVC converters. To achieve this

we used more than 10 information sources, including detailed statistics on financial

indices and domestic services in the Russian Federation. We collected PVC sales

statistics on each converter, using data on transportation by rail and road along with

expert assessments.

- We have also collected PVC supplies statistics on all producers in the market of the

Russian Federation in the context of each PVC grade. We analyzed all 500 PVC grades

that have been sold in the Russian market. If the analytics of imported grades supplies

can be collected in the market itself, the grade range of the Russian PVC producers can

only be found in our annual report. Only having collected summarized sales data on

some certain PVC grades, we managed to determine PVC consumption volumes in each

processing sector.

- We also got higher estimation of profile goods, than it used to be considered before the

preparation of the report. We managed to distribute C7068(59)M grade, produced by all

PVC producers in Russia, more correctly. In accordance with the European standards,

this grade is not used in production of window profiles, siding, wall panels, etc. However,

according to our data, Russian profile producers very often blend this grade with PVC-S

grade ?5868Zh or with any other grades with K-63, 64, completing compositions up to

necessary characteristics.

- We carried out in-depth analysis of every PVC processing equipment supplies. In our

analytical report each converter was referred to one or another processing sector, which,

in its turn, was regarded to a PVC grade. The rating of the most significant investments

made by converters has been prepared for each sector. Consequently, using the obtained

dynamics of capital investments into equipment we can judge about objective

perspectives for further growth in each PVC processing sector.

- Basing on the PVC processing investment data as well as using domestic service

statistics in Russia, we got an authentic view of PVC processing development in each

region of Russia.

- The data on PVC consumption and investments into processing do not provide us with

the full view about Russian market potential. Deliveries of finished PVC goods start to

play more important role. Over the last years imports of PVC goods into Russia exceeded

300 thousand tons. That was why, we analyzed imports of finished goods over the period

of 2007-2015 and made more precise assumptions about the nature and development of

every processing sector as well as about the potential of Russian producers in view of

the potential import substitution.

- Producers ratings were compiled on the basis of our own estimations of PVC

consumption, as well as ratings of sales of each PVC grade in each sector. That was

done for you to get a clear picture which PVC grades are in greatest demand today as

well as to define your grades mix for the future.

- we analyzed price fluctuations during 2007-2015, using the data of ICIS and Platts, as

well as our own weekly prices.

- One of the results of the unprejudiced analysis are our own assumptions about which

projects on expansion of PVC capacities are going to be the most popular in the Russian

market before 2015, and which are most likely going to remain on paper.

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4057041/



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


HOUSTON, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- After a successful inaugural year, Quaker State is launching the next installment of the "Best in Class Challenge," a 6-week automotive education competition featuring high school auto shop classes across the United States. Each school's team is charged with the task of tuning, restoring and customizing a pre-owned car into a pristine, creative representation of their school. The competition will consist of online voting, six weeks of automotive challenges, hands-on education, distinguished judges, participation in a Barrett-Jackson vehicle auction for the grand prize winner and of course, great prizes!

"After we experienced such excitement and strong participation numbers during last year's Quaker State 'Best in Class Challenge,' we knew we had to bring it back! We're honored to be able to offer this top-notch educational program once again to high school auto shop students from across the United States," said Laura Jaime, Quaker State North American Marketing Manager. "The competition will offer these students the opportunity to hone their tuning and customization skills while being mentored by top automotive experts in the field."

From September 12-25, 2016, approximately 55 semi-finalist schools will be responsible for securing as many votes as possible to be nominated for the "Best in Class Challenge." The team with the most votes from each of the five markets will then become finalists and will move on to the next stage of the competition comprised of six weeks of automotive challenges beginning October 11, 2016. To start casting votes (1 per person, per day) and to read the complete program rules, visit: www.QuakerState.com/BestInClass.

To kick off the competition, the top five schools will each receive a pre-owned vehicle valued at up to $3,000. For this year's competition, Quaker State has once again teamed up with AutoZone; teams will be given $2,000 to be used at their local AutoZone retailer to purchase the supplies and tools they'll need for success in the competition. Students will be scored on their progress at the end of each week of the competition based on the quality of their work and their overall final product. Additionally, the teams will have to secure online votes each week, which will be factored into their final scores as well.

This year's judges include Tommy Pike, owner of Tommy Pike Customs as lead judge, and Sung Kang, actor, producer and car enthusiast. Judging criteria ranges from general engine maintenance to creativity and quality of the vehicle's body work and customizations. Throughout the competition, these automotive industry leaders will have the opportunity to mentor and provide guidance to each team of high school students.

"I am honored to be back working with Quaker State for the second year of the 'Best in Class Challenge'," said Pike, who is known for his modern muscle performance and cutting edge customizations. "I was impressed with and inspired by last year's teams from their creativity, imagination, perseverance and sticktoitiveness. Not only do I have the opportunity to mentor these future automotive professionals, but I also look forward to encouraging the passion, creativity and work ethic that the next generation of car enthusiasts will be developing."

The five teams that successfully complete the "Best in Class Challenge" will be awarded the following prize packages:

1 st Place Grand Prize  A feature digital article and video on automotive websites, a $2,500 credit account at AutoZone, a customized tool kit ( $500 value) and the opportunity to sell their vehicle at auction with proceeds being awarded back to their school.

 A feature digital article and video on automotive websites, a credit account at AutoZone, a customized tool kit ( value) and the opportunity to sell their vehicle at auction with proceeds being awarded back to their school. 2 nd Place Prize  A $2,000 credit account at AutoZone and ownership of their customized vehicle from the competition.

 A credit account at AutoZone and ownership of their customized vehicle from the competition. 3 rd Place Prize  A $1,500 credit account at AutoZone and ownership of their customized vehicle from the competition.

 A credit account at AutoZone and ownership of their customized vehicle from the competition. 4 th Place Prize  A $1,000 credit account at AutoZone and ownership of their customized vehicle from the competition.

 A credit account at AutoZone and ownership of their customized vehicle from the competition. 5th Place Prize  A $750 credit account at AutoZone and ownership of their customized vehicle from the competition.

The 1st Place Grand Prize winner will be given the chance to attend the Barrett-Jackson auction in West Palm Beach, Florida on April 8, 2017. The attending students and their mentor will be with their customized vehicle when it is auctioned off to the highest bidder. The gross proceeds earned from the auction will be awarded back to the school as prize money.

Quaker State makes it its mission to provide motorists with products that offer the value that they desire and expect. To stay up-to-date on the latest Quaker State activities, be sure to 'Like' the official Quaker State Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/quakerstate) and follow Quaker State on Twitter (https://twitter.com/quakerstate).

About Quaker State

Quaker State motor oil has an 80-year history as a leader in consumer automotive products and vehicle care. Quaker State is among the industry's most innovative motor oil brands and offers a full line of products to meet vehicle engine needs. Quaker State is one of the first brands to develop high mileage engine motor oil.

For more information about the full line of Quaker State products, visit www.quakerstate.com.

About Shell Lubricants

The term 'Shell Lubricants' collectively refers to the companies of Royal Dutch Shell plc that are engaged in the lubricants business. Shell Lubricants companies lead the lubricants industry, supplying more than 12 percent of global lubricants volume. * The companies manufacture and blend products for use in consumer, heavy industrial and commercial transport applications. The Shell Lubricants portfolio of top-quality brands includes Pennzoil, Quaker State, FormulaShell, Shell TELLUS, Shell RIMULA, Shell ROTELLA T, Shell SPIRAX and Jiffy Lube.

*Kline & Company, "Global Lubricants Industry July 2015: Market Analysis and Assessment.

About AutoZone

As of May 9, 2015, AutoZone sells auto and light truck parts, chemicals and accessories through 5,069 AutoZone stores in 49 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico in the U.S., and 418 stores in Mexico and seven stores in Brazil and 18 IMC branches for a total count of 5,512.

AutoZone is the leading retailer and a leading distributor of automotive replacement parts and accessories in the United States. Each AutoZone store carries an extensive product line for cars, sport utility vehicles, vans and light trucks, including new and remanufactured automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products. Many stores also have a commercial sales program that provides commercial credit and prompt delivery of parts and other products to local, regional and national repair garages, dealers, service stations, and public sector accounts. IMC branches carry an extensive line of OE quality import replacement parts. AutoZone also sells the ALLDATA brand diagnostic and repair software through www.alldata.com. Additionally, we sell automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products through www.autozone.com, and accessories and performance parts through www.autoanything.com, and our commercial customers can make purchases through www.autozonepro.com and www.imcparts.net. AutoZone does not derive revenue from automotive repair or installation.

About Tommy Pike Customs

Tommy Pike Customs has been a leader in the automotive customization industry for more than fifteen years. Located in Greenville, South Carolina, Tommy Pike Customs is truly a one-stop shop for all things automotive. Specializing in modern muscle, performance and cutting edge customization, Tommy Pike and his team assist each customer with any level custom project.

To learn more about Tommy Pike Customs, visit www.tommypikecustoms.com, "Like" them on www.facebook.com/tommypikecustoms and "Follow" them on www.twitter.com/tommypikecustom.

About The Barrett -Jackson Auction Company

Established in 1971 and headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, Barrett-Jackson, The World's Greatest Collector Car Auctions, is the leader in collector car auctions and automotive lifestyle events. The company produces auctions in Scottsdale, Arizona; Palm Beach, Florida; at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, and Las Vegas, Nevada. With broadcast partners, Velocity and Discovery Channel, Barrett-Jackson will feature live television coverage in 2016, including broadcasts in over 100 countries internationally. Barrett-Jackson also endorses a one-of-a-kind collector car insurance for collector vehicles and other valued belongings. For more information about Barrett-Jackson, visit http://www.barrett-jackson.com, or call 480-421-6694.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406507LOGO

SOURCE Quaker State

Related Links

http://www.quakerstate.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This Market Research report assesses the current state-of-the-art in synthesizing QDs, identifies the current market players seeking to exploit QD behavior, evaluates actual or potential markets in terms of application, type and projected commercial market revenues. Forecast provided through 2021.

Use this report to:

- Gain insight into the current state regarding synthesizing quantum dots (QDs) and their focal applications.

- Identify the current market players seeking to exploit QD behavior; and evaluate potential markets in terms of application, type and projected commercial market revenues.

- Evaluate key patents based on developments in QD integration and technology.

Highlights

- The global market for quantum dots (QDs) totaled $610.0 million in revenue in 2016. The market should total over $3.4 billion by 2021, increasing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41.3% from 2016 to 2021.

- The electronics sector totaled $470.0 million revenue in 2016. The market should total $1.1 billion by 2021, increasing at a CAGR of 18.5% from 2016 to 2021.

- The optoelectronics market for QDs totaled $14.0 million in 2016, and should total just over $1.8 billion in 2021, increasing at a CAGR of 164.3% from 2016 to 2021.

Introduction & Scope

Among the many subsets of nanomaterials, quantum dots (QDs) are like no other. At dimensions typically below 10 nanometers, nanocrystalline (NC) semiconductors (SCs), metals and magnetic materials can all exhibit extraordinary quantum confinement phenomena. Basically, at these dimensions, their physical size encroaches upon the fundamental quantum confinement dimensions of orbiting electrons that are uniquely prescribed by their atomic nucleus. Within the regime of these critical dimensions, QDs exhibit distinctly different behavior from their bulk form, which manifests itself, for example, in distinctly different optical, electronic and magnetic properties.

Today, scientists can precisely synthesize NC materials at these critical dimensions and thereby systematically tune their quantum confining behavior. As a result, there is currently enormous interest to exploit and capitalize on the unique properties exhibited by QD materials. As a harbinger for future business developments, colloidal quantum dot (CQD) bioconjugates were among the first wave of commercial product applications stimulating market interest. Primarily, these have quickly established a niche market in the life sciences and biomedical communities, where they provide unrivalled cellular imaging and therapeutic detection capabilities. Other more recent commercial launchings of SC QDs include: a new generation of flash-memory devices; nanomaterial enhancements for improving the performance of liquid crystal display (LCD) TV and monitor display backlights; flexible organic LEDs, as well as solid-state white-LED lighting; and in rigid and flexible solar panel coatings.

With these latest commercial developments and their enormous business potential, this report provides a timely assessment of quantum dot materialswhere they are currently at, and where they might be in the foreseeable future.

STUDY GOAL AND OBJECTIVES

The primary objective of this report is threefold: to assess the current state-of-the-art in synthesizing QDs; to identify the current market players seeking to exploit QD behavior; and to evaluate actual or potential markets in terms of application, type and projected commercial market revenues.



SCOPE AND FORMAT

Since their parallel discovery in Russia and the U.S. over 30 years ago, SC QDs, until quite recently, have resided exclusively in the domain of solid-state physics, where they have been fabricated using expensive and sophisticated molecular beam epitaxy or chemical vapor deposition equipment. However, in a relatively short time frame, this situation has changed dramatically with the recent commercial availability of CQDs synthesized by less expensive wet-chemical processes. Practically, the availability of QDs in a colloidally dispersed form has helped demystify these somewhat esoteric materials. Most importantly, CQDs now provide access to a much broader industrial audience, which promises to further widen their potential market exploitation. Current and future applications of QDs impact a broad range of industrial markets. These include, for example: biology and biomedicine; computing and memory; electronics and displays; optoelectronic devices such as LEDs, lighting and lasers; optical components in telecommunications and image sensors; and security applications such as covert identification tagging or biowarfare detection sensors.

This report probes in considerable depth the early pioneers and champions in this field in industry, government and academic laboratories. The most active organizations, promising technical applications and developments realizable within the next five years, will all be highlighted.



CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE STUDY AND TARGET AUDIENCE

This report represents a major update of the BCC Research report (NAN027D) Quantum Dots: Technologies and Commercial Prospects, published in April 2014. The most significant revisions in the new edition include:

- An extensive updated patent analysis (2014 through 2015).

- An in-depth assessment of the unfolding commercial markets.

- Progress in the synthesis and commercial scale-up by QD producers.

- Interviews with leading producers.

- Updated company profiles of the producers and end users dictating market development.

- Updated five-year market projection analysis of the emerging QD market.

This is the fifth exclusive report to focus on QD nanomaterials from the perspective of their technology, applications and future business prospects. Thus, this up-to-date, technical assessment and business analysis should prove an especially valuable resource to individuals and organizations seeking more insight into the current status of QDs, their stand-alone capabilities within the spectrum of nanomaterials and time-to-market commercial development. The report's comprehensive technical and business assessment on the current status of the QD-based industry should prove informative to nanomaterials manufacturers, investors seeking near-term commercialization opportunities, technologists confronted with nanomaterial device integration issues and companies specifically interested in exploiting QDs in biological, biomedical, electronics, energy, optics, optoelectronics, security and other applications.



METHODOLOGY AND SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Both primary and secondary research methodologies were used in preparing this report. This report is derived primarily from the enormous amount of patent and technical literature relating to QDs disclosed in the public domain. In addition, complementary information has also been drawn from the business community, such as company investment news, company profiles, press releases and personal telephone interviews with selected companies.

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p02114686-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

http://www.reportlinker.com





__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

http://www.reportlinker.com


FREDERICKSBURG, Va., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Radiologic Associates of Virginia (RAF) is pleased to announce that Dr. Samer Hijaz, a fellowship-trained interventional radiologist with deep roots in Virginia, has joined the practice, Dr. R. Donald Doherty, Jr., said today.

RAF interventional radiologists and vascular surgeons serve patients at Virginia Interventional & Vascular Associates (VIVA), the group's outpatient facility near Lee's Hill North, at Mary Washington Hospital and at Stafford Hospital.

Dr. Hijaz is trained in the full range of interventional radiology services, including the latest procedures such as prostate embolization and interventional oncology. His special interests include procedures to manage arteriovenous fistulas, which provide dialysis access for patients with renal disease.

He recently completed his interventional radiology fellowship at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. Dr. Hijaz also worked as a diagnostic radiologist at Johns Hopkins' Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, MD.

Earlier in his education, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, VA, earning a bachelor of science degree in biomedical engineering as valedictorian of the School of Engineering Class of 2006.



"When I was halfway through my undergraduate biomedical engineering training, friends said that I should consider medical school because I would be great with patients," Dr. Hijaz noted. "Later as a medical student at VCU, I became interested in interventional radiology because it allowed me to apply my engineering background to my medical training. Interventional radiology procedures often involve the use of catheters, wires, stents and other biomedical engineering technology."



Dr. Hijaz earned his doctor of medicine degree from VCU and completed his diagnostic radiology residency there following a transitional year internship at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News. He has won numerous awards including the Charles L. Baird Award from VCU.



Fredericksburg is an ideal location for his family. His father passed away last year but his mother still lives in Richmond and his brothers live in Northern Virginia. His wife, Carol Baddour, a VCU graduate, has grandparents who have lived in the Richmond area for many years. Born in Lebanon, Dr. Hijaz is fluent in English and Arabic.

About Virginia Interventional & Vascular Associates

VIVA is the interventional radiology and vascular surgery practice of Radiologic Associates of Fredericksburg. For more information, visit vivassociates.com or call (540) 654-9118.

SOURCE Radiologic Associates of Fredericksburg

Related Links

http://www.rafimaging.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the Board of Directors of Raptor Pharmaceutical Corp. ("RPTP" or the "Company") in connection with the proposed acquisition of the Company by Horizon Pharma Plc ("Horizon"). On September 12, 2016, the Company announced that it had reached a definitive agreement for Horizon to acquire all outstanding shares of RPTP in a transaction valued at approximately $800 million. Under the terms of the agreement, the Company's shareholders will receive $9.00 in cash for each RPTP share they own.

WeissLaw is investigating whether RPTP's Board acted to maximize shareholder value prior to entering into the agreement. Notably, at least one analyst set a target price of $11.00 per share, or $2.00 above the offer price. Additionally, the Company announced positive financial results for the second quarter of 2016, reporting quarterly revenue increased 37.3% year-over-year to $32.0 million. The Company also raised its net revenue guidance from $115- $125 million to $125- $135 million. Finally, upon completion of the transaction, Horizon will also gain the rights to two RPTP rare-disease drugs: Procysbi, used for the treatment of a rare metabolic disorder; and Quinsar, which is administered to cystic fibrosis patients for the treatment of chronic pulmonary infections.

Given these facts, WeissLaw is investigating whether RPTP's Board acted in the best interests of RPTP's public shareholders to maximize shareholder value prior to entering into the agreement. If you own RPTP shares and would like more information about your rights or our investigation, or if you have information to share with us, please contact Joshua Rubin by telephone at (888) 593-4771 or by email at [email protected].

WeissLaw LLP has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at [email protected] or fill out the form on our website, http://www.weisslawllp.com/contact/report_fraud/.

SOURCE WeissLaw LLP

Related Links

http://www.weisslurie.com


KANSAS CITY, Kan., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Re-Bath views the Kansas City metro area as a premier location for expanding its national brand. Kansas City's massive untapped potential of over 100k owner occupied housing units and median home values of $150k allows success for Re-Bath's business model and proprietary products that offer affordable luxury bathroom remodels for the Kansas City middle-class.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406649

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406650

Full Bathroom Re-Bath remodel Re-Bath plans expansion into Kansas City market

Homeowners will spend an estimated $351.8 million on home improvement projects in 2016, according to the Home Improvement Research Institute, and that number is expected to increase to $383.7 million by 2018. The demand is driven in part by this fundamental: The average American home is 35 years old, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The prime years for remodeling are when a home is between 25 and 35 years old, and remodeling projects continue to be in high demand in homes older than 35 years.

Re-Bath completes more than 32,000 bathroom remodels a year and generates around $180 million in system wide retail sales, making them the leader in the remove and replace remodeling segment. A typical Re-Bath remodeling project is completed in 3-5 days, rather than the average 3-5 weeks that's standard in the remodeling industry.

Re-bath's proprietary products and unique process provides the Kansas City housing community a cost effective way to upgrade bathrooms. Re-Bath's offers a wide array of finishes and materials including both acrylic and natural stone which fit middle-class budgets for Kansas residents.

Whether someone is an existing contractor looking for ways to reach new potential revenue or an entrepreneur looking for a proven successful business model, Re-Bath supplies substantial ownership benefits.

"I had looked at some other products and companies, but no one else has the name recognition that Re-Bath has and no one else offered the same level of support they offer their franchisees," says Chris Deck, our Maricopa, Arizona, franchisee. "For example, their sales and installation training is huge. Their buying power allows for discounts on all of the products used in a full bathroom remodel. These are just a few of the ways that Re-Bath's proven system can have a huge impact on my business."

Re-Bath territories are often tied to specific sized markets that allow franchise owners to generate large revenue numbers.

"The ideal franchise owner for Re-Bath is someone who has experience in the remodeling industry and is looking for opportunity to expand their business using our successful business model," says Jeremey Wallace, Vice President of Franchise Development. "With our customer service and sales support, we aim to achieve success with every franchise owner we bring onboard."

About Re-Bath- Re-Bath is the world's largest bathroom remodeling franchise with nearly 150 locations open or in development. Each Re-Bath franchise is backed by professional support and experience you would expect from an award-winning franchisor, including industry-tested sales systems, incomparable product selection, and proven marketing business strategies, all recognized by successful franchise owners around the world. http://rebathfranchise.com/kansascity?pmc=GEO-KS

Contact:

Jeremy Wallace

Email

Vice President of Franchise Development

480-754-8976

SOURCE Re-Bath

Related Links

http://rebathfranchise.com/kansascity?pmc=GEO-KS


WEST MELBOURNE, Fla., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- RELM Wireless Corporation (NYSE MKT: RWC) today announced that it has entered into a Master Standing Offer agreement (MSO) with E-Comm Emergency Communications for British Columbia, Canada (E-Comm) to provide P25 700MHz portable and mobile radios, accessories and service. The MSO is for an initial base term of three years with renewal options for four additional years comprised of two, two-year periods. The renewals, if exercised, provide for renegotiated prices, with all other terms and conditions remaining unchanged. No minimum or maximum procurement is established under the MSO, nor does the MSO specify or guarantee purchase quantities or dates.

E-Comm is the largest 9-1-1 center in British Columbia, responsible for 88% of the province's emergency call volume; an estimated 1.35 million calls annually. E-Comm serves 25 regional district and communities ranging from Vancouver Island and Metro-Vancouver to the Alberta and U.S. borders, providing dispatch service for 35 police and fire departments.

RELM President and Chief Executive Officer David Storey commented, "E-Comm is one of the largest and most respected public safety organizations in Canada. We are very excited about our new relationship with E-Comm and our growing market share in Canada. This is our second announced Canadian contract, following last year's agreement with another Canadian emergency medical service provider, which to-date has yielded over $3.1 million in sales and helped establish our reputation for quality, reliability and value. We believe the agreement with E-Comm is equally promising and further raises RELM's profile in Canadian public safety. Combined, these agreements give us a strong presence in two Canadian provinces and a solid foundation for success in other parts of Canada. We look forward to making this relationship a mutual success for both E-Comm and RELM."

About APCO Project 25 (P25)

APCO Project 25 (P25), which requires interoperability among compliant equipment regardless of the manufacturer, was established by the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials and is approved by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The shift toward interoperability gained momentum as a result of significant communications failures in critical emergency situations. RELM was one of the first manufacturers to develop P25-compliant technology.

About RELM Wireless Corporation

As an American Manufacturer for almost 70 years, RELM Wireless Corporation has produced highspecification twoway communications equipment of unsurpassed reliability and value for use by public safety professionals and government agencies, as well as radios for use in a wide range of commercial and industrial applications. Advances include a broad new line of leading digital twoway radios compliant with APCO Project 25 specifications. RELM's products are manufactured and distributed worldwide under BK Radio and RELM brand names. The Company maintains its headquarters in West Melbourne, Florida and can be contacted through its web site at www.relm.com or directly at 18008212900. The Company's common stock trades on the NYSE MKT market under the symbol "RWC".

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the "Safe Harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act Of 1995. These forward-looking statements concern the Company's operations, economic performance and financial condition and are based largely on the Company's beliefs and expectations. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors and risks include, among others, the following: changes or advances in technology; the success of our LMR product line; competition in the land mobile radio industry; general economic and business conditions, including federal, state and local government budget deficits and spending limitations; the availability, terms and deployment of capital; reliance on contract manufacturers and suppliers; heavy reliance on sales to agencies of the U.S. government; our ability to utilize deferred tax assets; retention of executive officers and key personnel; our ability to manage our growth; our ability to identify potential candidates for, and consummate, acquisition or investment transactions, and risks incumbent to being a minority stockholder in a corporation; impact of our investment strategy; government regulation; our business with manufacturers located in other countries; our inventory and debt levels; protection of our intellectual property rights; fluctuation in our operating results; acts of war or terrorism, natural disasters and other catastrophic events; any infringement claims; data security breaches and other factors impacting our technology systems; availability of adequate insurance coverage; maintenance of our NYSE MKT listing; and the effect on our stock price and ability to raise equity capital of future sales of shares of our common stock. Certain of these factors and risks, as well as other risks and uncertainties, are stated in more detail in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 and in the Company's subsequent filings with the SEC. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements.

SOURCE RELM Wireless Corporation

Related Links

http://www.relm.com


WASHINGTON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Friday, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) introduced a bipartisan Congressional Resolution that supports the establishment of a safe haven province for persecuted religious minorities in the Nineveh Plain region of Iraq.

Drafted in collaboration between The Philos Project, In Defense of Christians, and the Institute for Global Engagement, H.Con.Res 152 is a response to declarations by Congress and the State Department last March that ISIL is responsible for genocide against religious minority groups in areas under its control.

"Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic and religious minorities have been slaughtered and driven from their homes by ISIL's horrific genocide," Fortenberry said at the introduction. "One next step must be the re-securitization and revitalization of the Nineveh Plain, allowing the repatriation of those who had to flee This resolution, which follows on the Government of Iraq's own initiative to create a province in the Nineveh Plain region, seeks to restore the ancestral homeland of so many suffering communities."

Cosponsors include: Reps. Dan Lipinski (D-IL), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Rob Wittman (R-VA), Dan Donovan (R-NY), Andy Harris (R-MD), Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Joe Pitts (R-PA).

"Without a strategy to decentralize power to Iraq's various regional communities and allow each to protect and govern itself at the local level, the future of Iraq is very uncertain," said Philos Project Executive Director Robert Nicholson.

For centuries, the Nineveh Plain region has been the ancestral homeland of Assyrian-Chaldean-Syriac Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities. With the ongoing liberation of Iraqi territory from ISIL by coalition forces, American policymakers must now consider the United States' role in a post-ISIL Iraq and Syria.

"The province would provide a zone of stability and influence that will weaken violent Islamic factions, and protect against a post-ISIL vacuum," Nicholson said.

Statements either granting autonomy to religious minorities or supporting the creation of a safe haven in the Nineveh region have been made by the Kurdistan Regional Government (2009), the Iraqi Cabinet (2014), various gatherings of Assyrian political leaders (2003, 2005, 2014, 2015), the European Parliament (2015), the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations (2011, 2014), and the U.S. Republican Party (2016), and others.

SOURCE The Philos Project
ATLANTA, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fujitsu General Limited and Rheem today announced a strategic collaboration that will expand the heating and cooling product portfolios for both companies.

Ducted central air conditioning systems account for approximately 90 percent of the U.S. residential HVAC market (source: AHRI). However, in recent years, the demand for ductless cooling systemspioneered by Japanese manufacturershas grown in the United States due to consumers' interests in systems that provide comfort and energy savings, and meet special add-on installation requirements, such as sites where duct-work is not feasible.

As part of this agreement, Rheem will begin offering ductless mini-split systems manufactured by Fujitsu General to its U.S. customers under the Rheem and Ruud brands. The relationship will expand to other product categories in the future and will further include joint development of products, as well as collaborative operational opportunities. Additionally, Fujitsu General will introduce a portfolio of ducted HVAC products, manufactured by Rheem, in its channel.

"In recent years, the demand for ductless mini-split and commercial VRF systems has risen dramatically in North America. Rheem is pleased to partner with Fujitsu General a global leader in these categories," said Mike Branson, vice president and general manager, Rheem Air Conditioning Division. "Our businesses are extremely complementary. We are excited about the potential of this relationship to develop and deliver new and expand HVAC solutions to the market."

"This relationship between Fujitsu General and Rheem makes perfect sense. Both Fujitsu General and Rheem are known for market leading, innovative HVAC solutions," said Hiroyuki Yokoyama, corporate senior vice president, of Fujitsu General Limited. "We look forward to beginning our collaboration with Rheem and the value it will provide to all of our customers and the market."

The companies expect to begin introducing new products in early 2017. Rheem and Fujitsu plan to showcase some of these products at the 2017 AHR Expo, which takes place Jan. 30 through Feb. 1, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Rheem will exhibit in booth C1336 and Fujitsu will exhibit in booth N10113.

About Rheem

Founded in 1925, Rheem is the only manufacturer in the world that produces heating, cooling, water heating, pool/spa heating and commercial refrigeration products. Rheem is headquartered in Atlanta, and it has an international presence in 14 countries. It has been a subsidiary of Paloma Co., Ltd. since 1988. The company's premium brands include Rheem, Raypak, Ruud, Eemax, Richmond and Splendid, as well as commercial refrigeration brands Russell, Witt, ColdZone and Kramer, which are part of the company's Heat Transfer Products Group (HTPG) division. To learn more, visit www.Rheem.com.

About Fujitsu General Limited

With global headquarters in Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan, and U.S. headquarters in Fairfield, New Jersey, Fujitsu General Limited manufacturers and sells products and components for both the air conditioning and telecommunications fields. Founded in January 1936, today the company is led by Chairman Junichi Murashima, and President Etsuro Saito. Fujitsu General Limited is listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (code no. 6755). Media can visit https://ssl.fujitsu-general.com/global/contact/corp_form.html to learn more.

SOURCE Rheem

Related Links

http://www.rheem.com


Unreserved auction features equipment from two of the longest-running contractors in the U.S.

COLUMBUS, OH, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - After 85+ years in business, and three generations of the Oliver family, Oliver Pipe & Equipment Inc. has decided to call it quits. At the same time, Sheehan Pipeline, in business for 100+ years, will also be selling its entire fleet. Equipment from two of the longest running contractors in the United States will be selling at Ritchie Bros.' Columbus, OH auction on September 28  29, 2016.

This historic auction already features 175+ pipelayersthe most Ritchie Bros. has ever sold in a single auctionas well as 100+ dozers, 100 excavators, 150+ truck tractors, and more. The auction is open to the public and every item will be sold without minimum bids or reserve prices.

"I never thought I'd live long enough to see a sale like this," said David Oliver, owner of Oliver Pipeline & Equipment Inc. "I've been blessed to be a part of this industry, but I'm ready to retire and move on to the next chapter of my life. Over the years we have been meticulous with our equipmentmaintaining and replacing it as needed. This auction is a great opportunity for somebody who needs to purchase equipment. Whether they need it now or in the next year or two, this is the sale to buy."

The September Columbus auction already features more than 2,375+ items. Specific highlights include:

24 Caterpillar 583T crawler pipelayers

15 Caterpillar 572R crawler pipelayers

14 Caterpillar 594H crawler pipelayers

Eight Caterpillar 594 crawler pipelayers

Six Caterpillar 583K crawler pipelayers

Two Caterpillar 587T crawler pipelayers

22 Caterpillar D8T crawler tractors

10 Caterpillar D7R crawler tractors

"This is a pretty unique event," said Terry Dolan, President, USA and Latin America, Ritchie Bros. "Not only is it our largest-ever pipeline event, it's also our largest-ever auction at our Columbus site. For anyone looking to purchase late-model pipeline equipment, heavy construction equipment and transportation assets: don't miss this auction!"

For a detailed list of all equipment in the auction, visit rbauction.com/Columbus .

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; Mascus, 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


SANTA ROSA, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ygrene Energy Fund announced today that the City of Riverside is the most recent Inland Empire community to approve the award-winning YgreneWorks PACE (property assessed clean energy) program to help property owners finance a broad range of energy efficiency, renewable energy and water conservation upgrades. To date, Ygrene has been selected by 294 cities and counties across California and Florida, making it the leading national residential, multifamily and commercial PACE provider.

YgreneWorks for Riverside

YgreneWorks was selected by Riverside city officials to provide greater choice in PACE financing options as drought continues to challenge the city's water supply. To date, YgreneWorks has completed contracts across Riverside County for over $41 million in residential, commercial and multifamily upgrades, resulting in 179 thousand gallons of water saved and 622 new jobs created and sustained.

Rusty Bailey, Mayor of Riverside: "Bringing Ygrene and CSCDA programs to the City of Riverside really expands our PACE portfolio, which makes low-cost energy efficiency financing available to a broader range of property owners. Opening the PACE program up to more providers creates competition in the marketplace, which is good for consumers and creates more job opportunities for our local building contractors."

Gary Robinson, Blue Star Energy: "I've worked in the solar industry for over a decade and recently started my own company to help meet the growing demand for renewables in Southern California. Ygrene's flexible and seamless financing process has really helped to get my business off the ground."

Ygrene's people-first approach to financing gives businesses and homeowners the most accessible and affordable way to pay for energy efficiency and climate resiliency upgrades. Rather than paying the high up-front costs and monthly payments often associated with credit-based financing, YgreneWorks allows property owners to pay off improvements with terms of up to 30 years through their property tax bill. Property owners can access YgreneWorks' list of certified contractors who will work with them to select and install eligible upgrades such as solar systems, energy efficient windows and doors, heating and air conditioning, cool roofs and more.

Ygrene is a leader when it comes to safe, transparent PACE financing with a high level of commitment to customer protections. Working alongside the California Mortgage Bankers Association and other PACE industry providers, Ygrene paved the way for the passing of California Assembly Bill 2693 on August 30, 2016establishing uniform disclosures for consumers of PACE programs. From application through approval, construction, project completion and funding, Ygrene's customer protection policies ensure Riverside consumers are supported every step of the way with its complete set of contractor certification, underwriting, consumer disclosure, data security and senior protection policies. For more information, view or download Ygrene's Customer Assurance and Protections.

With $1.75 billion in approved applications for more than 29,000 buildings, and more than $795 million in committed capital, the YgreneWorks program is helping communities across the nation meet their clean energy and climate resiliency goals.

About Ygrene Energy Fund

Ygrene Energy Fund is the nation's leading provider of residential, multifamily and commercial property assessed clean energy financing. The award-winning, privately funded YgreneWorks program provides immediately accessible financing with no upfront payments for energy efficiency, renewables, water conservation and, in certain areas, hurricane protection, electric vehicle charging stations and seismic upgrades. Ygrene is committed to making it easy for property owners to invest in their future and a healthier environment. Over the next five years, YgreneWorks is expected to create tens of thousands of jobs and invest billions of dollars into local economies. Learn more at ygreneworks.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20111109/LA03200LOGO

SOURCE Ygrene Energy Fund

Related Links

http://www.ygreneworks.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Rocketrip, the leading technology platform for reducing corporate travel expenses, today announced that Drew Sechrist has joined the company as Chief Revenue Officer. Sechrist, previously Vice President at Salesforce, joins Rocketrip with a depth of experience from building a billion-dollar sales organization.

Prior to joining Rocketrip, Sechrist was part of the team that grew Salesforce from pre-revenue to over $1 billion in revenue. He helped define the best practices that built Salesforce into a SaaS powerhouse, eventually becoming both the company's #1 sales manager and #1 account executive globally.

Reporting to Rocketrip CEO Dan Ruch, Drew will be responsible for driving revenue growth for the business. His work will span customer acquisition, client retention, and expansion. He joins Rocketrip at a key point in the company's growth, as the team rapidly closes deals with the Fortune 500 and recently completed a $9M Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

"Drew helped grow Salesforce from a scrappy startup into a billion-dollar business," said Dan Ruch, CEO of Rocketrip. "He has the experience, knowledge, and leadership ability to create massive growth at Rocketrip. We could not have brought in Drew at a better time, and we are excited to welcome him to the team."

"I joined Rocketrip because its travel incentives platform is a radical concept  the kind that has the potential to take off the way Salesforce did," said Sechrist. "Seventeen years ago, putting software in the cloud was a revolutionary idea, and today we take it for granted as the best method. In a few years, Rocketrip's approach to business travel will be viewed the same way."

Sechrist earned his B.A. in International Studies with a minor in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and now resides in New York City. To learn more about Drew Sechrist, connect with him on LinkedIn.

About Rocketrip

Rocketrip is the leading technology platform for reducing corporate travel expenses. By letting employees keep half of what they save on their business trips, Rocketrip motivates responsible spending. The platform's algorithms integrate a company's travel policy with real-time trip pricing and availability to create a personalized "Budget to Beat" for each trip. Employees book using their favorite travel websites or a travel management company, and Rocketrip provides employers with insights and analytics on company spending, savings and employee travel behavior.

Rocketrip is based in New York City and has received funding from Canaan Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Genacast Ventures, Crunchfund, Y Combinator, and angel investors.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160620/381228LOGO

SOURCE Rocketrip

Related Links

https://www.rocketrip.com/


The court ruled that Avvo is protected by the First Amendment in publishing attorney profiles accompanied by paid advertising. The ruling is consistent with the outcome of a similar publicity rights claim in federal court in California that settled last month (Aaron H. Darsky v. Avvo Inc., case number 3:15-cv-05495 ), in which the plaintiff dismissed the case and agreed to pay Avvo's legal fees. California, unlike Illinois, has a strong anti-SLAPP motion statute, requiring mandatory payment of the defendant's attorney fees when frivolous lawsuits designed to suppress free speech rights are filed.

"This is further validation that publishers like Avvo needn't obtain the consent of their subjects prior to exercising their First Amendment rights," said Avvo Chief Legal Officer Josh King. "The purpose of a free and unfettered media is to provide transparency and openness. While we never felt like the principle was really at risk here, we're pleased at the explicit recognition that our efforts to help people better understand lawyers and the legal profession is fully protected by the First Amendment."

The case is John Vrdolyak v. Avvo, case number 1:16-cv-02833, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division. For additional information about Avvo, visit www.avvo.com.

About Avvo, Inc.

Avvo helps people find and connect with the right lawyer through industry leading content, tools and services. Founded in 2006 in Seattle, Avvo provides transparent information about attorneys, with Avvo-rated profiles for 97% of practicing lawyers in the United States. A free Q&A forum with more than 8 million questions and answers and on-demand legal services that provide professional counsel for a fixed cost, make legal faster and easier. For more information on how Avvo helps people through legal issues from research to resolution, visit www.avvo.com.

Available Topic Experts: For information on the listed experts, click appropriate link.

Josh King

ProfNet - http://www.profnetconnect.com/Josh_King

Mark Britton

ProfNet - http://www.profnetconnect.com/Mark_Britton

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130404/SF88839LOGO

SOURCE Avvo, Inc.
SDC has earned impressive academic rankings as one of the best colleges in San Diego and implemented technology resources to spark growth as a top online college. Low tuition costs put a Christian education within reach of anyone called to serve. SDC provides a valuable education for less than many other institutions, including ITT.

ITT students will be able to choose from a comprehensive offering of programs, including online degrees in the following areas:

Bachelor of Science in Aviation Management

Bachelor of Science in Business Management

Bachelor of Arts in Christian Ministries

Bachelor of Arts in Communication

Bachelor of Arts in Human Development

Bachelor of Science in Leadership and Justice

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology

Associate of Arts in Liberal Studies

"San Diego Christian College has earned a reputation for preparing exceptional leaders," says Dr. Paul Ague, SDC President. "We encourage all ITT students to take advantage of this opportunity to complete their degree at SDC, where our experienced faculty gives personal attention to each student so they can reach their full potential."

Students who are interested in learning more about SDC's online degree programs can call Mark Hale, Enrollment Manager, at 619-213-1611 or [email protected], or visit www.aps.sdcc.edu.

ITT Technical Institute, based in Carmel, IN, announced that it is permanently closing its campuses, leaving roughly 35,000 students with no options for degree completion.

Media Contact:

Emerge Education

Tim Prusha, VP, Marketing, [email protected], 952-807-8909

ABOUT SAN DIEGO CHRISTIAN COLLEGE

Founded in 1970, San Diego Christian College (SDC) is a liberal arts institution that combines a biblical foundation and Christian worldview with educational competencies to prepare students to be servant leaders throughout the professional world. Our traditional undergraduate program offers 21 degrees and 33 emphases in areas of study ranging from Biblical Studies and Business Administration to Aviation and Kinesiology. The adult and online program offers seven majors both online and in the classroom.

Emerge Education, LLC.

Emerge Education provides higher education solutions to colleges and universities interested in 21st-century relevancy by growing revenues through enrollment. The Pennsylvania-based firm works with its partner institutions by investing its own capital and service resources to support lead generation, marketing and recruiting, allowing its partners to focus on what they do best: educating students. Emerge forges unique partnerships with each client institution. For more information about Emerge Education (www.emergeedu.com), please call 800-208-5499 or email [email protected].

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406612-INFO

SOURCE Emerge Education

Related Links

http://www.emergeedu.com


The EDGE Certification is the premier standard and methodology for evaluating a corporate commitment to gender equality. Launched at the World Economic Forum, the EDGE assessment methodology is distinguished by its rigor and business impact.

SAP's worldwide certification process began in March 2016  after it became the first tech company in the United States to achieve EDGE Certification earlier this year. Global certification, which requires that countries that comprise 80 percent of an organization be included, was awarded after a third-party review of company data, gender practices and employment policies, and employee survey results in an additional 12 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Criteria examined in the review include recruitment and promotion, leadership development training, mentoring, flexible working and company culture.

"SAP must be at the forefront to take businesses beyond bias," said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. "This global certification marks a major milestone in our ongoing efforts to eliminate bias in the workplace. We are very proud of our investments in technologies and programs to drive inclusion. This certification is another step in our leadership on this critical issue, all geared toward helping the world run better and improving people's lives."

SAP has a board-level commitment to reach 25 percent of its leadership positions filled by women by the end of 2017. This commitment has been reinforced by action. As of Q2 2016, women make up 24.1 percent of the company's leadership and 32.5 percent of all employees.

SAP's actions to achieve gender equality extend beyond employment totals. Last month, SAP conducted a pay equity analysis on its U.S. employee base, proactively increasing the compensation of employees that lacked pay parity. Additionally, SAP announced a machine-learning tool that, among other capabilities, detects biases in job postings.

"Gender equality is not a corporate social responsibility initiative or simply a cultural benefit," said Stefan Ries, chief human resources officer, SAP. "It's a strategic differentiator, a source of innovation and revenue driver for our company. We are proud of the recognition we've achieved, but we remain committed to creating a culture where employees of all backgrounds can thrive. We want to be the role model in the technology industry for providing opportunities for women, as well as for all underrepresented groups, and we hope that others in our market will follow our lead."

"The technology industry is home to the world's innovators, which is why diversity is of special importance. While the tech community overall has historically received low scores on gender equality, SAP is leading its peers worldwide through not only its strong public commitment but the impactful programs and efforts taking place on the ground every day," said Aniela Unguresan, cofounder, EDGE Certified Foundation. "Through this global EDGE Certification, SAP continues to set the standard for gender equality in technology. We applaud their efforts to promote a workforce that facilitates a culture of diversity, inclusion and equality."

About EDGE Certification

EDGE is the leading global assessment methodology and business certification standard for gender equality. EDGE Certification has been designed to help organizations not only create an optimal workplace for women and men but also benefit from it.

EDGE stands for Economic Dividends for Gender Equality and is distinguished by its rigor and focus on business impact. The methodology uses a business, rather than theoretical approach that incorporates benchmarking, metrics and accountability into the process. It assesses policies, practices and numbers across five different areas of analysis: equal pay for equivalent work, recruitment and promotion, leadership development training and mentoring, flexible working and organization culture.

EDGE Certification has received the endorsement of business, government and academic leaders from around the world.

The EDGE assessment methodology was developed by the EDGE Certified Foundation and launched at the World Economic Forum in 2011.

For more information, visit www.edge-cert.org or follow EDGE on Twitter at @EDGE_CERT.

For more information about SAP, visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

About SAP

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device  SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable approximately 320,000 business and public sector customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

 2016 SAP SE. All rights reserved.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx#trademark for additional trademark information and notices.

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:

Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24

United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:

Andy Kendzie, SAP, +1 (202) 312-3919, [email protected], ET

Rajiv Sekhri, SAP, +49 6227 77-4871, [email protected], CET

SAP News Center press room; [email protected]

Adam Novak, PAN Communications, +1 (617) 502-4300, [email protected], ET

Lucy Jay-Kennedy, EDGE, +41 41 530 11 49, [email protected], CET

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110126/AQ34470LOGO

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406474LOGO

SOURCE SAP SE

Related Links

http://www.sap.com


SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- McClatchy (NYSE: MNI) today named Sara Glines president and publisher of The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. She will assume her new role September 26, 2016. Glines previously served as president of the Atlantic Group for the Gannett Co., overseeing eight daily news organizations and additional non-dailies.

"Sara has deep experience with digital media, raising the digital acumen of her sales teams, improving the digital orientation of her newsrooms and reimagining legacy products," said McClatchy president and CEO Patrick Talamantes. "Her leadership will be a huge asset to both The News & Observer and McClatchy."

Glines has been overseeing digital initiatives for nearly 20 years, beginning as editor in chief of New Jersey Online in 1996. In 1999 she led the conversion of America Online sites and popular magazines like Car & Driver, Woman's Day and Elle to the web as a managing director at Hachette Filipacchi New Media. She joined MediaNews Group in 2003 as vice president, interactive, for their East Coast operations where she managed internet advertising, editorial and technical operations for 14 daily newspapers. She joined the MediaNews corporate team in 2010 and helped lead the company through its operational transition to Digital First Media. During her tenure as regional publisher in Pennsylvania, Glines led the newspaper group, which Gannett Co. acquired in 2015, to a digital-first newsroom workflow.

"The Triangle is a growing and dynamic region," said Glines. "The idea of being part of the leading news organization in this vibrant community is very compelling."

Glines replaces Orage Quarles III, who retired in June after serving 16 years as publisher. She embraces the role the news media plays in the community. "We right wrongs. We help businesses thrive and prosper. We make communities healthier. We make a difference," she said. "My goal for The News & Observer is to make sure we can do that long into the future."

Glines has served on the board of several organizations, including the Cultural Alliance of York County, the YWCA and Girls on the Run. She and her husband, John Kirkpatrick, are looking forward to calling Raleigh home. John's son and daughter-in-law live in Holly Springs, NC, and recently welcomed a new baby girl into their lives. "Being close to family makes this adventure that much more exciting," Glines said.

About McClatchy

McClatchy is a 21st century news and information leader, publisher of iconic brands such as the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Sacramento Bee, The Charlotte Observer, The (Raleigh) News & Observer, and the (Fort Worth) Star-Telegram. McClatchy operates media companies in 28 U.S. markets in 14 states, providing each of its communities with high-quality news and advertising services in a wide array of digital and print formats. McClatchy is headquartered in Sacramento, Calif., and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MNI.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160801/394690LOGO

SOURCE McClatchy

Related Links

http://www.mcclatchy.com


LONDON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --



Rising infrastructure developments in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar are anticipated to boost demand for HVAC and plumbing systems, and thereby, drive the market for copper pipes, coils and fittings in these countries through 2021. Copper piping network is widely used in plumbing infrastructure, on account of its fitment application in water supply networks. Copper pipes and coils are also widely applied in air conditioning and refrigeration systems, due to their high resilience to changes in temperatures and longevity. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar witness hot climatic conditions, which results in high usage of air conditioning and refrigeration systems. Further, expanding population base and high disposable income in all of these countries is projected to fuel demand for air conditioners and refrigerators in the coming years, thereby driving demand for copper pipes and coils. Additionally, these countries are highly dependent on desalination of sea water to address their need for potable water. Ongoing and future developments in strengthening and expanding water supply infrastructure is expected to positively influence the copper pipes, coils and fittings market in these countries during 2016-2021.



According to "Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar Copper Pipes, Coils and Fittings Market By Type, By Application, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2011 - 2021", the market for copper pipes, coils and fittings in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar is forecast to grow at a CAGR of over 8% through 2021, especially due to rising demand for copper pipes, coils and fittings from new building construction in these countries. Demand for copper pipes, coils and fittings in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar is met by distributors, with the distributors importing copper pipes, coils and fittings from countries such as the UK, South Africa, etc. Few of the major brands of copper pipes, coils and fittings available in these countries include Mueller Industries and Maksal Tubes, among others. On account of rising demand for copper pipes, coils and fittings in the Middle East, Mueller Industries has announced plans to establish a manufacturing facility in Bahrain to address the growing demand in the Middle East & Africa regions. "Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar Copper Pipes, Coils and Fittings Market By Type, By Application, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2011 - 2021" discusses the following aspects of copper pipes, coils and fittings market in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar:



- Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar Copper Pipes, Coils & Fittings Market Size, Share & Forecast

- Segmental Analysis - By Type (K Type, L Type and M Type), By Application (Plumbing, HVAC & Refrigeration, and Industrial/OEM)

- Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities

- Competitive Landscape & Strategic Recommendations



Why You Should Buy This Report?



- To gain an in-depth understanding of copper pipes, coils and fittings market in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar

- To identify the on-going trends and anticipated growth in the next five years

- To help industry consultants and copper pipes, coils and fittings manufacturers and distributors align their market-centric strategies

- To obtain research based business decisions and add weight to presentations and marketing material

- To gain competitive knowledge of leading market players

- To avail 10% customization in the report without any extra charges and get research data or trends added in the report as per the buyer's specific needs



Report Methodology



The information contained in this report is based upon both primary and secondary research. Primary research included interaction with copper pipes, coils and fittings manufacturers, distributors and industry experts. Secondary research included an exhaustive search of relevant publications company annual reports, financial reports and other proprietary databases.





Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4124985/



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


ANN ARBOR, Mich., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The second annual Women Who Fund Forum is the premiere event for high-achieving women who have carved out successful careers in venture capital and private equity, as well as female business leaders, to have the opportunity to network and engage. This boutique forum, hosted by the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at Michigan Ross in conjunction with the University of Michigan's Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance, will take place on Thursday, September 29 at the Graduate Hotel in Ann Arbor.

"Today, women are forming and running their own venture investment funds and becoming associates and partners at established venture capital and private equity shops," says David Brophy, director of the Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance. "Bringing people together for a special forum will stimulate in-depth discussions about career entry and advancement, promote industry networking and foster confidence building."

The program will kick off with a keynote address from Margaret Gibson, partner at Kirkland & Ellis where she focuses her practice on mergers and acquisitions. Gibson will discuss the strategies that catapulted her into a top leadership position and share her insights on how women can make their mark in these roles.

Discussions will cover a range of topics including how to build strategic relationships, attracting startup and growth capital, Michigan Venture Capital Association diversity study research, findings and drilling down on the tools and tactics that women need to elevate their brand and enhance their competitive advantage. Speakers include:

Carol Clark , Healthcare Technology Capital Partners

, Healthcare Technology Capital Partners Ellen Clark , Greenwich Capital Group

, Greenwich Capital Group Jan Garfinkle , Arboretum Ventures

, Arboretum Ventures Wendy Jarchow , River SAAS Capital

, River SAAS Capital Heather Madland , Huron Capital

, Huron Capital Mary Petrovich , The Carlyle Group; Axle Tech International

, The Carlyle Group; Axle Tech International Maureen Miller Brosnan , Michigan Venture Capital Association

, Michigan Venture Capital Association Marlena Reigh , International Voice Imaging

, International Voice Imaging Elizabeth Parkinson , University of Michigan (Marketing)

, (Marketing) Mary Hinesly , University of Michigan (Communications)

"Our original mission was to highlight the success and showcase the abundance of women in PE and VC or other alternative investments as well as female startup company founders," says Gina Staudacher, an attorney at Howard & Howard. "We also want to connect these women on a local and national level to foster a more robust network that could help women enter and advance in the industry."

To register to attend the event, please visit: http://bit.ly/WWFF2016. Seating is limited to 150. For additional information, please contact Mary Nickson at [email protected] or 734-615-4424.

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 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 positive change in today's dynamic global economy. The Ross mission is to develop leaders who make a positive difference in the world. Through thought and action, members of the Ross community drive change and innovation that improves 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 PhD. In addition, the school delivers open-enrollment and custom 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


NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Wells Fargo & Company ("Wells Fargo" or the "Company") (NYSE: WFC) (CUSIP: 949746101). Investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether Wells Fargo and certain of its officers and/or directors have violated Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

[Click here to join a class action]

On September 7, 2016, after the market closed, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB") announced that it had fined Wells Fargo a record $100 million for the widespread illegal practice of secretly opening unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts, citing the Company's own estimate that its employees had opened more than two million unauthorized accounts since 2011. In addition to the CFPB fine, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million to the City and County of Los Angeles.

On September 12, 2016, after the market closed, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs announced that it will hold a hearing to further explore charges that thousands of the bank's employees secretly opened accounts and enrolled customers in services without their consent.

On September 13, 2016, Wells Fargo announced that it will eliminate all product sales goals in its retail banking operations. On this news, Wells Fargo stock fell $1.58, or 3.26%, to close at $46.96 on September 13, 2016.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com

SOURCE Pomerantz LLP

Related Links

http://www.pomerantzlaw.com


ALTOONA, Pa., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In September, Feeding America and Sheetz, one of America's fastest growing, family-owned and operated convenience store chains, will launch the Made-to-Share campaign, which will help people who struggle with hunger. As part of this campaign, Sheetz will share the love by providing weekly product donations from each of its 530+ stores to Feeding America member food banks in the communities it serves. The Made-to-Share campaign will launch in September, during Hunger Action Month.

Feeding America is the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief organization, with 200 member food banks serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The strength of the network is critical to fulfilling its mission of feeding America's hungry. Through the Made-to-Share program, Feeding America has aligned with Sheetz to establish a company-wide food donation program that will connect all 536 Sheetz stores with member food banks by the end of 2017. At scale, through this partnership, Sheetz will donate over 2.5 million pounds of food, which will create over two million meals for Americans who turn to Feeding America member food banks.

"Feeding America is thankful to Sheetz for its support of people who struggle with hunger," said Eric Davis, managing director of retail product sourcing at Feeding America. "This partnership will help local food banks provide more food to people in need, especially people who reside in Sheetz's rural footprint."

Through local and national food-assistance programs, Feeding America is able to help provide food to Americans struggling with hunger; safe and nurturing places for children to have a meal; emergency assistance for disaster victims, as well as self-sufficiency programs for adults trying to break the cycle of poverty and hunger. During September's Hunger Action Month, Feeding America asks everyone in the nation to take action to fight hunger in their community, and to join a movement that has a real and lasting impact on the effort to feed more Americans than ever before.

"We are proud to partner with Feeding America in its mission to end hunger," said Joe Sheetz, president and CEO of Sheetz. "We can't forget that even in a country as prosperous as America, millions of our neighbors go without food, many of them children. At Sheetz, we've found that we can help fill that void in the communities where we operate. We remain committed to ending hunger in our neighborhoods, streets and schools."

About Feeding America

Feeding America is the nationwide network of 200 food banks that leads the fight against hunger in the United States. Together, we provide food to more than 46 million people through 60,000 food pantries and meal programs in communities across America. Feeding America also supports programs that improve food security among the people we serve; educates the public about the problem of hunger; and advocates for legislation that protects people from going hungry. Individuals, charities, businesses and government all have a role in ending hunger. Donate. Volunteer. Advocate. Educate. Together we can solve hunger. Visit www.feedingamerica.org, find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

About Sheetz, Inc.

Established in 1952 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Sheetz, Inc. is one of America's fastest growing, family-owned and operated convenience store chains, with more than $6.9 billion in revenue and more than 17,000 employees. The company operates 536 store locations throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina. Sheetz provides an award-winning menu of MTO sandwiches and salads, which are ordered through unique touch-screen order point terminals. All Sheetz convenience stores are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For more information, visit www.sheetz.com or follow us on Twitter (@sheetz), Facebook (www.facebook.com/sheetz) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/sheetz).

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20061212/CLTU039LOGO

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/406583LOGO

SOURCE Sheetz, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.sheetz.com


"Ted retires from the company after a distinguished career marked by significant achievements in the finance area that have contributed to the overall success of the company," said Philip D. Fracassa, executive president and chief financial officer, in making the announcement. "We appreciate Ted's steady hand over the years and wish him the best in retirement.

"At the same time, we're pleased to expand Shelly's responsibilities to include the role of chief accounting officer," said Fracassa. "Shelly has strong financial acumen and leadership skills and has delivered impressive results during her tenure with Timken. She will inherit a strong team and continue our efforts to drive financial compliance and improved performance on a global basis."

Chadwick joined Timken in 2011 as assistant corporate controller and in 2013 became controller of the company's Process Industries segment. In 2014, she was named vice president of treasury with her responsibilities expanded thereafter to include investor relations. Prior to joining Timken, Chadwick was vice president of finance and chief financial officer at Eckart America and previously held financial leadership roles at Noveon Inc. and BF Goodrich.

Chadwick holds a bachelor's degree in business management and finance from Westfield State University and a master's degree in business administration from Anna Maria College, both in Massachusetts. She is a member of Financial Executives International, serves on the board of directors of ArtsinStark, a non-profit organization that raises awareness of the value of arts in the community, and is a charter member for the local chapter of Zonta International, which focuses on advancing the status of women worldwide.

Mihaila joined Timken in 1975 and during his career held a number of different accounting and finance roles, including manager of accounting, general manager of business economics, director of internal audit and vice president and controller for the company's former Industrial Bearings segment. Mihaila was named to his present position of senior vice president and corporate controller in 2006. He currently serves on the board of directors of Habitat for Humanity East Central Ohio and is a member of the advisory boards of The University of Akron's George W. Daverio School of Accountancy and Walsh University's DeVille School of Business.

About The Timken Company

The Timken Company (NYSE: TKR; www.timken.com) manufactures and markets engineered bearings and mechanical power transmission products including gear drives, belts, chain, couplings and related products. The company also offers a spectrum of industrial services, including powertrain rebuild and bearing repair. The leading authority on tapered roller bearings, Timken applies its deep knowledge of metallurgy, tribology and mechanical systems to improve reliability and efficiency of machinery and equipment all around the world. The company's growing portfolio features many strong industrial brands including Timken, Fafnir, Philadelphia Gear, Carlisle, Lovejoy, Drives and InterlubeTM. Known for its quality products and collaborative technical sales model, Timken posted $2.9 billion in sales in 2015. With more than 15,000 employees operating from 28 countries, Timken makes the world more productive and keeps industry in motion.

Media Relations:

234.262.3514

[email protected]

Investor Relations:

Shelly Chadwick

234.262.3223

[email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406959

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/406958

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100210/TIMKENLOGO

SOURCE The Timken Company

Related Links

http://www.timken.com


MANCHESTER, England, September 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

EDM, a leading global provider of training simulators to the civil aviation and defence sectors, welcomed Manchester City Council Leader, Sir Richard Leese, last week.

Sir Richard was invited to officially start the construction work on EDM's new 1.3m manufacturing facility in a turf-cutting ceremony at the company's headquarters in Newton Heath, east Manchester. The 18,000 square feet structure is being built to meet the demands of the company's rapidly increasing order book as it enjoys 20% growth year-on-year since 2012.

The purpose-built facility will host up to 40 employees and provide all the resources needed to enable the company to manufacture its full range of training simulators for defence and civil aviation customers. Being constructed adjacent to EDM's existing 100,000 square feet site, the new facility is expected to be completed by March 2017.

Sir Richard said: "Manchester has an ever growing number of cutting edge businesses demonstrating world-class innovation. The Council congratulates EDM on their success story and welcomes the jobs and expertise created."



"We were delighted to welcome Sir Richard to officially begin the building work of our new facility," said Tony Bermingham, Managing Director of EDM. "This expansion is a mark of our rapid growth as we win new contracts all over the world and to have the leader of the local council here to support our success is very much appreciated by all at EDM."

For more information about EDM visit: http://www.edm.ltd.uk

About EDM

EDM is a leading global provider of training simulators to the civil aviation, defence, rail and other industries. Combining the highest engineering standards with leading-edge technologies, EDM provides airlines with Door Trainers, Cabin Service Trainers, Cabin Emergency Evacuation Trainers and Full Size Mockups and defence organsiations with Procedure Trainers, Maintenance Trainers, Ejection Seats, Simulators and Full Size Replicas. Serving organisations worldwide from its UK headquarters, EDM is committed to delivering exceptional quality and value to its clients to help them enhance safety and operational efficiency.

SOURCE EDM Limited
MILWAUKEE, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Employers intend to increase hiring in 42 of 43 countries and territories through the end of the year, according to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, released today by ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN). Employer hiring confidence remains strong despite uncertainty associated with the slowdown of the global economy, the Brexit vote and continued financial market volatility. Hiring confidence is strongest in India, Japan, Taiwan and the United States, while employers in Brazil, Belgium, Finland, Italy and Switzerland report the weakest hiring plans. Only employers in Brazil expect payrolls to decline in the October-December timeframe.

Slow and Steady: Majority of Employers Globally Anticipate an Increase in Hiring for Q4 2016

View complete Q4 2016 survey results: www.manpowergroup.com/meos

Of the nearly 59,000 employers interviewed globally, 42 of 43 countries and territories anticipate increasing their staffing levels in Q4 2016. Compared to Q3 2016, hiring prospects strengthen in 23 of 43 countries and territories, are unchanged in nine and decline in 11. Compared with last year at this time, Outlooks improve in 21 countries and territories, weaken in 15 and are unchanged in six.

"The Brexit vote in the UK, along with other recent geopolitical events, has added an additional level of volatility  real or perceived  to the global economic outlook," said Jonas Prising, Chairman & CEO, ManpowerGroup. "Despite this uncertainty, the labor market picture remains cautiously positive, with many EU and Eurozone economies slowly pushing back towards pre-recession levels as well as improving prospects in other key markets like India, Japan and Taiwan."

Global Hiring Plans by Region

EMEA: Employers expect staffing levels to increase again in all 25 countries in the EMEA region during the upcoming quarter. The strongest EMEA labor markets are forecast by employers in Ireland (their strongest Outlook since Q2 2007) and Israel , while the weakest Outlooks are reported in Belgium , Finland , Italy and Switzerland . Despite the Brexit decision, the jobs market in the UK remains strong at a national level, though there are signs of hesitancy in several sectors including Finance.

Employers expect staffing levels to increase again in all 25 countries in the EMEA region during the upcoming quarter. The strongest EMEA labor markets are forecast by employers in (their strongest Outlook since Q2 2007) and , while the weakest Outlooks are reported in , , and . Despite the Brexit decision, the jobs market in the UK remains strong at a national level, though there are signs of hesitancy in several sectors including Finance. Asia Pacific : Employers in all eight Asia Pacific countries and territories expect workforce gains during Q4 2016. Indian employers report the strongest regional and global hiring prospects for the fifth consecutive quarter, while the weakest Asia Pacific labor market is anticipated in China , also for the fifth consecutive quarter.

Employers in all eight countries and territories expect workforce gains during Q4 2016. Indian employers report the strongest regional and global hiring prospects for the fifth consecutive quarter, while the weakest labor market is anticipated in , also for the fifth consecutive quarter. Americas: Employers in nine of the 10 Americas countries expect to increase staffing levels during the next three months. Employers in the United States report the most optimistic hiring prospects in the region, while the weakest hiring activity is forecast by Brazilian employers  the only negative Outlook globally.

To view complete results for the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, visit www.manpowergroup.com/meos. The next survey will be released on 13 December 2016 to report hiring expectations for Q1 2017. To receive email notifications when the survey is available each quarter, visit press.manpower.com.

*Data for Portugal is not seasonally adjusted as Portugal only joined the survey in Q3 2016 and does not yet have year-over-year trend data. Seasonal adjustments will be available once 17 quarters of Portuguese data are accumulated.

About ManpowerGroup

ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN) is the world's workforce expert, creating innovative workforce solutions for nearly 70 years. As workforce experts, we connect more than 600,000 people to meaningful work across a wide range of skills and industries every day. Through our ManpowerGroup family of brands  Manpower, Experis, Right Management and ManpowerGroup Solutions  we help more than 400,000 clients in 80 countries and territories address their critical talent needs, providing comprehensive solutions to resource, manage and develop talent. In 2016, ManpowerGroup was named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies for the sixth consecutive year and one of Fortune's Most Admired Companies, confirming our position as the most trusted and admired brand in the industry. See how ManpowerGroup makes powering the world of work humanly possible: www.manpowergroup.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405818-INFO

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110330/CG73938LOGO-a





SOURCE ManpowerGroup

Related Links

http://www.manpowergroup.com


DUBLIN, 13 September, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Smart Glass Market - Global Forecast to 2022" report to their offering.

The global smart glass market is expected to grow from USD 2.34 Billion in 2015 to USD 8.13 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 19.2% between 2016 and 2022.



The emerging automobile and architectural buildings end-use industry create a huge demand for the smart glass market across the world. The major factors driving the growth of the market are the need for energy-efficient solutions and government regulations for green buildings. Furthermore, the growing automotive sector is expected to drive the market in the near future.

North America and Europe are the biggest contributors in this industry in terms of consumption and manufacturing capacities. Currently, Europe is the leading market in smart glass owing to the increasing need to reduce the energy consumption and incorporate energy-efficient building materials and technologies in the architectural and transportation sectors. The APAC smart glass market is also expected to witness significant growth between 2016 and 2022.





The major factors restraining the growth of market are the high cost of smart glass, lack of awareness about smart glass among end consumers, and delayed switching response time for changing the states from transparent to opaque or vice-versa for large surface area. Moreover, the high investment involved in the manufacturing and R&D of smart glass poses a key challenge for smart glass market players.



Companies Mentioned:



Asahi Glass Co. Ltd.

Gentex Corporation

Glass Apps LLC

Hitachi Chemical Co. Ltd.

PPG Industries

Pleotint, LLC

Ravenbrick LLC

Research Frontiers Incorporated

SPD Control System Corporation

Sage Electrochromics, Inc.

Scienstry Inc.

Smartglass International Ltd.

View Inc.



Key Topics Covered:



1 Introduction



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Premium Insights



5 Market Overview



6 Industry Trends



7 Smart Glass Market, By Technology



8 Smart Glass Market, By End-Use Industry



9 Geographic Analysis



10 Competitive Landscape



11 Company Profiles



12 Appendix



For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/bw8rv9/smart_glass

Related Report:



Related Topics: Glass

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


DUBLIN, Ohio, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Socius, an award-winning business technology and consulting company, announces the addition of Microsoft Dynamics CRM experts for the company's presence in the Columbus and Atlanta regions. The company intends to align its growing CRM practice with Microsoft Dynamics' capabilities in key markets like field service, healthcare, and manufacturing. Socius is one of few certified Microsoft partners in the United States.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that enables companies to market smarter and sell effectively and productively. Dynamics CRM is a business solution that helps companies improve marketing, sales, and service engagement with their customers to drive organizational efficiency, while helping to improve the overall customer experience. Socius provides social insights, business intelligence, and productivity with Microsoft solutions, and can deliver Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the cloud, on-premises, or with a hybrid combination.

Rob Urbanowicz, Socius' CRM Practice Director and CRM expert with more than 20 years of experience, came to Socius in March, 2015, with the goal of doubling the company's CRM practice in a two-year timeframe. To achieve this goal, Socius has hired key talent in key regions, most recently including Robert Wittig, Principal Consultant Dynamics CRM in Cleveland/Akron, and CRM consultants Meghan Reed and Erica Ellis, both serving clients nationally from the Socius office in Atlanta.

"With this expansion, we now have the ability to help our clients look at the Microsoft stack  Dynamics, Power BI, large-scale deployments  as it relates to CRM specifically," said Urbanowicz. "Our CRM practice new hires here in Ohio and in our Atlanta office will expand our reach as an award-winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner, allowing us to better serve our clients."

Wittig comes to Socius from his role as CRM practice lead at JibeCRM. Wittig is a 12-year veteran as a Microsoft Dynamics CRM architect with mid to large market experience designing, building, and integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM to achieve corporate goals and objectives. Wittig has a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Accounting Information Systems from the University of Akron.

Ellis comes to Socius from her role as director of marketing at Bond International Software in Roswell, Georgia. She has more than 15 years of software industry experience with emphasis in consulting, marketing, sales, implementation, training, and support, and specializes in Business Intelligence and data analysis, and Dynamics CRM. Ellis graduated cum laude from the University of Georgia Terry College of Business.

Reed is a recent graduate from Miami University with a degree in Information Systems. She joined the CRM Consulting team at Socius in Columbus as an associate CRM consultant in 2015, and was promoted to CRM consultant in August 2016.

In addition to the Consulting Team, Lisa Steinhart and Bill Rockwell have joined the CRM Business Development team. Steinhart has held various leadership positions at Socius, and is the CRM Solutions Director. Steinhart brings a vast amount of knowledge and experience with her to this role, including many sales and marketing management positions at companies within the technology sector. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from The Ohio State University. Bill Rockwell is located in western Ohio and brings years of experience selling CRM solutions to the middle market.

To learn more about how Socius can help businesses leverage technology with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, visit www.socius1.com.

About Socius:

Socius (www.socius1.com) is a strategic business consulting partner that provides comprehensive business management solutions to help companies leverage technology to fuel their growth and profitability and compete more successfully in today's economy. As a Gold Certified Microsoft Partner, a Sage Authorized Partner, and the largest NetSuite Partner in Ohio, Socius represents the most trusted accounting, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and business intelligence and analytics technologies on the market. Backed by over 30 years of award-winning experience, Socius proudly serves clients throughout the country from its headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, and its 28 additional locations.

For more information, contact:

Erin Paulson, Marketing Manager

614-798-0770

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160412/354341LOGO

SOURCE Socius

Related Links

http://www.socius1.com


Registration for the Spirits of Mexico is now open! Presented by IWSC Group's North American division, Spirits of Mexico (SOM) is the premier spirits competition in North America for agave-based spirits produced in Mexico.

IWSC Group is the world leader in organizing wine and spirit competitions globally, including the illustrious International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC). In March 2015, The IWSC Group launched a North American division, which now oversees the SOM competition.

"We are thrilled to once again host the Spirits of Mexico competition in Atlanta," said Dominique Love, CEO, IWSC Group North America. "Last year, we made a number of enhancements to the competition by recruiting a new panel of highly-recognized judges and implementing new judging procedures that aligned more closely with the International Wine & Spirit Competition standards. This year, we will continue to grow the competition and award-winners will see increased visibility at the other events in the IWSC Group portfolio, including the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival and the Sugar Land Wine & Food Affair."

Judges for the 2016 competition include Junior Merino, New York, NY; Jason Silverman, New York, NY; Clayton Szczech, Mexico City, MX; Todd Thrasher, Alexandria, VA and Kellie Thorn, Atlanta, GA.

Any commercial, agave-based spirit produced in Mexico is eligible for participation in Spirits of Mexico. Product samples are presented in flights in a blind competition and evaluate based on criteria consistent with the evaluation standards of the International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC). All judging is by region/area, variety/style/type, and vintage/age with special categories for Craft Spirits (less than 52,000 cases produced annually). Judges base scores on appearance, aromatics, flavor, mouthfeel and finish, awarding a maximum of 100 points.

Registration closes on Friday, October 21. Registration fee is $100 for entrants received before October 1 and $150 for entrants after. To register and to view the complete lists of spirit categories, visit www.thespiritsofmexico.com.

Follow Spirits of Mexico on Facebook and Twitter.

ABOUT THE IWSC GROUP

The IWSC Group is a global events company that brings together people and brands through authentic experiences that ignite conversation, entertain and enrich. IWSC Group events range from wine and spirit competitions, such as the prestigious International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC), to culinary festivals and arts conferences. The UK-based company launched in 2015 IWSC Group North America, which offers an expanding portfolio of events, including Atlanta Food & Wine Festival, Cochon555, NYC Craft Beer Festival, Sugar Land Wine & Food Affair and Whiskies of the World.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407293LOGO

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407146LOGO

SOURCE IWSC

Related Links

http://IWSCGROUP.COM


AUBURN, Maine, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- It's coming: The holiday season and the rush of revenue. It's the stuff of retailers' happy dreams. But with the switch over to EMV or chip cards, the anticipation of failed transactions, downed EMV POS terminals, and long, slow moving lines on Black Friday is what really keeps retailers up at night, according to the technical cleaning specialists at KICTeam, Inc. While speed and efficiency are critical to the bottom line, they are also the main components to ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. Should anything change that, check out becomes a nightmare.

Nothing frustrates a paying customer more than the inability to use their debit or credit card due to devices that jam, incur errors or won't accept payment. And nothing is more debilitating to operations than a line of waiting customers, unable to move because of POS failures. The amount of time wasted on rejected cards or read errors has become measurable and revenue losses stunning. Think about it. Every minute, every second a patron has to stop a transaction to determine what's wrong with their card, change cards, or track down a manager to fix a self- service device is revenue lost. And an exasperated customer, who walks away because your machines won't work, may not come back. Wouldn't ease and speed of payment be one of the first things you consider to create the best experience possible for your customers?

And there are additional card processing fees, chargebacks and fallback penalties, and the liability issues associated with unsuccessful EMV transactions. Failure to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) governing payment procedures, have serious and costly consequences. Maintaining the uptime of EMV devices not only lowers the risk of the shift in liability associated with using the magstripe reader or manual keyed entry, but also has a reduced risk of a data security breach. The negative impact on brand image of a breach can cause millions in lost revenue.

These payment failures could be the difference between a fast, steady stream of happy holiday shoppers bringing in revenue and a growling group of discouraged people driving away from your business. And dirt is what can make that nightmare a reality.

Dirt? Yes. In today's brick and mortar retail environment, the core component of operational success is credit and debit payment. It is the culmination point of the customer facing experience. But even the newest, most advanced customer payment systems are still subject to environmental conditions, airborne contaminants and just plain dust. Unlike simpler magstripe readers, chip technology requires sensitive friction and landing pins to make contact with the embedded chip. Due to normal environmental conditions and use, these pins can become dirty very quickly. Dirt, grease and grime can disrupt or negate the data exchange causing the transaction to fail.

And it's not just the environment. We know that money is dirty. But credit cards? Credit cards, one of the most handled items we possess, are a hotbed of germs and bacteria. In a recent study1 conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Queen Mary, University of London, one in 10 credit cards were contaminated with fecal organisms. Studies have also found food particles, drug residue, grease, and DNA from a variety of animals. When customers use your payment terminals, all those contaminants are transferred into the devices. Now doesn't THAT make you want to clean?

How? By implementing a simple, weekly device cleaning program utilizing pre-saturated cleaning cards, wipes and swabs. These are inexpensive disposable products specifically designed to clean the interior contact points that facilitate transactions on electronic devices such as payment terminals and bill acceptors. They remove dirt, salt, sand, dust, oils and other contaminants in a safe, efficient manner. Cleaning programs ensure overall device efficiency by eliminating or minimizing failed transactions. Time and again we hear the devices aren't broken, they are just dirty.

A 2013 pilot study done in 15 national retail locations over a 5 week period had store owners and operators testing a very simple cleaning kit designed to target specialized POS equipment including card readers, touch screens and thermal printers. The results? 100% of Test Stores noticed a reduction in error messages and recommended that a cleaning kit be implemented as Preventative Maintenance because:

Lines moved faster since the devices functioned properly

Customers were more satisfied that card readers worked the first time

Managers felt the small investment in the cleaning kit reduced need for service and device replacement

The idea to advocate routine cleaning has proven extremely effective in the industry, saving companies thousands annually. "It's amazing how many decision makers in the retail industry already know about adopting cleaning programs to keep their store devices operating at optimal levels," said Greg Dumais, Business Development Executive for KICTeam, the leading experts in technical cleaning programs. "With EMV implementation in full swing, keeping the devices operating full time has never been more important."

Whether merchants do it in-house or utilize a POS service company, moving to a regulated cleaning regime with mandated adoption enables merchants to manage their in-store transactions with a higher data transmission rate and maintain a seamless transaction process. This reduces costs associated with failed chip reads, fallback fees, delayed transaction speeds or perceived "broken" devices. By maintaining the uptime of the EMV device, the merchant lowers the risk of a data breach and the shift in liability associated with using the magstripe reader or manual keyed entry. The company will also benefit from improved POS performance metrics which have been proven to have a direct impact on customer retention and revenue.

On Black Friday, there will be things you can't control: the economy, crazed customers, power failures, "acts of God." So you have to rely on the things you can control to make things go smoothly. The easiest way of eliminating your Black Friday EMV nightmare is by having clean, functional devices. Dream happy, retailers!

[email protected] www.kicteam.com

1 Dirty Money 15 October, 2015 http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2012/dirty_money.html

SOURCE KICTeam

Related Links

http://www.kicteam.com


"When it comes to the strategic deterrence mission, the Trident II D5 industry team is focused on enabling the U.S. Navy to deliver credibility and unmatched reliability," said Eric Scherff, vice president of the Fleet Ballistic Missile program for Lockheed Martin. "We are building on a 60-year partnership with the Navy to ensure Trident remains capable for the decades to come through our shared robust flight test plan."

The missile was converted into a test configuration using a test missile kit produced by Lockheed Martin that contains range safety devices, tracking systems and flight telemetry instrumentation.

The Trident II D5 missile is deployed aboard U.S. Navy Ohio-class submarines and Royal Navy Vanguard-class to deter nuclear aggression. The three-stage ballistic missile can travel a nominal range of 4,000 nautical miles and carry multiple independently targeted reentry bodies.

Lockheed Martin has a long track record of success in engineering, evolving and sustaining ballistic missile systems. The company has been the Navy's strategic missile prime contractor since Dec. 27, 1955  one of the longest government and industry partnerships for a major U.S. weapon system. Lockheed Martin has also continuously supported the U.S. Air Force's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile mission since 1955.

For additional information, visit our website: www.lockheedmartin.com/trident.

About Lockheed Martin

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 98,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.

Media Contact:

Sydney Owens, +1 408-756-1241; [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406778

SOURCE Lockheed Martin

Related Links

http://www.lockheedmartin.com


Louis Martel, President, CSL International and Executive Vice-President, CSL Group, is named as successor

MONTREAL, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - The CSL Group announced today that Rod Jones has decided to retire effective March 31st, 2017, after a nine-year tenure as President and Chief Executive Officer, and a career with CSL that has spanned over thirty years.

During his three decades at CSL, Mr. Jones worked with CSLers around the world to transform what was a Great Lakes-focused shipping business into the largest owner and operator of self-unloading ships in the world. Under his leadership, CSL expanded beyond Canada and the Americas to Australia, Asia and Europe.

"The CSL Board of Directors and the Martin family are very grateful for the enormous contribution Rod Jones has made to the company's growth and success," said Paul Martin, Chair of the CSL Board. "Rod has stood out as an inclusive, visionary and modern leader who leaves behind a sound company and lasting legacy built on authentic values and a commitment to people, safety and the environment."

Effective April 1, 2017, Louis Martel, President, CSL International and Executive Vice-President, CSL Group, will assume the role of Chief Executive Officer.

"I have been privileged to lead our talented and committed ship and shore teams through an era of transformation at CSL and in the shipping industry," said Rod Jones. "It's now time to move on and I am extremely pleased with the Board's decision to appoint Louis Martel to chart the new course for CSL.

I look forward to working with Louis during a seven-month transition period. He is an experienced and accomplished leader with extensive knowledge of our ships, markets and strategies."

Louis Martel joined Canada Steamship Lines as a Naval Architect in 1997 and transferred to CSL Americas in 2003 where he became Vice-President, Technical Operations. He took the helm of Canada Steamship Lines as President in April 2012 and was promoted to Executive Vice-President, CSL Group, and President, Canada Steamship Lines in January 2014. A year later, he was appointed President, CSL International.

"Over the course of his 19-year career at CSL, Louis Martel has demonstrated a strong commitment to our customers and employees, and the aptitude and drive to successfully advance CSL's strategic vision,"

said Paul Martin. "The Board is confident in Louis' ability to successfully lead CSL into the future."

The CSL Group is the largest owner and operator of self-unloading ships in the world. Headquartered in Montreal with divisions operating throughout the Americas, Australia, Europe and Asia, CSL delivers more than 78 million tonnes of cargo annually for customers in the construction, steel, energy and agri-food sectors.

SOURCE The CSL Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cslships.com/en


SEATTLE, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Timeshare Exit Team is proud to announce they have earned accreditation with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) making them the only BBB accredited company in the Northwest that specializes in timeshare exits.

Timeshare Exit Team has met the BBB's Standards of Trust, a comprehensive set of policies and procedures of creating and maintaining ethical business practices. Timeshare Exit Team has gone through a vigorous evaluation and review process to acquire this accreditation, a testament to Timeshare Exit Team's commitment to transparency and service to consumers.

"While our business has been exponentially successful since we opened, and our A+ rating from customers on BBB.com has been impactful, this accreditation is extremely valued to us because it gives another level of third party validation to the consumer," says Brandon Reed, Timeshare Exit Team CEO and Co-Founder. This is an important distinction, one that not all businesses receive, and Timeshare Exit Team looks forward to building trust with even more consumers.

About Timeshare Exit Team

Since the inception of the company in 2012, Timeshare Exit Team has been helping consumers by offering free consultations for owners to assess their timeshare exit opportunities as well as educating the general public about the timeshare industry. Timeshare Exit Team specializes in helping timeshare owners out of their timeshare ownership when it is no longer a fit for their lifestyle. They have over 35 offices within the US, with corporate offices in Lynnwood, Washington. The company is both nationally and locally endorsed by public figures and thousands of satisfied customers. All timeshare owners can schedule their free consultation by visiting timeshareexitteam.com or calling 855.733.3434.

Contact:

Scott Loughran, Director of Marketing

425.415.1200

Email

SOURCE Timeshare Exit Team

Related Links

http://timeshareexitteam.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The law firm of Bressler, Amery & Ross, P.C. announced today that Tobias F. Ziegler has joined the firm as a Principal in its Corporate Practice.

Mr. Ziegler has law degrees earned in his native Germany, in France and the U.S. and he speaks German, French, English and Spanish  giving him an in-depth understanding of international law and languages. His international client base includes entities and entrepreneurs throughout Europe, including the UK, Germany, France and Spain as well as Asia and the U.S.

At Bressler, where he was an associate earlier in his career, Mr. Ziegler will help continue growing its Corporate Practice. He will focus on advising international clients entering the U.S. market and doing business here. Mr. Ziegler was most recently counsel at Gallet Dreyer & Berkey, LLP, heading its international business practice. He is resident in Bressler's New York office.

"I am thrilled to be returning to Bressler," said Mr. Ziegler. "Bressler's culture is geared towards establishing and strengthening long-term client relationships and its size is ideal to providing the highest quality legal advice to various types of businesses ranging from emerging companies to Fortune 500 corporations. I look forward to collaborating with Bressler attorneys and staff to serve our clients and achieving their business goals in an efficient manner."

"Ever since Tobias left us to pursue an excellent opportunity, we have kept in touch and have been impressed with the expansion of his transactional expertise and his clientele," said Bressler New York Office Managing Principal Andrew Sidman. "We are excited to bring Tobias back as a key component of our corporate team."

Mr. Ziegler represents international and U.S. entities and individuals regarding a range of business and commercial transactions. His extensive knowledge includes advising on the formation of companies, joint ventures, mergers & acquisitions, asset purchases, partnership and co-operation agreements, commercial contracts of all types, real estate and financing transactions, taxation and U.S. work visas for international business executives. He also has substantial experience handling licensing and intellectual property matters. Additionally, Mr. Ziegler counsels tech, IT, software companies and startups.

Mr. Ziegler is a member and frequent speaker at meetings of EuroJuris International, one of the largest international lawyer network groups with members in over 50 countries. He is the author of numerous articles on U.S. and international business law

He earned an LL.M. in German law from the University of Cologne Law School in Germany in 2001, a Maitrise degree (J.D. equivalent) in French law from the Sorbonne University Paris I, Law School in 2003 in Paris, a Master's in international law from Montpellier University Law School in France in 2004, and attended the University of Florida, its Levin College of Law and New York Law School. He passed the New York Bar exam in 2008.

Mr. Ziegler has also worked in Paris at Jones Day, Orrick and the Permanent Mission of Germany to the OECD.



About Bressler, Amery & Ross, P.C.

Bressler, Amery & Ross, P.C. is a leading full-service law firm that represents Fortune 500 corporations, midsize and small privately held companies, brokerage firms, banks, franchises, insurers and non-profits. The firm also represents emerging companies, high-net-worth individuals and families. The firm's main practices include securities, insurance, employment, and business litigation, including dispute resolution and tax. An NLJ350 firm and NJLJ Top 20 firm, Bressler has more than 160 attorneys in Florham Park, NJ; New York City; Birmingham, AL; Ft. Lauderdale, FL and Miami FL. For more information, visit: www.bressler.com

Contact:

Andrew Blum, AJB Communications

917-783-1680, [email protected]

SOURCE Bressler, Amery & Ross, P.C.

Related Links

http://www.bressler.com


SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Track Group, Inc. (OTCQX: TRCK) ("Track Group"), a world leader in location monitoring and predictive analytics, today announced several key appointments and nominations in alignment with the Company's strategic direction and strengthening its ability to achieve scale and profitable growth. The Company announced that Ray Johnson, former Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation, and Eric Rosenblum, an Executive at Palantir Technologies, Inc., are appointed to the Company's Board of Directors. Guy Dubois, Track Group's Chairman of the Board of Directors, remains Chairman and is now also appointed as Chief Executive Officer. In a planned transition, Mark Attarian, Track Group's current Chief Administrative Officer is appointed as Chief Financial Officer replacing John Merrill. These changes are effective immediately.

Ray Johnson is a pioneer in the technology space, serving in various leadership roles in some of the industry's most prominent companies. Most recently, Dr. Johnson served as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Lockheed Martin, where he was responsible for the Corporation's technology, engineering, and operational performance. He led Lockheed Martin to achieve the best operational performance in its over 100-year history for three consecutive years.

Eric Rosenblum has a distinguished career working in strategy and product development for emerging technology companies. Currently, he leads several product areas (including cybersecurity and financial compliance) as an Executive at Palantir Technologies. Mr. Rosenblum joined Palantir from Drawbridge, a mobile advertising start-up, where he served as Chief Operating Officer. Prior to that, Mr. Rosenblum was Director of Product and Director of Strategy and Business Operations at Google.

Guy Dubois joined the Board of Directors of SecureAlert in 2012 and was appointed Chairman of the Board in 2013. During that time, Mr. Dubois led the company's successful transformation including its corporate re-branding to Track Group in 2014. Prior to Track Group, Mr. Dubois held various executive leadership roles at gategroup Holding AG, including Director and CEO, and also at Roche Vitamins, Inc. Currently, Mr. Dubois is Chairman of Singapore-based Tetra House Pte. Ltd., a provider of consulting and advisory services worldwide, and is a member of the board of directors at RNTS Media NV, a Frankfurt-listed company that connects app developers and media companies with advertisers through the power of technology.

"As CEO, Guy Dubois brings extensive experience and proven leadership that will help drive the company's continued growth and strategic vision," stated David Boone, Lead Independent Director at Track Group. "By appointing top leaders in the technology industry, such as Ray and Eric, to our Board of Directors we are taking an important next step in the evolution of the company that will allow us to execute our global corporate strategy and continue creating sustainable competitive advantage as we redefine this industry."

Mark Attarian is a trusted and accomplished executive with 30+ years of wide-ranging industry experience in finance and operations with growth-oriented technology, healthcare and service companies. Prior to Track Group, Mark was CFO of Interactive Holding Corp., dba Undertone, a leader in mobile digital advertising solutions. Before that, he was a Partner at Tatum, a financial and technology consulting and advisory firm from 2004-2014. Mark has built a reputation for value creation through operating excellence and maximizing returns realized on invested capital. He has helped manage more than $5 billion worth of transactions, including leveraged recapitalizations and buyouts, acquisitions, divestitures, restructurings, initial public offerings, venture capital and private equity financings.

Guy Dubois, Track Group's Chairman and CEO said, "The appointment of Mark Attarian as Chief Financial Officer will strengthen the company's leadership team and contribute to building a culture of accountability and performance. Mark has the experience and strategic vision necessary to make a significant difference and I'm confident he will be a great fit at Track Group."

About Track Group, Inc.

Track Group is a global leader in providing criminal justice agencies with the most advanced and fully-integrated portfolio of location monitoring and predictive behavioral analytics solutions designed to increase public safety by improving the management of offenders, while enhancing rehabilitation outcomes. The company's hardware-agnostic platform combines real-time tracking devices and professional monitoring services with advanced data analytics and other integrated applications to enable secure, single-sourced solutions that support the re-socialization of offenders released on parole, probation or community corrections and other monitoring initiatives.

The company currently trades under the ticker symbol "TRCK" on the OTCQX exchange. For more information, visit www.trackgrp.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "if", "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to Track Group & its subsidiaries are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements are only predictions and reflect Track Group's current beliefs and expectations with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties and subject to change at any time. Track Group may from time to time update these publicly announced projections, but it is not obligated to do so. Any projections of future results of operations should not be construed in any manner as a guarantee that such results will in fact occur. These projections are subject to change and could differ materially from final reported results. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, see "Risk Factors" in Track Group's annual report on Form 10-K, its quarterly report on Form 10-Q, and its other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. New risks emerge from time to time. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the dates on which they are made.

SOURCE Track Group, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.trackgrp.com


"Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF is one of the longest-running youth initiatives in the country. For the generations of Americans who have participated, it marked their first opportunity to support a global cause, give back and feel empowered to make a difference," said Caryl M. Stern, president & CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. "This fall, we're inviting teachers to inspire the next generation of global citizens by teaching their students the fundamental value of helping others."

In order to bring Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF to the classroom and help educators engage their students, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF has developed a series of lesson plans on topics like child rights, survival and development. The resources, which include videos, readings, photos, music, maps and games, introduce students to UNICEF's work around a variety of issues affecting the health and well-being of children around the world, including clean water and sanitation, nutrition and education.

On Halloween, equipped with the knowledge that they can make the world a better place for children, kids will be motivated to fundraise with the iconic orange UNICEF boxes to collect donations that add up to lifesaving change for vulnerable children. And after Halloween ends, kids can continue supporting their peers around the world with UNICEF Kid Power, which allows them to get active and save the lives of malnourished children. To learn more about the world's first Wearable-for-Good, visit www.unicefkidpower.org.

Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF started as a grassroots campaign in 1950 when children went to door-to-door collecting coins in hand-painted milk cartons to support children affected by World War ll. Since then, it has evolved into a national campaign powered by children, their teachers and their families. The annual tradition of Kids Helping Kids  has raised more than $175 million to help UNICEF provide children around the world with medicine, nutrition, clean water, emergency relief and education.

The U.S. Fund for UNICEF is grateful for the support of National Partners HSNi and Key Club and Promotional Supporter American Airlines.

National Partners

Since 2013, HSNi Cares has partnered with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF as a National Partner of Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF. This September and October, all HSNi brands including Ballard Designs, Chasing Fireflies, Frontgate, Garnet Hill, Grandin Road, HSN, Improvements and TravelSmith will encourage their customers to make a donation to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to help UNICEF save and improve the lives of children around the world. During this time, HSN will match all donations to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF made on the HSN Card* up to $100,000. Exclusively on HSN and HSN.com, customers can purchase the "HSN Cares Designer Quilt." For each quilt sold on HSN, the company will donate $15 to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. HSN will also feature and sell a range of customer favorites in the HSN Cares U.S. Fund for UNICEF Collection, donating $5 for each product sold in this collection to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.



Key Club International continues its support of Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF, raising funds for The Eliminate Project, which seeks to eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus. To date, the longstanding partnership with Key Club has raised more than $7 million for UNICEF's global child health and development programs. Key Club International, a student-led service leadership program of Kiwanis International, is the oldest and largest service program for high school students. For more information, visit TheEliminateProject.org or KeyClub.org.



Promotional Supporter

For the eighth consecutive year, American Airlines will support Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF through UNICEF's Change for Good on American Airlines. Since 1994, American Airlines has been the proud U.S. airline supporting UNICEF's global Change for Good program, which converts customers' donations of foreign and domestic currency into lifesaving services for the world's most vulnerable children. From October 1731, American Airlines employee flight attendant volunteers, known as Champions for Children, will make a Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF-themed announcement and collect donations of foreign and domestic currency from customers on select international flights to support Change for Good.

For more information about the Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF campaign, visit www.trickortreatforunicef.org.

About UNICEF

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) works in more than 190 countries and territories to put children first. UNICEF has helped save more children's lives than any other humanitarian organization, by providing health care and immunizations, clean water and sanitation, nutrition, education, emergency relief and more. The U.S. Fund for UNICEF supports UNICEF's work through fundraising, advocacy and education in the United States. Together, we are working toward the day when no children die from preventable causes and every child has a safe and healthy childhood. For more information, visit www.unicefusa.org.

**Subject to credit approval. Comenity Capital Bank issues HSN credit card accounts. The HSN MasterCard is issued by Comenity Capital Bank, pursuant to a license by MasterCard International Incorporated. MasterCard and the MasterCard Brand Mark are registered trademarks of MasterCard International Incorporated.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160913/407240

SOURCE U.S. Fund for UNICEF

Related Links

http://www.unicefusa.org


GLENDALE, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- USA Link System, Inc., and its sister company AskAnny.com, is bringing technology to the community. They are working closely with Glendale Economic Development Corporation. As one of Glendale's creative agencies, USA Link System is a proud platinum sponsor of Glendale Tech Week.

As one of the fastest growing cities in Los Angeles, holding the Tech Week in Glendale is crucial and strategic for the city's progress. Glendale Tech Week aims to educate and inform the community about technology and business. Participate in lectures, conferences, and a job fair where aspiring applicants get to connect and interact with businesses. Esteemed guests and speakers include: developer Rick Caruso, CBRE's Lewis Horne, and Glendale's Mayor Paula Devine.

USA Link System invites the community to join them and participate at this year's Glendale Tech Week. Find their booth on September 14 from 9am-3pm and get to know their friendly staff! Ask them about their marketing strategies or their web and app development, and how they can help grow your business. Take advantage of their free digital presence evaluation and improvement report.

Here is a partial schedule of Glendale Tech Week.

September 14

4pm-5pm: Workplace Strategy: A Changing Workplace, featuring CBRE's Lewis Horne and Developer Rick Caruso at CBRE.

5pm-7 pm: Kick-Off Reception at CBRE with opening remarks by Glendale Mayor Paula Devine.

7pm-9pm: Sunset Cocktails and Meet the Funders at Bourbon Steakhouse.

September 15

12 pm to 1:30 pm: Lunch and Learn: Mobile First at Legal Zoom.

1:30 pm to 2:45 pm: Building Mobile Apps and Web Experiences at YP.

5:30 pm to 7:30 pm: Reception at Museum of Neon Art. Rum Bar and Cigar Rolling Lounge sponsored by Dominican Republic Consulate.

September 16

3 pm to 4 pm: The Walt Disney Company: Current State of Technology in Disney and How it will Shape How They Tell Stories Going Forward.

6 pm to 8 pm: VIP Reception at the Skydeck Lounge at Eden Burger. Event is followed by a show by Robby Krieger and The Music Path at the Alex Theatre. Proceeds benefit the Music Path. (RSVP is Required to attend this event.)

For a full list of events, visit GlendaleTechWeek.com.

Website: askanny.com and usalinksystem.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AskAnny/

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406747LOGO

SOURCE USA Link System, Inc.

Related Links

http://usalinksystem.com/


PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR), a world leader in radiotherapy and X-ray imaging technology, is announcing the publication of its annual corporate social responsibility report, detailing the company's policies and achievements in extending access to cancer care, protecting resources, and helping to save lives. The Varian 2016 Sustainability Report has been produced as part of a wider company effort to continually improve sustainability performance and transparency.

"Companies such as ours have a responsibility to achieve our business goals in a socially and environmentally responsible manner," said Dow Wilson, chief executive officer of Varian Medical Systems. "This is a company that utilizes its resources and talent to help people everywhere in the world. Sustainability for us is extending access to quality healthcare, delivering safe and effective products, and having a beneficial impact on the communities where we operate."

"We have made a commitment to produce annual updates so we could measure our achievements against defined sustainability goals," adds Wilson. "This effort involves the close participation of senior leaders from all divisions, key geographies, and core functions."

The achievements highlighted in the Varian Sustainability Report 2016 include programs that extend advanced care and enhance clinical training in developing countries. The report also spotlights ongoing reductions in electricity, natural gas and water consumption, along with progress towards greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. It also highlights the sustainability achievements of the Imaging Components division, which Varian intends to spin off as a separate company  named Varex Imaging  from January 2nd 2017.

The report outlines the governance structure that determines Varian's sustainability activities and measures performance against goals stated in its inaugural report. Based on internationally-recognized GRI (global reporting initiative) parameters, this year's report has been prepared in accordance with the GRI G4 guidelines.

Varian's 2016 Sustainability Report is available to download at https://www.varian.com/about-varian/citizenship

About Varian Medical Systems

Varian Medical Systems, Inc., of Palo Alto, California, focuses energy on saving lives by equipping the world with advanced technology for fighting cancer and for X-ray imaging. The company is the world's leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions with radiation. The company provides comprehensive solutions for radiotherapy, radiosurgery, proton therapy and brachytherapy. The company supplies informatics software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy centers and medical oncology practices. Varian is also a premier supplier of X-ray imaging components, including tubes, digital detectors, cables and connectors as well as image processing software and workstations for use in medical and industrial settings, as well as for security and non-destructive testing. Varian Medical Systems employs approximately 7,700 people who are located at manufacturing sites in North America, Europe, and China and sales and support offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.varian.com or follow us on Twitter.

Press Contact

Neil Madle

Varian Medical Systems

+44 7786 526068

[email protected]

SOURCE Varian Medical Systems

Related Links

http://www.varian.com


ATLANTA, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- VeriStor Systems, an advanced IT solutions provider specializing in virtual infrastructure and enterprise private, public and hybrid cloud services and solutions, today announced the addition of Patrick Madden as Area Sales Manager for Tennessee and the Midwest. The announcement marks an additional milestone in the company's growth and expansion strategy as it continues to capitalize on the increasing demand for the innovative IT solutions that power business productivity.

"It's an honor to add Patrick to our growing sales leadership team. A visionary sales strategist, Patrick not only has an impressive track record for achieving measureable results he's also an expert at growing new markets," said Ashby Lincoln, CEO, VeriStor. "As we continue to extend our focus throughout Tennessee, Kentucky and the greater Ohio Valley, his extensive relationships combined with his execution-oriented focus will enable us to quickly grow our market opportunity as customers throughout the region seek innovative virtual infrastructure, security and networking solutions as well as public, private and hybrid cloud services."

Madden has over 20 years of sales experience, with specific expertise in storage and virtualization technology and customized IT solutions. Prior to joining VeriStor he was Area Vice President of Sales for ProSys where he led sales throughout the Ohio Valley/Tennessee/Kentucky and Mid-Atlantic regions. Before joining ProSys, Madden was a channel storage sales executive with Dell for 12 years. A former Corporal in the United States Marine Corps, Madden and his family reside in Nashville, Tenn.

"It's an exciting time to join VeriStor as the company continues to make impressive strides in delivering the innovative IT solutions that enhance IT efficiency, enable greater IT agility and improve business productivity," said Madden. "I look forward to playing a pivotal role in the company's growth as we combine new technology innovation with expert services and support to help customers realize more from their IT investments."

As part of the VeriStor expansion strategy, the company has also added additional focus on its Alabama and Florida region. Under the direction of Peter Zanetti, Area Sales Manager, VeriStor's Alabama and Florida region will also undergo additional focus and expansion as VeriStor looks to also increase its footprint throughout the Southeast.

About VeriStor Systems, Inc.

At VeriStor, we design, implement and manage IT solutions that fuel business productivity. As an end-to-end solutions provider, VeriStor specializes in enterprise data storage, virtual infrastructure, public, private and hybrid cloud services, migration, and technology financing. Headquartered in Atlanta, VeriStor delivers solutions nationwide to enterprise and mid-market companies in all industries including financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, education and federal, state and local government. To learn how VeriStor can help you achieve an IT infrastructure that accelerates business growth, improves efficiencies and reduces costs, visit: http://www.veristor.com.

SOURCE VeriStor Systems, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.veristor.com


NEW YORK and LEXINGTON, Ky., Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Viamedia, the largest independent cable TV ad management company, announced today that Becky Jones, who has served as the company's senior vice president, marketing & research, has been promoted to chief marketing & people officer, a new position created to drive Viamedia's unique employee and customer service culture.

As one of Viamedia's very first employees and recipient of numerous industry awards and honors, Jones has been responsible for overseeing Viamedia's marketing -- including its branding, market positioning, corporate communications and research support for Viamedia's 250 sales people in the field.

In her new role Jones will remain based in Lexington, Kentucky, and will add oversight of the company's human resources functions, including recruitment, training and employee relations, among other responsibilities. Jones will continue to oversee all aspects of the company's marketing, research and creative services.

"Becky has been an integral part of Viamedia since the company's inception 15 years ago, bleeds Viamedia purple and has always played a key role in initiatives impacting our employees and our overall culture," said Mark Lieberman, Viamedia president & CEO. "Our people are our #1 priority, and in her new role Becky will be working with all our outstanding employees to infuse the voice of the customer across everything we do."

Jones began her cable television career at TCI just prior to its acquisition by AT&T. In 2014, Jones was the recipient of a Top Ops Award and was named 'Cable Marketer of the Year' by Cablefax Daily. She also was honored for Affiliate and Partnership Marketing with a Faxie Award in 2014. She has also been recognized as one of the cable and telecommunications industry's '40 Under 40' by Multichannel News; recognized in Cablefax's Sales Executive of the Year Awards program for multiple years; and has been named as one of the Most Powerful Women in Cable, also by Cablefax.

Jones holds a Bachelor of Communications from Eastern Kentucky University.

About Viamedia

Headquartered in New York City, Viamedia is the largest independent cable TV ad management company for local, regional and national advertising, programmatic and ad tech solutions, responsible for nearly one million spots per day on behalf to over 12,000 advertisers. The company specializes in selling advertising on behalf of 60 U.S. cable and telecommunications service providers, utility companies and municipalities, and employs approximately 380 people across the country. The company also operates placemedia, a programmatic data-driven TV ad platform, which aggregates ad inventory from Viamedia, major MVPDs and more than 40 national cable networks across 210 DMAs. For more information, please visit www.viamediatv.com and www.placemedia.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20101115/CL01765LOGO





SOURCE Viamedia

Related Links

http://www.viamediatv.com


"Vibram USA's 'Centennial Event for the Future' is as much about celebrating our future as it is our past," said Mike Gionfriddo, president & CEO of Vibram USA. "This milestone represents Vibram's commitment to innovating and manufacturing performance-oriented products here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

With the completion of the acquisition of the Quabaug Corporation last year, 2016 marks the beginning of Vibram USA committing to a five-year, multi-million dollar campaign, with investments in staff and machinery to support innovation for the next one hundred years. As such, it is upgrading QVI's capabilities, manufacturing machines, inaugurating a two-year workforce education program, expanding its domestic supply chain and strengthening its product development and innovation processes in an effort to dominate more global markets.

"Massachusetts is home to so many great manufacturing companies and Vibram is a great example. Here in North Brookfield, Vibram supports good jobs and continues the proud tradition of high-quality products made in America," comments Congressman Jim McGovern (MA-02). "A manufacturer of essential products used by our military and men and women in uniform, Vibram is also helping to keep our country safe. I am proud to join so many in North Brookfield in congratulating Vibram on 100 years of manufacturing right here in Central Massachusetts."

In 2016 alone, Vibram has invested $6 million for new machinery and machine upgrades to ensure modern capabilities, innovation and institutional knowledge remain in the United States. That effort includes replacing 30-year-old machines with new, more technologically advanced presses, which allow for current materials to be produced with better efficiency, quality and faster response times to meet customers' demands. Additionally, Vibram plans to make a significant investment in Vibram USA's materials testing and validation center to better understand the chemistry of its materials as it relates to consumer-oriented performance attributes.

In terms of a commitment to its staff, Vibram's plans include:

Continue hiring for all aspects of the business, including sales, marketing, human resources, manufacturing and finance, with a focus on recruitment related to innovation of talented designers, engineers, developers and chemists. That includes both electrical and mechanical engineers.

A new partnership with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to provide education to all 300+ Vibram USA employees, with a focus on topics such as plant layout, Lean Education Academic Network (LEAN) initiatives and quality management.

to provide education to all 300+ Vibram employees, with a focus on topics such as plant layout, Lean Education Academic Network (LEAN) initiatives and quality management. Provide outside educational growth programs, in partnership with the Worcester Polytechnic Institute for project management, University of Massachusetts Lowell for materials science and Massachusetts Institute of Technology for innovation management.

Gionfriddo continues, "We continue to rely upon new, young talent, who bring technical degrees from top universities with majors ranging from engineering to chemistry and physics to drive Vibram's global innovation projects in the U.S."

"The Governor and I want to congratulate Vibram USA on 100 years of business here in the Commonwealth," says Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito. "Vibram is a key component of the Massachusetts manufacturing economy and an important source of high-quality products for members of our military and individual customers around the globe."

Vibram USA's centennial celebration, which is open to the public, is scheduled for 10 a.m.-1 p.m., this Friday, Sept. 16, at 18 School St., North Brookfield, Massachusetts. Scheduled dignitaries attending include Rep. Jim McGovern, State Sen. Anne Gobi and State Rep. Donnie Berthiaume. The celebration will incorporate an anniversary commemoration, factory tours and hors' d'oeuvres. In support of the celebration, guests are asked to please bring a pair of extra shoes to donate, as Quabaug Vibram International is gathering and donating shoes to Veterans Inc. of Worcester to help support veterans in need.

About Vibram:

Vibram is recognized worldwide as the leader in high performance soles for outdoor, recreational, work and fashion footwear and is relied on by the world's greatest climbers and athletes. Vibram soles have gone on to conquer Mt. Everest, K2 and a host of the world's tallest peaks. Today, the company works with premium brands including Merrrell, Danner, La Sportiva, Lowa, Red Wing, Sperry, Scarpa, The North Face, and many more. Vibram's Five Finger shoe line is on the cutting-edge of the minimalist footwear trend. Please visit us at www.vibram.com or follow us and our innovative products and services on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406665

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160912/406666LOGO

SOURCE Vibram USA

Related Links

http://www.vibram.com


HOLMDEL, N.J., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Vonage (NYSE: VG), a leading provider of cloud communications for business, is enhancing its mobile experience for customers in conjunction with the launch of Apple's iOS 10.

Vonage is among the first cloud communications providers to take advantage of the new iOS 10 CallKit capabilities, allowing VoIP apps, like the Vonage Essentials mobile app, to work just like a native call.

In addition, Vonage's integration with Apple's Siri provides Vonage business customers with a convenient, hands-free way to access the Vonage app to make business calls. The customer simply gives Siri a voice command that initiates a phone call from the app to any contact.

Omar Javaid, Chief Product Officer for Vonage, commented, "iOS 10 provides a much better user experience for VoIP apps. Vonage customers can initiate and receive calls using the app exactly the same way they do using their iPhone today. With the new upgrades, there is no difference in the calling experience when you use the Vonage app than when you use the standard iPhone functionality for calls."

Mr. Javaid continued, "The new functionality of the Vonage app enabled by the iOS 10 upgrades will allow for a more robust mobile calling experience for business customers, and is particularly useful for those who want to make business calls from their iPhones using their business identities, while taking advantage of all of the features and functionality that come with their Vonage service. We're very excited about these advancements in iOS 10 and we know our customers will love them."

Enhanced functionality:

Allows Vonage app calls to be received like any other incoming call  with the same quick, full screen, full functionality as the native call screen

Eliminates push notifications for incoming calls and, therefore, the potential for missed calls

Provides native access to call controls like Mute and Call Waiting

Place calls using Vonage simply by asking Siri

Automatically logs into the native Recents list

Allows easy activation of call backs with a simple touch, whether the call comes from an app or through the iPhone directly

This short video demonstrates the ease of making and receiving Vonage calls in iOS 10, and the use of a Siri command to make a call. Mr. Javaid comments in this interview on the significance of this update and what it means to Vonage customers.

In conjunction with the launch of iOS 10, this new functionality is available on the Vonage Essentials service which is geared toward small to medium businesses.

In addition, with these upgrades, the Vonage Essentials App can become the primary mobile business communications tool for calling and messaging for small businesses.

Mr. Javaid added, "The ability to make the sign up process super easy through the iOS 10 StoreKit is yet another benefit of the update. Businesses can download the Vonage Essentials app to their mobile phone and start using it as a primary mobile business communications tool for calling and messaging, all within a couple of minutes and a few clicks directly in the app."

For non-Vonage customers, Vonage is offering a special, limited-time offer of basic mobile service for small businesses that use Apple iOS. This service is available exclusively through the Apple Store. Small businesses can sign up directly in the app and begin using the Vonage Essentials service immediately. The limited promotion includes:

Two mobile extensions with dedicated numbers and a company main number

Auto attendant, visual voicemail, company caller ID, and Never-Miss-a-Call functionality, among other features

For more details, please visit the App Store.

About Vonage

Vonage (NYSE: VG) is a leading provider of cloud communications services for business. Vonage transforms the way people work and businesses operate through a portfolio of cloud-based communications solutions that enable internal collaboration among employees, while also keeping companies closely connected with their customers, across any mode of communication, on any device.

Vonage's Nexmo API Platform provides tools for voice, messaging and phone verification services, allowing developers to embed contextual, programmable communications into mobile apps, websites and business systems, enabling enterprises to easily communicate relevant information to their customers in real time, anywhere in the world, through text messaging, chat, social media and voice.

The Company also provides a robust suite of feature-rich residential communication solutions. In 2015 and 2016, the Company was named a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as-a-Service, Worldwide. Vonage has also earned the Frost & Sullivan Growth Excellence Leadership Award for Hosted IP and Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) Services. For more information, visit www.vonage.com.

Vonage Holdings Corp. is headquartered in Holmdel, New Jersey. Vonage is a registered trademark of Vonage Marketing LLC, owned by Vonage America Inc. To follow Vonage on Twitter, please visit www.twitter.com/vonage. To become a fan on Facebook, go to www.facebook.com/vonage. To subscribe on YouTube, visit www.youtube.com/vonage

(vg-a)

SOURCE Vonage

Related Links

http://www.vonage.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Weber Shandwick, one of the world's leading global communications and engagement firms, has acquired Flipside, a specialized mobile and digital agency. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition combines Flipside's mobile platform expertise, creative and technical services with Weber Shandwick's global capabilities in social media, brand publishing and integrated media. Together with Flipside, Weber Shandwick will deliver a full-scale, modern digital offering that blends content, community and commerce for both B2C and B2B marketers.

"As our clients realign their marketing efforts around mobile environments, our focus is on bringing them the most creative and transformative solutions possible," said Andy Polansky, Chief Executive Officer, Weber Shandwick. "Flipside has particularly strong creative and technical expertise, and its team further bolsters Weber Shandwick's leading position in content marketing and social media."

Flipside has designed and developed mobile apps and digital experiences for some of the world's largest global brands. Headquartered in London, with an additional office in Guildford, UK, Flipside's capabilities also include strategic business and technology planning, social media management and mobile-centric marketing communications.

"To a large extent, marketers still view mobile as a medium to simply extend awareness-building, advertising-minded tactics onto a smaller screen," said Chris Perry, Chief Digital Officer, Weber Shandwick. "As we manage more of our lives on smart phones, we see the critical need to go far beyond these conventions  to deliver real value to users through new types of digital experiences and business services. Flipside recognized the potential from its start, and now gives Weber Shandwick added depth and dimension to bring new value-based, engagement-driven ideas to life."

"Flipside's success has been in helping our clients to capitalize on business and communications opportunities in an ever more mobile world, and I'm delighted that our deeply talented team of mobile and digital specialists has the opportunity to continue that pursuit on a global scale as part of Weber Shandwick," said Marcus Dyer, managing director, Flipside.

About Weber Shandwick

Weber Shandwick is a leading global communications and engagement firm in 79 cities across 34 countries with a network extending to 127 cities in 81 countries. The firm's diverse team of strategists, analysts, producers, designers, developers and campaign activators has won the most prestigious awards in the world for innovative, creative approaches and impactful work, including being honored as PRWeek's Global Agency of the Year in 2015 and 2016, an Ad Age A-List Agency in 2014 and 2015, and The Holmes Report's Global Agency of the Year in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2015. Weber Shandwick and its Prime unit have won a combined 31 Cannes Lions since 2009 and are credited as PR agency on an additional 25 Lions. Weber Shandwick was also named a Best Place to Work by Ad Age in 2014 and 2015 and PRWeek in 2013 and 2014. The firm deploys deep expertise across sectors and specialty areas, including consumer marketing, corporate reputation, healthcare, technology, public affairs, financial services, corporate social responsibility, financial communications and crisis management, using proprietary social, digital and analytics methodologies. Weber Shandwick is part of the Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG). For more information, visit http://www.webershandwick.com.

Contact: Michelle Giuda

Company: Weber Shandwick

Phone: 212.445.8088

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Weber Shandwick

Related Links

http://www.webershandwick.com


"Plaza is most appreciative of our partners in 'What Matters' for assisting us in preparing this award application and especially to program director Sally Kaplan for her expertise and guidance," said Stephanie Garry, CAO of Plaza Jewish Community Chapel. "We are also honored to be a part of such a thoughtful list of semifinalists," Garry added. Finalists will be selected in October, and prizes will be awarded at a ceremony in December. See programs profile here .

"What Matters" is a unique partnership between Plaza Jewish Community Chapel (the program's funder), JCC Manhattan, The Jewish Theological Seminary and The New Jewish Home, to foster open and honest conversations within the Jewish community regarding end-of-life issues. The program facilitates one-on-one conversations, provides innovative programming and trains and certifies a network of volunteers in a variety of Jewish settings. As a result, more New York adults, across the spectrum of Jewish religious observance, have the opportunity to learn about, discuss with family and friends, and complete advance care planning directives, with access to Jewish wisdom.

"What Matters" adapts the Gundersen Health System's Respecting Choices model for the Jewish community of New York. Gundersen's Respecting Choices model is often called the "gold standard in advance planning initiatives." It was originally designed to be a clinically administered program for the people of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where after launch, 96 percent of residents had an advance care plan compared to the national average of 25 percent. Through such effectiveness, it has spread to organizations and communities, large and small, across the U.S. and abroad. "What Matters" adapts the Respecting Choices model by creating informational materials, resources, and training components that elevate end-of-life care conversations, the number of completed advance care plans, and Jewish values, teachings, and culture.

To learn more, visit the official webpage of "What Matters":

http://www.jccmanhattan.org/jewish-living/advanced-care-planning/

About JCC Manhattan

Together with our community, JCC Manhattan creates opportunities for people to connect, grow, and learn within an ever-changing Jewish landscape.

JCC Manhattan imagines Jewish life that is diverse and engages meaningfully with its values, culture, and ideas in everyday lives.

One of our goals is to be the "community's living room" for important conversations regarding important issues. With a longstanding history of serving as the crossroads for a diverse and expansive group of people on the Upper West Side, the JCC is well-positioned to convene the advance care planning initiative with JTS and The New Jewish Home. The JCC has deep connections to the older adult population in the community, and vast experience in embracing and engaging the community in rich and meaningful opportunities. We are all strengthened by collaboration, and JCC's leadership believes that by knowing the strengths, interests, challenges, and needs of our neighborhood partners we are all better equipped to serve those who live amongst us.

About The New Jewish Home

The New Jewish Home has a 166-year history of providing innovative, comprehensive elder care in the New York metropolitan area, serving individuals across various religious affiliations, ethnicities, age groups and payment sources. We provide services to support health, individuality, and dignity. As a leader in the elder care sector, The New Jewish Home staff routinely engages in the topic of advance directives with the thousands of elders served each year. Our expertise in this area, as well as our longstanding partnerships with NYU Langone Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital, provides both teaching hospitals with nationally recognized palliative care programs, and invaluable access to thought-leaders and practitioners in the end-of-life arena.

About The Center for Pastoral Education at JTS

The Center for Pastoral Education at JTS is at the forefront of training seminarians, clergy and lay leaders to provide in-depth spiritual care to people in need. We have a special focus on training religious leaders to engage in conversations about death and dying with clients and families, respecting the broad range of backgrounds and attitudes. Our faculty has a depth of Jewish knowledge, which will enable us to train facilitators to invite participants into thoughtful conversation around their religious concerns related to end-of-life care. Facilitators who are grounded in Jewish and pastoral approaches will be able to provide participants with knowledge of the tradition while helping them achieve their own integration of traditional and personal concerns as they make end-of-life decisions.

About Plaza Jewish Community Chapel

Plaza's mission is to ensure that every member of the Jewish Community receives a dignified and respectful Jewish funeral; to lower the high cost of funerals by eliminating the profit motive and commercialism so often associated with the funeral industry; and to provide appropriate connections to Jewish communal resources that the bereaved may need to cope with emotional or practical problems.

Plaza's educational programs support those working in end-of-life as well as students in religious schools and seniors in a variety of settings. We provide programming in hospitals and hospice facilities and provide financial assistance to the community in a variety of ways.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160906/404621

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160906/404619LOGO

SOURCE Plaza Jewish Community Chapel

Related Links

http://plazajewish.org


MIAMI, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- World Media & Technology Corp. ("Wor(l)d") (www.worldmediatech.com) (OTC Pink: WRMT), today announced that its smart wristband device uses ApP Lite (Application Processor Lite) from Toshiba Corporation's Storage & Electronic Devices Solutions Company ("Toshiba").



Toshiba developed ApP Lite for health monitoring systems. Wor(l)d has incorporated Toshiba's high-performance, low power consumption processor into its Health and Lifestyle Oracle, Helo. This is the first time Toshiba's ApP Lite has been used to measure blood pressure and ECG in a wearable device.



Helo, WRMT's smart wristband with connected app, provides real-time health monitoring and dis-ease prediction, directly from the wrist. Wor(l)d's unique algorithm analyses the data gathered by Helo, determines what it means and presents it in an easy to understand interface to inform the wearer's health and lifestyle choices. Helo features include measurement of Blood Pressure, ECG, Heart Rate, Respiration Rate, Heart Rate Variability (HRV) analysis for mood and energy levels along with measuring steps, distance and calorie burn. In addition, sleep quality is also analyzed, an SOS guardian can be notified in the event of an emergency and the 'WeCare' feature allows the wearer's vital signs to be monitored remotely.



Following a successful launch and initial shipments, Helo already has users in over 10 countries where Wor(l)d can check wearer vital signs and gather useful health and activity data over time.



Fabio Galdi, CEO, World Media & Technology Corp., said, "Engaging with Toshiba at such a deep technical level allows us to consolidate our wearable technology platform, fast-track our product development and maintain our innovative edge. We look forward to a long term relationship with Toshiba." He continued, "Using ApP Lite allows us to release new and exciting, life changing products that bring the benefits of wearable technology to all our customers. It enables us to continue to deliver on our corporate promise  'Join Wor(l)d and change your life'. We look forward to having a more informed, healthier and fitter network of connected users."



ApP Lite is a trademark of Toshiba Corporation.

(http://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/product/assp/applite.html)



About Wor(l)d

World Media & Technology Corp. designs, manufactures and sells connected, next-generation, innovative wearable devices and mobile products. It has end-users in over 80 countries which it sup-ports through its exclusive distribution partnership with Wor(l)d Global Network (www.worldgn.com). For further information, see www.worldmediatech.com.



About Toshiba

Toshiba Corporation, a Fortune Global 500 company, channels world-class capabilities in advanced electronic and electrical product and systems into three focus business fields: Energy that sustains everyday life, that is cleaner and safer; Infrastructure that sustains quality of life; and Storage that sustains the advanced information society. Guided by the principles of The Basic Commitment of the Toshiba Group, "Committed to People, Committed to the Future", Toshiba promotes global operations and is contributing to the realization of a world where generations to come can live better lives.



Founded in Tokyo in 1875, today's Toshiba is at the heart of a global network of 550 consolidated companies employing 188,000 people worldwide, with annual sales surpassing 5.6 trillion yen

(US$50 billion). (As of March 31, 2016.)

To find out more about Toshiba, visit www.toshiba.co.jp/index.htm



This press release contains forward-looking statements. Words such as "expects," "intends," "believes," and similar expressions reflecting something other than historical fact are intended to identify forward-looking statements, but are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including the timely development and market acceptance of products and technologies, the ability to secure additional sources of finance, the ability to reduce operating ex-penses, and other factors described in the Company's filings with the OTC Markets Group and with the SEC. The actual results that the Company achieves may differ materially from any forward-looking statement due to such risks and uncertainties. The Company under-takes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.



SOURCE World Media & Technology Corp.

Related Links

http://www.worldmediatech.com


NEW HAVEN, Conn. and WESTPORT, Conn., Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI), with generous support from Canaan Partners, is taking a lead role in preparing life science faculty and grad students for life outside of academia, exposing them to industry experts, investors, biotech entrepreneurs and faculty innovators who can help them navigate career options through the new Business of Biotech seminar series, starting in the fall semester of 2016. The new program expands on the Bioscience Innovation and Business Fundamentals series and the original Business of Biotech started by Constance McKee  CEO of Manzanita Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and supported by the Yale Healthcare and Life Sciences Club (a school of management organization).

"Recent reports detailing trends in the life science workforce are emphasizing the importance of academic-industry partnerships to help students prepare to enter the biotechnology workforce," said Erika R. Smith, Director of the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale, who is overseeing the program. "Our Business of Biotech series is designed to introduce commercialization concepts and help the future life science workforce succeed."

Business of Biotech will introduce grad students, postdocs and faculty to the core skills and building blocks to translate their research to the marketplace. There will be three consecutive dates followed by monthly scheduled workshops all held at Alexion featuring guest speakers, hands-on workshops and case studies on topics like tech transfer, FDA approval, life science funding and exits, and medical devices and diagnostics. The initiative was born out of the Medical Product Development course Smith formerly taught at the National Institutes of Health. Canaan Partners, which supports YEI's Canaan-Yale Fellows program, is helping to underwrite the costs.

"We seldom get to make connections with promising science graduate students in the course of business," noted Manuel Litchman, M.D., president and CEO of Arvinas, a New Haven-based biotechnology company. "Opportunities such as those offered by this series allow us to see the most talented, driven students  people who will shape the healthcare industry in the future."

To develop the original Bioscience Innovation and Business Fundamentals series, Anna Chase and Mary Burke, both PhD students at Yale School of Medicine, worked closely with YEI to develop the series and found there was immediate interest, receiving 80-90 applications for 50 spots for the inaugural sessions. Given the strong interest and positive feedback, the new workshops will be open for up to 150 participants and will not require an application.

"The business skills required for pursuing careers in healthcare consulting, venture capital or even in a biotech startup are not built into the science PhD curriculum," said Ms. Burke. "I moved from basic science to clinical research because I want to be closer to the healthcare industry and serve the patient more directly."

Experts invited to participate in the series include Colleen Cuffaro, an Associate at Canaan Partners; Tim Shannon, General Partner at Canaan Partners; Andrey Antov, Program Director of the Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative at the Jackson Laboratory; David Harburger from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Angela Shen, CMO of Arvinas; and Jason Hafler, Senior Director of Investments and Principal at Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures.

"Hiring managers say that skills like collaboration, leadership, team work and effective communication are just as important  if not more important  than technical capabilities," continued Ms. Smith. "Our series introduces those concepts, and gives students an understanding of the myriad paths they can take in their future careers. Many life science graduate programs do not accomplish this in their coursework."

About Canaan Partners

For nearly 30 years, Canaan Partners has been investing in entrepreneurs with visionary ideas to improve the way we live our lives. With offices in Westport, Connecticut, New York City and Menlo, Park California, over $4.2 billion under management and more than 160 exits to date, Canaan has funded some of the world's most innovative companies in both technology and healthcare. For more information, visit us at www.canaan.com and follow us on Twitter @canaanpartners.

SOURCE Canaan Partners

Related Links

http://www.canaan.com


WASHINGTON, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated will convene in Washington D.C. for Zeta Day on the Hill (ZDOTH) 2016. ZDOTH will provide community leaders from 15 states a platform to voice their concerns on issues that affect minority communities across the United States. This day-long event informs attendees how to make significant policy changes in their communities by getting engaged in government.

The theme of this year's ZDOTH will be "Unleash Your Superpower: Vote. Advocate. Run." Preceding the 46th Annual Legislative Conference hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, ZDOTH will focus its discussion on sharing ways that African Americans can unleash their collective power to drive change in their communities, and ultimately run for political office.

"In 2012, when President Barack Obama was re-elected, African American women were 33% more likely than any other sub-group to vote," said Dr. Mary Breaux Wright, Zeta International President. "Our power goes far beyond our vote. Zeta is demonstrating how community leaders can take their rightful seat at the political table and direct the kind of change we want to see in our communities."

Past Zeta International President, Dr. Barbara West Carpenter, a member of the Louisiana State House of Representatives, will be joined by leadership representatives from the NAACP, the White House Council of Women and Girls, the American Association of University Women, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to host workshops to help Zeta leaders tackle key issues that plague their communities.

The day will culminate with a public community forum, A Seat at the Table: Black Women as Voters, Advocates, and Elected Officials featuring an expert panel of women, including Congresswoman Donna Edwards.

Zeta Day on the Hill will take place at the Holiday Inn Capitol, 550 C Street SW in Washington, D.C.

About Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated

Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated, was founded in 1920 at Howard University who envisioned a sorority that would promote the highest standards of scholarship achievement and Finer Womanhood. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., Zeta has a diverse membership of more than 120,000 college-educated women with more than 800 chapters in North America, Europe, Asia the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East. For more information, please visit www.zphib1920.org.

SOURCE Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.
New Delhi, Sep 7 : To expand the Indo-US cooperation in clean energy, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced on Wednesday four new partnerships with the Indian government.

First among these new partnerships, is USAID's commitment to work with the Bangalore power utility and US based company -- Innovari, to launch the first grid integration pilot under the "Greening the Grid" (GTG) initiative that that will strengthen India's power grid and manage large-scale integration of renewable energy.

"USAID welcomes and appreciates this historic opportunity to play a useful role in India's path forward," the USAID Assistant Administrator for Asia, Jonathan Stivers said after announcing the partnerships in a series of events, here recently.

"As part of the expansion of Indo-US bilateral cooperation, USAID will continue to support the Ministry of Power, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, and the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change to help India transition to a high-performing, low-emission, energy-secure economy," Stivers said.

Under the next partnership, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and USAID agreed to expand their solar rooftop programme to an additional eight states and 15 utilities.

"In the expanded programme, USAID will also partner with MNRE to train 5,000 utility engineers, 1,000 bankers and entrepreneurs on installation and operation of best practices for solar rooftop systems," Stivers said.

In support of efficient energy usage, USAID also announced a partnership with the Ministry's public sector energy efficiency company -- Energy Efficiency Services Limited, to transform India's markets for super-efficient air conditioners.

To improve urban air quality through energy efficiency, USAID is partnering with the University of Chicago to support the efforts of the Government of India and Gujarat State Pollution Control Board to pilot a market instrument designed to reduce costs for industrial plants to comply with regulatory limits on emissions, and to provide incentives encouraging emission reductions.

During the two countries' "Joint Working Group on Combating Climate Change", USAID announced its collaboration with the Forest Survey of India (FSI) under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, to strengthen the latter's capacity to predict forest fires and use high-resolution satellite imagery for forest resource assessment, and develop protocols for strengthening forest inventory.

This initiative will mobilise the scientific expertise of the US Forest Service.

During the first phase of this programme, USAID and MNRE supported the states of Rajasthan, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh to introduce appropriate net-metering policies and regulations, and provided technical assistance to the state distribution utilities implementing solar rooftop programmes.
Vientiane (Laos), Sep 8 : Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte did not attend any meetings at the ASEAN in Laos on Thursday, reportedly owing to a migraine, official sources reported.

Duterte sent his Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay to lead the Filipino delegation in ASEAN's meetings with India and the US and in the East Asia Summit, EFE news reported.

In the ASEAN-US meet and the East Asia Summit, Duterte was scheduled to share space with Obama, for whom he used obscene remarks on Monday, which led to the suspension of a bilateral meet between the two on Tuesday.

However, during the ASEAN dinner, the two leaders were seen having a brief chat to clear the air, according to Manila, while Washington termed it as an exchange of formal pleasantries.

Before the East Asia Summit - which brings together leaders from Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand - Filipino Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar attributed Duterte's absence to a headache.

The Filipino media had earlier speculated that the President's absence was because his daughter, who was pregnant with triplets and had to undergo an unwanted abortion.

Duterte is expected to participate in the summit's closing ceremony, during which Laos will pass on the rotational presidency to the Philippines, which will be in charge in in 2017 as ASEAN will mark its 50th anniversary then.
Singapore, Sep 9 : Twelve new cases of the locally transmitted Zika virus infection have brought the total number of infections in Singapore to 304, it was announced on Friday.

The Ministry of Health and National Environment Agency (NEA) said in a joint statement that among these newly reported cases, 10 cases are linked to the the main cluster spanning Aljunied Crescent, Sims Drive, Kallang Way and Paya Lebar Way while one case is linked to the Elite Terrace cluster, Xinhua news agency reported.

The other new case has no known links to any existing cluster.

The NEA is continuing with vector control operations and outreach efforts in the cluster areas. As of Thursday, a total of 183 breeding habitats have been found and destroyed.

Outreach activities supporting the 'Mozzie Wipeout Movement Against Zika' will be conducted all over Singapore to urge all residents to join in the collective effort in the fight against Zika. A '5-step Mozzie Wipeout' -- including removing stagnant water and not littering -- would be conducted.

Aligned to the dengue control approach, the NEA reiterated that they will continue to work with stakeholders and the community to reduce mosquito breeding, as vector control is key to reducing the transmission of Zika in the community.
New Delhi, Sep 9 : The Indian telecom regulator on Friday met service providers -- Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular -- to discuss the issue of mobile network interconnection among various players, but allegedly barred Cellular Operators' Association of India's (COAI) officials from participating in the meeting.

After the meeting with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Reliance Jio Infocomm Board Member Mahendra Nahata told reporters: "This is a fight of justice for the Indian customer. This is not about Jio customer, Idea customer, Voda customer or Airtel customer."

He said they did not ask anyone to leave the meeting. "We just said that the meeting should be attended by those who have been invited by the TRAI," he added.

However, Rajan S. Mathews, Director-General of COAI, said the association "has been kept out of the TRAI meeting at the insistence of Reliance Jio and TRAI acquiesced to their demand in an unprecedented manner."

It is learnt that the service providers have decided to meet soon and discuss interconnect issues among themselves and specify the number of Points-of-Interconnect (PoI) each has to provide to Reliance Jio.

According to sources, each service provider will reach a separate bilateral agreement with Reliance Jio to provide the latter with points of interconnect.

"As a responsible company, Bharti Airtel has always provided Points-of-Interconnect to other operators and is fully compliant with all regulatory guidelines and licence conditions. None of the new operators, who have launched services in the last few years, have faced any PoI related issues with Airtel," the company said in a statement.

"Following the commercial charging of services by Reliance Jio, which is expected by Jan 1, 2017, the traffic will inevitably get to a more balanced level and PoIs will be less of an issue. In the interim, we continue with our efforts to augment the hundreds of PoIs already given to Reliance Jio, as per the bilateral agreement, so that customers are not inconvenienced," the company added.

Earlier Jio had said that interconnection points provided by other operators were not sufficient.

"Based on industry practice, 12,500 E1 ports (interconnect points, with technical parameters) are required for 22 million subscribers, which details have been provided to the COAI member operators," said a Reliance Industries statement on August 18.

"As against this, the top 3 operators have released only 1,400 ports so far," the company said. A rough calculation suggests Jio, as per the above, would need a little over 8,500 ports given a subscriber base of 15 million.

"It is grossly incorrect to suggest that sufficient number of ports have been given to support 15 million users. This is reflected in the experience in the field where over 65 per cent of calls to networks of the top 3 operators are failing today," said the Jio statement.

Reliance Jio had officially launched its services on September 5.
Washington, Sep 10 : After Beijing thwarted New Delhi's bid for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the US has reiterated that it ias committed to India's membership as it is ready for it.

"Well, you know that discussions within that group are confidential within that group, so I'm not going to read out," Eizabeth Trudeau, Director of Press Office in the US State epartment said in the daily press briefing in reply to a question on Friday.

"But the US remains committed. We believe India is ready for full membership. We will work towards that goal."

At the NSG plenary in Seoul in June, China blocked India's bid for membership on the ground that a country has to be a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to become a member of the 48-nation bloc.

"In the last meeting, the NSG participating governments, as you know, did not reach a consensus decision - we spoke about it at the time - to admit any new applicant into the group," Trudeau said.

"We were disappointed in the outcome. We continue, though, and will be, continued to work constructively with India and with members of the NSG on India's accession in the months ahead," she stated.

But she qualified this by saying that a country's membership in the NSG is a consensus decision of the bloc.

It must be mentioned that during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to New Delhi last month, it was agreed that China's Director General for Disarmament, who heads his delegation in the NSG talks, will have negotiations with India's Joint Secretary for Disarmament on the issue.

Following the Second India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue in New Delhi towards the end of August, US Secretary of State John Kerry also reiterated Washington's commitment to New Delhi's bid for NSG membership.

"Our civil nuclear cooperation will bring affordable clean energy to tens of millions of Indian households as we move closer in the use of safe, modern, latest generation, modular nuclear power," Kerry said at a joint press interaction following the Dialogue.
New Delhi, Sep 12 : External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will lead India in the 22nd session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) here on Tuesday.

Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, Deputy Chairman of the Russian government will lead the Russian delegation, the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

"The Intergovernmental Commission provides a framework for review of a broad spectrum of bilateral issues covering trade, economic, scientific, educational and cultural cooperation," the statement said.

"India and Russia share a special and privileged strategic partnership. During the forthcoming meeting, External Affairs Minister and Deputy Chairman Rogozin would review the work of various working groups and subgroups under the IRIGC-TEC mechanism and discuss the preparations for the forthcoming visit of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation to India, in October 2016," the statement added.

As Chairman of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), India will host the annual BRICS Summit in Goa this year.

President Putin is also scheduled to visit India at the end of this year to participate in the annual bilateral India-Russia Summit.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled to Moscow in December for the last summit.
Paris, Sep 13 : French President Francois Hollande will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel here in Paris on Thursday to prepare for the EU meeting in Bratislava, his office on Monday.

On the eve of EU meeting of European leaders scheduled for September 16, Hollande will receive Merkel for "preparatory consultations", Xinhua news agency reported.

According to a statement, the two leaders will hold a joint press meeting at 00:50 p.m. local time before sharing a working lunch.
Panaji, Sep 13 : Eleven heads of states, nearly 800 delegates and a chock-a-block schedule of meetings between member states of BRICS and BIMSTEC countries and quick bilateral huddles on the sidelines will mark the two-day BRICS summit which will be held in Goa on October 15-16, a ministry of external affairs (MEA) ministry said on Monday.

Speaking to reporters in Panaji late on Monday, chief protocol officer at the MEA Sanjay Verma said that while the BRICS VVIPs would be busy deliberating issues related to counter-terrorism, trade, investments, environment, security, their spouses, delegates and some accompanying ministers would also be given an opportunity to sample Goa's cuisine, heritage as well as religious sites.

"Apart from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa who are part of BRICS, our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited leaders from Bay of Bengal initiative for multi-sectoral technical and economic cooperation (BIMSTEC) countries -- Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand, who will also be participating in a retreat which will follow the BRICS summit on October 16," Verma said.

The official also said that apart from the two formal meets, the heads of states will also be conducting bilateral meetings on the sidelines.

The sum of the BRICS meet would be articulated in a 'Goa Declaration' on the summit's concluding day, he said.

Some of the key issues which will be discussed during the BRICS meeting will be counter-terrorism, trade, investments, environment, security, Verma said.

Verma also said that as hosts, a special programme had also been devised for spouses of VVIPs, delegates and accompanying ministers on the sidelines of the summit.

"At events like these VVIPs rarely travel to tourist destinations. We have specially curated a programme including heritage sites, temples churches, old villas, Goan restaurants for delegates, spouses and some ministers," he said.

Verma also said that the BRICS summit, has provided Goa a great opportunity to position itself as a prime tourism and international conferencing destination and that the state beat a Southern Indian city to emerge as the host city for BRICS.

He, however, said that there was need to get over some obvious limitations of India's smallest state, one of the major encumbrances, being its narrow roads.

"Well that is a concern, but we are taking precaution. Two things happen when a road is narrow. The speed of the movement of the convoys is compromised," he said, adding that small roads with habitation in close proximity also adds to the element of risk.

"Goa is not perfect for an event of this nature. We are going to live with those limitations, work around them and ensure that these do not become limitations and we look at the larger picture of what is intended by making Goa the centre," he said, adding that the BRICS organisers were seeking help from theA Delhi police, Maharashtra police, National Security Guard, Special Protection Group, Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard to ensure comprehensive security.
Imphal, Sep 13 : One armed cadre of the Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF) was killed during an hour long gun battle with the cadres of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) late on Monday in Tamenglong district of Manipur.

Police sources told IANS on Tuesday that a posse of police and Assam Rifles have reached Taodaijang village where the fierce gun battle took place.

Confirming the recovery of the bullet-ridden body of the militant, police said that he was identified by local residents as Paouwalung of Ajuram village in the same district.

NSCN(IM) and ZUF are enemies and draw guns on sight of each other. There had been some encounters between the two outfits recently.

Combing operations have also been started in the suspected areas to flush the militants out. The ceasefire between the Indian government and the NSCN(IM) does not extend to Manipur.

Tamenglong district of Manipur is adjacent to Nagaland and as such cadres of these two outfits sneak into it from time to time.

There had been chance encounters. Besides, temporary mobile camps were also attacked which killed and injured some cadres. Being a mountainous region there cannot be tooth combs to smoke out the armed militants.
Beijing, Sep 13 : The Chinese Air Force sent multiple aircraft models to the West Pacific, via the Bashi Strait, for a routine combat simulation drill at sea, a spokesperson said.

Shen Jinke, spokesperson of the People's Liberation Army Air Force, said the fleet included H-6K bombers, Su-30 fighters, and air tankers, the People's Daily reported.

The fleet on Monday conducted reconnaissance and early warning, sea surface cruising, inflight refuelling, and achieved all the drill's targets.

The drill was a routine arrangement as part of the Air Force's annual training plan, and conformed to international law and practice, said Shen.

Drills at sea were common practices of coastal countries and a requirement of Chinese defence.

The Chinese Air Force will organise drills at sea, off island chains at regular basis, the spokesperson said.

The Air Force will focus on improving the quality of combat simulation drills, flying over island chains, controlling the East China Sea and cruising the South China Sea. It will also improve capability in plateau areas.

The Air Force will also speed up its advanced new military equipment system in a bid to promote strategic transformation, Shen added.
Rajkot, Sep 13 : An ambitious Rs 12,000 crore ($1.8 billion) project to bring the water of the Narmada river to Gujarat's parched Saurashtra region is helping reunite families, but experts caution that such lift-irrigation schemes had failed the world over.

Thousands of men from the region, who had to leave their homes in search of livelihood due to crop failures, are returning home, a visit to the area revealed.

Mukesh Patel, 44, a resident of Thariyali village in Rajkot district, said he had returned to his village after 18 years as there was finally ample water to irrigate his land due to the SAUNI project. "The government has now made arrangements to provide water to us for irrigation of crops," Patel told IANS.

SAUNI, abbreviated in Gujarati from Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation Yojna, plans to fill up 115 dams of the region with excess run-off water of the Sardar Sarovar Dam across the Narmada river. The dams will be fed through a network of pipelines and water will be supplied for drinking and irrigation.

Mukesh Patel said that water had always been a problem in his village. "Not to talk of irrigation, there was also paucity of drinking water," he said, adding that the crop yield was very low in the absence of assured irrigation and they were dependent on the monsoon.

Mukesh Patel was among the many people from the region who took up jobs in Surat's diamond polishing industry. "There are at least 5,000 people from my village and neighbouring areas in the diamond polishing work. Now nearly 95 per cent of them have come back," he said.

Rakesh Murji Patel, a resident of Khudiyali village, about 40 km from Rajkot, said they had a hard time in the diamond polishing industry as remuneration was low. Yet, "we had no choice but to migrate as there was no assured irrigation. It is a blessing that we have been able to return home", he said.

Ajit Chabariya, a resident of Latipur village, said that they can now grow two crops a year due to assured irrigation. Earlier, they were growing crops only during the kharif season (July-December) and the yields were uncertain.

"Villagers mostly grow cotton during the kharif season. But now they will be also grow oilseeds, sugarcane or wheat during the rabi season (January-April). With the promise of assured water supply in the area, we can grow two crops every year," Chabariya said.

Villagers also said they had to dig deep to get drinking water and this was often saline.

A.D. Kanani, a Superintending Engineer of the Gujarat Irrigation Department, said villagers will get water through pipelines and the problem of salinity would end.

The SAUNI project promises to provide water to over 900 villages in all the 11 districts of the Saurashtra region and is slated to be completed by 2019.

Independent experts feel that pumping water to the parched region is going to be a tough task for the Gujarat government.

"SAUNI is based on the unreliable assumptions of water availability in the Sardar Sarovar dam," Himanshu Thakkar, Coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, told IANS.

"The Sardar Sarovar Dam can accumulate about 28 million acre feet of water in its reservoir but Gujarat has been allocated only nine million acre feet from the tribunal (that adjudicated the issue). No one can guarantee how much water the dam will get every year depending upon the rainfall," he added.

He also said that "massive lift-irrigation schemes across the world have not been a success in the long term. I don't think SAUNI is going to be successful," Thakkar said.

Explaining the shortcomings of the project, Thakkar said, "The Sardar Sarovar Dam project, which was intended for Saurashtra, Kutch and north Gujarat, has not fulfilled the aspirations of the people as the canal infrastructure for taking the water to those areas wasn't completed."

"And even the water which was supposed to be sent to these drought-prone regions was instead sent to central Gujarat," he said, adding: "SAUNI is an additional irrigation project to that."

Highlighting the shortcomings of the SAUNI project, Thakkar said: "The command area of the SAUNI is not satisfactory as it will send water only to 1.1 million hectares of land once completed while over 4.2 million hectares need water for irrigation."

He also blamed the Gujarat government for not harvesting rainwater, adding: "Water levels are going down in most parts of Saurashtra, Kutch and north Gujarat. That's because unsustainable methods are being employed and rainwater is not being harvested."

"In 2015, there were heavy floods in the Saurashtra region. If water-harvesting schemes and check dams had been in place, the groundwater could have been recharged," he added.

(The reporter's visit to the project site was arranged by the Gujarat government. Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in)
Srinagar, Sep 13 : A protesting youth was killed and 10 others were injured in clashes between an unruly mob and security forces in Kashmir's Bandipora district on Wednesday.

The police said a mob gathered in the town after Eid prayers, and resorted to violence against the deployed forces.

"The youth identified as Murtaza, 25, died in the clashes. Security forces used smoke and pellets to disperse the mob," police said.

The deaths in the Kahsmir in the summer of clashes between security forces and protesters has risen to 84.

Authorities have imposed a curfew in all the 10 districts of the Kashmir Valley to prevent large-scale violence.

No major Eid congregation was allowed anywhere.

Separatists had asked the people to march to the Sonwar headquarters of the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) in Srinagar after the prayers.
Lucknow, Sep 13 : The Eid is being celebrated across Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, and senior political leaders, including Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, have joined in and greeted the Muslim community.

Thousands of Muslims attended the Namaz and did the traditional 'qurbani' (sacrifice) of goats in the state.

State Governor Ram Naik, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati, state's Congress unit chief Raj Babbar, Congress's chief ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit also extended their greetings to the people on Eid-ul-Adha.

Security has been heightened in sensitive places like Moradabad, Agra, Bijnor, Firozabad, Lucknow and Kanpur to ensure peaceful celebrations of the festival.
New Delhi, Sep 13 : Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday appealed to the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for calm and said there was no justification for the violence over the Cauvery water dispute, especially after the order of the apex court.

"The violence in the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu further to the direction of the Supreme Court on release of Cauvery waters to Tamil Nadu is quite disturbing. Such violence can't be justified on any ground and particularly, after the direction of the highest Court of the country," he told media here.

The Minister also appealed to media to exercise restraint while reporting the incidents from the two states.

"Highlighting such incidents visually and otherwise might incite further violence," he said.

Naidu said the apex court has given an order on the issue and the leadership of both the states should find a way out to deal with it.

"Water is no doubt a sensitive and emotive issue and particularly, in times of scarcity. It is in the fitness of things that such issues are resolved through discussions among the concerned parties. The Cauvery Waters issue is sub-judice and the Supreme Court has given a direction after listening to both the States. If still there are any issues, leadership of both the States could discuss the same and come out with a way forward," he added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also appealed to the people of the both the states to maintain peace and not to indulge in violence.
Chennai, Sep 13 : Actor Silambarasan aka Simbu, who was rumoured to have commented over the ongoing Cauvery row between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, said hed never garner publicity by making political statements.

"I'm currently in Thailand, completing the last leg of shoot for my film 'Accham Enbathu Madamaiyada'. Today I was informed by well wishers, as well as my father, about my 'apparent' comment on the sensitive Cauvery issue. As a responsible citizen, I'm aware of my role and clearly understand my limits too. I have not made or given any statement on this issue," Simbu said in a statement.

Karnataka has been protesting over release of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu, crippling normal life as well as disrupting work in hundreds of IT firms and back offices in India's tech hub Bengaluru.

"This is an issue between two states, and not a platform for artistes to engage in propaganda or take lightly. The elected leaders of both states with the support of the judiciary will provide us a solution. The best we can do is to pray for a good monsoon that can provide prosperity and peace to both the states," he said.

Simbu also hoped at no cost should this issue jeopardize the relationship between the people of these two states, who have coexisted as neighbours.

"I reiterate that I will be the last person to garner publicity by issuing political statements that could endanger the peace of both these states," he added.

IANS

hp/nv/vt
Manila, Sep 13 : The Philippines will respect the military accord signed between it and the US in 2014 that allows Washington to use Manila bases and boost its presence in the Southeast Asian region, a minister said.

Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay reiterated the Philippines' commitment to the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) signed by the previous government a day after President Rodrigo Duterte asked US special forces to leave Mindanao island, Efe news reported.

In an interview with a local radio station, Yasay clarified that Duterte meant that Manila will respect all agreements signed with any country, including the US, as well as the EDCA.

He even denied any change in the country's foreign policy with the US, adding that Duterte was only trying to save the lives of the Americans who could be targeted by Islamist groups such as Abu Sayyaf.

The presidential spokesman also said that Duerte's statements on the exit of US troops were only meant as a warning and signalled a shift towards a more independent foreign policy.

The Philippines and the US strengthened military cooperation in 2014 and are traditional allies in the region, sharing a common strategy to counter China in the territorial conflict in the South China Sea.

However, their bilateral ties have worsened since Duterte came to power following US criticism of his controversial anti-drug campaign which has claimed close to 3,000 lives since June this year.
Mumbai, Sep 13 : Actress Kriti Sanon is excited to start shooting for "Bareilly Ki Barfi", which will be helmed by "Nil Battey Sannata" fame director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari.

"I am very excited about the film and we will start shooting in October at Lucknow. It will be exciting to work with a superb director like Ashwiny. I loved his film 'Nil Battey Sannata'," she said at the screening of the film "Pink" on Monday.

The film also stars Ayushman Khurana and Rajkummar Rao, and Kriti is looking forward to share screen space with these talented actors.

"Also working with talented actors like Ayushman and Rajkummar will be thrilling." said the actress who was last seen in Shahrukh-Kajol starrer "Dilwale'."

"The story is very sweet and different. I loved the title and my portrayal in the story. Looking forward to 'Bareilly Ki Barfi'," She added.

Kriti has just wrapped up a schedule of Dinesh Vijan's "Raabta" with Sushant Singh Rajput in Mauritius.
Jaipur, Sep 13 : The Eid was celebrated with religious fervour and enthusiams across Rajasthan on Tuesday. Competitive bidding for the sacrificial goat set a new record of price in the state as the animal was sold online.

The main Eid prayer was offered in the Eid-gah on the outskirts of Jaipur where over three lakh devotees participated. The Eid prayers were offered in other parts of the city as well as in towns and other cities across the state.

People greeted one another after the morning prayers.

The sacrificial goat continued to be sold till late Monday night and some farmers from the state even sold the animal online.

The Eid was celebrated with great enthusiasm in Ajmer, too, where the Dargah Sharif of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti is situated.

Heavy rush was witnessed in the morning to pass through the Jannati Darwaza (gateway to paradise) at the Dargah Sharif to seek blessings. This Darwaza is opened only four times in a year.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje greeted people in a tweet on the Eid and said, "Greetings on the occasion of Eid ul Adha. May this festival strengthen brotherhood and bring peace and joy to all."

Former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said, "I extend my warm greetings and best wishes on the occasion of Eid. The auspicious festival reminds us of selfless sacrifice and inspires us to serve the humanity and mitigate the suffering of the poor and needy."
New Delhi, Sep 13 : With four deaths each from dengue and chikungunya reported so far and hundreds infected, the Delhi government on Tuesday announced an additional 1,000 beds for fever patients and a helpline number to provide information to people.

The beds will be provided in the three nodal hospitals for vector-borne diseases - Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, Janakpuri Super Speciality Hospital and Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital. It also announced a Control Room with a helpline number -- 011-22307145.

Urging the people to not panic due to the rising cases of dengue and chikungunya, Delhi government's Health Department said that it is fully prepared to deal with vector-borne diseases.

"The government has established dedicated Fever Clinics in its 26 hospitals (functional 24 hours), 262 Delhi government dispensaries (functional from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) and 106 Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics (functional from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.) to cater to fever patients," said an official statement.

According to the Delhi government, the treatment, lab diagnosis of dengue and chikungunya, are available free of cost in all Delhi government health institutions.

According official data, the number of the dengue, chikungunya and malaria infections stands at 1,158, 1,057 and 21 respectively till September 10 in the national capital.

Delhi has so far witnessed four deaths due to the complications arising from chikungunya. Three patients died at Ganga Ram Hospital on Monday.

AIIMS has also witnessed six deaths, including one by chikungunya, since September 1, 2016.

The Delhi government has said that private hospitals and nursing homes can increase their bed capacity.

The government has deployed manpower to fever clinics and emergencies and also ensured that hospitals provide drinking water with ORS in all the hospital OPDs.

"The Government has also set the ceiling price for dengue testing kits (NS1-Ag and MAC ELISA), chikungunya (IgM ELISA) at Rs 600. RT-PCR test for chikungunya at RS 1,500, and platelets test at Rs 50 has been fixed for private laboratories and hospitals to reduce the economic burden on the community," said the statement.

"All Sentinel Surveillance Hospitals (SSHs) have been directed to designate Nodal officer for dengue and send updated contact details to DGHS. All Nodal officers have been sensitized regarding dengue treatment and preparedness plan," said the statement.

It said that a dengue Task Force has been constituted with experts of National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), MCD and Delhi Government to assess the dengue situation.
New Delhi, Sep 13 : India on Tuesday said that there can be no comparison between the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and that in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

New Delhi's comments came after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein reportedly said at the the start of the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council that a team from the Geneva-based Office of the High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) should visit Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of large-scale violence.

Over 80 people have died in the violence following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani in July.

"We have seen the comments by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement..

"We note that he has received conflicting narratives on the cause for the confrontations," it stated.

The ministry said that the present situation in Jammu and Kashmir "arose from the death of a self-acknowledged commander of the terrorist organisation, Hizbul Mujahideen, who was wanted for several terrorist acts".

"It was further aggravated by sustained cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan," the statement said.

Stating that terrorism was the grossest violation of human rights and should be so acknowledged by any impartial and objective observer, it said: "The high number of casualties sustained by Indian security forces is a reflection of the tremendous restraint they have displayed in difficult circumstances."

Regarding the suggestion for a visit of an OHCHR team to both sides of the Line of Control, New Delhi made it clear that "we would underline that there is no comparison between the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir".

It said while Jammu and Kashmir has a democratically elected government, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir "has seen a Pakistani diplomat arbitrarily appointed as its head".

Earlier on Tuesday, Pakistan welcomed Al Hussein's suggestions for a OHCHR team's visit to Jammu and Kashmir.

"We strongly support the High Commissioner's position that an OHCHR team should visit Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir to independently investigate the grave human rights violations being perpetrated by Indian occupation forces, resulting in the killing of more than 90 civilians and 8000 injured, including those with severe pellet gun injuries," the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"The visit by the OHCHR team would help to end the culture of impunity which is prevailing for more than 68 years in IOK, in violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions."

New Delhi, in its statement, made it clear that "the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is part of a pluralistic and secular democracy, where freedoms are guaranteed by an independent judiciary, an active media and a vibrant civil society".

"In contrast, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is administered by a 'deep state' and has become a hub for the global export of terror," it stated.

Stating that the issue of an external mission was considered by an all-party conference on August 12 that met to discuss the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, it said: "It was unanimously felt that Indian democracy has all that is required to address legitimate grievances."

On the basis of that, it said, an all-party delegation visited Srinagar.

"Despite cross-border terrorist infiltration that saw an encounter only yesterday, government remains fully engaged in normalising the situation as soon as possible," the External Affairs Ministry stated.

"We hope that the connection between terrorism and violation of human rights would be recognised and deliberated upon in Geneva," it added.
New Delhi, Sep 13 : The widespread damage due to the violent protests over the Cauvery dispute has caused Karnataka to suffer a loss of Rs 22,000-25,000 besides denting the image of the state capital as India's Silicon Valley, industry chamber Assocham said on Tuesday.

"With widespread damage to the vital urban infrastructure, interruption in the transport including roads, rail and air and inability of the workforce to safely move to and from offices and factories, Karnataka, particularly Bengaluru city, is estimated to have suffered a loss between Rs 22,000-25,000 crore due to Cauvery dispute related violence," said an Assocham statement.

"Violence in the state capital and other parts of Karnataka has severely dented the image of Bengaluru as Silicon Valley of India, home to almost all the Fortune 500 companies," said the chamber appealing for peace in both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

"The way the violent incidents had spread is demoralizing the business and industrial community, particularly in the capital city of Karnataka. The image that India built around Bengaluru as its 'Silicon Valley' is being sullied," said Assocham Secretary General D.S. Rawat.

"The authorities in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu should not allow under any circumstances the law and order to be compromised. While the water is a basic requirement and an emotional issue, the situation is being exploited by miscreants, scaring away the peace loving workforce which has settled in both Bengaluru and Chennai from all over the country and even abroad," said Rawat.

The industry body has also urged the central government to effectively monitor the situation and ensure peace is restored in the two states.

"A lot of damage has already been done to the trade and factory output with movement of the vehicles hit by the agitation which is taking violent shape. There is a huge stake for the country's showpiece information technology in both Bengaluru and Chennai."
New Delhi, Sep 13 : Muslims in the national capital celebrated the festival of sacrifice Eid-ul-Adha with fervour on Tuesday.

Thousands offered prayers at different mosques across Delhi including historical mosques like the Jama Masjid, Fatehpuri and Shahi Eidgah. The special Namaaz at these mosques was held at 7.30 a.m.

People from other communities also greeted their Muslim friends on the occasion.

After prayers, goats and sheep were sacrificed -- an act commemorating the sacrifice by Abraham. The sacrificed meat was then split into three parts, of which people making sacrifices kept a part for themselves and distributed the rest among relatives and the poor.

The sacrifices would continue for the next three days, clerics said.

"Our country's distinctive feature of national integration was evident today as many from the Hindu community wished their Muslim friends on this pious occasion," Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari told IANS.

He added that people from different communities greeting their friends from other faiths depicts that brotherhood prevails and would continue to do so.

"This brotherhood is what would take our country ahead. There are some fringe elements but they are very few of them, they can't shatter our brotherhood," the Imam said.

Also known as Bakrid or Eid-e-Qurban, it is the second major festival of Muslims.
New Delhi, Sep 13 : In the context of the Indian Ocean region, India and Mauritius on Tuesday called for greater collaboration in the area of defence and security.

In a meeting with visiting Mauritian Finance Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that the long-standing partnership between India and Mauritius had played a critical role in ensuring peace and stability in the Indian Ocean region, according to sources here.

"In this context, both leaders called for greater collaboration in the area of defence and security," a source said.

"India offered to provide assistance in terms of hydrographic surveys."

Sushma Swaraj also appreciated Jugnauth's giving priority to visiting India on his first tour abroad, "which was in keeping with the very special 'blood relationship' between India and Mauritius".

Stating that India has always given full support to the development priorities of Mauritius, she said that both sides were finalising a memorandum of understanding (MoU) under which the Metro Express project and other projects announced by Jugnauth in his budget could begin to be implemented.

"The long-standing request from Mauritius for restarting negotiations of CECPA (Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement) and PTA (Preferential Trade Agreement) had also been met, with discussions yesterday (Monday) in Port Louis," the source said.

Sushma Swaraj thanked Jugnauth for the "forward looking decision" which had allowed the protocol on the amendment of the Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC) and said this has added to Mauritius's financial credentials.

On his part, Jugnauth reiterated Mauritius's consistent support for India's candidature as a member in a reformed and expanded UN Security Council (UNSC).

"In terms of people-to-people contacts, the two leaders discussed the construction of the World Hindi Secretariat in Mauritius," a source said.

"The External Affairs Minister invited significant participation from Mauritius in the forthcoming Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) 2017 to be held in Bengaluru."

Sushma Swaraj said that India would be sending a delegation to Mauritius this month to examine the Girmitya records for giving them Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards.

Girmityas are descendants of indentured Indian labourers who were taken to Mauritius during the British rule.
Mumbai, Sep 13 : There is something furiously flawed and formulistic about rural feminism in Indian cinema. When a film tells the story of a group of women in Rajasthan fighting to remain happy while the men in their lives rape and violate them every way possible, it's time to get very suspicious of the product.

Luckily, in "Parched", director Leena Yadav seems to have gone beyond the cliches of male oppression in pursuit of the heart beneath the predictable images of women caught moving seductively amidst the sand dunes.

And here we might as well spare a round of applause for cinematographer Russen Carpenter who seems to have captured the lives of the four female heroes without letting the Rajasthani desertscape overpower the emotional energy that trots across the shimmering skyline.

But yes, we've seen forlorn seductive women floating across the sand dunes in any number of films. "Parched" is less lyrical than other desert sagas in the past. More brutal. Yet beautiful. The women seem to take to the patriarchal clobbering with a great deal of reluctance and a whole lot of sisterly camaraderie.

If this film was made 20 years ago, Yadav would have cast Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Neena Gupta and Deepti Naval. Now, it's got Tannishtha Chatterjee, Radhika Apte, Surveen Chawla and Lehar Khan.

And yes, a voice appearance by producer Ajay Devgn at the end of the trailer.

In case, we forget superstars do have a social responsibility.
New Delhi, Sep 13 : A political blamegame began in the national capital on Tuesday as four deaths were reported due to chikungunya, with the ruling AAP blaming the Lt Governor and the municipal bodies for the rising mosquito-borne menace while the BJP asked for Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's resignation.

Kejriwal, who is in Bengaluru, said on Tuesday that he has been left with no power even to "buy a pen" and that people should question the "Prime Minister and Lt Governor" (over the matter).

With three Delhi government ministers, including the Chief Minister and his deputy, outside Delhi, the BJP stepped up its attack on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government as more deaths due to vector-borne diseases were reported.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asked Kejriwal to quit if he is unable to act.

"Sir if you don't have the capacity to buy a pen, as you are suggesting, why don't you resign? If you say that you have no role as the Chief Minister of Delhi, how come the Chief Minister and other ministers' offices spent Rs one crore on snacks and Rs 526 crore on ads," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra told reporters.

Delhi's Health Minister Satyendar Jain, who was in Goa and returned Delhi on Tuesday afternoon, said the situation in Delhi government hospitals is "much better" than in the hospitals run by the Centre and civic bodies.

"We're not denying anyone a bed and have made all facilities available to deal with such cases. We have opened 262 fever clinics in Delhi. Please avoid self medication and do not panic," Jain said in a press conference here.

He said that Delhi government officers were not being allowed to work and were being transfered.

"In such a situation why is the Delhi government being blamed? Ask the LG who himself went to the US. Two MCD Mayors are out of Delhi, ask them why? Their only work is to ensure cleanliness," Jain asserted.

He accused the BJP-controlled civic bodies of not taking preventive steps to control the spread of vector-borne disease.

"The three municipal corporations are not performing their duties to clean the city and do fogging to prevent chikungunya and dengue spread," the AAP leader said.

Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who is in Finland, targeted Lt Governor Najeeb Jung for the rising vector-borne diseases and questioned his absence from Delhi.

"Where has the LG now gone after appointing incompetent officers in the health department," Sisodia tweeted.

In the absence of senior ministers, Water Minister Kapil Mishra came out in defence of his government.

He termed the situation in Delhi as a "conspiracy" and said that LG had appointed a health secretary who was "responsible" for delay in the banning of Chinese manjha (kite string) and was infamous for delaying decisions.

"Shockingly, the LG approves 15 days leave for new health secretary just to punish people of Delhi," Mishra told media.

He demanded to know why no fogging had been done this year by the three wings of the municipal corporation.

"Where is LG the who has proclaimed himself as government, three mayors, seven MPs, 272 councillors now? All are busy protesting," he had tweeted.

The reference was to a Delhi High Court decision of August 4 which ruled that the Lt Governor would be in-charge of administrative affairs in Delhi and not the elected government.

The Congress took the opportunity to attack the Lt Governor and the AAP government.

"Kejriwal in Bengaluru, Deputy CM in Finland, Hussain (Imran) gone for Haj, Gopal Rai in Chhattisgarh and LG too in foreignA and Delhi is in ICU," Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken tweeted.

Former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit told reporters that no fumigation was done this time in the city.

"It is the government's responsibility to take pre-emptive steps when this season arrives before people get sick," she said.

Civic bodies have put the figure of dengue, chikungunya and malaria infections at 1,158, 1,057 and 21 respectively till Sep 10.

Delhi has so far witnessed four deaths due to chikungunya and four from dengue.

Three patients died of chikungunya at Ganga Ram Hospital on September 12.

AIIMS has also witnessed six deaths, including one from chikungunya, since September 1, 2016.
Chandigarh, Sep 13 : Protesting against the Punjab Speaker's decision to disallow a debate on a no-confidence motion, 27 lawmakers of the opposition Congress spent the night in the house and said they will stay in it till Wednesday morning when it assembles again.

Meanwhile, the other party legislators staged a sit-in outside the secretariat.

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday went to the assembly to meet the protesting members and urged them to end the stalemate and vacate the house but they refused to relent, demanding a discussion in the house on their no-confidence motion moved a day earlier.

"All the Congress legislators participated in the day-long protest (on Monday) over the Speaker's refusal to allow our members to speak on a no-confidence motion," Congress Legislative Party leader Charanjit Singh Channi told IANS.

He said the legislators spent the night inside the house to lodge their protest despite the electricity supply being disconnected.

"Our protest inside the assembly would continue till the house assembles on Wednesday," Channi added.

The Congress was demanding a debate on the government's failure to protect the interests of the state on the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal and deteriorating law and order situation in the state.

The protesters inside the assembly included four women legislators, who wore aprons that read "Punjab da cancer, Badal sarkar".

"We had requested the assembly secretary to provide three or four women support staff to ensure our safety in the night but no one was there," said legislator Karan Kaur Brar.

She said they spent their night in the house without lights and air-conditioning.

Official sources said initially the electricity was disconnected on Monday but late in the evening it was restored. Likewise, the staff attached with the legislators was allowed to stay with them on Tuesday.

Describing the first-of-its-kind incident in the state unfortunate, Congress leader Amarinder Singh said the government did not want to discuss the issues related to the common man in the house.

"For the first time in history the opposition has made the government to walk out of the house," he said in a statement.

"You may be able to run away from the Vidhan Sabha, how long can you run away from the people and we are going to drag you to people's court," the former Chief Minister added.

This is the last session of the assembly before the state goes to the polls early next year.

Other Congress legislators, comprising former Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Kewal Dhillon and former ministers Lal Singh and Brahm Mohindra who were denied entry into the assembly on Tuesday, staged a sit-in protest outside the Punjab secretariat here.

The trouble started on Monday evening when the no-confidence motion was defeated even before the debate could take place by a voice vote and amidst pandemonium, Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal adjourned the house till Wednesday.

"Unless we are assured that the debate on our motion will take place on Wednesday, we will not relent," Bhattal told reporters.

She said the Speaker had allotted three hours for debate on the no-confidence motion but at the last minute, he adjourned the house.
Srinagar, Sep 13 : Three people died and many were injured as clashes between protesters and security forces in parts of the troubled Kashmir Valley marred an Eid-al-Adha celebrated under curfew for the first time in over two decades.

With the city under a total clampdown, a separatist call for a march to the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) also proved a non-starter.

All roads leading to the UNMOGIP office in the high-security Sonwar locality here had heavy deployment of police and paramilitary forces who blocked all vehicles and even prevented pedestrian movement.

Two of the dead were protesters killed in clashes with security forces -- one each in Shopian and Bandipora districts -- while one person in a mosque died, apparently of heart attack, after a teargas shell crashed into the shrine at Awantipora in Pulwama district.

Shahid Ahmed, 24, was killed in Shopian when a mob defied curfew and began heavy stone-pelting at security forces. The forces retaliated with tear gas and pellets, resulting in Shahid's death. Ten others were also injured in the street fighting.

Jallaluddin, 45, died of heart attack when a teargas shell fired at protesters outside abruptly dropped into the Awantipora mosque where he was. Another youth, Murtaza, 25, was earlier killed in clashes in Bandipora. Clashes were also reported from Batamaloo area in Srinagar.

With policeman Rouf Ahmed, who was injured in a gunfight in Nowhatta town on August 15, succumbing on Tuesday, the death toll in the ongoing unrest sparked by the July 8 killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani has climbed to 86, according to police records. Thousands have been injured in the violence.

Authorities said on Monday that the curfew had been ordered across all 10 districts of the valley on Eid as they had received intelligence inputs that separatists had planned large-scale violence after prayers in the city.

Eid congregations were disallowed in Srinagar for the first time since the early 1990s when the separatists began their armed struggle. People could offer prayers only in mosques.

On Tuesday, the faithful offered Eid prayers in small groups in mosques in towns and villages in the valley. There were no visible celebrations in Srinagar as people preferred to be indoors fearing clashes and violence.

Traditionally, Muslims visit friends and relatives to mark the occasion, something that could not be done under curfew.

Authorities made a special effort to foil the proposed march to the UNMOGIP office, with police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) taking over the area. An Eid congregation at a shrine in Sonwar was disallowed as authorities feared that devotees might march to the nearby UN office.

The UNMOGIP has officers at Srinagar and Baramulla in Jammu and Kashmir and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-held Kashmir. It is mandated to ensure that ceasefire violations don't occur between India and Pakistan on the Line of Control (LoC) between the two countries.

Despite its limited mandate, it has become customary for separatists to hand over memoranda to officials posted at UNMOGIP.

The separatist leaders -- under detention since the ongoing unrest that started a day after Burhan Wani's killing -- had announced the march to coincide with the opening of the 71st session of the UN General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday.
Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 13 : Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah greeted the people of Kerala for "Vamana Jayanthi" instead of Onam -- raising eyebrows.

State Public Works Minister G. Sudhakaran has asked for a correction. "No idea why he is trying to distort things as this is totally wrong. The need of the hour is to see that he corrects it immediately," he said.

Shah's Facebook post on Tuesday also carried a picture of the mythical Vamana placing his foot on the head of Mahabali.

Shah's post received numerous reactions, mostly critical of the BJP leader for distortion.

State BJP president Kummanem Rajashekeran, however, downplayed the issue, saying it was just a matter of discussion and nothing more should be attributed to it.

Shah's post came at a time when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) magazine 'Kesari' ran an article calling for the worship of Lord Vishnu, through Vamana, instead of King Mahabali.

This is incidentally against the fundamentals of Onam celebration where Mahabali occupies the centre stage.

According to the legend surrounding Mahabali and Onam, it is said that Vishnu disguised as a dwarf -- Vamana -- had appeared before Mahabali acting like a poor Brahmin.

Mahabali, known for his generous nature, granted Vamana as much land as he wanted, when Vamana asked for only a piece of land.

Vamana said that he just wanted as much land as could be covered by his three steps.

The King was surprised to hear that but agreed, and soon Vamana began expanding to cosmic proportion.

With his first step Vamana covered the entire earth, and with the other step he covered the sky. He then asked King Mahabali where he should keep his third step.

Mahabali, realising that he was no ordinary Brahmin, with folded hands bowed before Vamana and asked him to place his last step on his head so that he could keep his promise.

The Brahmin placed his foot on the head of the King, pushing him to 'pathala' -- the nether world.

The king requested Vamana to reveal his true identity, whereupon Lord Vishnu appeared before the King in person.

Vishnu explained to Mahabali that the exercise was a test, in which Mahabali had passed. Vishnu then granted him a boon.

Mahabali requested for a visit to Kerala each year on Onam to see his people.

Onam is a tribute to the sacrifice of King Mahabali.
Kolkata, Sep 13 : The Muslim festival of sacrifice Eid-ul-Adha was celebrated with religious fervour across West Bengal on Tuesday.

The biggest congregation was organised on the arterial Indira Gandhi Sarani (Red road) in the state capital Kolkata, where thousands of members of the community offered prayers.

There was another big turnout outside the Nakhoda mosque in the city's Chitpur area for the special Namaaz. Similar prayer sessions were held in other mosques.

The prayers over, people hugged and greeted each other in traditional style. Those from other communities also extended wishes to their Muslim friends.

The prayers over, goats and sheep were sacrificed -- an act commemorating the sacrifice by Abraham. The sacrificed meat was then split into three parts, of which people making sacrifices kept a part for themselves and distributed the rest among relatives and the poor.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wished people on the occasion.

Also known as Bakrid or Eid-e-Qurban, it is the second major festival of Muslims.
Jammu, Sep 13 : The three-day-long operation against militants in Poonch district of Jammu region ended on Tuesday evening, police said, although search operations are still continuing in the area.

The police said the operation against holed up militants in the under construction Mini Secretariat building in Poonch town ended without another body of a militant having been found inside.

Firing had started between the holed up militants and security forces in the area on Sunday.

Four militants and a policeman were killed in the gunfight while five others, including a Sub-Inspector of Police, a civilian and three army soldiers, were injured.

The Army had pressed its elite commandos into the operation to flush out the holed up militants.

While three militants were killed on Sunday, the body of the fourth militant was found by the search parties of the Army inside the 60-room building on Monday.
New Delhi, Sep 13 : External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin here.

"From Mauritius to Moscow! EAM @SushmaSwaraj receives Deputy Prime Minister @Drogozin of Russia in Delhi," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted along with a picture of the two leaders.

Earlier on Tuesday, Sushma Swaraj met visiting Mauritian Finance Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth.

Rogozin is here to participate in the 22nd Session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC).

The Intergovernmental Commission provides a framework for review of a broad spectrum of bilateral issues covering trade, economic, scientific, educational and cultural cooperation.
Bengaluru, Sep 13 : Appealing for calm, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday said though the state has been a victim of "injustice", his government would implement the "difficult" apex court order on sharing Cauvery river water with Tamil Nadu.

Addressing a press conference here after an emergency cabinet meeting, the Chief Minister also urged that the image of 'Brand Bengaluru' as India's tech capital should not be sullied with further violence, as was witnessed on Monday.

Siddaramaiah said he has requested for a meeting with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to mediate in the Cauvery dispute as both the states could not afford the situation to go out of control.

"Though we are victims of injustice and finding difficulty in implementing the Supreme Court's fresh order, we are yet releasing water with a heavy heart," he said.

Siddaramaiah assured the people of Bengaluru, especially Tamils, of protection to them and their property, a day after widespread violence rocked the city over releasing the Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu.

Thanking the people for maintaining peace and in restoring normalcy in the city, the Chief Minister said: "As Bangalore is an international city with a global image and a brand as India's Silicon Valley, I seek cooperation of all, especially media in protecting its reputation."

Referring to his September 9 letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention in resolving the water sharing issue, the Chief Minister said he was waiting for a confirmation from the Prime Minister's Office for an appointment with Modi in New Delhi on Wednesday.

"I will request the Prime Minister to convene a meeting of the chief ministers of the two states (Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) to resolve the issue (sharing of the river water during distress times) through talks/dialogue," he said.

Siddaramaiah also assured the people of Bengaluru, Mandya and Mysuru drinking water till June next by judiciously utilising the river water despite facing distress due to deficit rains during this year's monsoon.

He said the state government had decided to impose law and order with an iron hand to maintain peace and tranquility.

Meanwhile, Home Minister G. Paremeshwara said 335 people were arrested in and around Bengaluru since Monday till Tuesday morning for rioting, arson and causing damage to public property.

About 30 protesters more were arrested at Mandya and Mysuru for indulging in violence, including stoning trucks and buses bearing Tamil Nadu registration numbers.

According to preliminary inquiry by the police, 97 vehicles (buses trucks and cars), including 78 in Bengaluru were either torched, burnt or fully destroyed during the violent protests on Monday.

Similarly, 59 vehicles, including 44 in Bengauru were damaged in stone-throwing and other violent incidents.

"The situation in Bangalore and other parts of the state is peaceful and under control. We relaxed the partial curfew in the city for Muslims to offer Eid prayers," Parameshwara told reporters.

Curfew will remain in force till Thursday in view of the Onam festival on Wednesday and immersion of Lord Ganesha's idols in lakes and ponds on Thursday.

About 15,000 thousand police personnel have been deployed in Bengaluru, Mandya and Mysuru, including 10 companies of the Rapid Action Force and five companies of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and five companies of the City Armoured Force in Bengalouru to ensure peace and maintain law and order.
London, Sep 13 : Whistleblower Edward Snowden believes that US President Barack Obama should pardon him before he leaves office in January, arguing that the disclosure by WikiLeaks of the scale of surveillance by the US and British intelligence agencies was not only morally right but had left citizens better off.

In an interview to The Guardian via video link from Moscow, where he is in exile, Snowden said any evaluation of the consequences of his leak of tens of thousands of National Security Agency and GCHQ documents in 2013 would show clearly that people had benefited.

"Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing but that is perhaps why the pardon power exists -- for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things, these were vital things," Snowden said.

"I think when people look at the calculations of benefit, it is clear that in the wake of 2013 the laws of our nation changed. The [US] Congress, the courts and the President all changed their policies as a result of these disclosures," he added.

"At the same time there has never been any public evidence that any individual came to harm as a result," he told The Guardian.

Snowden's came as supporters, including his US lawyer, stepped up a campaign for a presidential pardon. Snowden is wanted in the US, where he is accused of violating the Espionage Act and faces at least 30 years in jail.

Obama's former attorney-general Eric Holder, however, gave an unexpected boost to the campaign for Sonwden's pardon in May when he said Snowden had performed a public service.

The campaign could receive a further lift from Oliver Stone's film, Snowden, scheduled for release in the US on Friday.

Snowden was confident that he will end up back in the US.

"Once the officials, who felt like they had to protect the programs, their positions, their careers, have left government and we start looking at things from a more historical perspective, it will be pretty clear that this war on whistleblowers does not serve the interests of the US, rather it harms them."
New Delhi, Sep 13 : The Delhi Police said on Tuesday that it has rescued a 19-year-old woman, allegedly sold by her grandmother and arrested four persons including the grandmother.

The arrested accused have been identified as Shahjahana, 58, grandmother of the girl and a resident of Nand Nagari area in north east Delhi, Lilu, 30, Ramveer, 35 and Chintaram, 45, all residents of Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, police said.

According to police, the mother of the woman had filed a case against her maternal aunt for selling her daughter on September 4. Her mother had left her daughter with them and had gone to Jaipur.

"The woman in her statement to the police said that on the day of Janmashtami her maternal grandmother took her to one of her associates. They then took her to Chaar Khambha Nand Nagri area, where three boys were present and they had whispered talks with her Naani after which she was taken by them to Gautam Budh Nagar," Deputy Commissioner of Police (north east) A. K. Singla told reporters.

The woman was forcefully married to the accused Lilu, a senior police officer linked to the probe told IANS.

"The woman was raped by Lilu at his house and when she opposed him, he said that he had bought her for Rs one lakh from her grandmother Shahjahan," Singla said.

A case has been registered under sections 376 (rape), 343 (Wrongful confinement for three or more days), 366 (Kidnapping), 323 (Voluntarily Causing Hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), police said.
New Delhi, Sep 13 : A 75-year-old man died due to chikungunya at Ganga Ram Hospital on Tuesday evening, a day afer three men in their 60s succumbed to the mosquito-borne disease at the hospital, taking the number of fatalities in the national capital to five so far.

The patient, Prakash Kalra, was a resident of Mathura. He died of kidney failure as a result of complications arising from chikungunya.

Earlier, the hospital reported the deaths of three men on Monday of the disease.

According to the hospital, R. Pandey, 65, admitted to Ganga Ram on September 11 from Ghaziabad-based Yashodhara Hospital, died on Monday morning.

"Pandey's test for the vector-borne disease came positive with an extremely high viral count," said a senior official of the hospital.

Pandey, a diabetic, died after sepsis set in due to chikungunya fever. He died at around 4.30 a.m.

Another patient to succumb was 61-year-old Uday Shankar, who died on Monday afternoon.

"Shankar, a resident of Dwarka, was admitted to Ganga Ram on September 11. He collapsed due to chikungunya-led complications on September 12. He had reported positive for chikungunya on September 8 at the OPD," said the official. Shankar was also suffering from a kidney ailment.

The third death due to chikungunya complications was of 62-year old Ashok Chauhan.

Earlier on September 1, a 22-year-old-woman succumbed to chest infection which set in as a result of chikungunya, at MCD's Bara Hindu Rao Hospital.

Taking cognisance of the deaths, the Delhi government on Tuesday announced an additional 1,000 beds for fever patients and a helpline number to provide information to people.

The beds will be provided in the three nodal hospitals for vector-borne diseases - Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, Janakpuri Super Speciality Hospital and Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital. It also announced a Control Room with a helpline number -- 011-22307145.

Urging the people to not panic due to the rising cases of dengue and chikungunya, Delhi government's Health Department said that it is fully prepared to deal with vector-borne diseases.

"The government has established dedicated Fever Clinics in its 26 hospitals (functional 24 hours), 262 Delhi government dispensaries (functional from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) and 106 Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics (functional from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.) to cater to fever patients," said an official statement.

According to the Delhi government, the treatment, lab diagnosis of dengue and chikungunya, are available free of cost in all Delhi government health institutions.

The Delhi government has said that private hospitals and nursing homes can increase their bed capacity.

The government has deployed manpower to fever clinics and emergencies and also ensured that hospitals provide drinking water with ORS in all the hospital OPDs.

Delhi's Health Minister Satyendar Jain, who was in Goa and returned Delhi on Tuesday afternoon, said the situation in Delhi government hospitals is "much better" than in the hospitals run by the Centre and civic bodies.

"We're not denying anyone a bed and have made all facilities available to deal with such cases. We have opened 262 fever clinics in Delhi. Please avoid self medication and do not panic," Jain said in a press conference here.

He accused the BJP-controlled civic bodies of not taking preventive steps to control the spread of vector-borne disease.

Union Health Minister J.P Nadda said that Delhi Government needed to be more serious on the epidemic situation.

He assured all technical help to the Delhi Government to tackle the rising cases of chikungunya and dengue.

Civic bodies have put the figure of dengue, chikungunya and malaria infections at 1,158, 1,057 and 21 respectively till Sep 10.
Mumbai, Sep 13 : Aggressive activists of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) on Tuesday briefly disrupted a scheduled media gathering addressed by the Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti, which is fighting for carving out a separate state from Maharashtra.

When the media meet started, a group of Raj Thackeray's MNS led by Amey Khopkar, Sandeep Deshpande and others surrounded the dais and started shouting pro-united Maharashtra slogans.

They prevented the main speakers - former legislator Wamanrao Chatap, economist Shreenivas Khandewala and lawyer Nanda Parate - from speaking, waved MNS flags, and attempted to vandalise the venue.

"We will not allow you to raise the issue of a separate Vidarbha here. The people of the state wanted a united Maharashtra," Khopkar told the VRAS leaders.

The MNS, Shiv Sena and other parties are opposed to a separate Vidarbha and have campaigned for a united Maharashtra through their policies and politics.

Later, after the ruckus subsided, the VRAS resumed the media briefing and presented its arguments in favour of a separate Vidarbha state.

Chatap announced that VRAS would conduct a mock assembly session on October 3-4 in Nagpur where they would present a budget and highlight all the issues concerning Vidarbha in a systematic manner to press for the separate state.

Later, they would take out pro-Vidarbha long marches from six place in the region, which would culminate in Nagpur on December 5.

This would be in time for the upcoming Winter Session of Maharashtra Legislature which is usually held in the second capital, Nagpur in eastern Maharashtra, Chatap said.

Khandewale said the agitation would be continued in a peaceful manner till December 31, after which they would intensify the movement.

He recounted how Vidarbha, a region richly endowed with natural resources, has been consistently ignored for over 50 years by successive governments and chief ministers and it has been condemned to remain backward and underdeveloped.

Khandewale said that the VRAS has recently held a sit-in agitation outside the residence of Union Surface Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari which he claimed was "a huge success" and showed public support for creating a separate Vidarbha.

The speakers said they were not against Maharashtra, but through the creation of Vidarbha, sought independent decision-making for the people of the sprawling region comprising 11 districts.

Later, criticising the MNS agitation, social worker and human rights activist Jatin Desai said if they wanted to have their say, they should organize a separate media gathering instead of disrupting a peaceful media conference in this manner.
Kathmandu, Sep 13 : Nepal Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat has said that a new chapter would be added to Nepal-India relations.

Mahat said so while talking to media persons upon his arrival at Tribhuvan International Airport from India after a three-day visit, the Kathmandu Post reported.

Mahat said that he held friendly meetings with Indian leaders including External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Energy Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharti regarding bilateral relations and cooperation.

Mahat came to India to prepare the ground for the upcoming visit of Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' to India. Dahal is scheduled to arrive in Delhi on Thursday on a four-day state visit to India.
New Delhi, Sep 13 : India and Russia on Tuesday agreed to create an "energy bridge" with the possibility of gas pipelines for direct gas delivery from Russia to India.

"...Both sides launched an industry level Working Group - led by Gazprom, the biggest Russian gas company, and a consortium of Indian oil and gas companies - for creating an 'energy bridge' between the two countries through possible gas pipelines for direct gas delivery from Russia to India," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement following the 22nd Session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) here.

While External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj headed the Indian delegation in the talks, the Russian side was led by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

The meeting was held in the run-up to the annual bilateral summit to be held between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Goa on October 15.

According to the statement, connectivity was a major theme during the discussions.

"Implementation of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) project and the launch of the 'Green Corridor' project for customs facilitation are major steps towards better connectivity and trade facilitation," it said.

"Cooperation between Indian and Russian railways in the field of dedicated freight corridor, modernisation of railway stations, and training of railway personnel emerged as a new area to broaden cooperation in transports & logistics."

According to the statement, the commission also directed ministries and departments concerned to focus on key sectors in the trade and investment spheres to finalise concrete outcomes by the forthcoming summit in October 2016.

"India and Russia reiterated their strong desire to further broaden their strategic cooperation with emphasis on key sectors such as nuclear energy, space, modernisation, high technology, disaster management, and supercomputing," it stated.

India-Russia cooperation in nuclear energy reached a new milestone with the dedication of Unit 1 of the Kudankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu by Prime Minister Modi and President Putin last month.

"Both sides renewed their commitment to work together on remaining stages of Kudankulam 2,3,4,5 and 6; and other projects through localisation under the Make in India programme," the statement said.

Cooperation in the pharmaceutical sector also figured during the talks.

"Indian companies are closely engaged with Russian partners to develop cooperation under the Russian 'Pharma 2020 Programme'," the statement said.

"On the sidelines of the Commission's meeting, an Indian company Wockhardt and a Russian company PharmEco have signed an agreement for joint project for insulin production in Russia under the Pharma 2020 Programme."

Student and faculty exchange, cultural cooperation and tourism were also discussed.

"There has been 20 percent increase in the number of Indian students studying in Russia, while there has been 14 percent increase in Russian tourists visiting India in recent months," the statement said.

India and Russia will be celebrating the 70th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between India and the erstwhile USSR (now Russian Federation) next year.

"A series of activities are being planned to celebrate this important milestone," the statement said.

"There will be a new emphasis on promoting cooperation among various states in India and federal regions in Russia, especially the Far East region of Russia- as attractive investment destinations."

Tuesday's meeting comes in the wake of the India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue held here last month.
Aden, Sep 14 : Five operatives of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda branch were killed when a US drone strike targeted their vehicle in Yemen's central province of al-Bayda on Tuesday, a military official told Xinhua.

The military source confirmed that missiles fired from the unmanned US aircraft destroyed a vehicle carrying Al Qaeda operatives in the mountains of Radaa area in central al-Bayda province.

The military source said that "the slain Al Qaeda men were apparently travelling from Marib province and heading to meet their comrades in the al-Bayda province".

On Tuesday, the United States announced that its military killed 13 Al Qaeda militants in three separate strikes in Yemen in recent weeks, but it did not specify how the strikes were conducted or reveal the identities of the militants targeted.

Yemen has recently seen a growing number of Al Qaeda activities due to the prolonged security vacuum resulting from the 19-month civil war between the exiled government and Houthi rebels who seized much of the country's north, including capital Sanaa since 2014.

The military conflict has left more than 6,400 dead, according to the UN, displaced thousands and left the country's civilians facing a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
Raw Copper Basin Tap COCOON has the pleasure of working with Studio Piet Boon, one of the most renowned Dutch design studios.

COCOON, an interior design and architecture company, has recently announced the launch of its new line of stainless steel bathroom taps and showers designed by the renowned Dutch designer, Piet Boon. Considered timeless pieces of craftsmanship and art, the taps in COCOONs new collection have a distinctive shape and come in three different matte finishings: Brushed Stainless Steel, Raw Copper and Gunmetal Black. Unlike regular colored taps that have a coating on a brass base, COCOON taps consist of a highly durable 100% stainless steel base. Raw Copper and Gunmetal Black taps in the latest COCOON collection have a super strong PVD coating on a stainless steel base, enabling them to last a lifetime and adding a characteristic depth to the exclusive surface finishing.

COCOON has the pleasure of working with Studio Piet Boon, one of the most renowned Dutch design studios, states a representative from COCOON. Piet Boon is responsible for the new COCOON taps, showers, basins, and bathroom furniture collection. The taps breathe sophistication and simplicity due to their state-of-the-art technology which allows them to operate the single lever mixers over two axes.

Marriott Hotel Features COCOON

COCOONs collection of taps designed by Piet Boon have been installed in the pilot rooms of the grand 5-star Marriott Hotel in Amsterdam as part of a huge renovation planned to celebrate the hotels 40-year anniversary. Inspired by the Wabi-Sabi credo, the new collection of COCOON taps is designed to add a sophisticated edge to the clients bathroom, thanks to the taps chic matte finish.

COCOON taps are made from eco-friendly materials that will not harm the planet during their manufacture, use and disposal. The taps have water-saving aerators that maintain a steady flow of water that is perfect for use but without leading to wastage and overuse.

About The Company

COCOON is an interior design and architecture studio that has a passion for craftsmanship and timeless design. Using natural materials that beautify with age, COCOON designs products that make people happy, bring them comfort and allow them to embrace their personal identity. COCOON taps and showers are produced in Italy near the idyllic Lago Maggiore combining cutting edge techniques with artisanal craftsmanship. The company consists of diverse and multidisciplinary teams of architects, designers, product engineers, project managers, sales representatives, exclusive showroom partners, photographers, and the after-sales service team.

COCOON is currently introducing its first luxury projects in the USA. With the aim to keep them ultra-exclusive, the products will only be available directly at COCOONs Project Division and will be featured in just a handful of the most renowned architect firms and agents in New York, California and Canada later this year.

For more information on COCOON, log on to http://www.bycocoon.com or call on +31(0)208932364 or +31(0)629322251. The company can be reached on Facebook or Pinterest.
The new eOption Trader is a next generation platform that offers extensive research and analytical tools, enormous opportunities for trade desk personalization, convenient mobile trading on the go and many more."

eOption, a Chicago based low cost stock and option online broker, and ETNA, the leading provider of trading technology components for online broker-dealers, today announced the launch of eOption Trader. The two companies entered strategic technological partnership in early 2016 to upgrade eOption Trader using ETNA Trader, a trading platform for brokers provided by ETNA.

The revolutionary eOption Trader provides a unique user experience for active traders. From one screen to a dozen, it will adjust to any monitor setup. The web platform is HTML5 based and browser and device universal. Traders will benefit from customizable drag-and-drop layout, live charts with technical analysis tools, and the ability to trade directly from charts.

eOption is constantly working on improving its trading technology, said Shawn Herrin, President of eOption. The new eOption Trader is a next generation platform that offers extensive research and analytical tools, enormous opportunities for trade desk personalization, convenient mobile trading on the go and many more. ETNA built a great product, and we are glad our clients can take advantage of it.

eOption clients are able to work from pre-set dashboard layouts or create a customized configuration using an extensive suite of widgets. Designed with active traders in mind, the new eOption platform provides access to open API and widgets designer to create new custom widgets or integrate 3rd party trading tools. This outstanding functionality is available from any browser, without the need to install plugins or additional software.

Bringing the latest and greatest in technology to online trading community has been ETNAs top priority since the very start, said Roman Zhukov, CEO and President of ETNA. We are happy to power eOption clients with modern web and mobile trading tools and expand the growing community of modern self-directed online investors."

To learn more about eOption Trader and see video tutorials about basic system configuration, order entry, customization and chart settings, please visit http://www.eOption.com.

Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. Prior to trading options, you must be approved for options trading and read the Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options. A copy may also be requested via email at support@eoption.com or via mail to eOption, 950 Milwaukee Ave., Ste. 102, Glenview, IL 60025. Online trading has inherent risks due to loss of online services or delays from system performance, risk parameters, market conditions, and erroneous or unavailable market data.

About eOption

eOption offers a modern, efficient trading environment that meets the needs of the active trader and self-directed investor community without the high commission cost. A unique value that enhances successful trading with the potential for higher investment yields, without sacrificing quality of execution and customer service. The value proposition enables you to engage in strategies often considered cost prohibitive. Stock trades are $3 and option trades are $3 plus 15 per contract. Clients have the ability to realize immediate significant savings, whether trading equities or options and have access to a full range of investment products and services. Visit http://www.eOption.com for full details.

Media contact:

Shawn Herrin

President

eOption

888-793-5333

sherrin(at)eoption(dot)com

About ETNA

ETNA is a trading technology vendor. Headquartered in NYC, ETNA has been providing trading technology components for online broker-dealers since 2002. Its flagship product ETNA Trader is an all-in-one white label online trading platform for brokers, trading firms and FinTech startups. Launched in 2012 the platform has been quickly adopted by several top US brokers. Being highly customizable it is also leveraged as a foundation by 3rd party FinTech developers. For more information about ETNA products and services, please visit http://www.etnasoft.com.

Media contact:

Olga Zhukova

SVP, Marketing

ETNA

855-779-7171

marketing(at)etnasoft(dot)com
edison partners small logo

Edison Partners is pleased to announce leading a $4.5M Series A round of financing in Atlanta-based Big Cloud Analytics Inc. (BCA), a leader in predictive analytics solutions for insurance and healthcare industries. Funds will be used to expand sales and marketing efforts, as well as product development.

BCA is making healthcare simple and easy to understand by using IoT data from smart watches, wearables and other connected devices in 29 countries to inform decision-making. The company is growing 400% year over year with the help of distribution partners like Intel, CDW and Grupo Datco, and has been recognized by CIO Review as one of the Top 100 most promising companies in Big Data globally. Customers include Merck, MLC Life Insurance, as well as other health and life direct insurers and reinsurers.

We are impressed with BCAs leadership team and the momentum they have created in bringing predictive analytics based on wearable device data to healthcare and insurance customers, said Joe Allegra, Edison General Partner, who led the investment and has joined the board of directors. The company has attracted marquee customers and channel partners, validating its potential to lead the market in the US, Europe and Australia.

The Companys proprietary COVALENCE analytics platform gathers data from a wide array of activity trackers and uses proprietary algorithms to compute advanced population health analytics, manage population wellness and achieve improved claims outcomes. BCA is able to analyze data in real time for millions of users per customer, and display data in easy to understand dashboards at both the broad and individual level.

We are excited to have a financial and operating partner like Edison to help us accelerate our growth, said J Patrick Bewley, Big Cloud Analytics CEO. We are already benefiting from the firms value-add -- from their CEO leadership development event at West Point in June to ongoing sales and marketing guidance.

Edison has invested in and guided more than 20 Healthcare IT businesses and is actively investing out of its latest fund, Edison VIII. Current Healthcare IT portfolio companies include ClearPoint Learning, Lincor Solutions, Trialscope and, recent addition, Virtual Health. Noteworthy exits include CambridgeSoft, Dendrite, DiagnosisOne, InnaPhase, Octagon, POMs, Portico, Premier Health Exchange (PHX) and Taratec.

About Big Cloud Analytics

Big Cloud Analytics leads the market in real-time predictive analytics technology for the Internet of Things (IoT). Recognized in 2015 by Intel as a Health Innovation Award Finalist and by CIO Review as one of the Top 100 most promising companies in Big Data globally, the Company provides disruptive end-to-end solutions comprising both software and hardware through its proprietary COVALENCETM Analytics Platform. Big Cloud serves life and health insurance and other healthcare organizations, such as hospitals, pharma, senior living facilities, etc. as well as employers for population health management. For more information, visit http://www.bigcloudanalytics.com.

About Edison Partners

For 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams navigate the entrepreneurial journey and build successful companies. Through the unique combination of expansion capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of strategic advisory, the Edison Director Network, and executive education, Edison employs a holistic approach to nurturing invention and creating value for growth stage businesses ($5 to $20 million in revenue) in financial technology, healthcare IT, enterprise IT, and marketing technology industries. Edison investment objectives also include: buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.

Edisons active portfolio has created aggregate market value exceeding $5 billion. Its long-tenured team based in Princeton, NJ manages more than $1 billion in assets throughout the eastern United States.
We abide by God's words in our Holy Book... We comprehend the responsibility illuminated in The Constitution... and we want to be trusted as other citizens are with our share of the duty. It is my prayer that this book makes the argument readily.

In an unprecedented public and direct condemnation of Muslim extremism, a new book Democracy, Civic Virtue, and Islam: The Muslim-American Jihad Against Extremism- written by a long-time respected voice on Islam and Muslim affairs, Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed, has been recently (May, 2016) released by Infinity Publishing.

The author, a distinguished spokesman for Islam and the Muslim-American community for over a quarter century and former National Representative of the late W. Deen Mohammed (leader of America's largest indigenous Islamic community), introduces what he calls, "the Muslim-American community's guiding Islamic principle of citizenship responsibility," in an intriguing book which is part history of the development of Islam in America and the Muslim-American identity, part analysis of the crisis in Islamic-world leadership, and part manifesto arguing the value of America's indigenous Muslim community in aiding the American public and leadership to successfully confront and abate the complex issue of Muslim extremism.

Mohammed combines authentic scholarship with common language and understanding in identifying the specific Islamic principles derived from Islam's primary sources of knowledge - the Holy Qur'an and Muhammed the Prophet's tradition - which manifest for Muslim-Americans as both a social establishment philosophy of civic virtue, and a rooted, organic shelter protecting against extremism, while respectfully chiding American leadership for overlooking and under-appreciating what is its most valuable, native, and exportable ideological resource to nullify the rise and threat of Muslim extremist influences.

Mohammed is a life-long student of Islamic knowledge, and an accomplished teacher of religion and scriptural sciences with advanced credits in international and Arabic language studies from the Middle East Institute, Georgetown University, and the Modern Arabic Language Institute of Yemen in Sana'a. Imam W. Deen Mohammed said of him, "He, in my opinion, is responsible for most of the propagating of the true image of Muslims in America. Not just for us, but for all Muslims."

Democracy, Civic Virtue, and Islam: The Muslim-American Jihad Against Extremism will be compulsory reading for anyone interested in clear recognition of what Islam is, what it is committed to, and how an African-American community of Muslims interprets it to champion citizenship responsibility, to preserve the highest democratic ideals, and to defend the notion of a free, just, productive human and American society.

To officially review the book for a publication, or arrange an interview with the author, please contact:

Abdul-Hafeez Waheed, Public Relations (919) 282-7110

Mylika Cherry-Hutty, Literary Agent (267) 597-8553

Email: author(at)muslimamericanbooks(dot)com
MP Modern: A Better Agency Marketing is evolving more quickly every year, and businesses need to think differently to stay ahead of their competition.

Its time for marketers to rethink their approach to agencies. Todays quickly-evolving marketing landscape demands a better, innovative alternative to the traditional agency model. Today MarketPro, Inc. is excited to announce that solution in the form of MP Modern, a contemporary agency solution for modern marketing problems.

What weve been hearing time and again from many of our clients in recent years is that traditional solutions for B2B digital marketing simply are not working, says Bob Van Rossum, President of MarketPro and architect of the MP Modern concept. In many cases, especially with mid-sized companies, were seeing that theyre having a hard time finding the results they want from their agency spend, or are frustrated by the long delays associated with traditional agency process.

Put simply, MP Modern puts the power, experience and expertise of a specialized marketing agency right in the office of the client. The service collaborates with existing internal marketing teams to understand the organizations needs, projects, and campaigns. Then MP Modern strategically designs a team of experts who will develop, create and execute an ROI-driving marketing operation.

As an on-site entity, the custom-crafted insourced agency from MP Modern will be able to improve and speed up results because communication is in real-time. In an age where speed is everything, improved responsiveness makes all the difference in improving the effectiveness of marketing spend.

Working with agency partners can be very expensive and frustratingly slow. Marketing is evolving more quickly every year, and businesses need to think differently to stay ahead of their competition, said Olena Eaton, Chief Marketing Officer of MP Modern.

MP Modern partners with clients on an in-house agency model creating a results-driven internal agency with just the right size and mix of expertise appropriate for their needs. This insourced agency will integrate with the organizations culture and will be able to shift direction and priorities with a simple walk down the hallwaystreamlining communications and increasing speed.

This new service will be powered by talent handpicked through the MarketPro recruitment methodology thats been honed and perfected over twenty years. MarketPros powerful recruitment process ensures MP Modern clients will always be able to move forward with confidence knowing they have best-in-class talent at their disposal.

Organizations that insource their marketing can save up to 35% on their agency spend. MP Modern is currently offering businesses a free audit of their agency budgets to evaluate their savings potential. Parties interested in scheduling an evaluation should click here to learn more.

About MarketPro

MarketPro Inc. is a woman-owned marketing executive search and marketing staffing firm founded in 1996. Headquartered in Atlanta, the nationwide recruitment agency matches high-performing marketers with clients who need their skills and experience to take their business to the next level. MarketPro has former marketers finding and vetting the talent, so only the best get through to clients. Learn more at https://marketproinc.com.
The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Adult Autism Fellows with Dean Cathryn Potter, Rutgers University School of Social Work, and Linda Walder, Founder of The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation. Our aim is to ensure that for generations to come there will be an impactful focus on adult autism. It is a matter of human rights for all autistic adults to be accepted for who they are and to live the fullest lives possible.

It was announced today that The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation (DJFF), the nation's first not-for-profit organization to exclusively focus on adult autism, will launch two new groundbreaking endowment funds, adding to DJFFs existing endowed program initiatives at Yale University and the University of Miami.

With gifts of $100,000 each to Brown University and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, the newest DJFF endowed programs continue to expand the Foundations mission for a global focus on adult autism. Designed to increase awareness, opportunities, and knowledge about aging and autism, each of the four DJFF endowed programs serve a specific area relating to adult autism: research, program development, fostering creativity and expression through the arts, and counseling and resources for family members of adults on the spectrum.

Founded in 2002 by Linda J. Walder, a pioneer in the adult autism arena, The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation has blazed trails to develop, fund, and advocate for programs and public policy related to all aspects of adult life such as job training, residential living, the arts, recreation, health and wellness, and socialization. DJFF is named in honor of Linda's son Danny who was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and passed away at age nine.

The DJFF endowment funds are opening new doors with the establishment of in perpetuity adult-autism-focused collaborations with the nation's leading researchers and practitioners at renowned universities. They are poised to lead the nation by addressing critical issues in adult autism that will advance the creation of new research and model programs to expand opportunities for the diversely challenged population of autistic adults.

Says Linda Walder: "Our aim is to ensure that for generations to come there will be an impactful focus on adult autism. Today more than 3.5 million Americans live with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, and we need to do more to understand adult autism and to create as many paths as we can for adults to participate in and contribute to community life. It is a matter of human rights for all autistic adults to be accepted for who they are and to live the fullest lives possible.

On September 7, 2016, The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Adult Autism Family Support Fellowship and Resource Guide Fund was established at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, School of Social Work (SSW). Its purpose is to train SSW graduate students to work as clinicians specifically focused on improving outcomes for family members of adults diagnosed with autism. The Fund will support the work of 3-4 Fellows annually, who will be known as The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Fellows. The Fellows will work directly with family members of adults diagnosed with ASD to address the concerns and challenges they face as caregivers. The Fellows also will create and update bi-annually a web-based resource guide for families, organizations, and agencies. The resource guide will be featured on the Rutgers SSW website, so that the community at large also can benefit from a list of supports and services as they help adult loved ones navigate the complex system. The Fund's programs will be led by Dr. Cathryn Potter, Dean of Rutgers School of Social Work, and by SSW Professor Mark W. Lamar.

On September 8, 2016, The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Adult Autism Theater and Performing Arts Fund at Brown University was established. The Fund will support programs, education, and performance experiences at The Brown University Theater Arts and Performance Studies Program ("TAPS") that benefit young adults and adults diagnosed with ASD. It also will provide experiential and educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to work directly with the adult autism population. The DJFF Fund will enable Brown students and participants from the Artists and Scientists as Partners in Rhode Island to learn the methodology of master teacher Elaine Hall, Founder of The Miracle Project. TAPS Adjunct Professor Julie Adams Strandberg will supervise this endowed Fund program.

The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Adult Autism Endowment Funds were launched in 2014, with a $100,000 gift to Yale University Medical School to establish the nation's first-ever research fund specifically dedicated to study adult autism. The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Adult Autism Research Fund is led by Roger J. Jou, MD, PhD, at the Yale Child Study Center. Dr. Jou is a leading autism researcher, and one of the few physician-scientists in the nation who has dedicated his career to the research and care of adults living with autism. With the help of the DJFF endowed fund, Dr. Jou is currently running various social programs for adults on the spectrum as part of his research work, including Community Autism Socials at Yale ("Project CASY").

DJFF's second gift of $100,000 established a new endowment fund at the University of Miami's Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD) to spearhead further development of their world-renowned adult autism initiatives and establish much-needed new programs and services for adults. Run by Deborah Chin, The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Transition and Adult Programs at UM-NSU CARD support adult-related program development, such as "Project EAARN's Employment Boot Camp," an initiative that provides job training and assistance to employers, job seekers, and other professionals interested in improving employment outcomes for individuals with ASD. Dr. Michael Alessandri heads the UM-NSU CARD program.

For additional information about The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation, visit its website or Facebook page.
mSpy, the global leader in parental monitoring solutions, announces the implementation of the Portuguese language in its support center. Now mSpy Portuguese speaking customers will receive mSpy brand high-quality customer care in their native language calling 0 800 591 5100 (Brasil) and +351 308 802 223 (Portugal).

Globally, over 270 million people speak Portuguese. It is the official language of Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe. Portuguese also has co-official status in Equatorial Guinea, East Timor, and Macau.

mSpy supplies its parental monitoring services to more than one million users all over the world. The company appreciates every client and pays special attention to its 24/7 customer service. The mSpy support team has been constantly improving its service quality, adding new team members and starting new customer loyalty programs. mSpy's support center processes over 6500 requests monthly, provides assistance in routing and jailbreaking and is constantly ready to provide whatever help customers may need. The implementation of Portuguese in the support center will ensure better understanding and even a higher level of customer comfort. mSpys primary goal customers satisfaction which is why it is very important to communicate in all the languages mSpy customers speak.

Today mSpy remains the global leader in parental control monitoring dedicated to satisfying parent needs for the security, safety and convenience of their children. The app consolidates the most recent innovations in mobile monitoring to provide parents with solutions they can rely on.

ABOUT MSPY

mSpy specializes in customized and user-friendly mobile & computer monitoring solutions, by utilizing the latest innovations in monitoring technologies. mSpy's goal is to deliver the fastest and most secure solutions that suit most demanding parental needs and bring guaranteed results at an affordable price.
Our shared office space is completely ready to make your venture a success.

When it comes to work space, a great location and moral-boosting amenities can bring out the best in bosses and employees alike. Entrepreneurs, freelancers, independent consultants, telecommuters, and startup teams in the New Jersey area looking to rent office space can find everything they desire in a work space through WorkSocial, a shared office space company. With a WorkSocial office, owners and employees will have access to everything they need in order to work efficiently, productively, happily, and healthily.

WorkSocials two new locations at 111 Town Square Place in Jersey City  near the Holland Tunnel and the Newport PATH  have furnished private office spaces with access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Of the two available office spaces for rent, the first location is perfectly prepared for high tech companies while the second location caters to financial services and professional investment advisors.

The offices are equipped with: conference rooms and meeting spaces; white boards and office supplies; ultra-high speed Internet; secure WiFi; and the ability to print, copy, and scan documents. Our shared office space is completely ready to make your venture a success, said founder Natasha Mohan. Weve set the stage do you can get down to business.

In addition to business resources, WorkSocials temporary office spaces are stocked with gourmet teas and coffees and have fully stocked kitchens complete with healthy snacks. WorkSocial has even arranged for networking events and educational workshops as well as business support and a business address. We want you to feel right at home the minute you arrive, said Mohan.

Members of Work Social also enjoy other benefits, such as discounts on hotels, travel, car rental, and cloud and servers. When you rent office space with our company, you get more than the physical location. You become a member of our professional family, said Mohan.

About WorkSocial

A frontrunner in the shared or temporary office space industry, WorkSocial not only provides businesses a place to call home, but it also supports the very spirit of entrepreneurship. As a female and a minority, the companys founder, Natasha Mohan, believes anyone can achieve the American Dream with a little creativity and the right kind of opportunity. For more information, visit WorkSocial.works.

###
Backroads Guests enjoy an AmaWaterways active river cruise Each year our trip designers research, travel to and test new regions for future Backroads trips and for 2017 they have certainly outdone themselves," said Backroads Founder and President, Tom Hale.

As summer vacations are winding down, Backroads, the worlds leading active travel company, is enticing travelers to start thinking about their next adventure with the announcement of more than 40 new trips across the globe in 2017. The new lineup represents all activities of Backroads signature adventures, from Biking to Walking & Hiking, Multisport, active River Cruising, Family Trips and Family Breakaway Trips.

Backroads new destinations include an exciting adventure to Japan with a walking and hiking tour of Imperial Tokyo and the Northern Alps. A Bermuda bike tour exploring its pastel villages, pink-sand beaches and British colonial history. A Munich to Salzburg bike tour from Germanys Bavaria to Austrias Tyrolean Alps. And a Basque Country multisport adventure tour from Bilbao to Biarritz, with visits to beaches, the Pyrenees and a chance to hike, bike and experience Basque culture.

The company has continued to expand its ever-popular active River Cruise segment with additional departures on the Danube, Rhine, Seine and Portugals Douro River. New in 2017, Backroads is launching a Galapagos, Andes & Amazon River Cruise Walking tour, which combines both land activities and cruising on the Napo River inside the Amazon basin. Backroads is also rolling out a new Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos River Cruise Biking tour, offering guests the opportunity to sail and bike along the Mekong River. Guests will explore villages, jungles, bustling cities and ancient temples while diving deep into the local culture, cuisine and customs.

We have the best trip designers in the industry and they are passionate about finding new destinations for our guests to explore, said Backroads Founder and President, Tom Hale. Each year they research, travel to and test new regions for future Backroads trips and for 2017 they have certainly outdone themselves. Theres something for everyone with our new trips, from walking in Japan, hiking in Sedona, to biking with the family in Bermuda.

Backroads New 2017 Adventure Tours

The following list of our new trips for 2017 includes Premiere Inn, Casual Inn, Deluxe Camping, Classic, Family and Family Breakaway tours. Backroads Family Breakaway segmentdesigned for families with older teens and 20-somethingshas continued to grow in popularity and next year the company is rolling out even more departures in this area. More information on all new Backroads trips can be found at: https://www.backroads.com/new/highlights

Backroads New 2017 Adventure Tours

Classic Trips

Biking

Bermuda

Canadian Rockies

Czech Republic & Austria

Munich to Salzburg

Provence

Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos River Cruise

Multisport

Basque Country

Walking & Hiking

Crater Lake

Dolomites Hut-to-Hut

Galapagos, Andes & Amazon River Cruise

Iceland

Japan

Mallorca

Portugal's Douro River Cruise

Salzburg to Munich

Sedona

Tuscany & Umbria

Zion & Snow Canyon

Family Trips

Biking

Bermuda

Munich to Salzburg

Multisport

Maui & Lanai

Nova Scotia

Family Breakaway Trips

Biking

Bermuda

Champagne & Alsace

Czech Republic & Austria

Maine

Munich to Salzburg

Parma to Verona

Slovenia & Italy

Multisport

Alaska's Kenai Peninsula Casual Inns

Alaska's Kenai Peninsula Deluxe Camping

Canadian Rockies

Dalmatian Coast

Maui & Lanai

Switzerland

Yellowstone & Tetons

Walking & Hiking

Costa Rica

Galapagos, Andes & Amazon River Cruise

Glacier & Waterton Lakes

Iceland

Ireland

Sedona

Spanish Pyrenees to Costa Brava

A Taste of Camino de Santiago

Yellowstone & Tetons

Yosemite

Zion & Snow Canyon

ABOUT BACKROADS

Backroads (http://www.backroads.com) was founded in 1979 by Tom Hale and has been in business for more than 37 years. The company hosts thousands of guests, 80% of whom are repeat guests or referrals from past guests, in hundreds of locations across the globe. Backroads was named one of the Top 100 Places to Work by Outside Magazine in 2015, and is a founding member of the Adventure Collection. For more information, please visit http://www.backroads.com or call 800-462-2848 daily, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., Pacific time.
Paula Di Marco Young, BS, RN, CLO/A of Young Medical Spa was the recipient of the prestigious Best Aesthetic Nurse Award at the 2016 THE Aesthetic Awards at THE Aesthetic Show in Las Vegas, NV and has recently launched her own cosmetic and aesthetic podcast.

Its a Young Thing, Young Medical Spas new cosmetic and aesthetics podcast hosted by Nurse Paula Young, focuses around a single skincare, body contouring, or anti-aging treatment option that Paula will discuss at length, spelling out the details and common misconceptions people have. Nurse Paula states, We have performed so many complimentary consultations over the past eleven years we have been in practice that I have discovered there are many common misconceptions about various products, treatments and procedures we perform. Paula continues to say that Through my podcast, I can explain important facts and concepts people need to know when considering an aesthetic procedure in a language they can understand. Some topics include cosmetic injectable products, cellulite reduction, microneedling, sunspots, and CoolSculpting, with a new episode being released every week.

Paula goes into great detail on each topic, discussing how the treatment works and the recovery time involved, as well as debunking common misconceptions. Paula also guides the audience on what to look for and what questions to ask when considering a treatment. Her no-nonsense approach to informing her patients and straight forward, easy to understand language makes Its a Young Thing the perfect podcast for anyone thinking about receiving a treatment.

With two locations in Center Valley and Lansdale, Pennsylvania Young Medical Spa aims to ensure that their patients in the Allentown, Bethlehem, Lansdale and Philadelphia areas are well-informed and up-to-date on all the skin rejuvenation and body contouring treatments and opportunities available to them.

Its a Young Thing is available on iTunes and SoundCloud, as well as through Young Medical Spas website at YoungMedicalSpa.com/Podcast. Nurse Paula Young and the rest of the Young Medical Spa staff are proud to be able to share their expertise with so many patients through their podcast.

About Young Medical Spa in Pennsylvania

Dr. Thomas E. Young and Paula Di Marco Young, BS, RN, CLO/A founded Young Medical Spa with the mission to provide the highest quality aesthetic treatments and services within the comfort of a relaxing, spa-like environment. At Young Medical Spa in Pennsylvania, all patients are treated under the supervision of medical aesthetic experts to ensure that results match the teams passion for aesthetic medicine.

Dr. Young is a leader within the medical aesthetic industry, and shares his expertise by training other physicians with his advanced techniques and wealth of experience. At Young Medical Spa, Dr. Young works diligently to ensure that each patient is able to achieve their desired results within a state-of-the-art location and in the company of a friendly and welcoming staff.

Young Medical Spa has two locations serving the Lehigh Valley and greater Philadelphia areas. Their Center Valley medical spa is convenient to Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton. The Lansdale medical spa is located in Montgomery County outside of Philadelphia, serving King of Prussia and Lower Bucks County. Every patient is given the time and attention necessary to develop a unique treatment plan and foster a valuable relationship with the staff. Young Medical Spa is dedicated to patient care and comfort, maximizing results while ensuring the utmost safety.

Young Medical Spa is conveniently located at 4025 West Hopewell Road in Center Valley, PA, and at 635 North Broad Street, Lansdale, PA.

About Paula Di Marco Young, BS, RN, CLO/A

Paula is a Registered Nurse, Certified Laser Operator/Aesthetics, and the Director of Public Relations and Marketing for Young Medical Spa. She is also Faculty with THE Aesthetic Show in Las Vegas, NV, a multidisciplinary medical education conference focused on the rapidly expanding field of aesthetic medicine. Paula received an international award of Best Aesthetic Nurse in the 2016 THE Aesthetic Awards at THE Aesthetic Show.

You can listen to Paula on her podcast, Its a Young Thing, available on iTunes and SoundCloud where she discusses the most common questions from patients on aesthetic medicine and procedures, misconceptions, and new technological advancements in a language the patients can understand.

Paula holds a current license with the PA Cosmetology Board and previously owned Dr. TattAway Laser Tattoo & Hair Removal Clinic, a Merle Norman Cosmetics national franchise, a full-service beauty salon, and a chain of tanning salons. Her previous career was with Johnson & Johnson medical device and biotechnology divisions where she held senior management positions in the Medical and Sales Education and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) departments.

Paula is on the Board of Directors of the Medical Spa Society, and is a member of the American Society for Laser Medicine & Surgery, Dermatology Nurses Association, American Academy of Medical Esthetic Professionals, Association of PeriOperative Registered Nurses, American Nurses Association, and The Aesthetic Practice Association.

Paula has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal and MedEsthetics Magazine. She was interviewed on Huffington Post Live, authored for Medical Spa Report Magazine, authored textbooks on advanced aesthetic practices used by beauty academies, and is a reviewer of aesthetic-related curriculums for Milady Publishing. She is on the Advisory Boards for Lincoln Technical Institute, and Acara Medical Spa Consultants, and is an editorial blogger for MedicalSpaMD.
Spike Aerospace is using CD-adapco's STAR-CCM+ to reduce sonic boom and drive the design of the Spike S-512 Supersonic Jet.

CD-adapco, a Siemens business, is partnering with Spike Aerospace to develop the Spike S-512 Supersonic Jet, a state-of-the-art aircraft that promises to reduce flying times by half, through the use of its industry-leading computer aided engineering software tool, STAR-CCM+.

CD-adapco joins Maya Simulation in partnering with Spike Aerospace as they attempt to make the next generation of supersonic business jets a reality. Recognizing the importance of aerodynamics for performance, design, and the ability to reduce sonic boom, Spike Aerospace believes STAR-CCM+ is the most efficient and effective engineering simulation software tool for this exciting project. This application will be highlighted during a September 22 complimentary webinar titled Designing the Next Generation of Supersonic Business Jets with Low to No Sonic Boom.

Our CFD engineers found that the meshing capabilities in STAR-CCM+ were significantly better than other competing products and seemed a bit more intuitive and easier to use, said Vik Kachoria, President and CEO of Spike Aerospace. STAR-CCM+ is critical in any aerodynamic aircraft project as it has a number of tools that can help optimize the shape of the aircraft to minimize fuel burn, ensure stability and help the aircraft reach the performance goals we want to reach.

Once the Spike S-512 is fully functional and cleared for takeoff in the early 2020s, it is expected to revolutionize business travel. The duration of routes such as New York to London and London to Dubai will be halved, enabling business travelers to better allocate their time and resources.

STAR-CCM+ is helping us to ultimately build a robust, efficient aircraft that is going to build better relationships around the globe, Kachoria said.

STAR-CCM+ is enabling Spike Aerospace to utilize the power of digitalization to achieve improved efficiency and quality while also ensuring optimized machine design. STAR-CCM+ allows Spike Aerospace to determine the aerodynamics of the aircraft throughout the process and into flight.

The importance of the aerodynamics is clearly evident in the additional time savings provided in the design stage of the vessel, said Durrell Rittenberg, CD-adapco Director of Aerospace and Defense. There is also a tremendous benefit to being able to develop this project digitally. There arent many supersonic wind tunnels, so the idea that this can be done on a computer highlights the importance of the digital twin concept.

About Spike Aerospace

Spike Aerospace is leading a global collaboration to develop the worlds first supersonic business jet, the Spike S-512 Supersonic Jet. This advanced next-generation aircraft, with Quiet Supersonic Flight technology, will save travelers up to 50 percent flight time. A world-class team of senior engineers with backgrounds from leading aerospace companies are developing the high-level conceptual design of the supersonic aircraft. Top aerospace firms, like Maya, Siemens, Aernnova and Quartus Engineering are providing their expertise in aircraft design, engineering, manufacturing, and testing. Fly Supersonic, Do More. http://www.spikeaerospace.com/

About CD-adapco

CD-adapco (http://www.cd-adapco.com), recently acquired by Siemens, is a global engineering simulation company with a unique vision for Multidisciplinary Design eXploration (MDX). Engineering simulation provides the most reliable flow of information into the design process, which drives innovation and lowers product development costs. CD-adapco simulation tools, led by the flagship product STAR-CCM+, allow customers to discover better designs, faster. The companys solutions cover a wide range of engineering disciplines including Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Computational Solid Mechanics (CSM), heat transfer, particle dynamics, reacting flow, electrochemistry, acoustics and rheology. On average, CD-adapco increased its revenue at constant currencies by more than 12 percent annually over the past three fiscal years. CD-adapco employs over 1,000 talented individuals, working at 40 strategic locations across the globe.

###

Press Contact

Todd Mavreles, CD-adapco

todd.mavreles(at)cd-adapco(dot)com

(+1) 713 334 4311
From our very first discussion with Shine, it was clear that we were talking to an agency with a methodical, data-driven approach that will challenge the status quo in every part of our business.

Shine United has been named agency of record for HuHot Mongolian Grill LLC, a national create-your-own Asian stir fry concept offering a wide variety of meats, seafood, noodles, fresh veggies and signature sauces. Shine, which has a great deal of experience in the food and restaurant category, will be responsible for refining brand positioning and developing a comprehensive consumer campaign for the rapidly growing Mongolian grill franchise, which has 59 locations in 16 states.

We were looking for fresh thinking that could help us take our brand to the next level, said Stephanie Krause, VP of Marketing. From our very first discussion with Shine, it was clear that we were talking to an agency with a methodical, data-driven approach that will challenge the status quo in every part of our business. Were excited for what their strategic and creative firepower will mean for our franchisees and our organization as a whole.

The engagement will be focused on building awareness and preference for HuHot within both established and new markets, and will include brand and marketing communications planning, radio, digital, social, in-store and local store marketing executions.

HuHot is a truly unique brand that is poised for rapid growth, said Curt Hanke, Shine founder and CEO. Were excited to help HuHot continue its legacy of bold, irreverent work to capture their unfair share of attention.

###

About HuHot Mongolian Grill

HuHot is a national create-your-own stir fry concept offering a wide variety of meats, seafood, noodles, fresh veggies, and signature sauces to suit your tastes. Select your favorite ingredients then be entertained as your meal is cooked to perfection by our grill warriors on a 6-foot, scorching hot grill. It's always all-you-can-eat, so you can create a different meal every time.

HuHot Mongolian Grill, LLC opened its first restaurant in Missoula, Montana in 1999 focusing on fresh food, signature sauces and great service. Over the past 15 years, the concept has grown to 59 locations in 16 states and that focus has remained unchanged.

In 2015 HuHot was ranked for the fourth consecutive year in Franchise 500 by Entrepreneur and on Technomic's Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report. HuHot has been ranked as one of Franchise Times Next 300 Franchise Chains 3 years in a row, and named as one of Nation Restaurant News' Next 20 Chains of 2014.

About Shine United

Shine United is a $41 million advertising and brand consultancy located in Madison, Wisconsin. The privately held company's client roster includes national brands such as Harley-Davidson, Wisconsin Cheese, GORE-TEX Running Footwear, Amazon.com, Mizuno Running, Kohler Co. and LaCrosse Footwear. Shine is an environment where creativity, brilliance and teamwork are allowed to flourish  part of the reason the agency was named one of the best places to work by Outside Magazine the past three years. Learn more at ShineUnited.com. Shine On.
PowerObjects is thrilled to be entering the UK market and deliver innovative Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions.

PowerObjects, an HCL Company, announced that it is expanding its business to the United Kingdom, working closely with its parent company HCL Technologies to bring Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions to UK-based businesses.

Were no stranger to the UK market, says Jim Sheehan, SVP at PowerObjects. Our PowerPack add-ons for Dynamics CRM have been used globally for years now, and the country with the most downloads of our add-ons after the United States is the UK. Were just taking the next step now, leveraging our full breadth and ability to deliver sophisticated CRM solutions to businesses in the UK.

PowerObjects has been working closely with their counterparts at HCL Technologies, who already have a well-known presence in the UK, to start building their market strategy and establish the PowerObjects brand into Western Europe.

Being able to merge the HCL Technologies and PowerObjects teams has enabled us to offer services and capabilities for Dynamics CRM in a way we couldnt before, says Paul Rogers, AVP and Head of Microsoft Dynamics Practice EMEA. With the additional power of HCL Technologies behind us, we are in a unique position to make a big impact in the CRM market.

PowerObjects made its first major appearance related to its UK debut at Convergence-EMEA in November of 2015, alongside its parent company HCL Technologies. The conference was held in Barcelona, with people in attendance from all over Europe.

More recently, PowerObjects and HCL Technologies sponsored two major events in the UKIn-Depth 2016jointly hosted by Microsoft and Housing Technology. These events take place in London at the Emirates Stadium on July 6, and in Manchester at Old Trafford on July 21, and cover the latest technology trends in the social housing sector.

PowerObjects is thrilled to be entering the UK market and deliver innovative Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions, says Jim Sheehan, SVP at PowerObjects. Our goal is to become the best global CRM partner known for outstanding service, support, education, and add-ons for Dynamics CRM solutions.

About PowerObjects, an HCL Company

PowerObjects, an HCL Company, is a leader in delivering Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions through unparalleled offerings of service, support, education, and add-ons. Winner of the 2015 Microsoft Dynamics CRM Cloud CRM Partner of the Year, PowerObjects has built an unmatched team of CRM experts that help organizations increase productivity, streamline business processes and build better relationships.
Uncork Colorado billboard "This is second year in a row of exceptionally favorable growing conditions." Neil Jaquet, Grand Valley AVA grape-grower

The Colorado Wine Board reports that the highly anticipated harvest season has arrived in Colorados wine country. Winemakers from more than 140 wineries across Colorado are gearing up for crush as well as for myriad events taking place across the state that accompany the harvest. Having seen a relatively mild growing season, the 2016 harvest is expected to be a fruitful one as much of Colorado avoided the late season frosts and harsh winter damage that can curtail vintages. In addition, many of Colorados wineries are increasing their production this year.

"Colorados winemakers are feeling optimistic about this years crop," said Doug Caskey, executive director of the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board. All indications point to a very good year both in terms of quality and quantity for the Colorado wine industry, and our winemakers are expected to release several new varieties for 2017.

Colorado wines are a reflection of the states unique growing climate, producing some of the best grapes in the country grown on over 1,000 high-altitude acres of vineyards. This harvest season, thousands of wine lovers will make the annual pilgrimage to Colorados Western Slope to sample a growing array of Colorado wines and participate in a variety of events such as festivals, winery tours, winemaker competitions, shopping, concerts, grape stomps, and wine and food pairings. Favorites include the Annual Grape Stomp in Salida and The Colorado Mountain Winefest in Palisade, both of which attract thousands of tourists each year. For a complete list of events visit coloradowine.com/the-events.

The states largest and oldest wine festival is the 25th annual Colorado Mountain Winefest, presented by Alpine Bank, which takes place September 15-18 in Palisade. Attendees and volunteers alike travel from all over the country to take part in this exceptional event. The Festival in the Park takes place on Saturday, September 17 and features dozens of Colorado wineries, live music, a grape stomp, chef demonstrations and seminars. This year, event organizers plan to welcome more than 6,000 guests to the Western Slope throughout the weekend. For ticketing and information go to http://www.ColoradoWinefest.com.

"This is the second year in a row of exceptionally favorable growing conditions thanks to a mild-winter with very little cold-injury," said Palisade grape grower Neil Jaquet. "The harvest cycle this year appears to be falling squarely during the time of the Colorado Mountain Winefest in Palisade next week. The cooler temperatures of September coupled with our sunny skies are ideal for people to visit the Winefest and tour the growing regions and wineries of the area."

Another exciting development this year occurred when Colterris Wines purchased Christianson Vineyards (the previous home of Canyon Wind Cellars). The quality, variety and strength of the vines that cover these 52 acres will create an immediate expansion of production, and will allow them to open an additional tasting room for Colterris Wines at 3907 North River Road.

We have very high expectations for the 2016 vintage and we have big plans for the future, said Theresa High, Owner of Colterris Wines. We expect to harvest around 200 tons of grapes this year and produce up to 15,000 cases of wine exclusively from our vineyards in Palisade.

About the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board

The Colorado Wine Industry Development Board is an agency of the Colorado Department of Agriculture, dedicated to promoting and furthering the development of Colorados grape growers and approximately 140 wineries. For additional information, visit http://www.coloradowine.com.
Partnering with our clients to fortify their digital security and ease the pain of IT has helped catapult CSGs reputation as a trusted IT resource. Were thrilled to continue educating others on how to safely leverage IT to grow their businesses.

As a result of 184% growth over 3 years, Computer Solutions Group, a Los Angeles-based IT support company, announced it earned the #2027 spot on the 2016 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing privately held companies. This is the companys second year appearing on the coveted Inc. 5000 list.

The list represents a unique look at the most successful 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. On average, the companies featured on this years list achieved an impressive three-year growth rate of 433%.

Founded in 2008, CSG is dedicated to providing state-of-the-art IT support, services and products that allow clients to enhance personal and corporate productivity, drive revenue and ultimately surpass their competition. Featured on the CBS Evening News, KTLA 5, KCAL 9, and in The New York Times, CEO Scott Spiro regularly educates individuals and companies on how to protect their digital footprints.

Since 2012, CSG has grown from five employees to 20 and achieved $3.4 million in 2015 revenue as a result of delivering superior IT services, education and products.

Partnering with our clients to fortify their digital security and ease the pain of IT has helped catapult CSGs reputation as a trusted IT resource, Spiro said. Were thrilled to continue educating others on how to safely leverage IT to grow their businesses.

CSG has also earned a long list of recognitions, including the 2015 Microsoft West Region SMB Influencer of the Year Award and the 2015 US SMB West Region Digital Marketing Excellence Award at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.

The annual Inc. 5000 event honoring all the companies on the list will be held October 18-20 in San Antonio, Texas. Speakers include best-selling author and strategist Tony Robbins, SoulCycle co-founders Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice and many more.

To learn more about CSG, please visit http://www.csgsupport.net. For a complete look at all the companies recognized on the 2016 Inc. 5000 list, visit http://www.inc.com.

About Computer Solutions Group

Founded in 2008, Computer Solutions Group, Inc. began with a mission to help small and medium-sized businesses get a real return on their technology investments. Since then, CSG has remained dedicated to providing state-of-the-art IT support, service and products that allow its clients to get ahead of the competition and achieve greater success. The purpose at Computer Solutions Group is to create business success and peace of mind for customers by providing the absolute best IT services, education and products that enhance corporate and personal productivity. Expert IT support from Computer Solutions Group takes the focus off technology problems and puts it back on what really matters  your business.
Thus far in 2016, over 445 companies from 30 countries have announced expansions and new operations in Thailand.

The Thailand Board of Investment's New York office today announced that 2016 has been a strong year for the Kingdoms position in global foreign direct investment, investor confidence and third-party confidence indices.

Were seeing a good deal of interest in Thailand as a corporate investment destination, said Korbsiri Iamsuri, Director of Thailand Board of Investment in North America, Were pleased to not only see companies locating to Thailand, but also existing investors expanding their operations.

Last week, Reuters reported that Goodyear Thailand will build a new $162 million radial aviation tire factory to expand their production at their Phathumthani facility, located north of Bangkok. The expansion of the facility is in response to growing demand in the Asia Pacific market.

Also last week, Mazda announced that it is also expanding its automobile engine production capacity at its Powertrain Plant in Thailand. Again, demand in the Asian market is driving the expansion and the added production is expected to be for export to the Malaysian and Vietnamese markets.

Thus far in 2016, over 445 companies from 30 countries have announced expansions and new operations in Thailand. Companies such as SAIC Motor, Honda, and BMW, for a total investment of over $3.8 billion.

Foreign investors see that Thailand is committed to continually working to improve our workforce training programs and committed to responding to their needs, added Director Iamsuri, The success were seeing is a result of our governments commitment to improving the business landscape in Thailand.

Some of 2016s investor confidence indices supported what the Thailand Board of Investment is seeing on the ground.

The A.T. Kearney Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index ranked Thailand 21st in its top 25 global markets in its annual FDI Confidence index. The United States took first place, and Thailands 21st spot was ahead of countries such as Sweden, Ireland Austria, and Norway, who rounded out the remainder of the top 25.

The International Institute for Management Development also ranked Thailand highly in their annual World Competitiveness Ranking. Thailand placed 28th out of 61 countries, ahead of Korea, France, Spain, Italy, India, Mexico, Indonesia, and Brazil.

Sources for Editors

https://www.atkearney.com/gbpc/foreign-direct-investment-confidence-index

http://www.imd.org/uupload/imd.website/wcc/scoreboard.pdf

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-goodyear-th-expansion-idUSKCN1150I6

http://www2.mazda.com/en/publicity/release/2016/201608/160830b.html

About BOI

The Thailand Board of Investment (BOI) is the investment promotion agency for Thailand that facilitates foreign direct investment. BOIs services are free of charge and customized to help business succeed in Thailand. For more information, please visit http://www.boi.go.th and http://www.thinkasiainvestthailand.com
Almost Black Book Cover I posed as black to avoid racism against Asian Americans in university admissions. -- Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam

Following the Supreme Courts decision upholding affirmative action in the Fisher v. University of Texas case, Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam exposes the huge impact that race has on admissions decisions at Americas top universities with the release of Almost Black: The True Story of How I Got into Medical School by Posing as Black.

In his third year of college, Chokal-Ingam realized he didnt have the grades or test scores to get into medical school, at least not as an Indian American. So he shaved his head, trimmed his long eyelashes, and even joined the Organization of Black Students in order to self-identify as African American in his applications.

Despite a low 3.1 GPA, Chokal-Ingam managed to interview at 11 top medical schools in America, including Yale School of Medicine and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Furthermore, he got waitlisted at several prestigious schools, including Washington University, Case Western Reserve University, and the University of Pennsylvania. In Almost Black, Chokal-Ingam reconstructed his interview experiences in vivid detail with ample factual evidence such as official letterhead from the schools and real names of med school interviewers. Some interesting highlights:

1. Chokal-Ingam successfully deflected the accusation of faking his racial identity during an interview with Rubens Pamies, M.D., then Director of the Office of Minority Affairs at Case Western Reserve University.

2. Dr. Ellen Frank of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine praised Chokal-Ingam for being a role model for African Americans everywhere during an interview.

3. Disregarding their states strict residency requirements, the University of WisconsinMadison invited Chokal-Ingam to apply as an out of state minority.

Coauthored with Matthew Scott Hansen, Almost Black is written from the perspective of an irreverent 21-year-old frat boy desperate to get into medical school. While the conversational and colorful narrative style of the book appeals strongly to college students, the story also has poignant moments when the main character encounters racism for readers interested in a more serious discussion of racial issues. Almost Black also provides a rare, comprehensive look into what medical school application process looks like from start to finish.

While posing as a black man, Chokal-Ingam experienced the dark side of the African American experience. Cops harassed him, store clerks accused him of shoplifting, and fellow students became intimidated by him because of their stereotypical fears of African American men. Chokal-Ingam observed firsthand how the Chicago police system makes it easy for officers to lie in official reports as concluded by the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force. He witnessed a Chicago PD officer openly commit perjury in court: denying that he had asked Chokal-Ingam racially targeted questions.

I posed as black because I wanted to avoid racism against Asian Americans in university admissions," said Chokal-Ingam. "Yet, I discovered widespread racism against African Americans.

Chokal-Ingams sister Mindy Kaling has famously said this book will bring shame on the family and has denied knowledge of her brothers scheme. However, in Almost Black, Chokal-Ingam recalls how Kaling talked him out of applying to Dartmouth and Harvard for fear that his racial deception would be detected. Kaling was also the first person to jokingly suggest that someone write a book about her brothers surprisingly funny scam.

Almost Black is now available for purchase in paperback and eBook versions on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other fine booksellers. An audiobook version narrated by talented voice actor Spencer Cannon is also available on Amazon, Audible, and the iTunes Store.

To learn more, go to almostblack.com.

To request interviews with Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam, email press@almostblack.com.
3D Inverse Design approaches for turbomachinery optimization can deliver considerable reduction in development costs and times providing an ideal platform for multidisciplinary turbomachinery design and optimization compatible with industrial developments

Advanced Design Technology (ADT), a global leader in the development of advanced turbomachinery design methods and the TURBOdesign Suite are delighted to exhibit at the 45th Turbomachinery & 32nd Pump Symposia in Houston, Texas on 12- 15 September 2016. After the recent success of the 12th International Conference on Turbochargers and Turbocharging in London and ASME TURBO EXPO in Seoul, ADT continues its global showcase tour of the latest release of TURBOdesign Suite 6.1.0. The new software continues to grab global headlines with the power to streamline the process of design optimization of turbomachinery for multiple operating points.

The Turbomachinery and Pump Symposia serves as the premier training and networking opportunity for professionals in the pump, turbomachinery, and related industries. The annual event combines a world-class program with a cutting-edge exhibit hall; last year, attracting more than 5,500 attendees and 350 exhibiting companies from 48 countries. The Symposia is organized by the Turbomachinery Laboratory, part of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and The Texas A&M University System. The Advisory Committee Chairman is Dr. Dara Childs, Turbomachinery Laboratory Director.

"Maturing efficiency levels in turbomachinery combined with market and legislative pressures to improve performances and reliability, while reducing development costs are straining the limits of the conventional turbomachinery optimization methods says Prof. Zangeneh, Managing Director of ADT, 3D Inverse Design approaches for turbomachinery optimization can deliver considerable reduction in development costs and times providing an ideal platform for multidisciplinary turbomachinery design and optimization compatible with industrial development standard."

ADT's specialists and engineers will be on hand to show how by using TURBOdesign Suite inverse design methods make the turbomachinery design process simple. See how the advanced tools within TURBOdesign Suite enable engineers to produce high-quality designs, optimise the performance of components and reduce development time.

Book a demo now of our unique 3D design software during the exhibition, or come visit us on booth #1724.

Book a place in our exclusive 3 days Pump Workshop on 'Advanced Design Methods for Rotodynamic Pumps in light of US DOE Energy Conservation Standards for Pumps'.

About Advanced Design Technology, Ltd.

Advanced Design Technology (ADT) is a global leader in the development of advanced turbomachinery design and optimization methods to shorten development times and costs and improve turbomachinery performances. ADTs aim is to put designers in direct control of the aerodynamic design and to shorten the design time and time to market for a range of turbomachinery products. ADTs clients, who represent some of the leading global players in the aerospace, automotive, power generation and marine fields, have achieved significant returns on investment in for the reduction in design times, higher performance and ease of know-how transfer among different design teams and projects.

For more information, call +44 (0) 20 7299 1170 or visit http://www.adtechnology.co.uk.

About TURBOdesign Technology, Inc.

Founded in 2011, TURBOdesign Technology, Inc. (TDT) is the U.S. affiliate of Advanced Design Technology (ADT), selling the TURBOdesign Suite of 3D inverse design and analysis software while providing turbomachinery engineering support services. TURBOdesign Technology headquartered in Chicago, Ilinois. For more information, call +1 630 613 7604 or go to http://www.turbodesign-tech.com.
In the digital era, your apps and websites are your business and were redefining application performance management to support this reality.

Digital Performance Management software company, Dynatrace is named to the first-ever Forbes 2016 Cloud 100, the definitive list of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world, developed in partnership with Bessemer Venture Partners. To view the list, please visit http://www.forbes.com/cloud100. The list will appear in the October 4, 2016 issue of Forbes magazine.

In the digital era, your apps and websites are your business and were redefining application performance management to support this reality. Now more than ever, brands need to deliver outstanding experiences consistentlyevery day, every time, with every customer. Were dedicated to providing the digital confidence, in their apps and their websites, that ensure they can do just that said Dynatrace CEO, John Van Siclen. Being recognized in Forbes inaugural Cloud 100 list affirms this dedication and our leadership role in the digital performance space. As companies accelerate into their digital futures, we will continue to provide the only digital performance platform able to support them from cloud-native to complex enterprise environments.

Cloud companies are revolutionizing how businesses reach their customers today from digitizing painful old processes to allowing them more time to focus on what they really care aboutwhat makes their products unique, said Forbes editor of the Cloud 100 list Alex Konrad. Inclusion in the Forbes 2016 Cloud 100 list recognizes a company for its financial growth and excellence as recognized by customers and peers.

These are the companies to watch! said Byron Deeter, a leading cloud investor and partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. The Forbes Cloud 100 companies represent the very best private companies in cloud computing. We will see big IPOs and category killers emerge from this list as the cloud computing continues to propel the trillion-dollar software industry.

Methodology

The first-ever Forbes 2016 Cloud 100 list profiles the worlds top-tier private companies leading the cloud technology revolution, plus twenty rising stars within the field. With advancements in software, cloud security, or platform development, these companies are redefining the future for all industries and sectors.

Forbes, in partnership with Bessemer Venture Partners, received hundreds of submissions to identify the most promising private companies in cloud. The Forbes 2016 Cloud 100 was selected by a panel of judges representing leading public cloud companies, using qualitative and quantitative data submitted by nominees, along with publicly available third-party data sources.

Recognition

Every company named to the Forbes 2016 Cloud 100 is recognized in print and online by Forbes, and Forbes partners Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. The companies also receive physical awards and digital badges signifying their inclusion on this exclusive list, as well as an invitation to the celebratory Cloud 100 Awards Dinner, hosted in San Francisco by Forbes, Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures.

About Dynatrace

Dynatrace is the innovator behind the industrys premier Digital Performance Platform, making real-time information about digital performance visible and actionable for everyone across business and IT. We help customers of all sizes see their applications and digital channels through the lens of their end users. More than 8,000 organizations use these insights to master complexity, gain operational agility and grow revenue by delivering amazing customer experiences.

Follow Dynatrace on:

 Twitter: @Dynatrace

 about:performance blog

For Sales and Marketing Information:

Dynatrace, 404 Wyman St., Suite 500, Waltham, MA 02451, 781-530-1000, http://www.dynatrace.com

Press Contact:

Laura Paine, InkHouse for Dynatrace, 781-966-4124, dynatrace@inkhouse.com

###
AcctTwo was ranked the 16th fastest growing company in Houston.

AcctTwo, a leading consulting firm and provider of cloud-based ERP and Business-Process-as-a-Services solutions, announced today that it was ranked the 16th fastest growing company in Houston, according to the Houston Business Journal's Fast 100 list of the fastest-growing companies headquartered in the Houston area. This list is comprised of companies across multiple industries who have shown outstanding revenue growth between 2013 and 2015.

With customers in more than 35 states nationwide as well as a growing international presence, and with employees in Houston, Dallas, and Austin, AcctTwo has built a presence and focus that goes well beyond Houston and Texas. The firm's headquarters and its roots, however, are firmly part of the Houston community.

AcctTwo provides on-demand ERP software and business-process-as-a-service (BPaaS) outsourcing for midmarket companies and nonprofits. The firm has particular expertise in the Energy and Industrial, Nonprofit and Faith-Based, and Software industries, all of which are very well represented in the Houston area.

In addition to its spot on the Fast 100, AcctTwo has been named one of the Houston Business Journal's Enterprise Champions for 2016. These four Houston companies were chosen by a panel of judges for demonstrating outstanding innovation, corporate culture and community service, in addition to thriving in revenue growth.

"We're so excited to make the Fast 100 list again," said Marcus Wagner, Founder and CEO of AcctTwo. "I'm so proud of the continued growth that my team has managed over the past five years. Houston is the 4th largest city in the U.S., and is projected to surpass Chicago for the No. 3 spot in the next ten years. This is such an exciting time to do business in Houston, and we're thrilled to be a part of that amazing growth!"

To read the Houston Business Journal's post announcing the Fast 100 and Enterprise Champions lists, and to see the other companies on the list, click here.

If you have any questions about how Intacct's best-in-class ERP solutions or AcctTwo's BPaaS services can add strategic value to your organization, please visit the contact page to start the conversation.

About AcctTwo:

AcctTwo is a leading consulting firm and reseller of cloud-based accounting and ERP software. Our sophisticated systems solve the issues growing middle market companies face today. AcctTwo also provides Business-Process-as-a-Service solutions, allowing clients to focus on the core competencies of their business. We provide the people, processes, technology, and office facilities to perform these functions, while allowing clients to collaborate interactively through an on-line portal.

AcctTwo is headquartered in Houston, Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.accttwo.com or call 713-744-8400.

Contacts:

Peter Wagner

Director of Marketing

Cell: 512.415.6846

Email: pwagner(at)accttwo(dot)com

Chris Wailes

VP, National Media Relations

Pierpont Communications

Direct: 713.627.2223

Email: cwailes(at)piercom(dot)com
Pentec Health Chairman, CEO and President Joseph Cosgrove announced to employees at a recent corporate meeting that Inc. magazine ranked Pentec Health NO. 4133 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.

Joe Cosgrove noted, This achievement is testimony to the competence and significant effort of all Pentec colleagues in not only generating, but also sustaining, enviable growth over a three year period. I look forward to continued growth and long term success for our company.

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 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.

About Pentec Health, Inc.

For 33 years, Pentec Health has been an industry leader in providing outsourced, physician prescribed, custom prepared, patient-specific, compounded sterile medications that are intended for patient administration in the home as well as various alternate administration sites.

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.

CONTACT:

Pentec Health, Inc.

Jillian McKendree

jmckendree(at)pentechealth(dot)com

610-546-8466
ProMIS Neurosciences (ProMIS or the Company), a company focused on discovery and development of precision treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, today announced that at least three of its antibody therapeutic candidates targeting prion-like strains of Amyloid beta (A) have successfully completed validation in cadaveric brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from patients with Alzheimers disease (AD). The successful product candidates demonstrated the desired target profile of binding to brain tissue extracts and CSF from AD patients while not binding to plaque, as evidenced by microscopic examination (immunohistochemistry) of AD brain tissue. These monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapeutics have been designed to selectively bind only to distinct epitope targets specific for the neurotoxic, prion-like strains of misfolded A, which are widely believed to play a key role in the development and progression of AD.

To date, our on going validation program in AD cadaveric brain tissue and CSF has successfully identified at least three mAb product candidates showing what is now considered to be the ideal A target binding profile, which is specificity for the prion-like strains of A, with no binding to A monomers or plaque, said ProMIS CSO, Dr. Neil Cashman.

Results of prior AD clinical trials with mAbs targeting A support the ideal product profile of selective binding only to the neurotoxic, prion-like forms of A. In such trials, mAbs binding to A monomer (e.g. bapineuzemab, solanezumab) were associated with target distraction and lack of efficacy, whereas binding to A plaque (e.g. bapineuzemab, aducanumab) appeared related to significant adverse events such as neurovascular edema (brain swelling), also called ARIA-E (Amyloid related imaging abnormalities with edema).

Our process for selecting lead products for drug development has allowed identification of several product candidates with the ideal target binding profile, commented Dr. Elliot Goldstein, ProMIS CEO. We now look forward to the final stage of functional validation to select for drug development the mAb products that block the neurotoxicity and propagation of the prion-like forms of A.

The Company applied its proprietary discovery platform, consisting of ProMIS and Collective Coordinates, to successfully identify distinct target epitopes on prion-like strains of misfolded A.

About ProMIS Neurosciences, Inc.

The mission of ProMIS Neurosciences is to discover and develop precision medicine therapeutics for effective treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimers disease and ALS.

ProMIS Neurosciences proprietary target discovery engine is based on the use of two, complementary techniques. The Company applies its thermodynamic, computational discovery platformProMIS and Collective Coordinates  to predict novel targets known as Disease Specific Epitopes (DSEs) on the molecular surface of misfolded proteins. Using this unique "precision medicine" approach, ProMIS Neurosciences aims to develop novel antibody therapeutics and specific companion diagnostics for Alzheimers disease and ALS. The company has also developed two proprietary technologies to specifically identify very low levels of misfolded proteins in a biological sample. In addition, ProMIS Neurosciences owns a portfolio of therapeutic and diagnostic patents relating to misfolded SOD1 in ALS,

and currently has a preclinical monoclonal antibody therapeutic against this target.

The TSX has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This information release may contain certain forward-looking information. Such information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by statements herein, and therefore these statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. All forward-looking statements are based on the Company's current beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to it as well as other factors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Due to risks and uncertainties, including the risks and uncertainties identified by the Company in its public securities filings, actual events may differ materially from current expectations. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For further information please consult the Company's website at: http://www.promisneurosciences.com

Follow us on Twitter

Like us on LinkedIn

NATIONAL Equicom

Michael Moore

Tel. 858-886-7813

mmoore(at)national(dot)ca

Abby Garfunkel

Tel. 403-218-2887

agarfunkel(at)national(dot)ca

or contact

Dr. Elliot Goldstein

President and Chief Executive Officer, ProMIS Neurosciences Inc.

Tel. 415 341-5783

Elliot.goldstein(at)promisneurosciences(dot)com
"iCOM CMS is a game changer in the area of edge computing," said John Peter Valiulis, vice president, North America thermal management marketing, for Emerson Network Power.

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson and the worlds leading provider of critical infrastructure for information and communications technology systems, today introduced the iCOM CMS, a new thermal system control aimed at giving IT professionals much needed monitoring and protection of equipment in small IT spaces supporting edge computing. The new system is available in North America.

The announcement of iCOM CMS was made today at the start of AFCOM Data Center World conference in New Orleans, where Emerson Network Power is exhibiting the iCOM CMS and other data center infrastructure solutions.

iCOM CMS includes the first Internet of Things (IoT) app in the thermal space, giving IT managers unsurpassed visibility into thermal conditions and cooling equipment performance in these small spaces via mobile devices, the web and building management systems (BMS). Emersons recently released 2016 Cooling the Edge Survey found that monitoring was among the top three concerns facing IT professionals in North America when it comes to managing small IT spaces. Nearly half said these spaces contribute to company revenues.

As these small spaces grow in criticality in support of edge computing for cloud and collocation processing, iCOM CMS protects critical business revenue supported by these spaces by providing real-time alarms and notifications that reduce downtime and speed recovery. For the first time, IT managers can use mobile devices to view room and equipment conditions and alarm notifications, assign alarms to service technicians and ensure the progress of technician troubleshooting through automated workflow tracking.

iCOM CMS supports the critical transformation of data center processes, delivering increased visibility and control, said Jennifer Cooke, research director for global market intelligence provider International Data Corporations (IDC) Datacenter Trends and Strategies team. Improving protection and operational efficiency are top priorities for data center and facility managers; iCOM CMS provides them with a more efficient use of cooling resources as well as streamlined processes to monitor and control remote facilities. Increasingly, in hybrid environments that utilize edge computing and IoT technologies, this remote visibility and control is essential, Cooke added.

"As enterprises are now focusing more on gathering data flows at the logical extremes of a network, remote visibility and workflow tracking control of the state of IT at the edge is critical. Enterprises need an understanding of the cooling conditions of these spaces before problems arise. iCOM CMS provides unique, advanced remote visibility and alarm management from any mobile device, desktop computer or building management system," said Alea Fairchild, entrepreneur in residence, Blue Hill Research.

iCOM CMS is simple to deploy and secure, with streamlined BMS integration and accessibility behind corporate firewalls. It works with existing Liebert brand small space cooling systems, including the ceiling mounted Liebert Mini-Mate2 system and the wall mounted Liebert Datamate system. It also will be available with the new Liebert SRC mini-split system by the end of 2016.

iCOM CMS is a game changer in the area of edge computing. It answers a powerful need of our IT customers for more reliable and cost-effective management of these revenue-critical spaces, and it is another important milestone in the development of our thermal controls strategy, said John Peter Valiulis, vice president, North America thermal management marketing, for Emerson Network Power.

For more information about iCOM CMS and other data center infrastructure solutions, visit http://www.EmersonNetworkPower.com

# # #

About Emerson Network Power

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson, is the worlds leading provider of critical infrastructure technologies and life cycle services for information and communications technology systems. With an expansive portfolio of intelligent, rapidly deployable hardware and software solutions for power, thermal and infrastructure management, Emerson Network Power enables efficient, highly-available networks. Learn more at http://www.EmersonNetworkPower.com.

About Emerson

Emerson, based in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions for customers in industrial, commercial, and consumer markets around the world. The company is comprised of five business segments: Process Management, Industrial Automation, Network Power, Climate Technologies, and Commercial & Residential Solutions. Sales in fiscal 2015 were $22.3 billion. For more information, visit http://www.emerson.com
BirdEye introduces Athena for business insights Athena converts unstructured data into straightforward insights so a business knows how they compare to the competition across critical operational metrics.

Customer experience leader BirdEye today announced the release of Athena, an enhanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine that provides businesses with actionable insights on feedback from their own and their competitors customers. Athena is built for operational leaders to make customer experience improvements that drive tangible results.

While most text analytics tools measure demographics and customer segments, Athena focuses on customer experience  identifies the root cause of positive and negative sentiment surrounding each customer comment. It provides the why and where behind open-ended comment data so operational leaders can turn insights into action at the frontlines.

BirdEyes Athena offers insights in a three-tiered hierarchy:

1) Business level: What are the top positive and negative themes for the overall business?

2) Sentiment level: What keywords & adjectives do customers frequently use to describe these themes?

3) Location/product level: Where can managers go to fix issues or replicate positive performance?

With Athena, businesses can build out a profile of what customers are happy or unhappy about by discovering adjectives around keywords. For example, if a restaurant sees that customer sentiment for pizza crust is overwhelmingly negative, management can delve deeper to find the root cause and learn their crust is frequently described as soggy. Athena displays which locations have the most mentions of soggy crusts so the business knows where to go to fix the issue. After management makes changes, Athenas trend analysis feature shows if negative mentions for pizza crust decrease.

Athenas Business Alert feature intelligently detects themes from individual transactions and informs leadership of trending issues. For example, if a car rental companys Cincinnati location receives a surge of complaints about dirty cars, leadership will receive an alert to call that location manager and fix the issue.

Athena is not an analytics product, its a get-it-done product. As a COO, Im not interested in demographic data, I just want to find the problems and fix them to make our customers happy. Athena does that for me. said Neeraj Gupta, COO at BirdEye.

Not only can businesses analyze their own customer insights--BirdEye gives them access to their competitors data as well. With Athena, businesses can benchmark operational performance to understand exactly what customers prefer about the competition and where adjustments could be made for a competitive advantage.

Sentiment analysis on competitors is a game-changer. said Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo and AME Cloud Ventures. BirdEye is crunching feedback from millions of customer conversations. Athena converts all this unstructured data into straightforward insights so a business knows how they compare to the competition across critical operational metrics.

To see the complete picture in context, Athena offers businesses the full flexibility to zoom in on the verbatim customer feedback where themes are mentioned for them and their competitors at both a brand and location level.

Every customer comment is an opportunity to learn and improve, said Naveen Gupta, CEO at BirdEye Athena brings hard data to life and gives businesses the intel to completely redefine customer experience from the ground up.

About BirdEye: BirdEye is a SaaS platform that reimagines the way customer feedback is used to acquire and retain connected customers by closing the loop between reputation marketing and customer experience. The BirdEye platform enables businesses to get new reviews and captures existing customer sentiment from review sites, social media, Net Promoter Scores, and support cases in real-time. BirdEye converts all feedback into actionable insights so businesses can engage in every step of the customer journey, establish a positive online presence, and benchmark performance across locations and against competitors. In todays reputation economy, BirdEye provides the eyes, ears and algorithms necessary to create a standout customer experience that pleases a consumer society reliant on instant gratification. BirdEye platform is trusted by 10,000+ businesses and prominent F1000 enterprises. BirdEye was founded in 2012 by Google, Yahoo, Amazon alumni and backed by Silicon Valleys who incl. Trinity ventures, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.

Contact: Helen Irias, pr(at)birdeye(dot)com

Phone # 1-800-561-3357
LRQA, a leading provider of professional assurance services, has expanded its food safety training courses to offer FDA-recognized FSMA Preventive Controls Qualified Individual for Human Food FSPCA training. The course provides a better understanding of the requirements of FDA Standards, Good Manufacturing Practices, FDA Compliance, hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls that meet the needs of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The FSMA Preventive Controls Qualified Individual for Human Food FSPCA Training helps ensure the safe manufacturing/processing, packing and holding of food products for human consumption in the United States.

This FSMA Preventive Controls Qualified Individual (PCQI) training course was developed by the Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance (FSPCA) and is the standardized curriculum recognized by FDA. Successfully completing this course is one way to meet the FMSA employee training requirements for a PCQI.

This FSMA training course is designed with a curriculum which is intended as a FSMA PCQI training tool to assist companies in complying with the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act preventive controls regulations as part of the FSMA final rules. LRQA now offers this course for public registration and for private, on-site delivery.

The consequences of a food recall can have devastating financial impacts for any company, explains Chris Koci, President. LRQAs food safety training courses can help a company on this journey to assure their food products are as safe as possible for the consumer... The best recourse is prevention through developing a strong Food Safety Management System that is supported by highly qualified Preventive Controls Individuals embedded in the organization.

The course agenda includes training on Good Manufacturing Practices; biological, chemical, physical and economically motivated food safety hazards; development and resources for an effective food safety plan; hazard analysis and preventive controls determination and controls; food allergen, sanitation, and supply-chain preventive controls; verification and validation and record-keeping procedures; recall plan; and extensive regulation overviews. LRQA food safety trainers have extensive industry and auditing experience, are IRCA- and/or Exemplar-certified auditors, and have successfully attended and completed the FDA-recognized FSPCA Preventive Controls for Human Food & Lead Instructor Training course.

LRQAs FSPCA PCQI training course attendees will receive an FSPCA preventive controls for human food participant manual, and upon successful completion, attendees will receive an FDA-recognized FSPCA Preventive Controls Qualified Individual training course certificate.

LRQA will hold this FSMA FSPCA training course across the Americas in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Peru initially with additional locations to be announced.

Additional information about the course can be found at: http://www.lrqausa.com/Food-Safety/training-courses/FSMA-Preventive-Controls-Qualified-Individual-Human-Food-FSPCA-Training.aspx. To request on-site or public training, call 888-877-8001 or contact us at info-usa(at)lrqa.com.

Ends

Notes to editors

Lloyds Register (LR) is a global engineering, technical and business services organisation wholly owned by the Lloyds Register Foundation, a UK charity dedicated to research and education in science and engineering. Founded in 1760 as a marine classification society, LR now operates across many industry sectors, with over 9,000 employees in 78 countries.

LR has a long-standing reputation for integrity, impartiality and technical excellence. Our compliance, risk and technical consultancy services give clients confidence that their assets and businesses are safe, sustainable and dependable. Through our global technology centres and research network, LR is at the forefront of understanding the application of new science and technology to future-proof our clients businesses.

About LR Management Systems (LRQA)

LRQA is a member of the Lloyds Register group. LRQA is a leading independent provider of professional assurance services including assessment, certification, validation, verification and training across a broad spectrum of standards, schemes and customised assurance programmes.
WHAT: Orvis and other Perkins Rowe retailers will donate a portion of sales to St. Vincent de Pauls House in a Box. The House in a Box program provides new household items for families who have lost everything as a result of natural disasters. The Relief at the Rowe event will also coincide with the 7th annual Perkins Rowe Arts Festival, featuring an arts market, live music and children's activities.

WHEN: Saturday, September 24, from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.

WHO: Organized by Perkins Rowe and its retailers. Open to all members of the public.

WHY: To support community disaster relief.

HOW: The public can shop any of the participating stores at Perkins Rowe on Saturday, September 24 and a portion of the purchases will go to the House in a Box programs disaster relief efforts.

_______________________________________

About Orvis

Founded in 1856, Orvis pioneered the mail order industry in the United States. It now operates multiple catalog titles, three websites, more than 80 retail stores in the US and the UK, including its Flagship Store in Manchester, Vermont, and serves a network of over 400 authorized dealers worldwide. The oldest continuously operated catalog company in the country, Orvis provides authentic products, knowledge and experience that define outdoor adventures, with unsurpassed innovation and expertise in fly-fishing and wingshooting. A leading corporate steward for the environment, Orvis contributes 5% of pre-tax profits every year to protect nature, support communities and advance canine health and wellbeing. The companys international headquarters for its mail order, ecommerce, retail, and wholesale businesses are in Manchester, Vermont. Learn more at http://www.orvis.com.
This honor is a tribute to the hardworking staff at IO Education and the educators whose dedication to student success pushes us to be the best partners we can be, said Michael Williamson, chief executive officer at IO Education.

IO Education, the leader in empowering educators through data to improve educational outcomes, has been recognized as a 2016 Tyton Growth50 company. The Tyton Growth50 celebrates innovative organizations achieving impact at scale through a combination of strong financial performance; market awareness and adoption; and demonstrated customer outcomes across the preK12, postsecondary, corporate training, and consumer education markets. As one of 50 organizations selected this year, this achievement marks a significant milestone in IO Educations evolution.

This honor is a tribute to the hardworking staff at IO Education and the educators whose dedication to student success pushes us to be the best partners we can be, said Michael Williamson, chief executive officer at IO Education. Being named to Growth50 is a significant milestone for us as we continue to seek new and better ways to utilize data to help educators improve outcomes for students and educators.

Each year, experts on the Tyton Partners team review nominated companies in the space, evaluating each against the Tyton Growth Framework to narrow the field. That analysis is used to select the 50 companies that best exemplify the impact, engagement, awareness and sustainability necessary to have lasting impact for their partners.

Early-stage investment in education remains strong, but we often lose sight of what happens to these companies after initial funding, noted Adam Newman, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Tyton Partners. Companies selected for this years Tyton Growth50 are exemplars for understanding the transition from early- to growth and later-stage businesses, making that transition successfully and achieving impact at scale across a variety of segments of the education market.

With IO Education, schools and districts can break down data silos and aggregate state, district, classroom and assessment data to develop a rich understanding of student growth. Learn more at https://ioeducation.com.

About IO Education

As a leader in the education technology industry for over 18 years, IO Education is on a mission to empower educators through data to improve educational outcomes. The solutions from IO Education are used in all 50 states by over 5,000 schools and 120,000 educators, supporting instruction for over 5,000,000 students. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, GA.

About Tyton Partners

Tyton Partners is the leading provider of investment banking and strategy consulting services to the global knowledge sector. The firm has offices in Boston and Stamford (CT), and an experienced team of bankers and consultants who deliver a unique spectrum of services from mergers and acquisitions and capital markets access to strategy and market development services that helps companies, organizations, and investors navigate the complexities of the education, media, and information markets. Tyton Partners leverages a deep foundation of transactional and advisory experience and unparalleled level of global relationships to make its clients aspirations a reality and catalyze innovation in the sector. For more information, visit http://www.tytonpartners.com or follow us @tytonpartners.
Law360 has included Morrison & Foerster among its Litigation Powerhouses, an inaugural list of 50 firms that were chosen by examining the size of the firms litigation teams and the outstanding victories those teams netted between March 1, 2015, and March 1, 2016. Among other things, the report showcases historic, precedent-setting wins in class action litigation, jaw-dropping jury verdicts in courts across the country, victories in the smartphone wars, and dramatic upsets on appeal.

Morrison & Foerster is ranked 15th on the list, with Law360 highlighting several significant matters for its clients.

Were honored to be recognized as one of the top litigation firms in the country, Ben Fox, co-chair of Morrison & Foersters Litigation Department, said. Understanding our clients needs and helping them with their most difficult legal issues are our top priorities. This recognition demonstrates the respect that the firm has earned for the superb service and results that we consistently deliver for our clients.

Law360 also noted the strategic expansion of the firms litigation group, including adding Securities Litigation, Enforcement and White-Collar Defense Practice partners Carrie Cohen, James Koukios and Chuck Duross over recent years, and expansion of the firms Government Contracts and Public Procurement practice with the addition of eight new partners in April 2016.

In addition to showcasing the firms litigation victories, Law360 wrote: With a remarkable record of trial and appellate successes, the firms litigators are even more remarkably free of ego. They describe an environment where collaboration trumps competition, where egos take a back seat to client service and where law is a profession first and a business second.

About MoFo

We are Morrison & Foerster  a global firm of exceptional credentials. Our clients include some of the largest financial institutions, investment banks, Fortune 100, and technology and life sciences companies. The Financial Times has named the firm to its lists of most innovative law firms in North America and Asia every year that it has published its Innovative Lawyers Reports in those regions. In the past few years, Chambers USA has honored MoFos Bankruptcy and IP teams with Firm of the Year awards, the Corporate/M&A team with a client service award, and the firm as a whole as Global USA Firm of the Year. Our lawyers are committed to achieving innovative and business-minded results for our clients, while preserving the differences that make us stronger.
A terrific, refreshing memoir  a compelling story well told.  John Thornton, Chairman, Brookings Institution and former President of Goldman Sachs

In a compelling memoir, Nokias legendary CEO Jorma Ollila presents a riveting account of the inner workings of the company that created the global mobile revolution. CEO from 1992 to 2006, Ollila led an old-fashioned Finnish conglomerate from near catastrophe to become the worlds leading mobile phone manufacturer. He built a company where visionary thinking and courageous decisions were combined with exceptional creativity and first-rate engineering, leading to phenomenal growth.

Against All Odds: Leading Nokia from Near Catastrophe to Global Success narrates Ollilas personal and professional journey, where readers learn about the fine line between stratospheric success and disastrous failure. His stories are filled with lessons about the nature of leadership, the importance of shared values, and the need for strategic thinking. He is especially upfront about working with his executive and management teams as well as encounters with figures such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and George Soros.

This is a story of exceptional success, said Ollila, but at the same time of the poor judgment we sometimes showed and the bad decisions and mistakes that we made.

The result of those bad decisions: Nokia sold its declining mobile devices division to Microsoft in 2014.

Against All Odds, published in Finnish in 2013 and translated into English for the first time, includes a new Epilogue to bring the reader up to date on Ollilas thoughts about more recent events regarding the company, including the decision to sell its mobile phone business to Microsoft and its merger with Alcatel-Lucent.

About the Authors

Jorma Ollila became the pre-eminent European businessman of his generation during his time as Nokia's CEO and chairman (19992012). He served as Chairman of the Board of Royal Dutch Shell from 2006 to 2015. Currently hes an Advisory Partner at investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners. Harri Saukkomaa is chairman and founder of the public relations firm Tekir. Translated into English by Richard Powell.

About Maven House Press

An independent publisher specializing in forward-thinking business books, Maven House Press was founded in 2012. Its titles are distributed by Ingram Publisher Services-Legato. For more information visit http://mavenhousepress.com.
Bak USA's Atlas 12 is now available nationwide through collaboration with Microsoft Direct Today were another step closer to making that dream a reality.

Bak USA, a mobile computer company based in Buffalo, New York, has collaborated with Microsoft Direct. According to the announcement, Bak USAs newest computer, the Atlas 12, is now available for order at any Microsoft retail store in the United States.

Bak USA, which opened in January 2015 and began collaborating with Microsoft last March, has been working with local schools and other global tech leaders such as Intel to develop the Atlas 12, a 2-in-1 mobile computer that is purpose-built for K-12 classrooms.

Our vision is to make high-quality technologies accessible to everyone, especially students, said Bak USA Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder Christian Bak. Today were another step closer to making that dream a reality. As we continue to work with Microsoft, we increase our capacity to build high-quality technologies, celebrate American standards of manufacturing, and make a meaningful impact on education.

The Atlas 12 is built with 360 degrees of flexibility, allowing it to function as a laptop or a tablet. Unique features include increased durability, 180-degree rotatable camera, attached stylus, detachable microscope, and a built-in handle.

We are delighted to continue to expand our relationship with Bak USA as they launch the Atlas 12 with Windows 10, now available at Microsoft retail stores, said Peter Han, vice president, OEM Worldwide Marketing. The Atlas 12 will provide the education market a device with versatility in design and use with its 360 degrees of flexibility along with unique deployment packages and digitized lesson plans.

Additionally, schools and small organizations that purchase the Atlas 12 through Microsoft can take advantage of Bak USAs flexible deployment packages, features of which include digitizing lesson plans, etching school-specific logos, and offering multiple packaging and delivery options.

Available through Microsoft's Shape the Future campaigna government program dedicated to making technologies accessible to students and small businesses among othersthe Atlas 12 retails for $399 at Microsofts 79 retail stores across the United States.

About Bak USA

Bak USA (@_BakUSA) is a mobile computer company in Buffalo, New York. A grassroots enterprise with a global outreach, the company is aligning with local agencies, Intel, and Microsoft to build accessible technologies, empower local communities, and activate social prosperity. The Bak USA dream is to make high-quality technologies available to every human being on earth.

Press Contact

Christine Denham

281.433.5067

cdenham(at)martingroupmarketing(dot)com

###
Daniela Hagen, Director of Global Compliance and Information Security, cleverbridge

cleverbridge, a provider of global subscription billing solutions, announces cleverbridge Director of Global Compliance and Information Security Daniela Hagen will present at FOLEYTech Summit Boston 2016 to be held September 21 at The Westin Copley Place in Boston. Hagen will participate in the Export Controls and National Security" panel discussion from 11:45 a.m.  12:45 p.m. The event is an opportunity to exchange new ideas and solutions with top investors, attorneys, service providers and entrepreneurs to help businesses tackle todays challenges and grow in an evolving market.

Joining Hagen on the panel will be Bobbi Blake, Vice President, Legal & Business Affairs, Altair Engineering; Scott DePasquale, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Utilidata; Danielle Sheer, General Counsel, Vice President, and Corporate Secretary, Carbonite; and moderator Christopher Swift, Senior Counsel, Foley & Lardner LLP. From the Iran Nuclear Accord to the Panama Papers to growing tensions with Russia, global events present new challenges for technology companies working across international boundaries. This panel will explore the U.S. governments growing use of economic sanctions, export controls, and other laws to address those challenges, as well as the strategies technology companies use to manage risk, preserve value and adapt to a rapidly changing world.

Hagen is the Director of Global Compliance and Information Security of cleverbridge, where she is responsible for the design, implementation and management of the companys international compliance framework for their German, U.S. and Japanese office locations. With over ten years experience in compliance and privacy, Hagen is a former PCI qualified security assessor and regularly provides guidance to the executive team and clients on topics such as international export compliance regulations, privacy and payment-related compliance issues.

For more information or to register for Boston TECH Party: Path to Possibilities and Growth, click here. To learn more about cleverbridge, please contact inquiry(at)cleverbridge(dot)com or visit http://www.cleverbridge.com.

About cleverbridge

cleverbridge provides global subscription billing solutions that help companies build long-term customer relationships and grow recurring revenue streams. With its flexible, cloud-based billing and monetization platform, cleverbridge integrates seamlessly with client systems, simplifies subscription business models and delivers an optimized online customer experience. Leveraging cleverbridge expertise, technology and services, clients monetize products and services more effectively, rapidly expand their global subscriber base and maximize customer lifetime value. Headquartered in Cologne, Germany, cleverbridge has offices in Chicago, San Francisco and Tokyo. For more information, visit http://www.cleverbridge.com.
BBB serving Tarrant, Johnson, Hood, Somervell, Wise, Parker, Erath and Palo Pinto Counties today announces it is expanding its reach by merging with BBB serving Central, Coastal, Southwest Texas and the Permian Basin. The partnership will expand the BBB service area to a total of 105 counties, covering more than half of the great state of Texas. This merger will benefit both businesses and consumers by offering enhanced BBB services to about nine million people across Central, Coastal, Southwest Texas, the Permian Basin, Brazos Valley and Deep East Texas, and now the Fort Worth and surrounding areas.

The newly combined territory boasts a membership of more than 17,000 Accredited Businesses, which represents the largest accredited business base among all BBBs in North America.

"With the merger, we will build on each other's strengths, combine resources and initiate new programs to meet the needs of today's businesses and consumers," says Carrie A. Hurt, BBB President and CEO. "We are committed to the success of this merger which results in expansion of BBB services throughout the local Fort Worth community."

Consumers in the Fort Worth and surrounding areas will see increased community outreach, higher social media engagement and regular alerts on scams and consumer issues affecting their area. They will also have real time access to BBB experts.

Businesses will have access to award-winning marketing services, joint advertising campaigns and BBBs corporate partnership program. Programs and services, like business ethics training and business webinars, will also be expanded.

Mark Titus, Chairman of the BBB Board of Directors in Fort Worth, adds, "We are excited about this merger because of our mutual commitment to fulfilling BBB's mission to be the leader in advancing marketplace trust. By combining the strengths and resources of both trusted organizations, we will increase our ability to serve even more businesses and consumers." Titus added that this merger decision was approved by both the Fort Worth and BBB Austin boards of directors.

BBB will maintain a local presence throughout the Fort Worth area, headed up by a regional director and feature an official BBB vehicle. The merger will follow a proven model of success that has generated positive results through five mergers in Waco, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Midland/ Odessa, and Bryan/College Station over the past 13 years.

About Better Business Bureau:

For more than 100 years, Better Business Bureau has been helping people find businesses, brands and charities they can trust. In 2015, people turned to BBB more than 172 million times for BBB Business Reviews on more than 4.7 million businesses and Charity Reports on 11,000 charities, all available for free at bbb.org. BBB serving Central, Coastal, Southwest Texas and Permian Basin, which serves 105 counties in Texas, has offices in Austin, Waco, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Midland, Bryan and Fort Worth. Your BBB is one of more than 100 local, independent BBBs across the U.S. Canada and Mexico.

###
Patty Peterson, Director of Organization Development

Tindall Corporation, a national leader in precast concrete, is pleased to announce Patty Petersons transition from Senior Project Manager to Director of Organization Development. In this new Human Resources role, Peterson will focus on development and training initiatives, including talent management, career planning and succession, and employee engagement.

Peterson joined Tindalls Virginia division in 1995, and her duties have spanned engineering, quality control, contract negotiation, scheduling and estimating. During her 20-plus years with Tindall, Patty has helped manage many of the Virginia divisions largest projects.

Pattys experience and knowledge of Tindall and our industry make her an extremely valuable member of the Human Resources team, said Kelly Scheib, Vice President of Human Resources. She will be critical in spearheading the development of our most important asset: our people."

In addition to her work at Tindall, Peterson currently serves as the chair of the Financial Performance/Risk Management Committee for the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute. She is also active on PCIs Business Performance Council. Additionally, she serves on the Board of Directors for the American Subcontractors Associations national chapter. Peterson previously served as ASA of Metro Washingtons treasurer, vice president and president.

Headquartered in Spartanburg, S.C., Tindall Corporation is one of North Americas largest precast concrete companies with five locations providing design, manufacture and installation of precast, prestressed concrete structural systems, architectural cladding systems and underground utility structures. In 2015, Tindall ranked 5th in Engineering News-Records (ENR) Top 20 Specialty Concrete Contractors in the United States list and 77th overall in ENRs Top 600 Specialty Contractors list.
A Texas appeals court in Houston has reversed a lower courts judgment of more than $50 million in a dispute over a land purchase and lease for a Katy hospital. The 14th Court of Appeals ordered a new trial, ruling that the judgment could have been based on unsupported theories of liability.

The case involved Katy Pin Oak Hospital, which ultimately failed and produced numerous lawsuits and counterclaims. The 61st District Court in Harris County had awarded more than $50 million to Pankaj Shah, an investor and doctor involved in Apex Katy Physicians LLC, which acted as landlord for the project. Mr. Shah and Apex had filed claims for alleged wrongdoing against the owners of the hospital and Turnaround Management Group, the consulting business that set up the hospital deal.

The owners of Turnaround Management argued on appeal that the awarded damages were not linked to specific causes of action and that Mr. Shahs claims were not supported by trial evidence. The appeals court agreed, saying at least one of the theories of liability was invalid.

Robin L. Harrison of Houston-based Hicks Thomas LLP won the appeal for Turnaround and its parties along with trial counsel and attorney Douglas R. Little.

I think the outcome will be much better the second time around, if there is a second trial, said Mr. Harrison. To get a large punitive damages award in a non-jury trial is unusual and, in this case we believe, entirely unwarranted.

Mr. Harrison said he believes the decision is the first time a state appeals court has applied the 2000 Texas Supreme Court ruling in Crown Life Insurance Co. v. Casteel in a bench trial. In that case, the justices reversed a judgment from a jury verdict, saying they could not determine if the verdict, which included several different claims, was based on an invalid theory of liability.

Founded in 1997, Texas-based Hicks Thomas LLP is a premier litigation firm representing plaintiffs and defendants across the nation. With offices in Houston, Amarillo, and Sacramento, California, the firm provides in-depth experience in cases involving oil and gas, environmental, complex commercial, toxic tort, construction, products liability, corporate governance, securities, banking, insurance coverage, transportation, trade secrets and business litigation. Visit the firm at http://www.hicks-thomas.com.

The case is Zaidi et al. v. Shah et al., case number 14-14-00855-CV, in the Texas Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth District.
Jon Slangerup, Mxi Technologies' new Chairman and CEO

Mxi Technologies, the leader in aviation maintenance software, announced today that Jon Slangerup has been named Mxis new Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. In this role, Mr. Slangerup will be responsible for working with the Leadership team to further strengthen Mxi Technologies market position and drive corporate growth.

A senior-level executive with experience spanning the fields of aviation, technology and logistics, Mr. Slangerup joins Mxi Technologies from the Port of Long Beach -- one of the worlds premier seaports connecting trade between the United States and Asia  where he is currently transitioning as its Chief Executive Officer to take on his new role at Mxi. Previously, Mr. Slangerup spent 20 years at FedEx, where he advanced to become President of FedEx Canada, and helped build the Canadian business into a billion-dollar enterprise.

I am excited to be joining Mxi Technologies, a company with a strong track record of operational excellence and market leadership, Mr. Slangerup said in a statement. With such great prospects and opportunities ahead of us, supported by an experienced senior leadership team, I look forward to working with the team to deliver exceptional value, innovative solutions, and a long-term product vision to our customers and community stakeholders.

Mr. Slangerup began his career in military and commercial aviation, and over the next twenty years, went on to serve as a president, CEO and/or director of both public and private companies, successfully building businesses ranging from small technology startups to global brands. In addition to the Mxi Board, he currently serves on the Board of Trustees for his alma mater, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

He succeeds Bill Cavitt, who served as Mxi President & CEO since 2014. During his tenure, Mr. Cavitt was instrumental in strengthening Mxis position as one of the worlds leading global aviation maintenance management software companies. The Company delivered strong results in 2015, and is poised to exceed its profitability and revenue targets for 2016.

With todays announcement, we are confident that Jon Slangerups proven executive experience will position Mxi favorably for continuous growth and success well into the future, says James Johnston, Partner at NexPhase Capital. The board welcomes Jon to the Leadership team, and is grateful for Bills contributions as CEO and President.

About Mxi Technologies:

Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Mxi Technologies is a leading provider of integrated and intelligent maintenance management software, support and services catering specifically to the global aviation industry, including commercial and defense operators, third-party MROs, and OEM aftermarket service providers. Mxi Technologies suite of Maintenix software is uniquely designed to help aviation organizations maximize the revenue potential of their aviation assets through standard, lean, and predictable maintenance. Mxis global footprint of customers range from emerging, small to midsized organizations to the largest global enterprises, with single to multi-site deployments that scale as high as 6,000 users in a single instance. For more information, visit us at mxi.com.
2016 Fast 50 Nomination We credit our recognition to our company-wide commitment to the best in user-engaging mobile and web design and development services for our clients  and our dedication to leadership and solutions in nearshoring.

For the second year in a row, Austin Business Journal has ranked iTexico as one of the citys 50 fastest growing companies  a testament to the global software technology organizations unique strategy and commitment to client innovation & service excellence.

Following its second recognition in two years on the Inc. 5000 list as one of the top 5,000 American businesses providing unmatched innovation and growth to the economy, iTexicos newest prestigious local ranking in a competitive Austin software and technology market illustrates its success and devotion in delivering leading-edge, user-engaging applications to its clients, as well as its leadership in providing innovative nearshore solutions.

Its an honor to again receive recognition by Austin Business Journal as one of the foremost business leaders and growth generators in the Austin community, said iTexico CEO & Co-Founder Anurag Kumar. We credit our recognition to our company-wide commitment to the best in user-engaging mobile and web design and development services for our clients  and our dedication to leadership and solutions in nearshoring.

As the need for reliable, future-forward software applications increase in Austin, the United States, and worldwide, iTexico is well positioned with its current staff of over 140 expert designers, architects, and developers in Austin, San Francisco, and Guadalajara, Mexico.

For complete information about Austin Business Journals 2016 Fast 50, visit http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/. For information about iTexico and its comprehensive mobile development and fullstack nearshore solutions, please visit http://www.itexico.com.
Today New York City-based premium audio company Master & Dynamic released the latest colorway for its widely celebrated brass ME05 Earphones: a brilliant black. Named the top pick (for earphones) of 2015 by tech outlet WIRED, the earphones have now received their third colorway, one fitting of the city where they were designed and its latest Fashion Week. The black ME05 Earphones are available at http://www.masterdynamic.com for $199.

Much like the original brass ME05 Earphones and the palladium-coated colorway released shortly after, the black ME05 Earphones have the same acoustic properties  via 8mm titanium drivers housed in the products elegant body  that Hypebeast dubbed first class audio capabilities, making them the perfect fit for those that want high quality audio on the go. Similarly, the black ME05 Earphones also incorporate the same sophisticated ergonomic elements and elegant details, including their brass build, laser etching and mirrored accents that brilliantly reflect light. The appealing aesthetic of the ME05 makes them a perfect fit for New York Fashion Week, which coincides with the products launch.

Included in the box are two replacement sound filters, a polishing cloth, an aluminum clothing clip and a leather storage box. Replaceable acoustic filters (extra acoustic filters are included) prevent dirt and debris from blocking the acoustic chamber and exemplify Master & Dynamics commitment to detail and longevity.

Master & Dynamics new ME05 Earphones colorway marks the latest offering from the rapidly expanding premium audio company, which has added projects with Spotify, The Rolling Stones and Japanese designer Poggy to its resume in 2016, along with a new palladium colorway for the brass ME05 Earphones, which Hypebeast praised for their first class audio capabilities.

Thus far Master & Dynamic has unveiled a number of exciting projects in 2016, including a new limited-edition cobalt blue colorway exclusive to luxury boutique Colette in Paris and the first official headphones of legendary rock band The Rolling Stones. The brands commitment to excellence earned it high marks in 2015 as well, with the release of a number of products and designs such as the MW60 Wireless Over Ear Headphones and the brass ME05 Earphones, each awarded top pick in their respective categories by Wired Magazine.

About Master & Dynamic

Master & Dynamic is a premium audio brand obsessed with sound and creativity. It is a New York City-based company with a deep passion for building beautifully crafted, richly appointed, technically sophisticated sound tools for creative minds. Its collection of headphones are tuned to provide a rich warm sound that perfectly captures the exceptional detail of well recorded music. Master & Dynamic sees its headphones as modern thinking caps: tools to help focus, inspire and transport your mind. Designed for decades of use, Master & Dynamic products are engineered to last, utilizing only the finest materials such as premium leathers and stainless steel, which create the perfect balance of aesthetics, strength, comfort and sound. View the entire collection at http://www.masterdynamic.com.
Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been asked by the American Small Business League (ASBL) to address abuses that have been uncovered in federal small business contracting programs. The ASBL has sent open letters to both Trump and Clinton on the issue.

The ASBL has launched a national campaign to try and focus more media attention during the election on abuses that have been uncovered in federal small business contracting programs. Federal law mandates a minimum of 23% of all federal contracts be awarded to small businesses. Congress has established an additional 5% small business contracting goal for firms owned by women and minorities, as well as a 3% small business contracting goal has been established for service-disabled veteran owned firms.

The Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General released Report 5-15 on the diversion of federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and other clearly large businesses. It stated, One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the entire Federal Government today is that large businesses are receiving small business procurement awards and agencies are receiving credit for these awards.

During his first campaign, President Obama released a pro small business statement that ended with the sentence, It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.

On July 25, 2016, Mother Jones magazine released an article by Josh Harkinson on the issue titled, Giant Corporations Are Reaping Billions From Federal Small Business Contracts.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated the federal program for Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSB). Their report GAO-10-108 stated, By failing to hold firms accountable, SBA and contracting agencies have sent a message to the contracting community that there is no punishment or consequences for committing fraud or abusing the intent of the SDVOSB program.

Professor Charles Tiefer served in 2008-2011 as Commissioner on the Congressional chartered, Federal Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He issued a statement to ValueWalk on the issue in April 2014 stating, Billions of dollars are at stake for small businesses in America They are, frankly, being cheated out of their opportunity to provide goods and services to the American people because large companies such as Verizon, Citigroup, Boeing etc, have figured out how to manipulate the system. Worse, when people such as Lloyd Chapman, the head of the American Small Business League and a true champion in this field try to expose these unsavory practices, they are held up to scorn and ridicule."

In addition to their efforts to encourage Donald Trump and Secretary Clinton to address abuses in federal small business programs, the ASBL will be contacting Chambers of Commerce and media outlets in battle raid states until November 8th.
Cabling Installation & Maintenance 2016 Innovators Awards Program

Comtrend, a leading designer and manufacturer of networking equipment, announced today that their G.hn-based Powerline Adapter with Power over Ethernet (PoE), model PG-9172PoE, was given the impressive silver-level award by the judges of the annual Cabling Installation & Maintenance 2016 Innovators Awards program. The judging panel consisted of cabling and communications system specifiers, designers, integrators and managers with vast professional experience.

Comtrends G.hn Powerline Adapter with PoE brings the connection of a PoE device as close as the nearest electrical outlet. Simply connect a G.hn Powerline Adapter into the network, and then plug a PG-9172PoE into each electrical outlet for a PoE-enabled device. This reduces installation time and cost by utilizing existing electrical lines to simplify the deployment of PoE enabled devices, such as IP security cameras and VoIP phones. The PG-9172PoE eliminates the time and expense of installing Ethernet (CAT5e/6) cables to every device throughout the home or business.

Unlike wireless connections, Powerline adapters use physical wires to connect directly to devices, thereby eliminating interference and improving performance and security. Traditional Ethernet wiring requires elaborate cabling through walls, crawlspaces, and ceilings that are often troublesome and expensive. With the Comtrend PG-9172PoE, users can take advantage of the existing electrical wires in their home or office to transform every outlet into an Internet access point.

The Director of Marketing at Comtrend North America, Dan Knofler, comments, Comtrend is so excited to have been honored with this award from the Cabling Installation & Maintenance category. They confirmed what our customers told us, that our PG-9172PoE brings an innovative solution to the cabling industry. Installers of IP security cameras, as well as VoIP phones, are learning just how much time and effort is saved through this type of installation. G.hn technology arrived just in time for Comtrends Powerline adapters to deliver the video and voice quality needed for professional deployment.

Alan Bergstein, publisher of Cabling Installation & Maintenance (http://www.cablinginstall.com) said "This prestigious program allows Cabling Installation & Maintenance to celebrate and recognize the most innovative products and services in the structured cabling industry. Our 2016 Honorees are an outstanding example of companies who are making an impact in the industry."

The Innovators Awards are judged based on the following criteria:



Innovative

Value to the User

Sustainability

Meeting a Defined Need

Collaboration

Impact

The 2016 Cabling Installation & Maintenance Innovators Awards Honorees are featured on the October Issue of Cabling Installation & Maintenance magazine as well as on http://www.cablinginstall.com.

About Cabling Installation & Maintenance

Published since 1993, Cabling Installation & Maintenance has provided practical information to professionals responsible for the specification, design, installation and management of structured cabling systems in enterprises, data centers and campuses. Cabling Installation & Maintenance's magazine, website (http://www.cablinginstall.com), email newsletters and webcasts help cabling professionals improve day-to-day operations and enable strategic planning for their networks' optimum long-term performance

About The Cabling Installation & Maintenance 2016 Innovators Awards program

The Cabling Installation & Maintenance 2016 Innovators Awards program reviews and recognizes the most-innovative applications of cabling and communications technology products and systems within the structured cabling industry. Platinum, Gold and Silver Honorees were announced at BICSI's 2016 Fall Conference in San Antonio on Monday, September 12, 2016. Criteria used in the Innovators Awards ranking included: innovation, value, sustainability, collaboration, and impact.

About Comtrend

Comtrend, with more than 25 years of experience, has become one of the leading global providers of advanced networking solutions. Comtrend designs, manufactures, and markets a wide range of networking and surveillance equipment and software. Service providers, businesses, and consumers look to Comtrend for broadband gateways, as well as the latest WiFi, surveillance, Powerline, and coax technologies. Comtrend also remains committed to industry standards, like G.hn for home networking, as well as interoperability and market-leading performance. The company has its North American headquarters in Irvine, California. For more information please visit http://us.comtrend.com/
Scriptel Corporation We are very excited to participate at the eClinicalWorks National Conference this year, said Steve Sedaker, Director of Strategic Marketing at Scriptel.

Scriptel Corporation (Scriptel), a long-time provider of electronic signature solutions and capacitive pen digitizing components, today announced their participation as a Silver sponsor at the upcoming eClinicalWorks National Conference October 21-24, 2016 at the Orlando World Center Marriot.

We are very excited to participate at the eClinicalWorks National Conference this year, said Steve Sedaker, Director of Strategic Marketing at Scriptel. It is a great opportunity to meet face-to-face with members of the eClinicalWorks community, including end users, and to learn about new innovations that are being developed to advance the healthcare industry.

The event will bring together the larger eClinicalWorks community to advance innovation and development while enabling attendees to break down the electronic barriers to brainstorm, gain valuable insights and network face-to-face.

The event will host a variety of concurrent breakout sessions that cover every aspect of eClinicalWorks award-winning electronic health records (EHR) suite that is currently used by over 115,000 users. Their electronic health records are fully integrated with Scriptels ScripTouch electronic signature pads featuring the EasyScript interface. Scriptel will also be introducing a new model signature pad to the eClinicalWorks community at the event.

Members of the Scriptel Sales and Marketing teams will be attending the event. If you are interested in connecting with the Scriptel team, please visit the Scriptel booth (Booth 103) on the event floor, where attendees can find information about electronic signature capture, easy ways to integrate electronic signature pads into their current work flows, and about Scriptels newest products and software. Attendees will also have a chance to participate in a promotional drawing that will take place every 2 hours at the booth.

For additional information on the conference or to register, please visit: https://specialevents.eclinicalworks.com/event/nc-2016/home.

###

About Scriptel:

Based in Columbus, Ohio, Scriptel Corporation offers electronic signature capture pads and components based on its unique StaticCap capacitive pen digitizing technology together with software that integrates signature into cloud-based and locally-installed document workflow systems. After starting up more than 30 years ago as a specialist in digitizing and handwriting recognition technology, Scriptel has been focused on signature capture for the past 15 years with more than 3 million solutions deployed around the world. Our ScripTouch electronic signature pads and custom OEM components for the digital workflow and retail point-of-sale markets deliver high reliability with unrivalled support. Please visit us at scriptel.com.
QL2 Software, the brand name for travel pricing data and an integral part of RM and price optimization across the travel industry, has named Carl Wartzack, Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Carl brings QL2 more than 25 years of transformational global experience and is charged with increasing the companys leadership position across its key travel verticals by expanding and accelerating customer, product and market innovation. QL2 also announced that the company is moving its global headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland.

Carl has an incredible reputation for building and scaling global businesses. Under his leadership, QL2 will continue to lead in the Travel sector, but we will also accelerate our expansion into Retail, Government and Energy, said Paul Campbell, Chief Commercial Officer, QL2. Carl has spent the vast majority of his career leading global business lines from Baltimore. Through this experience, he knows that moving our global headquarters enables QL2 to leverage the rich technology talent within the Baltimore and Washington corridor; and increases our proximity to our growing customer base that has significant presence in that region as well.

Carl Wartzack has spent his career utilizing data and analytics to build market-leading, profitable products and businesses. Prior to joining QL2, he spearheaded major strategic, operational and technical shifts in groundbreaking digital media start-ups Advertising.com, the worlds leading performance-based digital advertising network (acquired by AOL in 2004); and Millennial Media, the worlds largest independent mobile advertising platform (acquired by AOL in 2015). He joined Millennial Media when the company was in its start-up phase and he was a key member of the leadership team that grew the company through its successful 2012 IPO and into a global media powerhouse and industry leader. He has also held key leadership roles at media giants Yahoo, AOL, Verizon and the Washington Post in product management, analytics and operations.

Over the past fifteen years, the QL2 brand has become synonymous with travel data, intelligence and revenue management; and Im proud to join this team, said Carl Wartzack, CEO, QL2 Software. The current pace of change in travel is unprecedented, and in QL2s next phase of evolution, we will bring incomparable innovation in real-time data, analytics and insights which are critical to our customers ability to act and react seamlessly to ever-changing market conditions.

QL2 processes billions of data points daily across its global customer base of large airlines, OTAs, rental car companies, hotels, and most large vacation package providers; train, ferry, bus, and cruise providers. Through its trusted customer relationships, QL2 provides the data necessary for the worlds leading travel companies to make critical business decisions throughout the day, every day.

About QL2

QL2 is the brand name for travel pricing data and an integral part of RM and price optimization across the travel industry. Product managers from around the world who must deal with the complexity of optimizing pricing and revenue on a day-to-day basis rely on QL2s services and solutions for business intelligence and actionable insights. QL2 provides the highest-quality and most comprehensive real-time information needed to optimize competitive strategies and maximize profit margins. Please visit http://www.QL2.com for more information.
Dr. David Parda "As we move into a new era in the war on cancer, collaboration among institutions is an essential ingredient to success." - David Parda, MD, Chair, Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute

A collaboration between Allegheny Health Network (AHN) Cancer Institute and the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center will provide molecular testing for all AHN patients with certain late-stage cancers. Molecular testing helps physicians identify certain mutations or genetic alterations in their cancers, making patients more likely to benefit from certain drugs that target those alterations.

Under the new agreement, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center experts will provide molecular testing for all AHN patients with Stage 4 colorectal cancer, melanoma, non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancers, and advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

By using molecular panel testing, we can gain extraordinary insights into some of the genetic alterations present in each individuals cancer, said Gene Finley, MD, Deputy Director of Medical Oncology, AHN Cancer Institute. Many tumors carry mutations that make them vulnerable to certain medications, and we can use the information provided by Johns Hopkins to help make the best treatment decisions for our patients.

The treatment of cancers based on the results of molecular testing has grown widely over the past few years. The use of trastuzumab, which is manufactured under several names (including Herceptin) to slow the growth of breast cancers that express the HER-2 hormone, is one example of targeted therapy. Herceptin, like other targeted therapies, generally causes fewer unpleasant side effects than chemotherapy.

Our agreement with Johns Hopkins gives us a framework to streamline the ordering of molecular tests, which will in turn expedite the availability of results  said Jan Silverman, MD, System Chair, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, AHN. Quick results are particularly essential for our patients with advanced cancers.

Molecular testing is particularly useful for non-small cell lung cancer patients, as scientists have identified several biomarkers associated with the cancer. About one-third of patients test positive for at least one of them, helping doctors determine how a patient will respond to a particular treatment, Dr. Finley said.

The agreement to provide molecular testing is the latest way in which AHN Cancer Institutes collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center is benefiting patients throughout the Pittsburgh region and beyond. The collaboration has given AHN patients access to innovative clinical trials at Johns Hopkins, as well as second opinions, providing patients with comprehensive treatment options.

As we move into a new era in the war on cancer, collaboration among institutions is an essential ingredient to success, said David Parda, MD, Chair, AHN Cancer Institute. Our agreement with Johns Hopkins is a perfect example of two great institutions breaking down barriers to share expertise for the benefit of patients. We are working together in a collaborative way to optimize the best methods and approaches for molecular testing and implement best practices.

AHN researchers, working with the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), conducted the practice-changing clinical trial that made trastuzemab standard therapy for many breast cancer patients. Pioneering work in molecular testing at both AHN and NSABP also included development of the Oncotype DX assay, further improving a personalized treatment approach for breast cancer patients.

Blair Jobe, MD, and colleagues from the AHN Esophageal and Lung Institute also recently discovered a panel of biomarkers that could detect esophageal cancer at its earliest stages, and many other groups within the AHN Cancer Institute are providing genomic based personalized patient care and conducting advancing research in this important and exciting area within their cancer-specific disease site groups.

About the Allegheny Health Network:

Allegheny Health Network (AHN.ORG), part of Highmark Health, is an integrated healthcare delivery system serving the Western Pennsylvania region. The Network is comprised of eight hospitals, including its flagship academic medical center Allegheny General Hospital, Allegheny Valley Hospital, Canonsburg Hospital, Forbes Hospital, Jefferson Hospital, Saint Vincent Hospital, Westfield Memorial Hospital and West Penn Hospital; an employed physician organization, a research institute, health + wellness pavilions, home and community-based health services and a group purchasing organization. The Network employs approximately 17,500 people, and has more than 2,100 physicians on its medical staff. The Network also serves as a clinical campus for Temple University School of Medicine, Drexel University College of Medicine and the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine.

About Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute: The Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute is home to a comprehensive cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, education, and research program that provides the complete spectrum of oncology care. The Network is comprised of more than 50 oncology clinics across the western Pennsylvania region, including hospital-based programs at Allegheny General Hospital, Allegheny Valley Hospital, Forbes Hospital, Jefferson Hospital, West Penn Hospital and other collaborative hospital partners. The Network is home to more than 200 medical, surgical and radiation oncology physicians, one of the states largest bone marrow transplant and cellular therapy programs, and the nations largest radiation oncology network accredited by both the American Society for Radiation Oncology and American College of Radiology. Allegheny Health Networks cancer research program offers patients access to more than 200 clinical trials and the Networks physicians hold leadership roles at the National Cancer Institute, the NCI-funded National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project, (the worlds foremost breast and bowel cancer research group based at Allegheny General Hospital), and many national and international organizations that advance cancer care. The AHN Cancer Institute also has a formal collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center to share knowledge and expertise to advance patient care, education, and research for cancer patients and oncology professionals.
Dennis and Holly Ensor with their dog, Jerry, and grandson, Gabriel. When we realized the difference Pet Wants made for Jerry, we knew we were sold on Pet Wants, both as customers and as franchise owners. Were so excited to be able to offer Pet Wants to pet families in the community weve lived in for more than 30 years.

Before finding Pet Wants, Holly Ensor spent two days each month cooking 80 pounds of hamburger, 50 cups of rice and 15 pounds of carrots for her two dogs. With their GI issues, her favorite companions couldnt eat commercial food and live indoors, but when she found Pet Wants, that all changed. The high-quality, small-batch kibble was easy on their stomachs, high in nutritional value and meant Holly had a lot more time to spend enjoying her pets.

Now Holly and her husband Dennis are excited to offer Pet Wants to other pet families in their community with their new small business, Pet Wants Springfield.

Dennis and I were looking for a business we could do in retirement and, when we came across Pet Wants, it sparked our interest. We had been cooking for our two dogs (one has since passed away) for many years because they had so many issues with commercial pet food. When we read the Pets Wants testimonials from other pet owners  and saw how many of them were cooking pet food until they found Pet Wants  we knew we had to give it a shot. And you know what? It worked! Holly said. Our Labrador, Jerry, has always suffered GI issues, but not with Pet Wants, and his coat is soft and shiny and hes full of energy.

Pet Wants carefully developed proprietary pet food is slow-cooked in small batches with fresh, all-natural ingredients once per month, so every kibble is guaranteed to be fresh and packed with nutrition. In addition to being made fresh monthly, Pet Wants only sources the best salmon, chicken, lamb, brown rice and other ingredients available. Theres no sugar added, no fillers and no animal by-products and, since Pet Wants never uses corn, wheat, soy or dyes, the food is a great fit for pets with allergies.

Pet Wants Springfield offers free, personal delivery to Springfield, Nixa, Ozark, Republic, Rogersville and the surrounding communities.

When we realized the difference Pet Wants made for Jerry, we knew we were sold on Pet Wants, both as customers and as franchise owners. Were so excited to be able to offer Pet Wants to pet families in the community weve lived in for more than 30 years, she said. Im personally excited to tell people about the nutritional value of Pet Wants. When we were trying to find food for Jerry, we researched everything and tried all kinds of food, but nothing worked until Pet Wants. Its miraculous.

You should feel good about what youre feeding your pets and, with Pet Wants, I know you will, Holly added.

Pet Wants originally launched in Cincinnati in 2010. Owned by Michele Hobbs, the business was built to provide proprietary crafted, fresh, slow-cooked, all-natural pet food delivered to customers through a retail store and a convenient home-delivery service. Hobbs, now the company founder, turned the business into a franchise in 2015 with the help of Franchise Funding Group, an investment and franchise-development company designed to help entrepreneurs scale their companies nationally as franchise systems. Pet Wants Springfield is locally-owned and operated franchise of Pet Wants national company.

To order Pet Wants food for your favorite companion or to learn about the company, call (417)210-8574, email HEnsor(at)PetWants(dot)com or visit http://www.PetWantsSpringfieldMO.com.

About Pet Wants: Pet Wants was started by Michele Hobbs out of love for her pets and frustration. Veterinarians were unable to help relieve her dogs painful skin allergies. After doing much research, Michele discovered the national dog food brand she trusted was not fresh, not all natural, and lacked sufficient nutrition...and when pet food sits in warehouses and store shelves for months and months it loses even more nutritional value. She was committed to developing a better solution for all dogs and cats. Their food is exclusively crafted fresh, healthy, slow-cooked and all natural with no sugar added, no fillers and no animal by-products. They source only the best salmon, chicken, lamb, brown rice, and other ingredients. Fresh ingredients make for better food and better health for pets. And since they never use corn, wheat, soy or dyes, the common pet health problems associated with these ingredients are no longer worries. Their fresh food is conveniently delivered to the customer within weeks of production, not months. Roughly half of Pet Wants products are sold through their store and half through their convenient, home-delivery program. You can learn more at http://www.PetWants.com.
CardioLog Analytics, the leading analytics solution for Office 365, SharePoint and Social, is excited to announce they're heading to Atlanta, Georgia for the highly anticipated , Microsoft Ignite. The largest Microsoft event of the year will take place at the Georgia World Congress Center from Monday September 26th to Friday September 30th 2016.

The team is excited to visit the city of Atlanta and to learn about all the latest advances for SharePoint, Office 365, Azure, Dynamics CRM, Yammer, Power BI and more. The best and brightest minds will come together to discuss the latest advances in cloud technology and all things relating to Microsoft. Attendees will leave the event with fresh ideas, practical tactics and strategic roadmap insights.

The CardioLog team will be showcasing both their On-Premises and SaaS based solutions at booth #2148. They'll be highlighting a set of special reports they've created to assist organizations in improving adoption, boosting engagement, increasing collaboration, easing migration, optimizing portal resources and enhancing portal usability. The team will also be raffling off 5 GoPro cameras throughout the week at the booth.

The team will also be hosting the second part of their Microsoft Ignite Webinar Series on Wednesday September 21st, to show how analytics can be used to ease a SharePoint/Office 365 Migration. To register for the webinar, click here.

About CardioLog Analyics

CardioLog Analytics has been a leader in the field of SharePoint analytics since 2005. CardioLog Analytics is a premier solution specifically designed for SharePoint, and the only on premise SharePoint Analytics solution for enterprises and governments. CardioLog Analytics enables organizations to improve intranet usability, drive portal collaboration, boost user engagement, and enhance overall business productivity. The solution is available as an On-Premises or SaaS solution based on Power BI, with the ability to track SharePoint Online (Office 365), SharePoint 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, Yammer and Sitrion. The solution can also accommodate Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SalesForce, and other third party platforms.
This September, the nations oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization will host its annual LULAC Capitol Hill Advocacy Day. LULAC members from across the country will conduct advocacy visits with over 50 congressional offices from both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. LULAC members will also meet with the Judiciary Committee, Education and the Workforce Committee, Natural Resources Committee, Energy and Commerce Committee, and Members from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

LULACs Capitol Hill Advocacy Day will include the bipartisan participation of Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD), Congressman Will Hurd (R-TX), Congressman Marc Veasey (D-TX), among other champions.

LULAC will kick off the Capitol Hill Advocacy Day with a press conference on Thursday, September 22, 2016 at 9:00 a.m. The press conference will include remarks from congressional members and Latino leaders regarding the importance of the Latino vote and the current efforts underway to register Latino voters. The leaders will also discuss how Trumps anti-Latino and misogynist rhetoric has alienated an important voting block that is critical to winning the White House.

WHO:



Congressman Marc Veasey, D-TX, 33rd District

LULAC National President Roger C. Rocha Jr.

LULAC National Executive Director Brent Wilkes

WHAT:

LULAC press conference to kick off annual Capitol Hill Advocacy Day

WHEN:

Thursday, September 22, 2016 from 9:00am to 9:30am

WHERE:

U.S. Capitol House Triangle (Independence Ave SE & New Jersey Ave SE)

About LULAC

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the nations largest and oldest civil rights volunteer-based organization that empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with 1,000 councils around the United States and Puerto Rico, LULACs programs, services and advocacy address the most important issues for Latinos, meeting critical needs of today and the future. For more information, visit http://www.LULAC.org, http://www.LULAC.org/facebook, and http://www.LULAC.org/twitter.
Career Velocity Logo What: Wi-Tronix Career Velocity Event * When: Thursday, September 15 * Time: 3:00 PM - 8:00 PM (open house) * Where: Wi-Tronix office, Bolingbrook, IL * More info: www2.wi-tronix.com/careers

On Thursday, September 15, Wi-Tronix will host its first annual Career Velocity Event, an all position career fair. The event will take place at Wi-Tronixs headquarters from 3:00  8:00 PM as an open house-style event. The Wi-Tronix office is located at 631 E Boughton Road, Suite 240, Bolingbrook, IL 60440, at the Promenade Bolingbrook.

The company is seeking qualified individuals to join the growing company. Wi-Tronix is accepting resumes for a wide variety of positions and departments including:



Software Engineering

Hardware Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Technical Support

Finance

RMA

IT

Assembly

Customer Care Management

Test Analysis

Project Management

Sales and Marketing

Business Analysis

Human Resources

Recent college grads, veterans, and professionals are invited to the office to network, connect, and explore career opportunities. Interested individuals should bring several copies of a resume to distribute to Wi-Tronix department representatives. For a listing of positions, please visit the Wi-Tronix Careers webpage at http://www2.wi-tronix.com/careers.

Appetizers and light refreshments will be available during this event.

If you are interested in attending the Wi-Tronix Career Velocity Event, please RSVP.

For further information, contact Wi-Tronix at 1-888-WI-TRONIX or Sue Schultz at sschultz(at)wi-tronix(dot)com.

About Wi-Tronix, LLC

Wi-Tronix is a leading provider of remote monitoring solutions for high-value mobile assets used in the rail, marine and mining markets, and in other commercial and industrial operations. Since 2004 Wi-Tronix has been working with businesses to improve the operational efficiency, service reliability, and safety of their high-value assets. Wi-Tronix corporate headquarters are located in Bolingbrook, Illinois. For more information visit wi-tronix.com or follow Wi-Tronix on Twitter at @WiTronix.
Weve established a great reputation in the DFW area and will bring the same enthusiasm, knowledge, and commitment to our clients and candidates in the Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego areas.

Camden Kelly Corporation, a leading technical recruiting and staffing company headquartered in the Dallas Fort Worth area, is pleased to announce its forthcoming expansion with the opening of several Southern California offices October 3, 2016 in Los Angeles, San Diego, and its regional headquarters in Irvine. The offices will connect technology job seekers with companies in the area who are hiring top IT talent.

From inception the business has doubled year-over year and that recruiting success is being used to propel the organization forward into Southern California. Katy Imhoff, President and CEO, is thrilled with the growth and success the company has achieved to date. Weve established a great reputation in the DFW area and will bring the same enthusiasm, knowledge, and commitment to our clients and candidates in the Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego areas.

The region will maintain a staff of talented full desk recruiters, with a focus on placing Software Developers, UI/UX Engineers, Mobile Developers and other full time and contract IT professionals. The office for the new regional headquarters is located at 2601 Main St. Suite 550, Irvine California, the Los Angeles office is located at 5670 Wilshire Blvd Suite 1800, Los Angeles California and the San Diego office is located at 402 West Broadway Suite 400, San Diego California.

For more information, visit us at http://www.camdenkelly.com

About Camden Kelly Corporation:

Camden Kelly Corporation is a highly effective IT Recruiting & Staffing Firm currently serving the DFW Metroplex and soon to be serving Southern California. When you work with Camden Kelly, you get results. Whether your preference is Microsoft or Open Source or anywhere in between we're here for you!

With an excellent reputation in pairing qualified Information Technology professionals who specialize in .Net, PHP, Python, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, iOS, Android, SQL and more with the companies who are looking to hire them, Camden Kelly is the smartest choice in IT Recruiting. Were the voice behind your resumefind out why on our website http://camdenkelly.com.
TIA Technology is pleased to announce that its 2016 community conference will be held in Warsaw, Poland from 14-15 September. This conference is a must-attend event for business and IT leaders in the insurance industry who want to stay ahead of the technology changes that are redefining the sector. The event is in its 14th year, and with over 200 attendees already registered for 2016, this is the biggest TIA Community Conference to date.

Enabling digital insurance across the value chain

The conference this year focuses on the opportunities that digitalization offers all insurers. Driven by technology advances and growing customer demands, insurers are facing increasing competition from unlikely places, and must adapt to survive. With presentations from guest speakers across the industry, the two-day event promises to provide insight into agile technology solutions that support customer engagement across all digital touchpoints.

Hear directly from customers

As well as hearing from industry experts, attendees will get the chance to hear first-hand how many insurers have already tackled the challenge of digital transformation. Amongst the speakers will be Jackie McMahon from FBD insurance in Ireland, Grazyna Sudzinska-Amroziewicz from Aviva Poland, and Ritva Vapalahti from Fennia in Finland who will share their experiences of how TIA Technology has helped them to stay competitive in the sector. All these customers have recently completed their migration to the latest version of the TIA Solution and will be sharing their insights into the benefits theyve seen.

A worldwide community event to share best practices

There will be more than 200 insurance professionals from the property and casualty sector attending the event, as well as systems integrators from across Europe who are helping insurers bridge the digital divide. Over 60 different companies from around the world will be represented at the conference and accompanying exhibition. This is a rare opportunity for insurers to learn from industry experts, hear from their peers, engage with technology specialists and grow their own personal networks.

This years TCC promises to be a place where the business and IT community come to be inspired, to learn and to share, said Christian Kromann, CEO of TIA Technology. We are committed to delivering solutions that enable our customers to realize a true digital insurance transformation. We look forward to bringing together industry experts, visionaries, customers and partners for a substantive discussion about the key issues facing insurers today. TCC 2016 is a strong manifest of TIAs leading position in the insurance industry.

Exclusive industry insight for a customer-first strategy

This year, hear from Sebastian Herfurth from Friendsurance, the first Peer-to-Peer insurer in the industry, as he explains the changing digital business dynamics and how traditional insurers need to think differently about their customers. Miguel Amaro from Deloitte will present on the increasing need for insurers to disrupt, or face disruption themselves, in the dace of fast-moving technology and competitive forces. Plus, hear the latest in expert analytics from Accenture and Affecto about the need for insurers to retain a laser focus on their customers, and provide them with a standout service experience as a point of real differentiation in the industry.

The venue

This years conference will be held at the Sheraton Warsaw Hotel in Poland. Poland is a thriving hub for the European insurance industry and a number of large companies are headquartered here. The vibrant TIA insurance community, combined with Polands dynamic and growing economy, make it the perfect location for the TCC event this year.

For more information on the full agenda for the two days, please visit the event website: http://www.tiatechnology.com/en/insurance-solutions/events2016/tcc-2016/.

About TIA Technology

Our core insurance software gives insurers the flexibility and customer insight they need to stay relevant and evolve with the market. The proven TIA Solution means insurers can count on a safe investment. And with 30,000 insurance professionals in more than 50 companies across 30 countries using the TIA Solution, we are a leading provider of integrated policy and claims solutions. http://www.tiatechnology.com/
Accepting the grant check are Marie Sperber, VP of Business and Philanthropy; Antonella Celli, AVP and Pluckemin Branch Manager, Investors Bank; and Maria Keenan, Manager of the Adult Day Club. We are enormously grateful for the generosity of Investors Foundation and their support of our mission, said Marie Sperber, VP of Business Development & Philanthropy at the VNA of Somerset Hills.

The Visiting Nurse Association of Somerset Hills (VNA) has received a $4,000 grant from Investors Foundation to support arts programming at the Adult Day Club at Somerset Hills (ADC), an adult day center run by the organization. The specialized interactive music, visual, and cultural arts programs offered at the ADC are designed to stimulate brain activity and provide opportunities for self-expression, sense of accomplishment and purpose, emotional communication, and memory retrieval. Many of the elderly clientele are frail, and suffer from moderate dementia or other functional impairments due to stroke or other chronic illnesses.

We are enormously grateful for the generosity of Investors Foundation and their support of our mission, said Marie Sperber, VP of Business Development & Philanthropy at the VNA of Somerset Hills. Their grant makes it possible for the Adult Day Club to continue to offer a wide range of therapeutic activities designed to enrich the lives of people with Alzheimers disease and other disabling conditions.

The Adult Day Club at Somerset Hills provides a warm and welcoming setting that enhances the quality of life for people who will benefit from companionship during the day, including those with Alzheimers and dementia. Members enjoy a fulfilling day outside the home including a variety of engaging activities, lunch and snacks, daily exercise sessions, and personal care services. Experienced and nurturing staff are focused on supporting the individual health, emotional and recreational needs of each member. Caregivers also receive a much-needed break from their stressful daily routine, allowing time for work and other non-caregiving responsibilities while feeling confident while their loved one is safe and not lonely. The care provided at the Adult Day Club may help delay need for placing a loved one in an assisted living or nursing facility.

The Investors Foundation is dedicated to helping organizations that support the arts, education, health & human services, youth initiatives, and more. Funding is available to organizations located in the areas served by Investors Bank, which includes most of New Jersey, New York City, and Long Island. Since the foundation's beginnings in 2005, more than $16 million has been pledged to hundreds of worthy organizations and causes.

About VNA of Somerset Hills

The Visiting Nurse Association of Somerset Hills and its subsidiaries provide individuals and families with comprehensive, high quality, cost-effective home and community healthcare services, regardless of ability to pay, using partnerships where appropriate. The VNA is a charitable, tax-exempt home health agency and hospice certified by Medicare, accredited by the Community Health Accreditation Program and licensed by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services.

For more information about the organization:

Web: http://www.visitingnurse.org

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/VNAofsomersethills

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/company/vna-of-somerset-hills

Twitter: https://twitter.com/VNASomHills
Mugshots Grill & Bar This Friday we will open for business and a portion of Fridays sales will be donated to Oxford Lovepacks.

Aint Life Grand Investments, parent company of Mugshots Grill and Bar, Glory Bound Gyro Co., and Tophers Rock 'N Roll Grill, announces the newest Mugshots Grill & Bar location opening Friday, September 16th in Oxford, MS. This opening will mark Mugshots eighteenth location. Friday, September 16, Mugshots will host their Eat Good, Give Back fund-raising event to benefit Oxford Lovepacks, an organization dedicated to providing supplemental food for school age children in need. The check presentation, ribbon cutting ceremony, and grand opening will by held Monday, September 19th, at 10:30am. All media and public are invited.

We are very excited the day is finally here. said Cliff Rayburn, Owner and Franchisee of Mugshots Tuscaloosa and Mugshots Oxford. This Friday we will open for business and a portion of Fridays sales will be donated to Oxford Lovepacks. Were happy to partner with and contribute to such a worthy cause. I would also like to thank the City of Oxford. They have been extremely welcoming to us during our construction and we cannot wait to be able to serve our fans here in Oxford." Rayburn also stated.

Opening a Mugshots in Oxford has been a long term goal and its finally here. said Mugshots founder Chris McDonald. Putting Mugshots Oxford in the hands of Cliff Rayburn was a no brainer. Cliff has been with us from day one and I couldnt think of anyone better suited to serve Mississippis greatest burger to one of Mississippis greatest college towns.

About Mugshots Grill & Bar:

Mugshots Grill & Bar is one of the South's favorite restaurant concepts serving up great food in a fun, casual, and family-friendly atmosphere. We are dedicated to giving back to the communities in which we operate with our nonprofit organization Making Life Grand." We pride ourself on our "Havin' A Good Time" culture and now have 18 locations in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Angelspan Logo Today we're excited to announce support for the GIIN standards.

AngelSpan, an investor relations service that helps CEOs establish trust with their investors, announced support for the emerging GIIN standards today at the Social Capital Markets Conference (SOCAP) in San Francisco, CA. This new feature will allow the investors and stakeholders of impact companies to receive regular progress updates measured against the GIIN standards.

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) recently released a report on The Business Value of Impact Measurement where research showed that 95% of impact investors said that understanding the performance of their investments was a part of their mission. Starting today, impact investments that use AngelSpan to regularly communicate with their investors and stakeholders will be measured using the GIIN standards.

At the beginning of 2016 we licensed the Bell Mason Diagnostic to apply business performance metrics to our non-impact clients, said Joe Milam, CEO. Today were excited to announce support for the GIIN standards for our clients that are impact companies.

Jean Case, nationally recognized philanthropist and CEO of the Case Foundation, recently defined impact investments as having three characteristics:



Clear intention

A commitment to measurement of their impact

Transparency and communication with their investors and stakeholders

Angelspan has been a key partner in helping us communicate the progress of our Buy One & We Give One mission to all of our investors and stakeholders, said David Simnick, CEO of Soapbox Soaps. "This is something I think all investors should require from every company in which they invest.

About AngelSpan

AngelSpan helps early stage CEOs build trust with their investors by delivering professionally crafted monthly updates. Dedicated communication coordinators assist entrepreneurs by curating all investor updates and keeping them on schedule. We understand entrepreneurs are stretched thin, so we do the heavy lifting to take the hard work out of investor relations. The best entrepreneurs know that regular investor communication encourages their stakeholders to provide business introductions, future investment, and referrals to potential team members. Investor updates that include business bottlenecks and hurdles earn credibility, demonstrate transparency, and build trust.
A Great Partnership Its exciting to achieve a high ranking upon AXON IVYs 1st entry into the Gartner Magic Quadrant, said Rolf G. Stephan, COO. With CM First as a partner, customers have an automated way to speed up transition to a business process/rules approach."

CM First Group announced today the addition of a new service, CM evolveIT Business Rules, which offers business rules extraction from mainframe applications developed in COBOL and other languages using the CM evolveIT Analysis Workbench. The extracted business rules can then be used in BPM tools and rules engines. http://cmevolveit.cmfirstgroup.com/ . This service adds to the CM First BPM practice, which extends iBPM to IBM i, CA Plex and CA 2E applications using the Axon.ivy iBPM Suite. CM First is a primary reseller and partner for AXON IVY.

With perfect timing, Gartner has just released the 2016 Magic Quadrant for Intelligent Business Process Management Suites (iBPMS) adding Axon.ivy BPM Suite to the Quadrant for the first time. Gartner assesses the global marketplace for each vendor classification, evaluating the products for their completeness of vision and ability to execute. Read more here: http://www.axonivy.com/worldwide/gartner-report/

Its exciting to achieve a high ranking upon AXON IVYs first entry into the Gartner Magic Quadrant, said Rolf G. Stephan, COO. And with CM First as a partner, customers that have legacy mainframe and midrange applications now have an automated way to speed up transition to a business process and business rules-based approach.

These two announcements validate the success of CM First and AXON IVY employees, partners and customers. The Gartner announcement places AXON IVY among the best 15 of all products in the iBPM arena. Customers rely on Gartners evaluation to help them select the best solutions to support the business.

The Axon.ivy BPM Suite helps organizations to quickly transform poorly documented business processes into intelligent, automated solutions  seamlessly integrating people, resources and systems. Axon.ivys model-centric BPM approach rapidly shortens payback across six coordinated actions: Business analysts model, publish and analyze while technical experts design, execute and monitor the same complex workflows. Reference customers include numerous transportation, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, financial and utilities industries. http://www.cmfirstgroup.com/products/axonivy/

Register now to learn more about the Axon.ivy solution. Axon IVY is sponsoring a webinar on Thursday, September 15, 2016, 9AM PDT featuring Forrester Research entitled, Accelerate the Shift to Digital Business With Customer-Obsessed Employee Apps. The speakers will be Clay Richardson, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research and Rolf Stephan, Chief Operating Officer, AXON IVY, explaining how companies need to build more flexible, digital apps to successfully compete in the digital business age. Axon.ivy is a key factor in that process. The concept of low code platforms to speed the effort will be highlighted as well as several customer case studies. Register now at: http://go.axonivy.com/digital-business-webinar-cmfirst/

CM Firsts CM evolveIT further accelerates that process, by using advanced compiler-accurate code slicing techniques to extract the business rules that serve as input to the process.

The attention that this Gartner Magic Quadrant announcement will bring to the Axon.ivy BPM Suite excites CM First, said Roger Hammer, CM evolveIT product owner. CM First have known for some time that Axon Ivy.is an excellent BPM choice for organizations that are modernizing legacy code using CM evolveIT.

About AXON IVY

AXON IVY is a software company headquartered in Switzerland and part of the Axon Active group, a global provider of process solutions since 1988. The Axon.ivy BPM suite helps midsize and large organizations develop customized, agile web and mobile applications to automate and monitor a variety of business processes across a wide range of departments including customer service, sales, marketing, HR, finance, operations, R&D and manufacturing processes. This comprehensive, process-centric application platform is used by more than 350 customers and 250,000 users around the globe.

About CM First

CM First is a global software and services company established in 1999 with a focus on modernizing applications, managing technical debt and the agile development of enterprise apps. Delivery areas include; migrations of software code, databases and IBM hardware, custom app, architecture and API development, mobility solutions and knowledge transfer. CM First works with hundreds of IBM and CA Technologies business-critical systems worldwide, with numerous reference customers covering industries as diverse as logistics, travel, insurance, food processing and oil and gas construction. For more information, visit http://www.cmfirstgroup.com

CM First Contacts

EMEA Headquarters

+41 41 508 01 05

info(at)cmfirstgroup(dot)com

Americas Headquarters

+1-512-600-1484

+1-888-866-6179

infotech(at)cmfirstgroup(dot)com

France

+33 608 504 285

infofrance(at)cmfirstgroup(dot)com
We are excited to discuss commerce challenges with the attendees at Shop.Org and to showcase recent advancements in the Broadleaf framework.

Broadleaf Commerce, the eCommerce platform solution provider for enterprise commerce brands, including OReilly Auto Parts and The Container Store, has announced their participation at Shop.Org 2016 where Broadleaf will provide eRetailers the ability to create and demo interactive web stores. The conference will take place in Broadleafs hometown of Dallas from September 26 to September 28.

Shop.Org, given the moniker Retails Digital Summit, is the go-to event where industry professionals can enjoy all things digital retail. With more than 5,000 attendees occupying the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center, retail professionals attending Shop.Org are able to discover and purchase eCommerce technology and services.

Broadleaf will host live demos at their booth, #7070, giving passersby the opportunity to experience website management utilizing Broadleafs new UI. Interested retailers may contact Broadleaf to schedule one-on-one private demonstrations or a session with a technical architect for a deeper discussion of the framework and its core functionalities.

We are excited to discuss commerce challenges with the attendees at Shop.Org and to showcase recent advancements in the Broadleaf framework, stated Brian Polster, CEO of Broadleaf Commerce. Our clients continue to reaffirm us as the best commerce framework for building complex or highly customized solutions. We look forward to seeing if our recent improvements with B2B, OMS, and CMS features resonate with the needs of Shop.Org attendees.

New administrative features have been introduced to the eCommerce solution to help streamline the website management process, including hierarchical category lookup and enhanced asset management capabilities. The platform enables retailers to increase conversion rates by easily targeting offers and promotions to the right customer at the right time.

Understanding the importance of remaining agile in an evolving market, Broadleafs modular architecture boasts a feature set designed to support the Fortune 500 enterprises, yet is priced for the mid-market. Retailers seeking to attend the conference may request a free ticket on behalf of Broadleaf at info(at)broadleafcommerce.com.

Those interested in learning more about the Broadleaf system are also invited to join upcoming web events or contact Broadleaf directly at info(at)broadleafcommerce.com.

About Broadleaf Commerce, LLC

Broadleaf Commerce provides B2B and B2C eCommerce platform solutions to simplify the complexities of multi-channel commerce and digital experience management. As the market-leading choice for enterprise organizations requiring tailored, highly scalable commerce systems, Broadleaf is fully customizable and extensible. Trusted by Fortune 500 corporations, yet priced for the mid-market, Broadleaf provides the framework for leading brands, including Google, The Container Store, OReilly Auto Parts, and Vology. For more information, visit: http://www.broadleafcommerce.com/.
The GlobalTranz community wanted to help those impacted by this tragedy.

The storm affected many homes in Louisiana. The flood produced devastation that has displaced many families and businesses. The GlobalTranz community wanted to help those impacted by this tragedy. Our team made contact with Mid City Redevelopment Alliance, Inc. in Baton Rouge to receive and distribute donations, said Chris Kyriakopoulos, Credit Manager at GlobalTranz.

Mid City Redevelopment Alliance is a local non-profit in the heart of Baton Rouge. Mid City has been working to revitalize Baton Rouges city center for 25 years. They were founded by a local hospital and over the years have distinguished themselves as a leader among the non-profit community.

To help in our efforts, GlobalTranz partnered with Pegasus Logistics to load and transport donations from Arizona to Louisiana. Pegasus Logistics, a veteran in the logistics industry for over 20 years, jumped at the chance to partner with us to help the victims of Louisiana, said Grant Glasser, Vice President of Carrier Operations at GlobalTranz

GlobalTranz, located at 7350 N. Dobson Rd. in Scottsdale, across from Talking Stick Resort, will be accepting donations for Louisiana relief efforts from 7am-4pm Monday through Friday through September 16th. Items in need are:



Bleach

Water

PowerAde

Gatorade

School Supplies

Toiletries

Gutting tools: sheetrock cutters are in desperate need, crowbars, hammers, 5 gallon buckets, wheelbarrows, thick work gloves, fungicide cleaning agents (Shockwave, Concrobium & Sterifab are being recommended), utility knives & replacement blades, brooms & dustpans, shop vacs, string lines, drywall screws, levels, and rags.

Big items may be harder to come by, but are also needed:

1/2 inch sheetrock

Tape

Bat insulation

Flooring

Sheetrock mud

Appliances (stove, refrigerator, dishwasher)

Feel free to contact Chris Kyriakopoulos at 480.339.5890 if arrangements outside of the donation hours are needed.

About GlobalTranz



GlobalTranz is a technology-enabled logistics company specializing in freight management services including LTL, Full Truckload, Supply Chain Management, and Domestic Air/Expedited shipping. Their team focuses on innovative technology and partnering with sales professionals that possess energy, insight, and a fervent customer service mentality.



GlobalTranz has created a one-stop-shop for its customer base of over 25,000 shippers. In 2016, Transport Topics Announced GlobalTranz as the 12th Largest Freight Brokerage Firm in the US. GlobalTranz is a leading company in the $157 Billion Dollar third-party logistics industry, with annual revenue exceeding $500M and growing every year. GlobalTranz currently has 500+ employees and is growing rapidly.

Pegasus Logistics Group

Global Headquarter Offices

306 Airline Drive, Suite 100

Coppell, TX, 75019

United States (US)

Toll Free: 800-997-7226

https://www.pegasuslogistics.com/

Mid City Redevelopment Alliance, Inc.

419 N 19th Street, Baton Rouge, LA 70802

225.346.1000 x205

http://www.midcityredevelopment.org
Some people fall into the trap of setting goals that are so high and unrealistic

Dan Coolican travelled to Manchester at the weekend to deliver a keynote speech at a Regional Business Development Conference that was attended by sales and marketing professionals from all over the UK. Mr Coolican was asked to speak about goal setting, a subject that he feels very strongly about.

Here, Mr Coolican has revealed the most crucial thing to remember when setting goals, which he emphasized in his speech.

Make them S.M.A.R.T.

First and foremost when setting goals, its vital to make them S.M.A.R.T, said Mr Coolican. Dan Coolican recommends professionals remember the acronym S.M.A.R.T. - meaning Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-sensitive.

Specific

When setting goals there is no room to be vague. Specific goals provide parameters to work within and stops people from wandering off path. Ambiguous goals produce ambiguous results and incomplete goals produce incomplete futures.

Measurable

Its important to make goals measurable as it provides the opportunity to evaluate the progress that has been achieved.

Attainable

While having big goals is important, its vital that they are attainable. Setting goals that are so high they are unattainable can become extremely deflating and demotivating.

Realistic

A goal has to be something that can become a reality. Some people fall into the trap of setting goals that are so high and unrealistic, said Dan Coolican. At Goldstream Incorporated they urge their contractors to set goals that can become a reality. The firm encourages people to dream big but states that they must be able to back it up and make it happen.

Time

Dan Coolican argues that every goal should have a timeframe. By having a deadline to work towards, it creates urgency and stops procrastination.

Something I am very passionate about is sharing my knowledge with budding entrepreneurs and helping people to learn and excel, said Dan Coolican, CEO at Goldstream Incorporated.

About GoldstreamIncorporated: http://www.goldstreamincorporated.co.uk/about-us/

Goldstream Incorporated is an outsourced sales and marketing firm based in Nottingham. As direct marketing specialists, the firm works closely alongside their clients to create unique marketing campaigns, which will accurately represent their products or services to consumers. By utilising the personal touch, Goldstream Incorporated are able to deliver both quality and quantity customer acquisitions for their clients. CEO Dan Coolican is regularly invited to attend industry events and has had a number of speaking engagements this year. As a firm that is passionate about entrepreneurship, Mr Coolican is committed to sharing his knowledge and experience with others, helping to assist them on their entrepreneurial journey.
This strategic partnership sums up what IOU Financial is about; providing competitive and responsible funding to help fuel the growth of small business, Phil Marleau, CEO IOU Financial, Inc.

IOU Financial (TSX-V: IOU), a leading online lender (IOUFinancial.com) to small businesses in the United States and Canada, is pleased to announce its strategic partnership with RestaurantLink (RestaurantLink.com).

Since 1995, RestaurantLink has led the foodservice industry in the USA, with procurement and management solutions. Thousands of independent and multi-unit operators count on the experience, strength and team at RestaurantLink to support their business. Now, by partnering with IOU Financial, RestaurantLink customers have access to fast, reliable financing, whether it is working capital or expansion related.

We understand Restaurants capital needs as restaurants represent nearly 1 out of 10 of clients, says Christophe Choquart, VP of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships. This partnership leverages IOU Financial and RestaurantLink shared values in delivering best-in-class productivity and funding tools to the food and beverage industry.

This strategic partnership sums up what IOU Financial is about; providing competitive and responsible funding to help fuel the growth of small business, says Phil Marleau, CEO.

Such strategic partnerships are a key pillar to the IOU Financial growth strategy, connecting with niche suppliers to offer small businesses a unique one-stop-shop experience. IOU Financial connects with key ecosystem players facilitating small business owners access to fast and responsible funding.

About IOU Financial Inc.

Endorsed by Kevin OLeary of ABCs Shark Tank, IOU Financial provides small business loans throughout the U.S. and Canada, providing access to the capital they need to seize growth opportunities quickly. Typical customers include medical and dental practices, grocery and retail stores, restaurant and hotel franchisees and e-commerce companies. In a unique approach to lending, the IOU Financial advanced, automated application and approval system accurately assesses applicants' financial realities, with an emphasis on day-to-day cash flow trends. It makes loans of up to $150,000 to qualified applicants within a few business days, with affordable charges favourable to cash-flow management. Its speed and transparency make IOU Financial a trusted alternative to banks. To learn more visit: IOUFinancial.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of IOU including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, dependence upon regulatory and shareholder approvals, the execution of definitive documentation and the uncertainty of obtaining additional financing. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. IOU does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

The TSX-V has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For more information, please contact:

Philippe Marleau

Chief Executive Officer

(514) 789-0694 ext. 225

Christophe Choquart

VP - Business Development and Strategic Partnerships

(678) 264-8584
It is my firm belief that all of our participating students have garnered a higher degree of aptitude within our field; regardless of what career path they will choose.

The IT industry is predicting over 4.5 million cybersecurity jobs available by the end of decade. Its no wonder that the National Cyber Leagues (NCL) popularity continues to grow. The NCL challenges cybersecurity students and professionals through virtual training exercises, and registration for Fall Season is now open.

NCL breeds future cybersecurity professional talent through preparatory lab exercises and challenges that deal with real problems and resource constraints. The NCL helps participants develop and validate knowledge and skills from nine competencies that include open source intelligence, scanning, enumeration, web app exploitation, log analysis, and more. In addition, faculty from two- and four-year colleges and universities can use free resources to integrate the NCL content into the classroom. Instructors will receive a suggested course progression from NCL preparatory lab exercises to competition challenges to professional certifications.

The experience and lessons learned from these series of events have been highly beneficial for all of our students -- both from a technical and a motivational standpoint, states Jayson Hayworth, Vice President of Hawaii Advanced Technology Society. It is my firm belief that all of our participating students have garnered a higher degree of aptitude within our field; regardless of what career path they will choose.

NCL measures participants' skill sets and how they compare to others and produces an individualized performance-based assessment, also known as the NCL Scouting Report. Organizations looking to hire qualified candidates can access these reports.

Registration for NCL is open through Oct. 3. For more information or to register, visit http://www.nationalcyberleague.org/fall-season.

About National Cyber League:

The National Cyber League (NCL) provides a cybersecurity training ground in a high-fidelity, simulation environment that requires participants to work individually in the Regular Season and in teams during the Postseason events. The NCL events are designed for participants to solve real problems with actual deadlines under time, technical and resource constraints. The NCL assists higher education institutions across the country in student preparation for its events and for professional certifications. Companies seeking qualified talent can access the NCLs Scouting Reports to evaluate potential cybersecurity professionals who have demonstrated skills in the NCL events. The NCL is where cybersecurity is a passion for students, faculty and the workforce. To learn more, visit nationalcyberleague.org.
OGC Group OGC listens, [they are] fun to do business with, very innovative, great customer service, and good people.

The Outdoor GreatRoom Company (OGC) hosted its second-annual Outdoor GreatRoom Conference, September 7-8, at their new corporate headquarters in Burnsville, Minnesota. The event included employees, sales representatives, and a number of customers from across the U.S. and Canada for a two-day event. This educational event themed Place Your Bets on OGC featured showroom, factory, and engineering tours, hands on product training, and round table discussions.

Evening festivities included dinner and hospitality, go-karting, and a hosted evening at Canterbury Park for some horse racing. Eric Cannon, Territory Representative for the Rocky Mountain States commented it was a fun and informative team building experience. As usual it was well planned and well executed by [OGC.] The new facility is awesome. Wow!

This event brought the company closer to its customers and provided a lot of feedback into how OGC can help its customers and sales representatives succeed in the market. Steve Shimek, VP of Sales got the feedback that OGC listens, [they are] fun to do business with, very innovative, great customer service, and good people.

OGC is looking forward to growing this event in the future.

ABOUT THE OUTDOOR GREATROOM COMPANY

The Outdoor GreatRoom Company (OGC) manufactures unique, upscale products with design appeal for indoor and outdoor living spaces. Products include gas fire pits and gas fire pit tables, pergolas, outdoor kitchen islands, outdoor gas fireplaces, indoor electric fireplaces, grills, outdoor patio furniture, accessories, along with custom and commercial products. Visit http://www.outdoorrooms.com for more information.
We are proud to have doubled our staff in Poland over the last 12 months to over 30 IT professionals today. Moreover, we expect to reach more than 80 people within the next two years at Skelia Poland.

Skelia, a trusted global IT services company and a successful market challenger, confirms the significant year-on-year growth of its Krakow-based service center and strengthens its Polish organization with the appointment of Shemek Fedyczkowski, as Director of Operations.

Skelias 150 IT professionals lead by excellence, technology acumen, and customer dialogue. Since its creation in 2008, Skelia helps European and U.S. customers achieve growth and efficiency by extending their businesses with IT talent from Eastern Europe. The company is headquartered in Luxembourg and provides software development, quality assurance, and outsourcing services operating through the network of service centers in Poland and Ukraine, with branch offices in the U.S., U.K., and the Netherlands.

Skelia, a Successful IT Market Challenger in Poland

Poland has one of the fastest growing economies in Eastern Europe with a favorable business climate, excellent education system, and highly qualified IT population. Considering our strong business demand for best IT talent in Europe and the U.S., we decided to strengthen our Polish operations as an important growth market. Our strategy is not to be a price killer, but to excel by service quality, people excellence, and team retention, says Skelias CEO Patrik Vandewalle. We are proud to have doubled our staff in Poland over the last 12 months to over 30 IT professionals today. Moreover, we expect to reach more than 80 people within the next two years at Skelia Poland.

Shemek Fedyczkowski, Director of Operations at Skelia Poland

Shemek Fedyczkowski, an accomplished and inspiring leader, joins Skelia Poland as Director of Operations. In his new role, Mr. Fedyczkowski will lead the business operations of Skelia Poland, driving the organizations operational excellence and sustainable business growth.

Efficient management is more than applying best practices to existing business capabilities, its continually looking to identify, plan and apply continuous operational transformation in response to the changing market landscape and most importantly the changing needs of our clients,  says Shemek Fedyczkowski, newly appointed Director of Operations.

In the past 6 years, Mr. Fedyczkowski has held senior management positions, leading departments and delivery centers of global IT companies in Poland. During his tenure at EPAM, he grew the organization from 65 software engineers to 350+. Before that, as Country Manager at IBM, Mr. Fedyczkowski was responsible for 14 teams supporting the IT layer of one of Switzerlands biggest financial institutions. Prior to working at the large corporations, he has successfully built and sold several IT businesses in Vancouver, Canada. Mr. Fedyczkowski earned his bachelors degree in Business Administration from Simon Fraser University.

About Skelia

Skelia is a global IT services company providing software development, quality assurance, and outsourcing services. We help our European and US customers with the best IT talent of Eastern Europe. Headquartered in Europe, Skelia operates through a global network of offices in Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland and the United States.

For detailed information, please visit: http://skelia.com/

Skelia sarl

20 rue de lindustrie

L-8399 Windhof

Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

+352 20 20 21 40

info(at)skelia(dot)com

Skelia Inc

3505 El Camino Real

Palo Alto CA 94306

USA

+1 415 4292084

info(at)skelia(dot)com
Private Inpatient Healing Center for Veterans, Military, Law Enforcement and First Responders Warriors Heart announces the Grand Opening of the first Warriors Only private treatment center for addiction and PTSD in the United States on October 15, 2016.

In celebration of the first private treatment center for Warriors Only in the United States, Warriors Heart will host a Grand Opening on Saturday, October 15, 2016, at their ranch just outside of San Antonio, Texas. Warriors Heart has been open since April 2016, and is proud to have already served a number of veterans, law enforcement, firefighters and department of defense contractors.

With over 14, 500 specialized drug treatment facilities in the United States (DrugAbuse.gov), Warriors Heart is the first and ONLY private treatment center for Warriors Only in the U.S.

Successful private treatment facility providers, Josh and Lisa Lannon (former Law Enforcement Officer), joined forces with Tom Spooner (former Special Forces and Mission 22 Co-Founder) to lead the Warriors Heart team on a special mission to heal our protectors with dignity and respect.

Warriors Heart offers an evidence-based and holistic treatment for our law enforcement, firefighters, veterans and other first responders. This program is also an alternative to the VA (Veterans Administration) backlog where veterans may wait months to see one specialist. According to VA reports, 690,869 (378,993 PTSD) have been diagnosed for mental health disorders since 2001 - and those are only the ones who have sought help.

The Warriors Heart Grand Opening is in honor of our National Heroes, and will include:

1. Tour of the Warriors Heart 542-acre ranch and healing facility.

2. Ribbon Cutting Ceremony.

3. Dedication of the Mission 22 Memorial on the Warriors Heart property.

4. K9 Service Dog demos.

5. Live music by local bands.

6. BBQ prepared by the Warriors Heart Private Chefs.

What makes the Warriors Heart program unique is the peer-to-peer residential treatment, where warriors can feel safe sharing with their Tribe. Other facilities may offer tracks that treat warriors, however, the programs are typically still in a group setting with clients who have not been through the front lines of trauma. There is a stigma that our warriors are supposed to be tough, but the effects of the front lines of war, the streets and fires take their toll. Warriors Heart provides a place where warriors can heal in an environment that supports and understands them. Warriors no longer have to deal with trauma in silence and through coping mechanisms such as alcohol. As a result of this Warriors Only approach to treatment, the healing process for veterans and first responders dealing with substance abuse and PTSD can be faster.

The Mission 22 Memorial, created by Elder Heart, will have a special dedication at this event. This mobile monument is made up of steel plates created in the likeness of real American Veterans who lost their battle with PTSD. These commemorative silhouettes are a sad reminder that 22 veterans commit suicide a day in the US. Warriors Heart is dedicated to helping our veterans overcome the War at Home, and reducing this unacceptable statistic.

The Warriors Heart facility is the former Purple Sage Ranch corporate retreat center with 40 beds, and is designed to let our warriors heal in a safe and comfortable place with a private chef, fitness center, pool, creative shop, private lake, running trails and luxury amenities.

The clinical team includes licensed doctors and therapists. Warriors Heart Clinical Director Annette T Hill is a Gold Star Mother, who specializes in trauma. Annettes son, Adam Hill Gibson, served two tours in Iraq and sadly passed way as a result of symptoms of PTSD in 2009.

Former Marine and Operation Overwatch Founder, Brice Cavanaugh and therapists will also do K9 demos during this Grand Opening to show the healing power of these Service Dogs provided at Warriors Heart.

Private insurance may cover most of the Warriors Heart program costs, and Warriors Heart is in the process of getting TriCare and TriWest insurance credentialed.

To RSVP, please email tim.whitehouse AT warriorsheart DOT com

For a timely media interview, please contact

Liz Kelly, Goody PR, 310-987-7207

About the Warriors Heart (Bandera, Texas):

Warriors Heart provides a peer-to peer based solution to help the over 13.3 million American Warriors (Military, Veterans, Law Enforcement and First Responders) faced with the self-medicating struggles of alcohol addiction, prescription and drug addiction, PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and mild TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) in a private, 40-bed facility. Along with a 28-day peer-to-peer residential treatment program, Warriors Heart will soon also have the option of Day Treatment, Outpatient, and Sober Living (60 Day Minimum). With decades of experience in addiction healing, military service and law enforcement, the 3 Warriors Heart Founders (CEO Josh Lannon, former Law Enforcement Officer Lisa Lannon and former Special Forces Tom Spooner) are leading the team on this special mission of warriors healing warriors. Warriors Heart Founders work has been featured in Forbes, Chicago Tribune, KENS5 CBS News San Antonio, FOX 10 News Phoenix, PoliceOne, Womans Day and Addiction Pro magazine. There is a 24-hour Warriors Heart hotline (844-448-2567) answered by warriors. http://warriorsheart.com
There arent currently many markets offering this type of coverage, says Robert Riske, Senior VP at Worldwide Facilities Los Angeles office. Worldwide Facilities is now one of the few wholesale brokers in the country that can provide access to it."

Worldwide Facilities now offers in-house underwriting and binding authority on A-rated paper, as well as domestic claims authority from TPA on all claims under $50,000.

There arent currently many markets offering this type of coverage, says Robert Riske, Senior Vice President at Worldwide Facilities Los Angeles office. Worldwide Facilities is now one of the few wholesale brokers in the country that can provide access to it.

Worldwide Facilities is able to offer either monoline or package coverage. Motor Truck Cargo covers up to 25 units or $250,000 per vehicle, and Auto Physical Damage offers up to $2 million in fleet values. Target classes include both owner-operators and small to mid-sized fleets.

Our Los Angeles team of brokers offers decades of experience securing coverage for challenging commercial transportation risks, says Ryan Riske, Assistant Vice President of Worldwide Facilities Marine Division. Were confident this new program will be of great use to the professionals we work with and their insureds.

Contact: Robert K. Riske

Senior Vice President

Direct: (213) 236-4526

rriske(at)wwfi(dot)com

Contact: Ryan C. Riske

Assistant Vice President, Marine Division

Direct: (213) 236-4537

Cell: (949) 500-2597

rcriske(at)wwfi(dot)com

Worldwide Facilities, LLC, 725 S. Figueroa Street, 19th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90017

About Worldwide Facilities, LLC

Worldwide Facilities, LLC is a national wholesale insurance broker and managing general agent that has been in business since 1970. Our seasoned brokers and underwriters are industry leaders in providing expertise in a wide range of specialty lines, and offer extensive contacts with carriers domestically and overseas.
If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity.

PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move.
China has lashed out at the U.S. after Washington accused Beijing of not doing enough to arrest North Korean 's nuclear ambitions , underscoring tensions between the two world powers in the geopolitically sensitive Korean Peninsula.

At the Chinese foreign affairs ministry's regular press conference on Monday, spokesperson Hua Chunying said U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter was being "unnecessarily modest" for thrusting the responsibility of handling Pyongyang solely on China.

"The cause and crux of the Korean nuclear issue rest with the U.S. rather than China," added Hua in an official transcript from the foreign affairs ministry.

"The core of the issue is the conflict between (North Korea) and the U.S. It is the U.S. who should reflect upon how the situation has become what it is today, and search for an effective solution. It is better for the doer to undo what he has done. The U.S. should shoulder its due responsibilities," she said.

Hua was responding to Carter who singled out the East Asian giant at a news conference in Norway as bearing the responsibility for North Korea's recalcitrant nuclear testing.

"It's China's responsibility," he said, according to Reuters. "China has and shares an important responsibility for this development and has an important responsibility to reverse it."

"And so it's important that it (China) uses its location, its history and its influence to further the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," he added.

Meanwhile, North Korea through its state-run news agency KCNA also said U.S. was the "very one" compelling the isolated country to develop nuclear warheads. The U.S.' constant "nuclear threat and blackmail" in the past decades was "an engine which pushed the (North Korea) to reach this point," it said.

On Tuesday, two U.S. B-1 bombers flew over South Korea in a show of solidarity with South Korea while Sung Kim, the U.S. envoy on North Korea, said the world's largest economy remained open to a meaningful dialogue with Pyongyang, Reuters reported.

Story continues

The Chinese foreign affairs ministry's Hua urged for dialogue among all parties to address security concerns. "It has been proven time and again that sanctions alone cannot solve the problem," she added.

"Any unilateral action based on one's self-interest will lead to a dead end. It will not help resolve one's security concerns but will only aggravate the tension, complicate the issue, and make it more difficult to achieve relevant goals," she said.

According to observers, China's stance was hardly a surprise.

"China's interest and ours coincides in the short-term but in not the long-term," said veteran U.S. diplomat and former senate majority leader, George Mitchell.

"China is very worried about the North Korean regime but it does not want a collapse of that regime and a unified Korea under the current the South Korea regime which they would regard as a mortal threat to their interest (with) American security forces right alongside their border," he told CNBC's " Squawk Box ".

That explained Beijing's intense opposition to the deployment of the U.S. Thaad defense system on South Korean soil even though Seoul was an ally which had repeatedly explained that the weapon was for self-defense.



"(There is) a larger sense that China feels that they are in a long term rivalry (with the U.S.) In my view, there is a troubling chill over U.S.-China relations and I don't see either presidential candidates really offering a sensible way to lower the temperatures in this rivalry. But if China is locked into this rivalry as it sees it, then it is taking measures that we don't like at all," Lyle Goldstein, a professor at the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College told CNBC.

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.